CHAPTER IX
Therumours of the camp were proved true the next morning and the preparations for provisioning and concentrating so large a force were swiftly pushed forward. Gerard de Montignac was to march with his squadron in a week’s time by Rabat and Saller to Kenitra. Paul was to rejoin his battalion a few days later. Half of that battalion, Paul’s company included, was to form part of the escort of Colonel Gouraud’s huge supply column, which with its hundreds of camels was beginning to assemble at Meheydia at the mouth of the Sebou.
Paul was now a full Captain in command of that company of the Tirailleurs which he had led during the last engagements of the Chaiouïa campaign, and marked out by his superiors as an officer likely to reach the high ranks and responsibilities. He had still a few days of his leave and he spent the greater part of them in the careful revision of his report. Gerard de Montignac, on his side was engaged in the supervision of the equipment of his squadron and was busy from morning until night. Two or three times during the course of the week, he went down between nine and ten at night to the Villa Iris, and sat or danced for half an hour with Marguerite Lambert. But he never saw Paul Ravenel there and through the week the two friends did not meet except for a moment or two in the thronged streets.
“Le grand serieux!” said Gerard, speaking of Paul to Marguerite Lambert with an affectionate mockery. “He will be a General when I am an old Major dyeing my moustache to make myself look young. But meanwhile, whilst we are both Captains, I should like to see more of him than I do. For, after all, we go out with our men—and one never knows who will come back.”
Marguerite’s face lost its colour at his words and she drew in her breath sharply. “Oh, it is our business of course,” he continued, taking her sympathy to himself. “Do you know, Marguerite, that for a second, I though you had stirred that thick soup in Paul’s veins which he calls his blood? But no, he never comes here.”
Marguerite laughed hurriedly, and asked at random, “You have seen him to-day?”
“Yes. He was coming out of a house close to the port with the agent who looks after his property, a little Italian. Paul was talking very earnestly and did not notice me. He has a good deal of property in Casablanca and was making his arrangements no doubt for a long absence.”
Marguerite looked down at the table, tracing a pattern upon its surface with her finger. When she spoke again her voice broke upon her words and her lips quivered.
“I shall lose all my friends this week,” she said.
“Only us two,” said Gerard, consoling her.
“That’s what I mean,” she returned with a little smile, and Gerard de Montignac leaned forward.
“Marguerite, I don’t go for a couple of days,” he said, lowering his voice to an eager whisper. “Let us make the best of them! Let me have the memory of two good days and nights to carry away with me, will you? Why not? My work is done. I could start off with my troops at six o’clock to-morrow instead of at six o’clock on the third morning. Give me the next two days.”
Marguerite shook her head.
“No, my friend.”
Gerard de Montignac knew nothing of that conversation which Henriette had held with Paul Ravenel on this spot a few nights before. He could but believe that Marguerite Lambert somehow found that dreadful gang of nondescripts with whom she foregathered more to her taste than he or his friend. She shone like a flower in this squalid haunt, a tired and drooping flower. It was extraordinary that she could endure this company for a moment, to say nothing of their embraces. But women, even the most delicate amongst them, would blindfold their eyes and stop their ears, and cease to appreciate both the look of their friends and the esteem in which they are held, if their interest prompted them. Gerard de Montignac rose angrily from his chair.
“Of course poor devils of officers like myself can’t hope to compete with these rich Dagoes,” he said brutally. “We must console ourselves with reflecting that our efforts and dangers have made them rich.”
Marguerite Lambert flushed scarlet at the insult, and then lowered her head.
“I do not wish to speak to you again,” she said in a distinct low voice, and Gerard de Montignac stalked out of the Villa Iris.
He was troubled by his recollection of the little scene during the next two days; sometimes falling into a remorse, and sometimes repeating his own words with bravado, and arguing that this was the proper way to speak; and always ending with a flood of heart-felt curses.
“Damn all Dagoes and Levantines! There ought to be a special code for them. They ought to be made to take off their shoes when they meet us in the street. Those old Moors knew something! I’ll never see that girl again as long as I live. Luckily she’ll be gone by the time I come back to Casablanca. Henriette said she wouldn’t dance at the Villa Iris for long. No, I won’t see her again.”
He kept carefully away from the neighbourhood of the Villa for thirty-six hours. Then a post came in and was delivered throughout the camp at eight o’clock in the evening. Amongst the letters which Gerard de Montignac received was one written in English by a Colonel Vanderfelt in Sussex praying for news of Paul Ravenel. Gerard had enough English to perceive how much anxiety and affection had gone to the composition of that letter.
“It ought to be answered at once,” he said. “Paul must answer it.”
Gerard looked at his watch. It was close upon nine now, and he was to parade at six in the morning. He must hand over that letter to Paul to-night. He could have sent it by the post very well, or he could have written an answer to Colonel Vanderfelt himself. But he took up his cap instead and walked down from Ain-Bourdja towards the town. Very likely he had some unacknowledged purpose at the back of his mind. For he found himself presently standing before the Villa Iris, though that house lay well out of the road between the camp and Paul Ravenel’s house by the seaward wall.
“Well, since I am here,” he said, as though he had come to this spot quite by accident, “I may as well go in and make my peace with Marguerite Lambert. For all I know I may be quitting the world altogether very shortly, and why should I leave unnecessary enemies to hate my memory.”
Thus he explained quite satisfactorily to himself his reason for entering and looking about him for Marguerite. But she was nowhere to be seen—no, not even amongst the Dagoes and the Levantines. She must be outside in the cool of the balcony beneath the roof of vines. But a glance there showed him that he was wrong. There was nothing for it but to approach the virago behind the Bar, who hotter and redder than ever on this night in early May, was polishing away at her counter and serving out the drinks.
Gerard ordered one and taking it from her hand, said carelessly:
“Mademoiselle Marguerite is not here to-night?”
