Miranda of the Balcony Part 32

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 cl.u.s.ter 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sivity, 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 pa.s.sers-by, but wrapped in his burnous, careless of any cry, impenetrable, un.o.bservant, 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 a.s.sured 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.s! 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 pa.s.sed 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, pa.s.sed out of the market and down the street towards the gate of Mequinez.

CHAPTER XX

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 pa.s.sed 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 G.o.d, 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 G.o.d, 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 h.e.l.l 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 a.s.sociations 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 G.o.d, 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.