"Hulloa! what's this?" he exclaims. "How will this do us? Leaves Munich at 4, gets to Heidelberg 4.15. That's quick work. Something wrong there. That won't do. You can't get from Munich to Heidelberg in a quarter of an hour. Oh! I see it. That 4 o'clock goes to Brussels, and then on to Heidelberg afterwards. Gets in there at 4.15 to-morrow, I suppose. I wonder why it goes round by Brussels, though? Then it seems to stop at Prague for ever so long.
Oh, damn this timetable!"
Then he finds another train that starts at 2.15, and seems to be an ideal train. He gets quite enthusiastic over this train.
"This is the train for us, old man," he says. "This is a splendid train, really. It doesn't stop anywhere."
"Does it GET anywhere?" I ask.
"Of course it gets somewhere," he replies indignantly. "It's an express! Munich," he murmurs, tracing its course through the timetable, "depart 2.15. First and second class only. Nuremberg?
No; it doesn't stop at Nuremberg. Wurtzburg? No. Frankfort for Strasburg? No. Cologne, Antwerp, Calais? Well, where does it stop? Confound it! it must stop somewhere. Berlin, Paris, Brussels, Copenhagen? No. Upon my soul, this is another train that does not go anywhere! It starts from Munich at 2.15, and that's all. It doesn't do anything else."
It seems to be a habit of Munich trains to start off in this purposeless way. Apparently, their sole object is to get away from the town. They don't care where they go to; they don't care what becomes of them, so long as they escape from Munich.
"For heaven's sake," they say to themselves, "let us get away from this place. Don't let us bother about where we shall go; we can decide that when we are once fairly outside. Let's get out of Munich; that's the great thing."
B. begins to grow quite frightened. He says: "We shall never be able to leave this city. There are no trains out of Munich at all. It's a plot to keep us here, that's what it is.
We shall never be able to get away. We shall never see dear old England again!"
I try to cheer him up by suggesting that perhaps it is the custom in Bavaria to leave the destination of the train to the taste and fancy of the passengers. The railway authorities provide a train, and start it off at 2.15. It is immaterial to them where it goes to.
That is a question for the passengers to decide among themselves.
The passengers hire the train and take it away, and there is an end of the matter, so far as the railway people are concerned. If there is any difference of opinion between the passengers, owing to some of them wishing to go to Spain, while others want to get home to Russia, they, no doubt, settle the matter by tossing up.
B., however, refuses to entertain this theory, and says he wishes I would not talk so much when I see how harassed he is. That's all the thanks I get for trying to help him.
He worries along for another five minutes, and then he discovers a train that gets to Heidelberg all right, and appears to be in most respects a model train, the only thing that can be urged against it being that it does not start from anywhere.
It seems to drop into Heidelberg casually and then to stop there.
One expects its sudden advent alarms the people at Heidelberg station. They do not know what to make of it. The porter goes up to the station-master, and says: "Beg pardon, sir, but there's a strange train in the station."
"Oh!" answers the station-master, surprised, "where did it come from?"
"Don't know," replies the man; "it doesn't seem to know itself."
"Dear me," says the station-master, "how very extraordinary! What does it want?"
"Doesn't seem to want anything particular," replies the other.
"It's a curious sort of train. Seems to be a bit dotty, if you ask me."
"Um," muses the station-master, "it's a rum go. Well, I suppose we must let it stop here a bit now. We can hardly turn it out a night like this. Oh, let it make itself comfortable in the wood-shed till the morning, and then we will see if we can find its friends."
At last B. makes the discovery that to get to Heidelberg we must go to Darmstadt and take another train from there. This knowledge gives him renewed hope and strength, and he sets to work afresh--this time, to find trains from Munich to Darmstadt, and from Darmstadt to Heidelberg.
"Here we are," he cries, after a few minutes' hunting. "I've got it!" (He is of a buoyant disposition.) "This will be it. Leaves Munich 10, gets to Darmstadt 5.25. Leaves Darmstadt for Heidelberg 5.20, gets to--"
"That doesn't allow us much time for changing, does it?" I remark.
"No," he replies, growing thoughtful again. "No, that's awkward.
If it were only the other way round, it would be all right, or it would do if our train got there five minutes before its time, and the other one was a little late in starting."
"Hardly safe to reckon on that," I suggest; and he agrees with me, and proceeds to look for some more fitable trains.
It would appear, however, that all the trains from Darmstadt to Heidelberg start just a few minutes before the trains from Munich arrive. It looks quite pointed, as though they tried to avoid us.
B.'s intellect generally gives way about this point, and he becomes simply drivelling. He discovers trains that run from Munich to Heidelberg in fourteen minutes, by way of Venice and Geneva, with half-an-hour's interval for breakfast at Rome. He rushes up and down the book in pursuit of demon expresses that arrive at their destinations forty-seven minutes before they start, and leave again before they get there. He finds out, all by himself, that the only way to get from South Germany to Paris is to go to Calais, and then take the boat to Moscow. Before he has done with the timetable, he doesn't know whether he is in Europe, Asia, Africa, or America, nor where he wants to get to, nor why he wants to go there.
