Barlasch of the Guard Part 27

Louis looked at him with a slow smile.

"I am tired as you," he said. "We will rest here until the moon rises."

Already the bare larches threw shadows three times their own length on the snow. Near at hand it glittered like a carpet of diamonds, while the distance was of a pale blue, merging to grey on the horizon. A far-off belt of pines against a sky absolutely cloudless suggested infinite s.p.a.ce--immeasurable distance. Nothing was sharp and clearly outlined, but hazy, silvery, as seen through a thin veil. The sea would seem to be our earthly picture of infinite s.p.a.ce, but no sea speaks of distance so clearly as the plain of Lithuania--absolutely flat, quite lonely. The far-off belt of pines only leads the eye to a shadow beyond, which is another pine-wood; and the traveller walking all day towards it knows that when at length he gets there he will see just such another on the far horizon.

Louis sat down wearily beside Barlasch. As far as eye could see, they were alone in this grim white world. They had nothing to say to each other. They sat and watched the sun go down with drawn eyes and a queer stolidity which comes to men in great cold, as if their souls were numb.

As the sun sank, the shadows turned bluer, and all the snow gleamed like a lake. The silver tints slowly turned to gold; the greys grew darker.

The distant lines of pines were almost black now, a silhouette against the golden sky. Near at hand the little inequalities in the snow loomed blue, like deeper pools in shallow water.

The sun sank very slowly, moving along the horizon almost parallel with it towards two bars of golden cloud awaiting it, the bars of the West forming a prison to this poor pale captive of the snows. The stems of a few silver-birch near at hand were rosy now, and suddenly the snow took a similar tint. At the same moment, a wave of cold seemed to sweep across the world.

The sun went down at length, leaving a brownish-red sky. This, too, faded to grey in a few minutes, and a steely cold gripped the world as in a vice.

Louis d'Arragon made a sudden effort and rose to his feet, beneath which the snow squeaked.

"Come," he said. "If we stay, we shall fall asleep, and then--"

Barlasch roused himself and looked sleepily at his companion. He had a patch of blue on either cheek.

"Come!" shouted Louis, as if to a deaf man. "Let us go on to Kowno, and find out whether he is alive or dead."

CHAPTER XX. DESIREE'S CHOICE.

Our wills and fates do so contrary run, That our devices still are overthrown.

Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own.

Rapp found himself in a stronghold which was strong in theory only. For the frozen river formed the easiest possible approach, instead of an insuperable barrier to the enemy. He had an army which was a paper army only.

He had, according to official returns, thirty-five thousand men. In reality a bare eight thousand could be collected to show a face to the enemy. The rest were sick and wounded. There was no national spirit among these men; they hardly had a language in common. For they were men from Africa and Italy, from France, Germany, Poland, Spain, and Holland.

The majority of them were recruits, raw and of poor physique. All were fugitives, flying before those dread Cossacks whose "hurrah!

hurrah!"--the Arabic "kill! kill!"--haunted their fitful sleep at night.

They came to Dantzig not to fight, but to lie down and rest. They were the last of the great army--the reinforcements dragged to the frontier which many of them had never crossed. For those who had been to Moscow were few and far between. The army of Moscow had perished at Malo-Jaroslavetz, at the Beresina, in Smolensk and Vilna.

These fugitives had fled to Dantzig for safety; and Rapp in crossing the bridge had made a grimace, for he saw that there was no safety here.

The fortifications had been merely sketched out. The ditches were full of snow, the rivers were frozen. All work was at a standstill. Dantzig lay at the mercy of the first-comer.

In twenty-four hours every available smith was at work, forging ice-axes and picks. Rapp was going to cut the frozen Vistula and set the river free. The Dantzigers laughed aloud.

"It will freeze again in a night," they said. And it did. So Rapp set the ice-cutters to work again next day. He kept boats moving day and night in the water, which ran sluggish and thick, like porridge, with the desire to freeze and be still.

He ordered the engineers to set to work on the abandoned fortifications.

