In the brightness of the noon Cigarette leaned out of her little ovalcasement that framed her head like an old black oak carving--a head withthe mellow bloom on its cheeks, and the flash of scarlet above its darkcurls, and the robin-like grace of poise and balance as it hung outthere in the sun.
Cigarette had been there a whole hour in thought; she who never hadwasted a moment in meditation or reverie, and who found the long Africanday all too short for her busy, abundant, joyous life, that was alwaysfull of haste and work, just as a bird's will seem so, though the birdhave no more to do than to fly at its will through summer air, and feedat its will from brook and from berry, from a ripe ear of the corn orfrom a deep cup of the lily. For the first time she was letting timedrift away in the fruitless labor of vain, purposeless thought, because,for the first time also, happiness was not with her.
They were gone forever--all the elastic joyance, all the free, fairhours, all the dauntless gayety of childhood, all the sweet, harmoniouslaughter of a heart without a care. They were gone forever; for thetouch of love and of pain had been laid on her; and never again wouldher radiant eyes smile cloudlessly, like the young eagle's, at a sunthat rose but to be greeted as only youth can great another dawn of lifethat is without a shadow.
And she leaned wearily there, with her cheek lying on the cold, grayMoorish stone; the color and the brightness were in the rays of thelight, in the rich hues of her hair and her mouth, in the scarlet glowof her dress; there was no brightness in her face. The eyes were vacantas they watched the green lizard glide over the wall beyond, and thelips were parted with a look of unspeakable fatigue; the tire, notof the limbs, but of the heart. She had come thither, hoping to leavebehind her on the desert wind that alien care, that new, strangepassion, which sapped her strength, and stung her pride, and made herevil with such murderous lust of vengeance; and they were with herstill. Only something of the deadly, biting ferocity of jealousy hadchanged into a passionate longing to be as that woman was who had hislove; into a certain hopeless, sickening sense of having forever lostthat which alone could have given her such beauty and such honor in thesight of men as those this woman had.
To her it seemed impossible that this patrician who had his passionshould not return it. To the child of the camp, though she often mockedat caste, all the inexorable rules, all the reticent instincts ofcaste, were things unknown. She would have failed to comprehend all thethousand reasons which would have forbidden any bond between the greataristocrat and a man of low grade and of dubious name. She only thoughtof love as she had always seen it, quickly born, hotly cherished, wildlyindulged, and without tie or restraint.
"And I came without my vengeance!" she mused. To the nature that feltthe ferocity of the vendetta a right and a due, there was woundinghumiliation in her knowledge that she had left her rival unharmed, andhad come hither, out from his sight and his presence, lest he shouldsee in her one glimpse of that folly which she would have killed herselfunder her own steel rather than have been betrayed, either for hiscontempt or his compassion.
"And I came without my vengeance!" she mused, in that oppressive noon,in that gray and lonely place, in that lofty tower-solitude, where therewas nothing between her and the hot, hard, cruel blue of the heavens,vengeance looked the only thing that was left her; the only meanswhereby that void in her heart could be filled, that shame in her lifebe washed out. To love! and to love a man who had no love for her, whoseeyes only beheld another's face, whose ears only thirsted foranother's voice! Its degradation stamped her a traitress in her ownsight--traitress to her code, to her pride, to her country, to her flag!
And yet, at the core of her heart so tired a pang was aching! She whohad gloried in being the child of the whole people, the daughter ofthe whole army, felt lonely and abandoned, as though she were some birdwhich an hour ago had been flying in all its joy among its brethrenand now, maimed with one shot, had fallen, with broken pinion and tornplumage, to lie alone upon the sand and die.
The touch of a bird's wing brushing her hair brought the dreamycomparison to her wandering thoughts. She started and lifted her head;it was a blue carrier-pigeon, one of the many she fed at that casement,and the swiftest and surest of several she sent with messages for thesoldiers between the various stations and corps. She had forgotten shehad left the bird at the encampment.
She caressed it absently, while the tired creature sank down on herbosom; then only she saw that there was a letter beneath one wing. Sheunloosed it, and looked at it without being able to tell its meaning;she could not read a word, printed or written. Military habits were toostrong with her for the arrival not to change her reverie into action;whoever it was for, it must be seen. She gave the pigeon water andgrain, then wound her way down the dark, narrow stairs, through theheight of the tower, out into the passage below.
She found an old French cobbler sitting at a stall in a casement,stitching leather; he was her customary reader and scribe in thisquarter. She touched him with the paper. "Bon Mathieu! Wilt thou readthis to me?"
"It is for thee, Little One, and signed 'Petit Pot-de-terre.'"
Cigarette nodded listlessly.
"'Tis a good lad, and a scholar," she answered absently. "Read on!"
And he read aloud:
"'There is ill news. I send the bird on a chance to find thee.Bel-a-faire-peau struck the Black Hawk--a slight blow, but with threatto kill following it. He has been tried, and is to be shot. There isno appeal. The case is clear; the Colonel could have cut him down, werethat all. I thought you should know. We are all sorry. It was done onthe night of the great fete. I am thy humble lover and slave.'"
So the boy-Zouave's scrawl, crushed, and blotted, and written with greatdifficulty, ran in its brief phrases that the slow muttering of the oldshoemaker drew out in tedious length.
Cigarette heard; she never made a movement or gave a sound, but allthe blood fled out of her brilliant face, leaving it horribly blanchedbeneath its brown sun-scorch; and her eyes--distended, senseless,sightless--were fastened on the old man's slowly moving mouth.
