Part 28
"Were you at the Gala Performance at the Opera, the night before last? Delphine Zucca could hardly sing; her husband, young Baron von Bladen, of the Jastrow Hussars, has been appointed first galloper on the Staff of General Manteuffel, Chief of the First Corps, First Army. So the Zucca is naturally inconsolable, as they've only been married a month. But Elise Hahn-Tieck, as the Genius of United Germany, in a corslet of gilt chain-mail, and a helmet crested with oak-boughs, with a green Rhine meandering over her white muslin robe, was tremendous when she came down to the center of the stage to sing '_Die Wacht am Rhein_,'---carrying our East Prussian Flag and the banner of the Hohenzollern, and followed by other operatic actresses in character as the Auxiliary States. _Sapperlot_! When she drew her sword, she was tremendous! And when she fell upon her knees, the big chandelier in the auditorium jumped. She sang the part of _Gretchen_ last season, and looked not much over thirty. Make-up, because, you know, she has a grandson who is a junior-lieutenant in the Duke of Coburg's Regiment of White Cuirassiers, and must be sixty if she's a day. _Prime donne_ are like wines, no good till they've arrived at a ripe old age. Though I could introduce you to a little girl of eighteen or so, just now doing a song-and-dance at the Schützen-Strasse Tingel-Tangel, who has a voice that pleases me better than the warblings of any of the highly paid Opera House nightingales. And what a figure! round and tempting and seductive. And such arms, and--_Sapperlot!_--what a pair of legs!"
Thus prattled the twenty-year-old sprig of German aristocracy, to the other youngster, his senior in years if his junior in knowledge of the world. He went on in his Oxford English:
"Not that I'm inclined to ruin myself for women, though I must say a good many pretty ones have been uncommonly kind to me. That sort of thing runs in my family, though! and I ought to be obliged to my Cousin Max for dying a bachelor. Killed himself in '66 about a mistress who was playing the double game. A regular French adventuress, diabolically handsome, who eloped with him when he was _attaché_ of our Prussian Embassy at Paris in '57, and has a husband living, they say. Colossal impudence--actually passes herself off as my cousin's widow, in society of a certain sort. So, out of the desire to deal Madame Venus a slap in the face, I got a comrade who knew her, to introduce me at a festive supper-party.... Said he: 'Countess von Schön-Valverden, permit me to present my most intimate friend,' and reels off my name. Would you believe it, the woman never turned a hair. It was I who got flustered when she stared me in the face. Colossal coolness--I can hear her now, lisping: '_The Herr Count is doubtless a relative of my poor, dear Maximilian! Even had he not borne the name, I should have been struck by his resemblance to my beloved lost one._' And then I got out, not half as cleverly as I had planned it: 'And even had you borne the name that is your own, Madame, I should have been shot through the heart by the beauty that has already proved fatal to one member of my family!'" He added, "I laid an emphasis on those four words, '_shot through the heart_,' because my unlucky cousin actually met his death after that fashion.... Will you have a cigar of mine? They are better than the weeds our patriotic friends have bestowed on us."
P. C. Breagh accepted a smooth light-hued Havana from the offered case, asking with interest, due to the lurid flare of tragedy in the background of the other's lively chatter: "And the lady of the Venusberg--how did she take your reference to her past?"
The Guardsman, cigar in mouth, stopped in the act of striking a fusee-match to answer: "She took it--as a woman of Madame de Bayard's stamp might be expected to. With a _sangfroid_ that one could only admire somewhat less than her superb skin and hair, her shape of a goddess and her marvelous eyes--almost the color of Brazilian tourmaline." He sent out a spiral of fragrant brownish-blue smoke and added: "Had I actually stood four years ago in the shoes which I have legally inherited, I'll be hanged if I'd have shot myself and left her to my rival. For the other was at Schönfeld--actually in the house, you must know!--when Cousin Max came home on leave. Hence the tragedy at three o'clock in the morning. Such a depressing hour to commit suicide. Now, had it been after supper..."
He shrugged, and sent out another spiral of cigar-smoke, and, perceiving that his whilom listener heard no longer, ceased to talk.
The while P. C. Breagh plunged into a brown-study by the chance utterance of a stranger's name, and unblushingly abandoning the effort to remain true to his gigantic type-ideal, hung fondly over the mentally evoked image of an Infanta in miniature.
