Part 22

These men would never know it, but they were profoundly humiliated. At least one of them had lost a half-column, striking the note of personal adventure to the clink of shekels of fine gold. As for Mr. Knewbit ... P. C. Breagh could almost hear him chuckling--had only to shut his eyes to see the poker, sketching out headings on the Coram Street kitchen wall:

"ADVENTURE OF YOUNG ENGLISHMAN.

WAR CORRESPONDENT IN BERLIN.

CRUSHED BY THE CROWD.

RESCUED BY BISMARCK.

THE IRON HAND SAVES A LIFE!"

Meanwhile, the medal had to be returned to the hands of its owner, who must, P. C. Breagh was firm on that!--consent to receive it from the hands of the finder, if he wanted it back again. P. C. Breagh knew the Foreign Office, in the Wilhelm Strasse--the shabbiest residence in all that street of official palaces--with its high-pitched, red-tiled Mansard roof, its shabby gray stuccoed front (a main building with two short wings, pierced by twelve windows, and decorated with a sham-Hellenic frieze and shallow pilasters),--and its big, park-like garden stretching away behind.

So, clutching the precious token, P. C. Breagh plunged back into the crowd. It was dense, but no longer solid, and, still lustily singing, with intervals of cheering, it bore him down the Linden as far as the Brandenburg Gate.

There it split into three vociferating rivers of humanity. One of which streamed north-westward toward the offices of the Great General Staff, where Moltke, the ancient war-wizard, was busy over his maps! Another, desirous of refreshment, surged onward in the direction of the Thiergarten. The third flowed down the street of palaces, and with it went P. C. Breagh.

XVIII

The Foreign Office knocker was a colossal funereal wreath, of sooty bronze laurel, that wakened hollow startling echoes in the tomb-like void of a grim stone vestibule.

The vestibule lay at the end of a glass-roofed passage. On the right was a window, behind the window gleamed an eye, belonging to the Chancery janitor who had manipulated the door-levers. The door banged behind P. C. Breagh, and his hope climbed a central flight of stairs, gray-white marble, with bronze balusters badly in need of cleaning. The staircase was covered with worn Turkey carpet, was lighted from above by a green and gold cupola, and guarded by two conventional figures of sphinxes, carved in shiny blackish stone.

All these details the eye of P. C. Breagh gleaned over the arm of the Chancellor's door-porter, a seven-foot East Prussian, who wore plain black official livery and carried no gold-headed staff, yet would have snubbed the Rector of the University of Schwärz-Brettingen had he presented himself in this unceremonious way.

"What does he want? The young man must know that His Excellency the Royal Chancellor of the North German Confederation is engaged upon State business--not to be approached by strangers having no appointments or credentials previously obtained. An introduction to His Excellency is indispensable. Where has the young man lived that he does not know that?"

To which the young man thus addressed could only reiterate that he deeply regretted the absence of a letter of introduction, and that his credentials could only be displayed to His Excellency himself.

"It is likely!" The porter's forehead corrugated with suspicion: "Thus is he approached by lunatics and dangerous persons, armed with crazy petitions or lethal weap----"

"Bosh!"

The English word made the porter leap in his square-toed, steel-buckled half-shoes. Recklessly P. C. Breagh went on:

"I'm neither a lunatic nor an assassin... It's just a case of _Rettung aus Gefahr_. Two lives saved in the year 1842, and another less than an hour ago.... Send that message to His Excellency, and he'll see me, I believe!"

"He believes!" ... snorted the porter indignantly.

A little, stooping, shabbily dressed old man in a chocolate-colored frock-coat with gilt buttons came shuffling across the vestibule carrying a handful of papers, telegrams they appeared to be. He had paused to listen to the latter part of the colloquy, holding his head on one side, as though the better to focus his sharp gray glance on the dusty, obtrusive young Englishman crowned with a sun-burnt Oxford straw hat, attired in a well-worn brown Norfolk jacket, knickerbockers and heather-mixture woolen stockings, and shod with stout, black, leather-laced, hob-nailed boots.

"He believes!" exclaimed the porter as though referring to the chocolate-coated old gentleman. "Will not the highly well-born Herr Legation-Councillor order that I summon Grams and Engelberg, and have this presumptuous person thrown into the street?"

