"Halt!" cried Captain Tavernay.
The bugler at his side raised his bugle to his lips and blew. The dozen chasseurs d'Afrique and the ten native scouts who formed the advance guard stopped upon the signal. A couple of hundred yards behind them the two companies of the Foreign Legion came to a standstill. The convoy of baggage mules upon the right flank, the hospital equipment, the artillery section, the herd of oxen which was driven along in the rear, in a word, the whole expedition, halted in a wood of dwarf-oaks and junipers at three o'clock in the afternoon.
The order was given to gather wood for the night's camp fires, and the companies were dismissed. Each soldier made his little bundle and fixed it upon his shoulders. Again the bugle rang out, sounding the "Fall in." And the tiny force marched out from the trees of the high plateaux into the open desert. It was extraordinary with what abruptness that transition was made. One minute the companies were treading upon turf under rustling leaves, the next they were descending a slope carpeted with halfa-grass, which stretched away to the horizon's rim, with hardly a bush to break its bare monotony. At the limit of vision, a great arc like a mirror of silver glittered out of the plain.
"Water," said a tall, bearded soldier, who marched in the front rank of the first company. It was he who had stepped from the train at Bel-Abbès with a light dust-coat over his evening dress suit. He passed now as Fusilier Barbier, an ex-engineer of Lyons.
"No," replied Sergeant Ohlsen, who marched at his side: "the crystals of a dry salt lake."
In the autumn of last year Ohlsen--or, rather, to give him his right name, Tony Stretton--had marched upon an expedition from Mesheria to the Chott Tigri, and knew, therefore, the look of those tantalising salt lakes. That expedition, which had conducted a surrey for a road to the Figuig oasis, had brought him his promotion.
"But we camp by the lake to-night," he added. "The wells of El-Guethifa are close."
The companies went forward, and above that salt lake they saw the mirages begin to shimmer, citadels and hanging gardens, tall towers and waving woods and majestic galleons, topsail over topsail, floating upon summer seas. At the wells the sheikh of the district was waiting upon a mule.
"I want fifty camels with their saddles and their drivers at five o'clock to-morrow morning," said Tavernay; and although as far as the eye could reach there was no moving thing upon that vast plain except the small group of Arabs and soldiers about the well, by five o'clock the camels were squatting upon the sand with their drivers beside them. The mules were sent back from El-Guethifa that morning, the baggage was packed upon the camels, and the little force, insufficient in numbers and supplies, went forward on its long and untoward march.
It passed through the oases of El-Maia and Methlili to Ouargla, at that time the last outpost of French authority. At Ouargla it rested for a week; and there, renewing its supplies, penetrated southwards to survey the desert country of the Touaregs for the construction of the oft-mooted trans-Saharan railway. South of Ouargla all the difficulties of the advance were doubled. The companies went down through the archipelago of oases in the dangerous Touat country amongst a sullen people, who had little food to supply, and would hardly supply it. Tavernay led his men with care, neither practising a discipline needlessly strict, nor relaxing into carelessness. But he was under-officered, and his officers even so were inexperienced. Lieutenant Laurent, a man irritable and unjust, was his second in command, and there were but twosous-lieutenantsbesides. In spite of all Tavernay's care the convoy diminished. One day a camel would stumble on the slippery bottom of a salt marsh, fall, and break its limbs; the next another would fail, and die through a long-untended wound, caused by the rough saddle upon its back. In the ranks of the soldiers, too, there was trouble, and Laurent was not the man to deal with it. There was hardly a company of the Legion, recruited, as it so largely was, from the outcasts and the men of sorrows, in which there were not some of disordered minds, some whom absinthe had brought to the edge of insanity. Upon these the severity of the expedition bore heavily. Tents had been perforce discarded. The men slept under the stars. They woke from freezing nights to the bitter winds of dawn, and two hours after dawn they were parched by a burning sun, and all the day they suffered under its pitiless and blinding glare. Storms whelmed them in lofty spirals of whirling, choking sand. For a week they would toil over high red mountainous ground of loose stones; then would follow the monotony of bare round plains, piled here and there with black rocks, quivering and glittering in the heat; the sun rose day after day upon their left hand in scarlet, and set in scarlet upon their right, and they themselves were still the tiny centre of the same empty inhospitable space; so that only the difference of the ground they trod, the feel of soft sand beneath their feet, where a minute before they had marched on gravel, told them that they progressed at all. The worst of the men became prone to disobedience, eager for change; and every now and then a soldier would rise upon his elbow in the night time, gaze furtively about over his sleeping comrades, watch the sentries until their backs were turned, and then crawl past them into the darkness. Of these men none ever returned. Or some mania would seize upon them and fix a strange idea in their brains, such as that which besieged Barbier, the fusilier, who had once stepped out of the railway carriage in his evening dress. He leaned over towards Stretton one evening, and said in a hoarse, trembling voice--
"I can stand it no longer."
Both men were sitting by a tiny fire, which Barbier was feeding with handfuls of halfa-grass and sticks. He was kneeling up in front of it, and by the red waving light Stretton saw that his face was quivering with excitement.
"What can't you stand?" he asked.
"It is Captain Tavernay," replied Barbier. He suddenly laughed in a pitiful fashion, and cast a glance over his shoulder. "There is a man put on to watch me. Night and day I am watched by Captain Tavernay's orders. He wants to fix a crime on me! I know. He wants to trap me. But let him take care!"
Stretton fetched the doctor, who listened for a while to Barbier's rambling, minatory talk, and then shrugged his shoulders.
