RUPERT WARRINER,
Aged 2 Years.
and the date of his birth and death.
The headstone was of marble, and had been sculptured with a poetic fancy; a boy, in whose face Charnock could trace a likeness to Miranda, looked out and laughed between the open lattices of a window.
They both watched the grave silently for a while. Then Miranda said gently, “Now do you understand? When Rupert was born, it seemed to me that here was a blossom on the thorn bush of the world. But you see the blossom never flowered. He died of diphtheria. It was hard when he died;” and Charnock suddenly started at her side.
“Those flowers!” he said hoarsely.
Upon the grave were scattered jonquils, geraniums, roses, pinks, camellias — all the rich reds and yellows of Miranda’s garden.
“You were cutting them, packing them, that afternoon when Wilbraham came?”
Mrs. Warriner shrank from looking at Charnock.
“Yes,” she confessed in a whisper.
“My God!” he exclaimed. Miranda glanced at him in fear. So it was coming; he was remembering the use to which she had put those flowers. Would he loathe her sufficiently to withdraw his help?
“Do you know what I thought?” he continued. “No, you can’t guess. You could not imagine it. I actually believed that you were cutting those flowers so that you might send them to—” and he broke off the sentence. “But it’s too odious to tell you.”
“But I meant you should believe just that,” she cried. “I meant you to believe it. Oh, how utterly hateful! How could I have done it? I wanted to hide that from you, but it was right you should know. I must have been mad,” and she convulsively clasped and unclasped her hands.
“I understand why you dropped that bunch from the cliff,” said Charnock, “after Wilbraham had picked a flower from it.”
“I wanted to bring you here,” said Miranda, “so that you might know why I ask this service of you. As I told you, I have no love left for Ralph, but he was that boy’s father, and the boy is dead. I cannot leave Ralph in Morocco a slave. He was Rupert’s father. Perhaps you remember that after I met you at Lady Donnisthorpe’s I came back at once to Ronda. I had half determined not to return at all, and when you first told me Ralph was alive, my first absorbing thought was, where should I hide myself? But it occurred to me that he might be in need, and he was Rupert’s father. So I came back, and when Wilbraham blackmailed me, I submitted to the blackmail again because he was Rupert’s father; and because he was Rupert’s father, when I learned in what sore need he stood, I sent that glove to you.”
“I understand,” said Charnock, and they turned and walked from the cemetery.
“Now will you speak?” she asked.
“No,” he returned, “but I will go myself to Morocco.”
“It is your life I am asking you to risk,” said Miranda, who now that she had gained her end, began at once to realise the consequences it would entail upon her friend.
“I know that and take the risk,” replied Charnock.
They walked out towards Europa Point, and turned into the Alameda.
“There is something else,” said Miranda. “Your search will cost money. Every farthing of that I must pay. You will promise me that?”
“Yes.”
“I wrote to M. Fournier yesterday. He will supply you. There is one thing more. This search will interrupt your career.”
“It will, no doubt,” he assented readily, and sitting down upon a seat he spoke to her words which she never forgot. “The quaint thing is that I have always been afraid lest a woman should break my career. I lived as a boy high up on the Yorkshire hills, two miles above a busy town. All day that town whirred in the hollow below. I could see it from my bedroom window, and all night the lights blazed in the factories; and when I went down into its streets there were always grimed men speeding upon their business. There was a certain grandeur about it which impressed me, — the perpetual shuffle of the looms, the loud, clear song of the wheels. That seemed to me the life to live. And I made up my mind that no woman should interfere. A brake on the wheel going up hill, a whip in the driver’s hand going down, — that was what I thought of woman until I met you.”
“And proved it true,” cried Miranda.
“And learned that there are better things than getting on,” said Charnock.
Miranda turned to him with shining eyes, and in a voice which left him in no doubt as to the significance of her words, she cried: —
“My dear, we are Love’s derelicts, you and I,” and so stopped and said no more.
