Once a Week (magazine)/Series 1/Volume 9/A "first-class" story; or, The perils of travelling alone - Part 2
A “FIRST-CLASS” STORY;
OR, THE PERILS OF TRAVELLING ALONE.
CHAPTER II. IN WHICH THE TRAVELLER MEETS A STRANGE GENTLEMAN.
Almost as soon as it was light the next morning the two cousins were wending their way along the snowy streets of Eisenach towards the railway station, with their German maidservant in advance of them, carrying the young lady’s heavy trunk on the chiffonnier-like basket that was strapped to her back. The bells at the doors of the chandlers’ shops kept tinkling with the demand for “schnapps” by the men on their way to work as the couple passed along. The dusty-looking bakers were busy arranging their sausage-shaped little rolls of bread on the small wooden ledges in front of their parlour windows; and the little go-cart-like milk waggons laden with their big tin jugs, not unlike in shape to large Etruscan vases, stood at the gateways, with the donkey half-dozing in the shafts; and the maidservants were grouped about the wells that were not yet frozen up, waiting for their turn to get water at the spring, while on the stones round about were ranged the tall, queer-looking wooden “butten,” not unlike enormous quivers, in which they were to carry, strapped to their backs, the cold, wet load home to their houses. The rude old Roman tower which forms the only remaining gateway of the once ramparted town was soon passed, and then it was but two or three minutes’ walk to the railway itself.
The starting-place had so few points of difference from an English station, that there is no necessity for particularising it; enough to say that the officials were all clad in suits of sky-blue, and every one had some hirsute appendage to either his lips or chin, and the “restoration-room” was heated to the temperature of a baker’s oven, and reeked with the not very fragrant odour of red-hot iron stoves and stale tobacco-smoke. Here were gentlemen done up in fur coats, and fur boots, and fur gloves, until they looked more like Esquimaux than the inhabitants of the temperate zone, waiting the departure of a train, and all smoking and drinking steaming cups of coffee, till the atmosphere was as misty as that of a wash-house.
Presently the huge bell hanging outside the refreshment-room door was tolled rapidly by one of the sky-blue officials, and then, the glass doors that opened on to the platform being thrown back, there was a general rush from within to without.
“Now, my dear Helen, I’ll go and see that your luggage is safely stowed away, while you take your seat, and arrange your rugs in this carriage,” said Madame Steindorf, as she approached the door of one of the first-class carriages, and then signalled to the porter to come and unlock it for them, and by the time the young lady had drawn on her felt shoes, and exchanged her bonnet for a quilted hood, and taken the books she had brought with her from her bag, her cousin was back again at the carriage door, inquiring if she were sure that she had brought this, and hadn’t forgotten that, and then telling her that she need be under no alarm whatever, that the guard had told her that first-class carriages were almost always empty at that season of the year, and she had written, as she knew, overnight to make arrangements for some one to meet her when she arrived at Harburg who would conduct her across the river to her destination at Hamburg. The conversation was here abruptly stopped by one of the officials closing the door of the carriage, and then Madame Steindorf had only time to shake her cousin by the hand, and bid her mind and be sure she wrote immediately she got to the end of her journey, before the big bell clattered again, and the chimes began to play telegraphically all along the line in the little belfries ranged on top of the lodges of the signal men, warning them that the Frankfurt train was then starting, immediately after which the engine-whistle rent the air with a piercing scream, the locomotive began to snort, heavily at first, and then to pant quicker and quicker, while the carriages, one after the other, began first to glide along the platform, and then to be whisked rapidly from the sight.
As yet Helen Boyne had kept up heroically against the struggle of parting—she had promised her cousin that there should be no “scene” before strangers at the railway station, and she was too proud-spirited to allow herself to forfeit her word; but when she saw the last flutter of her cousin’s handkerchief, and felt that she was now, for the first time, adrift in the world, and bound to a strange place, where she was to see only strange faces, the tender-hearted girl burst into tears, and sobbed as if her very heart would break. Her father had been assassinated in Ireland when she was but a mere child, and her mother, who had never recovered the shock of her husband’s death, died but a year or two afterwards, so that she had been left an orphan long before her school-days were over. Her mother’s sister had then received her under her roof, and had the girl educated for a governess, in which capacity her own daughter—before her marriage to Herr Steindorf—was then acting in an English family resident abroad. The subsequent marriage, however, of Helen’s cousin to a merchant at Bremen led to the young lady being received into that merchant’s family, in order that she might perfect herself in German, but she had not been here six months before the American panic came, and merchant houses that were considered solid as the Bank of England proved to be no more secure than cardboard ones—the oldest firms crashed on every side like rotten timber, and Herr Steindorf, from being one of the largest and most wealthy ship-owners, found himself comparatively a beggar in a few weeks, for bill after bill was returned to him dishonoured, and the losses came so heavy and fast that the merchant’s intellect gave way under it, and ultimately sinking into a state of childish imbecility, he ended his days in a private asylum. The little property left was then invested so as to secure a small annuity to his widow, and upon this the two cousins had been living in Eisenach until a situation could be obtained for the younger one.
