Читать книгу The Quest of Glory - Bowen Marjorie - Страница 7

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The French quitted Prague on the evening of the 16th of December, leaving only a small garrison in the Hradcany; by the 18th the vanguard had reached Pürgitz at the crossing of the rivers, and then the snow, that had paused for two days, commenced towards evening and the cold began to increase almost beyond human endurance.

At first their retreat had been harried by Austrian guns and charges of the Hungarian Pandours, but the enemy did not follow them far. The cannon was no longer in their ears; for twenty-four hours they marched through the silence of a barren, deserted country.

The road was now so impassable, the darkness so impenetrable, the storm so severe, the troops so exhausted that M. de Belleisle ordered a halt, though all they had for camping-ground was a ragged ravine, a strip of valley by the river, and, for the Generals, a few broken houses in the devastated village of Pürgitz.

The officers of the régiment du roi received orders to halt as they were painfully making their way through the steep mountain paths; they shrugged and laughed and proceeded without comment to make their camp.

It was impossible to put up the tents, both by reason of the heavy storm of snow and the rocky ground; the best they could do was to fix some of the canvas over the piled gun carriages and baggage wagons and so get men and horses into some kind of shelter.

No food was sent them, and it was too dark for any search to be made. It was impossible to find a spot dry enough to light a fire on. The men huddled together under the rocks and rested with their heads on their saddles within the feeble protection of the guns and carts.

The officers sat beneath a projecting point of rock, over which a canvas had been hastily dragged, and muffled themselves in their cloaks and every scrap of clothing they could find; behind them their horses were fastened, patient and silent.

“I am sorry,” said M. de Vauvenargues, “that there are so many women and feeble folk with us.”

“Another of M. de Belleisle’s blunders,” answered the Colonel calmly. “He should have forced them to remain in Prague.”

“There was never a Protestant,” remarked Lieutenant d’Espagnac, “who would remain in Prague at the mercy of the Hungarians.”

The other officers were silent; it seemed to them vexatious that this already difficult retreat should be further hampered by the presence of some hundred of refugees—men, women, and children, French travellers, foreign inhabitants of Prague, Bavarians who wished to return to their own country, Hussites who were afraid of being massacred by the Pandours.

M. de Vauvenargues had it particularly in his mind; he had seen more than one dead child on the route since they left Prague. Eger was still many leagues off and both the weather and road increasing in severity and difficulty.

“I wonder if Belleisle knew what he was doing,” he remarked thoughtfully.

M. d’Espagnac laughed; his soaring spirits were not in the least cast down. He had just managed, with considerable difficulty, to light a lantern, which he hung from a dry point of rock. Its sickly ray illuminated the group and showed features a little white and pinched above the close wrapped cloaks; but Georges d’Espagnac bloomed like a winter rose. There was no trace of fatigue on his ardent countenance; he leant back against the cold grey rock under the lantern and began to hum an aria of Glück’s that had been fashionable when he last saw Paris. His hair was loosened from the ribbon and half freed from powder; it showed in streaks of bright brown through the pomade.

“There will be no moving till dawn,” said M. de Biron with an air of disgust. The snow was beginning to invade their temporary shelter.

Another officer spoke impatiently.

“There must be food—many of our men have not eaten since they started. How many men does M. de Belleisle hope to get to Eger in this manner?”

There was no answer: the blast of heavy snow chilled speech. Some faint distant shouting and cries were heard, the neighing of a horse, the rumble of a cart, then silence.

Georges d’Espagnac continued his song; he seemed in a happy dream. Presently he fell asleep, resting his head against the shoulder of the other lieutenant. M. de Biron and the second captain either slept also or made a good feint of it. The Marquis rose and took the lantern from the wall; it was unbearable to him to sit there in the darkness, amid this silent company, while there was so much to do outside. The thought of his hungry men pricked him. The food wagons must have overlooked them. It was surely possible to find some member of the commissariat department. The army could not have reached already such a pitch of confusion.

He stepped softly from under the canvas. To his great relief he found that the snow had almost ceased, but the air was glacial. As he paused, endeavouring to see his way by means of the poor rays of the lantern, his horse gave a low whinny after him. The Marquis felt another pang—the poor brutes must be hungry too. He began to descend the rocky path; he was cold even through his heavy fur mantle, and his hands were stiff despite his fur gloves. The path was wet and slippery, half frozen already, though the snow had only lain a moment.

