Under Two Flags Part 49

"She? Who? What story goes with these roses?"

"None," said Cecil, with the same inflection of annoyance in his voice; to have his pa.s.sing encounter with this beautiful patrician pa.s.s into a barrack canard, through the unsparing jests of the soldiery around him, was a prospect very unwelcome to him. "None whatever. A generous thoughtfulness for our common necessities as soldiers--"

"Ouf!" interrupted Cigarette, before his phrase was one-third finished.

"The stalled mare will not go with the wild coursers; an aristocrat may live with us, but he will always cling to his old order. This is the story that runs with the roses. Milady was languidly insolent over some ivory chessmen, and Corporal Victor thought it divine, because languor and insolence are the twin G.o.ds of the n.o.blesse, parbleu! Milady, knowing no G.o.ds but those two, worships them, and sends to the soldiers of France, as the sort of sacrifice her G.o.ds love, fruits, and wines that, day after day, are set on her table, to be touched, if tasted at all, with a b.u.t.terfly's sip; and Corporal Victor finds this a charity sublime--to give what costs nothing, and scatter a few crumbs out from the profusion of a life of waste and indulgence! And I say that, if my children are of my fashion of thinking, they will choke like dogs dying of thirst rather than slake their throats with alms cast to them as if they were beggars!"

With which fiery and bitter enunciation of her views on the gifts of the Princesse Corona d'Amague, Cigarette struck light to her brule-guele, and thrusting it between her lips, with her hands in the folds of her scarlet waist-sash, went off with the light, swift step natural to her, exaggerated into the carriage she had learned of the Zouaves; laughing her good-morrows noisily to this and that trooper as she pa.s.sed their couches, and not dropping her voice even as she pa.s.sed the place where the dead lay, but singing, as loud as she could, the most impudent drinking-song out of the taverns of the Spahis that ever celebrated wine, women, and war in the lawlessness of the lingua Sabir.

Her wrath was hot, and her heart heavy within her. She had given up her whole fete-day to wait on the anguish and to soothe the solitude of his friend lying dying there; and her reward had been to hear him speak of this aristocrat's donations, that cost her nothing but the trouble of a few words of command to her household, as though they were the saintly charities of some angel from heaven!

"Diantre!" she muttered, as her hand wandered to the ever-beloved forms of the pistols within her sash. "Any of them would throw a draught of wine in his face, and lay him dead for me with a pa.s.s or two ten minutes after. Why don't I bid them? I have a mind----"

In that moment she could have shot him dead herself without a moment's thought. Storm and sunlight swept, one after another, with electrical rapidity at all times, through her vivid, changeful temper; and here she had been wounded and been stung in the very hour in which she had subdued her national love of mirth, and her childlike pa.s.sion for show, and her impatience of all confinement, and her hatred of all things mournful, in the attainment of this self-negation! Moreover, there mingled with it the fierce and intolerant heat of the pa.s.sionate and scarce-conscious jealousy of an utterly untamed nature, and of Gallic blood, quick and hot as the steaming springs of the Geyser.

"You have vexed her, Victor," said Leon Ramon, as she was lost to sight through the doors of the great, desolate chamber.

"I hope not; I do not know how," answered Cecil. "It is impossible to follow the windings of her wayward caprices. A child--a soldier--a dancer--a brigand--a spoiled beauty--a mischievous gamin--how is one to treat such a little f.a.got of opposites?"

The others smiled.

"Ah! you do not know the Little One yet. She is worth a study. I painted her years ago--'La Vivandiere a Sept Ans.' There was not a picture in the Salon that winter that was sought like it. I had traveled in Algeria then; I had not entered the army. The first thing I saw of Cigarette was this: She was seven years old; she had been beaten black and blue; she had had two of her tiny teeth knocked out. The men were furious--she was a pet with them; and she would not say who had done it, though she knew twenty swords would have beaten him flat as a fritter if she had given his name. I got her to sit to me some days after. I pleased her with her own picture. I asked her to tell me why she would not say who had ill-treated her. She put her head on one side like a robin, and told me, in a whisper: 'It was one of my comrades--because I would not steal for him. I would not have the army know--it would demoralize them. If a French soldier ever does a cowardly thing, another French soldier must not betray it.' That was Cigarette--at seven years. The esprit de corps was stronger than her own wrongs. What do you say to that nature?"

"That is superb!--that it might be molded to anything. The pity is--"

"Ah," said the artist-trooper, half wearily, half laughingly. "Spare me the old world-worn, threadbare formulas. Because the flax and the laleza blossom for use, and the garden flowers grow trained and pruned, must there be no bud that opens for mere love of the sun, and swings free in the wind in its fearless, fair fashion? Believe me, dear Victor, it is the lives which follow no previous rule that do the most good and give the most harvest."

