White Lies
by
Charles Reade
Part 7 out of 8
This cold and silent man had won the heart of the most talkative
sergeant in the French army. Sergeant La Croix protested with many
oaths that all the best generals of the day had commanded him in
turn, and that his present colonel was the first that had succeeded
in inspiring him with unlimited confidence. "He knows every point
of war--this one," said La Croix, "I heard him beg and pray for
leave to storm this thundering bastion before it was armed: but no,
the old muffs would be wiser than our colonel. So now here we are
kept at bay by a place that Julius Caesar and Cannibal wouldn't have
made two bites at apiece; no more would I if I was the old boy out
there behind the hill." In such terms do sergeants denote
commanders-in-chief--at a distance. A voluble sergeant has more
influence with the men than the minister of war is perhaps aware: on
the whole, the 24th brigade would have followed its gloomy colonel
to grim death and a foot farther. One thing gave these men a touch
of superstitious reverence for their commander. He seemed to them
free from physical weakness. He never SAT DOWN to dinner, and
seemed never to sleep. At no hour of the day or night were the
sentries safe from his visits.
Very annoying. But, after awhile, it led to keen watchfulness: the
more so that the sad and gloomy colonel showed by his manner he
appreciated it. Indeed, one night he even opened his marble jaws,
and told Sergeant La Croix that a watchful sentry was an important
soldier, not to his brigade only, but to the whole army. Judge
whether the maxim and the implied encomium did not circulate next
morning, with additions.
Sixteenth day of the siege. The round bastion opened fire at eight
o'clock, not on the opposing battery, but on the right of the French
attack. Its advanced position enabled a portion of its guns to rake
these trenches slant-wise: and depressing its guns it made the round
shot strike the ground first and ricochet over.
On this our colonel opened on them with all his guns: one of these
he served himself. Among his other warlike accomplishments, he was
a wonderful shot with a cannon. He showed them capital practice
this morning: drove two embrasures into one, and knocked about a ton
of masonry off the parapet. Then taking advantage of this, he
served two of his guns with grape, and swept the enemy off the top
of the bastion, and kept it clear. He made it so hot they could not
work the upper guns. Then they turned the other two tiers all upon
him, and at it both sides went ding, dong, till the guns were too
hot to be worked. So then Sergeant La Croix popped his head up from
the battery, and showed the enemy a great white plate. This was
meant to convey to them an invitation to dine with the French army:
the other side of the table of course.
To the credit of Prussian intelligence be it recorded, that this
pantomimic hint was at once taken and both sides went to dinner.
The fighting colonel, however, remained in the battery, and kept a
detachment of his gunners employed cooling the guns and repairing
the touch-holes. He ordered his two cutlets and his glass of water
into the battery.
Meantime, the enemy fired a single gun at long intervals, as much as
to say, "We had the last word."
Let trenches be cut ever so artfully, there will be a little space
exposed here and there at the angles. These spaces the men are
ordered to avoid, or whip quickly across them into cover.
Now the enemy had just got the range of one of these places with
their solitary gun, and had already dropped a couple of shot right
on to it. A camp follower with a tray, two cutlets, and a glass of
water, came to this open space just as a puff of white smoke burst
from the bastion. Instead of instantly seeking shelter till the
shot had struck, he, in his inexperience, thought the shot must have
struck, and all danger be over. He stayed there mooning instead of
pelting under cover: the shot (eighteen-pound) struck him right on
the breast, knocked him into spilikins, and sent the mutton cutlets
flying.
The human fragments lay quiet, ten yards off. But a soldier that
was eating his dinner kicked it over, and jumped up at the side of
"Death's Alley" (as it was christened next minute), and danced and
yelled with pain.
"Haw! haw! haw!" roared a soldier from the other side of the alley.
"What is that?" cried Sergeant La Croix. "What do you laugh at,
Private Cadel?" said he sternly, for, though he was too far in the
trench to see, he had heard that horrible sound a soldier knows from
every other, the "thud" of a round shot striking man or horse.
"Sergeant," said Cadel, respectfully, "I laugh to see Private Dard,
that got the wind of the shot, dance and sing, when the man that got
the shot itself does not say a word."
"The wind of the shot, you rascal!" roared Private Dard: "look
here!" and he showed the blood running down his face.
The shot had actually driven a splinter of bone out of the sutler
into Dard's temple.
"I am the unluckiest fellow in the army," remonstrated Dard: and he
stamped in a circle.
"Seems to me you are only the second unluckiest this time," said a
young soldier with his mouth full; and, with a certain dry humor, he
pointed vaguely over his shoulder with the fork towards the corpse.
The trenches laughed and assented.
This want of sympathy and justice irritated Dard. "You cursed
fools!" cried he. "He is gone where we must all go--without any
trouble. But look at me. I am always getting barked. Dogs of
Prussians! they pick me out among a thousand. I shall have a
headache all the afternoon, you see else."
Some of our heads would never have ached again: but Dard had a good
thick skull.
Dard pulled out his spilikin savagely.
"I'll wrap it up in paper for Jacintha," said he. "Then that will
learn her what a poor soldier has to go through."
Even this consolation was denied Private Dard.
Corporal Coriolanus Gand, a bit of an infidel from Lyons, who
sometimes amused himself with the Breton's superstition, told him
with a grave face, that the splinter belonged not to him, but to the
sutler, and, though so small, was doubtless a necessary part of his
frame.
"If you keep that, it will be a bone of contention between you two,"
said he; "especially at midnight. HE WILL BE ALWAYS COMING BACK TO
YOU FOR IT."
"There, take it away!" said the Breton hastily, "and bury it with
the poor fellow."
Sergeant La Croix presented himself before the colonel with a rueful
face and saluted him and said, "Colonel, I beg a thousand pardons;
your dinner has been spilt--a shot from the bastion."
"No matter," said the colonel. "Give me a piece of bread instead."
La Croix went for it himself, and on his return found Cadel sitting
on one side of Death's Alley, and Dard with his head bound up on the
other. They had got a bottle which each put up in turn wherever he
fancied the next round shot would strike, and they were betting
their afternoon rations which would get the Prussians to hit the
bottle first.
La Croix pulled both their ears playfully.
"Time is up for playing marbles," said he. "Be off, and play at
duty," and he bundled them into the battery.
It was an hour past midnight: a cloudy night. The moon was up, but
seen only by fitful gleams. A calm, peaceful silence reigned.
Dard was sentinel in the battery.
An officer going his rounds found the said sentinel flat instead of
vertical. He stirred him with his scabbard, and up jumped Dard.
"It's all right, sergeant. O Lord! it's the colonel. I wasn't
asleep, colonel."
"I have not accused you. But you will explain what you were doing."
"Colonel," said Dard, all in a flutter, "I was taking a squint at
them, because I saw something. The beggars are building a wall,
now."
"Where?"
"Between us and the bastion."
"Show me."
"I can't, colonel; the moon has gone in; but I did see it."
"How long was it?"
"About a hundred yards."
"How high?"
"Colonel, it was ten feet high if it was an inch."
"Have you good sight?"
"La! colonel, wasn't I a bit of a poacher before I took to the
bayonet?"
"Good! Now reflect. If you persist in this statement, I turn out
the brigade on your information."
"I'll stand the fire of a corporal's guard at break of day if I make
a mistake now," said Dard.
The colonel glided away, called his captain and first lieutenants,
and said two words in each ear, that made them spring off their
backs.
Dard, marching to an fro, musket on shoulder, found himself suddenly
surrounded by grim, silent, but deadly eager soldiers, that came
pouring like bees into the open space behind the battery. The
officers came round the colonel.
"Attend to two things," said he to the captains. "Don't fire till
they are within ten yards: and don't follow them unless I lead you."
The men were then told off by companies, some to the battery, some
to the trenches, some were kept on each side Death's Alley, ready
for a rush.
They were not all of them in position, when those behind the parapet
saw, as it were, something deepen the gloom of night, some fourscore
yards to the front: it was like a line of black ink suddenly drawn
upon a sheet covered with Indian ink.
It seems quite stationary. The novices wondered what it was. The
veterans muttered--"Three deep."
Though it looked stationary, it got blacker and blacker. The
soldiers of the 24th brigade griped their muskets hard, and set
their teeth, and the sergeants had much ado to keep them quiet.
All of a sudden, a loud yell on the right of the brigade, two or
three single shots from the trenches in that direction, followed by
a volley, the cries of wounded men, and the fierce hurrahs of an
attacking party.
Our colonel knew too well those sounds: the next parallel had been
surprised, and the Prussian bayonet was now silently at work.
Disguise was now impossible. At the first shot, a guttural voice in
front of Dujardin's men was heard to give a word of command. There
was a sharp rattle and in a moment the thick black line was tipped
with glittering steel.
