Miranda of the Balcony: A Story

by A. E. W. Mason

CHAPTER V

[WHEREIN CHARNOCK AND MIRANDA IMPROVE THEIR ACQUAINTANCESHIP IN A BALCONY]

Lady Donnisthorpe's house stood in Queen Anne's Gate, and the balcony overlooked St. James's Park. There Charnock found Miranda; he leaned his elbows upon the iron balustrade, and for a while neither of them spoke. It was a clear night of early June, odorous with messages of hedgerows along country lanes and uplands of young grass, and of bells ringing over meadows. In front of them the dark trees of the Park rippled and whispered to the stray breaths of wind; between the trees one line of colourless lamps marked the footpath across the bridge to the Mall; and the carriages on the outer roadway ringed that enclosure of thickets and lawns with flitting sparks of fire.

Charnock was still holding the glove which he had picked up on the window-sill.

"That's mine," said Miranda; "thank you," and she stretched out her hand for it.

"Yes," said Charnock, absently, and he drew the glove through his fingers. It was a delicate trifle of white kid; he smoothed it, and his hand had the light touch of a caress. "Miranda," he said softly but distinctly, and lingered on the word as though the sound pleased him.

Miranda started and then sank back again in her chair with a quiet smile. Very likely she blushed at this familiar utterance of her name, and at the caressing movement of his hand which accompanied and perhaps interpreted the utterance, or perhaps it was only at a certain throb of her own heart that she blushed. At all events, the darkness concealed the blush, and Charnock was not looking in her direction.

The freshness of the night air had restored her, but she was very willing to sit there in silence so long as no questions were asked of her, and Charnock had rather the air of one who works out a private problem for himself than one who seeks the answer from another.

The clock upon Westminster tower boomed the hour of twelve. Miranda noticed that Charnock raised his head and listened to the twelve heavy strokes with a smile. His manner was that of a man who comes unexpectedly upon some memento of an almost forgotten time.

"That is a familiar sound to you," said Mrs. Warriner, and she was suddenly sensible of a great interest in all of the past life of this man who was standing beside her.

"Yes," said Charnock, turning round to her.

"You lived in Westminster, then? At one time I used to stay here a good deal. Where did you live?"

Charnock laughed. "You would probably be no wiser if I named the street; it is not of those which you and your friends go up and down," he replied simply. "Yes, I lived in Westminster for three hard, curious years."

"It's not only the years that are curious," said Miranda, but the hint was lost, for Charnock had turned back to the balustrade. She was still, however, inclined to persist. The details which Lady Donnisthorpe had sown in her mind, now bore their crop. Interested in the man, now that she knew him, she was also interested in his career, in his hurried migratory life, in the mystery which enveloped his youth, and all the more because of the contrast between her youth and his. He had lived for three years in some small back street of Westminster; very likely she had more than once rubbed shoulders with him in the streets on the occasions when she had come up from her home in Suffolk. That home became instantly very distinct in her memories--an old manor-house guarded by a moat of dark silent water, a house or broad red-brick chimneys whereon she had known the roses to bloom on a Christmas-day, and of leaded windows upon which the boughs of trees continually tapped.

"I should like to show you my home," she said with a sudden impulse, and did not check herself before the words were spoken. "Perhaps some day," she continued hurriedly, "you will tell me of those three years you spent in Westminster." And she hoped that he had not heard the first sentence of the two.

"I will make an exchange," said Charnock. "I will exchange some day, if you will, the history of my three years for the history of your trouble." He turned eagerly towards her, but she held up her hand.

"Please, please!" she said in a low, shaking voice, for her distress had come back upon her. She had begun, if not to forget it, at all events to dull the remembrance of it since she had come out upon the balcony. She had, in a word, sought and found a compensation in the new friendship of this man, and a relief in his very naïveté. But he had brought her anxieties back to her, as he clearly understood, for he said: "That is the second time this evening. I am sorry."

"The second time?" said Miranda, quickly. "Why do you say that?"

"Am I wrong?" he asked. "Am I wrong in fearing that I myself have brought on you the trouble which I fancied I was to avert? I should be glad to know that I was wrong, for since I have stood here on this balcony, that fear has been growing. Your face so changed at the story I told you. At what point of it I do not know. I was not looking. Did I show you some misfortune you were unaware of, and might still be unaware of, if I had only held my tongue? In offering to shield you, did I only strike at you? I do not know, I am in the dark." He spoke in a voice of intense remorse, pleading for a proof that his fear was groundless, and Miranda did not answer him at all. "I do not ask you to speak freely now," he continued; "but sometime perhaps you will. You see, we shall be neighbours."

"Neighbours!" exclaimed Miranda, and her lips parted in a smile.

