That was an enchanted walk for P. C. Breagh, back to the big, bare,
barrack-like Victoria. It was the Doctor's generous amends for an
unintentional slight. Two days previously, at the Potsdam Railway
Station, Berlin, when a companion had said to him: "Who's the
enthusiastic young admirer who kowtowed to you? English, I should
say, and you cut him unmercifully,"--he had answered, out of the
whirl of great affairs:
"I've no notion; but I'll make amends if ever he crosses my path
again. It's not my way to hurt a boy."
"Bet you five bob he hails from Fleet Street," the friend had cried;
and the Doctor had answered:
"If so, he has a claim on me I'm not going to deny."
Dust underfoot made the tread fall as on velvet. Dust in the air
parched the throat and got in the eyes. And the incessant rolling of
the Prussian side-drums, lanced through with signal whistles and
sharp bugle-calls, made the hot baked atmosphere quiver, and the play
of early sunshine on myriads of brass helmet-spikes made the eyes
water and blink, as the battalions of blue infantry that had marched
into Bingen on the previous day mustered from their billets, were
entrained and conjured away; and other battalions that had marched
fifteen miles since cock-crow tramped in with the thick white dust
turned to mud upon them by the heavy Rhineland dews that had soaked
their boots and damped their uniforms, halted but to breakfast--and
were off, almost on the heels of the first.
Division after Division of Cavalry--Uhlans in light or dark blue
piped with red, and shiny black Lancer _schapkas_, Cuirassiers in
white uniforms, with steel breast and back plates, and steel helmets
simple in design as those of Cromwell's Ironsides; light blue
Dragoons, Hussars with tufted shakos of miniver, and braided jackets
of red, black, green, brown and pale blue, with their flying
batteries of Horse Artillery, their proviant columns and
ammunition-trains, had been rushed to the frontier with astounding
speed. Now the blue deluge of marching men with needle-guns came
rolling after. With thunder of heavy siege-trains, with patches of
green upon the monotonous blue, that stood for picked battalions of
sharpshooters; sons of gamekeepers and forest-rangers; bred from
childhood to woodcraft and hunter's lore; experts in the use of the
rifle, scouts and trackers of daring and skill.
On the seventeenth of July the Warlock had said to his King, "Give me
to the third of August and we are safe." This was the third of
August. And the air was thick with something besides dust.
Conscious of this, they talked, the neophyte and the adept discussing
things that had happened during the pregnant interval. How Forbes of
the _Daily News_, who tramped it up to Saarbrück by the Nahe Valley
Road from Kreuznach, had seen the first blood flow, when a couple of
infantrymen of the garrison were brought in in a chipped condition,
having been sniped at by red-breeched French marksmen across the
frontier-line.
With a single battalion of the Hohenzollerns, the 7th Regiment of
Rhineland Uhlans had hitherto constituted Saarbrück's garrison. And
the French being reported in force at Forbach, some fifteen or
sixteen thousand men being said to be strung out along the frontier,
a detachment of Uhlans with spare troop-horses had ridden into
Neunkirchen on the morning of the twenty-fourth of July, and borrowed
from the collieries a dozen stout miners, armed with picks, and
supplied with blasting cartridges, fuses, and so on. These grimy
stalwarts they tied on troop-horses; crossed the frontier, and blew
up the viaduct on the railway-line branching from the Forbach-Metz
railway near Cocheren and connecting Metz with Saarguemines, Bitche,
Hagenau and Strasbourg.
Thenceafter, nothing of note happened until the twenty-eighth of
July, when the Emperor Napoleon III. entered Metz with his Staff and
the heir to the Throne Imperial, and formally took command of the
seven _corps d'armée_ known as the "Army of the Rhine." Upon the
same day, a party of the Hohenzollerns, commanded by an N.C.O.,
reconnoitering on the right front, flushed a French _vidette_, in a
wood covering a knoll of rising ground, over the top of which went
the imaginary frontier-line.
Being shot at, the Hohenzollerns retired to garrison. But about
regimental soup-time, twelve or thereabouts, a battery of six French
field-pieces came over the slope of the Spicherenberg heights,
getting into position on a plateau half-way down.
