Complete Works of a E W Mason

by A. E. W. Mason

  He fell to wondering, not how it was that her face had appeared to him, nor by what miracle he was now enabled to have knowledge of her, but rather by what miracle of forgetfulness he had allowed her face, after he had seen it that one time six years ago, ever to slip from his thoughts, or her eyes after that one time he had exchanged a glance with them.

  The whirl of the dance carried her by his corner. She swung past him with the lightest imaginable step, and he was suddenly struck through and through with a chilling apprehension that by some unconscionable maladroitness he would surely tread upon her toes.

  At once he proceeded to count over the dances in which he had borne himself with credit. He had danced with Spanish women, he assured himself, and they had not objected. He was thus consoling himself when the time came for him to lead her out. And the touch of her hand in his, he remembers, turned him into a babbling idiot.

  He recollects that they danced with great celerity; that they passed Lady Donnisthorpe, who smiled at him with great encouragement, and that he was dolefully humorous concerning Major Wilbraham and his exchanges of cards, though why Major Wilbraham should have thrust his bald head into the conversation, he was ever at a loss to discover. And then Miranda said, “Shall we stop?”

  “Oh, I didn’t, did I?” exclaimed the horror-stricken Charnock, as he looked downwards at her toes.

  “No, you didn’t,” Miranda assured him with a laugh. “Do you usually?”

  “No,” he declared vehemently, “believe me, no! Never, upon my word! I have danced with Spanish women, — not at all, — no — no — no — no.”

  “Quite so,” said Miranda.

  And they laughed suddenly each to the other, and in a moment they were friends. Conversation came easily to their tongues, and underneath the surface of their light talk, the deeps of character called steadily like to like.

  “I have seen you once before, Mrs. Warriner,” said Charnock, as they seated themselves in an alcove of the room.

  “Yes,” she returned promptly, “at Monte Carlo, six years ago,” and her face lost its look of enjoyment and darkened with some shadow from her memories. The change was, however, unremarked by Charnock.

  “It seems strange,” he said in an absent voice, “that we should meet first of all in a gambling-room, and the next time at a ball.”

  “Why?”

  The question could not be answered. Charnock had a real but inexplicable feeling that Miranda and he should have met somewhere amidst the grandeur of open spaces, in the centre of the Sahara, and for the moment he forgot to calculate the effect of the sand upon Miranda’s eyes. This feeling, however, he could hardly express at the present point of their acquaintanceship; and, indeed, he immediately ceased to be aware of it.

  “Do you actually remember our meeting in that way six years ago?” he exclaimed. “How wonderful of you!”

  “Why?” again asked Mrs. Warriner. “Why is it wonderful, since you remember it?”

  “Ah, but I didn’t remember it until” — he paused for a second or two— “until I saw your face in a looking-glass.”

  Miranda glanced at him in considerable perplexity. Then she said with a demure smile, “I have at times seen it there myself.”

  “No doubt,” he replied with a glance at the cunning arrangement of her hair.

  “My maid does that,” said she, biting her lip.

  “No doubt, but you sit in front of the glass at the time. You’re in the room,” he continued hastily; “but when I saw your face in my mirror, you couldn’t be. I was in bed, — I mean, — let me tell you!” He stopped, overwhelmed with embarrassment. Miranda, with an air of complete unconsciousness, carefully buttoned her glove; only the glove was already buttoned, and her mouth twitched slightly at the corners.

  “It was just a week ago to-day,” Charnock began again. “I got home to my hotel late.”

  “Ah!” murmured Mrs. Warriner, as though the whole mystery was now explained to her.

  “I assure you,” he retorted with emphasis, “that I dined in the train and drank nothing more serious than railway claret.”

  “I made no accusation whatever,” Miranda blandly remarked, and seemed very well pleased.

  “After I had fallen asleep, I began to dream, but not about you, Mrs. Warriner; that’s the strange feature of the business. It wasn’t that I had been thinking of you that evening, or indeed, that I had ever been at all in the habit of thinking—” Again Charnock was utterly confused. “I don’t seem to be telling the story with the best taste in the world, do I?” he said ruefully.

