Chapter Sixteen.Men of Arnott’s type are most dangerous on account of their unscrupulousness. A man who will commit bigamy because he recognises that the virtue of the woman he desires is proof against any relationship save the honourably married state, is capable of the further infamy of unfaithfulness to the woman he has wronged. Faithfulness is an unknown quality in such natures; it is at variance with every other predominant quality that goes to the making of such men. Arnott was already unfaithful to Pamela in his thoughts. His sudden infatuation for the governess of his children developed surprisingly until it became an obsession. In his preference for her society ordinary caution was disregarded, and little by little the last decent pretences were allowed to slip away.Pamela began to be dimly aware of certain things during their stay at Muizenberg. Arnott spent a great deal of time in Miss Maitland’s company. He took her motoring, while Pamela remained with the children, and in the evenings, when she and the children were at tea, they went for long walks together, returning only in time for dinner. Pamela thought little of this at first. She had elected to be with the children, and had refused to motor with Herbert; she was pleased when he asked Blanche to accompany him. But after a while these excursions became a daily practice; the morning bathe was merely a pretext for teaching Blanche to swim Arnott pleased himself without any reference whatever to Pamela’s wishes or convenience. She felt indignant. It was time, she decided, to remonstrate with him on the impropriety of paying such marked attention to the girl. She particularly disliked his conduct towards her in the water. After all, Blanche was in a sense in her charge; she was responsible for her while she remained in her family.She informed Arnott on one occasion, when they were alone together, that he spent too much time with Miss Maitland, and was unnecessarily familiar. She objected to his addressing her by her Christian name. He lost his temper at that. He didn’t see any harm in it, he told her; she often called her Blanche.“That’s different,” Pamela answered. “It is scarcely a reason for your doing so. I don’t like it.”After that he was rather more careful, and indulged in these familiarities only when he felt certain that Pamela could not overhear. But his conduct in other respects continued to affront her, and spoilt her enjoyment entirely of the holiday which had promised so much pleasure at the beginning. She felt only anxious to return home. Had it not been for the disappointment it would have occasioned the children, she would have curtailed the holiday.When the fortnight was nearly expired, Arnott proposed remaining at Muizenberg for another week, but Pamela refused to do this. He did not urge her. He had put forward the suggestion in an offhand, self-conscious manner; and when she objected, he merely remarked that he thought it would be nice for the children, and then dropped the subject. But her refusal incensed him. Opposition to his wishes always made him angry. It exasperated him to be forced to submit to her decision; but he swallowed his annoyance, and said nothing.He went for a walk with Blanche, and confided to her that he was sick of his life. He derived immense consolation from her sympathetic silence, and the return pressure of her fingers when he sought her hand,—the first time she had responded in this way. There being no one in sight, he stooped and kissed her.“You can’t imagine what a help you are to me,” he said.“I am glad,” she answered. “No one has ever wanted my help before.”“I want it,” he said.“Just now,—because you are unhappy. But it won’t always be like that.”“It will,” he insisted. “I shall always want you. You are necessary to me. You make life bearable.”“I don’t think it very likely that I shall be with you much longer,” she said.“Why?” he asked quickly.She shook her head, and gave him one of her sphinx-like smiles.“I can’t explain,” she replied. “But I think it will be as I say.”“You don’t want to leave us?” he asked.She hesitated, and looked straight ahead along the hot white road. The expression of her face was difficult to read; the man, watching it closely, learned nothing from it. He was conscious only of the sudden hardening of the lines about her mouth.“Do I?” she murmured, rather to herself than to him, and added slowly:—“I don’t know.”“That’s nonsense,” he exclaimed impatiently. “You must know whether you are happy with us.”“I am not happy,” she returned, without looking at him. “I don’t think it should be difficult for you to realise that... I don’t think mine is a happy nature,” she continued in low, dispassionate tones. “I can’t remember being ever really happy—as most people are happy—even as a child. There has been little enough of love or brightness in my life.”“I want to show you something of both,” he said. “I could, if you would let me. I care a lot for you, you know.”She smiled drearily.“That’s not of any use to me,” she replied... “You know that.”“I’ll wait,” he said confidently. “You’ll change your mind about that some day.”The sun was sinking low towards the west, disappearing in a crimson glory which reflected its red glow in their faces, and splashed the girl’s white skirt with vivid colour. She stared at the dying splendour of the day with discontented eyes, which read in the vision of this royal withdrawal the melancholy inevitableness of destiny,—the futility of striving against the combined forces of nature and habit and inclination. Why, as Arnott argued, should one refuse what life offered from some unprofitable idea of right? Life had offered her so little: the only gladness she had known came to her through this man’s disloyal affection. Nothing could result from their intercourse. Already it caused her more pain than pleasure. But the unwholesome flattery of his attentions held her captive to the intoxicating excitement of the senses. Each new licence he permitted himself, against which she offered the vain resistance of a half-heartened remonstrance, left her more unguarded to his persistent attack. She despised herself for accepting his caresses, for allowing him to talk to her as he did. Always she resolved that each time should be the last; and on the next occasion she yielded to him again. When the mind becomes subordinated to the senses moral victory is impossible.“Let us rest here a while,” Arnott said.He drew her aside from the road, and spread his coat for her under the shade of a tree. He seated himself beside her, and smoked and talked disconnectedly about himself,—of the aimlessness of his life, of his unrealised hopes, his disappointments, and the unsatisfying nature of his married life. He did not speak to her of love; he contented himself with trying to arouse her sympathy, and to place the disloyalty of his conduct in a less condemnatory light. He was the misunderstood, unappreciated husband, whose sole function in his wife’s eyes was to provide her with the agreeable and comfortable things of life.If this description was not altogether consistent with the home life as she had observed it when she first came to live with them, Blanche ascribed the discrepancy to her want of perception, or to the decent deceptions he had practised in order to keep up before the world a pretence of domestic amiability. She was convinced he was quite sincere in what he told her. He was, as a matter of fact, talking himself into a belief in Pamela’s coldness. He began to feel genuinely sorry for himself in the rôle of the unappreciated husband divorced from the sympathies of an indifferent wife. Pamela was indifferent of late, he reflected; she had grown strangely independent of him.“You see how it is?” he said, and gazed appealingly into the dark calm eyes that were watching him in wondering earnestness, while their owner listened compassionately to this tale of married infelicity. “It’s all the children with her. I don’t count in the ordinary sense. God knows why I married! I’ve half a mind to chuck it—to disappear. There are times when I feel things can’t go on like this much longer. A man hates being thwarted. That’s what I am,—thwarted continually.”He dug his heel into the ground and uprooted little tufts of grass and kicked them irritably aside.“If it wasn’t for you,” he said, “I couldn’t stick it. You are so sweet and understanding and considerate. When I am with you I can let myself out, and that eases the strain. Don’t you ever marry, Blanche,” he added abruptly. “It’s the very devil to be tied hand and foot for life... the very devil.”“I am never likely to have the opportunity,” she answered in her cool, indifferent manner. “I don’t get on with men. They always want to be amused, and I have nothing to say to them. No man, save you, has ever troubled to talk to me.”“I’m glad of that,” he said. “It’s selfish of me; but I like to feel that I have your undisputed friendship. I’m a monopolist. A woman who held me alone in her thoughts could have the best of me,—the whole of me. I would give up everything for her.”“I suppose most men think that of themselves,” observed Blanche. “But a man’s world holds other things than love—a woman’s world also, for that matter, though it is not generally considered to. No person gets the whole of another person; at most one only shares.”“That’s a frigid philosophy,” he said. “You are too young to be cynical.”“I am young only in years,” she answered. “I’ve never had any youth. I don’t know what it is to feel girlish. All my life has been spent in looking after other people’s babies, with an insufficient education to fit me for anything else. That sort of life doesn’t tend to make one youthful.”“It’s a rotten shame,” he declared. “I’d like to take you out of it, and give you a right good time. I’d teach you how to be young.”“I believe you could,” she said, and smiled suddenly. “Do you know what I covet,” she asked abruptly, “more than anything in the world? Money.” She emitted a bitter little laugh. “Now, confess, you don’t think that altogether nice of me.”“Well, I don’t know,” he replied. “Life without money would be fairly dull. I had rather you had owned to a more feminine desire; it would seem more natural.”“Not really,” she contradicted. “Where will you find a woman who will marry a poor man if a richer offers? Every one wants wealth. It is the only thing which gives one power, and is never disappointing. If one is wealthy one can snap one’s fingers at the world.”“By Jove!” he muttered.He looked at her oddly, removing the cigar from his mouth and waving aside the smoke rings for his better observation of the intent, inscrutable face, which in its earnest concentration appeared wholly unaware of his scrutiny and the criticism in his eyes. He was busy taking stock of her, summing up from this unexpected admission to the secrecy of her innermost thoughts, the nature of this surprisingly new feminine type who imagined herself symbolic of all womanhood. Like himself, she was thorough egoist, hugging to her embittered, discontented soul the sense of her own importance and the world’s callous neglect. All the submissiveness, the gentle deferential manner which had won for her Mrs Carruthers’ patronage, and the confidence of Pamela, fell from her like a soft garment which has concealed effectively the deformities it cloaked. The passionate, hungry, dissatisfied soul of the girl was bared to the man’s gaze. He recognised her true self for the first time, and smiled to himself at the revelation. He took pleasure in the knowledge that he was a wealthy man.“If a rich man offered, I suppose you would marry him?” he said, brutally outspoken.She did not resent the grossness of the question, neither did she give him a direct answer. She plucked the head from a wild flower growing in the grass, and pulled it to pieces abstractedly while she talked.“Wealth, when it is a personal possession, brings one absolute power,” she said slowly. “When one benefits through another’s wealth one can only enjoy what it gives. If I had money of my own, I should be glad; but I shall never have it. If I were a man I would get it—somehow.”He laughed.“That kind of reckless ambition leads men occasionally into awkward scrapes,” he said. “Finance with a disregard for the methods of acquirement is folly. Your feminine logic disqualifies you for the profession.”She looked at him a little contemptuously.“A man always considers a woman a fool in business matters,” she said.“You’ve a good deal as a sex to learn yet,” he returned, unmoved.“Ah, well!” She threw away the petals of the flower and stood up. “It’s all idle talk, anyway. I suppose if I had even a moderate fortune I’d do as other women occasionally do, invest it in something absolutely safe.” She glanced at his recumbent figure, and at the coat lying on the ground. “If we don’t turn back, we shall be late; and Mrs Arnott will be displeased with me... I am sorry my holiday is drawing to an end.”“So am I,” he said.He picked up his coat, and vainly endeavoured to shake out the creases.“It tells a tale,” he said.Blanche held it for him while he got into it. She straightened the collar and pressed it into shape. He swung round suddenly and caught her round the waist and kissed her.“One day,” he said, still holding her with his arm, “you shall have a right royal holiday, and do as much spending as your avarice dictates. I’d enjoy being your banker.”She flushed hotly and withdrew from the encircling arm.“You must never say a thing like that to me again,” she said.Arnott merely smiled. The cloak once discarded can never be resumed as an effective disguise. He had summed her up in his mind and placed her to his entire satisfaction. She was no more sincere and no less vulnerable than the rest of her sex. Arnott held women cheaply in his thoughts, as men of his disposition are wont to do. The only woman whose cold virtue had opposed his libertine nature was his wife in England; and he hated her memory even.
