THE TURNPIKE GATE
It was not, however, only Millie Stretton whose fortunes were touched
by Tony's absence. Warrisden, whom Stretton had met but the once on
board the _City of Bristol_, was no less affected. On a day of that
summer, during which Tony camped far away on the edge of the Sahara,
Warrisden rode down the steep hill from the village of the three
poplars on his way to Whitewebs. Once Pamela had ridden along this
road between the white wood rails and the black bare stems of trees on
a winter's evening of mist. That was more than fifteen months ago. The
brown furrows in the fields were now acres of waving yellow; each
black clump was now an ambuscade of green, noisy with birds. The
branches creaked in a light wind and rippled and shook the sunlight
from their leaves, the road glistened like chalk. It was ten o'clock
on an August morning, very clear and light. Voices from far away
amongst the corn sounded tiny and distinct, like voices heard through
a telephone. Round this bend at the thicket corner Pamela had
disappeared on that dim, grey evening. How far had she since travelled
on the new road, Warrisden wondered. She was at Whitewebs now. He was
riding thither to find out.
When he inquired for her at the door, he was at once led through the
house into the big garden at the back. Pamela was sitting in a chair
at the edge of the lawn under the shade of the great avenue of elms
which ran straight from the back of the house to the shallow stream at
the garden's boundary. She saw him at once as he came out from the
glass-door on to the gravel, and she rose from her chair. She did not
advance to him, but just stood where she was, watching him approach;
and in her eyes there was a great perplexity. Warrisden came straight
to her over the lawn. There was no hesitation in his manner, at all
events. On the other hand, there was no air of assurance. He came with
a definite object; so much was evident, but no more. He stopped in
front of her and raised his hat. Pamela looked at him and said
nothing. She did not even give him her hand. She stood and waited
almost submissively, with her troubled eyes resting quietly on his.
"You expected me?" he said.
"Yes. I received your letter this morning."
"You have guessed why I have come?"
"Yes."
"And you are troubled," said Warrisden.
They turned and walked under the branches into the avenue. Overhead
there was a bustle of blackbirds and thrushes; a gardener sharpening
his scythe in the rose garden made a little rasping sound. Over all
the lawn the August sunlight lay warm and golden like a benediction.
"I have come to ask you the old question," said Warrisden. "Will you
marry me?"
Pamela gazed steadily ahead as she walked, and she walked very slowly.
She was prepared for the question, yet she took her time to answer it.
And the answer when at last she gave it was no answer at all.
"I do not know," she said, in a low clear voice.
Warrisden looked at her. The profile of her face was towards him. He
wondered for the thousandth time at its beauty and its gentleness. The
broad, white forehead under the sweep of her dark hair, the big, dark
eyes shining beneath her brows, the delicate colour upon her cheeks,
the curve of the lips. He wondered and longed. But he spoke simply and
without extravagance, knowing that he would be understood.
"I have done nothing for you of the things men often do when a woman
comes into their lives. I have tried to make no career. I think there
are enough people making careers. They make the world very noisy, and
they raise a deal of dust. I have just gone on living quietly as I did
before, believing you would need no such proof."
"I do not," said Pamela.
"There might be much happiness for both of us," he continued. And
again she answered, without looking at him--
"I do not know."
She was not evading him. Evasions, indeed, were never to her liking;
and here, she was aware, were very serious issues.
"I have been thinking about you a great deal," she said. "I will tell
you this. There is no one else. But that is not all. I can say too, I
think, quite certainly, that there will be no one else. Only that is
not enough, is it? Not enough, at all events, for you and me."
Warrisden nodded his head.
"No, that is not enough," he said gravely.
They walked on side by side in silence for a little while.
"It is only fair that I should be very frank with you," she went on.
"I have been thinking so much about you in order that when you came
again with this old question, as I knew you would, I might be quite
clear and frank. Do you remember that you once spoke to me about the
turnpike gate--the gate which I was to open and through which I was to
go, like other men and women down the appointed road?"
"Yes, I remember."
"You meant, as I understand it, the gate between friendship and the
ever so much more which lies beyond?"
"Yes."
And Pamela repeated his word. "Yes," she said. "But one cannot open
that gate at will. It opens of itself at a touch, or it stays shut."
"And it stays shut now?"
Pamela answered him at once--
"Say, rather, that I have raised a hand towards the gate, but that I
am afraid to try." And she turned her face to him at last. Her eyes
were very wistful.
They stopped upon the grass bank of the stream at the end of the
avenue. Pamela looked down into the dark, swiftly running water, and
went on choosing each word, testing it, as it were, before she uttered
it.
"You see that new road beyond the gate is no new road to me. I have
trodden it before, and crept back--broken. Therefore, I am afraid."
