Dorothy's Double Volume Ii Part 6

You may take all the precautions you like, walk as circ.u.mspectly as you will, but when the time comes you will succ.u.mb without a struggle.

However, do not let me lead you into the net of the fowler; keep away from the snare as long as you can; when your fate comes upon you you will be captured, and I doubt whether you will make as much as a struggle.'

'We shall see, Armstrong; at present you serve as a terrible example.

Well, I suppose we may as well turn in.'

There was a great consultation after breakfast the next morning. Mr.

Hawtrey had already marked out his own line of travel and had arranged for a carriage by which they would travel by easy stages through Brienz, Interlaken, Thun, Freyburg, and then on to Lausanne. They would stay for a week by the Lake of Geneva and then take another carriage to Martigny.

Beyond that nothing was at present settled, but they would make Martigny their head quarters for some little time. The Fortescues had no particular plan and were quite ready to fall into that of their friends, though, as they had as yet seen nothing of Lucerne, and intended to make some excursions from there, they said that they must stop there for a few days, but would join the others at Martigny.

The girls indeed would gladly have gone forward at once, being really fond of Dorothy, and thinking that it would be nice to travel together, but their mother overruled this.

'No, no, my dears, we must see what there is to be seen, and it would be a great pity to hurry away at once. We shall all meet again at Martigny, and may, perhaps, have a fortnight there together. Besides, there are inconveniences in two parties travelling together. One may happen to have faster horses than the other, and be kept waiting for their meals until the other arrives; then they don't always want to stop at the same places, or for the same time. Whoever gets in first may be able to find accommodation at an inn, while the second one may find it full. Don't you think so, Mr. Singleton?'

'Yes, I quite agree with you. Two parties are apt to be a tie upon each other. I think that your plan that we should all meet at Martigny is the wisest.'

'What are your plans, Captain Armstrong?'

'Beyond the fact that we have a month to wander about before we are due in London we have no particular plans. We, of course, stick to diligence routes; bachelors do not indulge in the luxury of posting, and, indeed, I greatly prefer the banquette of a diligence to a carriage--you get a better view, you meet other people, and learn more of the country. We intend to do a little climbing--I don't mean high peaks, I have no ambition that way whatever, but some of the pa.s.ses and glaciers. I was at Martigny last year; it is, perhaps, the best central position for the mountains, and I think it is very likely that we shall be there while you are.'

'I hope you will,' Mr. Hawtrey said cordially. 'These three young ladies will be only too glad of two stalwart guides. As far as carriages can go, or even donkeys, we elders can accompany them, but when it comes to scrambling about on glaciers, or doing anything like climbing, we are getting past that.'

'Nonsense, father,' Dorothy exclaimed. 'Why, you are often out for eight or ten hours over the turnip fields with a gun, you know; you could walk four times as far as I could.'

'Not twice as far, Dorothy. I have known you walk fifteen miles more than once, and I certainly should not care about walking thirty. But that has nothing to do with climbing, which is a question of weight and wind. You have only half my weight to carry. I am sure that after dancing through a London season your lungs ought to be in perfect order.

However, I dare say I shall be able to go with you if your views are not too ambitious; but the mania for climbing always seems to seize young people when they get among mountains, though for my part I prefer the view in a valley to one on the top of a hill. At any rate we shall be glad to see you both, Captain Armstrong, at Martigny, whether we requisition your services as guides or not. I am sorry, Dorothy, the Deans are not coming our way. He told me yesterday they were going to Zurich, and then by Constance into Bavaria.'

'I am sorry, too, father; I like them so much, and it would have been very pleasant indeed if they had been with us.'

CHAPTER XII

During the voyage Captain Hampton saw but little of Jacob. Each day he went to the rope across the deck marking the division between the cabin and the steerage pa.s.sengers, and the boy at once came running up to him.

His report always was that he was getting on 'fust rate,' while each day his wonder at the amount of water increased.

'I would not have believed if I hadn't seen it that there could be so much water, Captain. I can't think where it all comes from. I heard some of them say it was tremendous deep--ten times as deep as that monument with the chap on the top of it in Trafalgar Square. Why, it must have rained for years and years to have got such a lot of water here as this.

And it tastes bad. I had a wash in a bucket on deck this morning, and some of the water got in my mouth and it wur as nasty as could be--awful it wur. What can make it like that? Why the water in the Thames looks ten times as dirty, but it don't taste particular nasty for all that.'

'I will tell you about it some day, Jacob; it is too long to go into now. You remind me of it some evening, when we are at a lonely inn, with nothing to do. How do you get on at night?'

'I sleeps all right, sir; it is awful hot down there in them bunks, as they call 'em, one above another, just like a threepenny lodging-house where I used to sleep sometimes when I had had good luck. The first night or two was bad, there was no mistake about it. Most of 'em was awful ill, and made noises enough to frighten one. I could not think what made them so; it seemed to me as if someone must have put pison in the food, and I kept on expecting I was going to be took bad too; but a young chap tells me in the morning as most people is so the first day they goes to sea. If they wur to drink that water I could understand it, but it is all right what they gives us; and there are some of them as grumbles at the food, but I calls it just bang up. How much more of this water is there, sir?'

'About five more days' steaming, Jacob; it is a twelve-days' voyage from Liverpool to New York. I suppose some day they will get to do it in six, for they keep on building faster and faster steamers.'

