The Truants Part 8

"Yes," replied Millie. "It's strange, isn't it? But there's something stranger still."

The footsteps had now ceased. Millie led the way back to her room.

"When I got home yesterday," she related, "I had Tony's letter announcing his departure taken up to Sir John. I waited for him to send for me. He did not. I am not sure that I expected he would. You see, he has never shown the least interest in us. However, when I went up to my room to dress for dinner, I saw that the candles were all lighted in Tony's room next door, and his clothes laid out upon the bed. I went in and put the candles out--rather quickly." Her voice shook a little upon those last two words. Pamela nodded her head as though she understood, and Millicent went on, after a short pause--

"It troubled me to see them burning; it troubled me very much. And when I came downstairs I told the footman the candles were not to be lit again, since Tony had gone away. He answered that they had been lit by Sir John's orders. At first I thought that Sir John had not troubled to read the letter at all. I thought that all the more because he never once, either during dinner or afterwards, mentioned Tony's name or seemed to remark his absence. But it was not so. He has given orders that every night the room is to be ready and the candles lit as though Tony were here still, or might walk in at the door at any moment. I suppose that after all in a queer way he cares."

Again her voice faltered; and again a question rose up insistent in Pamela's mind. She knew her friend, and it was out of her knowledge that she had spoken long ago in Tony's presence when she had said, "her husband should never leave her." It was evident that Tony's departure had caused his wife great suffering.

Millicent had let that fact escape in spite of her exaltation. Pamela welcomed it, but she asked, "Was that regret a steady and durable thing?"

Pamela left London the next day with her question unanswered, and for two months there was no opportunity for her of discovering an answer.

Often during that August and September, on the moors in Scotland, or at her own home in Leicesters.h.i.+re, she would think of Millie Stretton, in the hot and dusty town amongst the houses where the blinds were drawn. She imagined her sitting over against the old stern impa.s.sive man at dinner, or wearily reading to him his newspaper at night. Had the regret dwindled to irritation, and the loneliness begotten petulance?

Indeed, those months were dull and wearisome enough for Millicent. No change of significance came in the routine of that monotonous household. Sir John went to his room perhaps a little earlier than had been his wont, his footsteps dragged along the floor for a while longer, and his light burned in the window after the dawn had come.

Finally he ceased to leave his room at all. But that was all. For Millicent, however, the weeks pa.s.sed easily. Each day brought her a day nearer to the sunlit farm fronting the open plain. She marked the weeks off in her diary with a growing relief; for news kept coming from America, and the news was good.

Early in October, Pamela pa.s.sed through London on her way to Suss.e.x, and broke her journey that she might see her friend.

"Frances Millingham is writing to you," she said. "She wants you to stay with her in Leicesters.h.i.+re. I shall be there too. I hope you will come."

"When?"

"At the beginning of the New Year."

Millicent laughed.

"I shall have left England before then. Tony will have made his way,"

she said, with a joyous conviction.

"There might be delays," Pamela suggested, in a very gentle voice. For suddenly there had risen before her mind the picture of a terrace high above a gorge dark with cypresses. She saw again the Mediterranean, breaking in gold along the curving sh.o.r.e, and the gardens of the Casino at Monte Carlo. She heard a young girl prophesying success upon that terrace with no less certainty than Millicent had used. Her face softened and her eyes shone with a very wistful look. She took out her watch and glanced at it. It was five o'clock. The school children had gone home by now from the little school-house in the square of Roquebrune. Was the schoolmaster leaning over the parapet looking downwards to the station or to the deserted walk in front of the Casino? Was a train pa.s.sing along the sea's edge towards France and Paris?

"One must expect delays, Millie," she insisted; and again Millie laughed.

"I have had letters. I am expecting another. It should have come a fortnight since." And she told Pamela what the letters had contained.

At first Tony had been a little bewildered by the activity of New York, after his quiescent years. But he had soon made an acquaintance, and the acquaintance had become a friend. The two men had determined to go into partners.h.i.+p; a farm in Kentucky was purchased, each man depositing an equal share of the purchase money.

"Six weeks ago they left New York. Tony said I would not hear from him at once."

And while they were sitting together there came a knock upon the door, and two letters were brought in for Millicent. One she tossed upon the table. With the other in her hand she turned triumphantly to Pamela.

"Do you mind?" she asked. "I have been waiting so long."

"Read it, of course," said Pamela.

Millie tore the letter open, and at once the light died out of her eyes, and the smile vanished from her lips.

"From New York," she said, halfway between perplexity and fear. "He writes from New York." And with trembling fingers she turned over the sheets and read the letter through.

