He had no time to say more; for Mathilde and her father were talking together on the stairs as they came down. D’Arragon thrust the letters into his pocket, the only indication he had time to give to Désirée of the policy they must pursue. He stood facing the door, alert and quiet, with only a moment in which to shape the course of more than one life.
“There is good news, Monsieur,” he said to Sebastian. “Though I did not come to bring it.”
Sebastian pointed interrogatively to the open window, where the sound of the bells seemed to emphasize the sunlight and the freshness of the morning.
“No—not that,” returned D’Arragon. “It is a great victory, they tell me; but it is hard to say whether such news would be good or bad. It was of Charles that I spoke. He is safe—Madame has heard.”
He spoke rather slowly, and turned towards Désirée with a measured gesture, not unlike Sebastian’s habitual manner, and a quick glance to satisfy himself that she had understood and was ready.
“Yes,” said Désirée, “he was safe and well after the battle, but he gives no details; for the letter was actually written the day before.”
“With a mere word, added in postscriptum, to say that he was unhurt at the end of the day,” suggested Sebastian, already drawing forward a chair with a gesture full of hospitality, inviting D’Arragon to be seated at the simple breakfast-table. But D’Arragon was looking at Mathilde, who had gone rather hurriedly to the window, as if to breathe the air. He had caught a glimpse of her face as she passed. It was hard and set, quite colourless, with bright, sleepless eyes. D’Arragon was a sailor. He had seen that look in rougher faces and sterner eyes, and knew what it meant.
“No details?” asked Mathilde in a muffled voice, without looking round.
“No,” answered Désirée, who had noticed nothing. How much more clearly we should understand what is going on around us if we had no secrets of our own to defend!
In obedience to Sebastian’s gesture, D’Arragon took a chair, and even as he did so Mathilde came to the table, calm and mistress of herself again, to pour out the coffee, and do the honours of the simple meal. D’Arragon, besides having acquired the seamen’s habit of adapting himself unconsciously and unobtrusively to his surroundings, was of a direct mind, lacking self-consciousness, and simplified by the pressure of a strong and steady purpose. For men’s minds are like the atmosphere, which is always cleared by a steady breeze, while a changing wind generates vapours, mist, uncertainty.
“And what news do you bring from the sea?” asked Sebastian. “Is your sky there as overcast as ours in Danzig?”
“No, Monsieur, our sky is clearing,” answered D’Arragon, eating with a hearty appetite the fresh bread and butter set before him. “Since I saw you, the treaties have been signed, as you doubtless know, between Sweden and Russia and England.”
Nodding his head with silent emphasis, Sebastian gave it to be understood that he knew that and more.
“It makes a great difference to us at sea in the Baltic,” said D’Arragon. “We are no longer harassed night and day, like a dog, hounded from end to end of a hostile street, not daring to look into any doorway. The Russian ports and Swedish ports are open to us now.”
“One is glad to hear that your life is one of less hardship,” said Sebastian gravely. “I … who have tasted it.”
Désirée glanced at his lean, hard face. She rose, went out of the room, and returned in a few minutes carrying a new loaf which she set on the table before him with a short laugh, and something glistening in her eyes that was not mirth.
But neither Désirée nor Mathilde joined in the conversation. They were glad for their father to have a companion so sympathetic as to produce a marked difference in his manner. For Sebastian was more at ease with Louis d’Arragon than he was with Charles, though the latter had the tie of a common fatherland, and spoke the same French that Sebastian spoke. D’Arragon’s French had the roundness always imparted to that language by an English voice. It was perfect enough, but of an educated perfection.
The talk was of such matters as concerned men more than women; of armies and war and treaties of peace. For all the world thought that Alexander of Russia would be brought to his knees by the battle of Borodino. None knew better how to turn a victory to account than he who claimed to be victor now. “It does not suffice,” Napoleon wrote to his brother at this time, “to gain a victory. You must learn to turn it to advantage.”
Save for the one reference to his life in the Baltic during the past two months, D’Arragon said nothing of himself, of his patient, dogged work carried on by day and by night in all weathers. Content to have escaped with his life, he neither referred to, nor thought of, his part in the negotiations which had resulted in the treaty just signed. For he had been the link between Russia and England; the never-failing messenger passing from one to the other with question and answer which were destined to bear fruit at last in an understanding brought to perfection in Paris, culminating at Elba.
Both were guarded in what they said of passing events, and both seemed to doubt the truth of the reports now flying through the streets of Danzig. Even in the quiet Frauengasse all the citizens were out on their terraces calling questions to those that passed by beneath the trees. The itinerant tradesman, the milkman going his round, the vendors of fruit from Langfuhr and the distant villages of the plain, lingered at the doors to tell the servants the latest gossip of the marketplace. Even in this frontier city, full of spies, strangers spoke
