Marguerite Lambert
The rumours of the camp were proved true the next morning and the
preparations for provisioning and concentrating so large a force were
swiftly pushed forward. Gerard de Montignac was to march with his
squadron in a week’s time by Rabat and Saller to Kenitra. Paul was to
rejoin his battalion a few days later. Half of that battalion, Paul’s
company included, was to form part of the escort of Colonel Gouraud’s
huge supply column, which with its hundreds of camels was beginning to
assemble at Meheydia at the mouth of the Sebou.
Paul was now a full Captain in command of that company of the
Tirailleurs which he had led during the last engagements of the Chaiouïa
campaign, and marked out by his superiors as an officer likely to reach
the high ranks and responsibilities. He had still a few days of his
leave and he spent the greater part of them in the careful revision of
his report. Gerard de Montignac, on his side was engaged in the
supervision of the equipment of his squadron and was busy from morning
until night. Two or three times during the course of the week, he went
down between nine and ten at night to the Villa Iris, and sat or danced
for half an hour with Marguerite Lambert. But he never saw Paul Ravenel
there and through the week the two friends did not meet except for a
moment or two in the thronged streets.
“Le grand serieux!” said Gerard, speaking of Paul to Marguerite Lambert
with an affectionate mockery. “He will be a General when I am an old
Major dyeing my moustache to make myself look young. But meanwhile,
whilst we are both Captains, I should like to see more of him than I do.
For, after all, we go out with our men—and one never knows who will
come back.”
Marguerite’s face lost its colour at his words and she drew in her
breath sharply. “Oh, it is our business of course,” he continued, taking
her sympathy to himself. “Do you know, Marguerite, that for a second, I
though you had stirred that thick soup in Paul’s veins which he calls
his blood? But no, he never comes here.”
Marguerite laughed hurriedly, and asked at random, “You have seen him
to-day?”
“Yes. He was coming out of a house close to the port with the agent who
looks after his property, a little Italian. Paul was talking very
earnestly and did not notice me. He has a good deal of property in
Casablanca and was making his arrangements no doubt for a long absence.”
Marguerite looked down at the table, tracing a pattern upon its surface
with her finger. When she spoke again her voice broke upon her words and
her lips quivered.
“I shall lose all my friends this week,” she said.
“Only us two,” said Gerard, consoling her.
“That’s what I mean,” she returned with a little smile, and Gerard de
Montignac leaned forward.
“Marguerite, I don’t go for a couple of days,” he said, lowering his
voice to an eager whisper. “Let us make the best of them! Let me have
the memory of two good days and nights to carry away with me, will you?
Why not? My work is done. I could start off with my troops at six
o’clock to-morrow instead of at six o’clock on the third morning. Give
me the next two days.”
Marguerite shook her head.
“No, my friend.”
Gerard de Montignac knew nothing of that conversation which Henriette
had held with Paul Ravenel on this spot a few nights before. He could
but believe that Marguerite Lambert somehow found that dreadful gang of
nondescripts with whom she foregathered more to her taste than he or his
friend. She shone like a flower in this squalid haunt, a tired and
drooping flower. It was extraordinary that she could endure this company
for a moment, to say nothing of their embraces. But women, even the most
delicate amongst them, would blindfold their eyes and stop their ears,
and cease to appreciate both the look of their friends and the esteem in
which they are held, if their interest prompted them. Gerard de
Montignac rose angrily from his chair.
“Of course poor devils of officers like myself can’t hope to compete
with these rich Dagoes,” he said brutally. “We must console ourselves
with reflecting that our efforts and dangers have made them rich.”
Marguerite Lambert flushed scarlet at the insult, and then lowered her
head.
“I do not wish to speak to you again,” she said in a distinct low voice,
and Gerard de Montignac stalked out of the Villa Iris.
He was troubled by his recollection of the little scene during the next
two days; sometimes falling into a remorse, and sometimes repeating his
own words with bravado, and arguing that this was the proper way to
speak; and always ending with a flood of heart-felt curses.
“Damn all Dagoes and Levantines! There ought to be a special code for
them. They ought to be made to take off their shoes when they meet us in
the street. Those old Moors knew something! I’ll never see that girl
again as long as I live. Luckily she’ll be gone by the time I come back
to Casablanca. Henriette said she wouldn’t dance at the Villa Iris for
long. No, I won’t see her again.”
