Barlasch of the Guard Part 17

She was alone in the room, having come down early, as was her wont, to prepare breakfast. She heard Lisa talking with some one at the door--a messenger, no doubt, to say that Charles was dead.

One letter still remained unread. It was in a different writing--the writing on the white leather.

"Madame," it read, "The enclosed papers were found on the field by one of my orderlies. One of them being addressed to you, furnishes a clue to their owner, who must have dropped them in the hurry of the advance.

Should Captain Charles Darragon be your husband, I have the pleasure to inform you that he was seen alive and well at the end of the day."

The writer a.s.sured Desiree of his respectful consideration, and wrote "Surgeon" after his name.

Desiree had read the explanation too late.

CHAPTER XIII. IN THE DAY OF REJOICING.

Truth, though it crush me.

The door of the room stood open, and the sound of a step in the pa.s.sage made Desiree glance up, as she hastily put together the papers found on the battlefield of Borodino.

Louis d'Arragon was coming into the room, and for an instant, before his expression changed, she saw all the fatigue that he must have endured during the night; all that he must have risked. His face was usually still and quiet; a combination of that contemplative calm which characterises seafaring faces, and the clean-cut immobility of a racial type developed by hereditary duties of self-restraint and command.

He knew that there had been a battle, and, seeing the papers on the table, his eyes asked her the inevitable question which his lips were slow to put into words.

In reply Desiree shook her head. She looked at the papers in quick thought. Then she withdrew from them the letter written to her by Charles--and put the others together.

"You told me to send for you," she said in a quiet, tired voice, "if I wanted you. You have saved me the trouble."

His eyes were hard with anxiety as he looked at her. She held the letters towards him.

"By coming," she added, with a glance at him which took in the dust, and the stains of salt-water on his clothes, the fatigue he sought to conceal by a rigid stillness, and the tension that was left by the dangers he had pa.s.sed through--daring all--to come.

Seeing that he looked doubtfully at the papers, she spoke again.

"One," she said, "that one on the stained paper, is addressed to me. You can read it--since I ask you."

The letter told him, at all events, that Charles was not killed, and, seeing his face clear as he read, she gave an odd, curt laugh.

"Read the others," she said. "Oh! you need not hesitate. You need not be so particular. Read one, the top one. One is enough."

The windows stood open, and the morning breeze fluttering the curtains brought in the gay sound of bells, the high clear bells of Hanseatic days, rejoicing at Napoleon's new success--by order of Napoleon. A bee sailed harmoniously into the room, made the circuit of it, and sought the open again with a hum that faded drowsily into silence.

D'Arragon read the letter slowly from beginning to the unsigned end, while Desiree, sitting at the table, upon which she leant one elbow, resting her small square chin in the palm of her hand, watched him.

"Ah?" she exclaimed at length, with a ring of contempt in her voice, as if at the thought of something unclean. "A spy! It is so easy for you to keep still, and to hide all you feel."

D'Arragon folded the letter slowly. It was the fatal letter written in the upper room in the shoemaker's house in Konigsberg in the Neuer Markt, where the linden trees grow close to the window. In it Charles spoke lightly of the sacrifice he had made in leaving Desiree on his wedding-day, to do the Emperor's bidding. It was indeed the greatest sacrifice that man can make; for he had thrown away his honour.

"It may not be so easy as you think," returned D'Arragon, looking towards the door.

He had no time to say more; for Mathilde and her father were talking together on the stairs as they came down. D'Arragon thrust the letters into his pocket, the only indication he had time to give to Desiree of the policy they must pursue. He stood facing the door, alert and quiet, with only a moment in which to shape the course of more than one life.

"There is good news, Monsieur," he said to Sebastian. "Though I did not come to bring it."

Sebastian pointed interrogatively to the open window, where the sound of the bells seemed to emphasize the sunlight and the freshness of the morning.

"No--not that," returned D'Arragon. "It is a great victory, they tell me; but it is hard to say whether such news would be good or bad. It was of Charles that I spoke. He is safe--Madame has heard."

He spoke rather slowly, and turned towards Desiree with a measured gesture, not unlike Sebastian's habitual manner, and a quick glance to satisfy himself that she had understood and was ready.

"Yes," said Desiree, "he was safe and well after the battle, but he gives no details; for the letter was actually written the day before."

