Chapter THIRTY: Recruits

By the fireplace of the great hall of the Brunvarad, Karl was standing with his two Generals, Meyer and Von Bilderbaum. It was six o'clock, and with the falling of night a thin haze of clouds had swept up from Austria, and a mist of fine snow was descending with silent persistence on hill and roof, rink and run, on the inviolate forts of Meyer's planning, and on the battered remains of the Marienkastel. Within the palace abundant electric light and blazing logs lent cheerfulness to the great stone walls of the chamber, and the huge dark beams that spanned them. On the men's coats were rapidly diminishing tokens of the storm without.

"I have to thank you for your congratulations," Karl was saying as he shook the snow from his cap into the spluttering flame, "and to thank you more especially for the efforts which have rendered those congratulations applicable."

Von Bilderbaum tugged nervously at his huge white moustache.

"I had so little to do, sire," he protested. "If I had headed a ski charge----"

"You would probably not be here to receive my thanks," interrupted Karl with a kindly laugh and a hand laid roughly on the old General's shoulder. "I'm sure Frau von Bilderbaum will agree with me, that Meyer's tactical passivity was superb. Meyer, again I thank you. You have served me well."

"My motives for doing so were so obvious," drawled the Commander-in-Chief. "Had Bernhardt won I should probably have been shot; certainly exposed to danger and hardships. As it is, I shall sleep well to-night in a comfortable room, with the pleasing conviction that your Majesty's gratitude will ultimately take a tangible form."

Karl laughed heartily. His eye was very bright, and the burden of many years seemed taken off his wide shoulders.

"Upon my word," he said, "I sometimes pity my dear cousins of Germany and England, who rule over united and contented kingdoms. I have my anxieties, God knows, but I also have my compensations. Fair weather is a pleasant thing, but it is the storm that distinguishes the friend from the parasite."

The great bell of the Brunvarad clanged, and a minute later Bomcke announced Robert Saunders and his wife.

"We come to offer your Majesty our congratulations," said Saunders.

Karl took the Englishman's hand, and held it in a firm grasp.

"You are a lucky man," he said with a glance at Mrs. Saunders' radiant cheeks. "You possess the silver of friendship and the gold of love. I have only friendship, and therefore I prize the lesser metal at great value. If this day is the turning-point of my fortunes, and I become King again of a whole country, I shall not esteem my happiness complete unless my friend, Robert Saunders, is my right-hand man."

"Your Majesty's fortunes are assured," said Saunders. "The enemy is half-way back to Wallen by now."

"And is being pursued?" asked Karl.

"Von Hügelweiler begged leave to harry them," said Meyer, "and he is harrying them to such purpose that they have shed their guns one by one in their flight. Had it not been for the snow-storm he might have captured a hundred or two prisoners."

"I think," said Karl, "we will not push our victory further. We have won the day, and there has been sufficiency of bloodshed. To-night I am a happy man, and I wish no one ill. Meyer, give orders for Von Hügelweiler to be recalled. He has done his work well, and he shall have his reward."

Meyer withdrew with a shrug to the room where the telephone was installed.

"It is good to see your Majesty happy," said Mrs. Saunders in the silence that followed Meyer's departure. "There has sat a cloud on your brow ever since we have been in Grimland. And to-night for the first time the cloud is gone, and there is sunshine--the old sunshine of 1904--in your face."

"Aye, I am happy," assented Karl with a smile, "happy in my friends."

"Here comes another happy person," said Saunders with an upward glance to the staircase, down which the spacious person of Frau von Bilderbaum was slowly descending.

"Truly spoken," said Karl, for as the ex-maid-of-honour caught sight of her lord and master she quickened her footsteps to a bovine canter, and hurled herself enthusiastically on to the General's breast.

"My brave, brave Heinrich!" she gasped.

"Not at all, at all!" murmured the warrior, disengaging himself gently from the overpowering embrace. "I have done literally nothing. Now, if there had been a ski-charge----"

At this moment Meyer returned from the telephone.

"I have sent to recall Hügelweiler," he said; "but I must say I think the policy of mercy is being over-done. My forbears of Palestine were not half so kind when they got the Amalekites on the run."

