The commander hesitated.
“I cannot have the men exposed.”
“I engage not to lose a man—except him who fires the gun. HE must take his chance.”
“Well, colonel, it must be done by volunteers. The men must not be ORDERED out on such a service as that.”
Colonel Dujardin bowed, and retired.
“Volunteers to go out of the trenches!” cried Sergeant La Croix, in a stentorian voice, standing erect as a poker, and swelling with importance.
There were fifty offers in less than as many seconds.
“Only twelve allowed to go,” said the sergeant; “and I am one,” added he, adroitly inserting himself.
A gun was taken down, placed on a carriage, and posted near Death’s Alley, but out of the line of fire.
The colonel himself superintended the loading of this gun; and to the surprise of the men had the shot weighed first, and then weighed out the powder himself.
He then waited quietly a long time till the bastion pitched one of its periodical shots into Death’s Alley, but no sooner had the shot struck, and sent the sand flying past the two lanes of curious noses, than Colonel Dujardin jumped upon the gun and waved his cocked hat. At this preconcerted signal, his battery opened fire on the bastion, and the battery to his right opened on the wall that fronted them; and the colonel gave the word to run the gun out of the trenches. They ran it out into the cloud of smoke their own guns were belching forth, unseen by the enemy; but they had no sooner twisted it into the line of Long Tom, than the smoke was gone, and there they were, a fair mark.
“Back into the trenches, all but one!” roared Dujardin.
And in they ran like rabbits.
“Quick! the elevation.”
Colonel Dujardin and La Croix raised the muzzle to the mark—hoo, hoo, hoo! ping, ping, ping! came the bullets about their ears.
“Away with you!” cried the colonel, taking the linstock from him.
Then Colonel Dujardin, fifteen yards from the trenches, in full blazing uniform, showed two armies what one intrepid soldier can do. He kneeled down and adjusted his gun, just as he would have done in a practising ground. He had a pot shot to take, and a pot shot he would take. He ignored three hundred muskets that were levelled at him. He looked along his gun, adjusted it, and re-adjusted it to a hair’s breadth. The enemy’s bullets pattered upon it: still he adjusted it delicately. His men were groaning and tearing their hair inside at his danger.
At last it was levelled to his mind, and then his movements were as quick as they had hitherto been slow. In a moment he stood erect in the half-fencing attitude of a gunner, and his linstock at the touch-hole: a huge tongue of flame, a volume of smoke, a roar, and the iron thunderbolt was on its way, and the colonel walked haughtily but rapidly back to the trenches; for in all this no bravado. He was there to make a shot; not to throw a chance of life away watching the effect.
Ten thousand eyes did that for him.
Both French and Prussians risked their own lives craning out to see what a colonel in full uniform was doing under fire from a whole line of forts, and what would be his fate; but when he fired the gun their curiosity left the man and followed the iron thunderbolt.
For two seconds all was uncertain; the ball was travelling.
Tom gave a rear like a wild horse, his protruding muzzle went up sky-high, then was seen no more, and a ring of old iron and a clatter of fragments was heard on the top of the bastion. Long Tom was dismounted. Oh! the roar of laughter and triumph from one end to another of the trenches; and the clapping of forty thousand hands that went on for full five minutes; then the Prussians, either through a burst of generous praise for an act so chivalrous and so brilliant, or because they would not be crowed over, clapped their tea thousand hands as loudly, and thus thundering, heart-thrilling salvo of applause answered salvo on both sides that terrible arena.
That evening came a courteous and flattering message from the commander-in-chief to Colonel Dujardin; and several officers visited his quarters to look at him; they went back disappointed. The cry was, “What a miserable, melancholy dog! I expected to see a fine, dashing fellow.”
The trenches neared the town. Colonel Dujardin’s mine was far advanced; the end of the chamber was within a few yards of the bastion. Of late, the colonel had often visited this mine in person. He seemed a little uneasy about something in that quarter; but no one knew what: he was a silent man. The third evening, after he dismounted Long Tom, he received private notice that an order was coming down from the commander-in-chief to assault the bastion. He shrugged his shoulders, but said nothing. That same night the colonel and one of his lieutenants stole out of the trenches, and by the help of a pitch-dark, windy night, got under the bastion unperceived, and crept round it, and made their observations, and got safe back. About noon down came General Raimbaut.
“Well, colonel, you are to have your way at last. Your bastion is to be stormed this afternoon previous to the general assault. Why, how is this? you don’t seem enchanted?”
“I am not.”
“Why, it was you who pressed for the assault.”
“At the right time, general, not the wrong. In five days I undertake to blow that bastion into the air. To assault it now would be to waste our men.”
General Raimbaut thought this excess of caution a great piece of perversity in Achilles. They were alone, and he said a little peevishly,—
“Is not this to blow hot and cold on the same thing?”
“No, general,” was the calm reply. “Not on the same thing. I blew hot upon timorous counsels; I blow cold on rash ones. General, last night Lieutenant Fleming and I were under that bastion; and all round it.”
“Ah! my prudent colonel, I thought we should not talk long without your coming out in your true light. If ever a man secretly enjoyed risking his life, it is you.”
“No, general,” said Dujardin looking gloomily down; “I enjoy neither that nor anything else. Live or die, it is all one to me; but to the lives of my soldiers I am not indifferent, and never will be while I live. My apparent rashness of last night was pure prudence.”
