Tony stood and looked at her with an eagerness which she did not understand.
“Are you glad?” he asked earnestly. “Millie, are you pleased?”
She stood in front of him with a very serious face. Once a smile brightened it; but it was a smile of doubt, of question.
“I am not sure,” she said. “I know that you have been very kind. You have done this to please me. But — —” And her voice wavered a little.
“Well?” said Tony.
“But,” she went on with difficulty, “I am not sure that I can endure it, unless things are different from what they have been lately. I shall be reminded every minute of other times, and the comparison between those times and the present will be very painful. I think that I shall be very unhappy, much more unhappy than I have ever been, even lately.”
Her voice sank to a whisper at the end. The little house in Deanery Street, even in her dreams, had been no more than a symbol. She had longed for it as the outward and visible sign of the complete reconciliation on which her heart was set. But to have the sign and to know that it signified nothing — she dreaded that possibility now. Only for a very few moments she dreaded it.
“I don’t think I can endure it, Tony,” she said sadly. And the next moment his arms were about her, and her head was resting against his breast.
“Millie!” he cried in a low voice; and again “Millie!”
Her face was white, her eyelids closed over her eyes. Tony thought that she had swooned. But when he moved her hands held him close to her, held him tightly, as though she dreaded to lose him.
“Millie,” he said, “do you remember the lights in Oban Bay? And the gulls calling at night above the islands?”
“I am forgiven, then?” she whispered; and he answered only —
“Hush!”
But the one word was enough.
CHAPTER XXXVI
THE END
TONY WISHED FOR no mention of the word. He had not brought her to that house that he might forgive her, but because he wanted her there. If forgiveness was in question, there was much to be said upon her side too. He was to blame, as Pamela had written. He had during the last few months begun to realise the justice of that sentence more clearly than he had done even when the letter was fresh within his thoughts.
“I have learnt something,” he said to Millie, “which I might have known before, but never did. It is this. Although a man may be content to know that love exists, that is not the case with women. They want the love expressed, continually expressed, not necessarily in words, but in a hundred little ways. I did not think of that. There was the mistake I made: I left you alone to think just what you chose. Well, that’s all over now. I bought this house not merely to please you, but as much to please myself; for as soon as I understood that after all the compromise which I dreaded need not be our lot — that after all the life together of which I used to dream was possible, was within arm’s reach if only one would put out an arm and grasp it, I wanted you here. As soon as I was sure, quite sure that I had recaptured you, I wanted you here.”
He spoke with passion, holding her in his arms. Millie remained quite still for a while, and then she asked —
“Do you miss the Legion? As much as you thought you would — as much as you did that night at Eze?”
He answered, “No”; and spoke the truth. On that night at Eze he had not foreseen the outcome of his swift return, of his irruption into the gaily lighted room murmurous with the sea. On that night he had revealed himself to Millie, and the revelation had been the beginning of love in her rather than its resumption. This he had come to understand, and, understanding, could reply with truth that he did not miss the Legion as he had thought he would. There were moments, no doubt, when the sound of a bugle on a still morning would stir him to a sense of loss, and he would fall to dreaming of Tavernay and Barbier, and his old comrades, and the menacing silence of the Sahara. At times, too, the yapping of dogs in the street would call up vividly before his mind the picture of some tent village in Morocco where he had camped. Or the wind roaring amongst trees on a night of storm would set his mind wondering whether the ketch Perseverance was heading to the white-crested rollers, close-reefed between the Dogger and the Fisher Banks; and for a little while he would feel the savour of the brine sharp upon his lips, and longing would be busy at his heart — for the Ishmaelite cannot easily become a stay-at-home. These, however, were but the passing moods.
Of one other character who took an important if an unobtrusive part in shaping the fortunes of the Truants a final word may be said. A glimpse of that man, of the real man in him, was vouchsafed to Warrisden two summers later. It happened that Warrisden attended a public dinner which was held in a restaurant in Oxford Street. He left the company before the dinner was over, since he intended to fetch his wife Pamela, who was on that June evening witnessing a performance of “Rigoletto” at the Opera House in Covent Garden. Warrisden rose from the table and slipped out, as he thought at eleven o’clock, but on descending into the hall he found that he had miscalculated the time. It was as yet only a quarter to the hour, and having fifteen minutes to spare, he determined to walk. The night was hot; he threw his overcoat across his arm, and turning southwards out of Oxford Street, passed down a narrow road in the neighbourhood of Drury Lane. In those days, which were not, after all, so very distant from our own, the great blocks of model dwellings had not been as yet erected; squalid courts and rookeries opened on to ill-lighted passages; the houses had a ruinous and a miserable look. There were few people abroad as Warrisden passed through the quarter, and his breast-plate of white shirt-front made him a conspicuous figure. He had come about half the way from Oxford Street when he saw two men suddenly emerge from the mouth of a narrow court a few yards in front of him. The two men were speaking, or rather shouting, at one another; and from the violence of their gestures no less than from the abusive nature of the language which they used, it was plain that they were quarrelling. Words and gestures led to blows. Warrisden saw one man strike the other and fell him to the ground.
