A Tatter of Scarlet Part 29

This gloomy, four-square hulk of a mediaeval 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 same _ruelles_ and squares, now grey with mistral or dreamy in the white suns.h.i.+ne. To-day not a cat would jump for a dozen Dukes of Burgundy, but seven hundred years ago Aramon le Vieux had a fierce _elan_ of 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 the _fosse_ bridge, Georges Barres 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 Rhone.

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 a.s.serted 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 Chateau yonder the silver gleams on the white table-cloth, the red wine mantles in the gla.s.s, the champagne foams, and--my great G.o.d! 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 a.s.sembly 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 n.o.ble 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 a.s.sembly in which the white caps of women were dotted and the ma.s.sed 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 pus.h.i.+ng 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 were _proprietaires_ in 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 Barres and Imbert, had nothing to gain or to lose however fortune's wheel might turn.

Pere Felix pushed his way into the dense ma.s.ses 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 Barres. 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 Pere Felix! 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 Barres, 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 Pere Felix.

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 Barres 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 Barres. "Why will they not hear me?"

Now Barres 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 pa.s.sing, and Pere Felix 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 Pere Felix 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 Pere Felix. 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 n.o.bly 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 shrill _chook_--_chook-chookychooks_ used on such occasions by the hen-wives of all nations. Pere Felix 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 flus.h.i.+ng to her face and her bosom heaving, Pere Felix 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 f.a.ggots for me. Then I can go and bring away the rest while you are at work."

"Felix, 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, Pere Felix had not known, but he certainly did come on purpose and on purpose he meant to stay.

CHAPTER x.x.xI

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 Barres, 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 cla.s.s, 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 pa.s.s 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 Barres 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. Barres 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 a.s.sa.s.sination 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 appet.i.te. By midnight Jack Jaikes called me up on the roof of the Chateau. All along the river front houses were already flaming. Some, as I looked, climaxed their particular display by the cras.h.i.+ng 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 Lycee St. Andre 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 s.h.i.+p-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 d.a.m.nation 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 G.o.d left in the universe."