Running Sands Part 44

Nor could she permit him to miss them. She seemed to thrive as much upon the labour as if she had been shopping as she used to shop in her unmarried days, and she dragged him after her, a husband more weary than he had often been in his pilgrimages through the Great Desert.

"To-morrow," he yawned, as he flung himself down to sleep, eight hours later, "we shall start for some place where we can rest and see a few real Alps. We'll go to the Engadine."

Muriel was seated at some distance from the bed. She was stooping to loosen her boots, and her hair fell over her face and hid it.

"Don't let's go there," she said. "Let's go to Innsbruck."

"Innsbruck? That's in Austria, isn't it?"

"Is it? Well, what if it is, Jim?"

"I thought you wanted to see Switzerland."

"We've seen it, haven't we?"

"Only a slice of it; and it must be a long and tiresome ride to Innsbruck."

Muriel dropped one boot and then the other and carried them outside the door.

"Anyhow," she said, returning, "we have seen enough of Switzerland to know what it's like, Jim. I'm awfully tired of it." She came to the bed and kissed him lightly on the cheek. "Do you mind, dear?" she added.

"Oh, no," he sighed. "I suppose not. Only let's go to sleep now: I am about done up."

Muriel said nothing to that, but the next morning she a.s.sumed the plan to be adopted, and they went to Innsbruck. They went by the way that Franz von Klausen had described to her: by the narrow, mountain-guarded Waldersee, the Castle Lichtenstein, the ruins of Graphang and, on the great rock that rises over Berschia, the pilgrim-church of St. Georgen.

Jim had tipped the guard to secure, at least for a time, the privacy of their compartment, and the guard, a little fellow with flaring moustaches and a uniform that was almost the uniform of an officer, saluted gravely and promised seclusion. Thus, for some hours, they had the place to themselves, but the train gradually filled, and at last there entered a young Austrian merchant, who insisted upon giving them a sense of his knowledge of English and American literature.

"All Austrians of culture read your Irving," he said; "also your Harte and Twain and Do-_nel_li."

"Our what?" asked Jim.

"Please?"

"I didn't catch that last name."

"Donelli--Ignatius Donelli."

"Oh! Ignatius Donnelly--yes."

"Indeed, yes, sir; and you will find few that do not by the heart know of Shakespeare: 'Friends, Romans, Countrymen, come listen to me!'"

The Austrian left the train just before they reached the six-and-a-half-mile Arlberg Tunnel and, when they returned to daylight after twenty minutes, Stainton asked his wife:

"Didn't that fellow remind you of von Klausen?"

Muriel moved uneasily. Von Klausen's name had not been mentioned more than twice between them since they had left the _Friedrich Barbarossa_.

"Why, no," she answered.

"I thought they spoke alike, Muriel."

"Did you? As I remember the Captain, his English was better."

Stainton reflected.

"Perhaps it was," he admitted. "But, by the way, your Austrian seemed rather to neglect us in Paris."

"_My_ Austrian? Why mine?"

"By right of discovery. You discovered him, didn't you?"

"You mean that he discovered me. I don't like Captain von Klausen."

He attempted to argue against her prejudice, and they came near to quarrelling. In the end, Muriel protested with tears that she hated all Austrians and all Austria, and that they must move on to Italy at once.

Stainton obtained only a day's respite in Innsbruck. They drove to the Triumphal Gate at the extremity of the Maria-Theresien-Stra.s.se and then across to the scene of the Tyrolese battles at Berg Isel, returning by way of the Stadthaus Platz, where the band was playing in the pale spring suns.h.i.+ne and where, in roles of gallants to the fas.h.i.+onable ladies of the city, strolled, in uniforms of grey, of green, and of light blue, scores of dapper, slim-waisted Austrian officers. But Muriel said that the women were dowdy and their escorts effeminate; she scorned the "Golden Roof" because the gilt was disappearing and the copper showing through; she p.r.o.nounced the Old Town, with its mediaeval roofed-streets, unwholesome; she would not stop for beer at the Goldene Adler, where Hofer drank. That worn and tarnished Hofkirche, "the Westminster of the Tyrol," with its grotesque statues and its empty tomb of Maximilian, she dismissed as "a dirty barn."

Muriel was cold; she said that she wanted to find warm weather. Stainton was tired; he said that he wanted to find a place where they could loaf.

So they left for Verona, feeling certain that they would there secure these things--and "sunny Italy" welcomed them with a snowstorm.

Muriel was again in tears.

"It's no use," she sobbed; "we can't get what we want anywhere."

"Of course we can," sighed Stainton, "and the snowstorm will clear.

Cheer up, dear; we've only to look hard enough or wait a bit."

"But I'm tired of looking and waiting--we've been doing that ever since we went away. Let's go back to Paris."

Back to Paris! She had taken him on this nerve-destroying journey; she had headed for this place and swerved to that; she had exhausted them both by her unaccountable whims and her switching resolutions--and now she wanted to go back to Paris!

"You said that Paris didn't agree with you, dear," pleaded Stainton.

"I know; but now it will be spring there--real spring--and everyone says that is the most beautiful time of the year in Paris."

"Yet the climate----"

"It will suit me in the spring; I know it will."

"Do you think"--Stainton put his hand upon hers--"do you think that you can rest there: really rest?"

"I know I can. O, Jim, I try to like it here, but I can't speak a word of Italian, and the French of these people is simply awful.

I did my best to be good in Innsbruck, but I don't know any German, either, and so I hated that. Do you realise that we've been hurrying--hurrying--hurrying, so that we are really worn to shreds?"

"I know it," said Stainton. He was so travel-wearied that he looked sixty years old.

"I dare say that is what has made me so horrid," said Muriel: "that pull, pull, pull at my nerves. I don't know _what's_ the matter with me; but I'm quite sure that getting back to Paris will be like getting back home."

This is how it came about that, two days later, they were once more quartered at the Chatham.