The Girl from Alsace Part 3

A brawny porter shouldered the two suit-cases which held Stewart's belongings, and the latter followed him along the hall to the door. As he stepped out upon the terrace, he saw drawn up there about twenty men--some with the black coats of waiters, some with the white caps of cooks, some with the green ap.r.o.ns of porters--while a bearded man in a spiked helmet was checking off their names in a little book. At the sound of Stewart's footsteps, he turned and cast upon him the cold, impersonal glance of German officialdom. Then he looked at the porter.

"You will return as quickly as possible," he said gruffly in German to the latter, and returned to his checking.

As they crossed the Domhof and skirted the rear of the cathedral, Stewart noticed that many of the shops were locked and shuttered, and that the street seemed strangely deserted. Only as they neared the station did the crowd increase. It was evident that many tourists, warned, perhaps, as Stewart had been, had made up their minds to get out of Germany; but the train drawn up beside the platform was a long one, and there was room for everybody. It was a good-humored crowd, rather inclined to laugh at its own fears and to protest that this journey was entirely in accordance with a pre-arranged schedule; but it grew quieter and quieter as moment after moment pa.s.sed and the train did not start.

That a German train should not start precisely on time was certainly unusual; that it should wait for twenty minutes beyond that time was staggering. But the station-master, pacing solemnly up and down the platform, paid no heed to the inquiries addressed to him, and the guards answered only by a shake of the head which might mean anything. Then, quite suddenly, above the noises of the station, menacing and insistent came the low, ceaseless shuffle of approaching feet.

A moment later the head of an infantry column appeared at the station entrance. It halted there, and an officer, in a long, gray cape that fell to his ankles, strode toward the station-master, who hastened to meet him. There was a moment's conference, and then the station-master, saluting for the tenth time, turned to the expectant guards.

"Clear the train!" he shouted in stentorian German, and the guards sprang eagerly to obey.

The scene which followed is quite indescribable. All the Germans in the train hastened to get off, as did everybody else who understood what was demanded and knew anything of the methods of militarism. But many did not understand; a few who did made the mistake of standing upon what they conceived to be their rights and refusing to be separated from their luggage--and all alike, men, women, and children, were yanked from their seats and deposited upon the platform. Some were deposited upon their feet--but not many. Women screamed as rough and seemingly hostile hands were laid upon them; men, red and inarticulate with anger, attempted ineffectually to resist. In a moment one and all found themselves shut off by a line of police which had suddenly appeared from nowhere and drawn up before the train.

Then a whistle sounded and the soldiers began to file into the carriages in the most systematic manner. Twenty-four men entered each compartment--ten sitting down and fourteen standing up or sitting upon the others' laps. Each coach, therefore, held one hundred and forty-four; and the battalion of seven hundred and twenty men exactly filled five coaches--just as the General Staff had long ago figured that it should.

Stewart, after watching this marvel of organization for a moment, realized that, if any carriages were empty, it would be the ones at the end of the train, and quietly made his way thither. At last, in the rear coach, he came to a compartment in which sat one man, evidently a German, with a melancholy bearded face. Before the door stood a guard watching the battalion entrain.

"May one get aboard?" Stewart inquired, in his best German.

The guard held up his hand for an instant; then the gold-braided station-master shouted a sentence which Stewart could not distinguish; but the guard dropped his hand and nodded.

Looking back, the American saw a wild mob charging down the platform toward him, and hastily swung himself aboard. As he dropped into his seat, he could hear the shrieks and oaths of the melee outside, and the next moment, a party of breathless and disheveled women were storming the door. They were panting, exhausted, inarticulate with rage and chagrin; they fell in, rolled in, stumbled in, until the compartment was jammed.

Stewart, swept from his seat at the first impact, but rallying and doing what he could to bring order out of chaos, could not but admire the manner in which his bearded fellow-pa.s.senger clung immovably to his seat until the last woman was aboard, and then reached quickly out, slammed shut the door, and held it shut, despite the entreaties of the lost souls who drifted despairingly past along the platform, seemingly blind, deaf, and totally uninterested in what was pa.s.sing around him.

Then Stewart looked at the women. Nine were crowded into the seats; eight were standing; all were red and perspiring; and most of them had plainly lost their tempers. Stewart was perspiring himself, and he got out his handkerchief and mopped his forehead; then he ventured to speak.

