Part 19

And the other two knew that the miracle had come to pass.

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 sand-pit 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 à 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——”

“Wh’st, 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.