All through that autumn Pamela watched for Tony's return, and watched in vain. Winter came, and with the winter a letter from Mr. Mudge. Lionel Callon had booked his passage home on a steamer which sailed on Christmas Eve from the port of Valparaiso. Pamela received the news one morning of December. She hunted that day with the Quorn, and for once her thoughts were set on other matters than this immediate business. The long grass meadows slipped away under her horse's feet the while she pondered how once more the danger of Callon's presence was to be averted. At times she hoped it would not need averting. Callon had been eighteen months away, and Millie was quick to forget. But she was no less quick to respond to a show of affection. Let Callon lay siege again persistently, and the danger at once was close. Besides, there were the letters. That he should have continued to write during the months of his absence was a sign that he had not forgone his plan of conquest.
Pamela returned home with a scheme floating in her mind. Some words which her mother had spoken at the breakfast-table had recurred to her, and at tea Pamela revived the subject.
"Did you say that you would not go to Roquebrune this winter, mother?" she asked.
"Yes," Mrs. Mardale replied; "I have been for so many winters now. I shall stay in England, for a change. We can let the Villa Pontignard, no doubt."
"Oh, there is no hurry," said Pamela. She added, "I shall be going to London to-morrow, but I shall be back in the evening."
She thought over her plan that evening. Its execution would cost her something, she realised. For many years she had not been out of England during the winter. She must leave her horses behind, and that was no small sacrifice for Pamela. She had one horse in particular, a big Irish horse, which had carried her in the days when her troubles were at their worst. He would follow her about the paddock or the yard nuzzling against her arm; a horse of blood and courage, yet gentle with her, thoughtful and kind for her as only a horse amongst the animals can be. She must leave him. On the other hand, her thoughts of late had been turning to Roquebrune for a particular reason. She had a feeling that she would rather like to tread again those hill-paths, to see once more those capes and headlands of which every one was a landmark of past pain--just as an experiment. She travelled to London the next day and drove from St. Pancras into Regent's Park.
Millie Stretton had taken a house on the west side of the park. It looked east across the water and through the glades of trees, and in front of it were the open spaces of which Tony and she had dreamed; and the sunlight streamed through the windows and lay in golden splashes on the floors when there was sunlight in London anywhere at all. When she looked from her window on the first morning, she could not but remember the plans which Tony and she had debated long ago. They had been so certain of realising them. Well, they were realised now, for her, at all events. There was the sunlight piercing through every cranny; there were the wide expanses of green, and trees. Only the windows looked on Regent's Park, and on no wide prairie; and of the two who, with so much enthusiasm, had marked out their imaginary site and built their house, there was only one to enjoy the fulfilment. Millie Stretton thought of Tony that morning, but with an effort. What Pamela had foreseen had come to pass. He had grown elusive to her thoughts, she could hardly visualise his person to herself; he was almost unreal. Had he walked in at that moment he would have been irksome to her as a stranger.
It was, however, Pamela Mardale who walked in. She was shown over the house, and until that ceremony was over she did not broach the reason for her visit. Then, however, Millie said with delight--
"It is what I have always wanted--sunlight."
"I came to suggest more sunlight," said Pamela. "There is our villa at Roquebrune in the south of France. It will be empty this winter. And I thought that perhaps you and I might go out there together as soon as Christmas is past."
Millie was standing at the window with her back to Pamela. She turned round quickly.
"But you hate the place," she said.
Pamela answered with sincerity--
"None the less I want to go this winter. I want to go very much. I won't tell you why. But I do want to go. And I should like you to come with me."
Pamela was anxious to discover whether that villa and its grounds, and the view from its windows, had still the power to revive the grief with which they had been so completely associated in her mind. Hitherto she had shrunk from the very idea of ever revisiting Roquebrune; of late, however, since Warrisden, in a word, had occupied so large a place in her thoughts, she had wished to put herself to the test, to understand whether her distress was really and truly dead, or whether it merely slumbered and could wake again. It was necessary, for Warrisden's sake as much as her own, that she should come to a true knowledge. And nowhere else could she so certainly acquire it. If the sight of Roquebrune, the familiar look of the villa's rooms, the familiar paths whereon she had carried so overcharged a heart, had no longer power to hurt and pain her, then she would be sure that she could start her life afresh. It was only fair--so she phrased it in her thoughts--that she should make the experiment.
Millie turned back to the window.
"I do not think that I shall leave London this winter," she said. "You see, I have only just got into the house."
"It might spare you some annoyance," Pamela suggested.
"I don't understand," said Millie.
"The annoyance of having to explain Tony's absence. He will very likely have returned by the spring."
Millie shrugged her shoulders.
"I have borne that annoyance for two years," she replied. "I do not think I shall go away this winter."
Was Millie thinking of Callon's return? Pamela wondered. Was it on his account that she decided to remain? Pamela could not ask the question. Her plan had come to naught, and she returned that afternoon to Leicestershire.
Christmas passed, and half-way through the month of January Callon called, on a dark afternoon, at Millie Stretton's house. Millie was alone; she was indeed expecting him. When Callon entered the room he found her standing with her back to the window, her face to the door, and so she stood, without speaking, for a few moments.
"You have been a long time away," she said, and she looked at him with curiosity, but with yet more anxiety to mark any changes which had come in his face.
