CHAPTER XXXIII.
THE GIFT OF THE CROSS.
One of the most brilliant of Algerian autumnal days shone over the greatcamp in the south. The war was almost at an end for a time; the Arabswere defeated and driven desertwards; hostilities irksome, harassing,and annoying, like all guerrilla warfare, would long continue; but peacewas virtually established, and Zaraila had been the chief glory that hadbeen added by the campaign to the flag of Imperial France. The kitesand the vultures had left the bare bones by thousands to bleach upon thesands, and the hillocks of brown earth rose in crowds where those, morecared for in death, had been hastily thrust beneath the brown crustof the earth. The dead had received their portion of reward--in thejackal's teeth, in the crow's beak, in the worm's caress. And theliving received theirs in this glorious, rose-flecked, glittering autumnmorning, when the breath of winter made the air crisp and cool, but theardent noon still lighted with its furnace glow the hillside and theplain.
The whole of the Army of the South was drawn up on the immense level ofthe plateau to witness the presentation of the Cross of the Legion ofHonor.
It was full noon. The sun shone without a single cloud on the deep,sparkling azure of the skies. The troops stretched east and west, northand south, formed up in three sides of one vast, massive square.The battalions of Zouaves and of Zephyrs; the brigade of Chasseursd'Afrique; the squadrons of Spahis; the regiments of Tirailleurs andTurcos; the batteries of Flying Artillery, were all massed there,reassembled from the various camps and stations of the southernprovinces to do honor to the day--to do honor in especial to one by whomthe glory of the Tricolor had been saved unstained.
The red, white, and blue of the standards, the brass of the eagleguidons; the gray, tossed manes of the chargers; the fierce, swarthyfaces of the soldiery; the scarlet of the Spahis' cloaks, and the snowyfolds of the Demi-Cavalry turbans; the shine of the sloped lances, andthe glisten of the carbine barrels, fused together in one sea of blendedcolor, flashed into a million prismatic hues against the somber shadowof the sunburned plains and the clear blue of the skies.
It had been a sanguinary, fruitless, cruel campaign; it had availednothing, except to drive the Arabs away from some hundred leagues ofuseless and profitless soil; hundreds of French soldiers had fallen bydisease, and drought, and dysentery, as well as by shot and saber, andwere unrecorded save on the books of the bureaus; unlamented, save,perhaps, in some little nestling hamlet among the great, green woods ofNormandy, or some wooden hut among the olives and the vines of Provence,where some woman, toiling till sunset among the fields, or prayingbefore some wayside saint's stone niche, would give a thought to thefar-off and devouring desert that had drawn down beneath its sands thehead that used to lie upon her bosom, cradled as a child's, or caressedas a lover's.
But the drums rolled out their long, deep thunder over the water; andthe shot-torn standards fluttered gayly in the breeze blowing from thewest; and the clear, full music of the French bands echoed away tothe dim, distant, terrible south, where the desert-scorch and thedesert-thirst had murdered their bravest and best--and the Army was enfete. En fete, for it did honor to its darling. Cigarette received theCross.
Mounted on her own little, bright bay, Etoile-Filante, with tricolorribbons flying from his bridle and among the glossy fringes of his mane,the Little One rode among her Spahis. A scarlet kepi was set on herthick, silken curls, a tricolor sash was knotted round her waist,her wine-barrel was slung on her left hip, her pistols thrust in herceinturon, and a light carbine held in her hand with the butt-endresting on her foot. With the sun on her childlike brunette face,her eyes flashing like brown diamonds in the light, and her marveloushorsemanship showing its skill in a hundred daring tricks, the littleFriend of the Flag had come hither among her half-savage warriors, whosered robes surrounded her like a sea of blood.