It was a long time after parting from Madame Steindorf, as her only friend on that side of the Channel, before Helen Boyne could manage to divert her thoughts by reading; for directly she tried to do so the tears which she fancied she had stayed would flood her eyes once more, and fall in heavy drops, like summer rain upon the leaves. Nor did she know whether they went through tunnels or crossed rivers; all outward things were an utter blank to her, for she heard nothing but the murmurings of her own heart, and saw nothing but her own sad fate before her.
She was hardly conscious even that the train had stopped at the little village of Gerstungen on the banks of the Werra, and was suddenly aroused from her dream by a strange gentleman jumping into the carriage in which she was seated, just as the train was in the act of starting.
The entrance was so abrupt and so utterly unforeseen that the girl gave a faint scream as she saw the man standing before her. Besides, the appearance of the gentleman was not of the most prepossessing kind. He was muffled to the nose in a comforter, and wore a fur-cap drawn low over the forehead, and with the lappets covering the ears, so that there was hardly any more of the face to be seen than if the man’s head had been seen through a vizor.
“Thank heaven!” gasped out the man, “I caught the train.” And the next minute he was jolted back into the seat with the motion of the carriages. Then having flung his carpet-bag on to the vacant cushion next to him he began to unwind the comforter from his neck and to remove the fur-covering from his head, so that he might wipe the perspiration from his brow. After which he commenced stamping violently to divest his boots of the heavy clots of snow that still clung to the soles of them. “I thought I should have missed it after all,” he said quickly, and half to himself, and then turning sharply round to the lady, he added in the same disjointed manner, “You are not a German, are you?”
The brusqueness of the question so startled the affrighted girl that she knew not whether to answer the man or not. On second thoughts, however, she fancied it would be better to be civil to the person, lest he should take offence and be rude to her in return: so, without turning her head, she replied:
“No, sir; I am English.”
“Soh!” cried the other, as he mused over the information. The next minute he began to unlock his carpet-bag, and after rummaging over the contents, ultimately drew forth a small hand mirror, which he held up in front of his face while he examined his beard and the long lank locks that hung like a lion’s mane about his head.
While he was so engaged Helen Boyne could not help casting a furtive glance at her companion, and, as she did so, she felt assured she had seen him somewhere before;—that horrible grisly red beard, and those straight yellow locks, reaching to his shoulders and tucked behind the large projecting ears, were too deeply impressed in her mind to forget them, and then she fell to wondering where it was she could have met him; it could not have been at the “Klemda,” for he seemed to be hardly well-bred enough to be admitted there; and while she was thus musing she noticed that the man was about to draw a pair of scissors from the dressing-case he had removed from the bag, but the sudden appearance of the guard at the window of the carriage made him thrust them hurriedly back again.
“Your ticket, if you please,” said the man. “Where are you going to?” he inquired, as he took the bit of pasteboard in order to make the customary hole through it.
“You can see if you can read,” snappishly answered the new comer. And as he took the ticket back from the official, he held it in front of his face, as he cried, “Can’t you see Gerstungen to Cassel; it’s printed large enough. I go from there to Frankfurt this afternoon, can’t I?”
“Yes,” was the laconic reply.
The manner of the stranger was so peculiar, and there was such a restlessness about his eyes that the guard could not help saying before pulling the window up again, “Is this gentleman annoying you, madame?”
Helen Boyne could not answer the question in the affirmative. It is true she objected to the man’s company; then she was too polite-minded a girl to ask for his removal from the carriage on that account, for she felt it would be casting a stigma upon him that he in no way deserved. So she stammered out:
“Oh no, thank you, not at all.”
The words were no sooner uttered than the window was closed again, and the guard was off walking along the narrow ledge outside the carriages to collect the tickets from the new comers while the train was in motion.
“Soh, now we are all right till we get to Cassel,” cried the stranger, chafing his palms together, but whether for the sake of warmth or exultation it was difficult to say.
The words, “from Gerstungen to Cassel,” rang like the drone of a cathedral bell for many a minute in the mind of the young girl. That man was to be her companion alone in the carriage for many an hour of her long journey. She would get out at Cassel and ask the guard to place her in another carriage. It was curious why he should have chosen to travel first-class, for it was evident by his manner and appearance that he was ill-able to afford the extra expense. Then she thought of what she had heard the day before at the hotel in Eisenach, that none but English people and mad folk ever resorted to those carriages; and as the recollection flashed through her mind she shuddered with alarm as she asked herself whether her companion could possibly be a person of deranged mind.
The rapid disjointed utterances he gave vent to, the incoherence of his actions, his restlessness and irritability, all tended to convince her that she was locked in that carriage alone with a lunatic. Gracious heaven! what would become of her? If she had only pondered over the matter a few minutes before, she could have sought protection of the guard while he was at the window. What should she do now? She would put down the window that very minute and shout for help, and then even while her hand was on the frame ready to put the first thought into execution, a second crossed her mind. Where was the good of that? Who could hear amid all the clatter of the moving wheels and the gasping of the engine. If there was only some one in the next carriage she would knock at the partition and beg of them to help her; but—no, she could hear no one speaking, and knew that she was alone in her terror. Well, she would do all she could to calm and soothe, rather than vex, the man; then, perhaps, by humouring him she might be able to ward off any great danger until they reached the next halting-place.
