A Soldier of the Legion

by C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

  CHAPTER VIII

  ON THE STATION PLATFORM

  They dined together in a glass-fronted restaurant opening out on to theterrace, and Sanda was sweet, but absent-minded. Max could guess whereher thoughts were, and almost hated Stanton. How could the man let somewretched engagement, with a few French officers, keep him from this poorlittle girl who adored him? How could Stanton let her go alone to meether unnatural father (it was thus that Max thought of Colonel DeLisle)when as her one-time guardian he might have taken her to Sidi-bel-Abbeshimself, and persuaded his old friend, DeLisle, to be lenient. All thatMax had heard against the explorer came back to him, and he was ready tobelieve Stanton the cruel and selfish egoist that gossip sketched him.Poor Sanda!

  Miss DeLisle had meant to finish her long journey as she had begun it,second-class; but Max persuaded the girl to let him take for her afirst-class ticket, with _coupe lit_, in a compartment for women, as faras the station where at dawn they must change for Sidi-bel-Abbes. Shewas surprised at the smallness of the price, but did not suspect thatshe owed her new friend anything more substantial than gratitude for allthe trouble he had taken for her comfort.

  Max himself went second-class, packed in with seven men who would havethought opening the window a symptom of insanity.

  One of the seven was the man with whom Sanda DeLisle had chatted onboard the _General Morel_ at dinner. He was the hero of the compartment,for he was going to Sidi-bel-Abbes to fight a boxing match with thechampion of the Legion, a soldier named Pelle. Four of the travellers(three men of Algiers and a youth of Sidi-bel-Abbes) were accompanyingthe French boxer, having met him at the ship.

  Dozing and waking, Max heard excited talk of _la boxe_ and the comingevent. He was vaguely interested, for he had been the champion boxer ofhis regiment--a hundred years ago!--but he was too weary in body andmind to care much about a match at Sidi-bel-Abbes. When he was nottrying to sleep, he was mentally composing a letter to his colonel, withdiscreet explanations, and a justification of his forthcoming immediateresignation from the army: or else a written explanation of his farewellto Billie, following up the telegram; or thinking out businessdirections to Edwin Reeves. Suddenly, however, as he was dully wonderinghow best to send the heiress to New York without going back himself, aname spoken almost in his ear had the blinding effect of a searchlightupon his brain.

  "La petite Josephine Delatour," said the young man who lived atBel-Abbes. He was evidently answering some question which Max had notcaught.

  "The handsomest, would you call her?" disputed a commercial traveller,who also knew the town. "Ah, _that_, no! she is too strange, toobizarre."

  "But her strangeness is her charm, _mon ami_! She has eyes of topaz,like those of a young panther. If she were not bizarre, would she--alittle nobody at all--be strong enough to draw the smart young officersafter her? There are girls in Bel-Abbes, daughters of rich merchants,who are jealous of the secretary at the Hotel Splendide. Before shecame, it was only the officers of high rank who messed there. Now it isalso the lieutenants. It is not the food, but Mademoiselle Josephine whoattracts!"

  "Once upon a time she thought me and my comrades good enough for aflirtation," said the commercial traveller. "But she looks higher inthese days, especially since her namesake in the Spahis joined hisregiment at Bel-Abbes. She told me they had found out that they werecousins."

  "The lieutenant doesn't go about boasting of the relationship," laughedthe youth from Bel-Abbes. "He comes to my father's cafe, which is thebest in the town, as you well know. If any one speaks to him of _lapetite_, he laughs: and it is a laugh she would not like."

  Max's ears tingled. He felt as if he were eavesdropping. He wished tohear more, though at the same time it seemed that he had no right tolisten. Luckily or unluckily, the boxer broke in and changed thesubject.

  Early in the morning, passengers for Sidi-bel-Abbes had to descend fromthe train going on to Oran, and take a slow one, on a branch line. Itwas a very slow one, indeed, and it was also late, so that it would benearly midday and the hour for _dejeuner_ when they reached theirdestination. Max saw himself inquiring for Mademoiselle Delatour just atthe moment when the admirers of her topaz eyes were assembling fortheir meal. He did not like the prospect; but said nothing of his ownworries to Sanda, whom he joined on changing trains. Now the meetingwith her father was so near, she had to hold her courage with bothhands. She had realized for the first time that she would not know whereto look for Colonel DeLisle. He might be in barracks. She could hardlygo to him there. He would perhaps be angry, should a girl arrive,announcing herself as his daughter, at the house where he had rooms. Thethird alternative was the Hotel Splendide, where he took his meals. Hemight already be there when she reached Sidi-bel-Abbes. What a place fora first meeting! Max agreed, sympathetically. It seemed that everythingat Sidi-bel-Abbes must happen at the Hotel Splendide!

