Complete Works of a E W Mason

by A. E. W. Mason

  “Glad!” she exclaimed.

  “Yes, for my sake, glad.” And as she looked at him in wonderment he went on: “Two lives should not be spoilt because of you. Had you had your way, had I not found out, not two but three lives would have been spoilt because of you — because of your loyalty.”

  “Three?”

  “Yours. Yes — yes, yours, Feversham’s, and mine. It was hard enough to keep the pretence during the few weeks we were in Devonshire. Own to it, Ethne! When I went to London to see my oculist it was a relief; it gave you a pause, a rest wherein to drop pretence and be yourself. It could not have lasted long even in Devonshire. But what when we came to live under the same roof, and there were no visits to the oculist, when we saw each other every hour of every day? Sooner or later the truth must have come to me. It might have come gradually, a suspicion added to a suspicion and another to that until no doubt was left. Or it might have flashed out in one terrible moment. But it would have been made clear. And then, Ethne? What then? You aimed at a compensation; you wanted to make up to me for the loss of what I love — my career, the army, the special service in the strange quarters of the world. A fine compensation to sit in front of you knowing you had married a cripple out of pity, and that in so doing you had crippled yourself and foregone the happiness which is yours by right. Whereas now—”

  “Whereas now?” she repeated.

  “I remain your friend, which I would rather be than your unloved husband,” he said very gently.

  Ethne made no rejoinder. The decision had been taken out of her hands.

  “You sent Harry away this afternoon,” said Durrance. “You said good-bye to him twice.”

  At the “twice” Ethne raised her head, but before she could speak Durrance explained: —

  “Once in the church, again upon your violin,” and he took up the instrument from the chair on which she had laid it. “It has been a very good friend, your violin,” he said. “A good friend to me, to us all. You will understand that, Ethne, very soon. I stood at the window while you played it. I had never heard anything in my life half so sad as your farewell to Harry Feversham, and yet it was nobly sad. It was true music, it did not complain.” He laid the violin down upon the chair again.

  “I am going to send a messenger to Rathmullen. Harry cannot cross Lough Swilly to-night. The messenger will bring him back to-morrow.”

  It had been a day of many emotions and surprises for Ethne. As Durrance bent down towards her, he became aware that she was crying silently. For once tears had their way with her. He took his cap and walked noiselessly to the door of the room. As he opened it, Ethne got up.

  “Don’t go for a moment,” she said, and she left the fireplace and came to the centre of the room.

  “The oculist at Wiesbaden?” she asked. “He gave you a hope?”

  Durrance stood meditating whether he should lie or speak the truth.

  “No,” he said at length. “There is no hope. But I am not so helpless as at one time I was afraid that I should be. I can get about, can’t I? Perhaps one of these days I shall go on a journey, one of the long journeys amongst the strange people in the East.”

  He went from the house upon his errand. He had learned his lesson a long time since, and the violin had taught it him. It had spoken again that afternoon, and though with a different voice, had offered to him the same message. The true music cannot complain.

  CHAPTER XXXIV

  THE END

  IN THE EARLY summer of next year two old men sat reading their newspapers after breakfast upon the terrace of Broad Place. The elder of the two turned over a sheet.

  “I see Osman Digna’s back at Suakin,” said he. “There’s likely to be some fighting.”

  “Oh,” said the other, “he will not do much harm.” And he laid down his paper. The quiet English country-side vanished from before his eyes. He saw only the white city by the Red Sea shimmering in the heat, the brown plains about it with their tangle of halfa grass, and in the distance the hills towards Khor Gwob.

  “A stuffy place Suakin, eh, Sutch?” said General Feversham.

  “Appallingly stuffy. I heard of an officer who went down on parade at six o’clock of the morning there, sunstruck in the temples right through a regulation helmet. Yes, a town of dank heat! But I was glad to be there — very glad,” he said with some feeling.

  “Yes,” said Feversham, briskly; “ibex, eh?”

