Deventer and I came upon Rhoda Polly while we were getting our breath after the rush upstairs. We were old friends, and Rhoda Polly did not even put aside her rifle to greet us.
"Come from school without leave—run away—good!" she exclaimed. "Have you made it all right with father?"
"Not yet—that is—the fact is—-we thought you might as well come along with us, Rhoda Polly."
"You think there will be a storm, Hugh?"
"Sure of it, but at least you can tell the Pater that Cawdor here is no prodigal. He comes with his father's blessing and a whole pile of paper money."
"Father is among his entrenchments on the roof," said the girl; "better wait till he comes down. He is never quite himself when he is up there and the wind is blowing. Now tell me what made you run away?"
"We are going to enlist among Garibaldi's volunteers, and fight for France—at least that's what Cawdor says. But I mean to stay here till all is safe for mother and you."
At this moment Rhoda Polly nudged us. There was a sound of heavy decided footsteps grating on the steel ladder which led to the roof, then a thump and the noise of feet stamping on the floor above us.
"He has been lying behind the chimney till he is stiff," whispered Rhoda Polly. "Give him time to limber himself."
For a minute all was quiet along the Potomac, and then a mighty voice was heard demanding "those two young rascals."
Deventer's smile was somewhat forced, and it might only have been the moonlight, but he certainly looked both sick and white about the gills. I was not greatly affected, but then I had not had his discipline. My case and credit were clear. All the same, it was obvious that the Dennis Deventer who captained his forces against the insurgents within the walls of Château Schneider, and the seeker after knowledge who prowled about my father's library or listened modestly to his interminable expositions, were very different persons.
"Better not keep him waiting," said Rhoda Polly. "I will take you. He has a room for himself fitted up on the third floor."
At the opening of the door we saw a long table covered with guns and revolvers, each ready to the hand, while behind the centre ran a continuous mountain range of ammunition in packets of gay-coloured green, red, and yellow.
"What's all this, boys?" said Dennis Deventer gruffly, as soon as he caught sight of us. "Now, you Rhoda Polly, hold your tongue! You are not put up to tell their story. Come—out with it. What is it?"
He thrust his hands through his crisping mane of hair with quick, nervous movements.
"Come, get it into word, Master Hugh Deventer. You were put to do your duty at school. Why didn't you stay put?"
Hugh Deventer had a difficulty about articulation. He was bold and brave really, besides being extraordinarily strong of body, but something in the tones of his father's voice seemed to make all these qualities, which I had seen proved so often, of no use to him. I looked at Rhoda Polly, and, to my amazement, even she appeared a little anxious. I began vaguely to understand the difference among parents, and to realise that with a father of the calibre of the Old Man Masterful I might have turned out a very different sort of son.
Finally Deventer managed to stammer out his account of the retreat of the troops and the hoisting of the Red Flag.
"I knew that they would be besieging you," he said, "so I came. I could not stop there doing mathematics, hearing the shots go off, and thinking what might be happening to my mother and the girls!"
I could see in a moment that he had taken good ground with his father. The strong muscular hands were laid flat on the table, with a loud clap which made the pistols spring.
"You did pretty well in your examinations—they tell me?"
"Second—Cawdor was first. He coached me, or I should never have got within smelling distance. As it was we halved the honours, and were asked to dine with theproviseurand professors when we got back."
"You look a perfect ox for strength. Let me see if you can lift this table without disturbing anything."
Deventer smiled for the first time, and after trying about for a little time so as to find the proper centre of gravity, he lifted the table, guns, ammunition and all, holding them with flexible arm on the level of his father's eyes. I think he was perfectly happy at that moment.
Old Dennis did not smile like his son. He only nodded, and said, "Yes, you may be useful. Can you shoot?"
"Fairly," Deventer admitted, "but not so well as Cawdor; and you should just see him send the Frenchmen's foils twirling to the roof of the gymnasium. He has fought three duels, Pater, and won every time. Even the Frenchmen could not deny it!"
"Gilt-edged nonsense—duelling," old Dennis broke out, "though your grandfather was out a score of times in County Down in his day. But what do you do when the Frenchmen challenge you?"
"Oh," cried Hugh gleefully, "I just chase them or their seconds till I catch them, and then I spank them till they agree that honour is satisfied. Generally by that time they are crying with rage, but that does not matter. However, they mostly let me alone now."
"Well done, Hugh," said his father; "have something to eat, and then come up and find me on the roof. We ought to have something lively to amuse you before the morning. By the way, Cawdor, what does your father say to all this?"
Deventer forestalled me, for he was anxious that I should say nothing about the draught from the window or my father's sending me off.
"His father sent him along with his blessing, and eight hundred and fifty francs."
"Well," rapped out the old man with the mane of grey hair, "you can keep the blessing, but I will take care of the money for you."
And with that he held out his hand. Quite instinctively I gave it to him, without thinking what I was doing. Then, the next moment, I regretted the act and strove to undo it. I remembered muttering something about fighting for France and joining the levies of Garibaldi, when I should need all the money I could get.
But old Dennis calmly locked my banknotes away in his safe, and assured me that I might 'list if I liked, but that it would be a downright fool's trick to carry about so much money among a parcel of Italians. He would send it on to me as I wanted it—twenty francs at a time. I could pick it up as I went, either at a bank, or from a correspondent of the Small Arms firm.
Once left to ourselves, Rhoda Polly seemed to think that we had come rather well out of the scrape.
"But it was Cawdor being there that saved you," said Rhoda Polly. "Father got so keen about Angus not spending his father's money, that he forgot about you. Now, you have only to run straight and do as you are bid——"
"Do you think I shall be able to go with Cawdor when this simmers down? I want to wear the red blouse as much as he does."
"As to that I don't know," said Rhoda Polly. "I don't believe he took it that you wanted to go soldiering as well. He means to put you into the works—fair field—no favour—up at five in the morning, breakfast in a tin can—that sort of thing—and as for Garibaldi's red jackets, he will sell them guns, but I rather fancy he will keep his son at home."
"Well," said Deventer, "I shall be ready for the works all in good time, but if Cawdor goes off with Garibaldi, I go. I could not stay behind. Nor could even the Pater keep me. He would not chain me to a wall, and——"
"At any rate," broke in the watchful Rhoda Polly, "here you are now, and the better you please the commander-in-chief the better chance there will be for you afterwards when the time comes. I shall do what I can for you, Hugh."
"Thanks, old girl," said Deventer. "Where are Hannah and Liz?"
"Where should they be but in bed, where, of course, I ought to be also. Only I have a dispensation to get what sleep I can in the daytime. I can see in the dark better than anyone in the house. I saw them gathering for the attack under the shadow of the pines on Thursday night, an hour after the moon had gone down. The Pater said it was a near shave, and spoke about my 'high-power vision' as if it were an attachment he had had fitted before I was born."
