CHAPTER XXXIV.
THE DESERT HAWK AND THE PARADISE-BIRD.
Some way distant, parted by a broad strip of unoccupied ground fromthe camp, were the grand marquees set aside for the Marshal and forhis guests. They were twelve in number, gayly decorated--as far asdecoration could be obtained in the southern provinces of Algeria--andhad, Arab-like, in front of each the standard of the Tricolor. Beforeone were two other standards also: the flags of England and of Spain.Cigarette, looking on from afar, saw the alien colors wave in thetorchlight flickering on them. "That is hers," thought the Little One,with the mournful and noble emotions of the previous moments swiftlychanging into the violent, reasonless, tumultuous hatred at once of arival and of an Order.
Cigarette was a thorough democrat; when she was two years old she hadsat on the topmost pile of a Parisian barricade, with the red bonnet onher curls, and had clapped her tiny hands for delight when the bulletsflew, and the "Marseillaise" rose above the cannonading; and the spiritof the musketry and of the "Marseillaise" had together passed into herand made her what she was. She was a genuine democrat; and nothingshort of the pure isonomy of the Greeks was tolerated in her politicalphilosophy, though she could not have told what such a word had meantfor her life. She had all the furious prejudices and all the instinctivetruths in her of an uncompromising Rouge; and the sight alone of thoselofty standards, signalizing the place of rest of the "aristocrats,"while her "children's" lowly tents wore in her sight all the dignity andall the distinction of the true field, would have aroused her ire at anytime. But now a hate tenfold keener moved her; she had a jealousy of theone in whose honor those two foreign ensigns floated, that was the mostbitter thing which had ever entered her short and sunny life--a hatethe hotter because tinged with that sickening sense of self-humiliation,because mingled with that wondering emotion at beholding something soutterly unlike to all that she had known or dreamed.
She had it in her, could she have had the power, to mercilessly andbrutally destroy this woman's beauty, which was so far above herreach, as she had once destroyed the ivory wreath; yet, as that of thesnow-white carving had done, so did this fair and regal beauty touchher, even in the midst of her fury, with a certain reverent awe, with acertain dim sense of something her own life had missed. She hadtrodden the ivory in pieces with all the violence of childish, savage,uncalculating hate, and she had been chidden, as by a rebuking voice, bythe wreck which her action had made at her feet; so could she now, hadit been possible, have ruined and annihilated the loveliness that filledhis heart and his soul; but so would she also, the moment her instinctto avenge herself had been sated, have felt the remorse and the shameof having struck down a delicate and gracious thing that even in itsdestruction had a glory that was above her.
Even her very hate attracted her to the sight, to the study, to thepresence of this woman, who was as dissimilar to all of womanhood thathad ever crossed her path, in camp and barrack, as the pure, whitegleaming lily of the hothouse is unlike the wind-tossed, sand-stained,yellow leaf down-trodden in the mud. An irresistible fascination drewher toward the self-same pain which had so wounded her a few hoursbefore--an impulse more intense than curiosity, and more vital thancaprice, urged her to the vicinity of the only human being who had everawakened in her the pang of humiliation, the throbs of envy.
And she went to that vicinity, now that the daylight had just changedto evening, and the ruddy torch-glare was glowing everywhere from greatpine boughs thrust in the ground, with their resinous branches steepedin oil and flaring alight. There was not a man that night in camp whowould have dared oppose the steps of the young heroine of the Crosswherever they might choose, in their fantastic flight, to wander.The sentinels passing up and down the great space before the marqueeschallenged her, indeed, but she was quick to give the answeringpassword, and they let her go by them, their eyes turning after thelittle picturesque form that every soldier of the Corps of Africa lovedalmost like the flag beneath which he fought. Once in the magic circle,she paused a while; the desire that urged her on, and the hate thatimpelled her backward, keeping her rooted there in the dusky shadowwhich the flapping standards threw.
