Miranda of the Balcony: A Story

by A. E. W. Mason

"After three years. I was a clerk then; I was seventeen, and I had ambitions which clerking didn't satisfy. I always had a hankering after machinery, and I used to teach myself drawing. The lessons, however, did not turn out very successful, when I put them to the test."

"What did you do?" asked Miranda.

"I went up North to Leeds. There's a firm of railway contractors and manufacturers of locomotives. Sir John Martin is the head partner, and I had seen him once or twice at my father's house, for he took and takes a great interest in the Yorkshire clergy."

"I see. You went to him and told him who you were," said Miranda, who inclined towards Charnock more and more from the interest which she took in a youth so entirely strange, and apart from her own up-bringing, just as he on his part had been from the first attracted to her by the secure traditional life of which she was the flower, of which he traced associations in her simplicity, and up to this day, at all events, her lack of affectations.

"No," replied Charnock, "it would have been wiser if I had done that; but I didn't. I changed my name, and applied for a vacancy as draughtsman. I obtained it, and held the post for three weeks. Why they suffered me for three weeks is still a mystery, for of course I couldn't draw at all. At the end of three weeks I was discharged. I asked to be taken on as anything at thirteen shillings a week. I saw Sir John Martin himself. He said I couldn't live on thirteen shillings; I said I could, and he asked me how." Charnock began to laugh at his own story. "I told him how," he said. "I lived practically for nothing."

"How?" said Miranda. "Quick, tell me!" Charnock laughed again. "I had been three weeks at the works, you see, where hands were continually changing. I lived in a sort of mechanics' boarding-house, and I lived practically for nothing, on condition that I kept the house full, which I was able to do, for I got on very well with the men at the works. Sir John laughed when I told him, and took me into the office. So there I was a clerk again, which I didn't want to be; however, I was not a clerk for long. One Sunday Sir John Martin came down to the boarding-house and asked for me. It was dinner time, and he was shown straight into the dining-room, where I was sitting, if you please, at the head of the table, in my shirtsleeves, carving for all I was worth. He leaned against the door and shook with laughter. 'You are certain to get on,' he said; 'but I would like a few minutes with you alone.' I put on my coat, and went out with him into the street. 'Is your name Charnock?' he asked, and I answered that it was. 'I thought I knew your face,' said he, 'and that's why I took you into my office, though I couldn't put a name to you. So if you are proud enough to think that I took you on your own merits, you are wrong. You might as well have told me your real name, and saved yourself some time. Look at that!' and he gave me a newspaper, and pointed out an advertisement. A firm of solicitors in London was advertising for me, and the firm, I happened to know, looked after my aunt's affairs. I went to London that night. My aunt had died sixteen months before, and had left me six hundred a year. The rest was easy. I took Sir John's advice. 'Railways,' he said, 'railways; they are the white man's tentacles;' and Sir John gave me my first employment as an engineer."

Miranda was silent for a long while after Charnock had ended his story. Charnock himself had nothing further to say. It was for her to speak, not for him to question. She had sent the glove. She knew why he had come. Miranda, however, took a turn along the flagged pathway, and leaned over the breast-high wall and pointed out a vulture above the valley, and talked in inattentive, undecided tones upon any impersonal topic. It was natural, Charnock thought, that she should wish to con over what he had told her. So he rose from his chair.

"Shall I come back to-morrow?" he asked, and she rallied herself to answer him.

"Will you?" she exclaimed. "I should be so glad," and checking the ardour of her words, she explained, "I mean of course if you have nothing better to do," and she examined a flower with intense absorption, and then looked at him pathetically over her shoulder, as he moved away. So again he lost sight of the Miranda of the balcony, and carried away his first impression, that he had met that afternoon with a stranger.

His fervour of the morning changed to a chilling perplexity. He wondered at the change in her. Something else, too, seized upon his thoughts, and exercised his fancies. Why had she stood so long outside the door before she hurried in with her simulated surprise? How had she looked as she paused there, silent and motionless? That question in particular haunted him, for he thought that if only he could have seen her through the closed door he would have found a clue which would lead him to comprehend and to justify her.