CHAPTER XXIV.
"MILADY AUX BEAUX YEUX BLEUS."
Early that morning, when the snowy cloud of pigeons were circling downto take their daily alms from Cigarette, where her bright brown facelooked out from the lattice-hole, Cecil, with some of the roughridersof his regiment, was sent far into the interior to bring in a string ofcolts, bought of a friendly desert tribe, and destined to be shipped toFrance for the Imperial Haras. The mission took two days; early on thethird day they returned with the string of wild young horses, whom ithad taken not a little exertion and address to conduct successfullythrough the country into Algiers.
He was usually kept in incessant activity, because those in command overhim had quickly discovered the immeasurable value of a bas-officier whowas certain to enforce and obtain implicit obedience, and certain toexecute any command given him with perfect address and surety, yet,who, at the same time, was adored by his men, and had acquired a mostsingularly advantageous influence over them. But of this he was alwaysglad; throughout his twelve years' service under the Emperor's flag, hehad only found those moments in which he was unemployed intolerable; hewould willingly have been in the saddle from dawn till midnight.
Chateauroy was himself present when the colts were taken into thestable-yard; and himself inquired, without the medium of any thirdperson, the whole details of the sale and of the transit. It wasimpossible, with all his inclination, to find any fault either with theexecution of the errand or with the brief, respectful answers by whichhis corporal replied to his rapid and imperious cross-questionings.There were a great number of men within hearing, many of them the mostdaring and rebellious pratiques of the regiment; and Cecil would havelet the coarsest upbraidings scourge him rather than put the temptationto mutiny in their way which one insubordinate or even not strictlydeferential word from him would have given. Hence the inspection passedoff peaceably; as the Marquis turned on his heel, however, he paused amoment.
"Victor!"
"Mon Commandant?"
"I have not forgotten your insolence with those ivory toys. But Mme. laPrincesse herself has deigned to solicit that it shall be passed overunpunished. She cannot, of course, yield to your impertinent request toremain also unpaid for them. I charged myself with the fulfillment ofher wishes. You deserve the stick, but since Milady herself is lenientenough to pardon you, you are to take this instead. Hold your hand,sir!"
Cecil put out his hand; he expected to receive a heavy blow from hiscommander's saber, that possibly might break the wrist. These littletrifles were common in Africa.
Instead a rouleau of Napoleons was laid on his open palm. Chateauroyknew the gold would sting more than the blow.
For the moment Cecil had but one impulse--to dash the pieces in thegiver's face. In time to restrain the impulse, he caught sight of thewild, eager hatred gleaming in the eyes of Rake, of Petit Picpon, of ascore of others, who loved him and cursed their Colonel, and would atone signal from him have sheathed their swords in the mighty frame ofthe Marquis, though they should have been fired down the next momentthemselves for the murder. The warning of Cigarette came to his memory;his hand clasped on the gold; he gave the salute calmly as Chateauroyswung himself away.
The troops looked at him with longing, questioning eyes; they knewenough of him by now to know the bitterness such gold, so given, had forhim. Any other, even a corporal, would have been challenged with a stormof raillery, a volley of congratulation, and would have had shouted orhissed after him opprobrious accusations of "faisant suisse" if he hadnot forthwith treated his comrades royally from such largesse. WithBel-a-faire-peur they held their peace; they kept the silence which theysaw that he wished to keep, as, his hour of liberty being come, he wentslowly out of the great court with the handful of Napoleons thrust inthe folds of his sash.
Rather unconsciously than by premeditation his steps turned throughthe streets that led to his old familiar haunt, the As de Pique; anddropping down on a bench under the awning, he asked for a draught ofwater. It was brought him at once; the hostess, a quick, brown littlewoman from Paris, whom the lovers of Eugene Sue called Rogolette, addingof her own accord a lump of ice and a slice or two of lemon, for whichshe vivaciously refused payment, though generosity was by no means hercardinal virtue.
"Bel-a-faire-peur" awakened general interest through Algiers; he broughtso fiery and so daring a reputation with him from the wars and raids ofthe interior, yet he was so calm, so grave, so gentle, so listless. Itwas known that he had made himself the terror of Kabyle and Bedouin,yet here in the city he thanked the negro boy who took him a glassof lemonade at an estaminet, and sharply rebuked one of his men forknocking down an old colon with a burden of gourds and of melons; sucha Roumi as this the good people of the Franco-African capital held as aperfect gift of the gods, and not understanding one whit, neverthelessfully appreciated.
