The Truants Part 19

Chase knew well what weight to give to that short sentence. Had it been more elaborate it would have meant less. It needed no other commentary than the quiet sincerity with which it was uttered.

"Yes, I understand," he said.

Stretton seated himself again in his chair and took out a briar pipe from his pocket. The pipe had an open metal covering over the bowl.

"I need that no longer," Stretton said, with a laugh, as he removed it. Then he took out a pouch, filled his pipe, and lighted it.

"Have a whisky and soda?" said Chase.

"No, thanks."

Chase lighted a cigarette and looked at his friend with curiosity. The change which he had noticed in Stretton's looks had been just as noticeable in his words. This man sitting opposite to him was no longer the Tony Stretton who had once come to him for advice. That man had been slow of thought, halting of speech, good-humoured, friendly; but a man with whom it was difficult to get at close quarters. Talk with him a hundred times, and you seemed to know him no better than you did at the moment when first you were introduced to him. Here, however, was a man who had thought out his problem--was, moreover, able lucidly to express it.

"Well," said Chase, "you are determined not to go back?"

"Not yet," Stretton corrected.

"What do you propose to do?"

The question showed how great the change had been, begun by the hard times in New York, completed by the eight weeks in the North Sea. For Chase put the question. He no longer offered advice, understanding that Stretton had not come to ask for it.

"I propose to enlist in the French Foreign Legion."

Stretton spoke with the most matter-of-fact air imaginable; he might have been naming the house at which he was to dine the next night.

Nevertheless, Chase started out of his chair; he stared at his companion in a stupefaction.

"No," said Stretton, calmly; "I am not off my head, and I have not been drinking. Sit down again, and think it over."

Chase obeyed, and Stretton proceeded to expound that inspiration which had come to him the night before.

"What else should I do? You know my object now. I have to re-establish myself in my wife's thoughts. How else can I do it? What professions are open to me in which I could gain, I don't say distinction, but mere recognition? I am not a money-maker; that, at all events, is evident. I have had experience enough during the last months to know that if I lived to a thousand I should never make money."

"I think that's true," Chase agreed, thoughtfully.

"Luckily there's no longer any need that I should try. What then? Run through the professions, Chase, and find one, if you can, in which a man at my age--twenty-nine--with my ignorance, my want of intellect, has a single chance of success. The bar? It's laughable. The sea? I am too old. The army? I resigned my commission years ago. So what then?"

He waited for Chase to speak, and Chase was silent. He waited with a smile, knowing that Chase could not speak.

"There must be an alternative," Chase said, doubtfully, at last.

"Name it, then."

That was just what Chase could not do. He turned in his mind from this calling to that. There was not one which did not need a particular education; there was not one in which Stretton was likely to succeed.

Soldiering or the sea. These were the two callings for which he was fitted. From the sea his age debarred him; from soldiering too, except in this one way. No, certainly, Stretton was not off his head.

"How in the world did you think of the Foreign Legion?" he asked.

Stretton shrugged his shoulders.

"I thought of most other courses first, and, one by one, rejected them as impossible. This plan came to me last of all, and only last night.

We were pa.s.sing a light-ship. In a way, you see, we were within sight of home. I was in despair; and suddenly the idea flashed upon me, like the revolving blaze from the light-ship. It is a sound one, I think.

At all events, it is the only one."

"Yes," answered Chase, slowly; "I suppose there will be chances, for there's always something stirring on the Algerian frontier."

"There, or in Siam," said Stretton.

"What arrangements are you making here?"

"I have written to my lawyers. Millie can do as she pleases with the income. She has power, too, to sell the house in Berkeley Square. I made my will, you know, before I left England."

Chase nodded, and for a while there fell a silence upon the two friends. A look of envy crept into the face of the clergyman as he looked at Stretton. He could appreciate a motive which set a man aiming high. He admired the persistence with which Stretton nursed it.

The plan it had prompted might be quixotic and quite fruitless, but, at all events, it was definite; and a definite scheme of life, based upon a simple and definite motive, was not so common but that it was enviable. Stretton was so sure of its wisdom, too. He had no doubts.

He sat in his chair not asking for approval, not caring for censure; he had made up his mind. The image of Stretton, indeed, as he sat in that chair on that evening, with the firelight playing upon his face, was often to come to Chase's thoughts.

