Part 11 (2/2)

But next day matters were worse. For one thing John Mudge went away, and he was the only person in the house who interested her at all.

Furthermore, Lionel Callon stayed, and he announced some news.

”I have been chosen to stand for Parliament at the next election,” he said; and he named an important const.i.tuency. Pamela noticed the look of gratification, almost of pride, which shone at once on Millie's face, and her heart sank. She interpreted Millie's thought, and accurately. Here was a successful man, a man who had got on without opportunities or means, simply by his own abilities; and there, far away in New York, was her failure of a husband. Moreover, Callon and Millicent were much together; they had even small secrets, to which in conversation they referred. The world was not going well with Pamela, and she waited for the fleece to be wet with dew.

After four days, however, the frost showed signs of breaking. A thaw actually set in that evening, and on the next morning two pieces of good news arrived. In the first place, Pamela received a letter from Alan Warrisden. There was nothing of importance in it, but it gave her his actual address. In the second, Millie told Frances Millingham that she had received news that Sir John Stretton was really failing, and although there was no immediate danger, she must hold herself in readiness to return to town. This to Pamela was really the best news of all. This morning, at all events, Gideon's Fleece was wet. She looked out some trains in the railway guide, and then sent a telegram to Warrisden to come by a morning train. She would meet him at the railway station. The one step in her power she was thus resolved to take.

CHAPTER IX

THE NEW ROAD

On the crest of that hill which was visible from the upper windows of Whitewebs, a village straggled for a mile; and all day in the cottages the looms were heard. The sound of looms, indeed, was always a.s.sociated with that village in the minds of Pamela Mardale and Alan Warrisden, though they drove along its broad street but once, and a few hours included all their visit. Those few hours, however, were rich with consequence. For Pamela asked for help that day, and, in the mere asking, gave, as women must; and she neither asked nor gave in ignorance of what she did. The request might be small, the gift small, too; but it set her and her friend in a new relation each to each, it linked them in a common effort, it brought a new and a sweet intimacy into both their lives. So that the noise of a loom was never heard by them in the after times but there rose before their eyes, visible as a picture, that grey chill day of February, the red-brick houses crowding on the broad street in a picturesque irregularity, and the three tall poplars tossing in the wind. The recollection brought always a smile of tenderness to their faces; and in their thoughts they had for the village a strange and fanciful name. It was just a little Leicesters.h.i.+re village perched upon a hill, the village of looms, the village of the three poplars. But they called it Quetta.

At the very end of the street, and exactly opposite to the small house from whose garden the poplars rose, there stood an inn. It was on the edge of the hill, for just beyond the road dipped steeply down between high hedges of brambles and elder trees, and, turning at the bottom of the incline, wound thence through woods and level meadows towards Leicester. It was the old coach road, and the great paved yard of the inn and the long line of disused stables had once been noisy with the shouts of ostlers and the crack of whips. Now only the carrier's cart drove twice a week down the steep road to Leicester, and a faint whistle from the low-lying land and a trail of smoke showed where now the traffic ran. On the platform of the little roadside station, three miles from the village, Pamela met Alan Warrisden on the morning after she had sent off her telegram. She had a trap waiting at the door, and as they mounted into it she said--

”I rode over to the village this morning and hired this dog-cart at the inn. I am not expected to be back at Whitewebs until the afternoon; so I thought we might lunch at the inn, and then a man can drive you back to the station, while I ride home again.”

”It was bad going for a horse, wasn't it?” said Warrisden.

The thaw had fairly set in; the roads, still hard as cement, ran with water, and were most slippery. On each side patches of snow hung upon the banks half melted, and the air was raw.

”Yes, it was bad going,” Pamela admitted. ”But I could not wait. It was necessary that I should see you to-day.”

She said no more at the moment, and Warrisden was content to sit by her side as she drove, and wait. The road ran in a broad straight line over the sloping ground. There was no vehicle, not even another person, moving along it. Warrisden could see the line of houses ahead, huddled against the sky, the spire of a church, and on his right the three sentinel poplars. He was to see them all that afternoon.

Pamela drove straight to the inn, where she had already ordered luncheon; and it was not until luncheon was over that she drew up her chair to the fire and spoke.

”Won't you smoke?” she said first of all. ”I want you to listen to me.”

Warrisden lit a pipe and listened.

”It is right that I should be very frank with you,” she went on, ”for I am going to ask you to help me.”

”You need me, then?” said Warrisden. There was a leap in his voice which brought the colour to her cheeks.

”Very much,” she said; and, with a smile, she asked, ”Are you glad?”

”Yes,” he answered simply.

”Yet the help may be difficult for you to give. It may occupy a long time besides. I am not asking you for a mere hour or a day.”

The warning only brought a smile to Warrisden's face.

”I don't think you understand,” he said, ”how much one wants to be needed by those one needs.”

Indeed, even when that simple truth was spoken to her, it took Pamela a little while to weigh it in her thoughts and give it credence. She had travelled a long distance during these last years down her solitary road. She began to understand that now. To need--actually to need people, to feel a joy in being needed--here were emotions, familiar to most, and no doubt at one time familiar to her, which were, nevertheless, now very new and strange. At present she only needed. Would a time come when she would go further still? When she would feel a joy in being needed? The question flashed across her mind.

”Yes,” she admitted, ”no doubt that is true. But none the less there must be no misunderstanding between you and me. I speak of myself, although it is not for myself that I need your help; but I am not blind. I know it will be for my sake that you give it, and I do not want you to give it in any ignorance of me, or, perhaps”--and she glanced at him almost shyly--”or, perhaps, expecting too much.”

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