“Yes. Wilbraham had known Ralph at Gibraltar, had seen the Ten Brothers, very likely had been aboard of her. That was why the look of the Tarifa was familiar to him. When you told him the Tarifa was a Salcombe boat he understood why it was familiar. It was the merest clue; but he followed it up and found out.”
“And blackmailed you!” continued Charnock.
He turned back to the writing-table and the window. Again his fingers played idly with the newspaper. For a while he was silent; then he said slowly, “Do you remember what you said to me on the balcony? That no man could offer a woman help without doing her a hurt in some other way.”
“I spoke idly,” interrupted Miranda.
“You spoke very truly, for here’s the proof.”
“I spoke to elude you,” said Miranda, stubbornly. “It was a mere idle fancy which came into my head, and the next moment was forgotten.”
“But I remembered it,” cried Charnock. “It was more true than you thought.”
“It was no more true than” — she hesitated. However, Charnock was not looking at her; she found it possible to proceed— “than another belief which led me astray, as this one is leading you.”
“What other belief?”
Miranda nerved herself to answer him. “That no man would serve a woman well, except for — for the one reason.”
The nature of that reason was apparent to Charnock from the very tone in which she spoke the word. “And you believed that?” he asked. In a movement of surprise he had knocked the newspaper off the writing-table. Underneath the newspaper was a book.
“I did believe it,” she replied, her face rosy with confusion, “for a few mad miserable days,” and she checked herself suddenly, for she saw that Charnock had absently opened and was absently turning over the leaves of the book.
“Was the message of your mirror after all so false?” she whispered. He turned towards her, with a face quite illumined. He did not, however, leave the table, and he kept the pages of the book open with his fingers.
“Then after all you do need help?” he cried.
“Need it?” she returned with a loud cry, and she stretched out hands across the table towards him. “Indeed, indeed I need it, I desperately need it! I sent the glove because I needed it.”
“Then the glove was no sham?”
“It was not the glove that you tore; that was thrown away, but not by me. I searched for it, it was not to be found. So I tore the other and sent it as a substitute.”
“And when I came, waited to discover,” he added, “whether the one reason held me to your service. I understand.”
“You see,” she agreed, “really, in my heart, all the time I trusted you, for I knew you would keep your word. I knew you would say nothing, but would just wait and wait until I told you what it was I needed done.”
Charnock turned abruptly towards her, and as he turned the book slipped off the table and fell to the ground. “But yesterday,” he exclaimed in perplexity, “yesterday, here in this room, I gave you the assurance which you looked for. You believed a man would only help you for the one reason. Well, I told you that the one reason held with me; yet, at that moment, you rejected all help and service. You cried out, ‘It’s the friend I want, not the lover.’”
“Because just at that moment I understood that my belief was wrong. I understood the shame, the horror, of the tricks I had played on you.”
“Tricks?” said Charnock. “Oh!” and as he stooped down to pick up the book he added in a voice of comprehension, “At last! You puzzled me yesterday when you said, ‘To possess the friend you had had to make the lover.’”
“Yes,” she said eagerly, “you understand? I want you to. I want you to understand to the last letter, so that you may decide whether you will help me or not, knowing what the woman is who asks your help. I sat down to trick you into caring for me if by any means I could. I did it deliberately, how deliberately you will see if you only open the book you hold. And it wasn’t until I had won that I realised that I had cheated to win and could not profit by the gains. I won yesterday and yesterday I sent you away. Perhaps God kept you here.”
Charnock made no answer. He sat down at the table opposite to Miranda and turned over the leaves of the book, whilst Miranda watched him, holding her breath. He was not angry yet, but she dreaded the moment when he should understand the subject-matter of the book.
The book was a collection of letters written by a great French lady at the Court of Louis XV. to a young girl-relative in Provence, and the letters were intended to serve as a guide to the girl’s provincial inexperience. There was much sage instruction as to the best methods of handling men, “ces animaux effroyables, dont nous ne pouvons ni ne voudrons nous débarrasser,” as the great lady politely termed them. In the margin of the book Miranda’s pencil had scored lines against passages here and there. Charnock read out one: —
“Et prends bien garde de tellement diriger la conversation qu’il parle beaucoup de lui-même.”
