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

CHAPTER XX
I PLAY "THREE'S COMPANY"

I met Rhoda Polly by arrangement made openly on a post card, which could be discussed in conclave and passed from hand to hand. I should be walking over to the restaurant of Mère Félix, and as the river Durance was in flood it might be worth while seeing. The day I mentioned, Saturday, was generally chosen by Hannah and Liz for their private outings, and I judged that the project would be unlikely to interest them in any case, not even if the Durance swept the plain, so long as the railway to Aramon remained open to them, by which to bring home their finery. Hugh was back with his father in the works, and Mrs. Deventer might be counted a fixture at the Château Schneider.

Remained, therefore, only Rhoda Polly, but would Rhoda Polly come? That would depend on how Hugh Deventer had kept his promise to me. Still, I thought that in any case, there being no jealousy in the matter, I could trust Rhoda Polly's curiosity in the matter of Jeanne Félix. It must be admitted that in taking her over to the Restaurant of Sambre-et-Meuse I was sailing very near indeed to the wind. For though my conscience (such as it was) remained clear of any overact of love-making with regard to Rhoda Polly, it was by no means the same when I came to review my dealings with Jeanne. Not that I mean for a moment that Jeanne thought anything of the matter, or cherished any deep feelings for me. She was no daughter of the sainted bourgeoisie. She was frankly of the people, and had not been educated out of her sphere. She was just a simple frank girl, such as one might find by Dee or Nithwater, not ignorant of the world, nor of the designs of man, and for a French girl wonderfully capable of looking after herself.

Still, whether Jeanne was capable of recognising in Rhoda Polly a mere comrade of mine after the manner of the English, was a problem which could only be solved by experiment.

Rhoda Polly met me at the corner of the garden of the Château Schneider about half-past ten of that Saturday morning. The works were crashing away behind, and the new big gun factory especially was noisy with roaring blast furnaces and spitting jets of white steam.

We did not shake hands nor make any demonstration beyond the lifting of a hat on my part and a slight nod on Rhoda Polly's. We might have been the merest acquaintances, yet no sooner were we alongside each other, walking on the same path, than the old understanding, trustful and confident, took hold of us. The spring on the slopes of the Rhône and the Durance comes early, and is the fairest time of the year. On the sandy tracts between the rivers we passed a world of fine things. The whole peninsula, almost correctly V-shaped, had been so often overflowed by the turbulent Durance that the permanent shrubs, the bushes of broom, thyme, and cistus had ascended the little rocky knolls which could keep their heads above water. But where our path wound was a delightful wilderness of alternate sun and shadow, black umbrageous stone pines, laurel, myrtle, and clove, planted out as in a nursery garden, yet all wild, the seeds brought down by the river, and now (like Shem and his brothers scattering from Ararat) true Children of the Flood.

On the way Rhoda Polly ran hither and thither gathering flowers. With us at Aramon the spring is well under way before the autumn flowers are tired of blooming. She gathered purple colt's-foot and orchis, yellow iris and goats' honeysuckle. Troops of butterflies attended us, especially the Red Admiral and the swift poising Humming Bird Moth, some of them so large as to look like the bird itself. Even Bates on his beloved Amazon was deceived by it, as I took care to tell Rhoda Polly.

We arrived at the edge of the crossing, and from the bank I shouted for Jeanne to take us over. She came down tall and nonchalant, an oar over her shoulder, unlocked the padlock and rowed unconcernedly across. She stood to help Rhoda Polly in, and then handed me the bow oar as was our habit like one long accustomed to such visits. I delayed introductions till we had reached the farther side. Rhoda Polly gave Jeanne her hand with the swift grip of liking. But I saw a glow in Jeanne's eyes as she took the oar away from me and marched with them both over her shoulder to the house.

"Mademoiselle Deventer, mother," she cried, "come to visit us. Monsieur has brought her – so kind of Monsieur!"

And Jeanne vanished round the corner with a kind of swirl of her pretty figure, the oar-blades swooping perilously after her.

"I say," whispered Rhoda Polly, "that girl has never worn stays. Did you see her waist and hips when she turned – a full half circle? None of us, pinched-up wretches that we are, could do that! It was beautiful, the poetry of motion."

