What had happened between the moment when Gerard de Montignac rode away from the door of Si Tayeb Reha’s house the first time and the moment when the pistol-shot rang out? It had all been Marguerite Lambert’s idea—a despairing clutch at some faint and far-off possibility, hardly a hope, yet worth putting to the proof. She had heard every word which Gerard had spoken. She had seen the revolver laid upon the table. She had seen even more than that. For when Gerard had gone from the room, Paul had taken the revolver at once in his hands. It would be a very little while before the sergeant noticed that Gerard’s revolver was missing from its pouch. He had not even time to write more than one “good-bye” to Marguerite. There were good friends who would look after her—the Basha himself, Selim his own servant. The road to the coast passed across the plain below the city, and there was a letter for her long since written with his instructions, on the top of his desk. He paused after he had written his one word to make sure that he had forgotten nothing. The addresses of his agents and his lawyers were written in the letter and all that he had, his property in the English funds, his houses in Fez and Casablanca, was bequeathed to her in a will of which Mr. Ferguson had charge. No, nothing had been forgotten—except that Marguerite herself was watching him from behind the curtains. She came into the room.
Paul handed to her the paper with the one word “good-bye” written upon it.
“Marguerite, Gerard de Montignac has been here.”
“I know. I heard.”
“Then you understand, my dear. This is the end for me.”
“For both of us, then, Paul.”
He began to argue and stopped. The futility of his words was too evident. She would follow him, whatever he might say. He began to thank her for the great love she had lavished on him and he stopped again. “I could never tell you what you have meant to me,” he said, helplessly. “But if it was all to do again, I should do as I did. For nothing in the world would I have left you alone through those days in the house of Si Ahmed Driss. Only, it is a pity that it must all end like this.”
He took her in his arms and kissed her and put her from him. “Will you leave me now, my dear? At any moment the knock may come upon the door.”
It was then that Marguerite’s inspiration came to her. She besought him to hold his hand. She fetched a rope and an axe. Often she had noticed from the window that ledge of rock breaking the precipice below. Paul was inclined to revolt against the trick which she was asking him to play. It was not likely to succeed with Gerard de Montignac. It would only add one more touch of indignity to their deaths. But Marguerite was urgent.
“I’m not thinking of just saving our lives, Paul, so that we may fly and hide ourselves again in some still darker corner for a little while,” she said, eagerly. “I’ll tell you of my hope, my plan, afterwards. Now we must hurry.”
Paul doubled the rope over one of the iron stanchions of the balcony close to the wall, whilst Marguerite locked the door. He climbed over the rail, and, taking a turn of the doubled rope round the upper part of his right arm and another turn round his right thigh, he let himself down until he hung below the balcony. He kept his arms squared and his hands below the level of his chin, and placing the flat of his feet against the wall of the house, he was able, by slackening the coils round arm and thigh, to descend without effort to the ledge of rock, where he lay huddled in a counterfeit of death.
“Don’t move until you hear my voice calling to you,” she whispered. Then she drew up the rope and broke down the rail of the balcony with some blows of the axe, and, unlocking the door, hid away both axe and rope in another room. She came back swiftly, and then, taking up the heavy revolver, fired it out of the window and let it fall upon the boards of the balcony. She dropped to her knees, and thus Gerard de Montignac found her.
All through that scene, whilst life and death were in the balance for these two, Paul Ravenel lay motionless upon the ledge of rock below the city wall. He dared not look up; he heard Gerard’s voice raised in anger and scorn; he expected the shock of the bullet tearing through his heart. But the voice diminished to a murmur. Gerard had gone back into the room. Some debate was in progress, and while it was in progress, from this and that far quarter of the sky the vultures gathered and wheeled above the precipice. . . .
After a while he heard Marguerite’s voice, and, looking up, saw that she was letting down the rope to him. She had tied knots in it at intervals to help him in his ascent, and he clambered up to her side.
“Gerard has gone?” he asked.
“Yes. He will not come here again.”
“Then he believed you?”
“No. He left us in pity to live our lives out as best we could,” said Marguerite.
Paul nodded his head.
“Others will be coming and going now,” he said. “This city will become a show-place, very likely. We can’t remain in Mulai Idris because of those others.”
“And we can’t remain anywhere else because of ourselves,” said Marguerite, quietly.
Paul was not startled by the words. They were no more than the echo of words which he had been trying during this last half hour not to speak to himself. They had built up with elaborate care a great pretence of contentment, watching themselves so that there might be no betrayal of the truth, watching each other so that if the truth did at some unendurable moment flash out, no heed should be taken of it; and hoping even without any conviction that one day the contentment would grow real. But all that patient edifice of pretence was a crumble of dust now. The outer world in the person of Gerard de Montignac in his uniform had rushed in, with his hard logic, its scorn for duty abandoned, its emblems of duty fulfilled; and there was no more any peace for Paul Ravenel and Marguerite Lambert. To live for thirty or forty years more as they had been living! It was in both their thoughts that it would have been better for Gerard de Montignac to have done straightway what he threatened, and for Marguerite to have followed her lover as she had determined.
Paul sat down at the table with his eyes upon Marguerite. She had some hope, some plan. So much she had said. Was it, he wondered, the plan of which he from time to time had dreamed, but for her sake had never dared to speak? He waited.
“You are a man, Paul,” she began, “oh, generous as men should not be, but a man. And you sit here idle. A great personage in Mulai Idris, no doubt. The power behind the throne—the Basha’s throne!” The hard words were spoken with a loving gentleness which drew their sting. “A man must have endeavour—I don’t say success—but endeavour of a kind, if only in games. Otherwise what? He becomes a thing in carpet slippers, old before his youth is spent, and this you would dwindle, too, for me! No, my dear!”
Paul made no gesture and uttered no word. She was to speak her thought out.
“You laugh and joke with these people here. For five minutes at a time no doubt you can forget,” she continued. “But you can never exchange thoughts with your equals, you can never talk over old dreams you have had in common, old, hard, and tough experiences which you have shared. And these things, Paul, are all necessary for a man.”
Again Paul Ravenel neither denied nor agreed. He left to her the right of way.
“And in spite of all you still love me!” she cried, in a sudden fervour, clasping her hands together upon her breast. “Me whom you should hate. I clutch the wonder of that to my heart. I must keep your love.”
Paul Ravenel smiled.
“There’s no danger of your losing it, Marguerite.”
Marguerite shook her head.
“But there is—oh, not at once! But I am warned, Paul. There’s the light showing on the reef. I keep my course at more than my peril.”
Paul went back upon his wo............