CHAPTER IX
THE COLONEL OF THE LEGION
All Sanda's anxiously laid plans were swept away in the wind of emotion.She and the father she had meant to win with loving diplomacy hadstumbled upon each other crudely in a railway station. The dearresemblance upon which she had founded her best hope had struck ColonelDeLisle like a blow over the heart.
The dapper little officer, with the figure of a boy and the face of atragic mask, stared straight at the girl, with the look of one who meetsa ghost in daylight. "My God! who are you?" he faltered, in French. Thewords seemed to speak themselves against his will.
Sanda was deathly pale. But she caught at her courage as a soldiergrasps his flag: "I am--Corisande, your daughter," she answered in thatsmall, sweet voice of a child with which she had begged Max to pardonher, yesterday. And she too spoke in French. "My father, forgive me ifI've done wrong to come to you like this. But I was so unhappy. I wantedso much to see you. And I've travelled such a long way!"
For an instant the man still stared at her in silence. He had the air oflistening for a voice within a voice, as one listens through the soundof running water for its tune. Max, who must now unfortunately beexplained and accounted for in spite of every difficulty, found astrange likeness between the middle-aged soldier and the young girl. Itwas in the eyes: long, gray, haunted with thoughts and dreams. If SandaDeLisle ever had to become acquainted with sorrow her eyes would be likeher father's.
The pause was but for a second or two, though it was full of suspensefor the girl, and even for Max, who forgot himself in anxiety for her.The hardness of straining after self-control melted to sudden beauty, asMax had seen Sanda's face transfigured. Never again, it seemed tohim--no matter what Colonel DeLisle's actions might be--could he believehim to be cruel or cold.
"Ma petite," DeLisle said, with a quiver in his voice that echoed upfrom heartstrings swept by some spirit hand. "Can it be true? You havecome--across half the world, to me?"
"Oh, father, yes, it is true. And always I've wanted to come." Sanda'svoice caressed him. No man could have resisted her then. "You're notangry?"
"Mon Dieu, no, I'm not angry, though my life is not the life for a girl.I only--for a moment I thought I saw----"
"I know, I guessed," Sanda gently filled up his pause. "Since I begangrowing into a woman every one told me I was like--her. But I wouldn'tsend you a photograph. For years I've planned to surprise you--and makeyou _care_ a little, if I could."
"Care!" he echoed, a look as of anguish passing over his face like theshadow of a cloud; then leaving it clear, though sad with the habitualsadness which had scored its many lines. "You have surprised me,indeed. But----" He stopped abruptly, and apparently for the first timenoticed the young man standing near. Stiffening slightly, ColonelDeLisle looked keenly at Max, his eyes trying to solve the new puzzle."But--my daughter, you have come to me with----"
"Only a friend," Sanda broke in desperately, blushing up to her brighthair. "A kind friend, Mr. Doran, an American who had to travel toSidi-bel-Abbes on business of his own, and who's been more good to methan I can describe. I want him to let me tell you all about him, andthen you will understand."
"I thank you in advance, Monsieur," said Colonel DeLisle, unbendingagain, and a faint--a very faint--twinkle brightening his eyes, at thethought of the error he had nearly made, and because of Doran's blush atbeing mistaken for an unwelcome son-in-law.
"I've done nothing, Monsieur le Colonel," stammered Max. "I had to come.I have business with a person at the Hotel Splendide. It is Mademoisellewho is kind to me in saying----"
"Could he not take me to the hotel to wait for you?" Sanda cut in. "Ishouldn't have interrupted you in such a place as this, and at such atime, my father, if I could have helped doing so, even though Irecognized your face from the old photograph that is my treasure. Butacting on impulse is my greatest fault, the aunts all say. And when Isaw you I cried out before I stopped to think. Then I drew back, but itwas too late. I have taken you from some duty."
"I came officially with my comrades to meet General Sauvanne, who isvisiting our Algerian garrisons," said DeLisle. He glanced again at Max,giving him one of those soldier looks which long experience has taughtto penetrate flesh and bone and brain down to a man's hidden self. "Itis true that I have no right to excuse myself for my own privateaffairs." He hesitated, almost imperceptibly, then turned to Max. "Addto your past kindness by taking my daughter to the hotel, Monsieur,where in my name she will engage a room for herself--since,unfortunately, I have no home to offer her. I will go with you both to acab, and then return to duty. My child, I will see you again before_dejeuner_."
Max's quick mind promptly comprehended the full meaning of ColonelDeLisle's seemingly unconventional decision. Not only was he being madefriendly use of, in a complicated situation, but Sanda's father wishedall who had seen the girl arrive with a man to know once for all thatthe man had his official approval. Soon Sanda's relationship to theColonel of the First Regiment of the Foreign Legion would be known, andthere must be no stupid gossip regarding the scene at the station. Asthey passed the other officers and their guests (who for these fewdramatic moments had discreetly awaited developments, outside theplatform gate), Colonel DeLisle lingered an instant to murmur; "It is mydaughter, who has come unexpectedly. A young friend whom I can trust tosee her to the hotel will take her there, and I am at your service whenI have put them into a cab."
