THE BEETLE
When Max had served four months in the Foreign Legion he felt older by
four years. He looked older, too. There were faintly sketched lines
round his mouth and eyes, and that indefinable expression which lies
deep down in eyes which have seen life and death at grip: a Legion look.
In some ways he had been a boy when he took his sudden resolve in the
Salle d'Honneur to prove what the Legion could do for a nature he
himself doubted. Now he was no longer a boy. He realized that, though he
had never found time to study the success of his experiment, and had no
idea that it was being studied day after day by his colonel. Had he
guessed, some dark hours might have been brightened by gleams of hope,
for in spite of his luck in the Legion there were times when Max felt
himself abandoned, a creature of as small consequence to any heart on
earth as a half-drowned fly. A more conceited man would have been
happier, but Max had not joined the Legion with the object of finding
happiness, and one who was watching believed that it would be good for
him to wait.
Max and Manöel Valdez (alias Garcia) had looked forward to the great
march, already vaguely talked of when they joined. But it had not been
a march for marching's sake: its real purpose was more grave. A band of
Arab thieves and murderers on the border of the M'zab country had to be
caught and punished. No recruits were taken: disappointment for Max and
despair for Valdez. He had hoped everything from that chance, and, in
his rage at losing it, made a dash for liberty from Sidi-bel-Abbés. He
got no farther than the outskirts, the forbidden _Village Négre_, where
he risked a night visit in search of the man bribed to hide a certain
precious bundle. Fortunately he was arrested before securing it, for had
he been trapped with civilian clothes not even his marvellous voice (the
talk of the garrison since it had been heard in the soldier's theatre)
could have saved him from the fate of caught deserters: the penal
battalion for months, if not a year; death, perhaps, from fever or
hardship. As it was, he escaped with the penalty for a night visit to
the Arab quarter: eight days _cellule_. But the clothes were safe. He
would try again. Nothing on earth, he said, should keep him from trying
again; because he might as well be a "Zephir" in the dreaded "Batt
d'Aff," if he could not answer the cry for help he seemed always to hear
from across the desert.
Since his first failure and imprisonment nearly four months had passed,
and he had tried again and failed in the same way. The second time his
sentence was twice as long; but before it was over the _medecin major_
sent him into hospital. He came out emaciated, sullen, dangerous, caring
for nothing, not even to sing. Max yearned over him, but could do
nothing except say, "It isn't too late yet. Maybe, if we brace up, we'll
be taken on the big march that they talk of for the first of September.
Even then there'll be time."
He said "we," because it was more comforting to Valdez that their names
should be bracketed together as friends; but as Legionnaires they were
already far apart. Max had never been censured, had never seen the
inside of the prison building (that low-roofed, sinister building that
runs along the walls of the barrack-yard). He was in the school of
corporals. Soon he would wear on his blue sleeve the coveted red woollen
stripe. Garcia, on the contrary, was constantly falling into trouble. He
had even drunk too much, once or twice, in the hope of drowning trouble,
as Legionnaires do. The September march to the south was ostensibly for
road-laying; but there was again a rumour of other important work to be
done. The great secret society of the Senussi threatened trouble through
a new leader who had arisen, a young man of the far south called the
"Deliverer." And when there was prospect of fighting in the desert or
elsewhere for the Legion, recruits--even those who had served for six
months--were seldom taken if a long list of black marks stood against
their names. Max feared that there was little hope for Valdez, though he
meant to do what he could to help. And he found it strange that he, a
born soldier as he knew himself to be, should think of tacitly aiding
another to desert, no matter on what pretext. At home in the same
position it could not have been so; but in the Foreign Legion recruits
talked freely, even before old Legionnaires to whom the Legion was
mother and father and country. There was no fear of betrayal. The whole
point of view seemed different. If a man felt that he had borne all he
could, and was desperate enough to risk death by starvation or worse,
why let him go with his comrades' blessing--and his blood on his own
head! If he had money he might get through. If not, he was lost; but
that, too, was his own business.
March was bitterly cold in wind-swept Sidi-bel-Abbés. April was mild;
May warm; June hot; July and August a furnace, but Legionnaires drank no
less of the heavy, red Algerian wine than before the summer heat
engulfed them. Max had heard men say jokingly or solemnly of each other,
"He has the _cafard_." Vaguely he knew that _cafard_ was French for
beetle, or cockroach; that soldiers who habitually mixed absinthe and
other strong drinks with their cheap but beloved _litre_ were often
affected with a strange madness which betrayed itself in weird ways, and
that this special madness was familiarly named _le cafard_. When the hot
wave arrived he saw for himself what the terrible insect could do in a
man's brain.