  "If you could only be with me and help, as you have helped me allalong!" she sighed. "Though of course you can't. If Sir Knight hadcome---- But I couldn't easily explain _you_ to my father. At least, notjust at present."

  Max saw this, even more clearly than she saw it. It would indeed bedifficult for a strange new daughter to explain in a few brief words astill more strange young man to such a person as Colonel DeLisle. If hewere to be introduced or even mentioned at all, Max felt that it wouldhave to be later, and must depend on the word of the redoubtablecolonel. He suggested to Sanda as discreetly as he could that he wouldkeep out of her way at the hotel, unless she summoned him. But, headded, he would have to be there for a short time at all events, becausehis business was taking him precisely to the Hotel Splendide.

  "The person you're looking for is staying there?" asked Sanda.

  "She's the secretary of the hotel." Max hesitated an instant, then,realizing from the words he had overheard how conspicuous a characterJosephine Delatour evidently was, he thought best to tell Sandasomething more of his story than he had told her yet. He sketched theversion, vindicating his foster-mother, which he had given to BillieBrookton and the Reeveses--a version which all the world at home would,he believed, soon hear.

  "So that is it?" said Sanda. "You're giving up everything to this girl.Do you think she will take it?"

  "I wish I were as sure of what I shall do next as I am sure of that,"laughed Max. If there had ever been any doubt in his mind as toJosephine's attitude, it had vanished while listening to the talk of herin the train.

  "I know what you ought to do next," Sanda said. "You ought to be whatyou have been--a soldier."

  "I shall always be, at heart, I think," Max confessed. "But soldier lifeis over for me, so far as I can see ahead."

  "I wonder----" she began eagerly, then stopped abruptly.

  "You wonder--what?"

  "I daren't say it."

  "Please dare."

  "I mustn't. It would be wrong. I might be horribly sorry afterward. Andyet----"

  She silenced herself with a little gasp. He urged her no more, butstared almost unseeingly out of the window at the roofed farmhouses, andthe yellow hills, like reclaimed desert, with bright patches ofcultivation, and a far, floating background of the blue Thesalamountains.

  * * * * *

  Sidi-bel-Abbes at last! and the train slowing down along the platform ofan insignificant station, which might have been in the South of France,save for a few burnoused Arabs. There was a green glimpse of olives andpalms, and taller plane trees, under a serene sky; and in the distancethe high fortified walls of yellow and dark gray stone, which ringed inthe northernmost stronghold of the Foreign Legion.

  "Sidi-bel-Abbes!" a deep voice shouted musically from one end of theplatform to the other, as the train came in; and the name thrilledthrough Max Doran's veins as it had not ceased to thrill sinceyesterday. More strongly than ever he had the impression that some greatthings would happen to him here, or begin to happen, and carry him onelsewhere, beyond those yellow hills. Deep down in him excitementstirred in the dark, like a da
zed traveller up before the dawn, gropingfor the door through which he must pass to begin his journey. All themore quietly, however, because of what he secretly felt, Max tookSanda's bag and his own, and gave her a hand for the high step from thetrain to platform. There they became units in a crowd strange to see ata little provincial station; a crowd to be met at few other places inthe world.

  The French boxer was not the only guest of importance this train broughtto Sidi-bel-Abbes. At the far end of the platform, where the first-classcarriages had stopped, a group of officers in full dress were collectedround a man who wore civilian clothes awkwardly, as an old soldierwears them. There was the sensationally splendid costume of the Spahis;scarlet cloak and full trousers; the beautiful pale blue of theChasseurs d'Afrique, and a plainer uniform which Max guessed to be thatof the Foreign Legion. The boxer had his committee _de reception_ also;a dozen or more dark, fat, loud-talking proprietors of cafes, ortradefolk keen on "_le sport_." These, and the lounging Arabs, mighthave interested strangers to Sidi-bel-Abbes, if there had been nothingbetter worth attention. But owing to the lateness of the train, it hadcome in almost simultaneously with another made up of windowless wagonsfor men, horses or freight, which had not yet discharged its load. Outfrom the wide doorway of the long car labelled "_32 hommes, 6 chevaux_,"was streaming an extraordinary procession; tall, bearded men with thehigh cheek-bones and sad, wide-apart eyes of the Slav: a blond,round-cheeked boy whose shy yet stolid face could only have been bred inGermany, or Alsace; sharp-featured, rat-eyed fellows who might have beencollected at Montmartre or in a Marseilles slum; others who werenondescripts of no complexion and no expression; waifs from anywhere; abrown-skinned Spaniard and an Italian or two; a Negro with thesophisticated look of a New York "darkee"; a melancholy, hooded Arab,and a fierce-faced Moor; types utterly at variance, yet with onelikeness which bound them together like a convict's chain: weariness andstains of long, hard travelling, which thrust the few well-dressed mendown to the level of the shabbiest. Some were almost middle aged; somewere youths hardly yet at the regulation enlistment age of eighteen; afew one might take for broken-down gentlemen; more who looked likeworkmen out of a job, and one or two unmistakably old soldiers,eager-eyed as lost dogs who had found their way home: a strangegathering of individuals to find stumbling out of a freight train at acountry station of a French colony; but this was Sidi-bel-Abbes,headquarters of _La Legion Etrangere_: and as the tired, dirty mentumbled out on to the platform, everybody stared openly as a corporalwith a high kepi, a buttoned-back blue overcoat, and loose, red trouserstucked into military boots, formed the crew into lines of four.

