The Interpreter Part 32

"Is't thou, my lad?" is all the greeting that pa.s.ses in that wild moment; but the blackened hands meet with a convulsive clasp, and they are brothers once more, as when, long ago, they hid their st.u.r.dy little faces in their mother's gown. Thank G.o.d for that! In another minute it would have been too late, for Bill is down, shot through the lungs, his white belts limp and crimson with blood; and John, with a tear in his eye, and something betwixt an oath and a prayer upon his lips, is rushing madly on, for the c.o.c.ked hat is still waving forward amongst the smoke. and the Colonel is still cheering them after him into the jaws of death.

But soldiers, even British soldiers, are but men, and the fire grows so deadly that the attacking force cannot but be checked in its headlong charge. The line breaks--wavers--gives way--the awful glacis is strewed with dead and dying--groans and curses, and shrieks for "_water!

water!_" mingle painfully with the wild cheers, and the trampling feet, and the thunder of the guns; but volumes of smoke, curling low and white over the ground, veil half the horrors of that ghastly scene; yet through the smoke can be discerned some three or four figures under the very parapet of the Redan, and the c.o.c.ked hat and square frame of the Colonel are conspicuous amongst the group.

It must have been a strange sight for the few actors that reached it alive. A handful of men, an officer or two, a retiring enemy, a place half taken, and an eager longing for reinforcements to complete the victory.

An aide-de-camp is despatched to the rear; he starts upon his mission to traverse that long three hundred yards, swept by a deadly cross-fire, that blackens and scorches the very turf beneath his feet. Down he goes headlong, shot through the body ere he has "run the gauntlet" for a third of the way. Another and another share the same fate! What is to be done? The case is urgent, yet doubtful; it demands prompt.i.tude, yet requires consideration. Our Colonel is a man who never hesitates or wavers for an instant. He calls up a young officer of the line, one of the few survivors on the spot; even as he addresses him, the rifleman on his right lurches heavily against him, shot through the loins, and a red-coated comrade on his left falls dead at his feet, yet the Colonel is, if possible, cooler and more colloquial than ever.

"What's your name, my young friend?" says he, shaking the ashes from a short black pipe with which he has been refreshing himself at intervals with much apparent zest. The officer replies, somewhat astonished, yet cool and composed as his commander. The Colonel repeats it twice over, to make sure he has got it right, glances once more at the enemy, then looking his new acquaintance steadily in the face, observes--

"Do I seem to be in a _funk_, young man?"

"No," replies the young officer, determined not to be outdone, "not the least bit of one, any more than myself."

The Colonel laughs heartily. "Very well," says he; "now, if I'm shot, I trust to you to do me justice. I'll tell you what I'm going to do. I must communicate with my supports. Every aide-de-camp I send gets knocked over. I'm no use here alone--I can't take the Redan single-handed--so I'm going back myself. It's only three hundred yards, but I can't run quite so fast as I used, so if I'm killed, I shall expect you to bear witness that I didn't go voluntarily into that cross-fire because _I was afraid_."

The young officer promised, and the Colonel started on his perilous errand. On the success of his mission or the tactics of that attack it is not my province to enlarge. Amongst all the conflicting opinions of the public, there is but one as to the daring gallantry and cool prompt.i.tude displayed on that memorable day by the leader of the a.s.sault.

Every man, however, moves in his own little world, even at the taking of Sebastopol. It was not for a nameless stranger, holding no rank in the service, to run into needless danger, and I was merely in the trenches as a looker-on, therefore did I keep sedulously under cover and out of fire. It is only the novice who exposes himself unnecessarily, and I had served too long with Omar Pasha not to appreciate the difference between the cool, calculating daring that willingly accepts a certain risk to attain a certain object, and the vainglorious foolhardiness that runs its head blindly against a wall for the mere display of its own intrinsic absurdity.

That great general himself was never known to expose his life unnecessarily. He would direct the manoeuvres of his regiments, and display the tactics for which he was so superior, at a safe distance from the fire of an enemy, as long as he believed himself sufficiently near to watch every movement, and to antic.i.p.ate every stratagem of the adversary; but if it was advisable to encourage his own troops with his presence, to head a charge, or rally a repulse, who so daring and so reckless as the fortunate Croatian adventurer?

And yet, with all my care and all my self-denial--for indeed, on occasions such as these, curiosity is a powerful motive, and there is a strange instinct in man's wilful heart that urges him into a fray--I had a narrow escape of my own life, and lost my oldest friend and comrade during the progress of the attack.

