Part 34 (1/2)

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.