"Hallucinations," said he. "Ideas of persecution. The commonest form," and having fixed Barbier into his proper category, he walked away. There was nothing to be done for Barbier upon this expedition. He had to be watched; that was all. Thus for seven hundred miles the force pushed southwards from Ouargla, and thus from within it disintegrated as it went. Tavernay could not but notice the change, but he said nothing to any subordinate. The men would fight well if fighting happened. That he knew, and meanwhile he marched on.
It was just when the seven hundred miles had been completed that Tavernay realised fighting was likely to happen. He went the round of the camp as the sun was setting, when the rifles were piled and the fires crackling. Stretton was at his side, and saw his commander stop and shade his eyes. Tavernay was looking westwards. Far away against the glowing ball of the sun, which was just dipping down behind the plain, the figure of an Arab mounted upon a camel stood motionless and black. Tavernay swung round and looked behind him. On the crest of a sandhill to the north a second rider stood distinct against the sky.
Tavernay watched the men for a long time through his glasses.
"Touaregs," said he, gravely. "Masked Touaregs," and that night the sentinels were doubled; and in the morning the bugle did not sound theréveillé.
Moreover, when the force advanced, it advanced in the formation of a square, with the baggage camels in the centre, one gun in the front line, and the other in the rear. They had marched into the country where the Senoussa sect prevailed. The monasteries of that body sent out their missionaries eastward to Khordofan, westwards to Tafilet, preaching the purification of the Mohammedan religion and the enlargement of Mohammedan countries now subject to the infidels. But nowhere had the missionaries raised their standard with more success than in this Touat country of the Sahara. The companies marched that day alert and cheerful. They were consolidated by the knowledge of danger. Captain Tavernay led them with pride.
"An insufficient force, ill-found, inadequately officered," he thought. "But the men are of the Legion." They weremes enfantsto him all that day.
But the attack was not yet to be delivered. During the night the two scouts had ridden on their swift Meharis northwestwards, to the town of Insalah. They knocked upon the gates of the great mud fortress of Abd-el-Kader, the sheikh, and were instantly admitted to the dark room where he sat upon a pile of rugs. When the eyes of the scouts became accustomed to the gloom, they saw there was yet another in the room, a tall man robed in black, with a black mask of cotton wound about his face so that only his eyes were visible. This was the chieftain of the Hoggar Touaregs.
"Well?" said Abd-el-Kader. And the scouts told him roughly the number of the force and the direction of the journey.
Then Abd-el-Kader turned to the Touareg chieftain.
"We will let them go further south, since southwards they are marching," he said, in his suave gentle voice. "A hundred miles more, and they will be amongst the sand dunes. Since they have cannon, the attack must be sudden. Let it be at the wells of Bir-el-Gharamo."
The Touareg chieftain rode out that day towards his hills; and, unmolested, Captain Tavernay's expedition went down to the dunes. Great waves of yellow sand, sometimes three hundred feet from crest to base, intersected the face of the desert; the winds had given to their summits the overhang of a breaking sea; they ran this way and that, as though the currents of an ocean had directed their course; they had the very look of motion; so that Stretton could not but remember the roaring combers of the cold North Sea as he gazed upon these silent and arrested copies. They made of that country a maze of intricate valleys. Led by a local guide commandeered from the last oasis, the companies of the Legion marched into the maze, and on the second day saw, as they came over a hill, just below them in a narrow hollow, a mud parapet built about the mouth of a well. This was Bir-el-Gharamo, and here they camped. Sentries were posted on the neighbouring crests; suddenly the darkness came, and overhead the stars rushed down towards the earth. There was no moon that night, nor was there any sound of danger heard. Three times Tavernay went the round of the sentries, at eight and at ten and at twelve. But at three o'clock, just as the dawn was breaking, a shot was heard. Tavernay sprang up from the ground, the alarm rang out clear from the bugle over the infinite waste, the companies of the Legion seized their piled rifles and fell into battle order with an incredible neatness and expedition. There was no confusion, no noise. The square was formed about the well--the camels were knee-haltered in the middle, the guns placed at the corners. But it was still dark. A few shots were fired on the dunes, and the sentries came running back.
"Steady," cried Captain Tavernay. "They are coming. Fire low!"
The first volley rang out, and immediately afterwards on every side of that doomed square the impact of the Touaregs' charge fell like the blow of some monstrous hammer. All night they had been gathering noiselessly in the surrounding valleys. Now they had charged with lance and sword from the surrounding crests. Three sides of the square held their ground. The fourth wavered, crumpled in like a piece of broken cardboard, and the Arabs were within the square, stabbing at the backs of the soldiers, loosing and stampeding the camels. And at once, where deep silence had reigned a minute ago, the air was torn with shrill cries and oaths and the clamour of weapons. The square was broken; but here a group of men stood back to back, and with cartridge and bayonet held its ground; there another formed; and about each gun the men fought desperately. Meanwhile the morning came, a grey, clear light spread over the desert. Tavernay himself was with one of the machine-guns. It was dragged clear of themêléeand up a slope of sand. The soldiers parted in front of it, and its charge began to sweep the Touaregs down like swathes, and to pit the sand hills like a fall of rain. About the other gun the fight still raged.
"Come, my children," said Tavernay, "fight well; the Touaregs give no quarter."
Followed by Stretton, he led the charge. The Touaregs gave way before their furious onslaught. The soldiers reached the gun, faced about, and firing steadily kept off the enemy while the gun was run back. As soon as that was saved the battle was over. All over the hollow, wherever the Touaregs were massed, the two guns rattled out their canister. No Arab could approach them. The sun rose over the earth, and while it was rising the Touaregs broke and fled. When it shone out in its full round, there was no one left of them in that hollow except the wounded and the dead. But the victory had been dearly bought. All about the well, lying pell-mell among the Arabs and the dead camels, were the French Legionaries, some quite still, and others writhing in pain and crying for water. Stretton drew his hand across his forehead. He was stunned and dazed. It seemed to him that years had passed, that he had grown very old. Yet there was the sun new-risen. There was a dull pain in his head. He raised his hand and drew it away wet with blood. How or when he had received the blow he was quite unaware. He stood staring stupidly about him. So very little while ago men were lying here sleeping in their cloaks, quite strong, living people; now they were lying dead or in pain; it was all incomprehensible.