"Surely. Only for this child--a woman--in her future--"

"Her future! Well, she will die, I dare say, some bright day or another, at the head of a regiment; with some desperate battle turned by the valor of her charge, and the sight of the torn tricolor upheld in her little hands. That is what Cigarette hopes for--why not? There will always be a million of commonplace women ready to keep up the decorous traditions of their s.e.x, and sit in safety over their needles by the side of their hearths. One little lioness here and there in a generation cannot do overmuch harm."

Cecil was silent. He would not cross the words of the wounded man by saying what might bring a train of less pleasant thoughts--saying what, in truth, was in his mind, that the future which he had meant for the little Friend of the Flag was not that of any glorious death by combat, but that of a life (unless no bullet early cut its silver cord in twain) when youth should have fled, and have carried forever with it her numberless graces, and left in its stead that ribaldry-stained, drink-defiled, hardened, battered, joyless, cruel, terrible thing which is unsightly and repugnant to even the lowest among men; which is as the lees of the drunk wine, as the ashes of the burned-out fires, as the discord of the broken and earth-clogged lyre.

Cigarette was charming now--a fairy-story set into living motion--a fantastic little firework out of an extravaganza, with the impudence of a boy-harlequin and the witching kitten-hood of a girl's beauty.

But when this youth that made it all fair should have pa.s.sed (and youth pa.s.ses soon when thus adrift on the world), when there should be left in its stead only shamelessness, hardihood, vice, weariness--those who found the prettiest jest in her now would be the first to cast aside, with an oath, the charred, wrecked rocket-stick of a life from which no golden, careless stream of many-colored fires of coquette caprices would rise and enchant them then.

"Who is it that sent these?" asked Leon Ramon, later on, as his hands still wandered among the flowers; for the moment he was at peace; the ice and the hours of quietude had calmed him.

Cecil told him again.

"What does Cigarette know of her?" he pursued.

"Nothing, except, I believe, she knew that Mme. Corona accepted my chess-carvings."

"Ah! I thought the Little One was jealous, Victor."

"Jealous? Pshaw! Of whom?"

"Of anyone you admire--especially of this grande dame."

"Absurd!" said Cecil, with a sense of annoyance. "Cigarette is far too bold a little trooper to have any thoughts of those follies; and as for this grande dame, as you call her, I shall, in every likelihood, never see her again--unless when the word is given to 'Carry Swords' or 'Lances' at the General's Salute, where she reins her horse beside M. le Marechal's at a review, as I have done this morning."

The keen ear of the sick man caught the inflection of an impatience, of a mortification, in the tone that the speaker himself was unconscious of. He guessed the truth--that Cecil had never felt more restless under the shadow of the Eagles than he had done when he had carried his sword up in the salute as he pa.s.sed with his regiment the flagstaff where the aristocracy of Algiers had been gathered about the Marshal and his staff, and the azure eyes of Mme. la Princesse had glanced carelessly and critically over the long line of gray horses of those Cha.s.seurs d'Afrique among whom he rode a bas-officier.

"Cigarette is right," said Ramon, with a slight smile. "Your heart is with your old order. You are an aristocrat."

"Indeed I am not, mon ami; I am a mere trooper."

"Now! Well, keep your history as you have always done, if you will. What my friend was matters nothing; I know well what he is, and how true a friend. As for Milady, she will be best out of your path, Victor. Women!

G.o.d!--they are so fatal!"

"Does not our folly make their fatality?"

"Not always; not often. The madness may be ours, but they sow it. Ah! do they not know how to rouse and enrage it; how to fan, to burn, to lull, to pierce, to slake, to inflame, to entice, to sting? Heavens! so well they know--that their beauty must come, one thinks, out of h.e.l.l itself!"

His great eyes gleamed like fire, his hollow chest panted for breath, the sweat stood out on his temples. Cecil sought to soothe him, but his words rushed on with the impetuous course of the pa.s.sionate memories that arose in him.

"Do you know what brought me here? No! As little as I know what brought you, though we have been close comrades all these years. Well, it was she! I was an artist. I had no money, I had few friends; but I had youth, I had ambition, I had, I think, genius, till she killed it. I loved my art with a great love, and I was happy. Even in Paris one can be so happy without wealth, while one is young. The mirth of the Barriere--the grotesques of the Halles--the wooden booths on New Year's Day--the bright midnight crowds under the gaslights--the bursts of music from the gay cafes--the gray little nuns flitting through the snow--the Mardi Gras and the Old-World fooleries--the summer Sundays under the leaves while we laughed like children--the silent dreams through the length of the Louvre--dreams that went home with us and made our garret bright with their visions--one was happy in them--happy, happy!"

His eyes were still fastened on the blank, white wall before him while he spoke, as though the things that his words sketched so faintly were painted in all their vivid colors on the dull, blank surface. And so in truth they were, as remembrance pictured all the thousand perished hours of his youth.

"Happy--until she looked at me," he pursued, while his voice flew in feverish haste over the words. "Why would she not let me be? She had them all in her golden nets: n.o.bles, and princes, and poets, and soldiers--she swept them in far and wide. She had her empire; why must she seek out a man who had but his art and his youth, and steal those?

