Slow train to Brussels

ALLAN SEAGER

She had talked every foot of the way from Amsterdam. It was a very slow train and, consequently, I had heard all of her life up to her husband's death in Borneo ten years before. She was a neat old lady with a kind, sweet face. She might even have been a nice old lady if she had only kept still.

I looked once more out of the window, and I was glad to see that night was coming down. I thought of asking, without proper introduction and with leering hints at song and champagne, the lovely young woman opposite to dine with me in Brussels if we ever arrived, but she was absorbed in the old lady's chatter. Even the gentleman in the corner seemed to be listening. He was encased in a tight, black coat that buttoned nearly to his chin, and he had done nothing since we left Amsterdam but smoke seven long, yellow cigars, one after the other. He was proud and distant and placed the ashes of his cigars in a meticulous little heap on the floor—but he listened. I listened finally, and the young lady listened with obvious sympathy and frequent enquiry.

"But your daughter? After the death of your husband in Borneo, what happened to her?" she asked.

The old lady sighed, or perhaps she was merely taking breath, "She was but a child of sixteen. Such a pretty child with long, yellow hair (like the cigars, I thought) in braids down her back. Wait, I have some of it here," and she fumbled in a large lace purse and brought out a small buckskin bag—full of guilders from the clink; a comb; two dirty letters—"These are from her. You see? Brussels;" a bottle of Eau de Cologne; and at last, bound with a rubber band, a frizzy little hank of yellow hair, which she handed with evident pride to the young lady, who murmured unintelligible compliments the way people do, and handed it back.

The old lady held it up before me. I smiled and contributed, "Very lovely." She seemed satisfied and made as if to display it to the gentleman in the corner but he looked coldly out of the window and flicked a long ash. The old lady said, "Stolz" under her breath and plunged on: "My husband left us some money. Such a little money. But I managed on it for three years, teaching my daughter the graces of the home. She cooked; she sewed; she scrubbed and cleaned, in order that one day, if the good God might so bless her, she might become a wife and strew her husband's hearth with roses. I am perhaps old-fashioned, yet I was reared so, and my husband and I were very happy. And, as we were content, I hoped that my daughter Kathe might content her husband. And now it has come to pass. She is betrothed to a bookbinder in Brussels and I am going there to be present when the marriage contract is signed. It has been difficult, 1 must say, because Adolf is poor and demands a large dowry. Yet my sister and I—she is a nun in the Convent of St. Agatha. Yes, we are Catholics. Oh, the life of a religious is hard. She must rise at three in the morning for matins—but she and I have worked, and now the dowry is complete. How we have worked! And if anything goes wrong now—" At this the old lady lapsed into silence unaccountably.

I waited a moment for her to begin again. She did not, but sat there with a strained look on her face as if she was worried. I turned to the young woman opposite. She was lovelier than I had thought.

"It is a beautiful night, don't you think?" I began.

She rubbed some of the steam off the window and looked out.

"A moon," I urged.

"Yes, it is a lovely moon," she said.

"Do you think we might possibly dine—"

"Oh, if they catch me, I shall be arrested," said the old lady in a wailing voice.

"If you are doing anything wrong, you should know better at your age," I said severely. "Especially with a sister in a convent who might be expected to exert a wholesome influence," and I continued, to the young lady, "do you think we might —''but she was soothing the old lady who had begun to weep tears of apprehension.

"There, there, my dear."

"In prison. I shall be put in prison," she sobbed.

"But what can you be doing wrong?"

The tears stopped suddenly. The old lady looked earnestly at each of us.

"Can I trust you with my secret?" she asked.

"Of course you can," said the beautiful young lady.

The old lady looked toward the copy of the Paris Soir behind which the stiff gentleman had hidden himself. A blue pennon of cigar smoke rose unsteadily from behind it.

"And him, can I trust him ? Mein Herr," she said loudly, "can you be trusted?"

The newspaper came crackling down. The gentleman leaped to his feet, clicked his heels and bobbed an angry bow without speaking. "Hmm, a soldier once," I thought.

The old lady rose and pulled down the blinds in the compartment. Then she began to fumble with her handbags, giving sly glances all around. Finally she had them opened. There was a false bottom to each bag and, beneath it, wrapped in tissue paper were hundreds of pieces of lace. It seemed to be very fine lace, though I know little about it.

