The Collected Works of P. C. Wren: Complete Beau Geste Series, Novels & Short Stories. P. C. Wren
. .
Oh, splendid de Lannec! . . . He was right, of course. . . .
But this was ruin and the end of Henri de Beaujolais.
Then a voice through the felt wall that cut off my part of the tent from the anderun said,
"Your language certainly sounded bad, Major! I am glad I don't understand Arabic!"
I was not very sure that I was glad she did not.
And as little as she understood Arabic did I understand whether I had done right or wrong.
But one thing I understood. I was a Failure. . . . I had failed my General, my Service, and my Country--but yet I somehow felt I had not failed my higher Self. . . .
§ 3
It was the next morning that Miss Vanbrugh greeted me with the words:
"Major, you haven't congratulated me yet. I had an honest-to-God offer of marriage from a leading citizen of this burg yesterday. . . . I'm blushing still. . . . Inwardly. . . ."
I was horrified. . . . What next?
"From whom?" I asked.
"The Sheikh el Habibka el Wazir."
"Good God!" I groaned. "Miss Vanbrugh, we shall have to walk very very delicately. . . ."
"So'll the Sheikh-lad," observed Mary grimly.
"But how did he make the proposal?" I inquired, knowing that no one in the place could translate and interpret except myself.
"By signs and wonders," answered the girl. "Some wonders! He certainly made himself clear . . . !"
"Was he? . . . Did he? . . ." I stammered, hardly knowing how to ask if the ruffian had seized her in his hot, amorous embrace and made fierce love to her. . . . My blood boiled, though my heart sank, and I knew that depth of trembling apprehension that is the true Fear--the fear for another whom we--whom we--esteem.
"Now don't you go prying heavy-hoofed into a young thing's first love affair, Major--because I shan't stand for it," replied Miss Vanbrugh.
"Had you your pistol with you?" I asked.
"I had, Major," was the reply. "I don't get caught that way twice."
And I reflected that if the Sheikh el Habibka el Wazir was still alive, he had not been violent.
* * *
That day I was not allowed to ride out for exercise, and a big Soudanese sentry was posted closer to my tent-door.
Hitherto I had felt myself under strict surveillance now I was under actual arrest.
The girls were invited, or ordered, to go riding as usual, and my frame of mind can be imagined.
Nothing could save them. . . . Nothing could now bring about the success of my mission--unless it were the fierce greed of these Arabs for gold. . . . I was a wretchedly impotent puppet in their hands. . . .
Now that I had mortally insulted and antagonized these fierce despots, what could I do to protect the woman . . . the women . . . whom I had brought here, and whose sole hope and trust was in me? . . .
I realized that a mighty change had been slowly taking place in my mind, and that it had been completed in the moment that the Emir had offered to sell me the treaty for the bodies of these girls. . . . I knew now that--instead of the fate of Mary Vanbrugh being an extra anxiety at the back of a mind filled with care concerning the treaty--the fate of the treaty was an extra anxiety at the back of a mind filled with care concerning the fate of Mary Vanbrugh!
Why should this be?
I had begun by disliking her. . . . At times I had hated her . . . and certainly there were times when she appeared to loathe me utterly. . . . Why should life, success, duty, France herself, all weigh as nothing in the balance against her safety? . . .
De Lannec? Fool, trifler, infirm of purpose, devoid of sense of proportion, broken reed and betrayer of his Service and his Motherland--or unselfish hero and gallant gentleman?
* * *
And what mattered the answer to that question, if I was an impotent prisoner, absolutely helpless in the power of this outraged Emir--and she was riding with him, alone. . . .
Chapter XIV.
A Second String
That night I was honoured by a visit from the Hadji Abdul Salam, the chief marabout and hakim of this particular tribe, and a man whose immense influence and power seemed disproportionate to his virtues and merits. (One of the things the Occidental mind can never grasp, is the way in which the Oriental mind can divorce Faith from Works, the office from its holder, and yield unstinted veneration to the holy priest, knowing him to be, at the same time, a worthless and scoundrelly man.) . . .
The good Hadji crept silently into my tent, in the dead of night, and very nearly got a bullet through his scheming brain.
Seeing that he was alone and apparently unarmed, I put my pistol under my pillow again, and asked him what he wanted.
The Reverend Father-in-Islam wanted to talk--in whispers--if I would take a most solemn oath to reveal nothing that he said. I was more than ready, and we talked of Cabbages and Kings, and also of Sealing-Wax and Whether Pigs have Wings. . . . And, after a while, we talked of Murder--or rather the Holy One did so. . . . He either trusted my keeping faith with him or knew he could repudiate anything I might say against him later.
I had a touch of fever again, and I was still in the state of mental turmoil natural to one who has just seen the edifice of a life's labour go crashing to the earth, and yet sits rejoicing among the ruins--thanking God for failure; his mind moaning a funeral dirge over the grave of all his hopes and strivings--his heart chanting a pæan of praise and thanksgiving over the saving of his Self. . . .
"Come, let us sit upon the ground And tell sad stories of the death of Kings, How some have been deposed, some sleeping killed,"
I quoted, from Etonian memories of Shakespeare's Richard the Second.
The Reverend Father looked surprised, and said he had a proposal to make.
This was that he should contrive to effect my escape, and that I should return with an army, defeat the Emir, and make the Hadji Abdul Salam ruler in his place.
An alternative idea was suggested by the probable assassination of the Emir by one Suleiman the Strong, "of whom I knew," and who was even now somewhere in the Great Oasis, and had visited the tents of the Holy Hadji!
Would I, on the death of the Emir, help the Hadji to seize the Seat of Power? He could easily poison Suleiman the Strong when he had fulfilled his vengeance--and his usefulness--or denounce him to the Tribe as the murderer of the Emir, and have him impaled alive. . . .
The pious man swore he would be a true and faithful friend to France.
"As you are to your master, the Emir?" I asked.
The Hadji replied that the Emir was a usurper, and that no one owed fealty to a usurper.
Moreover this was positively my only chance, as I was to be put to death shortly. . . . The Emir might then send a deputation to the Governor-General of French Africa, offering to make an alliance on receipt of a subsidy of a million francs and other advantages, and swearing that no emissary of the Governor-General's had ever reached him.
Or he might just let the matter rest--merely keeping the women, killing me, and washing his hands of French affairs, or, rather, declining to dirty his hands with them. . . . Or, of course, Suleiman might get him--and then the Wazir could be eliminated,