Читать книгу The Girl from Alsace - Burton Egbert Stevenson - Страница 6

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As Stewart ate his breakfast next morning, he smiled at his absurd fears of the night before. In the clear light of day, Bloem's talk of war seemed mere foolishness. War! Nonsense! Europe would never be guilty of such folly—a deliberate plunge to ruin.

Besides, there were no evidences of war; the life of the city was moving in its accustomed round, so far as Stewart could see; and there was vast reassurance in the quiet and orderly service of the breakfast-room. No doubt the Powers had bethought themselves, had interfered, had stopped the war between Austria and Servia, had ceased mobilization—in a word, had saved Europe from an explosion which would have shaken her from end to end.

But when Stewart asked for his bill, the proprietor, instead of intrusting it as usual to the headwaiter, presented it in person.

"If Herr Stewart would pay in gold, it would be a great favor," he said.

Like all Americans, Stewart, unaccustomed to gold and finding its weight burdensome, carried banknotes whenever it was possible to do so. Emptying his pockets now, he found, besides a miscellaneous lot of silver and nickel and copper, a single small gold coin, value ten marks.

"But I have plenty of paper," he said, and, producing his pocket-book, spread five notes for a hundred marks each before him on the table. "What's the matter with it?"

"There is nothing at all the matter with it, sir," the little fat German hastened to assure him; "only, just at present, there is a preference for gold. I would advise that you get gold for these notes, if possible."

"I have a Cook's letter of credit," said Stewart. "They would give me gold. Where is Cook's office here?"

"It is but a step up the street, sir," answered the other eagerly. "Come, I will show you," and, hastening to the door, he pointed out the office at the end of a row of buildings jutting out toward the cathedral.

Stewart, the banknotes in his hand, hastened thither, and found quite a crowd of people drawing money on traveler's checks and letters of credit. He noticed that they were all being paid in gold. They, too, it seemed, had heard rumors of war, had been advised to get gold; but most of them treated the rumors as a joke and were heeding the advice only because they needed gold to pay their bills.

Even if there was war, they told each other, it could not affect them. At most, it would only add a spice of excitement and adventure to the remainder of their European tour; what they most feared was that they would not be permitted to see any of the fighting! A few of the more timid shamefacedly confessed that they were getting ready to turn homeward, but by far the greater number proclaimed the fact that they had made up their minds not to alter their plans in any detail. So much Stewart gathered as he stood in line waiting his turn; then he was in front of the cashier's window.

The cashier looked rather dubious when Stewart laid the banknotes down and asked for gold.

"I am carrying one of your letters of credit," Stewart explained, and produced it. "I got these notes on it at Heidelberg just the other day. Now it seems they're no good."

"They are perfectly good," the cashier assured him; "but some of the tradespeople, who are always suspicious and ready to take alarm, are demanding gold. How long will you be in Germany?"

"I go to Belgium to-night or to-morrow."

"Then you can use French gold," said the cashier, with visible relief. "Will one hundred marks in German gold carry you through? Yes? I think I can arrange it on that basis;" and when Stewart assented, counted out five twenty-mark pieces and twenty-four twenty-franc pieces. "I think you are wise to leave Germany as soon as possible," he added, in a low tone, as Stewart gathered up this money and bestowed it about his person. "We do not wish to alarm anyone, and we are not offering advice, but if war comes, Germany will not be a pleasant place for strangers."

"Is it really coming?" Stewart asked. "Is there any news?"

"There is nothing definite—just a feeling in the air—but I believe that it is coming," and he turned to the next in line.

Stewart hastened back to the hotel, where his landlord received with reiterated thanks the thirty marks needed to settle the bill. When that transaction was ended, he glanced nervously about the empty office, and then leaned close.

"You leave this morning, do you not, sir?" he asked, in a tone cautiously lowered.

"Yes; I am going to Aix-la-Chapelle."

"Take my advice, sir," said the landlord earnestly, "and do not stop there. Go straight on to Brussels."

"But why?" asked Stewart. "Everybody is advising me to get out of Germany. What danger can there be?"

"No danger, perhaps, but very great annoyance. It is rumored that the Emperor has already signed the proclamation declaring Germany in a state of war. It may be posted at any moment."

"Suppose it is—what then? What difference can that make to me—or to any American?"