The defence of the Château was undertaken by the entire English-speaking colony of Aramon. The wives and children of the overseers and foremen were lodged in the rooms looking on the inner quadrangle, but took their meals in the great hall floored with many-coloured marbles. Their husbands and the younger unmarried men looked in occasionally when they could get off, ate what snacks stood handy on the sideboard and disappeared.
It was their duty to keep a watch over the workshops of the Company, and on the roof of the stables were half a dozen mitrailleuses ready to sweep the open square which lay out flat as a billiard-board beneath the windows of the Château Schneider, surrounded by workshops and storehouses on every side.
But a far more dangerous task was the raid through the ateliers themselves, which Dennis Deventer ordered to be made at irregular intervals.
"The divils would be breaking up the Company's machinery if I did not keep all their little plans in the back of my head. And that's none so easy, young Cawdor, for mark me this, 'tis easy to keep track of what a clever man will imagine to do. You have only to think what you would do yourself in his place. But you never know where ignorant stupid fools will break out, and that's the danger of it, Angus me lad!"
"But," I said, "they cannot all be such fools, for with my own eyes I saw them send the regular soldiers to the rightabout."
"The regular soldiers—raw levies mostly, I tell you," burst out old Dennis fiercely. "I should know, for I armed them man by man out of my own gun-sheds and rifle-racks. And I tell ye that beyond a few instruction sergeants from the artillery, there was divil a man among them who could point a chassepot or lay a piece. Our noisy revolutionaries simply frightened them out of the town, and if it had not been for our little stock company here, the biggest manufacturing arsenal in France would have been in their hands. Even as it is they have found enough rifles to arm themselves, but so far we have saved the mitrailleuses and the field artillery. The deputation which came from Marseilles did not go away very much the richer."
"But what is it that they want, sir?" I asked.
Dennis Deventer looked at me straight between the eyes.
"They want what they ought to have, Angus me boy, and what they should have, if I were not a servant of the Small Arms Company."
I was taken aback at his answer, though I had heard something like it from my father. But in his case I had taken it for mere poetry or philosophy, and so thought no more about it. But a man like Dennis Deventer, who was fighting these very insurgents—why, I tell you it was a curious thing to listen to, and made me wonder if I had heard aright. The old man continued, his bold blue eyes looking straight over my shoulder as if he saw something beyond me.
"You ask me why in that case I am fighting men who are in the right? Right is right, and wrong is wrong, you say. But bide a moment, Master Angus. I agree that these poor devils should have better wages, shorter hours, and a chance to lead the lives of human beings. I agree that at least half of the net profits we make ought to go to the men who made every penny. The proportion would not be too large. I should be willing that my own share should be cut down to help this along. But, also, Angus me lad, I know that murder and arson are not the best way for men to get their rights. General insurrection is still worse. They have tried to kill me, who am their best friend. That is nothing. It belongs to the business of manager. It is one of our risks. But they have also tried to break the machinery and to set fire to the buildings. They would burn Aramon if they could—they are so ill-advised. And what for? Only to find themselves left stranded without work or wages.
"This is a flea-bite," he went on. "I defend the Château because of my wife and daughters. But the business began when the men saw the masters flaunting their riches, entertaining the Emperor and Empress at the cost of millions on the very day when processes were being served from door to door of the rows of cottages belonging to the Company. A man may burn his hand or hurt his foot, but he must by no means get behind with his rent. If we had not laid a dozen firebrands by the heels without troubling the police, blood would have been shed in Aramon that day of the Imperial reception."
Dennis Deventer had spoken with such determination and cold anger, that it took me with a new surprise to see him spring like a boy up the steel ladder on to the roof in answer to some call unheard by me.
Rhoda Polly followed, and Hugh and I did not stay behind. Rhoda Polly gave us both a hand.
"Mind your feet," she whispered, "there are all sorts of things scattered about."
I could hear the voice of Dennis Deventer somewhere in the darkness. The stars were still keen and bright, though the morning of the Midi was nigh to the breaking.
"Clear machine-guns three, four, and six," he ordered. "Train them on the doors of the fitting-shed. There are lights over yonder I don't like, and I can sniff the paraffin in the air!"
Deventer and I stood quite still with Rhoda Polly between us. Neither of us knew what to do. We had received no word of command, and what we had just heard had somehow dislocated our simple world of duty. We had imagined all the right to be on one side, all the wrong on the other. Now quite unexpectedly we saw the "tatter of scarlet" from a new angle. Its colour heightened till it glowed like a ruby. After all it stood for an idea—the ideal even which had brought us from school, and sent us on our wild-goose chase for Garibaldi.
The weak were to be supported against the strong. Perhaps, after all, those who had been long driven to the wall were at last to hold the crown of the causeway.
Meanwhile, peering into the night we could see the dark masses of men clustering about the street corners of Aramon. The stars were paling a little when we saw them suddenly bunch together and run towards the long tiled roofs of the fitting-sheds, filled with valuable new machinery. Lanterns winked and tossed as they went, torches flamed high, and there came to our ears a kind of smothered cheer.
"Are you there, Jack Jaikes?"
"Here, sir."
"Aim well in front of them, and let them have it as soon as they get close to the buildings. The ricochet from the walls will scare them as well as anything else."
There was no hesitation in the Old Man's fighting dispositions, whatever he might think privately of the men's cause. He would protect his master's property, and point out in the most practical way to the men that they were going the wrong way about to get their wrongs redressed.
"B-r-r-r! B-r-r-r!" whirred and spluttered the mitrailleuses. These first machine-guns made a curious noise like the explosion of many sulphur matches held one after the other over a lamp chimney. The effect, however, was wonderful. The black rush of men checked itself a score of paces from the fitting-sheds. Several fell to the ground, with a clatter of spilt petroleum cans, but the most turned tail and ran as hard as possible for the shelter of the streets and the trees along the boulevards.
One man only, very broad in the shoulders, bareheaded and belted with a red sash, kept on. He was carrying a torch dipped with tar, and this he thrust repeatedly under the doorway of the atelier.
"Give me Number 27, quick!" commanded Dennis Deventer. "I know who that man is, and I am sorry, but he must be stopped."
Jack Jaikes placed the rifle in the old man's hand, and everybody held their breaths. The lintel of the fitting-shed protected the fire-raiser a little. We could see him thrusting with his torch till the sparks and smoke almost enveloped him. Then he threw down the torch and ran heavily back. He took hold of the first jar of petroleum which had been abandoned in the flight, and was hastening back with it when Number 27 spoke. The man appeared to gather himself up. Then he made a spring forwards, spilling the oil in a gush in the direction of the smouldering torch.
But there came no answering burst of flame. The distance was too great. Dennis watched a moment after reloading, then shook his head gloomily.
"He was a good workman too—yet that does not help a man when once the maggot begins to gnaw underneath the brain pan."
