The dark eyes under the haik met the Frenchwoman’s.
“Enter, Omar Ben Ali,” she said.
She felt her husband’s hand on her shoulder; he was grinning; and his squint had a fantastic eloquence.
“Speak the native lingo. That’s it. It is worth your while to make him comfortable. I have had a bit of luck.”
Omar was given a chair, cigarettes, coffee. He was told that he could sleep in the house, and during all these politenesses he watched the pair with a fanatical and half suspicious gravity.
Proyart, hilarious, was dragged by his wife into their bedroom.
“Idiot! What is the meaning of this?”
“Idiot, indeed!”
He took it as a magnificent joke.
“I tell you the gentleman has come here on private business. Business up at the Villa York, ma chérie. They shot a man up there a few weeks ago.”
And then Marie understood.
XIV
How these two came to understand each other was something of a mystery, but understand each other they did. A common hatred linked them together, and a native cruelty that both shared.
Omar was a very tall man, and he had brought a gun with him, the stock and barrel separate hidden under his burnous. For two days he lodged at the Mustapha Farm, never appearing outside the house. He would sit on a low stool close to Marie’s stove, smoking endless cigarettes, like a holy man sunk in meditation, and now and again he would look up at her with melancholy and fanatical eyes.
Marie Proyart knew what was in his mind. She shared his hatred, encouraged it, and in encouraging it, sought to control and direct it. She would study the lines of his expressive and cruel mouth, and try to discover what was going on behind those leaden-coloured eyes.
Omar Ben Ali had come to kill the man who had shot his brother. It was the old law, passionate and primitive, an adventurous duty that the man of his own race demanded. Blood for blood.
But Omar Ben Ali was more subtle than the ordinary fanatic armed with a gun or a knife. Blood was blood, but why be a butcher when you could be a torturer? A brother had been killed, but was the servant more responsible than the master who had given his servant a gun to kill with?
Omar was very cautious with his parleys with the Frenchwoman. He used to watch her eyes, and after a while her eyes convinced him, for what her voice said her eyes said even more fiercely.
“I hate. I wish to hurt—him—the Englishman. But how does one hurt people? With a stick or a stone or a knife. You and I—Omar Ben Ali—know that that is stupid and childish. One strikes at the thing that is dear.”
Omar nodded his head, and watched the smoke rise from his cigarette.
“An ass can kick blindly,” he said; “a man should know how and where a blow should fall.”
Proyart, in a state of fuddlement, yet had moments of suspicion. He would come in from the fields, and find the tall white figure squatting by the stove.
“What are you two plotting—hey?”
“The death of Mahomet.”
“Lord, what’s that to do with you? Why doesn’t the fellow go out with his gun and finish it? I am tired of him hanging about here.”
“Who brought him here, chéri?” she asked sweetly.
Her husband did not go beyond words, for Marie had a method of persuasion that never failed, and so Omar Ben Ali continued to sit by the stove. Life interested him, life and the motives of this woman who was trying to persuade him to do the very thing he was inclined to do. She was ready to tell him just how it could be done.
“Can you shoot straight, Omar?”
“When I wish to.”
He reached out and plucked at her skirt with thumb and forefinger. When he smiled his mouth took the shape of the crescent.
“Why does madame wish it?”
“Because I hate.”
“Why does madame hate?”
She looked down into the intelligent and cruel face.
“I will show you.”
And going into the next room she lifted the child out of the cradle, and bringing it to Omar Ben Ali, showed him its blotched and purple face.
“The Englishman miswished me, and put the evil eye upon me when I was with child. You see, the little one carries the evil wish on its face. Do you wonder that I do not mean his child to be born?”
Omar Ben Ali smiled, and fingered his chin.
“So—my hatred is useful to madame. Let us make a bargain.”
XV
York had been writing letters. He was standing at the window of his little cabinet d’étude, as men stand at windows in some happy moment to look out at life, and find it good.
