IN WHICH MAJOR WILBRAHAM DESCRIBES THE STEPS BY WHICH HE ATTAINED
HIS MAJORITY, AND GIVES MIRANDA SOME PARTICULAR INFORMATION
A month later at Ronda, and a little after midday. In the cool
darkness of the Cathedral, under the great stone dome behind the
choir, Miranda was kneeling before a lighted altar. That altar she had
erected, as an inscription showed, to the memory of Ralph Warriner,
and since her return from England she had passed more than an ordinary
proportion of her time in front of it.
This morning, however, an unaccountable uneasiness crept over her. She
tried to shake the sensation off by an increased devoutness, but
though her knees were bent, there was no prayer in her mind or upon
her lips. Her uneasiness increased, and after a while it defined
itself. Someone was watching her from behind.
She ceased even from the pretence of prayer. Her heart fluttered up
into her throat. She did not look round, she did not move, but she
knelt there with a sinking expectation, in the light of the altar
candles, and felt intensely helpless because their yellow warmth
streamed full upon her face and person, and must disclose her to the
watching eyes behind.
She knelt waiting for a familiar voice and a familiar step. She heard
only the grating of a chair upon the stone flags beyond the choir, and
a priest droning a litany very far away. Here all was quiet--quiet as
the eyes watching her out of the gloom.
At last, resenting her cowardice, she rose to her feet and turned. At
once a man stepped forward, and her heart gave a great throb of
relief, as she saw the man was a stranger.
He bowed, and with an excuse for his intrusion, he handed her a card.
She did not look at it, for immediately the stranger continued to
speak, in a cool, polite voice, and it seemed to her that all her
blood stood still.
"I knew Captain Warriner at Gibraltar," he said. "In fact I may say
that I know him, for he is alive."
Miranda was dimly aware that he waited for an answer, and then excused
her silence with an accent of sarcasm.
"Such good news must overwhelm you, no doubt. I have used all despatch
to inform you of it, for I was only certain of the truth yesterday."
And to her amazement Miranda heard herself reply:
"Then I discovered it a month before you did."
The next thing of which she was conscious was a thick golden mist
before her eyes. The golden mist was the clear sunlight in the square
before the Cathedral. Miranda was leaning against the stone parapet,
though how she was there she could not have told. She had expected the
news. She had even thought that the man standing behind her was her
husband, come to tell her it in person; but nevertheless the mere
telling of it, the putting of it in words, to quote the stranger's
phrase, had overwhelmed her. Memories of afternoons during which she
had walked out with her misery to Europa Point, of evenings when she
had sat with her misery upon the flat house-top watching the riding
lights in Algeciras Bay, and listening to the jingle of tambourines
from the houses on the hillside below--all the sordid unnecessary
wretchedness of those three years spent at Gibraltar came crushing
her. She savoured again the disgrace which attended upon Ralph's
flight. Her first instinct, when she learned Ralph was alive, had
urged her to hide, and at this moment she regretted that she had not
obeyed it. She regretted that she had returned to Ronda, where Ralph
or any emissary of his at once could find her.
But that was only for a moment. She had returned to Ronda with a full
appreciation of the consequences of her return, and for reasons which
she was afterwards to explain, and of which, even while she stood in
that square, she resumed courage to approve.
The stranger came from the door of the Cathedral and crossed to her.
"Your matter-of-fact acceptance of my news was clever, Mrs. Warriner,"
he said with a noticeable sharpness. "Believe me, I do homage to
cleverness. I frankly own that I expected a scene of sorts. I was
quite taken aback--a compliment, I assure you, upon my puff," and he
bowed with his hand on his breast. "You were out of the Cathedral door
before I realised that all this time you had been the Captain's--would
you mind if I said accomplice?"
That her matter-of-fact acceptance of the news was entirely due to the
fact that the news dazed her, Miranda did not trouble to explain.
"The altar," continued the stranger, in a voice of genuine admiration,
"was a master-stroke. To erect an altar to the memory of a husband
who is still alive, to pray devoutly before it, is highly ingenious
and--may I say?--brave. Religion is a trump-card, Mrs. Warriner, in
most of the games where you sit with law and order for your opponents;
but not many women have the bravery to play it for its value."
Miranda coloured at his words. There had been some insincerity in her
daily prayers before the altar, though the self-satisfied man who
spoke to her had not his finger upon the particular flaw,--enough
insincerity to cause Miranda some shame, now that she probed it, and
yet in the insincerity there had been also something sincere. The
truth is, Miranda could bring herself to wish neither that her husband
was dead if he was alive, nor that he should come to life again if he
was dead; she made a compromise--she daily prayed with great fervour
for his soul's salvation before the altar she had erected to his
memory. But this again was not a point upon which she troubled to
enlighten her companion. She was more concerned to discover who the
man was, and on what business he had come.
