The Truants. A. E. W. Mason

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CHAPTER I

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PAMELA MARDALE LEARNS A VERY LITTLE HISTORY

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      There were only two amongst all Pamela Mardale's friends who guessed that anything was wrong with her; and those two included neither her father nor her mother. Her mother, indeed, might have guessed, had she been a different woman. But she was a woman of schemes and little plots, who watched with concentration their immediate developments, but had no eyes for any lasting consequence. And it was no doubt as well for her peace of mind that she never guessed. But of the others it was unlikely that any one would suspect the truth. For Pamela made no outward sign. She hunted through the winter from her home under the Croft Hill in Leicestershire; she went everywhere, as the saying is, during the season in London; she held her own in her own world, lacking neither good spirits nor the look of health. There were, perhaps, two small peculiarities which marked her off from her companions. She was interested in things rather than in persons, and she preferred to talk to old men rather than to youths. But such points, taken by themselves, were not of an importance to attract attention.

      Yet there were two amongst her friends who suspected: Alan Warrisden and the schoolmaster of Roquebrune, the little village carved out of the hillside to the east of Monte Carlo. The schoolmaster was the nearer to the truth, for he not only knew that something was amiss, he suspected what the something was. But then he had a certain advantage, since he had known Pamela Mardale when she was a child. Their acquaintance came about in the following way--

      He was leaning one evening of December over the parapet of the tiny square beside the schoolhouse, when a servant from the Villa Pontignard approached him.

      "Could M. Giraud make it convenient to call at the villa at noon to-morrow?" the servant asked. "Madame Mardale was anxious to speak to him."

      M. Giraud turned about with a glow of pleasure upon his face.

      "Certainly," he replied. "But nothing could be more simple. I will be at the Villa Pontignard as the clock strikes."

      The servant bowed, and without another word paced away across the square and up the narrow winding street of Roquebrune, leaving the schoolmaster a little abashed at his display of eagerness. M. Giraud recognised that in one man's mind, at all events, he was now set down for a snob, for a lackey disguised as a schoolmaster. But the moment of shame passed. He had no doubt as to the reason of the summons, and he tingled with pride from head to foot. It was his little brochure upon the history of the village--written with what timidity, and printed at what cost to his meagre purse!--which had brought him recognition from the lady of the villa upon the spur of the hill. Looking upwards he could just see the white walls of the villa glimmering through the dusk, he could imagine its garden of trim lawns and dark cypresses falling from bank to bank in ordered tiers down the hillside.

      "To-morrow at noon," he repeated to himself; and now he was seized with a shiver of fear at the thought of the mistakes in behaviour which he was likely to make. What if Madame Mardale asked him to breakfast? There would be unfamiliar dishes to be eaten with particular forks. Sometimes a knife should be used and sometimes not. He turned back to the parapet with the thought that he had better, perhaps, send up a note in the morning pleading his duties at the school as a reason for breaking his engagement. But he was young, and as he looked down the steep slope of rock on which the village is perched, anticipation again got the better of fear. He began to build up his life like a fairy palace from the foundation of this brief message.

      A long lane of steps led winding down from the square, and his eyes followed it, as his feet had often done, to the little railway station by the sea through which people journeyed to and fro between the СКАЧАТЬ