The village of Ain-Sefra stands upon a high and fertile oasis on the very borders of Morocco. The oasis is well watered, and the date-palm grows thickly there. It lies far to the south. The railway, in the days when Tony Stretton served in the Foreign Legion, did not reach to it; the barracks were newly built, the parade ground newly enclosed; and if one looked southwards from any open space, one saw a tawny belt of sand in the extreme distance streak across the horizon from east to west. That is the beginning of the great Sahara. Tony Stretton could never see that belt of sand, but his thoughts went back to the terrible homeward march from Bir-el-Ghiramo to Ouargla. From east to west the Sahara stretched across Africa, breaking the soldiers who dared to violate its privacy, thrusting them back maimed and famine-stricken, jealously guarding its secrets and speaking by its very silence, its terrible "thus far and no farther," no less audibly, and a thousand times more truthfully than ever did the waves of the sea.
On one noonday Stretton mounted the steps on to the verandah of the hospital. He looked across open country to the great yellow line. He thought of the Touaregs hanging persistently upon the flanks of his tiny force, the long laborious days of thirst and hunger, the lengthening trail of graves which he left behind--those milestones of invasion. He felt as though the desert gripped him again and would not loose its hold, clinging to his feet with each step he took in the soft, yielding sand. He had brought back his handful of men, it was true; they had stumbled into Ouargla at the last; but there were few of them who were men as good as they had been when they had set out. Even the best, it almost seemed to him, had lost something of vitality which they would never recover; had a look fixed in their eyes which set them apart from their fellows--the look of those who have endured too much, who gazed for too long a time upon horrors; while the others were for the most part only fit to squat in the shade and to wait for things to cease. There was one whom Stretton had passed only a minute before sitting on the ground under the shadow of the barrack wall. Stretton was haunted by the picture of that man, for he was the only white man he had ever seen who did not trouble to raise a hand to brush away the flies from his face, but allowed them to settle and cluster about the corners of his mouth.
There was another in the hospital behind him. Him the Sahara definitely claimed. Stretton turned and walked into the building.
He passed down the line of beds, and stopped where a man lay tossing in a fever. Stretton leaned over the bed.
"Barbier," he said.
Fusilier Barbier had grown very gaunt and thin during these latter weeks. He turned his eyes upon Stretton, and muttered incoherently. But there was recognition neither in his eyes nor in his voice. An orderly approached the bed as Stretton stood beside it; and, in a low voice, lest, haply, Barbier should hear and understand, Tony asked--
"What did the doctor say?"
"Nothing good, my sergeant," the orderly replied, with an expressive shrug of the shoulders.
"I am very sorry," said Stretton, gravely.
Certainly Barbier looked to be lying at death's door. One hand and arm, emaciated and the colour of wax, lay outside upon the coverlet of the bed. His eyes, unnaturally lustrous, unnaturally large, shone deep-sunken in dark purple rings. His eyelids were red, as though with much weeping, and, below the eyes, his face was drawn with fever and very white. Stretton laid his hand gently upon Barbier's forehead. It was burning hot. Stretton dismissed the orderly with a nod. There was a haggard nobility in Barbier's appearance--his long, finely shaped hands, his lithe, well-knit figure, all betrayed the man of race. Yet he had once sunk to babbling about persecution at a fire in the desert, like any morbid child.
A heavy step sounded in the ward, and Stretton's colonel stood beside him, a stoutly built man, with a white moustache and imperial, and a stern yet not unkindly face. It expressed a deal of solicitude at this moment.
"I have seen the doctor this morning," said the colonel, "and he has given up hope. Barbier will hardly live out the night. They should never have sent him to us here. They should not have discharged him from the asylum as cured."
The idea of persecution had become fixed in Barbier's brain. It had never left him since the evening when he first gave utterance to it in the desert. The homeward march, indeed, had aggravated his mania. On his return he had been sent to the asylum at Bel-Abbès, but there he had developed cunning enough to conceal his hallucination. He had ceased to complain that his officers were in a conspiracy to entrap and ruin him, no more threats were heard, no more dangerous stealthy glances detected. He was sent back to his battalion at Ain-Sefra. A few weeks and again his malady was manifest, and on the top of that had come fever.
"I am very sorry," Stretton said again; and then, after looking about him and perceiving that the orderly was out of earshot, he bent down towards Barbier, lower than he had bent before, and he called upon him in a still lower voice.
But Barbier was no longer the name he used.
"Monsieur le Comte," he said, first of all, and then "Monsieur de----" He uttered a name which the generation before had made illustrious in French diplomacy.
At the sound of the name Barbier's face contracted. He started up in his bed upon one arm.
"Hush!" he cried. A most extraordinary change had come over him in a second. His eyes protruded, his mouth hung half open, his face was frozen into immobility by horror. "There is some one on the stairs," he whispered, "coming up--some one treading very lightly--but coming up--coming up." He inclined his head in the strained attitude of one listening with a great concentration and intentness, an image of terror and suspense. "Yes, coming up--coming up! Don't lock the door! That betrays all. Turn out the lights! Quickly! So. Oh, will this night ever pass!"
