V
THE GIFT

IT was Guest Night at the Spahis' mess.

   "What I complain of is the utter absence of gratitude among natives," said "Général" Archambaud Thibaud d'Amienville of the Chasseurs d'Afrique of the XIXth Army Corps of La République Française. "It is highly significant that there is no word for 'Thank you' in the vernacular, isn't it? . . . If you do a native a good turn, he either wonders what you want of him, or else casts about in his mind for the reason why you want to propitiate him. If you had cause to punish one of your Spahis and did not do it, he would think you were afraid to. Kindness is in their eyes pure weakness. If you forego vengeance, it must be because you think the offender may avenge that vengeance. No, gratitude doesn't flourish under a tropical sun." . . . Lieutenant d'Amienville was very young and therefore very cynical.

   "Is it a plant of very hardy growth under a temperate one?" inquired Captain Gautier d'Armentières of the First Battalion of the Legion. "I seem to have heard complaints, and I fancy that poets from the days of Homer to those of this morning have had something to say about it."

   "Quite so," agreed Médecin-Major Parme; "but pass me the matches, and I will promise a brief pang of gratitude . . . . Quite so. . . . If a fellow does you a really good turn, he is strongly inclined to like you for evermore, and you are equally strongly disposed to regard him as a nuisance, and his mouldy face as a reminder of the time when you had to faire la lessive¹ or were in some fearful scrape . . . . I could name a certain absinthe-sodden old Colonel who absolutely loathes me for having saved him, body and soul, some years ago, when he had been betting (and, of course, losing, as all people who bet do) and had then gone to Monte Carlo to put everything right at the gaming-tables! What made it worse was the fact that the departed francs were rather the property of Madame la République than of the Colonel. And Madame prefers to do her own gambling. His position, one Sunday night,

   "I believe you are right," agreed Colonel Lebrun. "One uses the expression 'debt of gratitude,' and nobody really likes being in debt . . . . The gratitude is rarely paid though. I suppose it is because the creditor of gratitude occupies the higher ground, and one resents being on the lower."

   "I certainly once lost a friend by doing him a kindness," put in Adjudant-Major Berthon of the Legion, who was also dining at the Spahis' mess. "This was a loan case, too, and a slight coolness ending in a sharp frost followed immediately upon it . . . . And it wasn't my fault the coolness arose, I am sure."

   "Of course the benefactor always likes the beneficiary better than the beneficiary likes the benefactor," said the cynical "Général" d'Amienville, "and the kind action always dwells longer in the mind of the doer than in that of the receiver. Far longer. Always."

   "Not always," observed Captain d'Armentières. "Only yesterday . . ."

   "Always," contradicted d'Amienville.

   "I was about to say," continued d'Armentières, "that, only yesterday, I reminded a man of a good turn he did me years ago, and he had clean forgotten it . . . . And it was a deed I could not forget if I lived to be a hundred years old."

   "I simply don't believe a man could give you half of his kingdom, or save your valuable life or honour, and forget all about it," replied the "Général."

   "I did not say he gave me a half of his kingdom or saved my valuable life or honour," was the quiet answer. "I said he did me a good turn and had absolutely forgotten the incident though I have not, and never shall. I feel the deepest gratitude towards him and always will. I should be very glad of an opportunity of proving the fact." . . .

   "A very noble sentiment," sneered the young gentleman.

   "No," said d'Armentières patiently. "I am not concerned to exhibit my high morality, fine nature, and noble sentiments, but am stating an example in opposition to your theory; a fact of memory — the respective memories of benefactor and beneficiary. He had forgotten doing the kindness, while I had remembered receiving it."

   "What was the nature of the action, if one might inquire?" put in Médecin-Major Parme.

   "Yes, what did he do, mon salop?" added Colonel Lebrun. "Surrender the beauteous damsel whom you both loved, with the hiccuping cry, 'Take her. She is thine,' and thenceforth hide a breaking heart beneath a writhing brow or a wrinkling tunic or something?"

   "Did he leap into the raging flood, or only place his huge fortune at your disposal? What was the noble deed?" asked Adjudant-Major Berthon.