To creep covertly into her rival's presence, to hide herself like a spyto see what she wished, to show fear, or hesitation, or deference,were not in the least what she contemplated. What she intended was toconfront this fair, strange, cold, cruel thing, and see if she were offlesh and blood like other living beings, and do the best that could bedone to outrage, to scourge, to challenge, to deride her with all theinsolent artillery of camp ribaldry, and show her how a child of thepeople could laugh at her rank, and affront her purity, and scorn herpower. Definite idea there was none to her; she had come on impulse.But a vague longing in some way to break down that proud serenity whichgalled her so sharply, and bring hot blood of shame into that delicateface, and cast indignity on that imperious and unassailable pride,consumed her.
She longed to do as some girl of whom she had once been told by an oldInvalide had done in the '89--a girl of the people, a fisher-girl of theCannebiere, who had loved one above her rank, a noble who deserted herfor a woman of his own Order, a beautiful, soft-skinned, lily-like,scornful aristocrat, with the silver ring of merciless laughter and thelanguid luster of sweet, contemptuous eyes. The Marseillaise bore herwrong in silence--she was a daughter of the south and of the populace,with a dark, brooding, burning beauty, strong and fierce, and bracedwith the salt lashing of the sea and with the keen breath of the stormymistral. She held her peace while the great lady was wooed and won,while the marriage joys came with the purple vintage time, while thepeople were made drunk at the bridal of their chatelaine in those hot,ruddy, luscious autumn days.
She held her peace; and the Terror came, and the streets of the city bythe sea ran blood, and the scorch of the sun blazed, every noon, on thescaffold. Then she had her vengeance. She stood and saw the ax fall downon the proud, snow-white neck that never had bent till it bent there,and she drew the severed head into her own bronzed hands and smotethe lips his lips had kissed,--a cruel blow that blurred their beautyout,--and twined a fish-hook in the long and glistening hair, and drewit, laughing as she went, through dust, and mire, and gore, and overthe rough stones of the town, and through the shouting crowds of themultitudes, and tossed it out on to the sea, laughing still as the wavesflung it out from billow to billow, and the fish sucked it down to maketheir feast. She stood and laughed by the side of the gray, angry water,watching the tresses of the floating hair sink downward like a heap ofsea-tossed weed.
That horrible story came to the memory of Cigarette now as it had beentold her by the old soldier who, in his boyhood, had seen the entry ofthe Marseillais to Paris. She knew what the woman of the people had feltwhen she had bruised and mocked and thrown out to the devouring watersthat fair and fallen head.
"I could do it--I could do it," she thought, with the savage instinct ofher many-sided nature dominant, leaving uppermost only its ferocity--thesame ferocity as had moved the southern woman to wreak her hatred on thesenseless head of her rival. The school in which the child-soldier hadbeen reared had been one to foster all those barbaric impulses; to leavein their inborn, uncontrolled force all those native desires which thehuman shares with the animal nature. There had been no more to teach herthat these were criminal or forbidden than there is to teach the youngtigress that it is cruel to tear the antelope for food. What Cigarettewas, that nature had made her; she was no more trained to self-control,or to the knowledge of good, than is the tiger's cub as it wantons inits play under the great, broad tropic leaves.
Now, she acted on her impulse; her impulse of open scorn of rank, ofreckless vindication of her right to do just whatsoever pleasured her;and she went boldly forward and dashed aside, with no gentle hand, thefolds that hung before the entrance of the tent, and stood there withthe gleam of the starry night and the glow of the torches behind her,so that her picturesque and brightly colored form looked painted on adusky, lurid background of shado
w and of flame.
The action startled the occupants of the tent, and made them both lookup; they were Venetia Corona and a Levantine woman, who was her favoriteand most devoted attendant, and had been about her from her birth. Thetent was the first of three set aside for her occupancy, and had beenadorned with as much luxury as was procurable, and with many of the richand curious things of Algerian art and workmanship, so far as theycould be hastily collected by the skill and quickness of the Frenchintendance. Cigarette stood silently looking at the scene on which shehad thus broken without leave or question; she saw nothing of it exceptone head lifted in surprise at her entrance--just such a head, just soproudly carried, just so crowned with gleaming hair as that which theMarseillaise had dragged through the dust of the streets and cast outinto the lust of the sharks. Venetia hesitated a moment in astonishedwonder; then, with the grace and the courtesy of her race, rose andapproached the entrance of her tent, in which that fierce--half asoldier, half a child--was standing, with the fitful, reddened lightbehind. She recognized whose it was.