"Why?" he asked aloud of no one. "Now, why?"
Gradually, however, custom resumed its power. There was a man hanging limp over the parapet of the well. He looked as though he had knelt down and stooped over to drink, and in that attitude had fallen asleep. But he might so easily be pushed into the well, and custom had made the preservation of wells from impurity an instinct. He removed the body and went in search of Tavernay. Tavernay was sitting propped up against a camel's saddle; the doctor was by his side, a blood-stained bandage was about his thigh. He spoke in a weak voice.
"Lieutenant Laurent?"
Stretton went in search. He came across an old grey-headed soldier rolling methodically a cigarette.
"He is dead--over there," said the soldier. "Have you a light?"
Laurent had died game. He was lying clasped in the arms of a gigantic Touareg, and while thus held he had been stabbed by another through the back. To that end the contemptuous smile of a lady far away in Paris had brought him. He lay with his face to the sky, his wounded vanity now quite healed. He had earned Tavernay's praise, at all events, that day. For he had fought well. Of thesous-lieutenantsone was killed, the other dangerously wounded. A sergeant-major lay with a broken shoulder beside one of the guns. Stretton went back to Tavernay.
"You must take command, then," said Tavernay. "I think you have learnt something about it on your fishing-boats." And in spite of his pain he smiled.
Stretton mustered the men and called over the names. Almost the first name which he called was the name of "Barbier," and Barbier, with a blood-stained rag about his head, answered. Of the two hundred and thirty men who had made up the two companies of the Legion, only forty-seven could stand in the ranks and answer to their names. For those forty-seven there was herculean work to do. Officers were appointed, the dead bodies were roughly buried, the camels collected, litters improvised for the wounded, the goat-skins filled with water. Late in the afternoon Stretton came again to Tavernay.
"We are ready, sir." Tavernay nodded and asked for a sheet of paper, an envelope, and ink. They were fetched from his portfolio and very slowly and laboriously he wrote a letter and handed it to Stretton.
"Seal it," he said, "now, in front of me."
Stretton obeyed.
"Keep that letter. If you get back to Ouargla without me, give it to the Commandant there."
Tavernay was lifted in a litter on to the back of a camel, and the remnant of the geographical expedition began its terrible homeward march. Eight hundred miles lay between Bir-el-Ghiramo and the safety of Ouargla. The Touaregs hung upon the rear of the force, but they did not attack again. They preferred another way. One evening a solitary Arab drove a laden camel into the bivouac. He was conducted to Stretton, and said, "The Touaregs ask pardon and pray for peace. They will molest you no more. Indeed, they will help you, and as an earnest of their true desire for your welfare they send you a camel-load of dates."
Stretton accepted the present, and carried the message to Tavernay, who cried at once, "Let no one eat those dates." But two soldiers had already eaten of them, and died of poison before the morning. Short of food, short of sentinels, the broken force crept back across the stretches of soft sand, the greyish-green plains of halfa-grass, the ridges of red hill. One by one the injured succumbed; their wounds gangrened, they were tortured by the burning sun and the motion of the camels. A halt would be made, a camel made to kneel, and a rough grave dug.
"Pelissier," cried Stretton, and a soldier stepped out from the ranks who had once conducted mass in the church of the Madeleine in Paris. Pelissier would recite such prayers as he remembered, and the force would move on again, leaving one more soldier's grave behind it in the desert to protest unnoticed against the economy of governments. Then came a morning when Stretton was summoned to Captain Tavernay's side.
For two days Tavernay had tossed in a delirium. He now lay beneath a rough shelter of cloaks, in his right senses, but so weak that he could not lift a hand, and with a face so pinched and drawn that his years seemed to have been doubled. His eyes shone out from big black circles. Stretton knelt down beside him.
"You have the letter?"
"Yes."
"Do not forget."
He lay for a while in a sort of contentment, then he said--"Do not think this expedition has been waste. A small force first and disaster ... the big force afterwards to retrieve the disaster, and with it victory, and government and peace, and a new country won for France. That is the law of the Legion....MyLegion." He smiled, and Stretton muttered a few insincere words.
"You will recover, my captain. You will lead your companies again."
"No," said Tavernay, in a whisper. "I do not want to. I am very happy. Yes, I say that, who joined the Legion twenty years ago. And the Legion, my friend, is the nation of the unhappy. For twenty years I have been a citizen of that nation.... I pity women who have no such nation to welcome them and find them work.... For us there is no need of pity."
And in a few moments he fell asleep, and, two hours later, sleeping, died. A pile of stones was built above his grave, and the force marched on. Gaunt, starved, and ragged, the men marched northwards, leaving the Touat country upon their left hand. It struck the caravan route from Tidikelt to Ouargla; it stumbled at last through the gates of the town. Silently it marched through the streets to the French fortress. On no survivor's face was there any sign of joy that at last their hardships were over, their safety assured. All were too tired, too dispirited. The very people who crowded to see them pass seemed part of an uninteresting show. Stretton went at once to the Commandant and told the story of their disaster. Then he handed him the letter of Captain Tavernay. The Commandant broke the seal and read it through. He looked up at Stretton, a thin spent figure of a man overwrought with sleeplessness and anxiety.
"Tell me how and when this was written," said the Commandant.
