Henry Seton Merriman – The Complete Collection

Chapter 7

Sebastian went out by the Frauenthor to the quay. Although it was dusk, the granaries were still at work. The river was full of craft and the roadway choked by rows and rows of carts, all of one pattern, too big and too heavy for roads that are laid across a marsh.

He turned to the right, but found his way blocked at the corner of the Langenmarkt, where the road narrows to pass under the Grunes Thor. Here the idlers of the evening hour were collected in a crowd, peering over each other's shoulders towards the roadway and the bridge. Sebastian was a tall man, and had no need to stand on tip-toe in order to see the straight rows of bayonets swinging past, and the line of shakos rising and falling in unison with the beat of a thousand feet on the hollow woodwork of the drawbridge.

The troops had been passing out of the city all the afternoon on the road to Elbing and Konigsberg.

"It is the same," said a man standing near to Sebastian, "at the Hohes Thor, where they are marching out by the road leading to Konigsberg by way of Dessau."

"It is farther than Konigsberg that they are going," was the significant answer of a white-haired veteran who had probably been at Eylau, for he had a crushed look.

"But war is not declared," said the first speaker.

"Does that matter?"

And both turned towards Sebastian with the challenging air that invites opinion or calls for admiration of uncommon shrewdness. He was better clad than they. He must know more than they did. But Sebastian looked over their heads and did not seem to have heard their conversation.

He turned back and went another way, by side streets and the little narrow alleys that nearly always encircle a cathedral, and are still to be found on all sides of the Marienkirche. At last he came to the Portchaisengasse, which was quiet enough in the twilight, though he could hear the tramp of soldiers along the Langgasse and the rumble of the guns.

There were only two lamps in the Portchaisengasse, swinging on wrought-iron gibbets at each end of the street. These were not yet alight, though the day was fading fast, and the western light could scarcely find its way between the high gables which hung over the road and seemed to lean confidentially towards each other.

Sebastian was going towards the door of the Weissen Ross'l when some one came out of the hostelry, as if he had been awaiting him within the porch.

The new-comer, who was a fat man with baggy cheeks and odd, light blue eyes--the eyes of an enthusiast, one would say--passed Sebastian, making a little gesture which at once recommended silence, and bade him turn and follow. At the entrance to a little alley leading down towards the Marienkirche the fat man awaited Sebastian, whose pace had not quickened, nor had his walk lost any of its dignity.

"Not there to-night," said the man, holding up a thick forefinger and shaking it sideways.

"Then where?"

"Nowhere to-night," was the answer. "He has come--you know that?"

"Yes," answered Sebastian slowly, "for I saw him."

"He is at supper now with Rapp and the others. The town is full of his people. His spies are everywhere. There are two in the Weissen Ross'l who pretend to be Bavarians. See! There is another--just there."

He pointed the thick forefinger down the Portchaisengasse where it widens to meet the Langgasse, where the last remains of daylight, reflected to and fro between the houses, found freer play than in the narrow alley where they stood.

Sebastian looked in the direction indicated. An officer was walking away from them. A quick observer would have noticed that his spurs made no noise, and that he carried his sword instead of allowing it to clatter after him. It was not clear whence he had come. It must have been from a doorway nearly opposite to the Weissen Ross'l.

"I know that man," said Sebastian.

"So do I," was the reply. "It is Colonel de Casimir."

With a little nod the fat man went out again into the Portchaisengasse in the direction of the inn, as if he were keeping watch there.

CHAPTER VI.

THE SHOEMAKER OF KONIGSBERG.

Chacun ne comprend que ce qu'il trouve en soi.

Nearly two years had passed since the death of Queen Luisa of Prussia. And she from her grave yet spake to her people--as sixty years later she was destined to speak to another King of Prussia, who said a prayer by her tomb before departing on a journey that was to end in Fontainebleau with an imperial crown and the reckoning for all time of the seven years of woe that followed Tilsit and killed a queen.

Two years earlier than that, in 1808, while Luisa yet lived, a few scientists and professors of Konigsberg had formed a sort of Union-- vague enough and visionary--to encourage virtue and discipline and patriotism. And now, in 1812, four years later, the memory of Luisa still lingered in those narrow streets that run by the banks of the Pregel beneath the great castle of Konigsberg, while the Tugendbund, like a seed that has been crushed beneath an iron heel, had spread its roots underground.

From Dantzig, the commercial, to Konigsberg, the kingly and the learned, the tide of war rolled steadily onwards. It is a tide that carries before it a certain flotsam of quick and active men, keen- eyed, restless, rising--men who speak with a sharp authority and pay from a bottomless purse. The arrival of Napoleon in Dantzig swept the first of the tide on to Konigsberg.