He did not look at the newspapers she offered him; but sat gazing outfrom the tawny awning, like the sail of a Neapolitan felucca, down thecheckered shadows and the many-colored masses of the little, crooked,rambling, semi-barbaric alley. He was thinking of the Napoleons in hissash and of the promise he had pledged to Cigarette. That he wouldkeep it he was resolved. The few impressive, vivid words of the youngvivandiere had painted before him like a picture the horrors of mutinyand its hopelessness; rather than that, through him, these should befallthe men who had become his brethren-in-arms, he felt ready to let theBlack Hawk do his worst on his own life. Yet a weariness, a bitterness,he had never known in the excitement of active service came on him,brought by this sting of insult brought from the fair hand of anaristocrate.
There was absolutely no hope possible in his future. The uttermost thatcould ever come to him would be a grade something higher in the armythat now enrolled him; the gift of the cross, or a post in the bureau.Algerine warfare was not like the campaigns of the armies of Italyor the Rhine, and there was no Napoleon here to discern with unerringomniscience a leader's genius under the kepi of a common trooper. Thoughhe should show the qualities of a Massena or a Kleber, the chances werea million to one that he would never get even as much as a lieutenancy;and the raids on the decimated tribes, the obscure skirmishes of theinterior, though terrible in slaughter and venturesome enough, were notthe fields on which great military successes were won and great militaryhonors acquired. The French fought for a barren strip of brown plateauthat, gained, would be of little use or profit to them; he thoughtthat he did much the same, that his future was much like those aridsand-plains, these thirsty, verdureless stretches of burned earth--verylittle worth the reaching.
The heavy folds of a Bedouin's haick, brushing the papers off the bench,broke the thread of his musings. As he stooped for them, he saw that onewas an English journal some weeks old. His own name caught his eye--thename buried so utterly, whose utterance in the Sheik's tent had struckhim like a dagger's thrust. The flickering light and darkness, as theawning waved to and fro, made the lines move dizzily upward and downwardas he read--read the short paragraph touching the fortunes of the racethat had disowned him:
"The Royallieu Succession.--We regret to learn that the Rt. Hon.Viscount Royallieu, who so lately succeeded to the family title on hisfather's death, has expired at Mentone, whither his health had inducedhim to go some months previous. The late Lord was unmarried. His nextbrother was, it will be remembered, many years ago, killed on a southernrailway. The title, therefore, now falls to the third and only remainingson, the Hon. Berkeley Cecil, who, having lately inherited considerableproperties from a distant relative, will, we believe, revive all theold glories of this Peerage, which have, from a variety of causes, lostsomewhat of their ancient brilliancy."
Cecil sat quite still, as he had sat looking down on the record of hisfather's death, when Cigarette had rallied him with her gay challengeamong the Moresco ruins. His face flushed hotly under the warm, goldenhue of the desert bronze, then lost all its color as suddenly, tillit was as pale as any of the ivory he carved. The letters of the paperreeled and
wavered, and grew misty before his eyes; he lost all senseof the noisy, changing, polyglot crowd thronging past him; he, a commonsoldier in the Algerian Cavalry, knew that, by every law of birthright,he was now a Peer of England.
His first thought was for the dead man. True, there had been littleamity, little intimacy, between them; a negligent friendliness, wheneverthey had met, had been all that they had ever reached. But in theirchildhood they had been carelessly kind to one another, and the memoryof the boy who had once played beside him down the old galleries andunder the old forests, of the man who had now died yonder where thesouthern sea-board lay across the warm, blue Mediterranean, was alone onhim for the moment. His thoughts had gone back, with a pang, almost erehe had read the opening lines, to autumn mornings in his youngest yearswhen the leaves had been flushed with their earliest red, and the brown,still pools had been alive with water-birds, and the dogs had droppeddown charging among the flags and rushes, and his brother's boyish facehad laughed on him from the wilderness of willows, and his brother'sboyish hands had taught him to handle his first cartridge and to firehis first shot. The many years of indifference and estrangement wereforgotten, the few years of childhood's confidence and comradeship aloneremembered, as he saw the words that brought him in his exile the storyof his brethren's fate and of his race's fortunes. His head sank, hisface was still colorless, he sat motionless with the printed sheet inhis hand. Once his eyes flashed, his breath came fast and uneven; herose with a sudden impulse, with a proud, bold instinct of birth andfreedom. Let him stand here in what grade he would, with the badge ofa Corporal of the Army of Africa on his arm, this inheritance that hadcome to him was his; he bore the name and the title of his house assurely as any had ever borne it since the first of the Norman owners ofRoyallieu had followed the Bastard's banner.
