TONY STRETTON RETURNS TO STEPNEY
Mr. Chase left the mission quite early in the evening and walked
towards his lodging. That side of his nature which clamoured for
enjoyments and a life of luxury was urgent with him to-night. As he
turned into his street he began to debate with himself whether he
should go in search of a cab and drive westwards out of the squalor. A
church clock had just struck nine; he would find his club open and his
friends about the fire. Thus debating he came to his own door, and had
unconsciously taken his latch-key from his pocket before he had
decided upon his course. The latch-key decided him. He opened the door
and went quickly up to his sitting-room. The gas was low, and what
light there was came from the fire. Chase shut the door gently, and
his face underwent a change. There came a glitter into his eyes, a
smile to his lips. He crossed to the little cupboard in the corner and
unlocked it, stealthily, even though he was alone. As he put his hand
into it and grasped the decanter, something stirred in his armchair.
The back of the chair was towards him. He remained for a second or two
motionless, listening. But the sound was not repeated. Chase
noiselessly locked the cupboard again and came back to the fire. A man
was sitting asleep in the chair.
Chase laid a hand upon his shoulder and shook him.
"Stretton," he said; and Tony Stretton opened his eyes.
"I fell asleep waiting for you," he said.
"When did you get back?" asked Chase.
"I landed at Yarmouth this morning. I came up to London this
afternoon."
Chase turned up the gas and lit a cigarette.
"You have not been home, then?" he said. "There is news waiting for
you there. Your father is dead!"
"I know," Stretton replied. "He died a month ago."
Mr. Chase was perplexed. He drew up a chair to the fire and sat down.
"You know that?" he asked slowly; "and yet you have not gone home?"
"No," replied Stretton. "And I do not mean to go."
Stretton was speaking in the quietest and most natural way. There was
no trace in his manner of that anxiety which during the last few days
had kept him restless and uneasy. He had come to his decision. Chase
was aware of the stubborn persistence of his friend; and it was rather
to acquire knowledge than to persuade that he put his questions.
"But why? You went away to make an independent home, free from the
restrictions under which you and your wife were living. Well, you have
got that home now. The reason for your absence has gone."
Stretton shook his head.
"The reason remains. Indeed it is stronger now than it was when I
first left England," he answered. He leaned forward with his elbows
upon his knees, gazing into the fire. The light played upon his face,
and Chase could not but notice the change which these few months had
brought to him. He had grown thin, and rather worn; he had lost the
comfortable look of prosperity; his face was tanned. But there was
more. It might have been expected that the rough surroundings amidst
which Stretton had lived would leave their marks. He might have become
rather coarse, rather gross to the eye. On the contrary, there was a
look of refinement. It was the long battle with his own thoughts which
had left the marks. The mind was showing through the flesh. The face
had become spiritualised.
"Yes, the reason remains," said Stretton. "I left home to keep my
wife. We lived a life of quarrels. All the little memories, the
associations, the thousand and one small private things--ideas,
thoughts, words, jokes even, which two people who care very much for
one another have in common--we were losing, and so quickly; so very
quickly. I can't express half what I mean. But haven't you seen a man
and a woman at a dinner-table, when some chance sentence is spoken,
suddenly look at one another just for a second, smile perhaps, at all
events speak, though no word is spoken? Well, that kind of intimacy
was going. I saw indifference coming, perhaps dislike, perhaps
contempt; yes, contempt, just because I sat there and looked on. So I
went away. But the contempt has come. Oh, don't think I believe that I
made a mistake in going away. It would have come none the less had I
stayed. But I have to reckon with the fact that it has come."
Mr. Chase sat following Stretton's words with a very close attention.
Never had Stretton spoken to him with so much frankness before.
"Go on," said Chase. "What you are saying is--much of it--news to me."
"Well, suppose that I were to go back now," Stretton resumed, "at
once--do you see?--that contempt is doubled."
"No," cried Chase.
"Yes, yes," Stretton insisted. "Look at it from Millie's point of
view, not from yours, not even from mine. Look at the history of the
incident from the beginning! Work it out as she would; nay," he
corrected himself, remembering the letters, "as she has. I leave her
when things are at their worst. That's not all. I take half Millie's
fortune, and am fool enough to lose it right away. And that's not all.
I stay away in the endeavour to recover the lost ground, and I
continually fail. Meanwhile Millie has the dreary, irksome, exacting,
unrequited life, which I left behind, to get through as best she can
alone; without pleasure, and she likes pleasure----" He suddenly
looked at Chase, with a challenge in his eyes. "Why shouldn't she?" he
asked abruptly. Chase agreed.