And on a sea of blood she, the Child of War, had floated; never sinkingin that awful flood, but buoyant ever above its darkest waves; catchingever some ray of sunlight upon her fair young head, and being oftentimeslike a star of hope to those over whom its dreaded waters closed.Therefore they loved her, these grim, slaughterous, and lustfulwarriors, to whom no other thing of womanhood was sacred; by whom intheir wrath or their crime no friend and no brother was spared, whoselaw was license, and whose mercy was murder. They loved her, thesebrutes whose greed was like the tiger's, whose hate was like thedevouring flame; and any who should have harmed a single lock of hercurling hair would have had the spears of the African Mussulmans buriedby the score in his body. They loved her, with the one fond, triumphantlove these vultures of the army ever knew; and to-day they gloried inher with fierce, passionate delight. To-day she was to her wild wolvesof Africa what Jeanne of Vaucouleurs was to her brethren of France. Andtoday was the crown of her young life.
In the fair, slight, girlish body of the child-soldier there lived acourage as daring as Danton's, a patriotism as pure as Vergniaud's,a soul as aspiring as Napoleon's. Untaught, untutored, uninspired bypoet's words or patriot's bidding, spontaneous as the rising and theblossoming of some wind-sown, sun-fed flower, there was, in this childof the battle, the spirit of genius, the desire to live and to diegreatly. To be forever a beloved tradition in the army of her country,to have her name remembered in the roll-call; to be once shrined in thelove and honor of France, Cigarette--full of the boundless joys of lifethat knew no weakness and no pain; strong as the young goat, happyas the young lamb, careless as the young flower tossing on the summerbreeze--Cigarette would have died contentedly. And now, living, somemeasure of this desire had been fulfilled to her, some breath of thisimperishable glory had passed over her. France had heard the story ofZaraila; from the Throne a message had been passed to her; what wasfar beyond all else to her, her own Army of Africa had crowned her,and thanked her, and adored her as with one voice, and wheresoever shepassed the wild cheers rang through the roar of musketry, as throughthe silence of sunny air, and throughout the regiments every sword wouldhave sprung from its scabbard in her defense if she had but lifted herhand and said one word--"Zaraila!"
The Army looked on her with delight now. In all that mute, still,immovable mass that stretched out so far, in such gorgeous array, therewas not one man whose eyes did not turn on her, whose pride did notcenter in her--their Little One, who was so wholly theirs, and who hadbeen under the shadow of their Flag ever since the curls, so dark now,had been yellow as wheat in her infancy. There was not one in all thosehosts whose eyes did not turn on her with gratitude, and reverence, anddelight in her as their own.
Not one; except where her own keen, rapid glance, far-seeing as thehawk's, lighted on the squadrons of the Chasseurs d'Afrique, and foundamong their ranks one face, grave, weary, meditative, with a gaze thatseemed looking far away from the glittering scene to a grave that layunseen leagues beyond, behind the rocky ridge.
"He is thinking of the dead man, not of me," thought Cigarette; and thefirst taint of bitterness entered into her cup of joy and triumph, assuch bitterness enters into most cups that are drunk by human lips. Awhole army was thinking of her, and of her alone; and there was avoid in her heart, a thorn in her crown, because one among that mightymass--one only--gave her presence little heed, but thought rather of alonely tomb among the desolation of the plains.
But she had scarce time even for that flash of pain to quiver inimpotent impatience through her. The trumpets sounded, the salvoesof artillery pealed out, the lances and the swords were carried up insalute; on the ground rode the Marshal of France, who represented theimperial will and presence, surrounded by his staff, by generals ofdivision and brigade, by officers of rank, and by some few civilianriders. An aid galloped up to her where she stood with the corps of herSpahis and gave her his orders. The Little One nodded carelessly, andtouched Etoile-Filante with the prick of the spur. Like lightning theanimal bounded forth from the ranks, rearing and plunging, and swervingfrom side to side, while his rider, with exquisite grace and address,kept her seat like the little semi-Arab t
hat she was, and with athousand curves and bounds cantered down the line of the gatheredtroops, with the west wind blowing from the far-distant sea, and fanningher bright cheeks till they wore the soft, scarlet flush of the glowingjaponica flower. And all down the ranks a low, hoarse, strange,longing murmur went--the buzz of the voices which, but that disciplinesuppressed them, would have broken out in worshiping acclamations.