"Is it you, ma petite?" she said kindly. "Come within. Do not beafraid----"
She spoke with the gentle consideration of a great lady to one whom sheadmired for her heroism, compassionated for her position, and thoughtnaturally in need of such encouragement. She had liked the frank,fearless, ardent brunette face of the Little Friend of the Flag; she hadliked her fiery and indomitable defense of the soldier of Zaraila;she felt an interest in her as deep as her pity, and she was above thescruples which many women of her rank might have had as to the fitnessof entering into conversation with this child of the army. She wasgentle to her as to a young bird, a young kitten, a young colt; whather brother had said of the vivandiere's love for one whom the girl onlyknew as a trooper of Chasseurs filled with an indefinable compassion thewoman who knew him as her own equal and of her own Order.
Cigarette, for once, answered nothing; her eyes very lowering, burning,savage.
"You wish to see me?" Venetia asked once more. "Come nearer. Have nofear--"
The one word unloosed the spell which had kept Cigarette speechless;the one word was an insult beyond endurance, that lashed all the worstspirit in her into flame.
"Fear!" she cried, with a camp oath, whose blasphemy was happilyunintelligible to her listener. "Fear! You think I fear you!--thedarling of the army, who saved the squadron at Zaraila, who has seen athousand days of bloodshed, who has killed as many men with her ownhand as any Lascar among them all--fear you, you hothouse flower, youparadise-bird, you silver pheasant, who never did aught but spread yourdainty colors in the sun, and never earned so much as the right to eat apierce of black bread, if you had your deserts! Fear you--I! Why! doyou not know that I could kill you where you stand as easily as I couldwring the neck of any one of those gold-winged orioles that flew aboveyour head to-day, and who have more right to live than you, for they doat least labor in their own fashion for their food, and their drink,and their dwelling? Dieu de Dieu! Why, I have killed Arabs, I tellyou--great, gaunt, grim men--and made them bite the dust under myfire. Do you think I would check for a moment at dealing you death, youbeautiful, useless, honeyed, poisoned, painted exotic, that has everywind tempered to you, and thinks the world only made to bear the fall ofyour foot!"
The fury of words was poured out without pause, and with an intensepassion vibrating through them; the wine was hot in her veins, the hatewas hot in her heart; her eyes glittered with murderous meaning, and shedarted with one swift bound to the side of the rival she loathed,with the pistol half out of her belt; she expected to see the one shethreatened recoil, quail, hear the threat in terror; she mistook thenature with which she dealt. Venetia Corona never moved, never gave asign of the amazement that awoke in her; but she put her hand out andclasped the barrel of the weapon, while her eyes looked down intothe flashing, looming, ferocious ones that menaced her, with calm,contemptuous rebuke, in which something of infinite pity was mingled.
"Child, are you mad?" she said gravely. "Brave natures do not stoop toassassination, which you seem to deify. If you have any reason to feelevil against me, tell me what it is. I always repair a wrong, if I can.But as for those threats, they are most absurd if you do not mean them;they are most wicked if you do."
The tranquil, unmoved, serious words stilled the vehement passion sherebuked with a strange and irresistible power; under her gaze the savagelust in Cigarette's eyes died out, and their lids drooped over them; thedusky, scarlet color failed from her cheeks; for the first time in herlife she felt humiliated, vanquished, awed. If this "aristocrat" hadshown one sign of fear, one trace of apprehension, all her violent andreckless hatred would have reigned on, and, it might have been, haverushed from threat to execution; but showing the only quality, thatof courage, for which she had respect, her great rival confused anddisarmed her. She was only sensible, with a vivid, agonizing sense ofshame, that her only cause of hatred against this woman was that heloved her. And this she would have died a thousand deaths rather thanhave acknowledged.
She let the pistol pass into Venetia's grasp; and stood, irresoluteand ashamed, her fluent tongue stricken dumb, her intent to wound,and sting, and outrage with every vile, coarse jest she knew, renderedimpossible to execute. The purity and the dignity of her opponent'spresence had their irresistible influence, an influence too strong foreven her debonair and dangerous insolence. She hated herself in thatmoment more than she hated her rival.
Venetia laid the loaded pistol down, away from both, and seated herselfon the cushions from which she had risen. Then she looked once more,long and quietly, at her unknown antagonist.
