Henry Seton Merriman – The Complete Collection

Chapter 3

"The good God be merciful to you," he added under his breath when Desiree had gone.

She laughed as she mounted the stairs, a slim white figure amid the heavy woodwork long since blackened by time. The stairs made no sound beneath her light step. How many weary feet had climbed them since they were built! For the Dantzigers have been a people of sorrow, torn by wars, starved by siege, tossed from one conqueror to another from the beginning until now.

Desiree excused herself for her absence and frankly gave the cause. She was disposed to make light of the incident. It was natural to her to be optimistic. Both she and Mathilde made a practice of withholding from their father's knowledge the smaller worries of daily life which sour so many women and make them whine on platforms to be given the larger woes.

She was glad to note that her father did not attach much importance to the arrival of Papa Barlasch; though Mathilde found opportunity to convey her displeasure at the news by a movement of the eyebrows.

Antoine Sebastian had applied himself seriously now to his role of host, so rarely played in the Frauengasse. He was courteous and quick to see a want or a possible desire of any one of his guests. It was part of his sense of hospitality to dismiss all personal matters, and especially a personal trouble, from public attention.

"They will attend to him in the kitchen, no doubt," he said with that grand air which the dancing academy tried to imitate.

Charles hardly noted what Desiree said. So sunny a nature as his might have been expected to make light of a minor trouble, more especially the minor trouble of another. He was unusually thoughtful. Some event of the morning had, it would appear, given him pause on his primrose path. He glanced more than once over his shoulder towards the window, which stood open. He seemed at times to listen.

Suddenly he rose and went to the window. His action caused a brief silence, and all heard the clatter of a horse's feet and the quick rattle of a sword against spur and buckle.

After a glance he came back into the room.

"Excuse me," he said, with a bow towards Mathilde. "It is, I think, a messenger for me."

And he hurried downstairs. He did not return at once, and soon the conversation became general again.

"You," said the Grafin, touching Desiree's arm with her fan, "you, who are now his wife, must be dying to know what has called him away. Do not consider the 'convenances,' my child."

Desiree, thus admonished, followed Charles. She had not been aware of this consuming curiosity until it was suggested to her.

She found Charles standing at the open door. He thrust a letter into his pocket as she approached him, and turned towards her the face that she had seen for a moment when he drew her back at the corner of the Pfaffengasse to allow the Emperor's carriage to pass on its way. It was the white, half-stupefied face of one who has for an instant seen a vision of things not earthly.

"I have been sent for by the . . . I am wanted at head-quarters," he said vaguely. "I shall not be long . . ."

He took his shako, looked at her with an odd attempt to simulate cheerfulness, kissed her fingers and hurried out into the street.

CHAPTER III.

FATE.

We pass; the path that each man trod Is dim; or will be dim, with weeds.

When Desiree turned towards the stairs, she met the guests descending. They were taking their leave as they came down, hurriedly, like persons conscious of having outstayed their welcome.

Mathilde listened coldly to the conventional excuses. So few people recognize the simple fact that they need never apologize for going away. Sebastian stood at the head of the stairs bowing in his most Germanic manner. The urbane host, with a charm entirely French, who had dispensed a simple hospitality so easily and gracefully a few minutes earlier, seemed to have disappeared behind a pale and formal mask.

Desiree was glad to see them go. There was a sense of uneasiness, a vague unrest in the air. There was something amiss. The wedding party had been a failure. All had gone well and merrily up to a certain point--at the corner of the Pfaffengasse, when the dusty travelling carriage passed across their path. From that moment there had been a change. A shadow seemed to have fallen across the sunny nature of the proceedings; for never had bride and bridegroom set forth together with lighter hearts than those carried by Charles and Desiree Darragon down the steps of the Marienkirche.

During its progress across the whole width of Germany, the carriage had left unrest behind it. Men had travelled night and day to stand sleepless by the roadside and see it pass. Whole cities had been kept astir till morning by the mere rumour that its flying wheels would be heard in the streets before dawn. Hatred and adoration, fear and that dread tightening of the heart-strings which is caused by the shadow of the superhuman, had sprung into being at the mere sound of its approach.

When therefore it passed across the Frauengasse, throwing its dust upon Desiree's wedding-dress, it was only fulfilling a mission. When it broke in upon the lives of these few persons seeking dimly for their happiness--as the heathen grope for an unknown God--and threw down carefully constructed plans, swept aside the strongest will and crushed the stoutest heart, it was only working out its destiny. The dust sprinkled on Desiree's hair had fallen on the faces of thousands of dead. The unrest that entered into the quiet little house on the left-hand side of the Frauengasse had made its way across a thousand thresholds, of Arab tent and imperial palace alike. The lives of millions were affected by it, the secret hopes of thousands were undermined by it. It disturbed the sleep of half the world, and made men old before their time.

