“Well, then, my dear, since you have been the only man for me, and I have been the only woman for you, we must hope that the good God will make the best of it.” She laughed again and her arms tightened about his neck. “But come back to me, my dear!” she whispered. “I am young, you know, Paul—twenty-three. I shall have such a long time to wait if you don’t, now that I have promised.”
They were ready within the twenty-four hours. The tail of Gerard de Montignac’s column had hardly disappeared before Marguerite, with her little escort, her tents and camp outfit, rode out of the gate of Mulai Idris and turned northwards past the columns of Volubilis. Paul rode with her to the top of the breach in the hills, whence the track zigzagged down to the plain of the Sebou. There they took their leave of one another. At each turn of the road Marguerite looked upwards and saw her lover upon his horse, his blue cape and white robes fluttering about him, outlined against the sky. The tears were raining down her face now which she had withheld so long as they were together, and in her heart was one deep call to him: “Oh, come back to me!” She looked up again and the breach in the hills was empty. Her lover had gone.
CHAPTER XXIII
The Necessary Man
In the summer of that same year, the thundercloud burst over Europe, and France, at her moment of need, reaped the fine harvest of her colonial policy. Black men and brown mustered to the call of her bugle as men having their share of France. Gerard de Montignac scrambled like his brother officers to get to the zone of battles. He was seconded in the autumn, was promoted colonel a year later, and was then summoned to Paris.
In a little room upon the first floor in a building adjacent to the War Office Gerard discovered Baumann, of the Affaires Indigènes, but an uplifted Baumann, a Baumann who had grown a little supercilious towards colonels.
“Ah, De Montignac!” he said, with a wave of the hand. “I have been expecting you. Yes. Will you sit down for a moment?”
Gerard smiled and obeyed contentedly. There were so many Baumanns about nowadays, and he never tired of them. Baumann frowned portentously over some papers on his desk for a few moments, and then, pushing them aside, smoothed out his forehead with the palm of his hand.
“Yours is a simpler affair, De Montignac. I am happy to say,” he said, with a happy air of relief. “The Governor-General is in Paris. You will see him after this interview. He wants you again in Morocco.”
“It is necessary?” Gerard asked, unwillingly.