A few children had congregated1 on the steps of the Marienkirche at Dantzig, because the door stood open. The verger, old Peter Koch—on week days a locksmith—had told them that nothing was going to happen; had been indiscreet enough to bid them go away. So they stayed, for they were little girls.
A wedding was in point of fact in progress within the towering walls of the Marienkirche—a cathedral built of red brick in the great days of the Hanseatic League.
“It is the younger daughter of Antoine Sebastian,” replied the verger, indicating with a nod of his head the house on the left-hand side of the Frauengasse where Sebastian lived. There was a wealth of meaning in the nod. For Peter Koch lived round the corner in the Kleine Schmiedegasse, and of course—well, it is only neighbourly to take an interest in those who drink milk from the same cow and buy wood from the same Jew.
The fishwife looked thoughtfully down the Frauengasse where every house has a different gable, and none of less than three floors within the pitch of the roof. She singled out No. 36, which has a carved stone balustrade to its broad verandah and a railing of wrought-iron on either side of the steps descending3 from the verandah to the street.
“They teach dancing?” she inquired.
And Koch nodded again, taking snuff.
“And he—the father?”
“He scrapes a fiddle,” replied the verger, examining the lady's basket of fish in a non-committing and final way. For a locksmith is almost as confidential4 an adviser5 as a notary6. The Dantzigers, moreover, are a thrifty7 race and keep their money in a safe place; a habit which was to cost many of them their lives before the coming of another June.
The marriage service was a long one and not exhilarating. Through the open door came no sound of organ or choir8, but the deep and monotonous9 drawl of one voice. There had been no ringing of bells. The north countries, with the exception of Russia, require more than the ringing of bells or the waving of flags to warm their hearts. They celebrate their festivities with good meat and wine consumed decently behind closed doors.
Dantzig was in fact under a cloud. No larger than a man's hand, this cloud had risen in Corsica forty-three years earlier. It had overshadowed France. Its gloom had spread to Italy, Austria, Spain; had penetrated10 so far north as Sweden; was now hanging sullen11 over Dantzig, the greatest of the Hanseatic towns, the Free City. For a Dantziger had never needed to say that he was a Pole or a Prussian, a Swede or a subject of the Czar. He was a Dantziger. Which is tantamount to having for a postal12 address a single name that is marked on the map.
Napoleon had garrisoned14 the Free City with French troops some years earlier, to the sullen astonishment15 of the citizens. And Prussia had not objected for a very obvious reason. Within the last fourteen months the garrison13 had been greatly augmented16. The clouds seemed to be gathering17 over this prosperous city of the north, where, however, men continued to eat and drink, to marry and to be given in marriage as in another city of the plain.
Peter Koch replaced his snuff-stained handkerchief in the pocket of his rusty18 cassock and stood aside. He murmured a few conventional words of blessing20, hard on the heels of stronger exhortations21 to the waiting children. And Desiree Sebastian came out into the sunlight—Desiree Sebastian no more.
That she was destined22 for the sunlight was clearly written on her face and in her gay, kind blue eyes. She was tall and straight and slim, as are English and Polish and Danish girls, and none other in all the world. But the colouring of her face and hair was more pronounced than in the fairness of Anglo-Saxon youth. For her hair had a golden tinge23 in it, and her skin was of that startlingly milky24 whiteness which is only found in those who live round the frozen waters. Her eyes, too, were of a clearer blue—like the blue of a summer sky over the Baltic sea. The rosy25 colour was in her cheeks, her eyes were laughing. This was a bride who had no misgivings26.
On seeing such a happy face returning from the altar the observer might have concluded that the bride had assuredly attained27 her desire; that she had secured a title; that the pre-nuptial settlement had been safely signed and sealed.
But Desiree had none of these things. It was nearly a hundred years ago.
Her husband must have whispered some laughing comment on Koch, or another appeal to her quick sense of the humorous, for she looked into his changing face and gave a low, girlish laugh of amusement as they descended28 the steps together into the brilliant sunlight.
Charles Darragon wore one of the countless29 uniforms that enlivened the outward world in the great days of the greatest captain that history has seen. He was unmistakably French—unmistakably a French gentleman, as rare in 1812 as he is to-day. To judge from his small head and clean-cut features, fine and mobile; from his graceful30 carriage and slight limbs, this man was one of the many bearing names that begin with the fourth letter of the alphabet since the Terror only.
He was merely a lieutenant31 in a regiment32 of Alsatian recruits; but that went for nothing in the days of the Empire. Three kings in Europe had begun no farther up the ladder.
The Frauengasse is a short street, made narrow by the terrace that each house throws outward from its face, each seeking to gain a few inches on its neighbour. It runs from the Marienkirche to the Frauenthor, and remains33 to-day as it was built three hundred years ago.
