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Title: Barlasch of the Guard

Author: H. S. Merriman

Release Date: May, 2005  [EBook #8158]
[This file was first posted on June 22, 2003]

Edition: 10

Language: English

Character set encoding: US-ASCII

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, BARLASCH OF THE GUARD ***




This etext was produced by Les Bowler, St. Ives, Dorset.




BARLASCH OF THE GUARD BY HENRY SETON MERRIMAN




     "And they that have not heard shall understand"




CONTENTS

CHAPTER

I.       ALL ON A SUMMER'S DAY
II.      A CAMPAIGNER
III.     FATE
IV.      THE CLOUDED MOON
V.       THE WEISSEN ROSS'L
VI.      THE SHOEMAKER OF KONIGSBERG
VII.     THE WAY OF LOVE
VIII.    A VISITATION
IX.      THE GOLDEN GUESS
X.       IN DEEP WATER
XI.      THE WAVE MOVES ON
XII.     FROM BORODINO
XIII.    IN THE DAY OF REJOICING
XIV.     MOSCOW
XV.      THE GOAL
XVI.     THE FIRST OF THE EBB
XVII.    A FORLORN HOPE
XVIII.   MISSING
XIX.     KOWNO
XX.      DESIREE'S CHOICE
XXI.     ON THE WARSAW ROAD
XXII.    THROUGH THE SHOALS
XXIII.   AGAINST THE STREAM
XXIV.    MATHILDE CHOOSES
XXV.     A DESPATCH
XXVI.    ON THE BRIDGE
XXVII.   A FLASH OF MEMORY
XXVIII.  VILNA
XXIX.    THE BARGAIN
XXX.     THE FULFILMENT



CHAPTER I.  ALL ON A SUMMER'S DAY.



     Il faut devoir lever les yeux pour regarder ce qu'on aime.

A few children had congregated on the steps of the Marienkirche at
Dantzig, because the door stood open.  The verger, old Peter Koch--
on week days a locksmith--had told them that nothing was going to
happen; had been indiscreet enough to bid them go away.  So they
stayed, for they were little girls.

A wedding was in point of fact in progress within the towering walls
of the Marienkirche--a cathedral built of red brick in the great
days of the Hanseatic League.

"Who is it?" asked a stout fishwife, stepping over the threshold to
whisper to Peter Koch.

"It is the younger daughter of Antoine Sebastian," replied the
verger, indicating with a nod of his head the house on the left-hand
side of the Frauengasse where Sebastian lived.  There was a wealth
of meaning in the nod.  For Peter Koch lived round the corner in the
Kleine Schmiedegasse, and of course--well, it is only neighbourly to
take an interest in those who drink milk from the same cow and buy
wood from the same Jew.

The fishwife looked thoughtfully down the Frauengasse where every
house has a different gable, and none of less than three floors
within the pitch of the roof.  She singled out No. 36, which has a
carved stone balustrade to its broad verandah and a railing of
wrought-iron on either side of the steps descending from the
verandah to the street.

"They teach dancing?" she inquired.

And Koch nodded again, taking snuff.

"And he--the father?"

"He scrapes a fiddle," replied the verger, examining the lady's
basket of fish in a non-committing and final way.  For a locksmith
is almost as confidential an adviser as a notary.  The Dantzigers,
moreover, are a thrifty race and keep their money in a safe place; a
habit which was to cost many of them their lives before the coming
of another June.

The marriage service was a long one and not exhilarating.  Through
the open door came no sound of organ or choir, but the deep and
monotonous drawl of one voice.  There had been no ringing of bells.
The north countries, with the exception of Russia, require more than
the ringing of bells or the waving of flags to warm their hearts.
They celebrate their festivities with good meat and wine consumed
decently behind closed doors.

Dantzig was in fact under a cloud.  No larger than a man's hand,
this cloud had risen in Corsica forty-three years earlier.  It had
overshadowed France.  Its gloom had spread to Italy, Austria, Spain;
had penetrated so far north as Sweden; was now hanging sullen over
Dantzig, the greatest of the Hanseatic towns, the Free City.  For a
Dantziger had never needed to say that he was a Pole or a Prussian,
a Swede or a subject of the Czar.  He was a Dantziger.  Which is
tantamount to having for a postal address a single name that is
marked on the map.

Napoleon had garrisoned the Free City with French troops some years
earlier, to the sullen astonishment of the citizens.  And Prussia
had not objected for a very obvious reason.  Within the last
fourteen months the garrison had been greatly augmented.  The clouds
seemed to be gathering over this prosperous city of the north,
where, however, men continued to eat and drink, to marry and to be
given in marriage as in another city of the plain.

Peter Koch replaced his snuff-stained handkerchief in the pocket of
his rusty cassock and stood aside.  He murmured a few conventional
words of blessing, hard on the heels of stronger exhortations to the
waiting children.  And Desiree Sebastian came out into the sunlight-
-Desiree Sebastian no more.

That she was destined for the sunlight was clearly written on her
face and in her gay, kind blue eyes.  She was tall and straight and
slim, as are English and Polish and Danish girls, and none other in
all the world.  But the colouring of her face and hair was more
pronounced than in the fairness of Anglo-Saxon youth.  For her hair
had a golden tinge in it, and her skin was of that startlingly milky
whiteness which is only found in those who live round the frozen
waters.  Her eyes, too, were of a clearer blue--like the blue of a
summer sky over the Baltic sea.  The rosy colour was in her cheeks,
her eyes were laughing.  This was a bride who had no misgivings.

On seeing such a happy face returning from the altar the observer
might have concluded that the bride had assuredly attained her
desire; that she had secured a title; that the pre-nuptial
settlement had been safely signed and sealed.

But Desiree had none of these things.  It was nearly a hundred years
ago.

Her husband must have whispered some laughing comment on Koch, or
another appeal to her quick sense of the humorous, for she looked
into his changing face and gave a low, girlish laugh of amusement as
they descended the steps together into the brilliant sunlight.

Charles Darragon wore one of the countless uniforms that enlivened
the outward world in the great days of the greatest captain that
history has seen.  He was unmistakably French--unmistakably a French
gentleman, as rare in 1812 as he is to-day.  To judge from his small
head and clean-cut features, fine and mobile; from his graceful
carriage and slight limbs, this man was one of the many bearing
names that begin with the fourth letter of the alphabet since the
Terror only.

He was merely a lieutenant in a regiment of Alsatian recruits; but
that went for nothing in the days of the Empire.  Three kings in
Europe had begun no farther up the ladder.

The Frauengasse is a short street, made narrow by the terrace that
each house throws outward from its face, each seeking to gain a few
inches on its neighbour.  It runs from the Marienkirche to the
Frauenthor, and remains to-day as it was built three hundred years
ago.

Desiree nodded and laughed to the children, who interested her.  She
was quite simple and womanly, as some women, it is to be hoped, may
succeed in continuing until the end of time.  She was always pleased
to see children; was glad, it seemed, that they should have
congregated on the steps to watch her pass.  Charles, with a faint
and unconscious reflex of that grand manner which had brought his
father to the guillotine, felt in his pocket for money, and found
none.

He jerked his hand out with widespread fingers, in a gesture
indicative of familiarity with the nakedness of the land.

"I have nothing, little citizens," he said with a mock gravity;
"nothing but my blessing."

And he made a gay gesture with his left hand over their heads, not
the act of benediction, but of peppering, which made them all laugh.
The bride and bridegroom passing on joined in the laughter with
hearts as light and voices scarcely less youthful.

The Frauengasse is intersected by the Pfaffengasse at right angles,
through which narrow and straight street passes much of the traffic
towards the Langenmarkt, the centre of the town.  As the little
bridal procession reached the corner of this street, it halted at
the approach of some mounted troops.  There was nothing unusual in
this sight in the streets of Dantzig, which were accustomed now to
the clatter of the Saxon cavalry.

But at the sight of the first troopers Charles Darragon threw up his
head with a little exclamation of surprise.

Desiree looked at him and then turned to follow the direction of his
gaze.

"What are these?" she murmured.  For the uniforms were new and
unfamiliar.

"Cavalry of the Old Guard," replied her husband, and as he spoke he
caught his breath.

The horsemen vanished into the continuation of the Pfaffengasse, and
immediately behind them came a travelling carriage, swung on high
wheels, three times the size of a Dantzig drosky, white with dust.
It had small square windows.  As Desiree drew back in obedience to a
movement of her husband's arm, she saw a face for an instant--pale
and set--with eyes that seemed to look at everything and yet at
something beyond.

"Who was it?  He looked at you, Charles," said Desiree.

"It is the Emperor," answered Darragon.  His face was white.  His
eyes were dull, like the eyes of one who has seen a vision and is
not yet back to earth.

Desiree turned to those behind her.

"It is the Emperor," she said, with an odd ring in her voice which
none had ever heard before.  Then she stood looking after the
carriage.

Her father, who was at her elbow--tall, white-haired, with an
aquiline, inscrutable face--stood in a like attitude, looking down
the Pfaffengasse.  His hand was raised before his face with
outspread fingers which seemed rigid in that gesture, as if lifted
hastily to screen his face and hide it.

"Did he see me?" he asked in a low voice which only Desiree heard.

She glanced at him, and her eyes, which were clear as a cloudless
sky, were suddenly shadowed by a suspicion quick and poignant.

"He seemed to see everything, but he only looked at Charles," she
answered.  For a moment they all stood in the sunshine looking
towards the Langenmarkt where the tower of the Rathhaus rose above
the high roofs.  The dust raised by the horses' feet and the
carriage wheels slowly settled on their bridal clothes.

It was Desiree who at length made a movement to continue their way
towards her father's house.

"Well," she said with a slight laugh, "he was not bidden to my
wedding, but he has come all the same."

Others laughed as they followed her.  For a bride at the church-
door, or a judge on the bench, or a criminal on the scaffold-steps,
need make but a very small joke to cause merriment.  Laughter is
often nothing but the froth of tears.

There were faces suddenly bleached in the little group of wedding-
guests, and none were whiter than the handsome features of Mathilde
Sebastian, Desiree's elder sister, who looked angry, had frowned at
the children, and seemed to find this simple wedding too bourgeois
for her taste.  She carried her head with an air that told the world
not to expect that she should ever be content to marry in such a
humble style, and walk from the church in satin slippers like any
daughter of a burgher.

This, at all events, was what old Koch the locksmith must have read
in her beautiful, discontented face.

"Ah! ah!" he muttered to the bolts as he shot them.  "But it is not
the lightest hearts that quit the church in a carriage."

So simple were the arrangements that bride and bridegroom and
wedding-guests had to wait in the street while the servant unlocked
the front door of No. 36 with a great key hurriedly extracted from
her apron-pocket.

There was no unusual stir in the street.  The windows of one or two
of the houses had been decorated with flowers.  These were the
houses of friends.  Others were silent and still behind their lace
curtains, where there doubtless lurked peeping and criticizing eyes-
-the house of a neighbour.

The wedding-guests were few in number.  Only one of them had a
distinguished air, and he, like the bridegroom, wore the uniform of
France.  He was a small man, somewhat brusque in attitude, as became
a soldier of Italy and Egypt.  But he had a pleasant smile and that
affability of manner which many learnt in the first years of the
great Republic.  He and Mathilde Sebastian never looked at each
other:  either an understanding or a misunderstanding.

The host, Antoine Sebastian, played his part well enough when he
remembered that he had a part to play.  He listened with a kind
attention to the story of a very old lady, who it seemed had been
married herself, but it was so long ago that the human interest of
it all was lost in a pottle of petty detail which was all she could
recall.  Before the story was half finished, Sebastian's attention
had strayed elsewhere, though his spare figure remained in its
attitude of attention and polite forbearance.  His mind had, it
would seem, a trick of thus wandering away and leaving his body
rigid in the last attitude that it had dictated.

Sebastian did not notice that the door was open and all the guests
were waiting for him to lead the way.

"Now, old dreamer," whispered Desiree, with a quick pinch on his
arm, "take the Grafin upstairs to the drawing-room and give her
wine.  You are to drink our healths, remember."

"Is there wine?" he asked with a vague smile.  "Where has it come
from?"

"Like other good things, my father-in-law," replied Charles with his
easy laugh, "it comes from France."

They spoke together thus in confidence, in the language of that same
sunny land.  But when Sebastian turned again to the old lady, still
recalling the details of that other wedding, he addressed her in
German, offering his arm with a sudden stiffness of gesture which he
seemed to put on with the change of tongue.

They passed up the low time-worn steps arm-in-arm, and beneath the
high carved doorway, whereon some pious Hanseatic merchant had
inscribed his belief that if God be in the house there is no need of
a watchman, emphasizing his creed by bolts and locks of enormous
strength, and bars to every window.

The servant in her Samland Sunday dress, having shaken her fist at
the children, closed the door behind the last guest, and, so far as
the Frauengasse was concerned, the exciting incident was over.  From
the open window came only the murmur of quiet voices, the clink of
glasses at the drinking of a toast, or a laugh in the clear voice of
the bride herself.  For Desiree persisted in her optimistic view of
these proceedings, though her husband scarcely helped her now at
all, and seemed a different man since the passage through the
Pfaffengasse of that dusty travelling carriage which had played the
part of the stormy petrel from end to end of Europe.



CHAPTER II.  A CAMPAIGNER.



     Not what I am, but what I Do, is my Kingdom.

Desiree had made all her own wedding-clothes.  "Her poor little
marriage-basket," she called it.  She had even made the cake which
was now cut with some ceremony by her father.

"I tremble," she exclaimed aloud, "to think what it may be like in
the middle."

