Complete works of a e w.., p.584
Complete Works of a E W Mason, page 584
“A house near to his on the sea-wall?” suddenly exclaimed Gerard.
“Yes.”
“That’s true, then. I saw his agent and him coming out of it. I think that I told Henriette, never dreaming that the house was meant for you, that you were already in it when I told Henriette.” He looked at Marguerite suddenly with eyes of pity. “You two poor children!” he exclaimed, softly, and after a few moments he added with a whimsical smile, “I told Paul that he would break his leg when we, the less serious ones, only barked our shins. It is a bad thing not to walk in the crowd, Marguerite.”
He watched her for a little while like a man in doubt. Then he reached his arm out and tapped with the muzzle of his revolver — for he still held it in his hand — on the part of the table opposite to him.
“You must sit down and tell me exactly what happened.”
Marguerite obeyed. She told Gerard of her journey up from the coast to Fez when Paul was sure that the road was safe, and how she came to the little palace with the door upon the roofed alley which Paul had got ready for her. Gerard, who had thought to listen to her story without question or comment, could not restrain an exclamation.
“You were in Fez, then, all that year!” he said, wondering. “In the house of Si Ahmed Driss! I never dreamt of it. Even when I discovered it and searched it, that never occurred to me. When I saw you both here, I imagined that Paul had slipped away at a bad moment for France, without a thought of his duty, to join you at Mulai Idris in accordance with a plan.”
Marguerite shook her head.
“No. I was in the house at Fez. Later, on that night of the sixteenth, he knew that the massacres were certain. He went to headquarters with the information. If they had listened to him then, he would never have deserted at all. But they wouldn’t listen, and he had to choose.”
She described how on the next day the fanatics had rushed in searching for a French officer who had been seen once or twice to visit there.
“It was not before that night, then, the night he came to the headquarters, that he was sure?” Gerard interrupted, quickly.
“No.”
“They would have come to seek him in the house, even if he had ridden straight back from the Hospital Auvert to Dar-Debibagh.”
“Yes.”
“Then he did save your life by deserting,” said Gerard. And, on the other hand, he asked himself was there any duty not discharged because Paul did desert? Was there any mistake made because the little Praslin led Paul Ravenel’s company along the river bed instead of Paul himself?
“My God, but it’s difficult!” cried Gerard. “Complexities upon complexities! How shall one judge — unless” — and he caught with relief at his good rules and standards— “yes, unless one walks in the crowd. It’s the only way to walk. Thou shalt do this! Thou shalt not do that! All clear and ordered and written in the book.”
Gerard had gibed enough in his day at those innumerable soldiers who answered every problem of regulations and manœuvres immediately with a complacent “It’s so laid down,” or “It’s not so laid down in the book.” He was glad to get back in the windings of this case to the broad highway of “the book.” The book told him how to deal with Paul Ravenel. Well, then! — Yet — yet —— !
Marguerite watched his face cloud over, and hurriedly continued her story, or rather began to continue it. For at her first words as to how Paul had out-witted the invaders of the house in Fez Gerard interrupted her with a cry.
“The uniform tunic, eh, Marguerite? The tunic all hacked and battered with blood?” He uttered a little wholesome laugh of appreciation. “And all prepared in readiness the night before. Yes, I recognise Paul there.”
This was the third time that Gerard de Montignac had spoken of “Paul” without any “Ravenel” added to it to show that he and Paul were strangers. Marguerite, you may be sure, had counted each one of them with a little leap of the heart. “And the blood!” he went on. “I think I know whence that came. His arm, eh? Wasn’t it so?”
Marguerite had determined to use no tricks with him, but she could not resist one now, the oldest and simplest and the never-failing. She looked at Gerard with awe and admiration — so sharp he was and penetrating.
“Yes. Oh, but how did you know? It’s rather wonderful.”
“When he was standing against the window there, the sleeve of his djellaba fell back. There was a scar like a white seam on his forearm.”
“Yes.”
Marguerite breathed her wonder at this prodigy of insight, and, like a good artist, having made her point, she did not labour it. She related with what reluctance Paul had afterwards told her the thing which he had done.
“I knew nothing of it before. I thought that he was on leave. I should have killed myself whilst there was yet time for him to return to the camp if I had known. Even when I did know, I hoped that he could make some excuse, and I tried to kill myself. But he had, of course, foreseen that, and prepared against it.”
Gerard nodded.
“How?”
“He had taken my little pistol secretly from the drawer where I kept it. He did not give it me back again until I promised that I would not use it unless the Moors were on the stair.”
Gerard de Montignac started suddenly and pushed his chair sharply back. Some quite new consideration had flashed into his mind. He looked at Marguerite with a sentence upon his lips. But he did not speak it. He turned away and took a turn across the room towards the window and back again, whilst Marguerite waited with her heart in her mouth.
“What am I to do?” he asked; and to Marguerite the fact of his actually addressing the question to her made the interview more of a nightmare than ever. He was standing close to her (breaking the breech of his revolver and snapping it to again, and almost unaware of who she was, and quite unaware that with each click and snap of the mechanism she could have screamed aloud). “What am I to do, Marguerite?”
