“It is the soldier billeted in the house,”
explained Lisa, with a half-hysterical laugh.
Then Barlasch harangued them in the language of intoxication.
If he had not spared Desiree’s feelings, he
spared her ears less now; for he was an ignorant man,
who had lived through a brutal period in the world’s
history the roughest life a man can lead. Two
of the men held him with difficulty against the wall,
while the third hastily searched the room—where,
indeed, no one could well be concealed.
Then they quitted the house, followed by the polyglot
curses of Barlasch, who was now endeavouring to find
his bayonet amidst his chaotic possessions.
The
golden guess
Is morning star to the
full round of truth.
Barlasch was never more sober in his life than when
he emerged a minute later from his room, while Lisa
was still feverishly bolting the door. He had
not wasted much time at his toilet. In his flannel
shirt, his arms bare to the elbow, knotted and muscular,
he looked like some rude son of toil.
“One thinks of one’s self,” he hastened
to explain to Desiree, fearing that she might ascribe
some other motive to his action. “Some
day the patron may be in power again, and then he will
remember a poor soldier. It is good to think
of the future.”
He shook his head pessimistically at Lisa as belonging
to a sex liable to error: instanced in this
case by bolting the door too eagerly.
“Now,” he said, turning to Desiree again,
“have you any in Dantzig to help you?”
“Yes,” she answered rather slowly.
“Then send for him.”
“I cannot do that.”
“Then go for him yourself,” snapped Barlasch
impatiently.
He looked at her fiercely beneath his shaggy eyebrows.
“It is no use to be afraid,” he said;
“you are afraid—I see it in your
face. And it is never any use. Before they
hammered on that door there, my legs shook.
For I am easily afraid—I. But it is
never any use. And when one opens the door, it
goes.”
He looked at her with a puzzled frown, seeking in
vain, it may have been, the ordinary symptoms of fear.
She was hesitating but not afraid. There ran
blood in her veins which will for all time be associated
by history with a gay and indomitable courage.
“Come,” he said sharply; “there
is nothing else to do.”
“I will go,” said Desiree, at length,
deciding suddenly to do the one thing that is left
to a woman once or twice in her life—to
go to the one man and trust him.
“By the back way,” said Barlasch, helping
her with the cloak that Lisa had brought, and pulling
the hood forward over her face with a jerk.
“Ah, I know that way. The patron is hiding
in the yard. An old soldier looks to the retreat—though
the Emperor has saved us that, so far. Come,
I will help you over the wall, for the door is rusted.”