"There will be great risks," he said. "Risks of death, of trouble in the battalion."

"I have counted them," Stretton replied; and he leaned forward again, with his hands upon his knees. "Oh yes; there will be great risks! But there's a prize, too, proportionate to the risks. Risks! Every one speaks of them," he went on, with a laugh of impatience. "But I have been eight weeks on the Dogger Bank, Chase, and I know--yes, I know--how to estimate risks. Out there men risk their lives daily to put a few boxes of fish on board a fish-cutter. Take the risk half-heartedly and your boat's swamped for a sure thing; but take it with all your heart and there are the fish-boxes to your credit. Well, Millie is my fish-boxes."

He ended with a laugh, and, rising, took his hat.

"Shall I put you up for the night?" Chase asked.

"No, thanks," said Stretton. "I have got a bed at an hotel. I have something else to do to-night;" and a smile, rather wistful and tender, played about his lips. "Goodbye!" He held out his hand, and as Chase took it he went on, "I am looking forward to the day when I come back. My word, how I am looking forward to it; and I will look forward each day until it actually, at the long last, comes. It will have been worth waiting for, Chase, well worth waiting for, both to Millie and to me."

With that he went away. Chase heard him close the street door behind him, and his footsteps sound for a moment or two on the pavement.

After all, he thought, a life under those Algerian skies, a life in the open air, of activity--there were many worse things, even though it should prove a second failure.

Chase stood for a little before the fire. He crossed slowly over to that cupboard in the corner at which Stretton's movement in the chair had stayed his hand. Chase looked back to the armchair, as though he half expected still to see Stretton sitting there. Then he slowly walked back to the fire, and left the cupboard locked. Stretton had gone, but he had left behind him memories which were not to be effaced--the memory of a great motive and of a st.u.r.dy determination to fulfil it. The two men were never to meet again; but, in the after time, more than once, of an evening, Chase's hand was stayed upon that cupboard door. More than once he looked back towards the chair as if he expected that again his friend was waiting for him by the fire.

CHAPTER XIV

TONY STRETTON PAYS A VISIT TO BERKELEY SQUARE

While Tony Stretton was thus stating the problem of his life to Mr.

Chase in Stepney Green, Lady Millingham was entertaining her friends in Berkeley Square. She began the evening with a dinner-party, at which Pamela Mardale and John Mudge were present, and she held a reception afterwards. Many people came, for Frances Millingham was popular. By half-past ten the rooms were already over-hot and overcrowded, and Lady Millingham was enjoying herself to her heart's content. Mr. Mudge, who stood by himself at the end of a big drawing-room, close to one of the windows, saw the tall figure of Warrisden come in at the door and steadily push towards Pamela. A few moments later M. de Marnay, a youthful _attache_ of the French Emba.s.sy, approached Mr. Mudge. M. de Marnay wiped his forehead and looked round the crowded room.

"A little is a good thing," said he, "but too much is enough." And he unlatched and pushed open the window. As he spoke, Mr. Mudge saw Callon appear in the doorway.

"Yes," he answered, with a laugh; "too much is enough."

Mudge watched Callon's movements with his usual interest. He saw him pa.s.s, a supple creature of smiles and small talk, from woman to woman.

How long would he last in his ign.o.ble career? Mudge wondered. Would he marry in the end some rich and elderly widow? Or would the crash come, and parties know Mr. Lionel Callon no more? Mudge never saw the man but he had a wish that he might get a glimpse of him alone in his own rooms, with the smile dropped from his face, and the unpaid bills piled upon his mantel-shelf, and his landlord very likely clamouring for the rent. He imagined the face grown all at once haggard and tired and afraid--afraid with a great fear of what must happen in a few years at the latest, when, with middle-age heavy upon his shoulders, he should see his coevals prospering and himself bankrupt of his stock-in-trade of good looks, and without one penny to rub against another. No presage of mind weighed upon Callon to-night, however, during his short stay in Frances Millingham's house. For his stay was short.

As the clock upon the mantelpiece struck eleven, his eyes were at once lifted to the clock-face, and almost at once he moved from the lady to whom he was talking and made his way to the door.