we pass; the path that each man trod
is dim; or will be dim, with weeds.
when desiree turned towards the stairs, she met the guests descending. they were taking their leave as they came down, hurriedly, like persons conscious of having outstayed their welcome.
mathilde listened coldly to the conventional excuses. so few people recognize the simple fact that they need never apologize for going away. sebastian stood at the head of the stairs bowing in his most germanic manner. the urbane host, with a charm entirely french, who had dispensed a simple hospitality so easily and gracefully a few minutes earlier, seemed to have disappeared behind a pale and formal mask.
desiree was glad to see them go. there was a sense of uneasiness, a vague unrest in the air. there was something amiss. the wedding party had been a failure. all had gone well and merrily up to a certain point—at the corner of the pfaffengasse, when the dusty travelling carriage passed across their path. from that moment there had been a change. a shadow seemed to have fallen across the sunny nature of the proceedings; for never had bride and bridegroom set forth together with lighter hearts than those carried by charles and desiree darragon down the steps of the marienkirche.
during its progress across the whole width of germany, the carriage had left unrest behind it. men had travelled night and day to stand sleepless by the roadside and see it pass. whole cities had been kept astir till morning by the mere rumour that its flying wheels would be heard in the streets before dawn. hatred and adoration, fear and that dread tightening of the heart-strings which is caused by the shadow of the superhuman, had sprung into being at the mere sound of its approach.
when therefore it passed across the frauengasse, throwing its dust upon desiree's wedding-dress, it was only fulfilling a mission. when it broke in upon the lives of these few persons seeking dimly for their happiness—as the heathen grope for an unknown god—and threw down carefully constructed plans, swept aside the strongest will and crushed the stoutest heart, it was only working out its destiny. the dust sprinkled on desiree's hair had fallen on the faces of thousands of dead. the unrest that entered into the quiet little house on the left-hand side of the frauengasse had made its way across a thousand thresholds, of arab tent and imperial palace alike. the lives of millions were affected by it, the secret hopes of thousands were undermined by it. it disturbed the sleep of half the world, and made men old before their time.
“more troops must have arrived,” said desiree, already busying herself to set the house in order, “since they have been forced to billet this man with us. and now they have sent for charles, though he is really on leave of absence.”
she glanced at the clock.
“i hope he will not be late. the chaise is to come at four o'clock. there is still time for me to help you.”
mathilde made no answer. their father stood near the window. he was looking out with thoughtful eyes. his face was drawn downwards by a hundred fine wrinkles. it was the face of one brooding over a sorrow or a vengeance. there was something in his whole being suggestive of a bygone prosperity. this was a lean man who had once been well-seeming.
“no!” said desiree gaily, “we were a dull company. we need not disguise it. it all came from that man crossing our path in his dusty carriage.”
“he is on his way to russia,” sebastian said jerkily. “god spare me to see him return!”
desiree and mathilde exchanged a glance of uneasiness. it seemed that their father was subject to certain humours which they had reason to dread. desiree left her occupation and went to him, linking her arm in his and standing beside him.
“do not let us think of disagreeable things to-day,” she said. “god will spare you much longer than that, you depressing old wedding-guest!”
he patted her hand which rested on his arm and looked down at her with eyes softened by affection. but her fair hair, rather tumbled, which met his glance must have awakened some memory that made his face a marble mask again.
“yes,” he said grimly, “but i am an old man and he is a young one. and i want to see him dead before i die.”
“i will not have you think such bloodthirsty thoughts on my wedding-day,” said desiree. “see, there is charles returning already, and he has not been absent ten minutes. he has some one with him—who is it? papa... mathilde, look! who is it coming back with charles in such a hurry?”
mathilde, who was setting the room in order, glanced through the lace curtains.
“i do not know,” she answered indifferently. “just an ordinary man.”
desiree had turned away from the window as if to go downstairs and meet her husband. she paused and looked back again over her shoulder towards the street.
