The Quest of Glory, Marjorie Bowen [reading an ebook .txt] 📗
- Author: Marjorie Bowen
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yes—perhaps.”
“I am sorry for you,” said Carola; at which he smiled. “But your
friend?” she added. “We have no priest!” She seemed distressed at the
thought.
“His soul does not need shriving,” replied M. de Vauvenargues.
But the words seemed to have penetrated the lieutenant’s clouded
consciousness; he clamoured for a priest, for the last Sacrament, for
the Eucharist.
The Marquis caught him in his arms and held him strongly.
“None of that matters,” he said with power. “You are free of all
that—upon the heights.”
The voice calmed M. d’Espagnac; he rested his head on his captain’s
breast, and shuddered into silence.
The Marquis looked up to see Carola with empty arms. “Where is the
child?” he asked.
“Dead,” she answered, in a tired voice. “And I have laid her under the
wagon with my crucifix. I think she was a Hussite, but perhaps God will
forgive her, for she was too young to know error.”
“Do you suppose God’s charity less than yours, Mademoiselle?” answered
M. de Vauvenargues gently. “You sheltered a heretic child all day—will
not God shelter her through all eternity?”
She looked at him strangely.
“I feel very weary,” she said; “the wolves sound nearer.”
The Marquis thought of the two dead mules and the woman’s corpse that
Carola had not seen; he was stretching out his hand for his pistol when
d’Espagnac lifted his head.
“Thank you, Monsieur,” he said, and his voice was sweet and sane; “I
fear I incommode you and Mademoiselle.” He smiled and raised himself on
one arm. “You must not stay for me. I am very well. Dying, I know—but
very well.”
Carola came closer to him.
“I know the prayers of my church—shall I say them for you?”
He faintly shook his head.
“Thank you for your thought. But we are so far from churches.”
He was silent again, and the Marquis noticed with a shudder that the
great snowflakes were beginning to fall once more.
“How can we endure it?” murmured Carola, and the tears clung to her
stiff lids.
M. d’Espagnac moved again. “There are some letters in my pockets—if
you should return to France—”
“Yes, yes,” said the Marquis.
The lieutenant gave a little cough, and seemed to suddenly fall asleep;
they wrapped him up as well as they could and chafed his brow and hands.
The snow increased and drifted round the wagon and began to cover them
softly.
Presently, as there was no further sound, the Marquis held a scrap of
the feather trimming of his hat before d’Espagnac’s lips and slipped his
hand inside the fine cold shirt.
They discovered that he was dead; had evidently drawn his last breath on
the word “France,” and resigned his soul without a sigh or struggle.
It was horrible and incredible to the Marquis in those first minutes;
why should he, never robust, and a girl of delicate make survive, and
Georges d’Espagnac, so young, strong, and full of vitality, die as
easily as the ailing child?
He bent low over the sunken face, and the loose strands of his hair
touched the frozen snow.
“The Quest of Glory,” said Carola, in a strange voice. The Marquis
looked up at her, and his eyes were full of light.
“Yes, Mademoiselle,” he said simply, and drew the heavy cloak over the
face of Georges d’Espagnac.
“A joyful quest!” she cried, in a hollow voice. “Yes,” he said again,
“a joyful quest.”
He rose, and the snow drifted on to his argent epaulettes, his torn lace
cravat and his loose hanging hair. He leant against the wagon and put
his hand to his side; now that they had the covered form of the dead
between them, the hideous loneliness became a hundredfold intensified.
Heavy tears forced themselves with difficulty from under Carola’s lids
and ran down her wan cheeks, but she made no sound of sobbing.
“You are a brave woman,” said the Marquis very gently. “You must not
die. Give me your hand.”
She shook her head.
“Leave me here. Why should you trouble? Go on your way.”
She bent her head and then felt his hand on her shoulder, drawing her,
very tenderly, to her feet; she resisted her giddiness, which nearly
flung her into his arms, and murmured in a firmer voice—
“Very well. We are companions in misfortune and will stay together.” She
crossed herself and whispered some prayer over the dead. “It is
horrible to leave them,” she added, thinking of the wolves.
“He is not there,” answered the Marquis, “but ahead of us on the way
already.”
He unfastened the lantern from the wagon and, taking it in his left
hand, offered the right to the Countess.
An extraordinary sweetness had sprung up between them; they felt a great
tenderness for each other, a great respect.
As they made the first steps on the terrible, difficult route, with the
snow-filled blackness before them and their poor light showing only
death and horror, the Marquis said to his companion—
“If I could have spared you, Mademoiselle, any of this—”
She broke in upon his speech—
“We shall never forget each other all our lives, Monsieur.”
Then in silence they followed in the bloodstained track of the army
towards Eger.
The winter of the year 1742 had been the coldest, in every part of
Europe, that had been known since 1709, and the following spring was
also remarkable—for heat and sunshine and rainless days and nights.
