The adventures of Heine
“You look tired,” he said, “I think the rest at Brighton is going to
do you a lot of good. When they told me you had got out at Clapham
Junction I really thought and hoped that you had decided upon taking
the short route. I expect it is the underground journeys that make you
look so weary. Have you a headache?”
“The only thing that gives me a headache, Major Haynes, is boorish and
unkultured conversation.”
I felt it was the moment to assert myself, even though it cost me my
life.
“Then avoid soliloquies,” he said, and with a nod he shut the door.
There was nothing to do the next morning but to go back to London,
which I did, taking my suitcase with me.
Major Haynes was on the same train, nearer the engine than I. I saw
him step into a motor-car that was waiting and drive off, and I went
into the buffet and had some breakfast.
My difficulty was going to be to arrive at the port of embarkation
rather than the actual getting on board the steamer, and I knew that I
should have to abandon both the Liverpool and the Fishguard routes and
go by way of Glasgow and Greenock.
The thing was to shake off the men who by this time were watching me,
and Fortune favoured me to an extraordinary extent. That night there
descended on London one of those thick white mists which sometimes
occur in the late spring. I packed a grip with a special kind of
disguise, put the necessary documents in my pocket, and sent for a
cab.
I came to the door of the front entrance of the flats, walked out
bareheaded to the driver and told him that I should want him to take
me to St. Pancras station to catch the 10.30 Scottish mail. I asked
him how long it would take me to get to the depôt, then I walked back
into the vestibule, picked up my hat, coat, and portmanteau, that were
waiting in a dark corner, slipped through the back door, across the
yard by which the tradesmen enter to deliver their goods, through a
mews, and in a few minutes I was swallowed up in the darkness. I stood
at the end of the mews and listened. There was no sound of footfall.
Rapidly threading the narrow streets which lay at the back of the
apartment house in which I lived, I gained a second road, hailed a
taxi and instructed the man to drive me to Langley, which is a wayside
station fifteen miles out of London, and lies between Slough and West
Drayton. He promptly refused the fare, but I slipped a couple of notes
into his hand and his views on the shortage of his petrol underwent a
remarkable change. So much for the veracity and honesty of English
cabmen!
On the way down I changed my mind. My appearance at so insignificant a
station might excite comment, and as we cleared the patch of mist, the
cabman offered no objection to taking me on to Reading. At this
station a slow train from London to Plymouth leaves shortly after
midnight. I reached Bristol at 3.30 in the morning, and by 5 o’clock I
was on my way northward, journeying by workman’s train part of the
way, until I changed on to a main line train at Worcester.
Had you stood that same afternoon on Carlisle station, you would have
seen a clean-shaven clergyman with a white collar and a black soft
felt hat, immaculate black garments, and the various other insignia of
his holy office. You would have observed that he was drinking tea, and
that under his arm was a large and serious book, and that his
gold-mounted spectacles would occasionally be turned benevolently left
and right, looking for Major Haynes.
In this guise I reached Glasgow, a comfortable English parson. I
passed the inspection of the alien officer, my passport was stamped
officially and I crossed the gangway of the ship with a feeling of
malicious joy.
“Here,” thought I, “is an object-lesson which Major Haynes himself
might take to heart as an example of German objectivity.”
We Germans never falter in our purpose. We set our minds upon a goal
and to that goal we attain. I stepped down the crowded gangway to the
purser’s office to present my ticket.
The purser looked at it and nodded.
“Take this gentleman to State Room 64,” he said to a steward, and the
man gathered up my trunk and my coat, led the way to the state room I
had booked, opened the door and I walked in--and there was Major
Haynes sitting on the settee smoking a cigar and looking bored.
“Close the door, Heine,” he said, and shook his head, reprovingly.
“I have not had the opportunity of telling you before,” he said
gravely, “but I think it is only right that you should know that a
clergyman of the Church of England does not wear gaiters, unless he is
a bishop, and I feel sure, Heine, that whatever you are, you are not a
bishop.”
I felt I could not bandy words with him. I sat heavily down upon the
settee.
“You have been getting your ideas of the clergyman,” he said, “from
_Simplicissimus_. For example, that apron you are wearing, and which I
have no doubt was supplied to you by a theatrical costumier who
thought you were cast for the good clergyman in ‘The Silver King,’ is
the apron that rural deans dream about, and country vicars regard as
being half-way to a halo. I wonder you didn’t bring a shepherd’s
crook,” he said bitterly.
“Do I understand that I am forbidden to travel on this boat?” I asked.
“Certainly. It would be no less than a scandal to allow you to
misrepresent the Church of England to our good friends in America,”
said Major Haynes. “Now get into some sensible clothes like a good
fellow.”
“Very well,” I said.
I took up my trunk, watery at heart, walked up the companion-way and
crossed the gangway on the wharf.
Oh, that journey back to London, how long, how dreary, how full of
conflicting emotions! With what soul weariness did I recall every
incident of the northward journey! With what respect had I been
greeted in my Episcopalian character by the common people!