"Yes," said he, "a long time."
Millie rang the bell and ordered tea to be brought.
"You have not changed," said she.
"Nor you."
Millie had spoken with a noticeable distance in her manner; and she had not given him her hand. With her back towards the light she had allowed very little of her expression to be visible to her visitor. When tea was brought in, however, she sat between the fireplace and the window, and the light fell upon her. Callon sat opposite to her.
"At last I know that I am at home again," he said, with a smile. Then he leaned forward and lowered his voice, although there was no third person in the room. He knew the value of such tricks. "I have looked forward during these eighteen months so very much to seeing you again."
Millie's face coloured, but it was with anger rather than pleasure. There was a hard look upon her face; her eyes blamed him.
"Yet you went away without a word to me," she said. "You did not come to see me before you went, you never hinted you were going."
"You thought it unkind?"
"It was unkind," said Millie.
"But I wrote to you. I have written often."
"In no letter have you told me why you went away," said Millie.
"You missed me when I went, then?"
Millie shrugged her shoulders.
"Well, I had seen a good deal of you. I missed--I missed--something," she said. Callon drank his tea and set down his cup.
"I have come to tell you why I went away without a word. I never mentioned the reason in my letters; I meant to tell you it with my lips. I did notgoaway, I wassentaway."
Millie was perplexed. "Sent away?" she repeated. "I understood, from what you wrote, that you accepted a post from Mr. Mudge?"
"I had to accept it," said Callon. "It was forced on me. Mudge was only the instrument to get me out of the way."
"Who sent you away, then?" asked Millie.
"A friend of yours--Miss Pamela Mardale."
Millie Stretton leaned back in her chair. "Pamela!" she cried incredulously. "Pamela sent you away! Why?"
"Because she thought that I was seeing too much of you."
Callon watched for the effect which his words would produce. He saw the change come in Millie's face. There was a new light in her eyes, her face flushed, she was angry; and anger was just the feeling he had meant to arouse, anger against Pamela, anger which would drive Millie towards him. He had kept his explanation back deliberately until he could speak it himself. From the moment when he had started from England he had nursed his determination to tell it to Millie Stretton. He had been hoodwinked, outwitted by Pamela and her friend; he had been banished to Chili for two years. Very well. But the game was not over yet. His vanity was hurt as nothing had ever hurt it before. He was stung to a thirst for revenge. He would live frugally, clear off his debts, return to England, and prove to his enemies the futility of their plan. He thought of Pamela Mardale; he imagined her hearing of his departure and dismissing him straightway contemptuously from her thoughts. For eighteen months he nursed his anger, and waited for the moment when he could return. There should be a surprise for Pamela Mardale. She should understand that he was a dangerous fellow to attack. Already, within a day of his landing, he had begun to retaliate. The anger in Millie Stretton's face was of good augury for him.
"Pamela!" cried Millie, clenching her hands together suddenly. "Yes, it was Pamela."
She bethought her of that pressing invitation to the south of France, an invitation from Pamela who looked on the shires as the only wintering-place. That was explained now. Mr. Mudge had informed Pamela, no doubt, that Lionel Callon was returning. Millie was furious. She looked on this interference as a gross impertinence.
Callon rose from his chair.
"You can imagine it, was humiliating to me to be tricked and sent away. But I was helpless. I am a poor man; I was in debt. Miss Mardale had an old rich man devoted to her in Mr. Mudge. He bought up my debts, his lawyer demanded an immediate settlement of them all, and I could not immediately settle them. I was threatened with proceedings, with bankruptcy."
"You should have come to me," cried Millie.
Callon raised a protesting hand.
"Oh, Lady Stretton, how could I?" he exclaimed in reproach. "Think for a moment! Oh, you would have offered help at a hint. I know you. You are most kind, most generous. But think, you are a woman. I am a man. Oh no!"
Callon did not mention that Mr. Mudge had compelled him to accept or refuse the post in Chili with only an hour's deliberation, and that hour between seven and eight in the evening. He had thought of calling upon Millie to suggest in her mind the offer which she had now made, but he had not had the time. He was glad now. His position was thereby so much the stronger.
"I had to accept Mudge's offer. Even the acceptance was made as humiliating as it possibly could be. For Mudge deliberately let me see that his only motive was to get me out of the country. He did not care whether I knew his motive or not. I did not count," he cried, bitterly. "I was a mere pawn upon a chess-board. I had to withdraw from my candidature. My career was spoilt. What did they care--Mr. Mudge and your friend? I was got out of your way."
"Oh, oh!" cried Millie; and Callon stepped quickly to her side.
"Imagine what these months have been to me," he went on. "I was out there in Chili, without friends. I had nothing to do. Every one else upon the railway had his work, his definite work, his definite position. I was nothing at, all, a mere prisoner, in everybody's way, a man utterly befooled. But that was not the worst of it. Shall I be frank?" He made a pretence of hesitation. "I will. I will take the risk of frankness. I was sent away just when I had begun to think a great deal about you." Millie Stretton, who had been gazing into her companion's face with the utmost sympathy, lowered her eyes to the floor. But she was silent.
"That was the worst," he continued softly. "I was angry, of course. I knew that I was losing the better part of two years----"
And Millie interrupted him: "How did she know?" she exclaimed.
