M. FOURNIER EXPOUNDS THE ADVANTAGES WHICH
EACH SEX HAS OVER THE OTHER
The long interview with Wilbraham in the Alameda of Ronda had
consequences for Miranda which she felt but did not trace to their
source. It was not merely that she sickened at the vulgar, futile
story of his ruin; that she saw in imagination the wretched victim he
had run to earth across two continents, closing the door and slipping
the pistol-barrel between his teeth; that she loathed the knowledge
that this man was henceforward her gaoler; but she took him and the
bitter years of her marriage together in her thoughts, and using them
as premisses began doubtfully to draw universal conclusions.
These conclusions Miranda hazarded at times in the form of questions
to her companion Jane Holt, and sought answers from her as from one
who had great experience of the tortuous conduct of men. Were men
trustworthy at all? If so, were there any means by which a woman could
test their trustworthiness? These two questions were the most constant
upon Miranda's tongue, and Jane Holt answered them with assurance, and
in her own way.
Wilbraham had not erred when he described her as a sentimentalist with
grievances. Sentimentalism was the shallows of her nature, and she had
no depths. Her conversation ran continually upon the "big things," as
she termed them, such as devotion, endurance, self-sacrifice, and the
rest, in which qualities men were singularly deficient. She meant,
however, only devotion to her, endurance of her, self-sacrifice for
her, of which it was not unnatural that men should tire, seeing who it
was that demanded them. Yet she had enjoyed her share, and more than
her share. For though incapable of passion herself, she had in her
youth possessed the trick of inspiring it, but without the power,
perhaps through her own incapacity, of keeping it alive, and no doubt
too because upon a moderate acquaintance she conveyed an impression of
inherent falsity. For, being a sentimentalist, she lived in a false
world, on the borders of a lie, never quite telling it perhaps, and
certainly never quite not telling it. She was by nature exigent, for
she was in her own eyes the pivot of her little world, and for the
wider world beyond, she had no eyes whatever. And her exigence took
amusing or irritating shapes according to the point of view of those
who suffered it. For instance, you must never praise her costumes, of
which she had many, and those worthy of praise, but the high qualities
of her mind, which were few and often of no taste whatever. It should
be added that she had always favoured an inferior before an equal. For
it pleased her above all things to condescend, since she secured thus
a double flattery, in the knowledge of her own condescension, and in
the grateful humility of those to whom she condescended.
It can be foreseen, then, what answers this woman,--who was tall, and
still retained the elegance of her figure, and would have still
retained the good looks of her face, but that it was written upon by
many grievances--would give to Miranda's questions.
"You can trust no men. You must bribe them with cajoleries; you must
play the coquette; you must enlist their vanity. They are all trivial,
and the big things do not appeal to them."
Miranda listened. She was accustomed to Jane Holt, and had no longer a
reasoned conception of her character. Habit had dulled her
impressions. She remembered only that Jane Holt had had much
experience of men wherein she herself was wofully deficient. Jane Holt
embroidered her theme; a pretty display of petulance, the seemingly
accidental disclosure of an ankle, a voluntary involuntary pressure of
the arm, these things had power to persuade the male mind, such as it
is, and to enmesh that worthless thing the male heart.
"One might have a man for a friend, perhaps," suggested Miranda,
hopefully.
"My poor Miranda!" exclaimed Miss Holt. "No wonder your marriage was a
failure. Men pretend friendship for a woman at times, but they mean
something else."
The moral was always that they were not to be trusted, and Miranda,
vividly recollecting Ralph Warriner and Wilbraham, listened and
wondered, listened and wondered, until she would rise of a sudden and
take refuge in her own parlour, of which the window looked out across
the valley to the hills, where she would sit with a throbbing forehead
pressed upon her palms, certain, certain, that the homily was not
true, and yet half distracted lest it should be true.
On the morrow of one such conversation, and one such flight, Miss Holt
came into the little parlour--a cool, dark-panelled, low-roofed room
of which the door gave on to the patio--and found Miranda searching
the room.