“is it?” she said rather oddly. “i do not know—i—”
and she stood with the incompleted sentence on her lips waiting irresolutely for charles to come upstairs.
in a moment he burst into the room with all his usual exuberance and high spirit.
“picture to yourselves!” he cried, standing in the doorway with his arms extended before him. “i was hurrying to head-quarters when i ran into the embrace of my dear louis—my cousin. i have told you a hundred times that he is brother and father and everything to me. i am so glad that he should come to-day of all days.”
he turned towards the stairs with a gesture of welcome, still with his two arms outheld, as if inviting the man, who came rather slowly upstairs, to come to his embrace and to the embrace of those who were now his relations.
“there was a little suspicion of sadness—i do not know what it was—at the table; but now it is all gone. all is well now that this unexpected guest has come. this dear louis.”
he went to the landing as he spoke, and returned bringing by the arm a man taller than himself and darker, with a still brown face and steady eyes set close together. he had a lean look of good breeding.
“this dear louis!” repeated charles. “my only relative in all the world. my cousin, louis d'arragon. but he, par exemple, spells his name in two words.”
the man bowed gravely—a comprehensive bow; but he looked at desiree.
“this is my father-in-law,” continued charles breathlessly. “monsieur antoine sebastian, and desiree and mathilde—my wife, my dear louis—your cousin, desiree.”
he had turned again to louis and shook him by the shoulders in the fulness of his joy. he had not distinguished between mathilde and desiree, and it was towards mathilde that d'arragon looked with a polite and rather formal repetition of his bow.
“it is i... i am desiree,” said the younger sister, coming forward with a slow gesture of shyness.
d'arragon took her hand.
“i have been happy,” he said, “in the moment of my arrival.”
then he turned to mathilde and bowed over the hand she held out to him. sebastian had come forward with a sudden return of his gracious and rather old-world manner. he did not offer to shake hands, but bowed.
“a son of louis d'arragon who was fortunate enough to escape to england?” he inquired with a courteous gesture.
“the only son,” replied the new-comer.
“i am honoured to make the acquaintance of monsieur le marquis,” said antoine sebastian slowly.
“oh, you must not call me that,” replied d'arragon with a short laugh. “i am an english sailor—that is all.”
“and now, my dear louis, i leave you,” broke in charles, who had rather impatiently awaited the end of these formalities. “a brief half-hour and i am with you again. you will stay here till i return.”
he turned, nodded gaily to desiree and ran downstairs.
through the open windows they heard his quick, light footfall as he hurried up the frauengasse. something made them silent, listening to it.
it was not difficult to see that d'arragon was a sailor. not only had he the brown face of those who live in the open, but he had the attentive air of one whose waking moments are a watch.
“you look at one as if one were the horizon,” desiree said to him long afterwards. but it was at this moment in the drawing-room in the frauengasse that the comparison formed itself in her mind.
his face was rather narrow, with a square chin and straight lips. he was not quick in speech like charles, but seemed to think before he spoke, with the result that he often appeared to be about to say something, and was interrupted before the words had been uttered.
“unless my memory is a bad one, your mother was an englishwoman, monsieur,” said sebastian, “which would account for your being in the english service.”
“not entirely,” answered d'arragon, “though my mother was indeed english and died—in a french prison. but it was from a sense of gratitude that my father placed me in the english service—and i have never regretted it, monsieur.”
“your father received kindnesses at english hands, after his escape, like many others.”
“yes, and he was too old to repay them by doing the country any service himself. he would have done it if he could—”
d'arragon paused, looking steadily at the tall old man who listened to him with averted eyes.
“my father was one of those,” he said at length, “who did not think that in fighting for bonaparte one was necessarily fighting for france.”
sebastian held up a warning hand.
“in england—” he corrected, “in england one may think such things. but not in france, and still less in dantzig.”
“if one is an englishman,” replied d'arragon with a smile, “one may think them where one likes, and say them when one is disposed. it is one of the privileges of the nation, monsieur.”
he made the statement lightly, seeing the humour of it with a cosmopolitan understanding, without any suggestion of the boastfulness of youth. desiree noticed that his hair was turning grey at the temples.