And Mathilde was the only person there who did not smile at the
unconscious admission.  The cake was still under discussion, and the
Grafin had just admitted that it was almost as good as that other
cake which had been consumed in the days of Frederick the Great,
when the servant called Desiree from the room.

"It is a soldier," she said in a whisper at the head of the stairs.
"He has a paper in his hand.  I know what that means.  He is
quartered on us."

Desiree hurried downstairs.  In the entrance-hall, a broad-built
little man stood awaiting her.  He was stout and red, with hair all
ragged at the temples, almost white.  His eyes were lost behind
shaggy eyebrows.  His face was made broader by little whiskers
stopping short at the level of his ear.  He had a snuff-blown
complexion, and in the wrinkles of his face the dust of a dozen
campaigns seemed to have accumulated.

"Barlasch," he said curtly, holding out a long strip of blue paper.
"Of the Guard.  Once a sergeant.  Italy, Egypt, the Danube."

He frowned at Desiree while she read the paper in the dim light that
filtered through the twisted bars of the fanlight above the door.

Then he turned to the servant who stood, comely and breathless,
looking him up and down.

"Papa Barlasch," he added for her edification, and he drew down his
left eyebrow with a jerk, so that it almost touched his cheek.  His
right eye, grey and piercing, returned her astonished gaze with a
fierce steadfastness.

"Does this mean that you are quartered upon us?" asked Desiree
without seeking to hide her disgust.  She spoke in her own tongue.

"French?" said the soldier, looking at her.  "Good.  Yes.  I am
quartered here.  Thirty-six, Frauengasse.  Sebastian; musician.  You
are lucky to get me.  I always give satisfaction--ha!"

He gave a curt laugh in one syllable only.  His left arm was curved
round a bundle of wood bound together by a red pocket-handkerchief
not innocent of snuff.  He held out this bundle to Desiree, as
Solomon may have held out some great gift to the Queen of Sheba to
smooth the first doubtful steps of friendship.

Desiree accepted the gift and stood in her wedding-dress holding the
bundle of wood against her breast.  Then a gleam of the one grey eye
that was visible conveyed to her the fact that this walnut-faced
warrior was smiling.  She laughed gaily.

"It is well," said Barlasch.  "We are friends.  You are lucky to get
me.  You may not think so now.  Would this woman like me to speak to
her in Polish or German?"

"Do you speak so many languages?"

He shrugged his shoulders and spread out his arms as far as his many
burdens allowed.  For he was hung round with a hundred parcels and
packages.

"The Old Guard," he said, "can always make itself understood."

He rubbed his hands together with the air of a brisk man ready for
any sort of work.

"Now, where shall I sleep?" he asked.  "One is not particular, you
understand.  A few minutes and one is at home--perhaps peeling the
potatoes.  It is only a civilian who is ashamed of using his knife
on a potato.  Papa Barlasch, they call me."

Without awaiting an invitation he went forward towards the kitchen.
He seemed to know the house by instinct.  His progress was
accompanied by a clatter of utensils like that which heralds the
coming of a carrier's cart.

At the kitchen door he stopped and sniffed loudly.  There certainly
was a slight odour of burning fat.  Papa Barlasch turned and shook
an admonitory finger at the servant, but he said nothing.  He looked
round at the highly polished utensils, at the table and floor both
alike scrubbed clean by a vigorous northern arm.  And he was kind
enough to nod approval.

"On a campaign," he said to no one in particular, "a little bit of
horse thrust into the cinders on the end of a bayonet--but in times
of peace . . ."

He broke off and made a gesture towards the saucepans which
indicated quite clearly that he was between campaigns--inclined to
good living.

"I am a rude fork," he jerked to Desiree over his shoulder in the
dialect of the Cotes du Nord.

"How long will you be here?" asked Desiree, who was eminently
practical.  A billet was a misfortune which Charles Darragon had
hitherto succeeded in warding off.  He had some small influence as
an officer of the head-quarters' staff.

Barlasch held up a reproving hand.  The question, he seemed to
think, was not quite delicate.

"I pay my own," he said.  "Give and take--that is my motto.  When
you have nothing to give . . . offer a smile."

With a gesture he indicated the bundle of firewood which Desiree
still absent-mindedly carried against her white dress.  He turned
and opened a cupboard low down on the floor at the left-hand side of
the fireplace.  He seemed to know by an instinct usually possessed
by charwomen and other domesticated persons of experience where the
firewood was kept.  Lisa gave a little exclamation of surprise at
his impertinence and his perspicacity.  He took the firewood,
unknotted his handkerchief, and threw his offering into the
cupboard.  Then he turned and perceived for the first time that
Desiree had a bright ribbon at her waist and on her shoulders; that
a thin chain of gold was round her throat and that there were
flowers at her breast.

"A fete?" he inquired curtly.

"My marriage fete," she answered.  "I was married half an hour ago."

He looked at her beneath his grizzled brows.  His face was only
capable of producing one expression--a shaggy weather-beaten
fierceness.  But, like a dog which can express more than many human
beings, by a hundred instinctive gestures he could, it seemed,
dispense with words on occasion and get on quite as well without
them.  He clearly disapproved of Desiree's marriage, and drew her
attention to the fact that she was no more than a schoolgirl with an
inconsequent brain, and little limbs too slight to fight a
successful battle in a world full of cruelty and danger.

Then he made a gesture half of apology as if recognizing that it was
no business of his, and turned away thoughtfully.

"I had troubles of that sort myself," he explained, putting together
the embers on the hearth with the point of a twisted, rusty bayonet,
"but that was long ago.  Well, I can drink your health all the same,
mademoiselle."

He turned to Lisa with a friendly nod and put out his tongue, in the
manner of the people, to indicate that his lips were dry.

Desiree had always been the housekeeper.  It was to her that Lisa
naturally turned in her extremity at the invasion of her kitchen by
Papa Barlasch.  And when that warrior had been supplied with beer it
was with Desiree, in an agitated whisper in the great dark dining-
room with its gloomy old pictures and heavy carving, that she took
counsel as to where he should be quartered.

The object of their solicitude himself interrupted their hurried
consultation by opening the door and putting his shaggy head round
the corner of it.

"It is not worth while to consult long about it," he said.  "There
is a little room behind the kitchen, that opens into the yard.  It
is full of boxes.  But we can move them--a little straw--and there!"

With a gesture he described a condition of domestic peace and
comfort which far exceeded his humble requirements.

"The blackbeetles and I are old friends," he concluded cheerfully.

"There are no blackbeetles in the house, monsieur," said Desiree,
hesitating to accept his proposal.

"Then I shall resign myself to my solitude," he answered.  "It is
quiet.  I shall not hear the patron touching on his violin.  It is
that which occupies his leisure, is it not?"

"Yes," answered Desiree, still considering the question.

"I too am a musician," said Papa Barlasch, turning towards the
kitchen again.  "I played a drum at Marengo."

And as he led the way to the little room in the yard at the back of
the kitchen, he expressed by a shake of the head a fellow-feeling
for the gentleman upstairs, whose acquaintance he had not yet made,
who occupied his leisure by touching the violin.

They stood together in the small apartment which Barlasch, with the
promptitude of an experienced conqueror, had set apart for his own
accommodation.

"Those trunks," he observed casually, "were made in France"--a
mental note which he happened to make aloud, as some do for better
remembrance.  "This solid girl and I will soon move them.  And you,
mademoiselle, go back to your wedding."

"The good God be merciful to you," he added under his breath when
Desiree had gone.

She laughed as she mounted the stairs, a slim white figure amid the
heavy woodwork long since blackened by time.  The stairs made no
sound beneath her light step.  How many weary feet had climbed them
since they were built!  For the Dantzigers have been a people of
sorrow, torn by wars, starved by siege, tossed from one conqueror to
another from the beginning until now.

Desiree excused herself for her absence and frankly gave the cause.
She was disposed to make light of the incident.  It was natural to
her to be optimistic.  Both she and Mathilde made a practice of
withholding from their father's knowledge the smaller worries of
daily life which sour so many women and make them whine on platforms
to be given the larger woes.

She was glad to note that her father did not attach much importance
to the arrival of Papa Barlasch; though Mathilde found opportunity
to convey her displeasure at the news by a movement of the eyebrows.

Antoine Sebastian had applied himself seriously now to his role of
host, so rarely played in the Frauengasse.  He was courteous and
quick to see a want or a possible desire of any one of his guests.
It was part of his sense of hospitality to dismiss all personal
matters, and especially a personal trouble, from public attention.

"They will attend to him in the kitchen, no doubt," he said with
that grand air which the dancing academy tried to imitate.

Charles hardly noted what Desiree said.  So sunny a nature as his
might have been expected to make light of a minor trouble, more
especially the minor trouble of another.  He was unusually
thoughtful.  Some event of the morning had, it would appear, given
him pause on his primrose path.  He glanced more than once over his
shoulder towards the window, which stood open.  He seemed at times
to listen.

Suddenly he rose and went to the window.  His action caused a brief
silence, and all heard the clatter of a horse's feet and the quick
rattle of a sword against spur and buckle.

After a glance he came back into the room.

"Excuse me," he said, with a bow towards Mathilde.  "It is, I think,
a messenger for me."

And he hurried downstairs.  He did not return at once, and soon the
conversation became general again.

"You," said the Grafin, touching Desiree's arm with her fan, "you,
who are now his wife, must be dying to know what has called him
away.  Do not consider the 'convenances,' my child."

Desiree, thus admonished, followed Charles.  She had not been aware
of this consuming curiosity until it was suggested to her.

She found Charles standing at the open door.  He thrust a letter
into his pocket as she approached him, and turned towards her the
face that she had seen for a moment when he drew her back at the
corner of the Pfaffengasse to allow the Emperor's carriage to pass
on its way.  It was the white, half-stupefied face of one who has
for an instant seen a vision of things not earthly.

"I have been sent for by the . . .  I am wanted at head-quarters,"
he said vaguely.  "I shall not be long . . ."

He took his shako, looked at her with an odd attempt to simulate
cheerfulness, kissed her fingers and hurried out into the street.



CHAPTER III.  FATE.



     We pass; the path that each man trod
     Is dim; or will be dim, with weeds.

When Desiree turned towards the stairs, she met the guests
descending.  They were taking their leave as they came down,
hurriedly, like persons conscious of having outstayed their welcome.

Mathilde listened coldly to the conventional excuses.  So few people
recognize the simple fact that they need never apologize for going
away.  Sebastian stood at the head of the stairs bowing in his most
Germanic manner.  The urbane host, with a charm entirely French, who
had dispensed a simple hospitality so easily and gracefully a few
minutes earlier, seemed to have disappeared behind a pale and formal
mask.

Desiree was glad to see them go.  There was a sense of uneasiness, a
vague unrest in the air.  There was something amiss.  The wedding
party had been a failure.  All had gone well and merrily up to a
certain point--at the corner of the Pfaffengasse, when the dusty
travelling carriage passed across their path.  From that moment
there had been a change.  A shadow seemed to have fallen across the
sunny nature of the proceedings; for never had bride and bridegroom
set forth together with lighter hearts than those carried by Charles
and Desiree Darragon down the steps of the Marienkirche.

During its progress across the whole width of Germany, the carriage
had left unrest behind it.  Men had travelled night and day to stand
sleepless by the roadside and see it pass.  Whole cities had been
kept astir till morning by the mere rumour that its flying wheels
would be heard in the streets before dawn.  Hatred and adoration,
fear and that dread tightening of the heart-strings which is caused
by the shadow of the superhuman, had sprung into being at the mere
sound of its approach.

When therefore it passed across the Frauengasse, throwing its dust
upon Desiree's wedding-dress, it was only fulfilling a mission.
When it broke in upon the lives of these few persons seeking dimly
for their happiness--as the heathen grope for an unknown God--and
threw down carefully constructed plans, swept aside the strongest
will and crushed the stoutest heart, it was only working out its
destiny.  The dust sprinkled on Desiree's hair had fallen on the
faces of thousands of dead.  The unrest that entered into the quiet
little house on the left-hand side of the Frauengasse had made its
way across a thousand thresholds, of Arab tent and imperial palace
alike.  The lives of millions were affected by it, the secret hopes
of thousands were undermined by it.  It disturbed the sleep of half
the world, and made men old before their time.

"More troops must have arrived," said Desiree, already busying
herself to set the house in order, "since they have been forced to
billet this man with us.  And now they have sent for Charles, though
he is really on leave of absence."

She glanced at the clock.

"I hope he will not be late.  The chaise is to come at four o'clock.
There is still time for me to help you."

Mathilde made no answer.  Their father stood near the window.  He
was looking out with thoughtful eyes.  His face was drawn downwards
by a hundred fine wrinkles.  It was the face of one brooding over a
sorrow or a vengeance.  There was something in his whole being
suggestive of a bygone prosperity.  This was a lean man who had once
been well-seeming.

"No!" said Desiree gaily, "we were a dull company.  We need not
disguise it.  It all came from that man crossing our path in his
dusty carriage."

"He is on his way to Russia," Sebastian said jerkily.  "God spare me
to see him return!"

Desiree and Mathilde exchanged a glance of uneasiness.  It seemed
that their father was subject to certain humours which they had
reason to dread.  Desiree left her occupation and went to him,
linking her arm in his and standing beside him.

"Do not let us think of disagreeable things to-day," she said.  "God
will spare you much longer than that, you depressing old wedding-
guest!"

He patted her hand which rested on his arm and looked down at her
with eyes softened by affection.  But her fair hair, rather tumbled,
which met his glance must have awakened some memory that made his
face a marble mask again.

"Yes," he said grimly, "but I am an old man and he is a young one.
And I want to see him dead before I die."

