The Great White Army Part 10

"You are returning to Paris, mademoiselle?" he asked her.

She said that it was possible.

"But," cried I, "I thought you would never leave Moscow. You told me so yourself."

"Major," she rejoined, "I did not then know that my father was alive, nor that he served the Emperor."

I thought upon it a minute, and then a sudden memory coming to me, I said:

"There is a Colonel St. Antoine with the Second Battalion of the Cha.s.seurs of the Line. Is it possible, mademoiselle, that he is a relative of yours?"

"He is my father," she said, with admirable dignity; and, turning, she hid her face in her hands again, as though the dreadful scene about us could no longer be suffered. Leon waited for no more, but, lifting her upon his horse, he rode straightway from the place.

"Do what you can for these poor women," said he to me. "We will wait for you in the town." And with that he pressed forward and was quickly lost to my view.

I had given him my word, and yet it was worth little. The poor women were beyond all hope, and it remained but to inter them decently.

This, with the aid of some sappers, I did anon, and having seen to it that we should know the place again if occasion arose, I also pressed on towards the town.

It was quite dark by this time, and the snow had begun to fall again.

I thought myself lucky to overtake my nephew, which I did some third of a mile from the gates of the town. But whether his welcome were as warm as my pleasure I have my doubts. Let me say in all honesty that I believe that Leon was in love with this woman, and would have gone through fire and water for her.

III

There were many terrible nights to be suffered before the remnant of the Grand Army might see Paris again; but none of them to surpa.s.s that night when we first made acquaintance with the north wind as Russia knows it.

What the cold was I cannot tell you, but such a rigour I had never known before, nor had any who marched with that stricken company.

Already we perceived that if we did not reach the shelter of the town we should never see the day; and the fury of the wind driving us and the snow blinding our eyes, we pressed on headlong.

Had a man doubted the road, the dead, as I have said, would have pointed it out to him. There was not a furlong free from the corpses of those who had been our comrades. Every bush sheltered poor wretches deploring their misery and appealing to G.o.d. We saw men staggering as though drunk with wine; others hysterical as women and gone stark mad in their suffering. And all the time the lights of the distant town would appear and disappear, as though mocking our hope and defying us of their promise.

I was sorry for my nephew, who had given his cloak to Valerie; and although she made a pretence of sheltering them both, it was precious little good he got by it. Perhaps, had she not been with him in the saddle, he would never have come to Slawkowo at all. As it was, he bore up bravely and did not cease to encourage her in every way that he could. "But a kilometre more, and we are there," he would say. Or again: "We shall find the Emperor in the city, and there will be food and shelter there." Sometimes he would ask her if she suffered much, and invariably she answered with a woman's courage.

"Don't think of me, captain," she would say; "I am used to the cold.

Have I not lived many years in Russia? All this is nothing to me."

Such courage was infectious, and we were both the better for it. It seemed possible now that we should reach the town after all, though there were many bitter interludes before we did so. Sometimes the lights would disappear altogether, and we would believe that we had lost our road. Then again they would appear as mysteriously, and we would think the city but a stone's throw from us. In the end, I remember, we came to a frozen river, and putting our horses across it, we found ourselves beneath high and forbidding walls, which told us that we had lost our way, and that the night might still have the better of us.

This was a terrible hour, and we rode vainly to and fro as children who are lost in an unknown country. Everywhere black walls denied us shelter, and so at last we recrossed the river and went southward a full half-hour before we discovered the gate of Slawkowo and cried to one another that all was well.

We thought it must be so.

Here was a considerable town with the houses of the merchants who had sheltered us when we rode to Moscow. We had known some pleasant days in Slawkowo on our outward journey, and I do not think it dawned upon any man that our reception would be different upon our return. Hardly had we entered the gate when we discovered our mistake. Of the once fine houses but the sh.e.l.l now remained. The main street was impa.s.sable by reason of guns and wagons gathered there. We turned aside to the suburb on the south, and found such houses as remained alive with our comrades, who filled them from garret to cellar, and swore that no new-comer should enter.

By here and there whole companies of infantry were bivouacked in the open for lack of shelter, and the high wall of church or garden alone protected them from the terrible night. Of food there seemed no prospect whatever. We beat upon the doors of many houses, and although we gave those within to understand that we were officers of the Guard, they answered that men or devils should not come in that night. At last we found ourselves at the very ramparts again with never a house in view and nothing but those monstrous walls before us.

"Good G.o.d!" says Leon, drawing rein at last and turning to me wearily, "is there no house in all this cursed city which will take us in?"

I could but answer him that we must wheel about and try again, and although my horse staggered at every step, and ultimately fell dead as we went, I could but repeat the admonition. We must get into a house of some sort, or we should never see the dawn. So much would have been evident to a child.

Behold us, then, staggering on, the snow beating upon us pitilessly; the wind howling amid the sh.e.l.ls of the ruined houses; the city itself but a mob of maddened troopers fighting for their very lives on every threshold. So evident was it that we should get no shelter anywhere in the vicinity of the gates that we pushed on ultimately as though we would leave Slawkowo by the western road, and then for the first time we were able to breathe freely and to reckon with the situation.