"We are not dealing with Amalekites," said Karl, "but with Grimlanders, who happen to be our fellow-countrymen. But come, ladies and gentlemen, let us eat, drink, and be merry, for the storm is over and the sun is already gleaming through the thin edges of the cloud-wrack."

"I am not a weather prophet," said Meyer, "nor did Providence assign to me a sanguine temperament. We have hit the enemy hard, and we have drawn most of his teeth, but until Bernhardt's dead body is discovered stiffening in the snow I have no intention of celebrating a decisive victory."

"Don't do so, then, dear raven," laughed Karl, "but at least take food for your strength's sake. At any rate, I hear that Bernhardt was wounded in the attack on Sanatorium Hill."

"A wounded tiger is not a particularly innocuous beast," returned the Commander-in-Chief, "and there is a certain friend of Herr Saunders who has the unpleasant gift of rising superior to difficulties, and whom I fear is not even wounded."

The meal at the Brunvarad was neither very long nor very festive. Meyer's taciturn refusal to admit premature victory had a distinctly damping effect on the spirits of the company. Noises of revelry and jubilation were audible from the world without, _feux de joie_, rockets, songs of carousal and bursts of cheering broke in on the desultory conversation that flowed fitfully round the royal dining-table. But these sounds of jubilation only brought a deeper frown to the features of Von Bilderbaum, an added sneer to the lips of the Commander-in-Chief; even the King began to lose the exaltation that had so illumined his countenance.

"The Weissheimer is in his element to-night," said Meyer. "He believes himself a hero, and will get most heroically drunk. If Bernhardt's retreat is only a ruse,--as I suspect,--he will return in the small hours and capture a town guarded by fuddled swine."

"Is there no discipline in my army?" asked Karl irritably.

"Very little just at present," was Meyer's cool reply. "Our friends have stood by us at a pinch; it is too much to expect them to keep sober when the danger is apparently over."

Karl rose angrily to his feet.

"And are we to assume," he demanded, "that the garrisons of our redoubts are drunk at their posts?"

"Certainly not," said Meyer; "they are drunk in the streets and taverns of Weissheim."

"Then I am going where my men ought to be," said Karl. "If we can gather a sufficient body of sober men to hold Redoubt A, we can at least foil any attempt of Bernhardt's to rush the town in the dead of night."

"An admirable idea," said Meyer rising with the others, "and one which I was going to suggest myself. I can manage a searchlight, and Von Bilderbaum can train a _mitrailleuse_, and Herr Saunders can order a company of riflemen--if he can find them."

"Come," said Karl, making towards the door, "let us waste no time!"

"Your Majesty," said Mrs. Saunders, speaking with some hesitation, "this morning I asked my husband to let me accompany him to the Marienkastel. He refused, and with reason. But there is no danger in your quest to-night. I am not asking you to let me help guard the redoubts, but to use a woman's influence in obtaining recruits for your garrison."

"Bravely spoken!" said Karl. "Wrap yourself well in furs, dear lady, and come with us. Bilderbaum can swear, and Meyer can sneer, but a beautiful woman can compel by surer means."

"If Frau Saunders goes, I will go too," said the wife of General Bilderbaum. "I will shake these drunken soldiers into a sense of discipline, or I am not the wife of the bravest soldier in your Majesty's army."

The party of six sallied forth into the night. The snow had ceased falling, and the haze of clouds had drifted southwards, leaving the black dome of night clean and clear and jewelled with the steely brilliance of the winter stars. Through the courtyard they strode, over the squeaking snow, past the sentinels in their black and yellow boxes with their charcoal braziers, past the great piers of the entrance with their fantastic caps of overhanging snow, and as they went the sounds of revelry assailed their ears with louder note.

"Dissipation is the better part of valour," was Meyer's sneering comment, as the refrain of riotous song floated on the thin air. "It is so easy to be brave when the red wine is well within range, and the ammunition of the _bier-halle_ is inexhaustible."

In the road were groups of men, soldiers and civilians, with linked arms, reeling gait, and a gift for making the night hideous with tuneless song.

Within fifty yards of the palace a bonfire had been kindled, and round its ruddy flames a wild dance, a veritable _carmagnole_ of drunken triumph, was in progress. Here the royal party stopped to watch, and in a few minutes they were recognised.

