The Marquise d'Esclignac, under the stars, interviewed the native soldier, the beggar, the man in rags, at the foot of the veranda. There was a moon as well as stars, and the man was distinctly visible in all his squalor.
"What on earth is he talking about, Robert?"
"About Sabron, marraine," said her godson laconically.
The Marquise d'Esclignac raised her lorgnon and said:
"Speak, man! What do you know about Monsieur de Sabron? See, he is covered with dirt—has leprosy, probably." But she did not withdraw. She was a great lady and stood her ground. She did not know what the word "squeamish" meant.
Listening to the man's jargon and putting many things together, Tremont at last turned to the Marquise d'Esclignac who was sternly fixing the beggar with her haughty condescension:
"Marraine, he says that Sabron is alive, in the hands of natives in a certain district where there is no travel, in the heart of the seditious tribes. He says that he has friends in a caravan of merchants who once a year pass the spot where this native village is."
"The man's a lunatic," said the Marquise d'Esclignac calmly. "Get Abimelec and put him out of the garden, Robert. You must not let Julia hear of this."
"Marraine," said Tremont quietly, "Mademoiselle Redmond has already seen this man. He has come to see her to-night."
"How perfectly horrible!" said the Marquise d'Esclignac. Then she asked rather weakly of Tremont: "Don't you think so?"
"Well, I think," said Tremont, "that the only interesting thing is the truth there may be in what this man says. If Sabron is a captive, and he knows anything about it, we must use his information for all it is worth."
"Of course," said the Marquise d'Esclignac, "of course. The war department must be informed at once. Why hasn't he gone there?"
"He has explained," said Tremont, "that the only way Sabron can be saved is that he shall be found by outsiders. One hint to his captors would end his life."
"Oh!" said the Marquise d'Esclignac. "I don't know what to do, Bob! What part can we take in this?"
Tremont pulled his mustache. Mimi had circled round the beggar, snuffing at his slippers and his robe. The man made no objection to the little creature, to the fluffy ball surrounded by a huge bow, and Mimi sat peacefully down in the moonlight, at the beggar's feet.
"Mimi seems to like him," said the Marquise d'Esclignac helplessly, "she is very particular."
"She finds that he has a serious and convincing manner," said Tremont.
Now the man, who had been a silent listener to the conversation, said in fairly comprehensible English to the Marquise d'Esclignac:
"If the beautiful grandmother could have seen the Capitaine de Sabron on the night before the battle—"
"Grandmother, indeed!" exclaimed the marquise indignantly. "Come, Mimi! Robert, finish with this creature and get what satisfaction you can from him. I believe him to be an impostor; at any rate, he does not expect me to mount a camel or to lead a caravan to the rescue."
Tremont put Mimi in her arms; she folded her lorgnon and sailed majestically away, like a highly decorated pinnace with silk sails, and Tremont, in the moonlight, continued to talk with the sincere and convincing Hammet Abou.
Now the young girl had his letters and her own to read. They were sweet and sad companions and she laid them side by side. She did not weep, because she was not of the weeping type; she had hope.
Her spirits remained singularly even. Madame de la Maine had given her a great deal to live on.
"Julia, what have you done to Robert?"
"Nothing, ma tante"
"He has quite changed. This excursion to Africa has entirely altered him. He is naturally so gay," said the Marquise d'Esclignac. "Have you refused him, Julia?"
"Ma tante, he has not asked me to be the Duchess de Tremont."
Her aunt's voice was earnest.
"Julia, do you wish to spoil your life and your chances of happiness? Do you wish to mourn for a dead soldier who has never been more than an acquaintance? I won't even say a friend."
What she said sounded logical.
"Ma tante, I do not think of Monsieur de Sabron as dead, you know."
"Well, in the event that he may be, my dear Julia."
"Sometimes," said the girl, drawing near to her aunt and taking the older lady's hand quietly and looking in her eyes, "sometimes, ma tante, you are cruel."
The marquise kissed her and sighed:
"Robert's mother will be so unhappy!"
"But she has never seen me, ma tante."
"She trusts my taste, Julia."
"There should be more than 'taste' in a matter of husband and wife, ma tante."
After a moment, in which the Marquise d'Esclignac gazed at the bougainvillea and wondered how any one could admire its crude and vulgar color, Miss Redmond asked:
"Did you ever think that the Duc de Tremont was in love?"
Turning shortly about to her niece, her aunt stared at her.
"In love, my dear!"
"With Madame de la Maine."
The arrival of Madame de la Maine had been a bitter blow to the Marquise d'Esclignac. The young woman was, however, much loved in Paris and quite in the eye of the world. There was no possible reason why the Marquise d'Esclignac should avoid her.
"You have been hearing gossip, Julia."
"I have been watching a lovely woman," said the girl simply, "and a man. That's all. You wouldn't want me to marry a man who loves another woman, ma tante, when the woman loves him and when I love another man?"
She laughed and kissed her aunt's cheek.
"Let us think of the soldier," she murmured, "let us think just of him, ma tante, will you not?"
The Marquise d'Esclignac struck her colors.
In the hallway of the villa, in a snowy gibbeh, (and his clean-washed appearance was much in his favor) Hammet Abou waited to talk with the "grandmother" and the excellency.
He pressed both his hands to his forehead and his breast as the ladies entered the vestibule. There was a stagnant odor of myrrh and sandalwood in the air. The marble vestibule was cool and dark, the walls hung with high-colored stuffs, the windows drawn to keep out the heat.
The Duc de Tremont and Madame de la Maine came out of the salon together. Tremont nodded to the Arab.
"I hope you are a little less—" and he touched his forehead smiling, "to-day, my friend."
"I am as God made me, Monsieur."
"What have you got to-day?" asked Julia Redmond anxiously, fixing her eager eyes upon Hammet.
It seemed terrible to her that this man should stand there with a vital secret and that they should not all be at his feet. He glanced boldly around at them.
"There are no soldiers here?"
"No, no, you may speak freely."
The man went forward to Tremont and put a paper in his hands, unfolding it like a chart.
"This is what monsieur asked me for—a plan of the battle-field. This is the battle-field, and this is the desert."
Tremont took the chart. On the page was simply a round circle, drawn in red ink, with a few Arabian characters and nothing else. Hammet Abou traced the circle with his fingers tipped with henna.
"That was the battle, Monsieur."
"But this is no chart, Hammet Abou."
The other continued, unmoved:
"And all the rest is a desert, like this."
Tremont, over the man's snowy turban, glanced at the others and shrugged. Every one but Julia Redmond thought he was insane. She came up to him where he stood close to Tremont. She said very slowly in French, compelling the man's dark eyes to meet hers:
"You don't wish to tell us, Hammet Abou, anything more. Am I not right? You don't wish us to know the truth."
