Miranda rose nervously from her chair. She made an effort to speak, which failed, and then yielding to a peremptory impulse she ran away. It was only, however, into her parlour that she ran, and thither Charnock followed her. She stood up rather quickly in the farthest corner of the room as soon as he entered, drew a pattern with her foot upon the floor, and tried to appear entirely at her ease. She did not look at Charnock, however; on the contrary she kept her eyes upon the ground, and felt very much like a school-girl who is going to be punished.
"Your husband is alive." Charnock's voice was cold and stern. Miranda resented it all the more because she knew she deserved nothing less than sternness. "Did you," he continued, "learn that from Wilbraham for the first time this morning?"
"No," she answered, and since she had found her voice, she added rebelliously, "No, teacher," and was at once aware that levity was not in the best of taste. Charnock perhaps was not at that moment in a mood for jocularities.
"How long have you known that your husband was alive?" he asked.
"Five months," she answered.
"Who told you?"
"You."
There was a moment's pause. Miranda's foot described more figures on the floor, and with great assiduity.
"I beg your pardon," said Charnock. "It is very humorous, no doubt, but--"
"It is true," interrupted Miranda. "If I had wished to evade you, to deceive you, I should have answered that Mr. Wilbraham brought me the news this morning."
"I should have disbelieved it."
"You could not at all events have disproved it. You would have had not a single word to say." She raised her eyes now and confronted him defiantly.
"Yes," said Charnock, "I admit that," and a great change came over Miranda. She stepped out of her corner. She raised her arms above her head like one waking from sleep. "But I have had my fill of deceptions. I am surfeited. Ask what you will, I'll answer you, and answer you the truth. And for one thing, this is true: you told me Ralph Warriner was alive, that night, at Lady Donnisthorpe's."
"I told you? On the balcony?"
"No, before. In the ball-room. You described him to me. You quoted his phrases. You had seen him that very morning. He was the stranger you quarrelled with in the streets of Plymouth."
"And you knew him from my description!" cried Charnock. All the anger had gone from his face, all the coldness from his voice. "I remember. Your face grew so white in the shadow of the alcove I should have believed you had swooned but for the living trouble in your eyes. Your face became through its pallor and distress the face which I had seen in my mirror. Oh, that mirror and its message!" He broke into a harsh bitter laugh, and seating himself at the table, beat upon his forehead with his clenched fists. "A message of appeal! A call for help! Was there ever such a fool in all the world? Here's one woman out of all the millions who needs my help, I was vain enough to think, and the first thing, the only thing that I did, was to tell her that her outcast bully of a husband was still alive to bully her. A fine way to help! But I guessed correctly even that night. Yes, even on that night I was afraid that I had revealed to you some misfortune of which you were unaware. Oh, why wasn't I struck dumb before I spoke? But you could not have been sure from my description," he cried eagerly, grasping in his remorse at so poor a straw as that subterfuge. "For men are not all unlike, and they use the same phrases. You could not have been certain. You must have had some other proof before you were convinced."
"Yes, that is true."
"And that other proof you got from someone else?" he said, and his voice implored her to assent.
Miranda only shook her head. "I promised to speak nothing but the truth. I got that other proof from you."
"No, no," he exclaimed. "Let me think! No, I told you nothing else but just my meeting with the man, my quarrel with him."
"Yes," said Miranda. "You told me how you woke up from dreaming of Ralph, and saw my face in your mirror. Don't you see? There is the convincing proof that the man you described to me, the man you quarrelled with, the man you dreamed of, was Ralph, for when you woke with that dream vivid in your mind, you saw my face vivid in your mirror. You yourself were at a loss to account for it, you had never so much as thought of me during the seven years since--since our eyes met at Monte Carlo. You could not imagine why on that particular night, after you had dreamed of someone else, unassociated with me, my face should have come back to you. But it was no mystery to me. The man you dreamed of was not unassociated with me; it was my husband, and the husband recalled to you the wife, by an unconscious trick of memory."
"But I did not know he was your husband," cried Charnock. "I had never seen him with you; I had never seen him at all before that day I quarrelled with him in the streets of Plymouth."
"You had," answered Miranda, gently. "He was with me that night at Monte Carlo seven years ago. We were on our honeymoon," she added, with a queer melancholy smile.
Charnock remembered the look of happiness upon her young face, and compared it with the tired woman's face which he saw now. "He was with you!" he exclaimed.
