Chapter 11

"You, my good Haase, will meet the train," said the Baron von Steinlach. "The Embassy has arranged to have it shunted to a siding outside the station. You will, of course, tell them nothing of what is in contemplation. Just inform whoever is in charge that I will come later. And, Von Wetten, I think we will send the car with a note to bring Herr Bettermann here at the same time."

"Here, Excellency?"

"Yes," said the Baron. "After all, we want to keep the thing as quiet as possible, and that fellow is capable of asking a party of friends to witness the ceremony." There was malicious amusement in the eye he turned on Von Wetten. "And we don't want that, do we?" he suggested.

Von Wetten shuddered.

The siding at which the special train finally came to rest was "outside the station" in the sense that it was a couple of miles short of it, to be reached by a track-side path complicated by piles of sleepers and cinder-heaps. Herr Haase, for the purpose of his mission, had attired himself sympathetically rather than conveniently; he was going to visit a colonel and, in addition to other splendors, he had even risked again the patent leather boots. He was nearly an hour behind time when he reached at length the two wagons-lits carriages standing by themselves in a wilderness of tracks.

Limping, perspiring, purple in the face, he came alongside of them, peering up at their windows. A face showed at one of them, spectacled and bearded, gazing motionlessly through the panes with the effect of a sea-creature in an aquarium. It vanished and reappeared at the end door of the car.

"Hi! You, what do you want here?" called the owner of the face to Herr Haase.

Herr Haase came shuffling towards the steps.

"Ich stelle Mich vor; I introduce myself," he said ceremoniously. "Haase sent by his Excellency, the Herr Baron von Steinlach."

The other gazed down on him, a youngish man, golden-blond as to beard and hair, with wide, friendly eyes magnified by his glasses. He was coatless in the heat, and smoked a china-bowled German pipe like a man whose work is done and whose ease is earned; yet in his face and manner there was a trace of perturbation, an irritation of nervousness.

"Oh!" he said, and spoke his own name. "Civil-doctor Fallwitz. I've been expecting somebody. You'd better come inside, hadn't you?"

Outside was light and heat; inside was shadow and heat. Dr. Fallwitz led the way along the corridor of the car, with its gold-outlined scrollwork and many brass-gadgeted doors, to his own tiny compartment, smelling of hot upholstery and tobacco. Herr Haase removed his hat and sank puffing upon the green velvet cushions.

"You are hot, nicht wahr?" inquired Dr. Fallwitz politely.

"Yes," said Herr Haase. "But, Herr Doktor, since you are so good it is not only that. If it is gross of me to ask it but if I might take off my boots for some moments. You see, they are new."

"Aber ich bitte," cried the doctor.

The doctor stood watching him while he struggled with the buttons, and while he watched he frowned and gnawed at the amber mouthpiece of his pipe.

He waited till Herr Haase, with a loud, luxurious grunt, had drawn off the second boot.

"There will be a row, of course," he remarked then. "These Excellencies and people are only good for making rows. But I told them he couldn't be moved."

Herr Haase shifted his toes inside his socks. "You mean Colonel von Specht? But isn't he here, then?"

The young doctor shook his head. "We obeyed orders," he said. "We had to. Those people think that life and death are subject to orders. I kept him going till we got here, but about an hour ago he had a hemorrhage."

He put his pipe back into his mouth, inhaled and exhaled a cloud of smoke, and spoke again.

"Died before we could do anything," he said. "You see, after all he had been through, he hadn't much blood to spare. What did they want him here for, do you know?"

"No," said Herr Haase. "But I know the Herr Baron was needing him particularly. Was fur eine Geschichte!"

"Want to see him?" asked the young doctor.

It had happened to Herr Haase never to see a dead man before. Therefore, among the incidents of his career, he will not fail to remember that the progress in his socks from the one car to the other, the atmosphere of the second car where the presence of death was heavy on the stagnant air, and the manner in which the thin white sheet outlined the shape beneath. A big young orderly in shabby civilian clothes was on guard; at the doctor's order he drew down the sheet and the dead man's face was bare. He who had slashed a helpless conscript across the face with a whip, for whom yet any service of his Fatherland was "good enough," showed to the shrinking Herr Haase only a thin, still countenance from whose features the eager passion and purpose had been wiped, leaving it resolute in peace alone.

