Under Two Flags Part 77

Cigarette stood looking after him with a gaze that was very evil, almost savage, in its wrath, in its pain, in its fiery jealousy, that ached so hotly in her, and was chained down by that pride which was as intense in the Vivandiere of Algeria as ever it could be in any d.u.c.h.ess of a Court.

Reckless, unfeminine, hardened, vitiated in much, as all her s.e.x would have deemed, and capable of the utmost abandonment to her pa.s.sion had it been returned, the haughty young soul of the child of the People was as sensitively delicate in this one thing as the purest and chastest among women could have been; she dreaded above every other thing that he should ever suspect that she loved him, or that she desired his love.

Her honor, her generosity, her pity for him, her natural instinct to do the thing that was right, even to her foes, any one of the unstudied and una.n.a.lyzed qualities in her had made her serve him even at her rival's bidding. But it had cost her none the less hardly because so manfully done; none the less did all the violent, ruthless hate, the vivid, childlike fury, the burning, intolerable jealousy of her nature combat in her with the cruel sense of her own unlikeness with that beauty which had subdued even herself, and with that n.o.bler impulse of self-sacrifice which grew side by side with the baser impulses of pa.s.sion.

As she crouched down by the side of the fire all the gracious, spiritual light that had been upon her face was gone; there was something of the goaded, dangerous, sullen ferocity of a brave animal hard-pressed and over-driven.

Her native generosity, the loyal disinterestedness of her love for him, had overborne the jealousy, the wounded vanity, and the desire of vengeance that reigned in her. Carried away by the first, she had, for the hour, risen above the last, and allowed the n.o.bler wish to serve and rescue him to prevail over the baser egotism. Nothing with her was ever premeditated; all was the offspring of the caprices of the impulse of the immediate moment. And now the reaction followed; she was only sensible of the burning envy that consumed her of this woman who seemed to her more than mortal in her wonderful, fair loveliness, in her marvelous difference from everything of their s.e.x that the camp and the barrack ever showed.

"And I have sent him to her when I should have fired my pistol into her breast!" she thought, as she sat by the dying embers. And she remembered once more the story of the Ma.r.s.eilles fisherwoman. She understood that terrible vengeance under the hot, southern sun, beside the ruthless, southern seas.

Meanwhile he, who so little knew or heeded how he occupied her heart, pa.s.sed unnoticed through the movements of the military crowds, crossed the breadth that parted the encampment from the marquees of the generals and their guests, gave the countersign and approached unarrested, and so far unseen save by the sentinels, the tents of the Corona suite. The Marshal and his male visitors were still over their banquet wines; she had withdrawn early, on the plea of fatigue; there was no one to notice his visit except the men on guard, who concluded that he went by command. In the dusky light, for the moon was very young, and the flare of the torches made the shadows black and uncertain, no one recognized him; the few soldiers stationed about saw one of their own troopers, and offered him no opposition, made him no question. He knew the pa.s.sword; that was sufficient. The Levantine waiting near the entrance drew the tent-folds aside and signed to him to enter. Another moment, and he was in the presence of her mistress, in that dim, amber light from the standing candelabra, in that heavy, soft-scented air perfumed from the aloe-wood burning in a brazier, through which he saw, half blinded at first coming from the darkness without, that face which subdued and dazzled even the antagonism and the lawlessness of Cigarette.

He bowed low before her, preserving that distant ceremonial due from the rank he ostensibly held to hers.

"Madame, this is very merciful! I know not how to thank you."

She motioned to him to take a seat near to her, while the Levantine, who knew nothing of the English tongue, retired to the farther end of the tent.

"I only kept my word," she answered, "for we leave the camp to-morrow; Africa next week."

"So soon!"

She saw the blood forsake the bronzed fairness of his face, and leave the dusky pallor there. It wounded her as if she suffered herself. For the first time she believed what the Little One had said--that this man loved her.

