Under Two Flags Part 62

There was that in the accent which struck his listener to the heart. He was powerless, fettered hand and foot as though he were a prisoner; a night's absence, and he would be shot as a deserter. He had grown accustomed to this rendering up of all his life to the rules of others; but now and then the galled spirit chafed, the netted stag strained at the bonds.

"I will try," said Cigarette simply, without any of her audacity or of her vanity in the answer. "Go you to the fire; you are cold."

"Are you sure he will not return?"

"Not he. They are gone to eat and drink; I go with them. What is it you fear?"

"My own weakness."

She was silent. She could just watch his features by the dim light, and she saw his mouth quiver under the fullness of his beard. He felt that if he looked again on the face of the man he loved he might be broken into self-pity, and unloose his silence, and shatter all the work of so many years. He had been strong where men of harder fiber and less ductile temper might have been feeble; but he never thought that he had been so; he only thought that he had acted on impulse, and had remained true to his act through the mere instinct of honor--an instinct inborn in his blood and his Order--an instinct natural and unconscious with him as the instinct by which he drove his breath.

"You are a fine soldier," said Cigarette musingly; "such men are not weak."

"Why? We are only strong as tigers are strong--just the strength of the talon and fang. I do not know. I was weak as water once; I may be again, if--if----"

He scarcely knew that he was speaking aloud; he had forgotten her! His whole heart seemed burned as with fire by the memory of that one face so familiar, so well loved, yet from which he must shrink as though some cowardly sin were between them. The wretchedness on him seemed more than he could bear; to know that this man was so near that the sound of his voice raised could summon him, yet that he must remain as dead to him--remain as one dead after a craven and treacherous guilt.

He turned suddenly, almost violently, upon Cigarette.

"You have surprised my folly from me; you know my secret so far; but you are too brave to betray me, you are too generous to tell of this? I can trust you to be silent?"

Her face flushed scarlet with astonished anger; her little, childlike form grew instinct with haughty and fiery dignity.

"Monsieur, that question from one soldier of France to another is insult. We are not dastards!"

There was a certain grave reproach that mingled with the indignant scorn of the answer, and showed that her own heart was wounded by the doubt, as well as her military pride by the aspersion. Even amid the conflict of pain at war in him he felt that, and hastened to soothe it.

"Forgive me, my child; I should not have wronged you with the question.

It is needless, I know. Men can trust you to the death, they say."

"To the death--yes."

The answer was thoughtful, dreamy, almost sad, for Cigarette. His thoughts were too far from her in their tumult of awakened memories to note the tone as he went rapidly on:

"You have ingenuity, compa.s.sion, tact; you have power here, too, in your way. For the love of Heaven get me sent out on some duty before dawn!

There is Biribi's murder to be avenged--would they give the errand to me?"

She thought a moment.

"We will see," she said curtly. "I think I can do it. But go back, or you will be missed. I will come to you soon."

She left him, then, rapidly; drawing her hand quickly out of the clasp of his.

Cigarette felt her heart aching to its core for the sorrow of this man who was nothing to her. He did not know what she had done for him in his suffering and delirium; he did not know how she had watched him all that night through, when she was weary, and bruised, and thirsting for sleep; he did not know; he held her hand as one comrade another's, and never looked to see if her eyes were blue or were black, were laughing or tear-laden. And yet she felt pain in his pain; she was always giving her life to his service. Many besides the little Friend of the Flag beat back as folly the n.o.blest and purest thing in them.

Cecil mechanically returned to the fire at which the men of his tribe were cooking their welcome supper, and sat down near them; rejecting, with a gesture, the most savory portion which, with their customary love and care for him, they were careful to select and bring to him. There had never been a time when they had found him fail to prefer them to himself, or fail to do them kindly service, if of such he had a chance; and they returned it with all that rough and silent attachment that can be so strong and so stanch in lives that may be black with crime or red with slaughter.

He sat like a man in a dream, while the loosened tongues of the men ran noisily on a hundred themes as they chaffed each other, exchanged a fire of bivouac jokes more racy than decorous, and gave themselves to the enjoyment of their rude meal, that had to them that savor which long hunger alone can give. Their voices came dull on his ear; the ruddy warmth of the fire was obscured to his sight; the din, the laughter, the stir all over the great camp, at the hour of dinner were lost on him.

He was insensible to everything except the innumerable memories that thronged upon him, and the aching longing that filled his heart with the sight of the friend of his youth.

"He said once that he would take my hand before all the world always, come what would," he thought. "Would he take it now, I wonder? Yes; he never believed against me."

And, as he thought, the same anguish of desire that had before smitten him to stand once more guiltless in the presence of men, and once more bear, untarnished, the name of his race and the honor of his fathers, shook him now as strong winds shake a tree that yet is fast rooted at its base, though it sway a while beneath the storm.

"How weak I am!" he thought bitterly. "What does it matter? Life is so short, one is a coward indeed to fret over it. I cannot undo what I did.

