Elizabeth is now in a position to decide whether the Rhine is a
cocktail river or no, for she is on it, and so am I. We are sitting,
with an awning over our heads, and little wooden stools under our
feet. Elizabeth has a small sailor’s hat and blue ribbon on her head.
The river breeze has blown it rather awry; has tangled her plenteous
hair; has made a faint pink stain on her pale cheeks. It is some fête
day, and the boat is crowded. Tables, countless camp-stools, volumes
of black smoke pouring from the funnel, as we steam along. “Nothing to
the Caledonian Canal!” cries a burly Scotchman in leggings, speaking
with loud authority, and surveying with an air of contempt the eternal
vine-clad slopes, that sound so well, and look so _sticky_ in reality.
“Cannot hold a candle to it!” A rival bride and bridegroom opposite,
sitting together like love-birds under an umbrella, looking into each
other’s eyes instead of at the Rhine scenery.
“They might as well have stayed at home, might not they?” says my wife,
with a little air of superiority. “Come, we are not so bad as that, are
we?”
A storm comes on: hailstones beat slantwise and reach us--stone and
sting us right under our awning. Everybody rushes down below, and
takes the opportunity to feed ravenously. There are few actions more
disgusting than eating _can_ be made. A handsome girl close to us--her
immaturity evidenced by the two long tails of black hair down her
back--is thrusting her knife half way down her throat.
“Come on deck again,” says Elizabeth, disgusted and frightened at this
last sight. “The hail was much better than this!”
So we return to our camp-stools, and sit alone under one mackintosh in
the lashing storm, with happy hearts and empty stomachs.
“Is not this better than any luncheon?” asks Elizabeth, triumphantly,
while the raindrops hang on her long and curled lashes.
“Infinitely better,” reply I, madly struggling with the umbrella to
prevent its being blown inside out, and gallantly ignoring a species of
gnawing sensation at my entrails.
The squall clears off by-and-by, and we go steaming, steaming on
past the unnumbered little villages by the water’s edge with church
spires and pointed roof, past the countless rocks with their little
pert castles perched on the top of them, past the tall, stiff poplar
rows. The church bells are ringing gaily as we go by. A nightingale is
singing from a wood. The black eagle of Prussia droops on the stream
behind us, swish-swish through the dull green water. A fat woman who is
interested in it, leans over the back of the boat, and by some happy
effect of crinoline, displays to her fellow-passengers two yards of
thick white cotton legs. She is, fortunately for herself, unconscious
of her generosity.
The day steals on; at every stopping place more people come on. There
is hardly elbow room; and, what is worse, almost everybody is drunk.
Rocks, castles, villages, poplars, slide by, while the paddles churn
always the water, and the evening draws greyly on. At Bingen a party of
big blue Prussian soldiers, very drunk, “glorious” as Tam o’ Shanter,
come and establish themselves close to us. They call for Lager Beer;
talk at the tip-top of their strong voices; two of them begin to spar;
all seem inclined to sing. Elizabeth is frightened. We are two hours
late in arriving at Biebrich. It is half an hour more before we can
get ourselves and our luggage into a carriage and set off along the
winding road to Wiesbaden. “The night is chilly, but not dark.” There
is only a little shabby bit of a moon, but it shines as hard as it can.
Elizabeth is quite worn out, her tired head droops in uneasy sleep on
my shoulder. Once she wakes up with a start.
“Are you sure that it meant nothing?” she asks, looking me eagerly in
my face; “do people often have such dreams?”
“Often, often,” I answer, reassuringly.
“I am always afraid of falling asleep now,” she says, trying to sit
upright and keep her heavy eyes open, “for fear of seeing him standing
there again. Tell me, do you think I shall? Is there any chance, any
probability of it?”
“None, none!”
We reach Wiesbaden at last, and drive up to the Hôtel des Quatre
Saisons. By this time it is full midnight. Two or three men are
standing about the door. Morris, the maid, has got out--so have I,
and I am holding out my hand to Elizabeth, when I hear her give one
piercing scream, and see her with ash-white face and starting eyes
point with her forefinger----
“There he is!--there!--there!”
I look in the direction indicated, and just catch a glimpse of a tall
figure, standing half in the shadow of the night, half in the gaslight
from the hotel. I have not time for more than one cursory glance, as I
am interrupted by a cry from the bystanders, and turning quickly round,
am just in time to catch my wife, who falls in utter insensibility into
my arms. We carry her into a room on the ground floor; it is small,
noisy, and hot, but it is the nearest at hand. In about an hour she
re-opens her eyes. A strong shudder makes her quiver from head to foot.
“Where is he?” she says, in a terrified whisper, as her senses come
slowly back. “He is somewhere about--somewhere near. I feel that he is!”
“My dearest child, there is no one here but Morris and me,” I answer,
soothingly. “Look for yourself. See.”
I take one of the candles and light up each corner of the room in
succession.
“You saw him!” she says, in trembling hurry, sitting up and clenching
her hands together. “I know you did--I pointed him out to you--you
_cannot_ say that it was a dream _this_ time.”
“I saw two or three ordinary looking men as we drove up,” I answer,
in a commonplace, matter-of-fact tone. “I did not notice anything
remarkable about any of them; you know the fact is, darling, that you
have had nothing to eat all day, nothing but a biscuit, and you are
over-wrought, and fancy things.”
“Fancy!” echoes she, with strong irritation. “How you talk! Was I ever
one to fancy things? I tell you that as sure as I sit here--as sure as
you stand there--I saw him--_him_--the man I saw in my dream, if it was
a dream. There was not a hair’s breadth of difference between them--and
he was looking at me--looking----”
She breaks off into hysterical sobbing.
“My dear child!” say I, thoroughly alarmed, and yet half angry, “for
God’s sake do not work yourself up into a fever: wait till to-morrow,
and we will find out who he is, and all about him; you yourself will
laugh when we discover that he is some harmless bagman.”
“Why not _now_?” she says, nervously; “why cannot you find out
_now_--_this minute_?”
“Impossible! Everybody is in bed! Wait till to-morrow, and all will be
cleared up.”
The morrow comes, and I go about the hotel, inquiring. The house is so
full, and the data I have to go upon are so small, that for some time I
have great difficulty in making it understood to whom I am alluding. At
length one waiter seems to comprehend.
“A tall and dark gentleman, with a pronounced and very peculiar nose?
Yes; there has been such a one, certainly, in the hotel, but he left at
‘grand matin’ this morning; he remained only one night.”
“And his name?”
The garçon shakes his head. “That is unknown, monsieur; he did not
inscribe it in the visitor’s book.”
“What countryman was he?”
Another shake of the head. “He spoke German, but it was with a foreign
accent.”
“Whither did he go?”
That also is unknown. Nor can I arrive at any more facts about him.