He ended with a groan of despair. Very gently Stretton laid him down again in the bed and covered him over with the clothes. The sweat rolled in drops from Barbier's forehead.
"He never tells us more, my colonel," said Stretton. "His real name-yes!--he betrayed that once to me. But of this night nothing more than the dread that it will never pass. Always he ends with those words. Yet it was that night, no doubt, which tossed him beyond the circle of his friends and dropped him down here, a man without a name, amongst the soldiers of the Legion."
Often Stretton's imagination had sought to pierce the mystery. What thing of horror had been done upon that night? In what town of France? Had the some one on the stairs turned the handle and entered the room when all the lights were out? Had he heard Barbier's breathing in the silent darkness of the room? Stretton could only reconstruct the scene. The stealthy footsteps on the stairs, the cautious turning of the door handle, the opening of the door, and the impenetrable blackness with one man, perhaps more than one, holding his breath somewhere, and crouching by the wall. But no hint escaped the sick man's lips of what there was which must needs be hidden, nor whether the thing which must needs be hidden was discovered by the one who trod so lightly on the stairs. Was it a dead man? Was it a dead woman? Or a woman alive? There was no answer. There was no knowledge to be gained, it seemed, but this--that because of that night a man in evening dress, who bore an illustrious name, had fled at daybreak on a summer morning to the nearest barracks, and had buried his name and all of his past life in the Foreign Legion.
As it happened, there was just a little more knowledge to be gained by Stretton. He learned it that morning from his colonel.
"When you told me who 'Barbier' really was, sergeant," said the colonel, "I made inquiries. Barbier's father died two years ago; but an uncle and a sister lived. I wrote to both, offering to send their relation back to them. Well, the mail has this morning come in from France."
"There is an answer, sir?" asked Stretton.
"From the uncle," replied the colonel. "Not a word from the sister; she does not mean to write. The uncle's letter makes that clear, I think. Read!" He handed the letter to Stretton. A cheque was enclosed, and a few words were added.
"See, if you please, that Barbier wants for nothing which can minister to body and soul."
That was all. There was no word of kindliness or affection. Barbier was dying. Let him, therefore, have medicine and prayers. Love, wishes for recovery, a desire that he should return to his friends, forgiveness for the thing which he had done, pity for the sufferings which had fallen to him--these things Fusilier Barbier must not expect. Stretton, reading the letter by the sick man's bed, thought it heartless and callous as no letter written by a human hand had ever been. Yet--yet, after all, who knew what had happened on that night? The uncle, evidently. It might be something which dishonoured the family beyond all reparation, which, if known, would have disgraced a great name, so that those who bore it in pride must now change it for very shame. Perhaps the father had died because of it, perhaps the sister had been stricken down. Stretton handed the letter back to his colonel.
"It is very sad, sir," he said.
"Yes, it is very sad," returned the colonel. "But for us this letter means nothing at all. Never speak of it, obliterate it from your memories." He tore the paper into the tiniest shreds. "We have no reproaches, no accusations for what Barbier did before Barbier got out of the train at Sidi Bel-Abbès. That is not our affair. For us the soldier of the Legion is only born on the day when he enlists."
Thus, in one sentence, the colonel epitomised the character of the Foreign Legion. It was a fine saying, Stretton thought. He knew it to be a true one.
"I will say nothing," said Stretton, "and I will forget."
"That is well. Come with me, for there is another letter which concerns you."
He turned upon his heel and left the hospital. Stretton followed him to his quarters.
"There is a letter from the War Office which concerns you, Sergeant Ohlsen," said the colonel, with a smile. "You will be gazetted, under your own name, to the first lieutenancy which falls vacant. There is the notification."
He handed the paper over to Stretton, and shook hands with him. Stretton was not a demonstrative man. He took the notification with no more show of emotion than if it had been some unimportant order of the day.
"Thank you, sir," he said, quietly; and for a moment his eyes rested on the paper.
But, none the less, the announcement, so abruptly made, caused him a shock. The words danced before his eyes so that he could not read them. He saluted his colonel and went out on to the great open parade ground, and stood there in the middle of that space, alone, under the hot noonday sun.
The thing for which he had striven had come to pass, then. He held the assurance of it in his hand. Hoped for and half-expected as that proof had been ever since he had led the survivors of the geographical expedition under the gate of Ouargla, its actual coming was to him most wonderful. He looked southwards to where the streak of yellow shone far away. The long marches, the harassing anxiety, the haunting figures of the Touaregs, with their faces veiled in their black masks and their eyes shining between the upper and the lower strip--yes, even those figures which appalled the imagination in the retrospect by a suggestion of inhuman ferocity--what were they all but contributaries to this event? His ordeal was over. He had done enough. He could go home.
Stretton did not want for modesty. He had won a commission from the ranks, it is true; but he realised that others had done this before, and under harder conditions. He himself had started with an advantage-the advantage of previous service in the English army. His knowledge of the manual exercise, of company and battalion drill had been of the greatest use at the first. He had had luck, too--the luck to be sent on the expedition to the Figuig oasis, the luck to find himself sergeant with Colonel Tavernay's force. His heart went out in gratitude to that fine friend who lay in his bed of sand so far away. Undoubtedly, he realised, his luck had been exceptional.
