The Great White Army

by Max Pemberton

"You will stay," he said, and he banged the table with his fist as though he had leapt suddenly to the command. "You will stay, messieurs. Are you not madame's guests? This is no time of night to be in the woods. There are dangers abroad, messieurs—and wolves. Upon my word, I am surprised at you—to mention such a thing."

We resumed our seats, and he fell to smiling again; yet it was with the snarl of one of those very wolves he had mentioned. A low cunning laugh, the like of which I have never heard, betrayed a deeper purpose than that of hospitality. We, in our turn, understood then the whole peril of the situation. The man was playing with us as a cat with mice; he had but begun the role he meant to undertake.

"You are foolish, messieurs," he went on presently; "indeed most foolish. Consider what would happen to you if you left this house against my will. The sentries would detain you, and there would be an inquiry at head-quarters. We are very unkind to traitors when they visit our camps, and we have our own way of dealing with them. Do you remember Major Royate, of the Engineers, whom the Cossacks took at Plavno? They tied him to a tree, I think, and the wolves ate him at sundown. Then there was your Lieutenant de Duras, whom they burned on a fire of logs at Letizka; and another, I think, was hacked to pieces with sabres on the eve of Borodino. All this is very terrible, but in your words, à la guerre comme à la guerre. You say that you fight with barbarians, and you will not quarrel with their customs. Are they not poor savages whom you have come here to correct? Messieurs, I do not know what would happen to you if I gave the alarm from that window at this minute. It would not be the water, for the river is frozen; but it might very well be the wolves, as your ears will bear witness if you will be good enough to listen."

With this he opened the rude window of the barn, and far away in the thick of the forest we could hear the dismal howling of the famished brutes. What was the man's intention, or why he talked in this way, I could not imagine; but presently, as he drank deeper, his reserve became less and his true meaning more apparent. Not for a moment had he been deceived by the tale which madame told him. One of us, he knew, was her lover, and that man he meant to discover and to kill.

"Frenchmen," he said presently, passion growing upon him as he spoke, "I will let two of you leave this house if the third remains. Cast lots amongst yourselves, if you please; it is a matter of indifference to me. But one man I will give to my Cossacks, so help me Heaven!" And with that he laughed savagely, as though this sudden humour pleased him mightily.

To this it was impossible to make any answer. We held our tongues, while Madame Pauline crossed over to the man's side and began to speak rapidly in Russian. It was plain, however, that she both appealed and commanded in vain. An Eastern passion for revenge suffered no woman's entreaty. He knew that none of us would betray the others, and he believed that he had us all in the net of a devilish vengeance.

"Two of you shall go," he kept saying—"two. I will give you five minutes by the clock. If you do not make a choice then, it is for my Cossacks to deal with you. As you please, messieurs; that is my last word."

We had no response to make. The man's anger and the woman's despair were both very dreadful things to hear and see, and we turned aside from them to argue the question in quick whispers. Plain was it that our hope of life hung upon a thread, and, all our fighting instinct returning, we began to say that we must deal with Tcharnhoff ourselves. Should we make a dash from the house, or should we seize the man where he stood? The latter seemed the wiser thing. We risked all by doing so, and yet might win all. No sooner was the course determined upon than, snatching his sword from the chair where it lay, Payard made a dash for the Cossack. Alas! that was the last thing he ever did in his life, for a pistol-shot rang out at the very instant, and our friend fell dead across the table. Tcharnhoff had shot him; and the smoke had not lifted when Pauline herself stabbed her lover to the heart, and he rolled headlong on the floor, almost at my feet.

"Go!" she cried, her face white as with the pallor of death. "I will say that you killed him. Go and leave me."

We waited for no other word. In the distance we heard the report of a musket and the alarm spreading through the camp. We had an instant between us and eternity, and be sure we made the best of it.