SHORT STORY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LI, Issue 15500, 6 January 1914, Page 4

SHORT STORY.

OUR LADY OF THUNDER.

BY HEADON HILL.

From its perch on the ridge the Chateau de St. Servao looks down through a glade m the woods on the smiling valley that lies between Pont Noyelles and the village of Querrieux, where on December 24, in the fatal year 1870, the French Army of the North, under General Faidherbe, made its last gallant stand against the hosts of the invader, and. cam© within an ace of victor} - . France has long ; ;o healed her wounds and turned her clear gaze to the future. Only here and there, in some isolated corner where the war fiend struck some deep personal note, is the grim realism of that dreadful time more than a tradition and a memory. It is my province to tell you how as late as the summer of last year an episode of the battle of Pont Noyelles was fought all over again— by spectres, perhaps, but some of them as yet in the flesh.

From one of the tall windows of the great white-and-goki salon, on the August morning of which I write, there stepped on to the broad terrace that flanks the chateau a dainty old lady of sweet and patient countenance. At least, though her abundant hair was like frosted silver, she was not really old— more than 60, and probably something less. Holding her graceful figure erect, she walked the whole length of the sun-lit terrace, and so passed into a lean-to greenhouse against the southern wall, wherein an elderly man in shirt sleeves and wearing a blue apron was busy among a superb collection oi flowering pot-plants.

"Good day, Jacques she said in a tone of kindly condescension. " Good day, madarme 1" the gardener replied, bowing and going on with his work of snipping off doubtful leaves, removing ffided blooms, and here and there tring up a stray tendril. He had deft hands, and laboured with more than the skill bo. a of long experience. He possessed that to a high degree, but it was joined to an evident pride in his work and to a parental love for his beautiful charges. Yet a close observer would have perceived that he was not on this occasion wholly absorbed. Now and again he -v.ould glance sharply at the glass roof of the greenhouse—a glance which mast have been for the turquoise blue of the sky above it, since there was nothing there to keep the light from his beloved blooms.

After the exchange of greetings the mistress of the chateau provided herself with a water-pot, and made a round of the stages with the perfunctory air of one who performs a daily task." She paid no further attention to "her servant, "and so did not notice the signs of uneasiness which did not interfere with the steady snip-snip of his scissors or with the maledictions he muttered on the discovery of a swiftly-doomed slug or caterpillar. Nor did she observe that the sunshine, wh.oh had been so bright on her entrance, had given place to a leaden pallor that dolled the feast of colour she was tending. Suddenly, distant but unmistakable, a peal of thunder boomed far down the valley. Madame de St. Servac put down her water-pot, and one thin white hand went with ? little Puttering gesture to her temple, as though in an effort of concentration.

" Jacques !" she cried. " Jacques, do you not hear? The Prussia:is —the sound of their guns Monsieur Gaston de Luzo imist have taken the wrong road, and \a will ride right into them. He has sworn to be killed rather than be taken alive. Saddle a horse ; gallop after him, and set him in the way to overtake our army in its retreat on v.he railway. Quick, imbecile 1 The life of a "brave soldier of France depends upon you."

Jacques Barthnu's mouth quivered as he shot one List glance at the darkening pall overhead. Again the advancing storm rumbled.

" Very good, ttadame; I go at once!" he said. '' Paladin is our fleetest horse. He should catch that ,knock-kni.sd charger of Monsieur Gaston in no time. Rest easy, madame, I, Jacques Barthou, will save the young officer." Haying uttered the words in the expressionless tone of a formula, he vanished at the far end of the greenhouse, and Madame de St. Servac, leaving by the door through which she had entered, hurried along the terrace to the window of the salon. The sky had grown densely overcast, and stabs of lightning heralded the more frequent thunderclaps, but to the mistress of the chateau the heavenly portents meant more than one of the brief but severe electric storms which in summer sweep down the valley of the Somiaie. It was no longer summer" to her, but the dark December day when, 30 years before, the battle of Pont Novelles had raged round the chateau. The hated Prussians were coming bo complete their half-won I victory of yestt-day, and her young lover, 'the gay Gaston, was riding full tilt into fcheir midst.

