On the crest of that hill which was visible from the upper windows of Whitewebs, a village straggled for a mile; and all day in the cottages the looms were heard. The sound of looms, indeed, was always associated with that village in the minds of Pamela Mardale and Alan Warrisden, though they drove along its broad street but once, and a few hours included all their visit. Those few hours, however, were rich with consequence. For Pamela asked for help that day, and, in the mere asking, gave, as women must; and she neither asked nor gave in ignorance of what she did. The request might be small, the gift small, too; but it set her and her friend in a new relation each to each, it linked them in a common effort, it brought a new and a sweet intimacy into both their lives. So that the noise of a loom was never heard by them in the after times but there rose before their eyes, visible as a picture, that grey chill day of February, the red-brick houses crowding on the broad street in a picturesque irregularity, and the three tall poplars tossing in the wind. The recollection brought always a smile of tenderness to their faces; and in their thoughts they had for the village a strange and fanciful name. It was just a little Leicestershire village perched upon a hill, the village of looms, the village of the three poplars. But they called it Quetta.
At the very end of the street, and exactly opposite to the small house from whose garden the poplars rose, there stood an inn. It was on the edge of the hill, for just beyond the road dipped steeply down between high hedges of brambles and elder trees, and, turning at the bottom of the incline, wound thence through woods and level meadows towards Leicester. It was the old coach road, and the great paved yard of the inn and the long line of disused stables had once been noisy with the shouts of ostlers and the crack of whips. Now only the carrier's cart drove twice a week down the steep road to Leicester, and a faint whistle from the low-lying land and a trail of smoke showed where now the traffic ran. On the platform of the little roadside station, three miles from the village, Pamela met Alan Warrisden on the morning after she had sent off her telegram. She had a trap waiting at the door, and as they mounted into it she said--
"I rode over to the village this morning and hired this dog-cart at the inn. I am not expected to be back at Whitewebs until the afternoon; so I thought we might lunch at the inn, and then a man can drive you back to the station, while I ride home again."
"It was bad going for a horse, wasn't it?" said Warrisden.
The thaw had fairly set in; the roads, still hard as cement, ran with water, and were most slippery. On each side patches of snow hung upon the banks half melted, and the air was raw.
"Yes, it was bad going," Pamela admitted. "But I could not wait. It was necessary that I should see you to-day."
She said no more at the moment, and Warrisden was content to sit by her side as she drove, and wait. The road ran in a broad straight line over the sloping ground. There was no vehicle, not even another person, moving along it. Warrisden could see the line of houses ahead, huddled against the sky, the spire of a church, and on his right the three sentinel poplars. He was to see them all that afternoon.
Pamela drove straight to the inn, where she had already ordered luncheon; and it was not until luncheon was over that she drew up her chair to the fire and spoke.
"Won't you smoke?" she said first of all. "I want you to listen to me."
Warrisden lit a pipe and listened.
"It is right that I should be very frank with you," she went on, "for I am going to ask you to help me."
"You need me, then?" said Warrisden. There was a leap in his voice which brought the colour to her cheeks.
"Very much," she said; and, with a smile, she asked, "Are you glad?"
"Yes," he answered simply.
"Yet the help may be difficult for you to give. It may occupy a long time besides. I am not asking you for a mere hour or a day."
The warning only brought a smile to Warrisden's face.
"I don't think you understand," he said, "how much one wants to be needed by those one needs."
Indeed, even when that simple truth was spoken to her, it took Pamela a little while to weigh it in her thoughts and give it credence. She had travelled a long distance during these last years down her solitary road. She began to understand that now. To need--actually to need people, to feel a joy in being needed--here were emotions, familiar to most, and no doubt at one time familiar to her, which were, nevertheless, now very new and strange. At present she only needed. Would a time come when she would go further still? When she would feel a joy in being needed? The question flashed across her mind.
"Yes," she admitted, "no doubt that is true. But none the less there must be no misunderstanding between you and me. I speak of myself, although it is not for myself that I need your help; but I am not blind. I know it will be for my sake that you give it, and I do not want you to give it in any ignorance of me, or, perhaps"--and she glanced at him almost shyly--"or, perhaps, expecting too much."
Warrisden made no other answer than to lean forward in his chair, with his eyes upon Pamela's face. She was going to explain that isolation of hers which had so baffled him. He would not for worlds have interrupted her lest he should check the utterance on her lips. He saw clearly enough that she was taking a great step for her, a step, too, which meant much to him. The actual explanation was not the important thing. That she should confide it of her own accord--there was the real and valuable sign. As she began to speak again, diffidence was even audible in her voice. She almost awaited his judgment.
"I must tell you something which I thought never to tell to any one," she said. "I meant to carry it as my secret out with me at the end of my life. I have been looking on all these last years. You noticed that; you thought perhaps I was just obeying my nature. But I wasn't. I did not begin life looking on. I began it as eager, as expectant of what life could give me as any girl that was ever born. And I had just my first season, that was all." She smiled rather wistfully as her thoughts went back to it. "I enjoyed my first season. I had hardly ever been in London before. I was eighteen; and everybody was very nice to me. At the end of July I went to stay for a month with some friends of mine on the coast of Devonshire, and--some one else stayed there, too. His name does not matter. I had met him during the season a good deal, but until he came down to Devonshire I had not thought of him more than as a friend. He was a little older than myself, not very much, and just as poor. He had no prospects, and his profession was diplomacy.... So that there was no possibility from the first. He meant never to say anything; but there came an hour, and the truth was out between us."
She stopped and gazed into the fire. The waters of the Channel ran in sunlit ripples before her eyes; the red rocks of Bigbury Bay curved warmly out on her right and her left; further away the towering headlands loomed misty in the hot, still August air. A white yacht, her sails hardly drawing, moved slowly westwards; the black smoke of a steamer stained the sky far out; and on the beach there were just two figures visible--herself and the man who had not meant to speak.