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"There is my daughter's dowry. That is what we have worked on, my sister and I, night after night by the light of a candle only. It is copied from the old lace of the Convent of St. Agatha. I cannot sell it in Germany. Brussels is the only place where it will fetch the ten thousand francs for the dowry. You see, I must smuggle it through the customs, else my daughter cannot marry," and she began to cry again.

The young lady fingered it, "Marvellous. I have never seen such beautiful work. You must have spent years on it."

"Seven years we have worked. Seven years have Adolf and Kiithe waited. Oh, how often I have thought of this journey. I have even dreamed of customs officers. I must not be discovered."

"Don't worry. We will help you. Now put the lace away again. We are not far from the border. There, now, don't worry," said the young lady kindly.

I was at a loss to see how we were going to help, when the young lady turned to me and addressed me for the first time, "You, sir, have you anything you might declare that will draw attention from the lace?" Her eyes were very large and blue and—well, as a matter of fact, I did have a box of cigars that I had been counting on slipping through. They were wrapped in a laundry bag in the bottom of my valise. Cigars are very cheap in Amsterdam and very dear in Brussels. Besides, I had been at the first battle of Ypres and I considered that the Belgian government and myself would be quits for a long time. I opened my valise and took out the cigars.

I was surprised to find that the young lady had also taken a box of cigars from her valise.

"You? Er—pardon me—you do not smoke them yourself?" I am not very tactful, I am afraid, and the vision of this beautiful creature with a Corona in her mouth upset me.

"These are for my brother," she said. Quite curtly, I thought.

The gentleman in the corner had put himself into a magnificent fur overcoat and a Homburg hat, and he did not seem disposed to help in the deception.

"Now, my dear, you see we will declare these cigars and the customs officers will not notice you at all," said the young lady.

The train had begun to bump slowly to a stop. I looked out of the window. This was the border. We heard the customs men up ahead in the train, and the three of us waited glumly like all conspirators.

Presently the door of the compartment opened and the customs officer entered. Quite illogically, I wanted to ask the old lady if she had dreamed about this particular one. He was quite young and obviously anxious to be very efficient and courteous. He got more than he bargained for. The young lady began to smile, ogle and languish generally and the catch on her valise was oh, so hard to open, and he must help her, and was he going to charge her VERY much duty on such a LITTLE box of cigars, and what handsome uniforms the Belgian customs wore, she had thought they were being invaded by the military, really she did, he looked just like a major she once knew and oh, thanks so much, never had she met with such kindness. The poor young customs officer, overcome by this twitter and these aquamarine glances, went through the rest of our luggage with glazed eyes. I had begun to be sorry I had not brought more cigars. He was just lifting his cap at the door when,

"HALT! Search this woman's bags, officer. She is a lace smuggler," said the stiff gentleman in the Homburg.

The officer opened the bags. The old lady began to weep again. The young lady looked annoyed. I said, "You swine!" But the stiff gentleman only smiled a ferocious smile.

The lace was discovered, and the officer had the old lady by the arm when the young lady sprang into action once more. It was superb. She almost wriggled with charm. Surely it was not the policy of a government with such exquisite taste in uniforms and—young men to prey upon the aged and infirm? Did he realize that his ruthless intervention would wreck the lives of three people? He had not that kind of face. His face was kind—it went on for five minutes and the upshot was that the customs man declared himself satisfied with the lace and a fifty franc pourboire, and took himself doubtingly off.

The train started again and the lights of the customs office went slowly by the window. The gloom was even thicker than the cigar smoke in the carriage. From the old lady's sobs came muffled references to "Kathe," "ruin," and "Adolf." I was genuinely angry so I turned to the betrayer, who was still smoking a complacent yellow cigar and said, with a formal intonation, "Sir, you are a cad."

At this he rose, bowed stiffly, and sat down again. Then he reached into a breast pocket and took out a wallet. He roused the old woman from her grief and pressed into her hand a roll of notes.

"Allow me to give you some small recompense for the trouble I have caused," he said.

The old lady looked up astounded. She took the notes mechanically and counted them. There were ten thousand francs.

"But why, mein Herr?" she asked wonderingly.

The gentleman opened his waistcoat. Around his waist was a leather belt with little pockets.

"I had to create some diversion. I could not be caught myself," he said. And he took from the pockets a handful of diamonds.

The young lady and I talked about it all during dinner in Brussels—with champagne.