A Soldier of the Legion Part 12

"Soldier Saint George, then," DeLisle began again, smiling, "this is my advice as your friend and well-wisher: again, I say, why should you not take advantages you have fairly earned? My men are wonderful soldiers. I suppose in the world there can be none braver, few so brave; for they nearly all come to heal or hide some secret wound that makes them desperate or careless of life. They are glorious soldiers, these foreigners of ours! But at the beginning you will see them at their worst in the dulness of barrack life. There are all sorts and conditions, from the lowest to the highest. You may happen to be among some of the lowest. Why not start where you are ent.i.tled to start? When, in being recruited, you are asked to state your profession, you're at liberty to say what you choose. No statement as to name, age, country, or occupation is disputed in the Legion. But once more, let me advise you, if you write yourself down "Soldier," things can be made comparatively easy for you."

"I thank you, sir, and I will take your advice in everything else. But I don't want things made easy."

"You may regret your obstinacy."

"Oh, father," pleaded Sanda, "wouldn't you be the very one to do the same thing?"

"In his place," said Colonel DeLisle, shrugging his shoulders, "I suppose I should do what he does. What _I_ might do, isn't the question, however. But I've said enough.... Now I have to get back to barracks.

For you, Sanda, this must be 'good-bye,' I fear, to the friend of your journey."

"My friend for always," the girl amended, holding out her hand to Max.

"And I'd rather say 'Au revoir' than 'Good-bye'; we shall meet again--away in the desert, perhaps."

She caught her father's warning eye and stopped. "Good-bye, then--Soldier of the Legion."

"If he doesn't change his mind," muttered DeLisle. "There's still time."

Max looked from the girl to the flag in its gla.s.s case.

"I shall not change my mind," he said.

CHAPTER XI

FOUR EYES

Beyond the barracks of the Legion, going toward the Porte de Tlemcen, and opposite the drill-ground and cavalry barracks of the Spahis, there is a sign: _Bureau de Recrutement_.

Early in the morning after taking his resolution, Max walked down the narrow, lane-like way which led off from the Rue de Tlemcen and the long front wall of the Legion's barracks, and found the door indicated by the sign.

In a bare office room, furnished with a table and a few benches, sat a corporal, busily writing. He looked up, surprised to see such a visitor as Max, and was at some trouble to hide his amazement on hearing that this well-dressed young man, evidently a gentleman, wished to enlist in the Legion. Opening off the outer room, with its white-washed walls and display of posters tempting to recruits, was another office, the _Bureau du Commandant de Recrutement_, and there Max was received by a lieutenant, older than most of the men of that rank in the English or American armies. Something in his manner made Max wonder if the officer had been told of him and his intention by Colonel DeLisle. At first he put only the perfunctory questions which a man entering the wide-open gate of the Legion may answer as he chooses. But when in its turn came an inquiry as to the recruit's profession, the officer looked at Max sharply yet with sympathy.

"No profession," was the answer; a true one, for Max's resignation had already taken effect.

"At present, but--in the past?" the lieutenant encouraged him kindly.

"If you have military experience, you can rise quickly in the Legion."

For good or ill, Max stuck to yesterday's resolve, knowing that he might be weak enough to regret it, and anxious therefore to make it irrevocable. "I have done some military service," he explained, "enough to help me learn my duties as a soldier quickly."

"Ah, well, no more on that subject, then!" and the lieutenant sighed audibly. "Yet it is a pity, especially as you are of French birth and parentage, though brought up in America. Your chance of promotion would--but let us hope that by good luck something may happen to give you the chance in any case. Who knows but both your countries may be proud of you some day? Is there--nothing you would care to tell me about yourself that might enable me to advise you later?"

"Nothing with which it is necessary to trouble you, my Lieutenant."

"_Bien!_ It remains then only for you to be examined by the _medecin major_. You have nothing to fear from his report. _Au contraire!_"

In an adjoining room two men were already waiting the arrival of the doctor, who was due in a few minutes. One, evidently a Frenchman, with a dark, dissipated face, volunteered the information that he was a chauffeur, whose master had discharged him without notice on account of an "unavoidable accident" at a small town within walking distance of Sidi-bel Abbes. The other, a blond boy who looked not a day over sixteen, announced that he was an Alsatian who had come to Algeria as a waiter in a restaurant car, on purpose to join the Legion, and escape military service as a German. "I shall serve my five years, and become a French subject," he said joyously. "Take hold of my arm. Not bad, is it, for biceps? For what age would you take me?"

"Seventeen," replied Max, adding a year to his real guess.

But it was not enough. The girlish face blushed up to the lint-coloured hair, cut _en brosse_. "I call myself eighteen," said the child. "Don't you think the doctor will believe me when he feels my muscle?"

"I think he'll give you the benefit of the doubt," Max a.s.sured him, smiling.

"No trouble about _my_ age!" exulted the chauffeur. "I am twenty-seven."

He looked ten years older. But a recruit for the Legion may take the age as well as the name he likes best, provided the _medecin major_ be not too critical.

Both his companions were keenly curious concerning Max, and considered themselves aggrieved that, after their frankness, he should choose to be reserved. They put this down to pride. But the Legion would take it out of him! All men were equal there. They had heard that among other things.

Before the stream of questions had run dry through lack of encouragement, the door was thrown open, and in walked the doctor, a big, jovial man, accompanied by the middle-aged lieutenant who had shown interest in Max, and a weary-faced clerk plunged in gloom by a bad cold in the head. As they entered, the two officers looked at Max, and glanced quickly at each other. They had evidently been speaking of him.