"We parted at once," she went on. "He was appointed a consul in West Africa. I think--indeed I know--that he hoped to rise more quickly that way. But trouble came and he was killed. Because of that one hour, you see, when he spoke what he did not mean to speak, he was killed." It seemed that there was the whole story told. But Pamela had not told it all, and never did; for her mother had played a part in its unfolding. It was Mrs. Mardale's ambition that her daughter should make a great marriage; it was her daughter's misfortune that she knew little of her daughter's character. Mrs. Mardale had remarked the growing friendship between Pamela and the man, she had realised that marriage was quite impossible, and she had thought, with her short-sighted ingenuity, that if Pamela fell in love and found love to be a thing of fruitless trouble, she would come the sooner to take a sensible view of the world and marry where marriage was to her worldly advantage. She thus had encouraged the couple to a greater friendliness, throwing them together when she could have hindered their companionship; she had even urged Pamela to accept that invitation to Devonshire, knowing who would be the other guests. She was disappointed afterwards when Pamela did not take the sensible view; but she did not blame herself at all. For she knew nothing of the suffering which her plan had brought about. Pamela had kept her secret. Even the months of ill-health which followed upon that first season had not opened the mother's eyes, and certainly she never suspected the weary nights of sleeplessness and aching misery which Pamela endured. Some hint of the pain of that bad past time, however, Pamela now gave to Warrisden.
"I stayed as much at home in Leicestershire as possible," she said. "You see there were my horses there; but even with them I was very lonely. The time was long in passing, and it wasn't pleasant to think that there would be so much of it yet, before it passed altogether. I went up to London for the season each year, and I went out a great deal. It helped me to keep from thinking."
The very simplicity with which she spoke gave an intensity to her words. There was no affectation in Pamela Mardale. Warrisden was able to fill out her hints, to understand her distress.
"All this is a great surprise to me," he said. "I have thought of you always as one who had never known either great troubles or great joys. I have hoped that some day you would wake, that I should find you looking out on the world with the eagerness of youth. But I believed eagerness would be a new thing to you."
He looked at her as she sat. The firelight was bright upon her face, and touched her hair with light; her dark eyes shone; and his thought was that which the schoolmaster at Roquebrune had once sadly pondered. It seemed needlessly cruel, needlessly wanton that a girl so equipped for happiness should, in her very first season, when the world was opening like a fairyland, have been blindly struck down. There were so many others who would have felt the blow less poignantly. She might surely have been spared.
"You can guess, now," said Pamela, "why I have so persistently looked on. I determined that I would never go through such distress again. I felt that I would not dare to face it again." She suddenly covered her face with her hands. "I don't think I could," she cried in a low, piteous voice. "I don't know what I would do," as though once more the misery of that time were closing upon her, so vivid were her recollections.
And once more Warrisden felt, as he watched her, the shock of a surprise. He had thought her too sedate, too womanly for her years, and here she sat shrinking in a positive terror, like any child, from the imagined recurrence of her years of trouble. Warrisden was moved as he had seldom been. But he sat quite still, saying no word; and in a little while she took her hands from her face and went on--
"My life was over, you see, at the very beginning, and I was resolved it should be over. For the future I would get interested only in trifling, unimportant things; no one should ever be more to me than a friend whom I could relinquish; I would merely look on. I should grow narrow, no doubt, and selfish." And, as Warrisden started, a smile came on to her face. "Yes, you have been thinking that, too, and you were right. But I didn't mind. I meant to take no risks. Nothing serious should ever come near me. If I saw it coming, I would push it away; and I have pushed it away."
"Until to-day, when you need my help?" Warrisden interrupted.
"Yes, until to-day," Pamela repeated softly.
Warrisden walked over to the window and stood with his back towards her. The three tall poplars stood leafless up in front of him; the sky was heavy with grey clouds; the wind was roaring about the chimneys; and the roads ran with water. It was as cheerless a day as February can produce, but to Warrisden it had something of a summer brightness. The change for which he had hoped so long in vain had actually come to pass.
"What do you want me to do?" he asked, turning again to the room.
"I want you to find Millie Stretton's husband," she replied; "and, at all costs, to bring him home again."
"Millie Stretton's husband?" he repeated, in perplexity.
"Yes. Don't you remember the couple who stepped out of the dark house in Berkeley Square and dared not whistle for a hansom--the truants?"
Warrisden was startled. "Those two!" he exclaimed. "Well, that's strange. On the very night when we saw them, you were saying that there was no road for you, no new road from Quetta to Seistan. I was puzzling my brains, too, as to how in the world you were to be roused out of your detachment; and there were the means visible all the time, perhaps--who knows?--ordained." He sat down again in his chair.
"Where shall I look for Mr. Stretton?" he asked.
"I don't know. He went away to New York, six months ago, to make a home for Millie and himself. He did not succeed, and he has disappeared."
"Disappeared?" cried Warrisden.
"Oh, but of his own accord," said Pamela. "I can't tell you why; it wouldn't be fair. I have no right to tell you. But he must be found, and he must be brought back. Again I can't tell you why; but it is most urgent."
"Is there any clue to help us?" Warrisden asked. "Had he friends in New York?"
"No; but he has a friend in England," said Pamela, "and I think it's just possible that the friend may know where he is to be found, for it was upon his advice that Mr. Stretton went to New York."
"Tell me his name."
"Mr. Chase," Pamela replied. "He is head of a mission in Stepney Green. Tony Stretton told me of him one morning in Hyde Park just before he went away. He seemed to rely very much upon his judgment."
Warrisden wrote the name down in his pocket-book.
"Will he tell me, do you think, where Stretton is, even if he knows? You say Stretton has disappeared of his own accord."
