“I am very sorry,” Stretton said again; and then, after looking about him and perceiving that the orderly was out of earshot, he bent down towards Barbier, lower than he had bent before, and he called upon him in a still lower voice.
But Barbier was no longer the name he used.
“Monsieur le Comte,” he said, first of all, and then “Monsieur de — —” He uttered a name which the generation before had made illustrious in French diplomacy.
At the sound of the name Barbier’s face contracted. He started up in his bed upon one arm.
“Hush!” he cried. A most extraordinary change had come over him in a second. His eyes protruded, his mouth hung half open, his face was frozen into immobility by horror. “There is some one on the stairs,” he whispered, “coming up — some one treading very lightly — but coming up — coming up.” He inclined his head in the strained attitude of one listening with a great concentration and intentness, an image of terror and suspense. “Yes, coming up — coming up! Don’t lock the door! That betrays all. Turn out the lights! Quickly! So. Oh, will this night ever pass!”
He ended with a groan of despair. Very gently Stretton laid him down again in the bed and covered him over with the clothes. The sweat rolled in drops from Barbier’s forehead.
“He never tells us more, my colonel,” said Stretton. “His real name-yes! — he betrayed that once to me. But of this night nothing more than the dread that it will never pass. Always he ends with those words. Yet it was that night, no doubt, which tossed him beyond the circle of his friends and dropped him down here, a man without a name, amongst the soldiers of the Legion.”
Often Stretton’s imagination had sought to pierce the mystery. What thing of horror had been done upon that night? In what town of France? Had the some one on the stairs turned the handle and entered the room when all the lights were out? Had he heard Barbier’s breathing in the silent darkness of the room? Stretton could only reconstruct the scene. The stealthy footsteps on the stairs, the cautious turning of the door handle, the opening of the door, and the impenetrable blackness with one man, perhaps more than one, holding his breath somewhere, and crouching by the wall. But no hint escaped the sick man’s lips of what there was which must needs be hidden, nor whether the thing which must needs be hidden was discovered by the one who trod so lightly on the stairs. Was it a dead man? Was it a dead woman? Or a woman alive? There was no answer. There was no knowledge to be gained, it seemed, but this — that because of that night a man in evening dress, who bore an illustrious name, had fled at daybreak on a summer morning to the nearest barracks, and had buried his name and all of his past life in the Foreign Legion.
As it happened, there was just a little more knowledge to be gained by Stretton. He learned it that morning from his colonel.
“When you told me who ‘Barbier’ really was, sergeant,” said the colonel, “I made inquiries. Barbier’s father died two years ago; but an uncle and a sister lived. I wrote to both, offering to send their relation back to them. Well, the mail has this morning come in from France.”
“There is an answer, sir?” asked Stretton.
“From the uncle,” replied the colonel. “Not a word from the sister; she does not mean to write. The uncle’s letter makes that clear, I think. Read!” He handed the letter to Stretton. A cheque was enclosed, and a few words were added.
“See, if you please, that Barbier wants for nothing which can minister to body and soul.”
That was all. There was no word of kindliness or affection. Barbier was dying. Let him, therefore, have medicine and prayers. Love, wishes for recovery, a desire that he should return to his friends, forgiveness for the thing which he had done, pity for the sufferings which had fallen to him — these things Fusilier Barbier must not expect. Stretton, reading the letter by the sick man’s bed, thought it heartless and callous as no letter written by a human hand had ever been. Yet — yet, after all, who knew what had happened on that night? The uncle, evidently. It might be something which dishonoured the family beyond all reparation, which, if known, would have disgraced a great name, so that those who bore it in pride must now change it for very shame. Perhaps the father had died because of it, perhaps the sister had been stricken down. Stretton handed the letter back to his colonel.
“It is very sad, sir,” he said.