"What do you think?" cried Sanda, as the rickety vehicle rattled themtoward the nearest gate of the walled town. "Have I failed with him--orhave I succeeded?"
"Succeeded," Max answered. "Don't you feel it?"
"I hoped it. Oh, Mr. Doran, I am going to love him!"
"I don't wonder," Max said. "I'm sure he's worth it."
"Yet I saw by your look when I spoke of him before, that you werethinking him heartless."
"I had no right to think anything."
"I gave you the right, by confiding in you. But I didn't confide enough,to do my father justice. I knew he wasn't heartless, though he couldn'tbear the sight of me when I was a baby, and put me out of his life. Hehas always said that a soldier's life was not for a young girl to share.I knew he had a heart, _because_ of that, not in spite of it. It wasthat he loved my mother so desperately, and I'd robbed him of her. Nowyou've seen him, you must let me tell you a little----"
"Would he wish it?"
"Yes, if he knew why, and if he knew you, and what you are going throughat this time. He fell in love with my mother at first sight in Paris,and she with him. He was on leave, and she was there with her parentsfrom Ireland. He'd never meant to marry, but he was swept off his feet.Mother's people wouldn't hear of it. They took her home in a hurry, andtried to make her marry some one else. She nearly did--because they werestronger than she. She wrote father a letter of good-bye, to his post inthe southern desert, where he was stationed then. He supposed, when heread the letter, that she was already married when he got it. Butsuddenly she appeared--as unexpectedly as I appeared to-day. She'd runaway from home, because she couldn't live without him. Oh, how well Iunderstand her! Think of the joy! It was like waking from a dreadfuldream for both of them. They were going to be married at once, thoughmother was half dead with fatigue and excitement after her long, hurriedjourney; but on their wedding eve she was taken ill, and becamedelirious. It was typhoid fever. She had got it somehow on the journey.She had come without stopping to rest, from Dublin to Touggourt, wherefather was stationed. They say it's wild there even now. It was farwilder then, more than twenty-one years ago. He nursed mother himself,scarcely eating or sleeping: not taking off his clothes for weeks. Oneof his aunts--my great-aunt--told me the story. It came to her from afriend of father's. He never spoke of it. For three months mother wasn'tout of danger. Father was her nurse, her doctor, not her husband. But atlast she was well again. They had their honeymoon in a tent in thedesert. She loved the desert, then--or thought she did. Afterward,though, she changed, for I was coming, and she was i
ll again. By thattime they were stationed still farther south. She grew so homesick forthe north that my father got leave. They started to travel by easystages through the desert, with a small caravan. Their hope was to reachAlgiers, and to get to France long before the baby should come; but theheat grew suddenly terrible, and one day they were caught in a fearfulsandstorm. My mother was terrified. I was born two months before thetime. That same night she died, while the storm was still raging; andbefore she went, she begged my father to promise, whatever happened, notto leave her body buried in the desert. He did promise. And then beganhis martyrdom. The caravan could not march fast because of me. A negrowoman who'd come as mother's maid took care of me as well as she could,and fed me on condensed milk. Strange I should have lived.... My fatherhad his men make for my mother's body a case of many tins, which theyspread open and soldered together, with lead from bullets they melted.In the next oasis they cut down a palm tree and hollowed out the trunkfor a coffin. They sealed up the tin case in it, and the coffintravelled on the camel mother had ridden when she was alive, in one ofthose beautiful hooded bassourahs you must have seen in pictures. Atnight the coffin rested in my father's tent, and he lay beside it as hehad lain beside my mother when she lived, and they were happy. Becauseshe'd been a Catholic, and because she'd always hated the dark, fatherburned candles on the coffin always till dawn; and the men who loved himlooked for wild flowers in the desert to lay upon it. He had forty days,and forty nights, marching through the desert with the dead body of hislove, before they came to the railway. Then he took mother to France,and left me with his two aunts there. Now do you wonder he never lovedme, or wanted to have me with him?"
"No, perhaps not," said Max. Deep sadness had fallen upon him. He was inthe desert with the man beside whose agony his own trial was as nothing.All the world seemed to be full of sorrow and pain sharper than his ownpersonal pain. And as the girl asked her question and he answered it,their cab passed the procession of recruits for the Foreign Legion,tramping along between tall plane trees toward the town gate.
Once again a pair of tortured black eyes looked at Max, who winced asthe thick yellow dust from the wheels enveloped the marching men.
"Will you let me tell my father your story, as I have told you his?"Sanda asked.
"Do as you think best," he said.
