the longer the silence grew, the more difficult gerard de montignac felt it was to break. he had entered the room, clothed upon with authority, sensible of it and prepared to demand explanations and exact retribution. but he had now a curious uneasiness. his authority seemed to be slipping from him. opposite to him without a movement of his body and his face still as a mask, stood le grand serieux, as half in jest, half in earnest, he used to label paul ravenel. he had not a doubt of his identity. but le grand serieux was altogether in earnest le grand serieux at this moment.
a quiet, tragic figure, drawn to his full height, wearing his dignity with the ease of an accustomed garment, when he should be—what? crushed under shame, faltering excuses, cringing! gerard de montignac said to himself: “why, i might be the culprit! it might be for me to offer an explanation, or to try to.” he almost wondered if he was the culprit, so complete was his discomfort, and so utterly he felt himself at a disadvantage. he whipped himself to a sneer.
“i am afraid that i am not very welcome, si tayeb reha,” he said, speaking in french.
“si tayeb reha! yes! that is my name,” returned the moor, in the mohgrebbin dialect of arabic.
“alias ben sedira of meknes. alias paul ravenel.”
the moor frowned in perplexity.
“alias,” he repeated, doubtfully, “and p?l rav——” he gave the name up. “what are these words? if your excellency would speak my language——”
“your language!” gerard interrupted, roughly. “since when have the outcasts a language of their own?”
he flung himself into a chair. he was not going to take a part in any comedy. he continued to speak in french. “you thought you were safe enough here, no doubt. oh, it was a clever plan, i grant you. who would look for paul ravenel in the sacred city of mulai idris? yet not so safe, after all, if any one knew that you had once travelled through the zahoun in the train of si ahmed driss of ouezzan.”
he leaned forward suddenly as some prosecuting counsél in a criminal court might do, seeking to terrify a defendant into an expression or a movement of guilt. but si tayeb reha was simply worried because he could not understand a word of all the scorn which was tumbling from gerard’s mouth. the officer was angry—that was only too evident—and with him, si tayeb reha! if only he could make it all out! gerard grew more exasperated than ever.
“no, not safe at all if any one had seen you come out of these gates in the rabble to drive away a visitor to volubilis. baumann, eh? do you remember baumann of the affaires indigènes, paul ravenel?”
si tayeb reha raised his hands:
“your excellency speaks in a tongue i do not understand.”
“you understand very well. sanctuary, eh? if one guessed you had run to earth here—sanctuary! no one dare violate the sacred city of mulai idris. once sheltered within its walls, safe to lead the dreadful squalid life you’ve chosen right to its last mean day! your mistake, paul ravenel! the arm of france is stretched over all this country.”
gerard stopped abruptly and flung himself back in his chair in disgust. he was becoming magniloquent now. in a minute he would be ridiculous, and over against him all the while stood this renegade, dwarfing him by his very silence, and the stillness of his body, putting him in the wrong—for that was it! putting him in the wrong who was in the right.
gerard had imagination. he was hampered now by that accursed gift of the artist. even whilst he spoke he was standing outside himself and watching himself speak, and act, and watching with eyes hostilely critical. thus were things well interpreted, but not thus were they well done. thus they were made brilliantly to live again; but not thus were they so contrived as to be worthy to live again. since by that road come hesitations and phrases that miss their mark.
he tried to sting si tayeb reha into a rejoinder.
“trenches, too! fire-trenches on the latest plan—so that if by chance we should come and be fools enough to come without guns”—he broke off and beat upon the table with his closed fist—“you would fight france, would you, to keep your burrow secret! the insolence of it! the zemmour indeed! fire-trenches and traverses and the rest of it against the zemmour.”
si tayeb reha leapt upon a word familiar to his tongue.
“the zemmour! yes,” he cried, smiling his relief. here was something which he could understand. “the zemmour threatened us two, three, four weeks ago. we made ready to welcome them. but they did not come. they were very wise, the zemmour!” and he chuckled and nodded.
gerard found this man of smiles and cunning easier to talk with than the aloof masked figure of a minute ago.
