P. C. Wren - The Collected Works of P. C. Wren - Complete Beau Geste Series, Novels & Short Stories

Now he exported dates to France, imported cotton goods from Manchester, and was a merchant-prince in Islam. And I had the pleasant feeling that old Ibrahim Maghruf loved me for myself, without arrière pensée , and apart from the value of my reports to Government on the subject of his services, his loyalty, and his influence.

In his house I was safe, and in his hands my secret (that I was a French Intelligence-Officer) was safe; so if in the maximum of gossip, inquiry and research, I told him the minimum of truth, I told him no untruth whatsoever. He, I believe, responded with the maximum of truth and the minimum of untruth, as between a good Mussulman and a polite, friendly, and useful Hell-doomed Infidel.

Anyhow, my disguise, my hejin camels--of the finest breed, brindled, grey-and-white, bluish-eyed, lean, slender greyhounds of the desert, good for a steady ten kilometres an hour--and my carefully selected outfit of necessities, watched night and day by my Soudanese orderly, Djikki, were safe in his charge.

§ 4

It was on calling at the Vanbrughs' quarters in the big house occupied by Colonel Levasseur, to take Miss Vanbrugh to Sidi Maghruf's, that I first encountered the pretty and piquant "Maudie," an artless and refreshing soul. She met me in the verandah, showed me into the drawing-room, and said that Miss Vanbrugh would be ready in half a minute. I wondered if she were as flirtatious as she looked. . . .

* * *

Maudie Atkinson, I learned later, was a London girl,--a trained parlour-maid who had attracted Miss Vanbrugh's notice and liking by her great courage, coolness and resource on the occasion of a disastrous fire in the English country-house at which Miss Vanbrugh was visiting. Maudie had been badly burnt in going to the rescue of a fellow-servant, and had then broken an arm in jumping out of a window.

Visiting the girl in the cottage-hospital, and finding that she would be homeless and workless when she left the hospital, Miss Vanbrugh had offered her the post of maid-companion, and in her democratic American way, treated her much more as companion than maid. . . .

When asked in Paris, by Miss Vanbrugh, if she were willing to accompany her to Africa, Maudie had replied,

"Oh, Miss! That's where the Sheikhs live, isn't it?" And on being assured that she need not be afraid of falling into the hands of Arabs, had replied,

"Oh, Miss! I'd give anything in the world to be carried off by a Sheikh! They are such lovely men. I adores Sheikhs!"

Further inquiry established the fact of Maudie's belief that Sheikhs were wealthy persons, clad in silken robes, exhaling an odour of attar of roses, residing on the backs of wondrous Arab steeds when not in more wondrous silken tents--slightly sunburnt Young Lochinvars in fact, and, like that gentleman, of most amazingly on-coming disposition; and, albeit deft and delightful, amorous beyond all telling.

"Oh, Miss ," had Maudie added, "they catches you up into their saddles and gallops off with you into the sunset! No good smacking their faces neither, for they don't take 'No' for an answer, when they're looking out for a wife----"

"Or wives," Miss Vanbrugh had observed.

"Not if you're the first, Miss. They're true to you. . . . And they fair burn your lips with hot kisses, Miss."

"You can do that much for yourself, with hot tea, Maudie. . . . Where did you learn so much about Sheikhs?"

"Oh--I've got a book all about a Sheikh, Miss. By a lady . . ."

"Wonder whether the fair sob-sister ever left her native shores--or saw all her Sheikhs on the movies, Maudie?" was Miss Vanbrugh's damping reply.

And when she told me all this, I could almost have wished that Maudie's authoress could herself have been carried off by one of the dirty, smelly desert-thieves; lousy, ruffianly and vile, who are much nearer the average "Sheikh" of fact than are those of the false and vain imaginings of her fiction. . . .

Some Fiction is much stranger than Truth. . . .

* * *

The dinner was a huge success, and I am not sure which of the two, Sidi Ibrahim Maghruf or Miss Mary Vanbrugh, enjoyed the other the more.

On my translating Ibrahim's courteous and sonorous, " Keif halak , Sitt Miriyam! All that is in this house is yours," and she had replied,

"What a bright old gentleman! Isn't he too cute and sweet? I certainly should like to kiss him," and I had translated this as,

"The Sitt admires all that you have and prays that God may make you strong to enjoy it," we got down to it, and old Ibrahim did his best to do us to death with the noblest and hugest feast by which I was ever defeated. . . .

A gazelle stalked solemnly in from the garden and pattered over the marble floor.

"Major Ivan, it isn't gazelles that Grandpapa Maghruf should pet. It's boa-constrictors . . ." groaned Miss Vanbrugh, as the thirty-seventh high-piled dish was laid on the red cloth at our feet. . . .

* * *

The feast ended at long last and we got away, surprised at our power to carry our burden, and staggered home through the silent moonlit night, preceded by Dufour and followed by Achmet (my splendid faithful servant, loving and beloved, Allah rest his brave soul!)--and Djikki, for I was taking no chances.

§ 5

For next day, at an hour before sunset, the good Colonel Levasseur, in his wisdom, had decreed a formal and full-dress parade of the entire garrison, to salute the Flag, and "to impress the populace." It seemed to me that he would certainly impress the populace with the fact of the utter inadequacy of his force, and I told him so.

He replied by officiously ordering me to be present, and "thereby render the garrison adequate to anything."

The good Levasseur did not like me and I wondered whether it was on account of Miss Vanbrugh or the fact that he was twenty years my senior and but one grade my superior in rank. . . . Nor did I myself greatly love the good Levasseur, a man very much du peuple , with his stubble hair, goggle-eyes, bulbous nose, purple face and enormous moustache, like the curling horns of a buffalo.

But I must be just to the brave Colonel--for he died in Zaguig with a reddened sword in one hand and an emptied revolver in the other, at the head of his splendid Zouaves; and he gave me, thanks to this officious command of his, some of the best minutes of my life. . . .

* * *

Cursing ce bon Levasseur, I clattered down the wooden stairs of my billet, in full fig, spurred cavalry-boots and sword and all, out into a narrow stinking lane, turned to the right--and began running as I believe I have never run before or since, not even when I won the senior quarter-mile at Eton--in somewhat more suitable running-kit.

For I had seen a sight which made the blood run cold throughout my body and yet boil in my head.

A woman in white riding-kit, on a big horse, followed by a gang of men, was galloping across an open space.

One of the men, racing level with her and apparently holding to her stirrup with one hand, drove a great knife into her horse's heart with the other, just as she smashed him across the head with her riding-crop.

As the horse lurched and fell, the woman sprang clear and dashed through the open gate of a compound.

It all happened in less time than it takes to tell, and by the time she was through the gate, followed by the Arabs, I was not twenty yards behind.

Mon Dieu! How I ran--and blessed Levasseur's officiousness as I ran--for there was only one woman in Zaguig who rode astride officers' chargers; only one who wore boots and breeches, long coat and white solar-topi.

By the mercy of God I was just in time to see the last of her pursuers vanish up a wooden outside stair that led to the flat roof of a building in this compound--a sort of firewood-and-hay store, now locked up and entirely deserted, like the streets, by reason of the Review.