Absorbed with such musings as the above, the girl for a moment turned her head from the stranger and was busy looking through the window sideways now towards this end of the train and then in the direction of the other, in the hope of catching sight of the guard before he returned to his seat on the top; and when she found the official was nowhere to be seen, she turned round again and discovered her red-bearded companion in the act of trying to cut the hairy appendage from his face, as he held a pair of scissors in one hand and the little mirror up before him with the other.
If Helen Boyne had had any doubts of the man’s sanity before, she was now fully convinced that her fellow traveller was nothing less than a confirmed maniac—no decent person of sound understanding would be guilty of such impropriety in the presence of an unprotected young lady.
The attempt of the fellow, however, at extemporaneous hair-cutting was utterly idle under such circumstances, for the motion of the carriage as well as the reversed movements of his own hand as seen reflected in the glass, rendered it extremely difficult for him to divest his chin even of a lock or two; and as the girl saw him nearly run the sharp points of the scissors into his throat, she started and half-shrieked in her alarm.
The cry made the man turn sharply round and look wildly at her, and then he gave a faint titter, and rising from his seat went and placed himself directly opposite to the girl.
“Merciful Heaven!” she breathed to herself, as her heart sank like a heavy stone within her; “What will he do, and what shall I do now? If I move away he will follow me and be angry, too.”
But there was little time for vague surmise, for the man soon said:
“May I ask, Mees” (the German rendering of Miss) “to do me a favour?” and as he uttered the words he smiled grimly at the terrified girl and half bowed towards her.
Helen Boyne paused for a minute as she almost foresaw the ugly boon the fellow was about to seek of her, and then stammered out:
“I shall be happy to do anything I can to oblige a fellow-traveller; but I must beg of you to remember that I am a young lady and unfortunately an unprotected one also, and therefore I entreat of you, as a gentleman, not to request me to do anything which I cannot consent to do with propriety.”
“Oh, don’t be alarmed, Fraulein,” blurted out the other, “I am harmless enough if you take me the right way. All I want of you is to cut my beard and whiskers clean off.”
It was as she had expected, and the poor girl in her modesty put her hands before her eyes as she sobbed out from behind them,—
“Oh, sir, I’m a stranger to you, and I blush to hear you ask me to do such a thing.”
“Come, come!” said the man, holding her hands down, “what should you blush about? I’m not going to ill-use you, and for the little matter of hair-cutting, you needn’t put on these romantic flights, for in many parts of Europe the barbers are women, and no one looks upon them as indelicate people.”
“But, sir, they are used to such an occupation, and I am not,” wept on the girl, “therefore I implore you wait till you get to your destination, and have it done by such as make a calling of it, for indeed, indeed, I cannot do it.”
“Oh! oh! you can’t, can’t you? Too fine a lady, no doubt,” said the man, with a surly scoff, “to play the barber; but we’ll see.”
“What would you do?” gasped Helen Boyne. “You would not force me to touch you?” and the girl shuddered with horror from head to foot.
“No force, only a little strong persuasion,” was the cool determined reply, as he drew his carpet-bag towards him and then dragged from the bottom of it a small revolver pistol which he placed on the cushion beside him.
“Heaven! You would not murder me, man?” cried the girl, as she started up from her seat.
“Oh no, no!” laughed the fellow derisively. “Not if you don’t particularly wish it, Miss. But the sight of that little mild persuader there may bring you to your senses;” and then rose to put his carpet-bag up in the netting over his head. As he did so his back was turned towards the girl but for an instant, and in that instant Helen Boyne darted forward, and snatching at the pistol that lay on the cushion, rushed with it in her hand to the opposite corner of the carriage, and there she stood with her back against the door, with her arm outstretched and the muzzle of the revolver directed point blank at her adversary; nor did the weapon tremble the least in her hand.
“It does bring me to my senses, coward that you are, for it teaches me that though but a mere child in strength, I have now the mastery over you; and though I never pulled a trigger before, I tell you I will shoot you down if you move but one step to lay a hand upon me.”
“Haugh! haugh!” bellowed her companion; and then turning round looked the girl steadfastly in the face and said sarcastically, “You never pulled a trigger before, didn’t my little one?” and began to stalk towards her.
“Another step and I fire,” cried the girl.
“Bah!” returned the other, and then stretching out his hand he made a snatch at the muzzle of the pistol that the girl still held steadily directed towards him. “Simpleton,” he shouted, as he wrenched the weapon from her clutch. “It’s very plain you never did fire a pistol before, or you wouldn’t try to pull the trigger with the hammer down.”
Helen Boyne tossed her head with dismay when she saw how easily she had been defeated, and her flesh crept as the man seized her by the arm, and dragged her back to the seat which she had left but a few minutes before. When he had resumed his place opposite to her, he said calmly, as he scanned the revolver that he held in his hand,
“You see, Miss, this is what you should have done; you should have drawn the trigger back thus, making it click twice, do you hear? And then having satisfied yourself that the percussion cap on the nipple was all right, if you had held it out towards me as I do to you now” (and he brought the muzzle within a few inches of her face as he said so), “why then the least pressure of the finger would be sufficient to lay a person’s body lifeless in an instant at the feet. Do you see, simple one?” and the girl cowered her head as far back as she could, while the fellow patted her under the chin as he said: “Come, Miss Hasty, will you trim my locks for me, now?”
