Miranda of the Balcony Part 36

Gibraltar is before everything a fortress, and the gates of that fortress are closed for the night at gunfire, and opened again for the day at gunfire in the morning.

"You will never do it," said the manager. "The gun goes off at seven."

"What's the month?" cried Warriner.

"July," answered the manager, in surprise.

"And the day of July?"

"The fifth."

"Good," cried Warriner. "You are wrong; on the fifth of July the gun goes off at eight--from the fifth of July to the thirty-first of August."

The manager uncoupled one carriage and the engine, coupled them together and switched them on to the up-line. Meanwhile Charnock telegraphed to the station-master at San Roque, to have a carriage in readiness; but time was occupied, and it was six o'clock before the engine steamed into San Roque.

San Roque is a wayside station; the village lies a mile away, hidden behind a hill. Charnock and Warriner alighted amongst fields and thickets of trees, but nowhere was there a house visible, and worst of all, there was no carriage in the lane outside the station. The station-master had ordered one, and no doubt one would arrive. He counselled patience.

For half-an-hour the incongruous companions, united by a common pa.s.sion and a mutual hate, kicked their heels upon the lonely platform of San Roque. Then at last a crazy, battered, creaking diligence, drawn by six broken-kneed, sore-backed mules, cantered up to the station with a driver and a boy upon the box, whooping exhortations to the mules with the full power of their lungs.

Charnock and Warriner sprang up into the hooded seat behind the box, the driver turned his mules, and the diligence went off at a canter, along an unmade track across the fields.

It was now close upon a quarter to seven, and nine miles lay between San Roque and the gates of Gibraltar. Moreover, there was no road for the first part of the journey, merely this unmade track across the fields. The two men urged on the driver with open-handed promises; the driver screamed and shouted at his mules: "Hi! mules, here's a bull after you!" He counterfeited the barking of dogs; but the mules were accustomed to his threats and exhortations; they knew there were no dogs at their heels, and they kept to their regular canter.

Charnock longed for the fields to end and for the road to begin; and when the road did begin, he longed again for the fields. The road consisted of long lines of ruts, ruts which were almost trenches, ruts which had been baked hard by the summer suns. The mules stumbled amongst them, the diligence tossed and pitched and rolled like a boat in a heavy sea; Charnock and Warriner clung to their seats, while the driver continually looked round to see whether a wheel had slipped off from its axle. At times the boy would jump down from the box, and running forward with the whip in his hand, would beat the mules with the b.u.t.t-end; the lash had long ceased to influence their movements.

"The road's infernal," cried Warriner.

"It will be when we get to the sea," replied the driver, and Charnock groaned in his distress. There was worse to come, and Miranda was ill.

The diligence lurched between two clumps of juniper trees, swung round a wall, and instantly the wheels sank into soft sand. The huge, sheer landward face of Gibraltar Rock towered up before them as they looked across the mile of neutral ground, that flat neck of land between the Mediterranean and the Bay. They saw the Spanish frontier town of Linea; but to Linea the sand stretched in a broad golden curve, soft and dry, and through that curve of sand the wheels of the diligence had to plough. The mules were beaten onwards, but the Levanter blew dead in their teeth. The driver turned the diligence towards the sea, and drove with the water splas.h.i.+ng over the wheels; there the sand bound, and the pace was faster.

It was still, however, too slow; Gibraltar seemed still as far away.

The travellers paid the driver, leaped from their seats, and ran over the soft clogging sand to Linea. They reached Linea. They pa.s.sed the sentinel and the iron gates, they stood upon the neutral ground. They had but one more mile to traverse.

A cab stood without the iron gates. They jumped into it and drove at a gallop across the level; but the gun was fired from the Rock, while they were still half-a-mile from the gate, and the cabman brought his horses to a standstill.

"What now?" said Warriner.

"We might get in," said Charnock.

"The keys are taken to the Governor. There would be trouble; there always is. I know there would be questions asked; it would not be safe. I might slip in when the gates are open, but now it would not be safe. And mind, Charnock, when you go in I go in too."

There was no doubt that Warriner meant what he said, every word of it.

For Miranda's sake Charnock could not risk Warriner's detection. They must remain outside Gibraltar for that night, even though during the night Miranda should die.

"Can we sleep at Linea?" said Charnock.

"No, Linea is a collection of workmen's houses and workmen's pot-houses." The two men made their supper at one of these latter, and for the rest of the night paced the neutral ground before Gibraltar.

A scud of clouds darkened the sky, and one pile of cloud, darker than the rest, lowered stationary upon the summit of the Rock. All night the Levanter blew pitilessly cold across that unprotected neck of land between sea and sea. With their numbed hands in their pockets, and their coats b.u.t.toned to the throat, Charnock and Warriner, accustomed to the blaze of a Morocco sun, waited from nightfall until midnight, and from midnight through the biting, dreary hours till dawn.

The gates were opened at three o'clock in the morning. Together the two men went through; they had still hours to wait before they could return to the hotel. They breakfasted together, and they let the time go by, for now that they were within reach of, almost within sight of, Miranda Warriner, they both began to hesitate. What was to be the end?

They looked at one another across the table with that question speaking from their eyes. They walked down to the hotel and faced each other at the door, and the question was still repeated and still unanswered. They turned away together and strolled a few yards, and turned and came back again. This time Charnock entered the hotel. "Is Mrs. Warriner in?" he asked.

The waiter replied, "Yes."

Charnock drew a long breath. Surely if much had been amiss with her the waiter would have told them; but he said nothing, he merely led the way upstairs.

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 G.o.d, 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 hoa.r.s.ely.

"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 ma.s.ses 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 hoa.r.s.e 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."