Henry Seton Merriman – The Complete Collection

Chapter 11

The man glanced at her. He was a heavy man, with little suspicious eyes set close together. He seemed to be concluding that she had outwitted him--that Sebastian was not in the house.

"Where are the cellar-stairs?" he asked. "I warn you, Fraulein, it is useless to conceal your father. We shall, of course, find him."

Desiree pointed to the door next to that giving entry to the kitchen. It was bolted and locked. Desiree found the key for them. She not only gave them every facility, but was anxious that they should be as quick as possible. They did not linger in the cellar, which, though vast, was empty; and when they returned, Desiree, who was waiting for them, led the way upstairs.

They were rather abashed by her silence. They would have preferred protestations and argument. Discussion always belittles. The smile recommended by Papa Barlasch, lurking at the corner of her lips, made them feel foolish. She was so slight and young and helpless, that a sort of shame rendered them clumsy.

They felt more at home in the kitchen when they arrived there, and the sight of Lisa, sturdy and defiant, reminded them of the authority upon which Desiree had somehow cast a mystic contempt.

"There is a door there," said the heavy official, with a brusque return of his early manner. "Come, what is that door?"

"That is a little room."

"Then open it."

"I cannot," returned Lisa. "It is locked."

"Aha!" said the man, with a laugh of much meaning. "On the inside, eh?"

He went to it, and banged on it with his fist.

"Come," he shouted, "open it and be done."

There was a short silence, during which those in the kitchen listened breathlessly. A shuffling sound inside the door made the officer of the law turn and beckon to his two men to come closer.

Then, after some fumbling, as of one in the dark, the door was unlocked and slowly opened.

Papa Barlasch stood in a very primitive night-apparel within the door. He had not done things by halves, for he was an old campaigner, and knew that a thing half done is better left undone in times of war. He noted the presence of Desiree and Lisa, but was not ashamed. The reason of it was soon apparent. For Papa Barlasch was drunk, and the smell of drink came out of his apartment in a warm wave.

"It is the soldier billeted in the house," explained Lisa, with a half-hysterical laugh.

Then Barlasch harangued them in the language of intoxication. If he had not spared Desiree's feelings, he spared her ears less now; for he was an ignorant man, who had lived through a brutal period in the world's history the roughest life a man can lead. Two of the men held him with difficulty against the wall, while the third hastily searched the room--where, indeed, no one could well be concealed.

Then they quitted the house, followed by the polyglot curses of Barlasch, who was now endeavouring to find his bayonet amidst his chaotic possessions.

CHAPTER IX.

THE GOLDEN GUESS.

The golden guess Is morning star to the full round of truth.

Barlasch was never more sober in his life than when he emerged a minute later from his room, while Lisa was still feverishly bolting the door. He had not wasted much time at his toilet. In his flannel shirt, his arms bare to the elbow, knotted and muscular, he looked like some rude son of toil.

"One thinks of one's self," he hastened to explain to Desiree, fearing that she might ascribe some other motive to his action. "Some day the patron may be in power again, and then he will remember a poor soldier. It is good to think of the future."

He shook his head pessimistically at Lisa as belonging to a s*x liable to error: instanced in this case by bolting the door too eagerly.

"Now," he said, turning to Desiree again, "have you any in Dantzig to help you?"

"Yes," she answered rather slowly.

"Then send for him."

"I cannot do that."

"Then go for him yourself," snapped Barlasch impatiently.

He looked at her fiercely beneath his shaggy eyebrows.

"It is no use to be afraid," he said; "you are afraid--I see it in your face. And it is never any use. Before they hammered on that door there, my legs shook. For I am easily afraid--I. But it is never any use. And when one opens the door, it goes."

He looked at her with a puzzled frown, seeking in vain, it may have been, the ordinary symptoms of fear. She was hesitating but not afraid. There ran blood in her veins which will for all time be associated by history with a gay and indomitable courage.

"Come," he said sharply; "there is nothing else to do."

"I will go," said Desiree, at length, deciding suddenly to do the one thing that is left to a woman once or twice in her life--to go to the one man and trust him.

"By the back way," said Barlasch, helping her with the cloak that Lisa had brought, and pulling the hood forward over her face with a jerk. "Ah, I know that way. The patron is hiding in the yard. An old soldier looks to the retreat--though the Emperor has saved us that, so far. Come, I will help you over the wall, for the door is rusted."

The way, which Barlasch had perceived, led through the room at the back of the kitchen to a yard, and thence through a door not opened by the present occupiers of the old house, into a very labyrinth of narrow alleys running downward to the river and round the tall houses that stand against the cathedral walls.