"I see you do not know what those words mean," said the little landlord, leaning still closer and speaking with twitching lips. "When Germany is in a state of war, all civil authority ceases; the military authority is everywhere supreme. The state takes charge of all railroads, and no private persons will be permitted on them until the troops have been mobilized, which will take at least a week; even after that, the trains will run only when the military authorities think proper, and never past the frontier. The telegraphs are taken and will send no private messages; no person may enter or leave the country until his identity is clearly established; every stranger in the country will be placed under arrest, if there is any reason to suspect him. All motor vehicles are seized, all horses, all stores of food. Business stops, because almost all the men must go to the army. I must close my hotel because there will be no men left to work for me. Even if the men were left, there would be no custom when travel ceases. Every shop will be closed which cannot be managed by women; every factory will shut, unless its product is needed by the army. Your letter of credit will be worthless, because there will be no way in which our bankers can get gold from America. No—at that time, Germany will be no place for strangers."

Stewart listened incredulously, for all this sounded like the wildest extravagance. He could not believe that business and industry would fall to pieces like that—it was too firmly founded, too strongly built.

"What I have said is true, sir, believe me," said the little man, earnestly, seeing his skeptical countenance. "One thing more—have you a passport?"

"Yes," said Stewart, and tapped his pocket.

"That is good. That will save you trouble at the frontier. Ah, here is your baggage. Good-by, sir, and a safe voyage to your most fortunate country."

A brawny porter shouldered the two suit-cases which held Stewart's belongings, and the latter followed him along the hall to the door. As he stepped out upon the terrace, he saw drawn up there about twenty men—some with the black coats of waiters, some with the white caps of cooks, some with the green aprons of porters—while a bearded man in a spiked helmet was checking off their names in a little book. At the sound of Stewart's footsteps, he turned and cast upon him the cold, impersonal glance of German officialdom. Then he looked at the porter.

"You will return as quickly as possible," he said gruffly in German to the latter, and returned to his checking.

As they crossed the Domhof and skirted the rear of the cathedral, Stewart noticed that many of the shops were locked and shuttered, and that the street seemed strangely deserted. Only as they neared the station did the crowd increase. It was evident that many tourists, warned, perhaps, as Stewart had been, had made up their minds to get out of Germany; but the train drawn up beside the platform was a long one, and there was room for everybody. It was a good-humored crowd, rather inclined to laugh at its own fears and to protest that this journey was entirely in accordance with a pre-arranged schedule; but it grew quieter and quieter as moment after moment passed and the train did not start.

That a German train should not start precisely on time was certainly unusual; that it should wait for twenty minutes beyond that time was staggering. But the station-master, pacing solemnly up and down the platform, paid no heed to the inquiries addressed to him, and the guards answered only by a shake of the head which might mean anything. Then, quite suddenly, above the noises of the station, menacing and insistent came the low, ceaseless shuffle of approaching feet.

A moment later the head of an infantry column appeared at the station entrance. It halted there, and an officer, in a long, gray cape that fell to his ankles, strode toward the station-master, who hastened to meet him. There was a moment's conference, and then the station-master, saluting for the tenth time, turned to the expectant guards.

"Clear the train!" he shouted in stentorian German, and the guards sprang eagerly to obey.

The scene which followed is quite indescribable. All the Germans in the train hastened to get off, as did everybody else who understood what was demanded and knew anything of the methods of militarism. But many did not understand; a few who did made the mistake of standing upon what they conceived to be their rights and refusing to be separated from their luggage—and all alike, men, women, and children, were yanked from their seats and deposited upon the platform. Some were deposited upon their feet—but not many. Women screamed as rough and seemingly hostile hands were laid upon them; men, red and inarticulate with anger, attempted ineffectually to resist. In a moment one and all found themselves shut off by a line of police which had suddenly appeared from nowhere and drawn up before the train.

Then a whistle sounded and the soldiers began to file into the carriages in the most systematic manner. Twenty-four men entered each compartment—ten sitting down and fourteen standing up or sitting upon the others' laps. Each coach, therefore, held one hundred and forty-four; and the battalion of seven hundred and twenty men exactly filled five coaches—just as the General Staff had long ago figured that it should.

Stewart, after watching this marvel of organization for a moment, realized that, if any carriages were empty, it would be the ones at the end of the train, and quietly made his way thither. At last, in the rear coach, he came to a compartment in which sat one man, evidently a German, with a melancholy bearded face. Before the door stood a guard watching the battalion entrain.

"May one get aboard?" Stewart inquired, in his best German.

The guard held up his hand for an instant; then the gold-braided station-master shouted a sentence which Stewart could not distinguish; but the guard dropped his hand and nodded.

Looking back, the American saw a wild mob charging down the platform toward him, and hastily swung himself aboard. As he dropped into his seat, he could hear the shrieks and oaths of the mêlée outside, and the next moment, a party of breathless and disheveled women were storming the door. They were panting, exhausted, inarticulate with rage and chagrin; they fell in, rolled in, stumbled in, until the compartment was jammed.

