Ouida_Under_Two_Flags.txt topic ['13', '324', '378', '393']
to her. welcome of her death-shot was the
only untruth that had ever soiled her fearless lips. was terrible;
yet she was content--content to have come to it for his sake.
was a ghastly, stricken silence round her. order she had
brought had just been glanced at, but no other thought was with the most
callous there than the heroism of her act, than the martyrdom of her
death.
color was fast passing from her lips, and a mortal pallor settling
there in the stead of that rich, bright hue, once warm as the scarlet
heart of the pomegranate. head leaned back on 's breast and she
felt the great burning tears fall, one by one, upon her brow as he
hung speechless over her; she put her hand upward and touched his eyes
softly.
"! is it to die--just to die? have lived your martyrdom;
could not have done that. , just one moment. will be rich.
care of the old man--he will not trouble long--and of -qui-veut
and , and , and the rat, and all the dogs, will you?
will show you the de in . should not
like to think that they would starve."
felt his lips move with the promise he could not find voice to
utter; and she thanked him with that old child-like smile that had lost
nothing of its light.
" is good; they will be happy with you. see here--that must
have back his white horse; he alone saved you. heed that they spare
him. make my grave somewhere where my army passes; where can hear
the trumpets, and the arms, and the passage of the troops-- !
forgot! shall not wake when the bugles sound. will all end now;
will it not? is horrible, horrible!"
shudder shook her as, for the moment, the full sense that all her
glowing, redundant, sunlit, passionate life was crushed out forever from
its place upon the earth forced itself on and overwhelmed her. she
was of too brave a mold to suffer any foe--even the foe that conquers
kings--to have power to appall her. raised herself, and looked at
the soldiery around her, among them the men whose carbines had killed
her, whose anguish was like the heart-rending anguish of women.
" ! was a foolish word of mine. many of my bravest
have fallen in death; and shall be afraid of what they welcomed?
not grieve like that. could not help it; you were doing your duty.
the shots had not come to me, they would have gone to him; and he has
been unhappy so long, and borne wrong so patiently, he has earned the
right to live and enjoy. -- have been happy all my days, like a
bird, like a kitten, like a foal, just from being young and taking no
thought. should have had to suffer if had lived. is much best as
it is----"
voice failed her when she had spoken the heroic words; loss of blood
was fast draining all strength from her, and she quivered in a torture
she could not wholly conceal. for whom she perished hung over her in
an agony greater far than hers. seemed a hideous dream to him that
this child lay dying in his stead.
" nothing save her?" he cried aloud. " ! that you had fired one
moment sooner!"
heard; and looked up at him with a look in which all the passionate,
hopeless, imperishable love she had resisted and concealed so long spoke
with an intensity she never dreamed.
" is content," she whispered softly. " did not understand her
rightly; that was all."
"! , how have wronged you!"
full strength, and nobility, and devotion of this passion he had
disbelieved in and neglected rushed on him as he met her eyes; for the
first time he saw her as she was; for the first time he saw all of which
the splendid heroism of this untrained nature would have been capable
under a different fate. it struck him suddenly, heavily, as with a
blow; it filled him with a passion of remorse.
" darling! my darling! what have done to be worthy of such love?"
he murmured while the tears fell from his blinded eyes, and his head
drooped until his lips met hers. the first utterance of that word
between them, at the unconscious tenderness of his kisses that had the
anguish of a farewell in them, the color suddenly flushed all over her
blanched face; she trembled in his arms; and a great, shivering sigh ran
through her. came too late, this warmth of love. learned what
its sweetness might have been only when her lips grew numb, and her
eyes sightless, and her heart without pulse, and her senses without
consciousness.
"!" she answered, with a look that pierced his soul. " those
kisses for . will have the right to love you; she is of your
'aristocrats,' she is not 'unsexed.' for me-- am only a little
trooper who has saved my comrade! soldiers, come round me one
instant; shall not long find words."
eyes closed as she spoke; a deadly faintness and coldness passed
over her; and she gasped for breath. moment, and the resolute courage
in her conquered; her eyes opened and rested on the war-worn faces of
her "children"--rested in a long, last look of unspeakable wistfulness
and tenderness.
" cannot speak as would," she said at length, while her voice grew
very faint. " have loved you. is said!"
was uttered in those four brief words. " had loved them."
whole story of her young life was told in the single phrase. the
gaunt, battle-scarred, murderous, ruthless veterans of who heard
her could have turned their weapons against their own breasts, and
sheathed them there, rather than have looked on to see their darling
die.
" have been too quick in anger sometimes--forgive it," she said gently.
