The Foreign Office knocker was a colossal funereal wreath, of sooty
bronze laurel, that wakened hollow startling echoes in the tomb-like
void of a grim stone vestibule.
The vestibule lay at the end of a glass-roofed passage. On the right
was a window, behind the window gleamed an eye, belonging to the
Chancery janitor who had manipulated the door-levers. The door
banged behind P. C. Breagh, and his hope climbed a central flight of
stairs, gray-white marble, with bronze balusters badly in need of
cleaning. The staircase was covered with worn Turkey carpet, was
lighted from above by a green and gold cupola, and guarded by two
conventional figures of sphinxes, carved in shiny blackish stone.
All these details the eye of P. C. Breagh gleaned over the arm of the
Chancellor's door-porter, a seven-foot East Prussian, who wore plain
black official livery and carried no gold-headed staff, yet would
have snubbed the Rector of the University of Schwärz-Brettingen had
he presented himself in this unceremonious way.
"What does he want? The young man must know that His Excellency the
Royal Chancellor of the North German Confederation is engaged upon
State business--not to be approached by strangers having no
appointments or credentials previously obtained. An introduction to
His Excellency is indispensable. Where has the young man lived that
he does not know that?"
To which the young man thus addressed could only reiterate that he
deeply regretted the absence of a letter of introduction, and that
his credentials could only be displayed to His Excellency himself.
"It is likely!" The porter's forehead corrugated with suspicion:
"Thus is he approached by lunatics and dangerous persons, armed with
crazy petitions or lethal weap----"
"Bosh!"
The English word made the porter leap in his square-toed,
steel-buckled half-shoes. Recklessly P. C. Breagh went on:
"I'm neither a lunatic nor an assassin... It's just a case of
_Rettung aus Gefahr_. Two lives saved in the year 1842, and another
less than an hour ago.... Send that message to His Excellency, and
he'll see me, I believe!"
"He believes!" ... snorted the porter indignantly.
A little, stooping, shabbily dressed old man in a chocolate-colored
frock-coat with gilt buttons came shuffling across the vestibule
carrying a handful of papers, telegrams they appeared to be. He had
paused to listen to the latter part of the colloquy, holding his head
on one side, as though the better to focus his sharp gray glance on
the dusty, obtrusive young Englishman crowned with a sun-burnt Oxford
straw hat, attired in a well-worn brown Norfolk jacket,
knickerbockers and heather-mixture woolen stockings, and shod with
stout, black, leather-laced, hob-nailed boots.
"He believes!" exclaimed the porter as though referring to the
chocolate-coated old gentleman. "Will not the highly well-born Herr
Legation-Councillor order that I summon Grams and Engelberg, and have
this presumptuous person thrown into the street?"
"Softly, softly, my good Niederstedt!" advised the little
chocolate-coated old gentleman. He added, shuffling forward in his
immense black cloth boots over the slippery marble pavement of the
vestibule: "It has occurred to me that an utterance of this young
man's referred to an article that has been lost by His Excellency."
He added, fixing his sharp, gray, jackdaw's eyes on the face of the
young man: "Not valuable, but worth recovering--purely as a memento
of the past!..."
Said Carolan bluntly:
"I did refer to such an article. In fact, I have it on me!"
A finger and thumb, stained with snuff, dipped into the Councillor's
waistcoat pocket. He said, secretly conveying an order to the
watchful porter with a twirl of one jackdaw-eye:
"For a couple of thalers," he displayed the coin, "a box of smokable
cigars may be purchased in Berlin." He added, having cast for a
bite, and missing the rise: "Four thalers secures a really excellent
article!"
"Certainly," agreed P. C. Breagh.
"But for ten thalers," continued the old gentleman with forced
enthusiasm, coaxingly beckoning P. C. Breagh to approach nearer, "one
may smoke the choicest Havana brands. Give me the medal, fortunate
young man, and take the money. Such a sum is not often picked up in
the street!"
Said the young man, thus adjured, thrusting out his square chin
obstinately:
"If His Excellency consents to receive me, I will personally return
the medal to him. Be good enough to let him know as much."
"Unhappy young man! you realize not the greatness of your own
presumption!" expostulated the old gentleman, lifting up his warty
eyelids and puffing out his whiskered cheeks over his old-fashioned
black satin stock. "Is the Chancellor of the Realm to be--and at a
national crisis such as this?--at the beck and call of every English
traveler?" He added with warmth: "For I know you to be of that
nation, young man, though you speak German with some approach to
facility. Hence! Trouble here no more, but give me that medal
before you take your departure. Otherwise you will be forcibly
relieved of it by the hands of those who are accustomed to deal with
bumptious and obstinately-authority-defying persons of your
description...."
