chocolate bonbon, a firework, a bagatelle, a draught of champagne, to
flavour an idle moment. "_Vin et Vénus_" she had always been accustomed
to see worshipped together, as became their alliterative; it was a bit
of fun--that was all. A passion that had pain in it had never touched
the Little One; she had disdained it with lightest, airiest contumely.
"If your sweetmeat has a bitter almond in it, eat the sugar, and throw
the almond away, you goose! that is simple enough, isn't it? Bah! I
don't pity the people who eat the bitter almond; not I--_ce sont bien
bêtes, ces gens!_" she had said once, when arguing with an officer on
the absurdity of a melancholy love which possessed him, and whose
sadness she rallied most unmercifully. Now, for once in her young life,
the Child of France found that it was remotely possible to meet with
almonds so bitter that the taste will remain and taint all things, do
what philosophy may to throw its acridity aside.
* * *
There were before them death, deprivation, long days of famine, long
days of drought and thirst; parching sun-baked roads; bitter chilly
nights; fiery furnace-blasts of sirocco; killing, pitiless, northern
winds; hunger, only sharpened by a snatch of raw meat or a handful of
maize; and the probabilities, ten to one, of being thrust under the sand
to rot, or left to have their skeletons picked clean by the vultures.
But what of that? There were also the wild delight of combat, the
freedom of lawless warfare, the joy of deep strokes thrust home, the
chance of plunder, of wine-skins, of cattle, of women; above all, that
lust for slaughter which burns so deep down in the hidden souls of men,
and gives them such brotherhood with wolf and vulture, and tiger, when
once its flames burst forth.
* * *
The levelled carbines covered him; he stood erect with his face full
toward the sun; ere they could fire, a shrill cry pierced the air--
"Wait! in the name of France."
Dismounted, breathless, staggering, with her arms flung upward, and her
face bloodless with fear, Cigarette appeared upon the ridge of rising
ground.
The cry of command pealed out upon the silence in the voice that the
Army of Africa loved as the voice of their Little One. And the cry came
too late; the volley was fired, the crash of sound thrilled across the
words that bade them pause, the heavy smoke rolled out upon the air, the
death that was doomed was dealt.
But beyond the smoke-cloud he staggered slightly, and then stood erect
still, almost unharmed, grazed only by some few of the balls. The flash
of fire was not so fleet as the swiftness of her love; and on his breast
she threw herself, and flung her arms about him, and turned her head
backward with her old dauntless sunlit smile as the balls pierced her
bosom, and broke her limbs, and were turned away by that shield of warm
young life from him.
Her arms were gliding from about his neck, and her shot limbs were
sinking to the earth as he caught her up where she dropped to his feet.
"O God! my child! they have killed you!"
He suffered more, as the cry broke from him, than if the bullets had
brought him that death which he saw at one glance had stricken down for
ever all the glory of her childhood, all the gladness of her youth.
She laughed--all the clear, imperious, arch laughter of her sunniest
hours unchanged.
"Chut! It is the powder and ball of France! _that_ does not hurt. If it
were an Arbico's bullet now! But wait! Here is the Marshal's order. He
suspends your sentence; I have told him all. You are safe!--do you
hear?--you are safe! How he looks! Is he grieved to live? _Mes
Français!_ tell him clearer than I can tell--here is the order. The
General must have it. No--not out of my hand till the General sees it.
Fetch him, some of you--fetch him to me."
"Great Heaven! you have given your life for mine!"
The words broke from him in an agony as he held her upward against his
heart, himself so blind, so stunned, with the sudden recall from death
to life, and with the sacrifice whereby life was thus brought to him,
that he could scarce see her face, scarce hear her voice, but only
dimly, incredulously, terribly knew, in some vague sense, that she was
dying, and dying thus for him.
She smiled up in his eyes, while even in that moment, when her life was
broken down like a wounded bird's, and the shots had pierced through
from her shoulder to her bosom, a hot scarlet flush came over her cheeks
as she felt his touch and rested on his heart.
"A life! _Tiens!_ what is it to give? We hold it in our hands every
hour, we soldiers, and toss it in change for a draught of wine. Lay me
down on the ground--at your feet--so! I shall live longest that way, and
I have much to tell. How they crowd around me! _Mes soldats_, do not
make that grief and that rage over me. They are sorry they fired; that
is foolish. They were only doing their duty, and they could not hear me
in time."
