Miranda of the Balcony Part 29

That tune has given you the clue? It was Ralph's favourite! You heard it--when? Where? Tell me!"

To her eager, joyous questions Charnock was silent. He did not move.

He still sat huddled in his chair, with his chin fallen on his breast, and his eyes fixedly staring at her. Miranda's enthusiasm was chilled by his silence; it was succeeded by fear. She became frightened; she picked up the note and held it out to him and bade it speak for her.

Charnock did not take the note or change his position. But he said:--

"Even on your honeymoon, you see, he left you to stand alone, while he gambled at the tables."

"But you mustn't think of that," she cried. "It's so small a thing."

"But so typical," added Charnock, quietly.

Miranda gave a moan and held her head between her hands. That Charnock might refuse to help her, because with tears in her eyes she had played the sedulous coquette, she had been prepared to acknowledge.

But that he would refuse to help, out of a mistaken belief that, by refusing to help, he was helping best--that supposition had not so much as occurred to her.

"Read the note again," she implored him. "_Do quickly what you can!_ And see, it is a week and more since M. Fournier was here. It is a fortnight and more since Ralph was kidnapped in the Sok. Quickly! And nothing is done, and nothing will be done, unless you do it. Oh, think of him--driven, his hands tied, beaten with sticks, sold for a slave to trudge with loads upon his back, barefooted, through Morocco! You will go," and her voice broke and was very tender as she appealed to him. "Please! You will have pity on me, and on him." And she watched Charnock's face for a sign of a.s.sent, her heart throbbing, her foot beating the ground, and every now and then a queer tremulous moan breaking from her dry lips.

Charnock, however, did not soften at the imagined picture of Ralph's misfortunes, and he hardened his heart against the visible picture of her distress.

"When I was at Algeciras, I asked many questions about Ralph Warriner.

I listened to many answers," he said curtly.

"Exaggerated answers," she returned, and as Charnock opened his mouth to reply, she hastened to continue: "Listen! Listen! Here's the strange thing! Not that I should need help, not that you should help me, not that I should come to you for help. Those three things--they are most natural. But that coming to you, I should come to the one man who can help, who already knows the way to help. Don't you understand?

It is very clear to me. You were _meant_ to help, to help me in this one trouble, so you were shown the means whereby to help." And seeing Charnock still impenetrable, she burst out: "Oh, he will not help! He will not understand!" and she took to considering how it was that he knew, how it was that he recognised the tune.

"You were in Tangier once," she argued. "Yes. You told me that not only to-day, but at Lady Donnisthorpe's. You crossed from Gibraltar?"

"Yes, just before I came to England and met you."

"Just before! Still you won't understand? You find out somehow--somehow in Tangier you come across a tune, an incident, something. Immediately after you meet a woman, at the first sight of whom you offer her your succour, and the time comes when she needs it, and that one incident you witnessed just before you met her gives you, and you alone in all the world, the opportunity to help her. Don't you remember, when you first were introduced at Lady Donnisthorpe's, what was your first feeling--one of disappointment, because I did not seem to stand in any need? Well, I do stand in need now--and now you turn away. And for my sake too! Was there ever such a tangle! Such a needless irony and tangle, and all because a man cannot put a woman from his thoughts!" And then she laughed bitterly and harshly, and so fell back again upon her guesses.

"You were in Tangier--how long?"

"For a day."

"When? Never mind! I know. I met you in June. You were in Tangier for a day in May. In May!" she repeated, and stopped. Then she uttered a cry. "May, that was the month. M. Fournier said May. You were the man," and leaning forward she laid a clutching hand upon Charnock's arm, which lay quiet on the table. "You were the unknown man who cried 'Look out!' through the closed door of M. Fournier's shop."

Charnock started. He was prepared to deny the challenge, if a.s.sent threatened to disclose his clue. But it did not. M. Fournier knew nothing of the blind beggar at the cemetery gate where Charnock had first heard the comic opera tune and registered it in his memory. That was evident, since in all M. Fournier's story, there was no mention anywhere of Ha.s.san Akbar.

"Yes," he admitted. "It was I."