He added, as the arms of P. C. Breagh were pinioned in an iron grip
that clamped the elbows together behind the shoulder-blades, drew his
arms down, and pinioned his wrists: "He, he, he! That was a capital
stratagem of yours, my excellent Niederstedt! Really very smartly
done!"
The grim, sable-clad porter, in whose huge hands P. C. Breagh vainly
struggled, relaxed into a smile at the compliment. He said, as from
different points two stalwart liveried attendants appeared, hastening
to lend assistance:
"One has not served in the Prussian Guards for nothing. Once a
soldier, always a soldier! Will the highly well-born Herr
Legation-Councillor order Grams and Engelberg to hold this English
pig-dog while I take His Excellency's medal out of the fellow's
clothes?"
Snarled P. C. Breagh, livid with rage and glaring at the hostile
faces like a young male tiger-cat:
"Add robbery to violence if you think well!--you are four to one--and
in your own country. But as an English journalist I protest against
the outrage.... And the British Ambassador shall take the matter up!"
There was an instant's pause of indecision, during which P. C. Breagh
heard the opening of a door on the landing above. Then, with the
rustle of silk, and the soft fall of footsteps traversing heavy
carpets, a resonant voice called down the stair that led up between
the basalt Sphinxes:
"Meanwhile, you will allow me to apologize for the too-excessive zeal
of my servants. Do me the favor to come up here!"
The grip of the giant porter became flaccid as an infant's. The
voice spoke again from the summit of the stair:
"Herr Legation-Councillor, will you kindly see Madame to her
carriage? Au revoir, Madame, et bon voyage!"
A liquid voice responded:
"_Au revoir, Monseigneur_! At Paris--who knows!--before the Noël!"
She pulled down her veil, curtsied with demure elegance, and came
softly rustling down in pale-hued, trailing silks and laces, one
snow-white hand blazing with splendid emeralds lightly passing over
the bronze baluster-rail, the other holding the ivory and jeweled
stick of a dainty parasol.
"Madame!"
As by an afterthought he had called her. Midway in her descent the
lady turned to look up at him. He said, bending his powerful eyes
upon the face of sensuous loveliness:
"Pardon! but I believe--you are a native of France?"
The hint stung. She returned, with the stain of an angry blush
darkening the roses purchased from Rimmel; and a hard line showing
from the angle of each delicate nostril to the corner of the
deep-cut, scarlet lips:
"Monseigneur is correct ... I am a Frenchwoman.... But the heart is
free to choose its own country.... And--mine has learned to beat for
the Fatherland!..."
So exquisite was the cadence with which the words were uttered, that
P. C. Breagh heaved an involuntary sigh. The Legation-Councillor
took snuff--it may have been his way of showing emotion. The huge
porter sighed like a locomotive blowing off steam. His colleagues,
who, like himself, stood waiting in rigid military attitudes,
suffered no sympathy to appear in their wooden faces, yet may have
felt the more. But the heavy mask of their master was divested of
all expression.
"Even," said he, in his clear, resonant voice, "to the point of
outdoing Agamemnon, King of Argos. For he--but doubtless you are
familiar with the classic story!--merely sacrificed Iphigeneia on the
altar of the virginal Artemis...." He added with a tone of
intolerable irony: "It would have required fewer scruples and more
toughness than Agamemnon possessed to have offered up an only
daughter to Venus Libertina.... Only a woman of fashion would be
capable of such infamy.... Pardon! but you have dropped your
parasol!"
She had shuddered and winced as though his words had been
vitriol,--dropped from above--corroding her delicate flesh.... The
costly toy had fallen from her hand as the shudder had passed over
her, and rolled down the stair, as she continued her descent. P. C.
Breagh picked it up and handed it to her, as she set foot upon the
lowest step of the staircase. She looked at him, and bent her head.
And the beauty that had been hers a moment back was so strangely,
bleakly altered, he could scarcely repress an exclamation of dismay.
Thus Circe might have stared, thought P. C. Breagh, when her feeding
hogs leaped up as men frantic for vengeance. Thus Duessa, when the
spotted image of her own vileness was reflected in the glassy shield
of Truth.
