Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman

by Stanley J Weyman

  And how heartily at that moment I wished that my feet were safely on those stones. There were four sentries, two in the uniform of Zerbst, two in a French cavalry uniform, green, with red revers. They faced one another and it was necessary to pass between them.

  As we approached, “Herren Hauser and Chemnitz,” my companion announced, and coolly paused to exchange a word about the game with one of the German sentries. Perforce, I, also, stood, cursing his easiness, and fuming at the delay; while the two moustachioed Frenchmen standing on the other side of the gate, looked us over, and grinned from ear to ear.

  And truly in all their campaigns it was unlikely that they had ever seen two stranger figures. A moment and Hauser prepared to move on — I, too, with a sigh of thankfulness. We had, indeed, as good as passed the barrier, our feet were actually on the street, when the blow fell.

  “Halte-lá,” cried the nearer Frenchman, and let his gun-butt fall noisily to the ground. “Il faut vous dimasquer, messieurs!”

  Heavens! I had not a word to say, nor an idea what to do. The worst had befallen us and I stood helpless, tongue-tied, manacled in that accursed dress of mine. And it may be that it was better so, for my companion rose to the occasion with admirable aplomb.

  “Ach!” he said. “But not for us! We are townsfolk, playing for His Highness’s pleasure and free of the gate. Let us pass, my friend, and no jokes.”

  But the second Frenchman, he who had not challenged us, barred the way by levelling his gun-barrel before us. “Dimasquez vous, messieurs!” he commanded. “It is an order.”

  “But not for us,” Hauser persisted stubbornly. “Hartel here knows us. We are townsfolk. Natives of Zerbst, see you.”

  The German confirmed him. “I know the Herren,” he said. “It is right.”

  But the Frenchman did not give way. Instead “ Plus de mots!” he grumbled harshly. “I say it is an order, and we — we obey orders or it is the wooden horse for us. Peste ! Are we here to be laughed at?” And he muttered something which sounded like “German pigs!”

  “Oh, well, very good,” Hauser replied, but his voice was no longer steady. “I’ll unmask. But my friend here, he cannot unless he undresses in the street, and it is” — fumbling with the strings of his helmet—” it is not what do you call it? — convenable. A respectable tradesman in his own town! I tell you there will be talk of this, Herren.”

  “Then there will be talk!” the Frenchman growled. “I obey orders and what do I care. Have we fought our way across Europe to be bearded by a—”

  “Herr Chemnitz! Herr Chemnitz!” The hail came even as I hesitated, stricken dumb by the ignominy as well as the danger of my position — came from the gardens behind us, and we turned — thankfully. A flying figure, light as gossamer, with floating curls and billowing skirts, was racing towards us. It was Babetta, and at her heels a leaping dog and a panting attendant, who was loudly but vainly protesting. “Herr Chemnitz! Herr Chemnitz!” the child repeated, and beckoned to us to await her.

  When she came up she was out of breath, and for a moment she could not speak. But her presence changed the atmosphere. The German sentries sprang to attention, slapping their butts and standing rigid. “Her Highness, the Princess!” ejaculated Hauser — in a tone of unmistakable relief. And at the word the French sentries came also to the salute.

  “Herr Chemnitz,” Babetta announced, as soon as she had recovered her breath — and with an imperious little hand she waved off her scandalized attendant, “your Anna is to come to the Schloss to play with me at one o’clock. Do you hear? Her Highness permits!”

  “I, in the highest degree, honoured am,” I murmured. And I bowed as low as my disguise permitted.

  “Bid her bring her hoop,” the young lady commanded. “And see you go quickly and send her. She will need to dress, it goes without saying.”

  “Immediately, if Her Highness so honours her,” I replied, and I bowed again. “I hasten to her.”

  She waved imperiously to us to go, and we turned. The sentries, still standing at attention, no longer barred the way. We moved off together, Hauser and I, keeping the middle of the road, and even swaggering a little.

  “Colossal!” Hauser muttered. “She is an Angel Child.”

  “It was a near thing,” said I. But my coolness was the merest pretence. As a fact, all my desire at the moment was to wipe my brow.

