TH A.E .W. MASO LIBRARY WIVERSITY 07 CALIFORNIA RIVERSIDE THE TRUANTS BY THE SAME AUTHOR THE FOUR FEATHERS. CLEMENTINA. MIRANDA OF THE BALCONY. THE WATCHERS. THE COURTSHIP OF MORRICE BUCKLER. THE PHILANDERERS. LAWRENCE CLAVEMNG. ENSIGN KNIG1ITLEY, AND OTHEB STORIES. THE TEUANTS BY A. E. W. MASON AUTHOR OF "THE FOUR FEATHERS," "MIRANDA OF THE BALCOJiY," ETC., ETC. LONDON SMITH, ELDER & CO., 15, WATERLOO PLACE 1904 (All rights reserved) MISTED BT WILLIAM CLOWES ASD SONS, L'MITrP, LONDON ASD BECCLE9. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. Pamela. Mardale learns a very little History 1 II. Pamela looks ox ... ... ... ... 15 III. The Truants ... ... ... ... 25 IV. Tony Stretton makes a Proposal ... ... 33 V. Pamela makes a Promise ... ... 42 VI. News of Tony ... ... ... ... 49 VII. The Lady on the Stair3 ... ... 58 VIII. Gideon's Fleece ... ... ... ... 71 IX. The New Eoad ... ... ... 77 X. Mr. Chase ... ... ... ... 88 XI. On the Dogger Bank ... ... ... 98 XII. Tony's Inspiration ... ... ... ... 110 XIII. Tony Stretton returns to Stepney ... 120 XIV. Tony Stretton pays a Visit to Berkeley Square ... ... ... ... 129 XV. Mr. Mudge comes to the Rescue ... ... 138 XVI. The Foreign Legion ... ... ... 145 XVII. Callon leaves England ... ... ... 155 XVIII. South of Ouaf.gla ... ... ... 1GG vi CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE XIX. The Tcrstike Gate ... ... ... 178 XX. Mr. Chase does xot answer ... ... 188 XXI. Callon redivtvus ... ... ... 198 XXII. Mr. Mudge's Confession ... ... 209 XXIII. Roquebruxe Revisited ... ... ... 217 XXIV. The Exd of the Exfeeimext ... ... 228 XXV. Tony Strettox bids Farewell to the Legion 237 XXVI. Bad News for Pamela ... ... ... 219 XXVII. "Balak!" 256 XXVIII. Homewards 2G7 XXIX. Pamela meets a Straxger ... ... 278 XXX. M. Giraud AGAIN 28G XXXI. At the Reserve 292 XXXII. Husband axd Wife ... ... ... 300 XXXIII. Millies Story 312 XXXIV. The Next Morxixo ... ... ... 318 XXXV. The Ltitle House in Deanery Street ... 324 XXXVI. The Exd 328 X 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 schoohnaster 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 B 2 THE TKUANTS 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 — i 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 ftoquebrune, 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 clown for a snob, for a lackey disguised as a schoolmaster. But the moment of shame passed. lie 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 glim- mering through the dusk, he could imagine its garden of brim lawns and dark cypresses falling from bank to bank in ordered tiers down the hillside. i " To-morrow at noon," he repeated to himself ; and now lie was seized with a shiver of fear at the thought of the mistakes in behaviour which lie was likely to make. AVhat if Madame Mardale asked him to breakfast ? There would be unfamiliar dishes to be eaten with particular forks. Some- times a knife should be used and sometimes not. He turned PAMELA LEARNS A VERY LITTLE HISTORY 3 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 dis- covered 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, 4 THE TRUANTS 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. 8he was a tall woman, who, in spite of her years, still retained the elegance of her vouth, but her face was bard 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 case. "You are a native of Roquebrunc, Monsieur?" said she. " Xo, Madame, my father was a peasant at Aigucs- 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, 1 ' 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 oppor- tunity so long dreamed of come at last. It mipht be the beginning of a career — it was at all events that first difficult ]i outwards. lie was to be the teacher in appearance ; at t he bottom of his heart he knew that he was to be the pupil, lie accepted the offer with enthusiasm, and the arrangements PAMELA LEARNS A VERY LITTLE HISTORY 5 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. 6 THE TRUANTS 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 appre- hensions. 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 Bat 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 PAMELA LEARNS A VERY LITTLE HISTORY 7 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 I 8 THE TRUANTS 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. tk Two travellers came up to Koquebrune 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 oilicial 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, lie 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 PAMELA LEARNS A VERY LITTLE HISTORY 9 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 uugainliness, 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." 10 THE TRUANTS TkG recollection of them, however, was not strong enough to check either her thoughts or their utterance. Late? on perhaps, in after years, she might in her mnsmgs 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 loot- in- 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 schoolmastei 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 Ins 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 •.Iter a long dark time from his one window on the outside world He frequented the little station from that moment. No « Eapide " passed from France on its way to Italy during his leisure hours but he was there to watch its pj^engers. 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. PAMELA LEARNS A VERT LITTLE HISTORY 11 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 eves 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 under- standing 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 Koque- brune, 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 specula- tions 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 in- imitable 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, 1 ' 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 12 THE TRUANTS 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 yuu, 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, tins 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 PAMELA LEARNS A VERY LITTLE HISTORY 13 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 con- viction in her voice. Giraud was not of the stern stuff " To break bis birtb'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 14 THE TRUANTS no longer thinking of bis 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. ( 15 ) CHAPTER II PAMELA LOOKS ON Alan Waerisden was one of the two men who Lad 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 Milling- ham, 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 16 THE TRUANTS 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 Leicester- shire. 