Mathilde could not be back until ten o’clock. She, who was so quick and quiet, had been much occupied in social observances lately, and had made fast friends with the Gräfin during the last few days, constantly going to see her.
Désirée knew that what Barlasch had repeated as the gossip of the cafés was in part, if not wholly, true. She and Mathilde had long known that any mention of France had the instant effect of turning their father into a man of stone. It was the skeleton in this quiet house that sat at table with its inmates, a shadowy fourth tying their tongues. The rattle of its bones seemed to paralyze Sebastian’s mind, and at any moment he would fall into a dumb and stricken apathy which terrified those about him. At such times it seemed that one thought in his mind had swallowed all the rest, so that he heard without understanding and saw without perceiving.
He was in such a humour when he came back to dinner. He passed Désirée on the stairs without speaking and went to his room to change his clothes, for he never relaxed his formal habits. At the dinner-table he glanced at her as a dog, knowing that he is ill, may be seen to glance with a secret air at his master, wondering whether he is detected.
Désirée had always hoped that her father would speak to her when this humour was upon him and tell her the meaning of it. Perhaps it would come tonight, when they were alone. There was an unspoken sympathy existing between them in which Mathilde took no share, which had even shut out Charles as out of a room where there was no light, into which Désirée and her father went at times and stood hand-in-hand without speaking.
They dined in silence, while Lisa hurried about her duties, oppressed by a sense of unknown fear. After dinner they went to the drawing-room as usual. It had been a dull day, with great clouds creeping up from the West. The evening fell early, and the lamps were already alight. Désirée looked to the wicks with the eye of experience when she entered the room. Then she went to the window. Lisa did not always draw the curtains effectually. She glanced down into the street, and turned suddenly on her heel, facing her father.
“They are there,” she said. For she had seen shadowy forms lurking beneath the trees of the Frauengasse. The street was ill-lighted, but she knew the shadows of the trees.
“How many?” asked Sebastian, in a dull voice.
She glanced at him quickly—at his still, frozen face and quiescent hands. He was not going to rise to the occasion, as he sometimes did even from his deepest apathy. She must do alone anything that was to be accomplished tonight.
The house, like many in the Frauengasse, had been built by a careful Hanseatic merchant, whose warehouse was his own cellar half sunk beneath the level of the street. The door of the warehouse was immediately under the front door, down a few steps below the street, while a few more steps, broad and footworn, led up to the stone veranda and the level of the lower dwelling-rooms. A guard placed in the street could thus watch both doors without moving.
There was a third door, giving exit from the little room where Barlasch slept to the small yard where he had placed those trunks which were made in France.
Désirée had no time to think. She came of a race of women of a brighter intelligence than any women in the world. She took her father by the arm and hastened downstairs. Barlasch was at his post within the kitchen door. His eyes shone suddenly as he saw her face. It was said of Papa Barlasch that he was a gay man in battle, laughing and making a hundred jests, but at other times lugubrious. Désirée saw him smile for the first time, in the dim light of the passage.
“They are there in the street,” he said; “I have seen them. I thought you would come to Barlasch. They all do—the women. In here. Leave him to me. When they ring the bell, receive them yourself—with smiles. They are only men. Let them search the house if they want to. Tell them he has gone to the reception with Mademoiselle.”
As he spoke the bell rang just above his head. He looked up at it and laughed.
“Ah, ah!” he said, “the fanfare begins.”
He drew Sebastian within and closed the door of his little room. Lisa had already gone to answer the bell. When she opened the door three men stepped quickly over the threshold, and one of them, thrusting her aside, closed the door and turned the key. Désirée, in her white evening dress, on the bottom step, just beneath the lamp that hung from the ceiling, made them pause and look at each other. Then one of the three came towards her, hat in hand.
“Our duty, Fräulein,” he said awkwardly. “We are but obeying orders. A mere formality. It will all be explained, no doubt, if the householder, Antoine Sebastian, will put on his hat and come with us.”
“His hat is not there, as you see,” answered Désirée. “You must seek him elsewhere.”
The man shook his head with a knowing smile. “We must seek him in this house,” he said. “We will make it as easy for you as we can, Fräulein—if you make it easy for us.”
As he spoke he produced a candle from his pocket, and encouraged the broken wick with his fingernail.
“It will make it pleasanter for all,” said Désirée cheerfully, “if you will accept a candlestick.”
The man glanced at her. He was a heavy man, with little suspicious eyes set close together. He seemed to be concluding that she had outwitted him—that Sebastian was not in the house.
“Where are the cellar-stairs?” he asked. “I warn you, Fräulein, it is useless to conceal your father.
