Upon the following afternoon the Colonel duly escorted Mademoiselle to the dwelling of Madame Tessier. You may conceive that the portly little warrior, when panoplied in the full-skirted, black frock-coat, gray peg-top trousers, black cravat and vest, and curly-brimmed silk chimney-pot of private life, looked a very gallant gentleman; and that his daughter, attired in a new and charming costume of fine blue cloth, trimmed with velvet and loops of black silk cord, and wearing a sealskin coat and a minute bonnet, consisting of a knot or two of blue velvet, a froth of lace, and half-a-dozen richly-tinted oak-leaves on her coils of black hair, conveyed an effect of elegant simplicity and youthful grace, such as only a well-bred French girl knows how to combine perfectly.
During the walk, which absorbed the best part of a quarter of an hour, Juliette occupied herself in the endeavor to glean a few meager items of information with regard to her destined husband. To her timidly-cast bait the Colonel barely vouchsafed a rise. One may imagine a dialogue of timid interrogations and baffling replies, running somewhat after this fashion:
"Dear father, upon reflection, I find myself unable to recall the features of M. Charles Tessier with anything approaching clearness. I pray you be kind enough to describe him to me?"
"My daughter, I myself experience—how shall I phrase it?—a difficulty in verbally portraying the form and features of that excellent young man. But his mother carries his image in her heart, and doubtless has it on her walls and in her albums. Look in the one before you search the others; it will be wise."
"Assuredly. But, my father——"
"Chut!" The Colonel twirled a waxed end of his magnificent mustache, and resumed presently: "M. Charles Tessier is a gentleman of honor, an excellent man of business, and a most desirablepartifor any young girl of good family and limited fortune. Could the most exacting bride-elect demand more than this? In addition, he has a fine hand——"
"Indeed, dear father——"
A fine hand was something tangible. The owner of the commended extremity might in addition be possessor of a good figure, broad shoulders, a handsome nose.... And yet hunchbacks occasionally have neat hands, and the Colonel had only testified to one. That idea might be dismissed as fanciful. Of course, Charles had the proper complement of legs and arms. Half-smiling at her own terrors, Juliette murmured:
"Pray go on, dear father! You said—a fine hand..."
"Hah—aha! yes. A fine hand for a stroke at billiards. In addition, it cannot be denied that Charles has a magnificent head——"
"I am listening, dear father!..."
"A truly magnificent head for figures! Book-keeping by double-entry is infant's play to this admirable young man. He must teach thee the logarithms, my child, when thou art married.... Docile and intelligent as thou art, thou wouldst quickly learn to be his secretary and head-clerk. It should be a true wife's ambition to help her husband in business, and this is alone possible when his avocations are of the strictly civil kind."
It was tragic. In her dreams Juliette Bayard had aided to put on the casque, and buckle the cuirass of a stately warrior. Now she must perforce mend the gray goose-quill of a knight of the counting-house. You might have seen how her slender throat swelled against the encircling band of velvet. Tears sprang to her eyes. To keep them back she bit her lip, straightened her back, and shrugged,—one barely perceptible shrug. The Colonel said,—was his kind glance a little troubled as it turned on her?—
"The letter of Madame Tessier has made it clear to thee, that although thou wilt see thy future husband soon, the meeting will not take place upon the present occasion. Since October M. Charles Tessier"—the Colonel twisted his mustache—"has been detained by affairs at Mons-sur-Trouille in Belgium. I understand that at this country hamlet—near the town of Mons—is situated the manufactory of his partner, M.—the name for the moment escapes me. He is a wealthy gentleman of excellent Flemish family. The daughter, I remember, was called Clémence or Clémentine."
The Colonel cleared his throat. Juliette expressed a preference for the name of Clémentine. The Colonel begged her pardon. After all, it was Clémence. That did not matter. Mademoiselle liked the name of Clémence nearly as well as Clémentine. The Colonel tugged at the other side of the fiercely-waxed mustache, and changed the subject.
"The pavement rings beneath the heel; I prophesy frost to-night. Thou art cold, my child, I saw thee shiver. Shall we walk more quickly? It will be better so."
She quickened her steps at the suggestion. There had already been frost, and the air was keen and sparkling as champagne. The young blood in her veins answered to the pleasant stimulus of exercise. Her cheeks were rose-tinted porcelain, her eyes blue stars, despite her wretchedness, by the time they reached Madame Tessier's door.
The house of the Widow Tessier was in the Rue de Provence, which runs north from the Avenue de Saint Cloud, not far from above its junction with the Carrefour de Montreuil, and ends at the corner of the Boulevard de la Reine.
A quiet, retiring street, its houses separated by ample gardens, hidden by high walls of brick faced with fine gray Caen stone, generally festooned with pretty creepers and overtopped by stately trees. A noble pine shaded the green glass conservatory, large enough to be termed a winter-garden, which projected on the south side, from what was a solidly built villa plastered yellow, with a raised ground-floor, second story and attic story with Mansard windows; the short sloping roof, and these—indeed, the whole of the attic story to the floor-line, where a fine-worked cornice of stone ran round the building—being covered with grayish-blue slates.
You rang at a gate of open ironwork, white-painted, in which was a smaller gate to admit pedestrians, and while you were waiting for someone to answer the bell, you had leisure to admire the heavyporte cochèreupon your left, of solid oak timbers, studded with iron bolts, surmounted with a fine arch of stone, centered with a blank lozenge; and the neat balcony railing topping the wall to your right, in which was a modest little iron-studded door leading to the kitchen and servants' offices, always secured by a huge lock, and opened with much groaning of inward bolts.
