Under Two Flags Part 29

She was incensed, too, that she had been degraded into that momentary wish that she knew how to read and looked less like a boy--just because a Cha.s.seur with white hands and silent ways had made her a grave bow!

She was more incensed still because she could not get at his history, and felt, despite herself, a reluctance to bribe him for it with those cajoleries whose potency she had boasted to Tata Leroux. "Let him take care!" muttered the soldier-coquette pa.s.sionately, in her little white teeth; so small and so pearly, though they had gripped a bridle tight before then, when each hand was filled with a pistol. "Let him take care! If he offend me there are five hundred swords that will thrust civility into him, five hundred shots that will teach him the cost of daring to provoke Cigarette!"

En route through the town her wayward way took the pretty brunette Friend of the Flag as many devious meandering as a bird takes in a summer's day flight, when it stops here for a berry, there for a gra.s.s seed, here to dip its beak into cherries, there to dart after a dragon-fly, here to shake its wings in a brook, there to poise on a lily-bell.

She loitered in a thousand places, for Cigarette knew everybody; she chatted with a group of Turcos, she emptied her barrel for some Zouaves, she ate sweetmeats with a lot of negro boys, she boxed a little drummer's ear for slurring over the "r'lin tintin" at his practice, she drank a demi-ta.s.se with some officers at a cafe; she had ten minutes'

pistol-shooting, where she beat hollow a young dandy of the Guides who had come to look at Algiers for a week, and made even points with one of the first shots of the "Cavalry a pied," as the Algerian ant.i.thesis runs. Finally she paused before the open French window of a snow-white villa, half-buried in tamarisk and orange and pomegranate, with the deep-hued flowers glaring in the sun, and a hedge of wild cactus fencing it in; through the cactus she made her way as easily as a rabbit burrows; it would have been an impossibility to Cigarette to enter by any ordinary means; and balancing herself lightly on the sill for a second, stood looking in at the chamber.

"Ho, M. le Marquis! the Zouaves have drunk all my wine up; fill me my keg with yours for once--the very best burgundy, mind. I'm half afraid your cellar will hurt my reputation."

The chamber was very handsome, hung and furnished in the very best Paris fas.h.i.+on, and all glittering with amber and ormolu and velvets; in it half a dozen men--officers of the cavalry--were sitting over their noon breakfast, and playing at lansquenet at the same time. The table was crowded with dishes of every sort, and wines of every vintage; and the fragrance of their bouquet, the clouds of smoke, and the heavy scent of the orange blossom without, mingled together in an intense perfume. He whom she addressed, M. le Marquis de Chateauroy, laughed, and looked up.

"Ah, is it thee, my pretty brunette? Take what thou wantest out of the ice pails."

"The best growths?" asked Cigarette, with the dubious air and caution of a connoisseur.

"Yes!" said M. le Marquis, amused with the precautions taken with his cellar, one of the finest in Algiers. "Come in and have some breakfast, ma belle. Only pay the toll."

Where he sat between the window and the table he caught her in his arms and drew her pretty face down; Cigarette, with the laugh of a saucy child, whisked her cigar out of her mouth and blew a great cloud of smoke in his eyes. She had no particular fancy for him, though she had for his wines; shouts of mirth from the other men completed the Marquis'

discomfiture, as she swayed away from him, and went over to the other side of the table, emptying some bottles unceremoniously into her wine-keg; iced, ruby, perfumy claret that she could not have bought anywhere for the barracks.

"Hola!" cried the Marquis, "thou art not generally so coy with thy kisses, pet.i.te."

Cigarette tossed her head.

"I don't like bad clarets after good! I've just been with your Corporal, 'Bel-a-faire-peur'; you are no beauty after him, M. le Colonel."

Chateauroy's face darkened; he was a colossal-limbed man, whose bone was iron, and whose muscles were like oak-fibers; he had a dark, keen head like an eagle's; the brow narrow, but very high, looking higher because the close-cut hair was worn off the temples; thin lips hidden by heavy curling mustaches, and a skin burned black by long African service.

Still he was fairly handsome enough not to have muttered so heavy an oath as he did at the vivandiere's jest.

