The Truants. A. E. W. Mason

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.

      "Well, I hope the plan will succeed, said Mrs. Mardale, but she spoke in a voice which showed that she had no great hopes of success. And as M. Giraud replied that he would at all events do his best, she rejoined plaintively--

      "It is not of you, Monsieur, that I have any doubts. But you do not know my daughter. She will learn nothing which she does not want to learn, she will not endure any governess who is not entirely her slave, and she is fifteen and she really must learn something."

      Pamela Mardale, indeed, was at this time the despair of her mother. Mrs. Mardale had mapped out for her daughter an ideal career. She was to be a model of decorum in the Early Victorian style, at once an ornament for a drawing-room and an excellent housekeeper, and she was subsequently to make a brilliant marriage. The weak point of the scheme was that it left Pamela out of the reckoning. There was her passion for horses for one thing, and her distinct refusal, besides, to sit quietly in any drawing-room. When she was a child, horses had been persons to Pamela rather than animals, and, as her conduct showed, persons preferable by far to human beings. Visitors to the house under Croft Hill were at times promised a sight of Pamela, and indeed they sometimes did see a girl in a white frock, with long black legs, and her hair tumbled all over her forehead, neighing and prancing at them from behind the gate of the stable yard. But they did not see her at closer quarters than that, and it was certain that if by any chance her lessons were properly learnt, they had been learnt upon the corn-bin in the stables. Portraits of Pamela at the age of nine remain, and they show a girl who was very pretty, but who might quite well have been a boy, with a mass of unruly dark hair, a pair of active dark eyes, and a good-humoured face alertly watching for any mischief which might come its way.

      Something of the troubles which M. Giraud was likely to find ahead of him Mrs. Mardale disclosed that morning, and the schoolmaster returned to his house filled with apprehensions. The apprehensions, however, were not justified. The little schoolmaster was so shy, so timid, that Pamela was disarmed. She could be gentle when she chose, and she chose now. She saw, too, M. Giraud's anxiety to justify her mother's choice of him, and she determined with a sense of extreme virtue to be a credit to his teaching. They became friends, and thus one afternoon, when they had taken their books out into the garden of the villa, M. Giraud confided to her the history of the brochure which had made them acquainted.

      "It was not love for Roquebrune which led me to write it," he said. "It was, on the contrary, my discontent. I was tortured with longings, I was not content with the children's lessons for my working hours, and the wineshop for my leisure. I took long walks over Cap Martin to Mentone, along the Corniche road to La Turbie, and up Mont Agel. But still I had my longings as my constant companions, and since everywhere I saw traces of antiquity, I wrote this little history as a relief. It kept my thoughts away from the great world."

      The garden ran here to a point at the extreme end of that outcropping spur of rock on which the villa was built. They were facing westwards, and the sun was setting behind the hills. It lay red upon the Mediterranean on their left, but the ravine and front was already dark, and down the hillside the shadows of the trees were lengthening. At their feet, a long way below, a stream tumbled and roared amongst the oleanders in the depths of the ravine. Pamela sat gazing downwards, her lips parted in a smile.

      "The great world," she said in a low voice of eagerness. "I wonder what it's like."

      That afternoon marked a distinct step in their friendship, and thereafter in the intervals of their reading they talked continually upon this one point they had in common, their curiosity as to the life of the world beyond their village. But it happened that Pamela did the greater part of the talking, and one afternoon that fact occurred to her.

      "You always listen now, Monsieur," she said. "Why have you grown so silent?"

      "You know more than I do, Mademoiselle."

      "I?" she exclaimed in surprise. "I only know about horses." Then she laughed. "Really, we both know nothing. We can only guess and guess."

      And that was the truth. Pamela's ideas of the world were as visionary, as dreamlike as his, but they were not his, as he was quick to recognise. The instincts of her class, her traditions, the influence of her friends, were all audible in her voice as well as in her words. To her the world was a great flower garden of pleasure with plenty of room for horses. To him it was a crowded place of ennobling strife.

      "But it's pleasant work guessing," she continued, "isn't it? Then why have you stopped?"

      "I will tell you, Mademoiselle. I am beginning to guess through your eyes."

      The whistle of a train, the train from Paris, mounted through the still air to their ears.

      "Well," said Pamela, with a shrug of impatience, "we shall both know the truth some time."

      "You will, Mademoiselle," said the schoolmaster, suddenly falling out of his dream.

      Pamela looked quickly at him. The idea that he would be left behind, that he would stay here all his life listening to the sing-song drone of the children in the schoolroom, teaching over and over again with an infinite weariness the same elementary lessons, until he became shabby and worn as the lesson-books he handled, had never struck her till this moment. The trouble which clouded his face was reflected by sympathy upon hers.

      "But you won't stay here," she said gently. "Oh no! Let me think!" and she thought with a child's oblivion of obstacles and a child's confidence. She imparted the wise result of her reflections to M. Giraud the next afternoon.

      He came to the garden with his eyes fevered and his face drawn.

      "You are ill?" said Pamela. "We will not work to-day."

      "It's nothing," he replied.

      "Tell me," said she.

      M. Giraud looked out across the valley.

      "Two travellers came up to Roquebrune yesterday. I met them as I walked home from here. I spoke to them and showed them the village, and took them by the short cut of the steps down to the railway station. They were from London. They talked of London and of Paris. It's as well visitors come up to Roquebrune rarely. I have not slept all night," and he clasped and unclasped his hands.

      "Hannibal crossed the Alps," said Pamela. "I read it in your book," and then she shook a finger at him, just as the schoolmaster might have done to one of his refractory pupils.

      "Listen," said she. "I have thought it all out."

      The schoolmaster composed himself into the attentive attitude of a pupil.

      "You are to become a Deputy."

      That was the solution of the problem. Pamela saw no difficulties. He would need a dress-suit of course for official occasions, which she understood were numerous. A horse, too, would be of use, but that didn't