"Now here," said our confiding acquaintance, after we had pledged one another in several mild beverages suited to a first day out on the briny deep—"here's a list of places my friend made out that I want to kind of take in on my way to the springs and back." And he produced from his pocketbook a narrow crumpled white paper, on which were pencilled the weighty names of Paris, Rome, Madrid, Vienna, St. Petersburg, Dresden, Antwerp, Heidelberg, and Munich. I give them in the order in which they occurred. "I suppose that's all right, ain't it?" he concluded, glancing at each of us in turn, as if the success of his tour depended on our good opinion.
"Why, yes," said Fearloe, "the places are all right, but you'll have to travel a good deal to include them all. I don't see how you're to get at them on the way to the baths."
"Oh, of course I shall have to branch off a little; but then the distances over there don't compare with ours," returned Mr. Steavens, hopefully.
"I'm not so sure of that," rejoined my friend, with a malicious air of there being some slight room for doubt. "Your first jaunt, from Paris to Rome, will be five hundred miles—five times as far as from Philadelphia to New York. After that you must count at least a thousand to Madrid, a thousand more from there to Vienna, and then twelve hundred, or over, to St. Petersburg." Steavens almost turned pale. He hastily set down the glass which he was carrying to his lips. "Besides," continued Fearloe, "you can't go to Rome at all before winter."
"Hold on!" cried the other, looking as if the sense of solid reality were slipping away from him. "Has anybody got a map here? Let's settle one thing at a time. You know what I want to do first is to strike down to Bad Peppers. I'd like to settle just how that stands."
Scharlach immediately went to his state-room, and returned promptly with a large and perfect map of the Continent, showing all the railroads and post-roads. Seeing this, I was tempted to make some sarcastic remark about his thorough German equipment; but I remembered Sedan, and shuddered. He was soon busily engaged in tracing out certain lines of travel with his long pink finger, the nail of which was whitish, and edged with black—according strangely with the Prussian national colors. I thought Scharlach took a peculiar interest in Pfeiffers, and seemed oddly familiar with it. He furnished our fellow-passenger with full details about the place; how it was situated on the Tamina River—which Steavens, with a friendly reminiscence of New York politics, instantly transformed into "Tammany" River; how the mountains were piled around its wild gorge seven or eight thousand feet high; how the healing waters flow only in summer, and are brought to the hotel by an aqueduct; and so on. All this seemed to reassure the rheumatic grocer very much; and having got "Peppers" definitely fixed in his mind again, and becoming familiar with the map, he once more grew self-confident about his list of cities, and nothing could avail to dissuade him from adhering to the exact order in which his unknown adviser had jotted them down. So, for the time, we abandoned the attempt.
There is hardly a circle more merciless in its criticisms than a body of first-cabin passengers on one of the European steamers; and Steavens soon became an object of amusement to most of us. His simplicity, openness, and perfectly good-humored, almost joyous, ignorance, made him an easy prey. But he proved to be a "good sailor," and was very gallant toward the ladies. The strangest part of it was that they rather liked him, and took his side against our covert ridicule. I suppose I must admit that this, instead of altering our opinions concerning him, only added a slight bitterness to a spirit of fun which would otherwise have been quite innocent; and we got into a way of looking at him with sarcastic hostility. When I say "we" I refer more particularly to Fearloe, the German, Scharlach, and myself, who, having been thrown with him more than the others on the first day of the voyage, regarded him as a sort of comic exhibition under our special supervision.
This rather absurd bond of union between us led to some degree of intimacy with Scharlach, who disclosed—greatly to the enhancement of our interest in Steavens's journey—that he, likewise, was going to Pfeiffers. His errand, moreover, was a romantic one. Five years before he had fallen in love with the orphaned niece of a rich merchant in Berlin; but feeling his cause to be hopeless, at least as regarded the girl's uncle, so long as he had nothing but his personal appearance and a very elaborate education to support his suit, Scharlach had preferred to retain the hold of friendship while starting out to better his condition; and accordingly he had never made a positive declaration of his passion, but had gone to Brazil, where he succeeded in gaining a moderately handsome fortune. His friends had kept him informed of Fräulein Raslaff's movements. As yet she had not married, from which he augured hopefully for his future; but her uncle had become an invalid, and they were now about resorting to Pfeiffers for his health, whither Scharlach, of course, purposed following them, in order to learn his fate.
He requested us urgently to say nothing about this to any of our fellow-voyagers, and we even kept the secret of his destination from Steavens. But that could not prevent Fearloe and myself from privately talking over Scharlach's prospects a little. My own opinion was that such cool self-possession as his course showed might not impress a woman so favorably as it did us, and I said I was by no means sure that Scharlach would win, after all. Fearloe did not agree with me here, and stroked his beard with an air of restrained certainty as he replied: "I see, Middleby, you fancy that women want something more startling romantic than that. But they are very practical, too; and I think you'll find Miss Raslaff will appreciate such sensible devotion as this of our Brazilian emigrant." As I have said, Fearloe knew the effect he could produce on women, and was proud of it; and when he uttered this remark it was plain that he thought he had settled the question.