They went back to the hotel and lunched together and came out again to the geraniums and bellas sombras of the Alameda. But they talked no more in this strain. They were just a man and a woman, and the flaming sword kept their lips apart. But they knew it and were not aggrieved, for being a man and a woman they knew not grievances.
The evening came down upon Gibraltar, the riding lanterns glimmered upon the masts in the bay; away to the left the lighthouse on Europa Point shot out its yellow column of light; above, the Spanish sky grew purple and rich with innumerable stars.
“The boat leaves early,” said Charnock. “I will say good-bye now.”
Miranda caught the hand which he held out to her and held it against her breast.
“But I shall see you again — once — please, once,” she said, “when you bring Ralph back to me;” and so they separated in the Alameda.
Charnock walked away and left her standing there, nor looked back. Stray lines and verses of ballads which he had heard sung by women in drawing-rooms here and there about the world came back to him — ballads of knights and cavaliers who had ridden away at their ladies’ behests. He had laughed at them then, but they came back to him now, and he felt himself linked through them in a community of feeling with the generations which had gone before. Men had gone out upon such errands as he was now privileged to do, and would do so again when he was dust, with just the same pride which he felt as he walked homewards on this night through the streets of Gibraltar. He realised as he had never realised before, through the fellowship of service, that in bone and muscle and blood he was of the family of men, son of the men who had gone before, father of the men who were to follow. The next morning he crossed the straits to Tangier.
CHAPTER XVIII
IN WHICH THE TAXIDERMIST AND A BASHA PREVAIL OVER A BLIND MAN
HE WENT AT once to the taxidermist’s shop. M. Fournier expected him, but not the story which he had to tell.
“You wish to discover the man who shouted through your door six months ago,” said Charnock. “It was I.”
M. Fournier got together his account-books and laid them on the counter of the shop. “I have much money. Where is my friend Mr. Jeremy Bentham?”
“It is Hassan Akbar whom we must ask,” said Charnock, and he told Fournier of what he had seen on the day of his previous visit to Tangier.
The two men walked up to the cemetery gate, where Hassan still sat in the dust, and swung his body to and fro and reiterated his cry “Allah Ben!” as on that day when, clothed as a Moor, Ralph Warriner had come down the hill. It was the tune which that Moor had hummed, and which Miranda had repeated, that had led Charnock to identify the victim and the enemy.
Charnock hummed over that tune again as he stood beside the Moor, and the Moor stopped at once from his prayer.
“Hassan Akbar, what hast them done with the Christian who hummed that tune and dropped a silver dollar in thy lap at this gate?”
Hassan made no answer, and as though his sole anxiety had been lest Warriner should have escaped and returned, he recommenced his cry.
“Hassan,” continued Charnock, “was it that Christian who betrayed thy wealth? Give him back to us and thou shalt be rich again.”
“Allah Beh!” cried Hassan. “Allah Beh!”
“It is of no use for us to question him,” said M. Fournier. “But the Basha will ask him, and in time he will answer. To-morrow
I will go to the Basha.”
Charnock hardly gathered the purport of Fournier’s proposal. He went back into the town, and that evening M. Fournier related to him much about Ralph Warriner which he did not know.
The idea of running guns in Morocco had appealed to Warriner some time before he put it into practice, and whilst he was still at Gibraltar.
