Miranda of the Balcony Part 34

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 pa.s.sion; 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 G.o.d, 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 G.o.d, 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 pa.s.s 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 G.o.d 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 pa.s.sion he had clean forgotten it. Warriner wiped the sweat from his face; he did not need to look at Charnock to be a.s.sured 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 fict.i.tious pa.s.sion 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 pa.s.sion 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 Sok and sleep within the town. What then? Pa.s.sion 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 a.s.sured 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 c.o.c.king 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.

CHAPTER XXI

COMPLETES THE JOURNEYINGS OF THIS INCONGRUOUS COUPLE

M. Fournier received the wanderers with an exuberant welcome. He fell upon Warriner's neck, patted him, and wept over him for joy at his return and for grief at his aged and altered looks. Then he grasped Charnock with both hands. "The deliverer," he cried, "the friend so n.o.ble!"

"Yes," said Warriner, pleasantly; "_ce bon_ Charnock, he loves my wife."

Within half-an-hour the two travellers were shaved and clothed in European dress.

"Would anyone know me?" asked Warriner.

"My poor friend, I am afraid not," answered Fournier, and Warriner seemed very well pleased with the answer.

"Then we will go and dine, really and properly dine, at a hotel on champagne wine," said he.

They dined at a window which looked out across the Straits, and all through that dinner Warriner's face darkened and darkened and his gaze was sombrely fixed towards Gibraltar.

"What are your plans?" asked Fournier.

"The first thing I propose to do is to walk up to the cemetery and astonish my friend Ha.s.san Akbar."

"You will not find him. The Basha thought it wise to keep him safe in prison until you were found."

"He has been there two years then?" said Warriner. "He had no friends.

Then he is dead?" For the Moorish authorities do not feed the prisoners in the Kasbah.

M. Fournier blushed. "No, he is not dead. He would have starved, but,--you will forgive it, my friend? After all he had no great reason to like you,--I sent him food myself every day,--not very much, but enough," stammered M. Fournier, anxiously.

Warriner waved his hand. "It is a small thing; yes, I forgive you."

"And he may go free?"