A Dilemma
It was the sixteenth day of April in the following year. The dawn broke
over Fez sullen and unfriendly as the mood of the city. And all through
the morning the clouds grew heavier. Many watched them with anxiety
through that forenoon: the French Mission which was to set out on the
morrow, on its return to Rabat with the treaty of the Protectorate of
Morocco signed and sealed in its pocket; Mulai Hafid himself, now for
these many months Sultan, who was to travel with the Mission, on his way
to Paris; various high dignitaries of state, who though outwardly
wreathed in smiles and goodwill had prepared a little surprise for the
Mission in one of the passes on its line of march to the coast; and
various young officers of the escort who after ten months of garrison
duty outside Fez welcomed a chance of kicking up their heels for a week
or two in the cafés of the coast towns. Like conversation before dinner,
all these arrangements depended on the weather.
At twelve o’clock Mulai Hafid gave a farewell luncheon to the Mission in
his great Palace in Fez Djedid; and after luncheon he conducted his
guests to a Pavilion looking upon a wide open space called Mechouar.
They had hardly reached the Pavilion before a storm burst with all the
violence of the tropics. The Pavilion was like everything else in
Morocco. It had never been finished when it was new, and never repaired
when it was old; and very soon, the rain breaking through the flimsy
roof had driven the guests from the first floor to the chamber of
audience below, and was splashing down the stairs in a cascade. A
general discomfort prevailed. Mulai Hafid himself was in a difficult
mood. To one French Commissioner of importance who apologized to him
because a certain General, lately promoted from Colonel, had not yet had
time to procure the insignia of his new rank, Mulai Hafid replied dryly:
“The sooner he gets them the better. He’ll want them all to protect him
before he has done.”
And a little later when the Head of the Mission, with whom he was
playing chess, indiscreetly objected to the Sultan moving
surreptitiously one of his knights with a latitude not authorised by the
rules, he turned in vexation to a Kaid of his friends and said: “See
what I have come to! I can no longer even move my own cavalry as I
please, without the consent of his Excellency and the French.”
Altogether it was an uneasy luncheon party. Alone Paul Ravenel was
content. He was on duty with the Mission and all the morning his face
had been as cloudy as the sky because the storm did not break. Now he
stood at a window of the upper room, sheltering himself as best he might
from the leaks of the roof and smiled contentedly. Lieutenant Praslin,
who a year before had trumpeted the praises of Marguerite Lambert in the
mess at Ain-Bourdja, stood at his elbow. Praslin commanded now a platoon
in Paul’s company and held his chief in awe. But annoyance spurred him
to familiarity.
“You are amused, my old one, are you?” he enquired. “We are of the
escort to-morrow. We shall swim through mud. The banks of the rivers
will be as slippery as a skating rink. We shall have horses and camels
tumbling about and breaking our necks. We shall have ladies in the party
too. And you are amused! Name of a name, you have a sense of humour, my
Captain.”
“I laugh,” replied Paul, “because if the rain continues, we shan’t go at
all.”
“And you don’t want to go! To arrive safely at Rabat with the Mission,
it might easily mean your step.”
That Paul should despise the indifferent gaieties of Rabat and
Casablanca—that was understood. He was the serious one, destined for
the high commands. But here was opportunity and Paul Ravenel had been
quick to seize upon opportunity. There had been a pretty little fight
between Kenitra and Segota when Paul was in command of the Advance Guard
of Colonel Gouraud’s convoy; and Paul had fought his little battle with
a resourceful skill which had brought his name into the orders of the
day. He had been for ten months now in command of his Company at the
great camp of Dar-Debibagh, four kilometres out of Fez. These were days
of rapid promotion in an army where as a rule promotion was slow. A
successful march to Rabat might well make him Commandant and give him
his battalion. Yet the look upon his face, as he watched the sheets of
rain turning the plain of the Mechouar into a marsh, was the look of a
man—no, not relieved, but reprieved—yes, actually reprieved, thought
the Lieutenant Praslin.
Below them in the chamber of audience the Chiefs of the Mission were at
this moment debating the postponement of the journey and they came
quickly to the only possible decision. The departure was put off for
three days.
“We shall go then, however,” said Praslin, when this decision was
announced. “The escort is made up. There will be no change.”
“I wonder,” Paul Ravenel replied. “In three days a man may learn wisdom.
The Mission may after all wait until a sufficient force is assembled to
protect it properly and then the whole personnel of the escort may be
changed.”
