WITHIN THE PALE
It was indeed high time that I went away from the perils of
Aramon-les-Ateliers. Indeed, Keller Bey was in greater danger and
condemned to greater isolation owing to my stay. At first he had counted
it a happiness to talk with me of things outside his unfortunate office
as head of the Commune. But even Pere Felix and the more dependable of
the little band of members of the Government, faithful to their head,
showed something like the cold shoulder when Keller withdrew regularly
to find me in his parlour as soon as the seance was over.
I waited most of a dark and moonless night for the coming of Jack Jaikes
to the corner of the wall. At the first sound of my voice he threw over
a rope to help me to scramble up. He himself was astride the top when I
got there and we were inside the fortifications within thirty seconds.
And lo! how easy it all was--and what a difference! I seemed a thousand
miles away from everyone on the town side, and now only a few rods
divided me from the house of friends--from the sudden breaking ires of
Dennis Deventer and the quiet smiles of his wife, a mistress within her
own domain. Yes, and from Rhoda Polly--though I have left her to the
last, I had not forgotten Rhoda Polly.
"Well," said Jack Jaikes, "ye've come at last, as ye had much better
have done at the first, biding there among anarchists' trash and
breakers of God's beautiful machinery. God knows I am as good a Liberal
as ever voted for what Maister Gladstone said was right--yes, me and my
faither before me. But before I would mix mysel' up with such a lazy,
unclean, unsatisfied, cankered crew--sakes alive, I wad raither turn
Tory at yince and lose my self-respect!"
This was a terrible threat for Jack Jaikes, who had brought away from
Scotland no particular religion, except (as was common in these years)
that unbounded adoration of Mr. Gladstone, which culminated in 1880.
For that night Jack Jaikes made me a shake-down among his own gang, and
urged me to get the Chief to let me serve there.
"Man, I could be doing wi' ye fine," he said, "even though ye do not ken
one end of a gun from anither till she goes off! But there's a headpiece
on ye and they tell me that ye are fair bursting with the mathematics!"
I told him I was better at classics, and he was, I think, more desirous
of my company than ever.
"My brither passed for the kirk and was something of a dab at the Greek.
You learned yours here in France--will that be the same sort? It will?
That's grand. Ye can gie me a bit help, then? I have some o' his auld
college buiks in my box. I hae put in heaps o' spadewark at readin'
them, but it is a dreary business by yersel'! For ane foot that ye gang
forward, ye slip back twa, as the Irishman said aboot the road covered
with ice!"
Above my head great steel armatures rose high in the air. The flitting
lanterns brought out now the brass knobs of a governor, now the dim
glistening bulk of a huge fly-wheel away up near the roof of the shed
which Jack Jaikes and his men used as a dormitory. There was one fixed
light which shone upon the instrument attached to a little field
telegraph. Jack Jaikes had given up his idea of a wholesale
electrocution of an attacking force--that is, Dennis Deventer had
compelled him to give it up. But he had perfected a kind of burglar
alarm applied to a wider area, which completely encircled the works and
(separately) protected the Chateau and its grounds. If anyone interfered
with his wires at any point, Jack Jaikes could instantly warn the
nearest post to the disturbance, and the men would swarm out like wasps.
The plan had its little inconveniences. Cats in particular loved and
were loved upon the great factory wall. But Jack Jaikes devised means,
by "stinging them up a bit" electrically, to make them "leave that," as
he expressed it.
Rooks also came to perch and left with a whoop of terror, or clung
desperately head down with paralysed claws firmly knotted till the men
plucked them off and threw them into a corner to recover.
But the first company of the Avengers, tentatively scrambling about the
north-west corner to see what sort of watch the English kept, were
promptly checked by a dozen bayonets thrust down from above, and having
received information, they departed without standing on ceremony.
Let it not be thought that I slept much in the power-house. It was
altogether too picturesque and vivid for me. My heart beat with a
rousing and incommunicable joy. I was again among my own kind. I had
done my best to sympathise with those others over the wall. I had tried
to help and understand Keller Bey, but though I might wear the red
cardigan, follow Garibaldi, run up the "tatter of scarlet" under Keller
Bey's orders, my heart beat with the after-guard. My instincts were
"yellow"--the rest was but the rash of the blood which came with youth
and would pass like a malady of childhood.
Small wonder I did not sleep. Into that entrancing and mysterious
hangar, hooded and cloaked men stole from nowhere in particular. Each
gave a kick or a shake in passing to other men, who, silently rising,
cloaked themselves, seized arms, adjusted belts, and so wordlessly
clanked away into the dark. Then the new-comers would go over to the
embers of the fire on the forge in the corner, where the red glow would
reveal him as a pleasant-faced English lad, munching ardently his bread
and sausage, or heating his coffee on the coals. In the gloom of the
dormitory shake-downs men would talk rapidly, muttering in their sleep.
If a man snored too vigorously, Jack Jaikes, or a lieutenant of that
considerable sub-chief, would turn him over on his side, or, in extreme
case, send him to the boiler-room, where the men had room to snore one
against the other. These Jack Jaikes, always reminiscent of Glasgow,
called the "Partick Social Warblers," in memory of a certain church
glee-club soiree, to enter which he had once paid a "silver collection"
in the unfulfilled expectation of "tea and a bag."
