A Soldier of the Legion Part 16

"We parted more than once, because when our two mothers died, one after another, of the same sickness--typhoid fever--Manoel was sent away to school. He's nine years older than I am--twenty-five now; a little more than three years younger than Tahar. My father sent him to the university in Algiers, because, you see, he was Christian--or, rather, he was nothing at all then; he had not settled to any belief. Tahar was like Aunt Mabrouka, very religious, and did not care much to study, except the Koran and a little French. He went once to Paris, but he didn't stay long. He said he was homesick. Oh, he is clever in his way!

He has known how to make himself necessary to my father."

"And Manoel Valdez?" asked Sanda.

"My father loved him when he was a boy, because he was of the same blood as my mother. Although Aunt Mabrouka was jealous even then--for she ruled in the house after my mother's death--she couldn't prejudice my father's mind against Manoel, hard as she tried. Manoel was free to come here when he liked, for his holidays, or to the _douar_ if we were there; and he loved life under the great tent. He had a wonderful voice, and he could sing our Arab songs as no one else ever could. Father wished him to be a lawyer, and gave money for his education, because we Arabs often need lawyers who understand us. But Manoel cared more for music than anything else--except for me. When I was eight and he was seventeen I told him I meant to marry him when I grew up, and he said he would wait for me. I suppose he was only joking then; but the thought of him and the love of him in my heart made me begin to grow into a woman sooner than if I had had only the thoughts of a child. It was like the sun opening a flower bud. When he was away I felt hardly alive. When he came back from Spain to our house or to our tent in the _douar_ I lived--lived every minute! It was three years ago, when I was thirteen, that he began to love me as a woman. I shall never forget the day he told me! I was not _hadjaba_ yet. Do you know what that means? I was considered to be a child still, and I could go out with my aunt to the baths, or with one of our servants, unveiled. I was not shut up in the house as I am now. But in my heart I was a woman, because of Manoel. And when he came home after nearly a year in Seville and other parts of Spain he felt and saw the difference in me. We were in the _douar_, and life was free and beautiful. For three months Manoel and I kept our secret. He said he would do anything to have me for his wife. He would even become Mohammedan, since religion meant little to him, and love everything. He had no money of his own, but he had been told that he could make a fortune with his voice, singing in opera, and he had been taking lessons without telling my father. A Frenchman--is "impresario"

the right word?--was having his voice trained, and by and by Manoel would pay him back out of his earnings. We used to call ourselves "engaged," as girls and men in Europe are engaged to each other in secret. But one day, soon after my thirteenth birthday, Aunt Mabrouka, who must have begun to suspect and spy on us, overheard us talking. She told my father. At first he wouldn't believe her, but he surprised me into confessing. I should never have been so stupid, only, from what he said, I thought he already knew everything. After all, it was so little!

Just words of love, and some dear kisses! He suspected there was more; and if I hadn't made him understand, he might have killed Manoel, and me, too. But even as it was, my father and Aunt Mabrouka hurried me from the _douar_ in the night, before Manoel knew that anything had happened.

I was brought here; and never since have I been outside this garden without a veil. It was months before I went out at all. And Manoel was sent away, cursed by my father for ingrat.i.tude and treachery, warned never to come again near Djazerta or the _douar_ as long as he lived, unless he wished for my death as well as his."

"Have you never seen him since?" Sanda asked, her heart beating fast with the rush of the story as Oureda had told it.

"Yes, he has seen me, and I have seen him. But we have not spoken, except in letters. For a whole year I heard nothing. Yet I never lost faith. I seemed to feel Manoel thinking of me, calling me, far away across the desert. I knew that we should meet in life or death. At last, one Friday two years ago--Friday, you know, is the women's day for visiting the graves of loved ones--I saw Manoel. He was dressed like a beggar. His face was stained dark brown, and nearly hidden by the hood of a ragged burnous. But I recognized the eyes. They looked into mine. I realized that he must have been waiting for me to pa.s.s with Aunt Mabrouka. He knew of course that whenever possible we went on Friday to the cemetery. I almost fainted with joy; but Allah gave me presence of mind, and strength to hide my feelings. You have noticed how sharp Aunt Mabrouka is. It's the great ambition of her life to see the daughter of the Agha married to her son. Never for one moment has she trusted me since she spied out the truth about Manoel. That Friday, though, I thwarted her. Oh, it was good to know that Manoel was near! I hardly dared to hope for more than just seeing him; but he remembered that my old nurse had a grandson in my father's _goum_, a fine rider, who first taught him--Manoel--to sit on a horse. Through my nurse and Ali ben Sliman I got letters from Manoel. He told me he had begun to sing in opera, and that if I would wait for him two--or at most three--years, he would have enough money saved to give me a life in Europe worthy of a prince's daughter, such as I am. He would organize some plan to steal me from home, if there were no chance of winning my father's consent, and he was sure it could be done with great bribes for many people, and relays of _Maharis_ and horses to get us through the dune-country. I sent word that I would wait for him three years, all the years of my life! But that was before I knew my father meant me to marry Tahar.

