“Alias,” he repeated, doubtfully, “and Pôl Rav——” He gave the name up. “What are these words? If your Excellency would speak my language——”
“Your language!” Gerard interrupted, roughly. “Since when have the outcasts a language of their own?”
He flung himself into a chair. He was not going to take a part in any comedy. He continued to speak in French. “You thought you were safe enough here, no doubt. Oh, it was a clever plan, I grant you. Who would look for Paul Ravenel in the sacred city of Mulai Idris? Yet not so safe, after all, if any one knew that you had once travelled through the Zahoun in the train of Si Ahmed Driss of Ouezzan.”
He leaned forward suddenly as some prosecuting counsél in a criminal court might do, seeking to terrify a defendant into an expression or a movement of guilt. But Si Tayeb Reha was simply worried because he could not understand a word of all the scorn which was tumbling from Gerard’s mouth. The officer was angry—that was only too evident—and with him, Si Tayeb Reha! If only he could make it all out! Gerard grew more exasperated than ever.
“No, not safe at all if any one had seen you come out of these gates in the rabble to drive away a visitor to Volubilis. Baumann, eh? Do you remember Baumann of the Affaires Indigènes, Paul Ravenel?”
Si Tayeb Reha raised his hands:
“Your Excellency speaks in a tongue I do not understand.”
“You understand very well. Sanctuary, eh? If one guessed you had run to earth here—sanctuary! No one dare violate the sacred city of Mulai Idris. Once sheltered within its walls, safe to lead the dreadful squalid life you’ve chosen right to its last mean day! Your mistake, Paul Ravenel! The arm of France is stretched over all this country.”
Gerard stopped abruptly and flung himself back in his chair in disgust. He was becoming magniloquent now. In a minute he would be ridiculous, and over against him all the while stood this renegade, dwarfing him by his very silence, and the stillness of his body, putting him in the wrong—for that was it! Putting him in the wrong who was in the right.
Gerard had imagination. He was hampered now by that accursed gift of the artist. Even whilst he spoke he was standing outside himself and watching himself speak, and act, and watching with eyes hostilely critical. Thus were things well interpreted, but not thus were they well done. Thus they were made brilliantly to live again; but not thus were they so contrived as to be worthy to live again. Since by that road come hesitations and phrases that miss their mark.