He turns and regards the girl sternly. Is she taking advantage of his
being a lonely stranger, far from home and friends, to mock him? He goes
over to what she calls the bed, and snatching off the top-most sack from
the pile and holding it up, says:
"Perhaps you'll tell me what this is, then?"
"That," says the girl, "that's the bed!"
He is somewhat nonplussed at the unexpected reply.
"Oh!" he says. "Oh! the bed, is it? I thought it was a pincushion!
Well, if it is the bed, then what is it doing out here, on the top of
everything else? You think that because I'm only a man, I don't
understand a bed!"
"That's the proper place for it," responds the chambermaid.
"What! on top?"
"Yes, sir."
"Well, then where are the clothes?"
"Underneath, sir."
"Look here, my good girl," he says; "you don't understand me, or I don't
understand you, one or the other. When I go to sleep, I lie on a bed and
pull the clothes over me. I don't want to lie on the clothes, and cover
myself with the bed. This isn't a comic ballet, you know!"
The girl assures him that there is no mistake about the matter at all.
There is the bed, made according to German notions of how a bed should be
made. He can make the best of it and try to go to sleep upon it, or he
can be sulky and go to sleep on the floor.
He is very much surprised. It looks to him the sort of bed that a man
would make for himself on coming home late from a party. But it is no
use arguing the matter with the girl.
"All right," he says; "bring me a pillow, and I'll risk it!"
The chambermaid explains that there are two pillows on the bed already,
indicating, as she does so, two flat cushions, each one a yard square,
placed one on top of the other at one end of the mixture.
"These!" exclaims the weary traveller, beginning to feel that he does not
want to go to bed at all. "These are not pillows! I want something to
put my head on; not a thing that comes down to the middle of my back!
Don't tell me that I've got to sleep on these things!"
But the girl does tell him so, and also implies that she has something
else to do than to stand there all day talking bed-gossip with him.
"Well, just show me how to start," he says, "which way you get into it,
and then I won't keep you any longer; I'll puzzle out the rest for
myself."
She explains the trick to him and leaves, and he undresses and crawls in.
The pillows give him a good deal of worry. He does not know whether he
is meant to sit on them or merely to lean up against them. In
experimenting upon this point, he bumps his head against the top board of
the bedstead. At this, he says, "Oh!" and shoots himself down to the
bottom of the bed. Here all his ten toes simultaneously come into sharp
contact with the board at the bottom.
Nothing irritates a man more than being rapped over the toes, especially
if he feels that he has done nothing to deserve it. He says, "Oh, damn!"
this time, and spasmodically doubles up his legs, thus giving his knees a
violent blow against the board at the side of the bed. (The German
bedstead, be it remembered, is built in the form of a shallow, open box,
and the victim is thus completely surrounded by solid pieces of wood with
sharp edges. I do not know what species of wood it is that is employed.
It is extremely hard, and gives forth a curious musical sound when struck
sharply with a bone.)
After this he lies perfectly still for a while, wondering where he is
going to be hit next. Finding that nothing happens, he begins to regain
confidence, and ventures to gently feel around with his left leg and take
stock of his position.
For clothes, he has only a very thin blanket and sheet, and beneath these
he feels decidedly chilly. The bed is warm enough, so far as it goes,
but there is not enough of it. He draws it up round his chin, and then
his feet begin to freeze. He pushes it down over his feet, and then all
the top part of him shivers.
He tries to roll up into a ball, so as to get the whole of himself
underneath it, but does not succeed; there is always some of him left
outside in the cold.
He reflects that a "boneless wonder" or a "man serpent" would be
comfortable enough in this bed, and wishes that he had been brought up as
a contortionist. If he could only tie his legs round his neck, and tuck
his head in under his arm, all would yet be well.
Never having been taught to do any really useful tricks such as these,
however, he has to be content to remain spread out, warming a bit of
himself at a time.
It is, perhaps, foolish of him, amid so many real troubles, to allow a
mere aesthetical consideration to worry him, but as he lies there on his
back, looking down at himself, the sight that he presents to himself
considerably annoys him. The puffed-up bed, resting on the middle of
him, gives him the appearance of a man suffering from some monstrous
swelling, or else of some exceptionally well-developed frog that has been
turned up the wrong way and does not know how to get on to its legs
again.
Another vexation that he has to contend with is, that every time he moves
a limb or breathes extra hard, the bed (which is only of down) tumbles
off on to the floor.
You cannot lean out of a German bed to pick up anything off the floor,
owing to its box-like formation; so he has to scramble out after it, and
of course every time he does this he barks both his shins twice against
the sides of the bed.
When he has performed this feat for about the tenth time, he concludes
that it was madness for him, a mere raw amateur at the business, to think
that he could manage a complicated, tricky bed of this sort, that must
take even an experienced man all he knows to sleep in it; and gets out
and camps on the floor.
At least, that is what I did. B. is accustomed to German beds, and
doubled himself up and went off to sleep without the slightest
difficulty.
