The Truants
by A. E. W. Mason · English · Gutenberg #38685 · 595,908 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: The Truants
Author: A. E. W. Mason
Release date: January 27, 2012 [eBook #38685]
Most recently updated: January 8, 2021
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/38685
Credits: Produced by Charles Bowen, from page scans provided by the Web Archive
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TRUANTS ***
Produced by Charles Bowen, from page scans provided by the Web Archive
Transcriber's Notes:
1. Page scan source:
http://www.archive.org/details/truantsnovel00maso
2. The diphthong oe is represented by [oe].
THE TRUANTS
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
THE FOUR FEATHERS.
CLEMENTINA.
MIRANDA OF THE BALCONY.
THE WATCHERS.
THE COURTSHIP OF MORRICE BUCKLER.
THE PHILANDERERS.
LAWRENCE CLAVERING.
ENSIGN KNIGHTLEY, AND OTHER STORIES.
THE TRUANTS
BY
A. E. W. MASON
AUTHOR OF
"THE FOUR FEATHERS," "MIRANDA OF THE BALCONY,"
ETC., ETC.
LONDON
SMITH, ELDER & CO., 15, WATERLOO PLACE
1904
(_All rights reserved_)
PRINTED BY
WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED,
LONDON AND BECCLES.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I. Pamela Mardale learns a very little History.
II. Pamela looks on.
III. The Truants.
IV. Tony Stretton makes a Proposal.
V. Pamela makes a Promise.
VI. News of Tony.
VII. The Lady on the Stairs.
VIII. Gideon's Fleece.
IX. The New Road.
X. Mr. Chase.
XI. On the Dogger Bank.
XII. Tony's Inspiration.
XIII. Tony Stretton returns to Stepney.
XIV. Tony Stretton pays a Visit to Berkeley Square.
XV. Mr. Mudge comes to the Rescue.
XVI. The Foreign Legion.
XVII. Callon leaves England.
XVIII. South of Ouargla.
XIX. The Turnpike Gate.
XX. Mr. Chase does not answer.
XXI. Callon redivivus.
XXII. Mr. Mudge's Confession.
XXIII. Roquebrune Revisited.
XXIV. The End of the Experiment.
XXV. Tony Stretton bids Farewell to the Legion.
XXVI. Bad News for Pamela.
XXVII. "Balak!"
XXVIII. Homewards.
XXIX. Pamela meets a Stranger.
XXX. M. Giraud again.
XXXI. At the Reserve.
XXXII. Husband and Wife.
XXXIII. Millie's Story.
XXXIV. The Next Morning.
XXXV. The Little House in Deanery Street.
XXXVI. The End.
THE TRUANTS
CHAPTER I
PAMELA MARDALE LEARNS A VERY LITTLE HISTORY
There were only two amongst all Pamela Mardale's friends who guessed
that anything was wrong with her; and those two included neither her
father nor her mother. Her mother, indeed, might have guessed, had she
been a different woman. But she was a woman of schemes and little
plots, who watched with concentration their immediate developments,
but had no eyes for any lasting consequence. And it was no doubt as
well for her peace of mind that she never guessed. But of the others
it was unlikely that any one would suspect the truth. For Pamela made
no outward sign. She hunted through the winter from her home under the
Croft Hill in Leicestershire; she went everywhere, as the saying is,
during the season in London; she held her own in her own world,
lacking neither good spirits nor the look of health. There were,
perhaps, two small peculiarities which marked her off from her
companions. She was interested in things rather than in persons, and
she preferred to talk to old men rather than to youths. But such
points, taken by themselves, were not of an importance to attract
attention.
Yet there were two amongst her friends who suspected: Alan Warrisden
and the schoolmaster of Roquebrune, the little village carved out of
the hillside to the east of Monte Carlo. The schoolmaster was the
nearer to the truth, for he not only knew that something was amiss, he
suspected what the something was. But then he had a certain advantage,
since he had known Pamela Mardale when she was a child. Their
acquaintance came about in the following way--
He was leaning one evening of December over the parapet of the tiny
square beside the schoolhouse, when a servant from the Villa
Pontignard approached him.
"Could M. Giraud make it convenient to call at the villa at noon
to-morrow?" the servant asked. "Madame Mardale was anxious to speak to
him."
M. Giraud turned about with a glow of pleasure upon his face.
"Certainly," he replied. "But nothing could be more simple. I will be
at the Villa Pontignard as the clock strikes."
The servant bowed, and without another word paced away across the
square and up the narrow winding street of Roquebrune, leaving the
schoolmaster a little abashed at his display of eagerness. M. Giraud
recognised that in one man's mind, at all events, he was now set down
for a snob, for a lackey disguised as a schoolmaster. But the moment
of shame passed. He had no doubt as to the reason of the summons, and
he tingled with pride from head to foot. It was his little brochure
upon the history of the village--written with what timidity, and
printed at what cost to his meagre purse!--which had brought him
recognition from the lady of the villa upon the spur of the hill.
Looking upwards he could just see the white walls of the villa
glimmering through the dusk, he could imagine its garden of trim lawns
and dark cypresses falling from bank to bank in ordered tiers down the
hillside.
"To-morrow at noon," he repeated to himself; and now he was seized
with a shiver of fear at the thought of the mistakes in behaviour
which he was likely to make. What if Madame Mardale asked him to
breakfast? There would be unfamiliar dishes to be eaten with
particular forks. Sometimes a knife should be used and sometimes not.
He turned back to the parapet with the thought that he had better,
perhaps, send up a note in the morning pleading his duties at the
school as a reason for breaking his engagement. But he was young, and
as he looked down the steep slope of rock on which the village is
perched, anticipation again got the better of fear. He began to build
up his life like a fairy palace from the foundation of this brief
message.
A long lane of steps led winding down from the square, and his eyes
followed it, as his feet had often done, to the little railway station
by the sea through which people journeyed to and fro between the great
cities, westwards to France and Paris, eastwards to Rome and Italy.
His eyes followed the signal lights towards another station of many
lamps far away to the right, and as he looked there blazed out
suddenly other lights of a great size and a glowing brilliancy, lights
which had the look of amazing jewels discovered in an eastern cave.
These were the lights upon the terrace of Monte Carlo. The
schoolmaster had walked that terrace on his mornings of leisure, had
sat unnoticed on the benches, all worship of the women and their
daintiness, all envy of the men and the composure of their manner. He
knew none of them, and yet one of them had actually sent for him, and
had heard of his work. He was to speak with her at noon to-morrow.
Let it be said at once that there was nothing of the lackey under the
schoolmaster's shabby coat. The visit which he was bidden to pay was
to him not so much a step upwards as outwards. Living always in this
remote high village, where the rock cropped out between the houses,
and the streets climbed through tunnels of rock, he was always
tormented with visions of great cities and thoroughfares ablaze; he
longed for the jostle of men, he craved for other companionship than
he could get in the village wineshop on the first floor, as a fainting
man craves for air. The stars came out above his head; it was a clear
night, and they had never shone brighter. The Mediterranean, dark and
noiseless, swept out at his feet beyond the woods of Cap Martin. But
he saw neither the Mediterranean nor any star. His eyes turned to the
glowing terrace upon his right, and to the red signal-lamps below the
terrace.
M. Giraud kept his engagement punctually. The clock chimed upon the
mantelpiece a few seconds after he was standing in the drawing-room of
the Villa Pontignard, and before the clock had stopped chiming Mrs.
Mardale came in to him. She was a tall woman, who, in spite of her
years, still retained the elegance of her youth, but her face was hard
and a trifle querulous, and M. Giraud was utterly intimidated. On the
other hand, she had good manners, and the friendly simplicity with
which she greeted him began to set him at his ease.
"You are a native of Roquebrune, Monsieur?" said she.
"No, Madame, my father was a peasant at Aigues-Mortes. I was born
there," he replied frankly.
"Yet you write, if I may say so, with the love of a native for his
village," she went on. M. Giraud was on the point of explaining. Mrs.
Mardale, however, was not in the least interested in his explanation,
and she asked him to sit down.
"My daughter, Monsieur, has an English governess," she explained, "but
it seems a pity that she should spend her winters here and lose the
chance of becoming really proficient in French. The cure recommended
me to apply to you, and I sent for you to see whether we could arrange
that you should read history with her in French during your spare
hours."
M. Giraud felt his head turning. Here was his opportunity so long
dreamed of come at last. It might be the beginning of a career--it was
at all events that first difficult step outwards. He was to be the
teacher in appearance; at the bottom of his heart he knew that he was
to be the pupil, he accepted the offer with enthusiasm, and the
arrangements were made. Three afternoons a week he was to spend an
hour at the Villa Pontignard.
"Well, I hope the plan will succeed, said Mrs. Mardale, but she spoke
in a voice which showed that she had no great hopes of success. And as
M. Giraud replied that he would at all events do his best, she
rejoined plaintively--
"It is not of you, Monsieur, that I have any doubts. But you do not
know my daughter. She will learn nothing which she does not want to
learn, she will not endure any governess who is not entirely her
slave, and she is fifteen and she really must learn something."
Pamela Mardale, indeed, was at this time the despair of her mother.
Mrs. Mardale had mapped out for her daughter an ideal career. She was
to be a model of decorum in the Early Victorian style, at once an
ornament for a drawing-room and an excellent housekeeper, and she was
subsequently to make a brilliant marriage. The weak point of the
scheme was that it left Pamela out of the reckoning. There was her
passion for horses for one thing, and her distinct refusal, besides,
to sit quietly in any drawing-room. When she was a child, horses had
been persons to Pamela rather than animals, and, as her conduct
showed, persons preferable by far to human beings. Visitors to the
house under Croft Hill were at times promised a sight of Pamela, and
indeed they sometimes did see a girl in a white frock, with long black
legs, and her hair tumbled all over her forehead, neighing and
prancing at them from behind the gate of the stable yard. But they did
not see her at closer quarters than that, and it was certain that if
by any chance her lessons were properly learnt, they had been learnt
upon the corn-bin in the stables. Portraits of Pamela at the age of
nine remain, and they show a girl who was very pretty, but who might
quite well have been a boy, with a mass of unruly dark hair, a pair of
active dark eyes, and a good-humoured face alertly watching for any
mischief which might come its way.
Something of the troubles which M. Giraud was likely to find ahead of
him Mrs. Mardale disclosed that morning, and the schoolmaster returned
to his house filled with apprehensions. The apprehensions, however,
were not justified. The little schoolmaster was so shy, so timid, that
Pamela was disarmed. She could be gentle when she chose, and she chose
now. She saw, too, M. Giraud's anxiety to justify her mother's choice
of him, and she determined with a sense of extreme virtue to be a
credit to his teaching. They became friends, and thus one afternoon,
when they had taken their books out into the garden of the villa, M.
Giraud confided to her the history of the brochure which had made them
acquainted.
"It was not love for Roquebrune which led me to write it," he said.
"It was, on the contrary, my discontent. I was tortured with longings,
I was not content with the children's lessons for my working hours,
and the wineshop for my leisure. I took long walks over Cap Martin to
Mentone, along the Corniche road to La Turbie, and up Mont Agel. But
still I had my longings as my constant companions, and since
everywhere I saw traces of antiquity, I wrote this little history as a
relief. It kept my thoughts away from the great world."
The garden ran here to a point at the extreme end of that outcropping
spur of rock on which the villa was built. They were facing westwards,
and the sun was setting behind the hills. It lay red upon the
Mediterranean on their left, but the ravine and front was already
dark, and down the hillside the shadows of the trees were lengthening.
At their feet, a long way below, a stream tumbled and roared amongst
the oleanders in the depths of the ravine. Pamela sat gazing
downwards, her lips parted in a smile.
"The great world," she said in a low voice of eagerness. "I wonder
what it's like."
That afternoon marked a distinct step in their friendship, and
thereafter in the intervals of their reading they talked continually
upon this one point they had in common, their curiosity as to the life
of the world beyond their village. But it happened that Pamela did the
greater part of the talking, and one afternoon that fact occurred to
her.
"You always listen now, Monsieur," she said. "Why have you grown so
silent?"
"You know more than I do, Mademoiselle."
"I?" she exclaimed in surprise. "I only know about horses." Then she
laughed. "Really, we both know nothing. We can only guess and guess."
And that was the truth. Pamela's ideas of the world were as visionary,
as dreamlike as his, but they were not his, as he was quick to
recognise. The instincts of her class, her traditions, the influence
of her friends, were all audible in her voice as well as in her words.
To her the world was a great flower garden of pleasure with plenty of
room for horses. To him it was a crowded place of ennobling strife.
"But it's pleasant work guessing," she continued, "isn't it? Then why
have you stopped?"
"I will tell you, Mademoiselle. I am beginning to guess through your
eyes."
The whistle of a train, the train from Paris, mounted through the
still air to their ears.
"Well," said Pamela, with a shrug of impatience, "we shall both know
the truth some time."
"You will, Mademoiselle," said the schoolmaster, suddenly falling out
of his dream.
Pamela looked quickly at him. The idea that he would be left behind,
that he would stay here all his life listening to the sing-song drone
of the children in the schoolroom, teaching over and over again with
an infinite weariness the same elementary lessons, until he became
shabby and worn as the lesson-books he handled, had never struck her
till this moment. The trouble which clouded his face was reflected by
sympathy upon hers.
"But you won't stay here," she said gently. "Oh no! Let me think!" and
she thought with a child's oblivion of obstacles and a child's
confidence. She imparted the wise result of her reflections to M.
Giraud the next afternoon.
He came to the garden with his eyes fevered and his face drawn.
"You are ill?" said Pamela. "We will not work to-day."
"It's nothing," he replied.
"Tell me," said she.
M. Giraud looked out across the valley.
"Two travellers came up to Roquebrune yesterday. I met them as I
walked home from here. I spoke to them and showed them the village,
and took them by the short cut of the steps down to the railway
station. They were from London. They talked of London and of Paris.
It's as well visitors come up to Roquebrune rarely. I have not slept
all night," and he clasped and unclasped his hands.
"Hannibal crossed the Alps," said Pamela. "I read it in your book,"
and then she shook a finger at him, just as the schoolmaster might
have done to one of his refractory pupils.
"Listen," said she. "I have thought it all out."
The schoolmaster composed himself into the attentive attitude of a
pupil.
"You are to become a Deputy."
That was the solution of the problem. Pamela saw no difficulties. He
would need a dress-suit of course for official occasions, which she
understood were numerous. A horse, too, would be of use, but that
didn't matter so much. The horse was regretfully given up. It might
come later, he must get elected first, never mind how. In a word, he
was as good as a Deputy already. And from a Deputy to the President of
the French Republic, the step after all was not so very long. "Though
I am not quite sure that I approve of Republics," said Pamela, very
seriously.
However, that was the best she could do in the way of mapping out his
future, and the schoolmaster listened, seeing the world through her
eyes. Thus three winters passed and Pamela learned a very little
history.
Towards the end of the third winter the history books were put away.
Pamela was now eighteen and looking eagerly forward to her first
season in London. And no doubt frocks and hats occupied more of her
thoughts than did the fortunes of the schoolmaster. Some remorse for
her forgetfulness seized her the day before she went away. It was a
morning of spring, and the schoolmaster saw her coming down the dark
narrow streets towards him. She was tall beyond the average, but
without ungainliness, long of limb and lightly built, and she walked
with the very step of youth. Her dark hair swept in two heavy waves
above her forehead, and was coiled down behind on the back of her
neck. Her throat rose straight and slim from the firm shoulders, and
her eyes glowed with anticipation. Though her hair was dark, she was
not sallow. Her face was no less fresh and clear than were her eyes,
and a soft colour like the bloom of a fruit brightened her cheeks. In
that old brown street she shone like a brilliant flower, and Giraud,
as he watched her, felt all at once that he could have no place in her
life, and in his humility he turned aside. But she ran after him and
caught him up.
"I am going to-morrow," she said, and she tried to keep the look of
happiness out of her eyes, the thrill out of her voice. And she
failed.
"It is good-bye, then," said he.
"For a little while. I shall come back to Roquebrune in December."
The schoolmaster smiled.
"I shall look forward from to-day until that month comes. You will
have much to tell me."
"Yes, shan't I?" she cried; and then, lest her eagerness should hurt
her friend, she added, "But I shall not forget our quiet afternoons on
the garden terrace."
The recollection of them, however, was not strong enough to check
either her thoughts or their utterance. Later on perhaps, in after
years, she might in her musings return to that terrace and the
speculations they indulged in, and the fairy palaces they built, with
an envy of the ignorance and the high thoughts of youth. To-day she
was all alert to grasp the future in her hands. One can imagine her
looking much as she looked in those portraits of her childhood.
"News of the great world," she cried. "I shall bring it back. We will
talk it over in Roquebrune and correct our guesses. For I shall know."
As a fact, they never did talk over her news, but that she could not
foresee. She went on her way with a smile upon her face: all
confidence and courage, and expectation, a brilliant image of youth.
Giraud, as he watched her the proud poise of her head, the light
springing step, the thing of beauty and gentleness which she was,
breathed a prayer that no harm might come to her, and no grief ever
sadden her face.
The next morning she went away, and the schoolmaster lost his one
glimpse of the outer world. But he lived upon the recollections of it,
and took again to his long walks on the Corniche road. The time hung
heavily upon his hands. He hungered for news, and no news came, and
when in the month of December he noticed that the shutters were opened
in the Villa Pontignard, and that there was a stir of servants about
the house, he felt that the shutters were being opened after a long
dark time from his one window on the outside world. He frequented the
little station from that moment. No "Rapide" passed from France on its
way to Italy during his leisure hours but he was there to watch its
passengers. Mrs. Mardale came first, and a fortnight afterwards Pamela
descended from a carriage with her maid.
Giraud watched her with a thrill of longing. It was not merely his
friend who had returned, but his instructor, with new and wonderful
knowledge added to the old.
Then came his first chilling moment of disillusion. It was quite
evident that she saw him as she was stepping on to the platform. Her
eyes went straight to his--and yet she turned away without the
slightest sign of recognition and busied herself about her luggage.
The world had spoilt her. That was his first thought, but he came to a
truer understanding afterwards. And indeed that thought had barely
become definite in his mind, when she turned again, and, holding out
her hand, came to him with a smile.
"You are well?" she said.
"Yes," said he.
And they walked up the long flight of steps to Roquebrune, talking
banalities. She gave him none of the news for which he longed, and
they spoke not at all of the career which together they had mapped out
for him. All their long talks upon the terrace, their plans and their
speculations seemed in an instant to Giraud to have become part of a
pleasant, very foolish, and very distant past. He was aware of the
vast gulf between them. With a girl's inimitable quickness to adapt
herself to new surroundings, she had acquired in the few months of her
absence the ease, the polish, and the armour of a woman of the world.
He was still the village schoolmaster, the peasant tortured with vain
aspirations, feeding upon vain dreams; and in this moment he saw
himself very clearly. Her silence upon their plan helped him to see
himself thus. Had she still believed in that imagined career, surely
she would have spoken of it. In a word, he was still looking at the
world through her eyes.
"You must come up to the villa," she said. "I shall look forward to
your coming."
They were in the little square by the schoolhouse and he took the
words for his dismissal. She went up the hill alone and slowly, like
one that is tired. Giraud, watching her, could not but compare her
with the girl who had come lightly down that street a few months ago.
It dawned upon him that, though knowledge had been acquired, something
had gone, something perhaps more valuable, the elasticity from her
step, the eagerness from her eyes.
Giraud did not go up to the villa of his own accord, but he was asked
to lunch in a week's time, and after lunch Pamela and he went out into
the garden. Instinctively they walked down to that corner on the point
of the bluff which overhung the ravine and the white torrent amongst
the oleanders in its depths. They had come indeed to the bench on
which they used to sit before Pamela was quite aware of the direction
their steps had taken. She drew back suddenly as she raised her head.
"Oh no, not here," she cried, and she moved away quickly with a look
of pain. Giraud suddenly understood why she had turned away at the
railway station. Here they had dreamed, and the reality had shown the
dreams to be bitterly false, so false that the very place where they
had dreamed had become by its associations a place of pain. She had
needed for herself that first moment when she had stepped down from
the carriage.
"The world must be the home of great troubles,' said Giraud, sadly.
"And how do you know that?" Pamela asked with a smile.
"From you," he replied simply.
The answer was unexpected. Pamela stopped and looked at him with
startled eyes.
"From me? I have said nothing--nothing at all."
"Yet I know. How else should I know except from you, since through you
alone I see the world?"
"A home of great troubles?" she repeated, speaking lightly. "Not for
all. You are serious, my friend, this afternoon, and you should not
be, for have I not come back?"
