Henriette Explains
Paul was rewarded out of all measure for his courtesy. For as Henriette
sat and drank her whiskey and soda, she talked.
“You were civil to me when your friend would have sent me contemptuously
away,” she said. “And when I told you that I had dined at the Café de
Paris only three weeks ago, and your friend laughed, you did not. You
pretended that you believed it. That was polite of you. For we both knew
that never once in all my life have I dined at the Café de Paris or any
such swell restaurant in Paris. And it was kind of you. It made me ready
to fancy that I had dined there and that does one a little good, eh? One
feels better in one’s self. So I will be kind in my turn. You are
interested in that little one,” and she jerked her head towards the
table in the Bar, where Marguerite had rejoined the noisy group. “Yes,
she has chic, and she is pretty on her feet, and she has a personality,
but—” Paul Ravenel leaned forward, his face hardening.
“Mademoiselle, I do not want to hear.”
“Oh, I am not going to crab her,” replied Henriette, and her petulant
temper flamed up. “You think, I suppose, that women cannot admire a girl
who is younger and prettier than themselves and cannot like her. That is
foolish. I tell you we all like Marguerite Lambert. And I speak to you
for your good and hers. But, of course, if you do not care to hear me—”
“I beg your pardon, Mademoiselle,” said Paul. “I will listen to you very
willingly.”
Henriette’s passions were no more than bubbles upon the surface of her
good-humour. They burst very quickly and left no traces. The flush faded
from her throat and forehead and no doubt from the painted cheeks as
well, though that could not be discovered by mortal eye.
“Listen,” she said. “Your friend asked me what Marguerite Lambert was
doing at the Villa Iris, and I would not answer him. Why should I? It
was clear what he meant, wasn’t it? Why was she, who might really have
dined at the Café de Paris three weeks ago, already here at Casablanca,
so near to the end of things?” Henriette’s face grew for a moment
haggard with terror, as she formulated the problem. The last stage but
one of the dreadful pilgrimage of her class! She herself was making that
journey, and what lay beyond and so hideously close, loomed up when she
thought of it, and appalled her.
Paul interrupted her with a word of solace.
“You are making too much of his question.”
But Henriette would have none of his consolation.
“No, that is what he meant and what you meant, too?”
“I said nothing.”
“But the question was in your face. The question and a great deal of
trouble. Why was Marguerite Lambert already at Casablanca?”
Paul did not contradict her again. She would not believe him if he did
and he might lose the answer to the question.
“You made it still more difficult to understand,” he said frankly. There
was no good to be gained by beating about the bush with this woman who
was disposed to help him. “For though you didn’t answer our question you
added to it another perplexity. You said that she wouldn’t remain here
long.”
Henriette nodded.
“That is right. The answer to both questions is the same. She drifted
here so soon, and she will stay for so short a time, because she waits
for the grand passion. Yes, the little fool!” but it was not in scorn
that she styled Marguerite a little fool, but with a half-contemptuous
tenderness, and perhaps a tiny spite of envy.
“The grand passion!” Paul repeated, wondering what in the world his
companion meant.
“Yes. Oh, she is quite frank with the rest of us. We talk, you know,
when we are dressing, and after the café is closed, when we are changing
back to our street clothes. Until the grand passion comes, nothing,
nothing, nothing to any man. Look, they are dancing again, she and
Petras Tetarnis, the Greek.”
So he was a Greek, the man with the yellow-buttoned boots and the heavy
black moustache! Henriette watched them with the eye of a professional.
“Yes, she dances prettily, that little one. But would you like a girl to
dance with you just in that way—so unconcerned, so half-asleep, so
utterly indifferent to you? And if you wanted her as Petras Tetarnis
does, furiously, wouldn’t you be mad when she swam in your arms so
lightly, with so correct a grace and not one look or smile or thought
for you? So that if you spoke to her, she had to recall her thoughts
from the end of the world before she could answer you? You would be wild
with rage, eh? You would want to take that slim little white throat
between your two big hands and squeeze and squeeze until some attention
was paid to you, if it was only the attention of agony and fear. Am I
not right?”
