The Great White Army Part 24

We turned the corner of the pa.s.s, and a flickering red light fell suddenly on the path before us. It came from a hole in the wall of the rock, giving access to a cave of melancholy aspect. The question whether we should pause or go on was answered by me in an instant.

"Attention!" I whispered to them, and, raising my hand, I now took command of the expedition, and crept stealthily to the aperture. Ten strides and I was up to it, and had the mystery before my eyes.

There were three of the filthiest and most revolting moujiks I have ever looked upon squatting upon the floor of a considerable cave, and they were busy dividing the property of a man who lay dead by their fireside. The latter was an officer of the fusiliers, as I could see by his epaulettes. They had hacked his head off with a scythe, which lay by the tumbled corpse, and were now counting his money.

You will understand with what feelings of rage and fury my nephew and I beheld this spectacle, and the steps we took to avenge our comrade.

Hardly had I clapped eyes upon the dead fusilier than I shot point-blank at the biggest of the Russians, and saw him fall forward into the very fire he had kindled. The two with him sprang to their feet, uttering the shrillest cries of alarm, but Leon settled the first of them with his pistol, and, to my amazement, the young Jew shot the third.

"I am well quit of him," said he; "there will be no more tribute next year."

And, upon this, what must he do but dash into the cavern and seize the money and the jewels which the robber still held in his quivering fingers.

At this I confess that I laughed aloud, and had not the heart to deprive him of his plunder. Sufficient that the dead was avenged and that these a.s.sa.s.sins would butcher Frenchmen no more.

VI

This delay had been unfortunate, and thereafter we pressed on as fast as the difficulties of the path would permit. The night was speeding, and the fate of the French army depended upon our swiftness. The day must be an enemy if the Emperor were not discovered.

This was all very well, but we knew no more than the dead how far from Bobr we then stood; nor did the young Jew who guided us. Indeed, it dawned upon me after a time that he himself was lost, and knew the way no better than we. This was a terrible reflection, and led me to the bitterest reproaches upon them both. I swore that they should be shot if they had played us false; to which the woman answered bravely enough, while the man whined an excuse which led me to doubt him more than ever. The road must be across the wide ravine which we were then entering, he declared. There was a bridle path through the thicket, and that would lead us out to the high road to Bobr. So much he said, and so little did the facts justify him.

We had now come to a wide pit, deep in snow and everywhere surrounded by the forest. Even the path by which we entered it was difficult to trace once we had been caught in the trap. And so we went, round and round, the horses often up to their girths and Isidore to his neck in the half-melted slush. Half an hour of it found the brutes exhausted and we at the end of our tether. The night had been lost, and, perhaps, the army with it. Never have I known a greater chagrin than overtook me at such an hour. To have been entrusted with so great a thing and to have failed! Good G.o.d! what a reckoning when next we came before His Majesty!

All this was black in the mind when the day began to dawn and a wan glimmer of chilly light to break above the white foreground of the frozen trees.

The young Jew, who had been weeping bitterly, recovered his composure when the day broke, and, seeming to recollect himself, he declared that a shrine in the wood was the landmark, and that if we could but detect it the road also would be regained. Perhaps he would have proved a false prophet after all, but for the distant blare of a bugle, and upon it the echo of rifle-shots far away down the valley. This immediately indicated to us that we looked towards the south, and another ten minutes had not pa.s.sed when madame clapped her hands and declared that she espied the shrine in a clearing of the trees.

Rarely can a mistake have been redeemed with such tragic irony as upon this fatal morning. We had lost the way and had found it--alas, too late!

It was a safe pa.s.sage thereafter, and one of which I remember little.

The forest became less dense from league to league, and ultimately showed us the great white plains we knew so well. Even from afar the black bodies of our dead were to be discerned. We knew that this was the road to Bobr, and, as our guides declared, that we stood barely a league from the hamlet itself.

Of the Jews we had now no further need, and paying them the money we had promised, we set spurs to our jaded horses and rode on at a gallop.

The last I saw of Isidore and the woman showed them quarrelling over the money at the wood's edge; and this was just what one would have expected them to be doing. We had almost forgotten their existence when, some half an hour later, we set eyes upon the whitened spires and low walls of the picturesque town of Bobr. The Emperor was there, and to him we must give an account of our stewardship.