“That accounts for the history of my life which I gave you in your garden,” said Charnock. He was not angry yet; he was even smiling.
“Yes,” said Miranda, seriously; “but there’s worse! Go on!”
“Soyez sage, ma mie,” he read, turning over a page. “On ne possede jamais un de ces animaux sans qu’on peut bien disposer d’un autre. Celui que tu aimes, t’aimera aussi si tu fais la cour a un deuxième. Ils ont bien tort qui disent qu’il ne faut que deux pour faire l’amour. Il faut au moins trois.”
“That accounts for Wilbraham, and the basket of flowers for Gibraltar.”
“For Wilbraham, yes,” said Miranda.
Charnock did not notice that she excluded the basket of flowers from her assent. He read out other items, still without any appearance of anger. A foot carelessly exhibited and carefully withdrawn, the young lady in the country was informed, might kick a hole in any male heart, so long as the foot was slim, and the shoe all that it should be. Charnock closed the book and sat opposite to Miranda with a laughing face, enjoying her intense earnestness.
“So you won by cheating?” he said, “and this book taught you how to cheat?”
“Yes, but I don’t think you have grasped it,” she replied seriously, “and I want you to. I want you to understand the horrible, hateful way in which I made you care for me. I now know that I ought to have relied upon your friendship when you first came to Ronda. But I chose the worse part, and if you say that you will not help me, why, I must abide by it, and Ralph must abide by it too. But there shall be nothing but truth now between you and me. I was not content with friendship, I had the time I knew to try to make you care for me in the other way, and I did try hatefully, and hatefully I succeeded—” and to Miranda’s surprise Charnock leaned back in his chair, and laughed loudly and heartily for a long while. The more perplexed Miranda looked, the more he laughed.
“Believe me, Mrs. Warriner,” he said, and stopped to laugh again, “if I had met you for the first time at Ronda, I should have taken the first train back to Algeciras. Your tricks! I noticed them all, and they drove me wild with indignation.”
“Do you mean that?” exclaimed Miranda, and her downcast face brightened.
“I do indeed,” answered Charnock. “Oh, your tricks! I almost hated you for them.” He began to laugh again as he recollected them.
“I am so glad,” replied Miranda, in the prettiest confusion, and as Charnock laughed, in a little her eyes began to dance and she laughed too.
“Shall I tell you what kept me at Ronda?” he said. “Because, in spite of yourself, every now and then yourself broke through the tricks. Because, however much you tried, you could not but reveal to me, now and then, some fleeting glimpse of the woman who once stood beside me in a balcony and looked out over the flashing carriage-lights to the quiet of St. James’s Park. It was in memory of that woman that I stayed.”
He was speaking with all seriousness now, and Miranda uttered a long trembling sigh of gratitu
de. “Thank you,” she said, “thank you.”
“Now what can I do for you?” he asked, and Miranda made haste to reply.
CHAPTER XVII
SHOWS HOW A TOMBSTONE MAY CONVINCE WHEN ARGUMENTS FAIL
SHE SHOWED HIM the scribbled note which M. Fournier had brought; she told him M. Fournier’s story; how that Ralph had run guns and ammunition from England into Morocco on board the Tarifa; how that he had been kidnapped between M. Fournier’s villa and the town-gate; how that he was not held to ransom, since no demand for ransom had come to the little Belgian; and finally how that it was impossible to apply for help to the Legation, since Ralph was already guilty of a crime, and would only be rescued that way in order to suffer penal servitude in England.
“What a coil to unravel!” said Charnock. “I know some Arabic. I could go to Morocco. I went there once, but only to Tangier. But Morocco? How shall one search Morocco without a clue?”
He rested his chin upon his hand, and stared gloomily at the wall. Miranda was careful not to interrupt his reflections. If there was a way out, she confidently relied upon this man to find it. Once she shivered, and Charnock looked inquiringly towards her. She was gazing at the soiled note which lay beneath her eyes upon the table, and saw again the picture of Ralph being beaten inland under the sun. She began to recall his acts and words, that she might make the best of them; she fell to considering whether she had not herself been in a measure to blame for the shipwreck of their marriage. And so, thinking of such matters, she absently hummed over a tune, a soft plaintive little melody from an opéra-bouffe. She ended it and hummed it over again; until it came upon her that Charnock had been silent for a long time, and she looked up from the note into his face.