In every crevice and hole in the rocks the soldiers were lying or sitting; many of them were wrapped in the tent canvases and horses’ blankets; here and there was a dead mule with a man lying close for warmth, or a wounded trooper dying helplessly in his stiffening blood. The Marquis saw these sights intermittently and imperfectly by the wavering light of his lantern. He set his teeth; after nine years’ service he was still sensitive to sights of horror.

When he reached the level ground by the river that was the principal camping ground, he stopped bewildered amidst utter confusion.

There were neither tents, nor sentries, nor outposts, merely thousands of men, lying abandoned to cold and hunger, amidst useless wagons of furniture; and as the Marquis moved slowly across the field he saw no other sight than this.

What might lie beyond the range of his lantern he could not tell, but all he could see seemed abandoned to despair.

A man leading a mule knocked up against him; he also held a feeble lantern; his dress and the chests the mule carried showed him to be a surgeon.

“This is a pitiful sight, Monsieur,” he said. “Most of the wagons were lost in that storm yesterday, and how am I to work with nothing?” He lifted his shoulders and repeated, “with nothing?”

“Is there no food?” asked the Marquis.

“In Pürgitz, yes—but who is to distribute it on such a night?”

“We are like to have worse nights. Is M. de Belleisle in Pürgitz?”

“And some regiments. They are in luck, Monsieur.”

M. de Vauvenargues stood thoughtfully, and the surgeon passed on. Two officers rode up on horseback, attended by a soldier with a torch; the Marquis accosted them.

“Messieurs, I am Vauvenargues of the régiment du roi,” he said. “We are encamped up the ravine, and there is no provision for men or horses——”

By the light of the torch he recognized in the foremost officer M. de Broglie, whose bright hair gleamed above a pale face.

“Maréchal,” he added, “I do not know how many will be alive by the morning.”

“M. de Vauvenargues!” exclaimed the General, with a faint smile. “I am helpless—absolutely helpless. The food wagons have not come up—some, I believe, are lost.”

The Marquis looked at him keenly; M. de Broglie was so careless in manner that the young officer suspected he was in truth deeply troubled.

“Very well, Monsieur,” he answered. “I suppose we may look for some relief with the dawn?”

“I think the orders will be to march at daybreak,” answered de Broglie. He touched his beaver and rode on, first adding gravely, “Pray God it does not snow again.”

The Marquis remained holding the lantern and looking at the huddled shape of men and horses. A vast pity for the waste and unseen courage of war gripped his heart; none of these men complained, the horses dropped silently, the very mules died patiently—and what was the use of it? The war was wanton, unprovoked, expensive, and, so far, a failure; it had nothing heroic in its object, which was principally to satisfy the ambitious vanity of M. de Belleisle and the vague schemes of poor old well-meaning Cardinal Fleury who had never seen a battle-field in his life.

The end seemed so inadequate to the sacrifice asked. The Marquis had seen the soldiers suffer and die in Prague with secret pangs, but this seemed a sheer devastation. It was impossible to stand still long in that cold; it was obvious that nothing could be done till the dawn. He pulled out his silver filigree watch, but it had stopped.

Slowly he moved through the camp. Now the snow had ceased, several pitiful little fires were springing up in sheltered spots; and the men were moving about in their heavy wraps, and the surgeons coming in and out the groups of wounded and sick.

A dog barked in a home-sick fashion; there was not a star visible. A Hussite pastor came within range of the Marquis’s lantern; he was carrying a limp child, and murmuring, in the strange Bohemian, what seemed a prayer.

Soon the flickering orbit of light fell on a Catholic priest kneeling beside a dying man whose face was sharp and dull. He too prayed, but the familiar Latin supplications were as outside the Marquis’s sympathy as the Hussite’s appeal; he was tolerant to both, but his thoughts just touched them, no more. A strange haughty sadness came over his heart; he felt disdainful of humanity that could be so weak, so cruel, so patient.

His lantern had evidently been near empty of oil, for it began to flicker and flare, and finally sank out.

He put it from him and felt his way over a pile of rocks that rose up suddenly sheer and sharp.

Nothing could be done till the dawn; it was doubtful even if he could find his way back to his own regiment. He seated himself on the rock, wrapped his cloak tightly about him, and waited.

He thought that he must be in some kind of shelter, for he did not feel the wind, and here the cold was certainly less severe.

His sombre mood did not long endure; he ceased to see the darkness filled with weary, dispirited, wounded men; rather he fancied it full of light and even flowers, which were the thoughts, he fancied, and aspirations of these poor tired soldiers.

Obedience, courage, endurance, strength blossomed rich as red roses in the hearts of the feeblest of these sons of France—and in the bosom of such as Georges d’Espagnac bloomed a very glory, as of white passion flowers at midsummer and in his own heart there grew enough to render the bloodstained night fragrant.

