A Tatter of Scarlet Part 21

I was tempted to deny my G.o.ds and declare that I did not love Rhoda Polly, when the remembrance of a particular smear on her nose one day of mutual paintwork on opposite sides of a fireplace, and a way she had of throwing her head back to toss the blonde curls out of her eyes, stopped me.

"Of course I love Rhoda Polly, and so will you (and more than I love her) when your eyes are opened!"

And with that I left Alida to digest the fact of her own selfishness. At the time I considered myself a kind of hero for having so spoken. Now I am not so sure. She was what Keller and Linn had made her, and I ought to have remembered the snubs and rebuffs which she must have suffered from Sous-Prefecture dames and other exacting though respectable ladies of Autun.

This week held many other matters and the seeds of more. Rhoda Polly came to take Alida out in her mother's Victoria, and spent a long day in the garden instead, sending back the coachman to be ready to take Mrs.

Deventer to the works to drive her husband home to lunch, as was her daily custom.

I do not know what the girls said to one another. I kept out of the way, but when I came into the dining-room with my father a little before noon, I was certain that Alida had been crying and that Rhoda Polly had been dabbing her eyes with hasty inexperienced fingers.

I thought this no ill sign of coming friendship, and indeed it was not an hour before I received a first confidence on the subject from Alida.

"She is all you say and more. She makes me so ashamed of myself!"

"So she does me!" I answered, thinking of my dealings with Jeanne and our walk home from the restaurant of Mere Felix.

Alida held out her hand quickly.

"Does she make you feel that too?--I am glad," she said, and smiled gratefully like a child consoled.

Then came Rhoda Polly's mother, and my father, who had been talking to Rhoda Polly by the sundial, rose and with a word and smile excused himself and went indoors. The interview that followed I should have loved well to watch and hear. But after all I doubt if any great part of the gentle influences which rained from Mrs. Deventer could have been written down. No stenographer could take note of those captivating intonations, the soft subtle pauses of speech, the lingering tender understanding in her motherly eyes, the way she had of laying her hand upon Alida's.

She had been a counsellor to many, and had never forgotten a sore heart even when healed, nor told a tale out of that gracious confessional.

Certain it is that the conquest of Alida was soon made, in so far as Mrs. Deventer could make it. They saw each other every day, and the sight of Rhoda Polly and Alida striking across the big bridge with the wind right in their faces--or of Alida, with Linn, like a gaunt watch-dog, thrusting a combative shoulder into the mistral to fend a way for her charge--became familiar on the windy sidewalks of the great suspension bridge.

All went as we could have wished it, till one day I took the Bey across to go over the works. Dennis Deventer was to afford enough time to conduct us in person. It was no small honour, for visitors were generally either refused altogether, or handed over to Jack Jaikes with instructions that they should see as little as possible.

I was wholly at ease about the meeting of the Bey and Dennis Deventer.

Two such fighters, I thought, could not but be delighted with one another.

I was only partly right. They met with mutual respect. Dennis had been in Algeria at a more recent date than the Bey, and could give news of deaths of chiefs, of successions disputed and consequently b.l.o.o.d.y, and of all the tangled politics of the South Oran.

But once in the hum and turmoil of the works, the power-straps running overhead like lightning flashes, the spinning lathes, the small busy mechanisms installed on tables and set going by tiny levers, the Bey's attention wandered. Instead of attending to the wonderful fittings and the constant jingle of the finished parts, he seemed to search out each man's face, in a manner to compel their attention. Usually when a visitor goes round with the "chief," the men make it a point of honour to turn away their eyes almost disdainfully. But it was different with the personally conducted trip of Keller Bey. At him the men gazed with sudden evident respect, and we were not half-way through the first room before the whisper of our coming ran far ahead of us through the workshops.

I could see nothing about Keller Bey to explain this sudden interest. He did not make masonic signs with his hands. He hardly spoke a word. He never looked at the men who were devouring him with their eyes. All I could see was that he wore the red tie habitual to him, clasped by a little pin made of two crossed standards drooped upon their _hampes_, one red with rubies and the other formed of black diamonds. It was the only jewellery Keller Bey ever wore and naturally, since I had never seen him without it, it seemed a part of him like his collar-stud or his sleeve-links.

Dennis Deventer, who never missed anything in the works, noted the men's behaviour, but continued his exposition of the secret of preventing the jamming of the mitrailleuses.

"I am a little late with my invention," he said, "I shall have to wait for the next war to make my demonstration complete."

"You may not have to wait so long as you think!" said the Bey quietly.

"Had you not a little private war of your own a month ago?"

The time was so ill chosen as to make Keller's reference almost a disaster. There were men within earshot who had driven the troops of the Republic out of Aramon, perhaps even some who had a.s.saulted the house of the Chief Director.

"We had some little trouble like other folks," said Dennis Deventer lightly, "but we have forgotten all about that!"

"Ah!" said the Bey reflectively, as they pa.s.sed on. In the big gun foundry a huge Hercules of a fellow, naked to the waist, thrust his way through the little crowd about us, seized Keller Bey by the hand, murmured something to us unintelligible. The Bey took no notice beyond nodding briefly to the man. Then turning to Deventer he continued unconcernedly, "About that feeding gear, you were saying----?"

