Читать книгу A Tatter of Scarlet: Adventurous Episodes of the Commune in the Midi 1871 - Crockett Samuel Rutherford - Страница 3

After a while Deventer and I went back to our joint study, where we essayed to do some work. But mostly we spoke apart, with lips that hardly moved, of our plans and all that lay in liberty-land beyond the walls. Deventer would go nowhere but to his father's house, and though I meant to end up with the red blouse of Garibaldi on my chest, I did not see how I could fail him at such a time.

We had to wait till night, and the time was almost unendurably long. The lines in our text-books which our eyes followed did not bite upon our minds. We were thinking so hard of other things that philosophies slid aside impotent and discomfited.

We began immediately to plan our escape, or at least I planned and Deventer, his great shaggy head on his hands and his eyes tight shut to concentrate thought, gave himself to the task of spotting the weak points.

At the bottom of the junior promenade was a door which opened upon the river, and on the opposite side dwelt a man who owned a skiff. The elders of the upper school used to employ this man, Jules Rameau by name, to ferry them across as often as they had enough money for a secret supper at a cabaret in some shy street. But some ill-paid pion must be bribed to allow the key to be "lifted" from the inside of his door. He must also take care to be in the deepest of sleep when it was returned. But this would not do for us. We were not coming back at all, and we could not allow any wretched usher to be sent about his business on our account.

In our leisure time we had studied the whole of the ground plan of St. André. The school buildings occupied an enormous amount of space, far more than was needed for educational purposes. By sticking to it we made some astonishing discoveries. For instance, after passing through the kitchen, by descending a flight of steps which led to an unoccupied wing, where all sorts of educational rubbish had been accumulated – globes, wall-maps, ancient copy-books with headlines set by hand, and a good bust of the first Napoleon – we reached a clean-smelling, brightly lighted range of offices all set out with tubs, soap, boiling vats, and blue stains which ran over smooth boards.

We had come upon the laundry of the college. On pegs, which ran all round, overalls were hung. There was even a shawl here and there, or a bonnet or two, as it were, flaunting their sex in this temple of the masculine virtues.

Not Crusoe on his island was more astonished when he came on the footprint. For it was not known to any of us, not even to the pions, that a single feminine foot profaned any part of the lycée.

But, whatever our surprise, it did not prevent us from locking the door and extracting the key of one of the range of exits which led out from the fixed washtubs upon the narrow drying ground, a terrace wholly invisible and unsuspected from our quarters on the opposite waterfront of the building.

Of course, Deventer and I said nothing about our discovery. We did not want the whole upper school playing leap-frog through the kitchens, or telling lies as to their conquests among the laundry maids.

It was possible that the lock of the door might be changed immediately, but we considered it more likely that the forewoman or caretaker in charge would say nothing at all about the loss, and trust to the key turning up.

We thought the whole matter well over, and considered it probable that a gate in the wall would be left permanently open to facilitate the comings and goings of the workwomen in the early morning. Such an opening in the wall must lead immediately out upon the main road that wound circuitously up the hill, and by which all stores and provisions were brought to the porter's lodge.

Then we made ready for the trip, laying out our most comfortable and inconspicuous town-going suits to take the place of the brass-buttoned lycée uniform.

With our door carefully locked, we raised a piece of the skirting board of our study and examined our store of arms, a couple of revolvers procured by Deventer in some vague inexplicable way at the works, three packets of ammunition apiece, and a couple of "surins," or long Apache knives – the use of which we had learned from the sous-préfet's son, a youth precondemned to the gallows, who before expulsion had sojourned an eventful and long-remembered three months at St. André.

We profited by his instructions as to guards and undercuts by practising with models whittled in wood. This we were enabled to do in open playground by the simple expedient of calling the exercise legerdemain.

Except what we could carry in our pockets, and the warlike accoutrement mentioned above, we left the whole of our property at the college. At the last minute Deventer packed away a Globe Shakespeare, and I found room for a limp Bagster Bible of small size, which my father had given me.

The clatter of the bedward-driven flocks began to tramp past our study door. The hum of lesson preparation in the schoolrooms ceased. We carefully set our house in order, for it was time for our evening visit from Professor Renard. But he was called "Renard by Name and Renard by Nature" among the Juniors whose small deceits he had the knack of seeing through, even before the explanation was well under way. He was a Jesuit of the newer school, of an educated candour, which seemed natural to our young eyes, and a ready sympathy for our misdemeanours, which made him the most popular professor in the lycée of St. André.

He always tapped at our door before entering. He never listened nor made use of the information of the common school spy. These things counted for much.

"Well, gentlemen," he said, as he came in and sat down in our one arm-chair, "you were too long on the terrace to-day to have a good report of your studies!"

We convinced him to the contrary. For we had always gone on the principle that who does his work early and well has his way made plain for him, and in him a thousand things are overlooked for which a "slacker" would get himself jumped upon.

After he had examined our exercises and approved of them, he looked up at us suddenly from under his overhanging brows.

"You understood what the disturbance was about over there?" he demanded.

"I knew," said Deventer, before I could stop him, "that if my father was left behind with his factories to look after, he would find himself mightily short-handed. He would have only the English staff to support him."