Now it was the American pitted against the Oriental. The Arab, with deference, touched his forehead before her.
"If I made a true plan," he said coolly, "your excellency could give it to-morrow to the government."
"Just what should be done, Julia," said the Marquise d'Esclignac, in English. "This man should be arrested at once."
"Ma tante," pleaded Julia Redmond.
She felt as though a slender thread was between her fingers, a thread which led her to the door of a labyrinth and which a rude touch might cause her to lose forever.
"If you had money would you start out to find Monsieur de Sabron at once?"
"It would cost a great deal, Excellency."
"You shall have all the money you need. Do you think you would be able to find your way?"
"Yes, Excellency."
The Duc de Tremont watched the American girl. She was bartering with an Arabian for the salvation of a poor officer. What an enthusiast! He had no idea she had ever seen Sabron more than once or twice in her life. He came forward.
"Let me talk to this man," he said with authority, and Julia Redmond did not dispute him.
In a tone different from the light and mocking one that he had hitherto used to the Arab, Tremont began to ask a dozen questions severely, and in his answers to the young Frenchman, Hammet Abou began to make a favorable impression on every one save the Marquise d'Esclignac, who did not understand him. There was a huge bamboo chair on a dais under a Chinese pagoda, and the Marquise d'Esclignac took the chair and sat upright as on a throne. Mimi, who had just been fed, came in tinkling her little bells and fawned at the sandals on Hammet Abou's bare feet. After talking with the native, Tremont said to his friends:
"This man says that if he joins a Jewish caravan, which leaves here to-morrow at sundown, he will be taken with these men and leave the city without suspicion, but he must share the expenses of the whole caravan. The expedition will not be without danger; it must be entered into with great subtlety. He is either," said Tremont, "an impostor or a remarkable man."
"He is an impostor, of course," murmured the Marquise d'Esclignac. "Come here, Mimi."
Tremont went on:
"Further he will not disclose to us. He has evidently some carefully laid plan for rescuing Sabron."
There was a pause. Hammet Abou, his hands folded peacefully across his breast, waited. Julia Redmond waited. The Comtesse de la Maine, in her pretty voice, asked quickly:
"But, mes amis, there is a man's life at stake! Why do we stand here talking in the antechamber? Evidently the war office has done all it can for the Capitaine de Sabron. But they have not found him. Whether this fellow is crazy or not, he has a wonderful hypothesis."
A brilliant look of gratitude crossed Julia Redmond's face. She glanced at the Comtesse de la Maine.
"Ah, she's got the heart!" she said to herself. "I knew it." She crossed the hall to the Comtesse de la Maine and slipped her arm in hers.
"Has Monsieur de Sabron no near family?"
"No," said the Marquise d'Esclignac from her throne. "He is one of those unfamilied beings who, when they are once taken into other hearts are all the dearer because of their orphaned state."
Her tone was not unkind. It was affectionate.
"Now, my good man," she said to Hammet Abou, in a language totally incomprehensible to him, "money is no object in this question, but what will you do with Monsieur de Sabron if you find him? He may be an invalid, and the ransom will be fabulous."
The Comtesse de la Maine felt the girl's arm in hers tremble. Hammet Abou answered none of these questions, for he did not understand them. He said quietly to Tremont:
"The caravan starts to-morrow at sundown and there is much to do."
Tremont stood pulling his mustache. He looked boyish and charming, withal serious beyond his usual habit. His eyes wandered over to the corner where the two women stood together.
"I intend to go with you, Hammet Abou," said he slowly, "if it can be arranged. Otherwise this expedition does not interest me."
Two women said:
"Oh, heavens!" at once.
Robert de Tremont heard the note of anxiety in the younger voice alone. He glanced at the Comtesse de la Maine.
"You are quite right, Madame," he said, "a man's life is at stake and we stand chaffing here. I know something of what the desert is and what the natives are. Sabron would be the first to go if it were a question of a brother officer."
The Marquise d'Esclignac got down from her throne, trembling. Her eyes were fixed upon her niece.
"Julia," she began, and stopped.
Madame de la Maine said nothing.
"Robert, you are my godson, and I forbid it. Your mother—"
"—is one of the bravest women I ever knew," said her godson. "My father was a soldier."
Julia withdrew her arm from the Comtesse de la Maine as though to leave her free.
"Then you two girls," said the Marquise d'Esclignac, thoroughly American for a moment, "must forbid him to go." She fixed her eyes sternly upon her niece, with a glance of entreaty and reproach. Miss Redmond said in a firm voice:
"In Monsieur de Tremont's case I should do exactly what he proposes."
"But he is risking his life," said the Marquise d'Esclignac. "He is not even an intimate friend of Monsieur de Sabron!"
Tremont said, smiling:
"You tell us that he has no brother, marraine. Eh bien, I will pass as his brother."
A thrill touched Julia Redmond's heart. She almost loved him. If, as her aunt had said, Sabron had been out of the question...
"Madame de la Maine," said the Marquise d'Esclignac, her hands shaking, "I appeal to you to divert this headstrong young man from his purpose."
The Comtesse de la Maine was the palest of the three women. She had been quietly looking at Tremont and now a smile crossed her lips that had tears back of it—one of those beautiful smiles that mean so much on a woman's face. She was the only one of the three who had not yet spoken. Tremont was waiting for her. Hammet Abou, with whom he had been in earnest conversation, was answering his further questions. The Marquise d'Esclignac shrugged, threw up her hands as though she gave up all questions of romance, rescue and disappointed love and foolish girls, and walked out thoroughly wretched, Mimi tinkling at her heels. The Comtesse de la Maine said to Julia:
"Ma chère, what were the words of the English song you sang last night—the song you told me was a sort of prayer. Tell me the words slowly, will you?"
They walked out of the vestibule together, leaving Hammet Abou and Tremont alone.
Pitchouné, who might have been considered as one of the infinitesimal atoms in the economy of the universe, ran over the sands away from his master. He was an infinitesimal dot on the desert's face. He was only a small Irish terrier in the heart of the Sahara. His little wiry body and his color seemed to blend with the dust. His eyes were dimmed by hunger and thirst and exhaustion, but there was the blood of a fighter in him and he was a thoroughbred. Nevertheless, he was running away. It looked very much like it. There was no one to comment on his treachery; had there been, Pitchouné would not have run far.
It was not an ordinary sight to see on the Sahara—a small Irish terrier going as fast as he could.
Pitchouné ran with his nose to the ground. There were several trails for a dog to follow on that apparently untrodden page of desert history. Which one would he choose? Without a scent a dog does nothing. His nostrils are his instinct. His devotion, his faithfulness, his intelligence, his heart—all come through his nose. A man's heart, they say, is in his stomach—or in his pocket. A dog's is in his nostrils. If Pitchouné had chosen the wrong direction, this story would never have been written. Michette did not give birth to the sixth puppy, in the stables of the garrison, for nothing. Nor had Sabron saved him on the night of the memorable dinner for nothing.
