CHAPTER XIX.
THE IVORY SQUADRONS.
The barracks of the Chasseurs was bright and clean in the morning light;in common with all Algerian barrack rooms as unlike the barrack rooms ofthe ordinary army as Cigarette, with her debonair devilry, smoking ona gun-wagon, was unlike a trim Normandy soubrette, sewing on a bench inthe Tuileries gardens.
Disorder reigned supreme; but Disorder, although a disheveled goddess,is very often a picturesque one, and more of an artist than herbetter-trained sisters; and the disorder was brightened with a thousandvivid colors and careless touches that blent in confusion to enchant apainter's eyes. The room was crammed with every sort of spoil that theadventurous pillaging temper of the troopers could forage from Arabtents, or mountain caves, or river depths, or desert beasts and birds.All things, from tiger skins to birds' nests, from Bedouin weapons toostrich eggs, from a lion's mighty coat to a tobacco-stopper chipped outof a morsel of deal, were piled together, pell-mell, or hung againstthe whitewashed walls, or suspended by cords from bed to bed. Everythingthat ingenuity and hardihood, prompted by the sharp spur of hunger,could wrest from the foe, from the country, from earth or water, fromwild beasts or rock, were here in the midst of the soldiers' regimentalpallets and regimental arms, making the barracks at once atelier,storehouse, workshop, and bazaar; while the men, cross-legged on theirlittle hard couches, worked away with the zest of those who work for thefew coins that alone will get them the food, the draught of wine, thehour's mirth and indulgence at the estaminet, to which they look acrossthe long, stern probation of discipline and maneuver.
Skill, grace, talent, invention whose mother was necessity, andinvention that was the unforced offshoot of natural genius, were allat work; and the hands that could send the naked steel down at a blowthrough turban and through brain could shape, with a woman's ingenuity,with a craftsman's skill, every quaint device and dainty bijou fromstone and wood, and many-colored feathers, and mountain berries, andall odds and ends that chance might bring to hand, and that the women ofBedouin tribes or the tourists of North Africa might hereafter buy witha wondrous tale appended to them--racy and marvelous as the Sapir slangand the military imagination could weave--to enhance the toys' value,and get a few coins more on them for their manufacture.
Ignorance jostled art, and bizarre ran hand in hand with talent, inall the products of the Chasseurs' extemporized studio; but nowherewas there ever clumsiness, and everywhere was there an industry,gay, untiring, accustomed to make the best of the worst; the workerslaughing, chattering, singing, in all good-fellowship, while the fingersthat gave the dead thrust held the carver's chisel, and the eyes thatglared blood-red in the heat of battle twinkled mischievously over themeerschaum bowl, in whose grinning form some great chief of the Bureauhad just been sculptured in audacious parody.
In the midst sat Rake, tattooing with an eastern skill the skin of agreat lion, that a year before he had killed in single combat in theheart of Oran, having watched for the beast twelve nights in vain, highperched on a leafy crest of rock, above a water-course. While he workedhis tongue flew far and fast over the camp slang--the slangs of allnations came easy to him--in voluble conversation with the Chasseurnext, who was making a fan out of feathers that any Peeress mighthave signaled with at the Opera. "Crache-au-nez-d'la-Mort" was in highpopularity with his comrades; and had said but the truth when he averredthat he had never been so happy as under the tricolor. The officerspronounced him an incurably audacious "pratique"; he was always inmischief, and the regimental rules he broke through like a terrierthrough a gauze net; but they knew that when once the trumpets soundedBoot and Saddle, this yellow-haired dare-devil of an English fellowwould be worth a score of more orderly soldiers, and that, whereverhis adopted flag was carried, there would he be, first and foremost, ineverything save retreat. The English service had failed to turn Rake toaccount; the French service made no such mistake, but knew that thoughthis British bulldog might set his teeth at the leash and the lash, hewould hold on like grim death in a fight, and live game to the last, ifwell handled.
Apart, at the head of the barracks, sat Cecil. The banter, the songs,the laughter, the chorus of tongues, went on unslackened by hispresence. He had cordial sympathies with the soldiers--with those menwho had been his followers in adversity and danger; and in whom he hadfound, despite all their occasional ferocity and habitual recklessness,traits and touches of the noblest instincts of humanity. His heart waswith them always, as his purse, and his wine, and his bread were alikeshared ever among them. He had learned to love them well--these wildwolf-dogs, whose fangs were so terrible to their foes, but whoseeyes would still glisten at a kind word, and who would give a staunchfidelity unknown to tamer animals.
