A Soldier of the Legion Part 26

"The star fell into your arms, and you saved it from extinction," she finished for him, laughing a little gurgling laugh of ecstasy.

"I caught it on its way somewhere else! But how can I let it go when it wants to shine for me? How can I be _expected_ to let it go? I ask you that, St. George!"

Racked with an anguish of jealousy, Max felt, nevertheless, a queer stirring of sympathy for the man; and struggling against it, he knew Stanton's conquering fascination. He knew, also, that nothing he could do or say would prevent Sanda from going with her hero. However, he stammered a protest.

"But--but I don't see what's to be done," he said, "Mademoiselle DeLisle's father, my colonel, ordered me to take her to Sidi-bel-Abbes."

"Not ordered; asked!" the girl cut in with an unfairness that hurt.

"All the blame is mine," Stanton a.s.sured him with a warm friendliness of manner. "My shoulders are broad enough to bear it. And you know, St.

George, your colonel and I are old friends. If he were here he'd give his consent, I think, after he'd got over his first surprise. I believe as his proxy you'll do the same, when you've taken a little time to reflect."

"Why, of course he will!" cried Sanda, sweet and repentant. "He knows that this is my one chance of happiness in life. Everything looked so gray in the future. I was going to Sidi-bel-Abbes to be with strangers till my father came. And even at best, though he loves me, I am a burden and a worry to him. Then, suddenly, comes this glorious joy! My Knight, my one Sir Knight, wants me, and cares! If I knew I were going straight to death, I'd go just the same, and just as joyously."

"We both realized what was in our hearts, and what must happen, when she looked out between her curtains like the Blessed Damozel, and I took her out of her ba.s.sourah and held her in my arms. That settled our fate,"

said Stanton, attractively boyish and eager in the warmth of his pa.s.sion. It was genuine pa.s.sion. There was no doubting that, but lit in an instant, like a burnt wick still warm from a flame blown out. How long would it last? How clear and true a light would it give? Max did not know how much of his doubt of Stanton was jealousy, how much regard for Sanda's happiness.

"To think this should come to me at Touggourt, where my father's happiness came to him!" Sanda murmured rapturously, as Max stood silent.

"It is Fate, indeed!"

"Listen to the music of Africa," said Stanton. "The players followed us for 'luck.' What luck they've brought! Child, I was feeling lonely and sad. I almost had a presentiment that my luck was out. What a fool! All the strength and courage I've ever had you've given back to me with yourself!"

"I could die of happiness to hear you say that!" Sanda answered. "You see how it is, my friend, my dear, kind soldier? G.o.d has timed my coming here to give me this wonderful gift! You wouldn't rob me of it if you could, would you?"

"Not if it's for your happiness," Max heard something that was only half himself answer. "But"--and he turned on Stanton--"how do you propose to marry her--here?"

The other hesitated for an instant, then replied briskly, as if he had calculated everything in detail. This was characteristic of him, to map out a plan of campaign as he went along, as fast as he drew breath for the rushing words. Often he had made his greatest impressions, his greatest successes, in this wild way.

"Why, _you_ will pitch your camp here for the night, instead of marching on to Touggourt," he said. "I camp here, too. My expedition is delayed for one day more, but what does that matter after a hundred delays?

Heavens! I've had to wait for tents a beast of a Jew contracted to give me and didn't. I've waited to test water-skins. I've waited for new camel-men when old ones failed me. Haven't I a right to wait a few hours for a companion--a wife? The first thing in the morning we'll have the priest out from Touggourt. Sanda's Catholic. He'll marry us and we'll start on together."

"Couldn't we," the girl rather timidly ventured the suggestion, "couldn't we go to Touggourt? There must be a church there if there's a priest, and I--I'd like to be married in a church."

"My darling child! The priest shall consecrate a tent, or a bit of the desert," Stanton answered with decision, which, she must have realized, would be useless to combat. "He'll do it all right! Marriage ceremonies are performed by Catholic priests in houses, you know, if the man or the woman is ill; deathbed marriages, and--but don't let us talk of such things! I know I can make him do this when I show him how impossible it would be for us to go back to Touggourt. Why, the men I've got together, mostly blacks, would take it for a bad omen if I left the escort stranded here in the desert the first day out! Half of them would bolt.

I'd have the whole work to do over again. You see that, don't you?"

Sanda did see; and even Max admitted to himself that the excuse was plausible. Yet he suspected another reason behind the one alleged.

Stanton was afraid of things Sanda might hear in Touggourt; perhaps he feared some more active peril.

"I thought," Max dared to argue, "that it took days arranging the legal part of a marriage? You're an Englishman, Mr. Stanton, and Colonel DeLisle's daughter's a French subject, though she is half British. You may find difficulties."

"d.a.m.n difficulties!" exclaimed Stanton, all his savage impatience of opposition breaking out at last. "Don't you say so, Sanda? When a man and woman need each other's companionship in lonely places outside the world, is the world's red tape going to make a barrier between them? My G.o.d, no! Sanda, if your church will give you to me, and send us into the desert with its blessing, is it, or is it not, enough for you? If not, you're not the girl I want. You're not my woman."

"If you love me, I _am_ 'your woman,'" said Sanda.

"You hear her?" Stanton asked. "If it's enough for her, I suppose it's enough for you, St. George?"

Through the blue dusk two blue eyes stared into Max's face. They put a question without words. "Have you any reason of your own for wanting to keep her from me?"