I was gazing eagerly through my double gla.s.ses--the very same that had often done me good service in such different scenes--to watch the forms of those devoted heroes who were staggering and falling in the smoke, when a stray sh.e.l.l, bursting in the trench behind me, blew my forage-cap from my head, and sent it spinning over the parapet on to the glacis beyond. Involuntarily I stretched my hand to catch at it as it flew away, and Bold, who had been crouching quietly at my heel, seeing the motion, started off in pursuit. Ere I could check him, the old dog was over the embankment, and in less than a minute returned to my side with the cap in his mouth. The men laughed, and cheered him as he laid it at my feet.

Poor Bold! poor Bold! he waved his handsome tail, and reared his great square head as proudly as ever; but there was a wistful expression in his eye as he looked up in my face, and when I patted him the old dog winced and moaned as if in pain. He lay down, though quite gently, at my feet, and let me turn him over and examine him. I thought so--there it was, the small round mark in his glossy coat, and the dark stain down his thick foreleg--my poor old friend and comrade, must I lose you too?

Is everything to be taken from me by degrees? My eyes were blinded with tears--the rough soldiers felt for me, and spared my favourite some water from their canteens; but he growled when any one offered to touch him but myself, and he died licking my hand.

Even in the turmoil and confusion of that wild scene I could mourn for Bold. He was the one link with my peaceful boyhood, the one creature that she and I had both loved and fondled, and now _she_ was lost to me for ever, and Bold lay dead at my feet. Besides, I was fond of him for his own sake--so faithful, so true, so attached, so brave and devoted--in truth, I was very, _very_ sorry for poor Bold.

CHAPTER XL

THE WAR-MINISTER AT HOME

Except at the crisis of great convulsions, when the man with the bayonet is the only individual that clearly knows what he has got to do and how to do it, the soldier is but the puppet upon the stage, while the diplomatist pulls the strings from behind the scenes. Before Sebastopol the armies of England, France, and Sardinia keep watch and ward, ever ready for action; at Vienna, the spruce _attache_ deciphers and makes his _precis_ of those despatches which decide the soldier's fate. Is it to be peace or war? Has Russia entered into a league with the Austrian Government, or is the Kaiser, in his youthful enthusiasm, eager for an appeal to arms, and forgetful of his defenceless capital, not thirty leagues from the Polish frontier, and innocent of a single fortified place between its walls and the enemy, prepared to join heart and hand with France and England against the common foe? These are questions everybody asks, but n.o.body seems able to answer. On the Bourse they cause a deal of gambling, and a considerable fluctuation in the value of the florin as computed with reference to English gold. Minor capitalists rise and fall, and Rothschild keeps on adding heap to heap. Money makes money, in Austria as in England; nor are those moustached and spectacled merchants smoking cigars on the Bourse one whit less eager or less rapacious than our own smooth speculators on the Stock Exchange. The crowd is a little more motley, perhaps, and a little more demonstrative, but the object is the same.

"And what news have you here this morning, my dear sir?" observes a quiet-looking, well-dressed bystander who has just strolled in, to a plethoric individual, with a double chin, a double eye-gla.s.s, and a red umbrella, who is making voluminous entries in a huge pocket-book. The plethoric man bows to the ground, and becomes exceedingly purple in the face.

"None, honourable sir, none," he replies, with a circular sweep of his hat that touches his toes; "the market is flat, honourable sir, flat, and money, if possible, scarcer than usual."

Whereat the stout man laughs, but breaks off abruptly, as if much alarmed at the liberty he has taken. The well-dressed gentleman turns to some one else with the same inquiry, and, receiving a less cautious answer, glances at his fat friend, who pales visibly under his eye.

They are all afraid of him here, for he is no other than our old acquaintance, Monsieur Stein, clean, quiet, and undemonstrative as when we saw him last in the drawing-room at Edeldorf. Let us follow him as he walks out and glides gently along the street in his dark, civil attire, relieved only by a bit of ribbon at the b.u.t.ton-hole.

All great men have their weaknesses. Hercules, resting from his labours, spun yarns with Omphale; Antony combined fishing and flirtation; Person loved pale ale, and refreshed himself copiously therewith; and shall not Monsieur Stein, whose Protean genius can a.s.sume the characters of all these heroes, display his taste for the fine arts in so picturesque a capital as his own native Vienna? He stops accordingly at a huge stone basin ornamenting one of its squares, and, producing his note-book, proceeds to sketch with masterly touches the magnificent back and limbs of that bronze Triton preparing to launch his harpoon into the depths below. Sly Monsieur Stein! is it thus you spread your nets for the captivation of unwary damsels, and are you always rewarded by so ready a prey as that well-dressed _soubrette_ who is peeping on tiptoe over your shoulder, and expressing her artless admiration of your talent in the superlative exclamations of her Teutonic idiom?

