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.