Miranda of the Balcony: A Story

by A. E. W. Mason

CHAPTER XXII

[IN WHICH CHARNOCK ASTONISHES RALPH WARRINER]

The waiter threw open the door, the two men entered, and Warriner shut the door. Miranda rose from a chair and stood looking from Charnock to Warriner and back again from Warriner to Charnock; and as yet no word was spoken by anyone of them. Charnock had time to note, and grieve for, the pallor of her face and the purple hollows about her eyes. Then she moved forward for a step or two quite steadily; she murmured a name and the name was not Ralph; and then suddenly, without any warning, she fell to the ground between Charnock and her husband, and lay still and lifeless.

"My God, she's dead!" whispered Warriner. "We should have sent word of our coming. We have killed her," and then he stopped. For Charnock was standing by the side of Miranda and talking down to her as she lay, in a low, soft, chiding voice.

"Come," he was saying, "it's what you wished. You will be glad when you have time to think over it and understand. There is no reason why you should--"

This intimate talking with the lifeless woman came upon Warriner as something horrible. "Man, can't you see?" he whispered hoarsely. "She's dead, Miranda is. We have killed her, you and I."

Charnock slowly turned his head towards Warriner and looked at him steadily with his eyebrows drawn down over his eyes. Somehow Warriner was frightened by that glance; he felt a chill creep down his spine; he was more frightened than even on that morning when Charnock threatened to sell him outside Alkasar. "She's dead, I tell you," he babbled, and so was silent.

Charnock looked back to Miranda, sank upon one knee by her side, and bending his head down began to whisper to her exhortations, gentle reproaches at her lack of courage, and between his words he smiled at her as at a wayward child.

"There is no reason to fear," the uncanny talk went on; "and it hurts us! You don't know how much. You might as well speak, not be like this--pretending." He reached over her and took her hand, cherished it in his own, and entwined his fingers with her fingers and then laughed, as though her fingers had responded to his own. "You are rather cruel, you know."

Warriner moved uneasily. "Charnock, I tell you Miranda's--"

Charnock flung his other arm across her body and crouched over it, glaring at Warriner like a beast about to spring.

"And I tell you she's not, she's not, she's not!" he hissed out. "Dead!" and suddenly he lifted up Miranda's head, held it in the hollow of his arm and kissed the face upon the forehead and the lips. "Dead?" and he broke out into a laugh. "Is she? I'll show you. Come! Come!" He forced his disengaged arm underneath her waist, and putting all his strength into the swing lifted himself on to his feet, and lifted Miranda with him. "Now don't you see?" Warriner was standing, his mouth open, his eyes contracted; there was more than horror expressed in them, there was terror besides.

"Don't you see?" cried Charnock, in a wild triumph. "Perhaps you are blind. Are you blind, Ralph Warriner?"

He held Miranda supported against his shoulder, and swung her up and tried to set her dangling feet firm-planted on the ground; but her limbs gave, her head rolled upon his shoulder. He hitched her up again, her head fell back exposing the white column of her throat. The heavy masses of her hair broke from their fastenings, unrolled about her shoulders, and tumbled about his. He tried again to set her on her feet, and her head fell forward upon his breast, and her hair swept across his lips. "There, man," he cried, "she can stand.... Can a dead woman stand? Tell me that!" He held her so that she had the posture, the semblance, of one who stands, though all her weight was upon his arm. His laughter rose without any gradation to the pitch of a scream, sank without gradation to a hoarse cry. "Why, she can walk! Can a dead woman walk? See! See!" And suddenly he dropped his arm from her waist, and stood aside from her, holding her hand in his. Instantly her figure curved and broke. She swung round towards him upon the pivot of his hand, and as she swung she stumbled and fell. Charnock caught her before she reached the ground, lifted her up, strained her to his breast, and held her so. One deep sob broke from him, shook him, and left him trembling. He carried Miranda to a couch, and there gently laid her down. Gently he divided her hair back from her temples and her face; he crossed her hands upon her breast, watched her for a second as she lay, her dress soiled with the dust of his journeyings; and then he dropped on his knees by the couch, and with a set white face, with his eyelids shut tight upon his eyes, in a low, even voice he steadily blasphemed.

Some time later a hand was laid upon his shoulder and a strange voice bade him rise. He stood up and looked at the stranger with a dazed expression like one who comes out of the dark into a lighted room. Warriner also was in the room. Charnock caught a word here and there; the stranger was speaking to him; Charnock gathered that the stranger was a doctor, and that Warriner had fetched him.

"But she's dead," said Charnock, resentfully. "Why trouble her? she's dead." And looking down to Miranda, he saw that there was a faint flush of pink upon her cheeks, where all had been white before. "But you said she was dead," he said stupidly to Warriner, and as the doctor bent over her, it broke in upon him that she was in truth alive, that she had but swooned, and the shame of what he had done came home to him. "I was mad," he said, "I was mad."

"Go," said the doctor, "both of you."

"I can stay," said Warriner. "This is Mrs. Warriner; I am her husband, Ralph Warriner." The doctor looked up sharply. Warriner simply nodded his head. "Yes, yes," he said; "and this is Charnock. Ce bon Charnock. You see, he loves my wife."

Warriner spoke slowly and in an inexpressive voice, as though he too was hardly aware of what he said. The conviction that Miranda was dead had come with equal force to both of these two men, and the knowledge that she was not brought an equal stupefaction. Warriner remained in the room; Charnock went outside and down the stairs.

He came to his senses in the streets of Gibraltar, and looking backwards, seemed to himself to have lost them weeks ago somewhere between Mequinez and Alkasar, in a profitless rivalry for a woman who could not belong to him. In the present revulsion of his feelings he was conscious that he had lost all his enmity towards Warriner. He walked down to the landing-stage at the Mole. The Levanter had spent its force during the night; the sea had gone down; a steamer was dropping its anchor in the bay. Charnock was in two minds whether or no to cross the harbour to Algeciras, where Warriner and himself had left their traps the day before, gather together his belongings, and sail for England in that steamer. He had done all that he had been enjoined to do; he had brought Warriner back; he had even, as he had promised, paid the one last visit to Miranda. But,--but, he might be wanted, he pleaded to himself, and so undecided he wandered about the streets, and in the afternoon came back to the hotel.

The waiter was watching for his return. Mrs. Warriner wished to speak with him. There was no sign of Warriner. Charnock mounted the stairs. There was no sign of Warriner within the sitting-room. Miranda was alone, and from the frank unembarrassed way with which she held out her hand, Charnock understood that she knew nothing of what had passed in the morning.