Under Two Flags Part 23

Carelessly daring always, he sauntered now into the station for which he had made, without a sign on him that could attract observation; he wore still the violet velvet Spanish-like dress, the hessians, and the broad-leafed felt hat with an eagle's feather fastened in it, that he had worn at the races; and with the gun in his hand there was nothing to distinguish him from any tourist "milor," except that in one hand he carried his own valise. He cast a rapid glance around; no warrant for his apprehension, no announcement of his personal appearance had preceded him here; he was safe--safe in that; safer still in the fact that the train rushed in so immediately on his arrival there, that the few people about had no time to notice or speculate upon him. The coupe was empty, by a happy chance; he took it, throwing his money down with no heed that when the little he had left was once expended he would be penniless, and the train whirled on with him, plunging into the heart of forest and mountain, and the black gloom of tunnels, and the golden seas of corn-harvest. He was alone; and he leaned his head on his hands, and thought, and thought, and thought, till the rocking, and the rus.h.i.+ng, and the whirl, and the noise of the steam on his ear and the giddy gyrations of his brain in the exhaustion of overstrung exertion, conquered thought. With the beating of the engine seeming to throb like the great swinging of a pendulum through his mind, and the whirling of the country pa.s.sing by him like a confused phantasmagoria, his eyes closed, his aching limbs stretched themselves out to rest, a heavy dreamless sleep fell on him, the sleep of intense bodily fatigue, and he knew no more.

Gendarmes awoke him to see his visa. He showed it them by sheer mechanical instinct, and slept again in that dead weight of slumber the moment he was alone. When he had taken his ticket, and they had asked him to where it should be, he had answered to their amaze, "to the farthest place it goes," and he was borne on now unwitting where it went; through the rich champaign and the barren plains; through the reddening vintage and over the dreary plateaux; through antique cities, and across broad, flowing rivers; through the cave of riven rocks, and above nestling, leafy valleys; on and on, on and on, while he knew nothing, as the opium-like sleep of intense weariness held him in it stupor.

He awoke at last with a start; it was evening; the stilly twilight was settling over all the land, and the train was still rus.h.i.+ng onward, fleet as the wind. His eyes, as they opened dreamily, fell on a face half obscured in the gleaming; he leaned forward, bewildered and doubting his senses.

"Rake!"

Rake gave the salute hurriedly and in embarra.s.sment.

"It's I, sir!--yes, sir."

Cecil thought himself dreaming still.

"You! You had my orders?"

"Yes, sir, I had your orders," murmured the ex-soldier, more confused than he had ever been in the whole course of his audacious life, "and they was the first I ever disobeyed--they was. You see, sir, they was just what I couldn't swallow nohow--that's the real, right-down fact!

Send me to the devil, Mr. Cecil, for you, and I'll go at the first bidding, but leave you just when things are on the cross for you, d.a.m.n me if I will!--beggin' your pardon, sir!"

And Rake, growing fiery and eloquent, dashed his cap down on the floor of the coupe with an emphatic declaration of resistance. Cecil looked at him in silence; he was not certain still whether this were not a fantastic folly he was dreaming.

"d.a.m.n me if I will, Mr. Cecil! You won't keep me--very well; but you can't prevent me follerin' of you, and foller you I will; and so there's no more to be said about it, sir; but just to let me have my own lark, as one may say. You said you'd go to the station, I went there; you took your ticket, I took my ticket. I've been travelling behind you till about two hours ago, then I looked at you; you was asleep sir. 'I don't think my master's quite well,' says I to Guard; 'I'd like to get in there along of him.' 'Get in with you, then,' says he (only we was jabbering that willainous tongue o' theirs), for he sees the name on my traps is the same as that on your traps--and in I get. Now, Mr.

Cecil, let me say one word for all, and don't think I'm a insolent, ne'er-do-well for having been and gone and disobeyed you; but you was good to me when I was sore in want of it; you was even good to my dog--rest his soul, the poor beast! There never were a braver!--and stick to you I will till you kick me away like a cur. The truth is, it's only being near of you, sir, that keeps me straight; if I was to leave you I should become a bad 'un again, right and away. Don't send me from you, sir, as you took mercy on me once!"

Rake's voice shook a little toward the close of his harangue, and in the shadows of evening light, as the train plunged through the gathering gloom, his ruddy, bright, bronzed face looked very pale and wistful.

Cecil stretched out his hand to him in silence that spoke better than words.

Rank hung his head.

"No, sir; you're a gentleman, and I've been an awful scamp! It's enough honor for me that you would do it. When I'm more worth it, perhaps--but that won't never be."

"You are worth it now, my gallant fellow." His voice was very low; the man's loyalty touched him keenly. "It was only for yourself, Rake, that I ever wished you to leave me."

