The Truants. A. E. W. Mason

Warrisden laughed again.

      "Wait," he said, as if he expected Pamela to interrupt. "You'll see they won't whistle up a cab. They'll walk beyond the house and take one quietly. Very likely they'll look up at the lighted window on the second floor as though they were schoolboys who had escaped from their dormitories, and were afraid of being caught by the master before they had had their fun. There, do you see?"

      For as he spoke the man and the woman stopped and looked up. Had they heard Warrisden's voice and obeyed his directions they could not have more completely fulfilled his prediction. They had the very air of truants. Apparently they were reassured. They walked along the pavement until they were well past the house. Then they signalled to a passing hansom. The cab-driver did not see them, yet they did not call out, nor did the man whistle. They waited until another approached and they beckoned to that. Warrisden watched the whole scene with the keenest interest. As the two people got into the cab he laughed again and turned back to Pamela.

      "Well?" she said, with a laugh of amusement, and the quiet monosyllable, falling as it were with a cold splash upon his enjoyment of the little scene, suddenly brought him back to the question which was always latent in his mind. How was Pamela to be awakened?

      "It's a strange place, London," he said. "No doubt it seems stranger to me, and more full of interesting people and interesting things just because I have come back from very silent and very empty places. But that house always puzzled me. I used to have rooms overlooking this square, high up, over there," and he pointed to the eastern side of the square towards Berkeley Street, "and what we have seen to-night used to take place every night, and at the same hour. The light went up in the room on the second floor, and the truants crept out. Guess where they go to! The Savoy. They go and sit there amongst the lights and the music for half an hour, then they come back to the dark house. They live in the most curious isolation with the most curious regularity. There are three of them altogether: an old man--it is his light, I suppose, which went up on the second floor--and those two. I know who they are. The old man is Sir John Stretton."

      "Oh!" said Pamela, with interest.

      "And the two people we saw are his son and his son's wife. I have never met them. In fact, no one meets them. I don't know any one who knows them."

      "Yes, you do," said Pamela, "I know them." And in her knowledge, although Warrisden did not know it, lay the answer to the problem which so perplexed him.

CHAPTER III

       Table of Contents

THE TRUANTS

       Table of Contents

      Warrisden turned quickly to Pamela.

      "You never mentioned them."

      "No," she replied with a smile. "But there's no mystery in my silence. I simply haven't mentioned them because for two years I have lost sight of them altogether. I used to meet them about, and I have been to their house."

      "There?" asked Warrisden, with a nod towards the lighted window.

      "No; but to the house Millie and Mr. Stretton had in Deanery Street. They gave that up two years ago when old Lady Stretton died. I thought they had gone to live in the country."

      "And all the while they have been living here," exclaimed Warrisden. He had spoken truthfully of himself. The events, and the people with whom he came, however slightly, into contact always had interested and amused him. It was his pleasure to fit his observations together until he had constructed a little biography in his mind of each person with whom he was acquainted. And there was never an incident of any interest within his notice, but he sought the reason for it and kept an eye open for its consequence.

      "Don't you see how strange the story is?" he went on. "They give up their house upon Lady Stretton's death, and they come to live here with Sir John. That's natural enough. Sir John's an old man. But they live in such seclusion that even their friends think they have retired into the country."

      "Yes, it is strange," Pamela admitted. And she added, "I was Millie Stretton's bridesmaid."

      Upon Warrisden's request she told him what she knew of the couple who lived in the dark house and played truant. Millie Stretton was the daughter of a Judge in Ceylon who when Millie had reached the age of seventeen had married a second time. The step-mother had lacked discretion; from the very first she had claimed to exercise a complete and undisputed authority; she had been at no pains to secure the affections of her step-daughter. And very little trouble would have been needed, for Millie was naturally affectionate. A girl without any great depth of feeling, she responded easily to a show of kindness. She found it neither difficult to make intimate friends, nor hard to lose them. She was of the imitative type besides. She took her thoughts and even her language from those who at the moment were by her side. Thus her step-mother had the easiest of tasks but she did not possess the necessary tact. She demanded obedience, and in return offered tolerance. The household at Colombo, therefore, became for Millie a roofstead rather than a home, and a year after this marriage she betook herself and the few thousands of pounds which her mother had bequeathed her to London. The ostensible reason for departure was the invitation of Mrs. Charles Rawson, a friend of her mother's. But Millie had made up her mind that a return to Ceylon was not to be endured. Somehow she would manage to make a home or herself in England.

      She found her path at once made easy. She was pretty, with the prettiness of a child, she gave no trouble, she was fresh, she dressed a drawing-room gracefully, he fitted neatly into her surroundings, she picked up immediately the ways of thought and the jargon of her new companions. In a word, with the remarkable receptivity which was hers, she was very quickly at home in Mrs. Rawson's house. She became a favourite no less for her modest friendliness than on account of her looks. Mrs. Rawson, who was nearing middle age, but whose love of amusements was not assuaged, rejoiced to have so attractive a companion to take about with her. Millie, for her part, was very glad to be so taken about. She had fallen from the obscure clouds into a bright and wonderful world.

      It was at this time that Pamela Mardale first met Millicent Stretton, or rather, one should say, Millicent Rundell, since Rundell was at that time her name. They became friends, although so far as character was concerned they had little in common. It may have been that the difference between them was the actual cause of their friendship. Certainly Millie came rather to lean upon her friend, admired her strength, made her the repository of her confidences, and if she received no confidences in return, she was content to believe that there were none to make. It was at this time too that Millie fell in with Lady Stretton.

      Lady Stretton, a tall old woman with the head of a Grenadier, had the characteristic of Sir Anthony Absolute. There was no one so good-tempered so long as she had her own way; and she generally had it.

      "Lady Stretton saw that Millie was easily led," Pamela continued. "She thought, for that reason, she would be a suitable wife for Tony, her son, who was then a subaltern in the Coldstream. So she did all she could to throw them together. She invited Millie up to her house in Scotland, the house Lady Millingham now has, and Mr. Stretton fell in love. He was evidently very fond of Millie, and Millie on her side liked him quite as much as any one else. They were married. Lady Stretton hired them the house I told you of, close to Park Lane, and took a great deal of trouble to see that they were comfortable. You see, they were toys for her. There, that's all I know. Are you satisfied?"

      She leaned back in her chair, smiling at Warrisden's serious face.

      "And what about the old man, Sir John Stretton?" he asked.

      "I never met him," replied Pamela. "He never went out to parties, and I never went to that house."

      As she concluded the sentence, a man looked on to the balcony and, seeing them, withdrew. Pamela rose at once from her chair, and, with a sudden movement