Madame Delagrange made a vicious dab with her duster and cried in an exasperation:
“Look, Monsieur! When she is here I have nothing but complaints. That little Marguerite! She holds her nose in the air as if we smelled. She looks at us as if we were animals at a circus—and she has nothing to be conceited about with her thin shoulders and tired face. Now she is gone, it is all the time—‘What have you done with our little Marguerite?’ Well, I have done nothing.” She turned to another customer. “For you, Monsieur? A bottle of champagne? Abdullah shall bring it to you.”
Abdullah in his Turkish breeches was handed the dreadful decoction and Gerard de Montignac tried again:
“She has left the Villa Iris altogether?”
“Yes, yes, yes. She has gone, that Miss Ni’Touche!”
“And where has she gone?”
The harridan behind the Bar flung up her hands.
“Saperlipoppette, how should I know, I ask you? I beg you, Monsieur, to allow me to serve my clients who do not think that because they have bought a whiskey-soda, they have become proprietors for the night of the Villa Iris.”
With an indignant nod she turned to some other customers. Gerard wandered out into the verandah, where he sat down rather heavily. He was more troubled than he would have thought possible. After all the disappearance of a little dancing girl from a Bar in a coast town of Morocco!—what was there to make a fuss about in that? That is the way of little dancing girls. They dance and they disappear, a question or two from you and me and the next man are as it were the ripples upon the pond, and then the surface is still once more.
But Gerard de Montignac could not dismiss Marguerite Lambert with this easy philosophy. He remembered her too clearly, her slim grace, the promise of real beauty if only she had food enough, her anger with him two evenings ago, and above all the queer look of fatality set upon her like a seal. Marguerite Lambert gone! How and whither? One or two dreadful sentences spoken a fortnight ago in the mess by the Commandant Marnier were written in letters of flame upon his memory. Casablanca was the last halting place but one in the ghastly pilgrimage of these poor creatures. The last of all—he shuddered to think of it. To picture Marguerite Lambert amongst its squalors was a sacrilege. Yet she had gone—she had moved on! There was the appalling fact.
He saw Henriette strolling a little way off between the tables. He beckoned eagerly to her. She looked at him doubtfully, then with a mutinous air and a toss of the head she strolled towards him.
“You want to speak to me? You were not very polite the last time.”
“I will atone for my discourtesy to-night, Mademoiselle Henriette.”
Henriette was induced to take a chair and order a drink.
Gerard believed that he must practise some diplomacy with this fiery creature if he was to get the truth from her, but as a fact he had not to put one question. For Henriette had hardly begun to sip her whiskey and soda before she said:
“The little Marguerite! She has been sent away. I am sorry. I told you—didn’t I?—that she wouldn’t stay here long.”
“Sent away?”
Henriette nodded.
“By Madame?”
“Last night?”
“Yes. After all the guests had gone. But what a scene! Oh, la, la, la! I was frightened I can tell you. So were we all. We hid in the little room there off the Bar, where we dress, and listened through the crack of the door. But a scene! It was terrible.”
“Tell me!” said Gerard.
Henriette twitched her chair into the table with an actual excitement. She was really and deeply distressed for Marguerite. But for the moment her distress was forgotten. The joy of the story teller had descended upon her.
“It was the Greek over there, Petras Tetarnis,” she began. “He was mad for Marguerite and she wouldn’t have anything to do with him. So he got her turned away. See how drunk he is to-night. How proud of his fine revenge on a little girl who asked for nothing more than permission to earn her seven francs a night in peace.”
“She wouldn’t have anything to say to him!” Gerard protested. “Why, she was always at that table where he sits.”
“Yes. Because he is the real owner of the Villa Iris. Madame is no more than his servant. So Marguerite, since she wished to stay here, must be friendly to him. But Petras was not content with friendliness and last night when your friend came in—”
“My friend,” interrupted Gerard de Montignac.
“Yes, the one with the yellow hair and the long legs and the face that tells you nothing at all.”
“Paul! He was here last night!”
“Yes. Oh, he has come here more than once during the last week, but very late and for a few minutes. He goes straight to that table and takes Marguerite away, as if he were the master; and somehow they all sit dumb as if they were the lackeys. Imagine it, Monsieur! All of them very noisy and boisterous and then—a sudden silence and the yellow-headed Captain walking away with Marguerite Lambert as if they did not exist. It used to make the rest of us laugh, but they—they were furious with humiliation and when, a little time afterwards, the Captain had gone—oh, how bold they were! They would pull his nose for him the next time, they would teach him how gentlemen behave—oh, yes, yes! But it was always the next time that these fine lessons would be given.”
Gerard de Montignac nodded his head.
“I know the breed.”
Henriette described how Paul Ravenel had entered the Bar a little after midnight. He had taken Marguerite Lambert away, danced a round or two, and given her some supper; and whilst she ate, Petras Tetarnis emboldened by drink and the encouragement of his friends had left his table and begun to prowl backwards and forwards behind Paul Ravenel’s back, nodding and winking at his associates and muttering to himself. Paul had taken no notice, but Marguerite had stopped eating and sat in terror watching him over Paul’s shoulder like a bird fascinated by a snake. Tetarnis drew nearer and nearer with each turn, Marguerite sat twisting her hands and imploring Paul to go away and leave her. She was speaking in English and in a whisper so that Henriette could not repeat the words. But it was easy enough to translate them. “It is for my sake,” she was saying. “It is for my sake.”
But Paul would not listen; and with a little helpless flutter of her frail hands Marguerite sank back in her chair. There would be a disturbance, very possibly a fight. Once more she was to be the Helen of a squalid Iliad and the result would be what it always had been. She would move on—and this time there was no whither she could move. She had come to the end.
“I could read the despair in her eyes, in the utter abandonment of her body,” said Henriette, but there had been much at that moment in Marguerite Lambert’s thoughts which Henriette could not read at all. The passionate dream of her life was dying, as she sat there. She had come to the end. It would have no chance of fulfilment now. Where to-morrow, could she find the great love waiting for her? It had made her life possible, it had given her strength to endure the squalor of her lodging and her companions, and the loss of all that daintiness and order which mean so much to women. It had given her wit to defend herself against the approaches of her courtiers, and the self-respect which kept her with the manners of one of gentlest birth. Nearer and nearer drew Petras Tetarnis until he bumped against Paul’s chair, and then very quickly and quietly Paul rose to his feet.
