The Tunic
“Marguerite, you must go to bed,” said Paul. “I’ll rouse you if there’s
any danger.”
It was very near to the dawn now. There was a freshness and an
expectation in the air; a faint colourless light was invading the
darkness; in the patch of sky above their heads the bright stars were
swooning. For most of this last half hour Marguerite’s head had lain
heavy upon his shoulder, and if she opened her eyes it was only to close
them again with a sigh of content. Paul lifted her on to her feet and
led her up the stairs.
“And you, Paul?” she asked, drowsily.
“I shall be within call. I shall sleep for a little on the cushions
below. Good-night.”
Marguerite noticed that the voice of the last mueddin ceased whilst she
was still preparing herself for her bed; and after she had got into it,
she heard a kettle singing cheerfully in the court below as if Paul were
brewing for himself some tea. Then, with the doors of her bedroom open
upon the little gallery above the court she went fast asleep.
Hours afterwards a shattering noise awakened her. She lay for a few
moments deliciously poised between sleep and consciousness, and vaguely
thinking her long and troubled vigil to have been a nightmare which the
light of day had happily dispelled. The sunlight was falling in a sheet
of gold through the open roof. “It must be very late,” she reflected,
lazily, and thereupon sharply and crisply two shots from a rifle split
the air. Marguerite sprang up in her bed with a hand to her heart, as
though one of those shots had wounded her. It was just the same noise
which had broken through her slumbers. The nightmare was true, then! She
listened, resting upon one arm, with her face turned towards the open
doors. A clamour of voices was borne from a distance to her ears. The
new Terror had begun.
“Paul!” she cried loudly. “Paul”; and a tall man dressed in the robes of
a Moor stood beside her bed. She shrank away with a little scream. It
was not until he smiled that she recognized her lover.
“You had better get up, Marguerite,” he said, and bending down he kissed
her. “You have slept well, thank the Lord.”
One of the negresses brought her a cup of tea and Marguerite, slipping
on her dressing gown, sat upon the edge of the bed and thrust her feet
into her slippers.
“What is the time, Paul?”
“A little past one.”
“So late?”
“I let you sleep. There was no disturbance. The first shot waked you.”
“I will be quick,” she said, or rather began to say. For the words,
half-uttered, were frozen upon her lips. Such a din, so shrill, so
menacing and strange, burst out above their heads that Marguerite
cowered down under it as under the threat of a blow. She had never heard
the like of it, she hoped never to hear the like of it again; yet she
was to hear it now for days—the swift repetition of one strident note,
swelling and falling in a pæan of wild inhuman triumph. Marguerite
imagined all the birds of prey in the world wheeling and screaming above
the city; or a thousand thin voices shrieking in a madhouse;
you—you—you—you—you—the piercing clamour ran swift as the clacking
of a mitrailleuse, and with a horrid ferocity which made the girl’s
blood run cold.
“Paul,” she said, “what is it?”
“The women on the roofs.”
“Oh!”
Marguerite shuddered as she listened, clutching tight her lover’s arm.
Such a promise of cruelty was in those shrill cries as made Marguerite
think of the little automatic pistol in the drawer of her table as a
talisman which she must henceforth carry close to her hand. She felt
that even if she escaped from the peril of these days, she could never
walk again in the narrow streets between the blind houses without the
chill of a great fear. Her clasp tightened upon her lover’s arm and he
winced sharply. Marguerite looked up into his face, and saw that his
lips were pressed close together to prevent a cry of pain.
“Paul!” she said wonderingly. She loosened her clasp and turned back the
sleeve of his djellaba. Beneath it, his forearm was roughly but tightly
bandaged. “Oh, my dear,” she cried, in a voice of compunction, “what
happened to you whilst I slept? You are wounded—and for me! Must I
always do you harm?” and she beat her hands together in her distress.
“It was an accident,” said Paul.
“An accident?”
She ran to her medicine-chest, and making him sit beside her, unfastened
the bandage. “An accident?” she repeated. It looked to her as if he had
been stabbed. A knife had been driven right through the flesh of his
forearm. Paul did not reply to her exclamations and she did not press
her questions. She washed and dressed the wound and bound it up again.
“It must hurt terribly,” she said, her forehead knitted in distress.
“It is easier now,” he answered. “The knife was clean.”
“You are sure of that, Paul?”
“Quite.”
She made a sling of his arm and sent him away. She dressed quickly,
wondering how that wound had been inflicted and why he wished not to
explain it. Surely he had not gone out whilst she slept? Surely there
had been no attack upon the house? No! But she was plunged now into a
world of mystery and fear, and she wrung her hands in an impotent
despair.