Desiree nodded and laughed to the children, who interested her. She was quite simple and womanly, as some women, it is to be hoped, may succeed in continuing until the end of time. She was always pleased to see children; was glad, it seemed, that they should have congregated on the steps to watch her pass. Charles, with a faint and unconscious reflex of that grand manner which had brought his father to the guillotine, felt in his pocket for money, and found none.
He jerked his hand out with widespread fingers, in a gesture indicative of familiarity with the nakedness of the land.
“I have nothing, little citizens,” he said with a mock gravity; “nothing but my blessing.”
And he made a gay gesture with his left hand over their heads, not the act of benediction34, but of peppering, which made them all laugh. The bride and bridegroom passing on joined in the laughter with hearts as light and voices scarcely less youthful.
The Frauengasse is intersected by the Pfaffengasse at right angles, through which narrow and straight street passes much of the traffic towards the Langenmarkt, the centre of the town. As the little bridal procession reached the corner of this street, it halted at the approach of some mounted troops. There was nothing unusual in this sight in the streets of Dantzig, which were accustomed now to the clatter35 of the Saxon cavalry36.
But at the sight of the first troopers Charles Darragon threw up his head with a little exclamation37 of surprise.
Desiree looked at him and then turned to follow the direction of his gaze.
“What are these?” she murmured. For the uniforms were new and unfamiliar38.
The horsemen vanished into the continuation of the Pfaffengasse, and immediately behind them came a travelling carriage, swung on high wheels, three times the size of a Dantzig drosky, white with dust. It had small square windows. As Desiree drew back in obedience40 to a movement of her husband's arm, she saw a face for an instant—pale and set—with eyes that seemed to look at everything and yet at something beyond.
“Who was it? He looked at you, Charles,” said Desiree.
“It is the Emperor,” answered Darragon. His face was white. His eyes were dull, like the eyes of one who has seen a vision and is not yet back to earth.
Desiree turned to those behind her.
“It is the Emperor,” she said, with an odd ring in her voice which none had ever heard before. Then she stood looking after the carriage.
Her father, who was at her elbow—tall, white-haired, with an aquiline41, inscrutable face—stood in a like attitude, looking down the Pfaffengasse. His hand was raised before his face with outspread fingers which seemed rigid42 in that gesture, as if lifted hastily to screen his face and hide it.
“Did he see me?” he asked in a low voice which only Desiree heard.
She glanced at him, and her eyes, which were clear as a cloudless sky, were suddenly shadowed by a suspicion quick and poignant43.
“He seemed to see everything, but he only looked at Charles,” she answered. For a moment they all stood in the sunshine looking towards the Langenmarkt where the tower of the Rathhaus rose above the high roofs. The dust raised by the horses' feet and the carriage wheels slowly settled on their bridal clothes.
It was Desiree who at length made a movement to continue their way towards her father's house.
“Well,” she said with a slight laugh, “he was not bidden to my wedding, but he has come all the same.”
Others laughed as they followed her. For a bride at the church-door, or a judge on the bench, or a criminal on the scaffold-steps, need make but a very small joke to cause merriment. Laughter is often nothing but the froth of tears.
There were faces suddenly bleached44 in the little group of wedding-guests, and none were whiter than the handsome features of Mathilde Sebastian, Desiree's elder sister, who looked angry, had frowned at the children, and seemed to find this simple wedding too bourgeois45 for her taste. She carried her head with an air that told the world not to expect that she should ever be content to marry in such a humble46 style, and walk from the church in satin slippers47 like any daughter of a burgher.
This, at all events, was what old Koch the locksmith must have read in her beautiful, discontented face.
“Ah! ah!” he muttered to the bolts as he shot them. “But it is not the lightest hearts that quit the church in a carriage.”
So simple were the arrangements that bride and bridegroom and wedding-guests had to wait in the street while the servant unlocked the front door of No. 36 with a great key hurriedly extracted from her apron-pocket.
There was no unusual stir in the street. The windows of one or two of the houses had been decorated with flowers. These were the houses of friends. Others were silent and still behind their lace curtains, where there doubtless lurked48 peeping and criticizing eyes—the house of a neighbour.
The wedding-guests were few in number. Only one of them had a distinguished49 air, and he, like the bridegroom, wore the uniform of France. He was a small man, somewhat brusque in attitude, as became a soldier of Italy and Egypt. But he had a pleasant smile and that affability of manner which many learnt in the first years of the great Republic. He and Mathilde Sebastian never looked at each other: either an understanding or a misunderstanding.
The host, Antoine Sebastian, played his part well enough when he remembered that he had a part to play. He listened with a kind attention to the story of a very old lady, who it seemed had been married herself, but it was so long ago that the human interest of it all was lost in a pottle of petty detail which was all she could recall. Before the story was half finished, Sebastian's attention had strayed elsewhere, though his 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 dictated50.