Stretton obeyed, and after he had heard, the Commandant sat with his hand shading his eyes. When he spoke, his voice showed that he was deeply moved.
"You know what the letter contains, Sergeant Ohlsen?"
"No, my Commandant."
"Read, then, for yourself;" and he passed the letter across his office table. Stretton took it and read. There were a few lines written--only a few; but those few lines recommended Sergeant Ohlsen for promotion to the rank of officer. The Commandant held out his hand.
"That is like our Tavernay," he said. "He thought always of his soldiers. He wrote it at once, you see, after the battle was over, lest he should die and justice not be done. Have no fear, my friend. It is you who have brought back to Ouargla the survivors of the Legion. But you must give your real name. There is a scrutiny before a soldier is promoted to the rank of office. Sergeant Ohlsen. That is all very well. But Lieutenant----. Come, Lieutenant who?"
He took up his pen.
"Lieutenant Sir Anthony Stretton," replied Tony; and the Commandant wrote down the name.
It was not, however, only Millie Stretton whose fortunes were touched by Tony's absence. Warrisden, whom Stretton had met but the once on board theCity of Bristol, was no less affected. On a day of that summer, during which Tony camped far away on the edge of the Sahara, Warrisden rode down the steep hill from the village of the three poplars on his way to Whitewebs. Once Pamela had ridden along this road between the white wood rails and the black bare stems of trees on a winter's evening of mist. That was more than fifteen months ago. The brown furrows in the fields were now acres of waving yellow; each black clump was now an ambuscade of green, noisy with birds. The branches creaked in a light wind and rippled and shook the sunlight from their leaves, the road glistened like chalk. It was ten o'clock on an August morning, very clear and light. Voices from far away amongst the corn sounded tiny and distinct, like voices heard through a telephone. Round this bend at the thicket corner Pamela had disappeared on that dim, grey evening. How far had she since travelled on the new road, Warrisden wondered. She was at Whitewebs now. He was riding thither to find out.
When he inquired for her at the door, he was at once led through the house into the big garden at the back. Pamela was sitting in a chair at the edge of the lawn under the shade of the great avenue of elms which ran straight from the back of the house to the shallow stream at the garden's boundary. She saw him at once as he came out from the glass-door on to the gravel, and she rose from her chair. She did not advance to him, but just stood where she was, watching him approach; and in her eyes there was a great perplexity. Warrisden came straight to her over the lawn. There was no hesitation in his manner, at all events. On the other hand, there was no air of assurance. He came with a definite object; so much was evident, but no more. He stopped in front of her and raised his hat. Pamela looked at him and said nothing. She did not even give him her hand. She stood and waited almost submissively, with her troubled eyes resting quietly on his.
"You expected me?" he said.
"Yes. I received your letter this morning."
"You have guessed why I have come?"
"Yes."
"And you are troubled," said Warrisden.
They turned and walked under the branches into the avenue. Overhead there was a bustle of blackbirds and thrushes; a gardener sharpening his scythe in the rose garden made a little rasping sound. Over all the lawn the August sunlight lay warm and golden like a benediction.
"I have come to ask you the old question," said Warrisden. "Will you marry me?"
Pamela gazed steadily ahead as she walked, and she walked very slowly. She was prepared for the question, yet she took her time to answer it. And the answer when at last she gave it was no answer at all.
"I do not know," she said, in a low clear voice.
Warrisden looked at her. The profile of her face was towards him. He wondered for the thousandth time at its beauty and its gentleness. The broad, white forehead under the sweep of her dark hair, the big, dark eyes shining beneath her brows, the delicate colour upon her cheeks, the curve of the lips. He wondered and longed. But he spoke simply and without extravagance, knowing that he would be understood.
"I have done nothing for you of the things men often do when a woman comes into their lives. I have tried to make no career. I think there are enough people making careers. They make the world very noisy, and they raise a deal of dust. I have just gone on living quietly as I did before, believing you would need no such proof."
"I do not," said Pamela.
"There might be much happiness for both of us," he continued. And again she answered, without looking at him--
"I do not know."
She was not evading him. Evasions, indeed, were never to her liking; and here, she was aware, were very serious issues.
"I have been thinking about you a great deal," she said. "I will tell you this. There is no one else. But that is not all. I can say too, I think, quite certainly, that there will be no one else. Only that is not enough, is it? Not enough, at all events, for you and me."
Warrisden nodded his head.
"No, that is not enough," he said gravely.
They walked on side by side in silence for a little while.
"It is only fair that I should be very frank with you," she went on. "I have been thinking so much about you in order that when you came again with this old question, as I knew you would, I might be quite clear and frank. Do you remember that you once spoke to me about the turnpike gate--the gate which I was to open and through which I was to go, like other men and women down the appointed road?"
"Yes, I remember."
"You meant, as I understand it, the gate between friendship and the ever so much more which lies beyond?"
"Yes."
And Pamela repeated his word. "Yes," she said. "But one cannot open that gate at will. It opens of itself at a touch, or it stays shut."
"And it stays shut now?"
Pamela answered him at once--
"Say, rather, that I have raised a hand towards the gate, but that I am afraid to try." And she turned her face to him at last. Her eyes were very wistful.
They stopped upon the grass bank of the stream at the end of the avenue. Pamela looked down into the dark, swiftly running water, and went on choosing each word, testing it, as it were, before she uttered it.
"You see that new road beyond the gate is no new road to me. I have trodden it before, and crept back--broken. Therefore, I am afraid." She paused. Warrisden was aware from her attitude that she had not finished. He did not stir lest he should check what more remained to say, and that remnant never be spoken at all. And it was well for him that he did not stir; for she said, in the same clear, low voice which she had hitherto used, and just as steadily--
"I am the more afraid because I think that if I did touch that gate it might open of itself."
