THE next morning was gloriously fine, and I was on the Stella in good time to see that all was in readiness. Old Bolton, my skipper, muttered something about the wind shifting and that we should probably have a change in the weather, but for once I didn’t believe him, and just before noon I jumped into the launch and went off in high spirits to fetch Miralda and her mother.
Then came a decidedly disagreeable surprise.
As I stepped on to the quay, Inez was waiting for me, her servant standing by with wraps. With one of her most radiant smiles she gave me her hand and reminded me that I had invited her to see the yacht. “So when I heard Miralda and the viscontesse were going to-day, I thought this would be just a chance of chances.”
“Of course, delighted,” I replied very cordially. I couldn’t very well tell her she wasn’t wanted; so I buttoned up my chagrin and made the best of it. “We’re going to have a little run out to sea.”
“You’re quite sure I shall not upset your plans?” she asked, knowing quite well that that was precisely what she was doing.
“My dear lady, what plans do you think I have that could be spoilt? There’s heaps of room on the Stella for us all.”
“I mean with regard to Miralda, Mr. Donnington,” she said, dropping her light tone and fixing those queer eyes of hers on me.
“I hope to give both the viscontesse and her daughter a pleasant day’s outing. You don’t consider that a very deadly plan, I hope.”
“You may remember my warning?”
“I try to make it a rule to remember only the pleasant things which are said to me by beautiful ladies, contesse.”
“You mean you refuse to be warned?”
“Against what?”
“Ah, you pretend you do not know,” she retorted impatiently.
“I don’t think you quite grasp the position. I am in Lisbon on business which will detain me some little time. Meanwhile, I am fortunate in having met some old friends and made some new ones, and I am delighted to have an opportunity of welcoming them on my yacht. That is how matters stand. And any warning against doing that, however well meant and by whomsoever given, is really as little needed as if you or I were to go to the Stella’s captain and warn him against hidden reefs out there on the open sea.”
“It is against a hidden reef in an apparently open sea that I am warning you.”
“Well, Captain Bolton is a splendid seaman and knows his charts, but a man of very few words, and he would—just smile.”
“You may smile if you will; but do you think I should have forced myself upon you in this way without reason?”
“The man is fortunate indeed upon whom such pleasure is thus thrust.”
“You cover your meaning with a jest—but I am too much in earnest. I wish to be your friend. You must not seek to interfere with Miralda’s marriage.”
“Your pardon, but we are really getting too personal. Let me suggest that we wait to discuss that lady until she is present. Ah, here they are,” I exclaimed, catching sight of them. And then I had a little thrust at Inez. “And you are fortunate, too. Lieutenant de Linto is with them.”
I knew how he must bore her; and she did not succeed in disguising her chagrin. She had admitted that she had come as a sort of watchdog; and the punishment fitted the crime so aptly that I grinned. Nor was that to be her only punishment, as matters turned out. The skipper proved a true weather prophet, and Inez was a desperately bad sailor.
She played her watchdog part cleverly; but it was entirely superfluous. All the delightful anticipations I had indulged in were killed by Miralda herself, whose conduct perplexed me far more than on the previous night.
Almost from the moment her dainty foot touched the Stella’s deck, she acted in a manner I could not have deemed possible. She was very bright and laughed and talked as if there were no such thing in the world as care and trouble. She treated me as if I were a mere acquaintance whom she was just pleased to meet again. Nothing more.
But it was not that which so pained me. She spoke freely of her visit to Paris, referring now to her mother and again to me in regard to little episodes of the time there, and doing it all without a suggestion of restraint. Then in a hard tone and with jarring half-boastful laughter, she began to jest about her conquests. She named several men, who, as I knew, had admired her; mimicked their ways, ridiculed their attentions, and freely admitted that she had flirted with them, because “one must amuse oneself.”
If any man had told me that she was capable of such conduct I think I should have knocked him down. But I heard it all myself. I could scarcely believe my own eyes and ears. The last belief in the back of my mind was that she could be the callous, heartless coquette she was showing herself, luring men to her by her beauty only to laugh at them for believing in her, and descending to the depths of talking about it to others in a vein of self-glorification.
The luncheon gong interrupted but did not check her, and as I sat listening in silence she appealed to me more than once to confirm some little ridiculous trait of some one or other of the men she had “scalped.”
Inez saw and rejoiced at my discomfiture, but retribution was at hand for her. When we sat down to luncheon the sea was as smooth as the table-cloth, but when we reached the deck again the weather had changed and a heavy bank of clouds to the south threatened a capful of wind. And even this served to show Miralda in a new light.
She heard me tell the skipper to return. “Is it going to be rough? I hope so. I love a rough sea. Don’t go back yet.”
Inez and Vasco protested vigorously.
Miralda looked at them both and shrugged her shoulders, and then turned to me. “I don’t see why we should spoil our pleasure for them, do you?” she asked with a laugh that was half a sneer.
“I am sorry to cut your pleasure short, but I think we had better return,” I replied.
“People look so silly when they are ill;” and with an unpleasant laugh she crossed to the side.