Living with them, one of them in all their vicissitudes; knowing alltheir vices, but knowing also all their virtues; owing to them many anaction of generous nobility and watching them in many an hour when theirgallant self-devotion and their loyal friendships went far to redeemtheir lawless robberies and their ruthless crimes, he understood themthoroughly, and he could rule them more surely in their tempestuousevil, because he comprehended them so well in their mirth and in theirbetter moods. When the grade of sous-officier gave him authority overthem, they obeyed him implicitly because they knew that his sympathieswere with them at all times, and that he would be the last to checktheir gayety, or to punish their harmless indiscretions.
The warlike Roumis had always had a proud tenderness for their"Bel-a-faire-peur," and a certain wondering respect for him; but theywould not have adored him to a man, as they did, unless they had knownthat they might laugh without restraint before him, and confide anydilemma to him--sure of aid, if aid were in his power.
The laughter, the work, and the clatter of conflicting tongues were attheir height; Cecil sat, now listening, now losing himself in thought,while he gave the last touch to the carvings before him. They were a setof chessmen which it had taken him years to find materials for and toperfect; the white men were in ivory, the black in walnut, and were twoopposing squadrons of French troops and of mounted Arabs. Beautifullycarved, with every detail of costume rigid to truth, they were hismasterpiece, though they had only been taken up at any odd ten minutesthat had happened to be unoccupied during the last three or four years.The chessmen had been about with him in so many places and under canvasso long, from the time that he chipped out their first Zouave pawn, ashe lay in the broiling heat of Oran prostrate by a dry brook's stonychannel, that he scarcely cared to part with them, and had refusedto let Rake offer them for sale, with all the rest of the carvings.Stooping over them, he did not notice the doors open at the end of thebarracks until a sudden silence that fell on the babble and uproar roundhim made him look up; then he rose and gave the salute with the rest ofhis discomfited and awestricken troopers. Chateauroy with a brilliantparty had entered.
The Colonel flashed an eagle glance round.
"Fine discipline! You shall go and do this pretty work at Beylick!"
The soldiers stood like hounds that see the lash; they knew that he waslike enough to carry out his threat; though they were doing no more thanthey had always tacit, if not open, permission to do. Cecil advanced,and fronted him.
"Mine is the blame, mon Commandant!"
He spoke simply, gently, boldly; standing with the ceremony that henever forgot to show to their chief, where the glow of African sunlightthrough the casement of the barracks fell full across his face, and hiseyes met the dark glance of the "Black Hawk" unflinchingly. He neverheeded that there was a gay, varied, numerous group behind Chateauroy;visitors who were looking over the barrack; he only heeded that hissoldiers were unjustly attacked and menaced.
The Marquis gave a grim, significant smile, that cut like so much cordof the scourge.
"Wherever there is insubordination in the regiment, the blame is verycertain to be yours! Corporal Victor, if you allow your Chambre tobe turned into the riot of a public fair, you will soon find yourselfdegraded from the rank you so sign
ally contrive to disgrace."
The words were far less than the tone they were spoken in, that gavethem all the insolence of so many blows, as he swung on his heel andbent to the ladies of the party he escorted. Cecil stood mute; bearingthe rebuke as it became a Corporal to bear his Commander's anger; a verykeen observer might have seen that a faint flush rose over the sun tanof his face, and that his teeth clinched under his beard; but he let noother sign escape him.
The very self-restraint irritated Chateauroy, who would have been thefirst to chastise the presumption of a reply, had any been attempted.
"Back to your place, sir!" he said, with a wave of his hand, as he mighthave waved back a cur. "Teach your men the first formula of obedience,at any rate!"
Cecil fell back in silence. With a swift, warning glance at Rake,--whosemouth was working, and whose forehead was hot as fire, where he clinchedhis lion-skin, and longed to be once free, to pull his chief down aslions pull in the death spring,--he went to his place at the farther endof the chamber and stood, keeping his eyes on the chess carvings, lestthe control which was so bitter to retain should be broken if he lookedon at the man who had been the curse and the antagonist of his wholelife in Algeria.
He saw nothing and heard almost as little of all that went on aroundhim; there had been a flutter of cloud-like color in his sight, a faint,dreamy fragrance on the air, a sound of murmuring voices and of lowlaughter; he had known that some guests or friends of the Marquis' hadcome to view the barracks, but he never even glanced to see who or whatthey were. The passionate bitterness of just hatred, that he had tochoke down as though it were the infamous instinct of some namelesscrime, was on him.
The moments passed, the hum of the voices floated to his ear; the ladiesof the party lingered by this soldier and by that, buying half thethings in the chamber, filling their hands with all the quaint trifles,ordering the daggers and the flissas and the ornamented saddles and thedesert skins to adorn their chateaux at home; and raining down on thetroopers a shower of uncounted Napoleons until the Chasseurs, who hadbegun to think their trades would take them to Beylick, thought insteadthat they had drifted into dreams of El Dorado. He never looked up;he heard nothing, heeded nothing; he was dreamily wondering whether heshould always be able so to hold his peace, and to withhold his arm,that he should never strike his tyrant down with one blow, in which allthe opprobrium of years should be stamped out. A voice woke him from hisreverie.