"You knew my husband at Gibraltar," she said, "and yet--"
"It is true," replied the man, in answer to her suspicion. "You need
not be afraid, Mrs. Warriner. I have not come from Scotland Yard. I
have had, I admit, relations with the police, but they have always
been of an involuntary kind."
"You assume," said she, with some pride, "that I have reason to fear
Scotland Yard, whereas nothing was further from my thoughts. Only you
say that you knew my husband at Gibraltar. You pretend to come from
him--"
"By no means. We are at cross-purposes, I fancy. I do not come from
him, though most certainly I did know him at Gibraltar. But I admit
that he never invited me to his house."
"In that case," said Miranda, with a cold bow, "I can do no more than
thank you for the news you give me and wish you a good day."
She walked by him. He turned and imperturbably fell into step by her
side. "Clever," said he, "clever!" Miranda stopped. "Who are you? What
is your business?" she asked.
"As to who I am, you hold my card in your hand."
Mrs. Warriner had carried it from the Cathedral, unaware that she held
it. She now raised it to her eyes and read, _Major Ambrose Wilbraham_.
Wilbraham noted, though he did not understand, the rapid, perplexed
glance which she shot at him. Charnock had spoken to her of a Major
Wilbraham, had described him, and undoubtedly this was the man. "As to
my business," he continued, "I give you the news that your husband is
alive, but I have also something to sell."
"What?"
"Obviously my silence. It might be awkward if it was known in certain
quarters that Captain Warriner, who sold the mechanism of the new
Daventry quick-firing gun to a foreign power; who slipped out of
Gibraltar just a night before his arrest was determined on, and who
was wrecked a year ago in the Scillies, is not only alive, but in the
habit of paying periodical visits to England."
Mrs. Warriner again read the name upon the card. "Major Ambrose
Wilbraham," she said, with an incredulous emphasis on the _Major_.
"Captains," he retorted airily, "have at times deviated from the
narrow path, so that a Major may well be forgiven a peccadillo. But I
will not deceive you, Mrs. Warriner. The rank was thrust upon me by a
barman in Shaftesbury Avenue, and I suffered it, because the title
after all gives me the entrance to the chambers of many young men who
have, or most often have not, just taken their degrees. So Major I am,
but my mess is any bar within a mile of Piccadilly Circus. Shall we
say that I hold brevet rank, and am seconded for service in the noble
regiment of the soldiers of fortune?"
"And the enemies you fight with," said Miranda, with a contemptuous
droop of the lips, "are women like myself."
"Pardon me," retorted Wilbraham, with unabashed good humour. "Women
like yourself, Mrs. Warriner, are the _vivandières_ whom we
regretfully impress to supply our needs upon the march. Our enemies
are the rozzers--again I beg your pardon--the gentlemen in blue who
lurk at the street corners, by whom from time to time we are worsted
and interned."
They walked across the square along a narrow street down towards the
Tajo, that deep chasm which bisects the town. The heat was intense,
the road scorched under foot, and they walked slowly. They made a
strange pair in the old, quaint streets, the woman walking with a
royal carriage, delicate in her beauty and her dress; the man defiant,
battered and worn, with an eye which from sheer habit scouted in front
and aside for the chance which might toss his day's rations in his
way.
Their talk was stranger still, for by an unexpressed consent, the
subject of the bargain to be struck was deferred, and as they walked
Wilbraham illustrated to Miranda the career of a man who lives by his
wits, and dwelt even with humour upon its alternations of prosperity
and starvation. "I have been a manager of theatrical companies in 'the
smalls,'" he said, "a billiard-marker at Trieste, a racing tipster, a
vender of--photographs, and I once carried a sandwich-board down Bond
Street, and saw the women I had danced with not so long before draw
their delicate skirts from the defilement of my rags. However, I
rose to a better position. It is funny, you know, to go right under,
and then find there are social degrees in the depths. I have had
good times too, mind you. Every now and then I have struck an A1
copper-bottomed gold mine, and then there were dress suits and meals
running into one another, and ormolu rooms on the first floor."
Dark sayings, unintelligible shibboleths, came and went among his
words and obscured their meaning; accents and phrases from many
countries betrayed the vicissitudes of his life; but he spoke with the
accent of a gentleman, and with something of a gentleman's good
humour; so that Miranda, moved partly by his recital and perhaps
partly because her own misfortunes had touched her to an universal
sympathy, began to be interested in the man who had experienced so
much that was strange to her, and they both slipped into a tolerance
of each other and a momentary forgetfulness of their relationship as
blackmailer and blackmailed.
