It was the Doctor's turn to whistle.
"Phew! So that's how they spy out and trap deserters from their
Reserve and _Landwehr_. Clever--uncommonly! Possibly it's not
business to tell you, but you've given away a genuine bit of
information. And as a lesson in caution for the future, I shall
annex your nugget--do you hear? In return--I've a pass for an extra
groom who has shot the moon with three weeks' double pay in advance,
the cowardly beggar! And--supposing you're not too proud--I'll take
you with me as far as Mayence."
"I don't know how to thank you, sir!"
"Leave thanking for the present." He pulled out the gold
chronometer, secured by its twisted thong. "Ten o'clock, and here
come Towers and Brotherton, like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, '_with
a kind of confession in their looks which their modesties have not
craft enough to color_.' No news to be had? No starting for Mayence
before twelve sharp, in spite of honied entreaties lavished on the
authorities?"
"Deuce a scrap!"
"Devil a minute!"
They threw themselves upon chairs, hot, dusty and panting. They had
got their papers back, countersigned, from a kind of understrapper,
after, to do him justice, very little delay. But of intelligence,
not a modicum was obtainable, except that the Emperor was said to be
close to the frontier near Saarbrück at the head of the Imperial
Guards.
"Though they've been saying that for forty-eight hours," grumbled
Tower, "and I'm dam' if I call it anything but Ancient History."
At which candid confession the Doctor's mouth twitched under the
thick, curling mustache of rusty iron-gray. He said, his quick eye
noting an excited stir and bustle about the thronged entrance of the
hotel, and the crowding of officers about another, who had a paper in
his hand:
"Those officers have heard--something that is not Ancient History.
And look at the fellows who were eating at the tables in the windows;
they've something tastier to discuss now than the landlord's
indifferent grub!"
It was true. In the long dining-room, in the restaurant, and in the
reading-room, which had been converted into a temporary coffee-room,
men were swarming like bees and buzzing like them, while detached,
staccato sentences shaped out of the buzz.
"Saarbrück ... Spicheren ... Frossard ... Colonel von Pestel...."
"Something up...." Towers adjusted his eyeglass. Brotherton,
catching a sentence shouted by an officer of a _jäger_ battalion to
another green-coat leaning from a window on the second-floor, jumped
as though he had been prodded with a bayonet, and turned a flaming
face upon his friend:
"A telegram has come in... There has been serious fighting at
Saarbrück. Did they lie to us at the station, then? Officers and
gentlemen----"
"Softly, Chris!" The Doctor's hand upon his arm checked him on the
verge of a fiery outburst. "I fancy they've a right to hold back
intelligence dispatched from Headquarters when the senders mark the
wire '_Delay_.'"
"No doubt, but I had better interview the Commandant. Details would
be worth having!" said Brotherton, adding with a peculiar smile, "Or
at least I, in my inexperience, am inclined to think so."
Came the quick answer:
"You can have details now--without troubling the Commandant!
Full--well, as fully as I got them--under a strict undertaking of
secrecy for four hours--at six o'clock this morning!"
Brotherton turned as ashen-pale as he had hitherto been crimson.
Towers called out gleefully, as active little thrills of excitement
coursed down P. C. Breagh's spine:
"Bravo, Doctor! And you had it up youi sleeve all the time.
'Unfold, thou man of 'orrid mystery!' as Miss Le Grange says at
Astley's in the _Specter's Bride_."
"There's not so much to unfold. But from, eight thousand to ten
thousand French troops made an attack on Saarbrück yesterday. Some
battalions of the 8th Prussian Army Corps had augmented the original
garrison, and their nearest support was at Lebach, five miles to the
rear. A mitrailleuse-battery and some field-guns posted on the
Keppertsberg drove the Blue Uniforms out of the town!"
Towers said: "Then why the deuce..." and broke off. Brotherton
gloomed heavily. The Doctor went on:
"The Emperor and the Prince Imperial were on the heights, with the
Imperial Staff, to see the show--an astonishing spectacle it must
have been. Frossard, in the center with supports drawn from the
Second Corps--Marshal Bazaine on the right, with troops picked from
the Third. And in command of the Fifth Corps, De Failly, who crossed
the river at Saarguemines."
Queried Tower:
"And when the big bow-wow had made the little one drop the bone, he
didn't stick to it?"
