The Strollers

“I wonder if this first-born can still bark!” he muttered.

But an instant’s hesitation, friend and foe being fairly intermingled, was fatal to his purpose; the venerable culverin remained silent, and the gunner met hand-to-hand a figure that sprang from the incoming host. Simultaneously the rapid firing of a new wave of besiegers from the other side of the castle threw once more a pall of smoke over the scene, and, beneath its mantle, the two men were like figures struggling in a fog, feeling rather than seeing each other’s blade, divining by touch the cut, pass or aggressive thrust.

“Faugh!” laughed the gunner. “They’ll kill us with smoke.”

The discharge of small arms gradually ceased; the fresh breeze again cleared the crest of the mount, showing the white walls of the structure which had been so obstinately defended; the valley, where the batteries now lay silent, having spoken their thundering prologue, and the alien flag, the regimental colors of the invaders, floating from the upper walls. Below on the road toward the city, a band of white across the table land, successive spots of smoke momentarily appeared and were succeeded, after a considerable interval, by the rub-a-dub of rifles. From the disenchanting distance the charge of a body of men, in the attempt to dislodge a party entrenched in a ditch, lost the tragic aspect of warfare, and the soldiers who fell seemed no larger than the toy figures of a nursery game.

With the brightening of the summit to the light of day, eagerly the two combatants near the copper gun gazed for the first time into each other’s eyes, and, at that trenchant glance, a tremor crossed the features of the gunner, and his arm, with its muscles of steel, suddenly became inert, powerless.

“Mon Dieu!–’Tis Ernest–little Ernest!” he exclaimed, wonderingly.

For all that his opponent’s sword, ominously red from the fierce first assault at the wall, was at his breast, he made no effort to oppose its threatening point, when a grape-shot, swifter than the blade, fairly struck the gunner. With blood streaming from his shoulder, he swayed from side to side, passing his hand before his eyes as one who questions oracular evidence, and then sank to the earth with an arm thrown over the tube of copper. Above his bronzed face the light curls waved like those of a Viking; though his clothes were dyed with the sanguinary hue and his chest rose and fell with labored breathing, it was with an almost quizzical glance he regarded the other who stood as if turned to stone.

“That was not so easily done, Ernest,” he said, not unkindly, “but surprise broke down my guard.”

“Before God, it was not I!” cried the soldier, starting from a trance.

“And if it were!” With his free arm he felt his shoulder. “I believe you are right,” he observed, coolly. “Swords break no bones.”

“I will get a surgeon,” said the other, as he turned.

“What for? To shake his head? Get no one, or if–for boyish days!–you want to serve me, lend me your canteen.”

Saint-Prosper held it to his lips, and he drank thirstily.

“That was a draught in an oasis. I had the desert in my throat–the desert, the wild desert! What a place to meet! But they caught Abd-el-Kader, and there was nothing for it but to flee! Besides, I am a rolling stone.”

To hear him who had betrayed his country and shed the blood of his comrades, characterize himself by no harsher term was an amazing revelation of the man’s character.

The space around them had become almost deserted; here and there lay figures on the ground among which might be distinguished a sub-lieutenant and other students of the military college, the castle having been both academy and garrison. Their tuition barely over, so early had they given up their lives beneath the classic walls of their alma mater! The exhilarating cheering and shouting had subsided; the sad after-flavor succeeded the lust of conquest.

“Yes,” continued the gunner, though the words came with an effort. “First, it was the desert. What a place to roll and rove! I couldn’t help it for the life of me! When I was a boy I ran away from school; a lad, I ran away from college! If I had been a sailor I would have deserted the ship. After they captured the prophet, I deserted the desert. So, hey for Mexico, a hilly place for a rolling stone!”