“Oh, those stories!” cried Praslin contemptuously. He had the official
mind which looks upon distrust of official utterances as something next
to sacrilege. And official utterances had been busy of late. There was
no truth, they declared stoutly, in those stories that the Maghzen, the
Government itself, was stirring up disaffection and revolt behind the
back of the Mission. Very likely the people of Fez were saying that the
Sultan was the prisoner of the French, that he was being taken to Rabat
and Paris to be exhibited triumphantly as a captive; but the people of
Fez were born gossips and there was no danger in their talk. Had not the
Grand Vizier himself pledged his word that the country was quiet? Thus
the official mind. Thus too, consequently, Lieutenant Praslin, who was
very anxious to see life as it is lived in the coast towns. And if the
Intelligence Division and some soldiers who had spent years in the
country took a different view, why, soldiers were always alarmists and
foolish people and it was waste of time to listen to them.
Paul rode back through the rain with Lieutenant Praslin to the camp at
Dar-Debibagh when the reception was over. They went by the Bab Segma and
the bridge over the Fez River. The track was already a batter of mud
above the fetlocks of their horses. At seven o’clock, however, the rain
ceased and Paul, changing into a dry uniform, went into Praslin’s tent.
“I am dining with a friend of mine in Fez,” he said, “and I shall not be
back until late.”
“The battalion parade’s at six in the morning,” Praslin reminded him.
“The order has not been countermanded.”
“I know,” answered Paul. “I shall be on duty of course”; and mounting
his horse he rode again into the city.
He rode back by the way he had come and just within the Bab Segma he met
four Moors mounted upon mules richly caparisoned, and themselves wearing
robes of a spotless white. They were clearly men of high rank and one
rode a little in advance of the others. As Paul drew closer to them he
recognised this man as the Minister of War and one of the most important
dignitaries of the Maghzen. Paul saluted him and to his amazement the
Minister did not return the salute but turned to one of his companions
with a dishonouring word.
“Djiffa!” he said contemptuously, and spat on the ground. Paul took no
notice of the insult. But if he had needed proof of the stories which
the official mind refused to entertain, here it was openly avowed. Very
likely the postponement of the Mission’s departure had upset the
precious plans of the Maghzen and the Minister of War was showing his
displeasure. The point of importance to Paul was that he should dare to
show it so openly. That could but imply very complete plans for an
ambuscade in force on the road of the Mission to the coast, and a very
complete confidence as to the outcome.
Paul began to think of his own affairs.
“Suppose that the Mission and its escort is destroyed,” he reflected. “I
have left nothing to chance. No! The blow must fall as lightly as I can
make possible.”
He enumerated one by one the arrangements which he had made and recalled
the wording of his instructions to his solicitors and agents.
“No, I can think of nothing else,” he concluded. He had this final
request for help to make to-night, and he was very sure that he would
not make it in vain. “No,—whatever money can do to lighten the
blow—that has been done. And money can do much assuredly.
Only—only”—and he admitted to himself at last with a little shiver, a
dark thought which he had hitherto driven off—“she is just the kind of
girl who might commit suttee.”
He rode along the main street into the quarter of Tala. It was a street
always narrow, but sometimes so narrow that if two mules met they could
hardly pass. High walls of houses without any windows made it a chasm
rather than a street. At rare intervals it widened into a “place” or
square, where a drinking fountain stood or a bridge crossed a stream. It
was paved with broken cobble stones with a great rut in the middle where
the feet of the mules and horses had broken down to the brown earth
beneath; and here and there a slippery mill-stone on which the horse
skidded, had been let in to the cobbles by way of repair. It climbed
steeply and steeply fell, and in places the line of houses was broken by
a high garden wall above which showed orange trees laden with their
fruit and bougainvillæa climbing.
At times he passed under an archway where the street was built over
above his head and huge solid doors stood back against the walls on
either hand, that one quarter might be shut off from another during the
night, or in times of trouble. On his right hand a number of alleys led
into the Souk-ben-Safi and the maze of Fez-el-Bali. Into one of these
alleys Paul turned and stopped in front of a big house with an imposing
door studded with nails, and a stone by which to mount a horse.
He dismounted and knocked upon the door. To his surprise, it was not at
once thrown open. He looked about him. There was no servant waiting to
take his horse in charge. If there had been a mistake! Paul’s heart sank
at the thought. Suppose that his friend Si El Hadj Arrifa, on whom so
much now might depend, had been called away from his home? But that
couldn’t be—surely! However peremptory the summons had been, so
punctilious a personage as Si El Hadj Arrifa would have found a moment
wherein to put off his expected guest. Yet if nevertheless it were so
. . . !
