“Until now, mine has been but a grim fortune,” I said. “The money that took me out of the world I loved brought me only unhappiness and discontent. It caused me to become cynical, dissatisfied with my English surroundings, dissatisfied with myself. Even now I gaze back with regret upon those blissful hours of idle gossip over our vermouth and our mazagran; those frugal days of desperate struggle to obtain a foothold in literature, those mad, rollicking fêtes du nuit; that pleasant, reckless life, so happily divided between pleasure and toil. How well, too, I recollect those easy-going, laughter-loving children of Bohemia, my boon companions, each of whose purse was ever at the other’s command; how vividly their faces and their bonhomie come back to me, now that I am, alas! no longer of their world, no longer a denizen of the Quartier where the man is not judged by his coat, and wealth commands no favours.”
“You are not ostracised as I am,” he blurted out, with much bitterness. “You have riches; you will win the woman you love, and return to Paris, to Brussels, to London, there to live in happiness; while I—mon Dieu!—I, professing a religion I do not follow, sailing under false colours, eating kousskouss from a wooden platter, broiling always beneath this merciless sun, shall one day fall, pierced by an Arab’s bullet! Bah!—the sooner it is all ended the better.”
“Why meet trouble half-way?” I asked, endeavouring to cheer him. “You have come out to this wild land to efface your identity, because if you had remained in Europe you would have been charged with a crime, the sequel of which would have been the lifelong unhappiness of the woman you love. I admit, your future appears dull and hopeless, but why despair? There may be a day when you will be able to return to her without branding her children as those of a murderer.”
“Never!”
“Tout arrive à point à qui sait attendre,” I observed cheerily. “Ah,” he replied, smiling sadly, “it is a long and weary waiting. Even while she seeks me, I am compelled to go further afield, in order to conceal my existence.”
“I can sympathise with you,” I said. “All of us bear our burdens of sorrow.”
“What sorrow can possess you?” he retorted. “The woman to whose arms you are now flying will accompany you back to civilisation, there to commence a new life. You will show her our world of spurious tinsel and hollow shams; you will educate her as a child into what we call les convenances, teach her what to accept and what to avoid, and she, who to-day is the leader of a band of outlaws, will become an idol of Society. Proud of her beauty, content in her love, you will at last find the perfect peace for which you have been searching, and for which you have risked so much.”
“Of you I will make the same prophetic utterances,” I answered, laughing. “Your life will not always be darkened by this cloud. It is a passing shadow that will be succeeded by sunshine.”
But he only shook his head, sighed, and remained silent.
To the sorrow weighing so heavily upon his brave, generous heart I made no further allusion during the ten days we travelled together, first to the little town of Dibbela,—where he discarded his Spahi’s dress for the white burnouse and fillet of camel’s hair of the Arab of the plain,—then, spurring over the boundless desert of Ndalada, and through the Agram Oasis, until, in the dazzling glare of a brilliant noon, we passed through a clump of palms, and distinguished, in the far distance, the dome and tall square minaret of the great mosque of Agadez.