The schoolmaster was not deceived by her evasion. There had come a
gravity into her manner, and a womanliness into her face, in a degree
more than natural at her years.
"Let us talk of you for a change," said she.
"Well, and what shall we say?" asked Giraud, and a constraint fell
upon them both.
"We must forget those fine plans," he continued at length. "Is it not
so? I think I have learnt that too from you."
"I hare said nothing," she interrupted quickly.
"Precisely," said he, with a smile. "The school at Roquebrune will
send no Deputy to Paris."
"Oh! why not?" said Pamela, but there was no conviction in her voice.
Giraud was not of the stern stuff
"To break his birth's invidious bar."
He had longings, but there was the end.
"At all events," she said, turning to him with a great earnestness,
"we shall be friends always, whatever happens."
The words were the death-knell to the schoolmaster's aspirations. They
conveyed so much more than was actually said. He took them bravely
enough.
"That is a good thing," he said in all sincerity. "If I stay here all
my life, I shall still have the memory of the years when I taught you
history. I shall know, though I do not see you, that we are friends.
It is a great thing for me."
"For me, too," said Pamela, looking straight into his eyes, and she
meant her words no less than he had meant his. Yet to both they had
the sound of a farewell. And in a way they were. They were the
farewell to the afternoons upon the terrace, they closed the door upon
their house of dreams.
Giraud leaned that evening over the parapet in the little square of
Roquebrune. The Mediterranean lay dark and quiet far below, the
terrace of Monte Carlo glowed, and the red signal-lamps pointed out
the way to Paris. But he was no longer thinking of his fallen plans.
He was thinking of the girl up there in the villa who had been struck
by some blind blow of Destiny, who had grown a woman before her time.
It was a pity, it was a loss in the general sum of things which make
for joy.
He had of course only his suspicions to go upon. But they were soon
strengthened. For Pamela fell into ill-health, and the period of
ill-health lasted all that winter. After those two years had passed,
she disappeared for a while altogether out of Giraud's sight. She came
no more to the Villa Pontignard, but stayed with her father and her
horses at her home in Leicestershire. Her mother came alone to
Roquebrune.
CHAPTER II
PAMELA LOOKS ON
Alan Warrisden was one of the two men who had walked up to Roquebrune
on that afternoon of which M. Giraud spoke. But it was not until
Pamela had reached the age of twenty that he made her acquaintance at
Lady Millingham's house in Berkeley Square. He took her down to
dinner, and, to tell the truth, paid no particular attention either to
her looks or her conversation. His neighbour upon the other side
happened to be a friend whom he had not seen for some while, and for a
good part of the dinner he talked to her. A few days afterwards,
however, he called upon Lady Millingham, and she asked at once quite
eagerly--
"Well, what did you think of Pamela Mardale?"
Warrisden was rather at a loss. He was evidently expected to answer
with enthusiasm, and he had not any very definite recollections on
which enthusiasm could be based. He did his best, however; but he was
unconvincing. Lady Millingham shrugged her shoulders and frowned. She
had been married precisely a year, and was engaged in plans for
marrying off all her friends with the greatest possible despatch.
"I shall send you in with somebody quite old the next time you dine
here," she said severely, and she discoursed at some length upon
Pamela's charms. "She loves horses, and yet she's not a bit horsey,"
she said in conclusion, "and there's really nothing better than that.
And just heaps of men have wanted to marry her." She leaned back
against her sofa and contemplated Warrisden with silent scorn. She had
set her heart upon this marriage more than upon any other. Of all the
possible marriages in London, there was not one, to her mind, so
suitable as this. Pamela Mardale came of one of the oldest families of
commoners in Leicestershire. The family was not well off, the estate
had shrunk year by year, and what was left was mortgaged, owing in
some degree to that villa at Roquebrune upon which Mrs. Mardale
insisted. Warrisden, on the other hand, was more than well off, his
family was known, and at the age of twenty-eight he was still dividing
his life between the season in London and shooting expeditions about
the world. And he had the look of a man who might do something more.
That visit had its results. Warrisden met Pamela Mardale again and
realised that Lady Millingham's indignation had been justified. At the
end of that season he proposed, and was gently refused. But if he was
slow to move, he was also firm to persevere. He hunted with the Quorn
that winter, and during the following season he was persistently but
unobtrusively at her elbow; so that Pamela came, at all events, to
count upon him as a most reliable friend. Having duly achieved that
place in her thoughts, he disappeared for ten months and returned to
town one afternoon in the last week of June. There were letters
waiting for him in his rooms, and amongst them a card from Lady
Millingham inviting him to a dance upon that night. At eleven o'clock
his _coupe_ turned out of Piccadilly and entered Berkeley Square. At
the bottom of the square the lighted windows of the house blazed out
upon the night, the balconies were banked with flowers, and behind the
flowers, silhouetted against the light, were visible the thronged
faces of men and women. Warrisden leaned forward, scrutinising the
shapes of the heads, the contours of the faces. His sight, sharpened
by long practice over wide horizons, was of the keenest; he could see,
even at that distance, the flash of jewels on neck and shoulder. But
the face he looked for was not there.
Lady Millingham, however, set his mind at case.
"You are back, then?" she cried.
"This afternoon."
"You will find friends here."
Warrisden passed on into the reception rooms. It seemed to him indeed
that all the friends he had ever made were gathered to this one house
on this particular evening. He was a tall man, and his height made him
noticeable upon most occasions. He was the more noticeable now by
reason of his sunburn and a certain look of exhilaration upon his
face. The season was drawing to its end, and brown faces were not so
usual but that the eyes turned to them. He spoke, however, the fewest
possible words to the men who greeted him, and he did not meet the
eyes of any woman. Yet he saw the women, and was in definite quest of
one of them. That might have been noticed by a careful observer, for
whenever he saw a man older than the rest talking to a girl he
quickened his pace that he might the sooner see that girl's face. He
barely looked into the ball-room at all, but kept to the corridors,
and, at last, in a doorway, came face to face with Pamela Mardale. He
saw her face light up, and the hand held out to him was even eagerly
extended.
"Have you a dance to spare?"
Pamela looked quickly round upon her neighbours.
"Yes, this one," she answered. She bowed to her companion, a man, as
Warrisden expected, much older than herself, and led the way at once
towards the balcony. Warrisden saw a youth emerge from the throng and
come towards them. Pamela was tall, and she used her height at this
moment. She looked him in the face with so serene an indifference that
the youth drew back disconcerted. Pamela was deliberately cutting her
partners.
Another man might have built upon the act, but Warrisden was shrewd,
and shrewdness had taught him long since to go warily in thought where
Pamela Mardale was concerned. She might merely be angry. He walked by
her side and said nothing. Even when they were seated on the balcony,
he left for her to speak first. She was sitting upon the outside
against the railing, so that the light from the windows streamed full
upon her face. He watched it, looking for the change which he desired.
But it had still the one fault he found with it. It was still too
sedate, too womanly for her years. It happened that they had found a
corner where flowers made a sort of screen, and they could talk in low
voices without being overheard.
"I heard of you," she said. "You were shooting woodcock in Dalmatia."
"That was at Christmas."
"Yes. You were hurt there."
"Not seriously," he replied. "A sheep-dog attacked me. They are savage
brutes, and indeed they have to be, there are so many wolves. The
worst of it is, if you are attacked, you mustn't kill the dog, or
there's trouble."
"I heard of you again. You were at Quetta, getting together a
caravan."
"That was in February. I crossed by the new trade route from Quetta to
Seistan."
She had spoken in an indefinite tone, which left him with no clue to
her thoughts. Now, however she turned her eyes upon him, and said in a
lower voice, which was very gentle--
"Don't you think yon might have told me that you were going away for a
year?"
Warrisden had gone away deliberately, and as deliberately he had
abstained from telling her of his intention. He had no answer to make
to her question, and he did not attempt to invent one. He sat still
and looked at her. She followed the question with another.
"Don't you think it would have been kinder if you had written to me
once or twice, instead of letting me hear about you from any chance
acquaintance?"
Again he made no answer. For he had deliberately abstained from
writing. The gentleness with which she spoke was the most hopeful sign
for him which she had made that evening. He had expected a harsher
accusation. For Pamela made her claims upon her friends. They must put
her first or there was likely to be a deal of trouble.
"Well," she said, with a shrug of her shoulders, "I hope you enjoyed
it."
"Yes. I wish I could have thought you would have enjoyed it too. But
you wouldn't have."
"No," she answered listlessly.
Warrisden was silent. He had expected the answer, but he was none the
less disappointed to receive it. To him there was no century in the
history of the world comparable to that in which he lived. It had its
faults, of course. It was ugly and a trifle feverish, but to men of
his stamp, the men with means and energy, a new world with countless
opportunities had been opened up. Asia and Africa were theirs, and the
farthest islands of the sea. Pamela, however, turned her back on it.
The new trade route to Seistan had no message for her. She looked with
envy upon an earlier century.
"Of course," he resumed, "it's pleasant to come back, if only as a
preparation for going away again."
And then Pamela turned on him with her eyes wide open and a look of
actual trouble upon her face.
"No," she said with emphasis. She leaned forward and lowered her
voice. "You have no right to work upon people and make them your
friends, if you mean, when you have made them your friends, to go away
without a word for ever so long. I have missed you very much."
"I wanted you to miss me," he replied.
"Yes, I thought so. But it wasn't fair," she said gently. "You see, I
have been quite fair with you. If you had gone away at once, if you
had left me alone when I said 'No' to you two years ago, then I should
have no right to complain. I should have no right to call you back.
But it's different now, and you willed that it should be different.
You stayed by me. Whenever I turned, there were you at my side. You
taught me to count on you, as I count on no one else. Yes, that's
true. Well, then, you have lost the right to turn your back now just
when it pleases you."
"It wasn't because it pleased me."
"No. I admit that," she agreed. "It was to make an experiment on me,
but the experiment was made at my expense. For after all you enjoyed
yourself," she added, with a laugh.
Warrisden joined in the laugh.
"It's quite true," he said. "I did." Then his voice dropped to the
same serious tone in which she had spoken. "Why not say the experiment
succeeded? Couldn't you say that?"
Pamela shook her head.
"No. I can give you no more now than I gave you a year ago, two years
ago, and that is not enough. Oh, I know," she continued hurriedly as
she saw that he was about to interrupt. "Lots of women are content to
begin with friendship. How they can, puzzles me. But I know they do
begin with nothing more than that, and very often it works out very
well. The friendship becomes more than friendship. But I can't begin
that way. I would if I could. But I can't."
She leaned back in her chair, and sat for a while with her hands upon
her knees in an attitude extraordinarily still. The jingle of harness
in the square rose to Warrisden's ears, the clamour of the town came
muffled from the noisy streets. He looked upwards to the tender blue
of a summer sky where the stars shone like silver; and he leaned back
disheartened. He had returned to London, and nothing was changed.
There was the same busy life vociferous in its streets, and this girl
still sat in the midst of it with the same lassitude and quiescence.
She seemed to be waiting, not at all for something new to happen, but
for the things, which were happening, to cease, waiting with the
indifference of the very old. And she was quite young. She sat with
the delicate profile of her face outlined against the darkness; the
colour of youth was in her cheeks; the slender column of her throat,
the ripple of her dark hair, the grace of her attitude claimed her for
youth; she was fragrant with it from head to foot. And yet it seemed
that there was no youth in her blood.
"So nothing has changed for you during these months," he said, deeply
disappointed.
She turned her face quietly to him and smiled. "No," she answered,
"there has been no new road for me from Quetta to Seistan. I still
look on."
There was the trouble. She just looked on, and to his thinking it was
not right that at her age she should do no more. A girl nowadays had
so many privileges, so many opportunities denied to her grandmother,
she could do so much more, she had so much more freedom, and yet
Pamela insisted upon looking on. If she had shown distress, it would
have been better. But no. She lived without deep feeling of any kind
in a determined isolation. She had built up a fence about herself, and
within it she sat untouched and alone.
It was likely that no one else in the wide circle of her acquaintances
had noticed her detachment, and certainly to no one but Warrisden had
she admitted it. And it was only acknowledged to him after he had
found it out for himself. For she did not sit at home. On the
contrary, hardly a night passed during the season but she went to some
party. Only, wherever she went, she looked on.
"And you still prefer old men to young ones?" he cried in a real
exasperation.
"They talk more of things and less of persons," she explained.
That was not right either. She ought to be interested in persons.
Warrisden rose abruptly from his chair. He was completely baffled.
Pamela was like the sleeping princess in the fairy tale, she lay girt
about with an impassable thicket of thorns. She was in a worse case,
indeed, for the princess in the story might have slept on till the end
of time, a thing of beauty. But was it possible for Pamela, so to
sleep to the end of life, he asked himself. Let her go on in her
indifference, and she might dwindle and grow narrow, her soul would be
starved and all the good of her be lost. Somehow a way must be forced
through the thicket, somehow she must be wakened. But he seemed no
nearer to finding that way than he had been two years ago, and she was
no nearer to her wakening.
"No, there has been no change," he said, and as he spoke his eye was
caught by a bright light which suddenly flamed up in the window of a
dark house upon his right. The house had perplexed him more than once.
It took so little part in the life of the square, it so consistently
effaced itself from the gaieties of the people who lived about. Its
balconies were never banked with flowers, no visitors mounted its
steps; and even in the daytime it had a look of mystery. It may have
been that some dim analogy between that house and the question which
so baffled him arrested Warrisden's attention. It may have been merely
that he was by nature curious and observant. But he leaned forward
upon the balcony-rail.
"Do you see that light?" he asked. "In the window on the second
floor?"
"Yes."
He took out his watch and noticed the time. It was just a quarter to
twelve. He laughed softly to himself and said--
"Wait a moment!"
He watched the house for a few minutes without saying a word. Pamela
with a smile at his eagerness watched too. In a little while they saw
the door open and a man and a woman, both in evening dress, appear
upon the steps. Warrisden laughed again.
"Wait," he said, as if he expected Pamela to interrupt. "You'll see
they won't whistle up a cab. They'll walk beyond the house and take
one quietly. Very likely they'll look up at the lighted window on the
second floor as though they were schoolboys who had escaped from their
dormitories, and were afraid of being caught by the master before they
had had their fun. There, do you see?"
For as he spoke the man and the woman stopped and looked up. Had they
heard Warrisden's voice and obeyed his directions they could not have
more completely fulfilled his prediction. They had the very air of
truants. Apparently they were reassured. They walked along the
pavement until they were well past the house. Then they signalled to a
passing hansom. The cab-driver did not see them, yet they did not call
out, nor did the man whistle. They waited until another approached and
they beckoned to that. Warrisden watched the whole scene with the
keenest interest. As the two people got into the cab he laughed again
and turned back to Pamela.
"Well?" she said, with a laugh of amusement, and the quiet
monosyllable, falling as it were with a cold splash upon his enjoyment
of the little scene, suddenly brought him back to the question which
was always latent in his mind. How was Pamela to be awakened?
"It's a strange place, London," he said. "No doubt it seems stranger
to me, and more full of interesting people and interesting things just
because I have come back from very silent and very empty places. But
that house always puzzled me. I used to have rooms overlooking this
square, high up, over there," and he pointed to the eastern side of
the square towards Berkeley Street, "and what we have seen to-night
used to take place every night, and at the same hour. The light went
up in the room on the second floor, and the truants crept out. Guess
where they go to! The Savoy. They go and sit there amongst the lights
and the music for half an hour, then they come back to the dark house.
They live in the most curious isolation with the most curious
regularity. There are three of them altogether: an old man--it is his
light, I suppose, which went up on the second floor--and those two. I
know who they are. The old man is Sir John Stretton."
"Oh!" said Pamela, with interest.
"And the two people we saw are his son and his son's wife. I have
never met them. In fact, no one meets them. I don't know any one who
knows them."
"Yes, you do," said Pamela, "I know them." And in her knowledge,
although Warrisden did not know it, lay the answer to the problem
which so perplexed him.
CHAPTER III
THE TRUANTS
Warrisden turned quickly to Pamela.
"You never mentioned them."
"No," she replied with a smile. "But there's no mystery in my silence.
I simply haven't mentioned them because for two years I have lost
sight of them altogether. I used to meet them about, and I have been
to their house."
"There?" asked Warrisden, with a nod towards the lighted window.
"No; but to the house Millie and Mr. Stretton had in Deanery Street.
They gave that up two years ago when old Lady Stretton died. I thought
they had gone to live in the country."
"And all the while they have been living here," exclaimed Warrisden.
He had spoken truthfully of himself. The events, and the people with
whom he came, however slightly, into contact always had interested and
amused him. It was his pleasure to fit his observations together until
he had constructed a little biography in his mind of each person with
whom he was acquainted. And there was never an incident of any
interest within his notice, but he sought the reason for it and kept
an eye open for its consequence.
"Don't you see how strange the story is?" he went on. "They give up
their house upon Lady Stretton's death, and they come to live here
with Sir John. That's natural enough. Sir John's an old man. But they
live in such seclusion that even their friends think they have retired
into the country."
"Yes, it is strange," Pamela admitted. And she added, "I was Millie
Stretton's bridesmaid."
Upon Warrisden's request she told him what she knew of the couple who
lived in the dark house and played truant. Millie Stretton was the
daughter of a Judge in Ceylon who when Millie had reached the age of
seventeen had married a second time. The step-mother had lacked
discretion; from the very first she had claimed to exercise a complete
and undisputed authority; she had been at no pains to secure the
affections of her step-daughter. And very little trouble would have
been needed, for Millie was naturally affectionate. A girl without any
great depth of feeling, she responded easily to a show of kindness.
She found it neither difficult to make intimate friends, nor hard to
lose them. She was of the imitative type besides. She took her
thoughts and even her language from those who at the moment were by
her side. Thus her step-mother had the easiest of tasks but she did
not possess the necessary tact. She demanded obedience, and in return
offered tolerance. The household at Colombo, therefore, became for
Millie a roofstead rather than a home, and a year after this marriage
she betook herself and the few thousands of pounds which her mother
had bequeathed her to London. The ostensible reason for departure was
the invitation of Mrs. Charles Rawson, a friend of her mother's. But
Millie had made up her mind that a return to Ceylon was not to be
endured. Somehow she would manage to make a home or herself in
England.
She found her path at once made easy. She was pretty, with the
prettiness of a child, she gave no trouble, she was fresh, she dressed
a drawing-room gracefully, he fitted neatly into her surroundings, she
picked up immediately the ways of thought and the jargon of her new
companions. In a word, with the remarkable receptivity which was hers,
she was very quickly at home in Mrs. Rawson's house. She became a
favourite no less for her modest friendliness than on account of her
looks. Mrs. Rawson, who was nearing middle age, but whose love of
amusements was not assuaged, rejoiced to have so attractive a
companion to take about with her. Millie, for her part, was very glad
to be so taken about. She had fallen from the obscure clouds into a
bright and wonderful world.
It was at this time that Pamela Mardale first met Millicent Stretton,
or rather, one should say, Millicent Rundell, since Rundell was at
that time her name. They became friends, although so far as character
was concerned they had little in common. It may have been that the
difference between them was the actual cause of their friendship.
Certainly Millie came rather to lean upon her friend, admired her
strength, made her the repository of her confidences, and if she
received no confidences in return, she was content to believe that
there were none to make. It was at this time too that Millie fell in
with Lady Stretton.
Lady Stretton, a tall old woman with the head of a Grenadier, had
the characteristic of Sir Anthony Absolute. There was no one so
good-tempered so long as she had her own way; and she generally had
it.
"Lady Stretton saw that Millie was easily led," Pamela continued. "She
thought, for that reason, she would be a suitable wife for Tony, her
son, who was then a subaltern in the Coldstream. So she did all she
could to throw them together. She invited Millie up to her house in
Scotland, the house Lady Millingham now has, and Mr. Stretton fell in
love. He was evidently very fond of Millie, and Millie on her side
liked him quite as much as any one else. They were married. Lady
Stretton hired them the house I told you of, close to Park Lane, and
took a great deal of trouble to see that they were comfortable. You
see, they were toys for her. There, that's all I know. Are you
satisfied?"
She leaned back in her chair, smiling at Warrisden's serious face.
"And what about the old man, Sir John Stretton?" he asked.
"I never met him," replied Pamela. "He never went out to parties, and
I never went to that house."
As she concluded the sentence, a man looked on to the balcony and,
seeing them, withdrew. Pamela rose at once from her chair, and, with a
sudden movement of jealousy, Warrisden swung round and looked into the
room. The man was well past the middle age, stout of build, and with a
heavy careworn face with no pleasure in it at all. He was the man who
had been with Pamela when Warrisden had arrived. Warrisden turned back
to the girl with a smile of relief.