Pamela watched her, saw the blood ebb from her cheeks, and dejection overspread her face. A great pity welled up in Pamela's heart, not merely for the wife who read, but for the man who had penned that letter--with what difficulty, she wondered, with how much pain!

Failure was the message which it carried. Millicent's trembling lips told her that. And again the village of Roquebrune rose up before her eyes as she gazed out of the window on the London square. What were the words the schoolmaster had spoken when, stripped of his dreams, he had confessed success was not for him? "We must forget these fine plans. The school at Roquebrune will send no deputy to Paris."

Pamela's eyes grew dim.

She stood looking out of the window for some while, but hearing no movement she at length turned back again. The sheets of the letter had fallen upon the floor, they lay scattered, written over in a round, sprawling, schoolboy's hand. Millicent sat very still, her face most weary and despairing.

"It's all over," she said. "The friend was a swindler. He left the train at a station on the way and disappeared. Tony went on, but there was no farm. He is back in New York."

"But the man can be found?"

"He belongs to a gang. There is little chance, and Tony has no money.

He will take no more of mine."

"He is coming home, then?" said Pamela.

"No; he means to stay and retrieve his failures."

Pamela said nothing, and Millicent appealed to her. "He will do that, don't you think? Men have started badly before, and have succeeded, and have not taken so very long to succeed."

"No doubt," said Pamela; and she spoke with what hopefulness she could. But she remembered Tony Stretton. Simplicity and good-humour were amongst his chief qualities; he was a loyal friend, and he had pluck. Was that enough? On the other hand, he had little knowledge and little experience. The schoolmaster of Roquebrune and Tony Stretton stood side by side in her thoughts. She was not, however, to be put to the task of inventing encouragements. For before she could open her lips again, Millicent said gently--

"Will you mind if I ask to be left alone? Come again as soon as you can. But this afternoon----" Her voice broke so that she could not finish her sentence, and she turned hastily away. However, she recovered her self-control and went down the stairs with Pamela, and as they came into the hall their eyes turned to the library door, and then they looked at one another. Both remembered the conversation they had had within that room.

"What if you told Sir John?" said Pamela. "It seems that he does after all care."

"It would be of no use," said Millicent, shaking her head. "He would only say, 'Let him come home,' and Tony will not. Besides, I never see him now."

"Never?" exclaimed Pamela.

"No; he does not leave his room." She lowered her voice. "I do not believe he ever will leave it again. It's not that he's really ill, his doctor tells me, but he's slowly letting himself go."

Pamela answered absently. Sir John Stretton and his ailments played a small part in her thoughts. It seemed that the library was again to become typical of the house, typical of the life its inhabitants led.

Nothing was to happen, then. There was to be a mere waiting for things to cease.

But a second letter was lying upstairs unopened on the table, and that letter, harmless as it appeared, was strangely to influence Millicent Stretton's life. It was many hours afterwards when Millicent opened it, and, compared with the heavy tidings she had by the same post received, it seemed utterly trifling and unimportant. It was no more indeed than the invitation from Frances Millingham of which Pamela had spoken. Pamela forgot it altogether when she heard the news which Tony had sent, but she was to be affected by it too. For she had made a promise to Tony Stretton, and, as he had foreseen, she would at any cost fulfil it.

CHAPTER VII

THE LADY ON THE STAIRS

Whitewebs, Frances Millingham's house in Leicesters.h.i.+re, was a long white building with many level windows. The square main block of the building rose in the centre two storeys high, and on each side a wing of one storey projected. Behind the house a broad lawn sloped to the bank of a clear and shallow trout stream, with an avenue of old elms upon its left, and a rose garden upon its right. In front of the house a paddock made a ring of green, and round this ring the carriage drive circled from a white five-barred gate. Whitewebs stood in a flat gra.s.s country. From the upper windows you looked over a wide plain of meadows and old trees, so level that you had on a misty day almost an illusion of a smooth sea and the masts of s.h.i.+ps; from the lower, you saw just as far as the nearest hedgerow, except in one quarter of the compa.s.s. For to the south-west the ground rose very far away, and at the limit of view three tall poplars, set in a tiny garden on the hill's crest, stood clearly out against the sky like sentinels upon a frontier. These three landmarks were visible for many miles around.

Pamela, however, saw nothing of them as she was driven over the three miles from the station to Whitewebs.

It was late on a February evening, and already dark. The snow had fallen heavily during the last week, and as Pamela looked out through the carriage windows she saw that the ground glimmered white on every side; above the ground a mist thickened the night air, and the cold was piercing. When she reached the house she found that Frances Millingham was waiting for her alone in the big inner hall, with tea ready; and the first question which she asked of her hostess was--