Madame de St. Servac passed through the salon, ascended the grand staircase, traversed a corridor, and so came to a flight of winding stone steps which brought her to a small circular chamber at the summit of one of the four turrets which marked the angles of the pile. The narrow window, once an open arrow-slit, but glazed in these later days, afforded a view of the avenue that approached the mansion along the crest of the ridge. Outside the entrance gates, _ where the avenue commenced, the main road split into a fork, the prongs of which were onl| visible for a few hundred yards before they plunged into the woods.

At this window the lady with the frosted hair stationed herself, to live over again for the hundredth time, the tragedy which had crushed her so long ago. Ail the patient resignation was gone from the tired face. Her eyes gleamed, her slenaer hands were clasped in an agony of suspense which was yet not without its ray of _ hope. For was not Jacques Barthou riding to prevent her lover from encountering those murderous foemen whose guns flashed and roared, nearer and nearer at each discharge?

Pitiful indeed had been the catastrophe which had overwhelmed Camille de St. Servac in her twentieth year, though the girl had hailed the beginning of it with a light heart, inasmuch as the ruddy blast of war had blown Gaston de Luze unexpectedly to the chateau. What mattered it to her that the fortunes of France were at their lowest ebb, when on the last sag of the receding tide the gallant young Chasseur d'Afrique, who had told his lov,e in a Parisian ballroom far back in peaceful June, was swept into her arms once more? What mattered it to her that the Prussian? were massing across the valley that black December night when Gaston, with an hour's leave to spend with her, dismounted _ at the door of the chateau, full of boyish laughter and of the great deeds they of the Northern army were going to do on the morrow? She laughed and boasted with him, but later cried a little when the count, her father, after the soldier lad's return to bivouac, shook his white mane and croaked ominouslv of disaster. Morning came, and all day long the battle raged round the chateau, the French repeatedly sweeping over the ridge? from their camp behind it—often to be beaten back, but once, towards evening, storming into the village of Querrieux at the foot of the slope and holding it for one fateful hour. Then the enemy, reinforced, made it too hot to hold them, and they fell back over the hill to their camp. There was no pursuit. It was a case of "As you were," and that night once more Gaston came up to the chateau and made the heart of Camille glad.

But on the. next day the short-lived resistance of the French came to an end, and the forebodings of the count were verified. During the night the Germans aad begun a flanking movement which, if completed, would make the French position untenable. The latter had to abandon their camp and retire on the railway, and in order to do so unmolested they feigned an intention to continue the battle. A skeleton force was sent to occupy thu ridge. They fired guns, galloped to and fro and showed themselves exceedingly busv, while behind the hill the retreat was in lull swing. Then the dummies on the ridge were withdrawn, and the field was left clear for the enemy's advanceto n».d the bird flown.

Gaston de Luze was among the officers told off to conduct the feint on the ridge,

and, the duty fulfilled, he stayed to snatch one last word with his lady-love. Telling his men that he would catch them up before they joined the main body, he rode up the avenue, and under the lure of Camille's rosy lips and sparkling eves that one last word easily grew into a thousand. It was only when the boom of German artillery at the end of the ridge sounded its warning that he tore himself away. " Sapristi! my cherished one, but I 'have lost my bearings," he cried as he swung himself into the saddle. "You have bewitched my poor brain out of all remembrance. Which way do Igo when I strike the main road?''

He had already pricked his charger when Camille's shrill answer floated after him, "To the right, after passing uie gates!" With a wave of his hand he galloped down the avenue, leaving the girl to hurry up to the turret for a last glimpse of him on the open highway before he disappeared into the woods. Even as she stumbled up the stone steps she was smitten with misgiving. Had the careless scatterbrain heard aright? Those execrable guns had been making such a din, and his tack had been turned to her. It would be dreadful if he missed his way, for had he not told her father in her" presence that he would be kilkd rather than be taken prisoner.

She planted herself, punting, at the window of the turret to watch for his appearance on the open stretch of road. She had not long to wait before he came into view, and cantered towards the woods. Her heart pained her with its wild beating as he neared the parting of the waj. and then for one brief moment it stood still as he dashed into the wrong road that would fling him on to the bayonets of the enemy. Mastering herself, she rushed down to the stables and bade Jacques Barthou, the youngest of the grooms, fling'a saddle on the thoroughbred Paladin, and try to overtake her lover before it was too late. In common with all the retainers Jacques was her devoted slave. When he had hastened to do her bidding she went back to the tower to strain her hot eyes towards the white strip of road

Each crawling second -was an hour to her, but the whole thing wm over in less than 20 minutes. First she saw the young groom gc pelting out of the entrance gates on the beautiful chestnut, end vanish like a mounted phantom into the leafy umbrage where the German guns bellowed ever nearer. And then, after another eternity of suspense, she saw Jacques Barthou ride back— She was down at the grand entrance when he drew rein, but it is doubtful if she heard his gasping story. She had read it in his face before he uttered a word— he had failed to overtake Gaston, but from afar had seen him', realising his .mistake too late, charge into the thick of the enemy and fall, riddled with bullets.