CHAPTER III. A STRANGE ADVENTURE.
Helen Boyne was, as we have before said, a strange, contradictory instance of the combination of the two opposite qualities: an utter want of nerve on certain occasions, and a marvellous strength of nerve upon others; for silly little coward as she was at one time, she could still play the heroine even to the extravagance of melodramatic action at another. What wonder then that the damsel with eyes as full of fire as those of a blood-horse, should at one moment be levelling a pistol at a ruffian’s head, and threatening to shoot him down if he moved a step towards her—as though she were some Amazonic young lady in a penny romance of thrilling interest—and the next minute be crouching with the acutest fear, like a well-beaten spaniel at the feet of its master. Even the strongest minded of men can hardly bear to look steadily down the barrel of a loaded gun presented at their forehead; so it was but natural that poor Helen should have averted her head, and shrunk away as far as she could from the ring of ugly black holes that formed the end of the revolver held within a few inches of her face.
“Now, girl,” cried the fellow, “take the scissors and clip away. It’s no use shivering there like an Italian greyhound. Do the work quickly, and you have nothing to fear; but hesitate, or attempt to raise the least alarm, and I can tell you I am too desperate a man to make any bones about taking your life. There, lay hold of the scissors, I say, and get the job over as quickly as possible;” and so saying, he thrust the scissors into her hand.
“Oh, sir!” faltered out the girl, “why not wait till we get to Cassel, and then I will willingly pay the money out of my own pocket to have it done. I should only wound you in the terrible tremble that I am in now.”
“Bah! I shall have no time to spare there. Besides, it is my whim that you, and you alone, shall be my hair-dresser,” returned her opposite neighbour wildly. “Directly I looked at myself in the glass, I made up my mind to have it all off; and when I saw your black eyes staring at me from the corner, like a rat peeping out of its dark hole, I was determined you should have the shearing of the sheep; so come, to your work, for there is no time to lose. Do it quickly, I say again, and you are safe against injury from me.”
The girl felt that she was in the power of a sturdy maniac, and knew that it was as much as her life was worth to refuse to carry out his mad whim; so she merely ejaculated, with a deep, hysterical sigh, “But pray take that ugly pistol away, sir, and then I will try what I can do.” And when the man had lowered the hand in which he held the weapon, and thrust his grisly chin forward towards her, the girl shuddered from head to foot when she laid hold of the end of the ugly red beard. As she raised the scissors in her hand, her first thought was, “What if I stab the wretch in the throat with them?” But she paused for a moment in the frenzy of the thought, and the cunning ruffian, half guessing what was passing through the girl’s mind, raised the hateful pistol once more,—a movement so significant, that it quickly caused her to cast aside all ideas of vengeance. The next minute the locks began to fall thick and fast into her lap, and as they did so she shook them from her dress with her knees, as if they were a knot of adders clinging to her.
“Good! good!” shouted the fellow. “Cut it close off—down to the roots, girl—whiskers, moustachios, and all. Make me as bare as a clipped poodle.”
“There!” cried the girl, after a time, “thank Heaven it’s over now—and I haven’t wounded you either.”
“Ay, you have done it well enough so far as it goes; but come, your task isn’t half finished yet,” said her ruffianly companion.
“Augh!” groaned Helen. “What else am I to be forced to do?”
“Here, all these locks must away as well,” and with the words, the man lifted up a large bunch of the yellow mop of hair that dangled about his shoulders; so putting his head down nearly into her lap, he waited for her to continue the operation.
The girl had now so far overcome the loathing which she had felt at the commencement of her arduous task, and was so far satisfied that if she complied with his lunatic freak he would remain quiet, that she began to ply the scissors again as rapidly as she could, so as to have done with the filthy work as fast as possible; and it was not very long before she had shorn the wretch’s head as close as a convict’s.
“Ah, that’s capital!” he ejaculated hurriedly, as he rubbed his hand over his bare round skull that was now not unlike a huge skittle-ball, and then drawing once more the little mirror from the carpet-bag in the netting above, he began to gaze at himself again in the looking-glass. “Thunder weather!” he burst out with a hoarse chuckle, as he gave vent to the customary oath of the Germans, “I shouldn’t know myself if I were to see my face now. Come look at me, girl,” he added, seizing her by the wrists and dragging her round towards him. “Would you believe it was the same person who stepped into the carriage some hour ago?”
“No, sir,” she faltered out, and then averted her head again as quickly as she could, for hideous as the fellow had appeared to her before, he looked now even more repulsive than ever, the colour of his hair being so light that his head seemed to be absolutely bald all over, and had more the semblance of a skeleton skull than the cranium of a living being, while the broken black stumps of teeth that had been previously hidden by the terrier-like fringe of hair on the upper lip, were now visible with hateful distinctness every time he grinned.
