Barlasch of the Guard

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This etext was produced by Les Bowler, St. Ives, Dorset.

BARLASCH OF THE GUARD BY HENRY SETON MERRIMAN

"And they that have not heard shall understand"

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

I. ALL ON A SUMMER'S DAY
II. A CAMPAIGNER
III. FATE
IV. THE CLOUDED MOON
V. THE WEISSEN ROSS'L
VI. THE SHOEMAKER OF KONIGSBERG
VII. THE WAY OF LOVE
VIII. A VISITATION
IX. THE GOLDEN GUESS
X. IN DEEP WATER
XI. THE WAVE MOVES ON
XII. FROM BORODINO
XIII. IN THE DAY OF REJOICING
XIV. MOSCOW
XV. THE GOAL
XVI. THE FIRST OF THE EBB
XVII. A FORLORN HOPE
XVIII. MISSING
XIX. KOWNO
XX. DESIREE'S CHOICE
XXI. ON THE WARSAW ROAD
XXII. THROUGH THE SHOALS
XXIII. AGAINST THE STREAM
XXIV. MATHILDE CHOOSES
XXV. A DESPATCH
XXVI. ON THE BRIDGE
XXVII. A FLASH OF MEMORY
XXVIII. VILNA
XXIX. THE BARGAIN
XXX. THE FULFILMENT

CHAPTER I. ALL ON A SUMMER'S DAY.

Il faut devoir lever les yeux pour regarder ce qu'on aime.

A few children had congregated on the steps of the Marienkirche at
Dantzig, because the door stood open. The verger, old Peter Koch--
on week days a locksmith--had told them that nothing was going to
happen; had been indiscreet enough to bid them go away. So they
stayed, for they were little girls.

A wedding was in point of fact in progress within the towering walls
of the Marienkirche--a cathedral built of red brick in the great
days of the Hanseatic League.

"Who is it?" asked a stout fishwife, stepping over the threshold to
whisper to Peter Koch.

"It is the younger daughter of Antoine Sebastian," replied the
verger, indicating with a nod of his head the house on the left-hand
side of the Frauengasse where Sebastian lived. There was a wealth
of meaning in the nod. For Peter Koch lived round the corner in the
Kleine Schmiedegasse, and of course--well, it is only neighbourly to
take an interest in those who drink milk from the same cow and buy
wood from the same Jew.

The fishwife looked thoughtfully down the Frauengasse where every
house has a different gable, and none of less than three floors
within the pitch of the roof. She singled out No. 36, which has a
carved stone balustrade to its broad verandah and a railing of
wrought-iron on either side of the steps descending from the
verandah to the street.

"They teach dancing?" she inquired.

And Koch nodded again, taking snuff.

"And he--the father?"

"He scrapes a fiddle," replied the verger, examining the lady's
basket of fish in a non-committing and final way. For a locksmith
is almost as confidential an adviser as a notary. The Dantzigers,
moreover, are a thrifty race and keep their money in a safe place; a
habit which was to cost many of them their lives before the coming
of another June.

The marriage service was a long one and not exhilarating. Through
the open door came no sound of organ or choir, but the deep and
monotonous drawl of one voice. There had been no ringing of bells.
The north countries, with the exception of Russia, require more than
the ringing of bells or the waving of flags to warm their hearts.
They celebrate their festivities with good meat and wine consumed
decently behind closed doors.

Dantzig was in fact under a cloud. No larger than a man's hand,
this cloud had risen in Corsica forty-three years earlier. It had
overshadowed France. Its gloom had spread to Italy, Austria, Spain;
had penetrated so far north as Sweden; was now hanging sullen over
Dantzig, the greatest of the Hanseatic towns, the Free City. For a
Dantziger had never needed to say that he was a Pole or a Prussian,
a Swede or a subject of the Czar. He was a Dantziger. Which is
tantamount to having for a postal address a single name that is
marked on the map.

Napoleon had garrisoned the Free City with French troops some years
earlier, to the sullen astonishment of the citizens. And Prussia
had not objected for a very obvious reason. Within the last
fourteen months the garrison had been greatly augmented. The clouds
seemed to be gathering over this prosperous city of the north,
where, however, men continued to eat and drink, to marry and to be
given in marriage as in another city of the plain.

Peter Koch replaced his snuff-stained handkerchief in the pocket of
his rusty cassock and stood aside. He murmured a few conventional
words of blessing, hard on the heels of stronger exhortations to the
waiting children. And Desiree Sebastian came out into the sunlight-
-Desiree Sebastian no more.

