Miranda of the Balcony: A Story
by A. E. W. Mason · English · Gutenberg #38679 · 459,108 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Miranda of the Balcony: A Story
Author: A. E. W. Mason
Release date: January 26, 2012 [eBook #38679]
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/38679
Credits: Produced by Charles Bowen, from page scans provided by the Web Archive
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MIRANDA OF THE BALCONY: A STORY ***
Produced by Charles Bowen, from page scans provided by the Web Archive
Transcriber's Notes:
1. Page scan source:
http://www.archive.org/details/mirandabalconya00masogoog
2. The diphthong oe is represented by [oe].
MIRANDA OF THE BALCONY
MIRANDA
OF THE BALCONY
_A STORY_
BY
A. E. W. MASON
AUTHOR OF "THE COURTSHIP OF MORRICE BUCKLER," ETC.
New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd.
1899
_All rights reserved_
Copyright, 1899,
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
_Norwood Press_
_J. S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith_
_Norwood, Mass., U.S.A_.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
IN WHICH A SHORT-SIGHTED TAXIDERMIST FROM TANGIER MAKES A DISCOVERY
UPON ROSEVEAR.
CHAPTER II
PRESENTS THE HERO IN THE UNHEROIC ATTITUDE OF A SPECTATOR.
CHAPTER III
TREATS OF A GENTLEMAN WITH AN AGREEABLE COUNTENANCE AND OF A WOMAN'S
FACE IN A MIRROR.
CHAPTER IV
TREATS OF THE FIRST MEETING BETWEEN CHARNOCK AND MIRANDA.
CHAPTER V
WHEREIN CHARNOCK AND MIRANDA IMPROVE THEIR ACQUAINTANCESHIP IN A
BALCONY.
CHAPTER VI
WHILE CHARNOCK BUILDS CASTLES IN SPAIN, MIRANDA RETURNS THERE.
CHAPTER VII
IN WHICH MAJOR WILBRAHAM DESCRIBES THE STEPS BY WHICH HE ATTAINED HIS
MAJORITY AND GIVES MIRANDA SOME PARTICULAR INFORMATION.
CHAPTER VIII
EXPLAINS THE MYSTERY OF THE "TARIFA'S" CARGO.
CHAPTER IX
SHOWS THE USE WHICH A BLIND MAN MAY MAKE OF A DARK NIGHT.
CHAPTER X
M. FOURNIER EXPOUNDS THE ADVANTAGES WHICH EACH SEX HAS OVER THE OTHER.
CHAPTER XI
IN WHICH MIRANDA ADOPTS A NEW LINE OF CONDUCT AND THE MAJOR EXPRESSES
SOME DISCONTENT.
CHAPTER XII
THE HERO, LIKE ALL HEROES, FINDS HIMSELF IN A FOG.
CHAPTER XIII
WHEREIN THE HERO'S PERPLEXITIES INCREASE.
CHAPTER XIV
MIRANDA PROFESSES REGRET FOR A PRACTICAL JOKE.
CHAPTER XV
IN WHICH THE MAJOR LOSES HIS TEMPER AND RECOVERS IT.
CHAPTER XVI
EXPLAINS WHY CHARNOCK SAW MIRANDA'S FACE IN HIS MIRROR.
CHAPTER XVII
SHOWS HOW A TOMBSTONE MAY CONVINCE WHEN ARGUMENTS FAIL.
CHAPTER XVIII
IN WHICH THE TAXIDERMIST AND A BASHA PREVAIL OVER A BLIND MAN.
CHAPTER XIX
TELLS OF CHARNOCK'S WANDERINGS IN MOROCCO AND OF A WALNUT-WOOD DOOR.
CHAPTER XX
CHARNOCK, LIKE THE TAXIDERMIST, FINDS WARRINER ANYTHING BUT A
COMFORTABLE COMPANION.
CHAPTER XXI
COMPLETES THE JOURNEYINGS OF THIS INCONGRUOUS COUPLE.
CHAPTER XXII
IN WHICH CHARNOCK ASTONISHES RALPH WARRINER.
CHAPTER XXIII
RELATES A SECOND MEETING BETWEEN CHARNOCK AND MIRANDA.
CHAPTER XXIV
A MIST IN THE CHANNEL ENDS, AS IT BEGAN, THE BOOK.
MIRANDA OF THE BALCONY
CHAPTER I
IN WHICH A SHORT-SIGHTED TAXIDERMIST FROM TANGIER MAKES A DISCOVERY
UPON ROSEVEAR
The discovery made a great stir amongst the islands, and particularly
at St. Mary's. In the square space before the Customs' House, on the
little stone jetty, among the paths through the gorse of the Garrison,
it became the staple subject of gossip, until another ship came ashore
and other lives were lost. For quite apart from its odd circumstances,
a certain mystery lent importance to Ralph Warriner. It transpired
that nearly two years before, when on service at Gibraltar, Captain
Warriner of the Artillery had slipped out of harbour one dark night in
his yacht, and had straightway disappeared; it was proved that
subsequently he had been dismissed from the service; and the coroner
of St. Mary's in a moment of indiscretion let slip the information
that the Home Office had requested him to furnish it with a detailed
history of the facts. The facts occurred in this sequence.
At seven o'clock of a morning in the last week of July, the St. Agnes
lugger which carries the relief men to and fro between the Trinity
House barracks upon St. Mary's and the Bishop Lighthouse in the
Atlantic, ran alongside of St. Mary's pier. There were waiting upon
the steps, the two lighthouse men, and a third, a small rotund Belgian
of a dark, shiny countenance which seemed always on the point of
perspiring. He was swathed in a borrowed suit of oilskins much too
large for him, and would have cut a comical figure had he not on that
raw morning looked supremely unhappy and pathetic. M. Claude Fournier
was a taxidermist by profession and resided at Tangier; he was never
backward in declaring that the evidences of his skill decorated many
entrance-halls throughout Europe; and some three weeks before he had
come holiday-making alone to the islands of Scilly.
He now stood upon the steps of the pier nervously polishing his
glasses as the lugger swung upwards and downwards on the swell. He
watched the relief men choose their time and spring on board, and just
as Zebedee Isaacs, the master of the boat, was about to push off with
his boat-hook, he nerved himself to speak.
"I go with you to the Bishop, is it not?"
Isaacs looked up in surprise. He had been wondering what had brought
the little man out in this dress and on this morning.
"There'll be a head-wind all the way," he said discouragingly, "and
wi' that and a heavy ground sea we'll be brave an' wet before we reach
the Bishop, brave an' wet."
"I do not mind," replied M. Fournier. "For the sea, I am _dévot_;" but
his voice was tremulous and belied him.
Isaacs shook his head.
"It's not only the sea. Look!" And he stretched out his arm. A
variable fog rolled and tumbled upon a tumbling wilderness of sea.
"I'ld sooner have two gales lashed together than sail amongst these
islands in a fog. I'ld never go to-day at all, but the boat's more'n
three weeks overdue."
Indeed, as M. Fournier looked seawards, there was no glimpse of land
visible. A fortnight of heavy weather had been followed by a week of
fog which enveloped the islands like a drenched blanket. Only to-day
had it shown any signs of breaking, and the St. Agnes lugger was the
first boat, so far as was known, to run the hazard of the sea. It is
true that two days before one man had run in to the bar of
Tregarthen's Hotel and told how he had stood upon the top of the
Garrison and had looked suddenly down a lane between two perpendicular
walls of mist, and had seen the water breaking white upon Great Smith
Rock, and in the near distance an open boat under a mizzen and a jib,
beating out through the heavy swell towards the west. But his story
was in no wise believed.
To all of Isaacs's objections M. Fournier was impervious, and he was
at last allowed to embark.
"Now!" cried Zebedee Isaacs, as the lugger rose. M. Fournier gave a
pathetic look backwards to the land, shut his eyes and jumped. Isaacs
caught and set him upon the floor of the boat, where he stood
clutching the runners. He saw the landing-steps dizzily rush past him
up to the sky like a Jacob's ladder, and then as dizzily shut
downwards below him like a telescope.
The boat was pushed off. It rounded the pier-head and beat out on its
first tack, across the Road. M. Fournier crouched down under the
shelter of the weather bulwark.
"As for the sea I am _dévot_," he murmured, with a watery smile.
In a little the boat was put about. From Sour Milk Ledge it was sailed
on the port tack towards Great Minalto, and felt the wind and felt the
sea. It climbed up waves till the red lug-sail swung over M.
Fournier's head like a canopy; and on the downward slope the heavy
bows took the water with a thud. M. Fournier knelt up and clung to the
stays. At all costs he must see. He stared into the shifting fog at
the rollers which came hopping and leaping towards him; and he was
very silent and very still, as though the fascination of terror
enchained him.
On the third tack, however, he began to resume his courage. He even
smiled over his shoulder towards Zebedee Isaacs at the tiller.
"As for the sea," he began to say, "I am--" But the statement, which
he was not to verify on this day, ended in a shriek. For at that
moment a great green wave hopped exultingly over the bows, and
thenceforward all the way to the Bishop the lugger shipped much water.
M. Fournier's behaviour became deplorable. As Isaacs bluntly and
angrily summarised it, "he lay upon the thwarts and screeched like a
rook;" and in his appeals to his mother he was quite conventionally
French.
He made no attempt to land upon the Lighthouse. The relief men were
hoisted up in the sling, the head-keeper and one of his assistants
were lowered, and the lugger started upon its homeward run before the
wind. The fog thickened and lightened about them as they threaded the
intricate channels of the western islands. Now it was a thin grey
mist, parting here and there in long corridors, driven this way and
that, twirling in spires of smoke, shepherded by the winds; now again
it hung close about them an impenetrable umber, while the crew in
short quick tones and gestures of the arms mapped out the rocks and
passages. About them they could hear the roar of the breaking waves
and the rush of water up slabs and over ledges, and then the "glumph
glumph" as the wave sucked away. At times, too, the fog lifted from
the surface and hung very low, massed above their heads, so that the
black hillocks of the islets stood out in the sinister light like
headstones of a cemetery of the sea, and at the feet of them the water
was white like a flash of hungry teeth.
It was at one such moment, when the boat had just passed through
Crebawethan Neck, that M. Fournier, who had been staring persistently
over the starboard bulwark, suddenly startled the crew.
"There's a ship on shore. _Tenez_--look!" he cried. "There, there!"
And as he spoke the mist drove between his eyes and what he declared
that he saw.
Zebedee Isaacs looked in the direction.
"On Jacky's Rock?" he asked, nodding towards a menacing column of
black rock which was faintly visible.
"No, no--beyond!--There!" And M. Fournier excitedly gesticulated. He
seemed at that moment to have lost all his terror of the sea.
"On Rosevear, then," said the keeper of the lighthouse, and he
strained towards Rosevear.
"I see nothing," he said, "and--"
"There's nothing to see," replied Isaacs, who did not alter his
course.
"But it's true," exclaimed the little Belgian. "I see it no more
myself. But I have seen it, I tell you. I have seen the mast above the
island--"
"You!" interrupted Isaacs, with a blunt contempt; "you are blind!" And
M. Fournier, before anyone could guess his intention, flung himself
upon Isaacs and jammed the tiller hard over to port. The boat came
broadside to the wind, heeled over, and in a second the water was
pouring in over the gunwale. Zebedee wrenched the main sheet off the
pin, and let the big sail fly; another loosed the jib. The promptitude
of these two men saved the boat. It ran its head up into the wind,
righted itself upon its keel, and lay with flapping sails and
shivered.
Isaacs without a word caught hold of M. Fournier and shook him like a
rat; and every man of the crew in violent tones expounded to the
Belgian the enormity of his crime. Fournier was himself well-nigh
frantic with excitement. He was undaunted by any threats of violence;
neither the boat, nor the sea, nor the crew had any terrors for him.
"There is a ship!" he screamed. "The fog was vanished--just for a
second it was vanished, and I have seen it. There may be men alive on
that rock--starving, perishing, men of the sea like you. You will not
leave them. But you shall not!" And clinging to the mast he stamped
his feet. "But you shall not!"
"And by the Lord he's right," said the lighthouse-keeper, gravely--so
gravely that complete silence at once fell upon the crew. One man
stood up in the bows, a second knelt upon the thwarts, a third craned
his body out beyond the stern, and all with one accord stared towards
Rosevear. The screen of haze was drawn aside, and quite clear to the
view over a low rock, rose the mast and tangled cordage of a wreck.
The sheets were made fast without a word. Without a word, Zebedee
Isaacs put the boat about and steered it into the Neck between
Rosevear and Rosevean. As they passed along that narrow channel, no
noise was heard but the bustle of the tide. For at the western end
they saw the bows of a ship unsteadily poised upon a ledge. There was
a breach amidships, the stern was under water, only the foremast
stood; and nowhere was there any sign of life.
Isaacs brought the boat to in a tiny creek, some distance from the
wreck.
"We can land here," he said, and the lighthouse-keeper and Fournier
stepped ashore.
On the instant that quiet, silent islet whirred into life and noise.
So startling was the change that M. Fournier jumped backwards while
his heart jerked within him.
"What's that?" he cried, and then laughed as he understood. For a
cloud of puffins, gulls, kittiwakes and shearwaters whirled upwards
from that nursery of sea-birds and circled above his head, their cries
sounding with infinite melancholy, their wings flickering like silver
in that grey and desolate light.
"It's so like your Robinson Crusoe," said M. Fournier.
"It is more like our islands of Scilly," said the lighthouse-keeper,
as he looked towards the wreck.
They climbed over the low rocks and walked along the crown of the
island towards the wreck. There was no tree or shrub upon the
barren soil, only here a stretch of sandy grass, there a patch of
mallows--mallows of a rusty green and whitened with salt of the sea.
In the midst of one such patch they came upon the body of a man. He
was dressed in a pilot coat, sea boots and thick stockings drawn over
his trousers to the hips, and he lay face downwards with his head
resting upon his arms in a natural posture of sleep.
Fournier stood still. The lighthouse-keeper walked forward and tapped
the sleeper upon the shoulder. But the sleeper did not wake. The
lighthouse man knelt down and gently turned the man over upon his
back; as he did so, or rather just before he did so, Fournier turned
sharply away with a shudder. When the sailor was lying upon his back,
the keeper of the lighthouse started with something of a shudder too.
For the sailor had no face.
The lighthouse man drew his handkerchief from his pocket and gently
covered the head. It seemed almost as if Fournier had been waiting,
had been watching, for this action. For he turned about immediately
and stood by the lighthouse-keeper's side. Above the lonely islet the
sea-birds circled and called; on the sea the mist was now no more than
a gauze, and through it the glow of the sun was faintly diffused.
"Strange that, isn't it?" said the lighthouse-keeper, in a hushed
voice. "The sea dashed him upon the rocks and drew him down again and
threw him up again until it got tired of the sport, and so tossed him
here to lie quietly face downwards amongst the mallows like a man
asleep."
Then he sat back upon his heels and measured the distance between the
mallows and the sea with some perplexity upon his forehead--and the
perplexity grew.
"It's a long way for the sea to have thrown him," he said, and as
Fournier shifted restlessly at his side, he looked up into his face.
"Good God, man, but you look white," he said.
"The sight is terrible," replied Fournier, as he wiped his forehead.
The lighthouse-keeper nodded assent.
"Yes, it's a terrible place, the sea about these western islands," he
said. "Did you ever hear tell that there are sunken cities all the way
between here and Land's End, the sunken cities of Lyonnesse? Terrible
sights those cities must see. I often think of the many ships which
have plunged down among their chimneys and roof-tops--perhaps here a
great Spanish galleon with its keel along the middle of a paved square
and its poop overhanging the gables, and the fishes swimming in and
out of the cabins through the broken windows; perhaps there a big
three-decker like Sir Cloudesley Shovel's, showing the muzzles of
her silent guns; or a little steam-tramp of our own times, its iron
sides brown with rust, and God knows what tragedy hidden in its tiny
engine-room. A terrible place--these islands of Scilly, dwelling
amongst the seas, as the old books say--dwelling amongst the seas."
He bent forward and unfastened the dead sailor's pilot jacket. Then he
felt in his pocket and drew out an oilskin case. This he opened, and
Fournier knelt beside him.
There were a few letters in the case, which the two men read through.
They were of no particular importance beyond that they were headed
"Yacht The Ten Brothers," and they were signed "Ralph Warriner," all
of them except one. This one was a love-letter of a date six years
back. It was addressed to "Ralph," and was signed "Miranda."
"Six years old," said the lighthouse-keeper. "For six years he has
carried that about with him, and now it will be read out in court to
make a sorry fun for people whom he never knew. That's hard on him,
eh? But harder on the woman."
At the words, spoken in a low voice, M. Fournier moved uneasily and
seemed to wince. The lighthouse-keeper held the letter in his hands
and thoughtfully turned over its pages.
"I have a mind to tear it up, but I suppose I must not." He returned
the papers to the oilskin case, and going back to the boat called for
two of the crew to carry the body down. "Meanwhile," said he to
Fournier, "we might have a look at 'The Ten Brothers.'"
They could not approach the bows of the ship, but overlooked them from
a pinnacle of rock. There was, however, little to be remarked.
"She is an old boat, and she has seen some weather from the look of
her," said the lighthouse-keeper. That, indeed, was only to be
expected, for "The Ten Brothers" had been a trader before Ralph
Warriner bought her, and two years had elapsed between the night when
he slipped from Gibraltar Harbour, and the day when this boat came to
its last moorings upon Rosevear.
The mist cleared altogether towards sunset. The sun shone out from the
edge of the horizon a ball of red fire, and the lugger ferried the
dead body back to St. Mary's over a sea which had the colour of
claret, and through foam ripples which sparkled like gold.
The Miranda who wrote the love-letter was Miranda Warriner, Ralph
Warriner's wife. Miranda Bedlow she had been at the date which headed
the letter. She was living now at Ronda in the Andalusian hills, a
hundred miles from Algeciras and Gibraltar, and had lived there since
her husband's disappearance. To Ronda the oilskin case was sent. She
heard the news of her Ralph's death with a natural sense of solemnity,
but she was too sincere a woman to assume a grief which she could not
feel. For her married life had been one of extraordinary unhappiness.
CHAPTER II
PRESENTS THE HERO IN THE UNHEROIC ATTITUDE OF A SPECTATOR
It was Lady Donnisthorpe who two years later introduced Luke Charnock
to Mrs. Warriner. Lady Donnisthorpe was an outspoken woman with an
untameable passion for match-making, which she indulged with the
ardour and, indeed, the results of an amateur chemist. Her life was
spent in mingling incompatible elements and producing explosions to
which her enthusiasm kept her deaf, even when they made a quite
astonishing noise. For no experience of reverses could stale her
satisfaction when she beheld an eligible bachelor or maid walk for the
first time into her parlour.
She had made Charnock's acquaintance originally in Barbados. He sat
next her at a dinner given by the Governor of the Island, and took her
fancy with the pleasing inconsistency of a boyish appearance and a
wealth of experiences. He was a man of a sunburnt aquiline face, which
was lean but not haggard, grey and very steady eyes, and a lithe, tall
figure, and though he conveyed an impression of activity, he was still
a restful companion. Lady Donnisthorpe remarked in him a modern
appreciation of the poetry of machinery, and after dinner made
inquiries of the Governor.
"He is on his way homewards from Peru," answered the latter. "He has
been surveying for a railway line there during the last two years.
What do you think of him?"
"I want to know what you think."
"I like him. He is modest without diffidence, successful without
notoriety."
"What are his people?" asked Lady Donnisthorpe.
"I don't believe he has any. But I believe his father was a clergyman
in Yorkshire."
"It would sound improper for a girl without visible relations to say
that she was the daughter of a clergyman in Yorkshire, wouldn't it?"
said her ladyship, reflectively. "But I suppose it's no objection in a
man;" and in her memories she made a mark against Charnock's name. She
heard of him again once or twice in unexpected quarters from the lips
of the men who from East to West are responsible for the work that is
done; and once or twice she met him, for she was a determined
traveller. Finally, at Cairo, she sat next to Sir John Martin, the
head partner of a great Leeds firm of railway contractors.
"Did you ever come across a Mr. Charnock?" she asked.
The head partner laughed.
"I did; I knew his father."
"It's a strange thing about Mr. Charnock," said she, "but one never
hears anything of what he was doing before the last few years."
"Why not ask him?" said the North-countryman, bluntly.
"It might sound inquisitive," replied Lady Donnisthorpe, "and perhaps
there's no need to, if you know."
"Yes, I know," returned Sir John, with a great deal of provoking
amusement, "and, believe me, Lady Donnisthorpe, it's not at all to his
discredit."
Lady Donnisthorpe began thereafter to select and reject possible wives
for Charnock, and while still undecided, she chanced to pass one
December through Nice. The first person whom she saw in the vestibule
of the hotel was Luke Charnock.
"What in the world are you doing here?" she asked.
"Taking a week's holiday, Lady Donnisthorpe. I have been in Spain for
the last two years, and shall be for the next nine months."
"In Spain?"
"I am making a new line between Cadiz and Algeciras."
"God bless the man, and I never thought of it!" exclaimed Lady
Donnisthorpe. "I think you will do," she added, looking him over, and
nodding her head.
"I hope so," replied Charnock, cheerfully. "It's a big lift for me."
"In a way, no doubt," agreed her ladyship. "Though, mind you, the land
isn't what it was."
"The railway will improve it," said Charnock.