"I could give you a modern edition of Don Guzman," he said. "I was a
money-lender's tout at Gibraltar at one time. It's to that I owed my
acquaintance with Warriner. It's to that I owe my present acquaintance
with you." He came to a dead stop in the full swing of narration. He
halted in his steps and banged the point of his stick down into the
road. "But I have done with it," he cried, and drawing a great breath,
he showed to Miranda a face suddenly illuminated. "The garrets and the
first floors, the stale billiard rooms, the desperate scouting for
food like a damned sea-gull--I beg your pardon, Mrs. Warriner. Upon my
word, I do! But imagine a poor beggar of a bankrupt painter who, after
fifteen years, suddenly finds himself with a meal upon the table and
his bills paid! I am that man. Fifteen years of what I have described
to you! It might have been less, no doubt, but I hadn't learnt my
lesson. Fifteen years, and from first to last not one thing done of
the few things worth doing; fifteen years of a murderous hunt for
breakfast and dinner! And I've done with it, thanks to you, Mrs.
Warriner." And his face hardened at once and gleamed at her, very
cruel and menacing. "Yes, thanks to you! We'll not forget that." And
as he resumed his walk the astounding creature began gaily to quote
poetry:
"I resume
Life after death; for 'tis no less than life
After such long, unlovely labouring days.
A great poet, Mrs. Warriner. What do you think?"
"No doubt," said Miranda, absently. That one cruel glance had chilled
the sympathy in her; Major Wilbraham would not spare either Ralph or
herself with the memory of those fifteen years to harden him.
They came to the Ciudad, the old intricate Moorish town of tortuous
lanes in the centre of Ronda. Before a pair of heavy walnut doors
curiously encrusted with bright copper nails Wilbraham came to a stop.
"Your house, I think, Mrs. Warriner," and he took off his hat and
wiped his forehead.
"I should prefer," said she, "to hear what you have to say in the
Alameda."
"As you will. I am bound to say that I could have done with a soda and
I'm so frisky, but I recognise that I have no right to trespass upon
your hospitality."
They went on, crossed a small plaza, and so came down to the Tajo. A
bridge spans the ravine in a single arch; in the centre of the bridge
Miranda stopped, leaned over the parapet and looked downwards.
Wilbraham followed her example. For three hundred feet the walls of
the gorge fell sheer, at the bottom the turbulence of a torrent foamed
and roared, at the top was the span of the bridge. In the brickwork of
the arch a tiny window looked out on air.
"Do you see that window?" said Miranda, drily. "The prison is
underfoot in the arch of the bridge."
"Indeed, how picturesque," returned Wilbraham, easily, who was quite
untouched by any menace which Miranda's words might suggest. Miranda
looked across the road towards a guardia. Wilbraham lazily followed
the direction of her glance; for all the emotion which he showed
blackmail might have been held in Spain an honourable means of
livelihood. Miranda turned back. "That window," she said, "is the
window of the prison."
"The view," remarked Wilbraham, "would compensate in some measure for
the restriction."
"Chains might add to the restriction."
"Chains _are_ unpleasant," Wilbraham heartily agreed.
Miranda realised that she had tempted defeat in this little encounter.
She accepted it and walked on.
"You were wise to come off that barrow, Mrs. Warriner," Wilbraham
remarked in approval.
They crossed the bridge and entered the Mercadillo, the new Spanish
quarter of the town, ascended the hill, and came to the bull ring.
Before that Wilbraham stopped. "Why do we go to the Alameda?"
"We can talk there on neutral ground."
"It seems a long way."
"On the other hand," replied Miranda, "the Alameda is close to the
railway station. By the bye, how did you know where I lived?"
"There was no difficulty in discovering that. I learnt at Gibraltar
that you lived at Ronda, and the station-master here told me where.
When I saw your house I did not wonder at your choice. You were wise
to take a Moorish house, I fancy--the patio with the tamarisks in the
middle and the fountain and the red and green tiles--very pleasant, I
should think. A door or two stood open. The rooms seemed charming, low
in roof, with dark panels, of a grateful coolness, and so far as I
could judge, with fine views."
"You went into the house, then?" exclaimed Miranda.
"Yes, I asked for you, and was told that Miss Holt was at home. I
thought it wise to go in--one never knows. So I introduced myself, but
not my business, to Miss Holt--your cousin, is she not? A profound
sentimentalist, I should fancy; I noticed she was reading _Henrietta
Temple_. She complained of being much alone; she nurses grievances, no
doubt. Sentimentalists have that habit--what do you say?" Miranda
could have laughed at the shrewdness of the man's perceptions, had she
not been aware that the shrewdness was a weapon directed against her
own breast.
