The Times' Red Cross Story Book/The Fight for the Garden

by Arthur T. Quiller-Couch

The Fight for the Garden

By Sir Arthur T. Quiller-Couch

Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry

I

"It is strange, though," said the gardener's wife in Flemish, standing in the doorway of the chapel and studying, while she shook her duster, the tall pigeon-house in the centre of the courtyard. "The birds have not come back yet. Not a sign of them."

"They never like it when their house is cleaned out," responded Philomène, the middle-aged maid-of-all-work, just within the doorway. She, too, had a duster and, perched on a step-ladder insecurely—she weighed, by our English reckoning, a good fifteen stone—was flapping the dust from a tall crucifix nailed above the lintel. "The good man told me he had collected close on two pecks."

"He is down in the garden digging it in around the roses. He says that it will certainly rain to-night."

"It has been raining to the southward all the afternoon," said Philomène, heavily descending her step-ladder and shielding her eyes to stare up at the western window, through the clear quarrels of which the declining sun sent a ray from under heavy clouds. "That will be by reason of the guns."

"Thunder," suggested the gardener's wife.

"The guns bring the thunder; it is well known." In her girlhood Philomène had been affianced to a young artilleryman; she had lost him at Landrecy twenty-one years ago, and had never since owned another lover or wished for one.

"Ah, well—provided they leave us alone, this time!" sighed the gardener's wife. She gazed across to the stable-buildings where, by a flight of cup steps leading to the hay-loft, her two children, Jean and Pauline, were busy at play with Antoine, son of a small farmer, whose homestead, scarcely a mile away, aligned the high-road running south from the capital.

The school in the neighbouring village had been closed for two days; and to-morrow, being Sunday, would make a third holiday anyhow. Yesterday Jean and Pauline had been Antoine's guests at a picnic breakfast in the sandpit opposite his father's farm (there were domestic reasons why they could not be entertained in the house), and had spent four blissful hours watching the army—their army, horse, foot, and artillery, all within toss of a biscuit—march past and southward along the chaussée. To-day it was their turn to be hosts; and all the long afternoon, with intervals for light refreshment, the three children had been conducting a series of military operations from the orchard-hedge through the orchard, across a sunken ditch, through the terraced garden (with circumspection here, for the gardener was swift to detect and stern to avenge paternally any footmark on his beds), through the small fruit-garden (where it was forbidden to eat the under-ripe currants), the barnyard, among the haystacks, the outbuildings, to the courtyard and a grand finale on the stable steps. Here Napoleon (Antoine, in a cocked hat of glazed paper) was making a last desperate stand on the stair-head, with his back to the door of the loft and using the broken half of a flail en moulinet to ward off a combined "kill" by the Prince of Orange (Jean) and the British Army (Pauline). Jean wielded a hoe and carried a wooden sword in an orange-coloured scarf strapped as waistband around his blouse. But Pauline made the most picturesque figure by far. She had kilted her petticoat high, and gartered her stocking low, exposing her knees. On her head through the heat of action she carried an old muff strapped under her chin with twine. Her right hand menaced the Corsican with a broomstick; her left arm she held crooked, working the elbow against her hip while her mouth uttered discordant sounds as a bagpipe.

"Pauline—Pauline!" called her mother. "Mais, tais-toi donc—c'est a tue-tête! Et d'ailleurs nu-genoux! C'n'est pas sage, ça ..."

"C'est le pibrock, maman," called back the child, desisting for a moment. "J'suis Ecossaise, voilà!"

She had seen the Highland regiments yesterday, and the sight had given her a new self-respect, a new interest in warfare; since (as she maintained against Antoine and Jean) these kilted warriors must be women; giantesses out of the North, but none the less women. "Why, it stands to reason. Look at their clothes!"

The gardener's wife left discipline to her husband. She took a step or two out into the yard, for a glance at the sun slanting between the poplar top of the avenue. "It's time Antoine's father fetched him," she announced, returning to the chapel. "And what has happened to the birds I cannot think. One would say they had forgotten their roosting house."

"The birds will return when the corn is spread," answered Philomène comfortably. "As for little Antoine, if he be not fetched, he shall have supper, and I myself will see him home across the fields. The child has courage enough to go alone, if we pack him off now, before nightfall; but I doubt the evil characters about. There are always many such in the track of an army."

"If that be so," the gardener's wife objected, "it will not be pleasant for you, when you have left him, to be returning alone in the dark. Why not take him back now before supper?"