Men of Arnott’s type are most dangerous on account of their unscrupulousness. A man who will commit bigamy because he recognises that the virtue of the woman he desires is proof against any relationship save the honourably married state, is capable of the further infamy of unfaithfulness to the woman he has wronged. Faithfulness is an unknown quality in such natures; it is at variance with every other predominant quality that goes to the making of such men. Arnott was already unfaithful to Pamela in his thoughts. His sudden infatuation for the governess of his children developed surprisingly until it became an obsession. In his preference for her society ordinary caution was disregarded, and little by little the last decent pretences were allowed to slip away.
Pamela began to be dimly aware of certain things during their stay at Muizenberg. Arnott spent a great deal of time in Miss Maitland’s company. He took her motoring, while Pamela remained with the children, and in the evenings, when she and the children were at tea, they went for long walks together, returning only in time for dinner. Pamela thought little of this at first. She had elected to be with the children, and had refused to motor with Herbert; she was pleased when he asked Blanche to accompany him. But after a while these excursions became a daily practice; the morning bathe was merely a pretext for teaching Blanche to swim Arnott pleased himself without any reference whatever to Pamela’s wishes or convenience. She felt indignant. It was time, she decided, to remonstrate with him on the impropriety of paying such marked attention to the girl. She particularly disliked his conduct towards her in the water. After all, Blanche was in a sense in her charge; she was responsible for her while she remained in her family.
She informed Arnott on one occasion, when they were alone together, that he spent too much time with Miss Maitland, and was unnecessarily familiar. She objected to his addressing her by her Christian name. He lost his temper at that. He didn’t see any harm in it, he told her; she often called her Blanche.
“That’s different,” Pamela answered. “It is scarcely a reason for your doing so. I don’t like it.”
After that he was rather more careful, and indulged in these familiarities only when he felt certain that Pamela could not overhear. But his conduct in other respects continued to affront her, and spoilt her enjoyment entirely of the holiday which had promised so much pleasure at the beginning. She felt only anxious to return home. Had it not been for the disappointment it would have occasioned the children, she would have curtailed the holiday.
When the fortnight was nearly expired, Arnott proposed remaining at Muizenberg for another week, but Pamela refused to do this. He did not urge her. He had put forward the suggestion in an offhand, self-conscious manner; and when she objected, he merely remarked that he thought it would be nice for the children, and then dropped the subject. But her refusal incensed him. Opposition to his wishes always made him angry. It exasperated him to be forced to submit to her decision; but he swallowed his annoyance, and said nothing.
He went for a walk with Blanche, and confided to her that he was sick of his life. He derived immense consolation from her sympathetic silence, and the return pressure of her fingers when he sought her hand,—the first time she had responded in this way. There being no one in sight, he stooped and kissed her.
“You can’t imagine what a help you are to me,” he said.
“I am glad,” she answered. “No one has ever wanted my help before.”
“I want it,” he said.
“Just now,—because you are unhappy. But it won’t always be like that.”
“It will,” he insisted. “I shall always want you. You are necessary to me. You make life bearable.”
“I don’t think it very likely that I shall be with you much longer,” she said.
“Why?” he asked quickly.
She shook her head, and gave him one of her sphinx-like smiles.
“I can’t explain,” she replied. “But I think it will be as I say.”
“You don’t want to leave us?” he asked.
She hesitated, and looked straight ahead along the hot white road. The expression of her face was difficult to read; the man, watching it closely, learned nothing from it. He was conscious only of the sudden hardening of the lines about her mouth.
“Do I?” she murmured, rather to herself than to him, and added slowly:—“I don’t know.”
“That’s nonsense,” he exclaimed impatiently. “You must know whether you are happy with us.”
“I am not happy,” she returned, without looking at him. “I don’t think it should be difficult for you to realise that... I don’t think mine is a happy nature,” she continued in low, dispassionate tones. “I can’t remember being ever really happy—as most people are happy—even as a child. There has been little enough of love or brightness in my life.”
“I want to show you something of both,” he said. “I could, if you would let me. I care a lot for you, you know.”
She smiled drearily.
“That’s not of any use to me,” she replied... “You know that.”
“I’ll wait,” he said confidently. “You’ll change your mind about that some day.”
The sun was sinking low towards the west, disappearing in a crimson glory which reflected its red glow in their faces, and splashed the girl’s white skirt with vivid colour. She stared at the dying splendour of the day with discontented eyes, which read in the vision of this royal withdrawal the melancholy inevitableness of destiny,—the futility of striving against the combined forces of nature and habit and inclination. Why, as Arnott argued, should one refuse what life offered from some unprofitable idea of right? Life had offered her so little: the only gladness she had known came to her through this man’s disloyal affection. Nothing could result from their intercourse. Already it caused her more pain than pleasure. But the unwholesome flattery of his attentions held her captive to the intoxicating excitement of the senses. Each new licence he permitted himself, against which she offered the vain resistance of a half-heartened remonstrance, left her more unguarded to his persistent attack. She despised herself for accepting his caresses, for allowing him to talk to her as he did. Always she resolved that each time should be the last; and on the next occasion she yielded to him again. When the mind becomes subordinated to the senses moral victory is impossible.
“Let us rest here a while,” Arnott said.
He drew her aside from the road, and spread his coat for her under the shade of a tree. He seated himself beside her, and smoked and talked disconnectedly about himself,—of the aimlessness of his life, of his unrealised hopes, his disappointments, and the unsatisfying nature of his married life. He did not speak to her of love; he contented himself with trying to arouse her sympathy, and to place the disloyalty of his conduct in a less condemnatory light. He was the misunderstood, unappreciated husband, whose sole function in his wife’s eyes was to provide her with the agreeable and comfortable things of life.
If this description was not altogether consistent with the home life as she had observed it when she first came to live with them, Blanche ascribed the discrepancy to her want of perception, or to the decent deceptions he had practised in order to keep up before the world a pretence of domestic amiability. She was convinced he was quite sincere in what he told her. He was, as a matter of fact, talking himself into a belief in Pamela’s coldness. He began to feel genuinely sorry for himself in the rôle of the unappreciated husband divorced from the sympathies of an indifferent wife. Pamela was indifferent of late, he reflected; she had grown strangely independent of him.
“You see how it is?” he said, and gazed appealingly into the dark calm eyes that were watching him in wondering earnestness, while their owner listened compassionately to this tale of married infelicity. “It’s all the children with her. I don’t count in the ordinary sense. God knows why I married! I’ve half a mind to chuck it—to disappear. There are times when I feel things can’t go on like this much longer. A man hates being thwarted. That’s what I am,—thwarted continually.”
He dug his heel into the ground and uprooted little tufts of grass and kicked them irritably aside.
“If it wasn’t for you,” he said, “I couldn’t stick it. You are so sweet and understanding and considerate. When I am with you I can let myself out, and that eases the strain. Don’t you ever marry, Blanche,” he added abruptly. “It’s the very devil to be tied hand and foot for life... the very devil.”
“I am never likely to have the opportunity,” she answered in her cool, indifferent manner. “I don’t get on with men. They always want to be amused, and I have nothing to say to them. No man, save you, has ever troubled to talk to me.”
“I’m glad of that,” he said. “It’s selfish of me; but I like to feel that I have your undisputed friendship. I’m a monopolist. A woman who held me alone in her thoughts could have the best of me,—the whole of me. I would give up everything for her.”
“I suppose most men think that of themselves,” observed Blanche. “But a man’s world holds other things than love—a woman’s world also, for that matter, though it is not generally considered to. No person gets the whole of another person; at most one only shares.”
“That’s a frigid philosophy,” he said. “You are too young to be cynical.”
“I am young only in years,” she answered. “I’ve never had any youth. I don’t know what it is to feel girlish. All my life has been spent in looking after other people’s babies, with an insufficient education to fit me for anything else. That sort of life doesn’t tend to make one youthful.”
“It’s a rotten shame,” he declared. “I’d like to take you out of it, and give you a right good time. I’d teach you how to be young.”
“I believe you could,” she said, and smiled suddenly. “Do you know what I covet,” she asked abruptly, “more than anything in the world? Money.” She emitted a bitter little laugh. “Now, confess, you don’t think that altogether nice of me.”
“Well, I don’t know,” he replied. “Life without money would be fairly dull. I had rather you had owned to a more feminine desire; it would seem more natural.”
“Not really,” she contradicted. “Where will you find a woman who will marry a poor man if a richer offers? Every one wants wealth. It is the only thing which gives one power, and is never disappointing. If one is wealthy one can snap one’s fingers at the world.”
“By Jove!” he muttered.
He looked at her oddly, removing the cigar from his mouth and waving aside the smoke rings for his better observation of the intent, inscrutable face, which in its earnest concentration appeared wholly unaware of his scrutiny and the criticism in his eyes. He was busy taking stock of her, summing up from this unexpected admission to the secrecy of her innermost thoughts, the nature of this surprisingly new feminine type who imagined herself symbolic of all womanhood. Like himself, she was thorough egoist, hugging to her embittered, discontented soul the sense of her own importance and the world’s callous neglect. All the submissiveness, the gentle deferential manner which had won for her Mrs Carruthers’ patronage, and the confidence of Pamela, fell from her like a soft garment which has concealed effectively the deformities it cloaked. The passionate, hungry, dissatisfied soul of the girl was bared to the man’s gaze. He recognised her true self for the first time, and smiled to himself at the revelation. He took pleasure in the knowledge that he was a wealthy man.
“If a rich man offered, I suppose you would marry him?” he said, brutally outspoken.
She did not resent the grossness of the question, neither did she give him a direct answer. She plucked the head from a wild flower growing in the grass, and pulled it to pieces abstractedly while she talked.
“Wealth, when it is a personal possession, brings one absolute power,” she said slowly. “When one benefits through another’s wealth one can only enjoy what it gives. If I had money of my own, I should be glad; but I shall never have it. If I were a man I would get it—somehow.”
He laughed.