With his nose flat to the sands Pitchouné smelt to east and to west, to north and south, took a scent to the east, decided on it—for what reason will never be told—and followed it. Fatigue and hunger were forgotten as hour after hour Pitchouné ran across the Sahara. Mercifully, the sun had been clouded by the precursor of a wind-storm. The air was almost cool. Mercifully, the wind did not arise until the little terrier had pursued his course to the end.
There are occasions when an animal's intelligence surpasses the human. When, toward evening of the twelve hours that it had taken him to reach a certain point, he came to a settlement of mud huts on the borders of an oasis, he was pretty nearly at the end of his strength. The oasis was the only sign of life in five hundred miles. There was very little left in his small body. He lay down, panting, but his bright spirit was unwilling just then to leave his form and hovered near him. In the religion of Tatman dogs alone have souls.
Pitchouné panted and dragged himself to a pool of water around which the green palms grew, and he drank and drank. Then the little desert wayfarer hid himself in the bushes and slept till morning. All night he was racked with convulsive twitches, but he slept and in his dreams, he killed a young chicken and ate it. In the morning he took a bath in the pool, and the sun rose while he swam in the water.
If Sabron or Miss Redmond could have seen him he would have seemed the epitome of heartless egoism. He was the epitome of wisdom. Instinct and wisdom sometimes go closely together. Solomon was only instinctive when he asked for wisdom. The epicurean Lucullus, when dying, asked for a certain Nile fish cooked in wine.
Pitchouné shook out his short hairy body and came out of the oasis pool into the sunlight and trotted into the Arabian village.
* * * * * * *
Fatou Anni parched corn in a brazier before her house. Her house was a mud hut with yellow walls. It had no roof and was open to the sky. Fatou Anni was ninety years old, straight as a lance—straight as one of the lances the men of the village carried when they went to dispute with white people. These lances with which the young men had fought, had won them the last battle. They had been victorious on the field.
Fatou Anni was the grandmother of many men. She had been the mother of many men. Now she parched corn tranquilly, prayerfully.
"Allah! that the corn should not burn; Allah! that it should be sweet; Allah! that her men should be always successful."
She was the fetish of the settlement. In a single blue garment, her black scrawny breast uncovered, the thin veil that the Fellaheen wear pushed back from her face, her fine eyes were revealed and she might have been a priestess as she bent over her corn!
"Allah! Allah Akbar!"
Rather than anything should happen to Fatou Anni, the settlement would have roasted its enemies alive, torn them in shreds. Some of them said that she was two hundred years old. There was a charmed ring drawn around her house. People supposed that if any creature crossed it uninvited, it would fall dead.
The sun had risen for an hour and the air was still cool. Overhead, the sky, unstained by a single cloud, was blue as a turquoise floor, and against it, black and portentous, flew the vultures. Here and there the sun-touched pools gave life and reason to the oasis.
Fatou Anni parched her corn. Her barbaric chant was interrupted by a sharp bark and a low pleading whine.
She had never heard sounds just like that. The dogs of the village were great wolf-like creatures. Pitchouné's bark was angelic compared with theirs. He crossed the charmed circle drawn around her house, and did not fall dead, and stood before her, whining. Fatou Anni left her corn, stood upright and looked at Pitchouné. To her the Irish terrier was an apparition. The fact that he had not fallen dead proved that he was beloved of Allah. He was, perhaps, a genie, an afrit.
Pitchouné fawned at her feet. She murmured a line of the Koran. It did not seem to affect his demonstrative affection. The woman bent down to him after making a pass against the Evil Eye, and touched him, and Pitchouné licked her hand.
Fatou Anni screamed, dropped him, went into the house and made her ablutions. When she came out Pitchouné sat patiently before the parched corn, and he again came crawling to her.
The Arabian woman lived in the last hut of the village. She could satisfy her curiosity without shocking her neighbors. She bent down to scrutinize Pitchouné's collar. There was a sacred medal on it with sacred inscriptions which she could not read. But as soon as she had freed him this time, Pitchouné tore himself away from her, flew out of the sacred ring and disappeared. Then he ran back, barking appealingly; he took the hem of her dress in his mouth and pulled her. He repeatedly did this and the superstitious Arabian believed herself to be called divinely. She cautiously left the door-step, her veil falling before her face, came out of the sacred ring, followed to the edge of the berry field. From there Pitchouné sped over the desert; then he stopped and looked back at her. Fatou Anni did not follow, and he returned to renew his entreaties. When she tried to touch him he escaped, keeping at a safe distance. The village began to stir. Blue and yellow garments fluttered in the streets.
"Allah Akbar," Fatou Anni murmured, "these are days of victory, of recompense."
She gathered her robe around her and, stately and impressively, started toward the huts of her grandsons. When she returned, eight young warriors, fully armed, accompanied her. Pitchouné sat beside the parched corn, watching the brazier and her meal. Fatou Anni pointed to the desert.
She said to the young men, "Go with this genie. There is something he wishes to show us. Allah is great. Go."
* * * * * * *
When the Capitaine de Sabron opened his eyes in consciousness, they encountered a square of blazing blue heaven. He weakly put up his hand to shade his sight, and a cotton awning, supported by four bamboo poles, was swiftly raised over his head. He saw objects and took cognizance of them. On the floor in the low doorway of a mud hut sat three little naked children covered with flies and dirt. He was the guest of Fatou Anni. These were three of her hundred great-great-grandchildren. The babies were playing with a little dog. Sabron knew the dog but could not articulate his name. By his side sat the woman to whom he owed his life. Her veil fell over her face. She was braiding straw. He looked at her intelligently. She brought him a drink of cool water in an earthen vessel, with the drops oozing from its porous sides. The hut reeked with odors which met his nostrils at every breath he drew. He asked in Arabic:
"Where am I?"
"In the hut of victory," said Fatou Anni.
Pitchouné overheard the voice and came to Sabron's side. His master murmured:
"Where are we, my friend?"
The dog leaped on his bed and licked his face. Fatou Anni, with a whisk of straw, swept the flies from him. A great weakness spread its wings above him and he fell asleep.
Days are all alike to those who lie in mortal sickness. The hours are intensely colorless and they slip and slip and slip into painful wakefulness, into fever, into drowsiness finally, and then into weakness.
The Capitaine de Sabron, although he had no family to speak of, did possess, unknown to the Marquise d'Esclignac, an old aunt in the provinces, and a handful of heartless cousins who were indifferent to him. Nevertheless he clung to life and in the hut of Fatou Anni fought for existence. Every time that he was conscious he struggled anew to hold to the thread of life. Whenever he grasped the thread he vanquished, and whenever he lost it, he went down, down.
