Under Two Flags Part 54

"To prevent it? Not purposely?"

"Purposely, mon Caporal," said Pet.i.t Picpon, with a sapient nod that spoke volumes. "He always does something when he thinks promotion is coming--something to get himself out of its way, do you see? And the reason is this: 'tis a good zig, and loves you, and will not be put over your head. 'Me rise afore him?' said the zig to me once. 'I'll have the As de pique on my collar fifty times over first! He's a Prince, and I'm a mongrel got in a gutter! I owe him more than I'll ever pay, and I'll kill the Kebir himself afore I'll insult him that way.' So say little to him about the Spahi, mon Caporal. He loves you well, does your Rac."

"Well, indeed! Good G.o.d! what n.o.bility!"

Picpon glanced at him; then, with the tact of his nation, glided away and busied himself teaching Flick-Flack to shoulder and present arms, the weapon being a long stick.

"After all, Diderot was in the right when he told Rousseau which side of the question to take," mused Cecil, as he crossed the barrack-yard a few minutes later to visit the incarcerated pratique. "On my life, civilization develops comfort, but I do believe it kills n.o.bility.

Individuality dies in it, and egotism grows strong and specious. Why is it that in a polished life a man, while becoming incapable of sinking to crime, almost always becomes also incapable of rising to greatness? Why is it that misery, tumult, privation, bloodshed, famine, beget, in such a life as this, such countless things of heroism, of endurance, of self-sacrifice--things worthy of demiG.o.ds--in men who quarrel with the wolves for a wild-boar's carca.s.s, for a sheep's offal?"

A question which perplexes, very wearily, thinkers who have more time, more subtlety, and more logic to bring to its unravelment than Bertie had either leisure or inclination to do.

"Is this true, Rake--that you intentionally commit these freaks of misconduct to escape promotion?" he asked of the man when he stood alone with him in his place of confinement.

Rake flushed a little.

"Mischief's bred in me, sir; it must come out! It's just bottled up in me like ale; if I didn't take the cork out now and then, I should fly apieces!"

"But many a time when you have been close on the reward of your splendid gallantry in the field, you have frustrated your own fortunes and the wishes of your superiors by wantonly proving yourself unfit for the higher grade they were going to raise you to. Why do you do that?"

Rake fidgeted restlessly, and, to avoid the awkwardness of the question, replied, like a Parliamentary orator, by a flow of rhetoric.

"Sir, there's a many chaps like me. They can't help nohow busting out when the fit takes 'em. 'Tain't reasonable to blame 'em for it; they're just made so, like a chestnut's made to bust its pod, and a chicken to bust its sh.e.l.l. Well, you see, sir, France, she knows that, and she says to herself, 'Here are these madcaps; if I keep 'em tight in hand I shan't do nothing with 'em--they'll turn obstreperous and cram my convict-cells. Now I want soldiers, I don't want convicts. I can't let 'em stay in the Regulars, 'cause they'll be for making all the army wildfire like 'em; I'll just draft 'em by theirselves, treat 'em different, and let 'em fire away. They've got good stuff in 'em, though too much of the curb riles 'em.' Well, sir, she do that; and aren't the Zephyrs as fine a lot of fellows as any in the service? Of course they are; but if they'd been in England--G.o.d bless her, the dear old obstinate soul!--they'd have been drove crazy along o' pipeclay and razors; she'd never have seed what was in 'em, her eyes are so bunged up with routine. If a pup riot in the pack, she's no notion but to double-thong him, and, a-course, in double-quick time, she finds herself obliged to go further and hang him. She don't ever remember that it may be only just along of his breeding, and that he may make a very good hound elseways let out a bit, though he'll spoil the whole pack if she will be a fool and try to make a steady line-hunter of him, straight agin his nature."

Rake stopped, breathless in his rhetoric, which contained more truth in it, as also more roughness, than most rhetoric does.

