XXVI
Jean dragged himself under the scanty foliage of the tamarisks, sought a shady spot for his head, and disposed himself there to await death.
He suffered from thirst, burning thirst, and presently his throat was convulsed by slight, spasmodic movements.
He had often witnessed the death of comrades in Africa, and he recognised this distressing indication of the approaching end, which people call the death sob.
The blood was trickling from his side, and the arid sand drank it as if it were dew.
But his sufferings diminished. Indeed, apart from this burning thirst, he was now in little pain.
Strange visions passed before poor Jean’s eyes: the mountain range of the Cevennes, the well-known haunts of his childhood, his cottage in the mountains.
Above all he saw visions of leafy landscapes, full of shade, mosses, coolness, and running water; his dear old mother, who took him gently by the hand to lead him as she had done in his childhood.
He felt his mother’s kiss! O, his mother, there she was, smoothing his brow with her poor old trembling hands, bathing his burning head with cool water. Could it be? Never more to feel a mother’s kiss, never more to hear her voice? Never, never more? Was this the end of everything? To die there alone, all alone, in the burning sun of the desert! And he half-raised himself, unwilling to die.
“Tjean, come into our dance!”
In front of him, like a whirlwind, like a furious gale, swept the circle of phantom dancers. The fierce gyrations of this vortex seemed to strike sparks from the burning pebbles.
And these spectral dancers, rising in swift spirals, like smoke before a rushing wind, faded away on high, in the fiery crucible of the blue ether.
Jean had the sensation of rising with them, of being borne aloft on terrible wings, and it came to him that this was the climax, the very moment of death.
But it was merely a convulsion of the muscles, a horrible pang of pain.
The red blood gushed from his mouth, and again a voice, whispering at his ear, said,
“Tjean, come into our dance.”
He grew calmer; his sufferings abated, and once more he sank down on his bed of sand.
Thronging memories of childhood came to life again in his mind, with singular clearness. He heard an old folksong, wherewith his mother used to lull him to sleep when he was a baby in his cradle; then suddenly, in the midst of the desert, the village chime rang out the evening Angelus.
Tears coursed down his bronzed cheeks. The prayers of long ago returned to his memory, and the poor soldier set himself to praying with the fervour of a child. He took between his hands the medal of the Virgin, which his mother had hung round his neck. He still had sufficient strength to raise it to his lips, and he kissed it with immeasurable love. He prayed with all his soul to Our Lady of Sorrows, to whom his simple-minded mother was wont to pray on his behalf each evening. He was steeped in the splendour of those radiant hallucinations that surround a deathbed; and aloud, in the overwhelming silence of these solitudes, he repeated, in a fast-failing voice, the inevitable adieu, “Farewell, farewell, until we meet in heaven.”
It was close on noon. Jean’s sufferings were diminishing. The desert in the intense tropical light seemed to him like a great brasier of white fire which no longer had power to burn him. And yet his bosom heaved as if to breathe more deeply; his mouth opened as if to plead for water.
At last his lower jaw dropped; his mouth fell open for the last time, and Jean passed peacefully away in the dazzling sunshine.