"I will not have you think such bloodthirsty thoughts on my wedding-
day," said Desiree.  "See, there is Charles returning already, and
he has not been absent ten minutes.  He has some one with him--who
is it?  Papa . . . Mathilde, look!  Who is it coming back with
Charles in such a hurry?"

Mathilde, who was setting the room in order, glanced through the
lace curtains.

"I do not know," she answered indifferently.  "Just an ordinary
man."

Desiree had turned away from the window as if to go downstairs and
meet her husband.  She paused and looked back again over her
shoulder towards the street.

"Is it?" she said rather oddly.  "I do not know--I--"

And she stood with the incompleted sentence on her lips waiting
irresolutely for Charles to come upstairs.

In a moment he burst into the room with all his usual exuberance and
high spirit.

"Picture to yourselves!" he cried, standing in the doorway with his
arms extended before him.  "I was hurrying to head-quarters when I
ran into the embrace of my dear Louis--my cousin.  I have told you a
hundred times that he is brother and father and everything to me.  I
am so glad that he should come to-day of all days."

He turned towards the stairs with a gesture of welcome, still with
his two arms outheld, as if inviting the man, who came rather slowly
upstairs, to come to his embrace and to the embrace of those who
were now his relations.

"There was a little suspicion of sadness--I do not know what it was-
-at the table; but now it is all gone.  All is well now that this
unexpected guest has come.  This dear Louis."

He went to the landing as he spoke, and returned bringing by the arm
a man taller than himself and darker, with a still brown face and
steady eyes set close together.  He had a lean look of good
breeding.

"This dear Louis!" repeated Charles.  "My only relative in all the
world.  My cousin, Louis d'Arragon.  But he, par exemple, spells his
name in two words."

The man bowed gravely--a comprehensive bow; but he looked at
Desiree.

"This is my father-in-law," continued Charles breathlessly.
"Monsieur Antoine Sebastian, and Desiree and Mathilde--my wife, my
dear Louis--your cousin, Desiree."

He had turned again to Louis and shook him by the shoulders in the
fulness of his joy.  He had not distinguished between Mathilde and
Desiree, and it was towards Mathilde that D'Arragon looked with a
polite and rather formal repetition of his bow.

"It is I . . .  I am Desiree," said the younger sister, coming
forward with a slow gesture of shyness.

D'Arragon took her hand.

"I have been happy," he said, "in the moment of my arrival."

Then he turned to Mathilde and bowed over the hand she held out to
him.  Sebastian had come forward with a sudden return of his
gracious and rather old-world manner.  He did not offer to shake
hands, but bowed.

"A son of Louis d'Arragon who was fortunate enough to escape to
England?" he inquired with a courteous gesture.

"The only son," replied the new-comer.

"I am honoured to make the acquaintance of Monsieur le Marquis,"
said Antoine Sebastian slowly.

"Oh, you must not call me that," replied D'Arragon with a short
laugh.  "I am an English sailor--that is all."

"And now, my dear Louis, I leave you," broke in Charles, who had
rather impatiently awaited the end of these formalities.  "A brief
half-hour and I am with you again.  You will stay here till I
return."

He turned, nodded gaily to Desiree and ran downstairs.

Through the open windows they heard his quick, light footfall as he
hurried up the Frauengasse.  Something made them silent, listening
to it.

It was not difficult to see that D'Arragon was a sailor.  Not only
had he the brown face of those who live in the open, but he had the
attentive air of one whose waking moments are a watch.

"You look at one as if one were the horizon," Desiree said to him
long afterwards.  But it was at this moment in the drawing-room in
the Frauengasse that the comparison formed itself in her mind.

His face was rather narrow, with a square chin and straight lips.
He was not quick in speech like Charles, but seemed to think before
he spoke, with the result that he often appeared to be about to say
something, and was interrupted before the words had been uttered.

"Unless my memory is a bad one, your mother was an Englishwoman,
monsieur," said Sebastian, "which would account for your being in
the English service."

"Not entirely," answered d'Arragon, "though my mother was indeed
English and died--in a French prison.  But it was from a sense of
gratitude that my father placed me in the English service--and I
have never regretted it, monsieur."

"Your father received kindnesses at English hands, after his escape,
like many others."

"Yes, and he was too old to repay them by doing the country any
service himself.  He would have done it if he could--"

D'Arragon paused, looking steadily at the tall old man who listened
to him with averted eyes.

"My father was one of those," he said at length, "who did not think
that in fighting for Bonaparte one was necessarily fighting for
France."

Sebastian held up a warning hand.

"In England--" he corrected, "in England one may think such things.
But not in France, and still less in Dantzig."

"If one is an Englishman," replied D'Arragon with a smile, "one may
think them where one likes, and say them when one is disposed.  It
is one of the privileges of the nation, monsieur."

He made the statement lightly, seeing the humour of it with a
cosmopolitan understanding, without any suggestion of the
boastfulness of youth.  Desiree noticed that his hair was turning
grey at the temples.

"I did not know," he said, turning to her, "that Charles was in
Dantzig, much less that he was celebrating so happy an occasion.  We
ran against each other by accident in the street.  It was a lucky
accident that allowed me to make your acquaintance so soon after you
have become his wife."

"It scarcely seems possible that it should be an accident," said
Desiree.  "It must have been the work of fate--if fate has time to
think of such an insignificant person as myself and so small an
event as my marriage in these days."

"Fate," put in Mathilde in her composed voice and manner, "has come
to Dantzig to-day."

"Ah!"

"Yes.  You are the second unexpected arrival this afternoon."

D'Arragon turned and looked at Mathilde.  His manner, always grave
and attentive, was that of a reader who has found an interesting
book on a dusty shelf.

"Has the Emperor come?" he asked.

Mathilde nodded.

"I thought I saw something in Charles's face," he said reflectively,
looking back through the open door towards the stairs where Charles
had nodded farewell to them.  "So the Emperor is here, in Dantzig?"

He turned towards Sebastian, who stood with a stony face.

"Which means war," he said.

"It always means war," replied Sebastian in a tired voice.  "Is he
again going to prove himself stronger than any?"

"Some day he will make a mistake," said D'Arragon cheerfully.  "And
then will come the day of reckoning."

"Ah!" said Sebastian, with a shake of the head that seemed to
indicate an account so one-sided that none could ever liquidate it.
"You are young, monsieur.  You are full of hope."

"I am not young--I am thirty-one--but I am, as you say, full of
hope.  I look to that day, Monsieur Sebastian."

"And in the mean time?" suggested the man who seemed but a shadow of
someone standing apart and far away from the affairs of daily life

"In the mean time one must play one's part," returned D'Arragon,
with his almost inaudible laugh, "whatever it may be."

There was no foreboding in his voice; no second meaning in the
words.  He was open and simple and practical, like the life he led.

"Then you have a part to play, too," said Desiree, thinking of
Charles, who had been called away at such an inopportune moment, and
had gone without complaint.  "It is the penalty we pay for living in
one of the less dull periods of history.  He touches your life too."

"He touches every one's life, mademoiselle.  That is what makes him
so great a man.  Yes.  I have a little part to play.  I am like one
of the unseen supernumeraries who has to see that a door is open to
allow the great actors to make an effective entree.  I am lent to
Russia for the war that is coming.  It is a little part.  I have to
keep open one small portion of the line of communication between
England and St. Petersburg, so that news may pass to and fro."

He glanced towards Mathilde as he spoke.  She was listening with an
odd eagerness which he noted, as he noted everything, methodically
and surely.  He remembered it afterwards.

"That will not be easy, with Denmark friendly to France," said
Sebastian, "and every Prussian port closed to you."

"But Sweden will help.  She is not friendly to France."

Sebastian laughed, and made a gesture with his white and elegant
hand, of contempt and ridicule.

"And, bon Dieu! what a friendship it is," he exclaimed, "that is
based on the fear of being taken for an enemy."

"It is a friendship that waits its time, monsieur," said D'Arragon
taking up his hat.

"Then you have a ship, monsieur, here in the Baltic?" asked Mathilde
with more haste than was characteristic of her usual utterance.

"A very small one, mademoiselle," he answered.  "So small that I
could turn her round here in the Frauengasse."

"But she is fast?"

"The fastest in the Baltic, mademoiselle," he answered.  "And that
is why I must take my leave--with the news you have told me."

He shook hands as he spoke, and bowed to Sebastian, whose generation
was content with the more formal salutation.  Desiree went to the
door, and led the way downstairs.

"We have but one servant," she said, "who is busy."

On the doorstep he paused for a moment.  And Desiree seemed to
expect him to do so.

"Charles and I have always been like brothers--you will remember
that always, will you not?"

"Yes," she answered with her gay nod.  "I will remember."

"Then good-bye, mademoiselle."

"Madame," she corrected lightly.

"Madame, my cousin," he said, and departed smiling.

Desiree went slowly upstairs again.



CHAPTER IV.  THE CLOUDED MOON.



  Quand on se mefie on se trompe, quand on ne se mefie pas, on est
trompe.

Charles Darragon had come to Dantzig a year earlier.  He was a
lieutenant in an infantry regiment, and he was twenty-five.  Many of
his contemporaries were colonels in these days of quick promotion,
when men lived at such a rate that few of them lived long.  But
Charles was too easy-going to envy any man.

When he arrived he knew no one in Dantzig, had few friends in the
army of occupation.  In six months he possessed acquaintances in
every street, and was on terms of easy familiarity with all his
fellow-officers.

"If the army of occupation had more officers like young Darragon," a
town councillor had grimly said to Rapp, "the Dantzigers would soon
be resigned to your presence."

It seemed that Charles had the gift of popularity.  He was open and
hearty, hail-fellow-well-met with the new-comers, who were numerous
enough at this time, quick to understand the quiet men, ready to
make merry with the gay.  Regarding himself, he was quite open and
frank.

"I am a poor devil of a lieutenant," he said, "that is all."

Reserve is fatal to popularity, yet friendship cannot exist without
it.  Charles had, it seemed, nothing to hide, and was indifferent to
the secrets of others.  It is such people who receive many
confidences.

"But it must go no farther . . ." a hundred men had said to him.

"My friend, by to-morrow I shall have forgotten all about it," he
invariably replied, which men remembered afterwards and were glad.

A certain sort of friendship seemed to exist between Charles
Darragon and Colonel de Casimir--not without patronage on one side
and a slightly constraining sense of obligation on the other.  It
was de Casimir who had introduced Charles to Mathilde Sebastian at a
formal reception at General Rapp's.  Charles, of course, fell in
love with Mathilde, and out again after half-an-hour's conversation.
There was something cold and calculating about Mathilde which held
him at arm's length with as much efficacy as the strictest duenna.
Indeed, there are some maidens who require no better chaperon for
their hearts than their own heads.

A few days after this introduction Charles met Mathilde and Desiree
in the Langgasse, and he fell in love with Desiree.  He went about
for a whole week seeking opportunity to tell her without delay what
had happened to him.  The opportunity presented itself before long;
for one morning he saw her walking quickly towards the Kuh-brucke
with her skates swinging from her wrist.  It was a sunny, still,
winter morning, such as temperate countries never know.  Desiree's
eyes were bright with youth and happiness.  The cold air had
slightly emphasized the rosy colour of her cheeks.

Charles caught his breath at the sight of her, though she did not
happen to perceive him.  He called a sleigh and drove to the
barracks for his own skates.  Then to the Kuh-brucke, where a reach
of the Mottlau was cleared and kept in order for skating.  He
overpaid the sleigh-driver and laughed aloud at the man's boorish
surprise.  There was no one so happy as Charles Darragon in all the
world.  He was going to tell Desiree that he loved her.

At first Desiree was surprised, as was only natural.  For she had
not thought again of the pleasant young officer introduced to her by
Mathilde.  They had not even commented on him after he had made his
gay bow and gone.

She had of course thought of these things in the abstract when her
busy mind had nothing more material and immediate to consider.  She
had probably arranged how some abstract person should some day tell
her of his love and how she should make reply.  But she had never
imagined the incident as it actually happened.  She had never
pictured a youth in a gay uniform looking down at her with ardent
eyes as he skated by her side through the crisp still air, while the
ice sang a high clear song beneath their feet in accompaniment to
his hurried laughing words of protestation.  He seemed to touch life
lightly and to anticipate nothing but happiness.  In truth, it was
difficult to be tragic on such a morning.

These were the heedless days of the beginning of the century, when
men not only threw away their lives, but played ducks-and-drakes
with their chances of happiness in a manner quite incomprehensible
to the careful method of human thought to-day.  Charles Darragon
lived only in the present moment.  He was in love with her.  Desiree
must marry him.

It was quite different from what she had anticipated.  She had
looked forward to such a moment with a secret misgiving.  The
abstract person of her thoughts had always inspired her with a
painful shyness and an indefinite, breathless fear.  But the lover
who was here now in the flesh by her side inspired none of these
feelings.  On the contrary, she felt easy and natural and quite at
home with him.  There was nothing alarming about his flushed face
and laughing eyes.  She was not at all afraid of him.  She even felt
in some vague way older than he, though he had just told her that he
was twenty-five, and four years her senior.

She accepted the violets which he had hurriedly bought for her as he
came through the Langenmarkt, but she would not say that she loved
him, because she did not.  She was in most ways quite a matter-of-
fact person, and she was of an honest mind.  She said she would
think about it.  She did not love him now--she knew that.  She could
not say that she would not learn to love him some day, but there
seemed no likelihood of it at present.  Then he would shoot himself!
He would certainly shoot himself unless she learnt to love him!  And
she asked "When?" and they both laughed.  They changed the subject,
but after a time they came back to it; which is the worst of love--
one always comes back to it.

