There are few women writers who have created more stir by
their works than Louise de la Ramée, the lady who wrote under
the pen name of Ouida. Born of English and French parentage at
Bury St. Edmund, England, in 1840, she began to turn to
account her undoubted literary talents at the age of twenty,
when she contributed to the "New Monthly" and "Bentley's
Magazine." In the same year appeared her first long story,
"Granville de Vigne," which was afterwards renamed and
republished as "Held in Bondage." From that time an amazing
output of romances fell in rapid succession from her pen, the
most picturesque of them, perhaps, being "Under Two Flags"
(1867) and "Moths." With respect to the former, although on
occasions it exhibits a tendency towards inaccurate
observation, the story is told with rare dramatic force and
descriptive power. From 1874, Mlle. Ramée made her home in
Italy, where, at Lucca, in spite of her reputation as a
novelist, she died in straightened circumstances Jan. 25,
1908.
_I.--An Officer of the Guards_
A Guardsman at home is always luxuriously accommodated, and the Hon.
Bertie Cecil, second son of Viscount Royallieu, was never behind his
fellows in anything; besides, he was one of the crack officers of the
1st Life Guards, and ladies sent him pretty things enough to fill the
Palais Royal.
Then Hon. Bertie was known generally in the brigade as "Beauty," and the
appellative, gained at Eton, was in no way undeserved. His face, with as
much delicacy and brilliancy as a woman's, was at once handsome,
thoroughbred, languid, nonchalant with a certain latent recklessness,
under the impassive calm of habit.
Life petted him and pampered him; lodged him like a prince, dined him
like a king, and had never let him feel the want of all that is bought
by money. How could he understand that he was not as rich a man as his
oldest and closest comrade, Lord Rockingham, a Colossus, known as "the
Seraph," the eldest son of the Duke of Lyonesse?
A quarrel with his father (whom he always alluded to as "Royal")
reminded him that he was ruined; that he would get no help from the old
lord, or from his elder brother, the heir. He was hopelessly in debt;
nothing but the will of his creditors stood between him and the fatal
hour when he must "send in his papers to sell," and be "nowhere" in the
great race of life.
An appeal for money from his young brother, Berkeley, whom he really
loved, forced Cecil to look, for the first time, blankly in the face of
ruin that awaited him.
Berkeley, a boy of twenty, had been gambling, and came to Cecil, as he
had come often enough before, with his tale of needs. It was £300
Berkeley wanted, and he had already borrowed £100 from a friend--a
shameless piece of degradation in Cecil's code.
"It is no use to give you false hopes, young one," said Cecil gently. "I
can do nothing. If the money were mine it should be yours at a word. But
I am all downhill, and my bills may be called in at any moment."
"You are such chums with Rockingham, and he's as rich as all the Jews
put together. What harm could there be if you asked him to lend you some
money for me?"
Cecil's face darkened.
"You will bring some disgrace on us before you die, Berkeley," he said.
"Have you no common knowledge of honour? If I did such a thing I should
deserve to be hounded out of the Guards to-morrow. The only thing for
you to do is to go down and tell Royal, he will sell every stick and
stone for your sake."
"I would rather cut my throat," said the boy. "I have had so much from
him lately."
But in the end he promised to go.
It was hard for Bertie to get it into his brain that he really was at
the end of his resources. There still seemed one chance open to him. He
was a fearless rider, and his horse, Forest King, was famous for its
powers. He entered him for a great race at Baden, and piled on all he
could, determined to be sunk or saved by the race. If he won he might be
able to set things right for a time, and then family influence ought to
procure him an advance in the Guards.
Forest King had never failed its master hitherto, and Bertie would have
been saved by his faithful steed, but for the fact that a blackguardly
turf welcher doctored the horse's mouth, and Forest King was beaten, and
couldn't finish the course.
"Something ails King," said Cecil calmly, "he is fairly knocked off his
legs. Some vet must look to him; ridden a yard further he will fall."
