A Tatter of Scarlet Part 11

She spoke in French, and the words had not the same sound as in English.

Something gay and Rhoda Polly-ish rang cheerfully in my heart.

"Really you should not swear!" said I. "What would Miss Balfour-Lansdowne say to that at Selborne College?"

"Oh, sometimes we said a good deal worse than that on the hockey ground, or in the heat of an argument. Besides, if you did not want to hear, you need not have followed me."

"Rhoda Polly," I said, "you know that I followed you because you made me a signal that you wanted to talk to me."

"Yes, I know," owned up Rhoda Polly, who scorned concealment. "Well, what have you to tell me now that you are here? I let you go just now and unbosom yourself to the Paternal without complaining. That was only playing the game, but certainly you owe it to me to stand and deliver as soon as you got clear."

"Well, and here I am, Rhoda Polly--which will you have--plain narrative--question and answer--the Socratic method, or a judicious mixture of the two?"

I knew the inquiry would resolve itself into the latter. Rhoda Polly went on with the potting of her Alan Richardson, biting her under lip at critical points, but ever and anon flas.h.i.+ng a pertinent query at me over the boxes of mould without once raising her head.

With the exception of my talks with Jeanne and the harmless little philandering we had indulged in to pa.s.s the time, I confided the whole of my day's adventures to Rhoda Polly. I told her also of the permission that her father had given that Hugh should go north and join the new armies with me.

Then at last Rhoda Polly did lift her eyes with a vividness of reproach in them.

"You cannot find enough to do here?" she said. "You trust these men at the works? I tell you they are not to be trusted. I know them better than either you or my father, I have heard their women-folk talking, and I know what they mean to do."

"I know what they _say_ they mean to do," I retorted. "I also have heard them in their cups, but it is only folly and emptiness."

"Do not be too sure," she said, patting the flowerpot round the edges and squinting down at it as if it were a work of art symmetrically finished. "I warn you we may need you here sooner than you think, and then Gaston Cremieux may not be so friendly as he is to-day."

I asked her why, but she only bent more over her work and shook her head. It had been clear to me from Cremieux's questions that he was in love with Rhoda Polly, and now from Rhoda Polly's prophecy of his future unfriendliness that she had made up her mind to reject him. But, in the meantime, it was my clear duty to go on and do what I could in the army.

We could not hope to defeat the Germans, but at least every additional man in the ranks added to the chance of withstanding them. If we could only hold them at bay till the politicians did their work, all this peaceful Southland would be spared the horrors of war and the more wearing pains of occupation and pillage.

I said this to Rhoda Polly and she could not help agreeing. Her a.s.sent, however, came from her clear head and trained intelligence, but her heart was still unconvinced that Hugh and I ought to go, leaving that houseful of women in Chateau Schneider. All this was perhaps natural enough, and certainly it made me feel warmer within to know that Rhoda Polly would regret me.

"I owe you a grudge," she said, as she stood up and rubbed the black crumbly mould briskly from her hands, "for without you we should at least have had Hugh. He would never have thought of going by himself."

Rhoda Polly had finished with her roses. She set out the boxes in a row, and then stood up facing me. Her eyes were steady and level like a man's--I mean a man of the North. They did not droop and flutter like Jeanne's at the Ferry. Her breast did not heave nor her full throat swell. The pent-up emotion in Rhoda Polly's bosom found no such commonplace feminine vents. Only the firm lines about her mouth betrayed her, and perhaps a certain moist luminousness of eye.

"I would not hinder you, Angus Cawdor," she said steadily, "let a man do what he knows he ought. But at least you owe it to me to come back the very day the war is over. It is not till then that the storm here will break. I have it from the women. They advise us to go out of the country, but I have a better plan in my head. You must be here to help me carry it out."

"I shall be here, Rhoda Polly, if I get through all right!"

"If you get through all right----?" The words fell uncertainly.

"If I live, Rhoda Polly."

"Ah, if you live," repeated the girl, mechanically holding out her hand.

And even as I looked, the bold bright look in her eyes was dimmed, as a pool greys over with the first coming of a breeze.

And thus I took my real farewell of Rhoda Polly. There was some of the black mould on my fingers as I went over to the shops to search for Hugh Deventer.

CHAPTER XIII

WE SEEK GARIBALDI

Hugh Deventer and I reached Orange only to hear that the recruiting parties of the Garibaldians had gone away north. But on the railway, hundreds of wagons laden with supplies were moving in the same direction, and with the conductors of these we made what interest we could.

We showed the letter we had brought from Gaston Cremieux, but these were men of the Saone and Isere, who had never heard of the agitator. But Hugh's willing help during heavy hours of loading and "trans.h.i.+pment,"

and perhaps also the mult.i.tude and flavour of my tales of Scotland, gained us a footing.

From them we heard with pride of what had already been done by Garibaldi, with such wretched material, and how the great Manteuffel himself, in his dispatches, had allowed the excellence of Garibaldi's tactics.

