He pointed to a folio which lay open with the day and date, but all else blank. He took a pen and wrote:
"As yesterday—no change. Guards—Caspar and Nolli. Both quiet. Messenger from Communal Government to ask about a report I am supposed to be making. Exhibit this."
"There you are—you can copy that if you like. I give you my word of honour that is all the report I ever write, and that is just enough to prove me on the spot, able for duty, and to claim my pay!"
I told Monsieur Weyse that I would not trouble him further. I should explain the foolish rumour to Keller Bey, and in all things he might count upon me. At the same timeifthere happened to be any volume of Hugo he was not using——! Well, he might imagine my gratitude.
He sprang to his feet with a kind of smothered whoop and began to delve among the pile which occupied the chair and slopped over upon the floor.
"Here—here," he explained, "take the first two volumes of "Les Misérables." It is the best of all. I shall read faster than you, for I have nothing else to do, and I keep it up far into the night. Why, my friend, if you come to-morrow, I shall have the third volume ready for you. No, no, don't thank me, but go instead and get your head clear of this noose. This Communist Aramon is going to be no safe place to play unpaid secretary in after a week or two. Those white wreaths of smoke against the Cevennes tell me that. The Company and the Government are working together over there, and when they are ready—it will be good not to be here and in your shoes!"
"But, Monsieur Weyse, you will be here!"
"Ah, that is different! I am a lonely man, and a servant in the way of his duty. Nothing can come amiss to me. Even if either side fortifies the junction buildings—why, I am the station-master acting for the Company. I sit and write my report once a day, and for the rest I read Hugo. Nothing is more simple. But as for you, take an old man's word. You are better anywhere than where you are!"
The station-master was right. I saw how things were tending and how the revolt was sure to end. Yet I was by nature so curious of the oddities of the business that I put off speaking to Keller Bey. For one thing, I did not want to find myself shut up in the Duke's Castle along with the other martyrs of the new rule. I preferred the open air and risk. Besides, I could each day assure myself of the well-being of Dennis Deventer and his family.
I discovered where Jack Jaikes was usually to be found on guard, and, early in the dusk of the morning, I slipped from my room in order to speak half an hour with him in private. He first abused me like a pickpocket for taking sides with such a dirty pack, and it was with the utmost difficulty that he could be persuaded that there was after all a difference between a Communard and a prisoner on parole. He did not trouble to conceal his opinion of the latter.
"Jump over the wall," he whispered, "see, catch hold of my belt. I tell ye, man, in business we cannot afford to be so fine. I learned that in Glasgow long syne, when a brither-in-law o' mine took my job from me. Now, he was my brither, though not by blood, and in a manner o' speaking I had promised to love, honour, and obey. But instead I just bashed him till he was laid up in bed for six weeks—so I got my job back! Now tell me, where would I have been if I had minded about honour and 'paroles' and them things?"
It was in vain that I pointed out to Jack Jaikes that, after all, it was not he but his sister who had promised to love, honour, and obey the maltreated job-jumper.
"It doesna maitter. It's all the wan thing!" was all that I could get out of Jack Jaikes. "Now then, catch a haud and I'll hae ye beside me in the crack o' a cow's tail!"
Now, though I had fought duels on the sly at St. André on the most approved principles of French honour, I had done so chiefly because I possessed an excellent method and a supple wrist trained by years of the "Salle." Really I cared nothing about any artificial code of honour. But it was quite a different thing to have passed my word to Keller Bey, and entirely unthinkable to leave him in the lurch by making my escape without telling him.
I began about this time to imagine a vain thing. It seemed that in some way I could save both Keller Bey and the Deventers. I would be on both sides of the fence at once, and play a universal providence. I did not then see that I should end by being outlawed by both sides—as, save for a curious interposition, I should have been.
Jack Jaikes had, however, sufficiently impressed me that I went to Keller Bey and told him that he must trust me completely without any parole. He must give me back my word about escaping. I might (I explained) disappear for a time without leaving him altogether. In reality I did not mean to do anything of the kind, and if it came to any trouble about saving the Deventers, he would find me again at his side. All this I believed perfectly feasible at the time. Indeed, I spoke with such earnestness and spontaneity that he finished by shutting his eyes, even as I was doing, to the difficulties or, rather, impossibilities of the position.
Somehow he clung to my presence among these men to whom he was already no more than a symbol of authority. They did not know the man Keller Bey. I did. And he seemed to wish to keep me near him as a link with a past with which he had broken. In his heart I am sure he regretted the garden and his talks with my father and Professor Renard, while as to Linn and Alida, they did not simply bear thinking about.
Yet he was possessed by that driving fate, ambition, call of duty, what you will—-which sends men forth from comfortable homes to battle for life about the frozen pole, to die miserably, to leave their bones there—though all the while in bright homes the loving hearts of women and the laughter of children are waiting for them.
Keller Bey was fate-driven. This Aramon rising had fallen accidentally in his way. The idealist in the man tempted him to believe that he could make a Socialist Land of Promise out of those factories and arsenals, which had grown up in such a beauty spot of nature, where (it was Keller Bey's word) "merely to be alive between sea, sky, and earth was a daily revelation of religion."
He thought nothing of the small questions of pay and personal interest which really made up the gist of the matter to the workmen. Perhaps also, though quite unwillingly, he had been led astray by Dennis Deventer. Dennis was an idealist also, and he saw the workmen's side of the question of private ownership. He would express these opinions with such dialectic sympathy that it almost seemed to the listener that he would be found one day persuading the owners of the factories to make over their possessions to the workers.
His wife often reproached him with this treachery of words.
"I know, I know, colleen," he would answer contritely, "'tis Irish Dennis hot in my brain that will get talking—then when Idothings Deventer the Scot sets the count right."
"But, then, how about the people with whom you have talked, and who may be depending on your words?"
"'Tis more the pity of them," he would say quizzically, "but, anyway, I am no worse than these young chicks that you have brought up."
"That is nonsense, Dennis—you are the master and yet you talk like a 'red' as often as not—very likely when you have just sent Jack Jaikes to fix a new gun where it will command a street or a gate by which you may be attacked."
Then Dennis would hold up his hand in token of surrender. It was all gospel truth, due perhaps as much as anything to the family habit of free discussion, when Dennis would take up a losing cause and champion it to the bitter end.
There is, however, room to commiserate Keller Bey, from whom these things were hidden. He reported to the Commune of Aramon at its daily séances, of the favourable dispositions of the representative of the Company. Nay, during the space of a week, it was quite on the cards that the men should return to work on the basis of some half-understood (and wholly misunderstood) word of Dennis's, which Keller Bey and his Social Commission had taken to mean the admission of the men's right to a share in the half-yearly profits.
Fortunately or unfortunately, another phrase at a succeeding interview had revealed that Dennis Deventer had no intention of committing his owners to anything. Nor had he the power. He had merely been willing to cast his own salary and commissions into the common fund gained by all the workers, and leave the total to be divided by the committee according to their idea of equity.