You are to understand that the roof of the kitchen formed a leaden terrace upon which the bay of the drawing-room and other ground-floor windows opened; these, like the windows on the basement and upper stories, being furnished with outside shutters, the slatted wooden pattern with which Continental travelers are familiar, yellow-painted to match the plaster of the walls. The terrace could be gained by a short flight of stone steps rising upon your right as you entered. But upon a visit of ceremony you went on to the main entrance, which was reached by a handsome ascent of five broad, shallow steps of the Caen stone, continued along the north and east sides of the house, so that from any of the ground-floor windows, which were all of antique French door-pattern, you could descend into the garden at will. The hall-door commanded a view of the stables and the cottage attached to them, whose tenant combined the office of coachman with the duties of a gardener. You could not call those buildings unpicturesque, covered as they were with the now leafless branches of a great vine and a magnificent wistaria. Beyond there stretched a kitchen-garden, with beds of flowers and vegetables, under glass and in the open; and splendid espaliers, whence many a basket of luscious cherries, huge blue plums, brown Bon Chrétien pears, and melting nectarines, were gathered for the table in the season of such luscious fruits. And behind and to the north side of the villa was the pleasance, which must have formed part of a nobleman's park at one time. For winding walks bordered with ground-ivy led you in and out and among clumps of oak and chestnut, and stately limes and acacias stood upon the sunlit spaces of its velvet-lawns; while near its bounds shrubberies and thickets of Portugal laurel and lilac, bird-cherry and hawthorn, syringa and arbutus harbored thrush and blackbird, and in spring rejoiced the lover of beauty and perfume; and one great tulip tree opened its crimson-purple chalices beneath the rains and suns of early June. From the eastern boundary-wall jutted a stone pipe, ending in a mask, from the mouth of which fell a jet of clear water, forming a tiny pond, and a brook that ran away between stones covered with moss and overgrown with ferns and water-plants. But just now the pond was frozen, and a great icicle hung from the jaws of the grinning Satyr, and the blackened leaves of the water-loving plants and club-mosses were hidden under a thin covering of recently-fallen snow. What strange uses this place was to serve before the terrible year of 1870 was ended! How many letters signed "Charles" were to be drawn by the tiny hand of P. C. Breagh's Infanta from that grinning satyr-mouth.
Entering the house—for you are to see it plainly, serving as it did for a theater upon whose table the life-blood of France was to flow; and her body, beneath the steady, skillful hands of a man well fitted to perform such operations, was fated to undergo a terrible mutilation—entering the house by the double glass-doors, you found yourself in a parqueted hall, furnished with Empire consoles and large mirrors in frames of tarnished gilding. The chief staircase, covered with striped drugget in gray-and-red, you found immediately upon your right. Under this was the opening to a servants' stairway leading down to the kitchen beneath the terrace. Upon your left was a small door masking another servants' stairway leading to the attics; and beyond this two large folding-doors, covered with green baize, led into a medium-sized but lofty apartment, used as the dining-room, looking out on the garden, and hung with a crimson flock paper patterned with gilt palm-leaves, against which hung some large landscapes and antique hunting-scenes in oils. There was a handsome white marble fireplace, with a high mantel-slab supported by terminal figures, one a nymph, wanton-lipped and languid-eyed, her full voluptuous bosom partly veiled by a leopard skin, her disheveled hair crowned with ivy, like that of her companion; a faun, and young, judging by his budding horns.
A third pair of folding-doors facing the hall-entrance opened into the drawing-room; a fourth to the right of these gave entrance to the billiard-room, from which access might be gained by a low glass door into the winter-garden, a high-domed glass house full of palms and tree-ferns, boasting a little fountain, whose leaden dolphin, balanced almost perpendicularly on his tail in the center of a moss-stained basin, could spout high enough to wet the green roof when any charitable hand might set him going. A door at the farther end of this winter-garden gave access to a small room lined with books, classical works by standard French authors for the most part, smelling moldy, and apt, when a curious hand strove to remove them from their shelves, to stick to their neighbors on either side. And looking at the conservatory from outside, one perceived, running along the entire length of the rounded glass roof, a wrought-iron gangway, or double-sided balcony. From which, according to the testimony of Madame, the late M. Tessier, from whose dressing-room this aerial promenade could be gained by a glass door had been, accustomed to enjoy the prospect and breathe the air.
Madame, a discreet and sensible-looking person, with very little more mustache than is becoming to a Frenchwoman of sixty, embraced Juliette warmly on both cheeks, and graciously received the Colonel's salute upon her mittened left hand. The mittens were invariably black in tribute to the memory of the late M. Tessier. Madame's half-mourning, gray poplin gown, trimmed with black gimp upon the gores, round the bottom of the expansive skirt and upon the waist and shoulder-lappets, might have been the same she had always worn, in Juliette's memory. Her cap had lavender ribbons, her front was bay, whereas it had been chestnut, and the net of black chenille-velvet, in which she confined her back hair, plentiful in quantity and iron gray like her mustache and eyebrows, had silver beads upon it here and there.
Father and daughter were made welcome, were entertained with wine of Madeira, raspberry-vinegar—for which sweet, subacid beverage, diluted with water, young ladies were expected to express a preference—macaroons, ratafias, and little pink ice-cakes. The Colonel, having accepted a glass of the good vintage and consumed a biscuit, expressed a desire to walk round the garden; Madame, who had suggested the excursion, and Juliette, who had gone goose-flesh all over—were left to atête-à-tête.
During the collation described above, Mademoiselle's blue eyes had discreetly raked the walls of the dining-room in search of portraits. Nothing rewarded her search but a highly varnished oil presentment of a simpering young woman in the vast flowery bonnet, the bunches of side-curls, and the high-waisted gown of 1830, in whom one must perforce discover Madame in her twentieth year. A case of three miniatures hung beside the copper wood-tongs on the left of the fireplace. When Madame affectionately leaned to her young guest, patted her hand, and bade her take her seat upon a green velvet fauteuil between Madame's own high-backed arm-chair and the carved-oak-framed, glass-covered embroidery picture of Dido on her funeral pyre that served as fire-screen, Juliette, in the act of transit, cast a rapid glance at this case. In vain. Only M. Tessier, in a high satin stock, gray curls and strips of side-whisker, Madame in a lace cap, fiddle-bodied brown silk gown, berthe, and cameo brooch, and a chubby infant of indeterminate sex, with sausage curls and tartan shoulder-knots, rewarded her anxious scrutiny. She could not restrain a sigh.
To be taken by the chin is not unpleasant to a young lady, under the right conditions and given certain circumstances. But when the ringed and bony fingers enclosed in Madame's black mitten, turned the small, pale oval to the light, a choking lump rose in Juliette's throat, and the black lashes veiled the eyes her aged friend would have peered in. She felt given over to harpies, abandoned and alone. Almost she could have rushed to one of the long French windows, wrenched it open, and fled to the shelter of her father. I wonder whether the Colonel was as ill at ease as his daughter, as he paced the winding paths under the leafless trees, between the beds of snow-powdered ground ivy, already sprinkled with patches of aconite in partially thawed places, shining yellow as little suns against dark leaves and wet brown earth....
She could see him from the nearer of the three long windows opening on the steps that led to the garden. He walked among the trees bare-headed, holding his high silk hat and gold-topped Indian cane behind him, his handsome double chin bent upon his breast, his fine face full of care. Even his boldly-curled mustaches seemed to droop under the weight of sorrows that were no longer hidden from his child.
At the bottom of his heart he distrusted her, she was almost certain. And from the bottom of her own heart she forgave the cruel wrong. He had come to believe, since the great betrayal, that every woman save the Mother of all mothers, and his own, had it in her to play the traitress, given the opportunity. Thus the opportunity was not to be given to Juliette.
