In the course of time Charnock came to a village of huts enclosed within an impenetrable rampart of cactus upon the flank of the hills southward of Mequinez and there met the Sheikh. The Sheikh laid his hands upon Mallam Juzeed and bade him speak, which he did with a wise promptitude. It was true; they had taken the Christian from Tangier, but they had sold him on the way. They had chanced to arrive at the great houseless and treeless plain of Seguedla, a day's march from Alkasar, on a Wednesday; and since every Wednesday an open market is held upon two or three low hills which jut out from the plain, they had sold Ralph Warriner there to a travelling merchant of the Mtoga. Mallam supplied the merchant's name and the direction of his journey. Charnock packed his tents upon his mules and disappeared into the south.
For two years he disappeared, or almost disappeared; almost, since through the freemasonry of the Jews, that great telephone across Barbary by which the Jew at Tangier shall hear the words which the Jew speaks at Tafilet, M. Fournier was able to obtain now and again rare news of Charnock, and, as it were, a rare glimpse of him at Saforo, at Marakesch, at Tarudant, and to supply him with money. Then came a long interval, until a Jew of the Waddoon stopped Fournier in the Sôk of Tangier, handed him a letter, and told him that many months ago, as he rode at nightfall down a desolate pass of the Upper Atlas mountains, he came to an inhospitable wilderness of stones, where one in Moorish dress and speaking the Moorish tongue was watching the antics of a snake-charmer by the light of a scanty fire of brushwood. The Moor had two servants with him but no escort, and no tent, and for safety's sake the Jew stayed with him that night. In the morning the Moor had given him the letter to M. Fournier and had bidden him say that he was well.
In that letter Charnock told in detail the history of his search. How he had held to his clue, how he had missed it and retraced his steps, how he had followed the merchant to Figuig on the borders of Algeria, and back; how he had gone south into the country of Sus and was now returning northwards to Mequinez. He had discarded the escort, because if a protection to himself, it was a warning to the Arabs with whom he fell in. They grew wary and shut their lips, distrusting him, distrusting his business; and since he could speak Arabic before, he had picked up sufficient of the Moghrebbin dialect, what with his dark face and Hamet to come to his aid, to pass muster as a native. M. Fournier sent the letter on to Mrs. Warriner at Ronda, who read it and re-read it and blamed her selfishness in sending any man upon such an errand, and wondered why she of all women in the world should have found a man ready to do her this service. Many a time as she looked from her window over the valley she speculated what his thoughts were as he camped in the night-air on the plains and among the passes. Did his thoughts turn to Ronda? Did he see her there obtruding a figure of a monstrous impertinence and vanity? For she had asked of him what no woman had a right to ask.
His frank confession of how he had defined women came back to her with a pitiless conviction; "A brake on the wheel going up hill, a whip in the driver's hand going down." It was true! It was true! She was the instance which proved it true. There were unhappy months for Miranda of the balcony.
At times Jane Holt would be wakened from her sleep by a great cry, and getting from her bed she would walk round the landing half-way up the patio, to Miranda's bedroom, only to find it empty. She would descend the staircase, and coming into the little parlour, would discover Miranda leaning out of the open window and looking down to a certain angle of the winding road.
She had dreamed, she had seen in her dream Charnock with his two servants encamped upon a hill-side or on a plain, and hooded figures in long robes crawling, creeping, towards them, crouching behind boulders, or writhing their bodies across fields of flowers. She saw him too in the narrow, dim alleys of ruined towns, lured through a doorway behind impenetrable walls, and then robbed for his money and tortured for his creed.
At such times the sight of that road whence he had looked upwards to her window was a consolation, almost a confutation of her dreams. There at that visible corner of the road, underneath these same stars and the same purple sky, Charnock had sat and gazed at this window from which she leaned. He could not be dead! And carried away by a feverish revulsion, she would at times come to fancy that he had returned, that he was even now seated on the bank by the roadside, that but for the gloom she would surely distinguish him, that in spite of the gloom she could faintly distinguish him. And so her cousin would speak to her, and with some commonplace excuse that the night was hot, Miranda would get her back to her room.
These were terrible months for Miranda of the balcony. And the months lengthened, and again no news came. Miranda began to wonder whether she had only sent Charnock out to meet Ralph's disaster, to become a slave beaten and whipped and shackled, and driven this way and that through the barbarous inlands.
The months were piled one upon the other. The weight of their burden could be measured by the changes in Miranda's bearing. Her cheeks grew thin, her manner feverish. The mere slamming of a door would fling the blood into her face like scarlet; an unexpected entrance set her heart racing till it stifled her.
* * * * *
Meanwhile Charnock had long ceased to be troubled by the interruption of his career. He moved now across wide prairies of iris and asphodel under a blazing African sun, with perhaps a single palm tree standing naked somewhere within view, or a cluster of dwarf olives; he halted now for the night under a sinister sky on a dark plain, which stretched to the horizon level as the sea; he would skirt a hill and come unawares upon some white town of vast, gaunt, crumbling walls, that ran out for no reason into the surrounding country, and for no reason stopped. He passed beneath their ruined crenellations, under the great gateways into the tortuous and dark streets where men noiseless and sombre went their shrouded way. There were nights too when he sat with a Mouser pistol in his hand, searching the darkness until the dawn.
The continent he had left behind seemed very far away; the echo of its clamours diminished; the hurry of its conflicts became unreasonable and strange. He was in a country where the moss upon the palace roofs was itself of an immemorial antiquity; where neither the face of the country nor the ways of those who lived on it had changed. He had waited as he turned his back upon a town in the violet sunset, to see the white flags break out upon the tops of the minarets, and the Mueddins appear. He had waited for their cry, "Allah Akbar!" and for the great plaintive moan of prayer which rose to answer it from the terraces, the bazaars, from every corner of the town, and which trembled away with infinite melancholy over infinite plains, "Allah Akbar! Allah Akbar!"
From those very minarets, during long successive centuries, a Mueddin at just that hour had uttered just that cry; so that the Mueddin became nothing, but the cry echoed down the years. And just that same answer had risen and trembled out in just the same plaintive mournfulness, so that those who prayed became of no account, and the prayer repeated by the generations, the one thing which lived.