They happened to be talking of different subjects. Lady Donnisthorpe
pursued her own.
"Then you won't be in England for a year?" she said regretfully.
"The company building the line is an English one," replied Charnock.
"I shall have to see the directors in June. I shall be in London
then."
"Then you must come and see me. Write before you leave Spain.
Promise!" said Lady Donnisthorpe, who was now elated.
Charnock promised, and that day Lady Donnisthorpe wrote to her cousin,
Miranda Warriner, at Ronda, who was now at the end of the first year
of her widowhood, and of the third year of her ridiculous seclusion at
that little hill-town of Spain. Miranda was entreated, implored, and
commanded to come to London in May. There was the season, there was
Miranda's estate in Suffolk, which needed her attention. Miranda
reluctantly consented, and so Lady Donnisthorpe was the instrument by
which Charnock and Mrs. Warriner became acquainted. But the
foundations of that acquaintanceship were laid without her ladyship's
agency, and indeed without the knowledge of either Charnock or
Miranda.
A trifling defect in the machinery of a P. and O. boat began it. The
P. and O. stayed for four days at Aden to make repairs, and so
Charnock had four days to wait at Gibraltar before he could embark for
England. He did not, however, spend more than two of those four days
at Gibraltar, but picking up a yellow handbill in the lounge of the
hotel, he obeyed its advice, and crossing the sunlit straits early the
next morning saw the jealous hills about Tangier unfold and that
cardboard city glitter down to the sea.
He was rowed ashore to the usual accompaniment of shouts and yells by
a villainous boat's crew of Arabs. A mob of Barbary Jews screamed at
him on the landing-stage, and then a Moorish boy with a brown roguish
face who was dressed in a saffron jellabia, pushed his way forwards
and in a conversational voice said, "You English? God damn you, give
me a penny!"
Charnock hired that boy, and under his guidance sauntered through
Tangier where the East and the West rub shoulders, where the camel
snarls in the Sôk with an electric arc-lamp for a night-light, and all
the races and all the centuries jostle together in many colours down
the cobbles of its narrow streets. Charnock was shown the incidentals
of the Tangier variety entertainment: the Basha administering more or
less justice for less or more money at his Palace gate; the wooden
peep-hole of the prison where the prisoners' hands come through and
clutch for alms; a dancing-room where a Moorish woman closely veiled
leaned her back against a Tottenham Court Road chest of drawers under
a portrait of Mrs. Langtry, and beat upon a drum while another stamped
an ungainly dance by the light of a paraffin lamp; and coming out
again into the sunlight, Charnock cried out, "Hamet, take me somewhere
where it's clean, and there's no din, and there are no smells."
Hamet led the way up the hills, and every now and then, as he passed a
man better dressed than his fellows he would say in a voice of awe:
"That's a rich." He invariably added, "He's a Juice."
"Look here, Hamet," said Charnock, at length, "can't you show me a
rich who isn't a Jew?"
"These are the loryers," observed Hamet, after the fashion of the
March Hare when posed with an inconvenient question. He pointed to a
number of venerable gentlemen in black robes who sat in wooden hutches
open to the street. "I will show you," he continued, "a Moor who was
the richest man in all Tangier."
The pair walked up out of the town towards the Mazan, and came to a
lane shadowed by cedars and bordered with prickly pears. Here the
resounding din of the streets below was subdued to a murmurous
confusion of voices, from which occasionally a sharp cry would spirt
up clear into the air like a jet of water. Only one voice was definite
and incessant, and that voice came down to them from the trees higher
up the lane--a voice very thin, but on that hot, still afternoon very
distinct--a voice which perpetually quavered and bleated one
monotonous invocation.
"Hassan Akbar," said Hamet.
The invocation became articulate as they ascended. "Allah Beh!" the
voice cried, and again "Allah Beh!" and again, until the windless air
seemed to vibrate with its recurrence.
They came upon the Moor who uttered this cry at the gate of the
Moorish cemetery. A white, stubbly beard grew upon his chin and lips,
but his strength was not diminished by his years, and with every
movement of his body the muscles beneath the tough skin of his bare
legs worked like live things. He sat cross-legged in the dust with a
filthy sack for his only garment; he was blind, and his eyes stared
from their red sockets covered with a bluish film as though the
colours of the eyeballs had run.
"Allah Beh!" he cried, swaying his body backwards and forwards with
the regularity of an automaton and an inimitable quickness. He paid no
heed whatever to Charnock and the boy as they halted beside him.
"Allah Beh!" he cried, and his chest touched the cradle of his knees.
He marked the seconds with the pendulum of his body; he struck them
with his strident invocation.
"He was the richest man in Tangier," said Hamet, and he told Hassan
Akbar's story as though it was an affair of every day. Hassan had not
secured the protection of any of the European Legations. He had hoped
to hide his wealth by living poorly, and though he owned a house worth
three thousand dollars in Tangier, he did not dwell in it. But no
concealments had availed him. Someone of his familiars had told, and
no doubt had made his profit from the telling. The Basha had waited
his opportunity. It came when blindness left Hassan defenceless. Then
the Basha laid hands upon him, forced him to give up the gains of a
lifetime's trade, and so cast him out penniless to beg for copper
flouss at the gate of the cemetery.
"And Europe's no more than seven miles away," cried Charnock. Even
where he stood he could see the laughing water of the Straits, and
beyond that, the summit of Gibraltar. "Who was it that told?" he
asked.
"That is not known."
Charnock dropped some money into the blind man's lap, but Hassan did
not cease from his prayer to thank him.
"He is very strong," said Hamet, who saw nothing strange in the story
he had told. "He swings like this all day from seven in the morning to
five at night. He never stops." And at that moment, upon the heels of
Hamet's words, as though intentionally to belie them, Hassan Akbar
suddenly arrested the motion of his body and suddenly ceased from his
pitiable cry.
His silence and immobility came with so much abruptness that Charnock
was fairly startled. Then Hamet held up a finger, and they both
listened. Maybe the blind man was listening too, but Charnock could
not be certain. His face was as blind as his eyes, and there was no
expression in the rigid attitude of his body.
Charnock heard a faint sound higher up the lane. The sound became
louder and defined itself. It was the slap-slap of a pair of Moorish
slippers. Charnock drew Hamet back by the trunk of a tree, which
sheltered them both from the view of anyone who came down the hill. He
left the lane free, and into the open space there came a man who wore
the dress of a Moor of wealth, serwal, chamir, farajia, and haik,
spotless and complete. In figure he was slight and perhaps a trifle
under the middle height, and the haik was drawn close over his
forehead to shield him from the sun.
Hassan was seated in the dust with the sun beating full upon his head.
In front of him the newcomer stopped. "Peace be with you," he said, as
Charnock, who had some knowledge of Arabic, understood. But the beggar
made no answer, nor gave any sign that he heard. He sat motionless,
impassive, a secret figure of stone.
The newcomer laughed lightly to himself, and the laughter, within view
of the rags and misery of the once rich man, sounded unpleasant and
callous. Hamet shifted a foot at Charnock's side, and Charnock, whose
interest in this picturesque encounter was steadily growing, pressed a
hand upon the boy's shoulder to restrain him.
The stranger, however, had noticed neither of the two spectators. He
was still laughing softly to himself as he watched the beggar, and in
a little he began to hum between his teeth a tune--a queer, elusive
tune of a sweet but rather mournful melody; and it seemed to Charnock
by some indefinable hint of movement that Hassan Akbar was straining
his ears to catch and register that tune.
The stranger advanced to Hassan and dropped a coin in his lap. The
coin was not copper, for it sparkled in the air as it fell. Then with
another easy laugh he turned to go down into Tangier. But as he turned
he saw Charnock watching him. On the instant his hand went to his hood
and drew it close about his cheeks, but not before Charnock had seen a
scared face flashed at him for a moment, and immediately withdrawn.
The Moor went down the lane.
"Perhaps it was he who told?" said Charnock.
Hamet disagreed.
"He would not know. His beard was fair, so he comes from Fez."
Charnock, too, had remarked that the man was fair-haired. But
nevertheless this encounter of the rich Moor and the beggar remained
in his thoughts, and he allowed his imagination lazily to fix a
picture of it in his mind. Thus occupied, he walked through the
cemetery, taking in that way a short cut to the Sôk. But he was not
half-way across the cemetery when he turned sharply towards Hamet.
"Do you remember the tune the Moor hummed?"
Charnock's ear was slow to retain the memory of music. Hamet, however,
promptly whistled the melody from beginning to end, while Charnock
stood and took count of it.
"I shall have forgotten it to-morrow," said Hamet.
"I think now that I shall recollect it tomorrow," said Charnock, and
he walked on.
But in a moment or two he stopped again as though some new perplexity
was present to his mind.
"Hamet," he said, "before the Moor appeared at all, while his
footsteps were still faint, certainly before he spoke, Hassan Akbar
stopped his prayer, which you say he never stops. He knew then who was
coming. At all events he suspected. How did he know? How did he
suspect?"
"There is the Sôk," replied Hamet.
They had passed round the bend of the hill up which the cemetery
slopes, and were come within view of the market-place. Charnock was
puzzled by his unanswered question, and the question was forced to his
notice again that afternoon, and with yet greater force.
It was market-day. Charnock beheld stretched out beneath him a great
field, or rather a great plain, (for the grass was long since trampled
into mud,) which curved down to the yellow sun-baked wall of the city,
and whereon an innumerable throng, Negroes from Timbuctoo, Arabs,
Jews, and Moors, in all manner of raiment, from rags to coloured
robes, jostled and seethed, bawled and sweated, under a hot sun and in
a brilliant air. Here an old hag screamed aloud the virtues of her
merchandise, a few skinny onions and vegetables; there two men forced
a passage with blows of their sticks, and behind them a stately train
of camels brought in from the uplands their loads of dates. A Riffian
sauntered by with an indifferent air, his silver-mounted gun upon his
back, a pair of pistols in his belt, and a great coarse tail of hair
swinging between his shoulders. He needed no couriers to prepare his
way. At one spot a serpent-charmer thrust out his tongue, from which a
snake was hanging by the fangs; at another a story-teller, vivid in
narration, and of an extraordinary aptness in his gestures, held an
audience enchained. From every side the din of human voices rose into
the air, and to the din was added the snarling of camels, the braying
of donkeys, the bleating of sheep, the lowing of oxen, and all manner
of squeals and grunts, so that it seemed the whole brute creation had
combined to make one discordant orchestra.
Into this Babel Charnock descended.
"Those are the shoemakers," said Hamet. He pointed to a cluster of
tiny grimed gunny-bag tents in a corner of the highest part of the
Sôk. In the doorways of the tents a few men sat cobbling; one or two
wood fires crackled in the intervals between the tents; and in close
proximity a dead mule took its last unsavoury sleep.
"Hassan Akbar sleeps in the mud near to the tents," continued Hamet.
"Every evening he comes down to the Sôk, buys milk and bread from the
shoemakers, and sleeps--"
"Near to that mule!" interrupted Charnock. "And he was the richest man
in all Tangier."
A moment later there was shown to him the second picture which he was
to carry away from Tangier. Down the Sôk, through the crowd, came the
Moor, in his spotless robes, and a few yards behind him, striding
swiftly and noiselessly, the blind gaunt beggar of the cemetery gate
followed upon his trail. In and out amongst the shifting groups he
threaded and wound, and never erred in his pursuit. The man in whose
track he kept never spoke when all were shouting, yet Hassan never
faltered. The sound of his footsteps was lost in a multitude of the
like sounds, yet Hassan was somehow sensible of it, somehow to his
ears it emerged distinct.
Charnock was amazed; in a way too he was chilled. It seemed uncanny
that this sightless creature of the impassive face should be able to
follow, follow, follow relentlessly, unswervingly, one silent man
amongst the noisy hundreds. Charnock walked for a few yards by Hassan
Akbar's side, keeping pace with him. Even with his eyes fixed upon the
Moor in front, even though he saw his feet tread the ground, he could
not distinguish his footfalls. How then could Hassan?
Tracker and Tracked passed from the Sôk under the archway of the gate,
and Charnock dismissing Hamet walked down towards his hotel near the
waterside. However, he missed his road. He turned through the horse
market, descended the steep street, past the great Mosque, and walked
along a narrow, crooked alley between blank and yellow walls, which
ended in a tunnel beneath over-arching houses. Almost within the mouth
of this tunnel there was a shop, or so it seemed, for a stuffed jackal
swung above the door as a sign. Before this shop Charnock halted with
a thrill of excitement. The door of the shop was shut, the unglazed
window was shuttered. It was not on that account that Charnock
stopped; but underneath the shuttered window, his head almost touching
the sill, Hassan squatted on the cobbles fingering now and then a
silver dollar.
Inside the door a bolt grated, the door opened, and a stout,
undersized European appeared in the entrance, polished a pair of
glasses, set them upon his nose, glanced up and down the street,
closed the door behind him, and taking no heed whatever of the blind
man under his window, walked briskly into the tunnel. He walked with a
short, tripping, and jaunty step.
Charnock waited while the echo of it diminished and ceased, and the
moment it had ceased he saw Hassan, without any hurry, without any
sign of expectation or excitement, rise slowly to his feet and move
along the house wall towards the door. His right elbow scraped the
plaster; then his elbow touched nothing. He had come to the recess of
the door, and he stopped.
It flashed upon Charnock that he had not heard the bolt again grate
into its socket. The door was then only latched and--was Hassan's
quarry behind its panels?
The affair had ceased to be a toy with which Charnock's imagination
could idly play. He strode across the alley and planted himself face
to face with Hassan. Hassan quietly and immediately murmured a request
for alms and stretched out his left hand, a supple, corded hand, with
long sinuous fingers, a hand of great strength. But as he spoke he
drew within the recess of the door, and Charnock noticed his right
hand steal up the panels feeling for the latch.
Made by this seemingly passionless and apathetic man, the secret
movement shocked Charnock. It seemed to him at that moment so
cold-blooded as to be almost inhuman.
"Look out!" he shouted through the door and in broad English,
forgetting that the man for whom his warning was intended was a Moor.
But the warning had its effect. There was a heavy blow upon the door,
as though a man's shoulder lurched against it, and then the bolt
grated into the socket. Hassan Akbar walked on repeating his prayer
for alms, as if his hand had never for an instant stolen up the panel
and felt for the latch.
Charnock, to make his warning the more complete, rapped on the door
for admission, once, twice, thrice. But he got no answer. He leaned
his ear to the panel. He could detect not so much as a foot stirring.
Absolute silence reigned in that dark and shuttered room.
Charnock walked back to his hotel. On the way he passed the end of the
pier, where he saw the little Frenchman bargaining with the owner of a
felucca. His excitement gradually died down. It occurred to him that
there might have been no grounds at all for any excitement. Hassan
Akbar might have been following through the Sôk by mere accident. He
might have tried the door in pursuit of nothing more than alms; and in
a little the whole incident ceased to trouble his speculations. He
crossed the Straits to Gibraltar the next morning, and waited there
for two days until the P. and O. came in. It was on the P. and O. that
he first fell in with Major Wilbraham.
CHAPTER III
TREATS OF A GENTLEMAN WITH AN AGREEABLE COUNTENANCE, AND OF A
WOMAN'S FACE IN A MIRROR
Major Ambrose Wilbraham had embarked at Marseilles, and before the
boat reached Gibraltar he had made the acquaintance of everyone on
board, and had managed to exchange cards with a good many. The steamer
was still within sight of Gibraltar when he introduced himself to
Charnock with a manner of effusive jocularity to which Charnock did
not respond. The Major was tall and about forty years of age. A thin
crop of black hair was plastered upon his head; he wore a moustache
which was turning grey; his eyebrows were so faultlessly regular that
they seemed to have been stencilled on his forehead, and underneath
them a pair of cold beady eyes counterfeited friendliness. Charnock
could not call to mind that he had ever met a man on whom geniality
sat with so ill a grace, or one whose acquaintance he less desired to
improve.
Major Wilbraham, however, was not easily rebuffed, and he walked the
deck by Charnock's side, talkative and unabashed.
Off the coast of Portugal the boat made bad weather, and she laboured
through the cross-seas of the Bay under a strong south-westerly wind.
Off Ushant she picked up a brigantine which Charnock watched from the
hurricane deck without premonition, and indeed without more than a
passing curiosity.
"Fine lines, eh, Charnock old fellow!" said a voice at his elbow.
The brigantine dipped her head into a roller, lifted it, and shook the
water off her decks in a cascade of snow.
"I have seen none finer," answered Charnock, "except on a racing-yacht
or a destroyer."
"She's almost familiar to me," speculated the Major.
"She reminds me of some boats I saw once at the West Indies," returned
Charnock, "built for the fruit-trade, and so built for speed. Only
they were schooners--from Salcombe, I believe. The Salcombe clippers
they were called."
"Indeed!" said the Major, with a sharp interest, and he leaned forward
over the rail. "Now I wonder what her name is."
Charnock held a pair of binoculars in his hand. He gave them to the
Major. Wilbraham raised them to his eyes while the P. and O. closed
upon the sailing-boat. The brigantine slid down the slope of a wave
and hoisted her stern.
"The 'Tarifa,'" said the Major, and he shut up the binoculars. "What
is her tonnage, do you think?"
"About three hundred, I should say."
"My notion precisely. Would it be of any advantage to alter her rig,
supposing that she was one of the Salcombe schooners?"
"I should hardly think so," replied Charnock. "I rather understood
that the schooners were noted boats."
"Ah, that's interesting," said Wilbraham, and he returned the
binoculars. The steamer was now abreast of the brigantine, and in a
little it drew ahead.
"By the way, Charnock, I shall hope to see more of you," resumed Major
Wilbraham. "I haven't given you a card, have I?"
He produced a well-worn card-case.
"It's very kind of you," said Charnock, as he twirled the card between
his forefinger and his thumb. "Don't you," he added, "find cards
rather a heavy item in your expenses?"
Major Wilbraham laughed noisily.
"I take you, dear friend," he exclaimed, "I take you. But a friend in
this world, sir, is a golden thread in a very dusty cobweb."
"But the friendship is rather a one-sided arrangement," rejoined
Charnock. "For instance, the cards you give, Major Wilbraham, bear no
address, the cards you receive, do." And while showing the card to his
companion, he inadvertently dropped it into the sea.
Major Wilbraham blamed the negligence of a rascally printer, and made
his way to the smoking-room.
The P. and O. boat touched at Plymouth the next morning, and landed
both Major Wilbraham and Charnock. The latter remained in Plymouth for
two days, and on the morning of the third day hired a hansom cab, and
so met with the last of those incidents which were to link him in such
close, strange ties with the fortunes of men and women who even in
name were then utterly unknown to him.
A yellow handbill had led Charnock across the Straits to Tangier, and
now it was nothing more serious than a draft upon Lloyd's bank which
took him in a hansom cab through the streets of Plymouth. Spring was
in the air; Charnock felt exceedingly light-hearted and cheerful. On
the way he unconsciously worked his little finger into the eye of the
brass bracket which juts inwards on each side of the front window at
the level of the shoulder; and when the cab stopped in front of the
bank he discovered that his finger was securely jammed.
Across the road he noticed a chemist's shop, and descending the steps
of the bank a fair-haired gentleman of an agreeable countenance, who,
quite appropriately in that town of sailors, had something of a
nautical aspect.
"Sir," began Charnock, politely, as he leaned out of the window, "I
shall be much obliged--"
To Charnock's surprise the good-natured gentleman precipitately sprang
down the steps and began to walk rapidly away. Charnock was
sufficiently human and therefore sufficiently perverse to become at
once convinced that although there were others passing, this reluctant
man was the only person in the world who could and must help him from
his predicament.
So he leaned yet farther out of the cab.
"Hi, you sir!" he shouted, "you who are running away!"
The words had an electrical effect. The man of the agreeable
countenance stopped suddenly, and so stood with his back towards
Charnock while gently and thoughtfully he nodded his head. It seemed
to Charnock that he might perhaps be counting over the voices with
which he was familiar.
"Well," cried Charnock, who was becoming exasperated, "my dear sir, am
I to wait for you all day?"
The street was populous with the morning traffic of a business
quarter. Curious people stopped and attracted others. In a very few
moments a small crowd would have formed. The stranger thereupon came
slowly back to the hansom, showing a face which was no longer
agreeable. He set a foot upon the step of the cab, and fixed a blue
and watchful eye upon Charnock.
"I am afraid," said the latter, with severity, "that my first
impression of you was wrong."
An indescribable relief was expressed by the other, but he spoke with
surliness.
"You mistook me for someone else?"
"I mistook your disposition for something else," Charnock affably
corrected. "I expected to find you a person of great good-nature."
"You hardly made such a point of summoning a perfect stranger," and
here the blue eyes became very wary, "for no other reason than to tell
him that."
"Certainly not," returned Charnock; "I would not trespass upon your
time, which seems to be extremely valuable, without a better reason.
But my finger is fixed, as you can see, in this brass ring, and I
cannot withdraw it. So if you would kindly cross over to the chemist
and buy me a pennyworth of vaseline, I shall be more than obliged."
And with the hand which was free he felt in his pocket for a penny and
held it out.
A look of utter incredulity showed upon the listener's face.
"Do you mean to tell me--" he blurted out.
"That I ask you to be my good Samaritan? Yes."
The stranger's face became suddenly vindictive. "Vaseline!" he cried.
"A pennyworth," said Charnock, again offering the penny.