"Well?" she said, at length. "Why do you venture to come here? And whydo you feel this malignity toward a stranger who never saw you untilthis morning?"
Under the challenge the fiery spirit of Cigarette rallied, though a rareand galling sense of intense inferiority, of intense mortification, wasupon her; though she would almost have given the Cross which was on herbreast that she had never come into this woman's sight.
"Oh, ah!" she answered recklessly, with the red blood flushing her faceagain at the only evasion of truth of which the little desperado, withall her sins, had ever been guilty. "I hate you, Milady, because ofyour Order--because of your nation--because of your fine, daintyways--because of your aristocrat's insolence--because you treat mysoldiers like paupers--because you are one of those who do no more tohave the right to live than the purple butterfly that flies in the sun,and who oust the people out of their dues as the cuckoo kicks the poorbirds that have reared it, out of the nest of down, to which it neverhas carried a twig or a moss!"
Her listener heard with a slight smile of amusement and of surprise thatbitterly discomfited the speaker. To Venetia Corona the girl-soldierseemed mad; but it was a madness that interested her, and she knew at aglance that this child of the army was of no common nature and no commonmind.
"I do not wish to discuss democracy with you," she answered, with a tonethat sounded strangely tranquil to Cigarette after the scathing acrimonyof her own. "I should probably convince you as little as you wouldconvince me; and I never waste words. But I heard you to-day claim acertain virtue--justice. How do you reconcile with that your very hastycondemnation of a stranger of whose motives, actions, and modes of lifeit is impossible you can have any accurate knowledge?"
Cigarette once again was silenced; her face burned, her heart washot with rage. She had come prepared to upbraid and to outrage thispatrician with every jibe and grossness camp usage could supplyher with, and--she stood dumb before her! She could only feel anall-absorbing sense of being ridiculous, and contemptible, and puerilein her sight.
"You bring two charges against me," said Venetia, when she had vainlyawaited answer. "That I treat your comrades like paupers, and that I robthe people--my own people, I imagine you to mean--of their dues. In thefirst, how will you prove it?--in the second, how can you know it?"
"Pardieu, Milady!" swore Cigarette recklessly, seeking only to hold
herown against the new sense of inferiority and of inability that oppressedher. "I was in the hospital when your fruits and your wines came; and asfor your people, I don't speak of them,--they are all slaves, they say,in Albion, and will bear to be yoked like oxen if they think they canturn any gold in the furrows--I speak of the people. Of the toiling,weary, agonized, joyless, hapless multitudes who labor on, and on, andon, ever in darkness, that such as you may bask in sunlight and takeyour pleasures wrung out of the death-sweat of millions of work-murderedpoor! What right have you to have your path strewn with roses, and everypain spared from you; only to lift your voice and say, 'Let that bedone,' to see it done?--to find life one long, sweet summer day ofgladness and abundance, while they die out in agony by thousands,ague-stricken, famine-stricken, crime-stricken, age-stricken, for wantonly of one ray of the light of happiness that falls from dawn to dawnlike gold upon your head?"
Vehement and exaggerated as the upbraiding was, her hearer's face grewvery grave, very thoughtful, as she spoke, those luminous, earnest eyes,whose power even the young democrat felt, gazed wearily down into hers.
"Ah, child! Do you think we never think of that? You wrong me--you wrongmy Order. There are many besides myself who turn over that terribleproblem as despairingly as you can ever do. As far as in us lies, westrive to remedy its evil; the uttermost effort can do but little, butthat little is only lessened--fearfully lessened--whenever Class isarrayed against Class by that blind antagonism which animates yourself."
Cigarette's intelligence was too rapid not to grasp the truths conveyedby these words; but she was in no mood to acknowledge them.
"Nom de Dieu, Milady!" she swore in her teeth. "If you do turn over theproblem--you aristocrats--it is pretty work, no doubt! Just puttingthe bits of a puzzle-ball together so long as the game pleases you, andleaving the puzzle in chaos when you are tired! Oh, ha! I know how fineladies and fine gentlemen play at philanthropies! But I am a child ofthe People, mark you; and I only see how birth is an angel that givessuch as you eternal sunlight and eternal summer, and how birth is adevil that drives down the millions into a pit of darkness, of crime, ofignorance, of misery, of suffering, where they are condemned before theyhave opened their eyes to existence, where they are sentenced beforethey have left their mothers' bosoms in infancy. You do not know whatthat darkness is. It is night--it is ice--it is hell!"
