Diary of a Pilgrimage Part 10

She is waiting for him, you may be sure, ready dressed; and a very sweet, old-world picture she makes, standing beneath the great overhanging gables of the wooden chalet. She, too, favours the national green; but, as relief, there is no lack of bonny red ribbons, to flutter in the wind, and, underneath the ornamented skirt, peeps out a bright-hued petticoat.

Around her ample breast she wears a dark tight-fitting bodice, laced down the front. (I think this garment is called a stomacher, but I am not sure, as I have never liked to ask.) Her square shoulders are covered with the whitest of white linen. Her sleeves are also white; and being very full, and of some soft lawnlike material, suggest the idea of folded wings. Upon her flaxen hair is perched a saucy round green hat. The buckles of her dainty shoes, the big eyes in her pretty face, are all four very bright. One feels one would like much to change places for the day with Hans.

Arm-in-arm, looking like some china, but exceedingly substantial china, shepherd and shepherdess, they descend upon the town. One rubs one's eyes and stares after them as they pa.s.s. They seem to have stepped from the pictured pages of one of those old story-books that we learnt to love, sitting beside the high bra.s.s guard that kept ourselves and the nursery-fire from doing each other any serious injury, in the days when the world was much bigger than it is now, and much more real and interesting.

Munich and the country round about it make a great exchange of peoples every Sunday. In the morning, trainload after trainload of villagers and mountaineers pour into the town, and trainload after trainload of good and other citizens steam out to spend the day in wood and valley, and upon lake and mountain-side.

We went into one or two of the beer-halls--not into the swell cafes, crowded with tourists and Munich masherdom, but into the low-ceilinged, smoke-grimed cellars where the life of the people is to be seen.

The ungenteel people in a country are so much more interesting than the gentlefolks. One lady or gentleman is painfully like every other lady or gentleman. There is so little individuality, so little character, among the upper circles of the world. They talk like each other, they think and act like each other, they dress like each other, and look very much like each other. We gentlefolks only play at living. We have our rules and regulations for the game, which must not be infringed. Our unwritten guide-books direct us what to do and what to say at each turn of the meaningless sport.

To those at the bottom of the social pyramid, however, who stand with their feet upon the earth, Nature is not a curious phenomenon to be looked down at and studied, but a living force to be obeyed. They front grim, naked Life, face to face, and wrestle with it through the darkness; and, as did the angel that strove with Jacob, it leaves its stamp upon them.

There is only one type of a gentleman. There are five hundred types of men and women. That is why I always seek out and frequent the places where the common people congregate, in preference to the haunts of respectability. I have to be continually explaining all this to my friends, to account to them for what they call my love of low life.

With a mug of beer before me, and a pipe in my mouth, I could sit for hours contentedly, and watch the life that ebbs and flows into and out of these old ale-kitchens.

The brawny peasant lads bring in their la.s.ses to treat them to the beloved nectar of Munich, together with a huge onion. How they enjoy themselves! What splendid jokes they have! How they laugh and roar and sing! At one table sit four old fellows, playing cards. How full of character is each gnarled face. One is eager, quick, vehement. How his eyes dance! You can read his every thought upon his face. You know when he is going to dash down the king with a shout of triumph on the queen.

His neighbour looks calm, slow, and dogged, but wears a confident expression. The game proceeds, and you watch and wait for him to play the winning cards that you feel sure he holds. He must intend to win.

Victory is written in his face. No! he loses. A seven was the highest card in his hand. Everyone turns to him, surprised. He laughs--A difficult man to deal with, that, in other matters besides cards. A man whose thoughts lie a good deal below his skin.

Opposite, a cross-looking old woman clamours for sausages, gets them, and seems crosser than ever. She scowls round on everyone, with a malignant expression that is quite terrifying. A small dog comes and sits down in front of her, and grins at her. Still, with the same savage expression of hatred towards all living things, she feeds him with sausage at the end of a fork, regarding him all the while with an aspect of such concentrated dislike, that one wonders it does not interfere with his digestion. In a corner, a stout old woman talks incessantly to a solemn-looking man, who sits silent and drinks steadily. It is evident that he can stand her conversation just so long as he has a mug of beer in front of him. He has brought her in here to give her a treat. He will let her have her talk out while he drinks. Heavens! how she does talk! She talks without movement, without expression; her voice never varies, it flows on, and on, and on, like a great resistless river. Four young artisans come clamping along in their hob-nailed boots, and seating themselves at one of the rude wooden tables, call for beer. With their arms round the waist of the utterly indifferent Fraulein, they shout and laugh and sing. Nearly all the young folks here are laughing--looking forward to life. All the old folks are talking, remembering it.

