The Truants Part 35

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 pa.s.sed 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 emanc.i.p.ated 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 cure 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 cure; but he pursed up his lips and shook his head.

"I must send for him," said Pamela.

The cure 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 cure's news.

"Has he married?" she asked.

"No."

"It would have been better if he had."

"No doubt, mademoiselle," said the cure, "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?"