A CAPTAIN OF BRIGANDS
The beaten wolves had slunk back to their lairs, but the fierceness of
their hate may be guessed from the fact that they would neither bury
their dead nor permit us to do it. Thrice was a burying party fired
upon, and it was only in the dead of night that Jack Jaikes and Brown
succeeded in cleaning the wide square in front of the main gate of the
factory.
Dennis Deventer had the iron gate new clamped and strengthened. On the
second night it was swung into place by the aid of an improvised crane,
which Dennis made, if not like the Creator "out of nothing," yet out of
the first things which came handy.
Our messes were now rather smaller. Between the Orchard and the Main
Gate attacks we had lost so many that the posts had to be strung out
wider to cover the long mileage of wall which had to be guarded.
The elated feeling of the earlier siege had departed. But in its place
we were conscious of a kind of proven and almost apathetic courage. We
might be called upon by any peril, and we knew now that we could do what
should be required of us.
I lived altogether with the gang now, only occasionally (by Jack Jaikes'
permission) running in to take a meal with the Deventers and to sun
myself in the approval of Rhoda Polly. Of course, I saw her often. She
had taken strongly to Allerdyce's gang, and, I think, cherished a hope
that Jack Jaikes might one day allow her to command it.
But, fond of Rhoda Polly as he was, Jack Jaikes had no idea of the
equality of the sexes when it came to a battery of machine guns. So he
gave the captaincy to Penman, a tall, thoughtful fellow of a dusky skin,
from the south, a good mechanician and a man dependable on all
occasions.
Rhoda Polly sulked a little and confided in me.
I pointed out to her that nothing more delicate than a mitrailleuse had
yet been invented. They jammed. They jibbed. They refused to fire when
they ought, but let go a shot or two without the least excuse, when they
might place those who served them in the greatest danger. What could
she, Rhoda Polly, do to remedy these ills? Nothing--whereas Penman had
been reared in the factory where they were made, and had long been a
foreman "assembler."
"Yes, but," she said, "I could tell him to do all that, and I am sure
that I could direct the fighting better. I have been a lot with my
father and I have kept my eyes open."
I told her to take her complaints to Jack Jaikes, but she knew better
than that. This is how she explained the apparent contempt of the second
in command.
"He has seen us sitting sleeping on the roof, hand in hand, when the
sunlight was two hours old, and you will see that neither you nor I will
ever get farther than we are at present under the consulship of Jack
Jaikes. He considers us in the light of a good joke, all because of that
unhappy rencontre!"
I was not ambitious like Rhoda Polly, and my position as confidential
lieutenant to Jack Jaikes suited me exactly. I do not mean that he ever
consulted me, or asked for my opinion on matters of business. But he
liked a listener and he loved to thresh out every question immediately
and to put down the contradictor. I must have been an immense comfort to
him, for I contradicted regularly, with or without conviction, and as
regularly allowed myself to be beaten down. That was what I was there
_for_!
Dennis Deventer had placed Jack Jaikes over the whole of the Works, as
distinct from the defences of the Chateau--which, as the less defensible
and the more likely to be attacked, he kept in his own hand. He
strengthened the wall of the orchard with palisades, and established
posts at either end with a machine gun to sweep its length. In spite of
all, the Old Orchard remained the weak spot in our defences, and the
sight of it with the enemy's posts so near put an idea into my head.
I went directly to Dennis Deventer. He was sitting placidly watching the
"assembling" of a new machine gun, the parts of which had been all ready
before the stoppage of the Works. He looked on critically, but without
needing to put in a word. Penman, Brown, and the rest were far too good
engineers to need even a suggestion. All the same they doubtless knew
themselves to be under the eye of the master.
"Chief," said I, "we took Keller Bey and Alida across the water for
safety, and I saw them into my father's care at Gobelet, where Hugh
remains as a guard. Now the real weakness of our position here is the
presence in our midst of Mrs. Deventer and your two daughters!"
"Two daughters--I have three!" said he, but I thought somewhat
quizzically and as if comprehending very well.
"Oh, I do not include Rhoda Polly," I answered, "she is as good a
soldier as any of us, and could be trusted in all circumstances, even if
she were rushed----"
"Rushed?" he said sharply. "How that? How trusted?" I spoke and I saw
him wince. Then, in a moment, he answered me, "You are quite right--ten
times right. And you mean that the others--could not!"
"I am speaking of what I pray God may never happen, but yet--the odds
against us are great. If it were as I suggested--with the other three
women--that would be your duty!"
He drew in his breath, hissing, between his teeth, like one who feels
the first sharp incision of the knife. His hands clenched and something
like a groan came from the strong man. I pursued my advantage.
"You might not be there, Mr. Deventer--you might be lying as I saw
Allerdyce along the top of your gun. So might I--so might anyone you
dared delegate."
"God forgive you--you put water into my veins. How could any man
'delegate' such a thing!"
"No," said I, "I feel as you do, and for that reason I beg of you to let
me escort your wife and daughters to the care of my father."
