but strong is fate, o love,
who makes, who mars, who ends.
desiree was telling mathilde the brief news of her futile journey, when a knock at the front door made them turn from the stairs where they were standing. it was sebastian's knock. his hours had been less regular of late. he came and went without explanation.
when he had freed his throat from his furs, and laid aside his gloves, he glanced hastily at desiree, who had kissed him without speaking.
“and your husband?” he asked curtly.
“it was not he whom we found at thorn,” she answered. there was something in her father's voice—in his quick, sidelong glance at her—that caught her attention. he had changed lately. from a man of dreams he had been transformed into a man of action. it is customary to designate a man of action as a hard man. custom is the brick wall against which feeble minds come to a standstill and hinder the progress of the world. sebastian had been softened by action, through which his mental energy had found an outlet. but to-night he was his old self again—hard, scornful, incomprehensible.
“i have heard nothing of him,” said desiree.
sebastian was stamping the snow from his boots.
“but i have,” he said, without looking up.
desiree said nothing. she knew that the secret she had guarded so carefully—the secret kept by herself and louis—was hers no longer. in the silence of the next moments she could hear barlasch breathing on his fingers, within the kitchen doorway just behind her. mathilde made a little movement. she was on the stairs, and she moved nearer to the balustrade and held to it breathlessly. for charles darragon's secret was de casimir's too.
“these two gentlemen,” said sebastian slowly, “were in the secret service of napoleon. they are hardly likely to return to dantzig.”
“why not?” asked mathilde.
“they dare not.”
“i think the emperor will be able to protect his officers,” said mathilde.
“but not his spies,” replied sebastian coldly.
“since they wore his uniform, they cannot be blamed for doing their duty. they are brave enough. they would hardly avoid returning to dantzig because—because they have outwitted the tugendbund.”
mathilde's face was colourless with anger, and her quiet eyes flashed. she had been surprised into this sudden advocacy, and an advocate who displays temper is always a dangerous ally. sebastian glanced at her sharply. she was usually so self-controlled that her flashing eyes and quick breath betrayed her.
“what do you know of the tugendbund?” he asked.
but she would not answer, merely shrugging her shoulders and closing her thin lips with a snap.
“it is not only in dantzig,” said sebastian, “that they are unsafe. it is anywhere where the tugendbund can reach them.”
he turned sharply to desiree. his wits, cleared by action, told him that her silence meant that she, at all events, had not been surprised. she had, therefore, known already the part played by de casimir and charles, in dantzig, before the war.
“and you,” he said, “you have nothing to say for your husband.”
“he may have been misled,” she said mechanically, in the manner of one making a prepared speech or meeting a foreseen emergency. it had been foreseen by louis d'arragon. the speech had been, unconsciously, prepared by him.
“you mean, by colonel de casimir,” suggested mathilde, who had recovered her usual quiet. and desiree did not deny her meaning. sebastian looked from one to the other. it was the irony of fate that had married one of his daughters to charles darragon, and affianced the other to de casimir. his own secret, so well kept, had turned in his hand like a concealed weapon.
they were all startled by barlasch, who spoke from the kitchen door, where he had been standing unobserved or forgotten. he came forward to the light of the lamp hanging overhead.
“that reminds me...” he said a second time, and having secured their attention, he instituted a search in the many pockets of his nondescript clothing. he still wore a dirty handkerchief bound over one eye. it served to release him from duty in the trenches or work on the frozen fortifications. by this simple device, coupled with half a dozen bandages in various parts of his person, where a frost-bite or a wound gave excuse, he passed as one of the twenty-five thousand sick and wounded who encumbered dantzig at this time, and were already dying at the rate of fifty a day.
“a letter...” he said, still searching with his maimed hand. “you mentioned the name of the colonel de casimir. it was that which recalled to my mind...” he paused, and produced a letter carefully sealed. he turned it over, glancing at the seals with a reproving jerk of the head, which conveyed as clearly as words a shameless confession that he had been frustrated by them... “this letter. i was told to give it you, without fail, at the right moment.”
it could hardly be the case that he honestly thought this moment might be so described. but he gave the letter to mathilde with a gesture of grim triumph. perhaps he was thinking of the cellar in the palace on the petrovka at moscow, and the treasure which he had found there.
“it is from the colonel de casimir,” he said, “a clever man,” he added, turning confidentially to sebastian, and holding his attention by an upraised hand. “oh!... a clever man.”
mathilde, her face all flushed, tore open the envelope, while barlasch, breathing on his fingers, watched with twinkling eye and busy lips.
the letter was a long one. colonel de casimir was an adept at explanation. there was, no doubt, much to explain. mathilde read the letter carefully. it was the first she had ever had—a love-letter in its guise—with explanations in it. love and explanation in the same breath. assuredly de casimir was a daring lover.
“he says that dantzig will be taken by storm,” she said at length, “and that the cossacks will spare no one.”
“does it signify,” inquired sebastian in his smoothest voice, “what colonel de casimir may say?”
his grand manner had come back to him. he made a gesture with his hand almost suggestive of a ruffle at the wrist, and clearly insulting to colonel de casimir.
“he urges us to quit the city before it is too late,” continued mathilde, in her measured voice, and awaited her father's reply. he took snuff with a cold smile.