“Yes, it is very sad,” returned the colonel. “But for us this letter means nothing at all. Never speak of it, obliterate it from your memories.” He tore the paper into the tiniest shreds. “We have no reproaches, no accusations for what Barbier did before Barbier got out of the train at Sidi Bel-Abbès. That is not our affair. For us the soldier of the Legion is only born on the day when he enlists.”
Thus, in one sentence, the colonel epitomised the character of the Foreign Legion. It was a fine saying, Stretton thought. He knew it to be a true one.
“I will say nothing,” said Stretton, “and I will forget.”
“That is well. Come with me, for there is another letter which concerns you.”
He turned upon his heel and left the hospital. Stretton followed him to his quarters.
“There is a letter from the War Office which concerns you, Sergeant Ohlsen,” said the colonel, with a smile. “You will be gazetted, under your own name, to the first lieutenancy which falls vacant. There is the notification.”
He handed the paper over to Stretton, and shook hands with him. Stretton was not a demonstrative man. He took the notification with no more show of emotion than if it had been some unimportant order of the day.
“Thank you, sir,” he said, quietly; and for a moment his eyes rested on the paper.
But, none the less, the announcement, so abruptly made, caused him a shock. The words danced before his eyes so that he could not read them. He saluted his colonel and went out on to the great open parade ground, and stood there in the middle of that space, alone, under the hot noonday sun.
The thing for which he had striven had come to pass, then. He held the assurance of it in his hand. Hoped for and half-expected as that proof had been ever since he had led the survivors of the geographical expedition under the gate of Ouargla, its actual coming was to him most wonderful. He looked southwards to where the streak of yellow shone far away. The long marches, the harassing anxiety, the haunting figures of the Touaregs, with their faces veiled in their black masks and their eyes shining between the upper and the lower strip — yes, even those figures which appalled the imagination in the retrospect by a suggestion of inhuman ferocity — what were they all but contributaries to this event? His ordeal was over. He had done enough. He could go home.
Stretton did not want for modesty. He had won a commission from the ranks, it is true; but he realised that others had done this before, and under harder conditions. He himself had started with an advantage-the advantage of previous service in the English army. His knowledge of the manual exercise, of company and battalion drill had been of the greatest use at the first. He had had luck, too — the luck to be sent on the expedition to the Figuig oasis, the luck to find himself sergeant with Colonel Tavernay’s force. His heart went out in gratitude to that fine friend who lay in his bed of sand so far away. Undoubtedly, he realised, his luck had been exceptional.
He turned away from the parade ground and walked through the village, and out of it towards a grove of palm trees. Under the shade of those trees he laid himself down on the ground and made out his plans. He would obtain his commission, secure his release, and so go home. A few months and he would be home! It seemed hardly credible; yet it was true, miraculously true. He would write home that very day. It was not any great success which he had achieved, but, at all events, he was no longer the man who was no good. He could write with confidence; he could write to Millie.
He lay under the shadow of the palms looking across to the village. There rose a little mosque with a white dome. The hovels were thatched for the most part, but here and there a square white-washed house, with a flat roof, overtopped
the rest. Hedges of cactus and prickly pears walled in the narrow lanes, and now and then a white robe appeared and vanished. Very soon Stretton would turn his back upon Algeria. In the after time he would remember this afternoon, remember the village as he saw it now, and the yellow streak of desert sand in the distance.
Stretton lay on his back and put together the sentences which he would write that day to Millie. She would get the letter within ten days — easily. He began to hum over to himself the words of the coon song which had once been sung on a summer night in an island of Scotland —
“Oh, come out, mah love. I’m a-waitin’ fo’ you heah!
Doan’ you keep yuh window shut to-night.
De tree-tops above am a-whisp’rin’ to you, deah — —”
And then he stopped suddenly. At last he began to wonder how Millie would receive the letter he was to write.
Yes, there was her point of view to be considered. Stretton was stubborn by nature as few men are. He had convinced himself that the course he had taken was the only course which promised happiness for Millie and himself, and impelled by that conviction he had gone on his way undisturbed by doubts and questions. Now, however, his object was achieved. He could claim exemption from his wife’s contempt. His mind had room for other thoughts, and they came that afternoon.