But the brave words could not console those who had killed the Child of
the Tricolour; they flung their carbines away, they beat their breasts,
they cursed themselves and the mother who had borne them; the silent,
rigid, motionless phalanx that had stood there in the dawn to see death
dealt in the inexorable penalty of the law was broken up into a
tumultuous, breathless, heart-stricken, infuriated throng, maddened with
remorse, convulsed with sorrow, turning wild eyes of hate on him as on
the cause through which their darling had been stricken. He, laying her
down with unspeakable gentleness as she had bidden him, hung over her,
leaning her head against his arm, and watching in paralysed horror the
helplessness of the quivering limbs, the slow flowing of the blood
beneath the Cross that shone where that young heroic heart so soon would
beat no more.
"Oh, my child, my child!" he moaned, as the full might and meaning of
this devotion which had saved him at such cost rushed on him. "What am I
worth that you should perish for me? Better a thousand times have left
me to my fate! Such nobility, such sacrifice, such love!"
The hot colour flushed her face once more; she was strong to the last to
conceal that passion for which she was still content to perish in her
youth.
"Chut! we are comrades, and you are a brave man. I would do the same for
any of my Spahis. Look you, I never heard of your arrest till I heard
too of your sentence"----
She paused a moment, and her features grew white, and quivered with pain
and with the oppression that seemed to lie like lead upon her chest. But
she forced herself to be stronger than the anguish which assailed her
strength; and she motioned them all to be silent as she spoke on while
her voice still should serve her.
"They will tell you how I did it--I have not time. The Marshal gave his
word you shall be saved; there is no fear. That is your friend who bends
over me here?--is it not? A fair face, a brave face! You will go back to
your land--you will live among your own people--and _she_, she will love
you now--now she knows you are of her Order!"
Something of the old thrill of jealous dread and hate quivered through
the words, but the purer, nobler nature vanquished it; she smiled up in
his eyes, heedless of the tumult round them.
"You will be happy. That is well. Look you--it is nothing that I did. I
would have done it for any one of my soldiers. And for this"--she
touched the blood flowing from her side with the old, bright, brave
smile--"it was an accident; they must not grieve for it. My men are good
to me; they will feel such regret and remorse; but do not let them. I am
glad to die."
The words were unwavering and heroic, but for one moment a convulsion
went over her face; the young life was so strong in her, the young
spirit was so joyous in her, existence was so new, so fresh, so bright,
so dauntless a thing to Cigarette. She loved life: the darkness, the
loneliness, the annihilation of death were horrible to her as the
blackness and the solitude of night to a young child. Death, like night,
can be welcome only to the weary, and she was weary of nothing on the
earth that bore her buoyant steps; the suns, the winds, the delights of
the sights, the joys of the senses, the music of her own laughter, the
mere pleasure of the air upon her cheeks, or of the blue sky above her
head, were all so sweet to her. Her welcome of her death-shot was the
only untruth that had ever soiled her fearless lips. Death was terrible;
yet she was content--content to have come to it for his sake.
There was a ghastly stricken silence round her. The order she had
brought had just been glanced at, but no other thought was with the most
callous there than the heroism of her act, than the martyrdom of her
death.
The colour was fast passing from her lips, and a mortal pallor settling
there in the stead of that rich bright hue, once warm as the scarlet
heart of the pomegranate. Her head leant back on Cecil's breast, and she
felt the great burning tears fall one by one upon her brow as he hung
speechless over her; she put her hand upward and touched his eyes
softly.
"Chut! What is it to die--just to die? You have _lived_ your martyrdom;
I could not have done that. Listen, just one moment. You will be rich.
Take care of the old man--he will not trouble long--and of Vole-qui-veut
and Etoile, and Boule Blanche, and the rat, and all the dogs, will you?
They will show you the Château de Cigarette in Algiers. I should not
like to think that they would starve."
She felt his lips move with the promise he could not find voice to
utter; and she thanked him with that old child-like smile that had lost
nothing of its light.
"That is good; they will be happy with you. And see here;--that Arab
must have back his white horse: he alone saved you. Have heed that they
spare him. And make my grave somewhere where my Army passes; where I can
hear the trumpets, and the arms, and the passage of the troops--O God! I
forgot! I shall not wake when the bugles sound. It will all _end_ now,
will it not? That is horrible, horrible!"