“That kind of reckless ambition leads men occasionally into awkward scrapes,” he said. “Finance with a disregard for the methods of acquirement is folly. Your feminine logic disqualifies you for the profession.”
She looked at him a little contemptuously.
“A man always considers a woman a fool in business matters,” she said.
“You’ve a good deal as a sex to learn yet,” he returned, unmoved.
“Ah, well!” She threw away the petals of the flower and stood up. “It’s all idle talk, anyway. I suppose if I had even a moderate fortune I’d do as other women occasionally do, invest it in something absolutely safe.” She glanced at his recumbent figure, and at the coat lying on the ground. “If we don’t turn back, we shall be late; and Mrs Arnott will be displeased with me... I am sorry my holiday is drawing to an end.”
“So am I,” he said.
He picked up his coat, and vainly endeavoured to shake out the creases.
“It tells a tale,” he said.
Blanche held it for him while he got into it. She straightened the collar and pressed it into shape. He swung round suddenly and caught her round the waist and kissed her.
“One day,” he said, still holding her with his arm, “you shall have a right royal holiday, and do as much spending as your avarice dictates. I’d enjoy being your banker.”
She flushed hotly and withdrew from the encircling arm.
“You must never say a thing like that to me again,” she said.
Arnott merely smiled. The cloak once discarded can never be resumed as an effective disguise. He had summed her up in his mind and placed her to his entire satisfaction. She was no more sincere and no less vulnerable than the rest of her sex. Arnott held women cheaply in his thoughts, as men of his disposition are wont to do. The only woman whose cold virtue had opposed his libertine nature was his wife in England; and he hated her memory even.
Chapter Seventeen.That night Blanche sat up late in the little bedroom leading out from the room where the children slept. She sat at the open window, leaning with her arms on the sill, looking out at the sea. The moon silvered the waters and touched the lazy waves where they folded over before breaking upon the sands with a white darting flame, like liquid fire glancing from wave to wave. The murmur of the sea was in her ears, and a warm salt breeze blew in through the opening and stirred the heavy tresses of dark hair that, unloosened, fell about her bare shoulders in becoming disarray. Seen thus, with the light of the moon upon it, the calm face, in its dark setting, was strangely alluring, almost disturbingly beautiful. The discontent in the sombre eyes, the weary droop of her pose, lent a pathos that harmonised with the surroundings, with the serene lonely beauty of the night, and the restless murmur of the sea.Beneath the outward quiet of her bearing, a ferment of passionate emotions stirred incessantly. The girl’s spirit was in fierce revolt; all the pride in her nature was up in arms. Certain things which Arnott had said to her on their walk that evening brought the angry blood surging to her cheeks merely to recall. She realised clearly that to remain in her present position in his household and keep her self-respect was impossible; to do so after what had passed were to give him the right to insult her. And yet she did not want to leave. The man exercised a hypnotic fascination over her. He was the only man who had ever made love to her,—who possessed the power to quicken her pulses, and bring a gladness and a softened look into her eyes. She believed she loved him. In an undisciplined, passionate way she did love him. He satisfied the hunger-ache in her heart. He was the sole human being to discover in her qualities to admire and like. No one, man or woman, had found her sufficiently attractive to desire her friendship. Blanche hated her own sex, and for the greater part despised men. For Arnott she experienced a kind of shrinking respect. She admired his strength and virility, his temperamental and intellectual force; even his position as a man of wealth and social standing appealed to the latent ambition of her avaricious nature. Because of these advantages which she enjoyed as his wife, she envied Pamela bitterly.In the next room the boy awoke and broke into fitful crying at finding himself alone. The girl frowned impatiently, but she did not move immediately from her position at the window. The Arnotts’ room was immediately opposite, with only the narrow space of the landing separating the bedroom doors. If the children cried in the night-time it was not her business to attend to them. Nevertheless, as the sobbing continued, she roused herself and went softly into the room, and bent over the child’s bed, across which the moonlight fell wanly, bathing the little rounded limbs in its white light. Blanche picked up the sheet which had fallen to the floor and spread it over the boy. Her face, as she hung over him, and patted the tiny shoulder soothingly, was infinitely womanly. The child was only half awake, and at her touch, lulled into a sense of security by her presence, he sunk quickly back into slumber.As the sobbing died away the door of the room opened and Arnott entered. Seeing the girl there, he closed the door softly behind him and advanced to the bed and stood beside it, watching her as she bent over the child, with the moonlight falling upon her, revealing the white arms and bare shoulders, and the disarray of her hair. She had taken off her dress because the night was oppressive; her deshabille, and the consciousness of his gaze brought the hot colour to her cheeks. She straightened herself, and, satisfied that the child slept, turned and faced him in quick embarrassment.“Why are you here?” she whispered. “You shouldn’t come in here. Go back.”“I heard the child cry,” he answered. “I didn’t suppose I should find you here. Why are you not in bed?”“I couldn’t rest,” she said. “I was sitting at my window looking out at the sea. Then the boy awoke... You shouldn’t have come in. Your wife—”“She is asleep,” he returned... “Besides, what does it matter?”He made a movement towards her, but she drew back quickly.“Blanche!” he muttered.She swept the hair from her face with a weary gesture, and stood, a drooping, dejected figure in the dim light, regarding the man with cold, resentful eyes.“You are making life very hard for me,” she said. “Why don’t you leave me alone? To-day you have made me almost hate you. You said things which made me mad.”“I love you,” he whispered sullenly. “I can’t help that, can I?”“Love!” The scorn in her voice stung him. She pointed to the closed door. “In pity’s name, go now, before you compromise me utterly. Let your love show that much consideration for me.”Without a word he turned and left the room, and she heard him enter his own room and shut the door softly behind him.Cautious as had been his movements, Pamela was fully aroused. She lifted herself in bed, and surveyed him as he entered with wide, surprised eyes: their regard disconcerted him enormously. He had not anticipated her wakefulness; and he lied awkwardly in answer to her inquiries. She lay back again on the pillow without making any response. He wondered how long she had been awake, and whether she had heard the opening and shutting of the children’s door. He would have been wiser, he decided, had he made a truthful statement of his excursion; the unconvincing falsehood had suggested a sinister motive for his midnight wandering.For neither Blanche nor Pamela was there any further sleep; Arnott alone slumbered dreamlessly throughout the hot hours of the brief night.The following day they left Muizenberg. They did not return in the order in which they had arrived. Arnott motored home alone. He left earlier than the others. At breakfast he announced his intention of starting immediately, and asked Pamela if she was driving with him. To his immense relief she decided to return by train with the children. Although no reference had been made to the previous night, he was uncomfortably aware that he was convicted of lying. He resented this. He was angry with himself for having told that unnecessary lie; he was more angry with Pamela for having, as he realised she had done, detected the lie. He did not feel at his ease with her. Had she accused him openly he would have blustered and asserted his right to act as it pleased him; since she chose to ignore the matter, he felt himself at a disadvantage. She was placing him deliberately in the wrong. This incensed him. Why, he asked himself with an oath, should she adopt this self-righteous pose and snub him by her silence? He was not going to tolerate that sort of thing. He would put his foot down, put it down pretty effectively, and make her realise that he was master in his own home.That was the attitude he assumed when absent from her; when confronted with her gentle, dignified presence he was considerably less bold. He shuffled and dissembled, and endeavoured by fitful bursts of kindness, too forced to be convincing, to sustain the fiction of his unalterable affection.Pamela was a woman who believed in the power of silence. To upbraid a man, however deserving he were of reproof, was wasted effort; it gave him an excuse for anger,—an angry person being unreasonable, nothing is gained by exciting his ire. Nevertheless, her distrust once aroused, she became watchful and suspicious. What she observed during the next few weeks decided her that Blanche must go. She could no longer doubt that between her husband and the governess existed a secret understanding prejudicial to the happiness of all concerned.The thing was an amazing revelation to Pamela. Though she had realised for a long while that Herbert’s love for her was no longer of the ardent quality that at one time, when separation had seemed imminent, had made their parting impossible, she had not supposed, despite the warning in his wife’s letter, despite her own bitter experience in watching the waning of his love, that he was a man of loose principles who pursued women idly for the gratification of a sensual nature. The discovery was a shock to her. She felt wounded and humiliated. It was an added degradation for her to reflect that the man she had loved so well, who had ruined her life, for whose sake she was living, according to the world’s judgment, in sin, was not the fine character she had believed him to be,—was merely a selfish profligate, hunting women for his pleasure, and carelessly breaking their lives. At least she would save Blanche from him, if that were possible. It was no easy task for Pamela to undertake. She lacked the power of the wife’s authority; and she realised perfectly that it was the lack of this power which made Arnott so brutally indifferent to her disapproval.When she lodged her complaint he flew into a rage. It was at night when, Blanche having retired, they were alone together in the drawing-room. Arnott had been out of the room when Blanche left it; he was frequently absent from the room about that hour; Pamela knew quite well that he was in the habit of waylaying the girl on the stairs. When he entered, carrying the glass of whisky which was the ostensible reason for his absence, she met him with the announcement that she intended to part with Blanche and revert to the system of a coloured nurse for the children.“What for?” he demanded, and reddened awkwardly.Pamela regarded him steadily.“I do not think it wise to have her in the house,” she answered. “You don’t need to ask my reason. You are quite aware why I consider her an unfit companion for my children.”“Look here!” he said. He placed the glass he carried on a table, and approached the sofa on which she was seated, and stood leaning against the head of it, looking at her angrily. “You’re fond of taking that tone lately. I don’t like it. What the devil do you mean by your insinuations?”“Need we discuss,” she said, “what is so flagrant and abominable? You know what I mean. You have given me every occasion lately for distrusting you.”“I suppose you are jealous?” he said. “Good Lord!”He tapped the floor irritably with his foot, and eyed her for a second or so in silence. Then he leaned suddenly towards her.“Suppose I insist on her remaining?” he asked, his face on a level with hers. “Suppose I put my foot down? ... You’ve no right to object.”Pamela’s expression froze as she stared bade into his angry eyes. Not at once did she grasp the magnitude of the insult he flung at her; as his meaning broke fully upon her, she whitened to the lips.“Ah! dear heaven!” she cried, and drew bade as though he had struck her. “To think that you should say that to me,—that you should hold me so cheaply in your thoughts! How dare you?”“Cheap!” he sneered. “Women are cheap—and ungrateful. I’ve given you everything you wanted; I’ve denied you nothing... I’ve been generous. It has been a fair exchange. If there are things you don’t like, you’ve got to put up with them. You’ve got to stand this sort of thing.” He worked himself into a rage. “You and your damned jealousy!” he shouted. “I’ve had enough of it. I can’t be decently civil to a girl but you take it in the light of a personal slight. I won’t hear any more of this tom-foolery. The girl stays. I won’t be brow-beaten in this fashion.”“Very well,” Pamela said. Despite her quiet manner, her voice broke; she was trembling from head to foot. “In that case, it is I who will go. If I had realised three years ago the position in which you held me, I would have left you then. Although to part then would have caused me pain, it would have left untarnished my faith in you. You’ve killed that.”He made a grab at her and caught her by the shoulder and shook her roughly.“By heaven!” he cried. “You tempt me to strike you. So you would leave me, would you? What do you suppose will become of you and the children without my protection? ... You’ve lived with me for eight years,—you’ve had everything I could give you; and in a moment of beastly jealousy you talk as lightly of leaving me as though I were nothing to you. What are you going to do if you leave my protection?”“I earned my own living before I met you,” she answered.“You hadn’t the children then,” he reminded her.“No,” Pamela admitted, and her eyes filled with tears.“Don’t you think they have a right to be considered?” he demanded. “You are not so damned selfish as to deny that, I imagine. If you leave my home, you ruin their future.”He was quick to see his advantage. He did not wish her to take the step she threatened. Social ostracism in two countries was rather much for a man, who has passed his youth, to face complacently. He had come to a time of life when the comforts of a home are indispensable; knocking about the world, even if accompanied by a mistress, did not appeal to his fastidiousness. Her threat had taken him by surprise; he had not considered this possibility; it found him unprepared. He pressed his point more insistently.“You’ve got to consider them,” he persisted. “If things leak out it will be beastly awkward for them when they are older. You’ve no right to make them suffer. You’ve no right to force poverty on them as well as disgrace. And it will be poverty. If you leave me, I will do nothing for you, nor for them.”At that she turned her face and regarded him fixedly.“If I leave you,” she said, “I wouldn’t desire you to do anything for me,—but I can compel you to provide for the children.”He stared at her. He apprehended her meaning fully, and his face went a dull red.“So you’ve sunk to that?” he said. “You’d show up well—wouldn’t you?—as prosecutrix in a case of bigamy.”He moved away, and stood with his back to her, trying to master his anger, trying to resist the devil in him which tempted him to murder her. At that moment he hated her as passionately as at one time he had loved her. It would have given him immense satisfaction to have hurt her, to have seen her wince under his hands.“Oh! you hold a trump card in that knowledge,” he muttered. “It was clever of you to have thought of that.”Pamela made no response. She remained perfectly motionless, looking miserably away from him, staring unseeingly straight before her. Arnott glanced at her contemptuously, and flung out of the room.