A roar and a rush, and the Prussian line three deep came furiously
like a huge steel-pointed wave, at the French lines. A tremendous
wave of fire rushed out to meet that wave of steel: a crash of two
hundred muskets, and all was still. Then you could see through the
black steel-tipped line in a hundred frightful gaps, and the ground
sparkled with bayonets and the air rang with the cries of the
wounded.
A tremendous cheer from the brigade, and the colonel charged at the
head of his column, out by Death's Alley.
The broken wall was melting away into the night. The colonel
wheeled his men to the right: one company, led by the impetuous
young Captain Jullien, followed the flying enemy.
The other attack had been only too successful. They shot the
sentries, and bayoneted many of the soldiers in their tents: others
escaped by running to the rear, and some into the next parallel.
Several, half dressed, snatched up their muskets, killed one
Prussian, and fell riddled like sieves.
A gallant officer got a company together into the place of arms and
formed in line.
Half the Prussian force went at them, the rest swept the trenches:
the French company delivered a deadly volley, and the next moment
clash the two forces crossed bayonets, and a silent deadly stabbing
match was played: the final result of which was inevitable. The
Prussians were five to one. The gallant officer and the poor
fellows who did their duty so stoutly, had no thought left but to
die hard, when suddenly a roaring cheer seemed to come from the rear
rank of the enemy. "France! France!" Half the 24th brigade came
leaping and swarming over the trenches in the Prussian rear. The
Prussians wavered. "France!" cried the little party that were being
overpowered, and charged in their turn with such fury that in two
seconds the two French corps went through the enemy's centre like
paper, and their very bayonets clashed together in more than one
Prussian body.
Broken thus in two fragments the Prussian corps ceased to exist as a
military force. The men fled each his own way back to the fort, and
many flung away their muskets, for French soldiers were swarming in
from all quarters. At this moment, bang! bang! bang! from the
bastion.
"They are firing on my brigade," said our colonel. "Who has led his
company there against my orders? Captain Neville, into the battery,
and fire twenty rounds at the bastion! Aim at the flashes from
their middle tier."
"Yes, colonel."
The battery opened with all its guns on the bastion. The right
attack followed suit. The town answered, and a furious cannonade
roared and blazed all down both lines till daybreak. Hell seemed
broken loose.
Captain Jullien had followed the flying foe: but could not come up
with them: and, as the enemy had prepared for every contingency, the
fatal bastion, after first throwing a rocket or two to discover
their position, poured showers of grape into them, killed many, and
would have killed more but that Captain Neville and his gunners
happened by mere accident to dismount one gun and to kill a couple
of gunners at the others. This gave the remains of the company time
to disperse and run back. When the men were mustered, Captain
Jullien and twenty-five of his company did not answer to their
names. At daybreak they were visible from the trenches lying all by
themselves within eighty yards of the bastion.
A flag of truce came from the fort: the dead were removed on both
sides and buried. Some Prussian officers strolled into the French
lines. Civilities and cigars exchanged: "Bon jour," "Gooten daeg:"
then at it again, ding dong all down the line blazing and roaring.
At twelve o'clock the besieged had got a man on horseback, on top of
a hill, with colored flags in his hand, making signals.
"What are you up to now?" inquired Dard.
"You will see," said La Croix, affecting mystery; he knew no more
than the other.
Presently off went Long Tom on the top of the bastion, and the shot
came roaring over the heads of the speakers.
The flags were changed, and off went Long Tom again at an elevation.
Ten seconds had scarcely elapsed when a tremendous explosion took
place on the French right. Long Tom was throwing red-hot shot; one
had fallen on a powder wagon, and blown it to pieces, and killed two
poor fellows and a horse, and turned an artillery man at some
distance into a seeming nigger, but did him no great harm; only took
him three days to get the powder out of his clothes with pipe clay,
and off his face with raw potato-peel.
When the tumbril exploded, the Prussians could be heard to cheer,
and they turned to and fired every iron spout they owned. Long Tom
worked all day.
They got into a corner where the guns of the battery could not hit
them or him, and there was his long muzzle looking towards the sky,
and sending half a hundredweight of iron up into the clouds, and
plunging down a mile off into the French lines.
And, at every shot, the man on horseback made signals to let the
gunners know where the shot fell.
At last, about four in the afternoon, they threw a forty-eight-pound
shot slap into the commander-in-chief's tent, a mile and a half
behind trenches.
Down comes a glittering aide-de-camp as hard as he can gallop.
"Colonel Dujardin, what are you about, sir? YOUR BASTION has thrown
a round shot into the commander-in-chief's tent."
The colonel did not appear so staggered as the aide-de-camp
expected.
"Ah, indeed!" said he quietly. "I observed they were trying
distances."
"Must not happen again, colonel. You must drive them from the gun."
"How?"
"Why, where is the difficulty?"
"If you will do me the honor to step into the battery, I will show
you," said the colonel.
"If you please," said the aide-de-camp stiffly.
Colonel Dujardin took him to the parapet, and began, in a calm,
painstaking way, to show him how and why none of his guns could be
brought to bear upon Long Tom.
In the middle of the explanation a melodious sound was heard in the
air above them, like a swarm of Brobdingnag bees.
"What is that?" inquired the aide-de-camp.
"What? I see nothing."
"That humming noise."
"Oh, that? Prussian bullets. Ah, by-the-by, it is a compliment to
your uniform, monsieur; they take you for some one of importance.
Well, as I was observing"--
"Your explanation is sufficient, colonel; let us get out of this.
Ha, ha! you are a cool hand, colonel, I must say. But your battery
is a warm place enough: I shall report it so at headquarters."
The grim colonel relaxed.
"Captain," said he politely, "you shall not have ridden to my post
in vain. Will you lend me your horse for ten minutes?"
"Certainly; and I will inspect your trenches meantime."
"Do so; oblige me by avoiding that angle; it is exposed, and the
enemy have got the range to an inch."
Colonel Dujardin slipped into his quarters; off with his half-dress
jacket and his dirty boots, and presently out he came full fig,
glittering brighter than the other, with one French and two foreign
orders shining on his breast, mounted the aide-de-camp's horse, and
away full pelt.
Admitted, after some delay, into the generalissimo's tent, Dujardin
found the old gentleman surrounded by his staff and wroth: nor was
the danger to which he had been exposed his sole cause of ire.
The shot had burst through his canvas, struck a table on which was a
large inkstand, and had squirted the whole contents over the
despatches he was writing for Paris.
Now this old gentleman prided himself upon the neatness of his
despatches: a blot on his paper darkened his soul.
Colonel Dujardin expressed his profound regret. The commander,
however, continued to remonstrate. "I have a great deal of writing
to do," said he, "as you must be aware; and, when I am writing, I
expect to be quiet."
Colonel Dujardin assented respectfully to the justice of this. He
then explained at full length why he could not bring a gun in the
battery to silence "Long Tom," and quietly asked to be permitted to
run a gun out of the trenches, and take a shot at the offender.
"It is a point-blank distance, and I have a new gun, with which a
man ought to be able to hit his own ball at three hundred yards."
The commander hesitated.
"I cannot have the men exposed."
"I engage not to lose a man--except him who fires the gun. HE must
take his chance."
"Well, colonel, it must be done by volunteers. The men must not be
ORDERED out on such a service as that."
Colonel Dujardin bowed, and retired.
"Volunteers to go out of the trenches!" cried Sergeant La Croix, in
a stentorian voice, standing erect as a poker, and swelling with
importance.
There were fifty offers in less than as many seconds.
"Only twelve allowed to go," said the sergeant; "and I am one,"
added he, adroitly inserting himself.
A gun was taken down, placed on a carriage, and posted near Death's
Alley, but out of the line of fire.
The colonel himself superintended the loading of this gun; and to
the surprise of the men had the shot weighed first, and then weighed
out the powder himself.
He then waited quietly a long time till the bastion pitched one of
its periodical shots into Death's Alley, but no sooner had the shot
struck, and sent the sand flying past the two lanes of curious
noses, than Colonel Dujardin jumped upon the gun and waved his
cocked hat. At this preconcerted signal, his battery opened fire on
the bastion, and the battery to his right opened on the wall that
fronted them; and the colonel gave the word to run the gun out of
the trenches. They ran it out into the cloud of smoke their own
guns were belching forth, unseen by the enemy; but they had no
sooner twisted it into the line of Long Tom, than the smoke was
gone, and there they were, a fair mark.
"Back into the trenches, all but one!" roared Dujardin.
And in they ran like rabbits.
"Quick! the elevation."
Colonel Dujardin and La Croix raised the muzzle to the mark--hoo,
hoo, hoo! ping, ping, ping! came the bullets about their ears.
"Away with you!" cried the colonel, taking the linstock from him.
Then Colonel Dujardin, fifteen yards from the trenches, in full
blazing uniform, showed two armies what one intrepid soldier can do.
He kneeled down and adjusted his gun, just as he would have done in
a practising ground. He had a pot shot to take, and a pot shot he
would take. He ignored three hundred muskets that were levelled at
him. He looked along his gun, adjusted it, and re-adjusted it to a
hair's breadth. The enemy's bullets pattered upon it: still he
adjusted it delicately. His men were groaning and tearing their
hair inside at his danger.
