VI
THE DESERTER

AS she stood on the deck beside her lover-husband and gazed upon the thrillingly beautiful panorama of Marseilles, there was assuredly no happier woman in the world. As he looked at the rapt face and wide-opened glorious eyes of the lovely girl beside him there can scarcely have been a man as happy.

   They had been married in England a week earlier, were on their way to his vast house and vaster estate in Australia, and had come round by sea, instead of suffering the miseries of the "special" across France (which saves a week to leave-expired returning Anglo-Indians).

   Happy! Her happiness was almost a pain. As a child she had childishly adored him; and now he had returned from his wanderings, after a decade of varied, strenuous life — to adore her. Life was too impossibly, hopelessly wonderful and beautiful . . . . He, who had been everywhere, done everything, been everything — soldier, sailor, rancher, planter, prospector, hunter, explorer — had come Home for a visit, and laid his heart at the feet of a country mouse. Happy! His happiness frightened him. After more than ten years of the roughest of roughing it, he had "made good" (exceeding good), and on top of good fortune incredible, had, to his wondering bewilderment, won the love of the sweetest, noblest, fairest, and most utterly lovable and desirable woman in the world. She whom he had left a child had grown into his absolute ideal of Woman, and had been by some miracle reserved for him.

   And which would now know the greater joy in their travels — he in showing her the fair places of the earth and telling her of personal experiences therein, or she in being shown them by this adored hero who had come to make her life a blessed dream of joy? Not that the fair places of the earth were necessary to their happiness. They could have spent a happy day in London on a wet Sunday, or at the end of Southend pier on a Bank Holiday, or in a prison-cell for that matter — for the mind of each to the other a kingdom was.

   "Would you like to go ashore? . . . 'Madame, will you walk and talk with me,' in the Cannebière?" he asked.

   "Of course, we must go ashore, Beloved Snail," was the reply. "I have no idea what the Cannebière is — but," and she hugged his arm and whispered, "you can always 'give me the keys of Heaven,' and walk and talk with me There." (He was "Beloved Snail" when he was a Bad Man and late for meals; "Bill" when he was virtuous or forgiven.)

   The ship being tied up, and a notice having guaranteed that she would on no account untie before midnight, this foolish couple, who utterly loved each other, walked down the gangway, passed the old lady who sells balloons and the old gentleman who sells deck-chairs, the young lady who sells glorious violets and the young gentleman who sells un-glorious "field"-glasses; through the echoing customs-shed and out to where, beside a railway-line, specimens of the genus cocher lie in wait for those who would drive to the boulevards and in hope for those who know not that four francs is ample fare.

   To the sights of Marseilles he took her, enjoying her enjoyment as he had enjoyed few things in his life, and then in the Cannebière dismissed the fiacre.

   "In Rome you must roam like the Romans," he observed. "In Marseilles you must sit on little chairs in front of a café and see the World and his Wife (or Belle Amie) go by."

   "Fancy sitting outside a public-house in Regent Street or the Strand and watching Londoners go by!" said the girl. "Isn't it extraordinary what a difference in habits and customs one finds by travelling a few miles? Think of English officers sitting, in uniform, on the pavement, like those are, and drinking in public," . . . and she pointed to a group of French officers so engaged. "Do let's go and sit near them," she added. "I have never seen soldiers dressed in pale blue and silver, and all the colours of the rainbow . . . . Aren't they pretty-dears!" . . .

   "Their uniforms look quaint to the insular eye, madam, I admit," he replied, as he led the way to an unoccupied table near the brilliant group, "but they are not toy soldiers by any means. They all belong to regiments of the African Army Corps, the Nineteenth, and there isn't a finer one on earth."

   "Darling, you know everything," smiled his wife. "Fancy knowing a thing like that now! I wonder how many other Englishmen know anything about this African Army and that it is the Ninety-Ninth. Now how do you know?"

   It was his turn to smile, and he did so somewhat wryly.

   "What will you have?" he asked, as an aproned garçon hovered around. "Coffee or sirop or — how would you like to be devil-of-a-fellow and taste a sip of absinthe? . . . You'll hate it."

   "No, thank you, Bill-man. Is the syrup golden-syrup or syrup-of-squills or what? No, I'll have some coffee and see if it is."

   "Is what?"