"Do you know what month this is?" Miss Holt asked severely.
"October."
"Quite so," and great emphasis was laid upon the words.
"I know," replied Miranda, penitently, as she crossed over to a table
and lifted the books. "We have been here all the summer; it has been
very hot. I am sorry, but I was compelled to stay. I did not know what
might occur, and," she anxiously turned over the letters and papers on
her writing-table in the window, "it was some comfort, I admit, to
feel that one was near--" She stopped suddenly and resumed in
confusion, "I mean I did not know what might happen."
Jane Holt looked at her with great displeasure, but said nothing
until Miranda began hurriedly to open and shut the drawers of her
writing-table. Then she said irritably: "What in the world are you
looking for?"
Miranda stood up and looked round the room. "There was a glove," she
said absently.
"Yes, I threw it away."
"Threw it away!" Miranda stared at Jane Holt with a look of complete
dismay. "You don't mean that. Oh, you can't mean it!"
"Indeed I do; it was torn across the palm."
"I left it lying there, on my writing-desk, yesterday, after you and I
had been talking--" She left the sentence unfinished.
"Yes, and I found it there. It was torn, so I had it thrown away."
Miranda rang a hand-bell, and ordered search to be made for the glove.
It could not be found; it had been burnt with the answered letters.
"Very well," said Miranda, and the servant retired. Miranda sat down,
and showed to Jane Holt a face of which the expression was almost
scared.
"What does it matter?" exclaimed Jane. "The glove was torn; you could
never have used it."
"No," answered Miranda, quickly, almost guiltily it seemed. "I should
never have used it; I never meant to use it. The glove was only a
symbol; it was no more than that, it represented a belief. I can
retain the belief, no doubt. No doubt, though, I have lost the
glove--"
"What in the world are you talking about?" interrupted Jane Holt.
"Nothing, nothing," answered Miranda, with a start. The loss of the
glove had so dismayed her that she had forgotten who it was she had
been speaking to, or indeed that she was speaking to anyone. She had
merely uttered her thoughts, for she had come to look upon that glove,
which, under no circumstances, would she use, as none the less a
safeguard, and of late, in particular, she had fallen into a habit of
taking it from the drawer in which it rested and setting it before her
eyes; of stating it, as it were, as a refutation of Jane Holt's ready
opinions.
Jane Holt shook her head. "You have changed very much towards me,
Miranda. You are growing secret. I don't want to know. I would not
press anyone for their confidence; but I may think it strange, I
suppose?" She folded her arms across her breast and tapped with her
fingers upon her elbows. "I suppose I may think it strange; and if
anyone took the trouble to give me a thought, perhaps anyone might
believe that I had a right to feel hurt. But I don't! Please don't run
away with that idea! No, I cannot allow you, Miranda, to fancy for a
moment that I should feel hurt. But I do notice that you jump whenever
there is a knock at the door. There! What did I say?"
The door of the parlour stood open to the patio; in the corner of the
opposite side of the patio there was the mouth of a passage which led
to the outer door; and upon that outer door just at this moment
someone rapped heavily, as though he came in haste. Miranda started
nervously, and to cover the movement, rose from her chair and closed
the door.
"And as for the glove," resumed Jane Holt, who found it difficult to
leave any subject alone when it was evident that it was unwelcome,
"you could never have used it."
"No," answered Miranda, thoughtfully. "Of course--of course, I could
never have used it;" and a servant entered the room and handed to her
a card on which was engraved M. Fournier's name and address.
Miranda held the card beneath her eyes for some little while. Then she
walked out into the patio, where M. Fournier awaited her. He came
towards her at once, in an extreme agitation, but she signed to him to
be silent, and opening a second door on the same side of the patio as
the door of her parlour, but farther to the right, she led the way
into a tiny garden rich with deep colours. Jonquils, camellias, roses,
wild geraniums, and pinks, tended with a care which bespoke a mistress
from another country, made a gay blaze in the sun, and sweetened the
air with their delicate perfumes.