Paul Ravenel felt the weighty letter under his tunic and gazed at the
blank wall of the great house with troubled eyes. Oh, he must talk with
his friend to-night! In three days the Mission and its escort were to
start. He might not get another chance. He redoubled his blows upon the
door and at last he heard a key turn in the lock and a clatter as the
wooden cross-bars were removed.
That sound completed his uneasiness. He had ridden through the city
thinking of his own affairs, his eyes in blinkers. Now tracing his steps
in memory, he recalled that the streets had been strangely quiet,
strangely empty. And here at the end of his journey was this hospitable
house barricaded against an invited guest.
“Oh, no,” he said, seeking to reassure himself, “the danger’s out there
in the ‘bled,’ on the way to the coast, not here in the town.”
But a picture rose before his mind of four notable Moors in milk-white
robes mounted on mules with trappings of scarlet and silver who sneered
openly at the uniform and spat. Paul Ravenel was frightened now. If it
was not only in the “bled” that danger threatened, then all his careful
letters and arrangements were worth just as much as the cobble stones
underneath his feet.
The door was open at last and as a servant took Paul’s horse by the
bridle and led it away to a stable, Paul hurried impatiently into the
house. But he was no more impatient than the servant who closed and
bolted the door behind him; and in the passage he saw a small troop of
attendants, every one of them armed and at the entrance from the passage
into the central court Si El Hadj Arrifa himself with a face of fear and
in the attitude of a man poised for flight.
But when he caught sight of the gold lace upon Paul’s uniform, the
Moor’s expression changed to surprise and surprise in its turn to a
smile of welcome. Si El Hadj Arrifa was a stout man, fair like so many
of the Fasi, with a fringe of beard round his fat face. He was dressed
in a silken shirt with an overgarment of pink tissue under his white
djellaba and his hands were as well-kept as a woman’s. He wore a fine
white haik over his turban and fez.
“I am afraid that you didn’t expect me,” said Paul.
“Your Excellency is always welcome,” replied Si El Hadj Arrifa. “Our
poor little meal is ready.”
But it was not ready and Paul’s uneasiness increased. He knew, however,
that he would hear nothing until hospitality was satisfied of its
ceremonies and then only by a roundabout road. He was led into a room
opening by means of a wide archway onto the court. In one corner of the
room stood a big modern brass bedstead. It was an ornament and a
decoration, nothing more. For sleep, cushions upon the tiled floor were
used. Round the wall there were a great number of clocks, Grandfather
clocks, heavy Victorian clocks of ormolu, clocks of marble, most of them
ticking away but registering quite different hours, and on the tiled
floor stood two branched candlesticks of shining silver with the candles
burning. Thick cushions were stretched upon the tiles about the candles
and upon them Paul and his host took their seats.
Si El Hadj Arrifa was a personage in Fez, a man of influence in politics
and of great wealth. He had visited Manchester more than once, to buy
cotton goods and he talked of that town whilst they waited for dinner.
“They have good dentists,” he said.
Paul looked at this soigné and dainty gentleman in the fine setting of
his beautiful house, and smiled to think of the figure he must cut in
Manchester. He probably wore a black gown like a gabardine and elastic
sided boots over white woollen socks and lived in a small room in a
dingy street. But Si El Hadj Arrifa fell soon into an uneasy silence and
sat listening with his head cocked as if he expected some sound from the
city without to ring out over the open square in the roof above the
court. A fountain was playing in the centre of the court in honour of
the visitor, but the Moor called to a servant to turn it off, since the
splash and tingle of the water so filled the ears that they could
apprehend nothing else.
Dinner was brought in at last by a couple of negresses and Paul must eat
of each course beginning with sweetmeats, and ranging through a
couscouss, a roasted leg of mutton and a stuffed chicken. Paul put his
right hand into the dish and tore at the meat in the due fashion and
accepted tit-bits from the fingers of his host. Some orange water was
brought for him to drink, and when the long meal was over one of the
negresses brought them a ewer and soap and poured water over their hands
whilst they washed them.
“Yes, they have good dentists in Manchester,” said Si El Hadj Arrifa
and, taking a complete set of shining teeth from his mouth, he washed
them and polished them and replaced them.
“They seem to have very good dentists there,” said Paul with befitting
gravity.
A silver tea kettle was brought and a silver spirit lamp, and Si El Hadj
Arrifa brewed two little cups of heavily sweetened green tea and
flavoured it with mint. But even while engaged upon this important work,
he still kept his head cocked a little on one side, as though he still
listened for some dreaded yet expected sound. And when he handed the cup
to Paul, it rattled in the saucer.
Nothing on this evening had so startled Paul Ravenel. His heart jumped
within his breast. Si El Hadj Arrifa was not merely disturbed. His hand
was shaking. He was desperately afraid. He drew a breath and leaned
forward to speak and Ravenel said to himself with relief. “At last! It
is coming.”
