The Great White Army Part 17

The old lady herself had disappeared and gone I knew not whither.

Another, perhaps, would have spied upon the Emperor, and even found a pretext for following him into the chapel. This kind of curiosity has never afflicted me, and all that I remembered was the continued peril of our situation.

How if the Cossacks made a sudden dash upon Liadoui and overpowered the sentinels at the gate!

Nothing could be easier than such an a.s.sault. We had but two regiments of the grenadiers in the village, and they were worn to death with marching. Indeed, I believed they were already sleeping in any bivouac they could find. The guns were mostly a day's march ahead of us, and we had little artillery in our train. Nothing, I said, could be looked for as surely as a sudden descent of the Cossacks upon any house in which they might imagine the Emperor to be sleeping. So you will understand my sense of responsibility and the keen ear I leant to any sounds from without.

The silence of the night seemed, indeed, almost unnatural. I began to be affrighted by it. What was odd was the length of time His Majesty was closeted in the dark chapel. It is true that I heard the sound of voices when a little while had pa.s.sed, and that a busy murmur of talk went on at intervals for a full hour. Then for a spell again there was silence, and it was during that interval that I first heard the alarm from without.

There were hors.e.m.e.n approaching the village. My trained ear told me the truth in an instant, and bending it to the gla.s.s, I made sure that I was not mistaken. Hors.e.m.e.n, I said, were riding across the frozen snow, either towards Liadoui or to Madame Zchekofsky's dwelling. No sooner was the opinion formed than the cry of a dying man confirmed it.

Someone had sabred or bayoneted the sentry at the gate. There is no mistaking that awful cry which a man utters when he realises that he has lived his life and that the steel within him has reached his heart.

I knew it too well, and, springing back at the sound, I ran to the chapel doors and beat heavily upon them.

"Your Majesty," I cried, "for G.o.d's sake!"

The door was locked, but someone opened it instantly, and there stood Mademoiselle Kyra and the Emperor by her side. She was wide awake now and a look of terror had come upon her pretty face.

"I beg you to go," she said to him.

For answer he stepped out into the bedroom and asked me what was the matter.

"The Cossacks are here," I cried; "they have killed the sentinel. Your Majesty must not delay."

Napoleon Bonaparte was no coward, as all the world knows, and he heard me almost with nonchalance.

"Are you quite sure?" he asked.

I told him that there was no doubt of it.

"Listen for yourself, sire," said I; "they are entering the house."

He shrugged his shoulders and turned to Mademoiselle Kyra.

"Is there a way out by the chapel?" he asked her.

Her affrighted eyes answered him.

"You will have to return by the great staircase," said she; and at that he smiled, for we could hear already the tramp of many feet upon it.

"That is a pity," says he now. "Major Constant must see what they want."

Then, speaking very earnestly to me, he exclaimed: "I count upon your devotion, major; do what you can." And instantly he re-entered the chapel, and I drew the curtain across its doors.

There was now, I suppose, an interval of ten good seconds in which I had an opportunity to think. Two alternatives faced me--I might either draw my sword and meet the men as they entered, or feign fraternity and so try to disarm their suspicions. The latter course occurred to me as the wiser, and without a moment's hesitation I sprang upon the bed and drew the heavy counterpane over my shoulders. The thing was hardly done when the door burst open and some ten men entered the room. They were Cossacks of the Guard, and every man had his sword drawn.

VII

I know little of the Russian tongue, but the few words that I have were sufficient to tell me that the first cry uttered by the leader of the men was for light. This was echoed down the stairs, and presently there came a sergeant with a lantern and another behind him with a wax candle in his hand.

I had not moved during the interval, and I lay still yet a little while. The fellows began to peer about immediately, and of course they soon discovered me upon the bed. Then, truly, I thought that I had not a minute to live. There were the barbarians, savage as it seemed in the l.u.s.t of blood. There was I as helpless as a bullock at the slaughter. They had but to cut and thrust, and the story of Surgeon-Major Constant would have been written for all time. You may imagine how my heart beat while I waited to feel the p.r.i.c.k of the steel and wondered how death in such a shape would come.

To a man so placed delay is but an agony anew. I could have prayed that they would strike swiftly, and when they did not strike I laughed aloud like a woman grown hysterical.

G.o.d in heaven, how I laughed! Sitting up in the bed and watching that ring of steel, no hyena in the wilderness uttered such sounds as I.

The best joke that was ever told could never have moved me as that perilous situation. Not for my life, not even for the life of His Majesty, was I acting thus; nay, if a man had offered me ten thousand golden pieces to have recovered my serenity, the money would have been lost for ever.

