Miranda of the Balcony Part 24

"Just like all the rest," said Miranda, wearily.

"I see," said Charnock. "Good-bye."

He went out of the room and closed the door behind him.

It was very quiet and still in the patio. In the square of blue sky there was no cloud; the suns.h.i.+ne poured into the court, only in one corner there was a shadow climbing the wall, where there had been no shadow when he entered the room. He vaguely wondered what the time was, and then someone laughed. Someone above him. He looked up. Jane Holt was leaning over the railing of the balcony.

He made some sort of remark; and he gathered from her reply that he had been asking why she laughed.

"Why did I laugh?" she said. "Do you believe in affinities?"

"No," he rejoined. "Why?"

She descended the stairs as she answered him.

"I saw you standing in the doorway there with your hand on your throat, breathing hard and quick, and altogether a very tragical picture."

Charnock was not aware whether the details were true or not. "Well?"

he asked.

"Well," she replied. "Do you remember the afternoon you came here? I was in that lounge chair. You were shown into the parlour. You did not notice me. Neither did Miranda when she followed you. But she stopped on the threshold."

"Yes, I remarked it. She stopped for some while. Well?"

"Well, she stood just as you were standing a minute ago, in that precise att.i.tude, with her hand to her throat, breathing hard and quick, and with a face not less tragical."

Charnock's face now at all events ceased to look tragical. Jane Holt saw it brighten extraordinarily. Miranda, had she been there, would not at this moment have complained of its lack of expression.

"That's true?" he asked eagerly. "What you tell me is true? She stood here, and in that att.i.tude?"

"Yes."

"That's the one point unexplained. I forgot to ask. She did not refer to it. She stood here breathing hard and quick, you say, before she entered the room--with all that appearance of surprise--she stood here! Mere remorse does not account for that, does not account for her manner. On her own showing it cannot account, since the remorse was only felt this afternoon. There _is_ something more." He was talking enigmas to Miss Holt, who went into the parlour and left him in the patio to talk to himself if he would. She was not greatly interested in his relations.h.i.+p towards Miranda. However, Charnock was not the only person to talk enigmas to her that afternoon. She found Miranda standing just as Charnock had left her. Miranda remained standing, with any absent answer to Jane Holt's remarks, until the big outer-doors clanged to, and made the house tremble.

Then she started violently. The sound of those doors shook her as no word or look of Charnock's had done. Her ears magnified it. It seemed to her that the doors swung to from the east and from the west, clean across the world, shutting Charnock upon the one side, and herself upon the other. It seemed to her too that as they clanged together, her heart was caught and broken between them.

"You were wrong, Jane," she said. "There are men who would be friends if we would only let them. Possibly we always find it out too late; I only found it out this afternoon." The clock struck the hour as she was speaking. "Four o'clock; the train for Algeciras leaves at six-fifteen," she said.

CHAPTER XV

IN WHICH THE MAJOR LOSES HIS TEMPER AND RECOVERS IT

All that evening Miranda's imagination followed the 6.15 train from Ronda to Algeciras. She looked at the clock at half-past ten. The ferry would be crossing from Algeciras to Gibraltar, and no doubt Charnock was crossing upon it. She felt a loneliness of which she had never had experience. And when she woke up in the morning from a troubled sleep, it was only to picture some stately mail steamer marching out from Algeciras Bay. She was conscious to the full of the irony of the situation. If she had only met this man years ago, seven years ago--that regret was a continual cry at her heart, and not the least part of her loneliness was made up from her clear remembrance of the picture of herself which she had given him to carry away.

She ordered her horse to be brought round early that morning, and rode out past the hotel a few minutes before nine. Major Wilbraham saw her pa.s.s. He was down betimes as a rule when he stayed in a hotel, since it was his habit, as often as possible, to look over the letters which came for the different visitors. The mere postmark he had known upon occasion to give him quite valuable hints. There was only, however, a telegram for Charnock, which he genially offered to deliver himself and did deliver, running into Charnock's bedroom for that purpose.

Charnock thanked him and read the telegram. It seemed to raise his spirits.

"Good news, old friend?" asked the Major.

"Well--interesting news," replied Charnock, as he lathered his face.

"Well, you shall give me it another time," said the Major, as he saw Charnock put the telegram in his pocket. "So long!"

The Major went downstairs and kept an eye upon the road. At ten o'clock he noticed Miranda returning slowly. He put on his hat and followed her. When he reached the house the horse was still at the door, but Miranda had gone in. He observed that Charnock was hesitating upon the other side of the road. Charnock was in fact debating his plan of action; the Major's was already prepared. The door stood open. Wilbraham put ceremony upon one side, the more readily since ceremony would very likely have barred the door in his face. He walked straight into the patio where Miranda stood before a little wicker table drawing off her gloves.

"Had a pleasant ride?" said the Major. "Nice horse; I am partial to roans myself--"

"What do you want?" asked Miranda.

"To so uncompromising a question, I must needs give an uncompromising reply. I want one thousand jimmies per annum," and the Major bowed gracefully.

"No," said Miranda.

"But excuse me, yes, very much yes. You see, there is my excellent young friend, the locomotive-man."

"Can't you keep his name out of the conversation?" she suggested, but with a dangerous quietude of voice.

"Indeed no," replied the Major, who was entirely at his ease. He looked sympathetically at her face. "You look pale; you have not slept well; you are tired, and so you do not follow me. Charnock is my G.o.d of the machine, a blind unconscious G.o.d--shall we say a Cupid, but a Cupid in the machine? Let me explain! May I be seated? No? So sorry!

On the first night of Charnock's stay at Ronda, I had the honour to follow him while he took a stroll."

"You followed him unseen, of course?" said Miranda, contemptuously, as she tossed her gloves on to the wicker table.

"You take me, you take me perfectly," returned the Major. "I followed him unseen, a habit of mine, and at times a very profitable habit.

Charnock walked--whither? Can you guess? Can't you tell?" He hummed with unabashed impertinence. "He walked down a certain road which winds down the precipice under your windows. Ah!"--he uttered the exclamation in a playful raillery, for Miranda's hand had gone to her heart; "he walked down that road until he came to an angle from which he could see your lighted window."

"Show me," said Miranda, suddenly. She walked round the patio, threw open the door of her parlour, and crossed to the window. The window was open, and the Major looked out. The window was in the outer wall of the wing, and was built on the very rim of the precipice. Wilbraham looked straight down on to the road.

"That was the angle, Mrs. Warriner," said he, pointing with his finger. "By that heap of stones he sat him down." Mrs. Warriner leaned out of the window with something of a smile parting her lips. "At the bottom of the bank he sat and aspired. Little Ambrose reclined on the top."

Miranda turned from the window abruptly. "Let us go back." She returned to the patio and took her former position by the wicker table. Wilbraham, upon the other side of it, faced her.

"We could only see the ceiling of the room," he continued, "and the shadow of your head. But so little contents an amorous engineer. He sighed, and what a sigh, and yet how typical! So hoa.r.s.e it seemed the whistle of an engine; so deep, it surely came from a cutting. He went home singing beneath the stars. He did not tread the ground. How should he? Love was his permanent way."

Miranda had listened so far without interruption, though the Major, had he been less pleased with his flowery description, might have noticed something ominous in the still depths of her dark eyes. "Mr.

Wilbraham," she said, "there is a little wicker table between us."

"I see it."

"And on the table?"

"A pair of gloves."

"Not only a pair of gloves."

"Ah true! A riding-whip."