"I have thought of that difficulty," Pamela answered. "There is an argument which you can use. Sir John Stretton, Tony's father, is ill, and in all probability dying."
"I see. I can use the same argument to Stretton himself, I suppose, when I find him?"
"I can give you no other," said Pamela; "but you can add to it. Mr. Stretton will tell you that his father does not care whether he comes back in time or not. He is sure to say that. But you can answer that every night since he went away the candles have been lit in his dressing-room and his clothes laid out by his father's orders, on the chance that some evening he might walk in at the door."
That Sir John Stretton's illness was merely the pretext for Tony's return both understood. The real reason why he must come home Pamela did not tell. To her thinking Millie was not yet so deeply entangled with Lionel Callon but that Tony's home-coming might set the tangle right. A few weeks of companionship, and surely he would resume his due place in his wife's thoughts. Pamela, besides, was loyal to her sex. She had promised to safeguard Millicent; she was in no mind to betray her.
"But bring him back," she cried, with a real passion. "So much depends on his return, for Millie, for him, and for me, too. Yes, for me! If you fail, it is I who fail; and I don't want failure. Save me from it!"
"I'll try," Warrisden answered simply; and Pamela was satisfied.
Much depended, for Warrisden too, upon the success of his adventure. If he failed, Pamela would retire again behind her barrier; she would again resume the passive, indifferent attitude of the very old; she would merely look on as before and wait for things to cease. If, however, he succeeded, she would be encouraged to move forward still; the common sympathies would have her in their grasp again; she might even pass that turnpike gate of friendship and go boldly down the appointed road of life. Thus success meant much for him. The fortunes of the four people--Millicent, Tony, Pamela, and Warrisden--were knotted together at this one point.
"Indeed, I'll try," he repeated,
Pamela's horse was brought round to the inn door. The dusk was coming on.
"Which way do you go?" asked Warrisden.
"Down the hill."
"I will walk to the bottom with you. The road will be dangerous."
They went slowly down between the high elder hedges, Pamela seated on her horse, Warrisden walking by her side. The wide level lowlands opened out beneath them--fields of brown and green, black woods with swinging boughs, and the broad high road with its white wood rails. A thin mist swirled across the face of the country in the wind, so that its every feature was softened and magnified. It loomed dim and strangely distant, with a glamour upon it like a place of old romance. To Pamela and Warrisden, as the mists wove and unwove about it, it had a look of dreamland.
They reached the end of the incline, and Pamela stopped her horse.
"This is my way," said she, pointing along the highway with her whip.
"Yes," answered Warrisden. The road ran straight for some distance, then crossed a wooden bridge and curved out of sight round the edge of a clump of trees. "The new road," he said softly. "The new road from Quetta to Seistan!"
Pamela smiled.
"This is Quetta," said she.
Warrisden laid his hand upon her horse's neck, and looked suddenly up into her face.
"Where will be Seistan?" he asked in a low voice.
Pamela returned the look frankly. There came a softness into her dark eyes. For a moment she let her hand rest lightly upon his sleeve, and did not speak. She herself was wondering how far she was to travel upon this new road.
"I cannot tell," she said very gently. "Nor, my friend, can you. Only"--and her voice took on a lighter and a whimsical tone-"only I start alone on my new road."
And she went forward into the level country. Warrisden climbed the hill again, and turned when he had reached the top; but Pamela was out of sight. The dusk and the mists had enclosed her.
The night had come when Warrisden stepped from the platform of the station into the train. Pamela was by this time back at Whitewebs--he himself was travelling to London; their day was over. He looked out of the window. Somewhere three miles away the village of the three poplars crowned the hill, but a thick wall of darkness and fog hid it from his eyes. It seemed almost as if Pamela and he had met that day only in thought at some village which existed only in a dream. The train, however, rattled upon its way. Gradually he became conscious of a familiar exhilaration. The day had been real. Not merely had it signalled the change in Pamela, for which for so long he had wished; not merely had it borne a blossom of promise for himself, but something was to be done immediately, and the thing to be done was of all things that which most chimed with his own desires. He was to take the road again, and the craving for the road was seldom stilled for long within his heart. He heard its call sung like a song to the rhythm of the wheels. The very uncertainty of its direction tantalised his thoughts.
Warrisden lodged upon the Embankment, and his rooms overlooked the Thames. The mist lay heavy upon London, mid all that night the steamboats hooted as they passed from bridge to bridge. Warrisden lay long awake listening to them; each blast had its message for him, each was like the greeting of a friend; each one summoned him, and to each he answered with a rising joy, "I shall follow, I shall follow." The boats passed down to the sea through the night mist. Many a time he had heard them before, picturing the dark deck and the side lights, red and green, and the yellow light upon the mast, and the man silent at the wheel with the light from the binnacle striking up upon the lines of his face. They were little river or coasting boats for the most part, but he had never failed to be stirred by the long-drawn melancholy of their whistles. They talked of distant lands and an alien foliage.
He spent the following morning and the afternoon in the arrangement of his affairs, and in the evening drove down to the mission house. It stood in a dull by-street close to Stepney Green, a rambling building with five rooms upon the ground floor panelled with varnished deal and furnished with forms and rough tables, and on the floor above, a big billiard-room, a bagatelle-room, and a carpenter's workshop. Mr. Chase was superintending a boxing class in one of the lower rooms, and Warrisden, when he was led up to him, received a shock of surprise. He had never seen a man to the outward eye so unfitted for his work. He had expected a strong burly person, cheery of manner and confident of voice; he saw, however, a tall young man with a long pale face and a fragile body. Mr. Chase was clothed in a clerical frock-coat of unusual length, he wore linen of an irreproachable whiteness, and his hands were fine and delicate as a woman's. He seemed indeed the typical High Church curate fresh that very instant from the tea-cups of a drawing-room.
