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

by S. R. Crockett

  CHAPTER XXXII

  "READY!"

  The weather changed brusquely during the day of the 7th April. Till nowit 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 indigoingof the south horizon--a constant darting of lightning flashes very faroff, this way and that--no thunder, only the inky storm advancing overthe sea. Wild fire playing about it and a white froth of springcloud-tufts tossing along its front.

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

  So it continued all day, the thunder passing off to this hand and theother--the mountains of Languedoc or among the dainty fringe of thedentelated Alpines behind Daudet's three windmills--which were not yethis. But it never quite left us alone. The Rhone Valley is the laidtrack and ready-made road for all thunderstorms. Even those from thewest turn into it as from a side lane, glad of the space and the easyright of way.

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

  She had, therefore, been deprived of the pleasure of crying to theirfather, "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 firstthreatened assault and battery and then retired in the sulks to her ownroom, the door of which they had heard locked and double locked. Mrs.Deventer had reproved them for their cruelty to their sister--which wasgrossly unfair, seeing that she had appeared to enjoy the performanceitself, 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 outof 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 thatreached the mouth was the bare fork!

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

  Jack Jaikes looked in upon us in a search for the Chief. There was noprivacy of any kind in Chateau Schneider in those days. You simply wentfrom room to room and from floor to floor till you ran your quarry toearth.

  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 theother, drowned in our high debate.

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

  "I say," said Rhoda Polly, "he never told about catching us asleep upbehind 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 haveheard the last of it. What sillies we must have looked. I say, AngusCawdor, that Jack Jaikes is a very decent sort. Suppose he had broughtthe 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 yoursake, Rhoda Polly. He would aid and abet you in forging the Governor'sname to a cheque for a dressmaker's bill."

  Rhoda Polly went to find her mother, after promising to lie down awhileand so be fresher for the night. Dennis Deventer had institutedfour-hour watches for the same reason, and everyone not on duty was sentto turn in. But the restless Jack Jaikes refused obedience. He had athousand things to do. Oh, yes, everything was in readiness, of course.Things always were "last gaiter button" and that sort of rubbish, but tolook everything over from one end to the other of all the posts was byno 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 leastthere was a period which otherwise could not be accounted for in thatyoung lady's diurnal of her time. Supper was a snatch meal, and I don'tthink anyone thought much about eating, but Rhoda Polly was down in thekitchen seeing that the men's rations were sent out to the posts. At sixI reported for duty to Jack Jaikes who had asked for me particularly. Hegave me a powerful pair of night-glasses, presented to him forlife-saving, as an inscription upon the instrument itself testified.

  "You know the streets of Aramon as well as I do," he said, "you haveonly got to keep your eyes about you, and report all you see. There is anice little Morse installed on the top of the gateway, and you will befairly safe behind the parapet--at least as safe as anywhere."

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

  "I suppose," he added, "Rhoda Polly is coming. If so, don't let herfire, and, of course, don't fire yourself. You are the watch, so keepall dark above. Not a light, not a cigarette. And when Rhoda Pollycomes, make her stay behind those sand-bags in the corner. I hiked a fewup on purpose for her."

  "I know nothing about it," I asserted, "I never thought of it for aninstant. If Rhoda Polly comes it will not be because I asked her."

  He looked at me with a slight contemptuous grin.

  "Do not worry yourself," he said; "if Rhoda Polly wants to come she willcome, and neither you will entice her, nor her father forbid her."

  And he went his way.

  * * * * *

  I watched the wide Cours of Aramon, white under the moon, with its planetrees casting inky shadows on the flat stones and trampled earth. Asilence had fallen upon the streets that opened on it, and no lightsshowed from the houses. The anarchists knew the value of darkness aswell as we. But for a while the moon continued to block them. The skyfilled and as regularly emptied of great white clouds, charioting upfrom the Mediterranean like angelic harvest-wains.

  I did not see anything worth reporting from the top of the clock-tower,nor hear anything except a distant hammering. An intense quiet reignedover the town of Aramon-les-Ateliers. I saw no new conflagrations. Theold were extinct, and no yelling mobs poured out towards the well-to-dosuburbs. The Extremists of the Commune had withdrawn their sentries andoutposts--at least from within sight of the defences of the works.

  Jack Jaikes argued that this alone showed that they were plottingmischief.

  "These gutter scrapings of a hundred ports and a thousand prisons" waswhat he called "the new lot" who had supplanted Keller Bey.

  I think he secretly rejoiced. For, so long as it was a matter offighting the elected Commune with Keller Bey at its head, he knew thatthe Chief had been lukewarm about extreme measures. He had evennegotiated in the early time, which Jack Jaikes called "a burning shame.The best way to negotiate wi' a rattlesnake is to break his back wi' astick!" He recognised, however, it was no use holding back when theChief said "March!"

  "But noo, lad," he confided to me, "they are coming for what they willget. They are going to harry and burn and kill. There are four womenyonder, and Dennis kens as well as me that if they win in on us, it willbe death and hell following after. So he will let us turn on thefire-hose from the firs
t, and let off no volleys in the air. That suitsJack Jaikes. This is no Sunday-school treat wi' tugs-o'-war and shyingat Aunt Sally for coco-nits! Aye, a-richt, you below--haud a wee, I'mcomin'!"

