SCHNEIDER
I
Stories about the Foreign Legion have, nearly all, the same centre idea and motive—escape or attempted escape.
It is the one thing the légionnaires think of. They grumble about their food; they grumble about their chief officers and their subordinate officers; they grumble about the hot days and cold nights of Algeria; they grumble about the scarcity of cigarettes, the price of wine, the scarcity of soap, the hardness of their work, the smallness of their pay, but they never grumble about their loss of liberty.
They dream about it.
It is the one idea around which all other ideas revolve, and it is kept alive and active less perhaps by the general hardness of life in the Legion than by the fact that escape is, though seemingly feasible, next to impossible.
No man can buy his discharge from the Legion. No man, once he has signed the fatal paper, can escape from the consequences of his act by influence. You may be the son of a prince—it does not matter, or of a Rockefeller—it does not matter, you have to dree your weird for five years and carry your rifle and knapsack under the blazing sun to the last day of your term of enlistment.
After all, you have signed a contract, and signed it with your eyes open, and should you fight against fate and try to break your contract, you find that the system you are struggling with has provided against that.
Twenty thousand men or so, distributed in Algeria, Indo-China and Morocco, and most of them willing to escape on the slightest chance, require a pretty definite and complete system of restraint.
Corporal Jacques had very clear views on this matter. Bitter personal experience had convinced him of the futility of all attempts at evasion. Where he had failed he could not see the chance of anyone else succeeding. Nor did he wish anyone else to succeed. Such a success would have cast extra discredit on his own attempt, an attempt that was fast fading from the memory of the regiment, but not from the memory of Corporal Jacques.
One bright morning, Jacques, who had returned to the barrack yard with his squad after three hours' practice on the ranges, turned from lighting a cigarette to watch the arrival of a column of recruits just arrived from France by way of Oran.
There were forty men in the column, men of all heights and ages, all nationalities, a sinister-looking crowd, dusty, tattered, limping, many of them most evidently underfed and nearly all of them wearing that look of dejection common to lost dogs and lost men.
Most of these new recruits had joined the Legion to escape starvation; a few were of the active criminal type and had evidently been given the choice of the Legion or the Penitentiary. Jacques' keen eyes sorted them out and classified them at once, but there was one man he could not classify, a man of middle height, dark, clean-shaven, youthful and of military bearing.
This person's clothes though dusty were well-cut, and his boots of brown tan leather were a marvel.
He carried himself easily, with an air of indifference and detachment, as though he were a spectator and not a member of this little company of tragic actors, and when the recruits were dismissed to find their quarters, he lit a cigarette before going to the depot to receive his uniform.
Jacques felt interested in this individual. Here was most evidently a man of superior birth, an aristocrat strayed into the trap of the Legion. Every now and then the net closes on a gorgeous bird of this description. Jacques knew the type and despised it; the young man of good birth gone wrong was, in his experience, a person to be avoided; he had had his soap stolen by a Viennese banker's son and he had been badly treated financially—it was a matter of five francs—by a gentleman with manicured nails and no money morals, who had the reputation of being a Count in his own country—though what that country was no man knew.
But the present specimen was different somehow from the others, as far as one would judge by appearances, and Jacques, falling into talk with him, showed him the way to the depot and then to the dormitory allotted to him.
No place in the world is kept more spick and span than the great barracks of the Foreign Legion. It vies with an English lighthouse or an English man-of-war in the polish of its brasses and the neatness of its poor appointments.
The dormitory to which Jacques led the new-comer had the appearance of a hospital ward. There were twenty beds, and every bed, except one or two that were vacant, had a card with a légionnaire's name and number.
"Here you are," said Jacques. "You can choose your bed from those three near the door; shuffle into your uniform and you can sell your old togs; you won't want them for another five years, and the fashions will have altered by then."
He showed the new-comer, who was carrying all his kit and accoutrements in a huge bundle, how to stow away his things, gave him a few hints as to what to avoid if he wished for a peaceable life, and took his departure.
The new-comer's name was Schneider, at least that was the name he had joined under, a German name, yet he spoke French like a Frenchman.
Jacques saw him next on the drill ground, and noticed that he wore his uniform as though born in it. They had thrown him out of the instructional squad, finding that he was as well up in the business of drill as the oldest légionnaire, and he was attached to Company 4, practising the double with the great column round and round the vast drill ground.
From the very first moment Schneider took his place in the Legion as a person to be respected. He had not sold his clothes. They, and the wonderful tan boots, he had given away to be sold and he had never asked for the money. He had plenty of money.
