“There is nothing but bad news,” he said laconically. “Barlasch will have told you; but there is no need to give up hope. The army has reached the Niemen; the rearguard has quitted Vilna. There is nothing for it but to go and look for him.”
“Who will go?” she asked quietly.
“I.”
He was looking at her with grave eyes trained to darkness. But she looked past him towards the sky, which was faintly lighted by the aurora. Her averted eyes and rigid attitude were not without some suggestion of guilt.
“My ship is icebound at Reval,” said D’Arragon, in a matter-of-fact way. “They have no use for me until the winter is over, and they have given me three months’ leave.”
“To go to England?” she asked.
“To go anywhere I like,” he said, with a short laugh. “So I am going to look for Charles, and Barlasch will come with me.”
“At a price,” put in that soldier, in a shrewd undertone. “At a price.”
“A small one,” corrected Louis, turning to look at him with the close attention of one exploring a new country.
“Bah! You give what you can. One does not go back across the Niemen for pleasure. We bargained, and we came to terms. I got as much as I could.”
Louis laughed, as if this were the blunt truth.
“If I had more, I would give you more. It is the money I placed in a Danzig bank for my cousin. I must take it out again, that is all.”
The last words were addressed to Désirée, as if he had acted in assurance of her approval.
“But I have more,” she said; “a little—not very much. We must not think of money. We must do everything to find him—to give him help, if he needs it.”
“Yes,” answered Louis, as if she had asked him a question. “We must do everything; but I have no more money.”
“And I have none with me. I have nothing that I can sell.”
She withdrew her fur mitten and held out her hand, as if to show that she had no rings, except the plain gold one on her third finger.
“You have the icon I brought you from Moscow,” said Barlasch gruffly. “Sell that.”
“No,” answered Désirée; “I will not sell that.”
Barlasch laughed cynically.
“There you have a woman,” he said, turning to Louis. “First she will not have a thing, then she will not part with it.”
“Well,” said Désirée, with some spirit, “a woman may know her own mind.”
“Some do,” admitted Barlasch carelessly; “the happy ones. And since you will not sell your icon, I must go for what Monsieur le capitaine offers me.
“Five hundred francs,” said Louis. “A thousand francs, if we succeed in bringing my cousin safely back to Danzig.”
“It is agreed,” said Barlasch, and Désirée looked from one to the other with an odd smile of amusement. For women do not understand that spirit of adventure which makes the mercenary soldier, and urges the sailor to join an exploring expedition without hope of any reward beyond his daily pay, for which he is content to work and die loyally.
“And I,” she asked, “what am I to do?”
“We must know where to find you,” replied D’Arragon.
There was so much in the simple answer that Désirée fell into a train of thought. It did not seem much for her to do, and yet it was all. For it summed up in six words a woman’s life: to wait till she is found.
“I shall wait in Danzig,” she said at length.
Barlasch held up his finger close to her face so that she could not fail to see it, and shook it slowly from side to side commanding her careful and entire attention.
“And buy salt,” he said. “Fill a cupboard full of salt. It is cheap enough in Danzig now. The patron will not think of it. He is a dreamer. But a dreamer awakes at length, and is hungry. It is I who tell you—Barlasch.”
He emphasized himself with a touch of his curved fingers on either shoulder.
“Buy salt,” he said, and walked away to a rising knoll to make sure that no one was approaching. The moon was just below the horizon, and a yellow glow was already in the sky.
Désirée and Louis were left alone. He was looking at her, but she was watching Barlasch with a still persistency.
“He said that it is the happy women who know their own minds,” she said slowly.
“I suppose he meant—Duty,” she added at length, when Louis made no sign of answering.
“Yes,” he said.
Barlasch was beckoning to her. She moved away, but stopped a few yards off, and looked at Louis again.
“Do you think it is any good trying?” she asked, with a short laugh.
“It is no good trying unless you mean to succeed,” he answered lightly. She laughed a second time and lingered, though Barlasch was calling her to come.
“Oh,” she said, “I am not afraid of you when you say things like that. It is what you leave unsaid. I am afraid of you, I think, because you expect so much.”
She tried to see his face.
“I am only an ordinary human being, you know,” she said warningly.
Then she followed Barlasch.
XVIII
Missing
I should fear those that dance before me now
Would one day stamp upon me; it has been done:
Men shut their doors against a setting sun.
During the first weeks of December the biting wind abated for a time, and immediately the snow came. It fell for days, until at length the grey sky seemed exhausted; for the flakes sailed downwards in twos and threes like the stragglers of an army bringing up the rear. Then the sun broke through again, and all the world was a dazzling white.
There had been a cessation in that stream of pitiable men who staggered across the bridge from the Königsberg road. Some instinct had turned it southwards. Now it began again, and the rumour spread throughout