But the ground was hard like granite, and the picks sprang back in the worker's grip, jarring his bones, and making not so much as a mark on the surface of the earth.

Again the Dantzigers laughed.

"It is frozen three feet down," they said.

The thermometer marked between twenty and thirty degrees of frost every night now. And it was only December--only the beginning of the winter.

The Russians were at the Niemen, daily coming nearer. Dantzig was full of sick and wounded. The available troops were worn out, frost-bitten, desperate. There were only a few doctors, who were without medical stores; no meat, no vegetables, no spirits, no forage.

No wonder the Dantzigers laughed. Rapp, who had to rely on Southerners to obey his orders--Italians, Africans, a few Frenchmen, men little used to cold and the hardships of a Northern winter--Rapp let them laugh. He was a medium-sized man, with a bullet-head and a round chubby face, a small nose, round eyes, and, if you please, side-whiskers.

Never for a moment did he admit that things looked black. He lit enormous bonfires, melted the frozen earth, and built the fortifications that had been planned.

"I took counsel," he said, long afterwards, "with two engineer officers whose devotion equalled their brilliancy--Colonel Richemont and General Campredon."

Soldiers might for all time study with advantage the acts of such obscure and almost forgotten men as these. For, through them, Napoleon was now teaching the world that a fortified place might be made stronger than any had hitherto suspected. That he should turn round and teach, on the other hand, that a city usually considered impregnable could be taken without great loss of life, was only characteristic of his splendid genius, which, like a towering tree, grew and grew until it fell.

The days were very short now, and it was dark when the sappers--whose business it was to keep the ice moving in the river at that spot where the Government building-yard abuts the river front to-day--were roused from their meditations by a shout on the farther bank.

They pushed their clumsy boat through the ice, and soon perceived against the snowy distance the outline of a man wrapped, swaddled, disguised in the heaped-up clothing so familiar to Eastern Europe at this time. The joke of seeing a grave artilleryman clad in a lady's ermine cloak had long since lost its savour for those who dwelt near the Moscow road.

"Ah! comrade," said one of the boatmen, an Italian who spoke French and had learnt his seamanship on the Mediterranean, by whose waters he would never idle again. "Ah! you are from Moscow?"

"And you, countryman?" replied the new-comer, with a non-committing readiness, as he stumbled over the gunwale.

"And you--an old man?" remarked the Italian, with the easy frankness of Piedmont.

By way of reply, the new-comer held out one hand roughly swathed in cloth, and shook it from side to side slowly, taking exception to such personal matters on a short acquaintance.

"A week ago, when I quitted Dantzig on a mission to Kowno," he said, with a careless air, "one could cross the Vistula anywhere. I have been walking on the bank for half a league looking for a way across. One would think there is a General in Dantzig now."

"There is Rapp," replied the Italian, poling his boat through the floating ice.

"He will be glad to see me."

The Italian turned and looked over his shoulder. Then he gave a curt, derisive laugh.

"Barlasch--of the Old Guard!" explained the new-comer, with a careless air.

"Never heard of him."

Barlasch pushed up the bandage which he still wore over his left eye, in order to get a better sight of this phenomenal ignoramus, but he made no comment.

On landing he nodded curtly, at which the boatman made a quick gesture and spat.

"You have not the price of a gla.s.s in your purse, perhaps," he suggested.

Barlasch disappeared in the darkness without deigning a reply. Half an hour later he was on the steps of Sebastian's house in the Frauenga.s.se.

On his way through the streets a hundred evidences of energy had caught his attention, for many of the houses were barricaded, and palisades were built at the end of the streets running down towards the river. The town was busy, and everywhere soldiers pa.s.sed to and fro. Like Samuel, Barlasch heard the bleating of sheep and the lowing of oxen in his ears.

The houses in the Frauenga.s.se were barricaded like others--many of the lower windows were built up. The door of No. 36 was bolted, and through the shutters of the upper windows no glimmer of light penetrated to the outer darkness of the street. Barlasch knocked and waited. He thought he could hear surrept.i.tious movements within the house. Again he knocked.