A Soldier of the Legion

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

Josephine had raged, for Grant, even more than she, hated to spend money where a show could not be made with it. But Captain de la Tour was rather insistent and got on her nerves. In an hysterical fit, therefore, she made a clean breast of the story to her husband. When she had described to him as well as she could what was in the letters, and what a Bohemian sort of life she had led in Bel-Abbés, Grant decided that it would be romantic as well as sensible to buy the Château de la Tour. Josephine had actually been born there; and they could either keep the place or sell it when it had been improved a bit and made famous by a few choice house-parties.

So the Doran-Reeveses bought the château and got back the letters, and hoped that Captain de la Tour would take himself and his ill-gotten gains out of the United States. But he lingered, looking out for an American heiress, while Josephine existed in a state of constant irritation, fearing some new demand or an indiscretion. And it was just at this time that she received Mrs. Jeff Houston's letter. Naturally it gave her great pleasure to snub some one, especially a woman prettier than herself. She took no notice of Billie's appeal, and when Mrs. Houston, hoping somehow that it had not reached its destination, spoke to her sweetly one night at the opera, Josephine was rude before some of the "best people" in New York.

After that, Billie said to every one that Mrs. Doran-Reeves was insane as well as deformed; but that "cut no ice," as Jeff Houston remarked, and when the snapshot of Max St. George, deserter from the Foreign Legion, appeared with the newspaper story of Sanda Stanton, Billie did what Jeff described as "falling over herself" to get to the office of Town Tales.

She told nothing damaging to the late Miss Brookton in mentioning Max Doran, and of him she spoke with friendly enthusiasm. He had been so good, so kind to her, and so different from many young men who were good to actresses. It broke her heart to think of his fate, for there was no doubt that Max St. George, the Legionnaire, and Max Doran were one. Billie told how, to her certain knowledge, Max had sacrificed himself for Josephine Doran, who (for some reason he was too noble to reveal, but it had to do with a secret of ancestry) seemed to him the rightful heiress.

Penniless, Max had been forced to resign from an expensive regiment, where he lived expensively. He had done this for Josephine's sake, though he had loved his career better than anything else in the world. And then, last of all, he had effaced himself rather than accept pity or favours. He had enlisted in the Foreign Legion, and now he had further shown the nobility of his nature by the very way in which he had fallen into disgrace. But what did the Doran-Reeveses do, though they owed everything to him? They told lies and ignored his existence. Mrs. Jeff Houston said that she felt it her duty as Max Doran's only faithful friend to bring this injustice to public notice.

Town Tales was delighted to help her do this, because she was Billie Brookton, a celebrity, and because it was "good copy." Other papers—many other papers—took up the hue and cry which Town Tales started; and the Doran-Reeveses' life became not as agreeable as it had been.

They defended themselves to friends and enemies and newspaper men, and thought of suing Town Tales for libel, but were dissuaded from doing so by old Mr. Reeves. Then it occurred to Josephine to let every one know that, though she was being cruelly maligned, she wished, as a proof of her admiration for Max's desert exploits, to present him with all her French property, the magnificent old vineyard-surrounded Château de la Tour, where he could cultivate grapes and make his fortune.

The papers pointed out that this was something like sending coals to Newcastle, as St. George, alias Doran, was debarred from entering France unless he wanted to go to prison. But Josephine and Grant quickly retorted that the recipient of their bounty need not live in France in order to benefit. He could sell or let the Château de la Tour through some agent.

Not an echo of all this play of cross purposes reached Max at the nursing home in Cairo, where he had been carried by Sanda's orders after breaking down. But Sanda, who took in a dozen papers to see what they had to say about the "deserter," read what was going on at New York as well as in Rome and at Sidi-bel-Abbés. She saw that Max had been presented with estates in France by the woman who had taken everything and given nothing; and because of queer things Max had let drop in his delirium she understood more of the past than he would have revealed of his own free will. For one thing, she learnt that a certain Jack and Rose Doran had had a child born to them at the Château de la Tour. This enabled her to put other things together in her mind, and loving Max as she did, she saw no harm in thus using her wits, while she respected him with all her heart for not telling the secret. Besides, she had met Captain de la Tour in Sidi-bel-Abbés, and she had guessed that it was partly because of him and one or two others like him that her father had sent her to the Agha's rather than leave her at Bel-Abbés alone.

"It would be the most wonderful sort of poetic justice," she reflected, sitting at Max's bedside one day while he slept, "if the old place of his ancestors should come back to him at last."