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

It was in a little bay behind a promontory filled with the Slug's sapling pines that I landed. I knew the place well, I knew also that Arcadius would almost certainly be in his potting house, putting things to rights after the labours of the day (the middle of March is high season for every gardener in the Midi). There indeed I found him surrounded with repaired hoes and rakes, and at that moment putting a new handle into the small gardener's bêche (or mattock) which was hardly ever out of his hands while in the open air.

Arcadius was not a man of politics.

"I have never known politics to improve the weather or keep off frosts!" he said. "I have yet to learn what good they do to a working gardener!"

I asked about the works and the town.

"Oh," he said, "my 'prentice lads stayed with me till six o'clock because I had put the fear of death on them if they tried to run. Yet I could see that they were itching to be off, and as soon as six struck from the Mairie, they dropped their tools and were over the wall. Only my Italians stayed and went soberly to bed. More I do not know. But, though there has been much noise of cheering in the square, there has been no shooting."

I told Arcadius of the skiff fastened up behind his sapling copse. He nodded easily and looked out of doors to examine the weather signs.

"It is not likely to rain, but it will hurt nothing to turn her upside down and stay her with a rope and a pair of stones. She will be ready when you want her. If you are bound on going into Aramon to-night, you may want her with great suddenness."

I left him at the upper gate of his garden opposite to the waste ground where the harmless bull fights of Provence took place.

"Now," he said, "there is a key for you. Put it in your pocket. Cross that bull yard and go through the passage, at the end of which you will come upon a door. When you open it you will find yourself in the narrow street by the new Lay Schools of the town."

Then my kindly Slug took himself off without waiting for thanks, shaking all over like a jelly, and his lantern making a trickle of clear yellow light on the pathway in front of him. His wife was calling him in to supper, "Arcad-arcad-ar-cad-i-oos!"

I crossed the road hastily. All was empty and desolate, and in a moment more I was fronted by the barricade over which every Sunday the "amateurs" of this innocent bull-baiting leaped back to safety and the applause of their friends.

Almost I had lost my way among piled benches, when a faint light showed through a much barred door. I passed through the money-taker's box with double doors and found myself facing the dark tunnel of which Arcadius had spoken. It looked dismal and uninviting enough, but at least there was no reason to suppose that any revolutionaries would be skulking there. Even if there were, what had I, an old Garibaldian, to fear? The passage had evidently been used for bringing the bull into the arena, and I was glad enough when the massive double portal stopped me, even though it was the bump on my forehead which first acquainted me with its position.

I felt for the keyhole and found that it took all my strength to turn the wards of the ancient lock which in that damp place creaked dismally. The half of the heavy door swung back ponderously. The street without seemed dim and forlorn in front of me, glimmering with a kind of bluish light. I was glad that I had not to step at once into the bright illumination of the Cours or the more restrained golden glow which distinguished the Place de la Mairie. I made what slight toilet I could, carefully wiping my muddy boots on the door-mat of a perfect stranger to whom in days to come I make belated acknowledgments.

I peered out and it was well I did so, for not ten yards from the end of the passage a sentry was posted in the dress of the National Guard of Aramon, blue breeches, blue coat liberally faced with red, and a red képi. I could see the light from an unseen lamp shining on the flat of his sword-bayonet, no doubt fresh from the storehouse of Dennis Deventer.

For since the ignominious retreat of the military two months ago, the Government had insisted that a National Guard on the Paris model should be established in Aramon and, for that matter, in all the larger towns of the Midi. Dennis Deventer warned the prefect of the department of Rhône-et-Durance that they were laying up trouble for themselves. He told them that if they armed the workmen of the Arms Factories on the slightest outbreak in Paris, all power in Aramon-les-Ateliers would pass instantly into their hands. The like would also happen in every town of the Midi.

"You of the South are afraid when a mouse squeaks," the Secretary of the Interior had replied (for Dennis and he were closeted together). "We accounted for the Reds easily enough in October and again in January. They have lost both in power and numbers since then. If anything grave does happen, we can always take Cavaignac's way – isolate suburb from suburb and – shoot!"