Philomène shrugged her broad shoulders. "Never fear for me, wife; I understand soldiery. And moreover, am I to leave the chapel unredded on a Saturday evening, of all times?"

"But since no one visits it——"

"The good God visits it, service or no service. What did Father Cosmas preach to us two Sundays ago? 'Work,' said he, 'for you cannot tell at what hour the Bridegroom cometh'—nor the baby, either, he might have said. Most likely the good man, Antoine's father, has work on his hands, and doctors so scarce with all this military overrunning us. I dreamt last night it would be twins. There now! I've said it, and a Friday night's dream told on a Saturday——"

"Whist, woman!" interrupted the gardener's wife, in a listening attitude; for the shouts of the children had ceased of a sudden.

II

Napoleon, at bay with his back to the hay-loft door, ceased to brandish his weapon, dropped his sword-arm and flung out the other, pointing:

"Look!" he cried. "Behind you!"

"Oh, we know that trick!" answered the escalading party, and closed upon him for the coup de grâce. But he ducked under Jean's clutch, still pointing, and cried again, this time so earnestly that they paused indeed and turned for a look.

About half-way between the foot of the steps and the arched entrance, with one of its double doors open behind him, stood a spare shortish gentleman, in blue frock-coat, white breeches, and Hessian boots. On his head was a small cocked hat, the peak of it only a little shorter than the nose which it overshadowed; and to this nose the spare shortish gentleman was carrying a pinch of snuff as he halted and regarded the children with what, had his mouth been less grim, might have passed for a smile of amusement.

"Mademoiselle and messieurs both," said he in very bad French, " I am sorry to interrupt, but I wish to see the propriétaire."

"The pro—— but that will be monseigneur," answered Pauline, who was the readiest (and the visitor's eyes were upon her, as if he had instantly guessed this). "But you cannot see him, sir, for he lives at Nivelles, and, moreover, is ever so old." She spread her hands apart as one elongates a concertina. "Between eighty and ninety, mamma says. He is too old to travel nowadays, even from Nivelles, and my brother Jean here is the only one of us who remembers to have seen him."

"I remember him," put in Jean, "because he wore blue spectacles and carried a white umbrella. He was not half so tall as anyone would think. Oh, what a beautiful horse!" he exclaimed, catching through the gateway a glimpse of a bright chestnut charger which an orderly was walking to and fro in the avenue. "Does he really belong to you, sir?" Jean asked this because the visitor's dress did not bespeak affluence. A button was missing from his frock-coat, his boots were mired to their tops, and a black smear on one side of his long nose made his appearance rather disreputable than not. It was, in fact, a smear of gunpowder.

"He really does," said the visitor, and turned again to Pauline, his blue eyes twinkling a little, his mouth grim as before. "Who, then, is in charge of this place?"

"My father, sir. He has been the gardener here since long before we were born, and mamma is his wife. He is in the garden at this moment if you wish to see him."

"I do," said the visitor, after a sharp glance around the courtyard, and another at its high protecting wall. "Take me to him, please!"

Pauline led him by a little gateway past the angle of the château and out upon the upper terrace of the garden—planted in the formal style—which ran along the main (south) front of the building and sloped to a stout brick wall some nine feet in height. Beyond the wall a grove of beech trees stretched southward upon the plain into open country.

"Excellent!" said the visitor. "First rate!" Yet he seemed to take small note of the orange trees, now in full bloom, or of the box-edged borders filled with periwinkle and blue forget-me-not, or with mignonette smelling very sweetly in the cool of the day; nor as yet had he cast more than a cursory glance along the whitewashed façade of the château or up at its high red-tiled roof with the pointed Flemish turrets that strangers invariably admired. He appeared quite incurious, too, when she halted a moment to give him a chance of wondering at the famous sun-dial—a circular flower-bed with a tall wooden gnomon in the centre and the hours cut in box around the edge.

"But where is your father?" he asked impatiently, drawing out a fine gold watch from his fob.

"He is not in the rose-garden, it seems," said Pauline, gazing along the terrace eastward. "Then he will be in the orchard beyond." She turned to bid Jean run and fetch him; but the two boys had thought it better fun to run back for a look at the handsome chestnut charger.

So she hurried on as guide. From the terrace they descended by some stone steps to a covered walk, at the end of which, close by the southern wall, stood another wonder—a tall picture, very vilely painted and in vile perspective, but meant to trick the eye by representing the walk as continued, with a summer-house at the end. The children held this for one of the cleverest things in the world. The visitor said "p'sh!" and in the rudest manner.