"Who? Oh, Miss Mardale. Do you remember the evening she came to Whitewebs? I was waiting for you in the hall. You came down the stairs and ran up again. There was a mirror on the mantelpiece. She guessed then. Afterwards she and Mudge discussed us in the drawing-room. I saw them."
Millie got up from her chair and moved to the fireplace.
"It was on my account that you have lost two years, that your career has been injured," she said, in a low voice. She was really hurt, really troubled. "I am so very sorry. What return can I ever make to you? I will never speak to Pamela again."
Callon crossed and stood beside her.
"No, don't do that," he said. "It would be--unwise."
Her eyes flashed up to his quickly, and as quickly fell. The colour slowly deepened in her cheeks.
"What does it matter about my career?" he continued, with a smile. "I see you again. If you wish to make me a return, let me see you very often!"
He spoke with tenderness, and he was not pretending. What space did Millie Stretton fill in his thoughts? She was pretty, she was sympathetic, she was ready to catch the mood of her companion. It was not merely an act of retaliation which Callon projected. Such love as he had to give was hers. It was not durable, it was intertwined with meanness, it knew no high aims; yet, such as it was, it was hers. It gained, too, a fictitious strength from the mere fact that he had been deliberately kept from her. The eighteen months of bondage had given her an importance in his eyes, had made her more desirable through the very difficulty of attaining her. Millie allowed him to come again and again. She had a natural taste for secrecies, and practised them now, as he bade her do, without any perception of the humiliation which they involved. If he called at her house, it was after the dusk had fallen, and when she was at home to no other visitors. They dined together in the restaurants of unfashionable hotels, and if she drove to them in her brougham, she sent it away, and was escorted to her door in a cab. Callon was a past-master in concealment; he knew the public places where the public never is, and rumour did not couple their names. But secrecy is not for the secret when the secret ones are a man and a woman. It needs too much calculation in making appointments, too much punctuality in keeping them, too close a dependence upon the probable thing happening at the probable time. Sooner or later an accident, which could not be foreseen, occurs. It may be no more than the collision of a cab and the summons of the driver. Or some one takes, one morning, a walk in an unaccustomed spot. Or the intriguers fall in quite unexpectedly with another, who has a secret too, of which they were not aware. Sooner or later some one knows.
It was the last of these contingencies which brought about the disclosure in the case of Callon and Millie Stretton. Six weeks had passed since Callon's return. It was just a month from Easter. Millie dined with some friends, and went with them afterwards to a theatre in the Haymarket. At the door she sent her carriage home, and when the performance was over she took a hansom cab. She declined any escort, and was driven up Regent Street towards her home. At the corner of Devonshire Street, in Portland Place, a man loitered upon the pavement with a white scarf showing above his coat-collar. Millie opened the trap and spoke to the driver. The cab stopped by the loiterer at the street corner, who opened the doors and stepped in. The loiterer was Lionel Callon.
"Drive round Regent's Park," he said.
The cab drove northwards through Park Place and along the broad road towards Alexandra Gate. The air was warm, the stars bright overhead, the dark trees lined the roadway on the left, the road under the wheels was very white. There was a great peace in the park. It was quite deserted. In a second it seemed they had come out of the glare, and the roar of streets, into a land of quiet and cool gloom. Millie leaned back while Callon talked, and this was the burden of his talk.
"Let us go to the south of France. I will go first. Do you follow! You go for Easter. It will be quite natural. You stay at Eze, I at the little Reserve by the sea a mile away. There is a suite of rooms there. No one need know." Three times the cab drove round the park while Callon urged, and Millie more and more faintly declined. The driver sat perched upon his box, certain of a good fare, indifferent. Inside his cab, on this quiet night, the great issues of life and honour were debated. Millie had just her life in her hands. One way or the other, by a 'Yes' or a 'No,' she must decide what she would do with it, and, to whatever decision she came, it must reach out momentous with consequences and touch other lives beyond hers and beyond those others, others still. Her husband, her relations, her friends--not one of them but was concerned in this midnight drive. It seemed to Millie almost that she heard them hurrying about the cab, calling to her, reaching out their hands. So vivid was her thought, that she could count them, and could recognise their faces. She looked amongst them for her husband. But Tony was not there. She could not see him, she could not hear his voice. Round and round past the trees, on the white road, the cab went jingling on, the driver, indifferent, upon his perch, the tempter and the tempted within.
"Your husband does not care," said Callon. "If he did, would he stay so long away?"
"No, he does not care," said Millie. If he cared, would he not be among that suppliant throng which ran about the cab? And all at once it seemed that the hurrying footsteps lagged behind. The voices called more faintly; she could not see the outreaching hands.
"No one need know," said Callon.
"Someone always knows," replied Millie.
"What then?" cried Callon. "If you love, you will not mind. If you love, you will abandon everything--everyone. If you love!"
He had taken the right way to persuade her. Call upon Millie for a great sacrifice, she would make it, she would glory in making it, just for the moment. Disenchantment would come later; but nothing of it would she foresee. As she had matched herself with Tony, when first he had proposed to leave her behind in 'his father's house, so now she matched herself with Callon, she felt strong.
"Very well," she said. "I will follow."
