Complete weird tales of.., p.98
Complete Weird Tales of Robert W Chambers, page 98
“What troops are these,” asked Harewood, striving to recognise his unseen friends.
“The 34th de marche,” said somebody.
“The second and third brigades are passing the forts,” added another.
Again a lantern gleamed out and Harewood saw General Bellemare passing close in front, escorted by dragoons, cloaked to the ears. The keen-eyed young General smiled at Harewood, who lifted his cap in silence. “Are you going with us to Le Bourget?” asked the General, drawing bridle and holding out a gloved hand.
“Oui, mon General — with your permission,” replied Harewood; “I have General Trochu’s consent,” he added.
“Then what do you want with mine?” queried General Bellemare, with a good-humoured gesture; “you journalists are a nuisance, Monsieur Harewood — a nuisance!”
“I am to carry through despatches, General; may I be of service to you?”
General Bellemare shook his head and wheeled his horse. “Wait until we take Le Bourget,” he said, and trotted forward, followed by his plunging snow-covered escort.
The snowflakes that were now falling seemed fine as sifted flour; they powdered the route with a silvery dust that lay thick in every rut and ditch, they blew across the fields in sheets and drifting pillars, they whirled up before gusts of wind, flurry after flurry, dim phantom shapes that filled the darkness with movements half seen, half divined.
Harewood found himself riding beside a mounted captain of the 34th Infantry, de marche; on either side plodded the troops, rifles en bandoulière, overcoats covering faces that turned shrunken and pallid under the sudden rays of some swiftly lifted lantern.
The long echo of crunching footsteps, the trample and sigh of horses, the sense of stifling obscurity, depressed Harewood. He watched a lantern’s sickly rays lighting up the knapsacks and muddy trousers of a line of men in front; he spoke to the mounted captain riding in silence, his heavy head buried in his wet cloak collar, but the officer did not seem to hear him.
The snow turned to finest grains of ice, the frozen dust pattered and rattled on wet caps, on soaked overcoats and stiffened epaulettes. Again a sudden shaft of cold passed through the air, bringing with it a mist that hung to the fringe of the marching column, and grew faintly luminous as the snow ceased to fall. The fog became denser, a sour odour of sweat and wet smoke-saturated clothing filled the air. The soaking saddles, the drenched manes of the horses, the rifle-barrels, gave out a stuffy, penetrating smell that choked and stifled. There was scarcely a breath of air stirring; steam rose from the men’s breath; the horses’ flanks were smoking.
Harewood rode on in silence, listening to the creak of saddles, the slop! slop! of steel-shod hoofs, the crushing crackle of thousands of tired feet.
Once the infantry captain, riding beside him in the dark, spoke: “Monsieur, if you are going through the lines, I have a wife and child at Bonneuil—” “Give me the letter,” said Harewood soberly. The captain fumbled in the breast of his soaked tunic, drew out a wet letter, and passed it to Harewood.
“Thank you, comrade,” he said. As he spoke a star broke out overhead.
Half an hour later the velvet depths of midnight were spangled with stars — great bluish wintry stars sparkling like frost crystals in the moonlight. The long black column detached itself from the shadowy plain, massed squads of horsemen broke the level of the infantry, and, on a little hill in front, the strange silhouettes of cannon passing, moved in shadow-shapes across the sky. It was four o’clock in the morning; Harewood opened his watch and read the dial by the splendid starlight. “We are near Le Bourget?” he asked the infantry captain.
“We are there,” said the captain, ominously.
Harewood, standing straight up in his stirrups, saw a little river just ahead, spanned by a column of wading infantry. Horses, too, were fording the shallow stream a few rods below, and, above, the cannoniers of the two field pieces moved cautiously along the pebbled shore searching for a safe crossing. On the opposite bank of the stream, in irregular outline, shadowy houses clustered, a single dim spire rose in their midst; not a ray of light came from the dark village, not a sound.
