Complete Works of a E W Mason

by A. E. W. Mason

  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 o
f 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.

  CHAPTER XIV

  TONY STRETTON PAYS A VISIT TO BERKELEY SQUARE

  WHILE TONY STRETTON was thus stating the problem of his life to Mr. Chase in Stepney Green, Lady Millingham was entertaining her friends in Berkeley Square. She began the evening with a dinner-party, at which Pamela Mardale and John Mudge were present, and she held a reception afterwards. Many people came, for Frances Millingham was popular. By half-past ten the rooms were already over-hot and overcrowded, and Lady Millingham was enjoying herself to her heart’s content. Mr. Mudge, who stood by himself at the end of a big drawing-room, close to one of the windows, saw the tall figure of Warrisden come in at the door and steadily push towards Pamela. A few moments later M. de Marnay, a youthful attaché of the French Embassy, approached Mr. Mudge. M. de Marnay wiped his forehead and looked round the crowded room.

  “A little is a good thing,” said he, “but too much is enough.” And he unlatched and pushed open the window. As he spoke, Mr. Mudge saw Callon appear in the doorway.

  “Yes,” he answered, with a laugh; “too much is enough.”

  Mudge watched Callon’s movements with his usual interest. He saw him pass, a supple creature of smiles and small talk, from woman to woman. How long would he last in his ignoble career? Mudge wondered. Would he marry in the end some rich and elderly widow? Or would the crash come, and parties know Mr. Lionel Callon no more? Mudge never saw the man but he had a wish that he might get a glimpse of him alone in his own rooms, with the smile dropped from his face, and the unpaid bills piled upon his mantel-shelf, and his landlord very likely clamouring for the rent. He imagined the face grown all at once haggard and tired and afraid — afraid with a great fear of what must happen in a few years at the latest, when, with middle-age heavy upon his shoulders, he should see his coevals prospering and himself bankrupt of his stock-in-trade of good looks, and without one penny to rub against another. No presage of mind weighed upon Callon to-night, however, during his short stay in Frances Millingham’s house. For his stay was short.

  As the clock upon the mantelpiece struck eleven, his eyes were at once lifted to the clock-face, and almost at once he moved from the lady to whom he was talking and made his way to the door.

  Mr. Mudge turned back to the window and pushed it still more open. It was a clear night of April, and April had brought with it the warmth of summer. Mr. Mudge stood at the open window facing the coolness and the quiet of the square; and thus by the accident of an overcrowded room he became the witness of a little episode which might almost have figured in some bygone comedy of intrigue.

  Callon passed through the line of carriages in the roadway beneath, and crossed the corner of the square to the pavement on the right-hand side. When he reached the pavement he walked for twenty yards or so in the direction of Piccadilly, until he came to a large and gloomy house. There a few shallow steps led from the pavement to the front door. Callon mounted the steps, rang the bell, and was admitted.

  There were a few lights in the upper windows and on the ground floor; but it was evident that there was no party at the house. Callon had run in to pay a visit. Mr. Mudge, who had watched this, as it were, the first scene in the comedy, distinctly heard the door close, and the sound somehow suggested to him that the time had come for him to go home to bed. He looked at his watch. It was exactly a quarter past eleven — exactly, in a word, three-quarters of an hour since Tony Stretton, who “had something else to do,” had taken his leave of his friend Chase in Stepney.

  Mr. Mudge turned from the window to make his way to the door, and came face to face with Pamela and Alan Warrisden. Pamela spoke to him. He had never yet met Warrisden, and he was now introduced. All three stood and talked together for a few minutes by the open window. Then Mudge, in that spirit of curiosity which Callon always provoked in him, asked abruptly —

  “By the way, Miss Mardale, do you happen to know who lives in that house?” and he pointed across the corner of the square to the house into which Callon had disappeared.

  Pamela and Warrisden looked quickly at one another. Then Pamela turned with great interest to Mr. Mudge.

  “Yes, we both know,” she answered. “Why do you ask?”

