by Frank Wynne
“Half after two. Come, we must hold out four hours.”
He had the gate of the court-yard shut, and all preparations were made for an energetic resistance. As the Prussians were on the other side of the Morelle, an immediate assault was not to be feared. To be sure, there was a bridge, a little over a mile off, but they doubtless did not know of its existence; and it was hardly possible that they would try to ford the river. So the officer merely had the road watched. The whole effort was to be made on the side toward the fields.
The firing had once more ceased. The mill seemed dead beneath the hot sun. Not a shutter was opened, not a sound came from the inside. Little by little, meanwhile, the Prussians showed themselves at the outskirts of the Gagny wood. They stretched forth their heads, grew more daring. In the mill, several soldiers had already levelled their rifles, but the captain cried out:—
“No, no, wait. Let them come up.”
They were very cautious about it, looking at the mill with evident distrust. This old dwelling, silent and dismal, with its curtains of ivy, made them uneasy. Still they kept advancing. When there were about fifty of them in the meadow opposite, the officer said a single word:—’
“Fire!”
A tearing sound was heard, followed by single shots. Françoise shaken with a fit of trembling, put her hands up to her ears, in spite of herself. Dominique, behind the soldiers, looked on; and when the smoke had blown away a little, he saw three Prussians stretched on their backs in the middle of the field. The rest had thrown themselves down behind the willows and poplars; and the siege began.
For over an hour the mill was riddled with bullets. They whipped its old walls like hail. When they struck stone, you heard them flatten out and fall back into the water. Into wood they penetrated with a hollow sound. Now and then a cracking told that the wheel had been hit. The soldiers inside husbanded their shots,—fired only when they could take aim. From time to time the captain would look at his watch; and as a ball split a shutter and then lodged in the ceiling:—
“Four o’clock,” he muttered. “We shall never hold out.”
It was true: this terrible firing of musketry was shivering the old mill. A shutter fell into the water, riddled like a piece of lace, and had to be replaced by a mattress. Old Merlier exposed himself every moment, to make sure of the injury done to his poor wheel, whose cracking went to his heart. It was all over with it this time: never would he be able to repair it. Dominique implored Françoise to go, but she would stay with him; she had sat down behind a great oak clothes-press, the sides of which gave out a deep sound. Then Dominique placed himself in front of Françoise. He had not fired yet; he held his gun in his hands, not being able to get up to the windows, whose entire width was taken up by the soldiers. At every discharge the floor shook.
“Look out! look out!” the captain cried of a sudden.
He had just seen a whole black mass come out from the wood. Immediately a formidable platoon fire was opened. It was as if a waterspout had passed over the mill. Another shutter gave way; and by the gaping opening of the window the bullets came in. Two soldiers rolled upon the floor. One did not move; they pushed him up against the wall, because he was in the way. The other squirmed on the ground begging them to make an end of him; but no one minded him: the balls kept coming in; every one shielded himself, and tried to find a loop-hole to fire back through. A third soldier was wounded; he said not a word, he let himself slide down by the edge of a table, with fixed and haggard eyes. Opposite the dead men, Françoise, seized with horror, had pushed her chair aside mechanically, to sit down on the ground next the wall; she felt smaller there, and in less danger. Meanwhile they had gone after all the mattresses in the house, and had half stopped up the window. The hall was getting filled with rubbish, with broken weapons, with gutted furniture.
“Five o’clock,” said the captain. “Keep it up. They are going to try to cross the water.”
At this instant Françoise gave a shriek. A rebounding ball had just grazed her forehead. A few drops of blood appeared. Dominique looked at her; then stepping up to the window, he fired his first shot, and kept on firing. He loaded, fired, without paying any attention to what was going on near him; only from time to time he would give Françoise a look. For the rest, he did not hurry himself,—took careful aim. The Prussians, creeping along by the poplars, were attempting the passage of the Morelle, as the captain had foreseen; but as soon as one of them risked showing himself, he would fall, hit in the head by a ball from Dominique. The captain who followed this game was astonished. He complimented the young man, saying that he would be glad to have a lot of marksmen like him. Dominique did not hear him. A ball cut his shoulder, another bruised his arm; and he kept on firing.
There were two more men killed. The mattresses, all slashed to bits, no longer stopped up the windows. A last volley seemed as if it would carry away the mill. The position was no longer tenable. Still the officer repeated:—
“Stick to it. Half an hour more.”
Now he counted the minutes. He had promised his superior officers to hold the enemy there until evening, and would not draw back a sole’s breadth before the time he had set for the retreat. He still had his gracious manner; smiling at Françoise to reassure her. He himself had just picked up a dead soldier’s rifle, and was firing.
There were only four soldiers left in the hall. The Prussians showed themselves in a body on the other bank of the Morelle, and it was evident that they might cross the river at any time. A few more minutes elapsed. The captain stuck to it obstinately, and would not give the order to retreat; when a sergeant came running up saying;—
“They are on the road: they are going to take us in the rear.”
The Prussians must have found the bridge. The captain pulled out his watch.
“Five minutes more,” said he. “They won’t be here for five minutes.”