Riding ahead, Harewood felt the pebbled shore beneath his horse’s feet; beside him, the infantry were passing the ford, while the black water gurgled and swirled to their knees. Suddenly all along the opposite bank of the stream a line of tiny lights danced and sparkled like fireflies; there came a rippling, tearing crash, the keen, whimpering whisper of bullets — showers of bullets, that hurtled and smacked on stone and rock and tore through the bushes on either side. Out in the water a horse reared, sank on its haunches, then began to splash furiously; a soldier in midstream started to run in a circle, shrieking; another dropped forward and came floating past, head under water, little tin cup shining in the starlight.
A shrill cheer broke out from the infantry; the shallow waters of the ford boiled under their rush; mounted officers thrashed through the water shouting, “Forward! Forward!” and the avant trains, borne onward by lashed horses, swung the field pieces down to the shore and through the icy water to the bank opposite, where the will-o’-the-wisp lights flickered and danced and the bullets whistled like hail through sheafed wheat.
The first rolling crash from the French infantry rifles seemed to extinguish the flicker of the rifles from the opposite shore. Already the battery horses were galloping back with the limbers; the two cannon stood apart, half hidden by shrubbery. Then through the night came the rush of a column, a fierce cheer:
“The bayonet! the bayonet!” and Harewood, setting spurs to his horse, rode out of the muddy field to the highway, where the French onset passed like a whirlwind straight into the black throat of the village street.
It was over in a moment; he caught a glimpse of figures outlined through sheets of level flame; he saw an Uhlan, clinging to the neck of a plunging horse, rear up in a blaze of light like a soul in torment. Drums began to beat from the extreme right; on the left the troops were cheering fiercely. A battalion of sailors came up on a double-quick, the flames from a thatched roof on fire gleaming on rifle-barrel and cutlass, on the red knots of their sailor caps, on broadaxes swinging and glittering as the blows fell on oaken doors from which spurted smoke and needle-like yellow flames. There were strange sounds, too, in the houses — shrieks, blows, the dull explosion of rifles behind barred shutters, the clangor of a bell that began swinging and ringing in some unseen steeple. A rush of strange cavalry passed like the wind — they were Uhlans of the Prussian Guard, stampeding frantically toward the open country. They drove past, a cyclone of slanting lances, of tossing pennons and frenzied horses, enveloped in flame and smoke from the French rifles, while the savage cheering redoubled and swift jetted flashes from revolver and chassepot pricked the fringing gloom with a thousand crimson rays.
The two cannon of twelve shook the earth with their discharges in the east; from the west two other cannon, pieces of four, broke in with shotted blasts, accompanied by the sinister drumming of a mitrailleuse from the Blanc-Mesnil highway. The little river Mollette reflected the glare of a burning thatch; a drowned horse, with bloated belly and hideous stiff legs, swayed with the current, stranded on a shoal.
Harewood, covered with mud, stood on the steps of the village church; his own dead horse lay in the gutter under a shattered lamp-post, its patient, sad eyes glazing in the sickly light of the torches. General Bellemare, cloaked and muddy, stood near Harewood on the church steps, surrounded by dismounted officers. Harewood heard him say:
“The 14th Mobile Battalion and the Franc-tireurs will occupy the village; a detachment of three infantry battalions and two guns will form the grand’garde, to be relieved every twenty-four hours. Two battalions of the 135th will hold Cœurneuve; Admiral Saisset must cover the right flank with the sailors and fortify Drancy. Where’s Colonel Martin? O, well, Colonel, are you under the guns of Aubervilliers? No? Is it too far? Where are those Belleville carbiniers?”
“The Belleville carbiniers ran,” said an officer, with a short, dry laugh.
There was a silence, then another laugh.
“If I had my way, I’d shoot this Flourens,” said General Bellemare, quietly. His glance fell on Harewood and he shrugged his shoulders.
“Monsieur Harewood, I fear you will have to wait before trying to pass the lines. It appears we are to receive no aid from Paris; we must rely on Saint Denis, according to General Trochu.”
“But,” said Harewood, astounded, “Le Bourget is the key to Saint Denis; isn’t it worth holding? It has been won gallantly.”
“Of course it’s worth holding,” broke out General Hanrion, violently. General Bellemare made a gesture of assent:
“It is the key to the Double-Crown battery,” he said; “surely they must realise this in Paris. If I dared to leave Le Bourget — if I dared go myself and persuade the Governor—”
He looked hard at Hanrion, who nodded back at him.