"Yes. You forgot us both. You met him again; you did not remember that you had ever seen him, but none the less, the memory was latent in you, and recalled me to you too. You could not trace the association, but it was very clear to me."
"Wait, wait!" said Charnock. He sat with his elbows on the table and the palms of his hands tightly pressed upon his eyes. "I can see you, as clearly as I saw you then at Monte Carlo, as though you were standing there, now, in the room and I in the room was watching you. You were a little apart from the table, you were standing a few feet behind the croupier at one end of the table. But Ralph Warriner! Was he amongst the players? Wait! Let me think!"
Charnock remained silent. Miranda did not interrupt him, and in a little he began again, piecing together his memories, revivifying that scene in the gambling-room seven years ago. "I can see the lamps with their green shades, I can see the glow of light upon the green table beneath the lamps. I can see the red diamond, the yellow lines upon the cloth, the three columns of numbers in the middle, the crowd about the table, some seated, others leaning over their chairs. But their faces! Their faces!" and then he suddenly cried out, "Ah! He was seated, in front of you, next to the croupier. You were behind him," and in his excitement he reached out his arm towards her, and with shaking fingers bade her speak.
"Yes," said she, "I was behind him."
"You moved to him. I understand now. His back was towards me at the first--when I first saw you, when our eyes met. It was that vision of you, the first, which I carried away, it was that only which I remembered--you standing alone there. It was that which came back to me when I saw your face in my mirror, just the picture of you as you stood alone, distinct from the flowers in your hat to the tip of your shoe, before you moved to the table, before you laid your hand on Ralph Warriner's shoulder, before he turned to answer you and so showed me his face. I remember, indeed. I saw his hand first of all. It was reached out holding his stake. I can even remember that he laid his stake onimpareand then he turned to you. Yes, yes, it's true," and Charnock rose from the table in his agitation, and walked once or twice across the room. "It was Ralph Warriner I met at Plymouth, and because of that trivial, ridiculous quarrel, I told you that he lived!"
He stopped suddenly in front of the writing-table, and stood staring out through the window, while his fingers idly played with a newspaper which lay upon the desk.
"But Major Wilbraham," said Miranda, thinking to lessen his remorse, "Major Wilbraham told me too, and only a month later; he came to me in the Cathedral at Ronda here, and told me. He would have told me in any case."
"Wilbraham!" said Charnock. "Yes, that's true. How did he find out? Who told Wilbraham?" and he turned eagerly towards Miranda.
Miranda stammered and faltered. She had not foreseen the question, and she tried to evade it. "He found out. He used his wits. He saw there was profit in the discovery if he could--"
"If he could make the discovery. I understand that; but how did he make the discovery?"
"Why, what does it matter?" cried Miranda. "He followed up a clue."
Charnock noticed her hesitation, her effort to evade his question. "But who gave him the clue?"
Miranda moved restlessly about the room. "He set his wits to work--he found out," she repeated. She sat down in the same chair in which Charnock had sat. "What does it matter?" she said, and even as Charnock had done, she pressed her hands upon her face.
"You promised me to answer truly whatever question I put to you," said he, who, the more she hesitated, was the more resolved to know. "I ask you this question. Who gave him the clue?"
"Since you will have it then,"--Miranda drew her hands from her face,--"my poor friend, you did," she answered gently.
Charnock was more than startled. His face changed. There was something even of horror in his eyes as he leaned across the table towards her. "I?" he gasped. "I did?"
"I would have spared you the knowledge of that," she said with a smile, "if only you would have allowed me to; but you would not. You pointed out to him a brigantine, which you passed off Ushant."
"Yes, theTarifa."
"TheTarifawas once theTen Brothers, Ralph's yacht which was supposed to have been wrecked on Rosevear."
"But theTen Brotherswas a schooner," urged Charnock. "I was told only a few weeks ago at Gibraltar--one of the Salcombe--oh yes, that's true too. I suggested to Wilbraham--to Wilbraham who said he was familiar with the look of the boat--I suggested to him that theTarifawas one of the Salcombe clippers."
"Yes. Wilbraham had known Ralph at Gibraltar, had seen theTen Brothers, very likely had been aboard of her. That was why the look of theTarifawas familiar to him. When you told him theTarifawas 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 tomakethe 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 gratitude. "Thank you," she said, "thank you."
"Now what can I do for you?" he asked, and Miranda made haste to reply.
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 theTarifa; 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 anopéra-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 weremeantto 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 don'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 wasmeantto 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:--
RUPERT WARRINER,Aged 2 Years.
and the date of his birth and death.