  He had hardly remained five minutes with me, but he had put some ironinto my blood. We were no longer fighting against theorists like KellerBey, or broad-beamed, first-class mechanicians like the Pere Felix.

  And then the women--they would not bear thinking about, and indeed I hadnot time, for prompt, as if answering to a call, Rhoda Polly plumpeddown beside me in the sand-bag niche.

  "I met Jack Jaikes," she explained. "He said he knew I was coming andhad made all snug for me. How did he know? You did not?"

  "He must have guessed, Rhoda Polly--perhaps it was something you said."

  "Nonsense, he is altogether too previous, that Jack Jaikes, but all thesame these sand-bags are comfy, and I can see as from an upper box."

  "There is not much to see." I was saying the very words when with acrash a wall on the opposite side of the Cours seemed to crumble in uponitself. There was a jet of flame, a rain of stones, which reachedhalf-way to the defences of the works, and then a gap, dark and vague inthe veiled moonlight.

  "That was dynamite," said Rhoda Polly, "though the report was not loud.There is, quarrymen say, a silent zone in which the explosion is notheard. We must be just on the verge of that. I wonder if there is moreto come."

  We waited--I straining my eyes into the darkness and seeing nothing. Themoon did not reach down into the gulf which the explosion had created.But I was vaguely conscious of shapes that moved and of a curiouscrushing noise like that of the steam-roller upon the fresh macadam of aroadway in the making.

  But though Jack Jaikes came up to see for himself, none of us could makeout anything--till Rhoda Polly, whose eyes were like those of a cat,made a telescope of her hands and after a long look whispered eagerly,"I see something they have got in there. It is like a bear on end--youknow--when it is dancing."

  "Try again, Rhoda Polly. Try the night-glass!"

  "I can do better without it, Jack Jaikes--yes, I see better now--it islike a big boiler for washing clothes or boiling pig's-meat with themouth tilted towards us. It looks as if it were mounted on a kind ofcradle!"

  The words were hardly out of her mouth when Jack Jaikes exclaimed, in avoice which might have been heard half across the wide oblong of theCours, "A mortar--I never thought of that--they have got a mortar. Theywere clearing a way for using it--at short range too. They can plug usanywhere now."

  He sprang towards the Morse telegraph, but he did not reach it. Aconcussion and a roar shook the tower to its base. I saw the flame shootout a yard wide from the gap in the defence wall. Our main gate and partof the rampart to the right had been badly smashed, quite enough for adetermined storming party to penetrate if the new gun made any moresuccesses.

  "They are firing solid shell at us," said Jack Jaikes, franticallymanipulating the keys of the telegraph instrument.

  "Now I must get a gun to play upon them. It will need something big, forthough we can scourge their gun emplacement with mitraille fire, themerit of their plan is that the gunners lie hid in a ditch. Only oneman, or two at most, are needed to slip round and drop in the charge andshell."

  "I see them," said Rhoda Polly, pointing where we saw only blankdarkness. "Give me a rifle, Jack Jaikes. I believe I can pick that manoff!"

  "You shall have number 27, Rhoda Polly, the best ever made. Oh, if onlyI had eyes like you!"

  Jack Jaikes groaned aloud, and Rhoda Polly settled herself behind thesand-bags. But she glanced up almost instantly.

  "He is gone!" she said.

  "Then look out!" cried Jack Jaikes.

  We both saw the broad stream of fire this time, and the wall on theother side of the gate came rattling down, while a big ball wentskipping across the yard of the works, kicking the dust into clouds andbringing up with a dull smack against the wall of the foundry justopposite.

  "No harm done this journey, just topped us and brought down a fewstones. But this can't last. They will get the range and make hay ofus."

  He was already making off on his quest.

  "Better get down out of that, Rhoda Polly," he called back, as his feetclattered among the fallen bricks and masonry. "Go to the cellar, RhodaPolly!"

  "Go to the cellar yourself, Jack Jaikes--I'm going to watch for the manwho does the loading of that gun!"

  And Jack Jaikes laughed, well pleased. I felt vaguely humiliated, for Iwas a far better shot than Rhoda Polly, only I could not see.Furthermore I wished her well out of the clock-tower, for the flash of arifle from the top of it would almost certainly cause us to bebombarded, and with the lobbing action of the mortar shot the projectilemight very well land right on top of us, in which case the sand-bagswould prove no protection. All I could do, however, was to stick to theMorse machine and send down the reports that Rhoda Polly threw at meover her shoulder.

  As soon as Jack Jaikes had made a tour of the posts, a hail of riflefire broke from the wall of our defences, directed upon the gap in thewall and the _debris_ which sheltered the mortar.

  "It's no use! Tell them to stop," called out Rhoda Polly; "they are onlymaking the plaster fall." I transmitted the message, and the firing fromour side slackened and ceased.

  The smoke of the volleys drifted slowly along the wall, blinding andprovoking the watcher. She waved it petulantly away with her hands.

