The war was in full swing, victory favouring the French troops, for the
most part, though occasionally she would hearten the defending Russians
with a smile or two of encouragement. Louise, with her fellow recruits,
had joined Ney's army corps. Already she had been present in several
minor engagements and had even received a slight flesh wound in the left
hand. The army surgeon attending her had remarked upon the smallness
of her hand. "It might be a woman's!" he said with a laugh. "There's
nothing here to keep you out of the fun," he added; "get back to the
colours as soon as you please."
The Russian General, Barclay de Tolly, was throughout unwilling to
expose his troops to the risk of battle. He was no coward. In the face
of much patriotic opposition from his fellow generals and the nation
at large, he adhered to his own tactics, which were to lure the enemy
constantly forward, striking only when a blow could be dealt with
effect. The peasantry, patriots to a man, beseeched their general
to bid them set fire to their standing crops, to their very homes
and granaries, that the enemy might find but a desolate waste in his
advance. Thousands of villages were so destroyed, their inhabitants
preferring to wander homeless and hungry into the woods rather than
allow the enemy to profit, even for a night, by the use of their
property.
Michel Prevost, as Louise was called among her fellows, was soon a
favourite in her regiment. No one had the slightest suspicion that
she was anything but what she pretended to be, a young conscript like
thousands of others who went to swell the Grande Armée. Occasionally
remarks would be made--jokes as to her complexion, which was fair for
a man's; her slight though well-knit figure, her modesty, her obvious
dislike for coarse topics of conversation, but though occasionally a man
might declare with a laugh that Michel was as much woman as man, barring
his fencing, which was second to none, no one dreamed that in saying
such a thing he was nearer the truth than he knew.
Never a day passed but Louise looked anxiously for the Baron
d'Estreville. He belonged, she knew, to a fashionable light cavalry
regiment, and this regiment she saw more than once, in the distance;
but during the first month of her campaigning she never succeeded in
catching a glimpse of her friend, an unkind arrangement of destiny which
caused Louise to sigh daily.
Then came a day of stress and battle.
Barclay de Tolly had decided to vary, for once, his tactics by staying
for a day his retrograde movement. If attacked and beaten, he could
immediately recommence his slow retreat upon Moscow. Should he prove
victorious--which he scarcely expected--it might be possible to
inflict a blow upon Napoleon which, at this crisis, would be fatal to
his further advance. Barclay decided upon this stand in deference to
the complaints of his army. The result was disastrous, and involved,
besides the loss of thousands of men, the burning and destruction of the
splendid old city of Smolensk, on the Dnieper, into which stronghold he
had thrown himself in his desperate attempt to stay the advance of the
French.
Napoleon made the remark that the blazing town "reminded him of Naples
during an eruption of Vesuvius".
During this day of fighting Louise suffered a shock, for she not only
saw Henri close at hand for the first time during the campaign, but
almost at the moment of recognising him, as he rode by at the head
of his troop of Hussars, saw him also struck by a shot and knocked
senseless from his saddle.
Her own regiment was at the moment rushing forward with cheers to
assault a house held by marksmen of the enemy, whose shots from the
windows had been a serious annoyance for an hour or more, and acting
upon the inspiration of the moment Louise fell forward upon her face,
as though struck by a bullet. She saw her comrades go forward shouting,
laughing, cursing, leaving a man here and half a dozen there; she saw
Henri's Hussars ride on also; then she rose and ran to the spot where
she had seen the Baron fall.
Henri was unconscious but alive. She bathed his temples with tepid fluid
from her own water-bottle. A bullet, she now saw, had passed through his
left shoulder. She ripped the tunic and tore away the shirt and washed
the wound. It bled fiercely, but she was able to stop the bleeding by
means of a tight bandage.
Henri opened his eyes presently and half sat up, using his right arm
and hand to prop himself. He looked around, listened to the cannonading,
the shouting and turmoil a mile away, and glanced, eventually, at
Louise, who was still busy over her bandage.
Henri stared at her face, saying nothing; Louise employed herself
busily, collecting composure for the trying ordeal through which she now
expected to have to pass.
"You are very kind to attend to my wound, _mon ami_," said Henri, at
last. "Who are you?"
"Michel Prevost, Monsieur le Capitaine," Louise replied, saluting; "I
saw you struck down, and fearing that you might bleed to death if left
alone, I stopped to bind your shoulder. You will recover, please God;
the bullet has missed the vital parts."
"It is curious. I seem to know your face, yet I think I have not seen
you before. Are you a Parisian?"
"Certainly, Monsieur, but only a conscript; it is not likely that you
should have seen me before."
"Perhaps not--yet your face seems familiar. Are you wounded?"
"No, mon Capitaine. I have no excuse to stay, now that your wants are
for the moment attended to. With your permission, I will follow my
companions, or I shall get myself shot for a skulker."
"I will speak for you. Stay a while here, my friend; or, still better,
help me, if you will, to the small house yonder, which our cannonballs
have half demolished. This wound of mine may be more serious than you
suppose--I feel very faint. It is cold here and very damp. Is it dark or
do my eyes----"
The Baron suddenly fainted, falling back into his companion's arms with
a groan. Within one hundred yards stood the half-demolished house to
which Henri had made reference. Louise laid the wounded man carefully
upon the grass and hastened to see whether any assistance was to be had.