“i did not know,” he said, turning to her, “that charles was in dantzig, much less that he was celebrating so happy an occasion. we ran against each other by accident in the street. it was a lucky accident that allowed me to make your acquaintance so soon after you have become his wife.”
“it scarcely seems possible that it should be an accident,” said desiree. “it must have been the work of fate—if fate has time to think of such an insignificant person as myself and so small an event as my marriage in these days.”
“fate,” put in mathilde in her composed voice and manner, “has come to dantzig to-day.”
“ah!”
“yes. you are the second unexpected arrival this afternoon.”
d'arragon turned and looked at mathilde. his manner, always grave and attentive, was that of a reader who has found an interesting book on a dusty shelf.
“has the emperor come?” he asked.
mathilde nodded.
“i thought i saw something in charles's face,” he said reflectively, looking back through the open door towards the stairs where charles had nodded farewell to them. “so the emperor is here, in dantzig?”
he turned towards sebastian, who stood with a stony face.
“which means war,” he said.
“it always means war,” replied sebastian in a tired voice. “is he again going to prove himself stronger than any?”
“some day he will make a mistake,” said d'arragon cheerfully. “and then will come the day of reckoning.”
“ah!” said sebastian, with a shake of the head that seemed to indicate an account so one-sided that none could ever liquidate it. “you are young, monsieur. you are full of hope.”
“i am not young—i am thirty-one—but i am, as you say, full of hope. i look to that day, monsieur sebastian.”
“and in the mean time?” suggested the man who seemed but a shadow of someone standing apart and far away from the affairs of daily life.
“in the mean time one must play one's part,” returned d'arragon, with his almost inaudible laugh, “whatever it may be.”
there was no foreboding in his voice; no second meaning in the words. he was open and simple and practical, like the life he led.
“then you have a part to play, too,” said desiree, thinking of charles, who had been called away at such an inopportune moment, and had gone without complaint. “it is the penalty we pay for living in one of the less dull periods of history. he touches your life too.”
“he touches every one's life, mademoiselle. that is what makes him so great a man. yes. i have a little part to play. i am like one of the unseen supernumeraries who has to see that a door is open to allow the great actors to make an effective entree. i am lent to russia for the war that is coming. it is a little part. i have to keep open one small portion of the line of communication between england and st. petersburg, so that news may pass to and fro.”
he glanced towards mathilde as he spoke. she was listening with an odd eagerness which he noted, as he noted everything, methodically and surely. he remembered it afterwards.
“that will not be easy, with denmark friendly to france,” said sebastian, “and every prussian port closed to you.”
“but sweden will help. she is not friendly to france.”
sebastian laughed, and made a gesture with his white and elegant hand, of contempt and ridicule.
“and, bon dieu! what a friendship it is,” he exclaimed, “that is based on the fear of being taken for an enemy.”
“it is a friendship that waits its time, monsieur,” said d'arragon taking up his hat.
“then you have a ship, monsieur, here in the baltic?” asked mathilde with more haste than was characteristic of her usual utterance.
“a very small one, mademoiselle,” he answered. “so small that i could turn her round here in the frauengasse.”
“but she is fast?”
“the fastest in the baltic, mademoiselle,” he answered. “and that is why i must take my leave—with the news you have told me.”
he shook hands as he spoke, and bowed to sebastian, whose generation was content with the more formal salutation. desiree went to the door, and led the way downstairs.
“we have but one servant,” she said, “who is busy.”
on the doorstep he paused for a moment. and desiree seemed to expect him to do so.
“charles and i have always been like brothers—you will remember that always, will you not?”
“yes,” she answered with her gay nod. “i will remember.”
“then good-bye, mademoiselle.”
“madame,” she corrected lightly.
“madame, my cousin,” he said, and departed smiling.
desiree went slowly upstairs again.
