Under Two Flags Part 57

Cigarette closed their long, black lashes down on the white cheeks with soft and reverent touch; she had seen that look ere now on the upturned faces of the dead who had strewn the barricades of Paris, with the words of the Ma.r.s.eillaise the last upon their lips.

To her there could be no fate fairer, no glory more glorious, than this of his--to die for France. And she laid him gently down, and left him, and went on with her quest.

It was here that she had lost sight of Cecil as they had charged together, and her mare, enraged and intoxicated with noise and terror, had torn away at full speed that had outstripped even the swiftest of her Spahis. A little farther on a dog's moan caught her ear; she turned and looked across. Upright, among a ghastly pile of men and chargers, sat the small, snowy poodle of the Cha.s.seurs, beating the air with its little paws, as it had been taught to do when it needed anything, and howling piteously as it begged.

"Flick-Flack? What is it, Flick-Flack?" she cried to him, while, with a bound, she reached the spot. The dog leaped on her, rejoicing. The dead were thick there--ten or twelve deep--French trooper and Bedouin rider flung across each other, horribly entangled with the limbs, the manes, the shattered bodies of their own horses. Among them she saw the face she sought, as the dog eagerly ran back, caressing the hair of a soldier who lay underneath the weight of his gray charger, that had been killed by a musket-ball.

Cigarette grew very pale, as she had never grown when the hailstorm of shots had been pouring on her in the midst of a battle; but, with the rapid skill and strength she had acquired long before, she reached the place, lifted aside first one, then another of the lifeless Arabs that had fallen above him, and drew out from beneath the suffocating pressure of his horse's weight the head and the frame of the Cha.s.seur whom Flick-Flack had sought out and guarded.

For a moment she thought him dead; then, as she drew him out where the cooled breeze of the declining day could reach him, a slow breath, painfully drawn, moved his chest; she saw that he was unconscious from the stifling oppression under which he had been buried since the noon; an hour more without the touch of fresher air, and life would have been extinct.

Cigarette had with her the flask of brandy that she always brought on such errands as these; she forced the end between his lips, and poured some down his throat; her hand shook slightly as she did so, a weakness the gallant little campaigner never before then had known.

It revived him in a degree; he breathed more freely, though heavily, and with difficulty still; but gradually the deadly, leaden color of his face was replaced by the hue of life, and his heart began to beat more loudly. Consciousness did not return to him; he lay motionless and senseless, with his head resting on her lap, and with Flick-Flack, in eager affection, licking his hands and his hair.

"He was as good as dead, Flick-Flack, if it had not been for you and me," said Cigarette, while she wetted his lips with more brandy. "Ah, bah! and he would be more grateful, Flick-Flack, for a scornful scoff from Milady!"

Still, though she thought this, she let his head lie on her lap, and, as she looked down on him, there was the glisten as of tears in the brave, sunny eyes of the little Friend of the Flag. She was of a vivid, voluptuous, artistic nature; she was thoroughly woman-like in her pa.s.sions and her instincts, though she so fiercely contemned womanhood.

If he had not been beautiful she would never have looked twice at him, never once have pitied his fate.

And he was beautiful still, though his hair was heavy with dew and dust; though his face was scorched with powder; though his eyes were closed as with the leaden weight of death, and his beard was covered with the red stain of blood that had flowed from the lance-wound on his shoulder.

He was not dead; he was not even in peril of death. She knew enough of medical lore to know that it was but the insensibility of exhaustion and suffocation; and she did not care that he should waken. She dropped her head over him, moving her hand softly among the ma.s.ses of his curls, and watching the quickening beatings of his heart under the bare, strong nerves. Her face grew tender, and warm, and eager, and melting with a marvelous change of pa.s.sionate hues. She had all the ardor of southern blood; without a wish he had wakened in her a love that grew daily and hourly, though she would not acknowledge it. She loved to see him lie there as though he were asleep, to cheat herself into the fancy that she watched his rest to wake it with a kiss on his lips. In that unconsciousness, in that abandonment, he seemed wholly her own; pa.s.sion which she could not have a.n.a.lyzed made her bend above him with a half-fierce, half-dreamy delight in that solitary possession of his beauty, of his life.

The restless movements of little Flick-Flack detached a piece of twine pa.s.sed round his favorite's throat; the glitter of gold arrested Cigarette's eyes. She caught what the poodle's impatient caress had broken from the string. It was a small, blue-enamel medallion bonbon-box, with a hole through it by which it had been slung--a tiny toy once costly, now tarnished, for it had been carried through many rough scenes and many years of hardship; had been bent by blows struck at the breast against which it rested, and was clotted now with blood.

Inside it was a woman's ring, of sapphires and opals.

She looked at both close, in the glow of the setting sun; then pa.s.sed the string through and fastened the box afresh. It was a mere trifle, but it sufficed to banish her dream; to arouse her to contemptuous, impatient bitterness with that new weakness that had for the hour broken her down to the level of this feverish folly. He was beautiful--yes!

