Miranda of the Balcony Part 20

"Then you left London," said Miranda.

"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 Yorks.h.i.+re 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 a.s.sociations 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 s.h.i.+llings a week. I saw Sir John Martin himself. He said I couldn't live on thirteen s.h.i.+llings; 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 s.h.i.+rtsleeves, 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 advertis.e.m.e.nt. 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.

Absorbed by these thoughts he sat through dinner un.o.bservant of his few neighbours at the long table. He was therefore surprised when, as he stood in the stone hall, lighting his cigar, a friendly hand was clapped down upon his shoulder, and an affable voice remarked:--

"Aha, dear friend! Finished the little job at Algeciras, I saw. What are you doing at Ronda?"

"What are you?" asked Charnock, as he faced the irrepressible Major Wilbraham.

"Trying to make seven hundred per annum into a thousand. You see I have no secrets. Now confidence for confidence, eh, dear friend?" and his eyes drew cunningly together behind the glowing end of his cigar.

"I am afraid that I must leave you to guess."

"Guessing's not very sociable work."

"Perhaps that's why I am given to it," said Charnock, and he walked between the stone columns and up the broad staircase.

The Major looked after him without the slightest resentment.

"Slipped up that time, Ambrose, my lad," he said to himself, and sauntered cheerfully out of the hotel.

Five minutes later Charnock pa.s.sed through the square at a quick walk.

Wilbraham was meditating a translation of the Carmen Saeculare, but business habits prevailed with him. He thrust the worn little Horace into his breast-pocket and followed Charnock at a safe distance. By means of a skill acquired by much practice, he walked very swiftly and yet retained the indifferent air of a loiterer. There was another picture of the tracker and the tracked to be seen that evening, but in Ronda instead of Tangier, and Charnock was unable to compare it with its companion picture, since, in this case, he was the tracked. The two men pa.s.sed down the hill to the bridge. Charnock stopped for a little and stood looking over the parapet to the water two hundred and fifty feet below, which was just visible through the gathering darkness like a ridge of snow on black soil. Wilbraham halted at the end of the bridge. It seemed that Charnock was merely taking a stroll.

He had himself, however, nothing better to do at the moment. He waited and repeated a stanza of his translation to the rhythm of the torrent, and was not displeased. Charnock moved on across the bridge, across the Plaza on the farther side of the bridge, up a street until he came to an old Moorish house that showed a blank yellow wall to the street and a heavy walnut door encrusted with copper nails.

Then he stopped again and looked steadily at the house and for a long while. Wilbraham began pensively to whistle a slow tune under his breath. Charnock walked on, stopped again, looked back to the house, as though he searched for a glimpse of the lights. But there was no c.h.i.n.k or cranny in that blank wall. The house faced the street, blind, dark, and repellent.

Charnock suddenly retraced his steps. Wilbraham had just time to mount the doorsteps of a house as though he was about to knock, before Charnock pa.s.sed him. Charnock had not noticed him. Wilbraham descended the steps and followed Charnock back into the Plaza.

Charnock was looking for a road which he had seen that afternoon from Miranda's garden, a road which wound in zigzags down the cliff. The road descended from the Plaza, Charnock discovered it, walked down it; behind him at a little distance walked Wilbraham. It was now falling dark, but the night was still, so that Wilbraham was compelled to drop yet farther and farther behind, lest the sound of his footsteps upon the hard, dry ground should betray his pursuit. He fell so far behind, in fact, that he ceased to hear Charnock's footsteps at all. He accordingly hurried; he did more than hurry, he ran; he turned an angle of the road and immediately a man seated upon the bank by the road-side said:--

"_Buenas noches_."

The man was Charnock.

Wilbraham had the presence of mind not to stop.

"_Felices suenos_," he returned in a gruff voice and continued to run.

He ran on until another angle of the road hid him. Then he climbed on to the top of the bank, which was high, and with great caution doubled back along the ridge until Charnock was just beneath him.

Charnock was gazing upwards; Wilbraham followed his example, and saw that right above his head, on the rim of the precipice, an open window glowed upon the night, a square of warm yellow light empanelled in the purple gloom.