Stepping from this covered way they followed a path which ran at right angles to it, close under the south wall, which was of brick on a low foundation of stone and stout brick buttresses. In these the visitor's interest seemed to revive.

"Couldn't be better," he said, nodding grimly.

Pauline knew that her father must be in the orchard, for the small door at the end of the path stood open; and just beyond it, and beyond a sunken ditch, sure enough they found him, with a pail of wash and a brush, anointing some trees on which the caterpillars had fastened. As the visitor strode forward Pauline came to a halt, having been taught that to listen to the talk of grown-up people was unbecoming.

But some words she could not help overhearing. "Good evening, my friend," said the visitor, stepping forward. "This is a fine orchard you have here. At what size do you put it?"

"He is going to buy the château," thought Pauline with a sinking of her small heart; for she knew that monseigneur, being so old, had more than once threatened to sell it. "He is going to buy the château, and we shall be turned out."

"We reckon it at three arpents, more or less. Yes, assuredly—a noble orchard, and in the best order, though I say it."

After a word or two which she could not catch, they walked off a little way under the trees. Their conversation grew more earnest. By and by Pauline saw her father step back a pace and salute with great reverence.

("Yes, of course," she decided. "He is a very rich man, or he could not be buying such a place. But it will break mamma's heart—and mine. And what is the place to this man, who appreciates nothing—not even the sun-dial?")

The two came back slowly, her father walking now at a distance respectfully wide of the visitor. They passed Pauline as if unaware of her presence. The visitor was saying——

"If we do not hold this point to-night, the French will hold it to-morrow. You understand?"

They went through the small doorway into the garden. Pauline followed. Again the visitor seemed to regard the long brick wall—in front of which grew a neglected line of shrubs, making the best of its northern aspect—as its most interesting feature.

"Might have been built for the very purpose with these buttresses." He stopped towards one and held the edge of his palm against it, almost half-way down. "But you must cut it down, so." He spoke as if the brickwork were a shrub to be lopped. "Have you a nice lot of planks handy?"

"A few, milord. We keep some for scaffolding, when repairs are needed."

"Not enough, hey? Then we must rip up a floor or two. My fellows will see to it."

The gardener rubbed his jaw thoughtfully. "To be sure there are the benches in the chapel," he suggested.

"That's a notion. Let's have a look at 'em."

They mounted to the terrace and passed back into the courtyard, Pauline still following. Antoine's father had arrived to fetch him; had arrived too with a cart. The cart held a quantity of household furniture. The farmer held the reins, and the gardener's wife and Philomène were hoisting the child up beside him. They were agitated, as anyone could see, and while her father led the visitor into the chapel Pauline walked over to Jean, who stood watching, to ask him what it all meant.

"He says the war is coming back this way: it may even be to-night."

"Yes," said the farmer, addressing the women and unwittingly corroborating Jean's report. "This is the third load. With the first I took along my good woman, and by God's mercy found a lodging for her at the Curé's. A small bedroom—that is all; but it will be handy for the midwife."

"And your crops, my poor friend?"

"It was a fine swathe of rye, to be sure," agreed the farmer, sighing. "And the barley full of promise—one gets compensation, they tell me; but that will be small comfort if while the grass grows the cow starves. So I brought you the first word, did I? Vraiment? And yet by this time I should not wonder if the troops were in sight." He waved a hand to the southward.

Jean plucked Pauline by the sleeve. The two stole away together to the ladder that stood against the pigeon-house.

"We hear no news of the world at all," said the gardener's wife. "My man at this season is so wrapped up in his roses——"

"Holà, neighbour!" called the gardener at this moment, coming forth from the chapel, the visitor behind him. "You are stealing a march on us, it seems? Now as a friend the best you can do is to drive ahead and bespeak some room at the village for my wife and little ones, while they pack and I get out the carts."

"Is it true, then?" His wife turned on him in a twitter.

"My good woman," interposed the visitor, coming forward—at sight of whom the farmer gave a gasp and then lifted his whip-head in a flurried (and quite unheeded) salute—"it is true, I regret to say, that to-night and to-morrow this house will be no place for you or for your children. Your husband may return if he chooses, when he has seen you safely bestowed. Indeed, he will be useful and probably in no danger until to-morrow."

"The children—where are the children?" quavered the gardener's wife, and began calling, "Jean! Pauline!"