"You are engaged?"
"Yes, for this dance to Mr. Mudge," and she indicated the man who was
retiring. "But we shall meet again--at Newmarket, at all events.
Perhaps in Scotland too."
She held out her hand to Warrisden, and, as he took it, her voice
dropped to a plea.
"Please don't go away again without telling me first, without talking
it over, so that I may know where you are from month to month. Please
promise!"
Warrisden promised, and went away from the house with her prayer
echoing in his ears. The very sound of her voice was audible to him,
and he never doubted the sincerity of its appeal. But if she set such
store on what she had, why was she content with just that and nothing
more, he asked himself. Why did she not claim a little more and give a
little more in return? Why did she come to a halt at friendship, a
mere turnpike on the great road, instead of passing through the gate
and going on down the appointed way. He did not know that she passed
the turnpike once, and that if she refused to venture on that path
again, it was because, knowing herself, she dared not.
In the narrows of Berkeley Street Warrisden was shaken out of these
reflections. A hansom jingled past him, and by the light of the lamp
which hung at the back within it he caught a glimpse of the truants.
They were driving home to the dark house in the Square, and they sat
side by side silent and with troubled faces. Warrisden's thoughts went
back to what Pamela had told him that night. She had told him the
half, but not the perplexing, interesting half of their history. That
indeed Pamela could not tell, for she did not know Sir John Stretton,
and the old man's warped and churlish character alone explained it.
It was by his doing that the truants gave up their cheery little house
in Deanery Street and came to live in Berkeley Square. The old man was
a miser, who during his wife's existence had not been allowed to
gratify his instincts. He made all the more ample amends after she had
died. The fine allowance on which the young couple had managed to keep
a pair of horses and a little brougham was stripped from them.
"Why should I live alone?" said the old man. "I am old, Tony, and I
need some attention. The house is big, much too big for me, and the
servants are eating their heads off for the want of something to do."
There were indeed more servants than were needed. Servants were the
single luxury Sir John allowed himself. Their liveries were faded,
they themselves were insolent and untidy, but they were there, in the
great bare dining-room at dinner-time, in the hall when Sir John came
home of an afternoon. For the old man went out each day as the clock
struck three; he came back each evening at half-past six. He went out
alone, he returned alone, and he never went to his club. He took an
omnibus from the corner of Berkeley Street and journeyed eastwards as
far as Ludgate Hill. There he took a drink in the refreshment bar,
and, coming out, struck northwards into Holborn, where he turned
westwards, and walking as far as the inn at the corner of the
Tottenham Court Road, stepped for an hour into the private bar. Thence
he took another omnibus, and finally reached home, where his footmen
received him solemnly in the hall. To this home he brought Tony and
his wife.
"There choose your own rooms, Tony," he said magnanimously. "What's
that? Money? But what for? You'll have it soon enough."
Tony Stretton suggested that it was hardly possible for any man,
however careful, to retain a commission in the Coldstream without an
allowance. Sir John, a tall thin man, with high bald forehead, and a
prim puritanical face, looked at his son with a righteous severity.
"A very expensive regiment. Leave it, Tony! And live quietly at home.
Look after your father, my boy, and you won't need money," and he
stalked upstairs leaving Tony aghast in the hall. Tony had to sit down
and think it over before he could quite realise the fate which had
over-taken him. Here he was, twenty-six years old brought up to spend
what he wanted and to ask for more when that was ended, and he was to
live quietly on nothing at all. He had no longer any profession, he
was not clever enough to enter upon a new one without some sort of
start and in addition he had a wife. His wife, it was true, had a few
thousands; they had remained untouched ever since the marriage and
Tony shrank from touching them now. He sat on one of the hall-chairs,
twisting his moustache and staring with his blank blue eyes at the
opposite wall. What in the world was he to do? Old Sir John was quite
aware of those few thousands. They might just as well be used now he
thought, and save him expense. Tony could pay them back after his
father was dead. Such was Sir John's plan and Tony had to fall in with
it. The horses and the brougham and all the furniture, the prints, the
pictures and the mirrors which had decked out so gaily the little
house in Deanery Street went to the hammer. Tony paid off his debts
and found himself with a hundred pounds in hand at the end; and when
that was gone he was forced to come to his wife.
"Of course," said she, "we'll share what I have, Tony."
"Yes, but we must go carefully," he replied. "Heaven knows how long we
will have to drag on like this."
So the money question was settled, but that was in reality the least
of their troubles. Sir John, for the first time in his life, was
master in fact as well as in name. He had been no match for his wife,
but he was more than a match for his son. He was the fifth baronet of
his name, and yet there was no landed property. He was rich, and all
the money was safely tucked away in the public funds, and he could
bequeath it as he willed. He was in a position to put the screw on
Tony and his wife, and he did not let the opportunity slip. The love
of authority grew upon him. He became exacting and portentously
severe. In his black, shabby coat, with his long thin figure, and his
narrow face, he had the look of a cold self-righteous fanatic. You
would have believed that he was mortifying his son for the sake of his
son's soul, unless perchance you had peeped into that private bar in
the Tottenham Court Road and had seen him drinking gloomily alone.
He laid down rules to which the unfortunate couple must needs conform.
They had to dine with him every night and to sit with him every
evening until he went to bed. It followed that they lost sight of
their friends, and every month isolated them more completely. The mere
humiliation of the position in which they stood caused them to shrink
more and more into their privacy. When they walked out in the
afternoon they kept away from the Park; when they played truant in the
evening, at the Savoy, they chose a little table in an obscure corner.
This was the real history of the truants with whose fortunes those of
Warrisden and Pamela were to be so closely intermingled. For that life
in the dark house was not to last. Even as Warrisden passed them in
Berkeley Street, Tony Stretton was saying over and over again in his
inactive mind--
"It can't go on. It can't go on!"
In the after times, when the yapping of dogs in the street at night
would wake Tony from his sleep, and set him on dreaming of tent
villages in a wild country of flowers, or when the wind in the trees
would recall to him a little ship labouring on short steep seas in a
mist of spray, he always looked back to this night as that on which
the venture of his wife's fortunes and his own began.
CHAPTER IV
TONY STRETTON MAKES A PROPOSAL
Regular as Warrisden had declared the lives of the truants to be, on
the night following the dance at Lady Millingham's there came a break
in the monotony of their habits. For once in a way they did not leave
the house in their search for light and colour as soon as they were
free. They stayed on in their own sitting-room. But it seemed that
they had nothing to speak about. Millie Stretton sat at the table,
staring at the wall in front of her, moody and despairing. Tony
Stretton leaned against the embrasure of the window, now and then
glancing remorsefully at his wife, now and then looking angrily up to
the ceiling where the heavy footsteps of a man treading up and down
the room above sounded measured and unceasing.
Tony lifted a corner of the blind and looked out.
"There's a party next door," he said, "there was another at Lady
Millingham's last night. You should have been at both, Millie, and you
were at neither. Upon my word, it's rough."
He dropped the blind and came over to her side. He knew quite well
what parties and entertainments meant to her. She loved them, and it
seemed to him natural and right that she should. Light, admiration,
laughter and gaiety, and fine frocks--these things she was born to
enjoy, and he himself had in the old days taken a great pride in
watching her enjoyment. But it was not merely the feeling that she had
been stripped of what was her due through him which troubled him
to-night. Other and deeper thoughts were vaguely stirring in his mind.
"We have quarrelled again to-night, Millie," he continued
remorsefully. "Here we are cooped up together with just ourselves to
rely upon to pull through these bad years, and we have quarrelled
again."
Millie shrugged her shoulders.
"How did it begin?" he asked. "Upon my word I don't remember. Oh yes,
I----" and Millie interrupted him.
"What does it matter, Tony, how the quarrel began? It did begin, and
another will begin to-morrow. We can't help ourselves, and you have
given the reason. Here we are cooped up by ourselves with nothing else
to do."
Tony pulled thoughtfully at his moustache.
"And we swore off quarrelling, too. When was that?"
"Yesterday."
"Yesterday!" exclaimed Tony, with a start of surprise. "By George, so
it was. Only yesterday."
Millie looked up at him, and the trouble upon his face brought a smile
to hers. She laid a hand upon his arm.
"It's no use swearing off, Tony," she said. "We are both of us living
all the time in a state of exasperation. I just--tingle with it,
there's no other word. And the least, smallest thing which goes wrong
sets us quarrelling. I don't think either of us is to blame. The house
alone gets on our nerves, doesn't it? These great empty, silent, dingy
rooms, with their tarnished furniture. Oh! they are horrible! I wander
through them sometimes and it always seems to me that, a long time
ago, people lived here who suddenly felt one morning that they
couldn't stand it for a single moment longer, and ran out and locked
the street door behind them; and I have almost done it myself. The
very sunlight comes through the windows timidly, as if it knew it had
no right here at all."
She leaned back in her chair, looking at Tony with eyes that were
hopeless and almost haggard. As Tony listened to her outburst the
remorse deepened on his face.
"If I could have foreseen all this, I would have spared you it,
Millie," he said. "I would, upon my word." He drew up a chair to the
table, and, sitting down, said in a more cheerful voice, "Let's talk
it over, and see if we can't find a remedy."
Millie shook her head.
"We talked it over yesterday."
"Yes, so we did."
"And quarrelled an hour after we had talked it over."
"We did that too," Tony agreed, despondently. His little spark of
hopefulness was put out and he sat in silence. His wife, too, did not
speak, and in a short while it occurred to him that the silence was
more complete than it had been a few minutes ago. It seemed that a
noise had ceased, and a noise which, unnoticed before, had become
noticeable by its cessation. He looked up to the ceiling. The heavy
footsteps no longer dragged upon the floor overhead. Tony sprang up.
"There! He is in bed," he exclaimed. "Shall we go out?"
"Not to-night," replied Millie.
He could make no proposal that night which was welcomed, and as he
walked over to the mantelshelf and filled his pipe, there was
something in his attitude and bearing which showed to Millie that the
quick rebuff had hurt.
"I can't pretend to-night, Tony, and that's the truth," she added in a
kinder voice. "For, after all, I do only pretend nowadays that I find
the Savoy amusing."
Tony turned slowly round with the lighted match in his hand and stared
at his wife. He was a man slow in thought, and when his thoughts
compelled expression, laborious in words. The deeper thoughts which
had begun of late to take shape in his mind stirred again at her
words.
"You have owned it," he said.
"It had been pretence with you too, then?" she asked, looking up in
surprise.
Tony puffed at his pipe.
"Of late, yes," he replied. "Perhaps chiefly since I saw that you were
pretending."
He came back to her side and looked for a long time steadily at her
while he thought. It was a surprise to Millie that he had noticed her
pretence, as much of a surprise as that he had been pretending too.
For she knew him to be at once slow to notice any change in others and
quick to betray it in himself. But she was not aware how wide a place
she filled in all his thoughts, partly because her own nature with its
facile emotions made her unable to conceive a devotion which was
engrossing, and partly because Tony himself had no aptitude for
expressing such a devotion, and indeed would have shrunk from its
expression had the aptitude been his. But she did fill that wide
place. Very slowly he had begun to watch her, very slowly and dimly
certain convictions were taking shape, very gradually he was drawing
nearer and nearer to a knowledge that a great risk must be taken and a
great sacrifice made partly by him, partly too by her. Some part of
his trouble he now spoke to her.
"It wasn't pretence a year ago, Millie," he said wistfully. "That's
what bothers me. We enjoyed slipping away quietly when the house was
quiet, and snatching some of the light, some of the laughter the
others have any time they want it. It made up for the days, it was fun
then, Millie, wasn't it? Upon my word, I believe we enjoyed our life,
yes, even this life, a year ago. Do you remember how we used to drive
home, laughing over what we had seen, talking about the few people we
had spoken to? It wasn't until we had turned the latch-key in the
door, and crept into the hall----"
"And passed the library door," Millie interrupted, with a little
shiver.
Tony Stretton stopped for a moment. Then he resumed in a lower voice,
"Yes, it wasn't until we had passed the library door that the gloom
settled down again. But now the fun's all over, at the latest when the
lights go down in the supper room, and often before we have got to
them at all. We were happy last year"--and he shook her affectionately
by the arm--"that's what bothers me."
His wife responded to the gentleness of his voice and action.
"Never mind, Tony," she said. "Some day we shall look back on all of
it--this house and the empty rooms and the quarrels"--she hesitated
for a second--"Yes, and the library door; we shall look back on it all
and laugh."
"Shall we?" said Tony, suddenly. His face was most serious, his voice
most doubtful.
"Why, what do you mean?" asked Millie. Then she added reassuringly,
"It must end some time. Oh yes, it can't last for ever."
"No," replied Tony; "but it can last just long enough."
"Long enough for what?"
"Long enough to spoil both our lives altogether."
He was speaking with a manner which was quite strange to her. There
was a certainty in his voice, there was a gravity too. He had ceased
to leave the remedy of their plight to time and chance, since, through
two years, time and chance had failed them. He had been seriously
thinking, and as the result of thought he had come to definite
conclusions. Millie understood that there was much more behind the
words he had spoken and that he meant to say that much more to her
to-night. She was suddenly aware that she was face to face with issues
momentous to both of them. She began to be a little afraid. She looked
at Tony almost as if he were a stranger.
"Tony," she said faintly, in deprecation.
"We must face it, Millie," he went on steadily. "This life of ours
here in this house will come to an end, of course, but how will it
leave us, you and me? Soured, embittered, quarrelsome, or no longer
quarrelsome, but just indifferent to each other, bored by each other?"
He was speaking very slowly, choosing each word with difficulty.
"Oh no," Millie protested.
"It may be even worse than that. Suppose we passed beyond indifference
to dislike--yes, active dislike. We are both of us young, we can both
reasonably look forward to long lives, long lives of active dislike.
There might too be contempt on your side."
Millie stared at her husband.
"Contempt?" she said, echoing his words in surprise.
"Yes. Here are you, most unhappy, and I take it sitting down. Contempt
might come from that."
"But what else can you do?" she said.
"Ah," said Tony, as though he had been waiting for that question,
couched in just those words. "Ask yourself that question often enough,
and contempt will come."
This idea of contempt was a new one to Millie, and very likely her
husband was indiscreet in suggesting its possibility. But he was not
thinking at all of the unwisdom of his words. His thoughts were set on
saving the cherished intimacy of their life from the ruin which he saw
was likely to overtake it. He spoke out frankly, not counting the
risk. Millie, for her part, was not in the mood to estimate the truth
of what he said, although it remained in her memory. She was rather
confused by the new aspect which her husband wore. She foresaw that he
was working towards the disclosure of a plan; and the plan would
involve changes, great changes, very likely a step altogether into the
dark. And she hesitated.
"We sha'n't alter, Tony," she said. "You can be sure of me, can't
you?"
"But we are altering," he replied. "Already the alteration has begun.
Did we quarrel a year ago as we do now? We enjoyed those evenings when
we played truant, a year ago"; and then he indulged in a yet greater
indiscretion than any which he had yet allowed himself to utter. But
he was by nature simple and completely honest. Whatever occurred to
him, that he spoke without reserve, and the larger it loomed in his
thoughts the more strenuous was its utterance upon his lips. He took a
seat at the table by her side.
"I know we are changing. I take myself, and I expect it is the same
with you. I am--it is difficult to express it--I am deadening. I am
getting insensible to the things which not very long ago moved me very
much. I once had a friend who fell ill of a slow paralysis, which
crept up his limbs little by little and he hardly noticed its advance.
I think that's happening with me. I am losing the associations--that's
the word I want--the associations which made one's recollections
valuable, and gave a colour to one's life. For instance, you sang a
song last night, Millie, one of those coon songs of yours--do you
remember? You sang it once in Scotland on a summer's night. I was
outside on the lawn, and past the islands across the water, which was
dark and still, I saw the lights in Oban bay. I thought I would never
hear that song again without seeing those lights in my mind far away
across the water, clustered together like the lights of a distant
town. Well, last night all those associations were somehow dead. I
remembered all right, but without any sort of feeling, that that song
was a landmark in one's life. It was merely you singing a song, or
rather it was merely some one singing a song."
It was a laboured speech, and Tony was very glad to have got it over.
"I am very sorry," replied Millie in a low voice. She did not show him
her face, and he had no notion whatever that his words could hardly
have failed to hurt. He was too intent upon convincing her, and too
anxious to put his belief before her with unmistakable clearness to
reflect in what spirit she might receive the words. That her first
thought would be "He no longer cares" never occurred to him at all,
and cheerfully misunderstanding her acquiescence, he went on--
"You see that's bad. It mustn't go on, Millie. Let's keep what we've
got. At all costs let us keep that!"
"You mean we must go away?" said Millie, and Tony Stretton did not
answer. He rose from his chair and walked back to the fireplace and
knocked the ashes from his pipe. Millie was accustomed to long
intervals between her questions and his replies, but she was on the
alert now. Something in his movements and his attitude showed her that
he was not thinking of what answer he should make. He was already sure
upon that point. Only the particular answer he found difficult to
speak. She guessed it on the instant and stood up erect, in alarm.
"You mean that you must go away, and that I must remain?"
Tony turned round to her and nodded his head.
"Alone! Here?" she exclaimed, looking round her with a shiver.
"For a little while. Until I have made a home for you to come to. Only
till then, Millie. It needn't be so very long."
"It will seem ages!" she cried, "however short it is. Tony, it's
impossible."
The tedious days stretched before her in an endless and monotonous
succession. The great rooms would be yet more silent, and more empty
than they were; there would be a chill throughout all the house; the
old man's exactions would become yet more oppressive, since there
would be only one to bear them. She thought of the long dull evenings,
in the faded drawing-room. They were bad enough now, those long
evenings during which she read the evening paper aloud, and Sir John
slept, yet not so soundly but that he woke the instant her voice
stopped, and bade her continue. What would they be if Tony were gone,
if there were no hour or so at the end when they were free to play
truant if they willed? What she had said was true. She had been merely
pretending to enjoy their hour of truancy, but she would miss it none
the less. And in the midst of these thoughts she heard Tony's voice.
"It sounds selfish, I know, but it isn't really. You see, I sha'n't
enjoy myself. I have not been brought up to know anything well or to
do anything well--anything, I mean, really useful--I'll have a pretty
hard time too." And then he described to her what he thought of doing.
He proposed to go out to one of the colonies, spend some months on a
farm as a hand, and when he had learned enough of the methods, and had
saved a little money, to get hold of a small farm to which he could
ask her to come. It was a pretty and a simple scheme, and it ignored
the great difficulties in the way, such as his ignorance and his lack
of capital. But he believed in it sincerely, and every word in his
short and broken sentences proved his belief. He had his way that
night with Millicent. She was capable of a quick fervour, though the
fervour might as quickly flicker out. She saw that the sacrifice was
really upon his side, for upon him would be the unaccustomed burden of
labour, and the labour would be strange and difficult. She rose to his
height since he was with her and speaking to her with all the
conviction of his soul.
"Well, then, go," she cried. "I'll wait here, Tony, till you send for
me."
And when she passed the library door that night she did not even
shrink.
CHAPTER V
PAMELA MAKES A PROMISE
Millie's enthusiasm for her husband's plan increased each day. The
picture which his halting phrases evoked for her, of a little farm
very far away under Southern skies, charmed her more by reason of its
novelty than either she or Tony quite understood. In the evenings of
the following week, long after the footsteps overhead had ceased, they
sat choosing the site of their house and building it. It was to be the
exact opposite of their house of bondage. The windows should look out
over rolling country, the simple decorations should be bright of
colour, and through every cranny the sun should find its way. Millie's
hopes, indeed, easily outran her husband's. She counted the house
already built, and the door open for her coming. Colour and light
bathed it in beauty.
"There's my little fortune, Tony," she said, when once or twice he
tried to check the leap of her anticipations; "that will provide the
capital."
"I knew you would offer it," Tony replied simply. "Your help will
shorten our separation by a good deal. So I'll take half."
"All!" cried Millie.
"And what would you do when you wanted a new frock?" asked Tony, with
a smile.
Millie shrugged her shoulders.
"I shall join you so soon," she said.
It dawned upon Tony that she was making too little of the burden which
she would be called upon to bear--the burden of dull lonely months in
that great shabby house.
"It will be a little while before I can send for you, Millie," he
protested. But she paid no heed to the protest. She fetched her bank
book and added up the figures.
"I have three thousand pounds," she said.
"I'll borrow half," he repeated. "Of course, I am only borrowing.
Should things go wrong with me, you are sure to get it back in the
end."
