Chapter XXII

A BITTER EXPERIENCE.

hat march from Verdun to Bitche! If Roy Baron should live to be a hundred years old, the bitter memory of it would stand out still, pre-eminent among memories.

He had at first only three English companions, middle-aged men, masters of merchantmen, accused of trying to escape from close confinement in the dungeon of the “Tour d’Angoulême” of the Verdun citadel. There, for no apparent reason beyond caprice, they had been flung by the commandant’s orders, and thence they were now no less arbitrarily remanded to the worse dungeons of Bitche.

They were honest sailor-like men, rough in manner, but kindly; and they looked with pity at the fresh-faced boy, whom many a time they had seen in the streets of Verdun. One of them spoke to him, but Roy was in no mood for talk. He held his head well up, and strode resolutely along, with a spirited imitation of the bearing which was characteristic of Ivor; yet at his heart lay a weight like lead. It was such cruel work, being thus torn away from all whom he loved, and sent he hardly knew whither, merely for one little boyish fit of recklessness.

At the first halting-place they were joined by a second and larger company, a party of English sailors, manacled two and two, like criminals. Sailors of the Royal Navy Roy knew at a glance, and he caught a glimpse also of three or four middies behind them. Then his attention was called off, as, to his unutterable wrath, he found himself also on the point of being put into fetters.

Roy Baron—son of a Colonel in His Majesty’s Guards—to be handcuffed!

The blood rushed to his face, then receded, leaving him as white as his own shirt-front. He clenched his hands fiercely; and the merchantman Captain, who had addressed him at the first, came a step nearer.

“Sir, it’ll be worse for you if you resist! I wouldn’t, sir—I wouldn’t really!”

As if in echo Roy seemed to hear Denham’s voice speaking too. “Think of your mother!” he had said. If he endured patiently, Roy might be the sooner sent back to her.

The frank weather-beaten face of the sailor had an anxious look upon it. Roy said gravely, “Thank you, Captain!” and submitted, though not without a sting of hot tears smarting under his eyelids at the indignity.

Then he flung himself flat on the ground, passionately hiding his face in those manacled hands, and refusing the coarse food that was offered to him. He had money in his possession, but Denham had advised him to be in no haste to betray the fact.

“Never you mind,” a voice said at his side, clear and chirpy as the note of a robin. “There’s nothing to be ashamed of, you know. It isn’t our fault. The shame is for them—not us. Cheer up, comrade.”

The combined childishness and manliness of the tones made an odd impression upon Roy, the more so as they also brought a sense of something familiar. He pulled himself up slowly. One of the middies had drawn close; a pretty boy, perhaps two years Roy’s junior, with a rosy face, and any amount of pluck in it.

Roy gazed hard at him, in growing bewilderment.

“You’d better eat while you can. None too good fare, eh?”—with the same droll assumption of manliness. “As for these”—and he lifted his little brown manacled hands—“why, it only shows we’re Englishmen. Ain’t you proud of that? I am!” Then a pause, and a stare. “O I say! My eyes!”

“I say!” echoed Roy.

“If you ain’t as like as two peas——”

“And you’ve a look——”

“It’s Roy Baron, as I’m alive!”

“And I declare it’s Will Peirce!”

The two tongues went fast for three minutes. As little boys they had played together, romped together, worked mischief together, teased Molly together, and together had usually made up to her afterwards by spending their joint pennies on splendid bull’s-eyes, wherewith to comfort her wounded feelings. For nearly five years the two had not met.

“We weren’t beaten in fair fight, don’t you think it,” Will asserted with his chirrupy cheerfulness. “Got caught in a trap. Damaged in a gale off Cape Finisterre, and then when ’twas as much as we could do to keep afloat, two seventy-gun French frigates bore down upon us. If she’d have answered her helm, we’d have got the best of it, in spite of all; but though we had a hard fight, ’twas no go for us. They raked us fore and aft, and we got riddled through and through, so we were bound to give in at last. I say, you set to work and eat something. We’ve a long way to go.”

Roy followed the wise counsel of experienced boyhood, and did eat, feeling better for it. Also, Will’s familiar and plucky face brought a sense of something like comfort.

“We’ll keep together as long as we can,” Will said.

