I see my way, as birds their trackless way.
De Casimir had never seen Louis d'Arragon, and yet some dim resemblance to his cousin must have introduced the new-comer to a conscience not quite easy.
“You seek me, Monsieur,” he asked, not having recognized Desiree, who stood behind her companion, in her furs.
“I seek Colonel Darragon, and was told that we should find him in this room.”
“May I ask why you seek him in this rather unceremonious manner?” asked De Casimir, with the ready insolence of his calling and his age.
“Because I am his cousin,” replied Louis quietly, “and Madame is his wife.”
Desiree came forward, her face colourless. She caught her breath, but made no attempt to speak.
De Casimir tried to lift himself on his elbows.
“Ah! madame,” he said. “You see me in a sorry state. I have been very ill.” And he made a gesture with one hand, begging her to overlook his unkempt appearance and the disorder of his room.
“Where is Charles?” asked Desiree curtly. She had suddenly realized how intensely she had always disliked De Casimir, and distrusted him.
“Has he not returned to Dantzig?” was the ready answer. “He should have been there a week ago. We parted at Vilna. He was exhausted—a mere question of over-fatigue—and at his request I left him there to recover and to pursue his way to Dantzig, where he knew you would be awaiting him.”
He paused and looked from one to the other with quick and furtive eyes. He felt himself easily a match for them in quickness of perception, in rapid thought, in glib speech. Both were dumb—he could not guess why. But there was a steadiness in D'Arragon's eyes which rarely goes with dulness of wit. This was a man who could be quick at will—a man to be reckoned with.
“You are wondering why I travel under your cousin's name, Monsieur,” said De Casimir, with a friendly smile.
“Yes,” returned Louis, without returning the smile.
“It is simple enough,” explained the sick man. “At Vilna we found all discipline relaxed. There were no longer any regiments. There was no longer staff. There was no longer an army. Every man did as he thought best. Many, as you know, elected to await the Russians at Vilna, rather than attempt to journey farther. Your cousin had been given the command of the escort which has now filtered away, like every other corps. He was to conduct back to Paris two carriages laden with imperial treasure and certain papers of value. Charles did not want to go back to Paris. He wished most naturally to return to Dantzig. I, on the other hand, desired to go to France; and there place my sword once more at the Emperor's service. What more simple than to change places?”
“And names,” suggested D'Arragon, without falling into De Casimir's easy and friendly manner.
“For greater security in passing through Poland and across the frontier,” explained De Casimir readily. “Once in France—and I hope to be there in a week—I shall report the matter to the Emperor as it really happened: namely, that, owing to Colonel Darragon's illness, he transferred his task to me at Vilna. The Emperor will be indifferent, so long as the order has been carried out.”
De Casimir turned to Desiree as likely to be more responsive than this dark-eyed stranger, who listened with so disconcerting a lack of comment or sympathy.
“So you see, madame,” he said, “Charles will still get the credit for having carried out his most difficult task, and no harm is done.”
“When did you leave Charles at Vilna?” asked she.
De Casimir lay back on the pillow in an attitude which betrayed his weakness and exhaustion. He looked at the ceiling with lustreless eyes.
“It must have been a fortnight ago,” he said at length. “I was trying to count the days. We have lost all account of dates since quitting Moscow. One day has been like another—and all, terrible. Believe me, madame, it has always been in my mind that you were awaiting the return of your husband at Dantzig. I spared him all I could. A dozen times we saved each other's lives.”
In six words Desiree could have told him all she knew: that he was a spy who had betrayed to death and exile many Dantzigers whose hospitality had been extended to him as a Polish officer; that Charles was a traitor who had gained access to her father's house in order to watch him—though he had honestly fallen in love with her. He was in love with her still, and he was her husband. It was this thought that broke into her sleep at night, that haunted her waking hours.
She glanced at Louis d'Arragon, and held her peace.
“Then, Monsieur,” he said, “you have every reason to suppose that if Madame returns to Dantzig now, she will find her husband there?”
De Casimir looked at D'Arragon, and hesitated for an instant. They both remembered afterwards that moment of uncertainty.
