CHAPTER XXV.
"LE BON ZIG."
Meanwhile the subject of their first discourse returned to the Chambree.
He had encouraged the men to pursue those various industries andingenuities, which, though they are affectedly considered against"discipline," formed, as he knew well, the best preservative from realinsubordination, and the best instrument in humanizing and amelioratingthe condition of his comrades. The habit of application alone wassomething gained; and if it kept them only for a while from the hauntsof those coarsest debaucheries which are the only possible form in whichthe soldier can pursue the forbidden license of vice, it was betterthan that leisure should be spent in that joyless bestiality which madeCecil, once used to every refinement of luxury and indulgence, sickenwith a pitying wonder for those who found in it the only shape they knewof "pleasure."
He had seen from the first, capabilities that might be turned to endlessuses; in the conscript drawn from the populace of the provinces therewas almost always a knowledge of self-help, and often of some trade,coupled with habits of diligence; in the soldier made from the streetArab of Paris there were always inconceivable intelligence, rapidity ofwit, and plastic vivacity; in the adventurers come, like himself, fromhigher grades of society, and burying a broken career under the shelterof the tricolor, there were continually gifts and acquirements, and evengenius, that had run to seed and brought forth no fruit. Of all theseFrance always avails herself in a great degree; but, as far as Cecil'sinfluence extended, they were developed much more than usual. As his owncharacter gradually changed under the force of fate, the desire for someinterest in life grew on him (every man, save one absolutely brainlessand self-engrossed, feels this sooner or late); and that interest hefound, or rather created, in his regiment. All that he could do tocontribute to its efficiency in the field he did; all that he could doto further its internal excellence he did likewise.
Coarseness perceptibly abated, and violence became much rarer in thatportion of his corps with which he had immediately to do; the mengradually acquired from him a better, a higher tone; they learned to doduties inglorious and distasteful as well as they did those which ledthem to the danger and the excitation that they loved; and, having theirgood faith and sympathy, heart and soul, with him, he met, in theselawless leopards of African France, with loyalty, courage, generosity,and self-abnegation far surpassing those which he had ever met with inthe polished civilization of his early experience.
For their sakes, he spent many of his free hours in the Chambree. Many aman, seeing him there, came and worked at some ingenious design, insteadof going off to burn his brains out with brandy, if he had sous enoughto buy any, or to do some dexterous bit of thieving on a native, if hehad not. Many a time knowing him to be there sufficed to restrain thetalk around from lewdness and from ribaldry, and turn it into channelsat once less loathsome and more mirthful, because they felt thatobscenity and vulgarity were alike jarring on his ear, although he hadnever more than tacitly shown that they were so. A precisian would havebeen covered with their contumely and ridicule; a saint would have beendriven out from their midst with every missile merciless tongues andmerciless hands could pelt with; a martinet would have been cursedaloud, and cheated, flouted, rebelled against, on every possibleoccasion. But the man who was "one of them" entirely, while yetsimply and thoroughly a gentleman, had great influence--an influenceexclusively for good.
The Chambree was empty when he returned; the men were scattered over thetown in one of their scant pauses of liberty; there was only the dog ofthe regiment, Flick-Flack, a snow-white poodle, asleep in the heat, on asack, who, without waking, moved his tail in a sign of gratification asCecil stroked him and sat down near; betaking himself to the work he hadin hand.
It was a stone for the grave of Leon Ramon. There was no other toremember the dead Chasseur; no other beside himself, save an old womansitting spinning at her wheel under the low-sloping, shingle roof of acottage by the western Biscayan sea, who, as she spun, and as the threadflew, looked with anxious, aged eyes over the purple waves where she hadseen his father--the son of her youth--go down beneath the waters.
But the thread of her flax would be spun out, and the thread of herwaning life be broken, ere ever the soldier for whom she watched wouldgo back to her and to Languedoc.
For life is brutal; and to none so brutal as to the aged who remember sowell, and yet are forgotten as though already they were amid the dead.
Cecil's hand pressed the graver along the letters, but his thoughtswandered far from the place where he was. Alone there, in the greatsun-scorched barrack room, the news that he had read, the presence hehad quitted, seemed like a dream.
He had never known fully all that he had lost until he had stood beforethe beauty of this woman, in whose deep imperial eyes the light of otheryears seemed to lie; the memories of other worlds seemed to slumber.
