The Men Who Wrought

by Ridgwell Cullum

Von Salzinger was in a bad mood. He was feeling the effects of close personal contact with the authority which he had been bred to acknowledge, to obey. In the abstract he admitted the right of it. In practice he had little enough complaint. But in personal contact with the administrators of it the tyranny became maddening. For once in his life he realized how far short of a free-acting, free-thinking being he really was, in spite of the considerable rank of Captain-General to which he had risen.

He possessed all the dominating personality of his race, all the hectoring brutality of his fellow-Prussians. He had no difficulty in submitting to a system which he found pleasure in enforcing upon those who acknowledged his authority, but to endure the personal meting out of such discipline by Von Berger was maddeningly irritating. He felt that his association with the all-powerful intimate of the Emperor was nearing the breaking-point, and when that point was reached he knew that whatever breaking took place he was bound to be the chief sufferer.

His irritation lasted all day. He had received a number of definite instructions, as though he were some insignificant underling. Von Berger had dictated his requirements. And Von Salzinger was galled, galled and furious. Nor was it until Von Berger had taken his departure that he felt he could again breathe freely.

Then had come a letter by hand. It was a letter for Vita, who remained in his charge. But though he read the letter, carefully steaming it open and re-sealing it so that detection was well-nigh impossible, and its contents proved satisfactory, still his temper underwent little betterment.

The day wore on filled with the many duties which Von Berger had demanded of him, and which he almost automatically fulfilled. He saw many callers. He held many consultations. He delivered many instructions in that harsh autocratic manner which he resented in Von Berger. But it was not until after he had dined amply in the evening, and his gastronomic senses had been indulged with an amplitude of good wine and savory fare, that he began to forget the glacial frigidity of the man who had power to reduce his own dominating personality to the level of an anæmic lackey.

After dinner he moved out onto the terrace which fronted the dining-room. It was a splendid night with a bright full moon. It was chilly but refreshing, and Von Salzinger, whatever else his habits might be, loved the fresh air. He paced the broad walk under the moon, and every now and then his eyes were turned upon a distant portion of the upper part of the mansion, where shone the lights of Vita's apartments. At last he seemed to have decided some momentous matter, and returned within the house and flung aside the heavy overcoat he was enveloped in.

The heaviness of his military figure was carefully toned under the perfect lines of his evening clothes. But the rigidity of his square shoulders and back would not be denied. Then, too, the shape of his head. He was Prussian, so Prussian, and every inch a soldier of the Hohenzollern dynasty.

He made his way down the long corridors which led towards a distant wing of the house, and passed on up-stairs.

Vita's days had become poignant with bitterness and self-reviling. But the despair in her grey eyes had lessened, and all the youthful beauty had returned to her cheeks. Her abject dread had given place to a condition of dreary hope which left her haunted only by the hideous memory of the price she had yet to pay.

Her mood was one of self-abasement and self-loathing. She told herself that she was purchasing life, or the chance of it, with all that was best in her. Sacrifice? She had told herself that she was sacrificing her love for her father's life. It was so. She knew she would sacrifice anything to safeguard that. But as time passed, and her dejected mood gained ascendancy, she began to question her purpose with a deplorable cynicism that, in reality, was no part of her nature.