That she was destined for the sunlight was clearly written on her
face and in her gay, kind blue eyes. She was tall and straight and
slim, as are English and Polish and Danish girls, and none other in
all the world. But the colouring of her face and hair was more
pronounced than in the fairness of Anglo-Saxon youth. For her hair
had a golden tinge in it, and her skin was of that startlingly milky
whiteness which is only found in those who live round the frozen
waters. Her eyes, too, were of a clearer blue--like the blue of a
summer sky over the Baltic sea. The rosy colour was in her cheeks,
her eyes were laughing. This was a bride who had no misgivings.

On seeing such a happy face returning from the altar the observer
might have concluded that the bride had assuredly attained her
desire; that she had secured a title; that the pre-nuptial
settlement had been safely signed and sealed.

But Desiree had none of these things. It was nearly a hundred years
ago.

Her husband must have whispered some laughing comment on Koch, or
another appeal to her quick sense of the humorous, for she looked
into his changing face and gave a low, girlish laugh of amusement as
they descended the steps together into the brilliant sunlight.

Charles Darragon wore one of the countless uniforms that enlivened
the outward world in the great days of the greatest captain that
history has seen. He was unmistakably French--unmistakably a French
gentleman, as rare in 1812 as he is to-day. To judge from his small
head and clean-cut features, fine and mobile; from his graceful
carriage and slight limbs, this man was one of the many bearing
names that begin with the fourth letter of the alphabet since the
Terror only.

He was merely a lieutenant in a regiment of Alsatian recruits; but
that went for nothing in the days of the Empire. Three kings in
Europe had begun no farther up the ladder.

The Frauengasse is a short street, made narrow by the terrace that
each house throws outward from its face, each seeking to gain a few
inches on its neighbour. It runs from the Marienkirche to the
Frauenthor, and remains to-day as it was built three hundred years
ago.

Desiree nodded and laughed to the children, who interested her. She
was quite simple and womanly, as some women, it is to be hoped, may
succeed in continuing until the end of time. She was always pleased
to see children; was glad, it seemed, that they should have
congregated on the steps to watch her pass. Charles, with a faint
and unconscious reflex of that grand manner which had brought his
father to the guillotine, felt in his pocket for money, and found
none.

He jerked his hand out with widespread fingers, in a gesture
indicative of familiarity with the nakedness of the land.

"I have nothing, little citizens," he said with a mock gravity;
"nothing but my blessing."

And he made a gay gesture with his left hand over their heads, not
the act of benediction, but of peppering, which made them all laugh.
The bride and bridegroom passing on joined in the laughter with
hearts as light and voices scarcely less youthful.

The Frauengasse is intersected by the Pfaffengasse at right angles,
through which narrow and straight street passes much of the traffic
towards the Langenmarkt, the centre of the town. As the little
bridal procession reached the corner of this street, it halted at
the approach of some mounted troops. There was nothing unusual in
this sight in the streets of Dantzig, which were accustomed now to
the clatter of the Saxon cavalry.

But at the sight of the first troopers Charles Darragon threw up his
head with a little exclamation of surprise.

Desiree looked at him and then turned to follow the direction of his
gaze.

"What are these?" she murmured. For the uniforms were new and
unfamiliar.

"Cavalry of the Old Guard," replied her husband, and as he spoke he
caught his breath.

The horsemen vanished into the continuation of the Pfaffengasse, and
immediately behind them came a travelling carriage, swung on high
wheels, three times the size of a Dantzig drosky, white with dust.
It had small square windows. As Desiree drew back in obedience to a
movement of her husband's arm, she saw a face for an instant--pale
and set--with eyes that seemed to look at everything and yet at
something beyond.

"Who was it? He looked at you, Charles," said Desiree.

"It is the Emperor," answered Darragon. His face was white. His
eyes were dull, like the eyes of one who has seen a vision and is
not yet back to earth.

Desiree turned to those behind her.

"It is the Emperor," she said, with an odd ring in her voice which
none had ever heard before. Then she stood looking after the
carriage.

Her father, who was at her elbow--tall, white-haired, with an
aquiline, inscrutable face--stood in a like attitude, looking down
the Pfaffengasse. His hand was raised before his face with
outspread fingers which seemed rigid in that gesture, as if lifted
hastily to screen his face and hide it.

"Did he see me?" he asked in a low voice which only Desiree heard.

