He closed the door behind him. Miranda had neither seen nor heard him enter. She sat opposite to the door, on the other side of the round oak table, her arms stretched out upon the table, her face buried in her arms. She was not weeping, and Charnock might have believed from the abandonment of her attitude that she lay in a swoon, but for one movement that she made. Her outstretched hands were clasped together and her fingers perpetually worked, twisting and intertwisting. There was no sound whatever in the room beyond the ticking of a clock, and Charnock leaned against the door and found the silence horrible. He would have preferred it to have been broken if only by the sound of her tears. All his doubts, all his accusations, were swept clean out of his brain by the sight of her distress, and, tortured himself, he stood witness of her torture. He advanced to the table, and leaning over it took the woman's clasped hands into his.
"Miranda!" he whispered, and again, "Miranda!" and there was just the same tenderness in his voice, as when he had first pronounced the name in the balcony over St. James's Park.
Miranda did not lift her head, but her hands answered the clasp of his. She did not in truth know at that moment who was speaking to her. She was only sensible of the sympathy of his touch and the great comfort of his voice.
Charnock bent lower towards her.
"I love you," he said, "you--Miranda."
Then she raised her face and stared at him with uncomprehending eyes.
"I love you," he repeated.
She looked down towards her hands which he still held and suddenly she shivered.
"I love you," he said a third time.
And she understood. She wrenched her hands away, she stretched out her arms, she thrust him away from her, in her violence she struck him.
"No, it's not true," she cried, "it's not true!" and so fell to pleading volubly. "Say that it's not true, now, at once. Say there's no truth in your words. Say that pity prompted them and only pity," and her voice rose again in a great horror. Horror glittered too in her eyes. "Say that you spoke more than you meant to speak!"
"I can say that," he answered. "When I came into this room I had no thought of speaking--as I did. But I saw you--I watched your hands," and he caught his breath, "and they plucked the truth out from me. For what I said is true."
"No!" she cried.
"Very true," he repeated quietly.
Her protesting arms fell limply to her sides. She nodded her head, submitted to his words, acknowledged their justice.
"Yes," she said, "yes. I knew this afternoon. You told me in the garden, and though I would not know, still I could not but know."
Then she rose from her chair and walked to the window. Charnock did not speak. He hung upon her answer, and yet dreaded to hear it, so that when her lips moved, he would have had them still, and when they ceased to move, he was conscious of a great relief. After a long while she spoke, very slowly and without turning to face him, words which he did not understand.
"Love," she said, in a wondering murmur, "is it so easily got? And by such poor means? Surely, then it's a slight thing itself, of no account, surely not durable," and at once her calmness forsook her; she was caught up in a whirl of passion. She raised a quivering face, and cried aloud in despair: "It's the friend I wanted; I want no lover!"
"But you have both," returned Charnock. With a hand upon the table he leaned over it towards her. "You have both."
"Ah!" exclaimed Miranda. With extraordinary swiftness she swung round and copied his movement. She leaned her hand upon the table, and bent forward to him. "But to win the one I have had to create the other. To possess the friend I have had to make the lover," and she suddenly threw herself back and stood erect. "Well, then," and she spoke with a thrill in her voice, as though she had this instant become aware of a new and a true conviction, "I must use neither--I will use neither--I want neither."
She faced Charnock resolute, and in her own fancy inflexible to any appeal. Only he made no appeal; he drew his hand across his forehead and looked at her with an expression of simple worry and bewilderment.
"My ways have lain amongst men, and men, and men," he said regretfully. "I wish I understood more about women."
The simplicity of his manner and words touched her as no protestations would have done, and broke down her self-control.
"My dear, my dear!" she cried, with a laugh which had more of tears in it than amusement, "I am not so sure that we understand so very much about ourselves;" and she dropped again into the chair and covered her face with her hands. But she heard Charnock move round the table towards her, and she dared not risk the touch of his hand, or so much as the brushing of his coat against her dress. She drew her hands from her face, held out her arms straight in front of her like bars, and shrank back in the chair behind the protection of those bars.
"I do not want you," she said deliberately, with a quiet harshness. "That, at all events, I understand and know. Go! Go away! I do not want you!" and the words, spoken this time without violence or haste, struck Charnock like a blow.
