“M’sieur is English, if I mistake not?” he inquired, with a pleasant smile upon his swarthy but refined face.
“True,” I replied. “And, judging from your accent, you are not an Arab, but a Parisian.”
“Yes,” he said, speaking in fairly good English. “I have been in England once. If you care to spend an hour in my tent, I can offer you absinthe and a cigarette. That is about the extent of the hospitalities of the oasis.”
Thanking him for his invitation, I accompanied him, and a few moments later we were sitting in the bright moonlight on a mat spread outside his small tent.
“So you have been in England?” I said presently, when he had told me his name was Octave Uzanne.
“Yes,” he replied, with a slight sigh, allowing the water to trickle slowly into his absinthe, and drawing his scarlet burnouse closer about him. It was strange to hear English in this region of silence and desolation.
“Is not the recollection of your visit pleasant?” I asked.
“Ah! forgive me, m’sieur,” he exclaimed quickly; “I can never hear your tongue, or think of London, without becoming triste. I associate with your great gloomy city the saddest days of my life. Had I not gone to London, I should never have been here, leading the wild semi-barbarous life in an Arab regiment of the Army of Africa. We of the Spahis have a saying, ‘N’éveillez pas le chat qui dort’—but sometimes—”
“It is a good adage, but we cannot always let our sorrows lie,” I interrupted sympathetically. He had spoken with the accent of a gentleman, and with the white light of the moon streaming upon his face, I saw that he was about thirty years of age, with a countenance clean-cut and noble, refined and somewhat effeminate. His dark eyes were deep-set and serious, yet in his face there was an expression of genuine bonhomie. The average Spahi is feared by Moor and Jew, by Biskri and Koulougli, as the fiercest and most daring of soldiers. In drink he is a brute, in love he is passionate, in the saddle he is one of the finest riders in the world; in the town he is docile and obedient, fond of lounging in the cafés, idling over his eternal cigarette; yet away in the desert, all his old instincts return; he is an Arab again, and knows no measure either in attachment or in hatred. A blow from his scabbard is the only payment when scouring the country for food, a thrust of his sabre the only apology to those he insults, while in the field, seated on his fleet horse, he rides like the wind, and has the strength and courage of a lion.
This quiet, intellectual, bearded young Frenchman sitting cross-legged on the mat beside me, was, I felt sure, a man with a past. One of his comrades came up and asked him a question in Arabic, to which he replied, speaking the language of his regiment like a true-born Bedouin. As we sipped our absinthe in silence for some minutes, watching the camp settling down for the night, it struck me as curious that, instead of being in the Chasseurs d’Afrique, he should be masquerading in burnouse in an exclusively native regiment.
We began talking of England, but he was not communicative regarding himself, and in reply to my question said—
“I desire to live here in the desert and to forget. Each time we return to Algiers, the glare and glitter of the European quarter unlocks the closed page of my history. It was because this wild roving beyond the pale of civilisation was suited to my mood that I became a homard.”
“Has your experience of life been so very bitter, then?” I asked, looking into the handsome face, upon which there was a shadow of pain, and which was set off by the spotless white haick surrounding it.
“Bitter?—Ah!” he exclaimed, with a deep sigh. “You see me now, dragging out a wretched existence in this wilderness, exiled from my home, with name, creed, nationality—everything changed.”
“In order to conceal your identity?” I hazarded.
“Yes, my past is erased. Dead to those who knew me, I am now merely known as Octave Uzanne. I have tasted of life’s pleasures, but just as I was about to drink of the cup of happiness, it was dashed from me. It is ended. All I have now to look for is—is a narrow bed in yonder sand.”
“My dear fellow,” I exclaimed, “don’t speak so despondently! We all have our little debauches of melancholy. Cannot you confide in me? Perhaps I might presume to give advice.”
Silently and thoughtfully he rolled a cigarette between the fingers of his bronzed hand, completing its manufacture carefully.
“My story?” he said dreamily. “Bah! Why should I trouble you—a stranger—with the wretched tragedy of my life?”
“Because I also have a skeleton in my cupboard, and I can sincerely sympathise with you,” I answered, tossing away my cigarette end and lighting a fresh one.
Murmuring some words that I did not catch, he sipped his absinthe slowly, and, passing his sinewy, sun-tanned hand wearily across his forehead, sat immovable and silent, with his eyes fixed upon the dense growth of myrtle bushes and prickly aloes before him.
Lighted candles stuck upon piles of rifles flickered here and there among the tents, the feathery leaves of the palms above waved in the night breeze like funeral plumes, the dry hulfa grass rustled and surged like a summer sea; while ever and anon there came bursts of hearty laughter from the Arab soldiers, or snatches of a chanson eccentrique with rollicking chorus that had been picked up a thousand miles away in the French cafés of Algiers.
Chapter Seven.
A Forgotten Tragedy.
Octave Uzanne roused himself.
“My career has not been brilliant,” he said slowly, and with bitterness. “It is only remarkable by reason of its direful tragedy. All of us keep a debtor and creditor account with Fortune, and, ma foi! my balance has always been on the wrong side. Seven years ago I left the university at Bordeaux with honours. My father was a Senator, and my elder brother was already an attaché at our Embassy in London. In order to study English, with the object of entering the diplomatic service, I went over to reside with him, and it was he who, one night, when leaving a theatre, introduced me to the goddess at whose shrine I bowed—and worshipped. We became companions, afterwards lovers. Did she love me? Yes. Though she was a butterfly of Society, though it is through her that I am compelled to lead this life of desert-wandering, I will never believe ill of her. Never! Violet Hanbury—why should I conceal her name—had a—”
“Violet Hanbury?” I cried, starting and looking to his face. “Do you mean the Honourable Violet Hanbury, daughter of Lord Isleworth?”
“The same,” he replied quickly. “What!—are you acquainted with her?”
“Well, scarcely,” I answered. “I—I merely know her by repute. I have seen her photograph in London shop-windows among the types of English beauty.”
I did not tell him all I knew. Vi Hanbury, the beauty of a season, had been mixed up in some unenviable affair. The matter, I remembered, had been enshrouded in a good deal of mystery at the time, but gossips’ tongues had not been idle.
“Ah!” he continued, enthusiastically; “I have no need then to describe her, for you know how handsome she is. Well—we loved one another; but it was the old story. Her parents forbade her to hold communication with me for two reasons—firstly, because I was not wealthy, and secondly, because they were determined that she should marry Henri de Largentière, a sallow, wizened man old enough to be her father, but who had been Minister of Education in the Brisson Cabinet.”
“Yes,” I said; “the engagement was discussed a good deal in the clubs after its announcement in the Morning Post.”