"Of course I will," he answered.
[Illustration: _Russian Refugees Returning Home._]
I went with him to the commanding officer, but that man would not
give me back the letter. I didn't care, I was so glad I hadn't been
arrested. When we came back from Vienna, I was the only one of our
party that had to undress. I never noticed it, but there was some
kind of a mark on my pass, and as soon as the official saw it I had to
undress. But this time I had nothing in my stocking. When they searched
my trunk they took away from me all the post cards and photos of Vienna
I had, and didn't give them back.
After leaving Tetschen, the train runs for hours through Bohemia. It
does not touch at Prague but at a number of small picturesque towns
such as Kolin and Znaim. The country is extensively cultivated and very
fertile. The train was supposed to be an express train but it stopped
at every little way-station.
At one station, a very beautifully dressed lady with a little girl got
on the train. I thought that she must be the wife of some high official
and I was surprised at her lovely clothes away out there in Bohemia.
She sat next to me, and in a short time she began talking to the woman
who sat across from her and who kept asking over and over if any one in
the coupé knew when we got to Deutschbrod. The beautifully-dressed lady
said that she knew for she was going there. And then she told the whole
coupé about the place.
To my surprise she said that she was the wife of the apothecary at the
Barracks at Deutschbrod. The Barracks is a city built since the war on
the hills above the town. It was built by the Austrian government and
is the home of the refugees of East Galicia whose homes were destroyed
by the Russians. Most of these _Flüchtlinge_, as the Germans call them,
are Polish and Russian Jews, but they have also two hundred Italians
from near Görz.
[Illustration: _A Family of Polish Refugees._]
The wife of the apothecary, who was a Hungarian woman, said that
the refugees had everything they needed and that everything was
free--clothes, food, wine, beer, doctor's service and medicine. She
said that unless there was some contagious disease in the camp the
people were allowed perfect freedom to go and come as they pleased.
Most of the inmates have their own gardens and raise their own
chickens.
It was dark when we came to the place, but the apothecary's wife
pointed it out on a distant hill. It was like a great city, one mass
of electric lights sparkling in the darkness. When I came back from
Vienna I had a good look at it. It was a hillside town made up of new
frame houses, mostly small houses laid out in regular rows separated by
straight streets.
After Deutschbrod was passed, our compartment was empty except for a
young Jewish woman who had been sitting quietly in the corner. After a
while she leaned over to us and said, "You speak English. I can see it
that you are Americans. I was once in New York." And then she told us
that she was a refugee from East Galicia.
[Illustration: _Galician Refugees in Austria._]
"It was terrible," she said in rather good English. "I was in
America for a whole year. I saw Niagara Falls. Then shortly before
the war broke out my mother wrote for me to come home. We had such
a nice house, and such nice things in our house. They belonged to my
ancestors. On the 4th of October we heard that the Russians were coming
toward our village and that they were only forty kilometers away. We
had already sent our best horses to the army. The ones left behind were
sent to the village for the old people. My mother and father rode, and
my husband and I walked or rather ran after them for two days as fast
as we could. We hadn't time to take anything with us, and we had to
leave even our glassware and silver behind. I had a new Persian lamb
coat that I left hanging in the cupboard. We have never been able to go
back to our homes since." She wept a little.
It was ten o'clock when we came to Vienna. We had a hard time getting
a cab, and when we did get one it rattled over the stones as though
it had no rubber on its wheels. The first thing we had to do the next
morning was to go to the police, and it took us the whole morning
until two o'clock in the afternoon to get registered. There were only
two clerks and about fifty people waiting. We came in turns, and if
any one tried to get in ahead of his turn the rest of us howled, "Wait
your turn." One fat, important-looking foreigner tried to get into the
clerk's room without waiting. Three men waiters jumped up and turned
him out. This pleased the rest of us and we all giggled with glee.
[Illustration: _Uniform of a Viennese Red Cross Girl, Field Gray
Trimmed in Red._]