A stifled prayer burst from Marguerite’s trembling lips. Then she covered her face with her hands and closed her ears with her thumbs. But there was no disturbance at all.
“The Captain Paul took Petras by the elbow and looking down upon him talked to him as one talks to a child. I could hear what he said. ‘You are terrifying this lady. You must not behave like this in public places. You must go back to your place and sit very quietly or you must go home.’ And Petras went. Yes, without a word, as if he had been whipped he went back to his chair amongst his friends. But, I tell you, Monsieur, his eyes had all hell in them! And after a little, very cautiously, as if he was afraid lest the Captain Paul should notice him he crept to the counter and talked very earnestly with Madame.”
“What was he saying?” asked Gerard de Montignac.
“I could not hear at all. I dared not even try to listen. I went to the table where Marguerite and her friend were sitting. Marguerite was imploring him to go away. I agreed with her. The storm was over. It was better for Marguerite’s sake that he should go away quietly now without any fuss.”
“And he went?” asked Gerard.
“Not at first,” returned Henrietta. “No, he was stubborn. He was thinking of his pride, as men do, not of the poor women who suffer by it. But at last—it seemed that some idea came into his head, some thought which made him smile—he consented. He paid his bill and walked, neither quickly nor slowly through the Bar and out by the passage into the street. And so the people settled down, and the trouble seemed at an end.”
And so until the closing of the Bar it was. As a rule the visitors had all gone by two o’clock in the morning; and this particular night was no exception. It was the practice as soon as the room was empty for Madame Delagrange to pay the girls their seven francs apiece at the counter. Then they crossed into the little dressing room, changed their clothes and went out into the lane by the street door, which was locked behind them. On this night, however, Madame Delagrange kept Marguerite Lambert to the last.
“You others can run away and get off your clothes. I want to have a little talk by myself with this delicate Miss Touch-me-not,” she said, lolling over the counter with a wicked leer on her coarse red face and licking her lips over her victim. The others were very glad to hurry away and leave the old harridan and Marguerite alone in the gaudily tiled, brightly lit room. They kept the door of the dressing room ajar, so that they could both see and hear what took place. But for a minute or two Madame Delagrange contented herself with chuckling and rubbing her fat hands together and looking Marguerite up and down from head to foot and almost frightening the girl out of her wits. Marguerite stood in front of the counter looking in her short dancing skirt like a schoolgirl awaiting punishment.
“So this is how we repay kindnesses!” Madame Delagrange began, slowly wetting her lips with her tongue. According to Henriette she was exactly like an ogress in a picture book savouring in anticipation the pretty morsel she meant to devour for supper. “We make troubles and inconveniences for the kind old fool of a woman who lets us sing our little songs in her Bar and dance with her clients and who pays us generously into the bargain. We won’t help her at all to keep the roof over her head. We treat her rich clients like mud. Only the beautiful officers are good enough for us! Bah! And we are virtuous too! Oh, he, he, he! Yes, but virtue isn’t bread and butter, my little one. So here’s an address.” She took a slip of paper from the shelf behind her and pushed it towards Marguerite. Marguerite took a step forward to the counter and picked up the paper.
“What am I to do with this, Madame?” she asked in perplexity.
“You are to go to that address, Mademoiselle.”
“To-morrow?”
“Now, little fool!”
“Why?”
“He is waiting for you.”
Marguerite shrank back, her face white as paper, her great eyes wide with horror.
“Who?” she asked in a whisper.
“Petras Tetarnis.”
Madame Delagrange nodded her head at Marguerite with an indignant satisfaction.
“Off you go! We shall be a little more modest, to-morrow evening, eh? We shan’t look at everybody as if they would dirty our little slippers if we stepped on them. Come, take your seven francs and hurry off. Or,” and she thrust out her lips savagely, “never come back to the Villa Iris.”
Marguerite stood and stared at the paper in her hands.
“You can’t mean it, Madame.”
Madame snorted contemptuously.
“Make your choice, little one. I want to go to bed.”
Marguerite folded the paper and with the tears running down her cheeks slowly tore it across and across and let the fragments flutter down to the floor. Madame Delagrange uttered an oath and then let loose upon the girl such a flood of vile abuse, that even those hiding behind the door of the dressing room had never heard the like of it.
“Out with you,” she said, spitting upon the ground and sweeping the seven francs off the counter towards Marguerite, so that they rolled and spun and rattled upon the floor. “Pick up your money and get your rags together and march! Quick now!”
She lolled over the counter screaming with laughter as Marguerite ran hither and thither seeking through her blinding tears for the coins, stooping and picking them up. “There’s another somewhere,” the old harridan cried, holding her fat sides. “Seek! Seek! Good dog! It takes ten years off my life to see the haughty Miss Touch-me-not running about after her pennies.”
Marguerite had got to retrieve them all. In the dreadful penury in which she lived, a single franc had the importance of gold. So she ran about the room, searched under tables and chairs and in the corners. The seven francs were all her capital. They stood between her and death by hunger. She must go on her knees and peer through the veil of her tears for the last of them. Even the women behind the door, hardened though they were, felt the humiliation of that scene in the marrow of their bones, felt it as something horrible and poignant and disturbing. As soon as Marguerite had picked up her money, Madame Delagrange shuffled out from behind her counter.
“Now come along with me. I mean to see that you don’t take away what doesn’t belong to you.”
She took the weeping girl by the elbow and pushed her along in front of her to the dressing room. Then she stood over her whilst she changed into her street dress and put up her dancing kit in a bundle.
“Do you miss anything, girls?” Madame Delagrange asked with her heavy-handed irony and indeed with an evident hope that one of them would miss something and the police could be sent for. But all of them were quick to say no, though not one of them had the courage to take Marguerite by the hand and wish her good luck in the face of the old blowsy termagant.
