it is our trust
that there is yet another world to mend
all error and mischance.
louis d'arragon knew the road well enough from konigsberg to the niemen. it runs across a plain, flat as a table, through which many small streams seek their rivers in winding beds. this country was not thinly inhabited, though the villages had been stripped, as foliage is stripped by a cloud of locusts. each cottage had its ring of silver birch-trees to protect it from the winds which sweep from the baltic and the steppe. these had been torn and broken down by the retreating army, in a vain hope of making fire with green wood.
it was quite easy to keep in the steps of the retreating army, for the road was marked by recumbent forms huddled on either side. few vehicles had come so far, for the broken country near to vilna and around kowno had presented slopes up which the starving horses were unable to drag their load.
d'arragon reached kowno without mishap, and there found a russian colonel of cossacks who proved friendly enough, and not only appreciated the value of his passport and such letters of recommendation as he had been able to procure at konigsberg, but gave him others, and forwarded him on his journey.
he still nourished a lingering belief in de casimir's word. charles must have been left behind at vilna to recover from his exhaustion. he would, undoubtedly, make his way westward as soon as possible. he might have got away to the south. any one of these huddled human landmarks might be charles darragon.
louis was essentially a thorough man. the sea is a mistress demanding a whole and concentrated attention—and concentration soon becomes a habit. louis did not travel at night, for fear of passing charles on the road, alive or dead. he knew his cousin better than any in the frauengasse had learnt to know this gay and inconsequent frenchman. a certain cunning lay behind the happy laugh—a great capacity was hidden by the careless manner. if ready wit could bring man through the dangers of the retreat, charles had as good a chance of surviving as any.
nevertheless, louis rarely passed a dead man on the road, but drew up, and quitting his sleigh, turned over the body, which was almost invariably huddled with its back offered to the deadly, prevailing north wind. against each this wind had piled a sloping bank of that fine snow which, even in the lightest breeze, drifts over the surface of the land like an ivory mist, waist high, and cakes the clothes. in a high wind it will rise twenty feet in the air, and blind any who try to face it.
as often as not a mere glance sufficed to show that this was not charles, for few of the bodies were clad. many had been stripped, while still living, by their half-frozen comrades. but sometimes louis had to dust the snow from strange bearded faces before he could pass on with a quick sigh of relief.
beyond kowno, the country is thinly populated, and spreading pine-forests bound the horizon. the cossacks—the wild men of toula, who reaped the laurels of the rearguard fighting—were all along the road. d'arragon frequently came upon a picket—as often as not the men were placidly sitting on a frozen corpse, as on a seat—and stopped to say a few words and gather news.
“you will find your friend at vilna,” said one young officer, who had been attached to general wilson's staff, and had many stories to tell of the energetic and indefatigable english commissioner. “at vilna we took twenty thousand prisoners—poor devils who came and asked us for food—and i don't know how many officers. and if you see wilson there, remember me to him. if napoleon has need to hate one man more than another for this business, it is that firebrand, wilson. yes, you will assuredly find your cousin at vilna among the prisoners. but you must not linger by the road, for they are being sent back to moscow to rebuild that which they have caused to be destroyed.”
he laughed and waved his gloved hand as d'arragon drove on.
after the broken land and low abrupt hills of kowno, the country was flat again until the valley of the vilia opened out. and here, almost within sight of vilna, d'arragon drove down a short hill which must ever be historic. he drove slowly, for on either side were gun-carriages deep sunken in the snow where the french had left them. this hill marked the final degeneration of the emperor's army into a shapeless rabble hopelessly flying before an exhausted enemy.
half on the road and half in the ditch were hundreds of carriages which had been hurriedly smashed up to provide firewood. carts, still laden with the booty of moscow, stood among the trees. some of them contained small square boxes of silver coin, brought by napoleon to pay his army and here abandoned. silver coin was too heavy to carry. the rate of exchange had long been sixty francs in silver for a gold napoleon or a louis. the cloth coverings of the cushions had been torn off to shape into rough garments; the straw stuffing had been eaten by the horses.
inside the carriages were—crouching on the floor—the frozen bodies of fugitives too badly wounded or too ill to attempt to walk. they had sat there till death came to them. many were women. in one carriage four women, in silks and fine linen, were huddled together. their furs had been dragged from them either before or after death.
louis stopped at the bottom and looked back. de casimir at all events had succeeded in surmounting this obstacle which had proved fatal to so many—the grave of so many hopes—god's rubbish-heap, where gold and precious stones, silks and priceless furs, all that greedy men had schemed and striven and fought to get, fell from their hands at last.
vilna lies all down a slope—a city built upon several hills—and the vilia runs at the bottom. that way of sorrow, the smolensk road, runs eastward by the river bank, and here the rearguard held the cossacks in check while murat hastily decamped, after dark, westwards to kowno. the king of naples, to whom napoleon gave the command of his broken army quite gaily—“a vous, roi de naples,” he is reported to have said, as he hurried to his carriage—murat abandoned his sick and wounded; did not even warn the stragglers.
d'arragon entered the city by the narrow gate known as the town gate, through which, as through that greater portal of moscow, every man must pass bareheaded.