As carelessly as though she reined up before the Cafe door of the Asde Pique, she arrested her horse before the great Marshal who was theimpersonation of authority, and put her hand up in salute, with hersaucy, wayward laugh. He was the impersonation of that vast, silent,awful, irresponsible power which, under the name of the Second Empire,stretched its hand of iron across the sea, and forced the soldiers ofFrance down into nameless graves, with the desert sand choking theirmouths; but he was no more to Cigarette than any drummer-boy thatmight be present. She had all the contempt for the laws of rank ofyour thorough inborn democrat, all the gay, insouciant indifference tostation of the really free and untrammeled nature; and, in her sight, adying soldier, lying quietly in a ditch to perish of shot-wounds withouta word or a moan, was greater than all the Marshals glittering in theirstars and orders. As for impressing her, or hoping to impress her, withrank--pooh! You might as well have bid the sailing clouds pause in theirfloating passage because they came between royalty and the sun. All thesovereigns of Europe would have awed Cigarette not one whit more than agathering of muleteers. "Allied sovereigns--bah!" she would have said,"what did that mean in '15? A chorus of magpies chattering over onestricken eagle!"
So she reined up before the Marshal and his staff, and the few greatpersonages whom Algeria could bring around them, as indifferently as shehad many a time reined up before a knot of grim Turcos, smoking under abarrack-gate. He was nothing to her: it was her army that crowned her.
Nevertheless, despite her gay contempt for rank, her heart beat fastunder its gold-laced packet as she reined up Etoile and saluted. In thathot, clear sun all the eyes of that immense host were fastened onher, and the hour of her longing desire was come at last. France hadrecognized that she had done greatly. There was a group before her,large and brilliant, but at them Cigarette never looked; what she sawwere the faces of her "children," of men who, in the majority, wereold enough to be her grandsires, who had been with her through so manydarksome hours, and whose black and rugged features lightened and grewtender whenever they looked upon their Little One. For the moment shefelt giddy with sweet, fiery joy; they were here to behold her thankedin the name of France.
The Marshal, in advance of all his staff, doffed his plumed hat andbowed to his saddle-bow as he faced her. He knew her well by sight, thispretty child of his Army of Africa, who had, before then, suppressedmutiny like a veteran, and led the charge like a Murat--this kitten witha lion's heart, this humming-bird with an eagle's swoop.
"Mademoiselle," he commenced, while his voice, well skilled to suchwork, echoed to the farthest end of the long lines of troops, "I havethe honor to discharge to-day the happiest duty of my life. In conveyingto you the expression of the Emperor's approval of your noble conduct inthe present campaign, I express the sentiments of the whole Army. Youraction on the day of Zaraila was as brilliant in conception as it wasgreat in execution; and the courage you displayed was only equaled byyour patriotism. May the soldiers of many wars remember and emulate you.In the name of France, I thank you. In the name of the Emperor, I bringto you the Cross of the Legion of Honor."
As the brief and soldierly words rolled down the ranks of the listeningregiments, he stooped forward from the saddle and fastened the redribbon on her breast; while from the whole gathered mass, watching,hearing, waiting breathlessly to give their tribute of applause totheir darling also, a great shout rose as with one voice, strong, full,echoing over and over again across the plains in thunder that joined hername with the name of France and of Napoleon, and hurled it upward infierce, tumultuous, idolatrous love to those cruel, cloudless skies thatshone above the dead. She was their child, their treasure, their idol,their young leader in war, their young angel in suffering; she was alltheir own, knowing with them one common mother--France. Honor to her washonor to them; they gloried with heart and soul in this bright, youngfearless life that had been among them ever since her infant feet hadwaded through the blood of slaughter-fields, and her infant lips hadlaughed to see the tricolor float in the sun above the smoke of battle.
And as she heard, her face became very pale, her large eyes grew dim andvery soft, her mirthful mouth trembled with the pain of a too intensejoy. She lifted her head, and all the unutterable love she bore hercountry and her people thrilled through the music of her voice.