Madame was speaking. She no longer held the little chin, though the chill of her hard finger-tips still seemed to cling to it. She smiled benevolently, making curves of parenthesis in her well-powdered cheeks, and sometimes punctuating her sentences by a rather disconcerting click of teeth that were too startlingly white and never seemed to fit properly.
"One understands, my cherished" (click), "that this visit is a littletristefor thee.... One who should have been here to welcome thee does not appear. To repress the feelings isconvenable" (click) "in a young girl of good education, but nevertheless one cannot hide the oppression of the heart. Rest assured, my little one, that my Charles—who is to be thy Charles so soon"—Madame's playfulness, emphasized by the click described, was more than a little grisly—"suffers as thou dost. He is chagrined to the very soul, believe me! that he cannot be with thee here to-day. Detained in Belgium, at Mons-sur-Trouille (where he has a manufactory for the production of woolen fabrics)—by important business in connection with an immense order given by a Paris firm of" (click) "drapers, thou canst picture him counting the hours that must elapse before the happy moment of his return. He is ardent, my Charles—noble, sincere, religious, and candid. I, his mother, say to thee: Thou art happy" (click) "to have won the love of so estimable a young man!"
And with this maternal peroration two gray poplin sleeves went out and enfolded Mademoiselle de Bayard, and two rapid touches of Madame Tessier's mustache visited first her left cheek and then her right one. Fluttering like a caught robin, Juliette faltered:
"You are so good, dear Madame, but when did I win it?" She added, released from the imprisoning sleeves, and with a bright red rose of agitation blooming in the center of each pale cheek: "Alas! I refer to the love of M. Charles Tessier.... If I might know where he has seen me? ... I cannot recollect his ever having been presented to me. In my mind, Madame, your son has no form, no features.... It is terrible, but there you have the fact!"
The truth was out at last. Now that the room had left off whirling, Madame's benevolent smile shone forth unchanged. She clicked, and returned with archness that was labored.
"My Juliette, I comprehend. Thou wert just a little bewildered.... Thy father has not made it quite clear.... Ah, naughty M. le Colonel, I shall scold him by-and-by!"
"Pray, no!" Juliette's little hands went out entreatingly. "Only explain, dear, dearest Madame, for I am bewildered, as you say truly. My father's command that I should leave school, provide myself with atrousseau, and come here to be married—instantly—to M. Charles Tessier!—was so brusque—so sudden—that I might be pardoned for saying I have felt less like a young girl than a poor lamb, hurriedly taken from the fold and driven to the butcher's yard."
"Poor little lamb!" drolled Madame, still portentously playful, and displaying a gleaming double row of teeth between the parenthesis. Juliette felt more than ever like the lamb of her analogy, as she strove to read the meaning of the smile. Madame continued: "Too much boldness—an excessive display ofsangfroid—my Charles has ever disliked in women. When I tell him howgentillethou art, how sensitive, and howspirituelle, he will say to me, 'My mother, thou hast chosen well! and when he sees thee...'"
Something in the well-powdered elderly face of the speaker sent an electrical shock of comprehension through Juliette's being, evoking the cry:
"Sees me.... But then ... he has never seen me?"
It was necessary to hold on with one's own eyes to Madame's, they so spun and whirled in their rather small, round orbits. Then they steadied, as though she had made her mind up. She said, and though the treacly suavity had gone out of her voice, Juliette liked it better:
"No, my child—Charles has never seen thee. This is a betrothal—this will be a marriage exclusively arranged by the parents of the young people concerned. Thy father, the son of my beloved friend Antoinette de Bayard, does not desire that the husband of his Juliette should be a member of the military profession,—I am averse to the idea of my son's bestowing his name upon the Protestant daughter of a Flemish woolen-manufacturer—for that that was originally my son's intention, I will not seek to deny. Wounded in my tenderest and most susceptible spot by the announcement of Charles's infatuation, I might have estranged him for ever—even hurried on the catastrophe I feared, had not the advice of my director, Dom Clovis, of the Carmelite Fathers—fortified and sustained me in the trying hour! I wrote to my son. I poured out my maternal heart in pleadings the most earnest—the most tender. I recalled to him the dispositions of his late father's will. Under this document," Madame went on, drying a tear with a deep-hemmed cambric handkerchief, "I possess the power at pleasure to divert from Charles and his heirs a considerable portion of his sainted father's funded property. And that power," said Madame, drying another tear, "I solemnly assured my child, would—in the event of his union with Mademoiselle Clémence Basselôt—unhesitatingly be used."
Words might have come from the pale parted lips before her. Madame tapped them to silence with a mittened finger and pursued her way.
"Charles is profoundly reasonable—a quality he inherits from both parents. He wrote to me a letter inexpressibly touching in its expressions of filial trust and confidence, over which, I assure thee, I have shed the most consoling tears."
Something had previously crackled in the pocket of Madame's black silk apron, when she had smoothed it over her knees in seating herself. Now she drew it out, and Juliette saw a blue envelope directed in a handwriting of the business-like, copper-plate description. The sheet of white paper the envelope contained had an engraved picture-heading of a square building possessing many windows—no doubt the Belgian cloth manufactory possessed in partnership by MM. Basselôt and Tessier. From the page, closely covered all down one side with regular lines of mercantile handwriting, Madame read:
"Sentiments of the most profound agitated me as I read thy letter. These sentences penned by a mother's hand, have touched me to the quick. Thy arguments, so delicate, yet so powerful, have convinced me of the impossibility of the union toward which—I will own!—my wishes urged me. I abandon the idea henceforth! Since Mademoiselle Clémence is not to be mine, choose then for me, best and noblest of women. Let her who taught my infant lips to murmur the beloved name of mother select for me some virtuous young girl upon whom I may confer the equally sacred title of Wife.
"THY CHARLES."
And there, with a flourish like a double lasso, M. Tessier's letter ended, leaving Juliette swaying between the impulse to shriek with laughter and the urgent desire to melt away in tears.
Madame came to her rescue by proposing a visit to the billiard-room, built and appointed by the late M. Tessier to afford his son wholesome recreation at home. For otherwise, Madame explained, the young man might have been allured by the amusements to be found in the saloons of the Hôtel des Réservoirs and other brilliant and fashionable lounges, full of dissipated civilians and officers of every branch of the military and naval services. Clubs Madame regarded as gateways to eternal perdition. She dried another tear as she thanked Heaven that her beloved child did not belong to one. When possible, she added, Charles avoided restaurants. A congenital delicacy of constitution rendered over-seasoned dishes little less than poison to him; he habitually suffered from nettle-rash after the consumption of shellfish. Green salad was, upon this count, pernicious to his well-being. Nor should he ever be permitted to sleep without a nightcap, having been subject to earache from his youth.
