In the extreme eastern corner of the wood, at the very end of the Vendean lines, near a miserable fire, which the rain had half extinguished, a young man was sitting against a tree with the head of another on his knees. The prostrate man was wrapped in what appeared to be part of the hangings of a bed, flowered brown and yellow; he who was sitting up wore what had once been the brilliant uniform of a garde-du-corps, tattered now and faded beyond all recognition. A blood-stained and very dirty rag was tied round his forehead, and his hair fell unkempt about his shoulders; he looked pinched with cold and fatigue, but his eyes were steady. It was Louis de Saint-Ermay. Round the two, clad, some of them, in the most fantastic garments, some merely in their rags, lay all that remained of the three hundred and fifty odd men who, nine months before, had called on the Marquis de Château-Foix to lead them to victory. There were just thirteen.
As he sat there waiting in the fine cold rain, warm only where the weight of the wounded man and a little of his covering lay across his knees, there swept before the Vicomte all the issues of the past four months. Since Gilbert had died in his arms, what a rosary of disasters had been theirs to tell! It had been a chaplet of desperate fighting, the ebb and flow of a bitter tide, a contest fought and refought over every foot of Vendean soil; but the beads, as they slipped in memory through the fingers, spoke only of the gradual quenching of the light of victory, of the appearance of disunion, of their double defeat at La Tremblay and at Cholet in mid-October, with Bonchamps and Lescure mortally wounded, and, as its consequence, the thrice fatal decision to leave their own province and to press on northwards of the Loire. Then that never-to-be-forgotten crossing of the wide river, with the smoke of their burning villages behind them, Bonchamps’ death on the further bank, and Lescure’s, horribly protracted, on the march through Maine. And the march itself, a slow serpent of a column miles in length, hampered with old and wounded, with children and women, the exodus of an entire people, with a young man of one-and-twenty for its leader. Then, when Normandy was reached at last, the abortive attack on the port of Granville, unsuccoured by the aid from England for which they had hoped; and after that, the agonising retreat, marked by combats at every halting-place, with forces dwindling day by day, till the final overthrow at Le Mans, with its whirlwind of slaughter. . . . And as if that were not enough, for those who survived it the scenes on the bank of the Loire, when the remnant attempted to recross the river to die in Vendée and found it impossible for want of boats, when, by a cruel mistake, Stofflet and La Rochejaquelein traversed it with a handful of followers, only to fall, probably, into the hands of the enemy on the other side. Then, their general separated from them for ever and their last hope of safety vanished, the influx of the courage of despair which bade most of them turn to bay and die here, sword in hand.
And from these red visions Louis’ thoughts went still further backwards. Centuries ago he had led a pleasant and irresponsible life in Paris, agreeably gilded by danger and intrigue, but not shot through, like this existence, in every hour, every minute, at every footstep with the need for endurance. Centuries ago he and Gilbert had stood with an Englishman at the parting of the ways at Candé; how well—though distantly—he had remembered it the other day, when they marched through the place. And the peasant whom centuries ago he had watched talking at midnight with Gilbert and La Rouërie he had seen since, riding into Laval to join them, his Chouans behind him. These memories, woven of threads which seemed to be torn from different existences, were confusing, phantasmagoric. How far away seemed even that amazing night when Gilbert had given up to him his claim, when he had welcomed with joy the call to arms, before he had learnt what that call was to mean.
But Gilbert’s weight in his hold, his head on his breast, his own kisses, the look on his face when he lay dead, those things were always near. It was partly for them, for all that made Gilbert’s memory dear and sacred to him, that he had followed to this bitter end the failing fortunes of the cause, instead of throwing down a sword grown blunted, and turning, as he might have done at Granville, to find safety—and something more—across the sea. He had never really contemplated that alternative, but he had thought to himself once or twice that, if there were such a thing as a meeting beyond the grave, Gilbert would approve him. And in that case the moment of approbation was very near now.
Louis was not disturbed at the prospect; he had faced it too often. And amid the wreck of everything that makes a man’s life, of family ties, of high and warlike hopes, of love itself, he had retained a kind of serenity—a gift not always to be found in conjunction with a brilliant and reckless courage such as his, and proportionately the more valuable in the hour of disaster. Yet Gilbert was dead; M. des Graves was gone—killed or taken at Le Mans, he knew not which—he should never see Lucienne now. She would be making holly wreaths in England to-day. . . .
He shivered suddenly, and gently removing the head of his wounded follower from his knee, replaced the coverlet over him, and, getting to his feet, began to pace up and down to keep warm. The doglike eyes of Toussaint Lelièvre followed him from the ground as he went. Here and there a head was raised to look at him. But not all were sleeping or pretending to sleep. Many were on their knees; and under a tree two young men, finishing a long conversation, gave each other the kiss of farewell.
It grew a little lighter. Louis beat his arms about him and tried to whistle an air, but his lips were too stiff. Like everybody else, he was wet to the bone, for his uniform was more than threadbare, and he had no cloak. But only two things mattered now: this nerve-trying waiting for a death to which one was resigned—and Lucienne. . . . He thrust a hand beneath his coat and felt her miniature on his breast. Into whose possession would it fall . . . afterwards? “But I shan’t be worth stripping,” he thought to himself, looking down at his rags. At the last he would kiss it; that was the only farewell he could make.
Presently out of the cold gloom came riding a dim form. “Is that you, M. de Saint-Ermay?”
Louis drew himself up and saluted. Bernard de Marigny leant his tall figure from the saddle. “How many men have you left, Monsieur?”
“Fourteen,” replied the Vicomte; “and one wounded.”