Samuel Crockett - A Tatter of Scarlet - Adventurous Episodes of the Commune in the Midi 1871

They directed us to follow the outer boulevard which skirted the town, and which should bring us to the Avignon gate without our needing to enter Aramon at all. The younger drew out a small box filled with inkpads and brass tampons , with which he stamped an order that would permit us to pass the opposite gate without annoyance.

Naturally we took the road between the scant white poplars, as it had been indicated to us, and stuck to it faithfully so long as we were in sight of the post at the bridge-end.

Then, at a particularly dark corner where the blank gable of a workshop loomed up to meet the overhanging flange of a fitting-shed, Deventer, who was now on his own ground, slid suddenly aside, and was lost in a devious track along which I had hard work to follow him. I could see his big figure, black against the glimmer of white-washed walls. I stumbled over anvils and heavy gearing scattered about, among which Deventer steered his way with the crafty experience and dainty serenity of a night-raking cat.

From this labyrinth we emerged on innumerable tiny little gardens, with the stubs of cabbages and a few trenches of early vegetables for sole contents. Rickety cane hedges leaning over at every angle surrounded these, and Deventer pushed his way through them with the silent expertness of an Indian on the trail.

Soon we came out on a wide park which was surrounded by a high wall. Deventer made directly for this. He struck it at a spot where a tree had thrust a sturdy limb through a fissure. The crack had been mended with plaster, but perhaps from curiosity, perhaps owing to carelessness, the branch of the tree had been allowed to go on growing. It was easy to swing oneself upon it and so gain the top of the wall.

Deventer and I had made a good straight rush from cover, and flattered ourselves that we should be able to mount unnoticed, but a patter of bullets went buzzing like bees over our heads, while others buried themselves with a sullen "spat" which threw up little fountains of black leaf-mould in the ground at the foot of the wall.

None, however, came our way, and the next moment Deventer and I were crouching among the lean spiky laurels and green-bedripped statues of his father's garden.

"They are besieged," he whispered; "we must be careful. We are not inside yet, and you may be sure they will shoot quite as readily as the insurgent jacks behind there, and with better aim too. Dad kept the English and Americans on the ranges every evening all last summer."

It was I who had the idea this time.

"Lend me your lantern and I will Morse them a message."

"The sentinel may not be able to read it off."

"No, but he will bring someone who can. At any rate let us try."

We established ourselves in an old summer-house at the edge of a pond, with a foolishly rustic door which opened straight upon the front of the house. Our light would be seen only by someone on the balconies, or at the windows of the upper floors. It was entirely dark, of course, but Deventer had no doubt that his father was there with all his faithful forces, "keeping his end up like a good old fighting Derryman," as his son expressed it.

"Hugh – Deventer – and – his – friend – Cawdor – are – down – here. Answer – by – Morse – by – which – door – they – can – enter – the – house."

I had Morsed this message three times before any notice was taken from within, and I had begun to give up hope. There must be nobody inside Château Schneider, as the place was called. But Deventer was far more hopeful.

"They have gone to waken my father," he whispered. "You see, they daren't do anything in these parts without the old bird. He is quite a different man from the one you saw poking about among your father's books, or drinking in his wisdom. Here he makes people do things. Try her again."

It was tedious work, but I flashed the whole message over again, according to the Morse code. This time the reply came back short and sweet.

"What – the – devil – are – you – doing – there?"

"That's Dad," said Hugh Deventer triumphantly. "Now we shall catch it."

I answered that having seen the soldiers retreat, we had come to help.

"Did – anybody – send – word – that – you – were – wanted?" twinkled the point of fire somewhere high among the chimney-stacks on the roof. These were a rarity in a district where one chimney for a house is counted a good average, but after one winter's experience of the windy Rhône valley, Dennis Deventer had refused to be done out of an open fireplace in every room.

Now he reaped the fruit of his labours, for in summer he had sat behind his low wall and taken the air of an evening, and now it needed little to convert the chimney-stacks on the flat roof of his house into reliable defences.

It was difficult to say in slow Morse alphabetage what we were doing down in the old summer-house, but at least I managed to convey that we had run the insurgent pickets and were in danger of being captured.

We got our reply quickly enough.

"Hugh – knows – the – door – under – the – main-outer – staircase."

"Of course," said Hugh, "I always went in that way when my feet were dirty. Come on!"

And we hurried across the sward, keeping between a sundial and fountain-basin railed about, into which half a dozen copper frogs sent each a thin thrill of water, with a sound quite unexpectedly cheerful and domestic thus heard in the darkness of the night.

This time there was no clatter of firing behind us. The sharpshooters of the insurrectionaries had learned a lesson of caution near the house of the manager of the Small Arms Factory. Dennis Deventer had been training his assistants and lieutenants the whole year at movable butts. He had rigged up a defile of six men-shaped figures which passed in front of a firing party, or, bent forward in the attitude of men running, dashed one by one across the men's field of vision as they lay at the firing line.

Hugh Deventer and I took for our goal the great double flight of steps, broad as a couple of carriage ways, which in the style of the Adams architecture united in front of a debased Corinthian portico at the height of the first floor windows of the Château.

"What, Jack Jaikes!" cried Hugh to the grinning young man who opened the door for us.

"Aye, just Jack Jaikes same as yesterday, and eh, but the chief is going to leather ye properly afore he sends ye back to school."

"But we are not going to school any more!"

"Maybe not – maybe not, but in this house we mostly go by what the master says. 'Tis more comfortable like all round. Eh, but ye have come in time to be leathered proper. If the lads of the Internationale yonder had been brisk at the firing ye might have gotten off, but as it is the auld man has nothing better to do than attend to ye on the spot!"

This made me a little uncomfortable as to our reception, but Deventer did not seem greatly disturbed.

"You tell me where my sisters are, and then go and find somebody else who will believe your lies, Jack Jaikes!"

The dark young man with the large hands grinned still more.

"Where should the three young ladies be at this time of night but in their beds? Go and take your dose, young gentlemen. No use stopping to think it over. In an hour, maybe, the worst of the sting will be by with – and at any rate there are sofas in the parlour!"

"Get out, Jack Jaikes! Hannah and Liz may be in bed, but I warrant that Rhoda Polly is somewhere on the look-out with a gun ready."

"Correct!" admitted Jaikes, with a chuckle. "I saw her at the window just over this old stone staircase a minute before t'owd man shouted the order for me to let you in."

"Come on then, Cawdor," Hugh cried; "let's find Rhoda Polly!" He ran upstairs as fast as he could, anxious to find his sister before having the first interview with his father. For though he knew that Jack Jaikes had been lying, he could not be sure on what basis of fact so much imagination reposed.