Henry Seton Merriman – The Complete Collection

Chapter 5

She accepted the violets which he had hurriedly bought for her as he came through the Langenmarkt, but she would not say that she loved him, because she did not. She was in most ways quite a matter-of- fact person, and she was of an honest mind. She said she would think about it. She did not love him now--she knew that. She could not say that she would not learn to love him some day, but there seemed no likelihood of it at present. Then he would shoot himself! He would certainly shoot himself unless she learnt to love him! And she asked "When?" and they both laughed. They changed the subject, but after a time they came back to it; which is the worst of love-- one always comes back to it.

Then suddenly he began to assume an air of proprietorship, and burst into a hundred explanations of what fears he felt for her; for her happiness and welfare. Her father was absent-minded and heedless. He was not a fit guardian for her. Was she not the prettiest girl in all Dantzig--in all the world? Her sister was not fond enough of her to care for her properly. He announced his intention of seeing her father the next day. Everything should be done in order. Not a word must be hinted by the most watchful neighbour against the perfect propriety of their betrothal.

Desiree laughed and said that he was progressing rather rapidly. She had only her instinct to guide her through these troubled waters; which was much better than experience. Experience in a woman is tantamount to a previous conviction against a prisoner.

Charles was grave, however; a rare tribute. He was in love for the first time, which often makes men quite honest for a brief period-- even unselfish. Of course, some men are honest and unselfish all their lives; which perhaps means that they remain in love--for the first time--all their lives. They are rare, of course. But the sort of woman with whom it is possible to remain in love all through a lifetime is rarer.

So Charles waylaid Antoine Sebastian the next day as he went out of the Frauenthor for his walk in the morning sun by the side of the frozen Mottlau. He was better received than he had any reason to expect.

"I am only a lieutenant," he said, "but in these days, monsieur, you know--there are possibilities."

He laughed gaily as he waved his gloves in the direction of Russia, across the river. But Sebastian's face clouded, and Charles, who was quick and sympathetic, abandoned that point in his argument almost before the words were out of his lips.

"I have a little money," he said, "in addition to my pay. I assure you, monsieur, I am not of mean birth."

"You are an orphan?" said Sebastian curtly.

"Yes."

"Of the . . . Terror?"

"Yes; I--well, one does not make much of one's parentage in these rough times--monsieur."

"Your father's name was Charles--like your own?"

"Yes."

"The second son?"

"Yes, monsieur. Did you know him?"

"One remembers a name here and there," answered Sebastian, in his stiff manner, looking straight in front of him.

"There was a tone in your voice--," began Charles, and, again perceiving that he was on a false scent, broke off abruptly. "If love can make mademoiselle happy--," he said; and a gesture of his right hand seemed to indicate that his passion was beyond the measure of words.

So Charles Darragon was permitted to pay his addresses to Desiree in the somewhat formal manner of a day which, upon careful consideration, will be found to have been no more foolish than the present. He made no inquiries respecting Desiree's parentage. It was Desiree he wanted, and that was all. They understood the arts of love and war in the great days of the Empire.

The rest was easy enough, and the gods were kind. Charles had even succeeded in getting a month's leave of absence. They were to spend their honeymoon at Zoppot, a little fishing-village hidden in the pines by the Baltic shore, only eight miles from Dantzig, where the Vistula loses itself at last in the salt water.

All these arrangements had been made, as Desiree had prepared her trousseau, with a zest and gaiety which all were invited to enjoy. It is said that love is an egoist. Charles and Desiree had no desire to keep their happiness to themselves, but wore it, as it were, upon their sleeves.

The attitude of the Frauengasse towards Desiree's wedding was only characteristic of the period. Every house in Dantzig looked askance upon its neighbour at this time. Each roof covered a number of contending interests.

Some were for the French, and some for the conqueror's unwilling ally, William of Prussia. The names above the shops were German and Polish. There are to-day Scotch names also, here as elsewhere on the Baltic shores. When the serfs were liberated it was necessary to find surnames for these free men--these Pauls-the-son-of-Paul; and the nobles of Esthonia and Lithuania were reading Sir Walter Scott at the time.

The burghers of Dantzig ("They must be made to pay, these rich Dantzigers," wrote Napoleon to Rapp) trembled for their wealth, and stood aghast by their empty counting-houses; for their gods had been cast down; commerce was at a standstill. There were many, therefore, who hated the French, and cherished a secret love of those bluff British captains--so like themselves in build, and thought, and slowness of speech--who would thrash their wooden brigs through the shallow seas, despite decrees and threats and sloops-of- war, so long as they could lay them alongside the granaries of the Vistula. Lately the very tolls had been collected by a French customs service, and the wholesale smuggling, to which even Governor Rapp--that long-headed Alsatian--had closed his eyes, was at an end.

Again, the Poles who looked on Dantzig as the seaport of that great kingdom of Eastern Europe which was and is no more, had been assured that France would set up again the throne of the Jagellons and the Sobieskis. There was a Poniatowski high in the Emperor's service and esteem. The Poles were for France.