"Francais!"
That was all she said; in that one word of their common nationality shespoke alike to the Marshal of the Empire and to the conscript of theranks. "Francais!" That one title made them all equal in her sight;whoever claimed it was honored in her eyes, and was precious to herheart, and when she answered them that it was nothing, this thing whichthey glorified in her, she answered but what seemed the simple truth inher code. She would have thought it "nothing" to have perished byshot, or steel, or flame, in day-long torture for that one fair sake ofFrance.
Vain in all else, and to all else wayward, here she was docile andsubmissive as the most patient child; here she deemed the greatest andthe hardest thing that she could ever do far less than all that shewould willingly have done. And as she looked upon the host whosethousand and ten thousand voices rang up to the noonday sun in herhomage, and in hers alone, a light like a glory beamed upon her facethat for once was white and still and very grave--none who saw her facethen ever forgot that look.
In that moment she touched the full sweetness of a proud and pureambition, attained and possessed in all its intensity, in all itsperfect splendor. In that moment she knew that divine hour which, bornof a people's love and of the impossible desires of genius in its youth,comes to so few human lives--knew that which was known to the youngNapoleon when, in the hot hush of the nights of July, France welcomedthe Conqueror of Italy. And in that moment there was an intensestillness; the Army crowned as its bravest and its best a woman-child inthe springtime of her girlhood.
Then Cigarette laid her hand on the Cross that had been the dream of heryears since she had first seen the brazen glisten of the eagles aboveher wondering eyes of infancy, and loosened it from above her heart, andstretched her hand out with it to the great Chief.
"M. le Marshal, this is not for me."
"Not for you! The Emperor bestows it----"
Cigarette saluted with her left hand, still stretching to him thedecoration with the other.
"It is not for me--not while I wear it unjustly."
"Unjustly! What is your meaning? My child, you talk strangely. The giftsof the Empire are not given lightly."
"No; and they shall not be given unfairly. Listen." The color hadflushed back, bright and radiant, to her cheeks; her eyes glanced withtheir old daring; her contemptuous, careless eloquence returned, and hervoice echoed, every note distinct as the notes of a trumpet-call, downthe ranks of the listening soldiery. "Hark you! The Emperor sends methis Cross; France thanks me; the Army applauds me. Well, I thank them,one and all. Cigarette was never yet ungrateful; it is the sin ofthe coward. But I say I will not take what is unjustly mine, and thispreference to me is unjust. I saved the day at Zaraila? Oh, ha! Andhow?--by scampering fast on my mare, and asking for a squadron or twoof my Spahis--that was all. If I had not done so much--I, a soldier ofAfrica--why, I should have deserved to have been shot like a cat--bah!should I not? It was not I who saved the battle. Who was it? It wasa Chasseur d'Afrique, I tell you. What did he do? Why, this. When hisofficers were all gone down, he rallied, and gathered hishandful of men, and held the ground with them all through theday--two--four--six--eight--ten hours in the scorch of the sun. TheArbicos, even were forced to see that was grand; they offered him lifeif he would yield. All his answer was to form his f
ew horsemen into lineas well as he could for the slain, and charge--a last charge in whichhe knew not one of his troop could live through the swarms of the Arabsaround them. That I saw with my own eyes. I and my Spahis just reachedhim in time. Then who is it that saved the day, I pray you?--I, who justran a race for fun and came in at the fag-end of the thing, or this manwho lived the whole day through in the carnage, and never let go of theguidon, but only thought how to die greatly? I tell you, the Cross ishis, and not mine. Take it back, and give it where it is due."
The Marshal listened, half amazed, half amused--half prepared to resentthe insult to the Empire and to discipline, half disposed to award thatsubmission to her caprice which all Algeria gave to Cigarette.
"Mademoiselle," he said, with a grave smile, "the honors of the Empireare not to be treated thus. But who is this man for whom you claim somuch?"