They reached the Alameda. Miranda led the way to a bench which faced
the railings. Wilbraham looked quickly and suspiciously at her, and
then walked to the railings and looked over. The Alameda is laid out
upon the very edge of the Ronda plateau, and Wilbraham looked straight
down a sheer rock precipice of a thousand feet. He remained in that
posture for some seconds. From the foot of that precipice the plain of
the Vega stretched out level as a South-sea lagoon. The gardens of a
few cottages were marked out upon the green like the squares of a
chess-board; upon the hedges there was here and there the flutter of
white linen. Orchards of apples, cherries, peaches, and pears,
enriched the plain with their subdued colours, and the Guadiaro, freed
from the confinement of its chasm, wound through it with the glitter
and the curve of a steel spring. A few white Moorish mills upon the
banks of the stream were at work, and the sound of them came droning
through the still heat up to Wilbraham's ears.
Wilbraham, however, was not occupied with the scenery, for when he
turned back to Miranda his face was dark and angry.
"Why did you bring me to the Alameda?" he asked sternly.
"Because I will not listen to you in my own, house," she answered with
spirit.
Wilbraham did not resent the reason, but he watched her warily, as
though he doubted it.
"Now," said Miranda, as she stood before him. "You tell me that my
husband is living. I have your bare word for it, and out of your lips
you have proved to me that your bare word has very little worth."
"The buttons are off the foils," said he; "very well. In the Cathedral
you corroborated my word. You know that he lives; I know it."
"How do you know it?"
"By adding two and two and making five, as any man with any savvy
always can," replied Wilbraham. "Indeed, by adding two and two, one
can even at times make a decent per annum."
Mrs. Warriner sat down upon the bench, and Wilbraham, standing at her
side, presented the following testimonial to his "savvy." First of
all, he drew from one pocket four pounds of English gold, and from the
other a handful of dollars and pesetas. "This is what is left of two
hundred and thirty pounds, which I won at Monte Carlo in the beginning
of May. There's a chance for philosophy, Mrs. Warriner. If I hadn't
won that money I shouldn't be standing here now with my livelihood
assured. For I shouldn't have been able to embark on the P. and O.
mail steamer _India_ at Marseilles, and so I shouldn't have fallen in
with my dear young friend Charnock."
Miranda fairly started at the mention of Charnock's name in connection
with Wilbraham's discovery. Instantly Wilbraham paused. Miranda made
an effort to look entirely unconcerned, but Wilbraham's eye was upon
her, and she felt the blood colouring her cheeks.
"Oho!" said Wilbraham, cocking his head. Then he whistled softly to
himself while he looked her over from head to foot. Miranda kept
silence, and he resumed his story, though every time he mentioned
Charnock's name he looked to surprise her in some movement.
"Off Ushant we came up with a brigantine, and I couldn't help fancying
that her lines were familiar to me. Charnock lent me his binoculars--a
dear good fellow, Charnock!--and I made out her name, the _Tarifa_. I
should not have given the boat another thought but for Charnock.
Charnock said she had the lines of a Salcombe clipper. Did you happen
to know that the _Ten Brothers_ was a Salcombe clipper? I did, and the
moment Charnock had spoken I understood why the look of her hull was
familiar; I had seen her or her own legitimate sister swinging at
Warriner's moorings in Algeciras Bay. I did not set any great store
upon that small point, however, until Charnock kindly informed me that
her owner could have gained no possible advantage by altering her rig
from a schooner's into a brigantine's. Then my interest began to rise,
for he had altered the rig. Why, if the change was to his
disadvantage? I can't say that I had any answer ready; I can't say
that I expected to find an answer. But since I landed at Plymouth,
from which Salcombe is a bare twenty miles, I thought that I might as
well run over. One never knows--such small accidents mean everything
for us--and, as a matter of fact, I spent a very pleasant half-hour in
the back parlour of the Commercial Inn, watching the yachts at anchor
and the little sailing boats spinning about the river, and listening
to an old skipper, who deplored the times when the town rang with the
din of hammers in shipbuilding yards, and twelve--observe, Mrs.
Warriner, twelve--schooners brought to it the prosperity of their
trade. The schooners had been sold off, but the skipper had their
destinies at his fingers' ends as a man follows the fortunes of his
children. Two had been cast away, three were in the Newfoundland
trade, one was now a steam-yacht, and the others still carried fruit
from the West Indies. He accounted for eleven of them, and the
twelfth, of course, was the _Ten Brothers_ wrecked upon Rosevear. I
eliminated the _Ten Brothers_, the two which had been cast away, and
the steam-yacht. Eight were left."
"Yes?" said Mrs. Warriner.