Raimbaut’s eye twinkled with suppressed irony. “No doubt!” said he; “no doubt!”
The impassive colonel would not notice the other’s irony; he went calmly on:—
“I suspected something; I went to confute, or confirm that suspicion. I confirmed it.”
Rat! tat! tat! tat! tat! tat! tat! was heard a drum. Relieving guard in the mine.
Colonel Dujardin interrupted himself.
“That comes apropos,” said he. “I expect one proof more from that quarter. Sergeant, send me the sentinel they are relieving.”
Sergeant La Croix soon came back, as pompous as a hen with one chick, predominating with a grand military air over a droll figure that chattered with cold, and held its musket in hands clothed in great mittens. Dard.
La Croix marched him up as if he had been a file; halted him like a file, sang out to him as to a file, stentorian and unintelligible, after the manner of sergeants.
“Private No. 4.”
DARD. P-p-p-present!
LA CROIX. Advance to the word of command, and speak to the colonel.
The shivering figure became an upright statue directly, and carried one of his mittens to his forehead. Then, suddenly recognizing the rank of the gray-haired officer, he was morally shaken, but remained physically erect, and stammered,—
“Colonel!—general!—colonel!”
“Don’t be frightened, my lad. But look at the general and answer me.”
“Yes! general! colonel!” and he levelled his eye dead at the general, as he would a bayonet at a foe, being so commanded.
“Now answer in as few syllables as you can.”
“Yes! general—colonel.”
“You have been on guard in the mine.”
“Yes, general.”
“What did you see there?”
“Nothing; it was night down there.”
“What did you feel?”
“Cold! I—was—in—water—hugh!”
“Did you hear nothing, then?”
“Yes.”
“What?”
“Bum! bum! bum!”
“Are you sure you did not hear particles of earth fall at the end of the trench?”
“I think it did, and this (touching his musket) sounded of its own accord.”
“Good! you have answered well; go.”
“Sergeant, I did not miss a word,” cried Dard, exulting. He thought he had passed a sort of military college examination. The sergeant was awe-struck and disgusted at his familiarity, speaking to him before the great: he pushed Private Dard hastily out of the presence, and bundled him into the trenches.
“Are you countermined, then?” asked General Raimbaut.
“I think not, general; but the whole bastion is. And we found it had been opened in the rear, and lately half a dozen broad roads cut through the masonry.”
“To let in re-enforcements?”
“Or to let the men run out in ease of an assault. I have seen from the first an able hand behind that part of the defences. If we assault the bastion, they will pick off as many of us as they can with their muskets then they will run for it, and fire a train, and blow it and us into the air.”
“Colonel, this is serious. Are you prepared to lay this statement before the commander-in-chief?”
“I am, and I do so through you, the general of my division. I even beg you to say, as from me, that the assault will be mere suicide—bloody and useless.”
General Raimbaut went off to headquarters in some haste, a thorough convert to Colonel Dujardin’s opinion. Meantime the colonel went slowly to his tent. At the mouth of it a corporal, who was also his body-servant, met him, saluted, and asked respectfully if there were any orders.
“A few minutes’ repose, Francois, that is all. Do not let me be disturbed for an hour.”
“Attention!” cried Francois. “Colonel wants to sleep.”
The tent was sentinelled, and Dujardin was alone with the past.
Then had the fools, that took (as fools will do) deep sorrow for sullenness, seen the fiery soldier droop, and his wan face fall into haggard lines, and his martial figure shrink, and heard his stout heart sigh! He took a letter from his bosom: it was almost worn to pieces. He had read it a thousand times, yet he read it again. A part of the sweet sad words ran thus:—
“We must bow. We can never be happy together on earth; let us make Heaven our friend. This is still left us,—not to blush for our love; to do our duty, and to die.”
“How tender, but how firm,” thought Camille. “I might agitate, taunt, grieve her I love, but I could not shake her. No! God and the saints to my aid! they saved me from a crime I now shudder at. And they have given me the good chaplain: he prays with me, he weeps for me. His prayers still my beating heart. Yes, poor suffering angel! I read your will in these tender, but bitter, words: you prefer duty to love. And one day you will forget me; not yet awhile, but it will be so. It wounds me when I think of it, but I must bow. Your will is sacred. I must rise to your level, not drag you to mine.”
Then the soldier that had stood between two armies in a hail of bullets, and fired a master-shot, took a little book of offices in one hand,—the chaplain had given it him,—and fixed his eyes upon the pious words, and clung like a child to the pious words, and kissed his lost wife’s letter, and tried hard to be like her he loved: patient, very patient, till the end should come.
“Qui vive?” cried the sentinel outside to a strange officer.
“France,” was his reply. He then asked the sentinel, “Where is the colonel commanding the brigade?”
The sentinel lowered his voice, “Asleep, my officer,” said he; for the new-comer carried two epaulets.
“Wake him,” said the officer in a tone of a man used to command on a large scale.
Dujardin heard, and did not choose a stranger should think he was asleep in broad day. He came hastily out of the tent, therefore, with Josephine’s letter in his hand, and, in the very act of conveying it to his bosom, found himself face to face with—her husband.
Did you ever see two duellists cross rapiers?
