A Soldier of the Legion

by C. N. Williamson; A. M. Williamson

Rumours had run ahead of the little party, from Kordofan, birthland of the terrible Mahdi; but the whole story was patched together from disjointed bits only, when the caravan arrived in civilization. Very little was got out of the fever-stricken, haggard young man who (according to Mrs. Stanton) was the hero of the great adventure, impossible to have been carried through for a single day without him. It was Sanda who told the tale, told it voluntarily, even eagerly, to every one who questioned her. She could not give Max St. George—that mysterious young man who apparently had no country and no past—enough praise to satisfy her gratitude. There had been terrible sandstorms in which they would have given themselves up for lost if it had not been for his energy and courage. Once they had strayed a long way off their track and nearly starved and died of thirst before they could find an oasis they had aimed for and renew exhausted supplies. But Max St. George's spirit had never flagged even after the mosquito-ridden swamp where he had caught a touch of malarial fever. Through his presence of mind and military skill the party had been saved from extinction in a surprise attack by a band of desert marauders twice their number. Every night he had protected the little camp by forming round it a hollow square of camels and baggage, and keeping a sentinel posted, generally himself. It was through these precautions they had been able to withstand the surprise and drive the robbers off with the loss only of a few men and some of the camels. They had fought and conquered the enemy under a flag of the Legion, a miniature copy given by Colonel DeLisle to his daughter. There had not been one desertion from their ranks, except by death, and all was owing—Sanda said—to the spirit Max St. George had infused into his followers. He insisted that the latter were the only heroes, if any, and the Arabs from far-off Touggourt enjoyed such fame as they had associated with the delights of a paradise reserved for warriors. But of himself Max St. George would not talk; and people said to each other, "Who is this young fellow who was the only white man with Stanton? He seems at home in every language. Where did he come from?"

Nobody could tell. Not a soul knew what his past had been. But as for his future, it seemed not unlikely that it might be limited on this earth; for having finished his mission, and taken Mrs. Stanton as far as Cairo on her way back to Algeria, he succumbed to the fever he had resisted ferociously while his services were needed. When there was nothing to do he relaxed a little and the flame in his blood burned unchecked.

Mrs. Stanton's exhibition of gratitude, however, was admirable in the eyes of the world focussed upon her. If Richard Stanton had not been a magnificent man, celebrated for his successes with women, and having the added attraction of fame as an explorer, people might have suggested that the widow's remaining in Cairo to nurse St. George was not entirely disinterested. But as it was, nobody said disagreeable things about the beautiful, pale young creature, and the haggard skeleton of a man who had pioneered her safely through the Sahara and Libyan deserts.

It was as much because of her beauty, which gave a glamour of almost classic romance to the wild business, as because of Stanton's reputation and the amazing madness of his last venture, that newspapers all over the civilized world gave columns to the story. Somehow, snapshots of Max St. George, as well as several of Sanda, had been snatched by enterprising journalists before St. George fell ill in Cairo. These were telegraphed for and bought by newspapers of England, Spain, Italy, France, America, Algeria, and even Germany, which had not loved Stanton. The next thing that happened was the report in Algerian papers that Max St. George, "le jeune homme de mystère," was a missing soldier of the Legion, who had deserted from an important mission to join Stanton's caravan. Sensation everywhere! Paragraphs reminding the public of a curious fact: that young Mrs. Stanton was the daughter of the colonel of the Legion. Strange if she had not known from the first that the recruit to her husband's expedition was a deserter from her father's regiment. And what a situation for the colonel himself! His daughter protected during a long desert journey of incalculable peril by a man whom it would be her father's duty to have arrested and court-martialled if he were on French soil.

Journalists argued the delicate question, whether, in the circumstances, it would be possible for Colonel DeLisle to do anything officially toward obtaining a pardon for St. George—whose name probably was not St. George, since no man wore anything so obvious as his own name in the Foreign Legion. Retired officers wrote letters to the papers and pointed out that for DeLisle to work in St. George's favour, simply because accident had enabled the deserter to aid a member of his colonel's family, would be inadmissible. If St. George were the right sort of man and soldier he would not expect or wish it. As a matter of fact, he did neither; but then, at the time, he was in a physical state which precluded conscious wishes and expectations. He did not know or care what happened; though sometimes, in intervals of seeing marvellous mirages of the Lost Oasis, and fighting robbers, or prescribing for sick camels, he appeared vaguely to recognize the face of his nurse; not the professional, but the amateur. "Sanda, Sanda!" he would mutter, or cry out aloud; but as fortunately no one knew that Mrs. Stanton, née Corisande DeLisle, was called "Sanda" by those who loved her, the doctor and the professional nurse supposed he was babbling about the sand of the desert. He had certainly had a distressing amount of it!