"I went back to Plymouth and verified the skipper's information. He
had given me the owners' names and the names of the vessels. I looked
them up in the sailing-lists and I proved beyond a shadow of doubt,
from their dates of sailing and arrival at various ports, that not one
of those eight schooners could have been the brigantine we passed off
Ushant. There remained, then, the four which I had eliminated, or
rather the three, for the steam-yacht was out of the question. Do you
follow?"
Miranda made a sign of assent.
"Those three boats had been cast away. Two of them belonged to
respectable firms, the third to Ralph Warriner. It would of course be
very convenient for Ralph Warriner, under the circumstances, to be
reputed dead and yet to be alive with a boat in hand, so to speak. On
the other side, would it profit either of the two respectable firms to
spread a false report that one of their boats had been cast away?
Hardly; besides, it would of course be to Warriner's advantage, from
the point of view of concealment, to change the rig and the name of
his boat. It was all inference and guess-work, no doubt. Charnock, for
instance, might have been entirely wrong; the _Tarifa_ might never
have been anything but the _Tarifa_ and a brigantine; but the
inference and the guess-work all pointed the one way, and I own that
my interest was rapidly changing to excitement. My suspicions were
strengthened by the behaviour of the _Tarifa_ herself. No news of her
approach was recorded in the papers. She didn't make any unnecessary
noise about the port she was bound for, nor had she the manners to
pass the time of day with any of Lloyd's signal-stations. The
_Tarifa's_ business began to provoke my curiosity. Here was (shall we
say?) a needless lack of ceremony to begin with. It didn't seem as if
the _Tarifa_ had many anxious friends awaiting her arrival. Besides
that, supposing that my suspicions were right, that the _Tarifa_ was
the _Ten Brothers_ masquerading under another name, and that perhaps
Ralph Warriner was on board, it stood to reason Ralph Warriner would
not risk his skin in an English port, without a better reason than a
cargo of trade. Comprenny, Mrs. Warriner? I was guessing,
conjecturing, inferring; I had no knowledge. So I thought the cargo of
the _Tarifa_ was the right end of the stick to hang on to. If I could
know the truth about that, I should be in a better position to guess
whether it had anything to do with Ralph Warriner. Is that clear?"
It was clear enough to Miranda, who already felt herself enmeshed in
the net of this man's ingenious deductions. "Yes," she said.
"Very well. From the brigantine's course, she was evidently making for
one of the western harbours. I lay low in Plymouth for a couple of
days, and read the shipping news. That wasn't all I did during those
two days, though. I went to the Free Library besides, overhauled the
file of the _Western Morning News_ and assimilated information about
the inquest at St. Mary's. The faceless mariner chucked up on Rosevear
struck one as interesting. I noticed too that there had been a good
many wrecks in the Channel during the heavy weather and the fog just
about that time. But before I had come to any conclusion, I opened my
newspaper on the third morning and read that the _Tarifa_ had dropped
her anchor at Falmouth. I took the first train out of Plymouth, and
sure enough I picked the _Tarifa_ up in Falmouth docks. Then I made
friends with the port-officers, but I got never a glimpse of Ralph
Warriner."
Miranda's hopes revived. She knew very well that Ralph Warriner was
not at that time in Falmouth. For the moment, however, she let
Wilbraham run on.
"I frankly admit that my hopes sank a little," he continued. "Of
course Warriner might have been put ashore; but it seemed to me
impossible to obtain sufficient certainty of my suspicions unless I
actually clapped eyes on him."
Miranda agreed, and her prospects of escaping from this man's clutches
showed brighter; for she was not in a mood of sufficient calmness to
enable her to realise that Wilbraham would hardly have been so frank,
if he had not by now at all events acquired absolute certainty.
"My hopes were to sink yet more," Wilbraham continued. "The brigantine
passed for a tramp out from Tarifa with a cargo of fruit. I saw that
cargo unloaded. There was no pretence about it; it was a full cargo of
fruit. The boat was sailing back to Tarifa with a cargo of alkali, and
I saw that cargo stowed away in her hold. Mrs. Warriner, my spirits
began to revive. That cargo of alkali was most uncommon small; the
profit on it wouldn't have paid the decky's wages. Again I inferred. I
inferred that the alkali was a blind, and that the _Tarifa_ meant to
pick up a cargo of another sort somewhere along the coast, though what
the cargo would be I could not for the life of me imagine."
"But it is all guess-work," said Miranda, with an indifference which
she was far from feeling.
"I learned one piece of solid cheering information from my friends the
port-officers," retorted Wilbraham. "The _Tarifa's_ papers were all
quite recent, and yet she was an old boat. She was supposed to be
owned by her master."
"And no doubt was," added Miranda, with an assumption of weariness.
