Produced by Les Bowler
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.