A Tatter of Scarlet Part 25

"Your servant, sir!"

Already at a mere waft of my entrance he had sprung to his feet and laid down his book.

"You take me a little by surprise--ah--from Keller Bey? Are you a Communard, young man?"

I rea.s.sured him. Keller Bey's family lived with my father across the water in Languedoc. I had been captured and had given my parole, but I was no partisan. I acted as occasional secretary to Keller Bey, that was all.

He shook his head sorrowfully, for I think the verdancy of my youth appealed to him.

"Do not run with the wolves too long or the wolf-hunters may not stop to ask the difference. There is a fable about that--which I have read somewhere--in Perrault or La Fontaine. Take back your parole and get out of Aramon. All this foolishness will go like that----" (he snapped his finger and thumb in the air), "and I only hope that I shall have time to read Hugo once through before I have again to think of a train every five minutes pouring north and south, east and west, through Aramon Junction!"

I put the question of the report as delicately as possible. I have rarely seen a Frenchman laugh more boisterously.

"But I have made no report. Why should I? I have received none and written none. The wires are cut in all directions. I have not a telegraphist on the place. There are my files if you want to look.

Everything is going by the branch lines on the other side, but even of that I know only what I can see from my bedroom window, the white steam of trains trailing off among the green woods, and sometimes the dull rumble of a heavily laden goods convoy crossing a bridge. Of positive knowledge concerning railway affairs I have none. I sit and read Hugo and wait for the end of things. The old life will come back soon enough.

Meanwhile I am earning my salary, and when traffic opens a pretty sum will be owing to me on the books of the company.

"See here," he said, chuckling, "this is my only report. I will write it before your eyes."

He pointed to a folio which lay open with the day and date, but all else blank. He took a pen and wrote:

"As yesterday--no change. Guards--Caspar and Nolli. Both quiet.

Messenger from Communal Government to ask about a report I am supposed to be making. Exhibit this."

"There you are--you can copy that if you like. I give you my word of honour that is all the report I ever write, and that is just enough to prove me on the spot, able for duty, and to claim my pay!"

I told Monsieur Weyse that I would not trouble him further. I should explain the foolish rumour to Keller Bey, and in all things he might count upon me. At the same time _if_ there happened to be any volume of Hugo he was not using----! Well, he might imagine my grat.i.tude.

He sprang to his feet with a kind of smothered whoop and began to delve among the pile which occupied the chair and slopped over upon the floor.

"Here--here," he explained, "take the first two volumes of "Les Miserables." It is the best of all. I shall read faster than you, for I have nothing else to do, and I keep it up far into the night. Why, my friend, if you come to-morrow, I shall have the third volume ready for you. No, no, don't thank me, but go instead and get your head clear of this noose. This Communist Aramon is going to be no safe place to play unpaid secretary in after a week or two. Those white wreaths of smoke against the Cevennes tell me that. The Company and the Government are working together over there, and when they are ready--it will be good not to be here and in your shoes!"

"But, Monsieur Weyse, you will be here!"

"Ah, that is different! I am a lonely man, and a servant in the way of his duty. Nothing can come amiss to me. Even if either side fortifies the junction buildings--why, I am the station-master acting for the Company. I sit and write my report once a day, and for the rest I read Hugo. Nothing is more simple. But as for you, take an old man's word.

You are better anywhere than where you are!"

CHAPTER XXVII

UNDER WHICH KING, BEZONIAN?

The station-master was right. I saw how things were tending and how the revolt was sure to end. Yet I was by nature so curious of the oddities of the business that I put off speaking to Keller Bey. For one thing, I did not want to find myself shut up in the Duke's Castle along with the other martyrs of the new rule. I preferred the open air and risk.

Besides, I could each day a.s.sure myself of the well-being of Dennis Deventer and his family.

I discovered where Jack Jaikes was usually to be found on guard, and, early in the dusk of the morning, I slipped from my room in order to speak half an hour with him in private. He first abused me like a pickpocket for taking sides with such a dirty pack, and it was with the utmost difficulty that he could be persuaded that there was after all a difference between a Communard and a prisoner on parole. He did not trouble to conceal his opinion of the latter.

"Jump over the wall," he whispered, "see, catch hold of my belt. I tell ye, man, in business we cannot afford to be so fine. I learned that in Glasgow long syne, when a brither-in-law o' mine took my job from me.

Now, he was my brither, though not by blood, and in a manner o' speaking I had promised to love, honour, and obey. But instead I just bashed him till he was laid up in bed for six weeks--so I got my job back! Now tell me, where would I have been if I had minded about honour and 'paroles'

and them things?"

It was in vain that I pointed out to Jack Jaikes that, after all, it was not he but his sister who had promised to love, honour, and obey the maltreated job-jumper.

"It doesna maitter. It's all the wan thing!" was all that I could get out of Jack Jaikes. "Now then, catch a haud and I'll hae ye beside me in the crack o' a cow's tail!"

Now, though I had fought duels on the sly at St. Andre on the most approved principles of French honour, I had done so chiefly because I possessed an excellent method and a supple wrist trained by years of the "Salle." Really I cared nothing about any artificial code of honour. But it was quite a different thing to have pa.s.sed my word to Keller Bey, and entirely unthinkable to leave him in the lurch by making my escape without telling him.

