The Truants Part 14

"No doubt," Warrisden agreed. "But it is thought that you might have heard from him since his disappearance."

Chase nodded his head.

"I have."

"It is thought that you might know where he is now."

"I do," said Mr. Chase. Warrisden was sensibly relieved. One-half of his fear was taken from him. Chase knew, at all events, where Stretton was to be found. Now he must disclose his knowledge. But before he could put a question, Chase said languidly--

"You say 'it is thought,' Mr. Warrisden. By whom is it thought? By his wife?"

"No. But by a great friend of hers and his."

"Oh," said Chase, "by Miss Pamela Mardale, then."

Warrisden started forward.

"You know her?" he asked.

"No. But Stretton mentioned her to me in a letter. She has sent you to me in fulfilment of a promise. I understand."

The words were not very intelligible to Warrisden. He knew nothing of Pamela's promise to Tony Stretton. But, on the other hand, he saw that Mr. Chase was giving a more attentive ear to what he said. He betrayed no ignorance of the promise.

"I am sent to fetch Stretton home," he said. "I want you to tell me where he is."

Chase shook his head.

"No," he said gently.

"It is absolutely necessary that Stretton should come back," Warrisden declared with great deliberation. And with no less deliberation Chase replied--

"In Stretton's view it is absolutely necessary that he should stay away!"

"His father is dying."

Chase started forward in his chair, and stared at Warrisden for a long time.

"Is that an excuse?" he said at length.

It was, as Warrisden was aware. He did not answer the question.

"It is the truth," he replied; and he replied truthfully.

Chase rose from his chair and walked once or twice across the room. He came back to the fire, and leaning an elbow on the mantelpiece stared into the coals. Warrisden sat very still. He had used his one argument--he could add nothing to it; he could only wait for the answer in a great anxiety. So much hung upon that answer for Stretton and his wife, for Pamela, for himself! The fortunes of all four were knotted together. At last the answer came.

"I promised Tony that I would keep his secret," said Chase. "But when he asked for the promise, and when I gave it, the possibility of his father dying was not either in his mind or mine. We considered--in letters, of course--other possibilities; but not this one. I don't think I have the right to remain silent. Even in the face of this possibility I should have kept my promise, I think, if you had come from his wife--for I know why he disappeared. But as things are, I will tell you. Tony Stretton is in the North Sea on a trawler."

"In the North Sea?" exclaimed Warrisden. And he smiled. After all, the steamboats on the river had last night called to him with a particular summons.

"Yes," continued Chase, and he fetched from his writing-desk a letter in Tony's hand. "He came back to England two months ago. He drifted across the country. He found himself at Yarmouth with a few s.h.i.+llings in his pocket. He knew something of the sea. He had sailed his own yacht in happier times. He was in great trouble. He needed time to think out a new course of life. He hung about on Gorleston pier for a day or two, and then was taken on by a skipper who was starting out short of hands, he signed for eight weeks, and he wrote to me the day before he started. That's four weeks ago."

"Can I reach him?" Warrisden asked.

"Yes. The boat is the _Perseverance_, and it belongs to the Blue Fleet. A steam cutter goes out every day from Billingsgate to fetch the fish. I know one of the owners. His son comes down to the mission.

I can get you a pa.s.sage. When can you start?"

"At any time," replied Warrisden. "The sooner the better."

"To-morrow, then," said Chase. "Meet me at the entrance to Billingsgate Market at half-past eleven. It will take you forty-eight hours with ordinary luck to reach the Dogger Bank. Of course, if there's a fog in the Thames the time will be longer. And I warn you, living is rough on a fish-carrier."

"I don't mind that," said Warrisden, with a smile. He went away with a light heart, and that night wrote a letter to Pamela, telling her of his interview with Mr. Chase. The new road seemed after all likely to prove a smooth one. As he wrote, every now and then a steamboat hooted from the river, and the rain pattered upon his window. He flung it up and looked out. There was no fog to-night, only the rain fell, and fell gently. He prayed that there might be no fog upon the Thames to-morrow.

Mr. Chase, too, heard the rain that night. He sat in his armchair listening to it with a decanter at his elbow half filled with a liquid like brown sherry. At times he poured a little into his gla.s.s and drank it slowly, crouching over his fire. Somewhere in the darkness of the North Sea Tony Stretton was hidden. Very likely at this moment he was standing upon the deck of his trawler with his hands upon the spokes of the wheel, and his eyes peering forward through the rain, keeping his long night-watch while the light from the binnacle struck upwards upon the lines of his face. Mr. Chase sat late in a muse. But before he went to bed he locked the decanter and the gla.s.s away in a private cupboard, and took the key with him into his bedroom.

CHAPTER XI

ON THE DOGGER BANK

The _City of Bristol_ swung out of the huddle of boats off Billingsgate Wharf at one o'clock on the next afternoon. Mr. Chase, who stood upon the quay amongst the porters and white-jacketed salesmen, turned away with an episcopal wave of the hand. Warrisden leaned over the rail of the steamer's bridge, between the captain and the pilot, and shouted a reply. The _City of Bristol_, fish-cutter of 300 tons, was a boat built for speed, long and narrow, sitting low on the water, with an upstanding forecastle forward, a small saloon in the stern, and a tiny cabin for the captain under the bridge on deck.