  “Never mind,” she said in a soothing voice.

  “Of course, I could have turned it into a compliment,” he continued. “Only I take it you have no taste for compliments, and I lack the experience to put them tactfully.”

  “For a novice,” said she, “you seem to be doing very well.” Charnock resumed his story. “I dreamt solely of people I had seen, and incidents I had witnessed during the last week, at Tangier and at Plymouth. I dreamed particularly of a man I quarrelled with at Plymouth, and I suddenly woke up and saw your face in the mirror.”

  “As you fancied.”

  “It was no fancy. It was no dream-face that I saw — dream-faces are always elusive. It was no dream-face, it was yours.”

  “Or one like mine.”

  “There cannot be two.”

  “For a novice,” repeated Miranda, with a smile, “you are doing very well.”

  Charnock had watched her carefully while he told his story, on the chance that her looks, if not her lips, might give him some clue to the comprehension of his mysterious vision. But she had expressed merely an unconcerned curiosity and some amusement.

  “Shall I explain your vision?” said she. “You must have seen me in London during the day: the recollection that you had seen me must have lain latent, so that when you woke up you saw me in your mirror and did not remember that you had seen me during the day.”

  “Were you at any theatre this day week?”

  “No,” said Miranda, after counting over the days.

  “You did not see Macbeth that night?”

  “No.”

  “Then it is impossible I should have seen you. For I came up from Plymouth only that afternoon. I drove from Paddington to my hotel; from the hotel I went to the theatre; from the theatre I walked back to the hotel. It is impossible.”

  “It is very strange,” said Miranda, whose interest was increasing, and whose sense of amusement had vanished; for she saw that her companion was moved by something more than curiosity. It was evident to her from his urgent tones, from the eagerness of his face, that he had some hidden reason for his desire to fathom the mystery. It seemed to her that he nourished some intention, some purpose in the back of his mind, which depended for fulfilment upon whether or no there was any feasible solution.

  “Tell me your dream,” she said.

  “It was the oddest jumble, — it had neither sense nor continuity. Moors figured in it, ships, Lady Macbeth, the Major with his card-case, and the stranger who swore at me through the cab-window at Plymouth. The phrases that man used came into it.”

  “What phrases?”

  “I couldn’t repeat to you the most eloquent. There were milder ones, however. He called me a fair red-hotter amongst other things,” said Charnock, laughing at his recollections, “and expressed a wish that I might — well, sit in that cab until I ante’d up in kingdom come.”

  Miranda leaned back in her seat and opened and shut her fan. “He was a stranger to you, you say?”

  “Quite.”

  “You are sure?”

  “Quite.”

  “You had never seen him anywhere — anywhere? Think!”

  Charnock deliberated for a few seconds. “Never anywhere,” he replied.

  There was a moment’s silence. Mrs. Warriner gently fanned herself as she leaned back in the shadow of the alcove. “Describe him to me,” she said quietly.

  “A man of a slight fi
gure, a little under the middle height, fair hair, bright blue eyes, an open, good-natured face, and I should say a year or so under forty. I took him to be a sailor.”

  The fan stopped. Miranda let it fall upon her lap. That was the only movement which she made, and from the shadow of the recess, she said: “There is no explanation.”

  Charnock drew a breath and leaned forward, his hands clasped, his elbows on his knees. It seemed he had been waiting for just that one sentence. As he sat now his face was in the light, and Miranda remarked a certain timidity upon it, as though now that he had heard the expected words, he dared not after all reply to them. He did not look towards her. He stared at the dancers, but with vacant eyes. He saw nothing of their jewels, or their coloured robes, or the flash of their silver feet, and the noise of their chatter sounded very dimly in his ears. He was quite occupied, indeed, with the hardihood of what he had it on his tongue’s tip to say — when he had gained sufficient courage.

  Miranda moved restlessly, unbuttoned a glove, drew it off her wrist unconsciously, and then was still as Charnock began to speak.