Then on again they marched, the middies and Roy simply handcuffed; the Royal Navy sailors and the merchantmen sailors chained together, two and two. The boys kept up a brave heart, at least in outward seeming, however weary and footsore they became; and Roy held out as resolutely as anyone. He seemed to himself indefinitely older than Will; though in some respects Will was more a man of the two, having fought in two or three engagements, and had one wound, besides coming in for a nice sum of prize-money some months earlier.

Now and again Roy would recur in thought to Ivor’s long march from Valenciennes to Verdun, all the way on foot, though weakened by illness, and then Denham’s pale face at the moment of their parting would come up; was it only that same morning? Already it began to look like months ago. Roy felt years older than when he had stood on the ramparts, watching a crowd at the gate. Was that indeed only two days earlier?

Later in the day, when another halt was made, a third company seemed to be waiting to join them. A company of—were they prisoners? Impossible. Roy gazed in perplexity. For these were French faces, sullen and downcast, with French manners, and French style of dress. Yet they too were coupled together, like the English sailors, two and two, by connecting chains. They too were under an escort of gendarmes.

“Are they convicts?” Roy exclaimed, and the merchantman-master, Captain Boyce, replied—

“Bless you, sir, no. Those are conscripts for the Emperor’s grand army, dragged from their homes, belike, without a will-he nor a nill-he, and driven to war like sheep to the shambles.”

“Poor wretches,” Will remarked, with his experienced air. “I’ve seen a lot of them before, on our way across France.”

“Sure enough, sir, and so have I—times and again. Looking as sheepish too and as down in the mouth as ever a man need look. It don’t make much wonder neither, seeing they’re dragged away from their homes and their sweethearts, and never a chance of getting off. O they’ll make smart soldiers enough, I’ll be bound, and good food for shot too, with a few months of drilling, and be as ready to rave as any Frenchman of them all for ‘le petit Caporal,’ as they’re pleased to call the Emperor. And the mothers and sweethearts may bear the sorrow as they can, and the land may go uncultivated, and what does Boney care, so long as he has his way?”

“But—conscripts for Napoleon! French soldiers—chained!”[1] uttered Roy.

“Well, you see, sir, it’s this way. They’ve got to be taken from their homes to the dépôt; and scarce a man among ’em wouldn’t desert on the road, if he’d a chance of doing so. When they’ve been in the army a few weeks or months, disciplined and turned into proper soldiers, they’ll learn a pride in their new position, and things’ll be different; but at the first ’tis hard upon the poor chaps. Why, look you, I’ve heard of a young fellow being taken straight off, just as he was on the point of being married, and the marriage put off, nobody knew how long. As like as not, in six months he’d be in a soldier’s grave.”

Roy thought of Lucille.

“’Tis not our English way with our soldiers,” he said, in reference to the sight before them.

“No, sir. But”—and a queer smile gleamed on the weatherbeaten face—“but I’m not one for to go for to say that even old England is never in the wrong. You’ve maybe heard o’ such matters as the work of the press-gangs, that force men to go to sea against their will; carry ’em off captive, in fact. Many a brave tar, in His Majesty’s Service at this moment, who’d give his life for his country, and never a moment’s hesitation, was kidnapped at the first and dragged away, unwilling enough, I can tell you.”[2]

“More shame for them, if they didn’t want to fight for the liberties of England!” retorted little Will, with the dignity of a man three times his size.

The chained and dejected conscripts followed in rear of the prisoners, as the march was resumed.

Day after day it went on. A hundred leagues were not to be accomplished on foot quickly, by a large number of men and boys, of varying powers, many of them used to shipboard life, and entirely unused to long tramps. There were tender feet and weary limbs among them before long, and things grew worse each day. Food was poor, and at night when they halted they were put to sleep in the common prison of the place, no matter what manner of prison it might be. Roy would have found it hard to rest, in such accommodation as was provided, but that he was usually far too weary to keep awake.

He was carefully guarding the money with which he had been abundantly supplied by his father; not allowing it to be known that he possessed more than a few loose coins, sufficient for immediate needs. Impulsive Roy would hardly have been so reticent, but for injunctions at the last from Ivor. Like Ivor, he was naturally open-handed and generous, and he could not but share freely what he had in hand with the middies, since they proved to be ill supplied with cash.

At length the long march came to an end. Bitche was reached—a grim and solemn fortress, sheltering already hundreds of English prisoners, waiting to engulf these new arrivals in addition.