"I I didn't know they looked like that," whispered Herr Haase.

The two homeward miles of cindery path were difficult; the sun was tyrannical; his boots were a torment; yet Herr Haase went as in a dream. He had seen reality; the veil of his daily preoccupations had been rent for him; and it needed the impertinence of the ticket-collector at the door of the station, who was unwilling to let him out without a ticket, to restore him. That battle won, he found himself a cab, and rattled over the stones of Thun to the hotel door. He prepared no phrases in which to clothe his news; facts are facts and are to be stated as facts. What he murmured to himself as he jolted over the cobbles was quite another matter.

"Ticket, indeed!" he breathed rancorously. "And I tipped him two marks only last Christmas!"

The Baron's car was waiting at the hotel door; the cab drew up behind it. The cabman, of course, wanted more than his due, and didn't get it; but the debate helped to take Herr Haase's mind still further off his feet. He entered the cool hall of the hotel triumphantly and made for the staircase.

"O, mein Herr!"

He turned; he had not seen the lady in the deep basket-chair just within the door, but now, as she rose and came towards him, he recognized her. It was the wife of Bettermann, the inventor, the shape upon the balcony of the chalet who had overlooked their experiments and overheard the bargain they had made.

Herr Haase bowed. "Gnadige Frau?"

He remembered her as little and pleasantly pretty; her presence above them on the balcony had touched his German sentimentalism. She was pretty now, with her softness and blossom-like fragility, but with it was a tensity, a sort of frightened desperation.

She hesitated for words, facing him with lips that trembled, and large, painful eyes of nervousness. "He he is here," she said, at last. "My husband they sent a car to fetch him to them. He is up there now, with them!"

Herr Haase did not understand. "But yes, gracious lady," he answered. "Why not? The Herr Baron wished to speak to him."

She put out a small gloved hand uncertainly and touched his sleeve.

"No," she said. "Tell me! I, I am so afraid. That other, the officer who cut Egon's face my husband's I mean, he has arrived? Tell me, mein Herr! Oh, I thought you would tell me; I saw you the other day, and those others never spoke to you, and you were the only one who looked kind and honest." She gulped and recovered. "He has arrived?"

"Well, now," began Herr Haase paternally. In all his official life he had never "told" anything. Her small face, German to its very coloring, pretty and pleading, tore at him.

"Yes, he has arrived," he said shortly. "I have I have just seen him."

"Oh!" It was almost a cry. "Then then they will do it? Mein Herr, mein Herr, help me! Egon, he has been thinking only of this for years; and now, if he does it, he will think of nothing else all his life. And he mustn't he mustn't! It's it will be madness. I know him. Mein Herr, there is nobody else I can ask; help me!"

The small gloved hand was holding him now, holding by the sleeve of his superlative black coat of ceremony, plucking at it, striving to stir him to sympathy and understanding; the face, hopeful and afraid, strained up at him.

Gently he detached the gloved hand on his sleeve, holding it a second in his own before letting it go.

"Listen," he said. "That bargain is cancelled. Colonel von Specht died to-day."

He turned forthwith and walked to the stairs. He did not look back at her.

"Herein!" called somebody from within the white-painted door of the Baron's room, when he knocked.

Herr Haase, removing his hat, composing his face to a nullity of official expression, entered.

After the shadow of the hall and the staircase, the window blazed at him. The Baron was at his little table, seated sideways in his chair, toying with an ivory paper-knife, large against the light. Von Wetten stood beside him, tall and very stiff, withdrawn into himself behind his mask of Prussian officer and aristocrat; and in a low chair, back to the door and facing the other two, Bettermann sat.

He screwed round awkwardly to see who entered, showing his thin face and its scar, then turned again to the Baron, large and calm and sufficient before him.

"I tell you," he said, resuming some talk that had been going on before Herr Haase's arrival: "I tell you, the letter of the bargain or nothing!"