“Very well then!” and Madame Delagrange took a step towards Marguerite who shrank back as if she expected a blow. Madame Delagrange laughed heartily at the girl’s face, rejoicing to see her so cowed and broken.
“Come here,” she said with a grim sort of pleasantry and she grinned and beckoned with her finger.
Marguerite faltered across the room, and the big woman took her prisoner again and marched her out through the Bar onto the verandah.
“There! You can go out by the garden and a good riddance to you!” Madame Delagrange banged to the big doors behind Marguerite Lambert and bolted them, leaving her with her bundle in her hand standing on the boards beneath the roof of vines.
“That’s the last we saw of her. Poor kid!” said Henriette. “If she hadn’t been such a little fool! Do you know that for a moment or two I hoped that your friend—”
“Paul,” Gerard de Montignac interrupted with a nod of his head. “I also—for a moment or two. But women don’t mean much to Paul.”
Henriette laughed bitterly, wondering to what man women did mean anything at all. In her experience she had never run across them.
“I am afraid for that little one,” she said, her thoughts coming back to Marguerite. “You know what happened? Her little bundle was found on the balcony this morning. The knot had broken, and her dancing dress, her slippers, her silk stockings were lying scattered on the boards. She just left them where they fell. You see, they were her stock-in-trade. She had brought them over with her from France and she has no money to replace them with. I am afraid.”
Gerard de Montignac was conscious of a chill of fear too. He recognised the significance of the abandonment of that bundle. The knot had burst, as Marguerite stood on the verandah, the doors shut behind her, the dark garden in front of her. She had not thought it worth while to gather her poor trifles of finery together again. Their use was over. Whither had she gone? Was she alive now? Had those roaring breakers on the coast drawn her into their embrace and beaten her to death upon the rocks and the sands?
“Where does she lodge?” he asked sharply.
“I don’t know,” answered Henriette. “None of us know. She would never tell. I think that she had some poor little room of which she was ashamed. With her seven francs a day, she could have nothing else.”
“I must find out,” cried Gerard, and then he struck his fist upon the table. “But I can’t find out. I march at six o’clock to-morrow morning for Fez.”
“Your friend then,” Henriette suggested eagerly.
“Paul!” replied Gerard. “Yes. He has a few days still in Casablanca. He has compassion, he will help. I know him.”
Henriette’s face lightened a little.
“But he must be quick, very quick,” she urged. “You will see him to-night?”
“I will go to him now,” and Gerard remembered the letter in his pocket from Colonel Vanderfelt. “I was indeed on my way to him when I came here.”
Gerard looked at his watch. It was half past ten. He had stayed longer than he had intended at the Villa Iris.
CHAPTER X
Gerardde Montignac found Paul still up and putting the last words to the report of long and solitary wanderings amongst the inland tribes. The report was to be despatched the next morning to the Bureau des Affaires Indigènes at Rabat, and Gerard waited in patience until the packet was sealed up. Then he burst out with his story of what had taken place on the night before at the Villa Iris. Paul listened without an interruption, but his face grew white with anger and his eyes burned, as he heard of Madame Delagrange’s coarse abuse and Marguerite’s tears and humiliations.
“So you see, Paul, it was your fault in a way,” Gerard urged. “Of course sooner or later Petras Tetarnis—damn his soul!—would have presented his ultimatum, as he did last night, but you were the occasion of it being done.”
“Yes,” Paul agreed.
“Then you must find her. You must do what you can, send her home, give her a chance. I’ll start searching myself this very night. But you have more time and better means of discovering her.”
“Yes.”
Paul had knocked about Casablanca as a boy. He had many friends amongst the natives, and was accustomed to sit with them by the hour, drinking mint tea and exchanging jokes. He was a man of property besides in that town and could put out a great many feelers in different quarters.
“I have no doubt that I can discover where she is,” he said, “if she is still in Casablanca.”
“Where else can she be unless it’s in the sea!” cried Gerard. “But remember you have got to be quick. She had only the seven francs. God knows what has become of her!”
He stood gazing at the lamp as if he could read her whereabouts in that white flame as the gifted might do in a crystal; with his cap tilted on the back of his head and a look of grave trouble upon his face.
“I’ll find her, never fear,” said Paul Ravenel, touching his friend upon the arm. “And what I can do to keep her from harm that I will do.”
Gerard responded to the friendliness and the assurance in Paul’s voice. He shook off his dejection.
“Thank you, mon vieux,” he said and held out his hand. “Well, we shall meet in Fez.”
He had reached the door before he remembered the primary reason for his visit.
“By the way, I have a letter about you from some one in England, a Colonel Vanderfelt. Yes, he is anxious for news of you. He wrote to me because in your letters to him you had more than once spoken of me as your friend.”
A shadow darkened Paul’s face as he listened, and a look of pain came into his eyes. He took the letter from Gerard.
“Have you answered it, Gerard?”
“No. It only reached me to-night. I must leave that to you.”
“Right.”
The door-keeper let Gerard out and he tramped through the now silent and empty streets the length of the town to the Market Gate; and so to his quarters in the camp at Ain-Bourdja. Some years were to pass before the two friends met again.
Paul stood for a long time just as Gerard had left him with Colonel Vanderfelt’s letter in his hand. The fragrance of an English garden seemed to him to sweeten this Moorish room. Though the lattices were wide open, he heard no longer the thunder of the great breakers upon the shore. The letter was magical and carried him back on this hot night of May to a country of cool stars. The garden, he remembered, would be white with lilac, the tulips would be in flower, the rhododendrons masses of red and mauve, against the house the wisteria would be hanging in purple clusters. And in the drawing room some very kindly people might at this moment be counting the date on which they could expect an answer to this letter.
Well, the answer would never come.