“I have every reason to suppose it,” replied De Casimir at length, speaking in a low voice, as if fearful of being overheard.
Louis waited a moment, and glanced at Desiree, who, however, had evidently nothing more to say.
“Then we will not trouble you farther,” he said, going towards the door, which he held open for Desiree to pass out. He was following her when De Casimir called him back.
“Monsieur,” cried the sick man, “Monsieur, one moment, if you can spare it.”
Louis came back. They looked at each other in silence while they heard Desiree descend the stairs and speak in German to the innkeeper who had been waiting there.
“I will be quite frank with you,” said De Casimir, in that voice of confidential friendliness which so rarely failed in its effect. “You know that Madame Darragon has an elder sister, Mademoiselle Mathilde Sebastian?”
“Yes.”
De Casimir raised himself on his elbows again, with an effort, and gave a short, half shamefaced laugh which was quite genuine. It was odd that Mathilde and he, who had walked most circumspectly, should both have been tripped up, as it were, by love.
“Bah!” he said, with a gesture dismissing the subject, “I cannot tell you more. It is a woman's secret, Monsieur, not mine. Will you deliver a letter for me in Dantzig, that is all I ask?”
“I will give it to Madame Darragon to give to Mademoiselle Mathilde, if you like; I am not returning to Dantzig,” replied Louis. But de Casimir shook his head.
“I am afraid that will not do,” he said doubtfully. “Between sisters, you understand—”
And he was no doubt right; this man of quick perception. Is it not from our nearest relative that our dearest secret is usually withheld?
“You cannot find another messenger?” asked De Casimir, and the anxiety in his face was genuine enough.
“I can—if you wish it.”
“Ah, Monsieur, I shall not forget it! I shall never forget it,” said the sick man quickly and eagerly. “The letter is there, beneath that sabretasche. It is sealed and addressed.”
Louis found the letter, and went towards the door, as he placed it in his pocket.
“Monsieur,” said De Casimir, stopping him again. “Your name, if I may ask it, so that I may remember a countryman who has done me so great a service.”
“I am not a countryman; I am an Englishman,” replied Louis. “My name is Louis d'Arragon.”
“Ah! I know. Charles has told me, Monsieur le—”
But D'Arragon heard no more, for he closed the door behind him.
He found Desiree awaiting him in the entrance hall of the inn, where a fire of pine-logs burnt in an open chimney. The walls and low ceiling were black with smoke, the little windows were covered with ice an inch thick. It was twilight in this quiet room, and would have been dark but for the leaping flames of the fire.
“You will go back to Dantzig,” he asked, “at once?”
He carefully avoided looking at her, though he need not have feared that she would have allowed her eyes to meet his. And thus they stood, looking downward to the fire—alone in a world that heeded them not, and would forget them in a week—and made their choice of a life.
“Yes,” she answered.
He stood thinking for a moment. He was quite practical and matter-of-fact; and had the air of a man of action rather than of one who deals in thoughts, and twists them hither and thither so that good is made to look ridiculous, and bad is tricked out with a fine new name. He frowned as he looked at the fire with eyes that flitted from one object to another, as men's eyes do who think of action and not of thought. This was the sailor—second to none in the shallow northern sea, where all marks had been removed, and every light extinguished—accustomed to facing danger and avoiding it, to foresee remote contingencies and provide against them, day and night, week in, week out; a sailor, careful and intrepid. He had the air of being capable of that concentration without which no man can hope to steer a clear course at all.
“The horses that brought you from Marienwerder will not be fit for the road till to-morrow morning,” he said. “I will take you back to Thorn at once, and—leave you there with Barlasch.”
He glanced towards her, and she nodded, as if acknowledging the sureness and steadiness of the hand at the helm.
“You can start early to-morrow morning, and be in Dantzig to-morrow night.”
They stood side by side in silence for some minutes. He was still thinking of her journey—of the dangers and the difficulties of that longer journey through life without landmark or light to guide her.
“And you?” she asked curtly.
He did not reply at once but busied himself with his ponderous fur coat, which he buttoned, as if bracing himself for the start. Beneath her lashes she looked sideways at the deliberate hands and the lean strong face, burnt to a red-brown by sun and snow, half hidden in the fur collar of his worn and weather-beaten coat.
