He retraced his steps and found a new shell-hole in front of the house. The house seemed all right; through the broken window the doctor saw the padre and called out to him:
"A near thing that time, padre. Are you all right? Where is Aurelle?"
But the padre did not move: with his head leaning on his arms crossed over the scattered cards, he appeared to be gazing vaguely at the doctor, who entered at a bound and touched the padre on the shoulder.
He was dead. A piece of shell had entered his temple, which was bleeding slowly. Aurelle had fallen on the floor. He was unconscious and covered with blood, but the doctor, bending over him, found that he still breathed. As he was unfastening his tunic and shirt, the colonel and Parker arrived with their measured tread and stopped abruptly at the door.
"The padre has been killed, sir," said the doctor simply. "Aurelle is hit, too, but I don’t think it is serious. No, it’s his shoulder—nothing much."
Parker helped O’Grady to lay the Frenchman on a table; a crumpled piece of paper attracted the colonel’s attention; he picked it up and read with difficulty:
"Pourquoi me fermes-tu les yeux Lorsque tu me baises la bouche?"
"It belongs to Aurelle," said the doctor.
The colonel carefully folded the little sheet of paper and slid it respectfully into the young Frenchman’s pocket. Then, after the doctor had finished dressing the wound and had sent for an ambulance, they laid the padre on Madame’s humble bed. They all took their hats off and stood silent for some time contemplating the strangely softened features of the childlike old man.
The doctor looked at his watch; it was twenty minutes past nine.
Aurelle, on leaving hospital, was attached, while convalescent, to the English colonel, Musgrave, who commanded a supply depot at Estrées, a little village well behind the line. He missed the evenings with the Lennox Mess, but buying fodder and wood took him some way out into the pretty undulating country with its clear streams, and he loved Estrées, hiding its innumerable belfries among the flowery hills.
It was a very antique city, and in its youth, in the time of the _seigneurs_ of Estrées, had played an important part in the affairs of France. For several hundred years she had defended her ramparts against the troops of the Kings of England, and from her walls she could see those same soldiers to-day camped about her, this time as familiar and courteous guests. Her tenacious burghers had repulsed both Leaguers and Spaniards with equal success. She now slept in smiling old age, having seen too many things to be surprised any more, while still retaining from the times of her glory her casket of beautiful mansions, built among courts and gardens with the noble simplicity of line dating from the best periods.