Barlasch of the Guard. Henry Seton Merriman

Sebastian, played his part well enough when he remembered that he had a part to play. He listened with a kind attention to the story of a very old lady, who it seemed had been married herself, but it was so long ago that the human interest of it all was lost in a pottle of petty detail which was all she could recall. Before the story was half finished, Sebastian's attention had strayed elsewhere, though his spare figure remained in its attitude of attention and polite forbearance. His mind had, it would seem, a trick of thus wandering away and leaving his body rigid in the last attitude that it had dictated.

      Sebastian did not notice that the door was open and all the guests were waiting for him to lead the way.

      “Now, old dreamer,” whispered Desiree, with a quick pinch on his arm, “take the Grafin upstairs to the drawing-room and give her wine. You are to drink our healths, remember.”

      “Is there wine?” he asked with a vague smile. “Where has it come from?”

      “Like other good things, my father-in-law,” replied Charles with his easy laugh, “it comes from France.”

      They spoke together thus in confidence, in the language of that same sunny land. But when Sebastian turned again to the old lady, still recalling the details of that other wedding, he addressed her in German, offering his arm with a sudden stiffness of gesture which he seemed to put on with the change of tongue.

      They passed up the low time-worn steps arm-in-arm, and beneath the high carved doorway, whereon some pious Hanseatic merchant had inscribed his belief that if God be in the house there is no need of a watchman, emphasizing his creed by bolts and locks of enormous strength, and bars to every window.

      The servant in her Samland Sunday dress, having shaken her fist at the children, closed the door behind the last guest, and, so far as the Frauengasse was concerned, the exciting incident was over. From the open window came only the murmur of quiet voices, the clink of glasses at the drinking of a toast, or a laugh in the clear voice of the bride herself. For Desiree persisted in her optimistic view of these proceedings, though her husband scarcely helped her now at all, and seemed a different man since the passage through the Pfaffengasse of that dusty travelling carriage which had played the part of the stormy petrel from end to end of Europe.

CHAPTER II. A CAMPAIGNER.

       Table of Contents

      Not what I am, but what I Do, is my Kingdom.

      Desiree had made all her own wedding-clothes. “Her poor little marriage-basket,” she called it. She had even made the cake which was now cut with some ceremony by her father.

      “I tremble,” she exclaimed aloud, “to think what it may be like in the middle.”

      And Mathilde was the only person there who did not smile at the unconscious admission. The cake was still under discussion, and the Grafin had just admitted that it was almost as good as that other cake which had been consumed in the days of Frederick the Great, when the servant called Desiree from the room.

      “It is a soldier,” she said in a whisper at the head of the stairs. “He has a paper in his hand. I know what that means. He is quartered on us.”

      Desiree hurried downstairs. In the entrance-hall, a broad-built little man stood awaiting her. He was stout and red, with hair all ragged at the temples, almost white. His eyes were lost behind shaggy eyebrows. His face was made broader by little whiskers stopping short at the level of his ear. He had a snuff-blown complexion, and in the wrinkles of his face the dust of a dozen campaigns seemed to have accumulated.

      “Barlasch,” he said curtly, holding out a long strip of blue paper. “Of the Guard. Once a sergeant. Italy, Egypt, the Danube.”

      He frowned at Desiree while she read the paper in the dim light that filtered through the twisted bars of the fanlight above the door.

      Then he turned to the servant who stood, comely and breathless, looking him up and down.

      “Papa Barlasch,” he added for her edification, and he drew down his left eyebrow with a jerk, so that it almost touched his cheek. His right eye, grey and piercing, returned her astonished gaze with a fierce steadfastness.

      “Does this mean that you are quartered upon us?” asked Desiree without seeking to hide her disgust. She spoke in her own tongue.

      “French?” said the soldier, looking at her. “Good. Yes. I am quartered here. Thirty-six, Frauengasse. Sebastian; musician. You are lucky to get me. I always give satisfaction—ha!”

      He gave a curt laugh in one syllable only. His left arm was curved round a bundle of wood bound together by a red pocket-handkerchief not innocent of snuff. He held out this bundle to Desiree, as Solomon may have held out some great gift to the Queen of Sheba to smooth the first doubtful steps of friendship.

      Desiree accepted the gift and stood in her wedding-dress holding the bundle of wood against her breast. Then a gleam of the one grey eye that was visible conveyed to her the fact that this walnut-faced warrior was smiling. She laughed gaily.

      “It is well,” said Barlasch. “We are friends. You are lucky to get me. You may not think so now. Would this woman like me to speak to her in Polish or German?”

      “Do you speak so many languages?”

      He shrugged his shoulders and spread out his arms as far as his many burdens allowed. For he was hung round with a hundred parcels and packages.

      “The Old Guard,” he said, “can always make itself understood.”

      He rubbed his hands together with the air of a brisk man ready for any sort of work.

      “Now, where shall I sleep?” he asked. “One is not particular, you understand. A few minutes and one is at home—perhaps peeling the potatoes. It is only a civilian who is ashamed of using his knife on a potato. Papa Barlasch, they call me.”

      Without awaiting an invitation he went forward towards the kitchen. He seemed to know the house by instinct. His progress was accompanied by a clatter of utensils like that which heralds the coming of a carrier's cart.

      At the kitchen door he stopped and sniffed loudly. There certainly was a slight odour of burning fat. Papa Barlasch turned and shook an admonitory finger at the servant, but he said nothing. He looked round at the highly polished utensils, at the table and floor both alike scrubbed clean by a vigorous northern arm. And he was kind enough to nod approval.

      “On a campaign,” he said to no one in particular, “a little bit of horse thrust into the cinders on the end of a bayonet—but in times of peace …”

      He broke off and made a gesture towards the saucepans which indicated quite clearly that he was between campaigns—inclined to good living.

      “I am a rude fork,” he jerked to Desiree over his shoulder in the dialect of the Cotes du Nord.

      “How long will you be here?” asked Desiree, who was eminently practical. A billet was a misfortune which Charles Darragon had hitherto succeeded in warding off. He had some small influence as an officer of the head-quarters' staff.

      Barlasch held up a reproving hand. The question, he seemed to think, was not quite delicate.

      “I pay my own,” he said. “Give and take—that is my motto. When you have nothing to give … offer a smile.”

      With a gesture he indicated the bundle of firewood which Desiree still absent-mindedly carried against her white dress. He turned and opened a cupboard low down on the floor at the left-hand side of the fireplace. He seemed to know by an instinct usually possessed by charwomen and other domesticated persons of experience where the firewood was kept. Lisa gave a little exclamation of surprise at his impertinence and his perspicacity. He took the firewood, unknotted his handkerchief, and threw his offering into the cupboard.