A shudder shook her as, for the moment, the full sense that all her
glowing, redundant, sunlit, passionate life was crushed out for ever
from its place upon the earth forced itself on and overwhelmed her. But
she was of too brave a mould to suffer any foe--even the foe that
conquers kings--to have power to appal her. She raised herself, and
looked at the soldiery around her, among them the men whose carbines had
killed her, whose anguish was like the heartrending anguish of women.
"Mes Français! That was a foolish word of mine. How many of my bravest
have fallen in death; and shall I be afraid of what they welcomed? Do
not grieve like that. You could not help it; you were doing your duty.
If the shots had not come to me, they would have gone to him; and he has
been unhappy so long, and borne wrong so patiently, he has earned the
right to live and enjoy. Now I--I have been happy all my days, like a
bird, like a kitten, like a foal, just from being young and taking no
thought. I should have had to suffer if I had lived; it is much best as
it is"----
Her voice failed her when she had spoken the heroic words; loss of blood
was fast draining all strength from her, and she quivered in a torture
she could not wholly conceal; he for whom she perished hung over her in
an agony greater far than hers; it seemed a hideous dream to him that
this child lay dying in his stead.
"Can nothing save her?" he cried aloud. "O God! that you had fired one
moment sooner!"
She heard; and looked up at him with a look in which all the passionate,
hopeless, imperishable love she had resisted and concealed so long
spoke with an intensity she never dreamed.
"She is content," she whispered softly. "You did not understand her
rightly; that was all."
"_All!_ O God! how I have wronged you!"
The full strength, and nobility, and devotion of this passion he had
disbelieved in and neglected rushed on him as he met her eyes; for the
first time he saw her as she was, for the first time he saw all of which
the splendid heroism of this untrained nature would have been capable
under a different fate. And it struck him suddenly, heavily, as with a
blow; it filled him with a passion of remorse.
"My darling!--my darling! what have I done to be worthy of such love?"
he murmured, while the tears fell from his blinded eyes, and his head
drooped until his lips met hers. At the first utterance of that word
between them, at the unconscious tenderness of his kisses that had the
anguish of a farewell in them, the colour suddenly flushed all over her
blanched face; she trembled in his arms; and a great shivering sigh ran
through her. It came too late, this warmth of love. She learned what its
sweetness might have been only when her lips grew numb, and her eyes
sightless, and her heart without pulse, and her senses without
consciousness.
"Hush!" she answered, with a look that pierced his soul. "Keep those
kisses for Miladi. She will have the right to love you; she is of your
'_aristocrates_,' she is not 'unsexed.' As for me,--I am only a little
trooper who has saved my comrade! My soldiers, come round me one
instant; I shall not long find words."
Her eyes closed as she spoke; a deadly faintness and coldness passed
over her; and she gasped for breath. A moment, and the resolute courage
in her conquered: her eyes opened and rested on the war-worn faces of
her "children"--rested in a long-lost look of unspeakable wistfulness
and tenderness.
"I cannot speak as I would," she said at length, while her voice grew
very faint. "But I have loved you. All is said!"
All was uttered in those four brief words. "She had loved them." The
whole story of her young life was told in the single phrase. And the
gaunt, battle-scarred, murderous, ruthless veterans of Africa who heard
her could have turned their weapons against their own breasts, and
sheathed them there, rather than have looked on to see their darling
die.
"I have been too quick in anger sometimes--forgive it," she said gently.
"And do not fight and curse among yourselves; it is bad amid brethren.
Bury my Cross with me, if they will let you; and let the colours be over
my grave, if you can. Think of me when you go into battle; and tell them
in France"----
For the first time her own eyes filled with great tears as the name of
her beloved land paused upon her lips; she stretched her arms out with a
gesture of infinite longing, like a lost child that vainly seeks its
mother.
"If I could only see France once more! France"----
It was the last word upon her utterance; her eyes met Cecil's in one
fleeting upward glance of unutterable tenderness; then with her hands
still stretched out westward to where her country was, and with the
dauntless heroism of her smile upon her face like light, she gave a
tired sigh as of a child that sinks to sleep, and in the midst of her
Army of Africa the Little One lay dead.