_II "A Mystery--An Error"_
Cecil knew that with the failure of Forest King had gone the last plank
that saved him from ruin, perhaps the last chance that stood between him
and dishonour. He had never looked on it as within the possibilities of
hazard that the horse could be defeated, and the blow fell with crushing
force; the fiercer because his indolence had persisted in ignoring his
danger, and his whole character was so accustomed to ease and to
enjoyment.
He got away from his companions, and wandered out alone into the gardens
in the evening sunlight, throwing himself on a bench beneath a
mountain-ash.
Here the little Lady Venetia, the eight-year-old sister of the colossal
Seraph, found him, and Cecil roused himself, and smiled at her.
"They say you have lost all your money," said the child, "and I want you
to take mine. It is my _very_ own. Papa gives it to me to do just what I
like with it. Please do take it."
Twenty bright Napoleons fell in a glittering shower on the grass.
"_Petite reine_," Cecil murmured gently, "how some man will love you one
day. I cannot take your money, and you will understand why when you are
older. But I will take this if you will give it me," and he picked up a
little enamelled sweetmeat box, and slipped it into his waistcoat
pocket. It was only a child's gift, but he kept it through many a dark
day and wild night.
At that moment as he stood there, with the child beside him, one of the
men of the gardens brought him an English letter, marked "instant."
Cecil took it wearily, broke the envelope, and read a scrawled,
miserable letter, blotted with hot tears, and scored out in impulsive
misery. The Lady Venetia went slowly away and when next they met it was
under the burning sun of Africa.
Alone, Cecil's head sank down upon his hands.
"Oh, God!" he thought. "If it were anything--anything except disgrace!"
An hour later and the Seraph's servant brought him a message, asking him
to come to Lord Rockingham's rooms immediately.
Cecil went, and the Seraph crossed the room with his hand held out; not
for his life in that moment would he have omitted that gesture of
friendship. There was a third person in the room, a Jew, M. Baroni, who
held a folded paper, with the forged signature of _Rockingham_ on it,
and another signature, the name of the forger in whose favour the bill
was drawn; that other signature was--_Bertie Cecil_.
"Cecil, my dear fellow," said the Seraph, "I'm ashamed to send for you
on such a blackguard errand! Here, M. Baroni, make your statement. Later
on, Mr. Cecil can avenge it."
"My statement is easily made," said the Jew. "I simply charge the Hon.
Bertie Cecil with having negotiated a bill with my firm for £750 month,
drawn in his own favour, and accepted at two months' date by your
lordship. Your signature you, my lord marquis, admit to be a forgery.
With that forgery I charge your friend!"
Cecil stood silent, with a strange anguish on his face.
"I am not guilty," he said quietly.
"Beauty--Beauty! Never say that to _me_!" said the Seraph. "Do you think
_I_ can ever doubt you?"
"It is a matter of course," replied Baroni, "that Mr. Cecil denies the
accusation. It is very wise. But I _must_ arrest Mr. Cecil! Were you
alone, my lord, you could prosecute or not, as you please; but ours is
the money obtained by that forgery. If Mr. Cecil will accompany me
unresistingly, I will not summon legal force."
"Cecil, tell me what is to be done?" said the Seraph hoarsely. "I will
send for the duke--"
"Send for no one. I will go with this man. He is right as far as he
knows. The whole is a--a mystery--an error."
Cecil hesitated a moment; then he stretched out his hand. "Will you take
it--still?"
"Take it! Before all the world, always, come what will!"
The Seraph's voice rang clear as the ring of silver. Another moment, and
the door had closed. Cecil went slowly out beside his accuser, not
blaming the Jew in anything.
Once out in the air, the Hebrew laid his hand on his arm. Presently, in
a side-street, three figures loomed in the shadow of the houses--a
German official, the commissary of police, and an English detective. The
Hebrew had betrayed him, and arrested him in the open street.