Paul’s face turned white. He leaned across the table and cried in a low,
fierce voice:
“Was that what you meant, Henriette, when you said that she would not be
here long? That the Greek would murder her?”
Henriette burst into a laugh.
“Oh, no, no, no, my friend. Petras Tetarnis is not the man to run such
perils. He has made much money, since the French have come to
Casablanca. He is a prudent one. It would have to be a very dark night
and a very empty street before Tetarnis risked his beautiful money and
all the enjoyment he gets from it; and even then some one else would
have to do the work. But he will use other ways.”
“What kind of ways?” asked Paul.
Henriette shrugged her shoulders.
“He is always here. He is rich. Madame Delagrange makes much of him.
Very likely he has lent her money, and if so, he will want his
interest.”
“I see.”
Paul leaned back in his chair and Henriette looked at him curiously.
“You were much moved, my friend, when I spoke of the big, coarse hands
gripping that little throat.”
“Well, any man would be, and whoever the woman,” he protested, and
Henriette smiled her disbelief.
“Would you have been so moved if it had been my throat which you thought
to be in danger?” she asked shrewdly. “No! Let us be frank. You would
have said, ‘It is Henriette’s business to look after herself. She is old
enough, anyway’; and you would have forgotten me the next moment.” She
turned her eyes again upon Marguerite Lambert.
“The grand passion. Oh, la, la, la! Until it comes nothing, oh, but
nothing at all for any one—not half a heart beat! But when it does
come, everything, at once, with both hands. The folly!”
“The glorious imprudence!” replied Paul.
Henriette broke into a harsh laugh as she heard the softly spoken words
and saw the light in Paul Ravenel’s eyes. It was the light of a great
relief rather than of hope. The fear which had plagued him all through
this evening had gone now. There was no need for the excuses. He had not
to argue a defence for Marguerite Lambert.
“The glorious imprudence,” Henriette repeated with a sneer. “Yes, so you
say—you, the man who has everything to gain from the glorious
imprudence and when he is tired of it, can drop it in the road behind
him. But I tell you those are not good ideas for a girl who dances for
her living, in the cafés. There is the patron behind the patron like
Petras Tetarnis, who will make trouble if he doesn’t get what he wants,
for there are rich patrons whom the patron does not wish to drive away.
Or there are jealousies which may mean fighting and the police. No, my
fine gentleman! Girls who are difficult, the Villa Irises are no place
for them. That is why Marguerite Lambert at twenty is dancing in
Casablanca and will not dance there long.”
“But if the great passion comes?” cried Paul.
“Then it must come quick! Believe me, very quick. Petras Tetarnis is
growing troublesome. And if it comes! Shall I tell you what will happen?
She will blow her brains out! Oh, you may start in your chair. But look
at her where she sits! There is the mark of fate already upon her face.
It is written, as they say in this country.”
So to Henriette as to Gerard de Montignac and to Paul Ravenel, that
indefinable look of destiny in Marguerite was evident. Paul asked
himself whether it was not simply the outward and visible sign of that
passionate self-respect which had kept her untarnished against the rush
and play of the great passion when it came. Or was the future really
written there—a history of great joys perhaps and great sorrows
certainly to be?
“So Marguerite lives on seven francs a day and—”
She got no further. Paul interrupted her with an exclamation of horror.
“Seven francs!”
“Yes. That is what our generous Madame Delagrange pays us each night and
we provide our own dancing kit out of it. Oh, the little fool starves.
That is certain—all the more certain because she will not let any of
the clients here give her food.”
“But she let me,” cried Paul with a smile of pride.
“Yes, she let you to-night. But the others, never, never, lest—you
understand? Lest they should make a claim.”
“Out of so small a service?” asked Paul incredulously.
Henriette smiled.
“You have been lucky in your world,” she said. “The clients of the Villa
Iris are not so generous. They will make a claim out of anything, as, by
the way, most men will, if the claim may get them what they want. So
that little one, since she will give herself to none of them, is wise to
starve. You are the only one from whom she has taken food. It is
curious, eh? It is because of that and because you treat me like a human
being that I, Henriette, who like the little fool, ramble on so
seriously to you to-night.”
The plastered face softened into tenderness and the bird-like eyes shone
and filled suddenly with tears.