Venetia Corona sighed wearily as she heard; pain had been so far fromher own life, and there was an intense eloquence in the low, deep wordsthat seemed to thrill through the stillness.
"Nor do you know how many shadows checker that light which you envy! ButI have said; it is useless for me to argue these questions with you.You commence with a hatred of a class; all justice is over whereverthat element enters. If I were what you think, I should bid you leave mypresence which you have entered so rudely. I do not desire to do that.I am sure that the heroine of Zaraila has something nobler in her thanmere malignity against a person who can never have injured her; andI would endure her insolence for the sake of awakening her justice.A virtue, that was so great in her at noon, cannot be utterly dead atnightfall."
Cigarette's fearless eyes drooped under the gaze of those bent sosearchingly, yet so gently, upon her; but only for a moment. She raisedthem afresh with their old dauntless frankness.
"Dieu! you shall never say you wanted justice and truth from a Frenchsoldier, and failed to get them! I hate you, never mind why--I do,though you never harmed me. I came here for two reasons: one, because Iwanted to look at you close--you are not like anything that I ever saw;the other, because I wanted to wound you, to hurt you, to outrage you,if I could find a way how. And you will not let me do it. I do not knowwhat it is in you."
In all her courted life, the great lady had had no truer homage than layin that irate, reluctant wonder of this fiery foe.
She smiled slightly.
"My poor child, it is rather something in yourself--a native nobilitythat will not allow you to be as unjust and as insolent as your souldesires--"
Cigarette gave a movement of intolerable impatience.
"Pardieu! Do not pity me, or I shall give you a taste of my 'insolence'in earnest! You may be a sovereign grand dame everywhere else, but youcan carry no terror with you for me, I promise you!"
"I do not seek to do so. If I did not feel interest in you, do yousuppose I should suffer for a moment the ignorant rudeness of anill-bred child? You fail in the tact, as in the courtesy, that belong toyour nation."
The rebuke was gentle, but it was all the more severe for its veryserenity. It cut Cigarette to the quick; it covered her with anoverwhelming sense of mortification and of failure. She was too keen andtoo just, despite all her vanity, not to feel that she had deserved thecondemnation, and not to know that her opponent had all the advantageand all the justice on her side. She had done nothing by coming here;nothing except to appear as an insolent and wayward child before hersuperb rival, and to feel a very anguish of inferiority before thegrace, the calm, the beauty, the nameless, potent charm of this woman,whom she had intended to humiliate and injure!
The inborn truth within her, the native generosity and candor thatsoon or late always overruled every other element in the Little One,conquered her now. She dashed down her Cross on the ground, and trodpassionately on the decoration she adored.
"I disgrace it the first day I wear it! You are right, though I hateyou, and you are as beautiful as a sorceress! There is no wonder heloves you!"
"He! Who?"
There was a colder and more utterly amazed hauteur in the interrogationthan had come into her voice throughout the interview, yet on her fairface a faint warmth rose.
The words were out, and Cigarette was reckless what she said; almostunconscious, indeed, in the violence of the many emotions in her.
"The man who carves the toys you give your dog to break!" she answeredbitterly. "Dieu de Dieu! he loves you. When he was down with his woundsafter Zaraila, he said so; but he never knew what he said, and he neverknew that I heard him. You are like the women of his old world; thoughthrough you he got treated like a dog, he loves you!"
"Of whom do you venture to speak?"
The cold, calm dignity of the question, whose very tone was a rebuke,came strangely after the violent audacity of Cigarette's speech.
"Sacre bleu! Of him, I tell you, who was made to bring his wares to youlike a hawker. And you think it insult, I will warrant!--insult fora soldier who has nothing but his courage, and his endurance, andhis heroism under suffering to ennoble him, to dare to love Mme. laPrincesse Corona! I think otherwise. I think that Mme. la PrincesseCorona never had a love of so much honor, though she has had princes andnobles and all the men of her rank, no doubt, at her feet, through thatbeauty that is like a spell!"
