We had slept in a stable in that unhappy town and there had fallen in with Sergeant Bardot and his plunder.
I remember that it was a dreadful night, the roar of the wind almost drowning the sound of the distant artillery, which we believed to be fired at our rearguard by the Russians. It has been said since that day that Marshal Ney himself fired the guns to drive the stragglers into the town. I cannot tell you how it was, but I know that we all suffered very much, especially the child Joan, who mourned ceaselessly for her father and her brother.
Next morning we set out for the bridge across the Niemen. It was almost as great a press as that at the Berezina. Happily, the Cossacks had not yet come up, and we got across at length to find an open country where there were few signs of an army marching.
Very shortly afterwards we lost all track of the vanguard, and were mere stragglers with a few others upon a great white plain which the wind swept pitilessly. That night we bivouacked in the barn of an ancient farmhouse which marauders had burned. It was there that we determined to go our own way henceforth and not to rejoin the regiment until we came to Elbing.
"Why should we?" old Bardot asked in his matter-of-fact way. "There will be no fighting, my friends; and if there be, the marshal will take care of those fellows. No one expects the Cossacks to cross the Niemen, and if they are wise they will now go back to their own country. We have food enough for some days and our horses are good.
Let us make a caravan as the Easterns do, and leave the rest to Providence."
This was very sensible advice, and it fell upon willing ears. We were a genial company, and if my nephew spent most of his hours in close converse with Valerie St. Antoine, at least I had the benefit of the sergeant"s company. As for little Joan, she rarely spoke to anyone; or, if she did, it was to raise again that fatal question of her father"s whereabouts. For all these reasons I deemed it wise to do as Bardot directed, and to seek a route of our own. We should find the remnant of the army at Elbing; it would be time enough to think of re-formation when we arrived there.
So behold us crossing those fearsome steppes, Valerie and Leon for our van, the sergeant and myself, with the child between us, talking of a thousand things which were to be done if ever we saw the city of Paris again. We had come by this time to believe that we should do so, and despite the sufferings which we endured our courage remained unshaken.
Alas! that it was so soon to be put to the proof. We were hopelessly lost upon the evening of the third day, and knew no more than the dead whether we were marching to Elbing or to the sea.
Remember that the heaven above us had been perpetually obscured by cloud and that the night showed us no stars. The plain in itself was a vast sea of snow, broken rarely by clumps or pines and hardly showing us a house which had not been burned by the army on its outward march.
From time to time, it is true, we espied little companies of stragglers in the far distance, or groups of hors.e.m.e.n poised upon a knoll; but of the high road we saw nothing, and gradually it began to dawn upon us that even Bardot"s store was not inexhaustible, and that we must surely perish in this wild place unless we recovered the high road speedily.
We slept that night in a dismal wood, listening to the howling of the wolves and but ill-protected by the snow-pit we had digged. The others were merry enough save little Joan, whose strength could not support these hardships and for whose safety we were all tenderly solicitous.
Fortunately, we had more than one great-coat of fur with us, and we made the child a bed in the snow as well as we could, and then fell to talking of our position.
Old Bardot"s plan clearly had broken down, and it remained to find another. Should we waste the precious hours trudging northward on the chance that the high road lay there, or should we hold our course and risk the discovery of a town or village in our path? Bardot was for the latter plan; Valerie for the former.
"I have friends in Elbing," she said. "Prince Nicholas visited the city frequently, and if we ever reach the town I am sure they will welcome me. We cannot do wrong to go to the north, for the sea will soon tell us where we are. Here it is a wilderness where none but madmen would remain."
She looked at the sergeant as she spoke; and, in truth, there never had been much love lost between those two. His defence of himself was lame but valiant.
"We should have been pillaged upon the high road," he said truculently.
"It was wiser to do as we have done."
Her answer was that we had now nothing to pillage. The argument threatened to grow heated when, to our great surprise, we heard the barking of a watch-dog, and, all springing to our feet, we discovered that the sound came from the far side of the wood and that a human habitation must be there.
III
Ten minutes later we were knocking at its door. It proved to be a little farmhouse kept by Poles--a widow and two sons--and they were greatly alarmed when we waked them. Our civilities presently obtained admittance, and we found ourselves in a long, low room with a wood fire burning brightly, and about it some evidence of an unexpected prosperity. Fine skins decorated the walls of this mean habitation.
