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.