The mental picture of Charles, suffering from an attack of nettle-rash and crowned with his protective nightcap, sent the listener's balance dipping toward hysteria. They were in the billiard-room, a pleasant, longish salle, with two high windows opening on the frontward terrace. The glass door stood open leading into the winter-garden: from whence came a smell of hot-water pipes, damp moss, and mold, with an added whiff of ferniness, and a suggestion of the cockroaches and mice that pervaded the place.
And then: "Thou seest, my sweet Juliette"—pray imagine Madame, indicating with a lifted mitten a gilt-framed square of canvas hanging between the two French windows—"a speaking portrait, painted but two years ago, of my—I should say, of our beloved Charles."
Obediently the eyes of Mademoiselle Bayard followed the direction of the pointing finger. The painter or the evil genius of Charles Tessier had induced him to sit for his portrait in the habiliments of the chase; thus in sporting checks of the chessboard pattern, with the addition of yellow leather leggings, gun pads, and a game bag, and holding between his knees a weapon which obviously embarrassed him, he was presented for the first time to the gaze of his future bride. Those eyes of Juliette's fastened on the canvas a single moment before their dusky lashes dropped. But in that moment Mademoiselle had classified Charles as belonging to the Order of Invertebrates; comprehended his profound insignificance, and realized that from the owner of a head so commonplace, eyes so round, and a nose so blunt, a mouth so lax, and cheeks so pink and chubby—possibly the artist had been liberal of carmine—nothing more of originality, decision, manly force, or power of will might be expected than is commonly demanded of the child's whirligig of stick and cardboard, as seen gyrating madly or spinning feebly under the impetus of its owner's breath.
It was impossible, Mademoiselle told herself, to detest a being so utterly devoid of character—a human pad of blotting paper—as uninteresting as a counting-house stool. One could only pity him, and hope for his mother's sake that sound business capacities were concealed behind that characterless forehead, topped with brown hair cut very short and standing upon end—and wonder at or congratulate Mademoiselle Clémence. Flamandes are generally big and muscular. One could only hope that she had taken Charles by his sloping shoulders and soundly shaken him when he had backed out of his proposal of marriage. Though possibly he had never spoken to the girl at all.
M. le Colonel found his daughter silent during their walk back to the Barracks. After a questioning eyeshot or so at the dainty little figure that moved so demurely beside him—abandoning the vain endeavor to read her mood from the droop of the pure eyelids, the chiseled lines of the exquisite profile—the father relapsed into his own sad thoughts. And then Juliette, stealing a glance at him, realized, with a pang, that his once luxuriant black curls were thinning in places, and already thickly sown with white hairs. The upright martial carriage was marred by a rounding of the shoulders—the stoop of a man upon whose back sits perched Black Care. The seams of the immaculately brushed frock-coat of civil ceremony were shiny in places—the rosette of red ribbon at the lapel was frayed and faded—the tiny medal tarnished and dull. Perhaps the mood of the wearer, be it hopeful or despondent, can affect the apparel, as the chameleon's wrinkled skin changes from the hue of dead bark to the vivid green of young leaves when sunlight touches it, and fades back to the neutral tint when the golden ray is withdrawn.
Juliette would not have thanked me for that analogy of the prehensile-tongued, long-tailed lizard. Inconstancy as described by the poets is typified by the chameleon, and her faith in the sincerity and truth of her Colonel was founded upon the living rock.
We know that she had, or thought she had, discovered why he dared not trust her to a husband whose career must lead him from her. "My blood," she had murmured to herself sorrowfully, "it must" (she meant unfaith) "be in my blood!" The reason for his desperate haste was all beyond her. It must be cruel, because it hurt him so.
That heart of hers was as great as she herself was tiny. Titania at need could love like a Titaness. And the blood of Antigone runs in the veins of living women even to this day, though the noble daughter of Œdipus died a virgin unspotted. When the fairy hand in the perfectly fitting gray glove crept under the Colonel's elbow, it gave, with the smile that accompanied it, a silent pledge of fidelity to the death. But oh, blind father, could you have seen her, in that inmost chamber of the heart where the most innocent maiden shrines the imaginary portrait of a lover—taking down the stately canvas bearing the presentment of a soldier-hero unknown, and hanging up in its place the picture of a mere Charles Tessier, your eyes, like those of the protagonist of the Greek drama, would have wept tears of blood.
That night a letter was penned to Monica in the small, delicately pointed handwriting that seemed appropriate to Juliette.
"To you, dear friend, who have exacted of me the pledge that I will write to you before all, a faithful description of the person of my future husband, I hasten to fulfill the vow. M. Charles Tessier has a fine head and a fine hand, my father praises his capacity for business and his skill at the billiard-table with equal fervor. Of his powers of conversation I have as yet not sufficient experience to afford you an opinion. In the presence of his mother he has been silent and reserved. His letters, however, are eloquently expressed and forcible. When I mention his letters, it should be explained that affairs have entailed upon him the necessity of a journey to Belgium, where he remains for the present, at the house of his partner, M. Basselôt. Thou wilt draw from this the correct conclusion that I am not yet married. Do not forget to pray for thy faithful
"JULIETTE."
"See you well, I am happy—content—I dream not of impossibilities.J'ai pris mon parti. I am sensible, me!"
In answer to a second letter from Monica received upon the ending of the month there came:
"Tell M. Breagh that I have received his message, so generously worded. Alas! the poor young girl had no intention of wounding a heart at once so courageous and so proud. His fellow-student is unjust to himself. Why term that 'brutality' which was merely honestbrusquerie? Yet if he gave pain—and I do not deny it was so—he may rest assured he has been forgiven. Tell this to thy brother, from
"JULIETTE."
"M. Charles Tessier is still delayed by affairs in Belgium. I visit his mother nearly every day. An excellent housekeeper and cuisinière, she is charmed with my skill in cooking. For her and for my father, who dines with her frequently, I plan delightful little menus. They eat, and praise the dishes and cry—at least, Madame cries: 'Ah, Heaven! if my Charles were only here!' In a letter which this morning's post brought me from the person mentioned, he dwells with that impassioned luxuriance of imagery, warmth of color and fullness of expression not denied to his sex, upon our approaching union. One cannot deny that it is pleasant to be the sole object in life of a young man so worthy and so amiable, and—ah, my dearest! were the sacrifice of a personal wish demanded of me, could I,knowing what I" (scratched out) "refuse to gratify the cherished desire of my dear father's heart? Each day that finds me by his side closes in deeper respect and love more ardent. Our Lord, Whose will it was to leave me motherless, decreed that in him I should find the tenderness of a father and that of a mother too.
"J. M. DE B."