In the canteen it was bad enough on pay nights--so called "the Legion's
holidays"--but there reigned Madame la Cantiniere, young, good looking,
a respected queen, who would go on march with the Legion in her cart,
and who must at all times to a certain extent be obeyed. But in dim
side-streets of the town, far from the lights of the smart, out-of-doors
cafés, were _casse croutes_ kept by Spaniards who cared nothing for the
fate of Legionnaires when they had spent their last sou. The _cafard_
grew and prospered there. He tickled men's gray matter and kneaded it in
his microscopic claws. There his victims fought each other, for no
reason which they could explain afterward, or mutilated themselves,
tearing off an ear, or tattooing a face with some design to rival Four
Eyes; or they sold parts of their uniforms to buy a little more drink,
or tried to blow out their brains, or the brains of some one else.
Afterward, if they survived, they went to prison; but if it could be
proved that they were indeed suffering from _cafard_, they got off with
light sentences.
Officers of the Legion old enough to have won a few medals seemed to
respect the _cafard_ and make allowances for his deadly work. If the men
did not survive, they--what was left of them--went to the cemetery to
rest under small black crosses marked with name and number, their only
mourners the great cypresses which sighed with every breath of wind from
the mountains.
One August night of blazing heat and moonlight Max could not sleep.
There had been a scene in the dormitory which had got every man out of
bed, but an hour after the tired soldiers were dead to the world
again--all save Max, who felt as if a white fire like the moonlight was
raging in his brain.
He lay still, as though he were gagged and bound, lest a sigh, or a
rustle in turning over--as he longed to turn--might waken a neighbour.
The hours set apart for the Legion's repose were sacred, so profoundly
sacred that any man who made the least noise at night or during the
afternoon siesta was given good cause to regret his awkwardness. The
most inveterate snorers were cured, or half killed; and to-night, in
this great room with its double row of beds, the trained silence of the
sleepers seemed unnatural, almost terrible, especially after the horror
that had broken it. Max had never before felt the oppression of this
deathlike stillness. Usually he slept as the rest slept; but now, weary
as he was, he resigned himself to lie staring through the slow hours,
till the orderly's call, "_Au jus!_" should rouse the men to swallow
their coffee before reveille.
The dormitory, white with moonlight streaming through curtainless open
windows, seemed to Max like a mausoleum. He could see the still, flat
forms, uncovered and prone on their narrow beds, like carven figures of
soldiers on tombs. He alone was alive among a company of statues. The
men could not be human to sleep so soon and so soundly after the thing
that had happened!
In his hot brain the scene repeated itself constantly in bright, moving
pictures. He had been rather miserable before going to bed, and had
longed for forgetfulness. Sleep had brought its balm, but suddenly he
had started awake to see a man bending over him, a dark shape with
lifted arms that fumbled along the shelf above the bed. On that shelf
was the famous _paquetage_ of the Legionnaire; all his belongings,
underclothes, and uniforms, built into the wonderful, artistic structure
which Four Eyes had shown his pet how to make. A thief was searching
among the neat layers of the _paquetage_ for money: every one knew that
St. George had money, for he was continually lending or giving it away.
This one meant to save him the trouble by taking it. Max felt suddenly
sick. He had thought all his comrades true to him. It was a blow to find
that some one wished to steal the little he had left, though he had
grudged no gift.
Just as Max waked the thief satisfied himself that the well-known wallet
was not hidden in the _paquetage_, and stooped lower to peer at the
sleeper's face before feeling under the pillow. His eyes and Max's
wide-open eyes met. In a flash Max recognized the man. He was of another
company, and had risked much to steal into the dormitory of the Tenth.
The fellow must be desperate! A wave of mingled pity and loathing rushed
over Max. Fearing consequences for the wretch, should any one wake, he
would mercifully have motioned him off in silence; but the warning
gesture was misunderstood. The thief started back, expecting a blow,
stumbled against the nearest bed, roused Four Eyes, and in a second the
whole room was in an uproar.
The full moon lit the intruder's face as if with a white ray from a
police lantern. Pelle and a dozen others recognized the man from the
Eleventh, who could have but one midnight errand in the sleeping-room of
the Tenth: the errand of a thief. Like wolves they leaped on him,
snapping and growling, swearing the strange oaths of the Legion.
Bayonets flashed in the moonlight; blood spouted red, for a soldier of
the Legion may "decorate" himself with a comrade's belt, or bit of
equipment, if another has annexed his: that is legitimate, even _chic_;
but money or food he must not steal if he would live. It is the Legion's
law.
All was over inside two minutes. The guard, hearing shouts, rushed in
and stoically bore away a limp, bloodstained bundle to the hospital.
Nobody blamed the men. Nobody pitied the bundle--except Max, whose first
experience it was of the Legion's swift justice. But nothing, not even
exciting prospects of a march, can be allowed to spoil the Legion's
rest; and so it was that in half an hour the raging avengers had become
once more stone figures carved on narrow tombs in a moonlit mausoleum.
