Kitabı oku: «Jack Hinton: The Guardsman», sayfa 36
Amid the wildest cries of rejoicing and frantic demonstrations of gratitude from the crowd, the regiment moved on to the little square of the village. Here the billets were speedily arranged; the men betook themselves to their quarters, the officers broke into small parties, and O’Grady and myself retired to the inn, where, having dined tête-à-tête, we began the interchange of our various adventures since we parted.
CHAPTER LV. THE FOUR-IN-HAND
My old friend, save in the deeper brown upon his cheek and some scars from French sabres, was nothing altered from the hour in which we parted; the same bold, generous temperament, the same blending of recklessness and deep feeling, the wild spirit of adventure, and the gentle tenderness of a child were all mixed up in his complex nature, for he was every inch an Irishman. While the breast of his uniform glittered with many a cross and decoration, he scarcely ever alluded to his own feats in the campaign; nor did he more than passingly mention the actions where his own conduct had been most conspicuous. Indeed, there was a reserve in his whole manner while speaking of the Peninsular battles which I soon discovered proceeded from delicacy towards me, knowing how little I had seen of service owing to my imprisonment, and fearing lest in the detail of the glorious career of our armies he might be inflicting fresh wounds on one whose fortune forbade him to share in it. He often asked me about my father, and seemed to feel deeply the kindness he had received from him when in London. Of my mother, too, he sometimes spoke, but never even alluded to Lady Julia; and when once I spoke of her as the protector of Corny, he fidgeted for a second or two, seemed uneasy and uncomfortable, and gave me the impression that he felt sorry to be reduced to accept a favour for his servant, where he himself had been treated with coldness and distance.
Apart from this – and it was a topic we mutually avoided – O’Grady’s spirits were as high as ever. Mixing much with the officers of his corps, he was actually beloved by them. He joined in all their schemes of pleasure and amusement with the zest of his own buoyant nature; and the youngest cornet in the regiment felt himself the Colonel’s inferior in the gaiety of the mess as much as at the head of the squadrons.
At the end of a few days I received from Paris the papers necessary to relieve me from the restraint of my parole, and was concerting with O’Grady the steps necessary to be taken to resume my rank in the service, when an incident occurred which altered all our plans for the moment, and, by one of those strange casualties which so often occur in life, gave a new current to my own fate for ever.
I should mention here, that, amid all the rejoicings which ushered in the restoration, amid all the flattery by which the allied armies were received, one portion of the royalists maintained a dogged, ungenial spirit towards the men by whom their cause was rendered victorious, and never forgave them the honour of reviving a dynasty to which they themselves had contributed nothing. These were the old militaires of Louis xviii. – the men who, too proud or too good-for-nothing to accept service under the Emperor, had lain dormant during the glorious career of the French armies, and who now, in their hour of defeat and adversity, started into life as the representatives of the military genius of the country. These men, I say, hated the English with a vindictive animosity which the old Napoleonists could not equal. Without the generous rivalry of an open foe, they felt themselves humbled by comparison with the soldiers whose weather-beaten faces and shattered limbs bore token of a hundred battles, and for the very cause, too, for which they themselves were the most interested. This ungenerous spirit found vent for itself in a thousand petty annoyances, which were practised upon our troops in every town and village of the north of France; and every officer whose billet consigned him to the house of a royalist soldier would gladly have exchanged his quarters for the companionship of the most inveterate follower of Napoleon. To an instance of what I have mentioned was owing the incident which I am about to relate.
To relieve the ennui of a French village, the officers of the Eighteenth had, with wonderful expenditure of skill and labour, succeeded in getting up a four-in-hand drag, which, to the astonishment and wonder of the natives, was seen daily wending its course through the devious alleys and narrow streets of the little town, the roof covered with dashing dragoons, whose laughing faces and loud-sounding bugles were all deemed so many direct insults by the ill-conditioned section I have mentioned. The unequivocal evidences of dislike they exhibited to this dashing ‘turn-out’ formed, I believe, one of its great attractions to the Eighteenth, who never omitted an occasion, whatever the state of the weather, to issue forth every day, with all the noise and uproar they could muster.
At last, however, the old commissaire de police, whose indignation at the proceeding knew no bounds, devised an admirable expedient for annoying our fellows – one which, supported as it was by the law of the country, there was no possibility of evading. This was to demand the passport of every officer who passed the barrière, thus necessitating him to get down from the roof of the coach, present his papers, and have them carefully conned and scrutinised, their visés looked into, and all sorts of questions propounded.
