CHAPTER XXII.
THE MISTRESS OF THE WHITE KING.
"Fighting in the Kabaila, life was well enough; but here!" thought Cecilas, earlier awake than those of his Chambree, he stood looking down thelengthy, narrow room where the men lay asleep along the bare floor.
Tired as overworked cattle, and crouched or stretched like worn-out,homeless dogs, they had never wakened as he had noiselessly harnessedhimself, and he looked at them with that interest in other lives thathad come to him through adversity; for if misfortune had given himstrength it had also given him sympathy.
They were of marvelously various types--these sleepers brought under oneroof by fates the most diverse. Close beside a huge and sinewy bruteof an Auvergnat, whose coarse, bestial features and massive bull's headwere fitter for a galley-slave than a soldier, were the lithe, exquisitelimbs and the oval, delicate face of a man from the Valley of the Rhone.Beneath a canopy of flapping, tawny wild-beast skins, the spoils of hisown hands, was flung the torso of one of the splendid peasants of theSables d'Olonne; one steeped so long in blood and wine and alcohol thathe had forgotten the blue, bright waves that broke on the western shoresof his boyhood's home, save when he muttered thirstily in his dreams ofthe cool sea, as he was muttering now. Next him, curled, dog-like, withits round, black head meeting its feet, was a wiry frame on which everymuscle was traced like network, and the skin burned black as jet undertwenty years of African sun. The midnight streets of Paris had seen itsbirth, the thieves' quarter had been its nest; it had no history, it hadalmost no humanity; it was a perfect machine for slaughter, no more--whohad ever tried to make it more?
Further on lay, sleeping fitfully, a boy of scarcely more thanseventeen, with rounded cheeks and fair, white brow like a child's,whose uncovered chest was delicate as a girl's, and through whoselong, brown lashes tears in his slumber were stealing as his rosy mouthmurmured, "Mere! Mere! Pauvre mere!" He was a young conscript taken fromthe glad vine-country of the Loire, and from the little dwelling up inthe rock beside the sunny, brimming river, and half-buried under itsgrape leaves and coils, that was dearer to him than is the palace to itsheir. There were many others beside these; and Cecil looked at them withthose weary, speculative, meditative fancies which, very alien to histemperament, stole on him occasionally in the privations and lonelinessof his existence here--loneliness in the midst of numbers, the mostpainful of all solitude.
Life was bearable enough to him in the activity of campaigning, inthe excitement of warfare; there were times even when it yielded himabsolute enjoyment, and brought him interests more genuine and vividthan any he had known in his former world. But, in the monotony and theconfinement of the barrack routine, his days were often intolerable tohim. Morning after morning he rose to the same weary round of duty, thesame series of petty irritations, of physical privations, of irksomerepetitions, to take a toss of black, rough coffee, and begin the dayknowing it would bring with it endless annoyances without one gleamof hope. Rose to spend hours on the exercise-ground in the glare of aburning sun, railed at if a trooper's accouterments were awry, oran insubordinate scoundrel had pawned his regulation shirt; to beincessantly witness of tyrannies and cruelties he was powerless toprevent, and which he continually saw undo all he had done, and rendermen desperate whom he had spent months in endeavoring to make contented;to have as the only diversions for his few instants of leisure loathsomepleasures that disgusted the senses they were meant to indulge, andthat brought him to scenes of low debauchery from which all the old,fastidious instincts of his delicate, luxurious taste recoiled. Withsuch a life as this, he often wondered regretfully why, out of the manyArab swords that had crossed his own, none had gone straight to hisheart; why, out of the many wounds that had kept him hovering onthe confines of the grave, none had ever brought him the end and theoblivion of death.
Had he been subject to all the miseries and personal hardships of hispresent career, but had only owned the power to command, to pardon,to lead, and to direct, as Alan Bertie before him had done with hisIrregular Cavalry in the Indian plains,--such a thought would never havecrossed him; he was far too thorough a soldier not then to have been notonly satisfied, but happy. What made his life in the barracks of Algiersso bitter were the impotency, the subjection, the compelled obedienceto a bidding that he knew often capricious and unjust as it was cruel;which were so unendurable to his natural pride, yet to which he hadhitherto rendered undeviating adhesion and submission, less for his ownsake than for that of the men around him, who, he knew, would back himin revolt to the death, and be dealt with, for such loyalty to him, inthe fashion that the vivandiere's words had pictured with such terribleforce and truth.
"Is it worth while to go on with it? Would it not be the wiser wayto draw my own saber across my throat?" he thought, as the brutalizedcompanionship in which his life was spent struck on him all the moredarkly because, the night before, a woman's voice and a woman's face hadrecalled memories buried for twelve long years.