The vagabond throngs--Moorish, Frank, Negro, Colon--paused as theypushed their way over the uneven road, and stared at him vacantly wherehe stood. There was something in his attitude, in his look, which sweptover them, seeing none of them, in the eager lifting of his head, in theexcited fire in his eyes, that arrested all--from the dullest muleteer,plodding on with his string of patient beasts, to the most volatileFrench girl laughing on her way with a group of fantassins. He did notnote them, hear them, think of them; the whole of the Algerine scene hadfaded out as if it had no place before him; he had forgot that he wasa cavalry soldier of the Empire; he saw nothing but the green wealth ofthe old home woods far away in England; he remembered nothing save thathe, and he alone, was the rightful Lord of Royallieu.
The hand of a broad-chested, black-visaged veteran of Chasseurs fell onhis shoulder, and the wooden rim of a little wine-cup was thrust towardhim with the proffered drink. It startled him and recalled him to theconsciousness of where he was. He stared one moment absently in thetrooper's amazed face, and then shook him off with a suddenness thattossed back the cup to the ground; and, holding the journal clinchedclose in his hand, went swiftly through the masses of the people--outand away, he little noted where--till he had forced his road beyond thegates, beyond the town, beyond all reach of its dust and its babble andits discord, and was alone in the farther outskirts, where to the norththe calm, sunlit bay slept peacefully with a few scattered ships ridingat anchor, and southward the luxuriance of the Sahel stretched to meetthe wide and cheerless plateaus, dotted with the conical houses of hair,and desolate as though the locust-swarm had just alighted there to laythem waste.
Reaching the heights he stood still involuntarily, and looked down oncemore on the words that told him of his birthright; in the blinding,intense light of the African day they seemed to stand out as thoughcarved in stone; and as he read them once more a great darkness passedover his face--this heritage was his, and he could never take it up;this thing had come to him, and he must never claim it. He was ViscountRoyallieu as surely as any of his fathers had been so before him, and hewas dead forever in the world's belief; he must live, and grow old, andperish by shot or steel, by sickness or by age, with his name and hisrights buried, and his years passed as a private soldier of France.
The momentary glow which had come to him, with the sudden resurrectionof hope and of pride, faded utterly as he slowly read and re-read thelines of the journal on the broken terraces of the hill-side, wherethe great fig trees spread their fantastic shadows, and through a rockychannel a russet stream of shallow waters threaded its downward pathunder the reeds, and no living thing was near him save some quietbrowsing herds far off, and their Arab shepherd-lad that an artist mighthave sketched as Ishmael. What his future might have been rose beforehis thoughts; what it must be rose also, bitterly, blackly, drearily incontrast. A noble without even a name; a chief of his race withouteven the power to claim kinship with that race; owner by law of threethousand broad English acres, yet an exile without freedom to set footon his native land; by heritage one among the aristocracy of England, bycircumstances, now and forever, till an Arab bullet should cut in twainhis thread of life, a soldier of the African legions, bound to obey thecommonest and coarsest boor that had risen to a rank above him: this waswhat he knew himself to be, and knew that he must continue to be withoutone appeal against it, without once stretching out his hand toward hisright of birth and station.
There was a passionate revolt, a bitter heart-sickness on him; all theold freedom and peace and luxury and pleasure of the life he had left solong allured him with a terrible temptation; the honors of the rank thathe should now have filled were not what he remembered. What he longedfor with an agonized desire was to stand once more stainless among hisequals; to reach once more the liberty of unchallenged, unfettered life;to return once more to those who held him but as a dishonored memory,as one whom violent death had well snatched from the shame of a criminalcareer.
