The Great White Army Part 12

Day broke with a wan, grey light and a powder of snow which burned the skin like hot needles. We found the great street of the town still blocked by the wagons of the transport and the guns of the Emperor's Guard. The bravest men moved like phantoms in the mist, their spirits sunk, their flesh shrunken by the cold. None of the eclat of departure was to be observed in all that throng. The road had carried us to a house of death, and no hope lay beyond it. Who shall wonder at the dejection which fell upon the once proud Grand Army?

We came up to the Emperor's tent at nine o'clock, and heard that His Majesty was just about to march. Murat and Dumesnil were with him, and I was lucky enough to catch the latter when he came out of the Emperor's room some ten minutes later. My story interested him profoundly, and we were soon ushered into His Majesty's presence. I thought he looked a little careworn, but there was no betrayal of his secret thoughts, nor did he speak a word in reference to the thousands of dead who lay buried beneath the snow in that wretched town. Indeed, his manner became almost a little aggressive when he spoke and asked me somewhat surlily what I wanted.

"Your Majesty," said I, "there is a woman in the city who has news from the Russian head-quarters. I thought you would wish to hear of her."

"Is she with you?" he asked quickly, the wonderful eyes searching me from head to foot.

I had to say that she was not, and at that his choler mounted.

"Then why do you come here? Why do you waste my time? Go and fetch her immediately. You must be a fool to come upon such an errand."

I had been an old favourite of his, and it came to me that he would not have spoken in this way had the situation been less terrible. His anger reflected his disappointment and would not suffer argument. I did not attempt to tell him the true story of Valerie St. Antoine, for to that he would never have listened in such a temper; but, promising to fetch her immediately, I was about to leave the room, when he said:

"Let there be no mistake. If you do not find her I will have you shot."

I heard him with amazement, for never had such words been spoken to me before. Yet I knew the Little Corporal well enough not to doubt his meaning. He had realised the importance of the tidings I carried, and his anger at our supposed neglect prompted the threat. If this did not alarm me it was because I trusted Valerie, and so well did my confidence seem to be justified that Leon laughed when he heard the story.

"I know women," said he. "She would do anything for me. We will just tell her all the circ.u.mstances, and she will come immediately. Cheer up, mon oncle; I shall not have to dig a bullet out of you at dawn to-morrow."

Truthfully, I did not believe that he would, but I was a little anxious none the less, and we returned to the church at our best speed. When we got there we found the building empty of all save its wounded and its dead. Of Valerie there was not a trace, nor of the colonel, her father. For a little while I could not realise the importance of this nor understand wholly what it meant to me. When the truth came it was as though a man had clapped a pistol to my head and cried that I must die. Good G.o.d, what would my case be if we could not find her? Even Leon was moved; I could see that he had begun to tremble.

VI

"Mon oncle," said he, "she cannot be gone far; let us get some of our men and search for her. Valerie will never leave the army at such a time. We must find her without delay."

I perceived that it was the only thing to be done, and, going out of the church with him, we began our search, which was to end so disastrously.

There was no street, house, nor cellar within a quarter of a mile of the place that we did not ransack to its depths. I have always been liked by the Guard, and many a good fellow proffered his help in such an emergency. Soon, I think, there must have been fifty of us crying the tidings far and wide and asking, "Have you seen the Frenchwoman named St. Antoine?" The astonis.h.i.+ng thing was that we did not meet a human being who could help us by a word. None had seen Valerie; few thought that they would recognise her if they did see her.

"Possibly," said one, "she has gone to the guest house in the main street of the town." Another suggested that she might have set out with the advance guard which left just after dawn. But all agreed that she was not to be found, and when noon came and there were still no tidings of her, then I began to believe that she would never be found at all. This was a disaster so unlooked for, so terrible, that it paralysed every faculty I possessed. To die for a woman's temper, I said, while even my friends began to admit that I was in grave danger.

When I met an aide-de-camp to General Dumesnil a little later in the afternoon, he told me that His Majesty was still waiting, but that his anger had not modified.

"By heaven," said he, "he will have you shot, major, if you do not find her."

I could only answer that I had done my best and was still doing it. It occurred to me that, after all, Valerie might return to the church eventually, and, telling every man I knew that I was going there, I sought out that now deserted building, and made myself its prisoner.

What hours they were--what hours of waiting, of hope, and of fear!

From the distance I could hear the rumble of the guns and the murmur of a great army moving, but the church itself was as silent as the dead and filled with the ghosts of yesterday. In the end the night came and found me still watching. I did not dare to return to head-quarters.

Even Leon did not come back to me.

Well, a man dies but once, they say, and yet I died many deaths that night.

Often I rebuked myself that Leon was one of the few to whom I had not committed my intention of returning to the church, and a little after ten o'clock I set out to seek for him. This walk took me back to the main street of the town, and eventually to the very building wherein I had seen His Majesty that morning. Such a fact, if it is to be explained at all, must be set down to the magnetism of fate, which destroys men as well as animals. The rabbit, they say, is fascinated by the snake, and so was I by that intolerable uncertainty which I could not support in the stillness of the church. I must know the truth, I thought: I must see the Emperor again, if I were ordered out for execution there and then--well, a more terrible death might await me on the frozen plain beyond the town. "Have done with it," was my idea, as I pushed my way up the steps and asked if His Majesty was still there.