"Sacre bleu! I wish my corporal were shot! One can never hear the last of him."

Cigarette darted a quick glance at him. "Oh, ho; jealous, mon brave!"

thought her quick wits. "And why, I wonder?"

"You haven't a finer soldier in your Cha.s.seurs, mon cher; don't wish him shot, for the good of the service," said the Viscount de Chanrellon, who had now a command of his own in the Light Cavalry of Algiers. "Pardieu!

If I had to choose whether I'd be backed by 'Bel-a-faire-peur,' or by six other men in a skirmish, I'd choose him, and risk the odds."

Chateauroy tossed off his burgundy with a contemptuous impatience.

"Diable! That is the exaggerated nonsense one always hears about this fellow--as if he were a second Roland, or a revivified Bayard! I see nothing particular in him, except that he's too fine a gentleman for the ranks."

"Fine? ah!" laughed Cigarette. "He made me bow this morning like a chamberlain; and his beard is like carded silk, and he has such woman's hands, mon Dieu! But he is a croc-mitaine, too."

"Rather!" laughed Claude de Chanrellon, as magnificent a soldier himself as ever crossed swords. "I said he would eat fire the very minute he played that queer game of dice with me years ago. I wish I had him instead of you, Chateauroy; like lightning in a charge; and yet the very man for a dangerous bit of secret service that wants the softness of a panther. We all let our tongues go too much, but he says so little--just a word here, a word there--when one's wanted--no more; and he's the devil's own to fight."

The Marquis heard the praise of his Corporal, knitting his heavy brows; it was evident the private was no favorite with him.

"The fellow rides well enough," he said, with an affectation of carelessness; "there--for what I see--is the end of his marvels. I wish you had him, Claude, with all my soul."

"Oh, ha!" cried Chanrellon, wiping the Rhenish off his tawny mustaches, "he should have been a captain by this if I had. Morbleu! He is a splendid sabreur--kills as many men to his own sword as I could myself, when it comes to a hand-to-hand fight; breaks horses in like magic; rides them like the wind; has a hawk's eye over open country; obeys like clockwork; what more can you want?"

"Obeys! Yes!" said the Colonel of Cha.s.seurs, with a snarl. "He'd obey without a word if you ordered him to walk up to a cannon's mouth, and be blown from it; but he gives you such a d----d languid grand seigneur glance as he listens that one would think he commanded the regiment."

"But he's very popular with your men, too?"

"Monsieur, the worst quality a corporal can have. His idea of maintaining discipline is to treat them to cognac and give them tobacco."

"Pardieu! Not a bad way, either, with our French fire-eaters. He knows them that he has to deal with; that brave fellow. Your squadrons would go to the devil after him."

The Colonel gave a grim laugh.

"I dare say n.o.body knows the way better."

Cigarette, flirting with the other officers, drinking champagne by great gla.s.sfuls, eating bonbons from one, sipping another's soup, pulling the limbs of a succulent ortolan to pieces with a relish, and devouring truffles with all the zest of a bon-vivant, did not lose a word, and catching the inflection of Chateauroy's voice, settled with her own thoughts that "Bel-a-faire-peur" was not a fair field or a smooth course with his Colonel. The weather-c.o.c.k heart of the little "Friend of the Flag" veered round, with her s.e.x's common custom, to the side that was the weakest.

"Dieu de Dieu, M. le Colonel!" she cried, while she ate M. le Colonel's foie gras with as little ceremony and as much enjoyment as would be expected from a young plunderer accustomed to think a meal all the better spiced by being stolen "by the rules of war"--"whatever else your handsome Corporal is, he is an aristocrat. Ah, ha! I know the aristocrats--I do! Their touch is so gentle, and their speech is so soft, and they have no slang of the camp, and yet they are such diablotins to fight and eat steel, and die laughing, all so quiet and nonchalant. Give me the aristocrats--the real thing, you know. Not the ginger-cakes, just gilt, that are ashamed of being honest bread--but the old blood like Bel-a-faire-peur."

