"I have thought of a way, Colonel DeLisle!"
"I am glad. You have only to tell me."
"Accept me as one of your men. Let me join the Legion."
"Mon Dieu!" The Legion"s colonel was taken completely by surprise. Max had thought he might perhaps have expected the request, but evidently it was not so. The dapper little figure straightened itself. And from his place beside his adored flag, Colonel DeLisle gazed across to the other side where, close also to the flag, stood the young man he had wished to serve. Max met his eyes, flushed and eager and, it seemed, pathetically young. There was dead silence for an instant. Then DeLisle spoke in a changed tone: "Do you mean this? Have you thought of what you are saying?"
"I do mean it," Max replied. "I believe I have thought of it ever since I saw those men of all countries getting out of the train to join the Legion. I felt the call they had felt. But it is stronger to-day. I know now what I want. In the Salle D"Honneur of the Legion I decide on my career."
"Decide!" the other repeated. "No, not that, yet! You have got this idea into your head because you are romantic. You think you are ruined and that the future doesn"t matter. You will find it does. This is no place for poetry and romance--my G.o.d, no! It"s a fiery furnace. In barracks we should burn the romance out of you in twenty-four hours."
"If I"ve got more in me than any man who loves adventure ought to have, then I want it burned out," said Max.
"Adventures will cost you less elsewhere," almost sneered DeLisle.
"I don"t ask to get them cheap," Max still insisted. "Though I"ve got nothing to pay with, except myself, my blood, and flesh, and muscles."
"That"s good coin," exclaimed the elder, warming again. "Yet we can"t take it. You may think you know what you mean. But you don"t know what the Legion means. I do. I"ve had nearly twenty years of it."
"You love it?"
"Yes, it is my life. But--I have to remind you, I entered it as an officer. There is all the difference."
"At least I should be a soldier. I know what a soldier"s hardships are."
"Ah, not in the Legion!"
"It can"t kill me."
"It might."
"Let it, then. I"ll die learning to be a man."
DeLisle looked at his companion intently. "I think," he said, "you are a man."
"No, sir, I"m not," Max contradicted him abruptly. "I used to hope I might pa.s.s muster as men go. But these last days I"ve been finding myself out. I"ve been down in h.e.l.l, and I shouldn"t have got there if I were a man. I"m a self-indulgent, pining, and whining boy, thinking of nothing but myself, and not knowing whether I"ve done right or wrong. If the Legion can"t teach me what"s white and what"s black, nothing can."
The colonel of the Legion laughed a queer, short laugh. "That is true,"
he said. "I take back those words of mine about poetry and romance.
You"ve got the right point of view, after all. And you are the kind of man the Legion wants, the born soldier, lover of adventure for adventure"s sake. You would come to us not because you have anything to hide, or because you prefer barracks in France to prison at home, or because some woman has thrown you over," (just there his keen eyes saw the young man wince, and he hurried on without a pause) "but because we"ve made some history, we of the Legion, and you would like a chance to make some for yourself, under this"--and he pointed to the flag whose folds hung between them--"_Valeur et Discipline!_ That"s the Legion"s motto, for the Legion itself must be _Dieu et Patrie_ for most of its sons. I"ve done my duty as a friend in warning you to go where life is easier. As colonel of the First Regiment, I welcome you, if you sincerely wish to come into the Legion. Only----"
"Only what, sir?"
"My daughter! She wanted me to help you. She"ll think I"ve hindered, instead."
"No, Colonel. She hoped I"d join the Legion."
DeLisle looked surprised. "What reason have you for supposing that?"
"Interpreting a thing she said, or, rather, a thing she wanted to say, but was afraid to say for fear I might blame her some day in the future."
"She, knowing nothing of the Legion, recommended you to join? That is strange."
"She knew a little of me and my circ.u.mstances. I"d been a soldier, and there seemed only one convenient way for a man without a name or country to start and become a soldier again. Miss DeLisle saw that."
"You"re talking of me?" inquired Sanda"s voice at the half-open door.
Both men sprang to open it for her. As she came into the Salle d"Honneur, she seemed to bring with her into this room, sacred to dead heroes of all lands, the sweetness of spring flowers to lay on distant graves. And as she stepped over the threshold, like a young soldier she saluted the flag.
"I have just said to Colonel DeLisle that you would approve of my joining the Legion," Max explained. "Have I told him the truth?"
The girl looked anxiously from one man to the other. She was rather pale and subdued, as if life pressed hardly even upon her. "You guessed what I wouldn"t let myself say in the train the other day!" she exclaimed.
"But--you _haven"t_ joined, have you?"
"Not yet, or I shouldn"t be here. The Salle d"Honneur is for common soldiers only when they"re dead, I presume."
"But you could become an officer some day, couldn"t he, father?"
"Yes," replied Colonel DeLisle. "Every soldier of the Legion has his chance. And our friend is French, I think, from what you"ve told me of his confidences to you. That gives an extra chance to rise.
France--rightly or wrongly, but like all mothers--favours her own sons.
Besides, he has been a soldier, which puts him at once ahead of the others."
"I shouldn"t trade on that! I"d rather begin on a level with other men, not ahead of them," Max said hastily. "My object would be not to teach, but to learn--to cure myself of my faults----"
The colonel drew a deep breath, like a sigh. "We do cure men sometimes, men far more desperate, men with souls far more sick than yours. There"s that to be said for us."
"His soul isn"t sick at all!" Sanda cried out, in defence of her friend.
"Perhaps he thinks it is." Colonel DeLisle looked at Max as he had looked after those chance words of his about a woman.
"_Do_ you think that, Mr. Doran?" the girl questioned incredulously. "I shall be disappointed if you do."
"Don"t be disappointed. I do not think my soul is sick. I want to see how strong it can be, and my body, too. But you mustn"t call me "Mr.
Doran" now, please. It isn"t my name any more. Colonel DeLisle, may I ask your daughter to choose a name for a new soldier of the Legion? It will be the last favour, for I understand perfectly that after I"ve joined the regiment, as a private soldier, you can be my friends only at heart. Socially, all intercourse must end."
"Oh, no, it wouldn"t be so," Sanda cried out impulsively, though the old officer was silent. "It wouldn"t, if I were not going away."
"You are going away?" Max was conscious of a faint chill. He would have found some comfort in the thought that his brave little travelling companion was near, even though he seldom saw and never spoke to her.
"Not home to the aunts! I told you I"d never go back to live with them, and my father wouldn"t send me. But there"s to be a long march---- Oh, have I said what I oughtn"t? Why? Since he _must_ know if he joins?
Anyhow, I can"t stay here many days longer--I mean, for the present. I"m to be sent to a wonderful place. It will be a great romance."
"Sanda, it is irrelevant to talk of that now," Colonel DeLisle reminded his daughter.
"Forgive me! I forgot, father. May I--name the new soldier, and wish him joy?"
DeLisle laughed rather bitterly. ""Joy" isn"t precisely the word. If he hoped for it, he would soon be disillusioned. You may give him a name, if he wishes it. But let me also give him a few words of advice.
Monsieur Doran----"
"St. George!" broke in Sanda. "That is to be his name. I christen him, close to the flag. Soldier, saint, slayer of dragons." She did not add "my patron saint," but Max remembered, and was grateful.