"Well," he said; "so this is war! I have always heard it was warm work!"

Most of the women merely glared at him and went on adjusting their clothing, and fastening up their hair, and straightening their hats; but one, a buxom woman of forty-eight or fifty, who was crowded next to him, and who had evidently suffered more than her share of the general misfortune, turned sharply.

"Are you an American?" she demanded.

"I am, madam."

"And you stand by and see your countrywomen treated in this perfectly outrageous fas.h.i.+on?"

"My dear madam," protested Stewart, "what could one man--even an American--do against a thousand?"

"You could at least----"

"Nonsense, mother," broke in another voice, and Stewart turned to see that it was a slim, pale girl of perhaps twenty-two who spoke. "The gentleman is quite right. Besides, I thought it rather good fun."

"Good fun!" snapped her mother. "Good fun to be jerked about and trampled on and insulted! And where is our baggage? Will we ever see it again?"

"Oh, the baggage is safe enough," Stewart a.s.sured her. "The troops will detrain somewhere this side the frontier, and we can all take our old seats."

"But why should they travel by this train? Why should they not take another train? Why should they----"

"Are we all here?" broke in an anxious voice. "Is anyone missing?"

There was a moment's counting, then a general sigh of relief. The number was found correct.

From somewhere up the line a whistle sounded, and the state of the engine-driver's nerves could be inferred from the jerk with which he started--quite an American jerk. All the women who were standing, screamed and clutched at each other and swayed back and forth as if wrestling. Stewart found himself wrestling with the buxom woman.

"I cannot stand!" she declared. "It is outrageous that I should have to stand!" and she fixed glittering eyes upon the bearded stranger. "No American would remain seated while a woman of my age was standing!"

But the bearded stranger gazed blandly out of the window at the pa.s.sing landscape.

There was a moment's silence, during which everyone looked at the heartless culprit. Stewart had an uneasy feeling that, if he were to do his duty as an American, he would grab the offender by the collar and hurl him through the window. Then the woman next to the stranger b.u.mped resolutely into him, pressed him into the corner, and disclosed a few inches of the seat.

"Sit here, Mrs. Field," she said. "We can all squeeze up a little."

The pressure was tremendous when Mrs. Field sat down; but the carriage was strongly built and the sides held. The slender girl came and stood by Stewart.

"What's it all about?" she asked. "Has there been a riot or something?"

"There is going to be a most awful riot," answered Stewart, "unless all signs fail. Germany is mobilizing her troops to attack France."

"To attack France! How outrageous! It's that Kaiser Wilhelm, I suppose!

Well, I hope France will simply clean him up!"

"So do I!" cried her mother. "The Germans are not gentlemen. They do not know how to treat women!"

"'_Kochen, Kirche und Kinder!_'" quoted somebody, in a high voice.

"But see here," protested Stewart, with a glance at the bearded stranger, who was still staring steadily out of the window, "if I were you, I'd wait till I was out of Germany before saying so. It would be safer!"

"Safer!" echoed an elderly woman with a high nose. "I should like to see them harm an American!"

Stewart turned away to the window with a gesture of despair, and caught the laughing eyes of the girl who stood beside him.

"Don't blame them too much," she said. "They're not themselves. Usually they are all quite polite and well-behaved; but now they are perfectly savage. And I don't blame them. I didn't mind so much, because I'm slim and long-legged and not very dignified; but if I were a stout, elderly woman, rather proud of my appearance, I would bitterly resent being yanked out of a seat and violently propelled across a platform by a bearded ruffian with dirty hands. Wouldn't you?"

"Yes," agreed Stewart, laughing; "I should probably kick and bite and behave in a most undignified manner."

The girl leaned closer.

"Some of them did!" she murmured.

Stewart laughed again and looked at her with fresh interest. It was something to find a woman who could preserve her sense of humor under such circ.u.mstances.

"You have been doing the continent?" he asked.

"Yes, seventeen of us; all from Philadelphia."

"And you've had a good time, of course?"

"We'd have had a better if we had brought a man along. I never realized before how valuable men are. Women aren't fitted by nature to wrestle with time-tables and cabbies and hotel-bills and headwaiters. This trip has taught me to respect men more than I have ever done."