The house was of stone, the only habitation left standing within half a
mile, for the wooden cottages which had surrounded it were burned to the
ground, every one. This had been a village, she concluded, standing a
mile or two from the town of Smolensk, now blazing in the distance. The
house was empty. It had been, to judge from its appearance, the village
shop or store. The upper portion had been destroyed by a cannon-ball,
but the ground floor still stood. Searching hastily among the débris
left by the owners on the approach of the French troops, Louise found a
bottle of vodka, three parts empty. With this treasure-trove she flew
back to her patient.
Henri opened his eyes when she had poured a quantity of the stuff down
his throat.
"You again?" he said. "What is it--did I faint?"
"There is a wheel-barrow in the yard of the house yonder," said Louise;
"can I leave you for a moment while I fetch it? If you are strong enough
to bear moving, it would be better to take you under shelter. It is
raining and miserable here. The night will be wet and cold."
"By the Saints, you are a good soul--what did you say your name
was--Michel? Yes, fetch the wheel-barrow, my friend. Strong enough or
not, I will make the journey, with your assistance."
Louise fetched the wheel-barrow. With many groans Henri contrived to
seat himself in the conveyance, and Louise wheeled him very carefully
into port. She improvised a bed out of a pile of hay which she found in
the stable behind and soon Henri lay in comparative comfort.
His wound seemed to be serious, though not dangerous, unless
complications should set in; but being young and very healthy there
was little danger that anything in the nature of mortification would
supervene. The wounded man and his companion were not long left in
undisturbed possession of their sanctuary, however, for before long
a surgeon and his assistants, following in the steps of the fighting
contingent, and finding a score of wounded men in the vicinity of
Henri's house, brought in as many as could be accommodated in the place,
which now became a pandemonium of groaning, swearing, raving and dying
men. Two other sufferers were brought into Henri's room, a circumstance
which did not please his nurse; but there was no help for it and the men
remained.
Henri d'Estreville was seen and treated by the doctor.
"You'll be all right," he said; "though you'd have bled to death but for
this young fellow--your servant, doubtless. I shall leave an assistant
in charge of the household; I must be off; by the Saints, his Majesty
gives us poor fellows work enough. Up at Smolensk, they say, it is like
the shambles."
One poor fellow died during the night and was removed by Louise. The
other lay groaning and raving in delirium, too far gone to take notice
of any one or anything.
All night Henri, too, raved in delirium, suffering from high fever.
Louise sat on the ground beside him, her back to the wall, weary to
death but sleeping never a wink. Towards morning Henri was quieter,
but could not sleep. He was inclined to talk, and treated Louise to a
long account of his adventures in love, some of which caused the poor
girl--who knew little of such things--to blush from neck to temples,
though Henri was unaware of the fact, owing to the darkness.
"Every one of these affairs," said Henri, "has left me without a mark. I
had begun to think that Nature, in her wisdom, had omitted to provide me
with a heart, well knowing that such a possession is as much a trouble
as a comfort to its owner; yet now, in my old age--imagine, Michel, I
am twenty-five, no less!--I have begun to fear that after all she has
treated me no better than my fellows. Not only have I found, of late,
that I possess a heart, but no sooner was it found than I have lost
it--so, at least, I fear!"
"It is possible, I suppose, that I shall die of this wound," Henri
continued presently.
"God forbid!" muttered his companion.
"Oh, agreed! I am not anxious to die," Henri laughed; "still, it is
possible, for, be assured, Michel, I have felt very ill this night;
certainly I have been nearer death than has been my lot before to-day.
Who can tell how the malady will go--which turn it will take. This girl,
I spoke of; if I should die, Michel, you shall take a message to her.
_Sapristi_--it is an odd thing, that I who have exchanged vows with a
hundred women should now remember with affection but one, and she the
most artless of them all and doubtless the most virtuous. You will carry
a message for this one, Michel, promise me--it is only in case of my
death--come!"
"I promise," murmured Louise.
"Good--perhaps I shall live, in which case keep my secret, lest by that
time I should think differently. But supposing that I should die, go
to the Palais d'armes of old Pierre Dupré, there ask for his daughter
Louise--remember their names--you shall take a note of them presently,
and tell her that in dying Baron Henri d'Estreville remembered her with
tenderness; of all his vows of love he remembered those only that he
made to her, which vows, say, he would certainly have kept if he should
have remained in the same mind when he returned."
Louise suddenly broke in upon Henri's message with a merry laugh.
"I will leave out the last sentence, it will not sound so well as the
rest," she said. "If you had lived, I will say, you might have been
faithful to her. That you died loving her fairly well."
"Ah, you mock me!" said Henri. "No, I am serious. It is wonderful, but I
remember that little simple one with true affection. To her lips I send
a loving kiss, the pledge of my love."
"Shall I carry your very kiss to her?" said Louise; "if--if it would be
a comfort to you, I will do so."
"Ah, rascal! I think I have roused your interest in my pretty one--well,
if I die I care very little what happens; yes, take her my very
kiss--bend over and receive it from me. It is a strange thing, Michel,
but there is something in your face which reminds me of my Louise; in
kissing you thus I can almost fancy it is she--I would to God it were!"
"Ah, you rave again!" murmured Louise.