All day the work was carried on. Through the hours this procession of the bearded dead went silently by. At the invitation of a sergeant, Louis took some soup and bread from the soldiers’ table. The men laughingly apologized for the quality of both.
Towards evening the officer who had first come on duty returned to his work.
“Not yet?” he asked, offering the inevitable cigarette.
“Not yet,” answered Louis, and even as he spoke he stepped forward and stopped the bearers. He brushed aside the matted hair and beard.
“Is that your friend?” asked the officer.
“Yes.”
It was Charles at last.
“The doctor says these have been dead two months,” volunteered the first bearer, over his shoulder.
“I am glad you have found him,” said the officer, signing to the men to go on with their burden. “It is better to know—is it not?”
“Yes,” answered Louis slowly. “It is better to know.”
And something in his voice made the Russian officer turn and watch him as he went away.
XXIX
The Bargain
Like plants in mines which never saw the sun,
But dream of him and guess where he may be,
And do their best to climb and get to him.
“Oh yes,” Barlasch was saying, “it is easier to die—it is that that you are thinking—it is easier to die.”
Désirée did not answer. She was sitting in the little kitchen at the back of the house in the Frauengasse. For they had no firing now, and were burning the furniture. Her father had been buried a week. The siege was drawn closer than ever. There was nothing to eat, nothing to do, no one to talk to. For Sebastian’s political friends did not dare to come near his house. Désirée was alone in this hopeless world with Barlasch, who was on duty now in one of the trenches near the river. He went out in the morning, and only returned at night. He had just come in, and she could see by the light of the single candle that his face was grey and haggard, with deep lines drawn downwards from eyes to chin. Désirée’s own face had lost all its roundness and the bloom of her northern girlhood.
Barlasch glanced at her, and bit his lip. He had brought nothing with him. At one time he had always managed to bring something to the house every day—a chicken, or a turnip, or a few carrots. But tonight there was nothing. And he was tired out. He did not sit down, however, but stood breathing on his fingers and rubbing them together to restore circulation. He pushed the candle farther forward on the table, so that it cast a better light upon her face.
“Yes,” he said, “it is often so. I, who speak to you, have seen it so a dozen times in my life. When it is easier to sit down and die. Bah! That is a fine thing to do—a brave thing—to sit down and die.”
“I am not going to do it, so do not make that mistake,” said Désirée, with a laugh that had no mirth in it.
“But you would like to. Listen. It is not what you feel that matters; it is what you do. Remember that.”
There was an unusual vigour in his voice. Of late, since the death of Sebastian, Barlasch seemed to have fallen victim to the settled apathy which lives within a prison wall and broods over a besieged city. It is a sort of silent mourning worn by the soul for a lost liberty. Danzig had soon succumbed to it, for the citizens had not even the satisfaction of being quite sure that they were deserving of the world’s sympathy. It soon spread to the soldiers who were defending a Prussian city for a French Emperor who seemed to have forgotten them.
But tonight Barlasch seemed to be more energetic. Désirée looked round over her shoulder. He had not laid on the table any contribution to a bare larder; and yet his manner was that of one who has prepared a surprise and is waiting to enjoy its effect. He was restless, moving from one foot to another, rubbing together his crooked fingers and darting sidelong glances at her face.
“What is it?” she asked suddenly, and Barlasch gave a start as if he had been detected in some deceit. He bustled forward to the smouldering fire and held his hands over it.
“It is that it is very cold tonight,” he answered, with that exaggerated ease of manner with which the young and the simple seek to conceal embarrassment. “Tell me, mademoiselle, what have we for supper tonight? It is I who will cook it. Tonight we will keep a fête. There is that piece of beef for you. I know a way to make it appetizing. For me there is my portion of horse. It is the friend of man—the horse.”
He laughed and made an effort to be gay, which had a poignant pathos in it that made Désirée bite her lip.
“What fête is it that we are to keep?” she asked, with a wan smile. Her kind blue eyes had that glitter in them which is caused by a constant and continuous hunger. Six months ago they had only been gay and kind, now they saw the world as it is, as it always must be so long as the human heart is capable of happiness and the human reason recognizes the rarity of its attainment.
“The fête of St. Matthias—my fête, mademoiselle.”
“But I thought your name was Jean.”
“So it is. But I keep my fête at St. Matthias, because on that day we won a battle in Egypt. We will have wine—a bottle of wine—eh?”
So Barlasch prepared a great feast which was to be celebrated by Désirée in the dining-room, where he lighted a fire, and by himself
