A Fearful Responsibility and Other Stories Part 17

The driver remained a moment in mumbled soliloquy; then he smacked his whip and drove rapidly away. They were aware of nothing outside but the starlit winter morning in unknown streets, till they plunged at last under an archway and drew up at a sort of lodge door, from which issued an example of the universal gold-cap-banded continental hotel _portier_, so like all others in Europe that it seemed idle for him to be leading an individual existence. He took the colonel's pa.s.sport and summoned a waiter, who went bowing before them up a staircase more or less grandiose, and led them to a pleasant chamber, whither he sent directly a woman servant. She bade them a hearty good morning in her tongue, and, kneeling down before the tall porcelain stove, kindled from her ap.r.o.nful of blocks and sticks a fire that soon penetrated the travellers with a rich comfort. It was of course too early yet to think of breakfast, but it was fortunately not too late to think of sleep. They were both very tired, and it was almost noon when they woke. The colonel had the fire rekindled, and he ordered breakfast to be served them in their room.

"Beefsteak and coffee--here!" he said, pointing to the table; and as he made Mrs. Kenton snug near the stove he expatiated in her own terms upon the perfect loveliness of the whole affair, and the touch of nature that made coffee and beefsteak the same in every language. It seemed that the Kaiserin Elisabeth knew how to serve such a breakfast in faultless taste; and they sat long over it, in that sense of sovereign satisfaction which beefsteak and coffee in your own room can best give.

At last the colonel rose briskly and announced the order of the day.

They were to go here, they were to stop there; they were to see this, they were to do that.

"Nothing of the kind," said Mrs. Kenton. "I am not going out at all to-day. It's too cold; and if we are to push on to Trieste to-morrow, I shall need the whole day to get a little rested. Besides, I have some jobs of mending to do that can't be put off any longer."

The colonel listened with an air of joyous admiration. "Bessie," said he, "this is inspiration. _I_ don't want to see their old town; and I shall ask nothing better than to spend the day with you here at our own fireside. You can sew, and I--I'll _read_ to you, Bessie!" This was a little too gross; even Mrs. Kenton laughed at this, the act of reading being so abhorrent to Colonel Kenton's active temperament that he was notorious for his avoidance of all literature except newspapers. In about ten minutes, pa.s.sed in an agreeable idealization of his purpose, which came in that time to include the perusal of all the books on Italy he had picked up on their journey, the colonel said he would go down and ask the portier if they had the New York papers.

When he returned, somewhat disconsolate, to say they had not, and had apparently never heard of the Herald or Tribune, his wife smiled subtly: "Then I suppose you'll have to go to the consul's for them."

"Why, Bessie, it isn't a thing I should have suggested; I can't bear the thoughts of leaving you here alone; but as you _say_! No, I'll tell you: I'll not go for the New York papers, but I will just step round and call upon the representative of the country--pay my respects to him, you know--if you _wish_ it. But I'd far rather spend the time here with you, Bessie, in our cosy little boudoir; I would, indeed."

Mrs. Kenton now laughed outright, and--it was a tremendous sarcasm for her--asked him if he were not afraid the example of the Black Forest was becoming infectious.

"Oh, come now, Bessie; no joking," pleaded the colonel, in mock distress. "I'll tell you what, my dear, the head waiter here speaks English like a--an Ollendorff; and if you get to feeling a little lonesome while I'm out, you can just ring and order something from him, you know. It will cheer you up to hear the sound of your native tongue in a foreign land. But, pshaw! _I_ sha'nt be gone a minute!"

By this time the colonel had got on his overcoat and gloves, and had his hat in one hand, and was leaning over his wife, resting the other hand on the back of the chair in which she sat warming the toes of her slippers at the draft of the stove. She popped him a cheery little kiss on his mustache, and gave him a small push: "Stay as long as you like, Ned. I shall not be in the least lonesome. I shall do my mending, and then I shall take a nap, and by that time it will be dinner. You needn't come back before dinner. What hour is the table d'hote?"

