Emmeline had childlike lapses1; she rejoiced greatly, for instance, at seeing a Strasbourg stork2. She confessed, when she saw it, to having read Hans Andersen when she was a little girl, and was happy in the resemblance of the tall chimneys he stood on, and the high-pitched red roofs he surveyed, to the pictures she remembered. But, for that matter, so were we all. We had an hour and a half at Strasbourg, and we drove, of course, to the Cathedral; but it was the stork that we saw, and that each of us privately3 considered the really valuable impression. He stood beside his nest with his chin sunk in his neck, looking immensely lucky and wise, and one quite agreed with Emmeline that it must be lovely to live under him.
We lunched at the station, and, as the meal progressed, saw again how widespread and sincere is the German sentiment to which I alluded4, perhaps too lightly, in the last chapter. Our waitresses were all that could be desired, until there came between us and them a youth from parts without. He was sallow, and the waitresses were buxom5; he might have been a student of law or medicine, they were naturally of much lower degree. But they frankly6 forsook7 us and sat down beside him in terms of devotion and an open aspect of radiant happiness. When one went to draw his lager beer he put an unrepelled arm round the waist of the other, and when the first came back he chucked her under the chin with undisguised affection, the while we looked on and starved, none knowing the language except Isabel, who thought of nothing but blushing. As Mr. Malt said, if the young man could only have made up his mind, we might have been able to get along with the rejected one; but, apparently8, he was not in the least embarrassed by numbers, sending a large and beguiling9 smile to yet a further hand-maiden, who passed enviously10 through the speise-salle with a basin of soup. It was only when Dicky stalked across to the old woman who sold sausages and biscuits behind a counter, and pointed11 indignantly to the person who held all the available table service of the Strasbourg railway station on his knees, that we obtained redress12. The old woman laughed as if it were amusing, and called the maidens13 shrilly14; but even then they came with reluctance15, as if we had been mere16 schnapps instead of ten complete luncheons17, one soup, and a bread and cheese, as Dicky said. The bread and cheese was the Count, and one gathered from it that the improvement in his immediate18 prospects19 was not yet assured, that the arrangimento was still in futuro.
We had become such a large party, that it is impossible to relate the whole of our experiences even in the half hour during which we dawdled20 round the Strasbourg waiting-room until the train should start. I know it was then, for instance, that Mrs. Portheris took Dicky aside and told him how deeply she sympathised with him in his trying position, and bade him only be faithful to the dictates21 of his own heart and all would come right in time. I know Dicky promised faithfully to do so, but I must not dwell upon it. Nor is the opportunity adequate to express the indignation we all felt, and not Mr. Mafferton merely, at the insufficient22 personal impression we made upon the German railway officials. They were so completely preoccupied23 with their magnificent selves and their vast business that they were unable even to look at us when we asked them questions, and their sole conception of a reply was an order, in terms that sounded brutal24 to a degree. They were objectionably burly and red in the face; they wore an offensive number of buttons and straps25 upon their uniforms. As Mr. Mafferton said, they utterly27 misconceived their position in life, attempting to Kaiser the travelling public by Divine right instead of recognising themselves as humble28 servants, buttoned only to be made more agreeable to the eye.
One such person trampled29 upon us to such an extent that I have never been able to satisfy myself that the Senator was sincere in making his little mistake. We were sitting in dejected rows, with a number of other foreigners who had been similarly reduced, when this official entered the waiting-room, advanced to the middle of it, posed with great majesty30, and emitted several bars of a kind of chant or chime. It was delivered with too much vigour31, and it stopped too abruptly32, to be entirely33 enjoyable; but there was no doubt about the musical intention. It was not even intoning; it was singing, beginning with moderation, going on stronger with indignation, and ending suddenly in a crescendo34 of denunciation.
We smiled in difficult self-restraint as he went away, and Dicky remarked that he supposed we were in their hands, we couldn't object to anything they did to us. In five minutes he came back to exactly the same spot and sang again the same words, in the same key, with the same unction. "Encore!" exclaimed Mr. Malt boldly, but cowered35 under the glare that was turned upon him, and utterly fell away when we reminded him of the punishments attached in Germany to the charge of lèse majesté. Precisely36 five minutes more passed away, and Bawlinbuttons, as Miss Callis called him, entered again. Then occurred the Senator's little mistake. In the midst of the second bar, the indignant one, Bawlinbuttons stopped short, petrified37 by poppa, who had advanced and was holding out copper38 coins whose usefulness we had left behind us, to the value of about fifteen cents.
"Here's the collection," said poppa benevolently—for an instant or two he was quite audible—"but unless you know some other tune39 the company wish me to say that they won't trouble you any further."
There are misunderstandings that are never rectified40, sometimes because a train draws up at the platform as in this case, and sometimes for other reasons, and it was natural enough that poppa should fail to comprehend Bawlinbuttons' indignant shouts to the effect that a Kaiser should never be mistaken for an organ-grinder, merely because his tastes are musical. Neither is it likely that the various Teutons who were waiting for the information will ever understand why the announcement that the train for Saarburg, Nancy, Frankfort, and Mayence would leave at ten o'clock precisely was never completed for the third time, according to the regulation. But we have often wondered since what Bawlinbuttons did with the coppers41.