Major Haynes was not on the train, I am happy to say. I was too
depressed to make any other attempt to escape, too weary even to
formulate some alternative plan. I did not even have the energy to
speculate upon the reason I was being detained, for I had not been
charged, as I might have been charged, with using false passports, nor
was I charged, with any of the other offences which might have been
alleged against me. I was just simply let loose and given another
chance of escape.
I made no pretence of going back to my flat, but drove to an hotel
where I knew I should be constantly under observation. I was eating my
dinner in an unhappy fashion, when I heard my name breathed, and,
looking up, I recognized in the waiter a man who had given us a great
deal of information, and was a worker for The Day. While he was
bending over me with the menu in his hand, and apparently taking my
orders, he was speaking rapidly.
“You are watched, Herr Heine,” he said under his breath.
“I know,” I replied in the same tone. “I am trying to get away from
London.”
He said no more, but when he came back with the soup he whispered:
“I think I can help you.”
When the fish arrived, he added a little more information.
“When you get back to your room to-night,” he said, “ring for the
_sommelier_. I will come up.”
I told him briefly that I had made two attempts and failed, and he
nodded.
I waited till fairly late before I rang the bell, and my friend--his
name deserves mention in these records, it was Gustav Stheil, a worthy
fellow who, I understand, has since fallen into the hands of our
hateful enemy--responded very quickly.
“In half an hour,” he said, “come out of your room and go down the
service stairs. You will find them on the left. At three o’clock
to-morrow morning the chimney-sweeps are coming to clean the kitchen
flues. I will get an old suit of clothes for you and with a bag of
soot and your face blacked you can get out of the hotel without
anybody being the wiser.”
“And after that,” I said.
“I think I can get you a horse and cart. Drive to this address. It is
my brother-in-law’s--he is in the country--and lay low there for a day
or two and I will come and see you.”
He gave me a key and the address. It was in a place called Palmer’s
Green.
The plan worked admirably. I descended without interruption or
observation, made a change of clothes, and so covered my face with
soot that no person would have recognized me. Gustav let me out
through the service entrance and I found a light cart and a horse
waiting, with a boy sitting in the seat.
“He is my son. You can trust him. Good luck, Herr Heine.”
I took a £5 note, it was somewhat dirty, I am afraid, for I had to
rub it to make sure there were not two, a mistake which I had once
made--and slipping it into the honest fellow’s hands, I drove off.
Picton Street, Palmer’s Green, is a street of small houses, and that
house to which I went was poorly furnished but was good enough for my
purpose. I washed the disguising soot from my face and lay down on the
bed to finish my sleep.
It was not a comfortable day by any means, because there was no food
in the house, and I was ravenously hungry that night when Gustav came
bringing me provisions and busying himself at the kitchen fire
preparing me coffee.
“There is a cattle-ship leaving Avonmouth in two days’ time,” he said.
“A friend of mine will smuggle you on board and look after you on the
voyage over.”
“How am I to get to Avonmouth?” I demanded.
“By train,” said he, but I shook my head.
“All the trains will be watched. Can you get me a motor-bicycle?”
He promised to do his best and, late as the hour was, he went out to
inquire. He came back with a push-bicycle and told me I should have to
do the best I could with that for one stage of the journey, and that
he would arrange to have me met on the Reading-Newbury road by a good
patriot with a motor-car, but that it would be necessary for me to lie
in the bottom of the car and allow myself to be covered by rugs.
I will not describe the frights and apprehensions of that journey. I
cycled through the night and just before daybreak I reached the
Reading-Newbury road and came within sight of the tail lights of a
motor-car drawn up at the roadside.
The journey was not an uncomfortable one. I descended from the car on
the outskirts of Bristol and made my way to the place where friend
Gustav told me I should meet the sailor. It was a little bar and from
the description which Gustav had given me I was able to recognize my
friend, a stalwart patriot of Finland, who despised the British even
as he hated the barbarous and tyrannical Russian.
To recall even that night’s adventures and to place on record all the
events which occurred between my leaving my friend’s lodgings and my
arrival in the hold of the soon-leaving ship would occupy a volume.
How I climbed two walls, how I concealed myself in a railway truck
which was slowly shunted to the side of the ship with most
uncomfortable bumpings, how I stole up the slippery side of a coal
shute and lay for two hours amongst the pots and pans of the cook’s
galley, how I eventually swarmed down an interminable ladder into the
depths of the ship, an adequate account of these happenings might be
written by a Zola, but my poor pen can neither describe the agonies of
mind and body which marked my reaching the ship, nor the miseries of
soul which followed when the vessel drew clear from the wharf and
began to sway and heave, to jump and sink in the open seas.
I was hungry until I went on board ship, but the moment the vessel
started on its voyage I felt I would never eat again. I almost wished
I had not left England. For a day and a night, it seemed like two
months, or even two years, I endured the agonies of sea-sickness
beyond description. At the end of the second night my friend made his