EXPLAINS WHY CHARNOCK SAW MIRANDA'S FACE IN HIS MIRROR
Miranda rose nervously from her chair. She made an effort to speak,
which failed, and then yielding to a peremptory impulse she ran away.
It was only, however, into her parlour that she ran, and thither
Charnock followed her. She stood up rather quickly in the farthest
corner of the room as soon as he entered, drew a pattern with her foot
upon the floor, and tried to appear entirely at her ease. She did not
look at Charnock, however; on the contrary she kept her eyes upon the
ground, and felt very much like a school-girl who is going to be
punished.
"Your husband is alive." Charnock's voice was cold and stern. Miranda
resented it all the more because she knew she deserved nothing less
than sternness. "Did you," he continued, "learn that from Wilbraham
for the first time this morning?"
"No," she answered, and since she had found her voice, she added
rebelliously, "No, teacher," and was at once aware that levity was not
in the best of taste. Charnock perhaps was not at that moment in a
mood for jocularities.
"How long have you known that your husband was alive?" he asked.
"Five months," she answered.
"Who told you?"
"You."
There was a moment's pause. Miranda's foot described more figures on
the floor, and with great assiduity.
"I beg your pardon," said Charnock. "It is very humorous, no doubt,
but--"
"It is true," interrupted Miranda. "If I had wished to evade you, to
deceive you, I should have answered that Mr. Wilbraham brought me the
news this morning."
"I should have disbelieved it."
"You could not at all events have disproved it. You would have had not
a single word to say." She raised her eyes now and confronted him
defiantly.
"Yes," said Charnock, "I admit that," and a great change came over
Miranda. She stepped out of her corner. She raised her arms above her
head like one waking from sleep. "But I have had my fill of
deceptions. I am surfeited. Ask what you will, I'll answer you, and
answer you the truth. And for one thing, this is true: you told me
Ralph Warriner was alive, that night, at Lady Donnisthorpe's."
"I told you? On the balcony?"
"No, before. In the ball-room. You described him to me. You quoted his
phrases. You had seen him that very morning. He was the stranger you
quarrelled with in the streets of Plymouth."
"And you knew him from my description!" cried Charnock. All the anger
had gone from his face, all the coldness from his voice. "I remember.
Your face grew so white in the shadow of the alcove I should have
believed you had swooned but for the living trouble in your eyes. Your
face became through its pallor and distress the face which I had seen
in my mirror. Oh, that mirror and its message!" He broke into a harsh
bitter laugh, and seating himself at the table, beat upon his forehead
with his clenched fists. "A message of appeal! A call for help! Was
there ever such a fool in all the world? Here's one woman out of all
the millions who needs my help, I was vain enough to think, and the
first thing, the only thing that I did, was to tell her that her
outcast bully of a husband was still alive to bully her. A fine way to
help! But I guessed correctly even that night. Yes, even on that night
I was afraid that I had revealed to you some misfortune of which you
were unaware. Oh, why wasn't I struck dumb before I spoke? But you
could not have been sure from my description," he cried eagerly,
grasping in his remorse at so poor a straw as that subterfuge. "For
men are not all unlike, and they use the same phrases. You could not
have been certain. You must have had some other proof before you were
convinced."
"Yes, that is true."
"And that other proof you got from someone else?" he said, and his
voice implored her to assent.
Miranda only shook her head. "I promised to speak nothing but the
truth. I got that other proof from you."
"No, no," he exclaimed. "Let me think! No, I told you nothing else but
just my meeting with the man, my quarrel with him."
"Yes," said Miranda. "You told me how you woke up from dreaming of
Ralph, and saw my face in your mirror. Don't you see? There is the
convincing proof that the man you described to me, the man you
quarrelled with, the man you dreamed of, was Ralph, for when you woke
with that dream vivid in your mind, you saw my face vivid in your
mirror. You yourself were at a loss to account for it, you had never
so much as thought of me during the seven years since--since our eyes
met at Monte Carlo. You could not imagine why on that particular
night, after you had dreamed of someone else, unassociated with me, my
face should have come back to you. But it was no mystery to me. The
man you dreamed of was not unassociated with me; it was my husband,
and the husband recalled to you the wife, by an unconscious trick of
memory."
