A Tatter of Scarlet: Adventurous Episodes of the Commune in the Midi 1871

"I am Keller," he said, "Keller grown old and staid. Linn keeps me at home. She had the devil's own job ere she got me buckled down, but she did it, and now there is only Linn and our daughter Alida for me to think about."

And in the silence of the house he lifted his voice and called aloud for "Linn."

Presently we heard footsteps coming swiftly along the passage which led from the inner rooms. A woman entered – tall, gaunt, and angular. Her aspect was severe to the borders of being forbidding, and she frowned upon us as Keller, ex-officer of Abd-el-Kader, made some brief introduction.

But the smile with which she held out her hand was transfiguring. The face which had been almost ugly suddenly became attractive and even fascinating. One saw that her eyes were of forget-me-not blue, and when she said "You are welcome" to one and the other of us, it was clear that Linn Keller possessed gifts of attraction which do not depend upon age or external beauty.

She was taller than her husband, but awkward and angular in her movement. She walked with a curious shuffle as if the slipper on one foot was always on the point of coming off, yet – in a moment we found ourselves at home with her, and in five minutes we were calling her "Linn" just as her husband had done. The assurance of youth can surely no farther go.

The lamp on the mantelpiece was of an Oriental design. Curtains and rugs were abundantly scattered about, and in one corner a looped-up hanging showed an oblong bath sunk in the tiled floor.

"This house is our own," said Linn; "we have arranged some things to suit ourselves, having been so long abroad that it seems impossible to do without them. But at any rate you must stay and see Alida. You must rise early, for she has to go out to give her lessons. Alida is a teacher of music. We have put everything except this house and a provision for our old age into Alida's education."

I explained to the pair that we would indeed be most grateful for the warmth and refuge of the kitchen, but that if that were inconvenient we could return at any hour of the morning, always provided the regiment did not march.

"They are fine lads, eh, Linn?" said Keller, turning to his wife. "Can we not do something better for them than the kitchen floor?"

I assured them that we asked no more than permission to stretch ourselves on a couple of rugs with knapsacks beneath our heads. But Linn's housewifery instinct was roused. She took us to a room on the entresol, with two beds, and even insisted on helping us off with our boots. There we should sleep, and she would keep an eye on the regiment, and have us on parade in good time. As for her she was a barrack's child and understood such things. Besides, Keller and she were back and forward all night like the Arabs among whom they had lived.

Never had the touch of sheets felt more caressing. Never did sleep fall upon us so deep and dreamless as when our heads touched the pillow. It was still dark when we were awakened by a light touch on the shoulder, and sitting up each on an elbow we beheld Linn stalking about the room and putting back our uniforms all carefully brushed and folded. A candle stood on a stand, and farther back a gigantic Linn was grotesquely shadowed upon the walls.

"Breakfast is ready," she said, when we had somewhat got over our first blankness. "You have a good hour before you, and if you dress now you will have time to breakfast, and besides you shall see Alida."

I do not know whether it was the breakfast or the prospect of Alida seen in the flesh which aroused us, but no sooner was the door closed behind Linn's back than we flung ourselves into our uniforms with that ordered rapidity which only a soldier understands.

Everything we touched had been warmed and cared for with that affectionate motherliness which looked out of Linn's eyes. We had never experienced any kindness like this before, and it seemed the more marvellous that by merely putting aside the blinds of our sleeping-room we could see our comrades still lying about the fires, and the cooks for the week beginning with their bayonet butts to crush and grind the berries for the morning coffee.

Yonder were Victor Dor and Marius Girr looking down at our sleeping places, and presently beginning to roll up our blankets. It seemed a shame that we should have passed the night between sheets, thus basely abandoning our comrades among the trampled snow of the market square of Autun.

But there interposed between them and us two necessities: a "made" breakfast which we must eat – eat till we could eat no more, and – we must see Alida Keller, daughter of the Atlas "goums."

I don't know what Hugh expected. But for myself I mingled Linn and the ideal music mistress. Tall, forceful, and striding she must be, with energy to bring into such evident subjection Keller Bey and his wife. Something younger and less weather-beaten than Linn, of course – perhaps with a certain passing glow of good looks which would fade out like the mist bloom upon the peach trees in the frost of April.

But when at last she came in, and stood a moment to give a hand to each of us, before nestling into her familiar corner of a low old Oriental couch – I think both our hearts cried out at the same moment: "Oh, the perfect creature!"