The Doctor returned:
"No--and that's the puzzle of the whole affair. The whole glorious
display resolved itself into a cannonade, with occupation of the
heights on the left bank, and nothing further. Though the French
foreposts actually occupied the three bridges and held the town."
Tower said, his pale eyes sharp with intelligence:
"Bet you a tenner it was done for the boy. Got up to blood the
young'un--cockerel of the Walk Imperial. Geewhillikins!--What
telegrams Nap must have fired off to St. Cloud!"
"They'll have read them in Berlin and London long before they get to
us," said the Doctor, shrugging. "Where are you off to, Brotherton?"
Brotherton returned--and the tone was offensive, if the words were
not:
"To do what my senior Special does not appear to think
necessary--wire the news to Printing House Square."
The elder answered with a good-humored twinkle:
"Why, that was done hours back, by grace of the authorities. They
bridled my tongue, but left my pen unhampered. Knowing, of course,
that the British Public must wait for its news until breakfast-time
to-morrow. Were you speaking to me, Brotherton?"
The Major was saying in a voice as little like his own as the livid
mask of rage he turned on the Doctor resembled his ordinarily calm
and placid visage:
"I was addressing you, though it pleased you not to hear me. I was
asking you what you meant, by G----! in stealing a march on the man
you've called your friend?"
The Doctor's eyes blazed behind their gold-rimmed glasses. Anger
darkened his handsome sunburnt face. He drew himself up and said,
speaking simply and with dignity:
"How do you infer that I have 'stolen a march on you'? By taking the
apology they give one here for a cold tub at cockcrow and going over
to the Hauptmann's office with our papers while you and Tower were
sleeping like----"
"Like dormice, by Gad!" put in Tower. "And so we were. And it's a
case of the early bird--and not the first time, I'll swear--by
thousands! And, Brotherton--you ought to apologize. You were simply
infernally rude just now!"
Said the Major loftily:
"I gave it as my opinion that I had been dealt with unfairly. I do
not withdraw the words I used. But I comprehend that my senior in
the service of the paper is not anxious to share the credit of the
earliest intelligence with regard to what is taking place on the
frontier just now."
"For God's sake, Chris, don't say what you'll be sorry for!"
"I'll say what I think, to you, sir, or to the King of Prussia!"
The gray-bearded, strongly-featured face, with the look of generous
sorrow on it, and the younger, fairer, handsomer face, with the stamp
of arrogance and vanity and pride marring its manly beauty,
confronted each other in silence, until, with an impatient snarl,
Brotherton swung round upon his heel.
"Look here!--look here!--where the merry hell are you off to?" Tower
spluttered, grabbing at the sleeve of the splendid scarlet tunic.
"Not going to part company for a misunderstanding--hey?"
"I am going to part company," Brotherton returned bitterly, freeing
himself from the detaining hand, "since the jealousy that hampered me
in my military career threatens to mar my prospects now. Where I am
going to I cannot tell you--probably you will hear from me, but I
cannot promise it. Good-bye! Or--if you prefer it--_Auf
wiedersehen_!"
He shook hands with Tower, nodded coldly to the astonished P. C.
Breagh, formally saluted the Doctor, who returned with a slight bow,
picked up his cap and cloak and strode away over the sun-dried grass
and the hot yellow gravel, making for the gaudily painted iron gates
that ended the drive.
"Oh, Chris, man-alive, and am I jealous of ye?" said the Doctor, his
spectacles dewy with irrepressible laughter, as the gallant figure in
its gorgeous scarlet and golden trappings was swallowed in a crowd of
blue uniforms: "If you'd waited another minute, I'd have told you of
something else your senior in the service of the paper by seventeen
years, some odd days, and a minute or two isn't anxious to share with
you, and that is a reputation for not being a hot-headed,
unreasonable young ass!"
"He's making a bee-line for the Railway Station," said Tower, wiping
his heated forehead with a gaudily-hued silk handkerchief, "and if he
comes across any of those Transport swells there'll be the deuce to
pay. He's got the bit in his teeth and his tail tight down over the
ribbons, by George!--and he'll kick the trap to pieces and lame
himself to a dead certainty. Shall I go after him and try to
_soother_ him down a bit?"
The Doctor shrugged assent.