'We are going wonderful fast now,' the boy said; 'a chap's cap as was sitting up in the end there blew off yesterday, and I ran to keep alongside with it, but it went a lot faster than I could run. I shall be glad when it is over, Captain; not as I ain't jolly, for I never was so jolly before, but I ain't doing nothing for you here, and I wants to be at work for you somehow. If they would let me wait on you, and put stuff on those white shoes, I should not so much mind.'

'I am very well waited on, Jacob, and if you were to try to wait on me at table while the vessel is rolling, you would be pretty sure to spill a plate of soup down my neck, or something of that sort. You amuse yourself in your own way, and don't worry about me; when there is anything to do I know you will do it.'

'I find you won't land till to-morrow, Jacob,' Captain Hampton said, as the vessel neared the wharf. 'Here is the name of the hotel where I shall be, in case by any chance I should miss you. They say you will probably come ash.o.r.e at nine o'clock in the morning.'

'Why can't we all land at once, sir?'

'It is late now, Jacob, and it is as much as they will be able to do to get through the cabin pa.s.sengers' baggage before dark; indeed it is probable they will only examine the light luggage.'

'What do they want to examine it for, sir? What business have they with your luggage?'

'They always do it when you go into a foreign country. They do it in England too, when you come in from abroad; everything has to be opened.

There are some things that pay duty going into a country, and they want to see that you have got none of them in your boxes; for, if you have, you must pay for them.'

'Then must I open my box if they ask me?'

'You must, Jacob.'

'And let them rummage my things about?'

'If they want to, Jacob; but I don't suppose they search the steerage baggage much; they will probably ask you who you are, and where you are going, and you must tell them that you are my servant, and that I am at the Metropolitan Hotel. But I am pretty sure to be here to see you through.'

However, at half-past eight, as Captain Hampton went to the door of the hotel with the intention of taking a vehicle down to the wharf, he saw Jacob coming along carrying his little portmanteau.

'Why, Jacob, I was just starting to the wharf. They told me that you were not to land till nine.'

'They said so last night, Captain, but they began just about seven. I heard there was another ship come in and they wanted to get us out of the way. I was one of the fust ash.o.r.e, and it didn't take many minutes afore I was out of the shed where they looks at the things. I says to the first chap I meets, "Where can I take a 'bus to the Metropolitan Hotel?" "You won't get no 'bus here," says he. "How far is it?" "Better than two miles," he says. That settled it, and I started off to walk. I ought to have been here sooner, but some one I asked the way of put me wrong, I suppose, and a box like this feels wonderful heavier the second mile than it does the first.'

An arrangement had already been made for Jacob's board and lodging, and a messenger boy showed him up to his little room at the top of the house, and then took him down to a room where the few white servants in the hotel had their meals. In half an hour he returned to the hall which served as smoking-room and general meeting-place. Captain Hampton had already had a talk with the clerk.

'I have not seen a young woman like that,' the latter said positively, when the photograph was produced, 'but then if the man had registered and written her name and his she might not have come up to the desk. If you go up to the entrance of the dining-room and ask the negro who takes the hats there, he will tell you for certain. He has a wonderful head, that chap has. Sometimes there are as many as three hundred come in to dinner between five and seven. He takes their hats and puts them on the pegs and racks, and as they come out he will give every man his own hat and never make a mistake. I never saw such a chap for remembering faces.'

The negro replied unhesitatingly, on seeing the photograph, that no such lady had taken any meals at the hotel.

'De ladies don't come into my department, sah, but I notice them as they goes in and out, and if that young lady had been here I should have noticed her for sartin.' Captain Hampton returned to the clerk in the hall, who, as he happened for the moment to be disengaged, was not averse to a talk. 'The darkey has not seen her.'

'Then you may be sure she hasn't been here. Yes, I reckon that is about the list of the hotels most of the pa.s.sengers by the steamers go to,' he said, as he glanced down a list of names Captain Hampton had got a fellow pa.s.senger to draw up. 'I will put down two or three others; they are not first-cla.s.s, but they are a good deal used by people to whom a dollar a day more or less makes a difference. And so you say they have been doing some swindling across the water. She don't look that sort either from her photograph, but they get the things up so one can never tell. I see you haven't got any German hotels; and if, as you say, you think they came by the line from Hamburg, they might have gone to one of them.'

'I should not think it likely they spoke German,' Captain Hampton said.

'Oh, that makes no odds. The waiters all talk English, and like enough on the voyage they would make friends with some Germans who have been here before, and they would recommend them one of their own people.'

'That is probable; and they would be likely to go there too,' Captain Hampton agreed, 'because anyone coming over to search for them would be less likely to search in such places than in houses like yours.'

'Then, again, you see, they might have gone straight through without going into an hotel at all. That would be the safest way, because then there would be no trace left of them.'

'But I suppose not many people do that.'

'Oh, yes, they do--lots of them. A man saves his hotel bills if he goes straight to the train, and there is only one move; but, of course, that is only when a man has quite made up his mind where he is going. As a rule, when a Britisher comes here he waits a few days and asks questions, and tries to find out about things, unless he is going somewhere straight to a friend. Is that boy looking for you? he has been standing there staring at you for the last five minutes.'

'Oh, yes, that is my servant. Will you give me the address of the Central Police Station?'