“you will not do so?” she asked. and by way of reply, sebastian laughed as he dusted the snuff from his coat with his pocket-handkerchief.
“he asks me to go to cracow with the grafin, and marry him,” said mathilde finally. and sebastian only shrugged his shoulders. the suggestion was beneath contempt.
“and...?” he inquired with raised eyebrows.
“i shall do it,” replied mathilde, defiance shining in her eyes.
“at all events,” commented sebastian, who knew mathilde's mind, and met her coldness with indifference, “you will do it with your eyes open, and not leap in the dark, as desiree did. i was to blame there; a man is always to blame if he is deceived. with you... bah! you know what the man is. but you do not know, unless he tells you in that letter, that he is even a traitor in his treachery. he has accepted the amnesty offered by the czar; he has abandoned napoleon's cause; he has petitioned the czar to allow him to retire to cracow, and there live on his estates.”
“he has no doubt good reasons for his action,” said mathilde.
“two carriages full,” muttered barlasch, who had withdrawn to the dark corner near the kitchen door. but no one heeded him.
“you must make your choice,” said sebastian, with the coldness of a judge. “you are of age. choose.”
“i have already chosen,” answered mathilde. “the grafin leaves to-morrow. i will go with her.”
she had, at all events, the courage of her own opinions—a courage not rare in women, however valueless may be the judgment upon which it is based. and in fairness it must be admitted that women usually have the courage not only of the opinion, but of the consequence, and meet it with a better grace than men can summon in misfortune.
sebastian dined alone and hastily. mathilde was locked in her room, and refused to open the door. desiree cooked her father's dinner while barlasch made ready to depart on some vague errand in the town.
“there may be news,” he said. “who knows? and afterwards the patron will go out, and it would not be wise for you to remain alone in the house.”
“why not?”
barlasch turned and looked at her thoughtfully over his shoulder.
“in some of the big houses down in the niederstadt there are forty and fifty soldiers quartered—diseased, wounded, without discipline. there are others coming. i have told them we have fever in the house. it is the only way. we may keep them out; for the frauengasse is in the centre of the town, and the soldiers are not needed in this quarter. but you—you cannot lie as i can. you laugh—ah! a woman tells more lies; but a man tells them better. push the bolts, when i am gone.”
after his dinner, sebastian went out, as barlasch had predicted. he said nothing to desiree of charles or of the future. there was nothing to be said, perhaps. he did not ask why mathilde was absent. in the stillness of the house, he could probably hear her moving in her rooms upstairs.
he had not been long gone when mathilde came down, dressed to go out. she came into the kitchen where desiree was doing the work of the absent lisa, who had reluctantly gone to her home on the baltic coast. mathilde stood by the kitchen table and ate some bread.
“the grafin has arranged to quit dantzig to-morrow,” she said. “i am going to ask her to take me with her.”
desiree nodded and made no comment. mathilde went to the door, but paused there. without looking round, she stood thinking deeply. they had grown from childhood together—motherless—with a father whom neither understood. together they had faced the difficulties of life; the hundred petty difficulties attending a woman's life in a strange land, among neighbours who bear the sleepless grudge of unsatisfied curiosity. they had worked together for their daily bread. and now the full stream of life had swept them together from the safe moorings of childhood.
“will you come too?” asked mathilde. “all that he says about dantzig is true.”
“no, thank you,” answered desiree, gently enough. “i will wait here. i must wait in dantzig.”
“i cannot,” said mathilde, half excusing herself. “i must go. i cannot help it. you understand?”
“yes,” said desiree, and nothing more.
had mathilde asked her the question six months ago, she would have said “no.” but she understood now, not that mathilde could love de casimir; that was beyond her individual comprehension, but that there was no alternative now.
soon after mathilde had gone, barlasch returned.
“if mademoiselle mathilde is going, she will have to go to-morrow,” he said. “those that are coming in at the gates now are the rearguard of the heudelet division which was driven out of elbing by the cossacks three days ago.”
he sat mumbling to himself by the fire, and only turned to the supper which desiree had placed in readiness for him when she quitted the room and went upstairs. it was he who opened the door for mathilde, who returned in half an hour. she thanked him absent-mindedly and went upstairs. he could hear the sisters talking together in a low voice in the drawing-room, which he had never seen, at the top of the stairs.
then desiree came down, and he helped her to find in a shed in the yard one of those travelling-trunks which he had recognized as being of french manufacture. he took off his boots, and carried it upstairs for her.
it was ten o'clock before sebastian came in. he nodded his thanks to barlasch, and watched him bolt the door. he made no inquiry as to mathilde, but extinguished the lamp, and went to his room. he never mentioned her name again.
early the next morning, the girls were astir. but barlasch was before them, and when desiree came down, she found the kitchen fire alight. barlasch was cleaning a knife, and nodded a silent good morning. desiree's eyes were red, and barlasch must have noted this sign of grief, for he gave a contemptuous laugh, and continued his occupation.
it was barely daylight when the grafin's heavy, old-fashioned carriage drew up in front of the house. mathilde came down, thickly veiled and in her travelling furs. she did not seem to see barlasch, and omitted to thank him for carrying her travelling-trunk to the carriage.
he stood on the terrace beside desiree until the carriage had turned the corner into the pfaffengasse.
“bah!” he said, “let her go. there is no stopping them, when they are like that. it is the curse—of the garden of eden.”