"Pardon me, honourable sir, that I so bold am, as so to overlook your wondrously-beautiful design, permit me to see it a little nearer. I thank you, love-worthy sir."

Monsieur Stein is too thoroughly Austrian not to be the pink of politeness. He doffs his hat, and hands her the note-book with a bow.

As she returns it to him an open letter peeps between the leaves, and they part and march off on their several ways with many expressions of grat.i.tude and politeness, such as two utter strangers make use of at the termination of a chance acquaintanceship; yet is the _soubrette_ strangely like Jeannette, Princess Vocqsal's _femme de chambre_; and the letter which Monsieur Stein reads so attentively as he paces along the sunny side of the street, is certainly addressed to that lady in characters bearing a strong resemblance to the handwriting of Victor, Count de Rohan.

Monsieur Stein pockets the epistle--it might be a receipt for _sour-krout_ for all the effect its perusal has on his impa.s.sible features--and proceeds, still at his equable, leisurely pace, to the residence of the War-Minister.

While he mounts the steps to the second floor, on which are situated the apartments of that functionary, and combs out his smooth moustaches, waiting the convenience of the porter who answers the bell, let us take a peep inside.

The War-Minister is at his wit's end. His morning has been a sadly troubled one, for he has been auditing accounts, to which pursuit he cherishes a strong disinclination, and he has received a letter from the Minister of the Interior, conveying contradictory orders from the Emperor, of which he cannot make head or tail. Besides this, he has private annoyances of his own. His intendant has failed to send him the usual supplies from his estates in Galicia; he is in debt to his tailor and his coach-maker, but he must have new liveries and an English carriage against the next Court ball; his favourite charger is lame, and he does not care to trust himself on any of his other horses; and, above all, he has sustained an hour's lecture this very morning, when drinking coffee in his dressing-gown, from Madame la Baronne, his austere and excellent spouse, commenting in severe terms on his backslidings and general conduct, the shortcomings of which, as that virtuous dame affirms, have not failed to elicit the censure of the young Emperor himself. So the War-Minister has drunk three large tumblers of _schwartz-bier_, and smoked as many cigars stuck up on end in the bowl of a meerschaum pipe, the combined effects of which have failed to simplify the accounts, or to reconcile the contradictory instructions of the Court.

He is a large, fine-looking man, considerably above six feet in height.

His grey-blue uniform is b.u.t.toned tightly over a capacious chest, covered with orders, clasps, and medals; his blue eyes and florid complexion denote health and good-humour, not out of keeping with the snowy moustaches and hair of some three-score winters. He looks completely puzzled, and is bestowing an uneasy sort of attention, for which he feels he must ere long be taken to task, upon a very charming and well-dressed visitor of the other s.e.x, no less a person, indeed, than that "_odious intrigante_," as Madame la Baronne calls her, the Princess Vocqsal.

She is as much at home here in the War-Minister's apartments as in her own drawing-room. She never loses her _aplomb_, or her presence of mind. If his wife were to walk in this minute she would greet her with amiable cordiality; and, to do Madame la Baronne justice, though she abuses the Princess in all societies, her greeting would be returned with the warmth and kindness universally displayed to each other by women who hate to the death. Till she has got her antagonist _down_, the female fencer never takes the b.u.t.ton off her foil.

"You are always so amiable and good-humoured, my dear Baron," says the Princess, throwing back her veil with a turn of her snowy wrist, not lost upon the old soldier, "that you will, I am sure, not keep us in suspense. The Prince wishes his nephew to serve the Emperor; he is but a boy yet. Will he be tall enough for the cavalry? A fine man looks so well on horseback!"

The Baron was justly proud of his person. This little compliment and the glance that accompanied it were not thrown away. He looked pleased, then remembered his wife, and looked sheepish, then smoothed his moustache, and inquired the age of the candidate.

"Seventeen next birthday," replied the Princess. "If it were not for this horrid war we would send him to travel a little. Do you think the war will last, Monsieur le Baronne?" added she, navely.

"You must ask the Foreign Minister about that," replied he, completely thrown off his guard by her innocence. "We are only soldiers here, we do not pull the strings, Madame. We do what we are told, and serve the Emperor and the ladies," he added, with a low bow and a leer.

"Then will you put him into the Cuira.s.siers immediately, Monsieur?" said the Princess, with her sweetest smile; "we wish no time to be lost--now _do_, to please _me_."

The Baron was rather in a dilemma; like all men in office, he hated to bind himself by a promise, but how to refuse that charming woman anything?--at last he stammered out--"Wait a little, Madame, wait, and I will do what I can for you; it is impossible just now, for we are going to reduce the army by sixty thousand men."