I did not say so aloud, but I knew that it was something quite different on Jeanne's part – in fact, a little fling of temper. And with the thought of opening out the matter of Alida on the way home, I began to wish that Rhoda Polly and I had taken another road than that which led to the riverside hostelry of the Sambre-et-Meuse.

Mère Félix was clamorous with welcomes, smiling heartsomely upon the daughter of the powerful manager of her husband's works, and quite willing to accept me as an elderly relative placed in charge of the outing. In which she made mistake, for nothing is more certain that all such expeditions were conducted according to the sole will of Rhoda Polly.

We arranged for lunch to be served under the tonnelle overlooking the river, and I stayed in the kitchen along with Mère Félix and the moon-faced maid-of-all-work. It was in my mind that perhaps Rhoda Polly might strike up one of her friendships with Jeanne, or at least do something to explain away the rather strained situation. Nor did I seem to be altogether wrong, for presently I saw the two girls amicably putting a boat to rights after a night's fishing in the flooded river. They were too distant for me to gather anything from their behaviour to one another. But presently it was evident that Rhoda Polly was talking in her wild harum-scarum fashion, for Jeanne threw back her head suddenly with a tinkle of laughter and a flash of brown throat showing pleasantly under a scarlet kerchief. I said in my heart – so vain and foolish was I – that the battle was to the cunning, and I thought no small potatoes of myself at that moment.

I soon found, however, that Jeanne, though she might laugh at Rhoda Polly's freely expressed yarns, had no intention of forgiving me. If Rhoda Polly was heart-free, that was certainly not my fault.

So when they came back to the house I tried in vain to inveigle Jeanne behind the barns where the fish-ponds lay safe and solitary, so that I might explain at my leisure. But it was "Monsieur is too good, but a poor girl has her work to do. She has no time to go off sightseeing of a forenoon even with so charming a cicerone as Monsieur!"

The little vixen! She tossed her head as she said it, and I declare that her small white teeth snapped together like a rat-trap. When I spoke to her after this, she answered me only with the distant civility of a well-trained servitor: "What can I do for Monsieur? If Monsieur will only take the trouble to rest himself in the salle while I send Babette to attend to his wants!" (Babette was the moon-faced, rather besmutted scullion of the kitchen and the courtyard.)

"Why, Jeanne," I cried, seeing that Rhoda Polly was at a safe distance learning the receipt for some sauce or dish from the Mère Félix, "Jeanne, why do you treat me like this? Are we not old comrades? Do you remember the day among the reeds after the boat went down and we had to tramp all the way home barefoot? I wrapped your feet in our handkerchiefs, Jeanne, because you had lost your shoes and stockings in the boat."

"I do not know to what Monsieur is good enough to refer. I think that the walk in the sun from Château Schneider must have made Monsieur a little light-headed!"

Of course if I had been wiser or older I would have said nothing more, and left Time to do his own perfect work. But I could not be content. I forgot all about Alida, and it seemed to me at that moment that nothing else mattered so long as Jeanne Félix remained friends with me. I have always been like that, and I cannot say that the business has worked out badly in the long run. No matter what a tangled web I wove, I always managed in the end to retain the good will of my dear lost loves, even when the losing was entirely my fault.

The thought that was most prominent in my own mind at that moment was how pleasant it would be to obey the imperious rule of Alida the Princess on the sunny slopes below St. André, without prejudice to the charming boy-and-girl comradeship I enjoyed with Rhoda Polly on the walks and river promenades of Aramon-les-Ateliers – neither of these to interfere in the least with the sweetness of Jeanne's breath and the touch of her surrendered lips in the bosky thickets along the Durance.

The young male of twenty-one has a heart which can beat for considerably more than one. At least so it was in my time.

It surprised me, and I must admit rather shocked me, when Jeanne of all girls refused to lend herself to any such combination. I might have dotted the twin rivers with my loves and Rhoda Polly would not have cared, but such conduct from Jeanne Félix I could only look upon as highly unsatisfactory. I had never expected it of Jeanne. It would teach me to walk very warily in the matter of Alida. Foolish Jeanne, thus to have killed the pure flower of candour in my bosom!