What we were most afraid of was that the whole war would be over before we got a chance. The men of the Isere, however, who on the strength of six months' campaigning considered themselves veterans, laughed scornfully at our young enthusiasms. They would march. They would fight.

But as for beating the Germans in the long run it was impossible. That time had gone by when Bazaine had let himself be locked up in Metz.

"All we can do is to help the Republic to get out of the mess with some credit!" said a tall sergeant who sat in the open door of a bullock wagon. And the others agreed with him. They were on tenterhooks to know why we English should be so eager to take up their quarrel. The thousand Italians they could understand. They came because Garibaldi did, touched by the glory of his name, but we English--what had we to do with the affair?

Me they suspected of Southern blood from my quick slimness and swarthy colour, but Deventer was a joy to them. "That Englishman!" they cried, and laughed as at an excellent jest. His big hearty blundering ways, his ignorance of military affairs kept them perpetually on the grin. But when they saw him strip and repair a cha.s.sepot with no more tools than a pocket screw-driver and a nail file, they changed the fas.h.i.+on of their countenances. Hugh was not the son of Dennis Deventer for nothing.

Presently we found ourselves privileged stowaways, whirling in the direction of Lyons, protected by these good fellows, who hid us carefully from the rounds of inspection which visited the wagons at every stopping place. Mostly, however, no severe examination was made, and the word of the sergeant was taken that all was right inside.

But as soon as the train slackened speed we sprang on a shelf which ran along one end of the wagon, and there lay snug behind a couple of bags of potatoes.

At last, near Civry, a little town on the foothills of the Cote d'Or, we were abruptly ordered down.

It was a dark night and raining as we set our noses out. We would much rather have remained behind the potato sacks, but there was no help for it. Out we must come along with the rest, for Manteuffel's Uhlans were off on a raid and had cut the line between us and Dijon. At first we could only see the blackness and the shapes of the trees bent eastward by many winter blasts, but after a time our eyes grew accustomed, and we became aware of a long line of wagoners' teams drawn up on a road that skirted the railway.

We did our best to a.s.sist at the changing of the provisions and ammunition, and would have been glad of permission to accompany the convoy through the hills to its destination.

But we had the ill fortune to fall in the way of a captain of regulars who asked us our business there, and on our telling him, he answered with evident contempt, that in that case we had better go and look for "Monsieur Garibaldi." As far as he was concerned, if he found us in his convoy again he would have us shot for spies. Hugh Deventer and I could not rejoice enough that we had left our two beautiful Henry rifles and our stores of ammunition on our sleeping shelf. We knew well that our protector the sergeant and his men would say nothing about the matter, though they looked with unrestrained envy and desire of possession upon our repeating rifles.

Accordingly I advised Hugh to confide to the sergeant in private the name of his father, and promise that a similar rifle would be sent to him with the next consignment of cha.s.sepots.

The sergeant's eyes glowed, and he told us that he was under orders for his native town of Epinal, which he hoped to reach in about a fortnight.

Hugh promised that he would find a Henry repeater with an abundant supply of cartridges waiting for him there at his mother's house. And accordingly he sat down in the empty wagon, and by the light of the lantern wrote a note to his father which he gave into the sergeant's hands to be posted at the first opportunity. He in his turn entrusted it to the care of the engine driver, who was getting ready to take his empty wagons rattling southward again to bring further supplies from the rich Rhone valley.

The sergeant also arranged that we should accompany the rear-guard so far as was possible during the night, when we were to strike off diagonally to the west to pick up Autun, where Menotti Garibaldi was reported to be waiting with a large force to cut off the retreat of the German raiders.

So we started on our march, and had soon reason to be glad that we were not stumbling at hazard up and down those leg-breaking vine-terraces.

The convoy had relays of peasants as guides, and at least we were kept along some semblance of a path. We could hear the rumbling and creaking of the wheels before us, but for that night the goad superseded the loud crack of the whip, and the language beloved of all nationalities of teamsters was, if not wholly silenced, at least sunk to a whisper. We marched far enough in the rear to be rid of the cloud of dust raised by the convoy, which fell quickly in the damp night air.

Occasionally an orderly would gallop back, dust-mantled in grey from head to heel. He was sent to see that we of the rear-guard kept our distance and did not straggle. The Isere and Gren.o.ble men with whom we marched were veterans and in no ways likely to desert, so that the adjutant's report was at once accepted, and the officer galloped back.

All the same we two regularly sneaked aside into a belt of trees or took refuge behind the vine-terraces as soon as the sound of hoofs was heard.

We had marched many hours in the darkness--from eight or nine of the evening till the small hours were pa.s.sing one by one with infinite weariness. I was lighter on my feet than Hugh, having less to carry in the way of "too, too solid flesh." Consequently he suffered more, both from the weight of his rifle, and the dumb remorseless steadiness of the marching column. Forward we went, however, stumbling now and then with sleep, our feet blistered, and the rattle and wheeze of the ammunition wagons coming back to us mixed with a jingle of mules' gear through the dark.

At last, when it seemed as if we could do no more, the column halted, and our grateful sergeant came back in order to set us on the road to Autun.