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

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."

This was a great disappointment to me, who had thought that an hour would see me inside the walls of the Château Schneider, talking with Mrs. Deventer or sneaking off into the conservatory or out upon the roof with Rhoda Polly for one of our long talks about everything in heaven above and on the earth beneath.

But it was very evident that Keller Bey had made up his mind, and, at any rate, I had galled him too bitterly in the beginning of our conversation to admit of my finishing it by asking a favour. I only shrugged my shoulders and said mockingly:

"Perhaps you would like me to lead your thousand men to Marseilles as well?"

"Indeed," he replied unexpectedly, "I am not sure but that it is an excellent idea – you are a friend of Gaston Cremieux. I could send you as civil delegate without awakening any jealousy among the chiefs of battalion. It is a suggestion which will bear thinking over – certainly not to be lost sight of."

* * * * *

I had many and excellent opportunities of watching Keller Bey in his new character of insurrectional leader during the days which followed. As every one anticipated, his name led the list of the new Commune by many thousands majority. The others came meekly behind, even the Père Félix only emerging from the crowd by a head.

What specially gratified Keller Bey was that no member of the noisy gang of wreckers had been chosen.

"What did I tell you?" he cried, patting me on the shoulder; "our Government is to be a model of firmness and sobriety."

And so it was, as far as Keller Bey could make it. But there remained dangerous elements of which he was ignorant, but which were very clear to Dennis Deventer, who had seen the leaven of evil at work for many years.

On the morrow began the organisation of the services of the new Government. It was a strange installation, and I sat there like a spectator in a good seat at a theatre and watched the play. None of those who were on the stage seemed to have any idea of the ridiculousness of the performance. Only I, outside all wire-pulling, saw the truth. The rest were hypnotised by the wonderful thing which had happened – a Commune at Aramon!

Hour by hour I saw Aramon being cut off from the world. At the first news of the election of a Commune the officials of the post office had disappeared. Piles of letters accumulated on the desks and before the ranged pigeon-holes. Sacks arrived by train so long as these were running, and were heaped in corners. The telegraphic machines were set down where the operators had abandoned them. I amused myself by calling up the different towns in our neighbourhood, but received answers only from Marseilles and Narbonne. The rest had nothing to say to a revolted city like ours. By and by Narbonne was abruptly cut off, probably at Cette or some intervening town favourable to the Government of Versailles.

Half of Keller Bey's time was taken up with such matters as the choice of a new post office staff. Where they came from I cannot imagine, these seekers after office. And their credentials! One highly recommended claimant for the office of receiver of contributions had been expelled by the brutal tyranny of Napoleon from a Tobacco Bureau. He had thereafter languished in prison, not, as he gave Keller to understand, as a political victim, but as a good, solid embezzler of Government money. Yet he was supported by a Commandant of the National Guards, a relative of his own, and but for my chance recognition of him, would doubtless have been appointed.

The post office staff was soon complete – director, assistants, money-order clerks, telegraph clerks, and messengers – postmen for the district town deliveries, postmen for the rural rounds – but after the first solemn sorting of the débris left behind by the old staff, not so much as a letter or a newspaper, to pass from hand to hand, even as a curiosity!

The civil services, the mayoral staff, the judges of the tribunal, judges of the commercial court, Procureur of the Republic and so forth gave a little more trouble. Père Félix was appointed President of the Tribunal, and his good nature and popularity promised easy sentences for the malefactors of Aramon. But they gave him for public prosecutor one Raoux, a little wizened wisp of a man, a shoemaker and bold orator of the bars, who in his readiness of denunciation threw Fouquier-Tinville into the shade, and in irreverence and insolence approached Raoul Rigault himself. Raoux was high in the National Guards, which Keller Bey had not yet begun to recognise as the power behind his throne. Consequently he had a real influence and soon aspired to nothing less than a ministry of justice, both making denunciations and by his authority sending the denounced to prison.

The officers of the city gaol were almost the only ones who remained of the civil servants of the Empire. They were mostly Corsicans, and as their chief Calvi said: "They had come to France to keep prisoners safely." He would give a receipt for each on arrival, and exact a similar receipt on his leaving the Château du Monsieur le Duc. But he would take the same pains with the prisoners of the new Government as with those of the old – and so, since, in fact, no Communard wished to become a turnkey, a garde-chiourme, Calvi and his staff were left in undisputed possession of the Central Prison and House of correction of the department of Rhône-et-Durance.

