The World's Greatest Books [Volumes 1-15, 17-20]

Cecil hesitated a moment; then he stretched out his hand. "Will you take it--still?"

"Take it! Before all the world, always, come what will!"

The Seraph's voice rang clear as the ring of silver. Another moment, and the door had closed. Cecil went slowly out beside his accuser, not blaming the Jew in anything.

Once out in the air, the Hebrew laid his hand on his arm. Presently, in a side-street, three figures loomed in the shadow of the houses--a German official, the commissary of police, and an English detective. The Hebrew had betrayed him, and arrested him in the open street.

In an instant all the pride and blood of his race was up. He wrenched his wrists free and with his left arm felled the detective to earth with a crushing blow. The German---a powerful and firmly-built man--was on him at once, but Cecil's science was the finer. For a second the two rocked in close embrace, and then the German fell heavily.

The cries of Baroni drew a crowd at once, but Cecil dashed, with the swiftness of the deer, forward into the gathering night.

Flight! The craven's refuge--the criminal's resource! Flight! He wished in the moment's agony that they would send a bullet through his brain.

Soon the pursuers were far behind. But Cecil knew that he had but the few remaining hours of night left to save those for whom he had elected to sacrifice his life.

III.--Under Another Flag

Cigarette was the pet of the army of Africa, and was as lawless as most of her patrons. She was the Friend of the Flag. Soldiers had been about her from her cradle. They had been her books, her teachers, her guardians, and, later on, her lovers, all the days of her life. She had no sense of duty taught her, except to face fire boldly, never to betray a comrade, and to worship but two deities--"la Gloire" and "la France." Her own sex would have seen no good in her, but her comrades-in-arms could, and did. A certain chasseur d'Afrique in this army at Algiers puzzled her. He treated her with a grave courtesy, that made her wish, with impatient scorn for the wish, that she knew how to read, and had not her hair cut short like a boy's--a weakness the little vivandière had never been visited with before.

"You are too fine for us, mon brave," she said pettishly once to this chasseur. "They say you are English, but I don't believe it. Say what you are, then?"

"A soldier of France. Can you wish me more?"

"True," she said simply. "But you were not always a soldier of France? You joined, they say, twelve years ago. What were you before then?"

"Before?" he answered slowly. "Well--a fool"

"You belonged to the majority, then!" said Cigarette. "But why did you come into the service? You were born in the noblesse--bah, I know an aristocrat at a glance! What ruined you, Monsieur l'Aristocrat?"

"Aristocrat? I am none. I am Louis Victor, a corporal of the chasseurs."

"You are dull, mon brave."

Cigarette left him, and made her way to the officers' quarters. High or low, they were all the same to Cigarette, and she would have talked to the emperor himself as coolly as she did to any private.

She praised the good looks of the corporal of chasseurs, and his colonel, M. le Marquis de Châteauroy, answered, with a curse, "I wish my corporal were shot! One can never hear the last of him!"

Meanwhile, the corporal of chasseurs sat alone among the stones of a ruined mosque. He was a dashing cavalry soldier, who had a dozen wounds cut over his body by the Bedouin swords in many and hot skirmishes; who had waited through sultry African nights for the lion's tread; and who had served well in fierce, arduous work in trying campaigns and in close discipline.

From the extremes of luxury and indolence Cecil came to the extremes of hardship and toil. He had borne the change mutely, and without a murmur, though the first years were years of intense misery. His comrades had grown to love him, seeing his courage and his willingness to help them, with a rough, dog-like love.

Twelve years ago in England it was accepted that Bertie Cecil and his servant Rake had been killed in a railway accident in France.

And the solitary corporal of chasseurs read in the "Galignani" of the death of his father, Viscount Royallieu, and of his elder brother. The title and estate that should have been his had gone to his younger brother.

IV.--From Death to Life

The Seraph, now Duke of Lyonesse, and his sister Venetia, Princess Corona, came on a visit to the French camp, and with them Berkeley, Viscount Royallieu. Corporal Louis Victor saw them, and, safe from recognition himself, knew them. But Cecil was not to go down to the grave unreleased. First, his brother Berkeley coming upon him alone in the solitude of a desert camp, made concealment impossible.

"Have you lived stainlessly since?" were Cecil's only words, stern as the demand of a judge.

"God is my witness, yes! But you--they said you were dead. That was my first disgrace, and my last; you bore the weight of my shame. What can I say? Such nobility, such sacrifice--"

It was for himself that Berkeley trembled.