The Bronze Eagle (33 page)

But this pity she was not prepared to show him: she wanted to pass right
out of his life, to forget once and for all that sense of warmth of the
soul, of comfort and of peace which she had felt in his presence on that
memorable evening at Brestalou. Above all, she never wanted to touch his
hand again, the hand which seemed to have such power to protect and to
shield her, when on that same evening she had placed her own in it.

Therefore, now she took her father's arm once more: she turned
resolutely to go. One more curt nod of the head, one last look of
undying enmity, and then she would pass finally out of his life for
ever.

How Clyffurde got back to his lodgings that night he never knew.
Crystal, after his final admission, had turned without another word from
him, and he had stood there in the lonely, silent street watching her
retreating form—on her father's arm—until the mist and gloom swallowed
her up as in an elvish grave. Then mechanically he hunted for his hat
and he, too, walked away.

That was the end of his life's romance, of course. The woman whom he
loved with his very soul, who held his heart, his mind, his imagination
captive, whose every look on him was joy, whose every smile was a
delight, had gone out of his life for ever! She had turned away from him
as she would from a venomous snake! she hated him so cruelly that she
would gladly hurt him—do him some grievous wrong if she could. And
Clyffurde was left in utter loneliness with only a vague, foolish
longing in his heart—the longing that one day she might have her wish,
and might have the power to wound him to death—bodily just
[Pg 259]
as she had
wounded him to the depth of his soul to-night.

For the rest there was nothing more for him to do in France. King Louis
was not like to remain at Lille very long: within twenty-four hours
probably he would continue his journey—his flight—to Ghent—where once
more he would hold his court in exile, with all the fugitive royalists
rallied around his tottering throne.

Clyffurde had already received orders from his chief at the Intelligence
Department to report himself first at Lille, then—if the King and court
had already left—at Ghent. If, however, there were plenty of men to do
the work of the Department it was his intention to give up his share in
it and to cross over to England as soon as possible, so as to take up
the first commission in the new army that he could get. England would be
wanting soldiers more urgently than she had ever done before: mother and
sisters would be well looked after: he—Bobby—had earned a fortune for
them, and they no longer needed a bread-winner now: whilst England
wanted all her sons, for she would surely fight.

Clyffurde, who had seen the English papers that morning—as they were
brought over by an Intelligence courier—had realised that the debates
in Parliament could only end one way.

England would not tolerate Bonaparte; she would not even tolerate his
abdication in favour of his own son. Austria had already declared her
intention of renewing the conflict and so had Prussia. England's
decision would, of course, turn the scale, and Bobby in his own mind had
no doubt which way that decision would go.

The man whom the people of France loved, and whom his army idolised, was
the disturber of the peace of Europe. No one would believe his
protestations of pacific intentions now: he had caused too much
devastation, too much misery in the past—who would believe in him for
the future?

[Pg 260]
For the sake of that past, and for dread of the future, he must go—go
from whence he could not again return, and Bobby Clyffurde—remembering
Grenoble, remembering Lyons, Villefranche and Nevers—could not
altogether suppress a sigh of regret for the brave man, the fine genius,
the reckless adventurer who had so boldly scaled for the second time the
heights of the Capitol, oblivious of the fact that the Tarpeian Rock was
so dangerously near.

At this same hour when Bobby Clyffurde finally bade adieu to all the
vague hopes of happiness which his love for Crystal de Cambray had
engendered in his heart, his whilom companion in the long ago—rival and
enemy now—Victor de Marmont, was laying a tribute of twenty-five
million francs at the feet of his beloved Emperor, and receiving the
thanks of the man to serve whom he would gladly have given his life.

"What reward shall we give you for this service?" the Emperor had
deigned to ask.

"The means to subdue a woman's pride, Sire, and make her thankful to
marry me," replied de Marmont promptly.

"A title, what?" queried the Emperor. "You have everything else, you
rogue, to please a woman's fancy and make her thankful to marry you."

