“But Sweden will help. She is not friendly to France.”
Sebastian laughed, and made a gesture with his white and elegant hand, of contempt and ridicule.
“And, bon Dieu! what a friendship it is,” he exclaimed, “that is based on the fear of being taken for an enemy.”
“It is a friendship that waits its time, monsieur,” said D’Arragon taking up his hat.
“Then you have a ship, monsieur, here in the Baltic?” asked Mathilde with more haste than was characteristic of her usual utterance.
“A very small one, mademoiselle,” he answered. “So small that I could turn her round here in the Frauengasse.”
“But she is fast?”
“The fastest in the Baltic, mademoiselle,” he answered. “And that is why I must take my leave—with the news you have told me.”
He shook hands as he spoke, and bowed to Sebastian, whose generation was content with the more formal salutation. Désirée went to the door, and led the way downstairs.
“We have but one servant,” she said, “who is busy.”
On the doorstep he paused for a moment. And Désirée seemed to expect him to do so.
“Charles and I have always been like brothers—you will remember that always, will you not?”
“Yes,” she answered with her gay nod. “I will remember.”
“Then goodbye, mademoiselle.”
“Madame,” she corrected lightly.
“Madame, my cousin,” he said, and departed smiling.
Désirée went slowly upstairs again.
IV
The Clouded Moon
Quand on se méfie on se trompé, quand on ne se méfie pas, on est trompé.
Charles Darragon had come to Danzig a year earlier. He was a lieutenant in an infantry regiment, and he was twenty-five. Many of his contemporaries were colonels in these days of quick promotion, when men lived at such a rate that few of them lived long. But Charles was too easygoing to envy any man.
When he arrived he knew no one in Danzig, had few friends in the army of occupation. In six months he possessed acquaintances in every street, and was on terms of easy familiarity with all his fellow-officers.
“If the army of occupation had more officers like young Darragon,” a town councillor had grimly said to Rapp, “the Danzigers would soon be resigned to your presence.”
It seemed that Charles had the gift of popularity. He was open and hearty, hail-fellow-well-met with the newcomers, who were numerous enough at this time, quick to understand the quiet men, ready to make merry with the gay. Regarding himself, he was quite open and frank.
“I am a poor devil of a lieutenant,” he said, “that is all.”
Reserve is fatal to popularity, yet friendship cannot exist without it. Charles had, it seemed, nothing to hide, and was indifferent to the secrets of others. It is such people who receive many confidences.
“But it must go no farther …” a hundred men had said to him.
“My friend, by tomorrow I shall have forgotten all about it,” he invariably replied, which men remembered afterwards and were glad.
A certain sort of friendship seemed to exist between Charles Darragon and Colonel de Casimir—not without patronage on one side and a slightly constraining sense of obligation on the other. It was de Casimir who had introduced Charles to Mathilde Sebastian at a formal reception at General Rapp’s. Charles, of course, fell in love with Mathilde, and out again after half-an-hour’s conversation. There was something cold and calculating about Mathilde which held him at arm’s length with as much efficacy as the strictest duenna. Indeed, there are some maidens who require no better chaperon for their hearts than their own heads.
A few days after this introduction Charles met Mathilde and Désirée in the Langgasse, and he fell in love with Désirée. He went about for a whole week seeking opportunity to tell her without delay what had happened to him. The opportunity presented itself before long; for one morning he saw her walking quickly towards the Kuh-brücke with her skates swinging from her wrist. It was a sunny, still, winter morning, such as temperate countries never know. Désirée’s eyes were bright with youth and happiness. The cold air had slightly emphasized the rosy colour of her cheeks.
Charles caught his breath at the sight of her, though she did not happen to perceive him. He called a sleigh and drove to the barracks for his own skates. Then to the Kuh-brücke, where a reach of the Mottlau was cleared and kept in order for skating. He overpaid the sleigh-driver and laughed aloud at the man’s boorish surprise. There was no one so happy as Charles Darragon in all the world. He was going to tell Désirée that he loved her.
At first Désirée was surprised, as was only natural. For she had not thought again of the pleasant young officer introduced to her by Mathilde. They had not even commented on him after he had made his gay bow and gone.
She had of course thought of these things in the abstract when her busy mind had nothing more material and immediate to consider. She had probably arranged how some abstract person should some day tell her of his love and how she should make reply. But she had never imagined the incident as it actually happened. She had never pictured a youth in a gay uniform looking down at her with ardent eyes as he skated by her side through the crisp still air, while the ice sang a high clear song beneath their feet in accompaniment to his hurried laughing words of protestation. He seemed to touch life lightly and to anticipate nothing but happiness. In truth, it was difficult to be tragic on such a morning.
These were the heedless days of the beginning of the century, when men not only threw away their lives, but played ducks-and-drakes with their chances of happiness in a manner quite incomprehensible to the careful method of human thought today. Charles Darragon lived only in the present moment. He was in love with