"You live at Ronda, Lady Donnisthorpe tells me; my headquarters now are at Algeciras;" and he told her briefly of his business there.

"My cousin did not tell me that," said Miranda.

Lady Donnisthorpe, in the wisdom of her heart, had, in fact, carefully concealed Charnock's place of abode, thinking it best that Miranda should learn it from Charnock's lips, and be pleasantly surprised thereby. That Miranda was pleasantly surprised might perhaps have been inferred by a more experienced man, from the extreme chilliness of her reply.

"Ronda is at the top," she said, "Algeciras at the bottom, and there are a hundred miles of hillside and cork-forest between."

"There are also," retorted Charnock, "a hundred miles of railway."

"Shall we go back into the room?" suggested Miranda.

"If you wish. Only there is something else I am trying to say to you," said Charnock, and at that Miranda laughed, and laughed with a fresh bright trill of amusement. It broke suddenly and spontaneously from her lips and surprised Charnock, who was at a loss to reconcile it with the signs of her distress. He turned towards her. "What is it?" he asked.

"Nothing," she said hastily, "nothing at all."

"You wished to go in?"

"Not now,--not for the world."

She was genuinely amused. Her eyes laughed at him in the starlight. Charnock was very content at the change in her, though he did not at all understand it. It made what he meant to say easier, if he could only find the means to say it. He held the means unwittingly in his hand, for he held Miranda's glove. It was that glove which provoked her amusement. Charnock, with a pertinacity which was only equalled by his absence of mind, was trying to force his hand into Mrs. Warriner's glove. He had already succeeded in slipping the long sleeve of it over his palm; he was now engaged in the more strenuous task of fitting his fingers into its slender fingers, as he leaned upon the balcony.

"You are laughing, no doubt, at my pertinacity, and it is true that our acquaintanceship is very slight," said he.

"In a moment you will irretrievably destroy it," said she, looking at the glove.

"I hope you don't mean that," he answered sadly, as he smoothed the finger-tip of the forefinger down upon his own, and at once proceeded to the other fingers. The little finger in particular needed a deal of strenuous coaxing, and caused him to break up his words with intervals of physical effort. "Because--as I say--we shall be neighbours--there!"--The exclamation "there" meant that he was satisfied with the third finger.--"A hundred miles of hill-side--in a foreign country--on a map a thumb will cover it."

"Will it cover a thumb, though?" asked Miranda, who took a feminine interest in the durability of her glove. She leaned forward in a delighted suspense, as Charnock proceeded to answer her question by experiment.

"There's the railway too," said he, as he struggled with the thumb of the glove, "and as I say, a foreign country. Very likely, we shall be nearer neighbours, though you are at Ronda and I am at Algeciras, than if you lived in this house and I at the house next door. Because after all there's one advantage in trouble of any kind. Trouble is the short foot-path to friendship, don't you think? Like that line of lamps across the Park."

Miranda forgot the glove. She was touched by the deep sincerity of his voice, by the modesty of his manner. She rose from her chair and stood by his side at the balustrade. "Yes," she answered, looking at the circling lights on the outer rim of the Park. "I think that is true. It spares one the long carriage-road of ceremonial acquaintanceship. But," she said thoughtfully, "I do not know whether after all I shall soon return to Ronda."

She heard a little sound of something tearing, and there was Charnock contemplating in amazement upon his left hand a white kid glove of which the kid was ripped across the palm. He felt in his pocket with his right hand and drew out both of his own gloves, which he had taken off while he was talking in the alcove. Then he looked at Miranda and his amazement became remorse.

"It's yours!" he said. "Of course, I picked it up. I had forgotten even that I was holding it. I had no notion that I was putting it on."

"I gave you fair warning," said Miranda, with a frank laugh, "but you would not pay any attention."

Charnock looked at her with absolute incredulity. "You mean to say that you don't mind? You are wonderful!"

"It seems almost too late to mind," said she, looking at the tattered glove.

"Or to mend," said he, ruefully, drawing it off with extreme care, and as a new thought struck him. "Oh!" he exclaimed, "suppose it had belonged to anyone else, the dowager in the window, for instance." He dangled the glove in the air. "Now that's a lesson!"

"Perhaps it's a parable," said Miranda, as she took the glove from him.

Charnock saw that she had grown quite serious. "If so," said he, "I cannot expound it."

"Shall I?" The smile had faded from her lips, her eyes shone upon his, with no longer a sparkle of merriment, but very still, very grave.

"Yes."

"Well, then," she said slowly, "shall I say that no man can offer a woman his friendship or help without doing her a hurt in some other way?"