Already every house was full. The high-gabled warehouses on the riverside could not be used for barracks, for they too had been crammed from floor to roof with stores and arms. So the soldiers slept where they could. They bivouacked in the timber-yards by the riverside. The country-women found the Neuer Markt transformed into a camp when they brought their baskets in the early morning, but they met with eager buyers, who haggled laughingly in half a dozen different tongues. There was no lack of money, however.

Cartloads of it were on the road.

The Neuer Markt in Konigsberg is a square, of which the lower side is a quay on the Pregel. The river is narrow here. Across it the country is open. The houses surrounding the quadrangle are all alike--two-storied buildings with dormer windows in the roof. There are trees in front. In front of that which is now Number Thirteen, at the right-hand corner, facing west, sideways to the river, the trees grow quite close to the windows, so that an active man or a boy might without great risk leap from the eaves below the dormer window into the topmost branches of the linden, which here grows strong and tough, as it surely should do in the fatherland.

A young soldier, seeking lodgings, who happened to knock at the door of Number Thirteen less than thirty hours after the arrival of Napoleon at Dantzig, looked upward through the shady boughs, and noted their growth with the light of interest in his eye. It would almost seem that the house had been described to him as that one in the Neuer Markt against which the lindens grew. For he had walked all round the square between the trees and houses before knocking at this door, which bore no number then, as it does to-day.

His tired horse had followed him meditatively, and now stood with drooping head in the shade. The man himself wore a dark uniform, white with dust. His hair was dusty and rather lank. He was not a very tidy soldier.

He stood looking at the sign which swung from the doorpost, a relic of the Polish days. It bore the painted semblance of a boot. For in Poland--a frontier country, as in frontier cities where many tongues are heard--it is the custom to paint a picture rather than write a word. So that every house bears the sign of its inmate's craft, legible alike to Lithuanian or Ruthenian, Swede or Cossack of the Don.

He knocked again, and at last the door was opened by a thickly-built man, who looked, not at his face, but at his boots. As these wanted no repair he half closed the door again and looked at the newcomer's face.

"What do you want?" he asked.

"A lodging."

The door was almost closed, when the soldier made an odd and, as it would seem, tentative gesture with his left hand. All the fingers were clenched, and with his extended thumb he scratched his chin slowly from side to side.

"I have no lodging to let," said the bootmaker. But he did not shut the door.

"I can pay," said the other, with his thumb still at his chin. He had quick, blue eyes beneath the shaggy hair that wanted cutting. "I am very tired--it is only for one night."

"Who are you?" asked the bootmaker.

The soldier was a dull and slow man. He leant against the doorpost with tired gestures before replying.

"Sergeant in a Schleswig regiment, in charge of spare horses."

"And you have come far?"

"From Dantzig without a halt."

The shoemaker looked him up and down with a doubting eye, as if there were something about him that was not quite clear and above- board. The dust and fatigue were, however, unmistakable.

"Who sent you to me, anyway?" he grumbled.

"Oh, I do not know," was the half-impatient answer; "the man I lodged with in Dantzig or another, I forget. It was Koch the locksmith in the Schmiedegasse. See, I have money. I tell you it is for one night. Say yes or no. I want to get to bed and to sleep."

"How much do you pay?"

"A thaler--if you like. Among friends, one is willing to pay."

After a short minute of hesitation the shoemaker opened the door wider and came out.

"And there will be another thaler for the horse, which I shall have to take to the stable of the wood-merchant at the corner. Go into the workshop and sit down till I come."

He stood in the doorway and watched the soldier seat himself wearily on a bench in the workshop among the ancient boots, past repair, one would think, and lean his head against the wall.

He was half asleep already, and the bootmaker, who was lame, shrugged his shoulders as he led away the tired horse, with a gesture half of pity, half of doubting suspicion. Had it suggested itself to his mind, and had it been within the power of one so halt and heavy-footed to turn back noiselessly, he would have found his visitor wide-awake enough, hurriedly opening every drawer and peering under the twine and needles, lifting every bale of leather, shaking out the very boots awaiting repair.

When the dweller in Number Thirteen returned, the soldier was asleep, and had to be shaken before he would open his eyes.

"Will you eat before you go to bed?" asked the bootmaker not unkindly.

"I ate as I came along the street," was the reply. "No, I will go to bed. What time is it?"

"It is only seven o'clock--but no matter."

"No, it is no matter. To-morrow I must be astir by five."

"Good," said the shoemaker. "But you will get your money's worth. The bed is a good one. It is my son's. He is away, and I am alone in the house."

He led the way upstairs as he spoke, going heavily one step at a time, so that the whole house seemed to shake beneath his tread. The room was that attic in the roof which has a dormer window overhanging the linden tree. It was small and not too clean; for Konigsberg was once a Polish city, and is not far from the Russian frontier.