He turned away from the parade ground and walked through the village, and out of it towards a grove of palm trees. Under the shade of those trees he laid himself down on the ground and made out his plans. He would obtain his commission, secure his release, and so go home. A few months and he would be home! It seemed hardly credible; yet it was true, miraculously true. He would write home that very day. It was not any great success which he had achieved, but, at all events, he was no longer the man who was no good. He could write with confidence; he could write to Millie.
He lay under the shadow of the palms looking across to the village. There rose a little mosque with a white dome. The hovels were thatched for the most part, but here and there a square white-washed house, with a flat roof, overtopped the rest. Hedges of cactus and prickly pears walled in the narrow lanes, and now and then a white robe appeared and vanished. Very soon Stretton would turn his back upon Algeria. In the after time he would remember this afternoon, remember the village as he saw it now, and the yellow streak of desert sand in the distance.
Stretton lay on his back and put together the sentences which he would write that day to Millie. She would get the letter within ten days--easily. He began to hum over to himself the words of the coon song which had once been sung on a summer night in an island of Scotland--
"Oh, come out, mah love. I'm a-waitin' fo' you heah!Doan' you keep yuh window shut to-night.De tree-tops above am a-whisp'rin' to you, deah----"
"Oh, come out, mah love. I'm a-waitin' fo' you heah!Doan' you keep yuh window shut to-night.De tree-tops above am a-whisp'rin' to you, deah----"
And then he stopped suddenly. At last he began to wonder how Millie would receive the letter he was to write.
Yes, there was her point of view to be considered. Stretton was stubborn by nature as few men are. He had convinced himself that the course he had taken was the only course which promised happiness for Millie and himself, and impelled by that conviction he had gone on his way undisturbed by doubts and questions. Now, however, his object was achieved. He could claim exemption from his wife's contempt. His mind had room for other thoughts, and they came that afternoon.
He had left his wife alone, with no explanation of his absence to offer to her friends, without even any knowledge of his whereabouts. There had been no other way, he still believed. But it was hard on Millie--undoubtedly it was hard.
Stretton rose from the ground and set off towards the camp that he might write his letter. But he never wrote it, for as he walked along the lane towards the barracks a man tapped him on the shoulder from behind. He was still humming his song, and he stopped in the middle of it--
"Jus' look out an' see all de longin' in mah eyes,An' mah arms is jus' a-pinin' foh to hug you,"
"Jus' look out an' see all de longin' in mah eyes,An' mah arms is jus' a-pinin' foh to hug you,"
he said, and turned about on his heel. He saw a stranger in European dress, who at once spoke his name.
"Sir Anthony Stretton?"
Stretton was no longer seeking to evade discovery.
"Yes?" he said. The stranger's face became vaguely familiar to him. "I have seen you before, I think."
"Once," replied the other. "My name is Warrisden. You saw me for a few minutes on the deck of a fish-carrier in the North Sea."
"To be sure," he said slowly. "Yes, to be sure, I did. You were sent to find me by Miss Pamela Mardale."
"She sends me again," replied Warrisden.
Stretton's heart sank in fear. He had disobeyed the summons before. He remembered Pamela's promise to befriend his wife. He remembered her warning that he should not leave his wife.
"She sent you then with an urgent message that I should return home," he said.
"I carry the same message again, only it is a thousand times more urgent."
He drew a letter from his pocket as he spoke, and handed it to Stretton. "I was to give you this," he said.
Stretton looked at the handwriting and nodded.
"Thank you," he said gravely.
He tore open the envelope and read.
It was a long letter. Tony read it through slowly, standing in the narrow lane between the high walls of prickly pear. A look of incredulity came upon his face.
"Is all this true?" he asked, not considering at all of whom he asked the question.
"I know nothing, of course, of what is written there," replied Warrisden; "but I do not doubt its truth. The signature is, I think, sufficient guarantee."
"No doubt, no doubt," said Stretton, absently. Then he asked--
"When did you reach Ain-Sefra?"
"This morning."
"And you came quickly?"
"Yes; I travelled night and day, I came first of all to Ain-Sefra in search of you."
"Thank you," said Stretton.
He did not ask how it was that Warrisden had come first of all to Ain-Sefra; such details held no place in his thoughts. Warrisdenhadfound him,hadbrought the letter which Pamela Mardale had written. That letter, with its perplexities and its consequences, obliterated all other speculations.
"You have a camp here?" Stretton asked.
"Yes."
"Let us go to it. The news you have brought has rather stunned me. I should like to sit down and think what I must do."
The incredulity had vanished from his face. Distress had replaced it.
"It is all true, no doubt," he went on, "but for the moment I don't understand it. Will you tell me where your camp is?"
"I will show you the way," said Warrisden.
"I think not. It will be better that we should not be seen together," Stretton said thoughtfully. "Will you give me the direction and go first? I will follow."
Warrisden's camp was pitched amongst trees a hundred yards from the western borders of the village. It stood in a garden of grass, enclosed with hedges. Thither Stretton found his way by a roundabout road, approaching the camp from the side opposite to Ain-Sefra. There was no one, at the moment, loitering about the spot. He walked into the garden. There were three tents pitched. Half a dozen mules stood picketed in a line, a little Barbary horse lay on the grass, some Algerian muleteers were taking their ease, and outside the chief tent a couple of camp chairs were placed. Warrisden came forward as Stretton entered the garden.