"A title, Sire, would be a welcome addition," said de Marmont lightly,
"and the freedom to go and woo her, until France and my Emperor need me
again."

"Then go and do your wooing, man, and come back here to me in three
months, for I doubt not by then the flames of war will have been kindled
against me again."

[Pg 261]

But the hand had lost its cunning, the mighty brain its indomitable
will-power. Genius was still there, but it was cramped now by
indecision—the indecision born of a sense of enmity around, suspicion
where there should have been nothing but enthusiasm, and the blind
devotion of the past.

The man who, all alone, by the force of his personality and of his
prestige had reconquered France, who had been acclaimed from the Gulf of
Jouan to the gates of the Tuileries as the saviour of France, the
people's Emperor, the beloved of the nation returned from exile, the man
who on the 20th of March had said with his old vigour and his old pride:
"Failure is the nightmare of the feeble! impotence, the refuge of the
poltroon!" the man who had marched as in a dream from end to end of
France to find himself face to face with the whole of Europe in league
against him, with a million men being hastily armed to hurl him from his
throne again, now found the south of France in open revolt, the west
ready to rise against him, the north in accord with his enemies.

He has not enough men to oppose to those millions, his arsenals are
depleted, his treasury empty. And after he has worked sixteen hours out
of the twenty-four at reorganising his army, his finances, his machinery
of war, he has to meet a set of apathetic or openly hostile ministers,
[Pg 262]
constitutional representatives, men who are ready to thwart him at every
turn, jealous only of curtailing his power, of obscuring his ascendency,
of clipping the eagle's wings, ere it soars to giddy heights again. And
to them he must give in, from them he must beg, entreat: give up, give
up all the time one hoped-for privilege after another, one power after
another.

He yields the military dictatorship to other—far less competent—hands;
he grants liberty to the press, liberty of debate, liberty of election,
liberty to all and sundry: but suspicion lurks around him; they suspect
his sincerity, his goodwill, they doubt his promises, they mistrust that
dormant Olympian ambition which has precipitated France into humiliation
and brought the strangers' armies within her gates.

The same man was there—the same genius who even now could have mastered
all the enemies of France and saved her from her present subjection and
European insignificance, but the men round him were not the same. He,
the guiding hand, was still there, but the machinery no longer worked as
it had done in the past before disaster had blunted and stiffened the
temper of its steel.

The men around the Emperor were not now as they were in the days of Jena
and Austerlitz and Wagram. Their characters and temperaments had
undergone a change. Disaster had brought on slackness, the past year of
constant failures had engendered a sense of discouragement and
demoralisation, a desire to argue, to foresee difficulties, to foretell
further disasters.

He saw it all well enough—he the man with the far-seeing mind and the
eagle-eyes that missed nothing—neither a look of indecision, nor an
indication of revolt. He saw it all but he could do nothing, for he too
felt overwhelmed by that wave of indecision and of discouragement. Faith
in himself, energy in action, had gone. He envisaged the possibility of
a vanquished and dismembered France.

[Pg 263]
Above all he had lost belief in his Star: the star of his destiny which,
rising over the small island of Corsica, shining above a humble
middle-class home, had guided him step by step, from triumph to triumph,
to the highest pinnacle of glory to which man's ambition has ever
reached.

That star had been dimmed once, its radiance was no longer unquenchable:
"Destiny has turned against me," he said, "and in her I have lost my
most valuable helpmate."

And now the whole of Europe had declared war against him, and in a final
impassioned speech he turns to his ministers and to the representatives
of his people: "Help me to save France!" he begs, "afterwards we'll
settle our quarrels."

One hundred days after he began his dream-march, from the gulf of Jouan
in the wake of his eagle, he started from Paris with the Army which he
loved and which alone he trusted, to meet Europe and his fate on the
plains of Belgium.