"If you think 'twill be any good! ... Meanwhile I have to write a
letter or two, and pack, or rout my man out of the servants' quarters
to do it. As for you, my boyo!"--he turned on P. C. Breagh a keen,
humorous glance that summoned up blushes to mantle under the railway
grime--"a wash and brush-up will do you no harm, and besides--my
absconding Berliner isn't described on his passport as a mulatto!"
Tower came back in half an hour, reporting failure in the attempt to
pacify Brotherton, who nevertheless joined the Doctor's little party
at the station, having apparently recovered his serenity of temper,
and abandoned his determination to forswear his senior's company.
Beer, coffee, bread and meat were still being lavishly distributed
among the troops continually parading for departure, and the
train-loads of soldiers passing through. And the exodus of
panic-stricken visitors, flying from the little up-Rhine watering
places, in apprehension of the arrival of the Emperor with his
mitrailleuses, continued; until, in another hour, the shrunken finger
of the Warlock wagged, and thenceforth the Rhine Valley Railways were
totally blocked for civilian passengers, and given over to the
transport of men and munitions of war.
Presently, when a train of coal-trucks from Kreuznach came jolting
into Bingen, bearing on their sable flanks the chalk hieroglyphics
that signified their official emptiness, P. C. Breagh was destined to
behold personages of the loftiest rank and the utmost exclusiveness,
German Serene Highnesses, Austrian Duchesses, and English peeresses,
with their children and lap-dogs, their maids, _chefs_, coachmen,
lackeys, and grooms, packed into these grimy vehicles without
precedence or selection, or any seating-accommodation other than that
afforded by an empty sack or an armful of straw.
The troop-train conveying the mounted gendarmerie of the Third Army
Corps--huge men equipped as dragoons--to Mayence, afforded
accommodation to the men, horses and vans of the Doctor's party.
Long before the fortifications came in sight the roads were blotted
out by marching columns, and the fields were dotted with moving
transport-trains.
At Mayence, whose stone-paved streets were roaring with the passage
of iron-shod wheels, the trampling of iron-shod hoofs, and the
measured tramping of infantry battalions, the Doctor, stepping from
the train, was seized upon by friends. Yet after the first eager
interchange of interrogations and answers, he found time to bestow a
parting hand-grip on Carolan and a final word of advice.
"And--put this in your pocket--it'll be a help to you if it doesn't
hang you. They're lithographed by the Prussian War Department, and
every German officer has one. And here's something else, a lot more
use than the revolver those chaps stole from you. You'll know better
than to use it unless in case of need!"
This was a folding pocket-map of the Eastern Departments of France,
with certain military routes very nicely marked in red upon it.
While the something else proved to be a wicker-covered metal
pocket-flask, containing about half-a-pint of the whisky of Kinahan.
The donor added:
"Remember, train your memory to pigeon-hole things for later
description, and never be caught taking notes, or fighting on a side!
And--be on your guard with women, pretty ones especially.
And--there's a scrap of paper in the pocket of the map-cover, may
come in handy, at a pinch. No, no thanks! General von Reigen,
that's the light blue Würtemburg Hussar officer talking to
Tower--tells me Moltke and his staff are quartered at the Hotel de
Holland. If so, the King won't be far off. He thinks Bismarck has
gone to a house outside the town, but he can't swear to it. There
goes a carriage with the Red Prince's big buck-nigger on the box.
Shows his Highness must be somewhere hereabouts. As for the Crown
Prince, nobody will say anything. He's marching--with an end in
view. And they say the French are shooting uncommonly badly--and
that half of the Reserve men don't know how to use their chassepots.
Well, they'll have practice enough before long. Good luck, and
good-bye!"
The "scrap of paper," upon later examination, proved to be a
five-pound note, placed there by the hand that later penned those
wonderful war-letters--under a wayside hedge, at a corner of a plank
bivouac-table, on the zinc counter of a wine-shop filled with
carousing soldiers--at the ebony and tortoiseshell _éscritoire_ of
Madame la Marquise, in the boudoir of the château that had been so
sorely battered by those big potatoes of Moltke's.
Kind little, great man; a whole chestful of Orders had no power to
chill the big warm heart that prompted your many deeds of generosity.
It molders in a coffin now, and the decorations are dimming with dust
in a glass-topped box. But beyond the Veil that parts the seen from
the unseen world, I like to think that there were waiting for you
rewards and honors, in comparison with which the most coveted earthly
insignia were vilest dirt and dross.