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
amusements was not assuaged, 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.
"You are engaged?"
"Yes, for this dance to Mr. Mudge," and she indicated the man who was
retiring. "But we shall meet again--at Newmarket, at all events.
Perhaps in Scotland too."
She held out her hand to Warrisden, and, as he took it, her voice
dropped to a plea.
"Please don't go away again without telling me first, without talking
it over, so that I may know where you are from month to month. Please
promise!"
Warrisden promised, and went away from the house with her prayer
echoing in his ears. The very sound of her voice was audible to him,
and he never doubted the sincerity of its appeal. But if she set such
store on what she had, why was she content with just that and nothing
more, he asked himself. Why did she not claim a little more and give a
little more in return? Why did she come to a halt at friendship, a
mere turnpike on the great road, instead of passing through the gate
and going on down the appointed way. He did not know that she passed
the turnpike once, and that if she refused to venture on that path
again, it was because, knowing herself, she dared not.
In the narrows of Berkeley Street Warrisden was shaken out of these
reflections. A hansom jingled past him, and by the light of the lamp
which hung at the back within it he caught a glimpse of the truants.
They were driving home to the dark house in the Square, and they sat
side by side silent and with troubled faces. Warrisden's thoughts went
back to what Pamela had told him that night. She had told him the
half, but not the perplexing, interesting half of their history. That
indeed Pamela could not tell, for she did not know Sir John Stretton,
and the old man's warped and churlish character alone explained it.
It was by his doing that the truants gave up their cheery little house
in Deanery Street and came to live in Berkeley Square. The old man was
a miser, who during his wife's existence had not been allowed to
gratify his instincts. He made all the more ample amends after she had
died. The fine allowance on which the young couple had managed to keep
a pair of horses and a little brougham was stripped from them.
"Why should I live alone?" said the old man. "I am old, Tony, and I
need some attention. The house is big, much too big for me, and the
servants are eating their heads off for the want of something to do."
There were indeed more servants than were needed. Servants were the
single luxury Sir John allowed himself. Their liveries were faded,
they themselves were insolent and untidy, but they were there, in the
great bare dining-room at dinner-time, in the hall when Sir John came
home of an afternoon. For the old man went out each day as the clock
struck three; he came back each evening at half-past six. He went out
alone, he returned alone, and he never went to his club. He took an
omnibus from the corner of Berkeley Street and journeyed eastwards as
far as Ludgate Hill. There he took a drink in the refreshment bar,
and, coming out, struck northwards into Holborn, where he turned
westwards, and walking as far as the inn at the corner of the
Tottenham Court Road, stepped for an hour into the private bar. Thence
he took another omnibus, and finally reached home, where his footmen
received him solemnly in the hall. To this home he brought Tony and
his wife.
"There choose your own rooms, Tony," he said magnanimously. "What's
that? Money? But what for? You'll have it soon enough."
Tony Stretton suggested that it was hardly possible for any man,
however careful, to retain a commission in the Coldstream without an
allowance. Sir John, a tall thin man, with high bald forehead, and a
prim puritanical face, looked at his son with a righteous severity.
"A very expensive regiment. Leave it, Tony! And live quietly at home.
Look after your father, my boy, and you won't need money," and he
stalked upstairs leaving Tony aghast in the hall. Tony had to sit down
and think it over before he could quite realise the fate which had
over-taken him. Here he was, twenty-six years old brought up to spend
what he wanted and to ask for more when that was ended, and he was to
live quietly on nothing at all. He had no longer any profession, he
was not clever enough to enter upon a new one without some sort of
start and in addition he had a wife. His wife, it was true, had a few
thousands; they had remained untouched ever since the marriage and
Tony shrank from touching them now. He sat on one of the hall-chairs,
twisting his moustache and staring with his blank blue eyes at the
opposite wall. What in the world was he to do? Old Sir John was quite
aware of those few thousands. They might just as well be used now he
thought, and save him expense. Tony could pay them back after his
father was dead. Such was Sir John's plan and Tony had to fall in with
it. The horses and the brougham and all the furniture, the prints, the
pictures and the mirrors which had decked out so gaily the little
house in Deanery Street went to the hammer. Tony paid off his debts
and found himself with a hundred pounds in hand at the end; and when
that was gone he was forced to come to his wife.
"Of course," said she, "we'll share what I have, Tony."
"Yes, but we must go carefully," he replied. "Heaven knows how long we
will have to drag on like this."
So the money question was settled, but that was in reality the least
of their troubles. Sir John, for the first time in his life, was
master in fact as well as in name. He had been no match for his wife,
but he was more than a match for his son. He was the fifth baronet of
his name, and yet there was no landed property. He was rich, and all
the money was safely tucked away in the public funds, and he could
bequeath it as he willed. He was in a position to put the screw on
Tony and his wife, and he did not let the opportunity slip. The love
of authority grew upon him. He became exacting and portentously
severe. In his black, shabby coat, with his long thin figure, and his
narrow face, he had the look of a cold self-righteous fanatic. You
would have believed that he was mortifying his son for the sake of his
son's soul, unless perchance you had peeped into that private bar in
the Tottenham Court Road and had seen him drinking gloomily alone.
He laid down rules to which the unfortunate couple must needs conform.
They had to dine with him every night and to sit with him every
evening until he went to bed. It followed that they lost sight of
their friends, and every month isolated them more completely. The mere
humiliation of the position in which they stood caused them to shrink
more and more into their privacy. When they walked out in the
afternoon they kept away from the Park; when they played truant in the
evening, at the Savoy, they chose a little table in an obscure corner.
This was the real history of the truants with whose fortunes those of
Warrisden and Pamela were to be so closely intermingled. For that life
in the dark house was not to last. Even as Warrisden passed them in
Berkeley Street, Tony Stretton was saying over and over again in his
inactive mind--
"It can't go on. It can't go on!"
In the after times, when the yapping of dogs in the street at night
would wake Tony from his sleep, and set him on dreaming of tent
villages in a wild country of flowers, or when the wind in the trees
would recall to him a little ship labouring on short steep seas in a
mist of spray, he always looked back to this night as that on which
the venture of his wife's fortunes and his own began.