   "Coffee." . . .

   Meanwhile an elderly, grizzled officer, with a somewhat brutal face, was staring hard and rudely at the unconscious couple. He wore a dark blue tunic with red-tabbed and gold-braided collar and cuffs, scarlet overalls, and a blue and red képi. So prolonged was his unshifting gaze, so fierce his frown, and so obvious his interest, that his companions noticed the fact.

   "Is the old hog smitten with la belle Anglaise, I wonder, or what?" murmured a handsome youth in the beautiful pale blue uniform of the Chasseurs d'Afrique to an even more gorgeous officer of Spahis.

   "I have never known Legros take the faintest interest in women," replied the other.

   "There will be a beastly fracas if the husband glances this way. He'll promise Legros to ponch ees 'ead if he thinks he's being rude — as he is."

   Certainly the elderly and truculent-looking officer was being rude, for not only was he staring with a hard, concentrated glare, but he was leaning as far forward as he could, the better to do it. Anyone — man, woman, or child — being conscious of this deliberate, searching gaze, must resent it. It was that of a gendarme, examining the face of a criminal and endeavouring to "place" him and recollect the details of his last encounter with him, or of a juge d'instruction examining a criminal in that manner which does not find favour in England.

   "It is as good as sitting in the stalls of a theatre, sitting here and seeing all these varied types go by, isn't it, Bill?" observed the girl. "Oh, do look at that — that boy in brown velvet and a forked beard!"

   "We are sitting in the Stalls of the Theatre of Life, my child," was the sententious reply, but in reality they were sitting nearer to the Pit.

   The brutal-looking officer scratched the back of his neck slowly up and down with the forefinger of his left hand, a sure sign that he was wrestling with an elusive reminiscence. For a moment he took his eyes from the face of the Englishman and looked sideways at the pavement, cudgelling his brains, ransacking the cells of his memory. With a muttered oath at failure to recapture some piece of long-stored information, he put his hand into the inside pocket of his tunic and produced a tiny flat case. From this he took a pair of pince-nez and adjusted them upon the bridge of his broad, short nose. From the slowness and clumsiness of his movements it was evident that he had only just taken to glasses, or else wore them very seldom.

   The latter was the case, as Lieutenant Legros considered spectacles of any kind a most unmilitary and pékinesque adjunct to uniform.

   A quiet, gentlemanly-looking officer, a Captain, wearing a similar uniform to that of Legros, observed the action.

   "Evidently something interests our friend beyond ordinary," he remarked, and followed the look that the elderly Lieutenant again fixed upon the Englishman, whom the Captain now noticed for the first time.

   Sitting with his back to the road, and almost facing Legros, he got a better view of the Englishman's features than did that deeply interested officer, who, without reply, continued his searching scrutiny. Evidently a person of great powers of concentration. As his glance fell upon the young couple, the Captain started slightly and then looked away.

   "Who's for a stroll?" he remarked, half rising. But his suggestion was not adopted, for glasses were charged, cigarettes alight, the shade of the cafe and awning very agreeable, and the sunshine hot without.

   "Have an apéritif first, mon ami, and be restful," said a Zouave officer, and tinkled the little table-bell loudly.

   The Englishman half-consciously turned toward the sound, and looked away again without noticing the baleful, steady glare fixed upon him through the glasses of the Lieutenant.

   "Dame!" grunted that officer, and smote his brow in an agony of exasperation at the failure of his memory . . . . Curse it! Was he getting old? He had the fellow's name and the circumstances of his case on the tip of his tongue, so to speak — at the tips of his fingers, as it were — and he could not say the word he was bursting to say; could not lay his twitching mental fingers on the details . . . . He knew. . . . He was right. . . He would have it in a minute. . . .

   A paper-boy passed the long front of the cafe and shouted some wholly unintelligible word as he gazed over the serried ranks of chairs and loungers.

