In course 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 a tin 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 of it----”
“You see these newer subsidised schools are making things 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 at Zermatt----”
“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 on Matterhorn----”
“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 climbed anything----”
“’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 knocked everything 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 did not 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 one of 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.