The Legion, though recruited considerably from the ranks of the broken-down, the criminal and the starving, is a regiment of dudes; after the main ambition to escape comes the ambition to outvie one's neighbour in cleanliness and neatness. This desire to be neat, to be bright and speckless, is stimulated by the laws of the Legion that bear with terrible severity upon slackers; all the same, it is a true desire, a true ambition born of the spirit of the Legion, that strange spirit of the mass which ever affects and bends the individuality of the unit.
Schneider was such a dude that he manicured his nails; having plenty of money, he was able to pay for services. The légionnaires' fatigue uniform of white cotton cloth has to be washed nearly every day; Schneider never washed his uniform, he paid another man to do that job; the polishing of the metal work of his equipment and the cleaning of his rifle never occupied his time; a brother légionnaire did all this for him—at a price.
Consequently, he could keep his hands clean and his evenings were free. He spent his evenings mostly in Sidi-bel-Abbès, in the Place Sadi Carnot listening to the band, or in one of the better-class cafés, unapproachable to the ordinary légionnaire on account of the prices charged—thirty centimes for a cigar, half a franc for a vermouth, and so forth.
Jacques sometimes saw Schneider seated before one of these cafés reading the Echo d'Oran and sipping his wine. Jacques, who had taken an interest in the man at first sight, found as time went on that his interest was steadily growing. He watched him as a cat watches a mouse.
He could not make him out at all. Here was a man most evidently of good birth, a man possessing money, and, more than that, a man who evidently kept up correspondence with his people—for Schneider received a good many letters—living the slave life of a légionnaire. Had he committed some crime? If so, why did he keep up this large correspondence? He was not of the criminal type, and, although men of the ordinary type often do commit crimes, Jacques felt instinctively that Schneider was not held in the Legion by fear of the Law.
There were other points of interest about this person. Without being in the least offensive in his manner, he managed to keep others at a distance; he talked with anyone who chose to talk to him, yet he made no friend; doing his duties well and without any sign of distaste, he, yet, always gave the impression of a mechanism without any soul in the business on hand. He never grumbled were the practice march ever so long or the sun ever so hot on the drill ground. He seemed quite content, in a fatalistic sort of way, with his lot, and Jacques might have left the matter at that and lost interest in him had not Schneider one day chosen to make him his friend.
It was six months after the latter had joined, and one morning after parade, Schneider, producing a packet of cigarettes, offered one to Jacques.
"They aren't very good, but they are better than the Algerian stuff," said Schneider.
Jacques, lighting up, assented, and the two men strolled back to the barracks, talking of indifferent matters, till, just as they were parting at the door of the depot, Jacques said:
"You aren't German, are you?"
Schneider laughed.
"No," said he. "I am not German. I am an Austrian—but I will tell you about that some day."
Next evening, they met in the town and Schneider stood Jacques a bottle of wine. It was the beginning of a friendship that was to last some months, a warm friendship, at least on the part of Jacques, who found himself actually caring less for Schneider's money or his wine than his companionship. Schneider, now that the ice was thawed, exhibited an interest in the Legion and its history in strong contrast with his general air of disinterest in everything. More especially did he ask questions about men who had tried to make their escape, their methods and their chances.
"Mon Dieu," would reply Jacques, "there's not a chance, not one in a thousand has ever done it." He went into the subject from the circumference to the centre and in the manner of an expert. He showed how the boats were guarded at Oran, how the railway line was watched and the roads patrolled.
"And how about escaping by way of the interior?" asked Schneider.
Jacques laughed and gave examples of men who had tried that business and their horrible fate.
"It's a fool's game," said he, "however you take it; but why do you talk of it so much. Do you want to escape?"
"Not I," said Schneider. "I am as happy here as anywhere else. I am interested in the subject, that is all."
But despite his interest in the subject, he did not refer to it again, and it seemed to Jacques for a moment as they returned to barracks that under the calm and listless demeanour of his friend there lay an uneasy spirit; the spirit of the slave that has sold himself into slavery and who has awakened to the galling of his chains.
Then he dismissed the subject from his mind. Schneider seemed contented, and if he did want to escape, he would without doubt have told the fact to his one friend in the Legion—Jacques.
One day, some two months later, Schneider took Jacques aside.
"You have asked me once or twice," said he, "about my nationality and the place where I came from. I told you I was an Austrian and that was the truth. I am, in fact, a Viennese. My family is one of the oldest in Austria and I left my home and forsook my position on account of an unfortunate love affair. You are my friend, and so I tell you this, trusting that you will keep my secret."
