Arrival at Ostend.--Coffee and Rolls.--Difficulty of Making French
Waiters understand German.--Advantages of Possessing a Conscience That
Does Not Get Up Too Early.--Villainy Triumphant.--Virtue Ordered
Outside.--A Homely English Row.
When I say I was "awakened" at Ostend, I do not speak the strict truth.
I was not awakened--not properly. I was only half-awakened. I never did
get fairly awake until the afternoon. During the journey from Ostend to
Cologne I was three-parts asleep and one-part partially awake.
At Ostend, however, I was sufficiently aroused to grasp the idea that we
had got somewhere, and that I must find my luggage and B., and do
something or other; in addition to which, a strange, vague instinct, but
one which I have never yet known deceive me, hovering about my mind, and
telling me that I was in the neighbourhood of something to eat and drink,
spurred me to vigour and action.
I hurried down into the saloon and there found B. He excused himself for
having left me alone all night--he need not have troubled himself. I had
not pined for him in the least. If the only woman I had ever loved had
been on board, I should have sat silent, and let any other fellow talk to
her that wanted to, and that felt equal to it--by explaining that he had
met a friend and that they had been talking. It appeared to have been a
trying conversation.
I also ran against the talkative man and his companion. Such a complete
wreck of a once strong man as the latter looked I have never before seen.
Mere sea-sickness, however severe, could never have accounted for the
change in his appearance since, happy and hopeful, he entered the
railway-carriage at Victoria six short hours ago. His friend, on the
other hand, appeared fresh and cheerful, and was relating an anecdote
about a cow.
We took our bags into the Custom House and opened them, and I sat down on
mine, and immediately went to sleep.
When I awoke, somebody whom I mistook at first for a Field-Marshal, and
from force of habit--I was once a volunteer--saluted, was standing over
me, pointing melodramatically at my bag. I assured him in picturesque
German that I had nothing to declare. He did not appear to comprehend
me, which struck me as curious, and took the bag away from me, which left
me nothing to sit upon but the floor. But I felt too sleepy to be
indignant.
After our luggage had been examined, we went into the buffet. My
instinct had not misled me: there I found hot coffee, and rolls and
butter. I ordered two coffees with milk, some bread, and some butter. I
ordered them in the best German I knew. As nobody understood me, I went
and got the things for myself. It saves a deal of argument, that method.
People seem to know what you mean in a moment then.
B. suggested that while we were in Belgium, where everybody spoke French,
while very few indeed knew German, I should stand a better chance of
being understood if I talked less German and more French.
He said:
"It will be easier for you, and less of a strain upon the natives. You
stick to French," he continued, "as long as ever you can. You will get
along much better with French. You will come across people now and
then--smart, intelligent people--who will partially understand your
French, but no human being, except a thought-reader, will ever obtain any
glimmering of what you mean from your German."
"Oh, are we in Belgium," I replied sleepily; "I thought we were in
Germany. I didn't know." And then, in a burst of confidence, I added,
feeling that further deceit was useless, "I don't know where I am, you
know."
"No, I thought you didn't," he replied. "That is exactly the idea you
give anybody. I wish you'd wake up a bit."
We waited about an hour at Ostend, while our train was made up. There
was only one carriage labelled for Cologne, and four more passengers
wanted to go there than the compartment would hold.
Not being aware of this, B. and I made no haste to secure places, and, in
consequence, when, having finished our coffee, we leisurely strolled up
and opened the carriage door we saw that every seat was already booked.
A bag was in one space and a rug in another, an umbrella booked a third,
and so on. Nobody was there, but the seats were gone!
It is the unwritten law among travellers that a man's luggage deposited
upon a seat, shall secure that seat to him until he comes to sit upon it
himself. This is a good law and a just law, and one that, in my normal
state, I myself would die to uphold and maintain.
But at three o'clock on a chilly morning one's moral sensibilities are
not properly developed. The average man's conscience does not begin work
till eight or nine o'clock--not till after breakfast, in fact. At three
a.m. he will do things that at three in the afternoon his soul would
revolt at.
Under ordinary circumstances I should as soon have thought of shifting a
man's bag and appropriating his seat as an ancient Hebrew squatter would
have thought of removing his neighbour's landmark; but at this time in
the morning my better nature was asleep.
I have often read of a man's better nature being suddenly awakened. The
business is generally accomplished by an organ-grinder or a little child
(I would back the latter, at all events--give it a fair chance--to awaken
anything in this world that was not stone deaf, or that had not been dead
for more than twenty-four hours); and if an organ-grinder or a little
child had been around Ostend station that morning, things might have been
different.
