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 Montig............