_STRATHMORE._
The sun was setting, sinking downward beyond purple bars of cloud, and
leaving a long golden trail behind it in its track--sinking slowly and
solemnly towards the west as the day declined, without rest, yet without
haste, as though to give to all the sons of earth warning and time to
leave no evil rooted, no bitterness unhealed, no feud to ripen, and no
crime to bring forth seed, when the day should have passed away to be
numbered with hours irrevocable, and the night should cast its pall over
the dark deeds done, and seal their graves never to be unclosed. The sun
was setting, and shedding its rich and yellow light over the green
earth, on the winding waters, and the blue hills afar off, and down the
thousand leafy aisles close by; but to one place that warm radiance
wandered not, in one spot the rays did not play, the glory did not
enter. That place was the deer-pond of the old Bois, where the dark
plants brooding on the fetid waters, which only stirred with noisome
things, had washed against the floating hair of lifeless women, and the
sombre branches of the crowding trees had been dragged earthward by the
lifeless weight of the self-slain, till the air seemed to be poisonous
with death, and the grasses, as they moved, to whisper to the winds
dread secrets of the Past. And here the light of the summer evening did
not come, but only through the leafless boughs of one seared tree, which
broke and parted the dark barrier of forest growth, they saw the west,
and the sun declining slowly in its haze of golden air, sinking downward
past the bars of cloud.
All was quiet, save the dull sounds of the parting waters, when some
loathsome reptiles stirred among its brakes, or the hot breeze moved its
pestilential plants; and in the silence they stood fronting each other;
in this silence they had met, in it they would part. And there, on their
right hand, through the break in the dank wall of leaves, shone the sun,
looking earthward, luminous, and blinding human sight like the gaze of
God.
The light from the west fell upon Erroll, touching the fair locks of his
silken hair, and shining in his azure eyes as they looked up at the
sunny skies, where a bird was soaring and circling in space, happy
through its mere sense and joy of life; and on Strathmore's face the
deep shadows slanted, leaving it as though cast in bronze, chill and
tranquil as that of an Eastern Kabyl, each feature set into the
merciless repose of one immovable purpose. Their faces were strangely
contrasted, for the serenity of the one was that of a man who fearlessly
awaits an inevitable doom, the serenity of the other that of a man who
mercilessly deals out an implacable fate; and while in the one those
present saw but the calmness of courage and of custom, in the other they
vaguely shrank from a new and an awful meaning. For beneath the suave
smile of the Duellist they read the intent of the Murderer.
The night was nigh at hand, and soon the day had to be gathered to the
past, such harvest garnered with it as men's hands had sown throughout
its brief twelve hours, which are so short in span, yet are so long in
sin. "LET NOT THE SUN GO DOWN UPON YOUR WRATH." There, across the west,
in letters of flame, the warning of the Hebrew scroll was written on the
purple skies; but he who should have read them stood immutable yet
insatiate, with the gleam of a tiger's lust burning in his eyes--the
lust when it scents blood; the lust that only slakes its thirst in life.
They fronted one another, those who had lived as brothers; while at
their feet babbled the poisonous waters, and on their right hand shone
the evening splendour of the sun.
"One!"
The word fell down upon the silence, and the hiss of a shrill cicada
echoed to it like a devil's laugh. Their eyes met, and in the gaze of
the one was a compassionate pardon, but in the gaze of the other a
relentless lust.
And the sun sank slowly downward beyond the barrier of purple cloud,
passing away from earth.
"Two!"
Again the single word dropped out upon the stillness, marking the flight
of the seconds; again the hoot of the cicada echoed it, laughing
hideously from its noisome marsh.
And the sun sank slowly, still slowly, nearer and nearer to its shroud
of mist, bearing with it all that lingered of the day.
"Three!"
The white death-signal flickered in the breeze, and the last golden rays
of the sun were still above the edge of the storm-cloud.
There was yet time.
But the warning was not read: there was the assassin's devilish greed
within Strathmore's soul, the assassin's devilish smile upon his lips;
the calmness of his face never changed, the tranquil pulse of his wrist
never quickened, the remorseless gleam of his eyes never softened. It
was for him to fire first, and the doom written in his look never
relaxed. He turned--in seeming carelessness, as you may turn to aim at
carrion bird--but his shot sped home.