"Read it again!" she said simply, when all was ended. He started andlooked up at her face; the voice had not one accent of its own toneleft.
He obeyed, and read it once more to the end. Then a loud, shudderingsigh escaped her, like the breath of one stifling under flames.
"Shot!" she said vacantly. "Shot!"
Her vengeance had come without her once lifting her hand to summon it.
The old man rose hurriedly.
"Child! Art thou ill?"
"The blow was struck for her!" she muttered. "It was that night, youhear--that night!"
"What night? Thou lookest so strangely! Dost thou love this doomedsoldier?"
Cigarette laughed--a laugh whose echo thrilled horribly through thelonely Moresco courtway.
"Love? Love? I hated him, look you! So I said. And I longed for myvengeance. It is come!"
She was still a moment; her white, parched mouth quivering as thoughshe were under physical torture, her strained eyes fastened on the emptyair, the veins in her throat swelling and throbbing till they glowed topurple. Then she crushed the letter in one hand, and flew, fleet as anyantelope through the streets of the Moorish quarter, and across the cityto the quay.
The people ever gave way before her; but now they scattered likefrightened sheep from her path. There was something that terrifiedthem in that bloodless horror set upon her face, and in that fury ofresistless speed with which she rushed upon her way.
Once only in her headlong career through the throngs she paused; itwas as one face, on which the strong light of the noontide poured, camebefore her. The senseless look changed in her eyes; she wheeled out ofher route, and stopped before the man who had thus arrested her. He wasleaning idly over the stall of a Turkish bazaar, and her hand graspedhis arm before he saw her.
"You have his face!" she muttered. "What are you to him?"
He made no answer; he was too amazed.
"You are of his race,"
she persisted. "You are brethren by your look.What are you to him?"
"To whom?"
"To the man who calls himself Louis Victor! A Chasseur of my army!"
Her eyes were fastened entirely on him; keen, ruthless, fierce, in thismoment as a hawk's. He grew pale and murmured an incoherent denial. Hesought to shake her off, first gently, then more rudely; he called hermad, and tried to fling her from him; but the lithe fingers only woundthemselves closer on his arm.
"Be still--fool!" she muttered; and there was that in the accent thatlent a strange force and dignity in that moment to the careless andmischievous plaything of the soldiery--force that overcame him, dignitythat overawed him. "You are of his people; you have his eyes, and hislook, and his features. He disowns you, or you him. No matter which.He is of your blood; and he lies under sentence of death. Do you knowthat?"
With a stifled cry, the other recoiled from her; he never doubted thatshe spoke the truth; nor could any who had looked upon her face.
"Do not lie to me," she said curtly. "It avails you nothing. Read that."
She thrust before him the paper the pigeon had brought; his handtrembled sorely as he held it; he believed in that moment thatthis strange creature--half soldier, half woman, half brigand, halfchild--knew all his story and all his shame from his brother.
"Shot!" he echoed hoarsely, as she had done, when he had read on to theend. "Shot! Oh, my God! and I----"
She drew him out of the thoroughfare into a dark recess within thebazaar, he submitting unresistingly. He was filled with the horror, theremorse, the overwhelming shock of his brother's doom.
"He will be shot," she said with a strange calmness. "We shoot down manymen in our army. I knew him well. He was justified in his act, I do notdoubt; but discipline will not stay for that--"
"Silence, for mercy's sake! Is there no hope--no possibility?"
Her lips were parched like the desert sand as her dry, hard words camethrough them. "None. His chief could have cut him down in the instant.It took place in camp. You feel this thing; you are of his race, then?"
"I am his brother!"
She was silent; looking at him fixedly, it did not seem to her strangethat she should thus have met one of his blood in the crowds of Algiers.She was absorbed in the one catastrophe whose hideousness seemed to eather very life away, even while her nerve, and her brain, and her courageremained at their keenest and strongest.
"You are his brother," she said slowly, so much as an affirmation thathis belief was confirmed that she had learned both their relationshipand their history from Cecil. "You must go to him, then."
He shook from head to foot.
"Yes, yes! But it will be too late!"
She did not know that the words were cried out in all the contrition ofan unavailing remorse; she gave them only their literal significance,and shuddered as she answered him.
"That you must risk. You must go to him. But, first, I must know more.Tell me his name, his rank."
He was silent; coward and egotist though he was, both cowardice andegotism were killed in him under the overwhelming horror with whichhe felt himself as truly by moral guilt a fratricide as though he hadstabbed his elder through the heart.
"Speak!" hissed Cigarette through her clenched teeth. "If you have anykindness, any pity, any love for the man of your blood, who will be shotthere like a dog, do not waste a second--answer me, tell me all."
He turned his wild, terrified glance upon her; he had in that moment nosense but to seize some means of reparation, to declare his brother'srights, to cry out to the very stones of the streets his own wrong andhis victim's sacrifice.
"He is the head of my house!" he answered her, scarce knowing what heanswered. "He should bear the title that I bear now. He is here, in thismisery, because he is the most merciful, the most generous, the mostlong-suffering of living souls! If he dies, it is not they who havekilled him; it is I!"
She listened, with her face set in that stern, fixed, resolute commandwhich never varied; she neglected all that wonder, or curiosity, orinterest would have made her as at any other time, she only heeded thefew great facts that bore upon the fate of the condemned.
"Settle with yourself for that sin," she said bitterly. "Your remorsewill not save him. But do the thing that I bid you, if that remorse besincere. Write me out here that title you say he should bear, and yourstatement that he is your brother, and should be the chief of yourhouse; then sign it, and give it to me."