At last it was levelled to his mind, and then his movements were as
quick as they had hitherto been slow. In a moment he stood erect in
the half-fencing attitude of a gunner, and his linstock at the
touch-hole: a huge tongue of flame, a volume of smoke, a roar, and
the iron thunderbolt was on its way, and the colonel walked
haughtily but rapidly back to the trenches; for in all this no
bravado. He was there to make a shot; not to throw a chance of life
away watching the effect.
Ten thousand eyes did that for him.
Both French and Prussians risked their own lives craning out to see
what a colonel in full uniform was doing under fire from a whole
line of forts, and what would be his fate; but when he fired the gun
their curiosity left the man and followed the iron thunderbolt.
For two seconds all was uncertain; the ball was travelling.
Tom gave a rear like a wild horse, his protruding muzzle went up
sky-high, then was seen no more, and a ring of old iron and a
clatter of fragments was heard on the top of the bastion. Long Tom
was dismounted. Oh! the roar of laughter and triumph from one end
to another of the trenches; and the clapping of forty thousand hands
that went on for full five minutes; then the Prussians, either
through a burst of generous praise for an act so chivalrous and so
brilliant, or because they would not be crowed over, clapped their
tea thousand hands as loudly, and thus thundering, heart-thrilling
salvo of applause answered salvo on both sides that terrible arena.
That evening came a courteous and flattering message from the
commander-in-chief to Colonel Dujardin; and several officers visited
his quarters to look at him; they went back disappointed. The cry
was, "What a miserable, melancholy dog! I expected to see a fine,
dashing fellow."
The trenches neared the town. Colonel Dujardin's mine was far
advanced; the end of the chamber was within a few yards of the
bastion. Of late, the colonel had often visited this mine in
person. He seemed a little uneasy about something in that quarter;
but no one knew what: he was a silent man. The third evening, after
he dismounted Long Tom, he received private notice that an order was
coming down from the commander-in-chief to assault the bastion. He
shrugged his shoulders, but said nothing. That same night the
colonel and one of his lieutenants stole out of the trenches, and by
the help of a pitch-dark, windy night, got under the bastion
unperceived, and crept round it, and made their observations, and
got safe back. About noon down came General Raimbaut.
"Well, colonel, you are to have your way at last. Your bastion is
to be stormed this afternoon previous to the general assault. Why,
how is this? you don't seem enchanted?"
"I am not."
"Why, it was you who pressed for the assault."
"At the right time, general, not the wrong. In five days I
undertake to blow that bastion into the air. To assault it now
would be to waste our men."
General Raimbaut thought this excess of caution a great piece of
perversity in Achilles. They were alone, and he said a little
peevishly,--
"Is not this to blow hot and cold on the same thing?"
"No, general," was the calm reply. "Not on the same thing. I blew
hot upon timorous counsels; I blow cold on rash ones. General, last
night Lieutenant Fleming and I were under that bastion; and all
round it."
"Ah! my prudent colonel, I thought we should not talk long without
your coming out in your true light. If ever a man secretly enjoyed
risking his life, it is you."
"No, general," said Dujardin looking gloomily down; "I enjoy neither
that nor anything else. Live or die, it is all one to me; but to
the lives of my soldiers I am not indifferent, and never will be
while I live. My apparent rashness of last night was pure
prudence."
Raimbaut's eye twinkled with suppressed irony. "No doubt!" said he;
"no doubt!"
The impassive colonel would not notice the other's irony; he went
calmly on:--
"I suspected something; I went to confute, or confirm that
suspicion. I confirmed it."
Rat! tat! tat! tat! tat! tat! tat! was heard a drum. Relieving
guard in the mine.
Colonel Dujardin interrupted himself.
"That comes apropos," said he. "I expect one proof more from that
quarter. Sergeant, send me the sentinel they are relieving."
Sergeant La Croix soon came back, as pompous as a hen with one
chick, predominating with a grand military air over a droll figure
that chattered with cold, and held its musket in hands clothed in
great mittens. Dard.
La Croix marched him up as if he had been a file; halted him like a
file, sang out to him as to a file, stentorian and unintelligible,
after the manner of sergeants.
"Private No. 4."
DARD. P-p-p-present!
LA CROIX. Advance to the word of command, and speak to the colonel.
The shivering figure became an upright statue directly, and carried
one of his mittens to his forehead. Then, suddenly recognizing the
rank of the gray-haired officer, he was morally shaken, but remained
physically erect, and stammered,--
"Colonel!--general!--colonel!"
"Don't be frightened, my lad. But look at the general and answer
me."
"Yes! general! colonel!" and he levelled his eye dead at the
general, as he would a bayonet at a foe, being so commanded.
"Now answer in as few syllables as you can."
"Yes! general--colonel."
"You have been on guard in the mine."
"Yes, general."
"What did you see there?"
"Nothing; it was night down there."
"What did you feel?"
"Cold! I--was--in--water--hugh!"
"Did you hear nothing, then?"
"Yes."
"What?"
"Bum! bum! bum!"
"Are you sure you did not hear particles of earth fall at the end of
the trench?"
"I think it did, and this (touching his musket) sounded of its own
accord."
"Good! you have answered well; go."
"Sergeant, I did not miss a word," cried Dard, exulting. He thought
he had passed a sort of military college examination. The sergeant
was awe-struck and disgusted at his familiarity, speaking to him
before the great: he pushed Private Dard hastily out of the
presence, and bundled him into the trenches.
"Are you countermined, then?" asked General Raimbaut.
"I think not, general; but the whole bastion is. And we found it
had been opened in the rear, and lately half a dozen broad roads cut
through the masonry."
"To let in re-enforcements?"
"Or to let the men run out in ease of an assault. I have seen from
the first an able hand behind that part of the defences. If we
assault the bastion, they will pick off as many of us as they can
with their muskets then they will run for it, and fire a train, and
blow it and us into the air."
"Colonel, this is serious. Are you prepared to lay this statement
before the commander-in-chief?"
"I am, and I do so through you, the general of my division. I even
beg you to say, as from me, that the assault will be mere suicide--
bloody and useless."
General Raimbaut went off to headquarters in some haste, a thorough
convert to Colonel Dujardin's opinion. Meantime the colonel went
slowly to his tent. At the mouth of it a corporal, who was also his
body-servant, met him, saluted, and asked respectfully if there were
any orders.
"A few minutes' repose, Francois, that is all. Do not let me be
disturbed for an hour."
"Attention!" cried Francois. "Colonel wants to sleep."
The tent was sentinelled, and Dujardin was alone with the past.
Then had the fools, that took (as fools will do) deep sorrow for
sullenness, seen the fiery soldier droop, and his wan face fall into
haggard lines, and his martial figure shrink, and heard his stout
heart sigh! He took a letter from his bosom: it was almost worn to
pieces. He had read it a thousand times, yet he read it again. A
part of the sweet sad words ran thus:--
"We must bow. We can never be happy together on earth; let us make
Heaven our friend. This is still left us,--not to blush for our
love; to do our duty, and to die."
"How tender, but how firm," thought Camille. "I might agitate,
taunt, grieve her I love, but I could not shake her. No! God and
the saints to my aid! they saved me from a crime I now shudder at.
And they have given me the good chaplain: he prays with me, he weeps
for me. His prayers still my beating heart. Yes, poor suffering
angel! I read your will in these tender, but bitter, words: you
prefer duty to love. And one day you will forget me; not yet
awhile, but it will be so. It wounds me when I think of it, but I
must bow. Your will is sacred. I must rise to your level, not drag
you to mine."
Then the soldier that had stood between two armies in a hail of
bullets, and fired a master-shot, took a little book of offices in
one hand,--the chaplain had given it him,--and fixed his eyes upon
the pious words, and clung like a child to the pious words, and
kissed his lost wife's letter, and tried hard to be like her he
loved: patient, very patient, till the end should come.
"Qui vive?" cried the sentinel outside to a strange officer.
"France," was his reply. He then asked the sentinel, "Where is the
colonel commanding the brigade?"
The sentinel lowered his voice, "Asleep, my officer," said he; for
the new-comer carried two epaulets.
"Wake him," said the officer in a tone of a man used to command on a
large scale.
Dujardin heard, and did not choose a stranger should think he was
asleep in broad day. He came hastily out of the tent, therefore,
with Josephine's letter in his hand, and, in the very act of
conveying it to his bosom, found himself face to face with--her
husband.
Did you ever see two duellists cross rapiers?
How unlike a theatrical duel! How smooth and quiet the bright
blades are! they glide into contact. They are polished and
slippery, yet they hold each other. So these two men's eyes met,
and fastened: neither spoke: each searched the other's face keenly.
