Part 76 (1/2)
”A great fallacy! You must have seen many courageous men vanquished. But what would you imply by it?”
”That you can help this man, if you will.”
”Would that I could; but I can discern no means--”
”Make them.”
Even in that moment her listener smiled involuntarily at the curt, imperious tones, decisive as Napoleon's ”Partons!” before the Pa.s.sage of the Alps.
”Be certain, if I can, I will. Meantime, there is one pressing danger of which you must be my medium to warn him. He and my brother must not meet. Tell him that the latter, knowing him only as Louis Victor, and interested in the incidents of his military career, will seek him out early to-morrow morning before we quit the camp. I must leave it to him to avoid the meeting as best he may be able.”
Cigarette smiled grimly.
”You do not know much of the camp. Victor is only a bas-officier; if his officers call him up, he must come, or be thrashed like a slave for contumacy. He has no will of his own.”
Venetia gave an irrepressible gesture of pain.
”True; I forgot. Well, go and send him to me. My brother must be taken into his confidence, whatever that confidence reveals. I will tell him so. Go and send him to me; it is the last chance.”
Cigarette gave no movement of a.s.sent; all the jealous rage in her flared up afresh to stifle the n.o.ble and unselfish instincts under which she had been led during the later moments. A coa.r.s.e and impudent scoff rose to her tongue, but it remained unuttered; she could not speak it under that glance, which held the evil in her in subjection, and compelled her reluctant reverence against her will.
”Tell him to come here to me,” repeated Venetia, with the calm decision of one to whom any possibility of false interpretation of her motives never occurred, and who was habituated to the free action that accompanied an una.s.sailable rank. ”My brother must know what I know.
I shall be alone, and he can make his way hither, without doubt, un.o.bserved. Go and say this to him. You are his loyal little friend and comrade.”
”If I be, I do not see why I am to turn your lackey, Madame,” said Cigarette bitterly. ”If you want him, you can send for him by other messengers!”
Venetia Corona looked at her steadfastly, with a certain contempt in the look.
”Then your pleading for him was all insincere? Let the matter drop, and be good enough to leave my presence, which, you will remember, you entered unsummoned and undesired.”
The undeviating gentleness of the tone made the rebuke cut deeper, as her first rebuke had cut, than any sterner censure or more peremptory dismissal could have done. Cigarette stood irresolute, ashamed, filled with rage, torn by contrition, impatient, wounded, swayed by jealous rage and by the purer impulses she strove to stifle.
The Cross she had tossed down caught her sight as it glittered on the carpet strewn over the hard earth; she stooped and raised it; the action sufficed to turn the tide with her impressionable, ardent, capricious nature; she would not disgrace that.
”I will go,” she muttered in her throat; ”and you--you--O G.o.d! no wonder men love you when even I cannot hate you!”
Almost ere the words were uttered she had dashed aside the hangings before the tent entrance, and had darted out into the night air. Venetia Corona gazed after the swiftly flying figure as it pa.s.sed over the starlit ground, lost in amazement, in pity, and in regret; wondering afresh if she had only dreamed of this strange interview in the Algerian camp, which seemed to have come and gone with the blinding rapidity of lightning.
”A little tigress!” she thought; ”and yet with infinite n.o.bility, with wonderful germs of good in her. Of such a nature what a rare life might have been made! As it is, her childhood we smile at and forgive; but, great Heaven! what will be her maturity, her old age! Yet how she loves him! And she is so brave she will not show it.”
With the recollection came the remembrance of Cigarette's words as to his own pa.s.sion for herself, and she grew paler as it did so. ”G.o.d forbid he should have that pain, too!” she murmured. ”What could it be save misery for us both!”
Yet she did not thrust the fancy from her with contemptuous nonchalance as she had done every other of the many pa.s.sions she had excited and disdained; it had a great sadness and a greater terror for her. She dreaded it slightly for herself.
She wished now that she had not sent for him. But it was done; it was for sake of their old friends.h.i.+p; and she was not one to vainly regret what was unalterable, or to desert what she deemed generous and right for the considerations of prudence or of egotism.
CHAPTER x.x.xV.
ORDEAL BY FIRE.