"Very well," said Dennis, "if you are sure of your regular army that may do for Paris – but at Aramon, at Marseilles, our suburbs are our rich quarters. The men of the revolt live in the city, and to put arms into their hands is to centralise all power there."

But the watchword of the Government for the moment was "trust of the people," and it was not till its generals were being shot down under the bloody apple blossom of the Rue des Rosiers, its army fraternising with the revolutionaries, and the chiefs of the Government clattering with foaming steeds and strained harness on the way to Versailles, that they became aware that Dennis Deventer had been right.

At any rate, there was I, who had not been consulted in the affair, almost within arms' length of a National Guard, my refuge in the doorway liable to be intruded upon at any moment, and all exit blocked. I began to ask myself what I was doing there.

Yet I had no idea of going back. I must know what had happened at Château Schneider. I must see Rhoda Polly. There was no sound except a confused murmur like wind overhead in high trees. No shots were fired, and except the erect sentinel in his blue coat, his red kêpi tipped rakishly over one ear, and his shining rifle and sword-bayonet, I heard no sound of civil strife.

I watched him carefully. He was new to his work and fidgeted constantly, now coming a little down the street and then going a little way up, but never a moment losing sight of my alley arch, which seemed to attract him like a sort of black hole into the unknown.

Twice or thrice he fumbled in his pockets, and once he drew out a short pipe which he eyed with longing. But apparently he had had his orders, for he put it back again, changed his piece from one shoulder to another, and resumed his uneasy guard.

I think that it must have been a good hour that I stood there watching the shining of that fellow's broad bayonet. So we might have stood indefinitely had not the pipe in my gentleman's pocket proved in time too much for him. He looked this way and that, ducked suddenly under my archway, bayonet and all, and then proceeded to strike a match. I can affirm in excuse for what followed that I had no time to form plans. The most natural defence was that which most concerned me. My opponent was armed and strong, I only agile, young, and unarmed. So while the vile governmental match still stank and hissed with its blue flame, I leaped upon him like a cat.

He screamed, dropped his pipe, and made immediately for the street. If he reached it I was a dead man. So I throttled him, pulling back his head till I feared his neck might crack. He fell, and in a twinkling I had tossed aside his gun and revolver, strapped his hands with my waistbelt and thrust a handkerchief into his mouth, fastening it in with another which I found in his own pocket.

Then I dragged him backwards towards the door and after some difficulty opened it. I lifted him as well as I could upon my shoulders so that only his feet trailed. But he must have received some stunning blow about the head, for he never moved, though it was with relief that I felt him breathing when I laid him down. I extended him comfortably on a fodder crib in the bull enclosure, for which luckily my key was also good.

Then I hastily reckoned the chances such as they were. It was clear I could not go about the streets of Aramon as I was, with armed sentinels at every corner. The man's red képi gave me an idea. It had fallen off. I picked it up, cleaned it, and was about to replace it, when I suddenly snatched it away again. I lifted the man up and took off his cloak and blue uniform coat. I would be a National Guard for the night, and I felt sure that with my experience of soldiering I could look the part. I bestowed my coat upon him, and gazed with longing at his blue breeches, but gave up that exchange as too long and perilous an undertaking. Dark brown must serve in place of the regulation blue pattern on the principle that at night all cats are grey. But I put on the coat which was considerably too big. I carefully cleaned the skirts of the cloak, and then added to my array the red képi.

The door once locked upon my prisoner, I left him to come to himself at his own time and as he would. On my way out I gathered up the arms that were missing. Already I had provided myself with his cartridge belt, his haversack and all accessories. The revolver was safe in its case near the door-mat and the rifle and sword-bayonet were soon polished on one of the tails of the coat. I kept the cloak open a little so that the broad red facings might show.

With a beating heart I peeped out. The street was empty, and it struck me forcibly that the sooner I got away from there the better.