Fatou Anni cherished him. He was a soldier who had fallen in the battle against her sons and grandsons. He was a man and a strong one, and she despised women. He was her prey and he was her reward and she cared for him; as she did so, she became maternal.
His eyes which, when he was conscious, thanked her; his thin hands that moved on the rough blue robe thrown over him, the devotion of the dog—found a responsive chord in the great-grandmother's heart. Once he smiled at one of the naked, big-bellied great-great-grandchildren. Beni Hassan, three years old, came up to Sabron with his finger in his mouth and chattered like a bird. This proved to Fatou Anni that Sabron had not the Evil Eye. No one but the children were admitted to the hut, but the sun and the flies and the cries of the village came in without permission, and now and then, when the winds arose, he could hear the stirring of the palm trees.
Sabron was reduced to skin and bone. His nourishment was insufficient, and the absence of all decent care was slowly taking him to death. It will never be known why he did not die.
Pitchouné took to making long excursions. He would be absent for days, and in his clouded mind Sabron thought the dog was reconnoitering for him over the vast pink sea without there—which, if one could sail across as in a ship, one would sail to France, through the walls of mellow old Tarascon, to the château of good King René; one would sail as the moon sails, and through an open window one might hear the sound of a woman's voice singing. The song, ever illusive and irritating in its persistency, tantalized his sick ears.
Sabron did not know that he would have found the château shut had he sailed there in the moon. It was as well that he did not know, for his wandering thought would not have known where to follow, and there was repose in thinking of the Château d'Esclignac.
It grew terribly hot. Fatou Anni, by his side, fanned him with a fan she had woven. The great-great-grandchildren on the floor in the mud fought together. They quarreled over bits of colored glass. Sabron's breath came panting. Without, he heard the cries of the warriors, the lance-bearers—he heard the cries of Fatou Anni's sons who were going out to battle. The French soldiers were in a distant part of the Sahara and Fatou Anni's grandchildren were going out to pillage and destroy. The old woman by his side cried out and beat her breast. Now and then she looked at him curiously, as if she saw death on his pale face. Now that all her sons and grandsons had gone, he was the only man left in the village, as even boys of sixteen had joined the raid. She wiped his forehead and gave him a potion that had healed her husband after his body had been pierced with arrows. It was all she could do for a captive.
Toward sundown, for the first time Sabron felt a little better, and after twenty-four hours' absence, Pitchouné whined at the hut door, but would not come in. Fatou Anni called on Allah, left her patient and went out to see what was the matter with the dog. At the door, in the shade of a palm, stood two Bedouins.
It was rare for the caravan to pass by Beni Medinet. The old woman's superstition foresaw danger in this visit. Her veil before her face, her gnarled old fingers held the fan with which she had been fanning Sabron. She went out to the strangers. Down by the well a group of girls in garments of blue and yellow, with earthen bottles on their heads, stood staring at Beni Medinet's unusual visitors.
"Peace be with you, Fatou Anni," said the older of the Bedouins.
"Are you a cousin or a brother that you know my name?" asked the ancient woman.
"Every one knows the name of the oldest woman in the Sahara," said Hammet Abou, "and the victorious are always brothers."
"What do you want with me?" she asked, thinking of the helplessness of the village.
Hammet Abou pointed to the hut
"You have a white captive in there. Is he alive?"
"What is that to you, son of a dog?"
"The mother of many sons is wise," said Hammet Abou portentously, "but she does not know that this man carries the Evil Eye. His dog carries the Evil Eye for his enemies. Your people have gone to battle. Unless this man is cast out from your village, your young men, your grandsons and your sons will be destroyed."
The old woman regarded him calmly.
"I do not fear it," she said tranquilly. "We have had corn and oil in plenty. He is sacred."
For the first time she looked at his companion, tall and slender and evidently younger.
"You favor the coward Franks," she said in a high voice. "You have come to fall upon us in our desolation."
She was about to raise the peculiar wail which would have summoned to her all the women of the village. The dogs of the place had already begun to show their noses, and the villagers were drawing near the people under the palms. Now the young man began to speak swiftly in a language that she did not understand, addressing his comrade. The language was so curious that the woman, with the cry arrested on her lips, stared at him. Pointing to his companion, Hammet Abou said:
"Fatou Anni, this great lord kisses your hand. He says that he wishes he could speak your beautiful language. He does not come from the enemy; he does not come from the French. He comes from two women of his people by whom the captive is beloved. He says that you are the Mother of sons and grandsons, and that you will deliver this man up into our hands in peace."
The narrow fetid streets were beginning to fill with the figures of women, their beautifully colored robes fluttering in the light, and there were curious eager children who came running, naked save for the bangles upon their arms and ankles.
Pointing to them, Hammet Abou said to the old sage:
"See, you are only women here, Fatou Anni. Your men are twenty miles farther south. We have a caravan of fifty men all armed, Fatou Anni. They camp just there, at the edge of the oasis. They are waiting. We come in peace, old woman; we come to take away the Evil Eye from your door; but if you anger us and rave against us, the dogs and women of your town will fall upon you and destroy every breast among you."
She began to beat her palms together, murmuring:
"Allah! Allah!"
"Hush," said the Bedouin fiercely, "take us to the captive, Fatou Anni."
Fatou Anni did not stir. She pulled aside the veil from her withered face, so that her great eyes looked out at the two men. She saw her predicament, but she was a subtle Oriental. Victory had been in her camp and in her village; her sons and grandsons had never been vanquished. Perhaps the dying man in the hut would bring the Evil Eye! He was dying, anyway—he would not live twenty-four hours. She knew this, for her ninety years of life had seen many eyes close on the oasis under the hard blue skies.
To the taller of the two Bedouins she said in Arabic:
"Fatou Anni is nearly one hundred years old. She has borne twenty children, she has had fifty grandchildren; she has seen many wives, many brides and many mothers. She does not believe the sick man has the Evil Eye. She is not afraid of your fifty armed men. Fatou Anni is not afraid. Allah is great. She will not give up the Frenchman because of fear, nor will she give him up to any man. She gives him to the women of his people."
With dignity and majesty and with great beauty of carriage, the old woman turned and walked toward her hut and the Bedouins followed her.
A week after the caravan of the Duc de Tremont left Algiers, Julia Redmond came unexpectedly to the villa of Madame de la Maine at an early morning hour. Madame de la Maine saw her standing on the threshold of her bedroom door.
"Chère Madame," Julia said, "I am leaving to-day with a dragoman and twenty servants to go into the desert."
Madame de la Maine was still in bed. At nine o'clock she read her papers and her correspondence.
"Into the desert—alone!"