  “Is there no explanation?” he asked. “I imagined one. You know how fancies come to one in the dark. That night I imagined one. I laughed at it the next morning, but now, since I have talked with you, I have been wondering whether by any miracle, it might be true. And if there’s an infinitesimal chance that it’s true, I think that I ought to tell you it, even though it may seem merely ridiculous, even though it may offend you. But I have lived for the most part of my time, since I was a man, in the waste places of the earth, and what may well be an impertinence — for we are only these few minutes acquainted — you will perhaps pardon on that account.”

  He received no encouragement to continue; on the other hand he received no warning to stop, for Miranda neither spoke nor moved. He did not look at her face lest he should read the warning there; but from the tail of his eye, he could see the fan, the white glove lying idle upon the black satin of her dress. The skirt hung from her knee to her foot without a stir in its folds, nor did her foot stir where it showed beneath the hem. She remained in a pose of most enigmatical quietude.

  “The face which my mirror showed to me,” he went on, “was your face, as I said; but in expression it was not your face as I see it to-night. It was very troubled, it was very pale; the eyes haunted me because of the pain in them, and because of — something else beside. It was a tortured face I saw, and the eyes seemed to ask — but to ask proudly — for help. Is it plain, the explanation which occurred to me?” His voice sank; he went on, slowly choosing every word with care, and speaking it with hesitation. “I imagined that out of all the millions of women in the world, here was one who needed help — my help, who was allowed to appeal to me for it, without, if you understand, making any appeal at all, and the explanation was not ... unpleasant ... to a man who lives much alone. In fact it has been so pleasant, and has become so familiar during this last week, that when I saw you to-night without a care, just as I saw you that night at Monte Carlo,” and indeed it seemed to Charnock that the black dress she wore alone marked the passage of those six years,— “I am ashamed to say that I was disappointed.”

  “Yes,” said Miranda. “I noticed the disappointment, but there’s a simpler explanation of the troubled face than yours. You had been to Macbeth that evening; Lady Macbeth played a part in your dreams. What if Lady Macbeth lent her pallor and her distress to the face which you saw in your mirror?”

  Charnock swung abruptly round towards her. It was not the explanation which surprised him, but the altered voice she used. And if her voice surprised him, he was shocked and startled by her looks. She was still leaning back in the shadow of the alcove, and her head rested against the dark wood-panels. She did not move when he looked towards her.

  “My God,” he said in a hushed and trembling whisper, and she gave no sign that she heard. She might have fainted, but that her eyes glittered out of the shadow straight and steadily into his. She might be dead from the whiteness of her face against the panels, but that her bosom rose and fell.

  “What can I do?” he exclaimed.

  “Hush!” she replied, and rose to her feet. “Here is Lady Donnisthorpe.” She walked abruptly past him across the room to the open window. Charnock remained nailed to the ground, following her with his eyes. For in that alcove, leaning against the dark panels, he had seen not merely the features, but the expression on the features, he had seen exact in every detail the face which he had seen in the polished darkness of his mirror. The sheen of the dark polished panels helped the illusion. His fancy had come true, was transmuted into fact. Somewhere, somehow, he was to meet that woman. He had met her here and in this way, and her eyes and her face uttered her distress as with a piercing cry. Her eyes! The resemblance was perfect to the last detail. For Charnock ventured to surmise in them the same involuntary appeal which he had seen in the eyes that had looked out from his mirror. What then if the rest were true? What if his explanation was as true as the true facts which it explained? What if it was given to him and to her to stand apart from their fellows in this mysterious relation?...

  He saw that Miranda was already near the window, that Lady Donnisthorpe was approaching him. He followed instantly in Miranda’s steps, and Lady Donnisthorpe, perceiving his attention, had the complaisance to turn aside. For the window opened on to a balcony wherein discreet palms sheltered off a nook. There was one of Lady Donnisthorpe’s guests who did not share her ladyship’s complacency. A censorious dowager sitting near to the window had kept an alert eye upon the couple in the recess during the last three dances; and each time that her daughter — a pretty girl with hair of the palest possible gold, and light blue eyes that were dancing with a child’s delight at all the wonders of a first season — returned to the shelter of her portly frame, the dowager drew moral lessons for her benefit from the text of the oblivious couple. She remarked with pain upon their increasing infatuation for each other; she pointed out to her daughter a hapless youth who tiptoed backwards and forwards before Mrs. Warriner, with a dance-card in his hand, too timorous to interrupt the intimate conversation; and when Mrs. Warriner dropped a glove as she stepped over the window-sill on to the balcony, the dowager nudged her daughter with an elbow.