She sidled out into the fair way and went forward upon her slow, intricate journey to the sea. Below the Tower she took her place in the long, single file of s.h.i.+ps winding between the mud banks, and changed it as occasion served; now she edged up by a string of barges, now in a clear broad s.p.a.ce she made a spurt and took the lead of a barquantine, which swam in indolence, with bare masts, behind a tug; and at times she stopped altogether, like a carriage blocked in Piccadilly. The screw thrashed the water, ceased, and struck again with a suggestion of petulance at the obstacles which barred the boat's way. Warrisden, too, chafed upon the bridge. A question pressed continually upon his mind--"Would Stretton return?" He had discovered where Stretton was to be found. The tall grey spire of Stepney Church rose from behind an inlet thick with masts, upon the left; he was already on his way to find him. But the critical moment was yet to come. He had still to use his arguments; and as he stood watching the s.h.i.+pping with indifferent eyes the arguments appeared most weak and unpersuasive. Stretton's father was dying, it was true. The son's return was no doubt a natural obligation. But would the natural obligation hold when the father was unnatural? Those months in New York had revealed one quality in Tony Stretton, at all events; he could persist. The very name of the trawler in which he was at work seemed to Warrisden of a bad augury for his success--the _Perseverance!_

Greenwich, with its hill of gra.s.s, slipped behind on the right; at the Albert Docks a huge Peninsular and Oriental steamer, deck towering above deck, swung into the line; the high chimneys of the cement works on the Ess.e.x flats began to stand out against the pale grey sky, each one crowned with white smoke like a tuft of wool; the barges, under their big brown sprit-sails, now tacked this way and that across a wider stream; the village of Greenhithe and the white portholes of the _Worcester_ showed upon the right.

"Would Stretton return?" The question revolved in Warrisden's mind as the propeller revolved in the thick brown water. The fortunes of four people hung upon the answer, and no answer could be given until a night, and a day, and another night had pa.s.sed, until he saw the Blue Fleet tossing far away upon the Dogger Bank. Suppose that the answer were "No!" He imagined Pamela sinking back into la.s.situde, narrowing to that selfishness which she, no less than he, foresaw; looking on again at the world's show with the lack-l.u.s.tre indifference of the very old.

At Gravesend the _City of Bristol_ dropped her pilot, a little, white-bearded, wizened man, who all the way down the river, balancing himself upon the top-rail of the bridge, like some nautical Blondin, had run from side to side the while he exchanged greetings with the anch.o.r.ed s.h.i.+ps; and just opposite to Tilbury Fort, with its scanty fringe of trees, she ran alongside of a hulk and took in a load of coal.

"We'll go down and have tea while they are loading her," said the captain.

The dusk was falling when Warrisden came again on deck, and a cold wind was blowing from the north-west. The sharp stem of the boat was cutting swiftly through the quiet water; the lift of the sea under her forefoot gave to her a buoyancy of motion--she seemed to have become a thing alive. The propeller cleft the surface regularly; there was no longer any sound of petulance in its revolutions, rather there was a throb of joy as it did its work unhindered. Throughout the s.h.i.+p a steady hum, a steady vibration ran. The _City of Bristol_ was not merely a thing alive; it was a thing satisfied.

Upon Warrisden, too, there descended a sense of peace. He was _en rapport_ with the s.h.i.+p. The fever of his questioning left him. On either side the arms of the sh.o.r.e melted into the gathering night. Far away upon his right the lights of Margate shone brightly, like a chain of gold stretched out upon the sea; in front of him there lay a wide and misty bay, into which the boat drove steadily. All the unknown seemed hidden there; all the secret unrevealed Beyond. There came whispers out of that illimitable bay to Warrisden's ears; whispers breathed upon the north wind, and all the whispers were whispers of promise, bidding him take heart. Warrisden listened and believed, uplifted by the grave quiet of the sea and its mysterious width.

The _City of Bristol_ turned northward into the great channel of the Swin, keeping close to the lights.h.i.+ps on the left, so close that Warrisden from the bridge could look straight down upon their decks.

The night had altogether come--a night of stars. Cl.u.s.ters of lights, low down upon the left, showed where the towns of Ess.e.x stood; upon the light hand the homeward-bound s.h.i.+ps loomed up ghost-like and pa.s.sed by; on the right, too, shone out the great green globes of the Mouse light like Neptune's reading-lamps. Sheltered behind the canvas screen at the corner of the bridge Warrisden looked along the rake of the unlighted deck below. He thought of Pamela waiting for his return at Whitewebs, but without impatience. The great peace and silence of the night were the most impressive things he had ever known. The captain's voice complaining of the sea jarred upon him.

"It's no Bobby's job," said the captain in a low voice. "It's home once in three weeks from Sat.u.r.day to Monday, if you are in luck, and the rest of your time you're in carpet slippers on the bridge. You'll sleep in my chatoo, to-night. I sha'n't turn in until we have pa.s.sed the Outer Gabbard and come to the open sea. That won't be till four in the morning."

Warrisden understood that he was being offered the captain's cabin.

"No, thanks," said he. "The bench of the saloon will do very well for me."

The captain did not press his offer.