They drove down to Millie's bank the next morning, and fifteen hundred
pounds were transferred to his account.
"Meanwhile," said Tony, as they came out of the door into Pall Mall,
"we have not yet settled where our farm is to be. I think I will go
and see Chase."
"The man in Stepney Green?" Millie asked.
"Yes. He's the man to help us."
Tony called a cab and drove off. It was late in the afternoon when he
returned, and he had no opportunity to tell his wife the results of
his visit before dinner was announced. Millie was in a fever to hear
his news. Never, even in this house, had an evening seemed so long.
Sir John sat upright in his high-backed chair, and, as was his custom,
bade her read aloud the evening paper. But that task was beyond her.
She pleaded a headache and escaped. It seemed to her that hours passed
before Tony rejoined her. She had come to dread with an intense fear
that some hindrance would, at any moment, stop their plan.
"Well?" she asked eagerly, when Tony at last came into their
sitting-room.
"It's to be horses in Kentucky," answered Tony. "Farming wants more
knowledge and a long apprenticeship; but I know a little about
horses."
"Splendid!" cried Millie. "You will go soon?"
"In a week. A week is all I need."
Millie was quiet for a little while. Then she asked, with an anxious
look--
"When do you mean to tell your father?"
"To-morrow."
"Don't," said she. She saw his face cloud, she was well aware of his
dislike of secrecies, but she was too much afraid that, somehow, at
the last moment an insuperable obstacle would bar the way. "Don't tell
him at all," she went on. "Leave a note for him. I will see that it is
given to him after you have gone. Then he can't stop you. Please do
this, I ask you."
"How can he stop me?
"I don't know; but I am afraid that he will. He could threaten to
disinherit you; if you disobeyed, he might carry out the threat. Give
him no opportunity to threaten."
Very reluctantly Tony consented. He had all a man's objections to
concealments, she all a woman's liking for them; but she prevailed,
and since the moment of separation was very near, they began to
retrace their steps through the years of their married life, and back
beyond them to the days of their first acquaintance. Thus it happened
that Millie mentioned the name of Pamela Mardale, and suddenly Tony
drew himself upright in his chair.
"Is she in town, I wonder?" he asked, rather of himself than of his
wife.
"Most likely," Millie replied. "Why?"
"I think I must try to see her before I go," said Tony, thoughtfully;
and more than once during the evening he looked with anxiety towards
his wife; but in his look there was some perplexity too.
He tried next day; for he borrowed a horse from a friend, and rode out
into the Row at eleven o'clock. As he passed through the gates of Hyde
Park, he saw Pamela turning her horse on the edge of the sand. She saw
him at the same moment and waited.
"You are a stranger here," she said, with a smile, as he joined her.
"Here and everywhere," he replied. "I came out on purpose to find
you."
Pamela glanced at Tony curiously. Only a few days had passed since
Warrisden had pointed out the truants from the window of Lady
Millingham's house, and had speculated upon the seclusion of their
lives. The memory of that evening was still fresh in her mind.
"I want to ask you a question."
"Ask it and I'll answer," she replied carelessly.
"You were Millie's bridesmaid?"
"Yes."
"You saw a good deal of her before we were married?"
"Yes."
They were riding down the Row at a walk under the trees, Pamela
wondering to what these questions were to lead, Tony slowly
formulating the point which troubled him.
"Before Millie and I were engaged," he went on, "before indeed there
was any likelihood of our being engaged, you once said to me something
about her."
"I did?"
"Yes. I remembered it last night. And it rather worries me. I should
like you to explain what you meant. You said, 'The man who marries her
should never leave her. If he goes away shooting big game, he should
take her with him. On no account must she be left behind.'"
It was a day cloudless and bright. Over towards the Serpentine the
heat filled the air with a soft screen of mist, and at the bottom of
the Row the rhododendrons glowed. As Pamela and Tony went forward at a
walk the sunlight slanting through the leaves now shone upon their
faces and now left them in shade. And when it fell bright upon Pamela
it lit up a countenance which was greatly troubled. She did not,
however, deny that she had used the words. She did not pretend that
she had forgotten their application.
"You remember what I said?" she remarked. "It is a long while ago."
"Before that," he explained, "I had begun to notice all that was said
of Millie."
"I spoke the words generally, perhaps too carelessly."
"Yet not without a reason," Tony insisted. "That's not your way."
Pamela made no reply for a moment or two. Then she patted her horse's
head, and said softly--
"Not without a reason." She admitted his contention frankly. She did
more, for she turned in her saddle towards him and, looking straight
into his face, said--
"I was not giving you advice at the time. But, had I been, I should
have said just those words. I say them again now."
"Why?"
Tony put his question very earnestly. He held Pamela in a great
respect, believing her clear-sighted beyond her fellows. He was indeed
a little timid in her presence as a rule, for she overawed him, though
all unconsciously. Nothing of this timidity, however, showed now.
"That was what I came out to ask you. Why?"
Again Pamela attempted no evasion.
"I can't tell you," she said quietly.
"You promised."
"I break the promise."
Tony looked wistfully at his companion. That the perplexing words had
been spoken with a definite meaning he had felt sure from the moment
when he had remembered them. And her refusal to explain proved to him
that the meaning was a very serious one--one indeed which he ought to
know and take into account.
"I ask you to explain," he urged, "because I _am_ going away, and I
_am_ leaving Millie behind."
Pamela was startled. She turned quickly towards him.
"Must you?" she said, and before he could answer she recovered from
her surprise. "Never mind," she continued; "shall we ride on?" and she
put her horse to a trot. It was not her business to advise or to
interfere. She had said too much already. She meant to remain the
looker-on.
Stretton, however, was not upon this occasion to be so easily
suppressed. He kept level with her, and as they rode he told her
something of the life which Millie and he had led in the big lonely
house in Berkeley Square; and in spite of herself Pamela was
interested. She had a sudden wish that Alan Warrisden was riding with
them too, so that he might hear his mystery resolved; she had a sudden
vision of his face, keen as a boy's, as he listened.
"I saw Millie and you a few nights ago. I was at a dance close by, and
I was surprised to see you. I thought you had left London," she said.
"No; but I am leaving," Stretton returned; and he went on to describe
that idyllic future which Millie and he had allotted to themselves.
The summer sunlight was golden in the air about them; already it
seemed that new fresh life was beginning. "I shall breed horses in
Kentucky. I was recommended to it by an East End parson called Chase,
who runs a mission on Stepney Green. I used to keep order in a
billiard room at his mission one night a week, when I was quartered at
the Tower. A queer sort of creature, Chase; but his judgment's good,
and of course he is always meeting all sorts of people."
"Chase?" Pamela repeated; and she retained the name in her memory.
"But he doesn't know Millie," said Stretton, "and you do. And so what
you said troubles me very much. If I go away remembering your words
and not understanding them, I shall go away uneasy. I shall remain
uneasy."
"I am sorry," Pamela replied. "I broke a rule of mine in saying what I
did, a rule not to interfere. And I see now that I did very wrong in
breaking it. I will not break it again. You must forget my words."
There was a quiet decision in her manner which warned Tony that no
persuasions would induce her to explain. He gave up his attempt and
turned to another subject.
"I have something else to ask--not a question this time, but a favour.
You could be a very staunch friend, Miss Mardale, if you chose. Millie
will be lonely after I have gone. You were a great friend of hers
once--be a friend of hers again."
Pamela hesitated. The promise which he sought on the face of it no
doubt looked easy of fulfilment. But Tony Stretton had been right in
one conjecture. She had spoken the words which troubled him from a
definite reason, and that reason assured her now that this promise
might lay upon her a burden, and a burden of a heavy kind. And she
shrank from all burdens. On the other hand, there was no doubt that
she had caused Tony much uneasiness. He would go away, on a task
which, as she saw very clearly, would be more arduous by far than even
he suspected--he would go away troubled and perplexed. That could not
be helped. But she might lighten the trouble, and make the perplexity
less insistent, if she granted the favour which he sought. It seemed
churlish to refuse.
"Very well," she said reluctantly. "I promise."
Already Tony's face showed his relief. She had given her promise
reluctantly, but she would keep it now. Of that he felt assured, and,
bidding her good-bye, he turned his horse and cantered back.
Pamela rode homewards more slowly. She had proposed to keep clear of
entanglements and responsibilities, and, behold! the meshes were about
her. She had undertaken a trust. In spite of herself she had ceased to
be the looker-on.
CHAPTER VI
NEWS OF TONY
The promise which Pamela had given was a great relief to Tony; he went
about the work of preparing for his departure with an easier mind. It
was even in his thoughts when he stood with his wife upon the platform
of Euston station, five minutes before his train started for
Liverpool.
"She will be a good friend, Millie," he said. "Count on her till I
send for you. I think I am right to go, even though I don't
understand----"
He checked himself abruptly. Millie, however, paid heed only to the
first clause of his sentence.
"Of course you are right," she said, with a confidence which brought
an answering smile to his face.
She watched the red tail-light of the train until it disappeared, and
drove home alone to the big dreary house. It seemed ten times more
dreary, ten times more silent than ever before. She was really alone
now. But her confidence in herself and in Tony was still strong. "I
can wait," she said, and the consciousness of her courage rejoiced
her. She walked from room to room and sat for a few moments in each,
realising that the coldness, the dingy look of the furniture, and the
empty silence had no longer the power to oppress her. She even
hesitated at the library door with her fingers on the key. But it was
not until the next day that she unlocked it and threw it open.
For Pamela, mindful of her promise, called in the afternoon. Millicent
was still uplifted by her confidence.
"I can wait quite patiently," she said; and Pamela scrutinised her
with some anxiety. For Millicent was speaking feverishly, as though
she laboured under an excitement. Was her courage the mere
effervescence of that excitement, or was it a steady, durable thing?
Pamela led her friend on to speak of the life which she and Tony had
led in the big house, sounding her the while so that she might come
upon some answer to that question. And thus it happened that, as they
came down the stairs together, Millicent again stopped before the
library door.
"Look!" she said. "This room always seemed to me typical of the whole
house, typical too of the lives we led in it."
She unlocked the door suddenly and flung it open. The floor of the
library was below the level of the hall, and a smooth plane of wood
sloped down to it very gradually from the threshold.
"There used to be steps here once, but before my time," said
Millicent. She went down into the room. Pamela followed her, and
understood why those two steps had been removed. Although the
book-shelves rose on every wall from floor to ceiling, it was not as a
library that this room was used. Heavy black curtains draped it with a
barbaric profusion. The centre of the room was clear of furniture, and
upon the carpet in that clear space was laid a purple drugget; and on
the drugget opposite to one another stood two strong wooden crutches.
The room was a mortuary chamber--nothing less. On those two crutches
the dead were to lie awaiting burial.
Millie Stretton shook her shoulders with a kind of shiver.
"Oh, how I used to hate this room, hate knowing that it was here,
prepared and ready!"
Pamela could understand how the knowledge would work upon a woman of
emotions, whose nerves were already strung to exasperation by the life
she led. For even to her there was something eerie in the disposition
of the room. It looked out upon a dull yard of stone at the back of
the house; the light was very dim and the noise of the streets hardly
the faintest whisper; there was a chill and a dampness in the air.
"How I hated it," Millie repeated. "I used to lie awake and think of
it. I used to imagine it more silent than any other of the silent
rooms, and emptier--emptier because day and night it seemed to claim
an inhabitant, and to claim it as a right. That was the horrible
thing. The room was waiting--waiting for us to be carried down that
wooden bridge and laid on the crutches here, each in our turn. It
became just a symbol of the whole house. For what is the house,
Pamela? A place that should have been a place of life, and is a place
merely expecting death. Look at the books reaching up to the ceiling,
never taken down, never read, for the room's a room for coffins. It
wasn't merely a symbol of the house--that wasn't the worst of it. It
was a sort of image of our lives, the old man's upstairs, Tony's and
mine down here. We were all doing nothing, neither suffering nor
enjoying, but just waiting--waiting for death. Nothing you see could
happen in this house but death. Until it came there would only be
silence and emptiness."
Millie Stretton finished her outburst, and stood dismayed as though
the shadow of those past days were still about her. The words she had
spoken must have seemed exaggerated and even theatrical, but for the
aspect of her as she spoke them. Her whole frame shuddered, her face
had the shrinking look of fear. She recovered herself, however, in a
moment.
"But that time's past," she said. "Tony's gone and I--I am waiting for
life now. I am only a lodger, you see. A month or two, and I pack my
boxes."
She turned towards the door and stopped. The hall door had just at
that moment opened. Pamela heard a man's footsteps sound heavily upon
the floor of the hall and then upon the stairs.
"My father-in-law," said Millie.
"This was his doing?" asked Pamela.
"Yes," replied Millie. "It's strange, isn't it? But there's something
stranger still."
The footsteps had now ceased. Millie led the way back to her room.
"When I got home yesterday," she related, "I had Tony's letter
announcing his departure taken up to Sir John. I waited for him to
send for me. He did not. I am not sure that I expected he would. You
see, he has never shown the least interest in us. However, when I went
up to my room to dress for dinner, I saw that the candles were all
lighted in Tony's room next door, and his clothes laid out upon the
bed. I went in and put the candles out--rather quickly." Her voice
shook a little upon those last two words. Pamela nodded her head as
though she understood, and Millicent went on, after a short pause--
"It troubled me to see them burning; it troubled me very much. And
when I came downstairs I told the footman the candles were not to be
lit again, since Tony had gone away. He answered that they had been
lit by Sir John's orders. At first I thought that Sir John had not
troubled to read the letter at all. I thought that all the more
because he never once, either during dinner or afterwards, mentioned
Tony's name or seemed to remark his absence. But it was not so. He has
given orders that every night the room is to be ready and the candles
lit as though Tony were here still, or might walk in at the door at
any moment. I suppose that after all in a queer way he cares."
Again her voice faltered; and again a question rose up insistent in
Pamela's mind. She knew her friend, and it was out of her knowledge
that she had spoken long ago in Tony's presence when she had said,
"her husband should never leave her." It was evident that Tony's
departure had caused his wife great suffering.
Millicent had let that fact escape in spite of her exaltation. Pamela
welcomed it, but she asked, "Was that regret a steady and durable
thing?"
Pamela left London the next day with her question unanswered, and for
two months there was no opportunity for her of discovering an answer.
Often during that August and September, on the moors in Scotland, or
at her own home in Leicestershire, she would think of Millie Stretton,
in the hot and dusty town amongst the houses where the blinds were
drawn. She imagined her sitting over against the old stern impassive
man at dinner, or wearily reading to him his newspaper at night. Had
the regret dwindled to irritation, and the loneliness begotten
petulance?
Indeed, those months were dull and wearisome enough for Millicent. No
change of significance came in the routine of that monotonous
household. Sir John went to his room perhaps a little earlier than had
been his wont, his footsteps dragged along the floor for a while
longer, and his light burned in the window after the dawn had come.
Finally he ceased to leave his room at all. But that was all. For
Millicent, however, the weeks passed easily. Each day brought her a
day nearer to the sunlit farm fronting the open plain. She marked the
weeks off in her diary with a growing relief; for news kept coming
from America, and the news was good.
Early in October, Pamela passed through London on her way to Sussex,
and broke her journey that she might see her friend.
"Frances Millingham is writing to you," she said. "She wants you to
stay with her in Leicestershire. I shall be there too. I hope you will
come."
"When?"
"At the beginning of the New Year."
Millicent laughed.
"I shall have left England before then. Tony will have made his way,"
she said, with a joyous conviction.
"There might be delays," Pamela suggested, in a very gentle voice. For
suddenly there had risen before her mind the picture of a terrace high
above a gorge dark with cypresses. She saw again the Mediterranean,
breaking in gold along the curving shore, and the gardens of the
Casino at Monte Carlo. She heard a young girl prophesying success upon
that terrace with no less certainty than Millicent had used. Her face
softened and her eyes shone with a very wistful look. She took out her
watch and glanced at it. It was five o'clock. The school children had
gone home by now from the little school-house in the square of
Roquebrune. Was the schoolmaster leaning over the parapet looking
downwards to the station or to the deserted walk in front of the
Casino? Was a train passing along the sea's edge towards France and
Paris?
"One must expect delays, Millie," she insisted; and again Millie
laughed.
"I have had letters. I am expecting another. It should have come a
fortnight since." And she told Pamela what the letters had contained.
At first Tony had been a little bewildered by the activity of New
York, after his quiescent years. But he had soon made an acquaintance,
and the acquaintance had become a friend. The two men had determined
to go into partnership; a farm in Kentucky was purchased, each man
depositing an equal share of the purchase money.
"Six weeks ago they left New York. Tony said I would not hear from him
at once."
And while they were sitting together there came a knock upon the door,
and two letters were brought in for Millicent. One she tossed upon the
table. With the other in her hand she turned triumphantly to Pamela.
"Do you mind?" she asked. "I have been waiting so long."
"Read it, of course," said Pamela.
Millie tore the letter open, and at once the light died out of her
eyes, and the smile vanished from her lips.
"From New York," she said, halfway between perplexity and fear. "He
writes from New York." And with trembling fingers she turned over the
sheets and read the letter through.
Pamela watched her, saw the blood ebb from her cheeks, and dejection
overspread her face. A great pity welled up in Pamela's heart, not
merely for the wife who read, but for the man who had penned that
letter--with what difficulty, she wondered, with how much pain!
Failure was the message which it carried. Millicent's trembling lips
told her that. And again the village of Roquebrune rose up before her
eyes as she gazed out of the window on the London square. What were
the words the schoolmaster had spoken when, stripped of his dreams, he
had confessed success was not for him? "We must forget these fine
plans. The school at Roquebrune will send no deputy to Paris."
Pamela's eyes grew dim.
She stood looking out of the window for some while, but hearing no
movement she at length turned back again. The sheets of the letter had
fallen upon the floor, they lay scattered, written over in a round,
sprawling, schoolboy's hand. Millicent sat very still, her face most
weary and despairing.
"It's all over," she said. "The friend was a swindler. He left the
train at a station on the way and disappeared. Tony went on, but there
was no farm. He is back in New York."
"But the man can be found?"
"He belongs to a gang. There is little chance, and Tony has no money.
He will take no more of mine."
"He is coming home, then?" said Pamela.
"No; he means to stay and retrieve his failures."
Pamela said nothing, and Millicent appealed to her. "He will do that,
don't you think? Men have started badly before, and have succeeded,
and have not taken so very long to succeed."
"No doubt," said Pamela; and she spoke with what hopefulness she
could. But she remembered Tony Stretton. Simplicity and good-humour
were amongst his chief qualities; he was a loyal friend, and he had
pluck. Was that enough? On the other hand, he had little knowledge and
little experience. The schoolmaster of Roquebrune and Tony Stretton
stood side by side in her thoughts. She was not, however, to be put to
the task of inventing encouragements. For before she could open her
lips again, Millicent said gently--
"Will you mind if I ask to be left alone? Come again as soon as you
can. But this afternoon----" Her voice broke so that she could not
finish her sentence, and she turned hastily away. However, she
recovered her self-control and went down the stairs with Pamela, and
as they came into the hall their eyes turned to the library door, and
then they looked at one another. Both remembered the conversation they
had had within that room.
"What if you told Sir John?" said Pamela. "It seems that he does after
all care."
"It would be of no use," said Millicent, shaking her head. "He would
only say, 'Let him come home,' and Tony will not. Besides, I never see
him now."
"Never?" exclaimed Pamela.
"No; he does not leave his room." She lowered her voice. "I do not
believe he ever will leave it again. It's not that he's really ill,
his doctor tells me, but he's slowly letting himself go."
Pamela answered absently. Sir John Stretton and his ailments played a
small part in her thoughts. It seemed that the library was again to
become typical of the house, typical of the life its inhabitants led.
Nothing was to happen, then. There was to be a mere waiting for things
to cease.
But a second letter was lying upstairs unopened on the table, and that
letter, harmless as it appeared, was strangely to influence Millicent
Stretton's life. It was many hours afterwards when Millicent opened
it, and, compared with the heavy tidings she had by the same post
received, it seemed utterly trifling and unimportant. It was no more
indeed than the invitation from Frances Millingham of which Pamela had
spoken. Pamela forgot it altogether when she heard the news which Tony
had sent, but she was to be affected by it too. For she had made a
promise to Tony Stretton, and, as he had foreseen, she would at any
cost fulfil it.