"But who would believe me now?" he thought. "Besides, this makes nodifference. If three words spoken would reinstate me, I could notspeak them at that cost. The beginning perhaps was folly, but for sheerjustice sake there is no drawing back now. Let him enjoy it; God knows Ido not grudge him it."
Yet, though it was true to the very core that no envy and no evil lay inhis heart against the younger brother to whose lot had fallen all goodgifts of men and fate, there was almost unbearable anguish on him inthis hour in which he learned the inheritance that had come to him, andremembered that he could never take again even so much of it as lay inthe name of his fathers. When he had given his memory up to slander andoblivion, and the shadow of a great shame; when he had let his life dieout from the world that had known him, and buried it beneath the rough,weather-stained, blood-soaked cloth of a private soldier's uniform, hehad not counted the cost then, nor foreseen the cost hereafter. It hadfallen on him very heavily now.
Where he stood under some sheltered columns of a long-ruined mosquewhose shafts were bound together by a thousand withes and wreaths ofthe rich, fantastic Sahel foliage, an exceeding weariness of longing wasupon him--longing for all that he had forfeited, for all that was hisown, yet never could be claimed as his.
The day was intensely still; there was not a sound except when, hereand there, the movement of a lizard under the dry grasses gave a low,crackling rustle. He wondered almost which was the dream and which thetruth: that old life that he had once led, and that looked now so faraway and so unreal; or this which had been about him for so many yearsin the camps and the bivouacs, the barracks and the battlefields. Hewondered almost which he himself was--an English Peer on whom the titleof his line had fallen, or a Corporal of Chasseurs who must take hischief's insults as patiently as a cur takes the blows of its master;that he was both seemed to him, as he stood there with the glisten ofthe sea before and the swelling slopes of the hillside above, a vague,distorted nightmare.
Hours might have passed, or only moments--he could not have told; hiseyes looked blankly out at the sun-glow, his hand instinctively clinchedon the journal whose stray lines had told him in an Algerine trattoriathat he had inherited what he never could enjoy.
"A
re they content, I wonder?" he thought, gazing down that fiery blazeof shadowless light. "Do they ever remember?"
He thought of those for whose sakes he had become what he was.
The distant, mellow, ringing notes of a trumpet-call floated to his earfrom the town at his feet; it was sounding the rentree en caserne. Oldinstinct, long habit, made him start and shake his harness together andlisten. The trumpet-blast, winding cheerily from afar off, recalled himto the truth; summoned him sharply back from vain regrets to the factsof daily life. It waked him as it wakes a sleeping charger; it rousedhim as it rouses a wounded trooper.
He stood hearkening to the familiar music till it had diedaway--spirited, yet still lingering; full of fire, yet fading softlydown the wind. He listened till the last echo ceased; then he tore thepaper that he held in strips, and let it float away, drifting down theyellow current of the reedy river channel; and he half drew from itsscabbard the saber whose blade had been notched and dented and stainedin many midnight skirmishes and many headlong charges under the desertsuns, and looked at it as though a friend's eye gazed at him inthe gleam of the trusty steel. And his soldier-like philosophy, hiscampaigner's carelessness, his habitual, easy negligence that hadsometimes been weak as water and sometimes heroic as martyrdom, cameback to him with a deeper shadow on it, that was grave with a calm,resolute, silent courage.
"So best after all, perhaps," he said half aloud, in the solitude of theruined and abandoned mosque. "He cannot well come to shipwreck with sucha fair wind and such a smooth sea. And I--I am just as well here. Toride with the Chasseurs is more exciting than to ride with the Pytchley;and the rules of the Chambree are scarce more tedious than the rules ofa Court. Nature turned me out for a soldier, though Fashion spoiledme for one. I can make a good campaigner--I should never make anythingelse."
And he let his sword drop back again into the scabbard, and quarreled nomore with fate.
His hand touched the thirty gold pieces in his sash.
He started, as the recollection of the forgotten insult came back onhim. He stood a while in thought; then he took his resolve.
A half hour of quick movement, for he had become used to the heat as anArab and heeded it as little, brought him before the entrance-gatesof the Villa Aioussa. A native of Soudan, in a rich dress, who had theoffice of porter, asked him politely his errand. Every indigene learnsby hard experience to be courteous to a French soldier. Cecil simplyasked, in answer, if Mme. La Princesse were visible. The negro returnedcautiously that she was at home, but doubted her being accessible. "Youcome from M. le Marquis?" he inquired.