Julia, with her cravache in her gloved hands, smiled sweetly though she was very pale. "I had not thought of going alone, Madame," she replied with charming assurance, "I knew you would go with me."
On a chair by her bed was a wrapper of blue silk and lace. The comtesse sprang up and then thrust her feet into her slippers and stared at Julia.
"What are you going to do in the desert?"
"Watch!"
"Yes, yes!" nodded Madame de la Maine. "And your aunt?"
"Deep in a bazaar for the hospital," smiled Miss Redmond.
Madame de la Maine regarded her slender friend with admiration and envy. "Why hadn't I thought of it?" She rang for her maid.
"Because your great-grandfather was not a pioneer!" Miss Redmond answered.
* * * * * * *
The sun which, all day long, held the desert in its burning embrace, went westward in his own brilliant caravan.
"The desert blossoms like a rose, Thérèse."
"Like a rose?" questioned Madame de la Maine.
She was sitting in the door of her tent; her white dress and her white hat gleamed like a touch of snow upon the desert's face. Julia Redmond, on a rug at her feet, and in her khaki riding-habit the color of the sand, blended with the desert as though part of it. She sat up as she spoke.
"How divine! See!" She pointed to the stretches of the Sahara before her. On every side they spread away as far as the eye could reach, suave, mellow, black, undulating finally to small hillocks with corrugated sides, as a group of little sand-hills rose softly out of the sea-like plain. "Look, Thérèse!"
Slowly, from ocher and gold the color changed; a faint wave-like blush crept over the sands, which reddened, paled, faded, warmed again, took depth and grew intense like flame.
"The heart of a rose! N'est-ce pas, Thérèse?"
"I understand now what you mean," said madame. The comtesse was not a dreamer. Parisian to the tips of her fingers, elegant, fine, she had lived a conventional life. Thérèse had been taught to conceal her emotions. She had been taught that our feelings matter very little to any one but ourselves. She had been taught to go lightly, to avoid serious things. Her great-grandmother had gone lightly to the scaffold, exquisitely courteous till the last.
"I ask your pardon if I jostled you in the tumbrel," the old comtesse had said to her companion on the way to the guillotine. "The springs of the cart are poor"—and she went up smiling.
In the companionship of the American girl, Thérèse de la Maine had thrown off restraint. If the Marquise d'Esclignac had felt Julia's influence, Thérèse de la Maine, being near her own age, echoed Julia's very feeling.
Except for their dragoman and their servants, the two women were alone in the desert.
Smiling at Julia, Madame de la Maine said: "I haven't been so far from the Rue de la Paix in my life."
"How can you speak of the Rue de la Paix, Thérèse?"
"Only to show you how completely I have left it behind."
Julia's eyes were fixed upon the limitless sands, a sea where a faint line lost itself in the red west and the horizon shut from her sight everything that she believed to be her life.
"This is the seventh day, Thérèse!"
"Already you are as brown as an Arab, Julia!"
"You as well, ma chère amie!"
"Robert does not like dark women," said the Comtesse de la Maine, and rubbed her cheek. "I must wear two veils."
"Look, Thérèse!"
Across the face of the desert the glow began to withdraw its curtain. The sands suffused an ineffable hue, a shell-like pink took possession, and the desert melted and then grew colder—it waned before their eyes, withered like a tea-rose.
"Like a rose!" Julia murmured, "smell its perfume!" She lifted her head, drinking in with delight the fragrance of the sands.
"Ma chère Julia," gently protested the comtesse, lifting her head, "perfume, Julia!" But she breathed with her friend, while a sweetly subtle, intoxicating odor, as of millions and millions of roses, gathered, warmed, kept, then scattered on the airs of heaven, intoxicating her.
To the left were the huddled tents of their attendants. No sooner had the sun gone down than the Arabs commenced to sing—a song that Julia had especially liked.
"Love is like a sweet perfume,
It comes, it escapes.
When it's present, it intoxicates;
When it's a memory, it brings tears.
Love is like a sweet breath,
It comes and it escapes."
The weird music filled the silence of the silent place. It had the evanescent quality of the wind that brought the breath of the sand-flowers. The voices of the Arabs, not unmusical, though hoarse and appealing, cried out their love-song, and then the music turned to invocation and to prayer.
The two women listened silently as the night fell, their figures sharply outlined in the beautiful clarity of the eastern night.
Julia stood upright. In her severe riding-dress, she was as slender as a boy. She remained looking toward the horizon, immovable, patient, a silent watcher over the uncommunicative waste.
"Perhaps," she thought, "there is nothing really beyond that line, so fast blotting itself into night!—and yet I seem to see them come!"
Madame de la Maine, in the door of her tent, immovable, her hands clasped around her knees, looked affectionately at the young girl before her. Julia was a delight to her. She was carried away by her, by her frank simplicity, and drawn to her warm and generous heart. Madame de la Maine had her own story. She wondered whether ever, for any period of her conventional life, she could have thrown everything aside and stood out with the man she loved.
Julia, standing before her, a dark slim figure in the night—isolated and alone—recalled the figurehead of a ship, its face toward heaven, pioneering the open seas.
* * * * * * *
Julia watched, indeed. On the desert there is the brilliant day, a passionate glow, and the nightfall. They passed the nights sometimes listening for a cry that should hail an approaching caravan, sometimes hearing the wild cry of the hyenas, or of a passing vulture on his horrid flight. Otherwise, until the camp stirred with the dawn and the early prayer-call sounded "Allah! Allah! Akbar!" into the stillness, they were wrapped in complete silence.
If it had not been for her absorbing thought of Sabron, Julia would have reveled in the desert and the new experiences. As it was, its charm and magic and the fact that he traveled over it helped her to endure the interval.
In the deep impenetrable silence she seemed to hear her future speak to her. She believed that it would either be a wonderfully happy one, or a hopelessly withered life.
"Julia, I can not ride any farther!" exclaimed the comtesse.
She was an excellent horsewoman and had ridden all her life, but her riding of late had consisted of a canter in the Bois de Boulogne at noon, and it was sometimes hard to follow Julia's tireless gallops toward an ever-disappearing goal.
"Forgive me," said Miss Redmond, and brought her horse up to her friend's side.
It was the cool of the day, of the fourteenth day since Tremont had left Algiers and the seventh day of Julia's excursion. A fresh wind blew from the west, lifting their veils from their helmets and bringing the fragrance of the mimosa into whose scanty forest they had ridden. The sky paled toward sunset, and the evening star, second in glory only to the moon, hung over the west.
Although both women knew perfectly well the reason for this excursion and its importance, not one word had been spoken between them of Sabron and Tremont other than a natural interest and anxiety.
They might have been two hospital nurses awaiting their patients.
They halted their horses, looking over toward the western horizon and its mystery. "The star shines over their caravan," mused Madame de la Maine (Julia had not thought Thérèse poetical), "as though to lead them home."