  Even the officers at the end of the platform gazed at the soiledscarecrows who had to be made into soldiers: for this beingSidi-bel-Abbes, there was no difficulty in guessing that thetwenty-eight or thirty men of six or seven nations were recruits of theLegion of Foreigners. The draggled throng was quietly indicated to thevisitor in civilian clothes, who nodded appreciatively and then turnedaway. But the boxer's brigade explained the unfortunate wretches soloudly and unflatteringly to their guest that haggard faces flushed andquivering lips stiffened; while at the gateway of exit, a motionless rowof non-commissioned officers, watching for deserters, regarded "_lesbleus_" critically, yet indifferently.

  Max, whose quick imagination made him almost painfully sensitive forothers, felt hot and sorry for the men herded together by misfortune. Hehad read sensational stories of the Foreign Legion, and found himselfhypnotized into looking for brutal jowls of escaped murderers, or facesof pallid aristocrats in torn evening clothes, splashed with blood.Among these men of mystery or sorrow there were, however, few startlingtypes which caught the eye. But one man--young, tall, straight as anarrow--running the gauntlet of jokes and stares with fierce, represseddefiance, turned suddenly to look at Max and Sanda.

  Where to place him in life, Max could not tell. He might be prince orpeasant by birth, since prince and peasant are akin at heart, and everremote from the middle-classes as from Martians. He wore a soft, grayfelt hat, smeared with coal-dust from the engine. The collar of hisdusty black overcoat was turned up; it actually looked like an eveningcoat. His trousers were black too, and Max had an impression of patentleather shoes glittering through dust. But these details were onlyaccessories to the picture, and interesting because of the wearer'sface. It was dark as that of a Spaniard from Andalusia, with the high,proud features of an Indian. It had been clean-shaven a few days ago;and from two haggard hollows a pair of wild black eyes flashed oneglance at Max--the only man who had not seemed to stare. Face and lookwere unforgettable. It seemed to Max that some appeal had been flung tohim. He could hardly keep himself from striding after the tall figure,to ask: "What is it you want me to do?" And Sanda also had beenimpressed. He heard her murmur under her breath, "Poor man! Whatwonderful eyes!"

  Nobody moved from the platform until the corporal had called the roll ofnames--German, French, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Arab--and had marchedhis batch of recruits briskly through the guarded gate. Max would havehurried Sanda out directly behind them, before the crowd could secureall the queer, old-fashioned cabs which were waiting, but at that momentthe smart group of officers moved forward. Having shown their guest oneof the sights of Sidi-bel-Abbes, they evidently expected to takeprecedence of the townspeople, who gave no sign of disputing theirright. Max, following the example of others and resisting an impulse tosalute, stood back with his companion to let the uniforms pass. Sanda,pink with excitement, was as usual all unconscious of self, and vividlyinterested both in recruits and officers. The latter, especially theyoung ones, were equally interested in the pretty, well-dressed girl, astranger in Sidi-bel-Abbes and the one woman on the platform.

  Max saw the polite but admiring glances, and would have liked to drawher further away. He bent down to whisper a suggestion, but Sanda didnot hear. Her face, her whole personality, had undergone one of thoseswift changes characteristic of her.

  With a fluttering cry, she started forward, then stepped nervously back,and, stumbling against Max's foot, would have fallen if he had notcaught her.

  All his attention was for her, yet, with his eyes on the girl, hesuddenly became conscious that something had happened among theofficers. One man had stopped abruptly just in front of Sanda, whileothers were going through the gate, hurrying on as if tactfully desirousto get themselves out of the way. A voice murmured "Mon Dieu!" andhaving steadied Sanda, Max saw standing close to them a small, ratherdapper man with a lined brown face, a very square, smooth-shaven jaw,long gray eyes, short gray hair, and the neat slimness of a West Pointcadet. He had on his sleeve the five gold stripes signifying a colonel'srank, and was decorated with several medals.

  Instantly Max understood the situation. The one thing that ought _not_to have happened, had happened.