planks torn from an earlier social structure were likewise warped, which
is to say they were dominated by obsessions. Edward's was the Bumpus
family; and Chris Auermann, who lived in the flat below, was convinced
that the history of mankind is a deplorable record of havoc caused by
women. Perhaps he was right, but the conviction was none the less an
obsession. He came from a little village near Wittenburg that has
scarcely changed since Luther's time. Like most residents of Hampton who
did not work in the mills, he ministered to those who did, or to those
who sold merchandise to the workers, cutting their hair in his barber
shop on Faber Street.

The Bumpuses, save Lise, clinging to a native individualism and pride,
preferred isolation to companionship with the other pieces of driftwood
by which they were surrounded, and with which the summer season compelled
a certain enforced contact. When the heat in the little dining-room grew
unbearable, they were driven to take refuge on the front steps shared in
common with the household of the barber. It is true that the barber's
wife was a mild hausfrau who had little to say, and that their lodgers,
two young Germans who worked in the mills, spent most of their evenings
at a bowling club; but Auermann himself, exhaling a strong odour of bay
rum, would arrive promptly at quarter past eight, take off his coat, and
thus, as it were stripped for action, would turn upon the defenceless
Edward.

"Vill you mention one great man--yoost one--who is not greater if the
vimmen leave him alone?" he would demand. "Is it Anthony, the conqueror
of Egypt and the East? I vill show you Cleopatra. Und Burns, and
Napoleon, the greatest man what ever lived--vimmen again. I tell you
there is no Elba, no St. Helena if it is not for the vimmen. Und vat vill
you say of Goethe?"