"The Crown Prince," wrote P. C. Breagh, "and the Red Prince--as
people nickname Friedrich Karl of Prussia, in virtue of his
partiality for the crimson uniform of his regiment, the Ziethen
Hussars,--have departed amidst scenes of overwhelming enthusiasm, to
take over the respective commands of the Third and Second Army Corps.
On July 31st, at half-past-five noon, the very day on which I pen
these lines, the aged Sovereign drove in an open landau drawn by two
superb black Hungarian horses to join his Ministers and his Chief of
the Great Staff at the station, where waited the special train
destined to convey the venerable Commander-in-Chief of the Field
Armies of Germany to the immediate Seat of War."
There was a jolt, the pencil bucked furiously, and the writer's skull
came smartly into contact with the uncushioned seat-back of the
gray-painted, semi-partitioned railway transport-car, in which, with
some forty blue-uniformed infantrymen of the Prussian Guard, P. C.
Breagh was being hurried toward the Rhine frontier, in a din so
comprehensive that you could only make your neighbor hear by putting
your mouth to his ear and bawling, and in an atmosphere so thick with
dust and smells, of varied degrees of intensity and picturesqueness,
that you drew it into your lungs in gulps and exhaled it with
sensible effort.
The partly-glazed windows did not let down, bars began where the
glass left off, and therefore the N.C.O.'s of the eighth of a company
appropriated to themselves the corner-seats. Sandwiched between two
large and heated warriors, with his unstrapped knapsack on his knee,
and his elbows jammed immovably against his lower ribs, P. C. Breagh
abandoned the impulse to rub his bump, and continued to write, using
the old straw hat which crowned the knapsack as a support for a
notebook.
"The Queen," he went on, "who was evidently laboring under the
influence of emotion, accompanied His Majesty. A thunderstorm
coruscated and detonated overhead as the Royal salute of guns crashed
out, and King Wilhelm's subjects greeted him with round upon round of
enthusiastic '_Hoch's_.' The object of their acclamations kept
continually smoothing his heavy white mustache with the right,
ungloved hand, between the salutes with which he acknowledged the
plaudits of his people--a characteristic gesture of the veteran
monarch when..."
The pencil faltered. "Under the influence of emotion" could not be
used again, because it had already done duty for the Queen, whose
eyes, poor lady! had been red with crying. P. C. Breagh knocked off
to sharpen his pencil and read over what he had set down.
"Coruscated and detonated" pleased him, though to have said that the
thunderstorm had growled and blazed would have been a good deal
nearer the mark. And "characteristic gesture" was loftier language
than "familiar trick" or "habit." Mr. Knewbit would have snorted at
it, it was true, but this was not one of Mr. Knewbit's stipulated-for
letters, "describing in a style readable by plain, ordinary, everyday
people, what you've seen and heard, and felt, and smelled."
Still, one could not hope to please everybody--and this was a
descriptive article--not a chatty news-letter. When complete, it
would be forwarded to the Editor of a Leading Daily, with the brief
intimation that more like it might be had--at a price. That it would
draw commissions, P. C. Breagh believed implicitly. There was a
stately stodginess about the style that could not fail to impress.
So he continued as "_Die Wacht am Rhein_" broke out once more; and
the deep bass notes emitted by his burly right-hand neighbor tickled
his ribs and made him goosefleshy.
"The aged monarch seemed weary, it appeared to me."
"Ach, ach! but the old man looks tired!" people in the front had
holloaed to one another. All the week-end one had seen the King
bowling up, and down, and round-about Berlin in his little one-horse
carriage, with a single, mounted orderly-officer in attendance;
giving out colors, addressing the regiments, conversing in short,
soldierly sentences with the field-officers in command.
"Baron von Moltke, Chief of the Great General Staff," went on the
pencil, "the War-Minister General von Roon, and the Federal
Chancellor and Minister-President General Count von
Bismarck-Schönhausen, with the personnel of the Great Headquarters
Staff and the mobilized Foreign Office, received His Majesty at the
railway-station, tastefully adorned with black-and-white bunting,
carpeted with red, and garlanded with roses, said to be the favorite
floral emblem of the septuagenarian potentate...."