When it is understood that the only drive led through one or other of these barriers, it may be imagined how provoking and vexatious such a course of proceeding became. Representations were made to the mayor ever and anon, explaining that the passports once produced no further inconvenience should be incurred; but all to no purpose. Any one who knows France will acknowledge how totally inadequate a common-sense argument is in the decision of a question before a government functionary. The mayor, too, was a royalist, and the matter was decided against us.
Argument and reason having failed, the gallant Eighteenth came to the resolution to try force; and accordingly it was decided that next morning we should charge the barrière in full gallop, as it was rightly conjectured that no French employé would feel disposed to encounter the rush of a four-in-hand, even with the law on his side. To render the coup de main more brilliant, and perhaps, too, to give an air of plausibility to the infraction, four dashing thoroughbred light chestnuts – two of the number having never felt a collar in their lives – were harnessed for the occasion. A strong force of the wildest spirits of the regiment took their places on the roof; and amid a cheer that actually made the street ring, and a tantarara from the trumpets, the equipage dashed through the town, the leaders bounding with the swingle-bars every moment over their backs. Away we went, the populace flying in terror on every side, and every eye turned towards the barrière, where the dignified official stood, in the calm repose of his station, as if daring us to transgress his frontier. Already had he stepped forward with his accustomed question. The words, ‘Messieurs, je vous demande,’ had just escaped his lips, when he had barely time to spring into his den as the furious leaders tore past, the pavement crashing beneath their hoofs, and shouts of laughter mingling with the uproar.
Having driven for a league or so at a slow pace, to breathe our cattle, we turned homewards, rejoicing in the success of our scheme, which had fully satisfied our expectations. What was our chagrin, however, as we neared the barrière, to discover that a strong force of mounted gendarmes stopped the way, their drawn sabres giving us plainly to understand the fate that awaited our horses if we persisted in our plan! What was to be done? To force a passage under the circumstances was only to give an opportunity to the gendarmerie they were long anxious for, to cut our whole equipage in pieces. To yield was the only alternative; but what an alternative! – to be laughed at by the whole town on the very day of our victory!
‘I have it!’ said O’Grady, who sat on the box beside the driver – ‘I have it, lads! Pull up when they tell you, and do as they direct.’
With some difficulty the four dashing nags were reined in as we came up to the barrière; and the commissaire, bursting with passion, appeared at the door of the lodge, and directed us to get down.
‘Your passports will avail little on the present occasion,’ said he insolently, as we produced our papers. ‘Your carriage and horses are confiscated. St. Omer has now privilege as a fortified town. The fortresses of France enforce a penalty of forty thousand francs – ’
A burst of laughter from the bystanders at our rueful faces prevented us hearing the remainder of the explanation. Meanwhile, to our horror and disgust, some half-dozen gendarmes, with their long caps and heavy boots, were crawling up the sides of the drag, and taking their seats upon the top. Some crept into the interior, and showed their grinning faces at the windows; others mounted into the rumble; and two more aspiring spirits ascended to the box, by one of whom O’Grady was rudely ordered to get down, a summons enforced by the commissaire himself in a tone of considerable insolence. O’Grady’s face for a minute or two seemed working with a secret impulse of fun and devilment which I could not account for at such a moment, as he asked, in a voice of much humility —
‘Does Monsieur the Commissaire require me to come down?’
‘Instantly,’ roared the Frenchman, whose passion was now boiling over.
‘In that case, gentlemen, take charge of the team.’ So saying, he handed the reins to the passive gendarmes, who took them, without well knowing why. ‘I have only a piece of advice,’ continued Phil, as he slowly descended the side – ‘keep a steady hand on the near-side leader, and don’t let the bar strike her; and now, good-bye.’
He flourished his four-in-hand whip as he spoke, and with one tremendous cut came down on the team, from leader to wheeler, accompanying the stroke with a yell there was no mistaking. The heavy carriage bounded from the earth as the infuriated cattle broke away at full gallop. A narrow street and a sharp angle lay straight in front; but few of those on the drag waited for the turn, as at every step some bearskin shako shot into the air, followed by a tall figure, whose heavy boots seemed ill-adapted for flying in. The corporal himself had abandoned the reins, and held on manfully by the rail of the box. On every side they fell, in every attitude of distress. But already the leaders had reached the corner; round went the swingle-bars, the wheelers followed, the coach rocked to one side, sprang clean off the pavement, came down with a crash, and then fell right over, while the maddened horses, breaking away, dashed through the town, the harness in fragments behind them, and the pavement flying at every step.
