TREATS OF A GENTLEMAN WITH AN AGREEABLE COUNTENANCE, AND OF A
WOMAN'S FACE IN A MIRROR
Major Ambrose Wilbraham had embarked at Marseilles, and before the
boat reached Gibraltar he had made the acquaintance of everyone on
board, and had managed to exchange cards with a good many. The steamer
was still within sight of Gibraltar when he introduced himself to
Charnock with a manner of effusive jocularity to which Charnock did
not respond. The Major was tall and about forty years of age. A thin
crop of black hair was plastered upon his head; he wore a moustache
which was turning grey; his eyebrows were so faultlessly regular that
they seemed to have been stencilled on his forehead, and underneath
them a pair of cold beady eyes counterfeited friendliness. Charnock
could not call to mind that he had ever met a man on whom geniality
sat with so ill a grace, or one whose acquaintance he less desired to
improve.
Major Wilbraham, however, was not easily rebuffed, and he walked the
deck by Charnock's side, talkative and unabashed.
Off the coast of Portugal the boat made bad weather, and she laboured
through the cross-seas of the Bay under a strong south-westerly wind.
Off Ushant she picked up a brigantine which Charnock watched from the
hurricane deck without premonition, and indeed without more than a
passing curiosity.
"Fine lines, eh, Charnock old fellow!" said a voice at his elbow.
The brigantine dipped her head into a roller, lifted it, and shook the
water off her decks in a cascade of snow.
"I have seen none finer," answered Charnock, "except on a racing-yacht
or a destroyer."
"She's almost familiar to me," speculated the Major.
"She reminds me of some boats I saw once at the West Indies," returned
Charnock, "built for the fruit-trade, and so built for speed. Only
they were schooners--from Salcombe, I believe. The Salcombe clippers
they were called."
"Indeed!" said the Major, with a sharp interest, and he leaned forward
over the rail. "Now I wonder what her name is."
Charnock held a pair of binoculars in his hand. He gave them to the
Major. Wilbraham raised them to his eyes while the P. and O. closed
upon the sailing-boat. The brigantine slid down the slope of a wave
and hoisted her stern.
"The 'Tarifa,'" said the Major, and he shut up the binoculars. "What
is her tonnage, do you think?"
"About three hundred, I should say."
"My notion precisely. Would it be of any advantage to alter her rig,
supposing that she was one of the Salcombe schooners?"
"I should hardly think so," replied Charnock. "I rather understood
that the schooners were noted boats."
"Ah, that's interesting," said Wilbraham, and he returned the
binoculars. The steamer was now abreast of the brigantine, and in a
little it drew ahead.
"By the way, Charnock, I shall hope to see more of you," resumed Major
Wilbraham. "I haven't given you a card, have I?"
He produced a well-worn card-case.
"It's very kind of you," said Charnock, as he twirled the card between
his forefinger and his thumb. "Don't you," he added, "find cards
rather a heavy item in your expenses?"
Major Wilbraham laughed noisily.
"I take you, dear friend," he exclaimed, "I take you. But a friend in
this world, sir, is a golden thread in a very dusty cobweb."
"But the friendship is rather a one-sided arrangement," rejoined
Charnock. "For instance, the cards you give, Major Wilbraham, bear no
address, the cards you receive, do." And while showing the card to his
companion, he inadvertently dropped it into the sea.
Major Wilbraham blamed the negligence of a rascally printer, and made
his way to the smoking-room.
The P. and O. boat touched at Plymouth the next morning, and landed
both Major Wilbraham and Charnock. The latter remained in Plymouth for
two days, and on the morning of the third day hired a hansom cab, and
so met with the last of those incidents which were to link him in such
close, strange ties with the fortunes of men and women who even in
name were then utterly unknown to him.
A yellow handbill had led Charnock across the Straits to Tangier, and
now it was nothing more serious than a draft upon Lloyd's bank which
took him in a hansom cab through the streets of Plymouth. Spring was
in the air; Charnock felt exceedingly light-hearted and cheerful. On
the way he unconsciously worked his little finger into the eye of the
brass bracket which juts inwards on each side of the front window at
the level of the shoulder; and when the cab stopped in front of the
bank he discovered that his finger was securely jammed.
Across the road he noticed a chemist's shop, and descending the steps
of the bank a fair-haired gentleman of an agreeable countenance, who,
quite appropriately in that town of sailors, had something of a
nautical aspect.