"But I did not know he was your husband," cried Charnock. "I had never
seen him with you; I had never seen him at all before that day I
quarrelled with him in the streets of Plymouth."
"You had," answered Miranda, gently. "He was with me that night at
Monte Carlo seven years ago. We were on our honeymoon," she added,
with a queer melancholy smile.
Charnock remembered the look of happiness upon her young face, and
compared it with the tired woman's face which he saw now. "He was with
you!" he exclaimed.
"Yes. You forgot us both. You met him again; you did not remember that
you had ever seen him, but none the less, the memory was latent in
you, and recalled me to you too. You could not trace the association,
but it was very clear to me."
"Wait, wait!" said Charnock. He sat with his elbows on the table and
the palms of his hands tightly pressed upon his eyes. "I can see you,
as clearly as I saw you then at Monte Carlo, as though you were
standing there, now, in the room and I in the room was watching you.
You were a little apart from the table, you were standing a few feet
behind the croupier at one end of the table. But Ralph Warriner! Was
he amongst the players? Wait! Let me think!"
Charnock remained silent. Miranda did not interrupt him, and in a
little he began again, piecing together his memories, revivifying that
scene in the gambling-room seven years ago. "I can see the lamps with
their green shades, I can see the glow of light upon the green table
beneath the lamps. I can see the red diamond, the yellow lines upon
the cloth, the three columns of numbers in the middle, the crowd about
the table, some seated, others leaning over their chairs. But their
faces! Their faces!" and then he suddenly cried out, "Ah! He was
seated, in front of you, next to the croupier. You were behind him,"
and in his excitement he reached out his arm towards her, and with
shaking fingers bade her speak.
"Yes," said she, "I was behind him."
"You moved to him. I understand now. His back was towards me at the
first--when I first saw you, when our eyes met. It was that vision of
you, the first, which I carried away, it was that only which I
remembered--you standing alone there. It was that which came back to
me when I saw your face in my mirror, just the picture of you as you
stood alone, distinct from the flowers in your hat to the tip of your
shoe, before you moved to the table, before you laid your hand on
Ralph Warriner's shoulder, before he turned to answer you and so
showed me his face. I remember, indeed. I saw his hand first of all.
It was reached out holding his stake. I can even remember that he laid
his stake on _impare_ and then he turned to you. Yes, yes, it's true,"
and Charnock rose from the table in his agitation, and walked once or
twice across the room. "It was Ralph Warriner I met at Plymouth, and
because of that trivial, ridiculous quarrel, I told you that he
lived!"
He stopped suddenly in front of the writing-table, and stood staring
out through the window, while his fingers idly played with a newspaper
which lay upon the desk.
"But Major Wilbraham," said Miranda, thinking to lessen his remorse,
"Major Wilbraham told me too, and only a month later; he came to me in
the Cathedral at Ronda here, and told me. He would have told me in any
case."
"Wilbraham!" said Charnock. "Yes, that's true. How did he find out?
Who told Wilbraham?" and he turned eagerly towards Miranda.
Miranda stammered and faltered. She had not foreseen the question, and
she tried to evade it. "He found out. He used his wits. He saw there
was profit in the discovery if he could--"
"If he could make the discovery. I understand that; but how did he
make the discovery?"
"Why, what does it matter?" cried Miranda. "He followed up a clue."
Charnock noticed her hesitation, her effort to evade his question.
"But who gave him the clue?"
Miranda moved restlessly about the room. "He set his wits to work--he
found out," she repeated. She sat down in the same chair in which
Charnock had sat. "What does it matter?" she said, and even as
Charnock had done, she pressed her hands upon her face.
"You promised me to answer truly whatever question I put to you," said
he, who, the more she hesitated, was the more resolved to know. "I ask
you this question. Who gave him the clue?"
"Since you will have it then,"--Miranda drew her hands from her
face,--"my poor friend, you did," she answered gently.