"You are right. But you wander from my question," said Cecil gently. "Do you avoid promotion?"

"Yes, sir; I do," said Rake, something sulkily; for he felt he was being driven "up a corner." "I do. I ain't not one bit fitter for an officer than that rioting pup I talk on is fit to lead them crack packs at home.

I should be in a strait-waistcoat if I was promoted; and as for the cross--Lord, sir, that would get me into a world o' trouble! I should p.a.w.n it for a toss of wine the first day out, or give it to the first moukiera that winked her black eye for it! The star put on my b.u.t.tons suits me a deal better; if you'll believe me, sir, it do."[*]

[*] The star on the metal b.u.t.tons of the insubordinates, or Zephyrs.

Cecil's eyes rested on him with a look that said far more than his answer.

"Rake, I know you better than you would let me do, if you had your way.

My n.o.ble fellow! You reject advancement, and earn yourself an unjust reputation for mutinous conduct, because you are too generous to be given a step above mine in the regiment."

"Who's been a-telling you that trash, sir?" retorted Rake, with ferocity.

"No matter who. It is no trash. It is a splendid loyalty of which I am utterly unworthy, and it shall be my care that it is known at the Bureaus, so that henceforth your great merits may be--"

"Stop that, sir!" cried Rake vehemently. "Stow that, if you please!

Promoted I won't be--no, not if the Emperor hisself was to order it, and come across here to see it done! A pretty thing, surely! Me a officer, and you never a one--me a-commanding of you, and you a-saluting of me!

By the Lord, sir! we might as well see the camp-scullions a-riding in state, and the Marshals a-scouring out the soup-pots!"

"Not at all. This Army has not a finer soldier than yourself; you have a right to the reward of your services in it. And I a.s.sure you you do me a great injustice if you think I would not as willingly go out under your orders as under those of all the Marshals of the Empire."

The tears rushed into the hardy eyes of the redoubtable "Crache-au-nez-d'la-Mort," though he dashed them away in a fury of eloquence.

"Sir, if you don't understand as how you've given me a power more than all the crosses in the world in saying of them there words, why, you don't know me much either, that's all. You're a gentleman--a right on rare thing that is--and being a gentleman, a-course you'd be too generous and too proud like not to behave well to me, whether I was a-serving you as I've always served you, or a-insulting of you by riding over your head in that way as we're speaking on. But I know my place, sir, and I know yours. If it wasn't for that ere Black Hawk--d.a.m.n him!--I can't help it, sir; I will d.a.m.n him, if he shoot me for it--you'd been a Chef d'Escadron by now. There ain't the leastest doubt of it. Ask all the zigs what they think. Well, sir, now you know I'm a man what do as I say. If you don't let me have my own way, and if you do the littlest thing to get me a step, why, sir, I swear, as I'm a living being, that I'll draw on Chateauroy the first time I see him afterward, and slit his throat as I'd slit a jackal's! There--my oath's took!"

And Cecil saw that it would also be kept. The natural lawlessness and fiery pa.s.sion inborn in Rake had of course not been cooled by the teaching of African warfare; and his hate was intense against the all-potent Chief of his regiment; as intense as the love he bore to the man whom he had followed out into exile.

Cecil tried vainly to argue with him; all his reasonings fell like hailstones on a cuira.s.s, and made no more impression; he was resolute.

"But listen to one thing," he urged at last. "Can you not see how you pain me by this self-sacrifice? If I knew that you had attained a higher grade, and wore your epaulettes in this service, can you not fancy I should feel pleasure then (as I feel regret, even remorse, now) that I brought you to Africa through my own follies and misfortunes?"

"Do you sir? There ain't the least cause for it, then," returned Rake st.u.r.dily. "Lord bless you, sir; why this life's made a-purpose for me!

If ever a round peg went trim and neat into a round hole, it was when I came into this here Army. I never was so happy in all my days before.