  “Gott im Himmel! She has the true German wit!” he swore, enraptured.

  “In excelsis!” I agreed thankfully.

  “Ach! You say well, in the Highest indeed. But there, there, they are not as others,” reverently. “How should they be, being born? And now, listen, Freiherr. We are clear of that, thank God, and in a moment I leave you. But a space before you reach the bridge and on the right hand is an alley little frequented. You will do wisely to step in there and take off that dress. Then on to — but you have your directions?”

  “To Puckler’s. But I have no hat.”

  “Better hatless than headless,” he rejoined dryly. “We part here.” And to my surprise, without so much as a backward glance or a word of farewell, the man turned his hobby’s head from me and stalked into a shop. He had behaved with splendid courage, and I would gladly have thanked him as he deserved. But he gave me no chance.

  I suppose that he was as glad to be rid of me as I should be glad when the time came to be rid of my hated disguise, and perhaps for all his phlegm he was not unshaken. At any rate that was how we parted, and I saw him no more. But I drink to his memory. Hoch! For a German, a man of very nimble brain.

  I walked on down the quiet sleepy street, and though here and there a stray French soldier stood to gape at the strange figure I presented, no one accosted me. Presently I saw the bridge before me, and choosing an alley at random, I left the street. I suppose it was the right passage, for it was untenanted, and hidden from observation by a sharp turn I tore off the abominable covering under which I had suffered so much both in body and mind.

  Freed from its folds, I flung it down in a comer, and oh, the relief of that moment! But I dared not linger, and with the welcome air cooling my heated brow I returned to the street and, hatless indeed, but otherwise presentable, I strode on to the inn by the bridge. I saw a man standing in the entrance to the yard. He was whistling and I made up to him.

  He did not wait for me. Making an almost imperceptible sign he turned back into the yard, and I followed. Within the gates a chaise and four stood ready for the road, the postboys in the saddle. The man opened the door of the carriage and without a word beckoned to me to enter.

  I did so, he closed the door, clapped his hands, and we moved out of the yard. In a trice we were crossing the long wooden bridge, the clear waters of the river shining beneath us, here broken by a brown sail, there stemmed by a floating mill. The horses’ feet ceased to drum upon the resounding planks. We took the road.

  I looked back many times but I saw no sign of pursuit. The chaise was shabby but the horses were strong and fresh, and the postboys had some countersign, or perhaps word of our coming had been sent before us, for at the Prussian frontier-post with its black and white pillars we passed without even a check.

  Again and again I looked back, but the road remained empty behind us. At Posdorf we changed horses, but I dared not, hungry and faint as I was, stay to eat, and it was not until we reached Belitz, still some thirty miles from Berlin, at five in the afternoon, that I broke my fast. Even so an hour saw me on the road again.

  And oh, the relief it was to awake from that bad dream and to be one’s self again! To stand next morning, once more Francis Cartwright of the British F.O., at the windows of the very same suite in the Hotel de Russie by the Schlossbrucke, that I had occupied five years before at a time when the Embassy in the Linden was preparing!

  To escape from the nightmare of the last three days and the shifts and disguises and inglorious expedients “to which I had been driven and at which I now shuddered, and to stand on my own feet ready to face whatever
of danger or difficulty still awaited me! For at last I was in Berlin, and beyond Berlin my thoughts did not yet pass — sufficient for the day, I told myself.

  Indeed, as I turned from the windows to the table spread English fashion in my honour, and prepared to fall to with an appetite, even the dark prospect that faced me at home lost half its terrors. Viewed through the sunshine of this fine, this exhilarating autumn morning, all things seemed possible. I reminded myself that I must be man enough to bear what my own folly had brought upon me and — faire bonne mine a mauvais jeu!

  Not that I was not grateful. Not that when I thought of my gracious and generous countrywoman and of dear little Babetta’s wit and courage I did not do so with a full heart, and long for the time when I might make some acknowledgment. Acknowledgment? I could make none equal to the occasion, indeed, but if there were still smugglers at Hamburg or at Varel, if Heligoland still stood, then English toys and band-boxes of Bond Street millinery should not be lacking!