What grand pictures some of these old, seared faces round us would make, if a man could only paint them--paint all that is in them, all the tragedy--and comedy that the great playwright, Life, has written upon the withered skins! Joys and sorrows, sordid hopes and fears, child-like strivings to be good, mean selfishness and grand unselfishness, have helped to fashion these old wrinkled faces. The curves of cunning and kindliness lurk round these fading eyes. The lines of greed hover about these bloodless lips, that have so often been tight-pressed in patient heroism.

SUNDAY, 25TH--CONTINUED

We Dine.--A Curious Dish.--"A Feeling of Sadness Comes O'er Me."--The German Cigar.--The Handsomest Match in Europe.--"How Easy 'tis for Friends to Drift Apart," especially in a place like Munich Railway Station.--The Victim of Fate.--A Faithful Bradshaw.--Among the Mountains.--Prince and Pauper.--A Modern Romance.--Arrival at Oberau.--Wise and Foolish Pilgrims.--An Interesting Drive.--Ettal and its Monastery.--We Reach the Goal of our Pilgrimage.

At one o'clock we turned into a restaurant for dinner. The Germans themselves always dine in the middle of the day, and a very substantial meal they make of it. At the hotels frequented by tourists _table d'hote_ is, during the season, fixed for about six or seven, but this is only done to meet the views of foreign customers.

I mention that we had dinner, not because I think that the information will prove exciting to the reader, but because I wish to warn my countrymen, travelling in Germany, against undue indulgence in Liptauer cheese.

I am fond of cheese, and of trying new varieties of cheese; so that when I looked down the cheese department of the bill of fare, and came across "liptauer garnit," an article of diet I had never before heard of, I determined to sample it.

It was not a tempting-looking cheese. It was an unhealthy, sad-looking cheese. It looked like a cheese that had seen trouble. In appearance it resembled putty more than anything else. It even tasted like putty--at least, like I should imagine putty would taste. To this hour I am not positive that it was not putty. The garnishing was even more remarkable than the cheese. All the way round the plate were piled articles that I had never before seen at a dinner, and that I do not ever want to see there again. There was a little heap of split-peas, three or four remarkably small potatoes--at least, I suppose they were potatoes; if not, they were pea-nuts boiled soft,--some caraway-seeds, a very young-looking fish, apparently of the stickleback breed, and some red paint. It was quite a little dinner all to itself.

What the red paint was for, I could not understand. B. thought that it was put there for suicidal purposes. His idea was that the customer, after eating all the other things in the plate, would wish he were dead, and that the restaurant people, knowing this, had thoughtfully provided him with red paint for one, so that he could poison himself off and get out of his misery.

I thought, after swallowing the first mouthful, that I would not eat any more of this cheese. Then it occurred to me that it was a pity to waste it after having ordered it, and, besides, I might get to like it before I had finished. The taste for most of the good things of this world has to be acquired. _I_ can remember the time when I did not like beer.

So I mixed up everything on the plate all together--made a sort of salad of it, in fact--and ate it with a spoon. A more disagreeable dish I have never tasted since the days when I used to do Willie Evans's "dags," by walking twice through a sewer, and was subsequently, on returning home, promptly put to bed, and made to eat brimstone and treacle.

I felt very sad after dinner. All the things I have done in my life that I should not have done recurred to me with painful vividness. (There seemed to be a goodish number of them, too.) I thought of all the disappointments and reverses I had experienced during my career; of all the injustice that I had suffered, and of all the unkind things that had been said and done to me. I thought of all the people I had known who were now dead, and whom I should never see again, of all the girls that I had loved, who were now married to other fellows, while I did not even know their present addresses. I pondered upon our earthly existence, upon how hollow, false, and transient it is, and how full of sorrow. I mused upon the wickedness of the world and of everybody in it, and the general cussedness of all things.

I thought how foolish it was for B. and myself to be wasting our time, gadding about Europe in this silly way. What earthly enjoyment was there in travelling--being jolted about in stuffy trains, and overcharged at uncomfortable hotels?