Charnock was more than startled. His face changed. There was something
even of horror in his eyes as he leaned across the table towards her.
"I?" he gasped. "I did?"
"I would have spared you the knowledge of that," she said with a
smile, "if only you would have allowed me to; but you would not. You
pointed out to him a brigantine, which you passed off Ushant."
"Yes, the _Tarifa_."
"The _Tarifa_ was once the _Ten Brothers_, Ralph's yacht which was
supposed to have been wrecked on Rosevear."
"But the _Ten Brothers_ was a schooner," urged Charnock. "I was told
only a few weeks ago at Gibraltar--one of the Salcombe--oh yes, that's
true too. I suggested to Wilbraham--to Wilbraham who said he was
familiar with the look of the boat--I suggested to him that the
_Tarifa_ was one of the Salcombe clippers."
"Yes. Wilbraham had known Ralph at Gibraltar, had seen the _Ten
Brothers_, very likely had been aboard of her. That was why the look
of the _Tarifa_ was familiar to him. When you told him the _Tarifa_
was a Salcombe boat he understood why it was familiar. It was the
merest clue; but he followed it up and found out."
"And blackmailed you!" continued Charnock.
He turned back to the writing-table and the window. Again his fingers
played idly with the newspaper. For a while he was silent; then he
said slowly, "Do you remember what you said to me on the balcony? That
no man could offer a woman help without doing her a hurt in some other
way."
"I spoke idly," interrupted Miranda.
"You spoke very truly, for here's the proof."
"I spoke to elude you," said Miranda, stubbornly. "It was a mere idle
fancy which came into my head, and the next moment was forgotten."
"But I remembered it," cried Charnock. "It was more true than you
thought."
"It was no more true than"--she hesitated. However, Charnock was not
looking at her; she found it possible to proceed--"than another belief
which led me astray, as this one is leading you."
"What other belief?"
Miranda nerved herself to answer him. "That no man would serve a woman
well, except for--for the one reason."
The nature of that reason was apparent to Charnock from the very
tone in which she spoke the word. "And you believed that?" he asked.
In a movement of surprise he had knocked the newspaper off the
writing-table. Underneath the newspaper was a book.
"I did believe it," she replied, her face rosy with confusion, "for a
few mad miserable days," and she checked herself suddenly, for she saw
that Charnock had absently opened and was absently turning over the
leaves of the book.
"Was the message of your mirror after all so false?" she whispered. He
turned towards her, with a face quite illumined. He did not, however,
leave the table, and he kept the pages of the book open with his
fingers.
"Then after all you do need help?" he cried.
"Need it?" she returned with a loud cry, and she stretched out hands
across the table towards him. "Indeed, indeed I need it, I desperately
need it! I sent the glove because I needed it."
"Then the glove was no sham?"
"It was not the glove that you tore; that was thrown away, but not by
me. I searched for it, it was not to be found. So I tore the other and
sent it as a substitute."
"And when I came, waited to discover," he added, "whether the one
reason held me to your service. I understand."
"You see," she agreed, "really, in my heart, all the time I trusted
you, for I knew you would keep your word. I knew you would say
nothing, but would just wait and wait until I told you what it was I
needed done."
Charnock turned abruptly towards her, and as he turned the book
slipped off the table and fell to the ground. "But yesterday," he
exclaimed in perplexity, "yesterday, here in this room, I gave you the
assurance which you looked for. You believed a man would only help you
for the one reason. Well, I told you that the one reason held with me;
yet, at that moment, you rejected all help and service. You cried out,
'It's the friend I want, not the lover.'"
"Because just at that moment I understood that my belief was wrong. I
understood the shame, the horror, of the tricks I had played on you."
"Tricks?" said Charnock. "Oh!" and as he stooped down to pick up the
book he added in a voice of comprehension, "At last! You puzzled me
yesterday when you said, 'To possess the friend you had had to _make_
the lover.'"