"Who is he?" echoed Cigarette, with all her fiery disdain for authorityablaze once more like brandy in a flame. "Oh, ha! Napoleon Premier wouldnot have left his Marshals to ask that! He is the finest soldier inAfrica, if it be possible for one to be finer than another where allare so great. They know that; they pick him out for all the dangerousmissions. But the Black Hawk hates him, and so France never hears thetruth of all that he does. I tell you, if the Emperor had seen him as Isaw him on the field of Zaraila, his would have been the Cross, and notmine."
"You are generous, my Little One."
"No; I am just."
Her brave eyes glowed in the sun, her voice rang as clear as a bell. Sheraised her head proudly and glanced down the line of her army. She wasjust--that was the one virtue in Cigarette's creed without which youwere poltroon, or liar, or both.
She alone knew what neglect, what indifference, what unintentional, butnone the less piercing, insults she had to avenge; she alone knew ofthat pain with which she had heard the name of his patrician rivalmurmured in delirious slumber after Zaraila; she alone knew of thatnegligent caress of farewell with which her lips had been touched aslightly as his hand caressed a horse's neck or a bird's wing. But thesedid not weigh with her one instant to make her withhold the words thatshe deemed deserved; these did not balance against him one instant thepique and the pain of her own heart, in opposition to the due of hiscourage and his fortitude.
Cigarette was rightly proud of her immunity from the weakness of hersex; she had neither meanness nor selfishness.
The Marshal listened gravely, the groups around him smilingly. If it hadbeen any other than the Little One, it would have been very different;as it was, all France and all Algeria knew Cigarette.
"What may be the name of this man whom you praise so greatly, my prettyone?" he asked her.
"That I cannot tell, M. le Marshal. All I know is he calls himself hereLouis Victor."
"Ah! I have heard much of him. A fine soldier, but--"
"A fine soldier without a 'but,'" interrupted Cigarette, with rebelliousindifference to the rank of the great man she corrected, "unless youadd, 'but never done justice by his Chief.'"
As she spoke, her eyes for the first time glanced over the variouspersonages who were mingled among the staff of the Marshal, his invitedguests for the review upon the plains. The color burned more duskilyin her cheek, her eyes glittered with hate; she could have bitten herlittle, frank, witty tongue through and through for having spokenthe name of that Chasseur who was yonder, out of earshot, where thelance-heads of his squadrons glistened against the blue skies. She sawa face which, though seen but once before, she knew instantly again--theface of "Milady." And she saw it change color, and lose its beautifulhue, and grow grave and troubled as the last words passed betweenherself and the French Marshal.
"Ah! can she feel?" wondered Cigarette, who, with a common error of suchvehement young democrats as herself, always thought that hearts neverached in the Patrician Order, and thought so still when she saw thelistless, proud tranquility return, not again to be altered, over theperfect features that she watched with so much violent, instinctivehate. "Did she heed his name, or did she not? What are their faces inthat Order? Only alabaster masks!" mused the child. And her heart sank,and bitterness mingled with her joy, and the soul that had a momentbefore been so full of all pure and noble emotion, all high andpatriotic and idealic thought, was dulled and soiled and clogged withbaser passions. So ever do unworthy things drag the loftier natureearthward.
She scarcely heard the Marshal's voice as it addressed her with a kindlyindulgence, as to a valued soldier and a spoiled pet in one.
"Have no fear, Little One. Victor's claims are not forgotten, thoughwe may await our own time to investigate and reward them. No one everserved the Empire and remained unrewarded. For yourself, wear your Crossproudly. It glitters above not only the bravest, but the most generous,heart in the service."
None had ever won such warm words from the redoubted chief, whose speechwas commonly rapid and stern as his conduct of war, and who usuallyrecompensed his men for fine service rather with a barrel of brandy toseason their rations than with speeches of military eulogium. But itfailed to give delight to Cigarette. She felt resting upon her the calmgaze of those brilliant azure eyes; and she felt, as she had done oncein her rhododendron shelter, as though she were some very worthless,rough, rude, untaught, and coarse little barbarian, who was, at best,but fit for a soldier's jest and a soldier's riot in the wild license ofthe barrack room or the campaigning tent. It was only the eyes ofthis woman, whom he loved, which ever had the power to awaken thathumiliation, that impatience of herself, that consciousness of somethinglost and irrevocable, which moved her now.