"Are those beautiful carvings yours?"
He looked up, and in the gloom of the alcove where he stood, wherethe sun did not stray, and two great rugs of various skins, with someconquered banners of Bedouins, hung like a black pall, he saw a woman'seyes resting on him; proud, lustrous eyes, a little haughty, verythoughtful, yet soft withal, as the deepest hue of deep waters. He bowedto her with the old grace of manner that had so amused and amazed thelittle vivandiere.
"Yes, madame, they are mine."
"Ah!--what wonderful skill!"
She took the White King, an Arab Sheik on his charger, in her hand, andturned to those about her, speaking of its beauties and its workmanshipin a voice low, very melodious, ever so slightly languid, that fellon Cecil's ear like a chime of long-forgotten music. Twelve years haddrifted by since he had been in the presence of a high-bred woman, andthose lingering, delicate tones had the note of his dead past.
He looked at her; at the gleam of the brilliant hair, at the arch of theproud brows, at the dreaming, imperial eyes; it was a face singularlydazzling, impressive, and beautiful at all times; most so of all inthe dusky shadows of the waving desert banners, and the rough, rude,barbaric life of the Caserne, where a fille de joie or a cantinierewere all of her sex that was ever seen, and those--poor wretches!--werehardened, and bronzed, and beaten, and brandy-steeped out of alllikeness to the fairness of women.
"You have an exquisite art. They are for sale?" she asked him. She spokewith the careless, gracious courtesy of a grande dame to a Corporalof Chasseurs; looking little at him, much at the Kings and their mimichosts of Zouaves and Bedouins.
"They are at your service, madame."
"And their price?" She had been purchasing largely of the men on allsides as she swept down the length of the Chambre and she drew outsome French banknotes as she spoke. Never had the bitterness of povertysmitten him as it smote him now when this young patrician offered himher gold! Old habits vanquished; he forgot who and where he now was; hebowed as in other days he had used to bow in the circle of St. James'.
"Is--the honor of your acceptance, if you will deign to give that."
He forgot that he was not as he once had been. He forgot that he stoodbut as a private of the French army before an aristocrat whose name hehad never heard.
She turned and looked at him, which she had never done before, soabsorbed had she been in the chessmen, and so little did a Chasseurof the ranks pass into her thoughts. There was an extreme of surprise,there was something of offense, and there was still more of coldness inher glance; a proud languid, astonished coldness of regard, thoughit softened slightly as she saw that he had spoken in all courtesy ofintent.
She bent her graceful, regal head.
"I thank you. Your very clever work can, of course, only be mine bypurchase."
And with that she laid aside the White King among his little troop ofivory Arabs and floated onward with her friends. Cecil's face paledslightly under the mellow tint left there by the desert sun and thedesert wind; he swept the chessmen into their walnut case and thrustthem out of sight under his knapsack. Then he stood motionless as asentinel, with the great leopard skins and Bedouin banners behind him,casting a gloom that the gold points on his harness could scarcely breakin its heavy shadow, and never moved till the echo of the voices, andthe cloud of draperies, and the fragrance of perfumed laces, and thebrilliancy of the staff officers' uniforms had passed away, and leftthe soldiers alone in their Chambre. Those careless cold words froma woman's lips had cut him deeper than the stick could have cut him,though it had bruised his loins and lashed his breast; they showed allhe had lost.
"What a fool I am still!" he thought, as he made his way out of thebarrack room. "I might have fairly forgotten by this time that I everhad the rights of a gentleman."
So the carvings had won him one warm heart and one keen pang that day;the vivandiere forgave, the aristocrat stung him, by means of thosesnowy, fragile, artistic toys that he had shaped in lonely nights undercanvas by ruddy picket-fires, beneath the shade of wild fig trees, andin the stir and color of Bedouin encampments.
"I must ask to be ordered out of the city," he thought, as he pushed hisway through the crowds of soldiers and civilians. "Here I get bitter,restless, impatient; here the past is always touching me on theshoulder; here I shall soon grow to regret, and to chafe, and to lookback like any pining woman. Out yonder there, with no cares to think ofbut my horse and my troop, I am a soldier--and nothing else; so best. Ishall be nothing else as long as I live. Pardieu, though! I don't knowwhat one wants better; it is a good life, as life goes. One must notturn compliments to great ladies, that is all--not much of a deprivationthere. The chessmen are the better for that; her Maltese dog would havebroken them all the first time it upset their table!"