The next day broke fresh and bright, with only that faint touch of Camargue mist which the sun dissolves in his first quarter of an hour.
From the roof and northern balcony we could hear a curious thudding sound in the direction of the moulding-works.
"The steam hammer," said Jack Jaikes; "pity we did not think to put her out of gear."
When he came down the chief listened a moment with his better ear turned towards the sound. Then he smiled ironically.
"They are trying to get a big field-gun ready for us. Luckily we have sent off the last we had in store. But they can't do it. At least they can't do it in time. There are good workmen and capital fitters among them, but who is to do their calculations?"
"No matter," grumbled Jack Jaikes, half to himself, "they will go by rule of thumb, and though their gun would not pass army tests, they will make it big enough and strong enough to drive a solid shell in at one side of this house and out at the other."
At that moment the girls came down for breakfast, and there was no more talk about the insurgents, or the state of siege at Château Schneider.
Hannah and Liz Deventer came in arm and arm. Hannah grave and sweet, with her air of taking admiration for granted and being rather bored by it; Liz dimpled and glancing from one to the other, deciding which of the young men would best serve her for cavalier that day. As for Rhoda Polly she had been in and out of the room for an hour, enforcing authority in the kitchen, rousing new courage in frightened servants whom only her example and abounding vitality shamed into remaining at their duty.
Dennis Deventer did not appear. Jack Jaikes came down presently and carried him up a pot of strong coffee and some rolls. Most of us hardly made even a pretence of sitting down, so eager were we to get back to our posts, but Hugh Deventer and a young apprentice, Laurent, the son of an English mother and a French father, stayed to keep the two younger girls company. As for me, I followed Rhoda Polly out upon the roof.
There I cleaned her rifle for her carefully, while she sat and watched me, her chin upon her palms. We were both quite comfortably hidden behind the stack of north-looking chimneys.
Rhoda Polly had always been a friend of mine, and there was no false shame between us, any more than between two college comrades of the same age and standing.
In quickly lapsing phrases she told me how the trouble had begun.
"It was," she said, "altogether a political matter at first. It had to do with the position of Procureur of the Republic, held by young Gaston Cremieux of Marseilles. He had been appointed by Gambetta in September, in the war year. But he was a 'red' and belonged to the Internationale, so that the solid people of the department, royalists for the most part, set about to try and dislodge him. He used to come often to our house, and he and father sat long arguing. I think we all liked him. He had great influence with the men up at the works, and so long as he was permitted to speak to them and go to their reunions, we had no trouble.
"But when Gambetta lost his power, and Thiers became dictator, or president, or something, Gaston Cremieux could not long remain Procureur. They stripped him of his office, and gave it to a dry-as-dust lawyer who did as the military tribunals bade him."
I put a question here.
"No," continued Rhoda Polly, with a flash of indignation, "if you knew my father better, you would know that he does not shelter himself behind anyone. Still, Cremieux was undoubtedly a help. My father can explain better than I can, but the men down here wanted to make our department a sovereign state like the American ones—New York, Massachusetts, Ohio, and so on."
"But," said I, "over there they have just fought a long and bloody war for the purpose of proving that no state is sovereign, but each must be subordinate to the central authority at Washington."
"Well, I don't know," said Rhoda Polly, "at least, that was the idea of these people down here, and I suppose all over France wherever there are many workmen. The peasants and agriculturists are different. They want only two things: low taxes and high prices."
Rhoda Polly was swinging herself back and forward on the low parapet which ran round the roof in so careless a fashion, that I begged her to take care that she did not lose her balance. At my words she stopped, cast a glance behind her, was instantly brought to her feet by what she saw, and ran towards the steel ladder crying, "It is Gaston Cremieux. I must let him in."
I went to the parapet holding the cleaned gun idly in my hand. A tall young man, with dark hair and a slight pointed beard, was coming straight across from the head-quarters of the insurgents. He walked easily and with a confident swing up the wide Stair of Honour which led to the front door.
Before he had reached the top the bolts were already shooting from within, and the door soon stood open; for Rhoda Polly had gathered in Jack Jaikes on her way, to help in undoing the intricate barrage and strengthening of the defence.
I am not sure that Jack Jaikes looked with much favour upon the welcome which Rhoda Polly gave to the young ex-Procureur of the Republic, but the lady knew well what she was about. In losing his office he had neither lost in influence nor authority, and she knew that if anyone could help to end the strife, it was this polite and deferential young man.
"I have been over at Nîmes seeing the family of my friend Rossel," he explained. "I heard there was some trouble at the works, so I took Aramon-les-Ateliers on my way back to Marseilles."
"That was good of you," said Rhoda Polly, "if anyone can set things right, you can. You know what my father thinks, and what he has done for the men, but he will not have the firm's machinery tampered with if he can help it."
Gaston Cremieux nodded his head of crisp black curls.
"Iunderstand," he said; "but there are men over yonder who cannot understand the uprightness of a man like your father. Worse still, they cannot believe that he wishes them well, just because he is a manager in the pay of the Company. He must on that very account be their enemy, they say, and they remain blind to the fact that he alone can put their needs and demands before the masters."
"Come up and see my father," said the girl, and without waiting for any word of consent, she turned and led the way, flitting before him with the lithe grace learned in the gymnasia of Selborne College.
Some minutes afterwards I encountered Jack Jaikes who had returned from re-bolting and restrengthening the door.
"If I could break that young scoundrel's neck I would be doing some good. He is at the bottom of all this trouble. I went to one of his speechifyings to see what he was after, and he led them like a flock of lambs. He was preaching revolt and red revolution, so far as I could make out—the works to belong to the workers and such-like clotted nonsense—and now Rhoda Polly receives him like an angel from heaven, and up they go to throw dust in the eyes of the old man. If I had my way of it—augh!"
And here Jack Jaikes turned away snorting to express the suddenness and certainty with which he would regulate the case of ex-Procureur Gaston Cremieux, if the matter were left in his hands.
On the roof another view was being taken. I heard the details from Hugh Deventer, who at this time was constantly with his father, now that he had been forgiven and, as it were, taken back into the general scheme of things as conceived by Dennis Deventer.
"Rhoda Polly brought him up" (so ran his narrative), "and it was like watching a hen with a new brood of chickens to see the pair of them. Rhoda Polly is like that. She was quite sure that she had found the specific remedy for all our woes, so she could hardly let the man speak at first, so anxious was she that he should say the right thing.
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"She kept at it interrupting so long, that at last the Pater, who was not specially patient just then, told her to go away and let them talk it out in peace. And that is pretty strong from the Pater to Rhoda Polly, for mostly he encourages her to say and do just what she likes. She is not like the others. There is nothing of the mother's-apron-string-girl about Rhoda Polly. She likes running about the works in a dirty blouse much better than sitting all day, with embroidery on her knee, listening to mother purring.