The headstone was of marble, and had been sculptured with a poetic fancy; a boy, in whose face Charnock could trace a likeness to Miranda, looked out and laughed between the open lattices of a window.
They both watched the grave silently for a while. Then Miranda said gently, "Now do you understand? When Rupert was born, it seemed to me that here was a blossom on the thorn bush of the world. But you see the blossom never flowered. He died of diphtheria. It was hard when he died;" and Charnock suddenly started at her side.
"Those flowers!" he said hoarsely.
Upon the grave were scattered jonquils, geraniums, roses, pinks, camellias--all the rich reds and yellows of Miranda's garden.
"You were cutting them, packing them, that afternoon when Wilbraham came?"
Mrs. Warriner shrank from looking at Charnock.
"Yes," she confessed in a whisper.
"My God!" he exclaimed. Miranda glanced at him in fear. So it was coming; he was remembering the use to which she had put those flowers. Would he loathe her sufficiently to withdraw his help?
"Do you know what I thought?" he continued. "No, you can't guess. You could not imagine it. I actually believed that you were cutting those flowers so that you might send them to--" and he broke off the sentence. "But it's too odious to tell you."
"But I meant you should believe just that," she cried. "I meant you to believe it. Oh, how utterly hateful! How could I have done it? I wanted to hide that from you, but it was right you should know. I must have been mad," and she convulsively clasped and unclasped her hands.
"I understand why you dropped that bunch from the cliff," said Charnock, "after Wilbraham had picked a flower from it."
"I wanted to bring you here," said Miranda, "so that you might know why I ask this service of you. As I told you, I have no love left for Ralph, but he was that boy's father, and the boy is dead. I cannot leave Ralph in Morocco a slave. He was Rupert's father. Perhaps you remember that after I met you at Lady Donnisthorpe's I came back at once to Ronda. I had half determined not to return at all, and when you first told me Ralph was alive, my first absorbing thought was, where should I hide myself? But it occurred to me that he might be in need, and he was Rupert's father. So I came back, and when Wilbraham blackmailed me, I submitted to the blackmail again because he was Rupert's father; and because he was Rupert's father, when I learned in what sore need he stood, I sent that glove to you."
"I understand," said Charnock, and they turned and walked from the cemetery.
"Now will you speak?" she asked.
"No," he returned, "but I will go myself to Morocco."
"It is your life I am asking you to risk," said Miranda, who now that she had gained her end, began at once to realise the consequences it would entail upon her friend.
"I know that and take the risk," replied Charnock.
They walked out towards Europa Point, and turned into the Alameda.
"There is something else," said Miranda. "Your search will cost money. Every farthing of that I must pay. You will promise me that?"
"Yes."
"I wrote to M. Fournier yesterday. He will supply you. There is one thing more. This search will interrupt your career."
"It will, no doubt," he assented readily, and sitting down upon a seat he spoke to her words which she never forgot. "The quaint thing is that I have always been afraid lest a woman should break my career. I lived as a boy high up on the Yorkshire hills, two miles above a busy town. All day that town whirred in the hollow below. I could see it from my bedroom window, and all night the lights blazed in the factories; and when I went down into its streets there were always grimed men speeding upon their business. There was a certain grandeur about it which impressed me,--the perpetual shuffle of the looms, the loud, clear song of the wheels. That seemed to me the life to live. And I made up my mind that no woman should interfere. A brake on the wheel going up hill, a whip in the driver's hand going down,--that was what I thought of woman until I met you."
"And proved it true," cried Miranda.
"And learned that there are better things than getting on," said Charnock.
Miranda turned to him with shining eyes, and in a voice which left him in no doubt as to the significance of her words, she cried:--
"My dear, we are Love's derelicts, you and I," and so stopped and said no more.
They went back to the hotel and lunched together and came out again to the geraniums and bellas sombras of the Alameda. But they talked no more in this strain. They were just a man and a woman, and the flaming sword kept their lips apart. But they knew it and were not aggrieved, for being a man and a woman they knew not grievances.
The evening came down upon Gibraltar, the riding lanterns glimmered upon the masts in the bay; away to the left the lighthouse on Europa Point shot out its yellow column of light; above, the Spanish sky grew purple and rich with innumerable stars.
"The boat leaves early," said Charnock. "I will say good-bye now."
Miranda caught the hand which he held out to her and held it against her breast.