"Softly, softly, my good Niederstedt!" advised the little chocolate-coated old gentleman. He added, shuffling forward in his immense black cloth boots over the slippery marble pavement of the vestibule: "It has occurred to me that an utterance of this young man's referred to an article that has been lost by His Excellency." He added, fixing his sharp, gray, jackdaw's eyes on the face of the young man: "Not valuable, but worth recovering--purely as a memento of the past!..."

Said Carolan bluntly:

"I did refer to such an article. In fact, I have it on me!"

A finger and thumb, stained with snuff, dipped into the Councillor's waistcoat pocket. He said, secretly conveying an order to the watchful porter with a twirl of one jackdaw-eye:

"For a couple of thalers," he displayed the coin, "a box of smokable cigars may be purchased in Berlin." He added, having cast for a bite, and missing the rise: "Four thalers secures a really excellent article!"

"Certainly," agreed P. C. Breagh.

"But for ten thalers," continued the old gentleman with forced enthusiasm, coaxingly beckoning P. C. Breagh to approach nearer, "one may smoke the choicest Havana brands. Give me the medal, fortunate young man, and take the money. Such a sum is not often picked up in the street!"

Said the young man, thus adjured, thrusting out his square chin obstinately:

"If His Excellency consents to receive me, I will personally return the medal to him. Be good enough to let him know as much."

"Unhappy young man! you realize not the greatness of your own presumption!" expostulated the old gentleman, lifting up his warty eyelids and puffing out his whiskered cheeks over his old-fashioned black satin stock. "Is the Chancellor of the Realm to be--and at a national crisis such as this?--at the beck and call of every English traveler?" He added with warmth: "For I know you to be of that nation, young man, though you speak German with some approach to facility. Hence! Trouble here no more, but give me that medal before you take your departure. Otherwise you will be forcibly relieved of it by the hands of those who are accustomed to deal with bumptious and obstinately-authority-defying persons of your description...."

He added, as the arms of P. C. Breagh were pinioned in an iron grip that clamped the elbows together behind the shoulder-blades, drew his arms down, and pinioned his wrists: "He, he, he! That was a capital stratagem of yours, my excellent Niederstedt! Really very smartly done!"

The grim, sable-clad porter, in whose huge hands P. C. Breagh vainly struggled, relaxed into a smile at the compliment. He said, as from different points two stalwart liveried attendants appeared, hastening to lend assistance:

"One has not served in the Prussian Guards for nothing. Once a soldier, always a soldier! Will the highly well-born Herr Legation-Councillor order Grams and Engelberg to hold this English pig-dog while I take His Excellency's medal out of the fellow's clothes?"

Snarled P. C. Breagh, livid with rage and glaring at the hostile faces like a young male tiger-cat:

"Add robbery to violence if you think well!--you are four to one--and in your own country. But as an English journalist I protest against the outrage.... And the British Ambassador shall take the matter up!"

There was an instant's pause of indecision, during which P. C. Breagh heard the opening of a door on the landing above. Then, with the rustle of silk, and the soft fall of footsteps traversing heavy carpets, a resonant voice called down the stair that led up between the basalt Sphinxes:

"Meanwhile, you will allow me to apologize for the too-excessive zeal of my servants. Do me the favor to come up here!"

The grip of the giant porter became flaccid as an infant's. The voice spoke again from the summit of the stair:

"Herr Legation-Councillor, will you kindly see Madame to her carriage? Au revoir, Madame, et bon voyage!"

A liquid voice responded:

"_Au revoir, Monseigneur_! At Paris--who knows!--before the Noël!"

She pulled down her veil, curtsied with demure elegance, and came softly rustling down in pale-hued, trailing silks and laces, one snow-white hand blazing with splendid emeralds lightly passing over the bronze baluster-rail, the other holding the ivory and jeweled stick of a dainty parasol.

"Madame!"

As by an afterthought he had called her. Midway in her descent the lady turned to look up at him. He said, bending his powerful eyes upon the face of sensuous loveliness:

"Pardon! but I believe--you are a native of France?"

