CHAPTER XXIV

CREEPING FATE

(1)

"Mon cher beaupère," wrote the Marquis de Flavigny, "my former letter (if you ever get it, which I should think doubtful) will have told you of the incidents of our landing at Carnac. I have now to inform you that we are in complete possession of the peninsula of Quiberon, the fort which commands it having surrendered, on being summoned, three days ago. In consequence all the émigré regiments have left their temporary quarters on the mainland, round Carnac, and are bivouacked in the peninsula itself. I myself write actually in Fort Penthièvre, and at this very moment I hear the sound of pick and spade, for the engineers, who have hopes, they say, of making it into another Gibraltar, are hard at work this morning throwing up fresh entrenchments."

The young man broke off, and looked down from the embrasure of the surrendered fort, where he was sitting, at the work to which he had just referred. For three days, as he had said, the fleur-de-lys had floated over Fort Penthièvre, having been hoisted there, in fact, on the very day of the failure of the Chouan attack on Auray. What wonder if the enheartened Royalists had toasted the future that night, in the poor little villages scattered among the stone-encircled fields, or that they saw in a bright vision not only the restored splendours of Versailles--the triumph of a cause--but the tourelles of the château or the little manoir, long in alien hands, which they had left for poverty and exile . . . recovered homes where now, after all, their children and their children's children might play.

But to-day the white and gold standard hung in heavy, listless folds from the flagstaff, for it was a hot, close morning, of the kind that saps the energies and is tinged besides with a suggestion of unpleasant auguries, the sensation of waiting for something to happen, one knows not what. . . . A scarcely visible sun sent down a surprising heat, and haze lay over the sea on either side. Even the throb of the Atlantic sounded sullen and remote, for all its nearness.

René de Flavigny, who was sensible to atmospheric conditions, felt a fresh welling up within him of a vague uneasiness that had been his all morning, an uneasiness which the two or three other little groups of officers, mostly engineers, on the platform of the fort did not appear to be sharing. Instead of going on with his letter to his father-in-law he allowed himself to wander off into speculations and apprehensions which could scarcely with prudence have been committed to paper. He thought bitterly, regretfully, of the insane jealousies and incompetence of the Comtes de Puisaye and d'Hervilly, which, during the past days of inaction, had been growing more manifest every hour. And why had there been those days of inaction? Why was he, an officer in an émigré regiment, sitting idly here in safety on the peninsula writing a letter, when they all knew that the Chouans whom they had not been allowed to support had been beaten off from Auray, and were, if reports were to be trusted, faring none too well in other portions of the mainland? What madness possessed the generals to keep them, regiments in the main of trained men, doing nothing, while the irregular peasant levies were pitted against the now reinforced Republican garrisons of the interior? It was surely all too probable that these, gathering in force, would utterly crush the brave but undisciplined guerrilla troops. In that case, what of Fortuné de la Vireville, who had gone off so gaily with his Bretons ten days ago?

The Marquis got up from the embrasure, and, despite the heat, began to pace up and down. Surely the proper course was to push on into the interior, while the dismay which their coming had undoubtedly spread amongst the Blues was still fresh, and before the latter had time to discover that the Royalist invaders were numerically not so strong as they had imagined. Puisaye indeed was credited with the desire for such a course, but, owing to the equivocal instructions of the English Government, his will was not paramount. It was quite true that their present position was strong; this very fortress on whose upper works he now meditated formed an almost impregnable defence to the amazingly narrow entrance of the lower part of the peninsula, and out there, half seen in the haze, was the friendly English squadron to protect them against any attack by sea on their rear. But René and his friends were all impatient to do something more than merely create, in this favourable position, a dépôt for supplies with which to replenish the Royalists of the interior. Why, in God's name, did they not press on, and strike while the iron was hot . . . and why also had they not with them a French prince of the blood? Of what use to say that the Comte d'Artois was following? He was wanted now!