"Not long after Manoel came to stay in Djazerta, disguised as a wandering beggar of Touggourt, my father told me what was in his mind. I feel sure Aunt Mabrouka suspected from my happier looks that I was hearing from Manoel, for she persuaded my father that I was ill. She shut me up and gave me medicine; and I was so afraid Manoel might be discovered and murdered, that I sent him word to go away at once, not even to write me again. He obeyed for my sake, not knowing what might happen to me if he refused, but by word of mouth came the message that he would always be working for our happiness. Well I guessed what he meant! Yet when my father told me about Tahar, all my faith in Manoel could not keep me brave. My father is splendid, but he will stop at nothing with those who go against him. At first he said I must be married when I was sixteen, but I reminded him that seventeen was my mother's age when he took her; and I begged him, "for luck," to let me wait. I dared not warn Manoel, lest they should have laid a trap, expecting me to write him about my marriage. I waited for months, and then it was too late, for Ali ben Sliman was away. I dared trust no one else; and so it is not yet a year ago that I sent a letter to an old address Manoel had left with Ali. I told him all that had happened, and I said, if I were to be saved it must be before my seventeenth birthday, the end of September. After that I should be dead--or else Tahar's wife.

Since then, not hearing, I have sent two more letters to the same address, for I have no other. But no answer has come. Now Ali has died of fever, and I can never write to Manoel again unless--unless----"

"Unless what?" breathed Sanda.

"Unless you can manage to help me. _Would_ you, if you could?"

"Yes," answered the other girl, without hesitating. "I'm a guest in the Agha's house, and I've eaten his salt, so it's hateful to work against him. But, some day, surely he'll be thankful to a friend who saves you from Si Tahar. I'll do anything I can. Yet I'm only a girl like yourself. What is there I _can_ do? Have you thought?"

"_If_ I have thought!" echoed Oureda. "I have thought of nothing else, for weeks and weeks, long before you came. I begged my father to find me a companion of my own age, not an Arab girl, but a European, to teach me things and make me clever like my mother. He believed I was pining with ennui; and because he had put real happiness out of my life, he was willing to console me as well as he could in some easy way. In spite of Aunt Mabrouka, who may have guessed what was in my mind, he trusts you completely, because you are your father's daughter."

"Ah, that's the dreadful part! To betray such a trust!" exclaimed Sanda.

"But after all, I am going to ask so little of you, not a hard thing at all," Oureda pleaded, frightened at the effect of her own words. "It is a thing only a trusted guest, a woman of the Roumia, could possibly do, yet it's very simple. And when the time comes to do it, you need only shut your eyes."

"Tell me what you mean," said Sanda anxiously.

"Every letter you write--not to your father, because he might ask questions, but to a friend--leave the envelope open, and turn your back, or go out of the room. Then don't look into the letter again, or notice if it seems thicker than before, but fasten it up tightly and seal the envelope with wax. Will you do that?"

"Yes," said Sanda, rather miserably. "To save you I will do that."

"You have friends in France who would post a letter if they found it enclosed in one of yours, without explanations?"

"I have friends who would do that, perhaps, but to make it more sure I will explain. It would not save my conscience to let you slip a letter into an open envelope, and pretend to myself that I knew nothing about it; because I _would_ know, and I think I'd almost rather be hypocritical with other people than with myself."

"I told you," exclaimed Oureda, "that Roumia girls were different from us even in their secret thoughts! But you will love me, won't you, although you think I am stealthy and sly? I need your love and help!"

"I love you, or I shouldn't have promised what I have just promised now," Sanda a.s.sured her.

"But if there were still more--something harder and more dangerous--would you love me enough to do that thing too?"

"Do you mean something in particular that you have in your mind, or----"

"Yes, oh, yes! I mean something in particular."

"Will you tell me what it is?"

"I am half afraid."

"Don't be afraid. Tell me!"

"Hush!" whispered Oureda. "Don't you hear some one on the stairs--coming up softly? I must tell you another time. Laugh! Laugh out aloud! Call to the doves!"

The two girls began to chatter together like children. And their young voices tinkling out in laughter sounded pitifully small in the immensity of the night-bleached desert.

Far away in the north where colonist farmers had long ago conquered the desert there was music that evening at Sidi-bel-Abbes, headquarters of the Foreign Legion. The soul of the Legion was speaking in its tragic-sweet voice, and the Place Carnot was full of soldiers sauntering singly or in pairs, mostly silent, as if to hear their own heart-secrets cried aloud by telltale 'cellos and flutes and violins.