The garden was an irregular nook with something or the shape of a
triangle, enclosed between the back wall of the house and a wing flung
out at a right angle. The base of the triangle was an old brick wall,
breast-high, which began at the end of the house wall and curved
outwards until it reached the wing. Over this wall the eye looked
through air to the olive-planted slope of a mountain. For the house
was built on the brink of the precipice, it was in a line with the
Alameda, though divided from it by the great chasm, and if one leaned
over the crumbling wall built long ago by the Moors, one had an
impression that one ought to see the waves churning at the foot of the
rock and to hear a faint moaning of the sea; so that the sight of the
level carpet of the plain continually surprised the eyes.
Into this garden Miranda brought M. Fournier. No windows overlooked
it, for those which gave light to Miranda's parlour were in the end
and the other side of the wing, and so commanded the valley without
commanding this enclosure. A little flagged causeway opened a path
between the flowers to the nook between the wing of the house and the
old wall, where two lounge chairs invited use.
Miranda seated herself in one of these chairs and with a gesture
offered the other to M. Fournier. M. Fournier, however, took no heed
of the invitation. He had eyes only for Miranda's face. He held his
hat in one hand, and with a coloured handkerchief continually mopped
his forehead, a dusty perspiring image of anxiety.
"You come from my husband?" said Miranda.
M. Fournier's face lightened. "Ah, then, you know--"
"That he is alive? Yes. You come from him?"
"From him, no; on his behalf, yes."
Miranda smiled at the subtle distinction. "You need money, of course,"
she said drily. "How much do you want? You have, no doubt, some
authority from my husband."
The little Belgian's anxiety gave place to offended pride. "We do not
need money, neither he nor I; but as for authority, perhaps this will
serve."
He drew from his pocket a soiled scrap of paper and handed it to
Miranda. The paper, as she could see from the blue lines, the shape,
and the jagged border, had been torn from a small pocketbook. It was
so crumpled and soiled that a few words scribbled with a pencil on the
outside in Arabic were barely visible. Miranda unfolded the paper
slowly, for the mere look of it was sinister. The words within were
written also in pencil, and her face altered as she read them.
"What does J. B. mean?" she asked.
"J. B. are the initials of the name he took."
"You are sure this comes from my husband? I do not recognise his
hand."
"Quite sure."
"Here is bad news," said she, and she conned the words over again, and
could nowhere pick out the familiar characteristics of Ralph
Warriner's handwriting. The words themselves were startling. _Reward
the bearer well, and for God's sake do quickly what you can_. But more
startling, more significant, than the words was the agitation of the
writer's hand. Haste and terror had kept the hand wavering. Here the
pencil had paused, yet even when pausing, its point had trembled on
the paper, as the blurred dots showed. Miranda imagined that so it had
paused and trembled, while someone walked by the writer's back and had
but to glance over his shoulder to discover the business he was
engaged upon. Then again the pencil had raced on, running the words
one into the other, fevered to get the message done. A whole tragedy
was indicated in the formation of the letters. Or a malady? Miranda
turned eagerly to the letter. The writing wavered up and down. The
small letters were clear; the capitals and the long letters, the
"f's," the "q's," the "y's," weak, as though the fingers could not
control the pencil. Illness might account for the message, and Miranda
chose that supposition.
"He is lying very ill somewhere," she said.
M. Fournier shook his head. "No. I tried to believe that myself at
first; but I never did believe it, and I thought and thought and
thought--_Tenez_, look!" He drew a piece of blank paper from one
pocket, a pencil from another. The paper he spread upon his knee, the
pencil he took between his teeth; then he held out his wrists.
"Now fasten them together."
Miranda uttered a cry. Her face grew very white. "What with?" she
asked.
"Your belt."
She unclasped her belt from her waist and strapped Fournier's wrists
together.
"Tighter," said he, "tighter. Now see!"