They took their breakfast in a room upon the first floor, Paul asking
questions as to how far the house was provisioned, and Marguerite
answering almost at random, whilst the cries of the women rang shrill
overhead.
“Oh, yes, there is food,” she answered.
“We can always send Selim out,” he added.
Marguerite’s eyes lightened.
“We will send him out, Paul,” she exclaimed. “Do you know what has been
troubling me? We haven’t a window upon any street. We are here at the
bottom of a well with nothing but our ears to warn us of danger. We can
see nothing.”
Paul looked at her anxiously. She was nervous, the flutter of her hands
feverish, and her voice running up and down the scale as though she had
no control over it. Paul reached across the table and laid his hand upon
her arm.
“You poor little girl!” he said gently. “These are trying days. But
there won’t be many. The wireless here will have got into touch already
with Moinier’s column near Meknes. The troops, too, at Dar-Debibagh may
do something,” and ever so slightly his voice faltered when he spoke of
the troops, yet not so slightly but that Marguerite noticed it. “They
have some guns,” he went on hurriedly, and again Marguerite noticed the
hurry, the desire to cover up and hide that little spasm of pain which
had stabbed him when he thought of his men. “Yes, the guns!” he said.
“There will be an end to that infernal twittering on the roof tops when
the guns begin to talk.”
“Paul, you should have been with your men,” said Marguerite, and he
answered her with a kind of violent obstinacy which drew her eyes in one
swift glance to his face. “I am on leave.”
He changed his tone, however, immediately.
“We will send Selim into the town for news,” he said cheerfully, “and we
will go up on to the roof.”
Selim was bidden to knock twice, and, after a tiny interval, once more
upon his return. Paul stood behind the door listening to make sure that
the tunnel was empty before he opened it. Then he let him go, and locked
and barred the door again.
“Come,” he said to Marguerite and, picking up some cushions, they went
upstairs to the roof. Marguerite had followed Paul’s example, and was
dressed in Moorish clothes; the house was higher by a storey than any
which adjoined it, and the roof itself was enclosed in a parapet
waist-high. They crouched upon the cushions behind the wall and
cautiously looked over it.
A pack of clouds was threatening in the west, but just now the city
glittered in the sunlight like a jewel, with its hanging gardens and
high terraces, its white houses huddling down the hillside like a flock
of sheep, and the bright green tiles of its mosques. Paul and Marguerite
never tired of this aspect of the lovely city, shut within its old
crumbling walls and musical with the rushing noise of its many rivers.
But to-day they saw it as they had never seen it before. For the roofs
were crowded with women in their coloured robes of gauze and bright
scarves, who danced and screamed, and climbed from one house to another
on little ladders in such a frenzy of excitement that the eyes were
dazzled and the ears deafened. Paul turned towards the north. Upon the
roof of one house men were breaking through with axes and picks, whilst
others flung down rags and sticks which had been soaked in paraffin and
lighted, through the holes into the rooms below.
“I think that’s the house of the French veterinary surgeon,” said Paul;
and from all about that house rose a continuous rattle of firing.
“Look!” said Paul, and he nodded to the south. Here there was a gap
between the houses, and Marguerite could see far below a tumble-down
stone bridge built in a steep arch across a stream. As she looked, a
wild horde of men swarmed upon the bridge, capering and yelling.
“There are soldiers amongst them,” said Marguerite. “I can see their
rifles and their bandoliers.”
“Yes, the Askris who have revolted,” answered Paul, and suddenly he
covered Marguerite’s eyes with the palm of his hand. “Don’t look!” But
Marguerite had already seen, and she sank down behind the parapet with a
moan. In the midst of that wild procession some rifles with bayonets
fixed were held aloft, and on one of the bayonets the trunk and the
limbs of a man were impaled. The head was carried last of all, and upon
a pole taller than the bayonets, a head black with blood, like a
negro’s, on which a gold-laced kêpi was derisively cocked.
Paul swore underneath his breath.
“One of my brothers,” he whispered. “Oh, my God,” and dropping his head
into his hands, he rocked his body to and fro in an agony of remorse.
Marguerite touched him on the shoulder.
“Paul, there’s a carbine in your room.”
“It would be fatal to use it.”
“I don’t care,” Marguerite cried fiercely. Her face was alive with
passion. “Use it, Paul. I don’t care!” and from far below there rose the
sound of a loud knocking upon a door.
Marguerite’s heart fluttered up into her throat. She stared at Paul with
her eyes opened wide in horror. The same thought was in both their
minds. Both listened, holding their breath that they might hear the
better.