Marguerite mastered her failing nerves.
“Those trenches outside Mulai Idris,” she said. “They were dug to resist the Zemmour. The people here might have used them against you but for Paul. He warned the Basha that he couldn’t win, that he would find you just and fair and careful of all his rights. Do you believe that?”
Gerard reflected.
“Yes, I do,” he said, slowly. “After all, he charged with Laguessière when Laguessière was put to it.”
“Charged with Laguessière?” repeated Marguerite.
“Yes — in Fez — one afternoon during the revolt. He had a great staff and used it — used it well. So much of the old creed remained with him, at all events.”
Yes, thought Marguerite, there had been an afternoon when Paul had been on edge and she had sent him out. He had come back, appeased, and a new man. The riddle of that change was now explained to her. But she had no leisure to dwell upon the explanation. Gerard had swung away again from her, and was now standing close to the window looking out across the chasm to the dark blue of the hill in the shadow opposite. One little step would carry him on to the balcony, and the butt of his revolver was still in his hand.
“Listen to me, Marguerite,” he said, in a low voice; and suddenly he became, to her thought, more dangerous in his calm than he had been in his anger. “Here’s a law broken by you and Paul, and see what misery has come of it! What loss! Shall I repair that law by breaking another? Hardly! Look at me, Marguerite!”
But he did not look at her. He even advanced a foot beyond the window-ledge so that the boards of the balcony creaked and groaned beneath its pressure.
“I could have lived in Paris with Deauville for the summer and Monte Carlo for the winter, and my own lands for the autumn — a pleasant, good life. I could have lived with women about me — the fine flower of them, the women who are exquisite and delicate. But I didn’t. I left the enjoyments to the others. I came out into these hot countries, the countries of squalor, to serve France. And I have served; yes, by God, I have served! That has been my creed. Shall I let another spit on it, even though he was my greatest friend? Not I!”
Marguerite gave all up for lost. The one chance at the eleventh hour was not to be tried out by Paul and her. Well — she was very tired. She closed her eyes that she might not see anything of what happened at the window — anything more in the world. If ever she had worn the look of one set apart by fate, as so many had declared, she wore it now, stamped upon the submission of her face. Her hands went to her girdle and felt within its folds; and that action saved her lover and herself. For Gerard de Montignac saw it as he was stepping out onto the boards of the balcony.
“Wait!” he cried, in a sharp, loud voice; and in a moment he was standing in front of her with a look of horror in his eyes. “The little pistol, which Paul took away from you and gave you back only on your promise — where is it?”
Marguerite neither moved nor answered him.
“It is there,” he cried, pointing to where her hand rested within her belt. It was that bedrabbled woman in the spangled skirt who had prophesied it. Henriette, yes, Henriette! It was strange over how many years that poor waif’s words had reached and with what effect. “No!” he cried. “You must go your ways. I’ll not have that upon my soul the day I die,” and he turned from her and rushed from the room, and in a few moments Marguerite heard the sound of a horse galloping away down the cobbled street as though its rider had no thought for his neck.
Gerard de Montignac talked for many hours the next day with the Basha in the house at the city’s top. But neither he nor the Basha spoke once of Si Tayeb Reha. They came to a good understanding, and Gerard rode back to his camp, his work in Mulai Idris done. He sat in his camp chair outside his tent that night watching the few lights upon the hillside go out one after the other and Mulai Idris glimmer, unsubstantial, as the silver city of a dream.
Gerard had carried off a small sort of triumph which would mean many good marks in the books of his great commander. But he was only thinking to-night of the two outcasts in the house on the city wall. Whither would they seek a refuge now that the gates of Mulai Idris were to stand open to the world? And was it worth their while? Marguerite’s haunted face and Paul Ravenel burrowing deeper and deeper into obscurity! Gerard turned to Laguessière, who was smoking at his side.
“Walk in the crowd, my friend! It is always less dangerous to walk in the crowd. Well, let us turn in, for we start early to-morrow.”
In the morning the tents were gone and Gerard’s column was continuing its march through the Zarhoun.
CHAPTER XXII
The Splendid Throw
WHAT HAD HAPPENED between the moment when Gerard de Montignac rode away from the door of Si Tayeb Reha’s house the first time and the moment when the pistol-shot rang out? It had all been Marguerite Lambert’s idea — a despairing clutch at some faint and far-off possibility, hardly a hope, yet worth putting to the proof. She had heard every word which Gerard had spoken. She had seen the revolver laid upon the table. She had seen even more than that. For when Gerard had gone from the room, Paul had taken the revolver at once in his hands. It would be a very little while before the sergeant noticed that Gerard’s revolver was missing from its pouch. He had not even time to write more than one “good-bye” to Marguerite. There were good friends who would look after her — the Basha himself, Selim his own servant.
The road to the coast passed across the plain below the city, and there was a letter for her long since written with his instructions, on the top of his desk. He paused after he had written his one word to make sure that he had forgotten nothing. The addresses of his agents and his lawyers were written in the letter and all that he had, his property in the English funds, his houses in Fez and Casablanca, was bequeathed to her in a will of which Mr. Ferguson had charge. No, nothing had been forgotten — except that Marguerite herself was watching him from behind the curtains. She came into the room.
