Miranda of the Balcony: A Story

by A. E. W. Mason

CHAPTER XIV

[MIRANDA PROFESSES REGRET FOR A PRACTICAL JOKE]

He closed the door behind him. Miranda had neither seen nor heard him enter. She sat opposite to the door, on the other side of the round oak table, her arms stretched out upon the table, her face buried in her arms. She was not weeping, and Charnock might have believed from the abandonment of her attitude that she lay in a swoon, but for one movement that she made. Her outstretched hands were clasped together and her fingers perpetually worked, twisting and intertwisting. There was no sound whatever in the room beyond the ticking of a clock, and Charnock leaned against the door and found the silence horrible. He would have preferred it to have been broken if only by the sound of her tears. All his doubts, all his accusations, were swept clean out of his brain by the sight of her distress, and, tortured himself, he stood witness of her torture. He advanced to the table, and leaning over it took the woman's clasped hands into his.

"Miranda!" he whispered, and again, "Miranda!" and there was just the same tenderness in his voice, as when he had first pronounced the name in the balcony over St. James's Park.

Miranda did not lift her head, but her hands answered the clasp of his. She did not in truth know at that moment who was speaking to her. She was only sensible of the sympathy of his touch and the great comfort of his voice.

Charnock bent lower towards her.

"I love you," he said, "you--Miranda."

Then she raised her face and stared at him with uncomprehending eyes.

"I love you," he repeated.

She looked down towards her hands which he still held and suddenly she shivered.

"I love you," he said a third time.

And she understood. She wrenched her hands away, she stretched out her arms, she thrust him away from her, in her violence she struck him.

"No, it's not true," she cried, "it's not true!" and so fell to pleading volubly. "Say that it's not true, now, at once. Say there's no truth in your words. Say that pity prompted them and only pity," and her voice rose again in a great horror. Horror glittered too in her eyes. "Say that you spoke more than you meant to speak!"

"I can say that," he answered. "When I came into this room I had no thought of speaking--as I did. But I saw you--I watched your hands," and he caught his breath, "and they plucked the truth out from me. For what I said is true."

"No!" she cried.

"Very true," he repeated quietly.

Her protesting arms fell limply to her sides. She nodded her head, submitted to his words, acknowledged their justice.

"Yes," she said, "yes. I knew this afternoon. You told me in the garden, and though I would not know, still I could not but know."

Then she rose from her chair and walked to the window. Charnock did not speak. He hung upon her answer, and yet dreaded to hear it, so that when her lips moved, he would have had them still, and when they ceased to move, he was conscious of a great relief. After a long while she spoke, very slowly and without turning to face him, words which he did not understand.

"Love," she said, in a wondering murmur, "is it so easily got? And by such poor means? Surely, then it's a slight thing itself, of no account, surely not durable," and at once her calmness forsook her; she was caught up in a whirl of passion. She raised a quivering face, and cried aloud in despair: "It's the friend I wanted; I want no lover!"

"But you have both," returned Charnock. With a hand upon the table he leaned over it towards her. "You have both."

"Ah!" exclaimed Miranda. With extraordinary swiftness she swung round and copied his movement. She leaned her hand upon the table, and bent forward to him. "But to win the one I have had to create the other. To possess the friend I have had to make the lover," and she suddenly threw herself back and stood erect. "Well, then," and she spoke with a thrill in her voice, as though she had this instant become aware of a new and a true conviction, "I must use neither--I will use neither--I want neither."

She faced Charnock resolute, and in her own fancy inflexible to any appeal. Only he made no appeal; he drew his hand across his forehead and looked at her with an expression of simple worry and bewilderment.

"My ways have lain amongst men, and men, and men," he said regretfully. "I wish I understood more about women."

The simplicity of his manner and words touched her as no protestations would have done, and broke down her self-control.

"My dear, my dear!" she cried, with a laugh which had more of tears in it than amusement, "I am not so sure that we understand so very much about ourselves;" and she dropped again into the chair and covered her face with her hands. But she heard Charnock move round the table towards her, and she dared not risk the touch of his hand, or so much as the brushing of his coat against her dress. She drew her hands from her face, held out her arms straight in front of her like bars, and shrank back in the chair behind the protection of those bars.

"I do not want you," she said deliberately, with a quiet harshness. "That, at all events, I understand and know. Go! Go away! I do not want you!" and the words, spoken this time without violence or haste, struck Charnock like a blow.

He stood dazed. He shook his head, as though it sang from the blow. Miranda drew in a breath. "Go!" she repeated.

"You do not want me?" he asked, and somehow, whether it was owing to his tone or his look, Miranda understood from the few words of his question how much he had built upon the belief that she needed him; and consequently the reply she made now cost her more than all the rest to make. "I do not," she managed to say firmly, and dared not hazard another syllable.

Charnock felt in his breast-pocket, took out an envelope, and from the envelope a glove. "Yet this was sent to me." He laid the glove upon the table. "It was sent by you." Miranda took it up. "It contradicts your words."

Miranda turned the glove over, and stretched it out upon her knees. "Does it?" she asked, with a slow smile, "does it contradict my words?"

"You sent it to me?"

"No doubt."

"You summoned me by sending it."

"Surely."

"For some purpose, then?"

"Ah, but for what purpose?" said she, leaning forwards in her chair. The cold smile was still upon her face, and seemed to Charnock unfriendly as even her violence had not been. It had some cruelty too, and perhaps, too, some cunning.

"For what purpose? You should know. It is for you to say," he answered in a dull, tired voice. He had built more upon this unneeded service than he himself had been aware.