But, after so long a stand-up fight with fate, so long a victory overthe temptation to let himself drift out in an opium-sleep from the worldthat had grown so dark to him, it was not in him to give under now. Inhis own way he had found a duty to do here, though he would have laughedat anyone who should have used the word "duty" in connection with him.In his own way, amid these wild spirits, who would have been blown fromthe guns' mouths to serve him, he had made good the "Coeur vaillant sefait Royaume" of his House. And he was, moreover, by this time, a Frenchsoldier at heart and in habit, in almost all things--though the Englishgentleman was not dead in him under the harness of a Chasseur d'Afrique.
This morning he roused the men of his Chambree with that kindlygentleness which had gone so far in its novelty to attach their liking;went through the customary routine of his past with that exactitude andpunctuality of which he was always careful to set the example; made hisbreakfast off some wretched onion-soup and a roll of black bread; rodefifty miles in the blazing heat of the African day at the head of ascore of his chasses-marais on convoy duty, bringing in escort a longstring of maize-wagons from the region of the Kabaila, which, withoutsuch guard, might have been swooped down on and borne off by somepredatory tribe; and returned, jaded, weary, parched with thirst,scorched through with heat, and covered with white dust, to be keptwaiting in his saddle, by his Colonel's orders, outside the barrack forthree-quarters of an hour, whether to receive a command or a censure hewas left in ignorance.
When the three-quarters had passed, he was told M. le Commandant hadgone long ago, and did not require him!
Cecil said nothing.
Yet he reeled slightly as he threw himself out of saddle; a nausea and agiddiness had come on him. To have passed nigh an hour motionless in hisstirrups, with the skies like brass above him, while he was already wornwith riding from sunrise well-nigh to sunset, with little to appeasehunger and less to slake thirst, made him, despite himself, staggerdizzily under a certain sense of blindness and exhaustion as hedismounted.
The Chasseur who had brought him the message caught his arm eagerly.
"Are you hurt, mon Caporal?"
Cecil shook his head. The speaker was one known in the regiment as PetitPicpon, who had begun life as a gamin of Paris, and now bade fair tomake one of the most brilliant of the soldiers of Africa. PetitPicpon had but one drawback to this military career--he was always ininsubordination; the old gamin dare-devilry was not dead in him, andnever would die; and Petit Picpon accordingly was perpetually a heroin the field and a ragamuffin in the times of peace. Of course he wasalways arrayed against authority, and now--being fond of his galonnewith that curious doglike, deathless attachment that these natures, allreckless, wanton, destructive, and mischievous though they may be, socommonly bestow--he muttered a terrible curse under his fiercely curledmustaches.
"If the Black Hawk were nailed up in the sun like a kite on a barn-door,I would drive twenty nails through his throat!"
Cecil turned rapidly on him.
"Si
lence, sir! or I must report you. Another speech like that, and youshall have a turn at Beylick."
It went to his heart to rebuke the poor fellow for an outburst ofindignation which had its root in regard for himself, but he knew thatto encourage it by so much even as by an expression of gratitude for theaffection borne him, would be to sow further and deeper the poison-seedsof that inclination to mutiny and that rebellious hatred againsttheir chief already only planted too strongly in the squadrons underChateauroy's command.
Petit Picpon looked as crestfallen as one of his fraternity could; heknew well enough that what he had said could get him twenty blows of thestick, if his corporal chose to give him up to judgment; but he had toomuch of the Parisian in him still not to have his say, though he shouldbe shot for it.
"Send me to Beylick, if you like, Corporal," he said sturdily; "I was inwrath for you--not for myself."
Cecil was infinitely more touched than he dared, for the sake ofdiscipline, for sake of the speaker himself, to show; but his glancedwelt on Petit Picpon with a look that the quick, black, monkey-likeeyes of the rebel were swift to read.
"I know," he said gravely. "I do not misjudge you, but at the same time,my name must never serve as a pretext for insubordination. Such men ascare to pleasure me will best do so in making my duty light by their ownself-control and obedience to the rules of their service."
He led his horse away, and Petit Picpon went on an errand he had beensent to do in the streets for one of the officers. Picpon was unusuallythoughtful and sober in deportment for him, since he was usually givento making his progress along a road, taken unobserved by those incommand over him, with hands and heels in the dexterous somersaults ofhis early days.
Now he went along without any unprofessional antics, biting the tip ofa smoked-out cigar, which he had picked up off the pavement in sheerinstinct, retained from the old times when he had used to rush in,the foremost of la queue, into the forsaken theaters of Bouffes or ofVarietes in search for those odds and ends which the departed audiencemight have left behind them--one of the favorite modes of seeking alivelihood with the Parisian night-birds.
"Dame! I will give it up then," resolved Picpon, half aloud, valorously.
Now Picpon had come forth on evil thoughts intent.