"A gentleman to see you, sir," said the ex-army sergeant who had brought forward Warrisden. He handed Warrisden's card to Chase, who turned about and showed Warrisden his full face. Surprise had been Warrisden's first sentiment, but it gave place in an instant to distaste. The face which he saw was not ugly, but he disliked it. It almost repelled him. There was no light in the eyes at all; they were veiled and sunken; and the features repelled by reason of a queer antagonism. Mr. Chase had the high narrow forehead of an ascetic, the loose mouth of a sensualist, and a thin crop of pale and almost colourless hair. Warrisden wondered why any one should come to this man for advice, most of all a Tony Stretton. What could they have in common--the simple, good-humoured, unintellectual subaltern of the Coldstream, and this clerical exquisite? The problem was perplexing.
"You wish to see me?" asked Chase.
"If you please."
"Now? As you see, I am busy."
"I can wait."
"Thank you. The mission closes at eleven. If you can wait till then you might come home with me, and we could talk in comfort."
It was nine o'clock. For two hours Warrisden followed Chase about the mission, and with each half-hour his interest increased. However irreconcilable with his surroundings Chase might appear to be, neither he nor any of the members of the mission were aware of it. He was at ease alike with the boys and the men; and the boys and the men were at ease with him. Moreover, he was absolute master, although there were rough men enough among his subjects. The fiercest boxing contest was stopped in a second by a motion of that delicate hand.
"I used to have a little trouble," he said to Warrisden, "before I had those wire frames fixed over the gas-jets. You see they cover the gas taps. Before that was done, if there was any trouble, the first thing which happened was that the room was in darkness. It took some time to restore order;" and he passed on to the swimming-bath.
Mr. Chase was certainly indefatigable. Now he was giving a lesson in wood-carving to a boy; now he was arranging an apprenticeship for another in the carpenter's shop. Finally he led the way into the great billiard-room, where only the older men were allowed.
"It is here that Stretton used to keep order?" said Warrisden; and Chase at once turned quickly towards him.
"Oh," he said slowly, in a voice of comprehension, "I was wondering what brought you here. Yes; this was the room."
Chase moved carelessly away, and spoke to some of the men about the tables. But for the rest of the evening he was on his guard. More than once his eyes turned curiously and furtively towards Warrisden. His face was stubborn, and wore a look of wariness. Warrisden began to fear lest he should get no answer to the question he had to put. No appeal would be of any use--of that he felt sure. His argument must serve--and would it serve?
Chase, at all events, made no attempt to avoid the interview. As the hands of the clock marked eleven, and the rooms emptied, he came at once to Warrisden.
"We can go now," he said; and unlocking a drawer, to Warrisden's perplexity he filled his pockets with racket-balls. The motive for that proceeding became apparent as they walked to the house where Chase lodged. Their way lay through alleys, and as they walked the children clustered about them, and Chase's pockets were emptied.
"We keep this house because men from the Universities come down and put in a week now and then at the mission. My rooms are upstairs."
Chase's sitting-room was in the strangest contrast to the bareness of the mission and the squalor of the streets. It was furnished with luxury, but the luxury was that of a man of taste and knowledge. There was hardly a piece of furniture which had not an interesting history; the engravings and the brass ornaments upon the walls had been picked up here and there in Italy. A bright fire blazed upon the hearth.
"What will you drink?" Chase asked, and brought from a cupboard bottle after bottle of liqueurs. It seemed to Warrisden that the procession of bottles would never end--some held liqueurs of which he had never even heard the name; but concerning all of them Mr. Chase discoursed with great knowledge and infinite appreciation.
"I can recommend this," he said tentatively, as he took up one fat round bottle and held it up to the light. "It is difficult perhaps to say definitely which is the best, but--yes, I can recommend this."
"Can't I have a whiskey and soda?" asked Warrisden, plaintively.
Mr. Chase looked at his companion with a stare.
"Of course you can," he replied. But his voice was one of disappointment, and with an almost imperceptible shrug of the shoulders he fetched a Tantalus and a siphon of seltzer.
"Help yourself," he said; and lighting a gold-tipped cigarette he drew up a chair and began to talk. And so Warrisden came at last to understand how Tony Stretton had gained his great faith in Mr. Chase. Chase was a talker of a rare quality. He sat stooping over the fire with his thin hands outspread to the blaze, and for half an hour Warrisden was enchained. All that had repelled him in the man, all that had aroused his curiosity, was soon lost to sight. He yielded himself up as if to some magician. Chase talked not at all of his work or of the many strange incidents which he must needs have witnessed in its discharge. He spoke of other climates and bright towns with a scholarship which had nothing of pedantry, and an observation human as it was keen. Chase, with the help of his Livy, had traced Hannibal's road across the Alps and had followed it on foot; he spoke of another march across snow mountains of which Warrisden had never till this moment heard--the hundred days of a dead Sultan of Morocco on the Passes of the Atlas, during which he led his forces back from Tafilet to Rabat. Chase knew nothing of this retreat but what he had read. Yet he made it real to Warrisden, so vividly did his imagination fill up the outlines of the written history. He knew his Paris, his Constantinople. He had bathed from the Lido and dreamed on the Grand Canal. He spoke of the peeling frescoes in the Villa of Countess Guiccioli above Leghorn, of the outlook from the terrace over the vines and the olive trees to the sea where Shelley was drowned; and where Byron's brig used to round into the wind and with its sails flapping drop anchor under the hill. For half an hour Warrisden wandered through Europe in the pleasantest companionship, and then Chase stopped abruptly and leaned back in his chair.
"I was forgetting," he said, "that you had come upon a particular errand. It sometimes happens that I see no one outside the mission people for a good while, and during those periods when I get an occasion I am apt to talk too much. What can I do for you?"