"It appeared that her saloon had caught fire; the saloon had been
gutted and the _Tarifa's_ papers destroyed a year before," Wilbraham
resumed, untroubled by Mrs. Warriner's objections. "A pretty careless
captain that, eh? A most uncommon careless captain, Mrs. Warriner? For
a boat to lose her papers--well, its pretty much the same as when a
girl loses her marriage lines in the melodramas. A most uncommon
careless captain! Or a most astute one, you say. What? Well, I'll not
deny but what you may be right. For that brigantine caught fire and
burned her papers just about the date when the _Ten Brothers_ went
ashore on Rosevear. How's that for the long arm?"
"But you did not see my husband," said Miranda, stubbornly.
"And why?" asked Wilbraham, and answered his question. "Because your
husband wasn't onboard."
"Then the whole story falls to the ground," exclaimed Miranda, as she
rose from her seat.
"Wait a bit, Mrs. Warriner," said Wilbraham, and he sat down on the
seat and nursed his leg. "The _Tarifa_ was supposed to belong to her
master, who went by the name of John Wilson. Now here's a funny thing.
I never saw John Wilson, though I prowled about the docks enough. The
port-officers described him to me, a grizzled seafaring man of fifty;
but he was always snug in his cabin, and a mate did the show business
with the cargo. I grew curious about John Wilson; I wanted to see John
Wilson. Accordingly I located the chart-room from the wharf, then I
put on a black thumb tie and a dirty collar so as to look like a
clerk, and I walked boldly down the gangway and stepped across the
deck. I chose my time, you understand. I knocked at the chart-room
door. 'Come in,' said a voice, and in I walked. Mrs. Warriner, you
could have knocked me down with that dainty parasol of yours if you
had been present when I first saw John Wilson.
"'What do you want?' says he, short and sharp.
"'Will you take a load of cotton to Valencia?' says I, and I quoted an
insignificant price.
"'I am not such a fool as you look,' said he, and out I went and shook
hands with myself on the quay. For John Wilson--"
"Was not my husband," exclaimed Miranda, with almost a despairing
violence. "He was not! He was not!"
"You are right, Mrs. Warriner, he was not. But he was a man whom you
and I knew as Thomas Discipline, first mate of the schooner-yacht the
_Ten Brothers_, of which Captain Ralph Warriner was the certificated
master. And observe, please, the whole crew of the _Ten Brothers_ was
reported lost upon Rosevear."
"Thomas Discipline might have left the _Ten Brothers_ before," argued
Miranda. "His presence on the _Tarifa_ does not connect my husband
with that boat."
"That's precisely the objection which occurred to me," said Wilbraham,
coolly. "But here was at last a fact which fitted in with my
guess-work, and I own to being uplifted. That evening I got the ticket
that the _Tarifa_ was to put to sea the next day, and sure enough in
the morning she swung out into the fairway and waited for the evening
ebb. I passed that day in an altogether unenviable state of anxiety,
Mrs. Warriner; for if by any chance I was wrong, if she did not mean
to take up another cargo of a more profitable kind by dark, if she
were to sail clean away for Ushant on the evening ebb, why, the boat
might be the _Ten Brothers_ or it might not, and the master might be
the late Captain Warriner or he might not. Any way the bottom fell
clean out of my little business. But she did not; she got her anchors
in about eight o'clock and reached out towards the Lizard in the dusk
with a light wind from the land on her beam."
"The story so far," Miranda interrupted, "seems nautical, but hardly
to the point."
"Think so?" said Wilbraham, indifferently. "Did I mention that at the
mouth of the harbour the _Tarifa_ passed a steam launch pottering
around the St. Anthony Light? Between you and me, Mrs. Warriner, I was
holding the tiller of that steam launch."
"You!" she exclaimed.
"Just poor little me," said he, smiling politely, "with a few paltry
thick-uns in my pocket to speculate in the hire of a steam launch. I
gave the _Tarifa_ a start and followed, keeping well away on her lee
with her red light just in view. That first half-hour or so was a
wearing time for me, Mrs. Warriner, I assure you," and he took off his
hat and wiped his forehead, as though the anxiety came back upon him
now. He laboured his breath and broke up his sentences with short
nervous laughter. He seemed entirely to forget his companion, and the
sun, and the Andalusian sierras across the plain; he was desperately
hunting the _Tarifa_ along the Spit to the Lizard point.
