Barlasch of the Guard Part 15

"The wave moves on," he said, making a gesture, and a sound ill.u.s.trating that watery progress. "And Dantzig will soon be forgotten. You will be left in peace--but we go on to--" He paused and shrugged his shoulders while attending to a strap. "India or the devil," he concluded.

"Colonel Casimir has gone," he added in what he took to be an aside to Mathilde. Which made her wonder for a moment. "I saw him depart with his staff soon after daybreak. And the Emperor has forgotten Dantzig. It is safe enough for the patron now. You can write him a letter to tell him so. Tell him that I said it was safe for him to return quietly here, and live in the Frauenga.s.se--I, Barlasch."

He was ready now, and, b.u.t.toning his tunic, he fixed the straps across his chest, looking from one to the other of the three women watching him, not without some appreciation of an audience. Then he turned to Desiree, who had always been his friend, with whom he now considered that he had the soldier's bond of a peril pa.s.sed through together.

"The Emperor has forgotten Dantzig," he repeated, "and those against whom he had a grudge. But he has also forgotten those who are in prison.

It is not good to be forgotten in prison. Tell the patron that--to put it in his pipe and smoke it. Some day he may remember an old soldier.

Ah, one thinks of one's self."

And beneath his bushy brows he looked at her with a gleam of cunning.

He went to the door and, turning there, pointed the finger of scorn at Lisa, stout and tearful. He gave a short laugh of a low-born contempt, and departed without further parley.

On the doorstep he paused to put on his boots and b.u.t.ton his gaiters, stooping clumsily with a groan beneath his burden of haversack and kit.

Desiree, who had had time to go upstairs to her bedroom, ran after him as he descended the steps. She had her purse in her hand, and she thrust it into his, quickly and breathlessly.

"If you take it," she said, "I shall know that we are friends."

He took it ungraciously enough. It was a silken thing with two small rings to keep the money in place, and he looked at it with a grimace, weighing it in his hand. It was very light.

"Money," he said. "No, thank you. To get drink with, and be degraded and sent to prison. Not for me, madame. No, thank you. One thinks of one's career."

And with a gruff laugh of worldly wisdom he continued his way down the worn steps, never looking back at her as she stood in the sunlight watching him, with the purse in her hand.

So in his old age Papa Barlasch was borne forward to the war on that human tide which flooded all Lithuania, and never ebbed again, but sank into the barren ground, and was no more seen.

As the slow autumn approached, it became apparent that Dantzig no longer interested the watchers. Vilna became the base of operations. Smolensk fell, and, most wonderful of all, the Russians were retiring on Moscow.

Dantzig was no longer on the route. For a time it was of the world forgotten, while, as Barlasch had predicted, free men continued at liberty, though their names had an evil savour, while innocent persons in prison were left to rot there.

Desiree continued to receive letters from her husband, full of love and war. For a long time he lingered at Konigsberg, hoping every day to be sent forward. Then he followed Murat across the Niemen, and wrote of weary journeys over the rolling plains of Lithuania.

Towards the end of July he mentioned curtly the arrival of de Casimir at head-quarters.

"With him came a courier," wrote Charles, "bringing your dead letter. I don't believe you love me as I love you. At all events, you do not seem to tell me that you do so often as I want to tell you. Tell me what you do and think every moment of the day...." And so on. Charles seemed to write as easily as he talked, and had no difficulty in setting forth his feelings. "The courier is in the saddle," he concluded. "De Casimir tells me that I must finish. Write and tell me everything. How is Mathilde? And your father? Is he in good health? How does he pa.s.s his day? Does he still go out in the evening to his cafe?"

This seemed to be an afterthought, suggested perhaps by conversation pa.s.sing in the room in which he sat.

The other exile, writing from Stockholm, was briefer in his communications.

"I am well," wrote Antoine Sebastian, "and hope to arrive soon after you receive this. Felix Meyer, the notary, has instructions to furnish you with money for household expenses."

It would appear that Sebastian possessed other friends in Dantzig, who had kept him advised of all that pa.s.sed in the city.

For neither Mathilde nor Desiree had obeyed Barlasch's blunt order to write to their father. They did not know whither he had fled, neither had they received any communication giving an address or a hint as to his future movements. It would appear that the same direct and laconic mind which had carried out his escape deemed it wiser that those left behind should be in no position to furnish information.

In fairness to Barlasch, Desiree had made little of that soldier's part in Sebastian's evasion, and Mathilde displayed small interest in such details. She rather fastened, however, upon the a.s.sistance rendered by Louis d'Arragon.

"Why did he do it?" she asked.

"Oh, because I asked him," was the reply.

"And why did you ask him?"

"Who else was there to ask?" returned Desiree, which was indeed unanswerable.