   "It was a gift," replied d'Armentières, smiling. "A free, unsolicited, unexpected, magnificent gift."

   "And he had forgotten it?" asked d'Amienville, with cold incredulity.

   "Absolutely. But I never shall," said d'Armentières.

   "And pray, what was this magnificent gift?" sneered d'Amienville. "A priceless horse, a mistress, an estate, a connoisseur's collection, an invaluable secret, your freedom — or what? What wonderful thing did he present to you and forget?"

   "A sausage," was the grave answer.

   The Spahis roared with laughter at their unpopular brother-officer. He was their guest, but they could not forbear to laugh. A very little goes a long way in the matter of wit in a bored mess, exiled from Home and the larger interests of life.

   The "Général" coloured hotly, and remarked that some people were doubtless devilish funny — in season and out of season.

   "I assure you it is my misfortune and not my fault if I am funny," was the grave statement of the Legionary. "I have been the recipient of other kindnesses, but not one of them has made such a mark on the tablets of my memory as that sausage."

   "They do make marks, I know," observed Médecin-Major Parme. "My wife threw one at me once, just as I was going out to call on the Commander-in-Chief-in-Algeria. He noticed the mark before I did."

   "Tell us the touching tale," put in Colonel Lebrun. "Were you on a raft in mid-ocean with one sausage between you and death, and did he say, 'Thy belly is greater than mine,' or 'Your bird,' or something?"

   "Surely he'd remember that," observed the sapient d'Amienville.

   "No. 'Twas thus," said d'Armentières. "You Spahis don't, for your sins, get sent to Indo-China. We do. And it can be more truly damnable along the Red River than in any desert station in the Sahara. You have got the sun, though you grumble at it, and too much heat is always better and less depressing than too little, to my way of thinking. What did Dante know of Hell when he had never been in a place consisting wholly of muddy water and watery mud — with nothing else for hundreds of square miles — except fever, starvation, dysentery, and the acutest craving for suicide? Yes. A low black sky of wet cotton wool, a vast river of black, muddy water, and its banks vast expanses of black watery mud. Nothing else to see — but much to feel. I was a young soldier then — a private of the Legion in my first year." . . .

   Captain d'Armentières paused. No one moved or spoke. It was not easy to "get him going " but it was worth a lot of trouble, for d'Armentières was a man of very great experience, very great courage, and very great ability. Soldier, philosopher, reformer, hero, thinker, and something of a saint.

   "Yes — you can go for weeks along the Red River of Tonkin, in an old stinking sampan, drenched, chilled to the bone, shivering, until you envy the Annamese boatmen in their straw but in the stern — and see nothing but clouds, water, and mud, save when the unceasing rain is too heavy for you to see anything at all. If God is very good, you may perhaps see a castor-oil plant sailing along in the water to tell that there are other human beings somewhere in the terrible world of mud, water, fog, clouds, and rain — Annamese peasants who have sown castor-oil plants in the mud, apparently for the pleasure of seeing that accursed river change its course in order to engulf them.

   "I remember wondering why I, why any single one of my Company, consented to live another day . . . . You Spahis and Chasseurs, Zouaves and Tirailleurs Algériens, Turcos and others of the XIXth Army Corps talk of your desert hardships — thirst, cafard, Arabs, heat, ennui . . . . Pah! I have tried both, and I'd serve a year in the Sahara rather than a week in the Annam jungles in the rains. I remember asking the man to whom I have been referring, my benefactor, an Englishman calling himself John Bull, or Jean Boule, why he, for example, went on living.

   "'I don't know,' he replied. 'Partly hope of better things, I suppose. Partly a feeling that suicide is cowardice, and partly the strongest instinct of the human mind — that of self-preservation.'

