Colonel Vanderfelt’s Letter
Gerard de Montignac found Paul still up and putting the last words to
the report of long and solitary wanderings amongst the inland tribes.
The report was to be despatched the next morning to the Bureau des
Affaires Indigènes at Rabat, and Gerard waited in patience until the
packet was sealed up. Then he burst out with his story of what had taken
place on the night before at the Villa Iris. Paul listened without an
interruption, but his face grew white with anger and his eyes burned, as
he heard of Madame Delagrange’s coarse abuse and Marguerite’s tears and
humiliations.
“So you see, Paul, it was your fault in a way,” Gerard urged. “Of course
sooner or later Petras Tetarnis—damn his soul!—would have presented
his ultimatum, as he did last night, but you were the occasion of it
being done.”
“Yes,” Paul agreed.
“Then you must find her. You must do what you can, send her home, give
her a chance. I’ll start searching myself this very night. But you have
more time and better means of discovering her.”
“Yes.”
Paul had knocked about Casablanca as a boy. He had many friends amongst
the natives, and was accustomed to sit with them by the hour, drinking
mint tea and exchanging jokes. He was a man of property besides in that
town and could put out a great many feelers in different quarters.
“I have no doubt that I can discover where she is,” he said, “if she is
still in Casablanca.”
“Where else can she be unless it’s in the sea!” cried Gerard. “But
remember you have got to be quick. She had only the seven francs. God
knows what has become of her!”
He stood gazing at the lamp as if he could read her whereabouts in that
white flame as the gifted might do in a crystal; with his cap tilted on
the back of his head and a look of grave trouble upon his face.
“I’ll find her, never fear,” said Paul Ravenel, touching his friend upon
the arm. “And what I can do to keep her from harm that I will do.”
Gerard responded to the friendliness and the assurance in Paul’s voice.
He shook off his dejection.
“Thank you, mon vieux,” he said and held out his hand. “Well, we shall
meet in Fez.”
He had reached the door before he remembered the primary reason for his
visit.
“By the way, I have a letter about you from some one in England, a
Colonel Vanderfelt. Yes, he is anxious for news of you. He wrote to me
because in your letters to him you had more than once spoken of me as
your friend.”
A shadow darkened Paul’s face as he listened, and a look of pain came
into his eyes. He took the letter from Gerard.
“Have you answered it, Gerard?”
“No. It only reached me to-night. I must leave that to you.”
“Right.”
The door-keeper let Gerard out and he tramped through the now silent and
empty streets the length of the town to the Market Gate; and so to his
quarters in the camp at Ain-Bourdja. Some years were to pass before the
two friends met again.
Paul stood for a long time just as Gerard had left him with Colonel
Vanderfelt’s letter in his hand. The fragrance of an English garden
seemed to him to sweeten this Moorish room. Though the lattices were
wide open, he heard no longer the thunder of the great breakers upon the
shore. The letter was magical and carried him back on this hot night of
May to a country of cool stars. The garden, he remembered, would be
white with lilac, the tulips would be in flower, the rhododendrons
masses of red and mauve, against the house the wisteria would be hanging
in purple clusters. And in the drawing room some very kindly people
might at this moment be counting the date on which they could expect an
answer to this letter.
Well, the answer would never come.
“All those pleasant dreams are over,” thought Paul. “They have not heard
from me for more than a year. Let the break be complete!” and with a
rather wistful smile he tore the letter into shreds. Then he went out
and turning into a street by the sea-wall came to that house from which
Gerard de Montignac had seen him and his agent depart three days before.
A lattice was open on the first floor and from a wide window a golden
flood of light poured out upon the night. Paul whistled gently and then
waited at the door. It was thrown open in a few seconds, just time
enough for some one to run down the stairs and open it. Paul stepped
into a dark passage and a pair of slender arms closed about his neck and
drew his face down.
“Marguerite, why didn’t you tell me how that venomous old harridan
treated you?” he whispered.
Marguerite Lambert laughed with a note of utter happiness which no one
had heard from her for a long while.
“My dear, what did it matter any longer;” and clinging to him
passionately, she pressed her lips to his.
* * * * *
Paul could have added a postscript to Henriette’s story, as Gerard de
Montignac had told it to him, if he had so willed. For when Marguerite
Lambert stood alone on that verandah, her bundle in her hand, a figure
had risen up out of the darkness of the garden and stepped onto the
boards. She recoiled at the first moment in terror, and her bundle
slipped from her hand and scattered its contents.
“Marguerite,” the man whispered, and with a wild throb of her heart she
knew it was Paul Ravenel who was speaking to her.
“You! You!” she said in so low a voice that, though he stood at her
side, the words only reached his ears like a sigh. “Oh!” and her arms
were about his shoulders, her hands tightly clasped behind his head, and
her tear-stained cheeks pressed close against the breast of his tunic.
He tried to lift her face, but she would not let him.
“No! No!” she whispered. He could feel her bosom rising and falling, and
hear the sobs bursting from her throat. Then she flung up her face.
“My dear! My dear! I was hoping that some sudden thing would kill me,
because I couldn’t do it myself. And then—you are here!”
She drew herself from his arms, and not knowing what she did she kneeled
and began to gather together her scattered belongings. Paul Ravenel
laughed and stooping, lifted her up.
“You won’t want those things any more, my dear,” and with his arm about
her he led her from the garden through the quiet streets to this house
by the sea-wall which had been got ready against her coming.