"Why shouldn't she?" he said, with a smile. "I am not disapproving."
Stretton resumed his former attitude, his former tone.
"Without friends, and she is fond of having friends about her; without
any chance of gratifying her spirits or her youth! To make her life
still more disheartening, every mail which reaches her from New York
brings her only another instalment of my disastrous record. Work it
out from her point of view, Chase; then add this to crown it all." He
leaned forward towards Chase and emphasized his words with a gesture
of his hand. "The first moment when her life suddenly becomes easy,
and does so through no help of mine, I--the failure--come scurrying
back to share it. No, Chase, no!"
He uttered his refusal to accept that position with a positive
violence, and flung himself back in his chair. Chase answered
quietly--
"Surely you are forgetting that it is your father's wealth which makes
her life easy."
"I am not forgetting it at all."
"It's your father's wealth," Chase repeated. "You have a right to
share in it."
"Yes," Stretton admitted; "but what have rights to do with the
question at all? If my wife thinks me no good, will my rights save me
from her contempt?"
And before that blunt question Mr. Chase was silent. It was too
direct, too unanswerable. Stretton rose from his chair, and stood
looking down at his companion.
"Just consider the story I should have to tell Millie tonight--by
George!" he exclaimed suddenly--"if I went back to-night. I start out
with fifteen hundred pounds of hers to make a home and a competence;
and within a few months I am working as a hand on a North Sea trawler
at nineteen shillings a week."
"A story of hardships undergone for her sake," said Chase; "for that's
the truth of your story, Stretton. And don't you think the hardships
would count for ever so much more than any success you could have
won?"
"Hardships!" exclaimed Stretton, with a laugh. "I think I would find
it difficult to make a moving tale out of my hardships. And I wouldn't
if I could--no!"
As a fact, although it was unknown to Tony, Chase was wrong. Had
Stretton told his story never so vividly, it would have made no
difference. Millie Stretton had not the imagination to realise what
those hardships had been. Tony's story would have been to her just a
story, calling, no doubt, for exclamations of tenderness and pity. But
she could not have understood what he had felt, what he had thought,
what he had endured. Deeper feelings and a wider sympathy than Millie
Stretton was dowered with would have been needed for comprehension.
Stretton walked across the room and came back to the fire. He looked
down at Chase with a smile. "Very likely you think I am a great fool,"
he said, in a gentler voice than he had used till now. "No doubt nine
men out of ten would say, 'Take the gifts the gods send you, and let
the rest slide. What if you and your wife drift apart? You won't be
the only couple.' But, frankly, Chase, that is not good enough. I have
seen a good deal of it--the boredom, the gradual ossification. Oh no;
I'm not content with that! You see, Chase," he stopped for a moment
and gazed steadily into the fire; then he went on quite simply, "you
see, I care for Millie very much."
Chase knew well what weight to give to that short sentence. Had it
been more elaborate it would have meant less. It needed no other
commentary than the quiet sincerity with which it was uttered.
"Yes, I understand," he said.
Stretton seated himself again in his chair and took out a briar pipe
from his pocket. The pipe had an open metal covering over the bowl.
"I need that no longer," Stretton said, with a laugh, as he removed
it. Then he took out a pouch, filled his pipe, and lighted it.
"Have a whisky and soda?" said Chase.
"No, thanks."
Chase lighted a cigarette and looked at his friend with curiosity. The
change which he had noticed in Stretton's looks had been just as
noticeable in his words. This man sitting opposite to him was no
longer the Tony Stretton who had once come to him for advice. That man
had been slow of thought, halting of speech, good-humoured, friendly;
but a man with whom it was difficult to get at close quarters. Talk
with him a hundred times, and you seemed to know him no better than
you did at the moment when first you were introduced to him. Here,
however, was a man who had thought out his problem--was, moreover,
able lucidly to express it.
"Well," said Chase, "you are determined not to go back?"
"Not yet," Stretton corrected.
"What do you propose to do?"
The question showed how great the change had been, begun by the hard
times in New York, completed by the eight weeks in the North Sea. For
Chase put the question. He no longer offered advice, understanding
that Stretton had not come to ask for it.
"I propose to enlist in the French Foreign Legion."
Stretton spoke with the most matter-of-fact air imaginable; he might
have been naming the house at which he was to dine the next night.
Nevertheless, Chase started out of his chair; he stared at his
companion in a stupefaction.
"No," said Stretton, calmly; "I am not off my head, and I have not
been drinking. Sit down again, and think it over."
Chase obeyed, and Stretton proceeded to expound that inspiration which
had come to him the night before.