"With a mere word, added in postscriptum, to say that he was unhurt at the end of the day," suggested Sebastian, already drawing forward a chair with a gesture full of hospitality, inviting D'Arragon to be seated at the simple breakfast-table. But D'Arragon was looking at Mathilde, who had gone rather hurriedly to the window, as if to breathe the air. He had caught a glimpse of her face as she pa.s.sed. It was hard and set, quite colourless, with bright, sleepless eyes. D'Arragon was a sailor. He had seen that look in rougher faces and sterner eyes, and knew what it meant.

"No details?" asked Mathilde in a m.u.f.fled voice, without looking round.

"No," answered Desiree, who had noticed nothing. How much more clearly we should understand what is going on around us if we had no secrets of our own to defend!

In obedience to Sebastian's gesture, D'Arragon took a chair, and even as he did so Mathilde came to the table, calm and mistress of herself again, to pour out the coffee, and do the honours of the simple meal.

D'Arragon, besides having acquired the seamen's habit of adapting himself unconsciously and un.o.btrusively to his surroundings, was of a direct mind, lacking self-consciousness, and simplified by the pressure of a strong and steady purpose. For men's minds are like the atmosphere, which is always cleared by a steady breeze, while a changing wind generates vapours, mist, uncertainty.

"And what news do you bring from the sea?" asked Sebastian. "Is your sky there as overcast as ours in Dantzig?"

"No, Monsieur, our sky is clearing," answered D'Arragon, eating with a hearty appet.i.te the fresh bread and b.u.t.ter set before him. "Since I saw you, the treaties have been signed, as you doubtless know, between Sweden and Russia and England."

Nodding his head with silent emphasis, Sebastian gave it to be understood that he knew that and more.

"It makes a great difference to us at sea in the Baltic," said D'Arragon. "We are no longer hara.s.sed night and day, like a dog, hounded from end to end of a hostile street, not daring to look into any doorway. The Russian ports and Swedish ports are open to us now."

"One is glad to hear that your life is one of less hards.h.i.+p," said Sebastian gravely. "I.... who have tasted it."

Desiree glanced at his lean, hard face. She rose, went out of the room, and returned in a few minutes carrying a new loaf which she set on the table before him with a short laugh, and something glistening in her eyes that was not mirth.

But neither Desiree nor Mathilde joined in the conversation. They were glad for their father to have a companion so sympathetic as to produce a marked difference in his manner. For Sebastian was more at ease with Louis d'Arragon than he was with Charles, though the latter had the tie of a common fatherland, and spoke the same French that Sebastian spoke.

D'Arragon's French had the roundness always imparted to that language by an English voice. It was perfect enough, but of an educated perfection.

The talk was of such matters as concerned men more than women; of armies and war and treaties of peace. For all the world thought that Alexander of Russia would be brought to his knees by the battle of Borodino. None knew better how to turn a victory to account than he who claimed to be victor now. "It does not suffice," Napoleon wrote to his brother at this time, "to gain a victory. You must learn to turn it to advantage."

Save for the one reference to his life in the Baltic during the past two months, D'Arragon said nothing of himself, of his patient, dogged work carried on by day and by night in all weathers. Content to have escaped with his life, he neither referred to, nor thought of, his part in the negotiations which had resulted in the treaty just signed. For he had been the link between Russia and England; the never-failing messenger pa.s.sing from one to the other with question and answer which were destined to bear fruit at last in an understanding brought to perfection in Paris, culminating at Elba.

Both were guarded in what they said of pa.s.sing events, and both seemed to doubt the truth of the reports now flying through the streets of Dantzig. Even in the quiet Frauenga.s.se all the citizens were out on their terraces calling questions to those that pa.s.sed by beneath the trees. The itinerant tradesman, the milkman going his round, the vendors of fruit from Langfuhr and the distant villages of the plain, lingered at the doors to tell the servants the latest gossip of the market-place.

Even in this frontier city, full of spies, strangers spoke together in the streets, and the sound of their voices, raised above the clang of carillons, came in at the open window.

"At first a victory is always a great one," said D'Arragon, looking towards the window.

"It is so easy to ring a bell," added Sebastian, with his rare smile.

He was quite himself this morning, and only once did the dull look arrest his features into the stony stillness which his daughters knew.