The change in the boy's face stabbed Madame to consciousness. She
caught at her mauve tulle veil, forgetful that it was already
lowered, and tore it horizontally, so that her full white rounded
chin emerged with fantastic effect, like the moon through a bank of
storm-wrack. And then, with her head held high, she swept through
the vestibule in a frou-frou of silks and a gale of perfume, and down
the passage ending in the hall-door with the funereal knocker. The
Legation-Councillor trotted after her. One of the servants followed
him, and P. C. Breagh, mounting the staircase between the Sphinxes,
reached the landing and the summit of his ambitions in a breath.
"Time is scarce!" said the man who was meant when Prime Ministers and
political leader-writers referred to Prussia. "I have no more than
five minutes to spare, but you shall have them. Come this way! So
you are an English journalist! What paper do you represent, here in
Berlin? Sit down and tell me in as few words as possible!"
They were in a small but lofty room on the first-floor, hung with
green flock paper. It had a fireplace as well as a stove, and it was
a study, yet it contained no bookcases, only a couple of shelved
stands laden with pamphlets and papers of the official kind. The two
high windows--open and unblinded, though the green-shaded
reading-lamp upon the big carved mahogany writing-table was
alight--looked across the extensive gardens reaching to the
Königgratzer-Strasse. Beyond lay the Thiergarten, all black with
masses of people under the sultry red-gold sunset of middle July.
Perhaps you can see--like Scaramouch and the Sultan in the Eastern
story--P. C. Breagh, hot and dusty, flushed and rumpled, seated
opposite the most formidable personage of the day. He who dictated
to Kings and carried his Foreign Office trailing after him whenever
he chose to go campaigning, stood upon the skin of a white lioness
that served as hearthrug, and bit off the end of a huge cigar. He
looked bulkier than ever, and the powerful modeling of his
scant-haired temples, the splendid dome of the skull that housed the
keenest intellect in Europe, the masterful regard of the great eyes,
the sarcastic humor of the mouth shaded by the heavy mustache--traits
and features reproduced so constantly in the illustrated newspapers
of the period,--conveyed to Carolan the impression that a portrait
moved and spoke.
He was attired, as usually represented, in a dark blue, braided
military undress-frock, and trousers tightly strapped over boots with
cavalry spurs. An Order hung at his collar. As he threw back his
head in the act of lighting his cigar, P. C. Breagh recognized
it--the Cross of a Commander of the Red Eagle. While on the left
breast of the blue frock-coat was a small three-cornered rent in the
cloth from which the lost medal had been somehow wrenched away....
The sight of that tear in the dark blue-faced cloth sent the blood
racing to P. C. Breagh's forehead. He knew himself for a
presumptuous young man. He plunged his hand into the pocket of the
brown Norfolk jacket, and brought out the red-and-white enameled
decoration, and said, awkwardly laying it upon the edge of the big
writing-table, in the yellow radius thrown by the lighted lamp:
"I found this after Your Excellency had gone!"
"Hand it here!" said the heavy blue eyes imperiously. P. C. Breagh
got up and obeyed. The Chancellor's long arm shot out, and the
muscular white fingers whipped the medal from the palm that offered
it. Its owner assured himself by a brief scrutiny that the token had
sustained no injury, nodded, and re-pinned it on the breast of his
frogged military frock-coat. When this was accomplished,--the small
solution in the continuity of the cloth being covered by the
decoration,--he said, taking the cigar from his mouth, and knocking
off the long crisp ash upon the edge of the white earthenware stove:
"I should have been sorry to have lost that. But, while thanking you
for having restored it, let me say that had my servants taken it from
you by _force majeure_ they would not have been robbing you,--though
in law they might have been held guilty of a personal assault. Now
as to your business. You have had one of your five minutes! You
have just now said you are an English journalist. Does your business
concern the War?"
P. C. Breagh stammered--for the heavy eyes that rested on him seemed
to oppress him physically:
"To be frank with Your Excellency, I represent no newspaper. I have
some slight experience as a journalist, that is all,--War
Correspondence seems to me the highest branch of journalism,--and I
want, naturally, to fit myself to practice it. Therefore, as no
newspaper would employ me, I accepted a private commission given, out
of good-nature, by a friend, who has helped me before. And--my first
day in Berlin--I fell in with Your Excellency. I won't deny it
seemed a hopeful augury!"
"For the future! ... I understand!" said the Chancellor, sending out
a long cloud of cigar-smoke. "And in what way do you suggest that I
should help you?"