For the delectation of those readers who are anxious to sample the luxuriant imagery, glowing color and plenitude of expression ascribed to the epistolary communication received by Mademoiselle de Bayard from M. Charles Tessier I append the letter referred to as above:
"BASSELÔT AND TESSIER,"WHOLESALE MERCHANTS."WEAVERS AND DYERS OF WOOLEN FABRICS.
"MONS-SUR-TROOTLLE."BELGIUM."—thJanuary, 1870.
"MADEMOISELLE,
"That I have been tardy in personally assuring you of my profound regard and unfaltering devotion you will pardon, knowing me detained in a foreign country in the interests of my business affairs.
"Assured that all that concerns my welfare will naturally possess for you the deepest interest, I hasten to inform you that jointly with my partner, M. Felix Basselôt, I have entered into a scheme to facilitate the manufacture of our woolen cloths and other textile fabrics by the purchase and installation of the most recently invented machines. Raw cloths are now subjected to perching, knotting, milling, washing, hydro-extracting, gigging, cutting, cropping, boiling, brushing and steaming processes of the latest invention, and we claim that the output of our manufactory will henceforth vie with the first qualities of goods advertised by the leading firms of Belgium, England and France.
"My mother's letters palpitate with your praises. What happiness, Mademoiselle, awaits the man who shall be privileged to confer upon such beauty, goodness, and amiability, the sacred name of wife. You will be interested to hear that for Saxonies, tweeds, merinos, and cashmeres for ladies' drapery our house maintains its old reputation, as well as for the heavier fabrics of masculine wear.
"Were I now at your side, how enchanting it would be to confide to you that we have struck out a bold and original line in dress-stuffs, dyed with the new agent called Aniline. It is extracted from coal-tar, and the magenta so much admired by our Parisianmondainesis obtained from it, by treating the crude substances with the chloride of tin. From magenta we derive rosaniline, a dye as delicate yet as passionate as a lover's fondest wishes. In an experiment recently made in my presence I beheld a pure young girl immerse in a solution of this extraction containing a little ammonia, a spotless lily, when instantly the virginal blossom's whiteness was changed to the loveliest roseate hue.
"Thus, dear Mademoiselle, your soul, so chaste, so spotless, and so innocent, being plunged in the consecrated vat of marriage, will assume the glowing hue of Love. Bleu de Lyons with Violet Imperial, all the most fashionable shades of mauve and other colors can be obtained by methods equally simple, and with the addition of aldehyde and sulphuric acid, we secure a green of the most brilliant, and a yellow that enchains the eye. By a simple process these colors may be fortified to stand the test of washing, as firmly and unchangeably as the affection I am privileged to offer you; which is hallowed by the blessing of the best of mothers, and of a father noble as your own.
"Receive then, dear Mademoiselle, the tenderest assurances of devotion,
"From yours eternally,"CHARLES JOSEPH TESSIER."
Over this epistle, apparently begotten between a trade-circular and a polite letter-writer, Juliette had wept helpless tears of mirth. Reading it, one may conjure up a picture of the excellent Charles, spurred by the maternal threat of partial disinheritance to a desperate effort, bending over the paper in the throes of composition, diluting the ink with the sweat of a non-intellectual brow.
Also, one may suspect the anonymous heroine of the experiment with the lily to have been none other than Mademoiselle Clémence Basselôt, but the suspicion has not, to the present date, been verified.
In the July of that year, while the gilding was yet untarnished upon France's brand-new Constitution—ratified by aplebiscitumobtained after the usual methods, and recording seven millions of pinchbeck votes—while the Imperial Court of the Third Napoleon played at Arcadian pastorals under the mistletoe-draped oaks and spreading beeches of St. Cloud, the question of the Candidacy of Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern for the vacant Throne of Spain appeared in the firmament of European politics (even as the voice of Lord Granville prophesied a lengthy period of unbroken fine weather)—and broke about the ears of the Power most concerned like a stinging shower of hail.
The Spanish crown upon the head of a Hohenzollern. Rather a Montpensier, intolerable as that would have been. True, the Almanach de Gotha had offered (to General Prim, President Zorilla, and the Cortes, assembled in solemn session) only the unwelcome alternative of the legal heir to the throne going begging; true, the Spanish people were very well satisfied with the idea of being ruled by a Catholic gentleman of Royal blood, suitable age, handsome person, and military experience, married to a Portuguese princess, and possessing two healthy sons.
But that a Prussian Prince, holding a commission in Prussia's Army, should be set up like a signpost of warning on France's southern frontier, as though to keep her in mind of what would happen in the event of another war on the Rhine—was, from the Gallic point of view, intolerable. "The security and the dignity of the French nation are endangered by this candidacy!" cried Jules Favre. According to M. Thiers, "the nominacy was not only an affront to the nation, but an enterprise adverse to its interests." Gambetta cried aloud that all Frenchmen must unite for a national war. Marshal Vaillant made a memorandum in his notebook. "This signifies war, or something very like it!" And at the Council of Ministers hastily summoned to St. Cloud on the morning of the sixth of July, the Emperor passed to the Duke de Gramont, his Foreign Minister, a penciled communication. "Notify Prince Gortchakoff at Petersburg that if Prussia insists upon the accession of the Prince of Hohenzollern to the throne of Spain, it will mean war!"
What haste to clutch at thecasus belli. When the Ministers quitted the Imperial Council, and the Corps Législatif opened its session, long-continued applause greeted the declaration of Gramont from the tribune that a certain unnamed Third Power, by placing one of its Princes on the throne of Charles V., threatened to disturb the equilibrium of Europe, to imperil the material interests and endanger the honor of France. "If it be impossible to prevent this," ran the peroration, "strong in your support, Messieurs, we shall perform our duty without hesitation or faltering!" Here was an ultimatum that sounded the very note of war.
Do you hear the echo of the thunderous acclamations that attended the Foreign Minister to his seat, the clapping of hands, stamping of feet, roaring of lungs that have been dust for more than forty years, or are now on the point of dissolving into their native element? Naturally because the Right were defiant, the Left called their utterances bellicose. Had the Right manifested a disposition to turn the other cheek in Scriptural fashion, the Left would have passionately taunted this band of politicians with cowardice, lack of patriotism, indifference to the sacred cause of national freedom,—would have accused them of being traitors to their country, and Heaven knows what else.
The Press threw oil upon the roaring conflagration. Were this affront submitted to, cried theGaulois, "there would not exist a woman in the world who would accept a Frenchman's arm!" TheCorrespondantwas "relieved to find that Frenchmen once more have become Frenchmen." TheMoniteur Universelwas charmed to discover that the blame for this momentous conflict could never be attributed to the French Government. TheFigaroleft off making a cockshy of the Imperial dignity, to admit that for once the Emperor's official mouthpiece had spoken the right word. And theDébatspraised the attitude taken by the Government. "Silence at this juncture would," it cried, "have been pusillanimous. Shall the nation be accused of bowing its head for the second time, before the cannon of Sadowa?"