Well, the effect upon the Cossacks was amazing. I have never had a doubt that the first of the band had already raised his sabre to thrust me through when this weird fit overtook me. The wonder of it held his hand and left him powerless. He stood there looking at me as though he had come suddenly upon a madman. Possibly I laughed, as men will at times, with an air which is infectious, compelling others to take up the catch, and certainly depriving them of their anger. Be that as it may, there were fellows laughing in that bedroom before I had done, and anon the whole company roared aloud with me. Such a thing was like a sudden vision of life to a man whom death had held by both hands. In a twinkling I had got my courage back, and what was but an ailment had become a stratagem. If laughter could save the Emperor, then was I the man. Soon I began to sing the "Ram, ram, ram, ram, plan, tire-lire ram plan," and shouted it with all my lungs and danced a step before them.

They in their turn clapped me on the back with their sabres and cried for drink.

"You will find it in the salle a manger," said I, speaking to one of them in French, and then, opening my mouth and making the sign of a man drinking, I caught the fellow by the arm and dragged him down the stairs. The others followed like sheep that would go into a fold. We were all drinking about the table in less than no time, and an hour had not run before the whole troop of them were as drunk as sailors at Toulon.

I say they were drunk, but a man must have been in Russia to know how very drunk they were.

This was no mere rollicking, no shouting of songs or bawling of catches, but right-down deep drinking, and upon that a stupor which bore a very good likeness to death. I watched them tumbling to the floor one by one, and, spurning their bodies aside with my foot, I remembered His Majesty and went back to him. He was still standing at the stairs head where I had left him, and Mademoiselle Kyra was still by his side.

"Well," says he; and I told him at a breath.

"There's an end of this until daybreak," said I. "Your Majesty can go now."

He did not speak, leaving it to the girl, who went slowly to the window and, opening it a little way, looked out across the field of snow.

Then she shut the cas.e.m.e.nt quickly and came back to us.

"They are watching the house," she said quietly. "It is as I thought.

They know your Majesty is here, and are waiting for you."

"Then let them find me instead," said I immediately, and, stepping up to the Emperor, I begged the loan of his cloak and c.o.c.ked hat. "You will find mine a little large, but they will serve, sire," said I. "If I draw off the troop, well and good. If not, your Majesty may yet find a way."

He looked at me in his own way, as one whom danger amused rather than dismayed.

"I will send a regiment of hussars to bring you back," he exclaimed, pinching my ear as he was wont to do when pleased. Then he handed me his cloak and c.o.c.ked hat and I donned them as though the joke were entirely to my liking. For all that, I knew very well what I was doing, and I would not have valued my life at a lira's purchase when I left him at the stairs head and went down.

Mademoiselle stood by his side then, and they were deep in talk. I might have said that I was forgotten already, and that may have been true enough. Men have died for Napoleon Bonaparte, knowing well that their very names would be unremembered when the sun rose again. Others will imitate them, for such is the spirit his gifts of kingship have inspired.

It was the dead of night when I went out, and not a sign of the old hag. I believed then that she had betrayed us, and had I met her that would have been the last hour she had lived. But, as I say, she had clean vanished, and the only lackey visible was dead asleep by the stove in the hall. Very softly now I pushed open the outer doors and looked about me. The spectacle was wonderfully beautiful, but as menacing as it was glorious. A great full moon shone down upon a scene that should have stood in a magic land. Earth and sky alike were aglow with the entrancing lights of winter made magnificent. The cold was intense beyond belief: the frost made a diamond of every pebble the foot crushed. And upon it all was the stillness of G.o.d's death.... the silence of a land which an Eastern winter had shrouded.

Thus for the beauty of the scene. The menace was no less remarkable.

There, frosted already, were the corpses of the sentinels the Russians had murdered. To reach the open I must step over the p.r.o.ne figures of brother Frenchmen and look into their staring eyes. The shudder was still upon me when I heard a cry of savage triumph, and knew that the Cossacks were upon me. The troop which Mademoiselle Kyra had seen from the window rode out of the shadows even as I crossed the threshold.

They fell upon me as wolves upon a carca.s.s, and no fowl was trussed as surely while a man could have counted twenty.

VIII

Imagine the exultation of these men, who believed that they had captured the greatest of Frenchmen, living or dead, and were carrying him to their general.

The first transports pa.s.sed, their sense of prudence returned to them, and with it a deference which should have won laughter from a log! The Emperor of the French a prisoner in their hands! Heaven above me, how they bowed and capered! What antics they cut! Never had a man such slaves at his feet. I was set upon a horse immediately, and had a guard at the head and tail of him. The officer saluted until his arm must have been weary. He had caught the Emperor--what a night!

Our way lay over the snows to the Cossack camp upon the far side.