Callon stopped the cab and got out. As he closed the doors and told the cabman where to drive, a man, wretchedly clad, slouched past and turned into the Marylebone Road. That was all. Sooner or later some one was sure to discover their secret. It happened that the some one passed them by to-night.
On the following morning a telegram was brought to Pamela at her father's house in Leicestershire. It came from Mr. Mudge, and contained these words: "Important that I should see you. Coming down. Please be at home at two." Punctually Mr. Mudge arrived. Pamela received him in her own sitting-room. She was waiting with a restless anxiety, and hardly waited for the door to be closed.
"You have bad news for me," she said. "Oh, I know! You are a busy man. You would not have come down to me had you not bad news. I am very grateful for your coming, but you have bad news."
"Yes," said Mr. Mudge, gravely; "news so bad that you must ask your other friend to help you. I can do nothing here."
It cost Mr. Mudge a little to acknowledge that he was of no avail in this particular instance. He would rather have served Pamela himself, had it been possible. He was fully aware of his age, and his looks, and his limitations. He was quite willing to stand aside for the other friend; indeed, he wished, with all his heart, that she should be happy with some mate of her own people. But at the same time he wished her to owe as much as possible of her happiness to him. He was her friend, but there was just that element of jealousy in his friendship which springs up when the friends are man and woman. Pamela understood that it meant some abnegation on his part to bid her call upon another than himself. She was still more impressed, in consequence, with the gravity of the news he had to convey.
"Is it Mr. Callon?" she asked.
"Yes," he replied. "It is imperative that Sir Anthony Stretton should return, and return at once. Of that I am very sure."
"You have seen Mr. Callon?" asked Pamela.
"And Lady Stretton. They were together."
"When?"
"Last night. In Regent's Park."
Pamela hesitated. She was doubtful how to put her questions. She said--
"And you are sure the trouble is urgent?"
Mr. Mudge nodded his head.
"Very sure. I saw them together. I saw the look on Lady Stretton's face. It was a clear night. There was a lamp too, in the cab. I passed them as Callon got out and said 'Good-night.'"
Pamela sat down in a chair, and fixed her troubled eyes on her companion.
"Did they see you?"
Mr. Mudge smiled.
"No."
"Let me have the whole truth," cried Pamela, "Tell me the story from the beginning. How you came to see them--everything."
Mr. Mudge sat down in his turn. He presented to her a side of his character which she had not hitherto suspected. She listened, and was moved to sympathy, as no complaint could ever have moved her; and Mr. Mudge was the last man to complain. Yet the truth came out clearly. Outwardly prosperous and enviable, he had yet inwardly missed all. A man of so wide a business, so many undertakings, so occupied a life, it was natural to dissociate him from the ordinary human sympathies and desires. It seemed that he could have neither time nor inclination to indulge them. But here he was, as he had once done before, not merely admitting their existence within him, but confessing that they were far the greater part of him, and that because they had been thwarted, the prosperous external life of business to which he seemed so ardently enchained was really of little account, He spoke very simply. Pamela lost sight of the business machine altogether. Here was a man, like another, telling her that through his vain ambitions his life had gone astray. She found a pathos in the dull and unimpressive look of him--his bald, uncomely head, his ungraceful figure. There was a strange contrast between his appearance and the fanciful antidote for disappointment which had brought him into Regent's Park when Callon and Lady Stretton were discussing their future course.
"I told you something of my history at Newmarket," he said. "You must remember what I told you, or you will not understand."
"I remember very well," said Pamela, gently. "I think that I shall understand."
Pamela of late, indeed, had gained much understanding. Two years ago the other point of view was to her always without interest. As often as not she was unaware that it existed; when she was aware, she dismissed it without consideration. But of late her eyes had learned to soften at the troubles of others, her mind to be perplexed with their perplexities.
"Yes," said Mudge, nodding his head, with a smile towards her. "You will understand now."
And he laid so much emphasis upon the word that Pamela looked up in surprise.
"Why now?" she asked.
"Because, recently, imagination has come to you. I have seen, I have noticed. Imagination, the power to see clearly, the power to understand--perhaps the greatest gift which love has in all his big box of gifts."
Pamela coloured at his words. She neither admitted nor denied the suggestion they contained.
"I have therefore ho fear that you will misunderstand," Mr. Mudge insisted. "I told you that my career, such as it is, has left me a very lonely man amongst a crowd of acquaintances, who are no more in sympathy with me than I myself am in sympathy with them. I did not tell you that I had found a way of alleviation."
"No," said Pamela. She was at a loss to understand how this statement of her companion was connected with his detection of Callon and Lady Stretton; but she had no doubt there was a connection. Mudge was not of those who take a pride in disclosing the details of their life and character in and out of season. If he spoke of himself, he did so with a definite reason, which bore upon the business in hand. "No; on the contrary, you said that you could not go back and start afresh. You had too much upon your hands. You were fixed in your isolation."
"I did not even then tell you all the truth. I could not go back half-way, that is true. I do not think I would find any comfort in that course even if I could; but I can and I do go back all the way at times. I reconstruct the days when I was very, very poor, and yet full of hope, full of confidence. I do not mean that I sit in front of my fire and tell myself the story. I do much more. I actually live them over again, so far as I can. That puzzles you," he said, with a laugh.
Pamela, indeed, was looking at him with a frown of perplexity upon her forehead.