Women are so insatiate, look you; though they held all the world, they would not rest if one mote in the air swam in sunshine, free of them! It was the first year I touched triumph that I saw her. They began for the first time to speak of me; it was the little painting of Cigarette, as a child of the army, that did it. Ah, G.o.d! I thought myself already so famous! Well, she sent for me to take her picture, and I went. I went and I painted her as Cleopatra--by her wish. Ah! it was a face for Cleopatra--the eyes that burn your youth dead, the lips that kiss your honor blind! A face--my G.o.d! how beautiful! She had set herself to gain my soul; and as the picture grew, and grew, and grew, so my life grew into hers till I lived only by her breath. Why did she want my life?

she had so many! She had rich lives, great lives, grand lives at her bidding; and yet she knew no rest till she had leaned down from her cruel height and had seized mine, that had nothing on earth but the joys of the sun and the dew, and the falling of night, and the dawning of day, that are given to the birds of the fields."

His chest heaved with the spasms that with each throe seemed to tear his frame asunder; still he conquered them, and his words went on; his eyes fastened on the burning white glare of the wall as though all the beauty of this woman glowed afresh there to his sight.

"She was great; no matter her name--she lives still. She was vile; aye, but not in my sight till too late. Why is it that the heart which is pure never makes ours beat upon it with the rapture sin gives? Through month on month my picture grew, and my pa.s.sion grew with it, fanned by her hand. She knew that never would a man paint her beauty like one who gave his soul for the price of success. I had my paradise; I was drunk; and I painted as never the colors of mortals painted a woman. I think even she was content; even she, who in her superb arrogance thought she was matchless and deathless. Then came my reward; when the picture was done, her fancy had changed! A light scorn, a careless laugh, a touch of her fan on my cheek; could I not understand? Was I still such a child?

Must I be broken more harshly in to learn to give place? That was all!

And at last her lackey pushed me back with his wand from her gates! What would you? I had not known what a great lady's illicit caprices meant; I was still but a boy! She had killed me; she had struck my genius dead; she had made earth my h.e.l.l--what of that? She had her beauty eternal in the picture she needed, and the whole city rang with her loveliness as they looked on my work. I have never painted again. I came here. What of that? An artist the less then, the world did not care; a life the less soon, she will not care either!"

Then, as the words ended, a great wave of blood beat back his breath and burst from the pent-up torture of his striving lungs, and stained red the dark and silken ma.s.ses of his beard. His comrade had seen the hemorrhage many times; yet now he knew, as he had never known before, that that was death.

As he held him upward in his arms, and shouted loud for help, the great luminous eyes of the French soldier looked up at him through their mist with the deep, fond grat.i.tude that beams in the eyes of a dog as it drops down to die, knowing one touch and one voice to the last.

"You do not forsake," he murmured brokenly, while his voice ebbed faintly away as the stream of his life flowed faster and faster out.

"It is over now--so best! If only I could have seen France once more.

France----"

He stretched his arms outward as he spoke, with the vain longing of a hopeless love. Then a deep sigh quivered through his lips; his hand strove to close on the hand of his comrade, and his head fell, resting on the flushed blossoms of the rose-buds of Provence.

He was dead.

An hour later Cecil left the hospital, seeing and hearing nothing of the gay riot of the town about him, though the folds of many-colored silk and bunting fluttered across the narrow Moorish streets, and the whole of the populace was swarming through them with the vivacious enjoyment of Paris mingling with the stately, picturesque life of Arab habit and custom. He was well used to pain of every sort; his bread had long been the bread of bitterness, and the waters of his draught been of gall. Yet this stroke, though looked for, fell heavily and cut far.

Yonder, in the deadroom, there lay a broken, useless ma.s.s of flesh and bone that in the sight of the Bureau Arabe was only a worn-out machine that had paid its due toll to the wars of the Second Empire, and was now valueless; only fit to be cast in to rot, unmourned, in the devouring African soil. But to him that lifeless, useless ma.s.s was dear still; was the wreck of the bravest, tenderest, and best-loved friend that he had found in his adversity.

In Leon Ramon he had found a man whom he had loved, and who had loved him. They had suffered much, and much endured together; their very dissimilarities had seemed to draw them nearer to each other. The gentle impa.s.siveness of the Englishman had been like rest to the ardent impetuosity of the French soldier; the pa.s.sionate and poetic temperament of the artist-trooper had revealed to Cecil a thousand views of thought and of feeling which had never before then dawned on him. And now that the one lay dead, a heavy, weary sense of loneliness rested on the other. They died around him every day; the fearless, fiery blood of France watered in ceaseless streams the arid, harvestless fields of northern Africa. Death was so common that the fall of a comrade was no more noted by them than the fall of a loose stone that their horse's foot shook down a precipice. Yet this death was very bitter to him. He wondered with a dull sense of aching impatience why no Bedouin bullet, no Arab saber, had ever found his own life out, and cut his thralls asunder.