"Sit down," he said.
"Inside the tent, I think," replied Stretton.
There he read the letter through again. He understood at last what Pamela had meant by the warning which had baffled him. Pamela revealed its meaning now. "Millie is not of those women," she wrote, "who have a vivid remembrance. To hold her, you must be near her. Go away, she will cry her eyes out; stay away for a little while, she will long for your return; make that little while a longer time, she will grow indifferent whether you return or not; prolong that longer time, she will regard your return as an awkwardness, a disturbance; add yet a little more to that longer time, and you will find another occupying your place in her thoughts." Then followed an account of the growth of that dangerous friendship between Millie and Lionel Callon. A summary of Callon's character rounded the description off. "So come home," she concluded, "at once, for no real harm has been done yet."
Stretton understood what the last sentence meant, and he believed it. Yet his mind revolted against the phrase. Of course, it was Pamela's phrase. Pamela, though frank, was explaining the position in words which could best spare Millie. But it was an unfortunate sentence. It provoked a momentary wave of scorn, which swept over Stretton. There was a postscript: "You yourself are really a good deal to blame." Thus it ran; but Stretton was in no mood to weigh its justice or injustice at the moment. Only this afternoon he had been lying under the palm trees putting together in his mind the sentences which were to tell Millie of his success, to re-establish him in her esteem, and to prepare her for his return. And now this letter had come. He sat for a time frowning at the letter, turning its pages over, glancing now at one phrase, now at another. Then he folded it up. "Callon," he said, softly; and then again, "Lionel Callon. I will talk with Mr. Callon." For all its softness, his voice sounded to Warrisden the voice of a dangerous man. And after he had spoken in this way he sat in thought, saying nothing, making no movement, and his face gave Warrisden no clue as to what he thought. At the last he stirred in his chair.
"Well?" said Warrisden.
"I shall return at once to England."
"You can?"
"Yes; I shall start to-night," said Stretton.
"We can go back together, then."
"No; that's impossible."
"Why?" asked Warrisden.
"Because I should be arrested if we did," Stretton replied calmly.
"Arrested?" Warrisden exclaimed.
"Yes; you see I shall have to desert to-night."
Warrisden started from his chair.
"Surely there is an alternative?"
"None," replied Stretton; and Warrisden slowly resumed his seat. He was astounded; he had never contemplated this possibility. He looked at Stretton in wonder. He could not understand how a man could speak so calmly of such a plan. Why in the world had Stretton ever joined the Legion if he was so ready, at the first summons, to desert? There seemed an inconsistency. But he did not know Tony Stretton.
"You are surprised," said Tony. "More than surprised--you are rather shocked; but there is no choice for me. I wish with all my heart and soul there were," he suddenly exclaimed, with a sort of passion. "I have foreseen this necessity ever since you tapped me on the shoulder in the lane. Because I foresaw it, I would not walk with you to your camp. Were we seen together to-day, the reason of my absence might be the sooner suspected. As it is, I shall get a day's start, for I have a good name in the regiment, and a day's start is all I need."
He spoke sadly and wistfully. He was caught by an inexorable fate, and knew it. He just had to accept the one course open to him.
"You see," he explained, "I am a soldier of the Legion--that is to say, I enlisted for five years' service in the French colonies. I could not get leave."
"Five years!" cried Warrisden. "You meant to stay five years away?"
"No," replied Stretton. "If things went well with me here, as up till to-day they have done, if, in a word, I did what I enlisted to do, I should have gone to work to buy myself out and get free. That can be done with a little influence and time-only time is the one thing I have not now. I must go home at once, since no harm has yet been done. Therefore I must desert. I am very sorry"--and again the wistfulness became very audible--"for, as I say, I have a good name; amongst both officers and men I have a good name. I should have liked very much to have left a good name behind me. Sergeant Ohlsen"--and as he uttered the name he smiled. "They speak well of Sergeant Ohlsen in the Legion, Warrisden; and to-morrow they will not. I am very sorry. I have good friends amongst both officers and men. I shall have lost them all to-morrow. I am sorry. There is only one thing of which I am glad to-day. I am glad that Captain Tavernay is dead."
Warrisden knew nothing at all of Captain Tavernay. Until this moment he had never heard his name. But Stretton was speaking with a simplicity so sincere, and so genuine a sorrow, that Warrisden could not but be deeply moved. He forgot the urgency of his summons; he ceased to think how greatly Stretton's immediate return would help his own fortunes. He cried out upon the impulse--
"Stay, then, until you can get free without----" And he stopped, keeping unspoken the word upon his lips.
"Without disgrace."
Stretton finished the sentence with a smile.
"Say it! Without disgrace. That was the word upon your tongue. I can't avoid disgrace. I have come to such a pass in my life's history that, one way or another, I can't avoid it. I thought just at the first moment that I could let things slide and stay. But there's dishonour in that course, too. Dishonour for myself, dishonour for my name, dishonour for others, too, whom it is my business--yes, my business--to keep from dishonour. That's the position--disgrace if I stay, disgrace if I go. It seems to me there's no rule of conduct which applies. I must judge for myself."