He kept carefully away from the neighbourhood of the Villa for
thirty-six hours. Then a post came in and was delivered throughout the
camp at eight o’clock in the evening. Amongst the letters which Gerard
de Montignac received was one written in English by a Colonel Vanderfelt
in Sussex praying for news of Paul Ravenel. Gerard had enough English to
perceive how much anxiety and affection had gone to the composition of
that letter.
“It ought to be answered at once,” he said. “Paul must answer it.”
Gerard looked at his watch. It was close upon nine now, and he was to
parade at six in the morning. He must hand over that letter to Paul
to-night. He could have sent it by the post very well, or he could have
written an answer to Colonel Vanderfelt himself. But he took up his cap
instead and walked down from Ain-Bourdja towards the town. Very likely
he had some unacknowledged purpose at the back of his mind. For he found
himself presently standing before the Villa Iris, though that house lay
well out of the road between the camp and Paul Ravenel’s house by the
seaward wall.
“Well, since I am here,” he said, as though he had come to this spot
quite by accident, “I may as well go in and make my peace with
Marguerite Lambert. For all I know I may be quitting the world
altogether very shortly, and why should I leave unnecessary enemies to
hate my memory.”
Thus he explained quite satisfactorily to himself his reason for
entering and looking about him for Marguerite. But she was nowhere to be
seen—no, not even amongst the Dagoes and the Levantines. She must be
outside in the cool of the balcony beneath the roof of vines. But a
glance there showed him that he was wrong. There was nothing for it but
to approach the virago behind the Bar, who hotter and redder than ever
on this night in early May, was polishing away at her counter and
serving out the drinks.
Gerard ordered one and taking it from her hand, said carelessly:
“Mademoiselle Marguerite is not here to-night?”
Madame Delagrange made a vicious dab with her duster and cried in an
exasperation:
“Look, Monsieur! When she is here I have nothing but complaints. That
little Marguerite! She holds her nose in the air as if we smelled. She
looks at us as if we were animals at a circus—and she has nothing to be
conceited about with her thin shoulders and tired face. Now she is gone,
it is all the time—‘What have you done with our little Marguerite?’
Well, I have done nothing.” She turned to another customer. “For you,
Monsieur? A bottle of champagne? Abdullah shall bring it to you.”
Abdullah in his Turkish breeches was handed the dreadful decoction and
Gerard de Montignac tried again:
“She has left the Villa Iris altogether?”
“Yes, yes, yes. She has gone, that Miss Ni’Touche!”
“And where has she gone?”
The harridan behind the Bar flung up her hands.
“Saperlipoppette, how should I know, I ask you? I beg you, Monsieur, to
allow me to serve my clients who do not think that because they have
bought a whiskey-soda, they have become proprietors for the night of the
Villa Iris.”
With an indignant nod she turned to some other customers. Gerard
wandered out into the verandah, where he sat down rather heavily. He was
more troubled than he would have thought possible. After all the
disappearance of a little dancing girl from a Bar in a coast town of
Morocco!—what was there to make a fuss about in that? That is the way
of little dancing girls. They dance and they disappear, a question or
two from you and me and the next man are as it were the ripples upon the
pond, and then the surface is still once more.
But Gerard de Montignac could not dismiss Marguerite Lambert with this
easy philosophy. He remembered her too clearly, her slim grace, the
promise of real beauty if only she had food enough, her anger with him
two evenings ago, and above all the queer look of fatality set upon her
like a seal. Marguerite Lambert gone! How and whither? One or two
dreadful sentences spoken a fortnight ago in the mess by the Commandant
Marnier were written in letters of flame upon his memory. Casablanca was
the last halting place but one in the ghastly pilgrimage of these poor
creatures. The last of all—he shuddered to think of it. To picture
Marguerite Lambert amongst its squalors was a sacrilege. Yet she had
gone—she had moved on! There was the appalling fact.
He saw Henriette strolling a little way off between the tables. He
beckoned eagerly to her. She looked at him doubtfully, then with a
mutinous air and a toss of the head she strolled towards him.
“You want to speak to me? You were not very polite the last time.”
“I will atone for my discourtesy to-night, Mademoiselle Henriette.”
Henriette was induced to take a chair and order a drink.