He seized her hands, and gazed with imploring eyes into her face.
"Who are you? What are you? If you have the power to do it, for the loveof God rescue him! It is I who have murdered him--I--who have let himlive on in this hell for my sake!"
"For your sake!"
She flung his hands off her and looked him full in the face; that glanceof the speechless scorn, the unutterable rebuke of the woman-child whowould herself have died a thousand deaths rather than have purchased awhole existence by a single falsehood or a single cowardice, smotehim like a blow, and avenged his sin more absolutely than any publicchastisement. The courage and the truth of a girl scorned his timorousfear and his living lie. His head sank, he seemed to shrink under hergaze; his act had never looked so vile to him as it looked now.
She gazed a moment longer at him with her mute and wondering disdainthat there should be on earth a male life capable of such fear and ofsuch ignominy as this. Then the strong and rapid power in her took itsinstant ascendancy over the weaker nature.
"Monsieur, I do not know your story, I do not want. I am not used to menwho let others suffer for them. What I want is your written statement ofyour brother's name and station; give it me."
He made a gesture of consent; he would have signed away his soul, if hecould, in the stupor of remorse which had seized him. She brought himpens and paper from the Turk's store, and dictated what he wrote:
"I hereby affirm that the person serving in the Chasseurs d'Afriqueunder the name of Louis Victor is my older brother, Bertie Cecil,lawfully, by inheritance, the Viscount Royallieu, Peer of England. Ihereby also acknowledge that I have succeeded to and borne the titleillegally, under the supposition of his death.
"BERKELEY CECIL." (Signed)
He wrote it mechanically; the force of her will and the torture of hisown conscience driving him, on an impulse, to undo in an instant thewhole web of falsehood that he had let circumstance weave on and on toshelter him through twelve long years. He let her draw the paper fromhim and fold it away in her belt. He watched her with a curious, dreamysense of his own impotence against the fierce and fiery torrent of herbidding.
"What is it you will do?" he asked her.
"The best that shall lie in my power. Do you the same."
"Can his life yet be saved?"
"His honor may--his honor shall."
Her face had an exceeding beauty as she spoke though it was stern andrigid still, a look that was sublime gleamed over it. She, the waif andstray of a dissolute camp, knew better than the scion of his own racehow the doomed man would choose the vindication of his honor before therescue of his life. He laid his hand on her as she moved.
"Stay!--stay! One word----"
She flung him off her again.
"This is no time for words. Go to him--coward!--and let the balls thatkill him reach you too, if you have one trait of manhood left in you!"
Then, swiftly as a swallow darts, she quitted him and flew on herheadlong way, down through the pressure of the people, and the throngsof the marts, and the noise, and the color, and the movement of thestreets.
The sun was scarce declined from its noon before she rode out of thecity, on a half-bred horse of the Spahis, swift as the antelope and aswild, with her only equipment some pistols in her holsters, and a bag ofrice and a skin of water slung at her saddle-bow.
They asked her where she went; she never answered. The hoofs strucksharp echoes out of the rugged stones, and the people were scatteredlike chaff as she went at full gallop down through Alg
iers. Hercomrades, used to see her ever with some song in the air and some laughon the lips as she went, looked after her with wonder as she passedthem, silent, and with her face white and stern as though the bright,brown loveliness of it had been changed to alabaster.
"What is it with the Cigarette?" they asked each other. None could tell;the desert horse and his rider flew by them as a swallow flies. Thegleam of her Cross and the colorless calm of the childlike face thatwore the resolve of a Napoleon's on it were the last they ever saw ofCigarette.
All her fluent, untiring speech was gone--gone with the rose hue fromher cheek, with the laugh from her mouth, with the child's joyancefrom her heart; but the brave, stanch, dauntless spirit lived with asoldier's courage, with a martyr's patience.
And she rode straight through the scorch of the midday sun, along thesea-coast westward. The dizzy swiftness would have blinded most whoshould have been carried through the dry air and under the burning skiesat that breathless and pauseless speed; but she had ridden half-maddenedcolts with the skill of Arabs themselves; she had been tossed on aholster from her earliest years, and had clung with an infant's hands infearless glee to the mane of roughriders' chargers. She never swerved,she never sickened; she was borne on and on against the hard, hotcurrents of the cleft air with only one sense--that she went so slowly,so slowly, when with every beat of the ringing hoofs one of the fewmoments of a charmed life fled away!
She had a long route before her; she had many leagues to travel, andthere were but four-and-twenty hours, she knew well, left to the man whowas condemned to death. Four-and-twenty hours left open for appeal--nomore--betwixt the delivery and execution of the sentence. That delaywas always interpreted by the French Code as a delay extending from theevening of the day to the dawn of the second day following; and someslight interval might then ensue, according as the general in commandordained. But the twenty-four hours was all of which she couldbe certain; and even of them some must have flown by since thecarrier-pigeon had been loosed to her. She could not tell how long hehad to live.
There were fifty miles between her and her goal; Abd-el-Kader's horsehad once covered that space in three hours, so men of the Army ofD'Aumale had told her; she knew what they had done she could do. Onceonly she paused, to let her horse lie a brief while, and cool hisfoam-flecked sides, and crop some short, sweet grass that grew wherea cleft of water ran and made the bare earth green. She sat quitemotionless while he rested; she was keenly alive to all that could bestsave his strength and further her travel; but she watched him duringthose few minutes of rest and inaction with a fearful look of hunger inher eyes--the worst hunger--that which craves Time and cannot seize itfast enough. Then she mounted again, and again went on, on her flight.
