“And how does that concern me?” asked Charnock.
“The consequences concern you. It will be known, for instance, that Mrs. Warriner has a real live husband.”
“I see,” said Charnock. He looked at Wilbraham with a curious interest. Then he spoke to Miranda, but without looking towards her at all. “It is blackmail, I suppose?”
“Yes,” said she.
“It is a claim for common gratitude,” Wilbraham corrected.
“What’s the price of the claim?” asked Charnock, pleasantly.
“One thousand jimmies per annum is the minimum figure,” replied the Major, whose jauntiness was quite restored. Since his affairs progressed so swimmingly towards prosperity, he was prepared to forgive, and, as soon as his looking-glass allowed, to forget that hasty slash of the riding-whip.
“And up till now how much have you received?” continued Charnock, in the same pleasant business-like voice.
“A beggarly two hundred and fifty.”
“Then if for form’s sake you will give Mrs. Warriner an I O U for that amount she can wish you good-day.”
Wilbraham smiled gaily, and with some condescension. “Is it bluff?” said he. “Where’s the use? My dear Charnock, I have a full hand, and—”
“My dear Major,” replied Charnock, “I hold a royal straight flush.”
He produced a telegram from his pocket. The Major eyed it with suspicion. “Is that the telegram I brought into your room this morning?”
“It is. To keep up your metaphor, you dealt me my hand. Do you call it?”
The Major cocked his head. Charnock’s ease was so very natural; his good temper so complete. Still, he might be merely playing the game; besides, one never knew what there might be in a telegram. “I do,” he said.
“Very well,” said Charnock. He sat down upon a chair, and spread out the telegram on his knee. “You talk very airily, Major, of dropping in upon Scotland Yard. Would it surprise you to hear that Scotland Yard would welcome you with open arms, for other reasons than a mere gratitude for your information?”
The Major was more than disappointed; he confessed to being grieved. “I expected something more subtle, I did indeed. Really, my dear Charnock, you are a novice! Sir, a novice.”
“But a novice with a royal straight flush. Major, why have you been living for four months at an out-of-the-way and unentertaining place like Tarifa?”
“I will answer you with frankness. I wished to keep my fingers upon Mrs. Warriner. An occasional tweak of the fingers, dear friend, is very useful if only to show that you are awake.”
“Was that the only reason?”
“No,” interposed Miranda. “He wanted quiet; he is translating Horace.”
The Major actually blushed, for the first and last time that morning. Accusations, even proofs of infamy, he could accept without a stir of the muscles; but to be charged, perhaps to be ridiculed, with his one honourable project — the Major was hurt.
“A little mean!” he said gently to Miranda. “You will agree with me when you think it over. A little mean!”
“But there was a third reason beyond those two,” resumed Charnock. “When I saw you dining at the hotel on the night of my arrival, when I remembered that you had been living for four months at Tarifa, where from time to time I had the pleasure to come across you, I began, for reasons which there’s no need to explain, to wonder whether you were causing any trouble to Mrs. Warriner. That night, too, if you remember, when I went for a stroll” — here Charnock faltered for a second, and Miranda looked quickly up— “you followed me, Major. When I sat down at the foot of the bank, you crouched upon the top. You made a mistake there, Major, for I at once thought it wise to learn what I could of your history and character. I accordingly wrote a letter that night to a friend of mine, who also happens to be an official at Scotland Yard. His answer, you see, comes by telegraph, and you will see that a reply is prepaid.”
He handed the telegram to the Major. The Major read it through and glanced anxiously towards the door, taking up his hat from the table at the same time.
“I think so, too,” said Charnock.
“What does the telegram say?” asked Miranda.
“Nothing definite, but every word of it is suggestive,” answered Charnock. “I asked my friend if he knew anything of Major Ambrose Wilbraham. He wires me: ‘Yes. Is he at Ronda?’ and prepays the reply. If there’s a warrant already issued, Major, I don’t think I should waste time, but you of course are the best judge.”
“Did you answer it?” asked the Major.
“I have not answered it yet. Do you think Scotland Yard will wait for an answer? It does not interest me very much. The one point which does interest me is this. You are hardly in a position to enter into communication with Scotland Yard in order to revenge yourself on Mrs. Warriner for not paying you blackmail.”
Major Wilbraham tugged at his moustache. His jauntiness had vanished, and his face had grown very sombre and tired during the last few minutes.
“I get nothing, then?”
“Not one depreciated Spanish dollar.”
There was a knock at the door. The Major started; he looked from Charnock to Miranda, his mouth opened, his eyes widened, he became at once a creature scared and hunted. The door was opened; the three people in the patio held their breath; but it was merely the postman with a letter for Miranda.
“I must get out of here,” said Wilbraham. “I must get out of Ronda. My God, I have to begin it again, have I — the hunt for breakfast and dinner?”
He showed a dangerous face at that moment. His lips were drawn back from his teeth, his eyes furtive and murderous. Miranda felt very glad of Charnock’s presence.
However, the Major mastered himself. He might have taken some sort of revenge by insulting Miranda, on account of her disposition towards Charnock; but he did not, and it was not fear of Charnock which restrained him.
