Part 72 (1/2)

”I was not interested to inquire.”

”Ah! you never liked him! Odd enough to leave without reason or apology?”

”He had his reasons, doubtless.”

”And made his apology to you?”

”Oh, yes!”

Her brother looked at her earnestly; there was a care upon her face new to him.

”Are you well, my darling?” he asked her. ”Has the sun been too hot, or la bise too cold for you?”

She rose, and gathered her cashmeres about her, and smiled somewhat wearily her adieu to him.

”Both, perhaps. I am tired. Good-night.”

CHAPTER x.x.xIII.

THE GIFT OF THE CROSS.

One of the most brilliant of Algerian autumnal days shone over the great camp in the south. The war was almost at an end for a time; the Arabs were defeated and driven desertwards; hostilities irksome, hara.s.sing, and annoying, like all guerrilla warfare, would long continue; but peace was virtually established, and Zaraila had been the chief glory that had been added by the campaign to the flag of Imperial France. The kites and the vultures had left the bare bones by thousands to bleach upon the sands, and the hillocks of brown earth rose in crowds where those, more cared for in death, had been hastily thrust beneath the brown crust of the earth. The dead had received their portion of reward--in the jackal's teeth, in the crow's beak, in the worm's caress. And the living received theirs in this glorious, rose-flecked, glittering autumn morning, when the breath of winter made the air crisp and cool, but the ardent noon still lighted with its furnace glow the hillside and the plain.

The whole of the Army of the South was drawn up on the immense level of the plateau to witness the presentation of the Cross of the Legion of Honor.

It was full noon. The sun shone without a single cloud on the deep, sparkling azure of the skies. The troops stretched east and west, north and south, formed up in three sides of one vast, ma.s.sive square.

The battalions of Zouaves and of Zephyrs; the brigade of Cha.s.seurs d'Afrique; the squadrons of Spahis; the regiments of Tirailleurs and Turcos; the batteries of Flying Artillery, were all ma.s.sed there, rea.s.sembled from the various camps and stations of the southern provinces to do honor to the day--to do honor in especial to one by whom the glory of the Tricolor had been saved unstained.

The red, white, and blue of the standards, the bra.s.s of the eagle guidons; the gray, tossed manes of the chargers; the fierce, swarthy faces of the soldiery; the scarlet of the Spahis' cloaks, and the snowy folds of the Demi-Cavalry turbans; the s.h.i.+ne of the sloped lances, and the glisten of the carbine barrels, fused together in one sea of blended color, flashed into a million prismatic hues against the somber shadow of the sunburned plains and the clear blue of the skies.

It had been a sanguinary, fruitless, cruel campaign; it had availed nothing, except to drive the Arabs away from some hundred leagues of useless and profitless soil; hundreds of French soldiers had fallen by disease, and drought, and dysentery, as well as by shot and saber, and were unrecorded save on the books of the bureaus; unlamented, save, perhaps, in some little nestling hamlet among the great, green woods of Normandy, or some wooden hut among the olives and the vines of Provence, where some woman, toiling till sunset among the fields, or praying before some wayside saint's stone niche, would give a thought to the far-off and devouring desert that had drawn down beneath its sands the head that used to lie upon her bosom, cradled as a child's, or caressed as a lover's.

But the drums rolled out their long, deep thunder over the water; and the shot-torn standards fluttered gayly in the breeze blowing from the west; and the clear, full music of the French bands echoed away to the dim, distant, terrible south, where the desert-scorch and the desert-thirst had murdered their bravest and best--and the Army was en fete. En fete, for it did honor to its darling. Cigarette received the Cross.

Mounted on her own little, bright bay, Etoile-Filante, with tricolor ribbons flying from his bridle and among the glossy fringes of his mane, the Little One rode among her Spahis. A scarlet kepi was set on her thick, silken curls, a tricolor sash was knotted round her waist, her wine-barrel was slung on her left hip, her pistols thrust in her ceinturon, and a light carbine held in her hand with the b.u.t.t-end resting on her foot. With the sun on her childlike brunette face, her eyes flas.h.i.+ng like brown diamonds in the light, and her marvelous horsemans.h.i.+p showing its skill in a hundred daring tricks, the little Friend of the Flag had come hither among her half-savage warriors, whose red robes surrounded her like a sea of blood.