Charnock used to halt upon his road, turn his face backwards to the town, and picture to himself that from East to West the whole continent of Africa was murmurous with that one prayer, that the Atlantic carried away the sound of it upon its receding waves, and that the Nile floated it down from village to village through the Soudan. He ceased to wonder at the indifference, the passivity, the fatalism, of these mysterious men amongst whom he lived; for he felt something of that fatalism invading himself.
He continued his search, northwards from the Atlas, escaping here a band of robbers, there struggling in the whirl of a swollen stream, listening at night to the cries of the jackals, and yielding to the witchery of a monotonous Arab flute into which one servant blew a few yards away, while Hamet, in a high strident voice, chanted a no less monotonous song. He continued his search almost because "it was written."
Until on a dull afternoon he came to Mequinez, with its palaces of dead kings, which rise up one behind the other, draped in golden lichens, vast roofs stretching away into the distance, green and grey with the whipping of rains, tower overtopping tower, crumbling crenellations of wall, silent, oppressive. Each palace shut and barred after its master was dead, and left so, to frown into decay and make a habitation for the storks.
To this city Charnock tracked the merchant, and taking up his abode in the Mellah with a Jew to whom M. Fournier had recommended him, he walked out through the streets beneath the walls of the palaces, neither inquiring for the merchant nor scanning the faces of the passers-by, but wrapped in his burnous, careless of any cry, impenetrable, unobservant, until he came out of the darkness of a bazaar, and saw, right before his eyes, a door.
The door was set in a wall perhaps sixty feet high. Charnock could not see the top for the narrowness of the street. Blank, and menacing in the sinister light, the wall towered up before his eyes, and reached out to the right and to the left. And at the foot of the wall was the door--a door of walnut wood, studded with copper nails, and the nails were intricately ordered in a geometrical figure, impossible for the eye to unravel.
That Charnock already knew; he had made trial before now to unravel those geometrical figures, once, very long ago, and very far away in the white sunlit street of a Spanish town. Charnock stood and stared at the door, and the Spanish town loomed larger before his vision, drew nearer, moved towards him, first slowly, then quickly, then in a rush. Ronda! Ronda! The town, as it were, swept over him. He seemed to wake; he seemed to stand again in the street. To his right was the chasm of the Tajo, and the bridge, and the boiling torrent; behind that door lived--and these two years slipped from him like a cloak. With an unconscious movement of his hands he pushed the hood back from his forehead, and stood bare-headed and alert. He was again one of the hurrying, strenuous, curious folk who live beyond the Straits.
He gazed at the door. Behind that door's fellow Miranda lived and waited. Even as the thought burned through his mind, the door opened. For a moment Charnock imagined that Miranda herself would step out; but only a Moor came forth from an interview with the Basha, and a ragged, decrepit greybeard of a servant attended on the Moor and made his path. Charnock was in an instant aware of a grey light filtering between the squalid roof-tops, of the filth of the streets, of the tottering walls of Mulai Ismail. He was in Mequinez.
And at Mequinez the long two years should end, and in ending bear their fruit. That door, on which his eyes were set, augured as much, nay promised it. "Not a sparrow shall fall...." Just for this reason, centuries ago, a Moorish conqueror had taken these slabs of walnut wood in Spain, and brought them back upon the shoulders of his slaves and made his door from them and set it in his wall at Mequinez; just that Charnock coming to this spot centuries afterwards might be quickened in his service towards a woman, and gird himself about with the memory of things which were growing dim, and be assured the service should not fail! Charnock was uplifted to believe it.
He drew the hood again about his head, and the voice of the Mueddin called the world to prayer. Through the open doors of the mosques, from the white walls glimmering in the dimness within those doors, from the streets, from the houses, the high-pitched tremulous prayer rose and declined in an arc of sound.
Charnock felt his whole being throb exultantly. At Mequinez, yes, and to-night, his search would end. Surely to-night! For the hour after the evening prayer was the hour for the selling of slaves.
Charnock walked to the market and sat himself down in the first dim corner. He did not choose a place prominent and visible, inviting whosoever had wares to sell; he took the first seat which offered--certain that wherever he sat Ralph Warriner would be brought to him. He sat down and looked about him.
Some half a dozen men were grouped about the market talking; a young negress from the Soudan, a white Moorish girl, a young negro from Timbuctoo, were brought to them in turn. They examined their teeth, their arms, their feet. The Moorish girl was bought; the others passed on, each with the owner. They were followed by the Moor whom Charnock had seen step from the Basha's door. He wished to sell his decrepit greybeard, and was met with laughter wheresoever he turned. These were all the slaves in the market.
Charnock did not lose heart. At any moment within the next few minutes the narrow entrance to the market might darken, and Ralph Warriner's owner thrust Ralph Warriner in--at some moment that would happen.
Did Warriner still shuffle in the Moorish slippers as he walked? Charnock found himself asking the question with a curious light-heartedness. The negress was offered to him, and then the negro; he refused them with a gesture. He lent an ear to the rustling whispering traffic of the streets outside. He listened patiently, confidently, for the sound of a shuffling footstep to emerge, and grow distinct and more distinct. The Moor brought his greybeard to Charnock's corner. Charnock held his head aside and listened for the loose slap-slap of the slipper upon the mud. The Moor spoke, was importunate; Charnock waved him aside impatiently.
But as he waved his arm he turned his head; and then he suddenly reached out a hand, while his heart leaped in his throat. "Ten dollars," he said. The Moor began to expatiate on the merits of his slave; he was still strong; he could carry heavy loads, and for far distances. Charnock was impatient to interrupt, to pay the price. When he had turned his head, suddenly, for an instant, he had looked straight into the greybeard's eyes--and they were the blue eyes which had stared into his--once, how many centuries ago?--through the window of a hansom cab in a noisy street of Plymouth. Charnock had no doubt. Other Moors had blue eyes, and in no other feature of this wizened, haggard creature but his eyes could he trace a resemblance to Ralph Warriner; but he had no doubt. All the intuitions of the last half-hour came to his aid. He remembered the door, the call to prayer. This was Ralph Warriner, and he had almost let him pass! Had he not turned by mere accident just at the one moment when the greybeard's eyes were raised, he would have lost his chance now and forever. Warriner would have perished in his servitude, would have dropped somewhere on the plain under a load too heavy, and lain there until nightfall brought the jackals.
