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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 mysterious attraction of the unknown had induced him to choose the corps of spahis.
His childhood had been passed in the Cevennes, in an obscure village in the heart of the woods.
In the strong, pure mountain air he had shot up like a young oak tree.
The first impressions graven on his childish mind were wholesome and simple, the well-beloved forms of his father and mother, his home, a little old-fashioned house shaded by chestnut trees. These things were all imprinted ineffaceably upon his memory, and had their own sacred place deep down in his heart. And then there were the great woods, his wanderings at random along paths deep in moss—and there was freedom.
In the first years of his life he knew nothing of the rest of the world beyond the bounds of the obscure village where he was born. He was aware of no other neighbourhood, but the wild, open country where the shepherds dwelt, the mountain sorcerers.
In these woods, where he was wont to roam all day long, he nursed the dreams of a solitary child, the musings of a shepherd boy—and then suddenly he would be seized with a wild desire to run, to climb, to break branches from the trees, to catch birds.
One distasteful memory was that of the village school, a gloomy place, where one had to stay quietly cooped up within four walls. His parents gave up sending him there; he was always playing truant.
On Sunday he was given his fine mountaineer’s dress to wear, and he went to church with his mother, hand in hand with little Jeanne, whom they picked up as they passed Uncle Méry’s house. After service, he used to play bowls on the common under the oak trees.
He was conscious that he was better looking and stronger than the other children, and at play he was always the one to be obeyed, and he was accustomed to meet with this submission wherever he went.
When he grew older his independence of spirit and his insatiable restlessness became more marked. He would go his own way. He was forever in mischief, untethering horses and galloping far away on them, forever poaching with an old gun that would not go off, and frequently getting into trouble with the rural constable, to the great despair of his Uncle Méry, who had hoped to have him taught a trade, and to make of him a steady man.
It was true. He had really been “a bit of a scapegrace in his time,” and it was still remembered against him at home.
Nevertheless he was a general favourite even with those who had suffered most at his hands, because he had a frank and open disposition. No one could be seriously angry with him who saw his good-natured smile. Besides, if he were spoken to gently and taken the right way, he could be led like a docile child. Uncle Méry, with his lectures and threats, had no influence over him. But when his mother reproved him, and he knew that he had grieved her, his heart was very heavy, and this big boy, who had already the air of a man, could be seen hanging his head, almost in tears.
He was undisciplined, but not dissolute. This big, strong, growing youth was of a proud, and somewhat uncouth, demeanour. In his village young men were safe from evil communications from the precocious depravity of sickly, town-bred creatures, so much so, that when he reached his twentieth year and had to begin his term of military service, Jean was as pure as a child, and almost as ignorant of the facts of life.
II
But then came a period full of all kinds of surprises for him.
He had followed his new comrades to places of debauch, where he had made the acquaintance of “love” in the most sordid and revolting conditions that a great town affords. His youthful understanding was confused, what between surprise and disgust, and also the devouring fascination of this new thing just revealed to him.
And then, after some days of riotous life, a ship had carried him far, far away over the calm, blue sea, and had landed him on the banks of the Senegal, a bewildered exile.
III