There were guns in the corner by the chimney, and among them some French weapons obviously taken from our own soldiers. A handsome drinking cup in silver stood upon a shelf which harboured good china; while a little shrine with candles denoted that the people were of the Catholic faith.
I thought them all strikingly handsome; the lads were dark, with intelligent eyes; the old woman looked a picture of almost saintly sweetness and benignity. With Valerie she was at home directly, and it was good to see the conquest which the French beauty made so quickly.
The result of this was immediate. We had not been in the farm ten minutes when the table was spread with viands and a bottle of French brandy set before us. Of the sons, one waited upon us and the other went out, as the old woman said, to cut wood. I thought it a little odd that he remained away so long, but the circ.u.mstance escaped my notice presently when rugs were spread upon the floor and our beds made ready.
So weary were we all that we lay down upon the floor without any ceremony, and the last I remember before going to sleep were the whispers of Valerie and my nephew, who, I doubt not, were telling each other an ancient story. When I awoke a light sound in the room disturbed me. I sat up and looked about me, bewildered by the flickering rays of the ebbing fire and uncertain for the moment where I was.
We all experience this in strange places, but a soldier usually is not at a loss. Upon this occasion, whether it were the unusual aspect of the room, the circ.u.mstances of our bivouac, or the treacherous firelight, I cannot tell you, but moments pa.s.sed before I remembered our coming to the house at all.
To this there succeeded a sense of alarm and of a peril I could not define. I thought that I was in a prison, and the Cossacks were my jailers. The fitful light upon the floor showed red and ghastly, and suggested the blood of dead comrades. I started up, pressing my hands to my eyes and prepared for any ignominy, when, as in a flash, the whole scene was recalled, and I remembered both the room and the Poles.
At the same instant the fire, leaping into flame, showed me the figure of Valerie, and I could have sworn that she was about to quit the apartment. This was not so. She made a sign to me, and I perceived immediately that it was one which warned me to be silent.
Naturally, all this astonished me very much, for I had expected to find her fast asleep. And yet here she was, sword in hand, standing by the door as though an enemy had knocked upon it. Stepping over the sleeping figures of Bardot and my nephew, I asked her in a whisper what had happened.
"The Pole has not returned," she said. "I heard a sound of footsteps on the snow--many of them. We must lock the door; there is danger."
With this she swung over the great bar of iron, and it fell softly into its place. If I had any doubt of the wisdom of what she did, a quick glance about the apartment would have set it at rest. Neither the old woman herself nor the younger son were where they had been last night.
Moreover, a sound of footsteps was now audible beyond all question. It was evident that the house was surrounded and that these cunning people had betrayed us.
A kick from my foot woke old Bardot, and Leon started up directly the sergeant moved. The briefest words told them what had happened; and, still yawning, they stretched out their hands and felt in the straw for their swords. Our muskets had been piled up in the corner with those of the young men, but it was soon apparent that they had been pillaged while we slept, for a purpose we could readily imagine. We had only the pistols, of which no occasion robbed us, and our first care was to prime them before going to the window. It was well that we did so.
Hardly had Bardot thrown open the cas.e.m.e.nt when bullets hailed into the room, and the china came crashing down like slates from a penthouse when the wind is high. This was a pretty business, to be sure--the last kind of welcome we had expected when we fell asleep by the fire.
"To the door!" cried I, as the shots rang out. We all were down on our marrow bones in a twinkling, protected by the great wooden doors and the bolt we had drawn. It was plain to me that no bullet would pierce the wood of the door, and that those who were after us must come in by the windows. The greater mystery remained--who were the bandits who attacked us in this headlong way, and what was their number? That they were not Cossacks I felt sure, for soldiers would have known how to take us in our sleep, and the rest had been easy. Were they the wretched moujiks, so many of whom armed themselves against the wounded of the Grand Army when it fled from Russia? Or were they the real bandits of the steppes? We answered the question when a bearded brigand, waving a gardener"s hoe, appeared at the window and slashed at us with the gleaming steel. This man I shot dead directly he showed his face. It was evident that he was but a peasant after all, and that we had his fellows to deal with.
I say that I shot him dead; but the respite was brief enough. No sooner had the man fallen than his place was taken by others, all armed with the most barbarous weapons, but no less zealous for our blood.
Under any other circ.u.mstance the scene must have been droll enough.
Here were we four with our backs to the great door, the latticed windows, by which the a.s.sa.s.sins tried to enter, upon either side of us.
