IX
A white hall, all open to the evening wind, two hanging lamps around which flutter large ephemerae dazzled by the flame; an uproarious company of men in red uniforms—coal-black kitchen wenches bustling around—a great supper party of spahis.
It has been a day of festivities—military festivities—a review at the barracks, races on desert-bred horses, camel races, races of oxen with riders, pirogue races—all the usual programme of a festal day in a little provincial town, with the addition of strange Nubian local colour.
All the fit men of the garrison, sailors, spahis, riflemen, were to be seen parading the streets in uniform; mulattos, men and women in gala dress; the ancient Signard ladies of Senegal—the half-bred aristocracy, erect and dignified with their high headdresses of cotton foulard, and their two corkscrew curls in the mode of 1820—and the young Signard ladies in dresses of the fashion of to-day, yet in spite of this, odd, faded, suggestive, somehow of the coast of Africa. Besides these, there were two or three white women in dainty gowns, and behind them, as if to serve as a foil, a crowd of negroes, decked with grigris and barbaric ornaments—all Guet n’dar in holiday dress.
All the animation and life that St Louis could produce; all the population the old colony could muster in its dead-alive streets—all were out-of-doors for a single day—ready to return on the morrow to their listless existence in those silent houses, each in its coat of white limewash, like a corpse in a winding sheet.
And the spahis who have paraded by order all day long on the Place du Gouvernement are roused to a high state of excitement by this unusual stir.
This evening they are celebrating the award of promotions and decorations brought by the last mail from France; and Jean, who as a rule holds himself a little aloof, is present at this supper party, which is a regimental affair.
The black kitchen wenches are kept very busy waiting on the spahis, not because the spahis have eaten a great deal, but because they have had a prodigious quantity to drink, and are all intoxicated.
A great many toasts have been proposed; much conversation has passed, extravagantly simple, or extravagantly cynical—much wit has flashed—spahis’ wit, smacking strongly of its origin, a medley of disillusionment and innocence. Many remarkable songs have been sung—appallingly suggestive, originating no one knows where, in Algiers, India, or some other spot—the solos comically discreet—the choruses terrible, and accompanied by the crashing of glasses and the thumping of fists enough to break down the tables. Old jokes have been made, ingenuous and well-worn, exciting bursts of youthful, joyous laughter, and words uttered capable of bringing a blush to the cheek of the devil himself.
Suddenly a spahi in the midst of this crazy uproar lifts his glass of champagne, and proposes this startling toast,
“To those who fell at Mecké and Bobdiarah.”
A very strange toast this—not originating in the brain of the author of this story! Quite unforeseen this health that has been proposed! Is it a tribute to the memory of the dead, or a sacrilegious jest. He was very drunk the spahi who proposed this funereal toast, and there was gloom in his irresolute eyes.
Alas! in a few years’ time who will remember those who fell in the defeat at Bobdiarah and at Mecké, those whose bones lie blanched already on the sand of the desert?
The people of St Louis who saw them march away may remember their names. But in a few years’ time, who will be able to call them to mind and to say them again?
So the glasses were drained to the memory of those who fell at Mecké and Bobdiarah. But this strange toast was followed by a moment of intense silence and astonishment, and it cast a gloomy veil upon the spahis’ banquet.
Jean, especially—whose eyes had been sparkling with animation at the infectious gaiety of his comrades, and who, as it happened, had been laughing heartily all this evening, Jean relapsed again into his dreamy, serious mood, hardly knowing why.
“Fallen there in the desert!”...
Without grasping the full meaning of it, the idea of it chilled him, like the sound of a jackal’s voice; it made his flesh creep....
He was still very much of a child, poor Jean, not yet inured to war, not yet a seasoned soldier. Nevertheless he was very brave; he was not afraid, not in the least afraid, of fighting. When there was talk of Boubakar-Ségou, who was prowling with his army through Cayor, almost up to the gates of St Louis, he felt his heart leap. Sometimes he dreamt about it. It seemed to him that it would do him good, that it would rouse him to see shots fired at last, even it they were directed only against a negro chief. There were times when he was dying of impatience....
It was solely with the idea of fighting that he had become a spahi—not in order that he might pass a languid, monotonous existence in a little white house, held spell-bound by a Khassonké girl....
Poor fellows, drinking to the memory of the dead, laugh, sing, be very merry and foolish, and snatch the fleeting moment of joy.... But song and uproar ring false in this land of Senegal, and yonder in the desert there are assuredly places already marked out for some of you.