The Truants Part 3

"It's quite true," he said. "I did." Then his voice dropped to the same serious tone in which she had spoken. "Why not say the experiment succeeded? Couldn't you say that?"

Pamela shook her head.

"No. I can give you no more now than I gave you a year ago, two years ago, and that is not enough. Oh, I know," she continued hurriedly as she saw that he was about to interrupt. "Lots of women are content to begin with friendship. How they can, puzzles me. But I know they do begin with nothing more than that, and very often it works out very well. The friendship becomes more than friendship. But I can't begin that way. I would if I could. But I can't."

She leaned back in her chair, and sat for a while with her hands upon her knees in an att.i.tude extraordinarily still. The jingle of harness in the square rose to Warrisden's ears, the clamour of the town came m.u.f.fled from the noisy streets. He looked upwards to the tender blue of a summer sky where the stars shone like silver; and he leaned back disheartened. He had returned to London, and nothing was changed.

There was the same busy life vociferous in its streets, and this girl still sat in the midst of it with the same la.s.situde and quiescence.

She seemed to be waiting, not at all for something new to happen, but for the things, which were happening, to cease, waiting with the indifference of the very old. And she was quite young. She sat with the delicate profile of her face outlined against the darkness; the colour of youth was in her cheeks; the slender column of her throat, the ripple of her dark hair, the grace of her att.i.tude claimed her for youth; she was fragrant with it from head to foot. And yet it seemed that there was no youth in her blood.

"So nothing has changed for you during these months," he said, deeply disappointed.

She turned her face quietly to him and smiled. "No," she answered, "there has been no new road for me from Quetta to Seistan. I still look on."

There was the trouble. She just looked on, and to his thinking it was not right that at her age she should do no more. A girl nowadays had so many privileges, so many opportunities denied to her grandmother, she could do so much more, she had so much more freedom, and yet Pamela insisted upon looking on. If she had shown distress, it would have been better. But no. She lived without deep feeling of any kind in a determined isolation. She had built up a fence about herself, and within it she sat untouched and alone.

It was likely that no one else in the wide circle of her acquaintances had noticed her detachment, and certainly to no one but Warrisden had she admitted it. And it was only acknowledged to him after he had found it out for himself. For she did not sit at home. On the contrary, hardly a night pa.s.sed during the season but she went to some party. Only, wherever she went, she looked on.

"And you still prefer old men to young ones?" he cried in a real exasperation.

"They talk more of things and less of persons," she explained.

That was not right either. She ought to be interested in persons.

Warrisden rose abruptly from his chair. He was completely baffled.

Pamela was like the sleeping princess in the fairy tale, she lay girt about with an impa.s.sable thicket of thorns. She was in a worse case, indeed, for the princess in the story might have slept on till the end of time, a thing of beauty. But was it possible for Pamela, so to sleep to the end of life, he asked himself. Let her go on in her indifference, and she might dwindle and grow narrow, her soul would be starved and all the good of her be lost. Somehow a way must be forced through the thicket, somehow she must be wakened. But he seemed no nearer to finding that way than he had been two years ago, and she was no nearer to her wakening.

"No, there has been no change," he said, and as he spoke his eye was caught by a bright light which suddenly flamed up in the window of a dark house upon his right. The house had perplexed him more than once.

It took so little part in the life of the square, it so consistently effaced itself from the gaieties of the people who lived about. Its balconies were never banked with flowers, no visitors mounted its steps; and even in the daytime it had a look of mystery. It may have been that some dim a.n.a.logy between that house and the question which so baffled him arrested Warrisden's attention. It may have been merely that he was by nature curious and observant. But he leaned forward upon the balcony-rail.

"Do you see that light?" he asked. "In the window on the second floor?"

"Yes."

He took out his watch and noticed the time. It was just a quarter to twelve. He laughed softly to himself and said--

"Wait a moment!"

He watched the house for a few minutes without saying a word. Pamela with a smile at his eagerness watched too. In a little while they saw the door open and a man and a woman, both in evening dress, appear upon the steps. Warrisden laughed again.

"Wait," he said, as if he expected Pamela to interrupt. "You'll see they won't whistle up a cab. They'll walk beyond the house and take one quietly. Very likely they'll look up at the lighted window on the second floor as though they were schoolboys who had escaped from their dormitories, and were afraid of being caught by the master before they had had their fun. There, do you see?"

For as he spoke the man and the woman stopped and looked up. Had they heard Warrisden's voice and obeyed his directions they could not have more completely fulfilled his prediction. They had the very air of truants. Apparently they were rea.s.sured. They walked along the pavement until they were well past the house. Then they signalled to a pa.s.sing hansom. The cab-driver did not see them, yet they did not call out, nor did the man whistle. They waited until another approached and they beckoned to that. Warrisden watched the whole scene with the keenest interest. As the two people got into the cab he laughed again and turned back to Pamela.

"Well?" she said, with a laugh of amus.e.m.e.nt, and the quiet monosyllable, falling as it were with a cold splash upon his enjoyment of the little scene, suddenly brought him back to the question which was always latent in his mind. How was Pamela to be awakened?

"It's a strange place, London," he said. "No doubt it seems stranger to me, and more full of interesting people and interesting things just because I have come back from very silent and very empty places. But that house always puzzled me. I used to have rooms overlooking this square, high up, over there," and he pointed to the eastern side of the square towards Berkeley Street, "and what we have seen to-night used to take place every night, and at the same hour. The light went up in the room on the second floor, and the truants crept out. Guess where they go to! The Savoy. They go and sit there amongst the lights and the music for half an hour, then they come back to the dark house.