  “Now, Mabel, there’s a coquette,” she said.

  Charnock was close behind, and overheard the triumphant remark.

  “I beg your pardon,” he said politely, “it was the purest accident.”

  The dowager bridled; her face grew red; she raised her tortoiseshell glasses and annihilated Charnock with a single stare. Charnock had the audacity to smile. He stooped and picked up the glove. Mrs. Warriner had indeed dropped the glove by accident; but since it fell in Charnock’s way and since he picked it up, it was to prove, like the handbill at Gibraltar and the draft on Lloyd’s bank, a thing trivial in itself, but the opportunity of strange events.

  CHAPTER V

  WHEREIN CHARNOCK AND MIRANDA IMPROVE THEIR ACQUAINTANCESHIP IN A BALCONY

  LADY DONNISTHORPE’S HOUSE stood in Queen Anne’s Gate, and the balcony overlooked St. James’s Park. There Charnock found Miranda; he leaned his elbows upon the iron balustrade, and for a while neither of them spoke. It was a clear night of early June, odorous with messages of hedgerows along country lanes and uplands of young grass, and of bells ringing over meadows. In front of them the dark trees of the Park rippled and whispered to the stray breaths of wind; between the trees one line of colourless lamps marked the footpath across the bridge to the Mall; and the carriages on the outer roadway ringed that enclosure of thickets and lawns with flitting sparks of fire.

  Charnock was still holding the glove which he had picked up on the window-sill.

  “That’s mine,” said Miranda; “thank you,” and she stretched out her hand for it.

  “Yes,” said Charnock, absently, and he drew the glove through his fingers. It was a delicate trifle of white kid; he smoothed it, and his hand had the light to
uch of a caress. “Miranda,” he said softly but distinctly, and lingered on the word as though the sound pleased him.

  Miranda started and then sank back again in her chair with a quiet smile. Very likely she blushed at this familiar utterance of her name, and at the caressing movement of his hand which accompanied and perhaps interpreted the utterance, or perhaps it was only at a certain throb of her own heart that she blushed. At all events, the darkness concealed the blush, and Charnock was not looking in her direction.

  The freshness of the night air had restored her, but she was very willing to sit there in silence so long as no questions were asked of her, and Charnock had rather the air of one who works out a private problem for himself than one who seeks the answer from another.

  The clock upon Westminster tower boomed the hour of twelve. Miranda noticed that Charnock raised his head and listened to the twelve heavy strokes with a smile. His manner was that of a man who comes unexpectedly upon some memento of an almost forgotten time.

  “That is a familiar sound to you,” said Mrs. Warriner, and she was suddenly sensible of a great interest in all of the past life of this man who was standing beside her.

  “Yes,” said Charnock, turning round to her.

  “You lived in Westminster, then? At one time I used to stay here a good deal. Where did you live?”

  Charnock laughed. “You would probably be no wiser if I named the street; it is not of those which you and your friends go up and down,” he replied simply. “Yes, I lived in Westminster for three hard, curious years.”

  “It’s not only the years that are curious,” said Miranda, but the hint was lost, for Charnock had turned back to the balustrade. She was still, however, inclined to persist. The details which Lady Donnisthorpe had sown in her mind, now bore their crop. Interested in the man, now that she knew him, she was also interested in his career, in his hurried migratory life, in the mystery which enveloped his youth, and all the more because of the contrast between her youth and his. He had lived for three years in some small back street of Westminster; very likely she had more than once rubbed shoulders with him in the streets on the occasions when she had come up from her home in Suffolk. That home became instantly very distinct in her memories — an old manor-house guarded by a moat of dark silent water, a house or broad red-brick chimneys whereon she had known the roses to bloom on a Christmas-day, and of leaded windows upon which the boughs of trees continually tapped.