Perhaps the question had been suggested to her by de Casimir, who, on learning that Louis d'Arragon had helped her father to slip through the Emperor's fingers, had asked the same in his own characteristic way.

"What could he hope to gain by doing it?" he had inquired as he walked by Mathilde's side, along the Pfaffenga.s.se. And he made other interrogations respecting D'Arragon which Mathilde was no more able to satisfy, as he accompanied her to the Frauenga.s.se.

Since that time the dancing-lessons had been resumed to the music of a hired fiddler, and Desiree had once more taken up her household task of making both ends meet. She approached the difficulties as impetuously as ever, and danced the stout pupils round the room with undiminished energy.

"It seems no good at all, your being married," said one of these breathlessly, while Desiree laughingly attended to her dishevelled hair.

"Why not?"

"Because you still make your own dresses and teach dancing," replied the pupil, with a quick sigh at the thought of some smart bursch in the Prussian contingent.

"Ah, but Charles will return a colonel, and I shall bow to you in a silk dress from a chaise and pair--come, left foot first. You are not so tired as you think you are."

For those that are busy, time flies quickly enough. And there is nothing more absorbing than keeping the wolf from the door, else a.s.suredly the hungry thousands would find time to arise and rend the overfed few.

August succeeded a hot July and brought with it Sebastian's curt letter.

Sebastian himself--that shadowy father--returned to his home a few hours later. He was not alone, for a heavier step followed his into the pa.s.sage, and Desiree, always quick to hear and see and act, coming to the head of the stairs, perceived her father looking upwards towards her, while his companion in rough sailor's clothes turned to lay aside the valise he had carried on his shoulder.

Mathilde was close behind Desiree, and Sebastian kissed his daughters with that cold repression of manner which always suggested a strenuous past in which the emotions had been relinquished for ever as an indulgence unfit for a stern and hard-bitten age.

"I took him away and now return him," said the sailor coming forward.

Desiree had always known that it was Louis, but Mathilde gave a little start at the sound of the neat clipping French in the mouth of an educated Frenchman so rarely heard in Dantzig--so rarely heard in all broad France to-day.

"Yes--that is true," answered Sebastian, turning to him with a sudden change of manner. There was that in voice and att.i.tude which his hearers had never noted before, although Charles had often evoked something approaching it. It seemed to indicate that, of all the people with whom they had seen their father hold intercourse, Louis d'Arragon was the only man who stood upon equality with him.

"That is true--and at great risk to yourself," he said, not a.s.signing, however, so great an importance to personal danger as men do in these careful days. As he spoke, he took Louis by the arm and by a gesture invited him to precede him upstairs with a suggestion of camaraderie somewhat startling in one usually so cold and formal as Antoine Sebastian, the dancing-master of the Frauenga.s.se.

"I was writing to Charles," said Desiree to D'Arragon, when they reached the drawing-room, and, crossing to her own table, she set the papers in order there. These consisted of a number of letters from her husband, read and re-read, it would appear. And the answer to them, a clean sheet of paper bearing only the date and address, lay beneath her hand.

"The courier leaves this evening," she said, with a queer ring of anxiety in her voice, as if she feared that for some reason or another she ran the risk of failing to despatch her letter. She glanced at the clock, and stood, pen in hand, thinking of what she should write.

"May I enclose a line?" asked Louis. "It is not wise, perhaps, for me to address to him a letter--since I am on the other side. It is a small matter of a heritage which he and I divide. I have placed some money in a Dantzig bank for him. He may require it when he returns."

"Then you do not correspond with Charles?" said Mathilde, clearing a s.p.a.ce for him on the larger table, and setting before him ink and pens and paper.

"Thank you, Mademoiselle," he said, glancing at her with that light of interest in his dark eyes which she had ignited once before by a question on the only occasion that they had met. He seemed to detect that she was more interested in him than her indifferent manner would appear to indicate. "No, I am a bad correspondent. If Charles and I, in our present circ.u.mstances, were to write to each other it could only lead to intrigue, for which I have no taste and Charles no capacity."

"You seem to hint that Charles might have such a taste then," she said, with her quiet smile, as she moved away leaving him to write.

"Charles has probably found out by this time," he answered with the bluntness which he claimed as a prerogative of his calling and nation, "that a soldier of Napoleon's who intrigues will make a better career than one who merely fights."

He took up his pen and wrote with the absorption of one who has but little time and knows exactly what to say. By chance he glanced towards Desiree, who sat at her own table near the window. She was stroking her cheek with the feather of her pen, looking with puzzled eyes at the blank paper before her. Each time D'Arragon dipped his pen he glanced at her, watching her. And Mathilde, with her needlework, watched them both.