That night Blanche sat up late in the little bedroom leading out from the room where the children slept. She sat at the open window, leaning with her arms on the sill, looking out at the sea. The moon silvered the waters and touched the lazy waves where they folded over before breaking upon the sands with a white darting flame, like liquid fire glancing from wave to wave. The murmur of the sea was in her ears, and a warm salt breeze blew in through the opening and stirred the heavy tresses of dark hair that, unloosened, fell about her bare shoulders in becoming disarray. Seen thus, with the light of the moon upon it, the calm face, in its dark setting, was strangely alluring, almost disturbingly beautiful. The discontent in the sombre eyes, the weary droop of her pose, lent a pathos that harmonised with the surroundings, with the serene lonely beauty of the night, and the restless murmur of the sea.
Beneath the outward quiet of her bearing, a ferment of passionate emotions stirred incessantly. The girl’s spirit was in fierce revolt; all the pride in her nature was up in arms. Certain things which Arnott had said to her on their walk that evening brought the angry blood surging to her cheeks merely to recall. She realised clearly that to remain in her present position in his household and keep her self-respect was impossible; to do so after what had passed were to give him the right to insult her. And yet she did not want to leave. The man exercised a hypnotic fascination over her. He was the only man who had ever made love to her,—who possessed the power to quicken her pulses, and bring a gladness and a softened look into her eyes. She believed she loved him. In an undisciplined, passionate way she did love him. He satisfied the hunger-ache in her heart. He was the sole human being to discover in her qualities to admire and like. No one, man or woman, had found her sufficiently attractive to desire her friendship. Blanche hated her own sex, and for the greater part despised men. For Arnott she experienced a kind of shrinking respect. She admired his strength and virility, his temperamental and intellectual force; even his position as a man of wealth and social standing appealed to the latent ambition of her avaricious nature. Because of these advantages which she enjoyed as his wife, she envied Pamela bitterly.
In the next room the boy awoke and broke into fitful crying at finding himself alone. The girl frowned impatiently, but she did not move immediately from her position at the window. The Arnotts’ room was immediately opposite, with only the narrow space of the landing separating the bedroom doors. If the children cried in the night-time it was not her business to attend to them. Nevertheless, as the sobbing continued, she roused herself and went softly into the room, and bent over the child’s bed, across which the moonlight fell wanly, bathing the little rounded limbs in its white light. Blanche picked up the sheet which had fallen to the floor and spread it over the boy. Her face, as she hung over him, and patted the tiny shoulder soothingly, was infinitely womanly. The child was only half awake, and at her touch, lulled into a sense of security by her presence, he sunk quickly back into slumber.
As the sobbing died away the door of the room opened and Arnott entered. Seeing the girl there, he closed the door softly behind him and advanced to the bed and stood beside it, watching her as she bent over the child, with the moonlight falling upon her, revealing the white arms and bare shoulders, and the disarray of her hair. She had taken off her dress because the night was oppressive; her deshabille, and the consciousness of his gaze brought the hot colour to her cheeks. She straightened herself, and, satisfied that the child slept, turned and faced him in quick embarrassment.
“Why are you here?” she whispered. “You shouldn’t come in here. Go back.”
“I heard the child cry,” he answered. “I didn’t suppose I should find you here. Why are you not in bed?”
“I couldn’t rest,” she said. “I was sitting at my window looking out at the sea. Then the boy awoke... You shouldn’t have come in. Your wife—”
“She is asleep,” he returned... “Besides, what does it matter?”
He made a movement towards her, but she drew back quickly.
“Blanche!” he muttered.
She swept the hair from her face with a weary gesture, and stood, a drooping, dejected figure in the dim light, regarding the man with cold, resentful eyes.
“You are making life very hard for me,” she said. “Why don’t you leave me alone? To-day you have made me almost hate you. You said things which made me mad.”
“I love you,” he whispered sullenly. “I can’t help that, can I?”
“Love!” The scorn in her voice stung him. She pointed to the closed door. “In pity’s name, go now, before you compromise me utterly. Let your love show that much consideration for me.”
Without a word he turned and left the room, and she heard him enter his own room and shut the door softly behind him.
Cautious as had been his movements, Pamela was fully aroused. She lifted herself in bed, and surveyed him as he entered with wide, surprised eyes: their regard disconcerted him enormously. He had not anticipated her wakefulness; and he lied awkwardly in answer to her inquiries. She lay back again on the pillow without making any response. He wondered how long she had been awake, and whether she had heard the opening and shutting of the children’s door. He would have been wiser, he decided, had he made a truthful statement of his excursion; the unconvincing falsehood had suggested a sinister motive for his midnight wandering.
For neither Blanche nor Pamela was there any further sleep; Arnott alone slumbered dreamlessly throughout the hot hours of the brief night.
The following day they left Muizenberg. They did not return in the order in which they had arrived. Arnott motored home alone. He left earlier than the others. At breakfast he announced his intention of starting immediately, and asked Pamela if she was driving with him. To his immense relief she decided to return by train with the children. Although no reference had been made to the previous night, he was uncomfortably aware that he was convicted of lying. He resented this. He was angry with himself for having told that unnecessary lie; he was more angry with Pamela for having, as he realised she had done, detected the lie. He did not feel at his ease with her. Had she accused him openly he would have blustered and asserted his right to act as it pleased him; since she chose to ignore the matter, he felt himself at a disadvantage. She was placing him deliberately in the wrong. This incensed him. Why, he asked himself with an oath, should she adopt this self-righteous pose and snub him by her silence? He was not going to tolerate that sort of thing. He would put his foot down, put it down pretty effectively, and make her realise that he was master in his own home.
That was the attitude he assumed when absent from her; when confronted with her gentle, dignified presence he was considerably less bold. He shuffled and dissembled, and endeavoured by fitful bursts of kindness, too forced to be convincing, to sustain the fiction of his unalterable affection.
Pamela was a woman who believed in the power of silence. To upbraid a man, however deserving he were of reproof, was wasted effort; it gave him an excuse for anger,—an angry person being unreasonable, nothing is gained by exciting his ire. Nevertheless, her distrust once aroused, she became watchful and suspicious. What she observed during the next few weeks decided her that Blanche must go. She could no longer doubt that between her husband and the governess existed a secret understanding prejudicial to the happiness of all concerned.
The thing was an amazing revelation to Pamela. Though she had realised for a long while that Herbert’s love for her was no longer of the ardent quality that at one time, when separation had seemed imminent, had made their parting impossible, she had not supposed, despite the warning in his wife’s letter, despite her own bitter experience in watching the waning of his love, that he was a man of loose principles who pursued women idly for the gratification of a sensual nature. The discovery was a shock to her. She felt wounded and humiliated. It was an added degradation for her to reflect that the man she had loved so well, who had ruined her life, for whose sake she was living, according to the world’s judgment, in sin, was not the fine character she had believed him to be,—was merely a selfish profligate, hunting women for his pleasure, and carelessly breaking their lives. At least she would save Blanche from him, if that were possible. It was no easy task for Pamela to undertake. She lacked the power of the wife’s authority; and she realised perfectly that it was the lack of this power which made Arnott so brutally indifferent to her disapproval.
When she lodged her complaint he flew into a rage. It was at night when, Blanche having retired, they were alone together in the drawing-room. Arnott had been out of the room when Blanche left it; he was frequently absent from the room about that hour; Pamela knew quite well that he was in the habit of waylaying the girl on the stairs. When he entered, carrying the glass of whisky which was the ostensible reason for his absence, she met him with the announcement that she intended to part with Blanche and revert to the system of a coloured nurse for the children.
“What for?” he demanded, and reddened awkwardly.
Pamela regarded him steadily.
“I do not think it wise to have her in the house,” she answered. “You don’t need to ask my reason. You are quite aware why I consider her an unfit companion for my children.”
“Look here!” he said. He placed the glass he carried on a table, and approached the sofa on which she was seated, and stood leaning against the head of it, looking at her angrily. “You’re fond of taking that tone lately. I don’t like it. What the devil do you mean by your insinuations?”
“Need we discuss,” she said, “what is so flagrant and abominable? You know what I mean. You have given me every occasion lately for distrusting you.”
