Part 19
"We shall know for certain, I dare say, when you've thrown your eye over this paper here," said his patron, producing a crumpled oblong of pale green. "That it's addressed to another person ain't your business. I mean that person no injury--and naturally no more don't you. What you're asked to do is to English these words for me." He handed over the cablegram and expanded himself to hear. P. C. Breagh read with lifting eyebrows:
"_Lanze inden Schuh, Uhlan! Hauptquartier, Berlin._"
"And what's that mean? English it, can't you?" snapped Mr. Knewbit, rabid with curiosity.
P. C. Breagh Englished it as requested:
"Lance in rest, Hussar. Headquarters, Berlin."
Said Mr. Knewbit later on, warming his calves despite the heat of the weather, at the low coke fire in the kitchen register, while Miss Ling bustled about clearing away the supper-cloth:
"That there cable was received in London at six-thirty this evening, and the _Evening Gazette_ Meguet quoted from was the latest issue--about eleven a.m. I shall go down early to the office to-night!"
His Excellency Field-Marshal General Count von Moltke had said that day, having dropped in at the Berlin Headquarters of the Reserve _Landwehr_ for the purpose of perusing certain lists sent from London a few days previously by the Teutonic gentleman who taught English to German immigrants at the Institute in Berners Street, W.:
"It was an excellent idea of Colonel von Rosius to fish for missing Prussian conscripts and deserters from our _Landwehr_ in the character of a teacher of English to foreigners in London. He has netted in a year, two thousand privates and non-commissioned officers, would-be waiters, clerks, porters, valets, and tradesmen--men of all ages, from forty to nineteen. A useful officer--a very intelligent officer. We shall make up much leakage in adopting his plan!"
In the dimly gaslit murkiness of three o'clock in the morning Mr. Knewbit sallied forth to business, carrying his hat in his hand as he went, for the weather was oppressive, yet walking at his usual red-hot pace, and making as much noise with his boots as three ordinary men.
"I'm not in my usual mood for Nature," he said, on reaching the bottom of gray, grimy Endell Street, "and I flatter myself on being tough enough--at a pinch--to do without my customary dose of fresh air. So I'll twist down Long Acre and take the Drury Lane short-cut. Not that there is any special reason for hurry to-night."
Yet hurry seemed abroad to an observation as strictly professional as Mr. Knewbit's. Cabs rattled over the stones of the Strand, dashing Fleet Streetward; panting messengers clutching envelopes dived under the horses' noses; hurried pedestrians carrying little black bags jostled Mr. Knewbit every moment; windows of offices glowed like furnaces, and the champing of steam-engines made a continual beat upon the ear.
"The last report from the late Debate in the Commons is in by now," said Mr. Knewbit, looking at his stout silver timekeeper, under a gas-lamp, "and Gladstone 'as made short work of that last batch of Bills for the Session. Fee Fo Fum was nothing to 'im. Merchant Shipping, Ballot, Turnpikes, Inclosures--and a baker's dozen of Scotch Bills 'ave been offered up in a regular 'ecatomb, and anathemas 'ave been 'urled at the 'eads of the Opposition with the usual inspiritin' effect. The gentleman who is a-trying to put a stop to the employment of young children in Factories and Workshops 'as been put down with the powerful argument that the kids like their work, and would get up at four in the morning to do it for nothink if they wasn't paid for it. What a headin' I could make out of that! The stoker who was drivin' the engine to give the reg'lar driver a rest when the Carlisle Railway Disaster happened has been released without a stain on 'is character, and complimented by the Committee on his 'umanity into the bargain. Mr. Bright is better, and will wake up the Board of Trade presently. That's all we shall have for our bill of fare this issue, includin' the City Correspondence, Sportin' Intelligence, Markets, Stocks, and state of the weather, Railway Shares, Law and Police reports, and Births, Deaths, and Marriages, and not leavin' out the new midsummer drama at Sadler's Wells Theater or the letters written by gentlemen with grievances, signing theirselves 'Pater-familias,' or 'Englishman,' or 'Verax,' who have been sauced by hackney-cab drivers or over-rated by the Income Tax, or overcharged for a cold-mutton, lettuce-salad and cheese luncheon in a country inn. That's all, and no more than bound to be! And yet I feel as if something was going to happen. I'm not due in my Department for another hour. I shall do a bit of a Look Round."