But he was wrong. His host only enquired whether Paul had ever visited
America.
“No,” he answered.
“A man in Manchester told me that they had a way there of stuffing
turkeys which was very good. But they used oysters for it and of course
so far from the sea we can get none at Fez.”
“Some day there will be a railway,” said Paul consolingly. Si El Hadj
Arrifa made another brew of tea, this time suspending in the brew a
little lump of ambergris to flavour it.
“I must begin,” thought Paul, as he took his cup. He felt for the big
letter in his tunic but before he could take it from his breast his host
spoke in a low, quiet tone, words which at first seemed of little more
importance than any which had been spoken before, and afterwards were
able to set Paul’s heart fluttering.
“I sent a messenger this evening to you at the camp at Dar-Debibagh.
“He missed me,” replied Paul.
“It is a pity.”
“Why?”
“I sent him to warn you not to come into Fez to-night.”
“Why?”
“You are my friend. There is danger.”
“But outside the city,” cried Paul, “from the tribes—after we have
marched.”
“Here in Fez too,” Si El Hadj Arrifa insisted in a voice which now
frankly shook with terror. “For you and all of your creed that dwell in
this city.”
Paul was already on his feet, his face and his eyes set in a stare of
horror. Si El Hadj Arrifa quite misunderstood the French officer’s
manner. He said soothingly:
“You shall stay in my house till it is all over.”
“All over?” Paul repeated. He took his hand from the bulky letter in his
tunic. If the dreadful news were true, his plans must change. His heart
sank as he caught a glimpse of how they must change.
“I must know more, my friend,” he said, and he sat quietly down again
upon the cushions.
“There are the Askris,” said the man of Fez, “the tribesmen. You have
taken them too quickly into your armies. You have armed them too
quickly. You have placed them with their instructors in the Kashab des
Cherarda by the Segma gate as a garrison for this town. Oh, madness!”
“Yes,” Paul agreed. “We should have waited a year—two years.”
“They are told that they must carry knapsacks,” continued Si El Hadj
Arrifa. “With us that is work for women, an insult to men.”
“But it isn’t true,” said Paul Ravenel.
“What does that matter if it is believed? The knapsacks were carried on
mules publicly through the city, so that all men might see them. Six
thousand of them.”
“Not by our orders,” said Paul, and the swift look and the shrug of the
shoulders with which the protest was received told him much. It was by
the order of the Maghzen that those knapsacks had been paraded. The
Government itself was behind this movement in the city as it was behind
the insurrection on the plains. Once more he saw very clearly the four
contemptuous notables upon their mules.
“Of course we have known of this trouble,” said Paul slowly. “But we
thought that each instructor could make it clear to his men that the
story was a lie.”
Si El Hadj Arrifa flung up his hands.
“Oh, the great lessons and nothing is learnt! Was there not trouble once
for the English in India? Was there not talk of cartridges greased with
the fat of pigs? It was not true. No! But it served. As the knapsacks
will serve in Fez.”
“A little time,” cried Paul Ravenel, clutching at the straw of that
faint hope.
“There is no time,” answered Si El Hadj Arrifa. “Listen!” He looked
swiftly behind him into the shadows of the court to make sure that there
were none to overhear. “The revolt in Fez was planned for to-morrow,
after the Mission had departed. There was to be a scouring.”
“Yes.”
“The Askris are ready: more than ready. It was difficult to hold them
in, even with the promise of to-morrow. Now that the departure is
postponed, they will not wait. It needs a word perhaps, but the speaking
of that word cannot be delayed.”
Paul nodded gloomily.
“And they won’t believe it,” he said in a dull quiet voice, as he stared
upon the ground. Believe it? Paul Ravenel knew very well that were he to
batter down the door of the Embassy, they would not even allow him to
blurt his story out. Why should he come prattling his soldier’s
silliness at that unearthly hour? Let him go back to his camp and await
his well-deserved reprimand in the morning! There are proper channels by
which presumptuous young officers must address their importunities. It
is the history of many disasters. Politics and ambition and the play of
parties must decide what is going to happen, not prescience or
knowledge. Is a country notoriously _studiis asperrima belli_? Let us
never admit it, lest we range against us this or that faction which is
strong enough to bring us down. It’s all a gamble. So let us plank our
money and everybody else’s and their lives into the bargain on to our
colour and chance it turning up. “All rising to Great Place is by a
winding stair.” So we must twist and turn and see nothing beyond the
next step by which we mount. Authority in Fez had just been given the
cravat of Grand Officer of the Legion of Honour, because the
negotiations for the Protectorate had been conducted so smoothly and had
ended in so resounding a success. It would never do for authority to
listen to any intrusive soldier who insisted that murder and torture
were knocking on the door. Had not the Maghzen declared that the
tribesmen in the “bled” were only thinking of their husbandry? Did not
the Grand Vizier himself guarantee the goodwill and peacefulness of Fez?