Gerard believed that he must practise some diplomacy with this fiery
creature if he was to get the truth from her, but as a fact he had not
to put one question. For Henriette had hardly begun to sip her whiskey
and soda before she said:
“The little Marguerite! She has been sent away. I am sorry. I told
you—didn’t I?—that she wouldn’t stay here long.”
“Sent away?”
Henriette nodded.
“By Madame?”
“Last night?”
“Yes. After all the guests had gone. But what a scene! Oh, la, la, la! I
was frightened I can tell you. So were we all. We hid in the little room
there off the Bar, where we dress, and listened through the crack of the
door. But a scene! It was terrible.”
“Tell me!” said Gerard.
Henriette twitched her chair into the table with an actual excitement.
She was really and deeply distressed for Marguerite. But for the moment
her distress was forgotten. The joy of the story teller had descended
upon her.
“It was the Greek over there, Petras Tetarnis,” she began. “He was mad
for Marguerite and she wouldn’t have anything to do with him. So he got
her turned away. See how drunk he is to-night. How proud of his fine
revenge on a little girl who asked for nothing more than permission to
earn her seven francs a night in peace.”
“She wouldn’t have anything to say to him!” Gerard protested. “Why, she
was always at that table where he sits.”
“Yes. Because he is the real owner of the Villa Iris. Madame is no more
than his servant. So Marguerite, since she wished to stay here, must be
friendly to him. But Petras was not content with friendliness and last
night when your friend came in—”
“My friend,” interrupted Gerard de Montignac.
“Yes, the one with the yellow hair and the long legs and the face that
tells you nothing at all.”
“Paul! He was here last night!”
“Yes. Oh, he has come here more than once during the last week, but very
late and for a few minutes. He goes straight to that table and takes
Marguerite away, as if he were the master; and somehow they all sit dumb
as if they were the lackeys. Imagine it, Monsieur! All of them very
noisy and boisterous and then—a sudden silence and the yellow-headed
Captain walking away with Marguerite Lambert as if they did not exist.
It used to make the rest of us laugh, but they—they were furious with
humiliation and when, a little time afterwards, the Captain had
gone—oh, how bold they were! They would pull his nose for him the next
time, they would teach him how gentlemen behave—oh, yes, yes! But it
was always the next time that these fine lessons would be given.”
Gerard de Montignac nodded his head.
“I know the breed.”
Henriette described how Paul Ravenel had entered the Bar a little after
midnight. He had taken Marguerite Lambert away, danced a round or two,
and given her some supper; and whilst she ate, Petras Tetarnis
emboldened by drink and the encouragement of his friends had left his
table and begun to prowl backwards and forwards behind Paul Ravenel’s
back, nodding and winking at his associates and muttering to himself.
Paul had taken no notice, but Marguerite had stopped eating and sat in
terror watching him over Paul’s shoulder like a bird fascinated by a
snake. Tetarnis drew nearer and nearer with each turn, Marguerite sat
twisting her hands and imploring Paul to go away and leave her. She was
speaking in English and in a whisper so that Henriette could not repeat
the words. But it was easy enough to translate them. “It is for my
sake,” she was saying. “It is for my sake.”
But Paul would not listen; and with a little helpless flutter of her
frail hands Marguerite sank back in her chair. There would be a
disturbance, very possibly a fight. Once more she was to be the Helen of
a squalid Iliad and the result would be what it always had been. She
would move on—and this time there was no whither she could move. She
had come to the end.
“I could read the despair in her eyes, in the utter abandonment of her
body,” said Henriette, but there had been much at that moment in
Marguerite Lambert’s thoughts which Henriette could not read at all. The
passionate dream of her life was dying, as she sat there. She had come
to the end. It would have no chance of fulfilment now. Where to-morrow,
could she find the great love waiting for her? It had made her life
possible, it had given her strength to endure the squalor of her lodging
and her companions, and the loss of all that daintiness and order which
mean so much to women. It had given her wit to defend herself against
the approaches of her courtiers, and the self-respect which kept her
with the manners of one of gentlest birth. Nearer and nearer drew Petras
Tetarnis until he bumped against Paul’s chair, and then very quickly and
quietly Paul rose to his feet.
A stifled prayer burst from Marguerite’s trembling lips. Then she
covered her face with her hands and closed her ears with her thumbs. But
there was no disturbance at all.