But then, though this was exceedingly generous, Dennis was also a partner and a rich man. The men, except Keller Bey, were indignant at what they counted a cheat—a false offer. Very unjustly, for to Dennis Deventer the rights of labour extended to what a man earned. Those of property, equally important to him, included the defence of his wife's money invested in the Small Arms Company, and also what he had been able to put aside during the years of his strenuous life.
This is how the great misunderstanding arose, and I do not see that any of the parties to it were free from blame—certainly not Dennis.
But I hasten to tell how the events fell out and what was my part in the adventure.
The same day that I had required my parole back from Keller Bey I marched boldly and in the face of all to the gate of Château Schneider, which was shut and boarded up, strengthened besides by criss-cross work of iron bars, so that the half which was opened creaked and groaned on its hinges when it turned. So careful was the watch that when at last after parley and explanation Jack Jaikes let me in, it was only to find myself commanded by three separate batteries of machine guns from behind which peered the perplexed faces of McAllister's gang. They were simple men and they could not understand this running with the hare and hunting with the hounds. I do not blame them. No one who did not know Keller Bey and the need of standing by him could possibly have understood. Jack Jaikes explained as well as he could, but not being convinced himself of the goodness of my cause, I fear his words only darkened counsel.
It was generally understood by those on guard at Château Schneider that "I would bear watching," and indeed it was not long before the sentinels of the National Guard on the other side of the wall came to exactly the same conclusion, so to please all parties I was blindfolded.
But the welcome I had from the household of Deventer made up for all this enveloping suspicion. Here, at least, I stood clear. I was re-established in my own conceit, in my position a most valuable asset. Was I not a martyr to duty, a prisoner on parole, one castaway among wild and dangerous people, because I had ventured out by night to join the Deventer defence?
Jack Jaikes had evidently done his part well. He had given me the rough side of his tongue, but had permitted the Deventers to understand that in the morning hours he had held converse with a hero and martyr to duty.
Mrs. Deventer came over and graciously kissed me, and I verily believe that I might have kissed all three girls—yes, even Hannah—under the eye maternal, without a reprimand.
Hugh was more comrade-like than he had been for a long time, and linked arms with me in the good old St. André way as we stood by the fire-place. Dennis Deventer came in smiling.
"Now our family is more like itself again. Angus me boy, and how did ye leave my good friend the commander of the forces?"
I told him that Keller Bey was well but much worried by the cares of office. At this he laughed a little mischievously, and burst out in one of his usual phrases:
"St. Patrick's Day and a fine morning to be whittling shillalahs. But Keller Bey has not seen the first green of his wild oat-sowing. Let him wait till his lambs begin to frolic. Then I do not envy him his task. As for me, Jack Jaikes and I are making this place so strong that they might blow it piece by piece about our ears without making us surrender."
Presently I found myself at luncheon at the Deventers' table. Nothing appeared to have changed, except that the young apprentices were no longer to be seen, and indeed there was no external service of any kind. We cut and poured out at the sideboard for ourselves. Mrs. Deventer was the only one waited upon, Rhoda Polly bringing her what she wanted.
The discussion grew as loud as ever, but hushed instantly when a messenger appeared at the door, cap in hand and a little breathless, to report the situation of the various posts, or to request instructions. Sometimes Dennis merely bade the messenger to "Ask Jack Jaikes!" More often he reeled off a detailed and technical explanation which the apprentice understood though I did not. Or again he would dash a few lines on the leaf of a note-book, indicate a design sketchily, and send the lad off again as fast as he could clatter down the stairs.
I could not help being struck with admiration of the Chief's method and science. Keller Bey was a leader of men, but I could not help seeing, apart from his indubitable personal magnetism, how things were bungled for lack of those very qualities of science and method. It went well in Château Schneider. No need for speech or lifted hand. Silence fell like a spell whenever the runner appeared in that ever-open doorway. And while the master of men launched his commands there was not even the ordinary clatter of knives and forks. Everyone seemed to feel the importance of the decision to be given. All were proud of the giver, though the moment before and the moment after they would be refuting his arguments, denying his statements, and generally assaulting his positions in a Donnybrook of sound and fury, without the least apparent reverence for the grey hairs to which he often appealed with mock pathos.
I took care not to see any of the defences of the workshops, or those about the Château. These had been wholly reorganised since the attempts of January, and were now nearing completion on a far more serious scale.
I had to go back and I should assuredly be questioned. If I did not answer I might doubtless be suspected. Therefore it was arranged that when the time came for me to go Jack Jaikes should blindfold me and lead me out by the main fortified entrance of the works, which was immediately in front of a large post of National Guards.
I was longing to get Rhoda Polly by herself and hear the news from her own lips, but Dennis was so eager for more and more detailed gossip about this one and that other among the members of the Commune, that he detained me a long while. He did not fish for secrets nor ask me to divulge any of Keller's plans. I think he felt himself too strong and sure for that.
He was, moreover, genuinely interested in the men, and wishful to know how they conducted themselves in their new spheres. He was specially amused at my account of the staffing of the Post-Office-Without-Letters, and when he heard the names he instantly baptized it "The Bureau of the Incompetents"—a sobriquet which afterwards got abroad and became a saying, so that many of those who had earned the name left the place to escape from it.
At last Rhoda Polly and I did manage to take refuge up on the roof behind our favourite chimney-stack at a place where the parapet was almost breast high. It was comfortable hiding and quite secluded—the fortifications of the Château roofbeinglong perfected, and indeed only to be used as a watch-tower or as a last line of defence.
Rhoda Polly told me how she had sent three messengers to Alida, of whom only one had been faithful to his trust. She had had to enlist Jack Jaikes in the business, and between them they had called up lads from the town, butchers' boys and such-like, known to the foreman from the Clyde. To each of these she had perforce to commit her letter, taking care that it should contain nothing compromising in case of capture. But only one ever returned with an answer, and he a little bare-footed rascal of a boot-black, from whom nothing had been expected. He had even brought back a letter from Alida, telling her friend that they were well but that for safety's sake Linn and she, with the two Tessier maids, had been taken into the main building of Gobelet, where at least they should be farther from the road and have men to protect them.
Alida went on to say that Linn went about as usual, but evidently grieved for her husband in silence. She herself was occupied in learning Latin from Mr. Cawdor, and already could read in a book called "Cæsar" and in another by an author named Sallust.
I saw the letter as Rhoda Polly turned it over, and noted that not a word of inquiry was wasted upon myself. My name was not once mentioned. The Lady Alida had taken dire offence at my flight, and this was in spite of the fact that Rhoda Polly had mentioned that I was with Keller Bey in the city of Aramon.
On my return I was, as I had expected, put to the question, with lenience by Keller Bey, but with biting irony and something like personal dislike by the Procureur Raoux. Then stood apparent all the man's bitter nature, mordantly distilled from years of poverty and hatred of the well-to-do.
The name of Dennis Deventer set his eyes ablaze, and the idea of his family sitting down to a comfortable meal in spite of their isolation from markets was to him gall and wormwood. He would hardly believe the tale of the National Guards that they had seen me come down the steps of the Château already blindfolded and under escort, and that I had so continued till I was pushed out of the main entrance of the works by Jack Jaikes.
How many guns had I seen? The little man shot out the question at me.
