Miranda of the Balcony Part 2

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 ash.o.r.e 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 jell.a.b.i.a, pushed his way forwards and in a conversational voice said, "You English? G.o.d d.a.m.n 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 Sok 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 pa.s.sed 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 p.r.i.c.kly 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.

"Ha.s.san 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 eyeb.a.l.l.s 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 Ha.s.san Akbar's story as though it was an affair of every day. Ha.s.san 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 Ha.s.san 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 Ha.s.san 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, Ha.s.san 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 att.i.tude 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 s.p.a.ce 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.

Ha.s.san 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, impa.s.sive, 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 Ha.s.san Akbar was straining his ears to catch and register that tune.

The stranger advanced to Ha.s.san 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 Sok. 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, Ha.s.san 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 Sok," replied Hamet.

They had pa.s.sed 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 gra.s.s 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 pa.s.sage 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 coa.r.s.e 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 cl.u.s.ter of tiny grimed gunny-bag tents in a corner of the highest part of the Sok. 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.

"Ha.s.san Akbar sleeps in the mud near to the tents," continued Hamet.

"Every evening he comes down to the Sok, 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 Sok, 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 Ha.s.san never faltered. The sound of his footsteps was lost in a mult.i.tude of the like sounds, yet Ha.s.san 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 impa.s.sive face should be able to follow, follow, follow relentlessly, unswervingly, one silent man amongst the noisy hundreds. Charnock walked for a few yards by Ha.s.san 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 Ha.s.san?

Tracker and Tracked pa.s.sed from the Sok 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, Ha.s.san 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 gla.s.ses, 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 Ha.s.san, 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 sc.r.a.ped 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 Ha.s.san'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 Ha.s.san. Ha.s.san 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.