“Konigsberg,” he answered, “and Riga.”
A light passed through her watching eyes, usually so kind and gay; like the gleam of jealousy.
“Your ship?” she asked sharply.
“Yes,” he answered, as the innkeeper came to tell them that their sleigh awaited them.
It was snowing now, and a whistling, fitful wind swept down the valley of the Vistula from Poland and the far Carpathians which made the travellers crouch low in the sleigh and rendered talk impossible, had there been anything to say. But there was nothing.
They found Barlasch asleep where they had left him in the inn at Thorn, on the floor against the stove. He roused himself with the quickness and completeness of one accustomed to brief and broken rest, and stood up shaking himself in his clothes, like a dog with a heavy coat. He took no notice of D'Arragon, but looked at Desiree with questioning eyes.
“It was not the Captain?” he asked.
And Desiree shook her head. Louis was standing near the door giving orders to the landlady of the inn—a kindly Pomeranian, clean and slow—for Desiree's comfort till the next morning.
Barlasch went close to Desiree, and, nudging her arm with exaggerated cunning, whispered—
“Who was it?”
“Colonel de Casimir.”
“With the two carriages and the treasure from Moscow?” asked Barlasch, watching Louis out of the corner of one eye, to make sure that he did not hear. It did not matter whether he heard or not, but Barlasch came of a peasant stock that always speaks of money in a whisper. And when Desiree nodded, he cut short the conversation.
The hostess came forward to tell Desiree that her room was ready, kindly suggesting that the “gnadiges Fraulein” must need sleep and rest. Desiree knew that Louis would go on to Konigsberg at once. She wondered whether she should ever see him again—long afterwards, perhaps, when all this would seem like a dream. Barlasch, breathing noisily on his frost-bitten fingers, was watching them. Desiree shook hands with Louis in an odd silence, and, turning on her heel, followed the woman out of the room without looking back.
Wo viel Licht ist, ist starker Schatten.
In the mean time the last of the Great Army had reached the Niemen, that narrow winding river in its ditch-like bed sunk below the level of the tableland, to which six months earlier the greatest captain this world has ever seen rode alone, and, coming back to his officers, said—
“Here we cross.”
Four hundred thousand men had crossed—a bare eighty thousand lived to pass the bridge again. Twelve hundred cannons had been left behind, nearly a thousand in the hands of the enemy, and the remainder buried or thrown into those dull rivers whose slow waters flow over them to this day. One hundred and twenty-five thousand officers and men had been killed in battle, another hundred thousand had perished by cold and disaster at the Beresina or other rivers where panic seized the fugitives.
Forty-eight generals had been captured by the Russians, three thousand officers, one hundred and ninety thousand men, swallowed by the silent white Empire of the North and no more seen.
As the retreat neared Vilna the cold had increased, killing men as the first cold of an English winter kills flies. And when the French quitted Vilna, the Russians were glad enough to seek its shelter, Kutusoff creeping in with forty thousand men, all that remained to him of two hundred thousand. He could not carry on the pursuit, but sent forward a handful of Cossacks to harry the hare-brained few who called themselves the rearguard. He was an old man, nearly worn out, with only three months more to live—but he had done his work.
Ney—the bravest of the brave—left alone in Russia at the last with seven hundred foreign recruits, men picked from here and there, called in from the highways and hedges to share the glory of the only Marshal who came back from Moscow with a name untarnished—Ney and Girard, musket in hand, were the last to cross the bridge, shouting defiance at their Cossack foes, who, when they had hounded the last of the French across the frontier, flung themselves down on the bloodstained snow to rest.
All along the banks of the Vistula, from Konigsberg and Dantzig up to Warsaw—that slow river which at the last call shall assuredly give up more dead than any other—the fugitives straggled homewards. For the Russians paused at their own frontier, and Prussia was still nominally the friend of France. She had still to wear the mask for three long months when she should at last openly side with Russia, only to be beaten again by Napoleon.