The hint stung. She returned, with the stain of an angry blush darkening the roses purchased from Rimmel; and a hard line showing from the angle of each delicate nostril to the corner of the deep-cut, scarlet lips:

"Monseigneur is correct ... I am a Frenchwoman.... But the heart is free to choose its own country.... And--mine has learned to beat for the Fatherland!..."

So exquisite was the cadence with which the words were uttered, that P. C. Breagh heaved an involuntary sigh. The Legation-Councillor took snuff--it may have been his way of showing emotion. The huge porter sighed like a locomotive blowing off steam. His colleagues, who, like himself, stood waiting in rigid military attitudes, suffered no sympathy to appear in their wooden faces, yet may have felt the more. But the heavy mask of their master was divested of all expression.

"Even," said he, in his clear, resonant voice, "to the point of outdoing Agamemnon, King of Argos. For he--but doubtless you are familiar with the classic story!--merely sacrificed Iphigeneia on the altar of the virginal Artemis...." He added with a tone of intolerable irony: "It would have required fewer scruples and more toughness than Agamemnon possessed to have offered up an only daughter to Venus Libertina.... Only a woman of fashion would be capable of such infamy.... Pardon! but you have dropped your parasol!"

She had shuddered and winced as though his words had been vitriol,--dropped from above--corroding her delicate flesh.... The costly toy had fallen from her hand as the shudder had passed over her, and rolled down the stair, as she continued her descent. P. C. Breagh picked it up and handed it to her, as she set foot upon the lowest step of the staircase. She looked at him, and bent her head. And the beauty that had been hers a moment back was so strangely, bleakly altered, he could scarcely repress an exclamation of dismay.

Thus Circe might have stared, thought P. C. Breagh, when her feeding hogs leaped up as men frantic for vengeance. Thus Duessa, when the spotted image of her own vileness was reflected in the glassy shield of Truth.

The change in the boy's face stabbed Madame to consciousness. She caught at her mauve tulle veil, forgetful that it was already lowered, and tore it horizontally, so that her full white rounded chin emerged with fantastic effect, like the moon through a bank of storm-wrack. And then, with her head held high, she swept through the vestibule in a frou-frou of silks and a gale of perfume, and down the passage ending in the hall-door with the funereal knocker. The Legation-Councillor trotted after her. One of the servants followed him, and P. C. Breagh, mounting the staircase between the Sphinxes, reached the landing and the summit of his ambitions in a breath.

"Time is scarce!" said the man who was meant when Prime Ministers and political leader-writers referred to Prussia. "I have no more than five minutes to spare, but you shall have them. Come this way! So you are an English journalist! What paper do you represent, here in Berlin? Sit down and tell me in as few words as possible!"

They were in a small but lofty room on the first-floor, hung with green flock paper. It had a fireplace as well as a stove, and it was a study, yet it contained no bookcases, only a couple of shelved stands laden with pamphlets and papers of the official kind. The two high windows--open and unblinded, though the green-shaded reading-lamp upon the big carved mahogany writing-table was alight--looked across the extensive gardens reaching to the Königgratzer-Strasse. Beyond lay the Thiergarten, all black with masses of people under the sultry red-gold sunset of middle July.

Perhaps you can see--like Scaramouch and the Sultan in the Eastern story--P. C. Breagh, hot and dusty, flushed and rumpled, seated opposite the most formidable personage of the day. He who dictated to Kings and carried his Foreign Office trailing after him whenever he chose to go campaigning, stood upon the skin of a white lioness that served as hearthrug, and bit off the end of a huge cigar. He looked bulkier than ever, and the powerful modeling of his scant-haired temples, the splendid dome of the skull that housed the keenest intellect in Europe, the masterful regard of the great eyes, the sarcastic humor of the mouth shaded by the heavy mustache--traits and features reproduced so constantly in the illustrated newspapers of the period,--conveyed to Carolan the impression that a portrait moved and spoke.

He was attired, as usually represented, in a dark blue, braided military undress-frock, and trousers tightly strapped over boots with cavalry spurs. An Order hung at his collar. As he threw back his head in the act of lighting his cigar, P. C. Breagh recognized it--the Cross of a Commander of the Red Eagle. While on the left breast of the blue frock-coat was a small three-cornered rent in the cloth from which the lost medal had been somehow wrenched away....