"I was certain of one thing: that no Captain Warriner had come aboard
at Falmouth. So if the _Tarifa_ kept out to sea, why, there was no
Captain Warriner to come aboard, and here was I spending my last
pounds in running down a will-o'-the-wisp, and the world to face again
to-morrow in the grim old way, without a penny to my purse. On the
other hand, if there was a Captain Warriner, he would come aboard with
the cargo somewhere that night, and I fancied I could lay my finger on
that somewhere. I had another cause for anxiety. Grant my guess-work
correct, and the last thing the _Tarifa_ was likely to hanker after
would be a wasp of a steam launch buzzing in her wake. The evening was
hazy, by a stroke of luck, but the wind was light and the sea smooth,
and my propeller throbbed out over the water until I thought it must
reverberate across the world, and the Esquimaux on Franz Josef Land
and the Kanaka in the Pacific would hear it plain as the pulsing of a
battleship. However, I slowed the launch down to less than half-speed,
and the crew of the _Tarifa_ made no account of me. The brigantine was
doing only a leisurely five knots--she was waiting for the dark, I
conjectured. Conjectured? I came near to praying it. And as if in
answer to my prayer--it sounds pretty much like blasphemy now, doesn't
it?--but at that moment I believed it--all at once her red light
vanished and my heart went jumping in the inside of me as though it
had slipped its moorings. For the _Tarifa_ had changed her course; she
was pointing closer to the wind and the wind came offshore; she was
showing me her stern instead of her port beam; on the course she was
lying now she couldn't clear the Manacles--not by any manner of means.
She was heading for the anchorage I hoped she would; she was standing
in towards Helford river. In a little she went about, and seeing her
green light, I slowed down again. I could afford to take it easy."
He drew a breath of relief and lolled back upon his seat. Miranda no
longer put questions; there was a look of discouragement upon her
face; she began bitterly to feel herself helpless in this man's hands,
as clay under the potter's thumb.
"Do you know the creek?" he asked, and did not wait for an answer. "I
hadn't anchored there for twenty years, but I had a chart of it in my
memories." His voice softened, with perhaps some recollection of a
yachting trip in the days before his life had grown sour. "Steep hills
on each side, and on each side woods. The trees run down and thrust
their knees into the water like animals at their watering places of an
evening. A mile or so up, a little rose and honeysuckle village
nestles as pretty as a poem. There's a noise of birds all day, and all
night and day the trees talk. Given a westerly wind, and the summer, I
don't know many places which come up to Helford river," and his voice
ceased, and he sat in a muse. A movement at his side recalled him.
"But that's not business, you say," he resumed briskly. "I left the
_Tarifa_ at the mouth of the creek. The little village a mile or more
up is on the southward side; opposite to it, on the Falmouth side, is
the coast-guard station; nearer to the mouth, and still on the
Falmouth side, a tiny dingle shelters a school-house and half-a-dozen
cottages, and still nearer, the road from Falmouth comes over the brow
of the hill and dips down along the hill-side. At one point the steep
hill-side is broken, there's an easy incline of sand and bushes and
soil between the water and the road. The incline is out of sight of
the coast-guard. Besides, it is only just round the point and close to
the sea. And for that reason I was in no particular hurry to follow
the _Tarifa_. I edged the launch close in under the point, waded
ashore, and scrambled along in the dark until I reached the break in
the hill-side. Then I lay down among the bushes and waited. All lights
were out on the _Tarifa_, but I could see her hull dimly, a blot of
solid black against the night's unsubstantial blackness. I waited for
centuries and æons. There was neither moon nor any star. At last I
heard a creaking sound that came from the other end of the world. It
was repeated, it grew louder, it became many sounds, the sounds or
cart wheels on the dry road. I looked at my watch; the glimmer of its
white face made it possible for me to tell the hour. It was five
minutes to eleven. For five minutes the sounds drew infinitesimally
nearer. Higher up the creek six bells were struck upon a yacht, and
then over the waters from the direction of the _Tarifa_ came
cautiously the wooden rattle of oars in the rowlocks of a boat. A
boat, I say, but it was followed by another and another. The three
boats grounded on the sand as the carts reached the break in the
hill-side. There were few words spoken, and no light shown. I lay in
the bushes straining my ears to catch a familiar voice, my eyes on the
chance that a match might be struck and light up a familiar face."
"Well?" said Miranda, breaking in upon his speech. She was strung to a
high pitch or excitement, and her face and voice betrayed it.
"I was disappointed," replied Wilbraham, "but I saw something of the
cargo which the waggons brought over the hill and the boats carried on
board. Backwards and forwards between the _Tarifa_ and the shore they
were rowed with unremitting diligence and caution, carrying first
longish packing-cases of some weight, as I could gather from the
conduct of the men who stumbled with them down the incline. And after
the packing-cases, square boxes, yet more unwieldy than the long
cases, if one takes the proportion of size. The morning was breaking
before the last boat was hoisted on board, and the last waggon had
creaked out of hearing over the hill."
"And what was the cargo?" asked Miranda.