He entered by the swing-doors of the Fleet Street general entrance, meeting a rush of hot air, powerfully flavored with gas and machine-oil, and was instantly borne off his feet by an avalanche of telegraph-agency messengers in oilskin caps and capes. The place was ablaze with gas, shirt-sleeved men and grubby boys ran hither and thither like agitated insects. The walls shook with the panting of engines getting up steam. Perspiring printer-foremen shot in and out of little baking-hot glass offices where sub-editors were cutting down heaps of "flimsy," ramming sheets of copy on files, correcting proofs, and curtailing pars....
Said Mr. Knewbit, fanning himself on a landing after climbing a great many iron-shod staircases, and passing in and out of a great many swing-doors emitting puffs of the hot gas-and-oil-perfumed air already mentioned, and leading to glass-roofed departments, where shirt-sleeved and aproned men labored for dear life, and huge steam-power machines at high pressure trembled and panted like elephants gone mad:
"The Foreign Telegrams are in type and the Leaders are in the chases. The forms are in the machines, and in another minute the word will be given to Print. Halloa! Beg pardon, sir! I'm sure I didn't see you!"
For a little red-hot, perspiring gentleman had leaped up the staircase like a goat of the mountain, had charged at the swing-doors immediately behind Knewbit, collided with him, sworn at him breathlessly--and vanished with a double thud of the swing-doors, and a shout of "Matheson!"
A clang of voices seemed to answer him, there was a brief minute's delay, ages as it seemed to the waiting Mr. Knewbit; then the mad elephants, unchained, began to heave and stamp and snort. And--at the rate of twenty-five thousand an hour, began to roll, from the great cylinders of damp paper, the day's issue of the _Early Wire_.
They rolled out--as similar cylinders were rolling up and down Fleet Street and all the world over, the Report of the late Debate in the Commons, the list of Bills beheaded by the Prime Minister, the ineffectual efforts of the gentleman who was trying to stop the Factory Owners from employing Infant Labor, the result of the Commission of Inquiry upon the Carlisle Railway Disaster, and all the News of the day. And in a space reserved for the Latest Foreign Intelligence appeared a telegram sent from Ems by the King of Prussia, as condensed at a dinner-council of three convivials, in the Wilhelm Strasse, Berlin.
And all the world read it and commented, as British stocks went up and Continental Stocks played seesaw:
"The King of Prussia refuses to receive the French Ambassador! ... This most certainly means WAR!"
XXV
Perched on the wall,--hung with an old-world Chinese paper, figured with sprays of bamboo, pagodas, bridges, mandarins promenading under yellow umbrellas, and fair Celestials reclining on the banks of a meandering, bright blue stream--the German fly of Mr. Knewbit's envy would have reaped scant information from the conversation of the three men sitting at the dinner-table, for the reason that they conversed in English--perhaps for privacy's sake.
The apartment, not ordinarily used as a dining-room, possessed three sets of folding-doors, and beyond a sofa and twelve heavy chairs, upholstered with a Chinese brocade matching the paper, was scantily furnished. The table plate was solid and handsome. A pair of huge silver-gilt wine-coolers displayed a goodly array of champagne bottles, a cellar-basket with rows of horizontal wicker-nests contained claret, Burgundy, and Rhine wine. The second course was under discussion, but the servants, after placing the dishes on the table, had withdrawn. By a bell kept on a dumb-waiter at the host's elbow, bearing sauces, clean plates, spare glasses, bread of white and black, and other requisites, the attendants could be summoned at need.
The hostess's chair at the table-head was vacant. The two guests' places were laid on the right and left hand of the host. All three men were in uniform, two were well stricken in years; and Time had not left sufficient locks among them to furnish a wig-maker with material for covering a bald patch.
Also, they were men of whom the world had heard much already, and was, before the ending of the year, to hear a great deal more.