Lord Granville, replacing the recently deceased Clarendon at Great Britain's Foreign Ministry, mentioned to the Spanish Ambassador to England that the choice of Prince Leopold would create a sore. He wrote to Layard at Berlin that he considered France had been given good cause of resentment. Lyons, in the shoes of Lord Cowley, at the English Embassy in Paris, wrote to his chief that the unhappy affair had revived all the old animosity, though it seemed to him that "neither the Emperor nor his Ministers really wish or expect war!" TheTimesof July 8th was severe on the policy of Prussia; theStandardfor once expressed the same opinion as theTimes. TheDaily Telegraphprophesied that the succession of the Prussian Prince would mean France's present humiliation and future peril. ThePall Mall Gazettepoked mordant fun at the attitude of unconsciousness assumed by King William, who, between sips of Ems water, declared his ignorance of the whole affair. TheEarly Wire, backing and filling, kept an even keel for a day or two. Then said Mr. Knewbit confidentially to P. C. Breagh, one midsummer evening, after the early supper:
"My opinion is we are a-going to give a leg-up to this 'ere 'O'enzollern business, our Chief being—when England, Home, and Duty permit him to indulge the weakness—a red-'ot admirer of a Certain Person at Berlin. Who"—Mr. Knewbit's wink was infinitely sagacious—"is said on the strict Q.T. to have put up Field-Marshal Prim and the Government at Madrid to making the proposal to the young gentleman. For the sake of giving a jolt-up to the elderly swell at the Tuileries. We all have our ideal 'eroes," Mr. Knewbit added, "and our Chief's partiality dates from his acting in an emergency as Special War Correspondent for his own paper, durin' the Prusso-Austrian War of 1866. It was at the Battle of——that name always beats me——"
"Königgratz, perhaps?" suggested Carolan.
"Königgratz—when this 'ere Bismarck spurs his big brown mare up to Colonel von Somebody to ask him why, seeing the 'eavy losses occurring in his neighborhood from Austrian Artillery—he didn't ride forward with his Cuirassiers to find out where the shells came from? Took our Chief's fancy uncommon, that did, as the iron sugar-plums was dropping freely in the neighborhood, and when he had rode on, swearing at the Colonel like anything you can imagine—the old man picked up a cigar-stump he'd pitched away, and keeps it to this hour in the pen-tray of the silver inkstand the Proprietors presented him with when he came home."
Said P. C. Breagh reflectively:
"It's the rule, invariably. Men love Bismarck or lampoon him—swear by him—or swear at him. He's the devil or a demigod—there's no alternative!"
"Good!" said Mr. Knewbit, leaning back in his Windsor chair, and rubbing the ear of the ginger Tom with the toe of one of his carpet slippers. "Tell us a bit more. Anything you can lay hold of. I want to see him stand out a bit clearer in my mind."
"He gets his name from the Wendish—I've read in theKleine Anekdotenbuch," said P. C. Breagh, "that 'Bismarck' really means 'beware of the thorns.' And there's a golden sprig of blackberry-bramble among the family quarterings, so perhaps there's something in it, after all. An ancestor of his who lived in the sixteenth century was a tailor—and a natural son of Duke Philip of Hesse, by the way! Duke Philip was a lineal descendant of St. Elizabeth of Hungary—who in her turn was descended from the Emperor Charlemagne——"
"Lor' bless my soul!" said Mr. Knewbit, rubbing his knees.
"And he—this man you want to know about!—was born the younger son of a Pomeranian country squire, and entered the University of Göttingen in 1831. They say that he permitted study to interfere so little with the more serious business of amusement that the name of Mad Bismarck was given him then, and had stuck to him even when he passed his examination as Referendar, and began to practice law in the Municipal Court of Aix-la-Chapelle."
Mr. Knewbit, drinking in the information at every pore, nodded "More"—and P. C. Breagh obliged him:
"He served his year as Volunteer at Potsdam in theJägersof the Guard, and then went home to the paternal estate of Kneiphof, and began sowing wild oats—acres and acres of them. The officers of the garrison were a hard-drinking set of fellows, and the county Junkers scorned to be outdone by them—so they hunted and shot and danced and made love to the local beauties—they dined and supped and gambled and fought duels. In fact, they did all the things men usually do when they mean to have a high old time and don't care a damn for the consequences," said P. C. Breagh, "and when you regularly hail smiling morn with cold punch, beer, and corn-brandy, and wind up the night with quart-beakers of champagne and porter, the consequences must be——"
"A taut skin and a fiery eye next morning," interpolated Mr. Knewbit, "and a tongue like a foul oven-plate or a burned kettle-bottom. But—my stars!—what a constitution that man must have to be as hale and as hearty, and as upright as they say he is, at fifty-five, and with a family of grown-up sons! One wonders how his sweetheart ever had the courage to marry such a—such a Ring-tailed Roarer.... But Love's a thing you can't account for nohow."
"I have heard that the Fräulein Puttkammer's family objected to the engagement," said P. C. Breagh, "but he seems to have got over their prejudices in a way peculiarly his own. By betrothing himself privately to the Fräulein first, and then calling openly to inquire how the family felt about it," he added, in response to the interrogative hoist of Mr. Knewbit's eyebrows, "and taking the precaution, upon entering the room—to hug the young lady before all her friends."
"The hugging would settle the thing—in Germany?" asked Mr. Knewbit.
"To a dead certainty."
"Without any male cousin or anything of that kind getting up and calling the hugger out?" asked Mr. Knewbit dubiously.
"When a man is six feet two inches in height, is as strong as a bull, and possesses a well-earned reputation as a fencer and pistol-shot, even male cousins," returned P. C. Breagh, "are content to sit still and let him hug."
"And then he married her and went into politics—and to-day, when the Press says 'Prussia,' it means him!" cried Mr. Knewbit. "What our Chief likes, and what fetches me!—is his cool owdaciousness. If ever I chance to find myself in Berlin," he added, "before visiting any State Collection of Art Objects ever brought together—I'd choose to 'ave a look at that man!"
Said P. C. Breagh:
"I've seen the Iron Chancellor just once—in '67—passing through Schwärz-Brettingen on his way to Berlin. It was in my first semester at the University, and just after the Constitution of the North German Bund was put into force by Royal Patent. The Social Democrats had protested against the withdrawal of the Prussian garrison from the independent State of Luxembourg—wanted to rush Germany into war over the business, and they, as well as theUltramontaine, having plenty of followers among the students—both parties formed up on the platform of the railway-station, and gave the Count three groans."