"That was the question which troubled me," replied Wilbraham. "I lay
on the hill-side in the chill of the morning as disheartened a man as
you can imagine. Through a break in the bushes I watched the _Tarifa_
below me, her decks busy with the movement of her crew and from her
galley the comfortable smoke coiling up into the air. Breakfast! A
Gargantuan appetite suddenly pinched my stomach. Had Warriner gone on
board with the cargo? And what was the cargo? And into what harbour
would the _Tarifa_ carry it? I had found out nothing. Then on board
the brigantine men gathered at the windlass, a chain clinked musically
as the anchor was hove short, the gaff of her mainsail creaked up the
mast, and the festoons of her canvas were unfolded. The _Tarifa_ was
outward bound and I had discovered nothing. I was like a man tied hand
and foot and a treasure within his reach. I had had my fingers on the
treasure. Again the chain rattled on the windlass; she broke out her
foresail and her jib; I saw the water sparkle under her foot and
stream out a creaming pennant in her wake. I had lost. In the space of
a second I lived through every minute of my last fifteen years and
their dreary vicissitudes. I lived in anticipation through another
fifteen similar in every detail, and fairly shuddered to think there
might be another fifteen still to follow those. I stretched myself out
and ground my face in the sand and cursed God with all my heart for
the difference between man and man. And meanwhile the _Tarifa_, with a
hint of the sun upon her topsails, slipped out over the tide to sea."
Wilbraham's face was quite convulsed by the violence of his
recollections; and with so vivid a sincerity, with a voice so mutable,
had he described the growth and extinction of his hopes, that Miranda
almost forgot their object, almost found herself sympathising with his
endeavours, almost regretted their failure--until she remembered that
after all he had not failed, or he would not have been sitting beside
her in the Alameda.
"Well," she said in a hard voice, "you failed. What then?"
"I crawled down to my launch, the cheapest man in the United Kingdom.
My engineer was muffled up in a pilot jacket and uncommon surly and
cheap too. I hadn't the pluck left in me to resent his impudence, and
we crept back to Falmouth. All the way I was pestered with that
question, 'What was the cargo I had seen shipped that night in Helford
river?' I couldn't get it out of my head. The propeller lashed it out
with a sort of vindictiveness. The little waves breaking ashore
whispered about it, as though they knew very well, but wouldn't peach.
When I had landed in Falmouth, I found that I was walking towards the
Free Library. The doors, however, were still closed. I breakfasted in
a fever of impatience and was back again at the doors before they were
opened. You may take it from me, Mrs. Warriner, I was the first
student inside the building that morning. I read over again every
scrap of news and comment about the inquest in Scilly which I could
pester the Librarian to unearth; and points which in my hurry I had
overlooked before, began to take an air of importance. The old man
Fournier, for instance; it seemed sort of queer that a taxidermist of
Tangier should come all the way to Scilly for a month's holiday. Eh,
what? What was old man Fournier doing at Scilly? Scilly's a likely
place for wrecks. Was old man Fournier a hanger-on upon chance, a
nautical Mr. Micawber waiting for a wreck to turn up which would suit
his purpose? Or had he stage-managed by some means or other the _coup
de theater_ on Rosevear? It seemed funny that the short-sighted man
should spot the wreck on Rosevear before the St. Agnes men, eh?
Suppose M. Fournier and Ralph Warriner were partners in that pretty
cargo! I walked straight out of that library, feeling quite certain
that I held the right end of the skein. I had made a mistake in
following up Warriner. I ought to have followed up the taxidermist. I
walked about Falmouth all that day puzzling the business out; and I
came to the conclusion that the sooner I crossed to the Scillies the
better. I was by this time fairly excited, and I think I should have
spent my last farthing in the hunt even if I had known that when I had
run the mystery to earth, it would not profit me at all. I took a
train that very evening, and pottered about from station to station
all night. In the morning I got to Penzance, and kicked my heels on
the wharf of the little dock there until nine o'clock, when the
_Lyonnesse_ started for St. Mary's. Three hours later I saw the
islands hump themselves up from the sea, and I stared and stared at
them till a genial being standing beside me said, 'I suppose you
haven't been home for a good many years.'--By the way, Mrs. Warriner,"
he suddenly broke off, "I have heard that natural sherry is a drink in
some favour hereabouts. I can't say that it's a beverage I have ever
hankered after before, but what with the sun and the talk, the thought
of it is at the present moment most seductive. What if we rang down
the curtain for ten minutes and had an _entr'acte_, eh? Would you
mind?" And Wilbraham rose from his seat.
"No," said Miranda. "Please finish what you have to say now."
Wilbraham sighed, resumed his seat and at the same time his story.