Barlasch of the Guard

by Henry Seton Merriman

“What do you know of the Tugendbund?” he asked.

But she would not answer, merely shrugging her shoulders and closing her thin lips with a snap.

“It is not only in Dantzig,” said Sebastian, “that they are unsafe. It is anywhere where the Tugendbund can reach them.”

He turned sharply to Desiree. His wits, cleared by action, told him that her silence meant that she, at all events, had not been surprised. She had, therefore, known already the part played by De Casimir and Charles, in Dantzig, before the war.

“And you,” he said, “you have nothing to say for your husband.”

“He may have been misled,” she said mechanically, in the manner of one making a prepared speech or meeting a foreseen emergency. It had been foreseen by Louis d'Arragon. The speech had been, unconsciously, prepared by him.

“You mean, by Colonel de Casimir,” suggested Mathilde, who had recovered her usual quiet. And Desiree did not deny her meaning. Sebastian looked from one to the other. It was the irony of Fate that had married one of his daughters to Charles Darragon, and affianced the other to De Casimir. His own secret, so well kept, had turned in his hand like a concealed weapon.

They were all startled by Barlasch, who spoke from the kitchen door, where he had been standing unobserved or forgotten. He came forward to the light of the lamp hanging overhead.

“That reminds me...” he said a second time, and having secured their attention, he instituted a search in the many pockets of his nondescript clothing. He still wore a dirty handkerchief bound over one eye. It served to release him from duty in the trenches or work on the frozen fortifications. By this simple device, coupled with half a dozen bandages in various parts of his person, where a frost-bite or a wound gave excuse, he passed as one of the twenty-five thousand sick and wounded who encumbered Dantzig at this time, and were already dying at the rate of fifty a day.

“A letter...” he said, still searching with his maimed hand. “You mentioned the name of the Colonel de Casimir. It was that which recalled to my mind...” He paused, and produced a letter carefully sealed. He turned it over, glancing at the seals with a reproving jerk of the head, which conveyed as clearly as words a shameless confession that he had been frustrated by them... “this letter. I was told to give it you, without fail, at the right moment.”