“What strange mania was on the man?” she asked of herself, as she took up her book and pretended to read, so that she might fix her eyes upon some other object than the hateful one before her. “Why should he be bent on removing every bit of hair from his head and face, and that at a time when the snow lay deep upon the ground, and the frost glistened, like ground-glass, upon every window-pane? Why, too, should he have forced her to cut the locks from him, when in a short while he could have had it done in Cassel by a proper person? Oh, yes, there was no other solution to the riddle but insanity—some wild sudden caprice that the miserable deranged creature had no power to resist.” But the maiden’s reverie was soon put an end to by the man asking her, as he let down the window to toss to the wind the lumps of hair that lay heaped at the bottom of the carriage, saying, the while, “What on earth do you take me for, Fraulein?”
Helen Boyne was so startled with the apparent sagacity of the tone in which the question was asked, that she started, as if she fancied some other person had put the question to her, and then replied, without taking her eyes from the book, “You Germans, sir, have a saying that only English people and madmen travel in first-class carriages in this country.”
“Soh!” replied the man, closing the window; “you are the English person, and I—,” but he broke off suddenly, adding, “You are mistaken, Fraulein; I am no lunatic, but have a purpose to serve, and for the carrying out of my object it is necessary, before reaching Cassel, that I beg another little favour at your hands.”
“Merciful Heaven!” thought the girl; “what fresh indignity is now to be put on me?”
“Come, there is no reason for any further fear, for what I am about to ask,” said the man, “is merely a promise from you.”
The girl, though somewhat relieved, still sat in terrible suspense, awaiting the issue. Nor was this in any way lessened when she beheld him once more grasp the revolver that still lay on the cushion at his side.
“Now, listen to me, Fraulein; you must swear to me,” he continued, “by all your hopes of happiness in this life, and of salvation hereafter, that you will not breathe a word of what has occurred to-day in this carriage, until a month has passed, and then you have my permission—ay,” he added, with a snap of the fingers, “even to publish it in the newspapers, if you will. Come, now swear to me.”
Helen Boyne hesitated, for she had made up her mind, directly she reached Cassel, to report the whole of the circumstances to the guard, and to demand that he should see her protected for the rest of her journey.
“You hesitate to take the oath, do you?” cried the fellow savagely. “Now hear me out, young lady; this pistol is loaded in every barrel, and if you do not take the oath I have enjoined, one of the bullets puts an end to you, and another to myself. So give me your solemn oath that you will not breathe a word nor give so much as a hint to the officials at Cassel as to the description of your fellow-traveller, or whither he was going, or what he had compelled you to do.”
Helen saw by the determined manner of her companion that there was no hope for her but to give the solemn promise he demanded of her, so she murmured, as distinctly as she could, owing to the fright that still possessed her, for she saw the man’s finger was once more on the trigger of the revolver which he held in his hand, “You have nothing to fear from me, sir.”
“Ay, but swear it,” he cried. “Have you nothing sacred about you by which to enforce the oath?” and then rudely throwing her cloak open, he discovered a little golden cross hanging from her neck. “Swear upon this token, by all your hopes of redemption, that you will keep silent, and I have done.”
“I do,” answered the girl; and as the man forced the little cross to her lips, she kissed it as a pledge of the sacredness of her vow. Then, to her great delight, she beheld the man begin to repack his travelling-bag, and to stow away the terrible pistol once more, as well as the mirror and the scissors, into the side-pocket from which he had originally drawn them; and when she heard the lock snap she felt as if some heavy incubus had been removed from her bosom, and she were waking up from an awful nightmare dream.
The next minute the man was busy costuming himself as when he had entered the carriage; the fur cap that fitted as close as a helmet, when the ear-lappets were tied under the chin, was once more resumed, and the long woollen comforter wound round and round the neck, and drawn close up to the nose, until it looked like a clumsy red respirator covering the lower part of the face.
“In a moment we shall be at Cassel, Fraulein, and then, be assured, if you break your oath,” he went on, while he scowled with a terrible menace at the girl, “there will be no hope of your escaping my vengeance wherever you may be,” and before the train had fully stopped, he sprang on to the broad stone platform, and hurried into the refreshment room.
Helen Boyne was too weak to be able to move from the carriage, for she felt that if she attempted to rise from it she must stagger like one after a long fever; nor could she even give heed to the crowd that kept shuffling along in their high fur-boots and clumsy felt over-shoes, that made them seem like so many gouty old gentlemen. Neither did she hear the boy cry “sausage-breads! ham-breads! beer, schnapps,” as he came and stood at the open carriage-door with the tin tray of refreshments slung before him, and with the tall glasses full of Lager-bier, arranged in a kind of big black cruet-stand, dangling from his hand; the girl had her face buried in her hands, and was sobbing away, half with joy at her deliverance, and half from the depression of the fright that had overcome her like a palsy.
“Is the Fraulein ill?” asked the boy; but as the question was unheeded the lad jerked his head, as if beckoning to some one hard by, and the minute after, the guard was at the carriage door with his face, swarthy as a gipsy’s with the smoke of the engine, and the high black sheepskin collar of his gaberdine-like over coat standing up about his ears and neck; for the seats of the railway officials accompanying the trains in Germany consist of mere low-backed arm-chairs perched on top of the carriages, and so exposed to the wind and the smoke of the engine, that the guards after a journey have the same Creole complexion as the stokers.
“The train stops here a quarter of an hour, Fraulein,” said the guard, as he entered the carriage, and touched the girl gently on the shoulder. “Would Fraulein like some refreshment? A cup of hot coffee might do her good: shall the boy here bring it you?”
