Paul was rewarded out of all measure for his courtesy. For as Henriette sat and drank her whiskey and soda, she talked. “You were civil to me when your friend would have sent me contemptuously away,” she said. “And when I told you that I had dined at the Café de Paris only three weeks ago, and your friend laughed, you did not. You pretended that you believed it. That was polite of you. For we both knew that never once in all my life have I dined at the Café de Paris or any such swell restaurant in Paris. And it was kind of you. It made me ready to fancy that I had dined there and that does one a little good, eh? One feels better in one’s self. So I will be kind in my turn. You are interested in that little one,” and she jerked her head towards the table in the Bar, where Marguerite had rejoined the noisy group. “Yes, she has chic, and she is pretty on her feet, and she has a personality, but—” Paul Ravenel leaned forward, his face hardening.
“Mademoiselle, I do not want to hear.”
“Oh, I am not going to crab her,” replied Henriette, and her petulant temper flamed up. “You think, I suppose, that women cannot admire a girl who is younger and prettier than themselves and cannot like her. That is foolish. I tell you we all like Marguerite Lambert. And I speak to you for your good and hers. But, of course, if you do not care to hear me—”
“I beg your pardon, Mademoiselle,” said Paul. “I will listen to you very willingly.”
Henriette’s passions were no more than bubbles upon the surface of her good-humour. They burst very quickly and left no traces. The flush faded from her throat and forehead and no doubt from the painted cheeks as well, though that could not be discovered by mortal eye.
“Listen,” she said. “Your friend asked me what Marguerite Lambert was doing at the Villa Iris, and I would not answer him. Why should I? It was clear what he meant, wasn’t it? Why was she, who might really have dined at the Café de Paris three weeks ago, already here at Casablanca, so near to the end of things?” Henriette’s face grew for a moment haggard with terror, as she formulated the problem. The last stage but one of the dreadful pilgrimage of her class! She herself was making that journey, and what lay beyond and so hideously close, loomed up when she thought of it, and appalled her.
Paul interrupted her with a word of solace.
“You are making too much of his question.”
But Henriette would have none of his consolation.
“No, that is what he meant and what you meant, too?”
“I said nothing.”
“But the question was in your face. The question and a great deal of trouble. Why was Marguerite Lambert already at Casablanca?”
Paul did not contradict her again. She would not believe him if he did and he might lose the answer to the question.
“You made it still more difficult to understand,” he said frankly. There was no good to be gained by beating about the bush with this woman who was disposed to help him. “For though you didn’t answer our question you added to it another perplexity. You said that she wouldn’t remain here long.”
Henriette nodded.
“That is right. The answer to both questions is the same. She drifted here so soon, and she will stay for so short a time, because she waits for the grand passion. Yes, the little fool!” but it was not in scorn that she styled Marguerite a little fool, but with a half-contemptuous tenderness, and perhaps a tiny spite of envy.
“The grand passion!” Paul repeated, wondering what in the world his companion meant.
“Yes. Oh, she is quite frank with the rest of us. We talk, you know, when we are dressing, and after the café is closed, when we are changing back to our street clothes. Until the grand passion comes, nothing, nothing, nothing to any man. Look, they are dancing again, she and Petras Tetarnis, the Greek.”
So he was a Greek, the man with the yellow-buttoned boots and the heavy black moustache! Henriette watched them with the eye of a professional.
“Yes, she dances prettily, that little one. But would you like a girl to dance with you just in that way—so unconcerned, so half-asleep, so utterly indifferent to you? And if you wanted her as Petras Tetarnis does, furiously, wouldn’t you be mad when she swam in your arms so lightly, with so correct a grace and not one look or smile or thought for you? So that if you spoke to her, she had to recall her thoughts from the end of the world before she could answer you? You would be wild with rage, eh? You would want to take that slim little white throat between your two big hands and squeeze and squeeze until some attention was paid to you, if it was only the attention of agony and fear. Am I not right?”
Paul’s face turned white. He leaned across the table and cried in a low, fierce voice:
“Was that what you meant, Henriette, when you said that she would not be here long? That the Greek would murder her?”
