"Don't be afraid. Tell me!"
"Hush!" whispered Ourïeda. "Don't you hear some one on the stairs—coming up softly? I must tell you another time. Laugh! Laugh out aloud! Call to the doves!"
The two girls began to chatter together like children. And their young voices tinkling out in laughter sounded pitifully small in the immensity of the night-bleached desert.
Far away in the north where colonist farmers had long ago conquered the desert there was music that evening at Sidi-bel-Abbés, headquarters of the Foreign Legion. The soul of the Legion was speaking in its tragic-sweet voice, and the Place Carnot was full of soldiers sauntering singly or in pairs, mostly silent, as if to hear their own heart-secrets cried aloud by telltale 'cellos and flutes and violins.
The townsfolk were there, too; and when the band played some selection especially to their liking they buzzed approval. It was only the Legionnaires who talked little, and in tones almost humbly suppressed. Once, years ago, they had violently asserted their right to promenade the Place Carnot, and enjoy the music of their own famous band, when local authority would insolently have banished them; but now the boon was won, they were subdued in manner, as if they had never smashed chairs and wrecked bandstand in fierce protest against bourgeois tyranny. Immaculate in every detail of their uniform as though each man had his own servant, these soldiers who spent half their so-called leisure in scrubbing clothes, polishing steel and brass, and varnishing leather, had nevertheless a piteously dejected bearing whenever they passed pretty, well-dressed young women. They knew that, whatever they might once have been, as Foreign Legion men on pay of five centimes a day they were in the eyes of Bel-Abbés girls hopeless ineligibles, poverty-stricken social outcasts, the black sheep of the world. It was to vie with each other and to make the Legion far outshine Chasseurs and Spahis that they sacrificed two thirds of their spare time in the cause of smartness, not because even the handsomest and youngest cherished any hope of catching a woman's approving eye.
Just at the moment, however, there was an exception to the depressing rule. The prettiest girls, French, Spanish, and Algerian-born, all condescended to glance at the bleu who had "knocked out" the former champion of the Legion, and, taking his place in the match with the Marseillais, had kept the championship for the First Regiment Etrangére. Since the day more than a week ago when the barrack-yard of the Legion had been the scene of the great fight—officers looking on in the front ranks of the invited crowd, and soldiers hanging out of dormitory windows—every one in Sidi-bel-Abbés had learned to know the hero by sight; and a blackened eye, a bruised cheek-bone, and a swelled lip (the unbecoming badges of his triumph) made recognition easy. But the Legion was proud of St. George. Not a man, least of all Four Eyes, grudged him his success, such "luck" as had never fallen to any mere recruit within the memory of the oldest Legionnaires, unless in the battlefield, where all are equal.
Max realized fully what this "luck" had done for him, and was aware that eyes turned his way; but, far from being proud, he was half-ashamed of his conspicuousness, fearing that Colonel DeLisle might disapprove. Also, he knew that the small, brief blaze of his notoriety would die out like the flame of a candle. A week or two more and the "little tin god" would go down off his wheels. If he meant to be somebody in the Legion he would have to work as he had never worked in all his life.
With him in the Place Carnot was the Spaniard who had begged for his civilian clothes. They were in the same company and of the same age. From the first glance (given and taken when one man was a recruit and the other did not yet dream of becoming one) something had drawn the two together. Then had come the incident of the clothing; and Max had felt himself an unwilling partner in the other's secret. Later, without exchanging confidences (since "ask no questions, I'll tell you no lies," is a good general rule in the Legion), they drifted into a tacit kind of comradeship, Max admiring the Spaniard, the Spaniard trusting Max.
To-night they walked together in silence, or speaking seldom, like the other Legionnaires, and listening to the music. Suddenly the Spaniard stopped, muttering some word under his breath, and Max saw through the dusk that the olive face had gone ashy pale. "What's the matter, Garcia? Are you ill?" he asked.