Stretton spoke with some anger in his voice, anger with those who had placed him in so cruel a position, anger, perhaps, in some measure, with himself. For in a little while he said--
"It is quite true that I am myself to blame, too. I want to be just. I was a fool not to have gone into the house the evening I was in London, after I had come back from the North Sea. Yes, I should have gone in then; and yet--I don't know. I had thought my course all out. I don't know."
He had thought his course out, it is true; but he had thought it out in ignorance of his wife's character. That was the trouble, as he clearly saw now.
"Anyhow, I must go to-night," he said, rising from his chair. In an instant he had become the practical man, arranging the means to an end already resolved upon.
"I can borrow money of you?"
"Yes."
"And a mule?"
"Yes."
"Let me choose my mule."
They walked from the tent to where the mules stood picketed. Warrisden pointed to one in the middle of the line.
"That is the strongest."
"I don't want one too strong, too obviously well-fed," said Stretton; and he selected another. "Can I borrow a muleteer for an hour or two?"
"Of course," said Warrisden.
Stretton called a muleteer towards him and gave him orders.
"There is a market to-day," he said. "Go to it and buy." He enumerated the articles he wanted, ticking them off upon his fingers--a few pairs of scissors and knives, a few gaudy silk handkerchiefs, one or two cheap clocks, some pieces of linen, needles and thread--in fact, a small pedlar's pack of wares. In addition, a black jellaba and cap, such as the Jews must wear in Morocco, and a native's underclothes and slippers.
"Bring these things back to the camp at once and speak to no one!" said Stretton.
The muleteer loosed a mule to carry the packages, and went off upon his errand. Stretton and Warrisden went back to the tent. Stretton sat down again in his chair, took a black cigarette from a bright-blue packet which he had in his pocket and lighted it, as though all the arrangements for his journey were now concluded.
"I want you to pack the mule I chose with the things which your muleteer brings back. Add some barley for the mule and some food for me, and bring it with the clothes to the south-west corner of the barrack wall at eight. It will be dark then. Don't come before it is dark, and wait for me at the corner. Will you?"
"Yes," replied Warrisden. "You are going to tramp to the coast? Surely you can come as one of my men as far as the rail-head. Then I will go on and wait for you at Algiers."
"No," said Stretton; "our ways lie altogether apart. It would be too dangerous for me to tramp through Algeria. I should certainly be stopped. That's my way."
He raised his arm and pointed through the tent door.
The tent door faced the west, and in front there rose a range of mountains, dark and lofty, ridge overtopping ridge, and wonderfully distinct. In that clear air the peaks and gaps, and jaggedarêteswere all sharply defined. The sun was still bright, and the dark cliffs had a purple bloom of extraordinary softness and beauty, like the bloom upon a ripe plum. Here and there the mountains were capped with snow, and the snow glistened like silver.
"Those mountains are in Morocco," said Stretton. "That's my way--over them. My only way. We are on the very edge of Morocco here."
"But, once over the border," Warrisden objected, "are you safe in Morocco?"
"Safe from recapture."
"But safe in no other sense?"
Stretton shrugged his shoulders.
"It is a bad road, I know--dangerous and difficult. The ordinary traveller cannot pass along it. But it has been traversed. Prisoners have escaped that way to Fez--Escoffier, for instance. Deserters have reached their homes by following it--some of them, at all events. One must take one's risks."
It was the old lesson learned upon the ketchPerseverancewhich Stretton now repeated; and not vainly learned. Far away to the south, in the afternoon sunlight, there shone that yellow streak of sand, beyond which its value had been surely proved. Warrisden's thoughts were carried back on a sudden to that morning of storm and foam and roaring waves, when Stretton had stood easily upon the deck of the fish-cutter, with the great seas swinging up behind him, and had, for the first time, uttered it in Warrisden's hearing. Much the same feeling came over Warrisden as that which had then affected him--a feeling almost of inferiority. Stretton was a man of no more than average ability, neither a deep thinker, nor a person of ingenuity and resource; but the mere stubbornness of his character gave to him at times a certain grandeur. In Warrisden's eyes he had that grandeur now. He had come quickly to his determination to desert, but he had come calmly to it. There had been no excitement in his manner, no suggestion of hysteria. He had counted up the cost, he had read his letter, he had held the balance between his sacrifice and Millie's necessity; and he had decided. He had decided, knowing not merely the disgrace, but the difficulties of his journey, and the danger of his road amongst the wild, lawless tribes in that unsettled quarter of Morocco. Again Warrisden was carried away. He forgot even Pamela at Roquebrune waiting for the telegram he was to send from Oran on his return. He cried--
"I will send back my outfit and come with you. If we travel together there will be more safety."
Stretton shook his head.
"Less," said he. "You cannot speak Mogrhebbin. I have a few sentences--not many, but enough. I know something of these tribes, too. For I once marched to the Figuig oasis. Your company would be no protection; rather it would be an extra danger."
Warrisden did not press his proposal. Stretton had so clearly made up his mind.
