To Journey Together (5 page)

Every minute the light was strengthening now, and when she began to see distant windmills, Elinor almost cried aloud with delight.

The houses in the small towns through which they passed enchanted her, with their clean, brightly coloured exteriors and their large and shining windows. People were already beginning to go about the day's business, and several times, as they ran over level crossings, Elinor saw fleets of cyclists waiting to pass.

Presently they began to enter the outskirts of a much larger place than any they had passed so far. And, as Elinor gazed eagerly at the distant liners which could be seen in dock, beyond the austere but attractive buildings of the city, Sir Daniel said briefly, "Rotterdam."

"There's a great deal of building going on here, isn't there?" she said, after a moment.

"Yes, there is," Sir Daniel agreed. "The Dutch are a very progressive people."

Presently the train drew into Rotterdam station and Elinor watched fascinated while throngs of travellers left the train and equally as many joined it. The bustling activity of large stations had always excited her, and this was no exception.

While the train was in the station, they left the dining car and made their way back to their own compartment, and Elinor settled down in her corner seat keenly anticipating the many wonderful sights which lay ahead. To her surprise, she dozed for a while, rousing herself from time to time to gaze at some specially beautiful line of poplars etched against the winter sky, or a gay windmill with turning sails. But, as they neared the frontier about nine o'clock, she became wide awake once more.

At this point the Dutch officials came on the train, to stamp passports and check currency. Then the train moved slowly across the narrow "no-man's-land" between the two frontier towns, and the German officials came on board. They too were very polite and correct, and presently the train moved off again on the next stage of the long journey.

Kenneth, who was sitting opposite her, leaned over once to ask, quite solicitously, if she were getting tired. But Elinor shook her head emphatically.

"No, it's lovely! I'm enjoying every bit of it."

"The loveliest part will soon be beginning," he told her. "After we leave Cologne. See—you can already glimpse the spires of the cathedral."

Elinor looked where he pointed, and in the distance, across the flat fields, she saw two beautiful, fretted spires pointing into the clear sky.

"I thought somehow that the cathedral was destroyed."

"No. A great deal of the rest of Cologne was. But though it was heavily blasted when so much of the nearby railway was destroyed, the actual fabric

of the cathedral was preserved. You will have a better view presently."

"And then—after Cologne—what next?" she asked eagerly, unable to hear too much of the joys which lay ahead.

"On down the Rhine, through Bonn and Coblenz to Frankfurt, and for a great part of the way we follow the actual course of the Rhine. That's what I meant when I said the loveliest part of the journey was soon beginning."

In a short while, Elinor found this all too true. Once they had left Cologne behind and were out in the country once more, she began to notice a great falling away of the ground on the left, as though a deep valley wound its way through the scene. Once she thought she caught a glimpse of water. And then, almost without warning, they drew suddenly nearer, until they were running alongside the depression—and there, stretching before them for miles and miles, were the wide, silvery, slowly undulating waters of the Rhine.

Nothing could move Elinor from the window after that. Sometimes the ground was comparatively flat and they glided past enchanting riverside villages, with red-roofed houses and ancient church-towers and little landing stages for the many river craft. Sometimes the banks became very steep on either side, curiously and regularly marked out in lines which, Kenneth explained, were the bare poles of the vineyards, later to be covered with foliage. And sometimes great cliffs towered above them,or across the river from them, and at intervals they passed incredibly romantic-looking castles or ancient ruins which looked like something straight out of all the adventure stories she had read as a child.

No one disturbed her as she gazed, enraptured, on the tremendous and ever-changing panorama. The Conneltons were both dozing, and Kenneth left her in peace to take her first long look at the greatest and

most beautiful waterway of Western Europe.

Only once did he interrupt her absorption, to point out the lovely wooded rock known as the Lorelei, and tell her briefly of the legend of the Lorelei who used to sit there, combing her hair and luring the unsuspecting traveller to his doom.

Bonn and Coblenz had been left far behind, the shining waters of the Moselle had merged with those of the Rhine, the towers of Mainz lay behind them and Frankfurt not far ahead, and still Elinor was watching, when Sir Daniel roused himself and said it was time for lunch. And Elinor found that it was one o'clock and that she was ravenously hungry.

In the dining car once more—now beginning to be known to Elinor as a "Speisewagen"—she was struck afresh by the variety of languages being spoken around her. She even began to pick out which was which.

French was easy, because she had learned a good deal at school, and her small stock of German words enabled her to pick out similar sounds and identify the language. She thought she also detected some Italian—or it could have been Spanish. But as for the interesting-looking couple in the corner, she simply could not imagine what they were talking.

The two intrigued her and she wished she could have known more about them, but it seemed unlikely that she ever would. There would be dozens—perhaps hundreds—of these casual contacts before her adventure was finished.

However, during the late afternoon, Elinor went and stood in the corridor for a while, partly because the scenery was more beautiful on that side and partly because she thought the Conneltons and Kenneth might like a little time to themselves, and immediately she noticed that the couple who had attracted her so much were standing there too.

After a few minutes, the girl smiled and said

something to Elinor in German.

"I—I'm sorry. I don't speak German," Elinor said, but she smiled, because there was something so extraordinarily attractive about this girl, with her slim, indefinably elegant figure, her long, laughing eyes, and her curiously wide cheekbones.

"Oh—I said that this is the part of the journey which always seems to drag," the girl replied in perfect English, with hardly a trace of any accent.