The Baron had given to Herr Haase his usual welcome of a half smile, satiric and not unkindly. He turned now to Bettermann.

"But certainly," he answered. He slapped the ivory paper-knife against his palm. "I was not withdrawing from the bargain. I was merely endeavoring to point out to you at the instance of my friend here" a jerk of the elbow towards Von Wetten "the advantages of a million marks, or several million marks, plus the cashiering of Colonel von Specht from the army, over the personal satisfaction which you have demanded for yourself. But since you insist."

Bettermann, doubled up in his low chair, broke in abruptly: "Yes, I insist!"

The Baron smiled his elderly, temperate smile. "So be it," he said. "Well, my good Haase, what have you to tell us?"

Herr Haase brought his heels together, dropped his thumbs to the seams of his best trousers, threw up his chin, and barked:

"Your Excellency, I have seen the Herr Colonel Graf von Specht. He died at ten minutes past eleven this morning."

His parade voice rang in the room; when it ceased the silence, for a space of moments, was absolute. What broke it was the voice of Von Wetten.

"Thank God!" it said, loudly and triumphantly.

The Baron swung round to him, but before he could speak Bettermann gathered up the slack of his long limbs and rose from his chair. He stood a moment, gaunt in his loose and worn clothes, impending over the seated baron.

"So that was it! Well" He paused, surveying the pair of them, the old man, the initiate and communicant of the inmost heart of the machine through which his soul had gone like grain through a mill, and the tall Prussian officer, at once the motor and millstone of that machine. And he smiled. "Well," he repeated, "there's the end of that!"

The door closed behind him; his retreating footsteps echoed in the corridor. The Baron spoke at last. He stared up at Von Wetten, his strong old face seamed with new lines.

"You thank God for that, do you?" he said.

Von Wetten returned his gaze. "Yes, Excellency," he replied.

He had screwed his monocle into his eye; it gave to his unconscious arrogance the barb of impertinence.

"You!" The Baron cried out at him. "You thank God, do you? and neither your thanks nor your God is worth the bones of a single Pomeranian grenadier! Do you know what has happened, fool?"

Captain von Wetten bent towards him, smiling slightly.

"You are speaking to Haase, of course, Excellency?"

The Baron caught himself. His face went a trifle pinker, but his mouth was hard under the clipped white moustache and the heavy brows were level.

"I will tell you what has happened," he said deliberately. "I will try to make it intelligible to you."

He held up the ivory paper-knife, its slender yellow blade strained in his two hands.

"That is Germany to-day," he said, "bending." His strong hands tightened; the paper-knife broke with a snap. "And that is Germany to-morrow broken. We have failed."

He threw the two pieces from him to the floor and stared under the pent of his brows at Von Wetten.

Their eyes engaged. But one of the pieces slid across the floor to Herr Haase's feet. Orderly and serviceable always, Herr Haase bent and picked up the broken pieces and put them back upon the table.

VIII

ALMS AND THE MAN

While she was yet dressing, she had heard the soft pad of slippers on the narrow landing outside her room and the shuffle of papers; then, heralded by a single knock, the scrape and crackle of a paper being pushed under her door. It was in this fashion that the Maison Mardel presented its weekly bills to its guests.

"Merci!" she called aloud, leaving her dressing to go and pick up the paper. A pant from without answered her and the slippers thudded away.

Standing by the door, with arms and shoulders bare, she unfolded the document, a long sheet with a printed column of items and large inky figures in francs and centimes written against them, and down in the right hand corner the dramatic climax of the total. It was the total that interested Annette Kelly.

"H'm!" It was something between a gasp and a sigh. "They 're making the most of me while I last," said Annette aloud.

Her purse was under her pillow, an old and baggy affair of shagreen, whose torn lining had to be explored with a forefinger for the coins it swallowed. She emptied it now upon the bed. The light of a Paris summer morning, golden and serene, flowed in at the window, visiting the poverty of the little room with its barren benediction and shining upon the figure of Annette as she bent above her money and counted it She was a slender girl of some three-and-twenty years, with hair and eyes of a somber brown; six weeks of searching for employment in Paris and economizing in food, of spurring herself each morning to the tone of hope and resolution, of returning each evening footsore and dispirited, had a little blanched and touched with tenseness a face in which there yet lingered some of the soft contours of childhood.

