Our wills and fates do so contrary run,
That our devices still are overthrown.
Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own.
Rapp found himself in a stronghold which was strong in theory only. For
the frozen river formed the easiest possible approach, instead of an
insuperable barrier to the enemy. He had an army which was a paper army
only.
He had, according to official returns, thirty-five thousand men. In
reality a bare eight thousand could be collected to show a face to the
enemy. The rest were sick and wounded. There was no national spirit
among these men; they hardly had a language in common. For they were men
from Africa and Italy, from France, Germany, Poland, Spain, and Holland.
The majority of them were recruits, raw and of poor physique. All
were fugitives, flying before those dread Cossacks whose “hurrah!
hurrah!”--the Arabic “kill! kill!”--haunted their fitful sleep at night.
They came to Dantzig not to fight, but to lie down and rest. They were
the last of the great army--the reinforcements dragged to the frontier
which many of them had never crossed. For those who had been to
Moscow were few and far between. The army of Moscow had perished at
Malo-Jaroslavetz, at the Beresina, in Smolensk and Vilna.
These fugitives had fled to Dantzig for safety; and Rapp in crossing the
bridge had made a grimace, for he saw that there was no safety here.
The fortifications had been merely sketched out. The ditches were full
of snow, the rivers were frozen. All work was at a standstill. Dantzig
lay at the mercy of the first-comer.
In twenty-four hours every available smith was at work, forging ice-axes
and picks. Rapp was going to cut the frozen Vistula and set the river
free. The Dantzigers laughed aloud.
“It will freeze again in a night,” they said. And it did. So Rapp set
the ice-cutters to work again next day. He kept boats moving day and
night in the water, which ran sluggish and thick, like porridge, with
the desire to freeze and be still.
He ordered the engineers to set to work on the abandoned fortifications.
But the ground was hard like granite, and the picks sprang back in the
worker's grip, jarring his bones, and making not so much as a mark on
the surface of the earth.
Again the Dantzigers laughed.
“It is frozen three feet down,” they said.
The thermometer marked between twenty and thirty degrees of frost every
night now. And it was only December--only the beginning of the winter.
The Russians were at the Niemen, daily coming nearer. Dantzig was full
of sick and wounded. The available troops were worn out, frost-bitten,
desperate. There were only a few doctors, who were without medical
stores; no meat, no vegetables, no spirits, no forage.
No wonder the Dantzigers laughed. Rapp, who had to rely on Southerners
to obey his orders--Italians, Africans, a few Frenchmen, men little used
to cold and the hardships of a Northern winter--Rapp let them laugh. He
was a medium-sized man, with a bullet-head and a round chubby face, a
small nose, round eyes, and, if you please, side-whiskers.
Never for a moment did he admit that things looked black. He lit
enormous bonfires, melted the frozen earth, and built the fortifications
that had been planned.
“I took counsel,” he said, long afterwards, “with two engineer officers
whose devotion equalled their brilliancy--Colonel Richemont and General
Campredon.”
Soldiers might for all time study with advantage the acts of such
obscure and almost forgotten men as these. For, through them, Napoleon
was now teaching the world that a fortified place might be made stronger
than any had hitherto suspected. That he should turn round and teach,
on the other hand, that a city usually considered impregnable could
be taken without great loss of life, was only characteristic of his
splendid genius, which, like a towering tree, grew and grew until it
fell.
The days were very short now, and it was dark when the sappers--whose
business it was to keep the ice moving in the river at that spot where
the Government building-yard abuts the river front to-day--were roused
from their meditations by a shout on the farther bank.
They pushed their clumsy boat through the ice, and soon perceived
against the snowy distance the outline of a man wrapped, swaddled,
disguised in the heaped-up clothing so familiar to Eastern Europe at
this time. The joke of seeing a grave artilleryman clad in a lady's
ermine cloak had long since lost its savour for those who dwelt near the
Moscow road.
“Ah! comrade,” said one of the boatmen, an Italian who spoke French and
had learnt his seamanship on the Mediterranean, by whose waters he would
never idle again. “Ah! you are from Moscow?”
“And you, countryman?” replied the new-comer, with a non-committing
readiness, as he stumbled over the gunwale.
“And you--an old man?” remarked the Italian, with the easy frankness of
Piedmont.
By way of reply, the new-comer held out one hand roughly swathed in
cloth, and shook it from side to side slowly, taking exception to such
personal matters on a short acquaintance.
“A week ago, when I quitted Dantzig on a mission to Kowno,” he said,
with a careless air, “one could cross the Vistula anywhere. I have been
walking on the bank for half a league looking for a way across. One
would think there is a General in Dantzig now.”
“There is Rapp,” replied the Italian, poling his boat through the
floating ice.
“He will be glad to see me.”
The Italian turned and looked over his shoulder. Then he gave a curt,
derisive laugh.
“Barlasch--of the Old Guard!” explained the new-comer, with a careless
air.
“Never heard of him.”
Barlasch pushed up the bandage which he still wore over his left eye, in
order to get a better sight of this phenomenal ignoramus, but he made no
comment.
On landing he nodded curtly, at which the boatman made a quick gesture
and spat.
“You have not the price of a glass in your purse, perhaps,” he
suggested.
Barlasch disappeared in the darkness without deigning a reply. Half an
hour later he was on the steps of Sebastian's house in the Frauengasse.
On his way through the streets a hundred evidences of energy had caught
his attention, for many of the houses were barricaded, and palisades
were built at the end of the streets running down towards the river. The
town was busy, and everywhere soldiers passed to and fro. Like Samuel,
Barlasch heard the bleating of sheep and the lowing of oxen in his ears.
The houses in the Frauengasse were barricaded like others--many of the
lower windows were built up. The door of No. 36 was bolted, and through
the shutters of the upper windows no glimmer of light penetrated to the
outer darkness of the street. Barlasch knocked and waited. He thought he
could hear surreptitious movements within the house. Again he knocked.
“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
passed 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 petite. They had facilities--name of God!--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 sex.
“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 God 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.