PRESENTS THE HERO IN THE UNHEROIC ATTITUDE OF A SPECTATOR
It was Lady Donnisthorpe who two years later introduced Luke Charnock
to Mrs. Warriner. Lady Donnisthorpe was an outspoken woman with an
untameable passion for match-making, which she indulged with the
ardour and, indeed, the results of an amateur chemist. Her life was
spent in mingling incompatible elements and producing explosions to
which her enthusiasm kept her deaf, even when they made a quite
astonishing noise. For no experience of reverses could stale her
satisfaction when she beheld an eligible bachelor or maid walk for the
first time into her parlour.
She had made Charnock's acquaintance originally in Barbados. He sat
next her at a dinner given by the Governor of the Island, and took her
fancy with the pleasing inconsistency of a boyish appearance and a
wealth of experiences. He was a man of a sunburnt aquiline face, which
was lean but not haggard, grey and very steady eyes, and a lithe, tall
figure, and though he conveyed an impression of activity, he was still
a restful companion. Lady Donnisthorpe remarked in him a modern
appreciation of the poetry of machinery, and after dinner made
inquiries of the Governor.
"He is on his way homewards from Peru," answered the latter. "He has
been surveying for a railway line there during the last two years.
What do you think of him?"
"I want to know what you think."
"I like him. He is modest without diffidence, successful without
notoriety."
"What are his people?" asked Lady Donnisthorpe.
"I don't believe he has any. But I believe his father was a clergyman
in Yorkshire."
"It would sound improper for a girl without visible relations to say
that she was the daughter of a clergyman in Yorkshire, wouldn't it?"
said her ladyship, reflectively. "But I suppose it's no objection in a
man;" and in her memories she made a mark against Charnock's name. She
heard of him again once or twice in unexpected quarters from the lips
of the men who from East to West are responsible for the work that is
done; and once or twice she met him, for she was a determined
traveller. Finally, at Cairo, she sat next to Sir John Martin, the
head partner of a great Leeds firm of railway contractors.
"Did you ever come across a Mr. Charnock?" she asked.
The head partner laughed.
"I did; I knew his father."
"It's a strange thing about Mr. Charnock," said she, "but one never
hears anything of what he was doing before the last few years."
"Why not ask him?" said the North-countryman, bluntly.
"It might sound inquisitive," replied Lady Donnisthorpe, "and perhaps
there's no need to, if you know."
"Yes, I know," returned Sir John, with a great deal of provoking
amusement, "and, believe me, Lady Donnisthorpe, it's not at all to his
discredit."
Lady Donnisthorpe began thereafter to select and reject possible wives
for Charnock, and while still undecided, she chanced to pass one
December through Nice. The first person whom she saw in the vestibule
of the hotel was Luke Charnock.
"What in the world are you doing here?" she asked.
"Taking a week's holiday, Lady Donnisthorpe. I have been in Spain for
the last two years, and shall be for the next nine months."
"In Spain?"
"I am making a new line between Cadiz and Algeciras."
"God bless the man, and I never thought of it!" exclaimed Lady
Donnisthorpe. "I think you will do," she added, looking him over, and
nodding her head.
"I hope so," replied Charnock, cheerfully. "It's a big lift for me."
"In a way, no doubt," agreed her ladyship. "Though, mind you, the land
isn't what it was."
"The railway will improve it," said Charnock.
They happened to be talking of different subjects. Lady Donnisthorpe
pursued her own.
"Then you won't be in England for a year?" she said regretfully.
"The company building the line is an English one," replied Charnock.
"I shall have to see the directors in June. I shall be in London
then."
"Then you must come and see me. Write before you leave Spain.
Promise!" said Lady Donnisthorpe, who was now elated.
Charnock promised, and that day Lady Donnisthorpe wrote to her cousin,
Miranda Warriner, at Ronda, who was now at the end of the first year
of her widowhood, and of the third year of her ridiculous seclusion at
that little hill-town of Spain. Miranda was entreated, implored, and
commanded to come to London in May. There was the season, there was
Miranda's estate in Suffolk, which needed her attention. Miranda
reluctantly consented, and so Lady Donnisthorpe was the instrument by
which Charnock and Mrs. Warriner became acquainted. But the
foundations of that acquaintanceship were laid without her ladyship's
agency, and indeed without the knowledge of either Charnock or
Miranda.
A trifling defect in the machinery of a P. and O. boat began it. The
P. and O. stayed for four days at Aden to make repairs, and so
Charnock had four days to wait at Gibraltar before he could embark for
England. He did not, however, spend more than two of those four days
at Gibraltar, but picking up a yellow handbill in the lounge of the
hotel, he obeyed its advice, and crossing the sunlit straits early the
next morning saw the jealous hills about Tangier unfold and that
cardboard city glitter down to the sea.