Murat was at Konigsberg with the Imperial staff, left in supreme command by the Emperor, and already thinking of his own sunny kingdom of the Mediterranean, and the ease and the glory of it. In a few weeks he, too, must tarnish his name.
“I make over the command to you,” he said to Prince Eugene; and Napoleon's step-son made an answer which shows, as Eugene showed again and again, that contact with a great man makes for greatness.
“You cannot make it over to me,” he replied. “Only the Emperor can do that. You can run away in the night, and the supreme command will devolve on me the next morning.”
And what Murat did is no doubt known to the learned reader.
Macdonald, abandoned by Yorck with the Prussian contingent, in great peril, alone in the north, was retreating with the remains of the Tenth Army Corps, wondering whether Konigsberg or Dantzig would still be French when he reached them. On his heels was Wittgenstein, in touch with St. Petersburg and the Emperor Alexander, communicating with Kutusoff at Vilna. And Macdonald, like the Scotchman and the Frenchman that he was, turned at a critical moment and rent Wittgenstein. Here was another bulldog in that panic-stricken pack, who turned and snarled and fought while his companions slunk homewards with their tails between their legs. There were three of such breed—Ney and Macdonald, and Prince Eugene de Beauharnais.
Napoleon was in Paris, getting together in wild haste the new army with which he was yet to frighten Europe into fits. And Rapp, doggedly fortifying his frozen city, knew that he was to hold Dantzig at any cost—a remote, far-thrown outpost on the Northern sea, cut off from all help, hundreds of miles from the French frontier, nearly a thousand miles from Paris.
At Marienwerder, Barlasch and Desiree found themselves in the midst of that bustle and confusion which attends the arrival or departure of an army corps. The majority of the men were young and of a dark skin. They seemed gay, and called out salutations to which Barlasch replied curtly enough.
“They are Italians,” said he to his companion; “I know their talk and their manners. To you and me, who come from the North, they are like children. See that one who is dancing. It is some fete. What is to-day?”
“It is New Year's Day,” replied Desiree.
“New Year's Day,” echoed Barlasch. “Good. And we have been on the road since six o'clock; and I, who have forgotten to wish you—” He paused and called cheerily to the horses, which had covered more than forty miles since leaving their stable at Thorn. “Bon Dieu!” he said in a lower tone, glancing at her beneath the ice-bound rim of his fur cap, “Bon Dieu—what am I to wish you, I wonder?”
Desiree did not answer, but smiled a little and looked straight in front of her.
Barlasch made a movement of the shoulders and eyebrows indicative of a hidden anger.
“We are friends,” he asked suddenly, “you and I?”
“Yes.”
“We have been friends since—that day—when you were married?”
“Yes,” answered Desiree.
“Then between friends,” said Barlasch, gruffly; “it is not necessary to smile—like that—when it is tears that are there.”
Desiree laughed.
“Would you have me weep?” she asked.
“It would hurt one less,” said Barlasch, attending to his horses. They were in the town now, and the narrow streets were crowded. Many sick and wounded were dragging themselves wearily along. A few carts, drawn by starving horses, went slowly down the hill. But there was some semblance of order, and thus men had the air and carriage of soldiers under discipline. Barlasch was quick to see it.
“It is the Fourth Corps. The Viceroy's army. They have done well. He is a soldier, who commands them. Ah! There is one I know.”
He threw the reins to Desiree, and in a moment he was out on the snow. A man, as old, it would seem, as himself, in uniform and carrying a musket, was marching past with a few men who seemed to be under his orders, though his uniform was long past recognition. He did not perceive, for some minutes, that Barlasch was coming towards him, and then the process of recognition was slow. Finally, he laid aside his musket, and the two old men gravely kissed each other.
Quite forgetful of Desiree, they stood talking together for twenty minutes. Then they gravely embraced once more, and Barlasch returned to the sleigh. He took the reins, and urged the horses up the hill without commenting on his encounter, but Desiree could see that he had heard news.
