The Car That Went Abroad Part 22

It was the 10th of July that we returned to Vevey, and it was just three weeks later that the world--a world of peace and the social interchange of nations--came to an end.

We had heard at Tours of the a.s.sa.s.sination of the Austrian archduke and his d.u.c.h.ess, but no thought of the long-threatened European war entered our minds. Neither did we discover later any indications of it. If there was any tension along the Franco-German border we failed to notice it.

Arriving at Vevey, there seemed not a ripple on the drowsy summer days.

Even when Austria finally sent her ultimatum to Serbia there was scarcely a suggestion of war talk. We had all the nations in our hotel, but they a.s.sembled harmoniously in the little reading room after dinner over the papers and innocuous games, and if the situation was discussed at all, the word "arbitration" was oftenest heard.

Neither did the news come to us gradually or gently. It came like a bomb, exploded one evening by Billy Baker, an American boy of sixteen and a bulletin of sorts. Billy had been for his customary after-dinner walk uptown, and it was clear the instant he plunged in that he had gathered something unusual.

"Say, folks," he burst out, "did you know that Austria has declared war against Serbia and is bombarding Belgrade, and now all the others are going to declare, and that us Americans have got to beat it for home?"

There was a general stir. Billy's items were often delivered in this abrupt way, but his news facts were seldom questioned. He went on, adding a quick, crisp detail, while the varied nationalities a.s.sumed att.i.tudes of attention. The little group around the green center table forgot what they were there for. I had just drawn a spade when I needed a heart, and did not mind the diversion. Billy concluded his dispatches:

"We've all got to beat it, you know, _now_, before all the ships and trains and things are used for mobilization and before the fighting begins. If we don't we'll have to stay here all winter." Then, his mission finished, Billy in his prompt way pulled a chair to the table.

"Let me in this, will you?" he said. "I feel awfully lucky to-night."

Americans laugh at most things. We laughed now at Billy Baker--at the dramatic manner of his news, with its picturesque even if stupendous possibilities--at the vision in everyone's mind of a horde of American tourists "beating it" out of Europe at the first drum-roll of war.

But not all in the room laughed. The "little countesses"--two Russian girls--and their white-haired companion, talked rapidly and earnestly together in low voices. The retired French admiral--old and invalided--rose, his long cape flung back across his shoulder, and walked feebly up and down, stopping at each turn to speak to his aged wife, who sat with their son, himself an officer on leave. An English judge, with a son at home, fraternized with the Americans and tried to be gay with them, but his mirth lacked freedom. A German family instinctively separated themselves from the others and presently were no longer in the room. Even one of the Americans--a Southern girl--laughed rather hysterically:

"All my baggage but one suit case is stored in Frankfort," she said. "If Germany goes to war I'll have a gay time getting it."

Morning brought confirmation of Billy Baker's news, at least so far as Austria's action was concerned, and the imminence of what promised to be a concerted movement of other great nations toward war. It was said that Russia was already mobilizing--that troops were in motion in Germany and in France. That night, or it may have been the next, a telegram came for the young French officer, summoning him to his regiment. His little son of nine or ten raced about excitedly.

"_L'Allmagne a mobilise--mon pere va a la guerre!_"

The old admiral, too feeble, almost, to be out of bed, seemed to take on a new bearing.

"I thought I was done with war," he said. "I am an invalid, and they could not call on me. But if France is attacked I shall go and fight once more for my country."

The German family--there were two grown sons in it--had already disappeared.

It was about the third morning that I took a walk down to the American Consulate. I had been there before, but had not found it exciting. It had been a place of silence and inactivity. There were generally a few flies drifting about, and a bored-looking man who spent an hour or two there morning and afternoon, killing time and glad of any little diversion in the way of company.

The Consulate was no longer a place of silence and buzzing flies.

There was buzzing in plenty, but it was made by my fellow countrymen--country-women, most of them--who were indeed making things hum. I don't know whether the consul was bored or not. I know he was answering questions at the rate of one per second, and even so not keeping up with the demand for information.