“It was upon our door they knocked,” Marguerite whispered, and she crept
a little closer to her lover.
“Listen!” replied Paul, and as the knocking began again, but this time
louder, he added with a grim look upon his face, “Yes.”
“And it was not Selim who knocked,” said Marguerite.
They could hear cries now, angry orders to open, followed by a muffled
clamour and such a clatter of heavy blows as shook the very house.
“I must go down,” said Paul, in a low voice. “Otherwise they’ll break in
the door.”
Marguerite nodded. Her face was white to the lips, but she was quite
still now and her eyes steady. They crept down to the uppermost floor of
the house. The noise was louder.
“You will stay here, Marguerite?”
“Yes.”
“You have your pistol?”
Marguerite drew it from her broad waistbelt of gold brocade, snapped
back the barrel, and set the safety catch. Her hand never shook. Now
that the peril was at her elbow she could even smile. Paul took her
passionately in his arms.
“You are gold all through, Marguerite,” he cried. “If this is the end, I
thank you a thousand times. I would hate to have died without knowing
the wonder of such rare love as yours.”
“‘We two embracing under death’s spread hand.’” She quoted from a book
upon her shelf in which she was pleased to find a whole library of
wisdom and inspiration.
“You will wait until the last moment?” said Paul, touching the little
automatic in her hand.
“Until they are on this last flight of stairs,” she replied, in an even
voice. “Paul!” She clung to him for a second, not in terror, but as to
some inestimable treasure which she could hardly let go. Then she stood
away, her eyes shining like the dew, her face hallowed with tenderness.
“Now, my dear, go!”
Paul Ravenel ran down the stairs. The clamour echoing from the tunnel
had taken on a fiercer note; the door, stout as it was, bent inwards
under the blows. Marguerite, standing upon the landing, heard him unbolt
the door. She drew back out of sight as a crowd of men, some in
djellabas spotted with blood, some in ragged caftans, some armed with
rifles, others with curved knives, others, again, with sharpened poles,
swept screaming like madmen over the court.
“The Frenchman,” cried a great fellow, brandishing a butcher’s cleaver.
“Give him to us! God has willed that they shall all die this day.”
What had become of Paul? she wondered. Had he been swept off his feet
and trampled down in the rush? She heard his voice above the clamour.
She imagined him standing with uplifted hand claiming silence. At all
events, silence followed, and then his voice rang out.
“God willed that he should die yesterday,” said Paul.
Marguerite peered out between the curtains which overhung the entrance
to the room. She saw him move, calm and smiling, across the court to an
alcove and point to a corner.
“The Frenchman came to my house once too often. Look! He sought refuge
here last night. He was not wise to seek refuge in the house of Ben
Sedira the Meknasi. For to-day his body rolls in the river—” Paul threw
open a small door in the back wall and showed them the Karouein River
tumbling, swollen with the rain, past the walls of his house. Then he
pointed to the alcove: “And his livery lies there.”
There was a rush into the alcove, and the shouts of exultation broke out
again. A blue tunic, on the breast of which medals glinted and rattled,
was tossed out high amidst the throng. The tunic was gashed and all
cluttered and stained with blood which had dried. Paul’s gold-lace cap
spun through the air, was caught, and clapped upon the head of a boy,
his breeches and boots and accoutrements were flung from hand to hand
and shared out amidst laughter and cheering. And once more there was a
surge of men, and the court was empty and silent. No, not quite empty.
Paul was talking in a gentle voice to one wild man who was now wearing
over a ragged caftan Paul’s uniform tunic. Paul held him firmly by the
elbow, and was speaking in a curiously soft, smooth voice, than which
Marguerite had never heard anything more menacing.
“You will leave that tunic, good friend. You will take it off at once
and leave it here. It is my trophy. Have I not earned it?”
The man protested, and sought to disengage himself, but Paul still held
him firmly.
“It shall hang in my house,” he continued, “that my children may
remember how once there were Frenchmen befouling the holy ground of
Morocco.”
Once more Marguerite heard the rattle of the medals as the coat was
restored, and the Moor cried out: “There will be none alive in Fez this
night. Salam aleikum, O man of Meknes!” And a little afterwards the door
was slammed and barred.
Paul returned to the court, holding the tunic in his hands. The peril of
the last few moments was swept altogether out of his mind. For a moment
Marguerite herself was forgotten. He was holding the badge of many years
of honourable service, and the shining medals which proved that the
service had been of real value to the country he served. All was now
wasted and foregone.