The thought took Charnock at the throat, left him struggling for his breath. So near had he been to failing when he must not fail! He began to fear at once that another purchaser might step in, while the Moor was still exaggerating his goods. Yet he must not interrupt; he must give no sign of anxiety lest he should awaken suspicion; he must bargain with extreme indifference while a fever burnt in all his blood.
"Thirty dollars," the Moor proposed.
Charnock shrugged his shoulders and shook his head. The Moor turned away; the slave followed the master. Charnock clenched his hands together under the folds of his sleeves to prevent them reaching out and clasping the man. The merchant walked slowly for a few yards. At the entrance of the market there was a sudden obscurity; a tall man blocked the way, entered, and stopped before the merchant and his slave. Charnock's heart died within him; but the man only laughed and passed on.
Charnock felt all his muscles relax, as his suspense ended. For now surely the slave would be brought back. The merchant turned slowly; Warriner turned obediently behind him, and the obedience went to Charnock's heart. It spoke of a discipline too hideous. Slowly the owner returned to Charnock; it seemed that he would never speak.
"Twenty-five dollars," he said.
With an effort Charnock mastered his face and controlled his body. "Twenty," he returned, and spoke of the slave's age, and how little need he had of him. He heard the newcomer across the market haggling over the negro from Timbuctoo. And at last,--at last the word was spoken, the man he had come to search for was his, and his inalienably, so long as he remained in any corner of Morocco.
Charnock paid the money; he did not so much as glance again at his slave. He rose from his seat. "Follow me," he said to Warriner in Moghrebbin; and one behind the other, Miranda's lover and Miranda's husband, master and slave, passed out of the market and down the street towards the gate of Mequinez.
On the way Charnock stopped at thefondakwhere Hamet slept, and bade the lad saddle the mules and bring them out of the town. Hamet looked surprised, for nightfall was an ill time to start upon a journey near the country of the Lemur tribes, but he was accustomed to obey. Charnock's new slave did not even show surprise. Leaving Hamet to follow him, Charnock passed through the gate. He dreaded to remain in the town lest by some misfortune he might lose his slave; and, besides, a nausea for its smells and its dirt began to gain upon him. He walked down the slope of the hill to the olive trees and the mossy turf. Lepers, of an unimaginable aspect, dragged by the side of the beaten track and begged; robbers, who for their crimes had had their eyes burnt out, kept pace with him, their eyelids closed upon red and empty sockets; dead horses, mules, and camels were scattered by the way, their carcases half devoured; everywhere were ruins, and things decaying and things decayed; and over all was a sky of unbroken cloud, and a chill lugubrious light.
Charnock observed his surroundings with newly-opened eyes and hurried on till he reached the olives. Then he stopped and turned to watch for Hamet's coming. He turned a trifle suddenly and his slave instinctively shrank away and stood submissive and mute, stilled by a long companionship with despair. And this was a captain of Her Majesty's Artillery, who had sailed his yacht in and out of Gibraltar Bay!
"My God, how you must have suffered!" cried Charnock, and he spoke in the English tongue.
Warriner raised a dazed, half-witted face. "Say that again," he said slowly, and he spoke in Arabic.
"My God, how you must have suffered!"
Warriner listened with one forefinger uplifted; he moved his finger backwards and forwards sawing the air. "Yes," he answered, and this time in English; but his mouth was awkward and the English came rustily from his tongue. "Yes, it has been a hell of a time."
He spoke in a quite expressionless voice. But whether it was that the forgotten sound of the tongue he used awoke in his dim mind faint associations and a glimmer of memories, of a sudden he dropped upon the turf amidst the olive trees and, burying his face in the moss, sobbed violently like a child.
Charnock let him lie there until he saw Hamet leading the mules down the beaten way from the town-gates. Then he bent down and touched Warriner on the shoulder. "Here is my servant--do you understand?--my servant."
The white man's pride answered the summons. Warriner got quickly to his feet and drew a ragged sleeve across his face. Then he looked round between the withered olives at that grey cruel ruin of a city looming through the falling desolate light, and shivered. His eyes lighted upon Hamet, and suddenly opened wide. "Those mules," he said almost fiercely. "They are yours?"
"Yes!"
"Let us ride! O dear God, let us ride!" And until Hamet reached them, his head darted this way and that, while his eyes searched the trees. "Mind, you bought me," he said. "I belong to you; to no one else. How far from here to the sea?"
"Nine days."
"Nine days," and he counted them over on his fingers.
Hamet brought up the mules. Charnock unrolled a burnous and a turban. Warriner plucked off his rags and put on the dress. Then the three men rode out between the olive trees, past the outer rampart of breached walls, into the open plain.
"Shall we camp?" said Charnock.
Warriner cast a look across his shoulder. Mequinez was still visible, a greyer blot upon the grey hillside. "No," said he.
They rode forward over carpets of flowers, between the hills. The light fell; the marigolds paled beneath their mules' feet; the gentians became any flower of a light hue. At last a toothed savage screen of rock moved across Mequinez.
"Here," said Warriner. He tumbled rather than dismounted from his mule, stretched his limbs out upon the grass, and in a moment was asleep. Hamet gathered a bundle of leaves from a dwarf palm tree and a few sticks, lit a fire, and cooked their supper. Charnock woke Warriner, who ate his meal and slept again; and all that night, with a Mouser pistol in his hand, Charnock sat by his side and guarded him.
The next morning they started betimes; they passed a caravan, farther on a tent-village, and towards evening, from the shoulder of a hill they looked down upon the vast plain of the Sebou. Level as a sea it stretched away until the distinct colours of its flower-patches merged into one soft blue.
"Eight days," said Warriner; and that night, as last night, he asked no questions of Charnock, but ate his supper and so slept; and that night again Charnock sat by his side and guarded him.