She was not like Linn in the least. Her father still less resembled her. It is almost impossible to describe this girl of the South, nevertheless I can but try, Alida Keller was little, but shaped with such delicate perfection that she gave the impression of a greater height. Her skin was of a creamy duskiness through which went and came colour now as faint as that of a rose leaf, which anon flamed out into a vivid red, the colour of the pomegranate flower.

Her father and Linn served her like a princess, and to this she seemed accustomed, for except that she patted Linn's hand, or with a smile said "Petit Père" to her father, she seemed unconscious of their attentions.

As for Hugh and myself, I declare that we were completely cheated out of that admirable breakfast. We had meant to square our elbows, grasp our knives and forks, and fall on. We had rank appetites, sharpened with fighting and hard fare, but the mere presence of Alida cut at the roots of hunger as a scythe cuts down reeds.

We simply sat and gazed at her. She was not in the least put out, ate well and daintily, and looked at us impartially from under her dark lashes. For the instant – I will not admit more – I forgot Rhoda Polly and Jeanne Félix.

But I am not much to be blamed. For the burden of the conversation fell on me. Hugh Deventer could only sit and gape, lifting the same morsel half a dozen times to his mouth without once getting it safely in. He uttered not a word, save sometimes in answer to a direct question he would produce a "yes" or "no," so jerky and mechanical that I was obliged to kick his shins under the table to keep him aware of himself.

Of this Keller and Linn saw nothing. They were all eyes and ears for Alida, and had not a glance for us. The table was covered – we were soldiers and could help ourselves. Meantime I was kept busy answering the questions of Alida. She spoke in a low and thrilling contralto, a voice that had a ron-ron in it, something like the pulsing whisper of a bell after it has been rung in a church tower.

How had we left school? We must tell her. Tell her I did, describing as vividly as possible the laundry and the secret way out upon the road, then the good-bye call at my father's house, and our escape from the sentinel at the bridge end. It was lovely to see the cheeks of Alida now going pale now flaming scarlet, and I admit that I made the most of my opportunity. I passed rapidly over the troubles in Aramon-les-Ateliers, both because I knew such things could not interest Alida Keller – also (and chiefly) because I gathered that Keller and Linn would be altogether on the side of the workmen, and I did not feel called upon to defend the difficult position of Dennis Deventer as Manager of the Small Arms Factory – at least not just then.

Our later adventures with the transport train, our march by night, our incorporation in the Garibaldi army, and the many skirmishes culminating in the big fight when we had defeated the Prussians, were all easy to tell – and I had scarcely finished when Linn came in with the news that the regiments were forming up for roll-call.

We had hardly time to promise to come back before we were equipped and pushed out by Linn with well-plenished haversacks. We scurried across the square and appeared in our places out of nowhere in particular, to the great astonishment of Victor and Marius, who hastily arranged our blankets across our shoulders so that we might pass inspection.

"You English fear nothing, I know," said Victor Dor, "but you almost ran things a trifle fine this morning. See yonder!"

He pointed with a finger towards a narrow street which debouched into the upper end of the Market Square. At first we could see nothing – and then – lo, the ramshackle barouche, and the two fatigued white horses of the General himself!

"Garibaldi! Garibaldi!"

The "Children" of the Milanese regiment could hardly keep their lines. We front-rank men felt an impulse as if someone were pushing us from behind. It was the concentred yearning of a thousand men.

Our officers kept whispering to us, "Stand firm. Not just now. He will return. See how the Tanara regiment is standing – would you have them put us to shame before our father?" So the Milanese men stood quivering each like a tuning-fork while their General passed by. Bordone was with him, and Ricciotti rode on the side farthest from the lines. I saw him clearly, and noted the waxen pallor of his face. But his eye was still bright, and the smile kindly on his lips as he passed down the lines. It was the face of a philosopher, a thinker, or a prophet, rather than that of the greatest leader of irregular troops the world had ever seen. But when the carriage turned at the end of the square, the men could no longer be held. They surrounded the old barouche, hanging round it in clusters, like grapes, or more exactly like bees about their queen in her summer flight. Hugh Deventer and I stood a little back, for we felt that this was, as one might say, a family matter, and no concern of ours. But Ricciotti spied us out, and putting his horse into the press, brought us forward to introduce us personally to his father.