  “No,” replied Sutch. “All the ibex had been shot off by the English garrison for miles round.”

  “No? Something to do, then. That’s it?”

  “Yes, that’s it, Feversham. Something to do.”

  And both men busied themselves again over their papers. But in a little while a footman brought to each a small pile of letters. General Feversham ran over his envelopes with a quick eye, selected one letter, and gave a grunt of satisfaction. He took a pair of spectacles from a case and placed them upon his nose.

  “From Ramelton?” asked Sutch, dropping his newspaper on to the terrace.

  “From Ramelton,” answered Feversham. “I’ll light a cigar first.”

  He laid the letter down on the garden table which stood between his companion and himself, drew a cigar-case from his pocket, and in spite of the impatience of Lieutenant Sutch, proceeded to cut and light it with the utmost deliberation. The old man had become an epicure in this respect. A letter from Ramelton was a luxury to be enjoyed with all the accessories of comfort which could be obtained. He made himself comfortable in his chair, stretched out his legs, and smoked enough of his cigar to assure himself that it was drawing well. Then he took up his letter again and opened it.

  “From him?” asked Sutch.

  “No; from her.”

  “Ah!”

  General Feversham read the letter through slowly, while Lieutenant Sutch tried not to peep at it across the table. When the general had finished he turned back to the first page, and began it again.

  “Any news?” said Sutch, with a casual air.

  “They are very pleased with the house now that it’s rebuilt.”

  “Anything more?”

  “Yes. Harry’s finished the sixth chapter of his history of the war.”

  “Good!” said Sutch. “You’ll see, he’ll do that well. He has imagination, he knows the ground, he was present while the war went on. Moreover, he was in the bazaars, he saw the under side of it.”

  “Yes. But you and I won’t read it, Sutch,” said Feversham. “No; I am wrong. You may, for you can give me a good many years.”

  He turned back to his letter and again Sutch asked: —

  “Anything more?”

  “Yes. They are coming here in a fortnight.”

  “Good,” said Sutch. “I shall stay.”

  He took a turn along the terrace and came back. He saw Feversham sitting with the letter upon his knees and a frown of great perplexity upon his face.

  “You know, Sutch, I never understood,” he said. “Did you?”

  “Yes, I think I did.”

  Sutch did not try to explain. It was as well, he thought, that Feversham never would understand. For he could not understand without much self-reproach.

  “Do you ever see Durrance?” asked the general, suddenly.

  “Yes, I see a good deal of Durrance. He is abroad just now.”

  Feversham turned towards his friend.

  “He came to Broad Place when you went to Suakin, and talked to me for half an hour. He was Harry’s best man. Well, that too I never understood. Did you?”

  “Yes, I understood that as well.”

  “Oh!” said General Feversham. He asked for no explanations, but, as he had always done, he took the questions which he did not understand and put them aside out of his thoughts. But he did not turn to his other letters. He sat smoking his cigar, and looked out across the summer country and listened to the sounds rising distinctly from the fields. Sutch had read through all of his correspondence before Feversham spoke again.


  “I have been thinking,” he said. “Have you noticed the date of the month, Sutch?” and Sutch looked up quickly.

  “Yes,” said he, “this day next week will be the anniversary of our attack upon the Redan, and Harry’s birthday.”

  “Exactly,” replied Feversham. “Why shouldn’t we start the Crimean nights again?”

  Sutch jumped up from his chair.

  “Splendid!” he cried. “Can we muster a tableful, do you think?”

  “Let’s see,” said Feversham, and ringing a handbell upon the table, sent the servant for the Army List. Bending over that Army List the two veterans may be left.