She had begun, in a word, to feel premonitions of that suspense and of that glowing life in which for a few brief months she had once been steeped. Did she expect a letter from Warrisden, there was an eagerness in her anticipation with which she was well familiar. Was the letter delayed, there was a keenness in her disappointment which was like the pang of an old wound. And this recognition that the good days might come again, as in a cycle, brought to her very vividly the memory of the bad black days which had followed. Fear of those latter days, and the contrast of their number with the number of those which had gone before, drove her back. For those latter days in their turn might come round again.
Warrisden looked at her and his heart filled with pity for the great trouble which had overwhelmed her. She stood by his side with the sunlight playing upon her face and her hair--a girl brilliant with life, ripe to turn its possibilities into facts; and she shrank from the ordeal, so hardly had she been hit! She was by nature fearless, yet was she desperately afraid.
"Will nothing make you touch the gate and try?" he asked gently. And then, quietly as he spoke, the greatness of his longing made itself heard. "My dear, my dear," he said, "will nothing make you take your risks?"
The words struck sharply upon her memories. She turned her eyes to him.
"It is strange that you should use those words," she said. "For there is one thing which might make me take my risks. The return of the man who used them to you in the North Sea."
"Tony Stretton?" exclaimed Warrisden.
"Yes. He is still away. It is said that he is on a long shooting expedition somewhere in Central Africa, and out of reach. But that is not the truth. We do not know where he is, or when he will come back."
"Shall I try to find him again?" said Warrisden. "This time I might succeed in bringing him home."
Pamela shook her head.
"No," she answered. "I think I know why he stays away. And there would be only one way of persuading him to return. Well--that means I must not use, unless things have come to an extremity."
The one means of persuasion was the truth. If she sent for Tony Stretton again she must explain what that saying of hers spoken so long ago had meant. She must write why he should not have left his wife. She must relate the sordid story, which rendered his return imperative, That she was prepared to do, if all else failed, in the last resort, but not till then.
"But the extremity has not been reached," she continued, "and I hope it never will. I hope Tony Stretton will come back soon of his own accord. That would be the best thing which could happen, ever so much the best." She did not blame Tony for his absence, for she understood the motive which caused it. In a way, she was inclined to approve of it in itself, just as a motive, that is to say. It was the character of Millie Stretton and his ignorance of it which made his experiment so hazardous. Complete confidence in his wife's honour, indeed, was to her thinking, and rightly, an essential part of his motive. She wished him to return of his own accord and keep that confidence.
"There is not the same necessity," she continued, choosing her words, "that he should return immediately, as there was when I sent you out to the North Sea; but it is possible that the necessity might recur." For she knew that, though Callon was far away in Chili, letters came from him to Millie. Only lately a careless remark of Millie's with reference to that State had assured her of this. And if the letters still came, though Callon had been away a year, it followed that they were answered.
"In that case you would send for me?" said Warrisden.
"Yes. I should rely on you."
And Warrisden answered quietly, "Thank you."
He asked no questions. He seemed to understand that Pamela must use him, and, while using him, not fail of loyalty to her sex. A feeling of self-reproach suddenly troubled Pamela. She had never told him that she had used another's help and not his. She wondered whether it was quite fair not to tell him. But she kept silent. After all, she thought, the news would only hurt him; and Mr. Mudge's help had been help which he could not have given. She went back to the matter of their relationship to one another.
"So you understand what I think," she said. "I am afraid. I look for signs. I cannot help doing that. I have set my heart on keeping a promise which I made to Tony Stretton. If he returns, whether of his own accord or by my persuasion, and things go well--why, then"--and she turned her face from him and said, looking steadily in front of her--"why, then, perhaps."
As she spoke her face changed wonderfully. The mere utterance of the word aloud conjured up dreams. A wistful smile made her lips beautiful, her eyes grew dim. Just for a moment she gave those dreams their way. She looked across the garden through a mist, seeing nothing of the trees or the coloured flowers, but gazing into a vision of other and golden days--of days perhaps to come. Warrisden stood at her side, and did not speak. But something of those dreams he guessed, her face had grown so young.
She shook her dreams from her in a few moments.
"So you see, at present," she resumed, "marriage is impossible. It will always be impossible to me unless I can bring--everything, not merely companionship, not merely liking; out the ever so much more which there is. I cannot contemplate it at all under any other conditions"--and now she looked at her companion--"and I believe it is the same with you."
"Yes," Warrisden replied, "I ask for everything."
He had his convictions, and since there was complete confidence between these two, he spoke them now.
"It is unsafe, of course, to generalise on the subject of women. But I do think this: If a man asks little from a woman, she will give him even less than he asks, and she will give it grudgingly, sparingly; counting what she gives. And that little, to my mind, is worth rather less than nothing. Better have no ties than weak ones. If, on the other hand, a man asks a great deal, and continually asks it, why, the woman may get bored, and he may get nothing. In which case he is no worse off than he was before. But if, on the other hand, the woman does give in return----"
"Well?" asked Pamela.
"Well, then, she gives ever so much more than he asks, and gives it willingly with open hands."
Pamela thought the theory over.
"Yes, I think that is generally true," she said. "But, after all, I am giving you very little."
Warrisden laughed.
"That's true," he replied. "But then you are not bored, and I have not done asking."
Pamela laughed too, and their talk thus ended in a lighter note. They walked towards the house, and as they did so a woman came out on to the lawn.
"This is Millie Stretton," said Pamela.
"She is staying here?" cried Warrisden.
"Yes," replied Pamela, "Before she comes I want to ask you to do something for me. Oh, it is quite a small thing. But I should like you very much to do it. Where do you go to from here?"
