The Great White Army Part 2

V

The sounds were deep and ominous, and might well have quelled a stronger spirit. The girl herself turned her head at the first blow, and then, staggering to her feet, she caught me by the arm and whispered her fears in my ear.

"They will beat it down," she said, indicating the door.

I answered that I thought it quite possible.

"Why do your soldiers let them?" she asked me; and upon that she said, "Why did you come here alone?"

I told her that the steward, for such I supposed the lackey to be, had brought me to the place; and so much she understood readily enough.

"He was insolent to me," she exclaimed. "My brother struck him. He carried a pistol, but we did not know it. G.o.d help me, what I have suffered this day! And now this----" And again she indicated the peril beyond the door.

Yet with it all her courage was not lacking. She no longer wept now that danger threatened us, and presently she pointed to the gilded dome above, and said that it could be reached from the little gallery behind the altar.

"Then," said I, "let us see what we can do." And, taking her hand, we went up to the gallery together; and there sure enough in the angle was a Gothic window large enough for a man to pa.s.s through. When I opened it I saw a narrow gallery at the very summit of the cupola, and to this I helped her immediately. The height was considerable and the parapet but trifling. She stood there by my side without flinching, and when we had closed the window it seemed as though the peril were now far distant.

"I could hold this place against a regiment," said I, drawing my sword and indicating the narrow window.

She understood as much, and, nodding her head, she gazed out over Moscow, as though some help were to be expected from the turbid streets which the night now revealed to us.

Surely this was a wonderful hour! The gallery of the cupola stood some eighty feet above the pavement of the courtyard below. We looked out over the stables of the prince's house to the great gate by which I had entered and the Place du Gouvernement where the lackey had accosted me.

It must have been nearly midnight, and yet Moscow was as wide awake as ever she had been in her history. I saw thousands of my own countrymen marching with light steps to the bivouacs prepared for them. Great fires had been kindled in every open s.p.a.ce. There were lanterns swinging and bugles blaring. Bayonets shimmered in the crimson light, bells rang joyously, the triumphant war songs of the victors were unceasing. And all this amid a clamour, a restless going to and fro, a fevered movement of awakened people that capitulation alone could provoke. The Grand Army had reached its goal, and here was the end of its labours. So I doubt not the thousands thought as they pressed on towards the Kremlin and soldiers began to enter every house and demand the fruits of their labours.

I have told you that the beautiful young Frenchwoman had hardly spoken to me hitherto, but here at this dizzy height she began for the first time, I think, to realise that I was a friend and not a foe, and her tongue was loosened. I have never seen greater dignity in a woman nor one whose self-possession was so remarkable under such tragic circ.u.mstances. She indicated the busy street below and asked me to which of those regiments I belonged.

I told her at once that I was a surgeon-major of the Velites, and should be now in the governor's palace with the Emperor.

"Then," she said, "your friends will come to look for you, will they not?"

I told her that it was not impossible.

"But, mademoiselle," said I, "they will not imagine that I have become a bird."

She liked the humour of it and smiled very sweetly.

"Oh," she said, closing her eyes and shuddering, "what a day it has been! Prince Boris left yesterday to rejoin the army. My brother and I were to have followed him to Nishni this afternoon. Then the steward said that he could not be left alone, for the convicts were out and were robbing the houses. The governor released them at noon to-day.

They have been pillaging all Moscow, and your friends will find little when they come."

I was greatly interested in this, for some such story had reached us even before we entered the city.

The desperate resolve to deliver Moscow to the evil element in its population had been taken by its rulers some days previously to the arrival of the army, but neither the Emperor nor his staff had been greatly moved by it. The cavalry would soon make short work of these fellows in the open, while we trusted to the predatory instincts of the rank and file to deal with such sc.u.m in the houses.

I was about to tell her as much when a movement of the window behind us caused me to turn round, and to discover a s.h.a.ggy head protruding therefrom. Without a thought, I fired my pistol point blank at it, and I shall always say that this was as unlucky a stroke as ever I made.

The flash and the report on that high tower drew the attention of the pa.s.sers-by in the street without, and presently some infantry who were pa.s.sing began to fire on the tower, and the bullets rained thick around us. There was nothing for it but to plump down beneath the bal.u.s.trade and so wait until their humour was done. And so we sat, the girl wide-eyed and silent, myself with drawn sword to thrust at any face which should be shown at the window above us.

"Janil," said I to myself, "this will be a pretty tale for the regiment to-morrow." Had you pressed me, I would have confessed a doubt that that to-morrow would ever be.

An hour pa.s.sed, I suppose, and still found us in the same position.

There were no longer any bullets from the street, and anon, when I stood up and looked again over the great gate of the palace, whom should I see but my own nephew Leon riding up and down upon his famous white horse and evidently searching for his old uncle who had played so scurvy a trick upon him.

VI

Now this was a splendid sight; and, waving my sword and crying with all my lungs, I strove in vain to attract his attention. As for the girl at my side, she watched me in some astonishment. Presently, seeing what I was after, she asked me if it were not the young soldier on the white horse in whom I was interested.