“Saint Denis can’t aid us now,” cried Colonel Lavoignet; “let them send us a dozen batteries from Paris. Do they expect us to annihilate the whole of the Prussian Guard-Royal? Let the Uhlans go back and tell their King that a handful of Mobiles and fantassins sent them packing.”
Everybody moved uneasily. The apathy of General Trochu disheartened them. Here was a victory — the first victory under the walls of Paris. And now, when it was won, the Governor thought it scarcely worth the powder. Yet Le Bourget was the point of the wedge with which the German lines might be split; it pierced the very centre of the north zone of investment, threatened the German eastern communications, and finally assured Saint Denis and opened a wider area of operations for the army of Paris.
General Bellemare drew out the telegraphic despatch from Paris and read it again with knitted brows:
“Le Bourget has no important bearing upon our line of defense, and is not necessary to our general plan of operation.
“Trochu,
“Governor of Paris.”
What was the sombre Trochu dreaming of? What dark chimera did he follow, dreaming awake as he paced the dim chambers of the war-office?
“Messieurs,” said General Bellemare, sharply, “call my escort. I leave for Paris to-morrow.” General Hanrion stepped forward, face lighted with hope.
“By God!” he cried, “the Governor shall listen now or — —”
“Or it will be too late,” said General Bellemare, quietly. He stood a moment watching the tattered Mobile battalions pressing wearily toward the Mollette. The boyish soldiers turned their sad faces toward him; some smiled, some raised ragged arms in salute. A little bugler sounded a fanfare, but he was too exhausted to finish and hung his head in shame, while a sergeant scolded him to conceal the tears in his own eyes. On every face the fine lines of hunger drew lips tight and sharpened nose and cheekbone; in every eye the last flicker of hope had died; yet they marched, turning their patient, pallid faces to their General, who watched them in silence — these men who had conquered and who were now left to die — because General Trochu had “other plans.” At last, when they had passed, General Bellemare turned and walked slowly into the church, up to the altar, holding his sword clasped, cross on his medalled breast.
When he knelt Harewood stepped to the church door and closed it.
There was a sudden stillness in Le Bourget.
CHAPTER XX.
LE BOURGET.
AT DAYLIGHT IT began to snow again; an hour later torrents of rain swept the deserted streets of the village. The roar of the wind awoke Harewood. A sickly twilight stole through the church, where, rolled in his blanket, he had slept under the altar among a dozen drenched officers.
A cavalry bugler, swathed to the chin in his dripping cloak, stood inside the chancel, strapping his shako chain with numb fingers. He had hung his bugle over the arm of the crucifix, and now, as his pinched, sick face turned to the sunken face on the cross, he paused, hand outstretched. After a second’s silence he crossed himself, unhooked the bugle, and, setting it stiffly to his shrunken lips, blew the reveille. A hundred shadowy forms stumbled up in the gloom, the vibrating shock of steel filled the church. An artillery officer, sabre clashing on the stone floor, left the church on a run, pulling on his astrachan jacket as he passed out into the storm.
Harewood stood up, aching in every bone. He shook his blanket, opened his despatch pouch, counted the papers, snapped back the lock and yawned.
An officer beside him began to shiver and shake, a thin, lantern-jawed fellow, yellow with jaundice and covered from cap to boot with half dry mud.
Somebody said: “Go to the hospital.” The officer turned a ravaged face to Harewood and smiled.
Outside the church the infantry bugles were sounding; their thin, strident call set Harewood’s teeth on edge. He rolled and strapped his blanket, slung the despatch pouch from shoulder to hip and stumbled out to the church door, where a dozen horses stood, heads hanging dejectedly in the pouring rain. A mounted hussar, with a lance in his stirrup boot, looked sullenly at Harewood, who called to him: “Whose escort is that?”
“General Bellemare’s,” replied the trooper.
“Is he going to Paris?”
“Yes, monsieur, in half an hour.”