She paused. Warrisden was aware from her attitude that she had not
finished. He did not stir lest he should check what more remained to
say, and that remnant never be spoken at all. And it was well for him
that he did not stir; for she said, in the same clear, low voice which
she had hitherto used, and just as steadily--
"I am the more afraid because I think that if I did touch that gate it
might open of itself."
She had begun, in a word, to feel premonitions of that suspense and of
that glowing life in which for a few brief months she had once been
steeped. Did she expect a letter from Warrisden, there was an
eagerness in her anticipation with which she was well familiar. Was
the letter delayed, there was a keenness in her disappointment which
was like the pang of an old wound. And this recognition that the good
days might come again, as in a cycle, brought to her very vividly the
memory of the bad black days which had followed. Fear of those latter
days, and the contrast of their number with the number of those which
had gone before, drove her back. For those latter days in their turn
might come round again.
Warrisden looked at her and his heart filled with pity for the great
trouble which had overwhelmed her. She stood by his side with the
sunlight playing upon her face and her hair--a girl brilliant with
life, ripe to turn its possibilities into facts; and she shrank from
the ordeal, so hardly had she been hit! She was by nature fearless,
yet was she desperately afraid.
"Will nothing make you touch the gate and try?" he asked gently. And
then, quietly as he spoke, the greatness of his longing made itself
heard. "My dear, my dear," he said, "will nothing make you take your
risks?"
The words struck sharply upon her memories. She turned her eyes to
him.
"It is strange that you should use those words," she said. "For there
is one thing which might make me take my risks. The return of the man
who used them to you in the North Sea."
"Tony Stretton?" exclaimed Warrisden.
"Yes. He is still away. It is said that he is on a long shooting
expedition somewhere in Central Africa, and out of reach. But that is
not the truth. We do not know where he is, or when he will come
back."
"Shall I try to find him again?" said Warrisden. "This time I might
succeed in bringing him home."
Pamela shook her head.
"No," she answered. "I think I know why he stays away. And there would
be only one way of persuading him to return. Well--that means I must
not use, unless things have come to an extremity."
The one means of persuasion was the truth. If she sent for Tony
Stretton again she must explain what that saying of hers spoken so
long ago had meant. She must write why he should not have left his
wife. She must relate the sordid story, which rendered his return
imperative, That she was prepared to do, if all else failed, in the
last resort, but not till then.
"But the extremity has not been reached," she continued, "and I hope
it never will. I hope Tony Stretton will come back soon of his own
accord. That would be the best thing which could happen, ever so much
the best." She did not blame Tony for his absence, for she understood
the motive which caused it. In a way, she was inclined to approve of
it in itself, just as a motive, that is to say. It was the character
of Millie Stretton and his ignorance of it which made his experiment
so hazardous. Complete confidence in his wife's honour, indeed, was to
her thinking, and rightly, an essential part of his motive. She wished
him to return of his own accord and keep that confidence.
"There is not the same necessity," she continued, choosing her words,
"that he should return immediately, as there was when I sent you out
to the North Sea; but it is possible that the necessity might recur."
For she knew that, though Callon was far away in Chili, letters came
from him to Millie. Only lately a careless remark of Millie's with
reference to that State had assured her of this. And if the letters
still came, though Callon had been away a year, it followed that they
were answered.
"In that case you would send for me?" said Warrisden.
"Yes. I should rely on you."
And Warrisden answered quietly, "Thank you."
He asked no questions. He seemed to understand that Pamela must use
him, and, while using him, not fail of loyalty to her sex. A feeling
of self-reproach suddenly troubled Pamela. She had never told him that
she had used another's help and not his. She wondered whether it was
quite fair not to tell him. But she kept silent. After all, she
thought, the news would only hurt him; and Mr. Mudge's help had been
help which he could not have given. She went back to the matter of
their relationship to one another.
"So you understand what I think," she said. "I am afraid. I look for
signs. I cannot help doing that. I have set my heart on keeping a
promise which I made to Tony Stretton. If he returns, whether of his
own accord or by my persuasion, and things go well--why, then"--and
she turned her face from him and said, looking steadily in front of
her--"why, then, perhaps."
As she spoke her face changed wonderfully. The mere utterance of the
word aloud conjured up dreams. A wistful smile made her lips
beautiful, her eyes grew dim. Just for a moment she gave those dreams
their way. She looked across the garden through a mist, seeing nothing
of the trees or the coloured flowers, but gazing into a vision of
other and golden days--of days perhaps to come. Warrisden stood at her
side, and did not speak. But something of those dreams he guessed, her
face had grown so young.
She shook her dreams from her in a few moments.