"No; on my own errand."
"You!" Not all the native African awe of a Roumi could restrain thecontemptuous amaze in the word.
"I. Ask if Corporal Victor, of the Chasseurs, can be permitted amoment's interview with your mistress. I come by permission," he added,as the native hesitated between his fear of a Roumi and his sense ofthe appalling unfittingness of a private soldier seeking audience of aSpanish princesse. The message was passed about between several of thehousehold; at last a servant of higher authority appeared:
"Madame permitted Corporal Victor to be taken to her presence. Would hefollow?"
He uncovered his head and entered, passing through several passagesand chambers, richly hung and furnished; for the villa had been the"campagne" of an illustrious French personage, who had offered it to thePrincesse Corona when, for some slight delicacy of health, the airof Algeria was advocated. A singular sensation came on him, half offamiliarity, half of strangeness, as he advanced along them; for twelveyears he had seen nothing but the bare walls of barrack rooms, thegoat-skin of douars, and the canvas of his own camp-tent. To come oncemore, after so long an interval, amid the old things of luxury and gracethat had been so long unseen wrought curiously on him. He could notfairly disentangle past and present. For the moment, as his feet fellonce more on soft carpets, and his eyes glanced over gold and silver,malachite and bronze, white silk and violet damasks, he almost thoughtthe Algerian years were a disordered dream of the night.
His spur caught in the yielding carpet, and his saber clashed slightlyagainst it; as the rentree au caserne had done an hour before, the soundrecalled the actual present to him. He was but a French soldier, whowent on sufferance into the presence of a great lady. All the rest wasdead and buried.
Some half dozen apartments, large and small, were crossed; then intothat presence he was ushered. The room was deeply shaded, and fragrantwith the odors of the innumerable flowers of the Sahel soil; there wasthat about it which struck on him as some air--long unheard, but onceintimately familiar--on the ear will revive innumerable memories. Shewas at some distance from him, with the trailing draperies of easternfabrics falling about her in a rich, unbroken, shadowy cloud ofmelting color, through which, here and there, broke threads of gold;involuntarily he paused on the threshold, looking at her. Some faint,far-off remembrance stirred in him, but deep down in the closed graveof his past; some vague, intangible association of forgotten days,forgotten thoughts, drifted before him as it had drifted before him whenfirst in the Chambree of his barracks he had beheld Venetia Corona.
She moved forward as her servant announced him; she saw him pause therelike one spell-bound, and thought it the hesitation of one who feltsensitively his own low grade in life. She came toward him with thesilent, sweeping grace that gave her the carriage of an empress; hervoice fell on his ear with the accent of a woman immeasurably proud,but too proud not to bend softly and graciously to those who were sofar beneath her that, without such aid from her, they could never haveaddressed or have approached her.
"You have come, I trust, to withdraw your prohibition? Nothing will giveme greater pleasure than to bring his Majesty's notice to one of thebest soldiers his Army holds."
There was that in the words, gently as they were spoken, that recalledhim suddenly to himself; they had that negligent, courteous pity shewould have shown to some colon begging at her gates! He forgot--forgotutterly--that he was only an African trooper. He only remembered that hehad once been a gentleman, that--if a life of honor and of self-negationcan make any so--he was one still. He advanced and bowed with the oldserene elegance that his bow had once been famed for; and she, well usedto be even overcritical in such trifles, thought, "That man has oncelived in courts!"
"Pardon me, madame, I do not come to trespass so far upon yourbenignity," he answered, as he bent before her. "I come to express,rather, my regret that you should have made one single error."
"Error!"--a haughty surprise glanced from her eyes as they swept overhim. Such a word had never been used to her in the whole course of herbrilliant and pampered life of sovereignty and indulgence.
"One common enough, madame, in your Order. The error to suppose thatunder the rough cloth of a private trooper's uniform there cannotpossibly be such aristocratic monopolies as nerves to wound."
"I do not comprehend you." She spoke very coldly; she repented herprofoundly of her concession in admitting a Chasseur d'Afrique to herpresence.