"Ah," said Professor Renard, "you look at it from a personal point of view, as is natural. Your father – "

"I have also a mother and sisters over there – "

"I think I can promise that they will be safe whatever happens to your father. And you can trust to my judgment. By custom and training my class, the clergy of France, parochial and regular, are royalists. The fight over yonder was only tiger eating leopard. The reds of Gambetta's hue were chased out by the deeper scarlet of the Commune. Did you see that flag of theirs to-night, just before sunset? It glowed with the true hell-fire light."

I had been in the habit of arguing in favour of the working men who were to constitute the brain and brawn of the Commune, but to-night I said nothing. Renard did not notice my silence, however, but continued his diatribe.

"We have had Napoleons of victory and Napoleons of disaster – republics of guillotine and republics of veiled Cæsarism. And now we have a third which is a house divided against itself. Listen well, young men – the Bible speaks the truth – it cannot stand. Even now the time for its fall is almost come. The little financier Thiers will pay off the Germans from the chimney-corner hoards of the peasants. Oh, make no mistake, lads, we are beaten as a nation, because we have not obeyed God and His anointed king. The atheist Garibaldi, spoiler of churches and enemy of the Pope, will do nothing for France, except to widen the area over which the German flood will spread. Their armies of Rouen, of the Loire, and of the South-East are condemned in advance. It is as if the Lord of Hosts had said, 'I am against thee, O France! Thou wast once the eldest daughter of the Church. Now thou hast defiled thyself with the unbeliever, with the captains of Assyria, and art become a castaway.'"

He seemed to recall himself. He was speaking as he did in the pulpit. The glow faded from his features. He smiled a little contemptuously at himself.

"I am gabbling like a novice of the first year, and withal to a couple of Protestants," he said, getting up and extending his hands, one to each, as was his habit. "Forgive me!"

Cramming our special themes into his pocket for after-consideration, he went downstairs with a heavy regular tread, and the noisy dormitories hushed at the sound. The Renard could not be taken in with the usual explanation that they had been reciting their prayers. Not till he was safe in his own room did the hum and clatter begin all over again.

It was past midnight before we judged it prudent to begin our descent. Safe of course it was not, nor could ever be. In a school directed by clerical influences, supervision is personal and unceasing. The two of us owed our comparative immunity to our having passed our recent baccalauréat, and to having done honour to the college in the national examinations, but still more to the fact that we were English heretics, whose eternal damnation was assured beforehand, and whose lesser transgressions, therefore, mattered little, so long as they did not flaunt themselves before the pupils, devout, Catholic, and Roman.

There was a faint sufficient light from the southern windows, for the moon was nearly full. The empty class-rooms smelt heavy and sour, and their doors stood open like the portholes of a battery, setting our hearts fluttering. We did not mean to let anything stand in the way of our purpose, but as we had been on good terms with the heads of the lycée of St. André, we did not want any trouble now at the eleventh hour, or rather when for us the time was close on the stroke of twelve.

We passed through the schoolrooms unchallenged. The dormitories were hushed and silent. We could see the dim light of the pions' watch-candles under the doors. We considered that we had passed the zone of danger, and were hurrying forward with less precaution, when a light in the open door of the kitchen pulled us up all standing.

I was lighter than Deventer, so I slipped my shoes and went forward on my stocking-soles to spy out the land.

A "mitron," or cook-boy, was writing a letter to his sweetheart with incredible pains. He wrote with his hands, with his body, with the wrinkles on his brow, and the tongue which stuck out of his mouth, responsively vibrant as a compass-needle to the spirit of his composition.

Here was a pretty pass. We must wait on this white-capped, dirty-aproned rascal who seemed in no hurry to finish his task. He had a file of feuilletons bound in brown paper before him, and he turned over the leaves of these in search of expressions which had pleased him, and which he now desired to appropriate. There seemed no end to his literary zeal, and if he was not hurried morning might come before we could get clear.

Then I remembered that among Deventer's accomplishments was that of being able to imitate the wheezy asthmatic breathing and hollow cough of the proviseur. So I sent him back with instructions to carry out his imitation at the foot of the kitchen stairs.

At the first wheeze and accompanying shuffle of a hand on the smooth wooden stair-rail, out went the "mitron's" candle. I could hear him gathering up his home-bound books of feuilletons, and whisking away his letter paper. I drew back as close to the wall as possible, for I suspected he would pass my way in order to reach his bedroom. I was no more than in time, for he stumbled over my foot, which had been carelessly thrust forward into the passage way. He did not stop to inquire into this, probably thinking that someone had put out their shoes to be cleaned in the morning. It was a narrow escape, for if it had chanced to be the boot-boy instead of an amorous 'prentice-cook we might not have escaped so easily.

Deventer and I crossed the kitchen quickly. The wick of the "mitron's" candle was still smoking red, as we stole down the corkscrew stair which led to the laundry. Everything here smelt strongly of damp clothes and lye, but somewhere a window was open, for the current of air was pronounced, and suggested possible alternative if the lock of our door had been changed.

But in this we were fortunate. The key which I had carried so long in the inner pocket of my jacket turned easily. The door swung noiselessly inwards, and the clean breath of the salt breeze from the Camargue marshes made our faces pleasantly chill and our lips sticky. We locked the door on the outside, and in another minute stood in the roadway, looking back at the great ghostly pile of the Palace of the Monks – as Louis the XIV had called it, when he cut down the plans so that it should not rival in dimensions that "abyss of expenditure" which was Versailles.

But it was no time to stand sentimentalising upon architecture. We turned and went down the vacant white road as fast as our legs would serve us.