"How do you live them again?" she asked. "I don't understand."
"In this way," said Mudge. "I keep an old, worn-out suit of clothes locked up in a cupboard. Well, when I find the house too lonely, and my servants, with their noiseless tread, get on to my nerves, I just put on that suit of clothes and revisit the old haunts where I used to live forty and fifty years ago. Often I have come back from a dinner party, let myself in at my front door, and slipped out of a side entrance half an hour later on one of my pilgrimages. You would never know me; you might toss me a shilling, that's all. Of course, I have to be careful. I am always expecting to be taken up as a thief as I slink away from the house. I would look rather a fool if that happened, wouldn't I?" and he laughed. "But it never has yet." He suddenly turned to her. "I enjoy myself upon those jaunts, you know; I really enjoy myself. I like the secrecy. To slip out of the great, silent house, to get clear away from the pictures, and the furniture, and the obedience, and to tramp down into the glare and the noise of the big streets, and to turn into some pothouse where once, years ago, I used to take my supper and dream of the future. It's a sort of hide-and-seek in itself." He laughed again, and then suddenly became serious. "But it's much more than that--ever so much more."
"Where do you go?" asked Pamela.
"It depends upon the time I have. If it's early I go down to Deptford, very often. I get into a tram and ride down a street where I once wandered all night because I hadn't the price of a lodging. I look at the old cookshop where I used to flatten my nose against the glass and dream that I had the run of my teeth. I get down and go into a public-house, say, with a sanded floor, and have a sausage and mash and a pot of beer, just as I was doing forty years ago, when this or that scheme, which turned out well, first came into my head. But don't misunderstand," Mudge exclaimed. "I don't set off upon these visits for the satisfaction of comparing what I was then with what I have become. It is to get back to what I was then, as nearly as I can; to recapture, just for a moment, some of the high hopes, some of the anticipations of happiness to be won which I felt in those days; to forget that the happiness has never been won, that the high hopes were for things not worth the trouble spent in acquiring them. I was wet, very often hungry, always ill-clothed; but I was happy in those days, Miss Mardale, though very likely I didn't know it. I was young, the future was mine, a solid reality; and the present--why, that was a time of work and dreams. There's nothing much better than that combination, Miss Mardale--work and dreams!"
He repeated the words wistfully, and was silent for a moment. No doubt those early struggles had not been so pleasant as they appeared in the retrospect; but time had stripped them of their bitterness and left to Mr. Mudge just that part of them which was worth remembering.
"I had friends in those days," he went on. "I wonder what has become of them all? In all my jaunts I have never seen one."
"And where else do you go?" asked Pamela.
"Oh, many places. There's a little narrow market between Shaftesbury Avenue and Oxford Street, where the gas-jets flare over the barrows on a Saturday night, and all the poor people go marketing. That's a haunt of mine. I was some time, too, when I was young, at work near the Marylebone Road. There's a tavern near Madame Tussaud's where I used to go and have supper at the counter in the public bar. Do you remember the night of Lady Millingham's reception, when we looked out of the window and saw Sir Anthony Stretton? Well, I supped at that tavern in the Marylebone Road on that particular night. I was hard put to it, too, when I used to work in Marylebone. I slept for three nights in Regent's Park. There's a coffee-stall close to the bridge, just outside the park, on the north side."
Pamela started, and Mudge nodded his head.
"Yes; that is how I came to see Lady Stretton and Mr. Callon. A hansom cab drove past me just as I crossed the road to go out of the gate to the coffee-stall. I noticed it enough to see that it held a man and a woman in evening dress, but no more. I stayed at the coffee-stall for a little while talking with the cabmen and the others who were about it, and drinking my coffee. As I returned into the park the cab drove past me again. I thought it was the same cab, from the casual glance I gave, and with the same people inside it. They had driven round, were still driving round. It was a fine night, a night of spring, fresh, and cool, and very pleasant. I did not wonder; I rather sympathised with them," he said, with a smile. "You see, I have never driven round Regent's Park at night with a woman I cared for beside me;" and again the wistful note was very audible in his voice; and he added, in a low voice, "That was not for me."
He shook the wistfulness from him and resumed--
"Well, as I reached the south side of the park, and was close by Park Place, the cab came towards me again, and pulled up. Callon got out. I saw him clearly. I saw quite clearly, too, who was within the cab. So you see there is danger. Mere friends do not drive round and round Regent's Park at night."
Mr. Mudge rose, and held out his hand.
"I must get back to town. I have a fly waiting to take me to the station," he said.
Pamela walked with him to the door of the house. As they stood in the hall she said--
"I thanked you, before you spoke at all, for putting your business aside for my sake, and coming down to me. I thank you still more now, and for another reason. I thank you for telling me what you have told me about yourself. Such confessions," and she smiled upon the word, "cannot be made without great confidence in the one they are made to."
"I have that confidence," said Mudge.
"I know. I am glad," replied Pamela; and she resumed: "They cannot be made, either, without creating a difference. We no longer stand where we did before they were made. I always looked upon you as my friend; but we are far greater friends now, is not that so?"
She spoke with great simplicity and feeling, her eyes glistened a little, and she added, "You are not living now with merely acquaintances around you."
Mr. Mudge took her hand.
"I am very glad that I came," he said; and, mounting into the fly, he drove away.