He was not thinking out any plan. He was watching her with a singular intentness, his head thrust forward from his shoulders, his face very strained. It seemed that every fibre of his body listened and was still, so that it might hear the better.
“Who taught you that tune?” he asked in a voice of suspense.
“Ralph,” said she, in some surprise at the question; “at least I picked it up from him.”
And Charnock fell back in his chair; he huddled himself in it, he let his chin drop upon his breast. He sat staring at her with eyes which seemed suddenly deep-sunk in a face suddenly grown white. And slowly, gradually, it broke in upon Miranda that he held the clue after all, that that tune was the clue, that in a word Charnock knew how Ralph had disappeared.
“You know!” she cried in her elation. “You know! Oh, and I sent you away yesterday! What if you had gone! Only to think of it! You know! That tune has given you the clue? It was Ralph’s favourite! You heard it — when? Where? Tell me!”
To her eager, joyous questions Charnock was silent. He did not move. He still sat huddled in his chair, with his chin fallen on his breast, and his eyes fixedly staring at her. Miranda’s enthusiasm was chilled by his silence; it was succeeded by fear. She became frightened; she picked up the note and held it out to him and bade it speak for her.
Charnock did not take the note or change his position. But he said: —
“Even on your honeymoon, you see, he left you to stand alone, while he gambled at the tables.”
“But you mustn’t think of that,” she cried. “It’s so small a thing.”
“But so typical,” added Charnock, quietly.
Miranda gave a moan and held her head between her hands. That Charnock might refuse to help her, because with tears in her eyes she had played the sedulous coquette, she had been prepared to acknowledge. But that he would refuse to help, out of a mistaken belief that, by refusing to help, he was helping best — that supposition had not so much as occurred to her.
“Read the note again,” she implored him. “Do quickly what you can! And see, it is a week and more since M. Fournier was here. It is a fortnight and more since Ralph was kidnapped in the Sôk. Quickly! And nothing is done, and nothing will be done, unless you do it. Oh, think of him — driven, his hands tied, beaten with sticks, sold for a slave to trudge with loads upon his back, barefooted, through Morocco! You will go,” and her voice broke and was very tender as she appealed to him. “Please! You will have pity on me, and on him.” And she watched Charnock’s face for a sign of assent, her heart throbbing, her foot beating the ground, and every now and then a queer tremulous moan breaking from her dry lips.
Charnock, however, did not soften at the imagined picture of Ralph’s misfortunes, and he hardened his heart against the visible picture of her distress.
“When I was at Algeciras, I asked many questions about Ralph Warriner. I listened to many answers,” he said curtly.
“Exaggerated answers,” she returned, and as Charnock opened his mouth to reply, she hastened to continue: “Listen! Listen! Here’s the strange thing! Not that I should need help, not that you should help me, not that I should come to you for help. Those three things — they are most natural. But that coming to you, I should come to the one man who can help, who already knows the way to help. Don’t you understand? It is very clear to me. You were meant to help, to help me in this one trouble, so you were shown the means whereby to help.” And seeing Charnock still impenetrable, she burst out: “Oh, he will not help! He will not understand!” and she took to considering how it was that he knew, how it was that he recognised the tune.
“You were in Tangier once,” she argued. “Yes. You told me that not only to-day, but at Lady Donnisthorpe’s. You crossed from Gibraltar?”
“Yes, just before I came to England and met you.”
“Just before! Still you won’t understand? You find out somehow — somehow in Tangier you come across a tune, an incident, something. Immediately after you meet a woman, at the first sight of whom you offer her your succour, and the time comes when she needs it, and that one incident you witnessed just before you met her gives you, and you alone in all the world, the opportunity to help her. Don’t you remember, when you first were introduced at Lady Donnisthorpe’s, what was your first feeling — one of disappointment, because I did not seem to stand in any need? Well, I do stand in need now — and now you turn away. And for my sake too! Was there ever such a tangle! Such a needless irony and tangle, and all because a man cannot put a woman from his thoughts!” And then she laughed bitterly and harshly, and so fell back again upon her guesses.