He was rowed ashore to the usual accompaniment of shouts and yells by
a villainous boat's crew of Arabs. A mob of Barbary Jews screamed at
him on the landing-stage, and then a Moorish boy with a brown roguish
face who was dressed in a saffron jellabia, pushed his way forwards
and in a conversational voice said, "You English? God damn you, give
me a penny!"
Charnock hired that boy, and under his guidance sauntered through
Tangier where the East and the West rub shoulders, where the camel
snarls in the Sôk with an electric arc-lamp for a night-light, and all
the races and all the centuries jostle together in many colours down
the cobbles of its narrow streets. Charnock was shown the incidentals
of the Tangier variety entertainment: the Basha administering more or
less justice for less or more money at his Palace gate; the wooden
peep-hole of the prison where the prisoners' hands come through and
clutch for alms; a dancing-room where a Moorish woman closely veiled
leaned her back against a Tottenham Court Road chest of drawers under
a portrait of Mrs. Langtry, and beat upon a drum while another stamped
an ungainly dance by the light of a paraffin lamp; and coming out
again into the sunlight, Charnock cried out, "Hamet, take me somewhere
where it's clean, and there's no din, and there are no smells."
Hamet led the way up the hills, and every now and then, as he passed a
man better dressed than his fellows he would say in a voice of awe:
"That's a rich." He invariably added, "He's a Juice."
"Look here, Hamet," said Charnock, at length, "can't you show me a
rich who isn't a Jew?"
"These are the loryers," observed Hamet, after the fashion of the
March Hare when posed with an inconvenient question. He pointed to a
number of venerable gentlemen in black robes who sat in wooden hutches
open to the street. "I will show you," he continued, "a Moor who was
the richest man in all Tangier."
The pair walked up out of the town towards the Mazan, and came to a
lane shadowed by cedars and bordered with prickly pears. Here the
resounding din of the streets below was subdued to a murmurous
confusion of voices, from which occasionally a sharp cry would spirt
up clear into the air like a jet of water. Only one voice was definite
and incessant, and that voice came down to them from the trees higher
up the lane--a voice very thin, but on that hot, still afternoon very
distinct--a voice which perpetually quavered and bleated one
monotonous invocation.
"Hassan Akbar," said Hamet.
The invocation became articulate as they ascended. "Allah Beh!" the
voice cried, and again "Allah Beh!" and again, until the windless air
seemed to vibrate with its recurrence.
They came upon the Moor who uttered this cry at the gate of the
Moorish cemetery. A white, stubbly beard grew upon his chin and lips,
but his strength was not diminished by his years, and with every
movement of his body the muscles beneath the tough skin of his bare
legs worked like live things. He sat cross-legged in the dust with a
filthy sack for his only garment; he was blind, and his eyes stared
from their red sockets covered with a bluish film as though the
colours of the eyeballs had run.
"Allah Beh!" he cried, swaying his body backwards and forwards with
the regularity of an automaton and an inimitable quickness. He paid no
heed whatever to Charnock and the boy as they halted beside him.
"Allah Beh!" he cried, and his chest touched the cradle of his knees.
He marked the seconds with the pendulum of his body; he struck them
with his strident invocation.
"He was the richest man in Tangier," said Hamet, and he told Hassan
Akbar's story as though it was an affair of every day. Hassan had not
secured the protection of any of the European Legations. He had hoped
to hide his wealth by living poorly, and though he owned a house worth
three thousand dollars in Tangier, he did not dwell in it. But no
concealments had availed him. Someone of his familiars had told, and
no doubt had made his profit from the telling. The Basha had waited
his opportunity. It came when blindness left Hassan defenceless. Then
the Basha laid hands upon him, forced him to give up the gains of a
lifetime's trade, and so cast him out penniless to beg for copper
flouss at the gate of the cemetery.
"And Europe's no more than seven miles away," cried Charnock. Even
where he stood he could see the laughing water of the Straits, and
beyond that, the summit of Gibraltar. "Who was it that told?" he
asked.
"That is not known."
Charnock dropped some money into the blind man's lap, but Hassan did
not cease from his prayer to thank him.
"He is very strong," said Hamet, who saw nothing strange in the story
he had told. "He swings like this all day from seven in the morning to
five at night. He never stops." And at that moment, upon the heels of
Hamet's words, as though intentionally to belie them, Hassan Akbar
suddenly arrested the motion of his body and suddenly ceased from his
pitiable cry.
His silence and immobility came with so much abruptness that Charnock
was fairly startled. Then Hamet held up a finger, and they both
listened. Maybe the blind man was listening too, but Charnock could
not be certain. His face was as blind as his eyes, and there was no
expression in the rigid attitude of his body.