  But of one other figure in this story a final word must be said. That night, when the invitations had been sent out from Broad Place, and no longer a light gleamed from any window of the house, a man leaned over the rail of a steamer anchored at Port Said and listened to the song of the Arab coolies as they tramped up and down the planks with their coal baskets between the barges and the ship’s side. The clamour of the streets of the town came across the water to his ears. He pictured to himself the flare of braziers upon the quays, the lighted port-holes, and dark funnels ahead and behind in the procession of the anchored ships. Attended by a servant, he had come back to the East again. Early the next morning the steamer moved through the canal, and towards the time of sunset passed out into the chills of the Gulf of Suez. Kassassin, Tel-el-Kebir, Tamai, Tamanieb, the attack upon McNeil’s zareeba — Durrance lived again through the good years of his activity, the years of plenty. Within that country on the west the long preparations were going steadily forward which would one day roll up the Dervish Empire and crush it into dust. Upon the glacis of the ruined fort of Sinkat, Durrance had promised himself to take a hand in that great work, but the desert which he loved had smitten and cast him out. But at all events the boat steamed southwards into the Red Sea. Three nights more, and though he would not see it, the Southern Cross would lift slantwise into the sky.

  The Truants (1904)

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER I

  CHAPTER II

  CHAPTER III

  CHAPTER IV

  CHAPTER V

  CHAPTER VI

  CHAPTER VII

  CHAPTER VIII

  CHAPTER IX

  CHAPTER X

  CHAPTER XI

  CHAPTER XII

  CHAPTER XIII

  CHAPTER XIV

  CHAPTER XV

  CHAPTER XVI

  CHAPTER XVII

  CHAPTER XVIII

  CHAPTER XIX

  CHAPTER XX

  CHAPTER XXI

  CHAPTER XXII

  CHAPTER XXIII

  CHAPTER XXIV

  CHAPTER XXV

  CHAPTER XXVI

  CHAPTER XXVII

  CHAPTER XXVIII

  CHAPTER XXIX

  CHAPTER XXX

  CHAPTER XXXI

  CHAPTER XXXII

  CHAPTER XXXIII

  CHAPTER XXXIV

  CHAPTER XXXV

  CHAPTER XXXVI

  The first edition

  The first edition’s title page

  The original frontispiece

  CHAPTER I

  PAMELA MARDALE LEARNS A VERY LITTLE HISTORY

  THERE WERE ONLY two amongst all Pamela Mardale’s friends who guessed that anything was wrong with her; and those two included neither her father nor her mother. Her mother, indeed, might have guessed, had she been a different woman. But she was a woman of schemes and little plots, who watched with concentration their immediate developments, but had no eyes for any lasting consequence. And it was no doubt as well for her peace of mind that she never guessed. But of the others it was unlikely that any one would suspect the truth. For Pamela made no outward sign. She hunted through the winter from her home under the Croft Hill in Leicestershire; she went everywhere, as the saying is, during the season in London; she held her own in her own world, lacking neither good spirits nor the look of health. There were, perhaps, two small peculiarities which marked her off from her companions. She was interested in things rather than in persons, and she preferred to talk to old men rather than to youths. But such points, taken by themselves, were not of an importance to attract attention.

  Yet there were two amongst her friends who suspected: Alan Warrisden and the schoolmaster of Roquebrune, the little village carved out of the hillside to the east of Monte Carlo. The schoolmaster was the nearer to the truth, for he not only knew that something was amiss, he suspected what the something was. But then he had a certain advantage, since he had known Pamela Mardale when she was a child. Their acquaintance came about in the following way —

  He was leaning one evening of December over the parapet of the tiny square beside the schoolhouse, when a servant from the Villa Pontignard approached him.

  “Could M. Giraud make it convenient to call at the villa at noon to-morrow?” the servant asked. “Madame Mardale was anxious to speak to him.”

  M. Giraud turned about with a glow of pleasure upon his face.

  “Certainly,” he replied. “But nothing could be more simple. I will be at the Villa Pontignard as the clock strikes.”

