第10章

"When did what die? Mother?"

"No, no, the child."

"What child?" The indignation of the official is almost picturesque.

"All I want to do," explains your friend, "is to register a letter.""A what?"

"This letter, I want--"

The window is slammed in his face.When, ten minutes later he does reach the right wicket--the bureau for the registration of letters, and not the bureau for the registration of infantile deaths--it is pointed out to him that the letter either is sealed or that it is not sealed.

I have never been able yet to solve this problem.If your letter is sealed, it then appears that it ought not to have been sealed.

If, on the other hand, you have omitted to seal it, that is your fault.In any case, the letter cannot go as it is.The continental official brings up the public on the principle of the nurse who sent the eldest girl to see what Tommy was doing and tell him he mustn't.

Your friend, having wasted half an hour and mislaid his temper for the day, decides to leave this thing over and talk to the hotel porter about it.Next to the Burgomeister, the hotel porter is the most influential man in the continental town: maybe because he can swear in seven different languages.But even he is not omnipotent.

[The Traveller's one Friend.]

Three of us, on the point of starting for a walking tour through the Tyrol, once sent on our luggage by post from Constance to Innsbruck.

Our idea was that, reaching Innsbruck in the height of the season, after a week's tramp on two flannel shirts and a change of socks, we should be glad to get into fresh clothes before showing ourselves in civilized society.Our bags were waiting for us in the post-office:

we could see them through the grating.But some informality--I have never been able to understand what it was--had occurred at Constance.

The suspicion of the Swiss postal authorities had been aroused, and special instructions had been sent that the bags were to be delivered up only to their rightful owners.

It sounds sensible enough.Nobody wants his bag delivered up to anyone else.But it had not been explained to the authorities at Innsbruck how they were to know the proper owners.Three wretched-looking creatures crawled into the post-office and said they wanted those three bags--"those bags, there in the corner"--which happened to be nice, clean, respectable-looking bags, the sort of bags that anyone might want.One of them produced a bit of paper, it is true, which he said had been given to him as a receipt by the post-office people at Constance.But in the lonely passes of the Tyrol one man, set upon by three, might easily be robbed of his papers, and his body thrown over a precipice.The chief clerk shook his head.He would like us to return accompanied by someone who could identify us.The hotel porter occurred to us, as a matter of course.Keeping to the back streets, we returned to the hotel and fished him out of his box.

"I am Mr.J.," I said: "this is my friend Mr.B.and this is Mr.S."The porter bowed and said he was delighted.

"I want you to come with us to the post-office," I explained, "and identify us."The hotel porter is always a practical man: his calling robs him of all sympathy with the hide-bound formality of his compatriots.He put on his cap and accompanied us back to the office.He did his best: no one could say he did not.He told them who we were: they asked him how he knew.For reply he asked them how they thought he knew his mother: he just knew us: it was second nature with him.

He implied that the question was a silly one, and suggested that, as his time was valuable, they should hand us over the three bags and have done with their nonsense.

They asked him how long he had known us.He threw up his hands with an eloquent gesture: memory refused to travel back such distance.

It appeared there was never a time when he had not known us.We had been boys together.

Did he know anybody else who knew us? The question appeared to him almost insulting.Everybody in Innsbruck knew us, honoured us, respected us--everybody, that is, except a few post-office officials, people quite out of society.

Would he kindly bring along, say; one undoubtedly respectable citizen who could vouch for our identity? The request caused him to forget us and our troubles.The argument became a personal quarrel between the porter and the clerk.If he, the porter, was not a respectable citizen of Innsbruck, where was such an one to be found?

[The disadvantage of being an unknown Person.]

Both gentlemen became excited, and the discussion passed beyond my understanding.But I gathered dimly from what the clerk said, that ill-natured remarks relative to the porter's grandfather and a missing cow had never yet been satisfactorily replied to: and, from observations made by the porter, that stories were in circulation about the clerk's aunt and a sergeant of artillery that should suggest to a discreet nephew of the lady the inadvisability of talking about other people's grandfathers.

Our sympathies were naturally with the porter: he was our man, but he did not seem to be advancing our cause much.We left them quarrelling, and persuaded the head waiter that evening to turn out the gas at our end of the table d'hote.

The next morning we returned to the post-office by ourselves.The clerk proved a reasonable man when treated in a friendly spirit.He was a bit of a climber himself.He admitted the possibility of our being the rightful owners.His instructions were only not to DELIVERUP the bags, and he himself suggested a way out of the difficulty.

We might come each day and dress in the post-office, behind the screen.It was an awkward arrangement, even although the clerk allowed us the use of the back door.And occasionally, in spite of the utmost care, bits of us would show outside the screen.But for a couple of days, until the British Consul returned from Salzburg, the post-office had to be our dressing room.The continental official, Iam inclined to think, errs on the side of prudence.