It could not be denied by P. C. Breagh,--the painfully hammered-out
paragraphs smacked of the sample supplied by Mr. Knewbit for
avoidance. "Sham technicality and sentimental slumgullion," he
seemed to hear that rigorous critic saying, so loudly and in such a
pouncing manner, that P. C. Breagh hurriedly scratched out the
sentence about the floral emblems, though "septuagenarian potentate"
must be reserved for use later, as offering a refreshing change from
"aged King" and "veteran" or "venerable monarch." "Hoary-headed
Ruler" would come in usefully by-and-by....
_Bump--bump--jolt, ker-link-ker-lank ker-lunk!_ ...
The two powerful engines, pulling a train-load of fully two-thirds of
a regiment at fullest war-strength, were slowing up at a station: ...
A roar of voices kept continually at crescendo hailed the arrival.
Another roar, mixed with fragments of patriotic song, replied. The
platform presented a sea of heads of both sexes, backed by an
imposing array of shelves, decorated with foliage, dangling lamps and
national bunting; surmounted by a bust of the King between busts of
Moltke and Bismarck, and literally groaning under piles of sausages,
loaves, cheeses, oleaginous packages of sandwiches and pastry--rows
of gilt and silver-foiled wine-bottles, and then more rows....
Barrels of genuine Berlin beer, adorned with the Hohenzollern colors,
stood hospitably ready to replenish glasses and mugs. Filled with
the amber nectar, trays of these, suspended from the shoulders of
stalwart youths, wearing Red Cross arm-badges, and
white-muslin-draped maidens adorned with crimson sashes, waited to
quench the thirst of Prussia's soldier sons. And taking in the
condition of things at a glance, said one of the two N.C.O.'s in
charge of the party:
"_Himmeldonnerwetter!_ ... Lads, there seems no help for it. We have
got to tuck in again!"
And simultaneously with the bass response: "At your service, Herr
Sergeant!" and almost before the slow-going locomotives stopped,
panting Samaritans hurled themselves upon the carriages, and arms
ending in hands proffering packages of comestibles and tobacco,
bottles of beer or frothing glasses, or packets of cigars, were
thrust in between the window-bars, until every man's jaws were busy,
and every man's hands were laden.... Until even the modestly
retiring P. C. Breagh had been compelled to accept a mighty hunk of
iced plum-cake and a giant package of liver-sandwiches, and forced to
empty a foaming beaker of brown Bavarian.
"Why not, why not, when they have plenty for everyone?" hiccoughed a
stalwart private, who had emptied many mugs: "Won't every fellow of
the regiment find his double-pint waiting him, when the next train
comes up?"
There was plenty for everyone. Not only the troop-train that would
follow this, containing the odd thousand rank-and-file and the rest
of the regimental officers, would find the "cool blonde" and the
"dark brunette," the savory snack and the soothing weed, as ready for
the alleviation of possible requirements as they had been at every
halting-place--the City of Hanover severely excepted--since the huge
send-off at Berlin on the afternoon of the previous day.
Every class contributed to the refreshment of the soldiers. Wealthy
brewers sent drayloads of barrels, rich aristocrats gave wines from
their cellars. The bakers bestowed bread, the pork-butchers
contributed hams and sausages, the tobacconists cigars and
pipe-tobacco. While the cook baked cakes with her perquisites of
lard and dripping: and the servant-maid took from her scant savings
for the purchase of a gross of match-boxes, to distribute at the
station when the military trains came in.
Poor was the wight who could be liberal in nothing. And thus thought
the little old woman when she cooked her dozen ginger-snaps.
She was a tiny little monkey-faced old peasant, in a frilled white
mutch, jaded red shawl, blue apron and brown-striped drugget
petticoat; and she stood quite alone in a clear space left upon the
platform of a little country station, as the eager philanthropists
about her crowded to lavish hospitality on the inmates of the
incoming train. As the pastry and the cakes, the coffee, beer, and
spirits flowed in at the windows and down the throats of the wearers
of the blue, white-faced Guard uniforms, this little old woman made
no effort to offer her ginger-snaps, which were ranged in three rows
of four on a dingy white cloth in a little broken basket, and were
palpably melting under the rays of an ardent July sun.
