V
Ray Luard’squest was one in which the soul of any man might well rejoice. He was flying, like a knight of old,—though as to ways and means in very much better case,—to the rescue of his lady-love from possibilities of trouble. More than that he did not look for, and possible difficulties and delays weighed little with him.
He reached Flushing about seven in the evening after a gusty passage which did not trouble him, and was at Cologne in the early hours of the morning. But after that his progress was slow and subject to constant, exasperating, and inexplicable delays.
He had secured a berth in the sleeper and took fullest advantage of it. But all night long, as he slept the troubled sleep of the sleeping-car, he was dully conscious of long intervals when the metronomic nimble of the wheels died away, and the unusual silence was broken only by the creaking complaints of the carriage-fittings and the long-drawn snores and sharper snorts and grunts of his companions in travel.
The train was crowded and every bunk was occupied. The occupant of the one above him was so violently stertorous that Ray feared he was in for a fit, and did his best to save him from it by energetic thumps from below. But the only result was a momentary pause of surprise in the strangling solo up above and the immediate resumption of it with renewed vigour, and Ray gave it up, and drew the bed clothes over his ears, and left him to his fate.
In the morning the noisy one turned out to be an immensely fat German who rolled about the car as if itand the world outside belonged to him,—the repulsively over-bearing kind of person whose very look seemed to intimate that no one but himself and his like had any right to cumber the earth. And just the kind of person that Ray Luard loathed and abominated beyond words.
Ray’s disgust of him, and all his kind and all their doings, showed unmistakably in his face, and the fat one became aware of it and took offence. He dropped ponderously into the seat alongside Ray so that he filled three-quarters of it, and proceeded to stare at him in most offensive fashion. His little yellow pig-like eyes, almost lost in the greasy fat rolls of his face, travelled suspiciously over his neighbour from head to foot as though searching for something to settle on.
Ray knew the look and its meaning. Had he been back at Heidelberg he would forthwith have demanded of the starer when and where it was his pleasure they should meet to fight it out. But this mountain of fat was long past his Mensur days, and Ray was doubtful how to tackle him.
He did perhaps the best thing under the circumstances,—turned his back on him and looked out of the window.
But the fat one was not satisfied to let matters rest so. He loosed a wheezy laugh and said, “Ach, zo! Ein Engländer!” with another wheezy little laugh of extremest scorn.
“And what of that, Fat-Pig?” rapped out Ray, in German equal to his own, and the shot took the fat one in the wind.
“Fat-Pig! Fat-Pig! Gott im Himmel, you call me Fat-Pig?”
He rose, bellowing with fury, and was about to drop himself bodily on Ray, when others who had watched the proceedings—a Bavarian whose foot he had trampled on without apology ten minutes before, and a Saxon upon whose newspapers he had also plumped down and pulped into illegibility—jumped up and laid hands on him and dragged him back.
“So you are! So you are!” they shouted. “The Englishman has doubtless paid his fare and is entitled to the whole of a seat without insult or annoyance.”
“They ought to charge you double and then carry you in the baggage-van,” said the Saxon.
“You should try to remember you’re not yet in Prussia—you!” growled the Bavarian, jerking the mountainous one down into an empty seat.
“Ja!—Mein Gott, if I had you all in Prussia I’d show you who’s who,” and he wagged his dewlaps at them with menacing malevolence.
“A damned English spy, if I have any eyes,” he wheezed.
“No more a spy than you’re a gentleman,” retorted Ray.
“Enough! Enough, mein Herr! Let him be! He’s just a Prussian and they’re all like that,—blown out with their own conceit till they’ve no decent manners left,” said the Bavarian.
“That is so,” said the Saxon, and they removed themselves with Ray out of sight and sound of the swollen one.
The other two were quite friendly, and through their smoke endeavoured to arrive at an understanding of Ray,—how he came to speak German so well,—what his business in life was,—where he was going, and why? And, as he had nothing to conceal and felt resentful still of the fat man’s insinuations, he told them frankly what he was there for.
Their reserve and soberness over the political outlook impressed him greatly. He felt more than justified in the decision he had taken as to Lois.
He did his best, without being too intrusive, to get at their view of the future, and they at his. But it was all too pregnant with awful possibilities, and too obscure and critically in the balance, for very free speech. From their manner, however, he gathered that, while they personally desired no interruption of the present prosperous state of affairs, they doubted if the dispute between Austria and Servia could be localised, and feared that if Russia supported Servia the fat would be in the fire.
“For me, I do not like Prussia and her insolent ways,” said the Bavarian. “Yon stout one is typical of her. But if she goes, we have to follow—unfortunately, whether we approve or not. We are all bound up together, you see, and there you are.”
And all their discursive chats throughout the day went very little deeper than that.
It was a very wearisome journey. Time after time they were shunted into sidings while long and heavy trains rolled past. And when Ray commented on it with a surprised,
“Well!—for a quick through train this is about as poor a specimen as I’ve ever tumbled on,”—their only comment, as they gazed gloomily out of the window, was, “The traffic is disorganised for the moment.”
The stations they passed through were packed with people, and the military element seemed more in evidence even than usual.
It was close on five o’clock in the afternoon before they arrived in Leipsic. The Bavarian had left them at Cassel. The Saxon, as he bade Ray adieu, said quietly,
“You may find things more difficult still if you try to return this way, Herr. If you take my advice you will strike down South into Tirol and Switzerland, and meanwhile say as little as possible to anyone,” and with a meaning nod he was gone.
Ray went along to the Hauffe, secured a room, had a much-needed bath and dinner, and then set off at once for Frau Helse’s house in Sebastian Bach Strasse.
The plump Saxon maid informed him that Fräulein Dare was out, that Frau Helse was out, that Fräulein Luise was out;—they were in fact all at a concert at the Conservatorium; and the Herr Lieutenant, he was with his regiment. So Ray left his card with the name of his hotel scribbled on it, and Mrs Dare’s letter, and promised to return in the morning.
Then, after a stroll about the unusually thronged streets, he returned to his hotel and looked up trains for Switzerland.