When the wind came and the Stella began to roll, Inez hurried away, followed directly by Vasco.
The viscontesse had been very quiet all the time, and although the motion of the yacht did not appear to upset her, she said she would rather lie down and asked Miralda to go with her.
“Don’t be unreasonable, mother,” was the reply. “I am enjoying every moment of it. You don’t want to shut me up in a stuffy cabin. But take my hat with you, and bring me a wrap of some sort, and my cloak.”
The unfeeling words and the tone in which they were uttered, stung me like the knots of a whip lash. I gave my arm to the viscontesse and took her below and installed her comfortably on a sofa in the saloon.
“Miralda loves a rough sea, Mr. Donnington,” she said, as she pointed to the wraps for me to take on deck. “Don’t stay with me; I am going to take an old woman’s privilege and have a nap.”
I took the things in silence and returned to Miralda.
She stood by the bulwarks her eyes intent on the troubled waters; a stray lock or two of her hair had been freed by the breeze, and her face was radiant with delight. She revelled in the scene. A veritable incarnation of vigorous youth and bewitching beauty.
She turned as I reached her side. “Isn’t it glorious, Mr. Donnington? I suppose I may stay on deck? I shan’t be in the way?”
“The whole yacht is yours to be where you will, of course,” I replied.
“You always say such pleasant things. I remember that knack of yours. Help me on with this cloak,” she added with a coquettish glance. “There, how do I look?” she asked when she had adjusted the wrap, gracefully, as all her acts were. “And now you must find me a corner where I shan’t be quite blown away,” she commanded.
I found her a corner and installed her.
“We shall want two chairs, of course, and then we can have a long chat like we used to in Paris.”
I had had quite enough of Paris already, if she meant to continue to talk in her former strain. But I fetched another chair and sat down.
Then she laughed suddenly and almost boisterously. “Do you know I really believe my mother wanted me to go and stop with her? She can be a terrible nuisance. Imagine me pinned up there. Sympathize with me.”
“The viscontesse told me she hoped to get to sleep,” I replied.
“Then wasn’t it selfish of her? As if I was going to miss this beautiful sea just because she feels bad and has a headache. Absolutely preposterous, wasn’t it?” and she laughed again.
I looked round at her and made no reply.
She returned the look as if surprised at my silence. Then her eyes lighted and her lips parted. “Oh, I remember now, of course. It was you who always put on that mournful look—funereally gloomy—when I used to do things which shocked your English propriety. I was thinking it was that Graf von Holstein—that long-faced German who would insist upon giving me flowers I did not want and then expected me to dance with him in return.”
I had given her flowers and asked her to dance when she wore them.
“Very unreasonable, mademoiselle,” I said after a pause.
“Oh, men are always like that. They all seem to think that because a girl amuses herself and dances once or twice with them, they have made a conquest.”
“A man is of course unreasonable to believe in a woman.”
“What a delightfully cynical platitude. Isn’t the sea getting up quickly? Poor mother! I am afraid you won’t tempt her on the yacht again.” Again she laughed, and added: “And that’s a nuisance, for I love the sea.”
I turned unexpectedly and caught a look in her eyes as they were bent on me, which she had not meant me to see. And then I thought I understood.
“I thought that was it,” I said quietly. I myself could smile now.
“What was what, Mr. Donnington?” she asked as a sort of challenge; adding, with an attempt to resume her former expression of reckless frivolity: “that sounds like a conundrum, doesn’t it? And they are such stupid things.”
“I believe I have the answer to the bigger conundrum.”
“There’s the grave Englishman again,” she jested, with a toss of the head.
“Yes. ‘Miralda’s Englishman,’” I answered, holding her eyes with mine and speaking slowly and deliberately.
It was great daring, but I felt that I must strip away this mask of heartless raillery which galled and pained me beyond endurance. I would know the truth at any cost. If this coquette of flouts and jibes who laughed at men with one breath and made light of even her mother’s sufferings with the next, was the real woman whom I had set in the inmost shrine of my heart, the sooner I was away the better.
The mask fell, but not at once.
She met my gaze steadily, almost defiantly, and the blood rushed to her face as she read my look and strove to force a laugh and utter a jest in reply. But the words would not come.
“You understand me,” I said, in the same deliberate tone. “You are either the most heartless jilt who ever trifled with the best feelings of men in order to be able to boast of your triumphs afterwards, or you are deliberately playing the part for some purpose of your own. God forbid that I should accept your self-accusation.”
“I will go——” she began and half rose. But the reaction came then. The crimson faded from her face, leaving it white and strained. She hid it behind her hands as she sank back in the chair, her head lowered, trembling in agitation.
I was answered and without a word I rose and left her that she might be alone while she recovered her self-command.
With a rare feeling of exultation I renewed all that had passed in the light of my new knowledge. She had set herself purposely to disgust me with the gibbering caricature she had drawn of herself. And my heart thrilled and my blood raced through my veins as I saw that my reading of her conduct on the evening of the reception had been right.
Many minutes passed as I paced the deck deciding the course I would take, and not until I had settled it did I return to her.