I made a last appeal to her, which to myself seemed irresistible. There was (I averred) a relationship in the world which might be called real brother-and-sisterhood, a fraternity of the spirit. This existed between Rhoda Polly and myself. We had always been conscious of it. When we played in pinafores in the dust we chose to be together, and left the others to their noisier sports. Afterwards we studied the same subjects at college – she at Selborne, I at St. André. We compared notes afterwards. We talked, but Jeanne must not think that there was more in the business than that. I could, would, must, and did assure her that the whole matter began and ended in a close spiritual brotherhood —

"Spiritual fiddlestick!" burst out Jeanne, turning fiercely upon me. "Have you ever kissed her?"

Now I could lie upon occasion to oblige a lady, but the question was shot out at me so unexpectedly that my lips moved but I spake not.

Jeanne eyed me one instant, with a length, breadth, and depth of contempt which cut to the quick even my self-conceit, at that time a young and exceedingly healthy growth. Then without a word she turned on her heel and went into the house. We saw no more of her that day. And when Rhoda Polly asked after her to say good-bye as we were leaving, the Mère Félix, after taking counsel with a casual stable-boy, informed us that Jeanne had rowed away up the river to visit a friend whose father kept a pépinière or nursery of young trees at Cabannes farther up the Durance. Yes, Jeanne was often there. She and Blanche Eymard had been at school together. It was an old friendship. Besides, there was more company and gaiety at Cabannes – what would you, maids are but young once, and with a daughter so "sage" as Jeanne – why, Père Félix and she never disquieted themselves for a moment. She sometimes stayed a week or a fortnight, for she loved the culture of the young trees and the flower seeds. The work at the pépinière was like a play to her with so many young people about her!

CHAPTER XXI
THE GOLDEN HEART OF RHODA POLLY

I admit that I was gloomy and disappointed as I turned to walk back with Rhoda Polly – disappointed in the turn things had taken, in the ill success of my cherished diplomacy, and especially disappointed in the desertion of Jeanne, who had carried what ought at least to have been a broken heart, to the consolation of a newer and gayer place where doubtless young men abounded, as full of admiration and eagerness to please as I had been – well, any time these last two years.

It did not strike me at the time that I was only a vain young fool, whose corns had been most deservedly trampled upon, and that here was the lesson which of all others would benefit me the most.

It was therefore in a most humbled and chastened frame of mind that I opened out to Rhoda Polly the vexed and difficult problem of Alida. Perhaps it was well that I was still suffering from the rods with which Jeanne had chastised me. For, had I begun on the way towards the Restaurant Félix, when I was rampant and haughty of crest, I might not have made my points so well.

But for once I forgot my silly self, and devoted all my energies to pleading for Alida. I painted her solitary condition, and the unlikelihood that, if she (Rhoda Polly) refused to help her, she would find any other friend of her rank in Aramon.

"Why, of course I will!" cried Rhoda Polly the golden-hearted; "why did it ever get into your stupid old noddle that I would not? And so will the rest – specially mother, who will be the most useful of us all. She has never had any mother, really, this Alida of yours! Oh, of course, your Linn has done her best, but then, you see, she knew she was a princess, and from early association Madame Keller would be little more than a servant. Oh, I shall understand, never fear. Mother will be as grand a dame as she is, and I – well, I shall be the daughter of the Great Emir of the Aramon Small Arms Factory. I wish she had been coming to stay with us – but no, it is better as it is. The Garden Cottage! – Think of it, what a Princess of the Sleeping Woods she will make. We are too noisy. But why did Hugh never tell us? I should have thought he would simply have raved about such a marvel. But he has been as silent as mumchance!"

"Forgive me. I wanted to tell you myself," I said, still humbly; "it was very good of Hugh, but I really could not let anyone else tell you, and it seemed so hard to get hold of you these days – I mean without your fighting tail."

"The fighting tail have gone off to-day to rustle chiffons," cried Rhoda Polly; "but never mind them! Tell me about this Princess from the East. I never thought I should see one, yet I once saw her father, a patch of white on the high promenade at Amboise, the year that Dad took me with him for company. He was bringing out a new carbine for the Cavalry School at Saumur on the Loire. So it was from there that we went one day to see the great man."

Then I told Rhoda Polly about the brown prince of the Khedival house, his visit and the answer he had carried back.

"Of course she could not," she cried, all on fire in a moment. "It would be like imprisonment for life, only far more dreadful."