"But I shall see you again--once--please, once," she said, "when you bring Ralph back to me;" and so they separated in the Alameda.
Charnock walked away and left her standing there, nor looked back. Stray lines and verses of ballads which he had heard sung by women in drawing-rooms here and there about the world came back to him--ballads of knights and cavaliers who had ridden away at their ladies' behests. He had laughed at them then, but they came back to him now, and he felt himself linked through them in a community of feeling with the generations which had gone before. Men had gone out upon such errands as he was now privileged to do, and would do so again when he was dust, with just the same pride which he felt as he walked homewards on this night through the streets of Gibraltar. He realised as he had never realised before, through the fellowship of service, that in bone and muscle and blood he was of the family of men, son of the men who had gone before, father of the men who were to follow. The next morning he crossed the straits to Tangier.
He went at once to the taxidermist's shop. M. Fournier expected him, but not the story which he had to tell.
"You wish to discover the man who shouted through your door six months ago," said Charnock. "It was I."
M. Fournier got together his account-books and laid them on the counter of the shop. "I have much money. Where is my friend Mr. Jeremy Bentham?"
"It is Hassan Akbar whom we must ask," said Charnock, and he told Fournier of what he had seen on the day of his previous visit to Tangier.
The two men walked up to the cemetery gate, where Hassan still sat in the dust, and swung his body to and fro and reiterated his cry "Allah Ben!" as on that day when, clothed as a Moor, Ralph Warriner had come down the hill. It was the tune which that Moor had hummed, and which Miranda had repeated, that had led Charnock to identify the victim and the enemy.
Charnock hummed over that tune again as he stood beside the Moor, and the Moor stopped at once from his prayer.
"Hassan Akbar, what hast them done with the Christian who hummed that tune and dropped a silver dollar in thy lap at this gate?"
Hassan made no answer, and as though his sole anxiety had been lest Warriner should have escaped and returned, he recommenced his cry.
"Hassan," continued Charnock, "was it that Christian who betrayed thy wealth? Give him back to us and thou shalt be rich again."
"Allah Beh!" cried Hassan. "Allah Beh!"
"It is of no use for us to question him," said M. Fournier. "But the Basha will ask him, and in time he will answer. To-morrow I will go to the Basha."
Charnock hardly gathered the purport of Fournier's proposal. He went back into the town, and that evening M. Fournier related to him much about Ralph Warriner which he did not know.
The idea of running guns in Morocco had appealed to Warriner some time before he put it into practice, and whilst he was still at Gibraltar.
"I did not know him then," said Fournier. "He had relations with others, very likely with Hassan Akbar, but nothing came of those relations. When he ran from Gibraltar in theTen Brothers, he landed at Tangier, and lay hid somewhere in the town, while he sent theTen Brothersover to South America and ordered the mate to sell her for as much as she would fetch. But in a little while Ralph Warriner met me and asked me to be his partner in his scheme. He had a little money then, and indeed it was just about the time when Hassan's fortune was discovered. It is very likely that our friend told the Basha of Hassan's wealth. If he knew, he would certainly have told," said M. Fournier, with a lenient smile, "for there was money in it. Anyway, he had some money then, I had some, I could get more, and I like him very much. I say yes. He tells me of his ship. We want a ship to carry over the guns. I telegraph to the Argentine and stop the sale. Warriner sent orders to change her rig, as he call it, and her name, and she comes back to us as theTarifa. The only trouble left was this. The most profitable guns to introduce are the Winchester rifles. But for that purpose one of us must go between England and Tangier, must sail theTarifabetween England and Tangier. I could not sail a toy-boat in a pond without falling into the water. How then could I sail theTarifa?So Warriner must do it. But Warriner, my poor dear friend, he has made little errors. He must not go to England, not even as Bentham. To make it safe for Jeremy Bentham to go to England, Ralph Warriner must be dead. You see?"
"Yes, I see. But why in the world did he call himself Jeremy Bentham?" asked Charnock.
"Because he was such an economist. Oh, but he was very witty and clever, my poor friend, when he was not swearing at you. At all events he decided that Ralph Warriner must die, and that there must be proofs that he was dead. So he packed up a few letters--one from his wife before he was married to her--that was clever,hein?A love-letter from hisfiancéewhich he has carried about next to his heart for six years! So sweet! So convincing to the great British public, eh? He found that letter by chance among his charts. He gives it to me and some others in an oilskin case, and sends me with one of his sailors to the Scilly Islands. And then Providence helped us.