“The Captain Paul took Petras by the elbow and looking down upon him
talked to him as one talks to a child. I could hear what he said. ‘You
are terrifying this lady. You must not behave like this in public
places. You must go back to your place and sit very quietly or you must
go home.’ And Petras went. Yes, without a word, as if he had been
whipped he went back to his chair amongst his friends. But, I tell you,
Monsieur, his eyes had all hell in them! And after a little, very
cautiously, as if he was afraid lest the Captain Paul should notice him
he crept to the counter and talked very earnestly with Madame.”
“What was he saying?” asked Gerard de Montignac.
“I could not hear at all. I dared not even try to listen. I went to the
table where Marguerite and her friend were sitting. Marguerite was
imploring him to go away. I agreed with her. The storm was over. It was
better for Marguerite’s sake that he should go away quietly now without
any fuss.”
“And he went?” asked Gerard.
“Not at first,” returned Henrietta. “No, he was stubborn. He was
thinking of his pride, as men do, not of the poor women who suffer by
it. But at last—it seemed that some idea came into his head, some
thought which made him smile—he consented. He paid his bill and walked,
neither quickly nor slowly through the Bar and out by the passage into
the street. And so the people settled down, and the trouble seemed at an
end.”
And so until the closing of the Bar it was. As a rule the visitors had
all gone by two o’clock in the morning; and this particular night was no
exception. It was the practice as soon as the room was empty for Madame
Delagrange to pay the girls their seven francs apiece at the counter.
Then they crossed into the little dressing room, changed their clothes
and went out into the lane by the street door, which was locked behind
them. On this night, however, Madame Delagrange kept Marguerite Lambert
to the last.
“You others can run away and get off your clothes. I want to have a
little talk by myself with this delicate Miss Touch-me-not,” she said,
lolling over the counter with a wicked leer on her coarse red face and
licking her lips over her victim. The others were very glad to hurry
away and leave the old harridan and Marguerite alone in the gaudily
tiled, brightly lit room. They kept the door of the dressing room ajar,
so that they could both see and hear what took place. But for a minute
or two Madame Delagrange contented herself with chuckling and rubbing
her fat hands together and looking Marguerite up and down from head to
foot and almost frightening the girl out of her wits. Marguerite stood
in front of the counter looking in her short dancing skirt like a
schoolgirl awaiting punishment.
“So this is how we repay kindnesses!” Madame Delagrange began, slowly
wetting her lips with her tongue. According to Henriette she was exactly
like an ogress in a picture book savouring in anticipation the pretty
morsel she meant to devour for supper. “We make troubles and
inconveniences for the kind old fool of a woman who lets us sing our
little songs in her Bar and dance with her clients and who pays us
generously into the bargain. We won’t help her at all to keep the roof
over her head. We treat her rich clients like mud. Only the beautiful
officers are good enough for us! Bah! And we are virtuous too! Oh, he,
he, he! Yes, but virtue isn’t bread and butter, my little one. So here’s
an address.” She took a slip of paper from the shelf behind her and
pushed it towards Marguerite. Marguerite took a step forward to the
counter and picked up the paper.
“What am I to do with this, Madame?” she asked in perplexity.
“You are to go to that address, Mademoiselle.”
“To-morrow?”
“Now, little fool!”
“Why?”
“He is waiting for you.”
Marguerite shrank back, her face white as paper, her great eyes wide
with horror.
“Who?” she asked in a whisper.
“Petras Tetarnis.”
Madame Delagrange nodded her head at Marguerite with an indignant
satisfaction.
“Off you go! We shall be a little more modest, to-morrow evening, eh? We
shan’t look at everybody as if they would dirty our little slippers if
we stepped on them. Come, take your seven francs and hurry off. Or,” and
she thrust out her lips savagely, “never come back to the Villa Iris.”
Marguerite stood and stared at the paper in her hands.
“You can’t mean it, Madame.”
Madame snorted contemptuously.
“Make your choice, little one. I want to go to bed.”
Marguerite folded the paper and with the tears running down her cheeks
slowly tore it across and across and let the fragments flutter down to
the floor. Madame Delagrange uttered an oath and then let loose upon the
girl such a flood of vile abuse, that even those hiding behind the door
of the dressing room had never heard the like of it.
