"Who is that?" asked Lisa just within, on the mat. She must have been there all the time.
"Barlasch," he replied. And the bolts which he, in his knowledge of such matters, himself had oiled, were quickly drawn.
Inside he found Lisa, and behind her Mathilde and Desiree.
"Where is the patron?" he asked, turning to bolt the door again.
"He is out, in the town," answered Desiree, in a strained voice. "Where are you from?"
"From Kowno."
Barlasch looked from one face to the other. His own was burnt red, and the light of the lamp hanging over his head gleamed on the icicles suspended to his eyebrows and ragged whiskers. In the warmth of the house his frozen garments began to melt, and from his limbs the water dripped to the floor with a sound like rain. Then he caught sight of Desiree"s face.
"He is alive, I tell you that," he said abruptly. "And well, so far as we know. It was at Kowno that we got news of him. I have a letter."
He opened his cloak, which was stiff like cardboard and creaked when he bent the rough cloth. Under his cloak he wore a Russian peasant"s sheepskin coat, and beneath that the remains of his uniform.
"A dog"s country," he muttered, as he breathed on his fingers.
At last he found the letter, and gave it to Desiree.
"You will have to make your choice," he commented, with a grimace indicative of a serious situation, "like any other woman. No doubt you will choose wrong."
Desiree went up two steps in order to be nearer the lamp, and they all watched her as she opened the letter.
"Is it from Charles?" asked Mathilde, speaking for the first time.
"No," answered Desiree, rather breathlessly.
Barlasch nudged Lisa, indicated his own mouth, and pushed her towards the kitchen. He nodded cunningly to Mathilde, as if to say that they were now free to discuss family affairs; and added, with a gesture towards his inner man--
"Since last night--nothing."
In a few minutes Desiree, having read the letter twice, handed it to her sister. It was characteristically short.
"We have found a man here," wrote Louis d"Arragon, "who travelled as far as Vilna with Charles. There they parted. Charles, who was ordered to Warsaw on staff work, told his friend that you were in Dantzig, and that, foreseeing a siege of the city, he had written to you to join him at Warsaw. This letter has doubtless been lost. I am following Charles to Warsaw, tracing him step by step, and if he has fallen ill by the way, as so many have done, shall certainly find him. Barlasch returns to bring you to Thorn, if you elect to join Charles. I will await you at Thorn, and if Charles has proceeded, we will follow him to Warsaw."
Barlasch, who had watched Desiree, now followed Mathilde"s eyes as they pa.s.sed to and fro over the closely written lines. As she neared the end, and her face, upon which deep shadows had been graven by sorrow and suspense, grew drawn and hopeless, he gave a curt laugh.
"There were two," he said, "travelling together--the Colonel de Casimir and the husband of--of la pet.i.te. They had facilities--name of G.o.d!--two carriages and an escort. In the carriages they had some of the Emperor"s playthings--holy pictures, the imperial loot--I know not what. Besides that, they had some of their own--not furs and candlesticks such as we others carried on our backs, but gold and jewellery enough to make a man rich all his life."
"How do you know that?" asked Mathilde, a dull light in her eyes.
"I--I know where it came from," replied Barlasch, with an odd smile.
"Allez! you may take it from me." And he muttered to himself in the patois of the Cotes du Nord.
"And they were safe and well at Vilna?" asked Mathilde.
"Yes--and they had their treasure. They had good fortune, or else they were more clever than other men; for they had the Imperial treasure to escort, and could take any man"s horse for the carriages in which also they had placed their own treasure. It was Captain Darragon who held the appointment, and the other--the Colonel--had attached himself to him as volunteer. For it was at Vilna that the last thread of discipline was broken, and every man did as he wished."
"They did not come to Kowno?" asked Mathilde, who had a clear mind, and that grasp of a situation which more often falls to the lot of the duller s.e.x.
"They did not come to Kowno. They would turn south at Vilna. It was as well. At Kowno the soldiers had broken into the magazines--the brandy was poured out in the streets. The men were lying there, the drunken and the dead all confused together on the snow. But there would be no confusion the next morning; for all would be dead."
"Was it at Kowno that you left Monsieur d"Arragon?" asked Desiree, in a sharp voice.
"No--no. We quitted Kowno together, and parted on the heights above the town. He would not trust me--monsieur le marquis--he was afraid that I should get at the brandy. And he was right. I only wanted the opportunity. He is a strong one--that!" And Barlasch held up a warning hand, as if to make known to all and sundry that it would be inadvisable to trifle with Louis d"Arragon.
He drew the icicles one by one from his whiskers with a wry face indicative of great agony, and threw them down on the mat.
"Well," he said, after a pause, to Desiree, "have you made your choice?"
Desiree was reading the letter again, and before she could answer, a quick knock on the front door startled them all. Barlasch"s face broke into that broad smile which was only called forth by the presence of danger.
"Is it the patron?" he asked in a whisper, with his hand on the heavy bolts affixed by that pious Hanseatic merchant who held that if G.o.d be in the house there is no need of watchmen.
"Yes," answered Mathilde. "Open quickly."
Sebastian came in with a light step. He was like a man long saddled with a burden of which he had at length been relieved.
"Ah! What news?" he asked, when he recognised Barlasch.
"Nothing that you do not know already, monsieur," replied Barlasch, "except that the husband of Mademoiselle is well and on the road to Warsaw. Here--read that."
And he took the letter from Desiree"s hand.
"I knew he would come back safely," said Desiree; and that was all.
Sebastian read the letter in one quick glance--and then fell to thinking.
"It is time to quit Dantzig," said Barlasch quietly, as if he had divined the old man"s thoughts. "I know Rapp. There will be trouble--here, on the Vistula."
But Sebastian dismissed the suggestion with a curt shake of the head.
Barlasch"s attention had been somewhat withdrawn by a smell of cooking meat, to which he opened his nostrils frankly and noisily after the manner of a dog.
"Then it remains," he said, looking towards the kitchen, "for Mademoiselle to make her choice."
"There is no choice," replied Desiree, "I shall be ready to go with you--when you have eaten."
"Good," said Barlasch, and the word applied as well to Lisa, who was beckoning to him.
CHAPTER XXI. ON THE WARSAW ROAD.