"Is there going to be a war?" "Is England going into it?" "Has Germany declared yet?" "Will we be safe in Switzerland?" "Will all Americans be ordered home?" "Are the trains going to be stopped?" "Will we have to have pa.s.sports?" "I have got a sailing in September. Will the ships be running then?" "How can I send a letter to my husband in Germany?" "How about money? Are the Swiss banks going to stop payment on letters of credit?"--these, repeated in every varying form, and a hundred other inquiries that only a first-cla.s.s registered clairvoyant could have answered with confidence. The consul was good-natured. He was also an optimist. His replies in general conveyed the suggestion to "keep cool,"

that everything was going to be all right.

The Swiss banks, however, did stop payment on letters of credit and various forms of checks forthwith. I had a very pretty-looking check myself, and a day or two before I had been haggling with the bank man over the rate of exchange, which had been gently declining. I said I would hold it for better terms. But on the day that Germany declared war I decided to cash it, anyway, just to have a little extra money in case--

Oh, well, never mind the details. I didn't cash it. The bank man looked at it, smiled feebly, and pointed to a notice on the wall. It was in French, but it was an "easy lesson." It said:

No more checks or letters of credit cashed until further notice.

By order of the a.s.sociation.

I don't know yet what "a.s.sociation" it was that was heartless enough to give an order like that, but I hoped it would live to repent it. The bank man said that in view of my position as a depositor he might be induced to advance me 10 per cent of the amount of the check. The next day he even refused to take it for collection. Switzerland is prudent; she had mobilized her army about the second day and sent it to the frontier. We had been down to the big market place to see it go. I never saw anything more quiet--more orderly. She had mobilized her cash in the same prompt, orderly fashion and sent it into safe retirement.

It was a sorrowful time, and it was not merely American--it was international. Switzerland never saw such a "busted community" as her tourists presented during August, 1914. Every day was Black Friday.

Almost n.o.body had any real money. A Russian n.o.bleman in our hotel with a letter of credit and a roll of national currency could not pay for his afternoon tea. The little countesses had to stop buying chocolates. An American army officer, retired, was unable to meet his laundry bill.

Even Swiss bank notes (there were none less than fifty francs in the beginning) were of small service, for there was no change. All the silver had disappeared as if it had suddenly dissolved. As for gold--lately so plentiful--one no longer even uttered the _word_ without emotion. Getting away, "beating it," as Billy had expressed it, was still a matter of prime importance, but it had taken second place. The immediate question was how and where to get money for the "beating"

process. The whole talk was money. Any little group collected on the street might begin by discussing the war, but, in whatever language, the discussion drifted presently to finance. The optimistic consul was still rea.s.suring. To some he advanced funds--he was more liberal than the Bank of Switzerland.

There was a percentage, of course--a lucky few--who had money, and these were getting away. There were enough of them along the Simplon Railway to crowd the trains. Every train for Paris went through with the seats and aisles full. All schedules were disordered. There was no telling when a train would come, or when it would arrive in Paris. Billy Baker promptly mobilized his party and they left sometime in the night--or it may have been in the morning, after a night of waiting. It was the last regular train to go. We did not learn of its fortunes.

No word came back from those who left us. They all went with promises to let us know, but a veil dropped behind them. They were as those who pa.s.s beyond the things of earth. We heard something of their belongings, however. Sometimes on clear days a new range of mountains seemed to be growing in the west. It was thought to be the American baggage heaped on the French frontier. Very likely our friends wrote to us, but there was no more mail. The last American, French, and English letters came August 3d. The last Paris _Herald_ hung on the hotel file and became dingy and tattered with rereading. No mails went out. One could amuse himself by writing letters and dropping them in the post office, but he would know, when he pa.s.sed a week later, that they had remained there. You could still cable, if you wished to do so--in French--and there must have been a scramble in America for French dictionaries, and a brisk hunting for the English equivalents of whatever terse Berlitz idiom was used to convey:

"Money in a hurry--dead broke."

