CHAPTER XI
[IN WHICH MIRANDA ADOPTS A NEW LINE OF CONDUCT AND THE MAJOR EXPRESSES SOME DISCONTENT]
Miranda was left with two convictions, of which she was very certain. Somehow, somewhither, help must be sent to Ralph; and if Charnock carried the help, he must know why and for whom before he went.
She stood in the patio until the outer door closed behind M. Fournier. A local newspaper lying upon a wicker chair caught her eye, and harassed and unresolved as she was, she turned eagerly for rest to its commonplaces. She read an anecdote about an unknown politician, and a summary of Don Carlos's prospects, with extreme care and concentration; for she knew that her perplexities lay in wait for her behind the screen of the news sheet, and she was very tired.
She turned over the sheet, and in spite of herself, began to feel at a third idea. She applied herself consequently to the first paragraph which met her eye, and read it over with great speed, perhaps ten times. But the words she read were not the printed words. They were these:--
"Send me the glove, and when I come up to Ronda, it will be understood without a word why I have come. There will be no need for me to speak at all, and you will only have to tell me the particular thing that wants doing."
And the idea became distinct. She could choose her own time for telling Charnock the particular thing which wanted doing. He would ask no questions; he had indeed hit upon that device of the glove to spare her; she could send the glove, and she could tell him after he had come in answer, but at her own discretion, why she had sent it. Therefore she had time--she had time.
She turned to her paragraph again, read it with comprehension, and from the paragraph her trouble sprang at her and caught her by the heart. For what she read was the account of the opening of the branch line to Algeciras. Charnock's work was done, then; he would be leaving Algeciras. Even at that moment her first feeling was one of approaching loneliness, so closely had the man crept into her thoughts. She took a step towards her parlour, stopped, stood for a moment irresolute, ran up the winding iron staircase to the landing half-way up the patio, and fetched a new long white kid glove from her dressing-room. She moulded it upon her hand, soiled it by a ten minutes' wearing, ripped it across the palm, and sealed it up in an envelope.
Jane Holt came into the patio while Miranda was still writing the address.
"What's that?" she asked.
"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.