"G.o.d bless you, sir!" said Rake pa.s.sionately; "them words are better nor ten tosses of brandy! You see, sir, I'm so spry and happy in a wild life, I am, and if so be as you go to them American parts as you spoke on, why I know 'em just as well as I know Newmarket Heath, every bit!

They're terrible rips in them parts; kill you as soon as look at you; it makes things uncommon larky out there, uncommon spicy. You aren't never sure but what there's a bowie knife a-waiting for you."

With which view of the delights of Western life, Rake, "feeling like a fool," as he thought himself, for which reason he had diverged into Argentine memories, applied himself to the touching and examining of the rifle with that tenderness which only gunnery love and lore produce.

Cecil sat silent a while, his head drooped down on his hands, while the evening deepened to night. At last he looked up.

"The King? Where is he?"

Rake flushed shamefacedly under his tanned skin.

"Beggin' your pardon, sir; behind you."

"Behind me?"

"Yes, sir; him and the brown mare. I couldn't do nothing else with 'em you see, sir, so I s.h.i.+pped him along with us; they don't care for the train a bit, bless their hearts! And I've got a sharp boy a-minding of 'em. You can easily send 'em on to England from Paris if you're determined to part with 'em; but you know the King always was fond of drums and trumpets and that like. You remember, sir, when he as a colt we broke him into it and taught him a bit of maneuvering; 'cause, till you find what pace he had in him, you'd thought of making a charger of him. He loves the noise of soldiering--he do; and if he thought you was going away without him, he'd break his heart, Mr. Cecil, sir. It was all I could do to keep him from follerin' of you this morning; he sawed my arms off almost."

With which, Rake, conscious that he had been guilty of unpardonable disobedience and outrageous interference, hung his head over the gun; a little anxious and a good deal ashamed.

Cecil smiled a little, despite himself.

"Rake, you will do for no service, I am afraid; you are terribly insubordinate!"

He had not the heart to say more; the man's fidelity was too true to be returned with rebuke; and stronger than all surprise and annoyance was a strange mingling of pain and pleasure in him to think that the horse he loved so well was still so near him, the comrade of his adversity as he had been the companion of his happiest hours.

"These things will keep him a few days," he thought, as he looked at his hunting-watch, and the priceless pearl in each of his wristband-studs.

HE would have p.a.w.ned every atom he had about him to have had the King with him a week longer.

The night fell, the stars came out, the storm-rack of a coming tempest drifted over the sky, the train rushed onward through the thickening darkness, through the spectral country--it was like his life, rus.h.i.+ng headlong down into impenetrable gloom. The best, the uttermost, that he could look for was a soldier's grave, far away under some foreign soil.

A few evenings later the Countess Guenevere stood alone in her own boudoir in her Baden suite; she was going to dine with an Archd.u.c.h.ess of Russia, and the splendid jewels of her House glittered through the black shower of her laces, and crowned her beautiful glossy hair, her delicate imperial head. In her hands was a letter--oddly written in pencil on a leaf torn out of a betting book, but without a tremor or a change in the writing itself. And as she stood a s.h.i.+ver shook her frame; in the solitude of her lighted and luxurious chamber her cheek grew pale, her eyes grew dim.

"To refute the charge," ran the last words of what was at best but a fragment, "I must have broken my promise to you, and have compromised your name. Keeping silence myself, but letting the trial take place, law-inquiries so execrable and so minute, would soon have traced through others that I was with you that evening. To clear myself I must have attainted your name with public slander, and drawn the horrible ordeal on you before the world. Let me be thought guilty. It matters little.

Henceforth I shall be dead to all who know me, and my ruin would have exiled me without this. Do not let an hour of grief for me mar your peace, my dearest; think of me with no pain, Beatrice; only with some memory of our past love. I have not strength yet to say--forget me; and yet,--if it be for your happiness,--blot out from your remembrance all thought of what we have been to one another; all thought of me and of my life, save to remember now and then that I was dear to you."

The words grew indistinct before her sight, they touched the heart of the world-worn coquette, of the victorious sovereign, to the core; she trembled greatly as she read them. For--in her hands was his fate.

Though no hint of this was breathed in his farewell letter, she knew that with a word she could clear him, free him, and call him back from exile and shame, give him once more honor and guiltlessness in the sight of the world. With a word she could do this; his life was in the balance that she held as utterly as though it were now hers to sign, or to destroy, his death-warrant. It rested with her to speak and to say he had no guilt.

But to do this she must sacrifice herself. She stood mute, irresolute, a shudder running through her till her diamonds shook in the light; the heavy tears stole slowly down, one by one, and fell upon the blurred and blackened paper; her heart ached with an exceeding bitterness.

Then shudderingly still, and as though there were a coward crime in the action, her hand unclosed and let the letter fall into the spirit flame of a silver lamp, burning by; the words that were upon it merited a better fate, a fonder cheris.h.i.+ng, but--they would have compromised her.

She let them fall, and burn, and wither. With them she gave up his life to its burden of shame, to its fate of exile.

