The Winding Stair

by A. E. W. Mason

Henriette described how Paul Ravenel had entered the Bar a little after midnight. He had taken Marguerite Lambert away, danced a round or two, and given her some supper; and whilst she ate, Petras Tetarnis emboldened by drink and the encouragement of his friends had left his table and begun to prowl backwards and forwards behind Paul Ravenel’s back, nodding and winking at his associates and muttering to himself. Paul had taken no notice, but Marguerite had stopped eating and sat in terror watching him over Paul’s shoulder like a bird fascinated by a snake. Tetarnis drew nearer and nearer with each turn, Marguerite sat twisting her hands and imploring Paul to go away and leave her. She was speaking in English and in a whisper so that Henriette could not repeat the words. But it was easy enough to translate them. “It is for my sake,” she was saying. “It is for my sake.”

But Paul would not listen; and with a little helpless flutter of her frail hands Marguerite sank back in her chair. There would be a disturbance, very possibly a fight. Once more she was to be the Helen of a squalid Iliad and the result would be what it always had been. She would move on—and this time there was no whither she could move. She had come to the end.

“I could read the despair in her eyes, in the utter abandonment of her body,” said Henriette, but there had been much at that moment in Marguerite Lambert’s thoughts which Henriette could not read at all. The passionate dream of her life was dying, as she sat there. She had come to the end. It would have no chance of fulfilment now. Where to-morrow, could she find the great love waiting for her? It had made her life possible, it had given her strength to endure the squalor of her lodging and her companions, and the loss of all that daintiness and order which mean so much to women. It had given her wit to defend herself against the approaches of her courtiers, and the self-respect which kept her with the manners of one of gentlest birth. Nearer and nearer drew Petras Tetarnis until he bumped against Paul’s chair, and then very quickly and quietly Paul rose to his feet.

A stifled prayer burst from Marguerite’s trembling lips. Then she covered her face with her hands and closed her ears with her thumbs. But there was no disturbance at all.

“The Captain Paul took Petras by the elbow and looking down upon him talked to him as one talks to a child. I could hear what he said. ‘You are terrifying this lady. You must not behave like this in public places. You must go back to your place and sit very quietly or you must go home.’ And Petras went. Yes, without a word, as if he had been whipped he went back to his chair amongst his friends. But, I tell you, Monsieur, his eyes had all hell in them! And after a little, very cautiously, as if he was afraid lest the Captain Paul should notice him he crept to the counter and talked very earnestly with Madame.”

“What was he saying?” asked Gerard de Montignac.

“I could not hear at all. I dared not even try to listen. I went to the table where Marguerite and her friend were sitting. Marguerite was imploring him to go away. I agreed with her. The storm was over. It was better for Marguerite’s sake that he should go away quietly now without any fuss.”

“And he went?” asked Gerard.

“Not at first,” returned Henrietta. “No, he was stubborn. He was thinking of his pride, as men do, not of the poor women who suffer by it. But at last—it seemed that some idea came into his head, some thought which made him smile—he consented. He paid his bill and walked, neither quickly nor slowly through the Bar and out by the passage into the street. And so the people settled down, and the trouble seemed at an end.”

And so until the closing of the Bar it was. As a rule the visitors had all gone by two o’clock in the morning; and this particular night was no exception. It was the practice as soon as the room was empty for Madame Delagrange to pay the girls their seven francs apiece at the counter. Then they crossed into the little dressing room, changed their clothes and went out into the lane by the street door, which was locked behind them. On this night, however, Madame Delagrange kept Marguerite Lambert to the last.