And on a sea of blood she, the Child of War, had floated; never sinking in that awful flood, but buoyant ever above its darkest waves; catching ever some ray of sunlight upon her fair young head, and being oftentimes like a star of hope to those over whom its dreaded waters closed.

Therefore they loved her, these grim, slaughterous, and l.u.s.tful warriors, to whom no other thing of womanhood was sacred; by whom in their wrath or their crime no friend and no brother was spared, whose law was license, and whose mercy was murder. They loved her, these brutes whose greed was like the tiger's, whose hate was like the devouring flame; and any who should have harmed a single lock of her curling hair would have had the spears of the African Mussulmans buried by the score in his body. They loved her, with the one fond, triumphant love these vultures of the army ever knew; and to-day they gloried in her with fierce, pa.s.sionate delight. To-day she was to her wild wolves of Africa what Jeanne of Vaucouleurs was to her brethren of France. And today was the crown of her young life.

In the fair, slight, girlish body of the child-soldier there lived a courage as daring as Danton's, a patriotism as pure as Vergniaud's, a soul as aspiring as Napoleon's. Untaught, untutored, uninspired by poet's words or patriot's bidding, spontaneous as the rising and the blossoming of some wind-sown, sun-fed flower, there was, in this child of the battle, the spirit of genius, the desire to live and to die greatly. To be forever a beloved tradition in the army of her country, to have her name remembered in the roll-call; to be once shrined in the love and honor of France, Cigarette--full of the boundless joys of life that knew no weakness and no pain; strong as the young goat, happy as the young lamb, careless as the young flower tossing on the summer breeze--Cigarette would have died contentedly. And now, living, some measure of this desire had been fulfilled to her, some breath of this imperishable glory had pa.s.sed over her. France had heard the story of Zaraila; from the Throne a message had been pa.s.sed to her; what was far beyond all else to her, her own Army of Africa had crowned her, and thanked her, and adored her as with one voice, and wheresoever she pa.s.sed the wild cheers rang through the roar of musketry, as through the silence of sunny air, and throughout the regiments every sword would have sprung from its scabbard in her defense if she had but lifted her hand and said one word--”Zaraila!”

The Army looked on her with delight now. In all that mute, still, immovable ma.s.s that stretched out so far, in such gorgeous array, there was not one man whose eyes did not turn on her, whose pride did not center in her--their Little One, who was so wholly theirs, and who had been under the shadow of their Flag ever since the curls, so dark now, had been yellow as wheat in her infancy. There was not one in all those hosts whose eyes did not turn on her with grat.i.tude, and reverence, and delight in her as their own.

Not one; except where her own keen, rapid glance, far-seeing as the hawk's, lighted on the squadrons of the Cha.s.seurs d'Afrique, and found among their ranks one face, grave, weary, meditative, with a gaze that seemed looking far away from the glittering scene to a grave that lay unseen leagues beyond, behind the rocky ridge.

”He is thinking of the dead man, not of me,” thought Cigarette; and the first taint of bitterness entered into her cup of joy and triumph, as such bitterness enters into most cups that are drunk by human lips. A whole army was thinking of her, and of her alone; and there was a void in her heart, a thorn in her crown, because one among that mighty ma.s.s--one only--gave her presence little heed, but thought rather of a lonely tomb among the desolation of the plains.

But she had scarce time even for that flash of pain to quiver in impotent impatience through her. The trumpets sounded, the salvoes of artillery pealed out, the lances and the swords were carried up in salute; on the ground rode the Marshal of France, who represented the imperial will and presence, surrounded by his staff, by generals of division and brigade, by officers of rank, and by some few civilian riders. An aid galloped up to her where she stood with the corps of her Spahis and gave her his orders. The Little One nodded carelessly, and touched Etoile-Filante with the p.r.i.c.k of the spur. Like lightning the animal bounded forth from the ranks, rearing and plunging, and swerving from side to side, while his rider, with exquisite grace and address, kept her seat like the little semi-Arab that she was, and with a thousand curves and bounds cantered down the line of the gathered troops, with the west wind blowing from the far-distant sea, and fanning her bright cheeks till they wore the soft, scarlet flush of the glowing j.a.ponica flower. And all down the ranks a low, hoa.r.s.e, strange, longing murmur went--the buzz of the voices which, but that discipline suppressed them, would have broken out in wors.h.i.+ping acclamations.