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 Chaiou?a 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 ti............