Marguerite drove her two trembling negresses out of the corners into which they had flown when the house was invaded, stood over them while they cooked the dinner, and strictly ordered that it should be served with the proper ceremonies. She dressed herself in her European clothes and with even more, to-night, of the scrupulous daintiness which was habitual to her. Paul watched her with a great pride and wonderment. “How in the world do you know at once what we have to learn?” he asked. “When people are rattled, routine’s the great remedy. Just doing the ordinary things at the ordinary hours lifts you along with a sort of assurance that life is going to be as sane to-morrow as it was yesterday. But we have men to watch, and they teach us these things. Where do you get them from?”
“From myself,” answered Marguerite, with a blush upon her cheeks, which her lover’s praise never failed to provoke. “I had to keep my own little flag of courage flying if I could.”
At half past nine they heard Selim’s three knocks upon the outer door, and Paul let him in and brought him to Marguerite in the room opening on to the patio. He brought with him a budget of black news. A couple of officers had been dragged from their horses and butchered in the streets. An engineer and his wife in Fez Djedid had been shot down as they sat at their luncheon. There had been an attack upon the H?tel de France, where the managress and a priest had been slain.
“There is a house in the Tala quarter,” said Paul, “where two veterinary surgeons and two other officers lodged. I saw men breaking through the roof to get at them this afternoon.”
“They escaped, Sidi. They let themselves down from a window into an alley. It is believed that they are hiding in a covered drain.”
“And the four French telegraph operators. They, too, occupied a house in the Tala.”
Selim had no good tidings to tell of them. The door of their house had been forced at midday. Throughout the afternoon they had resisted in an upper room, which they had barricaded, firing with what weapons they had until their ammunition was exhausted. At seven in the evening a rescue party had arrived, but only one of them was alive, and he grievously wounded.
“A rescue party!” asked Paul, wondering whence that party had come. There was not enough men at the headquarters in the hospital to do more than protect the quarter of the Consulates, even if they could do that.
“A battalion from Dar-Debibagh forced its way into the city at five o’clock this afternoon,” said Selim.
Paul’s face took life, his eyes kindled. No one knew better than he the difficulties which must have hampered that exploit.
“That was well done,” he cried. “Whose battalion?”
The old Algerian soldier replied:
“The Commandant Philipot’s.”
The gladness died out of Paul Ravenel’s face, and he sat in silence staring at the tiles of the floor. To Marguerite it was as though the light of a lamp waned and flickered out. She laid her hand upon his.
“That’s your battalion, Paul?”
Paul nodded, and whispered “Yes,” not trusting his voice over much.
“You should have been with it, my dear. But for me you would have led your company,” she said, remorsefully; and he cried out aloud suddenly in a voice which she had never heard him use before, a voice rough and violent and full of pain.
“I am on leave.”
Hearing him, she felt the compunction of one who has carelessly knocked against a throbbing wound. Her eyes went swiftly to his face. During these moments Paul Ravenel was off his guard, and she was looking upon a man in torture.
“The little Praslin will be leading my company,” he said, “and leading it just as well as I could have done.” He turned again to Selim. “Did the battalion have trouble to get through?”
“Great trouble, Sidi. The commandant tried to come in by the little gate in the Aguedal wall and the new gardens of the Sultan. But he was attacked by a swarm of men issuing from the Segma Gate on his left flank and by sharp-shooters on the wall itself in front of him.”
“And we taught them to shoot!” cried Paul in exasperation. “The commandant was held up?”
“Yes, Sidi.”
“What then? He was losing men, and quickly. What did he do?” Paul asked impatiently. His own men were under fire. He had got to know, and at once. “Out with it, Selim. What did the Commandant Philipot do?”
“He led his battalion down into the bed of the river Zitoun,” said Selim, and a long “Oh!” of admiration and relief from Paul welcomed the man?uvre. He spread before his eyes, in mind, an imaginary map of the difficult ground at that southwest corner of the city, outside the walls. Pressed hardly upon his left flank, at the mercy of the riflemen on the crest of the high, unscalable wall of the Aguedal, Commandant Philipot, leaving a rear-guard—trust the Commandant Philipot for that!—had disappeared with his battalion into the earth. Paul chuckled as he thought of it—the ingenuity and the audacity, too!
“He made for the Bab-el-Hadid?” he said.
“Yes,” answered Selim.
There had been risk, of course, risk of the gravest kind. Out of shot, the battalion certainly was—out of shot and out of sight. But, on the other hand, in the deep chasm of the Oued Zitoun it could not see any more than could its antagonists. If its rear-guard was overwhelmed by the insurgents from the Segma Gate, if a strong band of tribesmen rode up to the southern lip of the chasm and caught the battalion floundering below amongst the boulders and the swollen river! Why, there was an end of that battalion and, for the moment, of the relief of Fez. But he had got through—there was the fact. And by no other way and with no smaller risk could he have got through. Paul Ravenel, watching that unprinted map upon the floor, over which he bent, had no doubt upon that point. A great risk nobly taken for a great end, and adroitly imagined! And with what speed they must have covered that difficult ground!
“Well, the little Praslin would lead very well,” he said aloud, but with just a hint of effort in his cordiality. “He knows his work.”
“And you are on leave, Paul?”
Marguerite was watching her lover with startled eyes. But Paul noticed neither her look nor the urgent appeal of her voice. He was away with his company in the bed of the Oued Zitoun, now stumbling over the great stones, now flung down headlong by the rush of the rain-swollen torrent and pressing on again in the hurried march. He sat tracing with his finger on the tiles the convolutions of the river, the point where the battalion must leave its shelter and march through the gardens to the gates—lost to all else. And Marguerite, watching him, caught at any reason which could reassure her.
Of course, Paul was unconsciously expressing the regret of a true soldier that his company had gone upon difficult and hazardous service without him, and a soldier’s interest in a brilliant man?uvre successfully accomplished. His absorption meant no more than that. But—but—his cry, “I am on leave,” startled out of him a challenge, an obstinate defiance, harsh with pain, rang in her ears still, argue as she might. In spite of herself, an appalling suspicion flickered like lightning through her mind and went out—and flickered again.
She heard Paul asking questions of Selim and Selim answering. But she was asking of herself a question which made all other questions of little significance. If her suspicion were true, could his love for her remain? Could it live strongly and steadily after so enormous a sacrifice? Wouldn’t it die in contempt of himself and hatred of her? If Paul Ravenel had looked at Marguerite Lambert at this moment he would have seen the haggard dancing girl of the Villa Iris, as he had seen her under the grape-vine of the balcony with her seven francs clenched in her hand.
Paul, however, was giving his attention to Selim. The quarter of the hospitals and the Consulates was now thought to be safe, though the Moors, uplifted by their success, had planned to attack it that night. An attempt had been made by a company of Philipot’s battalion to force the Souk-Ben-Safi and its intricate, narrow streets, but the company had been driven back. A second company had been sent out to capture and hold the Bab-el-Mahroud, but it was now beleaguered and fighting for its life. Another section was at the Bab Fetouh, in the south of the town, under fire from the small mosque of Tamdert. A good many isolated Europeans had been rescued from the houses, and brought into the protected quarter, but Fez, as a whole, was still in the hands of the insurgents.
At this point Paul Ravenel broke in with a sharp question.
“You spoke to no one of this house?”
Selim shook his head.
“To no one, Sidi.”
“To none of the French soldiers? To no friend of the French? You are sure, Selim? You are very sure? There were no Europeans to be rescued from this house? Answer me............