My dear son, I have to tell you that we have been in great trouble for some time. Since you left us three years ago, nothing has gone well with us. Good fortune, as well as happiness, left us when you did. It has been a bad year on account of a heavy hailstorm which fell on the field and destroyed nearly everything except at the side of the road. Our cow went sick, and it cost us a lot of money to have her attended to. Your father’s wages are sometimes short, since he came back to this country of young men, who work faster than he. Besides this we have had to have part of our roof repaired, as it threatened to fall in with the heavy rains. I know that soldiers haven’t much to spare, but your father says that if you can send us what you promised without stinting yourself, it will be very useful to us.
The Mérys, who have plenty of money, could easily lend us some, but we don’t like asking them, especially as we do not want them to think us poor people. We often see your cousin, Jeanne Méry; she grows prettier every day. Her chief joy is to come and see us, and to talk about you. She says she would ask nothing better than to be your wife, my dear Jean. But her father will not hear of the marriage, because he says we are poor, and also that you have been a bit of a scapegrace in your day. I think, however, that if you were to get your quartermaster’s stripes, and if we could see you coming home in your fine uniform, he would perhaps end by consenting after all. I could die happy if I saw you married to her. You would build a house near ours, which would no longer be fine enough for you. We often make plans about it together with Peyral in the evenings.
My dear son, send us a little money without fail, for I assure you that we are in great trouble. We have not been able to manage this year, as I told you, because of that hailstorm and the cow. I see your father worrying himself terribly, and at night I often see him, instead of sleeping, thinking about it and turning from side to side. If you cannot send us the whole amount, send what you can.
Good-bye, my dear son; the village folk often ask after you, and want to know when you are coming back. The neighbours send hearty greetings. As for me, you know that I have had no joy in life since you went away.
I enclose my letter, embracing you, and Peyral does likewise.
Your loving old mother,
Françoise Peyral.
VIII
… Jean leaning on his elbow at the window fell into a reverie, looking absently at the wide prospect of African scenery stretched out before him—the pointed outlines of the Yolof huts, grouped by hundreds at his feet—in the distance the troubled sea and the ceaseless onset of the African breakers; the yellow sun about to set, still shedding upon the desert, further than the eye could see, its wan radiance; sand interminable; a distant caravan of Moors; flights of birds of prey swooping through the air; and yonder, a point on which he fixed his eyes, the cemetery of Sorr, whither he had already escorted some of his comrades, mountain-bred like himself, who had died of fever in that accursed climate.
O to return home to his aged parents, to live in a little house with Jeanne Méry, quite close to the humble paternal roof. Why had he been exiled to this land of Africa? What had he in common with this country? As for this uniform and this Arab fez in which they had dressed him up, and which, for all that, gave him so grand an air, what a burlesque disguise for him, the humble little peasant from the Cevennes.
He remained there a long time lost in thought, dreaming of his village, this poor soldier on the banks of the Senegal. With sunset and nightfall, his thoughts plunged themselves in unrelieved gloom.
From the direction of N’dar-toute came the hurried drumming of the tom-tom, summoning the negroes to the bamboula, and fires were lighted in the Yolof huts. It was an evening in December; a vexatious winter wind sprang up, whirling the sand in eddies here and there, and the great, parched land shuddered with an unwonted sensation of chill.
The door opened, and a yellow dog with straight ears and a look suggesting the jackal, a dog of the country, of the Laobé breed, bounded into the room and gambolled about his master.
At the same time, a young negro girl, with a merry smile, appeared at the door of the lodging. She made a little jerky bow, brusque and comic, the negresses’ salutation, and said Kéou! (Good-day).
IX
The spahi glanced at her absently.
“Fatou-gaye,” he said in a mixture of creole French and Yolof, “open the casket; I want to take out my money.”
“Your khâliss!” (your coins), exclaimed Fatou-gaye, opening her eyes so that the whites showed against the black eyelids. “Your khâliss!” she repeated with the mixture of fear and effrontery of children who have been surprised in a fault and are afraid they will be punished.
And then she showed him her ears, on which hung three pairs of exquisitely worked gold earrings.
They were ornaments of pure Galam gold, wonderfully delicate, such as are made by black craftsmen who possess the secret of this art, plying their trade in the shade of small, low-roofed tents, where they work mysteriously, crouching on the desert sands. Fatou-gaye had just been buying these trinkets, long-coveted, and that was what had become of the spahi’s khâliss, a hundred francs or so, accumulated little by little, the fruit of a soldier’s petty economies, and set aside by him for his old parents.
The spahi’s eyes flashed, and he made as if to strike her with his whip, but his arm sank harmlessly to his side. He soon regained his self-control, Jean Peyral; he was gentle, especially towards the weak.
He uttered no reproaches, knowing that they would be useless. It was his fault no less than hers. Why had he not been more careful to hide away this money, which he must now at all costs procure elsewhere?
Fatou-gaye knew how to soothe her lover with catlike caresses; how to clasp him in her black silver-braceletted arms that were shapely as the arms of a statue; how to lean her bare bosom against the red cloth of his jacket, rousing in him feverish desires that would bring about pardon for her offence. …
And the spahi sank with indifference on the tara beside her, putting off until the morrow the task of raising the money for which his old parents were waiting in their cottage overseas.
PART I
I
It was three years since Jean Peyral had first set foot in this land of Africa, and since his arrival he had undergone an extraordinary transformation. He had passed through several phases of moral development. Environment, climate, nature, had gradually exercised all their enervating influence upon his youthful personality. Slowly he had felt himself gliding down unknown slopes—and to-day he was the lover of Fatou-gaye, a young negro girl of Khassonké race, who had cast upon him I know not what sensual and impure seduction, what talismanic enchantment.
The story of Jean’s early life was not a very complicated one.
At twenty the ballot had snatched him from his old mother, who wept. He had gone away like other lads of the village singing noisily to keep himself from bursting into tears.
His height marked him out for cavalry. The