"All that we hoped to do was to hear of a wreck, in which many lives were lost, to go out amongst the rocks, where the ship was wrecked, and to pick up that little oilskin case. You understand? Oh, but we were helped. There was a heavy storm for many days at Scilly, and after the storm for many days a fog. On one day the sailor and I--we go out in the fog to the Western Islands, to see if any ship had come ashore. But it was dangerous! I can tell you it was very dangerous and very wet. However, we come to Rosevear, and there was the remnant of a ship, and no sailor anywhere. We landed on Rosevear, and just as I was about to place the oilskin case among the rocks where it would be naturally found, we came upon one dead sailor, lying near to the sea just as if asleep. I slipped the oilskin case into his pocket, and then with stones we broke in his face. Ah, but that was horrible! It made me sick then and there. But we did it, until there was no face left. Then for fear the waves might come up and wash him away, we dragged him up the rocks and laid him amongst the grass, again as though he was asleep. We made a little mistake there. We dragged him too far from the sea. But the mistake did not matter."
"I see," said Charnock. "And that day I shouted through the door Warriner sailed for England?"
"Yes," replied Fournier. "I hired that morning a felucca to sail himself across to Tarifa."
"I remember."
"The boat lay at Tarifa. He set sail that night."
"Yes," said Charnock. "I spent the night here. I waited two days for the P. and O. at Gibraltar, we passed theTarifaoff Ushant, and three days later I met Warriner in Plymouth. Yes, the times fit."
"It is very likely Ralph who told about Hassan," mused M. Fournier, with a lenient smile. "If he knew, he would have been sure to have told; for there was money in it. To-morrow I will see the Basha."
M. Fournier went down to the Kasbah and found the Basha delivering justice at the gates. The suitors were dismissed, and M. Fournier opened his business.
"We do not wish to trouble the Legation," said he. "The Legation would make much noise, and his Shereefian Majesty, whom God preserve, would never hear the end of it. Besides, we do not wish it." And upon that money changed hands. "But if the Englishman told your nobility that Hassan Akbar was hoarding his money in utter selfishness, then your nobility will talk privately with Hassan and find out from him where the Englishman is."
The Basha stroked his white beard.
"The Nazarene speaks wisely. We will not disturb the dignity of his Majesty, whom Allah preserve, for such small things. I will talk to Hassan Akbar and send for you again."
That impenetrable man was fetched from the cemetery gates, and the Basha addressed him.
"Hassan, thou didst hide and conceal thy treasure, and truly the Room told me of it; and since thy treasure was of no profit to thee, I took it."
"When I was blind and helpless," said Hassan.
"So thou wast chastened the more thoroughly for thy profit in the next world, and thy master and my master, the Sultan, was served in this," said the Basha, with great dignity, and he reverently bowed his head to the dust. "Now what hast thou done with the Room?"
But Hassan answered never a word.
"Thou stubborn man! May Allah burn thy great-great-grandfather!" said the Basha, and chained his hands and his feet, and had him conveyed to an inner room, where he talked to him with rods of various length and thickness. At the end of the third day the Basha sent a message to M. Fournier that Hassan's heart was softened by the goodness of God, and that now he would speak.
The Basha received Charnock and M. Fournier in a great cool domed room of lattice-work and tiles. He sat upon cushions on a dais at the end of the room; stools were brought forward for his visitors; and M. Fournier and the Basha exchanged lofty compliments, and drank much weak sweet tea. Then the Basha raised his hand; a door was thrown open; and a blind, wavering, broken man crawled, dragging his fetters, across the floor.
"Good God!" whispered Charnock; "what have they done to him?"
"They have made him speak, that is all," returned M. Fournier, imperturbably. He kept all his pity for Ralph Warriner.