He stood dazed. He shook his head, as though it sang from the blow. Miranda drew in a breath. "Go!" she repeated.
"You do not want me?" he asked, and somehow, whether it was owing to his tone or his look, Miranda understood from the few words of his question how much he had built upon the belief that she needed him; and consequently the reply she made now cost her more than all the rest to make. "I do not," she managed to say firmly, and dared not hazard another syllable.
Charnock felt in his breast-pocket, took out an envelope, and from the envelope a glove. "Yet this was sent to me." He laid the glove upon the table. "It was sent by you." Miranda took it up. "It contradicts your words."
Miranda turned the glove over, and stretched it out upon her knees. "Does it?" she asked, with a slow smile, "does it contradict my words?"
"You sent it to me?"
"No doubt."
"You summoned me by sending it."
"Surely."
"For some purpose, then?"
"Ah, but for what purpose?" said she, leaning forwards in her chair. The cold smile was still upon her face, and seemed to Charnock unfriendly as even her violence had not been. It had some cruelty too, and perhaps, too, some cunning.
"For what purpose? You should know. It is for you to say," he answered in a dull, tired voice. He had built more upon this unneeded service than he himself had been aware.
"I will tell you," continued Miranda. "You have talked to my companion Miss Holt?"
"Yes."
"She has no very strong faith in men. Perhaps you noticed as much."
"No."
"I did not agree with her. I had the glove. It would be--amusing to know whether she was right or whether I was. I sent it to you."
"Just to prove whether I should keep my word or not?"
"Yes," said Miranda.
"Just for your amusement, in a word?"
"Amusement was the word I chose."
"I see, I see." His voice was lifeless, his face dull and stony. Miranda moved uneasily as she watched him; but he did not notice her movement or regard her with any suspicion. His thoughts and feelings were muffled. He seemed to be standing somewhere a long way outside himself and contemplating the two people here in the room with a deal of curiosity, and with perhaps a little pity; of which pity the woman had her share with the man. "I see," he continued. "It was all a sham?"
Miranda glanced at him, and from him to the glove. "Even the glove was a sham," she said quickly. "Look at it."
He bent down and lifted it from her knees. Then he drew up a chair to the table, sat down, and examined the glove. Miranda hitched her chair closer to the table, too, and propping her elbows there, supported her chin upon her hands.
"You see that the glove is fresh," she said.
"It has been worn," answered Charnock. "The fingers have been shaped by wearing."
"It was worn by me for ten minutes in this room the day I posted it to you."
"But the tear?" he asked with a momentary quickening of speech.
"I tore it."
"I see." He laid the glove upon the table. "And the other glove--the one you wore that night--the one I tore upon the balcony over St. James's Park? It was you I met that night in London? Or wasn't it?"
The question was put without any sarcasm, but with the same dull curiosity which had marked his other questions, and on her side she answered it simply as she had answered the others. "Yes, it was I whom you met, and the glove you speak of was thrown away."
It seemed that he had come to the end of his questions, for he sat for a little, drumming with his fingers on the table. Once he looked up and towards the window, as though his very eyes needed the relief of the wide expanse of valley.
"Now will you go? Please," said Miranda, gently, and the next moment regretted that she had spoken.
"Oh, yes, I will go," he answered. "I will go back to Algeciras, and from Algeciras to England." He was not looking at her, and so noticed nothing of the spasm of pain which for a second convulsed her face at his literal acceptation of her prayer. "But before I go, tell me;" and the questions began again.
"You say you need no one?"
"No one."
"Then why did you cry out a minute ago, 'It's the friend I want, not the lover'? You were not amusing yourself then. Why, too, did you--this afternoon in the garden, perhaps you remember--when the flowers fell on to the ground between us? Neither were you amusing yourself then."
Miranda drew the glove away from where it lay in front of him; absently she began to slip it over her hand, and then becoming aware of what she did, and of certain associations with that action at this moment, she hurriedly stripped it off.
"Perhaps I have no right to press you," he said; "but I should like to know."