Pamela went back to the house and wrote out a telegram to Warrisden. She asked him to come at once to--and then she paused. Should he come here? No; there was another place, with associations for her which had now grown very pleasant and sweet to her thoughts. She asked him to meet her at the place where they had once kept tryst before--the parlour of the inn upon the hill in the village of the Three Poplars. Thither she had ridden before from Lady Millingham's house of Whitewebs. Her own house stood, as it were, at one end of the base of an obtuse triangle, of which Whitewebs made the other end, and the three poplars the apex.
There, accordingly, they met on the following afternoon. Pamela rode across the level country between the Croft Hill which overhung her house, and the village. In front of her the three poplars pointed skywards from the ridge. She was anxious and troubled. It seemed to her that Millie Stretton was slipping beyond her reach; but the sight of those trees lightened her of some portion of her distress. She was turning more and more in her thoughts towards Warrisden whenever trouble knocked upon her door. In the moment of greatest perplexity his companionship, or even the thought of it, rested her like sleep. As she came round the bend of the road at the foot of the hill, she saw him coming down the slope towards her. She quickened her horse, and trotted up to him.
"You are here already?" she said. "I am very glad. I was not sure that I had allowed you time enough."
"Oh yes," said Warrisden. "I came at once. I guessed why you wanted me from the choice of our meeting-place. We meet at Quetta, on the same business which brought us together at Quetta before. Is not that so?"
"Yes," said Pamela.
They walked to the door of the inn at the top of the hill. An ostler took charge of Pamela's horse, and they went within to the parlour.
"You want me to find Stretton again?" said Warrisden.
Pamela looked at him remorsefully.
"Well, I do," she answered; and there was compunction in the tone of her voice. "I would not ask you unless the matter was very urgent. I have used you for my needs, I know, with too little consideration for you, and you very generously and willingly have allowed me to use you. So I am a little ashamed to come to you again."
Here were strange words from Pamela. They were spoken with hesitation, too, and the colour burned in her cheeks. Warrisden was surprised to hear them. He laid his hand upon her arm and gave it a little affectionate shake.
"My dear, I am serving myself," he said, "just as much as I am serving you. Don't you understand that? Have you forgotten our walk under the elms in Lady Millingham's garden? If Tony returned, and returned in time, why, then you might lay your finger on the turnpike gate and let it swing open of its own accord. I remember what you said. Tony's return helps me, so I help myself in securing his return."
Pamela's face softened into a smile.
"Then you really do not mind going?" she went on. "I am remorseful, in a way, because I asked you to go once before in this very room, and nothing came of all your trouble. I want you to believe now that I could not ask you again to undergo the same trouble, or even more, as it may prove, were not the need ever so much more urgent than it was then."
"I am sorry to hear that the need is more urgent," Warrisden replied; "but, on the other hand, the trouble I shall have to bear is much less, for I know where Stretton is."
Pamela felt that half of the load of anxiety was taken from her shoulders.
"You do?" she exclaimed.
Warrisden nodded.
"And what he is doing. He is serving with the Foreign Legion in Algeria. I thought you might want to lay your hands on him again, and I wished to be ready. Chance gave me a clue--an envelope with a postmark. I followed up the clue by securing an example of Stretton's handwriting. It was the same handwriting as that which directed the envelope, so I was sure."
"Thank you," said Pamela. "Indeed, you do not fail me;" and her voice was musical with gratitude.
"He was at Ain-Sefra, a little town on the frontier of Algeria," Warrisden resumed. And Pamela interrupted him--
"Then I need not make so heavy a demand upon you after all," she said. "It was only a letter which I was going to ask you to carry to Tony. Now there is no necessity that yon should go at all, for I can post it."
She produced the letter from a pocket of her coat as she spoke.
"Ah, but will it reach Stretton if you do?" said Warrisden.
Pamela had already seated herself at the table, and was drawing the inkstand towards her. She paused at Warrisden's question, and looked up.
"Surely Ain-Sefra, Algeria, will find him?"
"Will it?" Warrisden repeated. He sat down at the table opposite to her. "Even if it does, will it reach him in time? You say the need is urgent. Well, it was last summer when I saw the postmark on the envelope, two days after we talked together in Lady Millingham's garden. I had business in London."
"I remember," said Pamela.
"My business was just to find out where Stretton was hiding himself. He was at Ain-Sefra then; he may be at Ain-Sefra now. But it is a small post, and he may not. The headquarters of the Legion are at Sidi Bel-Abbès, in the north. He may be there, or he may be altogether out of reach on some Saharan expedition."
There was yet another possibility which occurred to both their minds at this moment. It was possible that no letter would ever reach Stretton again; that Warrisden, searched he never so thoroughly, would not be able to find the man he searched for. There are so many graves in the Sahara. But neither of them spoke of this possibility, though a quick look they interchanged revealed to each its presence in the other's thoughts.
"Besides, he wanted to lie hidden. So much I know, who know nothing of his story. Would he have enlisted under his own name, do you think? Or even under his own nationality? It is not the common practice in the Foreign Legion. And that's not all. Even were he soldiering openly under his own name, how will you address your letter with any likelihood that it will reach him? Just 'La Legion Etrangère'? We want to know to what section of la Legion Etrangère he belongs. Is he chasseur, artilleryman, sapper? Perhaps he serves in the cavalry. Then which is his squadron? Is he a plain foot soldier? Then in what battalion, and what rank does he occupy? We cannot answer any of these questions, and, unanswered, they certainly delay your letter; they may prevent it ever reaching him at all."