Jacques, greatly flattered by the confidence of the other, swore eternal secrecy, and Schneider went on:
"The girl I loved," said he, "was my equal socially, young, charming, wealthy; she had discarded the attention of half Vienna, had chosen me just as I had chosen her by that instantaneous power of selection which Love alone bestows."
"Oui, oui," said Jacques, scarcely understanding all this and quite at a loss before the melodramatic language of the other, who, in fact, seemed reciting some passage out of a cheap novel rather than some experience from his own life.
"Everything went well," continued Schneider, "till one fatal day we quarrelled."
"Ah, mon Dieu," said Jacques. "You quarrelled; and what did you quarrel about?"
"That I cannot tell you," replied Schneider, "It is a matter I do not care to refer to; it is sufficient that we quarrelled. I could not endure life any longer, I left my country and, seeking an active life, I came here."
"You certainly have got what you came to look for," said Jacques; "and what has become of her; does she know where you are?"
"My friend," said Schneider, "not only does she know where I am, but she is at the present moment in Sidi-bel-Abbès."
"In Sidi-bel-Abbès?"
"Yes. She is staying at the Hôtel d'Oran; she has written to me and wishes to see me."
"And you are going?"
"No, I am not going," said Schneider. "Never again shall I see her."
"Ah, mon Dieu," said Jacques, "think twice about that. Never is a long day. Come, see her and make it up; you have only four years and a bit to serve before getting your discharge, and then you can marry her."
"I will not see her," replied Schneider, "it is useless to speak of it; but I want you, as a friend, to do something for me. I wish to write to her. I have written to her, in fact, and here is the letter. Will you take it to her? You know at the military post here they sometimes open letters, at least so it is said. I want you to give it into her own hands."
"I will do it," said Jacques. He took the letter and put it in his pocket—there was no address upon it. "And for whom shall I ask at the Hôtel d'Oran?"
"Madame Seraskier."
"Madame Seraskier?"
"Yes, that is her mother; she is staying there with her mother, so you must ask for the elder lady. Madame Seraskier knows all about this business, so you need not hesitate to hand the letter to Mademoiselle Seraskier in her presence."
"I will do it," said Jacques.
He got an hour's leave that afternoon and started off for Sidi-bel-Abbès.
Sidi-bel-Abbès is slashed across like a hot cross bun by two boulevards, one running north and south, the other east and west. The Hôtel d'Oran is situated near the junction of these boulevards, and when Jacques arrived there, he found after numerous inquiries that Madame Seraskier was at home. I say numerous inquiries, for in the hotels of Sidi-bel-Abbès nobody seems to know anything about anything, the Arab khayf seems to have stolen into the mental atmosphere of the business world, nobody seems capable of exertion or surprise, and if you were to ask the lady clerk of the Hôtel d'Oran as she sits in her glass-fronted office, "Madame, has a dromedary gone upstairs?" I am perfectly sure she would reply, without even raising those jet-black eyebrows of hers, "Monsieur, I do not know—but I will ask." Jacques was shown up to the first floor and into a private sitting-room, where an old lady and a young lady were seated, one reading a novel and the other writing a letter.
He told of his mission with military brevity, and stood whilst the young woman opened and read through the letter.
His mission was over with its delivery, yet he waited, scarcely knowing why, half expecting that some verbal message would be given to him, half held perhaps by his interest in the girl, who was very good-looking yet spoiled in his eyes by a business-like and decided manner evident in every movement.
"Thank you," said Mademoiselle Seraskier, as she finished reading and handed the letter to the elder woman. "It is most good of you to have brought this. There is no reply."
"No reply," said Jacques. He was thinking if this were so everything was indeed up with this unfortunate love affair, and his interest in his good friend Schneider made him bold.
"You will excuse me, mademoiselle," said he; "I am only a common soldier and Monsieur Schneider is a gentleman, as is easily to be seen, still he is my friend, and the welfare of my friend touches me. He has been in the Legion some months now and he stands the life all right; but it is in another six months or a year that the harness will begin to rub. I know, for I have seen it in many a man like him. The Legion tells, and the more a gentleman a man is, the sooner it breaks him. Then he goes cafard and shoots someone, or else he tries to escape and gets hauled back. All this happens unless he has some interest outside the Legion to hold him back and keep him quiet."
Jacques paused. He was a very blunt-speaking person and his shyness before the ladies was dissipated by the sound of his own voice; besides, he had a purpose.