In an instant all the pride and blood of his race was up. He wrenched
his wrists free and with his left arm felled the detective to earth with
a crushing blow. The German---a powerful and firmly-built man--was on
him at once, but Cecil's science was the finer. For a second the two
rocked in close embrace, and then the German fell heavily.
The cries of Baroni drew a crowd at once, but Cecil dashed, with the
swiftness of the deer, forward into the gathering night.
Flight! The craven's refuge--the criminal's resource! Flight! He wished
in the moment's agony that they would send a bullet through his brain.
Soon the pursuers were far behind. But Cecil knew that he had but the
few remaining hours of night left to save those for whom he had elected
to sacrifice his life.
_III.--Under Another Flag_
Cigarette was the pet of the army of Africa, and was as lawless as most
of her patrons. She was the Friend of the Flag. Soldiers had been about
her from her cradle. They had been her books, her teachers, her
guardians, and, later on, her lovers, all the days of her life. She had
no sense of duty taught her, except to face fire boldly, never to betray
a comrade, and to worship but two deities--"_la Gloire_" and "_la
France_." Her own sex would have seen no good in her, but her
comrades-in-arms could, and did. A certain chasseur d'Afrique in this
army at Algiers puzzled her. He treated her with a grave courtesy, that
made her wish, with impatient scorn for the wish, that she knew how to
read, and had not her hair cut short like a boy's--a weakness the little
vivandière had never been visited with before.
"You are too fine for us, _mon brave_," she said pettishly once to this
chasseur. "They say you are English, but I don't believe it. Say what
you are, then?"
"A soldier of France. Can you wish me more?"
"True," she said simply. "But you were not always a soldier of France?
You joined, they say, twelve years ago. What were you before then?"
"Before?" he answered slowly. "Well--a fool"
"You belonged to the majority, then!" said Cigarette. "But why did you
come into the service? You were born in the noblesse--bah, I know an
aristocrat at a glance! What ruined you, Monsieur l'Aristocrat?"
"Aristocrat? I am none. I am Louis Victor, a corporal of the chasseurs."
"You are dull, _mon brave_."
Cigarette left him, and made her way to the officers' quarters. High or
low, they were all the same to Cigarette, and she would have talked to
the emperor himself as coolly as she did to any private.
She praised the good looks of the corporal of chasseurs, and his
colonel, M. le Marquis de Châteauroy, answered, with a curse, "I wish my
corporal were shot! One can never hear the last of him!"
Meanwhile, the corporal of chasseurs sat alone among the stones of a
ruined mosque. He was a dashing cavalry soldier, who had a dozen wounds
cut over his body by the Bedouin swords in many and hot skirmishes; who
had waited through sultry African nights for the lion's tread; and who
had served well in fierce, arduous work in trying campaigns and in close
discipline.
From the extremes of luxury and indolence Cecil came to the extremes of
hardship and toil. He had borne the change mutely, and without a murmur,
though the first years were years of intense misery. His comrades had
grown to love him, seeing his courage and his willingness to help them,
with a rough, dog-like love.
Twelve years ago in England it was accepted that Bertie Cecil and his
servant Rake had been killed in a railway accident in France.
And the solitary corporal of chasseurs read in the "Galignani" of the
death of his father, Viscount Royallieu, and of his elder brother. The
title and estate that should have been his had gone to his younger
brother.
_IV.--From Death to Life_
The Seraph, now Duke of Lyonesse, and his sister Venetia, Princess
Corona, came on a visit to the French camp, and with them Berkeley,
Viscount Royallieu. Corporal Louis Victor saw them, and, safe from
recognition himself, knew them. But Cecil was not to go down to the
grave unreleased. First, his brother Berkeley coming upon him alone in
the solitude of a desert camp, made concealment impossible.
"Have you lived stainlessly _since_?" were Cecil's only words, stern as
the demand of a judge.