The tall, heavily-built man of sixty-seven, in the uniform of a General of Division, who sat upon the host's right hand, boasting a hair-tuft above either ear, a pair of shaggy eyebrows, and a bristling mustache dyed to savage blackness, any intelligent Berliner would have recognized as Von Roon, the Prussian Minister of War; while the mild-looking veteran of seventy who opposed him, displaying the crimson badge of the Great General Staff upon a plain dark close-buttoned military frock, with the ribbons of a dozen decorations showing in a narrow line on his left breast and the coveted Cross of the Red Eagle of the First Class hanging at the black regulation stock that clipped his unstarched linen collar, would have been claimed by the veriest street urchin as "Our Moltke!"
You saw in this hale, lean, stooping Staff Officer, who covered a scalp as bare as a new-born babe's with an obvious auburn wig, the first soldier of the day, the past-master in war-craft. His fine, transparent beaky profile, tight mouth, clear light eyes, set in a net of innumerable knowing little wrinkles, and the cross-hatching of tiny scarlet veins that made his hollow cheeks ruddy as Cornish apples, might have belonged to some aged, ascetic Cardinal, or venerable Professor of Science, rather than to Baron Helmuth Carl Bernhard von Moltke, General, Field-Marshal, and Chief of the Great General Staff of the Prussian Army; whose heraldic motto, _Erst wagen dann wagen_ summarizes his strategical policy; whose conduct of the Danish War of '64 and the Austrian War of '66 had placed Prussia in the forefront as a military nation, under whose banner were soon to gather the Confederated German States.
Questioned as to the identity of the man at the head of the table, the long-limbed, heavily molded, powerfully built personage of five-and-fifty, attired in the undress-uniform of a Colonel of White Cuirassiers, and wearing the Order of Commander of the Red Eagle, the citizen would most likely have scowled, the street-boy spat forth some unsavory epithet, tacked on to a name that was destined to be inscribed upon the era in divers mediums, inclusive of marble and iron, brass and gold and silver; lead and fire; bright steel and red blood.
For this was the Minister to whom diplomats, Parliamentary orators, and political leader-writers referred when they mentioned Prussia; the accursed of Ultramontane, the abhorred of Socialists. Walking alone through the streets, as, indeed, he loved to do, his keen eye and huge physical strength had saved him, ere now, from the assassin's bullet or knife. And you could not look upon him without recognizing a Force, all-potent for good or all-dominant in evil, an enemy to be execrated or a leader to be adored.
The massive, high-domed head was scantily covered, save for a grayish lock or so above either temple, and a thin thatching behind the finely shaped, sagacious ears. The eyebrows were thick--of gray mixed with darkish brown; the luxuriant brown-gray mustache covering the large, mobile, sarcastic mouth, grew heavily as any trooper's. The short, straight nose was rounded at the end like the point of a broadsword. And in the indomitable, vital regard of the blue eyes, partly hidden under thick and level lids, you felt the master-mind, as they coldly considered some question of finance or diplomacy, or blazed challenge and defiance, scorn and irony. And in the sagging orbital pouches, as in the puffy jowl, you read the unmistakable signs of bygone orgies, deep potations, marvelous vital powers taxed to the utmost in the past pursuit of pleasure, as by present indefatigable, unsleeping labors with brain, voice, and pen in the service of Throne and State.
The table-talk dealt chiefly, at first, with culinary and gastronomical matters. Asparagus soup iced and a clear soup with vermicelli had preceded the course of fish, placed on the table by the servants, who had then been dismissed. A huge dish of Waldbach trout with green sauce and another, as capacious, of crayfish stewed in cream with mushrooms, vanished before a double onslaught on the part of the War Minister and the Chancellor, the Chief of the General Staff partaking sparingly, as was his wont.
Said his host, smiling and setting down an empty wine goblet:
"You eat nothing, Herr Baron Field-Marshal, whereas I, who come of a family of great eaters, and His Excellency, who boasts a similarly inherited capacity, have taken twice of each dish."
"Thanks, thanks, dear Count," said Moltke mildly, glancing downward at the well-marked hollow behind his middle buttons; "but I do not like to overload my stomach, particularly at my time of life."
"Being aware of Your Excellency's objection to dishes that are heavy," the Chancellor continued gravely, but still smiling, "I took pains to select a menu of light, easily digested things. What are three or four dozens of oysters at the commencement of a dinner?"
Von Roon agreed, in a hoarse bass, that set the chandelier-glasses vibrating:
"Or a few half-pound trout, or a helping or so of stewed crayfish? Mere nothings--to a strong digestion."
