Miranda of the Balcony: A Story

by A. E. W. Mason

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 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.