The Colonel laughed, but restlessly; the little ingrate had aimed at a sore point in him. He was of the First Empire n.o.bility, and he was weak enough, though a fierce, dauntless iron-nerved soldier, to be discontented with the great fact that his father had been a hero of the Army of Italy, and scarce inferior in genius to Ma.s.sena, because impatient of the minor one that, before strapping on a knapsack to have his first taste of war under Custine, the Marshal had been but a postilion at a posting inn in the heart of the Nivernais.

"Ah, my brunette!" he answered with a rough laugh, "have you taken my popular Corporal for your lover? You should give your old friends warning first, or he may chance to get an ugly spit on a saber."

The Amie du Drapeau tossed off her sixth gla.s.s of champagne. She felt for the first time in her life a flush of hot blood on her brown, clear cheek, well used as she was to such jests and such lovers as these.

"Ma foi!" she said coolly. "He would be more likely to spit than be spitted if it came to a duel. I should like to see him in a duel; there is not a prettier sight in the world when both men have science. As for fighting for me! Morbleau! I will thank n.o.body to have the impudence to do it, unless I order them out. Coqueline got shot for me, you remember; he was a pretty fellow, Coqueline, and they killed him so clumsily, that they disfigured him terribly--it was quite a pity. I said then I would have no more handsome men fight about me. You may, if you like, M. le Black Hawk."

Which t.i.tle she gave with a saucy laugh, hitting with a chocolate bonbon the black African-burnt visage of the omnipotent chief she had the audacity to attack. High or low, they were all the same to Cigarette.

She would have "slanged" the Emperor himself with the self-same coolness, and the Army had given her a pa.s.sport of immunity so wide that it would have fared ill with anyone who had ever attempted to bring the vivandiere to book for her uttermost mischief.

"By the way!" she went on, quick as thought, with her reckless, devil-may-care gayety. "One thing! Your Corporal will demoralize the army of Africa, monsieur!"

"He shall have an ounce of cold lead before he does. What in?"

"He will demoralize it," said Cigarette, with a sagacious shake of her head. "If they follow his example we shan't have a Cha.s.seur, or a Spahi, or a Piou-piou, or a Sapeur worth anything--"

"Sacre! What does he do?" The Colonel's strong teeth bit savagely through his cigar; he would have given much to have been able to find a single thing of insubordination or laxity of duty in a soldier who irritated and annoyed him, but who obeyed him implicitly, and was one of the most brilliant "fire-eaters" of his regiment.

"He won't only demoralize the army," pursued the Cigarette, with vivacious eloquence, "but if his example is followed, he'll ruin the Prefets, close the Bureaux, destroy the Exchequer, beggar all the officials, make African life as tame as milk and water, and rob you, M.

le Colonel, of your very highest and dearest privilege!"

"Sacre bleu!" cried her hearers, as their hands instinctively sought their swords; "what does he do?"

Cigarette looked at them out of her arch black lashes.

"Why, he never thieves from the Arabs! If the fas.h.i.+on comes in, adieu to our occupation. Court-martial him, Colonel!"

With which sally Cigarette thrust her pretty soft curls back of her temples, and launched herself into lansquenet with all the ardor of a gambler and the vivacity of a child; her eyes flas.h.i.+ng, her cheeks flus.h.i.+ng, her little teeth set, her whole soul in a whirl of the game, made all the more riotous by the peals of laughter from her comrades and the wines that were washed down like water. Cigarette was a terrible little gamester, and had gaming made very easy to her, for it was the creed of the Army that her losses never counted, but her gains were paid to her often double or treble. Indeed, so well did she play, and so well did the G.o.ddess of hazard favor her, that she might have grown a millionaire on the fruits of her dice and her cards, but for this fact, that whatever the little Friend of the Flag had in her hands one hour was given away the next, to the first wounded soldier, or ailing veteran, or needy Arab woman that required the charity.

As much gold was showered on her as on Isabel of the Jockey Club; but Cigarette was never the richer for it. "Bah!" she would say, when they told her of her heedlessness, "money is like a mill, no good standing still. Let it turn, turn, turn, as fast as ever it can, and the more bread will come from it for the people to eat."