She swept by cantonments, villages, soldiers on the march, douairs ofpeaceful Arabs, strings of mules and camels, caravans of merchandise;nothing arrested her; she saw nothing that she passed, as she rode overthe hard, dust-covered, shadowless roads; over the weary, sun-scorched,monotonous country; over the land without verdure and without foliage,the land that yet has so weird a beauty, so irresistible a fascination;the land to which men, knowing that death waits for them in it, yetreturn with as mad an infatuation as her lovers went back across thewaters to Circe.
The horse was reeking with smoke and foam, and the blood was coursingfrom his flanks, as she reached her destination at last, and threwherself off his saddle as he sank, faint and quivering, to the ground.Whither she had come was to a fortress where the Marshal of France,who was the Viceroy of Africa, had arrived that day in his progressof inspection throughout the provinces. Soldiers clustered roundher eagerly beneath the gates and over the fallen beast; a thousandquestions pouring from their curious tongues. She pointed to the animalwith one hand, to the gaunt pile of stone that bristled with cannon withthe other.
"Have a care of him; and lead me to the chief."
She spoke quietly; but a certain sensation of awe and fear moved thosewho heard. She was not the Child of the Army whom they knew so well. Shewas a creature, desperate, hard-pressed, mute as death, strong as steel;above all, hunted by despair.
They hesitated to take her message, to do her bidding. The one whom shesought was great and supreme here as a king; they dreaded to approachhis staff, to ask his audience.
Cigarette looked at them a moment, then loosened her Cross and held itout to an adjutant standing beneath the gates.
"Take that to the man who gave it me. Tell him Cigarette waits; and witheach moment that she waits a soldier's life is lost. Go!"
The adjutant took it, and went. Over and over again she had broughtintelligence of an Arab movement, news of a contemplated razzia, warningof an internal revolt, or tidings of an encounter on the plains, thathad been of priceless value to the army which she served. It was notlightly that Cigarette's words were ever received when she spoke as shespoke now; nor was it impossible that she now brought to them that whichwould brook neither delay nor trifling.
She waited patiently; all the iron discipline of military life had neverbound her gay and lawless spirit down; but now she was singularly stilland mute. Only there gleamed thirstily in her eyes that fearful avaricewhich begrudges every moment in its flight as never the miser grudgedhis hoarded gold into the robber's grasp.
A few minutes and the decoration was brought back to her, and her demandgranted. She was summoned to the Marshal's presence. It was the ordnanceroom, a long, vast, silent chamber filled with stands of arms, with allthe arts and appliances of war brought to their uttermost perfection,and massed in all the resource of a great empire against the sons ofthe desert, who had nothing to oppose to them save the despair of aperishing nationality and a stifled freedom.
The Marshal, leaning against a brass field-piece, turned to her with asmile in his keen, stern eyes.
"You, my young one! What brings you here?"
She came up to him with her rapid leopard-like grace, and he started ashe saw the change upon her features. She was covered with sand and dust,and with the animal's blood-flecked foam. The beating of her heart fromthe fury of the gallop had drained every hue from her face; her voicewas scarcely articulate in its breathless haste as she saluted him.
"Monsieur, I have come from Algiers since noon--"
"From Algiers!" He and his officers echoed the name of the city inincredulous amaze; they knew how far from them down along the sea-linethe white town lay.
"Since noon, to rescue a life--the life of a great soldier, of aguiltless man. He who saved the honor of France at Zaraila is to die thedeath of a mutineer at dawn!"
"What!--your Chasseur!"
A dusky, scarlet fire burned through the pallor of her face; but hereyes never quailed, and the torrent of her eloquence returned under thepangs of shame that were beaten back under the noble instincts of herlove.
"Mine!--since he is a soldier of France; yours, too, by that title. I amcome here, from Algiers, to speak the truth in his name, and to save himfor his own honor and the honor of my Empire. See here! At noon, I havethis paper, sent by a swift pigeon. Read it! You see how he is to die,and why. Well, by my Cross, by my Flag, by my France, I swear that not ahair of his head shall be touched, and not a drop of blood in his veinsshall be shed!"
He looked at her, astonished at the grandeur and the courage which couldcome on this child of razzias and revelries, and give to her all thesplendor of a fearless command of some young empress. But his facedarkened and set sternly as he read the paper; it was the greatest crimein the sight of a proud soldier, this crime against discipline, of theman for whom she pleaded.
"You speak madly," he said, with cold brevity. "The offense merits thechastisement. I shall not attempt to interfere."
"Wait! You will hear, at least, Monsieur?"
"I will hear you--yes, but I tell you, once for all, I never changesentences that are pronounced by councils of war; and this crime is thelast for which you should attempt to plead for mercy with me."
"Hear me, at least!" she cried
, with passionate ferocity--the ferocityof a dumb animal wounded by a shot. "You do not know what this manis--how he has had to endure; I do. I have watched him; I have seen thebrutal tyranny of his chief, who hated him because the soldiers lovedhim. I have seen his patience, his obedience, his long-suffering beneathinsults that would have driven any other to revolt and murder. I haveseen him--I have told you how--at Zaraila, thinking never of death orlife, only of our Flag, that he has made his own, and under which he hasbeen forced to lead the life of a galley slave--"
"The finer soldier he be, the less pardonable his offense."
