“Yes,” she answered.
He stood thinking for a moment. He was quite practical and matter-of-fact; and had the air of a man of action rather than of one who deals in thoughts, and twists them hither and thither so that good is made to look ridiculous, and bad is tricked out with a fine new name. He frowned as he looked at the fire with eyes that flitted from one object to another, as men’s eyes do who think of action and not of thought. This was the sailor—second to none in the shallow northern sea, where all marks had been removed, and every light extinguished—accustomed to facing danger and avoiding it, to foresee remote contingencies and provide against them, day and night, week in, week out; a sailor, careful and intrepid. He had the air of being capable of that concentration without which no man can hope to steer a clear course at all.
“The horses that brought you from Marienwerder will not be fit for the road till tomorrow morning,” he said. “I will take you back to Thorn at once, and—leave you there with Barlasch.”
He glanced towards her, and she nodded, as if acknowledging the sureness and steadiness of the hand at the helm.
“You can start early tomorrow morning, and be in Danzig tomorrow night.”
They stood side by side in silence for some minutes. He was still thinking of her journey—of the dangers and the difficulties of that longer journey through life without landmark or light to guide her.
“And you?” she asked curtly.
He did not reply at once but busied himself with his ponderous fur coat, which he buttoned, as if bracing himself for the start. Beneath her lashes she looked sideways at the deliberate hands and the lean strong face, burnt to a red-brown by sun and snow, half hidden in the fur collar of his worn and weather-beaten coat.
“Königsberg,” he answered, “and Riga.”
A light passed through her watching eyes, usually so kind and gay; like the gleam of jealousy.
“Your ship?” she asked sharply.
“Yes,” he answered, as the innkeeper came to tell them that their sleigh awaited them.
It was snowing now, and a whistling, fitful wind swept down the valley of the Vistula from Poland and the far Carpathians which made the travellers crouch low in the sleigh and rendered talk impossible, had there been anything to say. But there was nothing.
They found Barlasch asleep where they had left him in the inn at Thorn, on the floor against the stove. He roused himself with the quickness and completeness of one accustomed to brief and broken rest, and stood up shaking himself in his clothes, like a dog with a heavy coat. He took no notice of D’Arragon, but looked at Désirée with questioning eyes.
“It was not the Captain?” he asked.
And Désirée shook her head. Louis was standing near the door giving orders to the landlady of the inn—a kindly Pomeranian, clean and slow—for Désirée’s comfort till the next morning.
Barlasch went close to Désirée, and, nudging her arm with exaggerated cunning, whispered—
“Who was it?”
“Colonel de Casimir.”
“With the two carriages and the treasure from Moscow?” asked Barlasch, watching Louis out of the corner of one eye, to make sure that he did not hear. It did not matter whether he heard or not, but Barlasch came of a peasant stock that always speaks of money in a whisper. And when Désirée nodded, he cut short the conversation.
The hostess came forward to tell Désirée that her room was ready, kindly suggesting that the gnädiges Fräulein must need sleep and rest. Désirée knew that Louis would go on to Königsberg at once. She wondered whether she should ever see him again—long afterwards, perhaps, when all this would seem like a dream. Barlasch, breathing noisily on his frostbitten fingers, was watching them. Désirée shook hands with Louis in an odd silence, and, turning on her heel, followed the woman out of the room without looking back.
XXIII
Against the Stream
Wo viel Licht ist, ist starker Schatten.
In the meantime the last of the Great Army had reached the Niemen, that narrow winding river in its ditch-like bed sunk below the level of the tableland, to which six months earlier the greatest captain this world has ever seen rode alone, and, coming back to his officers, said—
“Here we cross.”
Four hundred thousand men had crossed—a bare eighty thousand lived to pass the bridge again. Twelve hundred cannons had been left behind, nearly a thousand in the hands of the enemy, and the remainder buried or thrown into those dull rivers whose slow waters flow over them to this day. One hundred and twenty-five thousand officers and men had been killed in battle, another hundred thousand had perished by cold and disaster at the Bérésina or other rivers where panic seized the fugitives.
Forty-eight generals had been captured by the Russians, three thousand officers, one hundred and ninety thousand men, swallowed by the silent white Empire of the North and no more seen.
As the retreat neared Vilna the cold had increased, killing men as the first cold of an English winter kills flies. And when the French quitted Vilna, the Russians were glad enough to seek its shelter, Kutusoff creeping in with forty thousand men, all that remained to him of two hundred thousand. He could not carry on the pursuit, but sent forward a handful of Cossacks to harry the harebrained few who called themselves the rearguard. He was an old man, nearly worn out, with only three months more to live—but he had done his work.
Ney—the bravest of the brave—left alone in Russia at the last with seven hundred foreign recruits, men picked from here and there, called in from the highways and hedges to share the