Jean and Pauline by this time were perched high on the ladder, under the platform of the pigeon-cote. From this perch they could spy over the irregular ridge of the outbuildings down across the garden to the grove, and yet beyond the grove, between the beech-tops to the southward ridge of the plain which on most days presented an undulating horizon; but now all was blurred in that direction by heavy rain-clouds, and no sign of the returning army could be seen, save a small group of horsemen coming at a trot along the great high-road and scarcely half a mile away. Crosswise from their right a shaft of the setting sun shot, as through the slit of a closing shutter, between the crest of another wood and rain-clouds scarcely less dark. It dazzled their eyes. It lit a rainbow in the eastern sky, where also the clouds had started to discharge their rain.

The château seemed to be a vortex around which the thunderstorm was closing fast—on three sides at any rate. But for the moment, poured through this one long rift in the west, sunlight bathed the buildings; a sunlight uncanny and red, that streamed into the courtyard across the low ridge of the outbuildings. The visitor had stepped back to the eastern angle of the house, and stood there as if measuring with his eye the distance between him and the gate. He began to pace it, and as he advanced, to Jean's eye his shadow shortened itself down the wall like a streak of red blood fading from the top.

"There's room in the cart here for the little ones," the farmer suggested.

"But no," answered the gardener; "Jean and Pauline will be needed to drive off the cattle. I shall take one cart; you, Philomène, the other; and I will have both ready by the time you women have packed what is necessary."

"A bientôt, then!" The farmer started his mare, the gardener following him to the gateway. The gardener's wife turned towards the house, sobbing. "But I shall come back," called Philomène stoutly. "Mon Dieu, does anyone suppose I will leave our best rooms to be tramped through by a lot of nasty foreign soldiers!"

No one listened to her. After a moment she, too, went off towards the house. Jean and Pauline slid down the ladder.

The farmer's cart had rumbled through the archway and out into the avenue. The visitor had beckoned his orderly, and was preparing to mount. With one foot in stirrup he turned to the gardener. "By the way," said he, "when you return from the village bring lanterns—all you can collect"; then to the orderly, "Give me my cloak!" for already the rain was beginning to fall in large drops.

A squall of rain burst over the poplars as he rode away.

III

Jean and Pauline awoke next morning to some very queer sensations. They had slept in their clothes upon beds of hay. Their bedroom, in fact, was part of a cottage loft partitioned into two by rough boards; on this side, hay—on the other a hen-roost. The poultry were cackling and crowing and seemed to be in a flurry. Jean raised himself on his elbow and called:

"Pauline!"

"Jean! I was just going to wake you. I have scarcely slept all night, while you have been snoring. Listen! The battle has begun."

Sure enough a deal of fusillading was going on, and not very far away; and this no doubt had scared the fowls on the other side of the partition. The loft had but a narrow slit, unglazed, close under the eaves, to admit air and daylight. Jean crept to it, over the trusses of hay, and peered out on the world. He could see nothing but clouds and a few near trees wrapped in a foggy drizzle. Still the loose fusillade went on.

"I don't think it can be the battle," he reported. "Philomène says that battles always begin nowadays with the big guns, and this moreover sounds half-hearted."

He was right, too. The two or three trees visible in the mist were the outposts of a plantation which straggled up to the entrance of the village. Beyond this plantation lay two regiments that, like the rest of the army, had marched and bivouacked in mud and rain. At dawn they had been ordered to clean their small arms, and since the readiest way to make sure of a musket is to fire off the charge, they had been directed to do so, by companies.

In an interval of this fusillade the children caught the sound of someone moving in the kitchen below, lighting the fire. Jean crept from his window-slit to the hatchway of the loft and called down softly, "Maman!"

The good woman of the cottage answered, bidding him go back to bed again. His mother was not in the house, but had been called during the night to visit a cottage some way up the road.

"That will be Antoine's mother," whispered Pauline, who had crept over the hay to Jean's side. "Is it a boy or a girl?" she asked aloud.

"It is twins," said the good woman. "Now lie down and be sensible, you two."

"But where is papa?"

"Down at the château, doubtless. But God knows. He was here a little before midnight, and left again meaning to spend the night there. Now I have told you what I know."

The two crept back to their lairs, and lay very obediently until the good woman called up that coffee was ready. They hurried down the ladder, washed their hands and faces at the pump outside, and returned to the meal. There was coffee and a very savoury pottage in which they dipped great slices of bread. The woman was kind to them, having no children of her own. Her husband (she said) was somewhere in the plantation, felling trees with the troops. He had gone out long before dawn with a lantern, because he knew the best trees and could lead the pioneers to them in the dark.