"That I deny! If he were a dolt, a brute, a thing of wood as many are,he would have no right to vengeance; as it is, he is a gentleman, ahero, a martyr; may he not forget for one hour that he is a slave?Look you! I have seen him so tried that I told him--I, who love my armybetter than any living thing under the sun--that I would forgive him ifhe forgot duty and dealt with his tyrant as man to man. And he alwaysheld his soul in patience. Why? Not because he feared death--he desiredit; but because he loved his comrades, and suffered in peace and insilence lest, through him, they should be led into evil----"
His eyes softened as he heard her; but the inflexibility of his voicenever altered.
"It is useless to argue with me," he said briefly; "I never change asentence."
"But I say that you shall!" As the audacious words were flung forth, shelooked him full in the eyes, while her voice rang with its old imperiousoratory. "You are a great chief; you are as a monarch here; you hold thegifts and the grandeur of the Empire; but, because of that--because youare as France in my eyes--I swear, by the name of France, that you shallsee justice done to him; after death, if you cannot in life. Do you knowwho he is--this man whom his comrades will shoot down at sunrise as theyshoot down the murderer and the ravisher in their crimes?"
"He is a rebellious soldier; it is sufficient."
"He is not! He is a man who vindicated a woman's honor; he is a man whosuffers in a brother's place; he is an aristocrat exiled to a martyrdom;he is a hero who has never been greater than he will be great inhis last hour. Read that! What you refuse to justice, and mercy, andcourage, and guiltlessness, you will grant, maybe, to your Order."
She forced into his hand the written statement of Cecil's name andstation. All the hot blood was back in her cheek, all the fiery passionback in her eyes. She lashed this potent ruler with the scourge of herscorn as she had lashed a drunken horde of plunderers with her whip. Shewas reckless of what she said; she was conscious only of one thing--thedespair that consumed her.
The French Marshal glanced his eye on the fragment, carelessly andcoldly. As he saw the words, he started, and read on with wonderingeagerness.
"Royallieu!" he muttered--"Royallieu!"
The name was familiar to him; he it was who, when he had murmured, "Thatman has the seat of the English Guards," as a Chasseur d'Afrique hadpassed him, had been ignorant that in that Chasseur he saw one whom hehad known in many a scene of court splendor and Parisian pleasure. Theyears had been many since Cecil and he had met, but not so many but thatthe name brought memories of friendship with it, and moved him with astrange emotion.
He turned with grave anxiety to Cigarette.
"You speak strangely. How came this in your hands?"
"Thus: the day that you gave me the Cross, I saw Mme. la PrincesseCorona. I hated her, and I went--no matter! From her I learned that hewhom we call Louis Victor was of her rank, was of old friendship withher house, was exiled and nameless, but for some reason unknown to her.She needed to see him; to bid him farewell, so she said. I took themessage for her; I sent him to her." Her voice grew husky and savage,but she forced her words on with the reckless sacrifice of self thatmoved her. "He went to her tent, alone, at night; that was, of course,whence he came when Chateauroy met him. I doubt not the Black Hawkhad some foul thing to hint of his visit, and that blow was struck forher--for her! Well; in the streets of Algiers I saw a man with a facelike his own, different, but the same race, look you. I spoke to him; Itaxed him. When he found that the one whom I spoke of was under sentenceof death, he grew mad; he cried out that he was his brother and hadmurdered him--that it was for his sake that the cruelty of thisexile had been borne--that, if his brother perished, he would be hisdestroyer. Then I bade him write down that paper, since these Englishnames were unknown to me, and I brought it hither to you that you mightsee, under his hand and with your own eyes, that I have uttered thetruth. And now, is that man to be killed like a mad beast whom you fear?Is that death the reward France will give for Zaraila?"
Her eyes were fixed with a fearful intensity of appeal upon the sternface bent over her; her last arrow was sped; if this failed, all wasover. As he heard, he was visibly moved; he remembered the felon's shamethat in years gone by had fallen across the banished name of BertieCecil; the history seemed clear as crystal to him, seen beneath thelight shed on it from other days.
His hand fell heavily on the gun-carriage.
"Mort de Dieu! it was his brother's sin, not his!"
There was a long silence; those present, who knew nothing of all thatwas in his memory, felt instinctively that some dead weight of alienguilt was lifted off a blameless life forever.
She drew a deep, long, sighing breath; she knew that he was safe. Herhands unconsciously locked on the great chief's arms; her eyes lookedup, senselessly in their rapture and their dread, to his.
"Quick, quick!" she gasped. "The hours go so fast; while we speak herehe----"
The words died in her throat. The Marshal swung around with a rapid signto a staff officer.
"Pens and ink! Instantly! My brave child, what can we say to you? I willsend an aid to arrest the execution of the sentence. It must be deferredtill we know the whole truth of this. If it be as it looks now, he shallbe saved if the Empire can save him!"
She looked up in his eyes with a look that froze his very heart.
"His honor!" she muttered; "his honor--if not his life!"
He understood her; he bowed his haughty head low down to hers.
"True. We will cleanse that, if all other justice be too late."
The answer was infinitely gentle, infinitely solemn. Then he turned andwrote his hurried order, and bade his aid go with it without a second'sloss. But Cigarette caught it from his hand.
"To me! to me! No other will go so fast!"
"But, my child, you are worn out already."
She turned on him her beautiful, wild eyes, in which the blinding,passionate tears were floating.
"Do you think I would tarry for that? Ah! I wish that I had let themtell me of God, that I might ask Him now to bless you! Quick, quick!Lend me your swiftest horse! One that will not tire. And send a secondorder by your aid-de-camp; the Arabs may kill me as I go, and then, theywill not know!"