B. and I might have been saved from crime. Just as we were in the middle
of our villainy, the organ-grinder or the child would have struck up, and
we should have burst into tears, and have rushed from the carriage, and
have fallen upon each other's necks outside on the platform, and have
wept, and waited for the next train.
As it was, after looking carefully round to see that nobody was watching
us, we slipped quickly into the carriage, and, making room for ourselves
among the luggage there, sat down and tried to look innocent and easy.
B. said that the best thing we could do, when the other people came,
would be to pretend to be dead asleep, and too stupid to understand
anything.
I replied that as far as I was concerned, I thought I could convey the
desired impression without stooping to deceit at all, and prepared to
make myself comfortable.
A few seconds later another man got into the carriage. He also made room
for himself among the luggage and sat down.
"I am afraid that seat's taken, sir," said B. when he had recovered his
surprise at the man's coolness. "In fact, all the seats in this carriage
are taken."
"I can't help that," replied the ruffian, cynically. "I've got to get to
Cologne some time to-day, and there seems no other way of doing it that I
can see."
"Yes, but so has the gentleman whose seat you have taken got to get
there," I remonstrated; "what about him? You are thinking only of
yourself!"
My sense of right and justice was beginning to assert itself, and I felt
quite indignant with the fellow. Two minutes ago, as I have explained, I
could contemplate the taking of another man's seat with equanimity. Now,
such an act seemed to me shameful. The truth is that my better nature
never sleeps for long. Leave it alone and it wakens of its own accord.
Heaven help me! I am a sinful, worldly man, I know; but there is good at
the bottom of me. It wants hauling up, but it's there.
This man had aroused it. I now saw the sinfulness of taking another
passenger's place in a railway-carriage.
But I could not make the other man see it. I felt that some service was
due from me to Justice, in compensation of the wrong I had done her a few
moments ago, and I argued most eloquently.
My rhetoric was, however, quite thrown away. "Oh! it's only a
vice-consul," he said; "here's his name on the bag. There's plenty of
room for him in with the guard."
It was no use my defending the sacred cause of Right before a man who
held sentiments like that; so, having lodged a protest against his
behaviour, and thus eased my conscience, I leant back and dozed the doze
of the just.
Five minutes before the train started, the rightful owners of the
carriage came up and crowded in. They seemed surprised at finding only
five vacant seats available between seven of them, and commenced to
quarrel vigorously among themselves.
B. and I and the unjust man in the corner tried to calm them, but passion
ran too high at first for the voice of Reason to be heard. Each
combination of five, possible among them, accused each remaining two of
endeavouring to obtain seats by fraud, and each one more than hinted that
the other six were liars.
What annoyed me was that they quarrelled in English. They all had
languages of their own,--there were four Belgians, two Frenchmen, and a
German,--but no language was good enough for them to insult each other in
but English.
Finding that there seemed to be no chance of their ever agreeing among
themselves, they appealed to us. We unhesitatingly decided in favour of
the five thinnest, who, thereupon, evidently regarding the matter as
finally settled, sat down, and told the other two to get out.
These two stout ones, however--the German and one of the Belgians--seemed
inclined to dispute the award, and called up the station-master.
The station-master did not wait to listen to what they had to say, but at
once began abusing them for being in the carriage at all. He told them
they ought to be ashamed of themselves for forcing their way into a
compartment that was already more than full, and inconveniencing the
people already there.
He also used English to explain this to them, and they got out on the
platform and answered him back in English.
English seems to be the popular language for quarrelling in, among
foreigners. I suppose they find it more expressive.
We all watched the group from the window. We were amused and interested.
In the middle of the argument an early gendarme arrived on the scene.
The gendarme naturally supported the station-master. One man in uniform
always supports another man in uniform, no matter what the row is about,
or who may be in the right--that does not trouble him. It is a fixed
tenet of belief among uniform circles that a uniform can do no wrong. If
burglars wore uniform, the police would be instructed to render them
every assistance in their power, and to take into custody any householder
attempting to interfere with them in the execution of their business.
The gendarme assisted the station-master to abuse the two stout
passengers, and he also abused them in English. It was not good English
in any sense of the word. The man would probably have been able to give
his feelings much greater variety and play in French or Flemish, but that
was not his object. His ambition, like every other foreigner's, was to
become an accomplished English quarreller, and this was practice for him.
A Customs House clerk came out and joined in the babel. He took the part
of the passengers, and abused the station-master and the gendarme, and
_he_ abused _them_ in English.
B. said he thought it very pleasant here, far from our native shores, in
the land of the stranger, to come across a little homely English row like
this.