"Oh!" cried the colonel guiltily. "The fact is, I wasn't going to tell you, I thought it would vex you so much: there _is_ no table d'hote here and never was. Bradshaw has been depraved by the moral atmosphere of Germany. I'd as soon trust Baedeker after this."

"Well, never mind," said Mrs. Kenton. "We can tell them to bring us what they like for dinner, and we can have it whenever _we_ like."

"Bessie!" exclaimed the colonel, "I have not done justice to you, and I supposed I had. I knew how bright and beautiful you were, but I _didn't_ think you were so amiable. I didn't, indeed. This is a real surprise,"

he said, getting out at the door. He opened it to add that he would be back in an hour, and then he went his way, with the light heart of a husband who has a day to himself with his wife's full approval.

At the consulate a still greater surprise awaited Colonel Kenton. This was the consul himself, who proved to be an old companion-in-arms, and into whose awful presence the colonel was ushered by a _Hausmeister_ in a c.o.c.ked hat and a gold-braided uniform finer than that of all the American major-generals put together. The friends both shouted "Hollo!"

and "_You_ don't say so!" and threw back their heads and laughed.

"Why, didn't you know I was here?" demanded the consul when the hard work of greeting was over. "I thought everybody knew that."

"Oh, I knew you were rusting out in some of these Dutch towns, but I never supposed it was Vienna. But that doesn't make any difference, so long as you _are_ here." At this they smacked each other on the knees, and laughed again. That carried them by a very rough point in their astonishment, and they now composed themselves to the pleasure of telling each other how they happened to be then and there, with glances at their personal history when they were making it together in the field.

"Well, now, what are you going to do the rest of the day?" asked the consul at last, with a look at his watch. "As I understand it, you 're going to spend it with me, somehow. The question is, how would you like to spend it?"

"This is a handsome offer, Davis; but I don't see how I'm to manage exactly," replied the colonel, for the first time distinctly recalling the memory of Mrs. Kenton. "My wife wouldn't know what had become of me, you know."

"Oh, yes, she would," retorted the consul, with a bachelor's ignorant ease of mind on a point of that kind. "We'll go round and take her with us."

The colonel gravely shook his head. "She wouldn't go, old fellow. She's in for a day's rest and odd jobs. I'll tell you what, I'll just drop round and let her know I've found you, and then come back again. You'll dine with us, won't you?" Colonel Kenton had not always found old comradeship a bond between Mrs. Kenton and his friends, but he believed he could safely chance it with Davis, whom she had always rather liked,--with such small regard as a lady's devotion to her husband leaves her for his friends.

"Oh, I'll _dine_ with you fast enough," said his friend. "But why don't you send a note to Mrs. Kenton to say that we'll be round together, and save yourself the bother? Did you come here alone?"

"Bless your heart, no! I forgot him. The poor devil's out there, cooling his heels on your stairs all this time. I came with a complete guide to Vienna. Can't you let him in out of the weather a minute?"

"We'll have him in, so that he can take your note back; but he doesn't expect to be decently treated: they don't, here. You just sit down and write it," said the consul, pushing the colonel into his own chair before his desk; and when the colonel had superscribed his note, he called in the _Lohndiener_,--patient, hat in hand,--and, "Where are you stopping?" he asked the colonel.

"Oh, I forgot that. At the Kaiserin Elisabeth. I'll just write it"--

"Never mind; we'll tell him where to take it. See here," added the consul in a serviceable Viennese German of his own construction. "Take this to the Kaiserin Elisabeth, quick;" and as the man looked up in a dull surprise, "Do you hear? The Kaiserin Elisabeth!"

