One evening she came to meet him late for the rendezvous, and
creeping through the darkness like a shadow.
It was just before the new moon, and the stars had the sky all to
themselves, a sky of black pansy-purple, luminous, leaping with life
and light and fire.
Up here, where they met, the murmur of the city came to them from
below; the faint music of a band, louder or lower as the wind took it
or left it, the murmur of the streets, shrill boy voices calling the
last edition of the _Echo d'Oran_.
She had brought bad news.
Her father had discovered everything. It had all come about through
the little birds. Someone must have seen her receiving them, and
then, they were not a present that one could keep hidden for long.
She kept them in her room, but their little soft voices chatting
together must have reached the old man. Sounds like that were just
the sounds to reach a person like Abraham Misas. He would have heard
through walls of triple brass and by instinct. Then when she was out
he would have poked his head into her room and seen the cage and its
contents. He would then have cast about to find the giver.
Or it may have been that someone just came into the shop and said to
him, "I have seen your daughter with a soldier, one of the
légionnaires."
However that might be, the fact remained. Abraham Misas had a
brother, a metal worker in Algiers, and on the day after the morrow
he was going to Algiers and taking Manuella with him. She was to
live with the brother and help him in his shop.
Abraham had said not one word to his daughter of the reason for the
change, he had made no reproach. That was the sort of man he was,
secretive, silent, always working underground to obtain his ends and
always obtaining them.
To a callous outsider this decision of the old man, taking all the
facts into consideration, was a piece of profound common sense. For
even had Raboustel been an eligible party he was tied to the Legion
for nearly five years more.
Had Raboustel been worth a million of money he could not have escaped
the Legion's clutches. No man once seized by that iron grip can ever
escape, be he prince or millionaire or pauper, till the expiration of
his term of service sets him free.
So to an outsider the decision of the old Jew would have seemed
reasonable enough. To the two lovers it was equivalent to a sentence
of death.
Raboustel, confused by the blow and able to see nothing clearly, on
parting with the girl that night made her promise to meet him at the
same place on the morrow and at the same time.
"I will think it over," said he, "but one thing you may be sure, you
will not go. We will find some means of stopping it."
"We can always die," said Manuella.
He went tearing back to barracks and found Jacques, who had just
returned. He told him the whole story outside the canteen, and
Jacques gave him very cold comfort.
"What can you do?" said he. "The old man takes her off to Algiers,
that is to say to the moon as far as you are concerned. You can't
follow them, for to do so would be to desert, and you would be caught
at the first station out from Sidi. Even if you could follow them,
what then? You would find yourself in Algiers with no money. You
cannot carry on War or Love without money. That is a fact. You
cannot run away with her. Where could you run to? _Nom du bon
Dieu_, listen to me. It is I, Jacques, that am talking, and I know
what I am talking about. A man, if he is very quick-witted, if he
has plenty of money, if he can talk two languages, and if he is an
expert at disguise, may succeed in escaping as far as Oran. If he is
under special convoy by order of good luck he may reach Marseilles,
and if he escapes the military police at Marseilles, who have eyes
back and front and at the ends of their fingers, he may get out of
France. Now, mark you, it's not a question of escaping from
Sidi-bel-Abbès or Algeria, it is a question of escaping from France.
"You, without money, without languages, without the art of disguise
and with a girl in tow--what can you do? See you, if you get even to
Marseilles it would not help, for there is a telegraph cable under
the sea, and telegrams go quicker than mail boats, and once the girl
is missed you'd have all the Jews in Algeria shouting that a
Christian had run off with Rebecca, and all the Jews in Marseilles
would meet you at the landing-stage. That is another point. You are
not of the same faith. You are a Christian."
"Oh, _mon Dieu!_" said Raboustel, "what has Faith to do with love?"
"You would soon know if you went after a Mohammedan girl and her
people caught you," replied Jacques. "No, you are outflanked
everywhere, you can do nothing."
"One can always die," said Raboustel, echoing Manuella.
"This is a fool's talk," replied the other; "any fool can die. Come,
I will stand you a bottle. There's more sense in a bottle than in
many a man's skull. Come, I'll pay."
But Raboustel was not in the humour for drink, and said so and
departed on his way.
He went to bed, but he did not sleep that night. He lay awake,
listening to the snoring of the others, and their muttered
conversation sometimes as they talked aloud in their sleep.
Légionnaires sleep soundly, but they sometimes have dreams that even
the soundest sleep cannot smother. Dreams of France, of England, of
the wastes of Russia, of days departed and faces never to be seen
again.
Raboustel, lying on his back, watched the night pass and the stars
moving across the blue-black luminous sky disclosed by the window
space opposite to him.
Then something brilliant came slowly sailing into view, it was the
crescent of the new moon.
The new moon is the most lovely of new-born things, especially when
seen in the night sky of Algeria. Raboustel watched it pass,
scarcely heeding it. He was thinking out a plan.
Next day at six o'clock he departed as usual with the others to the
town.
Jacques, who had kept his eye on him all day, walked with him as far
as the town and then left him. Jacques, who had a good deal of
wisdom of his own, did not refer to the subject of the girl. He
judged that if Raboustel had made up his mind to run away with her,
nothing would stop him from making the attempt, and he considered
that if Raboustel had given up the idea it would be an unfriendly
thing to make him talk of it. Jacques was a good deal of a
gentleman, though he had knifed several men in his time.