But that night as I lay I kept awake for the pure joy of knowing myself
alive. I loved the breathing of the men about me, the ordered mystery of
the comings and goings, the clicking of the telegraphic machine as Jack
Jaikes bent over it, even the little circle of golden light which the
lamp shed, and the bristly way his moustache had of standing out beyond
the wicks of his grimly humorous mouth.
I wondered if he ever slept. Certainly he lay down. He had a blanket
with which he covered himself, head and all. It was not much of a
blanket, being pierced in the centre so that it could be worn with the
head thrust through, poncho-wise, as he stalked about. It was full of
burnt holes, showing where he had thrown himself down on cinders, some
of which had proved too recent.
About four there came a shrill _tirr-r-r-r_ of the small call-bell and
every sleeper was instantly on his feet. How Jack Jaikes got to the
ticker I do not know, but long before the men had their belts snapped,
he was reading off to them the location of the alarm.
"Between posts 48 and 49, Norwell and Omand warned. Ready there, file
out!"
The dark figures passed one by one out of the faint copper glow of the
forge, stood each a moment against the blue-black mystery of the night
framed in the doorway, and were then lost in the obscurity.
I thought of following, but first of all I was afraid of Jack Jaikes,
who had made no sign to me, and secondly and chiefly, in a yard and
among defences so sown with dangers and (for all I knew) corded with
live wires, I might easily do myself much harm, and the general welfare
of the cause little good. So, sorely against the grain, I stayed where I
was.
Presently the men came laughingly back, their humour quite vanished. Two
of the town goats--for Aramon was near enough to the mountains and to
Spain to possess many of these--had chosen to contest the narrow way to
the factory wall, from a pure point of honour as gentlemen should, for
there was no lady in the case. They had died fighting, and a bayonet's
point had been requisitioned to dislodge them both. They were now
brought in and handed over to the cook for preparation. Both had been
hard fighters in their time, and looked as if they would furnish what
Caroline in "The Heir at Law" calls "not an inviting meal."
Everybody was now fully waked up, and no one thought any more of sleep.
The night was still of the indigo dark peculiar to the South, and
outside, I could see the stars sinking one by one. The glow on the
forge-hearth was set blazing, tea billies were soon boiling, and there
was a fragrant smell of coffee in the air. The clean, appetising hiss of
frying bacon struck a joyous note. Someone set a big globe of electric
light flaring, when, _whisk-whisk_, a quartette of bullets tore through
the shed and knocked it to flinders.
Then in like an avenging genie entered Jack Jaikes.
"If I kenned wha that idiot was that set yon infernal thing blazing, I
would knock the amazing friskiness out o' him. Have I not telled ye a
score o' times that ye are no to make exhibitions o' yerselves?
Exhibitions, did I say, waur nor that, juist blank eediot targets that
the Frenchmen haena sense enough to hit!"
He made a silence about him, for all knew that his angers were black and
that he would stick at nothing, but, if provoked, strike with what came
nearest to his hand.
But the mood passed, the globe and carbons were renewed, and by the end
of their early breakfast his good-humour also was quite restored. The
men moved easily again without casting furtive eyes to see how the black
dog was riding Jack Jaikes. They knew him for an incomparable fighting
leader, an engineer without rival in the camp, but there was no doubt
that he needed humouring when, as he would have said himself, "his birse
was up." It had been remarked, even before he left the Clyde, that he
was "far ower handy wi' a spanner," and that might have been the reason
why he had tried Bristol and the Tyne before finding his master in
Dennis Deventer of the Arms Factory of Aramon.
I broke in upon the Deventers at breakfast--a meal which in defiance of
all local custom they took together as they had been used to do far away
in Barrow under the Cumberland fells. Or rather it was Jack Jaikes
himself who did the breaking. He could not deny himself that.
We heard the noise and clatter as we mounted the stairs.
"A fight," chuckled Jack Jaikes, half to himself, "but two to one on
Rhoda Polly, anyway."
But he had his little effect to make. He flung the door open, grounded
his rifle with a ringing clash, and announced in a stentorian voice:
"A deserter!"
The clamour ceased instantly. Every face was turned towards the door,
Dennis Deventer half rose, his napkin in his hand. I could see the pale,
clear-cut features of Rhoda Polly, her red lips parted, peering over her
father's shoulder.
Dennis Deventer received me with a friendly push that sent me in the
direction of Hugh, who "cleared" like a goal-keeper, and I fell into a
chair beside Rhoda Polly.
"Come in, Jack Jaikes--what will you take? Try those kidneys--they are
rather good. No, no, your chaps can't want you so soon. You are not
hatching them out there, you know!"