Then suddenly he began to assume an air of proprietorship, and burst
into a hundred explanations of what fears he felt for her; for her
happiness and welfare.  Her father was absent-minded and heedless.
He was not a fit guardian for her.  Was she not the prettiest girl
in all Dantzig--in all the world?  Her sister was not fond enough of
her to care for her properly.  He announced his intention of seeing
her father the next day.  Everything should be done in order.  Not a
word must be hinted by the most watchful neighbour against the
perfect propriety of their betrothal.

Desiree laughed and said that he was progressing rather rapidly.
She had only her instinct to guide her through these troubled
waters; which was much better than experience.  Experience in a
woman is tantamount to a previous conviction against a prisoner.

Charles was grave, however; a rare tribute.  He was in love for the
first time, which often makes men quite honest for a brief period--
even unselfish.  Of course, some men are honest and unselfish all
their lives; which perhaps means that they remain in love--for the
first time--all their lives.  They are rare, of course.  But the
sort of woman with whom it is possible to remain in love all through
a lifetime is rarer.

So Charles waylaid Antoine Sebastian the next day as he went out of
the Frauenthor for his walk in the morning sun by the side of the
frozen Mottlau.  He was better received than he had any reason to
expect.

"I am only a lieutenant," he said, "but in these days, monsieur, you
know--there are possibilities."

He laughed gaily as he waved his gloves in the direction of Russia,
across the river.  But Sebastian's face clouded, and Charles, who
was quick and sympathetic, abandoned that point in his argument
almost before the words were out of his lips.

"I have a little money," he said, "in addition to my pay.  I assure
you, monsieur, I am not of mean birth."

"You are an orphan?" said Sebastian curtly.

"Yes."

"Of the . . . Terror?"

"Yes; I--well, one does not make much of one's parentage in these
rough times--monsieur."

"Your father's name was Charles--like your own?"

"Yes."

"The second son?"

"Yes, monsieur.  Did you know him?"

"One remembers a name here and there," answered Sebastian, in his
stiff manner, looking straight in front of him.

"There was a tone in your voice--," began Charles, and, again
perceiving that he was on a false scent, broke off abruptly.  "If
love can make mademoiselle happy--," he said; and a gesture of his
right hand seemed to indicate that his passion was beyond the
measure of words.

So Charles Darragon was permitted to pay his addresses to Desiree in
the somewhat formal manner of a day which, upon careful
consideration, will be found to have been no more foolish than the
present.  He made no inquiries respecting Desiree's parentage.  It
was Desiree he wanted, and that was all.  They understood the arts
of love and war in the great days of the Empire.

The rest was easy enough, and the gods were kind.  Charles had even
succeeded in getting a month's leave of absence.  They were to spend
their honeymoon at Zoppot, a little fishing-village hidden in the
pines by the Baltic shore, only eight miles from Dantzig, where the
Vistula loses itself at last in the salt water.

All these arrangements had been made, as Desiree had prepared her
trousseau, with a zest and gaiety which all were invited to enjoy.
It is said that love is an egoist.  Charles and Desiree had no
desire to keep their happiness to themselves, but wore it, as it
were, upon their sleeves.

The attitude of the Frauengasse towards Desiree's wedding was only
characteristic of the period.  Every house in Dantzig looked askance
upon its neighbour at this time.  Each roof covered a number of
contending interests.

Some were for the French, and some for the conqueror's unwilling
ally, William of Prussia.  The names above the shops were German and
Polish.  There are to-day Scotch names also, here as elsewhere on
the Baltic shores.  When the serfs were liberated it was necessary
to find surnames for these free men--these Pauls-the-son-of-Paul;
and the nobles of Esthonia and Lithuania were reading Sir Walter
Scott at the time.

The burghers of Dantzig ("They must be made to pay, these rich
Dantzigers," wrote Napoleon to Rapp) trembled for their wealth, and
stood aghast by their empty counting-houses; for their gods had been
cast down; commerce was at a standstill.  There were many,
therefore, who hated the French, and cherished a secret love of
those bluff British captains--so like themselves in build, and
thought, and slowness of speech--who would thrash their wooden brigs
through the shallow seas, despite decrees and threats and sloops-of-
war, so long as they could lay them alongside the granaries of the
Vistula.  Lately the very tolls had been collected by a French
customs service, and the wholesale smuggling, to which even Governor
Rapp--that long-headed Alsatian--had closed his eyes, was at an end.

Again, the Poles who looked on Dantzig as the seaport of that great
kingdom of Eastern Europe which was and is no more, had been assured
that France would set up again the throne of the Jagellons and the
Sobieskis.  There was a Poniatowski high in the Emperor's service
and esteem.  The Poles were for France.

The Jew, hurrying along close by the wall--always in the shadow--
traded with all and trusted none.  Who could tell what thoughts were
hidden beneath the ragged fur cap--what revenge awaited its
consummation in the heart crushed by oppression and contempt?

Besides these civilians there were many who had a military air
within their civil garb.  For the pendulum of war had swung right
across from Cadiz to Dantzig, and swept northwards in its wake the
merchants of death, the men who live by feeding soldiers and rifling
the dead.

All these were in the streets, rubbing shoulders with the gay
epaulettes of the Saxons, the Badeners, the Wurtembergers, the
Westphalians, and the Hessians, who had been poured into Dantzig by
Napoleon during the months when he had continued to exchange
courteous and affectionate letters with Alexander of Russia.  For
more than a year the broad-faced Bavarians (who have borne the brunt
of every war in Central Europe) had been peaceably quartered in the
town.  Half a dozen different tongues were daily heard in this city
of the plain, and no man knew who might be his friend and who his
enemy.  For some who were allies to-day were commanded by their
kings to slay each other to-morrow.

In the wine-cellars and the humbler beer-shops, in the great houses
of the councillors, and behind the snowy lace curtains of the
Frauengasse and the Portchaisengasse a thousand slow Northerners
spoke of these things and kept them in their hearts.  A hundred
secret societies passed from mouth to mouth instruction, warning,
encouragement.  Germany has always been the home of the secret
society.  Northern Europe gave birth to those countless associations
which have proved stronger than kings and surer than a throne.  The
Hanseatic League, the first of the commercial unions which were
destined to build up the greatest empire of the world, lived longest
in Dantzig.

The Tugendbund, men whispered, was not dead but sleeping.  Napoleon,
who had crushed it once, was watching for its revival; had a whole
army of his matchless secret police ready for it.  And the
Tugendbund had had its centre in Dantzig.

Perhaps, in the Rathskeller itself--one of the largest wine stores
in the world, where tables and chairs are set beneath the arches of
the Exchange, a vast cave under the streets--perhaps here the
Tugendbund still encouraged men to be virtuous and self-denying for
no other or higher purpose than the overthrow of the Scourge of
Europe.  Here the richer citizens have met from time immemorial to
drink with solemnity and a decent leisure the wines sent hither in
their own ships from the Rhine, from Greece and the Crimea, from
Bordeaux and Burgundy, from the Champagne and Tokay.  This is not
only the Rathskeller, but the real Rathhaus, where the Dantzigers
have taken counsel over their afternoon wine from generation to
generation, whence have been issued to all the world those decrees
of probity and a commercial uprightness between buyer and seller,
debtor and creditor, master and man, which reached to every corner
of the commercial world.  And now it was whispered that the latter-
day Dantzigers--the sons of those who formed the Hanseatic League:
mostly fat men with large faces and shrewd, calculating eyes; high
foreheads; good solid men, who knew the world, and how to make their
way in it; withal, good judges of a wine and great drinkers, like
that William the Silent, who braved and met and conquered the
European scourge of mediaeval times--it was whispered that these
were reviving the Tugendbund.

Amid such contending interests, and in a free city so near to
several frontiers, men came and went without attracting undesired
attention.  Each party suspected a new-comer of belonging to the
other.

"He scrapes a fiddle," Koch had explained to the inquiring fishwife.
And perhaps he knew no more than this of Antoine Sebastian.
Sebastian was poor.  All the Frauengasse knew that.  But the
Frauengasse itself was poor, and no man in Dantzig was so foolish at
this time as to admit that he had possessions.

This was, moreover, not the day of display or snobbery.  The king of
snobs, Louis XVI., had died to some purpose, for a wave of manliness
had swept across human thought at the beginning of the century.  The
world has rarely been the poorer for the demise of a Bourbon.

The Frauengasse knew that Antoine Sebastian played the fiddle to
gain his daily bread, while his two daughters taught dancing for
that same safest and most satisfactory of all motives.

"But he holds his head so high!" once observed the stout and matter-
of-fact daughter of a Councillor.  "Why has he that grand manner?"

"Because he is a dancing-master," replied Desiree with a grave
assurance.  "He does it so that you may copy him.  Chin up.  Oh! how
fat you are."

Desiree herself was slim enough and as yet only half grown.  She did
not dance so well as Mathilde, who moved through a quadrille with
the air of a duchess, and threw into a polonaise or mazurka a quiet
grace which was the envy and despair of her pupils.  Mathilde was
patient with the slow and heavy of foot, while Desiree told them
bluntly that they were fat.  Nevertheless, they were afraid of
Mathilde, and only laughed at Desiree when she rushed angrily at
them, and, seizing them by the arms, danced them round the room with
the energy of despair.

Sebastian, who had an oddly judicial air, such as men acquire who
are in authority, held the balance evenly between the sisters, and
smiled apologetically over his fiddle towards the victim of
Desiree's impetuosity.

"Yes," he would reply to watching mothers, who tried to lead him to
say that their daughter was the best dancer in the school:  "Yes,
Mathilde puts it into their heads, and Desiree shakes it down to
their feet."

In all matters of the household Desiree played a similar part.  She
was up early and still astir after nine o'clock at night, when the
other houses in the Frauengasse were quiet, if there were work to
do.

"It is because she has no method," said Mathilde, who had herself a
well-ordered mind, and that quickness which never needs to hurry.



CHAPTER V.  THE WEISSEN ROSS'L.



     The moth will singe her wings, and singed return,
     Her love of light quenching her fear of pain.

There are quite a number of people who get through life without
realizing their own insignificance.  Ninety-nine out of a hundred
persons signify nothing, and the hundredth is usually so absorbed in
the message which he has been sent into the world to deliver that he
loses sight of the messenger altogether.

By a merciful dispensation of Providence we are permitted to bustle
about in our immediate little circle like the ant, running hither
and thither with all the sublime conceit of that insect.  We pick
up, as he does, a burden which on close inspection will be found to
be absolutely valueless, something that somebody else has thrown
away.  We hoist it over obstructions while there is usually a short
way round; we fret and sweat and fume.  Then we drop the burden and
rush off at a tangent to pick up another.  We write letters to our
friends explaining to them what we are about.  We even indite
diaries to be read by goodness knows whom, explaining to ourselves
what we have been doing.  Sometimes we find something that really
looks valuable, and rush to our particular ant-heap with it while
our neighbours pause and watch us.  But they really do not care; and
if the rumour of our discovery reach so far as the next ant-heap,
the bustlers there are almost indifferent, though a few may feel a
passing pang of jealousy.  They may perhaps remember our name, and
will soon forget what we discovered--which is Fame.  While we are
falling over each other to attain this, and dying to tell each other
what it feels like when we have it, or think we have it, let us
pause for a moment and think of an ant--who kept a diary.

Desiree did not keep a diary.  Her life was too busy for ink.  She
had had to work for her daily bread, which is better than riches.
Her life had been full of occupation from morning till night, and
God had given her sleep from night till morning.  It is better to
work for others than to think for them.  Some day the world will
learn to have a greater respect for the workers than for the
thinkers, who are idle, wordy persons, frequently thinking wrong.

Desiree remembered the siege and the occupation of Dantzig by French
troops.  She was at school in the Jopengasse when the Treaty of
Tilsit--that peace which was nothing but a pause--was concluded.
She had seen Luisa of Prussia, the good Queen who baffled Napoleon.
Her childhood had passed away in the roar of siege-guns.  Her
girlhood, in the Frauengasse, had been marked by the various woes of
Prussia, by each successive step in the development of Napoleon's
ambition.  There were no bogey-men in the night-nursery at the
beginning of the century.  One Aaron's rod of a bogey had swallowed
all the rest, and children buried their sobs in the pillow for fear
of Napoleon.  There were no ghosts in the dark corners of the stairs
when Desiree, candle in hand, went to bed at eight o'clock, half an
hour before Mathilde.  The shadows on the wall were the shadows of
soldiers--the wind roaring in the chimney was like the sound of
distant cannon.  When the timid glanced over their shoulders, the
apparition they looked for was that of a little man in a cocked hat
and a long grey coat.

This was not an age in which the individual life was highly valued.
Men were great to-day and gone to-morrow.  Women were of small
account.  It was the day of deeds and not of words.

Desiree had never been oppressed by a sense of her own importance,
which oppression leaves its mark on many a woman's face in these
times.  She had not, it would seem, expected much from life; and
when much was given to her she received it without misgivings.  She
was young and light-hearted, and she lived in a reckless age.

She was not surprised when Charles failed to return.  The chaise
that was to carry them to Zoppot stood in the Frauengasse on the
shady side of the street in the heat of the afternoon for more than
an hour.  Then she ran out and told the driver to go back to his
stables.

"One cannot go for a honeymoon alone," she explained airily to her
father, who was peevish and restless, standing by the window with
the air of one who expects without knowing what to expect.  "It is,
at all events, quite clear that there is nothing for me to do but
wait."