“I did not know him then,” said Fournier. “He had relations with others, very likely with Hassan Akbar, but nothing came of those relations. When he ran from Gibraltar in the Ten Brothers, he landed at Tangier, and lay hid somewhere in the town, while he sent the Ten Brothers over to South America and ordered the mate to sell her for as much as she would fetch. But in a little while Ralph Warriner met me and asked me to be his partner in his scheme. He had a little money then, and indeed it was just about the time when Hassan’s fortune was discovered. It is very likely that our friend told the Basha of Hassan’s wealth. If he knew, he would certainly have told,” said M. Fournier, with a lenient smile, “for there was money in it. Anyway, he had some money then, I had some, I could get more, and I like him very much. I say yes. He tells me of his ship. We want a ship to carry over the guns. I telegraph to the Argentine and stop the sale. Warriner sent orders to change her rig, as he call it, and her name, and she comes back to us as the Tarifa. The only trouble left was this. The most profitable guns to introduce are the Winchester rifles. But for that purpose one of us must go between England and Tangier, must sail the Tarifa between England and Tangier. I could not sail a toy-boat in a pond without falling into the water. How then could I sail the Tarifa? So Warriner must do it. But Warriner, my poor dear friend, he has made little errors. He must not go to England, not even as Bentham. To make it safe for Jeremy Bentham to go to England, Ralph Warriner must be dead. You see?”
“Yes, I see. But why in the world did he call himself Jeremy Bentham?” asked Charnock.
“Because he was such an economist. Oh, but he was very witty and clever, my poor friend, when he was not swearing at you. At all events he decided that Ralph Warriner must die, and that there must be proofs that he was dead. So he packed up a few letters — one from his wife before he was married to her — that was clever, hein? A love-letter from his fiancée which he has carried about next to his heart for six years! So sweet! So convincing to the great British public, eh? He found that letter by chance among his charts. He gives it to me and some others in an oilskin case, and sends me with one of his sailors to the Scilly Islands. And then Providence helped us.
“All that we hoped to do was to hear of a wreck, in which many lives were lost, to go out amongst the rocks, where the ship was wrecked, and to pick up that little oilskin case. You understand? Oh, but we were helped. There was a heavy storm for many days at Scilly, and after the storm for many days a fog. On one day the sailor and I — we go out in the fog to the Western Islands, to see if any ship had come ashore. But it was dangerous! I can tell you it was very dangerous and very wet. However, we come to Rosevear, and there was the remnant of a ship, and no sailor anywhere. We landed on Rosevear, and just as I was about to place the oilskin case among the rocks where it would be naturally found, we came upon one dead sailor, lying near to the sea just as if asleep. I slipped the oilskin case into his pocket, and then with stones we broke in his face. Ah, but that was horrible! It made me sick then and there. But we did it, until there was no face left. Then for fear the waves might come up and wash him away, we dragged him up the rocks and laid him amongst the grass, again as though he was asleep. We made a little mistake there. We dragged him too far from the sea. But the mistake did not matter.”
“I see,” said Charnock. “And that day I shouted through the door Warriner sailed for England?”
“Yes,” replied Fournier. “I hired that morning a felucca to sail himself across to Tarifa.”
“I remember.”
“The boat lay at Tarifa. He set sail that night.”
“Yes,” said Charnock. “I spent the night here. I waited two days for the P. and O. at Gibraltar, we passed the Tarifa off Ushant, and three days later I met Warriner in Plymouth. Yes, the times fit.”
“It is very likely Ralph who told about Hassan,” mused M. Fournier, with a lenient smile. “If he knew, he would have been sure to have told; for there was money in it. To-morrow I will see the Basha.”
M. Fournier went down to the Kasbah and found the Basha delivering justice at the gates. The suitors were dismissed, and M. Fournier opened his business.
“We do not wish to trouble the Legation,” said he. “The Legation would make much noise, and his Shereefian Majesty, whom God preserve, would never hear the end of it. Besides, we do not wish it.” And upon that money changed hands. “But if the Englishman told your nobility that Hassan Akbar was hoarding his money in utter selfishness, then your nobility will talk privately with Hassan and find out from him where the Englishman is.”
The Basha stroked his white beard.
“The Nazarene speaks wisely. We will not disturb the dignity of his Majesty, whom Allah preserve, for such small things. I will talk to Hassan Akbar and send for you again.”
That impenetrable man was fetched from the cemetery gates, and the Basha addressed him.
“Hassan, thou didst hide and conceal thy treasure, and truly the Room told me of it; and since thy treasure was of no profit to thee, I took it.”