Rhoda Polly's eyes, unused to untimeous moisture, were at least vague and misty, but that might only be because she was looking into the blue distance towards the Alps of Mont Ventoux.

"Poor precious waif," she said, "if she is wayward and a little difficult – who can wonder? We shall all try hard to make her happy. We will come and pay court to her in the garden."

I explained that a girl who had been a music mistress to the exigent Sous-Préfectoral dames and other ladies of Autun, might not be so difficult to deal with as she seemed to expect. It was only Keller Bey and Linn who, if spoiling had been possible, had spoilt her ever since she came to them as a little child, the charge committed to them by their master, the battle Emir of the Atlas.

"Oh," cried Rhoda Polly, hardly able to curb her feet to a decent walk, "how mean it will be if they stop Keller Bey's money, and that wretch of an old Emir getting so much from the Government. I wish I did not spend every centime of my allowance without ever knowing where it goes to! But at any rate I mean for the future to share with Alida if she will let me."

I explained how from what Keller had told me Alida would have enough to live upon even if they never saw another sixpence of her father's money. Also I described what my father was doing to the Garden Cottage to fit it for their coming.

"Oh, do let me come and help. Ask your father. I should love to! And I should have far more idea than a man. I could get mother to come too, sometimes, though you know how loath she is to move far out of her own house. Still, she could drive over."

Never was there so short a walk as that between the pier above Mère Felix's and the gate of Château Schneider. Rhoda Polly was so eager that she would have gone right across the river there and then, and climbed the hill to Garden Cottage, if I had not insisted on delivering her to her mother, and generally giving an account of my stewardship.

Before going in, however, I warned her that the secret of Alida the Princess must be kept. It was only for herself. To the rest of the family she must be Mademoiselle Keller, the daughter of Keller Bey and his wife Linn.

The need to keep so great a matter secret seemed to damp the girl's enthusiasm for a moment, but almost instantly she caught me by the hand in her impulsive boyish way.

"I promise," she said, "and you are quite right. It was splendid of you to tell me. I am so grateful for that."

"Of course I told you, Rhoda Polly. Who else could I have told?"

She meditated a little, finger on lip before speaking.

"Do you know it is rather a pity not to tell mother," she said at last. "She does not interfere, but she moderates and eases off the hard places. She has a great deal of influence in a quiet way – more than any-one – and she would never tell a soul. I really think that it would do Alida more good than anything else to have mother on our side from the first. We are all trumpeters like father (except perhaps Hugh, who is not like any of our brood), but it is mother who tells the trumpets when to stop sounding."

I assured Rhoda Polly that she could do as she thought best in the matter. Mrs. Deventer was all she said and more. She possessed, besides, a pleasant quality of motherhood that glinted kindly through her spectacles. Then, of course, Rhoda Polly knew best. All that I wanted to avoid was having the secret which had been entrusted to me being battered about in the daily brawls of the Deventer family – still less did I wish that it should get abroad to set talking the commonplace gossips of the town.

"Ah, mon ami," said Rhoda Polly, "you need not fear my mother. She knows the secrets of every one of us, I think – except perhaps Hugh's, who is too young to have any – and yet when we girls come to confide some tremendous fact to each other, we are astonished to find that mother has known it all the time."

CHAPTER XXII
IN THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW

Garden Cottage was occupied on the eleventh of March, 1871. For several days before that, the great discharging lorries lent by Mr. Deventer had toiled up the hill, the four stout horses leaning hard on the collar and their drivers ready to insert the wheel-rest at every turning.

Ever since this time began, Rhoda Polly had almost lived at our house, and she it was who had done the ordering of all the strange Oriental furnishings, partly from her own taste and partly from questioning me as to the arrangement of the different rooms I had seen at Autun.

Mrs. Deventer came across the bridge every day in her little blue Victoria – taking a peep in at us in the morning and hurrying back to tend her flocks, but in the afternoon, stopping over tea till she could drive a rather soiled Rhoda Polly home, as it were a much ruffled chick under a motherly wing. For indeed Rhoda Polly spared neither man nor beast, least of all did she spare herself. A tack-hammering, painting and varnishing, cellar-to-garret Rhoda Polly pervaded the house, swooping upon all and sundry and compelling strict attention to business among the much-promising, little-performing tradesmen of Aramon.

