VII
When Jean found himself once more in the deserted street he could restrain himself no longer, and with trembling hands he opened the envelope.
This time it contained only his mother’s handwriting—handwriting that was shakier than usual, and stained with tears.
He devoured the lines—dizziness seized him, poor fellow—clasping his head in his hands, he leaned against the wall.
The packet entrusted to him was very urgent, the Governor had said. He kissed old Françoise’s name piously, and went on his way like a drunken man.
Was this thing possible? It was over, over for ever. They had taken from him, the poor exile, the betrothed of his childish days, whom his old parents had chosen for him.
“The banns are published. The marriage will take place before the month is over. I had been fearing this, my dear son, even since last month; for Jeanne no longer came to see us. But I did not dare to tell you just then for fear of distressing you, since there was nothing that we could do in the matter.
“We are in deep despair. Now, my son, a thought struck Peyral yesterday which has alarmed us; it is that you may not wish to come home again now, but to remain in Africa.
“We are both very old. My good Jean, my dear son, your poor mother begs you on her knees not to let this prevent you from being sensible and from coming back to us soon, as we had expected. Otherwise I would rather die at once, and Peyral too.”
Incoherent, tumultuous thoughts rushed through Jean’s brain.
He made a rapid calculation of dates. No! It was not all over yet, it was not yet an accomplished fact. Telegraph! No! What possessed him? There was no telegraphic communication between France and Senegal. And after all, what could he have said? If he could have gone away, leaving everything behind, gone away on some very swift ship, and still have arrived in time, he might have thrown himself at their feet, with supplications and tears, and have yet succeeded in moving them to relent. But so far away! What futility! What impotence! All would be consummated before he could even reach them with his message of grief.
And he felt as if his head were crushed by iron hands, and his breast in the grip of a remorseless vice.
He halted again and reread the letter, and then remembering that he was the bearer of urgent orders from the Governor, he folded up the letter and went on.
Around him all things were lapped in the profound stillness of noon. The old Moorish houses stood ranged in straight rows, milk-white beneath the intense blue of the sky. At times, behind their brick walls, the ear of the passer-by might catch some negress’s plaintive, drowsy song, or perhaps the eye might light on a small, coal-black negro asleep on a doorstep, lying on his back in the sun, quite naked, with a necklet of coral, forming a dark patch in the midst of universal radiance. On the smooth sand of the streets, the lizards were chasing one another with curious little swaying movements of the head, drawing their tails along the ground and tracing an infinity of fantastic zig-zags, complicated like an Arabic design. A distant noise of kouss-kouss pounders, in its monotonous regularity almost a form of silence, came from Guet n’dar, deadened by the hot, heavy strata of the noontide atmosphere.
It seemed as if this tranquillity of prostrate nature were seeking to make mock of poor Jean’s emotion, and to intensify his sufferings. It oppressed him like a leaden winding sheet.
Of a sudden this country appeared to him as a vast tomb.
The spahi awoke as if from a heavy sleep that had lasted five years.
He felt himself in fierce revolt, revolt against everything and everyone. Why had they taken him from his village, from his mother, to bury him, in the prime of life, in this country of death?
By what right had they made of him that anomalous being called a spahi, a swashbuckler, half African, an outcast, forgotten of everyone, and at last disowned even by his betrothed.
He felt his heart possessed with frantic rage; he was conscious of a desire to wreak his wrath on some person or some object; a desire to torture, to seize, to crush in his mighty arms a fellow man.
And all around him there was nothing, nothing but silence, and heat, and sand.
Alas! he had not even one friend in this whole country, not one devoted comrade to whom he could confide his sorrow. Good God! he was indeed forsaken, indeed alone in the world.