It was 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 bougainvill?a 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............