The Winding Stair

by A. E. W. Mason

Never was question more insistently expressed. Why?—why?—why? . . . Marguerite found herself asking whilst her heart sank. That their secret might still be kept, its sweetness preserved for them? No, that reason was inadequate. Why, then? Because the danger was over? But it was not over. So much Selim had made very clear. The few troops had been withdrawn to the protected quarter of the Consulates. The detachments outside were hard put to it. The city of Fez was still in the hands of the insurgents. Why then? Why the eagerness that the French should know nothing of this secret house? Oh, there was an answer, dared she but listen to it! An answer with consequences as yet only dimly suspected. If it was the true answer!—Marguerite sat stunned. How was she to get away quite by herself that she might think her problem out, without betraying the trouble of her mind to Paul?

It was Paul himself who made escape easy for her. He dismissed Selim and said to Marguerite:

“I’ll go up on the roof, my dear, for a little while. The rain has stopped, but, dressed as you are, it wouldn’t be wise for you to come.”

The excuse was feeble, and he spoke looking away from Marguerite—a rare thing with him. But Marguerite welcomed the excuse and had no eyes for the shifty look of him as he made it.

“Very well,” she said, in a dull voice, and Paul went quickly up the stairs.

Selim’s story had moved him to the depths of his soul. He was conscious of an actual nausea. “I should make the sacrifice again.” He repeated a phrase which had been growing familiar to him during this day, repeated it with a stubborn emphasis. But he was beginning to understand dimly what the sacrifice was to cost him. Soldiering was his business in life. He was sealed to it. He had known it when he stood in his father’s death room on the islet off the coast of Spain; and when he sat over Colonel Vanderfelt’s wine in the dining room looking out upon the moonlit garden; but never so completely as now when his thoughts were with the men of his company stumbling in the river bed, and his feet were dragging up the stairs to the roof.

“I must be alone for a little while, otherwise Marguerite will guess the truth.”

It was an instinct rather than a formulated thought which drove him upwards. He dreaded Marguerite’s swift intuitions, that queer way she had of reaching certainty, cleaving her way to it like a bird through the air. He drew a long breath as he crept out upon the roof. He was alone now, and, sinking down upon the cushions underneath the parapet, he wrestled with his grief, letting it have its way up here in the darkness so that he might confine it the more surely afterwards. For an hour on this first night of the revolt he remained alone upon the roof-top whilst Marguerite, separated from him by the height of the beleaguered house, sat amongst the lighted candles in the room by the court, steeling herself to a sacrifice which should equal his.

When she was sure of herself she wrapped a dark cloak about her shining frock and climbed in her turn to the roof. But she moved very silently, and when she raised her head above the trap she saw her lover stretched upon the terrace, his turban thrown aside, his face buried in his arms, his whole attitude one of almost Oriental grief. He was unaware of her until she crouched by his side and, with something maternal in the loving pity of her hands, gently stroked his head.

“Paul!” she whispered, and he sprang swiftly up. She got a glimpse of a tortured face, and then he dropped by her side and, putting his arms about her, caught her to his heart.