The Truants. A. E. W. Mason

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      "You must come up to the villa," she said. "I shall look forward to your coming."

      They were in the little square by the schoolhouse and he took the words for his dismissal. She went up the hill alone and slowly, like one that is tired. Giraud, watching her, could not but compare her with the girl who had come lightly down that street a few months ago. It dawned upon him that, though knowledge had been acquired, something had gone, something perhaps more valuable, the elasticity from her step, the eagerness from her eyes.

      Giraud did not go up to the villa of his own accord, but he was asked to lunch in a week's time, and after lunch Pamela and he went out into the garden. Instinctively they walked down to that corner on the point of the bluff which overhung the ravine and the white torrent amongst the oleanders in its depths. They had come indeed to the bench on which they used to sit before Pamela was quite aware of the direction their steps had taken. She drew back suddenly as she raised her head.

      "Oh no, not here," she cried, and she moved away quickly with a look of pain. Giraud suddenly understood why she had turned away at the railway station. Here they had dreamed, and the reality had shown the dreams to be bitterly false, so false that the very place where they had dreamed had become by its associations a place of pain. She had needed for herself that first moment when she had stepped down from the carriage.

      "The world must be the home of great troubles,' said Giraud, sadly.

      "And how do you know that?" Pamela asked with a smile.

      "From you," he replied simply.

      The answer was unexpected. Pamela stopped and looked at him with startled eyes.

      "From me? I have said nothing--nothing at all."

      "Yet I know. How else should I know except from you, since through you alone I see the world?"

      "A home of great troubles?" she repeated, speaking lightly. "Not for all. You are serious, my friend, this afternoon, and you should not be, for have I not come back?"

      The schoolmaster was not deceived by her evasion. There had come a gravity into her manner, and a womanliness into her face, in a degree more than natural at her years.

      "Let us talk of you for a change," said she.

      "Well, and what shall we say?" asked Giraud, and a constraint fell upon them both.

      "We must forget those fine plans," he continued at length. "Is it not so? I think I have learnt that too from you."

      "I hare said nothing," she interrupted quickly.

      "Precisely," said he, with a smile. "The school at Roquebrune will send no Deputy to Paris."

      "Oh! why not?" said Pamela, but there was no conviction in her voice. Giraud was not of the stern stuff

      "To break his birth's invidious bar."

      He had longings, but there was the end.

      "At all events," she said, turning to him with a great earnestness, "we shall be friends always, whatever happens."

      The words were the death-knell to the schoolmaster's aspirations. They conveyed so much more than was actually said. He took them bravely enough.

      "That is a good thing," he said in all sincerity. "If I stay here all my life, I shall still have the memory of the years when I taught you history. I shall know, though I do not see you, that we are friends. It is a great thing for me."

      "For me, too," said Pamela, looking straight into his eyes, and she meant her words no less than he had meant his. Yet to both they had the sound of a farewell. And in a way they were. They were the farewell to the afternoons upon the terrace, they closed the door upon their house of dreams.

      Giraud leaned that evening over the parapet in the little square of Roquebrune. The Mediterranean lay dark and quiet far below, the terrace of Monte Carlo glowed, and the red signal-lamps pointed out the way to Paris. But he was no longer thinking of his fallen plans. He was thinking of the girl up there in the villa who had been struck by some blind blow of Destiny, who had grown a woman before her time. It was a pity, it was a loss in the general sum of things which make for joy.

      He had of course only his suspicions to go upon. But they were soon strengthened. For Pamela fell into ill-health, and the period of ill-health lasted all that winter. After those two years had passed, she disappeared for a while altogether out of Giraud's sight. She came no more to the Villa Pontignard, but stayed with her father and her horses at her home in Leicestershire. Her mother came alone to Roquebrune.

CHAPTER II

       Table of Contents

PAMELA LOOKS ON

       Table of Contents

      Alan Warrisden was one of the two men who had walked up to Roquebrune on that afternoon of which M. Giraud spoke. But it was not until Pamela had reached the age of twenty that he made her acquaintance at Lady Millingham's house in Berkeley Square. He took her down to dinner, and, to tell the truth, paid no particular attention either to her looks or her conversation. His neighbour upon the other side happened to be a friend whom he had not seen for some while, and for a good part of the dinner he talked to her. A few days afterwards, however, he called upon Lady Millingham, and she asked at once quite eagerly--

      "Well, what did you think of Pamela Mardale?"

      Warrisden was rather at a loss. He was evidently expected to answer with enthusiasm, and he had not any very definite recollections on which enthusiasm could be based. He did his best, however; but he was unconvincing. Lady Millingham shrugged her shoulders and frowned. She had been married precisely a year, and was engaged in plans for marrying off all her friends with the greatest possible despatch.

      "I shall send you in with somebody quite old the next time you dine here," she said severely, and she discoursed at some length upon Pamela's charms. "She loves horses, and yet she's not a bit horsey," she said in conclusion, "and there's really nothing better than that. And just heaps of men have wanted to marry her." She leaned back against her sofa and contemplated Warrisden with silent scorn. She had set her heart upon this marriage more than upon any other. Of all the possible marriages in London, there was not one, to her mind, so suitable as this. Pamela Mardale came of one of the oldest families of commoners in Leicestershire. The family was not well off, the estate had shrunk year by year, and what was left was mortgaged, owing in some degree to that villa at Roquebrune upon which Mrs. Mardale insisted. Warrisden, on the other hand, was more than well off, his family was known, and at the age of twenty-eight he was still dividing his life between the season in London and shooting expeditions about the world. And he had the look of a man who might do something more.

      That visit had its results. Warrisden met Pamela Mardale again and realised that Lady Millingham's indignation had been justified. At the end of that season he proposed, and was gently refused. But if he was slow to move, he was also firm to persevere. He hunted with the Quorn that winter, and during the following season he was persistently but unobtrusively at her elbow; so that СКАЧАТЬ