MY ROSE. [A Memory of the Commune]

Waikato Times, Volume XXVI, Issue 2137, 20 March 1886, Page 1 (Supplement)

MY ROSE. [A Memory of the Commune]

Br F. W. L. Adams.

HI. Events progressed swiftly — I mean political event* ; and events of my business did not progress at all, but rather ■eemed to recede. I was beginning to be discouraged. Madame Belot and Laurent were the most pleasaut elements in my daily life. I used to go off every afternoon to see Laurent, and smoke and chatter with him in his rooms. Finally he suggested that he should paint my portrait: and after some strife occasioned by my taking the suggestion seriously, saying I should want to adorn my house with it, insisting on paying him his proper price for it, etc., he* began. In the evenings, after dinner I used to sjt in the salon, and talk and drink tea with the Belots, especially with Madame. She was the only French woman I ever knew who could make tea properly. It was, as she said, a weakness of hers. My unfailiug present to her each Christmas was a chest of the best tea I could get. M. Belot, like Laurent, an " old man with a white beard," somewhat deaf, considerably dogmatic, I always found wearisome after a time ; but Madame Belot, with her bright wit, knowledge of the world, reading (I wonder if any woman in Paris read as many books, novels and others, ;as she did.) — Madame was always pleasant and refreshing to me. She, like Laurent, thought that something terrible was close at hand, something very terrible! Even If my business was nearly or quite completed, I doubt whether I should have left Paris — It would have seemed to me something like a desertion of these two old friends of i mine. I have made a fairly large number of acquaintances, but only three friends and the third was thousands of miles away. lam a lonely man, but with, I suppose curious parts of tenderness in me. Sauntering out one morning, I happened to stop opposite a florist's. How our thoughts come and go ! In a moment I was thinking of that Sunday afternoon, years ago, when I stood like this, making up my mind what flowers I should buy for Josephine. And then I thought of how I had bought a bouquet for her, and gone with it to Jack Payne's he (he had rooms then in one of those streets behind the Batignolles and near that church by the Rue Blanche) ; and how, as we stood on his balcony smoking, we saw two fair damsels in light attire in the balcony below ; and how at last we let down the bouquet to them with much laughter, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, I went into the shop, bought tome flowers, and took them up to my room, thinking that, if the singer appeared at her window again, I would throw them to her. I frequently observed to myself that I was a fool for all this, and what was the use of it ? but none the less, after dejeuner I stood leaning on the balcony rail, smoking with the flowers in a glass of water ready on a chair just inside. Her window was open. Was she in ? Would she appear ? I felt as Htirred, as fluttered about it all as I had been when, a boy of seventeen, I made my first advances to my dear little Josephine. I smoked on until the amount of tremulousness that was in me was exhausted. She would not appear. Decidedly, then, I teat a fool ! Still I lingered. What an idiotic position for a man like me to be in, I thought. Who that knew me, who ; of my London acquaintances, Laurent, | Madame Belot — which of them would believe it of me? Believe itl Believe what? I began to laugh. What a "much ' ado about nothing !" Presently I regained my self-possession, She appeared. I lost some of my selfpossession again, but happily not all. She stood leaning against the window, looking out across the city, rather dreamily. I threw out my cigarette ;It fell close past her, attracting her attention. She looked up. Our eyes met. I smiled and laughed ; this time it was she who amiled iv sympathy. I railed again, drew out the bouquet, showed it to her, and threw it. It lit in the embrasure in front of her window, sotne of the petals being dashed off. She tamed half round, looked into the room. Truly she had both a fine face and a fine figure. Straight brow and nose, and a round curved chin ; dark loose hair knotted simply at the back of the head ; a marbly regal throat, and regal forms shown to {>erfection in her shabby brown, collaress, short-armed dress. And a warmth of colour, rare in a Paritienne. Standing thus in the window, neither in light nor shade, but in the atmosphere of both, she made, what we used to call at the studios, " a fine subject," and more, a fine picture, the " values " were all so good. All this struck me as I watched her. This sight of her beauty was overcoming all my self-consciousness. At last she smiled, drew back a little, and a man put out his head and looked up at me with a smile, or shall I say a grin ? She too looked up at me with a smile. After a moment's inclination to feel foolish, the comicality of the situation came upon me, and I looked down at them both with a smile too. The man was a good-looking man, not unlike her, generally speaking, but more swarthy and pallid. He laughed brightly. " But say then," he said, turning to her, "but say, then thanks to the gentleman ; rise, my beauty." She, still smiliug took up the bouquet, kissed it, looked up to me, aud said : " Thank's, sir !" Then, with mutual bows, they went in, and I soon did the same. I lay down on my bed, with my hands under my head, staring at my ceiling, and wondering if the man was her brother. Alas, in a world that dogmatically djabttieYci in

pretty girls' cousins, one is apt to be sceptical even about brothers. Ultimately I fell asleep, and did not awake till six, half an hour before dinner. This waa the day on which the Commune burst upon us. M. Belot had a horrible story to tell us. One of the officers on duty at the Tuileriea had been caught by a mob of petroleuses and others, saturated with petroleum, set alight, and burnt to death. The Tuileries were in flames.