CHAPTER VII
THE LADY ON THE STAIRS
Whitewebs, Frances Millingham's house in Leicestershire, was a long
white building with many level windows. The square main block of the
building rose in the centre two storeys high, and on each side a wing
of one storey projected. Behind the house a broad lawn sloped to the
bank of a clear and shallow trout stream, with an avenue of old elms
upon its left, and a rose garden upon its right. In front of the house
a paddock made a ring of green, and round this ring the carriage drive
circled from a white five-barred gate. Whitewebs stood in a flat grass
country. From the upper windows you looked over a wide plain of
meadows and old trees, so level that you had on a misty day almost an
illusion of a smooth sea and the masts of ships; from the lower, you
saw just as far as the nearest hedgerow, except in one quarter of the
compass. For to the south-west the ground rose very far away, and at
the limit of view three tall poplars, set in a tiny garden on the
hill's crest, stood clearly out against the sky like sentinels upon a
frontier. These three landmarks were visible for many miles around.
Pamela, however, saw nothing of them as she was driven over the three
miles from the station to Whitewebs.
It was late on a February evening, and already dark. The snow had
fallen heavily during the last week, and as Pamela looked out through
the carriage windows she saw that the ground glimmered white on every
side; above the ground a mist thickened the night air, and the cold
was piercing. When she reached the house she found that Frances
Millingham was waiting for her alone in the big inner hall, with tea
ready; and the first question which she asked of her hostess was--
"Is Millie Stretton here?"
"Yes," replied Frances Millingham. "She has been here a week."
"I couldn't come before," said Pamela, rather remorsefully. "My father
was at home alone. How is Millie? I have not seen her for a long time.
Is she enjoying herself?"
Pamela's conscience had been reproaching her all that afternoon. She
could plead in her own behalf that after the arrival of Tony's letter
with its message of failure, she had deferred her visit into the
country and had stayed in London for a week. But she had not returned
to London since, and consequently she had not seen her friend. She had
heard regularly from her, it is true; she also knew that there was yet
no likelihood of the hoped-for change in the life of that isolated
household in Berkeley Square. But there had been certain omissions of
late in Millicent's letters which began to make Pamela anxious.
"Yes," Frances Millingham replied; "she seems to be happy enough."
Lady Millingham related the names of her guests. There were twelve in
all, but the first ten may be omitted, for they are in no way
concerned with Pamela's history. The eleventh name, however, was that
of a friend.
"John Mudge is here, too," said Frances Millingham; and Pamela said,
with a smile--
"I like him."
John Mudge was that elderly man whom Allan Warrisden had seen with
Pamela at Lady Millingham's dance, the man with no pleasure in his
face. "And Mr. Lionel Callon," said Frances; "you know him."
"Do I?" asked Pamela.
"At all events, he knows you."
It was no doubt a consequence of Pamela's deliberate plan never to be
more than an onlooker, that people who did not arouse her active
interest passed in and out of her acquaintanceship like shadows upon a
mirror. It might be that she had met Lionel Callon. She could not
remember.
"A quarter past seven," said Frances Millingham, glancing at the
clock. "We dine at eight."
Pamela dressed quickly in the hope that she might gain a few minutes
before dinner wherein to talk to Millicent. She came down the stairs
with this object a good quarter of an hour before eight, but she was
to be disappointed. The stairs descended into the big inner hall of
the house, and just below the roof of the hall they took a bend. As
Pamela came round this bend the hall was exposed to her eyes, and she
saw, below her, not Millicent at all, but the figure of a man. He was
standing by the fireplace, on her left hand as she descended, looking
into the fire indeed, so that his back was towards her. But at the
rustle of her frock he swung round quickly and looked up. He now moved
a few steps towards the foot of the stairs with a particular
eagerness. Pamela at that moment had just come round the bend, and was
on the small platform from which the final flight of steps began. The
staircase was dimly lit, and the panelling of the wall against which
it rested dark. Pamela took a step or two downwards, and the light of
the hall struck upon her face. The man came instantly to a dead stop,
and a passing disappointment was visible upon his upturned face. It
was evident that he was expecting some one else. Pamela on her side
was disappointed, too, for she had hoped to find Millicent. She went
down the stairs and stopped on the third step from the bottom.
"How do you do, Miss Mardale?" said the man. "You have arrived at
last."
The man was Lionel Callon. Pamela recognised him now that they stood
face to face; she _had_ met him, but she had retained no impression of
him in her memory. For the future, however, she would retain a very
distinct impression. For her instincts told her at once and clearly
that she thoroughly disliked the man. He was thirty-three in years,
and looked a trifle younger, although his hair was turning grey. He
was clean shaven, handsome beyond most men, and while his features
were of a classical regularity and of an almost feminine delicacy,
they were still not without character. There was determination in his
face, and his eyes were naturally watchful. It was his manner which
prompted Pamela's instinct of dislike. Assurance gave to it a hint of
arrogance; familiarity made it distasteful. He might have been her
host from the warmth of his welcome. Pamela put on her sedatest air.
"I am quite well," she said, with just sufficient surprise to suggest
the question, "What in the world has my health to do with you?" She
came down the three steps, and added, "We are the first, I suppose."
"There may be others in the drawing-room," said Callon, with a glance
towards the open door. But Pamela did not take the hint. For one thing
no sound of any voice was audible in that room; for another Mr. Callon
was plainly anxious to be rid of her. Even as he was speaking his
glance strayed past her up the staircase. Pamela disliked him; she
was, besides, disappointed by him of that private talk with Millicent
which she desired. She was in a mood for mischief. She changed her
manner at once, and, crossing over to the fireplace, engaged Mr.
Callon in conversation with the utmost cordiality, and as she talked
she began to be amused. Callon became positively uneasy; he could not
keep still, he answered her at random. For instance, she put to him a
question about the number of guests in the house. He did not answer at
all for a moment or two, and when he did speak, it was to say, "Will
the frost hold, do you think?"
"There's no sign of a thaw to-night," replied Pamela; and the sounds
for which both were listening became audible--the shutting of a door
on the landing above, and then the rustle of a frock upon the stairs.
Mr. Callon was evidently at his wits' end what to do; and Pamela,
taking her elbow from the mantelpiece, said, with great sympathy--
"One feels a little in the way----"
"Oh, not at all, Miss Mardale," Callon answered hurriedly, with a
flustered air.
Pamela looked at her companion with the blankest stare of surprise.
"I was going to say, when you interrupted me," she went on, "that one
feels a little in the way when one has brought a couple of horses, as
I have, and the frost holds."
Callon grew red. He had fallen into a trap; his very hurry to
interrupt what appeared to be almost an apology betrayed that the lady
upon the stairs and Mr. Lionel Callon had arranged to come down early.
He had protested overmuch. However, he looked Pamela steadily in the
face, and said--
"I beg your pardon, Miss Mardale."
He spoke loudly, rather too loudly for the ears of any one so near to
him as Pamela. The sentence, too, was uttered with a note of warning.
There was even a suggestion of command. The command was obeyed by the
lady on the stairs, for all at once the frock ceased to rustle, and
there was silence. Lionel Callon kept his eyes fixed upon Pamela's
face, but she did not look towards the stairs, and in a little while
again the sound was heard. But it diminished. The lady upon the stairs
was ascending, and a few minutes afterwards a door closed overhead.
She had beaten a retreat.
Callon could not quite keep the relief which he felt out of his eyes
or the smile from his lips. Pamela noticed the change with amusement.
She was not in the mind to spare him uneasiness, and she said, looking
at the wall above the mantelpiece--
"This is an old mirror, don't you think? From what period would you
date it?"
Callon's thoughts had been so intent upon the stairs that he had paid
no heed to the ornaments above the mantelshelf. Now, however, he took
note of them with a face grown at once anxious. The mirror was of an
oval shape and framed in gold. Under the pretence of admiring it, he
moved and stood behind Pamela, looking into the mirror over her
shoulder, seeing what she could see, and wondering how much she had
seen. He was to some extent relieved. The stairs were ill-lighted, the
panelling of the wall dark mahogany; moreover, the stairs bent round
into the hall just below the level of the roof, and at the bend the
lady on the stairs had stopped. Pamela could not have seen her face.
Pamela, indeed, had seen nothing more than a black satin slipper
arrested in the act of taking a step, and a black gown with some
touches of red at the waist. She had, however, noticed the attitude of
the wearer of the dress when the warning voice had brought her to a
stop. The lady had stooped down and had cautiously peered into the
hall. In this attitude she had been able to see, and yet had avoided
being seen.
Pamela, however, did not relieve Mr. Callon of his suspense. She
walked into the drawing-room and waited, with an amused curiosity, for
the appearance of the black dress. It was long in coming, however.
Pamela had no doubt that it would come last, and in a hurry, as though
its wearer had been late in dressing. But Pamela was wrong. Millicent
Stretton came into the room dressed in a frock of white lace, and at
once dinner was announced. Pamela turned to Frances Millingham with a
startled face--
"Are we all here?"
Frances Millingham looked round.
"Yes;" and Lord Millingham at that moment offered his arm to Pamela.
As she took it, she looked at Millicent, who was just rising from her
chair. Millicent was wearing with her white dress black shoes and
stockings. She might be wearing them deliberately, of course; on the
other hand, she might be wearing them because she had not had time to
change them. It was Millicent, certainly, who had come down last. "I
beg your pardon, Miss Mardale," Callon had said, and it was upon the
"Miss Mardale" that his voice had risen. The emphasis of his warning
had been laid upon the name.
As she placed her hand on her host's arm, Pamela said--
"It was very kind of Frances to ask Millie Stretton here."
"Oh no," Lord Millingham replied. "You see, Frances knew her. We all
knew, besides, that she is a great friend of yours."
"Yes," said Pamela; "I suppose everybody here knows that?"
"Mrs. Stretton has talked of it," he answered, with a smile.
The "Miss Mardale" might be a warning, then, to Millicent that her
friend had arrived--was actually then in the hall. There was certainly
no one but Millicent in that house who could have been conscious of
any need to shrink back at the warning, who would have changed her
dress to prevent a recognition; and Millicent herself need not have
feared the warning had there not been something to conceal--something
to conceal especially from Pamela, who had said, "I have promised your
husband I would be your friend." There was the heart of Pamela's
trouble.
She gazed down the two lines of people at the dinner-table, hoping
against hope that she had overlooked some one. There was no one
wearing a black gown. All Pamela's amusement in outwitting Callon had
long since vanished. If Tony had only taken her advice without
question, she thought. "Millie's husband should never leave her. If he
goes away he should take her with him." The words rang in her mind all
through dinner like the refrain of a song of which one cannot get rid.
And at the back of her thoughts there steadily grew and grew a great
regret that she had ever promised Tony to befriend his wife.
That Millicent was the lady on the stairs she no longer dared to
doubt. Had she doubted, her suspicions would have been confirmed
immediately dinner was over. In the drawing-room Millicent avoided any
chance of a private conversation, and since they had not met for so
long such avoidance was unnatural. Pamela, however, made no effort to
separate her friend from the other women. She had a plan in her mind,
and in pursuit of it she occupied a sofa, upon which there was just
room for two. She sat in the middle of the sofa, so that no one else
could sit on it, and just waited until the men came in. Some of them
crossed at once to Pamela, but she did not budge an inch. They were
compelled to stand. Finally, Mr. Mudge approached her, and immediately
she moved into one corner and bade him take the other. Mr. Mudge
accepted the position with alacrity. The others began to move away; a
couple of card-tables were made up. Pamela and John Mudge were left
alone.
"You know every one here?" she asked.
"No, very few."
"Mr. Callon, at all events?"
Mr. Mudge glanced shrewdly at his questioner.
"Yes, I know him slightly," he answered.
"Tell me what you know."
Mr. Mudge sat for a moment or two with his hands upon his knees and
his eyes staring in front of him. Pamela knew his history, and
esteemed his judgment. He had built up a great contracting business
from the poorest beginnings, and he remained without bombast or
arrogance. He was to be met nowadays in many houses, and, while he had
acquired manners, he had lost nothing of his simplicity. The journey
from the Seven Dials to Belgrave Square is a test of furnace heat, and
John Mudge had betrayed no flaws. There was a certain forlornness,
too, in his manner which appealed particularly to Pamela. She guessed
that the apples, for which through a lifetime he had grasped, had
crumbled into ashes between his fingers. Sympathy taught her that the
man was lonely. He wandered through the world amidst a throng of
acquaintances; but how many friends had he, she wondered? She did not
interrupt his reflections, and he turned to her at last, with an air
of decision.
"I am on strange ground here," he said, "as you know. I am the
outsider; and when I am on strange ground I go warily. If I am asked
what I think of this man or that I make it a rule to praise."
"Yes; but not to me," said Pamela, with a smile. "I want to know the
truth to-night."
Mudge looked at her deliberately, and no less deliberately he spoke--
"And I think you ought to know the truth to-night."
Mudge, then, like the rest, knew that she was Millicent's friend. Was
it for that reason that she ought to know the truth?
"I know Callon a little," he went on, "but I know a good deal about
him. Like most of the men who know him I dislike him heartily. Women,
on the other hand, like him, Miss Mardale--like him too well. Women
make extraordinary mistakes over men just as men do over women. They
can be very blind--like your friend----"
Mudge paused for an appreciable time. Then he went on steadily--
"Like your friend Lady Millingham, who invites him here."
Pamela was grateful for the delicacy with which the warning was
conveyed, but she did not misunderstand it. She had been told
indirectly, but no less definitely on that account, that Millie was
entangled.
"Callon has good looks, of course," continued Mudge; and Pamela
uttered a little exclamation of contempt. Mudge smiled, but rather
sadly.
"Oh, it's something. All people have not your haughty indifference to
good looks. He is tall, he has a face which is a face and not a
pudding. It's a good deal, Miss Mardale."
Pamela looked in surprise at the stout, heavily-built bald man who
spoke. That he should ever have given a thought to how he looked was a
new idea to her. It struck her as pathetic.
"But he is not merely good-looking. He is clever, persistent besides,
and, so far as I can judge, untroubled by a single scruple in the
management of his life. Altogether, Miss Mardale, a dangerous man. How
does he live?" he asked suddenly.
"I neither know nor care," said Pamela. "Ah, but you should care,"
replied Mudge. "The answer is instructive. He has a small income--two
hundred a year, perhaps; a mere nothing compared with what he
spends--and he never does an hour's work, as we understand work. Yet
he pays his card debts at his club, and they are sometimes heavy, and
he wants for nothing. How is it done? He has no prospect of an
inheritance, so post-obits are not the explanation."
Mr. Mudge leaned back in his chair and waited. Pamela turned the
question over in her mind. "I can't guess how it's done," she said.
"And I can do no more than hint the answer," he replied. "He rides one
woman's horses, he drives another woman's phaeton, he is always on
hand to take a third to a theatre, or to make up a luncheon party with
a fourth. Shall we say he borrows money from a fifth? Shall we be
wrong in saying it?" And suddenly Mr. Mudge exclaimed, with a heat and
scorn which Pamela had never heard from him before, "A very
contemptible existence, anyway, Miss Mardale. But the man's not to be
despised, mind. No, that's the worst of it. Some day, perhaps, a
strong man will rise up and set his foot on him. Till that time he is
to be feared." And when Pamela by a gesture rejected the word, Mudge
repeated it. "Yes, feared. He makes his plans, Miss Mardale. Take a
purely imaginary case," and somehow, although he laid no ironic stress
on the word imaginary, and accompanied it with no look, but sat gazing
straight in front of him, Pamela was aware that it was a real case he
was going to cite. "Imagine a young and pretty woman coming to a house
where most of the guests were strangers to her; imagine her to be of a
friendly, unsuspecting temperament, rather lonely, perhaps, and either
unmarried or separated for a time from her husband. Add that she will
one day be very rich, or that her husband will be. Such a woman might
be his prey, unless----"
Pamela looked up inquiringly.
"Unless she had good friends to help her."
Pamela's face, distressed before, grew yet more troubled now. The
burden of her promise was being forced upon her back. It seemed she
was not for one moment to be allowed to forget it.
"I'll tell you my philosophy, Miss Mardale," Mudge continued, "and I
have inferred it from what I have seen. I do not believe that any man
really comes to good unless he has started in life with the ambition
to make a career for himself, with no help other than his hands and
his brains afford. Later on he will learn that women can be most
helpful; later on, as he gets towards middle life, as the years
shorten and shorten, he will see that he must use whatever extraneous
assistance comes his way. But he will begin with a fearless ambition
to suffice with his own hands and head." Mr. Mudge dropped from the
high level of his earnestness. He looked towards Lionel Callon, who
was seated at a card-table, and the contempt again crept into his
voice. "Now that man began life meaning to use all people he met, and
especially women. Women were to be his implements." Mr. Mudge smiled
suddenly. "He's listening," he said.
"But he is too far away to hear," replied Pamela.
"No doubt; but he knows we are speaking of him. Look, his attitude
shows it. This, you see, is his battleground, and he knows the arts of
his particular warfare. A drawing-room! Mr. Lionel Callon fights among
the teacups. Cajolery first, and God knows by what means afterwards.
But he wins, Miss Mardale; don't close your eyes to that! Look, I told
you he was listening. The rubber's over, and he's coming towards us.
Oh, he's alert upon his battle-ground! He knows what men think of him.
He's afraid lest I should tell what men think to you. But he comes too
late."
Callon crossed to the sofa, and stood talking there until Frances
Millingham rose. Pamela turned to Mr. Mudge as she got up.
"I thank you very much," she said gratefully.
Mr. Mudge smiled.
"No need for thanks," said he. "I am very glad you came to-night, for
I go away to-morrow."
Pamela went to her room and sat down before the fire. What was to be
done, she wondered? She could not get Lionel Callon sent away from the
house. It would be no use even if she could, since Millie had an
address in town. She could not say a word openly.
She raised her head and spoke to her maid.
"Which is Mrs. Stretton's room?" And when she had the answer she rose
from her chair and stood, a figure of indecision. She did not plead
that John Mudge had exaggerated the danger; for she had herself
foreseen it long-ago, before Millie's marriage--even before Millie's
engagement. It was just because she had foreseen it that she had used
the words which had so rankled in Tony's memory. Bitterly she
regretted that she had ever used them; greatly she wished that she
could doubt their wisdom. But she could not. Let Millie's husband
leave her, she would grieve with all the strength of her nature; let
him come back soon, she would welcome him with a joy as great. Yes;
but he must come back _soon_. Otherwise she would grow used to his
absence; she would find his return an embarrassment, for it would be
the return of a stranger with the prerogative of a husband; she might
even have given to another the place he once held in her thoughts. And
the other might be a Lionel Callon. For this was Millicent's
character. She yielded too easily to affection, and she did not
readily distinguish between affection and the show of it. She paddled
in the shallows of passion, and flattered herself that she was
swimming in the depths. Grief she was capable of--yes; but a torrent
of tears obliterated it. Joy she knew; but it was a thrill with her
lasting an hour.
Pamela walked along the passage and knocked at Millicent's door,
saying who she was. Millicent opened the door, and received her friend
with some constraint.
"Can I come in?" said Pamela.
"Of course," said Millie.
They sat opposite to one another on each side of the fire.
"I wanted to see you before I went to bed," said Pamela. "You have not
told me lately in your letters how Tony is getting on."
Millie raised her hand to shield her face from the blaze of the fire.
She happened to shade it also from the eyes of Pamela; and she made no
reply.
"Is he still in New York?" Pamela asked; and then Millie replied.
"I do not know," she answered slowly. She let her hand fall, and
looked straight and defiantly at her friend.
"I have not heard from him for a long while," she added; and as she
spoke there crept into her face a look of disdain.
CHAPTER VIII
GIDEON'S FLEECE
Millicent was reluctant to add any word of explanation. She sat with
her eyes upon the fire, waiting, it seemed, until Pamela should see
fit to go. But Pamela remained, and of the two women she was the
stronger in will and character. She sat, with her eyes quietly resting
upon Millicent's face; and in a little while Millicent began
reluctantly to speak. As she spoke the disdainful droop of her lips
became more pronounced, and her words were uttered in a note of
petulance.
"He _would_ stay to retrieve his failure. You remember?" she said.
"Yes," replied Pamela.
"I wrote to him again and again to come home, but he would not. I
couldn't make him see that he wasn't really a match for the people he
must compete with."
Pamela nodded her head.
"You wrote that to him?"
Millicent lifted her face to Pamela's.
"I put it, of course, with less frankness. I offered him, besides, the
rest of my money, so that he might try again; but he refused to take a
farthing more. It was unreasonable, don't you think? I could have got
on without it, but he couldn't. I was very sorry for him."
"And you expressed your pity, too?" asked Pamela.
"Yes, indeed," said Millicent, eagerly. "But he never would accept it.
He replied cheerfully that something was sure to happen soon, that he
would be sure to find an opening soon. But, of course, he never did.