The man of the agreeable countenance struck Charnock's hand violently
aside, and the penny flew into a gutter. He stood up on the step and
thrust his face, which was now inflamed with fury, into the cab.
"I tell you what," he cried, "you are a fair red-hotter, you are. Buy
you vaseline! I hope your finger will petrify. I hope you'll just sit
in that cab and rot away in your boots, until you have to ante up in
kingdom come." He added expletives to his anathema.
"Really," said Charnock, "if I was a lady I don't think that I should
like to listen to you any longer."
But before Charnock had finished the sentence, the good Samaritan, who
was no Samaritan at all, had flung himself from the cab and was
striding up the street.
"After all," thought Charnock, "I might just as well have driven
across to the chemist, if I had only thought of it."
This he now did, got his finger free, cashed his draft, and took the
train to London.
During this journey the discourteous stranger occupied some part of
his thoughts. Between Charnock's eyes and the newspaper, against the
red cliffs of Teignmouth, on the green of the home counties, his face
obtruded, and for a particular reason. The marks of fear are
unmistakable. The man whom he had called, had been scared by the call,
nor had his fear quite left him when he had come face to face with
Charnock. Set features which strove to conceal, and a brightness of
the eye which betrayed emotion, these things Charnock remembered very
clearly.
In London he dined alone at his hotel, and over against him the
stranger's face bore him company. He went out afterwards into the
street, and amidst the myriad ringing feet, was seized with an utter
sense of loneliness, more poignant, more complete, than he had ever
experienced in the waste places of the world. The lights of a theatre
attracted him. He paid his money, took a seat in the stalls, and was
at once very worried and perplexed. He turned to his neighbour, who
was boisterously laughing.
"Would you mind telling me what this play is?" he asked.
"Oh, it's a musical comedy."
"I see. But what is it about?"
Charnock's neighbour scratched his head thoughtfully.
"I ought to remember," he said, "for I saw the piece early in the
run."
Charnock went out, crossed a street, and came to another theatre,
where he saw a good half of the tragedy of _Macbeth_. Thence he
returned to his hotel and went to bed.
The hotel was one of many balconies, situated upon the Embankment.
From the single window or his bedroom Charnock looked across the river
to where the name of a brewery perpetually wrote itself in red
brilliant letters which perpetually vanished. It was his habit to
sleep not merely with his window open, but with the blinds drawn up
and the curtains looped back, and these arrangements he made as usual
before he got into bed.
Now, the looking-glass stood upon a dressing-table in the window, with
its back towards the window-panes; and since the night was moonless
and dark, this mirror, it should be remembered, reflected nothing of
the room or its furniture, but presented only to the view of Charnock,
as he lay in bed, a surface of a black sheen.
Charnock recurred to his adventure of the morning, and thus the
abusive stranger was in his thoughts when he fell asleep. He figured
also in his dreams.
For, after he had fallen asleep, a curtain was raised upon a fantastic
_revue_ of the past week. Hassan Akbar strode quickly and noiselessly
behind his quarry, tracking him by some inappreciable faculty, not
through the muddy Sôk, but across the polished floor of the ball-room
in the musical comedy. Again Charnock shouted "Look out!" and the Moor
with one bound leapt from the ball-room, which was now become a
landing-stage, into a felucca. The crew of the felucca, it now
appeared, was made up of Charnock, Lady Macbeth, and Hassan Akbar, and
by casting lots with counters made of vaseline, Charnock was appointed
to hold the tiller. This duty compelled extraordinary care, for the
felucca would keep changing its rig and the bulk of its hull swelled
and dwindled. At last, to Charnock's intense relief, the boat settled
into a Salcombe clipper with the rig of a P. and O., but with
immeasurably greater speed, so that within a very few seconds they
sailed over a limitless ocean and anchored at Tangier. At once the
crew entirely vanished. Charnock was not distressed, because he saw a
hansom cab waiting for him at the Customs, though how the hansom was
to pass up those narrow cobbled streets he could not think. That
however was the driver's business.
"I hope your horse is good," said Charnock, springing into the cab.
"She comes of the great Red-hotter stock," replied the cabman, and
lifting the trap in the roof he showered packets of visiting cards,
which fell about Charnock like flakes of snow.
Charnock had not previously noticed that the cabman was Major
Wilbraham.
The cab shot up the hill through the tunnel, past the closed shop. A
figure sprang from the ground and thrust a face through the window of
the cab. The man was in Moorish dress, but the face was the face of
the abusive stranger of Plymouth--and all at once Charnock started up
on his elbow, and in the smallest fraction of a second was intensely
and vividly awake. There was no sound at all within the room. But in
the black sheen of the mirror he saw a woman's face.
He saw it quite clearly for perhaps five seconds, the face rising
white from the white column of the throat, the dark and weighty
coronal of the hair, the curved lips which alone had any colour, the
eyes, deep and troubled, which seemed to hint a prayer for help which
they disdained to make--for five seconds perhaps the illusion
remained, for five seconds the face looked out at him from the black
mirror, lit palely, as it seemed, by its own pallor, and so vanished.
Charnock remained propped upon his elbow. A faint twilight from the
stars crept timidly through the open window as though deprecating its
intrusion. Charnock looked into the dark corners of the room, but
nowhere did the darkness move. Nor could he hear any sound. Not even a
board of the floor cracked, and outside the door there was no noise of
a footstep on the stairs. Then from a great distance the jingle of a
cab came through the open window to his ears with a light
companionable lilt. Gradually the sound ceased, and again the silence
breathed about him. Charnock struck a match and looked at his watch.
It was a few minutes after three.
Charnock lay back in his bed wondering. For he had seen that face
once, he had once exchanged glances with those eyes, once only, six
years ago, and thereafter had entirely forgotten the incident--until
this moment. He had stopped for a night at Monte Carlo and had
seen--the girl--yes, the _girl_, though it was a woman's face which
had gleamed in the depths of his mirror--standing under the green
shaded lamps in the big gambling-room. His attention, he now
remembered, had been seized by the contrast between her amused
indifference and the feverish haste of the gamblers about the table;
between her fresh, clear looks and their heated complexions,--even
between her frock of lilac silk and their more elaborate toilettes.
The girl was entirely happy then, the red lips smiled, the violet eyes
laughed. Why should her face appear to him now, after these years, and
paled by this distress?
A queer fancy slipped into his mind--a fancy at the extravagance of
which he knew very well he should laugh in the sane light of the
morning, though he indulged it now--that somehow, somewhere, this
woman needed help, and that it was thus vouchsafed to her, a stranger,
to make her appeal to him in this way, which spared her the
humiliation of making any appeal at all. Charnock fell asleep
convinced that somehow, somewhere, he was destined to meet and know
her. As he had foreseen, he laughed at his fancies in the morning, but
nevertheless, he did meet her. It had, in fact, already been arranged
that he should. For the face which he saw in the mirror was the face
of Miranda Warriner.
CHAPTER IV
TREATS OF THE FIRST MEETING BETWEEN CHARNOCK AND MIRANDA
Lady Donnisthorpe, with a sigh of relief, retired from her position at
the head of the stairs, and catching Charnock in the interval between
two dances:--
"You kept some dances free," she said, "didn't you? I want to
introduce you to a cousin of mine, Miranda Warriner, because she lives
at Ronda."
"At Ronda. Indeed?"
"Yes." Her ladyship added with a magnificent air of indifference, "She
is a widow," and she led Charnock across the ball-room.
Miranda saw them approaching, noticed an indefinable air of
expectation in Lady Donnisthorpe's manner, and smiled. A few
excessively casual remarks concerning one Mr. Charnock, which Lady
Donnisthorpe had dropped during the last few days, had not escaped the
notice of Miranda, who was aware of her cousin's particular weakness.
This was undoubtedly Mr. Charnock. She raised her eyes towards him,
and had her ladyship been less fluttered, she might have remarked that
Miranda's eyes lit up with a momentary sparkle of recognition.
"Mrs. Warriner--Mr. Charnock."
Lady Donnisthorpe effected the momentous introduction and felt
immediately damped. She had not indeed expected that her two newest
victims would at once and publicly embrace. But at all events she had
decked out her ball-room as the sacrificial altar, and had taken care
that a fitting company and cheerful music should do credit to the
immolation. This tame indifference was less than she deserved.
Miranda, to whom Lady Donnisthorpe was looking, made the perfunctory
dip of the head and smiled the perfunctory smile, and Charnock--why in
the world did he not move or speak? Lady Donnisthorpe turned her eyes
from Miranda to this awkward cavalier, and was restored to a radiant
good-humour. "Dazzled," she said to herself, "absolutely dazzled!" For
Charnock stood rooted to the ground and tongue-tied with amazement.
It was fortunate for Lady Donnisthorpe that at this point she thought
it wise to withdraw. Otherwise she would surely have remarked an
unmistakable look of disappointment which grew within Charnock's eyes
and spread out over his face. Then the disappointment vanished, and as
he compared programmes with Miranda, he recovered his speech.
Four dances must intervene before he could claim her, and Charnock was
glad of the interval to get the better of his bewilderment. Here was
the woman whom his mirror had shown to him! After all, his nocturnal
fancy was fulfilled, or rather part of it, only part or it. He had met
her, he was to dance with her. Some miracle had brought them together.
From the corner by the doorway he watched Miranda, he remarked an
unaffected friendliness in her manner towards her partners. Candour
was written upon her broad white forehead and looked out from her
clear eyes. He had no doubt it was fragrant too in her hair. There
were heavy masses of that hair, as he knew very well from his mirror,
but now the masses were piled and woven about her head with a cunning
art, which to be sure they deserved. There was a ripple in her hair,
too, which caught the light--a most taking ripple. Here was a woman
divested of a girl's wiles and vanities. Charnock, without a scruple,
aspersed all girls up to the age of say twenty-four, that he might
give her greater praise.
He fell to wondering, not how it was that her face had appeared to
him, nor by what miracle he was now enabled to have knowledge of her,
but rather by what miracle of forgetfulness he had allowed her face,
after he had seen it that one time six years ago, ever to slip from
his thoughts, or her eyes after that one time he had exchanged a
glance with them.
The whirl of the dance carried her by his corner. She swung past him
with the lightest imaginable step, and he was suddenly struck through
and through with a chilling apprehension that by some unconscionable
maladroitness he would surely tread upon her toes.
At once he proceeded to count over the dances in which he had borne
himself with credit. He had danced with Spanish women, he assured
himself, and they had not objected. He was thus consoling himself when
the time came for him to lead her out. And the touch of her hand in
his, he remembers, turned him into a babbling idiot.
He recollects that they danced with great celerity; that they passed
Lady Donnisthorpe, who smiled at him with great encouragement, and
that he was dolefully humorous concerning Major Wilbraham and his
exchanges of cards, though why Major Wilbraham should have thrust his
bald head into the conversation, he was ever at a loss to discover.
And then Miranda said, "Shall we stop?"
"Oh, I didn't, did I?" exclaimed the horror-stricken Charnock, as he
looked downwards at her toes.
"No, you didn't," Miranda assured him with a laugh. "Do you usually?"
"No," he declared vehemently, "believe me, no! Never, upon my word! I
have danced with Spanish women,--not at all,--no--no--no--no."
"Quite so," said Miranda.
And they laughed suddenly each to the other, and in a moment they were
friends. Conversation came easily to their tongues, and underneath the
surface of their light talk, the deeps of character called steadily
like to like.
"I have seen you once before, Mrs. Warriner," said Charnock, as they
seated themselves in an alcove of the room.
"Yes," she returned promptly, "at Monte Carlo, six years ago," and her
face lost its look of enjoyment and darkened with some shadow from her
memories. The change was, however, unremarked by Charnock.
"It seems strange," he said in an absent voice, "that we should meet
first of all in a gambling-room, and the next time at a ball."
"Why?"
The question could not be answered. Charnock had a real but
inexplicable feeling that Miranda and he should have met somewhere
amidst the grandeur of open spaces, in the centre of the Sahara, and
for the moment he forgot to calculate the effect of the sand upon
Miranda's eyes. This feeling, however, he could hardly express at the
present point of their acquaintanceship; and, indeed, he immediately
ceased to be aware of it.
"Do you actually remember our meeting in that way six years ago?" he
exclaimed. "How wonderful of you!"
"Why?" again asked Mrs. Warriner. "Why is it wonderful, since you
remember it?"
"Ah, but I didn't remember it until"--he paused for a second or
two--"until I saw your face in a looking-glass."
Miranda glanced at him in considerable perplexity. Then she said with
a demure smile, "I have at times seen it there myself."
"No doubt," he replied with a glance at the cunning arrangement of her
hair.
"My maid does that," said she, biting her lip.
"No doubt, but you sit in front of the glass at the time. You're in
the room," he continued hastily; "but when I saw your face in my
mirror, you couldn't be. I was in bed,--I mean,--let me tell you!" He
stopped, overwhelmed with embarrassment. Miranda, with an air of
complete unconsciousness, carefully buttoned her glove; only the glove
was already buttoned, and her mouth twitched slightly at the corners.
"It was just a week ago to-day," Charnock began again. "I got home to
my hotel late."
"Ah!" murmured Mrs. Warriner, as though the whole mystery was now
explained to her.
"I assure you," he retorted with emphasis, "that I dined in the train
and drank nothing more serious than railway claret."
"I made no accusation whatever," Miranda blandly remarked, and seemed
very well pleased.
"After I had fallen asleep, I began to dream, but not about you, Mrs.
Warriner; that's the strange feature of the business. It wasn't that I
had been thinking of you that evening, or indeed, that I had ever been
at all in the habit of thinking--" Again Charnock was utterly
confused. "I don't seem to be telling the story with the best taste in
the world, do I?" he said ruefully.
"Never mind," she said in a soothing voice.
"Of course, I could have turned it into a compliment," he continued.
"Only I take it you have no taste for compliments, and I lack the
experience to put them tactfully."
"For a novice," said she, "you seem to be doing very well." Charnock
resumed his story. "I dreamt solely of people I had seen, and
incidents I had witnessed during the last week, at Tangier and at
Plymouth. I dreamed particularly of a man I quarrelled with at
Plymouth, and I suddenly woke up and saw your face in the mirror."
"As you fancied."
"It was no fancy. It was no dream-face that I saw--dream-faces are
always elusive. It was no dream-face, it was yours."
"Or one like mine."
"There cannot be two."
"For a novice," repeated Miranda, with a smile, "you _are_ doing very
well."
Charnock had watched her carefully while he told his story, on the
chance that her looks, if not her lips, might give him some clue to
the comprehension of his mysterious vision. But she had expressed
merely an unconcerned curiosity and some amusement.
"Shall I explain your vision?" said she. "You must have seen me in
London during the day: the recollection that you had seen me must have
lain latent, so that when you woke up you saw me in your mirror and
did not remember that you had seen me during the day."
"Were you at any theatre this day week?"
"No," said Miranda, after counting over the days.
"You did not see _Macbeth_ that night?"
"No."
"Then it is impossible I should have seen you. For I came up from
Plymouth only that afternoon. I drove from Paddington to my hotel;
from the hotel I went to the theatre; from the theatre I walked back
to the hotel. It is impossible."
"It is very strange," said Miranda, whose interest was increasing, and
whose sense of amusement had vanished; for she saw that her companion
was moved by something more than curiosity. It was evident to her from
his urgent tones, from the eagerness of his face, that he had some
hidden reason for his desire to fathom the mystery. It seemed to her
that he nourished some intention, some purpose in the back of his
mind, which depended for fulfilment upon whether or no there was any
feasible solution.
"Tell me your dream," she said.
"It was the oddest jumble,--it had neither sense nor continuity. Moors
figured in it, ships, Lady Macbeth, the Major with his card-case, and
the stranger who swore at me through the cab-window at Plymouth. The
phrases that man used came into it."
"What phrases?"
"I couldn't repeat to you the most eloquent. There were milder ones,
however. He called me a fair red-hotter amongst other things," said
Charnock, laughing at his recollections, "and expressed a wish that I
might--well, sit in that cab until I ante'd up in kingdom come."
Miranda leaned back in her seat and opened and shut her fan. "He was a
stranger to you, you say?"
"Quite."
"You are sure?"
"Quite."
"You had never seen him anywhere--anywhere? Think!"
Charnock deliberated for a few seconds. "Never anywhere," he replied.
There was a moment's silence. Mrs. Warriner gently fanned herself as
she leaned back in the shadow of the alcove. "Describe him to me," she
said quietly.
"A man of a slight figure, a little under the middle height, fair
hair, bright blue eyes, an open, good-natured face, and I should say a
year or so under forty. I took him to be a sailor."
The fan stopped. Miranda let it fall upon her lap. That was the only
movement which she made, and from the shadow of the recess, she said:
"There is no explanation."
Charnock drew a breath and leaned forward, his hands clasped, his
elbows on his knees. It seemed he had been waiting for just that one
sentence. As he sat now his face was in the light, and Miranda
remarked a certain timidity upon it, as though now that he had heard
the expected words, he dared not after all reply to them. He did not
look towards her. He stared at the dancers, but with vacant eyes. He
saw nothing of their jewels, or their coloured robes, or the flash of
their silver feet, and the noise of their chatter sounded very dimly
in his ears. He was quite occupied, indeed, with the hardihood of what
he had it on his tongue's tip to say--when he had gained sufficient
courage.
Miranda moved restlessly, unbuttoned a glove, drew it off her wrist
unconsciously, and then was still as Charnock began to speak.
"Is there no explanation?" he asked. "I imagined one. You know how
fancies come to one in the dark. That night I imagined one. I laughed
at it the next morning, but now, since I have talked with you, I have
been wondering whether by any miracle, it might be true. And if
there's an infinitesimal chance that it's true, I think that I ought
to tell you it, even though it may seem merely ridiculous, even though
it may offend you. But I have lived for the most part of my time,
since I was a man, in the waste places of the earth, and what may well
be an impertinence--for we are only these few minutes acquainted--you
will perhaps pardon on that account."
He received no encouragement to continue; on the other hand he
received no warning to stop, for Miranda neither spoke nor moved. He
did not look at her face lest he should read the warning there; but
from the tail of his eye, he could see the fan, the white glove lying
idle upon the black satin of her dress. The skirt hung from her knee
to her foot without a stir in its folds, nor did her foot stir where
it showed beneath the hem. She remained in a pose of most enigmatical
quietude.
"The face which my mirror showed to me," he went on, "was your face,
as I said; but in expression it was not your face as I see it
to-night. It was very troubled, it was very pale; the eyes haunted me
because of the pain in them, and because of--something else beside. It
was a tortured face I saw, and the eyes seemed to ask--but to ask
proudly--for help. Is it plain, the explanation which occurred to me?"
His voice sank; he went on, slowly choosing every word with care, and
speaking it with hesitation. "I imagined that out of all the millions
of women in the world, here was one who needed help--my help, who was
allowed to appeal to me for it, without, if you understand, making any
appeal at all, and the explanation was not ... unpleasant ... to a man
who lives much alone. In fact it has been so pleasant, and has become
so familiar during this last week, that when I saw you to-night
without a care, just as I saw you that night at Monte Carlo," and
indeed it seemed to Charnock that the black dress she wore alone
marked the passage of those six years,--"I am ashamed to say that I
was disappointed."
"Yes," said Miranda. "I noticed the disappointment, but there's a
simpler explanation of the troubled face than yours. You had been to
_Macbeth_ that evening; Lady Macbeth played a part in your dreams.
What if Lady Macbeth lent her pallor and her distress to the face
which you saw in your mirror?"
Charnock swung abruptly round towards her. It was not the explanation
which surprised him, but the altered voice she used. And if her voice
surprised him, he was shocked and startled by her looks. She was still
leaning back in the shadow of the alcove, and her head rested against
the dark wood-panels. She did not move when he looked towards her.
"My God," he said in a hushed and trembling whisper, and she gave no
sign that she heard. She might have fainted, but that her eyes
glittered out of the shadow straight and steadily into his. She might
be dead from the whiteness of her face against the panels, but that
her bosom rose and fell.
"What can I do?" he exclaimed.
"Hush!" she replied, and rose to her feet. "Here is Lady
Donnisthorpe." She walked abruptly past him across the room to the
open window. Charnock remained nailed to the ground, following her
with his eyes. For in that alcove, leaning against the dark panels, he
had seen not merely the features, but the expression on the features,
he had seen exact in every detail the face which he had seen in the
polished darkness of his mirror. The sheen of the dark polished panels
helped the illusion. His fancy had come true, was transmuted into
fact. Somewhere, somehow, he was to meet that woman. He had met her
here and in this way, and her eyes and her face uttered her distress
as with a piercing cry. Her eyes! The resemblance was perfect to the
last detail. For Charnock ventured to surmise in them the same
involuntary appeal which he had seen in the eyes that had looked out
from his mirror. What then if the rest were true? What if his
explanation was as true as the true facts which it explained? What if
it was given to him and to her to stand apart from their fellows in
this mysterious relation?...
He saw that Miranda was already near the window, that Lady
Donnisthorpe was approaching him. He followed instantly in Miranda's
steps, and Lady Donnisthorpe, perceiving his attention, had the
complaisance to turn aside. For the window opened on to a balcony
wherein discreet palms sheltered off a nook. There was one of Lady
Donnisthorpe's guests who did not share her ladyship's complacency. A
censorious dowager sitting near to the window had kept an alert eye
upon the couple in the recess during the last three dances; and each
time that her daughter--a pretty girl with hair of the palest possible
gold, and light blue eyes that were dancing with a child's delight at
all the wonders of a first season--returned to the shelter of her
portly frame, the dowager drew moral lessons for her benefit from the
text of the oblivious couple. She remarked with pain upon their
increasing infatuation for each other; she pointed out to her daughter
a hapless youth who tiptoed backwards and forwards before Mrs.