"Mademoiselle," said I, "it is Leon, my nephew. If I can make myself known to him, I will warrant that he will be inside this house before you can count ten. A fine soldier, mademoiselle; I am very proud of him."

She nodded her head and looked at the boy with a new interest. There was such a great bivouac fire at the corner of the square that you could see him almost as if he were upon the stage of a theatre, and surely a handsomer man did not ride with the Grand Army. Well I knew what this pretty woman would think of him, and I watched her with an old man's interest.

"He does not see you," she remarked presently.

It was all too true.

"But he will not abandon me," I retorted; and, turning at the same moment, I struck with the b.u.t.t of my pistol at a second face which showed itself at the window. The fellow withdrew with a curse that plainly meant mischief. I could hear other voices in the room, and by and by a stranger sound, and the smell of fire upon it.

"Good G.o.d!" I said, "they are burning the chapel!"

At that she uttered a low cry, the first of fear that I had heard escape her lips.

I opened the window and looked down into the chapel. There were but two men there, and one was firing the curtains of the altar. So little did he fear interruption that I leaped down on him while his torch was still upraised, and, running him through with my sword, I pulled the burning curtain upon him and stamped the fire out upon his body. The other a.s.sa.s.sin watched me with eyes grown wide with fear. He had a torch in his hand, but he stood there as though spellbound, and when I made at him he fell headlong upon the staircase, and man and fire went rolling over and over together.

This did not alarm me, for the stairs were all stone, and there was nothing that could be kindled. Following the fellow through the bedroom, I came again upon the great staircase, and there looked down upon as strange a spectacle as I shall ever see in all my years. It was as though all the rabble of Moscow had come together in that magnificent hall--giant Tartars, low-caste a.s.sa.s.sins from the Indies, black-browed Slavs, patriarchs with long beards and youths with none--all were filling their sacks with the spoils of the prince's house and carrying them, when full, to the garden beyond. Animals in a den never fought more fiercely than some of these rogues when their l.u.s.ts had clashed. Nor might a man have found a fiercer company in all the foul havens of the East.

For myself, I watched them aghast, knowing that it were death to be discovered where I stood. So eager, however, were they that none saw me, and the pillage and the riot were still at their height when one amongst them cried "Fire!" and in an instant every man sprang to attention, and the roar of a great conflagration burst upon their astonished ears.

VII

The palace had been fired; there could be no doubt about it.

Volumes of smoke poured into the hall and went floating to the ceiling in dense and looming clouds. The marble reflected a ruddy light as of flames vomited from a fiery pit. There was a crackling of wood, a rending of gla.s.s, and upon that the oaths and curses of the a.s.sa.s.sins below. Now truly were they hoist of their own petard. The palace had been fired while their plunder was yet unpacked, and they roared and barked around it like wolves robbed of their prey.

I say that we were all taken unawares, and that is true enough. For myself, I stood there listening to the roar of the flames, and watching the mad, frenzied struggles of the sc.u.m below, and with no more idea of how to get out of the place than the veriest child might have had.

None but a madman would have attempted to fight his way through the raving mob of brigands who grovelled about the doors in seeming impotence, as though their shaking hands could not unlock the bars which imprisoned them. Yet pa.s.sed they must be if I and the child with me were not to perish in the flames.

So much could not be hidden from either of us. We beheld them wrangling still upon their plunder while the flames were all about them, and those who did run from the hall returned immediately to warn their friends in a tongue which had no meaning for me. From this time they became as demons possessed. It was a terrible thing to see them running round and round like dogs driven by a whip, to hear the clash of their knives, and the shrieks of those who fell. Nor could I wonder that my little companion's courage deserted her at last and that a loud cry of fear escaped her.

"Oh, come," she cried, "come from this dreadful place." And, so saying, she caught me almost savagely by the arm and led me from the gallery. Whither she would take me, I knew not at all. Her eyes were alight with the fear which animated her. She stretched out her arms as though to feel her way in the gathering smoke which threatened us. I could see already that she had little hope of the venture.

We crossed a corridor and entered a lofty room which I took to be the library of the palace. Farther on there was an antechamber, whose door was locked and barred as the others had been in the room below. Upon this she beat furiously as though someone beyond could hear us and would open. Solid as a gate of iron, twenty men could not have forced it. I saw already that our errand was vain, and I was about to lead her away when what should happen but that the door was opened from within, and a Russian soldier stood before me. "Nicholas!" cried mademoiselle; and instantly the child was in the arms of a Russian, who kissed her as a lover might have done.

Now, this man was an officer who wore the white uniform and the black cuira.s.s of Prince Boris's famous regiment. I took him for the prince's son, and there I was not wrong, as I learned at a subsequent date.

And it needed no clever eye to tell me how things stood between the girl and himself, and there was a smile on my lips while I watched them and then looked over his shoulder into the room beyond, full of his fellows and ablaze with the glitter of uniforms.

The presence of these men needed little explanation. I perceived that there had been a secret conclave in the palace, and I understood in an instant what my own presence must mean. It was no coward's alarm.