M. de Flavigny tried to put a term to his impatient thoughts, and, sitting down again, attempted to go on with his letter to Mr. Elphinstone, keeping it free of indiscreet criticisms. But his head was too full of these inopportune questionings; they threatened to find an outlet by means of his fingers, and that would never do. So he took a fresh sheet of paper, and began a letter to his son, telling him under what circumstances he had met his friend the Chevalier, how he had even, he believed, set eyes on the famous Grain d'Orge of whom the child had talked so much, how----

He had got so far when he heard a sudden violent exclamation burst simultaneously from a couple of officers talking near him. Jumping up, he, like them, looked hastily over the nearest parapet.

The sandy waste between the fort and the mainland had miraculously become alive with quickly moving figures, groups of people running towards the fort in the greatest disorder. René could hardly believe his eyes. Children, women, old men, cattle, carts laden with household goods, on they came, a confused horde streaming down the top of the peninsula like affrighted locusts. It was only too clear what had happened--the Chouans, left without support, had been driven from their untenable positions, and were even now falling back on Quiberon, while before them poured the panic-struck inhabitants of the villages round, terrified at the prospect of being left at the mercy of the victorious Blues. As they came nearer, it was obvious that there were flying Chouans also in that advancing flood.

"Good God!" exclaimed the Comte de Contades, Puisaye's chief of staff, hurrying past, "they will take us by assault! There are only fifty men on guard. M. d'Hervilly must be informed at once!"

René watched, horrified and fascinated, from the embrasure. As yet there was no sign of an enemy--only this panting multitude full of one desire, to find safety. And soon some of the younger and more agile fugitives were swarming unchecked over the palisades of the newly erected entrenchments, clambering up the counterscarps of the fort itself. They clung weeping round the legs of the officers whom they encountered, having completely lost their heads; and in the midst of the confusion arrived the Comte d'Hervilly, who seemed as completely to have lost his. At any rate he was in his usual state of ineffective irritation.

"In God's name, get rid of all these people!" de Flavigny heard him cry, striking out right and left. But thousands of terrified fugitives were not so easily to be disposed of, especially when all the passages were blocked up by the carts which they had brought with them. And on d'Hervilly's sending for the régiment du Dresnay to come in haste and turn them out, he learnt that his command could not be at once obeyed, since the regiment was dispersed securing provisions. The mixture of calamity and farce reached its climax when some of the invading fugitives cried out, "There are the Blues!" on which all who possessed muskets instantly fired them off in every direction, to the no small danger of everybody else. In fact, the Comte de Vauban, an officer of high rank, who was at the bottom of the revetments at the moment, had only just time to save himself by throwing himself off his horse.

At last appeared, marching in good order, the Chouans of Tinténiac and Cadoudal, who had not broken, then their rearguard, and finally, a good distance behind, a hundred or so of Republican sharpshooters. A salvo from the fort dispersed these latter, and mingled with its echoes came the sound of the drums of du Dresnay, arriving to bring some order into this scene of confusion. And thus, at last, the crowd of fugitives was expelled, and driven down towards the southern extremity of the peninsula.

During all this affair the Comte de Puisaye sat very composedly at his dinner.

* * * * *

When René de Flavigny was able to get free of the fort, thus carried by its own defenders, he went anxiously in search of his friend among the Chouan troops. He found him, but too busy to do more than exchange a word with him.

"Hoche attacked all along our line with about thirteen thousand men," said La Vireville, wiping the sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand. "Ouf, what an infernal day for a retreat! Well, I am afraid we have brought you no welcome present in all these useless mouths!"

"Why, oh why, were we not allowed to come to your support!" cried the Marquis.

La Vireville shrugged his shoulders. "Why indeed! At any rate I see the lilies, as I had hoped, blooming on Fort Penthièvre. Only the gardener, you know, is not far off. . . ."

Indeed, every émigré knew by nightfall that the victorious Republicans had established themselves in the important position of Ste. Barbe, a village which commanded the entry into the peninsula, where they could be seen feverishly working at entrenching themselves. The invaders were in danger of being penned, like trapped creatures, into that tongue of land on which they had attained a foothold.