Warriner, with a dance-card in his hand, too timorous to interrupt the
intimate conversation; and when Mrs. Warriner dropped a glove as she
stepped over the window-sill on to the balcony, the dowager nudged her
daughter with an elbow.
"Now, Mabel, there's a coquette," she said.
Charnock was close behind, and overheard the triumphant remark.
"I beg your pardon," he said politely, "it was the purest accident."
The dowager bridled; her face grew red; she raised her tortoiseshell
glasses and annihilated Charnock with a single stare. Charnock had the
audacity to smile. He stooped and picked up the glove. Mrs. Warriner
had indeed dropped the glove by accident; but since it fell in
Charnock's way and since he picked it up, it was to prove, like the
handbill at Gibraltar and the draft on Lloyd's bank, a thing trivial
in itself, but the opportunity of strange events.
CHAPTER V
WHEREIN CHARNOCK AND MIRANDA IMPROVE
THEIR ACQUAINTANCESHIP IN A BALCONY
Lady Donnisthorpe's house stood in Queen Anne's Gate, and the balcony
overlooked St. James's Park. There Charnock found Miranda; he leaned
his elbows upon the iron balustrade, and for a while neither of them
spoke. It was a clear night of early June, odorous with messages of
hedgerows along country lanes and uplands of young grass, and of bells
ringing over meadows. In front of them the dark trees of the Park
rippled and whispered to the stray breaths of wind; between the trees
one line of colourless lamps marked the footpath across the bridge to
the Mall; and the carriages on the outer roadway ringed that enclosure
of thickets and lawns with flitting sparks of fire.
Charnock was still holding the glove which he had picked up on the
window-sill.
"That's mine," said Miranda; "thank you," and she stretched out her
hand for it.
"Yes," said Charnock, absently, and he drew the glove through his
fingers. It was a delicate trifle of white kid; he smoothed it, and
his hand had the light touch of a caress. "Miranda," he said softly
but distinctly, and lingered on the word as though the sound pleased
him.
Miranda started and then sank back again in her chair with a quiet
smile. Very likely she blushed at this familiar utterance of her name,
and at the caressing movement of his hand which accompanied and
perhaps interpreted the utterance, or perhaps it was only at a certain
throb of her own heart that she blushed. At all events, the darkness
concealed the blush, and Charnock was not looking in her direction.
The freshness of the night air had restored her, but she was very
willing to sit there in silence so long as no questions were asked of
her, and Charnock had rather the air of one who works out a private
problem for himself than one who seeks the answer from another.
The clock upon Westminster tower boomed the hour of twelve. Miranda
noticed that Charnock raised his head and listened to the twelve heavy
strokes with a smile. His manner was that of a man who comes
unexpectedly upon some memento of an almost forgotten time.
"That is a familiar sound to you," said Mrs. Warriner, and she was
suddenly sensible of a great interest in all of the past life of this
man who was standing beside her.
"Yes," said Charnock, turning round to her.
"You lived in Westminster, then? At one time I used to stay here a
good deal. Where did you live?"
Charnock laughed. "You would probably be no wiser if I named the
street; it is not of those which you and your friends go up and down,"
he replied simply. "Yes, I lived in Westminster for three hard,
curious years."
"It's not only the years that are curious," said Miranda, but the hint
was lost, for Charnock had turned back to the balustrade. She was
still, however, inclined to persist. The details which Lady
Donnisthorpe had sown in her mind, now bore their crop. Interested in
the man, now that she knew him, she was also interested in his career,
in his hurried migratory life, in the mystery which enveloped his
youth, and all the more because of the contrast between her youth and
his. He had lived for three years in some small back street of
Westminster; very likely she had more than once rubbed shoulders
with him in the streets on the occasions when she had come up from her
home in Suffolk. That home became instantly very distinct in her
memories--an old manor-house guarded by a moat of dark silent water, a
house or broad red-brick chimneys whereon she had known the roses to
bloom on a Christmas-day, and of leaded windows upon which the boughs
of trees continually tapped.
"I should like to show you my home," she said with a sudden impulse,
and did not check herself before the words were spoken. "Perhaps some
day," she continued hurriedly, "you will tell me of those three years
you spent in Westminster." And she hoped that he had not heard the
first sentence of the two.
"I will make an exchange," said Charnock. "I will exchange some day,
if you will, the history of my three years for the history of your
trouble." He turned eagerly towards her, but she held up her hand.
"Please, please!" she said in a low, shaking voice, for her distress
had come back upon her. She had begun, if not to forget it, at all
events to dull the remembrance of it since she had come out upon the
balcony. She had, in a word, sought and found a compensation in the
new friendship of this man, and a relief in his very _naïveté_. But he
had brought her anxieties back to her, as he clearly understood, for
he said: "That is the second time this evening. I am sorry."
"The second time?" said Miranda, quickly. "Why do you say that?"
"Am I wrong?" he asked. "Am I wrong in fearing that I myself have
brought on you the trouble which I fancied I was to avert? I should be
glad to know that I was wrong, for since I have stood here on this
balcony, that fear has been growing. Your face so changed at the story
I told you. At what point of it I do not know. I was not looking. Did
I show you some misfortune you were unaware of, and might still be
unaware of, if I had only held my tongue? In offering to shield you,
did I only strike at you? I do not know, I am in the dark." He spoke
in a voice of intense remorse, pleading for a proof that his fear was
groundless, and Miranda did not answer him at all. "I do not ask you
to speak freely now," he continued; "but sometime perhaps you will.
You see, we shall be neighbours."
"Neighbours!" exclaimed Miranda, and her lips parted in a smile.
"You live at Ronda, Lady Donnisthorpe tells me; my headquarters now
are at Algeciras;" and he told her briefly of his business there.
"My cousin did not tell me that," said Miranda.
Lady Donnisthorpe, in the wisdom of her heart, had, in fact, carefully
concealed Charnock's place of abode, thinking it best that Miranda
should learn it from Charnock's lips, and be pleasantly surprised
thereby. That Miranda was pleasantly surprised might perhaps have been
inferred by a more experienced man, from the extreme chilliness of her
reply.
"Ronda is at the top," she said, "Algeciras at the bottom, and there
are a hundred miles of hillside and cork-forest between."
"There are also," retorted Charnock, "a hundred miles of railway."
"Shall we go back into the room?" suggested Miranda.
"If you wish. Only there is something else I am trying to say to you,"
said Charnock, and at that Miranda laughed, and laughed with a fresh
bright trill of amusement. It broke suddenly and spontaneously from
her lips and surprised Charnock, who was at a loss to reconcile it
with the signs of her distress. He turned towards her. "What is it?"
he asked.
"Nothing," she said hastily, "nothing at all."
"You wished to go in?"
"Not now,--not for the world."
She was genuinely amused. Her eyes laughed at him in the starlight.
Charnock was very content at the change in her, though he did not at
all understand it. It made what he meant to say easier, if he could
only find the means to say it. He held the means unwittingly in his
hand, for he held Miranda's glove. It was that glove which provoked
her amusement. Charnock, with a pertinacity which was only equalled by
his absence of mind, was trying to force his hand into Mrs. Warriner's
glove. He had already succeeded in slipping the long sleeve of it over
his palm; he was now engaged in the more strenuous task of fitting his
fingers into its slender fingers, as he leaned upon the balcony.
"You are laughing, no doubt, at my pertinacity, and it is true that
our acquaintanceship is very slight," said he.
"In a moment you will irretrievably destroy it," said she, looking at
the glove.
"I hope you don't mean that," he answered sadly, as he smoothed
the finger-tip of the forefinger down upon his own, and at once
proceeded to the other fingers. The little finger in particular needed
a deal of strenuous coaxing, and caused him to break up his words with
intervals of physical effort. "Because--as I say--we shall be
neighbours--there!"--The exclamation "there" meant that he was
satisfied with the third finger.--"A hundred miles of hill-side--in a
foreign country--on a map a thumb will cover it."
"Will it cover a thumb, though?" asked Miranda, who took a feminine
interest in the durability of her glove. She leaned forward in a
delighted suspense, as Charnock proceeded to answer her question by
experiment.
"There's the railway too," said he, as he struggled with the thumb of
the glove, "and as I say, a foreign country. Very likely, we shall be
nearer neighbours, though you are at Ronda and I am at Algeciras, than
if you lived in this house and I at the house next door. Because after
all there's one advantage in trouble of any kind. Trouble is the short
foot-path to friendship, don't you think? Like that line of lamps
across the Park."
Miranda forgot the glove. She was touched by the deep sincerity of his
voice, by the modesty of his manner. She rose from her chair and stood
by his side at the balustrade. "Yes," she answered, looking at the
circling lights on the outer rim of the Park. "I think that is true.
It spares one the long carriage-road of ceremonial acquaintanceship.
But," she said thoughtfully, "I do not know whether after all I shall
soon return to Ronda."
She heard a little sound of something tearing, and there was Charnock
contemplating in amazement upon his left hand a white kid glove of
which the kid was ripped across the palm. He felt in his pocket with
his right hand and drew out both of his own gloves, which he had taken
off while he was talking in the alcove. Then he looked at Miranda and
his amazement became remorse.
"It's yours!" he said. "Of course, I picked it up. I had forgotten
even that I was holding it. I had no notion that I was putting it on."
"I gave you fair warning," said Miranda, with a frank laugh, "but you
would not pay any attention."
Charnock looked at her with absolute incredulity. "You mean to say
that you don't mind? You are wonderful!"
"It seems almost too late to mind," said she, looking at the tattered
glove.
"Or to mend," said he, ruefully, drawing it off with extreme care, and
as a new thought struck him. "Oh!" he exclaimed, "suppose it had
belonged to anyone else, the dowager in the window, for instance." He
dangled the glove in the air. "Now that's a lesson!"
"Perhaps it's a parable," said Miranda, as she took the glove from
him.
Charnock saw that she had grown quite serious. "If so," said he, "I
cannot expound it."
"Shall I?" The smile had faded from her lips, her eyes shone upon his,
with no longer a sparkle of merriment, but very still, very grave.
"Yes."
"Well, then," she said slowly, "shall I say that no man can offer a
woman his friendship or help without doing her a hurt in some other
way?"
His eyes as steadily answered back to hers. "Do you believe that?" he
said. He spoke quite simply without raising his voice in any way, but
none the less Mrs. Warriner was certain that she had but to say "yes,"
and there would be an end, now and forever, of his questions, of his
help, of his friendship, of everything between them beyond the merest
acquaintanceship. Perhaps some day they might cross the harbour
together in the same ferry from Algeciras to Gibraltar, and bow and
exchange a careless word, but that would be all--and only that until
his work was finished there.
"Do you believe that?"
She was half tempted to say "yes"; but she had an instinct, a
premonition, that whatever answer she made would stretch out to
unknown and incalculable consequences. She seemed to herself to be
drawing the lots which one way or another would decide and limit all
her years to come. Upon the tiny "yes" or "no" between which she had
to make her choice, her whole life was destined to pivot. Accordingly,
she made up her mind to say neither, but to turn the matter into a
jest. "Here's the proof," said she, as lightly as she could, and she
flourished the glove.
But the man steadily held her to his question, with his eyes, with his
voice, with his very attitude. "Do you believe that?" he repeated.
"I don't know whether I believe it," she murmured resentfully. "I
don't see why I should be asked to mean what I say, or whether I mean
what I say.... But it might be so, I think.... I don't know.... I
don't know."
To her relief Charnock moved. If he had stood like that, demanding an
answer with every line of his body, for another instant, she knew she
would have been compelled to answer one way or another; and she felt
certain, too, that whatever answer she gave it would have been the one
she would have wished afterwards to take back. "Now if you are
satisfied," she added with a touch of petulance, "we will go in."
He moved aside for her to pass, but before she had time to step
forward, he moved back again and barred the way. "No, please," he said
quickly, and his voice thrilled as though he had hit upon an
inspiration.
"Lady Donnisthorpe told me you were rather unconventional," she
remarked with a sigh, which was only half of it a jest; and she drew
back as though she did not wish to hear what he had to say, as though
she almost feared to hear it.
But Charnock barely even remarked her reluctance. "That glove," he
said, and pointed to it. Miranda imagined that he was reaching out a
hand for it.
"I have _heaps_ of pairs," she exclaimed, whipping it behind her back;
"there is no need to trouble about it at all."
"I do not ask for it; I had no thought of that. On the contrary, I
would ask you to keep it if you will. There is something else which I
was trying to say, if you remember."
"Dear, dear!" said Miranda, ruefully, "I could wish after all that you
had trodden on my toes."
"I beg your pardon," said Charnock, and instantly he drew aside. He
left the way clear for her. She passed him, and went towards the
window, from which the lights and the music streamed out into the
night. Had he followed, she would have stepped into the room, amongst
the dancers; she would have been claimed by a partner, and she would
have seen no more of Charnock, and the only consequences of this
interview upon the balcony would have been a memory in her thoughts, a
curiosity in her speculations.
But Charnock did not follow her. He remained where she left him, and
her feet loitered more with every step she took. At the edge of the
window she stopped. For the second time that evening she became aware
that one way or other she must do the irrevocable thing. It was a mere
step to make across the sill of the window, from the stone of the
balcony to the parquet of the ball-room floor,--a thing insignificant
in itself and in its consequences most momentous. She stood for a
second undecided. The sight of her partner looking about the room
decided her. She came back to where Charnock stood in a soldierly
rigidity.
"You might have come half-way to meet me," she said in a whimsical
complaint, and then very gently: "I will hear what you wish to say, if
you will still say it."
"What I mean is this," he replied; "it is what I was trying to say.
The hardest thing, if one ever wants help, is--don't you think?--the
asking for it. I could not say that to you until I had hit upon a
means by which the asking, should it ever be necessary, might be
dispensed with. And it seemed to me that there was something
providential in my tearing that glove; for that torn glove can be the
means, if ever you see fit to use it. You live at Ronda; for the next
year I am to be found at Algeciras; you will only have to send that
torn glove to me in an envelope. I shall know without a word from you;
and when I answer it by coming up to you at Ronda, it will be
understood by both of us, again without a word, why I have come. I
shall not need to speak at all; you will only need to say the precise
particular thing which needs to be done."
Miranda stood with her eyelids closed, and her ungloved hand pressed
over her heart. The blood darkened her cheeks. Charnock saw her whole
face soften and sweeten. "I understand," she said in a low voice. "I
might appeal and be spared the humiliation of appealing, like the face
in your mirror."
"I believe," said he, "that my mirror sent me a message on that night.
I have tried to deliver it."
Miranda slowly raised her eyes and they glistened with something other
than the starlight. "Thank you," she said; "for the delicacy of the
thought I am most grateful. What woman would not be? But I do not
think that I shall ever send you the glove: not because I would not be
glad to owe gratitude to you, but just for the same reason which has
kept me from telling you anything of my troubles. Such as they are I
must fight them through by myself."
This time she passed over the sill into the ballroom; but she was
holding the glove tight against her breast, and she had a feeling that
Charnock very surely knew that at some time she would send it to him.
CHAPTER VI
WHILE CHARNOCK BUILDS CASTLES IN SPAIN,
MIRANDA RETURNS THERE
The anxious dowager, who was preparing to depart with her daughter,
had just risen from her seat by the window as Miranda stepped over the
sill into the ball-room. She sat down again, however, for she had a
word or two to say concerning Miranda's appearance.
"Muriel," she observed, "take a good look at that woman, and remember
that if ever you sit out with one man for half-an-hour on a cool
balcony you can make no greater mistake than to return with a flushed
face."
"Thank you, mother," said Muriel, who was growing restive under this
instructional use of an evening party. "I will take the first
opportunity of practising your advice."
At this moment Charnock stepped over the sill. He stepped up to Mrs.
Warriner's side and spoke to her. Mrs. Warriner stopped within a
couple of yards of the dowager and gave her hand, and with her hand
her eyes, to her companion.
"Muriel, look!" said the censorious one. "How vulgar!"
"Shall I listen too?" asked Muriel, innocently.
"Do, my child, do!" said the dowager, who was impervious to sarcasm.
What was said, however, did not reach the dowager's ears. It was,
indeed, no more than an interchange of "good-nights," but the dowager
bridled, perhaps out of disappointment that she had not heard.
"An intriguing woman I have no doubt," said she, as through her
glasses she followed Miranda's retreat.
"Surely she has too much dignity," objected the daughter.
"Dignity, indeed! My child, when you know more of the world, you will
understand that the one astonishing thing about such women is not
their capacity for playing tricks but their incredible power of
retaining their self-respect while they are playing them. Now we will
go."
The dowager's voice was a high one. It carried her words clearly to
Charnock, who had not as yet moved. He laughed at them then with
entire incredulity, but he retained them unwittingly in his memory.
The next moment the dowager swept past him. The daughter Muriel
followed, and as she passed Charnock she looked at him with an
inquisitive friendliness. But her eyes happened to meet his, and with
a spontaneous fellow-feeling the girl and the man smiled to each other
and at the dowager, before they realised that they were totally
unacquainted.
Lady Donnisthorpe was lying in wait for Charnock. She asked him to
take her to the buffet. Charnock secured for her a chair and an ice,
and stood by her side, conversational but incommunicative. She was
consequently compelled herself to broach the subject which was at that
moment nearest to her heart.
"How did you get on with my cousin?" she asked.
Charnock smiled foolishly at nothing.
"Oh, say something!" cried Lady Donnisthorpe, and tapped with her
spoon upon the glass plate.
"Tell me about her," said Charnock, drawing up another chair.
Lady Donnisthorpe lowered her voice and said with great pathos: "She
is most unhappy."
Charnock gravely nodded his head. "Why?"
Lady Donnisthorpe settled herself comfortably with the full intention
of wringing Charnock's heart if by any means she could.
"Miranda comes of an old Catholic Suffolk family. She was eighteen
when she married, and that's six years ago. No, six years and a half.
Ralph Warriner was a Lieutenant in the Artillery, and made her
acquaintance when he was staying in the neighbourhood of the Pollards,
that's Miranda's house in Suffolk. Ralph listened to Allan Bedlow's
antediluvian stories. Allan was Miranda's father, her mother died long
ago. Ralph captured the father; finally he captured the daughter.
Ralph, you see, had many graces but no qualities; he was a bad stone
in a handsome setting and Miranda was no expert. How could she be? She
lived at Glenham with only her father and a discontented relation,
called Jane Holt, for her companions. Consequently she married Ralph
Warriner, who got his step the day after the marriage, and the pair
went immediately to Gibraltar. Ralph had overestimated Miranda's
fortune, and it came out that he was already handsomely dipped; so
that their married life began with more than the usual disadvantages.
It lasted for three years, and for that time only because of Miranda's
patience and endurance. She is very silent about those three years,
but we know enough," and Lady Donnisthorpe was for a moment carried
away. "It must have been intolerable," she exclaimed. "Ralph Warriner
never had cared a snap of his fingers for her. His tastes were
despicable, his disposition utterly mean. Cards were in his blood; I
verily believe that his heart was an ace of spades. Add to that that
he was naturally cantankerous and jealous. To his brother officers he
was civil for he owed them money, but he made up for his civility by
becoming a bully once he had closed his own front door."
"Yes, yes," interrupted Charnock, hurriedly, as though he had no heart
to hear more; "I understand."
"You can understand then that when the crash came we were glad. Two
years after the marriage old Allan Bedlow sickened. Miranda came home
to nurse him and Ralph--he bought a schooner-yacht. Allan Bedlow died;
Miranda inherited, and the estate was settled upon her. Ralph could
not touch a farthing of the capital, and he was aggrieved. Miranda
returned to Gibraltar, and matters went from worse to worse. The crash
came a year later. The nature of it is neither here nor there, but
Ralph had to go, and had to go pretty sharp. His schooner-yacht was
luckily lying in Gibraltar Bay; he slipped on board before gunfire,
and put to sea as soon as it was dark; and he was not an instant too
soon. From that moment he disappeared, and the next news we had of him
was the discovery of his body upon Rosevear two years afterwards."
Charnock hunted through the jungle of Lady Donnisthorpe's words for a
clue to the distress which Miranda had betrayed that evening, but he
did not discover one. Another question forced itself into his mind.
"Why does Mrs. Warriner live at Ronda?" he asked. "I have never been
there, but there are no English residents, I should think."
"That was one of her reasons," replied Lady Donnisthorpe. "At least I
think so, but upon that too she is silent, and when she will not speak
no one can make her. You see what Ralph did was hushed up,--it was one
of those cases which are hushed up,--particularly since he had
disappeared and was out of reach. But everyone knew that disgrace
attached to it. His name was removed from the Army List. Miranda
perhaps shrank from the disgrace. She shrank too, I think, from the
cheap pity of which she would have had so much. At all events she did
not return home, she sent for Jane Holt, her former companion, and
settled at Ronda." Lady Donnisthorpe looked doubtfully at Charnock.
"Perhaps there were other reasons too, sacred reasons." But she had
not made up her mind whether it would be wise to explain those other
reasons before her guests began to take their leave of her; and so the
opportunity was lost.
