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.