But the next morning Warriner for the first time began to evince some curiosity as to his rescue and the man who had rescued him. The two men had just bathed in a little stream which ran tinkling through the grass beside their camp. Warriner was kneeling upon the bank of the stream and contemplating himself in the clear mirror of its water, when he said to Charnock: "How in the world did you know me?"
"By your eyes."
"We are not strangers, eh?"
"I hailed you from a hansom cab once outside Lloyd's bank in Plymouth. You expressed an amiable wish that I should sit in that cab and rot away in my boots. Lucky for you I didn't!"
"You were the man who jammed his finger? I remember; I thought you had got a warrant in your pocket. By the way," and he lifted his head quickly, "you never, I suppose, came across a man called Wilbraham?"
"Ambrose?"
"Yes, yes; when did you come across him?"
"He was blackmailing your wife."
"Oh, my wife," said Warriner, suddenly, as though it had only just occurred to him that he had a wife. He turned his head and looked curiously to Charnock, who was scrubbing himself dry some yards behind him. "So you know my wife?"
"Yes."
"Ah!" Warriner again examined his face in the stream. "I think I might walk straight up from the Ragged Staff," said he, wagging his grey beard, "and shake hands with the Governor of Gibraltar and no one be a penny the wiser." Then he paused. "So you know Wilbraham," he said slowly, and paused again. "So you know my wife too;" and the pair went to their breakfast.
Warriner walked in front of Charnock, and the latter could not but notice how within these two days his companion had changed. His back was losing its timid differential curve; there was less of a slink in his walk; he no longer shrank when a loud word was addressed to him. Moreover, his curiosity increased, and while they were at breakfast he asked "How did you find me?"
And that morning as they rode forwards over the marigolds and irises, Charnock told him of his first visit to Tangier and of Hassan Akbar. "So when I came again," he said with perhaps a little awkwardness and after a pause, "I had a clue, a slight one, but still a clue, and I followed it."
"It was you who shouted through Fournier's shop-door, was it?" said Warriner. "That's the second time a cry of yours has fairly scared me. So you know Wilbraham," he added in a moment; "so you know my wife too."
They halted at noon under a hedge of cactus, and Charnock, tired with his long vigils, covered his head and slept. Through the long afternoon, over pink and violet flowers, under a burning sun, they journeyed drowsily, with no conversation and no sound at all but the humming of the insects in the air and the whistle of birds and the brushing of their mules' feet through the grass. That evening they crossed the Sebou and camped a few yards from the river's bank in a most lucid air.
It was after supper. Charnock was lying upon his back, his head resting upon his arms, and his eyes upturned to the throbbing stars and the rich violet sky. Warriner squatted cross-legged beside a dying fire, and now and then, as a flame spirted up, he cast a curious glance towards Charnock.
"How long have you been searching?" he asked.
"Two years," replied Charnock.
"Why?"
The question was shot at him, in a sharp challenging voice. Charnock did not move from his position; he lay resting on that vast plain under the fresh night sky and the kindly stars; but he was some little while silent before he answered, "Your wife asked me to come."
Warriner nodded his head thoughtfully, but said no more. That night Charnock did not keep watch, for they were across the Sebou and out of the perilous country. The next morning they rode on towards Alkasar with few words between them. Only Charnock noticed that Warriner was continually glancing at him with a certain furtiveness, and it seemed with a certain ill-will. Charnock grew restless under this surveillance: he resented it; it made him vaguely uneasy.
They rode with no shadows to console them until the afternoon brought the clouds over the top of the Atlas. Towards evening they saw far ahead of them the town of Alkasar amongst its gardens of orange trees and olives.
"We shall not reach it to-night," said Charnock, looking up at the sky.
"No, thank God," answered Warriner, fervently. "No towns for me! What if it does rain?"
So again they camped in the open, under a solitary wild fig tree, and the rain held off. They talked indifferently upon this subject and that, speculated upon news of Europe, and Charnock heard something of Warriner's comings and goings, his sufferings and adventures. But the talk was forced, and though now and again Wilbraham's name, and now and again Miranda's, recurred, it died altogether away.
Warriner broke it suddenly. "You are in love with my wife," he said.
Charnock started up on his elbow. "What the devil has that got to do with you?" he asked fiercely.
The two men eyed one another across the leaping flames of the fire. "Well, you have a right to put it that way, no doubt," said Warriner.
Charnock sank down again. He felt resentment throbbing hot within him. He was very glad that there were only five more days during which he and Warriner must travel together alone, and during which he must keep ward over the man he had rescued.
But the next day was one of peace. The mere proximity of a Moorish town had terrors for Warriner. His eyes turned ever towards it, scared and frightened. His very body shrank and took on a servile air. Besides, it rained.
"We might sleep in Alkasar. There is a Jew I stayed with coming up; you will be safe there," said Charnock.
"I would sooner shiver to death here," replied Warriner, and they skirted the town.
But a little distance from the gates Charnock called a halt, and taking Hamet and a mule he went up into the town. He sought out his Jew, and bought a tent, which he packed upon the mule, and so returned to where Warriner crouched and hid amongst the orange trees. Beyond Alkasar they passed through a long stretch of stubble, whence acres of wheat had been garnered, and at night the two men sat in the opening of their tent, while the lad Hamet drew weird melancholy from his pipe.
Warriner was silent; he was evidently turning over some thought in his mind, and his mind, rusted by his servitude, worked very slowly. A man of great vindictiveness and jealousy, he was not grateful for his rescue; but he was brooding over the motives which had induced Charnock to come in search of him, and which had persuaded Miranda to send him in search. Warriner had never cared for his wife, but his wife had never till now given him any cause for jealousy, and out of his present jealousy there sprang and grew in his half-crazy and disordered mind a quite fictitious passion.
He revealed something of it the next morning to Charnock. For after he had waked up and yawned, after he had watched for a moment the busy shadow of Hamet upon the tent-wall and heard the light crackle of the breakfast fire, he roused Charnock with a shake of the shoulder and resumed the conversation at the point where it had been broken off when they sat by the camp-fire.
