Читать книгу The Winding Stair - A. E. W. Mason - Страница 11

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Paul Ravenel left Colonel Vanderfelt’s house of King’s Corner on the next morning in time to catch an early train to London. His friends gathered in the drive to wave him a good-bye as he drove away.

“You’ll write to us, won’t you?” said Mrs. Vanderfelt.

“And there’s a room here whenever you have an evening to spare,” added the Colonel.

Paul had quite captured the hearts of the small household and they were hardly less concerned for his future and his success than they would have been had he been their own son.

Paul had given no hint at the breakfast table of his plans, if indeed he had yet formed any, nor did his friends press him with any question. But they waited anxiously for letters and in time one came with the postmark of St. Germain. Paul had passed into St. Cyr. Others followed with lively enough accounts of his surroundings and companions. Here and there the name of a friend was mentioned, Gerard de Montignac, Paul’s senior by a year, for instance, who cropped up more often than any one else.

They heard later that he had passed out with honours and was now a sub-lieutenant in the 174th Regiment, stationed at Marseilles; then a couple of years later, just at the time when Phyllis was married, that he had been seconded to the 2nd Tirailleurs and was on active service amongst the Beni-Snassen in Algeria. He escaped from that campaign without any hurt and wrote a little account of it to his friends at King’s Corner, with some shrewd pictures of his commanders and brother officers. But the same reticence overspread the pages. Mrs. Vanderfelt was at a loss to recapture out of them a picture of the lad who had stayed one night with them and borne so gallantly the destruction of his boyish illusions. The letters, to her thinking, might have been written by an automaton with a brain.

A few months afterwards Colonel Vanderfelt slammed down his newspaper on the breakfast table.

“That’s where Paul ought to be. I told him! You can’t blame me! I told him!”

The long-expected trouble in Morocco was coming to a head. The extravagance and incapacity of the Sultan Abd-el-Aziz; the concession of the Customs to the French; the jealousies of powerful kaids; and the queer admixture of contempt and fear with which the tribes watched the encroachments of Europeans; all these elements were setting the country on fire. Already there were rumours of disorder in the wealthy coast town of Casablanca.

“That’s where Paul ought to be,” cried Colonel Vanderfelt angrily. But his anger was appeased in a couple of days. For he received a letter from Paul with the postmark of Oran, written on shipboard. He and his battalion were on their way to Casablanca.

They arrived after the bombardment and massacres, and served under General D’Amade throughout the campaigns of the Chaiouïa. Paul was wounded in the thigh during the attack upon Settat but was able to rejoin his battalion in a month. He was now a senior Lieutenant and his captain being killed in the fight at McKoun, he commanded his company until the district was finally pacified by the victory over the great kaid and Marabout, Bou Nuallah. Paul had done well; he was given the medaille and at the age of twenty-six was sure that his temporary rank would be confirmed. He wrote warmly of those days to his friends. There was a note of confidence and elation which Mrs. Vanderfelt had not remarked before, and the letter ended with a short but earnest expression of gratitude to his friends for the help they had given him eight years before.

For the next two years, then, the household at King’s Corner read only of the routine of a great camp, described with a lively spirit and an interest in the little trifles of his profession, which was a clear proof to them all that Paul had seen straight and clearly when he had declared: “There’s no other profession for me.” Thereafter came news which thrilled his audience.

“I am transferred to the General Staff,” Paul wrote, “and am leaving here on special service. You must not expect to hear from me for a long while.”

Neither Colonel Vanderfelt nor his wife had quite realised how they had counted on Paul’s letters, or what a fresh, lively interest they brought into their quiet lives, until this warning reached them.

“Of course we can’t expect to hear,” said Colonel Vanderfelt irritably, “Paul’s probably on very important service. Very often a postmark’s enough to give a clue. But you women don’t understand these things.”

Phyllis, the married daughter, and Mrs. Vanderfelt were the women to whom this rebuke was addressed, and neither of them had said a word to provoke it.

“No doubt, dear,” Mrs. Vanderfelt replied meekly, with a private smile for the daughter. “We shall hear in due time.”

But the weeks ran into months, the months into a year, and still no letter came. At one moment they wondered whether new associations had not obliterated from Paul’s mind his former aspirations: at another, whether he still lived. Colonel Vanderfelt ran across Mr. Ferguson towards the end of the year outside his club in Piccadilly and made enquiries.

“Did you ever hear of that boy, Paul Ravenel, again?” he asked.

“Oh, yes, he’s a rich man now and I have acted for him,” returned Mr. Ferguson. “Since the French occupation, land in and around Casablanca has gone up to fifty times its former value. Ravenel has realised some of it. I have bought the freehold of his father’s house close to you and let it for seven years and invested a comfortable sum for him in British securities. So I gather that he means to come back in a little while.”

Colonel Vanderfelt was relieved upon one score, but it was only to have his anxiety increased upon the other.

“When did you hear from Paul last?” he asked, and Mr. Ferguson answered:

“Some while ago. Let me think. Yes, it must be a year at the least.”

Colonel Vanderfelt repeated the conversation to his wife on his return to King’s Corner, and both of them shirked the question which was heavy at their hearts.

“It will be pleasant to have him as a neighbour,” said Mrs. Vanderfelt.

“Yes,” replied the Colonel. “And it might be quite soon! Seven years he has let the house for. And we are getting no younger, are we! The sooner the better, I say!”

Some look upon his wife’s face, a droop of her shoulders, made him stop; and it was in a quiet and strangely altered voice that he began again:

“We are both pretending, Milly, and that’s the truth. We are afraid. It would be hard lines if he died before he did what he aimed to do. Yet we have got to face that possibility.”

Mrs. Vanderfelt was turning over a plan in her mind.

“I think that it’s time we had news of him,” she said. “There’s a friend he has mentioned several times in his letters. He was with him at St. Cyr and met him again at Casablanca—Gerard de Montignac.”

Colonel Vanderfelt went in search of Paul Ravenel’s letters. They were kept in a drawer of the writing-table in his bedroom and made a big bundle by now.

“De Montignac. That was the fellow’s name. Let’s look at the last ones for his rank. He’s a captain of the Chasseurs d’Afrique. I’ll write to Casablanca to-night, my dear, on the chance of his still being there.”

Colonel Vanderfelt was easier in his mind after he had posted the letter.

“That was a good idea of mine, Millie,” he said to his wife. “We shall get some news now.”

Gerard de Montignac was still in Casablanca, but at the time when Colonel Vanderfelt was writing to him, he was himself just as anxious as the Colonel about the safety of Paul Ravenel.