The immediate consequences of this affair were some severe bruises, and no small discouragement to the gendarmerie of St. Omer; the remoter ones, an appeal from the municipal authorities to the Commander-in-chief, by whom the matter was referred for examination to the Adjutant-General. O’Grady was accordingly summoned to Paris to explain, if he could, his conduct in the matter. The order for his appearance there came down at once, and I, having nothing to detain me at St. Omer, resolved to accompany my friend for a few days at least, before I returned to England. Our arrangements were easily made; and the same night we received the Adjutant-General’s letter we started by post for Paris.
CHAPTER LVI. ST. DENIS
We were both suddenly awakened from a sound sleep in the calèche by the loud cracking of the postillion’s whip, the sounds of street noises, and the increased rattle of the wheels over the unequal pavement. We started up just as, turning round in his saddle and pointing with his long whip to either side of him, the fellow called out —
‘Paris, Messieurs, Paris! This is Faubourg St. Denis; there before you lies the Rue St. Denis. Sacristi! the streets are as crowded as at noonday.’
By this time we had rubbed the sleep from our eyelids and looked about us, and truly the scene before us was one to excite all our astonishment. The Quartier St. Denis was then in the occupation of the Austrian troops, who were not only billeted in the houses, but bivouacked in the open streets – their horses picketed in long files along the pavé, the men asleep around their watch-fires, or burnishing arms and accoutrements beside them. The white-clad cuirassier from the Danube, the active and sinewy Hungarian, the tall and swarthy Croat were all there, mixed up among groups of peasant girls coming in to market with fowls and eggs. Carts of forage and waggons full of all manner of provisions were surrounded by groups of soldiers and country-people, trading amicably with one another as though the circumstances which had brought them together were among the ordinary events of commerce.
Threading our way slowly through these, we came upon the Jager encampment, their dark-green uniform and brown carbines giving that air of sombre to their appearance so striking after the steel-clad cuirassier and the bright helmets of the dragoons. Farther on, around a fountain, were a body of dismounted dragoons, their tall colbacks and scarlet trousers bespeaking them Polish lancers; their small but beautifully formed white horses pawed the ground, and splashed the water round them, till the dust and foam rose high above them. But the strangest of all were the tall, gigantic figures, who, stretched alongside of their horses, slept in the very middle of the wide street. Lifting their heads lazily for a moment, they gazed on us as we passed, and then lay down again to sleep. Their red beards hung in masses far down upon their breasts, and their loose trousers of a reddish dye but half concealed boots of undressed skin. Their tall lances were piled around them; but these were not wanting to prove that the savage, fierce-looking figures before us were the Cossacks of the Don, thus come for many a hundred mile to avenge the slaughter of Borodino and the burning of Moscow. As we penetrated farther into the city, the mixture of nation and costume became still more remarkable. The erect and soldierlike figure of the Prussian; the loose, wild-eyed Tartar; the brown-clad Russian, with russet beard and curved sabre; the stalwart Highlander, with nodding plume and waving tartan; the Bashkir, with naked scimitar; the gorgeous hussar of Hungary; the tall and manly form of the English guardsman – all passed and repassed before us, adding, by the babel of discordant sound, to the wild confusion of the scene.
It was a strange sight to see the savage soldier from the steppes of Russia, the dark-eyed, heavy-browed Gallician, the yellow-haired Saxon, the rude native of the Caucasus, who had thus given themselves a rendezvous in the very heart of European civilisation, wandering about – now stopping to admire some magnificent palace, now gazing with greedy wonder at the rich display of some jeweller, or the costly and splendid dresses which were exhibited in the shop windows; while here and there were gathered groups of men whose looks of undisguised hate and malignity were bent unceasingly upon the moving mass. Their bourgeois dress could not conceal that they were the old soldiers of the Empire – the men of Wagram, of Austerlitz, of Jena, and of Wilna – who now witnessed within their own capital the awful retribution of their own triumphant aggressions.