"_I_ don't know what it is about that hotel," said the colonel, when the man had meekly bowed himself away, with a hat that swept the ground in honor of a handsome drink-money; "but the mention of it always seems to awaken some sort of reluctance in the minds of the lower cla.s.ses. Our driver wanted to enter into conversation with me about it this morning at three o'clock, and I had to be pretty short with him. If you don't know the language, it isn't so difficult to be short in German as I've heard. And another curious thing is that Bradshaw says the Kaiserin Elisabeth has a table d'hote, and the head-waiter says she hasn't, and never did have."

"Oh, you can't trust anybody in Europe," said the consul sententiously.

"I'd leave Bradshaw and the waiter to fight it out among themselves.

We'll get back in time to order a dinner; it's always better, and then we can dine alone, and have a good time."

"They couldn't keep us from having a good time at a table d'hote, even.

But I don't mind."

By this time they had got on their hats and coats and sallied forth.

They first went to a cafe and had some of that famous Viennese coffee; and then they went to the imperial and munic.i.p.al a.r.s.enals, and viewed those collections of historical bricabrac, including the head of the unhappy Turkish general who was strangled by his sovereign because he failed to take Vienna in 1683. This from familiarity had no longer any effect upon the consul, but it gave Colonel Kenton prolonged pause. "I should have preferred a subordinate position in the sultan's army, I believe," he said. "Why, Davis, what a museum we could have had out of the Army of the Potomac alone, if Lincoln had been as particular as that sultan!"

From the a.r.s.enals they went to visit the parade-ground of the garrison, and came in time to see a manoeuvre of the troops, at which they looked with the frank respect and reserved superiority with which our veterans seem to regard the military of Europe. Then they walked about and noted the princ.i.p.al monuments of the city, and strolled along the promenades and looked at the handsome officers and the beautiful women.

Colonel Kenton admired the life and the gay movement everywhere; since leaving Paris he had seen nothing so much like New York. But he did not like their shovelling up the snow into carts everywhere and dumping all that fine sleighing into the Danube. "By the way," said his friend, "let's go over into Leopoldstadt, and see if we can't scare up a sleigh for a little turn in the suburbs."

"It's getting late, isn't it?" asked the colonel.

"Not so late as it looks. You know we haven't the high American sun, here."

Colonel Kenton was having such a good time that he felt no trouble about his wife, sitting over her mending in the Kaiserin Elisabeth; and he yielded joyfully, thinking how much she would like to hear about the suburbs of Vienna: a husband will go through almost any pleasure in order to give his wife an entertaining account of it afterwards; besides, a bachelor companionship is confusing: it makes many things appear right and feasible which are perhaps not so. It was not till their driver, who had turned out of the beaten track into a wayside drift to make room for another vehicle, attempted to regain the road by too abrupt a movement, and the shafts of their sledge responded with a loud crick-crack, that Colonel Kenton perceived the error into which he had suffered himself to be led. At three miles' distance from the city, and with the winter twilight beginning to fall, he felt the pang of a sudden remorse. It grew sorer with every homeward step and with each successive failure to secure a conveyance for their return. In fine, they trudged back to Leopoldstadt, where an absurd series of discomfitures awaited them in their attempts to get a fiacre over into the main city. They visited all the stands known to the consul, and then they were obliged to walk. But they were not tired, and they made their distance so quickly that Colonel Kenton's spirits rose again. He was able for the first time to smile at their misadventure, and some misgivings as to how Mrs. Kenton might stand affected towards a guest under the circ.u.mstances yielded to the thought of how he should make her laugh at them both. "Good old Davis!" mused the colonel, and affectionately linked his arm through that of his friend; and they stamped through the brilliantly lighted streets gay with uniforms and the picturesque costumes with which the Levant at Vienna encounters the London and Paris fashions. Suddenly the consul arrested their movement.

"Didn't you say you were stopping at the Kaiserin Elisabeth?"

"Why, yes; certainly."

"Well, it's just around the corner, here." The consul turned him about, and in another minute they walked under an archway into a court-yard, and were met by the portier at the door of his room with an inquiring obeisance.

