A Soldier of the Legion Part 17

Max answered quietly: "No, I don't wonder. Perhaps you feel it does you good to speak. It's strange music!--stirs one up, somehow--makes one think of things. And I suppose you trust me? You can. But don't go any farther unless you're sure you want to."

"I do want to!" burst out the Spaniard. "I've wanted to from the first--since you helped me about the clothes. Only you're a reserved fellow yourself. I didn't care to have you think me a gusher. You guessed why I begged for the clothes?"

"I didn't let myself dwell on it too much."

"You must have guessed. Of course I mean to desert the first chance I get."

"It's a beastly risk. Did you see that awful photograph the colonel told the non-coms to pa.s.s around for us to look at, as a warning against desertion?"

"The poor wretch they found in the desert, across the Moroccan border, the man who ran away from Bel Abbes before we came? Yes, I saw the picture. Ghastly! And to think it's the women who mutilate men like that! But I shan't try to escape by way of Morocco. The danger I'll run is only from being caught and sent to the penal battalion--the awful 'Batt d'Aff.' It's a bad enough danger, for I might as well be dead as in prison--better, for I'd be out of misery. But I must run the risk. I enlisted in the Legion for its protection in getting to Africa, because I was in danger of arrest. And you know the Legion, once it's got a man, won't give him up to the police unless he's a murderer. I'm not that, though I came near it. Even while I signed for five years' service, I knew I should have to desert the minute I could hope to get away. I shall wait now till the big march begins, and get as far south as the rest of you go, in my direction--the direction I want. Then I shall cut away."

"G.o.d help you!" said Max.

"Maybe He will, though I'm a man of no religion. Is love the next best thing? Everything I've done so far, and what I have to do, is for love.

Does that make you think me a fool?"

"No."

"I have to save a girl from being given to a man who isn't fit to kiss her little embroidered shoes--bless them! To save her from him--or from suicide. The letter told me she would rather die than marry him. That's why I'm not in Paris to-night. There'd been other letters before; she said in the one which reached me at the theatre--reached me in the midst of rehearsal--thank G.o.d--if there is a G.o.d--I still have till the end of September. The crisis won't come till then, on her seventeenth birthday. But what is five months and a half to a man handicapped as I am? Caught in a trap, and with hardly any money, just when I had a fortune almost in my grasp!"

"I can lend you a little," said Max. "I've a few hundred dollars left."

He laughed. "It seems a lot here! These poor chaps look on me as a millionaire, a sort of prince, because I've got something behind the daily five centimes--some dollars to buy decent tobacco for my friends and myself, and pay fellows to do my washing and so on--fellows wild with joy to do it! Jove! It makes me feel a brute to think what a few sous mean to them, gentlemen, some of 'em, who've lived a more luxurious life than I have--and----"

"Maybe that's why they're here: because they lived too luxuriously--on other people's money. Tell me, St. George, did you ever hear the name of Manoel Valdez?"

Max thought for an instant. "Valdez? Let me see ... how ... I know, a singer! He sang last winter in New York, in something or other, a small part, and I wasn't there, but I saw great notices. I remember now. Why, you're----"

"Yes. You're right. Don't be afraid to speak. I asked for it."

"Then you _are_----"

"Manoel Valdez. Saltenet, the man who wrote 'La Nalia,' wrote the man's part for me, because he thought I could sing it, and because I understand Arab music as maybe no other European does. I was brought up in the desert. The girl I love is a daughter of the desert. G.o.d! How that music they're playing makes me hear her call me, far away from behind her ocean of dunes! There's a secret link binding our souls together. Nothing can keep them apart. Saltenet was my benefactor. He has done everything for me. He would have made my fortune--after I'd made his; but that's human nature! And twelve nights ago I nearly killed him because he wouldn't let me go when that girl called--my desert princess! He vowed he'd have me arrested--anything to stop me. And he tried to hold me by force. I knocked him down in his own private room at the theatre where we were rehearsing, and then I had to make sure he wasn't dead, for his blood was on my hands, my sleeves, my shirt front.

It was only concussion of the brain, but I hoped it would keep him still, until I'd got well away. That afternoon an officer I knew had happened to mention before me that a lot of men were being shipped off to Oran for the Foreign Legion. I remembered. It was as if some voice reminded me. Africa was my goal, but I'd next to no money. I thought, why shouldn't France pay? Well, here I am! Now you know why I must desert. Wouldn't you do the same in my place? Have you got it in you, I wonder, to sacrifice everything in life for a woman?"