"So you see, at present," she resumed, "marriage is impossible. It
will always be impossible to me unless I can bring--everything, not
merely companionship, not merely liking; out the ever so much more
which there is. I cannot contemplate it at all under any other
conditions"--and now she looked at her companion--"and I believe it is
the same with you."
"Yes," Warrisden replied, "I ask for everything."
He had his convictions, and since there was complete confidence
between these two, he spoke them now.
"It is unsafe, of course, to generalise on the subject of women. But I
do think this: If a man asks little from a woman, she will give him
even less than he asks, and she will give it grudgingly, sparingly;
counting what she gives. And that little, to my mind, is worth rather
less than nothing. Better have no ties than weak ones. If, on the
other hand, a man asks a great deal, and continually asks it, why, the
woman may get bored, and he may get nothing. In which case he is no
worse off than he was before. But if, on the other hand, the woman
does give in return----"
"Well?" asked Pamela.
"Well, then, she gives ever so much more than he asks, and gives it
willingly with open hands."
Pamela thought the theory over.
"Yes, I think that is generally true," she said. "But, after all, I am
giving you very little."
Warrisden laughed.
"That's true," he replied. "But then you are not bored, and I have not
done asking."
Pamela laughed too, and their talk thus ended in a lighter note. They
walked towards the house, and as they did so a woman came out on to
the lawn.
"This is Millie Stretton," said Pamela.
"She is staying here?" cried Warrisden.
"Yes," replied Pamela, "Before she comes I want to ask you to do
something for me. Oh, it is quite a small thing. But I should like you
very much to do it. Where do you go to from here?"
"To London," said Warrisden, "I have business there."
The business which called him to town had, indeed, only occurred to
him during the last half-hour. It had arisen from their conversation.
It seemed to Warrisden immediate and imperative.
"Will you be in London to-morrow?" asked Pamela.
"Yes."
"Then I want you to write to me. Just a little letter--nothing much, a
line or two. And I want you to post it, not by the country post, but
afterwards, so that it will reach me in the evening. Don't write here,
for I am going home. And please don't forget."
Millie Stretton joined them a moment afterwards, and Warrisden was
introduced to her.
"I have had an offer for the house in Berkeley Square," she said to
Pamela. "I think I will take it. I shall be glad to be rid of it."
They went back into the house. Warrisden wondered at Pamela's request
for a letter, and at her urgency that it should arrive at a particular
time. He was not discontented with the walk which they had taken under
the avenue of elms. It seemed to him that Pamela was coming slowly
towards him. There was a great difference between her "No" of last
year and her "I do not know" of to-day. Even that "I do not know"
while they talked had become "perhaps." Had she not owned even more,
since she was afraid the gate would open of itself did she but touch
and try? His hopes, therefore, rode high that day, and would have
ridden yet higher, could he have guessed why she so desired a few
lines in his handwriting in the evening of the day after to-morrow.
The reason was this. Repairs, long needed, had at last been undertaken
in the house of Pamela's father, a few miles away; and those repairs
involved the rooms reserved for Pamela. There were certain drawers in
that room which had not been unlocked for years, and of which Pamela
sedulously guarded the keys. They held letters, a few small presents,
one or two photographs, and some insignificant trifles which could not
be valued, since their value depended only on their associations.
There were, for instance, some cheap red beads, and the history of
those beads tells all that need be said of the contents of those
locked drawers.
Two hundred years before, a great full-rigged ship, bound with a
general cargo for the Guinea Coast, sailed down the Channel out of
Portsmouth. Amongst the cargo was a great store of these red beads.
The beads were to buy slaves for the plantations. But the great ship
got no further on her voyage than Bigbury Bay in Devonshire. She
damaged her rudder in a storm, and the storm swept her on to the bleak
rocks of Bolt Tail, dragged her back again into the welter of the sea,
drove her into Bigbury Bay, and flung her up there against the low red
cliffs, where all her crew perished. The cargo was spilt amongst the
breakers, and the shores of that bay were littered with red beads. You
may pick them up to this day amongst the pebbles. There Pamela had
picked them upon a hot August morning, very like to that which now
dreamed over this green, quiet garden of Leicestershire; and when she
had picked them up she had not been alone. The locked cabinets held
all the relics which remained to her from those few bright weeks in
Devon; and the mere touch of any one, however trifling, would have
magic to quicken her memories. Yet now the cabinets must be unlocked,
and all that was in them removed. There was a bad hour waiting for
Pamela, when she would remove these relics one by one--the faded
letters in the handwriting which she would never see again on any
envelope; the photograph of the face which could exchange no look with
her; the little presents from the hand which could touch hers no more.
It would be a relief, she thought, to come downstairs when that
necessary work was done, that bad hour over, and find a letter from
Warrisden upon the table. Just a few lines. She needed nothing more.