“It is kind of you,” said Paul. If any one had said to him a couple of
hours before that he would have felt himself intensely privileged
because a little dancing girl of the Villa Iris had taken supper from
him and from him alone, he would have laughed his informant to scorn.
But it was so. Paul was radiant with pride. He saw himself as a very
fine fellow, a much finer fellow than he had ever believed himself to
be. The loneliness of his boyhood, a sudden blow crushing his pride and
his dreams in the dust, and years thereafter informed with a strong
purpose to regain his name and his place in his own country, had
combined to defer but had not slain his youth. It was back with him now,
all the more ardent and dangerous from the restraint which had held it
in check. Paul Ravenel was a boy of nineteen on this evening in the fire
of his passion, but with the will and the experience of his own years;
and he was old enough to hide any plans which he might be forming and to
seek all the knowledge he could get from Henriette.
“Why should she blow out her brains, as you say?” he asked, offering to
Henriette a cigarette.
“Because that is what she will do,” replied Henriette as she lighted her
cigarette. “I know my world. Listen! My father kept a little
eating-house at Rouen, where I saw many types of men. He went bankrupt.
I went to dance in Paris. Oh, I was nothing out of the way. I danced in
a quadrille at the Casino de Paris for a little time, then at the Bal
Tabarin. I went to Madrid and Barcelona where I danced at the Lion d’Or,
the restaurant which has no doors, for it is open night and day. And in
the end I came here. Well, I tell you this. Fine dreams are for rich
people. For us, if we are wise, we bury them out of sight the moment
they are born. We will not think of them. We will not allow them. The
rich have much which makes disappointment bearable. For us—we blow our
brains out.”
Whilst she spoke she kept darting little swift glances at her companion,
as though she was practising on him some trivial diplomacy. She
believed, in truth, every word she said. But since her philosophy was
not Marguerite’s, if this man could give the girl a year or two of
happiness, it would be something, at all events. But Paul sat and
listened carelessly and answered not at all.
“See!” she cried. “When you spin the racquet for the choice of courts at
the tennis, it is ‘rough’ or ‘smooth,’ eh? Well, it is always rough with
us and we lose the choice.”
She laughed at her trifle of a joke, and again her eyes glanced at Paul.
But the clearer his purpose became to himself, the more impassive grew
his face. Long ago he had learnt that lesson of defence. Henriette rose.
She, at all events, was openly disappointed.
“So! I have talked to you long enough,” she said. The piano began once
more its dreadful cacophany. “Ah, Marguerite is dancing with another of
that band. He does not matter. You yourself will dance with her again
to-night, isn’t it so?”
Paul shook his head.
“No,” and as he saw Henriette’s face cloud over, he added, “she herself
bade me keep away.”
The cloud passed at once. That was good news. There was an understanding
between them, then, already. Henriette beamed.
“I understand that,” she said in a whisper, “and I hope you understand
it, too. Madame Delagrange is not very content that we dance much with
the officers. She says they have no money.”
Paul laughed. He would have loved to have seen Gerard de Montignac’s
face if that remark had been made before him and to have heard his
reply.
“Not so much, certainly, as those gentlemen over there whom we have made
rich. But enough, Mademoiselle Henriette, to thank a good friend.”
For a moment Henriette was puzzled. Then she looked down. Beside her
empty glass lay a folded slip of paper. The broad band of purple told
her the amount of the bank note. She leaned forward and spoke in a
whisper.
“A thousand francs! It is a fortune to me! You understand that? I will
take it, yes, with a thousand thanks, but it was not to get your money
that I spoke to you.”
“I never thought it. If I had thought it, your surprise would have
proved me wrong.”
Henriette gathered the note in the palm of her hand and making a
movement as if to take her handkerchief, slipped it secretly into her
bosom. Another thought came to her.
“You are really rich then! You could make a little home, a little safe
home, where there would be no clients or patrons or starving. Oh, that
would be different!” she said in a wondering voice. “I take back what I
said about the end her grand passion would lead her to.” Henriette
glanced again towards Marguerite. “She is chic, eh? She has style, the
little one? An air of good breeding. Whence does it come? How is it that
she has kept it?” Paul could have answered that question had he wished
to. She had kept it because of her immense pride and self-respect, she
had probably got it to keep, from the same source. Henriette looked from
the girl dancing to the officer at the table.
