The Truants. A. E. W. Mason

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СКАЧАТЬ "Already the alteration has begun. Did we quarrel a year ago as we do now? We enjoyed those evenings when we played truant, a year ago"; and then he indulged in a yet greater indiscretion than any which he had yet allowed himself to utter. But he was by nature simple and completely honest. Whatever occurred to him, that he spoke without reserve, and the larger it loomed in his thoughts the more strenuous was its utterance upon his lips. He took a seat at the table by her side.

      "I know we are changing. I take myself, and I expect it is the same with you. I am--it is difficult to express it--I am deadening. I am getting insensible to the things which not very long ago moved me very much. I once had a friend who fell ill of a slow paralysis, which crept up his limbs little by little and he hardly noticed its advance. I think that's happening with me. I am losing the associations--that's the word I want--the associations which made one's recollections valuable, and gave a colour to one's life. For instance, you sang a song last night, Millie, one of those coon songs of yours--do you remember? You sang it once in Scotland on a summer's night. I was outside on the lawn, and past the islands across the water, which was dark and still, I saw the lights in Oban bay. I thought I would never hear that song again without seeing those lights in my mind far away across the water, clustered together like the lights of a distant town. Well, last night all those associations were somehow dead. I remembered all right, but without any sort of feeling, that that song was a landmark in one's life. It was merely you singing a song, or rather it was merely some one singing a song."

      It was a laboured speech, and Tony was very glad to have got it over.

      "I am very sorry," replied Millie in a low voice. She did not show him her face, and he had no notion whatever that his words could hardly have failed to hurt. He was too intent upon convincing her, and too anxious to put his belief before her with unmistakable clearness to reflect in what spirit she might receive the words. That her first thought would be "He no longer cares" never occurred to him at all, and cheerfully misunderstanding her acquiescence, he went on--

      "You see that's bad. It mustn't go on, Millie. Let's keep what we've got. At all costs let us keep that!"

      "You mean we must go away?" said Millie, and Tony Stretton did not answer. He rose from his chair and walked back to the fireplace and knocked the ashes from his pipe. Millie was accustomed to long intervals between her questions and his replies, but she was on the alert now. Something in his movements and his attitude showed her that he was not thinking of what answer he should make. He was already sure upon that point. Only the particular answer he found difficult to speak. She guessed it on the instant and stood up erect, in alarm.

      "You mean that you must go away, and that I must remain?"

      Tony turned round to her and nodded his head.

      "Alone! Here?" she exclaimed, looking round her with a shiver.

      "For a little while. Until I have made a home for you to come to. Only till then, Millie. It needn't be so very long."

      "It will seem ages!" she cried, "however short it is. Tony, it's impossible."

      The tedious days stretched before her in an endless and monotonous succession. The great rooms would be yet more silent, and more empty than they were; there would be a chill throughout all the house; the old man's exactions would become yet more oppressive, since there would be only one to bear them. She thought of the long dull evenings, in the faded drawing-room. They were bad enough now, those long evenings during which she read the evening paper aloud, and Sir John slept, yet not so soundly but that he woke the instant her voice stopped, and bade her continue. What would they be if Tony were gone, if there were no hour or so at the end when they were free to play truant if they willed? What she had said was true. She had been merely pretending to enjoy their hour of truancy, but she would miss it none the less. And in the midst of these thoughts she heard Tony's voice.

      "It sounds selfish, I know, but it isn't really. You see, I sha'n't enjoy myself. I have not been brought up to know anything well or to do anything well--anything, I mean, really useful--I'll have a pretty hard time too." And then he described to her what he thought of doing. He proposed to go out to one of the colonies, spend some months on a farm as a hand, and when he had learned enough of the methods, and had saved a little money, to get hold of a small farm to which he could ask her to come. It was a pretty and a simple scheme, and it ignored the great difficulties in the way, such as his ignorance and his lack of capital. But he believed in it sincerely, and every word in his short and broken sentences proved his belief. He had his way that night with Millicent. She was capable of a quick fervour, though the fervour might as quickly flicker out. She saw that the sacrifice was really upon his side, for upon him would be the unaccustomed burden of labour, and the labour would be strange and difficult. She rose to his height since he was with her and speaking to her with all the conviction of his soul.

      "Well, then, go," she cried. "I'll wait here, Tony, till you send for me."

      And when she passed the library door that night she did not even shrink.

CHAPTER V

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PAMELA MAKES A PROMISE

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      Millie's enthusiasm for her husband's plan increased each day. The picture which his halting phrases evoked for her, of a little farm very far away under Southern skies, charmed her more by reason of its novelty than either she or Tony quite understood. In the evenings of the following week, long after the footsteps overhead had ceased, they sat choosing the site of their house and building it. It was to be the exact opposite of their house of bondage. The windows should look out over rolling country, the simple decorations should be bright of colour, and through every cranny the sun should find its way. Millie's hopes, indeed, easily outran her husband's. She counted the house already built, and the door open for her coming. Colour and light bathed it in beauty.

      "There's my little fortune, Tony," she said, when once or twice he tried to check the leap of her anticipations; "that will provide the capital."

      "I knew you would offer it," Tony replied simply. "Your help will shorten our separation by a good deal. So I'll take half."

      "All!" cried Millie.

      "And what would you do when you wanted a new frock?" asked Tony, with a smile.

      Millie shrugged her shoulders.

      "I shall join you so soon," she said.

      It dawned upon Tony that she was making too little of the burden which she would be called upon to bear--the burden of dull lonely months in that great shabby house.

      "It will be a little while before I can send for you, Millie," he protested. But she paid no heed to the protest. She fetched her bank book and added up the figures.

      "I have three thousand pounds," she said.

      "I'll borrow half," he repeated. "Of course, I am only borrowing. Should things go wrong with me, you are sure to get it back in the end."

      They drove down to Millie's bank the next morning, and fifteen hundred pounds were transferred to his account.

      "Meanwhile," said Tony, as they came out of the СКАЧАТЬ