But as the girl merely shook her head without looking up or taking her hands from her face, the official added in a softer tone:
“What ails the Fraulein? Has that fox-bearded fellow I saw in the carriage been rude to the young lady?”
“I have no complaint to make against him,” she merely faltered out in a low voice.
“H—m! Fraulein has left her friends, maybe,” went on the man, with all the civility of unfeigned compassion. “Can I do anything for the lady before I leave, for I don’t go any farther than this station with the train?”
“Nothing, thank you,” said Helen; “all I want is to be left alone.”
“Then,” said the man jestingly, as he quitted the vehicle, “the Fraulein couldn’t have come to a better place than a first-class railway carriage at this time of the year.”
The flood of grief had now somewhat subsided, and Helen Boyne began to feel as if she had strength to look for the reticule which contained the bottle of smelling-salts that she had so longed for, but wanted power to search for previously. She had upon entering the carriage placed it upon the cushion before her, and as she leant forward to reach it, she recognised the familiar little Eisenach newspaper (no bigger than a sheet of ordinary letter-paper). In an instant she knew it must have fallen from the man’s carpet-bag, and with a strange fascination of fright she could neither keep her eyes nor her fingers from it, and the curiosity that was on her restored her, for a minute or two, to her senses. She scanned it all over as hurriedly as a person reads a long-expected letter, her eyes flying from paragraph to paragraph, with all the restlessness of mental distraction till she came to the official announcements near the end, and there she found that a clerk in one of the Government offices of the town had absconded with a large sum of money, and that he stood charged with having falsified entries, and forged signatures to receipts, and when she had read the description of the delinquent that was appended, she saw in a minute the clue to the mystery of the adventure she had been forced to take part in.
The girl was busily engaged in pondering over the printed description of her late companion, and saying to herself that the desperation and restlessness of the man were now fully explained, when the guard appeared again suddenly at the carriage-door, and said:
“I beg your pardon, Fraulein; but didn’t you hear the man who was in the carriage with you say he was going on to Frankfurt by this afternoon’s train?”
The young lady remained silent.
“You remember, Fraulein, when I asked him for his ticket?” added the guard quickly.
Still there was no answer.
“He didn’t tell you anything about himself, or where he was going to—in the course of conversation, you know, Fraulein—as sometimes happens, you know, among strangers travelling together?” chattered on the guard inquisitively, as he waited eagerly for the answer.
“No,” was the reply, “he told me nothing.”
“Did the Fraulein see which way he went when he got out of the carriage?” inquired the official.
The damsel, again, shook her head.
“Tut! tut! tut!” said the man; “if I had only gone to the office directly, the fellow couldn’t have slipped through my fingers, nor the reward either. But I know how he is dressed, and could pick his foxy beard and long yellow hair out of any mob. So he can’t well escape me yet.”
Some quarter of an hour after the above colloquy.—Helen Boyne had sat speculating a hundred and one odd things during the brief interval as to her fellow traveller’s wretched career and fate,—the doors of the carriages were heard to slam one after the other, all along the line, preparatory to the train starting once more, and just as the scream of the whistle rattled against the wall of the long station, the door of Helen’s carriage was once more suddenly opened, and a man in a soft felt Tyrol-shaped hat dashed into the seat next to it, and with the high fur collar of his coat turned up over his ears, immediately nestled up into the corner, as if he were arranging himself to sleep through the journey.
“Another intruder!” sighed the damsel to herself. “Had I thought there was a chance of such a thing, I would have asked the guard to shift me into a second-class carriage.” Whereupon, she inwardly made a resolution to do so on reaching the next station.
The next moment the train was off, and in a few minutes afterwards another guard made his appearance at the window to inspect the tickets of the passengers, and as he did so, the stranger in the “Garibaldi hat” and huge fur cloak, handed up his ticket to be perforated, saying the while:
“From Cassel to Hamburgh.”
“Gracious Heavens!” ejaculated Helen to herself; “it is he again. I could recognise that voice anywhere, now,” and as the idea flashed across her mind, the man turned his head and looked towards her, out of the corners of his eyes, with the same threatening glance as when he left her.
As soon as the window was closed, and the guard had retired along the little external ledge to the second-class carriages, the man threw the cloak back, and slightly raising his hat to the young lady, inquired with a bow, “whether she had expected to see him back so soon again.”
CHAPTER IV. BLIND FOLDED.
“You didn’t think to meet me so soon again, did you, Fraulein?” repeated the new comer.
The trembling girl could only stammer out “I imagined you had fled—I mean gone to Frankfurt.”
“Ay, and so the railway officials will fancy too. There’s nothing like throwing the hounds on the wrong scent,” returned the fellow with a triumpant chuckle. “But why should the Fraulein have made use of the word fled when speaking of my movements?”
“Why I—I—I—” Miss Boyne hesitated, for she hardly knew what excuse to give for so significant a slip of the tongue.
“There, it’s no use palavering, girl,” was the surly rebuke of the man, “I see it all. The “Kreis-Blatt” there, he added, referring to the Eisenach journal, that I forgot to put back into my bag, has told you all. No one with half an eye could mistake the description; but it would require a pretty good judge of character to recognise me now. Well I don’t mind about you knowing my secret, for I shall be far away before you can harm me. Do you know where I am bound to now?” he inquired significantly, as he again commenced unlocking the little carpet-bag.
