Читать книгу A Rent In A Cloud - Charles James Lever - Страница 5

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THE table d’hôte room was empty as the two Englishmen entered it at supper-time, and they took their places, moodily enough, at one end of a table laid for nigh thirty guests. “All gone to Lahnech, Franz?” asked Calvert of the waiter.

“Yes, Sir, but they’ll be sorry for it, for there’s thunder in the air, and we are sure to have a deluge before nightfall.”

“And the new arrivals, are they gone too?”

“No, Sir. They are up stairs. The old lady would seem to have forgotten a box, or a desk, on board the steamer, and she has been in such a state about it that she couldn’t think of supping; and the young ones appear to sympathise in her anxieties, for they, too, said, ‘Oh, we can’t think of eating just now.’ ”

“But of course, she needn’t fuss herself. It will be detained at Mayence, and given up to her when she demands it.”

A very expressive shrug of the shoulders was the only answer Franz made, and Calvert added, “You don’t quite agree with me, perhaps?”

“It is an almost daily event, the loss of luggage on those Rhine steamers; so much so, that one is tempted to believe that stealing luggage is a regular livelihood here.”

Just at this moment the Englishwoman in question entered the room, and in French of a very home manufacture asked the waiter how she could manage, by means of the telegraph, to reclaim her missing property.

A most involved and intricate game of cross purposes ensued; for the waiter’s knowledge of French was scarcely more extensive, and embarrassed, besides, by some specialities in accent, so that though she questioned and he replied, the discussion gave little hope of an intelligible solution.

“May I venture to offer my services, Madam?” said Calvert, rising and bowing politely. “If I can be of the least use on this occasion——”

“None whatever, Sir. I am perfectly competent to express my own wishes, and have no need of an interpreter;” and then turning to the waiter, added: “Montrez moi le telegraph, garçon.”

The semi-tragic air in which she spoke, not to add the strange accent of her very peculiar French, was almost too much for Calvert’s gravity, while Loyd, half pained by the ridicule thus attached to a countrywoman, held down his head and never uttered a word. Meanwhile the old lady had retired with a haughty toss of her towering bonnet, followed by Franz.

“The old party is fierce,” said Calvert, as he began his supper, “and would not have me at any price.”

“I suspect that this mistrust of each other is very common with us English: not so much from any doubt of our integrity, as from a fear lest we should not be equal in social rank.”

“Well; but really, don’t you think that our externals might have satisfied that old lady she had nothing to apprehend on that score?”

“I can’t say how she may have regarded that point,” was the cautious answer.

Calvert pushed his glass impatiently from him, and said, petulantly, “The woman is evidently a governess, or a companion, or a housekeeper. She writes her name in the book Miss Grainger, and the others are called Walter. Now, after all, a Miss Grainger might, without derogating too far, condescend to know a Fusilier, eh? Oh, here she comes again.”

The lady thus criticised had now re-entered the room, and was busily engaged in studying the announcement of steamboat departures and arrivals, over the chimney.

“It is too absurd,” said she, pettishly, in French, “to close the telegraph-office at eight, that the clerks may go to a ball.”

“Not to a ball, Madam, to the fair at Lahnech,” interposed Franz.

“I don’t care, Sir, whether it be a dance or a junketing. It is the same inconvenience to the public; and the landlord, and the secretary, as you call him, of this hotel, are all gone, and nothing left here but you.”

Whether it was the shameless effrontery of the contempt she evinced in these words, or the lamentable look of abasement of the waiter, that overcame Calvert, certain is it he made no effort to restrain himself, but, leaning back in his chair, laughed heartily and openly.

“Well, Sir,” said she, turning fiercely on him, “you force me to say, that I never witnessed a more gross display of ill breeding and bad manners.”

“Had you only added, Madam, ‘after a very long experience of life,’ the remark would have been perfect,” said he, still laughing.

“Oh, Calvert!” broke in Loyd, in a tone of deprecation; but the old lady, white with passion, retired without waiting for that apology which, certainly, there was little prospect of her receiving.