   "And yet, he was obviously a very unhappy man — as any refined person of breeding and education must be, in the ranks of the Legion. I pondered this until, night falling, the boatmen steered for the shore and anchored our junk. The happy souls then shut themselves in their straw hut and caroused on shum-shum, the poor man's absinthe in China — an awful rice-spirit — while we huddled, foodless, sodden, and frozen in that ceaseless rain, fog, and bitter wind . . . . Who would not drink himself insensible and unconscious when there was nothing of which to be sensible and conscious but misery of the acutest? . . . It always interests me to hear the comfortably-placed rail against the drunkenness of the poor and wretched . . . . What would not the smuggest bourgeois Bonpère not have given, had he been with us that night, to drown his shuddering soul in the vilest form of alcohol, and escape that bitter fog, fever, hunger, sickness, and awful ache; the mosquitoes, stench, pain, and homeless, lonely misery . . . . When the 'Black Flags' came, with the full moon, I was glad. I would have consented to fall into their hands alive rather than not die — and they could have taught the Holy Inquisition a whole language and literature of torture of which the Inquisition only knew the alphabet . . . . Yes. I knew I had malarial fever, and I feared I had yellow fever. I knew I had dysentery, and I feared I had cholera. I knew I had an appalling cold and cough, and I feared I had consumption. I can now smile at myself as I was then — but I can also make allowances, for I was a starving, fever-wrecked child of seventeen nearly dead with dysentery . . . . The bullets of the Black Flags were striking all around us, and it was a case of attacking them for our own safety. They were so close and had the range so well that I suspected our boatmen. I remember old Ivan Plevinski suddenly grunted hideously, heaved himself to his feet, removed his képi, and bowed toward the bank. 'Merci, messieurs,' he gasped, 'Milles remerciments. Je vous remercie. Slava Bogu,²' and died. I envied old Ivan Plevinski, and, judging by his way of life, decided that it would not be from cold that he would suffer in the Hereafter. . . .

   "Meanwhile, John Bull, by right of his superior ability, experience, personality, and force, had taken command, and the sampan was being poled and hauled ashore. I tried to take a hand at heaving-in the anchor-rope, but fell on it from sheer weakness and was kicked clear of it. As the junk grounded in the mud, the Legionaries sprang over the side, led by John Bull, and struggled through the mud toward the swamp-jungle whence the bullets came. I staggered as far as I could, and then fell and began slowly to sink in the black clayey mud. No — I was not afraid, only very glad to die. And half delirious, watched the fight in the moonlight. I remember being bitterly disappointed that I could not distinguish the features of a man who, on his half-engulfed arms and knees, was vomiting blood just in front of me. I did so want to know who had 'got it,' for he also would accompany me and Ivan Plevinski to the judgment Seat. I wondered what St. Peter would say if the fellow vomited blood on the doorstep of the Gates of Heaven. Then I became unconscious, delirious . . . . The junk following ours — in which was Lieutenant Egrier, as he then was — came ashore, took the 'pirates' in flank, and drove them off . . . .

   "All this leading up to the Sausage of Contention" (with a little bow and smile in the direction of Lieutenant d'Amienville, fingering his wine-glass and endeavouring to maintain a cynical smile) . . . . "You know Egrier's bluff, jolly way. 'What would you like, Jean Boule — recommendation for the Croix de Guerre or one of my tinned sausages,' he cried, as he approached Jean, who was pulling me out of the mud. I had broken into a perspiration, and was my own man again by then, and desperately anxious to live. (What was wrong with a world that held 'recommendations,' the Croix de Guerre, the Médaille Militaire, promotion, a career of glory fighting for La Belle France?)

   "'A sausage, mon Lieutenant,' replied Jean Boule, laying me on a bed he had made of mangrove twigs, straw from the boat, and his capote.

   "'Wise philosopher,' laughed Egrier. 'You shall have two — one for distinguished conduct in the field and one for wisdom.'

   "He was as good as his word. Before our sampans resumed their way to Phu-lang-Thuong, he gave Jean two sausages from the tin he opened. As I live, that gaunt, starving man cooked them both, gave one to me, and made the rest of our boat-load cast lots for the other.

   "I met him recently. He is still Soldat deuxième classe, for he has consistently refused promotion. When I shook him by the hand, he remembered me, but he had absolutely and completely forgotten the episode of the sausage.

   "I have not — and I regard his gift to me that day on the Red River in Tonkin as one of the noblest ever given . . . . He is my orderly now . . . . Have you ever starved, d'Amienville? . . . No?" . . .