He stooped and touched her little, brown, scorched, feverish hand withreverence.
"My child, Africa has shown me much heroism, but none like yours. If youfall, he shall be safe, and France will know how to avenge its darling'sloss."
She turned and gave him one look, infinitely sweet, infinitely eloquent.
"Ah, France!" she said, so softly that the last word was but a signof unutterable tenderness. The old, imperishable early love was notdethroned; it was there, still before all else. France was without rivalwith her.
Then, without another second's pause, she flew from them, and vaultinginto the saddle of a young horse which stood without in the court-yard,rode once more, at full speed out into the pitiless blaze of the sun,out to the wasted desolation of the plains.
The order of release, indeed, was in her bosom; but the chances were asa million to one that she would reach him with it in time, ere with therising of the sun his life would have set forever.
All the horror of remorse was on her; to her nature the bitter jealousyin which she had desired vengeance on him seemed to have rendered her amurderess. She loved him--loved him with an exceeding passion; and onlyin this extremity,
when it was confronted with the imminence of death,did the fullness and the greatness of that love make their way out ofthe petulant pride and the wounded vanity which had obscured them. Shehad been ere now a child and a hero; beneath this blow which struck athim she changed--she became a woman and a martyr.
And she rode at full speed through the night, as she had done throughthe daylight, her eyes glancing all around in the keen instinct of atrooper, her hand always on the butt of her belt pistol. For she knewwell what the danger was of these lonely, unguarded, untraveled leaguesthat yawned in so vast a distance between her and her goal. The Arabs,beaten, but only rendered furious by defeat, swept down on to thoseplains with the old guerrilla skill, the old marvelous rapidity. Sheknew that with every second shot or steel might send her reeling fromher saddle; that with every moment she might be surrounded by somedesperate band who would spare neither her sex nor her youth. But thatintoxication of peril, the wine-draught she had drunk from her infancy,was all which sustained her in that race with death. It filled her veinswith their old heat, her heart with its old daring, her nerves withtheir old matchless courage; but for it she would have dropped,heart-sick with terror and despair, ere her errand could be done; underit she had the coolness, the keenness, the sagacity, the sustainedforce, and the supernatural strength of some young hunted animal. Theymight slay her, so that she left perforce her mission unaccomplished;but no dread of such a fate had even an instant's power to appall her orarrest her. While there should be breath in her, she would go on to theend.
There were eight hours' hard riding before her, at the swiftest paceher horse could make; and she was already worn by the leagues alreadytraversed. Although this was nothing new that she did now, yet as timeflew on and she flew with it, ceaselessly, through the dim, solitary,barren moonlit land, her brain now and then grew giddy, her heart nowand then stood still with a sudden numbing faintness. She shook theweakness off her with the resolute scorn for it of her nature, andsucceeded in its banishment. They had put in her hand, as she had passedthrough the fortress gates, a lance with a lantern muffled in Arabfashion, so that the light was unseen from before, while it streamedover herself, to enable her to guide her way if the moon should beveiled by clouds. With that single, starry gleam aslant on a level withher eyes, she rode through the ghastly twilight of the half-lit plains;now flooded with luster as the moon emerged, now engulfed in darkness asthe stormy western winds drove the cirrhi over it. But neither darknessnor light differed to her; she noted neither; she was like one drunkwith strong wine, and she had but one dread--that the power of her horsewould give way under the unnatural strain made on it, and that shewould reach too late, when the life she went to save would have fallenforever, silent unto death, as she had seen the life of Marquise fall.
Hour on hour, league on league, passed away; she felt the animal quiverunder the spur, and she heard the catch in his panting breath as hestrained to give his fleetest and best, that told her how, ere long, theracing speed, the extended gallop at which she kept him, would tell,and beat him down, despite his desert strain. She had no pity; she wouldhave killed twenty horses under her to reach her goal. She was givingher own life, she was willing to lose it, if by its loss she did thisthing, to save even the man condemned to die with the rising of the sun.She did not spare herself; and she would have spared no living thing,to fulfill the mission that she undertook. She loved with the passionateblindness of her sex, with the absolute abandonment of the southernblood. If to spare him she must have bidden thousands fall, she wouldhave given the word for their destruction without a moment's pause.
Once, from some screen of gaunt and barren rock, a shot was fired ather, and flew within a hair's breadth of her brain; she never evenlooked around to see whence it had come; she knew it was from some Arabprowler of the plains. Her single spark of light through the half-veiledlantern passed as swiftly as a shooting-star across the plateau. Andas she felt the hours steal on--so fast, so hideously fast--with thathorrible relentlessness which tarries for no despair, as it hastens forno desire, her lips grew dry as dust, her tongue clove to the roof ofher mouth, the blood beat like a thousand hammers on her brain.
What she dreaded came.
Midway in her course, when, by the stars, she knew midnight was passed,the animal strained with hard-drawn, panting gasps to answer the demandmade on him by the spur and by the lance-shaft with which he was goadedonward. In the lantern light she saw his head stretched out in theracing agony, his distended eyeballs, his neck covered with foam andblood, his heaving flanks that seemed bursting with every throb that hisheart gave; she knew that, half a league more forced from him, he woulddrop like a dead thing never to rise again. She let the bridle drop uponthe poor beast's neck, and threw her arms above her head with a shrill,wailing cry, whose despair echoed over the noiseless plains like thecry of a shot-stricken animal. She saw it all: the breaking of therosy, golden day; the stillness of the hushed camp; the tread of thefew picked men; the open coffin by the open grave; the leveled carbinesgleaming in the first rays of the sun. . . She had seen it so manytimes--seen it to the awful end, when the living man fell down in themorning light a shattered, senseless, soulless, crushed-out mass.