Jean, having breakfasted until his small belly was tight as a drum, felt a new courage in his veins, and a great curiosity. He proposed to Pauline in a whisper that they should run down together to the château and see how papa was getting on, and Philomène.

"She will scold, though," objected Pauline.

"Oh!" said Jean. "Philomène's scolding!"

They ran out into the back garden. "That is right," the woman called after them. "You can play there more safely than in the road. But be sensible now; if they should begin firing——"

It was not difficult to slip through the tumble-down fence. On the far side of it the children struck a footpath which ran down across a rye-field to the plantation. The rain had ceased, and above the rye many larks were singing, though the clouds hung grey and heavy. The loose firing, too, had ceased. Trees and the backs of a few cottages on their left, denser woodland ahead of them, circumscribed the view here. Not a soldier was in sight. There was nothing to be heard save the larks' chorus.

"But, of course," exclaimed Pauline, recollecting, "it is Sunday. People do not fight on Sunday."

"Are you sure?" asked Jean, with a touch of disappointment. "If it were an ordinary Sunday the church bell would be ringing before now."

"That is M. le Curé's cunning. With so many soldiers about, his church would be suffocated if he called attention "

"But where are the soldiers?" demanded Jean.

They went down the path, which was narrow and slippery with mire, between walls of rye that, when brushed against, shook down the golden rain in showers. Jean led, with Pauline at his heels. They reached the plantation and entered it by a low gap. The wood being of beech, there was no undergrowth to wet their legs; but the boughs dripped. The plantation ended at a bank overhanging a paved road, and down this bank they scrambled without difficulty.

The pavement ran down the middle of the road, and they followed this, avoiding the slush which lined it on either side. The ruts here were prodigious. In fact, the children, who had driven the cattle up this road a few hours ago, found it almost unrecognisable.

They now heard sounds of wood-cutters' axes, creaking timber, men's voices—foreign voices, and at an angle of the road came on a sudden glimpse of scarlet. The avenue to the château turned off from the high-road just here; and just beyond the turning a company of British red-coats were completing an abattis, breast-high, of lopped trees criss-crossed and interlaced with beech-boughs.

An officer caught sight of the children as they stood hesitating, and warned them sharply to go back.

"But we have a message for our father, who is the gardener yonder," spoke up Jean, with a jerk of his thumb towards the château.

"Well, you can give it to the sentry at the gate, if he'll take it. But be quick!"

The children darted up the avenue between the poplars. At the entrance gate, which stood open, sure enough they found a red-coat posted.

"We bring a message for our father, who is the gardener here," said Jean, hardily.

The sentinel made him repeat it, and answered in execrable French. "Well, I suppose there is no harm in letting you carry it, if the message is urgent. Your father's somewhere in the garden; I saw him pass that way a minute ago. But you must promise to be back within five minutes."

"Lord, now," added the sentry, smiling down at them, "I left just such a pair as you at home, not two months ago. I'd be sorry, much as I love them, to see them anyways here."

"I like that man," said Pauline, as she and Jean passed into the yard. The place was empty, save for two soldiers—Lunsbrugers—in green uniform, who were carrying a bench from the chapel towards the small gate of the garden.

"But we have no message for papa," said Pauline, "unless we tell him that Antoine's mother has twins."

"And he won't be in a hurry to hear that." Just then a dull noise sounded afar to the southward, and the ground seemed to shake a little. "We will first seek Philomène."

He had hardly spoken the words when something screamed in the air above and struck the edge of the stable-steps with a terrific crash. The children, frightened out of their lives, dashed for the ladder of the pigeon-house—the nearest solid object to which they could cling. Across the smoke, as they clung and turned, they saw the sentry very coolly shutting the gate. Four or five green-coats ran out of the chapel to help him, but paused a moment as a second and a third shot whistled wide overhead. Then they rushed forward, heads down, to the gate, which was quickly shut and barred. They had not seen the children, who now, climbing up the ladder, stayed not until they had squeezed through the square hole of the platform and crawled into the pigeon-house, where they lay panting.

It was, of course, quite foolish to seek shelter here. For the moment they would have been far safer in the courtyard below, under the lee of the outbuildings. A ball, striking the pigeon-house, would knock it to shivers at one blow. But they had climbed in pure panic, and even now, without any excuse of reason, they felt more secure here.