"I sent for you," she continued hurriedly, her graceful languor and tranquillity for the first time stirred and quickened by emotion, almost by embarra.s.sment. "It was very strange, it was very painful, for me to trust that child with such a message. But you know us of old; you know we do not forsake our friends for considerations of self-interest or outward semblance. We act as we deem right; we do not heed untrue constructions. There are many things I desire to say to you----"

She paused; he merely bent his head; he could not trust the calmness of his voice in answer.

"First," she continued, "I must entreat you to allow me to tell Philip what I know. You cannot conceive how intensely oppressive it becomes to me to have any secret from him. I never concealed so much as a thought from my brother in all my life, and to evade even a mute question from his brave, frank eyes makes me feel a traitress to him."

"Anything else," he muttered. "Ask me anything else. For G.o.d's sake, do not let him dream that I live!"

"But why? You still speak to me in enigmas. To-morrow, moreover, before we leave, he intends to seek you out as what he thinks you--a soldier of France. He is interested by all he hears of your career; he was first interested by what I told him of you when he saw the ivory carvings at my villa. I asked the little vivandiere to tell you this, but, on second thoughts it seemed best to see you myself once more, as I had promised."

There was a slow weariness in the utterance of the words. She had said that she could not reflect on leaving him to such a fate as this of his in Africa without personal suffering, or without an effort to induce him to reconsider his decision to condemn himself to it for evermore.

"That French child," she went on rapidly, to cover both the pain that she felt and that she dealt, "forced her entrance here in a strange fashion; she wished to see me, I suppose, and to try my courage too.

She is a little brigand, but she had a true and generous nature, and she loves you very loyally."

"Cigarette?" he asked wearily; his thoughts could not stay for either the pity or interest for her in this moment. "Oh, no! I trust not.

I have done nothing to win her love, and she is a fierce little condottiera who disdains all such weakness. She forced her way in here?

That was unpardonable; but she seems to bear a singular dislike to you."

"Singular, indeed! I never saw her until to-day."

He answered nothing; the conviction stole on him that Cigarette hated her because he loved her.

"And yet she brought you my message?" pursued his companion. "That seems her nature--violent pa.s.sions, yet thorough loyalty. But time is precious. I must urge on you what I bade you come to hear. It is to implore you to put your trust, your confidence in Philip. You have acknowledged to me that you are guiltless--no one who knows what you once were could ever doubt it for an instant--then let him hear this, let him be your judge as to what course is right and what wrong for you to pursue. It is impossible for me to return to Europe knowing you are living thus and leaving you to such a fate. What motive you have to sentence yourself to such eternal banishment I am ignorant; but all I ask of you is, confide in him. Let him learn that you live; let him decide whether or not this sacrifice of yourself be needed. His honor is an punctilious as that of any man on earth; his friendship you can never doubt. Why conceal anything from him?"

His eyes turned on her with that dumb agony which once before had chilled her to the soul.

"Do you think, if I could speak in honor, I should not tell you all?"

A flush pa.s.sed over her face, the first that the gaze of any man had ever brought there. She understood him.

"But," she said, gently and hurriedly, "may it not be that you overrate the obligations of honor? I know that many a n.o.ble-hearted man has inexorably condemned himself to a severity of rule that a dispa.s.sionate judge of his life might deem very exaggerated, very unnecessary. It is so natural for an honorable man to so dread that he should do a dishonorable thing through self-interest or self-pity, that he may very well overestimate the sacrifice required of him through what he deems justice or generosity. May it not be so with you? I can conceive no reason that can be strong enough to require of you such fearful surrender of every hope, such utter abandonment of your own existence."

Her voice failed slightly over the last words; she could not think with calmness of the destiny that he accepted. Involuntarily some prescience of pain that would forever pursue her own life unless his were rescued lent an intense earnestness, almost entreaty, to her argument. She did not bear him love as yet; she had seen too little of him, too lately only known him as her equal; but there were in her, stranger than she knew, a pity, a tenderness, a regret, an honor for him that drew her toward him with an indefinable attraction, and would sooner or later warm and deepen into love. Already it was sufficient, though she deemed it but compa.s.sion and friendship, to make her feel that an intolerable weight would be heavy on her future if his should remain condemned to this awful isolation and oblivion while she alone of all the world should know and hold his secret.