Miranda spread the glove out on the table, and carefully divided and spread out the fingers. "I will tell you," she said at length, with something of a spirt in the quickness of her speech. "I am still capable of remorse, though very likely you can hardly believe that. Do you remember," she began to speak with greater ease, "when we rode out to Ronda La Viega, I asked you why you never expressed what you felt? I was then beginning to be afraid that you would take my--my trick too much to heart--that you would really think I needed you. My fear became certain this afternoon, when I--I was putting the flower in your coat. I was sorry then, as you saw when you came into the room. I was yet more sorry when you spoke to me as you did, for I thought that if you hadn't cared, if you had never intended to be more than my friend, the trick would not have mattered so much. And that was just what I meant, when I said it was the friend I wanted, not the lover."
Charnock listened to the explanation, accepted it and put it away in his mind.
"I see," he remarked, and her bosom rose and fell quickly. "All this time you have been just playing with me as you played with Wilbraham this afternoon."
"Just in the same way," she returned without flinching.
"Ah, but you dropped his flower down the cliff," he exclaimed suddenly.
"You forget that yours had already fallen on to the ground."
"Yes, that's true," and the suspicion died out of his face. "And that basket of flowers?" he asked.
This time, and for the first time since the questions had begun, Miranda did flinch. She had a great difficulty in answering, "It has already been sent off."
"To Gibraltar?" Miranda's difficulty increased. "To whom at Gibraltar? A friend, a man?"
Miranda's face grew very white; she tried to speak and failed; her throat, her lips, refused the answer. "At all events," she managed to whisper hoarsely, "not to a woman," and thereupon she laughed most mirthlessly, till the strange, harsh, strangled noise of it penetrated as something unfamiliar to Charnock's dazed mind.
"I beg your pardon," he said; "I was forgetful. I had no right to ask you," and he rose from his chair. She rose too. "I am glad," he continued with a formal politeness, "that you do not after all stand in need of anyone's help."
"Oh, no," she replied carelessly, "no one's;" and almost before she was aware, he was holding her wrists, one in each of his hands, and with his eyes he was searching her face, silently interrogating her for the truth. Once before, upon the balcony, he had bidden her in just this way answer him, and now, as then, she found herself under a growing compulsion to obey.
"You hurt me," she had the wit to say, and instantly Charnock released her wrists.
"I beg your pardon," said he, and he walked to the door. At the door he turned. "Tell me," he said abruptly, "you dropped your glove--not that one on the table, but the other--just as you stepped out on to the balcony?"
"Yes," she answered, and wondered what was coming.
"Was that an accident?"
Miranda stepped back and lowered her head.
"You remember everything," she murmured.
"Was it an accident?"
"You are unsparing."
"Was it an accident?"
"No."
"It was a trick, a sham like all the rest?"
"Just like all the rest," said Miranda, wearily.
"I see," said Charnock. "Good-bye."
He went out of the room and closed the door behind him.
It was very quiet and still in the patio. In the square of blue sky there was no cloud; the sunshine poured into the court, only in one corner there was a shadow climbing the wall, where there had been no shadow when he entered the room. He vaguely wondered what the time was, and then someone laughed. Someone above him. He looked up. Jane Holt was leaning over the railing of the balcony.
He made some sort of remark; and he gathered from her reply that he had been asking why she laughed.
"Why did I laugh?" she said. "Do you believe in affinities?"
"No," he rejoined. "Why?"
She descended the stairs as she answered him.
"I saw you standing in the doorway there with your hand on your throat, breathing hard and quick, and altogether a very tragical picture."
Charnock was not aware whether the details were true or not. "Well?" he asked.
"Well," she replied. "Do you remember the afternoon you came here? I was in that lounge chair. You were shown into the parlour. You did not notice me. Neither did Miranda when she followed you. But she stopped on the threshold."
"Yes, I remarked it. She stopped for some while. Well?"
"Well, she stood just as you were standing a minute ago, in that precise attitude, with her hand to her throat, breathing hard and quick, and with a face not less tragical."
Charnock's face now at all events ceased to look tragical. Jane Holt saw it brighten extraordinarily. Miranda, had she been there, would not at this moment have complained of its lack of expression.
"That's true?" he asked eagerly. "What you tell me is true? She stood here, and in that attitude?"
"Yes."
