Lord de Jones had been in a hurry to cross over to the Continent, for
there was no means at all of knowing how much of it had disintegrated to
date. The uncertainty of the whole business appalled him. The
stationmaster at Victoria might not be able to cummunicate with the
_chef de la gare du Nord_. Yet he had no means of knowing whether this
was because Paris-Nord (or, for that matter, Paris) had disintegrated,
or whether it was because the number was engaged.
There was of course an aeroplane service for abroad, but people still
clung to the _terra firma_, Lord de Jones thought, without good cause.
Moreover, they were travelling with luggage--a good deal of luggage. It
was indeed difficult to know how much luggage to take with one--Eva
could not take enough--to last one to the end of one’s days in time. The
sight of passengers reclining in the easy luxury of the Pullmans,
looking trim and hard, appalled him. They would not come back, he mused.
Never come back from this last journey into space whither they were
travelling _de luxe_, over viaducts, away, away, urbane materialists
melting into air....
And on the French side, against all the easy felicity of the language,
the sinuous tones of the restaurant-car attendant who sang out as he
squeezed himself along the swaying corridors: “_Prière de prendre place
pour le premier déjeuner!_” contrasting favourably with the brisk “First
luncheon!” of the British dining-car attendant, the incorrigible
insularity of the English passengers who said they wanted to shut out,
if possible, French passengers from the coupé (forgetting that they were
travelling across France in a French train), stood out a black and
reeking ghost of shame which made him think the world was doomed because
it lacked all manners. In the night the train stood still, emitting long
sighs at intervals; and his heart beat loud within him with foreboding.
Images passed through his mind, of a life _à la_ Jean Jacques Rousseau,
in which he must rely on his dexterity of arm and on nature’s bounty. A
hardened hunter he is, building her a hut. Eva with only furs from furry
animals which he had hunted down for her to hide her nudeness. Primeval
love and lust. Long days of bliss. But what is this? The roar of a lion.
Bother! He must get up and see about it. He had been dozing, and opening
his eyes, she was there indeed, not in the wilderness as yet, but facing
him in the coupé, and smiling at him.
But what if it fail him? She, the child,--no more than she could
understand how, having undone one atom, he had automatically undone the
world,--had not the remotest comprehension of how he could now isolate
a specific portion of it from destruction. Yet when he had, to
illustrate the process, said to her that all he had to do was to
vaccinate the hill they had selected as their future world, she said:
“Of course! How silly of me not to think of it myself!”
But even if it fail, then death. And what was death? A change of
outlook. He remembered once crossing a wide river somewhere, and as he
landed on the other side, straying into a bathing place where lots of
naked people sat about on benches in the garden and on chairs in the
adjoining restaurant, smoking, eating, chatting, listening to music--but
with nothing on them. It was uncanny. And he thought that landing on the
other side of death must be as strange: for everything seemed different,
yet everything the same.
Dusk fell as the train raced across Austria, and sheaves of corn in the
vast whirling fields looked like humans stealing away one by one in the
twilight. “Escaping,” he thought.
And, waking in the morning suddenly, they saw the mountains.
In the station square at Innsbruck, a fat German who looked like a pig
waved his whip at his dog and threatened it: “_Ach, du Schweinhund!_”
“Disgraceful!” said Eva, and as she passed him she gave him an icy look
over her slim shoulder. It was a beautiful day in June. They hired a
victoria and drove, at first through the old mellow town with its
cloistered streets, domes, turrets, and pinnacles; then by the side of
the river, angry and turbulent. A faint hazy summer afternoon was
drawing to its close, and as, at sundown, they came to a hanging bridge
chained between rocks and the foaming green river rushing angrily under
the horse’s hoofs, Christopher’s eyes filled with tears: the beauty of
it all was more than he could bear.
And when, at the Pension Kogl, they came out on to their balconies, they
were stunned with rapture by the view which opened out on to the
mountain scenery. Below was the river, the passionate Inn, and the
bridges, the funicular slowly climbing the mountain slope, and all
around were pine trees, birches, roses, villas hidden in lanes lined
with foliage; and at night when they walked by the river, where lanterns
shone forth from between secretive trees, it was as if a wonderful
secret, long dreamt and forgotten, awaited one round the corner.