The Maids of Paradise Part 57

There it rose against the seaward cliffs, the little tower of Trecourt farm, sea-smitten and crusted, wind-worn, stained, gray as the lichened rocks scattered across the moorland. Over it the white gulls pitched and tossed in a windy sky; beyond crawled the ancient and wrinkled sea.

"It is a strange thing," I said aloud, "to find love at the world's edge." I looked blindly across the gray waste. "But I have found it too late."

The wind blew furiously; I heard the gulls squealing in the sky, the far thunder of the surf.

Then, looking seaward again, for the first time I noticed that the black cruiser was gone, that nothing now lay between the cliffs and the hazy headland of Groix save a sheet of lonely water spreading league on league to meet a flat, gray sky.

Why had the cruiser sailed? As I stood there, brooding, to my numbed ears the moor-winds bore a sound coming from a great distance--the sound of cannon--little, soft reports, all but inaudible in the wind and the humming undertone of the breakers. Yet I knew the sound, and turned my unquiet eyes to the sea, where nothing moved save the far crests of waves.

For a while I stood listening, searching the sea, until a voice hailed me, and I turned to find Kelly Eyre almost at my elbow.

"There is a man in the village haranguing the people," he said, abruptly. "We thought you ought to know."

"A man haranguing the people," I repeated. "What of it?"

"Speed thinks the man is Buckhurst."

"What!" I cried.

"There's something else, too," he said, soberly, and drew a telegram from his pocket.

I seized it, and studied the fluttering sheet:

"The governor of Lorient, on complaint of the mayor of Paradise, forbids the American exhibition, and orders the individual Byram to travel immediately to Lorient with his so-called circus, where a British steamship will transport the personnel, baggage, and animals to British territory. The mayor of Paradise will see that this order of expulsion is promptly executed.

"(Signed) Breteuil.

"Chief of Police."

"Where did you get that telegram?" I asked.

"It's a copy; the mayor came with it. Byram does not know about it."

"Don't let him know it!" I said, quickly; "this thing will kill him, I believe. Where is that fool of a mayor? Come on, Kelly! Stay close beside me." And I set off at a swinging pace, down the hollow, out across the left bank of the little river, straight to the bridge, which we reached almost on a run.

"Look there!" cried my companion, as we came in sight of the square.

The square was packed with Breton peasants; near the fountain two cider barrels had been placed, a plank thrown across them, and on this plank stood a man holding a red flag.

The man was John Buckhurst.

When I came nearer I could see that he wore a red scarf across his breast; a little nearer and I could hear his pa.s.sionless voice sounding; nearer still, I could distinguish every clear-cut word:

"Men of the sea, men of that ancient Armorica which, for a thousand years, has suffered serfdom, I come to you bearing no sword. You need none; you are free under this red flag I raise above you."

He lifted the banner, shaking out the red folds.

"Yet if I come to you bearing no sword, I come with something better, something more powerful, something so resistless that, using it as your battle-cry, the world is yours!

"I come bearing the watchword of world-brotherhood--Peace, Love, Equality! I bear it from your battle-driven brothers, scourged to the battlements of Paris by the demons of a wicked government! I bear it from the devastated towns of the provinces, from your homeless brothers of Alsace and Lorraine.

"Peace, Love, Equality! All this is yours for the asking. The commune will be proclaimed throughout France; Paris is aroused, Lyons is ready, Bordeaux watches, Ma.r.s.eilles waits!

"You call your village Paradise--yet you starve here. Let this little Breton village be a paradise in truth--a shrine for future happy pilgrims who shall say: 'Here first were sewn the seeds of the world's liberty! Here first bloomed the perfect flower of universal brotherhood!"

He bent his sleek, gray head meekly, pausing as though in profound meditation. Suddenly he raised his head; his tone changed; a faint ring of defiance sounded under the smooth flow of words.

He began with a blasphemous comparison, alluding to the money-changers in the temple--a subtle appeal to righteous violence.

"It rests with us to cleanse the broad temple of our country and drive from it the thieves and traitors who enslave us! How can we do it? They are strong; we are weak. Ah, but _are_ they truly strong?

You say they have armies? Armies are composed of men. These men are your brothers, whipped forth to die--for what? For the pleasure of a few aristocrats. Who was it dragged your husbands and sons away from your arms, leaving you to starve? The governor of Lorient. Who is he?

An aristocrat, paid to scourge your husbands and children to battle--paid, perhaps, by Prussia to betray them, too!"

A low murmur rose from the people. Buckhurst swept the throng with colorless eyes.

"Under the commune we will have peace. Why? Because there can be no hunger, no distress, no homeless ones where the wealth of all is distributed equally. We will have no wars, because there will be nothing to fight for. We will have no aristocrats where all must labor for the common good; where all land is equally divided; where love, equality, and brotherhood are the only laws--"

"Where's the mayor?" I whispered to Eyre.

"In his house; Speed is with him."

"Come on, then," I said, pushing my way around the outskirts of the crowd to the mayor's house.

The door was shut and the blinds drawn, but a knock brought Speed to the door, revolver in hand.

"Oh," he said, grimly, "it's time you arrived. Come in."

The mayor was lying in his arm-chair, frightened, sulky, obstinate, his fat form swathed in a red sash.

"O-ho!" I said, sharply, "so you already wear the colors of the revolution, do you?"

"Dame, they tied it over my waistcoat," he said, "and there are no gendarmes to help me arrest them--"

"Never mind that just now," I interrupted; "what I want to know is why you wrote the governor of Lorient to expel our circus."

"That's my own affair," he snapped; "besides, who said I wrote?"

"Idiot," I said, "somebody paid you to do it. Who was it?"

The mayor, hunched up in his chair, shut his mouth obstinately.

"Somebody paid you," I repeated; "you would never have complained of us unless somebody paid you, because our circus is bringing money into your village. Come, my friend, that was easy to guess. Now let me guess again that Buckhurst paid you to complain of us."

The mayor looked slyly at me out of the corner of his mottled eyes, but he remained mute.

"Very well," said I; "when the troops from Lorient hear of this revolution in Paradise, they'll come and chase these communards into the sea. And after that they'll stand you up against a convenient wall and give you thirty seconds for absolution--"

"Stop!" burst out the mayor, struggling to his feet. "What am I to do? This gentleman, Monsieur Buckhurst, will slay me if I disobey him!

Besides," he added, with cowardly cunning, "they are going to do the same thing in Lorient, too--and everywhere--in Paris, in Bordeaux, in Ma.r.s.eilles--even in Quimperle! And when all these cities are flying the red flag it won't be comfortable for cities that fly the tricolor." He began to bl.u.s.ter. "I'm mayor of Paradise, and I won't be bullied! You get out of here with your circus and your foolish elephants! I haven't any gendarmes just now to drive you out, but you had better start, all the same--before night."