They're right on good fellows, and will back you to the death if so be as you've allays been share-and-share-alike with 'em, as a zig should.

As a private, sir, I'm happy and I'm safe; as a officer, I should be kicking over the traces and blundering everlastingly. However, there ain't no need to say a word more about it. I've sworn, and you've heerd me swear, sir, and you know as how I shall keep my oath if ever I'm provoked to it by being took notice of. I stuck that Spahi just now just by way of a lark, and only 'cause he come where he'd no business to poke his turbaned old pate; 'taint likely as I should stop at giving the Hawk two inches of steel if he comes such a insult over us both as to offer a blackguard like me the epaulettes as you ought to be a-wearing!"

And Cecil knew that it was hopeless either to persuade him to his own advantage or to convince him of his disobedience in speaking thus of his supreme, before his con-commissioned, officer. He was himself, moreover, deeply moved by the man's fidelity.

He stretched his hand out.

"I wish there were more blackguards with hearts like yours. I cannot repay your love, Rake, but I can value it."

Rake put his own hands behind his back.

"G.o.d bless you, sir; you've repaid it ten dozen times over. But you shan't do that, sir. I told you long ago, I'm too much of a scamp! Some day, perhaps, as I said, when I've settled scores with myself, and wiped off all the bad 'uns with a clear sweep, tolerably clean. Not afore, sir!"

And Rake was too st.u.r.dily obstinate not to always carry his point.

The love that he bore to Cecil was very much such a wild, chivalric, romantic fidelity as the Cavaliers or the Gentlemen of the North bore to their Stuart idols. That his benefactor had become a soldier of Africa in no way lessened the reverent love of his loyalty, any more than theirs was lessened by the adversities of their royal masters. Like theirs, also, it had beauty in its blindness--the beauty that lies in every pure unselfishness.

Meanwhile, Picpon's news was correct.

The regiments were ordered out on the march. There was fresh war in the interior; and wherever there was the hottest slaughter, there the Black Hawk always flew down with his falcon-flock. When Cecil left his incorrigible zig, the trumpets were sounding an a.s.sembly; there were noise, tumult, eagerness, excitement, delighted zest on every side; a general order was read to the enraptured squadrons; they were to leave the town at the first streak of dawn.

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 s.n.a.t.c.h 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 l.u.s.t 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 flame bursts forth.

That evening, at the Villa Aioussa, there gathered a courtly a.s.sembly, of much higher rank than Algiers can commonly afford, because many of station as lofty as her own had been drawn thither to follow her to what the Princesse Corona called her banishment--an endurable banishment enough under those azure skies, in that clear, elastic air, and with that charming "bonbonniere" in which to dwell, yet still a banishment to the reigning beauty of Paris, to one who had the habits and the commands of a wholly undisputed sovereignty in the royal splendor of her womanhood.

There was a variety of distractions to prevent ennui; there were half a dozen clever Paris actors playing the airiest of vaudevilles in the Bijou theater beyond the drawing-rooms; there were some celebrated Italian singers whom an Imperial Prince had brought over in his yacht; there was the best music; there was wit as well as homage whispered in her ear. Yet she was not altogether amused; she was a little touched with ennui.

"Those men are very stupid. They have not half the talent of that soldier!" she thought once, turning from a Peer of France, an Austrian Archduke, and a Russian diplomatist. And she smiled a little, furling her fan and musing on the horror that the triad of fas.h.i.+onable conquerors near her would feel if they knew that she thought them duller than an African lascar!

But they only told her things of which she had been long weary, specially of her own beauty; he had told her of things totally unknown to her--things real, terrible, vivid, strong, sorrowful--strong as life, sorrowful as death.

"Chateauroy and his Cha.s.seurs have an order de route," a voice was saying, that moment, behind her chair.

"Indeed?" said another. "The Black Hawk is never so happy as when unhooded. When do they go?"

"To-morrow. At dawn."