She sat down beside the money on the bed, her ankles crossed below her petticoat; her accounts were made up. After paying the bill and bestowing one franc in the unavoidable tip, there would remain to her exactly eight francs for her whole resources. It was the edge of the precipice at last. It was that precipice, overhanging depths unseen and terrible, which she was contemplating as she sat, feet swinging gently in the rhythm of meditation, her face serious and quiet. For six weeks she had seen it afar off; now it was at hand and immediate.

"Well," said Annette slowly; she had already the habit of talking aloud to herself which comes to lonely people. She paused. "It just means that today I've got to get some work. I've got to."

She rose, forcing herself to be brisk and energetic. The Journal, with its advertisements of work to be had for the asking, had come to her door with the glass of milk and the roll which formed her breakfast, and she had already made a selection of its more humble possibilities. She ran them over in her mind as she finished dressing. Two offices required typists; she would go to both. A cashier in a shop and an English governess were wanted. "Why shouldn't I be a governess?" said Annette. And finally, somebody in the Rue St. Honore required a young lady of good figure and pleasant manner for "reception." There were others, too, but it was upon these five that Annette decided to concentrate.

She put on her hat, took her money and her Journal, and turned to the door. A curious impulse checked her there and she came back to the mirror that hung above her dressing-table.

"Let's have a look at you!" said Annette to the reflection that confronted her.

She stood, examining it seriously. It was, she thought, quite presentable, a trim, quiet figure of a girl who might reasonably ask work and a wage; she could not find anything in it to account for those six weeks of refusals. She perked her chin and forced her face to look assured and spirited, watching the result in the mirror.

"Ye-es," she said at last, and nodded to the reflection. "You'll have to do; but I wish I wish you hadn't got that sort of doomed look. Good-bye, old girl!"

At the foot of the stairs, in the open door of that room which was labeled "Bureau," where a bed and a birdcage and a smell of food kept company with the roll-top desk, stood the patronne, Madame Mardel. She moved a little forth into the passage as Annette approached.

"Good morning, mademoiselle. Again a charming day!"

She was a large woman, grossly fleshy, with clothes that strained to creaking point about her body and gaped at the fastenings. Her vast face, under her irreproachably neat hair the hair of a Parisienne was swarthy and plethoric, with the jowl of a bulldog and eyes tiny and bright. Annette knew her for an artist in "extras," a vampire that had sucked her purse lean with deft overcharges, a creature without mercy or morals. But the daily irony of her greeting had the grace, the cordial inflexion, of a piece of distinguished politeness.

"Charming," agreed Annette. She produced the bill. "I may as well pay this now," she suggested.

Madame's chill and lively eyes were watching her face, estimating her solvency in the light of Madame's long experience of misfortune and despair. She shrugged a huge shoulder deprecatingly.

"There is no hurry," she said. She always said that. "Still, since mademoiselle is here."

Annette followed her into the bureau, that dimlighted sanctuary of Madame's real life. Below the half-raised blind in the window the canaries in their cage rustled and bickered; unwashed plates were crowded on the table; the big unmade bed added a flavor of its own to the atmosphere. Madame eased herself, panting, into the chair before the desk, revealing the great rounded expanse of her back with its row of straining buttons and lozenge-shaped revelations of underwear. With the businesslike deliberation of a person who transacts a serious affair with due seriousness, she spread the bill before her, smoothing it out with a practiced wipe of the hand, took her rubber stamp from the saucer in which' it lay, inked it on the pad and waited. Annette had been watching her, fascinated by that great methodical rhythm of movement, but at the pause she started, fished the required coins from the old purse, and laid them at Madame's elbow. "Merci, mademoiselle," said Madame, and then, and not till then, the stamp descended upon the paper. A flick with a scratchy pen completed the receipt, and Madame turned awkwardly in the embrace of her chair to hand it to Annette with her weekly smile. The ritual was accomplished.

"Good morning, mademoiselle. Thank you; good luck."