Max thought for a moment before risking a reply. Then he answered slowly: "I--almost believe I have. But who knows?"

"Some day you will know," said Manoel Valdez, looking away toward the desert.

CHAPTER XVI

THE BEETLE

When Max had served four months in the Foreign Legion he felt older by four years. He looked older, too. There were faintly sketched lines round his mouth and eyes, and that indefinable expression which lies deep down in eyes which have seen life and death at grip: a Legion look.

In some ways he had been a boy when he took his sudden resolve in the Salle d'Honneur to prove what the Legion could do for a nature he himself doubted. Now he was no longer a boy. He realized that, though he had never found time to study the success of his experiment, and had no idea that it was being studied day after day by his colonel. Had he guessed, some dark hours might have been brightened by gleams of hope, for in spite of his luck in the Legion there were times when Max felt himself abandoned, a creature of as small consequence to any heart on earth as a half-drowned fly. A more conceited man would have been happier, but Max had not joined the Legion with the object of finding happiness, and one who was watching believed that it would be good for him to wait.

Max and Manoel Valdez (alias Garcia) had looked forward to the great march, already vaguely talked of when they joined. But it had not been a march for marching's sake: its real purpose was more grave. A band of Arab thieves and murderers on the border of the M'zab country had to be caught and punished. No recruits were taken: disappointment for Max and despair for Valdez. He had hoped everything from that chance, and, in his rage at losing it, made a dash for liberty from Sidi-bel-Abbes. He got no farther than the outskirts, the forbidden _Village Negre_, where he risked a night visit in search of the man bribed to hide a certain precious bundle. Fortunately he was arrested before securing it, for had he been trapped with civilian clothes not even his marvellous voice (the talk of the garrison since it had been heard in the soldier's theatre) could have saved him from the fate of caught deserters: the penal battalion for months, if not a year; death, perhaps, from fever or hardship. As it was, he escaped with the penalty for a night visit to the Arab quarter: eight days _cellule_. But the clothes were safe. He would try again. Nothing on earth, he said, should keep him from trying again; because he might as well be a "Zephir" in the dreaded "Batt d'Aff," if he could not answer the cry for help he seemed always to hear from across the desert.

Since his first failure and imprisonment nearly four months had pa.s.sed, and he had tried again and failed in the same way. The second time his sentence was twice as long; but before it was over the _medecin major_ sent him into hospital. He came out emaciated, sullen, dangerous, caring for nothing, not even to sing. Max yearned over him, but could do nothing except say, "It isn't too late yet. Maybe, if we brace up, we'll be taken on the big march that they talk of for the first of September.

Even then there'll be time."

He said "we," because it was more comforting to Valdez that their names should be bracketed together as friends; but as Legionnaires they were already far apart. Max had never been censured, had never seen the inside of the prison building (that low-roofed, sinister building that runs along the walls of the barrack-yard). He was in the school of corporals. Soon he would wear on his blue sleeve the coveted red woollen stripe. Garcia, on the contrary, was constantly falling into trouble. He had even drunk too much, once or twice, in the hope of drowning trouble, as Legionnaires do. The September march to the south was ostensibly for road-laying; but there was again a rumour of other important work to be done. The great secret society of the Senussi threatened trouble through a new leader who had arisen, a young man of the far south called the "Deliverer." And when there was prospect of fighting in the desert or elsewhere for the Legion, recruits--even those who had served for six months--were seldom taken if a long list of black marks stood against their names. Max feared that there was little hope for Valdez, though he meant to do what he could to help. And he found it strange that he, a born soldier as he knew himself to be, should think of tacitly aiding another to desert, no matter on what pretext. At home in the same position it could not have been so; but in the Foreign Legion recruits talked freely, even before old Legionnaires to whom the Legion was mother and father and country. There was no fear of betrayal. The whole point of view seemed different. If a man felt that he had borne all he could, and was desperate enough to risk death by starvation or worse, why let him go with his comrades' blessing--and his blood on his own head! If he had money he might get through. If not, he was lost; but that, too, was his own business.