Raynal's countenance, prepared as he was for this meeting, was like
a stern statue's. The other's face flushed, and his heart raged and
sickened at sight of the man, that, once his comrade and benefactor,
was now possessor of the woman he loved. But the figures of both
stood alike haughty, erect, and immovable, face to face.
Colonel Raynal saluted Colonel Dujardin ceremoniously. Colonel
Dujardin returned the salute in the same style.
"You thought I was in Egypt," said Raynal with grim significance
that caught Dujardin's attention, though he did not know quite how
to interpret it.
He answered mechanically, "Yes, I did."
"I am sent here by General Bonaparte to take a command," explained
Raynal.
"You are welcome. What command?"
"Yours."
"Mine?" cried Dujardin, his forehead flushing with mortification and
anger. "What, is it not enough that you take my"-- He stopped
then.
"Come, colonel," said the other calmly, "do not be unjust to an old
comrade. I take your demi-brigade; but you are promoted to
Raimbaut's brigade. The exchange is to be made to-morrow."
"Was it then to announce to me my promotion you came to my
quarters?" and Camille looked with a strange mixture of feelings at
his old comrade.
"That was the first thing, being duty, you know."
"What? have you anything else to say to me, then?"
"I have."
"Is it important? for my own duties will soon demand me."
"It is so important that, command or no command, I should have come
further than the Rhine to say it to you."
Let a man be as bold as a lion, a certain awe still waits upon doubt
and mystery; and some of this vague awe crept over Camille Dujardin
at Raynal's mysterious speech, and his grave, quiet, significant
manner.
Had he discovered something, and what? For Josephine's sake, more
than his own, Camille was on his guard directly.
Raynal looked at him in silence a moment.
"What?" said he with a slight sneer, "has it never occurred to you
that I MUST have a serious word to say to you? First, let me put
you a question: did they treat you well at my house? at the chateau
de Beaurepaire?"
"Yes," faltered Camille.
"You met, I trust, all the kindness and care due to a wounded
soldier and an officer of merit. It would annoy me greatly if I
thought you were not treated like a brother in my house."
Colonel Dujardin writhed inwardly at this view of matters. He could
not reply in few words. This made him hesitate.
His inquisitor waited, but, receiving no reply, went on, "Well,
colonel, have you shown the sense of gratitude we had a right to
look for in return? In a word, when you left Beaurepaire, had your
conscience nothing to reproach you with?"
Dujardin still hesitated. He scarcely knew what to think or what to
say. But he thought to himself, "Who has told him? does he know
all?"
"Colonel Dujardin, I am the husband of Josephine, the son of Madame
de Beaurepaire, and the brother of Rose. You know very well what
brings me here. Your answer?"
"Colonel Raynal, between men of honor, placed as you and I are, few
words should pass, for words are idle. You will never prove to me
that I have wronged you: I shall never convince you that I have not.
Let us therefore close this painful interview in the way it is sure
to close. I am at your service, at any hour and place you please."
"And pray is that all the answer you can think of?" asked Raynal
somewhat scornfully.
"Why, what other answer can I give you?"
"A more sensible, a more honest, and a less boyish one. Who doubts
that you can fight, you silly fellow? haven't I seen you? I want
you to show me a much higher sort of courage: the courage to repair
a wrong, not the paltry valor to defend one."
"I really do not understand you, sir. How can I undo what is done?"
"Why, of course you cannot. And therefore I stand here ready to
forgive all that is past; not without a struggle, which you don't
seem to appreciate."
Camille was now utterly mystified. Raynal continued, "But of course
it is upon condition that you consent to heal the wound you have
made. If you refuse--hum! but you will not refuse."
"But what is it you require of me?" inquired Camille impatiently.
"Only a little common honesty. This is the case: you have seduced a
young lady."
"Sir!" cried Camille angrily.
"What is the matter? The word is not so bad as the crime, I take
it. You have seduced her, and under circumstances-- But we won't
speak of them, because I am resolved to keep cool. Well, sir, as
you said just now, it's no use crying over spilled milk; you can't
unseduce the little fool; so you must marry her."
"M--m--marry her?" and Dujardin flushed all over, and his heart
beat, and he stared in Raynal's face.
"Why, what is the matter again? If she has played the fool, it was
with you, and no other man: it is not as if she was depraved. Come,
my lad, show a little generosity! Take the consequences of your own
act--or your share of it--don't throw it all on the poor feeble
woman. If she has loved you too much, you are the man of all others
that should forgive her. Come, what do you say?"
This was too much for Camille; that Raynal should come and demand of
him to marry his own wife, for so he understood the proposal. He
stared at Raynal in silence ever so long, and even when he spoke it
was only to mutter, "Are you out of your senses, or am I?"
At this it cost Raynal a considerable effort to restrain his wrath.
However, he showed himself worthy of the office he had undertaken.
He contained himself, and submitted to argue the matter. "Why,
colonel," said he, "is it such a misfortune to marry poor Rose? She
is young, she is lovely, she has many good qualities, and she would
have walked straight to the end of her days but for you."
Now here was another surprise for Dujardin, another mystification.
"Rose de Beaurepaire?" said he, putting his hand to his head, as if
to see whether his reason was still there.
"Yes, Rose de Beaurepaire--Rose Dujardin that ought to be, and that
is to be, if you please."
"One word, monsieur: is it of Rose we have been talking all this
time?"
Raynal nearly lost his temper at this question, and the cold,
contemptuous tone with which it was put; but he gulped down his ire.
"It is," said he.
"One question more. Did she tell you I had--I had"--
"Why, as to that, she was in no condition to deny she had fallen,
poor girl; the evidence was too strong. She did not reveal her
seducer's name; but I had not far to go for that."
"One question more," said Dujardin, with a face of anguish. "Is it
Jos--is it Madame Raynal's wish I should marry her sister?"
"Why, of course," said Raynal, in all sincerity, assuming that
naturally enough as a matter of course; "if you have any respect for
HER feelings, look on me as her envoy in this matter."
At this Camille turned sick with disgust; then rage and bitterness
swelled his heart. A furious impulse seized him to expose Josephine
on the spot. He overcame that, however, and merely said, "She
wishes me to marry her sister, does she? very well then, I decline."
Raynal was shocked. "Oh," said he, sorrowfully, "I cannot believe
this of you; such heartlessness as this is not written in your face;
it is contradicted by your past actions."
"I refuse," said Dujardin, hastily; and to tell the truth, not sorry
to inflict some pain on the honest soldier who had unintentionally
driven the iron so deep into his own soul.
"And I," said Raynal, losing his temper, "insist, in the name of my
dear Josephine"--
"Perdition!" snarled Dujardin, losing his self-command in turn.
"And of the whole family."
"And I tell you I will never marry her. Upon my honor, never."
"Your honor! you have none. The only question is would you rather
marry her--or die."
"Die, to be sure."
"Then die you shall."
"Ah!" said Dujardin; "did I not tell you we were wasting time?
"Let us waste no more then. WHEN and WHERE?"
"At the rear of the commander-in-chief's tent; when you like."
"This afternoon, then--at five."
"At five."
"Seconds?"
"What for?"
"You are right. They are only in the way of men who carry sabres;
and besides the less gossip the better. Good-by, till five," and
the two saluted one another with grim ceremony; and Raynal turned on
his heel.
Camille stood transfixed; a fierce, guilty joy throbbed in his
heart. His rival had quarrelled with him, had insulted him, had
challenged him. It was not his fault. The sun shone bright now
upon his cold despair. An hour ago life offered nothing. A few
hours more, and then joy beyond expression, or an end of all. Death
or Josephine! Then he remembered that this very Josephine wished to
marry him to Rose. Then he remembered Raynal had saved his life.
Cold chills crossed his breaking heart. Of all that could happen to
him death alone seemed a blessing without alloy.
He stood there so torn with conflicting passions, that he noted
neither the passing hours nor the flying bullets.
He was only awakened from his miserable trance by the even tread of
soldiers marching towards him; he looked up and there were several
officers coming along the edge of the trench, escorted by a
corporal's guard.
He took a step or two to meet them. After the usual salutes, one of
the three colonels delivered a large paper, with a large seal, to
Dujardin. He read it out to his captains and lieutenants, who had
assembled at sight of the cocked hats and full uniforms.
"Attack by the army to-morrow upon all the lines. Attack of the
bastion St. Andre this evening. The 22d, the 24th, and 12th
brigades will furnish the contingents; the operation will be
conducted by one of the colonels of the second division, to be
appointed by General Raimbaut."
"Aha!" sounded a voice like a trombone at the reader's elbow. "I am
just in the nick of time. When, colonel, when?"
"At five this evening, Colonel Raynal."
"There," said Raynal, in a half-whisper, to Dujardin; "could they
choose no hour but that?"
"Do not be uneasy," replied Dujardin, under his breath. He
explained aloud--"the assault will not take place, gentlemen; the
bastion is mined."
"What of that? half of them are mined. We will take our engineers
in with us," said Raynal.