The spirit had gone from his voice, his face. He leaned back in his chair, a man tired out. Warrisden looked at the liqueur bottles crowded on the table, with Chase's conversation still fresh in his mind. Was Chase a man at war with himself, he wondered, who was living a life for which he had no taste that he might the more completely escape a life which his conscience disapproved? Or was he deliberately both hedonist and Puritan, giving to each side of his strange nature, in turn, its outlet and gratification?
"You have something to say to me," Chase continued. "I know quite well what it is about."
"Stretton," said Warrisden.
"Yes; you mentioned him in the billiard-room. Well?"
Chase was not looking at Warrisden. He sat with his eyes half-closed, his elbows on the arms of his chair, his finger-tips joined under his chain, and his head thrown back. There was no expression upon his face but one of weariness. Would he answer? Could he answer? Warrisden was in doubt, indeed in fear. He led to his question warily.
"It was you who recommended Stretton to try horse-breeding in Kentucky."
"Yes," said Chase; and he added, "after he had decided of his own accord to go away."
"He failed."
"Yes."
"And he has disappeared."
Chase opened his eyes, but did not turn them to his companion.
"I did not advise his disappearance," he said. "That, like his departure, was his own doing."
"No doubt," Warrisden agreed. "But it is thought that you might have heard from him since his disappearance."
Chase nodded his head.
"I have."
"It is thought that you might know where he is now."
"I do," said Mr. Chase. Warrisden was sensibly relieved. One-half of his fear was taken from him. Chase knew, at all events, where Stretton was to be found. Now he must disclose his knowledge. But before he could put a question, Chase said languidly--
"You say 'it is thought,' Mr. Warrisden. By whom is it thought? By his wife?"
"No. But by a great friend of hers and his."
"Oh," said Chase, "by Miss Pamela Mardale, then."
Warrisden started forward.
"You know her?" he asked.
"No. But Stretton mentioned her to me in a letter. She has sent you to me in fulfilment of a promise. I understand."
The words were not very intelligible to Warrisden. He knew nothing of Pamela's promise to Tony Stretton. But, on the other hand, he saw that Mr. Chase was giving a more attentive ear to what he said. He betrayed no ignorance of the promise.
"I am sent to fetch Stretton home," he said. "I want you to tell me where he is."
Chase shook his head.
"No," he said gently.
"It is absolutely necessary that Stretton should come back," Warrisden declared with great deliberation. And with no less deliberation Chase replied--
"In Stretton's view it is absolutely necessary that he should stay away!"
"His father is dying."
Chase started forward in his chair, and stared at Warrisden for a long time.
"Is that an excuse?" he said at length.
It was, as Warrisden was aware. He did not answer the question.
"It is the truth," he replied; and he replied truthfully.
Chase rose from his chair and walked once or twice across the room. He came back to the fire, and leaning an elbow on the mantelpiece stared into the coals. Warrisden sat very still. He had used his one argument--he could add nothing to it; he could only wait for the answer in a great anxiety. So much hung upon that answer for Stretton and his wife, for Pamela, for himself! The fortunes of all four were knotted together. At last the answer came.
"I promised Tony that I would keep his secret," said Chase. "But when he asked for the promise, and when I gave it, the possibility of his father dying was not either in his mind or mine. We considered--in letters, of course--other possibilities; but not this one. I don't think I have the right to remain silent. Even in the face of this possibility I should have kept my promise, I think, if you had come from his wife--for I know why he disappeared. But as things are, I will tell you. Tony Stretton is in the North Sea on a trawler."
"In the North Sea?" exclaimed Warrisden. And he smiled. After all, the steamboats on the river had last night called to him with a particular summons.
"Yes," continued Chase, and he fetched from his writing-desk a letter in Tony's hand. "He came back to England two months ago. He drifted across the country. He found himself at Yarmouth with a few shillings in his pocket. He knew something of the sea. He had sailed his own yacht in happier times. He was in great trouble. He needed time to think out a new course of life. He hung about on Gorleston pier for a day or two, and then was taken on by a skipper who was starting out short of hands, he signed for eight weeks, and he wrote to me the day before he started. That's four weeks ago."
"Can I reach him?" Warrisden asked.
"Yes. The boat is thePerseverance, and it belongs to the Blue Fleet. A steam cutter goes out every day from Billingsgate to fetch the fish. I know one of the owners. His son comes down to the mission. I can get you a passage. When can you start?"
"At any time," replied Warrisden. "The sooner the better."
"To-morrow, then," said Chase. "Meet me at the entrance to Billingsgate Market at half-past eleven. It will take you forty-eight hours with ordinary luck to reach the Dogger Bank. Of course, if there's a fog in the Thames the time will be longer. And I warn you, living is rough on a fish-carrier."
"I don't mind that," said Warrisden, with a smile. He went away with a light heart, and that night wrote a letter to Pamela, telling her of his interview with Mr. Chase. The new road seemed after all likely to prove a smooth one. As he wrote, every now and then a steamboat hooted from the river, and the rain pattered upon his window. He flung it up and looked out. There was no fog to-night, only the rain fell, and fell gently. He prayed that there might be no fog upon the Thames to-morrow.
Mr. Chase, too, heard the rain that night. He sat in his armchair listening to it with a decanter at his elbow half filled with a liquid like brown sherry. At times he poured a little into his glass and drank it slowly, crouching over his fire. Somewhere in the darkness of the North Sea Tony Stretton was hidden. Very likely at this moment he was standing upon the deck of his trawler with his hands upon the spokes of the wheel, and his eyes peering forward through the rain, keeping his long night-watch while the light from the binnacle struck upwards upon the lines of his face. Mr. Chase sat late in a muse. But before he went to bed he locked the decanter and the glass away in a private cupboard, and took the key with him into his bedroom.