My father had already done his part, for he was a man who could not endure the chill mistral of the Rhône valley. Every room which had a chimney was equipped above with a wind shield, and beneath with steel andirons, beside which the cut faggots lay ready piled. The chambers without chimneys had been fitted with porcelain German stoves, the pipes of which bristled like lightning-rods along the roof ridges, and in the hall a great open fire-place shone with brass and copper, the spoil of an ancient Spanish monastery condemned in 1835 by Mendizabal, prime minister and Jew share-broker. What wonder if Rhoda Polly went home dishevelled and not over clean, but full of excitement and ready to battle for her new fad with the family at Château Schneider. Once there her mother plumped her into a hot bath, and after a smart douche to close the pores, Rhoda Polly came down literally as fresh as paint, to do battle for her new enthusiasms.

Hannah and Liz Deventer came once or twice to see what it was all about, but as they would not help, but only went round accumulating brickbats to pelt Rhoda Polly with later in the day, on the second occasion that capable young woman turned them both out vi et armis, though she must have weighed a good third less than Hannah.

The girls went good-humouredly enough, and having found my father talked with him in the Gobelet garden, by the old sundial which bore the arms of a former Marquis de Gallifet, and a date which commemorated the visit of Mesdames de Grignan and de Sevigné during the governorship of the former's husband.

Gordon Cawdor, my father, pleased all women, and I must admit most men – though up till now I had not been able to allow him the full measure of my sympathy or admiration. To do him justice he did not seem in the least conscious of the need of these, so long as I behaved decently and did my duty at school and college.

He was a man wonderfully stoical about the modern lack of filial recognition, no doubt saying to himself, as I came to do later, that the bringing up of sons was a poor business if one looked for direct returns on the capital and labour expended. But he never complained, and must, I think, have been finally and lastingly astonished when the long-barren fields of my filial piety ripened of themselves.

At any rate I began to know him better during these days. I marked his gentle ways, his enormous reading and erudition, never flaunted, never refused, never at fault. He had already finished his part of the work at the Garden Cottage, so he sat either in his study with the tall French window on the hasp ready to a visitor's hand – or, if the sun shone and the mistral was stilled, out on the broad wooden bench by the fish pond, a volume in his hand to read or annotate when alone – but quite ready to drop it into the pocket of his velvet jacket, and turn the gaze of his gentle scholarly eyes upon whomsoever had come forth in need of society or soul refreshment.

I learned a lesson in those days – to know how other people estimated my father. Of course, I had seen Dennis Deventer drinking in the knowledge he felt the lack of, as from a fountain. I knew what Professor Renard and the Bey thought of him. Yet, after all, these were men of Gordon Cawdor's own age and stamp.

But when I saw the fine sweet house-motherliness of Mrs. Deventer sitting at my father's feet and talking confidentially yet with respect, the thing seemed to me strange. I have seen her finish the review and arrangement of a series of china and napery closets, the laying down of fresh papers in chests of drawers, or the ordering of knick-knacks gathered in the Bey's campaigns. Then she would throw a fold of black Spanish lace over her pretty grey hair, always shining and neat – and so, without explanation or apology, hie herself out to find my father.

"A talk with him is my refreshment!" she said once when she came back and laid the folded lace scarf down beside the work she was next to attack. More than once I had passed them speaking low and earnestly, and I am sure she was consulting him about some intimate affairs of which she had spoken to no one else.

Or it was the turn of Rhoda Polly and her procedure was different. She would remove the provision of tin-tacks, French nails, or whatnot from her mouth, her habitual ready receptacle, throw a wisp or two of rebellious ripe-corn hair back from her brow, and demand to be told if there were any very bad smuts on her face! When she presented her handkerchief or the hem of her apron to me I knew from long experience what was expected of me. I was to remove the offending smuts from Rhoda Polly's face with the oldest and most natural of cleansers, exactly as we had done to one another when the dinner bell or the voice of authority called us from some extra grubby tree-climbing or mud-pie making experiment in the days when the world was young.

"Spell ho!" Rhoda Polly would cry; "had enough this one time. I am off to talk to your father. He does me good."