I began about this time to imagine a vain thing. It seemed that in some way I could save both Keller Bey and the Deventers. I would be on both sides of the fence at once, and play a universal providence. I did not then see that I should end by being outlawed by both sides--as, save for a curious interposition, I should have been.

Jack Jaikes had, however, sufficiently impressed me that I went to Keller Bey and told him that he must trust me completely without any parole. He must give me back my word about escaping. I might (I explained) disappear for a time without leaving him altogether. In reality I did not mean to do anything of the kind, and if it came to any trouble about saving the Deventers, he would find me again at his side.

All this I believed perfectly feasible at the time. Indeed, I spoke with such earnestness and spontaneity that he finished by shutting his eyes, even as I was doing, to the difficulties or, rather, impossibilities of the position.

Somehow he clung to my presence among these men to whom he was already no more than a symbol of authority. They did not know the man Keller Bey. I did. And he seemed to wish to keep me near him as a link with a past with which he had broken. In his heart I am sure he regretted the garden and his talks with my father and Professor Renard, while as to Linn and Alida, they did not simply bear thinking about.

Yet he was possessed by that driving fate, ambition, call of duty, what you will---which sends men forth from comfortable homes to battle for life about the frozen pole, to die miserably, to leave their bones there--though all the while in bright homes the loving hearts of women and the laughter of children are waiting for them.

Keller Bey was fate-driven. This Aramon rising had fallen accidentally in his way. The idealist in the man tempted him to believe that he could make a Socialist Land of Promise out of those factories and a.r.s.enals, which had grown up in such a beauty spot of nature, where (it was Keller Bey's word) "merely to be alive between sea, sky, and earth was a daily revelation of religion."

He thought nothing of the small questions of pay and personal interest which really made up the gist of the matter to the workmen. Perhaps also, though quite unwillingly, he had been led astray by Dennis Deventer. Dennis was an idealist also, and he saw the workmen's side of the question of private ownership. He would express these opinions with such dialectic sympathy that it almost seemed to the listener that he would be found one day persuading the owners of the factories to make over their possessions to the workers.

His wife often reproached him with this treachery of words.

"I know, I know, colleen," he would answer contritely, "'tis Irish Dennis hot in my brain that will get talking--then when I _do_ things Deventer the Scot sets the count right."

"But, then, how about the people with whom you have talked, and who may be depending on your words?"

"'Tis more the pity of them," he would say quizzically, "but, anyway, I am no worse than these young chicks that you have brought up."

"That is nonsense, Dennis--you are the master and yet you talk like a 'red' as often as not--very likely when you have just sent Jack Jaikes to fix a new gun where it will command a street or a gate by which you may be attacked."

Then Dennis would hold up his hand in token of surrender. It was all gospel truth, due perhaps as much as anything to the family habit of free discussion, when Dennis would take up a losing cause and champion it to the bitter end.

There is, however, room to commiserate Keller Bey, from whom these things were hidden. He reported to the Commune of Aramon at its daily seances, of the favourable dispositions of the representative of the Company. Nay, during the s.p.a.ce of a week, it was quite on the cards that the men should return to work on the basis of some half-understood (and wholly misunderstood) word of Dennis's, which Keller Bey and his Social Commission had taken to mean the admission of the men's right to a share in the half-yearly profits.

Fortunately or unfortunately, another phrase at a succeeding interview had revealed that Dennis Deventer had no intention of committing his owners to anything. Nor had he the power. He had merely been willing to cast his own salary and commissions into the common fund gained by all the workers, and leave the total to be divided by the committee according to their idea of equity.

But then, though this was exceedingly generous, Dennis was also a partner and a rich man. The men, except Keller Bey, were indignant at what they counted a cheat--a false offer. Very unjustly, for to Dennis Deventer the rights of labour extended to what a man earned. Those of property, equally important to him, included the defence of his wife's money invested in the Small Arms Company, and also what he had been able to put aside during the years of his strenuous life.

This is how the great misunderstanding arose, and I do not see that any of the parties to it were free from blame--certainly not Dennis.

But I hasten to tell how the events fell out and what was my part in the adventure.

The same day that I had required my parole back from Keller Bey I marched boldly and in the face of all to the gate of Chateau Schneider, which was shut and boarded up, strengthened besides by criss-cross work of iron bars, so that the half which was opened creaked and groaned on its hinges when it turned. So careful was the watch that when at last after parley and explanation Jack Jaikes let me in, it was only to find myself commanded by three separate batteries of machine guns from behind which peered the perplexed faces of McAllister's gang. They were simple men and they could not understand this running with the hare and hunting with the hounds. I do not blame them. No one who did not know Keller Bey and the need of standing by him could possibly have understood. Jack Jaikes explained as well as he could, but not being convinced himself of the goodness of my cause, I fear his words only darkened counsel.

It was generally understood by those on guard at Chateau Schneider that "I would bear watching," and indeed it was not long before the sentinels of the National Guard on the other side of the wall came to exactly the same conclusion, so to please all parties I was blindfolded.