"Possibly not. Mine was the folly to dream that you would ever do so.I should not have intruded on you now, but for this reason: thehumiliation you were pleased to pass on me I could neither refuse norresent to the dealer of it. Had I done so, men who are only too loyalto me would have resented with me, and been thrashed or been shot, aspayment. I was compelled to accept it, and to wait until I could returnyour gift to you. I have no right to complain that you pained me withit, since one who occupies my position ought, I presume, to considerremembrance, even by an outrage, an honor done to him by the PrincesseCorona."
As he said the last words he laid on the table that stood near him thegold of Chateauroy's insult. She had listened with a bewildering wonder,held in check by the haughtier impulse of offense, that a man in thisgrade could venture thus to address, thus to arraign her. His wordswere totally incomprehensible to her, though, by the grave rebuke of hismanner, she saw that they were fully meant, and, as he considered, fullya
uthorized by some wrong done to him. As he laid the gold pieces downupon her table, an idea of the truth came to her.
"I know nothing of what you complain of; I sent you no money. What is ityou would imply?" she asked him, looking up from where she leaned backin the low couch into whose depth she had sunk as he had spoken.
"You did not send me these? Not as payment for the chess service?"
"Absolutely not. After what you said the other day, I should havescarcely been so ill-bred and so heedless of inflicting pain. Who usedmy name thus?"
His face lightened with a pleasure and a relief that changed itwonderfully; that brighter look of gladness had been a stranger to itfor so many years.
"You give me infinite happiness, madame. You little dream how bittersuch slights are where one has lost the power to resent them! It was M.de Chateauroy, who this morning--"
"Dared to tell you I sent you those coins?"
The serenity of a courtly woman of the world was unbroken, but herblue and brilliant eyes darkened and gleamed beneath the sweep of theirlashes.
"Perhaps I can scarcely say so much. He gave them, and he implied thathe gave them from you. The words he spoke were these."
He told her them as they had been uttered, adding no more; she saw theconstruction they had been intended to bear, and that which they hadborne naturally to his ear; she listened earnestly to the end. Then sheturned to him with the exquisite softness of grace which, when she wasmoved to it, contrasted so vividly with the haughty and almost chilllanguor of her habitual manner.
"Believe me, I regret deeply that you should have been wounded by thismost coarse indignity; I grieve sincerely that through myself in any wayit should have been brought upon you. As for the perpetrator of it, M.de Chateauroy will be received here no more; and it shall be my carethat he learns not only how I resent his unpardonable use of my name,but how I esteem his cruel outrage to a defender of his own Flag. Youdid exceedingly well and wisely to acquaint me; in your treatment of itas an affront that I was without warrant to offer you, you showed thejust indignation of a soldier, and--of what I am very sure that youare--a gentleman."
He bowed low before her.
"Madame, you have made me the debtor of my enemy's outrage. Those wordsfrom you are more than sufficient compensation for it."
"A poor one, I fear! Your Colonel is your enemy, then? And wherefore?"
He paused a moment.
"Why, at first, I scarcely know. We are antagonistic, I suppose."
"But is it usual for officers of his high grade to show such malice totheir soldiers?"
"Most unusual. In this service especially so; although officers risingfrom the ranks themselves are more apt to contract prejudices and illfeeling against, as they are to feel favoritism to, their men, thanwhere they enter the regiment in a superior grade at once. At least,that is the opinion I myself have formed; studying the working of thedifferent systems."
"You know the English service, then?"
"I know something of it."
"And still, though thinking this, you prefer the French?"
"I distinctly prefer it, as one that knows how to make fine soldiers andhow to reward them; as one in which a brave man will be valued, and aworn-out veteran will not be left to die like a horse at a knacker's."
"A brave man valued, and yet you are a corporal!" thought Milady, as hepursued:
"Since I am here, madame, let me thank you, in the Army's name, foryour infinite goodness in acting so munificently on my slight hint. Yourgenerosity has made many happy hearts in the hospital."
"Generosity! Oh, do not call it by any such name! What did it cost me?We are terribly selfish here. I am indebted to you that for once youmade me remember those who suffered."
She spoke with a certain impulse of candor and of self-accusation thatbroke with great sweetness the somewhat coldness of her general manner;it was like a gleam of light that showed all the depth and the warmththat in truth lay beneath that imperious languor of habit. It brokefurther the ice of distance that severed the grande dame from thecavalry soldier.