“I suppose you are jealous?” he said. “Good Lord!”
He tapped the floor irritably with his foot, and eyed her for a second or so in silence. Then he leaned suddenly towards her.
“Suppose I insist on her remaining?” he asked, his face on a level with hers. “Suppose I put my foot down? ... You’ve no right to object.”
Pamela’s expression froze as she stared bade into his angry eyes. Not at once did she grasp the magnitude of the insult he flung at her; as his meaning broke fully upon her, she whitened to the lips.
“Ah! dear heaven!” she cried, and drew bade as though he had struck her. “To think that you should say that to me,—that you should hold me so cheaply in your thoughts! How dare you?”
“Cheap!” he sneered. “Women are cheap—and ungrateful. I’ve given you everything you wanted; I’ve denied you nothing... I’ve been generous. It has been a fair exchange. If there are things you don’t like, you’ve got to put up with them. You’ve got to stand this sort of thing.” He worked himself into a rage. “You and your damned jealousy!” he shouted. “I’ve had enough of it. I can’t be decently civil to a girl but you take it in the light of a personal slight. I won’t hear any more of this tom-foolery. The girl stays. I won’t be brow-beaten in this fashion.”
“Very well,” Pamela said. Despite her quiet manner, her voice broke; she was trembling from head to foot. “In that case, it is I who will go. If I had realised three years ago the position in which you held me, I would have left you then. Although to part then would have caused me pain, it would have left untarnished my faith in you. You’ve killed that.”
He made a grab at her and caught her by the shoulder and shook her roughly.
“By heaven!” he cried. “You tempt me to strike you. So you would leave me, would you? What do you suppose will become of you and the children without my protection? ... You’ve lived with me for eight years,—you’ve had everything I could give you; and in a moment of beastly jealousy you talk as lightly of leaving me as though I were nothing to you. What are you going to do if you leave my protection?”
“I earned my own living before I met you,” she answered.
“You hadn’t the children then,” he reminded her.
“No,” Pamela admitted, and her eyes filled with tears.
“Don’t you think they have a right to be considered?” he demanded. “You are not so damned selfish as to deny that, I imagine. If you leave my home, you ruin their future.”
He was quick to see his advantage. He did not wish her to take the step she threatened. Social ostracism in two countries was rather much for a man, who has passed his youth, to face complacently. He had come to a time of life when the comforts of a home are indispensable; knocking about the world, even if accompanied by a mistress, did not appeal to his fastidiousness. Her threat had taken him by surprise; he had not considered this possibility; it found him unprepared. He pressed his point more insistently.
“You’ve got to consider them,” he persisted. “If things leak out it will be beastly awkward for them when they are older. You’ve no right to make them suffer. You’ve no right to force poverty on them as well as disgrace. And it will be poverty. If you leave me, I will do nothing for you, nor for them.”
At that she turned her face and regarded him fixedly.
“If I leave you,” she said, “I wouldn’t desire you to do anything for me,—but I can compel you to provide for the children.”
He stared at her. He apprehended her meaning fully, and his face went a dull red.
“So you’ve sunk to that?” he said. “You’d show up well—wouldn’t you?—as prosecutrix in a case of bigamy.”
He moved away, and stood with his back to her, trying to master his anger, trying to resist the devil in him which tempted him to murder her. At that moment he hated her as passionately as at one time he had loved her. It would have given him immense satisfaction to have hurt her, to have seen her wince under his hands.
“Oh! you hold a trump card in that knowledge,” he muttered. “It was clever of you to have thought of that.”
Pamela made no response. She remained perfectly motionless, looking miserably away from him, staring unseeingly straight before her. Arnott glanced at her contemptuously, and flung out of the room.
Chapter Eighteen.Pamela rose the next morning with a dumb anger in her heart. She had passed a sleepless night,—a night of anguish, such as she had not experienced since the time following her discovery of the existence of Arnott’s wife. She did not know how to act. She needed advice sorely, and knew of no one to whom she could turn in her trouble. The delicacy of her position made it impossible for her to seek outside help. Whatever difficulty arose through her relations with Arnott, she must face it alone.On one thing she was resolved; the night’s reflection had confirmed her on this point; Blanche must go at once. Arnott’s insistence that the girl should remain weighed with her very lightly, and failed to shake her determination.She went downstairs with her decision arrived at, with no intention of discussing the matter again. There was no one to discuss it with she found on descending; Arnott had breakfasted and left the house, taking a small amount of luggage with him. This, she realised, was his way of evading unpleasantness. Possibly the recognition that he dared not further assert his authority, coupled with a dislike for admitting defeat had moved him to this course as the only dignified way out of a dilemma. He left her to act on her own responsibility.Pamela breakfasted alone. For the first time since their marriage she experienced a relief in his absence. She lingered over the meal, encouraging a sense of independence which this solitariness gave her. Had she known that he had gone away for ever it would not have troubled her at the moment. She did not wish him back. Realising this with a faint touch of surprise, she set herself to analyse her feelings in regard to him. It caused her something of a shock to discover from this analysis that in three years her love for him had shrunk to inconsiderable dimensions. She was conscious of a feeling of contempt for him which came dangerously near to repulsion. The scene of the previous night had killed her respect for him finally. Further, it had convinced her that he had ceased entirely to care for her. This man of uncontrolled passions had wearied of her, as doubtless he had wearied of his first wife. Possibly, if she had left him three years ago before his passion had begun to wane, his love would have endured longer. With men of Arnott’s temperament the inaccessible is always the most desired.When she had finished breakfast she went upstairs to the nursery for her difficult interview with the governess. She had expected Miss Maitland to come down with the children. It was past the hour for their morning walk. To her amazement, when she entered the nursery, Maggie was in sole charge, endeavouring with the willing incapacity of her type to get the children into their walking things. Pamela was helping her by amusing the boy while she fitted his cap over the unruly curls. At sight of his mother the boy fought vigorously to go to her, while Pamela darted gleefully forward with the news that there was no Miss Maitland anywhere; she had looked in the bed and under the bed, and Maggie had hunted too. But Miss Maitland had gone, and her clothes had gone. Some one had come quite early and carried her trunk away.“Perhaps,” Pamela ended cheerfully, “some one came and fetched her away in the night.”Her mother turned white while she listened to the child’s excited explanation. She took the boy from Maggie, and while she proceeded with his dressing, asked in a low voice what the girl knew about the matter. Maggie’s information was not more lucid than the child’s. No one, it appeared, had seen Miss Maitland leave; but a strange boy had come for her luggage at seven, and John had carried it downstairs. The strange boy had left a note for the missis. Pamela asked for the note. Maggie had not seen it, but she believed it had been left in the hall.Pamela finished dressing the children, and led little David downstairs. She told Maggie to take them in the garden and let them play in the shade; she would come out later and join them. Then she turned back, white and trembling, an ugly doubt haunting her mind, and searched for the note that had been left for her. Would the note, she wondered, explain this horrible mystery, or merely increase her doubt? It was lying where the boy had left it on the hall table, and it was addressed, she saw, in Blanche’s handwriting. She opened it and read it where she stood. The writer had omitted the formality of the customary mode of address, she had also omitted to sign her name at the end.“When you read this,” she had written, “you will probably have heard of my departure, and you will feel less surprise at the abrupt manner of my leaving when I say that I was an unwilling listener to what passed between you and Mr Arnott after I left the drawing-room last night. For the sake of my reputation I could not remain beneath your roof an hour longer than was necessary. I made my preparations last night and left early this morning. I warn you, by the knowledge I possess, to be careful how you discuss me and my actions. If my reputation suffers I shall know where to attach the blame.”Pamela folded the note carefully, and carried it with her into the sitting-room, and sat down to think. This girl held the dangerous knowledge of her false position as Arnott’s wife. She meant to make use of the knowledge if at any time it suited her to use it. The thought was bitterly humiliating. For the time it swamped every other consideration, even the doubt which had haunted her before reading the note was lost sight of in the shock of this discovery.She tried to recall what had been said on the previous evening that had revealed their secret to this girl, who from her own admission had been eavesdropping. But of that interview no clear recollection remained. She could not recall the scraps of actual talk; only the bitterness of that monstrous duologue lingered in her memory, and the insults Herbert had flung at her in his anger, and her own threat to leave him. Reviewing the scene now, the sordidness of it gripped her, disgusted her. And to think that a third person should have deliberately listened to that painful, miserable interview. The thought of Blanche’s duplicity enraged her; the veiled threat conveyed in the note angered her more than it alarmed her. How dared she threaten her with the disclosure of her infamously acquired knowledge?She read the note carefully a second time. There was no suggestion in it that the writer’s flight were in any sense connected with Arnott’s sudden departure. And yet that veiled threat at the end...Pamela pondered over this doubt for a long while; and the longer she considered it the greater the doubt grew. It occurred to her that Blanche had had some motive in penning those offensive words. Could it be possible that after his angry exit last night Herbert had gone to this girl and arranged with her the manner of her leaving? Pamela wished she knew. Better the ugly truth than the horror of this uncertainty. At least she would know how to act if she knew the worst. Possibly he would write, she reflected. He could scarcely behave so outrageously as to leave home in this secret fashion and tender no explanation of his whereabouts, or his purpose in leaving. There was nothing for it but to wait and see what the days brought forth. But this waiting in utter ignorance was galling. It forced home to her to the full the degradation of her false position. Had it not been for the children she would have quitted his home finally. But, as Arnott had reminded her, the children were her first consideration; she had forfeited the right to consider herself.She allowed an hour to slip by in these unprofitable and bitter reflections before she recollected her promise to the children, and rising, went out into the garden to join them. It caused her a shock of dismay to discover Mrs Carruthers sitting under the trees with them—a puzzled, perturbed Mrs Carruthers, fully informed by Pamela, the younger, of the governess’ mysterious disappearance. She looked up when Pamela came towards them, rose, and advanced to meet her.“My dear,” she said, “you look worried. Whatever is this I’ve been hearing from Pamela? She tells me Blanche has gone.”It was impossible, Pamela realised, to keep Mrs Carruthers in ignorance of obvious domestic events; but she would have preferred to delay talking over these disturbing matters until she was better prepared. It had not occurred to her, until confronted with the actual difficulty, that she would be called upon to discuss with any interested inquirer the mysterious details of the absconding of her children’s governess, which, in conjunction with Arnott’s unexpected departure on the same day, might very easily give rise to gossip. Arnott’s interest in the governess had aroused attention at Muizenberg, as Pamela was perfectly aware. She could only hope to avert scandal in regard to this event by the caution with which she explained it. So far as Mrs Carruthers was concerned she felt that she could rely upon her absolute discretion; she was the one woman she knew in whom she could have confided, had it been possible to confide in any one. But the nature of her trouble sealed her lips; it was too sordid and shameful a story to impart to other ears.