How unlike a theatrical duel! How smooth and quiet the bright blades are! they glide into contact. They are polished and slippery, yet they hold each other. So these two men’s eyes met, and fastened: neither spoke: each searched the other’s face keenly. Raynal’s countenance, prepared as he was for this meeting, was like a stern statue’s. The other’s face flushed, and his heart raged and sickened at sight of the man, that, once his comrade and benefactor, was now possessor of the woman he loved. But the figures of both stood alike haughty, erect, and immovable, face to face.
Colonel Raynal saluted Colonel Dujardin ceremoniously. Colonel Dujardin returned the salute in the same style.
“You thought I was in Egypt,” said Raynal with grim significance that caught Dujardin’s attention, though he did not know quite how to interpret it.
He answered mechanically, “Yes, I did.”
“I am sent here by General Bonaparte to take a command,” explained Raynal.
“You are welcome. What command?”
“Yours.”
“Mine?” cried Dujardin, his forehead flushing with mortification and anger. “What, is it not enough that you take my”—He stopped then.
“Come, colonel,” said the other calmly, “do not be unjust to an old comrade. I take your demi-brigade; but you are promoted to Raimbaut’s brigade. The exchange is to be made to-morrow.”
“Was it then to announce to me my promotion you came to my quarters?” and Camille looked with a strange mixture of feelings at his old comrade.
“That was the first thing, being duty, you know.”
“What? have you anything else to say to me, then?”
“I have.”
“Is it important? for my own duties will soon demand me.”
“It is so important that, command or no command, I should have come further than the Rhine to say it to you.”
Let a man be as bold as a lion, a certain awe still waits upon doubt and mystery; and some of this vague awe crept over Camille Dujardin at Raynal’s mysterious speech, and his grave, quiet, significant manner.
Had he discovered something, and what? For Josephine’s sake, more than his own, Camille was on his guard directly.
Raynal looked at him in silence a moment.
“What?” said he with a slight sneer, “has it never occurred to you that I MUST have a serious word to say to you? First, let me put you a question: did they treat you well at my house? at the chateau de Beaurepaire?”
“Yes,” faltered Camille.
“You met, I trust, all the kindness and care due to a wounded soldier and an officer of merit. It would annoy me greatly if I thought you were not treated like a brother in my house.”
Colonel Dujardin writhed inwardly at this view of matters. He could not reply in few words. This made him hesitate.
His inquisitor waited, but, receiving no reply, went on, “Well, colonel, have you shown the sense of gratitude we had a right to look for in return? In a word, when you left Beaurepaire, had your conscience nothing to reproach you with?”
Dujardin still hesitated. He scarcely knew what to think or what to say. But he thought to himself, “Who has told him? does he know all?”
“Colonel Dujardin, I am the husband of Josephine, the son of Madame de Beaurepaire, and the brother of Rose. You know very well what brings me here. Your answer?”
“Colonel Raynal, between men of honor, placed as you and I are, few words should pass, for words are idle. You will never prove to me that I have wronged you: I shall never convince you that I have not. Let us therefore close this painful interview in the way it is sure to close. I am at your service, at any hour and place you please.”
“And pray is that all the answer you can think of?” asked Raynal somewhat scornfully.
“Why, what other answer can I give you?”
“A more sensible, a more honest, and a less boyish one. Who doubts that you can fight, you silly fellow? haven’t I seen you? I want you to show me a much higher sort of courage: the courage to repair a wrong, not the paltry valor to defend one.”
“I really do not understand you, sir. How can I undo what is done?”
“Why, of course you cannot. And therefore I stand here ready to forgive all that is past; not without a struggle, which you don’t seem to appreciate.”
Camille was now utterly mystified. Raynal continued, “But of course it is upon condition that you consent to heal the wound you have made. If you refuse—hum! but you will not refuse.”
“But what is it you require of me?” inquired Camille impatiently.
“Only a little common honesty. This is the case: you have seduced a young lady.”
“Sir!” cried Camille angrily.
“What is the matter? The word is not so bad as the crime, I take it. You have seduced her, and under circumstances—But we won’t speak of them, because I am resolved to keep cool. Well, sir, as you said just now, it’s no use crying over spilled milk; you can’t unseduce the little fool; so you must marry her.”
“M—m—marry her?” and Dujardin flushed all over, and his heart beat, and he stared in Raynal’s face.
“Why, what is the matter again? If she has played the fool, it was with you, and no other man: it is not as if she was depraved. Come, my lad, show a little generosity! Take the consequences of your own act—or your share of it—don’t throw it all on the poor feeble woman. If she has loved you too much, you are the man of all others that should forgive her. Come, what do you say?”
This was too much for Camille; that Raynal should come and demand of him to marry his own wife, for so he understood the proposal. He stared at Raynal in silence ever so long, and even when he spoke it was only to mutter, “Are you out of your senses, or am I?”
At this it cost Raynal a considerable effort to restrain his wrath. However, he showed himself worthy of the office he had undertaken. He contained himself, and submitted to argue the matter. “Why, colonel,” said he, “is it such a misfortune to marry poor Rose? She is young, she is lovely, she has many good qualities, and she would have walked straight to the end of her days but for you.”
Now here was another surprise for Dujardin, another mystification.
“Rose de Beaurepaire?” said he, putting his hand to his head, as if to see whether his reason was still there.
“Yes, Rose de Beaurepaire—Rose Dujardin that ought to be, and that is to be, if you please.”