"Only those on the roof," I answered readily, "those which had been used in January. They were hooded and protected from rain by waterproof jackets."
"How did you know that?"
"Because I went up there to take the air after dinner, and I leaned my back against one while I smoked."
"Was it a big gun? Three—four-pounder?"
I could not say exactly, but I should think four. I knew nothing about any defensive works within the square of the factory. I had traversed all that part blindfold.
The fierce little man grunted disbelievingly, but desisted when it was obvious that he could make nothing more of me.
"Let Dennis Deventer take care," he snarled, "he speaks smooth words now. Oh, the great things he will do for the workmen, but not for all his promises does he stop that Jacques Jaikes from fortifying and placing guns. Oh, I know more than you or Keller Bey are aware of. I do not go about with my eyes blindfolded. What is the use of a tower of Saint Crispin if a shoemaker may not climb it and spy out the works of his enemy?"
"That will do, Raoux," said Keller Bey, somewhat impatiently. "I shall send for you again when I need you."
He went out slowly, with a lingering, backward look, full of spite and malice, his words and face distilling hatred like the poison-fangs of a viper. I heard him mutter as he passed:
"You will send for me when you want me—take care I do not come when you want me least!"
It was indeed time to get away—the Commune of Aramon stood on the verge of a volcano which might blow us into the air any day.
Yet, how could I leave Keller Bey to his fate, and, if I did, how could I face Linn and Alida?
* * * * *
The days passed heavily in Aramon, yet with a kind of feverish excitement too—an undercurrent of danger which thrills a swimmer cutting his way through smooth upper waters when he feels the swirl of the undertow. The Commune of Aramon met daily for discussion, and reports of its meetings are still to be found in the little red-covered, tri-weekly sheet,Le Flambeau du Midi, of which I possess a set.
They appear to have discussed the most anodyne matters. They gabbled of drainage and water supplies, the suspension of rents and pawnbrokers' pledges for six months. They came to sharp words, almost to blows—"Moderates" and "Mountain," as in the old days of 1793—while outside the companies of the Avengers of Marat, the dark young men of the wolf-like prowl, kept their watch and took their sullen counsel.
Provisions showed no visible stoppage. The country about Aramon was an early one—the great market forprimeursbeing Château Renard, only ten miles away. Thither Père Félix, learned in the arts of restaurant supply, sent a little permanent guard to direct the provisioning of Aramon city.
I think the only man outside Château Schneider who saw what was coming upon the new Government was my Hugolâtre of a station-master up at the junction. I went to see him every day and he never ceased to urge me to clear out of the town lest worse should befall me.
"They are arming," he said one day in early April, "they are coming nearer. Put your eye to that telescope—no, don't alter it—tell me what you see. A signal post on the railway—semaphore you call it! Yes, but did you ever see such a semaphore on a railway? With us the stiff arm drops and all is clear. It rises half-way—'go slowly!' It stands at right angles to the post—'stop—the way is barred!' But what do you see yonder? The stiff arms are moving this way and that. You who can Morse out a message on the telegraph apparatus, why cannot you read something infinitely more simple? That is on the other side of the river and tells me that the Government engineers are creeping nearer. There is no railway line where the semaphore is. They are signalling to their comrades on this side. The storm is gathering—be very sure. For the present there is no great hurry. Little Dictator Thiers has many irons in the fire. He has no time to read Hugo like me, nor has he time to give much thought to Aramon. But yonder are those who are preparing a path for his feet, and for the feet of his little Breton Moblots when the time comes."
It appeared to me that I ought to look into this myself, but in a way that would not compromise my friend the station-master. So I made my way boldly up into St. Crispin's tower and turned the long spyglass, old as the first Napoleon, upon the semaphore ridge. It was wagging away cheerfully, spelling out messages which I could not understand. I went at once to Keller Bey.
"The Government of Versailles is not so far off as you think," I said, "they are watching you from the other side of the river, and I believe talking across the water to the commanders of troops on this side."
And with that I told him of the semaphore and of what I had seen from the tower of St. Crispin. He sent instantly for someone who could read semaphore messages, and within half an hour a deserter from the engineers quartered at Avignon was brought to him—a small, brown, snippet of a man whom I christened at sight "the runt," but whose real name was Pichon—one of a clan mighty in all the southland of Languedoc.
Keller Bey came with us to witness the trial, and we had not reached the summit when we heard behind us the wheezing, asthmatic breathing of the Procureur Raoux sorely tried by the hasty ascent.
"Why, why, why?" he gasped, poking his head through the door—"who gave you the liberty? Ah, Keller Bey—I beg your pardon. I was not aware of your presence."
"This young man has brought us important information," said Keller Bey. "He has discovered a semaphore signal newly erected on a spur among the olive trees. The enemy have a post there, and are busily sending messages to corresponding bodies making an advance southward upon this side."
By this time I had the glass into position, and was moving gingerly out of the way to let in the ex-engineer of Avignon, when the little cobbler fairly rushed at the vacant seat, catching a foot on one of the legs of the tripod and, of course, entirely losing the semaphore on the opposite bank of the Rhône.
"I can see nothing—there is nothing to see!" he cried, gesticulating fiercely with fingers like claws, "it is the lies of the English. I know them. They have always lied to us. Dennis Deventer lies. There is no message—no semaphore. There is no regiment nearer than Lyons or Marseilles, and there I warrant Gaston Cremieux, Procureur-Général like myself, is giving them as much as they can think about."
With extreme difficulty Keller persuaded the acrid little man to allow me to try.
"I will send him to the Central Prison if he has been bringing us false news—and of course he has. What a blessing! I have a committal form with me."
I did not shrink from the test, and while Keller Bey maintained the cobbler-magistrate in some degree of quiet on the other side of the platform, the expert deserter quickly got his eye on the signalling apparatus.
"I have it," he cried, his brow glued to the eyepiece and his hand signalling for stillness. "Oh, do be quiet!"
Raoux's dancing feet were shaking the crazy platform.
"The devil is in the fellow's legs," said Keller Bey. "Will you be quiet, Raoux, or shall I drop you over to the glory of your patron saint?"
He held him for a moment asprawl over the edge with a drop of two hundred feet clear upon the packed causeway stones. Something of helplessness in the grip of Keller Bey for a moment took the madness out of Raoux.
He kept fairly still when Keller placed him again on the floor of the platform, and with a pair of huge hands, one on each shoulder, held him in place. Without taking his eyes from the spyglass the engineer searched and found a dirty note-book to which was attached by a string a stump of pencil. Presently he began to spell out a message from one side of the river to the other. I could see his fingers shaking with excitement as he jotted down the letters.
"Why," he exclaimed at the first pause, "it's our fellows from Avignon, and they are not even troubling to code the message—shows what they think of us."
"Tell us what they say," said Keller Bey.
"One moment—they are beginning again," and the pencil stub began to travel.
"Gun platform can be laid out on spur mountain, 250 feet above present shelter trenches. Will command bridge-head of Aramon—possibly also rebel headquarters."
I saw Keller Bey turn pale to the lips. He understood well enough. He had campaigned against those same invisible, tireless French engineers for many desperate African years, and he knew that in the long run they always made out to do the task set for them.
