She silenced herself with a little gasp. He urged her no more, but stared almost unseeingly out of the window at the roofed farmhouses, and the yellow hills, like reclaimed desert, with bright patches of cultivation, and a far, floating background of the blue Thesala mountains.
Sidi-bel-Abbés at last! and the train slowing down along the platform of an insignificant station, which might have been in the South of France, save for a few burnoused Arabs. There was a green glimpse of olives and palms, and taller plane trees, under a serene sky; and in the distance the high fortified walls of yellow and dark gray stone, which ringed in the northernmost stronghold of the Foreign Legion.
"Sidi-bel-Abbés!" a deep voice shouted musically from one end of the platform to the other, as the train came in; and the name thrilled through Max Doran's veins as it had not ceased to thrill since yesterday. More strongly than ever he had the impression that some great things would happen to him here, or begin to happen, and carry him on elsewhere, beyond those yellow hills. Deep down in him excitement stirred in the dark, like a dazed traveller up before the dawn, groping for the door through which he must pass to begin his journey. All the more quietly, however, because of what he secretly felt, Max took Sanda's bag and his own, and gave her a hand for the high step from the train to platform. There they became units in a crowd strange to see at a little provincial station; a crowd to be met at few other places in the world.
The French boxer was not the only guest of importance this train brought to Sidi-bel-Abbés. At the far end of the platform, where the first-class carriages had stopped, a group of officers in full dress were collected round a man who wore civilian clothes awkwardly, as an old soldier wears them. There was the sensationally splendid costume of the Spahis; scarlet cloak and full trousers; the beautiful pale blue of the Chasseurs d'Afrique, and a plainer uniform which Max guessed to be that of the Foreign Legion. The boxer had his committee de réception also; a dozen or more dark, fat, loud-talking proprietors of cafés, or tradefolk keen on "le sport." These, and the lounging Arabs, might have interested strangers to Sidi-bel-Abbés, if there had been nothing better worth attention. But owing to the lateness of the train, it had come in almost simultaneously with another made up of windowless wagons for men, horses or freight, which had not yet discharged its load. Out from the wide doorway of the long car labelled "32 hommes, 6 chevaux," was streaming an extraordinary procession; tall, bearded men with the high cheek-bones and sad, wide-apart eyes of the Slav: a blond, round-cheeked boy whose shy yet stolid face could only have been bred in Germany, or Alsace; sharp-featured, rat-eyed fellows who might have been collected at Montmartre or in a Marseilles slum; others who were nondescripts of no complexion and no expression; waifs from anywhere; a brown-skinned Spaniard and an Italian or two; a Negro with the sophisticated look of a New York "darkee"; a melancholy, hooded Arab, and a fierce-faced Moor; types utterly at variance, yet with one likeness which bound them together like a convict's chain: weariness and stains of long, hard travelling, which thrust the few well-dressed men down to the level of the shabbiest. Some were almost middle aged; some were youths hardly yet at the regulation enlistment age of eighteen; a few one might take for broken-down gentlemen; more who looked like workmen out of a job, and one or two unmistakably old soldiers, eager-eyed as lost dogs who had found their way home: a strange gathering of individuals to find stumbling out of a freight train at a country station of a French colony; but this was Sidi-bel-Abbés, headquarters of La Legion Etrangére: and as the tired, dirty men tumbled out on to the platform, everybody stared openly as a corporal with a high képi, a buttoned-back blue overcoat, and loose, red trousers tucked into military boots, formed the crew into lines of four.
Even the officers at the end of the platform gazed at the soiled scarecrows who had to be made into soldiers: for this being Sidi-bel-Abbés, there was no difficulty in guessing that the twenty-eight or thirty men of six or seven nations were recruits of the Legion of Foreigners. The draggled throng was quietly indicated to the visitor in civilian clothes, who nodded appreciatively and then turned away. But the boxer's brigade explained the unfortunate wretches so loudly and unflatteringly to their guest that haggard faces flushed and quivering lips stiffened; while at the gateway of exit, a motionless row of non-commissioned officers, watching for deserters, regarded "les bleus" critically, yet indifferently.
Max, whose quick imagination made him almost painfully sensitive for others, felt hot and sorry for the men herded together by misfortune. He had read sensational stories of the Foreign Legion, and found himself hypnotized into looking for brutal jowls of escaped murderers, or faces of pallid aristocrats in torn evening clothes, splashed with blood. Among these men of mystery or sorrow there were, however, few startling types which caught the eye. But one man—young, tall, straight as an arrow—running the gauntlet of jokes and stares with fierce, repressed defiance, turned suddenly to look at Max and Sanda.
Where to place him in life, Max could not tell. He might be prince or peasant by birth, since prince and peasant are akin at heart, and ever remote from the middle-classes as from Martians. He wore a soft, gray felt hat, smeared with coal-dust from the engine. The collar of his dusty black overcoat was turned up; it actually looked like an evening coat. His trousers were black too, and Max had an impression of patent leather shoes glittering through dust. But these details were only accessories to the picture, and interesting because of the wearer's face. It was dark as that of a Spaniard from Andalusia, with the high, proud features of an Indian. It had been clean-shaven a few days ago; and from two haggard hollows a pair of wild black eyes flashed one glance at Max—the only man who had not seemed to stare. Face and look were unforgettable. It seemed to Max that some appeal had been flung to him. He could hardly keep himself from striding after the tall figure, to ask: "What is it you want me to do?" And Sanda also had been impressed. He heard her murmur under her breath, "Poor man! What wonderful eyes!"
Nobody moved from the platform until the corporal had called the roll of names—German, French, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Arab—and had marched his batch of recruits briskly through the guarded gate. Max would have hurried Sanda out directly behind them, before the crowd could secure all the queer, old-fashioned cabs which were waiting, but at that moment the smart group of officers moved forward. Having shown their guest one of the sights of Sidi-bel-Abbés, they evidently expected to take precedence of the townspeople, who gave no sign of disputing their right. Max, following the example of others and resisting an impulse to salute, stood back with his companion to let the uniforms pass. Sanda, pink with excitement, was as usual all unconscious of self, and vividly interested both in recruits and officers. The latter, especially the young ones, were equally interested in the pretty, well-dressed girl, a stranger in Sidi-bel-Abbés and the one woman on the platform.
Max saw the polite but admiring glances, and would have liked to draw her further away. He bent down to whisper a suggestion, but Sanda did not hear. Her face, her whole personality, had undergone one of those swift changes characteristic of her.