Paul handed to her the paper with the one word “good-bye” written upon it.
“Marguerite, Gerard de Montignac has been here.”
“I know. I heard.”
“Then you understand, my dear. This is the end for me.”
“For both of us, then, Paul.”
He began to argue and stopped. The futility of his words was too evident. She would follow him, whatever he might say. He began to thank her for the great love she had lavished on him and he stopped again. “I could never tell you what you have meant to me,” he said, helplessly. “But if it was all to do again, I should do as I did. For nothing in the world would I have left you alone through those days in the house of Si Ahmed Driss. Only, it is a pity that it must all end like this.”
He took her in his arms and kissed her and put her from him. “Will you leave me now, my dear? At any moment the knock may come upon the door.”
It was then that Marguerite’s inspiration came to her. She besought him to hold his hand. She fetched a rope and an axe. Often she had noticed from the window that ledge of rock breaking the precipice below. Paul was inclined to revolt against the trick which she was asking him to play. It was not likely to succeed with Gerard de Montignac. It would only add one more touch of indignity to their deaths. But Marguerite was urgent.
“I’m not thinking of just saving our lives, Paul, so that we may fly and hide ourselves again in some still darker corner for a little while,” she said, eagerly. “I’ll tell you of my hope, my plan, afterwards. Now we must hurry.”
Paul doubled the rope over one of the iron stanchions of the balcony close to the wall, whilst Marguerite locked the door. He climbed over the rail, and, taking a turn of the doubled rope round the upper part of his right arm and another turn round his right thigh, he let himself down until he hung below the balcony. He kept his arms squared and his hands below the level of his chin, and placing the flat of his feet against the wall of the house, he was able, by slackening the coils round arm and thigh, to descend without effort to the ledge of rock, where he lay huddled in a counterfeit of death.
“Don’t move until you hear my voice calling to you,” she whispered. Then she drew up the rope and broke down the rail of the balcony with some blows of the axe, and, unlocking the door, hid away both axe and rope in another room. She came back swiftly, and then, taking up the heavy revolver, fired it out of the window and let it fall upon the boards of the balcony. She dropped to her knees, and thus Gerard de Montignac found her.
All through that scene, whilst life and death were in the balance for these two, Paul Ravenel lay motionless upon the ledge of rock below the city wall. He dared not look up; he heard Gerard’s voice raised in anger and scorn; he expected the shock of the bullet tearing through his heart. But the voice diminished to a murmur. Gerard had gone back into the room. Some debate was in progress, and while it was in progress, from this and that far quarter of the sky the vultures gathered and wheeled above the precipice. . . .
After a while he heard Marguerite’s voice, and, looking up, saw that she was letting down the rope to him. She had tied knots in it at intervals to help him in his ascent, and he clambered up to her side.
“Gerard has gone?” he asked.
“Yes. He will not come here again.”
“Then he believed you?”
“No. He left us in pity to live our lives out as best we could,” said Marguerite.
Paul nodded his head.
“Others will be coming and going now,” he said. “This city will become a show-place, very likely. We can’t remain in Mulai Idris because of those others.”
“And we can’t remain anywhere else because of ourselves,” said Marguerite, quietly.
Paul was not startled by the words. They were no more than the echo of words which he had been trying during this last half hour not to speak to himself. They had built up with elaborate care a great pretence of contentment, watching themselves so that there might be no betrayal of the truth, watching each other so that if the truth did at some unendurable moment flash out, no heed should be taken of it; and hoping even without any conviction that one day the contentment would grow real. But all that patient edifice of pretence was a crumble of dust now. The outer world in the person of Gerard de Montignac in his uniform had rushed in, with his hard logic, its scorn for duty abandoned, its emblems of duty fulfilled; and there was no more any peace for Paul Ravenel and Marguerite Lambert. To live for thirty or forty years more as they had been living! It was in both their thoughts that it would have been better for Gerard de Montignac to have done straightway what he threatened, and for Marguerite to have followed her lover as she had determined.
Paul sat down at the table with his eyes upon Marguerite. She had some hope, some plan. So much she had said. Was it, he wondered, the plan of which he from time to time had dreamed, but for her sake had never dared to speak? He waited.
“You are a man, Paul,” she began, “oh, generous as men should not be, but a man. And you sit here idle. A great personage in Mulai Idris, no doubt. The power behind the throne — the Basha’s throne!” The hard words were spoken with a loving gentleness which drew their sting. “A man must have endeavour — I don’t say success — but endeavour of a kind, if only in games. Otherwise what? He becomes a thing in carpet slippers, old before his youth is spent, and this you would dwindle, too, for me! No, my dear!”
Paul made no gesture and uttered no word. She was to speak her thought out.
“You laugh and joke with these people here. For five minutes at a time no doubt you can forget,” she continued. “But you can never exchange thoughts with your equals, you can never talk over old dreams you have had in common, old, hard, and tough experiences which you have shared. And these things, Paul, are all necessary for a man.”