“Yes; she has gone,” she answered.“But why?” demanded Mrs Carruthers, who felt, through having recommended Blanche, in a sense responsible for the girl.“She ran away,” piped Pamela junior’s shrill treble.“Go and play,” said Pamela. “Mummy wants to talk business.”“But you said you’d come and play too,” the child protested.“So I will presently. Run away now, like a good girlie.”Mrs Carruthers drew a hand through Pamela’s arm and strolled with her along the path.“I don’t understand,” she said. “Why should Blanche leave you in this manner? It’s such a mad thing to do. What can the girl have been thinking of? It ruins her prospects. One couldn’t recommend her after such extraordinary behaviour. Maggie tells me she went before any one was up. But why, Pamela? She must have had a reason.”“I suppose she had,” Pamela agreed. “The only thing I can think of is that she knew I was going to dismiss her and simply forestalled me.”Mrs Carruthers looked perplexed.“I thought you were entirely satisfied with her,” she remarked.“No,” Pamela returned. “In many respects she was admirable. But I never cared much for her; and as you know I found her system in the nursery very trying. She had too much authority. I meant to try a nurse again.”“Well, I am astonished,” Mrs Carruthers exclaimed. “I believed she was a perfect treasure. But the fact of your intention to dismiss her is no warrant for her extraordinary behaviour. To run away like that! My dear Pamela, it’s absurd. What does Mr Arnott think about it?”At this sudden and wholly unforeseen question Pamela’s composure forsook her. She flushed red, and then went so very pale that Mrs Carruthers, watching her, could not fail to detect her agitation. She did not know what to make of these signs of distress. Had Pamela been guilty of making away with the governess she could not have appeared more conscience-stricken. Her eyes refused to meet Mrs Carruthers’ steady gaze: they shifted uneasily and sought the gravel of the path.“I don’t know,” she stammered.The answer, as much as her manner of uttering it, sounded disingenuous even in her own ears. She made an effort to collect her scattered wits, conscious that she was conveying a suggestion to her friend’s mind of the very suspicions she was anxious to avert.“Herbert had left before we knew about Blanche,” she explained with nervous haste. “He went away this morning immediately after breakfast. You see,” she looked at Mrs Carruthers quickly, with wide apprehensive eyes which appealed mutely for sympathy, “that makes it so much more difficult for me,—his not being here to advise me. Oh! Connie, I am so bothered. I don’t know how to act.”“That’s awkward,” said Mrs Carruthers, feeling too bewildered to detect that the remark was scarcely tactful.She thought for a moment.“I’ll ask Dickie when he gets home this evening what he thinks you ought to do. He’ll come in and have a chat with you, if you like. After all, it isn’t your business to bother about the girl if she chooses to serve you such a trick. I should put her out of my mind, if I were in your place. I am disappointed in that girl.”Suddenly tears rose in Pamela’s eyes. She tried hard to blink them away unseen; but they welled bigger and bigger until they overflowed and rolled down her white cheeks. Mrs Carruthers slipped an arm about her waist.“You poor dear!” she said.“It’s stupid of me,” murmured Pamela apologetically. “But I’m so worried. I feel all unstrung. It seems so odd for Blanche to have gone away like that. It’s so difficult to explain.”“I shouldn’t attempt explanations,” Mrs Carruthers advised. “When do you expect Mr Arnott home?” she asked.Again the distressing change of colour showed in Pamela’s face, and again her embarrassed, reluctant admission that she did not know when to expect him puzzled her listener anew. The whole business was incomprehensible.Mrs Carruthers’ knowledge of the Arnott’s affairs was greater than Pamela realised. Being fairly astute, her perception had led her to detect more of the breach than was obvious to the ordinary observer. Had she not already suspected it, Pamela’s manner would have convinced her that the governess’ flight was not alone responsible for her present distress. A more personal trouble could alone account for the unhinged state of her mind. To avoid adding to her embarrassment, she left the subject with the reflection that dwelling on annoyances merely aggravated them, and proposed joining the children.But Pamela’s face haunted her for the rest of the day. Despite a strong disinclination to allow the suspicion, the belief that Arnott’s absence and the girl’s flight were in some way connected, and not merely coincident, as his wife had so lamely endeavoured to convey, was difficult to banish. Pamela’s very anxiety to disprove the connection suggested to the unbiassed mind that the connection was there. Mrs Carruthers did not like Arnott. She threw that fact into the balance of her judgment, and resolved to give him the benefit of the doubt.
Pamela rose the next morning with a dumb anger in her heart. She had passed a sleepless night,—a night of anguish, such as she had not experienced since the time following her discovery of the existence of Arnott’s wife. She did not know how to act. She needed advice sorely, and knew of no one to whom she could turn in her trouble. The delicacy of her position made it impossible for her to seek outside help. Whatever difficulty arose through her relations with Arnott, she must face it alone.
On one thing she was resolved; the night’s reflection had confirmed her on this point; Blanche must go at once. Arnott’s insistence that the girl should remain weighed with her very lightly, and failed to shake her determination.
She went downstairs with her decision arrived at, with no intention of discussing the matter again. There was no one to discuss it with she found on descending; Arnott had breakfasted and left the house, taking a small amount of luggage with him. This, she realised, was his way of evading unpleasantness. Possibly the recognition that he dared not further assert his authority, coupled with a dislike for admitting defeat had moved him to this course as the only dignified way out of a dilemma. He left her to act on her own responsibility.
Pamela breakfasted alone. For the first time since their marriage she experienced a relief in his absence. She lingered over the meal, encouraging a sense of independence which this solitariness gave her. Had she known that he had gone away for ever it would not have troubled her at the moment. She did not wish him back. Realising this with a faint touch of surprise, she set herself to analyse her feelings in regard to him. It caused her something of a shock to discover from this analysis that in three years her love for him had shrunk to inconsiderable dimensions. She was conscious of a feeling of contempt for him which came dangerously near to repulsion. The scene of the previous night had killed her respect for him finally. Further, it had convinced her that he had ceased entirely to care for her. This man of uncontrolled passions had wearied of her, as doubtless he had wearied of his first wife. Possibly, if she had left him three years ago before his passion had begun to wane, his love would have endured longer. With men of Arnott’s temperament the inaccessible is always the most desired.
When she had finished breakfast she went upstairs to the nursery for her difficult interview with the governess. She had expected Miss Maitland to come down with the children. It was past the hour for their morning walk. To her amazement, when she entered the nursery, Maggie was in sole charge, endeavouring with the willing incapacity of her type to get the children into their walking things. Pamela was helping her by amusing the boy while she fitted his cap over the unruly curls. At sight of his mother the boy fought vigorously to go to her, while Pamela darted gleefully forward with the news that there was no Miss Maitland anywhere; she had looked in the bed and under the bed, and Maggie had hunted too. But Miss Maitland had gone, and her clothes had gone. Some one had come quite early and carried her trunk away.
“Perhaps,” Pamela ended cheerfully, “some one came and fetched her away in the night.”
Her mother turned white while she listened to the child’s excited explanation. She took the boy from Maggie, and while she proceeded with his dressing, asked in a low voice what the girl knew about the matter. Maggie’s information was not more lucid than the child’s. No one, it appeared, had seen Miss Maitland leave; but a strange boy had come for her luggage at seven, and John had carried it downstairs. The strange boy had left a note for the missis. Pamela asked for the note. Maggie had not seen it, but she believed it had been left in the hall.
Pamela finished dressing the children, and led little David downstairs. She told Maggie to take them in the garden and let them play in the shade; she would come out later and join them. Then she turned back, white and trembling, an ugly doubt haunting her mind, and searched for the note that had been left for her. Would the note, she wondered, explain this horrible mystery, or merely increase her doubt? It was lying where the boy had left it on the hall table, and it was addressed, she saw, in Blanche’s handwriting. She opened it and read it where she stood. The writer had omitted the formality of the customary mode of address, she had also omitted to sign her name at the end.
“When you read this,” she had written, “you will probably have heard of my departure, and you will feel less surprise at the abrupt manner of my leaving when I say that I was an unwilling listener to what passed between you and Mr Arnott after I left the drawing-room last night. For the sake of my reputation I could not remain beneath your roof an hour longer than was necessary. I made my preparations last night and left early this morning. I warn you, by the knowledge I possess, to be careful how you discuss me and my actions. If my reputation suffers I shall know where to attach the blame.”
Pamela folded the note carefully, and carried it with her into the sitting-room, and sat down to think. This girl held the dangerous knowledge of her false position as Arnott’s wife. She meant to make use of the knowledge if at any time it suited her to use it. The thought was bitterly humiliating. For the time it swamped every other consideration, even the doubt which had haunted her before reading the note was lost sight of in the shock of this discovery.
She tried to recall what had been said on the previous evening that had revealed their secret to this girl, who from her own admission had been eavesdropping. But of that interview no clear recollection remained. She could not recall the scraps of actual talk; only the bitterness of that monstrous duologue lingered in her memory, and the insults Herbert had flung at her in his anger, and her own threat to leave him. Reviewing the scene now, the sordidness of it gripped her, disgusted her. And to think that a third person should have deliberately listened to that painful, miserable interview. The thought of Blanche’s duplicity enraged her; the veiled threat conveyed in the note angered her more than it alarmed her. How dared she threaten her with the disclosure of her infamously acquired knowledge?
She read the note carefully a second time. There was no suggestion in it that the writer’s flight were in any sense connected with Arnott’s sudden departure. And yet that veiled threat at the end...
Pamela pondered over this doubt for a long while; and the longer she considered it the greater the doubt grew. It occurred to her that Blanche had had some motive in penning those offensive words. Could it be possible that after his angry exit last night Herbert had gone to this girl and arranged with her the manner of her leaving? Pamela wished she knew. Better the ugly truth than the horror of this uncertainty. At least she would know how to act if she knew the worst. Possibly he would write, she reflected. He could scarcely behave so outrageously as to leave home in this secret fashion and tender no explanation of his whereabouts, or his purpose in leaving. There was nothing for it but to wait and see what the days brought forth. But this waiting in utter ignorance was galling. It forced home to her to the full the degradation of her false position. Had it not been for the children she would have quitted his home finally. But, as Arnott had reminded her, the children were her first consideration; she had forfeited the right to consider herself.
She allowed an hour to slip by in these unprofitable and bitter reflections before she recollected her promise to the children, and rising, went out into the garden to join them. It caused her a shock of dismay to discover Mrs Carruthers sitting under the trees with them—a puzzled, perturbed Mrs Carruthers, fully informed by Pamela, the younger, of the governess’ mysterious disappearance. She looked up when Pamela came towards them, rose, and advanced to meet her.