   "What does he say, Bill?" asked the girl, "It sounds like Barin. How ill the poor lad looks! Fancy having to sell papers for a living when you are starving and horribly ill, as he obviously is," and as her hand stole to her charitable purse, she gratefully thought of the utter security, peace, comfort, and health of her life — now that Bill had linked it to his. . . . What was the phrase? . . . Yes — she had "hitched her wagon to a star"; her poor little homely wagon to the glorious and brilliant star of her Bill's career . . . . The inquisitorial Lieutenant used the paper-boy for the purposes of his tactics. Rising, he made his way between the chairs and the groups of apéritif-drinking citizens, to where the boy stood, bought a paper, and returned by a route which brought him full face-to-face with the Englishman. Recognition was instantaneous and mutual. The brutal countenance of the elderly Lieutenant was not improved by a sardonic smile and look of mean and petty triumph as he thrust an outstretched index-finger in the Englishman's face and harshly grunted.

   "Henri Rrrobinson!" and then laughed a sneering, hideous cackle.

   Staring in utter bewilderment from the French officer to her husband, the girl saw with horror that his jaw had dropped, his mouth and eyes were gaping wide, and he had gone as white as a sheet.

   "Sergeant Legros!" he whispered.

   "Lieutenant Legros," grunted the other.

   What had happened? What in the name of the Merciful Father was this? Was she dreaming? Her husband looked deathly. He seemed paralysed with fright.

   The Lieutenant half turned, and shouted to a couple of sombre and mysterious-looking gens d'armes who had been standing for some time on the little "island" under the big lamppost in the middle of the road. As they approached, the Englishman rose to his feet.

   "Listen, darling!" he hissed. "Get out of this quick — to the ship. Take a fiacre and say 'P. and O. bateau.' I'll join you all right. They have . . ."

   The Lieutenant put a heavy hand on his shoulder and swing him round.

   "Arrest this man," said he to the gens d'armes, "and take him to Fort St. Jean. He is a deserter, one Henri Rrrobinson, from the First Battalion of the Foreign Legion. Deserted from Sidi-bel-Abbes eight years ago. But I knew the dog. Aha!"

   The group of officers whom Legros had just left, joined the gathering crowd.

   "Poor devil!" said Captain d'Armentières. He too had recognized the soi-disant Henry Robinson . . . . "Poor girl!" he added. "Poor little soul!" She looked like une nouvelle mariée too. Of course Legros had only done his duty — curse him. Curse him a thousand times for a blackguardly, brutal ruffian. The girl was going to faint . . . . Her wedding-ring looked brand-new. "If this is his wedding-night, he'll spend it in the salle de police of Fort St. Jean," he reflected. "If he is on his honeymoon, he'll spend it in the cellules until the General Court-Martial at Oran gives him a few years rabiau with the Zephyrs. If he survives that, which is improbable, he will finish his five years of Legion service. No — she won't see much of him during the next decade. . . . Poor little soul!"

   The gens d'armes duly arrested the deserter. He caught the eye of the Captain.

   "Captain d'Armentières," said he, "you are a French gentleman. This lady is my wife. We have been married a week. I beg of you to see her safe on board the P. and O. steamer Maloja, which we have just left, for an hour's visit here."

   "I will do so," said d'Armentières.

   A fat and kindly Frenchman, who understood English, translated for the benefit of the crowd. It became intensely sympathetic — at least with the girl. The French, for some reason, imagine their Foreign Legion to be composed of Germans, and the French do not love Germans . . . . And then, having commended his wife to d'Armentières (whom he had liked and admired in the past when he had played the fool's prank of joining the Legion "for a lark"), he thought rapidly and clearly . . . .

   If they once got him inside Fort St. Jean (the clearing-house for drafts and details going to, and coming from, Algeria — recruits, convalescents, leave-expired, all sorts; Legionaries, Zouaves, Turcos, Spahis, Tirailleurs) he was done. In a short time he would be a convict, in military-convict dress, enduring the living-death of existence in the Zephyrs, the terrible Disciplinary Battalion, compared with whose lot that of the British long-sentence convict at Dartmoor, Portland, or Wormwood Scrubbs is a bed of roses in the lap of luxury. After that back to the Legion if he were alive to finish his five years, of which there were four unexpired. And his wife-stranded, without money, in Marseilles, unless d'Armentières got her to the ship. And what would she do then — at the end of the voyage? . . . God help them! . . . A few minutes ago — happiness unspeakable, safety, security, peace, all life before them. Now — in a few minutes he would be in gaol and his adored, adoring wife a deserted, friendless stranger in a strange land. . . . Would they allow d'Armentières to take her to the ship? Would they want her to give evidence — put her in some kind of prison until the Court-Martial sat? Suppose d'Armentières had not been there, and she had been left to the tender mercies of Legros — or utterly deserted, fainting on a café chair. . . .