"That's the one point unexplained. I forgot to ask. She did not refer to it. She stood here breathing hard and quick, you say, before she entered the room--with all that appearance of surprise--she stood here! Mere remorse does not account for that, does not account for her manner. On her own showing it cannot account, since the remorse was only felt this afternoon. Thereissomething more." He was talking enigmas to Miss Holt, who went into the parlour and left him in the patio to talk to himself if he would. She was not greatly interested in his relationship towards Miranda. However, Charnock was not the only person to talk enigmas to her that afternoon. She found Miranda standing just as Charnock had left her. Miranda remained standing, with any absent answer to Jane Holt's remarks, until the big outer-doors clanged to, and made the house tremble.
Then she started violently. The sound of those doors shook her as no word or look of Charnock's had done. Her ears magnified it. It seemed to her that the doors swung to from the east and from the west, clean across the world, shutting Charnock upon the one side, and herself upon the other. It seemed to her too that as they clanged together, her heart was caught and broken between them.
"You were wrong, Jane," she said. "There are men who would be friends if we would only let them. Possibly we always find it out too late; I only found it out this afternoon." The clock struck the hour as she was speaking. "Four o'clock; the train for Algeciras leaves at six-fifteen," she said.
All that evening Miranda's imagination followed the 6.15 train from Ronda to Algeciras. She looked at the clock at half-past ten. The ferry would be crossing from Algeciras to Gibraltar, and no doubt Charnock was crossing upon it. She felt a loneliness of which she had never had experience. And when she woke up in the morning from a troubled sleep, it was only to picture some stately mail steamer marching out from Algeciras Bay. She was conscious to the full of the irony of the situation. If she had only met this man years ago, seven years ago--that regret was a continual cry at her heart, and not the least part of her loneliness was made up from her clear remembrance of the picture of herself which she had given him to carry away.
She ordered her horse to be brought round early that morning, and rode out past the hotel a few minutes before nine. Major Wilbraham saw her pass. He was down betimes as a rule when he stayed in a hotel, since it was his habit, as often as possible, to look over the letters which came for the different visitors. The mere postmark he had known upon occasion to give him quite valuable hints. There was only, however, a telegram for Charnock, which he genially offered to deliver himself and did deliver, running into Charnock's bedroom for that purpose. Charnock thanked him and read the telegram. It seemed to raise his spirits.
"Good news, old friend?" asked the Major.
"Well--interesting news," replied Charnock, as he lathered his face.
"Well, you shall give me it another time," said the Major, as he saw Charnock put the telegram in his pocket. "So long!"
The Major went downstairs and kept an eye upon the road. At ten o'clock he noticed Miranda returning slowly. He put on his hat and followed her. When he reached the house the horse was still at the door, but Miranda had gone in. He observed that Charnock was hesitating upon the other side of the road. Charnock was in fact debating his plan of action; the Major's was already prepared. The door stood open. Wilbraham put ceremony upon one side, the more readily since ceremony would very likely have barred the door in his face. He walked straight into the patio where Miranda stood before a little wicker table drawing off her gloves.
"Had a pleasant ride?" said the Major. "Nice horse; I am partial to roans myself--"
"What do you want?" asked Miranda.
"To so uncompromising a question, I must needs give an uncompromising reply. I want one thousand jimmies per annum," and the Major bowed gracefully.
"No," said Miranda.
"But excuse me, yes, very much yes. You see, there is my excellent young friend, the locomotive-man."
"Can't you keep his name out of the conversation?" she suggested, but with a dangerous quietude of voice.
"Indeed no," replied the Major, who was entirely at his ease. He looked sympathetically at her face. "You look pale; you have not slept well; you are tired, and so you do not follow me. Charnock is my God of the machine, a blind unconscious God--shall we say a Cupid, but a Cupid in the machine? Let me explain! May I be seated? No? So sorry! On the first night of Charnock's stay at Ronda, I had the honour to follow him while he took a stroll."
"You followed him unseen, of course?" said Miranda, contemptuously, as she tossed her gloves on to the wicker table.