Madame de la Maine turned her face and Julia saw tears in her eyes. The Frenchwoman's control was usually perfect, she treated most things with mocking gaiety. The bright softness of her eyes touched Julia.
"Thérèse!" exclaimed the American girl. "It is only fourteen days!"
Madame de la Maine laughed. There was a break in her voice. "Only fourteen days," she repeated, "and any one of those days may mean death!"
She threw back her head, touched her stallion, and flew away like light, and it was Julia who first drew rein.
"Thérèse! Thérèse! We can not go any farther!"
"Lady!" said Azrael. He drew his big black horse up beside them. "We must go back to the tents."
Madame de la Maine pointed with her whip toward the horizon. "It is cruel! It ever recedes!"
* * * * * * *
"Tell me, Julia, of Monsieur de Sabron," asked Madame de la Maine abruptly.
"There is nothing to tell, Thérèse."
"You don't trust me?"
"Do you think that, really?"
In the tent where Azrael served them their meal, under the ceiling of Turkish red with its Arabic characters in clear white, Julia and Madame de la Maine sat while their coffee was served them by a Syrian servant.
"A girl does not come into the Sahara and watch like a sentinel, does not suffer as you have suffered, ma chère, without there being something to tell."
"It is true," said Miss Redmond, "and would you be with me, Thérèse, if I did not trust you? And what do you want me to tell?" she added naively.
The comtesse laughed.
"Vous êtes charmante, Julia!"
"I met Monsieur de Sabron," said Julia slowly, "not many months ago in Palestine. I saw him several times, and then he went away."
"And then?" urged Madame de la Maine eagerly.
"He left his little dog, Pitchouné, with me, and Pitchouné ran after his master, to Marseilles, flinging himself into the water, and was rescued by the sailors. I wrote about it to Monsieur de Sabron, and he answered me from the desert, the night before he went into battle."
"And that's all?" urged Madame de la Maine.
"That's all," said Miss Redmond. She drank her coffee.
"You tell a love story very badly, ma chère."
"Is it a love story?"
"Have you come to Africa for charity? Voyons!"
Julia was silent. A great reserve seemed to seize her heart, to stifle her as the poverty of her love story struck her. She sat turning her coffee-spoon between her fingers, her eyes downcast. She had very little to tell. She might never have any more to tell. Yet this was her love story. But the presence of Sabron was so real, and she saw his eyes clearly looking upon her as she had seen them often; heard the sound of his voice that meant but one thing—and the words of his letter came back to her. She remembered her letter to him, rescued from the field where he had fallen. She raised her eyes to the Comtesse de la Maine, and there was an appeal in them.
The Frenchwoman leaned over and kissed Julia. She asked nothing more. She had not learned her lessons in discretion to no purpose.
At night they sat out in the moonlight, white as day, and the radiance over the sands was like the snow-flowers. Wrapped in their warm coverings, Julia and Thérèse de la Maine lay on the rugs before the door of their tent, and above their heads shone the stars so low that it seemed as though their hands could snatch them from the sky. At a little distance their servants sat around the dying fire, and there came to them the plaintive song of Azrael, as he led their singing:
"And who can give again the love of yesterday?
Can a whirlwind replace the sand after it is scattered?
What can heal the heart that Allah has smited?
Can the mirage form again when there are no eyes to see?"
"I was married," said Madame de la Maine, "when I was sixteen."
Julia drew a little nearer and smiled to herself in the shadow.
This would be a real love story.
"I had just come out of the convent. We lived in an old château, older than the history of your country, ma chère, and I had no dot. Robert de Tremont and I used to play together in the allées of the park, on the terrace. When his mother brought him over, when she called on my grandmother, he teased me horribly because the weeds grew between the stones of our terrace. He was very rude.
"Throughout our childhood, until I was sixteen, we teased each other and fought and quarreled."
"This is not a love-affair, Thérèse," said Miss Redmond.
"There are all kinds, ma chère, as there are all temperaments," said Madame de la Maine. "At Assumption—that is our great feast, Julia—the Feast of Mary—it comes in August—at Assumption, Monsieur de la Maine came to talk with my grandmother. He was forty years old, and bald—Bob and I made fun of his few hairs, like the children in the Holy Bible."
Julia put out her hand and took the hand of Madame de la Maine gently. She was getting so far from a love-affair.
"I married Monsieur de la Maine in six weeks," said Thérèse.
"Oh," breathed Miss Redmond, "horrible!"
Madame de la Maine pressed Julia's hand.
"When it was decided between my grandmother and the comte, I escaped at night, after they thought I had gone to bed, and I went down to the lower terrace where the weeds grew in plenty, and told Robert. Somehow, I did not expect him to make fun, although we always joked about everything until this night. It was after nine o'clock."
The comtesse swept one hand toward the desert. "A moon like this—only not like this—ma chère. There was never but that moon to me for many years.
"I thought at first that Bob would kill me,—he grew so white and terrible. He seemed suddenly to have aged ten years. I will never forget his cry as it rang out in the night. 'You will marry that old man when we love each other?' I had never known it until then.
"We were only children, but he grew suddenly old. I knew it then," said Madame de la Maine intensely, "I knew it then."
She waited for a long time. Over the face of the desert there seemed to be nothing but one veil of light. The silence grew so intense, so deep; the Arabs had stopped singing, but the heart fairly echoed, and Julia grew meditative—before her eyes the caravan she waited for seemed to come out of the moonlit mist, rocking, rocking—the camels and the huddled figures of the riders, their shadows cast upon the sand.
And now Tremont would be forever changed in her mind. A man who had suffered from his youth, a warm-hearted boy, defrauded of his early love. It seemed to her that he was a charming figure to lead Sabron.
"Thérèse," she murmured, "won't you tell me?"
"They thought I had gone to bed," said the Comtesse de la Maine, "and I went back to my room by a little staircase, seldom used, and I found myself alone, and I knew what life was and what it meant to be poor."
"But," interrupted Julia, horrified, "girls are not sold in the twentieth century."
"They are sometimes in France, my dear. Robert was only seventeen. His father laughed at him, threatened to send him to South America. We were victims."
"It was the harvest moon," continued Madame de la Maine gently, "and it shone on us every night until my wedding-day. Then the duke kept his threat and sent Robert out of France. He continued his studies in England and went into the army of Africa."
There was a silence again.
"I did not see him until last year," said Madame de la Maine, "after my husband died."
Under the sun, under the starry nights Tremont, with his burden, journeyed toward the north. The halts were distasteful to him, and although he was forced to rest he would rather have been cursed with sleeplessness and have journeyed on and on. He rode his camel like a Bedouin; he grew brown like the Bedouins and under the hot breezes, swaying on his desert ship, he sank into dreamy, moody and melancholy reveries, like the wandering men of the Sahara, and felt himself part of the desolation, as they were.