He put the question so bluntly that P. C. Breagh, in the effort to
answer, floundered and boggled. He had suddenly realized his own
insect-like insignificance in the eyes that were so intolerably heavy
in their regard. His own eyes sank to the neat, small, polished
boots of the big man. who stood smoking upon the white lioness-skin.
To the wearer of those boots he was merely a beetle who could be
crushed by them. The slight ironical smile that altered the curve of
the mustache said as much. But the Minister's tone was suave as he
went on:
"I think I have grasped the mainspring of your reasoning. To begin
with, you desire to accompany one of our armies on the campaign?"
"Yes--sir! Your Excellency, I should say!"
A lambent light of humor danced in the blue eyes that were bent on
him. The faint ironic smile broadened into a laugh. The Chancellor
took his cigar from his mouth, knocked off the ash, and said quite
pleasantly:
"And deducting from this premise, I conjecture that--because I have
been privileged to save you from being trampled to death under the
feet of the mob upon the Linden, you naturally take it for granted
that I would further your ambitions. Gratitude, one of your English
authors has admirably defined as a lively sense of favors to come...."
P. C. Breagh, who had been for some time shrinking in his own
estimation, suddenly saw himself in a newer, meaner light. His
torturer went on in mellifluous English:
"I do not know that any classical German author has defined gratitude
quite so cleverly. But we in Pomerania have a folk-story which may
be new to you." He drew sharply at his cigar, then laid it glowing
on the edge of the stove:
"You speak German quite passably, so I will tell it in our Pomeranian
dialect. If this is not done, the dialogue lacks salt. Thus it
goes: Wedig Knips, a peasant of Dalow, whose horses wanted watering,
went one winter's day to break the ice that covered the
drinking-hole.... 'Bless us! what have we here?' says he, when he
finds a kerl called Peders, frozen in the ice, with his head down and
his heels up. To make a long story short, he chops out Peders, takes
him home, and sets him up to thaw before the fire.... 'Now,
neighbor,' says he, 'go about your business!'--'How can I when my
jerkin is wet and my breeches are full of muddy water?'--Says Wedig:
'Poor devil! I will give you my Sunday trows!'--'And a jerkin too,
for you saved my life, you must remember!' ... Wedig scratches his
head, but hands over a jerkin with the rest. 'Come, now be off!'
says he. '"Off," with my under-pants and shirt all sopping! Do you
want to kill me--now that you have saved my life?'--So Wedig pulls a
wry face, but hands over the underclothes.... 'Put these on and be
off, we are busy people in this house!' 'What,' says Peders,
'without paying me the value of the good duds spoiled in your
stinking horsepond?'--'Must I pay?' ... 'Certainly, you have saved my
life! Nobody asked you!--I had thrown myself in because I was tired
of living. Now it is your bounden duty to make things tolerable for
me!'--'How make things tolerable?'--'To begin with, I want a cottage
to live in, and a plot of kail-ground to it, and a wee pickle
furniture.'--'But I have only this cottage, and the bits of sticks
you see!'--'Well, give me them! Didn't you save my life?' ... Wedig
gets confused, sees no way out of it. 'The devil!' says he, 'this is
a nice affair! However, take them, man!'--'I will take them,' says
Peders, 'but you must give me the cart and plow, the cow and the two
horses?'--'_Himmelkreuzbombenelement_! Have I got to give you all
that because I saved your life?'--'Ay, undoubtedly!--and you must let
me have your wife into the bargain. It's your bounden duty----' 'I
know! because I saved your life! Shan't make such a mistake next
time, you may be sure of that!'--'No, but you did, so to grumble is
no use.'--'Thunder! my old girl will make a terrible
squawking.'--'Not when you have explained how you saved my life!' ...
Wedig scratches his head, rubs his chin, gets a bright idea....
'Help me to explain to the wife, do you agree?'--'Ay, of course!
What is it you want me to say to her?'--'Oh! say nothing. Only let
me show her exactly how I got you out of the
water-hole.'--'Willingly!'--'But to do that I must put you back just
a minute!'--'Put me back?'--'Only for a minute.' 'Promise when I cry
"_Genug!_" you'll take me out directly!'--'All right! Come along!'
So Wedig takes Peders by the legs and sticks him back where he found
him, driving his head well down into the mud at the bottom of the
pond.... So--he never cried '_Genug!_' and Wedig left him there....