"You take me, you take me perfectly," returned the Major. "I followed him unseen, a habit of mine, and at times a very profitable habit. Charnock walked--whither? Can you guess? Can't you tell?" He hummed with unabashed impertinence. "He walked down a certain road which winds down the precipice under your windows. Ah!"--he uttered the exclamation in a playful raillery, for Miranda's hand had gone to her heart; "he walked down that road until he came to an angle from which he could see your lighted window."
"Show me," said Miranda, suddenly. She walked round the patio, threw open the door of her parlour, and crossed to the window. The window was open, and the Major looked out. The window was in the outer wall of the wing, and was built on the very rim of the precipice. Wilbraham looked straight down on to the road.
"That was the angle, Mrs. Warriner," said he, pointing with his finger. "By that heap of stones he sat him down." Mrs. Warriner leaned out of the window with something of a smile parting her lips. "At the bottom of the bank he sat and aspired. Little Ambrose reclined on the top."
Miranda turned from the window abruptly. "Let us go back." She returned to the patio and took her former position by the wicker table. Wilbraham, upon the other side of it, faced her.
"We could only see the ceiling of the room," he continued, "and the shadow of your head. But so little contents an amorous engineer. He sighed, and what a sigh, and yet how typical! So hoarse it seemed the whistle of an engine; so deep, it surely came from a cutting. He went home singing beneath the stars. He did not tread the ground. How should he? Love was his permanent way."
Miranda had listened so far without interruption, though the Major, had he been less pleased with his flowery description, might have noticed something ominous in the still depths of her dark eyes. "Mr. Wilbraham," she said, "there is a little wicker table between us."
"I see it."
"And on the table?"
"A pair of gloves."
"Not only a pair of gloves."
"Ah true! A riding-whip."
"I was sure that you had not noticed it before."
The Major picked it up and examined the mounting of the handle. "It is very pretty," he remarked with emphasis, and laid it down again. "As I was about to say,"--he proceeded with his argument,--"I thus obtained on the night of Charnock's arrival a very clear knowledge of his sentiments towards you, while you, on the other hand, have been obliging enough to favour me with some hint of your own towards him, not merely this morning, when you asked me to point out the precise point of the road from which he worshipped your window, but yesterday when, in order to give an impetus to his bashfulness, you ingeniously courted myself. If I were, then, at all disposed to make unpleasantness, you see that all I have to do is to walk out of your house and inform the trustful Charnock that Mrs. Warriner is carefully concealing the existence of her husband from the man with whom she is in love."
Miranda took up the riding-whip. The Major did not give ground. If anything, he leaned a little towards her. His eyebrows drew together until they joined; his bird-like eyes narrowed.
"Drop it! Drop that whip," he commanded sharply. "I warn you, Mrs. Warriner. I have dealt with you gently, though you are a woman; be prudent. What if I took the gloves off? Eh?"
"You would place me in a better position," replied Miranda, who still held the whip, "to point out to you that your hands are not clean."
Wilbraham stepped back, stared at her, and burst into a laugh. "I will never deny that you are possessed or an admirable spirit," said he.
"I would rather have your threats than your compliments," said she. "For your threats I can answer with threats; I cannot do the same with your compliments."
"Threat for threat, then," said the Major; "but there's a difference in the threats. You cannot put yours into practice since I have my eyes upon the whip, whereas I can mine."
"Can you?" said Miranda, with a suspicion of triumph.
"I can," returned the Major. "I can walk straight out of your house and tell Luke Charnock," and he banged his hand upon the table and leaned over it. "Now what do you say?"
"I say that you cannot, for Mr. Charnock is at Gibraltar, if he is not already on the sea."
"Mr. Charnock is at Ronda, and contemplating the ornaments of your door at this very moment," said the Major, triumphantly.
But never did a man get less visible proofs of his triumph. Miranda, it is true, was evidently startled; her bosom rose and fell quickly; but she was pleasurably startled, as her face showed. For it cleared of its weariness with a magical swiftness, the blood pulsed warmly in her cheeks, her eyes sparkled and laughed, her contemptuous lips parted in the happiest of smiles.
Wilbraham construed her reception of his news in his own fashion.
