I
In Mustapha Street, which lies in the Moslem quarter of
Sidi-bel-Abbès, there was some years ago a little hole of a
restaurant run by a French girl. It is now a curio shop kept by
Abdesslem, a gentleman with a beard of burnt-up black, long
finger-nails, and a profound knowledge of the psychology of tourists,
but the original use of the place still remains in evidence in the
half scratched-out drawings and songs scribbled by légionnaires on
the walls. There is also a vague scent of caporal tobacco which
persists like a memory.
Mademoiselle Tricot was the name of the girl, she had come from who
knows where, planted herself in the little shop and bloomed. She had
wonderful hair, coils and coils of hair black as night and bright as
polished ebony, eyes black as sloes and a face too practical to be
pretty--hard, in fact, with that business hardness one finds so often
amongst the women of the small shop-keeping class in France.
But she fascinated the légionnaires, sold them coffee and hideous
non-alcoholic drinks made up with syrup of gum, and gave them credit
occasionally for cigarettes.
Corporal Jacques of the 10th Company of the second regiment of the
Foreign Legion was one of her warmest admirers. Jacques, towards the
end of his fifth year's service, had fallen foul of the authorities
over the matter of Choc, attempted escape, failed, and lost his
discharge. He was now in his seventh year of service and had been
promoted to the rank of corporal owing to his bravery and splendid
fighting qualities. He had started in life as an Apache and he was
still an Apache though of an improved order. A good-humoured
scoundrel, brown now as a Brazil-nut and always in his spare time on
the look out for profitable plunder. It was said that he had trained
his famous dog to thieve for him. He did not want any assistant in
that matter, however, if one were to believe the stories about him.
But whether he got it by theft or whether he got it by honest means,
one thing was certain: he generally had money to spend--and spent it.
Spent it in the canteen of the Legion and at Mimi Tricot's
"Restaurant"--but more especially of late at the latter place.
He was in love with the lady, yet he kept his passion so well
concealed that no one guessed it, except Corporal Zeiss. Zeiss was a
German from somewhere near Munich, a good-looking man and Jacques'
best friend.
Jacques it was who introduced Zeiss to Mimi Tricot's, and a couple of
months later, in the expansion of mind produced by a bottle of heavy
Algerian wine, he told Zeiss of the terrible condition his heart was
in, and Zeiss being a temperamental German, understood and
sympathized and quoted Schiller. Zeiss was a scamp who had left his
country to escape the law, but he had rich relations who sent him a
good deal of money--as money is reckoned in the Legion. He put most
of it by, hid it in some hole or corner, and sponged on Jacques and
anyone else who would stand him drinks.
This fact did not alter Jacques' friendliness towards Zeiss. He knew
him to be mean and looked on his meanness more in the light of a
humorous sort of infirmity than anything else. Zeiss was his
friend--and that was enough. Zeiss wore gold earrings. Things quite
inconspicuous yet all the same objects of jest among his friends.
The only other man in the regiment so adorned was an Italian named
Bretano who had once been a Neapolitan fisherman. No one noticed
them in the case of Bretano, but Zeiss was a German and that made all
the difference.
One day Jacques received a call to the hospital, where a man of his
company, Pelletan by name, lay dying.
Pelletan had developed rapid consumption as a result of his life in
the Legion acting on an hereditary tendency to the disease. Jacques
had been kind to him. This scoundrel of a Jacques had one great
quality: he was a man. A bad man, but still a man. Cruel as death
to a slacker, his instinct told him that when Pelletan fell out on a
march, or when his accoutrements were not absolutely spick and span,
the fault was not in the soul of Pelletan but in his body. It was he
who had marched Pelletan off to the doctor and he stood before him
now, looking down on him and asking what he wanted.
"You see, it's this way, corporal," said the dying man. "By
yesterday morning's post I received a money order for six hundred
francs. It seems that my father died last month. He had a little
vineyard down there by Tarascon, and when everything was sold up and
settled six hundred francs was all that was left of his property. I
have no mother, brother, sister, or aunt--so you see----"
His breath failed him for a moment. Then he went on: "You see, I
have no one to leave the money to. I had the order changed last
night and they got me gold at the Crédit Lyonnais for the notes. I'm
near done out--and the money is yours."
He put a thin and claw-like hand under his pillow and produced one of
the little paper bags of the Crédit Lyonnais. It chinked as he
handled it. Then he turned the money out on the quilt.
There was a screen round the bed so that no one saw what was going
forward, and a beam of sunlight through the high window lit the
thirty gold coins as Pelletan played with them lovingly, whilst
Jacques stood fascinated by the sight.
"You will take them?"
"Oh, ay," said Jacques. "I'll take them right enough if you have no
one better to give them to. Money is money, and there's no use
throwing it away."
Pelletan called out for the hospital orderly, and the man came.