The mirthless smile discounted the words; the cold, avid eyes were busy and suspicious. Annette let them stare their fill while she folded the paper and tucked it into the purse; she had had six weeks of training in the art of preserving a cheerful countenance.

Then: "Good morning, madame," she smiled, with her gay little nod and reached the door in good order.

There was still Aristide, the lame man-of-all-work, who absorbed a weekly franc and never concealed his contempt of the amount. He was waiting on the steps, leaning on a broom, and turned his rat's face on her, sourly and impatiently, without a word. She paused as she came to him and dipped two fingers into the poor old purse; Aristide's pale, red-edged eyes followed them, while his thin mouth twisted into contempt.

"This is for you, Aristide," she said, and held out the coin.

He took it in his open palm and surveyed it with lifted eyebrows. "This?" he inquired.

"Yes." The insult never failed to hurt her; this morning, in particular, she would have been glad to set forth upon the day's forlorn hope without that preface of hate and cruel greed. But Aristide still stood, with the coin in his open hand, staring from it to her and she flinched from him. "Good morning," she said timidly, and slipped past.

It needed the gladness of the day, its calm and colorful warmth, to take the taste of Aristide out of her mouth and uplift her again to her mood of resolution. Her way lay downhill; the first of her advertisements gave an address at the foot of the Rue Lafayette; and soon the stimulus of the thronged streets, the mere neighborhood of folk who moved briskly and with purpose, re-strung her slackened nerves and she was again ready for the battle. And as she went her lips moved.

"Mind, now!" she was telling herself. "Today's the end the very end. You've got to get work today!"

The address in the Rue Lafayette turned out to be that of a firm of house and estate agents; it was upon the first floor and showed to the landing four ground-glass doors, of which three were lettered "Private," while the fourth displayed an invitation to enter without knocking. Upon the landing, in the presence of those inexpressive doors, behind which salaries were earned and paid and life was all that was orderly and desirable, Annette paused for a space of moments to make sure of herself.

"Now!" she said, with a deep breath, and pushed open the fourth door.

Within was an office divided by a counter, and behind the counter desks and the various apparatus of business. The desks were unoccupied; the only person present was a thin pretty girl seated before a typewriter. She looked up at Annette across the counter; her face showed patches of too bright a red on the cheekbones.

"Good morning," began Annette, with determined briskness. "I've come."

The girl smiled. "Typist?" she interrupted.

"Yes," said Annette. "The advertisement"--she stopped; the girl was still smiling, but in a manner of deprecating and infinitely gentle regret.

Annette stared at her, feeling within again that rising chill of disappointment with which she was already so familiar. "You mean" she stammered awkwardly "you mean you've got the place?"

The thin girl spread her hands apart in a little French gesture of conciliation.

"Ten minutes ago," she answered. "There is no one here yet but the manager, and I was waiting at the door when he arrived."

"Thank you," said Annette faintly. The thin girl, still regarding her with big shadowy eyes, suddenly put a hand to her bosom and coughed. The neat big office beyond the bar of the polished counter was unbearably pleasant to look at; one could have been so happily busy at one's place between those tidy desks. A sharp bell rang from an inner office; the thin girl rose. The hectic on her cheeks burned brighter.

"I must go," she said hurriedly. "He wants me. I hope you will have good luck."

The sunlight without had lost some of its quality when Annette came forth to the street again; it no longer warmed her to optimism. She stood for some moments in the doorway of the building, letting her depression and discouragement have their way with her.

"If only I might cry a bit," she reflected. "That would help a little. But I mustn't even do that!"

She had to prod herself into fresh briskness with the sense of her need, that to-day was the end. She sighed, jerked her chin up, set her small face into the shape of resolute cheerfulness and started forth again in the direction of the second vacancy for a typist.

Here, for a while, hope burned high. The office was that of a firm of thriving wine exporters and the post had not yet been filled. The partner into whose office she penetrated by virtue of her sheer determination to see someone in authority, was a stout ruddy Marseillais, speaking French in the full-throated Southern fashion; he was kindly and cheery, with broad vermilion lips a-smile through his beard.