He looked at me half defiantly, half wistfully, I thought.
“But if I do, perhaps your stomach will turn against the food I cooked with these hands,” he added suddenly, stretching out his hands towards me, “You are English, m’sieu?”
“Yes.”
“Then I daresay you won’t understand.” “I think I shall,” I answered, looking full at him.
The way he had spoken of his child had drawn me to him. Whatever he had done, I felt that chivalry and tenderness were in this man.
“Why do they call you ‘Fin Tireur’?” “The men of the Midi, m’sieu, are not like the men of the rest of France,” said Fin Tireur—“at least so they say. We are boasters, perhaps; but we’ve got more love of adventure, more wish to see the world, and do something big in it. They’re talkers, you know, in the Midi, and they tell of what they’ve done. I heard them at Cassis when I was a boy, and one day I saw a Zouave in front of the inn balcony, where folks come on fête days to eat the bouillabaisse. The talk I had heard made me wish to rove; but when I saw the Zouave, in his big red trousers and blue and red jacket, I said to myself: ‘As soon as my three years’ service is over I’ll go to Africa, and make my fortune.’ I did my three years at Grenoble, m’sieu, and when it was done I carried out my resolve. I came to Africa; but I didn’t come alone.”
He puffed at his cigar for a minute or two, and the hot look in his eyes became more definite, like a fanned flame.
“You took a comrade?”
“I took a wife, a girl of Cassis. A good girl she was then.”
He paused again, then continued, in rather a loud voice: “She was good, m’sieu, because she had seen nothing. That’s often the way. It was I who put it into her head that there were things to be seen better than rocks, and dead white dusty roads, and fishing boats against the quay. I’ve thought of that since I—since I got my name of Fin Tireur. Her name was Marie, and she was eighteen when we stood before the priest. Next day we went to Marseille, and took the boat for Algiers. Our heads were full of I don’t know what. We thought we were clever ones, and should do well in a country like Africa. And so we did at first. We got into a hotel at Algiers. She was housemaid, and I was porter in the hall, and what with the goings and comings—strangers giving us a little when we’d done our best for them—we made some money, and we saved it. And I wish to God we’d spent it, every sou!”