DISPLEASURE OF "MONSIEUR AUGUSTIN"
In a little wood to the south of Auray, and in an exceedingly bad
temper, the Chevalier de la Vireville sat on a fallen tree and
surveyed his small band of Chouans, who, lying, seated or crouched
round him on their heels, looked at him with the expression of
dogs who know that they deserve a beating--though wearing, indeed,
the appearance of dogs who have already received one.
It was the evening of the third of July, six days after the landing
at Carnac. During those days Auray and Landévant had already been
taken by the Chouans and abandoned again for lack of support. Last
night had come peremptory orders from Carnac that they were to
be retaken; so the Comte du Boisberthelot and La Vireville had
set out at eleven that morning, without a single piece of artillery,
to recapture Auray, which was garrisoned by a thousand men under
the Republican adjutant-general Mermet. At the same time Tinténiac,
although he knew the task to be impossible, had attacked Landévant.
Mermet's sentries were not on the alert, and so the Comte du
Boisberthelot, who was a sailor, came charging in at the head of
his men by the route de l'Eglise, and drove out the Republicans.
But outside the town was Hoche himself, who ordered them to retake
it at any price. Mermet, in obeying this order, fell into the neat
ambush which La Vireville had prepared for him in a copse by the
Faubourg St. Goustan, and his column was on the point of breaking
up in disorder when Hoche came quickly up with his grenadiers
and two pieces of artillery. To stop his advance--a hopeless attempt
it was--La Vireville transferred himself and his Bretons to the
bridge into the town, cast up a barricade with carts and casks
and beams, and could probably have held this obstacle for a long
time against hand-to-hand fighting, or if he had possessed the
smallest piece of artillery. It was the want of that which had
caused him to grind his teeth as his men fired and reloaded and
fired behind the rapidly vanishing barricade, their own numbers
dwindling in proportion. For it was Hoche who had the cannon.
So he and his Chouans were driven from their position, and, penned
into the square by the church, were mown down by grapeshot till
he got them out of the town, when, in order to cover the wounded
du Boisberthelot's retreat to Locmaria, they returned to the
guerrilla fighting to which they were most accustomed, lying
hidden in the broom and picking off their men with the skill of
poachers. Unfortunately the Republican artillery discovered them
there also. . . . Nothing that La Vireville could say or do would
stop them this time; their abandonment of the position became a
rout, whose track was strewn with discarded sabots and knapsacks
and even with muskets. The émigré himself, swearing and furious,
was swept away on the flood, and finally, at dusk, fugitives and
leader found themselves in this little wood, not much more than a
coppice, but safe enough from pursuit, where the former had time
to draw breath and to reflect, and the latter to get rid of some
of the bitter anger and disgust which had prompted him, at first,
to leave them to their own devices and return alone to sell his
life at Auray.
He took another look round his dejected followers, and propped
his head between his fists, his elbows on his knees, to think.
He knew that he could get these fierce and childlike natures in
hand again--that, ashamed and penitent, they were, in fact, already
in the desired condition. He had no right, after all, to be hard
on them for the shortcomings of others. It was not their fault
that they had no artillery, and that help had not been sent from
the émigré regiments at Carnac. Moreover, his men had done no
worse than the rest, for a rumour was already afoot that Tinténiac,
the reckless and irresistible, had been beaten back from Landévant,
and that Vauban with his supporting force of Chouans had fared
no better.
Seeing his chief's attitude, Grain d'Orge, looking more than ever
ruffianly by reason of the filthy rag round his head, rose from
the ground and softly approached him.
"Monsieur Augustin is not wounded?"
"Si," retorted La Vireville without moving. "In my pride."
An uncomfortable silence. Grain d'Orge rubbed his bristly chin.
"If only the general had helped us a little," he grumbled. "If
some of those fine uniforms we saw at Carnac----"
"If only we had had a gun----" said another.
"Perhaps if we had prayed more to Ste. Anne," suggested a third,
thinking of the famous shrine of that saint so dear to all Bretons,
just outside Auray.
La Vireville heard the last remark. He lifted his head.
"On the contrary," he observed bitingly, "I should recommend a
little less rosary and a little more attention to simple military
duties. Where is the sentry I posted by that hedge a short time
ago?--Tudieu, this is a shooting matter!"
Springing to his feet, he went over to the hedge in question,
where indeed no sentry was visible. But he was there for all
that . . . only the shooting seemed to have been done already.
"He was hit at the barricade," said the croaking voice of Grain
d'Orge in La Vireville's ear as he stooped over the prostrate man.
"Then why the devil didn't he say so!" retorted his leader. "Give
me a hand, someone, and let us find out what is the matter with
him. Ah, I see; fortunately nothing very serious."
And having duly played the part of surgeon--a part to which he
was not unaccustomed--set another man at the fallen sentry's post,
and made some further dispositions, La Vireville stood a moment
looking through the tree-trunks towards Carnac, a little south
of the dying sunset, wondering what was happening in the peninsula
of Quiberon.
"And what shall we do next, Monsieur Augustin?" asked a voice rather
timidly, the voice of Le Goffic.
La Vireville turned round. "I suppose, my children," he said, more
kindly, "that unless M. d'Allègre holds Locmaria we shall have
to go back to Carnac and tell the general that we have not been
able to do what we were told to do. For the present, we will wait
here till morning."
"If Monsieur Augustin would sleep a little . . .?" One or two of
them had spread an old cloak under a tree, and now with gestures
invited him to repose. They were like children; it was impossible
to be long angry with them. So he went and lay down on the cloak,
to find that in spite of disgust and anxiety he was ready to sleep.
His new sentinel by the hedge, his musket leaning against him, was
telling his beads, and all his men, directly he lay down, lowered
their voices. He was drowsy, and floated away on a half-dream to
Jersey. . . . Why on earth were they talking of Anne-Hilarion?
"The little one, thou seest, when he was with us at Kerdronan, how
he was like the little Jesus Himself!"
"Yes, one looked to see His Mother round every corner."
"And as for him," said the first speaker, indicating his recumbent
leader, "he might have been St. Joseph!" But at this comparison
La Vireville was shaken with irreverent mirth.
He began to be more drowsy. Grain d'Orge was saying something
about Carhoët--he could not catch what. But the mention of the
name brought back the swarm of little memories that clung round
it, that had had their birth in so small a space of hours. His
foot was healed, the business of leader of that division passed
on, at his request, to someone else, but he had not forgotten
Mme. de Guéfontaine. On the contrary, he had found himself often
thinking of her during the few weeks that had elapsed since she
had made her somewhat sensational entry into his experience. He
was aware now of the sleepy conviction that she ought to have had
some part in this adventure--not indeed in the present sorry episode
of defeat, but in the landing the other night under the moon. Or
she might have stood, at daybreak, holding aloft the banner with
the lilies on the prow of one of those incoming boats. . . . She
would, surely, have been in her element. . . .
Then, with the rattle of beads and the murmur of the Ave Maria
in his ears, La Vireville went off into slumber, and dreamt
that Mr. Tollemache, whom he believed to be in the English flotilla,
was telling Mr. Elphinstone (the latter in a cocked hat and
epaulettes) by the barricade at Auray, that it had been arranged
for the English soldiers to land, and the Frenchmen to man the
English ships. But, Anne-Hilarion appearing suddenly in a boat,
and signifying that he wished to have Grain d'Orge for a nurse
instead of Elspeth, the conversation became entirely occupied with
this startling proposal--which did not, however, strike La Vireville
in his dream as being anything out of the common.