By early April the chestnuts outside the residence of the Clapiers
family in Aix were in perfect bloom and the white, golden-hearted
flowers sprang from the wide bronze-green leaves and expanded to the
summer-like sun; beneath the trees was a deep rich-coloured shade that
lay up the double steps of the house and across the high door with its
fine moulding of handsome wood. The shutters were closed against the
heat; the whole street was empty of everything save the perfume of the
lilac, roses, and syringa growing in the gardens of the mansions.
This languid peace of afternoon was broken by the arrival of a gentleman
on horseback followed by a servant; he drew rein under the chestnut
trees, dismounted, gave his horse to the man, and rather slowly ascended
the pleasant shaded steps. Without knocking he opened the door and
stepped at once into the dark, cool hall. A clock struck three, and he
waited till the chimes had ceased, then opened a door on his left and
entered a large low room full of shadow that looked out on to a great
garden and a young beech covered with red-gold leaves in which the sun
blazed splendidly.
Luc de Clapiers stood gazing at the home he had not seen for nine years.
Nothing was altered. On just such a day as this he had left it; but he
remembered that the beech tree had been smaller then and not so prodigal
of glorious foliage.
There were the same dark walls, the same heavy mahogany furniture, the
same picture of “The Sacrifice of Isaac” opposite the window, the same
carved sideboard bearing silver and glass, the candlesticks and
snuffers, the brass lamp and the taper-holders. Above the mantelpiece
were, deep carved, the de Clapiers arms, still brightly coloured, fasces
of argent and silver and the chief or—and on the mantelpiece the same
dark marble clock.
Luc crossed to the window that was not far above the ground and looked
down the garden; in the distance were two gentlemen—one young and one
old—followed by three bright dogs.
Luc put his hand to his eyes, then unlatched the window, that opened
casement fashion. The sound, slight as it was, carried in the absolute
stillness; the two gentlemen who were approaching the house glanced up.
They beheld, framed in the darkness of the room, the slim figure of a
young soldier in a blue and silver uniform, wearing a light grey
travelling cloak.
“Luc!” cried the younger, and the other gave a great start.
Luc stepped from the window and crossed to his father. He went simply on
his knees before him and kissed his hands, while the old Marquis
murmured, “You never wrote to me! You never wrote to me!”
“No,” added the younger brother reproachfully, “you never wrote to us,
Luc.”
Luc admitted that he had not, beyond the first letter that told of his
return from Bohemia.
“I did not know if I should be able to come to Aix,” he said, “forgive
me, Monseigneur.”
“You have got leave now, my child?” cried the old Marquis, grasping his
shoulder.
“Yes, my father, I have some leisure now,” he answered rather sadly.
“Come into the house,” said his brother, who was much moved. “I can
hardly believe it is you—you have changed a great deal in nine years.”
They entered the house—the Marquise was abroad; the servants were
roused. Luc heard the orders for the preparation of his chamber and the
stabling of his horse with a thrill of pure pleasure; it seemed that he
had been very long away from home.
His father made him sit by his right at the long black table that was
now covered with wine glasses and dishes of fruit, and kept his eyes
fixed on him with an earnest look of affection.
“You are very pale and thin,” he said.
The brother touched the young soldier’s hand lovingly. “Have you been
ill, Luc?” he asked.
Luc blushed; he was conscious of his frail appearance, of his occasional
cough, of his languid movements.
“Yes, I was ill at Eger,” he admitted reluctantly, “after the retreat
from Prague.”
The other two men were silent. By that retreat M. de Belleisle’s name
had become accursed through France: in ten days he had lost nearly
twenty-two thousand men. The scandal and horror of it had brought M. de
Fleury to patch a hasty peace with Austria.
“And do you recall,” added Luc sadly, “Hippolyte de Seytres, Marquis de
Caumont, whom I wrote of to you very often? He was my ‘sous lieutenant.’
I heard last week that he had died in Prague just before the garrison
capitulated in January.”
“I am sorry for de Caumont!” exclaimed the old Marquis, thinking of the
father.
“He was only eighteen,” said Luc, “and a sweet nature. M. d’Espagnac,
also, who came from Provence, died in my arms. I became delirious with
death.”
“It was very terrible?” questioned his father gravely.
“Ah, it was of all campaigns the most disastrous, the most unfortunate.
Let me not recall those black nights and days—those marches with hunger
and cold beside us, the disorder, the misery—the poor remnant of a
glorious army that at last reached the frontier of France—leaving our
blood and bones thick on the fields of Germany.” His eyes and voice
flashed and a clear colour dyed his cheek. “Belleisle is punished,” he
added. “His pride is cast down, his war ended in failure. But is he
humiliated enough for all the lives he so wantonly flung away?”
“They say Cardinal Fleury cannot sleep at night because of it,” remarked
the old Marquis, “that he always sees snow and blood about him. But you
have returned to us, my son.”
Luc gave him a long, soft, mournful look, then glanced at his brother
Joseph.
“Yes, I lived,” he said thoughtfully; “but I have not come home
gloriously.”
“There is time ahead of you,” answered his father proudly. “I know
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