A quiet, tragic1 figure, drawn2 to his full height, wearing his dignity with the ease of an accustomed garment, when he should be—what? Crushed under shame, faltering3 excuses, cringing4! Gerard de Montignac said to himself: “Why, I might be the culprit! It might be for me to offer an explanation, or to try to.” He almost wondered if he was the culprit, so complete was his discomfort5, and so utterly6 he felt himself at a disadvantage. He whipped himself to a sneer7.
“I am afraid that I am not very welcome, Si Tayeb Reha,” he said, speaking in French.
The Moor frowned in perplexity.
“Alias,” he repeated, doubtfully, “and P?l Rav——” He gave the name up. “What are these words? If your Excellency would speak my language——”
“Your language!” Gerard interrupted, roughly. “Since when have the outcasts a language of their own?”
He flung himself into a chair. He was not going to take a part in any comedy. He continued to speak in French. “You thought you were safe enough here, no doubt. Oh, it was a clever plan, I grant you. Who would look for Paul Ravenel in the sacred city of Mulai Idris? Yet not so safe, after all, if any one knew that you had once travelled through the Zahoun in the train of Si Ahmed Driss of Ouezzan.”
He leaned forward suddenly as some prosecuting10 counsél in a criminal court might do, seeking to terrify a defendant11 into an expression or a movement of guilt12. But Si Tayeb Reha was simply worried because he could not understand a word of all the scorn which was tumbling from Gerard’s mouth. The officer was angry—that was only too evident—and with him, Si Tayeb Reha! If only he could make it all out! Gerard grew more exasperated13 than ever.
“No, not safe at all if any one had seen you come out of these gates in the rabble14 to drive away a visitor to Volubilis. Baumann, eh? Do you remember Baumann of the Affaires Indigènes, Paul Ravenel?”
Si Tayeb Reha raised his hands:
“Your Excellency speaks in a tongue I do not understand.”
“You understand very well. Sanctuary15, eh? If one guessed you had run to earth here—sanctuary! No one dare violate the sacred city of Mulai Idris. Once sheltered within its walls, safe to lead the dreadful squalid life you’ve chosen right to its last mean day! Your mistake, Paul Ravenel! The arm of France is stretched over all this country.”
Gerard stopped abruptly16 and flung himself back in his chair in disgust. He was becoming magniloquent now. In a minute he would be ridiculous, and over against him all the while stood this renegade, dwarfing17 him by his very silence, and the stillness of his body, putting him in the wrong—for that was it! Putting him in the wrong who was in the right.
Gerard had imagination. He was hampered18 now by that accursed gift of the artist. Even whilst he spoke19 he was standing20 outside himself and watching himself speak, and act, and watching with eyes hostilely critical. Thus were things well interpreted, but not thus were they well done. Thus they were made brilliantly to live again; but not thus were they so contrived21 as to be worthy22 to live again. Since by that road come hesitations23 and phrases that miss their mark.
He tried to sting Si Tayeb Reha into a rejoinder.
“Trenches24, too! Fire-trenches on the latest plan—so that if by chance we should come and be fools enough to come without guns”—he broke off and beat upon the table with his closed fist—“you would fight France, would you, to keep your burrow25 secret! The insolence26 of it! The Zemmour indeed! Fire-trenches and traverses and the rest of it against the Zemmour.”
Si Tayeb Reha leapt upon a word familiar to his tongue.
“The Zemmour! Yes,” he cried, smiling his relief. Here was something which he could understand. “The Zemmour threatened us two, three, four weeks ago. We made ready to welcome them. But they did not come. They were very wise, the Zemmour!” and he chuckled27 and nodded.
Gerard found this man of smiles and cunning easier to talk with than the aloof28 masked figure of a minute ago.
“It was you who constructed those trenches and against us, who were once your comrades,” he said sternly.
Si Tayeb Reha was once more at a loss.
“If your Excellency will not speak my tongue, how shall I answer you?” he asked, plaintively29, and Gerard did not trouble to answer.