"Sir," began Charnock, politely, as he leaned out of the window, "I
shall be much obliged--"
To Charnock's surprise the good-natured gentleman precipitately sprang
down the steps and began to walk rapidly away. Charnock was
sufficiently human and therefore sufficiently perverse to become at
once convinced that although there were others passing, this reluctant
man was the only person in the world who could and must help him from
his predicament.
So he leaned yet farther out of the cab.
"Hi, you sir!" he shouted, "you who are running away!"
The words had an electrical effect. The man of the agreeable
countenance stopped suddenly, and so stood with his back towards
Charnock while gently and thoughtfully he nodded his head. It seemed
to Charnock that he might perhaps be counting over the voices with
which he was familiar.
"Well," cried Charnock, who was becoming exasperated, "my dear sir, am
I to wait for you all day?"
The street was populous with the morning traffic of a business
quarter. Curious people stopped and attracted others. In a very few
moments a small crowd would have formed. The stranger thereupon came
slowly back to the hansom, showing a face which was no longer
agreeable. He set a foot upon the step of the cab, and fixed a blue
and watchful eye upon Charnock.
"I am afraid," said the latter, with severity, "that my first
impression of you was wrong."
An indescribable relief was expressed by the other, but he spoke with
surliness.
"You mistook me for someone else?"
"I mistook your disposition for something else," Charnock affably
corrected. "I expected to find you a person of great good-nature."
"You hardly made such a point of summoning a perfect stranger," and
here the blue eyes became very wary, "for no other reason than to tell
him that."
"Certainly not," returned Charnock; "I would not trespass upon your
time, which seems to be extremely valuable, without a better reason.
But my finger is fixed, as you can see, in this brass ring, and I
cannot withdraw it. So if you would kindly cross over to the chemist
and buy me a pennyworth of vaseline, I shall be more than obliged."
And with the hand which was free he felt in his pocket for a penny and
held it out.
A look of utter incredulity showed upon the listener's face.
"Do you mean to tell me--" he blurted out.
"That I ask you to be my good Samaritan? Yes."
The stranger's face became suddenly vindictive. "Vaseline!" he cried.
"A pennyworth," said Charnock, again offering the penny.
The man of the agreeable countenance struck Charnock's hand violently
aside, and the penny flew into a gutter. He stood up on the step and
thrust his face, which was now inflamed with fury, into the cab.
"I tell you what," he cried, "you are a fair red-hotter, you are. Buy
you vaseline! I hope your finger will petrify. I hope you'll just sit
in that cab and rot away in your boots, until you have to ante up in
kingdom come." He added expletives to his anathema.
"Really," said Charnock, "if I was a lady I don't think that I should
like to listen to you any longer."
But before Charnock had finished the sentence, the good Samaritan, who
was no Samaritan at all, had flung himself from the cab and was
striding up the street.
"After all," thought Charnock, "I might just as well have driven
across to the chemist, if I had only thought of it."
This he now did, got his finger free, cashed his draft, and took the
train to London.
During this journey the discourteous stranger occupied some part of
his thoughts. Between Charnock's eyes and the newspaper, against the
red cliffs of Teignmouth, on the green of the home counties, his face
obtruded, and for a particular reason. The marks of fear are
unmistakable. The man whom he had called, had been scared by the call,
nor had his fear quite left him when he had come face to face with
Charnock. Set features which strove to conceal, and a brightness of
the eye which betrayed emotion, these things Charnock remembered very
clearly.
In London he dined alone at his hotel, and over against him the
stranger's face bore him company. He went out afterwards into the
street, and amidst the myriad ringing feet, was seized with an utter
sense of loneliness, more poignant, more complete, than he had ever
experienced in the waste places of the world. The lights of a theatre
attracted him. He paid his money, took a seat in the stalls, and was
at once very worried and perplexed. He turned to his neighbour, who
was boisterously laughing.
"Would you mind telling me what this play is?" he asked.
"Oh, it's a musical comedy."
"I see. But what is it about?"
Charnock's neighbour scratched his head thoughtfully.
"I ought to remember," he said, "for I saw the piece early in the
run."
Charnock went out, crossed a street, and came to another theatre,
where he saw a good half of the tragedy of _Macbeth_. Thence he
returned to his hotel and went to bed.
The hotel was one of many balconies, situated upon the Embankment.
From the single window or his bedroom Charnock looked across the river
to where the name of a brewery perpetually wrote itself in red
brilliant letters which perpetually vanished. It was his habit to
sleep not merely with his window open, but with the blinds drawn up
and the curtains looped back, and these arrangements he made as usual
before he got into bed.