Her timidity and her feebleness had kept her back, but when the
Colonel in command issued the order to entrain, and the officers who
had clanked in pairs up and down the platform, good-humoredly
answering the questions of old ladies, and gallantly returning the
admiring glances of young ones, accepting a leaf-full of fruit here,
or a glass of Rhine wine or a cigarette there,--began to take their
places,--she mustered courage to hold up her basket to a dandy young
subaltern and murmur: "Please to take!"
Next moment--the dandy could not have meant it,--but as he pushed
away the extended basket, and swung round upon his heel, his silver
sword-knot caught in the frayed cloth or broken wicker-work, and down
went the basket, and the snaps were spilt upon the ground....
"Thou dear God!" the little old woman cried in anguish. "_Ach--ach!_
the good, the delicious ginger-snaps! ... Who now will eat them?
_Ach!--Ach!_"
And up to her poor eyes went her blue apron. It was a terrible
tragedy to her. Some people pitied her. Others were heartless
enough to laugh after the fashion of the blond, red-lipped
officer--and to laugh once more at the summary fashion of his
setting-down.
For a terrible, rasping voice said, speaking behind the dandy
subaltern, and full four inches above the level of his ear:
"Under-Lieutenant Fahle will remedy the damage done by his
carelessness before he resumes his place in the train!"
Thus the train waited while the offender, blood-red with rage and
confusion, picked up the sticky brown cakes with his snowily gloved
fingers, and replaced them in the broken basket, amidst the little
old woman's humble apologies, and entreaties that the gracious
gentleman would not trouble himself. When the Colonel, owner of the
rasping voice above referred to, in conjunction with a bushy scarlet
beard and bristling mustaches, a stately height of six feet four
inches, a regulation waist, and three rows of decorations, performed
an act of bravery for which he deserved another medal still. For,
selecting the snap that looked cleanest, this dauntless warrior
gravely took it between his thumb and finger, bit a piece out, and
declared it excellent. Then, amidst the rapturous plaudits of the
onlookers, he solemnly saluted the twittering old lady, and swung
himself loftily back into his carriage, thundering out once more the
order:
"Entrain!"
Conceive the banging of doors, the bumping and clanking, the cheers
and the tears _da capo_, and the curtseys the little old woman
dropped, one after another, almost faster than one could count.
Suppose the train moving slowly on, and a tricksy spirit inspiring a
wag among the rank-and-file aboard, to shout to her:
"Hey there, Mother Ginger-snaps! give us one before we go!"
Twenty voices took up the cry, and blue cloth-covered arms were
thrust out between the carriage window-bars. Hands waggled,
soliciting the sugary boon. And the little old woman, torn between
the desire to give and the impossibility of giving,--danced like a
hen on a hot griddle, until a giant porter, compassionating her
plight, snatched her up like a large doll, and ran with her beside
the moving carriages, holding her out at arm's length, as she upheld
her basket, until all the ginger-snaps were gone.
Instinctively as P. C. Breagh had felt that the cumbrous
grandiloquence of his descriptive article would be snorted at by Mr.
Knewbit, so he knew that the little incident of the ginger-snaps
would afford his patron delight. Therefore he tucked it away in a
safe pigeon-hole of his memory, with a description of the rough,
gay-painted, crowded wooden box he sat in, odoriferous with its
conglomeration of smells, based on the combined stenches of tallow
and perspiring humanity, laced with the sharp sour of malt, and
mercifully tempered with the fumes of strong tobacco.
Piff! The hot, cinder-flavored draughts that raced in over the
glazed half-windows were powerless to freshen or dilute the
atmosphere. Yet among the varied types of men who, their heavy
knapsacks disposed in iron racks above them, sat packed as close as
sardines on the narrow benches, were not a few, who, judging by the
mute evidence of their well-groomed skins and carefully kept
finger-nails, their finer hair and more clearly modeled features,
belonged to Germany's upper class.
Shriek! The train plunged into a cutting ending in a tunnel of sheer
blackness. Bursting, with another shriek, into the light of day, she
raced for a while neck-and-neck with a cavalry-train. They were Red
Dragoon Guards and White Cuirassiers of the Great Headquarters Staff,
and they exchanged cheers and sharp, staccato shouts of "_Hurrah,
Preussen!_" with the infantry of the Guard, as the latter were
hurried by.