“the emperor is here,” were the first words spoken to him by the officer on guard.
but the streets were quiet enough, and the winner in this great game of chance maintained the same unostentatious silence in victory as that which, in the hour of humiliation, had baffled napoleon.
it was almost night, and d'arragon had been travelling since daylight. he found a lodging, and, having secured the comfort of the horse provided by the lame shoemaker of konigsberg, he went out into the streets in search of information.
few cities are, to this day, so behind the times as vilna. the streets are still narrow, winding, ill-paved, ill-lighted. when d'arragon quitted his lodging, he found no lights at all, for the starving soldiers had climbed to the lamps for the sake of the oil, which they had greedily drunk. it was a full moon, however, and the patrols at the street corners were willing to give such information as they could. they were strangers to vilna like louis himself, and not without suspicion; for this was a city which had bidden the french welcome. there had been dancing and revelry on the outward march. the citizens themselves were afraid of the strange, wild-eyed men who returned to them from moscow.
at last, in the episcopal palace, where head-quarters had been hurriedly established, louis found the man he sought, the officer in charge of the arrangements for despatching prisoners into russia and to siberia. he was a grizzled warrior of the old school, speaking only french and russian. he was tired out and hungry, but he listened to louis' story.
“there is the list,” he said, “it is more or less complete. many have called themselves officers who never held a commission from the emperor napoleon. but we have done what we can to sort them out.”
so louis sat down in the dimly lighted room and deciphered the names of those officers who had been left behind, detained by illness or wounds or the lack of spirit to persevere.
“you understand,” said the russian, returning to his work, “i cannot afford the time to help you. we have twenty-five thousand prisoners to feed and keep alive.”
“yes—i understand,” answered louis, who had the seaman's way of making himself a part of his surroundings.
the old colonel glanced at him across the table with a grim smile.
“the emperor,” he said, “was sitting in that chair an hour ago. he may come back at any moment.”
“ah!” said louis, following the written lines with a pencil.
but no interruption came, and at last the list was finished. charles was not among the officers taken prisoner at vilna.
“well?” inquired the russian, without looking up.
“not there.”
the old officer took a sheet of paper and hurriedly wrote a few words on it.
“try the basile hospital to-morrow morning,” he said. “that will gain you admittance. it is to be cleared out by the emperor's orders. we have about twenty thousand dead to dispose of as well—but they are in no hurry.”
he laughed grimly, and bade louis good night.
“come to me again,” he called out after him, drawn by a sudden chord of sympathy to this stranger, who had the rare capacity of confining himself to the business in hand.
by daybreak the next morning louis was at the hospital of st. basile. it had been prepared by the duc de bassano under napoleon's orders when vilna was selected as the base of the great army. when the russians entered vilna after the retreating remnant of murat's rabble, they found the dead and the dying in the streets and the market-place. some had made fires and had lain themselves down around them—to die. others were without food or firing, almost without clothes. many were barefoot. all, officers and men alike, were in rags. it was a piteous sight; for half of these men were no longer human. some were gnawing at their own limbs. many were blind, others had lost their speech or hearing. nearly all were marred by some disfigurement—some terrible sore, the result of a frozen wound, of frostbite, of scurvy, of gangrene.
the cossacks, half civilized as they were, wild with the excitement of killing and the chase of a human quarry, stood aghast in the streets of vilna.
when the emperor arrived, he set to work to clear the streets first, to get these piteous men indoors. there was no question yet of succouring them. it was not even possible to feed them all. the only thought was to find them some protection against the ruthless cold.
the first thought was, of course, directed to the hospitals. they looked in and saw a storehouse of the dead. the dead could wait; but the living must be housed.
so the dead waited, and it was their turn now at the st. basile hospital, where louis presented himself at dawn.
“looking for some one?” asked a man in uniform, who must have been inside the hospital, for he hurried down the steps with a set mouth and quailing eyes.
“yes.”
“then don't go in—wait here.”
louis looked in and took the doctor's advice. the dead were stored in the passages, one on the top of the other, like bales of goods in a warehouse.
some attempt seemed to have been made to clear the wards, but those whose task it had been had not had time to do more than drag the dead out into the passage.
the soldiers were now at work in the lower passage. carts began to arrive. an officer told off to this dread duty came up hurriedly smoking a cigarette, his high fur collar about his ears. he glanced at louis, and bowed to him.
“looking for some one?” he asked.
“yes.”
“then stand here beside me. it is i who have to keep count. they say there are eight thousand in here. they will be carried past here to the carts. have a cigarette.”
it is hard to talk when the thermometer registers more than twenty degrees of frost, for the lips stiffen and contract into wrinkles like the lips of a very old woman. perhaps neither of the watchers was in the humour to begin an acquaintance.
they stood side by side, stamping their feet to keep the blood going, without speaking. once or twice louis stepped forward, and at a signal from the officer the bearers stopped. but louis shook his head, and they passed on. at midday the officer was relieved, his place being taken by another, who bowed stiffly to louis and took no more notice of him. for war either hardens or softens. it never leaves a man as it found him.
all day the work was carried on. through the hours this procession of the bearded dead went silently by. at the invitation of a sergeant, louis took some soup and bread from the soldiers' table. the men laughingly apologized for the quality of both.
towards evening the officer who had first come on duty returned to his work.
“not yet?” he asked, offering the inevitable cigarette.
“not yet,” answered louis, and even as he spoke he stepped forward and stopped the bearers. he brushed aside the matted hair and beard.
“is that your friend?” asked the officer.
“yes.”
it was charles at last.
“the doctor says these have been dead two months,” volunteered the first bearer, over his shoulder.
“i am glad you have found him,” said the officer, signing to the men to go on with their burden. “it is better to know—is it not?”
“yes,” answered louis slowly. “it is better to know.”
and something in his voice made the russian officer turn and watch him as he went away.
