The Quest of Glory - Marjorie Bowen (most interesting books to read txt) 📗

keenly; M. de Broglie was so careless in

manner that the young officer suspected he was in truth deeply troubled.

 

“Very well, Monsieur,” he answered. “I suppose we may look for some

relief with the dawn?”

 

“I think the orders will be to march at daybreak,” answered de Broglie.

He touched his beaver and rode on, first adding gravely, “Pray God it

does not snow again.”

 

The Marquis remained holding the lantern and looking at the huddled

shape of men and horses. A vast pity for the waste and unseen courage of

war gripped his heart; none of these men complained, the horses dropped

silently, the very mules died patiently—and what was the use of it? The

war was wanton, unprovoked, expensive, and, so far, a failure; it had

nothing heroic in its object, which was principally to satisfy the

ambitious vanity of M. de Belleisle and the vague schemes of poor old

well-meaning Cardinal Fleury who had never seen a battle-field in his

life.

 

The end seemed so inadequate to the sacrifice asked. The Marquis had

seen the soldiers suffer and die in Prague with secret pangs, but this

seemed a sheer devastation. It was impossible to stand still long in

that cold; it was obvious that nothing could be done till the dawn. He

pulled out his silver filigree watch, but it had stopped.

 

Slowly he moved through the camp. Now the snow had ceased, several

pitiful little fires were springing up in sheltered spots; and the men

were moving about in their heavy wraps, and the surgeons coming in and

out the groups of wounded and sick.

 

A dog barked in a home-sick fashion; there was not a star visible. A

Hussite pastor came within range of the Marquis’s lantern; he was

carrying a limp child, and murmuring, in the strange Bohemian, what

seemed a prayer.

 

Soon the flickering orbit of light fell on a Catholic priest kneeling

beside a dying man whose face was sharp and dull. He too prayed, but the

familiar Latin supplications were as outside the Marquis’s sympathy as

the Hussite’s appeal; he was tolerant to both, but his thoughts just

touched them, no more. A strange haughty sadness came over his heart; he

felt disdainful of humanity that could be so weak, so cruel, so patient.

 

His lantern had evidently been near empty of oil, for it began to

flicker and flare, and finally sank out.

 

He put it from him and felt his way over a pile of rocks that rose up

suddenly sheer and sharp.

 

Nothing could be done till the dawn; it was doubtful even if he could

find his way back to his own regiment. He seated himself on the rock,

wrapped his cloak tightly about him, and waited.

 

He thought that he must be in some kind of shelter, for he did not feel

the wind, and here the cold was certainly less severe.

 

His sombre mood did not long endure; he ceased to see the darkness

filled with weary, dispirited, wounded men; rather he fancied it full of

light and even flowers, which were the thoughts, he fancied, and

aspirations of these poor tired soldiers.

 

Obedience, courage, endurance, strength blossomed rich as red roses in

the hearts of the feeblest of these sons of France—and in the bosom of

such as Georges d’Espagnac bloomed a very glory, as of white passion

flowers at midsummer; and in his own heart there grew enough to render

the bloodstained night fragrant.

 

He smiled at his conceit, but it was very real to him. He had not eaten

since early the previous day; he wondered if he was beginning to grow

light-headed, as he had done once before in Italy when he had been

without food and several hours in the sun.

 

The reflection brought back a sudden picture of Italy, hard,

brightly-coloured, gorgeous, brilliant; he shivered with a great longing

for that purple sunshine that scorched the flesh and ran in the blood.

 

In particular he recalled a field of wheat sloping to a sea which was

like a rough blue stone for colour, and huge-leaved chestnut trees of an

intense reddish green that cast a bronze shadow growing near, and the

loud humming of grasshoppers persistently—no, he thought, that did not

come in the wheat, but in the short dried grass, burnt gold as new clay

by the sun; the sun—that sun he had scarcely seen since he left Paris.

