The Winding Stair

by A. E. W. Mason

For three hours thereafter she sat alone in the court, with her pistol in her hand, paying her little price; outside the noise of a town in tumult, inside the ticking of a clock. And darkness came.

* * * * *

Marguerite had her reward. Paul Ravenel returned at eight o’clock, his robes covered with dust and mud, his body tired, but his black mood gone. He dressed himself after his bath in the grey suit of a European, and as they sat at dinner he gave Marguerite his good news. The back of the rebellion was broken. The tribes which were gathering in the South and East of the town had been dispersed by the artillery.

“Moinier and his column will be here before they can gather again. They were the great danger, Marguerite. For if they had once got into Fez they would have looted it from end to end. Friend’s house or enemy’s house, Fasi or Christian, would have been all the same to those gentlemen.”

The rising was premature. That had been the cause of its failure. The quarter of the Consulates and the Embassy had not been carried by storm on the first day. A number of the Askris who had joined the insurgents under fear, were now returning to their duties. The great dignitaries of the Maghzen were in a hurry to protest their loyalty by returning the few wounded prisoners and such dead bodies of the French soldiers as they could collect, to the headquarters at the Hospital.

“There’s still a post very hard-pressed at the Bab Fetouh. An effort was made to relieve it this afternoon—” Paul Ravenel broke off abruptly with a sudden smile upon his face and a light of enjoyment in his eyes. “I expect that they will try now from Dar-Debibagh outside the walls. It should be easier that way,” he said hurriedly.

Something had happened that afternoon of which he had not told Marguerite, and to which he owed his high spirits. Marguerite was well aware of it. She had not a doubt that he was hiding from her some rash act of which he was at once rather ashamed and very glad; and it amused her to note how clever he thought himself in concealing it from her. What had happened in that attempt to relieve the post at the Bab Fetouh? Marguerite did not ask, having a fine gift of silence. She had Paul back safe and sound, and the worst of their dangers was over. They were gay once more that night, looking upon it as a sort of sanctuary between the dangers of the past two days and the troubles which awaited them in the future.

“Shall we go up on the roof?” Marguerite asked, looking at the clock.

“We will go halfway up to the roof,” replied Paul, and Marguerite laughed as he put out the candles.

The next day the rebellion was over. A battalion from Meknes with a section of mitrailleuses marched in at three o’clock in the afternoon, having covered the sixty-five kilometres in a single stage. An order was given that every house which wished to avoid bombardment must fly the tricolour flag on the following morning, and Fez was garnished as for a festival. Never was there so swift a change. On every housetop daybreak saw the flag of France, and though the women thronged the terraces as yesterday, they were as silent as the bricks of their parapets. By a curious chance the pall of sullen rain-charged clouds, which for four days had hung low, was on this morning rolled away, and the city shimmered to the sun.