But his examination was left till the last. The chauffeur of "twenty-seven" and the waiter of "eighteen" were pa.s.sed as physically fit--_bon pour le service_: and then came the turn of the third recruit, whose pale blue silk underclothing brought a slight twinkle to the eye of the jolly _medecin major_. Max wished that it had occurred to him to buy something cheaper and less noticeable. But it was too late to think of that now. At all events, he was grateful for the tact and consideration which had given him the last turn.

"Magnifique!" exclaimed the doctor, when he had pinched and pounded Max, sounded heart and lungs, and squeezed his biceps. "Here we have an athlete." And he exchanged another glance with the lieutenant.

The clerk scribbled industriously and sadly in his book, as Max dressed himself again; and the ordeal was over. When the third recruit of the day had been given a paper, first to read, and then to sign with his new name, his contract for five years to serve the Republic of France was made and completed. Maxime St. George was a soldier of the Legion.

He, with the ex-chauffeur and the ex-waiter, was marched by a corporal through a small side gate into the barrack square; and the guard, sitting on a bench by the guardhouse, honoured the newcomers with a stare. The chauffeur and the waiter got no more than a pa.s.sing glance, but all eyes, especially those of the sergeant of the guard, focussed on Max. Apparently it was not every day that the little gate beside the great gate opened for a gentleman recruit. Max realized again that he was conspicuous, and resigned himself to the inevitable. This was the last time he need suffer. In a few minutes the uniform of the Legion would make him a unit among other units, and there would be nothing to single him out from the rest. He would no longer have even a name that mattered. In losing his individuality he would become a number. But for a moment he felt like a new arrival in a Zoo: an animal of some rare species which drew the interest of spectators away from luckier beasts of commoner sorts.

The trio of recruits stood together in an unhappy group, awaiting orders from the regimental offices; and the news of their advent must have run ahead of them with magic speed, swiftly as news travels in the desert, for everywhere along the front of the yellow buildings surrounding the square, windows flew open, heads of soldiers peered out, and voices shouted eagerly: "_Voila les bleus!_" There were only three newcomers, and the arrival of recruits in the barrack square was an everyday spectacle; but something to gaze at was better than nothing at all. Men in fatigue uniform of spotless white, their waists wound round with wide blue sashes, came running up to see the sight, before _les bleus_ should be marched away and lose their value as objects of interest by donning soldier clothes. Max recalled the day of his debut at West Point, a humble, modest "Pleb." This huge, gravelled courtyard, surrounded on three sides by tall, many-windowed barracks, and shut away from the Rue de Tlemcen by high iron railings, had no resemblance to the cadets'

barracks of gray stone; but the emotions of the "Pleb" and of the recruit to the Legion were curiously alike. The same thought presented itself to the soldier that had wisely counselled the new cadet. "I must take it all as it comes, and keep my temper unless some one insults me.

Then--well, I'll have to make myself respected now or never."

"_Les bleus! Voila les bleus!_" was the cry from every quarter: and discipline not being the order of the moment for Legionnaires off duty, young soldiers and old soldiers gathered round, making such remarks as occurred to them, witty or ribald. _Les bleus_ were fair game.

As a schoolboy, Max had read in some book that, in the time of Napoleon First, French recruits had been nicknamed "les bleus" because of the asphyxiating high collars which had empurpled their faces with a suffusion of blood. Little had he dreamed in committing that fact to memory that one day the name would be applied to him! Thinking thus, he smiled between amus.e.m.e.nt and bitterness; but the smile died as a voice whispered in his ear: "For G.o.d's sake don't sell your clothes to the Jews. Keep them for me. I'll get hold of them somehow."

The voice spoke in French. Max turned quickly, and could not resist a slight start at seeing close to his, the face which had seized his attention days ago in the railway station.

The man who had then been dressed in dusty black was now a soldier of the Legion, in white fatigue uniform, like all the rest: but the dark face and night-black eyes had the same arresting, tragic appeal. After this whisper, the Legionnaire drew back, his look asking for an answer by nod or shake of the head. Max caught the idea instantly. "By jove!

the fellow has made up his mind to desert already!" he thought. "Why? He hasn't the air of a slacker."

There was no language he could choose in this group made up from a dozen countries, which might not be understood by one or all. The only thing was to trust to the other's quickness of comprehension, as the speaker had trusted to his. He held out his hand, exclaiming: "_C'est vous, mon ami! Quel chance!_"

The ruse was understood. His handclasp was returned with meaning. Every one supposed that _le bleu_ of four days ago and _le bleu_ of to-day were old acquaintances who had found each other unexpectedly.

There was no chance for private speech. A quick fire of interrogation volleyed at the three recruits, especially at Max. "Are you French? Are you German? Are you from Switzerland--Alsace--Belgium--Italy--England?"

Questions spattered round the newcomers like a rain of bullets, in as many languages as the countries named, and Max amused himself by answering in the same, whenever he was able.

"How many tongues have you stowed in that fly-trap of yours, my child?"

inquired a thin, elderly Legionnaire with a long nose and clever, twinkling eyes. No nation but Holland could have produced that face, and it was unnecessary that the speaker should introduce himself as a Dutchman. "Fourteen years have I served France in the Legion. I have been to Madagascar and Tonkin. Everywhere I have found myself the champion of languages, which is only natural, for I was translator in the State Department at home--a long while ago. But if you can speak eleven you will get the champions.h.i.+p over me. I have only as many tongues as I have fingers."

"You beat me by six," laughed Max, and the jealous frown faded.

"Encore un champion!" gayly announced the round-faced youth who had jocosely asked Max if he were a Belgian. "Voila notre joli heros, Pelle."