"But I'll tell you a question which has to do with me, Charnock," he said. "Is my wife in love with you?"
"You damned blackguard!" cried Charnock.
"Thanks!" said Warriner, with a chuckle. "That's answer enough."
"It's no answer at all!" exclaimed Charnock, hotly, and he sat up amongst his blankets and took refuge in subterfuges. "If what you say were true, is it likely that your wife would have asked me to find you out and bring you back?"
"That's the very point I have been considering," returned Warriner; "and I think it uncommon likely. Women have all sorts of underground scruples which it's difficult for a man to get upside with, and I can imagine a woman would send off her fancy man on this particular business as a kind of set-off and compensation. See?"
Charnock dared not trust himself to answer. He got up and walked to the door of the tent, unfastened the flap, and let the sunlight in.
"Funny thing!" continued Warriner, "I never took much account of my wife. She was a bit too stately for me. It was just as though someone played symphonies to you all day when you hankered after music of the music-hall type. But somehow,--I suppose it's seeing you doing the heroic and all for her, don't you know?--somehow I am getting very fond of her."
Charnock seemed to have heard not a single word. He stood at the door of the tent, looking indifferently this way and that. His silence spurred Warriner to continue. "I tell you what, Charnock," he said, "you had better run straight with me. You'll find out your mistake if you don't. I'll tell you something more: you had better let me find when I get back to Ronda that you have run straight with me." He saw Charnock suddenly look round the angle of the tent and then shade his eyes with his hand. It seemed impossible to provoke him in any way. "Mind, I don't say that I shall take it much to heart, if the affair has stopped where you say it has." Charnock had said not a word about the matter, as Warriner was well aware. "No," he continued, "on the contrary; for no harm's actually done, you say, and my wife steps down from her pedestal on to my level. Understand, sonny?--What are you up to? Here, I say."
Charnock had stridden back into the tent. He stooped over Warriner and roughly plucked him up from the ground. "Stand up, will you!" he cried.
"Here, I say," protested Warriner, rather feebly; "you might be speaking to a dog."
"I wish I was."
At that Warriner turned. The two men's faces were convulsed with passion; hatred looked out from Warriner's eyes and saw its image in Charnock's.
"Get out of the tent," said Charnock, and taking Warriner by the shoulder, he threw rather than pushed him out.
"Now, what's that?" and he pointed an arm towards the east.
"That's a caravan."
"Quite so, a caravan. Perhaps you have forgotten what you said to me outside the walls of Mequinez. You belong to me, you remember. You're mine; I bought you, and I can sell you if I choose."
"By God, you wouldn't do that!" cried Warriner. His years of slavery rushed back on him. He saw himself again tramping, under the sun, with a load upon his back through the sand towards Algiers, over the hills to the Sus country; he heard again the whistle of a stick through the air, heard its thud as it fell upon his body, and felt the blow. "My God, you couldn't do that!" And seeing Charnock towering above him, his face hard, his eyes gloomy, he clung to his arm. "Charnock, old man! You wouldn't, would you?"
"You'll fetch half a dozen copperflouss" said Charnock.
"Look here, Charnock, I apologise. See, old man, see? I am sorry; you hear that, don't you? Yes, I'm sorry. It's my cursed tongue."
Charnock shook him off. "We left your rags behind, I believe, so you can keep those clothes. The caravan will pass us in an hour." Then Warriner fell to prayers, and flamed up in anger and curses and died down again to whimpering. All the while Charnock stood over him silent and contemptuous. There was no doubt possible he meant to carry out his threat. Warriner burst out in a flood of imprecations, and Moorish imprecations, for they came most readily to his tongue. He called on God to burn Charnock's great-grandmother, and then in an instant he became very cunning and calm.
"And what sort of a face will you show to Miranda," he said smoothly, "when you get back to Ronda? You have forgotten that."
Charnock had forgotten it; in his sudden access of passion he had clean forgotten it. Warriner wiped the sweat from his face; he did not need to look at Charnock to be assured that at this moment he was the master. He stuck his legs apart and rested his hands upon his hips. "You weren't quite playing the game, eh, Charnock?" he said easily. "Do you think you were quite playing the game?"
From that moment Warriner was master, and he was not inclined to leave Charnock ignorant upon that point. Jealousy burnt within him. His mind was unstable. A quite fictitious passion for his wife, for whom he had never cared, and of whom he certainly would very quickly tire, was kindled by his jealousy; and he left no word unspoken which could possibly wound his deliverer. Charnock bitterly realised the false position into which he had allowed passion to lead him; and for the future he held his peace.
"Only one more day," he said with relief, as they saw the hills behind Tangier.
"And what then, Charnock?" said Warriner. "What then?"
What then, indeed? Charnock debated that question during the long night, the last night he was to spend under canvas in company with Ralph Warriner. Sometime to-morrow they would see the minarets of Tangier--to-morrow evening they would ride down across the Sôk and sleep within the town. What then? Passion was raw in these two men. It was a clear night; an African moon sailed the sky, and the interior of the tent was bright. Warriner lay motionless, a foot or two away, wrapped in his dark coverings, and Charnock was conscious of a fierce thrill of joy when he remembered Miranda's confession that she had no love left for her husband. He did not attempt to repress it; he hugged the recollection to his heart. All at once Warriner began softly to whistle a tune; it was the tune which he had whistled that morning at the gates of Tangier cemetery, it was the tune which Miranda had hummed over absently in the little parlour at Ronda, and which had given Charnock the clue--and because of the clue Warriner was again whistling the tune in the same tent with himself--a day's march from Tangier.
Charnock began hotly to regret that he had ever heard it, that he had charged Hamet to repeat it, and that so he had fixed it in his mind. He kicked over on his rugs, and he heard Warriner speak.
"You are awake, are you? I say, Charnock," he asked smoothly, "did Miranda show you the graveyard in Gib? That was my youngster, understand?--mine and Miranda's."
Charnock clenched his teeth, clenched his hand, and straightened his muscles out through all his body, that he might give no sign of what he felt.
