But he held her close to him. “Poor child, what a night of horror she must have lived through,” he reflected. Lying on her bed in the dark, waiting for the first gleam of dawn, for the first sounds of the city’s awakening, and shutting her eyes and her ears against the terror of these savage and wild-eyed fanatics, forbidding her heart to sink before the ordeal of her great sacrifice. She had decked herself out in her jewels, like that bride of whom she had told him, but for a different reason; that she might the sooner attract notice and invite murder.
“It was mad, Marguerite!” he cried, and then, holding her to his heart. “But it was splendid!”
Already her strength was waning. She no longer struggled. She hung in his arms. Her hands stroked his face.
“Let me go, Paul,” she pleaded, “won’t you? It will be quick. The first of them who sees me! Oh, while I can do it. My dear, my dear, I’ll gladly die for you, I love you so.”
“Quick?” exclaimed Paul Ravenel, savagely. “You don’t know them! I have seen our men on the battlefields. Quick? My dear, they would bind you hand and foot and give you to their women to mutilate alive.”
Marguerite uttered a cry and struggled against him no more. He carried her up the stairs, undressed her, and put her to bed. She laid her hand in his. He would have his way. She gave herself into his keeping and, holding fast on to his hand, she fell asleep.
That morning the roar of the guns was louder, and the shells were flying over the city.
CHAPTER XVII
The Outcasts
THAT DAY, THE eighteenth of April, broke in gloom. A heavy canopy of sullen clouds hung over Fez. Nowhere within eye’s reach was there a slant of sunshine. There were no shadows, no flashes of colour. White houses and dark gardens and green-tiled mosques all lay very clear and near and distinct, but without any of the radiance which on a day of sunlight gives to the city so magical a beauty, that a stranger looking down upon it can believe that he has wandered into fairyland.
The shells were screaming over Fez from the south. They dispersed the Moors holding the North Fort outside the walls, and they destroyed the Castle of Sidi Bou Nafa in Fez Djedid, close to the Sultan’s Palace, which was held in force by the insurgents. But there were too many refugees still hiding and too many Fazi secretly friendly to the French to make possible such a bombardment as would reduce the city to terms.
The insurgents were still in possession of every quarter of the town except the Sultan’s Palace and the district of the Embassy and Consulates. The little post at the Bab-el-Mahroud had been exterminated during the night. The company of which that post had been a section, under Captain Henry, subsequently to be famous as a general upon a wider field, was fighting its way desperately back in the Souk Senadjine. Another company sent to join hands with him and occupy the quarter of Tala was held up in the Souk-Ben-Safi; and the post at the southern gate of Bab Fetouh was in desperate straits. The only gleam that morning was the rescue of the guests besieged in the Hôtel de France under the covering fire of a platoon stationed on the roof of the British Consulate. The screams of the women indeed shrilled from the terraces with a fiercer exultation than even on the outbreak of the rising.
Marguerite woke later to the sound of them. She held her hands over her ears and called loudly to Paul:
“I want to look at your arm,” she said, when he ran to her.
“It’s going on finely. It can wait until you are dressed.”
“No.”
She slipped her legs out of bed and sat on the edge of it, thrusting her feet into her slippers. She wanted to do something at once which would take her thoughts from that piercing and inhuman din. Paul brought to her the medicine-chest and she dressed and bandaged the half-healed wound.
“Thank you, Marguerite. I’ll tell them to get your bath ready,” he said, as he turned to go. But the screaming overhead made her blood run cold. She could endure the roar of the seventy-fives, the rattle of musketry, even the wild yelling of the men; but this cruel frenzy of the gaily-dressed women upon the house-tops, never tiring whilst daylight lasted, shocked her as something obscene, the screaming of offal-birds, not women, a thing not so much unnatural as an accusation against nature and the God that made nature. She quickly called her lover back.
“Paul, you took my little pistol from the drawer of my table there last night.”
“Well?” said Paul, looking at her in doubt.
“I want you to give it back to me.”