Charnock walked back to his hotel that night in a frame of mind
entirely strange to him. He was inclined to rhapsodise; he invented
and rejected various definitions of woman; he laughed at the worldly
ignorance of the dowager. "A woman, madam "--he imagined himself to be
lecturing her--"is the great gift to man to keep him clean and bright
like a favourite sword." He composed other and no less irreproachable
phrases, and in the midst of this exhilarating exercise was struck
suddenly aghast at the temerity of his own conduct that night, at the
remembrance of his persistency. However, he was not in a mood to be
disheartened. The dawn took the sky by surprise while he was still
upon his way. The birds bustled among the leaves in the gardens, and a
thrush tried his throat, and finding it clear gave full voice to his
song. The blackbirds called one to the other, and a rosy light struck
down the streets. It was morning, and he stopped to wonder whether
Miranda was yet asleep. He hoped so, intensely, for the sake of her
invaluable health.
But Miranda was seated by her open window, listening to the birds
calling in the Park, and drawing some quiet from the quiet of the
lawns and trees; and every now and then she glanced across her
shoulder to where a torn white glove lay upon the table, as though she
was afraid it would vanish by some enchantment.
But the next day Miranda packed her boxes, and when Charnock called
upon Lady Donnisthorpe, he was informed that she had returned in haste
to Ronda. Charnock was surprised, for he remembered that Mrs. Warriner
had expressed a doubt whether she would ever return to Ronda, and
wondered what had occurred to change her mind. But the surprise and
bewilderment were soon swallowed up in a satisfaction which sprang
from the assurance that Miranda and he were after all to be
neighbours.
CHAPTER VII
IN WHICH MAJOR WILBRAHAM DESCRIBES THE STEPS BY WHICH HE ATTAINED
HIS MAJORITY, AND GIVES MIRANDA SOME PARTICULAR INFORMATION
A month later at Ronda, and a little after midday. In the cool
darkness of the Cathedral, under the great stone dome behind the
choir, Miranda was kneeling before a lighted altar. That altar she had
erected, as an inscription showed, to the memory of Ralph Warriner,
and since her return from England she had passed more than an ordinary
proportion of her time in front of it.
This morning, however, an unaccountable uneasiness crept over her. She
tried to shake the sensation off by an increased devoutness, but
though her knees were bent, there was no prayer in her mind or upon
her lips. Her uneasiness increased, and after a while it defined
itself. Someone was watching her from behind.
She ceased even from the pretence of prayer. Her heart fluttered up
into her throat. She did not look round, she did not move, but she
knelt there with a sinking expectation, in the light of the altar
candles, and felt intensely helpless because their yellow warmth
streamed full upon her face and person, and must disclose her to the
watching eyes behind.
She knelt waiting for a familiar voice and a familiar step. She heard
only the grating of a chair upon the stone flags beyond the choir, and
a priest droning a litany very far away. Here all was quiet--quiet as
the eyes watching her out of the gloom.
At last, resenting her cowardice, she rose to her feet and turned. At
once a man stepped forward, and her heart gave a great throb of
relief, as she saw the man was a stranger.
He bowed, and with an excuse for his intrusion, he handed her a card.
She did not look at it, for immediately the stranger continued to
speak, in a cool, polite voice, and it seemed to her that all her
blood stood still.
"I knew Captain Warriner at Gibraltar," he said. "In fact I may say
that I know him, for he is alive."
Miranda was dimly aware that he waited for an answer, and then excused
her silence with an accent of sarcasm.
"Such good news must overwhelm you, no doubt. I have used all despatch
to inform you of it, for I was only certain of the truth yesterday."
And to her amazement Miranda heard herself reply:
"Then I discovered it a month before you did."
The next thing of which she was conscious was a thick golden mist
before her eyes. The golden mist was the clear sunlight in the square
before the Cathedral. Miranda was leaning against the stone parapet,
though how she was there she could not have told. She had expected the
news. She had even thought that the man standing behind her was her
husband, come to tell her it in person; but nevertheless the mere
telling of it, the putting of it in words, to quote the stranger's
phrase, had overwhelmed her. Memories of afternoons during which she
had walked out with her misery to Europa Point, of evenings when she
had sat with her misery upon the flat house-top watching the riding
lights in Algeciras Bay, and listening to the jingle of tambourines
from the houses on the hillside below--all the sordid unnecessary
wretchedness of those three years spent at Gibraltar came crushing
her. She savoured again the disgrace which attended upon Ralph's
flight. Her first instinct, when she learned Ralph was alive, had
urged her to hide, and at this moment she regretted that she had not
obeyed it. She regretted that she had returned to Ronda, where Ralph
or any emissary of his at once could find her.
But that was only for a moment. She had returned to Ronda with a full
appreciation of the consequences of her return, and for reasons which
she was afterwards to explain, and of which, even while she stood in
that square, she resumed courage to approve.
The stranger came from the door of the Cathedral and crossed to her.
"Your matter-of-fact acceptance of my news was clever, Mrs. Warriner,"
he said with a noticeable sharpness. "Believe me, I do homage to
cleverness. I frankly own that I expected a scene of sorts. I was
quite taken aback--a compliment, I assure you, upon my puff," and he
bowed with his hand on his breast. "You were out of the Cathedral door
before I realised that all this time you had been the Captain's--would
you mind if I said accomplice?"
That her matter-of-fact acceptance of the news was entirely due to the
fact that the news dazed her, Miranda did not trouble to explain.
"The altar," continued the stranger, in a voice of genuine admiration,
"was a master-stroke. To erect an altar to the memory of a husband
who is still alive, to pray devoutly before it, is highly ingenious
and--may I say?--brave. Religion is a trump-card, Mrs. Warriner, in
most of the games where you sit with law and order for your opponents;
but not many women have the bravery to play it for its value."
Miranda coloured at his words. There had been some insincerity in her
daily prayers before the altar, though the self-satisfied man who
spoke to her had not his finger upon the particular flaw,--enough
insincerity to cause Miranda some shame, now that she probed it, and
yet in the insincerity there had been also something sincere. The
truth is, Miranda could bring herself to wish neither that her husband
was dead if he was alive, nor that he should come to life again if he
was dead; she made a compromise--she daily prayed with great fervour
for his soul's salvation before the altar she had erected to his
memory. But this again was not a point upon which she troubled to
enlighten her companion. She was more concerned to discover who the
man was, and on what business he had come.
"You knew my husband at Gibraltar," she said, "and yet--"
"It is true," replied the man, in answer to her suspicion. "You need
not be afraid, Mrs. Warriner. I have not come from Scotland Yard. I
have had, I admit, relations with the police, but they have always
been of an involuntary kind."
"You assume," said she, with some pride, "that I have reason to fear
Scotland Yard, whereas nothing was further from my thoughts. Only you
say that you knew my husband at Gibraltar. You pretend to come from
him--"
"By no means. We are at cross-purposes, I fancy. I do not come from
him, though most certainly I did know him at Gibraltar. But I admit
that he never invited me to his house."
"In that case," said Miranda, with a cold bow, "I can do no more than
thank you for the news you give me and wish you a good day."
She walked by him. He turned and imperturbably fell into step by her
side. "Clever," said he, "clever!" Miranda stopped. "Who are you? What
is your business?" she asked.
"As to who I am, you hold my card in your hand."
Mrs. Warriner had carried it from the Cathedral, unaware that she held
it. She now raised it to her eyes and read, _Major Ambrose Wilbraham_.
Wilbraham noted, though he did not understand, the rapid, perplexed
glance which she shot at him. Charnock had spoken to her of a Major
Wilbraham, had described him, and undoubtedly this was the man. "As to
my business," he continued, "I give you the news that your husband is
alive, but I have also something to sell."
"What?"
"Obviously my silence. It might be awkward if it was known in certain
quarters that Captain Warriner, who sold the mechanism of the new
Daventry quick-firing gun to a foreign power; who slipped out of
Gibraltar just a night before his arrest was determined on, and who
was wrecked a year ago in the Scillies, is not only alive, but in the
habit of paying periodical visits to England."
Mrs. Warriner again read the name upon the card. "Major Ambrose
Wilbraham," she said, with an incredulous emphasis on the _Major_.
"Captains," he retorted airily, "have at times deviated from the
narrow path, so that a Major may well be forgiven a peccadillo. But I
will not deceive you, Mrs. Warriner. The rank was thrust upon me by a
barman in Shaftesbury Avenue, and I suffered it, because the title
after all gives me the entrance to the chambers of many young men who
have, or most often have not, just taken their degrees. So Major I am,
but my mess is any bar within a mile of Piccadilly Circus. Shall we
say that I hold brevet rank, and am seconded for service in the noble
regiment of the soldiers of fortune?"
"And the enemies you fight with," said Miranda, with a contemptuous
droop of the lips, "are women like myself."
"Pardon me," retorted Wilbraham, with unabashed good humour. "Women
like yourself, Mrs. Warriner, are the _vivandières_ whom we
regretfully impress to supply our needs upon the march. Our enemies
are the rozzers--again I beg your pardon--the gentlemen in blue who
lurk at the street corners, by whom from time to time we are worsted
and interned."
They walked across the square along a narrow street down towards the
Tajo, that deep chasm which bisects the town. The heat was intense,
the road scorched under foot, and they walked slowly. They made a
strange pair in the old, quaint streets, the woman walking with a
royal carriage, delicate in her beauty and her dress; the man defiant,
battered and worn, with an eye which from sheer habit scouted in front
and aside for the chance which might toss his day's rations in his
way.
Their talk was stranger still, for by an unexpressed consent, the
subject of the bargain to be struck was deferred, and as they walked
Wilbraham illustrated to Miranda the career of a man who lives by his
wits, and dwelt even with humour upon its alternations of prosperity
and starvation. "I have been a manager of theatrical companies in 'the
smalls,'" he said, "a billiard-marker at Trieste, a racing tipster, a
vender of--photographs, and I once carried a sandwich-board down Bond
Street, and saw the women I had danced with not so long before draw
their delicate skirts from the defilement of my rags. However, I
rose to a better position. It is funny, you know, to go right under,
and then find there are social degrees in the depths. I have had
good times too, mind you. Every now and then I have struck an A1
copper-bottomed gold mine, and then there were dress suits and meals
running into one another, and ormolu rooms on the first floor."
Dark sayings, unintelligible shibboleths, came and went among his
words and obscured their meaning; accents and phrases from many
countries betrayed the vicissitudes of his life; but he spoke with the
accent of a gentleman, and with something of a gentleman's good
humour; so that Miranda, moved partly by his recital and perhaps
partly because her own misfortunes had touched her to an universal
sympathy, began to be interested in the man who had experienced so
much that was strange to her, and they both slipped into a tolerance
of each other and a momentary forgetfulness of their relationship as
blackmailer and blackmailed.
"I could give you a modern edition of Don Guzman," he said. "I was a
money-lender's tout at Gibraltar at one time. It's to that I owed my
acquaintance with Warriner. It's to that I owe my present acquaintance
with you." He came to a dead stop in the full swing of narration. He
halted in his steps and banged the point of his stick down into the
road. "But I have done with it," he cried, and drawing a great breath,
he showed to Miranda a face suddenly illuminated. "The garrets and the
first floors, the stale billiard rooms, the desperate scouting for
food like a damned sea-gull--I beg your pardon, Mrs. Warriner. Upon my
word, I do! But imagine a poor beggar of a bankrupt painter who, after
fifteen years, suddenly finds himself with a meal upon the table and
his bills paid! I am that man. Fifteen years of what I have described
to you! It might have been less, no doubt, but I hadn't learnt my
lesson. Fifteen years, and from first to last not one thing done of
the few things worth doing; fifteen years of a murderous hunt for
breakfast and dinner! And I've done with it, thanks to you, Mrs.
Warriner." And his face hardened at once and gleamed at her, very
cruel and menacing. "Yes, thanks to you! We'll not forget that." And
as he resumed his walk the astounding creature began gaily to quote
poetry:
"I resume
Life after death; for 'tis no less than life
After such long, unlovely labouring days.
A great poet, Mrs. Warriner. What do you think?"
"No doubt," said Miranda, absently. That one cruel glance had chilled
the sympathy in her; Major Wilbraham would not spare either Ralph or
herself with the memory of those fifteen years to harden him.
They came to the Ciudad, the old intricate Moorish town of tortuous
lanes in the centre of Ronda. Before a pair of heavy walnut doors
curiously encrusted with bright copper nails Wilbraham came to a stop.
"Your house, I think, Mrs. Warriner," and he took off his hat and
wiped his forehead.
"I should prefer," said she, "to hear what you have to say in the
Alameda."
"As you will. I am bound to say that I could have done with a soda and
I'm so frisky, but I recognise that I have no right to trespass upon
your hospitality."
They went on, crossed a small plaza, and so came down to the Tajo. A
bridge spans the ravine in a single arch; in the centre of the bridge
Miranda stopped, leaned over the parapet and looked downwards.
Wilbraham followed her example. For three hundred feet the walls of
the gorge fell sheer, at the bottom the turbulence of a torrent foamed
and roared, at the top was the span of the bridge. In the brickwork of
the arch a tiny window looked out on air.
"Do you see that window?" said Miranda, drily. "The prison is
underfoot in the arch of the bridge."
"Indeed, how picturesque," returned Wilbraham, easily, who was quite
untouched by any menace which Miranda's words might suggest. Miranda
looked across the road towards a guardia. Wilbraham lazily followed
the direction of her glance; for all the emotion which he showed
blackmail might have been held in Spain an honourable means of
livelihood. Miranda turned back. "That window," she said, "is the
window of the prison."
"The view," remarked Wilbraham, "would compensate in some measure for
the restriction."
"Chains might add to the restriction."
"Chains _are_ unpleasant," Wilbraham heartily agreed.
Miranda realised that she had tempted defeat in this little encounter.
She accepted it and walked on.
"You were wise to come off that barrow, Mrs. Warriner," Wilbraham
remarked in approval.
They crossed the bridge and entered the Mercadillo, the new Spanish
quarter of the town, ascended the hill, and came to the bull ring.
Before that Wilbraham stopped. "Why do we go to the Alameda?"
"We can talk there on neutral ground."
"It seems a long way."
"On the other hand," replied Miranda, "the Alameda is close to the
railway station. By the bye, how did you know where I lived?"
"There was no difficulty in discovering that. I learnt at Gibraltar
that you lived at Ronda, and the station-master here told me where.
When I saw your house I did not wonder at your choice. You were wise
to take a Moorish house, I fancy--the patio with the tamarisks in the
middle and the fountain and the red and green tiles--very pleasant, I
should think. A door or two stood open. The rooms seemed charming, low
in roof, with dark panels, of a grateful coolness, and so far as I
could judge, with fine views."
"You went into the house, then?" exclaimed Miranda.
"Yes, I asked for you, and was told that Miss Holt was at home. I
thought it wise to go in--one never knows. So I introduced myself, but
not my business, to Miss Holt--your cousin, is she not? A profound
sentimentalist, I should fancy; I noticed she was reading _Henrietta
Temple_. She complained of being much alone; she nurses grievances, no
doubt. Sentimentalists have that habit--what do you say?" Miranda
could have laughed at the shrewdness of the man's perceptions, had she
not been aware that the shrewdness was a weapon directed against her
own breast.
They reached the Alameda. Miranda led the way to a bench which faced
the railings. Wilbraham looked quickly and suspiciously at her, and
then walked to the railings and looked over. The Alameda is laid out
upon the very edge of the Ronda plateau, and Wilbraham looked straight
down a sheer rock precipice of a thousand feet. He remained in that
posture for some seconds. From the foot of that precipice the plain of
the Vega stretched out level as a South-sea lagoon. The gardens of a
few cottages were marked out upon the green like the squares of a
chess-board; upon the hedges there was here and there the flutter of
white linen. Orchards of apples, cherries, peaches, and pears,
enriched the plain with their subdued colours, and the Guadiaro, freed
from the confinement of its chasm, wound through it with the glitter
and the curve of a steel spring. A few white Moorish mills upon the
banks of the stream were at work, and the sound of them came droning
through the still heat up to Wilbraham's ears.
Wilbraham, however, was not occupied with the scenery, for when he
turned back to Miranda his face was dark and angry.
"Why did you bring me to the Alameda?" he asked sternly.
"Because I will not listen to you in my own, house," she answered with
spirit.
Wilbraham did not resent the reason, but he watched her warily, as
though he doubted it.
"Now," said Miranda, as she stood before him. "You tell me that my
husband is living. I have your bare word for it, and out of your lips
you have proved to me that your bare word has very little worth."
"The buttons are off the foils," said he; "very well. In the Cathedral
you corroborated my word. You know that he lives; I know it."
"How do you know it?"
"By adding two and two and making five, as any man with any savvy
always can," replied Wilbraham. "Indeed, by adding two and two, one
can even at times make a decent per annum."
Mrs. Warriner sat down upon the bench, and Wilbraham, standing at her
side, presented the following testimonial to his "savvy." First of
all, he drew from one pocket four pounds of English gold, and from the
other a handful of dollars and pesetas. "This is what is left of two
hundred and thirty pounds, which I won at Monte Carlo in the beginning
of May. There's a chance for philosophy, Mrs. Warriner. If I hadn't
won that money I shouldn't be standing here now with my livelihood
assured. For I shouldn't have been able to embark on the P. and O.
mail steamer _India_ at Marseilles, and so I shouldn't have fallen in
with my dear young friend Charnock."
Miranda fairly started at the mention of Charnock's name in connection
with Wilbraham's discovery. Instantly Wilbraham paused. Miranda made
an effort to look entirely unconcerned, but Wilbraham's eye was upon
her, and she felt the blood colouring her cheeks.
"Oho!" said Wilbraham, cocking his head. Then he whistled softly to
himself while he looked her over from head to foot. Miranda kept
silence, and he resumed his story, though every time he mentioned
Charnock's name he looked to surprise her in some movement.
"Off Ushant we came up with a brigantine, and I couldn't help fancying
that her lines were familiar to me. Charnock lent me his binoculars--a
dear good fellow, Charnock!--and I made out her name, the _Tarifa_. I
should not have given the boat another thought but for Charnock.
Charnock said she had the lines of a Salcombe clipper. Did you happen
to know that the _Ten Brothers_ was a Salcombe clipper? I did, and the
moment Charnock had spoken I understood why the look of her hull was
familiar; I had seen her or her own legitimate sister swinging at
Warriner's moorings in Algeciras Bay. I did not set any great store
upon that small point, however, until Charnock kindly informed me that
her owner could have gained no possible advantage by altering her rig
from a schooner's into a brigantine's. Then my interest began to rise,
for he had altered the rig. Why, if the change was to his
disadvantage? I can't say that I had any answer ready; I can't say
that I expected to find an answer. But since I landed at Plymouth,
from which Salcombe is a bare twenty miles, I thought that I might as
well run over. One never knows--such small accidents mean everything
for us--and, as a matter of fact, I spent a very pleasant half-hour in
the back parlour of the Commercial Inn, watching the yachts at anchor
and the little sailing boats spinning about the river, and listening
to an old skipper, who deplored the times when the town rang with the
din of hammers in shipbuilding yards, and twelve--observe, Mrs.
Warriner, twelve--schooners brought to it the prosperity of their
trade. The schooners had been sold off, but the skipper had their
destinies at his fingers' ends as a man follows the fortunes of his
children. Two had been cast away, three were in the Newfoundland
trade, one was now a steam-yacht, and the others still carried fruit
from the West Indies. He accounted for eleven of them, and the
twelfth, of course, was the _Ten Brothers_ wrecked upon Rosevear. I
eliminated the _Ten Brothers_, the two which had been cast away, and
the steam-yacht. Eight were left."
"Yes?" said Mrs. Warriner.
"I went back to Plymouth and verified the skipper's information. He
had given me the owners' names and the names of the vessels. I looked
them up in the sailing-lists and I proved beyond a shadow of doubt,
from their dates of sailing and arrival at various ports, that not one
of those eight schooners could have been the brigantine we passed off
Ushant. There remained, then, the four which I had eliminated, or
rather the three, for the steam-yacht was out of the question. Do you
follow?"
Miranda made a sign of assent.
"Those three boats had been cast away. Two of them belonged to
respectable firms, the third to Ralph Warriner. It would of course be
very convenient for Ralph Warriner, under the circumstances, to be
reputed dead and yet to be alive with a boat in hand, so to speak. On
the other side, would it profit either of the two respectable firms to
spread a false report that one of their boats had been cast away?
Hardly; besides, it would of course be to Warriner's advantage, from
the point of view of concealment, to change the rig and the name of
his boat. It was all inference and guess-work, no doubt. Charnock, for
instance, might have been entirely wrong; the _Tarifa_ might never
have been anything but the _Tarifa_ and a brigantine; but the
inference and the guess-work all pointed the one way, and I own that
my interest was rapidly changing to excitement. My suspicions were
strengthened by the behaviour of the _Tarifa_ herself. No news of her
approach was recorded in the papers. She didn't make any unnecessary
noise about the port she was bound for, nor had she the manners to
pass the time of day with any of Lloyd's signal-stations. The
_Tarifa's_ business began to provoke my curiosity. Here was (shall we
say?) a needless lack of ceremony to begin with. It didn't seem as if
the _Tarifa_ had many anxious friends awaiting her arrival. Besides
that, supposing that my suspicions were right, that the _Tarifa_ was
the _Ten Brothers_ masquerading under another name, and that perhaps
Ralph Warriner was on board, it stood to reason Ralph Warriner would
not risk his skin in an English port, without a better reason than a
cargo of trade. Comprenny, Mrs. Warriner? I was guessing,
conjecturing, inferring; I had no knowledge. So I thought the cargo of
the _Tarifa_ was the right end of the stick to hang on to. If I could
know the truth about that, I should be in a better position to guess
whether it had anything to do with Ralph Warriner. Is that clear?"