It was not likely that with his inexperience he ever would."
Tony's own words had recoiled upon him. On the evening when he had
first broached his plan to Millicent in Berkeley Square, he had laid
before her, amongst others, this very obstacle, thinking that she
ought to be aware of it, and never doubting but that he would surmount
it. The honesty of his nature had bidden him speak all that he had
thought, and he had spoken without a suspicion that his very frankness
might put in her mind an argument to belittle him. He had seemed
strong then, because he knew the difficulties, and counted them up
when she omitted them. His image was all the more pale and ineffectual
now because, foreknowing them well, he had not mastered them.
"I wrote to him at last that it wasn't any use for him to go on with
the struggle. He would not tell me how he lived, or even where. I had
to send my letters to a post-office, and he called for them. He must
be living in want, in misery. I wrote to him that I had guessed as
much from his very reticence, and I said how sorry I was. Yet, in
spite of what I wrote," and here her voice hardened a little; she
showed herself as a woman really aggrieved, "in spite of what I wrote,
he answered me in a quite short letter, saying that I must not expect
to hear from him again until he had recovered from his defeat and was
re-established in my eyes. I can't understand that, can you?"
"I think so," Pamela answered. She spoke gently. For there was
something to be said upon Millicent's side. The sudden collapse of her
exaggerated hopes, the dreary life she led, and her natural
disappointment at the failure of the man whom she had married, when
once he stepped down into the arena to combat with his fellow-men.
These things could not fail to provoke, in a nature so easily swayed
from extreme to extreme as Millicent's, impatience, anger, and a sense
of grievance. Pamela could hold the balance fairly enough to
understand that. But chiefly she was thinking of Tony--Tony hidden
away in some lodging in New York, a lodging so squalid that he would
not give the address, and vainly seeking for an opportunity whereby he
would make a rapid fortune; very likely going short of food, and
returning home at night to read over a letter from his wife of which
every line cried out to him, with a contemptuous pity, "You are a
failure. You are a failure. Come home." Pamela's heart went out in
pity, too. But there was no contempt in her pity. She could not but
admire the perseverance with which, on this, the first time that he
had ever walked hand in hand with misery, he endured its
companionship.
"I think I understand," she said. "You say he answered you in that
short way in spite of what you wrote. I think it was not in spite of,
but because----"
Millie Stretton shook her head.
"No, that's not the reason," she replied. She gave one herself, and it
fairly startled Pamela. "Tony no longer cares for me. He means to go
out of my life altogether."
Pamela remembered what store Tony had always set upon his wife, how he
had spoken of her that July morning in the park, and how he had looked
at the moment when he spoke. It was just because he cared so much that
he had taken his wild leap into the dark. That, at all events, she
believed, and in such a strain she replied. But Millicent would not be
persuaded.
"Before Tony went away," she said stubbornly, "he let me see that he
no longer cared. He was losing the associations which used to be vivid
in his memory. Our marriage had just become a dull, ordinary thing. He
had lost the spirit in which he entered into it."
Again Tony's indiscreet frankness had done him wrong. The coon song,
which was always to be associated in his mind with the summer night,
and the islets in the sea, and the broad stretch of water trembling
away in the moonlight across to the lights of the yachts in Oban Bay,
had become a mere coon song "sung by some one." Millicent had often
remembered and reflected upon that unfortunate sentence, and as her
disappointment in Tony increased and the pitying contempt gradually
crept into her mind, she read into it more and more of what Tony had
not meant.
"I am sure you are wrong," said Pamela, very earnestly. "He went away
because he cared. He went away to keep your married life and his from
fading away into the colourless, dull, ordinary thing it so frequently
becomes. He has lost ground by his failure. No doubt your own letters
have shown that; and he is silent now in order to keep what he has.
You have said it yourself. He will not write until he is able to
re-establish himself in your thoughts."
But would Tony succeed? _Could_ he succeed? The questions forced
themselves into her mind even while she was speaking, and she carried
them back to her room. The chances were all against him. Even if he
retrieved his failure, it would be a long time before that result was
reached--too long, perhaps, when his wife was Millicent, and such
creatures as Lionel Callon walked about the world. And he might never
succeed at all, he was so badly handicapped.
Pamela was sorely tempted to leave the entanglement alone to unravel
itself. There was something which she could do. She was too honest to
close her eyes to that. But her own history rose up against her and
shook a warning finger. It had a message to her ears never so loudly
repeated as on this night. "Don't move a step. Look on! Look on!" She
knew herself well. She was by nature a partisan. Let her take this
trouble in hand and strive to set it right, her whole heart would soon
be set upon success. She was fond of Millicent already; she would
become fonder still in the effort to save her. She liked Tony very
much. The thought of him stoutly persevering, clinging to his one
ambition to keep his married life a bright and real thing in spite of
want and poverty--and even his wife's contempt, appealed to her with a
poignant strength. But she might fail. She had eaten of failure once,
and, after all these years, the taste of it was still most bitter in
her mouth.
She fought her battle out over her dying fire, and at the end two
thoughts stood out clearly in her mind. She had given her promise to
Tony to be a good friend to his wife, and there was one thing which
she could do in fulfilment of her promise.
She walked over to her window and flung it open. She was of the women
who look for signs; no story quite appealed to her like the story of
Gideon's Fleece. She looked for a sign now quite seriously. If a thaw
had set in, why, the world was going a little better with her, and
perhaps she might succeed. But the earth was iron-bound, and in the
still night she could hear a dry twig here and there snapping in the
frost. No, the world was not going well. She decided to wait until
things improved.
But next day matters were worse. For one thing John Mudge went away,
and he was the only person in the house who interested her at all.
Furthermore, Lionel Callon stayed, and he announced some news.
"I have been chosen to stand for Parliament at the next election," he
said; and he named an important constituency. Pamela noticed the look
of gratification, almost of pride, which shone at once on Millie's
face, and her heart sank. She interpreted Millie's thought, and
accurately. Here was a successful man, a man who had got on without
opportunities or means, simply by his own abilities; and there, far
away in New York, was her failure of a husband. Moreover, Callon and
Millicent were much together; they had even small secrets, to which in
conversation they referred. The world was not going well with Pamela,
and she waited for the fleece to be wet with dew.
After four days, however, the frost showed signs of breaking. A thaw
actually set in that evening, and on the next morning two pieces of
good news arrived. In the first place, Pamela received a letter from
Alan Warrisden. There was nothing of importance in it, but it gave her
his actual address. In the second, Millie told Frances Millingham that
she had received news that Sir John Stretton was really failing, and
although there was no immediate danger, she must hold herself in
readiness to return to town. This to Pamela was really the best news
of all. This morning, at all events, Gideon's Fleece was wet. She
looked out some trains in the railway guide, and then sent a telegram
to Warrisden to come by a morning train. She would meet him at the
railway station. The one step in her power she was thus resolved to
take.
CHAPTER IX
THE NEW ROAD
On the crest of that hill which was visible from the upper windows of
Whitewebs, a village straggled for a mile; and all day in the cottages
the looms were heard. The sound of looms, indeed, was always
associated with that village in the minds of Pamela Mardale and Alan
Warrisden, though they drove along its broad street but once, and a
few hours included all their visit. Those few hours, however, were
rich with consequence. For Pamela asked for help that day, and, in the
mere asking, gave, as women must; and she neither asked nor gave in
ignorance of what she did. The request might be small, the gift small,
too; but it set her and her friend in a new relation each to each, it
linked them in a common effort, it brought a new and a sweet intimacy
into both their lives. So that the noise of a loom was never heard by
them in the after times but there rose before their eyes, visible as a
picture, that grey chill day of February, the red-brick houses
crowding on the broad street in a picturesque irregularity, and the
three tall poplars tossing in the wind. The recollection brought
always a smile of tenderness to their faces; and in their thoughts
they had for the village a strange and fanciful name. It was just a
little Leicestershire village perched upon a hill, the village of
looms, the village of the three poplars. But they called it Quetta.
At the very end of the street, and exactly opposite to the small house
from whose garden the poplars rose, there stood an inn. It was on the
edge of the hill, for just beyond the road dipped steeply down between
high hedges of brambles and elder trees, and, turning at the bottom of
the incline, wound thence through woods and level meadows towards
Leicester. It was the old coach road, and the great paved yard of the
inn and the long line of disused stables had once been noisy with the
shouts of ostlers and the crack of whips. Now only the carrier's cart
drove twice a week down the steep road to Leicester, and a faint
whistle from the low-lying land and a trail of smoke showed where now
the traffic ran. On the platform of the little roadside station, three
miles from the village, Pamela met Alan Warrisden on the morning after
she had sent off her telegram. She had a trap waiting at the door, and
as they mounted into it she said--
"I rode over to the village this morning and hired this dog-cart at
the inn. I am not expected to be back at Whitewebs until the
afternoon; so I thought we might lunch at the inn, and then a man can
drive you back to the station, while I ride home again."
"It was bad going for a horse, wasn't it?" said Warrisden.
The thaw had fairly set in; the roads, still hard as cement, ran with
water, and were most slippery. On each side patches of snow hung upon
the banks half melted, and the air was raw.
"Yes, it was bad going," Pamela admitted. "But I could not wait. It
was necessary that I should see you to-day."
She said no more at the moment, and Warrisden was content to sit by
her side as she drove, and wait. The road ran in a broad straight line
over the sloping ground. There was no vehicle, not even another
person, moving along it. Warrisden could see the line of houses ahead,
huddled against the sky, the spire of a church, and on his right the
three sentinel poplars. He was to see them all that afternoon.
Pamela drove straight to the inn, where she had already ordered
luncheon; and it was not until luncheon was over that she drew up her
chair to the fire and spoke.
"Won't you smoke?" she said first of all. "I want you to listen to
me."
Warrisden lit a pipe and listened.
"It is right that I should be very frank with you," she went on, "for
I am going to ask you to help me."
"You need me, then?" said Warrisden. There was a leap in his voice
which brought the colour to her cheeks.
"Very much," she said; and, with a smile, she asked, "Are you glad?"
"Yes," he answered simply.
"Yet the help may be difficult for you to give. It may occupy a long
time besides. I am not asking you for a mere hour or a day."
The warning only brought a smile to Warrisden's face.
"I don't think you understand," he said, "how much one wants to be
needed by those one needs."
Indeed, even when that simple truth was spoken to her, it took Pamela
a little while to weigh it in her thoughts and give it credence. She
had travelled a long distance during these last years down her
solitary road. She began to understand that now. To need--actually to
need people, to feel a joy in being needed--here were emotions,
familiar to most, and no doubt at one time familiar to her, which
were, nevertheless, now very new and strange. At present she only
needed. Would a time come when she would go further still? When she
would feel a joy in being needed? The question flashed across her
mind.
"Yes," she admitted, "no doubt that is true. But none the less there
must be no misunderstanding between you and me. I speak of myself,
although it is not for myself that I need your help; but I am not
blind. I know it will be for my sake that you give it, and I do not
want you to give it in any ignorance of me, or, perhaps"--and she
glanced at him almost shyly--"or, perhaps, expecting too much."
Warrisden made no other answer than to lean forward in his chair, with
his eyes upon Pamela's face. She was going to explain that isolation
of hers which had so baffled him. He would not for worlds have
interrupted her lest he should check the utterance on her lips. He saw
clearly enough that she was taking a great step for her, a step, too,
which meant much to him. The actual explanation was not the important
thing. That she should confide it of her own accord--there was the
real and valuable sign. As she began to speak again, diffidence was
even audible in her voice. She almost awaited his judgment.
"I must tell you something which I thought never to tell to any one,"
she said. "I meant to carry it as my secret out with me at the end of
my life. I have been looking on all these last years. You noticed
that; you thought perhaps I was just obeying my nature. But I wasn't.
I did not begin life looking on. I began it as eager, as expectant of
what life could give me as any girl that was ever born. And I had just
my first season, that was all." She smiled rather wistfully as her
thoughts went back to it. "I enjoyed my first season. I had hardly
ever been in London before. I was eighteen; and everybody was very
nice to me. At the end of July I went to stay for a month with some
friends of mine on the coast of Devonshire, and--some one else stayed
there, too. His name does not matter. I had met him during the season
a good deal, but until he came down to Devonshire I had not thought of
him more than as a friend. He was a little older than myself, not very
much, and just as poor. He had no prospects, and his profession was
diplomacy.... So that there was no possibility from the first. He
meant never to say anything; but there came an hour, and the truth was
out between us."
She stopped and gazed into the fire. The waters of the Channel ran in
sunlit ripples before her eyes; the red rocks of Bigbury Bay curved
warmly out on her right and her left; further away the towering
headlands loomed misty in the hot, still August air. A white yacht,
her sails hardly drawing, moved slowly westwards; the black smoke of a
steamer stained the sky far out; and on the beach there were just two
figures visible--herself and the man who had not meant to speak.
"We parted at once," she went on. "He was appointed a consul in West
Africa. I think--indeed I know--that he hoped to rise more quickly
that way. But trouble came and he was killed. Because of that one
hour, you see, when he spoke what he did not mean to speak, he was
killed." It seemed that there was the whole story told. But Pamela had
not told it all, and never did; for her mother had played a part in
its unfolding. It was Mrs. Mardale's ambition that her daughter should
make a great marriage; it was her daughter's misfortune that she knew
little of her daughter's character. Mrs. Mardale had remarked the
growing friendship between Pamela and the man, she had realised
that marriage was quite impossible, and she had thought, with her
short-sighted ingenuity, that if Pamela fell in love and found love
to be a thing of fruitless trouble, she would come the sooner to take
a sensible view of the world and marry where marriage was to her
worldly advantage. She thus had encouraged the couple to a greater
friendliness, throwing them together when she could have hindered
their companionship; she had even urged Pamela to accept that
invitation to Devonshire, knowing who would be the other guests. She
was disappointed afterwards when Pamela did not take the sensible
view; but she did not blame herself at all. For she knew nothing of
the suffering which her plan had brought about. Pamela had kept her
secret. Even the months of ill-health which followed upon that first
season had not opened the mother's eyes, and certainly she never
suspected the weary nights of sleeplessness and aching misery which
Pamela endured. Some hint of the pain of that bad past time, however,
Pamela now gave to Warrisden.
"I stayed as much at home in Leicestershire as possible," she said.
"You see there were my horses there; but even with them I was very
lonely. The time was long in passing, and it wasn't pleasant to think
that there would be so much of it yet, before it passed altogether. I
went up to London for the season each year, and I went out a great
deal. It helped me to keep from thinking."
The very simplicity with which she spoke gave an intensity to her
words. There was no affectation in Pamela Mardale. Warrisden was able
to fill out her hints, to understand her distress.
"All this is a great surprise to me," he said. "I have thought of you
always as one who had never known either great troubles or great joys.
I have hoped that some day you would wake, that I should find you
looking out on the world with the eagerness of youth. But I believed
eagerness would be a new thing to you."
He looked at her as she sat. The firelight was bright upon her face,
and touched her hair with light; her dark eyes shone; and his thought
was that which the schoolmaster at Roquebrune had once sadly pondered.
It seemed needlessly cruel, needlessly wanton that a girl so equipped
for happiness should, in her very first season, when the world was
opening like a fairyland, have been blindly struck down. There were so
many others who would have felt the blow less poignantly. She might
surely have been spared.
"You can guess, now," said Pamela, "why I have so persistently looked
on. I determined that I would never go through such distress again. I
felt that I would not dare to face it again." She suddenly covered her
face with her hands. "I don't think I could," she cried in a low,
piteous voice. "I don't know what I would do," as though once more the
misery of that time were closing upon her, so vivid were her
recollections.
And once more Warrisden felt, as he watched her, the shock of a
surprise. He had thought her too sedate, too womanly for her years,
and here she sat shrinking in a positive terror, like any child, from
the imagined recurrence of her years of trouble. Warrisden was moved
as he had seldom been. But he sat quite still, saying no word; and in
a little while she took her hands from her face and went on--
"My life was over, you see, at the very beginning, and I was resolved
it should be over. For the future I would get interested only in
trifling, unimportant things; no one should ever be more to me than a
friend whom I could relinquish; I would merely look on. I should grow
narrow, no doubt, and selfish." And, as Warrisden started, a smile
came on to her face. "Yes, you have been thinking that, too, and you
were right. But I didn't mind. I meant to take no risks. Nothing
serious should ever come near me. If I saw it coming, I would push it
away; and I have pushed it away."
"Until to-day, when you need my help?" Warrisden interrupted.
"Yes, until to-day," Pamela repeated softly.
Warrisden walked over to the window and stood with his back towards
her. The three tall poplars stood leafless up in front of him; the sky
was heavy with grey clouds; the wind was roaring about the chimneys;
and the roads ran with water. It was as cheerless a day as February
can produce, but to Warrisden it had something of a summer brightness.
The change for which he had hoped so long in vain had actually come to
pass.
"What do you want me to do?" he asked, turning again to the room.
"I want you to find Millie Stretton's husband," she replied; "and, at
all costs, to bring him home again."
"Millie Stretton's husband?" he repeated, in perplexity.
"Yes. Don't you remember the couple who stepped out of the dark house
in Berkeley Square and dared not whistle for a hansom--the truants?"
Warrisden was startled. "Those two!" he exclaimed. "Well, that's
strange. On the very night when we saw them, you were saying that
there was no road for you, no new road from Quetta to Seistan. I was
puzzling my brains, too, as to how in the world you were to be roused
out of your detachment; and there were the means visible all the time,
perhaps--who knows?--ordained." He sat down again in his chair.
"Where shall I look for Mr. Stretton?" he asked.
"I don't know. He went away to New York, six months ago, to make a
home for Millie and himself. He did not succeed, and he has
disappeared."
"Disappeared?" cried Warrisden.
"Oh, but of his own accord," said Pamela. "I can't tell you why; it
wouldn't be fair. I have no right to tell you. But he must be found,
and he must be brought back. Again I can't tell you why; but it is
most urgent."
"Is there any clue to help us?" Warrisden asked. "Had he friends in
New York?"
"No; but he has a friend in England," said Pamela, "and I think it's
just possible that the friend may know where he is to be found, for it
was upon his advice that Mr. Stretton went to New York."
"Tell me his name."
"Mr. Chase," Pamela replied. "He is head of a mission in Stepney
Green. Tony Stretton told me of him one morning in Hyde Park just
before he went away. He seemed to rely very much upon his judgment."
Warrisden wrote the name down in his pocket-book.
"Will he tell me, do you think, where Stretton is, even if he knows?
You say Stretton has disappeared of his own accord."
"I have thought of that difficulty," Pamela answered. "There is an
argument which you can use. Sir John Stretton, Tony's father, is ill,
and in all probability dying."
"I see. I can use the same argument to Stretton himself, I suppose,
when I find him?"
"I can give you no other," said Pamela; "but you can add to it. Mr.
Stretton will tell you that his father does not care whether he comes
back in time or not. He is sure to say that. But you can answer that
every night since he went away the candles have been lit in his
dressing-room and his clothes laid out by his father's orders, on the
chance that some evening he might walk in at the door."
That Sir John Stretton's illness was merely the pretext for Tony's
return both understood. The real reason why he must come home Pamela
did not tell. To her thinking Millie was not yet so deeply entangled
with Lionel Callon but that Tony's home-coming might set the tangle
right. A few weeks of companionship, and surely he would resume his
due place in his wife's thoughts. Pamela, besides, was loyal to her
sex. She had promised to safeguard Millicent; she was in no mind to
betray her.
"But bring him back," she cried, with a real passion. "So much depends
on his return, for Millie, for him, and for me, too. Yes, for me! If
you fail, it is I who fail; and I don't want failure. Save me from
it!"
"I'll try," Warrisden answered simply; and Pamela was satisfied.
Much depended, for Warrisden too, upon the success of his adventure.
If he failed, Pamela would retire again behind her barrier; she would
again resume the passive, indifferent attitude of the very old; she
would merely look on as before and wait for things to cease. If,
however, he succeeded, she would be encouraged to move forward still;
the common sympathies would have her in their grasp again; she might
even pass that turnpike gate of friendship and go boldly down the
appointed road of life. Thus success meant much for him. The fortunes
of the four people--Millicent, Tony, Pamela, and Warrisden--were
knotted together at this one point.
"Indeed, I'll try," he repeated,
Pamela's horse was brought round to the inn door. The dusk was coming
on.
"Which way do you go?" asked Warrisden.
"Down the hill."
"I will walk to the bottom with you. The road will be dangerous."
