A Tatter of Scarlet: Adventurous Episodes of the Commune in the Midi 1871Crockett, S. R. (Samuel Rutherford)
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A Tatter of Scarlet: Adventurous Episodes of the Commune in the Midi 1871
Crockett, S. R. (Samuel Rutherford)
Adventure stories; Franco-Prussian War, 1870-1871 -- Fiction; Scots -- France -- Fiction
But Hugh and I, who slept with our door of communication open in order
to talk to one another in case of sleeplessness, could hear Keller and
Linn moving about at all hours of the night down in the silence of the
ground floor--sometimes advertising their presence by a little silvery
rattle of glass set on a tray, the dull fall of a log on the chimney and
irons, or the curious slip-shuffle of Linn's walk. Sometimes, too, we
heard voices, but that not often. Once about the end of the first week,
when I could not sleep, I slipped down for a stroll about the town. It
was half-past two of a black February morning, and the snow swirls were
waltzing like spinning tops all about the market square. But there in
the archway, his back to the carven lintel, stood Keller Bey, calmly
smoking his pipe and looking out on the black turmoil as though it had
been the cool of an August evening. Linn heard us talking, and came
quickly to see who was there. Even at that hour she was in her ordinary
dress, and she dried her hands composedly on a long sheath apron of blue
_toile nationale_.
"Why are you not asleep?" she demanded sharply. "Keller, you are
teaching this young man bad habits."
His wife's accusation only made Keller wag his head wisely. Instantly I
took all blame upon myself. I had not been able to sleep, I said, I was
ashamed to disturb Deventer by my restlessness.
"You drank too much of that black coffee last night, Monsieur Auguste"
(thus had Angus gone wrong). "I must ration you in future, so that you
can get your natural sleep as young folks should."
I hastened out into the night with Keller's huge "pellerine" cast about
my shoulders, and the hood reaching my ears. It was a comfortable
garment of some unknown African cloth, rough as frieze and warm as wool.
The sudden dashes of snow swooping upon me were turned victoriously
aside by its formidable brown folds, and I felt as I wandered in the
black of the streets with the buildings towering dim and shadowy above
me, like one who in a storm has by some magic carried his house along
with him.
No soldiers were bivouacking in the streets that night. The squares were
void of bonfires. All the red shirts and blue breeches had alike found
shelter, for the superfluous regiments were now quartered upon the
neighbouring villages, or had marched to their head-quarters at Dijon.
Back and forth I tramped, from the Mairie clock with its dim one-candle
power illumination of face to the dark mass of the towers of the Holy
Trinity, I patrolled the town from end to end.
It was perhaps an hour or a little more that I wandered so, tiring
myself for sleep, my face beaten upon pleasantly by the fierce gusts of
snow charging down from among the chimney-pots, or driving level across
the open spaces. At last I turned my face towards the market square,
which I entered by the little dusky street of the Arches, and so came
suddenly upon the Keller house at the angle opposite to the mayoral
belfry.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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