The Splendid Throw
What had happened between the moment when Gerard de Montignac rode away
from the door of Si Tayeb Reha’s house the first time and the moment
when the pistol-shot rang out? It had all been Marguerite Lambert’s
idea—a despairing clutch at some faint and far-off possibility, hardly
a hope, yet worth putting to the proof. She had heard every word which
Gerard had spoken. She had seen the revolver laid upon the table. She
had seen even more than that. For when Gerard had gone from the room,
Paul had taken the revolver at once in his hands. It would be a very
little while before the sergeant noticed that Gerard’s revolver was
missing from its pouch. He had not even time to write more than one
“good-bye” to Marguerite. There were good friends who would look after
her—the Basha himself, Selim his own servant.
The road to the coast passed across the plain below the city, and there
was a letter for her long since written with his instructions, on the
top of his desk. He paused after he had written his one word to make
sure that he had forgotten nothing. The addresses of his agents and his
lawyers were written in the letter and all that he had, his property in
the English funds, his houses in Fez and Casablanca, was bequeathed to
her in a will of which Mr. Ferguson had charge. No, nothing had been
forgotten—except that Marguerite herself was watching him from behind
the curtains. She came into the room.
Paul handed to her the paper with the one word “good-bye” written upon
it.
“Marguerite, Gerard de Montignac has been here.”
“I know. I heard.”
“Then you understand, my dear. This is the end for me.”
“For both of us, then, Paul.”
He began to argue and stopped. The futility of his words was too
evident. She would follow him, whatever he might say. He began to thank
her for the great love she had lavished on him and he stopped again. “I
could never tell you what you have meant to me,” he said, helplessly.
“But if it was all to do again, I should do as I did. For nothing in the
world would I have left you alone through those days in the house of Si
Ahmed Driss. Only, it is a pity that it must all end like this.”
He took her in his arms and kissed her and put her from him. “Will you
leave me now, my dear? At any moment the knock may come upon the door.”
It was then that Marguerite’s inspiration came to her. She besought him
to hold his hand. She fetched a rope and an axe. Often she had noticed
from the window that ledge of rock breaking the precipice below. Paul
was inclined to revolt against the trick which she was asking him to
play. It was not likely to succeed with Gerard de Montignac. It would
only add one more touch of indignity to their deaths. But Marguerite was
urgent.
“I’m not thinking of just saving our lives, Paul, so that we may fly and
hide ourselves again in some still darker corner for a little while,”
she said, eagerly. “I’ll tell you of my hope, my plan, afterwards. Now
we must hurry.”
Paul doubled the rope over one of the iron stanchions of the balcony
close to the wall, whilst Marguerite locked the door. He climbed over
the rail, and, taking a turn of the doubled rope round the upper part of
his right arm and another turn round his right thigh, he let himself
down until he hung below the balcony. He kept his arms squared and his
hands below the level of his chin, and placing the flat of his feet
against the wall of the house, he was able, by slackening the coils
round arm and thigh, to descend without effort to the ledge of rock,
where he lay huddled in a counterfeit of death.
“Don’t move until you hear my voice calling to you,” she whispered. Then
she drew up the rope and broke down the rail of the balcony with some
blows of the axe, and, unlocking the door, hid away both axe and rope in
another room. She came back swiftly, and then, taking up the heavy
revolver, fired it out of the window and let it fall upon the boards of
the balcony. She dropped to her knees, and thus Gerard de Montignac
found her.
All through that scene, whilst life and death were in the balance for
these two, Paul Ravenel lay motionless upon the ledge of rock below the
city wall. He dared not look up; he heard Gerard’s voice raised in anger
and scorn; he expected the shock of the bullet tearing through his
heart. But the voice diminished to a murmur. Gerard had gone back into
the room. Some debate was in progress, and while it was in progress,
from this and that far quarter of the sky the vultures gathered and
wheeled above the precipice. . . .
After a while he heard Marguerite’s voice, and, looking up, saw that she
was letting down the rope to him. She had tied knots in it at intervals
to help him in his ascent, and he clambered up to her side.
“Gerard has gone?” he asked.
“Yes. He will not come here again.”
“Then he believed you?”
“No. He left us in pity to live our lives out as best we could,” said
Marguerite.
Paul nodded his head.
“Others will be coming and going now,” he said. “This city will become a
show-place, very likely. We can’t remain in Mulai Idris because of those
others.”
“And we can’t remain anywhere else because of ourselves,” said
Marguerite, quietly.