Insensibly to himself, the knowledge that he had, in fact, the right tostand before her as an equal gave him the bearing of one who exercisedthat right, and her rapid perception had felt before now that this Roumiof Africa was as true a gentleman as any that had ever thronged abouther in palaces. Her own life had been an uninterrupted course of luxury,prosperity, serenity, and power; the adversity which she could not butperceive had weighed on his had a strange interest to her. She hadheard of many calamities, and aided many; but they had always been farsundered from her, they had never touched her; in this man's presencethey seemed to grow very close, terribly real. She led him on to speakof his comrades, of his daily life, of his harassing routine of dutiesin peace, and of his various experiences in war. He told her, too, ofLeon Ramon's history; and as she listened, he saw a mist arise and dimthe brilliancy of those eyes that men complained would never soften. Thevery fidelity with which he sketched to her the bitter sufferings andthe rough nobility that were momentarily borne and seen in that greatmilitary family of which he had become a son by adoption, interested herby its very unlikeness to anything in her own world.
His voice had still the old sweetness, his manner still its old grace;and added to these were a grave earnestness and a natural eloquence thatthe darkness of his own fortunes, and the sympathies with others thatpain had awakened, had brought to him. He wholly forgot their respectivestations; he only remembered that for the first time for so manyyears he had the charm of converse with a woman of high breeding, ofinexpressible beauty, and of keen and delicate intuition. He whollyforgot how time passed, and she did not seek to remind him; indeed, shebut little noted it herself.
At last the conversation turned back to his Chief.
"You seem to be aware of some motive for your commandant's dislike?" sheasked him. "Tell me to what you attribute it?"
"It is a long tale, madame."
"No matter; I would hear it."
"I fear it would only weary you."
"Do not fear that. Tell it me."
He obeyed, and told to her the story of the Emir and of the Pearl ofthe Desert; and Venetia Corona listened, as she had listened to himthroughout, with an interest that she rarely vouchsafed to the recitalsand the witticisms of her own circle. He gave to the narrative asoldierly simplicity and a picturesque coloring that lent a new interestto her; and she was of that nature which, however, it may be led toconceal feeling from pride and from hatred, never fails to awaken toindignant sympathy at wrong.
"This barbarian is your chief!" she said, as the tale closed. "Hisenmity is your honor! I can well credit that he will never pardon yourhaving stood between him and his crime."
"He has never pardoned it yet, of a surety."
"I will not tell you it was a noble action," she said, with a smilesweet as the morning--a smile that few saw light on them. "It came toonaturally to a man of honor for you to care for the epithet. Yet it wasa great one, a most generous one. But I have not heard one thing: whatargument did you use to obtain her release?"
"No one has ever heard it," he answered her, while his voice sank low."I will trust you with it; it will not pass elsewhere. I told him enoughof--of my own past life to show him that I knew what his had been, andthat I knew, moreover, though they were dead to me now, men in thatgreater world of Europe who would believe my statement if I wrote themthis outrage on the Emir, and would avenge it for the reputation of theEmpire. And unless he released the Emir's wife, I swore to him thatI would so write, though he had me shot on the morrow; and he knew Ishould keep my word."
She was silent some moments, looking on him with a musing gaze, in whichsome pity and more honor for him were blended.
"You told him your past. Will you confess it to me?"
"I cannot, madame."
"And why?"
"Because I am dead! Because, in your presence, it becomes more bitter tome to remember that I ever lived."
"You speak strangely. Cannot your life have a resurrection?"
"Never, madame. For a brief hour you have given it one--in dreams. Itwill have no other."
"But surely there may be ways--such a story as you have told me broughtto the Emperor's knowledge, you would see your enemy disgraced, yourselfhonored?"
"Possibly, madame. But it is out of the question that it should ever beso brought. As I am now, so I desire to live and die."
"You voluntarily condemn yourself to this?"
"I have voluntarily chosen it. I am well sure that the silence I entreatwill be kept by you?"
"Assuredly; unless by your wish it be broken. Yet--I await my brother'sarrival here; he is a soldier himself; I shall hope that he willpersuade you to think differently of your future. At any rate, both hisand my own influence will always be exerted for you, if you will availyourself of it."