"Very well," he said. "You have a revolver, I suppose. Or shall I lend you one?"
And, to Warrisden's astonishment, Stretton replied--
"I shall carry no weapons."
Warrisden was already placing his arms of defence upon the table so that Stretton might make his choice.
"No weapons!" he exclaimed.
"No. My best chance to get through to Fez is to travel as a Jew pedlar. That is why I am borrowing your mule and have sent your muleteer to the market. A Jew can go in Morocco where no Moor can, for he is not suspected; he is merely despised. Besides, he brings things for sale which are needed. He may be robbed and beaten, but he has more chance of reaching his journey's end in some plight or other than any one else."
Thereafter he sat for awhile silent, gazing towards the mountains in the west. The snow glittering upon the peaks brought back to his mind the flashing crystals in the great salt lakes. It was at just such a time, on just such an afternoon, when the two companies of the Legion had marched out from the trees of the high plateaux into the open desert, with its grey-green carpet of halfa-grass. Far away the lake had flashed like an arc of silver set in the ground. Stretton could not but remember that expedition and compare it with the one upon which he was now to start; and the comparison was full of bitterness. Then high hopes had reigned. The companies were marching out upon the Legion's special work; even if disaster overtook them, disaster would not be without its glory. Stretton heard the clear inspiriting music of the bugles, he listened to the steady tramp of feet. Now he was deserting.
"I shall miss the Legion," he said regretfully. "I had no idea how much I should miss it until this moment."
Its proud past history had grown dear to him. The recklessness of its soldiers, the endless perplexing variety of their characters, the secrets of their lives, of which every now and then, in a rare moment of carelessness, a glimpse was revealed, as though a curtain were raised and lowered--all these particular qualities of the force had given to it a grip upon his affections of which he felt the full strength now.
"Any other life," he said, "cannot but be a little dull, a little uninteresting afterwards. I shall miss the Legion very much."
Suddenly he put his hand into his pocket and took out of it that letter from the French War Office which his colonel had handed to him. "Look!" and he handed it over to Warrisden. "That is what I joined the Legion to win--a commission; and I have just not won it. In a month or two, perhaps in a week, perhaps even to-morrow, it might have been mine. Very soon I should have been back at home, the life I have dreamed of and worked for ever since I left London, might have been mine to live. It was to have been a good life of great happiness"--he had forgotten, it seemed, that he would regret the Legion--"a life without a flaw. Now that life's impossible, and I am a deserter. It's hard lines, isn't it?"
He rose from his chair, and looked for a moment at Warrisden in silence.
"I am feeling sorry that I ever came," said Warrisden.
"Oh no," Stretton answered, with a smile. "It would have been still worse if I had stayed here, ignorant of the news you have brought me, and had come home in my own time. Things would have been much worse--beyond all remedy. Do you know a man named Callon--Lionel Callon?" he asked abruptly. And before Warrisden could answer, the blood rushed into his face, and he exclaimed, "Never mind; don't answer! Be at the corner of the barracks with the mule at eight." And he went from the tent, cautiously made his way out of the garden, and returned to his quarters.
A few minutes before eight Warrisden drove the mule, packed with Stretton's purchases, to the south-western corner of the barracks. The night was dark, no one was abroad, the place without habitations. He remained under the shadow of the high wall, watching this way and that for Stretton's approach; and in a few minutes he was almost startled out of his wits by a heavy body falling from the top of the wall upon the ground at his side. Warrisden, indeed, was so taken by surprise that he uttered a low cry.
"Hush!" said a voice close to the ground. "It's only me."
"And Stretton rose to his feet. He had dropped from the summit of the wall.
"Are you hurt?" whispered Warrisden.
"No. Have you the clothes? Thanks!"
Stretton stripped off his uniform, and put on the Jewish dress. He had shaved off his moustache and blacked his hair. As he dressed he gave two or three small packages to Warrisden.
"Place them in the pack; hide them, if possible. That package contains my medals. I shall need them. The other's lamp-black. I shall want that for my hair. Glossy raven locks," he said, with a low laugh, "are not so easily procured in Ain-Sefra as in Bond Street. I have been thinking. You can help me if you will; you can shorten the time of my journey."
"How?" asked Warrisden.
"Go back to Oran as quickly as possible. Take the first boat to Tangier. Hire an outfit there, mules and horses--but good ones, mind!--and travel up at once to Fez. If you are quick you can do it within a fortnight. I shall take a fortnight at the least to reach Fez. I may be three weeks. But if I find you there, ready to start the moment I come to the town, we shall save much time."
"Very well; I will be there."
"If I get through sooner than I expect, I shall go straight on to Tangier, and we will meet on the road. Now let me climb on to your shoulders." Stretton made a bundle of his uniform, climbed on to Warrisden's shoulders, and threw it over the wall into the barrack yard.
"But that will betray you!" cried Warrisden, in a whisper. "They will find your clothes in the morning--clothes with a sergeant's stripes."
"I cannot help that," replied Stretton, as he jumped to the ground. "I do not intend to be shot as a thief, for that is what may happen when a man deserts and takes his uniform with him. Don't fail me in Fez. Good-bye."