“I go back to the regiment, Mrs. Warriner,” he said, “the regiment of the soldiers of fortune. I have had my furlough — four months’ furlough. I cannot complain.” He endeavoured to speak gaily and to bow with grace.
“Good-bye,” said Charnock.
Miranda was implacably silent.
“And they call women the softer sex,” said the Major.
“One moment,” exclaimed Miranda, taking no notice of his remark. “Mr. Wilbraham has a letter from my husband about the Daventry gun.”
“It is mine,” answered the Major; “it was written to me.”
“I will buy it,” said Charnock.
“For a thousand — ?”
“No; for permission to answer this prepaid telegram to Scotland Yard.”
“In your name?”
“In my name.”
“You’re not a bad fellow, Charnock,” said the Major as he drew out his pocket-book. He handed the letter to Charnock, looked at him curiously, and then laughed softly, without malice.
“O lover of my life! O soldier-saint!”
he quoted. “A great poet, what? Do you know Ralph Warriner? Will you play Caponsacchi to his Guido? You might; very likely you will.” The Major took the reply form and turned away.
“It is not always a profitable habit, it seems,” said Miranda, “that habit of following.”
“A little mean!” said the Major, gently. “Perhaps, too, a little overdone,” and as he went out of the patio Miranda flushed and felt ashamed. Then the flush faded from her cheeks and left her white, for she was alone with Charnock and had to make her account with him.
CHAPTER XVI
EXPLAINS WHY CHARNOCK SAW MIRANDA’S FACE IN HIS MIRROR
MIRANDA ROSE NERVOUSLY from her chair. She made an effort to speak, which failed, and then yielding to a peremptory impulse she ran away. It was only, however, into her parlour that she ran, and thither Charnock followed her. She stood up rather quickly in the farthest corner of the room as soon as he entered, drew a pattern with her foot upon the floor, and tried to appear enti
rely at her ease. She did not look at Charnock, however; on the contrary she kept her eyes upon the ground, and felt very much like a school-girl who is going to be punished.
“Your husband is alive.” Charnock’s voice was cold and stern. Miranda resented it all the more because she knew she deserved nothing less than sternness. “Did you,” he continued, “learn that from Wilbraham for the first time this morning?”
“No,” she answered, and since she had found her voice, she added rebelliously, “No, teacher,” and was at once aware that levity was not in the best of taste. Charnock perhaps was not at that moment in a mood for jocularities.
“How long have you known that your husband was alive?” he asked.
“Five months,” she answered.
“Who told you?”
“You.”
There was a moment’s pause. Miranda’s foot described more figures on the floor, and with great assiduity.
“I beg your pardon,” said Charnock. “It is very humorous, no doubt, but—”
“It is true,” interrupted Miranda. “If I had wished to evade you, to deceive you, I should have answered that Mr. Wilbraham brought me the news this morning.”
“I should have disbelieved it.”
“You could not at all events have disproved it. You would have had not a single word to say.” She raised her eyes now and confronted him defiantly.
“Yes,” said Charnock, “I admit that,” and a great change came over Miranda. She stepped out of her corner. She raised her arms above her head like one waking from sleep. “But I have had my fill of deceptions. I am surfeited. Ask what you will, I’ll answer you, and answer you the truth. And for one thing, this is true: you told me Ralph Warriner was alive, that night, at Lady Donnisthorpe’s.”
“I told you? On the balcony?”
“No, before. In the ball-room. You described him to me. You quoted his phrases. You had seen him that very morning. He was the stranger you quarrelled with in the streets of Plymouth.”
“And you knew him from my description!” cried Charnock. All the anger had gone from his face, all the coldness from his voice. “I remember. Your face grew so white in the shadow of the alcove I should have believed you had swooned but for the living trouble in your eyes. Your face became through its pallor and distress the face which I had seen in my mirror. Oh, that mirror and its message!” He broke into a harsh bitter laugh, and seating himself at the table, beat upon his forehead with his clenched fists. “A message of appeal! A call for help! Was there ever such a fool in all the world? Here’s one woman out of all the millions who needs my help, I was vain enough to think, and the first thing, the only thing that I did, was to tell her that her outcast bully of a husband was still alive to bully her. A fine way to help! But I guessed correctly even that night. Yes, even on that night I was afraid that I had revealed to you some misfortune of which you were unaware. Oh, why wasn’t I struck dumb before I spoke? But you could not have been sure from my description,” he cried eagerly, grasping in his remorse at so poor a straw as that subterfuge. “For men are not all unlike, and they use the same phrases. You could not have been certain. You must have had some other proof before you were convinced.”
“Yes, that is true.”
“And that other proof you got from someone else?” he said, and his voice implored her to assent.
Miranda only shook her head. “I promised to speak nothing but the truth. I got that other proof from you.”
“No, no,” he exclaimed. “Let me think! No, I told you nothing else but just my meeting with the man, my quarrel with him.”
