Читать книгу The Great White Army (Historical Novel) - Pemberton Max - Страница 7

I stooped over the man I had struck down, and found him breathing stertorously but still alive. The lackey, however, was quite dead, and his blood had made a great pool upon the rich Eastern carpet of the salon.

My first impulse was to go to the windows and open the heavy shutters; and when this was done I found myself looking out upon a pretty garden in the Italian fashion. It was surrounded by high walls on three sides, and seemed as void of humanity as the house. The salon itself stood at a considerable height from the ground, and although there was a wide balcony before the windows, I perceived no possible means of escape thereby.

This will tell you that I now had a considerable apprehension both of the deserted house and of the adventure which had befallen me. Not only did I blame my own folly for listening to the servant in the first instance—that was bad enough—but upon it there came a desire to return to my comrades, which was almost an obsession. There I stood upon the balcony listening to the rolling of the drums and the blare of the bugles, and yet I might have been a thousand leagues from friends and comrades. Moreover, it was evident that I had not seen the last of the assassins, and that they would return.

Such was the situation at a moment when I realised that escape by the balcony was impossible. Returning to the room, its beauty and riches stood fully revealed by the warm sunlight, and they recalled to me the tales of Moscow's wealth which we had heard directly we entered Russia. The Grand Army, I said, would be well occupied for many days to come in an employment it had always found congenial. Vases of the rarest porcelain, statues from Italy, pictures and furniture from my own France, gems in gold and stones most precious were the common ornaments of this magnificent apartment. Here and there an empty cabinet seemed to say that some attempt had been made already to remove these treasures, and that the entry of our troops had disturbed the robbers. What remained, however, would have been riches to a prince, and it would have been possible for me to have put a fortune into my wallet that very hour.

Already it seemed to me that I should have a difficulty in finding my way out of the house. The idea had been in my mind when I stood upon the balcony and contemplated the solitude and the security of the garden below. There I had listened to the rolling music of the bands, the blare of bugles, and the tramping of many thousands of exulting soldiers; but all sounds were lost when I returned to the great hall and stood alone with the dead.

Who was this youth to whom I had been called?

I bent over him and discovered such a face as one might find in the picture of an Italian master. The lad would have been about one and twenty, and no woman's hair could have been finer than his. Such a skin I had rarely seen; the face might have been chiselled from the purest marble; the eyes were open and blue as the sea by which I imagined this young fellow had lived. There was firmness in the chin, and a contour of neck and shoulders which even a physician could admire.

His clothes, I observed, were well chosen and made of him a man of some taste. He wore breeches of black velvet and a shirt of the finest cambric, open at the neck. His shoes had jewelled buckles, and his stockings were of silk. Who, then, was the lad, and why had the lackey killed him? That was a question I meant to answer when I had some of my comrades with me. It remained to escape from this house of mystery as quickly as might be.

I passed down the staircase and came to an ante-room with a vast door at the end of it. It was heavily bolted, and the keys of it were gone. So much I had expected, and yet it seemed that where the assassins had gone there might I follow. Ridiculous to be a prisoner of a house from within, and of such a house, when there must be half a dozen doors that gave upon the streets about it. And yet I could find none of them that was not locked and barred as the chief door I have named, while every window upon the ground floor might have been that of a prison.

Vainly I went from place to place—here by corridors that were as dark as night, there into rooms where the lightest sounds gave an echo as of thunder, back again to the great hall I had left—and always with the fear of the assassins upon me and the irony of my condition unconcealed. Good God! That I had shut myself in such a trap! A thousand times I cursed the builder of such a house and all his works. The night, I said, would find me alone in a tomb of marble.

I shall not weary you by a recital of all that befell in the hours of daylight that remained. I had a horrid fear of the dark, and when at length it overtook me I returned to the salon, and, having covered the dead men with the rugs lying about, went thence to the balcony and so watched the night come down.

Consider my situation—so near and yet so far from all that was taking place in this fallen city.

Above me the great bowl of the sky glowed with the lights of many a bivouac in square or market. It was as though the whole city trembled beneath the footsteps of the thousands who now trampled down her ancient glory and cast her banners to the earth. The blare of bands was to be heard everywhere; the murmur of voices rose and fell like the angry surf that beats upon a shore. Cries of "Vive l'Empereur!" rent the air from time to time, and to them were added the fierce shouting of the rabble or the frenzied screams of those who fled before the glittering bayonets of this mighty host. And to crown all, as though mockingly, there rang out the music of those unsurpassable bells—the bells of Moscow, of which all the world has heard.

These were the sights and sounds which came to me as I stood upon that balcony and laughed grimly at my situation. But a stone's throw away, said I, there would be merry fellows enough to call me by my name and lead me to my comrades.

Janil de Constant, I flattered myself, was as well known as any man in all the Guard, old or young. Never did his Majesty pass me but I had a warm word from him or that little pinch upon the ear which denoted his favour.

My art was considerable, as all the world knows.

I had been a professor in the University of Paris until this fever of war fell upon me, and I set out to discover its realities for myself. What skill could do for suffering men, I had done these many months, and yet here was I as far from it all as though a ship had carried me to the Indies and the desolation of the ocean lay all about me.

These, I say, were my thoughts, and the night—that wonderful night of summer—did nothing to better them. Perchance I should have spent it there upon the balcony but for that which I had expected—the return of the assassins to the spoils from which they had been scared. It could not have befallen otherwise. The time, I suppose, would have been about ten of the clock. They entered the garden below me, and I heard their footsteps upon the grass. But now there were many of them, and even from the balcony it was apparent to me that all were armed.