His window showed him the southern slope of the garden, with its white boundary wall, and groups of cypresses and pines. The great plain was a sheet of gold, and above it the grey breasts and peaks of the mountains were reflecting the sunset. To the right the gradual slope of a broad path led York’s glance to the low growing and spreading pine and the group of cypresses where his wife lay propped up in her long chair. He saw her white dress, and the red cushions, and the brown cover of the book she was reading. A tawniness beside the chair was the body of Jean the mastiff stretched out—and apparently asleep.
York’s eyes rested on the figure of his wife.
“What a lottery—marriage!” he thought, as thousands of men have thought before him. “I was restless, and I married a woman. There was something wiser in me than I knew.”
And on this tranquil September evening, in this land of the vintage, scorched in the summer, but gentle and perfumed from autumn to the spring, he felt that his fate was beneficent. The stately shadows of the trees, but not a shadow athwart his consciousness.
Bess was strong and happy; she would go through her woman’s ordeal like the healthy and beloved comrade that she was. The doctor had told him that there was nothing to fear.
His glance travelled towards the mountains, but in the mid-distance something arrested it. He saw the white outline of the garden wall suddenly broken by a white excrescence thrusting up beside the green spire of a cypress. A man was pulling himself on to the top of the wall. The sunlight glinted on a line of metal.
York stood a moment, wondering, and then made a quick movement to the gun-rack behind the door. He kept a rifle there, ready loaded. He was back at the open window, and in the act of raising the rifle when the man on the wall fired.
York’s shot was like a reflex act, and yet it was controlled by the sudden steeliness of a man in the presence of some unforeseen horror. As he climbed out of the window, he had a glimpse of a white shape lying doubled up over the wall like a white garment hung there, but for the moment that other death did not concern him. He was running down the path. He could see Bess sitting up, with the book pressed against her bosom. He was aware of a moment of most horrible suspense. He expected to see the white figure sink suddenly.
“Bess——”
She looked at him wide-eyed, and with a kind of shocked bewilderment.
“Oh—Ronny—poor Jean——!”
York’s face underwent an extraordinary change. He saw the mastiff stretched out, with a trickle of red coming from under his muzzle.
“My dear——!”
“Poor Jean sprang up suddenly. He was in front of me. Something struck me——”
She was still holding the book pressed against her body, and half imbedded in the cover York saw Omar Ben Ali’s bullet.
* * *
Made and Printed in Great Britain by
The Greycaine Book Manufacturing Company Limited, Watford
F150.830
NOVELS BY
WARWICK DEEPING
Exiles
Roper’s Row
Old Pybus
Kitty
Doomsday
Sorrell and Son
Suvla John
Three Rooms
The Secret Sanctuary
Orchards
Lantern Lane
Second Youth
/>
Countess Glika
Unrest
The Pride of Eve
The King Behind the King
The House of Spies
Sincerity
Fox Farm
Bess of the Woods
The Red Saint
The Slanderers
The Return of the Petticoat
A Woman’s War
Valour
Bertrand of Brittany
Uther and Igraine
The House of Adventure
The Prophetic Marriage
Apples of Gold
The Lame Englishman
Marriage by Conquest
Joan of the Tower
Martin Valliant
Rust of Rome
The White Gate
The Seven Streams
Mad Barbara
Love Among the Ruins
* * *
Transcriber’s Notes:
The list of books by Warwick Deeping has been moved from the front of the book to the end of the book. Archaic spellings and hyphenation have been retained. Obvious typesetting and punctuation errors have been corrected without note. Other errors have been corrected as noted below.
page 228, had heard that she ==> had hoped that she
page 385, a ginger a coloured and ==> a ginger coloured and
page 545, happening on a bicycle, ==> happening by on a bicycle,
[The end of The Short Stories of Warwick Deeping by Warwick Deeping]
The Short Stories of Warwick Deeping Page 89