These blue, proud, fathomless eyes! Why had they looked on him? He hadgrown content with his fate; he had been satisfied to live and to fall asoldier of France; he had set a seal on that far-off life of his earliertime, and had grown to forget that it had ever been. Why had chanceflung him in her way that, with one careless, haughty glance, one smileof courteous pity, she should have undone in a moment all the work of ahalf-score years, and shattered in a day the serenity which it had costhim such weary self-contest, such hard-fought victory, to attain?
She had come to pain, to weaken, to disturb, to influence him, to shadowhis peace, to wring his pride, to unman his resolve, as women do mostlywith men. Was life not hard enough here already, that she must make itmore bitter yet to bear?
He had been content, with a soldier's contentment, in danger and induty; and she must waken the old coiled serpent of restless, stingingregret which he had thought lulled to rest forever!
"If I had my heritage!" he thought; and the chisel fell from his handsas he looked down the length of the barrack room with the blue glare ofthe African sky through the casement.
Then he smiled at his own folly, in dreaming idly thus of things thatmight have been.
"I will see her no more," he said to himself. "If I do not take care, Ishall end by thinking myself a martyr--the last refuge and consolationof emasculate vanity, of impotent egotism!"
For though his whole existence was a sacrifice, it never occurred to himthat there was anything whatever great in its acceptation, or unjustin its endurance. He thought too little of his life's value, or of itsdeserts, even to consider by any chance that it had been harshly dealtwith, or unmeritedly visited.
At that instant Petit Picpon's keen, pale, Parisian face peered throughthe door; his great, black eyes, that at times had so pathetic amelancholy, and at others such a monkeyish mirth and malice, weresparkling excitedly and gleefully.
"Mon Caporal!"
"You, Picpon! What is it?"
"Mon, Caporal, there is great news. There is fighting broken outyonder."
"Ah! Are you sure?"
"Sure, mon Caporal. The Arbicos want a skirmish to the music ofmusketry. We are not to know just yet; we are to have the order de routeto-morrow. I overheard our officers say so. They think we shall havebrisk work. And for that they will not punish the vieille lame."
"Punish! Is there fresh disobedience? In my squadron; in my absence?"
He rose instinctively, buckling on the sword which he had put aside.
"Not in your squadron, mon Caporal," said Picpon quickly. "It is notmuch, either. Only the bon zig Rac."
"Rake? What has he been doing?"
There was infinite anxiety and vexation in his voice. Rake had recentlybeen changed into another squadron of the regiment, to his great lossand regret; for not only did he miss the man's bright face and familiarvoice from the Chambree, but he had much disquietude on the score of hissafety, for Rake was an incorrigible pratique, had only been kept fromscrapes and mischief by Cecil's influence, and even despite that hadbeen often in hot water, and once even had been drafted for a year or soof chastisement
among the "Zephyrs," a mode of punishment which, butfor its separation of him from his idol, would have given unmitigateddelight to the audacious offender.
"Very little, mon Caporal!" said Picpon eagerly. "A mere nothing--abagatelle! Run a Spahi through the stomach, that is all. I don't thinkthe man is so much as dead, even!"
"I hope not, indeed. When will you cease this brawling among yourselves?A soldier's blade should never be turned upon men of his own army. Howdid it happen?"
"A woman! They quarreled about a little fruit-seller. The Spahi was infault. 'Crache-au-nez-d'la-Mort' was there before him; and was preferredby the girl; and women should be allowed something to do with choosingtheir lovers, that I think, though it is true they often take the worstman. They quarreled; the Spahi drew first; and then, pouf et passe!quick as thought, Rac lunged through him. He has always a most beautifulstroke. Le Capitaine Argentier was passing, and made a fuss; elsenothing would have been done. They have put him under arrest; but Iheard them say they would let him free to-night because we should marchat dawn."
"I will go and see him at once."
"Wait, mon Caporal; I have something to tell you," said Picpon quickly."The zig has a motive in what he does. Rac wanted to get the prison. Hehas done more than one bit of mischief only for that."
"Only for what? He cannot be in love with the prison?"
"It serves his turn," said Picpon mysteriously. "Did you never guesswhy, mon Caporal? Well, I have. 'Crache-au-nez-d'la-Mort' is a finefearless soldier. The officers know it; the bureaus know it. He wouldhave mounted, mounted, mounted, and been a Captain long before now, ifhe had not been a pratique."
"I know that; so would many of you."