"How did he take 'em—the groans, I mean?'
"Rather as if he liked them, now I come to think of it. I can see him now, in civil dress, black frock-coat, vest and trousers, with a white choker something like a Lutheran clergyman's. And he jammed his great black felt hat down on his head and thrust his huge body half out of the carriage window. His eyes—fierce blue eyes heavily pouched underneath, and blazing from under shaggy eyebrows—swept over us as though we were a lot of squeaking mice—though he was laughing in a good-tempered sort of way. And he shouted something in dialect—they said it was a common Pomeranian proverb, 'Let not live men fight over a dead dog!'"
"Meaning——?"
"Meaning, one would suppose, that the Luxembourg garrison was a right which had been given up as unimportant, and therefore was of no more value than a dead dog, set against the cost of a new war."
"I'm obliged for your information," said Mr. Knewbit, pushing back his chair and getting up to reach his brass tobacco-box from the high kitchen mantelshelf. "In return I'll give you a bit o' news—which may be of walley to you. You have been talking A.1 journalism, young man, as different from the stuff you commonly put on paper as gold is from this metal"—he tapped the brass tobacco-box—"and—my advice is—For the future, write only of what you know; have felt, and heard and seen!"
He sucked despairingly at the wooden pipe he was filling and, finding it foul, stuck the stem in the spout of the boiling kettle—a practice abhorred of Miss Ling—and left it to be cleaned as he continued:
"Big things are going on in the world at this moment—things worth watching and waiting for. Damme!—though I'm not a swearer as a rule," said the little man, "if I don't wish I could change places with something that has wings. The great man we have been a-talking of is at this minute at his country-seat in Pomerania—that's the estate he bought with the grant—sixty thousand pounds English, it came to—the German Parliament voted him after the Prussian-Austrian War. And the King of Prussia is at Ems, a-drinking the waters, and the French Ambassador has been sent there by the Emperor Napoleon III. to obtain a special audience, I'm told. And if you or me could swop jobs with a fly on the wall at one place or the other—being a German insect it would be likely to understand their crack jaw language—me or you would be able to supply a leaded half-column for Special Issue that would fairly set the world afire. See this!"
He took the short poker from the top of Miss Ling's kitchen-range, and, pushing back his chair, rose and approached the wall, which was destitute of pictures, and distempered in an economical brown color.
"Look here, I say!..." began P. C. Breagh.
"The breath of genius inflates me," said Mr. Knewbit, who had had more than his allowance of beer at supper. "The impulse to prophesy stimulates me. Look at this!"
He wielded the poker deftly as he spoke. And on the brown distemper appeared in huge white letters:
WILL THERE BE WAR?YES!HOHENZOLLERN QUESTION NO DEAD DOG TO FRANCE!GAUL, AND TEUTON RIPE FOR CONFLICT.BISMARCK'S VIEWS!
"But, there, my inspiration gives out," said Mr. Knewbit, replacing the poker on the range and shaking his head mournfully, "unless it was possible to change with that fly on the wall—and take him at one of his expansive, confidential moments—if he ever has any—neither me nor any other man living will ever be able to give Bismarck's real views upon this or any other subject dealing with Politics. Who's this?"
The hall-door had slammed a moment previously. There had been a step upon the oilcloth-covered basement staircase, and now it bore Miss Ling's first-floor lodger, Herr von Rosius, the "quiet gentleman," who taught German to English students and English to Germans at the Institute of Languages in Berners Street, W.—across the threshold of her tidy kitchen, pipe in mouth and hat in hand.
"Meine Herren, I haf to beg your pardons! I seek the Fräulein Ling——" he was beginning, when suddenly the tall, broad-shouldered figure in the ill-fitting checked tweed clothes was petrified into rigidity. The felt hat he had civilly removed dropped from his hand, his jaws clenched on his inseparable meerschaum. Bolt upright, crimson to the hair, and staring through his steel-rimmed spectacles, he stood confronting the huge white letters that disfigured Miss Ling's brown distemper.
"Kreuzdonnerwetter! was ist dies?" Carolan heard him mutter in his own tongue. "Es ist in jedermanns Mund!" Then he recovered himself almost instantly, picked up his hat, and gave good-evening in his stiff, yet civil, way.
"Good evening! Miss Ling is out, and won't be back for an hour," explained Mr. Knewbit, "but if there was anything you were wanting in a hurry, I'll see that you get it, somehow."
"Thanks, thanks!" said Herr von Rosius pleasantly. "So that I shall have my bill within an hour I shall need nothing. Pray inform the Fräulein I haf just received a cable from my family in Germany. They tell me I am wanted at home."
"Sorry, sorry!" said Mr. Knewbit in his pouncing manner. "Sudden, sudden! Hope no bad news?"
Von Rosius's pale blue eyes might have been stones, they were so hard, and had so little expression. He removed and wiped his glasses with his silk handkerchief, and said, carefully replacing them:
"Nein, ganz und gar nicht, but my mother is in need of me. So I have resigned my post at the Berners Street Institute of Languages, and got my passport from our North German Consul in your city. Be so good to give my message to the Fräulein. I go upstairs to pack my trunks and bags!"
Von Rosius's long legs had carried him to the first-floor before Mr. Knewbit had done rubbing his ear and thinking. When his sitting-room door had banged, and the kitchen gaselier ceased to vibrate at the concussion, the little man said, looking at Carolan:
"You have an eye in your head, young chap, and have lived in that gentleman's country, and speak his language. And yet the setting of his upper lip and the blank expression he throwed into his spectacles when I put a plain question to him, have told me more about him than you've learned. I'll bet you a ginger-ale that Germany is his mother, and he has been recalled to serve in the Reserve Force, I forget what they call it just now."
"They call the Reserve the Reserve, but I expect you mean theLandwehr," returned Carolan, wondering at the little man's sharpness.
"That's it. Listen to him singing," said Mr. Knewbit, as the first-floor sitting-room door banged open again, heavy steps crossed the landing, and the robust baritone of Herr von Rosius trolled forth a fragment of song: "Now, if that might be anything in the 'Rule Britannia' line, my ginger-ale's as good as won."
"It's theWacht am Rhein," said P. C. Breagh, returning enlightened from an excursion to the bottom of the kitchen staircase, "and I believe you've hit the nail on the head."
"He served in '66 he told me," said Mr. Knewbit, indicating the unseen Von Rosius with an upward jerk of his chin, "and now he's got to go back and be a cog or a screw-nut somewhere in the big war-machine you've told me of. What did he call Service of the Active kind? 'Camping under the helmet-spike.' We shall miss him, for a quieter and civiler lodger never wore out oilcloth. Hark!—that was the hall-door. Monsieur Meguet's back uncommon early. As a rule, after the Museum Print Room closes he goes to his club in Leicester Square."