With great difficulty and labour he copied out Warriner's message on
the blank paper; and while he wrote Miranda saw the sentence wavering
up and down, the small letters coming out clear and small, the long
strokes and tails straggling. She seized the copy almost before he had
finished, and held it side by side with the original. There was a
difference, of course, the difference which stamped one man's hand as
Warriner's and the other as Fournier's, the difference of fear, but
that was the only difference. The method in each case was identical;
the same difficulties had produced the same results.
"There can be no doubt, _hein?_" asked Fournier, as Miranda unfastened
the belt.
"How did this come to you?" she returned.
"I tell you," said he, "from the beginning. Bentham--that is what M.
Warriner calls himself now, Bentham--Jeremy Bentham he calls himself,
because he says he's such an economist--well, he and I are partners in
a little business, and we have prospered. So when Bentham came back
from Bemin Sooar to Tangier a week ago, I give a dinner in my house to
a few friends and we dance afterwards. Perhaps ten or eleven of us and
Bentham. Bentham he came and danced and he was the last to go away. He
did not stay in my house--it was better for our little business that
we should not be thought more than mere friends. He had a lodging in
the town, while my house was outside up the hill. He rode away alone
on a mule, for he was in evening dress and one cannot walk across the
Sôk in dancing shoes, and he never reached his lodging. He
disappeared. I heard no word of him, until yesterday; yesterday about
mid-day, an Arab brought that scrap of paper to my shop."
"But the Arab told you how and where he got it?" said Miranda.
"Yes. He belonged to a douar, a tent village, you understand. The
village is three days from Tangier on the road to Mequinez. The Arab
was leading down his goats to the water a week ago, in the morning,
when six men passed him at a distance. They were going up into the
country; they had a mule with them. He watched them pass and noticed
that one of them would now and then loiter and fall a little behind,
whereupon the rest beat him with sticks and drove him again in front.
And he did not resist, Madame, I am afraid we know why he did not
resist."
Miranda pressed her hands to her forehead.
"Well," she said with an effort, and her voice had sunk to a whisper,
"finish, finish!"
"It seemed to the Arab," continued Fournier, whose anxiety seemed in
some measure to diminish, and whose face grew hopeful as he watched
Miranda's increasing distress, "that this victim made a sign to him,
and when the party had gone by he noticed something white gleaming on
the brown soil in the line of their march. He went forward and picked
it up. It was this piece of paper. He read the writing on it, these
marks." M. Fournier turned over the sheet, and pointed to the
indecipherable Arabic. "They mean, 'Take this to Fournier at Tangier
and you will get money.' He opened it, he could not read the inside,
but seeing that it was written in one of the languages of the
Nazarenes, he thought there might be some truth in the promise. So he
brought the paper to Tangier yesterday and I have brought it to you."
M. Fournier settled his glasses upon his nose and leaned forward for
his answer. Miranda sat with knitted brows, gazing out to the dark
mountains. Fournier would not interrupt her; he fancied she was
searching her wits for a device to bring help to Warriner; but,
indeed, she was not thinking at all.
Miranda had a trick of seeing pictures. She was not given to arguments
and inferences; but a word, a sentence, would strike upon her hearing,
and at once a curtain was rolled up somewhere in her mind, and she saw
men moving to and fro and things happening as upon a lighted stage.
Such pictures made up her arguments, her conclusions, even her
motives; and it was because of their instant vividness that she was so
rapidly moved to sympathy and dislike. So now there was set before her
eyes the picture of a man riding down the hill of Tangier at night in
the civilisation of evening dress, and, as she looked, it melted into
another in which the same man, clad in vile rags, with his hands
bound, was flogged forwards under a burning sun into the barbaric
inlands of Morocco. She saw that brutal party, the five gaolers, the
one captive, straggle past the tent village. She guessed at Ralph's
despairing glance as though it was directed towards herself, she saw
the scrap of paper flutter white upon the dark soil. And as she
contemplated this vision, she heard M. Fournier speaking again to her;
but the sound of his voice had changed. He was no longer telling his
story; he was pleading with a tenderness which had something
grotesquely pathetic, when she considered who it was for whom he
pleaded. His foreign accent became more pronounced, and the voluble
words tumbled one over the other.