She made light of it, and laughed at her father's grave face.
Mathilde said nothing, but her silence seemed to suggest that this
was no more than she had foretold, or at all events foreseen.  She
was too proud or too generous to put her thoughts into words.  For
pride and generosity are often confounded.  There are many who give
because they are too proud to withhold.

Desiree got her needlework and sat by the open window awaiting
Charles.  She could hear the continuous clatter of carts on the
quay, and the voices of the men working in the great granaries
across the river.

The whole city seemed to be astir, and men hurried to and fro in
even the quiet Frauengasse, while the clatter of cavalry and the
heavy rumble of gun carriages could be heard over the roofs from the
direction of the Langenmarkt.  There was a sense of hurry in the
dusty air.  The Emperor had arrived, and the magic of his name
lifted men out of themselves.  It seemed nothing extraordinary to
Desiree that her life should be taken up by this whirlwind, and
carried on she knew not whither.

At dinner-time Charles had not returned.  Antoine Sebastian dined at
half-past four, in the manner of Northern Europe; but his daughters
provided his table with the lighter meats of France, which he
preferred to the German cuisine.  Sebastian's dinner was an event in
the day, though he ate sparingly enough, and found a mental rather
than a physical pleasure in the ceremonious sequence of courses.

It was now too late to think of going to Zoppot.  After dinner
Mathilde and Desiree prepared the rooms which had been destined for
the occupation of the married pair after the honeymoon.

"We shall have to omit Zoppot, that is all," said Desiree
cheerfully, and fell to unpacking the bridal clothes which had been
so merrily laid in the trunks.

At half-past six a soldier brought a hurried note from Charles.

"I cannot return to-night, as I am about to start for Konigsberg,"
he wrote.  "It is a commission which I could not refuse if I wished
to.  You, I know, would have me go and do my duty."

There was more which Desiree did not read aloud.  Charles had always
found it easy enough to tell Desiree how much he loved her, and was
gaily indifferent to the ears of others.  But she seemed to be
restrained by some feeling which had found birth in her heart during
her wedding day.  She said nothing of Charles's protestations of
love.

"Decidedly," she said, folding the letter, and placing it in her
work-basket, "Fate is interfering in our affairs to-day."

She turned to her work again without further complaint, almost with
a sense of relief.  Mathilde, whose steady grey eyes saw everything,
penetrating every thought, glanced at her with a suddenly aroused
interest.  Desiree herself was half surprised at the philosophy with
which she met this fresh misfortune.

Antoine Sebastian had never acquired the habit of drinking tea in
the evening, which had found favour in these northern countries
bordering on Russia.  Instead, he usually went out at this time to
one of the many wine-rooms or Bier Halles in the town to drink a
slow and meditative glass of beer with such friends as he had made
in Dantzig.  For he was a lonely man, whose face was quite familiar
to many who looked for a bow or a friendly salutation in vain.

If he went to the Rathskeller it was on the invitation of a friend;
for he could not afford to pay the vintage of that cellar, though he
drank the wine with the slow mouthing of a connoisseur when he had
it.

More often than not he took a walk first, passing out of the
Frauenthor on to the quay, where he turned to left or right and made
his way back through one or other of the town gates, by devious
narrow streets to that which is still called the Portchaisengasse
though chairs and carriers have long ceased to pass along it.  Here,
on the northern side of the street is an old inn, "Zum weissen
Ross'l," with a broken, ill-carved head of a white horse above the
door.  Across the face of the house is written, in old German
letters, an invitation:

                    Gruss Gott.  Tritt ein!
                    Bring Gluck herein.

But few seemed to accept it.  Even a hundred years ago the White
Horse was behind the times, and fashion sought the wider streets.

Antoine Sebastian was perhaps ashamed of frequenting so humble a
house of entertainment, where for a groschen he could have a glass
of beer.  He seemed to make his way through the narrower streets for
some purpose, changing his route from day to day, and hurrying
across the wider thoroughfares with the air of one desirous to
attract but little attention.  He was not alone in the quiet
streets, for there were many in Dantzig at this time who from wealth
had fallen to want.  Many counting-houses once noisy with prosperity
were now closed and silent.  For five years the prosperous Dantzig
had lain crushed beneath the iron heel of the conqueror.

It would seem that Sebastian had only waited for the explanation of
Charles's most ill-timed absence to carry out his usual programme.
The clock in the tower of the Rathhaus had barely struck seven when
he took his hat and cloak from the peg near the dining-room door.
He was so absorbed that he did not perceive Papa Barlasch seated
just within the open door of the kitchen.  But Barlasch saw him, and
scratched his head at the sight.

The northern evenings are chill even in June, and Sebastian fumbled
with his cloak.  It would appear that he was little used to helping
himself in such matters.  Barlasch came out of the kitchen when
Sebastian's back was turned and helped him to put the flowing cloak
straight upon his shoulders.

"Thank you, Lisa, thank you," said Sebastian in German, without
looking round.  By accident Barlasch had performed one of Lisa's
duties, and the master of the house was too deeply engaged in
thought to notice any difference in the handling or to perceive the
smell of snuff that heralded the approach of Papa Barlasch.
Sebastian took his hat and went out closing the door behind him, and
leaving Barlasch, who had followed him to the door, standing rather
stupidly on the mat.

"Absent-minded--the citizen," muttered Barlasch, returning to the
kitchen, where he resumed his seat on a chair by the open door.  He
scratched his head and appeared to lapse into thought.  But his
brain was slow as were his movements.  He had been drinking to the
health of the bride.  He thumped himself on the brow with his closed
fist.

"Sacred-name-of-a-thunderstorm," he said.  "Where have I seen that
face before?"

Sebastian went out by the Frauenthor to the quay.  Although it was
dusk, the granaries were still at work.  The river was full of craft
and the roadway choked by rows and rows of carts, all of one
pattern, too big and too heavy for roads that are laid across a
marsh.

He turned to the right, but found his way blocked at the corner of
the Langenmarkt, where the road narrows to pass under the Grunes
Thor.  Here the idlers of the evening hour were collected in a
crowd, peering over each other's shoulders towards the roadway and
the bridge.  Sebastian was a tall man, and had no need to stand on
tip-toe in order to see the straight rows of bayonets swinging past,
and the line of shakos rising and falling in unison with the beat of
a thousand feet on the hollow woodwork of the drawbridge.

The troops had been passing out of the city all the afternoon on the
road to Elbing and Konigsberg.

"It is the same," said a man standing near to Sebastian, "at the
Hohes Thor, where they are marching out by the road leading to
Konigsberg by way of Dessau."

"It is farther than Konigsberg that they are going," was the
significant answer of a white-haired veteran who had probably been
at Eylau, for he had a crushed look.

"But war is not declared," said the first speaker.

"Does that matter?"

And both turned towards Sebastian with the challenging air that
invites opinion or calls for admiration of uncommon shrewdness.  He
was better clad than they.  He must know more than they did.  But
Sebastian looked over their heads and did not seem to have heard
their conversation.

He turned back and went another way, by side streets and the little
narrow alleys that nearly always encircle a cathedral, and are still
to be found on all sides of the Marienkirche.  At last he came to
the Portchaisengasse, which was quiet enough in the twilight, though
he could hear the tramp of soldiers along the Langgasse and the
rumble of the guns.

There were only two lamps in the Portchaisengasse, swinging on
wrought-iron gibbets at each end of the street.  These were not yet
alight, though the day was fading fast, and the western light could
scarcely find its way between the high gables which hung over the
road and seemed to lean confidentially towards each other.

Sebastian was going towards the door of the Weissen Ross'l when some
one came out of the hostelry, as if he had been awaiting him within
the porch.

The new-comer, who was a fat man with baggy cheeks and odd, light
blue eyes--the eyes of an enthusiast, one would say--passed
Sebastian, making a little gesture which at once recommended
silence, and bade him turn and follow.  At the entrance to a little
alley leading down towards the Marienkirche the fat man awaited
Sebastian, whose pace had not quickened, nor had his walk lost any
of its dignity.

"Not there to-night," said the man, holding up a thick forefinger
and shaking it sideways.

"Then where?"

"Nowhere to-night," was the answer.  "He has come--you know that?"

"Yes," answered Sebastian slowly, "for I saw him."

"He is at supper now with Rapp and the others.  The town is full of
his people.  His spies are everywhere.  There are two in the Weissen
Ross'l who pretend to be Bavarians.  See!  There is another--just
there."

He pointed the thick forefinger down the Portchaisengasse where it
widens to meet the Langgasse, where the last remains of daylight,
reflected to and fro between the houses, found freer play than in
the narrow alley where they stood.

Sebastian looked in the direction indicated.  An officer was walking
away from them.  A quick observer would have noticed that his spurs
made no noise, and that he carried his sword instead of allowing it
to clatter after him.  It was not clear whence he had come.  It must
have been from a doorway nearly opposite to the Weissen Ross'l.

"I know that man," said Sebastian.

"So do I," was the reply.  "It is Colonel de Casimir."

With a little nod the fat man went out again into the
Portchaisengasse in the direction of the inn, as if he were keeping
watch there.



CHAPTER VI.  THE SHOEMAKER OF KONIGSBERG.



     Chacun ne comprend que ce qu'il trouve en soi.

Nearly two years had passed since the death of Queen Luisa of
Prussia.  And she from her grave yet spake to her people--as sixty
years later she was destined to speak to another King of Prussia,
who said a prayer by her tomb before departing on a journey that was
to end in Fontainebleau with an imperial crown and the reckoning for
all time of the seven years of woe that followed Tilsit and killed a
queen.

Two years earlier than that, in 1808, while Luisa yet lived, a few
scientists and professors of Konigsberg had formed a sort of Union--
vague enough and visionary--to encourage virtue and discipline and
patriotism.  And now, in 1812, four years later, the memory of Luisa
still lingered in those narrow streets that run by the banks of the
Pregel beneath the great castle of Konigsberg, while the Tugendbund,
like a seed that has been crushed beneath an iron heel, had spread
its roots underground.

From Dantzig, the commercial, to Konigsberg, the kingly and the
learned, the tide of war rolled steadily onwards.  It is a tide that
carries before it a certain flotsam of quick and active men, keen-
eyed, restless, rising--men who speak with a sharp authority and pay
from a bottomless purse.  The arrival of Napoleon in Dantzig swept
the first of the tide on to Konigsberg.

Already every house was full.  The high-gabled warehouses on the
riverside could not be used for barracks, for they too had been
crammed from floor to roof with stores and arms.  So the soldiers
slept where they could.  They bivouacked in the timber-yards by the
riverside.  The country-women found the Neuer Markt transformed into
a camp when they brought their baskets in the early morning, but
they met with eager buyers, who haggled laughingly in half a dozen
different tongues.  There was no lack of money, however.

Cartloads of it were on the road.

The Neuer Markt in Konigsberg is a square, of which the lower side
is a quay on the Pregel.  The river is narrow here.  Across it the
country is open.  The houses surrounding the quadrangle are all
alike--two-storied buildings with dormer windows in the roof.  There
are trees in front.  In front of that which is now Number Thirteen,
at the right-hand corner, facing west, sideways to the river, the
trees grow quite close to the windows, so that an active man or a
boy might without great risk leap from the eaves below the dormer
window into the topmost branches of the linden, which here grows
strong and tough, as it surely should do in the fatherland.

A young soldier, seeking lodgings, who happened to knock at the door
of Number Thirteen less than thirty hours after the arrival of
Napoleon at Dantzig, looked upward through the shady boughs, and
noted their growth with the light of interest in his eye.  It would
almost seem that the house had been described to him as that one in
the Neuer Markt against which the lindens grew.  For he had walked
all round the square between the trees and houses before knocking at
this door, which bore no number then, as it does to-day.

His tired horse had followed him meditatively, and now stood with
drooping head in the shade.  The man himself wore a dark uniform,
white with dust.  His hair was dusty and rather lank.  He was not a
very tidy soldier.

He stood looking at the sign which swung from the doorpost, a relic
of the Polish days.  It bore the painted semblance of a boot.  For
in Poland--a frontier country, as in frontier cities where many
tongues are heard--it is the custom to paint a picture rather than
write a word.  So that every house bears the sign of its inmate's
craft, legible alike to Lithuanian or Ruthenian, Swede or Cossack of
the Don.

He knocked again, and at last the door was opened by a thickly-built
man, who looked, not at his face, but at his boots.  As these wanted
no repair he half closed the door again and looked at the newcomer's
face.

"What do you want?" he asked.

"A lodging."

The door was almost closed, when the soldier made an odd and, as it
would seem, tentative gesture with his left hand.  All the fingers
were clenched, and with his extended thumb he scratched his chin
slowly from side to side.

"I have no lodging to let," said the bootmaker.  But he did not shut
the door.

"I can pay," said the other, with his thumb still at his chin.  He
had quick, blue eyes beneath the shaggy hair that wanted cutting.
"I am very tired--it is only for one night."

"Who are you?" asked the bootmaker.

The soldier was a dull and slow man.  He leant against the doorpost
with tired gestures before replying.

"Sergeant in a Schleswig regiment, in charge of spare horses."

"And you have come far?"

"From Dantzig without a halt."

The shoemaker looked him up and down with a doubting eye, as if
there were something about him that was not quite clear and above-
board.  The dust and fatigue were, however, unmistakable.

"Who sent you to me, anyway?" he grumbled.

"Oh, I do not know," was the half-impatient answer; "the man I
lodged with in Dantzig or another, I forget.  It was Koch the
locksmith in the Schmiedegasse.  See, I have money.  I tell you it
is for one night.  Say yes or no.  I want to get to bed and to
sleep."

"How much do you pay?"

"A thaler--if you like.  Among friends, one is willing to pay."