As the morning advanced the crowds increased, and as we approached the Place du Carrousel, regiments poured in from every street to the morning parade. Among these the Russian garde– the Bonnets d’or– were conspicuous for the splendour of their costume and the soldierlike precision of their movements, the clash of their brass cymbals and the wild strains of their martial music adding indescribably to their singular appearance. As the infantry drew up in line, we stopped to regard them, when from the Place Louis Quinze the clear notes of a military band rang out a quick step, and the Twenty-eighth British marched in to the air of ‘The Young May Moon.’ O’Grady’s excitement could endure no longer. He jumped up in the calèche, and, waving his hat above his head, gave a cheer that rang through the long corridor beneath the Louvre. The Irish regiment caught up the cry, and a yell as wild as ever rose above the din of battle shook the air. A Cossack picket then cantering up suddenly halted, and, leaning down upon their horses’ manes, seemed to listen; then dashing spurs into their horses’ flanks they made the circuit of the Place at full gallop, while their ‘Hurra!’ burst forth with all the wild vehemence of their savage nature.
‘We shall get into some precious scrape with all this,’ said O’Grady, as, overcome with laughing, he fell back into the calèche.
Such was my own opinion; so telling the postillion to turn short into the next street we hurried away unperceived, and drove with all the speed we could muster for the Rue St. Honoré. The Hôtel de la Paix fortunately had room for us; and ordering our breakfasts we adjourned to dress, each resolving to make the most of his few hours at Paris.
I had just reached the breakfast-room, and was conning over the morning papers, when O’Grady entered in full uniform, his face radiant with pleasure, and the same easy, jaunty swagger in his walk as on the first day I met him.
‘When do you expect to have your audience, Phil?’ said I.
‘I have had it, my boy. It’s all over, finished, completed. Never was anything so successful I talked over the old Adjutant in such a strain, that, instead of dreaming about a court-martial on us, the worthy man is seriously bent on our obtaining compensation for the loss of the drag. He looked somewhat serious as I entered; but when once I made him laugh, the game was my own. I wish you had seen him wiping his dear old eyes as I described the covey of gendarmes taking the air. However, the main point is, the regiment is to be moved up to Paris, the commissaire is to receive a reprimand, our claim for some ten thousand francs is to be considered, and I am to dine with the Adjutant to-day and tell the story after dinner.’
‘Do you know, Phil, I have a theory that an Irishman never begins to prosper but just at the moment that any one else would surely be ruined.’
‘Don’t make a theory of it, Jack, for it may turn out unlucky. But the practice is pretty much what you represent it. Fortune never treats people so well as when they don’t care a fig about her. She’s exactly like a lady patroness – confoundedly impertinent if you’ll bear it, but all smiles if you won’t. Have you ever met Tom Burke – “Burke of Ours,” as they call him, I believe, in half the regiments in the service?’
‘No, never.’
‘Well, the loss is yours. Tom’s a fine fellow in his way; and if you could get him to tell you his story – or rather one of his stories, for his life is a succession of them – perhaps you would find that this same theory of yours has some foundation. Well pick him up one of these days, and I’ll introduce you. But now, Jack, I have a piece of news for you. What do you think of it, my lad? – Lady Charlotte Hinton ‘s at Paris.’
‘My mother here? Is it possible?’
‘Yes. Her ladyship resides No. 4 Place Vendôme, opposite the Hôtel de Londres. There’s accuracy for you.’
‘And who is with her? My father?’
‘No. The General is expected in a few days. Lady Julia, I believe, is her only companion.’
There was a kind of reserve suddenly in O’Grady’s manner as he mentioned this name, which made us both pause for a few seconds. At length he broke the awkwardness of the silence by saying, in his usual laughing way —
‘I contrived to pick up all the gossip of Paris in half an hour. The town is full of English – and such English too! The Cossacks are civilised people, of quiet, retiring habits, compared to them. I verily believe the French are more frightened by our conviviality than ever they were by the bayonets of the Allies. I’m dying to hear your lady-mother’s account of everything here.’
‘What say you, then, if you come along with me? I ‘m becoming very impatient to see my people once more. Julia will, I ‘m certain, be very amusing.’
‘Ah, and I have a debt of gratitude in that quarter,’ said O’Grady hesitatingly. ‘Lady Julia was so very kind as to extend her protection to that old villain Corny. I cannot for the life of me understand how she endured him.’
‘As to that,’ said I, ‘Julia has a taste for character; and not even the Chevalier Delany’s eccentricity would pain her. So let’s forward.’
‘Did I tell you that De Vere is here?’ said O’Grady.
‘No; not with my friends, I trust?’
‘On the contrary, I ascertained that he does not visit at Lady Charlotte’s. He is attached to Lord Cathcart’s embassy; he’s very little in society, and rarely to be seen but at the salon, where he plays tremendously high, loses every night, but reappears each day with a replenished pocket. But I intend to know the secret of all this, and of many other matters, ere long. So now let us proceed.’