"So M. Warriner does not ask you for money; that sees itself, is it
not? Nor even does he ask you for help. Be sure of that, Madame; read
the note again. He would not come to you for help; he is not so mean;
he has too much pride;" and as Mrs. Warriner smiled, with perhaps a
little bitterness, M. Fournier, noticing her smile, became yet more
astonishing and intricate in his apologies. "He take your money, oh
yes, I know very well, while he is with you; but then you get his
company in exchange. That make you both quits, eh? But once he has
gone away, he would not come back to you for money or help at all. He
has so much pride. Oh no! He just take it from the first person he
meet, me or anyone else. He has so much pride; besides, it would be
simpler. No! It is I who come to you. He often speak to me of you--oh,
but in the highest terms! And I say to myself: That dear Ralph, he is
difficult to live with. He is not a comfortable friend. We know that,
Mrs. Warriner and I, but we both love him very much--"
"No!"
The emphatic interruption fairly startled M. Fournier. Miranda had
risen from her seat and stood over him. He would not have believed
that so gentle a face could have taken on so vigorous an expression.
He stammered a protest. Miranda repeated her denial: "No, no, no!" she
cried. "Let us be frank!"
She turned aside from him, and leaning her elbows upon the crumbling
parapet of the wall, looked across the valley and down the cliff's
side where one road was cut in steep zigzags, and winding down to the
plain as to the water's edge, helped to complete the illusion that the
sea should fitly be breaking at the base.
M. Fournier's hopes dwindled in the face of this uncompromising
denial. He had come to enlist her help; he had counted upon her
affections, and had boldly counted, because Warriner had so surely
attracted his own. M. Fournier would have been at a loss to explain
his friendship for Warriner, to account for the causes or the
qualities which evoked it, but he felt its strength, and he now knew
that Mrs. Warriner had no lot or share in it.
He was therefore the more surprised when she turned back to him with
eyes which were shining and moist, and said very gently: "But of
course I will help." Her conduct was not at all inconsistent, however
much it might appear so to M. Fournier. She was acting upon the same
motive which had induced her, the moment she was aware of Ralph
Warriner's existence, to return to Ronda, the one spot where Warriner
would be sure to look for her if he needed her, and which had
subsequently persuaded her to submit to the blackmail of Major
Wilbraham. "Of course I will help. What can I do?"
M. Fournier's eyes narrowed, his manner became wary and cunning. "I
hoped that you might perhaps hit upon some plan," he suggested.
"I?" Miranda thought for a moment, then she said: "We must appeal to
the English Minister at Tangier."
M. Fournier sprang out of his chair. "No, that is the very last thing
we must do. For what should we say? That Mr. Ralph Warriner, who was
thought to be dead, has just been kidnapped in Morocco?"
"No, but that Mr. Bentham has," she returned quickly.
M. Fournier shrugged his shoulders. "Why am I here?" he exclaimed,
stamping his foot. "I ask you, why am I here? _Saperlipopette!_ Would
I have come to you if any so simple remedy had been possible? Suppose
we go politely to the English Minister and ask him to find Mr. Jeremy
Bentham! The Minister goes to the Sultan of Morocco, and after many
months, perhaps Mr. Bentham is found, perhaps he is not. Suppose that
he is found and brought down to Tangier,--what next, I beg you? There
will be talk about Mr. Bentham, there will be gentlemen everywhere,
behind bushes, under tables, everywhere, so that the great British
public may know the colours of the ties he wears, and at last be
happy. His name will be in the papers, and more, Mrs. Warriner, his
portrait too. His portrait; have you thought of that?"
"But he might escape the photographers."
"Suppose he do, by a miracle. Do you think there will be no inquiry as
to what is Mr. Bentham's business in Morocco? Do you think the English
Minister will not ask the inconvenient question? Do you think that you
can hide his business, once an inquiry is set on foot, in that
country? He might pass as a tourist, you think perhaps, _hein?_ And
any one man has only got to give a few dollars to some officer in the
custom-house, and he will know that Mr. Bentham is smuggling guns into
Morocco, and selling them to the Berbers of Bemin Sooar. What then? He
would be taken for trial to Gibraltar, where only two years ago he was
Captain Warriner."