She glanced at him, and her eyes, which were clear as a cloudless
sky, were suddenly shadowed by a suspicion quick and poignant.

"He seemed to see everything, but he only looked at Charles," she
answered. For a moment they all stood in the sunshine looking
towards the Langenmarkt where the tower of the Rathhaus rose above
the high roofs. The dust raised by the horses' feet and the
carriage wheels slowly settled on their bridal clothes.

It was Desiree who at length made a movement to continue their way
towards her father's house.

"Well," she said with a slight laugh, "he was not bidden to my
wedding, but he has come all the same."

Others laughed as they followed her. For a bride at the church-
door, or a judge on the bench, or a criminal on the scaffold-steps,
need make but a very small joke to cause merriment. Laughter is
often nothing but the froth of tears.

There were faces suddenly bleached in the little group of wedding-
guests, and none were whiter than the handsome features of Mathilde
Sebastian, Desiree's elder sister, who looked angry, had frowned at
the children, and seemed to find this simple wedding too bourgeois
for her taste. She carried her head with an air that told the world
not to expect that she should ever be content to marry in such a
humble style, and walk from the church in satin slippers like any
daughter of a burgher.

This, at all events, was what old Koch the locksmith must have read
in her beautiful, discontented face.

"Ah! ah!" he muttered to the bolts as he shot them. "But it is not
the lightest hearts that quit the church in a carriage."

So simple were the arrangements that bride and bridegroom and
wedding-guests had to wait in the street while the servant unlocked
the front door of No. 36 with a great key hurriedly extracted from
her apron-pocket.

There was no unusual stir in the street. The windows of one or two
of the houses had been decorated with flowers. These were the
houses of friends. Others were silent and still behind their lace
curtains, where there doubtless lurked peeping and criticizing eyes-
-the house of a neighbour.

The wedding-guests were few in number. Only one of them had a
distinguished air, and he, like the bridegroom, wore the uniform of
France. He was a small man, somewhat brusque in attitude, as became
a soldier of Italy and Egypt. But he had a pleasant smile and that
affability of manner which many learnt in the first years of the
great Republic. He and Mathilde Sebastian never looked at each
other: either an understanding or a misunderstanding.

The host, Antoine Sebastian, played his part well enough when he
remembered that he had a part to play. He listened with a kind
attention to the story of a very old lady, who it seemed had been
married herself, but it was so long ago that the human interest of
it all was lost in a pottle of petty detail which was all she could
recall. Before the story was half finished, Sebastian's attention
had strayed elsewhere, though his spare figure remained in its
attitude of attention and polite forbearance. His mind had, it
would seem, a trick of thus wandering away and leaving his body
rigid in the last attitude that it had dictated.

Sebastian did not notice that the door was open and all the guests
were waiting for him to lead the way.

"Now, old dreamer," whispered Desiree, with a quick pinch on his
arm, "take the Grafin upstairs to the drawing-room and give her
wine. You are to drink our healths, remember."

"Is there wine?" he asked with a vague smile. "Where has it come
from?"

"Like other good things, my father-in-law," replied Charles with his
easy laugh, "it comes from France."

They spoke together thus in confidence, in the language of that same
sunny land. But when Sebastian turned again to the old lady, still
recalling the details of that other wedding, he addressed her in
German, offering his arm with a sudden stiffness of gesture which he
seemed to put on with the change of tongue.

They passed up the low time-worn steps arm-in-arm, and beneath the
high carved doorway, whereon some pious Hanseatic merchant had
inscribed his belief that if God be in the house there is no need of
a watchman, emphasizing his creed by bolts and locks of enormous
strength, and bars to every window.

The servant in her Samland Sunday dress, having shaken her fist at
the children, closed the door behind the last guest, and, so far as
the Frauengasse was concerned, the exciting incident was over. From
the open window came only the murmur of quiet voices, the clink of
glasses at the drinking of a toast, or a laugh in the clear voice of
the bride herself. For Desiree persisted in her optimistic view of
these proceedings, though her husband scarcely helped her now at
all, and seemed a different man since the passage through the
Pfaffengasse of that dusty travelling carriage which had played the
part of the stormy petrel from end to end of Europe.

CHAPTER II. A CAMPAIGNER.

Not what I am, but what I Do, is my Kingdom.

Desiree had made all her own wedding-clothes. "Her poor little
marriage-basket," she called it. She had even made the cake which
was now cut with some ceremony by her father.

"I tremble," she exclaimed aloud, "to think what it may be like in
the middle."