G.o.d knows it was with no fair prospect that we entered the place at the moment when the army was waking to hear the fatal news.

VII

I say it was with no fair prospect, and yet there is an after-word.

Hardly were we in the main street of the place when we heard the clatter of horses' hoofs ahead of us, and presently we perceived a young hussar coming down the street at a canter.

"Good G.o.d!" cried Leon. "It's Valerie!"

I stared with all my eyes.

"Valerie, by all that's wonderful! Then she has followed us after all, and herself has carried the news to the Emperor. Thank G.o.d for that."

He admitted the truth of it with a sigh.

"We shall look the biggest fools in Russia to-day," said he.

But that I doubted.

"She is a woman," said I, "and--well, you are the best judge of what she has done. I will wager a hundred louis that she has not said a word of our failure."

He seemed to think it possible. Valerie herself had now drawn rein before the door of a considerable house, and there she waited for us to come up.

CHAPTER IX

WE CROSS THE BeReZINA

I

The news that the Russians had cut the bridge across the Berezina came as a thunderclap to the army.

We had believed that we had only to cross that fatal river to find ourselves immediately in a land overflowing with milk and honey. We never thought of the long leagues lying between ourselves and the city of Paris, or remembered that this dreadful Russian winter had but just begun. Food and shelter lay beyond the river, we thought--so little did we know.

Then the news came that the Cossacks of the south had cut the bridge.

The men said that we were caught like rats in a trap. Our generals were hourly in consultation. None could declare with truth that he had now any real hope of escaping death or the horrors of a Russian prison.

It was at this crisis of our fate that the good fortune befell me of being of some personal service to the army and to His Majesty.

We had advanced a stage upon the road to the Berezina, and in the middle of the night of November 20th we arrived at the town of Borisoff. The Emperor's quarters were in a country mansion near the town. I myself, with Leon and Valerie St. Antoine, took refuge in a mean house occupied by the priest of the place, and, having eaten a little black bread and boiled a handful of rice (all the poor fellow could offer us), we lay about his stove to sleep.

For the others this proved easy enough. No sooner had they laid their heads upon the sheepskins which the holy father provided for us, than their deep breathing responded to the measure of their fatigue. For myself, however, there was no such refuge. I could not sleep a wink despite my weariness. Beyond that, strange visions tormented me even when awake. For this, the doom which threatened the remnant of that once great army may have been responsible. I believed that I should never see my country again--and G.o.d only knows what that meant to one who had suffered so much.

Such was my condition when I heard someone tapping faintly upon the door of the priest's house, and then a sound of weeping. A common instinct of self-preservation should have made me callous, for those were the days when a man would have denied meat to his own brother--yet, whether it were the hour of the night or the despair of our situation, I know not--but, rising immediately, I took the rushlight in my hand and opened to the unknown.

II

The new-comer was dressed from head to foot in the fur of the silver fox, and had a grey woollen shawl about her head. I have rarely seen a more beautiful face upon a child or eyes so sorrowful.

Apparently of fourteen years of age or thereabouts, I perceived at once that she was of n.o.ble birth, while the sweetness of her voice was beyond words. Weeping upon the threshold, she ceased to weep directly she had entered the room, and, drawing herself up with a dignity worthy of her race, she told me that her name was Joan d'Izambert, and begged me to come immediately to the help of her brother, who was dying.

This was an astonishing request, and I could not forbear a question.

"Mademoiselle," I asked, "who is your brother, and what brought you to this house?"

She replied immediately that her brother was Gabriel d'Izambert, one of the _pontonniers_, and that he had been sent to the river by General Roguet. From this excursion I understood that the young man had returned in a state of delirium, and was now lying in an arbour of a garden close by.

"Sergeant Picard sent me to you," she explained. "He knows my brother well, and said that you would come. Oh, monsieur, we have suffered so much, and now there is this. Will you not help me?"

I told her that I would go. For another, perchance, I would not have stirred a foot that night; but there was so much in the child's manner--a gift to command and a n.o.bility of mien which were remarkable--that I put on my great fur coat without more ado, and went down to the garden with her. It lay, perhaps, a hundred paces from the house which we occupied, and was attached to a considerable mansion, of which General Roguet and his staff had then taken possession.