AFTERMATH
CHAPTER I
THE MEMORABLE WINTER
I
The leap into the dark is made willy-nilly by every passenger who steps upon a mail boat at night and asks no preliminary question concerning the weather.
What a spectacle it is of ease buffeted by necessity at the harbour station; of luxury driven out howling to the rigour of a raw and relentless atmosphere; of gregarious humanity sent as sheep to the slaughter or the satiety of the elements. Here comes the train blazing with lights. The passengers wake from their unsettled slumbers to de-wrap and thrust anxious faces from the carriage windows. They call for porters in many tongues, and porters often enough are not vouchsafed to them. There is a dreadful confusion upon the platform—the strong pressing upon the weak, the helpless giving place to the cunning, the rich wondering that they cannot bribe the sea. So we go to the ship lying as a phantom at the wharf. She must laugh at all this humanity so suddenly uncoddled. It is little to her whether the night be fine or windy. She has no rugs to cast aside, and the porters can do nothing for her.
Faber was an expert traveller, and his man, Frank, a paragon. He found a cabin reserved for him upon the steamer City of Berlin, and was surprised when making his way below to rub shoulders with Rupert Trevelle, the last person he believed to be on the train from the capital. Trevelle, old hand that he was, admitted that he had been caught napping this time, and was without a berth. It was the most obvious thing to offer him one.
"Come right along with me—I always book a second bunk, and you're welcome to it. You didn't say last night you were going across?"