"God is my witness, yes! But you--they said you were dead. That was my
first disgrace, and my last; you bore the weight of my shame. What can I
say? Such nobility, such sacrifice--"
It was for himself that Berkeley trembled.
"I have kept your secret twelve years; I will keep it still," said Cecil
gravely. "Only leave Algeria at once."
A slight incident revealed the corporal's identity to the Princess
Corona. By his bearing he had attracted the attention of the visitors to
the camp, and on being admitted to the villa of the princess to restore
a gold chain dropped carelessly in the road, he disclosed the little
enamelled box, marked "Venetia," the gift of the child in the garden at
Baden.
"That box is mine!" cried the princess. "I gave it! And you? You are my
brother's friend? You are Bertie Cecil?"
"_Petite reine_!" he murmured.
Then he acknowledged who he was, not even for his brother's sake could
he have lied to _her_; but he implored her to say nothing to the Seraph.
"I was innocent, but in honour I can never give you or any living thing
_proof_ that this crime was not mine."
"He is either a madman or a martyr," she mused, when Cecil had left her.
That he loved her was plain, and the time was not far distant when she
should love him, and be willing to share any sacrifice love and honour
might demand.
The hatred of Colonel Châteauroy for his corporal brought matters to a
climax. Meeting Cecil returning from his visit to Venetia, Châteauroy
could not refrain from saying insulting things concerning the princess.
"_You lie_!" cried Cecil; "and you know that you lie! Breathe her name
once more, and, as we are both living men, I will have your life for
your outrage!"
And as he spoke Cecil smote him on the lips.
Châteauroy summoned the guard, the corporal was placed under arrest, and
brought to court-martial.
In three days' time Corporal Louis Victor would be shot by order of the
court-martial.
Cigarette, and Cigarette alone, prevented the sentence being carried
out, and that at the cost of her life.
She was away from the camp at the time in a Moorish town when the news
came to her; and she stumbled on Berkeley Cecil, and, knowing him for an
Englishman, worked on his feelings, and gave him no rest till he had
acknowledged the condemned man for his elder brother and the lawful
Viscount Royallieu, peer of England.
With this document, signed and sealed by Berkeley, Cigarette galloped
off to the fortress where the marshal of France, who was Viceroy of
Africa, had arrived. The marshal knew Cigarette; he had decorated her
with the cross for her valour in battle, and with the whole army of
Africa he loved and admired her.
Cigarette gave him the document, and told him all she knew of the
corporal's heroism. And the marshal promised the sentence should be
deferred until he had found out the whole truth of the matter.
With the order of release in her bosom Cigarette once more vaulted into
the saddle, to ride hard through the day and night--for at sunrise on
the morrow will the sentence be executed.
And now it is sunrise, and the prisoner has been brought out to the
slope of earth out of sight of the camp.
At the last the Seraph appeared, and found in the condemned man the
friend of his youth. It was only with great difficulty that Rockingham
was overpowered, for he swore Cecil should not be killed, and a dozen
soldiers were required to get him away.
Then Cecil raised his hand, and gave the signal for his own death-shot.
The levelled carbines covered him; ere they could fire a shrill cry
pierced the air: "Wait! In the name of France!"
Dismounted and breathless, Cigarette was by the side of Cecil, and had
flung herself on his breast.
Her cry came too late; the volley was fired, and while the prisoner
stood erect, grazed only by some of the balls, Cigarette fell, pierced
and broken by the fire. She died in Cecil's arms, with the comrades she
had loved around her.
* * * * *
It is spring. Cecil is Lord of Royallieu, the Lady Venetia is his bride.
"It was worth banishment to return," he murmured to her. "It was worth
the trials that I bore to learn the love that I have known."
And the memories of both went back to a place in a desert land where the
folds of the tricolour drooped over one little grave--a grave where the
troops saluted as they passed it, because on the white stone there was
carved a name that spoke to every heart:
CIGARETTE
ENFANT DE L'ARMÉE, SOLDAT DE LA FRANCE.
* * * * *