March was bitterly cold in wind-swept Sidi-bel-Abbes. April was mild; May warm; June hot; July and August a furnace, but Legionnaires drank no less of the heavy, red Algerian wine than before the summer heat engulfed them. Max had heard men say jokingly or solemnly of each other, "He has the _cafard_." Vaguely he knew that _cafard_ was French for beetle, or c.o.c.kroach; that soldiers who habitually mixed absinthe and other strong drinks with their cheap but beloved _litre_ were often affected with a strange madness which betrayed itself in weird ways, and that this special madness was familiarly named _le cafard_. When the hot wave arrived he saw for himself what the terrible insect could do in a man's brain.

In the canteen it was bad enough on pay nights--so called "the Legion's holidays"--but there reigned Madame la Cantiniere, young, good looking, a respected queen, who would go on march with the Legion in her cart, and who must at all times to a certain extent be obeyed. But in dim side-streets of the town, far from the lights of the smart, out-of-doors cafes, were _ca.s.se croutes_ kept by Spaniards who cared nothing for the fate of Legionnaires when they had spent their last sou. The _cafard_ grew and prospered there. He tickled men's gray matter and kneaded it in his microscopic claws. There his victims fought each other, for no reason which they could explain afterward, or mutilated themselves, tearing off an ear, or tattooing a face with some design to rival Four Eyes; or they sold parts of their uniforms to buy a little more drink, or tried to blow out their brains, or the brains of some one else.

Afterward, if they survived, they went to prison; but if it could be proved that they were indeed suffering from _cafard_, they got off with light sentences.

Officers of the Legion old enough to have won a few medals seemed to respect the _cafard_ and make allowances for his deadly work. If the men did not survive, they--what was left of them--went to the cemetery to rest under small black crosses marked with name and number, their only mourners the great cypresses which sighed with every breath of wind from the mountains.

One August night of blazing heat and moonlight Max could not sleep.

There had been a scene in the dormitory which had got every man out of bed, but an hour after the tired soldiers were dead to the world again--all save Max, who felt as if a white fire like the moonlight was raging in his brain.

He lay still, as though he were gagged and bound, lest a sigh, or a rustle in turning over--as he longed to turn--might waken a neighbour.

The hours set apart for the Legion's repose were sacred, so profoundly sacred that any man who made the least noise at night or during the afternoon siesta was given good cause to regret his awkwardness. The most inveterate snorers were cured, or half killed; and to-night, in this great room with its double row of beds, the trained silence of the sleepers seemed unnatural, almost terrible, especially after the horror that had broken it. Max had never before felt the oppression of this deathlike stillness. Usually he slept as the rest slept; but now, weary as he was, he resigned himself to lie staring through the slow hours, till the orderly's call, "_Au jus!_" should rouse the men to swallow their coffee before reveille.

The dormitory, white with moonlight streaming through curtainless open windows, seemed to Max like a mausoleum. He could see the still, flat forms, uncovered and p.r.o.ne on their narrow beds, like carven figures of soldiers on tombs. He alone was alive among a company of statues. The men could not be human to sleep so soon and so soundly after the thing that had happened!

In his hot brain the scene repeated itself constantly in bright, moving pictures. He had been rather miserable before going to bed, and had longed for forgetfulness. Sleep had brought its balm, but suddenly he had started awake to see a man bending over him, a dark shape with lifted arms that fumbled along the shelf above the bed. On that shelf was the famous _paquetage_ of the Legionnaire; all his belongings, underclothes, and uniforms, built into the wonderful, artistic structure which Four Eyes had shown his pet how to make. A thief was searching among the neat layers of the _paquetage_ for money: every one knew that St. George had money, for he was continually lending or giving it away.

This one meant to save him the trouble by taking it. Max felt suddenly sick. He had thought all his comrades true to him. It was a blow to find that some one wished to steal the little he had left, though he had grudged no gift.

Just as Max waked the thief satisfied himself that the well-known wallet was not hidden in the _paquetage_, and stooped lower to peer at the sleeper's face before feeling under the pillow. His eyes and Max's wide-open eyes met. In a flash Max recognized the man. He was of another company, and had risked much to steal into the dormitory of the Tenth.

The fellow must be desperate! A wave of mingled pity and loathing rushed over Max. Fearing consequences for the wretch, should any one wake, he would mercifully have motioned him off in silence; but the warning gesture was misunderstood. The thief started back, expecting a blow, stumbled against the nearest bed, roused Four Eyes, and in a second the whole room was in an uproar.

The full moon lit the intruder's face as if with a white ray from a police lantern. Pelle and a dozen others recognized the man from the Eleventh, who could have but one midnight errand in the sleeping-room of the Tenth: the errand of a thief. Like wolves they leaped on him, snapping and growling, swearing the strange oaths of the Legion.