Miranda had already heard enough from Wilbraham to confirm M.
Fournier's statement about the custom-house.
"No," continued Fournier, "the risk is too great. And I call it risk!"
He hunched his shoulders and spread out his hand. "It is a red-hot
cert, as he would say. His identity would be established, and he had
better, after all, be a captive in Morocco than a convict in England.
There is some chance of an escape in Morocco."
"There is also in Morocco some chance of a--" Miranda's lips refused
to speak the word. M. Fournier supplied it.
"Murder? I do not fear that. Had they intended murder, they would have
killed that night, then and there, in the Sôk of Tangier. There would
have been no letter dropped three days inland."
Miranda eagerly welcomed the argument. "Yes, yes," she exclaimed, and
the colour came back to her lips. "He is held for ransom then,
surely?"
M. Fournier shook his head. "Hardly. Had they captured him for ransom,
they would have got from him the names of his friends. They would have
used measures," said he, with some emphasis upon the word, at which
Miranda shivered; "sure measures to get the names, and Warriner would
have given mine. They would have come to me for the ransom, and I
should have given it--if it was everything I had--and Warriner would
be safe by now."
Fournier was aware that Miranda looked curiously and even with a sort
of compunction towards him, though he did not understand the reason of
her look. To him it was the most natural, simple thing in the world
that he should care for Warriner.
"No, it is not ransom," and he threw a cautious glance this way and
that, and then, even in that secret spot, continued in a whisper:
"Warriner has enemies, enemies of his own race. I do not wonder at
it," he explained impartially. "He treats me, yes, even me, who am his
one friend, as though--well, his own phrase is the best. He wipes the
floor with me. He has promised to do it many times, and many times he
has done it too. No doubt he has enemies, and they have arranged his
capture."
"Why?"
"Suppose they sell him for a slave, a long way off and a long way
inland. It would not be pleasant at all, and most of all unpleasant to
him, for he is particular. Of course you know that, Mrs. Warriner. He
likes his linen very clean and fine. He would not enjoy being a slave,
yet he could not appeal to his Government, even if he got the chance."
"Oh, don't, please!" cried Miranda. That intimate detail about Ralph's
habits brought home to her most convincingly his present plight. "But
what enemies?" she asked in a moment or two. "Is it a guess of yours,
or do you know of any?"
M. Fournier hitched his chair nearer. His voice became yet more
confidential.
"Three months ago an Englishman came to my shop."
"Three months ago?" interrupted Miranda. "He leaned over your counter
and he said, 'How did you work that little affair on Rosevear, and
how's my dear friend, Ralph Warriner?'"
"Ah, you know him!" cried Fournier, springing up in excitement.
"Yes, and he has nothing to do with Ralph's capture," replied Miranda.
"He only went that one time to Tangier." M. Fournier resumed his seat,
and she briefly explained to the Belgian the reason and the
consequence of Wilbraham's visit. Fournier's face fell as he listened.
He had hoped that the necessary clue had been discovered, and when
Miranda finished he sat silent in a glum despair. After a little his
face lightened.
"Only once you say he came to Tangier, this man you speak of--only
once?" he asked eagerly, stretching out his hand.
"Only the once."
"He was not there earlier in the year? He was not there in May? Think
carefully. Be very sure!"
Mrs. Warriner reflected for a second. "I am sure he was not," she
replied. "He travelled by train from Monte Carlo to Marseilles in May.
From Marseilles he came directly by boat to England."
"Good," said M. Fournier. He sat forward in his chair and rubbed the
palms of his hands together. "Now listen! There was another Englishman
who came in May. He came to my shop, though the shutter was on the
window and the shop closed."
"Who was he?" asked Mrs. Warriner.
"I cannot guess."