“it was you who constructed those trenches and against us, who were once your comrades,” he said sternly.
si tayeb reha was once more at a loss.
“if your excellency will not speak my tongue, how shall i answer you?” he asked, plaintively, and gerard did not trouble to answer.
“i ought to send you down to meknes, for a court-martial to deal with you,” he said, reflectively. “but all strange crimes have their lures. they breed. god knows what decent-living youngster might get his imagination unwholesomely stirred and do as you have done and bring his name to disgrace! besides—do you know who guards the gate of mulai idris whilst i talk to you? who but laguessière? captain laguessière.” he searched the still face for a tremor, a twitch of recognition. si tayeb reha had apparently given up the attempt to understand. he stood leaning against the wall at the side of the window and looking out across the ravine to the mountainside.
“laguessière, at whose side you charged twisting your staff—do you remember?—back over the bridge by the lime-kilns in fez two years ago.”
the light fell full upon the face of the man at the window. it seemed to gerard de montignac impossible that any man, even the grand serieux, who had so often carried his life in his hands through the solitary places, could have learnt so to school his features and keep all meaning from his eyes.
“yes, that charge counts for you, and something else which shouldn’t count at all. you and i were at st. cyr together.”
indeed, that counted most of all. the sense of an old comradeship broken, the traditions of a great college violated, these had been the true cause of gerard de montignac’s discomfort. the years were beginning to build the high barriers about gerard, shutting off great tracts of which he had once had glimpses to make the heart leap, taking the bright colour from his visions. a treasure-house of good memories was something nowadays to value, and here was one of the good memories, almost the most vivid of them all, destroyed. he rose from his chair, and as he rose, a curtain moved which covered an archway, moved and ever so slightly parted. it was just behind si tayeb reha’s shoulder, and a little to his right at the side of the room; so that he did not notice the movement. gerard de montignac could look through the narrow opening. he had a glimpse of a woman with her face veiled, an orange scarf about her head, a broad belt of gold brocade about her white robe. somehow the sight of her helped him, though he saw her but for a second, before the curtains closed again. it spurred him to that statement which from the outset he had been working to.
“so that’s it!” he cried. “a woman, eh? two years since she took your fancy! she must be getting on now, mustn’t she? what’s her age? seventeen? and for that, honour, career, a decent life, all, into the dustbin!”
he drew his heavy revolver from the pouch at his belt and laid it on the table.
“it is loaded,” he said. “you have just the time until my sergeant notices that i have left my revolver behind in this house. if i come back, and—no shot has been fired—then it is meknes with all its shame and the same end.”
nothing surprised gerard de montignac more than the coolness with which si tayeb reha, as his old comrade called himself, received his sentence of death. he advanced to the table where the revolver lay and took the weapon up with a smile of curiosity and admiration.
“we make no such weapons as these,” he said in arabic, examining the pistol with all a moor’s fascination for mechanical instruments. “that, your excellency, is why we are never a match for you and we must open our gates at your summons.”
he had never said one word except in arabic during the whole of that interview, just as gerard had stubbornly refused to speak anything but french. gerard watched him toying with the weapon for a second and then turned rapidly away. he could not but admire his old friend’s courage; he could not but think: “what a waste of a good man!” he went out of the room without another word or another look. he was sick at heart. he no longer cared whether he had been peevish or argumentative or what kind of figure he had cut. one of the glamorous things in his life, his belief in the grand serieux, had been taken from him.
he mounted his horse and rode away, wishing for that shot to explode as quickly as possible, so that he might bury the dreadful episode out of sight and forget it altogether.
but though he listened with both his ears and though he walked his horse as slowly as he could, he heard nothing. he saw his sergeant suddenly look at his belt. it was coming, then, without a doubt. the next moment the sergeant was at his side and looking up into his face.