"You do me much honor, madame. All I will ever ask of you is to returnthose coins to my Colonel, and to forget that your gentleness has mademe forget, for one merciful half hour, the sufferance on which alone atrooper can present himself here."
He swept the ground with his kepi as though it were the plumed hat of aMarshal, and backed slowly from her presence, as he had many a time longbefore backed out of a throne-room.
As he went, his eyes caught the armies of the ivory chessmen; they stoodunder glass, and had not been broken by her lapdog.
Milady, left alone there in her luxurious morning room, sat a while lostin thought. He attracted her; he interested her; he aroused her sympathyand her wonder as the men of her own world failed to do--aroused themdespite the pride which made her impatient of lending so much attentionto a mere Chasseur d'Afrique. His knowledge of the fact that he was inreality the representative of his race, although the power to declarehimself so had been forever abandoned and lost, had given him in herpresence that day a certain melancholy, and a certain grave dignity thatwould have shown a far more superficial observer than she was that hehad come of a great race, and had memories that were of a very differenthue to the coarse and hard life which he led now. She had seen much ofthe world, and was naturally far more penetrative and more correct injudgment than are most women. She discovered the ring of true goldin his words, and the carriage of pure breeding in his actions. Heinterested her more than it pleased her that he should. A man so utterlybeneath her; doubtless brought into the grade to which he had fallen byevery kind of error, of improvidence, of folly--of probably worse thanfolly!
It was too absurd that she, so difficult to interest, so inaccessible,so fastidious, so satiated with all that was brilliant and celebrated,should find herself seriously spending her thoughts, her pity, and herspeculation on an adventurer of the African Army! She laughed a littleat herself as she stretched out her hand for a new volume of Frenchpoems dedicated to her by their accomplished writer, who was a Parisiandiplomatist.
"One would imagine I was just out of a convent, and weaving a marvelousromance from a mystery and a tristesse, because the first soldier Inotice in Algeria has a gentleman's voice and is ill treated by hisofficers!" she thought with a smile, while she opened the poems whichhad that day arrived, radiant in the creamy vellum, the white velvet,and the gold of a dedication copy, with the coronet of the Coronad'Amague on their binding. The poems were sparkling with grace andelegant silvery harmonies; but they served ill to chain her attention,for while she read her eyes wandered at intervals to the chessbattalions.
"Such a man as that buried in the ranks of this brutalized army!"she mused. "What fatal chance could bring him here? Misfortune, notmisconduct, surely. I wonder if Lyon could learn? He shall try."
"Your Chasseur has the air of a Prince, my love," said a voice behindher.
"Equivocal compliment! A much better air than most Princes," said Mme.Corona, glancing up with a slight shrug of her shoulders, as her guestand traveling companion, the Marquise de Renardiere, entered.
"Indeed! I saw him as he passed out; and he saluted me as if he had beena Marshal. Why did he come?"
Venetia Corona pointed to the Napoleons, and told the story; ratherlistlessly and briefly.
"Ah! The man has been a gentleman, I dare say. So many of them come toour army. I remember General Villefleur's telling me--he commandedhere a while--that the ranks of the Zephyrs and Zouaves were full ofwell-born men, utterly good-for-nothing, the handsomest scoundrelspossible; who had every gift and every grace, and yet come to no betterend than a pistol-shot in a ditch or a mortal thrust from Bedouin steel.I dare say your Corporal is one of them."
"It may be so."
"But you doubt it, I imagine."
"I am not sure now that I do. But this person is certainly unlike a manto whom disgrace has ever attached."
"You think your protege, then, has become what he is through adversity,I suppose? Very interesting!"
"I really can tell you nothing of his antecedents. Through his skill atsculpture, and my notice of it, considerable indignity has been broughtupon him; and a soldier can feel, it seems, though it is very absurdthat he should! That is all my concern with the matter, except thatI have to teach his commander not to play with my name in his barrackyard."
She spoke with that negligence which always sounded very cold, thoughthe words were so gently spoken. Her best and most familiar friendsalways knew when, with that courtly chillness, she had signed them theirline of demarcation.
And the Marquise de Renardiere said no more, but talked of theAmbassador's poems.