“Out with you,” she said, spitting upon the ground and sweeping the
seven francs off the counter towards Marguerite, so that they rolled and
spun and rattled upon the floor. “Pick up your money and get your rags
together and march! Quick now!”
She lolled over the counter screaming with laughter as Marguerite ran
hither and thither seeking through her blinding tears for the coins,
stooping and picking them up. “There’s another somewhere,” the old
harridan cried, holding her fat sides. “Seek! Seek! Good dog! It takes
ten years off my life to see the haughty Miss Touch-me-not running about
after her pennies.”
Marguerite had got to retrieve them all. In the dreadful penury in which
she lived, a single franc had the importance of gold. So she ran about
the room, searched under tables and chairs and in the corners. The seven
francs were all her capital. They stood between her and death by hunger.
She must go on her knees and peer through the veil of her tears for the
last of them. Even the women behind the door, hardened though they were,
felt the humiliation of that scene in the marrow of their bones, felt it
as something horrible and poignant and disturbing. As soon as Marguerite
had picked up her money, Madame Delagrange shuffled out from behind her
counter.
“Now come along with me. I mean to see that you don’t take away what
doesn’t belong to you.”
She took the weeping girl by the elbow and pushed her along in front of
her to the dressing room. Then she stood over her whilst she changed
into her street dress and put up her dancing kit in a bundle.
“Do you miss anything, girls?” Madame Delagrange asked with her
heavy-handed irony and indeed with an evident hope that one of them
would miss something and the police could be sent for. But all of them
were quick to say no, though not one of them had the courage to take
Marguerite by the hand and wish her good luck in the face of the old
blowsy termagant.
“Very well then!” and Madame Delagrange took a step towards Marguerite
who shrank back as if she expected a blow. Madame Delagrange laughed
heartily at the girl’s face, rejoicing to see her so cowed and broken.
“Come here,” she said with a grim sort of pleasantry and she grinned and
beckoned with her finger.
Marguerite faltered across the room, and the big woman took her prisoner
again and marched her out through the Bar onto the verandah.
“There! You can go out by the garden and a good riddance to you!” Madame
Delagrange banged to the big doors behind Marguerite Lambert and bolted
them, leaving her with her bundle in her hand standing on the boards
beneath the roof of vines.
“That’s the last we saw of her. Poor kid!” said Henriette. “If she
hadn’t been such a little fool! Do you know that for a moment or two I
hoped that your friend—”
“Paul,” Gerard de Montignac interrupted with a nod of his head. “I
also—for a moment or two. But women don’t mean much to Paul.”
Henriette laughed bitterly, wondering to what man women did mean
anything at all. In her experience she had never run across them.
“I am afraid for that little one,” she said, her thoughts coming back to
Marguerite. “You know what happened? Her little bundle was found on the
balcony this morning. The knot had broken, and her dancing dress, her
slippers, her silk stockings were lying scattered on the boards. She
just left them where they fell. You see, they were her stock-in-trade.
She had brought them over with her from France and she has no money to
replace them with. I am afraid.”
Gerard de Montignac was conscious of a chill of fear too. He recognised
the significance of the abandonment of that bundle. The knot had burst,
as Marguerite stood on the verandah, the doors shut behind her, the dark
garden in front of her. She had not thought it worth while to gather her
poor trifles of finery together again. Their use was over. Whither had
she gone? Was she alive now? Had those roaring breakers on the coast
drawn her into their embrace and beaten her to death upon the rocks and
the sands?
“Where does she lodge?” he asked sharply.
“I don’t know,” answered Henriette. “None of us know. She would never
tell. I think that she had some poor little room of which she was
ashamed. With her seven francs a day, she could have nothing else.”
“I must find out,” cried Gerard, and then he struck his fist upon the
table. “But I can’t find out. I march at six o’clock to-morrow morning
for Fez.”
“Your friend then,” Henriette suggested eagerly.
“Paul!” replied Gerard. “Yes. He has a few days still in Casablanca. He
has compassion, he will help. I know him.”
Henriette’s face lightened a little.
“But he must be quick, very quick,” she urged. “You will see him
to-night?”
“I will go to him now,” and Gerard remembered the letter in his pocket
from Colonel Vanderfelt. “I was indeed on my way to him when I came
here.”
Gerard looked at his watch. It was half past ten. He had stayed longer
than he had intended at the Villa Iris.