  "They will make me miss my chance," she mourned. "The gunners can dowhat they like behind that. I wish Jack Jaikes had had more sense. Whatis the use of shooting at sparrows' nests under the eaves when the menare down in a ditch?"

  She was quite right, the next shell was a live one, and passed quitenear us with a whistling sound. It exploded just under the big irondoor, which was blown from its fastenings and fell backward into theyard with a heavy, jangling crash which went to all our hearts like awarning.

  The square of the doorway, seen over the edge of the clock-tower, wasnow quite open. The mortar of the anarchists had done good work, and ourcarefully-thought-out positions were endangered. I could see DennisDeventer walking about from post to post, where there was danger of anattack. The wall was not high, especially on the side of the Chateau,and it would not do to leave these posts denuded of men.

  At the moment while I was looking at him, Jack Jaikes with a fullgunners' team came galloping across the yard with a four-inch Deventerquick-firing field-gun lurching after them. If once they could get thatup to the doorway they might be able to make some efficient reply to theenemy's mortar. But a gun of that size needs some sort of emplacement,and an approach to the doorway must be contrived.

  Dennis was on the spot and I could hear him giving his orders in sharp,lapidary phrases. In the interest below me I had not been watching RhodaPolly, and so the sharp report of her No. 27 startled me. Of course Icould discern nothing in the huge black gash torn by the explosion. ButRhoda Polly was triumphant.

  "I got him," she whispered; "I saw him coming out and before he couldget the shell into the muzzle, I fired. He dropped the shell and fell ontop of it. What a pity it did not go off!"

  Such a bloodthirsty Rhoda Polly! But the truth was that, when it came tofighting and what she called "taking a hand," Rhoda Polly feltabsolutely at one with the defence. She only strove to outdo those whowere her comrades, and the matter of sex, never prominent in RhodaPolly's mind, was altogether in abeyance.

  I tapped the keys of the Morse viciously. It was all I was good for.

  "Rhoda Polly has shot the gunner--now is your time!"

  But still the embankment for the four-inch did not quite please Dennis.He preferred to take his chance and wait. It seemed a long, wearifultime. Rhoda Polly peered into the blackness along the tube of No. 27.Rhoda Polly wriggled and settled herself.

  "Bang!" said No. 27. "Winged him! But he made off!" said the marksmandisgustedly. "He was quarrying under the other fellow for the shell, sothey can't have many or he would have brought out a fresh
one. I do wishfather would hurry up. In a minute or two there will be such a beautifulchance--just before they are going to fire. They will send three or fourmen this next time so that I can't shoot them all. If our folk are notspeedy, down will come this old clock-tower!"

  Rhoda Polly was a good prophet, and when next she spoke she had toreport that there was a little cloud of men on either side, hidingbehind the wall and preparing to load the piece, when their comradeswere ready, at any hazard.

  The four-inch was now poking a lean snout out of the door which had beensmashed open by the mortar, and stretched along, laying her on thecentre of the darkness, was Jack Jaikes, cursing the Providence whichhad not given him eyes like Rhoda Polly's.

  "Now," said my mentor hastily, "tell them now is the time. They can'tmiss if they fire into the brown! Right in the centre of the gap in theline of that white chimney."

  The discharge of the big gun beneath us quite made us gasp. It shookRhoda Polly's aim, and this time No. 27 went off pretty much at random.But what we saw within the gap opposite made up for everything. Theshell burst under the mortar or perhaps within it--I could notdistinguish which. At any rate, something black and huge rose in theair, poised as if for flight, and then, turning over, fell with aclangorous reverberation into the house behind, smashing down the whitechimney and causing the blue-coated National Guards with which it wasfilled to swarm out. Some took to their heels and were no more heard ofin the history of the revolt of Aramon. Others pulled off their coatsand fought it through in their shirts.

  Dennis Deventer waved his hat, and all except Jack Jaikes yelled. He wasbusy getting the gun ready for a second discharge. But Dennis stoppedhim.

  "Jackie, my lad," he said, "no more from this good lady the day--get upthe mitrailleuses. They had only that one big fellow and you havetumbled him in scrap through the house behind. I don't know how yousighted as you did."

  "I did not," said Jack Jaikes grumpily--"only where Rhoda Polly toldme."

  "Well, never mind--that job's done," said the Chief soothingly; "hurrywith the machine guns. They will take ten minutes to get over thatlittle surprise and wash it down with absinthe. Then we shall have tolook out. They will come, and if we have not their welcome ready, theywill come to stay."

  At this point I begged for permission to come down and join Jack Jaikes'gang.

  I was no use up there, I said, Rhoda Polly could see all round me. Shemust call down the news, as there was no time to teach her the Morse.

  "Well, come along then," said Dennis, and I did not stop even to saygood-bye to Rhoda Polly. At last I was going to have a chance.

  When I got to my gang Dennis Deventer was speaking.

  "I will give you what help I can by sending men from the north wall andthat next the river. I don't expect any assault there. But I cannotweaken the defence along the side of the Chateau orchard. That is wherewe are weakest, and where I must go myself. For they are sharp enough toknow it. I leave you in charge here, Jack Jaikes. Keep the men steadyand don't allow swearing in the ranks!"