Miranda of the Balcony Part 28

"It was no more true than"--she hesitated. However, Charnock was not looking at her; she found it possible to proceed--"than another belief which led me astray, as this one is leading you."

"What other belief?"

Miranda nerved herself to answer him. "That no man would serve a woman well, except for--for the one reason."

The nature of that reason was apparent to Charnock from the very tone in which she spoke the word. "And you believed that?" he asked.

In a movement of surprise he had knocked the newspaper off the writing-table. Underneath the newspaper was a book.

"I did believe it," she replied, her face rosy with confusion, "for a few mad miserable days," and she checked herself suddenly, for she saw that Charnock had absently opened and was absently turning over the leaves of the book.

"Was the message of your mirror after all so false?" she whispered. He turned towards her, with a face quite illumined. He did not, however, leave the table, and he kept the pages of the book open with his fingers.

"Then after all you do need help?" he cried.

"Need it?" she returned with a loud cry, and she stretched out hands across the table towards him. "Indeed, indeed I need it, I desperately need it! I sent the glove because I needed it."

"Then the glove was no sham?"

"It was not the glove that you tore; that was thrown away, but not by me. I searched for it, it was not to be found. So I tore the other and sent it as a subst.i.tute."

"And when I came, waited to discover," he added, "whether the one reason held me to your service. I understand."

"You see," she agreed, "really, in my heart, all the time I trusted you, for I knew you would keep your word. I knew you would say nothing, but would just wait and wait until I told you what it was I needed done."

Charnock turned abruptly towards her, and as he turned the book slipped off the table and fell to the ground. "But yesterday," he exclaimed in perplexity, "yesterday, here in this room, I gave you the a.s.surance which you looked for. You believed a man would only help you for the one reason. Well, I told you that the one reason held with me; yet, at that moment, you rejected all help and service. You cried out, 'It's the friend I want, not the lover.'"

"Because just at that moment I understood that my belief was wrong. I understood the shame, the horror, of the tricks I had played on you."

"Tricks?" said Charnock. "Oh!" and as he stooped down to pick up the book he added in a voice of comprehension, "At last! You puzzled me yesterday when you said, 'To possess the friend you had had to _make_ the lover.'"

"Yes," she said eagerly, "you understand? I want you to. I want you to understand to the last letter, so that you may decide whether you will help me or not, knowing what the woman is who asks your help. I sat down to trick you into caring for me if by any means I could. I did it deliberately, how deliberately you will see if you only open the book you hold. And it wasn't until I had won that I realised that I had cheated to win and could not profit by the gains. I won yesterday and yesterday I sent you away. Perhaps G.o.d kept you here."

Charnock made no answer. He sat down at the table opposite to Miranda and turned over the leaves of the book, whilst Miranda watched him, holding her breath. He was not angry yet, but she dreaded the moment when he should understand the subject-matter of the book.

The book was a collection of letters written by a great French lady at the Court of Louis XV. to a young girl-relative in Provence, and the letters were intended to serve as a guide to the girl's provincial inexperience. There was much sage instruction as to the best methods of handling men, "ces animaux effroyables, dont nous ne pouvons ni ne voudrons nous debarra.s.ser," as the great lady politely termed them. In the margin of the book Miranda's pencil had scored lines against pa.s.sages here and there. Charnock read out one:--

"Et prends bien garde de tellement diriger la conversation qu'il parle beaucoup de lui-meme."

"That accounts for the history of my life which I gave you in your garden," said Charnock. He was not angry yet; he was even smiling.

"Yes," said Miranda, seriously; "but there's worse! Go on!"

"Soyez sage, ma mie," he read, turning over a page. "On ne possede jamais un de ces animaux sans qu'on peut bien disposer d'un autre.

Celui que tu aimes, t'aimera aussi si tu fais la cour a un deuxieme.

Ils ont bien tort qui disent qu'il ne faut que deux pour faire l'amour. Il faut au moins trois."

"That accounts for Wilbraham, and the basket of flowers for Gibraltar."

"For Wilbraham, yes," said Miranda.

Charnock did not notice that she excluded the basket of flowers from her a.s.sent. He read out other items, still without any appearance of anger. A foot carelessly exhibited and carefully withdrawn, the young lady in the country was informed, might kick a hole in any male heart, so long as the foot was slim, and the shoe all that it should be.