Various economies began to be planned or practiced. Guests began to do without afternoon tea, or to make it themselves in their rooms. Few were paying their hotel bills, yet some went to cheaper places, frightened at the reckoning that was piling up against settling day. Others, with a little store of money, took very modest apartments and did light housekeeping to stretch their dwindling substance. Some, even among those at the hotels, in view of the general uncertainty, began to lay in tinned meats and other durable food against a time of scarcity. It was said that Switzerland, surrounded by war, would presently be short of provisions. Indeed, grocers, by order of the authorities, had already cut down the sale of staples, and no more than a pound or two of any one article was sold to a single purchaser. Hotels were obliged to send their servants, one after another, and even their guests, to get enough sugar and coffee and salt to go around. Hotel bills of fare--always lavish in Switzerland--began to be cut down, by _request of the guests themselves_. It was a time to worry, or--to "beat it" for home.

We fell into the habit of visiting the Consulate each morning. When we had looked over the little local French paper and found what new nations had declared war against Germany overnight, we strolled down to read the bulletins on the Consulate windows, which generally told us what steamer lines had been discontinued, and how we couldn't get money on our checks and letters of credit. Inside, an active commerce was in progress. No pa.s.sport had been issued from that Consulate for years. n.o.body in Europe needed one. You could pa.s.s about as freely from Switzerland to France or Germany as you could from Delaware to New Jersey.

Things were different now. With all Europe going to war, pa.s.sports properly vised were as necessary as train tickets. The consul, swamped with applications, had called for volunteers, and at several little tables young men were saying that they did not know most of the things those anxious people--women, mainly--were asking about, but that everything would surely be all right, soon. Meantime, they were helping their questioners make out applications for pa.s.sports.

There were applications for special things--personal things. There was a woman who had a husband lost somewhere in Germany and was convinced he would be shot as a spy. There was a man who had been appointed to a post office in America and was fearful of losing it if he did not get home immediately. There were anxious-faced little school-teachers who had saved for years to pay for a few weeks abroad, and were now with only some useless travelers' checks and a return ticket on a steamer which they could not reach, and which might not sail even if they reached it.

And what of their positions in America? Theirs were the sorrowful cases, and there were others.

But the crowd was good-natured, as a whole--Americans are generally that. The stranded ones saw humor in their situation, and confessed to one another--friends and strangers alike--their poverty and their predicaments, laughing a good deal, as Americans will. But there were anxious faces, too, and everybody wanted to know a number of things, which he asked of everybody else, and of the consul--oh, especially of the consul--until that good-natured soul was obliged to take an annex office upstairs where he could attend to the manufacture of pa.s.sports, while downstairs a Brooklyn judge was appointed to supervise matters and deal out official information in judicial form.

The judge was qualified for his appointment. Every morning before ten o'clock--opening time--he got together all the matters--letters, telegrams, and the like--that would be apt to interest the crowd, and dealt this substance out in a speech, at the end of which he invited inquiries on any point he had failed to make clear.

He got them, too--mainly questions that he had already answered, because there is a type of mind which does not consider information valid unless delivered to it individually and, in person. I remember, once, when among other wild rumors it had been reported that because of the food scarcity all foreigners would be ordered out of Switzerland in five days, a woman who had listened attentively to the judge's positive and thrice-repeated denial of this canard promptly asked him if she could stay in Switzerland if she wanted to.

The judge's speech became the chief interest of the day. It was the regular American program to a.s.semble in front of the Consulate, exchanging experiences and reading the bulletins until opening time. The place was in a quiet side street of the quaint old Swiss city, a step from the lake-front promenade, with a background of blue mountains and still bluer water. Across the street stood a sixteenth-century chateau with its gardens of greenery. At ten the Consulate doors opened and the little group pressed in for the speech. I am sure no one in our stranded a.s.sembly will easily forget those mornings.