Max would have been immensely interested if he could have known at this time of three persons in different parts of the world who were working for him in different ways. There was Manöel Valdez in Rome, where he had arrived with Ourïeda by way of Tunis and Sicily, instead of getting to Spain according to his earlier plan. Manöel, singing with magnificent success in grand opera, proclaimed himself Juan Garcia, a fellow-deserter with St. George, in order to gild St. George's escapade with glory. Not only did he talk to every one, and permit his fascinating Spanish-Arab bride to talk, but he let himself be interviewed by newspapers. Perhaps all this was a good advertisement in a way; but he was making a succes fou, and did not need advertisement. Genuinely and sincerely he was baring his heart and bringing his wife into the garish limelight because of his passionate gratitude to Max St. George.

The interview was copied everywhere, and Sanda read it in Cairo, learning for the first time not only many generous acts of St. George of which she had never heard, but gathering details of Ourïeda's escape with Valdez, at which till then she had merely been able to guess. The entire plot of Manöel's love drama, from the first grim scene of stunning the prospective bridegroom on the way to his unwilling bride, to the escape from the douar in the quiet hours when Tahar was supposed to be left alone with the "Agha's Rose," on to the hiding at Djazerta, and stealing away in disguise with a caravan while the hunt took another direction, all had played itself out according to his plan. Valdez attributed the whole success to St. George's help, advice, and gifts of money, down to the last franc in his possession. And now Manöel began to pay the debt he owed, by calling on the world's sympathy for the deserter, who might not set foot on French soil without being arrested. Thus the singer's golden voice was raised for Max in Italy. In Algeria old "Four Eyes" was working for him like the demon that he looked; having returned with his colonel and comrades to Sidi-bel-Abbés after the long march and a satisfactory fight with the "Deliverer," he soon received news of the lost one. With roars of derision he refused to believe in the little "corporal's" voluntary desertion, and from the first moment began to agitate. What! punish a hero for his heroism? That, in Four Eyes' vilely profane opinion, expressed with elaborate expletives in the Legion's own choicest vernacular, was what it would amount to if St. George were branded "deserter." Precisely why Max had joined Stanton's caravan instead of returning to Sidi-bel-Abbés, perhaps a few days late, Four Eyes was not certain; but there was no one better instructed than he in pretending to know things he merely conjectured. He had seen Ahmara, the dancer, and had told Max the scandal connecting her with the explorer. "What more natural than that a soldier of the Legion should, for his colonel's sake, sacrifice his whole career to protect the daughter from such a husband as Stanton? No doubt the boy knew that Stanton meant to take Ahmara with him, and had left everything to stand between the girl and such a pair."

In his own picturesque and lurid language Four Eyes presented these conjectures of his as if they were facts; and to do him justice he believed in them. Also, he took pains to rake up every old tale of cruelty, vanity, or lust that had been told in the past about Richard Stanton, and embroider them. Beside the satyr figure which he flaunted like a dummy Guy Fawkes, Max St. George shone a pure young martyr. Never had old Four Eyes enjoyed such popularity among the townfolk of Sidi-bel-Abbés as in these days, and he had the satisfaction of seeing veiled allusions to his anecdotes in newspapers when he could afford to buy or was able to steal them. On the strength of his triumph he got up among his fellow Legionnaires a petition for the pardon and reinstatement of Corporal St. George. Not a man refused to sign, for even those who might have hesitated would not have done so long under the basilisk stare of the ex-champion of boxing.

"Sign, or I'll smash you to a jelly," was his remark to one recruit who had not heard enough of St. George or Four Eyes to dash his name on paper the instant he saw a pen.

While the petition was growing Colonel DeLisle (who gave no sign that he had heard of it) obtained ten days' leave, the first he had asked for in many years, and took ship for Algiers to Alexandria to see his daughter. But that did not discourage Four Eyes; on the contrary, "The Old Man doesn't want to be in it, see?" said Pelle. "It ain't for him, in the circus, to do the trick; it's for us, ses enfants! And damn all four of my eyes, we'll do it, if we have to mutiny as our comrades once did before us, when they made big history in the Legion."