I should fear those that dance before me now
Would one day stamp upon me; it has been done:
Men shut their doors against a setting sun.
During the first weeks of December the biting wind abated for a time,
and immediately the snow came. It fell for days, until at length the
grey sky seemed exhausted; for the flakes sailed downwards in twos and
threes like the stragglers of an army bringing up the rear. Then the sun
broke through again, and all the world was a dazzling white.
There had been a cessation in that stream of pitiable men who staggered
across the bridge from the Konigsberg road. Some instinct had turned
it southwards. Now it began again, and the rumour spread throughout
the city that Rapp was coming. At length, in the middle of December, an
officer brought word that Rapp with his staff would arrive next day.
Desiree heard the news without comment.
“You do not believe it?” asked Mathilde, who had come in with shining
eyes and a pale face.
“Oh yes, I believe it.”
“Then you forget,” persisted Mathilde, “that Charles is on the staff.
They may arrive to-night.”
While they were speaking Sebastian came in. He looked quickly from one
to the other.
“You have heard the news?” he asked.
“That the General is coming back?” said Mathilde.
“No; not that. Though it is true. Macdonald is in full retreat on
Dantzig. The Prussians have abandoned him--at last.”
He gave a queer laugh and stood looking towards the window with restless
eyes that flitted from one object to another, as if he were endeavouring
to follow in mind the quick course of events. Then he remembered Desiree
and turned towards her.
“Rapp returns to-morrow,” he said. “We may presume that Charles is with
him.”
“Yes,” said Desiree, in a lifeless voice.
Sebastian wrinkled his eyes and gave an apologetic laugh.
“We cannot offer him a fitting welcome,” he said, with a gesture of
frustrated hospitality. “We must do what we can. You and he may, of
course, consider this your home as long as it pleases you to remain with
us. Mathilde, you will see that we have such delicacies in the house
as Dantzig can now afford--and you, Desiree, will of course make such
preparations as are necessary. It is well to remember, he may return...
to-night.”
Desiree went towards the door while Mathilde laid aside the delicate
needlework which seemed to absorb her mind and employ her fingers from
morning till night. She made a movement as if to accompany her sister,
but Desiree shook her head sharply and Mathilde remained where she was,
leaving Desiree to go upstairs alone.
The day was already drawing to its long twilight, and at four o'clock
the night came. Sebastian went out as usual, though he had caught cold.
But Mathilde stayed at home. Desiree sent Lisa to the shops in the
Langenmarkt, which is the centre of business and gossip in Dantzig. Lisa
always brought home the latest news. Mathilde came to the kitchen to
seek something when the messenger returned. She heard Lisa tell Desiree
that a few more stragglers had come in, but they brought no news of the
General. The house seemed lonely now that Barlasch was gone.
Throughout the night the sound of sleigh-bells could be faintly
heard through the double windows, though no sleigh passed through the
Frauengasse. A hundred times the bells seemed to come closer, and always
Desiree was ready behind the curtains to see the light flash past into
the Pfaffengasse. With a shiver of suspense she crept back to bed to
await the next alarm. In the early morning, long before it was light,
the dull thud of steps on the trodden snow called her to the window
again. She caught her breath as she drew back the curtain; for through
the long watches of the night she had imagined every possible form of
return.
This must be Barlasch. Louis and Barlasch must, of course, have met Rapp
on his homeward journey. On finding Charles, they had sent Barlasch back
in advance to announce the safety of Desiree's husband. Louis would, of
course, not come to Dantzig. He would go north to Russia, to Reval, and
perhaps home to England--never to return.
But it was not Barlasch. It was a woman who staggered past under a
burden of firewood which she had collected in the woods of Schottland,
and did not dare to carry through the streets by day.
At last the clocks struck six, and, soon after, Lisa's heavy footstep
made the stairs creak and crack.
Desiree went downstairs before daylight. She could hear Mathilde astir
in her room, and the light of candles was visible under her door.