  The servant bowed, and without another word paced away across the square and up the narrow winding street of Roquebrune, leaving the schoolmaster a little abashed at his display of eagerness. M. Giraud recognised that in one man’s mind, at all events, he was now set down for a snob, for a lackey disguised as a schoolmaster. But the moment of shame passed. He had no doubt as to the reason of the summons, and he tingled with pride from head to foot. It was his little brochure upon the history of the village — written with what timidity, and printed at what cost to his meagre purse! — which had brought him recognition from the lady of the villa upon the spur of the hill. Looking upwards he could just see the white walls of the villa glimmering through the dusk, he could imagine its garden of trim lawns and dark cypresses falling from bank to bank in ordered tiers down the hillside.

  “To-morrow at noon,” he repeated to himself; and now he was seized with a shiver of fear at the thought of the mistakes in behaviour which he was likely to make. What if Madame Mardale asked him to breakfast? There would be unfamiliar dishes to be eaten with particular forks. Sometimes a knife should be used and sometimes not. He turned back to the parapet with the thought that he had better, perhaps, send up a note in the morning pleading his duties at the school as a reason for breaking his engagement. But he was young, and as he looked down the steep slope of rock on which the village is perched, anticipation again got the better of fear. He began to build up his life like a fairy palace from the foundation of this brief message.

  A long lane of steps led winding down from the square, and his eyes followed it, as his feet had often done, to the little railway station by the sea through which people journeyed to and fro between the great cities, westwards to France and Paris, eastwards to Rome and Italy. His eyes followed the signal lights towards another station of many lamps far away to the right, and as he looked there blazed out suddenly other lights of a great size and a glowing brilliancy, lights which had the look of amazing jewels discovered in an eastern cave. These were the lights upon the terrace of Monte Carlo. The schoolmaster had walked that terrace on his mornings of leisure, had sat unnoticed on the benches, all worship of the women and their daintiness, all envy of the men and the composure of their manner. He knew none of them, and yet one of them had actually sent for him, and had heard of his work. He was to speak with her at noon to-morrow.

  Let it be said at once that there was nothing of the lackey under the schoolmaster’s shabby coat. The visit which he was bidden to pay was to him not so much a step upwards as outwards. Living always in this remote high village, where the rock cropped out between the houses, and the streets climbed through tunnels of rock, he was always tormented with visions of great cities and thoroughfares ablaze; he longed for the jostle of men, he craved for other companionship than he could get in the village wineshop on the first fl
oor, as a fainting man craves for air. The stars came out above his head; it was a clear night, and they had never shone brighter. The Mediterranean, dark and noiseless, swept out at his feet beyond the woods of Cap Martin. But he saw neither the Mediterranean nor any star. His eyes turned to the glowing terrace upon his right, and to the red signal-lamps below the terrace.

  M. Giraud kept his engagement punctually. The clock chimed upon the mantelpiece a few seconds after he was standing in the drawing-room of the Villa Pontignard, and before the clock had stopped chiming Mrs. Mardale came in to him. She was a tall woman, who, in spite of her years, still retained the elegance of her youth, but her face was hard and a trifle querulous, and M. Giraud was utterly intimidated. On the other hand, she had good manners, and the friendly simplicity with which she greeted him began to set him at his ease.

  “You are a native of Roquebrune, Monsieur?” said she.

  “No, Madame, my father was a peasant at Aigues-Mortes. I was born there,” he replied frankly.

  “Yet you write, if I may say so, with the love of a native for his village,” she went on. M. Giraud was on the point of explaining. Mrs. Mardale, however, was not in the least interested in his explanation, and she asked him to sit down.

  “My daughter, Monsieur, has an English governess,” she explained, “but it seems a pity that she should spend her winters here and lose the chance of becoming really proficient in French. The curé recommended me to apply to you, and I sent for you to see whether we could arrange that you should read history with her in French during your spare hours.”

  M. Giraud felt his head turning. Here was his opportunity so long dreamed of come at last. It might be the beginning of a career — it was at all events that first difficult step outwards. He was to be the teacher in appearance; at the bottom of his heart he knew that he was to be the pupil, he accepted the offer with enthusiasm, and the arrangements were made. Three afternoons a week he was to spend an hour at the Villa Pontignard.