Marguerite uttered a cry and struggled against him no more. He carried her up the stairs, undressed her, and put her to bed. She laid her hand in his. He would have his way. She gave herself into his keeping and, holding fast on to his hand, she fell asleep.
That morning the roar of the guns was louder, and the shells were flying over the city.
CHAPTER XVII
The Outcasts
That day, the eighteenth of April, broke in gloom. A heavy canopy of sullen clouds hung over Fez. Nowhere within eye’s reach was there a slant of sunshine. There were no shadows, no flashes of colour. White houses and dark gardens and green-tiled mosques all lay very clear and near and distinct, but without any of the radiance which on a day of sunlight gives to the city so magical a beauty, that a stranger looking down upon it can believe that he has wandered into fairyland.
The shells were screaming over Fez from the south. They dispersed the Moors holding the North Fort outside the walls, and they destroyed the Castle of Sidi Bou Nafa in Fez Djedid, close to the Sultan’s Palace, which was held in force by the insurgents. But there were too many refugees still hiding and too many Fazi secretly friendly to the French to make possible such a bombardment as would reduce the city to terms.
The insurgents were still in possession of every quarter of the town except the Sultan’s Palace and the district of the Embassy and Consulates. The little post at the Bab-el-Mahroud had been exterminated during the night. The company of which that post had been a section, under Captain Henry, subsequently to be famous as a general upon a wider field, was fighting its way desperately back in the Souk Senadjine. Another company sent to join hands with him and occupy the quarter of Tala was held up in the Souk-Ben-Safi; and the post at the southern gate of Bab Fetouh was in desperate straits. The only gleam that morning was the rescue of the guests besieged in the Hôtel de France under the covering fire of a platoon stationed on the roof of the British Consulate. The screams of the women indeed shrilled from the terraces with a fiercer exultation than even on the outbreak of the rising.
Marguerite woke later to the sound of them. She held her hands over her ears and called loudly to Paul:
“I want to look at your arm,” she said, when he ran to her.
“It’s going on finely. It can wait until you are dressed.”