XIX
Incourse of time and on the principle that Heaven helps them that help themselves, the stranded English in Montreux formed a committee of repatriation, which met in a room placed at their disposal by the authorities of the Kursaal, and, by dint of much writing and wiring and hustling, towards the end of the month their arrangements, such as they were, were, with the assistance of Cooks, who had now returned to business, satisfactorily completed.
The penniless were to be sent off first, then the rest by degrees in inverse ratio to their staying powers.
Anxious as they were, for some reasons, to get home, Lois, at all events,—with the knowledge that getting home might well be but the beginning of sorrows—found herself full of regrets at leaving Montreux. The little inconveniences of their stay there had been gloriously impearled with the glamour of their love. They had been perfectly happy, and perfect happiness comes not often in life nor ever lasts too long.
They had taken leave of their friends, and Ray had duly given the Vice-Consul a draft on Uncle Tony for the money he had advanced them. Monsieur and Madame and all the four demoiselles of the Pension Estèphe, and Anna the maid, had all come to the station to see them off, and were full of regrets at losing them, and now their train was jogging along towards Lausanne bound for Geneva.
They had been instructed to take with them provisions for three days, within which time it was hoped the journey to Paris might—failing accident—be accomplished. And so they had, with the assistance of Madame of the Pension, provided themselves with much bread, and butter, and atin of tongue, and a cold boiled fowl, and apples and pears and tomatoes, and cheese, and two bottles, one filled with wine and the other with cold tea. And they wondered if they would ever get through such a pile of eatables and felt prepared for a siege.
Hand-baggage alone was to be taken, and theirs consisted entirely of their provisions, as everything else they possessed went into the rucksacs on their backs. Those who attempted to take too much had to leave the excess in the Consigne at the station, to be forwarded later if opportunity permitted.
They had been told to be at the station at 5 a.m. and to form themselves into parties of eight, which would just fill a compartment, and as Lois and Ray had made few acquaintances they had some difficulty in making up their complement. They made hasty quest round, however, and Lois discovered two little elderly maiden ladies, waiting timidly in a corner for someone to take them in hand and tell them what to do, which she immediately did, and they wept gratefully. And Ray picked out two nice-looking boys of about his own age, who were standing watching the confusion in aloof amusement,—found they were not engaged, and secured them on the spot.
The final two in their carriage were thrust upon them at the last moment when the authorities found their numbers short. They were two young men from Lancashire, who did not speak a word of French—or indeed of anything but broad Lancashire—and they rarely opened their mouths. They were decent quiet fellows, however, and made no trouble.
The little ladies had just started on a Swiss trip to which they had been looking forward for years, and the war had made short work of it.
“We came to Switzerland once before, when our father was alive. But since he died—well, we have been keeping a school,”—confided one of them to Lois,—“and we have just disposed ofit——”
“You see these newer subsidised schools are makingthings hard for the private schools,” said the other, as the train jogged along the side of the lake, still wreathed with swathes of fleecy mist. “And when the chance offered we were glad to retire.”
“And we thought it would he so delightful to renew our old memories of Switzerland. We were atZermatt——”
“I was trying to remember where we’d seen you,” said one of the stranger youths, with just enough of a drawl and intonation to betray a trans-Atlantic origin. “We were at Zermatt too. We came across to climb something and they told us Matterhorn was about as good as anything. So we went to Zermatt and made a start onMatterhorn——”
“You began at the top,” said Ray.
“Matterhorn’s not a thing you can begin at the top. But we started from the Schwarzsee, and that’s 8945 feet up.”
“8495,” said his brother.
“And you got on all right?” asked Lois, while the little ladies regarded them with silent admiration,—men who had actually been up the Matterhorn, at which they themselves had gazed in fearful rapture from below!
“It was all right. We had guides, four of them, very good fellows, and ropes and axes and all the usual things. And they got us through. The only thing that happened to us was a stone in one of the couloirs that came down on my brother’s wrist and smashed his watch, and cut him a bit.”
“Had you done any climbing in America?” asked Ray.
“Nary! Never climbedanything——”
“’Cept stairs!” said his brother.