TheCity of Bristolswung out of the huddle of boats off Billingsgate Wharf at one o'clock on the next afternoon. Mr. Chase, who stood upon the quay amongst the porters and white-jacketed salesmen, turned away with an episcopal wave of the hand. Warrisden leaned over the rail of the steamer's bridge, between the captain and the pilot, and shouted a reply. TheCity of Bristol, fish-cutter of 300 tons, was a boat built for speed, long and narrow, sitting low on the water, with an upstanding forecastle forward, a small saloon in the stern, and a tiny cabin for the captain under the bridge on deck. She sidled out into the fair way and went forward upon her slow, intricate journey to the sea. Below the Tower she took her place in the long, single file of ships winding between the mud banks, and changed it as occasion served; now she edged up by a string of barges, now in a clear broad space she made a spurt and took the lead of a barquantine, which swam in indolence, with bare masts, behind a tug; and at times she stopped altogether, like a carriage blocked in Piccadilly. The screw thrashed the water, ceased, and struck again with a suggestion of petulance at the obstacles which barred the boat's way. Warrisden, too, chafed upon the bridge. A question pressed continually upon his mind--"Would Stretton return?" He had discovered where Stretton was to be found. The tall grey spire of Stepney Church rose from behind an inlet thick with masts, upon the left; he was already on his way to find him. But the critical moment was yet to come. He had still to use his arguments; and as he stood watching the shipping with indifferent eyes the arguments appeared most weak and unpersuasive. Stretton's father was dying, it was true. The son's return was no doubt a natural obligation. But would the natural obligation hold when the father was unnatural? Those months in New York had revealed one quality in Tony Stretton, at all events; he could persist. The very name of the trawler in which he was at work seemed to Warrisden of a bad augury for his success--thePerseverance!
Greenwich, with its hill of grass, slipped behind on the right; at the Albert Docks a huge Peninsular and Oriental steamer, deck towering above deck, swung into the line; the high chimneys of the cement works on the Essex flats began to stand out against the pale grey sky, each one crowned with white smoke like a tuft of wool; the barges, under their big brown sprit-sails, now tacked this way and that across a wider stream; the village of Greenhithe and the white portholes of theWorcestershowed upon the right.
"Would Stretton return?" The question revolved in Warrisden's mind as the propeller revolved in the thick brown water. The fortunes of four people hung upon the answer, and no answer could be given until a night, and a day, and another night had passed, until he saw the Blue Fleet tossing far away upon the Dogger Bank. Suppose that the answer were "No!" He imagined Pamela sinking back into lassitude, narrowing to that selfishness which she, no less than he, foresaw; looking on again at the world's show with the lack-lustre indifference of the very old.
At Gravesend theCity of Bristoldropped her pilot, a little, white-bearded, wizened man, who all the way down the river, balancing himself upon the top-rail of the bridge, like some nautical Blondin, had run from side to side the while he exchanged greetings with the anchored ships; and just opposite to Tilbury Fort, with its scanty fringe of trees, she ran alongside of a hulk and took in a load of coal.
"We'll go down and have tea while they are loading her," said the captain.
The dusk was falling when Warrisden came again on deck, and a cold wind was blowing from the north-west. The sharp stem of the boat was cutting swiftly through the quiet water; the lift of the sea under her forefoot gave to her a buoyancy of motion--she seemed to have become a thing alive. The propeller cleft the surface regularly; there was no longer any sound of petulance in its revolutions, rather there was a throb of joy as it did its work unhindered. Throughout the ship a steady hum, a steady vibration ran. TheCity of Bristolwas not merely a thing alive; it was a thing satisfied.
Upon Warrisden, too, there descended a sense of peace. He wasen rapportwith the ship. The fever of his questioning left him. On either side the arms of the shore melted into the gathering night. Far away upon his right the lights of Margate shone brightly, like a chain of gold stretched out upon the sea; in front of him there lay a wide and misty bay, into which the boat drove steadily. All the unknown seemed hidden there; all the secret unrevealed Beyond. There came whispers out of that illimitable bay to Warrisden's ears; whispers breathed upon the north wind, and all the whispers were whispers of promise, bidding him take heart. Warrisden listened and believed, uplifted by the grave quiet of the sea and its mysterious width.
TheCity of Bristolturned northward into the great channel of the Swin, keeping close to the lightships on the left, so close that Warrisden from the bridge could look straight down upon their decks. The night had altogether come--a night of stars. Clusters of lights, low down upon the left, showed where the towns of Essex stood; upon the light hand the homeward-bound ships loomed up ghost-like and passed by; on the right, too, shone out the great green globes of the Mouse light like Neptune's reading-lamps. Sheltered behind the canvas screen at the corner of the bridge Warrisden looked along the rake of the unlighted deck below. He thought of Pamela waiting for his return at Whitewebs, but without impatience. The great peace and silence of the night were the most impressive things he had ever known. The captain's voice complaining of the sea jarred upon him.
"It's no Bobby's job," said the captain in a low voice. "It's home once in three weeks from Saturday to Monday, if you are in luck, and the rest of your time you're in carpet slippers on the bridge. You'll sleep in my chatoo, to-night. I sha'n't turn in until we have passed the Outer Gabbard and come to the open sea. That won't be till four in the morning."
Warrisden understood that he was being offered the captain's cabin.
"No, thanks," said he. "The bench of the saloon will do very well for me."
The captain did not press his offer.
"Yes; there's more company in the saloon," he said. "I often sleep there myself. You are bound for the Mission ship, I suppose?"
"No; I want to find a man on the trawlerPerseverance."
The captain turned. Warrisden could not see his face, but he knew from his attitude that he was staring at him in amazement.
"Then you must want to see him pretty badly," he commented. "The No'th Sea in February and March is not a Bobby's job."
"Bad weather is to be expected?" asked Warrisden.