And Mathilde was the only person there who did not smile at the
unconscious admission. The cake was still under discussion, and the
Grafin had just admitted that it was almost as good as that other
cake which had been consumed in the days of Frederick the Great,
when the servant called Desiree from the room.

"It is a soldier," she said in a whisper at the head of the stairs.
"He has a paper in his hand. I know what that means. He is
quartered on us."

Desiree hurried downstairs. In the entrance-hall, a broad-built
little man stood awaiting her. He was stout and red, with hair all
ragged at the temples, almost white. His eyes were lost behind
shaggy eyebrows. His face was made broader by little whiskers
stopping short at the level of his ear. He had a snuff-blown
complexion, and in the wrinkles of his face the dust of a dozen
campaigns seemed to have accumulated.

"Barlasch," he said curtly, holding out a long strip of blue paper.
"Of the Guard. Once a sergeant. Italy, Egypt, the Danube."

He frowned at Desiree while she read the paper in the dim light that
filtered through the twisted bars of the fanlight above the door.

Then he turned to the servant who stood, comely and breathless,
looking him up and down.

"Papa Barlasch," he added for her edification, and he drew down his
left eyebrow with a jerk, so that it almost touched his cheek. His
right eye, grey and piercing, returned her astonished gaze with a
fierce steadfastness.

"Does this mean that you are quartered upon us?" asked Desiree
without seeking to hide her disgust. She spoke in her own tongue.

"French?" said the soldier, looking at her. "Good. Yes. I am
quartered here. Thirty-six, Frauengasse. Sebastian; musician. You
are lucky to get me. I always give satisfaction--ha!"

He gave a curt laugh in one syllable only. His left arm was curved
round a bundle of wood bound together by a red pocket-handkerchief
not innocent of snuff. He held out this bundle to Desiree, as
Solomon may have held out some great gift to the Queen of Sheba to
smooth the first doubtful steps of friendship.

Desiree accepted the gift and stood in her wedding-dress holding the
bundle of wood against her breast. Then a gleam of the one grey eye
that was visible conveyed to her the fact that this walnut-faced
warrior was smiling. She laughed gaily.

"It is well," said Barlasch. "We are friends. You are lucky to get
me. You may not think so now. Would this woman like me to speak to
her in Polish or German?"

"Do you speak so many languages?"

He shrugged his shoulders and spread out his arms as far as his many
burdens allowed. For he was hung round with a hundred parcels and
packages.

"The Old Guard," he said, "can always make itself understood."

He rubbed his hands together with the air of a brisk man ready for
any sort of work.

"Now, where shall I sleep?" he asked. "One is not particular, you
understand. A few minutes and one is at home--perhaps peeling the
potatoes. It is only a civilian who is ashamed of using his knife
on a potato. Papa Barlasch, they call me."

Without awaiting an invitation he went forward towards the kitchen.
He seemed to know the house by instinct. His progress was
accompanied by a clatter of utensils like that which heralds the
coming of a carrier's cart.

At the kitchen door he stopped and sniffed loudly. There certainly
was a slight odour of burning fat. Papa Barlasch turned and shook
an admonitory finger at the servant, but he said nothing. He looked
round at the highly polished utensils, at the table and floor both
alike scrubbed clean by a vigorous northern arm. And he was kind
enough to nod approval.

"On a campaign," he said to no one in particular, "a little bit of
horse thrust into the cinders on the end of a bayonet--but in times
of peace . . ."

He broke off and made a gesture towards the saucepans which
indicated quite clearly that he was between campaigns--inclined to
good living.

"I am a rude fork," he jerked to Desiree over his shoulder in the
dialect of the Cotes du Nord.

"How long will you be here?" asked Desiree, who was eminently
practical. A billet was a misfortune which Charles Darragon had
hitherto succeeded in warding off. He had some small influence as
an officer of the head-quarters' staff.

Barlasch held up a reproving hand. The question, he seemed to
think, was not quite delicate.

"I pay my own," he said. "Give and take--that is my motto. When
you have nothing to give . . . offer a smile."

With a gesture he indicated the bundle of firewood which Desiree
still absent-mindedly carried against her white dress. He turned
and opened a cupboard low down on the floor at the left-hand side of
the fireplace. He seemed to know by an instinct usually possessed
by charwomen and other domesticated persons of experience where the
firewood was kept. Lisa gave a little exclamation of surprise at
his impertinence and his perspicacity. He took the firewood,
unknotted his handkerchief, and threw his offering into the
cupboard. Then he turned and perceived for the first time that
Desiree had a bright ribbon at her waist and on her shoulders; that
a thin chain of gold was round her throat and that there were
flowers at her breast.