But Raoux the cobbler-procureur was quite unmoved.
"They are playing with levels and angle-machines as they used to do when I was at Avignon. They went out every day clean and came back dirty. The colonel could find nothing better for them to do. To-morrow we shall send half a column of ours and shoot a few. Then the rest will keep further up the river where they belong."
"As you will," said Keller Bey, "but you had better send a battalion at least with provisions for three days."
"Provisions for three days—absurd nonsense!" foamed the little man, for this was touching his tenderest spot, "our citizen soldiers are the National Guard of Aramon, and will not consent to sleep away from their houses, not for all the wig-wagging engineers and railway signalling in France! We are not slaves but freemen. No, no, a day's excursion to brush away these impudent land surveyors with a volley from our patriotic rifles—and then back again before dark with victory on our untarnished banners—that is what you can expect from the lion hearts of our young men. We defend the Commune. We do not make war outside it. And why should we when the chief strength of the enemy remains unassaulted and untaken within our walls?"
Keller Bey called off the ex-engineer. With such a war method as that which was evidently popular in Aramon, it was no use wasting time reading semaphore messages.
The Chief and I returned very mournfully to the Mairie. I could see that his reflections were bitter.
"They do not understand the Commune or what it means—they do not know the spirit of the Internationale here. They care nothing except for their little municipal quarrels. They cherish wild, vague hopes about the works, and would attack the man upon whose charity they are living. But of the fact that France will one day speak to them with a voice of authority—nay, is now speaking in warning—to that they will pay no heed. At the Commune meeting to-day a whole day was wasted arguing for or against an extra duty on potatoes when brought across the bridge from the Protestant department of the Deux Rives. Protestant potatoes, Catholic and Roman potatoes! What irony, when the dusky signal-men are crawling from hill to hill ever nearer, and any day may bring our doom upon us!"
I let it sink well in, for I could see that Keller Bey was at last conscious of the mistake he had made.
"You must go," he said, "I cannot fairly keep you longer. Go to your friends and advise the good women of them to accept a safe conduct across the river. I have still enough authority for that, if I promise an ultimatum and an assault on the works to follow. It would make me happy to think of these kind folk who welcomed Alida and Linn so warmly, safely lodged under your father's roof as in a city of refuge."
He paused and looked pensively out on the uniformed groups of National Guard lounging and smoking in the white courtyard of Fontveille stone.
"As for me," he said, "there is no room for any going back. The Government would accept no resignation or belated repentance. I have dreamed my dream. I thought (as thought Carl Marx) that these working men were ready for an ideal reform, for government over themselves. I saw other cities joining themselves to us, the good seed sown over the country from department to department, till all should work for all and no man only for himself. Now I see that the nature of man cannot be changed by a theory or a form of government. Go, young man, to your friends. I, Keller Bey, bid you! Be kind to Linn and to Alida, my master's daughter. Perhaps all this has come because I disobeyed him for the first time when he sent the prince of the house of Ali to bring home his daughter. I may be justly punished, yet, nevertheless, the will of Alida is nearer to my heart than that of the Emir Abd-el-Kader in his house at Brousse!"
It was indeed high time that I went away from the perils of Aramon-les-Ateliers. Indeed, Keller Bey was in greater danger and condemned to greater isolation owing to my stay. At first he had counted it a happiness to talk with me of things outside his unfortunate office as head of the Commune. But even Père Félix and the more dependable of the little band of members of the Government, faithful to their head, showed something like the cold shoulder when Keller withdrew regularly to find me in his parlour as soon as the séance was over.
I waited most of a dark and moonless night for the coming of Jack Jaikes to the corner of the wall. At the first sound of my voice he threw over a rope to help me to scramble up. He himself was astride the top when I got there and we were inside the fortifications within thirty seconds.
And lo! how easy it all was—and what a difference! I seemed a thousand miles away from everyone on the town side, and now only a few rods divided me from the house of friends—from the sudden breaking ires of Dennis Deventer and the quiet smiles of his wife, a mistress within her own domain. Yes, and from Rhoda Polly—though I have left her to the last, I had not forgotten Rhoda Polly.
"Well," said Jack Jaikes, "ye've come at last, as ye had much better have done at the first, biding there among anarchists' trash and breakers of God's beautiful machinery. God knows I am as good a Liberal as ever voted for what Maister Gladstone said was right—yes, me and my faither before me. But before I would mix mysel' up with such a lazy, unclean, unsatisfied, cankered crew—sakes alive, I wad raither turn Tory at yince and lose my self-respect!"
This was a terrible threat for Jack Jaikes, who had brought away from Scotland no particular religion, except (as was common in these years) that unbounded adoration of Mr. Gladstone, which culminated in 1880.
For that night Jack Jaikes made me a shake-down among his own gang, and urged me to get the Chief to let me serve there.
"Man, I could be doing wi' ye fine," he said, "even though ye do not ken one end of a gun from anither till she goes off! But there's a headpiece on ye and they tell me that ye are fair bursting with the mathematics!"
I told him I was better at classics, and he was, I think, more desirous of my company than ever.
"My brither passed for the kirk and was something of a dab at the Greek. You learned yours here in France—will that be the same sort? It will? That's grand. Ye can gie me a bit help, then? I have some o' his auld college buiks in my box. I hae put in heaps o' spadewark at readin' them, but it is a dreary business by yersel'! For ane foot that ye gang forward, ye slip back twa, as the Irishman said aboot the road covered with ice!"
Above my head great steel armatures rose high in the air. The flitting lanterns brought out now the brass knobs of a governor, now the dim glistening bulk of a huge fly-wheel away up near the roof of the shed which Jack Jaikes and his men used as a dormitory. There was one fixed light which shone upon the instrument attached to a little field telegraph. Jack Jaikes had given up his idea of a wholesale electrocution of an attacking force—that is, Dennis Deventer had compelled him to give it up. But he had perfected a kind of burglar alarm applied to a wider area, which completely encircled the works and (separately) protected the Château and its grounds. If anyone interfered with his wires at any point, Jack Jaikes could instantly warn the nearest post to the disturbance, and the men would swarm out like wasps.
The plan had its little inconveniences. Cats in particular loved and were loved upon the great factory wall. But Jack Jaikes devised means, by "stinging them up a bit" electrically, to make them "leave that," as he expressed it.
Rooks also came to perch and left with a whoop of terror, or clung desperately head down with paralysed claws firmly knotted till the men plucked them off and threw them into a corner to recover.
But the first company of the Avengers, tentatively scrambling about the north-west corner to see what sort of watch the English kept, were promptly checked by a dozen bayonets thrust down from above, and having received information, they departed without standing on ceremony.
Let it not be thought that I slept much in the power-house. It was altogether too picturesque and vivid for me. My heart beat with a rousing and incommunicable joy. I was again among my own kind. I had done my best to sympathise with those others over the wall. I had tried to help and understand Keller Bey, but though I might wear the red cardigan, follow Garibaldi, run up the "tatter of scarlet" under Keller Bey's orders, my heart beat with the after-guard. My instincts were "yellow"—the rest was but the rash of the blood which came with youth and would pass like a malady of childhood.