Paul Ravenel hesitated.
“You need not fear,” she continued. “Yesterday I meant to use it — for your dear sake as I thought — or rather for both our sakes. But since you will keep me with you — why, all that’s over and I shall not use it unless there is real need. Listen!”
She lifted her hand and, as she listened, shuddered. “You spoke of those women this morning. What they would do to me. I should feel — safe if you would give my pistol back to me.”
Paul took it from his belt and laid it on the flat of her hand.
“Thank you,” she said, with a sigh of relief. She sat on the edge of the bed, her hair tumbled about her shoulders, smiling at this little weapon which could make death swift and easy, like a child delighted with a new toy.
Things which make the flesh crawl and the spirit shudder have sometimes a curious and dreadful fascination. All through their luncheon these strident cries called to Marguerite, drew her like some morbid vice. She wanted to creep up on to the roof, to crouch behind the parapet, though she knew that her heart would miss its beats and her senses reel on the edge of terror. And when Paul Ravenel said:
“Marguerite, I shall lie down on my bed and sleep when we have finished,” she realized that it was her own wish which he was uttering. She was almost disappointed when he lit a cigar. A cigarette, yes; but a cigar! That needs a deal of smoking. “You’ll wake me if there’s need,” said Paul. “I think that I shall sleep soundly.”
Marguerite noticed the heaviness of his eyelids, and was filled with compunction.
“If I must,” she answered, determining that whatever happened he who had hardly slept at all for fifty hours should sleep his sleep out now.
Yet within an hour she had waked him.
Hardly, indeed, had Paul’s eyes closed before she climbed to the roof. The terraces of the houses were a very kaleidoscope of shifting colours. Orange, scarlet, deep waistbelts of cloth of gold over dresses of purple and blue and pink were grouped in clusters here like flower beds. There the women moved in and out with frantic gestures like revellers in Bedlam. And over all the shrill vibrant pæan like a canopy!
Marguerite watched and listened, shivering — until one house caught and riveted her eyes. Beneath her flowed the Karouein river. The farther bank was lined with the walls of houses, and about one, a little to Marguerite’s right, there was suddenly a great commotion. Marguerite lifted her head cautiously above the parapet and looked down. A narrow path ran between the houses and the stream, and this path was suddenly crowded with men as though they had sprung from the earth. They beat upon the door, they fired senselessly at the blind mud walls with rifles, they shouted for admittance. And the roof of that one house was empty. Marguerite was suddenly aware of it. It was the only empty roof in all that row of houses.
The shouts from the path were redoubled. Orders to open became screams of exultation, threats of vengeance. Marguerite, looking down from her high vantage point, saw the men upon the pathway busy like ants. A group of them clustered suddenly. They seemed to stoop, to lengthen themselves into line — and now she saw what they were lifting. A huge square long beam of wood — a battering ram? Yes, a battering ram. Three times the beam was swung against the door to the tune of some monotonous rhythm of the East, which breathed of deserts and strange temples and abiding wistfulness, curiously out of keeping with the grim violence which was used. At the fourth blow the door burst and broke. It was as though a river dam had broken and a river torrent leapt in a solid shaft through the breach.
For a few moments thereafter nothing was seen by Marguerite. The walls of the house were a curtain between her and the tragic stage. She could only imagine the overturning of furniture, the pillage of rooms a moment since clean and orderly, now a dirty wreckage, a pandemonium of a search — and then the empty roof was no longer empty. A man sprang out upon it, a man wearing the uniform of a French officer. He had been bolted like a rat by dogs.
Clearly his enemies were upon his heels. Marguerite saw him spring over the parapet on to the adjoining roof and a cloud of women assail him. Somehow he threw them off, somehow he dived and dodged between them, somehow he reached the further parapet, found a ladder propped against the outside wall, and slid down it on to a third housetop. And as he reached the flat terrace, yet another swarm of screaming termagants enveloped him. He was borne down to the floor of the room.