Charnock heard a faint sound higher up the lane. The sound became
louder and defined itself. It was the slap-slap of a pair of Moorish
slippers. Charnock drew Hamet back by the trunk of a tree, which
sheltered them both from the view of anyone who came down the hill. He
left the lane free, and into the open space there came a man who wore
the dress of a Moor of wealth, serwal, chamir, farajia, and haik,
spotless and complete. In figure he was slight and perhaps a trifle
under the middle height, and the haik was drawn close over his
forehead to shield him from the sun.
Hassan was seated in the dust with the sun beating full upon his head.
In front of him the newcomer stopped. "Peace be with you," he said, as
Charnock, who had some knowledge of Arabic, understood. But the beggar
made no answer, nor gave any sign that he heard. He sat motionless,
impassive, a secret figure of stone.
The newcomer laughed lightly to himself, and the laughter, within view
of the rags and misery of the once rich man, sounded unpleasant and
callous. Hamet shifted a foot at Charnock's side, and Charnock, whose
interest in this picturesque encounter was steadily growing, pressed a
hand upon the boy's shoulder to restrain him.
The stranger, however, had noticed neither of the two spectators. He
was still laughing softly to himself as he watched the beggar, and in
a little he began to hum between his teeth a tune--a queer, elusive
tune of a sweet but rather mournful melody; and it seemed to Charnock
by some indefinable hint of movement that Hassan Akbar was straining
his ears to catch and register that tune.
The stranger advanced to Hassan and dropped a coin in his lap. The
coin was not copper, for it sparkled in the air as it fell. Then with
another easy laugh he turned to go down into Tangier. But as he turned
he saw Charnock watching him. On the instant his hand went to his hood
and drew it close about his cheeks, but not before Charnock had seen a
scared face flashed at him for a moment, and immediately withdrawn.
The Moor went down the lane.
"Perhaps it was he who told?" said Charnock.
Hamet disagreed.
"He would not know. His beard was fair, so he comes from Fez."
Charnock, too, had remarked that the man was fair-haired. But
nevertheless this encounter of the rich Moor and the beggar remained
in his thoughts, and he allowed his imagination lazily to fix a
picture of it in his mind. Thus occupied, he walked through the
cemetery, taking in that way a short cut to the Sôk. But he was not
half-way across the cemetery when he turned sharply towards Hamet.
"Do you remember the tune the Moor hummed?"
Charnock's ear was slow to retain the memory of music. Hamet, however,
promptly whistled the melody from beginning to end, while Charnock
stood and took count of it.
"I shall have forgotten it to-morrow," said Hamet.
"I think now that I shall recollect it tomorrow," said Charnock, and
he walked on.
But in a moment or two he stopped again as though some new perplexity
was present to his mind.
"Hamet," he said, "before the Moor appeared at all, while his
footsteps were still faint, certainly before he spoke, Hassan Akbar
stopped his prayer, which you say he never stops. He knew then who was
coming. At all events he suspected. How did he know? How did he
suspect?"
"There is the Sôk," replied Hamet.
They had passed round the bend of the hill up which the cemetery
slopes, and were come within view of the market-place. Charnock was
puzzled by his unanswered question, and the question was forced to his
notice again that afternoon, and with yet greater force.
It was market-day. Charnock beheld stretched out beneath him a great
field, or rather a great plain, (for the grass was long since trampled
into mud,) which curved down to the yellow sun-baked wall of the city,
and whereon an innumerable throng, Negroes from Timbuctoo, Arabs,
Jews, and Moors, in all manner of raiment, from rags to coloured
robes, jostled and seethed, bawled and sweated, under a hot sun and in
a brilliant air. Here an old hag screamed aloud the virtues of her
merchandise, a few skinny onions and vegetables; there two men forced
a passage with blows of their sticks, and behind them a stately train
of camels brought in from the uplands their loads of dates. A Riffian
sauntered by with an indifferent air, his silver-mounted gun upon his
back, a pair of pistols in his belt, and a great coarse tail of hair
swinging between his shoulders. He needed no couriers to prepare his
way. At one spot a serpent-charmer thrust out his tongue, from which a
snake was hanging by the fangs; at another a story-teller, vivid in
narration, and of an extraordinary aptness in his gestures, held an
audience enchained. From every side the din of human voices rose into
the air, and to the din was added the snarling of camels, the braying
of donkeys, the bleating of sheep, the lowing of oxen, and all manner
of squeals and grunts, so that it seemed the whole brute creation had
combined to make one discordant orchestra.
Into this Babel Charnock descended.