Nothing was left to Chance. All was deadly, methodical accuracy.
The keen, clear brain under Moltke's wig controlled the speed of
every train upon the six Rhine and Moselle railways over which the
Army of United Germany was rolling to inundate France.
Trains, trains, trains!
Trains of trucks, laden with gabions woven of split beech-saplings,
with oaken lascines and bales of empty earth-bags. Commissariat
trains of wagons packed with sheep and cattle, and the ubiquitous pig
of the Fatherland. Coffee-and-sugar trains, trains of pea-sausage
and the rock-hard brown biscuit wherewith "Our Moltke" fed his
soldier men. Trains of spare arms, clothing, trenching-tools and
cooking-utensils; trains of cartridges, gunpowder, blasting-powder,
solid shot, shrapnel, and the big projectiles destined for the
siege-guns; with trains upon trains close-packed with the men who
were to use these things,--took precedence or gave it, because the
withered finger beckoned or waved....
"Our Moltke," so mild and affable and courteous, truly, when the
Genius that possessed thee spread his steely wings and soared, thou
wert a very terrible old man, or so it seems to me.
The descriptive article laid by, you found P. C. Breagh, in the
interests of Mr. Knewbit, studying his fellow-travelers. The
weak-eyed, spectacled young soldier on his left-hand, whose fingers
were burned and yellow-stained, as though their owner had dabbled in
chemical experiments, and who had remained mute as a fish throughout
the journey, only opening his mouth to eat or drink, or reply to a
remark addressed to him by a non-commissioned officer, was reading
the "Iliad" of Homer in the original, from a little parchment-bound,
Amsterdam-printed Elzevir edition, that he seemed to cherish as the
apple of one of his short-sighted eyes.... A handsome young bugler
in the next compartment had a well-thumbed copy of "The Pickwick
Papers." The huge tanned Guardsman on his right, whose broad breast
displayed the medals of 1866 and of the Schleswig-Holstein campaign,
and whose powerful bass notes had reverberated through the diaphragm
of his neighbor when he sang, was chatting with a younger comrade who
sat opposite. Holding the well-greased unburnished needle-gun
between their solid thighs--to hang the silver-spiked Guard's helmet
on the muzzle seemed a popular way of disposing of the
headpiece--they exchanged experiences in a genial roar, subdued to a
growl at confidential passages.
"Grete came to the Barracks to bid me God-speed.... There were a few
tears--dried when I promised to bring her a wedding-gift from Paris.
Thou seest, she is going to turn over a new leaf, and get married to
a waiter at a Sommer-garten--a club-footed man who is not called upon
to serve--being on the Exempt List."
They guffawed at the picture of the happy bridegroom. Said the
senior, wiping his overflowing eyes with a hand as brown and broad as
an undersized flitch of bacon:
"I looked up 'Mina in the Landsberger-Strasse. She could not meet
me, as her old woman had a betrothal-party for one of her daughters.
A young student from a Conservatoire, in a tail-coat three sizes too
small for him, and a pair of linen cuffs as big as starched
table-napkins, was the victim served up. I saw him as 'Mina carried
in the spiced wine and rum-punch, and a longer pair of lantern-jaws I
never saw. But when they sat down to table, and I took another peep
through the door-crack, I promise you those jaws of his were grinding
away like steam!"
"Nu, but the punch?" asked the other Guardsman.
"_Sapperlot!_--do you suppose I went without my whack of it?--and
'Mina's eyes as red as preserved cherries with crying about my going
to the War? I had had a mug of the good stuff, and a bottle of
something or other!--gilt paper on the neck of it--nothing at all but
fizzle inside. Then I settled down to a jug of cool beer and the
breast of a turkey, while 'Mina was waiting on the parlor-folks.
Heard her step coming along the passage--thought I'd play the fool
with her a bit--so I turned the kitchen-gas low and hid behind the
door. In she comes!--I'd got my arms round her and kissed her--a
regular juicy smack or two, before--by the yell she gave!--I knew it
wasn't 'Mina at all...."
"_Potzblitz!_ who was it, then?"