After a short minute of hesitation the shoemaker opened the door
wider and came out.

"And there will be another thaler for the horse, which I shall have
to take to the stable of the wood-merchant at the corner.  Go into
the workshop and sit down till I come."

He stood in the doorway and watched the soldier seat himself wearily
on a bench in the workshop among the ancient boots, past repair, one
would think, and lean his head against the wall.

He was half asleep already, and the bootmaker, who was lame,
shrugged his shoulders as he led away the tired horse, with a
gesture half of pity, half of doubting suspicion.  Had it suggested
itself to his mind, and had it been within the power of one so halt
and heavy-footed to turn back noiselessly, he would have found his
visitor wide-awake enough, hurriedly opening every drawer and
peering under the twine and needles, lifting every bale of leather,
shaking out the very boots awaiting repair.

When the dweller in Number Thirteen returned, the soldier was
asleep, and had to be shaken before he would open his eyes.

"Will you eat before you go to bed?" asked the bootmaker not
unkindly.

"I ate as I came along the street," was the reply.  "No, I will go
to bed.  What time is it?"

"It is only seven o'clock--but no matter."

"No, it is no matter.  To-morrow I must be astir by five."

"Good," said the shoemaker.  "But you will get your money's worth.
The bed is a good one.  It is my son's.  He is away, and I am alone
in the house."

He led the way upstairs as he spoke, going heavily one step at a
time, so that the whole house seemed to shake beneath his tread.
The room was that attic in the roof which has a dormer window
overhanging the linden tree.  It was small and not too clean; for
Konigsberg was once a Polish city, and is not far from the Russian
frontier.

The soldier hardly noticed his surroundings, but sat down instantly,
with the abandonment of a shepherd's dog at the day's end.

"I will put a stitch in your boots for you while you sleep," said
the host casually.  "The thread is rotten, I can see.  Look here--
and here!"

He stooped, and with a quick turn of the awl which he carried in his
belt he snapped the sewing at the join of the leg and the upper
leather, bringing the frayed ends of the thread out to view.

Without answering, the soldier looked round for the boot-jack,
lacking which, no German or Polish bedroom is complete.

When the bootmaker had gone, carrying the boots under his arm, the
soldier, left to himself, made a grimace at the closed door.
Without boots he was a prisoner in the house.  He could hear his
host at work already, downstairs in the shop, of which the door
opened to the stairs and allowed passage to that smell of leather
which breeds Radical convictions.

The regular "tap-tap" of the cobbler's hammer continued for an hour
until dusk, and all the while the soldier lay dressed on his bed.
Soon after, a creaking of the stairs told of the surreptitious
approach of the unwilling host.  He listened outside, and even tried
the door, but found it bolted.  The soldier, open-eyed on the bed,
snored aloud.  At the sound of the key on the outside of the door he
made a grimace again.  His features were very mobile, for Schleswig.

He heard the bootmaker descend the stairs again almost noiselessly,
and, rising from the bed, he took his station at the window.  All
the Langgasse would seem to be eating-houses.  The basement, which
has a separate door, gives forth odours of simple Pomeranian meats,
and every other house bears to this day the curt but comforting
inscription, "Here one eats."  It was only to be supposed that the
bootmaker at the end of his day would repair for supper to some
special haunt near by.

But the smell of cooking mingling with that of leather told that he
was preparing his own evening meal.  He was, it seemed, an
unsociable man, who had but a son beneath his roof, and mostly lived
alone.

Seated near the window, where the sunset light yet lingered, the
Schleswiger opened his haversack, which was well supplied, and
finding paper, pens and ink, fell to writing with one eye watchful
of the window and both ears listening for any movement in the room
below.

He wrote easily with a running pen, and sometimes he smiled as he
wrote.  More than once he paused and looked across the Neuer Markt
above the trees and the roofs, towards the western sky, with a
sudden grave wistfulness.  He was thinking of some one in the west.
It was assuredly not of war that this soldier wrote.  Then, again,
his attention would be attracted to some passer in the street below.
He only gave half of his attention to his letter.  He was, it
seemed, a man who as yet touched life lightly; for he was quite
young.  But, nevertheless, his pen, urged by only half a mind that
had all the energy of spring, flew over the paper.  Sowing is so
much easier than reaping.

Suddenly he threw his pen aside and moved quickly to the window
which stood open.  The shoemaker had gone out, closing the door
softly behind him.

It was to be expected that he would turn to the left, upwards
towards the town and the Langgasse, but it was in the direction of
the river that his footsteps died away.  There was no outlet on that
side except by boat.

It was almost dark now, and the trees growing close to the window
obscured the view.  So eager was the lodger to follow the movements
of his landlord that he crept in stocking-feet out on to the roof.
By lying on his face below the window he could just distinguish the
shadowy form of a lame man by the river edge.  He was moving to and
fro, unchaining a boat moored to the steps, which are more used in
winter when the Pregel is a frozen roadway than in summer.  There
was no one else in the Neuer Markt, for it was the supper hour.

Out in the middle of the river a few ships were moored:  high-
prowed, square-sterned vessels of a Dutch build trading in the
Frische Haaf and in the Baltic.

The soldier saw the boat steal out towards them.  There was no other
boat at the steps or in sight.  He stood up on the edge of the roof,
and after carefully measuring his distance, with quick eyes aglow
with excitement, he leapt lightly across the leafy space into the
topmost boughs, where he alighted in a forked branch almost without
sound.

At dawn the next morning, while the shoemaker still slept, the
soldier was astir again.  He shivered as he rose, and went to the
window, where his clothes were hanging from a rafter.  The water was
still dripping from them.  Wrapt in a blanket he sat down by the
open window to write while the morning air should dry his clothes.

That which he wrote was a long report--sheet after sheet closely
written.  And in the middle of his work he broke off to read again
the letter that he had written the night before.  With a quick,
impulsive gesture he kissed the name it bore.  Then he turned to his
work again.

The sun was up before he folded the papers together.  By way of a
postscript he wrote a brief letter.

"DEAR C.--I have been fortunate, as you will see from the enclosed
report.  His Majesty cannot again say that I have been neglectful.
I was quite right.  It is Sebastian and only Sebastian that we need
fear.  Here they are clumsy conspirators compared to him.  I have
been in the river half the night listening at the open stern-window
of a Reval pink to every word they said.  His Majesty can safely
come to Konigsberg.  Indeed, he is better out of Dantzig.  For the
whole country is riddled with that which they call patriotism, and
we treason.  But I can only repeat what his Majesty disbelieved the
day before yesterday--that the heart of the ill is Dantzig, and the
venom of it Sebastian.  Who he really is and what he is about you
must find out how you can.  I go forward to-day to Gumbinnen.  The
enclosed letter to its address, I beg of you, if only in
acknowledgment of all that I have sacrificed."

The letter was unsigned, and bore the date, "Dawn, June 10."  This
and the report, and that other letter (carefully sealed with a
wafer) which did not deal with war or its alarms, were all placed in
one large envelope.  He did not seal it, however, but sat thinking
while the sun began to shine on the opposite houses.  Then he
withdrew the open letter, and added a postscript to it:

"If an attempt were made on N.'s life--I should say Sebastian.  If
Prussia were to play us false suddenly, and cut us off from France--
I should say nothing else than Sebastian.  He is more dangerous than
a fanatic; for he is too clever to be one."

The writer shivered and laughed in sheer amusement at his own misery
as he drew on his wet clothes.  The shoemaker was already astir, and
presently knocked at his door.

"Yes, yes," the soldier cried, "I am astir."

And as his host rattled the door he opened it.  He had unrolled his
long cavalry cloak, and wore it over his wet clothes.

"You never told me your name," said the shoemaker.  A suspicious man
is always more suspicious at the beginning of the day.

"My name," answered the other carelessly.  "Oh! my name is Max
Brunner."



CHAPTER VII.  THE WAY OF LOVE.



   Celui qui souffle le feu s'expose a etre brule par les
etincelles.

It was said that Colonel de Casimir--that guest whose presence and
uniform lent an air of distinction to the quiet wedding in the
Frauengasse--was a Pole from Cracow.  Men also whispered that he was
in the confidence of the Emperor.  But this must only have been a
manner of speaking.  For no man was ever admitted fully into the
thoughts of that superhuman mind.

De Casimir was left behind in Dantzig when the army moved forward.

"There will be a great battle," he said, "somewhere near Vilna--and
I shall miss it."

Indeed, every man was striving to get to the front.  He who,
himself, had given a new meaning to human ambition seemed able to
inspire not only Frenchmen but soldiers of every nationality with
fire from his own consuming flame.

"Yes! madame," said de Casimir; for it was to Desiree that he spoke,
"and your husband is more fortunate than I.  He is sure of a staff
appointment.  He will be among the first.  It will soon be over.
To-morrow war is to be declared."

They were in the street--not far from the Frauengasse, whence
Desiree, always practical, was hurrying towards the market-place.
De Casimir had seemed idle until he perceived her.

Desiree made a little movement of horror at the announcement.  She
did not know that the fighting had already begun.

"Ah!" cried de Casimir with a reassuring smile.  "You must be of
good cheer.  There will be no war at all.  I tell you that in
confidence.  Russia will be paralyzed.  I was going towards the
Frauengasse when I perceived you; to pay my respects to your father,
to say a word to you.  Come--you are smiling again.  That is right.
You were so grave, madame, as you hurried along with your eyes
looking far away.  You must not think of Charles, if the thoughts
make you look as you looked then."

His manner was kind and confidential and easy--inviting in response
that which the confidential always expect, a return in kind.  It is
either hit or miss with such people; and de Casimir missed.  He saw
Desiree draw back.  She was young, and of that clear fairness of
skin which seems to let the thoughts out through the face so that
any can read them.  That which her face expressed at that moment was
a clear and definite refusal to confide anything whatsoever in this
little dark man who stood in front of her, looking into her eyes
with a deferential and sympathetic glance.

"I know for certain," he said, "that Charles was well two days ago,
and that he is highly thought of in high quarters.  I can tell you
that, at all events."

"Thank you," said Desiree.  She had nothing against de Casimir.  She
had only seen him once or twice, and she knew him to be Charles's
friend, and in some sense his patron.  For de Casimir held a high
position in Dantzig.  She was quite ready to like him since Charles
liked him; but she intended to do so at her own range.  It is always
the woman who measures the distance.

Desiree made a little movement as if to continue on her way; and de
Casimir instantly stood aside, with a bow.

"Shall I find your father at home?" he asked.

"I think so.  He was at home when I left," she answered, responding
to his salute with a friendly nod.

De Casimir watched her go and stood for a moment in reflection, as
if going over in his mind that which had passed between them.

"I must try the other one," he said to himself as he turned down the
Pfaffengasse.  He continued his way at a leisurely pace.  At the
corner of the Frauengasse he lingered in the shadow of the linden
trees, and while so doing saw Antoine Sebastian quit the door of No.
36, going in the opposite direction towards the river, and pass out
through the Frauenthor on to the quay.

He made a little gesture of annoyance on being told by the servant
that Sebastian was out.  After a moment's reflection, he seemed to
make up his mind to ignore the conventionalities.

"It is merely," he said in his friendly and confidential manner to
the servant, in perfect German, "that I have news from Monsieur
Darragon, the husband of Mademoiselle Desiree.  Madame is out--you
say.  Well, then, what is to be done?"

He had a most charming, grave manner of asking advice which few
could resist.

The servant nodded at him with a twinkle of understanding in her
eye.

"There is Fraulein Mathilde."

"But . . .  well, ask her if she will do me the honour of speaking
to me for an instant.  I leave it to you . . . ."

"But come in," protested the servant.  "Come upstairs.  She will see
you; why not?"

And she led the way upstairs.  Papa Barlasch, sitting just within
the kitchen door, where he sat all day doing nothing, glanced
upwards through his overhanging eyebrows at the clink of spurs and
the clatter of de Casimir's sword against the banisters.  He had the
air of a watchdog.

Mathilde was not in the drawing-room, and the servant left the
visitor there alone, saying that she would seek her mistress.  There
were one or two books on the tables.  One table was rather untidy;
it was Desiree's.  A writing-desk stood in the corner of the room.
It was locked--and the lock was a good one.  De Casimir was an
observant man.  He had time to make this observation, and to see
that there were no letters in Desiree's work-basket; to note the
titles of the books and the absence of name on the flyleaf, and was
looking out of the window when the door opened and Mathilde came in.

This was a day when women were treated with a great show of
deference, while in reality they had but little voice in the world's
affairs.  De Casimir's bow was deeper and more elaborate than would
be considered polite to-day.  On standing erect he quickly
suppressed a glance of surprise.

Mathilde must have expected him.  She was dressed in white, and her
hair was tied with a bright ribbon.  In her cheeks, usually so pale,
was a little touch of colour.  It may have been because Desiree was
not near, but de Casimir had never known until this moment how
pretty Mathilde really was.  There was something in her eyes, too,
which gripped his attention.  He remembered that at the wedding he
had never seen her eyes.  They had always been averted.  But now
they met his with a troubling directness.

De Casimir had a gallant manner.  All women commanded his eager
respect, which they could assess at such value as their fancy
painted, remembering that it is for the woman to measure the
distance.  On the few occasions of previous encounters, de Casimir
had been empresse in his manner towards Mathilde.  As he looked at
her, his quick mind ran back to former meetings.  He had no
recollection of having actually made love to her.

"Mademoiselle," he said, "for a soldier--in time of war--the
conventions may, perhaps, be slightly relaxed.  I was told that you
were alone--that your father is out, and yet I persisted--"

He spread out his hands and laughed appealingly, begging her, it
would seem, to help him out of the social difficulty in which he
found himself.