As a matter of fact the danger was lessening, for with these first shots the artillery to the southward, beyond the trees, had been finding its range and now began to drop its fire shorter, upon the garden below the château. Through their pigeon-holes Jean and Pauline overlooked almost the whole stretch of the garden, the foot of which along the brick wall was closely lined with soldiers—tall red-coats for the most part, with squads of green-jackets here and there and a sprinkling of men who carried yellow knapsacks. They had broken down the cups of the buttresses during the night and laid planks from buttress to buttress, forming a platform that ran the entire length of the wall. Along this platform a part of the defenders stood ready with bayonets fixed in their muskets, which they rested for the moment on the brick coping; others knelt on the flower border close beneath the platform watching at apertures where a few bricks had been knocked out. There were green jackets and yellow, too, in the grove beyond, posted here and there behind the breech-holes—a line of them pushed forward to a hedge on the left—with a line of retreat left open by a small doorway.

This was all that Jean and Pauline could see of the defence; and even this they took in hurriedly, for the round shot by now was sweeping the garden terraces and ploughing through the flower-beds. It still passed harmlessly over the wall and the soldiery lining it; and the children could see the men turn to watch the damage and grin at one another jocosely. Pauline wondered at their levity; for the hail under which they stood and the whistling noise of it, the constant throbbing of earth and air and the repeated heavy thuds upon the terrace were enough to strike terror into anyone.

She cried "O—oh!" as a tall orange-tree fell, shorn through as easily as a cabbage stump.

But Jean dragged at her arm. Between the tree tops in a gap of the smoke that hung and drifted beyond the wood—which dipped southward with the lie of the slope and fined away there to an acute angle—the enemy batteries, or two of them, were visible, shooting out fresh wings of smoke on the sullen air, and on a rising ground beyond, dense masses of infantry, with squadrons of horsemen moving and taking up position. Flags and pennons flickered, and from moment to moment, as a troop shifted ground, quick rivulets of light played across lines of cuirasses and helmets. Tens—hundreds—of thousands were gathered there and stretched away to the left (the trees were lower to the left and gave a better view); and the object of this tremendous concourse, as it presented itself to Jean—all to descend upon the château and swallow up this thin line of men by the garden wall. To him, as to Pauline, this home of theirs meant more than the capital, being the centre of their world; and of other preparations to resist the multitude opposite they could see nothing.

Jean wondered why, seeing it was so easy, the great masses hung on the slope and refrained from descending to deliver the blow.

By and by that part of the main body which stood facing the angle where the wood ended threw out, as it were by a puff, a cloud of little figures to left and right, much like two swarms of bees; and these two dark swarms, each as it came on in irregular order, expanding until their inner sides melted together and made one, descended under cover of their artillery to the dip, where for a few minutes Jean lost sight of them.

In less than a minute the booming of the heavy guns ceased, and their music was taken up by a quick crackle of small arms on both sides of the wood. The line of defenders by the hedge shook, wavered, broke and came running back, mingling with their supporters posted behind the beech-boles; under whose cover they found time to reload and fire again, dodging from tree to tree. But still as it dodged the whole body of men in the wood was being driven backward and inward from both sides upon the small door admitting to the garden. At this point the crush was hidden by the intervening wall. The children could only see the thin trickle of men, as after jostling without they escaped back through the doorway. But across the wall could now be seen the first of the assailants closing in among the beech-trunks. A line of red jackets, hitherto hidden, sprang forward—as it were from the base of the wall on the far side—to cover the route. But they were few and seemed doomed to perish when——

Whirr-rh! Over the children's heads, from somewhere behind the château, a shell hissed, plunged into the trees right amongst the assailants, and exploded. It was followed by another, another, and yet another. The whole air screamed with shells as the earth shook again with their explosions. But the marvel was the accuracy with which they dropped, plump among trees through which the assailants crowded—white-breasted regiments of the line, blue-coated, black-gaitered, sharpshooters closing in on their flanks. The edge of this ring within thirty seconds was a semicircle of smoke and flame along which, as globe after globe fell and crashed, arms tossed, bodies leapt and pitched back convulsively; while even two hundred yards nearer at most, the knot of defenders stood unscathed.

Within five minutes—so deadly was the play of these unseen howitzers—not a blue-coat stood anywhere in sight. A few wounded could be seen crawling away to shelter. The rest of the front and second lines lay in an irregular ring, and behind it the assault, which had swept so close up to the wall, melted clean away. Amid hurrahs the streams of green and yellow jackets, which had been pouring in at the entry, steadied itself and began to pour forth again to reoccupy the wood, gaily encouraged by the tall red-coats on the platform. The hail of shells ceased as suddenly as it had begun.

In the lull Jean found time to look below him, then through another pigeon-hole which faced the gateway he saw his father crossing the yard with a red-coated officer who was persuading him to leave it.