Bayonets flashed in the moonlight; blood spouted red, for a soldier of the Legion may "decorate" himself with a comrade's belt, or bit of equipment, if another has annexed his: that is legitimate, even _chic_; but money or food he must not steal if he would live. It is the Legion's law.

All was over inside two minutes. The guard, hearing shouts, rushed in and stoically bore away a limp, bloodstained bundle to the hospital.

n.o.body blamed the men. n.o.body pitied the bundle--except Max, whose first experience it was of the Legion's swift justice. But nothing, not even exciting prospects of a march, can be allowed to spoil the Legion's rest; and so it was that in half an hour the raging avengers had become once more stone figures carved on narrow tombs in a moonlit mausoleum.

For the first and only time since he had joined Max thoroughly hated the Legion and wished wildly that he had never come near Sidi-bel-Abbes. Yet did he wish that? If he had not come he would not have met Colonel DeLisle, his beau ideal of a man and a soldier. He would be a boy again, it seemed, with his eyes shut in the face of life. And he would miss his sweetest memory of Sanda: that hour in the Salle d'Honneur of the Legion, when she had christened him St. George and called him "her soldier." But after all, of what use to him could be his acquaintance with the Legion's colonel? There was a gulf between them now. And would it not be as well or better to forget that little episode of friendship with the colonel's daughter? She had probably forgotten it by this time.

And a Legionnaire has no business with women, even as friends. Besides, Max was in a mood to doubt all friendship. He had had a letter that day--his first letter from any one in four months--telling him that Grant Reeves had married Josephine Doran.

Of course, Grant had a right to marry Josephine; but not to write until the wedding day was safely over--as if he had been afraid Max would try to stop it--and then to confess how he had come with his mother to meet Josephine at Algiers! That was secret and unfriendly, even treacherous.

Max remembered very well how Grant had proposed accompanying Mrs.

Reeves, and he--Max--had rather impetuously vetoed the arrangement, saying it was unnecessary, and guessing instinctively the budding idea in Grant's mind. It was clear now that Grant had never abandoned it, that he had from the first planned a campaign to win the heiress before any other man had a chance with her, and that he had carried out the scheme with never a hitch. The letter, written on the eve of the wedding, had been three weeks on the way. Grant (the only person except Edwin Reeves to whom Max had revealed himself as Maxime St. George, Number 1033, in the Tenth Company, First Regiment of the Foreign Legion) wrote that he was telling n.o.body where his friend was, or what he had done. "The day will surely come, dear boy," Grant said--and Max could almost hear his voice speaking--"when you will wish to blot out these pages from your book of life. I want to make it easy for you to do so; and I advise you to keep your present resolve: confide in none of your pals. They might not be as discreet as the governor and I."

"He's glad I'm out of the way," thought Max. "He wants me to be forgotten by every one, and he wants to forget me himself. If I were on the spot, poor, and hustling to get on somehow or other in business, it might worry him a little to be seen spending money that used to be mine."

Perhaps it was morbid to attribute these motives to Grant Reeves, who had once been his friend, but he did attribute them; and conscious that he was actually encouraging morbid thoughts, Max wondered if he, too, were getting the _cafard_, the madness of the Legion? Lying there, the only waking one among the sleepers, fear of unseen, mysterious things, the fear that sometimes attacks a brave man in the night, leaped at him out of the shadows. He could almost feel the sharp little claws of the dreaded beetle scratching in his brain. Yes, he'd been a fool to join the Legion, and to hand over Jack Doran's house and fortune to Grant Reeves! It was impossible that Grant had married Josephine for love. He had simply taken her with the money, and he meant to have the spending of it.

In the letter, Grant said that they planned to alter the old Doran house and "bring it up to date." It was he, Grant, who had all the ideas, apparently. Josephine was letting him do as he pleased. What should she know about such matters? If she could have all the dresses and jewels and fur she wanted, Grant would be allowed to go his own way with other things. He was clever enough to understand that, and to manage Josephine.

With the letter Grant had posted a bundle of Sunday newspapers and ill.u.s.trated magazines, such a bundle of old news as one sends to an invalid in hospital. Max had glanced through some of the papers before going to bed, looking with a sad, far-off sort of interest at portraits of people whose names he knew. There had been a page of "America's most beautiful actresses" in one Sunday supplement, and among them, of course, was Billie Brookton. No such page would be complete without her!