"A fete?" he inquired curtly.

"My marriage fete," she answered. "I was married half an hour ago."

He looked at her beneath his grizzled brows. His face was only
capable of producing one expression--a shaggy weather-beaten
fierceness. But, like a dog which can express more than many human
beings, by a hundred instinctive gestures he could, it seemed,
dispense with words on occasion and get on quite as well without
them. He clearly disapproved of Desiree's marriage, and drew her
attention to the fact that she was no more than a schoolgirl with an
inconsequent brain, and little limbs too slight to fight a
successful battle in a world full of cruelty and danger.

Then he made a gesture half of apology as if recognizing that it was
no business of his, and turned away thoughtfully.

"I had troubles of that sort myself," he explained, putting together
the embers on the hearth with the point of a twisted, rusty bayonet,
"but that was long ago. Well, I can drink your health all the same,
mademoiselle."

He turned to Lisa with a friendly nod and put out his tongue, in the
manner of the people, to indicate that his lips were dry.

Desiree had always been the housekeeper. It was to her that Lisa
naturally turned in her extremity at the invasion of her kitchen by
Papa Barlasch. And when that warrior had been supplied with beer it
was with Desiree, in an agitated whisper in the great dark dining-
room with its gloomy old pictures and heavy carving, that she took
counsel as to where he should be quartered.

The object of their solicitude himself interrupted their hurried
consultation by opening the door and putting his shaggy head round
the corner of it.

"It is not worth while to consult long about it," he said. "There
is a little room behind the kitchen, that opens into the yard. It
is full of boxes. But we can move them--a little straw--and there!"

With a gesture he described a condition of domestic peace and
comfort which far exceeded his humble requirements.

"The blackbeetles and I are old friends," he concluded cheerfully.

"There are no blackbeetles in the house, monsieur," said Desiree,
hesitating to accept his proposal.

"Then I shall resign myself to my solitude," he answered. "It is
quiet. I shall not hear the patron touching on his violin. It is
that which occupies his leisure, is it not?"

"Yes," answered Desiree, still considering the question.

"I too am a musician," said Papa Barlasch, turning towards the
kitchen again. "I played a drum at Marengo."

And as he led the way to the little room in the yard at the back of
the kitchen, he expressed by a shake of the head a fellow-feeling
for the gentleman upstairs, whose acquaintance he had not yet made,
who occupied his leisure by touching the violin.

They stood together in the small apartment which Barlasch, with the
promptitude of an experienced conqueror, had set apart for his own
accommodation.

"Those trunks," he observed casually, "were made in France"--a
mental note which he happened to make aloud, as some do for better
remembrance. "This solid girl and I will soon move them. And you,
mademoiselle, go back to your wedding."

"The good God be merciful to you," he added under his breath when
Desiree had gone.

She laughed as she mounted the stairs, a slim white figure amid the
heavy woodwork long since blackened by time. The stairs made no
sound beneath her light step. How many weary feet had climbed them
since they were built! For the Dantzigers have been a people of
sorrow, torn by wars, starved by siege, tossed from one conqueror to
another from the beginning until now.

Desiree excused herself for her absence and frankly gave the cause.
She was disposed to make light of the incident. It was natural to
her to be optimistic. Both she and Mathilde made a practice of
withholding from their father's knowledge the smaller worries of
daily life which sour so many women and make them whine on platforms
to be given the larger woes.

She was glad to note that her father did not attach much importance
to the arrival of Papa Barlasch; though Mathilde found opportunity
to convey her displeasure at the news by a movement of the eyebrows.

Antoine Sebastian had applied himself seriously now to his role of
host, so rarely played in the Frauengasse. He was courteous and
quick to see a want or a possible desire of any one of his guests.
It was part of his sense of hospitality to dismiss all personal
matters, and especially a personal trouble, from public attention.

"They will attend to him in the kitchen, no doubt," he said with
that grand air which the dancing academy tried to imitate.

Charles hardly noted what Desiree said. So sunny a nature as his
might have been expected to make light of a minor trouble, more
especially the minor trouble of another. He was unusually
thoughtful. Some event of the morning had, it would appear, given
him pause on his primrose path. He glanced more than once over his
shoulder towards the window, which stood open. He seemed at times
to listen.

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