"Monsieur Schneider has told me the whole affair," he resumed. "He has quarrelled with you and will not make it up. Well, do not mind him, give him another six months of drill and route marching and he will sing another tune.—If you care for him, mademoiselle, as a woman ought to care for a man, don't regard his tantrums and keep on writing to him even if he tears up your letters."
The effect of this speech was astonishing. Mademoiselle Seraskier, after looking at Jacques for a moment with eyes dancing with merriment, suddenly turned and ran from the room; she seemed choking with laughter, and the incensed Jacques was turning to go, when the old lady held him.
"Do not mind my daughter," said she. "She is young, and young people are sometimes foolish. Meanwhile, take my thanks for your kindness, and as a small memento of our meeting please accept this."
She took a pink and blue five-hundred-franc note from a travelling desk open on the table and approached Jacques with it.
"Madame," said Jacques, "I do not take money for assisting my friends." He saluted, turned on his heel and departed.
It was magnificent. Five hundred francs to a légionnaire is the equivalent of five thousand francs to an ordinary civilian, and he had flung it back in the faces of these people—really in the face of this girl who had laughed at his friend. He came down the stairs swelling out his chest and with the feeling of a man who has cast everything away but honour. Then in the street outside and all of a sudden his splendour of mind faded and shrivelled up.
In a practical world where cigarettes were three sous a packet, he had flung away five hundred francs. Twenty-five napoleons.
"Madame, I do not take money for assisting my friends." What a fine sentiment for a man without five centimes in his pocket!
He stopped and actually retraced his steps for a pace or two, then he resumed his way to the barracks, furious with himself, with Schneider, Madame Seraskier, Mademoiselle Seraskier and the universe in general. He saw Schneider that evening and told him that he had delivered the letter, and Schneider not making any inquiries, he said nothing more. He felt illogically angry with Schneider, so much so that he borrowed five francs from him. It was the first time he had ever borrowed from him. With the five francs, Jacques went off to the canteen, where he stood treat all round, drank two bottles of Algerian wine and went to bed happy.
II
Next night at the time when all good légionnaires should be in barracks, Schneider failed to answer the roll call.
In such a case the Legion officials, disregarding the half-dozen different causes that may make a man break his leave, look upon him as a deserter.
By morning, Schneider's description had been telegraphed to Oran, eighty miles away, and the railway officials and road patrols notified, also the Arab police.
Schneider did not turn up next day. He had deserted or else he was dead.
Jacques believed that he must have done away with himself. Schneider, being his friend, would have told him had he intended to make his escape; then there was a matter of the letter to the girl, a farewell letter. Yes, there could be no doubt—he had committed suicide and was hidden away in some ditch somewhere.
He mourned for his friend all day, and in the evening, strolling into the town, he spent five centimes on the Echo d'Oran, thinking there might be some news of his vanished friend. Later on, he strolled into the shop of a friend of his, Moccata by name, a Jew clothier, rag and rubbish dealer and fence.
I do not accuse Jacques of using Moccata in the latter capacity, I simply state the fact that this gentleman was a fence; he was also a most picturesque individual, with the grey beard of a prophet.
Despite his many and shady activities, he always had time for a chat with Jacques if the latter called. He had a kindness for Jacques, who had once done him a service, and Jacques in return had a great respect for Moccata's astuteness and knowledge of the highways and byways of Sidi-bel-Abbès.
He had come to ask him his opinion of the Schneider business.
"The man has made his escape," said Moccata, "without any manner of doubt—you are quite wrong. If he had committed suicide, the body would have been found. Bless you, there's no hiding anything away in Sidi-bel-Abbès, what with the police always hunting for runaways and criminals and the Arab boys poking about in every lane and ditch for bits of old metal and rubbish— Ah, ha!"
He struck himself on the knee as though he had remembered something all of a sudden. Then he rose up and went into a corner of the shop, searched amongst the rubbish there and produced a bundle.
He unrolled it, exposing a blue full-dress légionnaire's coat, red trousers and sash.
"I was coming home last night," said Moccata, "with a sack containing some old clothes, when I stumbled against a bundle. It was in the lane opening from Mustapha Street; the things were rolled up and tied together with the sash. I popped them in the sack. It was stupid of me to touch them. You know the law is heavy on anyone helping a légionnaire to escape, and to be in possession of a légionnaire's uniform might cast suspicion on one, but to tell the truth, my friend, I could not let the things lie; all my life I have been dealing in old clothes; it is not the profit I make from them, but the feeling I have for them that prevents me from leaving even an old hat lying in the street if I can pick it up. My father dealt in old clothes before me and his father before him, it runs in the family. So there you are. I picked the things up. I could not let them lie, and now I do not know what to do with them."
