The Wages of Virtue Part 32

Outside, the Bucking Bronco set Carmelita down upon a bench in a dark corner and chafed her hands as he peered anxiously into her face.

"Pull yureself together, honey," he urged. "Don't yew give way yit.

Yew've gotter walk past the Guard ef I carries yew all the rest of the way."

The broken-hearted girl could only moan. The American racked his brains for a solution of the difficulty and wished John Bull and Rupert were with him. It would be utterly hopeless to approach the gate with the girl in his arms. What would happen if he could not get her out that night? Suddenly the girl rose to her feet. Pride had come to her rescue.

"Come, Monsieur Bronco," she said in a dead, emotionless voice. "Let me get home," and began to walk like an automaton. Slipping his arm through hers, the American guided and supported her, and in time, Carmelita awoke from a terrible dream to find herself at home. The Russian girl, in some clothing and a wrap of Carmelita's, admitted them at the back door.

"Get her some brandy," said the Bucking Bronco. "Shall I open the Caffy and serve fer yew, Carmelita, ma gel?" he asked.

Before he could translate his question into Legion French, Carmelita had understood, partly from his gestures. She shook her head.

Olga Kyrilovitch looked a mute question at the American. He nodded slightly. Carmelita caught the unspoken communication between the two.

"Yes," she said, turning to Olga, "you were right.... They were all right. And I was wrong.... He is the basest, meanest scoundrel who ever betrayed a woman. I do not realise it yet--I am stunned.... And I am punished too. I shall die or go mad when I understand.... And I want to be alone. Go now, dear Signor Orso Americano, and take my love and this message to Signor Jean Boule. _I kiss his boots in humility and apology, and if he will kill this Rivoli for me I will be his slave for life._"

"Let me kill him fer yew, Carmelita," begged the American as he turned to go, and then paused as his face lit up with the brightness of an idea. "No," he said. "Almighty G.o.d! I got another think come. I'll come an' see yew to-morrow, Carmelita--and make yew a _pro_posal about Mounseer Loojey as'll do yew good." At the door he beckoned to the Russian girl.

"Look at hyar, Miss Mikhail," he whispered. "Stand by her like a man to-night. Nuss her, and coddle her and soothe her. You see she don't do herself no harm. Yew hev' her safe and in her right mind in the mornin'--an' we'll git yew and yure brother outer Sidi or my name ain't Hyram Cyrus Milton."

--3

That night was one of the most unforgettable of all the memorable nights through which Olga Kyrilovitch ever lived in the course of her adventurous career. For it was the only night during which she was shut up with a violent and dangerous homicidal maniac. In addition to fighting for her own life, the girl had, at times, to fight for that of her a.s.sailant, and she deserved well of the Bucking Bronco. Nature at length a.s.serted herself and Carmelita collapsed. She slept, and awoke in the middle of the next day as sane as a person can be, every fibre of whose being yearns and tingles with one fierce obsession. Even to the experienced Russian girl, the wildness of the Neapolitan revenge-pa.s.sion was an alarming revelation.

"Though I starve or go mad, I cannot eat nor sleep till I have spat on his dead face," were the only words she answered to Olga's entreaty that she would take food. But she busied herself about her daily tasks with pinched white face, pinched white lips, and cavernous black brooding eyes.

"Rivoli's next meal here will be his last," thought Olga Kyrilovitch, and shuddered.

Terrible and unfathomable as was Carmelita's agony of mind, she insisted on carrying out the programme for the escape of the two Russians fixed for that day, and Olga salved a feeling of selfishness by a.s.suring herself that anything which took the girl's thoughts from her own tragedy was for her good.