One moment Erroll stood erect, his fair hair blowing in the wind, his
eyes full open to the light; then--he reeled slightly backward, raised
his right arm, and fired in the air! The bullet flew far and harmless
amidst the forest foliage, his arm dropped, and without sign or sound he
fell down upon the sodden turf, his head striking against the earth with
a dull echo, his hands drawing up the rank herbage by the roots, as they
closed convulsively in one brief spasm.
He was shot through the heart.
And the sun sank out of sight, leaving a dusky, sultry gloom to brood
over the noxious brakes and sullen stagnant waters, leaving the world to
Night, as fitting watch and shroud of Crime; and those who stood there
were stricken with a ghastly horror, were paralysed by a vague and
sudden awe, for they knew that they were in the presence of death, and
that the hand which had dealt it was the hand of his chosen friend. But
he, who had slain him, more coldly, more pitilessly than the merciful
amongst us would slay a dog, stood unmoved in the shadow, with his
ruthless calm, his deadly serenity, which had no remorse as it had had
no mercy, while about his lips there was a cold and evil smile, and in
his eyes gleamed the lurid flame of a tiger's triumph--the triumph when
it has tasted blood, and slaked its thirst in life.
_"Voyez!--il est mort!"_
The words, uttered in his ear by Valdor, were hoarse and almost
tremulous; but he heard and assented to them unmoved. An exultant light
shone and glittered in his eyes; he had avenged himself and her! Life
was the sole price that his revenge had set; his purpose had been as
iron, and his soul was as bronze. He went nearer, leisurely, and stooped
and looked at the work of his hand. In the gloom the dark-red blood
could yet be clearly seen, slowly welling out and staining the clotted
herbage as it flowed, while one stray gleam of light still stole
across, as if in love and pity, and played about the long fair hair
which trailed amidst the grass.
Life still lingered, faintly, flickeringly, as though both to leave for
ever that which one brief moment before had been instinct with all its
richest glory; the eyes opened wide once more, and looked up to the
evening skies with a wild, delirious, appealing pain, and the lips which
were growing white and drawn moved in a gasping prayer:
"Oh, God! I forgive--I forgive. He did not know"----
Then his head fell back, and his eyes gazed upward without sight or
sense, and murmuring low a woman's name, "Lucille! Lucille!" while one
last breath shivered like a deep-drawn sigh through all his frame--he
died. And his murderer stood by to see the shudder convulse the rigid
limbs, and count each lingering pang--calm, pitiless, unmoved, his face
so serene in its chill indifference, its brutal and unnatural
tranquillity, whilst beneath the drooped lids his eyes watched with the
dark glitter of a triumphant vengeance the last agony of the man whom he
had loved, that the two who were with him in this ghastly hour shrank
involuntarily from his side, awed more by the Living than the Dead.
Almost unconsciously they watched him, fascinated basilisk-wise, as he
stooped and severed a long flake of hair that was soiled by the dank
earth and wet with the dew: unarrested they let him turn away with the
golden lock in his hand and the fatal calm on his face, and move to the
spot where his horse was waiting. The beat of the hoofs rang muffled on
the turf, growing fainter and fainter as the gallop receded. Strathmore
rode to her whose bidding had steeled his arm, and whose soft embrace
would be his reward; rode swift and hard, with his hand closing fast on
the promised pledge of his vengeance; while behind him, in the shadows
of the falling night, lay a man whom he had once loved, whom he had now
slain, with the light of early stars breaking pale and cold, to shine
upon the oozing blood as it trailed slowly in its death-stream through
the grasses, staining red the arid turf.
And the sun had gone down upon his wrath.
* * *
Mes frères! it is well for us that we are no seers! Were we cursed with
prevision, could we know how, when the idle trifle of the present hour
shall have been forged into a link of the past, it will stretch out and
bind captive the whole future in its bonds, we should be paralysed,
hopeless, powerless, old ere we were young! It is well for us that we
are no seers. Were we cursed with second sight, we should see the white
shroud breast-high above the living man, the phosphor light of death
gleaming on the youthful radiant face, the feathery seed, lightly sown,
bearing in it the germ of the upas-tree; the idle careless word, daily
uttered, carrying in its womb the future bane of a lifetime; we should
see these things till we sickened, and reeled, and grew blind with pain
before the ghastly face of the Future, as men in ancient days before the
loathsome visage of the Medusa!
* * *