Miranda of the Balcony Part 23

"She has no very strong faith in men. Perhaps you noticed as much."

"No."

"I did not agree with her. I had the glove. It would be--amusing to know whether she was right or whether I was. I sent it to you."

"Just to prove whether I should keep my word or not?"

"Yes," said Miranda.

"Just for your amus.e.m.e.nt, in a word?"

"Amus.e.m.e.nt was the word I chose."

"I see, I see." His voice was lifeless, his face dull and stony.

Miranda moved uneasily as she watched him; but he did not notice her movement or regard her with any suspicion. His thoughts and feelings were m.u.f.fled. He seemed to be standing somewhere a long way outside himself and contemplating the two people here in the room with a deal of curiosity, and with perhaps a little pity; of which pity the woman had her share with the man. "I see," he continued. "It was all a sham?"

Miranda glanced at him, and from him to the glove. "Even the glove was a sham," she said quickly. "Look at it."

He bent down and lifted it from her knees. Then he drew up a chair to the table, sat down, and examined the glove. Miranda hitched her chair closer to the table, too, and propping her elbows there, supported her chin upon her hands.

"You see that the glove is fresh," she said.

"It has been worn," answered Charnock. "The fingers have been shaped by wearing."

"It was worn by me for ten minutes in this room the day I posted it to you."

"But the tear?" he asked with a momentary quickening of speech.

"I tore it."

"I see." He laid the glove upon the table. "And the other glove--the one you wore that night--the one I tore upon the balcony over St.

James's Park? It was you I met that night in London? Or wasn't it?"

The question was put without any sarcasm, but with the same dull curiosity which had marked his other questions, and on her side she answered it simply as she had answered the others. "Yes, it was I whom you met, and the glove you speak of was thrown away."

It seemed that he had come to the end of his questions, for he sat for a little, drumming with his fingers on the table. Once he looked up and towards the window, as though his very eyes needed the relief of the wide expanse of valley.

"Now will you go? Please," said Miranda, gently, and the next moment regretted that she had spoken.

"Oh, yes, I will go," he answered. "I will go back to Algeciras, and from Algeciras to England." He was not looking at her, and so noticed nothing of the spasm of pain which for a second convulsed her face at his literal acceptation of her prayer. "But before I go, tell me;" and the questions began again.

"You say you need no one?"

"No one."

"Then why did you cry out a minute ago, 'It's the friend I want, not the lover'? You were not amusing yourself then. Why, too, did you--this afternoon in the garden, perhaps you remember--when the flowers fell on to the ground between us? Neither were you amusing yourself then."

Miranda drew the glove away from where it lay in front of him; absently she began to slip it over her hand, and then becoming aware of what she did, and of certain a.s.sociations with that action at this moment, she hurriedly stripped it off.

"Perhaps I have no right to press you," he said; "but I should like to know."

Miranda spread the glove out on the table, and carefully divided and spread out the fingers. "I will tell you," she said at length, with something of a spirt in the quickness of her speech. "I am still capable of remorse, though very likely you can hardly believe that. Do you remember," she began to speak with greater ease, "when we rode out to Ronda La Viega, I asked you why you never expressed what you felt?

I was then beginning to be afraid that you would take my--my trick too much to heart--that you would really think I needed you. My fear became certain this afternoon, when I--I was putting the flower in your coat. I was sorry then, as you saw when you came into the room. I was yet more sorry when you spoke to me as you did, for I thought that if you hadn't cared, if you had never intended to be more than my friend, the trick would not have mattered so much. And that was just what I meant, when I said it was the friend I wanted, not the lover."

Charnock listened to the explanation, accepted it and put it away in his mind.

"I see," he remarked, and her bosom rose and fell quickly. "All this time you have been just playing with me as you played with Wilbraham this afternoon."

"Just in the same way," she returned without flinching.

"Ah, but you dropped his flower down the cliff," he exclaimed suddenly.

"You forget that yours had already fallen on to the ground."

"Yes, that's true," and the suspicion died out of his face. "And that basket of flowers?" he asked.

This time, and for the first time since the questions had begun, Miranda did flinch. She had a great difficulty in answering, "It has already been sent off."

"To Gibraltar?" Miranda's difficulty increased. "To whom at Gibraltar?

A friend, a man?"

Miranda's face grew very white; she tried to speak and failed; her throat, her lips, refused the answer. "At all events," she managed to whisper hoa.r.s.ely, "not to a woman," and thereupon she laughed most mirthlessly, till the strange, harsh, strangled noise of it penetrated as something unfamiliar to Charnock's dazed mind.

"I beg your pardon," he said; "I was forgetful. I had no right to ask you," and he rose from his chair. She rose too. "I am glad," he continued with a formal politeness, "that you do not after all stand in need of anyone's help."

"Oh, no," she replied carelessly, "no one's;" and almost before she was aware, he was holding her wrists, one in each of his hands, and with his eyes he was searching her face, silently interrogating her for the truth. Once before, upon the balcony, he had bidden her in just this way answer him, and now, as then, she found herself under a growing compulsion to obey.

"You hurt me," she had the wit to say, and instantly Charnock released her wrists.

"I beg your pardon," said he, and he walked to the door. At the door he turned. "Tell me," he said abruptly, "you dropped your glove--not that one on the table, but the other--just as you stepped out on to the balcony?"

"Yes," she answered, and wondered what was coming.

"Was that an accident?"

Miranda stepped back and lowered her head.

"You remember everything," she murmured.

"Was it an accident?"

"You are unsparing."

"Was it an accident?"

"No."

"It was a trick, a sham like all the rest?"