And in Brussels they danced, danced late into the night. No one was to
know that within the next three days the destinies of the whole world
would be changed by the hand of God.

And how to hide from timid eyes the sense of this oncoming destiny? how
to stop for a few brief hours the flow of women's tears?

The ball should have been postponed—Her Grace of Richmond was willing
that it should be so. How could men and women dance, flirt and make
merry while Death was already reckoning the heavy toll of brave young
lives which she would demand on the morrow? But who knows England who
has not seen her at the hour of danger?

Put off the ball? why! perish the thought! The timid townsfolk of
Brussels or the ladies of the French royalist
[Pg 264]
party who were in great
numbers in the city might think there was something amiss. What was
amiss? some gallant young men would go on the morrow and conquer or die
for England's honour! there's nothing amiss in that! Why put off the
ball? The girls would be disappointed—they who like to dance—why
should they be deprived of partners, just because some of them would lie
dead on the battlefield to-morrow?

Open your salons, Madame la Duchesse! The soldiers of Britain will come
to your ball. They will laugh and dance and flirt to-night as bravely as
they will die to-morrow.

The sands of life are running low for them: in a few hours perhaps a
bullet, a bayonet, who knows? will cut short that merry laugh, still the
gallant heart that even now takes a last and fond farewell from a
blushing partner, after a waltz, in a sweet-scented alcove with sounds
of soft and distinct music around that stills the coming cannon's roar.

Gordon and Lancey, Crawford and Ponsonby and Halkett, aye! and
Wellington too! What immortal names are spoken by the flunkeys to-night
as they usher in these brave men into the hostess' presence. The
ballroom is brilliantly illuminated with hundreds of wax candles, the
women have put on their pretty dresses, displaying bare arms and
dazzling shoulders; the men are in showy uniforms, glittering with stars
and decorations: Orange, Brunswick, Nassau, English, Belgian, Scottish,
French, all are there gay with gold and silver braid.

The confusion of tongues is greater surely than round the tower of
Babel. German and French and English, Scots accent and Irish brogue,
pedantic Hanoverian and lusty Brunswick tones, all and more of these
varied sounds mingle with one another, and half-drown by their clamour
the sweet strains of the Viennese orchestra that discoursed dreamy
waltzes from behind a bower of crimson roses;
[Pg 265]
whilst ponderous Flemish
wives of city burgomasters gaze open-mouthed at the elegant ladies of
the old French noblesse, and shy Belgian misses peep enviously at their
more self-reliant English friends.

And the hostess smiles equally graciously to all: she is ready with a
bright word of welcome for everybody now, just as she will be anon with
a mute look of farewell, when—at ten o'clock—by Wellington's commands,
one by one, one officer after another will slip out of this hospitable
house, out into the rainy night, for a hurried visit to lodgings or
barracks to collect a few necessaries, and then to work—to horse or
march—to form into the ranks of battle as they had formed for the
quadrille—squares to face the enemy—advance, deploy as they had done
in the mazes of the dance! to fight as they had danced! to give their
life as they had given a kiss.

Bobby Clyffurde only saw Crystal de Cambray from afar. He had his
commission in Colin Halkett's brigade; his orders were the same as those
of many others to-night: to put in an appearance at Her Grace's ball, to
dispel any fears that might be confided to him through a fair partner's
lips: to show confidence, courage and gaiety, and at ten o'clock to
report for duty.

But the crowd in the ball-room was great, and Crystal de Cambray was the
centre of a very close and exclusive little crowd, as indeed were all
the ladies of the old French noblesse, who were here in their numbers.
They had left their country in the wake of their dethroned king and
despite the anxieties and sorrows of the past three months, while the
star of the Corsican adventurer seemed to shine with renewed splendour,
and that of the unfortunate King of France to be more and more on the
wane, they had somehow filled the sleepy towns of Belgium—Ghent,
Brussels, Charleroi—with the atmosphere of their own elegance and their
unimpeachable good taste.