She could not bring herself to hate him; she could not help the br.i.m.m.i.n.g tears blinding her eyes when she looked at him, stretched senseless thus. But he was wedded to his past; that toy in his breast, whatever it might be, whatever tale might cling to it, was sweeter to him than her lips would ever be. Bah! there were better men than he; why had she not let him lie and die as he might, under the pile of dead?

Bah! she could have killed herself for her folly! She, who had scores of lovers, from princes, to piou-pious, and never had a heartache for one of them, to go and care for a silent "ci-devant," who had never even noticed that her eyes had any brightness or her face had any charm!

"You deserve to be shot--you!" said Cigarette, fiercely abusing herself as she put his head off her lap, and rose abruptly and shouted to a Tringlo, who was at some distance searching for the wounded. "Here is a Cha.s.se-Marais with some breath in him," she said curtly, as the man with his mule-cart and his sad burden of half-dead, moaning, writhing frames drew near to her summons. "Put him in. Soldiers cost too much training to waste them on jackals and kites, if one can help it. Lift him up--quick!"

"He is badly hurt?" said the Tringlo.

She shrugged her shoulders.

"Oh, no! I have had worse scratches myself. The horse fell on him, that was the mischief. I never saw a prettier thing--every Lascar has killed his own little knot of Arbicos. Look how nice and neat they lie."

Cigarette glanced over the field, with the satisfied appreciation of a dilettante glancing over a collection unimpeachable for accuracy and arrangement; and drank a toss of her brandy, and lighted her little amber pipe, and sang loudly, as she did so, the gayest ballad of the Langue Verte.

She was not going to have him imagine she cared for that Cha.s.seur whom he lifted up on his little wagon with so kindly a care--not she!

Cigarette was as proud in her way as was ever the Princesse Venetia Corona.

Nevertheless, she kept pace with the mules, carrying little Flick-Flack, and never paused on her way, though she pa.s.sed scores of dead Arabs, whose silver ornaments and silk embroideries, commonly replenished the knapsack and adorned in profusion the uniform of the young filibuster; being gleaned by her, right and left, as her lawful harvest after the fray.

"Leave him there. I will have a look at him," she said, at the first empty tent they reached. The camp had been the scene of as fierce a struggle as the part of the plain which the cavalry had held, and it was strewn with the slaughter of Zouaves and Tirailleurs. The Tringlo obeyed her, and went about his errand of mercy. Cigarette, left alone with the wounded man, lying insensible still on a heap of forage, ceased her song and grew very quiet. She had a certain surgical skill, learned as her untutored genius learned most things, with marvelous rapidity, by observation and intuition; and she had saved many a life by her knowledge and her patient attendance on the sufferers--patience that she had been famed for when she had been only six years old, and a surgeon of the Algerian regiments had affirmed that he could trust her to be as wakeful, as watchful, and as sure to obey his directions as though she were a Soeur de Charite. Now, "the little f.a.got of opposites," as Cecil had called her, put this skill into active use.

The tent had been a scullion's tent; the poor marmiton had been killed, and lay outside, with his head clean severed by an Arab flissa; his fire had gone out, but his bra.s.s pots and pans, his jar of fresh water, and his various preparations for the General's dinner were still there. The General was dead also; far yonder, where he had fallen in the van of his Zouaves, exposing himself with all the splendid, reckless gallantry of France; and the soup stood unserved; the wild plovers were taken by Flick-Flack; the empty dishes waited for the viands which there were no hands to prepare and no mouths to eat. Cigarette glanced round, and saw all with one flash of her eyes; then she knelt down beside the heap of forage, and, for the first thing, dressed his wounds with the cold, clear water, and washed away the dust and the blood that covered his breast.

"He is too good a soldier to die; one must do it for France," she said to herself, in a kind of self-apology. And as she did it, and bound the lance-gash close, and bathed his breast, his forehead, his hair, his beard, free from the sand and the powder and the gore, a thousand changes swept over her mobile face. It was one moment soft, and flushed, and tender as pa.s.sion; it was the next jealous, fiery, scornful, pale, and full of impatient self-disdain.

He was nothing to her--morbleu! He was an aristocrat, and she was a child of the people. She had been besieged by dukes and had flouted princes; she had borne herself in such gay liberty, such vivacious freedom, such proud and careless sovereignty--bah! what was it to her whether this man lived or died? If she saved him, he would give her a low bow as he thanked her; thinking all the while of Milady!

And yet she went on with her work.

Cecil had been stunned by a stroke from his horse's hoof as the poor beast fell beneath and rolled over him. His wounds were light--marvelously so, for the thousand strokes that had been aimed at him; but it was difficult to arouse him from unconsciousness, and his face was white as death where he lay on the heap of dry reeds and gra.s.ses. She began to feel fear of that lengthened syncope; a chill, tight, despairing fear that she had never known in her life before. She knelt silent a moment, drawing through her hand the wet locks of his hair with the bright threads of gold gleaming in it.

