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.