"I've got some money here," said he, holding up the bag in which he
had replaced the coins. "It's the money you got me yesterday for
that order. I'm just off the hooks as you very well know and I have
no one to give the stuff to except my friend here. He has used me
well and I give it to him. You are witness."
"Yes," replied the man.
Pelletan handed the bag to Jacques. It was his last act. As though
the gold coins had been his last drops of blood he fell back on the
pillows and in five minutes he was no longer a soldier of the Legion.
Jacques gave the orderly a louis and marched off with the little bag
in his pocket.
He was rich enough now to attempt his escape again from Algeria and
to have a fair sum left over with which to begin life in some foreign
country, but he was not thinking of escape. He was thinking of Mimi
Tricot.
Mimi was always bewailing the fact that she had not enough money to
start in a bigger business.
"Even a few hundred francs," she had said, "would help to get credit
with and with credit one can get anything--but what can one do with
customers like you légionnaires?"
This speech was in his memory as he went back to barracks, and all
through the afternoon drill he was thinking of Mimi.
He was greatly torn in his mind, the gold pulling one way and Mimi
the other.
The gold meant a lot to him. Twenty-nine pieces of gold, an
unthinkable treasure, hauled upon the rope at the other end of which
pulled Mimi.
He made two mistakes at drill that day and got reprimanded for the
first time since wearing the insignia of corporal. The gold was
already beginning to bring him into trouble, but he did not think of
this, or take warning.
At six o'clock, when the work of the day was over and the
Légionnaires starting off to the town, Jacques left the barracks.
He took his way with the others till he reached the Place Sadi
Carnot, where the band of the Legion was already occupying the
bandstand, around which the townsfolk and visitors were collecting.
It was a superb evening, the warm wind blowing from the Thessala
Mountains and a great moon rising in the east against the setting sun.
Jacques, his pocket bulging with gold, turned from the Place into a
narrow lane. It was the Ghetto of Sidi-bel-Abbès.
Sidi-bel-Abbès has its Spanish quarter, its negro quarter--outside
the gates--its Arab quarter and its Jewish quarter. It was through
the latter that Jacques took his way till he reached Mustapha Street
and the café of the charmer.
A half tipsy Spahi was talking to her across the little counter and
Jacques took a seat and called for a cup of coffee. He noted with
approval how well she kept the Spahi at a distance and at the same
time as a customer. Then, the Spahi having taken his departure, he
rose, came to the counter and plunged into the business on hand.
There was no time to waste as more customers might arrive at any
moment.
"Mimi," said Jacques, "you've always been saying how well you could
get on but for the want of a few francs. Well, here's something.
Open it and see."
He placed the little bag on the counter. Mimi opened it and shook
out the coins.
There were twenty-five louis in the bag. He had kept back four for
himself, which, with the one he had given to the hospital orderly,
made up the six hundred francs of Pelletan's gift.
"_Mon Dieu!_" cried Mimi. "What bank have you been robbing?"
Jacques laughed, then he explained, and as he explained Mimi counted
the money, dropping it back into the little paper bag coin by coin.
"So you see," finished Jacques, "it's yours; and since you are mine,
ma mie--it's mine. Take it and use it. In three years I will be a
free man, and if you care for me as you say you do, and if you have
any luck with the business you start in, we may do well together, you
and I. There's not a man knows more of the ins and outs of
Sidi-bel-Abbès than myself."
Mimi leaning her arms comfortably on the counter, they began to talk.
It was more like the conversation of two business people than two
lovers, but it ended in a kiss given across the counter as a seal of
the compact.
Jacques had confessed that he had kept four louis back for his own
private use. Three of these he handed to Mimi, at her request, to
keep for him.
"I will be your banker," said she.
Jacques returned to barracks that night in high good spirits.
Strangely enough, the money had weighed on him, making him irritable;
he had been afraid of losing it, afraid of being robbed, a hundred
plans for spending it had fought with another only to be conquered by
the plan he had just carried through. His mind was easy now, and he
had the satisfaction not only of knowing that Mimi was now his for
certain, but also of the surety that he had made a very good deal in
a business way.
With Mimi waiting for him till he came out of the Legion he would
have something to live for, and all the time he was serving the
completion of his term she would be building up their business. No
man knew better than Jacques what possibilities for making money lay
in Sidi-bel-Abbès. As cunning as a monkey and as sharp as a weasel,
Jacques had plumbed all the depths of the town.
Though the pay of the Legion is only a half-penny a day there is
money in the Legion. Nearly every légionnaire who has a friend or a
relative in any part of the world becomes a beggar-man, money orders
are constantly arriving and the money when it arrives is spent at
once. He reckoned on the Legion as a good customer for the new
business. Then there was the possibility of money-lending in the
town, beginning very small, of course, and increasing by degrees; and
there were things to be bought and sold in illicit ways, visitors to
be fleeced and natives to be plundered.