Stewart, swept from his seat at the first impact, but rallying and doing what he could to bring order out of chaos, could not but admire the manner in which his bearded fellow-passenger clung immovably to his seat until the last woman was aboard, and then reached quickly out, slammed shut the door, and held it shut, despite the entreaties of the lost souls who drifted despairingly past along the platform, seemingly blind, deaf, and totally uninterested in what was passing around him.

Then Stewart looked at the women. Nine were crowded into the seats; eight were standing; all were red and perspiring; and most of them had plainly lost their tempers. Stewart was perspiring himself, and he got out his handkerchief and mopped his forehead; then he ventured to speak.

"Well," he said; "so this is war! I have always heard it was warm work!"

Most of the women merely glared at him and went on adjusting their clothing, and fastening up their hair, and straightening their hats; but one, a buxom woman of forty-eight or fifty, who was crowded next to him, and who had evidently suffered more than her share of the general misfortune, turned sharply.

"Are you an American?" she demanded.

"I am, madam."

"And you stand by and see your countrywomen treated in this perfectly outrageous fashion?"

"My dear madam," protested Stewart, "what could one man—even an American—do against a thousand?"

"You could at least——"

"Nonsense, mother," broke in another voice, and Stewart turned to see that it was a slim, pale girl of perhaps twenty-two who spoke. "The gentleman is quite right. Besides, I thought it rather good fun."

"Good fun!" snapped her mother. "Good fun to be jerked about and trampled on and insulted! And where is our baggage? Will we ever see it again?"

"Oh, the baggage is safe enough," Stewart assured her. "The troops will detrain somewhere this side the frontier, and we can all take our old seats."

"But why should they travel by this train? Why should they not take another train? Why should they——"

"Are we all here?" broke in an anxious voice. "Is anyone missing?"

There was a moment's counting, then a general sigh of relief. The number was found correct.

From somewhere up the line a whistle sounded, and the state of the engine-driver's nerves could be inferred from the jerk with which he started—quite an American jerk. All the women who were standing, screamed and clutched at each other and swayed back and forth as if wrestling. Stewart found himself wrestling with the buxom woman.

"I cannot stand!" she declared. "It is outrageous that I should have to stand!" and she fixed glittering eyes upon the bearded stranger. "No American would remain seated while a woman of my age was standing!"

But the bearded stranger gazed blandly out of the window at the passing landscape.

There was a moment's silence, during which everyone looked at the heartless culprit. Stewart had an uneasy feeling that, if he were to do his duty as an American, he would grab the offender by the collar and hurl him through the window. Then the woman next to the stranger bumped resolutely into him, pressed him into the corner, and disclosed a few inches of the seat.

"Sit here, Mrs. Field," she said. "We can all squeeze up a little."

The pressure was tremendous when Mrs. Field sat down; but the carriage was strongly built and the sides held. The slender girl came and stood by Stewart.

"What's it all about?" she asked. "Has there been a riot or something?"

"There is going to be a most awful riot," answered Stewart, "unless all signs fail. Germany is mobilizing her troops to attack France."

"To attack France! How outrageous! It's that Kaiser Wilhelm, I suppose! Well, I hope France will simply clean him up!"

"So do I!" cried her mother. "The Germans are not gentlemen. They do not know how to treat women!"

"'Kochen, Kirche und Kinder!'" quoted somebody, in a high voice.

"But see here," protested Stewart, with a glance at the bearded stranger, who was still staring steadily out of the window, "if I were you, I'd wait till I was out of Germany before saying so. It would be safer!"

"Safer!" echoed an elderly woman with a high nose. "I should like to see them harm an American!"

Stewart turned away to the window with a gesture of despair, and caught the laughing eyes of the girl who stood beside him.

"Don't blame them too much," she said. "They're not themselves. Usually they are all quite polite and well-behaved; but now they are perfectly savage. And I don't blame them. I didn't mind so much, because I'm slim and long-legged and not very dignified; but if I were a stout, elderly woman, rather proud of my appearance, I would bitterly resent being yanked out of a seat and violently propelled across a platform by a bearded ruffian with dirty hands. Wouldn't you?"

"Yes," agreed Stewart, laughing; "I should probably kick and bite and behave in a most undignified manner."

The girl leaned closer.

"Some of them did!" she murmured.

Stewart laughed again and looked at her with fresh interest. It was something to find a woman who could preserve her sense of humor under such circumstances.

"You have been doing the continent?" he asked.

"Yes, seventeen of us; all from Philadelphia."

"And you've had a good time, of course?"

"We'd have had a better if we had brought a man along. I never realized before how valuable men are. Women aren't fitted by nature to wrestle with time-tables and cabbies and hotel-bills and headwaiters. This trip has taught me to respect men more than I have ever done."