In an instant a little group of people was gathered about the combatants, people intensely silent and interested — the sightseers of the London streets who spring from nowhere with inconceivable rapidity, as though they had been waiting in some secret spot hard by for just this particular spectacle in this particular place. Warrisden, indeed, was wondering carelessly at the speed with which the small crowd had gathered when he came abreast of it. He stopped and peered over the shoulders of the men and women in front of him that he might see the better. The two disputants had relapsed apparently into mere vituperation. Warrisden pressed forward, and those in front parted and made way for him. He did not, however, take advantage of the deference shown to his attire; for at that moment a voice whispered in his ear —
“You had better slip out. This row is got up for you.”
Warrisden turned upon his heel. He saw a short, stout, meanly dressed man of an elderly appearance moving away from his side; no doubt it was he who had warned him. Warrisden took the advice, all the more readily because he perceived that the group was, as it were, beginning to reform itself, with him as the new centre. He was, however, still upon the outskirts. He pushed quickly out into the open street, crossed the road, and continued on his way. In front of him he saw the stout, elderly man, and, quickening his pace, he caught him up.
“I have to thank you,” he said, “for saving me from an awkward moment.”
“Yes,” replied the stout man; and Warrisden, as he heard his voice, glanced at him with a sudden curiosity. But his hat was low upon his brows, and the street was dark. “It is an old trick, but the old tricks are the tricks which succeed. There was no real quarrel at all. Those two men were merely pretending to quarrel in order to attract your attention. You were seen approaching — that white shirt-front naturally inspired hope. In another minute you would have been hustled down the court and into one of the houses at the end. You would have be
en lucky if, half an hour later, you were turned out into the street stripped of everything of value you possess, half naked and half dead into the bargain. Good night!”
The little man crossed the road abruptly. It was plain that he needed neither thanks nor any further conversation. It occurred, indeed, to Warrisden that he was deliberately avoiding conversation. Warrisden accordingly walked on to the Opera House, and, meeting his wife in the vestibule, told her this story while they waited for their brougham.
As they drove together homewards, he added —
“That is not all, Pamela. I can’t help thinking — it is absurd, of course — and yet, I don’t know; but the little stout man reminded me very much of some one we both know.”
Pamela turned suddenly towards her husband —
“Mr. Mudge?” she said.
“Yes,” replied Warrisden, with some astonishment at the accuracy of her guess. “He reminded me of Mudge.”
“It was Mr. Mudge,” she said. For a moment or two she was silent; then she let her hand fall upon her husband’s: “He was a very good friend to us,” she said gently— “to all of us.”
THE END
Running Water (1906)
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
The first edition
CHAPTER I
SHOWS MRS. THESIGER IN HER HOME
THE GENEVA EXPRESS jerked itself out of the Gare de Lyons. For a few minutes the lights of outer Paris twinkled past its windows and then with a spring it reached the open night. The jolts and lurches merged into one regular purposeful throb, the shrieks of the wheels, the clatter of the coaches, into one continuous hum. And already in the upper berth of her compartment Mrs. Thesiger was asleep. The noise of a train had no unrest for her. Indeed, a sleeping compartment in a Continental express was the most permanent home which Mrs. Thesiger had possessed for a good many more years than she would have cared to acknowledge. She spent her life in hotels with her daughter for an unconsidered companion. From a winter in Vienna or in Rome she passed to a spring at Venice or at Constantinople, thence to a June in Paris, a July and August at the bathing places, a September at Aix, an autumn in Paris again. But always she came back to the sleeping-car. It was the one familiar room which was always ready for her; and though the prospect from its windows changed, it was the one room she knew which had always the same look, the same cramped space, the same furniture — the one room where, the moment she stepped into it, she was at home.
Yet on this particular journey she woke while it was yet dark. A noise slight in comparison to the clatter of the train, but distinct in character and quite near, told her at once what had disturbed her. Some one was moving stealthily in the compartment — her daughter. That was all. But Mrs. Thesiger lay quite still, and, as would happen to her at times, a sudden terror gripped her by the heart. She heard the girl beneath her, dressing very quietly, subduing the rustle of her garments, even the sound of her breathing.
“How much does she know?” Mrs. Thesiger asked of herself; and her heart sank and she dared not answer.
The rustling ceased. A sharp click was heard, and the next moment through a broad pane of glass a faint twilight crept into the carriage. The blind had been raised from one of the windows. It was two o’clock on a morning of July and the dawn was breaking. Very swiftly the daylight broadened, and against the window there came into view the profile of a girl’s head and face. Seen as Mrs. Thesiger saw it, with the light still dim behind it, it was black like an ancient daguerreotype. It was also as motionless and as grave.