"To London," said Warrisden, "I have business there."
The business which called him to town had, indeed, only occurred to him during the last half-hour. It had arisen from their conversation. It seemed to Warrisden immediate and imperative.
"Will you be in London to-morrow?" asked Pamela.
"Yes."
"Then I want you to write to me. Just a little letter--nothing much, a line or two. And I want you to post it, not by the country post, but afterwards, so that it will reach me in the evening. Don't write here, for I am going home. And please don't forget."
Millie Stretton joined them a moment afterwards, and Warrisden was introduced to her.
"I have had an offer for the house in Berkeley Square," she said to Pamela. "I think I will take it. I shall be glad to be rid of it."
They went back into the house. Warrisden wondered at Pamela's request for a letter, and at her urgency that it should arrive at a particular time. He was not discontented with the walk which they had taken under the avenue of elms. It seemed to him that Pamela was coming slowly towards him. There was a great difference between her "No" of last year and her "I do not know" of to-day. Even that "I do not know" while they talked had become "perhaps." Had she not owned even more, since she was afraid the gate would open of itself did she but touch and try? His hopes, therefore, rode high that day, and would have ridden yet higher, could he have guessed why she so desired a few lines in his handwriting in the evening of the day after to-morrow.
The reason was this. Repairs, long needed, had at last been undertaken in the house of Pamela's father, a few miles away; and those repairs involved the rooms reserved for Pamela. There were certain drawers in that room which had not been unlocked for years, and of which Pamela sedulously guarded the keys. They held letters, a few small presents, one or two photographs, and some insignificant trifles which could not be valued, since their value depended only on their associations. There were, for instance, some cheap red beads, and the history of those beads tells all that need be said of the contents of those locked drawers.
Two hundred years before, a great full-rigged ship, bound with a general cargo for the Guinea Coast, sailed down the Channel out of Portsmouth. Amongst the cargo was a great store of these red beads. The beads were to buy slaves for the plantations. But the great ship got no further on her voyage than Bigbury Bay in Devonshire. She damaged her rudder in a storm, and the storm swept her on to the bleak rocks of Bolt Tail, dragged her back again into the welter of the sea, drove her into Bigbury Bay, and flung her up there against the low red cliffs, where all her crew perished. The cargo was spilt amongst the breakers, and the shores of that bay were littered with red beads. You may pick them up to this day amongst the pebbles. There Pamela had picked them upon a hot August morning, very like to that which now dreamed over this green, quiet garden of Leicestershire; and when she had picked them up she had not been alone. The locked cabinets held all the relics which remained to her from those few bright weeks in Devon; and the mere touch of any one, however trifling, would have magic to quicken her memories. Yet now the cabinets must be unlocked, and all that was in them removed. There was a bad hour waiting for Pamela, when she would remove these relics one by one--the faded letters in the handwriting which she would never see again on any envelope; the photograph of the face which could exchange no look with her; the little presents from the hand which could touch hers no more. It would be a relief, she thought, to come downstairs when that necessary work was done, that bad hour over, and find a letter from Warrisden upon the table. Just a few lines. She needed nothing more.
Both Pamela and Millie Stretton walked with Warrisden through the hall to the front door. Upon the hall-table letters were lying. Pamela glanced at them as she passed, and caught one up rather suddenly. Then she looked at Warrisden, and there was something of appeal in her look. It was as though she turned to a confederate on whom she could surely rely. But she said nothing, since Millie Stretton was at her side. For the letter was in the handwriting of Mr. Mudge, who wrote but rarely, and never without a reason. She read the letter in the garden as soon as Warrisden had ridden off, and the news which it contained was bad news. Callon had lived frugally in South America--by Christmas he would have discharged his debts; and he had announced to Mudge that he intended at that date to resign his appointment. There were still four months, Pamela reflected--nay, counting the journey home, five months; and within that time Tony Stretton might reappear. If he did not, why, she could summon Warrisden to her aid. She looked at Millie, who was reading a book in a garden-chair close by. Did she know, Pamela wondered? But Millie gave no sign.
Meanwhile, Warrisden travelled to London upon that particular business which made a visit there in August so imperative. It had come upon him while he had been talking with Pamela that it would be as well for him to know the whereabouts of Tony Stretton at once; so that if the need came he should be ready to set out upon the instant. On the following evening, accordingly, he drove down to Stepney. It was very likely that Chase would be away upon a holiday. But there was a chance that he might find him clinging to his work through this hot August, a chance worth the trouble of his journey. He drove to the house where Chase lodged, thinking to catch him before he set out for his evening's work at the mission. The door of the house stood open to the street. Warrisden dismissed his cab, and walked up the steps into the narrow hall. A door upon his right hand was opened, and a young man politely asked Warrisden to step in. He was a fair-haired youth, with glasses upon his nose, and he carried a napkin in his hand. He had evidently been interrupted at his dinner by Warrisden's arrival. He was not dining alone, for a youth of the same standing, but of a more athletic mould, sat at the table. There was a third place laid, but not occupied.
Warrisden looked at the third chair.
"I came to see Mr. Chase," he said. "I suppose that he has gone early to the mission?"
"No," said the youth who had opened the door. "He has not been well of late. The hot weather in these close streets is trying. But he certainly should have something to eat by now, even if he does not intend to get up."
He spoke in a pedantic, self-satisfied voice, and introduced himself as Mr. Raphael Princkley, and his companion as Mr. Jonas Stiles, both undergraduates of Queen's College, Oxford.
"We are helping Chase in his work," continued Mr. Princkley. "It is little we can do, but you are no doubt acquainted with the poetry of Robert Browning: 'The little more, and how much it is'? In that line we find our justification."