It was clear enough to Miranda, who already felt herself enmeshed in
the net of this man's ingenious deductions. "Yes," she said.
"Very well. From the brigantine's course, she was evidently making for
one of the western harbours. I lay low in Plymouth for a couple of
days, and read the shipping news. That wasn't all I did during those
two days, though. I went to the Free Library besides, overhauled the
file of the _Western Morning News_ and assimilated information about
the inquest at St. Mary's. The faceless mariner chucked up on Rosevear
struck one as interesting. I noticed too that there had been a good
many wrecks in the Channel during the heavy weather and the fog just
about that time. But before I had come to any conclusion, I opened my
newspaper on the third morning and read that the _Tarifa_ had dropped
her anchor at Falmouth. I took the first train out of Plymouth, and
sure enough I picked the _Tarifa_ up in Falmouth docks. Then I made
friends with the port-officers, but I got never a glimpse of Ralph
Warriner."
Miranda's hopes revived. She knew very well that Ralph Warriner was
not at that time in Falmouth. For the moment, however, she let
Wilbraham run on.
"I frankly admit that my hopes sank a little," he continued. "Of
course Warriner might have been put ashore; but it seemed to me
impossible to obtain sufficient certainty of my suspicions unless I
actually clapped eyes on him."
Miranda agreed, and her prospects of escaping from this man's clutches
showed brighter; for she was not in a mood of sufficient calmness to
enable her to realise that Wilbraham would hardly have been so frank,
if he had not by now at all events acquired absolute certainty.
"My hopes were to sink yet more," Wilbraham continued. "The brigantine
passed for a tramp out from Tarifa with a cargo of fruit. I saw that
cargo unloaded. There was no pretence about it; it was a full cargo of
fruit. The boat was sailing back to Tarifa with a cargo of alkali, and
I saw that cargo stowed away in her hold. Mrs. Warriner, my spirits
began to revive. That cargo of alkali was most uncommon small; the
profit on it wouldn't have paid the decky's wages. Again I inferred. I
inferred that the alkali was a blind, and that the _Tarifa_ meant to
pick up a cargo of another sort somewhere along the coast, though what
the cargo would be I could not for the life of me imagine."
"But it is all guess-work," said Miranda, with an indifference which
she was far from feeling.
"I learned one piece of solid cheering information from my friends the
port-officers," retorted Wilbraham. "The _Tarifa's_ papers were all
quite recent, and yet she was an old boat. She was supposed to be
owned by her master."
"And no doubt was," added Miranda, with an assumption of weariness.
"It appeared that her saloon had caught fire; the saloon had been
gutted and the _Tarifa's_ papers destroyed a year before," Wilbraham
resumed, untroubled by Mrs. Warriner's objections. "A pretty careless
captain that, eh? A most uncommon careless captain, Mrs. Warriner? For
a boat to lose her papers--well, its pretty much the same as when a
girl loses her marriage lines in the melodramas. A most uncommon
careless captain! Or a most astute one, you say. What? Well, I'll not
deny but what you may be right. For that brigantine caught fire and
burned her papers just about the date when the _Ten Brothers_ went
ashore on Rosevear. How's that for the long arm?"
"But you did not see my husband," said Miranda, stubbornly.
"And why?" asked Wilbraham, and answered his question. "Because your
husband wasn't onboard."
"Then the whole story falls to the ground," exclaimed Miranda, as she
rose from her seat.
"Wait a bit, Mrs. Warriner," said Wilbraham, and he sat down on the
seat and nursed his leg. "The _Tarifa_ was supposed to belong to her
master, who went by the name of John Wilson. Now here's a funny thing.
I never saw John Wilson, though I prowled about the docks enough. The
port-officers described him to me, a grizzled seafaring man of fifty;
but he was always snug in his cabin, and a mate did the show business
with the cargo. I grew curious about John Wilson; I wanted to see John
Wilson. Accordingly I located the chart-room from the wharf, then I
put on a black thumb tie and a dirty collar so as to look like a
clerk, and I walked boldly down the gangway and stepped across the
deck. I chose my time, you understand. I knocked at the chart-room
door. 'Come in,' said a voice, and in I walked. Mrs. Warriner, you
could have knocked me down with that dainty parasol of yours if you
had been present when I first saw John Wilson.
"'What do you want?' says he, short and sharp.
"'Will you take a load of cotton to Valencia?' says I, and I quoted an
insignificant price.
"'I am not such a fool as you look,' said he, and out I went and shook
hands with myself on the quay. For John Wilson--"
"Was not my husband," exclaimed Miranda, with almost a despairing
violence. "He was not! He was not!"
"You are right, Mrs. Warriner, he was not. But he was a man whom you
and I knew as Thomas Discipline, first mate of the schooner-yacht the
_Ten Brothers_, of which Captain Ralph Warriner was the certificated
master. And observe, please, the whole crew of the _Ten Brothers_ was
reported lost upon Rosevear."
"Thomas Discipline might have left the _Ten Brothers_ before," argued
Miranda. "His presence on the _Tarifa_ does not connect my husband
with that boat."
"That's precisely the objection which occurred to me," said Wilbraham,
coolly. "But here was at last a fact which fitted in with my
guess-work, and I own to being uplifted. That evening I got the ticket
that the _Tarifa_ was to put to sea the next day, and sure enough in
the morning she swung out into the fairway and waited for the evening
ebb. I passed that day in an altogether unenviable state of anxiety,
Mrs. Warriner; for if by any chance I was wrong, if she did not mean
to take up another cargo of a more profitable kind by dark, if she
were to sail clean away for Ushant on the evening ebb, why, the boat
might be the _Ten Brothers_ or it might not, and the master might be
the late Captain Warriner or he might not. Any way the bottom fell
clean out of my little business. But she did not; she got her anchors
in about eight o'clock and reached out towards the Lizard in the dusk
with a light wind from the land on her beam."
"The story so far," Miranda interrupted, "seems nautical, but hardly
to the point."
"Think so?" said Wilbraham, indifferently. "Did I mention that at the
mouth of the harbour the _Tarifa_ passed a steam launch pottering
around the St. Anthony Light? Between you and me, Mrs. Warriner, I was
holding the tiller of that steam launch."
"You!" she exclaimed.
"Just poor little me," said he, smiling politely, "with a few paltry
thick-uns in my pocket to speculate in the hire of a steam launch. I
gave the _Tarifa_ a start and followed, keeping well away on her lee
with her red light just in view. That first half-hour or so was a
wearing time for me, Mrs. Warriner, I assure you," and he took off his
hat and wiped his forehead, as though the anxiety came back upon him
now. He laboured his breath and broke up his sentences with short
nervous laughter. He seemed entirely to forget his companion, and the
sun, and the Andalusian sierras across the plain; he was desperately
hunting the _Tarifa_ along the Spit to the Lizard point.
"I was certain of one thing: that no Captain Warriner had come aboard
at Falmouth. So if the _Tarifa_ kept out to sea, why, there was no
Captain Warriner to come aboard, and here was I spending my last
pounds in running down a will-o'-the-wisp, and the world to face again
to-morrow in the grim old way, without a penny to my purse. On the
other hand, if there was a Captain Warriner, he would come aboard with
the cargo somewhere that night, and I fancied I could lay my finger on
that somewhere. I had another cause for anxiety. Grant my guess-work
correct, and the last thing the _Tarifa_ was likely to hanker after
would be a wasp of a steam launch buzzing in her wake. The evening was
hazy, by a stroke of luck, but the wind was light and the sea smooth,
and my propeller throbbed out over the water until I thought it must
reverberate across the world, and the Esquimaux on Franz Josef Land
and the Kanaka in the Pacific would hear it plain as the pulsing of a
battleship. However, I slowed the launch down to less than half-speed,
and the crew of the _Tarifa_ made no account of me. The brigantine was
doing only a leisurely five knots--she was waiting for the dark, I
conjectured. Conjectured? I came near to praying it. And as if in
answer to my prayer--it sounds pretty much like blasphemy now, doesn't
it?--but at that moment I believed it--all at once her red light
vanished and my heart went jumping in the inside of me as though it
had slipped its moorings. For the _Tarifa_ had changed her course; she
was pointing closer to the wind and the wind came offshore; she was
showing me her stern instead of her port beam; on the course she was
lying now she couldn't clear the Manacles--not by any manner of means.
She was heading for the anchorage I hoped she would; she was standing
in towards Helford river. In a little she went about, and seeing her
green light, I slowed down again. I could afford to take it easy."
He drew a breath of relief and lolled back upon his seat. Miranda no
longer put questions; there was a look of discouragement upon her
face; she began bitterly to feel herself helpless in this man's hands,
as clay under the potter's thumb.
"Do you know the creek?" he asked, and did not wait for an answer. "I
hadn't anchored there for twenty years, but I had a chart of it in my
memories." His voice softened, with perhaps some recollection of a
yachting trip in the days before his life had grown sour. "Steep hills
on each side, and on each side woods. The trees run down and thrust
their knees into the water like animals at their watering places of an
evening. A mile or so up, a little rose and honeysuckle village
nestles as pretty as a poem. There's a noise of birds all day, and all
night and day the trees talk. Given a westerly wind, and the summer, I
don't know many places which come up to Helford river," and his voice
ceased, and he sat in a muse. A movement at his side recalled him.
"But that's not business, you say," he resumed briskly. "I left the
_Tarifa_ at the mouth of the creek. The little village a mile or more
up is on the southward side; opposite to it, on the Falmouth side, is
the coast-guard station; nearer to the mouth, and still on the
Falmouth side, a tiny dingle shelters a school-house and half-a-dozen
cottages, and still nearer, the road from Falmouth comes over the brow
of the hill and dips down along the hill-side. At one point the steep
hill-side is broken, there's an easy incline of sand and bushes and
soil between the water and the road. The incline is out of sight of
the coast-guard. Besides, it is only just round the point and close to
the sea. And for that reason I was in no particular hurry to follow
the _Tarifa_. I edged the launch close in under the point, waded
ashore, and scrambled along in the dark until I reached the break in
the hill-side. Then I lay down among the bushes and waited. All lights
were out on the _Tarifa_, but I could see her hull dimly, a blot of
solid black against the night's unsubstantial blackness. I waited for
centuries and æons. There was neither moon nor any star. At last I
heard a creaking sound that came from the other end of the world. It
was repeated, it grew louder, it became many sounds, the sounds or
cart wheels on the dry road. I looked at my watch; the glimmer of its
white face made it possible for me to tell the hour. It was five
minutes to eleven. For five minutes the sounds drew infinitesimally
nearer. Higher up the creek six bells were struck upon a yacht, and
then over the waters from the direction of the _Tarifa_ came
cautiously the wooden rattle of oars in the rowlocks of a boat. A
boat, I say, but it was followed by another and another. The three
boats grounded on the sand as the carts reached the break in the
hill-side. There were few words spoken, and no light shown. I lay in
the bushes straining my ears to catch a familiar voice, my eyes on the
chance that a match might be struck and light up a familiar face."
"Well?" said Miranda, breaking in upon his speech. She was strung to a
high pitch or excitement, and her face and voice betrayed it.
"I was disappointed," replied Wilbraham, "but I saw something of the
cargo which the waggons brought over the hill and the boats carried on
board. Backwards and forwards between the _Tarifa_ and the shore they
were rowed with unremitting diligence and caution, carrying first
longish packing-cases of some weight, as I could gather from the
conduct of the men who stumbled with them down the incline. And after
the packing-cases, square boxes, yet more unwieldy than the long
cases, if one takes the proportion of size. The morning was breaking
before the last boat was hoisted on board, and the last waggon had
creaked out of hearing over the hill."
"And what was the cargo?" asked Miranda.
"That was the question which troubled me," replied Wilbraham. "I lay
on the hill-side in the chill of the morning as disheartened a man as
you can imagine. Through a break in the bushes I watched the _Tarifa_
below me, her decks busy with the movement of her crew and from her
galley the comfortable smoke coiling up into the air. Breakfast! A
Gargantuan appetite suddenly pinched my stomach. Had Warriner gone on
board with the cargo? And what was the cargo? And into what harbour
would the _Tarifa_ carry it? I had found out nothing. Then on board
the brigantine men gathered at the windlass, a chain clinked musically
as the anchor was hove short, the gaff of her mainsail creaked up the
mast, and the festoons of her canvas were unfolded. The _Tarifa_ was
outward bound and I had discovered nothing. I was like a man tied hand
and foot and a treasure within his reach. I had had my fingers on the
treasure. Again the chain rattled on the windlass; she broke out her
foresail and her jib; I saw the water sparkle under her foot and
stream out a creaming pennant in her wake. I had lost. In the space of
a second I lived through every minute of my last fifteen years and
their dreary vicissitudes. I lived in anticipation through another
fifteen similar in every detail, and fairly shuddered to think there
might be another fifteen still to follow those. I stretched myself out
and ground my face in the sand and cursed God with all my heart for
the difference between man and man. And meanwhile the _Tarifa_, with a
hint of the sun upon her topsails, slipped out over the tide to sea."
Wilbraham's face was quite convulsed by the violence of his
recollections; and with so vivid a sincerity, with a voice so mutable,
had he described the growth and extinction of his hopes, that Miranda
almost forgot their object, almost found herself sympathising with his
endeavours, almost regretted their failure--until she remembered that
after all he had not failed, or he would not have been sitting beside
her in the Alameda.
"Well," she said in a hard voice, "you failed. What then?"
"I crawled down to my launch, the cheapest man in the United Kingdom.
My engineer was muffled up in a pilot jacket and uncommon surly and
cheap too. I hadn't the pluck left in me to resent his impudence, and
we crept back to Falmouth. All the way I was pestered with that
question, 'What was the cargo I had seen shipped that night in Helford
river?' I couldn't get it out of my head. The propeller lashed it out
with a sort of vindictiveness. The little waves breaking ashore
whispered about it, as though they knew very well, but wouldn't peach.
When I had landed in Falmouth, I found that I was walking towards the
Free Library. The doors, however, were still closed. I breakfasted in
a fever of impatience and was back again at the doors before they were
opened. You may take it from me, Mrs. Warriner, I was the first
student inside the building that morning. I read over again every
scrap of news and comment about the inquest in Scilly which I could
pester the Librarian to unearth; and points which in my hurry I had
overlooked before, began to take an air of importance. The old man
Fournier, for instance; it seemed sort of queer that a taxidermist of
Tangier should come all the way to Scilly for a month's holiday. Eh,
what? What was old man Fournier doing at Scilly? Scilly's a likely
place for wrecks. Was old man Fournier a hanger-on upon chance, a
nautical Mr. Micawber waiting for a wreck to turn up which would suit
his purpose? Or had he stage-managed by some means or other the _coup
de theater_ on Rosevear? It seemed funny that the short-sighted man
should spot the wreck on Rosevear before the St. Agnes men, eh?
Suppose M. Fournier and Ralph Warriner were partners in that pretty
cargo! I walked straight out of that library, feeling quite certain
that I held the right end of the skein. I had made a mistake in
following up Warriner. I ought to have followed up the taxidermist. I
walked about Falmouth all that day puzzling the business out; and I
came to the conclusion that the sooner I crossed to the Scillies the
better. I was by this time fairly excited, and I think I should have
spent my last farthing in the hunt even if I had known that when I had
run the mystery to earth, it would not profit me at all. I took a
train that very evening, and pottered about from station to station
all night. In the morning I got to Penzance, and kicked my heels on
the wharf of the little dock there until nine o'clock, when the
_Lyonnesse_ started for St. Mary's. Three hours later I saw the
islands hump themselves up from the sea, and I stared and stared at
them till a genial being standing beside me said, 'I suppose you
haven't been home for a good many years.'--By the way, Mrs. Warriner,"
he suddenly broke off, "I have heard that natural sherry is a drink in
some favour hereabouts. I can't say that it's a beverage I have ever
hankered after before, but what with the sun and the talk, the thought
of it is at the present moment most seductive. What if we rang down
the curtain for ten minutes and had an _entr'acte_, eh? Would you
mind?" And Wilbraham rose from his seat.
"No," said Miranda. "Please finish what you have to say now."
Wilbraham sighed, resumed his seat and at the same time his story.
CHAPTER VIII
EXPLAINS THE MYSTERY OF THE "TARIFA'S" CARGO
"At St. Mary's," he continued, "I called at once upon the doctor.
'Ah,' said he, 'liver, I suppose.'
"'Permanently enlarged by excessive indulgence in alcohol,' said I. 'I
had once a very dear friend in the same case called Ralph Warriner.'"
Here Miranda interrupted with considerable indignation. "There is not
a word of truth in that."
"There is not," Wilbraham agreed pleasantly; "but I had to introduce
the subject some way, and my way was successful. 'Ralph Warriner!'
exclaimed the doctor. 'And what was he dismissed the service for?' I
winked very slowly, with intense cunning; 'I understand,' said the
doctor, with a leer, though Heaven only knows what he did understand;
I fancy he thought his reputation as a man of the world was at stake.
After that the conversation went on swimmingly.
"I was more than ever convinced that the discovery on Rosevear was a
put-up job. If so, old man Fournier must have been aware of that wreck
before he discovered it. He must have landed on the island and shoved
those papers into the dead man's pocket; and someone must have sailed
him out to the island. I determined to lay myself out to discover who
that someone was; but I went no farther than the determination. There
was not indeed any need that I should, for I sailed myself the next
day to Rosevear. I hired the _St. Agnes_ lugger, and Zebedee Isaacs,
as he sat at the tiller, gave me news of old man Fournier. Old man
Fournier was a desperate coward on the sea, yet he had put out to the
Bishop on a most unpleasing day. It was old man Fournier who insisted
that they should run through the Neck and examine Rosevear, and when
Zebedee Isaacs declined the risk, old man Fournier flung himself in a
passion on the tiller and nearly swamped the boat. All very queer, eh?
M. Fournier must have had some fairly strong motive to nerve him to
that pitch of audacity. And what that motive was I should discover
when I discovered the nature of the _Tarifa's_ cargo. I thought
perpetually about that cargo, all the way to Rosevear, and after I had
landed on that melancholy island. The truth came upon me in a moment
of inspiration. The ground I remember gave way under my foot. I had
trodden on a sea-bird's nest and stumbled forward on my knees, and
with the shock of the stumble came the inspiration. I remained on my
knees, with the gulls screaming overhead, and the grey wastes of ocean
moaning about the unkindly rocks. And I knew! The taxidermist from
Tangier, the longish packing-cases, the square boxes--Ralph Warriner
and old man Fournier were running guns and ammunition into Morocco!"
Miranda could not repress an exclamation. She had no doubt that
Wilbraham was right; the theory fitted in with Ralph's adventurous
character. M. Fournier no doubt made the arrangements, and provided
the capital; Ralph worked the cargo across from England to Morocco.
And to make it safe for himself to venture upon English soil, he had
altered the rig of the _Tarifa_ in some unfrequented port, and somehow
arranged the deception concerning his death.
"You think as I thought in Rosevear," said Wilbraham, looking shrewdly
into her face. "I only wish you could participate in the delight I
felt. I had my fingers on the secret now, and it was such a perfect,
profitable secret, for, quite apart from the other affair, gun-running
in Morocco is itself an offence against the law. I fairly hugged
myself. 'Ambrose,' said I, 'never in all your puff have you struck
anything like this. Fouché you shall trample under foot and Sherlock
Holmes shall be your washpot; you are the best in the world. The
faceless mariner was a fraud, a freak from Barnum's. Here at last is
Eldorado, and there's no fly anywhere upon the gilding.' Thus, Mrs.
Warriner, I soliloquised, and took the next boat back to Penzance;
from Penzance I travelled by train to Plymouth; from Plymouth I sailed
in an Orient boat to Gib, and from Gib I crossed to Tangier, where I
had a few minutes' conversation with one or two officers of the
custom-house.
"Morocco as a social institution has many points of convenience which
it is useful for men like Warriner and myself to know. Here's a small
case in point. If you wish to smuggle forbidden goods into the
country, you hire the custom-house officials to unload your cargo for
you at night somewhere on the beach. Thus you avoid much trouble, all
chance of detection and you secure skilled workmen. I had no doubt
that Warriner had followed this course. So I hired the custom-house
officials to tell me the truth, and out it came. The _Tarifa_ had
landed its cargo in the bay a mile and a half from Tangier a couple of
days before I arrived, and M. Fournier had supervised the unloading,
and the captain of the _Tarifa_ was no longer the grizzled sea-dog,
Mr. Thomas Discipline, but a gentleman of a slight figure, blue eyes,
and fair hair. That middle-aged cherub, in a word, with whom you and I
are both familiar, and who now calls himself Mr. Jeremy Bentham. When
I had derived this information I walked into M. Fournier's shop and
bought a stuffed jackal. There was a tourist making purchases, so I
asked my question quietly as I leaned my elbows on the counter.
"'How did you work the situation on Rosevear?' said I, 'and how's my
sweet friend, Ralph Warriner?'
"The little Frenchman turned white and sick. He babbled expostulations
and denials. He demanded my name--"
"You gave him your card, I hope," interrupted Miranda, biting her lip.
