In the shadow of his tent, at midnight he whom she had rescued stoodlooking down at a bowed, stricken form before him with an exceeding,yearning pity in his gaze.
The words had at length been spoken that had lifted from him the burdenof another's guilt; the hour at last had come in which his eyes hadmet the eyes of his friend, without a hidden thought between them. Thesacrifice was ended, the martyrdom was over; henceforth this doom ofexile and of wretchedness would be but as a hideous dream; henceforthhis name would be stainless among men, and the desire of his heart wouldbe given him. And in this hour of release the strongest feeling in himwas the sadness of an infinite compassion; and where his brother wasstretched prostrate in shame before him, Cecil stooped and raised himtenderly.
"Say no more," he murmured. "It has been well for me that I havesuffered these things. For yourself--if you do indeed repent, and feelthat you owe me any debt, atone for it, and pay it, by letting your ownlife be strong in truth and fair in honor."
And it seemed to him that he himself had done no great or righteousthing in that servitude for another's sake, whose yoke was now liftedoff him for evermore. But, looking out over the sleeping camp where oneyoung child alone lay in a slumber that never would be broken, hisheart ached with the sense of some great, priceless gift received, andundeserved, and cast aside; even while in the dreams of passion thatnow knew its fruition possible, and the sweetness of communion with thefriend whose faith had never forsaken him, he retraced the years of hisexile, and thanked God that it was thus with him at the end.
CHAPTER THE LAST.
AT REST.
Under the green, springtide leafage of English woodlands, made musicalwith the movement and the song of innumerable birds that had their nestsamong the hawthorn boughs and deep, cool foliage of elm and beech, anold horse stood at pasture. Sleeping--with the sun on his gray, silkenskin, and the flies driven off with a dreamy switch of his tail, andthe grasses odorous about his hoofs, with dog-violets, and cowslips, andwild thyme--sleeping, yet not so surely but at one voice he started,and raised his head with all the eager grace of his youth, and gave amurmuring noise of welcome and delight. He had known that voice in aninstant, though for so many years his ear had never thrilled to it;Forest King had never forgotten. Now, scarce a day passed but what itspoke to him some word of greeting or of affection, and his black, softeyes would gleam with their old fire, because its tone brought backa thousand memories of bygone victory--only memories now, when ForestKing, in the years of age, dreamed out his happy life under the fragrantshade of the forest wealth of Royallieu.
With his arm over the horse's neck, the exile, who had returned to hisbirthright, stood silent a while, gazing out over the land on whichhis eyes never wearied of resting; the glad, cool, green, dew-freshenedearth that was so sweet and full of peace, after the scorched andblood-stained plains, whose sun was as flame, and whose breath was aspestilence. Then his glance came back and dwelt upon the face besidehim, the proud and splendid woman's face that had learned its softnessand its passion from him alone.
"It was worth banishment to return," he murmured to her. "It was worththe trials that I bore to learn the love that I have known----"
She, looking upward at him with those deep, lustrous, imperial eyes thathad first met his own in the glare of the African noon, passed her handover his lips with a gesture of tenderness far more eloquent from herthan from women less proud and less prone to weakness.
"Ah, hush! when I think of what her love was, how worthless looks myown! How little worthy of the fate it finds! What have I done that everyjoy should become mine, when she----"
Her mouth trembled, and the phrase died unfinished; strong as her lovehad grown, it looked to her unproven and without desert, beside thatwhich had chose to perish for his sake. And where they stood with thefuture as fair before them as the light of the day around them, he bowedhis head, as before some sacred thing, at the whisper of the child whohad died for him. The memories of both went back to a place in a desertland where the folds of the Tricolor drooped over one little graveturned westward toward the shores of France--a grave made where thebeat of drum, and the sound of moving squadrons, and the ring of thetrumpet-call, and the noise of the assembling battalions could beheard by night and day; a grave where the troops, as they passed it by,saluted and lowered their arms in tender reverence, in faithful, unaskedhomage, because beneath the Flag they honored there was carved in thewhite stone one name that spoke to every heart within the army she hadloved, one name on which the Arab sun streamed as with a martyr's glory:
"CIGARETTE,
"ENFANT DE L'ARMEE, SOLDAT DE LA FRANCE."
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