The fair-haired youth rang the bell for the housekeeper. She was an old woman, fat and slow, and she took her time in answering the summons.
"Mrs. Wither, have you called Mr. Chase?" he asked when the old lady appeared at the door.
"No, Mr. Princkley, sir," she replied. "You told me yesterday evening not to disturb him on any account until he rang."
Mr. Princkley turned to Warrisden.
"Mr. Chase was unwell all yesterday," he said, "and at dinner-time he told us that he felt unequal to his duties. He was sitting in that empty place, and we both advised him not to overtax his strength."
He appealed with a look to Mr. Stiles for corroboration.
"Yes; we both advised him," said Stiles, between two mouthfuls; "and, very wisely, he took our advice."
"He rose from his chair," continued Princkley. "There was some fruit upon the table. He took an apple from the dish. I think, Stiles, that it was an apple which he took?"
Mr. Stiles agreed, and went on with his dinner.
"It was certainly an apple which he took. He took it in his hand."
"You hardly expected him to take it with his foot!" rejoined Warrisden, politely. Warrisden was growing a little restive under this detailed account of Chase's indisposition.
"No," replied Princkley, with gravity. "He took it in quite a natural way, and went upstairs to his sitting-room. I gave orders to Mrs. Wither that he must not be disturbed until he rang. That is so, Mrs. Wither, is it not? Yes. I thank you."
"That was yesterday evening!" cried Warrisden.
"Yesterday evening," replied Mr. Princkley.
"And no one has been near him since?"
Then Mrs. Wither intervened.
"Oh yes. I went into Mr. Chase's room an hour afterwards. He was sitting in his armchair before the grate----"
"Holding the apple in his hand. I think. Mrs. Wither, you said?" continued Stiles.
"Yes, sir," said Mrs. Wither. "He had his arm out resting on the arm of the chair, and the apple was in his hand."
"Well, well!" exclaimed Warrisden.
"I told him that I would not call him in the morning until he rang, as he wanted a good rest."
"What did he say?" asked Warrisden.
"Nothing, sir. As often as not he does not answer when he is spoken to."
A sudden fear seized upon Warrisden. He ran out of the room and up the stairs to Chase's sitting-room. He knocked on the door; there was no answer. He turned the handle and entered. Chase had not gone to bed last night. He was still sitting in his armchair before the grate. One arm was extended along the arm of the chair, with the palm turned upwards, and in the palm lay an apple. Chase was sitting huddled up, with his head fallen forward upon his breast like a man asleep. Warrisden crossed the room and touched the hand which held the apple. It was quite cold. The apple rolled on to the floor. Warrisden turned to the housekeeper. She was standing in the doorway, and staring over her shoulder were the two undergraduates.
"He was dead," said Warrisden, "when you looked into the room an hour afterwards!"
The three people in the doorway stood stupidly aghast. Warrisden pushed them out, locked the door on the outside, and removed the key.
"Mr. Princkley, will you run for a doctor?" he asked.
Princkley nodded his head, and went off upon his errand.
Warrisden and Stiles descended the stairs into the dining-room.
"I think you had better take the news to the mission," said Warrisden; and Stiles in his turn went off without a word. Mrs. Wither for her part had run out of the house as quickly as she could. She hardly knew what she was doing. She had served as housekeeper to Mr. Chase ever since he had come to Stepney, and she was dazed by the sudden calamity. She was aware of a need to talk, to find the neighbours and talk.
Warrisden was thus left alone in the house. It had come about without any premeditation upon his part. He was the oldest man of the three who had been present, and the only one who had kept his wits clear. Both Princkley and Stiles had looked to him to decide what must be done. They regarded him as Chase's friend, whereas they were mere acquaintances. It did not even occur to Warrisden at first that he was alone in the house, that he held in his hand the key to Chase's room. He was thinking of the strange perplexing life which had now so strangely ended. He thought of his first meeting with Chase in the mission, and of the distaste which he had felt; he remembered the array of liqueur bottles on the table, and the half-hour during which Chase had talked. A man of morbid pleasures, that had been Warrisden's impression. Yet there were the years of work, here, amongst these squalid streets. Even August had seen him clinging to--nay, dying at--his work. As Warrisden looked out of the window he saw a group of men and women and children gather outside the house. There was not a face but wore a look of consternation. If they spoke, they spoke in whispers, like people overawed. A very strange life! Warrisden knew many--as who does not?--who saw the high-road distinctly, and could not for the life of them but walk upon the low one. But to use both deliberately, as it seemed Chase had done; to dip from the high-road on to the low, and then painfully to scramble up again, and again willingly to drop, as though the air of those stern heights were too rigorous for continuous walking; to live the double life because he could not entirely live the one, and would not entirely live the other. Thus Warrisden solved the problem of thedilettantecurate and his devotion to his work, and his solution was correct.
But he held the key of Chase's room in his hand; and there was no one but himself in the house. His thoughts came back to Pamela and the object of his journey up to town. He was sorely tempted to use the key, since now the means by which he had hoped to discover in what quarter of the world Stretton wandered and was hid were tragically closed to him. Chase could no longer speak, even if he would. Very likely there were letters upstairs lying on the table. There might be one from Tony Stretton. Warrisden did not want to read it--a mere glance at the postmark, and at the foreign stamp upon the envelope. Was that so great a crime? Warrisden was sorely tempted. If only he could be sure that Chase would a second time have revealed what he was bidden to keep hid, why, then, would it not be just the same thing as if Chase were actually speaking with his lips? Warrisden played with the key. He went to the door and listened. There was not a sound in the house except the ticking of a clock. The front door still stood open. He must be quick if he meant to act. Warrisden turned to the stairs. The thought of the dead man huddled in the chair, a silent guardian of the secret, weighted his steps. Slowly he mounted. Such serious issues hung upon his gaining this one piece of knowledge. The fortunes of four people--Pamela and himself, Tony Stretton and his wife--might all be straightened out if he only did this one thing, which he had no right to do. He would not pry amongst Chase's papers; he would merely glance at the table, that was all. He heard voices in the hall while he was still upon the stairs. He turned back with a feeling of relief.
