I SEE THE SCARLET TATTER NEAR AT HAND
I might have thought much more about Gaston Cremieux and the dark
fatality of his eyes, if other things had not immediately distracted my
attention. The garrison had had its noon dinner in the great hall, and
at one o'clock the family were served in the fine red and gold
dining-room, the furnishings of which had been the gift of the Emperor.
Dennis Deventer sat at the top of the table with the gleeful air of
having dispatched the business of the day.
There was a feeling of picnic unceremoniousness about the feast. The
servants were somewhat thinned by flight, and as there was no
hard-and-fast etiquette in Dennis Deventer's house on any occasion,
several of the younger apprentice engineers assisted in the service,
partly from a general feeling of loyalty, and partly because they liked
to steal glances at the three Deventer girls--glances of which only Liz
appeared conscious and or in any way prompt with a return fire.
Even Jack Jaikes, a dark figure of a Spanish hidalgo, in engineer's blue
serge and pockets continually bulging with spanners, looked in and said
with brusque courtesy:
"Anything I can do for you, Chief?"
"Nothing," said Dennis Deventer, over his shoulder, "except to come in
and sit down with us."
"Thank you, Chief," answered Jaikes, "but I have dined already. I am
watching the rascals from the roof. They have gone away for a while to
their 'speak-house,' where doubtless they are talking over the matter.
But it will not do to trust to appearances. I wish you would let me run
that live wire from the big dynamo in the power-house. That would curl
them up by the score if they tried any more of their rushes."
Dennis Deventer turned on him savagely, the carving-knife in hand and
upheld threateningly.
"You pirate," he cried, "do as I tell you, and if I hear of your
meddling with the wires I will blow your brains out. Don't you see that
we have got to go on living here, and the men we have to work the
factory with are the fellows out in the brush yonder? They will try to
kill us now, but they will not bear any lasting malice if a few of them
are bowled over while we are defending ourselves. But electrocution by a
live wire is a different thing. They can't fight us with those weapons,
and I am not going to have our lives made impossible by any wholesale
scientific butchery."
Jack Jaikes held his ground in the doorway, his thin body flattened
against the panels to let the hurrying servants and apprentices pass.
"I don't know about 'scientific butchery,'" he said, "but I do know that
some one of them is pretty handy with the trick of short-circuiting our
new Gramme armature. It wasn't any garlic-smelling 'Gugusse' who worked
that out. I have put it right three times, so I know it was no accident.
But at any rate I am going to watch, if I have to slink about the
dynamo-sheds all night. I shall carry the new Henry thirteen repeater I
had from Edinburgh yesterday, and if I don't touch up that other gang of
scientific ruffians my name is not Jack Jaikes, and I never smelt the
good Clyde water from the Broomielaw."
Having thus had the last word, he shouldered his notable new Henry rifle
and strode off with his head in the air.
"Bit of buccaneer blood in that fellow," said Dennis Deventer, "a hard
horse to hold in sober times, but deuced dependable in an emergency.
Hates the Frenchmen, however, and does not get on with them. Mostly I
have to keep him on special duty, or in the office, though he is a
capital engineer, and a capital 'driver' with Englishmen or Scots of his
own breed who understand him. But if he is not careful he will get
something for himself one of these days--a knife between the
shoulder-blades as like as not."
Gentle Mrs. Dennis had her lament to make.
"I wish you would give him to me to look after. He can do almost
anything. He mended my spare sewing-machine which has not worked for
years, and made the missing parts himself. I believe some of them were
given to Liz to play with when she was a little girl, and I have never
seen them since."
"By all means have Jack Jaikes to tinker at your embroidery frames--that
is, if you can tame him. For myself I do not see him in the role of
family emergency man. But you must wait till we get the things all fixed
here and the shops running handily. Then I dare say it may be just as
well for Jaikes to eclipse himself for a day or two. If you can persuade
him to spend his time in the Chateau without coming into the works till
things cool off a bit, it will be best for all of us. He will not find
himself exactly popular for a while."
"Of course I can, Dennis," said his wife, who never doubted her powers
of persuasion. "There are hundreds of things that need to be done, and
the girls and I can easily find him work for a year. The place is going
to rack and ruin. High or low hardly a bolt will slide. Not a door will
lock except the outer ones which you yourself have had looked to
recently. What do you say, girls?"
"It is quite true, father," said Rhoda Polly. "I was trying to get Hugh
to do some little things down in the kitchen yesterday, but whatever
they teach him up at St. Andre, to make himself useful is certainly not
among them. He was as dense as a French plum-pudding, and I had far more
idea of how to handle a tool, for all he is older and twice my size."
Both Hannah and Liz agreed that there was a decided missionary call for
the assistance of Jack Jaikes in the Chateau as soon as possible.