Desiree busied herself with household affairs.
“I have not slept,” said Lisa bluntly, “for thinking that your husband
might return, and fearing that we should make him wait in the street.
But without doubt you would have heard him.”
“Yes, I should have heard him.”
“If it had been my husband, I should have been at the window all night,”
said Lisa, with a gay laugh--and Desiree laughed too.
Mathilde seemed a long time in coming, and when at length she appeared
Desiree could scarcely repress a movement of surprise. Mathilde was
dressed, all in her best, as for a fete.
At breakfast Lisa brought the news told to her at the door that the
Governor would re-enter the city in state with his staff at midday. The
citizens were invited to decorate their streets, and to gather there to
welcome the returning garrison.
“And the citizens will accept the invitation,” commented Sebastian,
with a curt laugh. “All the world has sneered at Russia since the Empire
existed--and yet it has to learn from Moscow what part a citizen may
play in war. These good Dantzigers will accept the invitation.”
And he was right. For one reason or another the city did honour to Rapp.
Even the Poles must have known by now that France had made tools of
them. But as yet they could not realize that Napoleon had fallen. There
were doubtless many spies in the streets that cold December day--one who
listened for Napoleon; and another, peeping to this side and that,
for the King of Prussia. Sweden also would need to know what Dantzig
thought, and Russia must not be ignorant of the gossip in a great Baltic
port.
Enveloped in their stiff sheepskins, concealed by the high collars which
reached to the brim of their hats--showing nothing but eyes where the
rime made old faces and young all alike, it was difficult for any to
judge of his neighbour--whether he were Pole or Prussian, Dantziger or
Swede. The women in thick shawls, with hoods or scarves concealing their
faces, stood silently beside their husbands. It was only the children
who asked a thousand questions, and got never an answer from the
cautious descendants of a Hanseatic people.
“Is it the French or the Russians that are coming?” asked a child near
to Desiree.
“Both,” was the answer.
“But which will come first?”
“Wait and see--silentium,” replied the careful Dantziger, looking over
his shoulder.
Desiree had changed her clothes, and wore beneath her furs the dress
that had been prepared for the journey to Zoppot so long ago. Mathilde
had noticed the dress, which had not been seen for six months. Lisa,
more loquacious, nodded to it as to a friend when helping Desiree with
her furs.
“You have changed,” she said, “since you last wore it.”
“I have grown older--and fatter,” answered Desiree cheerfully.
And Lisa, who had no imagination, seemed satisfied with the explanation.
But the change was in Desiree's eyes.
With Sebastian's permission--almost at his suggestion--they had selected
the Grune Brucke as the point from which to see the sight. This bridge
spans the Mottlau at the entrance to the Langenmarkt, and the roadway
widens before it narrows again to pass beneath the Grunes Thor. There is
rising ground where the road spreads like a fan, and here they could see
and be seen.
“Let us hope,” said Sebastian, “that two of these gentlemen may perceive
you as they pass.”
But he did not offer to accompany them.
By half-past eleven the streets were full. The citizens knew their
governor, it seemed. He would not keep them waiting. Although Rapp
lacked that power of appealing to the imagination which has survived
Napoleon's death with such astounding vitality that it moves men's minds
to-day as surely as it did a hundred years ago, he was shrewd enough
to make use of his master's methods when such would seem to serve his
purpose. He was not going to creep into Dantzig like a whipped dog into
his kennel.
He had procured a horse at Elbing. Between that town and the Mottlau he
had halted to form his army into something like order, to get together a
staff with which to surround himself.
But the Dantzigers did not cheer. They stood and watched him in a sullen
silence as he rode across the bridge now known as the “Milk-Can.” His
bridle was twisted round his arm, for all his fingers were frostbitten.
His nose and his ears were in the same plight, and had been treated by
a Polish barber who, indeed, effected a cure. One eye was almost closed.
His face was astonishingly red. But he carried himself like a soldier,
and faced the world with the audacity that Napoleon taught to all his
disciples.