"Such an assault will be a useless massacre," resumed Dujardin. "I
reconnoitred the bastion last night, and saw their preparations for
blowing us to the devil; and General Raimbaut, at my request, is
even now presenting my remarks to the commander-in-chief, and
enforcing them. There will be no assault. In a day or two we shall
blow the bastion, mines, and all into the air."
At this moment Raynal caught sight of a gray-haired officer coming
at some distance. "There IS General Raimbaut," said he. "I will go
and pay my respects to him." General Raimbaut shook his hand
warmly, and welcomed him to the army. They were old and warm
friends. "And you are come at the right time," said he. "It will
soon be as hot here as in Egypt."
Raynal laughed and said all the better.
General Raimbaut now joined the group of officers, and entered at
once in the business which had brought him. Addressing himself to
Colonel Dujardin, first he informs that officer he had presented his
observations to the commander-in-chief, who had given them the
attention they merited.
Colonel Dujardin bowed.
"But," continued General Raimbaut, "they are overruled by imperious
circumstances, some of which he did not reveal; they remain in his
own breast. However, on the eve of a general attack, which he
cannot postpone, that bastion must be disarmed, otherwise it would
be too fatal to all the storming parties. It is a painful
necessity." He added, "Tell Colonel Dujardin I count greatly on the
courage and discipline of his brigade, and on his own wise
measures."
Colonel Dujardin bowed. Then he whispered in the other's ear, "Both
will alike be wasted."
The other colonels waved their hats in triumph at the commander-in-
chief's decision, and Raynal's face showed he looked on Dujardin as
a sort of spoil-sport happily defeated.
"Well, then, gentlemen," said General Raimbaut, "we begin by
settling the contingents to be furnished by your several brigades.
Say, an equal number from each. The sum total shall be settled by
Colonel Dujardin, who has so long and ably baffled the bastion at
this post."
Colonel Dujardin bowed stiffly and not very graciously. In his
heart he despised these old fogies, compounds of timidity and
rashness.
"So, how many men in all, colonel?" asked General Raimbaut.
"The fewer the better," replied the other solemnly, "since"--and
then discipline tied his tongue.
"I understand you," said the old man. "Shall we say eight hundred
men?"
"I should prefer three hundred. They have made a back door to the
bastion, and the means of flight at hand will put flight into their
heads. They will pick off some of our men as we go at them. When
the rest jump in they will jump out, and"-- He paused.
"Why, he knows all about it before it comes," said one of the
colonels naively.
"I do. I see the whole operation and its result before me, as I see
this hand. Three hundred men will do."
"But, general," objected Raynal, "you are not beginning at the
beginning. The first thing in these cases is to choose the officer
to command the storming party."
"Yes, Raynal, unquestionably; but you must be aware that is a
painful and embarrassing part of my duty, especially after Colonel
Dujardin's remarks."
"Ah, bah!" cried Raynal. "He is prejudiced. He has been digging a
thundering long mine here, and now you are going to make his child
useless. We none of us like that. But when he gets the colors in
his hand, and the storming column at his back, his misgivings will
all go to the wind, and the enemy after them, unless he has been
committing some crime, and is very much changed from what I knew him
four years ago."
"Colonel Raynal," said one of the other colonels, politely but
firmly, "pray do not assume that Colonel Dujardin is to lead the
column; there are three other claimants. General Raimbaut is to
select from us four."
"Yes, gentlemen, and in a service of this kind I would feel grateful
to you all if you would relieve me of that painful duty."
"Gentlemen," said Dujardin, with an imperceptible sneer, "the
general means to say this: the operation is so glorious that he
could hardly without partiality assign the command to either of us
four claimants. Well, then, let us cast lots."
The proposal was received by acclamation.
"The general will mark a black cross on one lot, and he who draws it
wins the command."
The young colonels prepared their lots with almost boyish eagerness.
These fiery spirits were sick to death of lying and skulking in the
trenches. They flung their lots into the hat. After them, who
should approach the hat, lot in hand, but Raynal. Dujardin
instantly interfered, and held his arm as he was in the act of
dropping in his lot.
"What is the matter?" said Raynal, sharply.
"This is our affair, Colonel Raynal. You have no command in this
army."
"I beg your pardon, sir, I have yours."
"Not till to-morrow."
"Why, you would not take such a pettifogging advantage of an old
comrade as that."
"Tell him the day ends at twelve o'clock," said one of the colonels
interested by this strange strife.
"Ah!" cried Raynal, triumphantly; "but no," said he, altering his
tone, "let us leave that sort of argument to lawyers. I have come a
good many miles to fight with you, general; and now you must decide
to pay me this little compliment on my arrival, or put a bitter
affront on me--choose!"
While the old general hesitated, Camille replied, "Since you take
that tone there can be but one answer. You are too great a credit
to the French army for even an apparent slight to be put on you
here. The rule, I think, is, that one of the privates shall hold
the hat.--Hallo! Private Dard, come here--there--hold this hat."
"Yes, colonel.--Lord, here is my young mistress's husband!"
"Silence!"
And they began to draw, and, in the act of drawing, a change of
manner was first visible in these gay and ardent spirits.
"It is not I," said one, throwing away his lot.
"Nor I."
"It is I," said Raynal; then with sudden gravity, "I am the lucky
one."
And now that the honor and the danger no longer floated vaguely over
four heads, but had fixed on one, a sudden silence and solemnity
took the place of eager voices.
It was first broken by Private Dard saying, with foolish triumph,
"And I held the hat for you, colonel."
"Ah, Raynal!" said General Raimbaut, sorrowfully, "it was not worth
while to come from Egypt for this."
Raynal made no reply to this. He drew out his watch, and said
calmly, he had no time to lose; he must inspect the detachments he
was to command. "Besides," said he, "I have some domestic
arrangements to make. Hitherto on these occasions I was a bachelor,
now I am married." General Raimbaut could not help sighing. Raynal
read this aright, and turned to him, "A droll marriage, my old
friend; I'll tell you all about it if ever I have the time. It
began with a purchase, general, and ends with--with a bequest, which
I might as well write now, and so have nothing to think of but duty
afterwards. Where can I write?"
"Colonel Dujardin will lend you his tent, I am sure."
"Certainly."
"And, messieurs," said Raynal, "if I waste time you need not. You
can pick me my men from your brigades. Give me a strong spice of
old hands."
The colonels withdrew on this, and General Raimbaut walked sadly and
thoughtfully towards the battery. Dujardin and Raynal were left
alone.
"This postpones our affair, sir."
"Yes, Raynal."
"Have you writing materials in your tent?"
"Yes; on the table."
"You are quite sure the bastion is mined, comrade?"
This unexpected word and Raynal's gentle appeal touched Dujardin
deeply. It was in a broken voice he replied that he was
unfortunately too sure of it.
Raynal received this reply as a sentence of death, and without
another word walked slowly into Dujardin's tent.
Dujardin's generosity was up in arms; he followed Raynal, and said
eagerly, "Raynal, for Heaven's sake resign this command!"
"Allow me to write to my wife, colonel," was the cold reply.
Camille winced at this affront, and drew back a moment; but his
nobler part prevailed. He seized Raynal by the wrist. "You shall
not affront me, you cannot affront me. You go to certain death I
tell you, if you attack that bastion."
"Don't be a fool, colonel," said Raynal: "somebody must lead the
men."
"Yes; but not you. Who has so good a right to lead them as I, their
colonel?"
"And be killed in my place, eh?"
"I know the ground better than you," said Camille. "Besides, who
cares for me? I have no friends, no family. But you are married--
and so many will mourn if you"--
Raynal interrupted him sternly. "You forget, sir, that Rose de
Beaurepaire is my sister, when you tell me you have no tie to life."
He added, with wonderful dignity and sobriety, "Allow me to write to
my wife, sir; and, while I write, reflect that you can embitter an
old comrade's last moments by persisting in your refusal to restore
his sister the honor you have robbed her of."
And leaving the other staggered and confused by this sudden blow, he
retired into Dujardin's tent, and finding writing materials on a
little table that was there, sat down to pen a line to Josephine.
Camille knew to whom he was writing, and a jealous pang passed
through him.
What he wrote ran thus,--
"A bastion is to be attacked at five. I command. Colonel Dujardin
proposed we should draw lots, and I lost. The service is honorable,
but the result may, I fear, give you some pain. My dear wife, it is
our fate. I was not to have time to make you know, and perhaps love
me. God bless you."
In writing these simple words, Raynal's hard face worked, and his
mustache quivered, and once he had to clear his eye with his hand to
form the letters. He, the man of iron.
He who stood there, leaning on his scabbard and watching the writer,
saw this, and it stirred all that was great and good in that grand
though passionate heart of his.