Before he went asleep that night he was driving in his automobile
through Sidi-bel-Abbès with Mimi at his side.
For a fortnight after that he lived on his twenty francs and in a
state of complete happiness, presenting the picture, unnatural and
against all reason, of a contented légionnaire; every evening he
would call in on Mimi, drink her vile coffee, smoke cigarettes, dream
of fortune, and make love to her as well as he could in the presence
of the other customers. She would give him no appointment outside
for a walk on the ramparts or through the great boulevards and he did
not grumble; her strictness and propriety pleased him almost as much
as her black coiled hair; this was a proper woman, a woman a man
could trust, if not, _nom de Dieu!_ whom could one trust?
One evening at the end of the fortnight, having spent his last
copper, he called on this trustworthy woman to draw five francs of
his money.
Jacques felt rather shamefaced over the business, but, putting a bold
face on the matter, he entered the little café, only to find the bar
deserted. It was early in the evening, a bit before the hour when
légionnaires might be expected, and the space before the counter,
with its rickety chairs and stained marble-topped tables, was also
empty.
From the little room at the back of the bar came voices in amicable
conversation, Mimi's voice and another--the voice of Corporal Zeiss!
Jacques stood for a moment like a man petrified, then he knocked on
the counter with one of the glass cigarette-ash trays and the lady
appeared.
Seeing Jacques, she closed the door of the little room and came
forward smiling and quite unruffled, and he, white under his
sunburning, but showing nothing of his feelings, made his request for
the five francs.
She gave it to him without a murmur and he took it, paid for a drink,
chatted for a few minutes, and then, saying that he had some business
on hand in the town, took his departure.
Outside he hid in the shadow of a doorway. He had not long to wait.
Some customers went into the café and almost as soon as they entered
out came Zeiss, walking with a light step and with the jaunty air of
a man very well satisfied with himself.
He passed so close to Jacques that the latter could see his earrings,
or at least the right earring.
Then Zeiss vanished round a corner and Jacques returned to the
barracks.
He wanted to be alone, a most dangerous sign in a man of Jacques'
mentality and character. He knew that at this hour the barracks
would be empty of all but the sentries and the men under sentence of
confinement to barracks, and he found no one in the big bedroom where
he slept and where now he lay down on his bed to think.
He was thinking of how he should kill Zeiss.
All sorts of tempting ways occurred to him and were played with by
his mind, but they had all one fault--they would also inevitably kill
Jacques.
He was a very brave man, but he had no fancy at all for facing the
firing-squad.
His love for Mimi was not of the nature that makes a man regardless
of all things should he be betrayed, but it was strong enough to
raise the Apache in him.
His dreams of wealth and motor-cars had been smashed by this
scoundrel Zeiss; that fact was almost more powerful with him than the
fact that Zeiss had stolen Mimi from him, and more potent than either
of these was the fact that Zeiss, his friend, had betrayed him.
Twenty minutes passed and then Jacques, rising from his bed, went off
downstairs to the canteen. He had discovered a way to revenge
himself, clean and without danger.
Firing practice on the range took place once every three weeks or so,
and Jacques had to wait a week till one fine morning when, led by the
buglers, his company started out for the butts.
During the whole of that week he had not seen Mimi nor heard from
her, nor thought of her, so deeply was his mind engaged with Zeiss.
But out here on the firing-ground this blazing morning, just as he
had taken a loaded rifle from one of the new recruits to explain its
mechanism, the thought of Mimi shot up in his mind like an imp as if
to give energy to his purpose.
He was bringing the muzzle of the rifle round in the direction of
Zeiss' broad back, whilst Zeiss, all unconscious of the fact, was
receiving orders from the captain of the company, when Sergeant
Terrail, with a glance at the German, said:
"Have you heard how Zeiss has been let down by that woman at the
coffee-shop--Black Mimi--she's bolted with all his savings, _nom d'un
pétard_, what a fool. Savigny met him last night crying for his
money. He blurted the whole thing out. She has cleared off. He had
close on a thousand francs saved up. He lent it to her to improve
her business. Well, he was always a mean pig, close-fisted, but she
managed to open his fist. Trust a woman for that."
Jacques said nothing. He handed the rifle back to the recruit and
Zeiss' life was saved. Then, getting away by himself, on the
pretence that the sun had given him vertigo, he lay down on the sand
under the shelter of a tree and laughed. Laughed with a laughter
that shook his whole body down to his toes. It was the sudden uplift
of the tragic from his mind as well as the facts of the case that
caused this extraordinary convulsion of merriment.
Then he rose up, dusted the sand from his tunic, and returned to the
firing-ground.
But the laughter had not cleared his mind of anger. He had spared
Zeiss' life, but his enmity towards Zeiss remained, though Mimi now
shared it. Those two. That is how he thought of them.