The hard blue eyes that had been all alight with laughter, the
heavily molded face that had unexpectedly proved itself capable of
comic changes, the voice that, as the droll dialogue proceeded, had
conveyed with slight, admirably restrained mimicry the complacent
assurance of the knave and the dull bewilderment of the victim,
changed, became the Minister's again. He said, in his smoothest
tones:
"I cannot put you back into the crush of the crowd, because by an
appeal to its loyal feelings and domestic instincts I was so
fortunate as to disperse it. What I might do, of course, is to
deliver you to the tender mercies of my servants, to whom,--when you
brought back the medal,--you blustered about delivering it to me
personally. This not-exactly-very-clever ruse would have failed--had
I not happened to step upon the scene. Your English policy is often
more fortunate than masterly.... Fortune certainly has favored you
to-day. Not in the fulfillment of your ambition to accompany a
Prussian Army to the field of action--that is a wish impossible to
gratify. For we put up a general defense against the presence of any
save the most highly accredited Correspondents, and the War Minister
will only grant Legitimations to two or three. But in obtaining for
an obscure paragraphist a special interview with the Prussian
Minister for Foreign Affairs on the eve of a world-crisis, Fortune
has certainly favored you. Go back now to your hotel and write your
article; then telegraph to Fleet Street and make your own terms!"
"I'll be shot if I do!" choked out P. C. Breagh, flaming scarlet to
his hair-roots. "And I thank Your Excellency for a lesson, and I beg
to take my leave!"
"Why does he go? Why does he talk about a lesson?" asked the broad,
cynical gaze that rested on him.
As though he had spoken aloud, P. C. Breagh answered:
"Because I set my personal advantage above common gratitude and
honor. Your Excellency lost the medal in pulling me out of the
scrimmage at the risk of your own life, and when I found the thing--I
used it,--exactly as you say! True, you'd snubbed me when I'd tried
to thank you! yet I did believe your having saved me might help me in
some way.... But it would be better to cadge in the dustbins for a
living, than make money out of information gained by trickery. And I
apologize sincerely for having been such a cad!"
"'Cad' is the slang for vulgarian, is it not?" He added: "Yes, they
inculcate a code of honor at the English public schools."
The voice grated. P. C. Breagh hated its owner. But he answered,
looking squarely in the bulldog face that bent on him:
"They do, and I am sorry to have broken at least one of its articles.
May I wish Your Excellency good afternoon!"
The speaker bowed, not clumsily, and turned to quit the room, when a
ferocious growl behind him, and the scraping of heavy claws on
slippery parquet pulled round his head. Savage, red-rimmed eyes
challenged, and the bared gleaming fangs of a huge boarhound couched
at length under a wrought-iron sofa at the west end of the longish
room menaced the stranger's throat:
"Down, Tyras!" ordered the Minister harshly, and with a deep groan
the heavy brute dropped its nose between its forepaws, and lay still,
shaken by occasional rumbling growls.
"You see," said the Minister, laughing, "that I can afford to
dispense with the services of detectives when this good servant is at
hand. Come, sit down another moment.... I am really willing to help
you.... You have not come so badly as you imagine out of the affair!"
"But I have said I will not write the article, and I am intruding on
Your Excellency's privacy." The soul of P. C. Breagh yearned for the
freedom of the streets. To be shut up in the study of the greatest
of living Ministers,--set beak-to-beak with the man who was occupying
the attention of Europe--the master-mind in statecraft, who used
blunt truth as a weapon to beat down diplomatic falsehood, and
comported himself amidst the striving parties of his national
Parliament as a giant surrounded by dwarfs;--had seemed, previously,
a thing to boast of--a dazzling feather in the cap of achievement.
Now it was no triumph, but a torture. He writhed under those keen,
amused, analytical glances, knowing himself worthy to be so despised.
"I have twenty minutes in which to refresh and rest, not having eaten
or sat down since ten o'clock this morning. You have had ten--I will
give you another five. Sit down again there!"
Tyras emitted another savage growl as though in support of his
owner's authority, and P. C. Breagh, loathing his host even more
intensely than he hated P. C. Breagh, obeyed the imperious hand that
pointed to the chair he had vacated, and sat down, white-gilled now,
and sick with longing to be out of this presence into which he had
thrust himself--beyond the reach of the icy, contemptuous tones and
the arrogant, domineering eyes.
