We
have been friends. I told you we should be. It is good-bye to
these ladies--and to that Lisa. Look at her!"
He pointed with his curved and derisive finger into Lisa's eyes.
And in truth the tears were there. Lisa was in heart and person
that which is comprehensively called motherly. She saw perhaps some
pathos in the sight of this rugged man--worn by travel, bent with
hardship and many wounds, past his work--shouldering his haversack
and trudging off to the war.
"The wave moves on," he said, making a gesture, and a sound
illustrating that watery progress. "And Dantzig will soon be
forgotten. You will be left in peace--but we go on to--" He paused
and shrugged his shoulders while attending to a strap. "India or
the devil," he concluded.
"Colonel Casimir has gone," he added in what he took to be an aside
to Mathilde. Which made her wonder for a moment. "I saw him depart
with his staff soon after daybreak. And the Emperor has forgotten
Dantzig. It is safe enough for the patron now. You can write him a
letter to tell him so. Tell him that I said it was safe for him to
return quietly here, and live in the Frauengasse--I, Barlasch."
He was ready now, and, buttoning his tunic, he fixed the straps
across his chest, looking from one to the other of the three women
watching him, not without some appreciation of an audience. Then he
turned to Desiree, who had always been his friend, with whom he now
considered that he had the soldier's bond of a peril passed through
together.
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