The inn was outside the town, on the road that follows the Vistula northwards to Dirschau and Dantzig. The horses were tired, and stumbled on the powdery snow which was heavy, like sand, and of a sandy colour. Here and there, by the side of the road, were great stains of blood and the remains of a horse that had been killed, and eaten raw. The faces of many of the men were smeared with blood, which had dried on their cheeks and caked there. Nearly all were smoke-grimed and had sore eyes.
At last Barlasch spoke, with the decisive air of one who has finally drawn up a course of action in a difficult position.
“He comes from my own country, that man. You heard us? We spoke together in our patois. I shall not see him again. He has a catarrh. When he coughs there is blood. Alas!”
Desiree glanced at the rugged face half turned away from her. She was not naturally heartless; but she quite forgot to sympathize with the elderly soldier who had caught a cold on the retreat from Moscow; for his friend's grief lacked conviction. Barlasch had heard news which he had decided to keep to himself.
“Has he come from Vilna?” asked Desiree.
“From Vilna—oh yes. They are all from Vilna.”
“And he had no news”—persisted she, “of—Captain Darragon?”
“News—oh no! He is a common soldier, and knows nothing of the officers on the staff. We are the same—he and I—poor animals in the ranks. A little gentleman rides up, all sabretasche and gold lace. It is an officer of the staff. 'Go down into the valley and get shot,' he says. And—bon jour! we go. No—no. He has no news, my poor comrade.”
They were at the inn now, and found the huge yard still packed with sleighs and disabled carriages, and the stables ostentatiously empty.
“Go in,” said Barlasch; “and tell them who your father is—say Antoine Sebastian and nothing else. I would do it myself, but when it is so cold as that, the lips are stiff, and I cannot speak German properly. They would find out that I am French, and it is no good being French now. My comrade told me that in Konigsberg, Murat himself was ill-received by the burgomaster and such city stuff as that.”
It was as Barlasch foretold. For at the name of Antoine Sebastian the innkeeper found horses—in another stable.
It would take a few minutes, he said, to fetch them, and in the meantime there were coffee and some roast meat—his own dinner. Indeed, he could not do enough to testify his respect for Desiree, and his commiseration for her, being forced to travel in such weather through a country infested by starving brigands.
Barlasch consented to come just within the inner door, but refused to sit at the table with Desiree. He took a piece of bread, and ate it standing.
“See you,” he said to her when they were left alone, “the good God has made very few mistakes, but there is one thing I would have altered. If He intended us for such a rough life, He should have made the human frame capable of going longer without food. To a poor soldier marching from Moscow to have to stop every three hours and gnaw a piece of horse that has died—and raw—it is not amusing.”
He watched Desiree with a grudging eye. For she was young, and had eaten nothing for six freezing hours.
“And for us,” he added; “what a waste of time!”
Desiree rose at once with a laugh.
“You want to go,” she said. “Come, I am ready.”
“Yes,” he admitted, “I want to go. I am afraid—name of a dog! I am afraid, I tell you. For I have heard the Cossacks cry, 'Hurrah! Hurrah!' And they are coming.”
“Ah!” said Desiree, “that is what your friend told you.”
“That, and other things.”
He was pulling on his gloves as he spoke, and turned quickly on his heel when the innkeeper entered the room, as if he had expected one of those dread Cossacks of Toula who were half savage. But the innkeeper carried nothing more lethal in his hand than a yellow mug of beer, which he offered to Barlasch. And the old soldier only shook his head.
“There is poison in it,” he muttered. “He knows I am a Frenchman.”
“Come,” said Desiree, with her gay laugh, “I will show you that there is no poison in it.”
She took the mug and drank, and handed the measure to Barlasch. It was a poor thin beer, and Barlasch was not one to hide his opinion from the host, to whom he made a reproving grimace when he returned the empty mug. But the effect upon him was nevertheless good, for he took the reins again with a renewed energy, and called to the horses gaily enough.
“Allons,” he said; “we shall reach Dantzig safely by nightfall, and there we shall find your husband awaiting us, and laughing at us for our foolish journey.”
But being an old man, the beer could not warm his heart for long, and he soon lapsed again into melancholy and silence. Nevertheless, they reached Dantzig by nightfall, and although it was a bitter twilight—colder than the night itself—the streets were full. Men stood in groups and talked. In the brief time required to journey to Thorn something had happened. Something happened every day in Dantzig; for when history wakes from her slumber and moves, it is with a heavy and restless tread.