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 Roquebrnne 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 Mar- dale 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 fur was not there. PAMELA LOOKS ON 17 Lad}' Millinghani, however, set his mind at case. k> 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. lie 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 com- panion, 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 c 18 THE TRUANTS nothing Even when they were seated on the balcony, he Mt t for her to speak first. She was sitting upon the out- de tainst the railing, so that the light from the windows streamed full npon her face. He watched it looking for the cLTe which he desired. But it had still the one fault he found with it. It was still too sedate, too womanly for her vears happened that they had found a comer where £ made'a" sort of screen, and they could talk in low mines without being overheard. « I heard of you," she said. " You were shooting wood- cock in Dalmatia." " That was at Christmas." " Yes. You were hurt there." « Not seriously," he replied. " A sheep-do- attacked me. Thev are savage brutes, and indeed they have to be there are so many wolves. The worst of it is, if you are attacked, von mustn't kill the dog, or there's trouble. J ' I heard of you again. You were at Quetta, getting t0g frhat C r!n'Feb™ary. I crossed by the new trade "^Sd^C^ndeanite tone, which left him -Bk no dtae to her thoughts. Now, however she turned tacyes upon him, aud said in a lower voice, which was very ^""to't you think yon might have told me that you were zx-^ittz***** 8^ follow,, wM mVZ ouec or twice, instead ? f letting m bear about you from any chance acquaintance ? deliberately Again he made no answer. For he bid uciiucratc.y PAMELA LOOKS ON 19 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 60 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 20 THE TRUANTS 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 Warnsden'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 m 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 tor something new to happen, but for the things, which were happening, to cease, waiting with the indifference PAMELA LOOKS ON 21 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 22 THE TRUANTS 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 grownarrow, 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. Bat 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 be 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. Warriaden laughed again. PAMELA LOOKS ON 23 " 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 beiDg 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. Appar- ently 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 24 THE TRUANTS 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. ( 25 ) 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," ex- claimed 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 oq THE TRUANTS 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 coupje 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 BPcnre the affections of her step-daughter. And very little rouble 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 ne thet 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 ride. Tims her step-mother had the easiest of tasks but she did not possess the necessary tact. She demanded o d ence, and in return offered tolerance. The household a Colon no, therefore, became for Millie a roofstead rather Urnn a home, and a year after this marriage she betook r " If and the few thousands of pounds which her mother hid bequeathed her to London. The ostensible reason for dep' u c was the invitation of Mrs Charles Rawson, a friend of her mother's. But Millie had made up her mind nat a return to Ceylon was not to be endured S omchow she would manage to make a home or herself in Englan d She found her path at once made easy. She was pre with the prettiness of a child, she gave no trouble sh waa •esh she dressed a drawing-room gracefully, he fitted , y 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 ^ery quickly at home in Mrs. Rawson s house. She THE TRUANTS 27 became a favourite no less for her modest friendliness than on account of her looks. Mrs. Kawson, 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 friend- ship. Certainly Millie came rather to lean upon her friend, admired her strength, made her the repository of her con- fidences, 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. 28 THE TRUANTS " And what about the old man, Sir John Stretton ? " he asked. " I never met him," replied Pamela. " He never went nut 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 TRUANTS 29 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 ani 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 sL u< s<> gaily the little house in Deanery Street went to the hammer. Tony paid off hi 11 and ennd himself with a hundred pounds in hand at 2 en" : and when that was gone he was forced to come to his wife. THE TRUANTS 31 " 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 bis 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 ! " 32 THE TRUANTS 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. ( 33 ) 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. LTpon 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 D 34 THE TRUANTS him which troubled him to-night. Other and deeper thoughts were vaguely stirring in his mind. " We have quarrelled again to-night, Millie," he con- tinued 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 looms, 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 conies 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 TONY STRETTON MAKES A PROPOSAL 35 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. 36 THE TRUANTS Id had been pretence with you too, then ? " she asked, looking up in surprise. Tony puffed at his pipe. " Of late, yes," he replied. " Perhaps cliiefly 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 rilled 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 MAKES A PROPOSAL 37 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 con- clusions. 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, 38 THE TRUANTS 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 wo are altering," he replied. " Already the altera- tion bus begun. Did we quarrel a year ago as we do now ? We enjoyed those evenings when we played truant, a year TONY STRETTON MAKES A PROPOSAL 39 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 associa- tions — 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 associa- tions 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 40 THE TRUANTS would be " He no longer cares " never occurred to hirn 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 Sfcretton 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." xv "It will seem ages 1 " 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 ^ if Tony were gone, if there were no TOXY STRETTON MAKES A PROPOSAL 41 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. 42 THE TRUANTS 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 PAMELA MAKES A PROMISE 43 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 after- noon 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 — 44 THE TRUANTS " 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 men- tioned 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. PAMELA MAKES A PROMISE 45 " 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." 