“I should make the sacrifice again,” he said obstinately to himself, “if
it were to make again. I should! I should!”
But he had not borne to see the tunic and its medals paraded in triumph
on the back of one of these assassins through the streets of Fez. When
he stopped the Moor and held him back from his companions, his hand had
gripped close the revolver hidden in his waistband. Had the man clung to
the tunic, Paul would have killed, whatever the risk. The traditions and
the whole training of his life had forced his hand. He knew that, as he
stood in the silent sunlit patio fondling the stuff of the coat between
his fingers, and his heart aching as though some little snake had
slipped into his bosom and was feeding there.
“I have done what my father did,” he thought. “I, who set out to atone
for him.” And he laughed aloud with so much mockery at his own
pretensions that the laughter startled him. “I can plead a different
reason. But what of that? I have done what my father did!”
He folded the tunic reverently, and laid it down again in the alcove. As
he stood up he was startled by the clatter of something falling overhead
and the sharp explosion of a pistol. He looked upwards. The sound had
come from behind those curtains where Marguerite was hidden. Had she
been watching? Had she seen him fondling the tunic? Had she heard his
bitter laughter? Perhaps he had spoken aloud. For a moment his heart
stood still. Some words that Henriette had said to him—oh, ever so long
ago, in the Villa Iris, flashed back into his mind. “Even if the grand
passion comes—oh la, la la!—she will blow her brains out, the little
fool!”
He sprang up the stairs, crying “Marguerite! Marguerite!” and stumbling
in his haste. No answer was returned to him. He tore the curtains aside,
and saw her lying on the floor by the side of a divan. The pistol had
slipped from her hand and fallen a little way from her. Paul flung
himself upon his knees beside her, lifted her, and pressed her close to
his heart. “Marguerite! Marguerite!” he whispered. There was no wound,
and she was breathing, and in a moment or two her eyes opened. Paul
understood in that supreme moment of relief how greatly his love of
Marguerite overpowered his grief at honour lost.
“Oh, my dear, you frightened me!” he said.
She smiled as he lifted her onto the divan.
“I was foolish,” she answered.
She had waited upon the outcome of that wild scene in the court below,
her nerves steady, her mind unconscious of any effort to steel herself
against catastrophe. She could catch but a glimpse of what was going
forward; she did not understand the trick by which Paul Ravenel had
appeased the invaders; she heard the wild babble of their frenzied
voices and Paul’s voice over-topping them. She had waited serenely with
her little pistol in her hand, safety to be reached so easily by the
mere pressure of a finger. Then suddenly all was over; the court was
empty, the house which had rung with fury a moment since was silent; and
as she heard the bolts of the door shot once more into their sockets her
strength had melted away. She had stood for a little while in a daze
and, catching at the divan as she fell, had slipped in a swoon to the
floor. The pistol fell from her hand and exploded as it fell.
“I was foolish,” she repeated; “I didn’t understand what had happened. I
don’t even now.”
“I was afraid that some time or another some one had seen me enter this
house and remembered it,” Paul Ravenel explained. “Last night something
happened outside the door—what, I don’t know, but enough to trouble me
a little. So after you had gone to bed I boiled a kettle—”
“Yes, I heard it.”
“And sterilized my big knife. I drove the knife through my arm and let
the blood soak through my tunic, and then I stabbed the tunic again in
the back. It was lucky that I did.”
“What should I have done without you?” she said, as she rested upon the
cushions of the divan. She laid a hand gently in his.
“Does the wound hurt, Paul?”
“It throbs a little if I move it. That’s all. It’s nothing.”
“I’ll dress it again to-night,” she said, sleepily, and almost
immediately she fell asleep. She slept so deeply, that a muffled roar,
which shook the house, did not even trouble her dreams. Paul smiled as
he heard that sound. “That’s one of the seventy-five,” he reflected. The
guns from the camp at Dar-Debibagh were coming into action.
He left Marguerite sleeping, and climbed again to the roof. The guns
were firing to the south of the town, and were still far away. But no
man who had fought through the Chaiouïa Campaign could ever forget the
tribesmen’s terror of the guns.
“Another day or two!”
Paul counted up the stages of the march of Moinier’s column from Meknes.
If only he was quick, so that the tribesmen could not mass between him
and Fez! There were houses alight now in Fez-el-Bali. The work of
massacre was going on. But let General Moinier hurry, and the guns over
there at Dar-Debibagh talk insistently to Fez! Moreover, at five o’clock
the rain began again. It fell like javelins, with the thunder of surf
upon a beach.