Barlasch of the Guard Part 21

CHAPTER XVI. THE FIRST OF THE EBB.

Tho' he trip and fall He shall not blind his soul with clay.

The days were short, and November was drawing to its end when Barlasch returned to Dantzig. Already the frost, holding its own against a sun that seemed to linger in the North that year, exercised its sway almost to midday, and drew a mist from the level plains.

The autumn had been one of unprecedented splendour, making the imaginative whisper that Napoleon, like a second Joshua, could exact obedience even from the sun. A month earlier, soon after the retreat was ordered, the nights had begun to be cold, but the days remained brilliant. Now the rivers were shrouded in white mist, and still water was frozen.

Barlasch seemed to take it for understood that a billet holds good throughout a whole campaign. But the door of No. 36 Frauenga.s.se was locked when he turned its iron handle. He knocked, and waited on the step.

It was Desiree who opened the door at length--Desiree, grown older, with something new in her eyes. Barlasch, sure of his entree, had already removed his boots, which he carried in his hand; this added to a certain surrept.i.tiousness in his att.i.tude. A handkerchief was bound over his left eye. He wore his shako still, but the rest of his uniform verged on the fantastic. Under a light-blue Bavarian cavalry cape he wore a peasant's homespun s.h.i.+rt, and he carried no arms.

He pushed past Desiree rather unceremoniously, glad to get within doors. He was very lame, and of his blue knitted stockings only the legs remained; he was barefoot.

He limped towards the kitchen, glancing over his shoulder to make sure that Desiree shut the door. The chair he had made his own stood just within the open door of the kitchen. It was nine o'clock in the morning, and Lisa had gone to market. Barlasch sat down.

"Voila," he said, and that was all. But by a gesture he described the end of the world. Then he scowled at her with his available eye with suspicion, and she turned away suddenly, as one may who has not a clear conscience.

"What is the matter with your eye?" she asked, in order to break the silence. He laid aside his hat, and his ragged hair, quite white, fell to his shoulders. By way of answer, he unknotted the bloodstained dusky handkerchief, and looked up at her. The hidden eye was uninjured and as bright as the other.

"Nothing," he answered, and he confirmed the statement by a low-born wink. More than once he glanced, with a glaring light in his eye, towards the cupboard where Lisa kept the bread, and quite suddenly Desiree knew that he was starving. She ran to the cupboard, and hurriedly set down on the table before him what was there. It was not much--a piece of cold meat and a whole loaf.

He had taken off his haversack, and was fumbling in it with unsteady hands. At last he found that which he sought. It was wrapped in a silk scarf that must have come from Cashmere to Moscow, and from Moscow in his haversack with pieces of horseflesh and muddy roots to Dantzig. With that awkwardness in giving and taking which belongs to his cla.s.s, he held out to Desiree a little square "ikon" no bigger than a playing-card. It was of gold, set with diamonds, and the faces of the Virgin and Child were painted with exquisite delicacy.

"It is a thing to say your prayers to," he said gruffly.

By an effort he kept his eyes averted from the food on the table.

"I met a baker on the bridge," he said, "and offered it to him for a loaf, but he refused."

And there was a whole history of human suffering and temptation--of the human fall--in his curt laugh. While Desiree was looking at the treasure in speechless admiration, he turned suddenly and took the bread and meat in his grimy hands. His crooked fingers closed over the loaf, making the crust crack, and for a second the expression of his face was not human.

Then he hurried to the room that had been his, like a dog that seeks to hide its greed in its kennel.

In a surprisingly short time he came back, the greyness all gone from his face, though his eyes still glittered with the dry, hard light of starvation. He went back to the chair near the door, and sat down.

"Seven hundred miles," he said, looking down at his feet with a shake of the head, "seven hundred miles in six weeks."

Then he glanced at her and out through the open door, to make sure none could overhear.

"Because I was afraid," he added in a whisper. "I am easily frightened.

I am not brave."

Desiree shook her head and laughed. Women have from all time accepted the theory that a uniform makes a man courageous.

"They had to abandon the guns," he went on, "soon after quitting Moscow.