His officer--a careless and extravagant man, the richest man inthe regiment--had given him a rather small velvet bag, sealed, withdirections to take it to a certain notorious beauty of Algiers, whosehandsome Moresco eyes smiled--or, at least, he believed so--exclusivelyfor the time on the sender. Picpon was very quick, intelligent, and muchliked by his superiors, so that he was often employed on errands; andthe tricks he played in the execution thereof were so adroitly donethat they were never detected. Picpon had chuckled to himself over thismission. It was but the work of an instant for the lithe, nimble fingersof the ex-gamin to undo the bag without touching the seal; to see thatit contained a hundred Napoleons with a note; to slip the gold into thefolds of his ceinturon; to fill up the sack with date-stones; to makeit assume its original form so that none could have imagined it had beentouched, and to proceed with it thus to the Moorish lionne's dwelling.The negro who always opened her door would take it in; Picpon would hintto him to be careful, as it contained some rare and rich sweetmeats,negro nature, he well knew, would impel him to search for the bonbons;and the bag, under his clumsy treatment, would bear plain marks ofhaving been tampered with, and, as the African had a most thievishreputation, he would never be believed if he swore himself guiltless.Voila! Here was a neat trick! If it had a drawback, it was that it wastoo simple, too little risque. A child might do it.
Still--a hundred Naps! What fat geese, what flagons of brandy, whatdozens of wine, what rich soups, what tavern banquets they would bring!Picpon had chuckled again as he arranged the little bag so carefully,with its date-stones, and pictured the rage of the beautiful Moor whenshe should discover the contents and order the stick to her negro. Ah!that was what Picpon called fun!
To appreciate the full force of such fun, it is necessary to have alsoappreciated the gamin. To understand the legitimate aspect such a theftbore, it is necessary to have also understood the unrecordable codesthat govern the genus pratique, into which the genus gamin, when atmaturity, develops.
Picpon was quite in love with his joke; it was only a good joke in hissight; and, indeed, men need to live as hardly as an African soldierlives, to estimate the full temptation that gold can have when you havecome to look on a cat as very good eating, and to have nothing to gnawbut a bit of old shoe-leather through the whole of the long hours of aburning day of fatigue-duty; and to estimate, as well, the full widthand depth of the renunciation that made him mutter now so valorously,"Dame! I will give it up, then!"
Picpon did not know himself as he said it. Yet he turned down into alonely, narrow lane, under marble walls, overtopped with fig and palmfrom some fine gardens; undid the bag for the second time; whisked outthe date-stones and threw them over the wall, so that they should be outof his reach if he repented; put back the Napoleons, closed the littlesack, ran as hard as he could scamper to his destination, delivered hischarge into the fair lady's own hands, and relieved his feelings by ascore of somersaults along the pavement as fast as ever he could go.
"Ma cantche!" he thought, as he stood on his head, with his legs at anacute angle in the air, in position very favored by him for moments ofreflection--he said his brain worked better upside down. "Ma cantche!What a weakness, what a weakness! What remorse to have yielded to it!Beneath you, Picpon--utterly beneath you. Just because that ci-devantsays such follies please him in us!"
Picpon (then in his gamin stage) had been enrolled in the Chasseursat the same time with the "ci-devant," as they called Bertie, and,following his gamin nature, had exhausted all his resourcesof impudence, maliciousness, and power of tormenting, on the"aristocrat"--somewhat disappointed, however, that the utmostingenuities of his insolence and even his malignity never succeeded inbreaking the "aristocrat's" silence and contemptuous forbearance fromall reprisal. For the first two years the hell-on-earth--which life witha Franco-Arab regiment seemed to Cecil--was a hundredfold embittered bythe brutalized jests and mosquito-like torments of this little odiouschimpanzee of Paris.
One day, however, it chanced that a detachment of Chasseurs, of whichCecil was one, was cut to pieces by such an overwhelming mass of Arabsthat scarce a dozen of them could force their way through the Bedouinswith life; he was among those few, and a flight at full speed was thesole chance of regaining their encampment. Just as he had shaken hisbridle free of the Arab's clutch, and had mowed himself a clear paththrough their ranks, he caught sight of his young enemy, Picpon, on theground, with a lance broken off in his ribs; guarding his head, withbleeding hands, as the horses trampled over him. To make a dash at theboy, though to linger a moment was to risk certain death; to send hissteel through an Arab who came in his way; to lean down and catch holdof the lad's sash; to swing him up into his saddle and throw himacross it in front of him, and to charge afresh through the storm ofmusket-balls, and ride on thus burdened, was the work of ten secondswith "Bel-a-faire-peur." And he brought the boy safe over a stretch ofsix leagues in a flight for life, though the imp no more deserved thecompassion than a scorpion that has spent all its noxious day stingingat every point of uncovered flesh would merit tenderness from the handit had poisoned.
When he was swung down from the saddle and laid in front of a fire,sheltered from the bitter north wind that was then blowing cruelly, thebright, black, ape-like eyes of the Parisian diablotin opened with astrange gleam in them.
"Picpon s'en souviendra," he murmured.
And Picpon had kept his word; he had remembered often, he rememberednow; standing on his head and thinking of his hundred Napoleonssurrendered because thieving and lying in the regiment gave pain tothat oddly prejudiced "ci-devant." This was the sort of loyalty that theFranco-Arabs rendered; this was the sort of influence that the EnglishGuardsman exercised among his Roumis.