He had left his wife alone, with no explanation of his absence to offer to her friends, without even any knowledge of his whereabouts. There had been no other way, he still believed. But it was hard on Millie — undoubtedly it was hard.
Stretton rose from the ground and set off towards the camp that he might write his letter. But he never wrote it, for as he walked along the lane towards the barracks a man tapped him on the shoulder from behind. He was still humming his song, and he stopped in the middle of it —
“Jus’ look out an’ see all de longin’ in mah eyes,
An’ mah arms is jus’ a-pinin’ foh to hug you,”
he said, and turned about on his heel. He saw a stranger in European dress, who at once spoke his name.
“Sir Anthony Stretton?”
Stretton was no longer seeking to evade discovery.
“Yes?” he said. The stranger’s face became vaguely familiar to him. “I have seen you before, I think.”
“Once,” replied the other. “My name is Warrisden. You saw me for a few minutes on the deck of a fish-carrier in the North Sea.”
“To be sure,” he said slowly. “Yes, to be sure, I did. You were sent to find me by Miss Pamela Mardale.”
“She sends me again,” replied Warrisden.
Stretton’s heart sank in fear. He had disobeyed the summons before. He remembered Pamela’s promise to befriend his wife. He remembered her warning that he should not leave his wife.
“She sent you then with an urgent message that I should return home,” he said.
“I carry the same message again, only it is a thousand times more urgent.”
He drew a letter from his pocket as he spoke, and handed it to Stretton. “I was to give you this,” he said.
Stretton looked at the handwriting and nodded.
“Thank you,” he said gravely.
He tore open the envelope and read.
CHAPTER XXV
TONY STRETTON BIDS FAREWELL TO THE LEGION
IT WAS A long letter. Tony read it through slowly, standing in the narrow lane between the high walls of prickly pear. A look of incredulity came upon his face.
“Is all this true?” he asked, not considering at all of whom he asked the question.
“I know nothing, of course, of what is written there,” replied Warrisden; “but I do not doubt its truth. The signature is, I think, sufficient guarantee.”
“No doubt, no doubt,” said Stretton, absently. Then he asked —
“When did you reach Ain-Sefra?”
“This morning.”
“And you came quickly?”
“Yes; I travelled night and day, I came first of all to Ain-Sefra in search of you.”
“Thank you,” said Stretton.
He did not ask how it was that Warrisden had come first of all to Ain-Sefra; such details held no place in his thoughts. Warrisden had found him, had brought the letter which Pamela Mardale had written. That letter, with its perplexities and its consequences, obliterated all other speculations.
“You have a camp here?” Stretton asked.
“Yes.”
“Let us go to it. The news you have brought has rather stunned me. I should like to sit down and think what I must do.”
The incredulity had vanished from his face. Distress had replaced it.
“It is all true, no doubt,” he went on, “but for the moment I don’t understand it. Will you tell me where your camp is?”
“I will show you the way,” said Warrisden.
“I think not. It will be better that we should not be seen together,” Stretton said thoughtfully. “Will you give me the direction and go first? I will follow.”
Warrisden’s camp was pitched amongst trees a hundred yards from the western borders of the village. It stood in a garden of grass, enclosed with hedges. Thither Stretton found his way by a roundabout road, approaching the camp from the side opposite to Ain-Sefra. There was no one, at the moment, loitering about the spot. He walked into the garden. There were three tents pitched. Half a dozen mules stood picketed in a line, a little Barbary horse lay on the grass, some Algerian muleteers were taking their ease, and outside the chief tent a couple of camp chairs were placed. Warrisden came forward as Stretton entered the garden.
“Sit down,” he said.
“Inside the tent, I think,” replied Stretton.
