The Truants

by A. E. W. Mason

"No, don't do that," he said. "It would be--unwise."

Her eyes flashed up to his quickly, and as quickly fell. The colour slowly deepened in her cheeks.

"What does it matter about my career?" he continued, with a smile. "I see you again. If you wish to make me a return, let me see you very often!"

He spoke with tenderness, and he was not pretending. What space did Millie Stretton fill in his thoughts? She was pretty, she was sympathetic, she was ready to catch the mood of her companion. It was not merely an act of retaliation which Callon projected. Such love as he had to give was hers. It was not durable, it was intertwined with meanness, it knew no high aims; yet, such as it was, it was hers. It gained, too, a fictitious strength from the mere fact that he had been deliberately kept from her. The eighteen months of bondage had given her an importance in his eyes, had made her more desirable through the very difficulty of attaining her. Millie allowed him to come again and again. She had a natural taste for secrecies, and practised them now, as he bade her do, without any perception of the humiliation which they involved. If he called at her house, it was after the dusk had fallen, and when she was at home to no other visitors. They dined together in the restaurants of unfashionable hotels, and if she drove to them in her brougham, she sent it away, and was escorted to her door in a cab. Callon was a past-master in concealment; he knew the public places where the public never is, and rumour did not couple their names. But secrecy is not for the secret when the secret ones are a man and a woman. It needs too much calculation in making appointments, too much punctuality in keeping them, too close a dependence upon the probable thing happening at the probable time. Sooner or later an accident, which could not be foreseen, occurs. It may be no more than the collision of a cab and the summons of the driver. Or some one takes, one morning, a walk in an unaccustomed spot. Or the intriguers fall in quite unexpectedly with another, who has a secret too, of which they were not aware. Sooner or later some one knows.

It was the last of these contingencies which brought about the disclosure in the case of Callon and Millie Stretton. Six weeks had passed since Callon's return. It was just a month from Easter. Millie dined with some friends, and went with them afterwards to a theatre in the Haymarket. At the door she sent her carriage home, and when the performance was over she took a hansom cab. She declined any escort, and was driven up Regent Street towards her home. At the corner of Devonshire Street, in Portland Place, a man loitered upon the pavement with a white scarf showing above his coat-collar. Millie opened the trap and spoke to the driver. The cab stopped by the loiterer at the street corner, who opened the doors and stepped in. The loiterer was Lionel Callon.

"Drive round Regent's Park," he said.

The cab drove northwards through Park Place and along the broad road towards Alexandra Gate. The air was warm, the stars bright overhead, the dark trees lined the roadway on the left, the road under the wheels was very white. There was a great peace in the park. It was quite deserted. In a second it seemed they had come out of the glare, and the roar of streets, into a land of quiet and cool gloom. Millie leaned back while Callon talked, and this was the burden of his talk.

"Let us go to the south of France. I will go first. Do you follow! You go for Easter. It will be quite natural. You stay at Eze, I at the little Reserve by the sea a mile away. There is a suite of rooms there. No one need know." Three times the cab drove round the park while Callon urged, and Millie more and more faintly declined. The driver sat perched upon his box, certain of a good fare, indifferent. Inside his cab, on this quiet night, the great issues of life and honour were debated. Millie had just her life in her hands. One way or the other, by a 'Yes' or a 'No,' she must decide what she would do with it, and, to whatever decision she came, it must reach out momentous with consequences and touch other lives beyond hers and beyond those others, others still. Her husband, her relations, her friends--not one of them but was concerned in this midnight drive. It seemed to Millie almost that she heard them hurrying about the cab, calling to her, reaching out their hands. So vivid was her thought, that she could count them, and could recognise their faces. She looked amongst them for her husband. But Tony was not there. She could not see him, she could not hear his voice. Round and round past the trees, on the white road, the cab went jingling on, the driver, indifferent, upon his perch, the tempter and the tempted within.

"Your husband does not care," said Callon. "If he did, would he stay so long away?"

"No, he does not care," said Millie. If he cared, would he not be among that suppliant throng which ran about the cab? And all at once it seemed that the hurrying footsteps lagged behind. The voices called more faintly; she could not see the outreaching hands.