While he spoke, Monsieur Stein was announced, and the Princess rose to take her leave; she had got all she wanted now, and did not care to face a thousand Baronesses. As she went downstairs, she pa.s.sed Monsieur Stein without the slightest mark of recognition, and he, too, looked admiringly after her, as if he had never seen her before. The Baron, by this time pining for more _schwartz-bier_, and another cigar, devoutly hoped his new visitor, with whose person and profession he was quite familiar, would not stay long; and the Princess, as she tripped past the _Huissier_ at the entrance, muttered, "Sixty thousand men--then it _will_ be peace: I thought so all along. My poor Baron! what a soft old creature you are! Well, I have tried everything now, and this speculating is the strongest excitement of all, even better than making Victor jealous!" but she sighed as she said it, and ordered her coachman to drive on at once to her stock-broker.

The presence of Monsieur Stein did not serve to re-establish either the clear-headedness or the good-humour of the War-Minister. The ostensible errand on which he came was merely to obtain some trifling military information concerning the garrison at Pesth, without which the co-operation of the police would not have been so effectual, in annoying still further the already exasperated Hungarians; but in the course of conversation, Monsieur Stein subjected the Baron to a process familiarly called "sucking the brains," with such skill that, ere the door was closed on his unwelcome visitor, the soldier felt he had placed himself--as indeed was intended--completely in the power of the police-agent. All his sins of omission and commission, his neglect of certain contracts, and his issuing of certain orders; his unpardonable lenity at his last tour of inspection, his unlucky expression of opinions at direct variance with those of his young Imperial master:--all these failures and offences he felt were now registered in letters never to be effaced,--on the records of Monsieur Stein's secret report; and what was more provoking still, was to think that he had, somehow or another, been insensibly led on to plead guilty to half-a-dozen derelictions, which he felt he might as consistently have denied.

As he sat bolt upright in his huge leathern chair, and turned once more to "sublime tobacco" for consolation and refreshment, his thoughts floated back to the merry days when he was young and slim, and had no cares beyond his squadron of Uhlans, no thought for the morrow but the parade and the ball. "Ah!" sighed the Baron to himself as he knocked the ash off his cigar with a ringed fore-finger, "I would I were a youngling again; the troop-accounts were easily kept, the society of my comrades was pleasanter than the Court. One never meets with such beer now as we had at Debreczin; and oh! those Hungarian ladies, how delightful it was to waltz before one grew fat, and flirt before one grew sage. I might have visited the charming Princess then, and no one would have found fault with me; no one would have objected--Heigh-ho!

there was no Madame la Baronne in those days--_now_ it is so different.

_Sapperment_! Here she comes!"

Though the Baron was upwards of six feet, and broad in proportion--though he had distinguished himself more than once before the enemy, and was covered with orders of merit and decorations for bravery--nay, though he was the actual head of the six hundred thousand heroes who const.i.tuted the Austrian army, he quailed before that little shrivelled old woman, with her mouth full of black teeth, and her hair dressed _a l'Imperatrice_.

We profane not the mysteries of Hymen--"Caudle" is a name of no exclusive nationality. We leave the Baron, not without a shudder, to the salutary discipline of his excellent monitress.

CHAPTER XLI

WHEELS WITHIN WHEELS

We must follow Monsieur Stein, for that worthy has got something to do; nay, he generally has his hands full, and cannot, indeed, be accused of eating the bread of idleness. It is a strange system of government, that of the Austrian empire; and is, we believe, found to answer as badly as might be expected from its organisation. The State takes so paternal an interest in the sayings and doings of its children, as to judge it expedient to support a whole staff of officials, whose sole duty it is to keep the Government informed respecting the habits, actions, everyday life, and secret thoughts and opinions of the general public. Nor do these myrmidons, whose number exceeds belief, and who add seriously to the national expenditure, fail to earn their pay with praiseworthy diligence. In all societies, in all places of pleasure or business, where half-a-dozen people may chance to congregate, _there_ will be an agent of police, always in plain clothes, and generally the least conspicuous person in the throng. The members of this corps are, as may be supposed, chosen for their general intelligence and apt.i.tude, are usually well-informed, agreeable men, likely to lead strangers into conversation, and excellent linguists. As an instance of their ubiquity, I may mention an incident that occurred within my own knowledge to an officer in the British service, when at Vienna, during the war. That officer was dining in the _salon_ of an hotel, and there were present, besides his own party, consisting of Englishmen, and one Hungarian much disaffected to the Government, only two other strangers, sitting quite at the farther extremity of the room, and apparently out of ear-shot. The conversation at my friend's table was, moreover, carried on in English, and turned upon the arrest of a certain Colonel Turr by the Austrian authorities at Bucharest, a few days previously.