"Philomène!" shouted the gardener.

The serving-woman came forth from the doorway of the house, bearing a large basin. She emptied it into a sink beside the steps, and what she poured was to appearance a bowlful of blood.

"We are to go, it seems," called the gardener. "They will try again, and the likes of us will be shot as having no business here."

"No business?" called back Philomène. "I don't remember when I had so much." She disappeared into the house.

"Papa!" shrilled Jean, and pushed Pauline out towards the platform. "For your life, quick!"

"But the ladder has gone!" gasped Pauline.

It was true. Jean shouted to his father again, but the scream of a belated shell overhead drowned his young voice. Someone had removed the ladder. Before he could call again his father had passed out and the sentry, under the officer's instructions, was barring the gate.

IV

The ladder which alone could help them to descend rested against the curtain of the gate, some two dozen yards away. Why it had been carried off to be planted there, or by whom, there was no guessing. Someone, maybe, had done it in a panic. For a moment it rested there idly: yet, as events proved, it had a purpose to serve.

A lull of twenty minutes ensued on the baffled first assault. But the French tirailleurs, beaten back from their direct attack on the wood, collected themselves on the edges of it, and began to play a new and more deadly game, creeping singly along the hedges and by the sunken ways, halting, gathering, pushing on again, gradually enclosing three sides of the walled enceinte. Against the abattis on the high-road they made a small demonstration as a feint. But the main rush came again through the wood and across an orchard to the left of it.

This time, for some reason, the deadly howitzers were silent. This time, after another roar of artillery fire, the defenders in the grove came pouring back with the black-gaitered men close upon them, intercepting and shooting them down by scores.

Then followed half an hour's horrible work all along the garden wall; work of which (and they should have thanked Heaven for it) the children missed the worst, seeing only the red-coats jabbing across the wall and downwards with their bayonets; the riflemen at the loopholes firing, drawing back, pausing to re-load. The small door had been shut fast, and a dozen men held their weight against it.

Yells and firing sounded all the while from the orchard to the loft. But what was happening there the children could not see. An angle of the house cut off their view in that direction—cut off in fact, their view of the main field of battle, where charge after charge of cavalry was being launched against the few regiments holding a ridge to the left, close under which the château stood.

But for Jean and Pauline the whole fight was for the château—their home, and especially just now for the garden. It seemed incredible that a thin line of red-coats could hold the wall against such numbers as kept pouring up between the beech-boles. Yet minute after minute passed, and the wall was not carried.

Someone shouted close at hand from the gate. They turned that way, each choosing a peephole. A score of blue-coats had actually burst the gate open, and were carrying the courtyard with a rush. But, half-way, as many red-coats met them and swept them out at point of bayonet, forcing the double gate on their backs. Half a dozen others ran with beams to barricade it. Close beside it to the left a man topped the wall and straddled it with a shout of triumph; a red-coat fired slantwise from the pigeon-house ladder and he pitched writhing upon the cobbles. Shakos and heads bobbed up behind the coping whence he had dropped; but the yard now was full of soldiers (Heaven knew whence they had sprung) and so this assault too was driven back.

Shouts arose from the left of the house. Gradually, the assault here being baffled, the men drained off in that direction. The attack upon the wall, too, seemed to have eased. Then came another lull. Then the enemy's artillery opened fire again, this time with shell. A tall officer stood against the wall, shouting an order, when the first shell dropped. When the smoke of the explosion cleared he was there no longer. There remained only what seemed to be his shadow. It was actually the streak of him beaten in blood upon the stucco.

This new cannonade was designed to set fire to the obstinate buildings, and very soon the roof broke into a blaze in two places. That of the chapel was the first to catch, at the western end. Many of the wounded had been carried there.

The pigeon-house stood intact. Not even a stray bullet had struck it. But now a new danger threatened the children and a surer one even than the fast dropping shells. Smoke from the blazing roof of the main building poured into every aperture of their hiding-place. They fought with it, striving to push it from them with hands that still grew feebler. Of a sudden it blotted out, not the battle only, but life itself for them.

V

"Pauline!"

It seemed to Jean that he was awaking again in the hay-loft. Again he heard the distant crackle of musketry.

"Pauline!"

Pauline stirred. At that moment a bird alighted on a sill before one of the holes and disappeared with a whirr of wings. It was a pigeon returning to roost, frightened to discover his house occupied.

The noise awakened Pauline upright. She sat up on the floor of the loft and asked suddenly:

"But did they break in after all?"