“You said you were going to Hamburgh,” the girl shuddered out, as the question revived the idea of her having such a companion all the way.
“So I told the guard; but that’s not my road, depend upon it, or I should not be fool enough to mention it,” was the knowing answer of the runaway. “Men in my desperate condition stick at nothing, and I can tell you that in the mood that’s on me I’m ready to sacrifice everything—truth, honesty—ay, and even human life if necessary, to get clear away. You are sure you said never a word to the guard at Cassel, girl?” and he looked her so full and savagely in the face while he went towards her and seized her by the wrists, “for if you had, he has told it to the men on duty by this train, and then I shall have hard work to dodge them yet. Are you sure you have kept faith with me, girl?” and he wrenched her wrist round in the fury of his doubts, that Helen shrieked out with pain. “My God, if I thought you had sold me, I would have your blood on the spot, young as you are,” and the next minute he held her face tightly in his hands, and looked straight into her eyes to see if he could detect the least look of treachery in her gaze.
The stare of the man was like that of a furious wild beast, and so terrified the girl, that in a minute or two the eyes began to swim, and the blush to fade rapidly from her cheeks. On the fellow releasing his hold, her head fell back as powerless as if her soul had withered under his glance.
“Fainted, or shamming,” said the man, callously, and he flung himself down in the seat before her, and began to unlock his bag for the second time, and to draw from it the revolver as before. “Come, come, Fraulein,” he then cried, as he proceeded to shake the comatose girl violently by the shoulders, “I’ve no time to put up with this fine-lady nonsense. Open your eyes, girl, I have something else that you must do for me.”
Half insensible as the damsel was, still the stupor was not sufficient to render her deaf to such words. The speech was too terrible for her to admit of her quickly fainting at such a time. Accordingly she started up wildly, and rubbing her eyes as if roused by some sudden commotion out of a deep sleep, and staring wildly about her, asked almost frantically, “What would you have me do now?”
“Give me your handkerchief,” was the answer; and Helen watched him anxiously as he spread it out upon his knee, and then proceeded to fold it up into a broad bandage, nor did she fail to notice that the revolver lay on the cushion at his side.
“Oh, Heaven,” she cried aloud piteously, while she raised her clasped hands and fell upon her knees before the fellow, “what would you do with me?”
“Blindfold you, girl,” bluffly rejoined the other.
“Oh, mercy! mercy! you are never going to take my life?”
The ruffian, however, made no answer, but merely forced her head down, while he placed the bandage over her eyes and tied it securely at the nape of her neck. What pen shall tell the agony that poor maiden suffered in her darkness: for she made sure that the fellow had seen her speaking with the guard while the train waited at Cassel, and that fancying she had betrayed him, he had returned solely to execute the vengeance he had threatened her with. She expected each moment to be her last. How she listened for the clicking of the pistol that was to warn her of her doom. But though her senses were rendered tenfold more acute by the horrible suspense in which she was kept, she could hear only the man tumbling the articles out of his carpet-bag. “Oh,” she cried in her anguish, “tell me what you are going to do with me—any fate is better than this. My heart will break. My head will burst if you keep me here much longer. But let me know how I am to die, and I will try and bear it patiently. Oh, cousin! cousin! if you only knew what has befallen me.”
For some five minutes the bewildered girl was left to suffer in this manner, and then to her utter surprise the bandage was suddenly withdrawn, and to all appearances an utter stranger sat before her.
Had she really gone mad? she asked herself. That man there—he with the short black ringlets and long raven whiskers and moustache—could he possibly be the same person as the red-bearded and yellow-haired creature that had entered the carriage that morning, and that dull black “Gibus” hat that he wore now, how different it made him look from when he wore the soft Garibaldi hat but a few minutes before.
Nor was Helen’s astonishment in any way diminished when the fellow raised the “Gibus” from his head, and making her a polite bow, said, in French, with an excellent accent, “Est-ce-que Mademoiselle, me connait à present?” and then, with a shrug of the shoulders, and indulging in the mincing gestures of a Frenchman, he went on to inform her that she was in future to regard him as a true Parisian, and as a proof of his having been naturalised, he begged to present her with his passport, which he bade her read and see whether the description agreed with the kind of person before her. But before placing the document in her hands he took the precaution to double back the part of the side where the personal traits were noted down, so that she might peruse only that part, and still be ignorant of the name and character in which he was about to travel.
Sure enough it was a veritable French pass, and as the girl read half aloud, “black curly hair, long black whiskers and moustachios, low forehead, broad nose, defective teeth, &c., she glanced in wonder from the written particulars to the real characteristics of the person before her, marvelling not alone at how closely they tallied, but also as to how he could have become possessed of such a document.
“Would Mademoiselle believe I was of French extraction if she had never seen me before?” asked the man, with a true French politeness, for his manner was now as much changed as his personal appearance.
“A girl who has never been in France can be easily deceived,” was the formal reply.