For a little while there was a wild tossing of arms, a confusion of bodies. It seemed to Marguerite as though all these women had suddenly melted into one fabulous monster. Then, with shrieks of joy and flutterings of scarves and handkerchiefs, they stood apart, dancing flatly on their feet. The officer for his part lay inert and for the best of reasons; he was bound hand and foot. . . . And shortly afterwards the women lighted a fire. . . .
“A fire?” said Marguerite, in a perplexity. “Why a fire?”
She watched — and then she heard the dreadful loud moan of a man in the extremity of pain. In a moment she was shaking Paul Ravenel by the shoulder, her face white and quivering, her eyes still looking out in horror upon a world incredible.
“Paul! Paul! Wake up!”
Ravenel came slowly out of a deep sleep, with a thought that once more the insurgents were about his door. But a few stammering words from Marguerite brought him quickly to his feet. He unlocked a cupboard and took from it a carbine in a canvas case. He slipped off the case and fitted a charged magazine beneath the breech.
“You will wait here, Marguerite.”
Whilst he was speaking he was already on the stair. Marguerite could not wait below as he had bidden her. This horror must end. She must know, of her own knowledge, that it had ended. She followed Paul as far as the mouth of the trap, and came to a stop there, her feet upon the stairs, her head just above the level of the roof. The groans of the tortured man floated across the open space mingled with the triumphant screams of the women.
“Oh, hurry, Paul, hurry,” she cried, and she heard him swear horribly.
The oath meant less than nothing to her. Would he never fire? He was kneeling behind the parapet, crouching a little so that not a flutter of his haik should be visible, with the barrel of his carbine resting upon the bricks. Why didn’t he fire? She stamped upon the stairs in a frenzy of impatience. She could not see that the women were perpetually shifting and crossing about their victim and obscuring him from Paul Ravenel.
At last a moment came when the line of sight was clear; and immediately the carbine spoke — once and no more; and all about her in this upper city of the air all noises ceased, groans, exultations, everything. It was to Marguerite as though the crack of that carbine had suspended all creation. In a few seconds the shrill screams broke out again, but there could be no doubt about their character. They were screams of terror. These, in their turn, dwindled and ceased. Had Marguerite raised her head above the parapet now she would have seen that those terraces so lately thronged were empty except one on which a fire was burning, and where one man in a uniform lay quite still and at peace with a bullet through his heart.
But Marguerite was watching Paul, who had sunk down below the edge of the parapet and was gazing upwards with startled eyes. Marguerite crept to his side.
“What is it?” she whispered.
Paul pointed. Just above their heads a tiny wisp of smoke coiled and writhed in the air like an adder.
“If that were seen—” said Paul, in a low voice.
“Yes.”
If that tiny wisp from the smokeless powder of his cartridge were seen floating in the air, there would be no doubt from what roof the shot had been fired. Paul drew Marguerite down beside him; together they watched. There was no wind at all; the air was sluggish and heavy; it seemed to them that the smoke was going slowly to curl and weave above their heads for ever. It grew diaphanous, parted into fine shreds, tumbled, and at last was gone.
The two lovers looked at one another with a faint smile upon their lips. But they did not move; they crouched down, seeing nothing but the empty sky above their heads.
The danger was not past. At any moment the sound of blows upon their door might resound again through the house. Or they might hear a ladder grate softly on the outside of this parapet, as it was raised from one of the roofs below. They waited there for half an hour. Then a shell screamed above their heads and exploded. It was followed by another and another.
“They are shelling the Souk-Ben-Safi,” said Paul. “Look! You can see the twinkle of the guns.” He pointed out to her the flashes on the hills to the east of the town. “That’s the way! Let the guns talk to these torturers!” He shook his fist over the town, standing upright now upon the roof, his face aflame with anger.
“Paul! Paul!” Marguerite cried in warning.
“There’s no one to see,” he returned, with a savage laugh. “One shell in the Souk-Ben-Safi and they’re shivering in their cellars. Come, let us go down!”