M. Fournier translated afterwards to Charnock the story which Hassan told as he grovelled on the ground, and it ran as follows:--
"When the son of the English first came into Morocco I showed him great kindness and hospitality, and how he returned it you know. So after I was blind I waited. More than once I heard his voice in the Sôk, and in the streets of Tangier, and I knew that he had quarrelled with his own people the Nazarenes, and dared not turn to them for help. I sit by the gate of the cemetery, and many Arabs, and Moors, and Negroes, and Jews come down the road from the country to the market-place, and at last one morning I heard the steps of one whose feet shuffled in hisbabouches; he could not walk in the loose slippers as we who are born to the use of them. And it was not an old man, whose feet are clogged by age, for his stride was long; that my ears told me which are my eyes. It was an infidel in the dress of the faithful. It may be that if I had seen with my eyes, I should never have known; but my ears are sharpened, and I heard. When he passed me he gave me greeting, and then I knew it was the Room. He dropped a dollar into my hands and whistled a tune which he had often whistled after he had eaten of mykouss-kouss, and so went on his way. I rose up and followed him, thinking that my time had come. Across the Sôk I followed him, hearing always the shuffle of the slippers amidst the din of voices and the hurrying of many feet. He did not see me, for he never turned or stopped, but went straight on under the gate of the town, and then turned through the horse-market, and came to a house which he entered. I heard the door barred behind him, and a shutter fixed across the window, and I sat down beneath the shutter and waited. I heard voices talking quickly and earnestly within the room, and then someone rose and came out of the door and walked down the street towards the port. But it was not the man for whom I waited. This one walked with little jaunty, tripping steps, and I was glad that he went away; for the bolt of the door was not shut behind him, and the dog of a Nazarene was alone. I rose and walked to the door. A son of the English stood in the way: I asked him for alms with the one hand and felt for the latch with the other; but the son of the English saw what I was doing and shouted through the door."
"It was I," said Charnock.
Hassan turned his sightless face towards Charnock and reflected. Then he answered: "It was indeed you. And after you had spoken the bolt was shot. Thereupon I went back to the Sôk, and asking here and there at last fell in with some Arabs from Beni Hassan with whom in other days I had traded. And for a long while I talked to them, showing that there was no danger, for the Room was without friends amongst his own people, and moreover that he would fetch a price, every okesa of which was theirs. And at the last they agreed with me that I should deliver him to them at night outside the walls of Tangier and they would take him away and treat him ill, and sell him for a slave in their own country. But the Room had gone from Tangier and the Arabs moved to Tetuan and Omara and Sôk-et-Trun, but after a while they returned to Tangier and the Room also returned; and the time I had waited for had come."
"What have you done with him?" said the Basha. "Speak."
"I besought a lad who had been my servant to watch the Room Bentham, and his goings and comings. With the dollar which he had given me I bought a little old tent of palmetto and set it up in the corner of the Sôk apart from the tents of the cobblers."
"Well?" interrupted M. Fournier, "speak quickly."
"One evening the lad came to me and said the Room had gone up to a house on the hill above the Sôk, where there were many lights and much noise of feasting. So I went down the Sôk to where the Arabs slept by their camels and said to them, 'It will be to-night.' And as God willed it the night was dark. The lad led me to the house and I sat outside it till the noise grew less and many went away. At last the Nazarene Bentham came to the door and his mule was brought for him and he mounted. I asked the boy who guided me, 'Is it he?' and the boy answered 'Yes.' So I dismissed him and followed the mule down the hill to the Sôk, which was very quiet. Then I ran after him and called, and he stopped his mule till I came up with him. 'What is it?' he asked, and I threw a cloth over his head and dragged him from the mule. We both fell to the ground, but I had one arm about his neck pressing the cloth to his mouth so that he could not cry out. I pressed him into the mud of the Sôk and put my knee upon his chest and bound his arms together. Then I carried him to my tent and took the cloth from his head, for I wished to hear him speak and be sure that it was Bentham. But he understood my wish and would not speak. So I took his mule-hobbles which I had stolen while he feasted, and made them hot in a fire and tied them about his ankles and in a little while I made him cry out and I was sure. Then I stripped him of his clothes and put upon him my own rags. The Arabs came to the tent an hour later. I gagged Bentham and gave him up to them bound, and in the dark they took him away, with the mule. His clothes I buried in the ground under my tent, and in the morning stamped the ground down and took the tent away."
"And the chief of these Arabs? Give me his name," said the Basha.
"Mallam Juzeed," replied Hassan.
The Basha waved his hand to the soldiers and Hassan was dragged away.
"I will send a soldier with you, give you a letter to the Sheikh of Beni Hassan, and he will discover the Room, if he is to be found in those parts," said the Basha to M. Fournier.
Charnock spent the greater part of a month in formalities. He took the letter from the Basha and many other letters to Jews of importance in the towns with which M. Fournier was able to provide him; he hired the boy Hamet who had acted as his guide on his first visit, and getting together an equipment as for a long journey in Morocco, rode out over the Hill of the Two Seas into the inlands of that mysterious and enchanted country.