“All those pleasant dreams are over,” thought Paul. “They have not heard from me for more than a year. Let the break be complete!” and with a rather wistful smile he tore the letter into shreds. Then he went out and turning into a street by the sea-wall came to that house from which Gerard de Montignac had seen him and his agent depart three days before. A lattice was open on the first floor and from a wide window a golden flood of light poured out upon the night. Paul whistled gently and then waited at the door. It was thrown open in a few seconds, just time enough for some one to run down the stairs and open it. Paul stepped into a dark passage and a pair of slender arms closed about his neck and drew his face down.
“Marguerite, why didn’t you tell me how that venomous old harridan treated you?” he whispered.
Marguerite Lambert laughed with a note of utter happiness which no one had heard from her for a long while.
“My dear, what did it matter any longer;” and clinging to him passionately, she pressed her lips to his.
* * * * *
Paul could have added a postscript to Henriette’s story, as Gerard de Montignac had told it to him, if he had so willed. For when Marguerite Lambert stood alone on that verandah, her bundle in her hand, a figure had risen up out of the darkness of the garden and stepped onto the boards. She recoiled at the first moment in terror, and her bundle slipped from her hand and scattered its contents.
“Marguerite,” the man whispered, and with a wild throb of her heart she knew it was Paul Ravenel who was speaking to her.
“You! You!” she said in so low a voice that, though he stood at her side, the words only reached his ears like a sigh. “Oh!” and her arms were about his shoulders, her hands tightly clasped behind his head, and her tear-stained cheeks pressed close against the breast of his tunic. He tried to lift her face, but she would not let him.
“No! No!” she whispered. He could feel her bosom rising and falling, and hear the sobs bursting from her throat. Then she flung up her face.
“My dear! My dear! I was hoping that some sudden thing would kill me, because I couldn’t do it myself. And then—you are here!”
She drew herself from his arms, and not knowing what she did she kneeled and began to gather together her scattered belongings. Paul Ravenel laughed and stooping, lifted her up.
“You won’t want those things any more, my dear,” and with his arm about her he led her from the garden through the quiet streets to this house by the sea-wall which had been got ready against her coming.
CHAPTER XI
Itwas the sixteenth day of April in the following year. The dawn broke over Fez sullen and unfriendly as the mood of the city. And all through the morning the clouds grew heavier. Many watched them with anxiety through that forenoon: the French Mission which was to set out on the morrow, on its return to Rabat with the treaty of the Protectorate of Morocco signed and sealed in its pocket; Mulai Hafid himself, now for these many months Sultan, who was to travel with the Mission, on his way to Paris; various high dignitaries of state, who though outwardly wreathed in smiles and goodwill had prepared a little surprise for the Mission in one of the passes on its line of march to the coast; and various young officers of the escort who after ten months of garrison duty outside Fez welcomed a chance of kicking up their heels for a week or two in the cafés of the coast towns. Like conversation before dinner, all these arrangements depended on the weather.
At twelve o’clock Mulai Hafid gave a farewell luncheon to the Mission in his great Palace in Fez Djedid; and after luncheon he conducted his guests to a Pavilion looking upon a wide open space called Mechouar. They had hardly reached the Pavilion before a storm burst with all the violence of the tropics. The Pavilion was like everything else in Morocco. It had never been finished when it was new, and never repaired when it was old; and very soon, the rain breaking through the flimsy roof had driven the guests from the first floor to the chamber of audience below, and was splashing down the stairs in a cascade. A general discomfort prevailed. Mulai Hafid himself was in a difficult mood. To one French Commissioner of importance who apologized to him because a certain General, lately promoted from Colonel, had not yet had time to procure the insignia of his new rank, Mulai Hafid replied dryly:
“The sooner he gets them the better. He’ll want them all to protect him before he has done.”
And a little later when the Head of the Mission, with whom he was playing chess, indiscreetly objected to the Sultan moving surreptitiously one of his knights with a latitude not authorised by the rules, he turned in vexation to a Kaid of his friends and said: “See what I have come to! I can no longer even move my own cavalry as I please, without the consent of his Excellency and the French.”
Altogether it was an uneasy luncheon party. Alone Paul Ravenel was content. He was on duty with the Mission and all the morning his face had been as cloudy as the sky because the storm did not break. Now he stood at a window of the upper room, sheltering himself as best he might from the leaks of the roof and smiled contentedly. Lieutenant Praslin, who a year before had trumpeted the praises of Marguerite Lambert in the mess at Ain-Bourdja, stood at his elbow. Praslin commanded now a platoon in Paul’s company and held his chief in awe. But annoyance spurred him to familiarity.
“You are amused, my old one, are you?” he enquired. “We are of the escort to-morrow. We shall swim through mud. The banks of the rivers will be as slippery as a skating rink. We shall have horses and camels tumbling about and breaking our necks. We shall have ladies in the party too. And you are amused! Name of a name, you have a sense of humour, my Captain.”
“I laugh,” replied Paul, “because if the rain continues, we shan’t go at all.”
“And you don’t want to go! To arrive safely at Rabat with the Mission, it might easily mean your step.”
That Paul should despise the indifferent gaieties of Rabat and Casablanca—that was understood. He was the serious one, destined for the high commands. But here was opportunity and Paul Ravenel had been quick to seize upon opportunity. There had been a pretty little fight between Kenitra and Segota when Paul was in command of the Advance Guard of Colonel Gouraud’s convoy; and Paul had fought his little battle with a resourceful skill which had brought his name into the orders of the day. He had been for ten months now in command of his Company at the great camp of Dar-Debibagh, four kilometres out of Fez. These were days of rapid promotion in an army where as a rule promotion was slow. A successful march to Rabat might well make him Commandant and give him his battalion. Yet the look upon his face, as he watched the sheets of rain turning the plain of the Mechouar into a marsh, was the look of a man—no, not relieved, but reprieved—yes, actually reprieved, thought the Lieutenant Praslin.
Below them in the chamber of audience the Chiefs of the Mission were at this moment debating the postponement of the journey and they came quickly to the only possible decision. The departure was put off for three days.
“We shall go then, however,” said Praslin, when this decision was announced. “The escort is made up. There will be no change.”
