Miranda of the Balcony

W. Mason A. E.

Description

Romeo and Juliet have got nothing on Miranda Warriner and Luke Charnock. Although every sign seems to point to these lovers' fated union, a series of increasingly insurmountable obstacles seem to be conspiring to keep them apart -- many of which stem from the misdeeds of Miranda's late husband Ralph.

Informations

• Publié par: The Floating Press
• Date de parution: 01 juillet 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781776583225
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

MI

RANDA OF T BALCONY

A STORY

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A. E. W. MASON

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Miranda of the Balcony A Story First published in 1899 PDF ISBN 978-1-77658-322-5 Also available: Epub ISBN 978-1-77658-321-8 © 2013 The Floating Press and its licensors. All rights reserved.

While every effort has been used to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information contained in The Floating Press edition of this book, The Floating Press does not assume liability or responsibility for any errors or omissions in this book. The Floating Press does not accept responsibility for loss suffered as a result of reliance upon the accuracy or currency of information contained in this book. Do not use while operating a motor vehicle or heavy equipment. Many suitcases look alike.

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Chapter I - In Which a Short-Sighted Taxidermist from Tangier Makes a Discovery Upon Rosevear Chapter II - Presents the Hero in the Unheroic Attitude of a Spectator Chapter III - Treats of a Gentleman with an Agreeable Countenance, and of a Woman's Face in a Mirror Chapter IV - Treats of the First Meeting Between Charnock and Miranda Chapter V - Wherein Charnock and Miranda Improve Their Acquaintanceship in a Balcony Chapter VI - While Charnock Builds Castles in Spain, Miranda Returns There Chapter VII - In Which Major Wilbraham Describes the Steps by Which He Attained His Majority, and Gives Miranda Some Particular Information Chapter VIII - Explains the Mystery of the "Tarifa's" Cargo Chapter IX - Shows the Use Which a Blind Man May Make of a Dark Night a Week Chapter X - M. Fournier Expounds the Advantages Which Each Sex Has over the Other Chapter XI - In Which Miranda Adopts a New Line of Conduct and the Major Expresses Some Discontent Chapter XII - The Hero, Like All Heroes, Finds Himself in a Fog Chapter XIII - Wherein the Hero's Perplexities Increase Chapter XIV - Miranda Professes Regret for a Practical Joke Chapter XV - In Which the Major Loses His Temper and Recovers It

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Chapter XVI - Explains Why Charnock Saw Miranda's Face in His Mirror Chapter XVII - Shows How a Tombstone May Convince When Arguments Fail Chapter XVIII - In Which the Taxidermist and a Basha Prevail over a Blind Man Chapter XIX - Tells of Charnock's Wanderings in Morocco and of a Walnut-Wood Door Chapter XX - Charnock, Like the Taxidermist, Finds Warriner Anything but a Comfortable Companion Chapter XXI - Completes the Journeyings of this Incongruous Couple Chapter XXII - In Which Charnock Astonishes Ralph Warriner Chapter XXIII - Relates a Second Meeting Between Charnock and Miranda Chapter XXIV - A Mist in the Channel Ends, as it Began, the Book

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Chapter I - In Which a Short- Sighted Taxidermist from Tangier Makes a Discovery Upon Rosevear

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The discovery made a great stir amongst the islands, and particularly at St. Mary's. In the square space before the Customs' House, on the little stone jetty, among the paths through the gorse of the Garrison, it became the staple subject of gossip, until another ship came ashore and other lives were lost. For quite apart from its odd circumstances, a certain mystery lent importance to Ralph Warriner. It transpired that nearly two years before, when on service at Gibraltar, Captain Warriner of the Artillery had slipped out of harbour one dark night in his yacht, and had straightway disappeared; it was proved that subsequently he had been dismissed from the service; and the coroner of St. Mary's in a moment of indiscretion let slip the information that the Home Office had requested him to furnish it with a detailed history of the facts. The facts occurred in this sequence.

At seven o'clock of a morning in the last week of July, the St. Agnes lugger which carries the relief men to and fro between the Trinity House barracks upon St. Mary's and the Bishop Lighthouse in the Atlantic, ran alongside of St. Mary's pier. There were waiting upon the steps, the two lighthouse men, and a third, a small rotund Belgian of a dark, shiny countenance which seemed always on the

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point of perspiring. He was swathed in a borrowed suit of oilskins much too large for him, and would have cut a comical figure had he not on that raw morning looked supremely unhappy and pathetic. M. Claude Fournier was a taxidermist by profession and resided at Tangier; he was never backward in declaring that the evidences of his skill decorated many entrance-halls throughout Europe; and some three weeks before he had come holiday-making alone to the islands of Scilly.

He now stood upon the steps of the pier nervously polishing his glasses as the lugger swung upwards and downwards on the swell. He watched the relief men choose their time and spring on board, and just as Zebedee Isaacs, the master of the boat, was about to push off with his boat-hook, he nerved himself to speak.