   Well, things couldn't be much worse (or could they) if he "resisted the police," assaulted the duly-appointed officers of the law in the execution of their duty, and made a break for liberty. No, things couldn't be worse. Neither he nor she would survive the next ten years. And there was a chance, or the ghost of a shadow of a chance. The deck of the Maloja was English soil, and they could not lay a finger on him there. If only she were safe onboard, he'd make the attempt. There was a chance — and he had always taken the sporting chance, all his life . . . . And this vile cur of a Legros! He had many a score to pay off to Sergeant Legros — the prize bully of the XIXth Army Corps. Now this! If he could only have his hands at the throat of Legros. As these thoughts flashed through his brain, "May I say farewell to my wife and see her into a fiacre with you, Captain d'Armentières?" he asked. He appeared to be as cool as he was pale. The Captain was the senior officer present.

   "Yes," he said. "I will drive her as quickly as possible to the ship," and willing hands helped the fainting girl into the fiacre. . . . Was she dying? As she lost her hold and sank into the bottomless depths of unconsciousness she was finally aware that her husband winked at her violently. That wink in a face which was a pallid, tragic mask, was the most dreadful and heartrending thing she had ever seen. Anyhow, it meant some kind of reassurance which he could not put into words without disclosing some plan to his captors. She fainted completely, in the act of wondering whether this was merely that he was putting a good face on it and pretending for her benefit, or whether he really had a plan. Anyhow she was to go to the ship — and, in any case, she was dying of a broken heart. . . .

   As he watched his wife driven rapidly away, the Englishman formulated his plans.

   He would delay as long as he could in order that his wife might be on board the ship before he reached it, if ever he did.

   He would go quietly and willingly but as slowly as possible — while the road to Fort St. Jean was the road to the ship. He would then break away from his pursuers and run for it. He would show them what an old Oxford miler and International Rugger forward could do in the way of running and dodging, and, perchance; what sort of a fight an amateur champion heavy-weight could put up.

   But strategy first, strength and skill afterwards, for he was playing a terrible game, with his wife's happiness at stake, not to mention his own liberty. With a groan, he artistically smote his knees together and sank to the ground. That would gain a little time anyhow, and they'd hardly carry him to Fort St. Jean, nor waste a cab-fare on the carcase of a Legionary.

   He wasn't quite certain as to the nearest way from the Cannebière to Fort St. Jean, but he remembered that it was down by the waterfront. Yes, he could again see its quaint old tower, like a lighthouse, and its drawbridged moat, as he closed his eyes. Part of the way to it would be the way to the P. and O. wharf at Mole C, or whatever it was, anyhow. Would they take him by tram? That might complicate matters. If they were going to do that, should he make his break for liberty at once, or on the journey, or at the end of it? It would be comparatively easy to make a dash before or after the tram-ride, but they'd surely never let him escape them from a crowded tram. Would they handcuff him? If so, that would settle it. He'd fight and run the moment handcuffs were produced. You can't run in handcuffs, although you think you can. Would they shoot? It would be Hell to be winged in sight of the ship. Was the P. and O. wharf British soil, as well as the ship?

   Almost certainly not.

   Lieutenant Legros kicked him in the ribs.

   "Get up, tricheur," he shouted. He was in his element, and fairly gloated over his victim, who only groaned and collapsed the more.

   To those of the crowd who realized that he was an Englishman, he was an object of pity; to those who concluded that, being a Legionary, he was a German, he was merely an object of interest.

   The officers who had been sitting with Legros departed in some disgust, and the crowd changed, eddied, and thinned . . . . Only a sick man being attended to by a couple of gens d'armes!

   These latter grew a little impatient. The sooner they could dispose of this fine fellow the better, but they certainly weren't going to march to Fort St. Jean at the request of a Lieutenant of Legionaries. Let the army do its own dirty work. They'd run him in all right to the nearest lock-up, and he could be handed over to the military authorities, to be dealt with, whenever they liked to fetch him. To the devil with all Légionnaires, be they deserters or Lieutenants! "He had better be taken to the police-station on a stretcher, mon Lieutenant," suggested one of them. "It would appear that he has fainted."