These and other cries at last persuaded Jack Jaikes to do what he was
yearning to do--sit down and eat a second breakfast with his master's
family. His grin was at once triumphant and sardonic, yet he left me to
answer for myself. His pleasure was not to talk much at these festivals
of his soul. I think he was fearful of what he called "langwage"--such
as he used occasionally in the works--escaping his control. At any rate
he was a happy listener, and the few words he uttered were always
destined to foment a discussion, acerbate a verbal quarrel, so that he
could lay mental bets upon his admired Rhoda Polly. When she made a good
hit, he felt inclined (as he confessed) to rise up and yell, "like a
gallery student on an opera night"--a set of savages whom he had known
during the college days of his brother, now a creditable and responsible
"placed" minister in Scotland.
When I announced that I had come to stay Rhoda Polly nearly trod my foot
off under the table, a vulgar disgrace to our comradeship for which she
apologised afterwards.
"I had to do it," she said, "or I should have been blubbering on your
shoulder with my arms about your neck! How would you have liked that,
Angus my lad?"
I answered, that before company I should have liked it ill enough, but
proffered my shoulder for the purpose since we were in private. Rhoda
Polly in her turn cried shame upon me. If I could not remember our
compact, she would not forget it. She also reminded me of saying of my
own accord that she and I had put away childish things. In vain I
represented to her that I had just returned from great danger and that
if she had been so overwhelmed with joy at breakfast as to make pemmican
of my foot, she must have still some remaining for which a suitable
expression might be found without looking out the word in the
dictionary.
But Rhoda Polly would have none of my suggestions. She was glad she had
shown her feelings, however irregularly, but now if I pleased we would
resume our good old talks together, at least when the incidents of the
siege permitted.
Her father did not allow her to run round the yard or about the posts
with the men, as she had been wont to do during the first January
difficulties.
"Oh, it isn't that," she said, answering a question in my eyes which was
also an accusation; "of course some of them think I'm nice and all that.
But it isn't that! I'm not Liz! Only father says that there are snipers
on the towers--the cathedral, St. Servan's, St. Marthe's, and St.
Crispin's--and he doesn't want any accidents happening to his eldest
daughter. But I am sure the boys miss me. I know Jack Jaikes does. He
told me so when he came in to arrange mother's sewing machine, which I
'wrongulated' on purpose to hear the news."
Later I retold Dennis Deventer the story of the coming trouble in Aramon
and the despair of Keller Bey. He listened without surprise, his
deep-set Irish eyes almost hidden under his twitching, bushy brows.
"There's a man that is obleeged to me, Angus me lad. He runs a copper
ore boat from Huelva--that's in Spain--to Marseilles. If we could get
the owld Keller man down there, I know a boatman in the Joliette who
would give him shelter till the steamer lifts her anchor. There is no
need for him to be desperate about any such thing. The world is wide and
Governments in this country are made of cardboard and bad paste. He will
be amnestied in a year or two. Can the man not be reasonable?"
I told him that the difficulty lay there. Keller Bey considered himself
bound to those who had helped him to set up the Commune in Aramon. He
would make no separate peace for himself.
"Separate fiddlesticks!" shouted Dennis Deventer. "Does he mean such
comfortable old soup-bags as Pere Felix, or wine-skins like
Pipe-en-Bois, or alcohol gutters like the Marshal Soult? Let him set his
mind at rest. They are safe. No Government while I live shall harm a
hair of their heads. They will never stand behind a barricade--never
fire a shot; if they will be careful not to fall downstairs after
celebration suppers to the memory of Danton and Marat and the men of
'48, they will all die in their beds and have their memories honoured in
turn by the suppers of another and redder generation!"
There was truth in what Dennis said. These were not the men who would
die fighting when the day of reckoning came. The young sullen wolf's
breed of the sidelong glances and the whispered counsels--these were
those who would line the last ditches of the defence of Aramon.
But, then, Keller Bey felt that he was responsible also for them. He was
their chief and normal leader. He had the secrets of the Internationale
and he had made proselytes, even among the young people. Could he leave
them and flee? I knew very well Keller Bey's line of argument, and I put
it to Dennis. He clapped his knee testily.
"Oh, for a good Scots or Ulster head on a man--even English would do
because of the fine, solid underpinning and bodygear the Lord God puts
into his southern-built vessels. But when a man gets this megrim of
honour in his brain, there is no saying beforehand what he will or will
not do--except that it will surely be eediocy."
"It's a pity, too," he added, after thought, "a man that can be talking
the Arab or the Turkish with men like your father (God bless him) and
old Professor Renard."
I suggested that there was one factor we were overlooking--that it was
more than likely that before long the Conservative Commune of Aramon
would be displaced and with it would disappear the rule of Keller.
No, I did not think they would kill him. They would probably expel the
ex-Dictator and let him go where he would. Then would be the time to
secure him, and send him to the captain of the Huelva cargo-boat.
Dennis patted me on the head.
"We cannot be sure of doing much," he said, "but we can always have a
try. We shall probably be desperately busy ourselves if the wild rakes
take the lead over the wall yonder. They will come at us, not this time
in undisciplined rush, but with method and well armed--thanks to the
folly of the National Assembly."
Still, Dennis Deventer had a card up his sleeve. "You must wait with us
and see the rubber played out."