His eyes as steadily answered back to hers. "Do you believe that?" he said. He spoke quite simply without raising his voice in any way, but none the less Mrs. Warriner was certain that she had but to say "yes," and there would be an end, now and forever, of his questions, of his help, of his friendship, of everything between them beyond the merest acquaintanceship. Perhaps some day they might cross the harbour together in the same ferry from Algeciras to Gibraltar, and bow and exchange a careless word, but that would be all--and only that until his work was finished there.

"Do you believe that?"

She was half tempted to say "yes"; but she had an instinct, a premonition, that whatever answer she made would stretch out to unknown and incalculable consequences. She seemed to herself to be drawing the lots which one way or another would decide and limit all her years to come. Upon the tiny "yes" or "no" between which she had to make her choice, her whole life was destined to pivot. Accordingly, she made up her mind to say neither, but to turn the matter into a jest. "Here's the proof," said she, as lightly as she could, and she flourished the glove.

But the man steadily held her to his question, with his eyes, with his voice, with his very attitude. "Do you believe that?" he repeated.

"I don't know whether I believe it," she murmured resentfully. "I don't see why I should be asked to mean what I say, or whether I mean what I say.... But it might be so, I think.... I don't know.... I don't know."

To her relief Charnock moved. If he had stood like that, demanding an answer with every line of his body, for another instant, she knew she would have been compelled to answer one way or another; and she felt certain, too, that whatever answer she gave it would have been the one she would have wished afterwards to take back. "Now if you are satisfied," she added with a touch of petulance, "we will go in."

He moved aside for her to pass, but before she had time to step forward, he moved back again and barred the way. "No, please," he said quickly, and his voice thrilled as though he had hit upon an inspiration.

"Lady Donnisthorpe told me you were rather unconventional," she remarked with a sigh, which was only half of it a jest; and she drew back as though she did not wish to hear what he had to say, as though she almost feared to hear it.

But Charnock barely even remarked her reluctance. "That glove," he said, and pointed to it. Miranda imagined that he was reaching out a hand for it.

"I have heaps of pairs," she exclaimed, whipping it behind her back; "there is no need to trouble about it at all."

"I do not ask for it; I had no thought of that. On the contrary, I would ask you to keep it if you will. There is something else which I was trying to say, if you remember."

"Dear, dear!" said Miranda, ruefully, "I could wish after all that you had trodden on my toes."

"I beg your pardon," said Charnock, and instantly he drew aside. He left the way clear for her. She passed him, and went towards the window, from which the lights and the music streamed out into the night. Had he followed, she would have stepped into the room, amongst the dancers; she would have been claimed by a partner, and she would have seen no more of Charnock, and the only consequences of this interview upon the balcony would have been a memory in her thoughts, a curiosity in her speculations.

But Charnock did not follow her. He remained where she left him, and her feet loitered more with every step she took. At the edge of the window she stopped. For the second time that evening she became aware that one way or other she must do the irrevocable thing. It was a mere step to make across the sill of the window, from the stone of the balcony to the parquet of the ball-room floor,--a thing insignificant in itself and in its consequences most momentous. She stood for a second undecided. The sight of her partner looking about the room decided her. She came back to where Charnock stood in a soldierly rigidity.

"You might have come half-way to meet me," she said in a whimsical complaint, and then very gently: "I will hear what you wish to say, if you will still say it."

"What I mean is this," he replied; "it is what I was trying to say. The hardest thing, if one ever wants help, is--don't you think?--the asking for it. I could not say that to you until I had hit upon a means by which the asking, should it ever be necessary, might be dispensed with. And it seemed to me that there was something providential in my tearing that glove; for that torn glove can be the means, if ever you see fit to use it. You live at Ronda; for the next year I am to be found at Algeciras; you will only have to send that torn glove to me in an envelope. I shall know without a word from you; and when I answer it by coming up to you at Ronda, it will be understood by both of us, again without a word, why I have come. I shall not need to speak at all; you will only need to say the precise particular thing which needs to be done."

Miranda stood with her eyelids closed, and her ungloved hand pressed over her heart. The blood darkened her cheeks. Charnock saw her whole face soften and sweeten. "I understand," she said in a low voice. "I might appeal and be spared the humiliation of appealing, like the face in your mirror."

"I believe," said he, "that my mirror sent me a message on that night. I have tried to deliver it."

Miranda slowly raised her eyes and they glistened with something other than the starlight. "Thank you," she said; "for the delicacy of the thought I am most grateful. What woman would not be? But I do not think that I shall ever send you the glove: not because I would not be glad to owe gratitude to you, but just for the same reason which has kept me from telling you anything of my troubles. Such as they are I must fight them through by myself."

This time she passed over the sill into the ballroom; but she was holding the glove tight against her breast, and she had a feeling that Charnock very surely knew that at some time she would send it to him.