Roy and the middies together were first taken to the “Petite Tête,” so-called, where each one underwent a severe searching, lest he should have concealed about him either weapons of defence, or instruments which might be used for purposes of escape. Roy’s bag of money and notes was detected in this search, and he knew that thenceforward the gendarmes would look upon him as lawful prey.

No immediate attempt was, however, made upon him. He and the middies were led through gloomy passages to one of the great subterranean dungeons, descending some sixty steps, into a place which has been described as not unlike a huge wine-vault. Originally it had been dug out of the solid saltpetre rock, and was some thirty feet below the surface of the ground.

In this vault, dimly-lighted, heavy and dank in atmosphere, with water here and there dripping from the roof or running down the walls, was gathered a motley crowd of some three hundred prisoners. English soldiers, English sailors, English middies, détenus from Verdun and elsewhere, were mingled with swindlers, pickpockets, and highwaymen; and even English gentlemen and officers of higher rank sometimes found themselves consigned here, though, unless they gave particular offence, they were more commonly installed in smaller rooms above ground.

With the measured descent down and down those stone steps, Roy’s heart sank lower and lower. Was this what he had come to? And for how long?

An outburst of uproarious cheering hailed the new arrivals, as the heavy doors were unlocked and they were ushered in. Three shouts were given; then each was hoisted on the shoulders of three or four men, and was paraded round the dungeon. After this rough welcome, came a severe blanket-tossing, which both Roy and the middies were wise enough to take in good part. Any who wished to fight were then cordially invited to do so; and lastly those who possessed money were called upon to treat others to drink, provided by the gendarmes.

Such initiatory ceremonies being ended, comparative quiet descended on the scene. It was past eight o’clock when they first arrived, and night was near.

Roy Baron’s first night in a French dungeon!

Each prisoner was provided with a worn blanket, cast off by a French soldier; and wrapped in these the crowd of over three hundred men and boys laid themselves down to rest. Some slumbered silently; some tossed to and fro; some snored loudly; some talked or shouted in their sleep. Roy lay amid the throng, a ragged blanket round him also. At first he had rejected it with scorn; but these subterranean regions were cold and damp, and, shivering, he had at length drawn it round him, as he lay with arms crossed, and face pressed into them. The handcuffs had been removed.

He was not thinking of the bruises which he had received, when the rough blanket-tossers had allowed him to drop upon the stone floor. Bruises to a hardy boy are a small matter. But the desolation of the lad that awful night went beyond bounds, and desperate blank despair took possession of him.

For hours he hardly stirred. He could not sleep. He could only lie in a trance of misery. He saw no gleam of hope, no chance of escape from this terrible place. Yet, to stay on here, week after week, month after month, perhaps even as some had done year after year! Could he bear it? Through all previous troubles Roy had borne up bravely; but at last his spirit gave way beneath the strain.

Molly’s face came up before his mind—not Molly the sedate and ladylike maiden of sixteen, but Molly the little eager girl whom he remembered. O to see her again! Roy pressed his face closer into the folded arms, writhing silently.

Then his mother’s face—he hardly dared to think of that. What would not she suffer? unknowing, indeed, what her boy had to endure; but fearing and conjecturing the worst, so far as she had knowledge to picture that worst. Would any picturings of hers approach the reality?

A wild craving for Denham had him next in its grasp. If Denham had but been arrested too—had but come with him! But that unworthy wish lasted not ten seconds. Upon it came a nobler rush of gladness that Denham was not here. The worn face came up before Roy, as he had seen it but a few days sooner; and below his breath he sobbed in an ecstasy of thankfulness, that at least Denham would be in comparative comfort, that at least he had not to be in this dungeon.

“Think how your mother will be praying for you.”

Was that Denham speaking? Roy seemed to hear the words, not only with his mind, but with his bodily ears.

He sat up and looked round upon the slumbering throng—looked with smarting eyes into the gloom. He gazed into the blackness overhead, where a stone roof shut him pitilessly in.

Was his mother praying for him then?—and his father?—and Denham? Would God hear their prayers?

Denham’s voice again, deep and quiet, seemed to breathe around him, “Remember! God is overall!” How long ago was it that he had said those words? Not lately. Was it—when he was ordered off to Valenciennes?

God over all? Ay, even here, even in this dungeon!

Roy dropped down again, face foremost; and through heaving sobs, not one of which was allowed to make itself heard, he joined his prayers to those of his mother.

(To be continued.)