Behind him rode a few staff officers, but the majority were on foot.
Some effort had been made to revive the faded uniforms. One or two
heroic souls had cast aside the fur cloaks to which they owed their
life, but the majority were broken men without spirit, without
pride--appealing only to pity. They hugged themselves closely in
their ragged cloaks and stumbled as they walked. It was impossible
to distinguish between the officers and the men. The biggest and the
strongest were the best clad--the bullies were the best fed. All were
black and smoke-grimed--with eyes reddened and inflamed by the dazzling
snow through which they stumbled by day, as much as by the smoke into
which they crouched at night. Every garment was riddled by the holes
burnt by flying sparks--every face was smeared with blood that ran
from the horseflesh they had torn asunder with their teeth while it yet
smoked.
Some laughed and waved their hands to the crowd. Others, who had known
the tragedy of Vilna and Kowno, stumbled on in stubborn silence still
doubting that Dantzig stood--that they were at last in sight of food and
warmth and rest.
“Is that all?” men asked each other in astonishment. For the last
stragglers had crossed the new Mottlau before the head of the procession
had reached the Grune Brucke.
“If I had such an army as that,” said a stout Dantziger, “I should bring
it into the city quietly, after dusk.”
But the majority were silent, remembering the departure of these
men--the triumph, the glory, and the hope. For a great catastrophe is
a curtain that for a moment shuts out all history and makes the human
family little children again who can but cower and hold each other's
hands in the dark.
“Where are the guns?” asked one.
“And the baggage?” suggested another.
“And the treasure of Moscow?” whispered a Jew with cunning eyes, who had
hidden behind his neighbour when Rapp glanced in his direction.
Emerging on the bridge, the General glanced at the old Mottlau. A crowd
was collected on it. The citizens no longer used the bridges but crossed
without fear where they pleased, and heavy sleighs passed up and down as
on a high-road. Rapp saw it, made a grimace, and, turning in his saddle,
spoke to his neighbour, an engineer officer, who was to make an immortal
name and die in Dantzig.
The Mottlau was one of the chief defences of the city, but instead of a
river the Governor found a high-road!
Rapp alone seemed to look about him with the air of one who knew his
whereabouts. In the straggling trail of men behind him, not one in a
hundred looked for a friendly face. Some stared in front of them with
lifeless eyes, while others, with a little spirit plucked up at the
end of a weary march, glanced up at the gabled houses with the interest
called forth by the first sight of a new city.
It was not until long afterwards that the world, piecing together
information purposely delayed and details carefully falsified, knew that
of the four hundred thousand men who marched triumphantly to the Niemen,
only twenty thousand recrossed that river six months later, and of these
two-thirds had never seen Moscow.
Rapp, whose bloodshot eyes searched the crowd of faces turned towards
him, recognized a number of people. To Mathilde he bowed gravely, and
with a kindlier glance turned in his saddle to bow again to Desiree.
They hardly heeded him, but with colourless faces turned towards the
staff riding behind him.
Most of the faces were strange: others were so altered that the features
had to be sought for as in the face of a mummy. Neither Charles nor
de Casimir was among the horsemen. One or two of them bowed, as their
leader had done, to the two girls.
“That is Captain de Villars,” said Mathilde, “and the other I do not
know. Nor that tall man who is bowing now. Who are they?”
Desiree did not answer. None of these men was Charles. Unconsciously
holding her two mittened hands at her throat, she searched each face.
They were well placed to see even those who followed on foot. Many of
them were not French. It would have been easy to distinguish Charles or
de Casimir among the dark-visaged southerners. Desiree was not conscious
of the crowd around her. She heard none of the muttered remarks. All her
soul was in her eyes.
“Is that all?” she said at length--as the others had said at the
entrance to the town.
She found she was standing hand-in-hand with Mathilde, whose face was
like marble.
At last, when even the crowd had passed away beneath the Grunes Thor,
they turned and walked home in silence.