Cigarette was proud with an intense pride of all her fiery liberty fromevery feminine trammel, of all her complete immunity from every scrupleand every fastidiousness of her sex. But, for once, within sight of thatnoble and haughty beauty, a poignant, cruel, wounding sense of utterinferiority, of utter debasement, possessed and weighed down her lawlessand indomitable spirit. Some vague, weary feeling that her youth wasfair enough in the sight of men, but that her older years would be verydark, very terrible, came on her even in this hour of the supreme joy,the supreme triumph of her life. Even her buoyant and cloudless naturedid not escape that mortal doom which pursues and poisons every ambitionin the very instant of its full fruition.
The doubt, the pain, the self-mistrust were still upon her as shesaluted once again and paced down the ranks of the assembled divisions;while every lance was carried, every sword lifted, every bayonetpresented to the order as she went; greeted as though she were anempress, for that cross which glittered on her heart, for that couragewherewith she had saved the Tricolor.
The great shouts rent the air; the clash of the lowered arms salutedher; the drums rolled out upon the air; the bands of the regiments ofAfrica broke into the fiery rapture of a war-march; the folds ofthe battle-torn flags were flung out wider and wider on the breeze.Gray-bearded men gazed on her with tears of delight upon their grizzledlashes, and young boys looked at her as the children of France oncegazed upon Jeanne d'Arc, where Cigarette, with the red ribbon on herbreast, road slowly in the noonday light along the line of troops.
It was the paradise of which she had dreamed; it was the homage ofthe army she adored; it was one of those hours in which life istransfigured, exalted, sublimated into a divine glory by the pure loveof a people; and yet in that instant, so long, so passionately desired,the doom of all genius was hers. There was the stealing pain of a wearyunrest amid the sunlit and intoxicating joy of satisfied aspiration.
The eyes of Venetia Corona followed her with something of ineffablepity. "Poor little unsexed child!" she thought. "How pretty and howbrave she is! and--how true to him!"
The Seraph, beside her in the group around the flagstaff, smiled andturned to her.
"I said that little Amazon was in love with this fellow Victor; howloyally she stood up for him. But I dare say she would be as quick tosend a bullet through him, if he should ever displease her."
"Why? Where there is so much courage the
re must be much nobility, evenin the abandonment of such a life as hers."
"Ah, you do not know what half-French, half-African natures are. Shewould die for him just now very likely; but if he ever forsake her, shewill be quite as likely to run her dirk through him."
"Forsake her! What is he to her?"
There was a certain impatience in the tone, and something ofcontemptuous disbelief, that made her brother look at her in wonder.
"What on earth can the loves of a camp concern her?" he thought, as heanswered: "Nothing that I know of. But this charming little tigressis very fond of him. By the way, can you point the man out to me? I amcurious to see him."
"Impossible! There are ten thousand faces, and the cavalry squadrons areso far off."
She spoke with indifference, but she grew a little pale as she did so,and the eyes that had always met his so frankly, so proudly, wereturned from him. He saw it, and it troubled him with a trouble the moreperplexed that he could assign to himself no reason for it. That itcould be caused by any interest felt for a Chasseur d'Afrique by thehaughtiest lady in all Europe would have been too preposterous and tooinsulting a supposition for it ever to occur to him. And he did notdream the truth--the truth that it was her withholding, for the firsttime in all her life, any secret from him which caused her pain; that itwas the fear lest he should learn that his lost friend was living thuswhich haunted her with that unspoken anxiety.