"It has been known," said the captain dryly; and before the lights of the Outer Gabbard winked good-bye on the starboard quarter at four o'clock in the morning, theCity of Bristolwas taking the water over her deck.
Warrisden rolled on the floor of the saloon--for he could not keep his balance on the narrow bench--and tried in vain to sleep. But the strong light of a lamp, swinging from the roof, glared upon his eyes, the snores of his companions trumpeted in his ears. Moreover, the heat was intolerable. Five men slept in the bunks--Warrisden made a sixth. At four in the morning the captain joined the party through his love of company. The skylight and the door were both tightly closed, a big fire burned in the stove, and a boiling kettle of tea perpetually puffed from its spout a column of warm, moist steam. Warrisden felt his skin prickly beneath his clothes; he gasped for fresh air.
Living would be rough upon the fish-carrier, Chase had told him; and rough Warrisden found it. In the morning the steward rose, and made tea by the simple process of dropping a handful of tea into the kettle and filling it up with water. A few minutes later he brought a dish of ham and eggs from the galley, and slapped it down on the table.
"Breakfast," he cried; and the five men opened their eyes, rubbed them, and without any other preparation sat down and ate. Warrisden slipped up the companion, unscrewed the skylight and opened it for the space of an inch. Then he returned.
TheCity of Bristolwas rolling heavily, and Warrisden noticed with surprise that all of the five men gave signs of discomfort. Surely, he thought, they must be used to heavy weather. But, nevertheless, something was wrong; they did not talk. Finally, the captain looked upwards, and brought his hand down upon the table.
"I felt something was wrong," said he; "the skylight's open."
All stared up to the roof.
"So it is."
"I did that," Warrisden said humbly.
At once all the faces were turned on him in great curiosity.
"Now why?" asked the captain. "Don't you like it nice and snug?"
"Yes; oh yes," Warrisden said hurriedly.
"Well, then!" said the captain; and the steward went on deck and screwed the skylight down.
"After all, it's only for thirty-six hours," thought Warrisden, as he subsequently bathed in a pail on deck. But he was wrong; for the Blue Fleet had gone a hundred miles north to the Fisher Bank, and thither theCity of Bristolfollowed it.
TheCity of Bristolsailed on to the Fisher Bank, and found an empty sea. It hunted the Blue Fleet for half-a-dozen hours, and, as night fell, it came upon a single trawler with a great flare light suspended from its yard.
"They're getting in their trawl," said the captain; and he edged up within earshot.
"Where's the Blue Fleet?" he cried.
"Gone back to the Dogger," came the answer.
The captain swore, and turned southwards. For four days and nights Warrisden pitched about on the fish-carrier and learned many things, such as the real meaning of tannin in tea, and the innumerable medical uses to which "Friar's Balsam" can be put. On the morning of the fifth day theCity of Bristolsteamed into the middle of the fleet, and her engines stopped.
These were the days before the steam-trawler. The sailing-ships were not as yet laid up, two by two, alongside Gorleston quay, and knocked down for a song to any purchaser. Warrisden looked over a grey, savage sea. The air was thick with spindrift. The waves leaped exultingly up from windward and roared away to leeward from under the cutter's keel in a steep, uprising hill of foam. All about him the sailing-boats headed to the wind, sinking and rising in the furrows, so that Warrisden would just see a brown topsail over the edge of a steep roller like a shark's fin, and the next instant the dripping hull of the boat flung out upon a breaking crest.
"You will have to look slippy when the punt from thePerseverancecomes alongside with her fish," the captain shouted. "The punt will give you a passage back to thePerseverance, but I don't think you will be able to return. There's a no'th-westerly gale blowing up, and the sea is increasing every moment. However, there will be another cutter up to-morrow, and if it's not too rough you could be put on board of her."
It took Warrisden a full minute to realise the meaning of the captain's words. He looked at the tumbling, breaking waves, he listened to the roar of the wind through the rigging.
"The boats won't come alongside to-day," he cried.
"Won't they?" the skipper replied. "Look!"
Certainly some manœuvre was in progress. The trawlers were all forming to windward in a rough semicircle about the cutter. Warrisden could see boat tackle being rigged to the main yards and men standing about the boats capsized on deck. They were actually intending to put their fish on board in the face of the storm.
"You see, with the gale blowing up, they mayn't get a chance to put their fish on board for three or four days after this," the captain explained. "Oh, you can take it from me. The No'th Sea is not a Bobby's job."
As Warrisden watched, one by one the trawlers dropped their boats, and loaded them with fish-boxes. The boats pushed off, three men to each, with their life-belts about their oil-skins, and came down with the wind towards the fish-carrier. The trawlers bore away, circled round theCity of Bristol, and took up their formation to leeward, so that, having discharged their fish, the boats might drop down again with the wind to their respective ships. Warrisden watched the boats, piled up with fish-boxes, coming through the welter of the sea. It seemed some desperate race was being rowed.
"Can you tell me which is the boat from thePerseverance?" he asked.
"I think it's the fifth," said the captain.
The boats came down, each one the kernel of a globe of spray. Warrisden watched, admiring how cleverly they chose the little gaps and valleys in the crests of the waves. Each moment he looked to see a boat tossed upwards and overturned; each moment he dreaded that boat would be the fifth. But no boat was overturned. One by one they passed under the stern of the City of Bristol, and came alongside under the shelter of its wall.
The fifth boat ranged up. A man stood up in the stern.
"ThePerseverance," he cried. "Nine boxes." And as he spoke a great sea leapt up against the windward bow of the cutter. The cutter rolled from it suddenly, her low bulwarks dipped under water on the leeward side, close by thePerseveranceboat.