Paul was not startled by the words. They were no more than the echo of
words which he had been trying during this last half hour not to speak
to himself. They had built up with elaborate care a great pretence of
contentment, watching themselves so that there might be no betrayal of
the truth, watching each other so that if the truth did at some
unendurable moment flash out, no heed should be taken of it; and hoping
even without any conviction that one day the contentment would grow
real. But all that patient edifice of pretence was a crumble of dust
now. The outer world in the person of Gerard de Montignac in his uniform
had rushed in, with his hard logic, its scorn for duty abandoned, its
emblems of duty fulfilled; and there was no more any peace for Paul
Ravenel and Marguerite Lambert. To live for thirty or forty years more
as they had been living! It was in both their thoughts that it would
have been better for Gerard de Montignac to have done straightway what
he threatened, and for Marguerite to have followed her lover as she had
determined.
Paul sat down at the table with his eyes upon Marguerite. She had some
hope, some plan. So much she had said. Was it, he wondered, the plan of
which he from time to time had dreamed, but for her sake had never dared
to speak? He waited.
“You are a man, Paul,” she began, “oh, generous as men should not be,
but a man. And you sit here idle. A great personage in Mulai Idris, no
doubt. The power behind the throne—the Basha’s throne!” The hard words
were spoken with a loving gentleness which drew their sting. “A man must
have endeavour—I don’t say success—but endeavour of a kind, if only in
games. Otherwise what? He becomes a thing in carpet slippers, old before
his youth is spent, and this you would dwindle, too, for me! No, my
dear!”
Paul made no gesture and uttered no word. She was to speak her thought
out.
“You laugh and joke with these people here. For five minutes at a time
no doubt you can forget,” she continued. “But you can never exchange
thoughts with your equals, you can never talk over old dreams you have
had in common, old, hard, and tough experiences which you have shared.
And these things, Paul, are all necessary for a man.”
Again Paul Ravenel neither denied nor agreed. He left to her the right
of way.
“And in spite of all you still love me!” she cried, in a sudden fervour,
clasping her hands together upon her breast. “Me whom you should hate. I
clutch the wonder of that to my heart. I must keep your love.”
Paul Ravenel smiled.
“There’s no danger of your losing it, Marguerite.”
Marguerite shook her head.
“But there is—oh, not at once! But I am warned, Paul. There’s the light
showing on the reef. I keep my course at more than my peril.”
Paul went back upon his words and his looks. What could he have said, he
who so watched himself?
“And this warning?” he asked, with a smile, making light of it.
“We dare not quarrel,” she answered, slowly. “That human natural thing
is barred from us. The sharp words flashing out, the shrug of
impatience, the few tears perhaps from me, the silent hour of sulkiness
in you, the making-up, the tenderness and remorse—these things are for
other lovers, Paul, never, my dear, for you and me. We daren’t quarrel.
We must watch ourselves night and day lest we do! For if we did, the
unforgivable word might be spoken. I might fling my debt to you in your
face. I might be reminded of it, anyway. No, we must live in a
constraint. Other lovers can quarrel and love no less. Not you and I—a
man who has given his honour and career, and a woman who has taken
them!”
The argument silenced Paul Ravenel, for there was no disputing it. How
daintily the pair of them had minced amongst words! With what terror of
a catastrophe if the tongue slipped!
“So . . . ?” he asked.
“Yes,” said Marguerite, with a nod. “So! So, Paul, let us stake all on
one splendid throw! Go down if we must, but if we do, in a fine
endeavour, and perhaps, after all, win out to the open street!”
She spoke with a ring in her voice which Paul had not heard for a long
while.
“How?” he asked, and the light leaped in his eyes. So much hung upon the
answer.
“The French are recruiting Moorish soldiers——” and she got no further,
for Paul sprang up from his chair, his face one flame of hope.
“Marguerite!” he cried, in a thrilling voice, and then sank down again
with his face buried in his arms. “Marguerite!” he whispered, and the
tenderness and gratitude with which the utterance of her name was
winged, she caught into her memories and treasured there against the
solitude which was to come.
She moved round the table and laid her hand upon his bowed head and let
it slip and rest upon his heaving shoulder.
“So the thought has been in your mind too, Paul?” she said, with a
smile.
“Yes.”
“And for a long time?”
“Yes.”
“And you would not speak it. No! I must find that way out for myself,”
she said, gently chiding him, “lest you should seem to wish at all costs
to be rid of me.” She walked away from his side and drew a chair up to
the table opposite to him.
“Let us be practical,” she said, very wisely, though her eyes danced.
“It would be possible for you to enlist without being recognised?”