"Who but the old woman? But for the thumping size of the waist I'd
squeezed, and the taste of violet-powder in my mouth, I might have
thought I'd got hold of one of the young Fräuleins. 'Help, murder,
thieves!' cried she. 'How dare you insult a respectable mother of a
family! Give your name, you rogue, or I'll have in the
police!'--'Don't do that,' says I. 'I'm only 'Mina's
brother--dropped in to take leave before going to the War!'--'A fine
brother!' says she. 'Do brothers hug their sisters in that bearish
way? Be off with you quick march! and think yourself lucky to escape
so easily!'..." He wound up: "But if she had reported me to the
_Herr Oberst Leutnant_, nothing much would have come of it. He'd
have said: '_Was sol Ich!_--but we're off to the War!'"
A sentence or so more, and the conversation resolved itself into
strong tobacco-smoke. Twilight was fading into dusk.
Dortmund--Elberfeld--Düsseldorf had paid tribute of beers, cheers,
and tears to the defenders of German Unity, the most inveterate
songsters and conversationalists were getting sleepy, and it would be
midnight before the troop-train, traveling, like the others that
followed it, at a speed strictly calculated to permit of the somewhat
slower transit of six supplementary trains bearing the King and his
Great Headquarter Staff--could reach Cologne.
The lamps, adding the flavor of hot kerosene to the conglomeration of
odors--had been lighted at Düsseldorf. The tobacco-reek had grown so
dense that below their band of yellow light was a sharply defined
band of opaque blue fog, in which medium colors were neutralized to
monochrome, and outlines of sleeping, or chatting, or card-playing,
or reading soldiers blurred into vagueness, wavered, and were blotted
out for P. C. Breagh in a sudden doze.
He wakened at a late hour, to the iron measure clanked and ground and
beaten out by couplings and brakes, wheels and axles. Snores of all
kinds--from the shrill clarionet-note of the spectacled student of
Homer to the deep 'cello-bass of the Guardsman who had hugged 'Mina's
mistress in mistake for his sweetheart--resounded on all sides; the
tobacco-fog had somewhat thinned.
Finding it possible to move, because his burly neighbor was soundly
sleeping, pillowed upon the body of the man upon his right hand, P.
C. Breagh yawned--recovered his knapsack, which had slipped from his
knees to a floor which in point of cleanliness left much to be
desired, removed from it with a fragment of newspaper the worst
impurities it had contracted by contact, threw the newspaper out of
the nearest window and, in the performance of this act, caught a not
unfriendly eye.
Its owner, a huge young man, who, occupying a place on the end of the
same seat, had been hitherto screened by the body of the huger
private who had kissed not wisely, said, and in English of the Oxford
brand:
"You find our men lacking in good manners? Yet there is much
spitting on the part of English soldiers, when they are standing at
ease, or off duty. I have myself observed this."
"Then you know England?" P. C. Breagh interrogated, and the private,
who was very tall, very blond, very broad-shouldered,
straight-featured, blue-eyed, and small-waisted, answered:
"Pretty well. I have a relative who married a lady who is your
countrywoman. I have been the guest of her family at their London
house. You speak our language, for I have heard you. And with a
North Prussian accent, by the way."
P. C. Breagh returned:
"I spent three years at Schwärz-Brettingen. With the sole result
that I can make myself understood by Germans who don't speak English.
And that I owe to my landlady."
Said the Guardsman, yawning and smiling:
"My father sent me to Oxford. Three terms have yielded this
result,--that I can converse with Englishmen who know German. Thanks
to a charming young lady, a niece of the relative I spoke of just
now, who was so good as to read the poems of Tennyson with me. 'The
Princess,' 'In Memoriam,' and 'Maud,' were her chief favorites--I
preferred his epics founded on the Arthurian legend. Though my
charming English cousin was often vexed with me for saying that our
Wagner's verse-drama of the Nibelungen-Ring possessed far truer
inspiration, and that 'Die Walküre' and 'Tristan' would have been
finer than anything Tennyson has ever written,--had they existed
simply as poems, and never been wedded to music at all. At that the
young English lady was angry; she said things to me in her
indignation which were terrible; but she forgave me, because I was
compelled to leave the University and return to Germany to put in my
term of service as a private, before I present myself as a candidate
for an officer's silver sword-knot in the usual course of things.
