If
not, it is possibly in one of the bags - somewhere, or in your
pocket-book, if you only knew where that was, or your purse.
You begin a search. You stand up and shake yourself. Then you have
another feel all over. You look round in the course of the
proceedings; and the sight of the crowd of curious faces watching
you, and of the man in uniform waiting with his eye fixed severely
upon you, convey to you, in your then state of confusion, the
momentary idea that this is a police-court scene, and that if the
ticket is found upon you, you will probably get five years.
Upon this you vehemently protest your innocence.
"I tell you I haven't got it!" you exclaim; - "never seen the
gentleman's ticket. You let me go! I - "
Here the surprise of your fellow-passengers recalls you to yourself,
and you proceed on your exploration. You overhaul the bags, turning
everything out on to the floor, muttering curses on the whole
railway system of Germany as you do so. Then you feel in your
boots. You make everybody near you stand up to see if they are
sitting upon it, and you go down on your knees and grovel for it
under the seat.
"You didn't throw it out of the window with your sandwiches, did
you?" asks your friend.
"No! Do you think I'm a fool?" you answer, irritably. "What should
I want to do that for?"
On going systematically over yourself for about the twentieth time,
you discover it in your waistcoat pocket, and for the next half-hour
you sit and wonder how you came to miss it on the previous nineteen
occasions.
Meanwhile, during this trying scene, the conduct of the guard has
certainly not tended to allay your anxiety and nervousness. All the
time that you have been looking for your ticket, he has been doing
silly tricks on the step outside, imperilling his life by every
means that experience and ingenuity can suggest.
The train is going at the rate of thirty miles an hour, the express
speed in Germany, and a bridge comes in sight crossing over the
line. On seeing this bridge, the guard, holding on by the window,
leans his body as far back as ever it will go. You look at him, and
then at the rapidly-nearing bridge, and calculate that the arch will
just take his head off without injuring any other part of him
whatever, and you wonder whether the head will be jerked into the
carriage or will fall outside.
When he is three inches off the bridge, he pulls himself up
straight, and the brickwork, as the train dashes through, kills a
fly that was trespassing on the upper part of his right ear.
Then, when the bridge is passed, and the train is skirting the very
edge of a precipice, so that a stone dropped just outside the window
would tumble straight down 300 feet, he suddenly lets go, and,
balancing himself on the foot-board without holding on to anything,
commences to dance a sort of Teutonic cellar-flap, and to warm his
body by flinging his arms about in the manner of cabmen on a cold
day.
The first essential to comfortable railway travelling in Germany is
to make up your mind not to care a rap whether the guard gets killed
in the course of the journey or not. Any tender feeling towards the
guard makes railway travelling in the Fatherland a simple torture.
At five a.m. (how fair and sweet and fresh the earth looks in the
early morning! Those lazy people who lie in bed till eight or nine
miss half the beauty of the day, if they but knew it. It is only we
who rise early that really enjoy Nature properly) I gave up trying
to get to sleep, and made my way to the dressing-room at the end of
the car, and had a wash.
It is difficult to wash in these little places, because the cars
shake so; and when you have got both your hands and half your head
in the basin, and are unable to protect yourself, the sides of the
room, and the water-tap and the soap-dish, and other cowardly
things, take a mean advantage of your helplessness to punch you as
hard as ever they can; and when you back away from these, the door
swings open and slaps you from behind.
I succeeded, however, in getting myself fairly wet all over, even if
I did nothing else, and then I looked about for a towel. Of course,
there was no towel. That is the trick. The idea of the railway
authorities is to lure the passenger, by providing him with soap and
water and a basin, into getting himself thoroughly soaked, and then
to let it dawn upon him that there is no towel. That is their
notion of fun!
I thought of the handkerchiefs in my bag, but to get to them I
should have to pass compartments containing ladies, and I was only
in early morning dress.
So I had to wipe myself with a newspaper which I happened to have in
my pocket, and a more unsatisfactory thing to dry oneself upon I
cannot conceive.
I woke up B. when I got back to the carriage, and persuaded him to
go and have a wash; and in listening to the distant sound of his
remarks when he likewise discovered that there was no towel, the
recollection of my own discomfiture passed gently away.
Ah! how true it is, as good people tell us, that in thinking of the
sorrows of others, we learn to forget our own!
For fifty miles before one reaches Munich, the land is flat, stale,
and apparently very unprofitable, and there is little to interest
the looker-out.
