Barlasch of the Guard. Henry Seton Merriman

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.

       Table of Contents

      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