"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 passionless 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, Marseilles 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
Marseilles--even in Quimperlé! And when all these cities are flying
the red flag it won't be comfortable for cities that fly the
tricolor." He began to bluster. "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."
"Oh," I said, "before night? Why before night?"
"Wait and see then," he muttered. "Anyway, get out of my house--d'
ye hear?"
"We are going to give that performance at two o'clock this
afternoon," I said. "After that, another to-morrow at the same hour,
and on every day at the same hour, as long as it pays. Do you
understand?"
"Perfectly," sneered the mayor.
"And," I continued, "if the governor of Lorient sends gendarmes to
conduct us to the steamship in Lorient harbor, they'll take with them
somebody besides the circus folk."
"You mean me?" he inquired.
"I do."
"What do I care?" he bawled in a fury. "You had better go to
Lorient, I tell you. What do you know about the commune? What do you
know about universal brotherhood? Everybody's everybody's brother,
whether you like it or not! I'm your brother, and if it doesn't suit
you you may go to the devil!"
Watching the infuriated magistrate, I said in English to Speed: "This
is interesting. Buckhurst has learned we are here, and has paid this
fellow heavily to have us expelled. What sense do you make of all
this?--for I can make none."
"Nor can I," muttered Speed; "there's a link gone; we'll find it
soon, I fancy. Without that link there's no logic in this matter."
"Look here," I said, sharply, to the mayor, who had waddled toward
the door, which was guarded by Kelly Eyre.
"Well, I'm looking," he snarled.
Then I patiently pointed out to him his folly, and he listened with
ill-grace, obstinate, mute, dull cunning gleaming from his half-closed
eyes.
Then I asked him what he would do if the cruiser began dropping shells
into Paradise; he deliberately winked at me and thrust his tongue into
his cheek.
"So you know that the cruiser has gone?" I asked.
He grinned.
"Do you suppose Buckhurst's men hold the semaphore? If they do, they
sent that cruiser on a fool's errand," whispered Speed.
Here was a nice plot! I stepped to the window. Outside in the square
Buckhurst was still speaking to a spellbound, gaping throng. A few men
cheered him. They were strangers in Paradise.
"What's he doing it for?" I asked, utterly at a loss to account for
proceedings which seemed to me the acme of folly. "He must know that
the commune cannot be started here in Brittany! Speed, what is that
man up to?"
Behind us the mayor was angrily demanding that we leave his house; and
after a while we did so, skirting the crowd once more to where, in a
cleared space near the fountain, Buckhurst stood, red flag in hand,
ranging a dozen peasants in line. The peasants were not Paradise men;
they wore the costumes of the interior, and somebody had already armed
them with scythes, rusty boarding-pikes, stable-forks, and one or two
flintlock muskets. An evil-looking crew, if ever I saw one; wild-eyed,
long-haired, bare of knee and ankle, loutish faces turned toward the
slim, gray, pale-faced orator who confronted them, flag in hand. They
were the scum of Morbihan.
He told them that they were his guard of honor, the glory of their
race--a sacred battalion whose names should shine high on the
imperishable battlements of freedom.
Around them the calm-eyed peasants stared at them stupidly; women
gazed fascinated when Buckhurst, raising his flag, pointed in silence
to the mayor's house, where that official stood in his doorway,
observing the scene:
"Forward!" said Buckhurst, and the grotesque escort started with a
clatter of heavy sabots and a rattle of scythes. The crowd fell back
to give them way, then closed in behind like a herd of sheep,
following to the mayor's house, where Buckhurst set his sentinels and
then entered, closing the door behind him.
"Well!" muttered Speed, in amazement.
After a long silence, Kelly Eyre looked at his watch. "It's time we
were in the tent," he observed, dryly; and we turned away without a
word. At the bridge we stopped and looked back. The red flag was
flying from the mayor's house.
"Speed," I said, "there's one thing certain: Byram can't stay if
there's going to be fighting here. I heard guns at sea this morning; I
don't know what that may indicate. And here's this idiotic revolution
started in Paradise! That means the troops from Lorient, and a
wretched lot of bushwhacking and guerrilla work. Those Faöuet Bretons
that Buckhurst has recruited are a bad lot; there is going to be
trouble, I tell you."
Eyre suggested that we arm our circus people, and Speed promised to
attend to it and to post them at the tent doors, ready to resist any
interference with the performance on the part of Buckhurst's
recruits.
It was already nearly one o'clock as we threaded our way through the
crowds at the entrance, where our band was playing gayly and thousands
of white head-dresses fluttered in the sparkling sunshine that poured
intermittently from a sky where great white clouds were sailing
seaward.
"Walk right up, messoors! Entry done, mesdames, see voo play!"
shouted Byram, waving a handful of red and blue tickets. "Animals all
on view before the performance begins! Walk right into the corridor of
livin' marvels and defunct curiosities! Bring the little ones to see
the elephant an' the camuel--the fleet ship of the Sairy! Don't miss
nothing! Don't fail to contemplate le ploo magnifique spectacle in
all Europe! Don't let nobody say you died an' never saw the only
Flyin' Mermaid! An' don't forget the prize--ten thousand francs to the
man, woman, or che-ild who can prove that this here Flyin' Mermaid
ain't a fictious bein' straight from Paradise!"
Speed and I made our way slowly through the crush to the stables, then
around to the dressing-rooms, where little Grigg, in his spotted
clown's costume, was putting the last touches of vermilion to his
white cheeks, and Horan, draped in a mangy leopard-skin to imitate
Hercules, sat on his two-thousand-pound dumbbell, curling his shiny
black mustache with Mrs. Grigg's iron.
"Jacqueline's dressed," cried Miss Crystal, parting the curtain of
her dressing-room, just enough to show her pretty, excited eyes and
nose.
"All right; I won't be long," replied Speed, who was to act as
ring-master. And he turned and looked at me as I raised the canvas
flap which screened my dressing-room.
"I think," I said, "that we had better ride over to Trécourt after
the show--not that there's any immediate danger--"
"There is no immediate danger," said Speed, "because she is here."