(2)

The Marquis de Flavigny never sent his unfinished letters to England. If he had completed them they would not have been very pleasant reading. Even the Comte d'Hervilly realised the disastrous consequences of being shut into Quiberon. The night after the influx of the fugitives he attacked the Republicans (who were taken by surprise), pushed his onset up to their very outworks, lost his head, and abandoned the attack, for no apparent reason, just at the very moment of success. _Quem Deus vult perdere_ . . .

After that abortive attack on Ste. Barbe things went quickly from bad to worse. The sixth of July had been on all counts an unmitigated disaster; the Chouan defeat did not fail to have a bad moral effect on the Bretons of the interior, and the useless mouths, as La Vireville had only too truly called them, brought the number of souls on the narrow strip of land up to fourteen thousand. It became a difficulty to feed the refugees; and most of them were not of the slightest military value. Old men, women, and children, they had to subsist as best they were able, shelterless, and cooking what they could get on fires of dung and seaweed. And even the Chouans were sullen and discontented; it was hard to make them work at the entrenchments with any zeal, and if they were reproached with their idleness they invariably replied that they had had nothing to eat for twenty-four hours. In fact, a small ration of salt meat and biscuit did seem insufficient to a peasant accustomed to more solid nourishment. The Comte de Puisaye, indeed, announced in the order of the day that he wished the brave Chouans, those dauntless supporters of the altar and the throne, to be particularly well treated, but as, this order once promulgated, he took no steps whatever to see that it was carried out, it frequently happened that the supporters of the altar and the throne went very hungry.

The Chouans of the Chevalier de la Vireville's little band, however, never suffered from that particular privation; their leader saw to that. How he managed it, by what system of combined begging, storming, and cajoling, the young Le Goffic knew, but to de Flavigny it was a marvel how he contrived to procure rations for them. The two friends did not very often meet, for though de Flavigny, who was only attached to the régiment du Dresnay, had more leisure than most officers, La Vireville, whose men called for constant attention of a kind that disciplined troops hardly needed, had less. Yet, curiously enough, in those few days of breathing-space, while the Royalists were awaiting the moment for another attempt to free themselves of the snare in which Hoche held them, when the young Republican general indeed was writing, with cruel and justified metaphor, "The enemies are in the rat-trap, and I with divers cats at the door of it."--in those days, when every man's private affairs had sunk into relative unimportance, de Flavigny was to learn that concerning his comrade's personal history which, in spite of occasional speculation, he had never really sought to know. He was, in fact, himself an agent in the chance encounter--if there be such a thing--which brought about the disclosure.

It befell as follows: One afternoon, de Flavigny, who was billeted with some other gentlemen of like standing with himself in a cottage in the tiny village of Clouarnet, found himself in his quarters with a couple of these, and, in addition, an officer whom they had brought with them, a M. de St. Four, of the régiment de la marine, usually known, from the name of its colonel, as the regiment d'Hector. M. de St. Four was a person of agreeable address and appearance, about forty years of age, who, when younger, had evidently been very handsome. He had, it seemed, already 'chouanné' a little in southern Brittany under Cadoudal.

The Marquis was standing talking to the newcomer by the big, projecting, smoke-blackened hearth, when a tall figure suddenly darkened the doorway of the cottage.

"Is M. de Flavigny within?" it inquired, and René recognised the voice as La Vireville's.

"Yes, I am here. Do you want me, Fortuné?" he asked, turning round from the hearth. The visitor did the same. And, as La Vireville stooped his head to enter, it occurred to de Flavigny to introduce him and St. Four, Chouans both of them.

