Chapter XXI (2)

“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.