“It is a good adage, but we cannot always let our sorrows lie,” I interrupted sympathetically. He had spoken with the accent of a gentleman, and with the white light of the moon streaming upon his face, I saw that he was about thirty years of age, with a countenance clean-cut and noble, refined and somewhat effeminate. His dark eyes were deep-set and serious, yet in his face there was an expression of genuine bonhomie. The average Spahi is feared by Moor and Jew, by Biskri and Koulougli, as the fiercest and most daring of soldiers. In drink he is a brute, in love he is passionate, in the saddle he is one of the finest riders in the world; in the town he is docile and obedient, fond of lounging in the cafés, idling over his eternal cigarette; yet away in the desert, all his old instincts return; he is an Arab again, and knows no measure either in attachment or in hatred. A blow from his scabbard is the only payment when scouring the country for food, a thrust of his sabre the only apology to those he insults, while in the field, seated on his fleet horse, he rides like the wind, and has the strength and courage of a lion.
This quiet, intellectual, bearded young Frenchman sitting cross-legged on the mat beside me, was, I felt sure, a man with a past. One of his comrades came up and asked him a question in Arabic, to which he replied, speaking the language of his regiment like a true-born Bedouin. As we sipped our absinthe in silence for some minutes, watching the camp settling down for the night, it struck me as curious that, instead of being in the Chasseurs d’Afrique, he should be masquerading in burnouse in an exclusively native regiment.
We began talking of England, but he was not communicative regarding himself, and in reply to my question said—
“I desire to live here in the desert and to forget. Each time we return to Algiers, the glare and glitter of the European quarter unlocks the closed page of my history. It was because this wild roving beyond the pale of civilisation was suited to my mood that I became a homard.”
“Has your experience of life been so very bitter, then?” I asked, looking into the handsome face, upon which there was a shadow of pain, and which was set off by the spotless white haick surrounding it.
“Bitter?—Ah!” he exclaimed, with a deep sigh. “You see me now, dragging out a wretched existence in this wilderness, exiled from my home, with name, creed, nationality—everything changed.”
“In order to conceal your identity?” I hazarded.
“Yes, my past is erased. Dead to those who knew me, I am now merely known as Octave Uzanne. I have tasted of life’s pleasures, but just as I was about to drink of the cup of happiness, it was dashed from me. It is ended. All I have now to look for is—is a narrow bed in yonder sand.”
“My dear fellow,” I exclaimed, “don’t speak so despondently! We all have our little debauches of melancholy. Cannot you confide in me? Perhaps I might presume to give advice.”
Silently and thoughtfully he rolled a cigarette between the fingers of his bronzed hand, completing its manufacture carefully.