“I wonder,” Paul Ravenel replied. “In three days a man may learn wisdom. The Mission may after all wait until a sufficient force is assembled to protect it properly and then the whole personnel of the escort may be changed.”
“Oh, those stories!” cried Praslin contemptuously. He had the official mind which looks upon distrust of official utterances as something next to sacrilege. And official utterances had been busy of late. There was no truth, they declared stoutly, in those stories that the Maghzen, the Government itself, was stirring up disaffection and revolt behind the back of the Mission. Very likely the people of Fez were saying that the Sultan was the prisoner of the French, that he was being taken to Rabat and Paris to be exhibited triumphantly as a captive; but the people of Fez were born gossips and there was no danger in their talk. Had not the Grand Vizier himself pledged his word that the country was quiet? Thus the official mind. Thus too, consequently, Lieutenant Praslin, who was very anxious to see life as it is lived in the coast towns. And if the Intelligence Division and some soldiers who had spent years in the country took a different view, why, soldiers were always alarmists and foolish people and it was waste of time to listen to them.
Paul rode back through the rain with Lieutenant Praslin to the camp at Dar-Debibagh when the reception was over. They went by the Bab Segma and the bridge over the Fez River. The track was already a batter of mud above the fetlocks of their horses. At seven o’clock, however, the rain ceased and Paul, changing into a dry uniform, went into Praslin’s tent.
“I am dining with a friend of mine in Fez,” he said, “and I shall not be back until late.”
“The battalion parade’s at six in the morning,” Praslin reminded him. “The order has not been countermanded.”
“I know,” answered Paul. “I shall be on duty of course”; and mounting his horse he rode again into the city.
He rode back by the way he had come and just within the Bab Segma he met four Moors mounted upon mules richly caparisoned, and themselves wearing robes of a spotless white. They were clearly men of high rank and one rode a little in advance of the others. As Paul drew closer to them he recognised this man as the Minister of War and one of the most important dignitaries of the Maghzen. Paul saluted him and to his amazement the Minister did not return the salute but turned to one of his companions with a dishonouring word.
“Djiffa!” he said contemptuously, and spat on the ground. Paul took no notice of the insult. But if he had needed proof of the stories which the official mind refused to entertain, here it was openly avowed. Very likely the postponement of the Mission’s departure had upset the precious plans of the Maghzen and the Minister of War was showing his displeasure. The point of importance to Paul was that he should dare to show it so openly. That could but imply very complete plans for an ambuscade in force on the road of the Mission to the coast, and a very complete confidence as to the outcome.
Paul began to think of his own affairs.
“Suppose that the Mission and its escort is destroyed,” he reflected. “I have left nothing to chance. No! The blow must fall as lightly as I can make possible.”
He enumerated one by one the arrangements which he had made and recalled the wording of his instructions to his solicitors and agents.
“No, I can think of nothing else,” he concluded. He had this final request for help to make to-night, and he was very sure that he would not make it in vain. “No,—whatever money can do to lighten the blow—that has been done. And money can do much assuredly. Only—only”—and he admitted to himself at last with a little shiver, a dark thought which he had hitherto driven off—“she is just the kind of girl who might commit suttee.”
He rode along the main street into the quarter of Tala. It was a street always narrow, but sometimes so narrow that if two mules met they could hardly pass. High walls of houses without any windows made it a chasm rather than a street. At rare intervals it widened into a “place” or square, where a drinking fountain stood or a bridge crossed a stream. It was paved with broken cobble stones with a great rut in the middle where the feet of the mules and horses had broken down to the brown earth beneath; and here and there a slippery mill-stone on which the horse skidded, had been let in to the cobbles by way of repair. It climbed steeply and steeply fell, and in places the line of houses was broken by a high garden wall above which showed orange trees laden with their fruit and bougainvillæa climbing.
At times he passed under an archway where the street was built over above his head and huge solid doors stood back against the walls on either hand, that one quarter might be shut off from another during the night, or in times of trouble. On his right hand a number of alleys led into the Souk-ben-Safi and the maze of Fez-el-Bali. Into one of these alleys Paul turned and stopped in front of a big house with an imposing door studded with nails, and a stone by which to mount a horse.
He dismounted and knocked upon the door. To his surprise, it was not at once thrown open. He looked about him. There was no servant waiting to take his horse in charge. If there had been a mistake! Paul’s heart sank at the thought. Suppose that his friend Si El Hadj Arrifa, on whom so much now might depend, had been called away from his home? But that couldn’t be—surely! However peremptory the summons had been, so punctilious a personage as Si El Hadj Arrifa would have found a moment wherein to put off his expected guest. Yet if nevertheless it were so . . . !
Paul Ravenel felt the weighty letter under his tunic and gazed at the blank wall of the great house with troubled eyes. Oh, he must talk with his friend to-night! In three days the Mission and its escort were to start. He might not get another chance. He redoubled his blows upon the door and at last he heard a key turn in the lock and a clatter as the wooden cross-bars were removed.
That sound completed his uneasiness. He had ridden through the city thinking of his own affairs, his eyes in blinkers. Now tracing his steps in memory, he recalled that the streets had been strangely quiet, strangely empty. And here at the end of his journey was this hospitable house barricaded against an invited guest.
“Oh, no,” he said, seeking to reassure himself, “the danger’s out there in the ‘bled,’ on the way to the coast, not here in the town.”
But a picture rose before his mind of four notable Moors in milk-white robes mounted on mules with trappings of scarlet and silver who sneered openly at the uniform and spat. Paul Ravenel was frightened now. If it was not only in the “bled” that danger threatened, then all his careful letters and arrangements were worth just as much as the cobble stones underneath his feet.
The door was open at last and as a servant took Paul’s horse by the bridle and led it away to a stable, Paul hurried impatiently into the house. But he was no more impatient than the servant who closed and bolted the door behind him; and in the passage he saw a small troop of attendants, every one of them armed and at the entrance from the passage into the central court Si El Hadj Arrifa himself with a face of fear and in the attitude of a man poised for flight.