  Still, my gorge rose at the false position in which I had placed myself and the risk of detection I had run; and, never again, never again, I determined, would I be so weak. One Drake was enough. I might share, I probably should share his disgrace. But I would run no second chance of becoming, like him, a laughing stock.

  At the Berlin barrier I had taken a high tone, announcing that my business was with the Danish Ministry on behalf of His Highness the Grand Duke of Zerbst. I should be found if needed at the Hotel de Russie. That, however, was the last subterfuge, if it was one, to which I had stooped.

  At the hotel I had presented myself in my own name and demanded my old suite. The night attendant, a former acquaintance, had received me respectfully, though, I saw, with profound astonishment. He had gone to rouse mine host, and he, too, though he had been in some degree prepared, had stared at me as at one risen from the dead.

  “Mein Gott!” he had exclaimed, the candle shaking in his hand as he held it up to view me the better. “It is as Johann said.”

  “To be sure, Herr Jager!” I had replied. But I had been a little dashed by a surprise that seemed to exceed the circumstances. “I would like to have my old rooms if they are unoccupied.”

  He had shrugged his shoulders. “There are few occupied in these days. We are a city of the dead. The rooms are at His Excellency’s service and Johann shall light a fire at once. But—”

  But I had no thought now save of bed, and I had cut him short, bidding him light me to the rooms; I had been many hours on the road, I told him. And still as he obeyed me, and stood to superintend the kindling of the fire, I had caught him stealing furtive glances at me, and I had known that a question trembled on his lips.

  But I had jumped to the conclusion that the presence in Berlin of that rara avis, an Englishman, sufficiently accounted for his stupefaction; and dog-tired as I was by all that I had gone through since morning, I had dismissed him as cursorily as was consistent with good manners.

  I was soon to learn, from another mouth, that the good fellow had a more substantial and a much stranger reason for his surprise than any of which I had knowledge.

  CHAPTER X

  LOST!

  I KNEW it to be of prime importance that I should be in touch with the Danish Minister before the Prussian police or their French masters moved against me, and half an hour after nine saw me leaving the Russie. I had but a short distance to walk, but I saw enough in that brief space to convince me that this was not the Berlin I had known.

  The city’s one good point, its State buildings, remained; but they seemed in their new and rather garish magnificence to be at greater odds than ever with the meanness of the shabby streets and low roofs that clustered beneath them. Traffic was sparse, trade appeared to be stagnant, depression reigned on all faces, the very carriages seemed to be, were that possible, more ramshackle, and the harness a little dingier than of old.

  On a city never beautiful but once aspiring, the victor had set his heel with a vengeance; and such prosperity as his exactions had not crushed, the absence of the Court, still in exile at Konisgberg, had sapped.

  Only in one place did I see, as I passed along, shunning rather than seeking notice, anything like animation. About one house in the Unter den Linden, and but a block or two from the Danish Mission, there was coming and going enough. A sentry in a blue coat and red trousers paced to and fro before this house, and through its doors an incessant stream of callers — soldiers, civilians, messengers, officers — was continually in passage.

  Over the door, flaunting its gilded plumes in the sunshine, an imperial eagle stretched its beak and spread its wings — for this was the French embassy, and within its walls I could fancy Daru and St. Marsan lolling in their chairs, while German princes waited in the anteroom until it should be the pleasure of French generals to receive them.

  Truly a wonderful sight to one who had known the old Berlin, its braggart air, its swaggering army, its traditions of victory, its memory, all-pervading of the Great Frederick! A sight to move and to astonish! It brought home to me as nothing else had, Jena and Auerstadt, those crushing defeats — ay, and the slender basis on which all military power rests.

  But it may be believed that I did not stand before that house and gaze. I passed it with averted face, hurried on to the Danish Mission, and sent in my name. Only then did I breathe freely or feel myself at liberty to indulge my curiosity. From the safe haven of the doorway I had the French house still in sight and could discern, through the thinning foliage of the limes, the gleam of the golden wings and the stir of the crowd that moved beneath them.