IV. I do not think I am * coward by nature, but, if I had been, the courage of M. and Madame Belot, and, for the matter of that, of Laurent, would have made me brave. M. Belot, was a republican, a middle-clan republican of the dogmatic •tern type. When Napoleon wa» leaving Parii, M. Belot, happened to meet the procession, did not take off hit hat, but stood, as he said, sternly staring at the man : this was noticed, and M. Belot was hustled and his hat torn from him. "The pale-faced scoundrel," Mid M. Belot, in recounting the incident to me. " I knew it was the last time we should see him here, and he knew ! He does well to leave us to quell the tempest he has raised." M. Belot was out most of the day passing from house to house, seeking any who were not too panicstruck to attempt to resist the anarchy that was upon us. Madame Belot and I went more than once to meet him at different places later on in the day. We were stopped at a barricade here and there, and told that we could not proceed unless we piled up a stone on it. Madame Belot at once quietly refused, and we made a circuit — the men and women who had asked us were surly and angry, but did nothing to us. Laurent, too, was moving about, trying to do some good. Both he and M Bolot described the state of panic as appalling. A few days later I, for the first time, saw a man killed. I was standing in tho middle of a crowd that was being fiercely harangued by a wild socialist, when suddenly, just above us, we heard the crack of a rifle, and a puff of smoke rone from a second-story window of a neighbouring house. A man, not half a yard from me, was hit We mere too closely packed to let him fall. His back was to me ; he kept quickly throwing his head forward. Then I saw his face ; it was twisted with pain or effort, and be was blowing blood and foam from his mouth. "Thus," thundered the Socialist, " thus they assassinate the people 1 Revenge ! Let us take our revenge !" There was a shout and rush, and I and the man who had been shot were seperated, but not before I had seen that he was killed. I came back home, and had tea with Madame Belot, M. Belot had not returned, and she was anxious about him. At twelve o'clock, however, he arrived unhurt. "It is a night-mare," were the first words he said, " they will lay the city in ashes rather than surrender, and, what is heart-rending, is that so many of them have noble hearts ! Let a* speak of it no more to-night. Give me something to eat, my friend, I am hungry." It was indeed, as he said, a night-mare. And yet, and so it seemed to me, the whole affair was being carried on by a small but determined minority in the face of a panic-stricken and inbecile majority. I wandered about the city fearlessly. What struck me moat was the number of womeu who were actively engaged in the revolution, and their courage and ferocity. I was told that they would go out to the guns and bribe the gunners with drink or kisses to let them shoot. Perhaps it was so. Nothing was too extravagant either for the saying or the doing at this time. Coming back one afternoon from one of my walks, it occurred to me* to enquire after the singer, as I used to call her to myself. Her window had been closed for several days. It was a small, " poor furnished hotel," in which she lived. The waiter informed me that the young lady after whom I was enquiring was called Mademoiselle Rose. No other name ? " No, sir ; Mademoiselle Rose," quite short. And it was evident, from the waiter's manner of speech, that he had small, if any, belief in the personal disinterestedness of my enquiries. There was more yet to learn, it appeared, after an interchange m % of m a five-franc piece. Mademoiselle Rose had not been back since yesterday morning, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. I was interested in all this, more interested than either I cared at the time to admit, or could quite explain to myself. I went away, and, happened to see some roses for sale in a courageous shopkeeper's window, bought them, and took them home, intending to throw them to her if I had the chance. I was, I think, beginning to look on this girl as a sort of incarnation of my pant life, and the might-have-been of it. I could not | get her face and form out of my mind | I dreamed about her. I dreamt that I loved her, and was married to her, that we lived together in an English country village in June, that I found her plucking roses, that I came and plucked one, and gave it to her, saying — " This is my rose !" And she smiled, and kissed it, and put it into her breast. And I awoke. I could not get out of the influence of my dream for the rest of tho morning. This was the last day of the seige. The Versailles troops broke in, I was told, at Auteuil and drove the revolutionists before them with fearful slaughter. The noise of rifle-shots, now close, now far, continued, off and on, all day. At Madame Belot's request, I stayed with her and M. Belot, who was ill in bed, his exertions having been too much for him. " This finishes, this finishes," he kept saying, " but afterwards ? what shall we do afterwards?" At last the evening came, and then the night. Occasional shots close to us could still be heard at times. Once a bullet came through the talle-a-mtt nger window and buried itself in the ceimig, a wanton shot probably. The nc \ n morning after breakfast, the moment that I stepped out into the balcony, I snv that Rose's window was opeu. I leant as usual over the railing, smoking a cigarette. Presently I saw her appear. 3be stood as before, looting out across the city, leaning one arm against the side of the window and her head on her arm. But, my God, bow she was changed ! Her face was quite pallid, nay, almost livid ; her eyes had great black semi-circles underneath them ; her brows were knitted, her lips drawn tight. Pain and grief, and weariness, and a brooding wrath seemed to be struggling for expression in her face. The sight of her like this gave me a shock. I could scarcely believe my eyes. An impulse came into me to take and try to help and comfort her. She closed her eyes and her head moved down a little. Poor girl, she was quite worn out. What had she been doing? she opened her eyes again and probably by chance (for I cannot now believe, as I did then, that she had felt I was near her and wishing to try to help and comfort her)— probably by chance, turned them to me. " Ah," I said, " May one throw some flowers to Madame? There are rones." At first she did not seem to understand me. I went in, brought out the roses and shewed them to her. " May one?" I asked, making a gesture as if to throw them. She bowed her head, smiling rather wearily and dreamily. I throw them. They fell at her feet. She beat, picked them up, and then, looking to me ; said — " I thank you, sir, you are very kind." The ptuwd ft moment, gazing out over