He gasped, held his hand to his shoulder and brought it away covered with red. But that Saint-Prosper knelt swiftly, sustaining and supporting him, he would have slid to the ground. He smiled–sweetly enough–on the stern soldier and placed his moist and stained hand caressingly on that of his companion. Seeing them thus, it was not difficult to trace a family likeness–a similarity in their very dissimilarity. The older was younger; the younger, older. The gunner’s hair was light, his face wild as a gerfalcon beneath; the other’s dark, with a countenance, habitually repressed, but now, at the touch of that dishonored hand, grown cold and harsh; yet despite the total difference of expression, the hereditary resemblance could not be stamped out. Even the smile of the wounded man was singularly like that of his brother–a rare transformation that seldom failed to charm.

“That’s my story,” he said, smiling now, as though all the problems of life and death could be thus dismissed. “As the prophet said: ‘I have urged my camel through every desert!’ You see I know my Koran well. But how came you here, Ernest? I thought you were in Africa, colonizing–us!”

“It was impossible to stay there long,” replied Saint-Prosper, slowly.

“There’s that cloud of smoke again,” muttered the wounded man, apparently oblivious to the other’s response. As he spoke he withdrew his hand from that of his brother. At that moment the tropic sun was bathing him in its light and the white walls shone with luster. “No; it’s like the desert; the dark hour before the sand-storm.” Upon his brow the perspiration gathered, but his lip curled half-scornfully, half-defiantly. “Turn me toward the valley, Ernest. There’s more space; more light!”

The soldier, an automaton in passive compliance, placed him where he commanded the outlook cityward; the open plain, protected by the breast-works of mountains; the distant spires trembling on the horizon; the lakes which once marked the Western Venice, a city of perfume and song. Striking a body of water, the sun converted it into a glowing shield, a silver escutcheon of the land of silver, and, in contrast with this polished splendor, the shadows, trailing on the far-away mountains, were soft, deep and velvety. But the freedom of the outlook afforded the wounded man little comfort.

“The storm!” he said.

A change passed over his face, as of a shadow drawn before it. He groped helplessly with his hand.

“Feel in my burnoose, Ernest. A bag–around my neck–open it!”

Saint-Prosper thrust his hand within the coat, shuddering at the contact with the ebbing life’s blood, and drew forth a leather bag which he placed in the other’s trembling fingers. With an effort, breathing laboriously, and staring hard, as though striving to penetrate a gathering film, the wounded man finally managed to display the contents of the bag, emptying them in his palm, where they glinted and gleamed in the sun’s rays. Sapphires, of delicate blue; emeralds with vitreous luster; opals of brilliant iridescence–but, above all, a ruby of perfect color and extraordinary size, cut en cabachon, and exhibiting a marvelous star of many rays; the ruby of Abd-el-Kader!

With a venal expression of delight, the gunner regarded the contents of the bag, feeling the gems one by one. “The rarest stone–from the Sagyin hills, Ernest!” he whispered, as his trembling fingers played with the ruby.

But even as he fondled it, a great pain crossed his breast; he gripped his shoulder tight with his free hand, clutching the precious stones hard in his clenched fist. Thus he remained, how long the other never knew, panting, growing paler, as the veins that carried life to his heart were being slowly emptied.

His head dropped. “How dark!” he murmured. “Like a m’chacha where the hashish-smokers dream!”

The younger brother thought his energy was spent when he looked up sharply.

“The lamp’s out, you Devil Jew!” he cried. “The pipe, too–spawn of hell!”

And he dropped back like stone, the gems falling from his hand, which twitched spasmodically on the ground and then was still. Saint-Prosper bent over him, but the heart, famished for nourishment, had ceased to beat; the restless, wayward soul had fled from its tabernacle of dust. Save for the stain on his breast and the fixedness of his eyes, he might have been sleeping.

Mechanically the soldier gathered the sapphires, emeralds and other gems–flashing testimony of that thankless past–and, leaning against the wall, gazed afar to the snow-capped volcanoes. Even as he looked, the vapors arose from the solfataras of the “smoking mountain” and a vast shower of cinders and stones was thrown into the air. Unnoticed passed the eruption before the gaze of Saint-Prosper, whose mind in a torpor swept dully back to youth’s roseate season, recalling the homage of the younger for the elder brother, a worship as natural as pagan adoration of the sun. From the sanguine fore-time to the dead present lay a bridge of darkness. With honor within grasp, deliberately he had sought dishonor, little recking of shame and murder, and childishly husbanding green, red and blue pebbles!