That afternoon, Feodor Kyrilovitch made his un.o.btrusive exit from the Legion and was admitted by his sister at the back door of the Cafe. In his pocket was a letter enclosed in a blank envelope. On an inner envelope was the following name and address: "_Lady Huntingten, Elham Old Hall, Elham, Kent, England._"

By the five-thirty train two flighty females--one blonde, the other brunette--were seen off from the little Sidi-bel-Abbes station of the Western Algerian Railway, which runs from Tlemcen to Oran, by Mademoiselle Carmelita of the Cafe de la Legion. Their conversation and playful badinage with the guard of Legionnaires, which is always on duty at the platform gate, were frivolous and unedifying. Sergeant Boulanger, as gallant to women as he was ferocious to men, vowed to his admired Carmelita that it broke his heart to announce that he feared he could not allow her two friends to proceed on their journey until--Carmelita's white face seemed to go a little whiter--they had both given him a chaste salute. On hearing this, one of the girls fled squealing to the train, while the other, with very real blushes and unfeigned reluctance, submitted her face to partial burial beneath the vast moustache of the amorous Sergeant.... As the ramshackle little train crawled out of the station, this girl said to the one who had fled: "You _were_ a sneak to bolt like that, Feodor," and received the somewhat cryptic reply--

"My dear Olga, and where should we both be now if his lips had felt the bristles around mine? ... You don't suppose that a double shave, twice over, makes a man's face like a girl's, do you?..."

These two young females found Lady Huntingten all, and more than all, her son had prophesied. When Feodor and Olga Kyrilovitch left the hospitable roof of Elham Old Hall, she parried their protestations of grat.i.tude with the statement that she was fully repaid and over-paid, for anything she had been able to do for them, by the pleasure of talking with friends of her son, friends who had actually been with him but a few days before, and who so fully bore out the statements contained in his letter to the effect that he was in splendid health and having a splendid time.

On returning to her Cafe, Carmelita found the Bucking Bronco, John Bull, Reginald Rupert, 'Erbiggins, and several other Legionnaires awaiting admittance. Having opened her bar and mechanically ministered to her customers' needs, the unsmiling, broken-looking Carmelita, all of whose vitality and energy seemed concentrated in her burning eyes beckoned to the American and led him into her room Gripping his wrist with her cold hand, and almost shaking him in her too-long suppressed frenzy:

"Have you told Jean Boule?" she asked. "When will he kill him? Where?

Quick, tell me! I must be there. I must see him do it.... Oh! He will die too quickly.... It is too good a death for such a reptile....

It is no punishment.... Why should he not suffer some thousandth part of what _I_ suffer?"

"Look at hyar, Carmelita, honey," interrupted the American, putting his arm round the little heaving shoulders as he mentally translated what he must first say in his own tongue. "Thet's jest whar the swine would git the bulge on yew. Why shouldn't he git a glimpse o' sufferin', sech as I had ter sit an' see yew git, las' night? ... An' I gits it in the think-box las' night, right hyar. Listen, ma honey. _I'm gwine ter beat him up_, right naow, right hyar, in yure Caffy--an' before yure very eyes. In front of all his bullies an' all the guys he's beat up, I'll hev' him on his knees a-blubberin' an' a-prayin' fer mercy.... Then he shall lick yure boots, little gel, same as he makes recruits lick his. Then he shall grovel on the ground an' beg an' pray yew to marry him, and at that insult yew shall ask me to put him across my knee and irritate his pants with my belt--an' then throw him neck and crop, tail over tip, in the gutter! Termorrer John Bull smacks his face on the barrack-square an' tells him he was only playin' with him about lettin'

him off that dool."

When Carmelita clearly understood the purport of this remarkable speech she put her arms around the Bucking Bronco's neck.

"Dear Signor Orso Americano," she whispered. "Humiliate him to the dust before his comrades, bring him grovelling to my feet, begging me to marry him--and I will be your wife.... Blind, blind, unnameable _fool_ that I have been--to think this dog a G.o.d and you a rough barbarian....

Forgive me, Signor.... I could kill myself."

The Bucking Bronco folded the woman in his arms. Suddenly she struggled free, thrust him from her, and, falling into a chair, buried her face in her arms and burst into tears. Standing over her the Bucking Bronco awkwardly patted her back with his huge hand.

"Do yew good, ma gel," he murmured over and over again. "Nuth'n like a good cry for a woman.... Git it over naow, and by'n-by show a smilin'

face an' a proud one fer Loojey Rivoli to see fer the las' time."