Frightened by the death of their comrade, they now resorted to a primitive attempt to harpoon us, as though we had been so many fish in a sea. It was ridiculous to watch the hairy arms thrust in at the window, while scythes or pikes or bayonets on sticks were turned menacingly toward us and their owners bayed like dogs after quarry.
Happily, our position enabled us to treat this puny a.s.sault with derision. We were beyond the reach of their harpoons, and we neglected no opportunity to retaliate. More than one of the a.s.sa.s.sins lost his hand or his arm by a swift cut from the swords we knew so well how to use. This was satisfactory enough, but it carried us nowhere, and behind it all there lay the real apprehension that these monsters would force the window presently and butcher us as though we had been sheep.
Hundreds of our comrades had so perished since we left Krasnoe. Wild creatures, more like gorillas than men, had come out of the woods with their scythes roped to sticks and had slashed and maimed the wounded without grace or pity. And here we were dealing with the same kind of villains, but, happily, neither wounded nor frightened by them. If any secret anxiety had accompanied the first moments of this amazing encounter, it was for little Joan d"Izambert, who still lay upon the far side of the room and had been forbidden by me to join us. I saw that the heavy table protected her from bullets, and bidding her lie still, I turned my attention to the window. It was time truly.
Someone had now pushed a musket through the cas.e.m.e.nt, and, aiming at hazard, the roar of the discharge shook everything in the apartment.
This was the turn we had not antic.i.p.ated. It needed all our wits now to slash at the barrels as they were poised by unseen hands, and nothing but the greatest agility saved our lives at such a crisis.
This was all very well, but you will soon see that it could not continue. Four of us there were to slash at the guns, but many outside to direct them; and presently my poor friend Bardot uttered a low cry and fell in the straw at my side.
"I am done for," said he, and instantly he fainted.
The success redoubled the fury of those without. Heads were seen at the window again; there was a new and more savage onslaught with the pikes; the door itself began to tremble under the thud of axes. I believed then that we were done for, and I am sure that the others were of my opinion. Let the door fall, and we should be cut to pieces. No hope of plunder animated these savages, but that insensate hatred of the invader by which our poor fellows had suffered so much already.
They l.u.s.ted for our blood, and that alone would satisfy them.
Surely this was a very terrible moment. The blows of the axes seemed to number the moments we had to live. Convinced now that they would not get us by the windows, but that the door must be forced, the wretches had drawn off and concentrated all their fury upon these ancient beams. Happily for us, the man who built the house was himself a child of the wilderness, and his life, no less than ours, may have depended many a time upon the stoutness of his portals. The door withstood the attack, though the very walls shook with the fury of it.
We could do nothing but crouch there and wait, hope almost dead, the promise of the day but a mockery. When to this we heard a cry of "Fire!"--for that was a word every French soldier had learned in Moscow--then we understood and believed that it was the end. They were going to burn us out. The cries of the old woman whose house they would have fired moved them not at all. "Fire!" they yelled; and we could hear them running hither and thither--a savage horde mad in its l.u.s.t for blood.
We had uttered few words until this time; and, as for that, a man could hardly have heard himself speak in the room. Now, however, we knew an instant of respite, and it was then that Valerie proposed that we should open the doors.
"Anything is better than this," she said. "Courage may find the horses--who knows?"
The suggestion was wise, and I fell in with it readily.
"Let Leon go first and do you follow him," said I. "The child shall come with me."
And at that I stooped over my poor Bardot and perceived that he was indeed dead. The prospect of dying out there in the open was less horrible than that of being cooped up in this miserable house, which presently must become a furnace; and who could say what these wretches might do or not do when confronted by soldiers of the Guard? The resolution hardly was taken when we lifted the bolt and threw the great doors wide open. "En avant!" cries Leon, rushing out with his sword flashing. Then he laughed drolly. Not a moujik was to be seen; not a voice to be heard. A sound of approaching sleigh bells alone broke in upon the silence of the night.
IV
Well, we all stood there to listen--our swords in our hands, our ears bent. A miracle had happened, and our enemies were fled. None of us, if it were not the child, understood the reality of the peril we had escaped, or surrendered to that revulsion of feeling natural to the circ.u.mstance. Little Joan, however, shed childish tears and was upon her knees giving thanks in an instant. The rest of us looked at her somewhat ashamed; our faith remained shaken. Beyond that, old Bardot was dead. I think we remembered the fact even when our own delivery tempted us to rejoice.
But was it delivery?