"What will be, will be!" Hammet Abou said to him a hundred times, and Tremont wondered: "Will Charles live to see Algiers?"
Sabron journeyed in a litter carried between six mules, and they traveled slowly, slowly. Tremont rode by the sick man's side day after day. Not once did the soldier for any length of time regain his reason. He would pass from coma to delirium, and many times Tremont thought he had ceased to breathe. Slender, emaciated under his covers, Sabron lay like the image of a soldier in wax—a wounded man carried as a votive offering to the altars of desert warfare.
At night as he lay in his bed in his tent, Tremont and Hammet Abou cooled his temples with water from the earthen bottles, where the sweet ooze stood out humid and refreshing on the damp clay. They gave him acid and cooling drinks, and now and then Sabron would smile on Tremont, calling him "petit frère", and Tremont heard the words with moisture in his eyes, remembering what he had said to the Marquise d'Esclignac about being Sabron's brother. Once or twice the soldier murmured a woman's name, but Tremont could not catch it, and once he said to the duke:
"Sing! Sing!"
The Frenchman obeyed docilely, humming in an agreeable barytone the snatches of song he could remember, La Fille de Madame Angot, Il Trovatore; running then into more modern opera, La Veuve Joyeuse. But the lines creased in Sabron's forehead indicated that the singer had not yet found the music which haunted the memory of the sick man.
"Sing!" he would repeat, fixing his hollow eyes on his companion, and Tremont complied faithfully. Finally, his own thoughts going back to early days, he hummed tunes that he and a certain little girl had sung at their games in the allées of an old château in the valley of the Indre.
"Sonnez les matines
Ding—din—don,"
and other children's melodies.
In those nights, on that desolate way, alone, in a traveling tent, at the side of a man he scarcely knew, Robert de Tremont learned serious lessons. He had been a soldier himself, but his life had been an inconsequent one. He had lived as he liked, behind him always the bitterness of an early deception. But he had been too young to break his heart at seventeen. He had lived through much since the day his father exiled him to Africa.
Thérèse had become a dream, a memory around which he did not always let his thoughts linger. When he had seen her again after her husband's death and found her free, he was already absorbed in the worldly life of an ambitious young man. He had not known how much he loved her until in the Villa des Bougainvilleas he had seen and contrasted her with Julia Redmond.
All the charm for him of the past returned, and he realized that, as money goes, he was poor—she was poorer.
The difficulties of the marriage made him all the more secure in his determination that nothing should separate him again from this woman.
By Sabron's bed he hummed his little insignificant tunes, and his heart longed for the woman. When once or twice on the return journey they had been threatened by the engulfing sand-storm, he had prayed not to die before he could again clasp her in his arms.
Sweet, tantalizing, exquisite with the sadness and the passion of young love, there came to him the memories of the moonlight nights on the terrace of the old château. He saw her in the pretty girlish dresses of long ago, the melancholy droop of her quivering mouth, her bare young arms, and smelled the fragrance of her hair as he kissed her. So humming his soothing melodies to the sick man, with his voice softened by his memories, he soothed Sabron.
Sabron closed his eyes, the creases in his forehead disappeared as though brushed away by a tender hand. Perhaps the sleep was due to the fact that, unconsciously, Tremont slipped into humming a tune which Miss Redmond had sung in the Villa des Bougainvilleas, and of whose English words De Tremont was quite ignorant.
"Will he last until Algiers, Hammet Abou?"
"What will be, will be, Monsieur!" Abou replied.
"He must," De Tremont answered fiercely. "He shall."
He became serious and meditative on those silent days, and his blue eyes, where the very whites were burned, began to wear the far-away mysterious look of the traveler across long distances. During the last sand-storm he stood, with the camels, round Sabron's litter, a human shade and shield, and when the storm ceased, he fell like one dead, and the Arabs pulled off his boots and put him to bed like a child.
One sundown, as they traveled into the after-glow with the East behind them, when Tremont thought he could not endure another day of the voyage, when the pallor and waxness of Sabron's face were like death itself, Hammet Abou, who rode ahead, cried out and pulled up his camel short. He waved his arm.
"A caravan, Monsieur!"
In the distance they saw the tents, like lotus leaves, scattered on the pink sands, and the dark shadows of the Arabs and the couchant beasts, and the glow of the encampment fire.
"An encampment, Monsieur!"
Tremont sighed. He drew the curtain of the litter and looked in upon Sabron, who was sleeping. His set features, the growth of his uncut beard, the long fringe of his eyes, his dark hair upon his forehead, his wan transparency—with the peace upon his face, he might have been a figure of Christ waiting for sepulture. Tremont cried to him: "Sabron, mon vieux Charles, réveille-toi! We are in sight of human beings!"
But Sabron gave no sign that he heard or cared.
Throughout the journey across the desert, Pitchouné had ridden at his will and according to his taste, sometimes journeying for the entire day perched upon Tremont's camel. He sat like a little figurehead or a mascot, with ears pointed northward and his keen nose sniffing the desert air. Sometimes he would take the same position on one of the mules that carried Sabron's litter, but his favorite post was within the litter, at his master's feet. There he would lie hour after hour, with his soft eyes fixed with understanding sympathy upon Sabron's face.
He was, as he had been to Fatou Anni, a kind of fetish: the caravan adored him. Now from his position at Sabron's feet, he crawled up and licked his master's hand.
"Charles!" Tremont cried, and lifted the soldier's hand.
Sabron opened his eyes. He was sane. The glimmer of a smile touched his lips. He said Tremont's name, recognized him. "Are we home?" he asked weakly. "Is it France?"
Tremont turned and dashed away a tear.
He drew the curtains of the litter and now walked beside it, his legs feeling like cotton and his heart beating.
As they came up toward the encampment, two people rode out to meet them, two women in white riding-habits, on stallions, and as the evening breeze fluttered the veils from their helmets, they seemed to be flags of welcome.
Under his helmet Tremont was red and burned. He had a short rough growth of beard.
Thérèse de la Maine and Julia Redmond rode up. Tremont recognized them, and came forward, half staggering. He looked at Julia and smiled, and pointed with his left hand toward the litter; but he went directly up to Madame de la Maine, who sat immovable on her little stallion. Tremont seemed to gather her in his arms. He lifted her down to him.
Julia Redmond's eyes were on the litter, whose curtains were stirring in the breeze. Hammet Abou, with a profound salaam, came forward to her.
"Mademoiselle," he said respectfully, "he lives. I have kept my word."
Pitchouné sprang from the litter and ran over the sands to Julia Redmond. She dismounted from her horse alone and called him: "Pitchouné! Pitchouné!" Kneeling down on the desert, she stooped to caress him, and he crouched at her feet, licking her hands.
