Barlasch of the Guard Part 7

CHAPTER VI. THE SHOEMAKER OF KONIGSBERG.

Chacun ne comprend que ce qu'il trouve en soi.

Nearly two years had pa.s.sed since the death of Queen Luisa of Prussia.

And she from her grave yet spake to her people--as sixty years later she was destined to speak to another King of Prussia, who said a prayer by her tomb before departing on a journey that was to end in Fontainebleau with an imperial crown and the reckoning for all time of the seven years of woe that followed Tilsit and killed a queen.

Two years earlier than that, in 1808, while Luisa yet lived, a few scientists and professors of Konigsberg had formed a sort of Union--vague enough and visionary--to encourage virtue and discipline and patriotism. And now, in 1812, four years later, the memory of Luisa still lingered in those narrow streets that run by the banks of the Pregel beneath the great castle of Konigsberg, while the Tugendbund, like a seed that has been crushed beneath an iron heel, had spread its roots underground.

From Dantzig, the commercial, to Konigsberg, the kingly and the learned, the tide of war rolled steadily onwards. It is a tide that carries before it a certain flotsam of quick and active men, keen-eyed, restless, rising--men who speak with a sharp authority and pay from a bottomless purse. The arrival of Napoleon in Dantzig swept the first of the tide on to Konigsberg.

Already every house was full. The high-gabled warehouses on the riverside could not be used for barracks, for they too had been crammed from floor to roof with stores and arms. So the soldiers slept where they could. They bivouacked in the timber-yards by the riverside. The country-women found the Neuer Markt transformed into a camp when they brought their baskets in the early morning, but they met with eager buyers, who haggled laughingly in half a dozen different tongues. There was no lack of money, however.

Cartloads of it were on the road.

The Neuer Markt in Konigsberg is a square, of which the lower side is a quay on the Pregel. The river is narrow here. Across it the country is open. The houses surrounding the quadrangle are all alike--two-storied buildings with dormer windows in the roof. There are trees in front. In front of that which is now Number Thirteen, at the right-hand corner, facing west, sideways to the river, the trees grow quite close to the windows, so that an active man or a boy might without great risk leap from the eaves below the dormer window into the topmost branches of the linden, which here grows strong and tough, as it surely should do in the fatherland.

A young soldier, seeking lodgings, who happened to knock at the door of Number Thirteen less than thirty hours after the arrival of Napoleon at Dantzig, looked upward through the shady boughs, and noted their growth with the light of interest in his eye. It would almost seem that the house had been described to him as that one in the Neuer Markt against which the lindens grew. For he had walked all round the square between the trees and houses before knocking at this door, which bore no number then, as it does to-day.

His tired horse had followed him meditatively, and now stood with drooping head in the shade. The man himself wore a dark uniform, white with dust. His hair was dusty and rather lank. He was not a very tidy soldier.

He stood looking at the sign which swung from the doorpost, a relic of the Polish days. It bore the painted semblance of a boot. For in Poland--a frontier country, as in frontier cities where many tongues are heard--it is the custom to paint a picture rather than write a word. So that every house bears the sign of its inmate's craft, legible alike to Lithuanian or Ruthenian, Swede or Cossack of the Don.

He knocked again, and at last the door was opened by a thickly-built man, who looked, not at his face, but at his boots. As these wanted no repair he half closed the door again and looked at the newcomer's face.

"What do you want?" he asked.

"A lodging."

The door was almost closed, when the soldier made an odd and, as it would seem, tentative gesture with his left hand. All the fingers were clenched, and with his extended thumb he scratched his chin slowly from side to side.

"I have no lodging to let," said the bootmaker. But he did not shut the door.

"I can pay," said the other, with his thumb still at his chin. He had quick, blue eyes beneath the s.h.a.ggy hair that wanted cutting. "I am very tired--it is only for one night."

"Who are you?" asked the bootmaker.

The soldier was a dull and slow man. He leant against the doorpost with tired gestures before replying.

"Sergeant in a Schleswig regiment, in charge of spare horses."

"And you have come far?"

"From Dantzig without a halt."