"Those are the shoemakers," said Hamet. He pointed to a cluster of
tiny grimed gunny-bag tents in a corner of the highest part of the
Sôk. In the doorways of the tents a few men sat cobbling; one or two
wood fires crackled in the intervals between the tents; and in close
proximity a dead mule took its last unsavoury sleep.
"Hassan Akbar sleeps in the mud near to the tents," continued Hamet.
"Every evening he comes down to the Sôk, buys milk and bread from the
shoemakers, and sleeps--"
"Near to that mule!" interrupted Charnock. "And he was the richest man
in all Tangier."
A moment later there was shown to him the second picture which he was
to carry away from Tangier. Down the Sôk, through the crowd, came the
Moor, in his spotless robes, and a few yards behind him, striding
swiftly and noiselessly, the blind gaunt beggar of the cemetery gate
followed upon his trail. In and out amongst the shifting groups he
threaded and wound, and never erred in his pursuit. The man in whose
track he kept never spoke when all were shouting, yet Hassan never
faltered. The sound of his footsteps was lost in a multitude of the
like sounds, yet Hassan was somehow sensible of it, somehow to his
ears it emerged distinct.
Charnock was amazed; in a way too he was chilled. It seemed uncanny
that this sightless creature of the impassive face should be able to
follow, follow, follow relentlessly, unswervingly, one silent man
amongst the noisy hundreds. Charnock walked for a few yards by Hassan
Akbar's side, keeping pace with him. Even with his eyes fixed upon the
Moor in front, even though he saw his feet tread the ground, he could
not distinguish his footfalls. How then could Hassan?
Tracker and Tracked passed from the Sôk under the archway of the gate,
and Charnock dismissing Hamet walked down towards his hotel near the
waterside. However, he missed his road. He turned through the horse
market, descended the steep street, past the great Mosque, and walked
along a narrow, crooked alley between blank and yellow walls, which
ended in a tunnel beneath over-arching houses. Almost within the mouth
of this tunnel there was a shop, or so it seemed, for a stuffed jackal
swung above the door as a sign. Before this shop Charnock halted with
a thrill of excitement. The door of the shop was shut, the unglazed
window was shuttered. It was not on that account that Charnock
stopped; but underneath the shuttered window, his head almost touching
the sill, Hassan squatted on the cobbles fingering now and then a
silver dollar.
Inside the door a bolt grated, the door opened, and a stout,
undersized European appeared in the entrance, polished a pair of
glasses, set them upon his nose, glanced up and down the street,
closed the door behind him, and taking no heed whatever of the blind
man under his window, walked briskly into the tunnel. He walked with a
short, tripping, and jaunty step.
Charnock waited while the echo of it diminished and ceased, and the
moment it had ceased he saw Hassan, without any hurry, without any
sign of expectation or excitement, rise slowly to his feet and move
along the house wall towards the door. His right elbow scraped the
plaster; then his elbow touched nothing. He had come to the recess of
the door, and he stopped.
It flashed upon Charnock that he had not heard the bolt again grate
into its socket. The door was then only latched and--was Hassan's
quarry behind its panels?
The affair had ceased to be a toy with which Charnock's imagination
could idly play. He strode across the alley and planted himself face
to face with Hassan. Hassan quietly and immediately murmured a request
for alms and stretched out his left hand, a supple, corded hand, with
long sinuous fingers, a hand of great strength. But as he spoke he
drew within the recess of the door, and Charnock noticed his right
hand steal up the panels feeling for the latch.
Made by this seemingly passionless and apathetic man, the secret
movement shocked Charnock. It seemed to him at that moment so
cold-blooded as to be almost inhuman.
"Look out!" he shouted through the door and in broad English,
forgetting that the man for whom his warning was intended was a Moor.
But the warning had its effect. There was a heavy blow upon the door,
as though a man's shoulder lurched against it, and then the bolt
grated into the socket. Hassan Akbar walked on repeating his prayer
for alms, as if his hand had never for an instant stolen up the panel
and felt for the latch.
Charnock, to make his warning the more complete, rapped on the door
for admission, once, twice, thrice. But he got no answer. He leaned
his ear to the panel. He could detect not so much as a foot stirring.
Absolute silence reigned in that dark and shuttered room.
Charnock walked back to his hotel. On the way he passed the end of the
pier, where he saw the little Frenchman bargaining with the owner of a
felucca. His excitement gradually died down. It occurred to him that
there might have been no grounds at all for any excitement. Hassan
Akbar might have been following through the Sôk by mere accident. He
might have tried the door in pursuit of nothing more than alms; and in
a little the whole incident ceased to trouble his speculations. He
crossed the Straits to Gibraltar the next morning, and waited there
for two days until the P. and O. came in. It was on the P. and O. that
he first fell in with Major Wilbraham.