CHARNOCK, LIKE THE TAXIDERMIST,
FINDS WARRINER ANYTHING BUT A COMFORTABLE COMPANION
On the way Charnock stopped at the _fondak_ where 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 copper _flouss_" 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.