Henry Seton Merriman – The Complete Collection

Chapter 4

"You look at one as if one were the horizon," Desiree said to him long afterwards. But it was at this moment in the drawing-room in the Frauengasse that the comparison formed itself in her mind.

His face was rather narrow, with a square chin and straight lips. He was not quick in speech like Charles, but seemed to think before he spoke, with the result that he often appeared to be about to say something, and was interrupted before the words had been uttered.

"Unless my memory is a bad one, your mother was an Englishwoman, monsieur," said Sebastian, "which would account for your being in the English service."

"Not entirely," answered d'Arragon, "though my mother was indeed English and died--in a French prison. But it was from a sense of gratitude that my father placed me in the English service--and I have never regretted it, monsieur."

"Your father received kindnesses at English hands, after his escape, like many others."

"Yes, and he was too old to repay them by doing the country any service himself. He would have done it if he could--"

D'Arragon paused, looking steadily at the tall old man who listened to him with averted eyes.

"My father was one of those," he said at length, "who did not think that in fighting for Bonaparte one was necessarily fighting for France."

Sebastian held up a warning hand.

"In England--" he corrected, "in England one may think such things. But not in France, and still less in Dantzig."

"If one is an Englishman," replied D'Arragon with a smile, "one may think them where one likes, and say them when one is disposed. It is one of the privileges of the nation, monsieur."

He made the statement lightly, seeing the humour of it with a cosmopolitan understanding, without any suggestion of the boastfulness of youth. Desiree noticed that his hair was turning grey at the temples.

"I did not know," he said, turning to her, "that Charles was in Dantzig, much less that he was celebrating so happy an occasion. We ran against each other by accident in the street. It was a lucky accident that allowed me to make your acquaintance so soon after you have become his wife."

"It scarcely seems possible that it should be an accident," said Desiree. "It must have been the work of fate--if fate has time to think of such an insignificant person as myself and so small an event as my marriage in these days."

"Fate," put in Mathilde in her composed voice and manner, "has come to Dantzig to-day."

"Ah!"

"Yes. You are the second unexpected arrival this afternoon."

D'Arragon turned and looked at Mathilde. His manner, always grave and attentive, was that of a reader who has found an interesting book on a dusty shelf.

"Has the Emperor come?" he asked.

Mathilde nodded.

"I thought I saw something in Charles's face," he said reflectively, looking back through the open door towards the stairs where Charles had nodded farewell to them. "So the Emperor is here, in Dantzig?"

He turned towards Sebastian, who stood with a stony face.

"Which means war," he said.

"It always means war," replied Sebastian in a tired voice. "Is he again going to prove himself stronger than any?"

"Some day he will make a mistake," said D'Arragon cheerfully. "And then will come the day of reckoning."

"Ah!" said Sebastian, with a shake of the head that seemed to indicate an account so one-sided that none could ever liquidate it. "You are young, monsieur. You are full of hope."

"I am not young--I am thirty-one--but I am, as you say, full of hope. I look to that day, Monsieur Sebastian."

"And in the mean time?" suggested the man who seemed but a shadow of someone standing apart and far away from the affairs of daily life

"In the mean time one must play one's part," returned D'Arragon, with his almost inaudible laugh, "whatever it may be."

There was no foreboding in his voice; no second meaning in the words. He was open and simple and practical, like the life he led.

"Then you have a part to play, too," said Desiree, thinking of Charles, who had been called away at such an inopportune moment, and had gone without complaint. "It is the penalty we pay for living in one of the less dull periods of history. He touches your life too."

"He touches every one's life, mademoiselle. That is what makes him so great a man. Yes. I have a little part to play. I am like one of the unseen supernumeraries who has to see that a door is open to allow the great actors to make an effective entree. I am lent to Russia for the war that is coming. It is a little part. I have to keep open one small portion of the line of communication between England and St. Petersburg, so that news may pass to and fro."

He glanced towards Mathilde as he spoke. She was listening with an odd eagerness which he noted, as he noted everything, methodically and surely. He remembered it afterwards.

"That will not be easy, with Denmark friendly to France," said Sebastian, "and every Prussian port closed to you."

"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. Desiree 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 Desiree 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 good-bye, mademoiselle."

"Madame," she corrected lightly.

"Madame, my cousin," he said, and departed smiling.

Desiree went slowly upstairs again.

CHAPTER IV.

THE CLOUDED MOON.

Quand on se mefie on se trompe, quand on ne se mefie pas, on est trompe.

Charles Darragon had come to Dantzig 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 easy-going to envy any man.

When he arrived he knew no one in Dantzig, 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 Dantzigers 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 new-comers, 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 to-morrow 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 Desiree in the Langgasse, and he fell in love with Desiree. 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-brucke with her skates swinging from her wrist. It was a sunny, still, winter morning, such as temperate countries never know. Desiree'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-brucke, 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 Desiree that he loved her.

At first Desiree 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 to-day. Charles Darragon lived only in the present moment. He was in love with her. Desiree must marry him.

It was quite different from what she had anticipated. She had looked forward to such a moment with a secret misgiving. The abstract person of her thoughts had always inspired her with a painful shyness and an indefinite, breathless fear. But the lover who was here now in the flesh by her side inspired none of these feelings. On the contrary, she felt easy and natural and quite at home with him. There was nothing alarming about his flushed face and laughing eyes. She was not at all afraid of him. She even felt in some vague way older than he, though he had just told her that he was twenty-five, and four years her senior.