The Truants Part 34

"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 a.s.sociations 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.

CHAPTER XXIII

ROQUEBRUNE REVISITED

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 grat.i.tude.

"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-Abbes, 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 Etrangere'? We want to know to what section of la Legion Etrangere he belongs. Is he cha.s.seur, 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."