Moscow: A Story of the French Invasion of 1812

"Of course that was nothing to you," he said.

"Absolutely. But with regard to that same conversation, I have a grievance and a serious one, as I hinted before. We came to an agreement, I remember, with regard to a certain foolish contract entered into by our parents on our behalf. You were to destroy it, by mutual consent. You did not do so, as I learned for the first time but a few months ago."

"Honestly, Vera, the notary said it could not be destroyed but in the presence of, and by sworn consent of, both. The priests, too, declare that the sanction of the metropolitan is necessary."

"You should not have asked them. You had undertaken to tear up the foolish thing. That would have sufficed for us. Why did you ask advice?"

"I see that you will have the whole truth. I stupidly thought that by retaining the contract I retained also a kind of hold upon you. Of course, on reconsideration–"

"Yes, of course that is nonsense. I will tell you, my friend, that contract or no contract, I should never dream of marrying any man against my own will and desire. Your action makes no difference, but it was foolish and not quite honest. It is better that we should understand one another from the beginning."

"Yes, that is true. Will you do me a kindness, Vera? You say that it is better that we should understand one another. It might save me much pain if you were to tell me now, before it is quite too late, whether you have left Paris as heart free as you entered it?"

Vera flushed crimson.

"By what right am I thus catechised?" she asked angrily. "Is it by virtue of the contract you so dishonestly retained? or do you consider that I am bound to give you my confidence because you have been so good as to lay bare your heart for my entertainment? Neither is a sufficient reason, sir."

"You are very hard on me, Vera," Maximof sighed. "What you have implied might have been conveyed to me less harshly. Well, thank you for letting me know what I wished to know." He paused. "With regard to our intercourse here in Moscow, I shall be very busy and—well, I may as well speak to you frankly while I am about it, I fancy it would be too dangerous for me to see much of you. Good-bye—oh, as to this thing–"

Sasha produced a pocket-book and took from it an oldish paper. "At any rate you shall be worried no longer by the whim of our parents!" He opened the door of the stove and threw the betrothal contract within; then he lit a match and applied it to an edge of the document which was soon in flames.

"So ends a foolish comedy that might have developed into a pretty romance!" said Maximof, laughing bitterly. "Farewell, Vera Danilovna. I wish to God you had not lived these three years in Paris!" At the door he turned and spoke again.

"Of course I don't blame you, but it's hard on me that you should have grown so—so maddeningly pretty." Maximof repeated his loud laugh and departed.

Vera sighed. "I ought to have known you before, my friend," she thought; "before—before Paul! But after all, the gulf between Paul and me is wide enough!"

CHAPTER XIV

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.