The old man extended his hand which, instead of kissing, we shook in the English fashion. The difference pleased him.

"It is like Sicily to see you here. I had once over eight hundred of you, and not a white feather or a faint heart among them all. I trusted them as I trusted my children. They were as my children. Well may I love England. They fought for me seeking no reward, and afterwards when there was talk of expelling me, they bought my island and gave it to me, so that none could take it away for ever."

He moved on, nodding his head and smiling, while Bordone glooming on the seat opposite seemed vastly relieved. Ricciotti was in high spirits.

"The Chief is better to-day than I have seen him for years," he confided to us. "He said we had done well against Manteuffel – yes, even I, his son whom he never praises."

Victor Dor and Marius Girr came and shook hands with us repeatedly. It was an honour to the company that the General had so distinguished us, and would we tell them what he had said – yes, every word.

From their archway Keller and Linn had beheld, one standing on either side of the door, and a slight vibration of the window curtains suggested that perhaps Alida herself was not wholly without curiosity.

Then the troops were dismissed. The town was placarded with the white oblongs reserved for Government proclamations. The Armistice (they said) had been concluded with the Emperor of Germany, but in the meantime its army of the Vosges was to remain under arms for the reason that poor Bourbaki's army of the East was excepted from the cessation of hostilities. At first no one could imagine why, because it was now little more than a broken troop, hardly able to fight a rearguard action, and ready to be driven through the perishing cold of the mountain passes to surrender to a Swiss colonel beyond the frontier. Later the truth appeared. By their own politicians the army of the East had been wholly overlooked and forgotten! And Bismarck, irritated by the stubborn resistance of Denfert at Belfort, was willing to take advantage of this fact to overrun two additional French departments.

Thus it came to pass that we remained full three weeks more kicking our heels in Autun. We were allowed to make our own arrangements for billets de logement, which carried us naturally to the house in the square inhabited by Keller Bey, his wife Linn, and – Alida.

The officers all knew that the war was over and chafed at the delay. So I think did most of the soldiers excepting ourselves. Hugh and I alone were content, of all the army of the Vosges encamped in and about Autun.

CHAPTER XVII

A DESERT PRINCESS

We occupied the two big gable rooms looking east on the second floor of the Kellers' house in the market square of Autun. This suited us admirably, though we were obliged to keep quiet so as not to disturb Alida, who had the corresponding suite on the first floor below. We found that the room in the entresol where we had slept the first night was the proper bedroom of Keller and Linn his wife.

But as a matter of habit, neither of them appeared to care very much for a regular night's rest. You would catch them, indeed, closing their eyes after dinner over a newspaper, or when Alida was practising on her noble grand piano, the chief pride and luxury of the Keller house.

But Hugh and I, who slept with our door of communication open in order to talk to one another in case of sleeplessness, could hear Keller and Linn moving about at all hours of the night down in the silence of the ground floor – sometimes advertising their presence by a little silvery rattle of glass set on a tray, the dull fall of a log on the chimney and irons, or the curious slip-shuffle of Linn's walk. Sometimes, too, we heard voices, but that not often. Once about the end of the first week, when I could not sleep, I slipped down for a stroll about the town. It was half-past two of a black February morning, and the snow swirls were waltzing like spinning tops all about the market square. But there in the archway, his back to the carven lintel, stood Keller Bey, calmly smoking his pipe and looking out on the black turmoil as though it had been the cool of an August evening. Linn heard us talking, and came quickly to see who was there. Even at that hour she was in her ordinary dress, and she dried her hands composedly on a long sheath apron of blue toile nationale.

"Why are you not asleep?" she demanded sharply. "Keller, you are teaching this young man bad habits."

His wife's accusation only made Keller wag his head wisely. Instantly I took all blame upon myself. I had not been able to sleep, I said, I was ashamed to disturb Deventer by my restlessness.

"You drank too much of that black coffee last night, Monsieur Auguste" (thus had Angus gone wrong). "I must ration you in future, so that you can get your natural sleep as young folks should."

I hastened out into the night with Keller's huge "pellerine" cast about my shoulders, and the hood reaching my ears. It was a comfortable garment of some unknown African cloth, rough as frieze and warm as wool. The sudden dashes of snow swooping upon me were turned victoriously aside by its formidable brown folds, and I felt as I wandered in the black of the streets with the buildings towering dim and shadowy above me, like one who in a storm has by some magic carried his house along with him.