46 THE TRUANTS " 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 per- plexing 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 ; PAMELA MAKES A PROMISE 47 " 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 48 THE TRUANTS 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. ( 49 ) CHAPTEE 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 dis- appeared, 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 after- noon. Millicent was still uplifted by her confidence. E 50 THE TRUANTS % - 1 can wait quite patiently," she said ; and Pamela scrutinised her with some anxiety. For Millicent was speaking feverishly, as though she laboured under an excite- ment. 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 clown 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 NEWS OF TONY 51 was something eerie in the disposition of the room. It looked ont 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 shrink- *• ing 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. 52 THE TRUANTS " 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 foot- man the candles were not to bo 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 voire faltered ; and again a question rose np insistent in Pamela's mind. She knew her friend, and it 3 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. NEWS OP TONY 53 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 wliile 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 54 THE TRUANTS 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 Eoquebrune. Was the schoolmaster leaning over the parapet looking down- wards 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 Bhe turned triumphantly to Pamela. " Do you mind ? " she asked. " I have been wailing 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. NEWS OF TONY 55 " From New York," she said, halfway between perplexity and fear. " He writes from New York." And with trem- bling 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." 56 THE TRUANTS " 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 expe- rience. 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 conversa- tion 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 NEWS OF TONY 57 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. 58 THE TRUANTS 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 THE LADY ON THE STAIRS 59 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 remorse- fully. " 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 Madge 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. 60 THE TRUANTS " 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 acquaint- anceship like shadows upon a mirror. It might be that she had met Lionel Callon. She could not remember. " A quarter past seven," said Frances Milliugham, 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 dis- appointment 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 THE LADY ON THE STAIRS 61 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 Gallon, 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 62 THE TRUANTS — 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 wav 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 over- much. 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 sugges- tion 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 thiuk ? From what period would you date it ? " THE LADY ON THE STAIRS 63 Gallon'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, how- ever, 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 tinned 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, 64 THE TRUANTS she might be wearing them because she had not had time to change them. It was Milliccnt, certainly, who had come down last. " I beg your pardon, Miss Mardale," Gallon 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 Gallon had long si nee vanished. If Tony had only taken her advice without question, Bhe thought. " Millie's hnsband 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. THE LADY ON THE STAIRS 65 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 F 6G THE TRUANTS 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 Gallon 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 hiin, 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 THE LADY ON THE STAIRS 67 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, per- sistent besides, and, so far as I can judge, untroubled by a single scrapie 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 68 THE TRUANTS word, Madge repeated it. " Yes, feared. He makes liis 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, un- suspecting 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, THE LADY ON THE STAIRS 69 " Xo doubt ; but he knows we are speaking of hirn. Look, his attitude shows it. This, you see, is his battle- ground, 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. " Xo 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 ex- aggerated the danger ; for she had herself foreseen it long- ago, before Millie's marriage — even before Millie's engage- ment. 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 70 TOE TRUANTS must come back soon. Oohcrwise 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 band 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. ( n ) 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 M illicent'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 unreason- able, 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 72 THE TRUANTS 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 GIDEON'S FLEECE 73 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 lie 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 associa- tions 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 74 THE TRUANTS 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 colour- less, 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 ha3. 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 linger. It had a message to her cars 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 ami strive to set it right, her whole heart would soon be set upon Bnocess. She was fond of Millicent already ; she would become fonder kl ill in the effort to save her. She liked Tony very much. The thought of him stoutly perBerering, clinging to his one ambition to keep his married life a bright and real thing in spile of want and poverty — and even his wife's contempt, GIDEON'S FLEECE 75 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 Gallon 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 oppor- tunities 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 76 THE TRUANTS 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. ( 77 ) CHAPTER IX THE NEW ROAD Ox 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 78 THE TRUANTS 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. AVarrisden 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 THE NEW ROAD 79 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,