“Yes,” said Miranda. “You told me how you woke up from dreaming of Ralph, and saw my face in your mirror. Don’t you see? There is the convincing proof that the man you described to me, the man you quarrelled with, the man you dreamed of, was Ralph, for when you woke with that dream vivid in your mind, you saw my face vivid in your mirror. You yourself were at a loss to account for it, you had never so much as thought of me during the seven years since — since our eyes met at Monte Carlo. You could not imagine why on that particular night, after you had dreamed of someone else, unassociated with me, my face should have come back to you. But it was no mystery to me. The man you dreamed of was not unassociated with me; it was my husband, and the husband recalled to you the wife, by an unconscious trick of memory.”
“But I did not know he was your husband,” cried Charnock. “I had never seen him with you; I had never seen him at all before that day I quarrelled with him in the streets of Plymouth.”
“You had,” answered Miranda, gently. “He was with me that night at Monte Carlo seven years ago. We were on our honeymoon,” she added, with a queer melancholy smile.
Charnock remembered the look of happiness upon her young face, and compared it with the tired woman’s face which he saw now. “He was with you!” he exclaimed.
“Yes. You forgot us both. You met him again; you did not remember that you had ever seen him, but none the less, the memory was latent in you, and recalled me to you too. You could not trace the association, but it was very clear to me.”
“Wait, wait!” said Charnock. He sat with his elbows on the table and the palms of his hands tightly pressed upon his eyes. “I can see you, as clearly as I saw you then at Monte Carlo, as though you were standing there, now, in the room and I in the room was watching you. You were a little apart from the table, you were standing a few feet behind the croupier at one end of the table. But Ralph Warriner! Was he amongst the players? Wait! Let me think!”
Charnock remained silent. Miranda did not interrupt him, and in a little he began again, piecing together his memories, revivifying that scene in the gambling-room seven years ago. “I can see the lamps with their green shades, I can see the glow of light upon the green table beneath the lamps. I can see the red diamond, the yellow lines upon the cloth, the three columns of numbers in the middle, the crowd about the table, some seated, others leaning over their chairs. But their faces! Their faces!” and then he suddenly cried out, “Ah! He was seated, in front of you, next to the croupier. You were behind him,” and in his excitement he reached out his arm towards her, and with shaking fingers bade her speak.
“Yes,” said she, “I was behind him.”
“You moved to him. I understand now. His back was towards me at the first — when I first saw you, when our eyes met. It was that vision of you, the first, which I carried away, it was that only which I remembered — you standing alone there. It was that which came back to me when I saw your face in my mirror, just the picture of you as you stood alone, distinct from the flowers in your hat to the tip of your shoe, before you moved to the table, before you laid your hand on Ralph Warriner’s shoulder, before he turned to answer you and so showed me his face. I remember, indeed. I saw his hand first of all. It was reached out holding his stake. I can even remember that he laid his stake on impare and then he turned to you. Yes, yes, it’s true,” and Charnock rose from the table in his agitation, and walked once or twice across the room. “It was Ralph Warriner I met at Plymouth, and because of that trivial, ridiculous quarrel, I told you that he lived!”
He stopped suddenly in front of the writing-table, and stood staring out through the window, while his fingers idly played with a newspaper which lay upon the desk.
“But Major Wilbraham,” said Miranda, thinking to lessen his remorse, “Major Wilbraham told me too, and only a month later; he came to me in the Cathedral at Ronda here, and told me. He would have told me in any case.”
“Wilbraham!” said Charnock. “Yes, that’s true. How did he find out? Who told Wilbraham?” and he turned eagerly towards Miranda.
Miranda stammered and faltered. She had not foreseen the question, and she tried to evade it. “He found out. He used his wits. He saw there was profit in the discovery if he could—”
“If he could make the discovery. I understand that; but how did he make the discovery?”
“Why, what does it matter?” cried Mir
anda. “He followed up a clue.”
Charnock noticed her hesitation, her effort to evade his question. “But who gave him the clue?”
Miranda moved restlessly about the room. “He set his wits to work — he found out,” she repeated. She sat down in the same chair in which Charnock had sat. “What does it matter?” she said, and even as Charnock had done, she pressed her hands upon her face.
“You promised me to answer truly whatever question I put to you,” said he, who, the more she hesitated, was the more resolved to know. “I ask you this question. Who gave him the clue?”
“Since you will have it then,” — Miranda drew her hands from her face,— “my poor friend, you did,” she answered gently.
Charnock was more than startled. His face changed. There was something even of horror in his eyes as he leaned across the table towards her. “I?” he gasped. “I did?”
“I would have spared you the knowledge of that,” she said with a smile, “if only you would have allowed me to; but you would not. You pointed out to him a brigantine, which you passed off Ushant.”
“Yes, the Tarifa.”
“The Tarifa was once the Ten Brothers, Ralph’s yacht which was supposed to have been wrecked on Rosevear.”
“But the Ten Brothers was a schooner,” urged Charnock. “I was told only a few weeks ago at Gibraltar — one of the Salcombe — oh yes, that’s true too. I suggested to Wilbraham — to Wilbraham who said he was familiar with the look of the boat — I suggested to him that the Tarifa was one of the Salcombe clippers.”
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 310