The Dark Road: further adventures of Chéri-Bibi

THE NUT

The Nut lay on the scorching beach facing the terrible sea in which the hungry sharks, the warders of his prison, were disporting. The convict was like a weary animal at rest. In truth, he had availed himself of the "relaxation" at ten o'clock to seek out a little fresh air and seclusion between two precipitous crags which cut him off from the rest of the convict settlement. If only he could live alone! No longer to hear anything. No longer to see anything! No longer to think of anything. But how could he help thinking of what he had seen, of what he had been compelled to see, that morning?

A double execution had taken place that very morning as an awful but necessary example. It was a smart piece of work by Pernambouc, the prison executioner, and his assistant, "Monsieur Désiré." . . . Oh the horror of it!

The Nut was still shuddering from the sight of it. He was a young man in the fullness of his supple strength. He lay resting on his elbows, holding his chin in the cup of his hands, apparently indulging in an impossible dream. His broad-brimmed straw hat cast its shadow over the gloom of his penetrating gaze which stole to the distant skyline. The outline of his clean-shaven face as far as could be seen indicated strength of character and shrewdness. Notwithstanding the ineffaceable marks of prison life which soon transforms the youngest convict into an old man, the Nut seemed to be scarcely more than forty years of age.

It was this combination of strength and refinement which had brought down on him the nickname of The Nut. It is a word which in the language of the Pré, or convict settlement, denotes a man whom nature has endowed with a fine bearing usually appreciated by women. "He acted as if he were the master." But the Nut's real name, Raoul de Saint-Dalmas, had been in famous criminal records some ten years before when the jury of the Seine Assize Court condemned him to death. He was a young man of good family who, after squandering his substance, had been charged with murdering his employer in order to rob him.

He owed his reprieve to his youth, to his mother, who in her despair died of grief, and to the persistence with which he proclaimed his innocence in spite of proofs which were seemingly overwhelming. And now he was in the convict settlement undergoing a sentence of penal servitude for life.

"Why do you sigh, Nut?"

He gave a start and turned round.

Bursts of coarse laughter rang out, and his eyes encountered seated round him the Parisian, the Burglar, the Caid and the Joker. His dreams had carried him so far away that he had failed to hear their approach.

The four men were his worst enemies. They never relented, and as a result he had not hesitated latterly to get himself imprisoned for months together in the île St. Joseph, the island of silence, which was near, and reserved for those who committed offenses in the convict settlement or whose feelings rebelled against the convict gang.

In order to avoid those four monsters who tormented him with their infernal mischief-making and their abominable jokes, he tried to fasten a quarrel on one of the convict guards by seriously threatening him, for which he suffered the terrible punishment of internment on the adjoining island, where the overseers themselves were not permitted to communicate with the prisoners by word of mouth, but only by signs and in writing.

He left his solitary confinement with a feeling of regret, especially as Chéri-Bibi, the astonishing bandit who had terrorized the world for so many years—Chéri-Bibi had made a friend of him—was no longer there to silence by a frown the loathsome Burglar or the Parisian himself.

Not that Chéri-Bibi was very far away. He was for the time being behind bars in the principal building, and the Nut peeping through them one morning when he was on fatigue duty, sweeping the courtyards, caught sight of him and exchanged a few secret signs of friendship. It was done in a flash, for the sergeant of the guard had entered the courtyard, and, straightway, such volleys of insults were poured forth from the rows of cells fronted with iron bars, that the hapless sergeant sounded the call for the fatigue party, and ordered the cooks' mates who were bringing along the soup to clear the courtyard, declaring in his wrath that he would leave the "lifers" to starve and rot for three days.

Above the shouting of threats and the hideous tumult the Nut could hear Chéri-Bibi's strident and vociferous laugh.

Neither the Parisian nor the Burglar nor the Caid nor the Joker would have run the risk in this way of being sent to solitary confinement. They managed to have a good time, standing in some favor with the authorities, to whom they secretly related what they wanted to know about the state of mind or the plans of escape of their fellow-convicts, reaping no little reward for their treachery.

And even when their natural disposition to fight or plunder got the better of them, they merely "copped," as a punishment, the job of "taking a stroll with the wood," which meant that they had to move heavy planks from one place to another for several hours a day, merely to take them back again to the spot whence they came.

Just then, as they began to annoy the Nut, they were working in leisurely fashion at certain odds and ends intended to be exchanged, when a chance visitor appeared, for packets of tobacco or small change. Arigonde, otherwise the Parisian, had just finished engraving with a knife on a shark's jawbone the fateful words:
The Convict's Tomb.

Arigonde bore a deadly hatred against the Nut for having deposed him from his position as the "man of fashion" in the Îles du Salut. Until the Nut came upon the scene it was Arigonde who wielded the scepter of elegance, if such a term may be allowed. Needless to say, this reputation for elegance depended less upon the cut of his clothes or the way in which he tied his tie than upon his manners, which were not met with in the usual run of convicts, and bore witness to his superior education. In spite of the Parisian's bragging—he was never at a loss in telling the story of his successes with the fair sex in high circles and crying up his relations in society—he seemed, compared with the Nut, none the less to be what he was to begin with—a shopman in a small firm bowing and scraping to the customers.

The Nut resumed his original posture on the beach, and it was as though he did not hear the Joker, who squeaked:

"He lacks most who sighs most."

The others grinned.

"M'sieu Nut does not condescend to enter into conversation with humble 'jail-birds' like us," went on the Joker, who had once been a clerk to a sheriff's officer and had assisted a client to murder his master. "M'sieu Nut puts on airs and graces and fancies himself a bit."

"M'sieu Nut is grieving over the misfortunes of France," interjected the rascally Burglar, a short man with disjointed limbs, who walked sideways like a crab, and was wont to enter other people's houses by way of the roof.

"The Caid, too, would like to make bang, bang on the Boches. The Caid good soldier."

The Nut bit his fingers to prevent a groan slipping from him when he heard the awful Ben Aïssa, the Mohammedan "jail-bird," a robber and procurer of girls, ask to take part in the world struggle.

Alas, did he not himself long to play a part in it? And was it not because they heard him on the evening when they learned of the declaration of war proclaim once again his innocence and his despair, and demand to be allowed to shoulder a rifle, that the wretched men in their spite made game of him?

"I've just seen the postman on his way from the town," declared the Parisian, "and he brings some very great news. It seems that Joffre wants the Nut as his Chief of Staff!"

The Nut leaped to his feet, and the four men fell back, for he was a match for them. Only they knew he shrank from the task of "pitching into jail-birds," and indeed he contented himself with shouting a few threats against them, which roused their laughter, though they kept their distance.

"Do you think you can bounce us with the things you say," sneered the Burglar. "Hold your jaw."

"All my eye and tommy rot," said the Burglar, prudently retiring into the background. "All brag."

"When you've done talking I may have something to get off my chest," said the Parisian, who did not venture to try conclusions with the Nut, but whose hatred of him was so intense that he would have liked to kill him.

He made a step towards the Nut, who clenched his fists and began to see red, when the arrival of another person put the four miscreants to flight as if by magic. There was no need for the newcomer to open his mouth. He had but to show his face.

It was Chéri-Bibi!