Part 4 (2/2)

The cab shot up the hill through the tunnel, past the closed shop. A figure sprang from the ground and thrust a face through the window of the cab. The man was in Moorish dress, but the face was the face of the abusive stranger of Plymouth--and all at once Charnock started up on his elbow, and in the smallest fraction of a second was intensely and vividly awake. There was no sound at all within the room. But in the black sheen of the mirror he saw a woman's face.

He saw it quite clearly for perhaps five seconds, the face rising white from the white column of the throat, the dark and weighty coronal of the hair, the curved lips which alone had any colour, the eyes, deep and troubled, which seemed to hint a prayer for help which they disdained to make--for five seconds perhaps the illusion remained, for five seconds the face looked out at him from the black mirror, lit palely, as it seemed, by its own pallor, and so vanished.

Charnock remained propped upon his elbow. A faint twilight from the stars crept timidly through the open window as though deprecating its intrusion. Charnock looked into the dark corners of the room, but nowhere did the darkness move. Nor could he hear any sound. Not even a board of the floor cracked, and outside the door there was no noise of a footstep on the stairs. Then from a great distance the jingle of a cab came through the open window to his ears with a light companionable lilt. Gradually the sound ceased, and again the silence breathed about him. Charnock struck a match and looked at his watch.

It was a few minutes after three.

Charnock lay back in his bed wondering. For he had seen that face once, he had once exchanged glances with those eyes, once only, six years ago, and thereafter had entirely forgotten the incident--until this moment. He had stopped for a night at Monte Carlo and had seen--the girl--yes, the _girl_, though it was a woman's face which had gleamed in the depths of his mirror--standing under the green shaded lamps in the big gambling-room. His attention, he now remembered, had been seized by the contrast between her amused indifference and the feverish haste of the gamblers about the table; between her fresh, clear looks and their heated complexions,--even between her frock of lilac silk and their more elaborate toilettes.

The girl was entirely happy then, the red lips smiled, the violet eyes laughed. Why should her face appear to him now, after these years, and paled by this distress?

A queer fancy slipped into his mind--a fancy at the extravagance of which he knew very well he should laugh in the sane light of the morning, though he indulged it now--that somehow, somewhere, this woman needed help, and that it was thus vouchsafed to her, a stranger, to make her appeal to him in this way, which spared her the humiliation of making any appeal at all. Charnock fell asleep convinced that somehow, somewhere, he was destined to meet and know her. As he had foreseen, he laughed at his fancies in the morning, but nevertheless, he did meet her. It had, in fact, already been arranged that he should. For the face which he saw in the mirror was the face of Miranda Warriner.

CHAPTER IV

TREATS OF THE FIRST MEETING BETWEEN CHARNOCK AND MIRANDA

Lady Donnisthorpe, with a sigh of relief, retired from her position at the head of the stairs, and catching Charnock in the interval between two dances:--

”You kept some dances free,” she said, ”didn't you? I want to introduce you to a cousin of mine, Miranda Warriner, because she lives at Ronda.”

”At Ronda. Indeed?”

”Yes.” Her ladys.h.i.+p added with a magnificent air of indifference, ”She is a widow,” and she led Charnock across the ball-room.

Miranda saw them approaching, noticed an indefinable air of expectation in Lady Donnisthorpe's manner, and smiled. A few excessively casual remarks concerning one Mr. Charnock, which Lady Donnisthorpe had dropped during the last few days, had not escaped the notice of Miranda, who was aware of her cousin's particular weakness.

This was undoubtedly Mr. Charnock. She raised her eyes towards him, and had her ladys.h.i.+p been less fluttered, she might have remarked that Miranda's eyes lit up with a momentary sparkle of recognition.

”Mrs. Warriner--Mr. Charnock.”

Lady Donnisthorpe effected the momentous introduction and felt immediately damped. She had not indeed expected that her two newest victims would at once and publicly embrace. But at all events she had decked out her ball-room as the sacrificial altar, and had taken care that a fitting company and cheerful music should do credit to the immolation. This tame indifference was less than she deserved.

Miranda, to whom Lady Donnisthorpe was looking, made the perfunctory dip of the head and smiled the perfunctory smile, and Charnock--why in the world did he not move or speak? Lady Donnisthorpe turned her eyes from Miranda to this awkward cavalier, and was restored to a radiant good-humour. ”Dazzled,” she said to herself, ”absolutely dazzled!” For Charnock stood rooted to the ground and tongue-tied with amazement.

It was fortunate for Lady Donnisthorpe that at this point she thought it wise to withdraw. Otherwise she would surely have remarked an unmistakable look of disappointment which grew within Charnock's eyes and spread out over his face. Then the disappointment vanished, and as he compared programmes with Miranda, he recovered his speech.

Four dances must intervene before he could claim her, and Charnock was glad of the interval to get the better of his bewilderment. Here was the woman whom his mirror had shown to him! After all, his nocturnal fancy was fulfilled, or rather part of it, only part or it. He had met her, he was to dance with her. Some miracle had brought them together.

From the corner by the doorway he watched Miranda, he remarked an unaffected friendliness in her manner towards her partners. Candour was written upon her broad white forehead and looked out from her clear eyes. He had no doubt it was fragrant too in her hair. There were heavy ma.s.ses of that hair, as he knew very well from his mirror, but now the ma.s.ses were piled and woven about her head with a cunning art, which to be sure they deserved. There was a ripple in her hair, too, which caught the light--a most taking ripple. Here was a woman divested of a girl's wiles and vanities. Charnock, without a scruple, aspersed all girls up to the age of say twenty-four, that he might give her greater praise.

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 a.s.sured 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 pa.s.sed 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.

<script>