So my proposition was for the time rejected, but I did not despair. For I knew, or thought I knew, that the absence of the women would relieve us who were fighting the lines of the Château and Factory from an almost intolerable fear. In this respect I now think I was wrong. For the idea of the girls and their mother being entrusted to them to defend, made every man behind the defences hate the enemy with a deep steady hatred. Each became in his own eyes charged with the care of Liz or Hannah, of Rhoda Polly or their mother, according to where, or in what relation of life—sweetheart, sister, or mother—their hearts were tenderest.
Outside the situation changed but slowly. The Committee of Public Safety had taken possession of the Mairie after Keller Bey had been abandoned by his colleagues—and when with Alida he had come forth to make a last effort at conciliation. Except the desperate Chanot, none of the leaders of the Revolt-against-the-Revolt had taken any part in the fighting. Barrès, Chardon, even Bonnot had sat and directed operations from the safe shelter of the Hôtel de Ville.
It was not cowardice, the scoundrels were brave enough, as they showed afterwards—but they had reached what seemed a haven of peace, and the share of the plunder which had been claimed by the "administration" assured them of good restaurant meals and such joyous company as was to be found in Aramon.
Speaking to Chardon, his lieutenant Chanot treated the whole business lightly.
"Why should we not take the best of life we can? It may not be for long," he said, referring to this period. "You people of the Château had taken toll of our numbers. Well, I do not complain. There was the more left for the rest. We had appropriated, and who had a better right to spend? There was no more cant of liberty and individualism among us, and each man being a law and a religion to himself, we stole from one another when we could. That is, if we found a friend's cash-box in a place where a hand might grasp it, we thought how much good it would do him to drink of his own brewing. So we 'individually expropriated' him. That is why Lasalle of St. Gilles was killed by Auroy. Auroy found him mixed up with a roll of bank-notes he had hidden in his mattress. There had been a new election for the Quartier St. Marthe, and as nobody thought of voting, we nominated Eusèbe le Plan who had lost an arm in the fighting and would be a long time in hospital. This made the plums go still farther round."
"The old 'reds'? Oh, they were in the town mostly, hidden in garrets, passing their time like Troppman in reading 'The Picturesque Magazine'" (here he laughed), "and listening for our footsteps and the grounding of our rifle-butts before their doors. They thought we wanted them. What in the devil's name should we want with such feeble, broken, bellowing cattle? They had brought nothing to the office. They had been content with their fifteen pence a day. Not one of them had a sou to rub against another, and their wives hardly knew where the next day's soup was to come from. Oh, yes, I know now, that which had I known then, some blood would have splashed the garden walls—that Dennis Deventer had his own folk among them who distributed money and food. They were his best workmen and it was an agreed thing that when all this had blown over and when we who had turned them out were all shot or beheaded, he should enlist them again, and they would go back in the 'shops' to speak with deference and sobriety as becomes an inferior to his superior!"
* * * * *
I do not mean that there was any regular truce—rather a kind of inaction and exhaustion. The first ardours of the political brigands had been cooled by machine gun practice—Napoleon's old prescription of "the whiff of grapeshot." A good many of this miscellaneous collection of rascals, especially those who had done well in the earlier work of incendiarism among the villas along the riverside, tailed off without crying a warning. They made their way, some to Marseilles, where the troops were just putting down the rule of Gaston Cremieux, some to Narbonne, which was still in the wildest revolt, while others scattered over the country, committing crimes in lonely places, hiding in the forests by day and tramping by night, till for the most part they managed to get themselves out of the country into Germany, Switzerland, or Spain—wherever, indeed, they were least known.
But those who were left behind at Aramon waxed all the more deadly and desperate because of these desertions. If only they had guessed how severe our losses had been, they would have attacked with more vigour than they did, but I think they judged that the "scourging" inflicted upon them by Jack Jaikes had been almost without loss to ourselves. Alas, besides the mound in the Orchard, the double row of graves in the beaten earth of the courtyard told another tale! I do not think anyone ever passed the spot without lifting his hat to Allerdyce and his troop of gallant men, to whom the noble May days and the starry nights of the last days of our siege mattered so little.