You are, perhaps, acquainted with our German methods of qualifying
for a Commission? Bismarck has two sons serving as troopers with the
1st Dragoon Guards; whereas a private of Ours is a nephew of
Moltke's, and two or three others are cadets of princely
families--representatives of what your countrymen would call the
'aristocracy of Germany.' Perhaps one or two of them will find that
silver sword-knot they are looking for--across the frontier,
somewhere between the Rhine and the Moselle!..."
"When do you think there will be fighting?"
Inexpressibly P. C. Breagh yearned to know when and where the dance
was expected to begin. But his eagerness seemed to freeze the
loquacious Guardsman, whose blue eyes narrowed, whose smile
stiffened, whose smooth voice instantly diverted the current of the
talk to other things:
"Were you at the Gala Performance at the Opera, the night before
last? Delphine Zucca could hardly sing; her husband, young Baron von
Bladen, of the Jastrow Hussars, has been appointed first galloper on
the Staff of General Manteuffel, Chief of the First Corps, First
Army. So the Zucca is naturally inconsolable, as they've only been
married a month. But Elise Hahn-Tieck, as the Genius of United
Germany, in a corslet of gilt chain-mail, and a helmet crested with
oak-boughs, with a green Rhine meandering over her white muslin robe,
was tremendous when she came down to the center of the stage to sing
'_Die Wacht am Rhein_,'---carrying our East Prussian Flag and the
banner of the Hohenzollern, and followed by other operatic actresses
in character as the Auxiliary States. _Sapperlot_! When she drew
her sword, she was tremendous! And when she fell upon her knees, the
big chandelier in the auditorium jumped. She sang the part of
_Gretchen_ last season, and looked not much over thirty. Make-up,
because, you know, she has a grandson who is a junior-lieutenant in
the Duke of Coburg's Regiment of White Cuirassiers, and must be sixty
if she's a day. _Prime donne_ are like wines, no good till they've
arrived at a ripe old age. Though I could introduce you to a little
girl of eighteen or so, just now doing a song-and-dance at the
Schützen-Strasse Tingel-Tangel, who has a voice that pleases me
better than the warblings of any of the highly paid Opera House
nightingales. And what a figure! round and tempting and seductive.
And such arms, and--_Sapperlot!_--what a pair of legs!"
Thus prattled the twenty-year-old sprig of German aristocracy, to the
other youngster, his senior in years if his junior in knowledge of
the world. He went on in his Oxford English:
"Not that I'm inclined to ruin myself for women, though I must say a
good many pretty ones have been uncommonly kind to me. That sort of
thing runs in my family, though! and I ought to be obliged to my
Cousin Max for dying a bachelor. Killed himself in '66 about a
mistress who was playing the double game. A regular French
adventuress, diabolically handsome, who eloped with him when he was
_attaché_ of our Prussian Embassy at Paris in '57, and has a husband
living, they say. Colossal impudence--actually passes herself off as
my cousin's widow, in society of a certain sort. So, out of the
desire to deal Madame Venus a slap in the face, I got a comrade who
knew her, to introduce me at a festive supper-party.... Said he:
'Countess von Schön-Valverden, permit me to present my most intimate
friend,' and reels off my name. Would you believe it, the woman
never turned a hair. It was I who got flustered when she stared me
in the face. Colossal coolness--I can hear her now, lisping: '_The
Herr Count is doubtless a relative of my poor, dear Maximilian! Even
had he not borne the name, I should have been struck by his
resemblance to my beloved lost one._' And then I got out, not half
as cleverly as I had planned it: 'And even had you borne the name
that is your own, Madame, I should have been shot through the heart
by the beauty that has already proved fatal to one member of my
family!'" He added, "I laid an emphasis on those four words, '_shot
through the heart_,' because my unlucky cousin actually met his death
after that fashion.... Will you have a cigar of mine? They are
better than the weeds our patriotic friends have bestowed on us."
P. C. Breagh accepted a smooth light-hued Havana from the offered
case, asking with interest, due to the lurid flare of tragedy in the
background of the other's lively chatter: "And the lady of the
Venusberg--how did she take your reference to her past?"
