Miranda of the Balcony Part 33

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 gra.s.s, 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 pa.s.sed 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 gra.s.s 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 Ha.s.san 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 gra.s.s. 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 G.o.d," 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 pa.s.sed 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 fict.i.tious pa.s.sion.

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 d.a.m.ned 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."