Hurried headlong by her own vehemence, and her own hatred for her rival,which drove her to magnify the worth of the passion of which she was sojealous, that she might lessen, if she could, the pride of her on whomit was lavished, she never paused to care what she said, or heed whatits consequences might become. She felt incensed, amazed, irritated,to see no trace of any emotion come on her hearer's face; the hot,impetuous, expansive, untrained nature underrated the power forself-command of the Order she so blindly hated.
"You speak idly and at random, like the child you are," the grande dameanswered her with chill, contemptuous rebuke. "I do not imagine that theperson you allude to made you his confidante in such a matter?"
"He!" retorted Cigarette. "He belongs to your class, Milady. He is assilent as the grave. You might kill him, and he would never show ithurt. I only know what he muttered in his fever."
"When you attended him?"
"Not I!" cried Cigarette, who saw for the first time that she wasbetraying herself. "He lay in the scullion's tent where I was; that wasall; and he was delirious with the shot-wounds. Men often are--"
"Wait! Hear me a little while, before you rush on in this headlong andfoolish speech," interrupted her auditor, who had in
a moment's rapidthought decided on her course with this strange, wayward nature. "Youerr in the construction you have placed on the words, whatever theywere, which you heard. The gentleman--he is a gentleman--whom you speakof bears me no love. We are almost strangers. But by a strange chainof circumstances he is connected with my family; he once had greatfriendship with my brother; for reasons that I do not know, but whichare imperative with him, he desires to keep his identity unsuspected byeveryone; an accident alone revealed it to me, and I have promised himnot to divulge it. You understand?"
Cigarette gave an affirmative gesture. Her eyes were fastened suddenly,yet with a deep, bright glow in them, upon her companion; she wasbeginning to see her way through his secret--a secret she was toointrinsically loyal even now to dream of betraying.
"You spoke very nobly for him to-day. You have the fealty of one bravecharacter to another, I am sure!" pursued Venetia Corona, purposelyavoiding all hints of any warmer feeling on her listener's part, sinceshe saw how tenacious the girl was of any confession of it. "You woulddo him service if you could, I fancy. Am I right?"
"Oh, yes!" answered Cigarette, with an over-assumption of carelessness."He is bon zig; we always help each other. Besides, he is very good tomy men. What is it you want of me?"
"To preserve secrecy on what I have told you for his sake; and to givehim a message from me."
Cigarette laughed scornfully; she was furious with herself for standingobediently like a chidden child to hear this patrician's bidding, andto do her will. And yet, try how she would, she could not shake off thespell under which those grave, sweet, lustrous eyes of command held her.
"Pardieu, Milady! Do you think I babble like any young drunk with hisfirst measure of wine? As for your message, you had better let him comeand hear what you have to say; I cannot promise to remember it!"
"Your answer is reckless; I want a serious one. You spoke like abrave and a just friend to him to-day; are you willing to act as suchto-night? You have come here strangely, rudely, without pretext orapology; but I think better of you than you would allow me to do, if Ijudged only from the surface. I believe that you have loyalty, as I knowthat you have courage."
Cigarette set her teeth hard.
"What of that?"
"This of it. That one who has them will never cherish maliceunjustifiably, or fail to fulfill a trust."
Cigarette's clear, brown skin grew very red.
"That is true," she muttered reluctantly. Her better nature was growinguppermost, though she strove hard to keep the evil one predominant.
"Then you will cease to feel hatred toward me for so senseless a reasonas that I belong to an aristocracy that offends you; and you will remainsilent on what I tell you concerning the one whom you know as LouisVictor?"
Cigarette nodded assent; the sullen fire-glow still burned in her eyes,but she succumbed to the resistless influence which the serenity, thepatience, and the dignity of this woman had over her. She was studyingVenetia Corona all this while with the keen, rapid perceptions ofenvy and of jealousy; studying her features, her form, her dress,her attitude, all the many various and intangible marks of birth andbreeding which were so new to her, and which made her rival seem sostrange, so dazzling, so marvelous a sorceress to her; and all thewhile the sense of her own inferiority, her own worthlessness, her ownboldness, her own debasement was growing upon her, eating, sharply intothe metal of her vanity and her pride, humiliating her unbearably, yetmaking her heart ache with a sad, pathetic pity for herself.