The French gentleman who lived on the second floor had ascended the doorsteps simultaneously with Mr. Ticking. Mounting to the hall on his way upstairs, attended by the ginger Tom—no longer a kitten—P. C. Breagh found them, surrounded by a blue haze of Sweet Caporal and Navy Cut, finishing a political discussion on the mat, while Mr. Mounteney, languidly leaning against the door-post of the ground-floor front-parlor, listened with a detached and weary air.
"C'est de bouc émissaire—I tell you he is the scapegoat of a diplomat's malice!" declared the French gentleman. "Of himself he is without designs—unambitious! a good child, nothing more! Brave as he is—has he not been trained from infancy to hardihood and acts of daring?—has he not slept with but a blanket for covering, and eaten the soldier's sausage of pea? ... Brave as he is, he dare not draw upon his unhappy country the terrible—the devastating—the exterminating wrath of France!"
The French gentleman whose profession was Prints had spoken loudly,—possibly without the design of being heard upon the first floor.
Now, as he paused to wipe his streaming brow with a brilliant green silk handkerchief, a door upon the landing immediately above was suddenly thrown open, and as a trunk was dragged across the landing, a stave of the German equivalent to "Rule, Britannia," boomed forth in Herr von Rosius's powerful baritone:
"While there's a drop of blood to run,While there's an arm to hold a gun—While there's a hand to wield a sword—Brum—brum brum brum——"
The German words were lost in the racket accompanying the violent ejection of heavy articles from the bedroom. Comparative calm ensued as M. Meguet continued:
"Disciplined, well drilled, energetic, and brave, the Army of France is unmatched and invincible. Our Emperor assures us upon the honor of a Napoleon, that, equipped and ready to the last buckle—to the final gaiter-button, it waits but the signal to roll on. Its musket is infinitely superior to the Prussian needle-gun, that feeble invention of an ill-balanced mind!—its artillery is commanded by a picked corps of officers—is enforced by that terrific weapon, themitrailleuse. The Army of Prussia is a bundle of dry bones, fastened together—not with living sinews—but with rusty wire. The Prussian Monarch is a tottering pantaloon of seventy-three, crowned with dusty laurels; who submits to be the puppet of a demon in human form! The Genius of France is a divine and glorious being, whose soul burns with the noble thirst for warlike achievements, whose blood courses with the fire and heat of unimpaired youth...."
From upstairs came the big baritone, buzzing like a gigantic bumble-bee:
"The oath is sworn—the hosts roll on,In heart and soul thy sons are one.Dear Fatherland, no fear be thine,We'll keep our watch upon the Rhine!"
"I tell you!" cried M. Meguet passionately, and pitching his voice so as to be heard, if possible, still more distinctly on the floor above; "France will cross the Rhine! Her hosts will inundate the soil of Germany like a vast tidal wave, and in one moment obliterate——"
Silence had prevailed above during the utterance of the above-recorded sentences. At the word "obliterate," a heavy canvas holdall dropped over the balusters of the upper landing, missing the speaker by a calculated inch; and as the ginger Tom, with an astonished curse, disappeared in the direction of the kitchen:
"Prut!" said the voice of Von Rosius from above, "that was an uncommonly near shave. Pray pardon," he added, appearing on the staircase, emitting volumes of smoke from his big meerschaum. "I so much regret the accident!"
He was attired in rough traveling-clothes, and wore an intensely practical woolen cap with ear-flaps, though the July night was oppressively hot. And his spectacles were inscrutable as he gathered up the boots, slippers, and clothes-brush that had escaped from the holdall, leaned the bulky brown canvas mass against the hall-wainscoting, and felt in the drawer of the rickety hatstand that never had hats on it, for the cab-whistle that was wheezy from overwork.
"It is nothing, Monsieur, you have not deranged me for an instant," returned M. Meguet, with ominously smiling bonhomie. Then refixing his late audience with his eye, he went on as though the interruption had never happened:
—"and obliterate from the face of the earth the entire German nation."
Von Rosius opened the hall-door, letting in the sultry smell of the hot street. He stood upon the threshold, and blew for a four-wheeler, one tittering, mocking trill. M. Meguet continued, quavering, and clutching his brow in the character of the terrified Hohenzollern, and imparting a tremor of agitation to his legs:
"Is it, then, to be wondered at," cries this unhappy Leopold, "that the opinion of Queen Victoria and the observations of the Czar of Russia have quickened scruples already existing in my breast? Will my royal relatives wonder that I say:This shall not be? The brand designed to set a world on fire has been quenched by my mother's tears, and the entreaties of my wife and infants. Let M. de Bismarck mount the Spanish Throne, and adorn his crafty temples with this crown of piercing bayonets. I withdraw from this fatal candidacy, though the whole world should say——"
M. Meguet shrugged his shoulders and struck the blow for which he had been saving himself:
—"should say what the latest edition of that admirably-informed journal, theEvening Gazette, quotes from this morning's edition ofLe Gaulois:
"'La Prusse cane!'"
Von Rosius was standing on the threshold of the open door as the words hissed past him. Distant wheels were rumbling up the dusty cobblestones of Coram Street from, the cabstand at the corner of Russell Square
"Now, what's the English of that?" asked Mr. Ticking, rashly.
"Possibly," remarked M. Meguet, with a sardonic smile at the tall figure and broad shoulders that blocked the hall-doorway, "Herr von Rosius might be able to inform you!"
Von Rosius signaled to the driver of the approaching cab before he turned. In his rough, loosely-fitting clothes, he bulked large and menacing, though his spectacles were as inscrutable as ever, and under his light mustache his excellent teeth showed quite smilingly. He felt for money in his trousers-pocket as he answered composedly:
"With pleasure. It is a slang expression used by the blackguards of the lowest quarters of Paris. 'Cane' is to 'back out' or to 'climb down,' as the Americans would say. Excuse me! I go to pay my bill."
He nodded slightly as he passed Ticking and Mounteney, and bestowed the same civility on P. C. Breagh. Then his heavy footsteps thundered down the kitchen staircase, from whose hatchway he emerged a few minutes later, accompanied by Mr. Knewbit, who had volunteered to help with the luggage, and this being stacked on the cab, their owner got into it, and Herr von Rosius, rigidly shaking hands with his English fellow-lodgers, and exchanging a distant salute with M. Meguet, got into the fusty vehicle and was driven away to the triumphant strains of the Marseillaise, performed by his racial antagonist on the piano appertaining to the first-floor sitting-room he had a moment previously vacated.
"'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."