For the first and only time since he had joined Max thoroughly hated the
Legion and wished wildly that he had never come near Sidi-bel-Abbés. Yet
did he wish that? If he had not come he would not have met Colonel
DeLisle, his beau ideal of a man and a soldier. He would be a boy again,
it seemed, with his eyes shut in the face of life. And he would miss his
sweetest memory of Sanda: that hour in the Salle d'Honneur of the
Legion, when she had christened him St. George and called him "her
soldier." But after all, of what use to him could be his acquaintance
with the Legion's colonel? There was a gulf between them now. And would
it not be as well or better to forget that little episode of friendship
with the colonel's daughter? She had probably forgotten it by this time.
And a Legionnaire has no business with women, even as friends. Besides,
Max was in a mood to doubt all friendship. He had had a letter that
day--his first letter from any one in four months--telling him that
Grant Reeves had married Josephine Doran.
Of course, Grant had a right to marry Josephine; but not to write until
the wedding day was safely over--as if he had been afraid Max would try
to stop it--and then to confess how he had come with his mother to meet
Josephine at Algiers! That was secret and unfriendly, even treacherous.
Max remembered very well how Grant had proposed accompanying Mrs.
Reeves, and he--Max--had rather impetuously vetoed the arrangement,
saying it was unnecessary, and guessing instinctively the budding idea
in Grant's mind. It was clear now that Grant had never abandoned it,
that he had from the first planned a campaign to win the heiress before
any other man had a chance with her, and that he had carried out the
scheme with never a hitch. The letter, written on the eve of the
wedding, had been three weeks on the way. Grant (the only person except
Edwin Reeves to whom Max had revealed himself as Maxime St. George,
Number 1033, in the Tenth Company, First Regiment of the Foreign Legion)
wrote that he was telling nobody where his friend was, or what he had
done. "The day will surely come, dear boy," Grant said--and Max could
almost hear his voice speaking--"when you will wish to blot out these
pages from your book of life. I want to make it easy for you to do so;
and I advise you to keep your present resolve: confide in none of your
pals. They might not be as discreet as the governor and I."
"He's glad I'm out of the way," thought Max. "He wants me to be
forgotten by every one, and he wants to forget me himself. If I were on
the spot, poor, and hustling to get on somehow or other in business, it
might worry him a little to be seen spending money that used to be
mine."
Perhaps it was morbid to attribute these motives to Grant Reeves, who
had once been his friend, but he did attribute them; and conscious that
he was actually encouraging morbid thoughts, Max wondered if he, too,
were getting the _cafard_, the madness of the Legion? Lying there, the
only waking one among the sleepers, fear of unseen, mysterious things,
the fear that sometimes attacks a brave man in the night, leaped at him
out of the shadows. He could almost feel the sharp little claws of the
dreaded beetle scratching in his brain. Yes, he'd been a fool to join
the Legion, and to hand over Jack Doran's house and fortune to Grant
Reeves! It was impossible that Grant had married Josephine for love. He
had simply taken her with the money, and he meant to have the spending
of it.
In the letter, Grant said that they planned to alter the old Doran house
and "bring it up to date." It was he, Grant, who had all the ideas,
apparently. Josephine was letting him do as he pleased. What should she
know about such matters? If she could have all the dresses and jewels
and fur she wanted, Grant would be allowed to go his own way with other
things. He was clever enough to understand that, and to manage
Josephine.
With the letter Grant had posted a bundle of Sunday newspapers and
illustrated magazines, such a bundle of old news as one sends to an
invalid in hospital. Max had glanced through some of the papers before
going to bed, looking with a sad, far-off sort of interest at portraits
of people whose names he knew. There had been a page of "America's most
beautiful actresses" in one Sunday supplement, and among them, of
course, was Billie Brookton. No such page would be complete without her!
It was a new photograph that Max had never seen. The smiling face, head
drooped slightly in order to give Billie's celebrated upward look from
under level brows, had the place of honour in the middle of the page.
And a paragraph beneath announced that Billie would leave the stage on
her marriage with "Millionaire Jeff Houston, of Chicago."
No doubt Houston was the man she had mentioned in her last letter. Round
her neck, in the picture, Max thought he recognized his pearls, and on
the pretty hand, raised to play with a rope of bigger pearls--"Millionaire
Houston's" perhaps--was the ring Max had given her the night when the
telegram came. The photograph, which was large and clearly reproduced,
showed the curiously shaped stone on the middle finger of Billie's left
hand. A large round pearl adorned the finger on which Max had once hoped
she might wear the blue diamond, a pearl so conspicuous that the original
of the picture appeared to display it purposely. "Millionaire Houston"
would be flattered; and that was what Billie Brookton wanted. As for what
Max Doran might think if he saw the portrait, why should she care? For
her, he was numbered with the dead.