Where was Juliette de Bayard now? Had the outbreak of war hastened or delayed her marriage with the happy master of swordsmanship? And--worshiping her father as Monica had said she did--how had she borne the parting from him?
She would be very calm.... P. C. Breagh pictured the little face drawn and pinched with misery; saw the sapphire eyes dimmed with tears unshed, imagined the slender throat convulsed with sobs that were kept resolutely back, heard the silver-flute voice saying:
"My father has honored me with his confidence as long as I can remember, sir!" and, "See you--I will be trusted absolutely, or I will not be trusted at all!"
Strange that his elfin queen--his carved ivory Princess--should bear the same name as the woman the Guardsman had gossiped of--the beautiful, evil creature with the eyes like Brazilian tourmalines. And, what particular color in Brazilian tourmalines might have been intended? Some were purple, others pink, and yet others reddish-brown. The woman who had dropped her parasol on the staircase at the Chancellor's had had eyes of tawny wine-color. With the remembrance, came back the perfume shaken from her rustling silks and laces, and the languid echo of her caressing voice.
Drowsiness came next, and then oblivion, in heavy slumber. And, as the unconscious form of P. C. Breagh lapsed this way and that, and his chin burrowed deeper into his bosom, the Sergeant who occupied the corner-seat facing the sleeper,--shading his eyes from the lamplight with a broad brown hand that wore a thick silver wedding ring upon the little finger, lowered the hand, and, leaning forward, stared in the young man's unconscious face, with small, suspicious, unwinking eyes. Now the eyes looked round so sharply, that every waking man in the compartment, save the blue-eyed patron of the Tingel-Tangel girl, found it necessary to assume the appearance of slumber, and the Sergeant's voice said hoarsely:
"Private von Valverden!"
"At your service, _Herr_ Sergeant."
"Private von Valverden, is this one, then, an Englishman?"
"Undoubtedly, _Herr_ Sergeant!"
"_Gut!_" said the Sergeant. "But what is his calling? Is he of the newspaper-offices that he sits and scribbles so?"
"That question I cannot answer, Herr Sergeant, but if he be on the staff of any paper, he cannot accompany us without a _Legitimation_, and a letter from someone in authority."
The Sergeant sucked in his bearded lips, and rolled his sharp little eyes more suspiciously than ever. Valverden went on:
"Doubtless he has them--I saw him show a paper to the Halt Commandant at Berlin, and the _Herr_ Colonel himself spoke to him and told him he might travel as far as Bingen by this train. And I happen to know that four London newspaper correspondents have been accredited by the King upon the instance of Count Bismarck; one being appointed to accompany the Crown Prince, another being permitted to accompany the Second Army, while two are attached to the Great Headquarter Staff."
The Sergeant said, glancing at the unconscious slumberer:
"_Gut, gut!_ but is this fellow one of them?"
"If he be not, _Herr_ Sergeant, he will get no farther than Bingen, for doubtless the Commandant there will be on the lookout for persons whose credentials are not of the best."
The Sergeant shook his head vigorously, wrinkling up his full-bearded countenance suspiciously:
"And suppose the Commandant is not on the lookout, Private von Valverden? See you, I have had my suspicions since yesterday, and I tell you..."
XXXII
Every waking ear in the neighborhood, and there were now a good many, pricked with curiosity as the Sergeant half-rose, and, inclining his inflamed countenance and bearded lips toward the ear of his selected confidant, continued in a hoarse rumbling undertone:
"Two of those _verdammte_ English newspaper-scribblers that have got on the blind side of Their Excellencies and His Majesty the Commander-in-Chief were at the station at Berlin picking up information the very day we entrained. Well do I know that paunchy little one with the big beard, who has, they say, as many Orders as a Field-Marshal, and who will venture to thrust himself upon Our Moltke in his study, and accost His Excellency Count Bismarck upon the very doorsteps of the Reichstag itself. They got off three trains ahead of us, paying for men and horses and trucks, to Cologne; and if this fellow were not a knave, would he not have gone with them? _Ach, ja_! It would have been so! But they did not even know him, though he pretended to touch his cap to them.... I tell you he turned as red as beetroot when they passed him without a glance. _Nu, nu!_ he is an unlicensed meddler, if not a French spy, speaking English. Do they not teach it at their Lycées? And he has got on the blind side of the Commandant at Berlin and the _Herr_ Colonel. But I, Sergeant Schmidt, have my weather-eye open, and it sticks in my gizzard that our so-glorious Moltke, let alone His Majesty, should with so much civility these quill-driving vagabonds encourage; when they say the French Emperor has given orders that, should the like of them about the heels of his Army Corps be caught sniffing, they are to be shot."