There he read the letter through again. He understood at last what Pamela had meant by the warning which had baffled him. Pamela revealed its meaning now. “Millie is not of those women,” she wrote, “who have a vivid remembrance. To hold her, you must be near her. Go away, she will cry her eyes out; stay away for a little while, she will long for your return; make that little while a longer time, she will grow indifferent whether you return or not; prolong that longer time, she will regard your return as an awkwardness, a disturbance; add yet a little more to that longer time, and you will find another occupying your place in her thoughts.” Then followed an account of the growth of that dangerous friendship between Millie and Lionel Callon. A summary of Callon’s character rounded the description off. “So come home,” she concluded, “at once, for no real harm has been done yet.”
Stretton understood what the last sentence meant, and he believed it. Yet his mind revolted against the phrase. Of course, it was Pamela’s phrase. Pamela, though frank, was explaining the position in words which could best spare Millie. But it was an unfortunate sentence. It provoked a momentary wave of scorn, which swept over Stretton. There was a postscript: “You yourself are really a good deal to blame.” Thus it ran; but Stretton was in no mood to weigh its justice or injustice at the moment. Only this afternoon he had been lying under the palm trees putting together in his mind the sentences which were to tell Millie of his success, to re-establish him in her esteem, and to prepare her for his return. And now this letter had come. He sat for a time frowning at the letter, turning its pages over, glancing now at one phrase, now at another. Then he folded it up. “Callon,” he said, softly; and then again, “Lionel Callon. I will talk with Mr. Callon.” For all its softness, his voice sounded to Warrisden the voice of a dangerous man. And after he had spoken in this way he sat in thought, saying nothing, making no movement, and his face gave Warrisden no clue as to what he thought. At the last he stirred in his chair.
“Well?” said Warrisden.
“I shall return at once to England.”
“You can?”
“Yes; I shall start to-night,” said Stretton.
“We can go back together, then.”
“No; that’s impossible.”
“Why?” asked Warrisden.
“Because I should be arrested if we did,” S
tretton replied calmly.
“Arrested?” Warrisden exclaimed.
“Yes; you see I shall have to desert to-night.”
Warrisden started from his chair.
“Surely there is an alternative?”
“None,” replied Stretton; and Warrisden slowly resumed his seat. He was astounded; he had never contemplated this possibility. He looked at Stretton in wonder. He could not understand how a man could speak so calmly of such a plan. Why in the world had Stretton ever joined the Legion if he was so ready, at the first summons, to desert? There seemed an inconsistency. But he did not know Tony Stretton.
“You are surprised,” said Tony. “More than surprised — you are rather shocked; but there is no choice for me. I wish with all my heart and soul there were,” he suddenly exclaimed, with a sort of passion. “I have foreseen this necessity ever since you tapped me on the shoulder in the lane. Because I foresaw it, I would not walk with you to your camp. Were we seen together to-day, the reason of my absence might be the sooner suspected. As it is, I shall get a day’s start, for I have a good name in the regiment, and a day’s start is all I need.”
He spoke sadly and wistfully. He was caught by an inexorable fate, and knew it. He just had to accept the one course open to him.
“You see,” he explained, “I am a soldier of the Legion — that is to say, I enlisted for five years’ service in the French colonies. I could not get leave.”
“Five years!” cried Warrisden. “You meant to stay five years away?”
“No,” replied Stretton. “If things went well with me here, as up till to-day they have done, if, in a word, I did what I enlisted to do, I should have gone to work to buy myself out and get free. That can be done with a little influence and time-only time is the one thing I have not now. I must go home at once, since no harm has yet been done. Therefore I must desert. I am very sorry” — and again the wistfulness became very audible— “for, as I say, I have a good name; amongst both officers and men I have a good name. I should have liked very much to have left a good name behind me. Sergeant Ohlsen” — and as he uttered the name he smiled. “They speak well of Sergeant Ohlsen in the Legion, Warrisden; and to-morrow they will not. I am very sorry. I have good friends amongst both officers and men. I shall have lost them all to-morrow. I am sorry. There is only one thing of which I am glad to-day. I am glad that Captain Tavernay is dead.”
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 414