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

THE BLACK BAND

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 outer volets clattering 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 beasts will slink 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 is that you 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.

CHAPTER XXXII

"READY!"

The weather changed brusquely during the day of the 7th April. Till now it had been lovely spring weather – indeed, save for the shorter days, comparable to our finest summers in England.

Then about noon came a thunderstorm – a sudden blackening and indigoing of the south horizon – a constant darting of lightning flashes very far off, this way and that – no thunder, only the inky storm advancing over the sea. Wild fire playing about it and a white froth of spring cloud-tufts tossing along its front.

By two the flashes were raging about us, the thunder continuous and deafening, and the hailstones hopping like crickets on the roof of Château Schneider. Then it rained a great rain, every gargoyle spouting, every gap and pipe gurgling full. The wind bent double the tall poplars and lashed the lithe willows till they fished the stream. At half-past two all was past, for the moment at least. The roofs were giving off a fine, visible steam under bright sunshine. The land reeked with rising moisture, and over the water the wet roofs of Aramon le Vieux and St. André winked like heliographs.

So it continued all day, the thunder passing off to this hand and the other – the mountains of Languedoc or among the dainty fringe of the dentelated Alpines behind Daudet's three windmills – which were not yet his. But it never quite left us alone. The Rhône Valley is the laid track and ready-made road for all thunderstorms. Even those from the west turn into it as from a side lane, glad of the space and the easy right of way.

I rose from my proper bed just in time to see the best of the thunderstorm. Rhoda Polly had been up "ages before," as she asserted. She had lunched with the family and confided to me that there had been less row than usual, for the Chief had not been able to take the meal with them.

She had, therefore, been deprived of the pleasure of crying to their father, "Hey, Dennis, hold hard there!" Or, plaintively, "Now, Dennis, you know that is not true!"

So they had solaced themselves by teasing Hannah, who had first threatened assault and battery and then retired in the sulks to her own room, the door of which they had heard locked and double locked. Mrs. Deventer had reproved them for their cruelty to their sister – which was grossly unfair, seeing that she had appeared to enjoy the performance itself, and even contributed a homily on Hannah's love of finery.

Altogether it had been a stupid lunch, and I had done well to keep out of it. Oh, certainly, Rhoda Polly would gladly get me something to eat. Indeed, she did not mind having a pauper's plateful of scraps herself. Lunch proper was such an accidental meal that oftentimes all that reached the mouth was the bare fork!

So on scraps and a glass of ale Rhoda Polly and I lunched together with great amity and content. We spoke of the coming (or at least expected) attack, and Rhoda Polly revealed to me her plans for seeing all she could and yet keeping clear of the eyes of her father. This was undutiful, but certainly not more so than shouting "You, Dennis!" at him down the whole length of an uproarious dinner-table.

Jack Jaikes looked in upon us in a search for the Chief. There was no privacy of any kind in Château Schneider in those days. You simply went from room to room and from floor to floor till you ran your quarry to earth.

Rhoda Polly and I were sitting with the width of the table between us, our two chins on our palms, the eyes of one never leaving those of the other, drowned in our high debate.

Jack Jaikes gazed at us a moment and then, with a grin which might have meant "Gather ye rosebuds while ye may," if Jack Jaikes had read any poetry, he turned on his heel and went out again without speaking.

"I say," said Rhoda Polly, "he never told about catching us asleep up behind the chimney pots with the sun baking our noses brick-red – "

"Holding hands too, and my head – "

"Glory, I'm glad it wasn't Hugh who caught us – then we should never have heard the last of it. What sillies we must have looked. I say, Angus Cawdor, that Jack Jaikes is a very decent sort. Suppose he had brought the others up! Hanged if I could have kept from telling!"

"Oh, it was not to spare me, don't you deceive yourself. It was for your sake, Rhoda Polly. He would aid and abet you in forging the Governor's name to a cheque for a dressmaker's bill."

Rhoda Polly went to find her mother, after promising to lie down awhile and so be fresher for the night. Dennis Deventer had instituted four-hour watches for the same reason, and everyone not on duty was sent to turn in. But the restless Jack Jaikes refused obedience. He had a thousand things to do. Oh, yes, everything was in readiness, of course. Things always were "last gaiter button" and that sort of rubbish, but to look everything over from one end to the other of all the posts was by no means useless, and to this he, Jack Jaikes, meant to devote himself.

At any rate I slept, and I believe so also did Rhoda Polly. At least there was a period which otherwise could not be accounted for in that young lady's diurnal of her time. Supper was a snatch meal, and I don't think anyone thought much about eating, but Rhoda Polly was down in the kitchen seeing that the men's rations were sent out to the posts. At six I reported for duty to Jack Jaikes who had asked for me particularly. He gave me a powerful pair of night-glasses, presented to him for life-saving, as an inscription upon the instrument itself testified.

"You know the streets of Aramon as well as I do," he said, "you have only got to keep your eyes about you, and report all you see. There is a nice little Morse installed on the top of the gateway, and you will be fairly safe behind the parapet – at least as safe as anywhere."

The little tower he spoke of carried a clock and was placed not directly over the main gate, but to the side above the offices of the time-keepers and accountants.