When he returned to barracks that night he looked about for his
friend. He had not yet come back. Then Jacques, instead of going to
the canteen, took his place near the sentry at the barrack gate and
watched the late arrivals coming in. The men came in twos and
threes, singing, skylarking, some silent and moody, the last of them
flushed with running, but none of them drunk. Drunkenness is not
common in the Legion, owing to the scarcity of money and the drastic
nature of the punishment.
Then the barrack gates were shut and the roll was called. Raboustel
did not answer to his name.
He had deserted.
Of course it might be that he would yet turn up. It sometimes
happens that a légionnaire, for one cause or another, outstays his
leave; but Jacques did not consider this chance at all. He made up
his mind that the man had deserted, and he was right.
Next day brought confirmation.
A report came from the Arab police that a légionnaire and a girl
mounted on a presumably stolen horse had been met with by a police
patrol on the southern road.
The girl was mounted behind the légionnaire. The patrol, consisting
of two officers, allowed them to pass; they were riding at full speed
and the officers never thought for a moment that it was the case of a
légionnaire deserting. Légionnaires making off are always on foot,
they avoid the high roads and they don't carry girls with them.
Then, recovering from their surprise, the police officers consulted
together and determined to follow, but the légionnaire had got a long
start and a very good horse. They followed for two miles or so
without gaining on the suspects, their horses being poor and already
tired by a long day's work. They dropped the chase, returned to
Sidi-bel-Abbès and telegraphed to the nearest southern police post.
No news of the supposed fugitives had been received. They must have
left the road and taken to the plain.
Then Abraham Misas appeared on the scene. He turned up at the
barracks, interviewed the colonel and literally wailed over his lost
daughter. It was a bad quarter of an hour for Colonel Tirard, and he
swore terrible oaths as to what he would do with that scamp of a
Raboustel when he was brought back. He got rid of the old man at
last, and day followed day, but no news came, and week followed week
without a breath or word from that mysterious south into which the
lovers had vanished like figures in a dream.
The affair caused a great stir in Sidi-bel-Abbès, where it is
remembered yet. The escape of a soldier would not give the good
people of the town a moment's thought, but the escape of a soldier
taking away with him a girl of the town, a daughter of an honest
citizen, made them furious.
This delighted the Legion, who hate the townsfolk for various and
substantial reasons. Raboustel became a hero. He had undoubtedly
made his way across the frontier into Morocco. The thing had been
done once or twice before by deserters.
After a month had passed this supposition became an assured fact and
Raboustel began to suffer the fate of the heroes, kings and captains
who had vanished. People began to forget him.
"And you never saw him again?" I said.
"There you are wrong, Monsieur," replied Jacques. "I saw them both.
It was this way. Three months or so after he had made his escape,
taking the girl with him, an Arab tribe down south began to light
matches. That sort of thing spreads and must be put out quickly, or
you would soon have the whole of the south on fire, so, one night we
got our orders to march. The whole regiment went.
"It was really not much of an affair and we soon dealt with it; what
made us swear was not the fighting, for there was scarcely enough
fighting to go round, but the distance. The place was very far
south, in the region of the sand dunes.
"Does Monsieur know the desert? Many people when they talk of the
desert think of sand and nothing but sand, whereas the desert is rock
and nothing but rock, till, of course, you reach the sandy patches.
"Well, it was down there, the main fighting was over and we were
sending out patrol parties to clean up and hunt for fugitives. I was
with one of these parties. One day, about ten kilometres from camp,
we sighted a palm tree, and knowing there was water there, we made
for it, thinking also to find fugitives.
"It was a dead tree, Monsieur; it had been dead, maybe, six months,
and the well source that had fed it was dried up, but we found
fugitives.
"Under the withered tree, Monsieur, lay two skeletons, the bones all
mixed together, and some rags of cloth; the birds had torn the
clothing to get at the bodies that now were skeletons.
"There were also some buttons from a légionnaire's uniform, his belt
and buckle, and a woman's comb. I said at once: 'There's Raboustel
and his girl, look,' I said; 'it is a légionnaire's bones, and the
little bones are those of a girl.'
"Then, Monsieur, I picked up something else that made me sure. It
was a little cage. I knew it, for I had made it myself, and in the
cage there were also two skeletons. The girl had taken the thing
with her. Women do strange things. One might have thought that she
had enough to bother about, without taking that. It was a strong
cage, made of iron wire, else the vultures would have broken it to
pieces. That is the story of Raboustel, Monsieur, and his girl."
He rolled a cigarette, and as he was lighting it there came along the
person for whom he was waiting. An Arab boy, a bird trapper,
carrying a cage in which were two little birds newly caught. He gave
them to Jacques, who gave him in return some small coins.
"Do you make much at this business?" I asked.
"No, Monsieur," he replied. "A légionnaire never has the chance of
making much money over anything. Just a few francs, and the man who
buys them will sell them for ten--he is not in the Legion."
I gave him ten francs for the birds, and opening the cage let them
free, much to his amazement; then we stood watching them as they
fluttered in the air, confused, dazzled by freedom, and at last
striking south away across the vineyards like two spirits freed from
the prison of a sordid and soul-ruining world.