"And you shouted it not as a menace--so M. Fournier thought and was wrong--but as a warning to Ralph, my husband, whom you will not speak a word to save. You spoke a word then, very likely you saved him then.

Well, do just as much now. I ask no more of you. Only speak the word!

Tell me the clue, I myself will follow it up. Oh, he will not speak!"

and in her agitation she rose up and paced the room.

Charnock rose too. Miranda flew to the door and leaned her back against it.

"Just for a moment! Listen to what M. Fournier said! He said that if once we could lay our hands upon the man who shouted through the door, we should lay our hands upon the means to rescue Ralph. Think how truly he spoke, in a truer sense than he intended. You know why he disappeared. You know who captured him. And if you don't speak, I shall have no peace until I die," and she sat herself again at the table.

"Do you still care for him?" asked Charnock, with some gentleness.

Miranda, who was wrought almost to frenzy, drummed upon the table with her clenched fists.

"Must we debate that question while Ralph--" Then she mastered herself. "I know you," she said. "If I were to tell you that I loved him heart and soul, you would go upon this errand, straight as an arrow, for my sake. But I promised there should be nothing but truth between you and me. I do not love him. Now, will you go to Morocco?

Or, if you will not go, will you speak?"

"No. Let him stay there! Where he cannot harm you. What if I was _meant_ to keep you from rescuing him?"

"You do not know," she replied. "You can do me no greater service than by rescuing Ralph, by bringing him back to me. Will you believe that?"

"No," said he, calmly, and she rose from her chair.

"But if I proved it to you?"

"You cannot."

"I will."

She looked at the clock.

"It is four o'clock," she said. "Two hours and a quarter before the train leaves for Algeciras. Will you meet me on the platform? I had thought to spare myself--this. But you shall have the proof. I will not tell you of it, but I will show it to you to-morrow at Gibraltar."

She spoke now with great calmness. She had hit upon the means to persuade. She was convinced that she had, and he was afraid that she had.

"Very well," said he. "The 6.15 for Algeciras."

They travelled to Gibraltar that night. Miranda stayed at the Bristol, Charnock at the Albion; they met the next morning, and walked through the long main street. Here and there an officer looked at her with a start of surprise and respectfully raised his hat, and perhaps took a step or two towards her. But she did not stop to speak with anyone. It was two years since she had set foot within the gates of Gibraltar, and no doubt the stones upon which she walked had many memories wherewith to bruise her. Charnock respected her silence, and kept pace with her un.o.btrusively. They pa.s.sed into the square with Government House upon the one side and the mess-rooms upon the other. Charnock sketched a picture of her in his fancies, the picture of a young girl newly-come from the brown solitudes of Suffolk into this crowded and picturesque fortress with the wonder of a new world in her eyes, and contrasted it with the woman who walked beside him, and inferred the increasing misery of her years. He was touched to greater depths of sympathy than he had ever felt before even when she had lain with her head upon her arms in an abandonment of distress; so that now the uncomplaining uprightness of her figure made his heart ache, and the sound of her footsteps was a pain. But of the most intolerable of all her memories he had still to learn. She led him into the little cemetery, guided him between the graves, and stopped before a headstone on which Charnock read:--

RUPERT WARRINER, Aged 2 Years.

and the date of his birth and death.

The headstone was of marble, and had been sculptured with a poetic fancy; a boy, in whose face Charnock could trace a likeness to Miranda, looked out and laughed between the open lattices of a window.

They both watched the grave silently for a while. Then Miranda said gently, "Now do you understand? When Rupert was born, it seemed to me that here was a blossom on the thorn bush of the world. But you see the blossom never flowered. He died of diphtheria. It was hard when he died;" and Charnock suddenly started at her side.

"Those flowers!" he said hoa.r.s.ely.

Upon the grave were scattered jonquils, geraniums, roses, pinks, camellias--all the rich reds and yellows of Miranda's garden.

"You were cutting them, packing them, that afternoon when Wilbraham came?"

Mrs. Warriner shrank from looking at Charnock.

"Yes," she confessed in a whisper.