"Does it?" Elinor shook her head, still smiling. "Not for me. It is the first time I have ever done it."

"The first time!"

"How fortunate for you." The young man also spoke almost without accent and in a charmingly friendly way. "It must be wonderful to see the world for the first time."

"Oh, it is," Elinor assured them, wi
th such fervour that they both
laughed, as though they found her as intriguing as she found them.

"And where are you going first? Munich?"

"Only for an overnight stop. Then we go on to Ehrwald, which is a little place in the Austrian Tyrol."

"Yes, I know it. We also are going there," the man said.

"Are you?" The coincidence surprised and delighted Elinor. But she had the odd impression that the man's companion was equally surprised.

"It's a delightful place for winter sports," the man went on. "Not too fashionable and spoilt."

"It sounds lovely." And then, because her curiosity suddenly got the better of her, Elinor turned to the girl and said rather shyly, "Do you mind my asking what language you were talking in the dining car? I couldn't identify it at all. It—it sounded so strange. I couldn't help listening to a few words."

They both laughed at that.

"It was Hungarian," the girl told her.

"Oh, then—you're Hungarian?"

"No, not really. We're Austrian, but we had a Hungarian grandmother and spent quite a lot of our childhood in Hungary. When my brother and I want to talk without being overheard we
usually
speak in Hungarian. It's a fairly safe bet that no one round will understand, even in a continental dining car."

"Nowadays it is," her brother amended rather bitterly. "Most Hungarians are securely fastened away behind the Iron Curtain."

"Oh." Elinor looked startled. She had heard these expressions before, of course, and vaguely accepted their tragic meaning. But she had never expected to talk to people to whom they were personal facts—part of the pattern of their own lives.

She would have liked to go on talking to the handsome couple, who seemed to her like people in a book. But just then Lady Connelton drew back the door of their compartment and glanced out into the corridor for her.

"I must go now." Elinor smiled a regretful goodbye at her companions.

"Perhaps we shall meet in Ehrwald," the man said with a little bow. And before she could stop herself Elinor replied sincerely, "Oh, I hope so!"

It was just after six-thirty when the train at last entered the big, well-rebuilt station of Munich and their long day's journey was at an end. By now, even Elinor was willing to call a halt, for it had been too dark to see anything from the windows during the last hour, and she was eager for her first night in a foreign city.

In the crowd which poured out of the train she caught sight for a moment of the brother and sister who had spoken to her, and was pleased that they both waved before going off in the wake of their porter.

Taxis seemed to be a great deal smaller and more cramped than in London, and as the Conneltons had a good deal of luggage, they went in one taxi, leaving Elinor and Kenneth to follow in another.

Again, Elinor felt a little self-conscious, left alone with him, but she gazed out on the town with genuine interest, and thought it looked extraordinarily gay and well-lit, with fine shop-windows displays and, in some cases, the shops themselves still open.

Once they passed a big open space where rebuilding was evidently in progress and, in the glare of great arc lamps, workmen were going about their business as though it were midday, and with a speed and energy which made Elinor gasp.

"Why—they're still working as though they mean to be there for hours," she exclaimed.

"They probably do," replied Kenneth Brownlow dryly.

"You mean that they go on building—and all that sort of thing—far into the night?"

"Of course. How else do you suppose they could have made such a come-back? They are almost the only race left on earth who've accepted the unpalatable fact that there is no substitute for hard work.

"Then—" Elinor suddenly saw a dry, economic fact presented to her in simple, practical terms—"they must produce more cheaply and efficiently than most other people?"

"Certainly. It is simply a question of what you want in life, of course," Kenneth said, still dryly. "Those who think the most important thing is to work shorter hours must not expect to do so well in a wicked world as those whose ambition it is to produce better, faster and more cheaply than anyone else. That's what is called realism. But it isn't very fashionable," he added, with a sudden, almost roguish smile.

They arrived at the hotel at this moment, and Elinor found that Sir Daniel—who was obviously tired after the journey—and Lady Connelton intended to dine there and go to bed early.

"But there is no reason why you two young people should do the same," Lady Connelton said

kindly. "If you want to go out somewhere more interesting, just do so."

"But I'm really here to keep you company, Lady Connelton," Elinor said doubtfully.

"Tonight it isn't important." Lady Connelton actually patted her cheek indulgently. "I shall go to bed almost directly after dinner."

Elinor began to say that perhaps she had better do the same. But at this point Kenneth took a hand in the conversation.

"Suppose you let me take you out to supper," he said, glancing at her with a touch of amusement. "We could go to one of the local beer cellars."

"But I don't drink beer," Elinor explained.

"You won't have to," he assured her.

Lady Connelton seemed to take it for granted that she would now go. And so, with some trepidation, Elinor went off under the guidance of Kenneth Brownlow on her first exploration in a foreign city.

It was certainly interesting. The "beer cellar" turned out to be a picturesque place, with scrubbed wooden tables, shining copper utensils on great oak dressers, a fascinating tiled stove at each corner, and the most delicious food Elinor had ever tasted.

She was not, it seemed, expected to drink anything more alarming than "Apfelsaft", the delicious ice-cold apple-juice which one finds everywhere in Germany and Austria, though most people round her were drinking the famous, foaming Munich beer from great pottery tankards.

There was a good deal of laughter and much talking and, threading through it all, string music from three players in Bavarian costume who sat on a low platform at one end of the room, but remained in very intimate contact with the regular patrons.