But when he caught sight of the gold lace upon Paul’s uniform, the Moor’s expression changed to surprise and surprise in its turn to a smile of welcome. Si El Hadj Arrifa was a stout man, fair like so many of the Fasi, with a fringe of beard round his fat face. He was dressed in a silken shirt with an overgarment of pink tissue under his white djellaba and his hands were as well-kept as a woman’s. He wore a fine white haik over his turban and fez.
“I am afraid that you didn’t expect me,” said Paul.
“Your Excellency is always welcome,” replied Si El Hadj Arrifa. “Our poor little meal is ready.”
But it was not ready and Paul’s uneasiness increased. He knew, however, that he would hear nothing until hospitality was satisfied of its ceremonies and then only by a roundabout road. He was led into a room opening by means of a wide archway onto the court. In one corner of the room stood a big modern brass bedstead. It was an ornament and a decoration, nothing more. For sleep, cushions upon the tiled floor were used. Round the wall there were a great number of clocks, Grandfather clocks, heavy Victorian clocks of ormolu, clocks of marble, most of them ticking away but registering quite different hours, and on the tiled floor stood two branched candlesticks of shining silver with the candles burning. Thick cushions were stretched upon the tiles about the candles and upon them Paul and his host took their seats.
Si El Hadj Arrifa was a personage in Fez, a man of influence in politics and of great wealth. He had visited Manchester more than once, to buy cotton goods and he talked of that town whilst they waited for dinner.
“They have good dentists,” he said.
Paul looked at this soigné and dainty gentleman in the fine setting of his beautiful house, and smiled to think of the figure he must cut in Manchester. He probably wore a black gown like a gabardine and elastic sided boots over white woollen socks and lived in a small room in a dingy street. But Si El Hadj Arrifa fell soon into an uneasy silence and sat listening with his head cocked as if he expected some sound from the city without to ring out over the open square in the roof above the court. A fountain was playing in the centre of the court in honour of the visitor, but the Moor called to a servant to turn it off, since the splash and tingle of the water so filled the ears that they could apprehend nothing else.
Dinner was brought in at last by a couple of negresses and Paul must eat of each course beginning with sweetmeats, and ranging through a couscouss, a roasted leg of mutton and a stuffed chicken. Paul put his right hand into the dish and tore at the meat in the due fashion and accepted tit-bits from the fingers of his host. Some orange water was brought for him to drink, and when the long meal was over one of the negresses brought them a ewer and soap and poured water over their hands whilst they washed them.
“Yes, they have good dentists in Manchester,” said Si El Hadj Arrifa and, taking a complete set of shining teeth from his mouth, he washed them and polished them and replaced them.
“They seem to have very good dentists there,” said Paul with befitting gravity.
A silver tea kettle was brought and a silver spirit lamp, and Si El Hadj Arrifa brewed two little cups of heavily sweetened green tea and flavoured it with mint. But even while engaged upon this important work, he still kept his head cocked a little on one side, as though he still listened for some dreaded yet expected sound. And when he handed the cup to Paul, it rattled in the saucer.
Nothing on this evening had so startled Paul Ravenel. His heart jumped within his breast. Si El Hadj Arrifa was not merely disturbed. His hand was shaking. He was desperately afraid. He drew a breath and leaned forward to speak and Ravenel said to himself with relief. “At last! It is coming.”
But he was wrong. His host only enquired whether Paul had ever visited America.
“No,” he answered.
“A man in Manchester told me that they had a way there of stuffing turkeys which was very good. But they used oysters for it and of course so far from the sea we can get none at Fez.”
“Some day there will be a railway,” said Paul consolingly. Si El Hadj Arrifa made another brew of tea, this time suspending in the brew a little lump of ambergris to flavour it.
“I must begin,” thought Paul, as he took his cup. He felt for the big letter in his tunic but before he could take it from his breast his host spoke in a low, quiet tone, words which at first seemed of little more importance than any which had been spoken before, and afterwards were able to set Paul’s heart fluttering.
“I sent a messenger this evening to you at the camp at Dar-Debibagh.
“He missed me,” replied Paul.
“It is a pity.”
“Why?”
“I sent him to warn you not to come into Fez to-night.”
“Why?”
“You are my friend. There is danger.”
“But outside the city,” cried Paul, “from the tribes—after we have marched.”
“Here in Fez too,” Si El Hadj Arrifa insisted in a voice which now frankly shook with terror. “For you and all of your creed that dwell in this city.”
Paul was already on his feet, his face and his eyes set in a stare of horror. Si El Hadj Arrifa quite misunderstood the French officer’s manner. He said soothingly:
“You shall stay in my house till it is all over.”
“All over?” Paul repeated. He took his hand from the bulky letter in his tunic. If the dreadful news were true, his plans must change. His heart sank as he caught a glimpse of how they must change.
“I must know more, my friend,” he said, and he sat quietly down again upon the cushions.
“There are the Askris,” said the man of Fez, “the tribesmen. You have taken them too quickly into your armies. You have armed them too quickly. You have placed them with their instructors in the Kashab des Cherarda by the Segma gate as a garrison for this town. Oh, madness!”
“Yes,” Paul agreed. “We should have waited a year—two years.”
“They are told that they must carry knapsacks,” continued Si El Hadj Arrifa. “With us that is work for women, an insult to men.”
“But it isn’t true,” said Paul Ravenel.
“What does that matter if it is believed? The knapsacks were carried on mules publicly through the city, so that all men might see them. Six thousand of them.”
“Not by our orders,” said Paul, and the swift look and the shrug of the shoulders with which the protest was received told him much. It was by the order of the Maghzen that those knapsacks had been paraded. The Government itself was behind this movement in the city as it was behind the insurrection on the plains. Once more he saw very clearly the four contemptuous notables upon their mules.
“Of course we have known of this trouble,” said Paul slowly. “But we thought that each instructor could make it clear to his men that the story was a lie.”
Si El Hadj Arrifa flung up his hands.