Wilbraham gazed at her with admiration. "Well, you have got some
spirit. I will say that for you, Mrs. Warriner."
"I am not in need of testimonials," said Miranda. "What of M.
Fournier?"
"He talked to me mysteries after that. 'You were in Tangier a month
ago,' said he. 'You shouted "Look out!" through the door; you startled
a friend of mine; you are a coward.' Would you believe it, the little
worm turned? He flew into a violent passion; I suppose it was in just
such a passion that he flung himself on Zebedee Isaacs at Scilly. A
plucky little man for all his cowardice! He called me a number of ill
names. However, I had got what I wanted. I crossed back to Gibraltar,
and here I am."
Wilbraham crossed his legs, and with a polite "You will permit me?"
lighted a cigarette.
"I see," said Miranda, with a contemptuous droop of her lips. "Having
failed to blackmail M. Fournier and my husband, you fall back upon
blackmailing a woman."
Wilbraham's answer to the sneer was entirely unexpected, even by
Miranda, who was prepared for the unexpected in this man. He showed no
shame; he did not try to laugh away the slur; but removing his
cigarette from his mouth, he turned deliberately his full face to her
and in a deliberate voice said: "I do not take the conventional view
upon these matters. And, all other things being equal, had I to choose
between a man and a woman, I should spare the man and strike the
woman."
He spoke without any bitterness, but in a hard, calm voice, as though
he had sounded the question to the bottom. Miranda gasped, the words
for a second took her breath away, and then the blood came warmly into
her cheeks, and her eyes softened and brightened and she smiled. A
sudden glory seemed to illuminate her face. Wilbraham wondered why. He
could not know that the brutal shock of his speech had sent her
thoughts winging back to a balcony overlooking St. James's Park, where
a man had held a torn glove in his hand and in a no less decided voice
than Wilbraham's had spoken quite other words.
"I never intended to address either Fournier or your husband upon the
subject of--shall we call it compensation? At the best I should have
got a lump sum now and again from them, and as I say, I have learnt my
lesson. If I had a lump sum, it would be spent, and I should again be
penniless. I apply to you because I propose a regular sum per annum
paid quarterly in advance."
Miranda was still uplifted by the contrast between her recollections
and Wilbraham's words. She had the glove at home locked up, an
evidence that succour was very near--a hundred miles only down the
winding valley which faced her--and she had not even to say a word in
order to command it. When she spoke again to Wilbraham she spoke
emboldened by this knowledge.
"And what if I were to refuse you even a shilling for your dinner?"
"I should be compelled to lay my information before the proper
authorities, that Ralph Warriner is alive and may at times be captured
in England."
"Would you be surprised to hear that Mr. Warriner committed no crime
for which he could be captured?"
"I should be surprised beyond words. Mr. Warriner sold the mechanism
of the Daventry gun to a foreign government."
"Are you so sure of that?"
"I was his agent."
"You! Then you are also his accomplice."
"True,--and I look forward to turning Queen's evidence."
Miranda withdrew from the contest. The discussion was hardly more than
academic, for she knew both that her husband was alive and that this
particular crime he had committed.
"What is your price?" she asked, and she sat down upon the bench.
Wilbraham did not immediately reply. He took a pocket-book from his
coat and a letter from the pocket-book.
"I should wish you fully to understand the strength of my position,"
he said. "This letter you will see is in your husband's handwriting.
This passage," and he folded the letter to show Miranda a line or two,
"enjoins me to be very careful about the plans. The gun is not
mentioned by name, but the date of the letter and the context leave no
possible doubt."
He fluttered the letter under Miranda's eyes and within reach of her
fingers.
"It is my one piece of evidence, but a convincing piece."
He made a pretence of dropping it at her feet and snatched it up
quickly. Then he replaced it in his pocket-book and shut up his
pocket-book with a snap.
"Why didn't you snatch at it?" he exclaimed with irritation.
"Why did you wish me to snatch at it?" she replied.
"Because--because," he said angrily, "you have made me feel real mean,
as mean as a man in the commission of his first dishonourable act
towards a woman, and I wanted you to look mean at all events; it would
have made my business easier to handle. Well, let's have done with it.
I know Ralph Warriner is alive. I can give information which may lead
to his capture; and there's always the disgrace to publish."
He blurted out the words, ashamed and indignant with her for the shame
he felt. Miranda, in spite of herself, was touched by Wilbraham's
manner, and she answered quite gently: "Very well. I will buy your
silence."
"Coals of fire!" he replied with a sneer. Miranda understood that he
was defying her to make him feel ashamed. "Is that the ticket, Mrs.
Warriner? It won't lessen the amount of the per annum I can assure
you. What I propose is to live for the future in some more or less
quiet hole, where none of my acquaintances are likely to crop up.
Tarifa occurred to me; for one thing I can reach you from Tarifa; for
another I can do the royal act at Tarifa on a moderate income; for a
third it is a quiet place where I can have a shot at--well, at what I
want to do," and his voice suddenly became shy. She looked at him and
he coloured under her glance, and he shifted in his seat and laughed
awkwardly.
Miranda was familiar with those signs and what they signified.
Wilbraham wanted her to ask him to confide in her. Many men at
Gibraltar had brought their troubles to her in just this way, with
just these marks of diffidence, this fear that the troubles would bore
her. She had been called upon to play the guardian-angel at times and
had not shrunk from the responsibility, though she had accepted it
with a saving modesty of humour at the notion of herself playing the
guardian-angel to any man.
"What is it you want to do?" she asked, and Wilbraham confided in her.
The position was strange, no doubt. Here was a woman whom he had
bullied, whom he meant to rob, and on whom he meant to live until he
died, and he was confiding in her. But the words tumbled from his lips
and he did not think of the relationship in which he stood to her. He
was only aware that for fifteen years he had not shared a single one
of his intimate thoughts with either man or woman, and he was
surcharged with them. Here was a woman, frank, reliable, who asked for
his confidence, and he gave it, with a schoolboy's mixture of
eagerness and timidity.
"Do you know," said he, "the Odes of Horace have never been well
translated into English verse by anyone? Some people have done an ode
or two very well, perhaps as well as it could be done--Hood for
instance tried his hand at it. But no one has done them all, with any
approach to success. And yet they ought to be capable of translation.
Perhaps they aren't--I don't know--perhaps they are too wonderfully
perfect. Probably I should make an awful hash of the job; but I think
I should like to have a shot. I began years and years ago when I was
an attaché at Paris, and--and I have always kept the book with me; but
one has had no time." As he spoke he drew from his side pocket a
little copy of Horace in an old light-brown cover of leather very much
frayed and scratched. "Look," said he, and half stretched it out to
her, as though doubtful whether he should put it into her hands or
refuse to let her take it at all. She held out her hand, and he made
up his mind and gave it into her keeping.
The copy was dated 1767; the rough black type, in which all the s's
looked like f's, was margined by paper brown with age and sullied with
the rims of tumblers and the stains of tobacco; and this stained
margin was everywhere written over with ink in a small fine hand.
"You see I have made a sort of ground-work," said Wilbraham, with a
deprecating laugh, as though he feared Miranda would ridicule his
efforts. The writing consisted of tags of verse, half-lines, here and
there complete lines, and sometimes, though rarely, a complete stanza.
"You must not judge by what you see there," he made haste to add. "All
I have written on the margin is purely tentative; probably it's no
good at all." Miranda turned over a page and came upon one ode
completely translated. "I did that," explained Wilbraham, "one season
when I shipped as a hand on a Yarmouth smack. We got bad weather on
the Dogger Bank, out in the North Sea at Christmas. We spent a good
deal of time hove to with the wheel lashed, and on night-watches I
used to make up the verses. Indeed, those night-watches seem the only
time I have had free during the last fifteen years. The rest of the
time--well, I have told you about it. I got through one complete ode
out in the North Sea, and did parts of others."
Mrs. Warriner began to read the ode. "May I?" she asked.
"Of course," said he, with a flush of pleasure, and he watched her
most earnestly for the involuntary signs of approval or censure. But
her face betrayed neither the one nor the other; and he was quick to
apologise for the ode's shortcomings.
"You mustn't think that I had a great deal of time on those
night-watches. For one thing we did not get over-much sleep on the
voyage, and so one's brains no doubt were a trifle dull. Besides,
there were always seas combing up above the bows and roaring along the
deck. You had to keep your eyes open for them and scuttle down the
companion before they came on board. Otherwise, if the weight of the
water took you, it was a case of this way to the pit. The whole hull
of the smack disappears, and you just see the foresail sticking up
from the hungry, lashing tumble of green water. So, you see, it stands
to reason that ode is subject to revision."
But Miranda was not thinking of the ode. She had a vision of the smack
labouring on a black night in the trough of a black sea flecked with
white, at Christmas time, and a man on the watch, who had been an
attaché at Paris, and was, even with the rude sailor-folk for his
companions, engaged in translating Horace; and the vision had an
exquisite pathos for her.
"What was the beginning of it all?" she asked in a low voice, and
since Wilbraham was in the train of confidences, he told her that too.
He told her perhaps more than he meant to tell. It was an old story,
the story of the faithless woman and the man who trusts her, and what
comes of it all. The story of Helen and Menelaus, but disfigured into
a caricature of its original by the paltriness of the characters and
the vulgarity of the incidents. The throb of primitive passion was
gone from the story, and therefore all dignity too. Subtle and
intricate trivialities of sentiment took the place of passion, and
made the episode infinitely mean. Menelaus was an attaché at Paris:
Helen lived at Knightsbridge, and the pair of them were engaged to be
married. Helen was faithless merely through a cheap vanity, and a
cheaper pose of wilfulness, and even so she was faithless merely in a
low and despicable way. It was an infidelity of innumerable
flirtations. She passed from arm to arm without intermission, and
almost allowed those who fondled her to overlap. Yet all the day she
talked of her pride, and was conscious of no inconsistency between the
vulgarity of her conduct and the high words upon her lips. She
practised all the small necessary deceits to conceal her various
meetings and appointments, and was unaware of the degradation they
involved; for still she talked loudly of her pride. And when Menelaus
lifted his hat and wished her good-morning, she only felt that she was
deeply aggrieved.
Menelaus, however, was in no better case. He had not the strength to
thrust her from his mind, but let his thoughts play sensuously with
his recollections, until he declined upon a greater and a greater
weakness.
"I went back to Paris," continued Wilbraham. "I had good prospects,
but they came to nothing. Even now men going in for Mods. have to get
up a book which I once wrote, and as for the service, if I were to
tell you my real name, it is just possible that you might have heard
it, for I was supposed to have done something quite decent at
Zanzibar. Well, I went back to Paris. It's a hard thing, you know, to
discover that the woman you have been working for, and in a way
succeeding for, isn't worth the nicotine at the bottom of your
pipe-bowl. At that time I reckon I would rather have been the wreck I
am now, and believed it was all my fault, for, you see, I might then
have imagined that if I had done all right, I should have won the
desirable woman.... Anyway, after I got back to Paris, a little while
after, there was trouble." Wilbraham examined his cane and drew
diagrams upon the ground. "The woman blabbed, in a moment of
confidence ... to her husband. There was a sort of a scandal.... I had
to go. I didn't blame the woman who blabbed; no, Mrs. Warriner, I
blamed the first woman, the woman in Knightsbridge. Was I right? I
came back to England. I was a second son, and my father slammed
the door in my face. Then, Mrs. Warriner, I blamed all women,
you--you--you amongst the others, even though I didn't know you." He
spoke in a gust of extraordinary violence, and so brought his
confidences to an end. "Now your income is--" he resumed, and fetched
out his pocket-book again. "I made a note about your estate when I was
doing business with Warriner," he said. "The note comes in usefully
now."
He found the details of which he was in search, and made a neat little
sum at the corner of the leaf, to which Miranda paid no attention
whatsoever. The queer inclination towards pity which had moved her to
ask for his confidence, had been entirely and finally destroyed by the
confidence she had asked for. The story was so utterly sordid; the
characters in it so utterly puny. Before he told it he had acquired in
her eyes even a sort of dignity, the dignity of a man battered and
defeated in a battle wherein his wits were unequally matched against
the solid forces of order; but in the telling he had destroyed that
impression. Miranda had no feeling now but one of aversion for the
wreck of a man at her side. She looked at the Horace, which still lay
open on her lap, and the contrast between the fine scholar's
handwriting and the stains of the pothouse had no longer any power to
touch her. She set the book down on the bench, and stood up.
Wilbraham stopped his calculations, and, with the stump of his pencil
in his mouth, looked at her alertly and furtively. She took a step or
two towards the parapet of the Alameda. Wilbraham instantly laid his
pocket-book on the seat with the pencil to mark the place, and without
any noise, stood up. Miranda reached the railings at the edge of the
gardens and leaned her arms upon it. The next moment she felt a firm
grip upon her elbow. She turned round and saw Wilbraham's face ablaze
with passion. "I suspected that," he said fiercely, "when first I saw
where you had brought me," and he shook her elbow.
"Suspected what?" exclaimed Miranda, and she drew away to free herself
from his grasp. Wilbraham's next movement answered her question. For
he slipped between her and the railings with a glance at the precipice
below.
"But you shall not do it," he continued. "I was robbed that way once
before; I'll take care the robbery is not repeated." He leaned his
back against the railings and shook his finger at her.
"Besides, there's no sense in it," and he jerked his head backwards to
signify the abysm. "You are crying out before you are hurt. You don't
even know how much I want; I shan't ruin you. I made a mistake that
way once; I had the best secret conceivable, and ran my man down
across two continents. Then I was fool enough to put my hand too deep
in his sky, and I suppose he thought--well, he blew his brains out
that night, and then was I robbed."
Mrs. Warriner stared at him with a growing horror in her eyes. "You
murdered him," she said slowly.
"We won't quarrel over words," said Wilbraham, callously.
Miranda walked back to the bench. She was not troubled to explain
Wilbraham's misconception of her movement. She was only anxious to be
rid of him. "What income do you want?" she asked.
"You have three thousand a year," he returned. "Of that I take it
Warriner takes a largish slice."
Miranda flushed. "My husband has never asked for a farthing since the
_Ten Brothers_ slipped out of Gibraltar. He has never received a
farthing," she said angrily.
"An imprudent remark," said Wilbraham. "I might feel inclined to raise
my price."
"At all events you shall not slander him."
Wilbraham looked at her with his head cocked on one side. "You are
very loyal," said he, with genuine admiration. "I will not raise my
price."
Miranda did not, by any gesture or word, acknowledge his compliment.
She stood over against him with a face just as hard and white as he
had shown to her.
"I say seven hundred a year," he said briefly. "I will call for it
myself every quarter."
"I will send it to you," she interrupted.
"I prefer to call for it," said he; for so he concealed his own
address and kept her within his reach. "You will not leave Ronda even
for a week without giving me due notice of your destination. I will
take a quarter's payment to-day. You draw on a bank in Ronda, I
suppose, so a cheque will serve."
"If you will wait here, I will bring you the cheque."
Twenty minutes afterwards she returned with it to the Alameda, where
she found Wilbraham seated on the bench with his Horace in his hand.
He put down the book awkwardly, and rose. He had the grace to feel
some discomfort as he took the cheque, and that discomfort his manner
expressed.
Miranda had no word, no look, for him. He stood perhaps for the space
of a minute fingering the cheque. Then he said suddenly: "I can't
imagine what a woman like you sees in Ralph Warriner to trouble about.
In your place I should have let him go his own way, without paying to
keep him out of prison."
Miranda kept her reasons to herself, as she had done with the reason
of her return to Ronda. She waited for him to go, and he walked
sullenly away--for ten yards. Then he returned, for he had left his
copy of Horace lying upon the bench. He picked it up with a curious
and almost timorous glance of appeal towards Miranda. She did not move
but waited implacably for his departure. Wilbraham worked his
shoulders in discomfort.
"My clothes don't fit and God hates me," he cried irritably. Then this
jack-in-the-box of fortune slunk out of her sight.
CHAPTER IX
SHOWS THE USE WHICH A BLIND MAN MAY MAKE
OF A DARK NIGHT A WEEK
A week after Wilbraham's departure from Ronda, the night fell very dark
at Tangier. In the Sôk outside the city gate, the solitary electric lamp
from its tall mast threw a pale light over a circle of the trampled
grass, but outside the circle all was black. There was no glimmer in
the tents of the shoemakers at the upper corner of the Sôk; nor was
there any stir or noise. For it was past midnight and the world was
asleep--except at one spot on the hill-side above the Sôk, and a
little distance to the right.
There a small villa, standing by itself, shone gaudily in the heart of
the blackness. From its open windows a yellow flood of light streamed
out, and besides the light, the music of a single violin and the
rhythmical beat of feet. There were other noises too, such as the
popping of corks, and much laughter.
Outside the villa, and beyond the range of its light, a man and a boy
sat patient and silent. The man for his sole clothing wore a sack, but
a dark cloak lay on the ground beside him. With his hands he
continually tested a cord twisted from palmetto fibres, as though
doubtful of its strength. At length the door of the villa opened.
"Who comes out?" asked the man.
"A man and a woman," answered the boy.
"Describe the man to me."
"Big, fat--"
"That is enough."
The man and the woman passed through the little garden of the villa,
and walked down across the Sôk towards the city gate. The door opened
again and again. There was a continual sound of leave-taking in
different languages, mostly German and French, and between the man and
the boy the same dialogue was repeated and repeated. Some wore evening
dress, others did not. Some walked across the Sôk, others rode.
"They are all gone," said the boy.
"Wait," commanded the man.
"They are putting out the lights."
"Are all the lights out?"
"No, one light is burning."
"Wait!"
The door opened again, and two men in evening dress came out on to the
steps.
"There are two men," said the boy, "but only one wears a hat."
"Describe him to me."
"He is not tall, he is thin, but I cannot see his face for his hat."
"Look! look well!"
"He goes back into the house. He takes off his hat. Wait! He is
smoking. He strikes a match and holds it to his mouth. I can see him
now."
"Well! Of what colour is his hair?"
"Very fair--yellow. His face is round, his eyes are light."
The man in the sack ceased from his questions, but he gave no sign of
either approval or disappointment. He sat still in the darkness until
a voice from the little garden cried out with a French accent: "I
cannot think what has come to the beast. He has got loose. And he was
hobbled, Jeremy. You did hobble him, _hein?_"
The boy began to laugh. "The little fat Christian is looking for the
mule in the garden," said he. "Hush!" whispered the man, laying his
hand upon the boy's mouth. "Listen! What does the other answer? Listen
for his voice."
"He does not answer," returned the boy. "He leans against the door,
and smokes and waits, while the little fat Room searches for the
mule."
"Help to find the mule!"
The boy laughed again, rose from the ground, and disappeared into the
darkness. In a few minutes he returned, driving the mule in front of
him. He drove it through the wicket of the garden. A few words passed
between the little Frenchman and the boy. Then the boy came back to
the man seated patiently outside the rim of the villa's lights.
"What did he say to thee?" said the man.
"He asked me if I had stolen the hobbles."
"And thou didst answer?"
"That I knew nothing of the hobbles. I said that I had found the mule
loose in the Sôk, and seeing the lights, brought it to the house."
"It is well. Now go, my son; go home and sleep, and forget the hours
we have waited in the darkness outside the villa of the Room. Forget,
so that in the morning they shall never have been. Go! God will reward
thee!"
The boy turned upon his heel, and ran down towards the town. The man
was left alone. He remained squatting on the ground. He heard the
French voice exclaim: "Good-night, Jeremy."
But no answering voice returned the wish. Jeremy indeed contented
himself with a careless nod of the head, mounted his mule, and passed
out of the wicket gate. Jeremy passed within ten yards of the man
seated upon the ground, who heard the padding of the mule's feet upon
the grass and smelt the cigar.
He did not move, however. A road ran between this stretch of grass and
the Sôk beyond, and he waited until the mule's hooves rang upon it.
Then he picked up the dark cloak by his side and ran swiftly and
noiselessly down the grass, across the road, over the trampled Sôk.
Ahead of him he heard the leisurely amble of the mule.
"Stop!" he cried out in the Moghrebbin dialect. "I have the hobbles of
the most noble one."
He heard the mule stop, and ran lightly forward.
"Who is it?" asked Jeremy, in the same tongue, as he bent round in his
saddle.
"Hassan Akbar," cried the other, leaping at the point from which the
voice came. "Bentham, it is Hassan Akbar."
The man addressed as Bentham turned quickly in his saddle with a cry
and gathered up the reins; but he was too late. Even the cry was
stifled upon his lips. For Hassan threw the cloak over his head,
gathered it in tight round his neck, and still holding him by the
neck, dragged him out of the saddle and flung him on to the ground.
Bentham, half-throttled, half-stunned, lay for a moment or two upon
his back, limp and unresisting. When he came to himself, it was no
longer within his power to resist, for Hassan knelt straddled across
his body, pinning him to the ground with the weight of his stature.
One bony knee pressed upon his chest insufferably. Bentham's ribs
cracked under it; he felt that his ribs were being driven into his
lungs. The other knee held down his thighs, and while he lay there
incapable of defence, Hassan bound his arms tightly together with the
cord of palmetto fibres.
Bentham tried to shout, but the cloak was over his mouth: the knee was
grinding and boring into his chest, and his shout was an exiguous wail
which, when it had penetrated the cloak, was no more than a sigh. He
waited for the moment when the knee would be removed, and waited
motionless without a twitch of his muscles, so that Hassan might be
deceived into the belief that he had swooned, and remove his knee and
the cloak.