Pamela laid down her pen and stared blankly at "Warrisden. He piled up the objections one by one in front of her until it seemed she would lose Tony once more from her sight after she had got him for a moment within her vision.
"So you had better entrust your letter to me," he concluded. "Address it to Stretton under his own name. I will find him, if he is to be found, never fear. I will find him very quickly."
Pamela addressed the letter. Yet she held it for a little time in her hand after it was addressed. All the while Warrisden had been speaking she had felt an impulse strong within her to keep him back; and it was because of that impulse, rather than with any thought of Millie Stretton and the danger in which she stood, that Pamela asked doubtfully--
"How long will you be?"
"I should find him within ten days."
Pamela smiled suddenly.
"It is not so very long," said she; and she handed the letter across to Warrisden. "Well, go!" she cried, with a certain effort. "Telegraph to me when you have found Tony. Bring him back, and come back yourself." She added, in a voice which was very low and wistful, "Please come back soon!" Then she rose from the table, and Warrisden put the letter in his pocket and rose too.
"You will be at home, I suppose, in ten days?" he said. And Pamela said quickly, as though some new idea had just been suggested to her mind--
"Oh, wait a moment!"
She stood quite still and thoughtful. There was a certain test by which she had meant to find the soundings of heart. Here was a good opportunity to apply the test. Warrisden would be away upon his journey; she could not help Millie Stretton now by remaining in England. She determined to apply the test.
"No," she said slowly. "Telegraph to me at the Villa Pontignard, Roquebrune, Alpes Maritimes, France. I shall be travelling thither immediately."
Her decision was taken upon an instant. It was the logical outcome of her thoughts and of Warrisden's departure; and since Warrisden went because of Millie Stretton, Pamela's journey to the South of France was due, in a measure, to that lady, too. Yet no one would have been more astonished than Millie Stretton had she learned of Pamela's visit at this time. She would have been quick to change her own plans; but she had no knowledge of whither Pamela's thoughts were leading her. When Callon in the hansom cab had said to her, "Come South," her first swift reflection had been, "Pamela will be safe in England." She herself had refused to go south with Pamela. Pamela's desire to go was to her mind a mere false pretext to get her away from her one friend. If she did not go south, she was very sure that Pamela would not. There had seemed to her no safer place than the Riviera. But she was wrong. Here, in the village of the Three Poplars, Pamela had made her decision.
"I shall go to Roquebrune as soon as I can make arrangements for a servant or two," she said.
"Roquebrune," said Warrisden, as he wrote down the address. "I once walked up a long flight of steps to that village many years ago. Perhaps you were at the villa then. I wonder. You must have been a little girl. It was one February. I came over from Monte Carlo, and we walked up from the station. We met the schoolmaster."
"M. Giraud!" exclaimed Pamela.
"Was that his name? He had written a little history of the village and the Corniche road. He took me under his wing. We went into a wine shop on the first floor of a house in the middle of the village, and we sat there quite a long time. He asked us about Paris and London with an eagerness which was quite pathetic. He came down with us to the station, and his questions never ceased. I suppose he was lonely there."
Pamela nodded her head.
"Very. He did not sleep all night for thinking of what you had told him."
"You were there, then?" cried Warrisden.
"Yes; M. Giraud used to read French with me. He came to me one afternoon quite feverish. Two Englishmen had come up to Roquebrune, and had talked to him about the great towns and the lighted streets. He was always dreaming of them. Poor man, he is at Roquebrune still, no doubt."
She spoke with a great tenderness and pity, looking out of the window, and for the moment altogether lost to her surroundings. Warrisden roused her from her reverie.
"I must be going away."
Pamela's horse was brought to the door, and she mounted.
"Walk down the hill beside my horse," she said; "just as you did on that other day, when the hill was slippery, your hand upon his neck--so."
Very slowly they walked down the hill. There were no driving mists to-day, the evening was coming with a great peace, the fields and woods lay spread beneath them toned to a tranquil grey. The white road glimmered. At the bottom of the hill Pamela stopped.
"Good-bye," she said; and there was more tenderness in her voice and in her face than he had ever known. She laid her hand upon his arm and bent down to him.
"Come back to me," she said wistfully. "I do not like letting you go; and yet I am rather proud to know that you are doing something for me which I could not do for myself, and that you do it so very willingly."
She did not wait to hear any answer, but took her hand from his arm and rode quickly away. That turnpike gate of friendship had already swung open of its own accord. As she rode from Quetta that evening, she passed beyond it, and went gratefully and hopefully, with the other men and women, down the appointed road.
She knew it while she was riding homewards to the Croft Hill. She knew it, and was very glad. She rode home very slowly through the tranquil evening, and gave herself up to joy. It was warm, and there was a freshness in the air as though the world renewed itself. Darkness came; only the road glimmered ahead of her--the new road, which was the old road. Even that glimmer of white had almost vanished when at last she saw the lighted windows of her father's house. The footman told her that dinner was already served, but she ran past him very quickly up the stairs, and coming to her own room, locked the door and sat for a long while in the darkness, her blood throbbing in her veins, her whole heart uplifted, not thinking at all, but just living, and living most joyfully. She sat so still that she might have been in a swoon; but it was the stillness of perfect happiness. She knew the truth that night.