"He is of your Order, then?" she asked abruptly.
"He was--yes."
"Oh, ha!" cried Cigarette, with her old irony. "Then he must be always,mustn't he? You think too much of your blue blood, you patricians, tofancy it can lose its royalty, whether it run under a King's purple or aRoumi's canvas shirt. Blood tells, they say! Well, perhaps it does. Somesay my father was a Prince of France--maybe! So, he is of your Order?Bah! I knew that the first day I saw his hands. Do you want me to tellyou why he lives among us, buried like this?"
"Not if you violate any confidence to do so."
"Pardieu! He makes no confidence, I promise you. Not ten words willMonsieur say, if he can help it, about anything. He is as silent as alama. But we learn things without being told in camp; and I know wellenough he is here to save someone else, in someone's place; it is asacrifice, look you, that nails him down to this martyrdom."
Her auditor was silent; she thought as the vivandiere thought, but thepride in her, the natural reticence and reserve of her class, made hershrink from discussing the history of one whom she knew--shrink fromhaving any argument on his past or future with a saucy, rough, fieryyoung camp-follower, who had broken thus unceremoniously on her privacy.Yet she needed greatly to be able to trust Cigarette; the child was theonly means through which she could send him a warning that must besent; and there were a bravery and a truth in her which attracted the"aristocrat," to whom she was so singular and novel a rarity as thoughshe were some young savage of desert western isles.
"Look you, Milady," said Cigarette, half sullenly, half passionately,for the words were wrenched out of her generosity, and choked herin their utterance, "that man suffers; his life here is a hell uponearth--I don't mean for the danger, he is bon soldat; but for theindignity, the subordination, the license, the brutality, the tyranny.He is as if he were chained to the galleys. He never says anything.Oh, no! he is of your kind you know! But he suffers. Mort de Dieu! hesuffers. Now, if you be his friend, can you do nothing for him? Can youransom him in no way? Can you go away out of Africa and leave him inthis living death to get killed and thrust into the sand, like hiscomrade the other day?"
Her hearer did not answer; the words made her heart ache; they cut herto the soul. It was not for the first time that the awful desolation ofhis future had been present before her; but it was the first time thatthe fate to which she would pass away and leave him had been so directlyin words before her. Cigarette, obeying the generous impulses of herbetter nature, and abandoning self with the same reckless impetuositywith which a moment before she would, if she could, have sacrificed herrival, saw the advantage gained, and pursued it with rapid skill. Shewas pleading against herself; no matter. In that instant she was capableof crucifying herself, and only remembering mercy to the absent.
"I have heard," she went on vehemently, for the utterance to which sheforced herself was very cruel to her, "that you of the Noblesse arestanch as steel to your own people. It is the best virtue that youhave. Well, he is of your people. Will you go away in your negligentindifference, and leave him to eat his heart out in bitterness andmisery? He was your brother's friend; he was known to you in his earlytime; you said so. And are you cold enough and cruel enough, Milady,not to make one effort to redeem him out of bondage?--to go back to yourpalaces, and your pleasures, and your luxuries, and your flatteries, andbe happy, while this man is left on bearing his yoke here?--and it isa yoke that galls, that kills!--bearing it until, in some day ofdesperation, a naked blade cuts its way to his heart, and makes itspulse cease forever? If you do, you patricians are worse still than Ithought you!"
Venetia heard her without interruption; a great sadness came over herface as the vivid phrases followed each other. She was too absorbed inthe subject of them to heed the challenge and the insolence of theirmanner. She knew that the Little One who spoke them loved him, thoughso tenacious to conceal her love; and she was touched, not less by themagnanimity which, for his sake, sought to release him from the Africanservice, than by the hopelessness of his coming years as thus prefiguredbefore her.
"Your reproaches are unneeded," she replied, slowly and wearily. "Icould not abandon one who was once the friend of my family to such afate as you picture without very great pain. But I do not see how toalter this fate, as you think I could do with so much ease. I am not inits secret; I do not know the reason of its seeming suicide; I have nomore connection with its intricacies than you have. This gentleman haschosen his own path; it is not for me to chang
e his choice or spy intohis motives."