The military organisation of the Revolt might be more complete than I supposed. They might send out Grand Rounds to visit their sentinels, or the guard might be changed – both of which events would be exceedingly awkward for me, especially as I was wholly without knowledge of the password.

Not more than an instant did I hesitate on the threshold. Then with (I admit) my heart in my mouth, I stepped out and marched directly for the end of the alley.

The broad Place de la République (as it had been named for six months, vice "Imperial" superseded) was filled with a dim but pervading illumination. The resinous smell of many torches filled the air, and as I turned towards the Hôtel de Ville I saw the reason. On the broad platform over the doorway, many men were standing bareheaded, and a little in advance of the others one was holding a document in his hand.

Flags that certainly were not tricolour drooped on either hand of this balcony and cascaded down the front of the building, hiding the first-floor windows and reaching the ground.

I saw many National Guards hurrying from their places, some singly, some in little groups of three and four. I let myself be carried along till I reached the press in front of the ceremony. Discreetly I did not try to penetrate, but kept well on the outskirts, as far from the hundred torches as possible. Mine was not a popular position, for the reek of the tar set people coughing, and most were not slow to move away. But I stood as if on faction, and as such was saluted and passed by a hurrying officer, who, barely saluting, barked at me the single word "Marx," shooting it in my direction like a missile. I saluted in return and he went his way, leaving me in possession of the password for the night. It was no immediate service, for all there were too intent on the ceremony in front of the town hall to look at one National Guard more or less.

When I had accustomed my eyes to the acrid sting of the smoke, I moved nearer in order to hear better, and then for the first time I became aware that the man who was proclaiming the Commune in Aramon was – Keller Bey himself!

The accents of the voice, falling clamorously on my ear, had indeed sounded familiar, but I had rather thought of Père Félix, Pipe-en-Bois, Soult or any other valiants of the former revolutions. What was Keller doing here?

Suppositions crowded dizzily about me. Of course, there had always been an unknown side to Keller Bey, and his hatred of the priests and the bourgeoisie had been things to reckon with.

"Who is the speaker?" I asked of a man beside me, still in the blouse of his daily work, his eyes red with tending furnaces and his hands grimy with coal. He cast one look of contempt on me.

"Where have you come from," he demanded, "that you do not know Keller Chief of the Secret Council of the Internationale?"

"I have been fighting along with Garibaldi," I answered truthfully enough, "I have not been long in the National Guard."

Which in its way was still truer.

"Ah," he answered carelessly, "the Italian! I have heard of him. What sort of a fellow was he?"

I explained enthusiastically, but as usual quite in vain.

"Well," said the man, cursing the smoke and beginning to move off, "he might as well have stopped at home for all the good he did. That's my way of it!"

And I will not conceal from the reader that this summed up pretty fairly the bulk of French opinion upon the great leader.

As may well be imagined I stood far back, shrouded in shadow and smoke till Keller Bey had finished his speech. He told how in Paris the revolt of the proletariat had been completely successful, how the army had gone over to the cause of the people, how the bourgeois Government had fled to Versailles with hardly one to do them honour – how in all the great cities of France the new Commune was being declared and established. At Marseilles Gambetta's young Procureur-Général, the citizen Gaston Cremieux, headed the movement. He read a dispatch that moment received, urging Aramon to send a thousand men to help their brothers in Marseilles, threatened with troops from overseas and exposed to daily attacks from the still untaken forts.

"We shall be glad to aid our brothers in Marseilles if we are let alone here. We desire no fighting. The troops of the tricolour are not within our gates, and though there are some left who think differently from us, we can, I believe, live on excellent terms with them, until our Government is solidified and the Company of Arms is ready to nationalise its works. Till that day we must deal prudently, rule well, allow no attempts on private property, and behave as if we were all in reality as well as in name comrades and brothers."

So far as I could judge, I think Keller Bey carried the audience with him. I did not hear a murmur of dissent. Only, on the other hand, the plaudits could not be called long-continued or well-nourished. The workers of Aramon-les-Ateliers cherished a secret doubt – a doubt which they wished set at rest.