“You were in Tangier — how long?”
“For a day.”
“When? Never mind! I know. I met you in June. You were in Tangier for a day in May. In May!” she repeated, and stopped. Then she uttered a cry. “May, that was the month. M. Fournier said May. You were the man,” and leaning forward she laid a clutching hand upon Charnock’s arm, which lay quiet on the table. “You were the unknown man who cried ‘Look out!’ through the closed door of M. Fournier’s shop.”
Charnock started. He was prepared to deny the challenge, if assent threatened to disclose his clue. But it did not. M. Fournier knew nothing of the blind beggar at the cemetery gate where Charnock had first heard the comic opera tune and registered it in his memory. That was evident, since in all M. Fournier’s story, there was no mention anywhere of Hassan Akbar.
“Yes,” he admitted. “It was I.”
“And you shouted it not as a menace — so M. Fournier thought and was wrong — but as a warning to Ralph, my husband, whom you will not speak a word to save. You spoke a word then, very likely you saved him then. Well, do just as much now. I ask no more of you. Only speak the word! Tell me the clue, I myself will follow it up. Oh, he will not speak!” and in her agitation she rose up and paced the room.
Charnock rose too. Miranda flew to the door and leaned her back against it.
“Just for a moment! Listen to what M. Fournier said! He said that if once we could lay our hands upon the man who shouted through the door, we should lay our hands upon the means to rescue Ralph. Think how truly he spoke, in a truer sense than he intended. You know why he disappeared. You know who captured him. And if you d
on’t speak, I shall have no peace until I die,” and she sat herself again at the table.
“Do you still care for him?” asked Charnock, with some gentleness.
Miranda, who was wrought almost to frenzy, drummed upon the table with her clenched fists.
“Must we debate that question while Ralph—” Then she mastered herself. “I know you,” she said. “If I were to tell you that I loved him heart and soul, you would go upon this errand, straight as an arrow, for my sake. But I promised there should be nothing but truth between you and me. I do not love him. Now, will you go to Morocco? Or, if you will not go, will you speak?”
“No. Let him stay there! Where he cannot harm you. What if I was meant to keep you from rescuing him?”
“You do not know,” she replied. “You can do me no greater service than by rescuing Ralph, by bringing him back to me. Will you believe that?”
“No,” said he, calmly, and she rose from her chair.
“But if I proved it to you?”
“You cannot.”
“I will.”
She looked at the clock.
“It is four o’clock,” she said. “Two hours and a quarter before the train leaves for Algeciras. Will you meet me on the platform? I had thought to spare myself — this. But you shall have the proof. I will not tell you of it, but I will show it to you to-morrow at Gibraltar.”
She spoke now with great calmness. She had hit upon the means to persuade. She was convinced that she had, and he was afraid that she had.
“Very well,” said he. “The 6.15 for Algeciras.”
They travelled to Gibraltar that night. Miranda stayed at the Bristol, Charnock at the Albion; they met the next morning, and walked through the long main street. Here and there an officer looked at her with a start of surprise and respectfully raised his hat, and perhaps took a step or two towards her. But she did not stop to speak with anyone. It was two years since she had set foot within the gates of Gibraltar, and no doubt the stones upon which she walked had many memories wherewith to bruise her. Charnock respected her silence, and kept pace with her unobtrusively. They passed into the square with Government House upon the one side and the mess-rooms upon the other. Charnock sketched a picture of her in his fancies, the picture of a young girl newly-come from the brown solitudes of Suffolk into this crowded and picturesque fortress with the wonder of a new world in her eyes, and contrasted it with the woman who walked beside him, and inferred the increasing misery of her years. He was touched to greater depths of sympathy than he had ever felt before even when she had lain with her head upon her arms in an abandonment of distress; so that now the uncomplaining uprightness of her figure made his heart ache, and the sound of her footsteps was a pain. But of the most intolerable of all her memories he had still to learn. She led him into the little cemetery, guided him between the graves, and stopped before a headstone on which Charnock read: —
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 311