"Shove off!" the man cried, who was standing up; and as he shouted he lurched and fell into the bottom of the boat. The two men in the bows pushed off with their oars; but they were too late. The cutter's bulwark caught the boat under the keel; it seemed she must be upset, and men and boxes whelmed in the sea, unless a miracle happened. But the miracle did happen. As the fish-cutter righted she scooped on to her deck the boat, with its boxes and its crew. The incident all seemed to happen within the fraction of a second. Not a man upon the fish-cutter had time to throw out a rope. Warrisden saw the cutter's bulwarks dip, the sailor falling in the boat, and the boat upon the deck of the cutter in so swift a succession that he had not yet realised disaster was inevitable before disaster was avoided.
The sailor rose from the bottom of the boat and stepped on deck, a stalwart, dripping figure.
"From thePerseverance, sir. Nine boxes," he said, looking up to the captain on the bridge; and Warrisden, leaning by the captain's side upon the rail, knew the sailor to be Tony Stretton. The accent of the voice would have been enough to assure him; but Warrisden knew the face too.
"This is the man I want," he said to the captain.
"You must be quick, then," the captain replied. "Speak to him while the boat is being unloaded."
Warrisden descended on to the deck.
"Mr. Stretton," said he.
The sailor swung round quickly. There was a look of annoyance upon his face.
"You are surely making a mistake," said he, abruptly. "We are not acquainted," and he turned back to the fish-boxes.
"I'm not making a mistake," replied Warrisden. "I have come out to the North Sea in order to find you."
Stretton ceased from his work and stood up. He led the way to the stern of the cutter, where the two men were out of earshot.
"Now," he said. He stood in front of Warrisden, in his sea-boots and his oilskins, firmly planted, yet swaying to the motion of the ship. There was not merely annoyance in his face, but he had the stubborn and resolute look of a man not lightly to be persuaded. Standing there on the cutter's deck, backed by the swinging seas, there was even an air of mastery about him which Warrisden had not expected. His attitude seemed, somehow, not quite consistent with his record of failure.
"Now," said Stretton, "we must be quick. The sea is getting worse each minute, and I have to get back to thePerseverance. You are----?"
"Alan Warrisden, a stranger to you."
"Yes," Stretton interrupted; "how did you find me out?"
"Chase told me."
Stretton's face flushed angrily.
"He had no right to tell you. I wished for these few weeks to be alone. He gave me his word he would tell no one."
"He had to break his word," said Warrisden, firmly. "It is necessary that you should come home at once."
Stretton laughed. Warrisden was clinging to a wire stay from the cutter's mizzen-mast, and even so could hardly keep his feet. He had a sense of coming failure from the very ease with which Stretton stood resting his hands upon his hips, unsupported on the unsteady deck.
"I cannot come," said Stretton abruptly; and he turned away. As he turned Warrisden shouted--for in that high wind words carried in no other way--"Your father, Sir John Stretton, is dying."
Stretton stopped. He looked for a time thoughtfully into Warrisden's face; but there was no change in his expression by which Warrisden could gather whether the argument would prevail or no. And when at last he spoke, it was to say--
"But he has not sent for me."
It was the weak point in Warrisden's argument, and Stretton had, in his direct way, come to it at once. Warrisden was silent.
"Well?" asked Stretton. "He has not sent for me?"
"No," Warrisden admitted; "that is true."
"Then I will not come."
"But though he has not sent for you, it is very certain that he wishes for your return," Warrisden urged. "Every night since you have been away the candles have been lighted in your dressing-room and your clothes laid out, in the hope that on one evening you will walk in at the door. On the very first night, the night of the day on which you went, that was done. It was done by Sir John Stretton's orders, and by his orders it has always since been done."
Just for a moment Warrisden thought that his argument would prevail. Stretton's face softened; then came a smile which was almost wistful about his lips, his eyes had a kindlier look. And the kindlier look remained. Kindliness, too, was the first tone audible in his voice as he replied; but the reply itself yielded nothing.
"He has not sent for me."
He looked curiously at Warrisden, as if for the first time he became aware of him as a man acting from motives, not a mere instrument of persuasion.
"After all, who did send you?" he asked. "My wife?"
"No."
"Who then?"
"Miss Pamela Mardale."
Stretton was startled by the name. It was really the strongest argument Warrisden had in his armoury. Only he was not aware of its strength.
"Oh," said Stretton, doubtfully; "so Miss Mardale sent you!"
He thought of that morning in the Row; of Pamela's words--"I still give the same advice. Do not leave your wife." He recalled the promise she had given, although it was seldom long absent from his thoughts. It might be that she sent this message in fulfilment of that promise. It might be that, for some unknown reason, he was now needed at his wife's side. But he had no thought of distrust; he had great faith in Millicent. She despised him, yes; but he did not distrust her. And, again, it might be that Pamela was merely sending him this news thinking he would wish to hear of it in time. After all, Pamela was his friend. He looked out on the wild sea. Already the boats were heading back through the foam, each to its trawler.
"One must take one's risks," he said. "So much I have learnt here in the North Sea. Look!" and he pointed to the boats. "Those boats are taking theirs. Yes; whether it's lacing your topsail or taking in a reef, one must take one's risks. I will not come."
He went back to the middle of the ship. The punt of thePerseverancewas already launched, the two fishermen waiting in it. As it rose on a swell, Stretton climbed over the bulwarks and dropped into the stern.
"Good-bye," he said. "I have signed on for eight weeks, and only four have passed. I cannot run away and leave the ship short-handed. Thank you for coming; but one must take one's risks."
The boat was pushed off and headed towards thePerseverance. The waves had increased, the crests toppled down the green slopes in foam. Slowly the boat was rowed down to the trawler, the men now stopping and backing water, now dashing on. Warrisden saw them reach the ship's side and climb on board, and he saw the boat slung upwards and brought in on to the deck. Then the screw of theCity of Bristolstruck the water again. Lurching through the heavy seas, she steamed southwards. In a few minutes the Blue Fleet was lost to sight.