“One word, monsieur: is it of Rose we have been talking all this time?”
Raynal nearly lost his temper at this question, and the cold, contemptuous tone with which it was put; but he gulped down his ire.
“It is,” said he.
“One question more. Did she tell you I had—I had”—
“Why, as to that, she was in no condition to deny she had fallen, poor girl; the evidence was too strong. She did not reveal her seducer’s name; but I had not far to go for that.”
“One question more,” said Dujardin, with a face of anguish. “Is it Jos—is it Madame Raynal’s wish I should marry her sister?”
“Why, of course,” said Raynal, in all sincerity, assuming that naturally enough as a matter of course; “if you have any respect for HER feelings, look on me as her envoy in this matter.”
At this Camille turned sick with disgust; then rage and bitterness swelled his heart. A furious impulse seized him to expose Josephine on the spot. He overcame that, however, and merely said, “She wishes me to marry her sister, does she? very well then, I decline.”
Raynal was shocked. “Oh,” said he, sorrowfully, “I cannot believe this of you; such heartlessness as this is not written in your face; it is contradicted by your past actions.”
“I refuse,” said Dujardin, hastily; and to tell the truth, not sorry to inflict some pain on the honest soldier who had unintentionally driven the iron so deep into his own soul.
“And I,” said Raynal, losing his temper, “insist, in the name of my dear Josephine”—
“Perdition!” snarled Dujardin, losing his self-command in turn.
“And of the whole family.”
“And I tell you I will never marry her. Upon my honor, never.”
“Your honor! you have none. The only question is would you rather marry her—or die.”
“Die, to be sure.”
“Then die you shall.”
“Ah!” said Dujardin; “did I not tell you we were wasting time?
“Let us waste no more then. WHEN and WHERE?”
“At the rear of the commander-in-chief’s tent; when you like.”
“This afternoon, then—at five.”
“At five.”
“Seconds?”
“What for?”
“You are right. They are only in the way of men who carry sabres; and besides the less gossip the better. Good-by, till five,” and the two saluted one another with grim ceremony; and Raynal turned on his heel.
Camille stood transfixed; a fierce, guilty joy throbbed in his heart. His rival had quarrelled with him, had insulted him, had challenged him. It was not his fault. The sun shone bright now upon his cold despair. An hour ago life offered nothing. A few hours more, and then joy beyond expression, or an end of all. Death or Josephine! Then he remembered that this very Josephine wished to marry him to Rose. Then he remembered Raynal had saved his life. Cold chills crossed his breaking heart. Of all that could happen to him death alone seemed a blessing without alloy.
He stood there so torn with conflicting passions, that he noted neither the passing hours nor the flying bullets.
He was only awakened from his miserable trance by the even tread of soldiers marching towards him; he looked up and there were several officers coming along the edge of the trench, escorted by a corporal’s guard.
He took a step or two to meet them. After the usual salutes, one of the three colonels delivered a large paper, with a large seal, to Dujardin. He read it out to his captains and lieutenants, who had assembled at sight of the cocked hats and full uniforms.
“Attack by the army to-morrow upon all the lines. Attack of the bastion St. Andre this evening. The 22d, the 24th, and 12th brigades will furnish the contingents; the operation will be conducted by one of the colonels of the second division, to be appointed by General Raimbaut.”
“Aha!” sounded a voice like a trombone at the reader’s elbow. “I am just in the nick of time. When, colonel, when?”
“At five this evening, Colonel Raynal.”
“There,” said Raynal, in a half-whisper, to Dujardin; “could they choose no hour but that?”
“Do not be uneasy,” replied Dujardin, under his breath. He explained aloud—“the assault will not take place, gentlemen; the bastion is mined.”
“What of that? half of them are mined. We will take our engineers in with us,” said Raynal.
“Such an assault will be a useless massacre,” resumed Dujardin. “I reconnoitred the bastion last night, and saw their preparations for blowing us to the devil; and General Raimbaut, at my request, is even now presenting my remarks to the commander-in-chief, and enforcing them. There will be no assault. In a day or two we shall blow the bastion, mines, and all into the air.”
At this moment Raynal caught sight of a gray-haired officer coming at some distance. “There IS General Raimbaut,” said he. “I will go and pay my respects to him.” General Raimbaut shook his hand warmly, and welcomed him to the army. They were old and warm friends. “And you are come at the right time,” said he. “It will soon be as hot here as in Egypt.”
Raynal laughed and said all the better.
General Raimbaut now joined the group of officers, and entered at once in the business which had brought him. Addressing himself to Colonel Dujardin, first he informs that officer he had presented his observations to the commander-in-chief, who had given them the attention they merited.
Colonel Dujardin bowed.
“But,” continued General Raimbaut, “they are overruled by imperious circumstances, some of which he did not reveal; they remain in his own breast. However, on the eve of a general attack, which he cannot postpone, that bastion must be disarmed, otherwise it would be too fatal to all the storming parties. It is a painful necessity.” He added, “Tell Colonel Dujardin I count greatly on the courage and discipline of his brigade, and on his own wise measures.”
Colonel Dujardin bowed. Then he whispered in the other’s ear, “Both will alike be wasted.”
The other colonels waved their hats in triumph at the commander-in-chief’s decision, and Raynal’s face showed he looked on Dujardin as a sort of spoil-sport happily defeated.