Then she started up, and, leaving him, found a match, and lighted the died-out wood afresh; the fire soon blazed up, and she warmed above it the soup that had grown cold, poured into it some red wine that was near, and forced some, little by little, down his throat. It was with difficulty at first that she could pa.s.s any though his tightly locked teeth; but by degrees she succeeded, and, only half-conscious still, he drank it faster; the heat and the strength reviving him as its stimulant warmed his veins. His eyes did not unclose, but he stirred, moved his limbs, and, with some muttered words she could not hear, drew a deeper breath and turned.

"He will sleep now--he is safe," she thought to herself, while she stood watching him with a curious conflict of pity, impatience, anger, and relief at war within her.

Bah! Why was she always doing good services to this man, who only cared for the blue, serene eyes of a woman who would never give him aught except pain? Why should she take such care to keep the fire of vitality alight in him, when it had been crushed out in thousands as good as he, who would have no notice save a hasty thrust into the earth; no funeral chant except the screech of the carrion-birds?

Cigarette had been too successful in her rebellion against all weakness, and was far too fiery a young warrior to find refuge or consolation in the poet's plea,

"How is it under our control to love or not to love?"

To allow anything to gain ascendancy over her that she resisted, to succ.u.mb to any conqueror that was unbidden and unwelcome, was a submission beyond words degrading to the fearless soldier-code of the Friend of the Flag. And yet--there she stayed and watched him. She took some food, for she had been fasting all day; then she dropped down before the fire she had lighted, and, in one of those soft, curled, kitten-like att.i.tudes that were characteristic of her, kept her vigil over him.

She was bruised, stiff, tired, longing like a tired child to fall asleep; her eyes felt hot as flame; her rounded, supple limbs were aching, her throat was sore with long thirst and the sand that she seemed to have swallowed till no draught of water or wine would take the scorched, dry pain out of it. But, as she had given up her fete-day in the hospital, so she sat now--as patient in the self-sacrifice as she was impatient when the vivacious agility of her young frame was longing for the frenzied delights of the dance or the battle.

Yonder she knew, where her Spahis bivouacked on the hard-won field, there were riotous homage, wild applause, intoxicating triumph waiting for the Little One who had saved the day, if she chose to go out for it; and she loved to be the center of such adoration and rejoicing, with all the exultant vanity of a child and a hero in one. Here there were warmth of flames, quietness of rest, long hours for slumber; all that her burning eyes and throbbing nerves were longing for, as the sleep she would not yield to stole on her, and the racking pain of fatigue cramped her bones. But she would not go to the pleasure without, and she would not give way to the weariness that tortured her.

Cigarette could crucify self with a generous courage, all the purer because it never occurred to her that there was anything of virtue or of sacrifice in it. She was acting en bon soldat--that was all. Pouf! That wanted no thanks.

Silence settled over the camp; half the slain could not be buried, and the clear, luminous stars rose on the ghastly plateau. All that were heard were the challenge of sentinels, the tramp of patrols. The guard visited her once.

She kept herself awake in the little dark tent, only lit by the glow of the fire. Dead men were just without, and in the moonlight without, as the night came on, she could see the severed throat of the scullion, and the head further off, like a round, gray stone. But that was nothing to Cigarette; dead men were no more to her than dead trees are to others.

Every now and then, four or five times in an hour, she gave him whom she tended the soup or the wine that she kept warmed for him over the embers. He took it without knowledge, sunk half in lethargy, half in sleep; but it kept the life glowing in him which, without it, might have perished of cold and exhaustion as the chills and northerly wind of the evening succeeded to the heat of the day, and pierced through the canvas walls of the tent. It was very bitter; more keenly felt because of the previous burning of the sun. There was no cloak or covering to fling over him; she took off her blue cloth tunic and threw it across his chest, and, shivering despite herself, curled closer to the little fire.

She did not know why she did it--he was nothing to her--and yet she kept herself wide awake through the dark autumn night, lest he should sigh or stir and she not hear him.

"I have saved his life twice," she thought, looking at him; "beware of the third time, they say!"

He moved restlessly, and she went to him. His face was flushed now; his breath came rapidly and shortly; there was some fever on him. The linen was displaced from his wounds; she dipped it again in water, and laid the cooled bands on them. "Ah, bah! If I were not uns.e.xed enough for this, how would it be with you now?" she said in her teeth. He tossed wearily to and fro; detached words caught her ear as he muttered them.

"Let it be, let it be--he is welcome! How could I prove it at his cost?

I saved him--I could do that. It was not much----"

She listened with intent anxiety to hear the other whispers ending the sentence, but they were stifled and broken.

"Tiens!" she murmured below her breath. "It is for some other he has ruined himself."

She could not catch the words that followed. They were in an unknown language to her, for she knew nothing of English, and they poured fast and obscure from his lips as he moved in feverish unrest; the wine that had saved him from exhaustion inflaming his brain in his sleep. Now and then French phrases crossed the English ones; she leaned down to seize their meaning till her cheek was against his forehead, till her lips touched his hair; and at that half caress her heart beat, her face flushed, her mouth trembled with a too vivid joy, with an impulse, half fear and half longing, that had never so moved her before.