 

A shuddering drowsiness overcame him; his head fell on his bosom, and he

sank to sleep.

 

When he woke it was with a sense of physical pain and the sensation that

light was falling about him in great flakes; his clearing senses told

him that this was the dawn, and that he was giddy. He sat up, to find

himself in a natural alcove of rock overgrown with a grey dry moss

frozen and glittering; a jutting point partially shut off his vision,

but he could see enough of dead men and horses and painfully moving

troops in the strip of ravine immediately below him. He unfolded his

cloak from his stiff limbs, and by the aid of his sword rose to his

feet. As he did so, he raised his eyes, and then gave an involuntary cry

of wonder and pleasure.

 

Immediately behind him was a silver fir, perhaps a hundred feet high, as

high at least as a village steeple, rising up, branch on branch, till it

tapered to a perfect finish; and in the flat topmost boughs the sun,

struggling through frowning blank grey clouds, rested with a melancholy

radiance.

 

The Marquis had seen many such trees in Bohemia, and there was nothing

extraordinary that he should, unwittingly, have slept under one; yet his

breath was shaken at the sight of the tall, unspoilt beauty of this

common silver fir with the sun in the upper branches, and he could not

tell why.

 

He supported himself against the trunk and closed his eyes for a moment;

his body was stabbed with pain, and his head seemed filled with restless

waves of sensation. He had never been robust, and it had often been a

keen trouble to him that he could not support hardship like some men,

like most soldiers. He set his teeth and with an effort opened his eyes.

 

The first sight they met was that of a woman riding a white horse coming

round the fir tree.

 

He knew her instantly for the Countess Koklinska, and she evidently knew

him, for she reined up her horse, which she rode astride like a man, and

looked down at him with a direct glance of recognition.

 

“I have forgotten your name,” she said, “but I remember you, Monsieur.

You are ill,” she added.

 

He blushed that she should see his weakness, and mastered himself

sufficiently to step to her stirrup.

 

“I found a lodging in Pürgitz,” she said, “and food; but there has been

great suffering among your men.”

 

Her attire was the same as when he had seen her last—barbaric and

splendid, dark furs, scarlet powdered with gold, turquoise velvet and

crimson satin; her face was pinched and sallow, but her eyes were clear

and expressive under the thick long lashes.

 

“I wish we had no women with us,” said the Marquis faintly.

 

She dismounted before he had divined her intentions, and drew a silver

flask from her sash, and held it out to him in her white fur gloved

hands.

 

“Only a little poor wine,” she murmured humbly, and she had the cup

ready and the red wine poured out.

 

He thanked her gravely and drank with distaste; their heavy gloves

touched as he handed the horn goblet back to her and again their eyes

met.

 

In the pale, clear winter morning he looked dishevelled, pallid, and

sad, but his eyes were steady, and held the same look as had lightened

them in the chapel of St. Wenceslas.

 

“If there are no more storms, we shall do very well,” he remarked

quietly. “I think there are no more than twenty leagues to Eger, and M.

de Saxe took this route last year with but little loss.”

 

“Not in this weather,” returned the Countess Carola. “And M. de

Belleisle is not Maurice de Saxe.”

 

Both her remarks were true, but the Marquis would not confirm them; he

bowed gravely, as if displeased, and passed down the rocky path.

 

She remained beside the silver fir looking after him. The cold clouds

had closed over the feeble sun and the wind blew more icy; all the

sounds of a moving camp came with a sharp clearness through the pure,

glacial air.

 

The Marquis made his way up the ascent to where his regiment bivouacked.

His progress was slow; the sky became darker and lower as he ascended,

and his way was marked by the frozen dead and the unconscious dying. He

turned a point of rock to see the figure of Georges d’Espagnac standing

at the edge of a little precipice fanning some glimmering sticks into a

flame. Then the snow began; suddenly a few flakes, then a dense storm

that blended heaven and earth in one whirl of white and cold.