Marguerite laughed, as she could afford to. As she knew very well, he loved to see her straight and slim in her fine clothes and it gave him an entrancing little sensuous thrill to feel the delicate fabrics draping exquisitely her firm young body.
Paul, before he had set out with Colonel Gouraud’s supply column on the expedition to Fez, had sent Marguerite across the Straits and up to Madrid, where a credit was opened for her at one of the banks. Paul had been afraid lest she should stint herself, not only of luxuries but of things needed. But she had answered, “Of course I’ll take from you, my dear. I am proud to take from you.”
She looked back upon that journey now and said:
“I had six glorious weeks in Madrid. Fittings and fittings and choosing colours, and buying shoes and stockings and hats and all sorts of things. I began at half past nine every morning and was never finished till the shops closed. I had never had any money to spend before. Oh, it was an orgy!”
“And you regret those weeks?” asked Paul, misled by the enjoyment with which she remembered them.
“Nonsense. I had more fun still when I came back with what I had bought. I was going to make myself beautiful in the eyes of my lord!” and mockingly she pushed her elbow into his side, as she sat beside him.
Marguerite, upon her return, had waited for some weeks in Tangier. Paul had to make sure that he was to be stationed at Fez. Afterwards he had to find and buy this house, furnish it and provide a staff of servants on whose fidelity he could rely. He had secured two negresses and an Algerian, an old soldier who had served with him in the Beni-Snassen campaign before he had ever come on service to Morocco. Even when all was ready at Fez there was a further delay, since the road from Tangier to Fez was for a time unsafe.
“I was tired of waiting, long before Selim and the negress and the little escort you sent for me appeared,” she said. “But the journey up country I adored.”
It was early in the year. The ten villages with their hedges of cactus; the rolling plains of turf over-scattered with clumps of asphodel in flower; the aspect of little white-walled towns tucked away high up in the folds of hills; the bright strong sun by day, the freshness of the nights, and the camp fires in that open and spacious country were a miracle of freedom and delight to this girl who had choked for so long in the hot and tawdry bars of the coast towns. And every step brought her nearer to her lover. It was the season of flowers. Great fields of marigold smiled at her. Yellow-striped purple iris nodded a welcome. Rosy thrift, and pale-blue chicory, and little congregations of crimson poppies, and acres of wild mustard drew her on through a land of colour. And here and there on a small knoll a solitary palm overshadowed a solitary white-domed tomb.
She rode a mule and wore the dress of a Moorish woman. All had been done secretly, even to the purchase of the house in Fez, which was held in the name of a Moorish friend of Paul’s. It was Marguerite’s wish from first to last. Paul would have proclaimed her from the roof tops, had she but lifted an eyebrow. But she knew very well that it would not help Paul in his career were he to bring a pretty mistress up from the coast and parade her openly in Fez. He would get a name for levity and indiscretion. Moreover, the secrecy was for itself delightful to her. It was to her like a new toy to a child.