The Truants. A. E. W. Mason

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ advice without question, she thought. "Millie's husband should never leave her. If he goes away he should take her with him." The words rang in her mind all through dinner like the refrain of a song of which one cannot get rid. And at the back of her thoughts there steadily grew and grew a great regret that she had ever promised Tony to befriend his wife.

      That Millicent was the lady on the stairs she no longer dared to doubt. Had she doubted, her suspicions would have been confirmed immediately dinner was over. In the drawing-room Millicent avoided any chance of a private conversation, and since they had not met for so long such avoidance was unnatural. Pamela, however, made no effort to separate her friend from the other women. She had a plan in her mind, and in pursuit of it she occupied a sofa, upon which there was just room for two. She sat in the middle of the sofa, so that no one else could sit on it, and just waited until the men came in. Some of them crossed at once to Pamela, but she did not budge an inch. They were compelled to stand. Finally, Mr. Mudge approached her, and immediately she moved into one corner and bade him take the other. Mr. Mudge accepted the position with alacrity. The others began to move away; a couple of card-tables were made up. Pamela and John Mudge were left alone.

      "You know every one here?" she asked.

      "No, very few."

      "Mr. Callon, at all events?"

      Mr. Mudge glanced shrewdly at his questioner.

      "Yes, I know him slightly," he answered.

      "Tell me what you know."

      Mr. Mudge sat for a moment or two with his hands upon his knees and his eyes staring in front of him. Pamela knew his history, and esteemed his judgment. He had built up a great contracting business from the poorest beginnings, and he remained without bombast or arrogance. He was to be met nowadays in many houses, and, while he had acquired manners, he had lost nothing of his simplicity. The journey from the Seven Dials to Belgrave Square is a test of furnace heat, and John Mudge had betrayed no flaws. There was a certain forlornness, too, in his manner which appealed particularly to Pamela. She guessed that the apples, for which through a lifetime he had grasped, had crumbled into ashes between his fingers. Sympathy taught her that the man was lonely. He wandered through the world amidst a throng of acquaintances; but how many friends had he, she wondered? She did not interrupt his reflections, and he turned to her at last, with an air of decision.

      "I am on strange ground here," he said, "as you know. I am the outsider; and when I am on strange ground I go warily. If I am asked what I think of this man or that I make it a rule to praise."

      "Yes; but not to me," said Pamela, with a smile. "I want to know the truth to-night."

      Mudge looked at her deliberately, and no less deliberately he spoke--

      "And I think you ought to know the truth to-night."

      Mudge, then, like the rest, knew that she was Millicent's friend. Was it for that reason that she ought to know the truth?

      "I know Callon a little," he went on, "but I know a good deal about him. Like most of the men who know him I dislike him heartily. Women, on the other hand, like him, Miss Mardale--like him too well. Women make extraordinary mistakes over men just as men do over women. They can be very blind--like your friend----"

      Mudge paused for an appreciable time. Then he went on steadily--

      "Like your friend Lady Millingham, who invites him here."

      Pamela was grateful for the delicacy with which the warning was conveyed, but she did not misunderstand it. She had been told indirectly, but no less definitely on that account, that Millie was entangled.

      "Callon has good looks, of course," continued Mudge; and Pamela uttered a little exclamation of contempt. Mudge smiled, but rather sadly.

      "Oh, it's something. All people have not your haughty indifference to good looks. He is tall, he has a face which is a face and not a pudding. It's a good deal, Miss Mardale."

      Pamela looked in surprise at the stout, heavily-built bald man who spoke. That he should ever have given a thought to how he looked was a new idea to her. It struck her as pathetic.

      "But he is not merely good-looking. He is clever, persistent besides, and, so far as I can judge, untroubled by a single scruple in the management of his life. Altogether, Miss Mardale, a dangerous man. How does he live?" he asked suddenly.

      "I neither know nor care," said Pamela. "Ah, but you should care," replied Mudge. "The answer is instructive. He has a small income--two hundred a year, perhaps; a mere nothing compared with what he spends--and he never does an hour's work, as we understand work. Yet he pays his card debts at his club, and they are sometimes heavy, and he wants for nothing. How is it done? He has no prospect of an inheritance, so post-obits are not the explanation."

      Mr. Mudge leaned back in his chair and waited. Pamela turned the question over in her mind. "I can't guess how it's done," she said. "And I can do no more than hint the answer," he replied. "He rides one woman's horses, he drives another woman's phaeton, he is always on hand to take a third to a theatre, or to make up a luncheon party with a fourth. Shall we say he borrows money from a fifth? Shall we be wrong in saying it?" And suddenly Mr. Mudge exclaimed, with a heat and scorn which Pamela had never heard from him before, "A very contemptible existence, anyway, Miss Mardale. But the man's not to be despised, mind. No, that's the worst of it. Some day, perhaps, a strong man will rise up and set his foot on him. Till that time he is to be feared." And when Pamela by a gesture rejected the word, Mudge repeated it. "Yes, feared. He makes his plans, Miss Mardale. Take a purely imaginary case," and somehow, although he laid no ironic stress on the word imaginary, and accompanied it with no look, but sat gazing straight in front of him, Pamela was aware that it was a real case he was going to cite. "Imagine a young and pretty woman coming to a house where most of the guests were strangers to her; imagine her to be of a friendly, unsuspecting temperament, rather lonely, perhaps, and either unmarried or separated for a time from her husband. Add that she will one day be very rich, or that her husband will be. Such a woman might be his prey, unless----"

      Pamela looked up inquiringly.

      "Unless she had good friends to help her."

      Pamela's face, distressed before, grew yet more troubled now. The burden of her promise was being forced upon her back. It seemed she was not for one moment to be allowed to forget it.

      "I'll tell you my philosophy, Miss Mardale," Mudge continued, "and I have inferred it from what I have seen. I do not believe that any man really comes to good unless he has started in life with the ambition to make a career for himself, with no help other than his hands and his brains afford. Later on he will learn that women can be most helpful; later on, as he gets towards middle life, as the years shorten and shorten, he will see that he must use whatever extraneous assistance comes his way. But he will begin with a fearless ambition to suffice with his own hands and head." Mr. Mudge dropped from the high level of his earnestness. He looked towards Lionel Callon, who was seated at a card-table, and the contempt again crept into his voice. "Now that man began life meaning to use all people he met, and especially women. Women were to be his implements." Mr. Mudge smiled suddenly. "He's listening," he said.

      "But he is too far away to hear," replied Pamela.

      "No doubt; but he knows we are speaking of him. Look, his attitude shows it. This, you see, is his battleground, and he knows the arts of his particular warfare. A drawing-room! Mr. Lionel Callon fights among the teacups. Cajolery first, and God knows by what means afterwards. But he wins, Miss Mardale; don't close your eyes to that! Look, СКАЧАТЬ