The townsfolk were there, too; and when the band played some selection especially to their liking they buzzed approval. It was only the Legionnaires who talked little, and in tones almost humbly suppressed.

Once, years ago, they had violently a.s.serted their right to promenade the Place Carnot, and enjoy the music of their own famous band, when local authority would insolently have banished them; but now the boon was won, they were subdued in manner, as if they had never smashed chairs and wrecked bandstand in fierce protest against _bourgeois_ tyranny. Immaculate in every detail of their uniform as though each man had his own servant, these soldiers who spent half their so-called leisure in scrubbing clothes, polishing steel and bra.s.s, and varnishing leather, had nevertheless a piteously dejected bearing whenever they pa.s.sed pretty, well-dressed young women. They knew that, whatever they might once have been, as Foreign Legion men on pay of five centimes a day they were in the eyes of Bel-Abbes girls hopeless ineligibles, poverty-stricken social outcasts, the black sheep of the world. It was to vie with each other and to make the Legion far outshine Cha.s.seurs and Spahis that they sacrificed two thirds of their spare time in the cause of smartness, not because even the handsomest and youngest cherished any hope of catching a woman's approving eye.

Just at the moment, however, there was an exception to the depressing rule. The prettiest girls, French, Spanish, and Algerian-born, all condescended to glance at the _bleu_ who had "knocked out" the former champion of the Legion, and, taking his place in the match with the Ma.r.s.eillais, had kept the championship for the First _Regiment Etrangere_. Since the day more than a week ago when the barrack-yard of the Legion had been the scene of the great fight--officers looking on in the front ranks of the invited crowd, and soldiers hanging out of dormitory windows--every one in Sidi-bel-Abbes had learned to know the hero by sight; and a blackened eye, a bruised cheek-bone, and a swelled lip (the unbecoming badges of his triumph) made recognition easy. But the Legion was proud of St. George. Not a man, least of all Four Eyes, grudged him his success, such "luck" as had never fallen to any mere recruit within the memory of the oldest Legionnaires, unless in the battlefield, where all are equal.

Max realized fully what this "luck" had done for him, and was aware that eyes turned his way; but, far from being proud, he was half-ashamed of his conspicuousness, fearing that Colonel DeLisle might disapprove.

Also, he knew that the small, brief blaze of his notoriety would die out like the flame of a candle. A week or two more and the "little tin G.o.d"

would go down off his wheels. If he meant to be somebody in the Legion he would have to work as he had never worked in all his life.

With him in the Place Carnot was the Spaniard who had begged for his civilian clothes. They were in the same company and of the same age.

From the first glance (given and taken when one man was a recruit and the other did not yet dream of becoming one) something had drawn the two together. Then had come the incident of the clothing; and Max had felt himself an unwilling partner in the other's secret. Later, without exchanging confidences (since "ask no questions, I'll tell you no lies,"

is a good general rule in the Legion), they drifted into a tacit kind of comradeship, Max admiring the Spaniard, the Spaniard trusting Max.

To-night they walked together in silence, or speaking seldom, like the other Legionnaires, and listening to the music. Suddenly the Spaniard stopped, muttering some word under his breath, and Max saw through the dusk that the olive face had gone ashy pale. "What's the matter, Garcia?

Are you ill?" he asked.

The other did not answer. He stood stock still, staring almost stupidly straight before him.

Max linked an arm in his. "What's wrong? Garcia! What's wrong with you?"

he repeated.

The Spaniard started. "I beg your pardon," he stammered, dazed. "I didn't realize you were--speaking--to me."

Instantly Max guessed that "Juan Garcia," the name appearing with the "_numero matricule_" over the bed of _le bleu_, was as new as his place in the Legion, and as fict.i.tious as the alleged profession of _garcon d'hotel_ which accounted cleverly for the recruit's stained evening clothes.

"I only asked you what was wrong, what made you stop so suddenly?" Max explained.

"It was that thing the band is playing now," said the Spaniard. "Strange they should have it here already! It is out of the new African opera by Saltenet, "La Nalia," produced for the first time ten days ago--a trial performance at Ma.r.s.eilles, and on now at the Opera Comique in Paris.

Good heavens! Another world, and yet these extraordinary men are playing that song here already--_my_ song!"

"Your song?" involuntarily Max echoed the words.

"My song. If a certain letter hadn't come to me on the night of the last rehearsal but one, and if we hadn't been in Ma.r.s.eilles, rehearsing, I shouldn't be here to-night. I should be in Paris, perhaps coming on to the stage at this moment, where I suppose my understudy is grimacing like the conceited monkey he is."

"By jove!" was all that Max could find to say. But he put several emotions into the two words: astonishment, warm sympathy, and some sort of friendly understanding.

"You wonder why I tell you this?" Garcia challenged him.