"Ah, mon Caporal; but that is just what Rac does not choose. In thebooks his page beats every man's, except yours. They have talked of himmany times for the cross and for promotion; but whenever they do hegoes off to a bit of mischief, and gets himself punished. Any term ofpunishment, long or short, serves his purpose. They think him too wildto take out of the ranks. You remember, mon Caporal, that splendid thingthat he did five years ago at Sabasasta? Well, you know they spoke ofpromoting him for it, and he would have run up all the grades like asquirrel, and died a Kebir, I dare say. What did he do to prevent it?Why, went that escapade into Oran disguised as a Dervish, and go theprison instead."
"To prevent it? Not purposely?"
"Purposely, mon Caporal," said Petit Picpon, with a sapient nod thatspoke volumes. "He always does something when he thinks promotion iscoming--something to get himself out of its way, do you see? And thereason is this: 'tis a good zig, and loves you, and will not be put overyour head. 'Me rise afore him?' said the zig to me once. 'I'll have theAs de pique on my collar fifty times over first! He's a Prince, and I'ma mongrel got in a gutter! I owe him more than I'll ever pay, and I'llkill the Kebir himself afore I'll insult him that way.' So say little tohim about the Spahi, mon Caporal. He loves you well, does your Rac."
"Well, indeed! Good God! what nobility!"
Picpon glanced at him; then, with the tact of his nation, glided awayand 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 ofthe question to take," mused Cecil, as he crossed the barrack-yard afew minutes later to visit the incarcerated pratique. "On my life,civilization develops comfort, but I do believe it kills nobility.Individuality dies in it, and egotism grows strong and specious. Why isit that in a polished life a man, while becoming incapable of sinking tocrime, almost always becomes also incapable of rising to greatness? Whyis it that misery, tumult, privation, bloodshed, famine, beget, insuch a life as this, such countless things of heroism, of endurance, ofself-sacrifice--things worthy of demigods--in men who quarrel with thewolves for a wild-boar's carcass, 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 Bertiehad either leisure or inclination to do.
"Is this true, Rake--that you intentionally commit these freaks ofmisconduct to escape promotion?" he asked of the man when he stood alonewith 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 inme like ale; if I didn't take the cork out now and then, I should flyapieces!"
"But many a time when you have been close on the reward of your splendidgallantry in the field, you have frustrated your own fortunes and thewishes of your superiors by wantonly proving yourself unfit for thehigher 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 outwhen the fit takes 'em. 'Tain't reasonable to blame 'em for it; they'rejust made so, like a chestnut's made to bust its pod, and a chicken tobust its shell. Well, you see, sir, France, she knows that, and shesays to herself, 'Here are these madcaps; if I keep 'em tight in handI shan't do nothing with 'em--they'll turn obstreperous and cram myconvict-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 armywildfire like 'em; I'll just draft 'em by theirselves, treat 'emdifferent, and let 'em fire away. They've got good stuff in 'em, thoughtoo much of the curb riles 'em.' Well, sir, she do that; and aren't theZephyrs as fine a lot of fellows as any in the service? Of coursethey are; but if they'd been in England--God bless her, the dear oldobstinate soul!--they'd have been drove crazy along o' pipeclay andrazors; she'd never have seed what was in 'em, her eyes are so bungedup with routine. If a pup riot in the pack, she's no notion but todouble-thong him, and, a-course, in double-quick time, she finds herselfobliged to go further and hang him. She don't ever remember that it maybe only just along of his breeding, and that he may make a very goodhound elseways let out a bit, though he'll spoil the whole pack if shewill be a fool and try to make a steady line-hunter of him, straightagin his nature."
Rake stopped, breathless in his rhetoric, which contained more truth init, as also more roughness, than most rhetoric does.
"You are right. But you wander from my question," said Cecil gently. "Doyou avoid promotion?"
"Yes, sir; I do," said Rake, something sulkily; for he felt he was beingdriven "up a corner." "I do. I ain't not one bit fitter for an officerthan 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 thecross--Lord, sir, that would get me into a world o' trouble! I shouldpawn it for a toss of wine the first day out, or give it to the firstmoukiera that winked her black eye for it! The star put on my buttonssuits me a deal better; if you'll believe me, sir, it do."[*]
[*] The star on the metal buttons of the insubordinates, or Zephyrs.
Cecil's eyes rested on him with a look that said far more than hisanswer.
"Rake, I know you better than you would let me do, if you had your way.My noble fellow! You reject advancement, and earn yourself an unjustreputation for mutinous conduct, because you are too generous to begiven a step above mine in the regiment."