When Sabron next opened his eyes he fancied that he was at home in his old room in Rouen, in the house where he was born, in the little room in which, as a child, dressed in his dimity night-gown, he had sat up in his bed by candle-light to learn his letters from the cookery book.
The room was snowy white. Outside the window he heard a bird sing, and near by, he heard a dog's smothered bark. Then he knew that he was not at home or a child, for with the languor and weakness came his memory. A quiet nurse in a hospital dress was sitting by his bed, and Pitchouné rose from the foot of the bed and looked at him adoringly.
He was in a hospital in Algiers.
"Pitchouné," he murmured, not knowing the name of his other companion, "where are we, old fellow?"
The nurse replied in an agreeable Anglo-Saxon French:
"You are in a French hospital in Algiers, sir, and doing well."
Tremont came up to him.
"I remember you," Sabron said. "You have been near me a dozen times lately."
"You must not talk, mon vieux."
"But I feel as though I must talk a great deal. Didn't you come for me into the desert?"
Tremont, healthy, vigorous, tanned, gay and cheerful, seemed good-looking to poor Sabron, who gazed up at him with touching gratitude.
"I think I remember everything. I think I shall never forget it," he said, and lifted his hand feebly. Robert de Tremont took it. "Haven't we traveled far together, Tremont?"
"Yes," nodded the other, affected, "but you must sleep now. We will talk about it over our cigars and liquors soon."
Sabron smiled faintly. His clear mind was regaining its balance, and thoughts began to sweep over it cruelly fast. He looked at his rescuer, and to him the other's radiance meant simply that he was engaged to Miss Redmond. Of course that was natural. Sabron tried to accept it and to be glad for the happiness of the man who had rescued him. But as he thought this, he wondered why he had been rescued and shut his eyes so that Tremont might not see his weakness. He said hesitatingly:
"I am haunted by a melody, a tune. Could you help me? It won't come."
"It's not the Marseillaise?" asked the other, sitting down by his side and pulling Pitchouné's ears.
"Oh, no!"
"There will be singing in the ward shortly. A Red Cross nurse comes to sing to the patients. She may help you to remember."
Sabron renounced in despair. Haunting, tantalizing in his brain and illusive, the notes began and stopped, began and stopped. He wanted to ask his friend a thousand questions. How he had come to him, why he had come to him, how he knew... He gave it all up and dozed, and while he slept the sweet sleep of those who are to recover, he heard the sound of a woman's voice in the distance, singing, one after another, familiar melodies, and finally he heard the Kyrie Eleison, and to its music Sabron again fell asleep.
The next day he received a visitor. It was not an easy matter to introduce visitors to his bedside, for Pitchouné objected. Pitchouné received the Marquise d'Esclignac with great displeasure.
"Is he a thoroughbred?" asked the Marquise d'Esclignac.
"He has behaved like one," replied the officer.
There was a silence. The Marquise d'Esclignac was wondering what her niece saw in the pale man so near still to the borders of the other world.
"You will be leaving the army, of course," she murmured, looking at him interestedly.
"Madame!" said the Capitaine de Sabron, with his blood—all that was in him—rising to his cheeks.
"I mean that France has done nothing for you. France did not rescue you and you may feel like seeking a more—another career."
Sabron could not reply. Her ribbons and flowers and jewels shook in his eyes like a kaleidoscope. His flush had made him more natural. In his invalid state, with his hair brushed back from his fine brow, there was something spiritual and beautiful about him. The Marquise d'Esclignac looked on a man who had been far and who had determined of his own accord to come back. She said more gently, putting her hand affectionately over his:
"Get strong, Monsieur—get well. Eat all the good things we are making for you. I dare say that the army can not spare you. It needs brave hearts."
Sabron was so agitated after her departure that the nurse said he must receive no more visits for several days, and he meditated and longed and thought and wondered, and nearly cursed the life that had brought him back to a world which must be lonely for him henceforth.
When he sat up in bed he was a shadow. He had a book to read and read a few lines of it, but he put it down as the letters blurred. He was sitting so, dreaming and wondering how true or how false it was that he had seen Julia Redmond come several times to his bedside during the early days of his illness here in the hospital. Then across his troubled mind suddenly came the words that he had heard her sing, and he tried to recall them. The Red Cross nurse who so charitably sang in the hospital came to the wards and began her mission. One after another she sang familiar songs.
"How the poor devils must love it!" Sabron thought, and he blessed her for her charity.
How familiar was her voice! But that was only because he was so ill. But he began to wonder and to doubt, and across the distance came the notes of the tune, the melody of the song that had haunted him for many months:
"God keep you safe, my love,
All through the night;
Rest close in His encircling arms
Until the light.
My heart is with you as I kneel to pray,
Good night! God keep you in His care alway.
"Thick shadows creep like silent ghosts
About my head;
I lose myself in tender dreams
While overhead
The moon comes stealing through the window-bars,
A silver sickle gleaming 'mid the stars.
"For I, though I am far away,
Feel safe and strong,
To trust you thus, dear love—and yet,
The night is long.
I say with sobbing breath the old fond prayer,
Good night! Sweet dreams! God keep you everywhere!"
When she had finished singing there were tears on the soldier's cheeks and he was not ashamed. Pitchouné, who remembered the tune as well, crept up to him and laid his head on his master's hand. Sabron had just time to wipe away the tears when the Duc de Tremont came in.
"Old fellow, do you feel up to seeing Miss Redmond for a few moments?"
* * * * * * *
When she came in he did not know whether he most clearly saw her simple summer dress with the single jewel at her throat, her large hat that framed her face, or the gentle lovely face all sweetness and sympathy. He believed her to be the future Duchesse de Tremont.
"Monsieur de Sabron, we are all so glad you are getting well."
"Thank you, Mademoiselle."
He seemed to look at her from a great distance, from the distance to the end of which he had so wearily been traveling. She was lovelier than he had dreamed, more rarely sweet and adorable.
"Did you recognize the little song, Monsieur?"
"It was good of you to sing it."
"This is not the first time I have seen you, Monsieur de Sabron. I came when you were too ill to know of it."
"Then I did not dream," said the officer simply.
He was as proud as he was poor. He could only suppose her engaged to the Duc de Tremont. It explained her presence here. In his wildest dreams he could not suppose that she had followed him to Africa. Julia, on her part, having done an extraordinary and wonderful thing, like every brave woman, was seized with terror and a sudden cowardice. Sabron, after all, was a stranger. How could she know his feelings for her? She spent a miserable day. He was out of all danger; in a fortnight he might leave the hospital. She did not feel that she could see him again as things were. The Comtesse de la Maine had returned to Paris as soon as Tremont came in from the desert.