Marguerite drove her two trembling negresses out of the corners into which they had flown when the house was invaded, stood over them while they cooked the dinner, and strictly ordered that it should be served with the proper ceremonies. She dressed herself in her European clothes and with even more, to-night, of the scrupulous daintiness which was habitual to her. Paul watched her with a great pride and wonderment.
“How in the world do you know at once what we have to learn?” he asked. “When people are rattled, routine’s the great remedy. Just doing the ordinary things at the ordinary hours lifts you along with a sort of assurance that life is going to be as sane to-morrow as it was yesterday. But we have men to watch, and they teach us these things. Where do you get them from?”
“From myself,” answered Marguerite, with a blush upon her cheeks, which her lover’s praise never failed to provoke. “I had to keep my own little flag of courage flying if I could.”
At half past nine they heard Selim’s three knocks upon the outer door, and Paul let him in and brought him to Marguerite in the room opening on to the patio. He brought with him a budget of black news. A couple of officers had been dragged from their horses and butchered in the streets. An engineer and his wife in Fez Djedid had been shot down as they sat at their luncheon. There had been an attack upon the Hôtel de France, where the managress and a priest had been slain.
“There is a house in the Tala quarter,” said Paul, “where two veterinary surgeons and two other officers lodged. I saw men breaking through the roof to get at them this afternoon.”
“They escaped, Sidi. They let themselves down from a window into an alley. It is believed that they are hiding in a covered drain.”
“And the four French telegraph operators. They, too, occupied a house in the Tala.”
Selim had no good tidings to tell of them. The door of their house had been forced at midday. Throughout the afternoon they had resisted in an upper room, which they had barricaded, firing with what weapons they had until their ammunition was exhausted. At seven in the evening a rescue party had arrived, but only one of them was alive, and he grievously wounded.
“A rescue party!” asked Paul, wondering whence that party had come. There was not enough men at the headquarters in the hospital to do more than protect the quarter of the Consulates, even if they could do that.
“A battalion from Dar-Debibagh forced its way into the city at five o’clock this afternoon,” said Selim.