"What of Dennis?" they cried. "Dennis Deventer? Are the works to be closed? Where is the week's wage to come from?"

Keller Bey rose again, brushing aside the Père Félix.

"To-morrow," he said "you shall elect your Commune – twenty citizens of weight and mark to take the place of the present provisional government which has declared Aramon a city of liberty. Choose you good strong men who can deal with the Company and the Company's agent. Have no fear. Our cause is just. Marseilles and the great cities are with us. And to-morrow, doubt it not, France shall be with us also. We have inaugurated the reign of international peace. Let us begin by keeping the peace within our own borders. If we are to govern at all, we must show an example of good government, so that every city, town, and hamlet shall desire to throw in its lot with us. There is to be no wrecking of machinery, which we know must one day belong to the workers. We shall make friends with the foremen of departments, and when we come to restarting the works on the Communist plan we shall pay every man his wage according to his deserts – aye, and to Dennis Deventer his, for a head we must have. A business without a head is like an army without a general."

At this moment I was suddenly gripped solidly from behind, my weapons snatched away from me, and with the butt of the rifle such a blow was delivered on the back of my head that the marvel is I am here writing of it to-day. My gentleman of the bull enclosure had been cleverer than I had anticipated. Most likely he had been shamming dead, and now, having loosened himself, he had leaped the fence, made a detour of the boulevard and appeared from behind me at the moment when I was expecting him as little as he had looked for me in the archway.

That gun-butt was enough for me. I sank swooning on the ground under the low smoke drift from the dim torches and with the words of Keller Bey as to universal peace and concord still in my ears.

CHAPTER XXVI

KELLER BEY, INSURGENT

Among the panelled mirrors and gilt splendours of the Hôtel de Ville of Aramon I opened my eyes. A doctor had been attending me. My head was tightly bandaged and my left hand was also bound up. From many aches and pains I judged that in my quality of detected spy I had been somewhat severely dealt with, by the crowd, or perhaps my own man had remembered the taste of the gag and had perpetrated some little personal atrocities on his own account, before delivering me up to justice, in order to square the account.

The doctor was talking to Keller Bey. It was broad day, and abundant light, filtering through the plane trees, flooded the great room. It was usually the Salle des Mariages, but for the time being it had been converted into a lounging place for the people of Aramon. I had in fact awakened on election day, and in the new Commune my vote was as good as that of any other man. At one end was a space boarded off in the regular way, into which one elector after another passed with his voting ticket, and having deposited it under the eyes of the four watchful questors, walked immediately out by the opposite door.

Presently Keller Bey passed into an inner room, which, from the gilding upon the door and the allegorical figures above holding swords of justice and ill-adjusted balances, I took to be a court room. It was in fact the mayoral parlour, and the comfortable office coat and even the dressing-gown of the late occupant still hung on the pegs behind the door.

Keller Bey gave an order and I was immediately brought in and laid upon a wide and springy sofa which furnished one whole side of the apartment. I noticed the device of the crossed red and black flags had been removed from his tie, and was now worn upon the lapel of his coat like a decoration.

As soon as the room was clear he came over and sat down beside me. At sight of me his grim face softened almost as it was wont to do when Linn or Alida spoke to him.

"All this may seem very strange to you," he said, with a faint feeling of apology in his voice, "you who have only seen me going about the house like a tame cat. But since I was raised to high place and consideration in the Internationale, the old fighting spirit rose within me. I could not deny the appeal of my brothers to stand by them, and so you find me here, at the head of the Commune of Aramon – at least till the will of the voters is ascertained. The men who are with me are honest fellows, but, so far as I see, quite incapable of leadership. I do not believe that the vote will strip me of any authority or responsibility."

I thought that he was talking straight on without stopping in order to escape the question which he must have seen on my lips.

"And your duty to Linn and Alida?" I demanded abruptly. I could see him flush and pale.

"Personal and private interests must give way at such times," he answered firmly enough, but his tones did not carry conviction, not even, I think, to himself.

"Besides," he added, after a pause, "Linn knew that it would have to come. I dare not refuse a call of duty because of the danger."