Cigarette's flashing, searching eyes bent all their brown light on her.
"Mme. Corona, you are courageous; to those who are so, all things arepossible."
"A great fallacy! You must have seen many courageous men vanquished. Butwhat would you imply by it?"
"That you can help this man, if you will."
"Would that I could; but I can discern no means--"
"Make them."
Even in that moment her listener smiled involuntarily at the curt,imperious tones, decisive as Napoleon's "Partons!" before the Passage ofthe Alps.
"Be certain, if I can, I will. Meantime, there is one pressing dangerof which you must be my medium to warn him. He and my brother must notmeet. Tell him that the latter, knowing him only as Louis Victor, andinterested in the incidents of his military career, will seek him outearly to-morrow morning before we quit the camp. I must leave it to himto avoid the meeting as best he may be able."
Cigarette smiled grimly.
"You do not know much of the camp. Victor is only a bas-officier; ifhis officers call him up, he must come, or be thrashed like a slave forcontumacy. He has no will of his own."
Venetia gave an irrepressible gesture of pain.
"True; I forgot. Well, go and send him to me. My brother must be takeninto his confidence, whatever that confidence reveals. I will tell himso. Go and send him to me; it is the last chance."
Cigarette gave no movement of assent; all the jealous rage in her flaredup afresh to stifle the noble and unselfish instincts under which shehad been led during the later moments. A coarse and impudent scoff roseto her tongue, but it remained unuttered; she could not speak it underthat glance, which held the evil in her in subjection, and compelled herreluctant reverence against her will.
"Tell him to come here to me," repeated Venetia, with the calm decisionof one to whom any possibility of false interpretation of her motivesnever occurred, and who was habituated to the free action thataccompanied an unassailable rank. "My brother must know what I know.I shall be alone, and he can make his way hither, without doubt,unobserved. Go and say this to him. You are his loyal little friend andcomrade."
"If I be, I do not see why I am to turn your lackey, Madame," saidCigarette bitterly. "If you want him, you can send for him by othermessengers!"
Venetia Corona looked at her steadfastly, with a certain contempt in thelook.
"Then your pleading for him was all insincere? Let the matter drop,and be good enough to leave my presence, which, you will remember, youentered unsummoned and undesired."
The undeviating gentleness of the tone made the rebuke cut deeper, asher first rebuke had cut, than any sterner censure or more peremptorydismissal could have done. Cigarette stood irresolute, ashamed, filledwith rage, torn by contrition, impatient, wounded, swayed by jealousrage and by the purer impulses she strove to stifle.
The Cross she had tossed down caught her sight as it glittered on thecarpet strewn over the hard earth; she stooped and raised it; the actionsufficed to turn the tide with her impressionable, ardent, capriciousnature; she would not disgrace that.
"I will go," she muttered in her throat; "and you--you--O God! no wondermen love you when even I cannot hate you!"
Almost ere the words were uttered she had dashed aside the hangingsbefore the tent entrance, and had darted out into the night air. VenetiaCorona gazed after the swiftly flying figure as it passed over thestarlit ground, lost in amazement, in pity, and in regret; wonderingafresh if she had only dreamed of this strange interview in the Algeriancamp, which seemed to have come and gone with the blinding rapidity oflightning.
"A little tigress!" she thought; "and yet with infinite nobility, withwonderful germs of good in her. Of such a nature what a rare life mighthave been made! As it is, her childhood we smile at and forgive; but,great Heaven! what will be her maturity, her old age! Yet how she loveshim! And she is so brave she will not show it."
With the recollection came the remembrance of Cigarette's words asto his own passion for herself, and she grew paler as it did so. "Godforbid he should have that pain, too!" she murmured. "What could it besave misery for us both!"
Yet she did not thrust the fancy from her with contemptuous nonchalanceas she had done every other of the many passions she had excited anddisdained; it had a great sadness and a greater terror for her. Shedreaded it slightly for herself.
She wished now that she had not sent for him. But it was done; it wasfor sake of their old friendship; and she was not one to vainly regretwhat was unalterable, or to desert what she deemed generous and rightfor the considerations of prudence or of egotism.