Small wonder I did not sleep. Into that entrancing and mysterious hangar, hooded and cloaked men stole from nowhere in particular. Each gave a kick or a shake in passing to other men, who, silently rising, cloaked themselves, seized arms, adjusted belts, and so wordlessly clanked away into the dark. Then the new-comers would go over to the embers of the fire on the forge in the corner, where the red glow would reveal him as a pleasant-faced English lad, munching ardently his bread and sausage, or heating his coffee on the coals. In the gloom of the dormitory shake-downs men would talk rapidly, muttering in their sleep. If a man snored too vigorously, Jack Jaikes, or a lieutenant of that considerable sub-chief, would turn him over on his side, or, in extreme case, send him to the boiler-room, where the men had room to snore one against the other. These Jack Jaikes, always reminiscent of Glasgow, called the "Partick Social Warblers," in memory of a certain church glee-club soirée, to enter which he had once paid a "silver collection" in the unfulfilled expectation of "tea and a bag."
But that night as I lay I kept awake for the pure joy of knowing myself alive. I loved the breathing of the men about me, the ordered mystery of the comings and goings, the clicking of the telegraphic machine as Jack Jaikes bent over it, even the little circle of golden light which the lamp shed, and the bristly way his moustache had of standing out beyond the wicks of his grimly humorous mouth.
I wondered if he ever slept. Certainly he lay down. He had a blanket with which he covered himself, head and all. It was not much of a blanket, being pierced in the centre so that it could be worn with the head thrust through, poncho-wise, as he stalked about. It was full of burnt holes, showing where he had thrown himself down on cinders, some of which had proved too recent.
About four there came a shrilltirr-r-r-rof the small call-bell and every sleeper was instantly on his feet. How Jack Jaikes got to the ticker I do not know, but long before the men had their belts snapped, he was reading off to them the location of the alarm.
"Between posts 48 and 49, Norwell and Omand warned. Ready there, file out!"
The dark figures passed one by one out of the faint copper glow of the forge, stood each a moment against the blue-black mystery of the night framed in the doorway, and were then lost in the obscurity.
I thought of following, but first of all I was afraid of Jack Jaikes, who had made no sign to me, and secondly and chiefly, in a yard and among defences so sown with dangers and (for all I knew) corded with live wires, I might easily do myself much harm, and the general welfare of the cause little good. So, sorely against the grain, I stayed where I was.
Presently the men came laughingly back, their humour quite vanished. Two of the town goats—for Aramon was near enough to the mountains and to Spain to possess many of these—had chosen to contest the narrow way to the factory wall, from a pure point of honour as gentlemen should, for there was no lady in the case. They had died fighting, and a bayonet's point had been requisitioned to dislodge them both. They were now brought in and handed over to the cook for preparation. Both had been hard fighters in their time, and looked as if they would furnish what Caroline in "The Heir at Law" calls "not an inviting meal."
Everybody was now fully waked up, and no one thought any more of sleep. The night was still of the indigo dark peculiar to the South, and outside, I could see the stars sinking one by one. The glow on the forge-hearth was set blazing, tea billies were soon boiling, and there was a fragrant smell of coffee in the air. The clean, appetising hiss of frying bacon struck a joyous note. Someone set a big globe of electric light flaring, when,whisk-whisk, a quartette of bullets tore through the shed and knocked it to flinders.
Then in like an avenging genie entered Jack Jaikes.
"If I kenned wha that idiot was that set yon infernal thing blazing, I would knock the amazing friskiness out o' him. Have I not telled ye a score o' times that ye are no to make exhibitions o' yerselves? Exhibitions, did I say, waur nor that, juist blank eediot targets that the Frenchmen haena sense enough to hit!"
He made a silence about him, for all knew that his angers were black and that he would stick at nothing, but, if provoked, strike with what came nearest to his hand.
But the mood passed, the globe and carbons were renewed, and by the end of their early breakfast his good-humour also was quite restored. The men moved easily again without casting furtive eyes to see how the black dog was riding Jack Jaikes. They knew him for an incomparable fighting leader, an engineer without rival in the camp, but there was no doubt that he needed humouring when, as he would have said himself, "his birse was up." It had been remarked, even before he left the Clyde, that he was "far ower handy wi' a spanner," and that might have been the reason why he had tried Bristol and the Tyne before finding his master in Dennis Deventer of the Arms Factory of Aramon.
I broke in upon the Deventers at breakfast—a meal which in defiance of all local custom they took together as they had been used to do far away in Barrow under the Cumberland fells. Or rather it was Jack Jaikes himself who did the breaking. He could not deny himself that.
We heard the noise and clatter as we mounted the stairs.
"A fight," chuckled Jack Jaikes, half to himself, "but two to one on Rhoda Polly, anyway."
But he had his little effect to make. He flung the door open, grounded his rifle with a ringing clash, and announced in a stentorian voice:
"A deserter!"
The clamour ceased instantly. Every face was turned towards the door, Dennis Deventer half rose, his napkin in his hand. I could see the pale, clear-cut features of Rhoda Polly, her red lips parted, peering over her father's shoulder.
Dennis Deventer received me with a friendly push that sent me in the direction of Hugh, who "cleared" like a goal-keeper, and I fell into a chair beside Rhoda Polly.
"Come in, Jack Jaikes—what will you take? Try those kidneys—they are rather good. No, no, your chaps can't want you so soon. You are not hatching them out there, you know!"
These and other cries at last persuaded Jack Jaikes to do what he was yearning to do—sit down and eat a second breakfast with his master's family. His grin was at once triumphant and sardonic, yet he left me to answer for myself. His pleasure was not to talk much at these festivals of his soul. I think he was fearful of what he called "langwage"—such as he used occasionally in the works—escaping his control. At any rate he was a happy listener, and the few words he uttered were always destined to foment a discussion, acerbate a verbal quarrel, so that he could lay mental bets upon his admired Rhoda Polly. When she made a good hit, he felt inclined (as he confessed) to rise up and yell, "like a gallery student on an opera night"—a set of savages whom he had known during the college days of his brother, now a creditable and responsible "placed" minister in Scotland.
When I announced that I had come to stay Rhoda Polly nearly trod my foot off under the table, a vulgar disgrace to our comradeship for which she apologised afterwards.
"I had to do it," she said, "or I should have been blubbering on your shoulder with my arms about your neck! How would you have liked that, Angus my lad?"
I answered, that before company I should have liked it ill enough, but proffered my shoulder for the purpose since we were in private. Rhoda Polly in her turn cried shame upon me. If I could not remember our compact, she would not forget it. She also reminded me of saying of my own accord that she and I had put away childish things. In vain I represented to her that I had just returned from great danger and that if she had been so overwhelmed with joy at breakfast as to make pemmican of my foot, she must have still some remaining for which a suitable expression might be found without looking out the word in the dictionary.
But Rhoda Polly would have none of my suggestions. She was glad she had shown her feelings, however irregularly, but now if I pleased we would resume our good old talks together, at least when the incidents of the siege permitted.
Her father did not allow her to run round the yard or about the posts with the men, as she had been wont to do during the first January difficulties.
