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 Frauenga.s.se, 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 pa.s.s Antoine Sebastian in the narrow pa.s.sage 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 pa.s.sage 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 a.s.sumed 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 hoa.r.s.e 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 pa.s.sed 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 Frauenga.s.se. 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 Frauenga.s.se, 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 pa.s.sage.
"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.