"Tell me what he was like."
"Ah! there's the trouble. Neither of us saw him. Warriner heard his
voice, that is all. And a voice? There is no clue more deceptive. The
one thing Warriner is sure of is that he had never heard the voice
before."
"But what was it that he heard?"
"I tell you. Warriner came down to Tangier that very morning from the
country. He travelled as always in the dress of a Moor, for he speaks
their tongues, no Moor better, and our little business, you
understand, needs secrecy. I closed my shop, shuttered the window,
locked the door. Warriner told me he had arranged with the sheikhs of
the Berber tribes to deliver so many Winchesters, so much ammunition,
within a certain period. The period was short; Warriner's boat, the
_Ten Brothers_, was waiting at Tarifa. I leave him to change his dress
and shave his beard, while I go down to the harbour and hire a felucca
to put him over to Tarifa. But Warriner forgot to lock the door behind
me. In a minute or two he hear a hand scrape softly, oh so softly, up
the door towards the latch. For a second he stood, with the razor in
his hand like this," and the Belgian, in the absorption of his
narrative began to act the scene, "looking at the latch, waiting for
it to rise, and listening. Then he remembered that he had not locked
the door. He crept on tip-toe towards it; just as he reached it he
heard a loud English voice shout to him violently, 'Look out!' That
phrase is a menace, eh?" he stopped to ask.
"It might be. It would more naturally be a warning," said Mrs.
Warriner.
"In either case it means an enemy. As he shouted Warriner's hand was
already on the key. Warriner turn the lock, and immediately the
Englishman batter and knock at the door, but he could not get in, and
after a little he went away. Ah! how often we have wondered who that
man was, and why he shouted out his threat and tried to force the
door. To know that you have one enemy at your heels, but you cannot
pick him out because you have not seen his face! That frightens me,
Madame Warriner. I am a coward, and it is no wonder that it frightens
me." The perspiration broke out on Fournier's forehead as he made his
frank confession. "But it frightens Warriner too, who is no coward.
Often and often have I seen him lift up a finger, so," he suited the
action to the word, "when a new voice speak within his hearing, and
listen, listen, listen, to make sure whether that was the voice which
shouted through the door or no. But a voice! You cannot be certain you
recognise it, unless you can recognise also the face of the man to
whom it belongs. A singer's voice, yes! Perhaps you might know that
again though you heard it for the first time blindfold. But a voice
that merely speaks or shouts, no!"
M. Fournier picked up his hat and rose from his chair. Miranda rose
too, and they stood face to face with one another under the awning.
"So I ask you this. Will you help to recover your husband?" he asked,
with a simplicity of appeal which went home to Miranda all the more,
because it did not presume to claim her help. "Either a search must be
made privately through Morocco until he is found and bought, and such
a search seems hopeless; or the unknown man who shouted through the
door must be discovered. That is the simplest way. For this I do
believe"--and he expressed his belief with a great solemnity and
conviction which sank very memorably into Miranda's mind--"I believe
that if we lay our hands upon that man we shall lay our hands also
upon the means to rescue Warriner from his servitude."
"But how can I help? I do not know the man who shouted through the
door." The words were flung at Fournier in a passion of impotence.
"You say you need no money. I cannot scour Morocco. How can a woman
help?"
M. Fournier hesitated. He took off his glasses. He found it easier to
speak the matter of his thoughts when he saw her face dimly, and could
not take note of its expressions.
"A woman very often has friends," he hinted.
He saw her face grow rosy and then pale.
"Yes, but I have lost the glove," she cried impulsively, and as she
turned towards the perplexed M. Fournier, the blood rushed back into
her cheeks. "I mean," she stammered, and broke off suddenly into a
question which was at once an accusation and a challenge.
"And men, have they no friends?"
Fournier did not affect to misunderstand her.
"Here and there, perhaps a man has one friend who will deliberately
risk much, even life, for him, but in those cases he has only one such
friend. Warriner has one, but alas! that one friend is myself.