He smiled at his conceit, but it was very real to him. He had not eaten since early the previous day; he wondered if he was beginning to grow light-headed, as he had done once before in Italy when he had been without food and several hours in the sun.

The reflection brought back a sudden picture of Italy, hard, brightly-coloured, gorgeous, brilliant; he shivered with a great longing for that purple sunshine that scorched the flesh and ran in the blood.

In particular he recalled a field of wheat sloping to a sea which was like a rough blue stone for colour, and huge-leaved chestnut trees of an intense reddish green that cast a bronze shadow growing near, and the loud humming of grasshoppers persistently—no, he thought, that did not come in the wheat, but in the short dried grass, burnt gold as new clay by the sun; the sun—that sun he had scarcely seen since he left Paris.

A shuddering drowsiness overcame him; his head fell on his bosom, and he sank to sleep.

When he woke it was with a sense of physical pain and the sensation that light was falling about him in great flakes; his clearing senses told him that this was the dawn, and that he was giddy. He sat up, to find himself in a natural alcove of rock overgrown with a grey dry moss frozen and glittering; a jutting point partially shut off his vision, but he could see enough of dead men and horses and painfully moving troops in the strip of ravine immediately below him. He unfolded his cloak from his stiff limbs, and by the aid of his sword rose to his feet. As he did so, he raised his eyes, and then gave an involuntary cry of wonder and pleasure.

Immediately behind him was a silver fir, perhaps a hundred feet high, as high at least as a village steeple, rising up, branch on branch, till it tapered to a perfect finish; and in the flat topmost boughs the sun, struggling through frowning blank grey clouds, rested with a melancholy radiance.

The Marquis had seen many such trees in Bohemia, and there was nothing extraordinary that he should, unwittingly, have slept under one; yet his breath was shaken at the sight of the tall, unspoilt beauty of this common silver fir with the sun in the upper branches, and he could not tell why.

He supported himself against the trunk and closed his eyes for a moment; his body was stabbed with pain, and his head seemed filled with restless waves of sensation. He had never been robust, and it had often been a keen trouble to him that he could not support hardship like some men, like most soldiers. He set his teeth and with an effort opened his eyes.

The first sight they met was that of a woman riding a white horse coming round the fir tree.

He knew her instantly for the Countess Koklinska, and she evidently knew him, for she reined up her horse, which she rode astride like a man, and looked down at him with a direct glance of recognition.

“I have forgotten your name,” she said, “but I remember you, Monsieur. You are ill,” she added.

He blushed that she should see his weakness, and mastered himself sufficiently to step to her stirrup.

“I found a lodging in Pürgitz,” she said, “and food; but there has been great suffering among your men.”

Her attire was the same as when he had seen her last—barbaric and splendid, dark furs, scarlet powdered with gold, turquoise velvet and crimson satin; her face was pinched and sallow, but her eyes were clear and expressive under the thick long lashes.

“I wish we had no women with us,” said the Marquis faintly.

She dismounted before he had divined her intentions, and drew a silver flask from her sash, and held it out to him in her white fur gloved hands.

“Only a little poor wine,” she murmured humbly, and she had the cup ready and the red wine poured out.

He thanked her gravely and drank with distaste; their heavy gloves touched as he handed the horn goblet back to her and again their eyes met.

In the pale, clear winter morning he looked dishevelled, pallid, and sad, but his eyes were steady, and held the same look as had lightened them in the chapel of St. Wenceslas.

“If there are no more storms, we shall do very well,” he remarked quietly. “I think there are no more than twenty leagues to Eger, and M. de Saxe took this route last year with but little loss.”

“Not in this weather,” returned the Countess Carola. “And M. de Belleisle is not Maurice de Saxe.”

Both her remarks were true, but the Marquis would not confirm them; he bowed gravely, as if displeased, and passed down the rocky path.

She remained beside the silver fir looking after him. The cold clouds had closed over the feeble sun and the wind blew more icy; all the sounds of a moving camp came with a sharp clearness through the pure, glacial air.

The Marquis made his way up the ascent to where his regiment bivouacked. His progress was slow; the sky became darker and lower as he ascended, and his way was marked by the frozen dead and the unconscious dying. He turned a point of rock to see the figure of Georges d’Espagnac standing at the edge of a little precipice fanning some glimmering sticks into a flame. Then the snow began; suddenly a few flakes, then a dense storm that blended heaven and earth in one whirl of white and cold.