“my commandant, you have left your revolver behind in that house.”
gerard de montignac took all the time that he could. he stared at the sergeant and made him repeat his statement as though he had been lost in thought and had never heard it at all. then he looked down at the holster and fingered it as if he were trying to recollect where in the world he had taken the revolver out.
“why, that’s true,” he said, at last. he wheeled his horse around and rode back very dispiritedly with his chin sunk upon his breast. “it is to be meknes after all, then, and all the public shame,” the sergeant heard him mutter; and then a pistol cracked sharp and clear, and gerard raised his face. it was lit with a great relief.
they were only ten paces from the house. gerard dismounted and gave the reins to the sergeant.
“wait for me here! keep the door clear!” he ordered. he had left the door of the house open when he rode away. it was open still. gerard ran up the stairs and burst into the room. there was a smell of gunpowder in the air, and the moorish woman with the orange scarf and the white robe and the deep gold waistband was standing with her hands pressed over her face.
but there was no sign of si tayeb reha anywhere. they had tried to trick him, then! they imagined that he would accept the evidence of the pistol-shot and continue on his way! they took him for no better than a child, it seemed. no, that would not do!
“where is he?” he asked, angrily, of the girl, and now he, too, spoke in arabic.
she pointed a trembling hand towards the window; and gerard saw that the rail of the balustrade of the balcony was broken and that the revolver lay upon the boards. gerard stepped out from the window and looked down.
the balcony had been built out from the sheer wall; it was a rough thing of boards, supported upon iron stanchions, and jutting out above the deep chasm at the edge of the town. gerard could see between the boards deep down a precipice of rocks to a tiny white thread of stream and clumps of bushes. he drew close to the broken rail and leaned cautiously over. caught upon some outcropping rocks, a little way below the wall, hung the body of si tayeb reha. he was lying face downwards, his arms outspread. the story of what had happened was written there for him to read.
paul ravenel had shot himself on the balcony, the revolver had fallen from his hand, his body had crashed through the flimsy rail and toppled down until it had been caught on the rocks below. yes, no doubt! the mere fall from that height, even if ravenel had been unhurt, would have been enough. yet—yet—there had been a long delay before the shot was fired. gerard looked keenly and swiftly about the room. no, there was no sign of a rope.
he looked at the girl. she was now crouched down upon her knees, her face hidden between her hands, her body rocking, whilst a wail like a chant, shrill of key but faint, made a measure for her rocking. she was like an animal in pain—that was all, and for her paul had thrown a great name to the winds! what a piece of irony that she, with hardly more brain and soul than a favourite dog, should have cost france so much!
gerard stooped and picked up his revolver. he broke the breech, ejected the one exploded cartridge, and closed the breech again with a snap. he leaned forward again to take a last look at that poor rag of flesh and bone, hung there for the vultures to feed upon, which once had been his friend—and he was aware of a subtle change in the woman behind him within the room. oh, very slight, and for so small a space of time! but just for an imperceptible moment her wail had faltered, the rocking of her body had been stayed. she had been watching him between those fingers with the henna-dyed nails which were so tightly pressed over her face.
he looked at her closely without moving from his position. it was all going correctly on again—the lament, the swaying, the proper conventional expression of the abandonment of grief. yet she had been watching him, and for a moment she had been startled and afraid. of what? and the truth flashed upon him. he had been fingering his revolver. she was afraid of the coup de grace.
then they were tricking him between them—she with her wailing, he spread out on the bulge of rock below. they should see! he stretched out his arm downwards, the revolver pointed in his hand. and out of the tail of his eye he saw the woman cease from her exhibition and rise to her feet. as he took his aim she unwound the veil from before her face. he could not but look at her; and having looked, he could not take his eyes from her face. he stumbled into the room. “marguerite lambert!” he said, in a voice of wonder! “yes, marguerite lambert!”