"Then it hasn't been wasted. But you say you're from Philadelphia. I know some people in Philadelphia—the Courtlandt Bryces are sort of cousins of mine."

But the girl shook her head.

"That sort of thing happens only in novels," she said. "But there is no reason I shouldn't tell you my name, if you want to know it. It is Millicent Field, and its possessor is very undistinguished—just a school-teacher—not at all in the same social circle as the Courtlandt Bryces."

Stewart colored a little.

"My name is Bradford Stewart," he said, "and I also am very undistinguished—just a surgeon on the staff at Johns Hopkins. Did you get to Vienna?"

"No; that was too far for us."

"There was a clinic there; I saw some wonderful things. These German surgeons certainly know their business."

Miss Field made a little grimace.

"Perhaps," she admitted. "But do you know the impression of Germany that I am taking home with me? It is that Germany is a country run solely in the interests of the male half of creation. Women are tolerated only because they are necessary in the scheme of things."

Stewart laughed.

"There was a book published a year or two ago," he said, "called 'Germany and the Germans.' Perhaps you read it?"

"No."

"I remember it for one remark. Its author says that Germany is the only country on earth where the men's hands are better kept than the women's."

Miss Field clapped her hands in delight.

"Delicious!" she cried. "Splendid! And it is true," she added, more seriously. "Did you see the women cleaning the streets in Munich?"

"Yes."

"And harvesting the grain, and spreading manure, and carrying great burdens—doing all the dirty work and the heavy work. What are the men doing, I should like to know?"

"Madam," spoke up the bearded stranger by the window, in a deep voice which made everybody jump, "I will tell you what the men are doing—they are in the army, preparing themselves for the defense of their fatherland. Do you think it is of choice they leave the harvesting and street-cleaning and carrying of burdens to their mothers and wives and sisters? No; it is because for them is reserved a greater task—the task of confronting the revengeful hate of France, the envious hate of England, the cruel hate of Russia. That is their task to-day, madam, and they accept it with light hearts, confident of victory!"

There was a moment's silence. Mrs. Field was the first to find her voice.

"All the same," she said, "that does not justify the use of cows as draft animals!"

The German stared at her an instant in astonishment, then turned away to the window with a gesture of contempt, as of one who refuses to argue with lunatics, and paid no further heed to the Americans.

With them, the conversation turned from war, which none of them really believed would come, to home, for which they were all longing. Home, Stewart told himself, means everything to middle-aged women of fixed habits. It was astonishing that they should tear themselves away from it, even for a tour of Europe, for to them travel meant martyrdom. Home! How their eyes brightened as they spoke the word! They were going through to Brussels, then to Ostend, after a look at Ghent and Bruges, and so to England and their boat.

"I intend to spend the afternoon at Aix-la-Chapelle," said Stewart, "and go on to Brussels to-night or in the morning. Perhaps I shall see you there."

Miss Field mentioned the hotel at which the party would stop.

"What is there at Aix-la-Chapelle?" she asked. "I suppose I ought to know, but I don't."

"There's a cathedral, with the tomb of Charlemagne, and his throne, and a lot of other relics. I was always impressed by Charlemagne. He was the real thing in the way of emperors."

"I should like to see his tomb," said Miss Field. "Why can't we stop at Aix-la-Chapelle, mother?"

But Mrs. Field shook her head.

"We will get out of Germany as quickly as we can," she said, and the other members of the party nodded their hearty agreement.

Meanwhile the train rolled steadily on through a beautiful and peaceful country, where war seemed incredible and undreamed of. White villas dotted the thickly-wooded hillsides; quaint villages huddled in the valleys. And finally the train crossed a long viaduct and rumbled into the station at Aix-la-Chapelle.

The platform was deserted, save for a few guards and porters. Stewart opened the door and was about to step out, when a guard waved him violently back. Looking forward, he saw that the soldiers were detraining.

"Good!" he said. "You can get your old seats again!" and, catching the eye of the guard, gave him a nod which promised a liberal tip.

That worthy understood it perfectly, and the moment the last soldier was on the platform, he beckoned to Stewart and his party, assisted them to find their old compartments, ejected a peasant who had taken refuge in one of them, assured the ladies that they would have no further inconvenience, and summoned a porter to take charge of Stewart's suit-cases. In short, he did everything he could to earn the shining three-mark piece which Stewart slipped into his hand.

And then, after receiving the thanks of the ladies and promising to look them up in Brussels, Stewart followed his porter across the platform to the entrance.

Millicent Field looked after him a little wistfully.

"How easy it is for a man to do things!" she remarked to nobody in particular. "Never speak to me again of woman suffrage!"