The wall was taller than Barlasch, but he ran at it like a cat, and Desiree standing below could see the black outline of his limbs crouching on the top. He stooped down, and grasping her hands, lifted her by the sheer strength of one arm, balanced her for an instant on the wall, and then lowered her on the outer side.

"Run," he whispered.

She knew the way, and although the night was dark, and these narrow alleys between high walls had no lamps, Desiree lost no time. The Krahn-Thor is quite near to the Frauengasse. Indeed, the whole of Dantzig occupied but a small space between the rivers in those straitened days. The town was quieter than it had been for months, and Desiree passed unmolested through the narrow streets. She made her way to the quay, passing through the low gateway known as the door of the Holy Ghost, and here found people still astir. For the commerce that thrives on a northern river is paralyzed all the winter, and feverishly active when the ice has gone.

"The Elsa," replied a woman, who had been selling bread all day on the quay, and was now packing up her stall, "you ask for the Elsa. There is such a ship, I know. But how can I say which she is? See, they lie right across the river like a bridge. Besides, it is late, and sailors are rough men."

Desiree hurried on. Louis d'Arragon had said that the ship was lying near to the Krahn-Thor, of which the great hooded roof loomed darkly against the stars above her. She was looking about her when a man came forward with the hesitating step of one who has been told to wait the arrival of some one unknown to him.

"The Elsa," she said to him; "which ship is it?"

"Come along with me, Mademoiselle," the man replied; "though I was not told to look for a woman."

He spoke in English, which Desiree hardly understood; for she had never heard it from English lips, and looked for the first time on one of that race upon which all the world waited now for salvation. For the English, of all the nations, were the only men who from the first had consistently defied Napoleon.

The sailor led the way towards the river. As he passed the lamp burning dimly above some steps, Desiree saw that he was little more than a boy. He turned and offered her his hand with a shy laugh, and together they stood at the bottom of the steps with the water lapping at their feet.

"Have you a letter," he said, "or will you come on board?"

Then perceiving that she did not understand, he repeated the question in German.

"I will come on board," she answered.

The Elsa was lying in the middle of the river, and the boat into which Desiree stepped shot across the water without sound of oars. The sailor was paddling it noiselessly at the stern. Desiree was not unused to boats, and when they came alongside the Elsa she climbed on board without help.

"This way," said the sailor, leading her towards the deckhouse where a light burned dimly behind red curtains. He knocked at the door and opened it without awaiting a reply. In the little cabin two men sat at a table, and one of them was Louis d'Arragon dressed in the rough clothes of a merchant seaman. He seemed to recognize Desiree at once, though she still stood without the door, in the darkness.

"You?" he said in surprise. "I did not expect you, madame. You want me?"

"Yes," answered Desiree, stepping over the combing. Louis's companion, who was also a sailor, coarsely clad, rose and, awkwardly taking off his cap, hurried to the door, murmuring some vague apology. It is not always the roughest men who have the worst manners towards women.

He closed the door behind him, leaving Desiree and Louis looking at each other by the light of an oil lamp that flickered and gave forth a greasy smell. The little cabin was smoke-ridden, and smelt of ancient tar. It was no bigger than the table in the drawing-room in the Frauengasse, across which he had bowed to her in farewell a few days earlier, little knowing when and where they were to meet again. For fate can always turn a surprise better than the human fancy.

Behind the curtain, the window stood open, and the high, clear song of the wind through the rigging filled the little cabin with a continuous minor note of warning which must have been part of his life; for he must have heard it, as all sailors do, sleeping or waking, night and day.

He was probably so accustomed to it that he never heeded it. But it filled Desiree's ears, and whenever she heard it in after-life, in memory this moment came again to her, and she looked back to it, as a traveller may look back to a milestone at a cross-road, and wonder where his journey might have ended had he taken another turning.

"My father," she said quickly, "is in danger. There is no one else in Dantzig to whom we can turn, and--"

She paused. What was she going to add? She hesitated, and then was silent. There was no reason why she should have elected to come to him. At all events she gave none.

"I am glad I was in Dantzig when it happened," he said, turning to take up his cap, which was of rough dark fur, such as seamen wear even in summer at night in the Northern seas.

"Come," he added, "you can tell me as we go ashore."

But they did not speak while the sailor sculled the boat to the steps. On the quay they would probably pass unnoticed, for there were many strange sailors at this time in Dantzig, and Louis d'Arragon might easily be mistaken for one of the French seamen who had brought stores by sea from Bordeaux and Brest and Cherbourg.

"Now tell me," he said, as they walked side by side; and in voluble French, Desiree launched into her story. It was rather incoherent, by reason, perhaps, of its frankness.