"As for Cremieux and my father, they understood each other from the first. It was wonderful to find how much they had in common. And he will help to stop the rioting. He says he will not go away from Aramon till the men are back at work. Cremieux's opinion is that these sporadic risings do no good, even when run on the best lines, without personal violence or destruction of property. To succeed, the thing must be a national movement, concerted and directed from each one of the great towns, otherwise the bourgeois government merely waits till its feet are free elsewhere, and then tramples out one by one all the little revolts."
At that moment Deventer caught me by the arm.
"Hold hard," he whispered, "here he comes with the Chief. I declare they are as thick as thieves, and yet in an hour he may be leading the rascals over yonder to burn down the Château."
The restless eyes of Dennis Deventer spied me out.
"Ah, Angus me boy," he hailed, "come this way. You two ought to know one another. This is our philosopher's son from Gobelet, who has run away from college to take service under Garibaldi."
"If he casts his eyes in that direction," said the dark young man, smiling, "I can find him more profitable work nearer home."
"Come, none of your proselytising on my ground!" said Dennis Deventer, laying a heavy hand on his companion's shoulder. "If he chooses to go and get a bullet in him for the sake of France, that is his own affair. But I will not have him mixed up in your little revolutions about which he knows nothing at all."
"But I will teach him. He is intelligent—of a fine race—it is such men we need. Let me speak to him, I beg."
But Dennis Deventer would listen to nothing. He pushed his visitor out of the hall, laughing and shaking his head good-humouredly.
"Take anyone you like from my rank and file," he said, "but leave my staff officers alone."
But I did not forget that tall, grave young man, who talked so earnestly and pleaded so strongly for a chance to teach me the wisdom of insurrection.
I might have thought much more about Gaston Cremieux and the dark fatality of his eyes, if other things had not immediately distracted my attention. The garrison had had its noon dinner in the great hall, and at one o'clock the family were served in the fine red and gold dining-room, the furnishings of which had been the gift of the Emperor. Dennis Deventer sat at the top of the table with the gleeful air of having dispatched the business of the day.
There was a feeling of picnic unceremoniousness about the feast. The servants were somewhat thinned by flight, and as there was no hard-and-fast etiquette in Dennis Deventer's house on any occasion, several of the younger apprentice engineers assisted in the service, partly from a general feeling of loyalty, and partly because they liked to steal glances at the three Deventer girls—glances of which only Liz appeared conscious and or in any way prompt with a return fire.
Even Jack Jaikes, a dark figure of a Spanish hidalgo, in engineer's blue serge and pockets continually bulging with spanners, looked in and said with brusque courtesy:
"Anything I can do for you, Chief?"
"Nothing," said Dennis Deventer, over his shoulder, "except to come in and sit down with us."
"Thank you, Chief," answered Jaikes, "but I have dined already. I am watching the rascals from the roof. They have gone away for a while to their 'speak-house,' where doubtless they are talking over the matter. But it will not do to trust to appearances. I wish you would let me run that live wire from the big dynamo in the power-house. That would curl them up by the score if they tried any more of their rushes."
Dennis Deventer turned on him savagely, the carving-knife in hand and upheld threateningly.
"You pirate," he cried, "do as I tell you, and if I hear of your meddling with the wires I will blow your brains out. Don't you see that we have got to go on living here, and the men we have to work the factory with are the fellows out in the brush yonder? They will try to kill us now, but they will not bear any lasting malice if a few of them are bowled over while we are defending ourselves. But electrocution by a live wire is a different thing. They can't fight us with those weapons, and I am not going to have our lives made impossible by any wholesale scientific butchery."
Jack Jaikes held his ground in the doorway, his thin body flattened against the panels to let the hurrying servants and apprentices pass.
"I don't know about 'scientific butchery,'" he said, "but I do know that some one of them is pretty handy with the trick of short-circuiting our new Gramme armature. It wasn't any garlic-smelling 'Gugusse' who worked that out. I have put it right three times, so I know it was no accident. But at any rate I am going to watch, if I have to slink about the dynamo-sheds all night. I shall carry the new Henry thirteen repeater I had from Edinburgh yesterday, and if I don't touch up that other gang of scientific ruffians my name is not Jack Jaikes, and I never smelt the good Clyde water from the Broomielaw."
Having thus had the last word, he shouldered his notable new Henry rifle and strode off with his head in the air.
"Bit of buccaneer blood in that fellow," said Dennis Deventer, "a hard horse to hold in sober times, but deuced dependable in an emergency. Hates the Frenchmen, however, and does not get on with them. Mostly I have to keep him on special duty, or in the office, though he is a capital engineer, and a capital 'driver' with Englishmen or Scots of his own breed who understand him. But if he is not careful he will get something for himself one of these days—a knife between the shoulder-blades as like as not."
Gentle Mrs. Dennis had her lament to make.
"I wish you would give him to me to look after. He can do almost anything. He mended my spare sewing-machine which has not worked for years, and made the missing parts himself. I believe some of them were given to Liz to play with when she was a little girl, and I have never seen them since."
"By all means have Jack Jaikes to tinker at your embroidery frames—that is, if you can tame him. For myself I do not see him in the rôle of family emergency man. But you must wait till we get the things all fixed here and the shops running handily. Then I dare say it may be just as well for Jaikes to eclipse himself for a day or two. If you can persuade him to spend his time in the Château without coming into the works till things cool off a bit, it will be best for all of us. He will not find himself exactly popular for a while."
"Of course I can, Dennis," said his wife, who never doubted her powers of persuasion. "There are hundreds of things that need to be done, and the girls and I can easily find him work for a year. The place is going to rack and ruin. High or low hardly a bolt will slide. Not a door will lock except the outer ones which you yourself have had looked to recently. What do you say, girls?"
"It is quite true, father," said Rhoda Polly. "I was trying to get Hugh to do some little things down in the kitchen yesterday, but whatever they teach him up at St. André, to make himself useful is certainly not among them. He was as dense as a French plum-pudding, and I had far more idea of how to handle a tool, for all he is older and twice my size."
Both Hannah and Liz agreed that there was a decided missionary call for the assistance of Jack Jaikes in the Château as soon as possible. Something in the tone of his youngest daughter touched Dennis Deventer's educated ear.
He looked up sharply from his plate.
"Now, Liz," he said, "I will have no nonsense ofthatkind!"
Liz blushed and dimpled, but kept her eyes well on her knife and fork without a word. But there was a smile which lurked about the corners of her mouth which said that her father, though a wise and masterful man in his own house, could not control what was in the mind of a young girl.