"Who's been a-telling you that trash, sir?" retorted Rake, withferocity.
"No matter who. It is no trash. It is a splendid loyalty of which Iam utterly unworthy, and it shall be my care that it is known at theBureaus, 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, andcome 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 instate, and the Marshals a-scouring out the soup-pots!"
"Not at all. This Army has not a finer soldier than yourself; you have aright to the reward of your services in it. An
d I assure you you do me agreat injustice if you think I would not as willingly go out under yourorders 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 ofeloquence.
"Sir, if you don't understand as how you've given me a power more thanall the crosses in the world in saying of them there words, why, youdon't know me much either, that's all. You're a gentleman--a righton rare thing that is--and being a gentleman, a-course you'd be toogenerous and too proud like not to behave well to me, whether I wasa-serving you as I've always served you, or a-insulting of you by ridingover 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--damnhim!--I can't help it, sir; I will damn him, if he shoot me forit--you'd been a Chef d'Escadron by now. There ain't the leastest doubtof it. Ask all the zigs what they think. Well, sir, now you know I'm aman what do as I say. If you don't let me have my own way, and if you dothe littlest thing to get me a step, why, sir, I swear, as I'm a livingbeing, 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 lawlessnessand fiery passion inborn in Rake had of course not been cooled bythe teaching of African warfare; and his hate was intense against theall-potent Chief of his regiment; as intense as the love he bore to theman whom he had followed out into exile.
Cecil tried vainly to argue with him; all his reasonings fell likehailstones on a cuirass, and made no more impression; he was resolute.
"But listen to one thing," he urged at last. "Can you not see how youpain me by this self-sacrifice? If I knew that you had attained a highergrade, and wore your epaulettes in this service, can you not fancy Ishould feel pleasure then (as I feel regret, even remorse, now) that Ibrought you to Africa through my own follies and misfortunes?"
"Do you sir? There ain't the least cause for it, then," returned Rakesturdily. "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 whenI 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 beas 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 bekicking over the traces and blundering everlastingly. However, thereain't no need to say a word more about it. I've sworn, and you've heerdme swear, sir, and you know as how I shall keep my oath if ever I'mprovoked to it by being took notice of. I stuck that Spahi just now justby way of a lark, and only 'cause he come where he'd no business to pokehis turbaned old pate; 'taint likely as I should stop at giving the Hawktwo inches of steel if he comes such a insult over us both as to offer ablackguard like me the epaulettes as you ought to be a-wearing!"
And Cecil knew that it was hopeless either to persuade him to his ownadvantage or to convince him of his disobedience in speaking thus of hissupreme, 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 cannotrepay your love, Rake, but I can value it."
Rake put his own hands behind his back.
"God bless you, sir; you've repaid it ten dozen times over. But youshan't do that, sir. I told you long ago, I'm too much of a scamp! Someday, perhaps, as I said, when I've settled scores with myself, and wipedoff all the bad 'uns with a clear sweep, tolerably clean. Not afore,sir!"
And Rake was too sturdily 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 totheir Stuart idols. That his benefactor had become a soldier of Africain no way lessened the reverent love of his loyalty, any more thantheirs was lessened by the adversities of their royal masters. Liketheirs, also, it had beauty in its blindness--the beauty that lies inevery pure unselfishness.
Meanwhile, Picpon's news was correct.
The regiments were ordered out on the march. There was fresh war in theinterior; and wherever there was the hottest slaughter, there theBlack Hawk always flew down with his falcon-flock. When Cecil left hisincorrigible zig, the trumpets were sounding an assembly; there werenoise, tumult, eagerness, excitement, delighted zest on every side; ageneral order was read to the enraptured squadrons; they were to leavethe town at the first streak of dawn.
There were before them death, deprivation, long days of famine, longdays of drought and thirst; parching, sun-baked roads; bitter, chillynights; fiery furnace-blasts of sirocco; killing, pitiless, northernwinds; hunger, only sharpened by a snatch of raw meat or a handful ofmaize; and the probabilities, ten to one, of being thrust under the sandto rot, or left to have their skeletons picked clean by the vultures.But what of that! There were also the wild delight of combat, thefreedom of lawless warfare, the joy of deep strokes thrust home, thechance of plunder, of wine-skins, of cattle, of women; above all, thatlust for slaughter which burns so deep down in the hidden souls of menand gives them such brotherhood with wolf and vulture and tiger, whenonce its flame bursts forth.