Chapter XXV: As Handsome Does

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.

"_Ma tante_," said Julia Redmond to the Marquise d'Esclignac, "can we go back to France immediately?"

"My dear Julia!" exclaimed her aunt, in surprise and delight. "Robert will be enchanted, but he would not be able to leave his friend so soon."

"He need not," said the girl, "nor need you leave unless you wish."

The Marquise d'Esclignac entertained a thousand thoughts. She had not studied young girls' minds for a long time. She had heard that the modern American girl was very extreme and she held her in rather light esteem. Julia Redmond she had considered to be out of the general rule. "Was it possible," she wondered, "that Julia, in comparing Tremont with the invalid, found Robert more attractive?"

"Julia," she said severely, as though her niece were a child, pointing to a chair, "sit down."

Slightly smiling, the young girl obeyed her aunt.

"My dear, I have followed your caprices from France to Africa. Only by pleading heart-failure and mortal illness could I dissuade you from going into the desert with the caravan. Now, without any apparent reason, you wish to return to France."

"The reason for coming here has been accomplished, _ma tante_. Monsieur de Sabron has been found."

"And now that you have found him," said the marquise reproachfully, "and you discover that he is not all your romantic fancy imagined, you are going to run away from him. In short, you mean to throw him over."

"Throw him over, _ma tante_!" murmured the girl. "I have never had the chance. Between Monsieur de Sabron and myself there is only friendship."

"Fiddlesticks!" said the Marquise d'Esclignac impatiently. "I have no understanding of the modern young girl. She makes her own marriages and her subsequent divorces. I am your aunt, my dear, your mother's sister, and a woman of at least twenty-five years' more experience than you have."

Julia was not following her aunt's train of thought, but her own. She felt the hint of authority and bondage in her aunt's tone and repeated:

"I wish to leave Algiers to-morrow."

"You shall do so," said her aunt. "I am rejoiced to get out of the Orient. It is late to order my dresses for Trouville, but I can manage. Before we go, however, my dear, I want you to make me a promise."

"A promise, _ma tante_?" The girl's tone implied that she did not think she would give it.

"You have played the part of fate in the life of this young man, who, I find, is a charming and brave man. Now you must stand by your guns, my dear Julia."

"Why, how do you mean, _ma tante_?"

"You will go to Paris and the Capitaine de Sabron will get well rapidly. He will follow you, and if it were not for Tremont, myself, your Red Cross Society and the presence here of Madame de la Maine, you would have been very much compromised. But never mind," said the Marquise d'Esclignac magnificently, "my name is sufficient protection for my niece. I am thinking solely of the poor young man."

"Of Monsieur de Sabron?"

"Of course," said the Marquise d'Esclignac tartly, "did you think I meant Robert? You have so well arranged _his_ life for him, my dear."

"_Ma tante_," pleaded the girl.

The marquise was merciless.

"I want you to promise me, Julia, before you sail for home, that if Sabron follows us and makes you to understand that he loves you, as he will, that you will accept him."

Julia Redmond looked at the Marquise d'Esclignac in astonishment. She half laughed and she half cried.

"You want me to promise?"

"I do," said her aunt firmly, regarding her niece through her lorgnon. "In the first place the affair is entirely unconventional and has been since we left France. It is I who should speak to the Capitaine de Sabron. You are so extremely rich that it will be a difficult matter for a poor and honorable young man.... Indeed, my dear, I may as well tell you that I shall do so when we reach home."

"Oh," said the girl, turning perfectly pale and stepping forward toward her aunt, "if you consider such a thing I shall leave for America at once."

The Marquise d'Esclignac gave a petulant sigh.

"How impossible you are, Julia. Understand me, my dear, I do not want a woman of my family to be a coquette. I do not want it said that you are an American flirt--it is in bad taste and entirely misunderstood in the Faubourg St.-Germain."

The girl, bewildered by her aunt's attitude and extremely troubled by the threat of the marriage convention, said:

"Don't you understand? In this case it is peculiarly delicate. He might ask me from a sense of honor."

"Not in any sense," said the Marquise d'Esclignac. "It has not occurred to the poor young officer to suppose for a moment that a young woman with millions, as you are so fortunate to be, would derange herself like this to follow him. If I thought so I would not have brought you, Julia. What I have done, I have done solely for your peace of mind, my child. This young man loves you. He believes that you love him, no doubt. You have given him sufficient reason, heaven knows! Now," said her aunt emphatically, "I do not intend that you should break his heart."

It was more than likely that the Marquise d'Esclignac was looking back twenty-five years to a time, when as a rich American, she had put aside her love for a penniless soldier with an insignificant title. She remembered how she had followed his campaign. She folded her lorgnon and looked at her niece. Julia Redmond saw a cloud pass over her aunt's tranquil face. She put her arms around her and kissed her tenderly.

"You really think then, _ma tante_, that he will come to Paris?"

"Without a doubt, my dear."

"You think he cares, _ma tante_?"

Her aunt kissed her and laughed.

"I think you will be happy to a bourgeois extent. He is a fine man."

"But do I need to _promise_ you?" asked the girl. "Don't you _know_?"

"I shall be perfectly ashamed of you," said the Marquise d'Esclignac, "if you are anything but a woman of heart and decision in this matter."

Evidently she waited, and Julia Redmond, slightly bowing her lovely head in deference to the older lady who had not married her first love, said obediently:

"I promise to do as you wish, _ma tante_."