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 doorway51, whereon some pious52 Hanseatic merchant had inscribed53 his belief that if God be in the house there is no need of a watchman, emphasizing his creed54 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 murmur19 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 proceedings55, 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.
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1
congregated
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| （使）集合，聚集( congregate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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descending
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| n. 下行 adj. 下降的 | |
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confidential
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| adj.秘（机）密的，表示信任的，担任机密工作的 | |
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5
adviser
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| n.劝告者，顾问 | |
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notary
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| n.公证人，公证员 | |
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7
thrifty
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| adj.节俭的；兴旺的；健壮的 | |
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8
choir
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| n.唱诗班，唱诗班的席位，合唱团，舞蹈团；v.合唱 | |
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9
monotonous
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| adj.单调的，一成不变的，使人厌倦的 | |
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10
penetrated
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| adj. 击穿的，鞭辟入里的 动词penetrate的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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11
sullen
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| adj.愠怒的，闷闷不乐的，(天气等)阴沉的 | |
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12
postal
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| adj.邮政的，邮局的 | |
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13
garrison
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| n.卫戍部队；驻地，卫戍区；vt.派(兵)驻防 | |
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14
garrisoned
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| 卫戍部队守备( garrison的过去式和过去分词 )； 派部队驻防 | |
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15
astonishment
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| n.惊奇，惊异 | |
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16
Augmented
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| adj.增音的 动词augment的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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17
gathering
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| n.集会，聚会，聚集 | |
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18
rusty
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| adj.生锈的；锈色的；荒废了的 | |
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19
murmur
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| n.低语，低声的怨言；v.低语，低声而言 | |
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20
blessing
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| n.祈神赐福；祷告；祝福，祝愿 | |
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21
exhortations
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| n.敦促( exhortation的名词复数 )；极力推荐；（正式的）演讲；（宗教仪式中的）劝诫 | |
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22
destined
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| adj.命中注定的；(for)以…为目的地的 | |
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23
tinge
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| vt.(较淡)着色于，染色；使带有…气息；n.淡淡色彩，些微的气息 | |
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24
milky
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| adj.牛奶的，多奶的；乳白色的 | |
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rosy
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| adj.美好的，乐观的，玫瑰色的 | |
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26
misgivings
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| n.疑虑，担忧，害怕；疑虑，担心，恐惧( misgiving的名词复数 )；疑惧 | |
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27
attained
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| （通常经过努力）实现( attain的过去式和过去分词 )； 达到； 获得； 达到（某年龄、水平、状况） | |
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28
descended
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| a.为...后裔的，出身于...的 | |
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29
countless
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| adj.无数的，多得不计其数的 | |
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30
graceful
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| adj.优美的，优雅的；得体的 | |
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31
lieutenant
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| n.陆军中尉，海军上尉；代理官员，副职官员 | |
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32
regiment
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| n.团，多数，管理；v.组织，编成团，统制 | |
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33
remains
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| n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹 | |
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34
benediction
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| n.祝福；恩赐 | |
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35
clatter
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| v./n.(使)发出连续而清脆的撞击声 | |
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36
cavalry
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| n.骑兵；轻装甲部队 | |
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37
exclamation
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| n.感叹号，惊呼，惊叹词 | |
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38
unfamiliar
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| adj.陌生的，不熟悉的 | |
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39
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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40
obedience
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| n.服从，顺从 | |
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41
aquiline
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| adj.钩状的，鹰的 | |
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42
rigid
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| adj.严格的，死板的；刚硬的，僵硬的 | |
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43
poignant
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| adj.令人痛苦的，辛酸的，惨痛的 | |
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44
bleached
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| 漂白的，晒白的，颜色变浅的 | |
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45
bourgeois
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| adj./n.追求物质享受的(人)；中产阶级分子 | |
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46
humble
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| adj.谦卑的，恭顺的；地位低下的；v.降低，贬低 | |
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47
slippers
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| n. 拖鞋 | |
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48
lurked
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| vi.潜伏，埋伏（lurk的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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49
distinguished
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| adj.卓越的，杰出的，著名的 | |
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50
dictated
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| v.大声讲或读( dictate的过去式和过去分词 )；口授；支配；摆布 | |
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51
doorway
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| n.门口，(喻)入门；门路，途径 | |
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52
pious
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| adj.虔诚的；道貌岸然的 | |
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53
inscribed
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| v.写，刻( inscribe的过去式和过去分词 )；内接 | |
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54
creed
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| n.信条；信念，纲领 | |
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55
proceedings
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| n.进程，过程，议程；诉讼(程序)；公报 | |
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