"Hail, Karl the Twenty-second of Grimland!" cried a big-bearded man in a military overcoat. "Long live our gallant King!"

"Three cheers for Karl!" cried another, a burly form well muffled in a gigantic green ulster. "Death to the revolutionaries!"

Karl saluted gravely.

"Your sentiments are admirable, sirs," he said. "It would be perhaps even nobler if you put them into practice."

"I have been in the firing-line all day," answered the first speaker, "and Bernhardt and his men are two leagues from here by now."

"They may not be so in the small hours of the morning," said Meyer. "If they take it into their heads to return, they will have an easy task to overcome an army of sots."

The dance had ceased for the moment. The majority stood at a little distance from the royal party, ashamed to pursue their orgy, but resentful of its interruption. Two other figures, however, arm in arm,--as if to steady their unruly footsteps,--joined the group. One of them,--a small man with a big blonde moustache,--was clad in the uniform of a private. The other was wrapped in a sheepskin overall and had a woollen helmet pulled down over his ears and chin. The latter raised a guttural voice in husky protest.

"It is hard if we cannot celebrate your Majesty's victory in our own way!" he hiccupped. "A glass or two of wine hurts no man on a cold night like this." He steadied himself against the small soldier.

"Frantz will be all right in half an hour," said the bearded one confidently. "He has had but two or three cups of Kurdesheim, and his head is not over-strong. A few more dances round the bonfire and he will be as sober as any of us."

"Look here, my merry gentlemen," said Meyer. "You seem to me to be only partially drunk, and a brisk walk down to the forts would probably render you tolerably sober. If you will stand by us to-night and help us guard the town till daylight you shall be drunk for a week on end at the King's expense--I swear it on the honour of a Jew."

"That's well spoken," said the bearded man pensively. "I like to get jolly now and again, but I don't want to see those d----d Weidenbruckers stealing a march on us when we're in our cups. I'm for the King, I am, and to the devil with the Schattenbergs!"

"But to-morrow there will be no sport afoot," objected the man in the green ulster, "and to-night there will be grand fun in the 'Drei Kronen' and outside the Meierei."

A murmur of agreement came from the others.

"They say they're going to burn Father Bernhardt in effigy," said the fellow in the woollen helmet, "and that there will be free beer at the 'Drei Kronen.' The beer at the 'Drei Kronen' is good--very good."

It was Mrs. Saunders who spoke next.

"I think these men are quite right," she said coolly. "They have probably seen a little fighting from a distance, and are quite satisfied with that. They evidently prefer the smell of beer to the smell of gunpowder, and would be quite useless if there was serious work to do in the forts."

"What's that?" demanded the bearded man, in a sudden access of indignation. "We afraid! My father was a soldier, and so was my grandfather, and I have served his Majesty twelve years come Michaelmas, and one doesn't serve twelve years in the army of Grimland without learning something about ball cartridges. Afraid! Bah! I'd sooner spend a night in the trenches potting at old Bernhardt and his friends than drink the best brandy in the cellars of the Brunvarad."

"An admirable sentiment," said Meyer, "but one not apparently shared by your comrade in the green ulster."

"Oh, I like fighting well enough," replied the individual in question, "only it is cold work doing sentry-go when there's no enemy within six miles of you."

"For shame!" cried Mrs. Saunders. "Is your idea of military service the mere excitement of fine-weather fighting? Is not _duty_ among your ideals as well as _glory_? We so far mistrust this retreat of Bernhardt's that we are going to Redoubt A to watch against any return of the rebuffed Weidenbruckers. Must we go alone,--four men who are wearied with long hours of anxiety and ceaseless activity, and two women who have never handled a rifle in their existence? Is that your creed of loyalty, your standard of a soldier's honour?"

"Rudolf," said the man in the ulster to the gentleman with the beard, "we must accompany our good sovereign and his friends to the fort. The lady is right. Duty is duty, and the beer of the 'Drei Kronen' can wait. I would have liked a dance outside the Meierei, but----" here he wiped an eye with the sleeve of his ulster--"I am a man of honour--and the beer will keep."

"Forward then!" said Meyer, striking while the iron was hot. "Down the hill to Redoubt A, and gather what recruits we can in the name of duty--and postponed beer."