“I am sorry you should have said that,” said Loyd, “or though she was scarcely measured in her remark, our laughter was a gross provocation.”

“How the cant of your profession sticks to you!” said the other. “There was the lawyer in every word of that speech. There was the ‘case’ and the ‘set off.’ ”

Loyd could not help smiling, though scarcely pleased at this rejoinder.

“Take my word for it,” said Calvert, as he helped himself to the dish before him, “there is nothing in life so aggressive as one of our elderly countrywomen when travelling in an independent condition. The theory is attack—attack—attack! They have a sort of vague impression that the passive are always imposed on, and certainly they rarely place themselves in that category. As I live, here she comes once more.”

The old lady had now entered the room with a slip of paper in her hand, to which she called the waiter’s attention, saying,

“You will despatch this message to Mayence, when the office opens in the morning. See that there is no mistake about it.”

“It must be in German, Madam,” said Franz. “They’ll not take it in in any foreign language.”

“Tell her you’ll translate it, Loyd. Go in, man, and get your knock-down as I did,” whispered Calvert.

Loyd blushed slightly; but not heeding the sarcasm of his companion, he arose, and, approaching the stranger, said, “It will give me much pleasure to put your message into German, Madam, if it will at all convenience you.”

It was not till after a very searching look into his face, and an apparently satisfactory examination of his features, that she replied, “Well, Sir, I make no objection; there can be no great secrecy in what passes through a telegraph-office. You can do it, if you please.”

Now, though the speech was not a very gracious acknowledgment of a proffered service, Loyd took the paper and proceeded to read it. It was not without an effort, however, that he could constrain himself so far as not to laugh aloud at the contents, which began by an explanation that the present inconvenience was entirely owing to the very shameful arrangements made by the steam packet company for the landing of passengers at intermediate stations, and through which the complainant, travelling with her nieces, Millicent and Florence Walter, and her maids, Susannah Tucker and Mary Briggs, and having for luggage the following articles——

“May I observe, Madam,” said Loyd, in a mild tone of remonstrance, “that these explanations are too lengthy for the telegraph, not to say very costly, and as your object is simply to reclaim a missing article of your baggage—”

“I trust, Sir, that having fully satisfied your curiosity as to who we are, and of what grievance we complain, that you will spare me your comments as to the mode in which we prefer our demand for redress; but I ought to have known better, and I deserve it!” and, snatching the paper rudely from his hand, she dashed out of the room in passion.

“By Jove! you fared worse than myself,” said Calvert, as he laughed loud and long. “You got a heavier castigation for your polite interference than I did for my impertinence.”

“It is a lesson, at all events,” said Loyd, still blushing for his late defeat “I wonder is she all right up here,” and he touched his forehead significantly.

“Of course she is. Nay, more, I’ll wager a Nap. that in her own set, amidst the peculiar horrors who form her daily intimates, she is a strong-minded sensible woman, ‘that won’t stand humbug,’ and so on. These are specialities; they wear thick shoes, woollen petticoats, and brown veils, quarrel with cabmen, and live at Clapham.”

“But why do they come abroad?”

“Ah! that is the question that would puzzle nineteen out of every twenty of us. With a panorama in Leicester-square, and a guide-book in a chimney-corner, we should know more of the Tyrol than we’ll ever acquire junketing along in a hired coach, and only eager not to pay too much for one’s ‘Kalbsbraten’ or ‘Schweinfleisch,’ and yet here we come in shoals—to grumble and complain of all our self-imposed miseries, and incessantly lament the comforts of the land that we won’t live in.”

“Some of us come for health,” said Loyd, sorrowfully.

“And was there ever such a blunder? Why the very vicissitudes of a continental climate are more trying than any severity in our own. Imagine the room we are now sitting in, of a winter’s evening, with a stove heated to ninety-five, and the door opening every five minutes to a draught of air eleven degrees below zero! You pass out of this furnace to your bed-room, by a stair and corridor like the Arctic regions, to gain an uncarpeted room, with something like a knife-tray for a bed, and a poultice of feathers for a coverlet!”

