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.
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 theMajor.
"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 thevivandièreswhom 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 resumeLife after death; for 'tis no less than lifeAfter such long, unlovely labouring days.
"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."
"Chainsareunpleasant," 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 readingHenrietta 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 steamerIndiaat 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, theTarifa. 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 theTen Brotherswas 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 theTen Brotherswrecked upon Rosevear. I eliminated theTen 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; theTarifamight never have been anything but theTarifaand 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 theTarifaherself. 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. TheTarifa'sbusiness began to provoke my curiosity. Here was (shall we say?) a needless lack of ceremony to begin with. It didn't seem as if theTarifahad many anxious friends awaiting her arrival. Besides that, supposing that my suspicions were right, that theTarifawas theTen Brothersmasquerading 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 theTarifawas 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 theWestern Morning Newsand 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 theTarifahad dropped her anchor at Falmouth. I took the first train out of Plymouth, and sure enough I picked theTarifaup 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 theTarifameant 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. "TheTarifa'spapers 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 theTarifa'spapers 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 theTen Brotherswent 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. "TheTarifawas 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 theTen Brothers, of which Captain Ralph Warriner was the certificated master. And observe, please, the whole crew of theTen Brotherswas reported lost upon Rosevear."
"Thomas Discipline might have left theTen Brothersbefore," argued Miranda. "His presence on theTarifadoes 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 theTarifawas 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 theTen Brothersor 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 theTarifapassed 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 theTarifaa 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 theTarifaalong the Spit to the Lizard point.
"I was certain of one thing: that no Captain Warriner had come aboard at Falmouth. So if theTarifakept 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 theTarifawas 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 theTarifamade 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 theTarifahad 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 theTarifaat 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 theTarifa. 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 theTarifa, 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 theTarifacame 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 theTarifaand 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 theTarifabelow 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 theTarifacarry 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. TheTarifawas 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 theTarifa, 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 thecoup de theateron 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 theLyonnessestarted 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 anentr'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.