He held out his hand, and, as Warrisden grasped it, he said--
"I have not said much to you in the way of thanks; but I am very grateful, however much I may have seemed to have been made unhappy by your coming. Since things are as they are, I am glad you came. I thank you, too, for that other visit to the North Sea. I will give you better thanks when we meet in Fez."
He cast a glance back to the wall of the barracks, and, in a voice which trembled, so deeply was he moved, he whispered to himself, rather than to Warrisden--
"Oh, but I am glad Tavernay is dead!"
All else that he had said since he dropped from the wall had been said hurriedly and without emotion. These last words were whispered from a heart overcharged with sorrow. They were his farewell to the Legion. He turned away, and, driving the mule before him, vanished into the darkness.
Warrisden struck his camp early the next morning, and set out for the rail-head. Thence he travelled to Oran. At Oran he was fortunate enough to find a steamer of the Lambert Line in the harbour, which was preparing to sail that afternoon for Tangier. Warrisden had three hours to pass in Oran. He went at once to the post-office and despatched his telegram to Pamela Mardale at the Villa Pontignard. The telegram informed her that Tony Stretton was returning, though his journey might take longer than she would naturally expect; and, secondly, that he himself was sailing that day for Tangier, whither any message should be sent at once to await his arrival at the English post-office. The telegram was couched in vague phrases. Tony Stretton, for instance, was called "The Truant." Pamela became more and more disquieted by the vagueness of its wording. She pondered, and in vain, why in the world Warrisden must be sailing to Tangier. It seemed certain that there were difficulties in the way of Tony's home-coming which she had not foreseen, and at the nature of which she could not conjecture. She sent off a reply to Tangier--
"Bring truant to Roquebrune as soon as possible."
For, on thinking over the new aspect which her problem presented, now that Lionel Callon had come to the Riviera, she had come to the conclusion that this was the safest plan.
If Millie Stretton did not come to the south of France, no harm would have been done; whereas, if she did, and Tony went straight home to England, the last chance of saving her would be lost.
This message, however, did little to reassure Pamela. For the more she thought of Warrisden's telegram, the more she was troubled. Tony was returning. Yes, that was something--that was a great thing. But he was going to take a long time in returning, and, to Pamela's apprehension, there was no long time to spare. And the day after she had received the telegram she came upon still stronger reasons for disquietude.
She went down to Monte Carlo in the morning, and again saw Lionel Callon upon the terrace, and again noticed that he was alone. Yet on the whole she was not surprised. Millie Stretton's name figured as yet in no visitors' list, and Pamela was quite sure that if Millie Stretton had come south the name would have been inserted. It was impossible that Millie Stretton could come to Monte Carlo, or to, indeed, any hotel upon the Riviera, under a false name. She could not but meet acquaintances and friends at every step, during this season of the year. To assume a name which was not hers would be an act of stupidity too gross. None the less Pamela was relieved. She avoided Callon's notice, and acting upon a sudden impulse, went out from the garden, hired a carriage, and ordered the coachman to drive along the lower Corniche Road in the direction of Beaulieu.
Pamela was growing harassed and anxious. The days were passing, and no message had yet come from Alan Warrisden. She suspected the presence of Lionel Callon on the Riviera more and more. More and more she dreaded the arrival of Millie Stretton. There was nothing now which she could do. She had that hard lot which falls to women, the lot of waiting. But she could not wait with folded hands. She must be doing something; even though that something were altogether trivial and useless, it still helped her through the hours. In this spirit she drove out from Monte Carlo at twelve o'clock, without a thought that her drive was to assist her toward the end on which she had set her heart.
She drove past the back of the big hotel at Eze. Just beyond, a deep gorge runs from the hills straight down to the sea. The road carves round the head of the gorge and bends again to the shore. Pamela drove round the gorge, and coming again to the shore, went forward by the side of the sea. After a few minutes she bade the driver stop. In front of her the road rose a little, and then on the other side of the crest dipped down a steep hill. On her left a pair of iron gates stood open. From those gates a carriage-drive ran in two zigzags between borders of flowers down to an open gravel space in front of a long one-storied building. The building faced upon the road, but at a lower level, so that even the flat roof was below Pamela. The building was prettily built, and roses and magnolias climbed against the walls, making it gay. The door in the middle stood open, but there was no sign of life about the house. Pamela sat gazing down into the garden, with its bushes and brightly-coloured flowers.
Pamela spoke to the driver.
"What place is this?" she asked.
"It was only built last year," the man replied, and he told her enough for her to know that this was theRéserveat which Lionel Callon was staying.
"Few people come here?" said Pamela.
"It is not known yet," replied the driver. "It is such a little while since it has been opened."
The sun was bright. Beyond theRéservethe Mediterranean rippled and sparkled--here the deepest blue, there breaking into points of golden light. TheRéserveitself had the look of a country house in a rich garden of flowers tended with love. In the noonday the spot was very quiet and still. Yet to Pamela it had the most sinister aspect. It stood in a solitary position, just beneath the road. In its very quietude there was to her harassed thoughts something clandestine.