We divided up on the way to Mayence, and Mr. and Mrs. Malt came into the compartment42 with the Senator, momma, and me. Mr. Malt was unsatisfied with poppa's revenge on Bawlinbuttons, and proposed to make things awkward further for the guard. He said it could be done very simply, by a disagreement between himself and the Senator as to whether the windows should be open or shut. He said he had heard of a German guard put to the most enjoyable misery43 by such a dispute, not knowing the language of the disputants and being forced to arbitrate upon their respective demands. Mr. Malt had laughed at the Senator's joke, so the Senator, of course, had to assist at Mr. Malt's, and they began to work themselves up, as Mr. Malt said, into the spirit of it. Mr. Malt was to insist that the windows should be shut, he said he had got a trifling44 cold, and the Senator was to require them open in the interests of ventilation. They rehearsed their arguments, and momma putting her head out of the window at the first small station cried, "Be quick and change your expressions—he's coming!"
In the presence of the guard Mr. Malt rose with dignity and closed the windows. The Senator, with a well-simulated scowl45, at once opened them both.
"Stranger!" said Mr. Malt, while momma fumbled46 for her ticket, "I shut those windows."
"Sir," responded poppa, "if you had not done so I shouldn't have been obliged to open them."
"I can't die of pneumonia47, sir," said Mr. Malt, again closing the window, "to oblige you."
"Nor do I feel compelled," returned the Senator furiously, "to asphyxiate48 my family to make it comfortable for you!" and the window fell with a bang.
The guard, holding out a massive hand for my ticket, took no notice whatever.
"Put it up again," said Mrs. Malt, who was more anxious than any of us to avenge49 herself upon the German railway system, "and try to break the glass."
"Attract his attention, Alexander," said momma. "Pull one of his silly buttons off."
The guard gave no sign—he was replacing the elastic50 round my book of coupons51 after detaching the green one on which was printed, "Strasburg nach Mainz."
Poppa and Mr. Malt were sitting opposite each other in the middle of the carriage.
"I tell you I've got bronchial trouble, and I won't be manslaughtered," cried Mr. Malt, hurling52 himself upon the strap26, while poppa seized the guard by the arm and pointed to the closed window. The only foreign language with which poppa is acquainted is that used by the Indians on the banks of the Saguenay river, a few words of which he acquired while salmon53 fishing there two years ago. These he poured forth54 upon the guard—they were the only ones that occurred to him, he said—at the same time threatening with his disengaged fist bodily assault upon Mr. Malt.
"That ought to draw him," said Mrs. Malt.
It did draw him.
"Leave go!" he said to poppa, and his air of authority was such that poppa left go. "Is this here a lunatic party, or a young menagerie, or what? Now look here," he continued, taking Mr. Malt by the elbow and seating him with some violence in a corner seat and shutting the window. "If you've got eight tickets for yourself say so, if you haven't that's as much an' more than you are entitled to. The other gentleman——" But the Senator had already collapsed55 into the furthest corner and was looking fixedly56 through the closed glass. "Well, all I've got to say is," he went on, lowering that window with decision, "that you can't go kickin' up rows in this country same as you do at home, an' if you can't get along more satisfactory together I'll——" here something interrupted him, requiring to be transferred from the Senator's hand to the nearest convenient pocket. "As I was goin' to say, gentlemen, there isn't any what you might call strict rule about the windows, an' as far as I'm concerned, you can settle it for yourselves."
Whereupon he swung along to the next carriage, the train having started, and left us to reflect on the incongruity57 of an English railway guard in Germany.
It was curious, but the incident left behind it a certain coolness, so well defined that when momma suggested that the Malts' window should be lowered as it was before to give us a current of air, Mrs. Malt said she thought it would be better to abide58 by the decision of the guard, now that we had referred it to him, and momma said, "Oh dear me, yes," if she preferred to do so, and everybody established the most aggressively private relations with books and newspapers. It was quite a relief when Mrs. Portheris came at the next station to inquire whether, if we had no married Germans in our compartment, we could possibly make room for Isabel. Mrs. Portheris had married Germans in her compartment, two pairs of them, and she could no longer permit her daughter to observe their behaviour. "They obtrude59 their domestic relations," said Mrs. Portheris, "in the most disgusting way. They are continually patting each other. Quite middle-aged60, too! And calling each other 'Leibchen,' and other things which may be worse. My poor Isabel is dreadfully embarrassed, for, of course, she can't always look out of the window. And as she understands the language, I can't possibly tell what she may overhear!"
We made room for Isabel, but the train to Mayence was crowded that day, and before we arrived we had ample reason to believe that conjugal61 affection is not only at home but abroad in Germany. The Senator, at one point, threatened to travel on the engine to avoid it. He used, I think the language of exaggeration about it. He said it was the most objectionable article made in Germany. But I did not notice that Isabel devoted62 herself at all seriously to looking out of the window.