“How much does she know?”
The question would thrust itself into the mother’s thoughts. She watched her daughter intently from the dark corner where her head lay, thinking that with the broadening of the day she might read the answer in that still face. But she read nothing even when every feature was revealed in the clear dead light, for the face which she saw was the face of one who lived much apart within itself, building amongst her own dreams as a child builds upon the sand and pays no heed to those who pass. And to none of her dreams had Mrs. Thesiger the key. Deliberately her daughter had withdrawn herself amongst them, and they had given her this return for her company. They had kept her fresh and gentle in a circle where freshness was soon lost and gentleness put aside.
Sylvia Thesiger was at this time seventeen, although her mother dressed her to look younger, and even then overdressed her like a toy. It was of a piece with the nature of the girl that, in this matter as in the rest, she made no protest. She foresaw the scene, the useless scene, which would follow upon her protest, exclamations against her ingratitude, abuse for her impertinence, and very likely a facile shower of tears at the end; and her dignity forbade her to enter upon it. She just let her mother dress her as she chose, and she withdrew just a little more into the secret chamber of her dreams. She sat now looking steadily out of the window, with her eyes uplifted and aloof, in a fashion which had become natural to her, and her mother was seized with a pang of envy at the girl’s beauty. For beauty Sylvia Thesiger had, uncommon in its quality rather than in its degree. From the temples to the round point of her chin the contour of her face described a perfect oval. Her forehead was broad and low and her hair, which in color was a dark chestnut, parted in the middle, whence it rippled in two thick daring waves to the ears, a fashion which noticeably became her, and it was gathered behind into a plait which lay rather low upon the nape of her neck. Her eyes were big, of a dark gray hue and very quiet in their scrutiny; her mouth, small and provoking. It provoked, when still, with the promise of a very winning smile, and the smile itself was not so frequent but that it provoked a desire to summon it to her lips again. It had a way of hesitating, as though Sylvia were not sure whether she would smile or not; and when she had made up her mind, it dimpled her cheeks and transfigured her whole face, and revealed in her tenderness and a sense of humor. Her complexion was pale, but clear, her figure was slender and active, but without angularities, and she was of the middle height. Yet the quality which the eye first remarked in her was not so much her beauty, as a certain purity, a look almost of the Madonna, a certainty, one might say, that even in the circle in which she moved, she had kept herself unspotted from the world.
Thus she looked as she sat by the carriage window. But as the train drew near to Ambérieu, the air brightened and the sunlight ministered to her beauty like a careful handmaid, touching her pale cheeks to a rosy warmth, giving a luster to her hair, and humanizing her to a smile. Sylvia sat forward a little, as though to meet the sunlight, then she turned toward the carriage and saw her mother’s eyes intently watching her.
“You are awake?” she said in surprise.
“Yes, child. You woke me.”
“I am very sorry. I was as quiet as I could be. I could not sleep.”
“Why?” Mrs. Thesiger repeated the question with insistence. “Why couldn’t you sleep?”
“We are traveling to Chamonix,” replied Sylvia. “I have been thinking of it all night,” and though she smiled in all sincerity, Mrs. Thesiger doubted. She lay silent for a little while. Then she said, with a detachment perhaps slightly too marked:
“We left Trouville in a hurry yesterday, didn’t we?”
“Yes,” replied Sylvia, “I suppose we did,” and she spoke as though this
was the first time that she had given the matter a thought.
“Trouville was altogether too hot,” said Mrs. Thesiger; and again silence followed. But Mrs. Thesiger was not content. “How much does she know?” she speculated again, and was driven on to find an answer. She raised herself upon her elbow, and while rearranging her pillow said carelessly:
“Sylvia, our last morning at Trouville you were reading a book which seemed to interest you very much.”
“Yes.”
Sylvia volunteered no information about that book.
“You brought it down to the sands. So I suppose you never noticed a strange-looking couple who passed along the deal boards just in front of us.” Mrs. Thesiger laughed and her head fell back upon her pillow. But during that movement her eyes had never left her daughter’s face. “A middle-aged man with stiff gray hair, a stiff, prim face, and a figure like a ramrod. Oh, there never was anything so stiff.” A noticeable bitterness began to sound in her voice and increased as she went on. “There was an old woman with him as precise and old-fashioned as himself. But you didn’t see them? I never saw anything so ludicrous as that couple, austere and provincial as their clothes, walking along the deal boards between the rows of smart people.” Mrs. Thesiger laughed as she recalled the picture. “They must have come from the Provinces. I could imagine them living in a chateau on a hill overlooking some tiny village in — where shall we say?” She hesitated for a moment, and then with an air of audacity she shot the word from her lips— “in Provence.”
The name, however, had evidently no significance for Sylvia, and Mrs. Thesiger was relieved of her fears.
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 423