The Chancellor had turned away to pull at one of the red woolen
bell-ropes that hung on either side of the fire-place, shabby things,
threadbare with use, like the Persian carpet that was trodden out in
paths by the spurred feet of the man who stood for Prussia; worn like
the leather cushions of the great wrought-iron sofa, under which the
great man's faithful attendant couched, with one eye on the familiar
face, and the other on the strange one that might mask an enemy.
Above the sofa, beneath a trophy of fencing-swords and masks,
reigning over a rack supporting a number of red and white military
undress-caps in all stages of wear, and another containing a
collection of pipe-sticks and unmounted pipe-heads, hung the
half-length oil-portrait of a beautiful girl in ball-dress. Below
was a large-framed photograph of a noble-looking woman, with a mass
of black braided hair framing a long, serious face, with grave dark
eyes, thick straight nose, and full-curved, humorous lips recalling
published engravings of the English author of "Adam Bede." Probably
it was the Countess--that same Fräulein Johanna Puttkammer who had
been hugged under the gaze of her assembled family. She looked
strong, serene and courageous, fit--thought P. C. Breagh--to be the
wife of a man destined by Fate and framed by nature to become a
leader of men. Also, she looked like a woman who could love with
old-world, elemental, forceful passion. She had bestowed such love
upon this man--who had begun life as a roaring, hard-drinking young
Pomeranian squire, well worthy of the sobriquet of "Mad Bismarck,"
bestowed upon him by his native county.
She had sifted the gold out of the sand.... She had never openly
displayed her influence.... All the same it had been there, guiding,
sustaining, controlling.... He had written to her, years after, when
he had begun in earnest to be a power in politics.... "_You see what
you have made me! What should I have done without you?_"
Arrogant, harsh, domineering, merciless, as his enemies had reason to
term him, there must be something noble in the man who had written
like that. He was said to be a kind, if not over-indulgent, father
to his two big sons, even then serving as private soldiers in a
well-known regiment of Dragoon Guards, and to be worshiped by his
daughter, a feminine copy of himself, if that oil-portrait were
anything like....
"Have you taken any food to-day?..."
The interrogation brought P. C. Breagh's head round. A servant must
have appeared, and gone, and come again in answer to the
bell-summons. For on a clear corner of an étagère otherwise piled
with official papers and pamphlets, stood a tray, bearing glasses and
a vast crystal jug of creaming golden-hued nectar with miniature
icebergs floating on the surface; and several dishes of rolls, split,
profusely buttered, and lined with something savory, the sight and
scent of which awoke tender yearnings within....
"No!--I thought not. Drink this and eat some of these sandwiches. I
myself have fasted longer than is agreeable!"
And a huge goblet of the ice-cold creaming nectar was handed to P. C.
Breagh, who immediately realized that his tongue and palate were dry
as the sun-baked asphalt of the Linden.
"_Prosit!_" said his host, and drained his glass, adding, as the
guest duly responded according to the classic formula and drank: "You
are University-bred, I see! What Alma Mater had the preference?
Schwärz-Brettingen! ... Ah, they thought very badly of me there about
the time of the Luxembourg Garrison Question. Nearly all the little
foxes barked at me as I passed through. However, we are now
reconciled, and more than a thousand of the students have applied to
serve as volunteers in this war,--there's an item of interest for
your paper!--though you have Quixotically determined, you say, not to
make use of any information that I may be enabled to offer you. All
Quixotism is weakness, in my estimation; a man, according to my code,
should pursue his advantage where he finds it irrespective of ethical
laws or religious prejudice. Now eat some of these stuffed rolls.
Here are caviar, smoked goose-breast, Westphalian ham and
liver-sausage. You see I set you an example!--and a would-be
campaigner should be able to sleep soundly under any and all
conditions; and eat whenever anything eatable is obtainable, with
unflinching appetite!"
The savory rolls were vanishing under the speaker's repeated attacks,
and the golden tide in the great crystal decanter was sinking
visibly. He said, lifting and holding it so that between the light
of the green-shaded table-lamp and the red glow of sunset pouring
through the unblinded western windows, the liquid in it shone ruby
and emerald....
"Come, let me fill your glass again, and then I shall send you about
your business. Absolved, you understand, from that ridiculous vow of
yours--and with a magic talisman to enable you to use your eyes."
The steady hand set down the now emptied jug, and took from the red
marble mantelshelf a small and perfectly-finished pair of
field-glasses, covered in black Russia leather and mounted in ivory.
An inlaid silver shield bore a monogram, "O. v. B.-S.," and a date.