“A little home, eh. If it could be!” she pleaded. Paul gazed at her with
a smile upon his lips and in his eyes, but he did not answer her, and
she flung away.
“Oh, you are a box with the lid shut! Good-night, Monsieur!”
“Good-night, Mademoiselle Henriette.”
A few moments later Paul Ravenel followed Henriette into the Bar. He
stopped before the counter where Madame Delagrange was vigorously wiping
the wet rings made by the bottoms of the glasses from the light polished
wood. She had always the duster in her hand, except when she was
measuring out her drinks into the glasses, and very often then, and
generally was at work with it.
“This is quite Maxim’s, Madam,” he said.
The flattery had little effect. Madame barely paused in her polishing
and smiled sourly.
“In that case I must see about raising my prices, Monsieur,” said she.
No, clearly she did not like the officers. Paul went on to the door.
Marguerite, seated with the Levantines, never looked at him, but just as
he was going out she raised her glass to her lips with a little nod of
her head, as though she drank a health to some absent friend, and her
slow smile dawned and trembled on her lips.
But the night was not yet over for Paul Ravenel. As he reached his house
he heard his name called aloud and turning about saw his friend Gerard
de Montignac hurrying towards him.
“There is news at last,” he said.
The town had been full of rumours for many days. Certain things were
known. It was certain, for instance that the tribes of the Beni-M’Tir,
the Ait-Youssi and the Gerouan had actually pitched their tents on the
plain of Fez and in full revolt against Mulai Hafid the Sultan, were
pressing the city close. It was known too that a flying column purposely
small in order to set at rest the distrust of the German Press and the
opposition of politicians in Paris, had been assembled at Kenitra for a
swift march to relieve the capital. This had been delayed by bad weather
which had turned the flat country beyond Kenitra into a marsh.
But there had been for days a continual disembarkation of fresh troops
at Casablanca which pointed to operations on a wider scale. On this
night the truth was out.
“Come into the house and let me hear, Gerard,” said Paul, and opening
his door he switched on the electric lights and led Gerard into a room.
“Meknes has risen too. A new Sultan, Mulai Zine, the brother of Mulai
Hafid has been proclaimed Sultan there. It is no longer to be a flying
column which will camp for a few days under the walls of Fez and return.
It is to be a great expedition. The whole camp at Ain-Bourdja is ringing
with it to-night. I ran down to tell you.”
“That was good of you, Gerard,” said Paul.
There was a great contrast visible now between the two officers, the one
excited and eager, the other playing with the switch of the standard
lamp upon his table, and lost in thought.
“I hear that my squadron is to go up in the first column under Colonel
Brulard. You, of course, with your battalion will be wanted too.”
“I suppose so,” replied Paul slowly. “I should have liked to have
finished this report before I go.”
“The report can wait,” cried Gerard, “France can’t.”
The two friends talked late into the night. Paul gradually threw off the
reticence with which he had at first answered De Montignac. They fell to
debating the strength of the different columns, the line of march,
whether through the forest of Zemmour or over the plain of the Sebou and
by the Col of Segota, and who would command.
“Brulard for the Advance Force,” said Gerard, “the General himself will
follow.”
“And Gouraud?” asked Paul.
“Yes, yes, Gouraud. He couldn’t be left behind. It is said that he will
have the supply column and follow a day or two behind Brulard.”
“We shall know more about it to-morrow,” said Paul, and Gerard looked at
his watch.
“Do you know the time?” he said springing to his feet. “If we were in
France now, we should see daylight.” He was in an emotional mood. He
clapped his friend upon the shoulder. “We shall see one another again,
my old one, before I start, no doubt. But if we don’t, and anything
happens to either of us, well, it is good luck to the survivor.”
He shook hands with Paul and Paul let him out of the house.
Paul went back to the room. The eagerness with which he had discussed
the technical details of the expedition fell from him as soon as he was
alone. He sat down at his table and remained there until dawn at last
did break over the town. But he was not at work upon his report. He had
pushed it from him and sat with his face between the palms of his hands.