Then at the stroke of six, he at last consented to order his men out by a little door opening upon an alley-way. From there they threw themselves into a ditch; they reached the Sauval forest. Before going, the captain saluted old Merlier very politely, excusing himself; and he even added:—
“Make them lose time. We shall be back again.”
Meanwhile Dominique stayed on in the hall. He still kept firing, hearing nothing, understanding nothing. He only felt that he must defend Françoise. The soldiers were gone, without his suspecting it the least in the world. He took aim and killed his man at every shot. Suddenly there was a loud noise. The Prussians from the rear, had just overrun the court-yard. He fired his last shot, and they fell upon him as his piece was still smoking.
Four men held him. Others shouted round him in a frightful language. They all but cut his throat off-hand. Françoise threw herself before him in supplication; but an officer came in and took charge of the prisoner. After a few sentences exchanged in German with the soldiers, he turned to Dominique and said roughly, and in very good French:—
“You will be shot in two hours.”
II.
It was a rule made by the German staff: every Frenchman not belonging to the regular army, and taken with arms in his hands, should be shot. Even the guerilla companies were not recognized as belligerents. By thus making terrible examples of the peasants who defended their own firesides, the Germans wished to prevent the uprising of the whole country en masse, which they dreaded.
The officer, a tall lean man of about fifty, put Dominique through a brief examination. Although he spoke very pure French, he had quite the Prussian stiffness.
“You belong in these parts?”
“No, I am a Belgian.”
“Why have you taken up arms? All this can’t be any of your business.”
Dominique did not answer. At this moment the officer caught sight of Françoise, standing upright and very pale, listening; her slight wound put a red bar across her white forehead. He looked at the young people, one after the other, seemed to understand, and contented himself with adding:—
“You don’t deny that you were firing?”
“I fired as long as I was able,” Dominique answered quietly.
This confession was needless; for he was black with powder, covered with sweat, spotted with some drops of blood that had run down from the scratch on his shoulder.
“Very well,” the officer repeated. “You will be shot in two hours.”
Françoise did not cry out. She clasped her hands together, and raised them in a gesture of mute despair. The officer noticed this gesture. Two soldiers had led Dominique away into the next room, where they were to keep him in sight. The young girl had dropped down upon a chair, her legs giving way under her; she could not cry, she was choking. Meanwhile the officer kept looking at her closely. At last he spoke to her.
“That young man is your brother?” he asked.
She shook her head. He stood there stiff, without a smile. Then after a silence:—
“He has lived a long while in these parts?”
She nodded yes, still dumb.
“Then he must know the woods round here very well?”
This time she spoke.
“Yes, sir,” she said, looking at him in some surprise.
He said no more, and turned on his heel, asking to have the mayor of the village brought to him. But Françoise had risen, a faint flush on her face, thinking to have caught the drift of his questions, and seeing fresh hope in them. It was she who ran to find her father.
Old Merlier, as soon as the shots had ceased, had run quickly down the wooden steps to look at his wheel. He adored his daughter, he had a stout friendship for Dominique, his intended son-in-law; but his wheel also held a large place in his heart. As the two young ones, as he called them, had come safe and sound out of the scrimmage, he thought of his other love, and this one had suffered grievously. And bending over the huge wooden carcass, he investigated its wounds, the picture of distress. Five paddles were in splinters, the central framework was riddled. He stuck his fingers into the bullet-holes to measure their depth; he thought over how he could repair all this damage. Françoise found him already stopping up cracks with broken bits of wood and moss.
“Father,” she said, “you are wanted.”
And at last she wept, telling him what she had just heard. Old Merlier shook his head. You didn’t shoot people that way. He must see. And he went back into the mill with his silent, pacific air. When the officer asked him for victuals for his men, he answered that the people in Rocreuse were not accustomed to being bullied, and that nothing would be got from them by violence. He took everything upon himself, but on the condition of being allowed to act alone. The officer showed signs, at first, of getting angry at his cool manner; then he gave in to the old man’s curt and business-like way of talking. He even called him back to ask him:—
“What do you call these woods there, opposite?”
“The Sauval woods.”
“And what is their extent?”
The miller looked at him fixedly.
“I don’t know,” he answered.
And he walked away. An hour later, the contribution of victuals and money required by the officer were in the court-yard of the mill. Night was approaching; Françoise followed the soldiers’ movements anxiously. She did not go far from the room in which Dominique was shut up. At about seven she had a poignant emotion: she saw the officer go into the prisoner’s room, and for a quarter of an hour or so she heard their voices raised. One instant the officer reappeared on the threshold, to give an order in German, which she did not understand: but when twelve men came and fell into line in the court-yard with their muskets, she fell a-trembling; she felt ready to die. So it was all over: the execution was to take place. The twelve men waited there ten minutes. Dominique’s voice was still raised in a violent refusal. At last the officer came out, slamming the door and saying:—
“Very well; think it over. I give you till to-morrow morning.”
And with a motion of his arm, he ordered the twelve men to break ranks. Françoise stayed on in a sort of stupor. Old Merlier, who had not stopped smoking his pipe, while looking at the squad with an air of simple curiosity, came up and took her by the arm with fatherly gentleness. He led her to her room.