They went slowly down between the high elder hedges, Pamela seated on
her horse, Warrisden walking by her side. The wide level lowlands
opened out beneath them--fields of brown and green, black woods with
swinging boughs, and the broad high road with its white wood rails. A
thin mist swirled across the face of the country in the wind, so that
its every feature was softened and magnified. It loomed dim and
strangely distant, with a glamour upon it like a place of old romance.
To Pamela and Warrisden, as the mists wove and unwove about it, it had
a look of dreamland.
They reached the end of the incline, and Pamela stopped her horse.
"This is my way," said she, pointing along the highway with her whip.
"Yes," answered Warrisden. The road ran straight for some distance,
then crossed a wooden bridge and curved out of sight round the edge of
a clump of trees. "The new road," he said softly. "The new road from
Quetta to Seistan!"
Pamela smiled.
"This is Quetta," said she.
Warrisden laid his hand upon her horse's neck, and looked suddenly up
into her face.
"Where will be Seistan?" he asked in a low voice.
Pamela returned the look frankly. There came a softness into her dark
eyes. For a moment she let her hand rest lightly upon his sleeve, and
did not speak. She herself was wondering how far she was to travel
upon this new road.
"I cannot tell," she said very gently. "Nor, my friend, can you.
Only"--and her voice took on a lighter and a whimsical tone-"only I
start alone on my new road."
And she went forward into the level country. Warrisden climbed the
hill again, and turned when he had reached the top; but Pamela was out
of sight. The dusk and the mists had enclosed her.
CHAPTER X
MR. CHASE
The night had come when Warrisden stepped from the platform of the
station into the train. Pamela was by this time back at Whitewebs--he
himself was travelling to London; their day was over. He looked out of
the window. Somewhere three miles away the village of the three
poplars crowned the hill, but a thick wall of darkness and fog hid it
from his eyes. It seemed almost as if Pamela and he had met that day
only in thought at some village which existed only in a dream. The
train, however, rattled upon its way. Gradually he became conscious of
a familiar exhilaration. The day had been real. Not merely had it
signalled the change in Pamela, for which for so long he had wished;
not merely had it borne a blossom of promise for himself, but
something was to be done immediately, and the thing to be done was of
all things that which most chimed with his own desires. He was to take
the road again, and the craving for the road was seldom stilled for
long within his heart. He heard its call sung like a song to the
rhythm of the wheels. The very uncertainty of its direction tantalised
his thoughts.
Warrisden lodged upon the Embankment, and his rooms overlooked the
Thames. The mist lay heavy upon London, mid all that night the
steamboats hooted as they passed from bridge to bridge. Warrisden lay
long awake listening to them; each blast had its message for him, each
was like the greeting of a friend; each one summoned him, and to each
he answered with a rising joy, "I shall follow, I shall follow." The
boats passed down to the sea through the night mist. Many a time he
had heard them before, picturing the dark deck and the side lights,
red and green, and the yellow light upon the mast, and the man silent
at the wheel with the light from the binnacle striking up upon the
lines of his face. They were little river or coasting boats for the
most part, but he had never failed to be stirred by the long-drawn
melancholy of their whistles. They talked of distant lands and an
alien foliage.
He spent the following morning and the afternoon in the arrangement of
his affairs, and in the evening drove down to the mission house. It
stood in a dull by-street close to Stepney Green, a rambling building
with five rooms upon the ground floor panelled with varnished deal and
furnished with forms and rough tables, and on the floor above, a big
billiard-room, a bagatelle-room, and a carpenter's workshop. Mr. Chase
was superintending a boxing class in one of the lower rooms, and
Warrisden, when he was led up to him, received a shock of surprise. He
had never seen a man to the outward eye so unfitted for his work. He
had expected a strong burly person, cheery of manner and confident of
voice; he saw, however, a tall young man with a long pale face and a
fragile body. Mr. Chase was clothed in a clerical frock-coat of
unusual length, he wore linen of an irreproachable whiteness, and his
hands were fine and delicate as a woman's. He seemed indeed the
typical High Church curate fresh that very instant from the tea-cups
of a drawing-room.
"A gentleman to see you, sir," said the ex-army sergeant who had
brought forward Warrisden. He handed Warrisden's card to Chase, who
turned about and showed Warrisden his full face. Surprise had been
Warrisden's first sentiment, but it gave place in an instant to
distaste. The face which he saw was not ugly, but he disliked it. It
almost repelled him. There was no light in the eyes at all; they were
veiled and sunken; and the features repelled by reason of a queer
antagonism. Mr. Chase had the high narrow forehead of an ascetic, the
loose mouth of a sensualist, and a thin crop of pale and almost
colourless hair. Warrisden wondered why any one should come to this
man for advice, most of all a Tony Stretton. What could they have in
common--the simple, good-humoured, unintellectual subaltern of the
Coldstream, and this clerical exquisite? The problem was perplexing.
"You wish to see me?" asked Chase.
"If you please."
"Now? As you see, I am busy."
"I can wait."
"Thank you. The mission closes at eleven. If you can wait till then
you might come home with me, and we could talk in comfort."
It was nine o'clock. For two hours Warrisden followed Chase about the
mission, and with each half-hour his interest increased. However
irreconcilable with his surroundings Chase might appear to be, neither
he nor any of the members of the mission were aware of it. He was at
ease alike with the boys and the men; and the boys and the men were at
ease with him. Moreover, he was absolute master, although there were
rough men enough among his subjects. The fiercest boxing contest was
stopped in a second by a motion of that delicate hand.
"I used to have a little trouble," he said to Warrisden, "before I had
those wire frames fixed over the gas-jets. You see they cover the gas
taps. Before that was done, if there was any trouble, the first thing
which happened was that the room was in darkness. It took some time to
restore order;" and he passed on to the swimming-bath.
Mr. Chase was certainly indefatigable. Now he was giving a lesson in
wood-carving to a boy; now he was arranging an apprenticeship for
another in the carpenter's shop. Finally he led the way into the great
billiard-room, where only the older men were allowed.
"It is here that Stretton used to keep order?" said Warrisden; and
Chase at once turned quickly towards him.
"Oh," he said slowly, in a voice of comprehension, "I was wondering
what brought you here. Yes; this was the room."
Chase moved carelessly away, and spoke to some of the men about the
tables. But for the rest of the evening he was on his guard. More than
once his eyes turned curiously and furtively towards Warrisden. His
face was stubborn, and wore a look of wariness. Warrisden began to
fear lest he should get no answer to the question he had to put. No
appeal would be of any use--of that he felt sure. His argument must
serve--and would it serve?
Chase, at all events, made no attempt to avoid the interview. As the
hands of the clock marked eleven, and the rooms emptied, he came at
once to Warrisden.
"We can go now," he said; and unlocking a drawer, to Warrisden's
perplexity he filled his pockets with racket-balls. The motive for
that proceeding became apparent as they walked to the house where
Chase lodged. Their way lay through alleys, and as they walked the
children clustered about them, and Chase's pockets were emptied.
"We keep this house because men from the Universities come down and
put in a week now and then at the mission. My rooms are upstairs."
Chase's sitting-room was in the strangest contrast to the bareness of
the mission and the squalor of the streets. It was furnished with
luxury, but the luxury was that of a man of taste and knowledge. There
was hardly a piece of furniture which had not an interesting history;
the engravings and the brass ornaments upon the walls had been picked
up here and there in Italy. A bright fire blazed upon the hearth.
"What will you drink?" Chase asked, and brought from a cupboard bottle
after bottle of liqueurs. It seemed to Warrisden that the procession
of bottles would never end--some held liqueurs of which he had never
even heard the name; but concerning all of them Mr. Chase discoursed
with great knowledge and infinite appreciation.
"I can recommend this," he said tentatively, as he took up one fat
round bottle and held it up to the light. "It is difficult perhaps to
say definitely which is the best, but--yes, I can recommend this."
"Can't I have a whiskey and soda?" asked Warrisden, plaintively.
Mr. Chase looked at his companion with a stare.
"Of course you can," he replied. But his voice was one of
disappointment, and with an almost imperceptible shrug of the
shoulders he fetched a Tantalus and a siphon of seltzer.
"Help yourself," he said; and lighting a gold-tipped cigarette he drew
up a chair and began to talk. And so Warrisden came at last to
understand how Tony Stretton had gained his great faith in Mr. Chase.
Chase was a talker of a rare quality. He sat stooping over the fire
with his thin hands outspread to the blaze, and for half an hour
Warrisden was enchained. All that had repelled him in the man, all
that had aroused his curiosity, was soon lost to sight. He yielded
himself up as if to some magician. Chase talked not at all of his work
or of the many strange incidents which he must needs have witnessed in
its discharge. He spoke of other climates and bright towns with a
scholarship which had nothing of pedantry, and an observation human as
it was keen. Chase, with the help of his Livy, had traced Hannibal's
road across the Alps and had followed it on foot; he spoke of another
march across snow mountains of which Warrisden had never till this
moment heard--the hundred days of a dead Sultan of Morocco on the
Passes of the Atlas, during which he led his forces back from Tafilet
to Rabat. Chase knew nothing of this retreat but what he had read. Yet
he made it real to Warrisden, so vividly did his imagination fill up
the outlines of the written history. He knew his Paris, his
Constantinople. He had bathed from the Lido and dreamed on the Grand
Canal. He spoke of the peeling frescoes in the Villa of Countess
Guiccioli above Leghorn, of the outlook from the terrace over the
vines and the olive trees to the sea where Shelley was drowned; and
where Byron's brig used to round into the wind and with its sails
flapping drop anchor under the hill. For half an hour Warrisden
wandered through Europe in the pleasantest companionship, and then
Chase stopped abruptly and leaned back in his chair.
"I was forgetting," he said, "that you had come upon a particular
errand. It sometimes happens that I see no one outside the mission
people for a good while, and during those periods when I get an
occasion I am apt to talk too much. What can I do for you?"
The spirit had gone from his voice, his face. He leaned back in his
chair, a man tired out. Warrisden looked at the liqueur bottles
crowded on the table, with Chase's conversation still fresh in his
mind. Was Chase a man at war with himself, he wondered, who was living
a life for which he had no taste that he might the more completely
escape a life which his conscience disapproved? Or was he deliberately
both hedonist and Puritan, giving to each side of his strange nature,
in turn, its outlet and gratification?
"You have something to say to me," Chase continued. "I know quite well
what it is about."
"Stretton," said Warrisden.
"Yes; you mentioned him in the billiard-room. Well?"
Chase was not looking at Warrisden. He sat with his eyes half-closed,
his elbows on the arms of his chair, his finger-tips joined under his
chain, and his head thrown back. There was no expression upon his face
but one of weariness. Would he answer? Could he answer? Warrisden was
in doubt, indeed in fear. He led to his question warily.
"It was you who recommended Stretton to try horse-breeding in
Kentucky."
"Yes," said Chase; and he added, "after he had decided of his own
accord to go away."
"He failed."
"Yes."
"And he has disappeared."
Chase opened his eyes, but did not turn them to his companion.
"I did not advise his disappearance," he said. "That, like his
departure, was his own doing."
"No doubt," Warrisden agreed. "But it is thought that you might have
heard from him since his disappearance."
Chase nodded his head.
"I have."
"It is thought that you might know where he is now."
"I do," said Mr. Chase. Warrisden was sensibly relieved. One-half of
his fear was taken from him. Chase knew, at all events, where Stretton
was to be found. Now he must disclose his knowledge. But before he
could put a question, Chase said languidly--
"You say 'it is thought,' Mr. Warrisden. By whom is it thought? By his
wife?"
"No. But by a great friend of hers and his."
"Oh," said Chase, "by Miss Pamela Mardale, then."
Warrisden started forward.
"You know her?" he asked.
"No. But Stretton mentioned her to me in a letter. She has sent you to
me in fulfilment of a promise. I understand."
The words were not very intelligible to Warrisden. He knew nothing of
Pamela's promise to Tony Stretton. But, on the other hand, he saw that
Mr. Chase was giving a more attentive ear to what he said. He betrayed
no ignorance of the promise.
"I am sent to fetch Stretton home," he said. "I want you to tell me
where he is."
Chase shook his head.
"No," he said gently.
"It is absolutely necessary that Stretton should come back," Warrisden
declared with great deliberation. And with no less deliberation Chase
replied--
"In Stretton's view it is absolutely necessary that he should stay
away!"
"His father is dying."
Chase started forward in his chair, and stared at Warrisden for a long
time.
"Is that an excuse?" he said at length.
It was, as Warrisden was aware. He did not answer the question.
"It is the truth," he replied; and he replied truthfully.
Chase rose from his chair and walked once or twice across the room. He
came back to the fire, and leaning an elbow on the mantelpiece stared
into the coals. Warrisden sat very still. He had used his one
argument--he could add nothing to it; he could only wait for the
answer in a great anxiety. So much hung upon that answer for Stretton
and his wife, for Pamela, for himself! The fortunes of all four were
knotted together. At last the answer came.
"I promised Tony that I would keep his secret," said Chase. "But when
he asked for the promise, and when I gave it, the possibility of his
father dying was not either in his mind or mine. We considered--in
letters, of course--other possibilities; but not this one. I don't
think I have the right to remain silent. Even in the face of this
possibility I should have kept my promise, I think, if you had come
from his wife--for I know why he disappeared. But as things are, I
will tell you. Tony Stretton is in the North Sea on a trawler."
"In the North Sea?" exclaimed Warrisden. And he smiled. After all, the
steamboats on the river had last night called to him with a particular
summons.
"Yes," continued Chase, and he fetched from his writing-desk a letter
in Tony's hand. "He came back to England two months ago. He drifted
across the country. He found himself at Yarmouth with a few shillings
in his pocket. He knew something of the sea. He had sailed his own
yacht in happier times. He was in great trouble. He needed time to
think out a new course of life. He hung about on Gorleston pier for a
day or two, and then was taken on by a skipper who was starting out
short of hands, he signed for eight weeks, and he wrote to me the day
before he started. That's four weeks ago."
"Can I reach him?" Warrisden asked.
"Yes. The boat is the _Perseverance_, and it belongs to the Blue
Fleet. A steam cutter goes out every day from Billingsgate to fetch
the fish. I know one of the owners. His son comes down to the mission.
I can get you a passage. When can you start?"
"At any time," replied Warrisden. "The sooner the better."
"To-morrow, then," said Chase. "Meet me at the entrance to
Billingsgate Market at half-past eleven. It will take you forty-eight
hours with ordinary luck to reach the Dogger Bank. Of course, if
there's a fog in the Thames the time will be longer. And I warn you,
living is rough on a fish-carrier."
"I don't mind that," said Warrisden, with a smile. He went away with a
light heart, and that night wrote a letter to Pamela, telling her of
his interview with Mr. Chase. The new road seemed after all likely to
prove a smooth one. As he wrote, every now and then a steamboat hooted
from the river, and the rain pattered upon his window. He flung it up
and looked out. There was no fog to-night, only the rain fell, and
fell gently. He prayed that there might be no fog upon the Thames
to-morrow.
Mr. Chase, too, heard the rain that night. He sat in his armchair
listening to it with a decanter at his elbow half filled with a liquid
like brown sherry. At times he poured a little into his glass and
drank it slowly, crouching over his fire. Somewhere in the darkness of
the North Sea Tony Stretton was hidden. Very likely at this moment he
was standing upon the deck of his trawler with his hands upon the
spokes of the wheel, and his eyes peering forward through the rain,
keeping his long night-watch while the light from the binnacle struck
upwards upon the lines of his face. Mr. Chase sat late in a muse. But
before he went to bed he locked the decanter and the glass away in a
private cupboard, and took the key with him into his bedroom.
CHAPTER XI
ON THE DOGGER BANK
The _City of Bristol_ swung out of the huddle of boats off
Billingsgate Wharf at one o'clock on the next afternoon. Mr. Chase,
who stood upon the quay amongst the porters and white-jacketed
salesmen, turned away with an episcopal wave of the hand. Warrisden
leaned over the rail of the steamer's bridge, between the captain and
the pilot, and shouted a reply. The _City of Bristol_, fish-cutter of
300 tons, was a boat built for speed, long and narrow, sitting low on
the water, with an upstanding forecastle forward, a small saloon in
the stern, and a tiny cabin for the captain under the bridge on deck.
She sidled out into the fair way and went forward upon her slow,
intricate journey to the sea. Below the Tower she took her place in
the long, single file of ships winding between the mud banks, and
changed it as occasion served; now she edged up by a string of barges,
now in a clear broad space she made a spurt and took the lead of a
barquantine, which swam in indolence, with bare masts, behind a tug;
and at times she stopped altogether, like a carriage blocked in
Piccadilly. The screw thrashed the water, ceased, and struck again
with a suggestion of petulance at the obstacles which barred the
boat's way. Warrisden, too, chafed upon the bridge. A question pressed
continually upon his mind--"Would Stretton return?" He had discovered
where Stretton was to be found. The tall grey spire of Stepney Church
rose from behind an inlet thick with masts, upon the left; he was
already on his way to find him. But the critical moment was yet to
come. He had still to use his arguments; and as he stood watching the
shipping with indifferent eyes the arguments appeared most weak and
unpersuasive. Stretton's father was dying, it was true. The son's
return was no doubt a natural obligation. But would the natural
obligation hold when the father was unnatural? Those months in New
York had revealed one quality in Tony Stretton, at all events; he
could persist. The very name of the trawler in which he was at work
seemed to Warrisden of a bad augury for his success--the
_Perseverance!_
Greenwich, with its hill of grass, slipped behind on the right; at the
Albert Docks a huge Peninsular and Oriental steamer, deck towering
above deck, swung into the line; the high chimneys of the cement works
on the Essex flats began to stand out against the pale grey sky, each
one crowned with white smoke like a tuft of wool; the barges, under
their big brown sprit-sails, now tacked this way and that across a
wider stream; the village of Greenhithe and the white portholes of the
_Worcester_ showed upon the right.
"Would Stretton return?" The question revolved in Warrisden's mind as
the propeller revolved in the thick brown water. The fortunes of four
people hung upon the answer, and no answer could be given until a
night, and a day, and another night had passed, until he saw the Blue
Fleet tossing far away upon the Dogger Bank. Suppose that the answer
were "No!" He imagined Pamela sinking back into lassitude, narrowing
to that selfishness which she, no less than he, foresaw; looking on
again at the world's show with the lack-lustre indifference of the
very old.
At Gravesend the _City of Bristol_ dropped her pilot, a little,
white-bearded, wizened man, who all the way down the river, balancing
himself upon the top-rail of the bridge, like some nautical Blondin,
had run from side to side the while he exchanged greetings with the
anchored ships; and just opposite to Tilbury Fort, with its scanty
fringe of trees, she ran alongside of a hulk and took in a load of
coal.
"We'll go down and have tea while they are loading her," said the
captain.
The dusk was falling when Warrisden came again on deck, and a cold
wind was blowing from the north-west. The sharp stem of the boat was
cutting swiftly through the quiet water; the lift of the sea under her
forefoot gave to her a buoyancy of motion--she seemed to have become a
thing alive. The propeller cleft the surface regularly; there was no
longer any sound of petulance in its revolutions, rather there was a
throb of joy as it did its work unhindered. Throughout the ship a
steady hum, a steady vibration ran. The _City of Bristol_ was not
merely a thing alive; it was a thing satisfied.
Upon Warrisden, too, there descended a sense of peace. He was _en
rapport_ with the ship. The fever of his questioning left him. On
either side the arms of the shore melted into the gathering night. Far
away upon his right the lights of Margate shone brightly, like a chain
of gold stretched out upon the sea; in front of him there lay a wide
and misty bay, into which the boat drove steadily. All the unknown
seemed hidden there; all the secret unrevealed Beyond. There came
whispers out of that illimitable bay to Warrisden's ears; whispers
breathed upon the north wind, and all the whispers were whispers of
promise, bidding him take heart. Warrisden listened and believed,
uplifted by the grave quiet of the sea and its mysterious width.
The _City of Bristol_ turned northward into the great channel of the
Swin, keeping close to the lightships on the left, so close that
Warrisden from the bridge could look straight down upon their decks.
The night had altogether come--a night of stars. Clusters of lights,
low down upon the left, showed where the towns of Essex stood; upon
the light hand the homeward-bound ships loomed up ghost-like and
passed by; on the right, too, shone out the great green globes of the
Mouse light like Neptune's reading-lamps. Sheltered behind the canvas
screen at the corner of the bridge Warrisden looked along the rake of
the unlighted deck below. He thought of Pamela waiting for his return
at Whitewebs, but without impatience. The great peace and silence of
the night were the most impressive things he had ever known. The
captain's voice complaining of the sea jarred upon him.