The shoemaker looked him up and down with a doubting eye, as if there were something about him that was not quite clear and above-board. The dust and fatigue were, however, unmistakable.

"Who sent you to me, anyway?" he grumbled.

"Oh, I do not know," was the half-impatient answer; "the man I lodged with in Dantzig or another, I forget. It was Koch the locksmith in the Schmiedega.s.se. See, I have money. I tell you it is for one night. Say yes or no. I want to get to bed and to sleep."

"How much do you pay?"

"A thaler--if you like. Among friends, one is willing to pay."

After a short minute of hesitation the shoemaker opened the door wider and came out.

"And there will be another thaler for the horse, which I shall have to take to the stable of the wood-merchant at the corner. Go into the workshop and sit down till I come."

He stood in the doorway and watched the soldier seat himself wearily on a bench in the workshop among the ancient boots, past repair, one would think, and lean his head against the wall.

He was half asleep already, and the bootmaker, who was lame, shrugged his shoulders as he led away the tired horse, with a gesture half of pity, half of doubting suspicion. Had it suggested itself to his mind, and had it been within the power of one so halt and heavy-footed to turn back noiselessly, he would have found his visitor wide-awake enough, hurriedly opening every drawer and peering under the twine and needles, lifting every bale of leather, shaking out the very boots awaiting repair.

When the dweller in Number Thirteen returned, the soldier was asleep, and had to be shaken before he would open his eyes.

"Will you eat before you go to bed?" asked the bootmaker not unkindly.

"I ate as I came along the street," was the reply. "No, I will go to bed. What time is it?"

"It is only seven o'clock--but no matter."

"No, it is no matter. To-morrow I must be astir by five."

"Good," said the shoemaker. "But you will get your money's worth. The bed is a good one. It is my son's. He is away, and I am alone in the house."

He led the way upstairs as he spoke, going heavily one step at a time, so that the whole house seemed to shake beneath his tread. The room was that attic in the roof which has a dormer window overhanging the linden tree. It was small and not too clean; for Konigsberg was once a Polish city, and is not far from the Russian frontier.

The soldier hardly noticed his surroundings, but sat down instantly, with the abandonment of a shepherd's dog at the day's end.

"I will put a st.i.tch in your boots for you while you sleep," said the host casually. "The thread is rotten, I can see. Look here--and here!"

He stooped, and with a quick turn of the awl which he carried in his belt he snapped the sewing at the join of the leg and the upper leather, bringing the frayed ends of the thread out to view.

Without answering, the soldier looked round for the boot-jack, lacking which, no German or Polish bedroom is complete.

When the bootmaker had gone, carrying the boots under his arm, the soldier, left to himself, made a grimace at the closed door. Without boots he was a prisoner in the house. He could hear his host at work already, downstairs in the shop, of which the door opened to the stairs and allowed pa.s.sage to that smell of leather which breeds Radical convictions.

The regular "tap-tap" of the cobbler's hammer continued for an hour until dusk, and all the while the soldier lay dressed on his bed. Soon after, a creaking of the stairs told of the surrept.i.tious approach of the unwilling host. He listened outside, and even tried the door, but found it bolted. The soldier, open-eyed on the bed, snored aloud. At the sound of the key on the outside of the door he made a grimace again. His features were very mobile, for Schleswig.

He heard the bootmaker descend the stairs again almost noiselessly, and, rising from the bed, he took his station at the window. All the Langga.s.se would seem to be eating-houses. The bas.e.m.e.nt, which has a separate door, gives forth odours of simple Pomeranian meats, and every other house bears to this day the curt but comforting inscription, "Here one eats." It was only to be supposed that the bootmaker at the end of his day would repair for supper to some special haunt near by.

But the smell of cooking mingling with that of leather told that he was preparing his own evening meal. He was, it seemed, an unsociable man, who had but a son beneath his roof, and mostly lived alone.

Seated near the window, where the sunset light yet lingered, the Schleswiger opened his haversack, which was well supplied, and finding paper, pens and ink, fell to writing with one eye watchful of the window and both ears listening for any movement in the room below.

He wrote easily with a running pen, and sometimes he smiled as he wrote.