" do not fight and curse among yourselves; it is bad amid brethren.
my with me, if they will let you; and let the colors be over
my grave, if you can. of me when you go into battle; and tell them
in ----"
the first time her eyes filled with great tears as the name of her
beloved land paused upon her lips. stretched her arms out with a
gesture of infinite longing, like a lost child that vainly seeks its
mother.
" could only see once more! ----"
was the last word upon her utterance; her eyes met 's in one
fleeting, upward glance of unutterable tenderness, then, with her hands
still stretched out westward to where her country was, and with the
dauntless heroism of her smile upon her face like light, she gave a
tired sigh as of a child that sinks to sleep, and in the midst of her
of the lay dead.
the shadow of his tent, at midnight he whom she had rescued stood
looking down at a bowed, stricken form before him with an exceeding,
yearning pity in his gaze.
words had at length been spoken that had lifted from him the burden
of another's guilt; the hour at last had come in which his eyes had
met the eyes of his friend, without a hidden thought between them.
sacrifice was ended, the martyrdom was over; henceforth this doom of
exile and of wretchedness would be but as a hideous dream; henceforth
his name would be stainless among men, and the desire of his heart would
be given him. in this hour of release the strongest feeling in him
was the sadness of an infinite compassion; and where his brother was
stretched prostrate in shame before him, stooped and raised him
tenderly.
" no more," he murmured. " has been well for me that have
suffered these things. yourself--if you do indeed repent, and feel
that you owe me any debt, atone for it, and pay it, by letting your own
life be strong in truth and fair in honor."
it seemed to him that he himself had done no great or righteous
thing in that servitude for another's sake, whose yoke was now lifted
off him for evermore. , looking out over the sleeping camp where one
young child alone lay in a slumber that never would be broken, his
heart ached with the sense of some great, priceless gift received, and
undeserved, and cast aside; even while in the dreams of passion that
now knew its fruition possible, and the sweetness of communion with the
friend whose faith had never forsaken him, he retraced the years of his
exile, and thanked that it was thus with him at the end.
.
.
the green, springtide leafage of woodlands, made musical
with the movement and the song of innumerable birds that had their nests
among the hawthorn boughs and deep, cool foliage of elm and beech, an
old horse stood at pasture. --with the sun on his gray, silken
skin, and the flies driven off with a dreamy switch of his tail, and
the grasses odorous about his hoofs, with dog-violets, and cowslips, and
wild thyme--sleeping, yet not so surely but at one voice he started,
and raised his head with all the eager grace of his youth, and gave a
murmuring noise of welcome and delight. had known that voice in an
instant, though for so many years his ear had never thrilled to it;
had never forgotten. , scarce a day passed but what it
spoke to him some word of greeting or of affection, and his black, soft
eyes would gleam with their old fire, because its tone brought back
a thousand memories of bygone victory--only memories now, when
, in the years of age, dreamed out his happy life under the fragrant
shade of the forest wealth of .
his arm over the horse's neck, the exile, who had returned to his
birthright, stood silent a while, gazing out over the land on which
his eyes never wearied of resting; the glad, cool, green, dew-freshened
earth that was so sweet and full of peace, after the scorched and
blood-stained plains, whose sun was as flame, and whose breath was as
pestilence. his glance came back and dwelt upon the face beside
him, the proud and splendid woman's face that had learned its softness
and its passion from him alone.
" was worth banishment to return," he murmured to her. " was worth
the trials that bore to learn the love that have known----"
, looking upward at him with those deep, lustrous, imperial eyes that
had first met his own in the glare of the noon, passed her hand
over his lips with a gesture of tenderness far more eloquent from her
than from women less proud and less prone to weakness.
", hush! when think of what her love was, how worthless looks my
own! little worthy of the fate it finds! have done that every
joy should become mine, when she----"
mouth trembled, and the phrase died unfinished; strong as her love
had grown, it looked to her unproven and without desert, beside that
which had chose to perish for his sake. where they stood with the
future as fair before them as the light of the day around them, he bowed
his head, as before some sacred thing, at the whisper of the child who
had died for him. memories of both went back to a place in a desert
land where the folds of the drooped over one little grave
turned westward toward the shores of --a grave made where the
beat of drum, and the sound of moving squadrons, and the ring of the
trumpet-call, and the noise of the assembling battalions could be
heard by night and day; a grave where the troops, as they passed it by,
saluted and lowered their arms in tender reverence, in faithful, unasked
homage, because beneath the they honored there was carved in the
white stone one name that spoke to every heart within the army she had
loved, one name on which the sun streamed as with a martyr's glory:
",
" ', ."