And while the Prussian drummers beat to arms; while the Hohenzollerns
hastily posted their four companies, one on each of the town's three
bridges, and sent one forward on the heels of a squadron of Uhlans,
up the Forbach Road, which runs through Saarbrück, rising as it
trends to the west;--while the rest of the Uhlans stood to their
horses in the Markt-platz, and the civilian population stopped to
look on, or scuttled for cover, six shells were fired, three of them
hitting a little beerhouse on the hill-brow, just off the Forbach
Road--and the Imperial cannonade was over, the artillerists retired,
and nothing more had happened,--though the _videttes_ and patrols,
Gallic and Teuton, had cracked away at each other from high noon till
batlight.
Discussing these things, the adept and the neophyte came to the
Victoria, every window of which was crowded with Prussian officers,
eating, drinking and smoking, or shouting for breakfast, coffee,
beer, wine and tobacco in every key of the human register.
Distracted waiters ran about like ants, and before the packed and
roaring caravanserai--keeping guard over one of the little decrepit
iron tables that stood under the dusty acacias--a little table that
had a fly-spotted cloth upon it, and a great glass basin filled with
sugar cubes, and was further adorned with brown rings made by the
bottoms of coffee-cups and beer-glasses, were the two friends
referred to by P. C. Breagh's Good Samaritan.
One was a handsome, fair-haired, smiling man in the scarlet,
yellow-faced, gold-adorned uniform of a crack regiment of British
Light Dragoons, "a swell of the haw-haw type" Mr. Ticking would have
termed him. With this splendid personage, who was generally referred
to as "Major Brotherton," was a shorter, plainer individual with
fluffy whiskers, attired as for the sports of the field, in a white,
low-crowned felt, large checked tweeds, in which orange and pink
predominated, drab leggings and heavily nailed highlows. A Dolland
field-glass was slung from his shoulders, and over a neighboring
chair lay a huge box-coat, the multitudinous pockets of which
appeared to contain his luggage, for a bath-sponge in a rubber bag
rolled out of one as he rose up to welcome the leader of the party,
and a box of areca-nut tooth-paste, and a hairbrush with a patent
collapsible handle had to be shifted before the sponge could be
replaced; just as though Mr. Toole had thought out the costume and
the comic business for some traveling Briton in a new farce.
You may suppose P. C. Breagh blushing from consciousness of the
contrast of his own travel-stained griminess with the Major's
dazzling brilliancy, when that personage shook hands with him and
said it was going to be a hot day. Introduced by his kindly patron
to the sportsman in pink and orange tweeds with:
"Tower, this is a young countryman of mine--picked up at the
station--just tumbled out of a troop-wagon full of Guards
Infantry----"
The fluffy whiskered sportsman civilly nodded and observed: "And
dashed good luck for him!" He added: "Doctor, if you recognized your
baggage-van by that confounded goat you've had painted on it, I'll
admit it's served some purpose besides frightening German crows!"
"Begad! it frightened me when I saw it on the siding this morning!"
avowed the genial Doctor. "But how was I to know that the Berlin
painter who undertook to copy the crest from my family coat-of-arms
had got a magnifying eye?"
Said the man in cavalry uniform, smoothing his drooping mustache, and
speaking with the drawl of Robertsonian comedy:
"At any rate, the size of the animal testifies to the antiquity of
your race, and so on. For in prehistoric days, I take it, goats were
as big as cows are now!"
"My thanks to you, Brotherton, for supplying so plausible an
explanation. I'll salve my pride of pedigree with it next time I'm
taken for a traveling quack, and Prussian soldiers suffering with
indigestion apply to me for pills and black-dose." He added, with
his pleasant laugh, catching P. C. Breagh's glance of incredulity:
"Actual fact, and no embroidery, I assure you! You understand that
to emphasize the strictly pacific nature of my calling, I'm
exploiting my honorary degree for all it's worth!" He added, rather
pointedly addressing the handsome cavalryman, "I've no special
ambition to be shot as a combatant!"