"Bone of my bone," continued Warriner, in a silky, drawling voice, "flesh of my flesh,--and Miranda's." Perhaps some deep breath drawn with a hiss through the teeth assured Warriner that his speech was not spoken in vain; for he laughed softly and hatefully to himself.
Charnock lay quite still, but every vein in his body was throbbing. He had one thought only to relieve him. Warriner had said the last uttermost word of provocation; he had fashioned it out of the dust of his child, when but for that child he would still be a slave; and out of the wifehood of Miranda, when but for Miranda Charnock would never have come in search of him.Rupert Warriner, aged two. The gravestone, the boy looking out between the lattices, was very visible to Charnock at that moment. He was in the mind to give Warriner an account of how and why he was brought to see it; but he held his peace, sure that whatever gibes or stings Warriner might dispense in the future, they would be trifling and inconsiderable compared with this monumental provocation.
He was wrong; Warriner's malice had yet another resource. Seeing that Charnock neither answered him nor moved, he got up from his couch. Charnock saw him rummaging amongst the baggage, hopping about the tent in the pale moonlight; the shadow of his beard wagged upon the tent-wall, and all the while he chuckled and whispered to himself. Charnock watched his fantastic movements and took them together with the man's fantastic words, and it occurred to him then for the first time to ask whether Warriner's mind had suffered with his body. He had come to this point of his reflections when Warriner, stooping over a bundle, found whatever it was for which he searched. Charnock heard a light snick, like the cocking of a pistol, only not so loud. Then Warriner hopped back to Charnock's side, knelt down and thrust something into the palm of Charnock's hand. Charnock's fingers closed on it instinctively and gripped it hard; for this something was the handle of a knife and the blade was open.
"There!" said Warriner. "You have to protect me. This is the last night, so I give you the knife to protect me with."
He hopped back to his rugs, twittering with pleasure; and turning his face once more towards Charnock, while Charnock lay with the open knife in his hand, he resumed, "My boy, Charnock--mine and Miranda's--mine and Miranda's."
The next evening they rode over the cobblestones of Tangier and halted at M. Fournier's shop.
M. Fournier received the wanderers with an exuberant welcome. He fell upon Warriner's neck, patted him, and wept over him for joy at his return and for grief at his aged and altered looks. Then he grasped Charnock with both hands. "The deliverer," he cried, "the friend so noble!"
"Yes," said Warriner, pleasantly; "ce bonCharnock, he loves my wife."
Within half-an-hour the two travellers were shaved and clothed in European dress.
"Would anyone know me?" asked Warriner.
"My poor friend, I am afraid not," answered Fournier, and Warriner seemed very well pleased with the answer.
"Then we will go and dine, really and properly dine, at a hotel on champagne wine," said he.
They dined at a window which looked out across the Straits, and all through that dinner Warriner's face darkened and darkened and his gaze was sombrely fixed towards Gibraltar.
"What are your plans?" asked Fournier.
"The first thing I propose to do is to walk up to the cemetery and astonish my friend Hassan Akbar."
"You will not find him. The Basha thought it wise to keep him safe in prison until you were found."
"He has been there two years then?" said Warriner. "He had no friends. Then he is dead?" For the Moorish authorities do not feed the prisoners in the Kasbah.
M. Fournier blushed. "No, he is not dead. He would have starved, but,--you will forgive it, my friend? After all he had no great reason to like you,--I sent him food myself every day,--not very much, but enough," stammered M. Fournier, anxiously.
Warriner waved his hand. "It is a small thing; yes, I forgive you."
"And he may go free?"
"Why not? He will not catch me again."
M. Fournier's face brightened with admiration.
"Ah, but you are great, truly great," he exclaimed; "my friend, you aremagnanime!Now tell me what you will do."
M. Fournier's magnanimous friend replied. "The boat crosses to Algeciras to-morrow. I shall go up to Ronda. And you?" he asked, turning to Charnock.
"I shall go with you," said Charnock.
"Ce bonCharnock," said Warriner, with a smile. "He loves my wife."
"But afterwards?" Fournier hurried to interpose. "Will you stay at Ronda?"
"No."
Warriner's eyes strained out across the water to where the topmost ridge of Gibraltar rose against the evening sky. Since his rescue two thoughts had divided and made a conflict in his mind; one was his jealousy of Charnock, his unreal hot-house affection for Miranda; the other had been represented by his vague questions and statements about Wilbraham. He was now to speak more clearly, for as he looked over to the Rock, Wilbraham was uppermost in his mind.
"You did not know Wilbraham," he resumed. "Charnock did,ce bonCharnock. I have a little account to settle with Wilbraham, a little account of some standing, and now there's a new item to the bill. The scullion! Imagine it, Fournier. He blackmailed my wife; blackmailed Miranda! Do you understand?" he cried feverishly. "Miranda! You know her, Charnock. Fournier, how often have I spoken of her to you? Miranda!" And words failed him, so inconceivable was the thought that any man should bring himself to do any wrong to his Miranda.
M. Fournier stared. As he had once told Mrs. Warriner, Ralph had spoken to him of Miranda; but it had not been with the startling enthusiasm which at present he evinced.
"I shall settle my accounts with Wilbraham first," continued Warriner, "after I have seen Miranda. Did you know it was Wilbraham who sold the plans of the Daventry gun?"
"Was it?" exclaimed Charnock.
"It was," and the three men drew their chairs closer together. "Wilbraham was a moneylender's tout at Gib. I had borrowed money and renewed; I borrowed again, and again renewed. You see," he argued in excuse, "I would not touch a penny of my wife's estate; that of course was sacred. It was Miranda's--"
"And settled upon Miranda," Charnock could not refrain from interposing.
"Don't you call my wife by her christian name, else you and I will quarrel," exclaimed Warriner, banging his fist violently upon the table, and M. Fournier anxiously signed to Charnock to be silent.
"It was a slip," said Fournier, and soothingly he patted Warriner on the shoulder. "Here! have one or two fine champagne, eh? Now go on; we are all of us good friends. You borrowed twice from Wilbraham and did not pay; you would not, of course. Well?"