"Poor Raynal!" thought he, "you were never like that before on going
into action. He is loath to die. Ay, and it is a coward's trick to
let him die. I shall have her, but shall I have her esteem? What
will the army say? What will my conscience say? Oh! I feel already
it will gnaw my heart to death; the ghost of that brave fellow--once
my dear friend, my rival now, by no fault of his--will rise between
her and me, and reproach me with my bloody inheritance. The heart
never deceives; I feel it now whispering in my ear: 'Skulking
captain, white-livered soldier, that stand behind a parapet while a
better man does your work! you assassinate the husband, but the
rival conquers you.' There, he puts his hand to his eyes. What
shall I do?"
"Colonel," said a low voice, and at the same time a hand was laid on
his shoulder.
It was General Raimbaut. The general looked pale and distressed.
"Come apart, colonel, for Heaven's sake! One word, while he is
writing. Ah! that was an unlucky idea of yours."
"Of mine, general?"
"'Twas you proposed to cast lots."
"Good God! so it was."
"I thought of course it was to be managed so that Raynal should not
be the one. Between ourselves, what honorable excuse can we make?"
"None, general."
"The whole division will be disgraced, and forgive me if I say a
portion of the discredit will fall on you."
"Help me to avert that shame then," cried Camille, eagerly.
"Ah! that I will: but how?"
"Take your pencil and write--'I authorize Colonel Dujardin to save
the honor of the colonels of the second division.'"
The general hesitated. He had never seen an order so worded. But
at last he took out his pencil and wrote the required order, after
his own fashion; i.e., in milk and water:--
On account of the singular ability and courage with which Colonel
Dujardin has conducted the operations against the Bastion St. Andre,
a discretionary power is given him at the moment of assault to carry
into effect such measures, as, without interfering with the
commander-in-chief's order, may sustain his own credit, and that of
the other colonels of the second division.
RAIMBAUT, General of Division.
Camille put the paper into his bosom.
"Now, general, you may leave all to me. I swear to you, Raynal
shall not die--shall not lead this assault."
"Your hand, colonel. You are an honor to the French armies. How
will you do it?"
"Leave it to me, general, it shall be done."
"I feel it will, my noble fellow: but, alas! I fear not without
risking some valuable life or other, most likely your own. Tell
me!"
"General, I decline."
"You refuse me, sir?"
"Yes; this order gives me a discretionary power. I will hand back
the order at your command; but modify it I will not. Come, sir, you
veteran generals have been unjust to me, and listened to me too
little all through this siege, but at last you have honored me.
This order is the greatest honor that was ever done me since I wore
a sword.".
"My poor colonel!"
"Let me wear it intact, and carry it to my grave."
"Say no more! One word--Is there anything on earth I can do for
you, my brave soldier?"
"Yes, general. Be so kind as to retire to your quarters; there are
reasons why you ought not to be near this post in half an hour."
"I go. Is there NOTHING else?"
"Well, general, ask the good priest Ambrose, to pray for all those
who shall die doing their duty to their country this afternoon."
They parted. General Raimbaut looked back more than once at the
firm, intrepid figure that stood there unflinching, on the edge of
the grave. But HE never took his eye off Raynal. The next minute
the sad letter was finished, and Raynal walked out of the tent, and
confronted the man he had challenged to single combat.
I have mentioned elsewhere that Colonel Dujardin had eyes strangely
compounded of battle and love, of the dove and the hawk. And these,
softened by a noble act he meditated, now rested on Raynal with a
strange expression of warmth and goodness. This strange gaze struck
Raynal, so far at least as this; he saw it was no hostile eye. He
was glad of that, for his own heart was calmed and softened by the
solemn prospect before him.
"We, too, have a little account to settle before I order out the
men," said he, calmly, "and I can't give you a long credit. I am
pressed for time."
"Our quarrel is at an end. When duty sounds the recall, a soldier's
heart leaves private feuds. See! I come to you without anger and
ill-will. Just now my voice was loud, my manner, I dare say,
offensive, and menacing even, and that always tempts a brave fellow
like you to resist. But now, you see, I am harmless as a woman. We
are alone. Humbug to the winds! I know that you are the only man
in this army fit to command a division. I know that when you say
the assault of that bastion is death, death it is. To the point
then; now that my manner is no longer irritating, now that I am
going to die, Camille Dujardin, my old comrade, have you the heart
to refuse me? am I to die unhappy?"
"No; no: I will do whatever you like."
"You will marry that poor girl, then?"
"Yes."
"Aha! did not I always say he was a good fellow? Clench the nail;
give me your honor."
"I give you my honor to marry her, if I live."
"You take a load off me; may Heaven reward you. In one hour those
poor women, whose support I had promised to be, will lose their
protector; but I give them another in you. We shall not leave that
family in tears, Rose in shame, and your child without a name."
Dujardin stared at the speaker. What new and devilish deception was
this?
"My child!" he faltered. "What child?"
"Ah," said Raynal, "what a fool I was! That is the first thing I
ought to have told you. Poor little fellow! I surprised him in his
cradle; his mother and Josephine were rocking him, and singing over
him. Oh! it was a scene, I can tell you. My poor wife had been ill
for some time, and was so weakened by it, that I frightened her into
a fit, stealing a march on her that way. She fainted away. Perhaps
it is as well she did; for I--I did not know what to think; it
looked ugly; but while she lay at our feet insensible, I forced the
truth from Rose; she owned the boy was hers."
While Raynal told him this strange story, Camille turned hot and
cold. First came a thrill of glowing joy; he had some clew to all
this: he was a father; that child was Josephine's and his; the next
moment he froze within. So Josephine had not only gulled her
husband, but him, too; she had refused him the sad consolation of
knowing he had a child. Cruelty, calculation, and baseness
unexampled! Here was a creature who could sacrifice anything and
anybody to her comfort, to the peace and sordid smoothness of her
domestic life. She stood between two men--a thing. Between two
truths--a double lie.
His heart, in one moment, turned against her like a stone. A
musket-bullet through the body does not turn life to death quicker
than Raynal turned his rival's love to despair and scorn: that love
which neither wounds, absence, prison, nor even her want of
constancy had prevailed to shake.
"Out of my bosom!" he cried--"out of it, in this world and the
next!"
He forgot, in his lofty rage, who stood beside him.
"What?--what?" cried Raynal.
"No matter," said Camille; "only I esteem YOU, Raynal. You are
truth; you are a man, and deserve a better lot."
"Don't say that," replied Raynal, quite misunderstanding him. "It
is a soldier's end: I never desired nor hoped a better: only, of
course, I feel sad. You are a happy fellow, to have a child and to
live to see it, and her you love."
"Oh, yes, I am very happy," replied the poor fellow, his lip
quivering.
"Watch over all those poor women, comrade, and sometimes speak to
them of me. It is foolish, but we like to be remembered."
"Yes! but do not let us speak of that. Raynal, you and I were
lieutenants together; do you remember saving my life in the Arno?"
"Yes."
"Then promise me, if you should live, to remember not our quarrel of
to-day, nor anything; but only those early days, AND THIS AFTERNOON."
"I do."
"Your hand, comrade."
"There, comrade, there."
They wrung one another's hands, and turned away and hid their faces
from each other, for their eyes were moist.
"This won't do, comrade, I must go. I shall attack from your
position. So I shall go down the line, and bring the men up.
Meantime, pick me your detachment. Give me a good spice of
veterans. I shall get one word with you before we go out. God
bless you!"
"God bless you, Raynal!"
The moment Raynal was gone, Camille beckoned a lieutenant to him,
and ordered half the brigade to form in a strong column on both
sides Death's Alley.
His eye fell upon private Dard, as luck would have it. "Come here,"
said he. Dard came and saluted.
"Have you anybody at Beaurepaire that would be sorry if you were
killed?"
"Yes, colonel! Jacintha, that used to make your broth, colonel."
"Take this line to Colonel Raynal. You will find him with the 12th
brigade."
He wrote a few lines in pencil, folded them, and Dard went off with
them, little dreaming that the colonel of his brigade was taking the
trouble to save his life, because he came from Beaurepaire. Colonel
Dujardin then went into his tent, and closed the aperture, and took
the good book the priest had given him, and prayed humbly, and
forgave all the world.
Then he sat down, his head in his hands, and thought of his child,
and how hard it was he must die and never see him. Then he lighted
a candle, and sealed up his orders of valor, and wrote a line,
begging that they might be sent to his sister. He also sealed up
his purse, and left a memorandum that the contents should be given
to disabled soldiers of his brigade upon their being invalided.
Then he took out Josephine's letter. "Poor coward," he said, "let
me not be unkind. See, I burn your letter, lest it should be found,
and disturb the peace you prize so highly. I, too, shall soon be at
peace." He lighted the letter, and dropped it on the ground: it
burned slowly away. He eyed it, despairingly. "Ay," said he, "you
perish, last record of an unhappy love: and even so pass away my
life; my hopes of glory, and my dreams of love; it all ends to-day:
at nine and twenty."
He put his white handkerchief to his eyes. Josephine had given it
him. He cried a little.