The Jew, hurrying along close by the wall--always in the shadow-- traded with all and trusted none. Who could tell what thoughts were hidden beneath the ragged fur cap--what revenge awaited its consummation in the heart crushed by oppression and contempt?

Besides these civilians there were many who had a military air within their civil garb. For the pendulum of war had swung right across from Cadiz to Dantzig, and swept northwards in its wake the merchants of death, the men who live by feeding soldiers and rifling the dead.

All these were in the streets, rubbing shoulders with the gay epaulettes of the Saxons, the Badeners, the Wurtembergers, the Westphalians, and the Hessians, who had been poured into Dantzig by Napoleon during the months when he had continued to exchange courteous and affectionate letters with Alexander of Russia. For more than a year the broad-faced Bavarians (who have borne the brunt of every war in Central Europe) had been peaceably quartered in the town. Half a dozen different tongues were daily heard in this city of the plain, and no man knew who might be his friend and who his enemy. For some who were allies to-day were commanded by their kings to slay each other to-morrow.

In the wine-cellars and the humbler beer-shops, in the great houses of the councillors, and behind the snowy lace curtains of the Frauengasse and the Portchaisengasse a thousand slow Northerners spoke of these things and kept them in their hearts. A hundred secret societies passed from mouth to mouth instruction, warning, encouragement. Germany has always been the home of the secret society. Northern Europe gave birth to those countless associations which have proved stronger than kings and surer than a throne. The Hanseatic League, the first of the commercial unions which were destined to build up the greatest empire of the world, lived longest in Dantzig.

The Tugendbund, men whispered, was not dead but sleeping. Napoleon, who had crushed it once, was watching for its revival; had a whole army of his matchless secret police ready for it. And the Tugendbund had had its centre in Dantzig.

Perhaps, in the Rathskeller itself--one of the largest wine stores in the world, where tables and chairs are set beneath the arches of the Exchange, a vast cave under the streets--perhaps here the Tugendbund still encouraged men to be virtuous and self-denying for no other or higher purpose than the overthrow of the Scourge of Europe. Here the richer citizens have met from time immemorial to drink with solemnity and a decent leisure the wines sent hither in their own ships from the Rhine, from Greece and the Crimea, from Bordeaux and Burgundy, from the Champagne and Tokay. This is not only the Rathskeller, but the real Rathhaus, where the Dantzigers have taken counsel over their afternoon wine from generation to generation, whence have been issued to all the world those decrees of probity and a commercial uprightness between buyer and seller, debtor and creditor, master and man, which reached to every corner of the commercial world. And now it was whispered that the latter- day Dantzigers--the sons of those who formed the Hanseatic League: mostly fat men with large faces and shrewd, calculating eyes; high foreheads; good solid men, who knew the world, and how to make their way in it; withal, good judges of a wine and great drinkers, like that William the Silent, who braved and met and conquered the European scourge of mediaeval times--it was whispered that these were reviving the Tugendbund.

Amid such contending interests, and in a free city so near to several frontiers, men came and went without attracting undesired attention. Each party suspected a new-comer of belonging to the other.

"He scrapes a fiddle," Koch had explained to the inquiring fishwife. And perhaps he knew no more than this of Antoine Sebastian. Sebastian was poor. All the Frauengasse knew that. But the Frauengasse itself was poor, and no man in Dantzig was so foolish at this time as to admit that he had possessions.

This was, moreover, not the day of display or snobbery. The king of snobs, Louis XVI., had died to some purpose, for a wave of manliness had swept across human thought at the beginning of the century. The world has rarely been the poorer for the demise of a Bourbon.

The Frauengasse knew that Antoine Sebastian played the fiddle to gain his daily bread, while his two daughters taught dancing for that same safest and most satisfactory of all motives.

"But he holds his head so high!" once observed the stout and matter- of-fact daughter of a Councillor. "Why has he that grand manner?"

"Because he is a dancing-master," replied Desiree with a grave assurance. "He does it so that you may copy him. Chin up. Oh! how fat you are."

Desiree herself was slim enough and as yet only half grown. She did not dance so well as Mathilde, who moved through a quadrille with the air of a duchess, and threw into a polonaise or mazurka a quiet grace which was the envy and despair of her pupils. Mathilde was patient with the slow and heavy of foot, while Desiree told them bluntly that they were fat. Nevertheless, they were afraid of Mathilde, and only laughed at Desiree when she rushed angrily at them, and, seizing them by the arms, danced them round the room with the energy of despair.

Sebastian, who had an oddly judicial air, such as men acquire who are in authority, held the balance evenly between the sisters, and smiled apologetically over his fiddle towards the victim of Desiree's impetuosity.

"Yes," he would reply to watching mothers, who tried to lead him to say that their daughter was the best dancer in the school: "Yes, Mathilde puts it into their heads, and Desiree shakes it down to their feet."