"More troops must have arrived," said Desiree, already busying herself to set the house in order, "since they have been forced to billet this man with us. And now they have sent for Charles, though he is really on leave of absence."

She glanced at the clock.

"I hope he will not be late. The chaise is to come at four o'clock. There is still time for me to help you."

Mathilde made no answer. Their father stood near the window. He was looking out with thoughtful eyes. His face was drawn downwards by a hundred fine wrinkles. It was the face of one brooding over a sorrow or a vengeance. There was something in his whole being suggestive of a bygone prosperity. This was a lean man who had once been well-seeming.

"No!" said Desiree gaily, "we were a dull company. We need not disguise it. It all came from that man crossing our path in his dusty carriage."

"He is on his way to Russia," Sebastian said jerkily. "God spare me to see him return!"

Desiree and Mathilde exchanged a glance of uneasiness. It seemed that their father was subject to certain humours which they had reason to dread. Desiree left her occupation and went to him, linking her arm in his and standing beside him.

"Do not let us think of disagreeable things to-day," she said. "God will spare you much longer than that, you depressing old wedding- guest!"

He patted her hand which rested on his arm and looked down at her with eyes softened by affection. But her fair hair, rather tumbled, which met his glance must have awakened some memory that made his face a marble mask again.

"Yes," he said grimly, "but I am an old man and he is a young one. And I want to see him dead before I die."

"I will not have you think such bloodthirsty thoughts on my wedding- day," said Desiree. "See, there is Charles returning already, and he has not been absent ten minutes. He has some one with him--who is it? Papa . . . Mathilde, look! Who is it coming back with Charles in such a hurry?"

Mathilde, who was setting the room in order, glanced through the lace curtains.

"I do not know," she answered indifferently. "Just an ordinary man."

Desiree had turned away from the window as if to go downstairs and meet her husband. She paused and looked back again over her shoulder towards the street.

"Is it?" she said rather oddly. "I do not know--I--"

And she stood with the incompleted sentence on her lips waiting irresolutely for Charles to come upstairs.

In a moment he burst into the room with all his usual exuberance and high spirit.

"Picture to yourselves!" he cried, standing in the doorway with his arms extended before him. "I was hurrying to head-quarters when I ran into the embrace of my dear Louis--my cousin. I have told you a hundred times that he is brother and father and everything to me. I am so glad that he should come to-day of all days."

He turned towards the stairs with a gesture of welcome, still with his two arms outheld, as if inviting the man, who came rather slowly upstairs, to come to his embrace and to the embrace of those who were now his relations.

"There was a little suspicion of sadness--I do not know what it was- -at the table; but now it is all gone. All is well now that this unexpected guest has come. This dear Louis."

He went to the landing as he spoke, and returned bringing by the arm a man taller than himself and darker, with a still brown face and steady eyes set close together. He had a lean look of good breeding.

"This dear Louis!" repeated Charles. "My only relative in all the world. My cousin, Louis d'Arragon. But he, par exemple, spells his name in two words."

The man bowed gravely--a comprehensive bow; but he looked at Desiree.

"This is my father-in-law," continued Charles breathlessly. "Monsieur Antoine Sebastian, and Desiree and Mathilde--my wife, my dear Louis--your cousin, Desiree."

He had turned again to Louis and shook him by the shoulders in the fulness of his joy. He had not distinguished between Mathilde and Desiree, and it was towards Mathilde that D'Arragon looked with a polite and rather formal repetition of his bow.

"It is I . . . I am Desiree," said the younger sister, coming forward with a slow gesture of shyness.

D'Arragon took her hand.

"I have been happy," he said, "in the moment of my arrival."

Then he turned to Mathilde and bowed over the hand she held out to him. Sebastian had come forward with a sudden return of his gracious and rather old-world manner. He did not offer to shake hands, but bowed.

"A son of Louis d'Arragon who was fortunate enough to escape to England?" he inquired with a courteous gesture.

"The only son," replied the new-comer.

"I am honoured to make the acquaintance of Monsieur le Marquis," said Antoine Sebastian slowly.

"Oh, you must not call me that," replied D'Arragon with a short laugh. "I am an English sailor--that is all."

"And now, my dear Louis, I leave you," broke in Charles, who had rather impatiently awaited the end of these formalities. "A brief half-hour and I am with you again. You will stay here till I return."

He turned, nodded gaily to Desiree and ran downstairs.

Through the open windows they heard his quick, light footfall as he hurried up the Frauengasse. Something made them silent, listening to it.

It was not difficult to see that D'Arragon was a sailor. Not only had he the brown face of those who live in the open, but he had the attentive air of one whose waking moments are a watch.