Hassan removed his knees, bent down to Bentham, twined one arm about
his legs, thrust the other underneath his neck, and lifted him from
the ground as though he was a child. Bentham was now less able to
shout than before, for the hand of the arm which was about his neck
pressed the cloak close upon his mouth.
Bentham struggled for his breath; Hassan's arms only tightened their
grip and held him like a coil of wire. An utter terror seized upon
Bentham. He remembered the darkness of the night, the lateness of the
hour, the silence of the Sôk, and from the manner of Hassan's walk, he
knew that he was being carried up the hill and away from Tangier. He
was helpless in the hands of a Moor whom he had irreparably wronged.
Death he knew he must expect; the question which troubled him was what
kind of death.
Hassan's foot struck against a rope drawn tight across his path, and
in Bentham hope for a moment revived. The rope was the stay of a tent,
no doubt. What if Hassan had lost his way and stumbled among the tents
of the shoemakers? But Hassan loosened the grip of the arm which held
his legs, and Bentham heard him fumbling with his hand for the
door-flap of the tent. Plainly Hassan had not missed his way.
Hassan dropt him on the ground, thrust him through the small opening,
and crawled in after him. Then he knelt beside Bentham, turned back
the cloak from his face, but tied it securely about his mouth. Bentham
could now see, and the flap of the tent was open. The tent was indeed
one of the low, tiny gunny-bag tents of the shoemakers, but it was set
far apart from that small cluster, as Bentham recognized in despair,
for through the aperture he could see a long way below him and a long
way to his right the electric light in the middle of the Sôk.
Outside the tent there was a sound of something moving. Bentham sat up
and tore at his gag with his bound hands.
"Why cry for help to a mule?" said Hassan, calmly. "Will a mule help
thee?" He leaned forward and tightened the knot which fastened the
cloak at the back of his head. Then he crawled out of the tent and
Bentham heard him tethering the mule to one of the tent-pegs.
Bentham was thus left alone. He had a few seconds, and he had at once
to determine what use he would make of those seconds. There was not
enough time wherein to free his hands. It would have been sheer waste
of time to free his mouth from the cloak. For none was within earshot
of that tent who would be concerned to discover the reason of a cry,
and the cry would not be repeated, since Hassan outside the tent was
still within arm's reach.
Instead, he hitched and worked his white waistcoat upwards from the
bottom, leaning forward the while, until his watch fell from the
pocket and dangled on the end of the chain; after his watch a metal
pencil-case rolled out and dropped between his knees. One of the two
things he meant to do was done. Hassan had bound his hands not palm
to palm, but wrist across wrist; and raising his hands he was able
with the tips of his right-hand fingers to feel in the left-hand
breast-pocket of his dress-coat. His fingers touched a small
pocket-book, opened it, and plucked out a leaf of paper. This leaf and
the pencil-case he secreted in the palm of his hand.
Hassan crawled back into the tent and closed the flap. Bentham, with
his knees drawn up to his chin, crouched back against the wall of the
tent. Now that the flap was closed, it was pitch-dark; that, however,
made no difference to Hassan Akbar, who lived in darkness, and out of
the darkness his voice spoke.
"The ways of God are very wonderful. You gave me this tent. With the
dollar you dropped on my knees at the gate of the cemetery, I bought
this tent and set it up here apart, to keep you safe for the little
time before you start upon your journey."
Bentham took no comfort from the passionless voice, though his heart
leaped at the words. He was not then to be killed. He did not answer
Hassan, but remained crouched in his corner.
"Now the dog of a Christian will speak," said Hassan, quietly. Bentham
made no movement. Hassan crawled towards him, felt his feet, his
up-drawn knees, and reaching his face untied the cloak from his mouth.
"Now the dog of a Christian will speak," he repeated softly, in a low
gentle voice, "so that I may know it is indeed Bentham, who took
shelter with me at Tangier, and ate of my _kouss-kouss_, and
thereafter betrayed me."
Bentham did not reply. If Hassan had a doubt, then it was his part to
make the most of it to prolong the solution of the doubt, to defer it,
if it might be, till the morning came. This was summer--July--the
morning comes early in July, not so early as in June, but still early.
Would that this had happened one month back!
Hassan kneeled upon his hams by Bentham's side. "Will not the dog of a
Christian speak?" he asked in a wheedling voice, which daunted and
chilled the man he spoke to. "Let us see!" And again his sinuous hands
lingered and stole over Bentham's face. The thumbs lingered about
Bentham's eyes.
Bentham shivered; but still, though the desire to shout, to curse, to
relieve by some violence, if only of speech, the tension he was
suffering, was strong, he mastered himself, he held his tongue, for if
once he did speak he betrayed himself. His only chance lay in Hassan's
doubt, which lived upon his silence. Again Hassan's fingers returned
to his face. Bentham closed his eyes; the thumbs touched and retouched
them, now pressing gently upon the eyeballs, now working about the
corners of the sockets. Finally Hassan snatched his hands away. "If I
did that," he murmured, "they would not take him, for he would fetch
no price;" and Bentham understood the fate which was in store for
him--if he spoke.
Hassan left his side, and was busy in a corner of the tent, at what
Bentham could not for the moment discover. He heard a cracking of
twigs; what was to follow? One instant he dreaded, the next he burned
to know, and all the while he shivered with terror. Hassan struck a
match and lit the twigs, and breathed upon the little blue flames,
until they warmed to yellow, and spirted up into a fire.
Bentham watched Hassan's gaunt, disfigured, inexpressive face, as he
crouched over the twigs, and his terror increased. He saw that he held
something in each hand, something that flashed bright, like a disk of
iron. Hassan laid the disks upon the twigs; they were the hobbles
which Bentham had placed upon his mule early that evening.
Bentham began to count the seconds; at any moment the morning might
begin to break, surely, surely. As he watched the hobbles growing hot
and the sparks dance upon the iron, he continued to count the seconds,
not knowing what he did, and at an incredible speed.
Hassan picked up the hobbles, each with a cleft stick, and brought
them over to Bentham. "Now the dog of a Christian will speak," said
he.
Bentham summoned all his courage, all his strength, and was silent.
Hassan reached out his hands, and drew his legs from under him, and
fitted the hobbles over his slippers, and fixed them round his ankles
like a pair of fetters.
Bentham uttered a cry--it was almost a scream--as the iron burnt into
his flesh. He kicked, he struggled to free his legs, to free his
hands; but Hassan Akbar dragged him forward, thrust him down upon his
back, and pinned his shoulders to the ground. Bentham could do no more
than vainly writhe in convulsive movements of his limbs. The hot iron
rings clung to his ankles; the smoke from the wood fire choked him;
the smell of burning flesh was acrid in his nostrils. Agony redoubled
his strength, but even so, he was too crippled, and Hassan's grasp
upon his shoulders did not relax.
In the end Hassan had his heart's desire, and Bentham spoke. He spoke
too in the low voice which Hassan enjoined, though he used it without
thought to obey,--low, voluble, earnest prayers for mercy, and then
again voluble curses, and again voluble appeals for pity, and at the
end of it a broken whimpering, as though his strength was gone, and
the convulsive jerks which a fish makes in a basket.
All the while Hassan held him down, listening to the appeals, the
prayers, the curses, with an untouched gravity of face. "It is indeed
you; I have made no mistake," and he freed him from the burning
fetters, and opened the flap of the tent. Bentham rolled over on his
side with his face to the opening, and lay there shaking, moaning.
"Now I will tell you what I have planned for you," continued Hassan.
"I thought at first to kill you, but it is so small a thing. Then I
remembered words you once told me, that you had trouble with your own
people, and could not ask them for protection. So friends of mine from
Beni Hassan, who go upon their way to-night, will take you with them,
and sell you when they are far away. And for the rest of your days you
will carry loads upon your back up and down the inlands of Morocco,
and your masters will beat you, and if you faint and are tired, they
will do strange things to make you suffer, even as I did with the
hobbles. Lo, here my friends come!"
The sound of steps came to their ears. A few moments later a hand
fumbled at the flap of the tent, opened it, and a head was thrust in.
"Is it you, Hassan Akbar?"
"Yes," replied Hassan; "and here is the Room whom you promised to take
out of my path. He will fetch a price, and besides I give to you his
mule, which you will find tethered to the tent."
"And the saddle too, Hassan, is it not so?"
"It is."
Meanwhile Hassan cut Bentham's clothes from him as he lay upon the
ground, and taking off his own sack, cast it for a garment over
Bentham's shoulders, and wrapped himself in the dark cloak. In the
place of that cloak he tied over Bentham's mouth a thick rag. Then he
thrust him out of the tent, and jerked him on to his feet. Bentham
made no longer any resistance; he let them do with him as they were
pleased; and he stood tottering and swaying.
Five Arabs waited outside the tent. "He cannot walk, he shall ride the
mule this night," said the chief of them. "To-morrow he shall learn to
walk."
They hoisted Bentham on to the back of the mule, and tied him there
with leathern thongs. Then they started on their long journey.
The cool night air after the stifling tent revived the man who
perforce rode the mule. It did not give him strength to resist, or as
yet even the impulse to cry out; but it restored to him the power to
hear and to understand. What he heard was a distant clock below him in
Tangier striking an hour; what he understood was that the hour it
struck was only one o'clock.
CHAPTER X
M. FOURNIER EXPOUNDS THE ADVANTAGES WHICH
EACH SEX HAS OVER THE OTHER
The long interview with Wilbraham in the Alameda of Ronda had
consequences for Miranda which she felt but did not trace to their
source. It was not merely that she sickened at the vulgar, futile
story of his ruin; that she saw in imagination the wretched victim he
had run to earth across two continents, closing the door and slipping
the pistol-barrel between his teeth; that she loathed the knowledge
that this man was henceforward her gaoler; but she took him and the
bitter years of her marriage together in her thoughts, and using them
as premisses began doubtfully to draw universal conclusions.
These conclusions Miranda hazarded at times in the form of questions
to her companion Jane Holt, and sought answers from her as from one
who had great experience of the tortuous conduct of men. Were men
trustworthy at all? If so, were there any means by which a woman could
test their trustworthiness? These two questions were the most constant
upon Miranda's tongue, and Jane Holt answered them with assurance, and
in her own way.
Wilbraham had not erred when he described her as a sentimentalist with
grievances. Sentimentalism was the shallows of her nature, and she had
no depths. Her conversation ran continually upon the "big things," as
she termed them, such as devotion, endurance, self-sacrifice, and the
rest, in which qualities men were singularly deficient. She meant,
however, only devotion to her, endurance of her, self-sacrifice for
her, of which it was not unnatural that men should tire, seeing who it
was that demanded them. Yet she had enjoyed her share, and more than
her share. For though incapable of passion herself, she had in her
youth possessed the trick of inspiring it, but without the power,
perhaps through her own incapacity, of keeping it alive, and no doubt
too because upon a moderate acquaintance she conveyed an impression of
inherent falsity. For, being a sentimentalist, she lived in a false
world, on the borders of a lie, never quite telling it perhaps, and
certainly never quite not telling it. She was by nature exigent, for
she was in her own eyes the pivot of her little world, and for the
wider world beyond, she had no eyes whatever. And her exigence took
amusing or irritating shapes according to the point of view of those
who suffered it. For instance, you must never praise her costumes, of
which she had many, and those worthy of praise, but the high qualities
of her mind, which were few and often of no taste whatever. It should
be added that she had always favoured an inferior before an equal. For
it pleased her above all things to condescend, since she secured thus
a double flattery, in the knowledge of her own condescension, and in
the grateful humility of those to whom she condescended.
It can be foreseen, then, what answers this woman,--who was tall, and
still retained the elegance of her figure, and would have still
retained the good looks of her face, but that it was written upon by
many grievances--would give to Miranda's questions.
"You can trust no men. You must bribe them with cajoleries; you must
play the coquette; you must enlist their vanity. They are all trivial,
and the big things do not appeal to them."
Miranda listened. She was accustomed to Jane Holt, and had no longer a
reasoned conception of her character. Habit had dulled her
impressions. She remembered only that Jane Holt had had much
experience of men wherein she herself was wofully deficient. Jane Holt
embroidered her theme; a pretty display of petulance, the seemingly
accidental disclosure of an ankle, a voluntary involuntary pressure of
the arm, these things had power to persuade the male mind, such as it
is, and to enmesh that worthless thing the male heart.
"One might have a man for a friend, perhaps," suggested Miranda,
hopefully.
"My poor Miranda!" exclaimed Miss Holt. "No wonder your marriage was a
failure. Men pretend friendship for a woman at times, but they mean
something else."
The moral was always that they were not to be trusted, and Miranda,
vividly recollecting Ralph Warriner and Wilbraham, listened and
wondered, listened and wondered, until she would rise of a sudden and
take refuge in her own parlour, of which the window looked out across
the valley to the hills, where she would sit with a throbbing forehead
pressed upon her palms, certain, certain, that the homily was not
true, and yet half distracted lest it should be true.
On the morrow of one such conversation, and one such flight, Miss Holt
came into the little parlour--a cool, dark-panelled, low-roofed room
of which the door gave on to the patio--and found Miranda searching
the room.
"Do you know what month this is?" Miss Holt asked severely.
"October."
"Quite so," and great emphasis was laid upon the words.
"I know," replied Miranda, penitently, as she crossed over to a table
and lifted the books. "We have been here all the summer; it has been
very hot. I am sorry, but I was compelled to stay. I did not know what
might occur, and," she anxiously turned over the letters and papers on
her writing-table in the window, "it was some comfort, I admit, to
feel that one was near--" She stopped suddenly and resumed in
confusion, "I mean I did not know what might happen."
Jane Holt looked at her with great displeasure, but said nothing
until Miranda began hurriedly to open and shut the drawers of her
writing-table. Then she said irritably: "What in the world are you
looking for?"
Miranda stood up and looked round the room. "There was a glove," she
said absently.
"Yes, I threw it away."
"Threw it away!" Miranda stared at Jane Holt with a look of complete
dismay. "You don't mean that. Oh, you can't mean it!"
"Indeed I do; it was torn across the palm."
"I left it lying there, on my writing-desk, yesterday, after you and I
had been talking--" She left the sentence unfinished.
"Yes, and I found it there. It was torn, so I had it thrown away."
Miranda rang a hand-bell, and ordered search to be made for the glove.
It could not be found; it had been burnt with the answered letters.
"Very well," said Miranda, and the servant retired. Miranda sat down,
and showed to Jane Holt a face of which the expression was almost
scared.
"What does it matter?" exclaimed Jane. "The glove was torn; you could
never have used it."
"No," answered Miranda, quickly, almost guiltily it seemed. "I should
never have used it; I never meant to use it. The glove was only a
symbol; it was no more than that, it represented a belief. I can
retain the belief, no doubt. No doubt, though, I have lost the
glove--"
"What in the world are you talking about?" interrupted Jane Holt.
"Nothing, nothing," answered Miranda, with a start. The loss of the
glove had so dismayed her that she had forgotten who it was she had
been speaking to, or indeed that she was speaking to anyone. She had
merely uttered her thoughts, for she had come to look upon that glove,
which, under no circumstances, would she use, as none the less a
safeguard, and of late, in particular, she had fallen into a habit of
taking it from the drawer in which it rested and setting it before her
eyes; of stating it, as it were, as a refutation of Jane Holt's ready
opinions.
Jane Holt shook her head. "You have changed very much towards me,
Miranda. You are growing secret. I don't want to know. I would not
press anyone for their confidence; but I may think it strange, I
suppose?" She folded her arms across her breast and tapped with her
fingers upon her elbows. "I suppose I may think it strange; and if
anyone took the trouble to give me a thought, perhaps anyone might
believe that I had a right to feel hurt. But I don't! Please don't run
away with that idea! No, I cannot allow you, Miranda, to fancy for a
moment that I should feel hurt. But I do notice that you jump whenever
there is a knock at the door. There! What did I say?"
The door of the parlour stood open to the patio; in the corner of the
opposite side of the patio there was the mouth of a passage which led
to the outer door; and upon that outer door just at this moment
someone rapped heavily, as though he came in haste. Miranda started
nervously, and to cover the movement, rose from her chair and closed
the door.
"And as for the glove," resumed Jane Holt, who found it difficult to
leave any subject alone when it was evident that it was unwelcome,
"you could never have used it."
"No," answered Miranda, thoughtfully. "Of course--of course, I could
never have used it;" and a servant entered the room and handed to her
a card on which was engraved M. Fournier's name and address.
Miranda held the card beneath her eyes for some little while. Then she
walked out into the patio, where M. Fournier awaited her. He came
towards her at once, in an extreme agitation, but she signed to him to
be silent, and opening a second door on the same side of the patio as
the door of her parlour, but farther to the right, she led the way
into a tiny garden rich with deep colours. Jonquils, camellias, roses,
wild geraniums, and pinks, tended with a care which bespoke a mistress
from another country, made a gay blaze in the sun, and sweetened the
air with their delicate perfumes.
The garden was an irregular nook with something or the shape of a
triangle, enclosed between the back wall of the house and a wing flung
out at a right angle. The base of the triangle was an old brick wall,
breast-high, which began at the end of the house wall and curved
outwards until it reached the wing. Over this wall the eye looked
through air to the olive-planted slope of a mountain. For the house
was built on the brink of the precipice, it was in a line with the
Alameda, though divided from it by the great chasm, and if one leaned
over the crumbling wall built long ago by the Moors, one had an
impression that one ought to see the waves churning at the foot of the
rock and to hear a faint moaning of the sea; so that the sight of the
level carpet of the plain continually surprised the eyes.
Into this garden Miranda brought M. Fournier. No windows overlooked
it, for those which gave light to Miranda's parlour were in the end
and the other side of the wing, and so commanded the valley without
commanding this enclosure. A little flagged causeway opened a path
between the flowers to the nook between the wing of the house and the
old wall, where two lounge chairs invited use.
Miranda seated herself in one of these chairs and with a gesture
offered the other to M. Fournier. M. Fournier, however, took no heed
of the invitation. He had eyes only for Miranda's face. He held his
hat in one hand, and with a coloured handkerchief continually mopped
his forehead, a dusty perspiring image of anxiety.
"You come from my husband?" said Miranda.
M. Fournier's face lightened. "Ah, then, you know--"
"That he is alive? Yes. You come from him?"
"From him, no; on his behalf, yes."
Miranda smiled at the subtle distinction. "You need money, of course,"
she said drily. "How much do you want? You have, no doubt, some
authority from my husband."
The little Belgian's anxiety gave place to offended pride. "We do not
need money, neither he nor I; but as for authority, perhaps this will
serve."
He drew from his pocket a soiled scrap of paper and handed it to
Miranda. The paper, as she could see from the blue lines, the shape,
and the jagged border, had been torn from a small pocketbook. It was
so crumpled and soiled that a few words scribbled with a pencil on the
outside in Arabic were barely visible. Miranda unfolded the paper
slowly, for the mere look of it was sinister. The words within were
written also in pencil, and her face altered as she read them.
"What does J. B. mean?" she asked.
"J. B. are the initials of the name he took."
"You are sure this comes from my husband? I do not recognise his
hand."
"Quite sure."
"Here is bad news," said she, and she conned the words over again, and
could nowhere pick out the familiar characteristics of Ralph
Warriner's handwriting. The words themselves were startling. _Reward
the bearer well, and for God's sake do quickly what you can_. But more
startling, more significant, than the words was the agitation of the
writer's hand. Haste and terror had kept the hand wavering. Here the
pencil had paused, yet even when pausing, its point had trembled on
the paper, as the blurred dots showed. Miranda imagined that so it had
paused and trembled, while someone walked by the writer's back and had
but to glance over his shoulder to discover the business he was
engaged upon. Then again the pencil had raced on, running the words
one into the other, fevered to get the message done. A whole tragedy
was indicated in the formation of the letters. Or a malady? Miranda
turned eagerly to the letter. The writing wavered up and down. The
small letters were clear; the capitals and the long letters, the
"f's," the "q's," the "y's," weak, as though the fingers could not
control the pencil. Illness might account for the message, and Miranda
chose that supposition.
"He is lying very ill somewhere," she said.
M. Fournier shook his head. "No. I tried to believe that myself at
first; but I never did believe it, and I thought and thought and
thought--_Tenez_, look!" He drew a piece of blank paper from one
pocket, a pencil from another. The paper he spread upon his knee, the
pencil he took between his teeth; then he held out his wrists.
"Now fasten them together."
Miranda uttered a cry. Her face grew very white. "What with?" she
asked.
"Your belt."
She unclasped her belt from her waist and strapped Fournier's wrists
together.
"Tighter," said he, "tighter. Now see!"
With great difficulty and labour he copied out Warriner's message on
the blank paper; and while he wrote Miranda saw the sentence wavering
up and down, the small letters coming out clear and small, the long
strokes and tails straggling. She seized the copy almost before he had
finished, and held it side by side with the original. There was a
difference, of course, the difference which stamped one man's hand as
Warriner's and the other as Fournier's, the difference of fear, but
that was the only difference. The method in each case was identical;
the same difficulties had produced the same results.
"There can be no doubt, _hein?_" asked Fournier, as Miranda unfastened
the belt.
"How did this come to you?" she returned.
"I tell you," said he, "from the beginning. Bentham--that is what M.
Warriner calls himself now, Bentham--Jeremy Bentham he calls himself,
because he says he's such an economist--well, he and I are partners in
a little business, and we have prospered. So when Bentham came bac
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