“Does it signify,” inquired Sebastian in his smoothest voice, “what Colonel de Casimir may say?”
His grand manner had come back to him. He made a gesture with his hand almost suggestive of a ruffle at the wrist, and clearly insulting to Colonel de Casimir.
“He urges us to quit the city before it is too late,” continued Mathilde, in her measured voice, and awaited her father’s reply. He took snuff with a cold smile.
“You will not do so?” she asked. And by way of reply, Sebastian laughed as he dusted the snuff from his coat with his pocket-handkerchief.
“He asks me to go to Krakow with the Gräfin, and marry him,” said Mathilde finally. And Sebastian only shrugged his shoulders. The suggestion was beneath contempt.
“And … ?” he inquired with raised eyebrows.
“I shall do it,” replied Mathilde, defiance shining in her eyes.
“At all events,” commented Sebastian, who knew Mathilde’s mind, and met her coldness with indifference, “you will do it with your eyes open, and not leap in the dark, as Désirée did. I was to blame there; a man is always to blame if he is deceived. With you … Bah! you know what the man is. But you do not know, unless he tells you in that letter, that he is even a traitor in his treachery. He has accepted the amnesty offered by the Czar; he has abandoned Napoleon’s cause; he has petitioned the Czar to allow him to retire to Krakow, and there live on his estates.”
“He has no doubt good reasons for his action,” said Mathilde.
“Two carriages full,” muttered Barlasch, who had withdrawn to the dark corner near the kitchen door. But no one heeded him.
“You must make your choice,” said Sebastian, with the coldness of a judge. “You are of age. Choose.”
“I have already chosen,” answered Mathilde. “The Gräfin leaves tomorrow. I will go with her.”
She had, at all events, the courage of her own opinions—a courage not rare in women, however valueless may be the judgment upon which it is based. And in fairness it must be admitted that women usually have the courage not only of the opinion, but of the consequence, and meet it with a better grace than men can summon in misfortune.
Sebastian dined alone and hastily. Mathilde was locked in her room, and refused to open the door. Désirée cooked her father’s dinner while Barlasch made ready to depart on some vague errand in the town.
“There may be news,” he said. “Who knows? And afterwards the patron will go out, and it would not be wise for you to remain alone in the house.”
“Why not?”
Barlasch turned and looked at her thoughtfully over his shoulder.
“In some of the big houses down in the Niederstadt there are forty and fifty soldiers quartered—diseased, wounded, without discipline. There are others coming. I have told them we have fever in the house. It is the only way. We may keep them out; for the Frauengasse is in the centre of the town, and the soldiers are not needed in this quarter. But you—you cannot lie as I can. You laugh—ah! A woman tells more lies; but a man tells them better. Push the bolts, when I am gone.”
After his dinner, Sebastian went out, as Barlasch had predicted. He said nothing to Désirée of Charles or of the future. There was nothing to be said, perhaps. He did not ask why Mathilde was absent. In the stillness of the house, he could probably hear her moving in her rooms upstairs.
He had not been long gone when Mathilde came down, dressed to go out. She came into the kitchen where Désirée was doing the work of the absent Lisa, who had reluctantly gone to her home on the Baltic coast. Mathilde stood by the kitchen table and ate some bread.
“The Gräfin has arranged to quit Danzig tomorrow,” she said. “I am going to ask her to take me with her.”
Désirée nodded and made no comment. Mathilde went to the door, but paused there. Without looking round, she stood thinking deeply. They had grown from childhood together—motherless—with a father whom neither understood. Together they had faced the difficulties of life; the hundred petty difficulties attending a woman’s life in a strange land, among neighbours who bear the sleepless grudge of unsatisfied curiosity. They had worked together for their daily bread. And now the full stream of life had swept them together from the safe moorings of childhood.
“Will you come too?” asked Mathilde. “All that he says about Danzig is true.”
“No, thank you,” answered Désirée, gently enough. “I will wait here. I must wait in Danzig.”
“I cannot,” said Mathilde, half excusing herself. “I must go. I cannot help it. You understand?”
“Yes,” said Désirée, and nothing more.
Had Mathilde asked her the question six months ago, she would have said “No.” But she understood now, not that Mathilde could love De Casimir; that was beyond her individual comprehension, but that there was no alternative now.
Soon after Mathilde had gone, Barlasch returned.
“If Mademoiselle Mathilde is going, she will have to go tomorrow,” he said. “Those that are coming in at the gates now are the rearguard of the Heudelet Division which was driven out of Elbing by the Cossacks three days ago.”
He sat mumbling to himself by the fire, and only turned to the supper which Désirée had placed in readiness for him when she quitted the room and went upstairs. It was he who opened the door for Mathilde, who returned in half an hour. She thanked him absentmindedly and went upstairs. He could hear the sisters talking together in a low voice in the drawing-room, which he had never seen, at the top of the stairs.
Then Désirée came down, and he helped her to find in a shed in the yard one of those travelling-trunks which he had recognized as being of French manufacture. He took off his boots, and carried it upstairs for her.
It was ten o’clock before Sebastian came in. He nodded his thanks to
