Early the next morning, the girls were astir. But Barlasch was before them, and when Désirée came down, she found the kitchen fire alight. Barlasch was cleaning a knife, and nodded a silent good morning. Désirée’s eyes were red, and Barlasch must have noted this sign of grief, for he gave a contemptuous laugh, and continued his occupation.
It was barely daylight when the Gräfin’s heavy, old-fashioned carriage drew up in front of the house. Mathilde came down, thickly veiled and in her travelling furs. She did not seem to see Barlasch, and omitted to thank him for carrying her travelling-trunk to the carriage.
He stood on the terrace beside Désirée until the carriage had turned the corner into the Pfaffengasse.
“Bah!” he said, “let her go. There is no stopping them, when they are like that. It is the curse—of the Garden of Eden.”
XXV
A Despatch
In counsel it is good to see dangers; and in execution not to see them unless they be very great.
Mathilde had told Désirée that Colonel de Casimir made no mention of Charles in his letter to her. Barlasch was able to supply but little further information on the matter.
“It was given to me by the Captain Louis d’Arragon at Thorn,” he said. “He handled it as if it were not too clean. And he had nothing to say about it. You know his way, for the rest. He says little; but he knows the look of things. It seemed that he had promised to deliver the letter—for some reason, who knows what? and he kept his promise. The man was not dying by any chance—that De Casimir?”
And his little sharp eyes, reddened by the smoke of campfires, inflamed by the glare of sun on snow, searched her face. He was thinking of the treasure.
“Oh no!”
“Was he ill at all?”
“He was in bed,” answered Désirée, doubtfully.
Barlasch scratched his head without ceremony, and fell into a long train of thought.
“Do you know what I think?” he said at length. “I think that De Casimir was not ill at all—any more than I am; I, Barlasch. Not so ill, perhaps, as I am, for I have an indigestion. It is always there at the summit of the stomach. It is horse without salt.”
He paused and rubbed his chest tenderly.
“Never eat horse without salt,” he put in parenthetically.
“I hope never to eat it at all,” answered Désirée. “What about Colonel de Casimir?”
He waved her aside as a babbler who broke in upon his thoughts. These seemed to be lodged in his mouth, for, when reflecting, he chewed and mumbled with his lips.
“Listen,” he said at length. “This is De Casimir. He goes to bed and lets his beard grow—half an inch of beard will keep any man in the hospital. You nod your head. Yes; I thought so. He knows that the viceroy, with the last of the army, is at Thorn. He keeps quiet. He waits in his roadside inn until the last of the army has gone. He waits until the Russians come, and to them he hands over the Emperor’s possessions—all the papers, the maps, the despatches. For that he will be rewarded by the Emperor Alexander, who has already promised pardon to all Poles who have taken arms against Russia and now submit. De Casimir will be allowed to retain his own baggage. He has no loot taken at Moscow—oh no! Only his own baggage. Ah—that man! See, I spit him out.”
And it is painful to record that he here resorted to graphic illustration.
“Ah!” he went on triumphantly, “I know. I can see right into the mind of such a man. I will tell you why. It is because I am that sort of man myself.”
“You do not seem to have been so successful—since you are poor,” said Désirée, with a laugh.
He frowned at her apparently in speechless anger, seeking an answer. But for the moment he could think of none, so he turned to the knives again, which he was cleaning on a board on the kitchen-table. At length he paused and glanced at Désirée.
“And your husband,” he said slowly. “Remember that he is a partner with this De Casimir. They hunt together. I know it; for I was in Moscow. Ah! that makes you stand stiffly, and push your chin out.”
He went on cleaning the knives, and, without looking at her, seemed to be speaking his own thoughts aloud.
“Yes! He is a traitor. And he is worse than the other; for he is no Pole, but a Frenchman. And if he returns to France, the Emperor will say: ‘Where are my despatches, my maps, my papers, which were given into your care?’ ”
He finished the thought with three gestures, which seemed to illustrate the placing of a man against a wall and shooting him. His meaning could not be mistaken.
“And that is what the patron means when he says that Monsieur Charles Darragon will not return to Danzig. I knew that he meant that last night, when he was so angry—on the mat.”
“And why did you not tell me?”
Barlasch looked at her thoughtfully for a moment, before replying slowly and impressively.
“Because, if I had told you, you might have decided to quit Danzig with Mademoiselle Mathilde, and go hunting your husband in a country overrun by desperate fugitives and untamed Cossacks. And I did not want that. I want you here—in Danzig; in the Frauengasse; in this kitchen; under my hand—so that I can take care of you till the war is over. I—who speak to you—Papa Barlasch, at your service. And there is not another man in the world who will do it so well. No; not one.”
And his eyes flashed as he threw the knives into a drawer.
“But why should you do all this for me?” asked Désirée. “You could