“They have stopped their ears and bandaged their eyes,” said Paul.
“But you will stay here to-night,” his friend urged. “No one, I think,
saw you come into my house, and my servants are faithful. Yes, you will
stay here and be safe until this danger is overpast!”
Paul shook his head.
“That I cannot do,” he said, and Si El Hadj Arrifa hearing the tone he
used, knew that there would be no persuading him.
“Then go while you can, and ride quickly with your pistol loose in its
holster.”
But even so Paul did not move.
“Wait,” he said.
He raised his head to listen. The night was still as a tomb. A cry even
from the most distant corner of the city, it seemed to him, must carry
to this open square of darkness above them. He had time. “Yes, wait,” he
repeated, and he went apart into the shadowy patio. Never had he been
set to face so tragic a dilemma. He knew Si El Hadj Arrifa too well to
doubt him. Nor indeed had he any real doubt as to the choice which he
himself would make. The choice was in truth made, had been made from the
moment he was sure that torture and massacre threatened those who
remained in Fez as much as those who marched to Rabat. But he stood in
that shadowy court of marble and tiles, gazing with a great sorrow upon
many lovely cherished things which he was now forever to forego, his own
hopes and ambitions, a little circle of good friends, honour and good
report, a career of active service and study well-applied, and at the
end of it all a name cleansed of its stain, and—even now the picture
rose before his mind—a dreamlike high garden fragrant with roses, from
which one looked out over moonlit country to the misty barrier of the
Downs. It was such a farewell as he had never thought to make and when
he turned back into the room his face was twisted as with a physical
pain and anguish lay deep in his brooding eyes.
He took the envelope from his breast.
“I shall trust you with more than my life,” he said.
“Your Excellency has honoured me with his friendship. I am his servant
in all things.”
“I have been for three nights writing this letter. I had it in my mind
to open it here and read it to you. But the bad news you have given me
points to another way. It may be that there will be no need to use it. I
give it into your hands and I beg you to keep it sealed as it is, until
you are certain of my death. If I am alive I shall find a means to let
you know. If I am dead, I pray you to do all that I have written here.”
Si El Hadj Arrifa took the letter and bowed his forehead upon it, as
though it carried the very Sultan’s seal.
“With God’s will, I will do as you direct.”
Paul took his friend by the hand, and looked him in the eyes.
“I could not rest quiet in my grave if my wishes written there were not
fulfilled—if misfortune struck where there is no need that it should
strike. A voice would call to me, in sorrow and distress, and I should
hear it and stir in my grave though I was buried metres deep in clay. It
is a promise?”
“Yes.”
Si El Hadj Arrifa struck a bell and a man came out to him from the
servants’ quarters.
“All is quiet, Mohammed?”
“Up till this hour.”
“His Excellency’s horse then! You will go in front of him with a lantern
as far as the Bab Segma. His Excellency returns to the camp at
Dar-Debibagh.”
The servant’s eyes opened wide in fear. He looked from his master to his
master’s guest, as though both of them had been smitten with madness.
Then he went out upon his business, and the two men in the court heard
the fall of the bars and the grinding of the lock of the door.
“I will put this away,” said Si El Hadj Arrifa, balancing the letter in
his hands; and he went upstairs to his own room. When he came down Paul
was standing in the patio, with his cap upon his head.
“I will bid you good-bye here my friend,” said Paul, but his host,
terrified though he was, would not so far fall short of his duties. He
went out with Paul Ravenel to the street. The city all about them was
very quiet. There was no light anywhere but the light in the big lantern
which Mohammed was carrying in one hand whilst he held the bridle of
Paul’s horse with the other. Paul mounted quickly and without a word. Si
El Hadj Arrifa stood in the doorway of his house. He watched the lantern
dwindle to a spark, he heard the sharp loud crack of the horse’s shoes
upon the cobbles soften and grow dull. He waited until the spark had
vanished, and, a little time afterwards, the beat of the hoofs had
ceased. And still there was no sign of any trouble, no distant clamour
as of men gathering, no shrill cries from the women on the roofs. He
went back into his house.
[Illustration: _A William Fox Production._ _The Winding Stair._ PAUL
FIRST MEETS MARGUERITE, DANCER IN THE CAFE IRIS.]