It was a family tradition that at table Dennis Deventer should not be argued with. Their mother might say inconsequent things in her purring fashion, but only Rhoda Polly was allowed to stand up to their Old Man. Even she rarely interfered, except in case of flagrant injustice or misunderstanding, or when the subject matter under discussion had been agreed upon beforehand in the family conclave. In Liz's case Rhoda Polly judged there was no cause to interfere. It had become too much Liz's habit to count all males coming to the house as "her meat," hardly excluding the halt, the maimed, and the blind. If her father had noticed this growing peculiarity, he had done so "off his own bat," and on the whole it was a good thing. The knowledge that she was under suspicion at head-quarters might do something to keep Liz within bounds. At least if she did get tangled up in her own snares, she would not have the face to go to their father for pity or demands for disentanglement. Rhoda Polly hoped that this would put some of the iron which was in her own blood into that of her more temperamental and impulsive younger sister.
The turmoil, the constant clatter of knives, forks, and plates, the discussion which swayed from one side of the table to the other, the well-worn family jests, which, because I held no key to their origin, shut me out from the shouts of merriment they provoked—all produced on me a feeling of dazed isolation. I liked the Deventers singly, especially Rhoda Polly and her father. I could talk to each with ease and an honest eye to my own profit or amusement. But I will not hide it from you that I found the entire Deventer family, taken together, too much for me.
I think I inherit my father's feeling for a "twa-handed crack" as the only genuine method of intercourse among reasoning beings. More than three in a conversation only serves to darken counsel by words without knowledge. In a company of four my father is reduced to complete silence, unless, indeed, he assumes his gown professorial and simply prelects. In this way alone, and on condition that nobody says a word, my father could be induced to give forth of his wisdom in company.
But a sympathetic touch on the shoulder from Rhoda Polly, one of whose peculiarities was that she understood things without being told, delivered me from my awkwardness.
"I don't think you have been here since we all grew up," she said, with a smile. "Weareratherassommant, I admit. We stun people with our trick of throwing ourselves at each other's heads. But you will soon get used to the clamour. Meantime, if I were you, I should go out and walk in the acacia avenue. It is a good place to be quiet in, and I have it in my mind that you may learn something there"—she paused a moment—"something that will take the taste of Jack Jaikes' threatenings and slaughters out of your mouth."
She had moved back her chair a little so as to let me slip out, and then with a nod and half-smile she launched herself into the fiercest of the fray. So keen was challenge andrépliquejustatthat moment that I was outside the fine old tapestried dining-room without being perceived by anyone.
I ran downstairs and reported to the sentinel on duty at the front door. I told him that I did not feel well and was going to take the air. He asked if I had my revolvers with me, and was only pacified at sight of them. He had gone often with messages from the Chief to my father at Gobelet, and so took an interest in me.
I skirted the house, and was just plunging into a belt of woodland through which I could gain the acacia walk without being seen, when I was hailed from the roof by Jack Jaikes. He wanted to know where I was going, and what I was going to do when I got there.
Instead of being rude and obvious I made him the reply which I knew would baffle him.
"Ask Rhoda Polly!" I said, and he swore aloud. If he had not been safe on the roof he would have come after me at once. As it was I advised him that he had as much responsibility as one man could safely shoulder, and that he would do wisely not to fret about me.
With that I waved my hand and stepped into the thickest of the bushes. The little wood ran round an artificial lake, and was prolonged right to the great wall of the Château policies half a mile away. It was the part of the grounds most distant from the works, and from what might be called the centre of disturbance.
I climbed a young but good-sized plane which overtopped the wall. It had been pollarded, and the step from the tree to the top of the wall was rather a long one. I managed it, however, without difficulty, thanks to the bough of an acacia which came swaying and trembling over from the highway beyond. The next moment I had dropped like a cat out of the acacia boughs into the road. A young man was sitting on a fallen tree trunk, pensively smoking a cigarette, his hat pulled low on his brow, and his eyes on the road.
I had no chance to escape his notice, for the sound of my feet attracted him and he looked up at once. He rose smilingly and held out his hand. It was Gaston Cremieux.
"Did Rhoda Polly send you?" Cremieux asked, though I am sure he knew.
"She bade me come here, saying that perhaps I might learn something to my advantage."
He looked at me queerly, and with a shade of suspicion which I quite misunderstood.
"Then I may take it that she does not mean to come herself?"
"I am sure she has not the least idea of that. She was in the very thick of a discussion upon the possibility of factories and ateliers being run entirely by working men. The whole family had taken sides, and when I came away I expected every moment to see them leap at each other's throats."
"They are extraordinary, but quite admirable," he said, throwing away his cigarette and rising. "We cannot breed anything of the kind in France. Our spirit of family discipline forbids it. We have the cult of ancestor worship as in China, only we do not get farther back than father and mother. It is mainly the mother who leads the young men of France. We have them among us too, these good mothers, women who teach their sons to fight to the death for the great Day of Freedom. But they are scarce. Our women are still under the heel of the priesthood, and the young men, though they may follow us, still keep the inmost corner of their hearts for their mothers; and one day when we most want them, we may find them missing at roll-call. His mother cannot bear that her son should be outcast and accursed. He need not go to Mass, but if he will only see her favourite priest a moment in secret, she is sure that he will stay at home with her. Like you, Rossel is a Protestant and has not this to put up with. He is now in Metz with Bazaine, but he will return, and then you and the world will see a man."
I asked him what the men meant to do, and if he thought he could not prevent further fighting and burning.
Before he had time to answer a bell began clanging furiously in the town.
"That is the signal," he said; "the Commune of Aramon is to meet in general assembly. Will you come? You will be quite safe with me, even though I am going to make them very angry. And besides, as Rhoda Polly says, you will learn something to your advantage."
"Do you think she meant that?" I asked.
"Ah, you may go far and look long before you find out all that is in Rhoda Polly's mind, but at any rate I suppose she meant that you would be safe with me, and might hear a few things that are not included in the curriculum of theLycéeSt. André."
We took our way towards the clanging bell, and it had the weirdest effect as we topped a knoll, where the noise came so fierce and angry as to put a stop to our conversation. Anon descending into deep dells out of which the pines shot straight upwards like darts, sheer trunks for a hundred feet before the first branch was poised delicately outwards as if to grasp the light, we lost the sound of the rebellious tocsin, or it came to our ears soft as the Angelus floated over the fields to a worshipping peasantry in days that were yet of faith.
But Gaston Cremieux kept on his way without paying much notice to the woodland sights about him. His colour rose, and his shoulders were bent forward with a certain eagerness. The bell seemed to be calling him, and I doubt not he was thinking of the responsibility of guiding aright these darkened souls. His convictions, his aspirations were theirs. But their volcanic outbursts of destructive energy, sudden, spiteful, and inexplicable, vexed and troubled him.
Yet the reason plainly was that they had been hurt by those in authority over them, and they struck back as naturally and instinctively as bees fly out to sting when their hive is overturned. That the affair is partly an accident does not matter either to bee or workman.