She would hear his crime condemned, and her lips would not open; she would hear his name aspersed, and her voice would not be raised; she would know that he dwelt in misery, or died under foreign suns unhonored and unmourned, while tongues around her would babble of his disgrace--and she would keep her peace.

She loved him--yes; but she loved better the dignity in which the world held her, and the diamonds from which the law would divorce her if their love were known.

She sacrificed him for her reputation and her jewels; the choice was thoroughly a woman's.

CHAPTER XIII.

IN THE CAFE OF THE CHa.s.sEURS.

The red-hot light of the after-glow still burned on the waters of the bay, and shed its Egyptian-like l.u.s.ter on the city that lies in the circle of the Sahel, with the Mediterranean so softly las.h.i.+ng with its violet waves the feet of the white, sloping town. The sun had sunk down in fire--the sun that once looked over those waters on the legions of Scipio and the iron brood of Hamilcar, and that now gave its l.u.s.ter on the folds of the French flags as they floated above the s.h.i.+pping of the harbor, and on the glitter of the French arms, as a squadron of the army of Algeria swept back over the hills to their barracks. Pell-mell in its fantastic confusion, its incongruous blending, its forced mixture of two races--that will touch, but never mingle; that will be chained together, but will never a.s.similate--the Gallic-Moorish life of the city poured out; all the coloring of Haroun al Raschid scattered broadcast among Parisian fas.h.i.+on and French routine. Away yonder, on the spurs and tops of the hills, the green sea-pines seemed to pierce the transparent air; in the Cabash old, dreamy Arabian legends, poetic as Hafiz, seem still to linger here and there under the foliage of hanging gardens or the picturesque curves of broken terraces; in the distance the brown, rugged Kabyl mountains lay like a couched camel, and far off against the golden haze a single palm rose, at a few rare intervals, with its drooped, curled leaves, as though to recall, amid the shame of foreign domination, that this was once the home of Hannibal; the Africa that had made Rome tremble.

In the straight, white boulevards, as in the winding ancient streets; under the huge barn-like walls of barracks, as beneath the marvelous mosaics of mosques; the strange bizarre conflict of European and Oriental life spread its panorama. Staff officers, all aglitter with crosses, galloped past; mules, laden with green maize and driven by lean, brown Bedouins, swept past the plate-gla.s.s windows of bonbon shops; grave, white-bearded sheiks drank pet.i.ts verres in the guinguettes; sapeurs, Cha.s.seurs, Zouaves, cantinieres--all the varieties of French military life--mingled with jet-black Soudans, desert kings wrathful and silent, Eastern women shrouded in haick and serroual, eagle-eyed Arabs flinging back snow-white burnous, and handling ominously the jeweled halts of their cangiars. Alcazar chansons rang out from the cafes, while in their midst stood the mosque, that had used to resound with the Muezzin. Bijou-blondine and Bebee La-la and all the sister-heroines of demi-monde dragged their voluminous Paris-made dresses side by side with Moorish beauties, who only dared show the gleam of their bright black eyes through the yashmak; the reverberes were lit in the Place du Gouvernement, and a group fit for the days of Solyman the Magnificent sat under the white marble beauty of the Mohammedan church. "Rein n'est sacre pour un sapeur!" was being sung to a circle of sous-officiers, close in the ear of a patriarch serenely majestic as Abraham; gaslights were flas.h.i.+ng, cigar shops were filling, newspapers were being read, the Rigolboche was being danced, commis-voyageurs were chattering with grisettes, drums were beating, trumpets were sounding, bands were playing, and, amid it all, grave men were dropping on their square of carpet to pray, bra.s.s trays of sweetmeats were pa.s.sing, ostrich eggs were dangling, henna-tipped fingers were drawing the envious veil close, and n.o.ble Oriental shadows were gliding to and fro through the open doors of the mosques, like a picture of the "Arabian Nights," like a poem of dead Islamism--in a word, it was Algiers at evening.

In one of the cafes there, a mingling of all the nations under the sun was drinking demi-ta.s.ses, absinthe, vermouth, or old wines, in the comparative silence that had succeeded to a song, sung by a certain favorite of the Spahis, known as Loo-Loo-j'n-m'en soucie guere, from Mlle. Loo-Loo's well-known habits of independence and bravado, which last had gone once so far as shooting a man through the chest in the Rue Bab-al-Oued, and setting all the gendarmes and sergents-de-ville at defiance afterward. Half a dozen of that famous regiment the Cha.s.seurs d'Afrique were gathered together, some with their feet resting on the little marble-topped tables, some reading the French papers, all smoking their inseparable companions--the brules-gueles; fine, stalwart, sun-burned fellows, with faces and figures that the glowing colors of their uniform set off to the best advantage.

"Loo-Loo was in fine voice to-night," said one.

"Yes; she took plenty of cognac before she sang; that always clears her voice," said a second.