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Barlasch waited with working lips until the sound of her footsteps ceased on the stairs. Then he pushed across the kitchen table a piece of writing-paper, rather yellow and woolly. It had been to Moscow and back. "Write a word to him," he said. "I will take it to Zoppot." "But you can send a message by the fisherman whose name I have given you," answered Desiree. "And will he heed the message?
It was now too late to think of going to Zoppot. After dinner Mathilde and Desiree prepared the rooms which had been destined for the occupation of the married pair after the honeymoon. "We shall have to omit Zoppot, that is all," said Desiree cheerfully, and fell to unpacking the bridal clothes which had been so merrily laid in the trunks.
"There is a man at Zoppot who will tell you," she answered. "Then I go to Zoppot." Barlasch had lived unmolested in the Frauengasse since his return. He was an old man, ill-clad, with a bloody handkerchief bound over one eye.
There was no guard-house here because Langfuhr was held by the French, and Rapp's outposts were three miles out on the road to Zoppot. "I have played this game for fifty years," said Barlasch, with a low laugh, when they reached the earthworks, completed, at such enormous cost of life and strength, by Rapp; "follow me and do as I do. When I stoop, stoop; when I crawl, crawl; when I run, run."
"Those," said Barlasch, pausing at the edge of the slope, "those are the lights of Oliva, where the Russians are. That line of lights straight in front is the Russian fleet lying off Zoppot, and with them are English ships. One of them is the little ship of Captain d'Arragon.
But we understand each other. I go now to give him the signal that it is for to-night. I have borrowed one of Lisa's dusters a blue one that will show against the snow with which to give him the signal. And he is watching from Zoppot with his telescope. That fat Lisa if I had held up my finger, she would have fallen in love with me. It has always been so. These women " And he went away muttering.
"Something must be done. The patron will do nothing; he is in the clouds, he is dreaming dreams of a new France, that bourgeois. I am an old man. Yes, I will go to Zoppot." "You mean that we should have heard from Charles before now," said Desiree. "Name of thunder! he may be in Paris!" exclaimed Barlasch, with the sudden anger that anxiety commands. "He is on the staff, I tell you."
Desiree had changed her clothes, and wore beneath her furs the dress that had been prepared for the journey to Zoppot so long ago. Mathilde had noticed the dress, which had not been seen for six months. Lisa, more loquacious, nodded to it as to a friend when helping Desiree with her furs. "You have changed," she said, "since you last wore it."
There are some fishermen who come from Zoppot to sell their fish. They steal through the Russian lines on the ice of the river at night and come to our outposts at daylight. One of them said my name this morning. I looked at him. He was wrapped up only to show the eyes. He drew his scarf aside. It was the Captain d'Arragon."
The chaise that was to carry them to Zoppot stood in the Frauengasse on the shady side of the street in the heat of the afternoon for more than an hour. Then she ran out and told the driver to go back to his stables.
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