And now when the other Deventer girls, the stately swan-necked Hannah and the Dresden shepherdess of a dainty Liz, being expelled for "shameless slacking" and "getting in everybody's way," took their road with happy expectant faces to the bench by the sundial, I knew in my heart for the first time that I would never so add to the happiness of humanity as that gentle refined scholarly man who was my father.

To my shame I took a cast about the garden, and from the top of a ladder looked down upon the trio in an unworthy and wholly ungentlemanly way. I did not mean to overhear – of course not – but I overheard. My only excuse is that I was in a quandary. I knew that I had somehow been all wrong about my father, and I wanted to find out how I could put matters right. Hannah was seated on the bench beside him, listening and looking down, making diagrams meanwhile in the gravel with the point of her en-tout-cas, a sort of long-handled parasol sent from Paris.

Liz had characteristically pulled one of the little stools called "banquettes" from under the sundial, and had seated herself between my father's knees. She had taken her hat off and now leaned her elbow on his knee looking up into his face.

He was telling them about maidens of old times, how the Lesbia of Catullus looked and dressed, how he and she idled the day by the length a-dream in a boat in the bays about Sirmio. He quoted Tennyson's delicious verses to them, and they promised to look them up that night.

"If it were not that Rhoda Polly knows so much, I should begin Latin this very day," said Liz; "but she is such a swell that she can always come down on a fellow. She thinks we know nothing!"

"I know I don't," said Hannah, "except how to walk and dance and behave at table."

"No, that last you don't," retorted Liz Deventer; "you were far the noisiest (mother said so) in our last big family fight!"

"Well, I mean I can do these things when I like, Silly!" said Hannah, unmoved.

The hand of my father descended slowly. It had been raised to mark the rhythm of Olive-silvery-Sirmio! It now rested on the curly brown locks of Liz Deventer. He ceased to speak, and then suddenly with a sigh he said, "I envy Dennis. I have a good son – yes, a good son," he repeated with emphasis, "but I should have liked a daughter also. There is a side of me she would have understood."

Instantly the girls had their arms about his neck, and I hastily descended my shameful ladder, leaving behind me a chorus of "We will be your daughters – Rhoda Polly too – mother too – she thinks – "

But I got out of earshot as fast as might be, quite chopfallen and ashamed. I had not been a good son, whatever Gordon Cawdor might say – I knew it. I had held him lightly and withheld what others found their greatest joy in giving him – my confidence. It was no use saying that he never invited it. No more had he invited that of Mrs. Deventer, or of the girls – or, what touched me more nearly, that of Rhoda Polly herself.

At last the great day came, and by the same train which had brought the Bey on his errand of inspection the three new tenants of the Cottage arrived. The Bey looked military and imposing as he stood over the baggage counter. Linn, tall and gaunt in unbroken black, accepted my father's arm smilingly almost at the first sound of his voice. He showed her through the narrow shed-like waiting-rooms to the carriage in readiness outside. Mrs. Deventer had received Alida into her arms as she descended from the carriage, and was now cooing over her, watched hungrily by Rhoda Polly, who wearied for her turn to come.

It struck me that Alida was not looking quite so well as usual. It had cost her more than I thought to disobey her father – more afterwards perhaps than at the time. For among those of her blood, the servitude of woman goes with heredity, and the culture of Europe, though it may render obedience impossible, does not kill the idea of parental authority. "Though he slay me, yet shall I trust in him!"

But when Alida greeted me, I knew in a moment that though the battle had been sore, the victory was won. There would be no looking back.

"What, Angoos, mon ami, have I all those friends already? I owe them all to you!"

I took Rhoda Polly's hand, and put it into the gloved fingers of the little Princess.

"Not to me, dear Alida," I said, "but to this girl; she has, as you shall find, a heart of gold."

Alida kept the strong roughened fingers in hers, and looked deep into the eyes of Rhoda Polly as if to read her inmost soul.

"I shall remember that, Angoos," she said; "that is a beautiful thing when it is said in the language of my own country. It sings itself – it makes poetry. Listen!

"'Rhoda Polly of the Golden Heart – Heart of Gold, how true is my maiden!' Wait, I will sing it for you in Arabic – "

But suddenly, no one knew why, the female heart being many stringed and unaccountable, even to me, Rhoda Polly was crying – yes, Rhoda Polly the dry-eyed, and who but Alida was comforting her under the stupid gaze of hangers-on about the station of Aramon!