Charnock closed the book and sat opposite to Miranda with a laughing face, enjoying her intense earnestness.

"So you won by cheating?" he said, "and this book taught you how to cheat?"

"Yes, but I don't think you have grasped it," she replied seriously, "and I want you to. I want you to understand the horrible, hateful way in which I made you care for me. I now know that I ought to have relied upon your friends.h.i.+p when you first came to Ronda. But I chose the worse part, and if you say that you will not help me, why, I must abide by it, and Ralph must abide by it too. But there shall be nothing but truth now between you and me. I was not content with friends.h.i.+p, I had the time I knew to try to make you care for me in the other way, and I did try hatefully, and hatefully I succeeded--"

and to Miranda's surprise Charnock leaned back in his chair, and laughed loudly and heartily for a long while. The more perplexed Miranda looked, the more he laughed.

"Believe me, Mrs. Warriner," he said, and stopped to laugh again, "if I had met you for the first time at Ronda, I should have taken the first train back to Algeciras. Your tricks! I noticed them all, and they drove me wild with indignation."

"Do you mean that?" exclaimed Miranda, and her downcast face brightened.

"I do indeed," answered Charnock. "Oh, your tricks! I almost hated you for them." He began to laugh again as he recollected them.

"I am so glad," replied Miranda, in the prettiest confusion, and as Charnock laughed, in a little her eyes began to dance and she laughed too.

"Shall I tell you what kept me at Ronda?" he said. "Because, in spite of yourself, every now and then yourself broke through the tricks.

Because, however much you tried, you could not but reveal to me, now and then, some fleeting glimpse of the woman who once stood beside me in a balcony and looked out over the flas.h.i.+ng carriage-lights to the quiet of St. James's Park. It was in memory of that woman that I stayed."

He was speaking with all seriousness now, and Miranda uttered a long trembling sigh of grat.i.tude. "Thank you," she said, "thank you."

"Now what can I do for you?" he asked, and Miranda made haste to reply.

CHAPTER XVII

SHOWS HOW A TOMBSTONE MAY CONVINCE WHEN ARGUMENTS FAIL

She showed him the scribbled note which M. Fournier had brought; she told him M. Fournier's story; how that Ralph had run guns and ammunition from England into Morocco on board the _Tarifa_; how that he had been kidnapped between M. Fournier's villa and the town-gate; how that he was not held to ransom, since no demand for ransom had come to the little Belgian; and finally how that it was impossible to apply for help to the Legation, since Ralph was already guilty of a crime, and would only be rescued that way in order to suffer penal servitude in England.

"What a coil to unravel!" said Charnock. "I know some Arabic. I could go to Morocco. I went there once, but only to Tangier. But Morocco?

How shall one search Morocco without a clue?"

He rested his chin upon his hand, and stared gloomily at the wall.

Miranda was careful not to interrupt his reflections. If there was a way out, she confidently relied upon this man to find it. Once she s.h.i.+vered, and Charnock looked inquiringly towards her. She was gazing at the soiled note which lay beneath her eyes upon the table, and saw again the picture of Ralph being beaten inland under the sun. She began to recall his acts and words, that she might make the best of them; she fell to considering whether she had not herself been in a measure to blame for the s.h.i.+pwreck of their marriage. And so, thinking of such matters, she absently hummed over a tune, a soft plaintive little melody from an _opera-bouffe_. She ended it and hummed it over again; until it came upon her that Charnock had been silent for a long time, and she looked up from the note into his face.

He was not thinking out any plan. He was watching her with a singular intentness, his head thrust forward from his shoulders, his face very strained. It seemed that every fibre of his body listened and was still, so that it might hear the better.

"Who taught you that tune?" he asked in a voice of suspense.

"Ralph," said she, in some surprise at the question; "at least I picked it up from him."

And Charnock fell back in his chair; he huddled himself in it, he let his chin drop upon his breast. He sat staring at her with eyes which seemed suddenly deep-sunk in a face suddenly grown white. And slowly, gradually, it broke in upon Miranda that he held the clue after all, that that tune was the clue, that in a word Charnock knew how Ralph had disappeared.

"You know!" she cried in her elation. "You know! Oh, and I sent you away yesterday! What if you had gone! Only to think of it! You know!