The horses were starving. There was a steep hill, and the guns were left at the bottom. Then I began to be afraid. There were some marching with candelabras on their backs and nothing in their carna.s.sieres. They carried a million francs on their shoulders and death in their faces. I was afraid. I carried salt--salt--and nothing else. Then one day I saw the Emperor's face. That was enough. The same night I crept away while the others slept round the fire. They looked like a masquerade. Some of them wore ermine. Oh! I was afraid, I tell you. I only had the salt and some horse. There was plenty of that on the road. And that toy. I found it in Moscow. I stood in a cellar, as big as this room, full of such things. But one thinks of one's life. I only carried salt, and that picture for you... to say your prayers to. The good G.o.d will hear you, perhaps; He has no time to listen to us others."

And he used the last words as a French peasant, which is a survival of serfdom that has come down through the furnace of the Revolution.

"But I cannot take it," said Desiree. "It is worth a million francs."

He looked at her fiercely.

"You think that I look for something in return?"

"Oh no!" she answered, "I have nothing to give you in return. I am as poor as you."

"Then we can be friends," he said. He was eyeing surrept.i.tiously a mug of beer which Desiree had set before him on the table. Some instinct, or the teaching of the last two months, made it repugnant to him to eat or drink beneath his neighbour's eye. He was a sorry-looking figure, not far removed from the animals, and in his downward journey he had picked up, perhaps, the instinct which none can explain, telling an animal to take its food in secret.

Desiree went to the window, turning her back to him, and looked out into the yard. She heard him drink, and set the mug down again with a gulp.

"You were in Moscow?" she said at length, half turning towards him so that he could see her profile and her short upper lip, which was parted as if to ask a question which she did not put into words. He looked her slowly up and down beneath his heavy eyebrows, his little cunning eyes alight with suspicion. He watched her parted lips, which were tilted at the corners, showing humour and a nature quick to laugh or suffer. Then he jerked his head upwards as if he saw the unasked question quivering there, and bore her some malice for her silence.

"Yes! I was in Moscow," he said, watching the colour fade from her face.

"And I saw him--your husband--there. I was on guard outside his door the night we entered the city. It was I who carried to the post the letter he wrote you. He was very anxious that it should reach you. You received it--that love-letter?"

"Yes," answered Desiree gravely, in no wise responding to a sudden forced gaiety in Papa Barlasch, which was only an evidence of the shyness with which rough men all the world over approach the subject of love. The gaiety lapsed into a sudden silence. He waited for her to ask a question, but in vain.

"I never saw him again," went on Barlasch, "for the 'general' sounded, and I went out into the streets to find the city on fire. In a great army, as in a large country, one may easily lose one's own brother. But he will return--have no fear. He has good fortune--the fine gentleman."

He stopped and scratched his head, looked at her sideways with a grimace of bewilderment.

"It is good news I bring you," he muttered. "He was alive and well when we began the retreat. He was on the staff, and the staff had horses and carriages. They had bread to eat, I am told."

"And you--what had you?" asked Desiree, over her shoulder.

"No matter," he answered gruffly, "since I am here."

"And yet you believe in that man still," flashed out Desiree, turning to face him.

Barlasch held up a warning finger, as if bidding her to be silent on a subject on which she was not capable of forming a judgment. He wagged his head from side to side and heaved a sigh.

"I tell you," he said, "I saw his face after Malo-Jaroslavetz; we lost ten thousand that day. And I was afraid. For I saw in it that he was going to leave us as he did in Egypt. I am not afraid when he is there--not afraid of the Devil--or the bon Dieu, but when Napoleon is not there--" He broke off with a gesture describing abject terror.

"They say in Dantzig," said Desiree, "that he will never get back across the Beresina, for the Russians are bringing two armies to stop him there. They say that the Prussians will turn against him."

"Ah--they say that already?"

"Yes."

He looked at her with a sudden light of anger in his eyes.

"Who has taught you to hate Napoleon?" he asked bluntly.

And again Desiree turned away from his glance as if she could not meet it.