He started from her side as he heard, and paced to and fro the narrow limits of the tent like a caged animal. For the first time it grew a belief to him, in his thoughts, that were he free, were he owner of his heritage, he could rouse her heart from its long repose and make her love him with the soft and pa.s.sionate warmth of his dead Arab mistress--a thing that had been so distant from her negligence and her pride as warmth from the diamond or the crystal. He felt as if the struggle would kill him. He had but to betray his brother, and he would be unchained from his torture; he had but to break his word, and he would be at liberty. All the temptation that had before beset him paled and grew as naught beside this possibility of the possession of her love which dawned upon him now.

She, knowing nothing of this which moved him, believed only that he weighed her words in hesitation, and strove to turn the balance.

"Hear me," she said softly. "I do not bid you decide; I only bid you confide in Philip--in one who, as you must well remember, would sooner cut off his own hand than counsel a base thing or do an unfaithful act. You are guiltless of this charge under which you left England; you endure it rather than do what you deem dishonorable to clear yourself.

That is n.o.ble--that is great. But it is possible, as I say, that you may exaggerate the abnegation required of you. Whoever was the criminal should suffer. Yours is magnificent magnanimity; but it may surely be also false justice alike to yourself and the world."

He turned on her almost fiercely in the suffering she dealt him.

"It is! It was a madness--a Quixotism--the wild, unconsidered act of a fool. What you will! But it is done; it was done forever--so long ago--when your young eyes looked on me in the pity of your innocent childhood. I cannot redeem its folly now by adding to it baseness. I cannot change the choice of a madman by repenting of it with a coward's caprice. Ah, G.o.d! you do not know what you do--how you tempt. For pity's sake, urge me no more. Help me--strengthen me--to be true to my word. Do not bid me do evil that I may enter paradise through my sin!"

He threw himself down beside her as the incoherent words poured out, his arms flung across the pile of cushions on which he had been seated, his face hidden on them. His teeth clinched on his tongue till the blood flowed; he felt that if the power of speech remained with him he should forswear every law that had bound him to silence, and tell her all, whatever the cost.

She looked at him, she heard him, moved to a greater agitation than ever had had sway over her; for the first time the storm winds that swept by her did not leave her pa.s.sionless and calm; this man's whole future was in her hands. She could bid him seek happiness dishonored; or cleave to honor, and accept wretchedness forever.

It was a fearful choice to hold.

"Answer me! Choose for me!" he said vehemently. "Be my law, and be my G.o.d!"

She gave a gesture almost of fear.

"Hush, hush! The woman does not live who should be that to any man."

"You shall be it to me! Choose for me!"

"I cannot! You leave so much in darkness and untold----"

"Nothing that you need know to decide your choice for me, save one thing only--that I love you."

She shuddered.

"This is madness! What have you seen of me?"

"Enough to love you while my life shall last, and love no other woman.

Ah! I was but an African trooper in your sight, but in my own I was your equal. You only saw a man to whom your gracious alms and your gentle charity were to be given, as a queen may stoop in mercy to a beggar; but I saw one who had the light of my old days in her smile, the sweetness of my old joys in her eyes, the memories of my old world in her every grace and gesture. You forget! I was nothing to you; but you were so much to me. I loved you the first moment that your voice fell on my ear.

It is madness! Oh, yes! I should have said so, too, in those old years.

A madness I would have sworn never to feel. But I have lived a hard life since then, and no men ever love like those who suffer. Now you know all; know the worst that tempts me. No famine, no humiliation, no obloquy, no loss I have known, ever drove me so cruelly to buy back my happiness with the price of dishonor as the one desire--to stand in my rightful place before men, and be free to strive with you for what they have not won!"