CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

MEYER AT WORK

Meyer had not disliked the battle quite so much as he had expected. Karl's winter palace, the Brunvarad,--where he had taken up his headquarters,--was sufficiently remote from the danger zone to allow his mind to work coolly and collectedly on his master's behalf. And on the whole he almost enjoyed it. Karl was with him, silent, almost sulky in the enforced inactivity Fate and his councillors assigned him. He would have been happier in the trenches handling a rifle, or sighting one of the big Creusot guns that barked defiance at his foes. But for the moment circumstances held him in the little room where Meyer,--with a big map spread before him, and a telephone receiver at his ear,--issued the brief messages or despatched the brief notes that meant so much to the issues of the day.

"War has been compared to the game of chess," remarked Meyer during a brief pause when the telephone bell was silent, and no _aide-de-camp_ rushed in with his vital message from the front; "and if the simile is trite and commonplace, it is certainly especially applicable in this case. One sacrifices piece for piece, a pawn for a knight, a knight for a castle, and so forth, and he who ultimately has the best of the exchange has an easy victory at the finish. In our case we are sacrificing a castle--the Marienkastel--for a Queen. When the enemy's Queen is _hors-de-combat_ they can make but a poor bid for victory."

"The simile will bear pressing even closer," said Karl surlily, "for by the rules of the game the king can only move one step in any direction." And with a wave of his hand the discontented monarch indicated the four walls which confined his activities.

"It is our duty to prevent you from being checkmated, sire," returned the Commander-in-Chief. "Personally, I hold fighting a coarse sport, and am well content to do the intellectual part at the end of the telephone."

The ringing of the instrument punctuated his remark with singular appropriateness.

"Well, who are you and what is it?" he demanded.

"I'm Saunders," returned a voice; "I'm in the abatis in the churchyard."

Meyer glanced round at the clock. It pointed to the hour of twelve.

"Then you're there half an hour too soon," he returned.

"Not a moment, I assure you," came the reply. "Trafford sent Major Flannel's curling-stones hurtling down the bob-run, and spoilt the formation of my advance guard. In the confusion they rushed us, and,--as I understood you did not want us to be wiped out,--we bolted manfully for the _abatis_. Here we are, and here we'll remain as long as you wish."

"And what's happening in the Marienkastel?" asked the Commander-in-Chief.

"Bernhardt's holding it in force."

"And his guns?"

"Are being slowly dragged up the snow slope."

"How long will it take to get them in position?"

"At least an hour. The sun has made the snow soft."

"Thank you," said Meyer. "Stay where you are, please, till further orders," and replacing the receiver he rose to his feet.

"Now, sire," he said, "the King can move more than one step at a time."

"In what direction?"

"The Marienkastel."

They left the Brunvarad, Karl leading, by the great doorway at the base of the armoury tower. Here a couple of horses were awaiting them--big, yellow, maize-fed brutes, raw-boned and angular, but serviceable steeds on a rough path or a frozen highway.

"I should feel a little happier if you would take me into your complete confidence," said Karl as they rode out of the palace courtyard. "So far, I have listened to one-sided conversations on the telephone, and brusque orders to breathless _aides-de-camp_, but I hardly know what portions of Weissheim are still mine and which are Gloria's."

"The enemy have taken the Marienkastel, as we intended they should, but--they have taken it three-quarters of an hour too soon. The insufferable Trafford,--who saved your life and rent your kingdom,--has the subtlety of the serpent without the harmlessness of the dove. He enfiladed Saunders' trench in the bob-sleigh run with curling-stones, and in the confusion Bernhardt rushed the Schloss."

"Cannot we re-capture it?" asked Karl. "I should not mind leading the forlorn hope."

"As my place is by my royal master's side," responded Meyer drily, "I must veto the suggestion with all the authority I possess."

"Then what are we to do?"

"Employ the enthusiasm of others, repress our own. Von Hügelweiler, who hates Trafford and loves Gloria,--and therefore would like to destroy them both,--is waiting in Drechler's farm at the top of Sanatorium Hill with a park of howitzers. When he gets the order the mortars will talk. The distances have been carefully measured, and the Marienkastel may already be numbered among the disappearing relics of old Grimland."

