"A sham, Jane, a sham," said Miranda, in a queer, unsteady voice; "a trick, the first of them."
Jane Holt shook her head. "You are very strange, Miranda," but Miranda picked up the envelope, and putting on her hat hurried to the post-office. As she crossed the bridge over the Tajo a man barred her way. She tried to pass him; he moved again in front of her, and she saw that the man was Wilbraham.
"I wish to speak to you."
"In ten minutes," said she, "in the Alameda. I have a letter to post."
"The letter can wait," said he.
"If it did, it would never be posted," said she, and she hurried past him.
The Major followed her with inquisitive eyes; he felt a certain admiration for her buoyant walk, her tall slight figure, which a white muslin dress with a touch of colour at the waist so well set off, and for the pose of her head under the wide straw hat. But business instincts prevailed over his admiration. He lit a cigarette.
"What is the large sealed letter which must be posted at once, or it will never be posted at all?" he asked himself. "Why must it be posted at once?"
He strolled to the Alameda unable to find an answer. In the Alameda, at the bench before the railings, Miranda was waiting for him. She rose at once to meet him.
"Why have you come?" she asked. "It is not quarter-day. We made our bargain. I have kept my part of it."
"Yes," said he. "But it was not a good bargain for me. I underrated my necessities. I overrated my taste for a quiet life."
"And the Horace?" she asked scornfully. "One of the few things worth doing, was it not?"
Wilbraham flushed angrily.
"So it is," he said. "But I find it difficult to settle down. I need, in fact,--do we not all need them?--intervals of relaxation." He spoke uneasily; he looked even more worn and tired than when he first came to Ronda. Miranda understood that here indeed was the real tragedy of the man's life.
"All these years, fifteen years," she said, "you have dreamed of doing sooner or later this one thing. You have played with the dream. You have kept your self-respect by means of it. It has set you apart from your companions. And now, when the opportunity comes, you find that you were only after all on the level of your companions, lower, perhaps a trifle lower, by this trifle of delusion. For you cannot do the work."
Wilbraham did not resent the speech, which was uttered without reproach or accusation, but in the tone of one who notes a fact which should have been foreseen.
"A topping fellow Horace, of course," Wilbraham began.
"And I trusted you to do it," she said suddenly, and looked at him for a moment full in the face, not angrily, but with a queer sort of interest in the mistake she had made. Then she turned from him and walked away.
The Major followed quickly, but before he could come up with her she turned round on him.
"Follow me for one other step," she said, "and I call that guardia twenty yards away."
She meant to do it, too; this was unmistakable. She resumed her walk, and the Major thought it prudent to remain where he was. He remained in fact for some time on that spot, whistling softly to himself.
Wilbraham's menaces had sunk to a complete insignificance in Miranda's mind, since she had been confronted with the actual positive disaster which had befallen Ralph Warriner. Wilbraham, however, was not in a position to trace Miranda's sudden audacity to its true source. He fell therefore, and not unnaturally, into the error of imagining that she drew her courage to refuse his demands from some new and external support. His thoughts went back to the letter which must be posted at once. Had that letter anything to do with that support? Had it anything to do with her refusal?
Wilbraham asked himself these questions with considerable uneasiness, for after all the seven hundred per annum was not so absolutely assured. He came to the conclusion that it would be wise to transfer his quarters from Tarifa to Ronda.
CHAPTER XII
THE HERO, LIKE ALL HEROES, FINDS HIMSELF IN A FOG
At eight o'clock the next morning Charnock was crushing the remainder of his clothes into a portmanteau. A couple of corded trunks stood ready for the porters, while the manager of the line sat in the window overlooking Algeciras Bay, and gave him gratuitous advice as to totally different and very superior methods of packing.
The manager suddenly rose to his feet.
"Here's the P. and O. coming into the bay," he said. "Man, but you have very little time. I'm thinking you'll miss it."
Charnock raised a flushed face from his portmanteau, and so wasted a few seconds. He made no effort to catch them up.
"I'm thinking, too, you would not be very sorry to miss it," continued the manager, sagely. "Though what charms you can discover in Algeciras, it's beyond my powers to comprehend."
Charnock did not controvert or explain the manager's supposition. He continued to pack, but perhaps a trifle more slowly than before.
"You have got my address, Macdonald?" he said. "You won't lose it, will you?"
He shut up the portmanteau and knelt upon it.
"You will forward everything that comes--everything without fail?" he insisted.
"In all human probability," returned Macdonald, "I will forward nothing at all. For I am thinking you will lose the boat."
There was a knock on the door; Charnock's servant brought in a letter.
The letter lay upon its face, and the sealed back of the envelope had an official look.
"Open it, will you, Macdonald?" said Charnock, as he fastened the straps. "Well, what's it about?"
"I cannot tell. It's written in a dialect I do not understand," said the manager, gravely, and Charnock, turning about, saw that he dangled and deliberated upon a long white kid glove.
Charnock jumped up and snatched it away.
"It's a female's," said the manager, sagely.
"It's a woman's," returned Charnock, with indignation.
"You are very young," observed Macdonald. "And I'll point out to you that you have torn your letter."
Charnock was turning the glove over, and showed the palm at that moment. He smiled, but made no answer. He folded the glove, wrapped it in its envelope, took it out again, and smoothed its creases. Then he folded it once more, held it for a little balanced on his hand, and finally replaced it in the envelope and hid the envelope in his pocket.
"Man, but you are _very_ young," remarked Macdonald, "and I'm thinking that you'll lose--"
"There's a train to Ronda pretty soon?" interrupted Charnock.
"There is," replied Macdonald, drily, "and I'll be particular to mind your address, and forward everything that comes. Eh, but you have paid your passage on the P. and O."
Charnock, in spite of that argument, took his seat in the train for Ronda, and travelled up through the forest of cork trees whose foliage split the sunshine, making here a shade, there an alley of light. The foresters were at work stripping the trunks of their bark, and Charnock was in a mood to make parables of the world, so long as they fitted in with and exemplified his own particular purposes and plans.
He himself was a forester, and the rough bark he was stripping was Miranda's distress, so it is to be supposed that the bare tree-trunk was Miranda herself; and, to be sure, what simile could be more elegant?