Weighing the stones in his hand now, Ernest Saint-Prosper looked at them long and bitterly. For these the honor and pride of an old family had been sold. For these he himself had endured the reflected disgrace; isolation from comradeship; distrust which had blighted his military career at the outset. How different had been the reality from his expectations; the buoyant hopes of youth; the fond anticipation of glory, succeeded by stigma and stain! And, as the miserable, perplexing panorama of these later years pictured itself in his brain he threw, with a sudden gesture, the gems far from him, over the wall, out toward the valley!

Like dancing beams of color, they flashed a moment in mid air; then mingled their hues with the rainbow tints of a falling stream. Lost to sight, they sank in the crystal waters which leaped with a caressing murmur toward the table-land; only the tiny spectrum, vivid reminder of their color, still waved and wavered from rock to rock above a pellucid pool.

“I beg your pardon, Colonel,” said a voice at his elbow, breaking in upon his reflections; “are you wounded?”

With drawn features, the officer turned.

“No; I am not wounded.”

“The general directs you to take this message to the commanding general,” continued the little aide. “I believe I may congratulate you, sir, for you will have the honor of bearing the news of the victory.” He handed Saint-Prosper a sealed message. “It’s been a glorious day, sir, but”–gazing carelessly around him–“has cost many a brave life!”

“Yes, many a life!” answered the other, placing the message in his breast and steadfastly regarding for the last time the figure beneath the gun.

“We ought to be in the City of Mexico in a day or two, sir,” resumed the aide. “Won’t it be jolly though, after forced marches and all that sort of thing! Fandangos; tambourines; cymbals! And the pulque! What creatures of the moment we are, sir!” he added, with sudden thoughtfulness. “’Twill be, after all, like dancing over the graves of our dear comrades!”

CHAPTER VIII

A FAIR PENITENT

The reception to General Zachary Taylor, on his return from Mexico, and the inauguration of the carnival combined to the observance of a dual festival day in the Crescent City. Up the river, past the rice fields, disturbing the ducks and pelicans, ploughed the noisy craft bearing “Old Rough and Ready” to the open port of the merry-making town. When near the barracks, the welcoming cannon boomed, and the affrighted darkies on the remote plantations shook with dire forebodings of a Mexican invasion.

The boat rounded at the Place d’Armes, where, beneath a triumphal arch, General Taylor received the crown and chaplet of the people–popular applause–and a salvo of eloquence from the mayor. With flying colors and nourish of trumpets, a procession of civic and military bodies was then formed, the parade finally halting at the St. Charles, where the fatted calf had been killed and the succulent ox roasted. Sounding a retreat, the veteran commander fell back upon a private parlor to recuperate his forces in anticipation of the forthcoming banquet.

From this stronghold, where, however, not all of the enemy–his friends–could be excluded, there escaped an officer, with: “I’ll look around town a little, General.”

“Look around!” said the commander at the door. “I should think we had looked around! Well, don’t fall foul of too many juleps.”

With a laughing response, the young man pushed his way through the jostling crowd near the door, traversed the animated corridor, and soon found himself out on the busy street. Amid the variegated colors and motley throng, he walked, not, however, in King Carnival’s gay domains, but in a city of recollections. The tavern he had just left was associated with an unforgotten presence; the stores, the windows, the thoroughfares themselves were fraught with retrospective suggestion of the strollers.

Even now–and he came to an abrupt standstill–he was staring at the bill-board of the theater where she had played, the familiar entrance bedecked with bunting and festival inscriptions. Before its classic portals appeared the black-letter announcement of an act by “Impecunious Jordan, Ethiopian artist, followed by a Tableau of General Scott’s Capture of the City of Mexico.” Mechanically he stepped within and approached the box office. From the little cupboard, a strange face looked forth; even the ticket vender of old had been swallowed up by the irony of fate, and, instead of the well-remembered blond mustache of the erstwhile seller of seats, a dark-bearded man, with sallow complexion, inquired:

“How many?”