“Well, then, gentlemen,” said General Raimbaut, “we begin by settling the contingents to be furnished by your several brigades. Say, an equal number from each. The sum total shall be settled by Colonel Dujardin, who has so long and ably baffled the bastion at this post.”
Colonel Dujardin bowed stiffly and not very graciously. In his heart he despised these old fogies, compounds of timidity and rashness.
“So, how many men in all, colonel?” asked General Raimbaut.
“The fewer the better,” replied the other solemnly, “since”—and then discipline tied his tongue.
“I understand you,” said the old man. “Shall we say eight hundred men?”
“I should prefer three hundred. They have made a back door to the bastion, and the means of flight at hand will put flight into their heads. They will pick off some of our men as we go at them. When the rest jump in they will jump out, and”—He paused.
“Why, he knows all about it before it comes,” said one of the colonels naively.
“I do. I see the whole operation and its result before me, as I see this hand. Three hundred men will do.”
“But, general,” objected Raynal, “you are not beginning at the beginning. The first thing in these cases is to choose the officer to command the storming party.”
“Yes, Raynal, unquestionably; but you must be aware that is a painful and embarrassing part of my duty, especially after Colonel Dujardin’s remarks.”
“Ah, bah!” cried Raynal. “He is prejudiced. He has been digging a thundering long mine here, and now you are going to make his child useless. We none of us like that. But when he gets the colors in his hand, and the storming column at his back, his misgivings will all go to the wind, and the enemy after them, unless he has been committing some crime, and is very much changed from what I knew him four years ago.”
“Colonel Raynal,” said one of the other colonels, politely but firmly, “pray do not assume that Colonel Dujardin is to lead the column; there are three other claimants. General Raimbaut is to select from us four.”
“Yes, gentlemen, and in a service of this kind I would feel grateful to you all if you would relieve me of that painful duty.”
“Gentlemen,” said Dujardin, with an imperceptible sneer, “the general means to say this: the operation is so glorious that he could hardly without partiality assign the command to either of us four claimants. Well, then, let us cast lots.”
The proposal was received by acclamation.
“The general will mark a black cross on one lot, and he who draws it wins the command.”
The young colonels prepared their lots with almost boyish eagerness. These fiery spirits were sick to death of lying and skulking in the trenches. They flung their lots into the hat. After them, who should approach the hat, lot in hand, but Raynal. Dujardin instantly interfered, and held his arm as he was in the act of dropping in his lot.
“What is the matter?” said Raynal, sharply.
“This is our affair, Colonel Raynal. You have no command in this army.”
“I beg your pardon, sir, I have yours.”
“Not till to-morrow.”
“Why, you would not take such a pettifogging advantage of an old comrade as that.”
“Tell him the day ends at twelve o’clock,” said one of the colonels interested by this strange strife.
“Ah!” cried Raynal, triumphantly; “but no,” said he, altering his tone, “let us leave that sort of argument to lawyers. I have come a good many miles to fight with you, general; and now you must decide to pay me this little compliment on my arrival, or put a bitter affront on me—choose!”
While the old general hesitated, Camille replied, “Since you take that tone there can be but one answer. You are too great a credit to the French army for even an apparent slight to be put on you here. The rule, I think, is, that one of the privates shall hold the hat.—Hallo! Private Dard, come here—there—hold this hat.”
“Yes, colonel.—Lord, here is my young mistress’s husband!”
“Silence!”
And they began to draw, and, in the act of drawing, a change of manner was first visible in these gay and ardent spirits.
“It is not I,” said one, throwing away his lot.
“Nor I.”
“It is I,” said Raynal; then with sudden gravity, “I am the lucky one.”
And now that the honor and the danger no longer floated vaguely over four heads, but had fixed on one, a sudden silence and solemnity took the place of eager voices.
It was first broken by Private Dard saying, with foolish triumph, “And I held the hat for you, colonel.”
“Ah, Raynal!” said General Raimbaut, sorrowfully, “it was not worth while to come from Egypt for this.”
Raynal made no reply to this. He drew out his watch, and said calmly, he had no time to lose; he must inspect the detachments he was to command. “Besides,” said he, “I have some domestic arrangements to make. Hitherto on these occasions I was a bachelor, now I am married.” General Raimbaut could not help sighing. Raynal read this aright, and turned to him, “A droll marriage, my old friend; I’ll tell you all about it if ever I have the time. It began with a purchase, general, and ends with—with a bequest, which I might as well write now, and so have nothing to think of but duty afterwards. Where can I write?”
“Colonel Dujardin will lend you his tent, I am sure.”
“Certainly.”
“And, messieurs,” said Raynal, “if I waste time you need not. You can pick me my men from your brigades. Give me a strong spice of old hands.”
The colonels withdrew on this, and General Raimbaut walked sadly and thoughtfully towards the battery. Dujardin and Raynal were left alone.
“This postpones our affair, sir.”
“Yes, Raynal.”
“Have you writing materials in your tent?”
“Yes; on the table.”
“You are quite sure the bastion is mined, comrade?”
This unexpected word and Raynal’s gentle appeal touched Dujardin deeply. It was in a broken voice he replied that he was unfortunately too sure of it.
Raynal received this reply as a sentence of death, and without another word walked slowly into Dujardin’s tent.