He laughed a little as he went on smoking; the old carelessness,mutability, and indolent philosophies were with him still, and werestill inclined to thrust away and glide from all pain, as it arose.Though much of gravity and of thoughtfulness had stolen on him, muchof insouciance remained; and there were times when there was not amore reckless or a more nonchalant lion in all the battalions than"Bel-a-faire-peur." Under his gentleness there was "wild blood" in himstill, and the wildness was not tamed by the fiery champagne-draught ofthe perilous, adventurous years he spent.
"I wonder if I shall never teach the Black Hawk that he may strike hisbeak in once too far?" he pondered, with a sudden darker, graver touchof musing; and involuntarily he stretched his arm out, and looked atthe wrist, supple as Damascus steel, and at the musc
les that were tracedbeneath the skin, as he thrust the sleeve up, clear, firm, and sinewy asany athlete's. He doubted his countenance then, fast rein as he held allrebellion in, close shield as he bound to him against his own passionsin the breastplate of a soldier's first duty--obedience.
He shook the thought off him as he would have shaken a snake. It had aterrible temptation--a temptation which he knew might any day overmasterhim; and Cecil, who all through his life had certain inborn instinctsof honor, which served him better than most codes or creeds served theirprofessors, was resolute to follow the military religion of obedienceenjoined in the Service that had received him at his needs, and to giveno precedent in his own person that could be fraught with dangerous,rebellious allurement for the untamed, chafing, red-hot spirits ofhis comrades, for whom he knew insubordination would be ruin anddeath--whose one chance of reward, of success, and of a higherambition lay in their implicit subordination to their chiefs, and theircontinuous resistance of every rebellious impulse.
Cecil had always thought very little of himself.
In his most brilliant and pampered days he had always considered in hisown heart that he was a graceless fellow, not worth his salt, and hadoccasionally wondered, in a listless sort of way, why so useless abagatelle a la mode as his own life was had ever been created. Hethought much the same now; but following his natural instincts, whichwere always the instincts of a gentleman, and of a generous temper,he did, unconsciously, make his life of much value among its presentcomrades.
His influence had done more to humanize the men he was associated withthan any preachers or teachers could have done. The most savage andobscene brute in the ranks with him caught something gentler and betterfrom the "aristocrat." His refined habits, his serene temper, hiskindly forbearance, his high instinctive honor, made themselves feltimperceptibly, but surely; they knew that he was as fearless in war,as eager for danger as themselves; they knew that he was no saint, butloved the smile of women's eyes, the flush of wines, and the excitationof gaming hazards as well as they did; and hence his influence had aweight that probably a more strictly virtuous man's would have strainedfor and missed forever. The coarsest ruffian felt ashamed to make anutter beast of himself before the calm eyes of the patrician. The mostlawless pratique felt a lie halt on his lips when the contemptuousglance of his gentleman-comrade taught him that falsehood waspoltroonery. Blasphemous tongues learned to rein in their filthinesswhen this "beau lion" sauntered away from the picket-fire, on an icynight, to be out of hearing of their witless obscenities. More thanonce the weight of his arm and the slash of his saber had called themto account in fiery fashion for their brutality to women or their theftsfrom the country people, till they grew aware that "Bel-a-faire-peur"would risk having all their swords buried in him rather than stand by tosee injustice done.
And throughout his corps men became unconsciously gentler, juster; witha finer sense of right and wrong, and less bestial modes of pleasure, ofspeech, and of habit, because he was among them. Moreover, the keen-eyeddesperadoes who made up the chief sum of his comrades saw that he gaveunquestioning respect to a chief who made his life a hell; and renderedunquestioning submission under affronts, tyrannies, and insults which,as they also saw, stung him to the quick, and tortured him as nophysical torture would have done--and the sight was not without a strongeffect for good on them. They could tell that he suffered under these asthey never suffered themselves, yet he bore them and did his duty with aself-control and patience they had never attained.
Almost insensibly they grew ashamed to be beaten by him, and stroveto grow like him as far as they could. They never knew him drunk,they never heard him swear; they never found him unjust--even toa poverty-stricken indigene; or brutal--even to a fille de joie.Insensibly his presence humanized them. Of a surety, the last partBertie dreamed of playing was that of a teacher to any mortal thing;yet, here in Africa, it might reasonably be questioned if a secondAugustine or Francis Xavier would ever have done half the good amongthe devil-may-care Roumis that was wrought by the dauntless, listless,reckless soldier who followed instinctively the one religion which hasno cant in its brave, simple creed, and binds man to man in links thatare true as steel--the religion of a gallant gentleman's loyalty andhonor.