Something in the tone of his youngest daughter touched Dennis Deventer's
educated ear.
He looked up sharply from his plate.
"Now, Liz," he said, "I will have no nonsense of _that_ kind!"
Liz blushed and dimpled, but kept her eyes well on her knife and fork
without a word. But there was a smile which lurked about the corners of
her mouth which said that her father, though a wise and masterful man in
his own house, could not control what was in the mind of a young girl.
It was a family tradition that at table Dennis Deventer should not be
argued with. Their mother might say inconsequent things in her purring
fashion, but only Rhoda Polly was allowed to stand up to their Old Man.
Even she rarely interfered, except in case of flagrant injustice or
misunderstanding, or when the subject matter under discussion had been
agreed upon beforehand in the family conclave. In Liz's case Rhoda Polly
judged there was no cause to interfere. It had become too much Liz's
habit to count all males coming to the house as "her meat," hardly
excluding the halt, the maimed, and the blind. If her father had noticed
this growing peculiarity, he had done so "off his own bat," and on the
whole it was a good thing. The knowledge that she was under suspicion at
head-quarters might do something to keep Liz within bounds. At least if
she did get tangled up in her own snares, she would not have the face to
go to their father for pity or demands for disentanglement. Rhoda Polly
hoped that this would put some of the iron which was in her own blood
into that of her more temperamental and impulsive younger sister.
The turmoil, the constant clatter of knives, forks, and plates, the
discussion which swayed from one side of the table to the other, the
well-worn family jests, which, because I held no key to their origin,
shut me out from the shouts of merriment they provoked--all produced on
me a feeling of dazed isolation. I liked the Deventers singly,
especially Rhoda Polly and her father. I could talk to each with ease
and an honest eye to my own profit or amusement. But I will not hide it
from you that I found the entire Deventer family, taken together, too
much for me.
I think I inherit my father's feeling for a "twa-handed crack" as the
only genuine method of intercourse among reasoning beings. More than
three in a conversation only serves to darken counsel by words without
knowledge. In a company of four my father is reduced to complete
silence, unless, indeed, he assumes his gown professorial and simply
prelects. In this way alone, and on condition that nobody says a word,
my father could be induced to give forth of his wisdom in company.
But a sympathetic touch on the shoulder from Rhoda Polly, one of whose
peculiarities was that she understood things without being told,
delivered me from my awkwardness.
"I don't think you have been here since we all grew up," she said, with
a smile. "We _are_ rather _assommant_, I admit. We stun people with our
trick of throwing ourselves at each other's heads. But you will soon get
used to the clamour. Meantime, if I were you, I should go out and walk
in the acacia avenue. It is a good place to be quiet in, and I have it
in my mind that you may learn something there"--she paused a
moment--"something that will take the taste of Jack Jaikes' threatenings
and slaughters out of your mouth."
She had moved back her chair a little so as to let me slip out, and then
with a nod and half-smile she launched herself into the fiercest of the
fray. So keen was challenge and _replique_ just at that moment that I
was outside the fine old tapestried dining-room without being perceived
by anyone.
I ran downstairs and reported to the sentinel on duty at the front door.
I told him that I did not feel well and was going to take the air. He
asked if I had my revolvers with me, and was only pacified at sight of
them. He had gone often with messages from the Chief to my father at
Gobelet, and so took an interest in me.
I skirted the house, and was just plunging into a belt of woodland
through which I could gain the acacia walk without being seen, when I
was hailed from the roof by Jack Jaikes. He wanted to know where I was
going, and what I was going to do when I got there.
Instead of being rude and obvious I made him the reply which I knew
would baffle him.
"Ask Rhoda Polly!" I said, and he swore aloud. If he had not been safe
on the roof he would have come after me at once. As it was I advised him
that he had as much responsibility as one man could safely shoulder, and
that he would do wisely not to fret about me.
With that I waved my hand and stepped into the thickest of the bushes.
The little wood ran round an artificial lake, and was prolonged right to
the great wall of the Chateau policies half a mile away. It was the part
of the grounds most distant from the works, and from what might be
called the centre of disturbance.
I climbed a young but good-sized plane which overtopped the wall. It had
been pollarded, and the step from the tree to the top of the wall was
rather a long one. I managed it, however, without difficulty, thanks to
the bough of an acacia which came swaying and trembling over from the
highway beyond. The next moment I had dropped like a cat out of the
acacia boughs into the road. A young man was sitting on a fallen tree
trunk, pensively smoking a cigarette, his hat pulled low on his brow,
and his eyes on the road.
I had no chance to escape his notice, for the sound of my feet attracted
him and he looked up at once. He rose smilingly and held out his hand.
It was Gaston Cremieux.