Jacques knew the word "Duty" only as a military term. He could not tell in the least what power it was that compelled him to do this thing he did not want to do. The child had become a companion, an interest, almost a necessity of life, and had you told him that it was the good influence of the child upon him that was now driving the child away from him, he would not have understood you.
No. The uniform had hit him in the face, that was enough for him.
El Kobir said nothing more. Like Jacques, he did not want to part with the child, yet he was a just man. Had he been an unjust man or a hard-hearted man, he would not have wanted to keep the child. Our good qualities hit us very hard sometimes.
"And who are the child's people?" asked El Kobir, as Jacques, rose to go.
The latter took a paper from his pocket and handed it to his questioner, who scanned it and handed it back without a word.
It was almost a world-known name that he had read, and it remained before his eyes as he sat alone working on the rug.
He knew quite well that Jacques was about to write, or get his commanding officer to write to the child's people, yet he had said nothing to urge or deter him from that course.
He was an old man, and the child had grown round his heart. However, Fate is Fate. If the thing had to be, it had to be. All the same, a half welcome idea clung to his mind that Jacques might prove weak enough to let the matter stand as it was for the present. A year or two, what did it matter. And suppose the child were taken off to that splendid palace and that glorious future awaiting him, might that prove the happiest fate for him?
El Kobir had a profound knowledge of the evil of wealth and the weariness of greatness, and he looked on Western civilization with the cynical eyes of an Eastern.
Railway trains, telegraph lines, steamships, the magic that makes a voice reach London from Paris, all these things did not impress him at all; viewed against the background of the stately East they seemed like the vulgar jewellery of a nouveau riche. He knew quite well that the glitter surrounding a great man in Europe was only glitter, and that as far as happiness was concerned, an Arab boy playing in the streets of Sidi-bel-Abbès had, perhaps, a better chance of securing happiness than a princeling in a palace of the West.