Some of the happenings were curious. The prisoners within, sentenced to various terms of reclusion and imprisonment under the Empire, found themselves on their release walking about in a world which knew not Joseph. Some were rearrested as spies, but even the vibrant little cobbler Raoux could not break down the excellence of the alibi which they had ready to hand.

Some alarmed good women by asking news of the Emperor, or loudly expressing disbelief in a café when the disasters of the war were hinted at. A ruffianly fellow, excited by his first cup of spirits for some years, offered to fight any man who dared to say that the Germans had entered Paris. So fiercely did he assault the original patriot who had mentioned the fact, that the rest of the party, gathered over their cards and mulled wine in the Café Jacquard, denied one by one that they had ever heard of such a thing. Finally the tyranny of the "nervi" or ticket-of-leave man became so overbearing that it took half a company of National Guards with fixed bayonets to convey him to the "gendarmerie," and from thence, after due committal, to the gloomy prison-house of Monsieur le Duc, from which he had been but three hours released. He had struggled gallantly against bayonet prick and rifle butt. The escort, amateurs at this kind of work, had pitied the few wardens who must handle such a desperado.

But when the first policeman appeared he merely bade the "nervi" lay his thumbs together, and in an instant he was leading the formidable warrior whither he would as submissive and obedient as a child. Calvi was called and came hastily in, donning a uniform coat, and leaving a half-played game of "dames" behind him.

He examined the order of the new Procureur. The stamp was as usual. The signature mattered nothing to Calvi, who looked up at the rioter with a kind of reproach.

"Number 333," he said, with severity, "if you had told us that we were to be honoured with your custom so soon again, you would have saved us the trouble of whitewashing your cell. Take care not to overturn the materials which have been left, make yourself as comfortable as you can to-night, and you can do the rest of the work to-morrow. Good night, gentlemen of the National Guard!"

He should have said "citizens," and every man knew it; but after all he was a miserable child of the Isle of Despots, and besides, no citizen, however loyal, objects to being called a gentleman once in a way.

Keller gave me work to do occasionally. I drafted proclamations and, after rounding the sentences to make them more sonorous, I carried them to the Communal printing office, which did not differ from other printing offices, save that, in the absence of a master, each printer lounged and smoked about the cases, or took himself off to the nearest grog-shop in the intervals of labour. Often I had to work Keller Bey's name for all it was worth, and threaten a guard and the Bastille of Aramon before I could get anything done.

Sometimes, during my long hours of waiting at the printing office of the Commune, I strolled up to the Aramon station. Only a stray lamp-cleaner sat with his legs dangling from the platform and spat upon the quickly rusting rails, looking over his shoulder occasionally to throw a remark to the single Garde National, who, though on duty, had laid his rifle and cartridge-belt upon a luggage-barrow, sought out a pile of "returned empty" sacks of coarse jute, arranged these to his mind, and finally had laid himself down on them, only rolling over occasionally to refill his pipe or to wheel his couch into a shady place or one more convenient for a friendly gossip. On the whole this was the man I liked best. His "relief," a burly fellow from the Hard Stone Quarries above the town, calmly divested himself of his coat, wrapped his feet in his cloak, drew his coat loosely over him, put his head on his knapsack, and slept his watch out on the green velvet cushions of the first-class waiting-room.

Above, the man really responsible, the station-master of Aramon Junction, was supposed to be busying himself with a report of the reopening of the line between Lyons and Marseilles. This news had been brought to Keller Bey by my friend of the travelling bed on the luggage truck. He considered it hard that Monsieur Weyse never came down to patrol the platform and pass the time of day. He yearned for society, and one of the comfortable arm-chairs in the station-master's room would have appealed to him strongly. It was the unseen official's own fault if a man so naturally companionable as he of the luggage-barrow were driven by neglect to prefer a complaint against him.

The expanse of empty quays and innumerable parallels of iron rails preyed on his spirits. He tired of the man who cleaned lamps and sat upon the stone parapet. He had already heard all his opinions, knew where he was going to place his oaths, and scented his grotesque and improper anecdotes afar off – with a sense of loathing because, in addition to all, the lamp-man spat with a regularity and vigour singularly disgustful to a Frenchman, who does not use his tobacco in the "plug" form.

