The yellow book: an illustrated quarterly (5.1895)

The Pleasure-Pilgrim

By Ella D’Arcy

I

Campbell was on his way to Schloss Altenau, for a second
quiet season with his work. He had spent three profitable
months there a year ago, and now he was devoutly hoping for a
repetition of that good fortune. His thoughts outran the train ;
and long before his arrival at the Hamelin railway Station, he was
enjoying his welcome by the Ritterhausens, was revelling in the
ease and comfort of the old castle, and was contrasting the pleasures
of his home-coming—for he looked upon Schloss Altenau as a sort
of temporary home—with his recent cheerless experiences of
lodging-houses in London, hotels in Berlin, and stränge indifferent
faces everywhere. He thought with especial satisfaction of the
Maynes, and of the good talks Mayne and he would have together,
late at night, before the great fire in the hall, after the rest of the
household had gone to bed. He blessed the adverse circumstances
which had turned Schloss Altenau into a boarding-house, and
had reduced the Freiherr Ritterhausen to eke out his shrunken
revenues by the reception, as paying guests, of English and
American pleasure-pilgrims.

He rubbed the blurred window-pane with the fringed end of the

strap