“What is it?” asked Barlasch of the sentry at the town gate, while they waited for their passports to be returned to them.
“It is a proclamation from the Emperor of Russia—no one knows how it has got here.”
“And what does he proclaim—that citizen?”
“He bids the Dantzigers rise and turn us out,” answered the soldier, with a grim laugh.
“Is that all?”
“No, comrade, that is not all,” was the answer in a graver voice.
“He proclaims that every Pole who submits now will be forgiven and set at liberty; the past, he says, will be committed to an eternal oblivion and a profound silence—those are his words.”
“Ah!”
“Yes, and half the defenders of Dantzig are Poles—there are your passports—pass on.”
They drove through the dark streets where men like shadows hurried silently about their business.
The Frauengasse seemed to be deserted when they reached it. It was Mathilde who opened the door. She must have been at the darkened window, behind the curtain. Lisa had gone home to her native village in Sammland in obedience to the Governor's orders. Sebastian had not been home all day. Charles had not returned, and there was no news of him.
Barlasch, wiping the snow from his face, watched Desiree, and made no comment.
But strong is fate, O Love,Who makes, who mars, who ends.
Desiree was telling Mathilde the brief news of her futile journey, when a knock at the front door made them turn from the stairs where they were standing. It was Sebastian's knock. His hours had been less regular of late. He came and went without explanation.
When he had freed his throat from his furs, and laid aside his gloves, he glanced hastily at Desiree, who had kissed him without speaking.
“And your husband?” he asked curtly.
“It was not he whom we found at Thorn,” she answered. There was something in her father's voice—in his quick, sidelong glance at her—that caught her attention. He had changed lately. From a man of dreams he had been transformed into a man of action. It is customary to designate a man of action as a hard man. Custom is the brick wall against which feeble minds come to a standstill and hinder the progress of the world. Sebastian had been softened by action, through which his mental energy had found an outlet. But to-night he was his old self again—hard, scornful, incomprehensible.
“I have heard nothing of him,” said Desiree.
Sebastian was stamping the snow from his boots.
“But I have,” he said, without looking up.
Desiree said nothing. She knew that the secret she had guarded so carefully—the secret kept by herself and Louis—was hers no longer. In the silence of the next moments she could hear Barlasch breathing on his fingers, within the kitchen doorway just behind her. Mathilde made a little movement. She was on the stairs, and she moved nearer to the balustrade and held to it breathlessly. For Charles Darragon's secret was De Casimir's too.
“These two gentlemen,” said Sebastian slowly, “were in the secret service of Napoleon. They are hardly likely to return to Dantzig.”
“Why not?” asked Mathilde.
“They dare not.”
“I think the Emperor will be able to protect his officers,” said Mathilde.
“But not his spies,” replied Sebastian coldly.
“Since they wore his uniform, they cannot be blamed for doing their duty. They are brave enough. They would hardly avoid returning to Dantzig because—because they have outwitted the Tugendbund.”
Mathilde's face was colourless with anger, and her quiet eyes flashed. She had been surprised into this sudden advocacy, and an advocate who displays temper is always a dangerous ally. Sebastian glanced at her sharply. She was usually so self-controlled that her flashing eyes and quick breath betrayed her.
“What do you know of the Tugendbund?” he asked.
But she would not answer, merely shrugging her shoulders and closing her thin lips with a snap.
“It is not only in Dantzig,” said Sebastian, “that they are unsafe. It is anywhere where the Tugendbund can reach them.”
He turned sharply to Desiree. His wits, cleared by action, told him that her silence meant that she, at all events, had not been surprised. She had, therefore, known already the part played by De Casimir and Charles, in Dantzig, before the war.
“And you,” he said, “you have nothing to say for your husband.”
“He may have been misled,” she said mechanically, in the manner of one making a prepared speech or meeting a foreseen emergency. It had been foreseen by Louis d'Arragon. The speech had been, unconsciously, prepared by him.