“I ought to send you down to Meknes, for a court-martial to deal with you,” he said, reflectively. “But all strange crimes have their lures30. They breed. God knows what decent-living youngster might get his imagination unwholesomely stirred and do as you have done and bring his name to disgrace! Besides—do you know who guards the gate of Mulai Idris whilst I talk to you? Who but Laguessière? Captain Laguessière.” He searched the still face for a tremor31, a twitch32 of recognition. Si Tayeb Reha had apparently33 given up the attempt to understand. He stood leaning against the wall at the side of the window and looking out across the ravine to the mountainside.
“Laguessière, at whose side you charged twisting your staff—do you remember?—back over the bridge by the lime-kilns in Fez two years ago.”
The light fell full upon the face of the man at the window. It seemed to Gerard de Montignac impossible that any man, even the grand serieux, who had so often carried his life in his hands through the solitary34 places, could have learnt so to school his features and keep all meaning from his eyes.
“Yes, that charge counts for you, and something else which shouldn’t count at all. You and I were at St. Cyr together.”
Indeed, that counted most of all. The sense of an old comradeship broken, the traditions of a great college violated, these had been the true cause of Gerard de Montignac’s discomfort. The years were beginning to build the high barriers about Gerard, shutting off great tracts35 of which he had once had glimpses to make the heart leap, taking the bright colour from his visions. A treasure-house of good memories was something nowadays to value, and here was one of the good memories, almost the most vivid of them all, destroyed. He rose from his chair, and as he rose, a curtain moved which covered an archway, moved and ever so slightly parted. It was just behind Si Tayeb Reha’s shoulder, and a little to his right at the side of the room; so that he did not notice the movement. Gerard de Montignac could look through the narrow opening. He had a glimpse of a woman with her face veiled, an orange scarf about her head, a broad belt of gold brocade about her white robe. Somehow the sight of her helped him, though he saw her but for a second, before the curtains closed again. It spurred him to that statement which from the outset he had been working to.
“So that’s it!” he cried. “A woman, eh? Two years since she took your fancy! She must be getting on now, mustn’t she? What’s her age? Seventeen? And for that, honour, career, a decent life, all, into the dustbin!”
“It is loaded,” he said. “You have just the time until my sergeant37 notices that I have left my revolver behind in this house. If I come back, and—no shot has been fired—then it is Meknes with all its shame and the same end.”
Nothing surprised Gerard de Montignac more than the coolness with which Si Tayeb Reha, as his old comrade called himself, received his sentence of death. He advanced to the table where the revolver lay and took the weapon up with a smile of curiosity and admiration38.
“We make no such weapons as these,” he said in Arabic, examining the pistol with all a Moor’s fascination39 for mechanical instruments. “That, your Excellency, is why we are never a match for you and we must open our gates at your summons.”
He had never said one word except in Arabic during the whole of that interview, just as Gerard had stubbornly refused to speak anything but French. Gerard watched him toying with the weapon for a second and then turned rapidly away. He could not but admire his old friend’s courage; he could not but think: “What a waste of a good man!” He went out of the room without another word or another look. He was sick at heart. He no longer cared whether he had been peevish40 or argumentative or what kind of figure he had cut. One of the glamorous41 things in his life, his belief in the grand serieux, had been taken from him.
He mounted his horse and rode away, wishing for that shot to explode as quickly as possible, so that he might bury the dreadful episode out of sight and forget it altogether.
But though he listened with both his ears and though he walked his horse as slowly as he could, he heard nothing. He saw his sergeant suddenly look at his belt. It was coming, then, without a doubt. The next moment the sergeant was at his side and looking up into his face.
“My commandant, you have left your revolver behind in that house.”
Gerard de Montignac took all the time that he could. He stared at the sergeant and made him repeat his statement as though he had been lost in thought and had never heard it at all. Then he looked down at the holster and fingered it as if he were trying to recollect42 where in the world he had taken the revolver out.
“Why, that’s true,” he said, at last. He wheeled his horse around and rode back very dispiritedly with his chin sunk upon his breast. “It is to be Meknes after all, then, and all the public shame,” the sergeant heard him mutter; and then a pistol cracked sharp and clear, and Gerard raised his face. It was lit with a great relief.