"Nor have I," said the man in sporting checks, warmly. "And,
Brotherton, my dear fellow, if this 'ere 'umble individual may add
his advice to the counsel you've already had from the man, by Jove!
who of all men knows best what he's talkin' about, you'll stow that
'ere lady-killing uniform, and the silver helmet with the flowin'
plume away in some spare portmanteau, and leave 'em with your saber
and the dazzlin' horse-furniture you showed me this morning in charge
of the landlord here, until you come back from the war-path safe and
sound. Am I talking 'oss sense, Doctor?"
"Indeed you are, Tower!" agreed the Doctor. "And, Chris, if you'll
listen to him, I'll be eternally grateful to you, for your own sake.
You've too much of what Tower and the Yankees call 'horse sense' not
to know you're handicapped as a war correspondent by your glorious
panoply!"
The Major smiled, and said, smoothing the drooping mustache with a
fine white hand that wore a diamond-set signet:
"You can't blame me for thirsting to carry the harness I've worn in
sham fights for nearly half my lifetime, where bullets are flying in
real earnest?"
"Not a bit, dear fellow," said the Doctor, with a twinkle, "so long
as you thirst to do it and don't! That letter 'R' on your
shoulder-cord is hardly big enough to serve as cover where those
bullets are plentiful. And with your influence, prospects in life,
and position, you'd be an ingrate to Fate if you were anxious to die
at thirty-four."
Said Brotherton, knitting his fair eyebrows over the restless fire in
his handsome eyes:
"Influence has been my bane, and the two other things have stood in
my light ever since I was an urchin in knickerbockers. I've been
Queen's page, and Prince's Equerry, and _aide-de-camp_ on the Duke's
Staff, and I've never seen an army in the field, or smelt powder,
except at Aldershot, or Shorncliffe, or the Curragh of Kildare, or at
carbine-practice. What luck do you call that?"
"Dashed hard!" said Tower.
Brotherton went on:
"I was a callow cadet at Sandhurst when the Regiment covered itself
with glory at Balaclava, and as it has seen no active service
since--I've had no chance to find out whether I'm a real soldier, or
a kid-glove one."
"Why not have exchanged----" began Tower. The Major shook his head.
"It wasn't to be done, for a very solid reason. My father, who
served with Redlett's Brigade in the Crimea, was killed on Balaclava
Day; and I was an only son. And my mother was a confidential
Lady-in-Waiting, and knew where to apply, by Jove! when my youthful
ambition was to be cold-watered.... And now that the dear soul has
gone, and I'm on the Retired list--after fifteen years of Windsor,
Buckingham Palace, Whitehall, Pall Mall and Hyde Park--out breaks the
war that I've been sighing for. And, after hovering about the
_Thunderbolt_ office till every printer's devil knows me by name, and
cooling my heels on the doorstep of your chambers in the Albion so
persistently that your housekeeper believed me a bailiff with a
writ--I managed to knock over Opportunity on the wing--and secured,
thanks to you, Doctor! the chance of my life!"
He stood up, a handsome, martial figure in his scarlet and golden
uniform, his eyes ablaze under the silver, gold-starred, white-plumed
helmet, his fine face flushed with the battle-lust. And as he
stretched out his hand across the spotty tablecloth, the feasting
flies rose in a buzzing cloud.
"And glad am I if word of mine helped to get that chance for you, and
you know it, Chris, and that it's a pleasure to have you with me,"
said the genial voice, as the Doctor took the offered hand. "But the
military array, my dear fellow! The wampum and war-paint--that's
what I kick at, with my gouty toe of fifty-two." He added: "But here
comes the waiter with the coffee and eggs, and bread and butter, and
something like the cold sliced ham I'm dying for--if only it doesn't
happen to be raw! So sit down and we'll fortify ourselves against
possible short-commons at Mayence. For that's where the King is,
with Moltke and the Great Headquarters. And that's the destination
we take rail for at twelve noon."
He added, as Brotherton and Tower started in their chairs, and P. C.
Breagh quivered like a fox-terrier shown a rat: "As for the other
chiefs, the Red Prince is--no one seems able to tell where--and the
Crown Prince is on the frontier. Maybe we'll hear of him at
Wissembourg by-and-by!"
"We should be there ourselves, in the thick of it," asserted
Brotherton, savagely slashing at a pallid pat of butter, as Tower
poured boiling milk and coffee into cups half-an-inch thick.