"I tried to borrow a third time," continued Warriner; "but Wilbraham refused unless I could offer him good security. He himself suggested the plans of the Daventry gun. He swore most solemnly that he would not use them; he would keep them as a security for three weeks, and I wanted his money. I had debts to pay, debts to my brother officers, and I agreed. He lent me the money; I gave him the plans, and he went off to Paris and sold them. I received a hint one afternoon that the mechanism of the gun was known, and I ran out of Gibraltar that evening. So, you see, I have an account with him; and it grows and grows and grows upon me each time that I see that." He pointed a shaking finger to where the sharp ridge of Gibraltar cut the evening sky. "Now that I can go where I will and no one will know me, I will get the account paid, and cut a receipt in full with a knife right across Wilbraham's face."
His voice rose and quavered with a feverish excitement, his eyes shone and glittered; it seemed to Charnock there was madness in them. M. Fournier's eyes met his and they exchanged glances, so M. Fournier, who was engaged in assiduously soothing Warriner, shared the conjecture. Indeed, as M. Fournier took his leave, he said privately to Charnock: "My poor friend! what will be the end of it for him? His wife does not like him and he will follow this Wilbraham, and he is not himself."
Charnock was lighting his candle at the hall-table.
"Yes," said he, slowly. "There is his wife, there is Wilbraham, there is himself; what is to be the end of it all?"
He went up the stairs to his room. His room communicated with Warriner's, and taking the key from the door, he left the door unlocked. More than once as he tossed upon his bed vainly reiterating the question, what was to be the end, he heard the latch of the door click, he saw the door open slowly, he saw a head come cautiously through the opening; and then, as he lay still, Warriner came hopping across the room to his bed. Warriner came to assure himself that Charnock had not stolen a march upon him during the night; he was possessed by a crazy fear lest Charnock should see Miranda before himself.
On the following afternoon they crossed together to Algeciras, through a rough sea in a strong wind.
"It's the Levanter," said Warriner; "there'll be three days of it." He looked earnestly at Gibraltar as the boat turned into the bay. "Wilbraham, Wilbraham," he muttered in a voice of anticipation. Then he turned to Charnock. "Mind, we go up to Ronda together! We shall have to stay the night at Algeciras. Mind, you are not to charter a special and go up ahead while I am asleep."
Charnock was sorely tempted to secure an engine, as he could have done, but Miranda had asked to see him "once when he brought Ralph back," and so the next morning they travelled together.
At noon Charnock saw again the walnut door encrusted with the copper nails, and Warriner was already hammering upon it with his stick. The moment it was opened he rushed through without a word, thrusting the servant aside.
Charnock followed him, but though he followed he had the advantage, for while Warriner gazed about the patio into which for the first time he entered, Charnock ran across to the little room in which Miranda was wont to sit. He opened the door.
"Empty," said Warriner, from behind his shoulder, and he pushed past Charnock into the room. From the balcony above them Jane Holt spoke. She spoke to Charnock as she ran down the stair.
"It's you at last! Miranda is at Gibraltar. She expected to hear of you, and thought she would hear more quickly there. She has been ill, besides; she needed doctors."
"Ill?" exclaimed Charnock.
"Who is that?" asked Miss Holt, glancing across Charnock's shoulder.
"Ralph."
"Ralph!" cried out Miss Holt. "But he's--"
"Hush!"
They followed Warriner into the room, and Charnock closed the door.
"Didn't you know?" he asked. "I went to find him."
"No," she replied, utterly bewildered. "It seems strange; but Miranda is very secret. A little unkind, perhaps," and then her voice went up almost in a scream as Warriner turned towards her. "Ralph! Is that Ralph?"
"Yes, yes, it's Ralph," said Warriner, and all the time he spoke, he trotted and hopped and danced about the room. "Ralph Warriner, to be sure; a little bit aged, eh, Jane Holt? Little bit musty? Been lyin' too long in the churchyard at Scilly--bound to alter your looks that,--what?" He skipped over to the writing table and began with a seeming aimlessness to pull out the drawers. "Where's Miranda? Does she know her lovin' husband's here? Why don't she come? Tell me that, Jane Holt!" He made a quick, and to Charnock an unintelligible, movement at the writing table, shut up a drawer with a bang, and the next moment he had a hand tight upon Jane Holt's wrist. "Where's Miranda? Quick!" and he shook her arm fiercely, but with a sly look towards Charnock; his other hand he thrust into his pocket. Charnock just got a glimpse of a sheet of paper clenched in the fist. Warriner withdrew his hand from his pocket empty. He had stolen something from the writing drawer. But what it was Charnock could not guess, nor did he think it wise, in view of Warriner's excitement, to ask.
"Miranda's at Gibraltar," said Miss Holt, quite alarmed by the man's extravagance. "I told you, she is ill."
Warriner waited to hear no more. He dropped her arm. "At Gibraltar," he said, and ran out of the room across the patio. Charnock followed him immediately. "He must not go alone," he cried over his shoulder to Miss Holt, but the excuse was only half of his motive. Passion, resentment, jealousy,--these too ordered him and he obeyed.
Charnock came up with Warriner at the railway station. The train did not leave Ronda until three, as Charnock might have known and so behaved with dignity before Miss Holt; but he was beyond the power of argument or reflection. He hurried after Warriner and caught him up, and during the two hours of waiting, the two men kept watch and ward upon each other. Together they walked to the hotel, they lunched at the same table, they returned side by side to the station, and seated themselves side by side in the same carriage of the train. The train which takes four hours to climb to Ronda runs down that long slope of a hundred miles in two hours. Charnock and Warriner took their seats in acoupéat the end of the last carriage; they rushed suddenly into the dark straight tunnels, and saw the mouths by which they had entered as round O's of light which contracted and contracted until a mere pin's-point of sunshine was visible far away, and then suddenly they were out again in the daylight.
There were certain landmarks with which Charnock was familiar,--a precipitous gorge upon the right, an underground river which flooded out from a hillside upon the left, a white town far away upon a green slope like a flock of sheep herded together, and finally the glades of the cork forest with the gleam of its stripped tree-trunks. The train drew up at Algeciras a few minutes after five.