The Guardsman, cigar in mouth, stopped in the act of striking a
fusee-match to answer: "She took it--as a woman of Madame de Bayard's
stamp might be expected to. With a _sangfroid_ that one could only
admire somewhat less than her superb skin and hair, her shape of a
goddess and her marvelous eyes--almost the color of Brazilian
tourmaline." He sent out a spiral of fragrant brownish-blue smoke
and added: "Had I actually stood four years ago in the shoes which I
have legally inherited, I'll be hanged if I'd have shot myself and
left her to my rival. For the other was at Schönfeld--actually in
the house, you must know!--when Cousin Max came home on leave. Hence
the tragedy at three o'clock in the morning. Such a depressing hour
to commit suicide. Now, had it been after supper..."
He shrugged, and sent out another spiral of cigar-smoke, and,
perceiving that his whilom listener heard no longer, ceased to talk.
The while P. C. Breagh plunged into a brown-study by the chance
utterance of a stranger's name, and unblushingly abandoning the
effort to remain true to his gigantic type-ideal, hung fondly over
the mentally evoked image of an Infanta in miniature.
Where was Juliette de Bayard now? Had the outbreak of war hastened
or delayed her marriage with the happy master of swordsmanship?
And--worshiping her father as Monica had said she did--how had she
borne the parting from him?
She would be very calm.... P. C. Breagh pictured the little face
drawn and pinched with misery; saw the sapphire eyes dimmed with
tears unshed, imagined the slender throat convulsed with sobs that
were kept resolutely back, heard the silver-flute voice saying:
"My father has honored me with his confidence as long as I can
remember, sir!" and, "See you--I will be trusted absolutely, or I
will not be trusted at all!"
Strange that his elfin queen--his carved ivory Princess--should bear
the same name as the woman the Guardsman had gossiped of--the
beautiful, evil creature with the eyes like Brazilian tourmalines.
And, what particular color in Brazilian tourmalines might have been
intended? Some were purple, others pink, and yet others
reddish-brown. The woman who had dropped her parasol on the
staircase at the Chancellor's had had eyes of tawny wine-color. With
the remembrance, came back the perfume shaken from her rustling silks
and laces, and the languid echo of her caressing voice.
Drowsiness came next, and then oblivion, in heavy slumber. And, as
the unconscious form of P. C. Breagh lapsed this way and that, and
his chin burrowed deeper into his bosom, the Sergeant who occupied
the corner-seat facing the sleeper,--shading his eyes from the
lamplight with a broad brown hand that wore a thick silver wedding
ring upon the little finger, lowered the hand, and, leaning forward,
stared in the young man's unconscious face, with small, suspicious,
unwinking eyes. Now the eyes looked round so sharply, that every
waking man in the compartment, save the blue-eyed patron of the
Tingel-Tangel girl, found it necessary to assume the appearance of
slumber, and the Sergeant's voice said hoarsely:
"Private von Valverden!"
"At your service, _Herr_ Sergeant."
"Private von Valverden, is this one, then, an Englishman?"
"Undoubtedly, _Herr_ Sergeant!"
"_Gut!_" said the Sergeant. "But what is his calling? Is he of the
newspaper-offices that he sits and scribbles so?"
"That question I cannot answer, Herr Sergeant, but if he be on the
staff of any paper, he cannot accompany us without a _Legitimation_,
and a letter from someone in authority."
The Sergeant sucked in his bearded lips, and rolled his sharp little
eyes more suspiciously than ever. Valverden went on:
"Doubtless he has them--I saw him show a paper to the Halt Commandant
at Berlin, and the _Herr_ Colonel himself spoke to him and told him
he might travel as far as Bingen by this train. And I happen to know
that four London newspaper correspondents have been accredited by the
King upon the instance of Count Bismarck; one being appointed to
accompany the Crown Prince, another being permitted to accompany the
Second Army, while two are attached to the Great Headquarter Staff."
The Sergeant said, glancing at the unconscious slumberer:
"_Gut, gut!_ but is this fellow one of them?"
"If he be not, _Herr_ Sergeant, he will get no farther than Bingen,
for doubtless the Commandant there will be on the lookout for persons
whose credentials are not of the best."
The Sergeant shook his head vigorously, wrinkling up his full-bearded
countenance suspiciously:
"And suppose the Commandant is not on the lookout, Private von
Valverden? See you, I have had my suspicions since yesterday, and I
tell you..."