B. was cheerful and frivolously inclined at the beginning of our walk (we were strolling down the Maximilian Stra.s.se, after dinner); but as I talked to him, I was glad to notice that he gradually grew more serious and subdued. He is not really bad, you know, only thoughtless.

B. bought some cigars and offered me one. I did not want to smoke.

Smoking seemed to me, just then, a foolish waste of time and money. As I said to B.:

"In a few more years, perhaps before this very month is gone, we shall be lying in the silent tomb, with the worms feeding on us. Of what advantage will it be to us then that we smoked these cigars to-day?"

B. said:

"Well, the advantage it will be to me now is, that if you have a cigar in your mouth I shan't get quite so much of your chatty conversation. Take one, for my sake."

To humour him, I lit up.

I do not admire the German cigar. B. says that when you consider they only cost a penny, you cannot grumble. But what I say is, that when you consider they are dear at six a half-penny, you can grumble. Well boiled, they might serve for greens; but as smoking material they are not worth the match with which you light them, especially not if the match be a German one. The German match is quite a high art work. It has a yellow head and a magenta or green stem, and can certainly lay claim to being the handsomest match in Europe.

We smoked a good many penny cigars during our stay in Germany, and that we were none the worse for doing so I consider as proof of our splendid physique and const.i.tution. I think the German cigar test might, with reason, be adopted by life insurance offices.--Question: "Are you at present, and have you always been, of robust health?" Answer: "I have smoked a German cigar, and still live." Life accepted.

Towards three o'clock we worked our way round to the station, and began looking for our train. We hunted all over the place, but could not find it anywhere. The central station at Munich is an enormous building, and a perfect maze of pa.s.sages and halls and corridors. It is much easier to lose oneself in it, than to find anything in it one may happen to want.

Together and separately B. and I lost ourselves and each other some twenty-four times. For about half an hour we seemed to be doing nothing else but rushing up and down the station looking for each other, suddenly finding each other, and saying, "Why, where the d.i.c.kens have you been? I have been hunting for you everywhere. Don't go away like that," and then immediately losing each other again.

And what was so extraordinary about the matter was that every time, after losing each other, we invariably met again--when we did meet--outside the door of the third-cla.s.s refreshment room.

We came at length to regard the door of the third-cla.s.s refreshment room as "home," and to feel a thrill of joy when, in the course of our weary wanderings through far-off waiting-rooms and lost-luggage bureaus and lamp depots, we saw its old familiar handle shining in the distance, and knew that there, beside it, we should find our loved and lost one.

When any very long time elapsed without our coming across it, we would go up to one of the officials, and ask to be directed to it.

"Please can you tell me," we would say, "the nearest way to the door of the third-cla.s.s refreshment room?"

When three o'clock came, and still we had not found the 3.10 train, we became quite anxious about the poor thing, and made inquiries concerning it.

"The 3.10 train to Ober-Ammergau," they said. "Oh, we've not thought about that yet."

"Haven't thought about it!" we exclaimed indignantly. "Well, do for heaven's sake wake up a bit. It is 3.5 now!"

"Yes," they answered, "3.5 in the afternoon; the 3.10 is a night train.

Don't you see it's printed in thick type? All the trains between six in the evening and six in the morning are printed in fat figures, and the day trains in thin. You have got plenty of time. Look around after supper."

I do believe I am the most unfortunate man at a time-table that ever was born. I do not think it can be stupidity; for if it were mere stupidity, I should occasionally, now and then when I was feeling well, not make a mistake. It must be fate.

If there is one train out of forty that goes on "Sat.u.r.days only" to some place I want to get to, that is the train I select to travel by on a Friday. On Sat.u.r.day morning I get up at six, swallow a hasty breakfast, and rush off to catch a return train that goes on every day in the week "except Sat.u.r.days."

I go to London, Brighton and South Coast Railway-stations and clamour for South-Eastern trains. On Bank Holidays I forget it is Bank Holiday, and go and sit on draughty platforms for hours, waiting for trains that do not run on Bank Holidays.

To add to my misfortunes, I am the miserable possessor of a demon time-table that I cannot get rid of, a Bradshaw for August, 1887.

Regularly, on the first of each month, I buy and bring home with me a new Bradshaw and a new A.B.C. What becomes of them after the second of the month, I do not know. After the second of the month, I never see either of them again. What their fate is, I can only guess. In their place is left, to mislead me, this wretched old 1887 corpse.

For three years I have been trying to escape from it, but it will not leave me.