"You may smile, my lady," said he, brutally. "It's gratifying no doubt to have your lover hanging about your doors, a wistful Lazarus for the crumbs of your favour. It's pleasant no doubt to transform a man into a tame whipped puppy-dog. There's not one of you, from Eve to a modern factory-girl, but envies Circe her enchantments, and imitates them to the best of her ability. Circes--Circes in laced petticoats and open-worked stockings--to help you in the dainty work of making a man a beast." The Major's vindictiveness had fairly got hold of him. "But in the original story, if you remember, the men resumed their shape; now what if I play Ulysses in our version of the story!--" There was a knock upon the outer door. The Major paused, and continued hurriedly: "Do you understand? That knock may have been Charnock's. Do you understand? He may be entering the house at this moment."
"He is," said Miranda, quietly.
The Major listened. He distinctly heard Charnock's voice speaking to the servant; he dropped his own to a whisper. "Then what if I told him, your lover, now and here, the truth about Ralph Warriner?"
"You shall," said Miranda.
Major Wilbraham was completely taken aback. She had spoken in no gust of passion, but slowly and calmly. Her face, equally calm, equally resolute, showed him that she intended and understood what she had said. The Major was in a predicament. The drawback to blackmailing as a profession is that the blackmailer's secret is only of value so long as he never tells it, his threats only of use so long as they are never enforced; and here he was in imminent danger of being compelled to tell his secret and execute his threat. If Charnock knew the truth, he would certainly lose his extra three hundred per annum. Moreover, since Charnock was a man, and not a woman, he would very likely lose his original seven hundred into the bargain. These reflections flashed simultaneously into the Major's mind; but already he heard Charnock's step sounding in the passage. "I don't wish to push you too far," he whispered. "Tomorrow, to-morrow."
"No, to-day," said Miranda, quietly. "You shall tell my lover the truth about Ralph Warriner, and to help you to tell it him convincingly you shall tell it with this mark across your face."
Charnock did not see the blow struck, but he heard Wilbraham's cry, and as he entered the patio, he saw the wheal redden and ridge upon his face. He stood still for a second in amazement. Wilbraham had reeled back from the table against the wall, with his coat-sleeve pressed upon his smarting cheeks. Miranda alone seemed composed. There was indeed even an air of relief about her; for she was at last to be lightened of the deception.
"Major Wilbraham," she said as she dropped the whip upon the table and walked away to a lounge chair, "Major Wilbraham,"--she seated herself in the chair as though she was to be henceforward a spectator,--"Major Wilbraham has a confidence to make to you," she said.
"And by God I have!" snarled the Major as he started forward. It would be told for a certain thing, either by Mrs. Warriner or himself, and since the slash of the whip burned intolerably upon his face, he meant to do the telling himself.
"That woman's husband is alive."
Charnock's face was a mask. He did not start; he did not even look at Miranda; only he was silent for some seconds. Then he said, "Well?" and said it in a quite commonplace, ordinary voice, as though he wondered what there was to make any pother about.
Miranda was startled, the Major utterly dumbfoundered. His blow had seemingly failed to hurt, and his anger was thereby redoubled.
"A small thing, eh?" he sneered. "A husband more or less don't matter in these days of the sacred laws of passion? Well, very likely. But this husband is a peculiar sort of a husband. He slipped out of Gibraltar one fine night. Why? Because he had sold the plans of the new Daventry gun to a foreign government, being stony."
"Well?" said Charnock, again.
"Well, I know where he is."
"Well?" asked Charnock, for the third time, and with an unchanged imperturbability.
Wilbraham suddenly ceased from his accusations. He looked at Miranda, who was herself looking on the ground, and gently beating it with her foot. From Miranda he looked to Charnock. Then he uttered a long whistle, as if some new idea had occurred to him. "So you are both in the pretty secret, are you?" he said, and stopped to consider how that supposition affected himself. His hopes immediately revived. "Why, then, you are both equally interested in keeping it dark! I can't say but what I am glad, for I can point out to you precisely what I have pointed out to Mrs. Warriner. I have merely to present myself at Scotland Yard, observe that Ralph Warriner is alive, and mention a port in England where he may from time to time be found, and--do you follow me?--there is Ralph Warriner laid by the heels in a place which not even a triple-expansion locomotive, with the engineer from Algeciras for the driver, will get him out of."
"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.