We slept for two hours, and then got up and went back to the
railway-station, where we dined. The railway refreshment-room in German
towns appears to be as much patronised by the inhabitants of the town as
by the travellers passing through. It is regarded as an ordinary
restaurant, and used as such by the citizens. We found the dining-room
at Cologne station crowded with Cologneists.
All classes of citizens were there, but especially soldiers. There were
all sorts of soldiers--soldiers of rank, and soldiers of rank and file;
attached soldiers (very much attached, apparently) and soldiers
unattached; stout soldiers, thin soldiers; old soldiers, young soldiers.
Four very young soldiers sat opposite us, drinking beer. I never saw
such young soldiers out by themselves before. They each looked about
twelve years old, but may have been thirteen; and they each looked, also,
ready and willing to storm a battery, if the order were given to them to
do it. There they sat, raising and lowering their huge mugs of beer,
discussing military matters, and rising every now and again to gravely
salute some officer as he passed, and to receive as gravely his grave
salute in return.
There seemed to be a deal of saluting to be gone through. Officers kept
entering and passing through the room in an almost continual stream, and
every time one came in sight all the military drinkers and eaters rose
and saluted, and remained at the salute until the officer had passed.
One young soldier, who was trying to eat a plate of soup near us, I felt
quite sorry for. Every time he got the spoon near his mouth an officer
invariably hove in view, and down would have to go the spoon, soup and
all, and up he would have to rise. It never seemed to occur to the silly
fellow to get under the table and finish his dinner there.
We had half-an-hour to spare between dinner and the starting of our
train, and B. suggested that we should go into the cathedral. That is
B.'s one weakness, churches. I have the greatest difficulty in getting
him past a church-door. We are walking along a street, arm in arm,
talking as rationally and even as virtuously as need be, when all at once
I find that B. has become silent and abstracted.
I know what it is; he has caught sight of a church. I pretend not to
notice any change in him, and endeavour to hurry him on. He lags more
and more behind, however, and at last stops altogether.
"Come, come," I say to him, encouragingly, "pull yourself together, and
be a man. Don't think about it. Put it behind you, and determine that
you _won't_ be conquered. Come, we shall be round the corner in another
minute, where you won't be able to see it. Take my hand, and let's run!"
He makes a few feeble steps forward with me, and then stops again.
"It's no good, old man," he says, with a sickly smile, so full of pathos
that it is impossible to find it in one's heart to feel anything but pity
for him. "I can't help it. I have given way to this sort of thing too
long. It is too late to reform now. You go on and get a drink
somewhere; I'll join you again in a few minutes. Don't worry about me;
it's no good."
And back he goes with tottering steps, while I sadly pass on into the
nearest cafe, and, over a glass of absinthe or cognac, thank Providence
that I learnt to control my craving for churches in early youth, and so
am not now like this poor B.
In a little while he comes in, and sits down beside me. There is a wild,
unhealthy excitement in his eye, and, under a defiant air of unnatural
gaiety, he attempts to hide his consciousness of guilt.
"It was a lovely altar-cloth," he whispers to me, with an enthusiasm that
only makes one sorrow for him the more, so utterly impossible does it
cause all hope of cure to seem. "And they've got a coffin in the north
crypt that is simply a poem. I never enjoyed a sarcophagus more in all
my life."
I do not say much at the time; it would be useless. But after the day is
done, and we are standing beside our little beds, and all around is as
silent as one can expect it to be in an hotel where people seem to be
arriving all night long with heavy luggage, and to be all, more or less,
in trouble, I argue with him, and gently reprove him. To avoid the
appearance of sermonising as much as possible, I put it on mere grounds
of expediency.
"How are we to find time," I say, "to go to all the places that we really
ought to go to--to all the cafes and theatres and music-halls and
beer-gardens and dancing-saloons that we want to visit--if you waste half
the precious day loafing about churches and cathedrals?"
He is deeply moved, and promises to swear off. He vows, with tears in
his voice, that he will never enter a church-door again. But next
morning, when the temptation comes, all his good resolutions are swept
away, and again he yields. It is no good being angry with him, because
he evidently does really try; but there is something about the mere odour
of a church that he simply cannot withstand.
Not knowing, then, that this weakness of his for churches was so strong,
I made no objection to the proposed visit to Cologne Cathedral, and,
accordingly, towards it we wended our way. B. has seen it before, and
knows all about it. He tells me it was begun about the middle of the
thirteenth century, and was only completed ten years ago. It seems to me
that there must have been gross delay on the part of the builder. Why, a
plumber would be ashamed to take as long as that over a job!
B. also asserts that the two towers are the highest church towers in the
world. I dispute this, and deprecate the towers generally. B. warmly
defends them. He says they are higher than any building in Europe,
except the Eiffel Tower.
"Oh, dear no!" I say, "there are many buildings higher than they in
Europe--to say nothing of Asia and America."
I have no authority for making this assertion. As a matter of fact, I
know nothing whatever about the matter. I merely say it to irritate B.
He appears to take a sort of personal interest in the building, and
enlarges upon its beauties and advantages with as much fervour as if he
were an auctioneer trying to sell the place.
He retorts that the towers are 512 feet high.