"My father will be sorry--" she began.

"That is hardly the question," he interrupted; "I was thinking of
your displeasure.  But I have an excuse, I assure you.  I only ask a
moment to tell you that I have heard from Konigsberg that Charles
Darragon is in good health there, and is moving forward with the
advance-guard to the frontier."

"You are kind to come so soon," answered Mathilde, and there was an
odd note of disappointment in her voice.  De Casimir must have heard
it, for he glanced at her again with a gleam of surprise in his
eyes.

"That is my excuse, Mademoiselle," he said with a tentative
emphasis, as if he were feeling his way.  He was an opportunist with
all the quickness of one who must live by his wits among others
existing on the same uncertain fare.  He saw her flush, and again he
hesitated as a wayfarer may hesitate when he finds an easy road
where he had expected to climb a hill.  What was the meaning of it?
he seemed to ask himself.

"Charles does not interest you so much as he interests your sister?"
he suggested.

"He has never interested me much," she replied indifferently.  She
did not ask him to sit down.  It would not have been etiquette in an
age when women were by some odd misjudgment considered incapable of
managing their own hearts.

"Is that because he is in love, Mademoiselle?" inquired de Casimir
with a guarded laugh.

"Perhaps so."

She did not look at him.  De Casimir had not missed this time.  His
air of candid confidence had met with a quick response.  He laughed
again and moved towards the door.  Mathilde stood motionless, and
although she said no word, nor by any gesture bade him stay, he
stopped on the threshold and turned again towards her.

"It was my conscience," he said, looking at her over his shoulder,
"that bade me go."

Her face and her averted eyes asked why, but her straight lips were
silent.

"Because I cannot claim to be more interesting than Charles
Darragon," he hazarded.  "And you, Mademoiselle, confess that you
have no tolerance for a man who is in love."

"I have no tolerance for a man who is weakened by love.  He should
be strengthened and hardened by it."

"To--?"

"To do a man's work in the world," said Mathilde coldly.

De Casimir was standing by the open door.  He closed it with his
foot.  He was professedly a man alert for the chance of a moment,
which he was content to grasp without pausing to look ahead.  Should
there be difficulties yet unperceived, these in turn might present
an opportunity to be seized by the quick-witted.

"Then you would admit, Mademoiselle," he said gravely, "that there
may be good in a love that fights continually against ambition, and-
-does not prevail."

Mathilde did not answer at once.  There was an odd suggestion of
antagonism in their attitude towards each other--not irreconcilable,
the poets tell us, with love--but this is assuredly not the Love
that comes from Heaven and will go back there to live through
eternity.

"Yes," said she at length.

"Such is my love for you," he said, his quick instinct telling him
that with Mathilde few words were best.

He only spoke the thoughts of his age; for ambition was the ruling
passion in men's hearts at this time.  All who served the Great
Adventurer gave it the first place in their consideration, and de
Casimir only aped his betters.  Though oddly enough the only two of
all the great leaders who were to emerge still greater from the
coming war--Ney and Eugene--thought otherwise on these matters.

"I mean to be great and rich, Mademoiselle," he added after a pause.
"I have risked my life for that purpose half a dozen times."

Mathilde stood looking across the room towards the window.  He could
only see her profile and the straight line of her lips.  She too was
the product of a generation in which men rose to dazzling heights
without the aid of women.

"I should not have troubled you with these details, Mademoiselle,"
he said, watching her.  His instinct was very keen, for not one
woman in a thousand, even in those days, would have admitted that
love was a detail.  "I should not have mentioned it--had you not
given me your views--so strangely in harmony with my own."

Whatever his nationality, his voice was that of a Pole--rich,
musical, and expressive.  He could have made, one would have
thought, a very different sort of love had he wished, or had he been
sincere.  But he was an opportunist.  This was the sort of love that
Mathilde wanted.

He came a step nearer to her and stood resting on his sword--a lean
hard man who had seen much war.

"Until you opened my eyes," he said, "I did not know, or did not
care to know, that love, far from being a drag on ambition, may be a
help."

Mathilde made a little movement towards him which she instantly
repressed.  The heart is quicker, but the head nearly always has the
last word.

"Mademoiselle," he said--and no doubt he saw the movement and the
restraint--"will you help me now at the beginning of the war, and
listen to me again at the end of it--if I succeed?"

After all, he was modest in his demands.

"Will you help me?  Together, Mademoiselle--to what height may we
not rise in these days?"

There was a ring of sincerity in his voice, and her eyes answered
it.

"How can I help you?" she asked in a doubting voice.

"Oh, it is a small matter," was the reply.  "But it is one in which
the Emperor is personally interested.  Such things have a special
attraction for him.  The human interest never fails to hold his
attention.  If I do well, he will know it and remember me.  It is a
question, Mademoiselle, of secret societies.  You know that Prussia
is riddled with them."

Mathilde did not answer.  He studied her face, which was clean cut
and hard like a marble bust--a good face to hide a secret.

"It is my duty to watch here in Dantzig and to report to the
Emperor.  In serving myself I could also perhaps serve a friend, one
who might otherwise run into danger--who may be in danger while you
and I stand here.  For the Emperor strikes hard and quickly.  I
speak of your father, Mademoiselle--and of the Tugendbund."

Still he could not see from the pale profile whether Mathilde knew
anything at all.

"And if I procure information for you?" asked she at length, in a
quiet and collected voice.

"You will help me to attain a position such as I could ask--even
you--to share with me.  And you would do your father no harm.  You
would even render him a service.  For all the secret societies in
Germany will not stop Napoleon.  It is only God who can stop him
now, Mademoiselle.  All men who attempt it will only be crushed
beneath the wheels.  I might save your father."

But Mathilde did not seem to be thinking of her father.

"I am hampered by poverty," de Casimir said, changing his ground.
"In the old days it did not matter.  But now, in the Empire, one
must be rich.  I shall be rich--at the end of this campaign."

Again his voice was sincere, and again her eyes responded.  He made
a step forward, and gently taking her hand, he raised it to his
lips.

"You will help me!" he said, and, turning abruptly on his heel, he
left her.

De Casimir's quarters were in the Langenmarkt.  On returning to
them, he took from his despatch-case a letter which he turned over
thoughtfully in his hand.  It was addressed to Desiree, and sealed
carefully with a wafer.

"She may as well have it," he said.  "It will be as well that she
should be occupied with her own affairs."



CHAPTER VIII.  A VISITATION.



     Be wiser than other people if you can, but do not tell them so.

Whenever Papa Barlasch caught sight of his unwilling host's face, he
turned his own aside with a despairing upward nod.  Once or twice,
during the early days of his occupation of the room behind the
kitchen in the Frauengasse, he smote himself sharply on the brow, as
if calling upon his brain to make an effort.  But afterwards he
seemed to resign himself to this lapse of memory, and the upward
despairing nod gradually lost intensity until at last he brought
himself to pass Antoine Sebastian in the narrow passage with no more
emphatic notice than a scowl.

"You and I," he said to Desiree, "are the friends.  The others--"

And his gesture seemed to permit the others to go hang if they so
desired.  The army had gone forward, leaving Dantzig in that idle
restlessness which holds those who, finding themselves in a house of
sickness, are not permitted entry to the darkened chamber, but must
await the crisis elsewhere.

There were some busy enough in the commerce that must exist between
a huge army and its base, in the forwarding of war material and
stores, in accommodating the sick and sending out in return those
who were to fill the gaps.  But the Dantzigers themselves had
nothing to do.  Their prosperous trade was paralyzed.  Those who had
aught to sell had sold it.  The high-seas and the high-roads were
alike blocked by the French.  And rumour, ever busy among those that
wait, ran to and fro in the town.

The Emperor of Russia had been taken prisoner.  Napoleon had been
checked at the passage of the Niemen.  There had been a great battle
at Gumbinnen, and the French were in full retreat.  Vilna had
capitulated to Murat, and the war was at an end.  A hundred
authentic despatches of the morning were the subject of contemptuous
laughter at the supper-table.

Lisa heard these tales in the market-place, and told Desiree, who,
as often as not, translated them to Barlasch.  But he only held up
his wrinkled forefinger and shook it slowly from side to side.

"Woman's chatter!" he said.  "What is the German for 'magpie'?"

And on being told the word, he repeated it gravely to Lisa.  For he
had not only fulfilled his promise of settling down in the house,
but had assumed therein a distinct and clearly defined position.  He
was the counsellor, and from his chair just within the kitchen he
gave forth judgment.

"And you," he said to Desiree one morning, when household affairs
had taken her to the kitchen, "you are troubled this morning.  You
have had a letter from your husband?"

"Yes--and he is in good health."

"Ah!"

Barlasch glared at her beneath his brows, looking her up and down,
noting her quick movements, which had the uncertainty of youth.

"And now that he is gone," he said, "and that there is war, you are
going to employ yourself by falling in love with him, when you had
all the time before, and did not take advantage of it."

Desiree laughed at him and made no other answer.  While she spoke to
Lisa he sat and watched them.

"It would be like a woman to do such a thing," he pursued.  "They
are so inconvenient--women.  They get married for fun, and then one
fine Thursday they find they have missed all the fun, like one who
comes late to the theatre--when the music is over."

He went to the table and examined the morning marketing, which Lisa
had laid out in preparation for dinner.  Of some of her purchases he
approved, but he laughed aloud at a lettuce which had no heart, and
at such a buyer.

Then Desiree attracted his scrutiny again.

"Yes," he said, half to himself, "I see it.  You are in love.  Just
Heaven, I know!  I have had them in love with me . . . . Barlasch."

"That must have been a long time ago," answered Desiree with her gay
laugh, only giving him half her attention.

"Yes, it was a century ago.  But they were the same then as they are
now, as they always will be--inconvenient.  They waited, however,
till they were grown up!"

And with his ever-ready accusing finger he drew Desiree's attention
to her own slimness.  They were left alone for a minute while Lisa
answered a knock at the door, during which time Barlasch sat in grim
silence.

"It is a letter," said Lisa, returning.  "A sailor brought it."

"Another?" said Barlasch, with a gesture of despair.

"Can you give me news of Charles?" Desiree read, in a writing that
was unknown to her.  "I shall wait a reply until midnight on board
the Elsa, lying off the Krahn-Thor."  The letter bore the signature,
"Louis d'Arragon."  Desiree turned slowly and went upstairs,
carrying it folded small in her closed hand.

She was alone in the house, for Mathilde was out and her father had
not yet returned from his evening walk.  She stood at the head of
the stairs, where the last of the daylight filtered through the
barred window, and read the letter again.  Then she turned and gave
a slight start to see Barlasch at the foot of the stairs beckoning
to her.  He made no attempt to come up, but stood on the mat like a
dog that has been forbidden the upper rooms.

"Is it about your father?" he asked, in a hoarse whisper.

"No!"

He made a gesture commanding secrecy and silence.  Then he went to
close the kitchen door and returned on tip-toe.

"It is," he explained, "that they are talking of him in the cafes.
There are many to be arrested to-morrow.  They say the patron is one
of them, and employs himself in plotting.  That his name is not
Sebastian at all.  That he is a Frenchman who escaped the
guillotine.  What do I know?  It is the gossip of the cafes.  But I
tell it you because we are friends, you and I.  And some day I may
want you to do something for me.  One thinks of one's self, eh?  It
is good to make friends.  For some day one may want them.  That is
why I do it.  I think of myself.  An old soldier.  Of the Guard."

With many gestures of tremendous import, and a face all wrinkled and
twisted with mystery, he returned to the kitchen.

Mathilde was not to return until late.  She had gone to the house of
the old Grafin whose reminiscences had been a fruitful topic at
Desiree's wedding.  After dining there she and the Grafin were to go
together to a farewell reception given by the Governor.  For Rapp
was bound for the frontier with the rest, and was to go to the war
as first aide-de-camp to the Emperor.

Mathilde could not be back until ten o'clock.  She, who was so quick
and quiet, had been much occupied in social observances lately, and
had made fast friends with the Grafin during the last few days,
constantly going to see her.

Desiree knew that what Barlasch had repeated as the gossip of the
cafes was in part, if not wholly, true.  She and Mathilde had long
known that any mention of France had the instant effect of turning
their father into a man of stone.  It was the skeleton in this quiet
house that sat at table with its inmates, a shadowy fourth tying
their tongues.  The rattle of its bones seemed to paralyze
Sebastian's mind, and at any moment he would fall into a dumb and
stricken apathy which terrified those about him.  At such times it
seemed that one thought in his mind had swallowed all the rest, so
that he heard without understanding and saw without perceiving.

He was in such a humour when he came back to dinner.  He passed
Desiree on the stairs without speaking and went to his room to
change his clothes, for he never relaxed his formal habits.  At the
dinner-table he glanced at her as a dog, knowing that he is ill, may
be seen to glance with a secret air at his master, wondering whether
he is detected.

Desiree had always hoped that her father would speak to her when
this humour was upon him and tell her the meaning of it.  Perhaps it
would come to-night, when they were alone.  There was an unspoken
sympathy existing between them in which Mathilde took no share,
which had even shut out Charles as out of a room where there was no
light, into which Desiree and her father went at times and stood
hand-in-hand without speaking.

They dined in silence, while Lisa hurried about her duties,
oppressed by a sense of unknown fear.  After dinner they went to the
drawing-room as usual.  It had been a dull day, with great clouds
creeping up from the West.  The evening fell early, and the lamps
were already alight.  Desiree looked to the wicks with the eye of
experience when she entered the room.  Then she went to the window.
Lisa did not always draw the curtains effectually.  She glanced down
into the street, and turned suddenly on her heel, facing her father.