“Wait for me here! Keep the door clear!” he ordered. He had left the door of the house open when he rode away. It was open still. Gerard ran up the stairs and burst into the room. There was a smell of gunpowder44 in the air, and the Moorish45 woman with the orange scarf and the white robe and the deep gold waistband was standing with her hands pressed over her face.
But there was no sign of Si Tayeb Reha anywhere. They had tried to trick him, then! They imagined that he would accept the evidence of the pistol-shot and continue on his way! They took him for no better than a child, it seemed. No, that would not do!
“Where is he?” he asked, angrily, of the girl, and now he, too, spoke in Arabic.
She pointed46 a trembling hand towards the window; and Gerard saw that the rail of the balustrade of the balcony was broken and that the revolver lay upon the boards. Gerard stepped out from the window and looked down.
The balcony had been built out from the sheer wall; it was a rough thing of boards, supported upon iron stanchions, and jutting47 out above the deep chasm48 at the edge of the town. Gerard could see between the boards deep down a precipice49 of rocks to a tiny white thread of stream and clumps50 of bushes. He drew close to the broken rail and leaned cautiously over. Caught upon some outcropping rocks, a little way below the wall, hung the body of Si Tayeb Reha. He was lying face downwards51, his arms outspread. The story of what had happened was written there for him to read.
Paul Ravenel had shot himself on the balcony, the revolver had fallen from his hand, his body had crashed through the flimsy rail and toppled down until it had been caught on the rocks below. Yes, no doubt! The mere52 fall from that height, even if Ravenel had been unhurt, would have been enough. Yet—yet—there had been a long delay before the shot was fired. Gerard looked keenly and swiftly about the room. No, there was no sign of a rope.
He looked at the girl. She was now crouched53 down upon her knees, her face hidden between her hands, her body rocking, whilst a wail54 like a chant, shrill55 of key but faint, made a measure for her rocking. She was like an animal in pain—that was all, and for her Paul had thrown a great name to the winds! What a piece of irony56 that she, with hardly more brain and soul than a favourite dog, should have cost France so much!
Gerard stooped and picked up his revolver. He broke the breech, ejected the one exploded cartridge57, and closed the breech again with a snap. He leaned forward again to take a last look at that poor rag of flesh and bone, hung there for the vultures to feed upon, which once had been his friend—and he was aware of a subtle change in the woman behind him within the room. Oh, very slight, and for so small a space of time! But just for an imperceptible moment her wail had faltered58, the rocking of her body had been stayed. She had been watching him between those fingers with the henna-dyed nails which were so tightly pressed over her face.
He looked at her closely without moving from his position. It was all going correctly on again—the lament59, the swaying, the proper conventional expression of the abandonment of grief. Yet she had been watching him, and for a moment she had been startled and afraid. Of what? And the truth flashed upon him. He had been fingering his revolver. She was afraid of the coup60 de grace.
Then they were tricking him between them—she with her wailing61, he spread out on the bulge62 of rock below. They should see! He stretched out his arm downwards, the revolver pointed in his hand. And out of the tail of his eye he saw the woman cease from her exhibition and rise to her feet. As he took his aim she unwound the veil from before her face. He could not but look at her; and having looked, he could not take his eyes from her face. He stumbled into the room. “Marguerite Lambert!” he said, in a voice of wonder! “Yes, Marguerite Lambert!”
