It was on these bridges that Philippe loved to linger, gazing down at the ferns and grasses swaying in the wind of the cascade, and counting what he fondly imagined to be the fish attempting to leap up the spray. This afternoon we hung happily together over the biggest of the pools where fingers of bright sunlight probed the ferns and made an iridescent bloom of fine spray.
"There," said Philippe, triumphantly. "Voilà, did you see her? Beside the stone there, where the waves are! "
I peered down at the whirling pool some fifteen feet below us, "I can't see anything. And it's not her, Philippe."
"It was. Truly it was. I am seeing her-"
"I'm sure you are. But a fish isn't her, it's it."
"A trout is her in French," said Philippe firmly. It was a great source of pride to him that my French was worse than his English.
"No doubt," I said, "but not in English. Oh, look, there's one, Philippe, definitely! I saw her-it jump!"
"Four." Philippe knew when to pursue his triumphs and when to hold his tongue. "Four and a half, because I do not know if that shadow is a truite-trout, or a shadow." He gripped the rail and leaned over, peering eagerly down.
"Let's go on," I said. "If it's still there when we come back, it's a shadow. Let's go down into the big wood again."
He turned obediently off the bridge onto the wide level path that led along the hillside deeper into the trees. "All right. To look for wolves?"
"Wolves?"
He was trotting ahead of me. He turned, laughing. "Mademoiselle, you sounded quite frightened! Did you think there were really wolves?"
"Well, I-"
He gave a crow of laughter and a comic little skip that shuffled up last year's dead leaves. "You did! You did!"
"Well," I said, "I've never lived in a place like this before. For all I know Valmy might be crawling with wolves."
"We have got bears," confided Philippe, in the tone of one inviting congratulations. He looked earnestly up at me, "We truly have. This is not a blague. Many bears of a bigness incredible." His scarlet-gloved hands sketched in the air something of the dimensions of an overgrown grizzly. "I have never seen one, vous comprenez, but Bernard has shot one. He told me so."
"Then I hope to goodness we don't meet one today."
"They are asleep," said Philippe comfortingly. "There is no danger unless one treads on them where they sleep." He jumped experimentally into a deep drift of dead leaves, sending them swirling up in bright flakes of gold. The drift was, fortunately, bearless. "They sleep very sound," said Philippe, who appeared to find it necessary to excuse this failure, "with nuts in the pocket, like an écureuil.”
"Squirrel."
"Skervirrel. Perhaps you prefer that we do not look for bears?"
"I would really rather not, if you don't mind," I said apologetically.
"Then we will not," he said generously. "But there are many other things to see in the woods, I think. Papa used to tell me of them. There is chamois and marmottes and the foxes, oh, many. Do you think that when I have ten years-"
"’When I am ten'."
"When I am ten years I can have a gun and shoot, mademoiselle?"
"Possibly not when you're ten, Philippe, but certainly when you're a bit older."
"Ten is old."
"It may be old, but it's not very big. You wouldn't be of a bigness-I mean you wouldn't be big enough to use the right gun for a bear."
"Skervirrels, then."
"Squirrel."
"Skervirrel. I could have a small gun for skervirrel when I am ten?"
"Possibly, though I should doubt it. In any case, it's what they call an unworthy ambition."
"Plaȋt-il?" He was still jigging along slightly in front of me, laughing back over his shoulder, his face for once flushed and bright under his scarlet woollen ski-cap. He said cheekily: "English, please."
I laughed. "I meant that it's a shame to shoot squirrels. They're charming."
"Char-ming? No, they are not. They eat the young trees. They cause much work, lose much money. The foresters say it. One must shoot them."
"Very French," I said dryly.
"I am French," said Philippe, skipping gaily on ahead, "and they are my trees, and I shall have a gun when I am older and go out every day to shoot the skervirrels. Look! There's one! Bang!" He proceeded, with gestures, to shoot down several squirrels very loudly, singing meanwhile an extremely noisy and shapeless song whose burden was something like:
Bang, bang, bang,
Bang, bang, bang,
Got you, got you,
Bang, bang, bang.
"If you don't look where you're going," I said, "it'll be you who'll-look out, you silly chump!" Then three things happened, almost simultaneously. Philippe, laughing back at me as he jigged along, tripped over a tree-root and fell headlong. Something struck the tree beside him with the sound of a hand smacking the bark, and, a fraction later, the sharp crack of a rifle split the silence of the woods.
I don't know how long it took me to grasp just what had happened. The unmistakable crack of the gun, and the child's body flat in the path… for one heart-stopping moment terror zigzagged like pain through my blood. Then even as Philippe moved the significance of that sharp smack on the tree's bole struck me, and I knew he was not hit.
I found myself shouting into the silent woods that sloped above us: "Don't shoot, you fool! There are people here!" Then I was beside Philippe, bending over him, making sure…
The bullet had not touched him, of course; but when I looked up and saw the hole in the tree just above where he lay, I realised how nearly he had been missed. The silly little jigging song that had tripped him up had saved his life.
He lifted a face from which all the bright gaiety and colour had gone. There was mud on one thin little cheek and his eyes were scared.
"It was a gun. Something hit the tree. A bullet." He spoke, of course, in French. This was no moment to insist either on his English or my own false position. In any case he had just heard me shouting in French at the owner of the gun. I put my arms round him and spoke in the same tongue. "Some silly fool out with a rifle after foxes." (Did one shoot foxes with a rifle?) "It's all right, Philippe, it's all right. A silly mistake, that's all. He'd hear me shout and he'll be far more scared than we were." I smiled at him and got up, pulling him to his feet. "I expect he thought you were a wolf."
Philippe was shaking, too, and I saw now that it was with anger as much as fright. "He has no business to shoot like that. Wolves don't sing, and in any case you don't shoot at sounds. You wait till you can see. He is a fool, and imbecile. He should not have a gun. I shall get him dismissed."
I let him rage on in a shaken shrill little voice, a queer and rather touching mixture of scared child and angry Comte de Valmy. I was scanning the slopes of open wood above us for the approach of an alarmed and apologetic keeper. It was quite a few seconds before I realised that the wood was, apparently, empty. The path where we walked ran between widely-spaced trees. Above us sloped some hundred yards of rough grass-an open space of sunlight and sparse young beeches, where brambles and honeysuckle tangled over the roots of felled trees. At the crest of the rise was a tumble of rock and the dark ridge of a planted forest. Nothing moved. Whoever was at large there with a rifle had no intention of admitting the recent piece of lunatic carelessness.