"They are there," she said.  For she had seen shadowy forms lurking
beneath the trees of the Frauengasse.  The street was ill-lighted,
but she knew the shadows of the trees.

"How many?" asked Sebastian, in a dull voice.

She glanced at him quickly--at his still, frozen face and quiescent
hands.  He was not going to rise to the occasion, as he sometimes
did even from his deepest apathy.  She must do alone anything that
was to be accomplished to-night.

The house, like many in the Frauengasse, had been built by a careful
Hanseatic merchant, whose warehouse was his own cellar half sunk
beneath the level of the street.  The door of the warehouse was
immediately under the front door, down a few steps below the street,
while a few more steps, broad and footworn, led up to the stone
veranda and the level of the lower dwelling-rooms.  A guard placed
in the street could thus watch both doors without moving.

There was a third door, giving exit from the little room where
Barlasch slept to the small yard where he had placed those trunks
which were made in France.

Desiree had no time to think.  She came of a race of women of a
brighter intelligence than any women in the world.  She took her
father by the arm and hastened downstairs.  Barlasch was at his post
within the kitchen door.  His eyes shone suddenly as he saw her
face.  It was said of Papa Barlasch that he was a gay man in battle,
laughing and making a hundred jests, but at other times lugubrious.
Desiree saw him smile for the first time, in the dim light of the
passage.

"They are there in the street," he said; "I have seen them.  I
thought you would come to Barlasch.  They all do--the women.  In
here.  Leave him to me.  When they ring the bell, receive them
yourself--with smiles.  They are only men.  Let them search the
house if they want to.  Tell them he has gone to the reception with
Mademoiselle."

As he spoke the bell rang just above his head.  He looked up at it
and laughed.

"Ah, ah!" he said, "the fanfare begins."

He drew Sebastian within and closed the door of his little room.
Lisa had already gone to answer the bell.  When she opened the door
three men stepped quickly over the threshold, and one of them,
thrusting her aside, closed the door and turned the key.  Desiree,
in her white evening dress, on the bottom step, just beneath the
lamp that hung from the ceiling, made them pause and look at each
other.  Then one of the three came towards her, hat in hand.

"Our duty, Fraulein," he said awkwardly.  "We are but obeying
orders.  A mere formality.  It will all be explained, no doubt, if
the householder, Antoine Sebastian, will put on his hat and come
with us."

"His hat is not there, as you see," answered Desiree.  "You must
seek him elsewhere."

The man shook his head with a knowing smile.  "We must seek him in
this house," he said.  "We will make it as easy for you as we can,
Fraulein--if you make it easy for us."

As he spoke he produced a candle from his pocket, and encouraged the
broken wick with his finger-nail.

"It will make it pleasanter for all," said Desiree cheerfully, "if
you will accept a candlestick."

The man glanced at her.  He was a heavy man, with little suspicious
eyes set close together.  He seemed to be concluding that she had
outwitted him--that Sebastian was not in the house.

"Where are the cellar-stairs?" he asked.  "I warn you, Fraulein, it
is useless to conceal your father.  We shall, of course, find him."

Desiree pointed to the door next to that giving entry to the
kitchen.  It was bolted and locked.  Desiree found the key for them.
She not only gave them every facility, but was anxious that they
should be as quick as possible.  They did not linger in the cellar,
which, though vast, was empty; and when they returned, Desiree, who
was waiting for them, led the way upstairs.

They were rather abashed by her silence.  They would have preferred
protestations and argument.  Discussion always belittles.  The smile
recommended by Papa Barlasch, lurking at the corner of her lips,
made them feel foolish.  She was so slight and young and helpless,
that a sort of shame rendered them clumsy.

They felt more at home in the kitchen when they arrived there, and
the sight of Lisa, sturdy and defiant, reminded them of the
authority upon which Desiree had somehow cast a mystic contempt.

"There is a door there," said the heavy official, with a brusque
return of his early manner.  "Come, what is that door?"

"That is a little room."

"Then open it."

"I cannot," returned Lisa.  "It is locked."

"Aha!" said the man, with a laugh of much meaning.  "On the inside,
eh?"

He went to it, and banged on it with his fist.

"Come," he shouted, "open it and be done."

There was a short silence, during which those in the kitchen
listened breathlessly.  A shuffling sound inside the door made the
officer of the law turn and beckon to his two men to come closer.

Then, after some fumbling, as of one in the dark, the door was
unlocked and slowly opened.

Papa Barlasch stood in a very primitive night-apparel within the
door.  He had not done things by halves, for he was an old
campaigner, and knew that a thing half done is better left undone in
times of war.  He noted the presence of Desiree and Lisa, but was
not ashamed.  The reason of it was soon apparent.  For Papa Barlasch
was drunk, and the smell of drink came out of his apartment in a
warm wave.

"It is the soldier billeted in the house," explained Lisa, with a
half-hysterical laugh.

Then Barlasch harangued them in the language of intoxication.  If he
had not spared Desiree's feelings, he spared her ears less now; for
he was an ignorant man, who had lived through a brutal period in the
world's history the roughest life a man can lead.  Two of the men
held him with difficulty against the wall, while the third hastily
searched the room--where, indeed, no one could well be concealed.

Then they quitted the house, followed by the polyglot curses of
Barlasch, who was now endeavouring to find his bayonet amidst his
chaotic possessions.



CHAPTER IX.  THE GOLDEN GUESS.



                              The golden guess
     Is morning star to the full round of truth.

Barlasch was never more sober in his life than when he emerged a
minute later from his room, while Lisa was still feverishly bolting
the door.  He had not wasted much time at his toilet.  In his
flannel shirt, his arms bare to the elbow, knotted and muscular, he
looked like some rude son of toil.

"One thinks of one's self," he hastened to explain to Desiree,
fearing that she might ascribe some other motive to his action.
"Some day the patron may be in power again, and then he will
remember a poor soldier.  It is good to think of the future."

He shook his head pessimistically at Lisa as belonging to a sex
liable to error:  instanced in this case by bolting the door too
eagerly.

"Now," he said, turning to Desiree again, "have you any in Dantzig
to help you?"

"Yes," she answered rather slowly.

"Then send for him."

"I cannot do that."

"Then go for him yourself," snapped Barlasch impatiently.

He looked at her fiercely beneath his shaggy eyebrows.

"It is no use to be afraid," he said; "you are afraid--I see it in
your face.  And it is never any use.  Before they hammered on that
door there, my legs shook.  For I am easily afraid--I.  But it is
never any use.  And when one opens the door, it goes."

He looked at her with a puzzled frown, seeking in vain, it may have
been, the ordinary symptoms of fear.  She was hesitating but not
afraid.  There ran blood in her veins which will for all time be
associated by history with a gay and indomitable courage.

"Come," he said sharply; "there is nothing else to do."

"I will go," said Desiree, at length, deciding suddenly to do the
one thing that is left to a woman once or twice in her life--to go
to the one man and trust him.

"By the back way," said Barlasch, helping her with the cloak that
Lisa had brought, and pulling the hood forward over her face with a
jerk.  "Ah, I know that way.  The patron is hiding in the yard.  An
old soldier looks to the retreat--though the Emperor has saved us
that, so far.  Come, I will help you over the wall, for the door is
rusted."

The way, which Barlasch had perceived, led through the room at the
back of the kitchen to a yard, and thence through a door not opened
by the present occupiers of the old house, into a very labyrinth of
narrow alleys running downward to the river and round the tall
houses that stand against the cathedral walls.

The wall was taller than Barlasch, but he ran at it like a cat, and
Desiree standing below could see the black outline of his limbs
crouching on the top.  He stooped down, and grasping her hands,
lifted her by the sheer strength of one arm, balanced her for an
instant on the wall, and then lowered her on the outer side.

"Run," he whispered.

She knew the way, and although the night was dark, and these narrow
alleys between high walls had no lamps, Desiree lost no time.  The
Krahn-Thor is quite near to the Frauengasse.  Indeed, the whole of
Dantzig occupied but a small space between the rivers in those
straitened days.  The town was quieter than it had been for months,
and Desiree passed unmolested through the narrow streets.  She made
her way to the quay, passing through the low gateway known as the
door of the Holy Ghost, and here found people still astir.  For the
commerce that thrives on a northern river is paralyzed all the
winter, and feverishly active when the ice has gone.

"The Elsa," replied a woman, who had been selling bread all day on
the quay, and was now packing up her stall, "you ask for the Elsa.
There is such a ship, I know.  But how can I say which she is?  See,
they lie right across the river like a bridge.  Besides, it is late,
and sailors are rough men."

Desiree hurried on.  Louis d'Arragon had said that the ship was
lying near to the Krahn-Thor, of which the great hooded roof loomed
darkly against the stars above her.  She was looking about her when
a man came forward with the hesitating step of one who has been told
to wait the arrival of some one unknown to him.

"The Elsa," she said to him; "which ship is it?"

"Come along with me, Mademoiselle," the man replied; "though I was
not told to look for a woman."

He spoke in English, which Desiree hardly understood; for she had
never heard it from English lips, and looked for the first time on
one of that race upon which all the world waited now for salvation.
For the English, of all the nations, were the only men who from the
first had consistently defied Napoleon.

The sailor led the way towards the river.  As he passed the lamp
burning dimly above some steps, Desiree saw that he was little more
than a boy.  He turned and offered her his hand with a shy laugh,
and together they stood at the bottom of the steps with the water
lapping at their feet.

"Have you a letter," he said, "or will you come on board?"

Then perceiving that she did not understand, he repeated the
question in German.

"I will come on board," she answered.

The Elsa was lying in the middle of the river, and the boat into
which Desiree stepped shot across the water without sound of oars.
The sailor was paddling it noiselessly at the stern.  Desiree was
not unused to boats, and when they came alongside the Elsa she
climbed on board without help.

"This way," said the sailor, leading her towards the deckhouse where
a light burned dimly behind red curtains.  He knocked at the door
and opened it without awaiting a reply.  In the little cabin two men
sat at a table, and one of them was Louis d'Arragon dressed in the
rough clothes of a merchant seaman.  He seemed to recognize Desiree
at once, though she still stood without the door, in the darkness.

"You?" he said in surprise.  "I did not expect you, madame.  You
want me?"

"Yes," answered Desiree, stepping over the combing.  Louis's
companion, who was also a sailor, coarsely clad, rose and, awkwardly
taking off his cap, hurried to the door, murmuring some vague
apology.  It is not always the roughest men who have the worst
manners towards women.

He closed the door behind him, leaving Desiree and Louis looking at
each other by the light of an oil lamp that flickered and gave forth
a greasy smell.  The little cabin was smoke-ridden, and smelt of
ancient tar.  It was no bigger than the table in the drawing-room in
the Frauengasse, across which he had bowed to her in farewell a few
days earlier, little knowing when and where they were to meet again.
For fate can always turn a surprise better than the human fancy.

Behind the curtain, the window stood open, and the high, clear song
of the wind through the rigging filled the little cabin with a
continuous minor note of warning which must have been part of his
life; for he must have heard it, as all sailors do, sleeping or
waking, night and day.

He was probably so accustomed to it that he never heeded it.  But it
filled Desiree's ears, and whenever she heard it in after-life, in
memory this moment came again to her, and she looked back to it, as
a traveller may look back to a milestone at a cross-road, and wonder
where his journey might have ended had he taken another turning.

"My father," she said quickly, "is in danger.  There is no one else
in Dantzig to whom we can turn, and--"

She paused.  What was she going to add?  She hesitated, and then was
silent.  There was no reason why she should have elected to come to
him.  At all events she gave none.

"I am glad I was in Dantzig when it happened," he said, turning to
take up his cap, which was of rough dark fur, such as seamen wear
even in summer at night in the Northern seas.

"Come," he added, "you can tell me as we go ashore."

But they did not speak while the sailor sculled the boat to the
steps.  On the quay they would probably pass unnoticed, for there
were many strange sailors at this time in Dantzig, and Louis
d'Arragon might easily be mistaken for one of the French seamen who
had brought stores by sea from Bordeaux and Brest and Cherbourg.

"Now tell me," he said, as they walked side by side; and in voluble
French, Desiree launched into her story.  It was rather incoherent,
by reason, perhaps, of its frankness.

"Stop--stop," he interrupted gravely, "who is Barlasch?"

Louis walked rather slowly in his stiff sea-boots at her side, and
she instinctively spoke less rapidly as she explained the part that
Barlasch had played.

"And you trust him?"

"Of course," she answered.

"But why?"

"Oh, you are so matter-of-fact," she exclaimed; "I do not know.
Because he is trustworthy, I suppose."

She continued the story, but suddenly stopped and looked up at him
under the shadow of her hood.

"You are silent," she said.  "Do you know something about my father
of which I am ignorant?  Is that it?"

"No," he answered, "I am trying to follow--that is all.  You leave
so much to my imagination."

"But I have no time to explain things," she protested.  "Every
moment is of value.  I will explain all those things some other
time.  At this moment all I can think of is my father and the danger
he is in.  If it had not been for Barlasch, he would have been in
prison by now.  And as it is, the danger is only half averted.  For
he, himself, is so little help.  All must be done for him.  He will
do nothing for himself while this humour is upon him; you
understand?"

"Partly," he answered slowly.

"Oh!" she exclaimed half-impatiently, "one sees that you are an
Englishman."

And she found time, even in her hurry, to laugh.  For she was young
enough to float buoyant upon that sea of hope which ebbs in the
course of years and leaves men stranded on the hard facts of life.

"You forget," he said in self-defence.

"I forget what?"

"That a week ago I had never seen Dantzig, or your father, or your
sister, or the Fr