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1
tragic
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| adj.悲剧的，悲剧性的，悲惨的 | |
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drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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faltering
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| 犹豫的，支吾的，蹒跚的 | |
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cringing
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| adj.谄媚，奉承 | |
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discomfort
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| n.不舒服，不安，难过，困难，不方便 | |
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utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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sneer
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| v.轻蔑；嘲笑；n.嘲笑，讥讽的言语 | |
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moor
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| n.荒野，沼泽；vt.(使)停泊；vi.停泊 | |
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alias
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| n.化名；别名；adv.又名 | |
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prosecuting
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| 检举、告发某人( prosecute的现在分词 )； 对某人提起公诉； 继续从事（某事物）； 担任控方律师 | |
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defendant
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| n.被告；adj.处于被告地位的 | |
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guilt
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| n.犯罪；内疚；过失，罪责 | |
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exasperated
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| adj.恼怒的 | |
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rabble
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| n.乌合之众，暴民；下等人 | |
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sanctuary
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| n.圣所，圣堂，寺庙；禁猎区，保护区 | |
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abruptly
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| adv.突然地，出其不意地 | |
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dwarfing
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| n.矮化病 | |
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hampered
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| 妨碍，束缚，限制( hamper的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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contrived
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| adj.不自然的，做作的；虚构的 | |
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worthy
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| adj.(of)值得的，配得上的；有价值的 | |
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hesitations
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| n.犹豫( hesitation的名词复数 )；踌躇；犹豫（之事或行为）；口吃 | |
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24
trenches
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| 深沟，地沟( trench的名词复数 )； 战壕 | |
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burrow
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| vt.挖掘(洞穴)；钻进；vi.挖洞；翻寻；n.地洞 | |
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insolence
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| n.傲慢；无礼；厚颜；傲慢的态度 | |
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27
chuckled
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| 轻声地笑( chuckle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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aloof
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| adj.远离的；冷淡的，漠不关心的 | |
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plaintively
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| adv.悲哀地，哀怨地 | |
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lures
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| 吸引力，魅力（lure的复数形式） | |
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tremor
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| n.震动，颤动，战栗，兴奋，地震 | |
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twitch
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| v.急拉，抽动，痉挛，抽搐；n.扯，阵痛，痉挛 | |
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apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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solitary
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| adj.孤独的，独立的，荒凉的；n.隐士 | |
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tracts
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| 大片土地( tract的名词复数 )； 地带； （体内的）道； （尤指宣扬宗教、伦理或政治的）短文 | |
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36
pouch
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| n.小袋，小包，囊状袋；vt.装...入袋中，用袋运输；vi.用袋送信件 | |
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37
sergeant
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| n.警官，中士 | |
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38
admiration
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| n.钦佩，赞美，羡慕 | |
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fascination
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| n.令人着迷的事物，魅力，迷恋 | |
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40
peevish
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| adj.易怒的，坏脾气的 | |
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41
glamorous
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| adj.富有魅力的；美丽动人的；令人向往的 | |
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42
recollect
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| v.回忆，想起，记起，忆起，记得 | |
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43
reins
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| 感情，激情； 缰( rein的名词复数 )； 控制手段； 掌管； （成人带着幼儿走路以防其走失时用的）保护带 | |
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44
gunpowder
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| n.火药 | |
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45
moorish
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| adj.沼地的，荒野的，生[住]在沼地的 | |
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46
pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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47
jutting
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| v.（使）突出( jut的现在分词 )；伸出；（从…）突出；高出 | |
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48
chasm
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| n.深坑，断层，裂口，大分岐，利害冲突 | |
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49
precipice
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| n.悬崖，危急的处境 | |
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50
clumps
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| n.（树、灌木、植物等的）丛、簇( clump的名词复数 )；（土、泥等）团；块；笨重的脚步声v.（树、灌木、植物等的）丛、簇( clump的第三人称单数 )；（土、泥等）团；块；笨重的脚步声 | |
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51
downwards
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| adj./adv.向下的（地），下行的（地） | |
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52
mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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53
crouched
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| v.屈膝，蹲伏( crouch的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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54
wail
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| vt./vi.大声哀号，恸哭；呼啸，尖啸 | |
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55
shrill
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| adj.尖声的；刺耳的；v尖叫 | |
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56
irony
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| n.反语，冷嘲；具有讽刺意味的事，嘲弄 | |
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cartridge
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| n.弹壳，弹药筒；(装磁带等的)盒子 | |
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58
faltered
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| （嗓音）颤抖( falter的过去式和过去分词 )； 支吾其词； 蹒跚； 摇晃 | |
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59
lament
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| n.悲叹，悔恨，恸哭；v.哀悼，悔恨，悲叹 | |
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coup
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| n.政变；突然而成功的行动 | |
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61
wailing
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| v.哭叫，哀号( wail的现在分词 )；沱 | |
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62
bulge
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| n.突出，膨胀，激增；vt.突出，膨胀 | |
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