“My dear,” she said, “you look worried. Whatever is this I’ve been hearing from Pamela? She tells me Blanche has gone.”
It was impossible, Pamela realised, to keep Mrs Carruthers in ignorance of obvious domestic events; but she would have preferred to delay talking over these disturbing matters until she was better prepared. It had not occurred to her, until confronted with the actual difficulty, that she would be called upon to discuss with any interested inquirer the mysterious details of the absconding of her children’s governess, which, in conjunction with Arnott’s unexpected departure on the same day, might very easily give rise to gossip. Arnott’s interest in the governess had aroused attention at Muizenberg, as Pamela was perfectly aware. She could only hope to avert scandal in regard to this event by the caution with which she explained it. So far as Mrs Carruthers was concerned she felt that she could rely upon her absolute discretion; she was the one woman she knew in whom she could have confided, had it been possible to confide in any one. But the nature of her trouble sealed her lips; it was too sordid and shameful a story to impart to other ears.
“Yes; she has gone,” she answered.
“But why?” demanded Mrs Carruthers, who felt, through having recommended Blanche, in a sense responsible for the girl.
“She ran away,” piped Pamela junior’s shrill treble.
“Go and play,” said Pamela. “Mummy wants to talk business.”
“But you said you’d come and play too,” the child protested.
“So I will presently. Run away now, like a good girlie.”
Mrs Carruthers drew a hand through Pamela’s arm and strolled with her along the path.
“I don’t understand,” she said. “Why should Blanche leave you in this manner? It’s such a mad thing to do. What can the girl have been thinking of? It ruins her prospects. One couldn’t recommend her after such extraordinary behaviour. Maggie tells me she went before any one was up. But why, Pamela? She must have had a reason.”
“I suppose she had,” Pamela agreed. “The only thing I can think of is that she knew I was going to dismiss her and simply forestalled me.”
Mrs Carruthers looked perplexed.
“I thought you were entirely satisfied with her,” she remarked.
“No,” Pamela returned. “In many respects she was admirable. But I never cared much for her; and as you know I found her system in the nursery very trying. She had too much authority. I meant to try a nurse again.”
“Well, I am astonished,” Mrs Carruthers exclaimed. “I believed she was a perfect treasure. But the fact of your intention to dismiss her is no warrant for her extraordinary behaviour. To run away like that! My dear Pamela, it’s absurd. What does Mr Arnott think about it?”
At this sudden and wholly unforeseen question Pamela’s composure forsook her. She flushed red, and then went so very pale that Mrs Carruthers, watching her, could not fail to detect her agitation. She did not know what to make of these signs of distress. Had Pamela been guilty of making away with the governess she could not have appeared more conscience-stricken. Her eyes refused to meet Mrs Carruthers’ steady gaze: they shifted uneasily and sought the gravel of the path.
“I don’t know,” she stammered.
The answer, as much as her manner of uttering it, sounded disingenuous even in her own ears. She made an effort to collect her scattered wits, conscious that she was conveying a suggestion to her friend’s mind of the very suspicions she was anxious to avert.
“Herbert had left before we knew about Blanche,” she explained with nervous haste. “He went away this morning immediately after breakfast. You see,” she looked at Mrs Carruthers quickly, with wide apprehensive eyes which appealed mutely for sympathy, “that makes it so much more difficult for me,—his not being here to advise me. Oh! Connie, I am so bothered. I don’t know how to act.”
“That’s awkward,” said Mrs Carruthers, feeling too bewildered to detect that the remark was scarcely tactful.
She thought for a moment.
“I’ll ask Dickie when he gets home this evening what he thinks you ought to do. He’ll come in and have a chat with you, if you like. After all, it isn’t your business to bother about the girl if she chooses to serve you such a trick. I should put her out of my mind, if I were in your place. I am disappointed in that girl.”
Suddenly tears rose in Pamela’s eyes. She tried hard to blink them away unseen; but they welled bigger and bigger until they overflowed and rolled down her white cheeks. Mrs Carruthers slipped an arm about her waist.
“You poor dear!” she said.
“It’s stupid of me,” murmured Pamela apologetically. “But I’m so worried. I feel all unstrung. It seems so odd for Blanche to have gone away like that. It’s so difficult to explain.”
“I shouldn’t attempt explanations,” Mrs Carruthers advised. “When do you expect Mr Arnott home?” she asked.
Again the distressing change of colour showed in Pamela’s face, and again her embarrassed, reluctant admission that she did not know when to expect him puzzled her listener anew. The whole business was incomprehensible.
Mrs Carruthers’ knowledge of the Arnott’s affairs was greater than Pamela realised. Being fairly astute, her perception had led her to detect more of the breach than was obvious to the ordinary observer. Had she not already suspected it, Pamela’s manner would have convinced her that the governess’ flight was not alone responsible for her present distress. A more personal trouble could alone account for the unhinged state of her mind. To avoid adding to her embarrassment, she left the subject with the reflection that dwelling on annoyances merely aggravated them, and proposed joining the children.
But Pamela’s face haunted her for the rest of the day. Despite a strong disinclination to allow the suspicion, the belief that Arnott’s absence and the girl’s flight were in some way connected, and not merely coincident, as his wife had so lamely endeavoured to convey, was difficult to banish. Pamela’s very anxiety to disprove the connection suggested to the unbiassed mind that the connection was there. Mrs Carruthers did not like Arnott. She threw that fact into the balance of her judgment, and resolved to give him the benefit of the doubt.
Chapter Nineteen.Desire to be perfectly fair in her judgment of Arnott did not prevent Mrs Carruthers from imparting her views to her husband, when discussing with him that evening the mysterious happenings next door. She first acquainted him with the bare details, and asked for his opinion; since he had no opinion to offer she proceeded to unfold hers. Carruthers was astounded; he was also, to his wife’s amazement, annoyed with her.“Perhaps you won’t be so ready to recommend people in future,” he remarked. “This is what comes of interfering in other people’s concerns.”“Don’t be so unreasonable,” she expostulated. “The girl appeared to be all right. She was with the Smiths for years.”“Smith’s dead, you see,” he answered.Mrs Carruthers stared.“You think she was that sort of girl?” she asked.“Well, I don’t know,” he returned, and looked a trifle sheepish. “But Arnott got her talked about pretty badly at Muizenberg. A fellow who was there at the same time told me it was scandalous the way he went on.”Mrs Carruthers regarded her husband for a second or two in meditative silence. There was something in her suspicion after all; it was not merely prejudice which had been responsible for connecting Arnott’s absence with the girl’s flight in her mind.“Dickie,” she said, “I believe they have gone away together.”“I shouldn’t wonder.”“I believe she knows it,” Mrs Carruthers pursued. She recalled Pamela’s stricken face, the evasive, frightened look in her eyes, her halting admission of ignorance as to her husband’s movements. “The brute!” she murmured, and added abruptly, “What a horrible thing to have happened. How is it going to end?”“The usual way, I imagine,” Carruthers replied. “Unless of course she decides to keep quiet for the sake of the kids.”A pause followed. Carruthers bit the end off a cigar and lighted it irritably. He was wishing that the Arnott’s affairs would not intrude themselves on his domestic peace. From his knowledge of his wife he realised that, however disinclined, he would be dragged into the business somehow. He anticipated her proposal that he should act as adviser to the deserted wife. In general he was not abnormally selfish; but he disliked being mixed up in other people’s scandals; and he did not see how he could keep out of this very well. He smoked energetically, and maintained a non-committal silence. In the meanwhile Mrs Carruthers rapidly reviewed the situation.“But the girl...” she said suddenly, and broke off with a thoughtful puckering of her brows. “And I wanted George Dare to marry that girl,” she added, ending the pause.“It’s a let off for him anyway,” remarked Carruthers.“I would never have believed her capable of such wickedness,” she observed presently.“I don’t see why you should believe it of her now,” he ventured. “After all, you know nothing. There may be quite a different explanation of Arnott’s absence. Didn’t his wife say where he had gone?”“I didn’t like to ask her. She seemed to be in entire ignorance as to his movements. And she was so upset. It was her manner that made me suspicious. She was dazed, and—oh! hopeless. No one would take the disappearance of a governess to heart like that. I told her you would run in for a chat and advise her what to do.”He groaned.“Why couldn’t you leave me out of it?” he protested. “I can’t advise her. I’ve no experience in these things. You can tell her from me not to bother her head about the matter. I’ll make inquiries to-morrow, and find out what I can. I don’t suppose it will lead to much. The girl is old enough to look after herself, and Arnott’s movements are no concern of mine.”“Well, really! Dickie, you might be more helpful,” she said.“That is being helpful,” he insisted. “It’s a much more reasonable idea than yours, and more discreet in the circumstances. If things are anything like so bad as you are trying to make out, the less I run in there the better.”Mrs Carruthers laughed.“You nice chivalrous person!” she scoffed. “A fine friend you make for a woman in distress.”“Distressed women aren’t my forte,” he said. “You should enlist the sympathies of an unmarried man. These bachelors in their sublime ignorance are bolder.”“I would enlist the help of George Dare,” she said, “if it wasn’t for the unfortunate circumstance of his being—”She broke off abruptly. To finish the sentence would have been to abuse Dare’s confidence, and she had no wish to do that.“Of his being what?” Carruthers inquired, looking up.“So far away,” she finished lamely. “You see, you are on the spot.”“Yes,” he admitted. “I wish I wasn’t. As though a man’s own domestic troubles aren’t sufficient without his being expected to shoulder another man’s neglected responsibilities. There are people whose business it is to undertake these cases. If Mrs Arnott wants advice she knows where to procure it.”“Oh! a woman never goes to a lawyer until she has exhausted every other resource,” Mrs Carruthers interposed.“You are letting your imagination run away with your commonsense,” Carruthers resumed. “It is more than possible that you have discovered the proverbial mare’s nest. Because Arnott leaves home a few hours after the governess has done a bunk is no reason for concluding that they have eloped together. The explanation is probably much more simple.”“Then I wish you would explain it,” she said with mild exasperation.“Very likely they had a row,” he returned; “and Arnott cleared out. It’s the male equivalent for feminine hysteria. A jealous woman can make things fairly uncomfortable.”“He shouldn’t give her cause for jealousy.”“Well, there of course,” replied Carruthers, amused, “your argument is unassailable. But these things will happen. Man was born to be a hunter, you know; and throughout the ages woman has remained his favourite quarry. It’s pure instinct with us; and occasionally, as in Arnott’s case, instinct and opportunity occur simultaneously. In employing a good-looking underling, a married woman courts disaster.”“Dickie,” exclaimed his disgusted wife, “how dare you talk like that? I am ashamed of you.”He laughed good-humouredly, and rose from his seat.“And now,” he said, “since you really wish it, I’ll go in and comfort Pamela. I’m in the mood for it.”She gave him a bright look, in which a smiling sarcasm strove with her satisfaction in having gained this concession.