"Yes," she said eagerly, "you understand? I want you to. I want you to
understand to the last letter, so that you may decide whether you will
help me or not, knowing what the woman is who asks your help. I sat
down to trick you into caring for me if by any means I could. I did it
deliberately, how deliberately you will see if you only open the book
you hold. And it wasn't until I had won that I realised that I had
cheated to win and could not profit by the gains. I won yesterday and
yesterday I sent you away. Perhaps God kept you here."
Charnock made no answer. He sat down at the table opposite to Miranda
and turned over the leaves of the book, whilst Miranda watched him,
holding her breath. He was not angry yet, but she dreaded the moment
when he should understand the subject-matter of the book.
The book was a collection of letters written by a great French lady at
the Court of Louis XV. to a young girl-relative in Provence, and the
letters were intended to serve as a guide to the girl's provincial
inexperience. There was much sage instruction as to the best methods
of handling men, "ces animaux effroyables, dont nous ne pouvons ni ne
voudrons nous débarrasser," as the great lady politely termed them. In
the margin of the book Miranda's pencil had scored lines against
passages here and there. Charnock read out one:--
"Et prends bien garde de tellement diriger la conversation qu'il parle
beaucoup de lui-même."
"That accounts for the history of my life which I gave you in your
garden," said Charnock. He was not angry yet; he was even smiling.
"Yes," said Miranda, seriously; "but there's worse! Go on!"
"Soyez sage, ma mie," he read, turning over a page. "On ne possede
jamais un de ces animaux sans qu'on peut bien disposer d'un autre.
Celui que tu aimes, t'aimera aussi si tu fais la cour a un deuxième.
Ils ont bien tort qui disent qu'il ne faut que deux pour faire
l'amour. Il faut au moins trois."
"That accounts for Wilbraham, and the basket of flowers for
Gibraltar."
"For Wilbraham, yes," said Miranda.
Charnock did not notice that she excluded the basket of flowers from
her assent. He read out other items, still without any appearance of
anger. A foot carelessly exhibited and carefully withdrawn, the young
lady in the country was informed, might kick a hole in any male heart,
so long as the foot was slim, and the shoe all that it should be.
Charnock closed the book and sat opposite to Miranda with a laughing
face, enjoying her intense earnestness.
"So you won by cheating?" he said, "and this book taught you how to
cheat?"
"Yes, but I don't think you have grasped it," she replied seriously,
"and I want you to. I want you to understand the horrible, hateful way
in which I made you care for me. I now know that I ought to have
relied upon your friendship when you first came to Ronda. But I chose
the worse part, and if you say that you will not help me, why, I must
abide by it, and Ralph must abide by it too. But there shall be
nothing but truth now between you and me. I was not content with
friendship, I had the time I knew to try to make you care for me in
the other way, and I did try hatefully, and hatefully I succeeded--"
and to Miranda's surprise Charnock leaned back in his chair, and
laughed loudly and heartily for a long while. The more perplexed
Miranda looked, the more he laughed.
"Believe me, Mrs. Warriner," he said, and stopped to laugh again, "if
I had met you for the first time at Ronda, I should have taken the
first train back to Algeciras. Your tricks! I noticed them all, and
they drove me wild with indignation."
"Do you mean that?" exclaimed Miranda, and her downcast face
brightened.
"I do indeed," answered Charnock. "Oh, your tricks! I almost hated you
for them." He began to laugh again as he recollected them.
"I am so glad," replied Miranda, in the prettiest confusion, and as
Charnock laughed, in a little her eyes began to dance and she laughed
too.
"Shall I tell you what kept me at Ronda?" he said. "Because, in spite
of yourself, every now and then yourself broke through the tricks.
Because, however much you tried, you could not but reveal to me, now
and then, some fleeting glimpse of the woman who once stood beside me
in a balcony and looked out over the flashing carriage-lights to the
quiet of St. James's Park. It was in memory of that woman that I
stayed."
He was speaking with all seriousness now, and Miranda uttered a long
trembling sigh of gratitude. "Thank you," she said, "thank you."
"Now what can I do for you?" he asked, and Miranda made haste to
reply.