“You mean, by Colonel de Casimir,” suggested Mathilde, who had recovered her usual quiet. And Desiree did not deny her meaning. Sebastian looked from one to the other. It was the irony of Fate that had married one of his daughters to Charles Darragon, and affianced the other to De Casimir. His own secret, so well kept, had turned in his hand like a concealed weapon.
They were all startled by Barlasch, who spoke from the kitchen door, where he had been standing unobserved or forgotten. He came forward to the light of the lamp hanging overhead.
“That reminds me...” he said a second time, and having secured their attention, he instituted a search in the many pockets of his nondescript clothing. He still wore a dirty handkerchief bound over one eye. It served to release him from duty in the trenches or work on the frozen fortifications. By this simple device, coupled with half a dozen bandages in various parts of his person, where a frost-bite or a wound gave excuse, he passed as one of the twenty-five thousand sick and wounded who encumbered Dantzig at this time, and were already dying at the rate of fifty a day.
“A letter...” he said, still searching with his maimed hand. “You mentioned the name of the Colonel de Casimir. It was that which recalled to my mind...” He paused, and produced a letter carefully sealed. He turned it over, glancing at the seals with a reproving jerk of the head, which conveyed as clearly as words a shameless confession that he had been frustrated by them... “this letter. I was told to give it you, without fail, at the right moment.”
It could hardly be the case that he honestly thought this moment might be so described. But he gave the letter to Mathilde with a gesture of grim triumph. Perhaps he was thinking of the cellar in the Palace on the Petrovka at Moscow, and the treasure which he had found there.
“It is from the Colonel de Casimir,” he said, “a clever man,” he added, turning confidentially to Sebastian, and holding his attention by an upraised hand. “Oh!... a clever man.”
Mathilde, her face all flushed, tore open the envelope, while Barlasch, breathing on his fingers, watched with twinkling eye and busy lips.
The letter was a long one. Colonel de Casimir was an adept at explanation. There was, no doubt, much to explain. Mathilde read the letter carefully. It was the first she had ever had—a love-letter in its guise—with explanations in it. Love and explanation in the same breath. Assuredly De Casimir was a daring lover.
“He says that Dantzig will be taken by storm,” she said at length, “and that the Cossacks will spare no one.”
“Does it signify,” inquired Sebastian in his smoothest voice, “what Colonel de Casimir may say?”
His grand manner had come back to him. He made a gesture with his hand almost suggestive of a ruffle at the wrist, and clearly insulting to Colonel de Casimir.
“He urges us to quit the city before it is too late,” continued Mathilde, in her measured voice, and awaited her father's reply. He took snuff with a cold smile.
“You will not do so?” she asked. And by way of reply, Sebastian laughed as he dusted the snuff from his coat with his pocket-handkerchief.
“He asks me to go to Cracow with the Grafin, and marry him,” said Mathilde finally. And Sebastian only shrugged his shoulders. The suggestion was beneath contempt.
“And...?” he inquired with raised eyebrows.
“I shall do it,” replied Mathilde, defiance shining in her eyes.
“At all events,” commented Sebastian, who knew Mathilde's mind, and met her coldness with indifference, “you will do it with your eyes open, and not leap in the dark, as Desiree did. I was to blame there; a man is always to blame if he is deceived. With you... Bah! you know what the man is. But you do not know, unless he tells you in that letter, that he is even a traitor in his treachery. He has accepted the amnesty offered by the Czar; he has abandoned Napoleon's cause; he has petitioned the Czar to allow him to retire to Cracow, and there live on his estates.”
“He has no doubt good reasons for his action,” said Mathilde.
“Two carriages full,” muttered Barlasch, who had withdrawn to the dark corner near the kitchen door. But no one heeded him.
“You must make your choice,” said Sebastian, with the coldness of a judge. “You are of age. Choose.”
“I have already chosen,” answered Mathilde. “The Grafin leaves to-morrow. I will go with her.”
She had, at all events, the courage of her own opinions—a courage not rare in women, however valueless may be the judgment upon which it is based. And in fairness it must be admitted that women usually have the courage not only of the opinion, but of the consequence, and meet it with a better grace than men can summon in misfortune.