That single moment was all the soldier's nature in her gave to theabandonment of despair, to the paralysis that seized her. With that onecry from the depths of her breaking heart, the weakness spent itself;she knew that action alone could aid him. She looked across, southwardand northward, east and west, to see if there were aught near from whichshe could get aid. If there were none, the horse must drop down to die,and with his life the other life would perish as surely as the sun wouldrise.
Her gaze, straining through the darkness, broken here and there byfitful gleams of moonlight, caught sight in the distance of some yetdarker thing, moving rapidly--a large cloud skimming the earth. She letthe horse, which had paused the instant the bridle had touched his neck,stand still a while, and kept her eyes fixed on the advancing cloudtill, with the marvelous surety of her desert-trained vision, shedisentangled it from the floating mists and wavering shadows andrecognized it, as it was, a band of Arabs.
If she turned eastward out of her route, the failing strength of herhorse would be fully enough to take her into safety from their pursuit,or even from their perception, for they were coming straightly andswiftly across the plain. If she were seen by them, she was certainof her fate; they could only be the desperate remnant of the decimatedtribes, the foraging raiders of starving and desperate men, huntedfrom refuge to refuge, and carrying fire and sword in their vengeancewherever an unprotected caravan or a defenseless settlement gave themthe power of plunder and of slaughter, that spared neither age nor sex.She was known throughout the length and the breadth of the land to theArabs; she was neither child nor woman to them; she was but the soldierwho had brought up the French reserve at Zaraila; she was but the foewho had seen them defeated, and ridden down with her comrades in theirpursuit in twice a score of vanquished, bitter, intolerably shamefuldays. Some among them had sworn by their God to put her to a fearfuldeath if ever they made her captive, for they held her in superstitiousawe, and thought the spell of the Frankish successes would be brokenif she were slain. She knew that; yet, knowing it, she looked attheir advancing band one moment, then turned her horse's head and rodestraight toward them.
"They will kill me, but that may save him," she thought. "Any other wayhe is lost."
So she rode directly toward them; rode so that she crossed their front,and placed herself in their path, standing quite still, with the clothtorn from the lantern, so that its light fell full about her, as sheheld it above her head. In an instant they knew her. They were theremnant who had escaped from the carnage of Zaraila; they knew herwith all the rapid, unerring surety of hate. They gave the shrill, wildwar-shout of their tribe, and the whole mass of gaunt, dark, mountedfigures with their weapons whirling round their heads inclosed her; acloud of kites settled down with their black wings and cruel beaks uponone young silvery
-plumed falcon.
She sat unmoved, and looked up at the naked blades that flashed aboveher; there was no fear upon her face, only a calm, resolute, proudbeauty--very pale, very still in the light that gleamed on it from thelantern rays.
"I surrender," she said briefly; she had never thought to say thesewords of submission to her scorned foes; she would not have been broughtto utter them to spare her own existence. Their answer was a yell offurious delight, and their bare blades smote each other with a clash ofbrutal joy. They had her, the Frankish child who had brought shame anddestruction on them at Zaraila, and they longed to draw their steelacross the fair young throat, to plunge their lances into the bright,bare bosom, to twine her hair round their spear handles, to rend herdelicate limbs apart, as a tiger rends the antelope, to torture, tooutrage, to wreak their vengeance on her. Their chief, only, motionedtheir violence back from her, and bade them leave her untouched. At himshe looked still with the same fixed, serene, scornful resolve; she hadencountered these men so often in battle, she knew so well how rich aprize she was to him. But she had one thought alone with her; and for itshe subdued contempt, and hate, and pride, and every passion in her.
"I surrender," she said, with the same tranquillity. "I have heard thatyou have sworn by your God and your Prophet to tear me limb from limbbecause that I--a child, and a woman-child--brought you to shame and togrief on the day of Zaraila. Well, I am here; do it. You can slake yourwill on me. But that you are brave men, and that I have ever met you infair fight, let me speak one word with you first."
Through the menaces and the rage around her, fierce as the yelling ofstarving wolves around a frozen corpse, her clear, brave tones reachedthe ear of the chief in the lingua sabir that she used. He was a youngman, and his ear was caught by that tuneful voice, his eyes by thatyouthful face. He signed upward the swords of his followers, andmotioned them back as their arms were stretched to seize her, and theirshouts clamored for her slaughter.
"Speak on," he said briefly to her.
"You have sworn to take my body, sawn in two, to Ben-Ihreddin?" shepursued, naming the Arab leader whom her Spahis had driven off the fieldof Zaraila. "Well, here it is; you can take it to him; and you willreceive the piasters, and the horses, and the arms that he has promisedto whoever shall slay me. I have surrendered; I am yours. But you arebold men, and the bold are never mean; therefore, I will ask one thingof you. There is a man yonder, in my camp, condemned to death with thedawn. He is innocent. I have ridden from Algiers to-day with the orderof his release. If it is not there by sunrise he will be shot; and heis guiltless as a child unborn. My horse is worn out; he could not goanother half league. I knew that, since he had failed, my comrade wouldperish, unless I found a fresh beast or a messenger to go in my stead.I saw your band come across the plain. I knew that you would kill me,because of your oath and of your Emir's bride; but I thought that youwould have greatness enough in you to save this man who is condemned,without crime, and who must perish unless you, his foes, have pity onhim. Therefore I came. Take the paper that frees him; send your fleetestand surest with it, under a flag of truce, into our camp by the dawn;let him tell them there that I, Cigarette, gave it him. He must say noword of what you have done to me, or his white flag will not protect himfrom the vengeance of my army--and then receive your reward from yourchief, Ben-Ihreddin, when you lay my head down for his horse's hoofs totrample into the dust. Answer me--is the compact fair? Ride on with thispaper northward, and then kill me with what torments you choose."