At the foot of the stairs stood Mr. Princkley and the doctor. Warrisden handed the key of the room to the latter, and the three men went up. The doctor opened the door and crossed to the armchair. Then he looked about the room.
"Nothing has been touched, of course?"
"Nothing," replied Warrisden.
The doctor looked again at the dead man. Then he turned to Warrisden, mistaking him, as the others had done, for some relation or near friend.
"I can give no certificate," said he.
"There must be an inquest?"
"Yes."
Then the doctor moved suddenly to the table, which stood a few feet from the armchair. There was a decanter upon it half filled with a liquid like brown sherry, only a little darker. The doctor removed the stopper and raised the decanter to his nose.
"Ah!" said he, in a voice of comprehension. He turned again to Warrisden.
"Did you know?" he asked.
"No."
The doctor held the decanter towards Warrisden. Warrisden took it, moistened the tip of a finger with the liquid, and tasted it. It had a bitter flavour.
"What is it?" he asked.
"Laudanum," said the doctor. "An overdose of it."
"Where is the glass, then, in which it was taken?"
A tumbler stood upon the table close to the decanter-stopper. The doctor took it up.
"Yes, I noticed that," said Warrisden; "I noticed that it is clean."
The doctor took the glass to the window, turned it upside down, and held it to the light. It was quite dry, quite clean.
"Surely it's evident what happened," said Warrisden. "Chase came into the room, opened that cupboard door in the corner there. His keys are still dangling in the lock, he took the decanter and the tumbler out, placed them on the table at his side, sat down in his chair with the apple in his hand, leaned back and quietly died."
"Yes, no doubt," said the doctor. "But I think here will be found the reason why he leaned back and quietly died," and he touched the decanter. "Opium poisoning. It may not have been an overdose, but a regular practice." He went to the door and called for Mrs. Wither. Mrs. Wither had now returned to the house. When she came upstairs into the room, he pointed to the decanter.
"Did you ever see this before?"
"No, sir," she answered.
"Or that cupboard open?"
"No, it was always locked."
"Quite so," said the doctor. "You had better get some women to help you here," he went on; and, with Warrisden's assistance, he lifted Chase from the chair and carried him into his bedroom.
"I must give notice to the police," he went on, and again he appealed to Warrisden. "Do you mind staying in the house till I come back?"
"Not at all."
The doctor locked the door of the room and took the key away with him. Warrisden waited with Princkley in the dining-room. The doctor had taken away the key. It seemed that his chance of discovering the secret which was of so much importance to Pamela and Millie Stretton and himself had vanished. If only he had come yesterday, or the day before! He sat down by the window and gazed out upon the street. A group of men and women were gathered in the roadway, looking up at the windows and talking quietly together. Then Princkley from behind said--
"Some letters came for Chase this morning. They were not taken up to his room. You had better look at them."
Every one took him for a close friend. Princkley brought him the letters, and he glanced at the superscriptions lest any one should wear a look of immediate importance. He held the letters in his hand and turned them over one by one, and half-way through the file he stopped. He had come to a letter written upon thin paper, in a man's handwriting, with a foreign stamp upon the envelope. The stamp was a French one, and there was printed upon it: "Poste d'Algérie."
Warrisden examined the post-mark. The letter came from Ain-Sefra. Warrisden went on with his examination without a word. But his heart quickened. He wondered whether he had found the clue. Ain-Sefra in Algeria. Warrisden had never heard of the place before. It might be a health resort, a wintering place. But this was the month of August. There would be no visitors at this time to a health resort in Algeria. He handed the letters back to Princkley.
"I cannot tell whether they are important or not," he said. "I knew Chase very slightly. His relations must be informed. I suppose Mrs. Wither knows where they live."
He took his departure as soon as the doctor had returned with the police, and drove back to his rooms. A search through the Encyclopædia told him nothing of Ain-Sefra; but, on the other hand, he could not look at the article on Algeria without the Foreign Legion leaping to his eyes at once--so great and magnificent a part it played in the modern history of that colony. The Foreign Legion! Warrisden jumped to the conviction that there was the secret of Tony Stretton's disappearance. Every reason he could imagine came to his aid. Let a man wish to disappear, as, from whatsoever reason, Tony Stretton did, where else could he so completely bury himself and yet live? Hardships? Dangers? Yes. But Tony Stretton had braved hardships and dangers in the North Sea, and had made light of them. A detachment of the Foreign Legion might well be stationed at this oasis of Ain-Sefra, of which his Encyclopædia knew nothing. He had no doubt there was a trooper there, serving under some false name, who would start if the name of "Stretton" were suddenly shouted to him behind his back.
Warrisden wrote no word of his conjecture to Pamela; he wished to raise no hopes which he could not fulfil. Convinced as he was, he wished for certain proof. But in fulfilment of his promise he wrote to Pamela that night. Just a few lines--nothing more, as she had asked. But in those few lines he wrote that he would like her to procure for him a scrap of Tony Stretton's handwriting. Could she do it? In a week the scrap of handwriting arrived. Warrisden, looking at it, knew that the same hand had addressed the envelope at Ain-Sefra to Mr. Chase.
Warrisden was ready now, if the summons to service should come once more from Pamela.