Dividing Waters. I. A. R. Wylie
tenderness infinitely precious.
"Nora," he went on, "even now it is not too late. My dearest, what are you waiting for? What are you expecting to find? I believe I could make you happy—my love is so great."
She threw up her head with the determined gesture he knew so well.
"I must go," she said. "It would be weak and cowardly to turn back at the last minute. Only——"
"You will come back soon?"
She nodded, her lips trembling.
"I feel I must," she said.
"And you will write to me?"
The Rev. John bustled up to them. He was flustered and nervous, as people are to whom a journey of any sort is an event full of dangerous possibilities.
"You must get in at once," he said fussily. "The train is just off. There, God bless you, my dear child! Remember all I have said. And if you are not happy, or the people not nice, let us know at once."
Mrs. Ingestre clasped her daughter in a short, almost passionate embrace.
"Be happy!" she said again; and the words were a blessing.
The carriage door slammed to; somewhere from the rear they heard the guard's shrill whistle, and gradually the train began to glide forward, leaving behind the little group of dearly loved faces.
Arnold walked at the carriage side.
"You will write to me often?" he pleaded.
"Yes, yes, I will write."
"Tell me everything—everything you think and feel. Oh, Nora, it is so hard to let you go! But I have taken fresh hope. I believe you will come back soon—I believe it will all come right for us both."
The train was gathering speed. He had to run to keep pace with her carriage.
"Nora, after all—you do care a little, don't you?"
She nodded. She was so tired, so heart-sick, that had it been possible she would have sprung out and put her hand in his in weary, thankful surrender. But it was too late. She could only look at him, and again her eyes told more than she perhaps would have said. He stood still, hat in hand, and waved to her, and the last she saw of him was a face full of hope and gratitude.
"When you send for me, I shall come," he said.
The train glided into the suffocating darkness of a tunnel, and when they once more emerged the station was far behind, and they were travelling faster and faster into the night. The lights of London, of home, of England swept past in blurred lines of fire.
Nora Ingestre watched them, fighting bravely; but when they had disappeared she covered her eyes with her hand and wept the silent, bitter tears of a first exile.
CHAPTER V
AMONG THE HEATHEN
"Karlsburg! Alles aussteigen—Karlsburg!"
Nora sprang up, roughly aroused from a half-doze by the stentorian tones and a general move in her compartment. The fat German who had occupied the corner seat opposite her, and who had spent the journey in doing his best to justify her scorn and contempt for all foreigners, was heaving great masses of untidy luggage out of the window and shouting furiously for a Gepäckträger. In this performance he trod more than once on Nora's toes, thus arousing her so effectually that she made haste to convey herself and her belongings out into the narrow corridor congested with passengers and baggage. After a brief energetic scramble down the appalling staircase which separates the continental traveller from the platform, she landed safely and drew a sigh of relief. "Here I am at last!" she thought, comforted by the knowledge that the worst was over. The "worst" in connection with separations is the first twenty-four hours, the first night-fall, and the first awaking to changed surroundings and circumstances. After that, the human capacity for adjustment mercifully begins to display itself, and the first poignancy of grief is over—at any rate for those who have courage and youth to help them. And Nora had both. As she stood that morning on the deck of the Flushing boat, watching the pale, low outline of land, she had already felt the first glow of returning vigour. The keen sea-air had blown colour into her cheeks; the tears which had threatened to assert themselves so often the night before had dried at their source, and she had flung herself into the confusion of exchange from the boat to the waiting train with a pleased realisation of her own independence. Then had come the long and glorious panorama along the Rhine, the frowning castles, the majestic spires of the great Dom, the new types of men and women hurrying backwards and forwards about the busy platforms.
During the long hours Nora's watchful, eager eyes never closed. This, then, was the new world to which she was to open her heart; these, then, the people whose qualities of goodness she was to learn to honour. The first task was easy enough—it was, indeed, a beautiful world. But the people? They were of another type than that to which she was accustomed, and Nora, imbued with the pleasant insular conviction that all English people are tall and handsome, found them so far little to her taste. In truth, a firmly rooted prejudice is not to be overcome in a moment, or even by the wisest precept, and not all Mrs. Ingestre's eloquence could crush back the half-conscious superiority which her daughter experienced in that stuffy second-class coupé. Her fellow-passengers, be it confessed, were stout and inelegant, and they obviously preferred the window closed—points which were alone quite sufficient to stamp them as belonging to an inferior class. But the chief point was Nora's own nationality. The mere fact that she was English would have kept her in countenance even when confronted with the whole Imperial family, and, indeed, throughout the journey, with its difficulties, its various encounters with idiotic foreign porters who refuse to understand the English language, no matter how loud it is shouted, she was sustained by a calm and inborn knowledge of her racial superiority. Thus she felt no sense of loneliness or helplessness until the voice shouting "Karlsburg" had hurried her out on to the crowded, bustling platform. There for the first time she felt her own insignificance, her own strangeness. She was really in a foreign country at last, and with all her superiority she stood there a forlorn handful of pretty, despairing girlhood, waiting for the first jabbering, gesticulating savage to rescue her from her perplexity.
"Ach, liebes Kind, da bist du! Willkommen!"
The eager, kindly voice and the cordial embrace were equally sudden and somewhat overwhelming. Steadying her hat from the effects of the shock, Nora turned to find herself held by a short, stout little woman, very out of breath, very excited, who was smiling and nodding at her as though at an old and very dear acquaintance.
"Ach! you do not know me?" she interrogated, adding in the same gasp, "But how should you? I am ze old Fräulein Müller—you haf heard of her? Long ago she did teach ze muzzer, and now here is ze daughter—her muzzer every bit of her. Ach, du lieber Gott im Himmel! But I must not so much talk. Give ze man your Gepäckschein, liebes Kind."
Half overcome by the torrent of words, Nora produced the document which she supposed answered to the name of Gepäckschein. In the interval, whilst Fräulein Müller was apparently pouring volumes of mingled explanation and abuse over the head of an equally flustered porter, Nora had opportunity to study her rescuer. Fräulein Müller, she imagined, was well over the fifties and, on account of her stoutness, looked her age, but her face was as lively as it was plain, and the rotund figure in its dowdy brown dress cut after the manner of a long-forgotten fashion seemed to be bubbling over with seething sprightliness. Nora had a quick eye, and her critical faculties, at home usually dormant, were on the alert. "How badly the Germans dress!" she thought. "What dreadful boots—and that dress! I suppose it is her best, and it was probably quite expensive. Whatever could have made any one choose a colour like that?"
Her observations were cut short by her unconscious victim grasping her by the arm and hurrying her up and down dark flights of steps, the whole way continuing her explanations, peppered with gasps and exclamatory German outbreaks.
"Ze portermans are ze stupidest race on ze earth," she panted, "but I haf told him—I haf his number—it is zirty-one—please try and remember, liebes Kind—zat he must your Koffers bring at