“Plenty stairs, yes, but no mountains to speak of. That’s why we came—to see how it felt.”
“And it felt good,” said his brother.
“Yes, it felt good, and if we could have stopped we’d have climbed some more. But this flare-up’s knockedeverything sky-high. We couldn’t raise a red cent on our letters of credit, and there we were, stony in a strange land, and not even able to tell what was the matter, ’cept when we struck someone that had the good sense to speak English.”
They were extremely nice fellows, graduates of Harvard, one studying law in Boston, and the other medicine, and their humorous outlook and comments on life in general did much to palliate the discomforts of the journey.
They had gone in strongly for fruit as provisioning, and had a couple of melons, a large supply of grapes, apples and pears and nuts, and of course tomatoes. The little ladies’ ideas had run to sandwiches and chocolates and a few bananas, all of which they confidently asserted were extremely nutritious.
At Geneva they had to change trains for the journey through France. They were all bundled out into the courtyard outside the station, and stood there in the broiling sun till soldiers with bayonets separated them into parties of forty and finally marshalled them to their carriages.
These were a decided come-down,—old non-corridors, five-on-a-side, and some without even racks for their parcels. However, it was all part of the adventure, and our party, all sticking together, were glad to find themselves at last securely locked in and really started on the journey home.
It was slow business, however, and freighted with discomforts, but they made as light of these as they possibly could, and did their best to look upon it all as a joke.
When, in the course of the night, Lois produced a small spirit lamp she had lavishly expended two whole francs on, and, after several times nearly setting them all on fire, managed to produce cups of tea all round—an operation which took time, since her kettle was of the smallest and they had only two aluminium folding-cups—they could none of them find words commensurate with their gratitude. Time, however, was the one thing they didnot lack, and their absorbed interest in that precarious tea-making, and the attention they had to give to unexpected conflagrations, and then their exultation and enjoyment over their cups of hot tea, rejoiced her greatly and fully compensated her for her prodigal expenditure on the spirit-lamp and kettle.
Even the new members of their party, a somewhat reserved young Englishman and his wife, returning dolefully from a short-cut honeymoon, thawed by degrees under the influence of hot tea at midnight, and became quite cheerful and friendly, in spite of the fact that no formal introductions had taken place.
They were packed pretty tight in their old-fashioned carriage, and but for the general goodwill the discomforts would have been almost insupportable.
They chatted and ate, and ate and chatted, and made tea at intervals, and now and again dozed with their heads on one another’s shoulders quite irrespective of persons. The ladies were accorded the corner seats and the men acted as pillows and buffers between. And so they jogged slowly along through the night, drawing up now and again with a succession of clangorous bumps that ran from end to end of the train and died with lugubrious creakings into startling silence, then starting again with a jerk that shook them all wide awake. It was as though they were cautiously feeling their way through the darkness and unknown dangers ahead.
Of official stops there were almost none. When one did come, and the guard announced ‘dix minutes d’arrêt,’ everybody poured out of the carriages, to fill their water-bottles at the station pump and stretch their cramped legs gratefully.
In the very early morning they had a stop of nearly an hour and heard that it was because a lady had been taken ill. They blessed her fervently, washed their hands and faces at the pump, and many boldly produced toothbrushes and did their teeth. And all the time afterwards, their American boys kept suggesting that Lois, or oneof the little ladies, or the young bride, should go sick and procure them another such happy release from their cages.
Everywhere, as they waited in sidings, there were heavy train-loads of soldiers speeding to the front. They were all obviously in the best of spirits, eager to get to the long-expected red work and to make an end of it for good and all. They leaned out of the windows and cheered the waiting trains, which gave them back cheer for cheer and hearty God-speeds.
Their young Englishman, with more zeal than aptitude for foreign tongues, roused great enthusiasm by leaning as far out as he could get and shouting at the top of his voice, “Vive la Président!”—which was invariably greeted with laughter and heartier cheers than ever. And so, by slow degrees and haltingly, they crept up towards Paris, where one of Cook’s people met them, and took them round by the Ceinture railway, and saw them safely off for Dieppe.