"Possibly the Napoleon has more deficiencies to be ashamed of than we have, _Herr_ Sergeant!"
Taking a deep breath, the Sergeant blew himself out to the utmost of his capacity and bellowed:
"_Himmeldonnerwetter!_ are you going to insinuate in my presence that the Prussian Army has anything at all to be ashamed of? Now you've waked this rascal with your racket, maybe you'll sit on his head while I go through his pockets. Here, Braun and Kleiss, catch hold of his arms and legs!"
Waking in the chiaroscuro of the smoke-filled, lamplit troop-carriage to find himself in the brawny grip of the aforesaid Braun and Kleiss, P. C. Breagh fought for freedom, yelling as one possessed, and lashing out with all his might. In the heat of the scrimmage that followed, as a muscular arm in a coarse blue sleeve came round his neck from behind and choked him into silence, somebody said in his ear:
"Keep still ... not hurt you! Only going ... search!"
And before he had rallied his wits sufficiently to realize that the warning was in English, a pair of extra-sized hands had deftly emptied the pockets of the old brown Norfolk jacket, relieved him of the cherished binoculars, a brand-new revolver, and a purse and letter-case that had been hidden in his bosom next the skin. Then, a soiled newspaper having been spread upon the carriage-bench and the pieces of conviction arranged upon it, Sergeant Schmidt, surrounded by an audience of admiring inferiors, commenced to interrogate their owner:
"What is this?" He held up the well-used briar-root. "A pipe, and yet it might be used to conceal dispatches or tracings. A pistol also. On the principle of the French mitraille, with many barrels. Prisoner, answer! Where did you get this?"
Returned P. C. Breagh, scarlet and breathing shortly:
"I bought it in Berlin from a pawnbroker in the Landsberger-strasse. By what right..."
Someone behind hacked him on the ankle, driving home the axiom that silence was wisdom, and he subsided, boiling within, as the Colt, a nearly brand-new six-barreled weapon, seen and purchased, together with its box of three hundred cartridges, for seven of P. C. Breagh's cherished sovereigns, was laid by, while the Sergeant, breathing stertorously, examined the contents of the purse. He snorted, letting the bright coins run through his greedy fingers like yellow water:
"Nine pieces of gold. French coins, too, or call me a sheepshead!"
"At your service, Herr Sergeant," put in the smooth, well-bred voice of Valverden, following on the ominous murmur that had greeted the Sergeant's announcement; "the money is as English as this revolver is American. Prove the first for yourself. When has the French Emperor figured in a woman's hair and _corsage_?"
A guffaw went up. P. C. Breagh, recognizing the voice which had spoken from behind him, realized that here was a friend in need. But an attempt at speech on his part was frustrated by an ominous tightening of the muscular arm that had previously half-strangled him. The Sergeant, his fiery pot-zeal rather damped by frequent set-backs, snapped-to the purse and said, keeping it tucked in one capacious palm, as he shook out the contents of the letter-case:
"_So_! He is cunning, like many another of his kidney. Yet it may be here is proof sufficient to show him a rogue! Who here reads French?"
"I do, _Herr_ Sergeant." Once again the well-bred voice of Valverden. The Sergeant grunted surlily:
"There is another here ... Private Kunz!"
The spectacled soldier who read Homer in the original, and who had been violently displaced when the muscular Braun and the athletic Kleiss had obeyed the order to pinion the suspected one, shot bolt upright in his distant corner, saluted and said in a meek voice:
"At your service, _Herr_ Sergeant!"
"Private Kunz, canst thou read French?"
"_Zu befehl, Herr_ Sergeant!" The spectacled private added as the Sergeant passed him over the contents of the letter-case: "But these letters are not in French. Two are in English, and one is in German."
The Sergeant scowled and thundered:
"Thou art an ass!"
"At your service, Herr Sergeant," mildly agreed the spectacled soldier, "but Private Count von Schön-Valverden, who understands the French and English languages, will corroborate my statement if you will kindly refer to him."
