CHAPTER II
THE VOYAGE OUT
It seems extraordinary to me that every day throughout the winter, crowds of people should throng the railway stations whence they can hurry south in search of warmth and sunshine, and yet London remains apparently as full as ever! We plunged into a seething mass of outward-bound humanity at Victoria Station on the 22nd of February, and, having wrestled our way into the Continental express, were whirled across the sad and sodden country to Dover amidst hundreds of our shivering fellow-countrymen.
Truly we are beyond measure conservative in our railway discomforts. With a bitter easterly wind searching out the chinks of door and window, we sat shivering in our unwarmed compartment—unwarmed, I say, in spite of the clumsy tin of quickly-cooled hot water procured by favour—and a gratuity—from a porter!
The Channel showed even more disagreeable than usual. A grey, cold sky, with swift-flying clouds from the east hung over a grey, cold sea, the waves showing their wicked white teeth under the lash of the strong wind. The patient lightship off the pier was swinging drearily as we throbbed past into the gust-swept open and set our bows for the unseen coast of France.
The tumult of passengers was speedily reduced to a limp and inert swarm of cold, wet, and sea-sick humanity.
The cold and miserable weather clung to us long. In Paris it snowed heavily, and I was constrained to betake myself in a cab—“chauffé,” it is needless to remark—to seek out a kindly dentist, the bitter east wind having sought out and found a weak spot wherein to implant an abscess.
At Bâle it was freezing, but clear and bright, and a good breakfast and a breath of clean, fresh air was truly enjoyable after the overheated sleeping-car in which we had come from Paris.
It may seem unreasonable to grumble at the overheating of the “Sleeper” after abusing the under-heating of our British railways. Surely, though, there is a golden mean? I wish neither to be frozen nor boiled, and there can be no doubt but that the heating of most Continental trains is excellent, the power of application being left to the traveller.
The journey by the St. Gotthard was delightful, the day brilliant, and the frost keen, while we watched the fleeting panorama of icebound peaks and snow-powdered pines from the cushions of our comfortable carriage.
The glory of winter left us as we left the Swiss mountains and dropped down into the fertile flats of Northern Italy, and at Milan all was raw chilliness and mud.