"You can shoot with a pistol?--Good!--then I should advise you to buy
one, if possible. A revolver of the American Colt's
invention--six-barreled--a feature which increases weight in
proportion as it adds to effectiveness--would be useful. Indeed, I
carry one myself! One day they will turn out such things with one
barrel--but we must wait for that, I am afraid. Here is the case
belonging to the glasses, with a strap to sling it round your
shoulders--and one thing more I will give you--though I am less
certain about its ultimate usefulness!"
The writing-table stood in the middle of the room. He moved to it
with one of his long, heavy strides, sat down--dipped quill in
ink--and penned a few lines rapidly, glancing at the sunburned,
freckled face as though to refresh his memory--holding up an
imperious baud for silence when the recipient of the field-glasses
seemed about to protest against the value of the gift.
"Your nationality?--'British.' Name, 'Patrick Carolan
Breagh--pronounced "Brack." Your height?--Be very accurate. One
half-inch too much or too little might bring you into trouble of a
serious kind. 'Five feet nine' ... you promise to be taller. Your
age ... twenty-three last January.... Shoulders broad, good muscular
development. Your hair ... Reddish, is it not? ... You have gray
eyes with what the French would call _taches_ of yellow in them.
Complexion fresh, considerably freckled. Nose short and straight,
ears small, teeth white and regular. Chin square and with a
cleft--weaklings have not such chins!..."
He added a brief sentence to the hastily scrawled description, signed
and blotted it, rose and came to P. C. Breagh and thrust it in his
hand.
"Do not thank me! It is my passing whim to help you--regard it in
that light. As to this pass, safe-conduct or whatever one may call
it--it may forward you or hinder you.... _Potztausend_! I am a mere
officer of Cuirassiers of the _Landwehr_--General by courtesy--not
Generalissimo! ... You, Bucher! ... What is there wanted now?..."
For a scratch on the door-panel had been succeeded by the flurried
entrance of the little Councillor of Legation, breathing hard, and
red in the face. He gabbled in Spanish:
"Pardon, Your Excellency, that I enter without knocking. But His
Highness the Crown Prince is coming upstairs!..."
And almost in the same instant, as Tyras uttered a deep "wuff" of
friendly greeting, the open doorway was filled by the stateliest and
most martial figure in Europe, and a pleasant, manly voice said:
"Not finding you in your official quarters below-stairs, I ventured,
my dear Count Bismarck, to follow you to your private study. It is a
question of whether Le Sourd delivered the war-gauntlet from Paris,
or---- Pardon! I had no idea that you were not alone!"
The tall, broad-chested, golden-bearded Viking in the undress uniform
of the First Regiment of Guards touched his cap in acknowledgment of
P. C. Breagh's respectful salutation. Then, as in obedience to a
glance from the Minister, the lean claws of the little Councillor
closed upon P. C. Breagh's arm, and he was plucked from the room, the
Prince asked, glancing after the queer couple:
"May one ask who your young friend is?" and got answer:
"It is only an English schoolboy, Your Royal Highness,--who thirsts
to try his hand at War-correspondence--having had a few articles
printed in some London rag. And this being so, he applies to me, who
am the least leisured person in His Majesty's dominions---for a
moment of my spare time!..."
"It is annoying, my dear Count," answered the mellow-voiced Viking,
"but cannot your people keep such troublesome persons outside?"
The Minister returned, laughing:
"He caught me on my doorstep,--as the polecat waylaid the
badger!--and as he brought back a decoration I had lost, and which
he, luckily for himself, had found!--I could not refuse him a
minute's interview. But with regard to Your Royal Highness's
question of an instant since--Le Sourd, the French Chargé d'Affaires,
placed the Emperor's declaration of war in my hands about an hour
after the opening of Council in the Palace to-day."
Said the Prince:
"Unhappy man! driven to risk the loss of an Empire that he may
continue to rule a nation of enemies. One can hardly doubt the
issue--yet at what cost of lives shall we not purchase victory!"
Bismarck said in harsh, metallic tones, bending his brows upon the
Prince, who all the world knew loved peace, and loathed the thought
of the red months of strife that were approaching:
"Your Royal Highness is aware that I look upon this war as necessary,
and that I should not have returned to Varzin without giving in my
resignation to His Majesty had the issue been other than what it
is.... As for this weak-backed Napoleon, this Pierrot stuffed with
bran,--who is kept in an upright attitude only by the slaps I deal
him on one cheek and the buffets the Monarchists and the
Revolutionists lend him on the other!--it will be better for him to
meet his end by a bullet or a sword-thrust on the banks of the Rhine,
than to be blown to pieces by some bomb in the streets of Paris, or
to die of apoplexy in the bedroom of some nymph of the
theater-coulisses!"
