III
Six months had passed. The mails from France had brought poor Jean no very bad news, certainly, but on the other hand none that were very good.
Uncle Méry remained inflexible, but Jeanne no less so, and she always slipped into old Françoise’s letter a few loyal and loving words to her betrothed.
Jean himself was full of hope, and never doubted but that everything would be settled without difficulty as soon as he arrived home.
He lost himself more and more in delicious imaginings.... After these five years of exile his return to the village glowed with all the colours of an apotheosis. All the dreams of the poor, forlorn soldier centred around that radiant moment. He would take his seat in the village diligence, wearing the big burnoose of his spahi’s uniform, and watch the Cevennes coming into sight once more, the familiar skyline of his mountains, the well-known road, the dear old clock-tower, and at last his father’s cottage by the roadside. With what rapture would he embrace his beloved old parents!
Then the three of them would go together to see the Mérys. The good people of the village, all the girls, would come running out of their houses to watch him go past. They would admire him in his foreign dress, with the glamour of Africa upon him. He would show Uncle Méry his quartermaster’s stripes, which had at last been awarded him, and they would have an irresistible effect. After all, Uncle Méry was kind. True, he had often scolded Jean in former days, but he had been fond of him, too; Jean had a very plain recollection of this now; he was very sure of it. (To the exile, far away, those who remain at home are always painted in softer colours; they are remembered as affectionate and kind; their defects, their hardness and rancour, are forgotten.)
And so it seemed impossible that Uncle Méry should not suffer himself to be moved when he saw his two children pleading together. He would surely relent and place Jeanne’s trembling hand in Jean’s. And then, what happiness, what a life of joy and peace, what a Paradise on earth!...
At the same time, Jean did not find it so easy to picture himself in the dress worn by the men of his village. Especially he baulked at the unpretentious headgear of a peasant. This transformation was a subject on which he did not care to dwell. It seemed to him that he would no longer, by himself, be the proud spahi he had been, in the accoutrements of former days.
It was in this red uniform that he had learnt to know life. It was on African soil that he had become a man, and more of a man than he guessed. He had an affection for all this—for his Arab fez, his sabre, his horse—this vast, God-forsaken country, this desert of his.
Jean did not know what disillusion sometimes awaits young men—sailors, soldiers, spahis—when they return to the village which has so often inspired their dreams—left when they were children, and beheld from afar through magic prisms.
Alas! what sadness, what dreary monotony, often awaits these exiles on their return home.
Other unfortunate spahis, like himself acclimatised and enervated in this land of Africa, have sometimes regretted the desolate banks of the Senegal. The long expeditions on horseback, the freer life, the larger light, the boundless horizon—all these things are missed when, having grown accustomed to them, one is cut off from them. In the quiet of home life one feels as it were a craving for the devouring sun, the never-ending heat, a yearning for the desert, and a home sickness for the sand.