Presently we began to pass little villas—"Mon Plaisir," "Mont Dore," and "Château des Roses." The mountain path among the pines began to widen into a made road, and to carry traces of wheelmarks. My leader quickened his pace, and after a few minutes of threading our way among the houses of New Aramon, we turned aside and entered a wide space in the centre of which was a hall roofed with corrugated iron. Doors wide and high as those of a barn stood open, and in the interior we could see many people, men and women, already seated on rude benches.
There were also groups outside, but these were mostly younger men, sullen-faced and furtive of eye. To me it seemed as if they regarded my companion with no favourable looks. Several had been wounded in the fighting, and now carried bandaged arms or white-wrapped heads. Somehow I knew at once that this was the dangerous element, and I knew that the whirring machine guns behind which glanced the pitiless eye of Jack Jaikes, had had something to say to them.
Outwardly the Reunion of the Reds had nothing to distinguish it from other political gatherings in the Midi. Indeed the type had been struck out in the earlier pre-Robespierre period of the great Revolution, improved upon in 1830 and 1848, and had now imposed itself even upon the anarchists.
A president was appointed, who had his pair of vice-presidents and a couple of secretaries to prepare a report of the proceedings exactly as you may find described in Mirabeau'sCourier de Provence.
The Hall of the People at Aramon had been an old riding-school in the days before Solferino, when the scheming Emperor was hotly preparing for his campaign across the Milanese plains. It was now a rather dimly lighted, well-ventilated meeting-place, with a clean light-varnished platform in front for speakers, and behind a broader space on which cane chairs had been set out for the "assessors"—as we would say "members of committee." These were being filled as we entered the hall. Names were called out, and sturdy fathers of families rose from beside their spouses to tramp up to the "assessors" chairs, not without a certain conscious dignity as citizens whose worth was unexpectedly made apparent to all men. I have seen the same expression since on the faces of men pressed to become members of a municipality, or even a village council, and I suppose Cabinet Ministers look like that when the new Prime Minister hints at the object of his visit.
The entrance of Gaston Cremieux called forth a kind of shrill cheer, but the Latin races had not at that time learned the full-bodied roar which greets and encourages a favourite orator in England or America.
I was seated at the right of the speaker's platform, and a little behind in shadow—which was as well, for there I could see without being seen. And what I saw astonished me. There were nearly a couple of thousand people in the riding-school by the time that Gaston Cremieux had shaken hands with the President and taken his seat. The iron galleries which ran round contained the younger people, many girls and their sweethearts, while at the far end were a score or two of long-limbed fellows clustered together—probably day labourers whose dusky tints and clustering black curls indicated their Italian origin.
So long as the great doors remained open, I could see outside the restless hither and thither of the young men who had scowled at us as we came into the court.
It was not long before the President and Bureau of Workmen of the Ateliers des Armes at Aramon declared that this properly called and constituted general meeting was open.
It was evident that some of the elder men were ready enough to speak, and a grave-faced grey-headed man rose to make his way towards the speaker's platform. But long before he reached theestrade, it had already been taken possession of by a young man with a shaggy head and wild beady eyes. This was Georges Barrès, a moulder in the new big gun factory. He had but recently arrived from St. Etienne, and had instantly become a notable firebrand.
The speech into which he plunged was a fierce denunciation of the masters and managers, through which ran the assertion that all property was theft. The workers, therefore, were justified in redressing their wrongs with the strong hand, and he and his companions would see to it that they did not die of starvation with so many rich and fine houses all about them. As for Monsieur Deventer and his English vermin of overseers, they must be killed out like rats. Only so would the town be purified. Only so would their dead comrades be avenged, and a solid foundation be laid for the Free Commune in which the works and all within them, the profits and everything included in the year's trading, should belong absolutely to the workers.
There was some applause from the groups that had gathered in, ceasing their rapid caged-wolf sentry-go to hear their leader. But for the most part the meeting sat silent and unresponsive.
At a nod from the chairman a sturdy mechanician rose. He was an "assembler," or skilled workman, who takes the parts of the gun as they are sent in from the various departments, and then with file, saw, and sandpaper, but especially by the wisdom of the eye, "assembles" them into one complete weapon such as can be issued to fill the orders of the Government. Père Félix was a man much regarded in Aramon les Ateliers, and a silence followed his taking of the speaker's place. He was in no hurry to begin. He knew his power and the worth of his opinion, and was determined to conduct himself with the restraint and gravity which he demanded from his audience.
Père Félix opened by a word as to the speaker who had preceded him on the rostrum. Comrade Barrès had spoken (he said) with an earnestness which would have been noble if it had been allied with wisdom. But of course their companion laboured under the double disadvantage of being a foreigner himself, a Spaniard from Catalonia, and of knowing nothing about the district. The Englishmen who were to be killed like rats had been for the most part of them friends and neighbours ever since the works were opened, and in any case for a much longer period than Comrade Barrès had spent in France. Besides, like themselves, they were men with wives and families. They had aided each other in sickness, their wives had interchanged kindlinesses, their children had played together—why should they be doomed to a slaughter of the innocents worse than that of Bethlehem?
As for Director Deventer, he had defended himself when he was attacked in his own house as every man has a right to do. And what was the use of founding an Internationale in Aramon to bring about universal peace if its first action was to send men sneaking forth under cloud of night to kill women and children? Blood had been shed and he regretted it, but the lesson learned was a useful one, bitter in the mouth, but sweet in the belly.
When Gaston Cremieux rose to give an account of his mission he was received with a storm of applause, but the young men at the back, clustered near the door, were conspicuously silent. But lately Cremieux had been their idol, and would be so again; but for the moment he was under deep suspicion, and they stood sullenly glowering at him, occasionally murmuring to each other the accusations so typical of men of Latin race, when their idol does not exactly fulfil their expectations.
Gaston was a traitor. He had sold himself. So much was evident to them, though as usual it was difficult to see who would have money or interest to buy the traitor to the Cause.
But after all there is something communicative in the thunderous applause of a great assembly, and many of those who had come to hoot were readiest with their cheers before Cremieux had uttered a score of sentences. He spoke rather slowly, with marked emphasis, and repeated each point of his argument in different words till he had firmly impressed his meaning on his audience.
Yes, he had seen the manager. He had talked with him on the subject of their grievances, and he knew that so far as the power lay with Monsieur Dennis Deventer, their demands would be granted. Moreover, the Director would use what influence he had with the Government to prevent reprisals for the expulsion of the garrison from the town on the 21st of January.
They, on their side, must return as good workmen to take up their jobs. Nothing would be said. No man would suffer for the past, and pay on the higher scale would begin from the day they started work.
"And the comrades who died fighting, what of them?"
The question came bitter and scornful from the back of the hall, deep under the shadow of the gallery.