"'Kindly refer.' ... 'Corroborate my statement.' ..." The Sergeant, purple in the gills, and with bolting eyes, loosened his collar-hook before he launched into profanity: "_Potzblitz_! Never did I meet with language to equal thine. What wert thou as a civilian before thou didst enter the Army?"
"Graduate of the University of Würzburg, _Herr_ Sergeant," faltered the spectacled Guardsman, "and _Privat-docent_ in Chemistry and Philosophy. Occupying the post of assistant to Herr Weber, Dispensing Chemist, of Strahlsund, near Stettin."
"_Sehrgut_, Private Kunz," said the Sergeant, conscious of the grins lurking behind the respectful faces about him. "Tell us plainly, and without lying or skipping, what are these papers the fellow has got on him? Put him back on the seat, Braun and Kleiss, and sit on either side, each taking a wing. Now, Kunz, do thou begin!"
And the little sheaf that had been transferred from the horny clutches of the Sergeant, to the yellow-stained sensitive-looking fingers of the chemist's assistant, was subjected to the scrutiny of the weak eyes behind his large round spectacles, as sleepy-looking Westphalian villages of cottages with tall tiled roofs, grouped about squat, low-spired churches; and leagues of rye and barley, almost ready for the sickle, streamed by the half-glazed windows, all black in shadow and white in the clear, pure radiance of August's crescent moon.
_Item_, a worn letter in English handwriting of the legal kind, dated in the January previous, and directed to P. C. Breagh, Esq., Care of Frau Busch, Jaeger-strasse, Schwärz-Brettingen. _Item_, a passport issued some ten days previously, to the same person on application at the London Foreign Office, on disbursement of the sum of Two Shillings, and authorizing him, on payment of the proper dues and at his own risk, to proceed _via_ Ostend to Berlin. _Item_, another passport, procured as a last resource--granting the said P. C. Breagh permission on the part of the Berlin Foreign Office, and as a strictly non-combatant British subject, to transfer himself, _via_ Belgium and Luxembourg, to French territory. Lastly, a half-sheet of tough Chancellory note-paper, covered with the large, closely-set, vigorous handwriting of the man who was meant when newspaper-editors and politicians, diplomats and monarchs, guttersnipes and generals, talked of Prussia. What would happen when that came under the spectacles of the ex-chemist's assistant? P. C. Breagh thirsted to know.
What happened was, that the Sergeant, rendered impatient by delay on the part of the spectacled one, grabbed at the documents and dropped them on the unclean floor. The half-sheet of Chancellory note was picked up by Valverden. He gave it one glance and said, smoothly and with an indefinable change in the tone of the voice that P. C. Breagh had thought so friendly:
"I would put this paper back with the rest and return them to their owner, Herr Sergeant, and prosecute no further inquiries, if I were you."
"_Nu_? ... _Was_? I cannot read the crabbed stuff that is written and printed on the other papers," grunted the Sergeant. "But this seems wholesome German.... What says it, then? Tell us, you, since that _gimpel_ in glasses can make nothing of it, for all his brag."
Valverden obeyed and read:
"_The bearer of this is an Englishman, named Patrick Carolan Breagh, speaking German with a slight accent. Height five feet nine inches, age 23. Hair reddish and curling, complexion fresh, much freckled. Short, straight nose, gray eyes with dots of yellow, chin square, slightly cleft. Further his desire to proceed with our troops, if possible. I can personally vouch for his honesty and good faith._
[Illustration: signature of Otto von Bismarck]
"BERLIN, "_July_, 1870."
XXXIII
P. C. Breagh never heard the order given, but next moment his aching wrists were released from the huge, hard grip of Privates Braun and Kleiss, and the muscular legs that had affectionately twined about his own, were withdrawn. Subsequently, singly, and in silence, the Sergeant handed back the watch, pipe, tobacco-pouch, purse, and note-case. Last of all, Valverden, making a long arm, returned the half-sheet of Chancellory note, bearing the signature that had worked the miracle, without words, and looking coldly in its owner's face.