Now, the looking-glass stood upon a dressing-table in the window, with
its back towards the window-panes; and since the night was moonless
and dark, this mirror, it should be remembered, reflected nothing of
the room or its furniture, but presented only to the view of Charnock,
as he lay in bed, a surface of a black sheen.
Charnock recurred to his adventure of the morning, and thus the
abusive stranger was in his thoughts when he fell asleep. He figured
also in his dreams.
For, after he had fallen asleep, a curtain was raised upon a fantastic
_revue_ of the past week. Hassan Akbar strode quickly and noiselessly
behind his quarry, tracking him by some inappreciable faculty, not
through the muddy Sôk, but across the polished floor of the ball-room
in the musical comedy. Again Charnock shouted "Look out!" and the Moor
with one bound leapt from the ball-room, which was now become a
landing-stage, into a felucca. The crew of the felucca, it now
appeared, was made up of Charnock, Lady Macbeth, and Hassan Akbar, and
by casting lots with counters made of vaseline, Charnock was appointed
to hold the tiller. This duty compelled extraordinary care, for the
felucca would keep changing its rig and the bulk of its hull swelled
and dwindled. At last, to Charnock's intense relief, the boat settled
into a Salcombe clipper with the rig of a P. and O., but with
immeasurably greater speed, so that within a very few seconds they
sailed over a limitless ocean and anchored at Tangier. At once the
crew entirely vanished. Charnock was not distressed, because he saw a
hansom cab waiting for him at the Customs, though how the hansom was
to pass up those narrow cobbled streets he could not think. That
however was the driver's business.
"I hope your horse is good," said Charnock, springing into the cab.
"She comes of the great Red-hotter stock," replied the cabman, and
lifting the trap in the roof he showered packets of visiting cards,
which fell about Charnock like flakes of snow.
Charnock had not previously noticed that the cabman was Major
Wilbraham.
The cab shot up the hill through the tunnel, past the closed shop. A
figure sprang from the ground and thrust a face through the window of
the cab. The man was in Moorish dress, but the face was the face of
the abusive stranger of Plymouth--and all at once Charnock started up
on his elbow, and in the smallest fraction of a second was intensely
and vividly awake. There was no sound at all within the room. But in
the black sheen of the mirror he saw a woman's face.
He saw it quite clearly for perhaps five seconds, the face rising
white from the white column of the throat, the dark and weighty
coronal of the hair, the curved lips which alone had any colour, the
eyes, deep and troubled, which seemed to hint a prayer for help which
they disdained to make--for five seconds perhaps the illusion
remained, for five seconds the face looked out at him from the black
mirror, lit palely, as it seemed, by its own pallor, and so vanished.
Charnock remained propped upon his elbow. A faint twilight from the
stars crept timidly through the open window as though deprecating its
intrusion. Charnock looked into the dark corners of the room, but
nowhere did the darkness move. Nor could he hear any sound. Not even a
board of the floor cracked, and outside the door there was no noise of
a footstep on the stairs. Then from a great distance the jingle of a
cab came through the open window to his ears with a light
companionable lilt. Gradually the sound ceased, and again the silence
breathed about him. Charnock struck a match and looked at his watch.
It was a few minutes after three.
Charnock lay back in his bed wondering. For he had seen that face
once, he had once exchanged glances with those eyes, once only, six
years ago, and thereafter had entirely forgotten the incident--until
this moment. He had stopped for a night at Monte Carlo and had
seen--the girl--yes, the _girl_, though it was a woman's face which
had gleamed in the depths of his mirror--standing under the green
shaded lamps in the big gambling-room. His attention, he now
remembered, had been seized by the contrast between her amused
indifference and the feverish haste of the gamblers about the table;
between her fresh, clear looks and their heated complexions,--even
between her frock of lilac silk and their more elaborate toilettes.
The girl was entirely happy then, the red lips smiled, the violet eyes
laughed. Why should her face appear to him now, after these years, and
paled by this distress?
A queer fancy slipped into his mind--a fancy at the extravagance of
which he knew very well he should laugh in the sane light of the
morning, though he indulged it now--that somehow, somewhere, this
woman needed help, and that it was thus vouchsafed to her, a stranger,
to make her appeal to him in this way, which spared her the
humiliation of making any appeal at all. Charnock fell asleep
convinced that somehow, somewhere, he was destined to meet and know
her. As he had foreseen, he laughed at his fancies in the morning, but
nevertheless, he did meet her. It had, in fact, already been arranged
that he should. For the face which he saw in the mirror was the face
of Miranda Warriner.