"I will tell you," continued Miranda. "You have talked to my companion Miss Holt?"

"Yes."

"She has no very strong faith in men. Perhaps you noticed as much."

"No."

"I did not agree with her. I had the glove. It would be--amusing to know whether she was right or whether I was. I sent it to you."

"Just to prove whether I should keep my word or not?"

"Yes," said Miranda.

"Just for your amusement, in a word?"

"Amusement was the word I chose."

"I see, I see." His voice was lifeless, his face dull and stony. Miranda moved uneasily as she watched him; but he did not notice her movement or regard her with any suspicion. His thoughts and feelings were muffled. He seemed to be standing somewhere a long way outside himself and contemplating the two people here in the room with a deal of curiosity, and with perhaps a little pity; of which pity the woman had her share with the man. "I see," he continued. "It was all a sham?"

Miranda glanced at him, and from him to the glove. "Even the glove was a sham," she said quickly. "Look at it."

He bent down and lifted it from her knees. Then he drew up a chair to the table, sat down, and examined the glove. Miranda hitched her chair closer to the table, too, and propping her elbows there, supported her chin upon her hands.

"You see that the glove is fresh," she said.

"It has been worn," answered Charnock. "The fingers have been shaped by wearing."

"It was worn by me for ten minutes in this room the day I posted it to you."

"But the tear?" he asked with a momentary quickening of speech.

"I tore it."

"I see." He laid the glove upon the table. "And the other glove--the one you wore that night--the one I tore upon the balcony over St. James's Park? It was you I met that night in London? Or wasn't it?"

The question was put without any sarcasm, but with the same dull curiosity which had marked his other questions, and on her side she answered it simply as she had answered the others. "Yes, it was I whom you met, and the glove you speak of was thrown away."

It seemed that he had come to the end of his questions, for he sat for a little, drumming with his fingers on the table. Once he looked up and towards the window, as though his very eyes needed the relief of the wide expanse of valley.

"Now will you go? Please," said Miranda, gently, and the next moment regretted that she had spoken.

"Oh, yes, I will go," he answered. "I will go back to Algeciras, and from Algeciras to England." He was not looking at her, and so noticed nothing of the spasm of pain which for a second convulsed her face at his literal acceptation of her prayer. "But before I go, tell me;" and the questions began again.

"You say you need no one?"

"No one."

"Then why did you cry out a minute ago, 'It's the friend I want, not the lover'? You were not amusing yourself then. Why, too, did you--this afternoon in the garden, perhaps you remember--when the flowers fell on to the ground between us? Neither were you amusing yourself then."

Miranda drew the glove away from where it lay in front of him; absently she began to slip it over her hand, and then becoming aware of what she did, and of certain associations with that action at this moment, she hurriedly stripped it off.

"Perhaps I have no right to press you," he said; "but I should like to know."

Miranda spread the glove out on the table, and carefully divided and spread out the fingers. "I will tell you," she said at length, with something of a spirt in the quickness of her speech. "I am still capable of remorse, though very likely you can hardly believe that. Do you remember," she began to speak with greater ease, "when we rode out to Ronda La Viega, I asked you why you never expressed what you felt? I was then beginning to be afraid that you would take my--my trick too much to heart--that you would really think I needed you. My fear became certain this afternoon, when I--I was putting the flower in your coat. I was sorry then, as you saw when you came into the room. I was yet more sorry when you spoke to me as you did, for I thought that if you hadn't cared, if you had never intended to be more than my friend, the trick would not have mattered so much. And that was just what I meant, when I said it was the friend I wanted, not the lover."

Charnock listened to the explanation, accepted it and put it away in his mind.

"I see," he remarked, and her bosom rose and fell quickly. "All this time you have been just playing with me as you played with Wilbraham this afternoon."

"Just in the same way," she returned without flinching.

"Ah, but you dropped his flower down the cliff," he exclaimed suddenly.

"You forget that yours had already fallen on to the ground."

"Yes, that's true," and the suspicion died out of his face. "And that basket of flowers?" he asked.

This time, and for the first time since the questions had begun, Miranda did flinch. She had a great difficulty in answering, "It has already been sent off."

"To Gibraltar?" Miranda's difficulty increased. "To whom at Gibraltar? A friend, a man?"

Miranda's face grew very white; she tried to speak and failed; her throat, her lips, refused the answer. "At all events," she managed to whisper hoarsely, "not to a woman," and thereupon she laughed most mirthlessly, till the strange, harsh, strangled noise of it penetrated as something unfamiliar to Charnock's dazed mind.

"I beg your pardon," he said; "I was forgetful. I had no right to ask you," and he rose from his chair. She rose too. "I am glad," he continued with a formal politeness, "that you do not after all stand in need of anyone's help."

"Oh, no," she replied carelessly, "no one's;" and almost before she was aware, he was holding her wrists, one in each of his hands, and with his eyes he was searching her face, silently interrogating her for the truth. Once before, upon the balcony, he had bidden her in just this way answer him, and now, as then, she found herself under a growing compulsion to obey.

"You hurt me," she had the wit to say, and instantly Charnock released her wrists.

"I beg your pardon," said he, and he walked to the door. At the door he turned. "Tell me," he said abruptly, "you dropped your glove--not that one on the table, but the other--just as you stepped out on to the balcony?"

"Yes," she answered, and wondered what was coming.

"Was that an accident?"

Miranda stepped back and lowered her head.

"You remember everything," she murmured.

"Was it an accident?"

"You are unsparing."

"Was it an accident?"

"No."

"It was a trick, a sham like all the rest?"

"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 sunshine 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 attitude, 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 attitude?"

"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 relationship 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.