"Mine cannot be strong," the great strategist remarked modestly, "for I find that an over-plentiful meal oppresses the brain, and hinders steady thought."
Said the Chancellor, filling from a long-necked bottle one of the three large crystal goblets that served him as wine-glasses, emptying it at a draught and setting it down:
"Hah! Were that known in a certain high quarter at Paris, what a cargo of delicacies you would presently receive from the Maison Chevet!"
Von Roon's big voice came in:
"Was not Chevet the Parisian purveyor who supplied the banker-minister Lafitte with fish for a Dieppe dinner in the time of the French Monarchy?"
"So!" The Chancellor, holding his napkin delicately in both hands, dried the wine from his mustache, and added, turning his great, slightly bloodshot eyes upon the interrogator. "And who is now chief caterer for the Emperor Napoleon the Third." He added, glancing back at Moltke, and observing that his glass stood unemptied: "Since Your Excellency will not eat, let me recommend you the wine, which is of special quality. Not only Rüdesheim, but good Rüdesheim. Ha, ha, ha!"
The veteran's clear eyes became mere slits in the mass of puckered wrinkles. He pushed back his auburn peruke, showing his high-arched temples, and laughed, revealing gums as healthy as a child's, and still accommodating three or four staunch old grinders inclined at various angles, like ancient apple-tree stumps.
"_Nu, nu_! You are twitting me with my candor to Sultan Mahmoud in 1835; but what else could I say when Chosref Pasha intimated that His Sublimity required my opinion? Directly I tasted his wretched wine, I knew some rogue had sold him an inferior brand, and thus I told him honestly: 'It is Rüdesheim, Your Majesty, but it is not good Rüdesheim!' And with the first of the boxes of tobacco and cigarettes that came from Constantinople after my return to Germany, I received the message that the _tutun_ was not only Turkish _tutun_, but good Turkish _tutun_." He drank off his wine, ending: "And so my nephews say it is, for I smoke neither cigarettes nor pipes."
"I smoke pipes," said the Chancellor, stretching a white, muscular hand toward the bell on the dumb-waiter, "when my doctor prohibits cigars." He added: "Pipes of all materials and descriptions--one sort excepted. I have no doubt Your Excellency could give it a name."
The War Minister, pondering, knotted his heavy tufted eyebrows, and presently blew out his cheeks as a man may when the jest baffles his wit. The Field-Marshal began to laugh, a gentle chuckle that began by agitating his lean abdomen, and shaking his bowed but vigorous shoulders before it widened his mouth into a slit curved gaily at the corners, and squeezed tears of merriment out of his puckered eyes.
"I'll wager half a pfennig I will name it at the first guess! You mean the Calumet of Peace!"
Von Roon barked out a laugh. The Chancellor nodded, smiling. Then two middle-aged, grave-looking male servants in plain black entered with the third course, and the faces of the diners underwent a curious change. They were more suave, and all expression seemed as though it had been wiped from them. Until, following on the heels of the servants (who brought the _entrées_), there appeared a colossal boarhound, dark tawny in color, with black pointings, short, rounded ears, massive chest, square muzzle, and red-rimmed eyes. Fixing these fierce orbs upon his master with an affection proved not altogether disinterested by the copious dribbling of his jaws, the great brute sat upright at his left hand, flogged the carpet with his heavy tail, and saluted the placing of the dishes on the table with three gruff barks.
"Aha, Tyras!"
"Hey, then, Tyras! So they have cut short your furlough, boy!"
"He would tell you, like that sergeant of infantry who was made postman of a country district after the war of '66, and at whom the illiterate population--who never got anything but bad news or dunning letters--used to shoot as a mild hint to keep away altogether, that all the days are field-days to him. Speaking as a dog with a master who walks when he does not ride, and must be waited for when he is neither riding nor walking."
The Chancellor, smiling, looked at the huge brute, which rose and laid its massive jowl entreatingly upon his chair-arm, and receiving no immediate return in caress, lobbed a heavy forepaw pettishly upon the tablecloth. A chased silver-gilt salt-cellar, in the shape of a Bavarian peasant-girl carrying two milk-pails, toppled, and might have fallen to the floor, but that the Field-Marshal caught it dexterously, though without being able to prevent the salt being spilt.