But, none the less, she travelled south towards the end of the week, since there a telegram would come to her. She persuaded a convenient aunt to keep her company, who has nothing whatever to do with this story; and reaching Villa Pontignard one afternoon, walked through the familiar rooms which she had so dreaded ever to revisit. She went out to the narrow point of the garden where so often she had dreamed with M. Giraud of the outside world, its roaring cities and its jostle of people. She sat down upon the parapet. Below her the cliff fell sheer, and far below, in the darkness at the bottom of the gorge, the water tumbled in foam with a distant hum. On the opposite hill the cypresses stood out black from the brown and green. Here she had suffered greatly, but the wounds were healed. These dreaded places had no longer power to hurt. She knew that very surely. She was emancipated from sorrow, and as she sat there in the still, golden afternoon, the sense of freedom ran riot in her blood. She looked back over the years to the dragging days of misery, the sleepless nights. She felt a pity for the young girl who had then looked down from this parapet and prayed for death; who had counted the many years of life in front of her; who had bewailed her very strength and health. But ever her eyes turned towards the Mediterranean and searched the horizon. For beyond that blue, calm sea stretched the coasts of Algeria.
There was but one cloud to darken Pamela's happiness during these days while she waited for Warrisden's telegram. On the morning after she had arrived, the old curé climbed from the village to visit her. Almost Pamela's first question was of M. Giraud.
"He is still here?"
"Yes, he is still here," replied the curé; but he pursed up his lips and shook his head.
"I must send for him," said Pamela.
The curé said nothing. He was standing by the window, and almost imperceptibly he shrugged his shoulders as though he doubted her wisdom. In a moment Pamela was at his side.
"What is it?" she asked gently. "Tell me."
"Oh, mademoiselle, there is little to tell! He is not the schoolmaster you once knew. That is all. The wine shop has made the difference--the wine shop and discontent. He was always dissatisfied, you know. It is a pity."
"I am so sorry," said Pamela, gravely, "so very sorry."
She was silent for a while, and greatly troubled by the curé's news.
"Has he married?" she asked.
"No."
"It would have been better if he had."
"No doubt, mademoiselle," said the curé, "but he has not, and I think it is now too late."
Pamela did not send for M. Giraud. It seemed to her that she could do no good even if at her request he came to her. She would be going away in a few days. She would only hurt him and put him to shame before her. She took no step towards a renewal of their friendship, and though she did not avoid him, she never came across him in her walks.
For ten days she walked the old hill paths, and dreams came to her with the sunlight. They gave her company in the evenings, too, when she looked from her garden upon the quiet sea and saw, away upon the right, the lights, like great jewels, burning on the terrace of Monte Carlo. She went down one morning on to that terrace, and, while seated upon a bench, suddenly saw, at a little distance, the back of a man which was familiar to her.
She was not sure, but she was chilled with apprehension. She watched from behind her newspaper, and in a little while she was sure, for the man turned and showed his face. It was Lionel Callon. What was he doing here, she asked herself? And another question trod fast upon the heels of the first. "Was he alone?"
Callon was alone on this morning, at all events. Pamela saw him speak to one or two people, and then mount the terrace steps towards the town. She gave him a little time, and then, walking through the gardens, bought a visitors' list at the kiosk in front of the Rooms. She found Callon's name. He was the only visitor at a Reserve, on the Corniche road, which was rather a restaurant than a hotel. She searched through the list, fearing to find the name of Millie Stretton under the heading of some other hotel. To her relief it was not there. It was possible, of course, that Callon was merely taking a holiday by himself. She wished to believe that, and yet there was a fear speaking loudly at her heart. "Suppose that Tony should return too late just by a few days!" She was still holding the paper in her hands when she heard her name called, and, turning about, saw some friends. She lunched with them at Ciro's, and asked carelessly during luncheon--
"You have not seen Millie Stretton, I suppose?"
"No," they all replied. And one asked, "Is she expected?"
"I don't know whether she will come or not," Pamela replied. "I asked her to come with me, but she could not do that, and she was not sure that she would come at all."
This she said, thinking that if Millie did arrive it might seem that she came because Pamela herself was there. Pamela went back to Roquebrune that afternoon, and after she had walked through the village and had come out on the slope of hill above, she met the postman coming down from the Villa Pontignard.
"You have a telegram for me?" she said anxiously.
"Mademoiselle," he replied, "I have just left it at the house."
Pamela hurried on, and found the telegram in thesalon. She tore it open. It was from Warrisden. It told her that Tony Stretton was found, and would return. It gave the news in vague and guarded language, mentioning no names. But Pamela understood the message. Tony Stretton was actually coming back. "Would he come too late?" she asked, gazing out in fear across the sea. Of any trouble, out there in Algeria, which might delay his return, she did not think at all. If it was true that he had enlisted in the Legion, there might be obstacles to a quick return. But such matters were not in her thoughts. She thought only of Callon upon the terrace of Monte Carlo. "Would Tony come too late?" she asked; and she prayed that he might come in time.