Part 43 (2/2)
Stretton started up, amazed, and most deeply moved. An English officer instructed the Moorish troops. What more natural than that he should introduce the English calls and signals? But to Stretton it seemed most wonderful that here, in this Eastern country, while the Mohammedan priest was chanting from his minaret, he should hear again, after so many years, that familiar tattoo sounded by an Eastern bugle and an Eastern drum. In how many barracks of England, he wondered, would that same ”Last Post” ring out to-night? And at once the years slipped away, the hard years of the North Sea and the Sahara. He was carried back among the days when he served in the Coldstream. Then arose in his heart a great longing that something of the happiness of those days might be recaptured still.
Warrisden and Stretton crossed the Sebou the next morning, and rode with the boom of the Atlantic in their ears. Hills upon their left hand hid the sea from their eyes, and it was not until the next day, when they mounted on to a high tableland four hours from Larache, that they saw it rolling lazily towards the sh.o.r.e. They caught a steamer at Larache that night.
CHAPTER XXIX
PAMELA MEETS A STRANGER
Meanwhile Pamela waited at the Villa Pontignard, swinging from hope to fear, and from fear again to hope. The days chased one another. She watched the arrival of each train from Ma.r.s.eilles at the little station below, with an expectant heart; and long after it had departed towards Italy, she kept within her vision the pathway up the hillside to the villa. But the travellers did not return. Expectation and disappointment walked alternately at her elbow all the day, and each day seemed endless. Yet, when the next day came, it had come all too quickly. Every morning it seemed to her, as she turned her calendar, that the days chased one another, racing to the month's end; every evening, tired out with her vigil, she wondered how they could pa.s.s so slowly. The thirty-first of the month dawned at last. At some time on this day Millie Stretton would arrive at Eze. She thought of it, as she rose, with a sinking heart; and then thrust thought aside. She dared not confront the possibility that the trains might stop at Roquebrune, and move on to Italy and discharge no pa.s.sengers upon the platform. She dared not recognise her dread that this day might close and the darkness come as fruitlessly as all the rest. It was her last day of hope. Lionel Callon was waiting. Millie Stretton was arriving.
To-morrow, Tony might come, but he would come too late. Pamela lived in suspense. Somehow the morning pa.s.sed. The afternoon _Rapide_ swept through towards Mentone. Pamela saw the smoke of the engine from her terrace, and knew that upon that train had come the pa.s.senger from England. Half an hour ago Millie had most likely stepped from her carriage on to the platform at Eze. And still Tony Stretton and Warrisden lingered.
Towards dusk she began to despair. In a little while another train was due. She heard its whistle, saw it stop at the station, and waited with her eyes fixed upon the hillside path. No one appeared upon it.
She turned and went into the house. She thought for a moment of going herself to Eze, thrusting herself upon Millie at the cost of any snub; and while she debated whether the plan could at all avail, the door was opened, a servant spoke some words about a visitor, and a man entered the room. Pamela started to her feet. The man stood in the twilight of the room: his back was against the light of the window.
Pamela could not see his face. But it was not Warrisden, so much she knew at once. It could only be Tony Stretton.
”So you have come,” she cried. ”At last! I had given up hope.”
She advanced and held out her hand. And some reserve in Tony's att.i.tude, something of coldness in the manner with which he took her hand, checked and chilled her.
”It is you?” she asked. ”I watched the path. The train has gone some while.”
”Yes, it is I,” he replied. ”I had to inquire my way at the village.
This is the first time I ever came to Roquebrune.”
Still more than the touch of his hand and the reserve of his manner, the cold reticence of his voice chilled her. She turned to the servant abruptly--
”Bring lamps,” she said. She felt the need to see Tony Stretton's face. She had looked forward so eagerly to his coming; she had hoped for it, and despaired of it with so full a heart; and now he had come, and with him there had come, most unexpectedly, disappointment. She had expected ardour, and there was only, as it seemed, indifference and stolidity. She was prepared for a host of questions to be tumbled out upon her in so swift a succession that no time was given to her for an answer to any one of them; and he stood before her, seemingly cold as stone. Had he ceased to care for Millie, she wondered?
”You have come as quickly as you could?” she asked, trying to read his features in the obscurity.
”I have not lost a moment since I received your letter,” he answered.
She caught at the words, ”your letter.” Perhaps there lay the reason for his reserve. She had written frankly, perhaps too frankly she feared at this moment. Had the letter suddenly killed his love for Millie? Such things, no doubt, could happen--had happened. Disillusion might have withered it like a swift shaft of lightning.
”My letter,” she said. ”You must not exaggerate its meaning. You read it carefully?”
”Very carefully.”
”And I wrote it carefully,” she went on, pleading with his indifference; ”very carefully.”
”It contains the truth,” said Tony; ”I did not doubt that.”
”Yes; but it contains all the truth,” she urged. ”You must not doubt that either. Remember, you yourself are to blame. I wrote that, didn't I? I meant it.”
”Yes, you wrote that,” answered Tony. ”I am not denying that you are right. It may well be that I am to blame. It may well be that you, too, are not quite free from blame. Had you told me that morning, when we rode together in the Row, what you had really meant when you said that I ought never to leave my wife----” And at that Pamela interrupted him--
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