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 Désirée 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 Désirée, as Solomon may have held out some great gift to the Queen of Sheba to smooth the first doubtful steps of friendship.
Désirée 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 Désirée over his shoulder in the dialect of the Côtes du Nord.
“How long will you be here?” asked Désirée, 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 headquarters’ 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 Désirée still absentmindedly 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 Désirée 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 fête?” he inquired curtly.
“My marriage fête,” 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 Désirée’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.
Désirée 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 Désirée, 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.