  “Well, I don’t know,” said Mudge; “I think that I should like to know.”

  The glance which his two companions had exchanged, and Pamela’s rather eager question, had quickened his curiosity. But he got no answer for a few moments. Both Pamela and Warrisden were looking out towards the house. They were standing side by side. Mr. Mudge had an intuition that the same thought was passing through both their minds.

  “That is where the truants lived last July,” said Warrisden, in a low voice. He spoke to Pamela, not to Mr. Mudge at all, whose existence seemed for the moment to have been clean forgotten.

  “Yes,” Pamela replied softly. “The dark house, where the truants lived and where” — she looked at Warrisden and smiled with a great friendliness— “where the new road began. For it was there really. It’s from the steps of the dark house, not from the three poplars that the new road runs out.”

  “Yes, that is true,” said Warrisden.

  And again both were silent.

  Mr. Mudge broke in upon the silence. “I have no doubt that the truants lived there, and that the new road begins at the foot of the steps,” he said plaintively; “but neither statement adds materially to my knowledge.”

  Pamela and Warrisden turned to him and laughed. It was true that they had for a moment forgotten Mr. Mudge. The memory of the star-lit night, in last July, when from this balcony they had watched the truants slip down the steps and furtively call a cab, was busy in their thoughts. From that night their alliance had dated, although no suspicion of it had crossed their minds. It seemed strange to them now that there had been no premonition.

  “Well, who lives there?” asked Mudge.

  But even now he received no answer; for Warrisden suddenly exclaimed in a low, startled voice —

  “Look!” and with an instinctive movement he drew back into the room.r />
  A man was standing in the road looking up at the windows of the dark house. His face could not be seen under the shadow of his hat. Pamela peered forward.

  “Do you think it’s he?” she asked in a whisper.

  “I am not sure,” replied Warrisden.

  “Oh, I hope so! I hope so!”

  “I am not sure. Wait! Wait and look!” said Warrisden.

  In a few moments the man moved. He crossed the road and stepped on to the pavement. Again he stopped, again he looked up to the house; then he walked slowly on. But he walked northwards, that is, towards the watchers at the window.

  “There’s a lamp-post,” said Warrisden; “he will come within the light of it. We shall know.”

  And the next moment the light fell white and clear upon Tony Stretton’s face.

  “He has come back,” exclaimed Pamela, joyfully.

  “Who?” asked Mr. Mudge; “who has come back?”

  This time he was answered.

  “Why, Tony Stretton, of course,” said Pamela, impatiently. She was hardly aware of Mr. Mudge, even while she answered him; she was too intent upon Tony Stretton in the square below. She did not therefore notice that Mudge was startled by her reply. She did not remark the anxiety in his voice as he went on —

  “And that is Stretton’s house?”

  “Yes.”

  “And his wife, Lady Stretton, is she in London? Is she there — now?”

  Mr. Mudge spoke with an excitement of manner which at any other time must have caused surprise. It passed now unremarked; for Warrisden, too, had his preoccupation. He was neither overjoyed, like Pamela, nor troubled, like Mr. Mudge; but as he looked down into the square he was perplexed.

  “Yes,” replied Pamela, “Millie Stretton is at home. Could anything be more fortunate?”

  To Mudge’s way of thinking, nothing could be more unfortunate. Pamela had come late to the play; Mr. Mudge, on the other hand, had seen the curtain rise, and had a clearer knowledge of the plot’s development. The husband outside the house, quite unexpected, quite unsuspicious, and about to enter; the wife and the interloper within: here were the formulas of a comedy of intrigue. Only, Mr. Mudge doubtfully wondered, after the husband had entered, and when the great scene took place, would the decorous accent of the comedy be maintained? Nature was after all a violent dramatist, with little care for the rules and methods. Of one thing, at all events, he was quite sure, as he looked at Pamela: she would find no amusement in the climax. There was, however, to be an element of novelty, which Mr. Mudge had not foreseen.