The Man of Iron

by Richard Dehan

XXIV

"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 the Landwehr," 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 the Wacht 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, the mitrailleuse. 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, the Evening Gazette, quotes from this morning's edition of Le 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."

Said Mr. Knewbit later on, warming his calves despite the heat of the weather, at the low coke fire in the kitchen register, while Miss Ling bustled about clearing away the supper-cloth:

"That there cable was received in London at six-thirty this evening, and the Evening Gazette Meguet quoted from was the latest issue—about eleven a.m. I shall go down early to the office to-night!"

His Excellency Field-Marshal General Count von Moltke had said that day, having dropped in at the Berlin Headquarters of the Reserve Landwehr for the purpose of perusing certain lists sent from London a few days previously by the Teutonic gentleman who taught English to German immigrants at the Institute in Berners Street, W.:

"It was an excellent idea of Colonel von Rosius to fish for missing Prussian conscripts and deserters from our Landwehr in the character of a teacher of English to foreigners in London. He has netted in a year, two thousand privates and non-commissioned officers, would-be waiters, clerks, porters, valets, and tradesmen—men of all ages, from forty to nineteen. A useful officer—a very intelligent officer. We shall make up much leakage in adopting his plan!"

In the dimly gaslit murkiness of three o'clock in the morning Mr. Knewbit sallied forth to business, carrying his hat in his hand as he went, for the weather was oppressive, yet walking at his usual red-hot pace, and making as much noise with his boots as three ordinary men.

"I'm not in my usual mood for Nature," he said, on reaching the bottom of gray, grimy Endell Street, "and I flatter myself on being tough enough—at a pinch—to do without my customary dose of fresh air. So I'll twist down Long Acre and take the Drury Lane short-cut. Not that there is any special reason for hurry to-night."

Yet hurry seemed abroad to an observation as strictly professional as Mr. Knewbit's. Cabs rattled over the stones of the Strand, dashing Fleet Streetward; panting messengers clutching envelopes dived under the horses' noses; hurried pedestrians carrying little black bags jostled Mr. Knewbit every moment; windows of offices glowed like furnaces, and the champing of steam-engines made a continual beat upon the ear.

"The last report from the late Debate in the Commons is in by now," said Mr. Knewbit, looking at his stout silver timekeeper, under a gas-lamp, "and Gladstone 'as made short work of that last batch of Bills for the Session. Fee Fo Fum was nothing to 'im. Merchant Shipping, Ballot, Turnpikes, Inclosures—and a baker's dozen of Scotch Bills 'ave been offered up in a regular 'ecatomb, and anathemas 'ave been 'urled at the 'eads of the Opposition with the usual inspiritin' effect. The gentleman who is a-trying to put a stop to the employment of young children in Factories and Workshops 'as been put down with the powerful argument that the kids like their work, and would get up at four in the morning to do it for nothink if they wasn't paid for it. What a headin' I could make out of that! The stoker who was drivin' the engine to give the reg'lar driver a rest when the Carlisle Railway Disaster happened has been released without a stain on 'is character, and complimented by the Committee on his 'umanity into the bargain. Mr. Bright is better, and will wake up the Board of Trade presently. That's all we shall have for our bill of fare this issue, includin' the City Correspondence, Sportin' Intelligence, Markets, Stocks, and state of the weather, Railway Shares, Law and Police reports, and Births, Deaths, and Marriages, and not leavin' out the new midsummer drama at Sadler's Wells Theater or the letters written by gentlemen with grievances, signing theirselves 'Pater-familias,' or 'Englishman,' or 'Verax,' who have been sauced by hackney-cab drivers or over-rated by the Income Tax, or overcharged for a cold-mutton, lettuce-salad and cheese luncheon in a country inn. That's all, and no more than bound to be! And yet I feel as if something was going to happen. I'm not due in my Department for another hour. I shall do a bit of a Look Round."

He entered by the swing-doors of the Fleet Street general entrance, meeting a rush of hot air, powerfully flavored with gas and machine-oil, and was instantly borne off his feet by an avalanche of telegraph-agency messengers in oilskin caps and capes. The place was ablaze with gas, shirt-sleeved men and grubby boys ran hither and thither like agitated insects. The walls shook with the panting of engines getting up steam. Perspiring printer-foremen shot in and out of little baking-hot glass offices where sub-editors were cutting down heaps of "flimsy," ramming sheets of copy on files, correcting proofs, and curtailing pars....

Said Mr. Knewbit, fanning himself on a landing after climbing a great many iron-shod staircases, and passing in and out of a great many swing-doors emitting puffs of the hot gas-and-oil-perfumed air already mentioned, and leading to glass-roofed departments, where shirt-sleeved and aproned men labored for dear life, and huge steam-power machines at high pressure trembled and panted like elephants gone mad:

"The Foreign Telegrams are in type and the Leaders are in the chases. The forms are in the machines, and in another minute the word will be given to Print. Halloa! Beg pardon, sir! I'm sure I didn't see you!"

For a little red-hot, perspiring gentleman had leaped up the staircase like a goat of the mountain, had charged at the swing-doors immediately behind Knewbit, collided with him, sworn at him breathlessly—and vanished with a double thud of the swing-doors, and a shout of "Matheson!"

A clang of voices seemed to answer him, there was a brief minute's delay, ages as it seemed to the waiting Mr. Knewbit; then the mad elephants, unchained, began to heave and stamp and snort. And—at the rate of twenty-five thousand an hour, began to roll, from the great cylinders of damp paper, the day's issue of the Early Wire.

They rolled out—as similar cylinders were rolling up and down Fleet Street and all the world over, the Report of the late Debate in the Commons, the list of Bills beheaded by the Prime Minister, the ineffectual efforts of the gentleman who was trying to stop the Factory Owners from employing Infant Labor, the result of the Commission of Inquiry upon the Carlisle Railway Disaster, and all the News of the day. And in a space reserved for the Latest Foreign Intelligence appeared a telegram sent from Ems by the King of Prussia, as condensed at a dinner-council of three convivials, in the Wilhelm Strasse, Berlin.

And all the world read it and commented, as British stocks went up and Continental Stocks played seesaw:

"The King of Prussia refuses to receive the French Ambassador! ... This most certainly means WAR!"