"Let me make you and this gentleman known to each other first," he began. "M. de St. Four of the régiment d'Hector, M. le Chevalier de la Vire----"

The name died on his lips. La Vireville's eyes were not on him at all, but on the stranger, yet the look he wore was enough to slay instantly any attempt at introduction. The naked hatred and contempt on his face seemed to have frozen equally the other man and himself; then, after two or three seconds of an intolerable silence, he turned without a word and walked straight out of the cottage.

The two other witnesses of this scene were also stricken dumb. M. de St. Four was the first to recover himself. He gave an uneasy laugh. De Flavigny, overwhelmed by the suddenness and inexplicability of the incident, began to stammer out some apology.

"It is of no consequence, Monsieur," said St. Four, shrugging his shoulders. "Your friend does not wish to know me, that is all." And he made an attempt to resume their conversation where it had been broken off, but, as was hardly surprising, without any marked success, and shortly afterwards he took his leave. De Flavigny also, as soon as he could, made an excuse to the others, and went in search of his friend.

(3)

La Vireville was not at his quarters, and it took some half-hour's search before the Marquis found him, sitting on a rock that faced the Atlantic on the side of the 'mer sauvage,' his chin on his clenched fists, staring out to sea.

At the sound of a step he turned round, and showed de Flavigny a face no longer, at least, like the Medusa's mask.

"Have you come for an apology, René? I owe you one, I admit."

"No; it is for me to apologise," said the Marquis, stepping on to the rock. "But I did not know----"

"Of course you did not. How could you? Fate is pleased to be humorous, but you could not realise to what degree. It was something of a pity that you could not." He laughed, a hard, mirthless laugh, and tearing off a piece of dried seaweed from the rock on which he sat, cast it towards the waves. The wind carried it away.

De Flavigny sat down by him. "Mon ami, the last thing I wish to do is to pry into your affairs. I can only repeat that I am exceedingly sorry I was so clumsy as to cause you pain, and that, since his presence is displeasing to you, I will make it my care, as far as I can, that you do not meet the gentleman in question again."

"I don't suppose," said Fortuné de la Vireville between his teeth, "that he will seek for a repetition of the interview."

He looked out to sea again in silence. René glanced at his set mouth. His friendship was of too recent a date for him to know much of La Vireville's private history, but he, like others, had heard the rumour of a tragedy in his past, and he guessed that he now stood on its threshold. He was silent, while the sea, all a-sparkle in the sun, came splashing in a little below them, and the gulls, uttering their fine-weather chuckle, sailed slantwise in the wind.

"I never thought I should see him again," said La Vireville to himself, after a moment "--least of all here." And he pulled off another piece of seaweed and examined it minutely.

"You need never come into contact with him," repeated the Marquis.

"A woman asked me not long ago," observed La Vireville inconsequently, still examining the seaweed, "whether I could readily forgive a mortal injury. I told her . . . the truth. Yes, by God, it was the truth! . . . I think you have never had cause to hate anyone overmuch, René? Destiny, perhaps"--his face softened for a moment as he glanced at him--"but not a man--nor a woman."

"No," answered the Marquis. And he added, "Thank God!"

La Vireville threw him another glance, satirical this time. "Your pious ejaculation is quite justified. It is not an emotion to cultivate. Well, I suppose I ought to return to my flock, having sat on this promontory long enough." He dropped the piece of seaweed carefully into a pool. "Where is . . . your protégé gone to?"

"Back to his regiment, I presume," answered de Flavigny. "Hector is quartered at Port Haliguen, as you know." He hesitated, then laid his hand on the Chouan's shoulder. "Fortuné, my dear friend, forgive me for saying it, but if you meet him again you will not quarrel with him? After all, every man here----"

La Vireville's face hardened again as he broke in. "My dear René, I know perfectly well what you are going to say. Private enmities must be sunk for the common weal, is it not? I assure you I am fully of your opinion. And, to reassure your scrupulous mind, let me tell you that M. de St. Four and I settled our score in that way ten years ago. You see that mark?" He touched his cheek. "That is the proof of it. Come, let us go back." He scrambled to his feet, and Rene de Flavigny followed him.