IN WHICH MIRANDA ADOPTS A NEW LINE OF CONDUCT AND THE MAJOR
EXPRESSES SOME DISCONTENT
Miranda was left with two convictions, of which she was very certain.
Somehow, somewhither, help must be sent to Ralph; and if Charnock
carried the help, he must know why and for whom before he went.
She stood in the patio until the outer door closed behind M. Fournier.
A local newspaper lying upon a wicker chair caught her eye, and
harassed and unresolved as she was, she turned eagerly for rest to its
commonplaces. She read an anecdote about an unknown politician, and a
summary of Don Carlos's prospects, with extreme care and
concentration; for she knew that her perplexities lay in wait for her
behind the screen of the news sheet, and she was very tired.
She turned over the sheet, and in spite of herself, began to feel at a
third idea. She applied herself consequently to the first paragraph
which met her eye, and read it over with great speed, perhaps ten
times. But the words she read were not the printed words. They were
these:--
"Send me the glove, and when I come up to Ronda, it will be understood
without a word why I have come. There will be no need for me to speak
at all, and you will only have to tell me the particular thing that
wants doing."
And the idea became distinct. She could choose her own time for
telling Charnock the particular thing which wanted doing. He would ask
no questions; he had indeed hit upon that device of the glove to spare
her; she could send the glove, and she could tell him after he had
come in answer, but at her own discretion, why she had sent it.
Therefore she had time--she had time.
She turned to her paragraph again, read it with comprehension, and
from the paragraph her trouble sprang at her and caught her by the
heart. For what she read was the account of the opening of the branch
line to Algeciras. Charnock's work was done, then; he would be leaving
Algeciras. Even at that moment her first feeling was one of
approaching loneliness, so closely had the man crept into her
thoughts. She took a step towards her parlour, stopped, stood for a
moment irresolute, ran up the winding iron staircase to the landing
half-way up the patio, and fetched a new long white kid glove from her
dressing-room. She moulded it upon her hand, soiled it by a ten
minutes' wearing, ripped it across the palm, and sealed it up in an
envelope.
Jane Holt came into the patio while Miranda was still writing the
address.
"What's that?" she asked.
"A sham, Jane, a sham," said Miranda, in a queer, unsteady voice; "a
trick, the first of them."
Jane Holt shook her head. "You are very strange, Miranda," but
Miranda picked up the envelope, and putting on her hat hurried to the
post-office. As she crossed the bridge over the Tajo a man barred her
way. She tried to pass him; he moved again in front of her, and she
saw that the man was Wilbraham.
"I wish to speak to you."
"In ten minutes," said she, "in the Alameda. I have a letter to post."
"The letter can wait," said he.
"If it did, it would never be posted," said she, and she hurried past
him.
The Major followed her with inquisitive eyes; he felt a certain
admiration for her buoyant walk, her tall slight figure, which a white
muslin dress with a touch of colour at the waist so well set off, and
for the pose of her head under the wide straw hat. But business
instincts prevailed over his admiration. He lit a cigarette.
"What is the large sealed letter which must be posted at once, or it
will never be posted at all?" he asked himself. "Why must it be posted
at once?"
He strolled to the Alameda unable to find an answer. In the Alameda,
at the bench before the railings, Miranda was waiting for him. She
rose at once to meet him.
"Why have you come?" she asked. "It is not quarter-day. We made our
bargain. I have kept my part of it."
"Yes," said he. "But it was not a good bargain for me. I underrated my
necessities. I overrated my taste for a quiet life."
"And the Horace?" she asked scornfully. "One of the few things worth
doing, was it not?"
Wilbraham flushed angrily.
"So it is," he said. "But I find it difficult to settle down. I need,
in fact,--do we not all need them?--intervals of relaxation." He spoke
uneasily; he looked even more worn and tired than when he first came
to Ronda. Miranda understood that here indeed was the real tragedy of
the man's life.
"All these years, fifteen years," she said, "you have dreamed of doing
sooner or later this one thing. You have played with the dream. You
have kept your self-respect by means of it. It has set you apart from
your companions. And now, when the opportunity comes, you find that
you were only after all on the level of your companions, lower,
perhaps a trifle lower, by this trifle of delusion. For you cannot do
the work."
Wilbraham did not resent the speech, which was uttered without
reproach or accusation, but in the tone of one who notes a fact which
should have been foreseen.
"A topping fellow Horace, of course," Wilbraham began.
"And I trusted you to do it," she said suddenly, and looked at him for
a moment full in the face, not angrily, but with a queer sort of
interest in the mistake she had made. Then she turned from him and
walked away.
The Major followed quickly, but before he could come up with her she
turned round on him.
"Follow me for one other step," she said, "and I call that guardia
twenty yards away."
She meant to do it, too; this was unmistakable. She resumed her walk,
and the Major thought it prudent to remain where he was. He remained
in fact for some time on that spot, whistling softly to himself.
Wilbraham's menaces had sunk to a complete insignificance in Miranda's
mind, since she had been confronted with the actual positive disaster
which had befallen Ralph Warriner. Wilbraham, however, was not in a
position to trace Miranda's sudden audacity to its true source. He
fell therefore, and not unnaturally, into the error of imagining that
she drew her courage to refuse his demands from some new and external
support. His thoughts went back to the letter which must be posted at
once. Had that letter anything to do with that support? Had it
anything to do with her refusal?
Wilbraham asked himself these questions with considerable uneasiness,
for after all the seven hundred per annum was not so absolutely
assured. He came to the conclusion that it would be wise to transfer
his quarters from Tarifa to Ronda.