When he had done crying, he put his white handkerchief in his bosom,
and the whole man was transformed beyond language to express.
Powder does not change more when it catches fire. He rose that
moment and went like a flash of lightning out of the tent. The
next, he came down between the lines of the strong column that stood
awaiting orders in Death's Alley.
"Attention!" cried the sergeants; "the colonel!"
There was a dead silence, for the bare sight of that erect and
inspired figure made the men's bosoms thrill with the certainty of
great deeds to come: the light of battle was in his eye. No longer
the moody colonel, but a thunderbolt of war, red-hot, and waiting to
be launched.
"Officers, sergeants, soldiers, a word with you!"
La Croix. Attention!
"Do you know what passed here five minutes ago?"
"The attack of the bastion was settled!" cried a captain.
"It was; and who was to lead the assault? do you know that?"
"No."
"A colonel FROM EGYPT."
At that there was a groan from the men.
"With detachments from the other brigades."
"AH!" an angry roar.
Colonel Dujardin walked quickly down between the two lines, looking
with his fiery eye into the men's eyes on his right. Then he came
back on the other side, and, as he went, he lighted those men's eyes
with his own. It was a torch passing along a line of ready gas-
lights.
"The work to us!" he cried in a voice like a clarion (it fired the
hearts as his eye had fired the eyes)--"The triumph to strangers!
Our fatigues and our losses have not gained the brigade the honor of
going out at those fellows that have killed so many of our
comrades."
A fierce groan broke from the men.
"What! shall the colors of another brigade and not ours fly from
that bastion this afternoon?"
"No! no!" in a roar like thunder.
"Ah! you are of my mind. Attention! the attack is fixed for five
o'clock. Suppose you and I were to carry the bastion ten minutes
before the colonel from Egypt can bring his men upon the ground."
At this there was a fierce burst of joy and laughter; the strange
laughter of veterans and born invincibles. Then a yell of exulting
assent, accompanied by the thunder of impatient drums, and the
rattle of fixing bayonets.
The colonel told off a party to the battery.
"Level the guns at the top tier. Fire at my signal, and keep firing
over our heads, till you see our colors on the place."
He then darted to the head of the column, which instantly formed
behind him in the centre of Death's Alley.
"The colors! No hand but mine shall hold them to-day."
They were instantly brought him: his left hand shook them free in
the afternoon sun.
A deep murmur of joy rolled out from the old hands at the now
unwonted sight. Out flashed the colonel's sword like steel
lightning. He pointed to the battery.
Bang! bang! bang! bang! went his cannon, and the smoke rolled over
the trenches. At the same moment up went the colors waving, and the
colonel's clarion voice pealed high above all:--
"Twenty-fourth brigade--FORWARD!"
They went so swiftly out of the trenches that they were not seen
through their own smoke until they had run some sixty yards. As
soon as they were seen, coming on like devils through their own
smoke, two thousand muskets were levelled at them from the Prussian
line. It was not a rattle of small arms--it was a crash, and the
men fell fast: but in a moment they were seen to spread out like a
fan, and to offer less mark, and when the fan closed again, it half
encircled the bastion. It was a French attack: part swarmed at it
in front like bees, part swept round the glacis and flanked it.
They were seen to fall in numbers, shot down from the embrasures.
But the living took the place of the dead: and the fight ranged
evenly there. Where are the colors? Towards the rear there. The
colonel and a hundred men are fighting hand to hand with the
Prussians, who have charged out at the back doors of the bastion.
Success there, and the bastion must fall--both sides know this.
The colors disappeared. There was a groan from the French lines.
The colors reappeared, and close under the bastion.
And now in front the attack was so hot, that often the Prussian
gunners were seen to jump down, driven from their posts; and the
next moment a fierce hurrah from the rear told that the French had
won some great advantage there. The fire slackening told a similar
tale and presently down came the Prussian flag-staff. That might be
an accident. A few moments of thirsting expectation, and up went
the colors of the 24th brigade upon the Bastion St. Andre.
The French army raised a shout that rent the sky, and their cannon
began to play on the Prussian lines and between the bastion and the
nearest fort, to prevent a recapture.
Sudden there shot from the bastion a cubic acre of fire: it carried
up a heavy mountain of red and black smoke that looked solid as
marble. There was a heavy, sullen, tremendous explosion that
snuffed out the sound of the cannon, and paralyzed the French and
Prussian gunners' hands, and checked the very beating of their
hearts. Thirty thousand pounds of gunpowder were in that awful
explosion. War itself held its breath, and both armies, like
peaceable spectators, gazed wonder-struck, terror-struck. Great
hell seemed to burst through the earth's crust, and to be rushing at
heaven. Huge stones, cannons, corpses, and limbs of soldiers, were
seen driven or falling through the smoke. Some of these last came
quite clear of the ruins, ay, into the French and Prussian lines,
that even the veterans put their hands to their eyes. Raynal felt
something patter on him from the sky--it was blood--a comrade's
perhaps.
The smoke cleared. Where, a moment before, the great bastion stood
and fought, was a monstrous pile of blackened, bloody stones and
timbers, with dismounted cannon sticking up here and there.
And, rent and crushed to atoms beneath the smoking mass, lay the
relics of the gallant brigade, and their victorious colors.
CHAPTER XXII.
A few wounded soldiers of the brigade lay still till dusk. Then
they crept back to the trenches. These had all been struck down or
disabled short of the bastion. Of those that had taken the place no
one came home.
Raynal, after the first stupefaction, pressed hard and even angrily
for an immediate assault on the whole Prussian line. Not they. It
was on paper that the assault should be at daybreak to-morrow. Such
leaders as they were cannot IMPROVISE.
Rage and grief in his heart, Raynal waited chafing in the trenches
till five minutes past midnight. He then became commander of the
brigade, gave his orders, and took thirty men out to creep up to the
wreck of the bastion, and find the late colonel's body.
Going for so pious a purpose, he was rewarded by an important
discovery. The whole Prussian lines had been abandoned since
sunset, and, mounting cautiously on the ramparts, Raynal saw the
town too was evacuated, and lights and other indications on a rising
ground behind it convinced him that the Prussians were in full
retreat, probably to effect that junction with other forces which
the assault he had recommended would have rendered impossible.
They now lighted lanterns, and searched all over and round the
bastion for the poor colonel, in the rear of the bastion they found
many French soldiers, most of whom had died by the bayonet. The
Prussian dead had all been carried off.
Here they found the talkative Sergeant La Croix. The poor fellow
was silent enough now. A terrible sabre-cut on the skull. The
colonel was not there. Raynal groaned, and led the way on to the
bastion. The ruins still smoked. Seven or eight bodies were
discovered by an arm or a foot protruding through the masses of
masonry. Of these some were Prussians; a proof that some devoted
hand had fired the train, and destroyed both friend and foe.
They found the tube of Long Tom sticking up, just as he had shown
over the battlements that glorious day, with this exception, that a
great piece was knocked off his lip, and the slice ended in a long,
broad crack.
The soldiers looked at this. "That is our bullet's work," said
they. Then one old veteran touched his cap, and told Raynal
gravely, he knew where their beloved colonel was. "Dig here, to the
bottom," said he. "HE LIES BENEATH HIS WORK."
Improbable and superstitious as this was, the hearts of the soldiers
assented to it.
Presently there was a joyful cry outside the bastion. A rush was
made thither. But it proved to be only Dard, who had discovered
that Sergeant La Croix's heart still beat. They took him up
carefully, and carried him gently into camp. To Dard's delight the
surgeon pronounced him curable. For all that, he was three days
insensible, and after that unfit for duty. So they sent him home
invalided, with a hundred francs out of the poor colonel's purse.
Raynal reported the evacuation of the place, and that Colonel
Dujardin was buried under the bastion, and soon after rode out of
the camp.
The words Camille had scratched with a pencil, and sent him from the
edge of the grave, were few but striking.
"A dead man takes you once more by the hand. My last thought, thank
God, is France. For her sake and mine, Raynal. GO FOR GENERAL
BONAPARTE. Tell him, from a dying soldier, the Rhine is a river to
these generals, but to him a field of glory. He will lay out our
lives, not waste them."
There was nothing to hinder Raynal from carrying out this sacred
request: for the 24th brigade had ceased to exist: already thinned
by hard service, it was reduced to a file or two by the fatal
bastion. It was incorporated with the 12th; and Raynal rode heavy
at heart to Paris, with a black scarf across his breast.
CHAPTER XXIII.
You see now into what a fatal entanglement two high-minded young
ladies were led, step by step, through yielding to the natural
foible of their sex--the desire to hide everything painful from
those they love, even at the expense of truth.
A nice mess they made of it with their amiable dishonesty. And pray
take notice that after the first White Lie or two, circumstances
overpowered them, and drove them on against their will. It was no
small part of all their misery that they longed to get back to truth
and could not.