Colonel Kenton started. The cap and the cap-band were the same, and it was to all intents and purposes the same portier who had bowed him away in the morning; but the face was different. On noting this fact Colonel Kenton observed so general a change in the appointments and even architecture of the place that, "Old fellow," he said to the consul, "you've made a little mistake; this isn't the Kaiserin Elisabeth."

The consul referred the matter to the portier. Perfectly; that was the Kaiserin Elisabeth. "Well, then," said the colonel, "tell him to have us shown to my room." The portier discovered a certain embarra.s.sment when the colonel's pleasure was made known to him, and ventured something in reply which made the consul smile.

"Look here, Kenton," he said, "_you've_ made a little mistake, this time. You're not stopping at the Kaiserin Elisabeth!"

"Oh, pshaw! Come now! Don't bring the consular dignity so low as to enter into a practical joke with a hotel porter. It won't do. We got into Vienna this morning at three, and drove straight to the Kaiserin Elisabeth. We had a room and fire, and breakfast about noon. Tell him who I am, and what I say."

The consul did so, the portier slowly and respectfully shaking his head at every point. When it came to the name, he turned to his books, and shook his head yet more impressively. Then he took down a letter, spelled its address, and handed it to the colonel; it was his own note to Mrs. Kenton. That quite crushed him. He looked at it in a dull, mechanical way, and nodded his head with compressed lips. Then he scanned the portier, and glanced round once more at the bedevilled architecture. "Well," said he, at last, "there's a mistake somewhere.

Unless there are two Kaiserin Elisabeths--. Davis, ask him if there are two Kaiserin Elisabeths."

The consul compa.s.sionately put the question, received with something like grief by the portier. Impossible!

"Then I'm not stopping at either of them," continued the colonel. "So far, so good,--if you want to call it _good_. The question is now, if I'm not stopping at the Kaiserin Elisabeth," he demanded, with sudden heat, and raising his voice, "how the devil did I get there?"

The consul at this broke into a fit of laughter so violent that the portier retired a pace or two from these maniacs, and took up a safe position within his doorway. "You didn't--you didn't--get there!"

shrieked the consul. "That's what made the whole trouble. You--you meant well, but you got somewhere else." He took out his handkerchief and wiped the tears from his eyes.

The colonel did not laugh; he had no real pleasure in the joke. On the contrary, he treated it as a serious business. "Very well," said he, "it will be proved next that I never told that driver to take me to the Kaiserin Elisabeth, as it appears that I never got there and am not stopping there. Will you be good enough to tell me," he asked, with polished sarcasm, "where I _am_ stopping, and why, and how?'

"I wish with all my heart I could," gasped his friend, catching his breath, "but I can't, and the only way is to go round to the princ.i.p.al hotels till we hit the right one. It won't take long. Come!" He pa.s.sed his arm through that of the colonel, and made an explanation to the portier, as if accounting for the vagaries of some harmless eccentric he had in charge. Then he pulled his friend gently away, who yielded after a survey of the portier and the court-yard with a frown in which an indignant sense of injury quite eclipsed his former bewilderment. He had still this defiant air when they came to the next hotel, and used the portier with so much severity on finding that he was not stopping there, either, that the consul was obliged to protest: "If you behave in that way, Kenton, I won't go with you. The man's perfectly innocent of your stopping at the wrong place; and some of these hotel people know me, and I won't stand your bullying them. And I tell you what: you've got to let me have my laugh out, too. You know the thing's perfectly ridiculous, and there's no use putting any other face on it." The consul did not wait for leave to have his laugh out, but had it out in a series of furious gusts. At last the colonel himself joined him ruefully.

"Of course," said he, "I know I'm an a.s.s, and I wouldn't mind it on my own account. _I_ would as soon roam round after that hotel the rest of the night as not, but I can't help feeling anxious about my wife. I'm afraid she'll be getting very uneasy at my being gone so long. She's all alone, there, wherever it is, and--"