"No harm done. See!" He triumphantly set the milk-maid in her place again: "Only the salt is spilled upon the cloth!"
"Now, if Tyras were superstitious!" commented the host, as a servant hastened to repair the damage with the aid of a napkin and a porcelain dessert-plate, "he would be convinced that Madame Tyras and her sons were not doing as well as might be hoped."
"The bitch has pupped, then?" said Von Roon as a trio of corks exploded; and the servants, having carried round the dishes, placed them on the table, set an open bottle of champagne, dewy from the ice, and enveloped in a damask napkin, at the right of each diner, and noiselessly quitted the Chinese room.
As the door shut, the Chancellor continued, responding to Roon's question with a nod, and looking at the Chief of the Great General Staff:
"However, Tyras is not one of those nervous sires who rend heaven and earth with outcries if danger threatens one of their offspring. The Pomeranian breed are possibly less nervous than the strain at Sigmaringen. I think Prince Antony----"
Blurted out the Field-Marshal, bolting a mouthful of cutlet and crimsoning to the edges of his wig with sudden anger: "May the great devil fly away with that pompous old sheep's-head!"
"It was not without reason," said the Chancellor, without slackening in his onslaught upon an _entrée_ of duckling stewed with olives, "that I arranged for us three to dine without the servants. Did I not foresee that the hot blood of the warlike youth would effervesce in some such expression as that I have just heard!"
Said the old man, still flushed, but laughing, and sipping at a bumper of dry Sillery:
"He is a sheep's-head, and a pompous one! He negotiates with Prim, as head of the Hohenzollern family, quite forgetting the King, it would appear! He is very well pleased--he thinks the place will suit his son capitally! He sends him on second thoughts to ask the King if he does not think so. Then when France hurries her Ambassador to Ems to inform the King, who has not said 'Ay' or 'Nay' in the matter, that she will not tolerate a Prince of Prussia on the Throne of Spain, he writes to the King saying that he is much impressed by the turn things are taking at Paris, and though he thinks he cannot in decency break off the affair, perhaps the King will do it for him! Meanwhile Prince Leopold, who is the chief person concerned--where withdrawal or acceptance is in question--has quitted Ems and gone where you please.... Not to his parents' country castle of Sigmaringen, but to the Tyrol.... Now why to the Tyrol? This marching and countermarching--with no definite purpose in it, makes my blood boil. Phew!"
And really the perspiration fairly bubbled from the pores of the old warrior, as he took off his auburn peruke and mopped his dripping head and face with a large white handkerchief.
The Chancellor, who had been discussing a second helping of the dish before him, laid down his knife and fork upon their silver-gilt supporters, unfastened a hook of his undress frock, and said, withdrawing a small roll of tissue papers and separating one thin penciled sheet from the rest:
"There is some reason for the Prince's agitation. This morning a telegram in cipher--of which this is a fair transcript--was dispatched from Sigmaringen to Olozaga, the Spanish Ambassador at Paris. It conveys the intimation that Prince Antony withdraws from the candidacy in the name of Prince Leopold. It was sent by the French Emperor's secret agent, a Roumanian named Straz."
He went on informing himself, with a quiet side-glance to right and left, of the effect his communication was producing:
"Perhaps you do not know Straz--a man with the profile and curls of one of M. Layard's man-god bulls of Nineveh, a living tool that might have been tempered in the workshop of an Alexander Borgia, or a Catherine de Medici----"
He stopped to fill one of his great crystal goblets from the champagne-bottle that stood beside him. Moltke, indifferent to the dishes that stood temptingly within reach, had been wiping the inside of his wig dry with his handkerchief. Now, oblivious of the wig, and crumpling it with the handkerchief into a ball, he was squeezing the ball between his narrow palms as he listened to the speaker. Von Roon, who had been busy upon some sweetbreads cooked in sour cream, paused in the act of helping himself again largely.
"So--so--this fellow--Straz----" The Chancellor stuttered now and then, and he did it here effectively--"This uns-scrupulous f-fellow of whom I am t-talking----" He drained the big glass to the dregs, wiped his mustache carefully, and began delicately unfolding more thin sheets of paper from the small but pregnant wad.