I was sent to interview the station-master as to the famous report. I found him comfortably ensconced at his fireside, his legs embracing one side and the other of the hearth, a huge pile of the complete works of Victor Hugo, the Brussels edition, on a chair by his side. He was fathoms deep in the third volume of "Les Misérables." I never saw a man more enraptured nor one more enviable. I stood and looked at him, a broad, beefy man with a shrewd Scottish countenance. His uniformed coat and gold-broidered cap were neatly placed on a chair behind him. But the man himself, in a long blouse drawn well above his knees, so that he might feel the comforting of the fire, continued his reading without a pause, stirring the logs occasionally with his toe.

I was sorry to interrupt him, but I was resolved to make a friend, for here was a man with a set of Hugo. I had already been at the Municipal Library, but there, the collection dating entirely from the times of the Empire, it of course contained nothing of Hugo's later than "Hernani."

"Your servant, sir!"

Already at a mere waft of my entrance he had sprung to his feet and laid down his book.

"You take me a little by surprise – ah – from Keller Bey? Are you a Communard, young man?"

I reassured him. Keller Bey's family lived with my father across the water in Languedoc. I had been captured and had given my parole, but I was no partisan. I acted as occasional secretary to Keller Bey, that was all.

He shook his head sorrowfully, for I think the verdancy of my youth appealed to him.

"Do not run with the wolves too long or the wolf-hunters may not stop to ask the difference. There is a fable about that – which I have read somewhere – in Perrault or La Fontaine. Take back your parole and get out of Aramon. All this foolishness will go like that – " (he snapped his finger and thumb in the air), "and I only hope that I shall have time to read Hugo once through before I have again to think of a train every five minutes pouring north and south, east and west, through Aramon Junction!"

I put the question of the report as delicately as possible. I have rarely seen a Frenchman laugh more boisterously.

"But I have made no report. Why should I? I have received none and written none. The wires are cut in all directions. I have not a telegraphist on the place. There are my files if you want to look. Everything is going by the branch lines on the other side, but even of that I know only what I can see from my bedroom window, the white steam of trains trailing off among the green woods, and sometimes the dull rumble of a heavily laden goods convoy crossing a bridge. Of positive knowledge concerning railway affairs I have none. I sit and read Hugo and wait for the end of things. The old life will come back soon enough. Meanwhile I am earning my salary, and when traffic opens a pretty sum will be owing to me on the books of the company.

"See here," he said, chuckling, "this is my only report. I will write it before your eyes."

He pointed to a folio which lay open with the day and date, but all else blank. He took a pen and wrote:

"As yesterday – no change. Guards – Caspar and Nolli. Both quiet. Messenger from Communal Government to ask about a report I am supposed to be making. Exhibit this."

"There you are – you can copy that if you like. I give you my word of honour that is all the report I ever write, and that is just enough to prove me on the spot, able for duty, and to claim my pay!"

I told Monsieur Weyse that I would not trouble him further. I should explain the foolish rumour to Keller Bey, and in all things he might count upon me. At the same time if there happened to be any volume of Hugo he was not using – ! Well, he might imagine my gratitude.

He sprang to his feet with a kind of smothered whoop and began to delve among the pile which occupied the chair and slopped over upon the floor.

"Here – here," he explained, "take the first two volumes of "Les Misérables." It is the best of all. I shall read faster than you, for I have nothing else to do, and I keep it up far into the night. Why, my friend, if you come to-morrow, I shall have the third volume ready for you. No, no, don't thank me, but go instead and get your head clear of this noose. This Communist Aramon is going to be no safe place to play unpaid secretary in after a week or two. Those white wreaths of smoke against the Cevennes tell me that. The Company and the Government are working together over there, and when they are ready – it will be good not to be here and in your shoes!"

"But, Monsieur Weyse, you will be here!"

"Ah, that is different! I am a lonely man, and a servant in the way of his duty. Nothing can come amiss to me. Even if either side fortifies the junction buildings – why, I am the station-master acting for the Company. I sit and write my report once a day, and for the rest I read Hugo. Nothing is more simple. But as for you, take an old man's word. You are better anywhere than where you are!"