She had regained her self-possession, but as I sat down she looked at me questioningly and nervously as if fearing how I should refer to the secret I had surprised. But there was not a vestige of the mask left. She was just herself.
“The wind is dropping again already,” I said in a casual tone.
Her eyes thanked me, but she made no reply and sank back in her chair with an air of relief. I uttered a few commonplaces about the weather and the yacht, worked round to the subject of Lisbon and then to that of my supposed purpose in the city. For once the concessions were of use, as they enabled me to describe my own acts and intentions in regard to her as if I were referring to the concessions.
“Of course I shall find difficulties—indeed the whole position is entirely different from my anticipations. I ought to have been here earlier. But it was impossible. After my father’s stroke of paralysis which took me at a moment’s notice from Paris, he lay between life and death for three months; and although I was as anxious then as now about these concessions and should have come at once to Lisbon, I could not leave him for any purpose, however vital and important to me.”
“No, of course not,” she murmured, not raising her eyes from the deck.
“But now that I am here, of course I shall not abandon my efforts to obtain them until they are actually in the possession of some one else. I have heard that they are promised, but I shall not regard that as an actual barrier.”
She moved slightly and answered in a voice firm but low: “From what I have heard you will only be wasting time and effort, Mr. Donnington. You will not be allowed to—to obtain them.”
“You think the unsettled condition of political matters here, the cabals and intrigues and so on, will interfere with me?”
“I am sure of it,” she said very deliberately.
“You mean there are obstacles of which I know nothing. As for those I do know, I care nothing for them.”
“It depends upon what you do know.” Every word was uttered in a low tense monotone, full charged with suppressed feeling.
“I know, as I say, that they are promised to some one else, but that doesn’t count with me. I know too that they are involved in the secret plans of some of those whose political objects are opposed to the professed objects of some leaders of the League of Portugal. But that also I will not regard as an insuperable barrier.”
“Is that all you know?”
“Yes.”
“It has not occurred to you that private influences may be at work which those who might wish to help you are powerless to resist, and which make your quest absolutely unattainable and impossible?”
“I admit I have had fears of that, but I shall not believe it impossible until I know what those influences are.”
“I have told you that I know it to be impossible, Mr. Donnington.”
“Will you tell me more—what these private influences are?”
“I cannot without speaking of things that must be secret; without revealing a story of shame and crime.”
“Why should I sacrifice an object which is more to me than any I have ever desired because another person has done wrong?”
“You must not even seek to discover it.”
“On the contrary, I will know it within the next few hours.”
“If you knew it, you would recognize the truth of what I have said. But if you will take advice, you will use those next few hours to be many leagues on your way to England.”
“I will go when I said—when the concessions are actually in the possession of those who seek them. Not one hour, not one minute before.”
She was silent for a while and then for the first time since I had rejoined her she sat forward and looked at me. “Once in those days when we met in Paris, you said you would do anything I asked you? Does that promise hold good now?”
“Yes.”
“Then I wish you to leave Lisbon at once.”
I shook my head. “No, anything but that.”
“I was afraid,” she murmured, and leant back in her seat, with a sigh of despair; and we both remained silent.
Some time later the skipper’s voice roused me. “We shall drop anchor in about quarter of an hour, Mr. Donnington,” he said as he passed.
Miralda rose with a sigh, started to leave me and then returned.
“There is one thing you spoke of which I must make clear. I am no revolutionary, as you hinted, but I am not free. I have been compromised against my will and I cannot break the bonds. But don’t think me a rebel, because you see me associated with those who are.”
And without waiting for any reply, she turned and hurried away.
When the anchor was dropped and the launch waiting to take us all on shore, she came up with the viscontesse and was again wearing a mask. But a different one now. She laughed and chatted brightly, but without the hardness or bitterness of the earlier time.
I was once more the stranger. I gathered that the mask was now worn to mislead Inez, for when we shook hands, although her words of thanks were just those of common courtesy, there was an expression in the eyes and a simultaneous pressure of the fingers eloquent of the altered relations between us.
Wishing to be entirely alone I returned to the Stella and remained there thinking and speculating and planning.
I did not reach my rooms until late and found a letter awaiting me which made me rub my eyes in astonishment.
It was from Volheno, thanking me for some information I had given him and saying that it had been acted upon the previous night with excellent results. “It will of course be considered by the Government when we come to decide the matter of the Beira concessions; and I need scarcely say that if you can give us any more information of the same kind, you will render the Government a great service.”
I had given no information and would see him in the morning and explain. The man was mad; and I tossed the letter down and went off to bed.
I must have slept heavily after the day in the fresh air, for I was roused by some one shaking me roughly.
I opened my eyes to find the lights switched up and the police in my room. Two of them were searching the room and a third stood over me and ordered me sternly to get up and dress and be quick about it.
“What does it mean?” I asked, blinking like an owl in the sudden light.
“You are arrested. That’s what it means. Dress and come with us, unless you want to go as you are;” and the fellow gave point to his words by stripping off the bedclothes.
A curious sequel, this, to Volheno’s letter.