"Oh, it isn't that," she said, answering a question in my eyes which was also an accusation; "of course some of them think I'm nice and all that. But it isn't that! I'm not Liz! Only father says that there are snipers on the towers—the cathedral, St. Servan's, St. Marthe's, and St. Crispin's—and he doesn't want any accidents happening to his eldest daughter. But I am sure the boys miss me. I know Jack Jaikes does. He told me so when he came in to arrange mother's sewing machine, which I 'wrongulated' on purpose to hear the news."
Later I retold Dennis Deventer the story of the coming trouble in Aramon and the despair of Keller Bey. He listened without surprise, his deep-set Irish eyes almost hidden under his twitching, bushy brows.
"There's a man that is obleeged to me, Angus me lad. He runs a copper ore boat from Huelva—that's in Spain—to Marseilles. If we could get the owld Keller man down there, I know a boatman in the Joliette who would give him shelter till the steamer lifts her anchor. There is no need for him to be desperate about any such thing. The world is wide and Governments in this country are made of cardboard and bad paste. He will be amnestied in a year or two. Can the man not be reasonable?"
I told him that the difficulty lay there. Keller Bey considered himself bound to those who had helped him to set up the Commune in Aramon. He would make no separate peace for himself.
"Separate fiddlesticks!" shouted Dennis Deventer. "Does he mean such comfortable old soup-bags as Père Félix, or wine-skins like Pipe-en-Bois, or alcohol gutters like the Marshal Soult? Let him set his mind at rest. They are safe. No Government while I live shall harm a hair of their heads. They will never stand behind a barricade—never fire a shot; if they will be careful not to fall downstairs after celebration suppers to the memory of Danton and Marat and the men of '48, they will all die in their beds and have their memories honoured in turn by the suppers of another and redder generation!"
There was truth in what Dennis said. These were not the men who would die fighting when the day of reckoning came. The young sullen wolf's breed of the sidelong glances and the whispered counsels—these were those who would line the last ditches of the defence of Aramon.
But, then, Keller Bey felt that he was responsible also for them. He was their chief and normal leader. He had the secrets of the Internationale and he had made proselytes, even among the young people. Could he leave them and flee? I knew very well Keller Bey's line of argument, and I put it to Dennis. He clapped his knee testily.
"Oh, for a good Scots or Ulster head on a man—even English would do because of the fine, solid underpinning and bodygear the Lord God puts into his southern-built vessels. But when a man gets this megrim of honour in his brain, there is no saying beforehand what he will or will not do—except that it will surely be eediocy."
"It's a pity, too," he added, after thought, "a man that can be talking the Arab or the Turkish with men like your father (God bless him) and old Professor Renard."
I suggested that there was one factor we were overlooking—that it was more than likely that before long the Conservative Commune of Aramon would be displaced and with it would disappear the rule of Keller.
No, I did not think they would kill him. They would probably expel the ex-Dictator and let him go where he would. Then would be the time to secure him, and send him to the captain of the Huelva cargo-boat.
Dennis patted me on the head.
"We cannot be sure of doing much," he said, "but we can always have a try. We shall probably be desperately busy ourselves if the wild rakes take the lead over the wall yonder. They will come at us, not this time in undisciplined rush, but with method and well armed—thanks to the folly of the National Assembly."
Still, Dennis Deventer had a card up his sleeve. "You must wait with us and see the rubber played out."
The black day which was coming upon Aramon was not long in dawning. Barrès and Imbert were the leaders of the anarchist party, which had always secretly opposed the Marxian communism of Keller Bey and his adherents.
These were the men of the opposition, dark-browed cub-engineers and piece-workers, not high in their professions—being far too careless and off-hand for regular work, but with a dashing strain in them, and a way of putting the matter which imposed upon the younger men.
Were they hungry? There was food in the shops. Was their miserable fifteen pence a day insufficient? Yonder were the villas of the traders who had sucked and grown rich on the money they had earned, inadequate as it was. Had any man a wrong? The Government had put arms in his hands—let him go and right it!—It may be imagined what was the outcome of this kind of talk. So long as Keller Bey kept his hold there was no night plundering, and several men caught playing at "individual expropriation" were first threatened with the provost marshal and then with a firing party. Instead they were sent to the care of Calvi in the prison of Monsieur le Duc because the heart of Keller was tender.
This gloomy, four-square hulk of a mediæval keep had been built in the thirteenth century by the Duke of Burgundy, to awe the riotous Frankish burghers of Aramon le Vieux, and stands still, machicolated and fossed, much as he left it.
It was difficult now to think of the Aramon with its strong guild of hammer men, its coppersmiths swarming from their clattering toil, its tanners and booth-men pouring out of these sameruellesand squares, now grey with mistral or dreamy in the white sunshine. To-day not a cat would jump for a dozen Dukes of Burgundy, but seven hundred years ago Aramon le Vieux had a fierceélanof its own and knew how to singe the beard of an oppressor, especially if he were at some considerable distance.
After the building of the great feudal keep on the opposite bank, we hear little more of the turbulent traders, and the likelihood is that they paid their dues and gave no trouble ever afterwards, especially after the Duke constructed a bridge of boats which opened at both sides to allow of traffic.
Now, however, the lofty walls of the fortress of Monsieur le Duc became the rallying place of revolt. Every evening in front of the grand entrance, or upon thefossébridge, Georges Barrès preached the doctrine of plunder and petroleum. There were in Aramon a certain number of "haves"—let those who heard him see to it that there were ten times that number of "takes"! For what were their brethren shut up there (he pointed to the Loches-like cliff of masonry above him, nearly twice the height of Rochester Castle), and answered, "For retaking their own—for redressing the wrongs of the poor!"
"For plain theft—they stole hens!" proclaimed a voice in the crowd.
"Down with the spy—kill the royalist—dismember the traitor!" howled the mob. And to show their honesty they fell upon a good citizen of Aramon, a respectable apothecary, come there almost at random. He had been discreetly silent. It was not he who had made the outcry, but wore he not a black frock-coat and looked he not sleek and well fed? If he were not a spy, what was he doing there? So they threw him in the Rhône. He was fished out half a mile below, where for a long distance the workshop wall skirts the river. Jack Jaikes did the job with grumbling thoroughness and the man of drugs was brought to with a science and celerity unknown in his own pharmacy.
Having thus asserted its power, the crowd turned with self-approval to listen to its favourite orator.
"Here in Aramon we have a Government, and over it presides a Great Shadow which has been sent us from the Internationale. What did ever the Internationale do for us? Did it stop this war? Did it force back the Germans? You tell me that we owe to this shadow the thirty sous a day on which we starve. What of that? It is a bribe to keep us from taking all they possess. Every day in that Château yonder the silver gleams on the white table-cloth, the red wine mantles in the glass, the champagne foams, and—my great God! you can hear them laughing—from the miserable lairs where your children are clamouring for bread, and your wives are weeping because there is none to give them!"
Now the soul of such crowds is most strange. In all that listening assembly there was no single man who did not know that every word was false. There was a special grant for families, and if any worker's children had not enough bread, it was because the patriot himself had spent the money on absinthe! Every worker knew this. Yet tears started to their eyes, and a deep-throated roar of anger went out against the Government which had arranged such a monstrous iniquity.
