Cigarette glanced over the field, with the satisfied appreciation of a dilettante glancing over a collection unimpeachable for accuracy and arrangement; and drank a toss of her brandy, and lighted her little amber pipe, and sang loudly, as she did so, the gayest ballad of the Langue Verte.
She was not going to have him imagine she cared for that Chasseur whom he lifted up on his little wagon with so kindly a care—not she! Cigarette was as proud in her way as was ever the Princesse Venetia Corona.
Nevertheless, she kept pace with the mules, carrying little Flick-Flack, and never paused on her way, though she passed scores of dead Arabs, whose silver ornaments and silk embroideries, commonly replenished the knapsack and adorned in profusion the uniform of the young filibuster; being gleaned by her, right and left, as her lawful harvest after the fray.
“Leave him there. I will have a look at him,” she said, at the first empty tent they reached. The camp had been the scene of as fierce a struggle as the part of the plain which the cavalry had held, and it was strewn with the slaughter of Zouaves and Tirailleurs. The Tringlo obeyed her, and went about his errand of mercy. Cigarette, left alone with the wounded man, lying insensible still on a heap of forage, ceased her song and grew very quiet. She had a certain surgical skill, learned as her untutored genius learned most things, with marvelous rapidity, by observation and intuition; and she had saved many a life by her knowledge and her patient attendance on the sufferers—patience that she had been famed for when she had been only six years old, and a surgeon of the Algerian regiments had affirmed that he could trust her to be as wakeful, as watchful, and as sure to obey his directions as though she were a Soeur de Charite. Now, “the little fagot of opposites,” as Cecil had called her, put this skill into active use.
The tent had been a scullion's tent; the poor marmiton had been killed, and lay outside, with his head clean severed by an Arab flissa; his fire had gone out, but his brass pots and pans, his jar of fresh water, and his various preparations for the General's dinner were still there. The General was dead also; far yonder, where he had fallen in the van of his Zouaves, exposing himself with all the splendid, reckless gallantry of France; and the soup stood unserved; the wild plovers were taken by Flick-Flack; the empty dishes waited for the viands which there were no hands to prepare and no mouths to eat. Cigarette glanced round, and saw all with one flash of her eyes; then she knelt down beside the heap of forage, and, for the first thing, dressed his wounds with the cold, clear water, and washed away the dust and the blood that covered his breast.
“He is too good a soldier to die; one must do it for France,” she said to herself, in a kind of self-apology. And as she did it, and bound the lance-gash close, and bathed his breast, his forehead, his hair, his beard, free from the sand and the powder and the gore, a thousand changes swept over her mobile face. It was one moment soft, and flushed, and tender as passion; it was the next jealous, fiery, scornful, pale, and full of impatient self-disdain.
He was nothing to her—morbleu! He was an aristocrat, and she was a child of the people. She had been besieged by dukes and had flouted princes; she had borne herself in such gay liberty, such vivacious freedom, such proud and careless sovereignty—bah! what was it to her whether this man lived or died? If she saved him, he would give her a low bow as he thanked her; thinking all the while of Milady!
And yet she went on with her work.
Cecil had been stunned by a stroke from his horse's hoof as the poor beast fell beneath and rolled over him. His wounds were light—marvelously so, for the thousand strokes that had been aimed at him; but it was difficult to arouse him from unconsciousness, and his face was white as death where he lay on the heap of dry reeds and grasses. She began to feel fear of that lengthened syncope; a chill, tight, despairing fear that she had never known in her life before. She knelt silent a moment, drawing through her hand the wet locks of his hair with the bright threads of gold gleaming in it.
Then she started up, and, leaving him, found a match, and lighted the died-out wood afresh; the fire soon blazed up, and she warmed above it the soup that had grown cold, poured into it some red wine that was near, and forced some, little by little, down his throat. It was with difficulty at first that she could pass any though his tightly locked teeth; but by degrees she succeeded, and, only half-conscious still, he drank it faster; the heat and the strength reviving him as its stimulant warmed his veins. His eyes did not unclose, but he stirred, moved his limbs, and, with some muttered words she could not hear, drew a deeper breath and turned.