He had commonly given Rake the office of selling them, and as
commonly spent all the proceeds on all other needs save his own.
He lingered a moment, with regret in his eyes; he had scarcely a sou in
his pocket, and he had wanted some money sorely that night for a comrade
dying of a lung-wound--a noble fellow, a French artist, who, in an evil
hour of desperation, had joined the army, with a poet's temper that made
its hard, colorless routine unendurable, and had been shot in the chest
in a night-skirmish.
"You will not buy them yourself?" he asked at length, the color flushing
in his face; he would not have pressed the question to save his own life
from starving, but Leon Ramon would have no chance of fruit or a lump of
ice to cool his parched lips and still his agonized retching, unless he
himself could get money to buy those luxuries that are too splendid and
too merciful to be provided for a dying soldier, who knows so little of
his duty to his country as to venture to die in his bed.
"Myself!" screeched the dealer, with a derisive laugh. "Ask me to give
you my whole stock next! These trumperies will lie on hand for a year."
Cecil went out of the place without a word; his thoughts were with Leon
Ramon, and the insolence scarce touched him. "How shall I get him the
ice?" he wondered. "God! if I had only one of the lumps that used to
float in our claret cup!"
As he left the den, a military fairy, all gay with blue and crimson,
like the fuchsia bell she most resembled, with a meerschaum in her
scarlet lips and a world of wrath in her bright black eyes, dashed past
him into the darkness within, and before the dealer knew or dreamed of
her, tossed up the old man's little shriveled frame like a shuttlecock,
shook him till he shook like custards, flung him upward and caught him
as if he were the hoop in a game of La Grace, and set him down bruised,
breathless, and terrified out of his wits.
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