"We would be, Chris, me dear man!" said the Doctor, liberally piling
slices of cold veal and ham-sausage on his guests' plates, cutting
bread and passing the pickles, "if the authorities panted to have
English correspondents at their elbows while they're posting their
pawns and pieces for the opening game!"
Brotherton retorted with a touch of pomposity:
"You take it lightly, sir. But for the honor of our profession, we
should extort recognition at the hands of these foreigners. We
should, as representatives of a great Power, submit to no belittling.
Wielding as we do----"
"Keep all that toffee for the speechmaking end of a Newspaper Press
dinner, Chris, my boy," drolled the Doctor. "Sure, 'tis we ourselves
are the foreigners here--hard as it is of conception to a true-born
Briton. And--since we're permitted on sufferance to accompany the
forces of United Germany--the least we can do is to extract the
necessary information painlessly!"
"But, my God! when I think of what may be doing at this moment!"
broke out Brotherton, hitting the table, "I feel as if I should go
stark, staring crazy! Have I sacrificed what I have
sacrificed--and--and borne what I have borne, to trot like a stray
tyke at the tail of a moving Army--picking up such scraps as may be
thrown me from day to day? I tell you, sir, the mere idea is
horrible to me! I cannot put it more mildly. My blood is not yet
chilled by age, or my susceptibilities blunted...." He pushed away
his plate and rose, pulling his gloves from his belt, and taking up
the cloak that had been thrown over a neighboring chair. "I will ask
you to excuse me! I have not yet received my papers back from the
Halt Commandant. I will call upon him now!"
"Come with you, if you've no objection to walking in civilian
company?" said Tower, swallowing a mouthful, emptying his coffee-cup,
and reaching for the white felt hat and the box-coat.
"Come back about ten--I may have a scrap or two of news worth
hearing," said the Doctor, with imperturbable good temper; and with a
horsey touch of the hat on Tower's part, and a sulkily dignified
salute from the Major, the tall soldierly figure in its scarlet and
blue and gold, and the less dignified personality in the clothes that
might have been worn by Toole in the part of a horsey squire, went
away together, over the yellow-burnt grass and the dusty sun-baked
gravel, dotted with little breakfasting groups of officers, who had
been crowded out of the Hotel.
"I'm glad Tower's gone with him. He's in a frame of mind that won't
make for pleasant relations with Prussian transport-officers," quoth
the Doctor, looking after the retreating couple with something like a
twinkle and something like a sigh. "But he's a grand fellow!--a
splendid fellow is Brotherton!--even if he sometimes reminds me of
the Quaker wife who said to her husband: 'Friend Timothy, all the
world is wrong except thee and me, and thou is a little wrong
sometimes, Friend Timothy!'"
And having got rid of his vexation in one gentle gibe at the
idiosyncrasy of the petulant Brotherton, he fell to his breakfast
again, urging his guest to a renewed attack on the strong ham-sausage
and weak coffee, with the words:
"Bad policy--neglecting rations. Must stoke when fuel for the human
engine is to be had, if you're going to chronicle the deeds of an
army that fights as it marches. And when you've cleaned your plate,
and drunk another cup of coffee, you shall tell me why you came here
and what you want to do."
He commented, when P. C. Breagh, duly replete, had stated the nature
of his aims and ambitions; touching upon his discouragements as
briefly as might be:
"War Correspondence! ... Well, I'll admit I guessed that you'd set
your heart on something of the kind, when I saw you tumble out of
that troop-wagon with a note book sticking out of your jacket-pocket.
And so old Knewbit financed? Sporting of him!--and he deserves that
his letters should be worth reading. Call 'em 'Experiences of a Tyke
at the Tail of an Army.'" He added, his bright brown eyes twinkling
through their gold-rimmed glasses. "For that's where you've got to
be!"
He lighted a huge cigar, twisted round his green-painted iron chair
and sat astride upon it, resting on its rickety back his folded arms,
short and strong, with small muscular hands, sunburned like his
bearded face and thick bull-neck.