Max was no longer in love with Billie. The shock of Rose Doran's
terrible accident, the story she had to tell, and her death, had chilled
the fire of what he thought was love. The letter of farewell had put it
out. But the scar of the burn sometimes hurts. To-night was one of those
times; and Max believed that his disappointment in Billie had had its
influence in driving him to the Legion. She stood now as a type of what
was mercenary, calculating, and false in womankind, just as (almost
unknown to himself) Sanda DeLisle stood for what was gentle, yet brave
and true. He felt that Billie Brookton had made him hard, with a
hardness that was not good; and that not only she, but all those he had
cared for most in his old life, had deceived and tricked or at best
forgotten him. Lying in his narrow bunk, Max lifted his head and let
his eyes wander over the faces of his comrades, turned to gray stone by
the moonlight. Not one which was not sad, except that of the Alsatian
who had joined on the day of his own recruitment. The boy was smiling in
some dream and looked like a child, but a sickly child, for the heat and
the severe marching drill for _les bleus_ were telling upon him. Faces
of twenty different types, faces which by day masked their secrets with
sullenness, defiance, or stolidity, could hide nothing in sleep, but
fell into lines of sadness that gave a strange family resemblance to the
stone soldiers on the tombs. Saddest of all, after Manöel Valdez,
perhaps, was the wrecked visage of Pelle, whose own particular _cafard_
had been leading him a merry dance the last few days.
To Sidi-bel-Abbés, with a letter of introduction to the colonel, had
come an old officer of the British army, a man of distinction. Pelle, as
an Englishman and an ex-soldier, had been honoured by being appointed
his guide. The two had recognized one another. Pelle had served under
the officer years ago. The encounter had been too much for Quatro Oyos:
that, and the money the general gave him at parting. Remembrance of past
days was the enemy in the Legion. Four Eyes had been half drunk ever
since, and had escaped prison only by a miracle. That, however, was
nothing new for him. He had been corporal twice and sergeant once; each
time he had been "broke" because of drink. In spite of all, he had stuck
to the Legion. There was no other place for him on earth. The Legion was
his country now--his only country and his only home. His medals he had
asked Max to keep till he "settled down again." They mustn't go to the
places where the _cafard_ would take him. They mustn't risk disgrace
through things which the _cafard_ might make him do. He looked like the
ruin of a man in the revealing moonshine. But to-morrow he would be a
soldier again till night came, and sooner or later he would pull himself
together--more or less. The medals he had won and his love of sport were
his incentives. Yet there were other men who had no medals and no
special incentives, and to-night Max felt himself down on a level with
those.
"What incentive have I?" he asked, in a flash of furious rebellion
against fate, conscious yet not caring that such thoughts spawned the
beetle in the brain. Five years of this life to look forward to!--the
life he had pledged himself to live. The officers did their best. It was
_vieux style_ nowadays for an officer of the Legion to be cruel. But try
as they might to break the sameness of barrack life by changing the
order of drill and exercise--fencing one day, boxing the next, then
gymnastics, target-practice, marching, skirmishing, learning first aid
to the wounded, giving all the variety possible, the monotony was
heart-breaking, as Colonel DeLisle had warned him it would be. And a
great march, when a march meant the chance of a fight, didn't always
come in the way of a young soldier, even one whose conduct was
unsmirched by any stain. Max did not know yet whether he would be taken
on the march that all the garrison was talking of. To-night the beetle
in his brain tried to make him think he would not be taken. There was no
luck any more for him! And as for his corporal's stripe, if he got it
soon, what a pathetic prize for a man who had been a lieutenant in the
--th Cavalry, the crack cavalry regiment of the United States Army!
Oh, better not to think of future or past! Better not to think at all,
perhaps, but do as some of the other men did when they wanted to forget
even as they had been forgotten: take the few pleasures in their reach,
do the very things he had been prig enough to warn Valdez not to do! Let
the beetle burrow, as a counter-irritant!
"Soldier St. George--my soldier!" a girl's voice seemed to encourage
him.
Max heard it through the scratching of the beetle in his brain.
Sanda! Yes, Sanda might care a little, a very little, when she had time
to think of him--Sanda, who loved another man, but had promised to be
his friend. He thought of her eyes as they had looked at him that day in
the Salle d'Honneur. He thought of her hair, her long, soft hair....
"She'd be sorry if I let go," he said to himself. "Jove! I _won't_! I'll
fight this down. And if I'm taken on the march----"
He fell suddenly asleep, thinking of Sanda's hair, her long, soft hair.
And the moonlight turned him also into a stone soldier on a tomb.