"It is lucky for Linn and Alida," I said with the studied cruelty only attained by boys, "that they have friends who put them before all public duties."

"Sir," said Keller Bey, his cheek blanching to a kind of cadaveric rigidity, so great was the intensity of his anger, "I do not allow anyone to call my actions into question."

"Call in your soldiers, Monsieur of the Internationale," I said tauntingly, "you can soon get even with me. There are many walls between here and the cottage in my father's garden. My shooting will not have the éclat of the assassination of the Paris generals, but it will come as blithe news for the three left wondering in the garden of Gobelet."

I spoke like a bad, spiteful boy, conscious of a power to wound to the quick and thoroughly enjoying my triumph.

Keller Bey did not answer directly to my railings. He felt instinctively that he could not meet me along these lines.

"How did you come here?" he demanded abruptly, "and why in the coat of a Garde Nationale?"

"Because," I said, looking at him with my bandaged head lifted on my hand, "I do not forget old kindnesses. Nor yet new ones – though my house had not been set in order and largely furnished by the kindness of the Deventers. I crossed the river in a boat and was going to find them – to help them if I could, if necessary to fight and die with them, if your people should besiege them as they have done before."

Keller Bey threw out his arms suddenly with the gesture of a tortured man who seeks something to grip in his agony.

"I had not thought youth so cruel," he moaned. "Do you not understand that I am here to prevent all that? I stand between the hotheads and Dennis Deventer. His wife and family are as safe here as mine in your father's garden, of which you are so good as repeatedly to remind me!"

I am afraid that my expression expressed unbelief.

"You must pardon me," I said suavely and still provocatively, "but I have been among the chimneys of the Château Schneider when the mitrailleuses were talking. You intend to rule justly and love mercy, but what of the men about you? I have seen them streaming across the open court wrecking and destroying."

"Exactly," said Keller Bey, with suddenly recovered dignity, "but then I was not at the direction of affairs. If any man now disobeys he shall be made to feel the vengeance of the Internationale! We shall sow fear among them as corn is sown on a windy day."

At this moment Keller was summoned outside, and I could hear his voice dominating and allaying a quarrel between functionaries, as I lay back listening and determined to find out what he intended to do with myself as soon as he came back. But one thing and another was referred to him for judgment, and it was the better part of an hour before he came in holding a sheaf of telegrams in his hand. A secretary accompanied him, and I had perforce to put off my demand.

Keller Bey had evidently regained some of the old military readiness which had made him the favourite lieutenant of the great Emir. He dictated telegrams and dispatches to Paris, to St. Etienne, to Narbonne, and especially a long communication to Gaston Cremieux at Marseilles.

There were (he said) certainly men at Aramon and to spare, but for the moment each Commune in revolt must depend upon itself. When the provisional Government of Aramon, of which he was the head, had handed over its powers to a properly elected Commune, then would be the time to speak of sending reinforcements to a greater neighbour. It was true that there were no troops belonging to the expelled Government of Versailles in the city of Aramon itself, but to the north the ancient, highly clerical Avignon offered an excellent centre for collecting an army corps. The Government of the Assembly, exiled to Versailles, had its hands tied by the marvellous success of the Paris revolt. But save that the Commune of Paris was sending a pair of delegates to arrange terms of association, no help need be looked for from that quarter.

At last Keller Bey made an end and dismissed the secretary. Then he sat a while with his head upon his hands in deep thought.

I interrupted his meditation with my question.

"And now, Keller Bey, what do you mean to do with me?"

He did not reply instantly, but continued his meditations in silence. I was compelled to put the question three times, and the third time with some heat, before he raised his head to answer.

"In the meantime I shall keep you by me as a hostage. The voting is not yet over, and, though I do not anticipate any violent change, there is always a possibility that the fiery spirits may urge violent measures. In that case I shall use you for a messenger to our friends at Château Schneider. In any case, you have come to me and here you had better stay. It may be necessary also to communicate with my family and in that matter I could trust only you."