Charnock and Warriner were met with the statement that the Levanter of yesterday had increased in force, and by the order of the harbour-master the port of Algeciras was closed. It was impossible to make the passage to Gibraltar--and Miranda was ill. She had needed doctors, Jane Holt had said. Charnock's fears exaggerated the malady; she might be dying; she might die while he and Warriner waited at Algeciras for the sea to subside. "We must reach Gibraltar to-night," he cried.
"And before gunfire," added Warriner. "But how?"
Charnock went straight to the office of the manager of the line. The manager greeted him with warmth. "But, man, where have you been these two years?" he exclaimed.
"There's a station at San Roque half-way round the bay," said Charnock. "I must get into Gibraltar to-night. If I can have a special to San Roque, I might drive the last nine miles."
Gibraltar is before everything a fortress, and the gates of that fortress are closed for the night at gunfire, and opened again for the day at gunfire in the morning.
"You will never do it," said the manager. "The gun goes off at seven."
"What's the month?" cried Warriner.
"July," answered the manager, in surprise.
"And the day of July?"
"The fifth."
"Good," cried Warriner. "You are wrong; on the fifth of July the gun goes off at eight--from the fifth of July to the thirty-first of August."
The manager uncoupled one carriage and the engine, coupled them together and switched them on to the up-line. Meanwhile Charnock telegraphed to the station-master at San Roque, to have a carriage in readiness; but time was occupied, and it was six o'clock before the engine steamed into San Roque.
San Roque is a wayside station; the village lies a mile away, hidden behind a hill. Charnock and Warriner alighted amongst fields and thickets of trees, but nowhere was there a house visible, and worst of all, there was no carriage in the lane outside the station. The station-master had ordered one, and no doubt one would arrive. He counselled patience.
For half-an-hour the incongruous companions, united by a common passion and a mutual hate, kicked their heels upon the lonely platform of San Roque. Then at last a crazy, battered, creaking diligence, drawn by six broken-kneed, sore-backed mules, cantered up to the station with a driver and a boy upon the box, whooping exhortations to the mules with the full power of their lungs.
Charnock and Warriner sprang up into the hooded seat behind the box, the driver turned his mules, and the diligence went off at a canter, along an unmade track across the fields.
It was now close upon a quarter to seven, and nine miles lay between San Roque and the gates of Gibraltar. Moreover, there was no road for the first part of the journey, merely this unmade track across the fields. The two men urged on the driver with open-handed promises; the driver screamed and shouted at his mules: "Hi! mules, here's a bull after you!" He counterfeited the barking of dogs; but the mules were accustomed to his threats and exhortations; they knew there were no dogs at their heels, and they kept to their regular canter.
Charnock longed for the fields to end and for the road to begin; and when the road did begin, he longed again for the fields. The road consisted of long lines of ruts, ruts which were almost trenches, ruts which had been baked hard by the summer suns. The mules stumbled amongst them, the diligence tossed and pitched and rolled like a boat in a heavy sea; Charnock and Warriner clung to their seats, while the driver continually looked round to see whether a wheel had slipped off from its axle. At times the boy would jump down from the box, and running forward with the whip in his hand, would beat the mules with the butt-end; the lash had long ceased to influence their movements.
"The road's infernal," cried Warriner.
"It will be when we get to the sea," replied the driver, and Charnock groaned in his distress. There was worse to come, and Miranda was ill.
The diligence lurched between two clumps of juniper trees, swung round a wall, and instantly the wheels sank into soft sand. The huge, sheer landward face of Gibraltar Rock towered up before them as they looked across the mile of neutral ground, that flat neck of land between the Mediterranean and the Bay. They saw the Spanish frontier town of Linea; but to Linea the sand stretched in a broad golden curve, soft and dry, and through that curve of sand the wheels of the diligence had to plough. The mules were beaten onwards, but the Levanter blew dead in their teeth. The driver turned the diligence towards the sea, and drove with the water splashing over the wheels; there the sand bound, and the pace was faster.
It was still, however, too slow; Gibraltar seemed still as far away. The travellers paid the driver, leaped from their seats, and ran over the soft clogging sand to Linea. They reached Linea. They passed the sentinel and the iron gates, they stood upon the neutral ground. They had but one more mile to traverse.
A cab stood without the iron gates. They jumped into it and drove at a gallop across the level; but the gun was fired from the Rock, while they were still half-a-mile from the gate, and the cabman brought his horses to a standstill.
"What now?" said Warriner.
"We might get in," said Charnock.
"The keys are taken to the Governor. There would be trouble; there always is. I know there would be questions asked; it would not be safe. I might slip in when the gates are open, but now it would not be safe. And mind, Charnock, when you go in I go in too."
There was no doubt that Warriner meant what he said, every word of it. For Miranda's sake Charnock could not risk Warriner's detection. They must remain outside Gibraltar for that night, even though during the night Miranda should die.
"Can we sleep at Linea?" said Charnock.
"No, Linea is a collection of workmen's houses and workmen's pot-houses." The two men made their supper at one of these latter, and for the rest of the night paced the neutral ground before Gibraltar.
A scud of clouds darkened the sky, and one pile of cloud, darker than the rest, lowered stationary upon the summit of the Rock. All night the Levanter blew pitilessly cold across that unprotected neck of land between sea and sea. With their numbed hands in their pockets, and their coats buttoned to the throat, Charnock and Warriner, accustomed to the blaze of a Morocco sun, waited from nightfall until midnight, and from midnight through the biting, dreary hours till dawn.
The gates were opened at three o'clock in the morning. Together the two men went through; they had still hours to wait before they could return to the hotel. They breakfasted together, and they let the time go by, for now that they were within reach of, almost within sight of, Miranda Warriner, they both began to hesitate. What was to be the end? They looked at one another across the table with that question speaking from their eyes. They walked down to the hotel and faced each other at the door, and the question was still repeated and still unanswered. They turned away together and strolled a few yards, and turned and came back again. This time Charnock entered the hotel. "Is Mrs. Warriner in?" he asked.
The waiter replied, "Yes."
Charnock drew a long breath. Surely if much had been amiss with her the waiter would have told them; but he said nothing, he merely led the way upstairs.