Henriette burst into a laugh.
“Oh, no, no, no, my friend. Petras Tetarnis is not the man to run such perils. He has made much money, since the French have come to Casablanca. He is a prudent one. It would have to be a very dark night and a very empty street before Tetarnis risked his beautiful money and all the enjoyment he gets from it; and even then some one else would have to do the work. But he will use other ways.”
“What kind of ways?” asked Paul.
Henriette shrugged her shoulders.
“He is always here. He is rich. Madame Delagrange makes much of him. Very likely he has lent her money, and if so, he will want his interest.”
“I see.”
Paul leaned back in his chair and Henriette looked at him curiously.
“You were much moved, my friend, when I spoke of the big, coarse hands gripping that little throat.”
“Well, any man would be, and whoever the woman,” he protested, and Henriette smiled her disbelief.
“Would you have been so moved if it had been my throat which you thought to be in danger?” she asked shrewdly. “No! Let us be frank. You would have said, ‘It is Henriette’s business to look after herself. She is old enough, anyway’; and you would have forgotten me the next moment.” She turned her eyes again upon Marguerite Lambert.
“The grand passion. Oh, la, la, la! Until it comes nothing, oh, but nothing at all for any one—not half a heart beat! But when it does come, everything, at once, with both hands. The folly!”
“The glorious imprudence!” replied Paul.
Henriette broke into a harsh laugh as she heard the softly spoken words and saw the light in Paul Ravenel’s eyes. It was the light of a great relief rather than of hope. The fear which had plagued him all through this evening had gone now. There was no need for the excuses. He had not to argue a defence for Marguerite Lambert.
“The glorious imprudence,” Henriette repeated with a sneer. “Yes, so you say—you, the man who has everything to gain from the glorious imprudence and when he is tired of it, can drop it in the road behind him. But I tell you those are not good ideas for a girl who dances for her living, in the cafés. There is the patron behind the patron like Petras Tetarnis, who will make trouble if he doesn’t get what he wants, for there are rich patrons whom the patron does not wish to drive away. Or there are jealousies which may mean fighting and the police. No, my fine gentleman! Girls who are difficult, the Villa Irises are no place for them. That is why Marguerite Lambert at twenty is dancing in Casablanca and will not dance there long.”
“But if the great passion comes?” cried Paul.
“Then it must come quick! Believe me, very quick. Petras Tetarnis is growing troublesome. And if it comes! Shall I tell you what will happen? She will blow her brains out! Oh, you may start in your chair. But look at her where she sits! There is the mark of fate already upon her face. It is written, as they say in this country.”
So to Henriette as to Gerard de Montignac and to Paul Ravenel, that indefinable look of destiny in Marguerite was evident. Paul asked himself whether it was not simply the outward and visible sign of that passionate self-respect which had kept her untarnished against the rush and play of the great passion when it came. Or was the future really written there—a history of great joys perhaps and great sorrows certainly to be?
“So Marguerite lives on seven francs a day and—”
She got no further. Paul interrupted her with an exclamation of horror.
“Seven francs!”
“Yes. That is what our generous Madame Delagrange pays us each night and we provide our own dancing kit out of it. Oh, the little fool starves. That is certain—all the more certain because she will not let any of the clients here give her food.”
“But she let me,” cried Paul with a smile of pride.
“Yes, she let you to-night. But the others, never, never, lest—you understand? Lest they should make a claim.”
“Out of so small a service?” asked Paul incredulously.
Henriette smiled.
“You have been lucky in your world,” she said. “The clients of the Villa Iris are not so generous. They will make a claim out of anything, as, by the way, most men will, if the claim may get them what they want. So that little one, since she will give herself to none of them, is wise to starve. You are the only one from whom she has taken food. It is curious, eh? It is because of that and because you treat me like a human being that I, Henriette, who like the little fool, ramble on so seriously to you to-night.”
The plastered face softened into tenderness and the bird-like eyes shone and filled suddenly with tears.<............