Dujardin’s generosity was up in arms; he followed Raynal, and said eagerly, “Raynal, for Heaven’s sake resign this command!”
“Allow me to write to my wife, colonel,” was the cold reply.
Camille winced at this affront, and drew back a moment; but his nobler part prevailed. He seized Raynal by the wrist. “You shall not affront me, you cannot affront me. You go to certain death I tell you, if you attack that bastion.”
“Don’t be a fool, colonel,” said Raynal: “somebody must lead the men.”
“Yes; but not you. Who has so good a right to lead them as I, their colonel?”
“And be killed in my place, eh?”
“I know the ground better than you,” said Camille. “Besides, who cares for me? I have no friends, no family. But you are married—and so many will mourn if you”—
Raynal interrupted him sternly. “You forget, sir, that Rose de Beaurepaire is my sister, when you tell me you have no tie to life.” He added, with wonderful dignity and sobriety, “Allow me to write to my wife, sir; and, while I write, reflect that you can embitter an old comrade’s last moments by persisting in your refusal to restore his sister the honor you have robbed her of.”
And leaving the other staggered and confused by this sudden blow, he retired into Dujardin’s tent, and finding writing materials on a little table that was there, sat down to pen a line to Josephine.
Camille knew to whom he was writing, and a jealous pang passed through him.
What he wrote ran thus,—
“A bastion is to be attacked at five. I command. Colonel Dujardin proposed we should draw lots, and I lost. The service is honorable, but the result may, I fear, give you some pain. My dear wife, it is our fate. I was not to have time to make you know, and perhaps love me. God bless you.”
In writing these simple words, Raynal’s hard face worked, and his mustache quivered, and once he had to clear his eye with his hand to form the letters. He, the man of iron.
He who stood there, leaning on his scabbard and watching the writer, saw this, and it stirred all that was great and good in that grand though passionate heart of his.
“Poor Raynal!” thought he, “you were never like that before on going into action. He is loath to die. Ay, and it is a coward’s trick to let him die. I shall have her, but shall I have her esteem? What will the army say? What will my conscience say? Oh! I feel already it will gnaw my heart to death; the ghost of that brave fellow—once my dear friend, my rival now, by no fault of his—will rise between her and me, and reproach me with my bloody inheritance. The heart never deceives; I feel it now whispering in my ear: ‘Skulking captain, white-livered soldier, that stand behind a parapet while a better man does your work! you assassinate the husband, but the rival conquers you.’ There, he puts his hand to his eyes. What shall I do?”
“Colonel,” said a low voice, and at the same time a hand was laid on his shoulder.
It was General Raimbaut. The general looked pale and distressed.
“Come apart, colonel, for Heaven’s sake! One word, while he is writing. Ah! that was an unlucky idea of yours.”
“Of mine, general?”
“‘Twas you proposed to cast lots.”
“Good God! so it was.”
“I thought of course it was to be managed so that Raynal should not be the one. Between ourselves, what honorable excuse can we make?”
“None, general.”
“The whole division will be disgraced, and forgive me if I say a portion of the discredit will fall on you.”
“Help me to avert that shame then,” cried Camille, eagerly.
“Ah! that I will: but how?”
“Take your pencil and write—‘I authorize Colonel Dujardin to save the honor of the colonels of the second division.’”
The general hesitated. He had never seen an order so worded. But at last he took out his pencil and wrote the required order, after his own fashion; i.e., in milk and water:—
On account of the singular ability and courage with which Colonel Dujardin has conducted the operations against the Bastion St. Andre, a discretionary power is given him at the moment of assault to carry into effect such measures, as, without interfering with the commander-in-chief’s order, may sustain his own credit, and that of the other colonels of the second division.
RAIMBAUT, General of Division.
Camille put the paper into his bosom.
“Now, general, you may leave all to me. I swear to you, Raynal shall not die—shall not lead this assault.”
“Your hand, colonel. You are an honor to the French armies. How will you do it?”
“Leave it to me, general, it shall be done.”
“I feel it will, my noble fellow: but, alas! I fear not without risking some valuable life or other, most likely your own. Tell me!”
“General, I decline.”
“You refuse me, sir?”
“Yes; this order gives me a discretionary power. I will hand back the order at your command; but modify it I will not. Come, sir, you veteran generals have been unjust to me, and listened to me too little all through this siege, but at last you have honored me. This order is the greatest honor that was ever done me since I wore a sword.”.
“My poor colonel!”
“Let me wear it intact, and carry it to my grave.”
“Say no more! One word—Is there anything on earth I can do for you, my brave soldier?”
“Yes, general. Be so kind as to retire to your quarters; there are reasons why you ought not to be near this post in half an hour.”
“I go. Is there NOTHING else?”
“Well, general, ask the good priest Ambrose, to pray for all those who shall die doing their duty to their country this afternoon.”
They parted. General Raimbaut looked back more than once at the firm, intrepid figure that stood there unflinching, on the edge of the grave. But HE never took his eye off Raynal. The next minute the sad letter was finished, and Raynal walked out of the tent, and confronted the man he had challenged to single combat.
I have mentioned elsewhere that Colonel Dujardin had eyes strangely compounded of battle and love, of the dove and the hawk. And these, softened by a noble act he meditated, now rested on Raynal with a strange expression of warmth and goodness. This strange gaze struck Raynal, so far at least as this; he saw it was no hostile eye. He was glad of that, for his own heart was calmed and softened by the solemn prospect before him.