But Dennis Deventer looked at Keller Bey curiously.

"Did you know that man?" he asked earnestly.

"No, I never set eyes on him before," said the Bey carelessly as before; "is there anything against him?"

"Not exactly," replied Deventer, "but he is one of the most dangerous men in the works--almost as strong in body as I am myself, and much listened to by the men. I wish I could say he leads them wisely."

Keller Bey shook his head gravely, but except repeating that he knew nothing whatever about the foundryman, he uttered no word of excuse or commendation. However, Dennis Deventer was in no mind to let him off so easily.

"You are having such a success among the men as I never saw the like of, and would not have believed if I had not seen with my own eyes. Have you been to St. Etienne or Creusot? Many of our fellows come from there. It is possible that they may recognise you."

"I have never been in either place in my life," said Keller Bey simply, and so cut off discussion.

But I could see that a doubt remained and brooded upon the spirit of Dennis Deventer. He brought the visit abruptly and rather disappointingly to a close, by saying that there was a man waiting for him in his office. But as men were always waiting to see Dennis Deventer at any hour of the day, his taking himself off must have been an excuse.

I felt vaguely to blame. Indeed, I was wholly at sea, the more so when just outside the great gates of the Small Arms Company's yards Keller was met by half a dozen workmen of a superior sort, who saluted him respectfully and asked for a private interview.

I said I should go and wait for him at the bridge-end, and he kept me waiting for an hour and a half, which I would much rather have spent with Rhoda Polly. Keller Bey was altogether too much of a responsibility in Aramon-les-Ateliers. If he had further visits to pay on this side, he could find his way himself, so far as I was concerned. I would not waste a whole morning only to get myself suspected by Rhoda Polly's father.

I sat down on the parapet and watched the drowsy _douaniers_ at the receipt of custom, or the still drowsier fishermen dropping baited lines into a seven-knot current, which banked itself up and then swirled high between the piers.

And lazying thus in the sunshine, I cast my mind over many things, but particularly I thought of Hugh. Had I indeed lost Hugh Deventer? Why was he no longer my faithful confidant and comrade as of old? Had we gone together to the wars, slept under one blanket, only to bring about this separation? Even to-day I had not seen him. Had he of set purpose hid himself away?

Certainly he was no more the dreamily affectionate companion, a little slow in comprehension but rapid and accurate in execution, upon whose thews and muscles I had been wont to depend. Hugh Deventer was lost to me. More than that, he could hardly any more be said to belong to the family circle at Chateau Schneider. He had furnished a room for himself down at the works, where he read and slept. His meals were cooked by the wife of the chief night-watchman and at home no one was surprised. For the Deventers were, even before coming of age, in fact as soon as they had left school, a law to themselves. And I think that Dennis was secretly pleased at his boy's setting up for himself.

But I knew that Hugh was not driven by any n.o.ble desire for independence. Sitting there in the warm sun which beat upon the bridge parapet, I set aside one possible cause for our estrangement after another.

It was not on account of Jeanne or Rhoda Polly. No jealousy possessed Hugh Deventer because I sat at his father's table far oftener than he did. One reason only could explain all the circ.u.mstances. He had been at Autun and had supposed that Alida's idea of coming to the Garden Cottage had originated with me. Evidently he had resented this, and since our return he had kept himself, in all save the most formal fashion, apart from all the rejoicing over the new tenants.

Obviously he must consider himself in love with Alida, which was, of course, wholly natural and within his right. But why vent his humour upon me? I could not make Alida return his love, and certainly sulking in the holes and corners of a factory would do nothing to soften the heart of that imperious little lady. He had indeed become little more than a memory to Alida.

"I don't think Hugh likes me," she said, more than once. "He never comes to see me--not even to tell me how selfish I am!"

CHAPTER XXIV

PEACE BEFORE STORM

The 18th of March dawned clear and bright, the wind still a little chill, but the whole land, as we looked down upon it from our Gobelet watch-tower on the front of St. Andre's hill, tinted white and pink with blossom, almond, peach, pear, plum, and cherry. It was wonderful to see them running up, as it were scrambling over fence and rock scarp, till they broke in a sunshiny spray of hawthorn blossom against the grey walls of the _lycee_ of St. Andre.

Never was there a quieter day nor one that seemed filled with more happy promise. For the first time Linn and Alida had resumed their old understanding. For there is no doubt that Linn had been somewhat jealous of the absorbing commerce between the house of Deventer and the cottage in the laurel bushes beyond the garden of Gobelet.

Keller had gone to Aramon, Linn said. He might be away all night, for he had it in his mind to push as far as Ma.r.s.eilles. I knew of the Bey's absences from Autun, and so thought no more of the matter. Linn, put in good humour by having Alida to herself (for me she did not count), talked freely of the beauties of their installation. The Ba.s.se Cour and the poultry especially delighted her, and she had already prepared a ruled book which was to show in parallel columns the cost of feeding as compared with the result in chickens and eggs.