People will say: Oh, but you were once sergeant-major, and why did not you command rather than the corporal? Well, for two good reasons. First, if I had once been sergeant-major, he had once been captain. Second, somebody had to be close to Giulia in every fight, for reasons that may be guessed—and who had a better right to be at her side than I?
There was no time for us to bury poor Mac, even had I pick and shovel for the work. Anyway, no soldier thinks much about where his body will lie after death: no grave at all is as good as a place in a trench where hundreds of others are pressing and crowding around. When you have once seen a battlefield grave, where three or four hundred lie like sardines in a tin, you will find little, if indeed any, poetry in the words "God's acre." Not that the burial party should be blamed, be it well understood. Oh no! they must think of the living, especially the wounded, and in a hot climate quick burial is the only thing to prevent a pestilence of the sun.
Giulia and I managed to go about twelve kilometres farther on our road that day. I did not want to go so far, but she insisted. She knew, as I did, that she was not in a fit state to travel such a distance; but some fear of the Berbers who had killed our comrades had taken possession of her heart, and she would not, nay, she could not, rest until we were quite safe from further pursuit. But she could not hold out very long; at last even to sit her horse when going at a merewalking pace was too much for her strength, and she was compelled to yield to my entreaties and to dismount and rest. Poor girl! she was very nervous and excited. Even the struggles that ended in complete success had tried her too much, and now she felt with tenfold anxiety and apprehension the death of the two loyal, brave, and generous comrades who had been so suddenly lost. And a woman always feels the loss of a friend more than a man does, because a man can easily get another, but a women must be always suspicious of those who tender her friendship, lest there be poison in the gift.
That night we could set no guard. Both of us were weary in spirit and in body. There was no one to relieve me if I watched, and Giulia could not rest unless I was so near that her hand could always touch me. I thought of a plan: it was to picket the horses so that there should be no danger of losing them, and then to withdraw about four hundred yards from the spot where they were placed. The horses might attract enemies in the night, but if we were some distance away, we ought to be in comparative safety. Giulia assented; and when I had settled the horses for the night I helped her to a spot a good distance from them, and after a little interval, during which Giulia wept and I comforted her as best I could, we lay down to rest in the desert side by side. As I was sleeping, as a soldier sleeps who has learned to rest with aching body or even with aching heart, Giulia clasped me by the shoulder, and brought me back to active thought and life.
"What! is there an attack?" And I tried for my rifle in the dark.
"No, no! oh no! it is not that. I am ill; oh, what shall I do!"
But I will not tell the story. The night wore on, and when dawn came it was only to show me that the best of all my comrades, the comrade who made life happy and a thing of joy, the woman who hadloved and trusted, ever true, ever unchanging, was about to pass out of my life for ever. The end came shortly after the dawn. It was quiet, for poor Giulia was worn out with all that she had gone through, and, when all was over, Arab or Berber or robber of the road might take my life, and I should not resist. What was the good of life since I had lost my love?
All that day I stayed quietly by the dead body of my dear one. I forgot the horses; I forgot the danger of attack; I forgot all things save that I was at last alone, really alone, in the world. I thought of those whom I had loved and lost—Nicholas the Russian, the English corporal, Mac; but every moment my thoughts reverted to the greatest loss of all—the loss of her whose corpse, pale and bloodless, it is true, but with an indefinable beauty of feature and expression, lay quiet and still upon the sand.
In the evening I dug a grave with my bayonet, and gently, tenderly, laid there to rest the remains of her who had loved me with so great a love.
There is little more to be said. I had no difficulty in making my way to Tangier. I was not molested, nor did I molest anyone. The only thought in my mind was to get as far away as possible from Africa—the land for me of so many chances and changes, of exquisite love and still more exquisite sorrow. I was hopeless, heartless, not in the sense that I was heartless to others—I was heartless only for myself.
From Tangier I crossed to Spain, and there found a relation at Salamanca—one of those men who, studying for the priesthood, choose the foreign colleges rather than Maynooth. He helped me with money to reach Ireland, but from him, as from all others, I kept the true story, the story, I may now say, of "twenty golden years ago."
THE RIVERSIDE PRESS LIMITED, EDINBURGH.