“We, too, have a little account to settle before I order out the men,” said he, calmly, “and I can’t give you a long credit. I am pressed for time.”
“Our quarrel is at an end. When duty sounds the recall, a soldier’s heart leaves private feuds. See! I come to you without anger and ill-will. Just now my voice was loud, my manner, I dare say, offensive, and menacing even, and that always tempts a brave fellow like you to resist. But now, you see, I am harmless as a woman. We are alone. Humbug to the winds! I know that you are the only man in this army fit to command a division. I know that when you say the assault of that bastion is death, death it is. To the point then; now that my manner is no longer irritating, now that I am going to die, Camille Dujardin, my old comrade, have you the heart to refuse me? am I to die unhappy?”
“No; no: I will do whatever you like.”
“You will marry that poor girl, then?”
“Yes.”
“Aha! did not I always say he was a good fellow? Clench the nail; give me your honor.”
“I give you my honor to marry her, if I live.”
“You take a load off me; may Heaven reward you. In one hour those poor women, whose support I had promised to be, will lose their protector; but I give them another in you. We shall not leave that family in tears, Rose in shame, and your child without a name.”
Dujardin stared at the speaker. What new and devilish deception was this?
“My child!” he faltered. “What child?”
“Ah,” said Raynal, “what a fool I was! That is the first thing I ought to have told you. Poor little fellow! I surprised him in his cradle; his mother and Josephine were rocking him, and singing over him. Oh! it was a scene, I can tell you. My poor wife had been ill for some time, and was so weakened by it, that I frightened her into a fit, stealing a march on her that way. She fainted away. Perhaps it is as well she did; for I—I did not know what to think; it looked ugly; but while she lay at our feet insensible, I forced the truth from Rose; she owned the boy was hers.”
While Raynal told him this strange story, Camille turned hot and cold. First came a thrill of glowing joy; he had some clew to all this: he was a father; that child was Josephine’s and his; the next moment he froze within. So Josephine had not only gulled her husband, but him, too; she had refused him the sad consolation of knowing he had a child. Cruelty, calculation, and baseness unexampled! Here was a creature who could sacrifice anything and anybody to her comfort, to the peace and sordid smoothness of her domestic life. She stood between two men—a thing. Between two truths—a double lie.
His heart, in one moment, turned against her like a stone. A musket-bullet through the body does not turn life to death quicker than Raynal turned his rival’s love to despair and scorn: that love which neither wounds, absence, prison, nor even her want of constancy had prevailed to shake.
“Out of my bosom!” he cried—“out of it, in this world and the next!”
He forgot, in his lofty rage, who stood beside him.
“What?—what?” cried Raynal.
“No matter,” said Camille; “only I esteem YOU, Raynal. You are truth; you are a man, and deserve a better lot.”
“Don’t say that,” replied Raynal, quite misunderstanding him. “It is a soldier’s end: I never desired nor hoped a better: only, of course, I feel sad. You are a happy fellow, to have a child and to live to see it, and her you love.”
“Oh, yes, I am very happy,” replied the poor fellow, his lip quivering.
“Watch over all those poor women, comrade, and sometimes speak to them of me. It is foolish, but we like to be remembered.”
“Yes! but do not let us speak of that. Raynal, you and I were lieutenants together; do you remember saving my life in the Arno?”
“Yes.”
“Then promise me, if you should live, to remember not our quarrel of to-day, nor anything; but only those early days, AND THIS AFTERNOON.”
“I do.”
“Your hand, comrade.”
“There, comrade, there.”
They wrung one another’s hands, and turned away and hid their faces from each other, for their eyes were moist.
“This won’t do, comrade, I must go. I shall attack from your position. So I shall go down the line, and bring the men up. Meantime, pick me your detachment. Give me a good spice of veterans. I shall get one word with you before we go out. God bless you!”
“God bless you, Raynal!”
The moment Raynal was gone, Camille beckoned a lieutenant to him, and ordered half the brigade to form in a strong column on both sides Death’s Alley.
His eye fell upon private Dard, as luck would have it. “Come here,” said he. Dard came and saluted.
“Have you anybody at Beaurepaire that would be sorry if you were killed?”
“Yes, colonel! Jacintha, that used to make your broth, colonel.”
“Take this line to Colonel Raynal. You will find him with the 12th brigade.”
He wrote a few lines in pencil, folded them, and Dard went off with them, little dreaming that the colonel of his brigade was taking the trouble to save his life, because he came from Beaurepaire. Colonel Dujardin then went into his tent, and closed the aperture, and took the good book the priest had given him, and prayed humbly, and forgave all the world.
Then he sat down, his head in his hands, and thought of his child, and how hard it was he must die and never see him. Then he lighted a candle, and sealed up his orders of valor, and wrote a line, begging that they might be sent to his sister. He also sealed up his purse, and left a memorandum that the contents should be given to disabled soldiers of his brigade upon their being invalided.
Then he took out Josephine’s letter. “Poor coward,” he said, “let me not be unkind. See, I burn your letter, lest it should be found, and disturb the peace you prize so highly. I, too, shall soon be at peace.” He lighted the letter, and dropped it on the ground: it burned slowly away. He eyed it, despairingly. “Ay,” said he, “you perish, last record of an unhappy love: and even so pass away my life; my hopes of glory, and my dreams of love; it all ends to-day: at nine and twenty.”