"And suppose," he said, "that our friends the enemy, finding us a hard
nut to crack and probably with little kernel when cracked, should take
it into their heads to cross the bridge and plunder the houses on the
hill of St. Andre?"
"I think not, sir," I answered steadily. "There are Government troops in
Aramon le Vieux. The National Guard there is all against the
revolutionists. In the old town the tricolour has never been in the
least danger. The whole department would move upon them if they
attempted such a thing."
"Well argued, my Cicero," said he, "you are your father's son. But these
black-a-vised rogues of ours defy reasoning. They may do the very thing
all wisdom shows that they ought not to do. And a visit to Gobelet on
the hill is one of these temptations which may prove too much for the
gaol birds who shelter themselves under the black flag of anarchy. I do
not see that the danger would be much lessened, considering the devil's
crew with whom we have to deal. A raid across the water, made by night,
would be an exploit worthy of them."
So my proposition was for the time rejected, but I did not despair. For
I knew, or thought I knew, that the absence of the women would relieve
us who were fighting the lines of the Chateau and Factory from an almost
intolerable fear. In this respect I now think I was wrong. For the idea
of the girls and their mother being entrusted to them to defend, made
every man behind the defences hate the enemy with a deep steady hatred.
Each became in his own eyes charged with the care of Liz or Hannah, of
Rhoda Polly or their mother, according to where, or in what relation of
life--sweetheart, sister, or mother--their hearts were tenderest.
Outside the situation changed but slowly. The Committee of Public Safety
had taken possession of the Mairie after Keller Bey had been abandoned
by his colleagues--and when with Alida he had come forth to make a last
effort at conciliation. Except the desperate Chanot, none of the leaders
of the Revolt-against-the-Revolt had taken any part in the fighting.
Barres, Chardon, even Bonnot had sat and directed operations from the
safe shelter of the Hotel de Ville.
It was not cowardice, the scoundrels were brave enough, as they showed
afterwards--but they had reached what seemed a haven of peace, and the
share of the plunder which had been claimed by the "administration"
assured them of good restaurant meals and such joyous company as was to
be found in Aramon.
Speaking to Chardon, his lieutenant Chanot treated the whole business
lightly.
"Why should we not take the best of life we can? It may not be for
long," he said, referring to this period. "You people of the Chateau had
taken toll of our numbers. Well, I do not complain. There was the more
left for the rest. We had appropriated, and who had a better right to
spend? There was no more cant of liberty and individualism among us, and
each man being a law and a religion to himself, we stole from one
another when we could. That is, if we found a friend's cash-box in a
place where a hand might grasp it, we thought how much good it would do
him to drink of his own brewing. So we 'individually expropriated' him.
That is why Lasalle of St. Gilles was killed by Auroy. Auroy found him
mixed up with a roll of bank-notes he had hidden in his mattress. There
had been a new election for the Quartier St. Marthe, and as nobody
thought of voting, we nominated Eusebe le Plan who had lost an arm in
the fighting and would be a long time in hospital. This made the plums
go still farther round."
"The old 'reds'? Oh, they were in the town mostly, hidden in garrets,
passing their time like Troppman in reading 'The Picturesque Magazine'"
(here he laughed), "and listening for our footsteps and the grounding of
our rifle-butts before their doors. They thought we wanted them. What in
the devil's name should we want with such feeble, broken, bellowing
cattle? They had brought nothing to the office. They had been content
with their fifteen pence a day. Not one of them had a sou to rub against
another, and their wives hardly knew where the next day's soup was to
come from. Oh, yes, I know now, that which had I known then, some blood
would have splashed the garden walls--that Dennis Deventer had his own
folk among them who distributed money and food. They were his best
workmen and it was an agreed thing that when all this had blown over and
when we who had turned them out were all shot or beheaded, he should
enlist them again, and they would go back in the 'shops' to speak with
deference and sobriety as becomes an inferior to his superior!"
* * * * *
I do not mean that there was any regular truce--rather a kind of
inaction and exhaustion. The first ardours of the political brigands had
been cooled by machine gun practice--Napoleon's old prescription of "the
whiff of grapeshot." A good many of this miscellaneous collection of
rascals, especially those who had done well in the earlier work of
incendiarism among the villas along the riverside, tailed off without
crying a warning. They made their way, some to Marseilles, where the
troops were just putting down the rule of Gaston Cremieux, some to
Narbonne, which was still in the wildest revolt, while others scattered
over the country, committing crimes in lonely places, hiding in the
forests by day and tramping by night, till for the most part they
managed to get themselves out of the country into Germany, Switzerland,
or Spain--wherever, indeed, they were least known.
But those who were left behind at Aramon waxed all the more deadly and
desperate because of these desertions. If only they had guessed how
severe our losses had been, they would have attacked with more vigour
than they did, but I think they judged that the "scourging" inflicted
upon them by Jack Jaikes had been almost without loss to ourselves.
Alas, besides the mound in the Orchard, the double row of graves in the
beaten earth of the courtyard told another tale! I do not think anyone
ever passed the spot without lifting his hat to Allerdyce and his troop
of gallant men, to whom the noble May days and the starry nights of the
last days of our siege mattered so little.