"They? Who?" asked Jean, still confused. But he crept to the opening, as he had crept to the other opening in the dawn.

It was close upon sunset now; but he did not mark this. What he marked—and what brought him back to his senses—was the sight of Philomène crossing the empty courtyard with a bucket. It was the same courtyard, though its outbuildings here and there lacked a roof. It was the same Philomène anyhow, with her waddling walk.

"Philomène!"

"Eh? But, the good God deliver us, how?"

"Fetch the ladder here."

She fetched and planted it. The two children climbed down to her.

VI

A man came through the broken gateway and stood for a moment gazing around him in the falling twilight at the ruins—a tall sergeant of the Horse Artillery. He caught sight of Philomène and the children and stared at them, harder still.

"Well, I've seen things to-day," he said. "But if you ain't the unlikeliest. Who belongs here?"

"I could have told you, yesterday," answered Philomène, in an old voice, following his look around.

"And you've seen these things? You?" he asked. His face was dirty—a mask of gunpowder; but his eyes shone kindly, and Pauline, without recognising his uniform, knew him for a friend. "Well, I'm ——! But who lives here just now?"

"There's nobody at home just now but me and the children, as you see," said Philomène. "Were you looking for somebody?" with another look around. "He will be hard to find."

The tall sergeant leaned an elbow against the gate. He was tottering with fatigue. "It's a victory, that's what it is," he said; "an almighty victory."

"It ought to be, God knows," Philomène assented.

"And—and—— But you'll be busy, no doubt?"

"Moderately."

"I have to push on with my battery. But there's no real hurry— the Prussians are after them. Now I thought—on the off-chance, if I could find a friend here——"

"What is it you ask of me, good man?"

"If one of you wouldn't mind stepping yonder with me. It's much to ask, I know. But there's a gentleman—an officer of ours——"

"Wounded?"

"No such trouble for you, good woman. Dead he is, and I helped bury him. But I want to find someone who will mark the place and keep it marked 'gainst I come back—if ever I do."

"Was he a friend of yours, then?" asked Philomène, while the children stared.

"I wouldn't altogether say that. He'd have said 'yes' fast enough, if you'd asked him. But he was a gentleman; Ramsey by name—Major Norman Ramsey; one of many fallen to-day, but I rode with him in his battery when he charged in slap through the whole French cavalry at Fuentes d'Oñoro. Will you come? 'Tis but a little way."

His voice pleaded so—it was so strange and womanly, coming from a man of his strength and inches—that they followed him almost without demur, out by the gateway and around the sunken lane at the back of the buildings, where (for it was dark) they had to pick their steps for fear of stumbling over the dead.

Mercifully the way was not far. The tall sergeant halted and pointed to a patch of broken turf, where was a loose mound among broad wheel-ruts.

"You see, I have marked it with a stone," said he. "But in a few days' time there may be many around here. I want you to mark this one—it doesn't matter how, so that you know it and can point it out when his friends ask. He wears his jacket, of course—the same as mine." The tall man spanned his chest and turned towards the dying daylight, so that the bars of yellow braid showed between his fingers. "Only the facings will be of gold. You see those three trees standing alone? They will be half-way between it and the wall of the château—in a straight line almost; and the lane close here on our left. You cannot miss it." He felt in his pockets.

"We want no money, soldier," said Philomène. "We will do our best. Give me your name, that meanwhile we may pray for you and him, out of these many."

"My name is Livesay, Sergeant, of Bull's troop. That will mean nothing to you, however."

"I dare say," answered Philomène simply, "it will convey more to our Lord God. I had a man once—who was killed—in the Artillery."

Jean and Pauline stared at the man. Tears, as he stood by the grave, had carved channels of white down his powder-stained cheeks.

"I do not believe," he said, "in praying for the dead. But I am glad, somehow, there are folks who do. Will you? His name was Ramsey; and the Duke, who has won this battle, broke his heart, curse him!"

"How did he die, sir?" asked Philomène simply.

"He was killed some while ago and far from here," answered the sergeant. "Of a broken heart, Mademoiselle."

"It is a sad thing," sighed Philomène, "to live for the Artillery."

The sergeant seemed to wish to say more, but turned to shake hands with her. He patted the children lightly on the head, then strode down the slope.

A last shaft of sunset cast his long shadow over the heaps of slain. With a sob Philomène pulled herself together.

"Mark my words, children. The pigeons will be home at their roosts to-morrow and all this will be as if it never had been."

She turned back to retrace the path, and over the fields of slain the two children followed her, heavy with sleep.