"It's no Bobby's job," said the captain in a low voice. "It's home
once in three weeks from Saturday to Monday, if you are in luck, and
the rest of your time you're in carpet slippers on the bridge. You'll
sleep in my chatoo, to-night. I sha'n't turn in until we have passed
the Outer Gabbard and come to the open sea. That won't be till four in
the morning."
Warrisden understood that he was being offered the captain's cabin.
"No, thanks," said he. "The bench of the saloon will do very well for
me."
The captain did not press his offer.
"Yes; there's more company in the saloon," he said. "I often sleep
there myself. You are bound for the Mission ship, I suppose?"
"No; I want to find a man on the trawler _Perseverance_."
The captain turned. Warrisden could not see his face, but he knew from
his attitude that he was staring at him in amazement.
"Then you must want to see him pretty badly," he commented. "The No'th
Sea in February and March is not a Bobby's job."
"Bad weather is to be expected?" asked Warrisden.
"It has been known," said the captain dryly; and before the lights of
the Outer Gabbard winked good-bye on the starboard quarter at four
o'clock in the morning, the _City of Bristol_ was taking the water
over her deck.
Warrisden rolled on the floor of the saloon--for he could not keep his
balance on the narrow bench--and tried in vain to sleep. But the
strong light of a lamp, swinging from the roof, glared upon his eyes,
the snores of his companions trumpeted in his ears. Moreover, the heat
was intolerable. Five men slept in the bunks--Warrisden made a sixth.
At four in the morning the captain joined the party through his love
of company. The skylight and the door were both tightly closed, a big
fire burned in the stove, and a boiling kettle of tea perpetually
puffed from its spout a column of warm, moist steam. Warrisden felt
his skin prickly beneath his clothes; he gasped for fresh air.
Living would be rough upon the fish-carrier, Chase had told him; and
rough Warrisden found it. In the morning the steward rose, and made
tea by the simple process of dropping a handful of tea into the kettle
and filling it up with water. A few minutes later he brought a dish of
ham and eggs from the galley, and slapped it down on the table.
"Breakfast," he cried; and the five men opened their eyes, rubbed
them, and without any other preparation sat down and ate. Warrisden
slipped up the companion, unscrewed the skylight and opened it for the
space of an inch. Then he returned.
The _City of Bristol_ was rolling heavily, and Warrisden noticed with
surprise that all of the five men gave signs of discomfort. Surely, he
thought, they must be used to heavy weather. But, nevertheless,
something was wrong; they did not talk. Finally, the captain looked
upwards, and brought his hand down upon the table.
"I felt something was wrong," said he; "the skylight's open."
All stared up to the roof.
"So it is."
"I did that," Warrisden said humbly.
At once all the faces were turned on him in great curiosity.
"Now why?" asked the captain. "Don't you like it nice and snug?"
"Yes; oh yes," Warrisden said hurriedly.
"Well, then!" said the captain; and the steward went on deck and
screwed the skylight down.
"After all, it's only for thirty-six hours," thought Warrisden, as he
subsequently bathed in a pail on deck. But he was wrong; for the Blue
Fleet had gone a hundred miles north to the Fisher Bank, and thither
the _City of Bristol_ followed it.
The _City of Bristol_ sailed on to the Fisher Bank, and found an empty
sea. It hunted the Blue Fleet for half-a-dozen hours, and, as night
fell, it came upon a single trawler with a great flare light suspended
from its yard.
"They're getting in their trawl," said the captain; and he edged up
within earshot.
"Where's the Blue Fleet?" he cried.
"Gone back to the Dogger," came the answer.
The captain swore, and turned southwards. For four days and nights
Warrisden pitched about on the fish-carrier and learned many things,
such as the real meaning of tannin in tea, and the innumerable medical
uses to which "Friar's Balsam" can be put. On the morning of the fifth
day the _City of Bristol_ steamed into the middle of the fleet, and
her engines stopped.
These were the days before the steam-trawler. The sailing-ships were
not as yet laid up, two by two, alongside Gorleston quay, and knocked
down for a song to any purchaser. Warrisden looked over a grey, savage
sea. The air was thick with spindrift. The waves leaped exultingly up
from windward and roared away to leeward from under the cutter's keel
in a steep, uprising hill of foam. All about him the sailing-boats
headed to the wind, sinking and rising in the furrows, so that
Warrisden would just see a brown topsail over the edge of a steep
roller like a shark's fin, and the next instant the dripping hull of
the boat flung out upon a breaking crest.
"You will have to look slippy when the punt from the _Perseverance_
comes alongside with her fish," the captain shouted. "The punt will
give you a passage back to the _Perseverance_, but I don't think you
will be able to return. There's a no'th-westerly gale blowing up, and
the sea is increasing every moment. However, there will be another
cutter up to-morrow, and if it's not too rough you could be put on
board of her."
It took Warrisden a full minute to realise the meaning of the
captain's words. He looked at the tumbling, breaking waves, he
listened to the roar of the wind through the rigging.
"The boats won't come alongside to-day," he cried.
"Won't they?" the skipper replied. "Look!"
Certainly some man[oe]uvre was in progress. The trawlers were all
forming to windward in a rough semicircle about the cutter. Warrisden
could see boat tackle being rigged to the main yards and men standing
about the boats capsized on deck. They were actually intending to put
their fish on board in the face of the storm.
"You see, with the gale blowing up, they mayn't get a chance to put
their fish on board for three or four days after this," the captain
explained. "Oh, you can take it from me. The No'th Sea is not a
Bobby's job."
As Warrisden watched, one by one the trawlers dropped their boats, and
loaded them with fish-boxes. The boats pushed off, three men to each,
with their life-belts about their oil-skins, and came down with the
wind towards the fish-carrier. The trawlers bore away, circled round
the _City of Bristol_, and took up their formation to leeward, so
that, having discharged their fish, the boats might drop down again
with the wind to their respective ships. Warrisden watched the boats,
piled up with fish-boxes, coming through the welter of the sea. It
seemed some desperate race was being rowed.
"Can you tell me which is the boat from the _Perseverance?_" he asked.
"I think it's the fifth," said the captain.
The boats came down, each one the kernel of a globe of spray.
Warrisden watched, admiring how cleverly they chose the little gaps
and valleys in the crests of the waves. Each moment he looked to see a
boat tossed upwards and overturned; each moment he dreaded that boat
would be the fifth. But no boat was overturned. One by one they passed
under the stern of the City of Bristol, and came alongside under the
shelter of its wall.
The fifth boat ranged up. A man stood up in the stern.
"The _Perseverance_," he cried. "Nine boxes." And as he spoke a great
sea leapt up against the windward bow of the cutter. The cutter rolled
from it suddenly, her low bulwarks dipped under water on the leeward
side, close by the _Perseverance_ boat.
"Shove off!" the man cried, who was standing up; and as he shouted he
lurched and fell into the bottom of the boat. The two men in the bows
pushed off with their oars; but they were too late. The cutter's
bulwark caught the boat under the keel; it seemed she must be upset,
and men and boxes whelmed in the sea, unless a miracle happened. But
the miracle did happen. As the fish-cutter righted she scooped on to
her deck the boat, with its boxes and its crew. The incident all
seemed to happen within the fraction of a second. Not a man upon the
fish-cutter had time to throw out a rope. Warrisden saw the cutter's
bulwarks dip, the sailor falling in the boat, and the boat upon the
deck of the cutter in so swift a succession that he had not yet
realised disaster was inevitable before disaster was avoided.
The sailor rose from the bottom of the boat and stepped on deck, a
stalwart, dripping figure.
"From the _Perseverance_, sir. Nine boxes," he said, looking up to the
captain on the bridge; and Warrisden, leaning by the captain's side
upon the rail, knew the sailor to be Tony Stretton. The accent of the
voice would have been enough to assure him; but Warrisden knew the
face too.
"This is the man I want," he said to the captain.
"You must be quick, then," the captain replied. "Speak to him while
the boat is being unloaded."
Warrisden descended on to the deck.
"Mr. Stretton," said he.
The sailor swung round quickly. There was a look of annoyance upon his
face.
"You are surely making a mistake," said he, abruptly. "We are not
acquainted," and he turned back to the fish-boxes.
"I'm not making a mistake," replied Warrisden. "I have come out to the
North Sea in order to find you."
Stretton ceased from his work and stood up. He led the way to the
stern of the cutter, where the two men were out of earshot.
"Now," he said. He stood in front of Warrisden, in his sea-boots and
his oilskins, firmly planted, yet swaying to the motion of the ship.
There was not merely annoyance in his face, but he had the stubborn
and resolute look of a man not lightly to be persuaded. Standing there
on the cutter's deck, backed by the swinging seas, there was even an
air of mastery about him which Warrisden had not expected. His
attitude seemed, somehow, not quite consistent with his record of
failure.
"Now," said Stretton, "we must be quick. The sea is getting worse each
minute, and I have to get back to the _Perseverance_. You are----?"
"Alan Warrisden, a stranger to you."
"Yes," Stretton interrupted; "how did you find me out?"
"Chase told me."
Stretton's face flushed angrily.
"He had no right to tell you. I wished for these few weeks to be
alone. He gave me his word he would tell no one."
"He had to break his word," said Warrisden, firmly. "It is necessary
that you should come home at once."
Stretton laughed. Warrisden was clinging to a wire stay from the
cutter's mizzen-mast, and even so could hardly keep his feet. He had a
sense of coming failure from the very ease with which Stretton stood
resting his hands upon his hips, unsupported on the unsteady deck.
"I cannot come," said Stretton abruptly; and he turned away. As he
turned Warrisden shouted--for in that high wind words carried in no
other way--"Your father, Sir John Stretton, is dying."
Stretton stopped. He looked for a time thoughtfully into Warrisden's
face; but there was no change in his expression by which Warrisden
could gather whether the argument would prevail or no. And when at
last he spoke, it was to say--
"But he has not sent for me."
It was the weak point in Warrisden's argument, and Stretton had, in
his direct way, come to it at once. Warrisden was silent.
"Well?" asked Stretton. "He has not sent for me?"
"No," Warrisden admitted; "that is true."
"Then I will not come."
"But though he has not sent for you, it is very certain that he wishes
for your return," Warrisden urged. "Every night since you have been
away the candles have been lighted in your dressing-room and your
clothes laid out, in the hope that on one evening you will walk in at
the door. On the very first night, the night of the day on which you
went, that was done. It was done by Sir John Stretton's orders, and by
his orders it has always since been done."
Just for a moment Warrisden thought that his argument would prevail.
Stretton's face softened; then came a smile which was almost wistful
about his lips, his eyes had a kindlier look. And the kindlier look
remained. Kindliness, too, was the first tone audible in his voice as
he replied; but the reply itself yielded nothing.
"He has not sent for me."
He looked curiously at Warrisden, as if for the first time he became
aware of him as a man acting from motives, not a mere instrument of
persuasion.
"After all, who did send you?" he asked. "My wife?"
"No."
"Who then?"
"Miss Pamela Mardale."
Stretton was startled by the name. It was really the strongest
argument Warrisden had in his armoury. Only he was not aware of its
strength.
"Oh," said Stretton, doubtfully; "so Miss Mardale sent you!"
He thought of that morning in the Row; of Pamela's words--"I still
give the same advice. Do not leave your wife." He recalled the promise
she had given, although it was seldom long absent from his thoughts.
It might be that she sent this message in fulfilment of that promise.
It might be that, for some unknown reason, he was now needed at his
wife's side. But he had no thought of distrust; he had great faith in
Millicent. She despised him, yes; but he did not distrust her. And,
again, it might be that Pamela was merely sending him this news
thinking he would wish to hear of it in time. After all, Pamela was
his friend. He looked out on the wild sea. Already the boats were
heading back through the foam, each to its trawler.
"One must take one's risks," he said. "So much I have learnt here in
the North Sea. Look!" and he pointed to the boats. "Those boats are
taking theirs. Yes; whether it's lacing your topsail or taking in a
reef, one must take one's risks. I will not come."
He went back to the middle of the ship. The punt of the _Perseverance_
was already launched, the two fishermen waiting in it. As it rose on a
swell, Stretton climbed over the bulwarks and dropped into the stern.
"Good-bye," he said. "I have signed on for eight weeks, and only four
have passed. I cannot run away and leave the ship short-handed. Thank
you for coming; but one must take one's risks."
The boat was pushed off and headed towards the _Perseverance_. The
waves had increased, the crests toppled down the green slopes in foam.
Slowly the boat was rowed down to the trawler, the men now stopping
and backing water, now dashing on. Warrisden saw them reach the ship's
side and climb on board, and he saw the boat slung upwards and brought
in on to the deck. Then the screw of the _City of Bristol_ struck the
water again. Lurching through the heavy seas, she steamed southwards.
In a few minutes the Blue Fleet was lost to sight.
CHAPTER XII
TONY'S INSPIRATION
Warrisden had failed. This was the account of his mission which he had
to give to Pamela Mardale; and he gave it without excuses. He landed
at Billingsgate Wharf at eleven o'clock on the second day after the
sails of the Blue Fleet had dropped out of sight behind the screen of
breaking waves. That afternoon he travelled down to the village of the
three poplars. It was night when he stepped out of the train on to the
platform of the little station. One can imagine what bitter and
humiliating thoughts occupied his mind. Away on the crest of the hill
the lights of the village shone brightly through the clear night air,
just as the lights of Margate had shone across the bay when the
steam-cutter had sprung like a thing alive to the lift of the sea
beneath her bows. Then all the breeze had whispered promises; now the
high hopes were fallen. "Do not fail!" Pamela had cried, with a
veritable passion, hating failure as an indignity, he could hear the
words in the very accent of her voice. Once she had suffered failure,
but it was not to be endured again. That was what she had meant; and
he had failed. He drove along that straight road which he had
traversed with Pamela at his side; he slept under the roof of the inn
where Pamela had claimed his help. The help had been fruitless, and
the next morning he rode down the hill and along the load with the
white wood rails--"the new road"--to tell her so. The sun was bright;
there was a sparkle of spring in the air; on the black leafless boughs
birds sang. He looked back to the three poplars pointing to the sky
from the tiny garden on the crest of the hill. Quetta--yes! But it
seemed there was to be no Seistan.
He had started early, fearing that there might be a meet that day; and
he had acted wisely, for in the hall there were one or two men
lounging by the fire in scarlet, and Pamela was wearing her
riding-habit when she received him. He was shown into a little room
which opened on to the garden behind the house, and thither Pamela
came.
"You are alone!" she said.
"Yes; Stretton would not come."
"None the less, I am very grateful."
She smiled as she spoke, and sat down, with her eyes upon him, waiting
for his story. The disappointment was visible upon his face, but not
upon hers. Pamela's indeed, was to him at this moment rather
inscrutable. It was not indifferent, however. He recognised that, and
was, in a way, consoled. It had been his fear that at the first word
she would dismiss the subject, and turn her back on it for good. On
the contrary, she was interested, attentive.
"You found him, then?" she asked.
"Yes. You would like to hear what passed?"
"Of course."
"Even though I failed?"
She looked at him with some surprise at his insistence.
"Yes, yes," she said, a little impatiently.
"We were nearly three days longer in reaching the Blue Fleet than we
anticipated," he began. "Stretton came on board the fish-cutter----"
And Pamela interrupted him--
"Why were you nearly three days longer? Tell me about your own journey
out to the fleet from the beginning."
She was, in fact, as much interested in her messenger as in the errand
upon which she had sent him. Warrisden began to see that his journey
after all was not entirely a defeat. The alliance to which they had
set their hands up there in the village on the hill was bearing its
fruit. It had set them in a new relationship to each other, and in a
closer intimacy.
He told the story of his voyage, making light of his hardships on the
steam-cutter. She, on the other hand, made much of them.
"To quote your captain," she remarked, with a smile, "it was not a
Bobby's job."
Warrisden laughed, and told her of Stretton's arrival in the punt of
the _Perseverance_. He described the way in which he had come on
board; he related the conversation which had passed between them at
the stern of the cutter.
"He hadn't the look of a man who had failed," Warrisden continued. "He
stood there on the swinging deck with his legs firmly planted apart,
as easily as if he were standing on a stone pavement. I, on the other
hand, was clinging desperately to a stay. He stood there, with the
seas swinging up behind him, and stubbornly refused to come."
"You told him of his father's illness?" asked Pamela.
"He replied that his father had not sent for him."
"You spoke of the candles lit every night?"
"His answer was the same. His father had not sent for him. Besides, he
had his time to serve. He had signed on for eight weeks. There was
only one moment when I thought that there was a chance I might
persuade him; and, indeed, my persuasions had really nothing to do
with it at all. It was just the mention of your name."
"My name?" asked Pamela, in surprise.
"Yes. In answer to a question of his I told him that I had been sent
out by you, and for a moment he faltered."
Pamela nodded her head in comprehension.
"I understand; but he refused in the end?"
"Yes. He said, 'One must take one's risks.'"
Pamela repeated the sentence softly to herself; and Warrisden crossed
over to her side. His voice took a gentler note, and one still more
serious than that which he had used.
"Do you know what I think?" he asked. "You sent me out with a message
to Stretton. I think that he has sent me back with a message for
you--'One must take one's risks.' He said that he had learned that in
the North Sea. He pointed to the little boats carrying the fish-boxes
to the steamer through the heavy, breaking seas. Each man in each of
the boats was taking his risks. 'Whether it's lacing your topsail or
taking in a reef,' he said, 'one must take one's risks.'"
Pamela was silent for awhile after he had spoken. She sat with her
hands folded in her lap, and her face most serious. Then she looked up
at her companion with a very friendly smile; but she did not answer
him at all. And when she spoke, she spoke words which utterly
surprised him. All the time since the ketches had disappeared behind
the waves he had been plagued with the thought of the distress which
defeat would cause her; and here she was saying--
"I am very glad that you went out to the North Sea for me, even though
the journey proved fruitless. It makes us so much the better friends,
doesn't it? And that is a gain for me. Think of it that way, and you
will not mind the hardships and the waste of time."
She held out her hand--rather a rare act with her--and Warrisden took
it. Then came the explanation why defeat meant so little just at this
time.
"I need not have sent you at all," she continued, "could I have
foreseen. Sir John Stretton died yesterday afternoon, suddenly. I
received a telegram last night from Millie. So Tony will naturally
come home when his four weeks are up. I wrote last night to Millie,
telling her where Tony was." Then she added, "But I am glad that I did
not foresee."
She rose from her chair, and they walked out through the hall to the
front of the house. A groom was holding Pamela's horse. The others who
were hunting that day had already ridden off. Warrisden helped her
into the saddle, and she rode away.
Sir John had died, and Stretton would now naturally come home. That
explained to Warrisden how it was that Pamela made so little of the
defeat. But it was not the whole explanation. Pamela was waking from
her long sleep, like the princess in the fairy tale, and the mere act
of waking was a pleasure. In the stir of emotions, hitherto rigorously
suppressed, in the exercise of sympathies, she found a delight such as
one may find in the mere stretching of one's muscles after a deep
rest. The consciousness of life as a thing enjoyable began to tingle
in her. She was learning again lessons which she remembered once to
have learned before. The joy of being needed by those one needs--there
was one of them. She had learned a new one to-day--"One must take
one's risks." She repeated the sentence over to herself as she rode
between the hedgerows on this morning which had the sparkle of spring.
A few days ago she would have put that view of life away from her.
Now, old as it was, simple as it was, she pondered upon it as though
it were a view quite novel. She found it, moreover, pleasant. She had
travelled, indeed, further along the new road than she was aware. The
truth is that she had rather hugged to herself the great trouble which
had overshadowed her life. She had done so unwittingly. She had
allowed it to dominate her after it had lost its power to dominate,
and from force of habit. She began to be aware of it now that she had
stepped out from her isolation, and was gathering again the strings of
her life into her hands.
* * * * *
But Pamela was wrong in her supposition that since Sir John's death
the danger for Millicent was at an end. Tony Stretton would now return
home, she thought; and nothing was further from Tony's thoughts. At
the time when Pamela was riding through the lanes of Leicestershire on
that morning of early spring, Tony was lying in his bunk in the cabin
of the _Perseverance_ reading over, for the thousandth time, certain
letters which he kept beneath his pillow. This week he kept the long
night watch from midnight until eight of the morning; it was now
eleven, and he had the cabin to himself. The great gale had blown
itself out. The trawl, which for three days had remained safely stowed
under the lee bulwarks, was now dragging behind the boat; with her
topsails set the ketch was sailing full and by the wind; and down the
open companion the sunlight streamed into the cabin and played like
water upon the floor. The letters Tony Stretton was reading were those
which Millie had sent him. Disappointment was plain in every line;
they were sown with galling expressions of
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