"What of them?" answered Gaston Cremieux calmly. "Well, we are all travelling the same road. We shall all end the same. They a little earlier, I a little later. We are not making revolution by sprinkling rosewater. From the beginning your Aramon outbreak was a mistake, as all such things done in a corner must be. When the bells ring for that august Twilight of the Newer Gods, you must waste no time storming through the streets of Aramon, shooting and destroying. You must go in mass to the railway, requisition trains, get yourselves instantly transported to Marseilles, to Lyons, or to Paris. There your brothers will have formed governments which your disciplined bayonets must sustain. Then, having established a firm rule over the big towns, the submission of the rural districts is only a matter of time.
"But," he added, with slow emphasis, "we can only succeed by being sure of our comrades. They must wait for the signal, and the signal may not be long in coming."
He concluded with a moving picture of the new Heavens and earth which would arise when the workman was made part owner of his factory, and when wars were no longer made by kings and emperors against the will of the people—a glad peaceful world, well ordered, well content, and without poverty.
It was very noble and very convincing, delivered with a kind of austere fire strange in one so young and fragile. The people shouted for "Gaston" as if he had been a son of each of their houses. The motherly women shed tears, and I heard prayers spoken aloud that this and that saint, or more especially the Holy Virgin, should protect him.
There was no doubt at all that he carried the meeting with him. The works of Aramon would be reopened next day, and the director's terms would be accepted.
This was the sense of the meeting as interpreted by the President. It was put to the vote and carried unanimously, but the sullen young men under the gallery had already opened the doors and passed silently out. I could see them resuming their wolf's prowl in little packs of four or five, keeping quite distinct from the decent burgesses who had so lately filled the body of the riding-school, and were now pouring towards their homes in Aramon in dense black streams.
"These are our potential Troppmanns," said Gaston Cremieux, as we passed through the grounds of the riding-school. "We must not blame them too much. It is partly our fault. We have taken their religion from them, and they have not yet enough moral sense to balance the loss. They have learned at our meetings and conferences that they have not come to their own, and they want to break their way to immediate wealth and independence by the stroke of their own hands. All they can see is that the rich have pleasures from which they are shut out—wine, women, and feasting chiefly. This orgy of their imaginations heats the blood so that the younger of them have come to think such things the only good. The schoolmasters also are to blame. They have not instructed them in noble thoughts and duties. The Church which has let them slip without effort is to blame. But we of the liberating societies are most to blame, for we have given them nothing to replace the Catechism they learned, and the mystic trappings of that religion in which we have taught them not to believe. Hence they are our Troppmanns in haste to be rich, on edge to taste every sort of forbidden fruit, and in order to reach their pleasure they are ready to slaughter men, women, and little children with as much cold-bloodedness as did the murderer of the Kinck family at Pantin."
Gaston spoke of a terrible crime which had shaken France the year before, when a young man of twenty, active and intelligent, had with devilish cunning slain an entire family of eight, his friends and neighbours, in order that he might "get rich quick," and begin a new life in a new country.
Cremieux seemed to feel himself in some measure responsible for these lost sheep, but he made no attempt at present to conciliate them, feeling perhaps that the pains would be thrown away or his motives misunderstood.
"If we can keep them from active mischief till we want them, all will be well," he kept repeating. "A time will come when such as they will be invaluable, but at present they exist in every town and village in France—budding 'hooligans' or 'Apaches,' ready for robbery and murder, counting their own life a light thing and the taking of another's a jest. If only they would take service with Garibaldi and be made into men! That is where the North and East are going to outstrip us in the coming years. Their Troppmanns are all being swept into the fighting line, and will come out honourable citizens, while we of the South, untouched by the German armies, have our idle rascals on our hands, becoming a greater curse and burden every year, and a standing menace to the next generation.
"But," he paused thoughtfully upon the phrase, "when the day for the real struggle begins, we can find them work to do, and shoot them if they will not do it. To keep them quiet in the meantime is the difficulty."
By the time Gaston Cremieux had thus delivered his soul upon the question of the town-bred ne'er-do-weels—the Vauriens of the Midi—he was striding along the edge of the Rhône, till at the end of the quay we turned in the direction of the Durance, the swift river which comes rushing from the mountains, and the muddy torrent of which makes turbulent the clear glaucous-blue of the Rhône from a little below Avignon.
By this time my stomach, always on campaign, began to remind me that, though I had been learning the secrets of Communism, particularism was still rampant within my body.
"Let us go to see Madame Félix," I suggested. "Her husband spoke at the reunion to-day. He is a chief among the workmen, but his wife is worth a score of him when a fellow is hungry, and his daughter Jeanne Félix is the girl best worth looking at in these parts—our friends at the Château alone excepted."
Gaston Cremieux smiled indulgently and with a sort of patient scorn for my enthusiasms.
"I hardly know what it is to be hungry," he said gently; "and except some of our brave mothers of the Commune, and of course Rhoda Polly, one woman is much the same to me as another."
It was on the tip of my tongue to say, as I should have done to Deventer, "Then the more fool you!" But there was actually something about the young ex-Procureur of the Republic which made one shrink from familiarity. Instead, I turned through a growth of tall rushes, the cane-brakes peculiar to Provence, in the direction of the little ferry-house. It was war-year, and nobody had thought of cutting them. The stiff leaves whistled frostily as we pushed our way through, the supple yellowcannesclattering behind us as they sprang back. After them came a tangle of withered vines, still clinging to the trellis of a dismantled house, and then we found ourselves on the river bank overlooking the cottage belonging to Mère Félix of the Durance Ferry. The boats were all on the other side, so I was obliged to make a trumpet of my hands and call loud and long for "Mariana," which besides being the baptismal name of the lady of the house, is an excellent resonant word to carry across an estuary. Now the Durance, though an absurdly tricky river, is no arm of the sea. Its race is short and turbulent, though it makes as much trouble as possible (which is no little) for those who dwell on its banks. It plays with inundations, whirlpools, eddies, and deceitful currents, as a child with toys. You cannot row for ten strokes straight upon it, for it will bubble up and snatch the oar out of your hand, or failing in this, it will suddenly send the bow of your boat deep into a reed-bed as if it were part of a conjuring trick. I knew somewhat more of the matter than most, for had not Jeanne Félix taught me? I had often gone over to spend a day there during the long vacations. For my father, buried among his books, made no objections to my roaming the country at will.
Cremieux and I presently stood at the top of a rough and tumble-down flight of steps which led to a pier in somewhat better condition. I recognised the work of my own hands upon this last. For Jeanne and I had coopered it up only last year, so that her passengers might land without risking their lives each time. Paths extended both up and down stream, but as yet nothing had been done to the flight of rough-hewn steps of split pinewood leading to the forest above. These things I did not communicate to my new revolutionary friend, for I was busy wondering what effect Jeanne Félix would have upon him.