At that moment something snapped ii Camille de St. Servac's brain. The tragedy of that morning was to her, through all the years that followed, but a blurred mist in which her lover was always the central figure, but always alive and about to return to her. Of the flight of time she took no heed. Her father died, bequeathing to her the chateau and b'' - fortune, which she administered wisely and with a beneficent charity that enshrined her in the hearts of her people. At ordinary times she lived her placid life in serene confidence that her Gaston had overtaken the French army, that he was somewhere fighting the Germans, and that he would come back to her at the end of the campaign. Her brown hair silvered, and still she held to that belief, nigh on 40 years afterwards, with brief intervals of frenzied fear.

Whenever an electric storm broke over the Somme Valley her mind, at the first crash of thunder, would revert to'the aay of her bereavement, and she would reconstitute every detail. The thunder, to her, was the roar of the German guns. Jacques Barthou, long ago grown too stout for the stables and promoted to be head gardener, would be bidden saddle Paladin— had been a succession of Paladins at the chateau—and rirb after Gaston to put him in the right v>&j. Then mademoiselle would station herself in the turret and watch the old man gallop along the white road into the woods and presently return, as he had on the fatal morning, alone. But by some queer kink in her brain there was always a second horseman riding neck and neck with Jacques, and at the fork this other would turn off into the road which would have led Gaston to safety so long ago. The good Jacques would pull up his sweating steed at the main entrance, and gravely report to his mistress that he had carried out her orders, after which things would go on as before till the next storm. The peasants and the servants humoured the delusion, and from it coined a pet name for the heroine of the ancient love-story.* They called her "Our Lady of Thunder." By Jacques Barthou this service was always rendered with, a conscientious effort to endow the mimic pursuit -with convincing realism. In a long course of practice he had grown perfect in his part in the pitiful drama, delivering his report at the conclusion of each appalling ride with an air that assured his mistress of her lover's safety. But to Jacques himself the demand of madame's derangement was a nightmare of ever-present horror. It made the life, which he would cheerfully have laid down for her, a burden almost beyond bearing. ■ From his youth he had been constitutionally afraid of thunder. Brave as a lion in everything else, electricity in the atmosphere, long before the breaking of a storm, turned him into the most abject of cowards. At ihe first distant peal that told him that he would have to ride out into the tumult nis heart would fail him, and he would wish that he had never been born.

Yet, though he would fain have run to hide his frightened eyes from the lightning and stop his ears to the thunder, he always braced himself at that well-known cry, "Jacques! The Prussians, Jacques. Do you not hear their guns?" Braced himself and obeyed, as he had often before, again on this sultry August morning when he was old and fat.

So Madame de St. Servac stood at the turret window and watched for her faithful servitor to dash out from the entrance gates on to the highway. The storm was raging now, sweeping straight along the ridge towards the chateau. It was grey-dark in the little circular chamber except for the almost incessant lightning flashes, and the thunder was terrific, but she kept her post, praying silently. For her, poor soul, the warring elements had no message other than that somewhere out there on the ridge her Gaston was blundering on his foes. Ah. there came Jacques at last, galloping helter-skelter on to the white strip of road through the murk of the gun smoke. The Germans coul<? n't be far from the edge of the woods, but there was just a chance that the groom v ;>uld catch the young officer in time. Ten seconds of suspense, and then a scream was wrungfrom the watcher as man and horse went down in a blaze of violent flame and lay very still in the road. Madame sank to her knees, raising a white, but fearless face to the inky heavens. "The cruel, cruel shell!" she wailed! "Good God, have mercy, and direct their next shot at this thy stricken handmaid !'*

There followed a lull in the storm, but Camille de St. Servac knelt on, her suppliant lips moving, her anguish calming in the strength of her faith. And tnen a levin-bolt of greater fury than all split the turret, hurling it to the terrace below, but dealing so gently with the dead woman that when they found her she seemed to smile.