He drew himself to his full height and, folding his powerful arms
upon his breast, said, looking full at the Prince, who had declined a
seat and who was standing near the window, his hair and beard glowing
golden-red in the full rays of the setting sun:
"Your Royal Highness speaks of the effusion of blood. I am of those
who have drawn the sword in the service of their King and country. I
do not regard war from the point of view of the man who stops at
home. More than this! ... His Majesty is not the only father who has
a son serving in our Army.... I have two. Herbert and Bill...."
A pale purplish tint suffused his heavy face and crept to the summit
of his rugged forehead. His fierce blue eyes dimmed. He said, in
slightly muffled tones:
"I am not given to pompous phrases. Yet if German unity can only be
brought about by a great national war waged against our near-hand
enemy--our old, cunning, sleepless foe--I hail that war, even though
it leave me without posterity! If the gulf that divides the Northern
and Southern sections of the Fatherland can be better bridged by my
boys' dead bodies ... I would give them as freely as I would give my
own!"
A spasm twisted his under-jaw. He said, laughing in his stern way:
"Three long-legged Bismarcks should equal one eighteen-foot-seven
plank. And I speak not only for myself. My wife would echo me."
Said the Prince in his cordial way:
"My mother has a great admiration for Her Excellency. My wife, too,
speaks of her as a woman of antique nobility of mind." He continued,
with a smile that curved the bold, frank mouth under the glittering
mustache into lines of exceeding pleasantness: "And her personal
solicitude for Your Excellency pleases my father much!"
The heavy face that opposed him lost its dogged, set expression. The
Minister broke into a hearty laugh.
"So! I have been waiting to hear somewhat of that voluble telegram
of hers to Abeken: '_Pray ask the King not to bother Count Bismarck
about State matters just now, when he is taking Carlsbad waters for
the gout!_'
"Ha, ha!" The Prince joined gaily in the laughter. "The Councillor
was working with the King and myself, when he received that wire. It
came with a sheaf of others--he read it aloud without a change of
expression..... Then you should have seen his face ... a study for a
comedian...."
The Minister said, still smiling:
"My wife pours many confidences of the domestic sort into Abeken's
bosom. She said to him during the Constitutional Conflict of '66 ...
'Bismarck cares really nothing at all about these stupid political
matters. A cabbage well grown, or a fir-tree well planted, means
more to him than the Indemnity Bill.' Yet when the Bill passed she
was all-triumphant. And to-day she remarked to me: 'War is horrible
to me on principle. But it would be equally horrible to me if you
said to me to-morrow: "_All is over!--we do not fight!..._"' I made
her angry by telling her that one might parody in application to the
mental attitude of her sex the lines of the English Poet Laureate,
and say:
"Her reason rooted in unreason stood."
"When our German women become too highly educated," said the
fair-haired giant, "love will take wing for a land where the culture
of the feminine intellect is still unpopular. We males hold our
supremacy on the very insecure tenure of a carefully inculcated
belief that, being men, we must be wise!"
Said the Minister:
"There is a Pomeranian proverb bearing on that question. '_In the
house where a strip of green hide hangs handy, the wife will never
know better than her old man!_'"
"Unless she happened to be the stronger of the two, bodily as well as
mentally, dear Count," the Prince rejoined; "in which case the
husband would be well advised to accept the inferior place. For
against brute-strength and brains combined, there is no remedy but
patience."
Bismarck retorted:
"Possibly--but what if the muscular brute with the brains possesses a
share of patience also? There is nothing like knowing how to wait--I
assure Your Royal Highness!"
The Prince looked at the great figure topped by the stolid bulldog
face, and recalled something that the English Princess, his wife, had
said to him that day:
"This fearful struggle will set the coping-stone upon that man's
colossal labors and ambitions!"
But he was all grave, gracious cordiality as they passed from the
lighter vein of talk to serious questions, though, as he took leave
of the Minister at the hall-door and stepped into his waiting
carriage, he said to himself mournfully:
"Alix was right. He has what he has waited and schemed for. To
light this international conflagration he would have ventured down to
fetch a burning brand from the nethermost Hell. And what oceans of
blood will be poured out before the fire may be extinguished--none
knows but God alone!"