"What else should I do? You know my object now. I have to re-establish
myself in my wife's thoughts. How else can I do it? What professions
are open to me in which I could gain, I don't say distinction, but
mere recognition? I am not a money-maker; that, at all events, is
evident. I have had experience enough during the last months to know
that if I lived to a thousand I should never make money."
"I think that's true," Chase agreed, thoughtfully.
"Luckily there's no longer any need that I should try. What then? Run
through the professions, Chase, and find one, if you can, in which a
man at my age--twenty-nine--with my ignorance, my want of intellect,
has a single chance of success. The bar? It's laughable. The sea? I am
too old. The army? I resigned my commission years ago. So what then?"
He waited for Chase to speak, and Chase was silent. He waited with a
smile, knowing that Chase could not speak.
"There must be an alternative," Chase said, doubtfully, at last.
"Name it, then."
That was just what Chase could not do. He turned in his mind from this
calling to that. There was not one which did not need a particular
education; there was not one in which Stretton was likely to succeed.
Soldiering or the sea. These were the two callings for which he was
fitted. From the sea his age debarred him; from soldiering too, except
in this one way. No, certainly, Stretton was not off his head.
"How in the world did you think of the Foreign Legion?" he asked.
Stretton shrugged his shoulders.
"I thought of most other courses first, and, one by one, rejected them
as impossible. This plan came to me last of all, and only last night.
We were passing a light-ship. In a way, you see, we were within sight
of home. I was in despair; and suddenly the idea flashed upon me, like
the revolving blaze from the light-ship. It is a sound one, I think.
At all events, it is the only one."
"Yes," answered Chase, slowly; "I suppose there will be chances, for
there's always something stirring on the Algerian frontier."
"There, or in Siam," said Stretton.
"What arrangements are you making here?"
"I have written to my lawyers. Millie can do as she pleases with the
income. She has power, too, to sell the house in Berkeley Square. I
made my will, you know, before I left England."
Chase nodded, and for a while there fell a silence upon the two
friends. A look of envy crept into the face of the clergyman as he
looked at Stretton. He could appreciate a motive which set a man
aiming high. He admired the persistence with which Stretton nursed it.
The plan it had prompted might be quixotic and quite fruitless, but,
at all events, it was definite; and a definite scheme of life, based
upon a simple and definite motive, was not so common but that it was
enviable. Stretton was so sure of its wisdom, too. He had no doubts.
He sat in his chair not asking for approval, not caring for censure;
he had made up his mind. The image of Stretton, indeed, as he sat in
that chair on that evening, with the firelight playing upon his face,
was often to come to Chase's thoughts.
"There will be great risks," he said. "Risks of death, of trouble in
the battalion."
"I have counted them," Stretton replied; and he leaned forward again,
with his hands upon his knees. "Oh yes; there will be great risks! But
there's a prize, too, proportionate to the risks. Risks! Every one
speaks of them," he went on, with a laugh of impatience. "But I have
been eight weeks on the Dogger Bank, Chase, and I know--yes, I
know--how to estimate risks. Out there men risk their lives daily to
put a few boxes of fish on board a fish-cutter. Take the risk
half-heartedly and your boat's swamped for a sure thing; but take it
with all your heart and there are the fish-boxes to your credit. Well,
Millie is my fish-boxes."
He ended with a laugh, and, rising, took his hat.
"Shall I put you up for the night?" Chase asked.
"No, thanks," said Stretton. "I have got a bed at an hotel. I have
something else to do to-night;" and a smile, rather wistful and
tender, played about his lips. "Goodbye!" He held out his hand, and as
Chase took it he went on, "I am looking forward to the day when I come
back. My word, how I am looking forward to it; and I will look forward
each day until it actually, at the long last, comes. It will have been
worth waiting for, Chase, well worth waiting for, both to Millie and
to me."
With that he went away. Chase heard him close the street door behind
him, and his footsteps sound for a moment or two on the pavement.
After all, he thought, a life under those Algerian skies, a life in
the open air, of activity--there were many worse things, even though
it should prove a second failure.
Chase stood for a little before the fire. He crossed slowly over to
that cupboard in the corner at which Stretton's movement in the chair
had stayed his hand. Chase looked back to the armchair, as though he
half expected still to see Stretton sitting there. Then he slowly
walked back to the fire, and left the cupboard locked. Stretton had
gone, but he had left behind him memories which were not to be
effaced--the memory of a great motive and of a sturdy determination to
fulfil it. The two men were never to meet again; but, in the after
time, more than once, of an evening, Chase's hand was stayed upon that
cupboard door. More than once he looked back towards the chair as if
he expected that again his friend was waiting for him by the fire.