'True,' she said, 'you do well to remind me. It is not easy to remember that in war many things must give way. You may go, sir. I shall be ready.'
But as she stood and saw her horses saddled, her heart sank like lead. All the misery of her false position came home to her. She felt that now she was alone indeed, and powerless. She was leaving behind her the only chance that remained of regaining her friends. She was going back to put herself more completely, if that were possible, in the general's hands. Yet she dared not resist! She dared not court defeat! As her only hope and reserve lay in her wits and in the prestige of her rank and beauty, to lower that prestige by an unavailing struggle, by an unwomanly display, would be to destroy at a blow half her defences.
The Countess saw this; and though her heart ached for her friends, and her eyes often turned back in unavailing hope, she mounted with a serene brow. Her horses had been brought to the top of the hill, and she rode down by a path which had been discovered. When she had gone a league on the backward road she came upon the foremost part of the captured convoy; which, was immediately halted and drawn aside, that she might pass more conveniently and escape the noise and dust it occasioned.
Among the rest were three waggons laden with wounded. Awnings had been spread to veil them from the sun, and she was spared the sight of their sufferings. But their meanings and cries, as the waggons jolted and creaked over the rough road, drove the blood from her cheeks. She passed them quickly--they were many and she was one, and she could do nothing--and rode on, little thinking who lay under the awnings, or whose eyes followed her as she went.
CHAPTER XXI.
[AMONG THE WOUNDED.]
When a man lies fettered at the bottom of a jolting waggon, and, unable to help himself, is made a pillow for wounded wretches, whose feverish struggles go near to stifling him; and when to these miseries are added the heat of a sultry night, thirst, and the near prospect of death, passion soon dies down. Anger gives place to pain and the chill of apprehension. The man begins to know himself again--forgets his enemies, thinks of his friends.
It was so with me. The general's back was not turned before I ceased to cry out; and that gained me the one alleviation I had--that I was not gagged. They piled the waggon with bleeding, groaning men,--of our side, of course, for no quarter was given to the other,--and I shuddered as each mangled wretch came in. Still, I had my mouth free. If I could not move, I could breathe, and hear what passed round me. I could see the dark night sky lit up by the glare of the fires, or, later, watch the stars shining coldly and indifferently down on this scene of pain and misery.
When the waggon was full they drove us, jolting and wailing, to an appointed place, and took out some, leaving only enough to cover the floor thickly. And then, ah me! the night began. That which at first had been an inconvenience, became in time intolerable pain. The ropes cut into my flesh, the boards burned my back; we were so closely packed, and I was so tightly bound that I could not move a limb. Every moment the wounded cried for water, and those in pain wailed and lamented, while all night the wolves howled round the camp. In one corner, a man whose eyes were injured babbled unceasingly of his mother and his home. Hour by hour, for the frenzy held him all night, he rolled his head, and chattered, and laughed! In the morning he died, and we thanked God for it.
The peasant and the soldier sup the real miseries of war; the noble and the officer, whose it is to dare death in the field, but rarely, very rarely to lie wounded under the burning sun or through the freezing night, only taste them. A place of arms falls; there is quarter for my lord and a pass and courtesy for my lady, but edge and point for the common herd. To risk all and get nothing--or a penny a day, unpaid--is the lot of most.