The sight of that tear in the dark blue-faced cloth sent the blood racing to P. C. Breagh's forehead. He knew himself for a presumptuous young man. He plunged his hand into the pocket of the brown Norfolk jacket, and brought out the red-and-white enameled decoration, and said, awkwardly laying it upon the edge of the big writing-table, in the yellow radius thrown by the lighted lamp:

"I found this after Your Excellency had gone!"

"Hand it here!" said the heavy blue eyes imperiously. P. C. Breagh got up and obeyed. The Chancellor's long arm shot out, and the muscular white fingers whipped the medal from the palm that offered it. Its owner assured himself by a brief scrutiny that the token had sustained no injury, nodded, and re-pinned it on the breast of his frogged military frock-coat. When this was accomplished,--the small solution in the continuity of the cloth being covered by the decoration,--he said, taking the cigar from his mouth, and knocking off the long crisp ash upon the edge of the white earthenware stove:

"I should have been sorry to have lost that. But, while thanking you for having restored it, let me say that had my servants taken it from you by _force majeure_ they would not have been robbing you,--though in law they might have been held guilty of a personal assault. Now as to your business. You have had one of your five minutes! You have just now said you are an English journalist. Does your business concern the War?"

P. C. Breagh stammered--for the heavy eyes that rested on him seemed to oppress him physically:

"To be frank with Your Excellency, I represent no newspaper. I have some slight experience as a journalist, that is all,--War Correspondence seems to me the highest branch of journalism,--and I want, naturally, to fit myself to practice it. Therefore, as no newspaper would employ me, I accepted a private commission given, out of good-nature, by a friend, who has helped me before. And--my first day in Berlin--I fell in with Your Excellency. I won't deny it seemed a hopeful augury!"

"For the future! ... I understand!" said the Chancellor, sending out a long cloud of cigar-smoke. "And in what way do you suggest that I should help you?"

He put the question so bluntly that P. C. Breagh, in the effort to answer, floundered and boggled. He had suddenly realized his own insect-like insignificance in the eyes that were so intolerably heavy in their regard. His own eyes sank to the neat, small, polished boots of the big man. who stood smoking upon the white lioness-skin. To the wearer of those boots he was merely a beetle who could be crushed by them. The slight ironical smile that altered the curve of the mustache said as much. But the Minister's tone was suave as he went on:

"I think I have grasped the mainspring of your reasoning. To begin with, you desire to accompany one of our armies on the campaign?"

"Yes--sir! Your Excellency, I should say!"

A lambent light of humor danced in the blue eyes that were bent on him. The faint ironic smile broadened into a laugh. The Chancellor took his cigar from his mouth, knocked off the ash, and said quite pleasantly:

"And deducting from this premise, I conjecture that--because I have been privileged to save you from being trampled to death under the feet of the mob upon the Linden, you naturally take it for granted that I would further your ambitions. Gratitude, one of your English authors has admirably defined as a lively sense of favors to come...."

P. C. Breagh, who had been for some time shrinking in his own estimation, suddenly saw himself in a newer, meaner light. His torturer went on in mellifluous English:

"I do not know that any classical German author has defined gratitude quite so cleverly. But we in Pomerania have a folk-story which may be new to you." He drew sharply at his cigar, then laid it glowing on the edge of the stove:

"You speak German quite passably, so I will tell it in our Pomeranian dialect. If this is not done, the dialogue lacks salt. Thus it goes: Wedig Knips, a peasant of Dalow, whose horses wanted watering, went one winter's day to break the ice that covered the drinking-hole.... 'Bless us! what have we here?' says he, when he finds a kerl called Peders, frozen in the ice, with his head down and his heels up. To make a long story short, he chops out Peders, takes him home, and sets him up to thaw before the fire.... 'Now, neighbor,' says he, 'go about your business!'--'How can I when my jerkin is wet and my breeches are full of muddy water?'--Says Wedig: 'Poor devil! I will give you my Sunday trows!'--'And a jerkin too, for you saved my life, you must remember!' ... Wedig scratches his head, but hands over a jerkin with the rest. 'Come, now be off!' says he. '"Off," with my under-pants and shirt all sopping! Do you want to kill me--now that you have saved my life?'--So Wedig pulls a wry face, but hands over the underclothes.... 'Put these on and be off, we are busy people in this house!' 'What,' says Peders, 'without paying me the value of the good duds spoiled in your stinking horsepond?'--'Must I pay?' ... 'Certainly, you have saved my life! Nobody asked you!--I had thrown myself in because I was tired of living. Now it is your bounden duty to make things tolerable for me!'--'How make things tolerable?'--'To begin with, I want a cottage to live in, and a plot of kail-ground to it, and a wee pickle furniture.'--'But I have only this cottage, and the bits of sticks you see!'--'Well, give me them! Didn't you save my life?' ... Wedig gets confused, sees no way out of it. 'The devil!' says he, 'this is a nice affair! However, take them, man!'--'I will take them,' says Peders, 'but you must give me the cart and plow, the cow and the two horses?'--'_Himmelkreuzbombenelement_! Have I got to give you all that because I saved your life?'--'Ay, undoubtedly!--and you must let me have your wife into the bargain. It's your bounden duty----' 'I know! because I saved your life! Shan't make such a mistake next time, you may be sure of that!'--'No, but you did, so to grumble is no use.'--'Thunder! my old girl will make a terrible squawking.'--'Not when you have explained how you saved my life!' ... Wedig scratches his head, rubs his chin, gets a bright idea.... 'Help me to explain to the wife, do you agree?'--'Ay, of course! What is it you want me to say to her?'--'Oh! say nothing. Only let me show her exactly how I got you out of the water-hole.'--'Willingly!'--'But to do that I must put you back just a minute!'--'Put me back?'--'Only for a minute.' 'Promise when I cry "_Genug!_" you'll take me out directly!'--'All right! Come along!' So Wedig takes Peders by the legs and sticks him back where he found him, driving his head well down into the mud at the bottom of the pond.... So--he never cried '_Genug!_' and Wedig left him there....

The hard blue eyes that had been all alight with laughter, the heavily molded face that had unexpectedly proved itself capable of comic changes, the voice that, as the droll dialogue proceeded, had conveyed with slight, admirably restrained mimicry the complacent assurance of the knave and the dull bewilderment of the victim, changed, became the Minister's again. He said, in his smoothest tones:

"I cannot put you back into the crush of the crowd, because by an appeal to its loyal feelings and domestic instincts I was so fortunate as to disperse it. What I might do, of course, is to deliver you to the tender mercies of my servants, to whom,--when you brought back the medal,--you blustered about delivering it to me personally. This not-exactly-very-clever ruse would have failed--had I not happened to step upon the scene. Your English policy is often more fortunate than masterly.... Fortune certainly has favored you to-day. Not in the fulfillment of your ambition to accompany a Prussian Army to the field of action--that is a wish impossible to gratify. For we put up a general defense against the presence of any save the most highly accredited Correspondents, and the War Minister will only grant Legitimations to two or three. But in obtaining for an obscure paragraphist a special interview with the Prussian Minister for Foreign Affairs on the eve of a world-crisis, Fortune has certainly favored you. Go back now to your hotel and write your article; then telegraph to Fleet Street and make your own terms!"

"I'll be shot if I do!" choked out P. C. Breagh, flaming scarlet to his hair-roots. "And I thank Your Excellency for a lesson, and I beg to take my leave!"

"Why does he go? Why does he talk about a lesson?" asked the broad, cynical gaze that rested on him.

As though he had spoken aloud, P. C. Breagh answered:

"Because I set my personal advantage above common gratitude and honor. Your Excellency lost the medal in pulling me out of the scrimmage at the risk of your own life, and when I found the thing--I used it,--exactly as you say! True, you'd snubbed me when I'd tried to thank you! yet I did believe your having saved me might help me in some way.... But it would be better to cadge in the dustbins for a living, than make money out of information gained by trickery. And I apologize sincerely for having been such a cad!"

"'Cad' is the slang for vulgarian, is it not?" He added: "Yes, they inculcate a code of honor at the English public schools."

The voice grated. P. C. Breagh hated its owner. But he answered, looking squarely in the bulldog face that bent on him:

"They do, and I am sorry to have broken at least one of its articles. May I wish Your Excellency good afternoon!"