"I go with you to the Bishop, is it not?"

Isaacs looked up in surprise. He had been wondering what had brought the little man out in this dress and on this morning.

"There'll be a head-wind all the way," he said discouragingly, "and wi' that and a heavy ground sea we'll be brave an' wet before we reach the Bishop, brave an' wet."

"I do not mind," replied M. Fournier. "For the sea, I amdévot;" but his voice was tremulous and belied him.

Isaacs shook his head.

"It's not only the sea. Look!" And he stretched out his arm. A variable fog rolled and tumbled upon a tumbling wilderness of sea. "I'ld sooner have two gales lashed together than sail amongst these islands in a fog. I'ld never go to-day at all, but the boat's more'n three weeks overdue."

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Indeed, as M. Fournier looked seawards, there was no glimpse of land visible. A fortnight of heavy weather had been followed by a week of fog which enveloped the islands like a drenched blanket. Only to-day had it shown any signs of breaking, and the St. Agnes lugger was the first boat, so far as was known, to run the hazard of the sea. It is true that two days before one man had run in to the bar of Tregarthen's Hotel and told how he had stood upon the top of the Garrison and had looked suddenly down a lane between two perpendicular walls of mist, and had seen the water breaking white upon Great Smith Rock, and in the near distance an open boat under a mizzen and a jib, beating out through the heavy swell towards the west. But his story was in no wise believed.

To all of Isaacs's objections M. Fournier was impervious, and he was at last allowed to embark.

"Now!" cried Zebedee Isaacs, as the lugger rose. M. Fournier gave a pathetic look backwards to the land, shut his eyes and jumped. Isaacs caught and set him upon the floor of the boat, where he stood clutching the runners. He saw the landing-steps dizzily rush past him up to the sky like a Jacob's ladder, and then as dizzily shut downwards below him like a telescope.

The boat was pushed off. It rounded the pier-head and beat out on its first tack, across the Road. M. Fournier crouched down under the shelter of the weather bulwark.

"As for the sea I amdévot," he murmured, with a watery smile.

In a little the boat was put about. From Sour Milk Ledge it was sailed on the port tack towards Great Minalto, and felt the wind and felt the sea. It climbed up waves till the red lug-sail swung over M. Fournier's head like a canopy; and on the downward slope the heavy bows took the water with a thud. M. Fournier knelt up

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and clung to the stays. At all costs he must see. He stared into the shifting fog at the rollers which came hopping and leaping towards him; and he was very silent and very still, as though the fascination of terror enchained him.

On the third tack, however, he began to resume his courage. He even smiled over his shoulder towards Zebedee Isaacs at the tiller.

"As for the sea," he began to say, "I am—" But the statement, which he was not to verify on this day, ended in a shriek. For at that moment a great green wave hopped exultingly over the bows, and thenceforward all the way to the Bishop the lugger shipped much water.

M. Fournier's behaviour became deplorable. As Isaacs bluntly and angrily summarised it, "he lay upon the thwarts and screeched like a rook;" and in his appeals to his mother he was quite conventionally French.

He made no attempt to land upon the Lighthouse. The relief men were hoisted up in the sling, the head-keeper and one of his assistants were lowered, and the lugger started upon its homeward run before the wind. The fog thickened and lightened about them as they threaded the intricate channels of the western islands. Now it was a thin grey mist, parting here and there in long corridors, driven this way and that, twirling in spires of smoke, shepherded by the winds; now again it hung close about them an impenetrable umber, while the crew in short quick tones and gestures of the arms mapped out the rocks and passages. About them they could hear the roar of the breaking waves and the rush of water up slabs and over ledges, and then the "glumph glumph" as the wave sucked away. At times, too, the fog lifted from the surface and hung very low, massed above their heads, so that the black hillocks of the islets stood out in the sinister light like headstones of a cemetery of

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the sea, and at the feet of them the water was white like a flash of hungry teeth.

It was at one such moment, when the boat had just passed through Crebawethan Neck, that M. Fournier, who had been staring persistently over the starboard bulwark, suddenly startled the crew.

"There's a ship on shore.Tenez—look!" he cried. "There, there!" And as he spoke the mist drove between his eyes and what he declared that he saw.

Zebedee Isaacs looked in the direction.

"On Jacky's Rock?" he asked, nodding towards a menacing column of black rock which was faintly visible.

"No, no—beyond!—There!" And M. Fournier excitedly gesticulated. He seemed at that moment to have lost all his terror of the sea.

"On Rosevear, then," said the keeper of the lighthouse, and he strained towards Rosevear.

"I see nothing," he said, "and—"

"There's nothing to see," replied Isaacs, who did not alter his course.

"But it's true," exclaimed the little Belgian. "I see it no more myself. But I have seen it, I tell you. I have seen the mast above the island—"

"You!" interrupted Isaacs, with a blunt contempt; "you are blind!" And M. Fournier, before anyone could guess his intention, flung himself upon Isaacs and jammed the tiller hard over to port. The

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