Barlasch of the Guard | Page 4

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.

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