In another moment the cab had rolled past a few gardens and villas, agreen plateau and a moat, and passed through a great gateway. Overhead,carved in the stone, were the words "Porte d'Oran," and the date, 1855.Once, when the town was young, the gates had been kept tightly closed,and through the loopholes in the stout, stone wall (the old part yellow,the newer part gray) guns had been fired at besieging Arabs, the tribeof the Beni Amer, who had worshipped at the shrine of the dead Saint,Sidi-bel-Abbes. But all that was past long ago. No hope of fighting forthe Legionnaires, save over the frontier in Morocco, or far away in theSouth! The shrine of Sidi-bel-Abbes stood neglected in the Arabgraveyard. Even the meaning of the name, once sacred to his followers,was well-nigh forgotten; and all that was Arab in Sidi-bel-Abbes hadbeen relegated to the _Village Negre_, strictly forbidden as BlueBeard's Room of Secrets, to the Soldiers of the Legion.
Inside the wall everything was modern and French, except for a fewtrudging or labouring Arabs in white, or in gray burnouses of camel'shair made in Morocco. As the daughter of the Legion's colonel drovehumbly in her shabby cab to the Hotel Splendide, she felt vaguelydepressed and disappointed in the town which she expected to be herhome. She had fancied that it would be very eastern, with mosques andbazaars, and perhaps surrounded with desert; but there was no desertwithin many miles; and there was only one minaret rising in thedistance, like a long white finger to mark the beginning of the _VillageNegre_. Instead of bazaars, there were new French shops and a sinisterpredominance of drinking places of all sorts: a few "smart" cafes, withmarble-topped tables on the pavement, but mostly dull dens, appealing tothe poorest and most desperate. The town was like a Maltese cross inshape, the arms of the cross being wide streets, each leading to a gatein the fortifications; Porte d'Oran, Porte de Tlemcen, Porte deMascarra, and Porte de Daya; and the one great charm of the place seemedto be in its trees; giant planes which made arbours across the streets,giving a look of dreaming peace, despite the rattle of wheels on roughlyset paving-stones.
There were middle-aged buildings, low and small and dun-coloured,exactly like those of every other French-Algerian settlement, but bignew blocks of glittering white gave an air of almost ostentatiousprosperity to the place. There was even an attempt at gayety in theornamentation, yet there appeared to be nothing attractive to tourists,save the Foreign Legion, which gave mystery and romance to all thatwould otherwise have been banal. Noise was everywhere, loud, shrill,insistent; rumbling, shrieking, rattling, roaring. Huge wagons, loadedwith purple-stained cases of Algerian wine, bumping over the stones;strings of bells wound round the great horns of horses' collars jinglinglike sleigh-bells in winter; whips in the hands of fierce-eyed carterscracking round the heads of large, sad mules; hooters of automobilesand immense motor diligences blaring; men shouting at animals; animalsbarking or braying, snorting or clucking at men; unseen soldiersmarching to music; a town clock sweetly chiming the hour, and, aboveall, rising like spray from the ocean of din, high voices of Arabschaffering, disputing, arguing. This was the "Arabian Night's Paradise"that Sanda had dreamed of!
Presently the cab passed a great town clock with four faces (one foreach of the four diverging streets) and drew up before a flat-facedbuilding with the name "Hotel Splendide" stretching across its dim,yellow front. Inside a big, open doorway, stairs went steeply up, pastpiles of commercial travellers' show trunks, and an Arab bootblack whoclamoured for custom. At the top Max Doran and his charge came into ahall, whence a bare-looking restaurant and several other rooms openedout. On a gigantic hatrack like a withered tree hung coats and hats indark bunches, brightened with a few military coats and gold-braidedcaps. As Max and Sanda appeared, an officer--youngish, dark,sharp-featured, with a small waxed moustache and near-sighted blackeyes--turned hastily away from a window, and with a stride added his capand cloak to the hatrack's burden. He had an almost childishly guiltyair of not wishing to be caught at something. And what that somethingwas, Max Doran guessed with a queer constriction of the throat as helooked through the window. This opened into a dim room, which waslabelled "Bureau," and framed the head and bust of a young woman.
Such light as there was in the hall fell full upon her short, whiteface, into her slanting yellow eyes and on to the elaborately dressedred hair. She had been smiling at the officer, but on the interruptionof the strangers' entrance she frowned with annoyance. It was the frank,animal annoyance of a beautiful young lynx, teased by having a piece ofmeat snatched away. The eyes were clear in colour as a dark topaz, andfull of topaz light. This was remarkable; but their real strangeness layin expression. They seemed not unintelligent, but devoid of all humanexperience. They gazed at the newcomers from the little window of thebureau, as an animal gazes from the bars of its cage, looking at theeyes which regard it, not into them; near yet remote; a creature ofanother species.
The girl appeared to be well-shaped enough, though her strong whitethroat was short, and the hands which lay on the wide window ledge wereas small as a child's. Yet like a shadow thrown on the wall behind herwas a lurking impression of deformity of body and mind, a spirit castout of her, to point at something veiled. If there could have lingeredin the mind of Max a grain of doubt concerning Rose Doran's confession,it was burnt up in a moment; for the girl was an Aubrey Beardsleycaricature of Rose. No need to ask if this were Mademoiselle Delatour.He knew. And this lieutenant in the uniform of the Spahis was the"namesake" of whom the men had talked in the train.