They were traveling here with the avowed purpose of seeing the militaryoperations of the south; she could not have prevented him from acceptingthe Marshal's invitation to the review of the African Army withoutexciting comment and interrogation; she was forced to let eventstake their own course, and shape themselves as they would; yet anapprehension, a dread, that she could hardly form into distant shape,pursued her. It weighed on her with an infinite oppression--this storywhich she alone had had revealed to her; this life whose martyrdom shealone had seen, and whose secret even she could not divine. It affectedher more powerfully, it grieved her more keenly, than she herself knew.It brought her close, for the only time in her experience, to a lifeabsolutely without a hope, and one that accepted the despair of sucha destiny with silent resignation; it moved her as nothing less, asnothing feebler or of more common type could ever have found power todo. There were a simplicity and a greatness in the mute, unpretentious,almost unconscious, heroism of this man, who, for the sheer sake ofthat which he deemed the need of "honor," accepted the desolation of hisentire future, which attracted her as nothing else had ever done, whichmade her heart ache when she looked at the glitter of the Franco-Arabsquadrons, where their sloped lances glistened in the sun, with apang that she had never felt before. Moreover, as the untutored,half-barbaric, impulsive young heart of Cigarette had felt, so felt thehigh-bred, cultured, world-wise mind of Venetia Corona--that thisman's exile was no shame, but some great sacrifice; a sacrifice whosebitterness smote her with its own suffering, whose mystery wearied herwith its own perplexity, as she gazed down the line of the regiments towhere the shot-bruised Eagle of Zaraila gleamed above the squadrons ofthe Chasseurs d'Afrique.
He, in his place among those squadrons, knew her, though so far distant,and endured the deadliest trial of patience which had come to him whilebeneath the yoke of African discipline. To leave his place was to incurthe heaviest punishment; yet he could almost have risked that sentencerather than wait there. Only seven days had gone by since he had beenwith her under the roof of the caravanserai; but it seemed to him asif these days had aged him more than all the twelve years that he hadpassed upon the Algerian soil. He was thankful that the enmity of hisrelentless chief had placed such shadow of evil report between his nameand the rewards due to his service, that even the promised recognitionof his brilliant actions at Zaraila and elsewhere was postponed a whileon the plea of investigation. He was thankful that the honors whichthe whole Army expected for him, and which the antagonism of Chateauroywould soon be powerless to avert any longer from their meet bestowal,did not force him to go up there in the scorching light of the noon, andtake those honors as a soldier of France, under the eyes of the man heloved, of the woman he adored.
As it was, he sat motionless as a statue in his saddle, and never lookedwestward to where the tricolors of the flagstaff drooped above the headof Venetia Corona.
Thus, he never heard the gallant words spoken in his behalf by the loyallips that he had not cared to caress. As she passed down the ranks,indeed, he saw and smiled on his little champion; but the smile had onlya weary kindness of recognition in it and it wounded Cigarette more thanthough he had struck her through the breast with his lance.
The moment that he had dreaded came; the troops broke up and marchedpast the representative of their empire, the cavalry at the head of thedivisions. He passed among the rest; he raised his lance so that it hidhis features as much as its slender shaft could do; the fair and nobleface on which his glance flashed was very pale and very grave; the onebeside her was sunny and frank, and unchanged by the years that haddrifted by, and its azure eyes, so like her own, sweeping over themasses with all the swift, keen appreciation of a military glance, wereso eagerly noting carriage, accouterment, harness, horses, that theynever once fell upon the single soldier whose heart so unutterablylonged for, even while it dreaded, his recognition.
Venetia gave a low, quick breath of mingled pain and relief as the lastof the Chasseurs passed by. The Seraph started, and turned his head.
"My darling! Are you not well?"
"Perfectly!"
"You do not look so; and you forgot now to point me out this specialtrooper. I forgot him too."
"He goes there--the tenth from here."
Her brother looked; it was too late.
"He is taller than the others. That is all I can see now that his backis turned. I will seek him out when--"
"Do no such thing!"
"And why? It was your own request that I inquired--"
"Think me changeable as you will. Do nothing to seek him, to inquire forhim--"
"But why? A man who at Zaraila--"
"Never mind! Do not let it be said you notice a Chasseur d'Afrique at myinstance."
