“At first a victory is always a great one,” said D’Arragon, looking towards the window.
“It is so easy to ring a bell,” added Sebastian, with his rare smile.
He was quite himself this morning, and only once did the dull look arrest his features into the stony stillness which his daughters knew.
“You are the only one of your name in Danzig,” said D’Arragon, in the course of question and answer as to the safe delivery of letters in time of war.
“So far as I know, there is no other Sebastian,” replied he; and Désirée, who had guessed the motive of the question, which must have been in D’Arragon’s mind from the beginning, was startled by the fullness of the answer. It seemed to make reply to more than D’Arragon had asked. It shattered the last faint hope that there might have been another Sebastian of whom Charles had written.
“For myself,” said D’Arragon, changing the subject quickly, “I can now make sure of receiving letters addressed to me in the care of the English Consul at Riga, or the Consul at Stockholm, should you wish to communicate with me, or should Madame find leisure to give me news of her husband.”
“Désirée will no doubt take pleasure in keeping you advised of Charles’s progress. As for myself, I fear I am a bad correspondent. Perhaps not a desirable one in these days,” said Sebastian, his face slowly clearing. He waved the point aside with a gesture that looked out of place on a hand lean and spare, emerging from a shabby brown sleeve without cuff or ruffle.
“For I feel assured,” he went on, “that we shall continue to hear good news of your cousin; not only that he is safe and well, but that he makes progress in his profession. He will go far, I am sure.”
D’Arragon bowed his acknowledgment of this kind thought, and rose rather hastily.
“My best chance of quitting the city unseen,” he said, “is to pass through the gates with the market-people returning to the villages. To do that, I must not delay.”
“The streets are so full,” replied Sebastian, glancing out of the window, “that you will pass through them unnoticed. I see beneath the trees, a neighbour, Koch the locksmith, who is perhaps waiting to give me news. While you are saying farewell, I will go out and speak to him. What he has to tell may interest you and your comrades at sea—may help your escape from the city this morning.”
He took his hat as he spoke and went to the door. Mathilde, thirsting for the news that seemed to hum in the streets like the sound of bees, rose and followed him. Désirée and D’Arragon were left alone. She had gone to the window, and, turning there, she looked back at him over her shoulder, where he stood by the door watching her.
“So, you see,” she said, “there is no other Sebastian.”
D’Arragon made no reply. She came nearer to him, her blue eyes sombre with contempt for the man she had married. Suddenly she pointed to the chair which D’Arragon had just vacated.
“That is where he sat. He has eaten my father’s salt a hundred times,” she said, with a short laugh. For whithersoever civilization may take us, we must still go back to certain primaeval laws of justice between man and man.
“You judge too hastily,” said D’Arragon; but she interrupted him with a gesture of warning.
“I have not judged hastily,” she said. “You do not understand. You think I judge from that letter. That is only a confirmation of something that has been in my mind for a long time—ever since my wedding-day. I knew when you came into the room upstairs on that day that you did not trust Charles.”
“I—?” he asked.
“Yes,” she answered, standing squarely in front of him and looking him in the eyes. “You did not trust him. You were not glad that I had married him. I could see it in your face. I have never forgotten.”
D’Arragon turned away towards the window. Sebastian and Mathilde were in the street below, in the shade of the trees, talking with the eager neighbours.
“You would have stopped it if you could,” said Désirée; and he did not deny it.
“It was some instinct,” he said at length. “Some passing misgiving.”
“For Charles?” she asked sharply.
And D’Arragon, looking out of the window, would not answer. She gave a sudden laugh.
“One cannot compliment you on your politeness,” she said. “Was it for Charles that you had misgivings?”
At last D’Arragon turned on his heel.
“Does it matter?” he asked. “Since I came too late.”
“That is true,” she said, after a pause. “You came too late; so it doesn’t matter. And the thing is done now, and I … , well, I suppose I must do what others have done before me—I must make the best of it.”
“I will help you,” said D’Arragon slowly, almost carefully, “if I can.”
He was still avoiding her eyes, still looking out of the window. Sebastian was coming up the steps.
XIV
Moscow
Nothing is so disappointing as failure—except success.
While the Danzigers with grave faces discussed the news of Borodino beneath the trees in the Frauengasse, Charles Darragon, white with dust, rose in his stirrups to catch the first sight of the domes and cupolas of Moscow.
It was a sunny morning, and the gold on the churches gleamed and glittered in the shimmering heat like fairyland. Charles had ridden to the summit of a hill and sat for a moment, as others had done, in silent contemplation. Moscow at last! All around him men were shouting: “Moscow! Moscow!” Grave, white-haired generals waved their shakos in the air. Those at the summit of the hill called the others to come. Far down in the valley, where the dust raised by thousands of feet hung in the air like a mist,