Already, it is true, I have risked my life for him at the Scillies,
and I would gladly lose it for him now, if I could only lose it
without foreknowledge. But what can I do? A little fat Belgian
bourgeois, of middle age, who speaks no language correctly but his
own, and has only a few poor words of Arabic, a man of no strength,
and, Madame, a coward,--what could I do inland in Morocco?" He made no
parade of humility as he described himself; he used the simple,
straightforward tone of one who advances cogent arguments. Miranda was
moved by an impulse to hold out her hand to him.
"I beg your pardon," she said.
M. Fournier was encouraged to continue his plea.
"But to possess sufficient friends so that one may choose the adequate
instrument,--ah, that is the privilege of women!" He added timidly,
"Of women who have youth and beauty," but in a voice so low that the
words hardly reached Miranda's ears, and their significance was not
understood by her at all.
"I have not many friends," she returned frankly, "but I have one who
would be adequate. I cannot tell whether I can bring myself to--I mean
I cannot tell whether he could go; he has duties. It is asking much to
ask any man to set out into Morocco on such an errand. However, I must
think of it; I could at all events send for him and tell him of my
husband--"
M. Fournier interposed quickly: "He knows nothing of Ralph Warriner?"
"He believes my husband dead."
"Then why should he not continue to believe your husband dead?" asked
Fournier, with a sly cunning. "It is Mr. Jeremy Bentham he goes out to
find,--a friend of yours--a relation perhaps--is it not so? We can
keep Ralph Warriner dead for a while longer."
The little man's intention was becoming obvious.
"Why?" asked Miranda, sharply.
"It would be more prudent."
"I don't understand."
Her voice was cold and dangerous.
"A man has one friend, a woman many," explained M. Fournier; "but
there are compensations for the man in that his friend will serve him
for friendship's sake. But a man will not serve a woman for
friendship's sake. Not if he serve her well."
M. Fournier was prepared for an outburst of indignation; he was not
prepared for the expression which came over Miranda's face, and he
could not understand it. She looked at him fixedly and, as it seemed,
in consternation. "That is not true," she said; "it is not true.
Surely, surely it cannot be true."
M. Fournier made no answer. She turned away from him and walked along
the flagged pathway, turned at the end and came slowly back. "A man
will only serve a woman if he cares for her?"
M. Fournier bowed.
"And men can be made to care?"
M. Fournier smiled.
"But it needs time?"
M. Fournier shrugged his shoulders and spread out his hands.
"And it needs tricks?"
M. Fournier made a pun.
"Nature, Madame, has put the tricks in your hand."
Miranda nodded her head once or twice, and made a remark which M.
Fournier was at a loss to apply. "The old question," said she, "and
the old answer;" and at once an irrational anger flamed up within her,
anger with M. Fournier for posing the question again, anger with
herself for her perplexity, anger even against Charnock, because he
did not magically appear in the garden and answer the question and
dissolve her perplexity. But M. Fournier alone was in the garden with
her, and the full force of her anger broke upon him. "I am to throw
out my net," she cried, "and catch my friend! I am to trick him, to
lie to him, and to earn with the lie the use of his life and his
brains and his time and his manhood. How dare you come to me with such
a thought? A coward's thought indeed!"
"The thought of a man who loves his friend," said M. Fournier,
stubbornly; and he continued without any sarcasm: "Your sentiments,
Madame Warriner, are most correct; they do you honour, but I love my
friend."
To his surprise Miranda suddenly smiled at him, and then laughed. "I
was never treated with such absolute disregard in all my life," she
said. "No, don't apologise, I like you for it."
"Then you will do as I propose?" he exclaimed.
Miranda grew serious. "I cannot. If I ask my friend to go upon this
errand, he must know before he goes who it is I ask him to bring back.
I must think what can be done. You will go back to Tangier; perhaps
you may find Ralph there when you return. I will write to you at
Tangier."
M. Fournier had plainly no opinion of her plan; but he saw that he
could not dissuade her. He took the hand which she held out to him,
and returned sorrowfully through the patio to the street.