The color flushed her face as she spoke; it was with the scorn, thehatred, of this shadow of an untruth with which she for the sole timein life soiled her lips. He, noting it, shook himself restlessly in hissaddle. If he had not known her to be the noblest and the haughtiest ofall the imperial women who had crowned his house with their beauty andtheir honor, he could have believed that some interest, degrading asdisgrace, moved her toward this foreign trooper, and caused her alteredwishes and her silence. As it was, so much insult to her as would haveexisted in the mere thought was impossible to him; yet it left himannoyed and vaguely disquieted.
The subject did not wholly fade from his mind throughout theentertainments that succeeded to the military inspection in the greatwhite tent glistening with gilded bees and brightened with tricolorstandards which the ingenuity of the soldiers of the administration hadreared as though by magic amid the barrenness of the country, and inwhich the skill of camp cooks served up a delicate banquet. The scenewas very picturesque, and all the more so for the widespread, changingpanorama without the canvas city of the camp. It was chiefly designed topleasure the great lady who had come so far southward; all the resourceswhich could be employed were exhausted to make the occasion memorableand worthy of the dignity of the guests whom the Viceroy of the Empiredelighted to honor. Yet she, seated there on his right hand, wherethe rich skins and cashmeres and carpets were strewn on a dais, saw inreality little save a confused blending of hues, and metals, and orders,and weapons, and snowy beards, and olive faces, and French elegance andglitter fused with the grave majesty of Arab pomp. For her thoughts werenot with the scene around her, but with the soldier who was without inthat teeming crowd of tents, who lived in poverty, and danger, and thehard slavery of unquestioning obedience, and asked only to be as onedead to all who had known and loved him in his youth. It was inva
in that she repelled the memory; it usurped her, and would not bedisplaced.
Meantime, in another part of the camp, the heroine of Zaraila wasfeasted, not less distinctively, if more noisily and more familiarly, bythe younger officers of the various regiments. La Cigarette, many a timebefore the reigning spirit of suppers and carouses, was banqueted withall the eclat that befitted that cross which sparkled on her blue andscarlet vest. High throned on a pyramid of knapsacks, canteens, andrugs, toasted a thousand times in all brandies and red wines that thestores would yield, sung of in improvised odes that were chanted byvoices which might have won European fame as tenor or as basso, caressedand sued with all the rapid, fiery, lightly-come and lightly-go love ofthe camp, with twice a hundred flashing, darkling eyes bent on her inthe hot admiration that her vain, coquette spirit found delight in,ruling as she would with jest, and caprice, and command, and bravadoall these men who were terrible as tigers to their foes, the Little Onereigned alone; and--like many who have reigned before her--found lead inher scepter, dross in her diadem, satiety in her kingdom.
When it was over, this banquet that was all in her honor, and that threemonths before would have been a paradise to her, she shook herself freeof the scores of arms outstretched to keep her captive, and went outinto the night alone. She did not know what she ailed, but she wasrestless, oppressed, weighed down with a sense of dissatisfied wearinessthat had never before touched the joyous and elastic nature of the childof France.
And this, too, in the moment when the very sweetest and loftiest of herambitions was attained! When her hand wandered to that decoration on herheart which had been ever in her sight what the crown of wild olive andthe wreath of summer grasses were to the youths and to the victorsof the old, dead classic years! As she stood in solitude under thebrilliancy of the stars, tears, unfamiliar and unbidden, rose in hereyes as they gazed over the hosts around her.
"How they live only for the slaughter! How they perish like the beastsof the field!" she thought. Upon her, as on the poet or the patriotwho could translate and could utter the thought as she could not, thereweighed the burden of that heart-sick consciousness of the vanity of thehighest hope, the futility of the noblest effort, to bring light intothe darkness of the suffering, toiling, blind throngs of human life.
"There is only one thing worth doing--to die greatly!" thought theaching heart of the child-soldier, unconsciously returning to the onlyend that the genius and the greatness of Greece could find as issue tothe terrible jest, the mysterious despair, of all existence.