They live in the most curious isolation with the most curious regularity. There are three of them altogether: an old man--it is his light, I suppose, which went up on the second floor--and those two. I know who they are. The old man is Sir John Stretton."

"Oh!" said Pamela, with interest.

"And the two people we saw are his son and his son's wife. I have never met them. In fact, no one meets them. I don't know any one who knows them."

"Yes, you do," said Pamela, "I know them." And in her knowledge, although Warrisden did not know it, lay the answer to the problem which so perplexed him.

CHAPTER III

THE TRUANTS

Warrisden turned quickly to Pamela.

"You never mentioned them."

"No," she replied with a smile. "But there's no mystery in my silence.

I simply haven't mentioned them because for two years I have lost sight of them altogether. I used to meet them about, and I have been to their house."

"There?" asked Warrisden, with a nod towards the lighted window.

"No; but to the house Millie and Mr. Stretton had in Deanery Street.

They gave that up two years ago when old Lady Stretton died. I thought they had gone to live in the country."

"And all the while they have been living here," exclaimed Warrisden.

He had spoken truthfully of himself. The events, and the people with whom he came, however slightly, into contact always had interested and amused him. It was his pleasure to fit his observations together until he had constructed a little biography in his mind of each person with whom he was acquainted. And there was never an incident of any interest within his notice, but he sought the reason for it and kept an eye open for its consequence.

"Don't you see how strange the story is?" he went on. "They give up their house upon Lady Stretton's death, and they come to live here with Sir John. That's natural enough. Sir John's an old man. But they live in such seclusion that even their friends think they have retired into the country."

"Yes, it is strange," Pamela admitted. And she added, "I was Millie Stretton's bridesmaid."

Upon Warrisden's request she told him what she knew of the couple who lived in the dark house and played truant. Millie Stretton was the daughter of a Judge in Ceylon who when Millie had reached the age of seventeen had married a second time. The step-mother had lacked discretion; from the very first she had claimed to exercise a complete and undisputed authority; she had been at no pains to secure the affections of her step-daughter. And very little trouble would have been needed, for Millie was naturally affectionate. A girl without any great depth of feeling, she responded easily to a show of kindness.

She found it neither difficult to make intimate friends, nor hard to lose them. She was of the imitative type besides. She took her thoughts and even her language from those who at the moment were by her side. Thus her step-mother had the easiest of tasks but she did not possess the necessary tact. She demanded obedience, and in return offered tolerance. The household at Colombo, therefore, became for Millie a roofstead rather than a home, and a year after this marriage she betook herself and the few thousands of pounds which her mother had bequeathed her to London. The ostensible reason for departure was the invitation of Mrs. Charles Rawson, a friend of her mother's. But Millie had made up her mind that a return to Ceylon was not to be endured. Somehow she would manage to make a home or herself in England.

She found her path at once made easy. She was pretty, with the prettiness of a child, she gave no trouble, she was fresh, she dressed a drawing-room gracefully, he fitted neatly into her surroundings, she picked up immediately the ways of thought and the jargon of her new companions. In a word, with the remarkable receptivity which was hers, she was very quickly at home in Mrs. Rawson's house. She became a favourite no less for her modest friendliness than on account of her looks. Mrs. Rawson, who was nearing middle age, but whose love of amus.e.m.e.nts was not a.s.suaged, rejoiced to have so attractive a companion to take about with her. Millie, for her part, was very glad to be so taken about. She had fallen from the obscure clouds into a bright and wonderful world.

It was at this time that Pamela Mardale first met Millicent Stretton, or rather, one should say, Millicent Rundell, since Rundell was at that time her name. They became friends, although so far as character was concerned they had little in common. It may have been that the difference between them was the actual cause of their friendship.

Certainly Millie came rather to lean upon her friend, admired her strength, made her the repository of her confidences, and if she received no confidences in return, she was content to believe that there were none to make. It was at this time too that Millie fell in with Lady Stretton.

Lady Stretton, a tall old woman with the head of a Grenadier, had the characteristic of Sir Anthony Absolute. There was no one so good-tempered so long as she had her own way; and she generally had it.

"Lady Stretton saw that Millie was easily led," Pamela continued. "She thought, for that reason, she would be a suitable wife for Tony, her son, who was then a subaltern in the Coldstream. So she did all she could to throw them together. She invited Millie up to her house in Scotland, the house Lady Millingham now has, and Mr. Stretton fell in love. He was evidently very fond of Millie, and Millie on her side liked him quite as much as any one else. They were married. Lady Stretton hired them the house I told you of, close to Park Lane, and took a great deal of trouble to see that they were comfortable. You see, they were toys for her. There, that's all I know. Are you satisfied?"

She leaned back in her chair, smiling at Warrisden's serious face.

"And what about the old man, Sir John Stretton?" he asked.

"I never met him," replied Pamela. "He never went out to parties, and I never went to that house."

As she concluded the sentence, a man looked on to the balcony and, seeing them, withdrew. Pamela rose at once from her chair, and, with a sudden movement of jealousy, Warrisden swung round and looked into the room. The man was well past the middle age, stout of build, and with a heavy careworn face with no pleasure in it at all. He was the man who had been with Pamela when Warrisden had arrived. Warrisden turned back to the girl with a smile of relief.