The ceiling of the room was visible, and just below the ceiling a gleam as of polished panels. At that height above them the window seemed very small; its brightness exaggerated the darkness which surrounded it; and both men looked into it as into a tiny theatre of marionettes and expected the performance of a miniature play.

All that they saw, however, was a shadow-pantomime thrown upon the ceiling, and that merely of a tantalising kind--the shadow of a woman's head and hair, growing and diminis.h.i.+ng as the unseen woman moved away or to the candles. A second shadow, and this too the shadow of a woman, joined the first. But no woman showed herself at the window, and Charnock, tiring of the entertainment, returned to his hotel.

Wilbraham remained to count the houses between that lighted window and the chasm of the Tajo. He counted six. Then he returned, but not immediately to the hotel. On reaching the Plaza he walked, indeed, precisely in the opposite direction, away from the Tajo, and he counted the houses which he pa.s.sed and stopped before the seventh.

The seventh was noticeable for its great doors of walnut-wood and the geometrical figures which were traced upon it with copper nails.

The Major c.o.c.ked his hat on one side, and stepped out for the hotel most jauntily. "These little accidents," said he, "a brigantine sighted off Ushant; a man going out for a walk! If only one has patience! Patience, there's the secret. A little more, and how much--a great poet!" And he entered the hotel.

Charnock rose from a bench in the hall, "Pleasant night for a stroll,"

said he.

"Business with me, dear old boy," replied the Major. "I fancy that after all I have made that seven hundred per annum into a thou. I am not sure, but I think so. Good-night, sleep well, be good!" With a flourish of his hand over the bal.u.s.trade of the stairs, the Major disappeared.

Charnock sat down again on the bench and reflected.

"Wilbraham's at Ronda. I find him at Ronda when I am sent for to Ronda. Wilbraham said good-night to me on the road. Wilbraham was following me; Wilbraham's clothes were dusty: it was Wilbraham who kicked his toes into the gra.s.s on the top of the bank while I sat at the bottom. Have I to meet Wilbraham? What has his seven hundred per annum to do with Mrs. Warriner? Well, I shall learn to-morrow," he concluded, and so went to bed.

CHAPTER XIII

WHEREIN THE HERO'S PERPLEXITIES INCREASE

Charnock, however, learned nothing the next morning, except perhaps a lesson in patience. For the greater part of his visit was occupied in extracting a thorn from one of Mrs. Warriner's fingers. They chanced to be alone in the garden when the accident occurred, and Miranda naturally came to him for a.s.sistance. She said no word about the glove, nor did he; it was part of the compact that he should be silent. He came the next day, and it seemed that there was something amiss with Miranda's hairpins, for the coils of her hair were continually threatening to tumble about her shoulders; at least, so she said, complaining of the weight of her hair. But again there was no mention of the glove. That afternoon Charnock was introduced to Miss Holt, whom Miranda kept continually at her side, until Charnock took his leave, when she accompanied him across the patio.

"We never seem to get an opportunity of talking to each other," said she, with the utmost innocence. "Will you ride with me to-morrow? Say at two. We might ride as far as Ronda La Viega."

Charnock, who within the last half-hour had begun to consider whether it would not be wise for him to return to Algeciras, eagerly accepted the invitation. To-morrow everything would be explained. They would ride out together, alone, and she would tell him of the dragon he was required to slay, and no doubt explain why, for these last two days, she had been marketing her charms. That certainly needed explanation--for even at this moment in the patio, she was engaged in kissing a kitten with too elaborate a preparation of her lips to avoid a suspicion that the pantomime was intended for a spectator.

Charnock was punctual to the minute of his appointment, and in Miranda's company rode through the town. As they pa.s.sed the hotel, Major Wilbraham came out of the doorway. He took off his hat. Charnock nodded in reply and turned towards Miranda, remembering his suspicions as to whether Wilbraham was concerned in the mysterious peril which he was to combat. To his surprise Miranda instantly smiled at the Major with extreme friendliness, and markedly returned his bow.

"Clever, clever!" muttered the Major, as he bit his moustache and commended her man[oe]uvre. "A little overdone, perhaps; the bow a trifle too marked; still, it's clever! Ambrose, you will have that thousand."