P. C. Wren - The Collected Works of P. C. Wren - Complete Beau Geste Series, Novels & Short Stories

"I can't murder you, Becque," I said.

"You have ," he replied. "Can't you complete your job? . . . No. . . . The Bold-and-Beautiful de Beaujolais couldn't do that--he could only gloat upon his handiwork and spin out the last hours of the man he had killed. . . . You and your Arab-debauching women from the stews of Paris. . . ." And he spat.

"One of those women worked over you like a nurse or a mother, Becque," I said. "She lavished her tiny store of cognac, eau-de-Cologne , antiseptics and surgery stuff on you----"

"As I said," he interrupted, "to keep me alive and gloat. . . ."

Silence fell in that hot, dimly-lighted tent, and I sat and watched this Becque.

After a while he spoke again.

"De Beaujolais," he said, "I make a last appeal as a soldier to a soldier. . . . Don't keep me alive, in agony, for days--knowing that I shall be a mortifying mass of gangrene and corruption before I die. . . . Knowing that nothing can save me. . . . I appeal to you, to you on whose head my blood is, to spare me that . . . . Put your pistol near me--and let Becque die as he has lived, with a weapon in his hand. . . ."

I thought rapidly.

". . . Come, come, de Beaujolais, it is not much to ask, surely. It leaves your lily-white hands clean and saves your conscience the reproach that you let me suffer tortures that the Arabs themselves would spare me. . . ."

I came to a decision.

"De Beaujolais--if I have the ghost of a chance of life, refuse my request. . . . If I have no chance, and you know I have none--as surely as you know the sun will rise--then, if you are a man, a human creature with a spark of humane feeling in you--put your pistol by my hand. . . . You can turn your back if you are squeamish. . . . Do it, de Beaujolais, and I will die forgiving you and repenting my sins. . . ."

His voice broke, and I swallowed a lump in my throat as I rose and went to where my revolver hung to the tent-pole. My sword had passed below his lungs and had penetrated the liver and stomach and probably the spinal cord. He would never leave that bed, nothing upon earth could save him, and his long lingering death would be a ghastly thing. . . . It was the one thing I could do for him. . . .

I put the pistol beside his right hand.

"Good-bye, Becque," I said. "In the name of France and Mary Vanbrugh I forgive the evil you tried to do to them both. . . . Personally I feel no hate whatsoever. . . . Good-bye, brave man--good-bye, old chap. . . ." And I touched his hand and turned my back.

* * *

The bullet cut my ear.

I sprang round and knocked the pistol from Becque's hand.

"You treacherous devil !" I cried.

"You poor gullible fool !" he answered, with the wry smile that showed the gleaming fang.

The sentry raised the door flap and looked in, and Mary Vanbrugh rushed from the anderun half of the tent, as I picked up my revolver.

" Oh! What is it? " she asked breathlessly.

"An accident," replied Becque. "One of the most deplorable that ever happened. . . . I shall regret it all my life. . . ." And he laughed.

There was no denying the gameness and stout heart of this dear Becque.

"More Duty, I thought, perhaps, Major de Beaujolais," observed the girl.

"It was. As I conceived it, Miss Vanbrugh," I replied.

After looking at Becque's bandages and giving him a sip of hot soupe , made with our compressed meat-tablets and a little cognac, she returned to the anderun , bidding me drink the soupe , for Becque could do little more than taste it.

"You win again, you dog!" said Becque, as soon as we were alone. "What a fool I was to aim at your head--with a shaking hand! . . . But I did so want to see those poor brains you are so proud of. . . . Now , will you kill me?"

"No," I answered.

" I know you won't! " he replied. "You haven't the guts. . . . And I know I shall recover. . . . Why, you fool, I breathe almost without pain. . . . My lungs are absolutely sound. . . . You only gave me a flesh wound and I heal splendidly. Always have done. . . ."

The poor wretch evidently did not know that the bandages hid as surely mortal a wound as ever man received. His talk of fatal injuries and certain death, which he had supposed to be a ruse that would gull and fool me, was but the simple truth.

"I'll be on my feet in a week, you witless ape," he continued, "and I'll get you yet! . . . Believe me, Beautiful de Beaujolais, I won't miss you next time I shoot. . . . But I hope it won't come to that. . . . I want to see you die quite otherwise--and then I'll deal with your Arab-debauching harlots. . . . But I'll get you somehow! I'll get you, my Beau Sabreur! . . ."

He raised himself on one elbow, pointed a shaking hand at my face, spat, and fell back dead. . . .

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"The worldly hopes men set their hearts upon,

Turn ashes--or they prosper;

Anon, like snow upon the desert's dusty face,

Lighting a little hour or two--are gone. . . ."

Becque's body having been borne away at dawn for burial, I soon began to wonder if the events of the previous day and night had really occurred, or whether they were the nightmare imaginings of a delirious fever-victim.

My wounds were real enough, however, and though slight, were painful in the extreme, throbbing almost unbearably and making movement a torture.

I would not have been without them though, for three times that day Mary Vanbrugh dressed them, and if I scarcely heard her voice, I felt the blessed touch of her fingers.

But she attended me as impersonally and coldly as a queen washing the feet of beggars, or as a certain type of army-surgeon doctoring a sick negro soldier.

As she left the tent on the last of her almost silent visits, she paused at the door-curtain and turned to me.

"What exactly was that shot in the night, Major de Beaujolais?" she asked.

"It was Becque shooting at me," I replied. "You did not suppose that it was me shooting at Becque, did you, Miss Vanbrugh?"

"I really did not know, Major de Beaujolais," answered the girl. "I should not be so foolish as to set any limit to what you might do in the name of Duty ! . . . Nothing whatever would surprise me in that direction, now, I think. . . ."

"A man's duty is his duty," I replied.

"Oh, quite," she answered. "I would not have you deviate a hair's breadth from your splendid path. . . . But since the day you informed me that you would have left me to the mercies of the Touareg--had there been but one camel--I have been thinking . . . a good deal. . . . Yes, ' A man's duty is his duty ' and--if I might venture to speak so presumptuously--a woman's duty is her duty, too. . . ."

"Surely," I agreed.

"And so I find it my duty to hinder you no further, and to remain in the Oasis with these fine Arabs-- under the protection of the Emir el Hamel el Kebir . . . ."

" What! " I shouted, startled out of my habitual calm and courtesy. "You find it your ' duty ' to do what ?"

I felt actually faint--and began to tremble with horror, fear, and a deadly sickness of soul.

"I think you heard what I said," the girl replied coldly, "and I think you know that I always mean what I say, and say what I mean. . . . Oh, believe me, Major de Beaujolais--I have some notions of my own on duty --and it is no part of mine to hinder yours. . . ."

I drank some water, and my trembling hand spilt more than my dry throat swallowed.

"So I shall remain here," she went on, "and I think too that I prefer the standards and ideals of this Emir. . . . Somehow I do not think that anything would have induced him to leave a woman to certain death or worse. . . . Not even a treaty !" and the bitter scorn of her accents, as she said that word, was terrible.