Harewood glanced down the dismal street. The low stone houses, shabby and deserted, loomed dark and misty through the storm; everywhere closed shutters, closed doors, dismantled street lamps, stark trees, rusty railings on balcony and porch; everywhere the downpour, fiercer when the wind swept the rain-spears, rank on rank, against the house-fronts. And now, down the street, through the roaring wind and slanting sheets of rain, marched a regiment — a spectral regiment, gaunt drummers ahead, lining the flooded pavement from gutter to gutter, sloppy drums vibrating like the death-rattle of an army. It was the 128th of the line — the relief for the grand guard. After it, one by one, rumbled four cannon and a mitrailleuse, escorted by Mobiles — the 12th battalion of the Seine.
The hussar backed his horses onto the sidewalk while the infantry were passing. Harewood leaned from the church steps and touched him on the shoulder.
“Will you deliver a letter in Paris for me?” he asked.
The hussar nodded sulkily and said: “Are you going to stay here with the troops?”
“Yes,” replied Harewood, sitting down under the porch and beginning to write on a pad with a stump of red pencil.
“Then you’ll not need an answer to your letter,” observed the hussar.
Harewood raised his eyes.
“Because,” continued the trooper, with an oath, “that damned Trochu won’t send you any cannon, and you’ll all die like rats — that’s why!”
Harewood thought a moment, then went on writing to Bourke:
“The sortie was no sortie after all; it was a raid on Le Bourget by Bellemare. Trochu isn’t inclined to back him up, and here we are, wedged into the German lines, able to pierce them if supported from Paris, but in a bad mess if Paris abandons us. Bellemare starts for Paris in half an hour to urge personally the direction of a supporting column. If the Germans come at us while he’s gone I don’t know how it will end.
“In case of accident you will find duplicates of all despatches in my washstand drawer. I would go back to Paris if it were not such a shame to risk losing this chance to get through the lines. If worst comes to worst, I think I can get back safely. But in case you don’t hear from me—”
He started to add something about Hildé, but crossed it out. Instead he wrote, “God bless you all,” then scratched that out, for he had a horror of battlefield sentiment and doleful messages “from the front.”
He raised his head and watched the storm. Swifter and swifter came the rain, dashing itself to smoking mist on the glistening slate roofs. A shutter hanging from one twisted hinge swung like an inn sign across the façade of a cottage opposite.
He wrote again a message to Hildé, cheerful and optimistic — a gay pleasantry untinged with doubt or foreboding — and signed his name, “James Harewood.”
When he had sealed and directed the letter, he handed it to the hussar, saying cheerfully:
“Thank you, comrade, for your trouble.”
The trooper thrust the letter into the breast of his tunic, pocketed the silver piece that Harewood held out to him, and nodded his thanks.
A few moments later General Bellemare came out of the house next the church and climbed into his saddle, calling sharply to his escort, and off they tore into the teeth of the storm, the hussar’s lance flying a crimson guidon that snapped like a wet whiplash in the tempest.
Harewood prowled around the church, picking up scraps of information from officers and men, until he found that he knew quite as much about the situation as anybody did, which was really nothing.
He leaned against the gothic column that supported the west-choir, eating a bit of bread and drinking from time to time the mixture of wine and rain-water that stood in a great stone font — where once the good people of Le Bourget had found holy-water. The church swarmed with soldiers at breakfast, some eating ravenously, some walking about listlessly, nibbling bits of crust, some sitting cross-legged on the stone-slabbed floor, faces vacant, a morsel of bread untasted in their hands. They came to dip their little tin cups into the basin where the wine and water stood; one, forgetful, touched the crimson liquid with his fingers and crossed himself. Nobody laughed.
About 7 o’clock, without the slightest warning, a violent explosion shook the street in front of the church. Before Harewood could reach the door three shells fell, one after another, and exploded in the street, sending cobblestones and pavement into the air.
“Keep back!” shouted an officer. “Close the doors!” Harewood ran out into the street. Far away toward Pont-Iblon the smoke of the Prussian guns hung heavily in the air.
“Are you coming back?” bawled a soldier. “We’re going to close the church doors.”
Harewood came back, calling out to an officer, “It’s the batteries behind Pont-Iblon!”