Promising news began to come. The judge announced one morning that five hundred thousand francs had been placed to the consular credit in Switzerland by America for the relief of her citizens. Great happiness for the moment! Hope lighted every face. Then some mathematician figured that five hundred thousand francs amounted to a hundred thousand dollars, and that there were ten thousand Americans in Switzerland--hence, ten dollars apiece. The light of hope grew dim.

There was not a soul in that crowd who needed less than two hundred dollars to pay his board and get him home. Ten thousand times two hundred--it is a sizable sum. And what of the rest of Europe? The mathematician figured that there were a quarter of a million Americans in Europe, all willing to go home, and that it would take fifty million dollars and a fleet of five hundred fair-sized ships to deliver them in New York.

Still, that five hundred thousand francs served a good purpose. An allotment of it found its way to our consul, to use at his discretion.

It came to the right man. Here and there were those who had neither money nor credit. To such he had already advanced money from his own limited supply. His allowance, now, would provide for those needy ones until more came. It was not sufficient, however, to provide one woman with three hundred francs to buy a set of furs she had selected, though she raged up and down the office and threatened to report him to Washington, and eventually flung some papers in his face. It turned out later that she was not an American. I don't know what she was--mostly wildcat, I judge.

Further news came--still better. The government would send a battleship--the _Tennessee_--with a large sum of gold. The deposit of this specie in the banks of Europe would make checks and letters of credit good again. Various monies from American banks, cabled for by individuals, would also arrive on this ship.

Things generally looked brighter. With the British fleet protecting the seas, English, French, and Dutch liners were likely to keep their schedules; also, there were some Italian boats, though these were reported to be overrun by "swell" Americans who were paying as high as one thousand dollars for a single berth. Perhaps the report was true--I don't know. None of our crowd cared to investigate.

There were better plans nearer home--plans for "beating it" out of Switzerland on a big scale. Special trains were to be provided--and ships. A commission was coming on the _Tennessee_ to arrange for these things. The vessel had already left New York.

The crowd at the Consulate grew larger and more feverishly interested.

Applications for pa.s.sports multiplied. Over and over, and in great detail, the Brooklyn judge explained just what was necessary to insure free and safe departure from Europe when the time came to go. Over and over we questioned him concerning all those things, and concerning ever so many other things that had no particular bearing on the subject, and he bore it and beamed on us and was fully as patient as was Moses in that other wilderness we wot of.

Trains began to run again through France; at least they started, and I suppose they arrived somewhere. Four days, six days, eight days was said to be the time to Paris, with only third-cla.s.s coaches, day and night, all the aisles full--no food and no water except what was carried. It was not a pleasant prospect and few of our people risked it. The _Tennessee_ was reported to have reached England and the special American trains were promised soon. In fact, one was presently announced. It went from Lindau, through Germany, and was too far east for most of our crowd. Then there were trains from Lucerne and elsewhere; also, special English trains. Then, at last a Simplon train was scheduled: Territet, Montreux, Vevey, Lausanne, Geneva--all aboard for Paris!

Great excitement at the Consulate. The _Tennessee_ money could arrive any day now; everybody could pay up and start. The Brooklyn judge rehea.r.s.ed each morning all the old details and presented all the news and requirements. The train, he said, would go through a nation that was at war. It would be under military surveillance. Once on the train, one must stay on it until it arrived in Paris. In Paris pa.s.sengers must go to the hotels selected, they must leave at the time arranged and by the train provided, and must accept without complaint the ship and berth a.s.signed to each. It would be a big tourist party personally conducted by the United States for her exiled citizens. The United States was not ordering its citizens to leave Switzerland; it was merely providing a means for those who must go at once and had not provided for themselves. The coaches would be comfortable, the price as usual, red cards insuring each holder a seat would be issued at the Consulate.

Tickets through to New York would be provided for those without funds.

The government could do no more. Any questions, please?