“When I was blind and helpless,” said Hassan.
“So thou wast chastened the more thoroughly for thy profit in the next world, and thy master and my master, the Sultan, was served in this,” said the Basha, with great dignity, and he reverently bowed his head to the dust. “Now what hast thou done with the Room?”
But Hassan answered never a word.
“Thou stubborn man! May Allah burn thy great-great-grandfather!” said the Basha, and chained his hands and his feet, and had him conveyed to an inner room, where he talked to him with rods of various length and thickness. At the end of the third day the Basha sent a message to M. Fournier that Hassan’s heart was softened by the goodness of God, and that now he would speak.
The Basha received Charnock and M. Fournier in a great cool domed room of lattice-work and tiles. He sat upon cushions on a dais at the end of the room; stools were brought forward for his visitors; and M. Fournier and the Basha exchanged lofty compliments, and drank much weak sweet tea. Then the Basha raised his hand; a door was thrown open; and a blind, wavering, broken man crawled, dragging his fetters, across the floor.
“Good God!” whispered Charnock; “what have they done to him?”
“They have made him speak, that is all,” returned M. Fournier, imperturbably. He kept all his pity for Ralph Warriner.
M. Fournier translated afterwards to Charnock the story which Hassan told as he grovelled on the ground, and it ran as follows: —
“When the son of the English first came into Morocco I showed him great kindness and hospitality, and how he returned it you know. So after I was blind I waited. More than once I heard his voice in the Sôk, and in the streets of Tangier, and I knew that he had quarrelled with his own people the Nazarenes, and dared not turn to them for help. I sit by the gate of the cemetery, and many Arabs, and Moors, and Negroes, and Jews come down the road from the country to the market-place, and at last one morning I heard the steps of one whose feet shuffled in his babouches; he could not walk in the loose slippers as we who are born to the use of them. And it was not an old man, whose feet are clogged by age, for his stride was long; that my ears told me which are my eyes. It was an infidel in the dress of the faithful. It may be that if I had seen with my eyes, I should never have known; but my ears are sharpened, and I heard. When he passed me he gave me greeting, and then I knew it was the Room. He dropped a dollar into my hands and whistled a tune which he had often whistled after he had eaten of my kouss-kouss, and so went on his way. I rose up and followed him, thinking that my time had come. Across the Sôk I followed him, hearing always the shuffle of the slippers
amidst the din of voices and the hurrying of many feet. He did not see me, for he never turned or stopped, but went straight on under the gate of the town, and then turned through the horse-market, and came to a house which he entered. I heard the door barred behind him, and a shutter fixed across the window, and I sat down beneath the shutter and waited. I heard voices talking quickly and earnestly within the room, and then someone rose and came out of the door and walked down the street towards the port. But it was not the man for whom I waited. This one walked with little jaunty, tripping steps, and I was glad that he went away; for the bolt of the door was not shut behind him, and the dog of a Nazarene was alone. I rose and walked to the door. A son of the English stood in the way: I asked him for alms with the one hand and felt for the latch with the other; but the son of the English saw what I was doing and shouted through the door.”
“It was I,” said Charnock.
Hassan turned his sightless face towards Charnock and reflected. Then he answered: “It was indeed you. And after you had spoken the bolt was shot. Thereupon I went back to the Sôk, and asking here and there at last fell in with some Arabs from Beni Hassan with whom in other days I had traded. And for a long while I talked to them, showing that there was no danger, for the Room was without friends amongst his own people, and moreover that he would fetch a price, every okesa of which was theirs. And at the last they agreed with me that I should deliver him to them at night outside the walls of Tangier and they would take him away and treat him ill, and sell him for a slave in their own country. But the Room had gone from Tangier and the Arabs moved to Tetuan and Omara and Sôk-et-Trun, but after a while they returned to Tangier and the Room also returned; and the time I had waited for had come.”
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 312