"Yonder lie the workshops—the place where money is spun—money such as you have no idea of—millions a week—all the fruit of your toil. Do not break the machinery. We will set it spinning money on our own account—but first we must be quit of Dennis Deventer and his foreign gang. Keller Bey will tell you that they are workers like yourselves—citizens, of equal rights before the Internationale. Why then did they collect together yonder, these brave citizens, these honest workers, these noble revolutionaries? Why are they not walking about these streets and taking their turn at mounting guard? I will tell you. Because they are the guardians of the treasures of the masters—they are keeping locked in Dennis Deventer's safes the millions which have been wrung from you in cruelty and blood and tears!"
Such a roar as went up from that black assembly in which the white caps of women were dotted and the massed blue knots of the National Guard could be seen! It reached the council, drearily debating in the town house, and there was a general desire to adjourn. The air was electric with coming trouble. These duly elected members of the Commune felt themselves caught between two great unknown forces—the Government of Versailles, which was represented by the pushing surveyors of the engineers' corps, the first skirmishers of an army which was certain to come upon them from the north, and this uprising of the idlers and workspoilers of their own kind.
Personally their Socialism was not deep-rooted. They had the national respect for small property-holders, and even if they possessed none themselves, Oncle Jean Marie or Tante Frizade werepropriétairesin their own right. When these heritages fell in none of their loving nephews and nieces would fight harder for their share than the red-begirt members of the Commune of Aramon.
Only men like Keller Bey and Gaston Cremieux lived in a world beyond such things—and on the other hand were those who, like Barrès and Imbert, had nothing to gain or to lose however fortune's wheel might turn.
Père Félix pushed his way into the dense masses about the entrance of the prison keep. He was sure of himself, but very indignant at those of the Commune who had allowed him to come alone. Of course it was not fitting that Keller Bey should expose his person, but if the twenty of Aramon had marched together in a body, each with his crimson scarf of office girding him, they might have dominated the mob and silenced the hair-brained Barrès. Still, all the more honour to himself, when he should go back to twit them with their fears and tell them the story of his triumph!
"We don't want to hear Père Félix! Down with the traitor! Trample him, spit upon him!"
He could not believe his ears. For then began a din such as he had never heard. The young men on the outskirts had seized the instruments of the band of the National Guard and were now blowing, bellowing, and clanging upon them. He stood beside Barrès, who looked at him contemptuously, tossing the light fall of hair off his brow with a regular movement, as a challenged bull tosses his horns.
"Comrades and citizens, in the name of the Commune of Aramon, elected by you, I address you——"
Brazen horns brayed, tin trays and kettles were beaten, the big drum thundered just underneath. Words issued from the mouth of Père Félix. They must have done so, for his lips were moving, but not even himself heard a word, and the sardonic smile on the face of the Catalan Barrès became a grin.
The old orator, who had swayed all meetings of the plebs in Aramon ever since '48, threw up his hands in hopeless misery.
"They will not hear me," he cried, so that this time the words reached the ear of Barrès. "Why will they not hear me?"
Now Barrès was by this time content with his triumph, and he put his hand to the old man's ear and shouted, "Because your day is past—you are down, you and all your gang. You silenced me at the Riding School meeting three months ago, but then you had Gaston Cremieux to help you. You had better go home. I shall see to it that you do go home, and let not Aramon see your face again. Keep on the farther side of the Durance and no man shall meddle with you. But from this day forth take notice that Aramon means to do without you!"
He beckoned a few determined-looking fellows from the crowd, each armed with a rifle and cartridge-belt. A few instructions, a determined push through the crowd which divided to right and left, shouting hateful words all the time he was passing, and Père Félix found himself thrust ignominiously out of the northern gate of Aramon. His captors had treated him with a certain hasty roughness, but had up till now refrained from insult. Now they tore the red scarf of office from about his body and trampled it in the dust. The rule of the Twenty was over in Aramon.
Slowly and mournfully Père Félix took the way under the beautiful trees of the water road toward the Durance. He did not see where he was going. His foot caught more than once in twisted roots from which the soil had been washed away by the winter floods. Under the willows and among the glimmering poplars shedding blue and gold, he drew nearer the broken pier and the little height of sandy dune from which he could see the blue reek curl upward from the kitchen chimney of the restaurant of the Sambre-et-Meuse.
When he saw it his heart gave a sudden throb, as if he had recognised suddenly the face of a friend unseen and neglected for years.
"This is mine," he muttered, "and what have I been caring for? The popular applause! Mariana told me they would turn upon me and kick me at the last. Then perhaps I would remember that I had a home. They trampled my red sash in the dust. It was they who gave it to me—it was their own authority vested in me. They ought to have remembered!"
There were tears in the eyes of Père Félix. The tribune of the people could not all at once bring himself to accept a final defeat. But as he looked a different feeling gathered warm about his heart. Yonder was Jeanne bringing back a boat-load of firewood gathered from the flood mark. How tall she was, and how beautiful! He had not noticed these things before. How nobly and regularly she stood in the stern and poled the boat with the current—a splash or two and she was safe within the little backwater. Beyond was Mariana, busy with her fowls, scattering feed for them with the shrillchook—chook-chookychooksused on such occasions by the hen-wives of all nations. Père Félix could see the birds running stumblingly with wings outspread to the feast. Mariana turned, glanced across the water, put on her spectacles, and called aloud to Jeanne without any surprise.
"There is your father, Jeanne—go, fetch him home!"
And suddenly, as his daughter leaped lightly out of the boat and kissed him on both cheeks, the colour flushing to her face and her bosom heaving, Père Félix felt himself no more ashamed and outcasted.
"Father," said Jeanne, "I have found such a nest of logs—fine burning wood. You are just in time to cut it into faggots for me. Then I can go and bring away the rest while you are at work."
"Félix, you are just in time for dinner," his wife cried out at sight of him. "There is roast lamb and green peas from Les Cabannes. You old gourmand, I'll wager you knew and came home on purpose!"
No, Père Félix had not known, but he certainly did come on purpose and on purpose he meant to stay.
The first Commune of Aramon had fallen. Its place was taken by a Committee of Public Safety sitting at the Riding School. Of these the chiefs were Georges Barrès, the Catalan, who called himself "of Perpignan"; Chanot, the cadet of a good house, just released from a term of imprisonment (which he described as being for political offences); Auroy, the proprietor of an hotel by no means of the highest class, and Chardon, whose knowledge of the world extended as far as New Caledonia. They were a crew of desperadoes who had been employed chiefly in labourers' work at the factories. They knew no handicraft—at least none sufficiently well to pass the eye of such foremen as worked for Dennis Deventer. And, in addition, they were lazy in working hours, given to obscene conversation and to drinking pure alcohol out of pocket flasks. So it may be well believed that they were not popular with the oversmen at the works, and when they fell under Jack Jaikes' rebuke he was apt to chastise them with whips of scorpions.