She spoke with calm, unwavering resolve, meaning that which she utteredto its very uttermost letter. She knew that these men had thirsted forher blood; she offered it to be shed to gain for him that messenger onwhose speed his life was hanging. She knew that a price was set upon herhead; but she delivered herself over to the hands of her enemies so thatthereby she might purchase his redemption.
As they heard, silence fell upon the brutal, clamorous herd around--thesilence of amaze and of respect. The young chief listened gravely; bythe glistening of his keen, black eyes, he was surprised and moved,though, true to his teaching, he showed neither emotion as he answeredher.
"Who is this Frank for whom you do this thing?"
"He is the warrior to whom you offered life on the field of Zarailabecause his courage was as the courage of gods."
She knew the qualities of the desert character; knew how to appeal toits reverence and to its chivalry.
"And for what does he perish?" he asked.
"Because he forgot for once that he was a slave, and because he hasborne the burden of guilt that was not his own."
They were quite still now, closed around her; these ferociousplunderers, who had been thirsty a moment before to sheathe theirweapons in her body, were spellbound by the sympathy of courageoussouls, by some vague perception that there was a greatness in thislittle tigress of France, whom they had sworn to hunt down andslaughter, which surpassed all they had known or dreamed.
"And you have given yourself up to us that, by your death, you maypurchase a messenger from us for this errand?" pursued their leader. Hehad been reared as a boy in the high tenets and the pure chivalries ofthe school of Abd-el-Kader; and they were not lost in him, despite thecrimes and the desperation of his life.
She held the paper out to him, with a passionate entreaty breakingthrough the enforced calm of despair with which she had hitherto spoken.
"Cut me in ten thousand pieces with your swords, but save him, as youare brave men, as you are generous foes!"
With a single sign of his hand their leader waved them back where theycrowded around her, and leaped down from his saddle, and led the horsehe had dismounted to her.
"Maiden," he said gently, "we are Arabs, but we are not brutes. We sworeto avenge ourselves on an enemy; we are not vile enough to accept amartyrdom. Take my horse--he is the swiftest of my troop--and go you onyour errand. You are safe from me."
She looked at him in stupor; the sense of his words was not tangibleto her; she had had no hope, no thought, that they would ever deal thuswith her; all she had ever dreamed of was so to touch their hearts andtheir generosity that they would spare one from among their troop to dothe errand of mercy she had begged of them.
"You play with me!" she murmured, while her lips grew whiter and hergreat eyes larger in the intensity of her emotion. "Ah! for pity's sake,make haste and kill me, so that this only may reach him!"
The chief, standing by her, lifted her up in his sinewy arms, up on tothe saddle of his charger. His voice was very solemn, his glance wasvery gentle; all the nobility of the highest Arab nature was arousedin him at the heroism of a child, a girl, an infidel--one, in his sightabandoned and shameful among her sex.
"Go in peace," he said simply; "it is not with such as thee that wewar."
Then, and then only, as she felt the fresh reins placed in her hand, andsaw the ruthless horde around her fall back and leave her free, did sheunderstand his meaning; did she comprehend that he gave her back bothliberty and life, and, with the surrender of the horse he loved, thenoblest and most precious gift that the Arab ever bestows or everreceives. The unutterable joy seemed to blind her, and gleam upon herface like the blazing light of noon, as she turned her burning eyes fullon him.
"Ah! now I believe that thine Allah rules thee, equally with Christians!If I live, thou shalt see me back ere another night; if I die, Francewill know how to thank thee!"
"We do not do the thing that is right for the sake that men mayrecompense us," he answered her gently. "Fly to thy friend, andhereafter do not judge that those who are in arms against thee mustneeds be as the brutes that seek out whom they shall devour."
Then, with one word in his own tongue, he bade the horse bear hersouthward, and, as swiftly as a spear launched from his hand, the animalobeyed him and flew across the plains. He looked after a while, throughthe dim, tremulous darkness that seemed cleft by the rush of the gallopas the clouds are cleft by lightning, while his tribe sat silent ontheir horses in
moody, unwilling consent; savage in that they had beendeprived of prey, moved in that they were sensible of this martyrdomwhich had been offered to them.
"Verily the courage of a woman has put the best among us unto shame,"he said, rather to himself than them, as he mounted the stallion broughthim from the rear and rode slowly northward; unconscious that the thinghe had done was great, because conscious only that it was just.
And, borne by the fleetness of the desert-bred beast, she went awaythrough the heavy, bronze-hued dullness of the night. Her brain had nosense, her hands had no feeling, her eyes had no sight; the rushing ofwaters was loud on her ears, the giddiness of fasting and of fatiguesent the gloom eddying round and round like a whirlpool of shadow. Yetshe had remembrance enough left to ride on, and on, and on without onceflinching from the agonies that racked her cramped limbs and throbbed inher beating temples; she had remembrance enough to strain her blind eyestoward the east and murmur, in her terror of that white dawn, that mustsoon break, the only prayer that had been ever uttered by the lips nomother's kiss had ever touched:
"O God! keep the day back!"