Part 19
"'Prussia climbs down,'" murmured Mr. Knewbit, standing before the inscription on the kitchen distemper. "With the 'and on her 'elm that she 'as----" he went on shedding "h's," as was his way when deeply meditative, "I should doubt the correctness of that report. Still, I shall advise Maria to keep them first-floor apartments vacant a day or two--in case Mr. von Rosius's mother doesn't want him after all.... What does Solomon say? '_Designs are strengthened by counsels, and wars are to be managed by Governments._'"
The kettle was boiling madly, and a volume of steam was issuing from the pipe-bowl. Mr. Knewbit rescued the blackened briar-root, mechanically filled it, and looked for a light.
There was a crumpled pale green paper lying near his boot upon the worn linoleum. He picked it up, and saw that it was a cablegram issued by the North German Submarine Telegraph Company, addressed to Von Rosius, and containing a message of four words:
"_Lanze inden Schuh, Uhlan! Hauptquartier, Berlin._"
"Now, which shall I do?" asked Mr. Knewbit, scanning the baffling foreign words written in the familiar English characters. Torn between conscientious scruples and a characteristic thirst for information, the little man was pitiable to see. "Which shall I do?" he repeated. "Use this here for a pipe-light--or show it to my young shaver upstairs?"
Deciding on the latter course, he climbed to the attic rented by the young shaver, and knocked at the door.
"Come in! ... I'm not working to-night," said P. C. Breagh out of the darkness. Upon Mr. Knewbit's striking a match, the young man, who was leaning back in his chair before the venerable davenport, contemplating the dusk oblong of starry sky visible above the chimney-pots of Bernard Street, shook himself free of thought as a setter shakes off water, and got up.
"Feel out of sorts?" asked Mr. Knewbit, burning his fingers, and striking another match as he bustled to the single bracket over the narrow wooden mantelshelf and lighted the gas. "Anything wrong?"
"I feel out of the swim," said P. C. Breagh, sitting down again astride his chair, and cupping his square chin in a fist that had ink-smears on it, as he stared at the wobbling blue flame that presently spread itself into a yellow fan of radiance, "and hipped and beastly. I've no right to quarrel with my bread-and-butter, but I'm doing it to-night. The fact that I'm a Nobody doesn't prevent me from wanting to wind up as Somebody. Putting the case roughly, that's what's wrong."
"This here house," said Mr. Knewbit in his pouncing manner, "belonged to a man who was a Nobody, if you like. A Master Seaman, who used to tramp it to his ship at Wapping, and pick up the outcast babies lying in the kennels, and roll 'em in his big boat-cloak and carry 'em home. Them foundlings was nobodies--yet two of 'em lived to be Lord Mayors of London. Old Captain Coram, who founded the Hospital, died neglected and forgotten, but nobody looking at his tomb in the Chapel yonder will deny he wound up as Somebody at last!"
P. C. Breagh yawned hugely and rumpled his hair discontentedly.
"The chap you're talking of was a philanthropist, and I want--I'm not ashamed to want--to build a career for myself instead of founding a charity-school. I want--your own talk has made me want!--to get out of this little squirrel-cage--even though there are nuts and sugar and bread in it all the year round. And"--his scowl was portentous--"if this Hohenzollern hadn't backed out of the Spanish Crown affair, when France cockadoodled, and there had been a racket on the Rhine frontier--I'd just have rummaged round to find an editor who'd be ass enough to pay a raw hand for letters sent from the seat of hostilities--and if I couldn't have found one--and of course I couldn't--when seasoned men are as plentiful as nutshells in the Adelphi gallery--I'd have gone to the war as a camp-follower--and got experience that way!"
Said Mr. Knewbit, turning and scanning the resolute, dogged young face, with black eyes that twinkled like jet beads:
"I don't agree with you that seasoned Correspondents are plentiful. There are thousands who're ready to sit in an office behind the Compositors' Room, and write eyewitnesses' accounts of thrilling charges. But them that are ready to go out with a Permit and get attached to a Staff; them that are ready and willing to march with an Army on the War path--starve when there are no rations, lie in the fields in the sopping rain when no roof's to be had to cover 'em--write accounts of the day's fighting under shell-fire, and cheerfully get killed if a bullet comes their way in the course o' things!--you can't call the journalistic profession overstocked with them. If you do, just name me one such man for each finger of these two big hands of mine. I defy you to, so there!"
They were very big hands, and as Mr. Knewbit held them up side by side, with the palms toward his young shaver, they not undistantly resembled a pair of decent-sized flatfish.
"To become a man like one of these--and they're the Pick of the British Nation," said Mr. Knewbit, "you must be pitched into the midst of things neck and crop, and left to sink or swim. I compliment you when I say that I believe you one of the swimming kind. Now, supposing War broke out after all--how much Hard Cash would you want to carry you through a Campaign?"
"I've got five pounds put away in the Post-Office Savings Bank," returned P. C. Breagh, after a moment's mental calculation, "and I believe I could manage if I had another fifteen."
"Making Twenty Pound," said Mr. Knewbit, biting a finger thoughtfully. He threw the finger out at P. C. Breagh, and his black eyes twinkled more than ever. "For Fifteen Pound down would you undertake to write and send home to the person advancing you the money, for--say four weeks (that'd give two nations comfortable time to have it out and settle their differences in a Christian-like manner, with a little burning of powder, and bloodshed)--three letters per week, describing in a style readable by plain, ordinary, everyday people--what you've seen, and heard--and felt--and smelt--don't forget that!" said Mr. Knewbit, shaking his finger warningly at P. C. Breagh, "on the march, or in the bivouac, or while the fighting was going on?"
P. C. Breagh would have broken in here, but the held-up finger stopped him on the verge of utterance:
"Avoid sham Technicality," said Mr. Knewbit sternly. "Don't let me have stuff like: '_Sir--On the morning of the --th the Field-Marshal von Blitherem--or General Parlezvous--shifted the left wing of his Division nearer to his center, and shortly after nine o 'clock the forces under command of What'shisname and Thingummy began to move in column of so and so. A light 'aze lay upon the fields--the droppin' fire of the enemy's Artillery made itself felt at the Advance Posts nor' and nor'-west._' Nor don't you ladle me out sentimental slumgullion, after the fashion of--'_All is Peace, while I pen these 'asty lines and sip my morning coffee. Yet ere the radiant beams of Sol will have dried the pearly dew from these smiling fields, the 'ideous roar of cannon and the withering burst of shrapnel will have devastated and blighted Nature's choicest 'andiwork, and Man, that noblest work of the Creative Power--will be engaged in the 'orrible task of destroying fellow-men wrought in the image of hisself._' For the Lord is a Man of War--according to the Scriptures," said Mr. Knewbit, ignoring P. C. Breagh's amusement. "And it is written that He shall overthrow Kingdoms and break the scepters of Kings, and cause that nations shall be swallowed up in nations." He added, with a sharp change to his business tone, "And bad or good, these letters of yours are mine, to burn or print as I think fit and necessary? All right! I'll draw up a little agreement--and whenever you choose to sign it--there's your Fifteen Pounds.--Lord! to think I should live to send out a Special Correspondent, all to my own cheek! It's--a--a luxury I should never have anticipated."
"The Correspondent won't be much use without a war to correspond about," said Carolan, growing weary of Mr. Knewbit's humor. "And I suppose there won't be one now."
"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.