“Keep quiet,” he said; “try to sleep. To-morrow it will be daylight, and we will see.”
When he withdrew he locked her in, for prudence’s sake. It was a principle of his that women were no good, and that they made a mess of it whenever they undertook anything serious. But Françoise did not go to bed: she stayed a long time sitting on her bed, listening to the noises in the house. The German soldiers, encamped in the court-yard, were singing and laughing: they must have been eating and drinking up to eleven, for the noise did not stop for an instant. In the mill itself, heavy steps sounded every now and then: no doubt they were relieving sentries. But what interested her above all were noises that she could not make out, in the room under hers. Several times she lay down on the ground; she put her ear to the floor. This room happened to be the one in which Dominique was locked up. He must have been walking from the wall to the window, for she long heard the cadence of his steps: then there was a dead silence; he had doubtless sat down. Besides, the noises stopped; everything was hushed in sleep. When the house seemed to her to slumber, she opened the window as softly as possible, and rested her elbows on the sill.
Outside the night was calm and warm. The slender crescent moon, setting behind the Sauval woods, lighted up the country with the glimmer of a night-taper. The elongated shadows of the great trees barred the meadows with black; while the grass, in the unshaded spots, put on the softness of greenish velvet. But Françoise did not stop to note the mysterious charm of the night. She examined the country, looking for the sentinels that the Germans must have stationed on one side. She plainly saw their shadows, ranged like rungs of a ladder along the Morelle. Only a single one stood opposite the mill, on the other side of the river, near a willow whose branches dipped into the water. Françoise saw him distinctly: he was a big fellow, standing motionless, his face turned towards the sky with the dreamy look of a shepherd.
Then when she had carefully inspected the ground, she went back and sat down upon her bed. She stayed there an hour, deeply absorbed. Then she listened again: in the house not a breath stirred. She went back to the window, and looked out; but no doubt she saw danger in one of the horns of the moon, which still appeared behind the trees, for she went back again to wait. At last the time seemed to have come. The night was quite dark; she no longer saw the sentinel opposite; the country lay spread out like a pool of ink. She listened intently for a moment, and made up her mind. An iron ladder ran near the window,—some bars let into the wall, leading from the wheel up to the loft, down which the millers used to climb to get at certain cog-wheels; then when the machinery had been altered, the ladder had long since disappeared beneath the rank growth of ivy that covered that side of the mill.
Françoise bravely climbed over the balustrade of her window, grasped one of the iron bars, and found herself in empty space. She began to climb down. Her skirts were much in her way. Suddenly a stone broke loose from the masonry, and fell into the Morelle with a resounding splash. She stopped, chilled with a shudder. But she saw that the waterfall, with its continuous roar, drowned out from afar any noise she might make; and she climbed down more boldly, feeling for the ivy with her foot, making sure of the rungs of the ladder. When she had got on a level with the room that was used as Dominique’s prison, she stopped. An unforeseen difficulty nearly made her lose all her courage: the window of the room below was not cut regularly, under the window of her chamber; it was some way from the ladder, and when she stretched out her hand she felt only the wall. Would she have to climb up again, without carrying her plan through to the end? Her arms were getting tired; the murmur of the Morelle beneath her began to make her dizzy. Then she tore off little bits of mortar from the wall, barking her fingers. And her strength was giving out: she felt herself falling backwards, when Do
minique, at last, softly opened his window.
“It’s I,” she whispered. “Take me quick,—I’m falling.”
It was the first time she had tutoyéed him. He caught her, leaning out, and lifted her into the room. There she had a fit of tears, stifling her sobs so as not to be heard. Then by a supreme effort she calmed herself.
“You are guarded?” she asked in a low voice.
Dominique, still dumbfounded at seeing her thus, made a simple sign, pointing to his door. They heard a snoring on the other side; the sentinel must have given way to drowsiness, and laid him down on the ground across the doorway, thinking that in this way the prisoner could not get out.
“You must run away,” she went on rapidly. “I have come to implore you to run away, and to say good-by.”
But he did not seem to hear her. He kept repeating:—
“How—it’s you, it’s you!—how you frightened me! You might have killed yourself.”
He took her hands—he kissed them.
“How I love you, Françoise! You are as brave as you are good. I only had one fear,—that of dying without seeing you once more. But you are here, and now they can shoot me. When I have had a quarter of an hour with you, I shall be ready.”
Little by little he had drawn her closer to him, and she rested her head upon his shoulder. The danger drew them nearer together. They forgot all in this embrace.
“Ah, Françoise,” Dominique went on in a caressing voice, “to-day is St. Louis’s day; our wedding day that we have waited for so long. Nothing has been able to separate us, since we are here, all alone, faithful to our tryst. It’s our wedding morn now, isn’t it?”
“Yes, yes,” she repeated, “our wedding morning.”
They exchanged a kiss trembling. But of a sudden she broke loose: the terrible reality rose up before her.
“You must run away,—you must run away,” she stammered out. “Let us not lose a minute.”
And as he stretched out his arms once more to take her in the darkness, she again tutoyéed him:—