"Thanks tremendously! ... I've no doubt I'm to blame for not producing my credentials earlier," said Carolan. "But I'd no notion of the rather serious turn things were going to take. However, all's well that ends----"
His smile froze upon his lips, and died out of his eyes as he encountered the stare the other turned upon him, answering haughtily:
"I regret that you have suffered some rough handling from my comrades, under the wrong impression that you were an agent of the French Secret Service. Admitting that our own side act advisedly in employing persons like you, I must say that to me, personally, a spy is--a spy!"
"But, hang it! you don't suppose----" Carolan choked out after a moment of angry bewilderment. And with the Sergeant's piggish little eyes curiously fixed on him, Valverden answered curtly:
"I suppose nothing. Excuse me from further conversation."
The revolver with its cartridges had not been returned with the other articles. Its owner asked the Sergeant for it, getting in reply only a glare. Thenceforward the long night's journey for one traveler was performed in unbroken silence. P. C. Breagh had been dispatched to Coventry by one and all.
Men who conversed spoke in barely-audible whispers, their covert glances, like the frigid indifference of Valverden's regard, and the extra six inches of seat-space accorded to the holder of the States Chancellor's written guarantee, testified to the aroma of suspicion that personage's document exhaled.
So at breathless, baking midnight the troop-train clanked into Cologne, no longer throbbing with the beat of drums, roaring with iron-shod wheels, swarming with men in brass-spiked helmets, choked with continuously shouting patriots, as it had been a few hours earlier when the Headquarter Staff trains had passed through,--and in the close, gray dawn of a thundery day, jolted into Bingen.
Here miles of rolling-stock and numberless engines blocked up the metal roads. Shuttered windows and barricaded doors testified that house-owners had temporarily abandoned their property. Strings of barges, laden with Commissariat stores and live-stock, were being towed up the Rhine by the gaily painted, white-awninged, paddle-wheel steamers familiar to the British tourist, while others were conveying voluntarily exiled residents and fugitive visitors down the classic stream out of harm's way.
Conveyance by railway--of a kind--was to be had upon terms prohibitory to all but the opulent. And disheveled ladies, pale or red with panic, besieged the station-master and his master, the Halt Commandant--with prayers, commands and entreaties, for places, but for places on some Northward-going train....
Something was in the air besides the short, staccato bugle-calls, the scream of signal-whistles and the ceaseless beating of the Prussian side-drums. P. C. Breagh knew it, even as a tall, lean, red-faced Inspector caught his eye and beckoned him imperiously to quit his cage, asking:
"You have a _Legitimation_ to proceed with the troops to Kreuznach? No? Then be good enough to stand aside until I have an opportunity of ascertaining why you were originally permitted. Here is the Commandant."
Standing on the whitewashed platform, hot, dusty, unbrushed and unwashed, burdened with his unstrapped knapsack, a stout walking-stick, a leather-covered, screw topped sling water-bottle, some crumpled newspapers and a package of solid sandwiches--thrust upon him at one of the previous stopping-places, P. C. Breagh was conscious of cutting a sorry figure. Conscious, too, of Valverden's supercilious eye-glass, glittering a few yards off, as he stretched his long legs on the platform and talked eagerly with some comrades of his own standing, straight-backed, long-legged youngsters, with arrogant manners, clear eyes, budding mustaches, newly fledged whiskers, broad shoulders and regulation waists.
No new pupil at a young ladies' boarding school, smarting under the double stigma of plainness and poverty, no cheaply arrayed debutante at a suburban subscription-ball, ever blushed more hotly or winced more painfully under the scrutiny of prettier and richer girls, than did P. C. Breagh under the glances of these young men.
Not the memory of the Army Service examinations he had failed in galled him, or that missed shot for the I.C.S., or the University career foregone. It was the word "spy" that rankled in his memory and took the starch out of his self-conceit.
Before the discovery of the Minister's written guarantee, Valverden had gossiped with him as an equal--the other Guardsmen had been friendly in their rougher way. The fateful half-sheet of Chancellory note had changed everything. "As though one had blossomed out in plague or smallpox," P. C. Breagh had said to himself bitterly. "And I feel like a kind of Ali Baba or somebody, whose talisman would only work upside down!"
Even his parting salute had met with grudging acknowledgment. The Sergeant had grunted. Braun and Kleiss had spat, and looked the other way. Valverden's finger had barely brushed the narrow peak of his forage-cap. Only Kunz, the spectacled ex-chemist's assistant, had civilly bidden the parting guest good-day.