“And for all that we like it, we long for it; save, pinch, screw, and sacrifice Heaven knows what of home enjoyment just for six weeks or two months of it.”

“Shall I tell you why? Just because Simpkins has done it Simpkins has been up the Rhine and dined at the Cursaal at Ems, and made his little début at roulette at Wiesbaden, and spoken his atrocious French at Frankfort, and we won’t consent to be less men of the world than Simpkins; and though Simpkins knows that it doesn’t ‘pay,’ and I know that it doesn’t pay, we won’t ‘peach’ either of us, just for the pleasure of seeing you, and a score like you, fall into the same blunder, experience the same disasters, and incur the same disappointments as ourselves.”

“No. I don’t agree with you; or, rather, I won’t agree with you. I am determined to enjoy this holiday of mine to the utmost my health will let me, and you shall not poison the pleasure by that false philosophy which, affecting to be deep, is only depreciatory.”

“And the honourable gentleman resumed his seat, as the newspapers say, amidst loud and vociferous cheers, which lasted for several minutes.” This Calvert said as he drummed a noisy applause upon the table, and made Loyd’s face glow with a blush of deep shame and confusion.

“I told you, the second day we travelled together, and I tell you again now, Calvert,” said he, falteringly, “that we are nowise suited to each other, and never could make good travelling companions. You know far more of life than I either do or wish to know. You see things with an acute and piercing clearness which I cannot attain to. You have no mind for the sort of humble things which give pleasure to a man simple as myself; and, lastly, I don’t like to say it, but I must, your means are so much more ample than mine, that to associate with you I must live in a style totally above my pretensions. All these are confessions more or less painful to make, but now that I have made them, let me have the result, and say, good-bye—good-bye.”

There was an emotion in the last words that more than compensated for what preceded them. It was the genuine sorrow that loneliness ever impresses on certain natures; but Calvert read the sentiment as a tribute to himself, and hastily said, “No, no, you are all wrong. The very disparities you complain of are the bonds between us. The differences in our temperament are the resources by which the sphere of our observation will be widened—my scepticism will be the corrector of your hopefulness—and, as to means, take my word for it, nobody can be harder up than I am, and if you’ll only keep the bag, and limit the outgoings, I’ll submit to any shortcomings when you tell me they are savings.”

“Are you serious—downright in earnest in all this?” asked Loyd.

“So serious, that I propose our bargain should begin from this hour. We shall each of us place ten Napoleons in that bag of yours. You shall administer all outlay, and I bind myself to follow implicitly all your behests, as though I were a ward and you my guardian.”

“I’m not very confident about the success of the scheme. I see many difficulties already, and there may be others that I cannot foresee; still, I am willing to give it a trial.”

“At last I realise one of my fondest anticipations which was to travel without the daily recurring miseries of money reckoning.”

“Don’t take those cigars, they are supplied by the waiter, and cost two groschen each, and they sell for three groschen a dozen in the Platz;” and, so saying, Loyd removed the plate from before him in a quiet business-like way, that promised well for the spirit is which his trust would be exercised.

Calvert laughed as he laid down the cigar, but his obedience ratified the pact between them.

“When do we go from this?” asked he, in a quiet and half-submissive tone.

“Oh, come, this is too much!” said Loyd. “I undertook to be purser, but not pilot.”

“Well, but I insist upon your assuming all the cares of legislation. It is not alone that I want not to think of the cash; but I want to have no anxieties about the road we go, where we halt, and when we move on. I want, for once in my life, to indulge the glorious enjoyment of perfect indolence—such another chance will scarcely offer itself.”

“Be it so. Whenever you like to rebel, I shall be just as ready to abdicate. I’ll go to my room now and study the map, and by the time you have finished your evening’s stroll on the bridge, I shall have made the plan of our future wanderings.”

“Agreed!” said Calvert. “I’m off to search for some of those cheap cigars you spoke of.”

“Stay; you forget that you have not got any money. Here are six silver groschen; take two dozen, and see that they don’t give you any of those vile Swiss ones in the number.”

He took the coin with becoming gravity, and set out on his errand.