the city, and then went into the room. I would have given a hundred pounds to have been there aud able to try and comfort her. Then I too went in, and did a little business work, and wrote a little, and read a little, and dawdled a little, till it was time for dejeuner. The moment dejeuner was over, I considered that I had, as it were, a right to go out on to the balcony agatft for my post-prandial smoke. I went out, then. Rose's window (she was rose to me now) was still open, but I could see no signs of Rose. I stood leaning over the rails, smoking, watching the wreaths of smoke mounting and being caught and carried away by the air currents. Above was an almost cloudless blue sky, the sun shining brightly. Some way up the street (not the Rue Fontenoy, the front of the house faces the Rue Fontenoy, and my room was in the side) I saw a batch of soldiers coming along. Two, officers, were ahead of the others. Even that far off I could see that they had been in the fight. I watched them with interest as they came nearer and nearer. They were umall men and by no means smart. They slouched along rather than walked, but there was something both resolute and, us it were, sinewy in their look, that made me think that they knew how to march and to fight as well as most. One of the officers was a young fellow, passably fierce and swaggering. He came along talking loudly, and gesticulating sharply to his companion, who answered little or nothing, twirling his moustache savagely with his left hand. Unfortunately for me, my powers of hearing are not commensurate with my powers of seeing. I could not hear what they said, till they were quite close. The young man was recounting a death-scene. " I caught hold of her," he cried, " my revolver like this, tliou seest. Your hands, — show your hands. Black. Good. Pist -crack— pouf ! There she was in bed !" He laughed out. I threw away my cigarette-stump. The wind caught it and carried it back, so that, instead of falling on to the road, it fell on to the pavement, The elder man threw up his head with a savage expression to see who had thrown this, as he probably supposed, at him. The next moment he leaped straight into the air, so high that I absolutely started back from fear that his distorted face should strike mine. The crack of a rifle was heard, and as it was echoing away among the houses, he fell forward heavily on to his face on to the pavement, with his arms bent hack Dream-like, nightmare* like, though it all seemed to me, there was yet a horrible reality about it that never for a moment let me doubt it had positively taken place. My heart seemed suddenly to stop as I looked at Rose's window, nnd saw her standing there, bending over the balcony, looking down into the streets, a smoking rifle in the hand that was bent baukwai k so as to rest the rifle's weight ou the floor. There was a fierce ciy from the soldiers. Two shots were discharged, one bullet ripping up the woodwork just by her arm. She rose deliberately, saying calmly, aloud — ''I have missed. So much the worse," and went in. I waited to see no more. The only thing I seemed to care about in the world was to get to her— to save her. I rushed out of my room, and along the passage to the hall-door. I fumbled and wrenched at it. At last I saw that it was locked. Back I ran into tho salon. No one. I buist into XI. Belot's bedroom, where he was in bed, with Madame Belot in a chair beside him. " For God's sake," I cried in English, "give me the key— la clef— la clef. Je ne l'ai pas — je l'ai perdue. 0 vite, vitc, vite !" Madame Bulot, without for a moment losing her presence of mind, took her latch key out of her pocket aud held it to me. I snatched it from her, saying thanks, and ran to the liall door again. 1 managed sou chow to open it. I went running and leaping down the stairs, and out by the large door iuto the Rue Fontenoy. I could hear a chorus of angry voices. I was round the corner in a moment, and the whole scene burst upon me. Rose standing against the wall by the window of the tap-room, tlio officer fiercely interrogating her, two soldiers holding her, one by either wrist. She, erect flaming out defiance at them. "you are a petroleuse," cried the officer, " your hands are still black." " You are an assassin," she answered, "a coward of Versailles! You have killed my bi other. Kill me too then. You are assassins, all of you !" I hurried forward crying, "Sir, Sir." A soldier caught hold of me, exclaiming — " Here is another ! We are hand to hand ! Quick, then, quick !" The rest was in a whirlwind and a night-mare. Rose en-ct, defiant : tho flash of the rifles at her very breast. I uttered an agonised cry and hid my face in my arm, the soldier still holding me. . . . It was finished. She lay there dead. I knelt down beside her, and looked at her face, and put her dead arms down to her sides. But, when I saw in her breast one of the roses that I had given her in the morning, I broke down and sobbed like a child. And now, now that ten years have passed and all is changed to me, when I think of it I sob again. . Ah, poor faded lump of brown scented leaves, lying heie in my desk with the tew things that are all precious to me in the world, you are all I have, aud, (so it seems) all I know of " my Rose." fponclwled. )