For an hour the shells screeched above the roof, and Paul, as he cleaned his carbine, whistled joyously. He raised his head from his task to see Marguerite, very white in the face, clinging to her chair with clenched hands, and trying in vain to whistle too.
“I am a brute,” he cried, in compunction. “They won’t touch this house, Marguerite! It’s too near the Karouein Mosque. The French are going to stay in Morocco. They’ll not touch the Karouein Mosque. There’s no spot in Fez safer from our guns.”
Marguerite professed herself reassured, but it did occur to her that gunners and even guns might make occasionally a mistake, and she drew a very long breath of relief when the bombardment ceased.
Paul Ravenel, however, fell into a restless mood, pacing the court, and now and again coming to a stop in front of Marguerite with some word upon his lips, which, after all, he did not speak. Marguerite guessed it, and after a little struggle made herself his interpreter.
“The bombardment’s over. It will keep Fez quiet for awhile. Even if that wisp of smoke was seen, no crowd will come here for an explanation — yet, at all events. Why don’t you go outside into the town and get the news?”
The eager light in his eyes told her clearly that she had interpreted him aright. But Paul, not knowing the reason which had prompted her, sought for another. He looked at Marguerite warily.
“I gave you back your pistol,” he said.
“And I promised not to use it,” she replied.
Paul shifted from one foot to the other, anxious for news, eager, after his two days’ confinement in this shell, for action, yet remorseful for his eagerness.
“It wouldn’t be fair,” he said, half-heartedly.
“But I want you to go,” she answered, with a glimmer of a smile at this man turned shamefaced school-boy who stood in front of her. “You’re wild to go really, Paul, and I am in no danger.” She drew a swift breath as she said that and hoped that he would not notice it.
Paul Ravenel did not.
“Yes, I am restless, Marguerite,” he said in a burst. “I’ll tell you why? Do you know what I did on the roof? What I had to do?”
“You frightened the women away — shot one of them — put an end to their fiendishness.”
Paul shook his head.
“That would have been no use, my dear. The man, a brother-officer of mine, would still have lain upon that roof in torture and helpless. They would have left him there till dark and finished their work then, if he were still alive. Can you guess what they were doing? They were burning his head slowly.”
“Oh!”
M
arguerite had a vision of herself rushing out into the street as only that morning she had proposed to do, and meeting the same fate. She covered her eyes with her hands.
“I am sorry, dear. I had to tell you, because I have to tell you this too. I killed him.”
Marguerite took her hands from her face and stared at her lover.
“I had to,” said Paul, in a dull voice. “There was no other way to save him. But, of course, it” — and he sat down suddenly with his hands clenched together and his head bowed— “it troubles me dreadfully. Who he was I don’t know; his face was blackened with the fire. But he may have served with me in the Chaiouïa — he may have marched up with me to Fez — we may have sat together on many nights over a camp fire, telling each other how clever we were — and I had to kill him, just as one puts a horse out of its misery.”
“Oh, my dear,” said Marguerite. She was at his side with her arm about his shoulders — comforting him. “I didn’t understand. You could do nothing else. And you were quick. He would be the first to thank you.”
Paul took the hand that was laid upon his shoulders gratefully. “No, I could do nothing else,” he said. “But I want to move, so that I mayn’t think of it.”
“I know,” she said.
She made light of her own isolation in that house. Paul, it was plain to her, was in a dangerous mood. Horror at the thing which he had been forced to do, anger at the stroke of fate which had set him to the tragic choice between his passion and his duty, bitterness against the men in power who had refused to listen, were seething within him. He was in a mood to run riot in a berserk rage at a chance word, a chance touch, to kill and kill and kill, until he in turn was borne down and stamped to death. But Marguerite stood aside. One appeal — it would be enough if only her eyes looked it — and without a doubt he would stay. Yes, stay and remember that he had been stayed! She did not even bid him take care or hurry back to her. She called Selim and bade him stand by the outer door.
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 579