  And as I gazed, myself withdrawn from sight, I witnessed the commotion caused by an arrival. I saw the crowd part suddenly asunder, and a carriage drawn by four smoking horses whirl up to the door. From the carriage, amid much parade and excitement, there alighted four men, wearing cloaks over their uniforms. They entered the house, and in the first to pass within, flanked on either hand by bared heads, by salutes, by ceremony, I recognized Davout!

  I had reached a place of safety only just in time!

  I turned back into the hall, and immediately became aware — my sight-seeing had taken up no more than a minute — of a stentorian voice heaping one exclamation of surprise on another. “Bring him in! Bring him in!”

  I heard, and the next moment the messenger to whom I had given my name came hurrying out to me. “His Excellency will see you at once, sir,” he said, and went before me into the room.

  Dear old Bronberg! As huge, as hearty, as burly as ever, yet hiding under his booming and bellowing personality almost as much finesse as benevolence. “Wunder-bar! Colossal!” he cried. “It is!” And laying his hands on my shoulders he kissed me soundly on both cheeks. “ Cartwright, by all the powers returned to life!”

  “To be sure!” I said, moved by the cordiality of his reception, yet already feeling the awkwardness of the explanation upon which I must enter. “ Here I am, Baron, at last!”

  “And Ellis? Perceval Ellis?” He looked expectantly towards the door which the messenger still held ajar. “Is your chief not—”

  “Ellis?” I exclaimed.

  “Yes. He is with you, I suppose?”

  I stared. What did the man mean?— “Perceval Ellis?” I repeated. “With me?”

  “Why not? If one, why not the other? Why,” gazing at me with all his eyes, “what’s the matter, man? Why do you look like that?”

  “But Perceval Ellis?” I stammered. “Ellis is in England, Baron — this ten weeks.”

  “The devil he is!” he exploded.

  “But of course.”

  “Then all I can say,” the Baron roared, and I saw the blood rush to his face and his eyes snap, “your people have given me a devilish lot of trouble for nothing! In England these ten weeks? Do you mean it? Donner und Blitzen, man! If that is so, what does your pretty Government mean by — mean by—”

  “But isn’t it so?” I struck in, staring feebly at him. “Did he not come through Berlin in Augu
st — the first week of August, and go on to England?”

  “To England! Without you?”

  “Yes.”

  “No, he didn’t!” he bellowed in his bull voice. “ No, he didn’t, or there are more liars in your country than I believe in! No! No, no, no! He didn’t! And if he is not with you now, the devil knows where he is! Gott im Himmel, haven’t I interviewed half the German nation and written a pile of letters this high — this high about him and about you? Haven’t you both been given up for dead — haven’t you both been lost this two months, and half the embassies and all the police and der Teufel knows who besides, been driven out of their senses to find you? And Talleyrand — that subtle devil! — writing, and Duroc! And has not the whole country been ransacked to find him — and you? And you walk coolly in with a smile on your face and want to make me believe — why, man it would try the patience of a saint! What does it all mean? What’s at the bottom of it? Where is he? Where is he, man?”

  “Before God, I don’t know,” I said, my head whirling. “ I did not know that he was lost. I supposed him to be in England — these many weeks.”

  “Then why are you here? Why are you here, man? If he is in England! Were you not together?”

  “I can explain that,” I said, wincing. “We parted at Wittenberg, Baron.”

  “When?”

  “The last day of July.”

  “And he went on — without you?”

  “Yes.” I wiped my brow.

  “And you?

  “It is a long story.”

  “Well, in heaven’s name, man, let us have it. Let us have it! It is time I am sure. Let us get some glimmer of light in this worse than Baltic fog. Gott im Himmel, when I saw you come in at the door I supposed he was with you, and there was an end of it! And glad I was, my friend, I can tell you, for the bother I’ve had with this. But there, wait! wait!”

  He touched a bell and to the messenger who entered, “ I am not to be interrupted, do you hear?” he said. “Not for an hour, if it is Count Hardenberg himself! I see no one. And hark you, don’t let anyone know that this gentleman is here. Let us see where we are,” he continued as the door closed, “before we commit ourselves. This is the strangest thing I have known for many a day.”