I cannot, if I could. To betray him now! G.o.d! not for a kingdom, if I had the chance! Besides, she may live still; and, even were she dead, to tarnish her name to clear my own would be a scoundrel's baseness--baseness that would fail as it merited; for who could be brought to believe me now?"

The thoughts unformed drifted through his mind, half dulled, half sharpened by the deadly pain, and the rush of old brotherly love that had arisen in him as he had seen the face of his friend beside the watch-fire of the French bivouac. It was hard; it was cruelly hard; he had, after a long and severe conflict, brought himself into contentment with his lot, and taught himself oblivion of the past, and interest in the present, by active duties and firm resolve; he had vanquished all the habits, controlled most of the weaknesses, and banished nearly all the frailties and indulgences of his temperament in the long ordeal of African warfare. It was cruelly hard that now when he had obtained serenity, and more than half attained forgetfulness, these two--her face and his--must come before him; one to recall the past, the other to embitter the future!

As he sat with his head bent down and his forehead leaning on his arm, while the hard biscuit that served for a plate stood unnoticed beside him, with the food that the soldiers had placed on it, he did not hear Cigarette's step till she touched him on the arm. Then he looked up; her eyes were looking on him with a tender, earnest pity.

"Hark! I have done it," she said gently. "But it will be an errand very close to death that you must go on--"

He raised himself erect, eagerly.

"No matter that! Ah, mademoiselle, how I thank you!"

"Chut! I am no Paris demoiselle!" said Cigarette, with a dash of her old acrimony. "Ceremony in a camp--pouf! You must have been a court chamberlain once, weren't you? Well, I have done it. Your officers were talking yonder of a delicate business; they were uncertain who best to employ. I put in my speech--it was dead against military etiquette, but I did it. I said to M. le General: 'You want the best rider, the most silent tongue, and the surest steel in the squadrons? Take Bel-a-faire-peur, then.' 'Who is that?' asked the general; he would have sent out of camp anybody but Cigarette for the interruption.

'Mon General,' said I, 'the Arabs asked that, too, the other day, at Zaraila.' 'What!' he cried, 'the man Victor--who held the ground with his Cha.s.seurs? I know--a fine soldier. M. le Colonel, shall we send him?' The Black Hawk had scowled thunder on you; he hates you more still since that affair of Zaraila, especially because the general has reported your conduct with such praise that they cannot help but promote you. Well, he had looked thunder, but now he laughed. 'Yes, mon General,' he answered him, 'take him, if you like. It is fifty to one whoever goes on that business will not come back alive, and you will rid me of the most insolent fine gentleman in my squadrons.' The general hardly heard him; he was deep in thought; but he asked a good deal about you from the Hawk, and Chateauroy spoke for your fitness for the errand they are going to send you on, very truthfully, for a wonder. I don't know why; but he wants you to be sent, I think; most likely that you may be cut to pieces. And so they will send for you in a minute. I have done it as you wished."

There was something of her old brusquerie and recklessness in the closing sentences; but it had not her customary debonair lightness. She knew too well that the chances were as a hundred to one that he would never return alive from this service on which he had entreated to be dispatched. Cecil grasped both her hands in his with warm grat.i.tude, that was still, like the touch of his hands, the grat.i.tude of comrade to comrade, not of man to woman.

"G.o.d bless you, Cigarette! You are a true friend, my child. You have done me immeasurable benefits--"

"Oh! I am a true friend," said the Little One, somewhat pettishly. She would have preferred another epithet. "If a man wants to get shot as a very great favor, I always let him pleasure himself. Give a man his own way, if you wish to be kind to him. You are children, all of you, nothing but children, and if the toy that pleases you best is death, why--you must have it. Nothing else would content you. I know you. You always want what flies from you, and are tired of what lies to your hand. That is always a man."

"And a woman, too, is it not?"

Cigarette shrugged her shoulders.

"Oh, I dare say! We love what is new--what is strange. We are humming-tops; we will only spin when we are fresh wound up with a string to our liking."

"Make an exception of yourself, my child. You are always ready to do a good action, and never tire of that. From my heart I thank you. I wish to Heaven I could prove it better."

She drew her hands away from him.

"A great thing I have done, certainly! Got you permission to go and throw a cartel at old King Death; that is all! There! That is your summons."

The orderly approached, and brought the bidding of the general in command of the Cavalry for Cecil to render himself at once to his presence. These things brook no second's delay in obedience; he went with a quick adieu to Cigarette, and the little Friend of the Flag was left in his vacant place beside the fire.

And there was a pang at her heart.

"Ten to one he goes to his death," she thought. But Cigarette, little mischief-maker though she was, could reach very high in one thing; she could reach a love that was unselfish, and one that was heroic.

A few moments, and Cecil returned.

"Rake," he said rapidly, in the French he habitually used, "saddle my horse and your own. I am allowed to choose one of you to accompany me."

Rake, in paradise, and the envied of every man in the squadron, turned to his work--with him a task of scarce more than a second; and Cecil approached his little Friend of the Flag.