“But I ought to be able to blind more sharp-sighted folk than you, in such a disguise, since my mother was French, and all my cousins on her side are French too,” he continued, half talking to himself, and then, as he stood up, he divested himself of a large fur cloak, in which he had entered the carriage at Cassel, and revealed a long black Capuchin over-coat, with a tasseled hood hanging down the back, such as Frenchmen are known to delight in, and which, on his first entry into the carriage at Gerstungen, he had kept carefully concealed under the plaid shawl that he wore over his shoulders, after the fashion of the university folk of Germany.
“Vun ozer favor, Meess, you shall make, and zen I am done,” he now said, in broken English, affecting to speak the language as a Frenchman.
“Another?” trembled out the girl, as the terrible recollection of the ordeal she had passed through on the last occasion darted across her mind.
“Zees fur redingote! You shall be so good as to give him to zee conducteur of zee train, when he is arrived at Harburg, and you shall say to him that a shentleman did take him avay viz him by error from zee vaiting saloon at Cassel. Have you zee goodness to say so,” he jabbered on, still affecting the ways of a Frenchman.
The girl nodded assent, for she was still too prostrate from fright to speak overmuch now that her astonishment was at an end.
Then, resuming his former air, the man added, in his native language, and with the same terrible menace in his looks, “Remember! One word of what has passed in this carriage before a month has elapsed, and you shall feel the vengeance of a man driven to desperation by his crimes. Swear secresy again,” he raved on, “ere I leave you, for my time is just up. Swear it with your right hand on your bosom, as is the custom with women in Germany. Thus, girl,” and with the words he forced her palm rudely on her breast.
“I do, I do,” murmured Helen Boyne, ready to comply with any request to be quit of the fellow.
The next minute the train was entering the Hannover station, where the stranger sprang once more from the carriage, and was soon lost in the crowd.
As usual, the guard made his appearance in a few minutes, to tell the young lady that the train stops for a considerable time at this station, and immediately Helen saw the welcome form of the official she said, in a faint voice, “I have a ticket for Harburg, can I stay here the night, for indeed I am too ill to go on?”
“If the Fraulein will walk with me to the office, I will arrange it for her,” replied the guard.
“Indeed I cannot; I am too weak and ill. Oh, pray take me to some hotel,” she cried, “and do not let me travel here alone any longer,” and the poor thing trembled from head to foot as though she had been seized with a tertian ague.
“Yonder is the Flaus-knecht, from the Hotel de Hannovre,” said the official; “I will go and bid him get a drosky to carry the Fraulein, for we are some little distance from the town here.”
And by the time the young lady was brought to the door of the hotel she was so faint that she had to be lifted from the vehicle and carried straight to her room, and she had only the strength to dictate the address of her cousin in Eisenach, and to beg that the mistress of the hotel would write a letter to her by that night’s post, and entreat her to come to her there immediately, as she felt as if she would never rise from her bed again.
Nor was it until two days had passed that Madame Steindorf was able to join the girl, and then she learnt from the medical gentleman who had been called in that the young lady was suffering from some violent shock to her system, but how it had been caused it was impossible for him to learn from her. For the first night he had been afraid she would sink into a state of collapse, so utterly prostrate was the entire constitution. She must have suffered, in his opinion, some terrible fright; had there been an accident on the line that would have accounted for her symptoms, for he had seen such cases even when not the least bodily injury had been sustained. But though the guard of the train had been questioned, he could give no account of the girl having been frightened in any way; all he knew was that she had travelled with a gentleman in a first-class carriage, and that the young lady made no complaint to the officials whatever on arriving at the station.
“There is some fearful mystery in all this,” thought Madame Steindorf, “and I must have it cleared up somehow.”
The first point to be attended to, however, was the restoration of the poor girl herself, for the doctor added, “that he was afraid of fever setting in now that some slight symptoms of reaction began to manifest themselves; the pulse had been getting quicker and stronger all day, and if he were not much mistaken, the girl would be in a state of delirium that night—and then it would be impossible to say which way the case might go.”
The physician was right. Some hour or two before midnight Helen Boyne was raving, and describing ugly apparitions: now of some man with a red beard, who was pointing a revolver at her head, and now of another with black ringlets, who was blindfolding her eyes. At one time she was begging of the man to spare her life, and the next minute swearing a solemn oath never to divulge his secret.
Madame Steindorf sat patiently by Helen’s bedside, bathing her burning and throbbing temples, and giving her cool drinks whenever she could get her to take them; but never for a moment venturing to divert the current of her dreams, for she knew that by letting her rave on, and afterwards putting together the disjointed sentences uttered in her wanderings, she would be soon able to make out the puzzle, if not to bring the ruffian within reach of justice.
And so it happened. In the course of that long night Madame Steindorf had, with the doctor’s assistance, obtained sufficient clue to give information to the police as to the disguise of the runaway government defaulter, and with their aid telegraphic despatches were forwarded to each of the German ports trading with America, and before many days had passed news was received that the culprit had been arrested at Bremen while in the act of boarding a vessel that had already hoisted sail for New York.
It was long after that before Helen Boyne was well enough to resume her journey to Hamburg, and when she did she travelled thither in company with her cousin—and not in a first-class carriage, assuredly.
“For the future, my dear,” said Madame Steindorf, as they paid for their tickets at the Hannover Station, “we will leave the first-class for ‘Englishmen and madmen.’”