“Oh, the great lessons and nothing is learnt! Was there not trouble once for the English in India? Was there not talk of cartridges greased with the fat of pigs? It was not true. No! But it served. As the knapsacks will serve in Fez.”
“A little time,” cried Paul Ravenel, clutching at the straw of that faint hope.
“There is no time,” answered Si El Hadj Arrifa. “Listen!” He looked swiftly behind him into the shadows of the court to make sure that there were none to overhear. “The revolt in Fez was planned for to-morrow, after the Mission had departed. There was to be a scouring.”
“Yes.”
“The Askris are ready: more than ready. It was difficult to hold them in, even with the promise of to-morrow. Now that the departure is postponed, they will not wait. It needs a word perhaps, but the speaking of that word cannot be delayed.”
Paul nodded gloomily.
“And they won’t believe it,” he said in a dull quiet voice, as he stared upon the ground. Believe it? Paul Ravenel knew very well that were he to batter down the door of the Embassy, they would not even allow him to blurt his story out. Why should he come prattling his soldier’s silliness at that unearthly hour? Let him go back to his camp and await his well-deserved reprimand in the morning! There are proper channels by which presumptuous young officers must address their importunities. It is the history of many disasters. Politics and ambition and the play of parties must decide what is going to happen, not prescience or knowledge. Is a country notoriouslystudiis asperrima belli? Let us never admit it, lest we range against us this or that faction which is strong enough to bring us down. It’s all a gamble. So let us plank our money and everybody else’s and their lives into the bargain on to our colour and chance it turning up. “All rising to Great Place is by a winding stair.” So we must twist and turn and see nothing beyond the next step by which we mount. Authority in Fez had just been given the cravat of Grand Officer of the Legion of Honour, because the negotiations for the Protectorate had been conducted so smoothly and had ended in so resounding a success. It would never do for authority to listen to any intrusive soldier who insisted that murder and torture were knocking on the door. Had not the Maghzen declared that the tribesmen in the “bled” were only thinking of their husbandry? Did not the Grand Vizier himself guarantee the goodwill and peacefulness of Fez?
“They have stopped their ears and bandaged their eyes,” said Paul.
“But you will stay here to-night,” his friend urged. “No one, I think, saw you come into my house, and my servants are faithful. Yes, you will stay here and be safe until this danger is overpast!”
Paul shook his head.
“That I cannot do,” he said, and Si El Hadj Arrifa hearing the tone he used, knew that there would be no persuading him.
“Then go while you can, and ride quickly with your pistol loose in its holster.”
But even so Paul did not move.
“Wait,” he said.
He raised his head to listen. The night was still as a tomb. A cry even from the most distant corner of the city, it seemed to him, must carry to this open square of darkness above them. He had time. “Yes, wait,” he repeated, and he went apart into the shadowy patio. Never had he been set to face so tragic a dilemma. He knew Si El Hadj Arrifa too well to doubt him. Nor indeed had he any real doubt as to the choice which he himself would make. The choice was in truth made, had been made from the moment he was sure that torture and massacre threatened those who remained in Fez as much as those who marched to Rabat. But he stood in that shadowy court of marble and tiles, gazing with a great sorrow upon many lovely cherished things which he was now forever to forego, his own hopes and ambitions, a little circle of good friends, honour and good report, a career of active service and study well-applied, and at the end of it all a name cleansed of its stain, and—even now the picture rose before his mind—a dreamlike high garden fragrant with roses, from which one looked out over moonlit country to the misty barrier of the Downs. It was such a farewell as he had never thought to make and when he turned back into the room his face was twisted as with a physical pain and anguish lay deep in his brooding eyes.
He took the envelope from his breast.
“I shall trust you with more than my life,” he said.
“Your Excellency has honoured me with his friendship. I am his servant in all things.”
“I have been for three nights writing this letter. I had it in my mind to open it here and read it to you. But the bad news you have given me points to another way. It may be that there will be no need to use it. I give it into your hands and I beg you to keep it sealed as it is, until you are certain of my death. If I am alive I shall find a means to let you know. If I am dead, I pray you to do all that I have written here.”
Si El Hadj Arrifa took the letter and bowed his forehead upon it, as though it carried the very Sultan’s seal.
“With God’s will, I will do as you direct.”
Paul took his friend by the hand, and looked him in the eyes.
“I could not rest quiet in my grave if my wishes written there were not fulfilled—if misfortune struck where there is no need that it should strike. A voice would call to me, in sorrow and distress, and I should hear it and stir in my grave though I was buried metres deep in clay. It is a promise?”
“Yes.”
Si El Hadj Arrifa struck a bell and a man came out to him from the servants’ quarters.
“All is quiet, Mohammed?”
“Up till this hour.”
“His Excellency’s horse then! You will go in front of him with a lantern as far as the Bab Segma. His Excellency returns to the camp at Dar-Debibagh.”
The servant’s eyes opened wide in fear. He looked from his master to his master’s guest, as though both of them had been smitten with madness. Then he went out upon his business, and the two men in the court heard the fall of the bars and the grinding of the lock of the door.
“I will put this away,” said Si El Hadj Arrifa, balancing the letter in his hands; and he went upstairs to his own room. When he came down Paul was standing in the patio, with his cap upon his head.
“I will bid you good-bye here my friend,” said Paul, but his host, terrified though he was, would not so far fall short of his duties. He went out with Paul Ravenel to the street. The city all about them was very quiet. There was no light anywhere but the light in the big lantern which Mohammed was carrying in one hand whilst he held the bridle of Paul’s horse with the other. Paul mounted quickly and without a word. Si El Hadj Arrifa stood in the doorway of his house. He watched the lantern dwindle to a spark, he heard the sharp loud crack of the horse’s shoes upon the cobbles soften and grow dull. He waited until the spark had vanished, and, a little time afterwards, the beat of the hoofs had ceased. And still there was no sign of any trouble, no distant clamour as of men gathering, no shrill cries from the women on the roofs. He went back into his house.