There were no houses at all here--merely the blackened ruins of once fine streets. Often we rode over heaps of rubbish with the sure knowledge that a mishap might send us headlong into some vault or cellar, already, it may be, full of dead. This, however, did not deter us; we had Valerie to save, and the same thought inspired us both.

There could be no rest for either until Valerie St. Antoine had found a refuge. How shall I tell you what we ourselves suffered, buffeted this way and that; drawn now to some phantom house; anon to the borders of the frozen river, and from that back again to the wilderness?

Certainly I thought that all was ended, and the deadly spell of the cold seizing upon me, I began to have that desire of sleep from which there can be no awakening.

"Nephew," said I, "do you go on and leave me here."

It was then that my horse fell, and rolling heavily in the snow I thought that my end had come. Leon, however, had a flask of brandy in his haversack, and presently I was conscious of a burning sensation in my throat and of a sudden realisation of the truth that I must wake or die. Making a mighty effort of the will, I got upon my feet and struggled on, hardly knowing that Valerie St. Antoine had one of my arms and Leon the other. The words they spoke to me were as sounds from afar; I did not rightly understand them, and made no reply. But presently, a little strength coming back to me, I heard a note of distant music, and asked them what it was.

"Listen to that," said I. "Someone is playing the organ."

They laughed at me, Leon saying, "Come, come, uncle, your ears are playing tricks with you; there is no organ here."

"You are wrong," said I; "there is an organ, and someone is playing 'On va leur percer les flancs.' Listen and you will heal it."

Well, they both stood and listened, and after a few moments they admitted I was right.

"There is someone playing," said Leon, while Valerie uttered a little cry of pleasure, and running forward with her hands clasped, she returned to tell us that it must be the organ of a church and that we should never hear it on such a night if it were not very near to us.

On this we all agreed, and a new hope animating us, we led Leon's horse and pressed on towards the music.

Ah, what a quest that was! How those phantom chords deceived us!

Sometimes we would think the organ was so near us that nothing but a miracle could hide the scene. Then again we would lose the sounds altogether, and try to comfort each other with the a.s.surance that the wind alone m.u.f.fled them. This went on for a full half-hour, until as though a miracle had happened, we found ourselves in the very porch of a considerable church, and understood in a moment that our own fellows were within, and that one of them was playing upon the organ.

"Open to the Guard!" cried Leon, beating heavily upon the door with the hilt of his sword.

The answer from within was the one we had heard so often that night: "Let the Guard go elsewhere, there is no room for anybody here."

"Oh," says Leon, "is that not Sergeant Bourgogne who is speaking?"

It was a lucky shot, for the door was opened instantly, and there stood our old sergeant before us.

"Why, captain," cried he, "we have reported you for dead!" And then espying me, he added, "The very man we are looking for, major. There is plenty of work for a surgeon to do in this place. Come in, messieurs, and let me bolt the door after you."

Needless to say, we did not ask for a second invitation, but pa.s.sing at once into the church, we heard the sergeant bolting and locking the heavy door. There the light almost blinded us, and we sank exhausted upon the stone pavement and lay motionless for many minutes.

IV

When we had recovered ourselves a little we were able to get some idea of the strange happenings within the church.

To begin with, I would tell you that it was a building in the Russian fashion, with two domes above its naves and a similar one above the chancel. About the wall there were the icons which the Russians worship, and the organ which we had heard played stood in the western gallery just above the main doors. The building was large, and would have accommodated a thousand people perhaps. There must have been five hundred of our own fellows within when we entered, and they lay about the marble pavement in every conceivable att.i.tude.

Some, I perceived, were already drunk with brandy, of which there was a considerable supply in the church. I learned from Sergeant Bourgogne that the cellars of a neighbouring wine shop had been ransacked before dark fell and many bottles of wine and brandy carried into the church against the bitter night; of food there was none but horseflesh, and despite my nephew's protests, the troopers killed and cut up his own charger directly we entered the building. Soon the whole place was redolent with the smell of roasted flesh, and what with the pungent odour of that and of the burning wood and brandy the atmosphere became almost insupportable.

I should tell you that two great fires had been lighted in the building: one upon the pavement of the chancel, the other below the choir screen, which is a great thing in all their churches.

Unhappily the fire before the altar had been fed chiefly by the beautiful painted panels of this screen, while that in the nave owed its glowing heat to the mult.i.tude of chairs which had been broken up and burned upon it. Here all the cooking was done, and it was an odd thing to see men toasting great lumps of horseflesh upon the points of their bayonets and swords, and eating them while they were still hot and dripping from the fire. Such practices, however, went on uninterruptedly; and if anything be said against them, I would remind you of the intolerable night outside and of what these poor fellows had suffered during their march to Slawkowo. For that matter we ourselves were not above sharing in this barbarous hospitality, and even Valerie St. Antoine ate a piece of roasted horseflesh and drank a draught of wine from the flask which Sergeant Bourgogne proffered her.