Sebastian dined alone and hastily. Mathilde was locked in her room, and refused to open the door. Desiree cooked her father's dinner while Barlasch made ready to depart on some vague errand in the town.
“There may be news,” he said. “Who knows? And afterwards the patron will go out, and it would not be wise for you to remain alone in the house.”
“Why not?”
Barlasch turned and looked at her thoughtfully over his shoulder.
“In some of the big houses down in the Niederstadt there are forty and fifty soldiers quartered—diseased, wounded, without discipline. There are others coming. I have told them we have fever in the house. It is the only way. We may keep them out; for the Frauengasse is in the centre of the town, and the soldiers are not needed in this quarter. But you—you cannot lie as I can. You laugh—ah! A woman tells more lies; but a man tells them better. Push the bolts, when I am gone.”
After his dinner, Sebastian went out, as Barlasch had predicted. He said nothing to Desiree of Charles or of the future. There was nothing to be said, perhaps. He did not ask why Mathilde was absent. In the stillness of the house, he could probably hear her moving in her rooms upstairs.
He had not been long gone when Mathilde came down, dressed to go out. She came into the kitchen where Desiree was doing the work of the absent Lisa, who had reluctantly gone to her home on the Baltic coast. Mathilde stood by the kitchen table and ate some bread.
“The Grafin has arranged to quit Dantzig to-morrow,” she said. “I am going to ask her to take me with her.”
Desiree nodded and made no comment. Mathilde went to the door, but paused there. Without looking round, she stood thinking deeply. They had grown from childhood together—motherless—with a father whom neither understood. Together they had faced the difficulties of life; the hundred petty difficulties attending a woman's life in a strange land, among neighbours who bear the sleepless grudge of unsatisfied curiosity. They had worked together for their daily bread. And now the full stream of life had swept them together from the safe moorings of childhood.
“Will you come too?” asked Mathilde. “All that he says about Dantzig is true.”
“No, thank you,” answered Desiree, gently enough. “I will wait here. I must wait in Dantzig.”
“I cannot,” said Mathilde, half excusing herself. “I must go. I cannot help it. You understand?”
“Yes,” said Desiree, and nothing more.
Had Mathilde asked her the question six months ago, she would have said “No.” But she understood now, not that Mathilde could love De Casimir; that was beyond her individual comprehension, but that there was no alternative now.
Soon after Mathilde had gone, Barlasch returned.
“If Mademoiselle Mathilde is going, she will have to go to-morrow,” he said. “Those that are coming in at the gates now are the rearguard of the Heudelet Division which was driven out of Elbing by the Cossacks three days ago.”
He sat mumbling to himself by the fire, and only turned to the supper which Desiree had placed in readiness for him when she quitted the room and went upstairs. It was he who opened the door for Mathilde, who returned in half an hour. She thanked him absent-mindedly and went upstairs. He could hear the sisters talking together in a low voice in the drawing-room, which he had never seen, at the top of the stairs.
Then Desiree came down, and he helped her to find in a shed in the yard one of those travelling-trunks which he had recognized as being of French manufacture. He took off his boots, and carried it upstairs for her.
It was ten o'clock before Sebastian came in. He nodded his thanks to Barlasch, and watched him bolt the door. He made no inquiry as to Mathilde, but extinguished the lamp, and went to his room. He never mentioned her name again.
Early the next morning, the girls were astir. But Barlasch was before them, and when Desiree came down, she found the kitchen fire alight. Barlasch was cleaning a knife, and nodded a silent good morning. Desiree's eyes were red, and Barlasch must have noted this sign of grief, for he gave a contemptuous laugh, and continued his occupation.
It was barely daylight when the Grafin's heavy, old-fashioned carriage drew up in front of the house. Mathilde came down, thickly veiled and in her travelling furs. She did not seem to see Barlasch, and omitted to thank him for carrying her travelling-trunk to the carriage.
He stood on the terrace beside Desiree until the carriage had turned the corner into the Pfaffengasse.
“Bah!” he said, “let her go. There is no stopping them, when they are like that. It is the curse—of the Garden of Eden.”