He put his white handkerchief to his eyes. Josephine had given it him. He cried a little.
When he had done crying, he put his white handkerchief in his bosom, and the whole man was transformed beyond language to express. Powder does not change more when it catches fire. He rose that moment and went like a flash of lightning out of the tent. The next, he came down between the lines of the strong column that stood awaiting orders in Death’s Alley.
“Attention!” cried the sergeants; “the colonel!”
There was a dead silence, for the bare sight of that erect and inspired figure made the men’s bosoms thrill with the certainty of great deeds to come: the light of battle was in his eye. No longer the moody colonel, but a thunderbolt of war, red-hot, and waiting to be launched.
“Officers, sergeants, soldiers, a word with you!”
La Croix. Attention!
“Do you know what passed here five minutes ago?”
“The attack of the bastion was settled!” cried a captain.
“It was; and who was to lead the assault? do you know that?”
“No.”
“A colonel FROM EGYPT.”
At that there was a groan from the men.
“With detachments from the other brigades.”
“AH!” an angry roar.
Colonel Dujardin walked quickly down between the two lines, looking with his fiery eye into the men’s eyes on his right. Then he came back on the other side, and, as he went, he lighted those men’s eyes with his own. It was a torch passing along a line of ready gas-lights.
“The work to us!” he cried in a voice like a clarion (it fired the hearts as his eye had fired the eyes)—“The triumph to strangers! Our fatigues and our losses have not gained the brigade the honor of going out at those fellows that have killed so many of our comrades.”
A fierce groan broke from the men.
“What! shall the colors of another brigade and not ours fly from that bastion this afternoon?”
“No! no!” in a roar like thunder.
“Ah! you are of my mind. Attention! the attack is fixed for five o’clock. Suppose you and I were to carry the bastion ten minutes before the colonel from Egypt can bring his men upon the ground.”
At this there was a fierce burst of joy and laughter; the strange laughter of veterans and born invincibles. Then a yell of exulting assent, accompanied by the thunder of impatient drums, and the rattle of fixing bayonets.
The colonel told off a party to the battery.
“Level the guns at the top tier. Fire at my signal, and keep firing over our heads, till you see our colors on the place.”
He then darted to the head of the column, which instantly formed behind him in the centre of Death’s Alley.
“The colors! No hand but mine shall hold them to-day.”
They were instantly brought him: his left hand shook them free in the afternoon sun.
A deep murmur of joy rolled out from the old hands at the now unwonted sight. Out flashed the colonel’s sword like steel lightning. He pointed to the battery.
Bang! bang! bang! bang! went his cannon, and the smoke rolled over the trenches. At the same moment up went the colors waving, and the colonel’s clarion voice pealed high above all:—
“Twenty-fourth brigade—FORWARD!”
They went so swiftly out of the trenches that they were not seen through their own smoke until they had run some sixty yards. As soon as they were seen, coming on like devils through their own smoke, two thousand muskets were levelled at them from the Prussian line. It was not a rattle of small arms—it was a crash, and the men fell fast: but in a moment they were seen to spread out like a fan, and to offer less mark, and when the fan closed again, it half encircled the bastion. It was a French attack: part swarmed at it in front like bees, part swept round the glacis and flanked it. They were seen to fall in numbers, shot down from the embrasures. But the living took the place of the dead: and the fight ranged evenly there. Where are the colors? Towards the rear there. The colonel and a hundred men are fighting hand to hand with the Prussians, who have charged out at the back doors of the bastion. Success there, and the bastion must fall—both sides know this.
The colors disappeared. There was a groan from the French lines. The colors reappeared, and close under the bastion.
And now in front the attack was so hot, that often the Prussian gunners were seen to jump down, driven from their posts; and the next moment a fierce hurrah from the rear told that the French had won some great advantage there. The fire slackening told a similar tale and presently down came the Prussian flag-staff. That might be an accident. A few moments of thirsting expectation, and up went the colors of the 24th brigade upon the Bastion St. Andre.
The French army raised a shout that rent the sky, and their cannon began to play on the Prussian lines and between the bastion and the nearest fort, to prevent a recapture.
Sudden there shot from the bastion a cubic acre of fire: it carried up a heavy mountain of red and black smoke that looked solid as marble. There was a heavy, sullen, tremendous explosion that snuffed out the sound of the cannon, and paralyzed the French and Prussian gunners’ hands, and checked the very beating of their hearts. Thirty thousand pounds of gunpowder were in that awful explosion. War itself held its breath, and both armies, like peaceable spectators, gazed wonder-struck, terror-struck. Great hell seemed to burst through the earth’s crust, and to be rushing at heaven. Huge stones, cannons, corpses, and limbs of soldiers, were seen driven or falling through the smoke. Some of these last came quite clear of the ruins, ay, into the French and Prussian lines, that even the veterans put their hands to their eyes. Raynal felt something patter on him from the sky—it was blood—a comrade’s perhaps.
The smoke cleared. Where, a moment before, the great bastion stood and fought, was a monstrous pile of blackened, bloody stones and timbers, with dismounted cannon sticking up here and there.
And, rent and crushed to atoms beneath the smoking mass, lay the relics of the gallant brigade, and their victorious colors.