XVIII.

The next morning was merely a transitional period, full of turmoil and

disorder, between the broken life of the sea and the untried life of the

shore. No one attempted to resume the routine of the voyage. People went

and came between their rooms and the saloons and the decks, and were no

longer careful to take their own steamer chairs when they sat down for a

moment.

In the cabins the berths were not made up, and those who remained below

had to sit on their hard edges, or on the sofas, which were cumbered

with, hand-bags and rolls of shawls. At an early hour after breakfast the

bedroom stewards began to get the steamer trunks out and pile them in the

corridors; the servants all became more caressingly attentive; and people

who had left off settling the amount of the fees they were going to give,

anxiously conferred together. The question whether you ought ever to give

the head steward anything pressed crucially at the early lunch, and Kenby

brought only a partial relief by saying that he always regarded the head

steward as an officer of the ship. March made the experiment of offering

him six marks, and the head steward took them quite as if he were not an

officer of the ship. He also collected a handsome fee for the music,

which is the tax levied on all German ships beyond the tolls exacted on

the steamers of other nations.

After lunch the flat shore at Cuxhaven was so near that the summer

cottages of the little watering-place showed through the warm drizzle

much like the summer cottages of our own shore, and if it had not been

for the strange, low sky, the Americans might easily have fancied

themselves at home again.

Every one waited on foot while the tender came out into the stream where

the Norumbia had dropped anchor. People who had brought their

hand-baggage with them from their rooms looked so much safer with it that

people who had left theirs to their stewards had to go back and pledge

them afresh not to forget it. The tender came alongside, and the transfer

of the heavy trunks began, but it seemed such an endless work that every

one sat down in some other's chair. At last the trunks were all on the

tender, and the bareheaded stewards began to run down the gangways with

the hand-baggage. "Is this Hoboken?" March murmured in his wife's ear,

with a bewildered sense of something in the scene like the reversed

action of the kinematograph.

On the deck of the tender there was a brief moment of reunion among the

companions of the voyage, the more intimate for their being crowded

together under cover from the drizzle which now turned into a dashing

rain. Burnamy's smile appeared, and then Mrs. March recognized Miss

Triscoe and her father in their travel dress; they were not far from

Burnamy's smile, but he seemed rather to have charge of the Eltwins, whom

he was helping look after their bags and bundles. Rose Adding was talking

with Kenby, and apparently asking his opinion of something; Mrs. Adding

sat near them tranquilly enjoying her son.

Mrs. March made her husband identify their baggage, large and small, and

after he had satisfied her, he furtively satisfied himself by a fresh

count that it was all there. But he need not have taken the trouble;

their long, calm bedroom-steward was keeping guard over it; his eyes

expressed a contemptuous pity for their anxiety, whose like he must have

been very tired of. He brought their handbags into the customs-room at

the station where they landed; and there took a last leave and a last fee

with unexpected cordiality.

Again their companionship suffered eclipse in the distraction which the

customs inspectors of all countries bring to travellers; and again they

were united during the long delay in the waiting-room, which was also the

restaurant. It was full of strange noises and figures and odors--the

shuffling of feet, the clash of crockery, the explosion of nervous German

voices, mixed with the smell of beer and ham, and the smoke of cigars.

Through it all pierced the wail of a postman standing at the door with a

letter in his hand and calling out at regular intervals, "Krahnay,

Krahnay!" When March could bear it no longer he went up to him and

shouted, "Crane! Crane!" and the man bowed gratefully, and began to cry,

"Kren! Kren!" But whether Mr. Crane got his letter or not, he never knew.

People were swarming at the window of the telegraph-office, and sending

home cablegrams to announce their safe arrival; March could not forbear

cabling to his son, though he felt it absurd. There was a great deal of

talking, but no laughing, except among the Americans, and the girls

behind the bar who tried to understand, what they wanted, and then served

them with what they chose for them. Otherwise the Germans, though

voluble, were unsmiling, and here on the threshold of their empire the

travellers had their first hint of the anxious mood which seems habitual

with these amiable people.

Mrs. Adding came screaming with glee to March where he sat with his wife,

and leaned over her son to ask, "Do you know what lese-majesty is? Rose

is afraid I've committed it!"

"No, I don't," said March. "But it's the unpardonable sin. What have you

been doing?"

"I asked the official at the door when our train would start, and when he

said at half past three, I said, 'How tiresome!' Rose says the railroads

belong to the state here, and that if I find fault with the time-table,

it's constructive censure of the Emperor, and that's lese-majesty." She

gave way to her mirth, while the boy studied March's face with an

appealing smile.

"Well, I don't think you'll be arrested this time, Mrs. Adding; but I

hope it will be a warning to Mrs. March. She's been complaining of the

coffee."

"Indeed I shall say what I like," said Mrs. March. "I'm an American."

"Well, you'll find you're a German, if you like to say anything

disagreeable about the coffee in the restaurant of the Emperor's railroad

station; the first thing you know I shall be given three months on your

account."

Mrs. Adding asked: "Then they won't punish ladies? There, Rose! I'm safe,

you see; and you're still a minor, though you are so wise for your

years."

She went back to her table, where Kenby came and sat down by her.

"I don't know that I quite like her playing on that sensitive child,",

said Mrs. March. "And you've joined with her in her joking. Go and speak,

to him!"

The boy was slowly following his mother, with his head fallen. March

overtook him, and he started nervously at the touch of a hand on his

shoulder, and then looked gratefully up into the man's face. March tried

to tell him what the crime of lese-majesty was, and he said: "Oh, yes. I

understood that. But I got to thinking; and I don't want my mother to

take any risks."

"I don't believe she will, really, Rose. But I'll speak to her, and tell

her she can't be too cautious."

"Not now, please!" the boy entreated.

"Well, I'll find another chance," March assented. He looked round and

caught a smiling nod from Burnamy, who was still with the Eltwins; the

Triscoes were at a table by themselves; Miss Triseoe nodded too, but her

father appeared not to see March. "It's all right, with Rose," he said,

when he sat down again by his wife; "but I guess it's all over with

Burnamy," and he told her what he had seen. "Do you think it came to any

displeasure between them last night? Do you suppose he offered himself,

and she--"

"What nonsense!" said Mrs. March, but she was not at peace. "It's her

father who's keeping her away from him."

"I shouldn't mind that. He's keeping her away from us, too." But at that

moment Miss Triscoe as if she had followed his return from afar, came

over to speak to his wife. She said they were going on to Dresden that

evening, and she was afraid they might have no chance to see each other

on the train or in Hamburg. March, at this advance, went to speak with

her father; he found him no more reconciled to Europe than America.

"They're Goths," he said of the Germans. "I could hardly get that stupid

brute in the telegraph-office to take my despatch."

On his way back to his wife March met Miss Triscoe; he was not altogether

surprised to meet Burnamy with her, now. The young fellow asked if he

could be of any use to him, and then he said he would look him up in the

train. He seemed in a hurry, but when he walked away with Miss Triscoe he

did not seem in a hurry.

March remarked upon the change to his wife, and she sighed, "Yes, you can

see that as far as they're concerned."

"It's a great pity that there should be parents to complicate these

affairs," he said. "How simple it would be if there were no parties to

them but the lovers! But nature is always insisting upon fathers and

mothers, and families on both sides."