Young Praslin’s voice got smaller and smaller as he replied: “For the last two years on an advanced post upon the Algerian frontier.”
“Where no doubt he has had full opportunity to compute the beauty of women,” said the Commandant sagely. “I think we can now construct a picture of this houri. She will be fifty if she is a day. In the colour and texture of her skin she will be very like a fig. Not all the kohl in the East will lend a sparkle to her eyes, nor all the red salve freshness to her faded lips. She will wear a red dress with a swaying whale-boned skirt glittering with spangles and she will tell you that she dined at the Ritz in Paris a fortnight ago.”
The description was not inept, but his voice changed now into a snarl. Commandant Marnier had the ill humour of men who sit all their lives in the company of their juniors and see themselves overpassed by each in turn.
“The ladies of the Villa Iris! Have we not all sought our good fortune at their hands? The poor pilgrims! Here they have reached the last stage but one in their doleful Pilgrimage. Paris, Madrid, Barcelona, Oran, Tangiers, Casablanca and then up on the supply wagons to the advanced Posts of the Legion from which there is no return! Francine, Florette, Hortense—oh, the pretty names! Yes, that’s about all they have left when they reach this fine metropolis of Casablanca—their pretty names!”
He rose with a contemptuous movement from his chair, and Gerard de Montignac asked carelessly, with a mind far away from the subject.
“And what is the name of this girl?”
“Marguerite Lambert, an American,” replied Praslin, and close by Gerard, a young lieutenant of spahis who had disembarked that morning from Oran raised himself half out of his chair and sank back again.
“Do you know her, too?” Gerard asked.
“No,” replied the lieutenant. “Yet I have danced with her”; and he sat wondering not so much that Marguerite Lambert had come to Casablanca as that he should not have guessed after that short stay of hers at Oran that it was to Casablanca she must and would come.
Gerard de Montignac moved round the table to Henri Ratenay, an officer of his own regiment who had made the campaign of Chaiouïa with him and Ravenel.