Читать книгу Barlasch of the Guard - Henry Seton Merriman - Страница 5

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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.

Suddenly he rose and went to the window. His action caused a brief silence, and all heard the clatter of a horse's feet and the quick rattle of a sword against spur and buckle.

After a glance he came back into the room.

“Excuse me,” he said, with a bow towards Mathilde. “It is, I think, a messenger for me.”

And he hurried downstairs. He did not return at once, and soon the conversation became general again.

“You,” said the Grafin, touching Desiree's arm with her fan, “you, who are now his wife, must be dying to know what has called him away. Do not consider the 'convenances,' my child.”

Desiree, thus admonished, followed Charles. She had not been aware of this consuming curiosity until it was suggested to her.

She found Charles standing at the open door. He thrust a letter into his pocket as she approached him, and turned towards her the face that she had seen for a moment when he drew her back at the corner of the Pfaffengasse to allow the Emperor's carriage to pass on its way. It was the white, half-stupefied face of one who has for an instant seen a vision of things not earthly.

“I have been sent for by the … I am wanted at head-quarters,” he said vaguely. “I shall not be long …”

He took his shako, looked at her with an odd attempt to simulate cheerfulness, kissed her fingers and hurried out into the street.