"You had better hide them," said Jacques. Then he went off.
There was no doubt in his mind now. Schneider was not dead, he had escaped. The only thing to account for a uniform cast away like that was an escaped légionnaire, and no other légionnaire had escaped or attempted escape.
Schneider had been playing a part all along. Jacques, as he walked back to the barracks, revolved matters in his mind. He remembered how, several months ago, Schneider had suddenly made friends with him; he remembered those conversations about escape, and he saw how artfully this scamp had pumped him on the matter; then came the question of the girl.
The girl and the old lady had come to Sidi-bel-Abbès to help in the business, and he blushed to think of the part he, Jacques, had played; he remembered that speech of his, honest and spoken from the heart, and the way in which the girl had received it, rushing from the room to hide her merriment, and remembering this, Jacques swore a great oath to be revenged. Schneider had played him false, that was bad; he had placed him in a ridiculous position, that was worse.
Then as he drew near the barrack gate, an idea struck him. He went straight to the officers' quarters, and the colonel happening to be in, Jacques had a five minutes' interview with him.
At ten minutes past ten he left the colonel, carrying with him a written order that made him virtual master of all the outlets of Algeria; he went to his room, fetched his blue overcoat, and going to the garage, secured a motor-car. A few minutes later he was being driven to Oran, where he arrived shortly before one o'clock in the morning.
He went to the Police Bureau and found that the boat for Marseilles was due to start at nine o'clock, and at eight o'clock he had taken his stand on the quay, close to the gangway of the steamer.
It was the ill-fated General Chanzy, and the last of the cargo was going on board to the tune of the winch pawls and the shouting of the red-fezzed negro stevedores. The quay presented a brilliant spectacle beneath the intense blue of the morning sky; a company of Spahis bound for Senegal were lining up by the troopship that was to take them, the crying of the Arab children at play answered the crying of the gulls fishing in the harbour, and here came the first of the passengers for the Marseilles boat, a stout, bearded Frenchman, who might have been Tartarin of Tarascon himself, in tweeds, wearing a sun helmet and followed by two negro porters carrying his luggage. After him came a French family, two American ladies in blue veils and a tall Englishman with side whiskers, a rare bird to find nowadays, and recalling to mind the "typical" Englishman who used to figure in the old Palais Royal farces. Then came some Germans, and lastly what Jacques was waiting for.
Madame Seraskier, Mademoiselle Seraskier and their maid. The women were all veiled and the maid was carrying a dressing-bag. There was no sign of Schneider. Jacques was not looking for him.
He drew close to the gangway, and as Madame Seraskier placed her hand upon the rail, he advanced, raised his képi and said:
"I see, madame, that you have changed your maid."
The stout Frenchman, who had taken his place on the boat deck of the General Chanzy, and who was in the act of lighting a cigar, was treated to a spectacle. He saw the légionnaire corporal raise his hat to an old lady, the old lady fall in a faint, and the old lady's maid drop the dressing-bag she was carrying, pick up her skirts and run, pursued by the légionnaire. He saw her captured and handcuffed, and then he saw the old lady and her daughter led off by the police.
Then the boat started, carrying him off, to wonder for ever what could have been the meaning of it all and how it all ended.
It ended in a court-martial at Oran, where Schneider was condemned to a year of the penal battalion, not for having run away, but for having lost his uniform, and Jacques, who knew where that uniform was, said nothing. Wicked of him, perhaps, but with that I have nothing to do. I am simply telling this story to cast a sidelight on the character of Jacques.
As for the character of Schneider, the regimental surgeon, a hard-bitten French colonial officer with a terrible eye for the truth of things, summed it up for me:
"Schneider joined the Legion, as we discovered at the court-martial, for no reason. He was suffering from the European disease that afflicts, mostly, well-to-do men, and which is confined almost entirely to the continent of Europe, the disease that makes a man go off and commit suicide or join the Legion—for no reason. He is tired of life. These men are nearly always of high intelligence, but they have no belief in a God, and as in the case of Schneider, they often keep no faith with a friend. They are very crafty. We have had several of them in the service and I speak from knowledge.
"When Schneider, after a couple of months of Algeria, began to dislike the business, he determined to make an end of it; but knowing that it was next to impossible to escape by ordinary ways, he enlisted his old mother and his sister in his service. No heart, you see.
"I believe what is wrong with men like him is a brain that tires of ordinary stimuli and seeks for new sensations; well, he is receiving plenty of them in the criminal battalion, building roads down there in the south. It is a remedy that will cure him, if it does not kill him."