   "Stretcher!" roared Legros, and spat. "Pah! That is not how we deal with swine of Légionnaires who sham sick. Stretcher! Drag him face downward by one toe at the tail of a dust-cart more likely!"

   Oho! Police-station, was it? Not Fort St. Jean immediately. And where might the nearest police-station be, wondered the prostrate Englishman. He must not let them get him there. The boat would sail at midnight, whether he were on board or not — and once the cell door closed on him it would not open till the morning.

   Perhaps he had better take his leave at once. Unless they went in the direction of the docks for some part of the way it would be a cruelly punishing run. . . . Just as bad for them though, and he'd back himself against any of these beefy old birds for a four-mile race. . . . His wife must be half-way there by now — more, if d'Armentières urged the cocher, as he would.

   Was it likely that d'Armentières would collect a guard of gens d'armes, dock police, soldiers, or customs officials at the wharf gate or the ship's gangway, and lie in wait to see if he tried to get on board? No — d'Armentières was not that sort.

   (He was not, and when, later, Lieutenant Legros was reduced to the rank of sergeant for what was practically the brutal murder of a Legionary, Captain d'Armentières thought of this incident and rejoiced.)

   And if he did — let them stop him if they could. He'd break through the scrum of them all right. Lay some of them out too.

   What was Legros saying? Urging the gens d'armes to boot him up and lug him off by the scruff of his neck, eh?

   He groaned again, sat up with difficulty, shakily and painfully rose to his feet, then smote Legros a smashing blow between the eyes, butted the gendarme who stood on his right, and with a dodge, a jump, and a wriggle was away and running like a hare.

   To the end of his life he never forgot that race for life, and for more than life. Scores of times he lived through it again in terrible nightmares and suffered a thousand times more than he did on the actual run itself. For then he was quite cool, steady, and unafraid. He imagined himself to be running with the ball at Blackheath or Richmond, threading his way through the hostile fifteen, dodging, leaping, handing-off. But there were one or two differences. In Rugger you may not drive your clenched fist with all your might into the face of any man who springs at you. . . . Nor do you run for miles over cobbles. . . .

   It was really surprisingly easy. Once he had got clear and put a few yards between himself and the uninjured gendarme, it was even betting that he'd win — provided his wind held and he didn't get the stitch, and that he did not slip and fall on the cursed stones. For the folk behind he cared nothing, and with such in front as grasped the situation in time to do something, he could deal. Some he dodged, some he handed-off as at Rugger, and some he hit. These last were slower to rise than those he handed-off, or caused to fall by dodging them as they sprang at him.

   When he turned a sharp corner he was so well ahead of the original pursuers that he was merely a man running, and that is not in itself an indictable offence. Certainly people stopped and stared at the sight of an obvious foreigner running at top speed, but he might have a boat to catch, he might be pursuing a train of thought or his lost youth and innocence. Que voulez-vous? Besides, he might be English, and therefore mad.

   And then the blue-faced, panting gendarme would round the corner at the head of such gamins, loafers, police agents, and other citizens as saw fit to run on a hot afternoon. Whereupon people in this sector of street would look after the runaway and some run after him as well. So the pursuing crowd continually changed, as some left it and others joined it, until there remained of the old original firm scarcely any but the distressed and labouring gendarme — who, at last, himself gave up, reeled to the wall, and whooping and gasping for breath, prepared to meet his Maker.

   Before the poor man had decided that this event was not yet, the Englishman had dashed round another corner and actually leapt on to an electric tram in full flight toward the quais!

   Ciel! How mad were these English! Fancy a man running like that now, just to catch a tram. No, he would not go inside; he preferred to stand on the platform, and stand there he would.

   He did, and anon, the tram having stopped at his polite request to the conductor, he strolled on to the P. and O. wharf and marched up the gangway of the good ship Maloja.

   A steward informed him that his wife were ill, 'aving been brought aboard by a French gent and took to 'er cabing. She were still lying down. . . .

   She was, at that moment, very ill indeed, mentally and physically.

   But not for long, when his arms had assured her that they were not those of a vision and a ghost. . . .

   If you ever travel Home with them, you'll find they don't go ashore at Marseilles. No, they don't like the place — prefer to stay on board, even through the coaling.