"And the Princess Gloria?" asked Karl.

"Will cease to be an effective factor in Grimland politics."

Karl frowned. He had been ruthless enough in 1904, but then he was fighting against men. He was no sentimentalist, and he meant holding his own, though regiments were decimated in the process, and the snows of his beloved Weissheim were stained scarlet with good blood. But he had ever had a soft corner in his heart for the laughter-loving Princess, and his spirits sank at the prospect of her bright young life being sacrificed to the brutal, senseless Moloch of civil strife. The rough, fierce men who held the uplands for him were fair game for powder and shot, the levies of the plain were _chair a cannon_, maybe; but Gloria von Schattenberg was a creature of too delicate flesh to be maimed by live shell or splintering masonry, and his manhood revolted at the gruesome prospect.

"We must try and save the Princess," he said after a minute's silence.

Meyer said nothing. The nearer they advanced to the scene of action the lower his spirits fell. The sun was high in the cloudless heavens, and the distant mountains reared their snowy crests against a blue that was astounding in its intensity. A purple haze swam in the hollows of the hills; the buntings twittered in cheerful chorus amidst the dripping pine trees, now that their song was broken no longer by the crude music of the cannons' roar. For the moment Nature spoke of peace, but Meyer knew that there was no peace. There was a pause in the struggle, a lull before the storm, a moment when, by mutual consent, the hand-grip was relaxed, preparatory to the final struggle when one combatant or the other would be forced ruthlessly to his knees. And Meyer in his room, directing movements from a distance, was a very different person from Meyer within striking distance of a mobile foe. The man had no stomach for fighting. His mouth was dry and his pulses drumming a craven melody in his ears. He was afraid, and he was painfully conscious of his fear; but although his suffering was acute his brain was working tolerably well behind the half-shut eyes.

There is a kind of cowardice that never loses its self-control at a crisis, just as there is a kind of bravery that never keeps it.

A turn of their path brought them into the main road running between the town of Weissheim and the Marienkastel; and if there had been peace in the outlook over the matchless valley of the Niederkessel and amidst the high sanctuaries of the mountains, there was war here in stern evidence and grim reality. Upward pressed the troops who had held the redoubts of the lower town, and whose presence was now needed on higher ground. Downward, on sleighs painted with the red cross of mercy, progressed those who had suffered in the brief defence of the Marienkastel. Karl and his General saluted, the latter with no softening of his cynical features, but a strange numbness of his breast that was fear tempered, perhaps, with mercy, certainly with horror. A couple of hundred yards up the road they halted; here, within easy range of the Marienkastel, but protected by the banked-up snow at the side of the road, were gathered a considerable number of soldiers under the eye of General von Bilderbaum. The latter advanced and saluted as soon as he saw his Sovereign.

"How are matters progressing, General?" asked the King.

"They are not progressing, sire," replied the General bluntly. "We are doing nothing, while the enemy is doing much. In forty minutes their guns will be in position, and the loyal town of Weissheim will be wiped off the map."

"Meyer does not seem to have bestowed his confidences very widely," returned Karl. "I have only just learned that there is a battery of howitzers waiting to pound the Marienkastel into brick-dust. Why they do not commence pounding is known only to my intelligent Commander-in-Chief."

"When one destroys a wasps' nest," said Meyer smiling, "it is wise to protect oneself against the inmates. When the castle becomes untenable Bernhardt and his men will buzz out in a thoroughly bad temper. Unless this road, where we now are, is held strongly, there is nothing to prevent them taking their afternoon tea in the Brunvarad."

Karl nodded; despite his present irritability he had considerable faith in his Commander-in-Chief. Not so old Bilderbaum.

"What about these howitzers?" he asked scornfully. "What is there to prevent Bernhardt rushing them? Where are they?"

"They are in a very safe place," said Meyer with a wave of his hand to the right. "If Bernhardt means to storm them he'll have to face six quick-firers and two hundred riflemen on either flank; also he'll have to climb a quarter of a mile of soft snow without a stick of cover for his men. Anyone who can reach those howitzers may keep them as a memento of a warm afternoon."

"And who is in command?" asked the still unconvinced General.

"Von Hügelweiler," replied Meyer.