"The _bambino_," wailed the girl. "The _bambino_."

"_What?_" exclaimed the Bucking Bronco.

Rising, the girl looked the man in the face and painfully but bravely stammered out what had been her so-wonderful Secret, and the hope of her life.

The Bucking Bronco again folded Carmelita in his arms.

CHAPTER X

THE WAGES OF SIN

It was soon evident that the word had been pa.s.sed round that there would be "something doing" at the Cafe de la Legion that evening. Never before had its hospitable roof covered so large an a.s.sembly of guests.

Though it was not exactly what could be called "a packed house," it was far from being a selected gathering of the special friends of Il Signor Luigi Rivoli. To Legionaries John Bull, Reginald Rupert and 'Erb 'Iggins it was obvious that the Bucking Bronco had been at some pains to arrange that the spectators of whatever might befall that evening, were men who would witness the undoing of Luigi Rivoli--should that occur--with considerable equanimity. Scarcely a man there but had felt at some time the weight of his brutal fist and the indignity of helpless obedience to his tyrannous behest. Of one thing they were sure--whatever they might, or might not behold, they would see a Homeric fight, a struggle that would become historic in the annals of la Legion.

The atmosphere was electric with suppressed excitement and a sense of pleasurable expectation.

In a group by the bar, lounged the Bucking Bronco and the three Englishmen with a few of their more immediate intimates, chiefly Frenchmen, and members of their _escouade_. Carmelita, a brilliant spot of colour glowing on either cheek, busied herself about her duties, flitting like a b.u.t.terfly from table to table. Never had she appeared more light-hearted, gay, and _insouciante_. But to John Bull, who watched her anxiously, it was clear that her gaiety was feverish and hectic, her laughter forced and hysterical.

"Reckon 'e's got an earthly, matey?" asked 'Erb of Rupert. "'E'll 'ave ter scrag an' kick, same as Rivoli, if 'e don't want ter be counted aht."

"I'd give a hundred pounds to see him win, anyhow," was the reply. "I expect he'll fight the brute with his own weapons. He'll go in for what he calls 'rough-housing' I hope.... No good following Amateur Boxing a.s.sociation rules if you're fighting a bear, or a Zulu, or a Fuzzy-wuzzy, or Luigi Rivoli...."

And that was precisely the intention of the American, whose fighting had been learnt in a very rough and varied school. When earning his living as a professional boxer, he had given referees no more than the average amount of trouble; and in the ring, against a clean fighter, had put up a clean fight. A tricky opponent, resorting to fouls, had always found him able to respond with very satisfying tricks of his own--"and then some." But the Bucking Bronco had also done much mixed fighting as a hobo[#] with husky and adequate bulls[#] in many of the towns of the free and glorious United States of America, when guilty of having no visible means of support; with exasperated and homicidal shacks[#] on most of that proud country's railways, when "holding her down," and frustrating their endeavours to make him "hit the grit"; with terrible and dangerous lumber-jacks in timber camps when the rye whiskey was in and all sense and decency were out; with cow-punchers and ranchers, with miners, with Bowery toughs, and a.s.sorted desperadoes.

[#] Tramp, a rough.

[#] Policemen.

[#] Train conductors.

To-night, when he stood face to face with Luigi Rivoli, he intended to do precisely what his opponent would do, to use all Nature's weapons and every device, trick, s.h.i.+ft and artifice that his unusually wide experience had taught him.

He knew, and fully admitted, that, tremendously powerful and tough as he himself was, Rivoli was far stronger. Not only was the Italian a born Strong Man, but he had spent his life in developing his muscles, and it was probable that there were very few more finely developed athletes on the face of the earth. Moreover, he was a far younger man, far better fed (thanks to Carmelita), and a trained professional wrestler. Not only were his muscles of marvellous development, they were also trained and educated to an equally marvellous quickness, skill and poise. Add to this the fact that the man was no mean exponent of the arts of _la savate_ and _la boxe_, utterly devoid of any scruples of honour and fair-play, and infused with a bitter hatred of the American--and small blame accrues to the latter for his determination to meet the Italian on his own ground.