My fourth or fifth shout brought the Mère Félix wrathfully down to the river edge where her white cap and broad head ribbons showed between the tallcannes. She had a couple of oars upon one shoulder and called across at us, "Who is making such a noise with their Marianas? There is no Mariana here except to my husband, the Père Félix, who is now from home, doubtless at one of his foolish reunions——"
"Dear Mariana," I answered, showing myself at the end of the little pier, "push out a boat and you can kiss me for it. My father says you may. Also send Jeanne quickly, for she and I can row so well together."
"It is that rascal of an English student, Monsieu' Aügoose from Gobelet. Well, I might have guessed. Yet it is not playtime at St. André that I have heard. I shall have you sent back and whipped. What, they do not whip at St. André? Ah, it is no wonder, then, that you young people wax so impertinent. If only you weremyboy, I should not call upon Père Félix to help me. No, no—I would——" and the old lady, smacking one hard hand upon the other, conveyed her meaning exactly.
"Send Jeanne," I repeated, taking no notice of her pantomime.
"Send Jeanne," she imitated my college-trained voice, "Jeanne—Jeanne—it is always Jeanne!"
"Perhaps," I ventured, "when you were Jeanne's age it was always 'Mariana'! I'll wager that more people than Père Félix called you that in those days, petite mère!"
"Here comes Jeanne at last," she called, so that I could hear. "Do not put up with his insolence, Jeanne. He is a spoilt schoolboy, nothing more."
Jeanne stepped sagely into the skiff, with a foot so light and practised that the frail craft hardly quivered in the water. She was a tall, dark girl with a supple figure, both light and well-rounded, remarkably Diana-ish in a land where the women, save a few, are inclined to shortness, and in addition are already overshadowed by the stoutness which inevitably overtakes them after marriage.
Jeanne Félix received us without the least embarrassment into her boat. When I mentioned my friend's name in introducing him, there was one rapid up-and-down flicker of the drooping eyelashes, a flash of velvet eyes, and then without a word or a salutation she handed me the bow oar as if we had parted only the night before.
When we landed on the neat littleembarcadère, below the Restaurant Sambre-et-Meuse, Madame Félix had vanished. I knew her to be already busy with themenuof our dinner, a matter which, in spite of her abuse of me, she would entrust to nobody.
There was a great chestnut tree before the door, and though the month was January, my pocket thermometer registered 62° Fahrenheit in our shadowed nook.
Here we sat and waited, talking with Jeanne till her mother should call us in to lunch.
The reformer smoked innumerable cigarettes, but he said little. I fancy he had not much small talk, and at times he seemed so far away that I wondered whether he heard the light badinage in which Jeanne and I are fond of engaging. Jeanne is freed from all fear of her mother's reproof and I do as I like, because I am a choice favourite with that lady, being the only person in the world she permits herself to abuse grossly, except her goodman Père Félix—who, according to her, is still moreimpayableand gifted with a faculty of irritation not to be told.
As for me, I am younger and not her husband, but she has known me since I could really receive from her palm the manual chastisement she had so familiarly illustrated.
Still, I must admit that so far as Cremieux was concerned, interest in the Restaurant Sambre-et-Meuse awaked only when from the river-path along the Durance we heard the sound of voices, and presently Père Félix emerged talking eagerly with Pipe-en-Bois Soult, nicknamed the Marshal, and several of the Old Guard of the Commune. Then his eyes lit up suddenly. He rose as if throwing a weight from his shoulders. He had come to his own again. This man bore the weight of a bullet he had gained on the day of thecoup d-étât. Pipe-en-Bois had been in front of the battle about the Luxembourg that morning of 1848 when Cavaignac's fusillade proved the futility of moderate Republican promises.
In the kitchen was great rattling of dishes, the voice of Mère Félix calling on her daughter Jeanne, summoning from a great way off her "torchon" Babette, a kind of scullery-maid gathered chance-wise from among the numerous squatter families clustered along the river's edge.
Such long-limbed slatterns were plentiful as blackberries and of as rank a growth all along the Durance. Monsieur Brunet, horsemaster and former "Red of the Midi," owned the water meadows all about, and smilingly allowed the little street of wooden houses fringing the banks. A stray rabbit might be caught out of the pine knolls, but Monsieur's grazing rights must be respected, and his ponies and brood-mares left in peace.
Probably none except the family Félix all along that riverine sweep of reed-bed paid a penny of rent or a tax to the Government. The rural guard with his sash and his great brass plate of office must, of course, have known of the colony. But for some reason or another he said nothing, and all the time the huts of the "zoniers" tailed out at both ends into more and more ramshackle sheds andbicoques.
Here arose the danger of the community. They could only exist by attracting no attention, and many of the ancient inhabitants, in good odour with the Sieur Brunet, were compelled to replace the fences which had been torn down to burn, or used as building material by their less scrupulous neighbours.
Hence came quarrels, sharp words, and occasionally the breaking of heads. The chief penalty was that no offenders against the unwritten law of the settlement were allowed to drink under the cool shade of Mère Félix's vine trellises.
The men who had come back with the proprietor of the Restaurant Sambre-et-Meuse were, of course, the fine flower of this scattering Faubourg Durance. They were full of admiration for their host, but every man of them knew that Père Félix would occupy a very different position at the Sambre-et-Meuse from what had been his in the late great meeting of citizens at the riding-school of Aramon. They seemed to be wishing to make up to him all the way for the coming loss of prestige.
At the journey's end he would have to submit to his wife's inevitable dictatorship, and support in his own proper person the reproach of the whole company. He became responsible (among other things) for the misdeeds of the half-wild cook-maid, for the uncertainties of the weather, for the lack of fuel, and for the vicissitudes of the lady's culinary apparatus. Like many a high officer, colonel, or commandant, whose word is law to a thousand men in barracks, the Père Félix came home to do pack-drill and practise the goose-step under the eye of a severe drill-sergeant armed with a broomstick.
But the good woman allowed no one except herself to treat her husband lightly, so that in a measure his self-esteem was re-established before company. The more guests there were at the Sambre-et-Meuse, the more consideration was it necessary to show for the proprietor.
A chicken had been set aside for me, and of that I was not to be deprived, or at least of as great a portion as could be piled on my plate within her inviolable kitchen, by Mariana of the liberal hand. Gaston Cremieux, though she looked upon him as a perverter of youth, and the worst of examples for her husband, was still a guest of honour, and he had come there in my company. Therefore he should have a share in the chicken. Roast mutton, soup, and boiled beef out of the soup-pot which had simmered all day by the fire were good enough for the others. There was plenty of good bread, better than rich men could buy in Paris at that moment—let the newcomers "bank up" with that and be thankful. These, with regard to food supply, were the conclusions of Mariana of the Restaurant of Sambre-et-Meuse among the reed-beds of the Durance.