Well, it was a fearful ordeal. A young officer carried in my message and bade me wait at the door until he returned. It mattered not where it was. I do not think I was conscious of the time, the place, or of anything but the issue. Should I be summoned to that magic presence or should I not? Would the penalty be death? Few know what a man suffers who lives through such moments as these; few can understand the sudden reaction which attends the truth, whatever it be.

"His Majesty left at one o'clock," said the orderly when he returned.

The truth staggered me, and I reeled as at a blow.

"Did His Majesty leave alone?" I asked.

"No," said the fellow, and here he smiled; "there was a woman with him."

Pah, my friends, what a coward I had been, and how I cursed the weary hours I had spent alone in that hole of a church!

CHAPTER V

THE CAMP BY THE RIVER

I

There were two days of cold, clear weather after we left Slawkowo. It was upon the second of these days that the adventure of which I shall now speak befell me.

The sufferings which the army endured had not by any means abated at this time. We found but scant supplies in the town, and there had not been that distribution of rations we had expected. It is true that the first-comers pillaged brandy from the cellars of Slawkowo, but this was poor sustenance for men whose greatest necessity was bread, and in this respect we quitted the town as poor as we entered it. Our one consolation was that the north winds no longer nipped us and the snow had ceased to fall. Just as heretofore, men devoured the horses that fell by the way and drank their blood greedily. Nay, we were in no way surprised when we heard that the Croats were devouring each other, and the cruel tales of our comrades' sufferings which were told at every bivouac could readily be believed. Naturally, only the bravest kept their courage through such an ordeal. The cunning we had with us, and they went stoutly enough because of their cunning. There will always be men who are able to get food while others starve, and in such the Grand Army was not deficient. These happy fellows kept their secrets for the most part, and would often pretend to take pot-luck with us, while we knew all the time that they had hidden stores in which we did not share. The fact led to bitterness sometimes, and such men were shunned by their fellows as unworthy of the spirit of comrades.h.i.+p which animated the Guard.

I met more than one of these cormorants after we left Slawkowo, but none whose conduct so much mystified me as that of Captain Payard of the dragoons. In converse he was the best of good fellows--a merry, curly-haired gentleman, whose eyes were as blue as a woman's and whose smile was medicine for every ill. Payard pretended to eat horse with us, and yet we knew that this could not be his staple diet, for he was as fat as a Normandy lamb and as gay. Many tried to guess his secret, but none discovered it, and he would have carried it back to Paris with him but for a bottle of brandy I h.o.a.rded at my saddle-bow, and opened on the night we left Slawkowo. So deeply did he drink of this that he became quite tipsy, and, crouching by my side over the bivouac fire in the wood, he told me his story without shame.

"You all say that I live well," he protested. "True enough; but, bon camarade, I steal from the Russians."

"What?" cried I. "You are known to them, then?"

He laughed at the idea of treachery.

"Do you not know me better than that, major?" said he, his eyes flas.h.i.+ng in the crimson light. "I tell you that I go to the Russian camp and steal what I want. Is it not very simple, and should you not all have thought of it for yourselves?"

I was very much surprised, and began to question him closely. How had he got the pa.s.sword? Was it not a highly dangerous undertaking, and had he not been fortunate to escape with his life?

All this he treated lightly. There was danger, of course, but what is danger to men who are dying of starvation? He admitted that he had a friend among the Russians, but declared very stoutly that such friends.h.i.+p had been of great service both to him and to the Emperor.

Finally, he said:

"Come with me, major, and bring your nephew, and we will dine among the Cossacks to-morrow night. Are you prepared to take your chance? Very well. We will start a little before sunset, and we can rejoin the column on the following morning. Come now, and I promise you as good a dinner as you could get in our own Paris this night."

The request astonished me very much, and I thought upon it a little while. Leon had been away inspecting the horses, but when he returned I mentioned the matter to him, and he did not hesitate a moment. Of course we must go. Did it not promise us an adventure, and was not anything better than the starvation we suffered? I think, indeed, he would have leapt from a mountain-top if there had been food at the bottom; and even at my age I could ask myself what perils counted for men who marched daily over the bodies of their comrades to a city of visions.

II

Now this was all very well, but, in truth, the affair was rash enough to have satisfied the most reckless.

Remember that we marched like a beaten army, dejected and without spirit; thousands dying every day as we went: the road across the snows black with the bodies of our comrades who had fallen. Only the spirit which had conquered at Austerlitz and Jena prevented our swift annihilation by the Russian wolves, who barked at us from every thicket. If a man lost his way, the sabres of the Cossacks quickly showed him the road, or the hatchets of the peasantry put an end to his sufferings. And yet this laughing Payard could propose that we should brave the fastnesses of these savages just to find a good dinner beyond them--a soldier's invitation, surely, perhaps a madman's project.

I shall not dwell upon this aspect of the adventure, for it must be apparent to all. Whatever misgivings I had at dawn pa.s.sed away as the day waxed and waned and the pangs of a savage hunger devoured me at nightfall. A starving man is no better than a starving dog when he is famished, and the Velites were becoming but animals these latter days.

So you will not wonder that Payard found us ready when he called us at sunset and that we set off as willingly as lads from a school. We were going to dine for the first time since we had quitted Moscow. Happy pilgrims upon a gourmet's road--how little we knew what was in store for us!