We shall see presently how far they succeeded in that pious object,
for the sake of which they first entered on concealments. But first
a word is due about one of the victims of their amiable, self-
sacrificing lubricity. Edouard Riviere fell in one night, from
happiness and confidence, such as till that night be had never
enjoyed, to deep and hopeless misery.
He lost that which, to every heart capable of really loving, is the
greatest earthly blessing, the woman he adored. But worse than
that, he lost those prime treasures of the masculine soul, belief in
human goodness, and in female purity. To him no more could there be
in nature a candid eye, a virtuous ready-mantling cheek: for frailty
and treachery had put on these signs of virtue and nobility.
Henceforth, let him live a hundred years, whom could he trust or
believe in?
Here was a creature whose virtues seemed to make frailty impossible:
treachery, doubly impossible: a creature whose very faults--for
faults she had--had seemed as opposite to treachery as her very
virtues were. Yet she was all frailty and falsehood.
He passed in that one night of anguish from youth to age. He went
about his business like a leaden thing. His food turned tasteless.
His life seemed ended. Nothing appeared what it had been. The very
landscape seemed cut in stone, and he a stone in the middle of it,
and his heart a stone in him. At times, across that heavy heart
came gushes of furious rage and bitter mortification; his heart was
broken, and his faith was gone, for his vanity had been stabbed as
fiercely as his love. "Georges Dandin!" he would cry, "curse her!
curse her!" But love and misery overpowered these heats, and froze
him to stone again.
The poor boy pined and pined. His clothes hung loose about him; his
face was so drawn with suffering, you would not have known him. He
hated company. The things he was expected to talk about!--he with
his crushed heart. He could not. He would not. He shunned all the
world; he went alone like a wounded deer. The good doctor, on his
return from Paris, called on him to see if he was ill: since he had
not come for days to the chateau. He saw the doctor coming and bade
the servant say he was not in the village.
He drew down the blind, that he might never see the chateau again.
He drew it up again: he could not exist without seeing it. "She
will be miserable, too," he cried, gnashing his teeth. "She will
see whether she has chosen well." At other times, all his courage,
and his hatred, and his wounded vanity, were drowned in his love and
its despair, and then he bowed his head, and sobbed and cried as if
his heart would burst. One morning he was so sobbing with his head
on the table, when his landlady tapped at his door. He started up
and turned his head away from the door.
"A young woman from Beaurepaire, monsieur."
"From Beaurepaire?" his heart gave a furious leap. "Show her in."
He wiped his eyes and seated himself at a table, and, all in a
flutter, pretended to be the state's.
It was not Jacintha, as he expected, but the other servant. She
made a low reverence, cast a look of admiration on him, and gave him
a letter. His eye darted on it: his hand trembled as he took it.
He turned away again to open it. He forced himself to say, in a
tolerably calm voice, "I will send an answer."
The letter was apparently from the baroness de Beaurepaire; a mere
line inviting him to pay her a visit. It was written in a tremulous
hand. Edouard examined the writing, and saw directly it was written
by Rose.
Being now, naturally enough, full of suspicion, he set this down as
an attempt to disguise her hand. "So," said he, to himself, "this
is the game. The old woman is to be drawn into it, too. She is to
help to make Georges Dandin of me. I will go. I will baffle them
all. I will expose this nest of depravity, all ceremony on the
surface, and voluptuousness and treachery below. O God! who could
believe that creature never loved me! They shall none of them see
my weakness. Their benefactor shall be still their superior. They
shall see me cold as ice, and bitter as gall."
But to follow him farther just now, would be to run too far in
advance of the main story. I must, therefore, return to
Beaurepaire, and show, amongst other things, how this very letter
came to be written.
When Josephine and Rose awoke from that startled slumber that
followed the exhaustion of that troubled night, Rose was the more
wretched of the two. She had not only dishonored herself, but
stabbed the man she loved.
Josephine, on the other hand, was exhausted, but calm. The fearful
escape she had had softened down by contrast her more distant
terrors.
She began to shut her eyes again, and let herself drift. Above all,
the doctor's promise comforted her: that she should go to Paris with
him, and have her boy.
This deceitful calm of the heart lasted three days.
Carefully encouraged by Rose, it was destroyed by Jacintha.
Jacintha, conscious that she had betrayed her trust, was almost
heart-broken. She was ashamed to appear before her young mistress,
and, coward-like, wanted to avoid knowing even how much harm she had
done.
She pretended toothache, bound up her face, and never stirred from
the kitchen. But she was not to escape: the other servant came down
with a message: "Madame Raynal wanted to see her directly."
She came quaking, and found Josephine all alone.
Josephine rose to meet her, and casting a furtive glance round the
room first, threw her arms round Jacintha's neck, and embraced her
with many tears.
"Was ever fidelity like yours? how COULD you do it, Jacintha? and
how can I ever repay it? But, no; it is too base of me to accept
such a sacrifice from any woman."
Jacintha was so confounded she did not know what to say. But it was
a mystification that could not endure long between two women, who
were both deceived by a third. Between them they soon discovered
that it must have been Rose who had sacrificed herself.
"And Edouard has never been here since," said Josephine.
"And never will, madame."
"Yes, he shall! there must be some limit even to my feebleness, and
my sister's devotion. You shall take a line to him from me. I will
write it this moment."
The letter was written. But it was never sent. Rose found
Josephine and Jacintha together; saw a letter was being written,
asked to see it; on Josephine's hesitating, snatched it out of her
hand, read it, tore it to pieces, and told Jacintha to leave the
room. She hated the sight of poor Jacintha, who had slept at the
very moment when all depended on her watchfulness.
"So you were going to send to HIM, unknown to me."
"Forgive me, Rose." Rose burst out crying.
"O Josephine! is it come to this? Would you deceive ME?"
"You have deceived ME! Yes! it has come to that. I know all.
Twill not consent to destroy ALL I love."
She then begged hard for leave to send the letter.
Rose gave an impetuous refusal. "What could you say to him? foolish
thing, don't you know him, and his vanity? When you had exposed
yourself to him, and showed him I had insulted him for you, do you
think he would forgive me? No! this is to make light of my love--to
make me waste the sacrifice I have made. I feel that sacrifice as
much as you do, more perhaps, and I would rather die in a convent
than waste that night of shame and agony. Come, promise me, no more
attempts of that kind, or we are sisters no more, friends no more,
one heart and one blood no more."
The weaker nature, weakened still more by ill-health and grief, was
terrified into submission, or rather temporized. "Kiss me then,"
said Josephine, "and love me to the end. Ah, if I was only in my
grave!"
Rose kissed her with many sighs, but Josephine smiled. Rose eyed
her with suspicion. That deep smile; what did it mean? She had
formed some resolution. "She is going to deceive me somehow,"
thought Rose.
From that day she watched Josephine like a spy. Confidence was gone
between them. Suspicion took its place.
Rose was right in her misgivings. The moment Josephine saw that
Edouard's happiness and Rose's were to be sacrificed for her whom
nothing could make happy, the poor thing said to herself, "I CAN
DIE."
And that was the happy thought that made her smile.
The doctor gave her laudanum: he found she could not sleep: and he
thought it all-important that she should sleep.
Josephine, instead of taking these small doses, saved them all up,
secreted them in a phial, and so, from the sleep of a dozen nights,
collected the sleep of death: and now she was tranquil. This young
creature that could not bear to give pain to any one else, prepared
her own death with a calm resolution the heroes of our sex have not
often equalled. It was so little a thing to her to strike
Josephine. Death would save her honor, would spare her the
frightful alternative of deceiving her husband, or of telling him
she was another's. "Poor Raynal," said she to herself, "it is so
cruel to tie him to a woman who can never be to him what he
deserves. Rose would then prove her innocence to Edouard. A few
tears for a weak, loving soul, and they would all be happy and
forget her."
One day the baroness, finding herself alone with Rose and Dr.
Aubertin, asked the latter what he thought of Josephine's state.
"Oh, she was better: had slept last night without her usual
narcotic."
The baroness laid down her knitting and said, with much meaning,
"And I tell you, you will never cure her body till you can cure her
mind. My poor child has some secret sorrow."
"Sorrow!" said Aubertin, stoutly concealing the uneasiness these
words created, "what sorrow?"
"Oh, she has some deep sorrow. And so have you, Rose."
"Me, mamma! what DO you mean?"
The baroness's pale cheek flushed a little. "I mean," said she,
"that my patience is worn out at last; I cannot live surrounded by
secrets. Raynal's gloomy looks when he left us, after staying but
one hour; Josephine ill from that day, and bursting into tears at
every word; yourself pale and changed, hiding an unaccountable
sadness under forced smiles-- Now, don't interrupt me. Edouard,
who was almost like a son, gone off, without a word, and never comes
near us now."
"Really you are ingenious in tormenting yourself. Josephine is ill!
Well, is it so very strange? Have you never been ill? Rose is
pale! you ARE pale, my dear; but she has nursed her sister for a
month; is it a wonder she has lost color? Edouard is gone a
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