She knew that Callon was in Monte Carlo. She told her driver to drive down to the door, and at the door she stepped down and walked into the building. A large dining-room opened out before her in which two waiters lounged. There were no visitors. The waiters came forward. "Would Madame take luncheon in the room, or on the terrace at the back over the sea?"
"On the terrace," Pamela replied.
She lunched quite alone on a broad, flagged terrace, with the sea gently breaking at its foot. The greater portion of the building was occupied by the restaurant, but at one end Pamela noticed a couple of French windows. She remarked to the waiter who served her upon the absence of any visitors but herself.
"It is only this season, Madame, that the restaurant is open," he replied.
"Can people stay here?" she asked.
"Yes. There are two suites of rooms. One is occupied; but the other is vacant, if Madame would care to see it."
Pamela rose and followed him. He opened one of the French windows. A dining-room furnished with elegance, and lightly decorated; a sitting-room, and a bedroom comprised the suite. Pamela came back to the terrace. She was disquieted. It was impossible, of course, that Millie Stretton should stay at theRéserve; but the whole look of the place troubled her.
She mounted into her carriage and drove back. In front of her the great hotel of Eze stood high upon a promontory above the railway. A thought came to Pamela. She drove back round the head of the gorge, and when she came to the hotel she bade the coachman drive in. In the open space in front of the hotel she took tea. She could not see the restaurant itself, but she could see the road rising to the little hill-crest beside it. It was very near, she thought. She went into the hotel, and asked boldly at the office--
"When do you expect Lady Stretton?"
"Lady Stretton?" The clerk in the office looked up his books. "In three weeks, Madame," he said. "She has engaged her rooms from the 31st."
"Thank you," said Pamela.
She mounted into her carriage and drove back to Monte Carlo. So Millie Stretton was coming to the Riviera after all. She had refused to come with Pamela, yet she was coming by herself. She had declared she would not leave England this spring. But she had made that declaration before Lionel Callon had returned from Chili. Now Callon was here, and she was following. Pamela could not doubt that her coming was part of a concerted plan. The very choice of the hotel helped to convince her. It was so near to that at which Callon was staying. Twenty minutes' walk at the most would separate them. Moreover, why should Callon choose that lonely restaurant without some particular, nay, some secret object? No one, it seemed, visited it in the day; no one but he slept there at night. Callon was not the man to fall in love with solitude. And if he had wished for solitude he would not have come to the Riviera at all. Besides, he spent his days in Monte Carlo, as Pamela well knew. No, it was not loneliness at which he aimed, but secrecy. That was it--secrecy. Pamela's heart sank within her. She had a momentary thought that she would disclose her presence to Lionel Callon, and dismissed it. The disclosure would alter Callon's plan, that was all; it would not hinder the fulfilment. It would drive Millie and him from the Riviera--it would not prevent them from meeting somewhere else. It would be better, indeed, that, if meet they must, they should meet under her eyes. For some accident might happen, some unforeseen opportunity occur of which she could take advantage to separate them. It was not known to Callon that she was on the spot. After all, that was an advantage. She must meet secrecy with secrecy. She urged her coachman to quicken his pace. She drove straight to the post-office at Monte Carlo. Thence she despatched a second telegram to Alan Warrisden at Tangier.
"Do not fail to arrive by the 31st," she telegraphed; and upon that took the train back to Roquebrune. She could do no more now; but the knowledge that she could do no more only aggravated her fears. Questions which could not be answered thronged upon her mind. "Would the telegram reach Tangier in time? What was Alan Warrisden doing at Tangier at all? What hindered them coming straight from Algeria to France?" Well, there were three weeks still. She sent up her prayer that those three weeks might bring Tony Stretton back, that Millie might be saved for him. She walked up the steps from Roquebrune station very slowly. She did not look up as she climbed. Had she done so she might, perhaps, have seen a head above the parapet in the little square where the school-house stood; and she would certainly have seen that head suddenly withdrawn as her head was raised. M. Giraud was watching her furtively, as he had done many a time since she had come to Roquebrune, taking care that she should not see him. He watched her now, noticing that she walked with the same lagging, weary step as when he had last seen her on that path so many years ago. But as he watched she stopped, and, turning about, looked southwards across the sea, and stood there for an appreciable time. When she turned again and once more mounted the steps, it seemed to him that the weariness had gone. She walked buoyantly, like one full of faith, full of hope; and he caught a glimpse of her face. It seemed to him that it had become transfigured, and that the eyes were looking at some vision which was visible to her eyes alone. Pamela had come back. Indeed, at the end of all her perplexities and conjectures, to the belief born of her new love, that somehow the world would right itself, that somehow in a short while she would hear whispered upon the wind, answered by the ripples of the sea, and confirmed by the one voice she longed to hear, the sentinel's cry, "All's well."
The messages which Pamela had sent to Warrisden reached him at Tangier. He found them both waiting for him the day after they had been sent. He had twenty days in front of him. If Tony kept to his time, twenty days would serve. He hired a camp outfit, and the best mules to be obtained in Tangier on that day. The same evening he bought a couple of barbs, well recommended to him for speed and endurance.
"They will amble at six miles an hour for ten hours a day," said one whose advice he sought. Warrisden discounted the statement, but bought the barbs. Early the nest morning he set out for Fez.