"I am not joking, my young acquaintance. Can't you understand that
to keep abreast with even a secondary Staff in the war-field you have
to sweat out money at every pore? And--without gold for transport or
thalers for _trinkgelt_--or seasoned knowledge to help you even if
your pockets were full, what can you accomplish? I tell you
frankly--nothing at all! But if you'll follow on the fringe of a
Division, marching with the hangers-on and officers' servants--you'll
get many a scrap of useful news and many a meaty bone of valuable
information tossed to you day by day. And even with the rear of the
Army Corps you elect to stick to, you'll sup your fill of raw-head
and bloody bones--take the assurance from me. Will you--with the
advice?"
The great man was so unassuming in his kindness that the little one
hardly grasped the full extent of it, even as he said, blinking as
though a cinder of the Lower Rhineland Railroad had got into his eye:
"Yes, sir, and thank you! I shall never forget how good you've been
to me!" and got reply:
"You've no business to be here, boyo, but since you are, more by luck
than grace, use your eyes and stuff your memory with things worth
keeping. Now as my time is precious,--is there anything more you
want to know?"
"Only one thing.... I have been puzzled by an--an incident that
happened to a--fellow in my own position." P. C. Breagh boggled
horribly: "Was regularly set on getting to the Front--hadn't a notion
how to set about it--when he--accidentally--managed to get hold of
a--kind of official authorization. An informal pass, certifying the
bearer as trustworthy--written and signed by Count Bismarck
himself...."
"And that wasn't half bad," the Doctor said, knocking the ash off the
huge cigar, "for a beginner pretty well, it seems to me!"
Said P. C. Breagh:
"He was tremendously elated at having got the paper. It seemed to
smooth away every difficulty. But later, when he found himself in
touch with Prussian Army men--they,--not only the gentlemen privates
qualifying for commissions, but the common rankers,--dropped him like
a hot potato once they knew! And--I'd like to know the reason why
they cut me--I mean him?--because they supposed him to belong to the
Secret Intelligence Department? '_A spy is--a spy! Excuse me from
further conversation!_' His mouth twisted wryly, repeating the
hateful words.
"I--understand." The Doctor stroked his beard. "And previously this
young Englishman and the rank-and-file of the Guard Infantry"--P. C.
Breagh kept as straight an upper-lip as was possible--"had chatted
together upon friendly terms?"
"That was it. He had got on splendidly with them--one fellow
especially. And--it hurt, being suddenly sent to Coventry!..."
"And does it strike you"--there was infinite sagacity in the clear
brown eyes behind the gold-rimmed glasses, "that if you had been
chatting freely with a supposed equal, about your own position,
prospects, and opinions, you would have 'dropped him like a hot
potato' if you had suspected him of being commissioned to sound you
for French sympathies, predilections, and so forth--on the eve of
hostilities with France?"
A light broke in upon the darkness in which Carolan had groped. His
eyes became circular, and his mouth shaped for a whistle. He
exploded:
"Oh, hang it! I never thought of anything so--so beastly.... I
wondered why Valverden shied, supposing me a Secret Information
agent, when the Army has shoals of 'em.... But that Government
should set such fellows sniffing at the heels of the Army--of course
I never thought of that. It's not--cricket, is it, sir?"
The Doctor's hearty laugh pulled round the heads of a breakfasting
party of officers not far off. He said, lowering his voice:
"You remember the nigger's definitions of verse and prose, don't you?
'_Go up mill-dam, fall down slam! dat verse. Go up mill-dam, fall
down whoppo, dat blank verse._' Prussian military authority may
hold, that between spying on the enemy before the Army and spying on
the Army before the enemy, there is as little distinction. Though
they'd think differently at the Horse Guards, thank the Lord! By the
way, with regard to that gaunt, long-legged Lieutenant-Colonel of
Uhlans of the Landwehr who claimed to know something of you, rather
luckily for your ambitions!--where did you come across him? '_An
English schoolboy,' he called you, 'crazy to see War!_'"
P. C. Breagh explained:
"He did know something of me, sir!--though it was the merest
chance--our meeting. Until a week ago he was a teacher of English at
the Berners Street Institute of Languages, and lodged at my
landlady's. And they recalled him to Berlin a few hours before the
Declaration of War."