General Bilderbaum uttered a sonorous oath that was more like a roar than an expletive.

"Hügelweiler!" he cried. "I wouldn't trust him with a corporal's guard. He's a liar and a traitor on his own confession."

"He is probably both," agreed Meyer, "and he is also a bitterly disappointed man. The gentleman for whom his hatred is being nursed is now in the Marienkastel, and I don't think you need have any anxiety as to the accuracy of Von Hügelweiler's guns."

For a moment Meyer's calm assurance won silence. The troops continued to arrive from the lower town and take their appointed positions on the road that led to Weissheim. The Commander-in-Chief might be making mistakes, but if so they were not the errors of a stupid mind. Karl began for the first time to appreciate the true merits of the Jew's scheme. When the invaders' position in the castle was rendered untenable they would have no path open to them but the one by which they had come. Then, doubtless having frittered away their strength in vain efforts to break through to Weissheim, Meyer would deliver a crushing counter attack as they drew off, spent and shattered, down the hillside. Von Bilderbaum, however, failed to see things with the same eye of faith.

"Why doesn't Von Hügelweiler open fire now?" he demanded.

"Because he has not received the order to do so," Meyer replied.

"Why not?" persisted Bilderbaum.

Meyer's eyes contracted. He had the air of a wise man dealing with a foolish one; and when he spoke it was with more than a touch of impatience.

"The enemy's guns are now half-way up the hill," he said. "When they have kindly brought them the whole way we shall have something to say to them."

"And they may have something to say to us," retorted the General.

Meyer shrugged his shoulders, as if convinced of the hopelessness of trying to instil intelligence into the other's skull.

"If I were you," went on Bilderbaum, "I should send a couple of regiments full pelt against those guns. We might bring off a very effective ski-charge down the slope."

"And lose fifty or sixty men," sneered Meyer.

"It would at any rate be fighting. At the present moment we're lowering the _morale_ of our troops by palsied inaction."

"If General von Bilderbaum were in supreme command of his Majesty's forces," said Meyer, "I have no doubt that the battle would be short, sharp, and decisive--only the decision would not be in our favour."

Von Bilderbaum flushed scarlet. He was essentially a fighting man, with the fighting man's contempt of the Jew, and his calculated inactivity.

Meyer's gentle gift of rudeness pierced his thick skin with inflaming venom. A sense of discipline and the presence of the enemy alone restrained him from violence. In despair he turned to his Sovereign.

"Have I your permission to head a charge against the guns, sire?" he asked.

But Karl's face had taken on a new look of decision.

"You have not," he replied firmly. "Any fool can head a charge. I suggested doing so myself half an hour ago. In theory I am a King and you a General; in practice we are pawns in Meyer's game. It is wisest to accept our limitations, and only to move when and where we are told. If I can submit, Von Bilderbaum, surely you can, too."

"Your Majesty's words are very touching," said Meyer in his colourless tones, which might have concealed the profoundest contempt or the most genuine feeling. "This is the hour of the savant, of the professor of '_Kriegspiel_,' of the man whose brain is unaffected by the glamour of heroism or the poetry of shock tactics. The hour of the fighting man will come later--your hour, Von Bilderbaum--the hour of big deeds and little cunning, of personal glory and the primordial joy of destruction. Believe me, General, I envy you your hour more than you grudge me mine. It is better to be a fighting dog than a pusillanimous old fox."

Bilderbaum looked his superior squarely between the eyes.

"You were a fighting dog, yourself, in 1904," he retorted.

"For ten minutes," sneered the Commander-in-Chief.

"For ten very useful and strenuous minutes," maintained the General. "I am not sure that I am not proud of serving under you. I am quite sure that it is a good thing for his Majesty that you are not serving under me."

Meyer ignored the honourable concession. He was gazing through his field-glasses at the distant guns, which were now three parts of the way up the hill.

"The secret of military success," he murmured, extracting his notebook and scribbling something in it, "is to strike when the iron's hot--not before. Give that to your A.D.C., General," he went on, tearing out the leaf and folding it, "and tell him to take it instantly to the officer in command of the howitzer battery on Sanatorium Hill. The moment has arrived for destroying the wasps' nest."