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1
lapses
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| n.失误，过失( lapse的名词复数 )；小毛病；行为失检；偏离正道v.退步( lapse的第三人称单数 )；陷入；倒退；丧失 | |
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2
stork
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| n.鹳 | |
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3
privately
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| adv.以私人的身份，悄悄地，私下地 | |
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alluded
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| 提及，暗指( allude的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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buxom
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| adj.（妇女）丰满的，有健康美的 | |
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frankly
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| adv.坦白地，直率地；坦率地说 | |
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7
forsook
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| forsake的过去式 | |
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8
apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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beguiling
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| adj.欺骗的，诱人的v.欺骗( beguile的现在分词 )；使陶醉；使高兴；消磨（时间等） | |
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enviously
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| adv.满怀嫉妒地 | |
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pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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redress
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| n.赔偿，救济，矫正；v.纠正，匡正，革除 | |
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13
maidens
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| 处女( maiden的名词复数 )； 少女； 未婚女子； （板球运动）未得分的一轮投球 | |
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14
shrilly
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| 尖声的； 光亮的，耀眼的 | |
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reluctance
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| n.厌恶，讨厌，勉强，不情愿 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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luncheons
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| n.午餐，午宴( luncheon的名词复数 ) | |
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18
immediate
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| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
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prospects
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| n.希望，前途(恒为复数) | |
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20
dawdled
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| v.混（时间）( dawdle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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21
dictates
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| n.命令，规定，要求( dictate的名词复数 )v.大声讲或读( dictate的第三人称单数 )；口授；支配；摆布 | |
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22
insufficient
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| adj.(for，of)不足的，不够的 | |
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23
preoccupied
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| adj.全神贯注的，入神的；被抢先占有的；心事重重的v.占据（某人）思想，使对…全神贯注，使专心于( preoccupy的过去式) | |
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24
brutal
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| adj.残忍的，野蛮的，不讲理的 | |
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straps
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| n.带子( strap的名词复数 )；挎带；肩带；背带v.用皮带捆扎( strap的第三人称单数 )；用皮带抽打；包扎；给…打绷带 | |
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strap
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| n.皮带，带子；v.用带扣住，束牢；用绷带包扎 | |
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utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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humble
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| adj.谦卑的，恭顺的；地位低下的；v.降低，贬低 | |
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29
trampled
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| 踩( trample的过去式和过去分词 )； 践踏； 无视； 侵犯 | |
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30
majesty
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| n.雄伟，壮丽，庄严，威严；最高权威，王权 | |
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31
vigour
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| （=vigor）n.智力，体力，精力 | |
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abruptly
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| adv.突然地，出其不意地 | |
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entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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crescendo
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| n.(音乐)渐强，高潮 | |
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35
cowered
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| v.畏缩，抖缩( cower的过去式 ) | |
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precisely
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| adv.恰好，正好，精确地，细致地 | |
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petrified
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| adj.惊呆的；目瞪口呆的v.使吓呆，使惊呆；变僵硬；使石化(petrify的过去式和过去分词) | |
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38
copper
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| n.铜；铜币；铜器；adj.铜(制)的；(紫)铜色的 | |
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39
tune
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| n.调子；和谐，协调；v.调音，调节，调整 | |
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40
rectified
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| [医]矫正的，调整的 | |
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41
coppers
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| 铜( copper的名词复数 )； 铜币 | |
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42
compartment
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| n.卧车包房，隔间；分隔的空间 | |
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43
misery
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| n.痛苦，苦恼，苦难；悲惨的境遇，贫苦 | |
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44
trifling
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| adj.微不足道的；没什么价值的 | |
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45
scowl
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| vi.(at)生气地皱眉，沉下脸，怒视；n.怒容 | |
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46
fumbled
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| （笨拙地）摸索或处理（某事物）( fumble的过去式和过去分词 )； 乱摸，笨拙地弄； 使落下 | |
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47
pneumonia
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| n.肺炎 | |
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48
asphyxiate
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| v.无法呼吸，窒息而死 | |
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49
avenge
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| v.为...复仇，为...报仇 | |
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50
elastic
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| n.橡皮圈，松紧带；adj.有弹性的；灵活的 | |
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51
coupons
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| n.礼券( coupon的名词复数 )；优惠券；订货单；参赛表 | |
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52
hurling
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| n.爱尔兰式曲棍球v.猛投，用力掷( hurl的现在分词 )；大声叫骂 | |
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53
salmon
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| n.鲑，大马哈鱼，橙红色的 | |
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54
forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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55
collapsed
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| adj.倒塌的 | |
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56
fixedly
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| adv.固定地；不屈地，坚定不移地 | |
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incongruity
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| n.不协调，不一致 | |
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58
abide
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| vi.遵守；坚持；vt.忍受 | |
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59
obtrude
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| v.闯入；侵入；打扰 | |
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60
middle-aged
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| adj.中年的 | |
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61
conjugal
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| adj.婚姻的，婚姻性的 | |
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62
devoted
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| adj.忠诚的，忠实的，热心的，献身于...的 | |
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