"Will it be enough for Colonel DeLisle?" Max persisted.

"I promised to shoulder all responsibility with him," repeated Stanton.

"And father would be the last man in the world to spoil two lives for a convention," Sanda added. "Do you remember his love story that I told you?"

Did Max remember? It was not a story to forget, that tragic tale of love and death in the desert. Must the story of the daughter be tragic, too?

A great fear for the girl was in his heart. He believed that he could think of her alone, now, apart from selfishness. Realizing her worship of Stanton, had her fate lain in his hands he would have placed it in those of the other man could he have been half sure they would be tender. But her fate was in her own keeping. He could do no more than beg, for DeLisle's sake, that they would wait for the wedding until Stanton came back from his expedition. Even as he spoke, it seemed strange and almost absurd that he should be urging legal formalities upon any one, especially a man like Stanton, almost old enough to be his father. What, after all, did law matter in the desert if two people loved each other? And as Stanton said--patient and pleasant again after his outburst--they could have all the legal business, to make things straight in the silly eyes of the silly world, when they won through to Egypt, under English law.

The matter settled itself exactly as it would have settled itself had Max stormed protests for an hour. Sanda was to be married by the Catholic priest from Touggourt, as early in the morning as he could be fetched. The great caravan and the little caravan halted for the night.

Stanton harangued his escort in their own various dialects, for there was no obscure lingo of Africa which he did not know, and this knowledge gave him much of his power over the black or brown men. The news he told, explaining the delay, was received with wild shouts of amused approval. Stanton was allowing some of his head men to travel with their wives, it being their concern, not his, if the women died and rotted in the desert. It was his concern only to be popular as a leader on this expedition for which it had been hard to get recruits. It was fair that he, too, should have a wife if he wanted one, and the men cared as little what became of the white girl they had not seen as Stanton cared about the fate of their strapping females.

The mad music of the tomtoms and raitas played as Max, with his own hands, set up Sanda's little tent. "For the last time," he said to himself. "To-morrow night her tent will be Stanton's."

He felt physically sick as he thought of leaving her in the desert with that man, whom they called mad, and going on alone to report at Sidi-bel-Abbes, days after his leave had expired. Now that Sanda was staying behind, his best excuse was taken from him. He could hear himself making futile-sounding explanations, but keeping Mademoiselle DeLisle's name in the background. None save a man present at the scene he had gone through could possibly pardon him for abandoning his charge.

After all, however, what did it matter? He did not care what became of him, even if his punishment were to be years in the African penal battalion, the awful _Bat d'Aff_, a sentence of death in life. "Perhaps I deserve it," he said. "I don't know!" All he did know was that he would give his life for Sanda. Yet it seemed that he could do nothing.

When all was quiet he went to his tent and threw himself down just inside the entrance with the flap up. Lying thus, he could see Sanda's tent not far away, dim in the starlit night. He could not see her, nor did he wish to. But he knew she was sitting in the doorway with Stanton at her feet. Max did not mean to spy; but he was afraid for her, of Stanton, while that music played. At last he heard her lover in going call out "good night," then it was no longer necessary to play sentinel, but though Sanda had slipped inside her tent, perhaps to dream of to-morrow, it seemed to Max that there were no drugs in the world strong enough to give him sleep. He supposed, vaguely, that if a priest consented to marry the girl to Stanton, after the wedding and the start of the explorer's caravan, he, Max, would board the first train he could catch on the new railway, and go to "take his medicine" at Sidi-bel-Abbes.

Before dawn, when Stanton came to tell Sanda that he was off for Touggourt to fetch the priest, no alternative had yet presented itself to Max's mind, and he was still indifferent to his own future. But when Stanton had been gone for half an hour, and a faint primrose coloured flame had begun to quiver along the billowy horizon in the east, he heard a soft voice call his name, almost in a whisper.

"Soldier St. George!" it said.

Max sprang up, fully dressed as he was, and went out of his tent. Sanda was standing near, a vague shape of glimmering white.

CHAPTER XXV

CORPORAL ST. GEORGE, DESERTER

"Is anything the matter?" he asked. A wild hope was in his heart that she might wish to tell him she had changed her mind. The joy of that hope s.n.a.t.c.hed his breath away. But her first words put it to flight.

"No, nothing is the matter, except that I've been thinking about you. I could hardly wait to ask you some things. But I _had_ to wait till morning. It is morning now that Richard is up and has gone, even though it isn't quite light. And it's better to talk before he comes back.

There'll be--so much happening then---- You're all dressed! You didn't go to bed."

"No, I didn't want to sleep," said Max.

"I haven't slept, either. I didn't try to sleep! I'm so happy for myself, but I'm not _all_ happy. I'm anxious about you. I see that I've been horribly, hatefully selfish--a beast!"

"Don't! I won't hear you say such things."

"You mustn't try and put me off. Will you promise by--by your love for my father--and your friendship for me, to answer truly the questions I ask?"

"All I can answer."

"If you don't answer, I shall know what your silence means. _Mon ami_, you made a great sacrifice for me. You gave up your march to take me safely to Bel-Abbes. You had only eight days' leave to do it in. I know, because my father said so in his letter. But I, thinking always of myself, gave no thought to that. You lost time coming back from Djazerta to the _douar_. Now I've kept you another night. Is there a train to-morrow going out of Touggourt?"