At the same time, desperate and careless though they were, and backed by the majority of the unthinking younger men of the National Guard, they had some qualms as to disturbing Keller Bey in his fastness of the Mairie. He had still a number of faithful defenders, and like an old lion of the Atlas he would certainly sell his life dearly.
So Barrès and the Committee of Public Safety laid aside his case for the moment. They had other matters which pressed. Their "rapine and pillage" adherents desired to begin work. On the outskirts were many villas and houses of summer resort which promised loot. Barrès had preached so much, that (though with no great good-will) he was now driven to a little practice. Yet he knew instinctively that in France offences against property are far longer remembered and far more severely dealt with than crimes against persons—shooting and assassination not excluded.
Still, he had to satisfy his followers, and in the bosom of the committee there were already experts—the ex-political prisoner Chanot and the traveller to the coasts of Cayenne were not at their first essay in "personal expropriation."
It was clearly unsafe to cross the river. The town of Aramon le Vieux was a hornets' nest, all Gambetta republicans and royalists. The department, too, had a fine National Guard, mostly Protestants or commanded by Protestants, and the Moblots or Mobiles of the department of Deux Rives were drilling every day. What plundering was to be done must be on this side of the bridge, but there was abundance and to spare for all, if the business were rightly managed.
The first step was to disarm the doubtful companies, and re-enlist only those who were of proper anarchist hue and ready for "expropriation." This was done in the Riding School where the Committee sat all day devising mischief and laying out evil as on a map.
On the night of the 6th of April they were ready. The villas and country houses left vacant by the officers of the troops formerly quartered in Aramon had remained unoccupied, and, as the soldiers went right off to the seat of war from Aramon Junction, the furniture and personal belongings were equally untouched. The wives and children had been dispatched to the care of parents paternal and maternal in Limousin castles and Norman apple-orchards. Only an ancient caretaker or two remained, hiding in some niche of the ground floor and cautiously venturing out to make a hasty and furtive "market" in the grey of the morning.
For the adepts of "individual redistribution" these served to whet an appetite. By midnight Jack Jaikes called me up on the roof of the Château. All along the river front houses were already flaming. Some, as I looked, climaxed their particular display by the crashing down of roofs and the falling in of floor after floor, followed by bursts of flame many hundreds of feet high, which lit up the dim river and the white houses of Aramon le Vieux. I could see the ancient battlements of the Lycée St. André serrated against a velvet-black sky—nay, I could make out that very forehead of promenade from which we had watched, that day in January, the tricolour give place to the Tatter of Scarlet.
The rabble were giving tongue down there like packs of wolves, and at the sound Jack Jaikes stamped and cursed as men swear only in Clydeside ship-building yards.
"Whist now, Jackie," said the voice of Dennis Deventer at my elbow, "what's the use of using all the Lord's fine big words that are meant to embellish Scripture on the like of them? Is it not tempting Providence to be cursing fools who are sprinting hot-foot to damnation by themselves?"
"Wait—oh, wait," growled Jack Jaikes, jerking his joints till they creaked in a way he had when he was excited; "I shall make them sing to a different tune. Listen to them baying. Chief" (he turned suddenly to Dennis) "could I not just lob over half a dozen shrapnel among these cattle? They seem to be having it all their own way. Let me remind them that there's a God left in the universe."
"You've got your business to attend to, young man. Be good enough to leave your Maker's alone. He can manage His own affairs, Jack Jaikes, and has been doing so for quite a while."
Yet I understood the haste of the senior lieutenant and gangforeman. Apart from the uncompromising temperament of the Strathclyde man, it was difficult even for me to stand idle and listen to the shrieks of demoniac mirth as each new villa was attacked. In the silence of the night we could hear the crash of doors beaten in, the splintering of wood and the jangle of glass. Then came the dull rumble of many feet beating irregularly on wooden floors, the rush upstairs, the windows flung open, their green outervoletsclattering against the walls, to let in the clear shining of a moon which had been full only the night before.
"What could not a score of us be doing with plenty of ammunition and our Deventer rifles?" I whispered to Jack Jaikes. He hardly looked at me. He was in the mood for anything except disobedience. He merely heaved a protesting sigh in the direction of his Chief, a sigh which was eloquent of all that he could do if he were not controlled by a higher power.
"Will our turn never come?" I asked him, as he stood and gazed, his eyes red and as if injected in the glowing of the burning buildings.
"I fear not to-night," he said, "the beastswillslink back to their lairs to deposit their loot. To-morrow night we may expect something serious for ourselves. But in any case I can't stand here hopping about like a hen on a hot plate. Let us go and see that the posts are all on the look-out."
I did not go out with him, however, instead I remained with Rhoda Polly, whom I had run downstairs to find. She told me the names of the burning houses and to whom they belonged—the Villa Mireille, built recently by a great Paris grocer—Sans Souci, that of a local sausage-maker, and so forth. All these people had long left the district, and, as I said, the smaller houses had been let to the officers of the former Imperial garrison.
Presently Dennis Deventer came and sat down beside us. Said Rhoda Polly, "Father, I never knew that we harboured such wretches among our men. Surely they do not come from the Works?"
"No," said Dennis, settling himself with his back to the chimney pots, "I rather judge we have to thank your friend Gaston Cremieux for most of these. His experience as Gambetta's Procureur made him intimately acquainted with all bad characters in Marseilles. So when he became dictator, a few executions along the Old Port, and the posting up of a warning proclamation set the whole hive of cosmopolitan ill-doers scattering northwards. I think Aramon got the cream of them, and they are now acting after their kind, sure of an immunity which they could not hope for under the rule of Gaston Cremieux."
"But Keller Bey?" said Rhoda Polly, astonishment in her accent, "why should he allow it? He is a soldier. Alida told me of his campaigns in the Atlas."
"Yes, Rhoda Polly," her father answered, "but though they let Keller Bey alone in the Mairie, he has no more power in Aramon. The party of the Reprise Individuelle, that is to say of plump and plain robbery, is in full possession, and I doubt not but that before long we shall have such a siege of Château Schneider as will make us forget the other altogether. Only remember this, Miss Rhoda Polly Deventer, we about the Yard and Works do not wish your assistance or countenance on any pretext."
"I do not see why," said Rhoda Polly, pouting, "I know I am at least of as much use as Hugh."
"He is a man—my son!"
"Well, if it isthatyou are thinking of," snapped Rhoda Polly, "you can afford better to lose a daughter than a son. You've got three of us, Dennis, don't forget! Take my advice. Risk a daughter, and send Hugh down cellar with the Mater!"
"Not one like you, little spitfire!" Her father spoke more tenderly than I had ever heard him, and before going away he let his hand lie for an instant on the vaporous curls about her brow.
We kept awake most of the night, while the moon sailed overhead and the tall chimney stalks of the factories were made picturesque by the red glow from the entire riverside quarter of Aramon. The shouting and the tumult died down with the incendiary fires. The river, sometime of molten copper, was again grey, unpolished silver under the moon, save where the webbed and delicate shadow of the great suspension bridge slept on the water.
At the dawning of the day mighty sleep passed upon the two of us sitting there, and there Jack Jaikes found us sitting hand in hand, my head on Rhoda Polly's shoulder, shamelessly slumbering under the risen sun.