Paul lifted his head and nodded:
“Over in the south by Marrakesch.”
“And you could continue to escape recognition.”
“I think so. Even if I were recognised, very likely those who recognised
me would say nothing. I remember a case once . . .”
“Here?” cried Marguerite. “There was a case, then—an example to
follow—and even so you would not tell me.”
“I didn’t mean I know of a case here. I was thinking of another country.
India. If that man could, I could, for I am even better equipped than he
was.”
Paul Ravenel could say that with confidence. He knew more of the Moors,
had more constantly lived their life and spoken their dialects than
Colonel Vanderfelt had known of the Pathans upon the frontier of India.
The example of Colonel Vanderfelt had been long in Paul Ravenel’s
thoughts. How often had he watched with an envy not to be described,
both when he waked and when he slept, that limping figure, with the
medals shining upon his breast, walk down the dark city street from the
brilliant lights of the Guildhall!
How often had this room in the remote hill town of Mulai Idris been
suddenly filled with the fragrance of a Sussex garden, whilst he himself
looked out not upon the hillside of Zahoun but upon a dim and dewy lawn
where roses clustered! He had done the bad thing which his father did,
and, like his father, lost his place in the world. Could he now win back
that place by the expiation of his father’s friend? Was it not of
excellent omen that the solution which he had remembered, Marguerite had
herself devised? But she must weigh everything.
“It may be long before opportunity comes,” he warned her. “Such
opportunity as will restore to me my name. It may never come at all. Or
death may come with it.”
Marguerite looked round the room and out of the window to the barren
hill.
“Is not this death, Paul?” she answered, simply, and he was answered.
“You must make me a promise, too, before I go, Marguerite,” he
continued. “More than once you’ve said you couldn’t go on living if
. . .”
Marguerite interrupted him.
“I promise.”
“Then I’ll go.”
A great load was lifted from both of them. They set straightway about
their preparations. Marguerite was to set out first with Selim and her
women. The road over the Red Hill to Tangier was no longer safe at all,
since it passed through a portion of the Spanish zone. But five days of
easy travel would take her to Casablanca, through a country now peaceful
as a road in France. She would go to Marseilles, she said, and wait
there for news of Paul. They passed that evening with a lightness of
spirit which neither of them had known since they had laughed and loved
in the house of Si Ahmed Driss before the massacres of Fez.
“There is one thing which troubles me,” said Paul, catching her in his
arms and speaking with a great tenderness. “Long ago in Fez you once
told me of a girl who, when her husband died, dressed herself in her
wedding gown——”
“Hush!” said Marguerite, and laid her hand upon his lips.
“You remember, then?” said Paul. He took her hand gently away, and
Marguerite bent her head down and nodded. “‘I couldn’t do that, my
dear,’ you said. I have never forgotten it, Marguerite. I should have
dearly loved, if before we parted—that had been possible.”
Marguerite raised her face. There were tears in her eyes, but her lips
were smiling, and there was a smile, too, in her eyes behind the tears.
“_I know! the World proscribes not love;_
_Allows my finger to caress_
_Your lips’ contour and downiness_
_Provided I supply a glove._
“_The World’s good word!—the Institute!_
_Guizot receives Montalembert!_
_Eh? Down the court three lampions flare;_
_Put forward your best foot!_”
She quoted with a laugh from the poet whose brown books had been the
backbone of their library, and then drew his head down to hers and
whispered:
“Thank you, Paul. The world shall supply its glove—afterwards, when you
come back to me.”
“But if I don’t come back . . . ?”
“Well, then, my dear, since you have been the only man for me, and I
have been the only woman for you, we must hope that the good God will
make the best of it.” She laughed again and her arms tightened about his
neck. “But come back to me, my dear!” she whispered. “I am young, you
know, Paul—twenty-three. I shall have such a long time to wait if you
don’t, now that I have promised.”
They were ready within the twenty-four hours. The tail of Gerard de
Montignac’s column had hardly disappeared before Marguerite, with her
little escort, her tents and camp outfit, rode out of the gate of Mulai
Idris and turned northwards past the columns of Volubilis. Paul rode
with her to the top of the breach in the hills, whence the track
zigzagged down to the plain of the Sebou. There they took their leave of
one another. At each turn of the road Marguerite looked upwards and saw
her lover upon his horse, his blue cape and white robes fluttering about
him, outlined against the sky. The tears were raining down her face now
which she had withheld so long as they were together, and in her heart
was one deep call to him: “Oh, come back to me!” She looked up again and
the breach in the hills was empty. Her lover had gone.