“You have just time before dinner, my fine hunter,” she observed. “If Pamela is in the humour, bring her back with you.”Pamela was in no mood to accept an invitation to dine out. She was indeed so distraught in manner and so extraordinarily depressed that Carruthers did not propose it. He did not know what to make of her; but he was of his wife’s opinion that the unceremonious departure of the governess was not a sufficient cause for her obvious distress. Rather than adopt her theory, however, he clung to his belief that the Arnotts had had a domestic difference of more than ordinary seriousness, and that Arnott’s sudden absence was the result. The contemporaneous disappearance of the governess was an awkward development. Had he known where to address the man, he would have wired to him and suggested the propriety of his immediate return. But having in mind what his wife had confided to him, and baffled by Pamela’s extraordinary reticence, it was not in Carruthers to bring himself to the point of asking outright for the address. When he hinted at the advisability of summoning Arnott home, Pamela ignored the suggestion. He inclined to the view that she actually did not know where he was.Very much perplexed, Carruthers returned home. He had relieved Pamela of further responsibility in regard to Blanche Maitland, by promising to look up the girl’s friends and discover, if he could, what had become of her. That was as much as he could do, he informed his wife; and reluctantly confessed, when she dragged the admission from him, that Pamela had not appeared anxious for him to undertake the task. The interview had been most unsatisfactory.“That bears out my suspicion,” Mrs Carruthers declared. “They have gone off together, and Pamela knows it.”“Well, in that case,” Carruthers remarked, as he went in to dinner, “we shall all of us know it quite soon enough.”Carruthers’ subsequent inquiries concerning Blanche Maitland elicited very little information. Her friends, if they knew anything definite, were evidently pledged to secrecy. They were aware that she had left her late employment, but her present whereabouts were unknown to them; they understood she was travelling.That seemed to strengthen his wife’s suspicion, Carruthers decided; but reflecting that it was no business of his, he dismissed the matter from his thoughts, having first informed Pamela that the girl’s friends appeared satisfied as to her well-being, and that therefore there was no need for her to concern herself further about her. Pamela took the news very quietly. She thanked him for the trouble he had been to on her behalf; and it seemed to him that by her manner of thanking him she intimated that there was nothing further he could do. If, as Mrs Carruthers insisted, she knew the two had eloped, it was plain she did not intend to move in the matter for the present. He admired her reserve. Whatever the trouble between herself and her husband might be it was manifest she had no wish to discuss it. Her attitude he considered was highly correct and discreet.Pamela passed an anxious week waiting for news of Arnott, but no letter arrived from him. A fortnight passed, a month, without bringing any news. This neglect confirmed her worst fears. She began seriously to consider her position. If Herbert had deserted her she could not continue living as she was doing in his house. It was monstrous to allow herself to be kept in this manner by a man who no longer wanted her.But the difficulty was how to act. To seek outside advice, it would be necessary to disclose the shameful secret of her marriage. That, she realised, with its consequent disgrace and imprisonment for Herbert, would seem to him a paltry act of revenge on her part. She experienced as great a shrinking from punishing him, as from the thought of publishing her own shame, and bringing ostracism on her children.The expedient of writing to Dare and making the demand on his friendship which he had asked her so urgently to make, crossed her mind more than once. She could consult him without fear that he would reveal her secret to others. His insistent request that she should appeal to him if in any difficulty, seemed almost as though he had foreseen this trouble looming ahead for her. Could it be that he knew something of Arnott’s past? Impossible! No one, save themselves and Lucy Arnott, knew of his bigamous second marriage.She sat down to write to Dare one day at Arnott’s desk in the room he called his study. Save that he kept it for his exclusive use and wrote his letters there, it had no pretence at being a study; no one, least of all Arnott, ever studied there. Pamela opened the desk and searched for writing materials. Then she began a letter to Dare.“You told me once,” she reminded him, “that if ever I was in need of help such as a friend only could render, I was to write to you. My friend, I am in need of help now. I am in great trouble...”Here she broke off, dissatisfied with this attempt, and tore the paper into minute fragments and threw them into the waste-paper basket. Then she started again. She got a little further with the second letter before this too occurred to her as unsatisfactory and followed the fate of the former attempt. In all she wrote six letters, none of which pleased her, and were each in turn consigned to the basket. Then, having exhausted the note-paper, she paused and sat back in the chair and thought. Was it wise after all to write to him? What could he, or any one, do to help her in her present distress? It was a matter which could only be settled between herself and Herbert, unless she was prepared to face the ordeal of a public scandal.But the memory of Dare’s face as he had pleaded with her in the garden, the sympathy of the strong kindly voice, the earnest insistence of his manner when he spoke of his desire to be helpful, and his right as her sincere friend to the privilege of her confidence, awoke in her a craving for his help, for the comfort of his advice. She was conscious also of a wish for his presence; it would be an immense relief merely to talk with him.Quickly she resolved to make a further attempt to write to him, and searched in the desk for another sheet of paper. She opened the drawers, and turned over their contents,—bills principally, and old letters of Arnott’s. From among a pile of loose papers a cablegram fell out, face upward, with a cutting from a newspaper pinned to the back of it. The writing caught Pamela’s eye; the brief message on the little yellow form was fully exposed. “Lucy Arnott died this morning.” And the cablegram was dated ten months ago.Pamela took it up and stared at the message with dull, comprehending eyes. Ten months earlier Arnott had received this news of his wife’s death, and he had withheld the knowledge from her. Ten months ago he had it in his power to legalise their union, and he had not done it. He had wilfully deceived her in the matter of his wife’s death. There was only one interpretation to put upon his conduct: he had no wish, no intention, to right the wrong he had done her.Pamela shivered, and laid the cablegram down on the desk and stared at it, faint and sick with the pain and anger, the shamed resentment with which this knowledge filled her. Arnott’s infamous conduct showed her plainly how lightly he regarded her, how little of honour, of love or respect he felt for the girl he had cheated into marrying him, and had made the mother of his children. Free now to marry her, he was satisfied to keep her in the shameful position of a mistress, and to follow lightly after illicit loves.She recalled his words uttered on the last evening before he left home: “Cheap! Women are cheap.” That probably had been his attitude always in regard to women.She turned back the cablegram and looked at the printed form attached to it. It was a cutting from an English newspaper containing a brief notice of Lucy Arnott’s death. Why, she wondered, had he kept the thing lying about loose in his drawer where any one might read it? She took it up, closed the desk, forgetting Dare and her intention to write to him, forgetting everything in face of this horrible ugly proof of Herbert’s treachery; and going up to her own room, she locked the cablegram away in the safe where she kept her jewels.
Desire to be perfectly fair in her judgment of Arnott did not prevent Mrs Carruthers from imparting her views to her husband, when discussing with him that evening the mysterious happenings next door. She first acquainted him with the bare details, and asked for his opinion; since he had no opinion to offer she proceeded to unfold hers. Carruthers was astounded; he was also, to his wife’s amazement, annoyed with her.
“Perhaps you won’t be so ready to recommend people in future,” he remarked. “This is what comes of interfering in other people’s concerns.”
“Don’t be so unreasonable,” she expostulated. “The girl appeared to be all right. She was with the Smiths for years.”
“Smith’s dead, you see,” he answered.
Mrs Carruthers stared.
“You think she was that sort of girl?” she asked.
“Well, I don’t know,” he returned, and looked a trifle sheepish. “But Arnott got her talked about pretty badly at Muizenberg. A fellow who was there at the same time told me it was scandalous the way he went on.”
Mrs Carruthers regarded her husband for a second or two in meditative silence. There was something in her suspicion after all; it was not merely prejudice which had been responsible for connecting Arnott’s absence with the girl’s flight in her mind.
“Dickie,” she said, “I believe they have gone away together.”
“I shouldn’t wonder.”
“I believe she knows it,” Mrs Carruthers pursued. She recalled Pamela’s stricken face, the evasive, frightened look in her eyes, her halting admission of ignorance as to her husband’s movements. “The brute!” she murmured, and added abruptly, “What a horrible thing to have happened. How is it going to end?”
“The usual way, I imagine,” Carruthers replied. “Unless of course she decides to keep quiet for the sake of the kids.”
A pause followed. Carruthers bit the end off a cigar and lighted it irritably. He was wishing that the Arnott’s affairs would not intrude themselves on his domestic peace. From his knowledge of his wife he realised that, however disinclined, he would be dragged into the business somehow. He anticipated her proposal that he should act as adviser to the deserted wife. In general he was not abnormally selfish; but he disliked being mixed up in other people’s scandals; and he did not see how he could keep out of this very well. He smoked energetically, and maintained a non-committal silence. In the meanwhile Mrs Carruthers rapidly reviewed the situation.
“But the girl...” she said suddenly, and broke off with a thoughtful puckering of her brows. “And I wanted George Dare to marry that girl,” she added, ending the pause.
“It’s a let off for him anyway,” remarked Carruthers.
“I would never have believed her capable of such wickedness,” she observed presently.
“I don’t see why you should believe it of her now,” he ventured. “After all, you know nothing. There may be quite a different explanation of Arnott’s absence. Didn’t his wife say where he had gone?”
“I didn’t like to ask her. She seemed to be in entire ignorance as to his movements. And she was so upset. It was her manner that made me suspicious. She was dazed, and—oh! hopeless. No one would take the disappearance of a governess to heart like that. I told her you would run in for a chat and advise her what to do.”
He groaned.
“Why couldn’t you leave me out of it?” he protested. “I can’t advise her. I’ve no experience in these things. You can tell her from me not to bother her head about the matter. I’ll make inquiries to-morrow, and find out what I can. I don’t suppose it will lead to much. The girl is old enough to look after herself, and Arnott’s movements are no concern of mine.”
“Well, really! Dickie, you might be more helpful,” she said.
“That is being helpful,” he insisted. “It’s a much more reasonable idea than yours, and more discreet in the circumstances. If things are anything like so bad as you are trying to make out, the less I run in there the better.”
Mrs Carruthers laughed.
“You nice chivalrous person!” she scoffed. “A fine friend you make for a woman in distress.”
“Distressed women aren’t my forte,” he said. “You should enlist the sympathies of an unmarried man. These bachelors in their sublime ignorance are bolder.”
“I would enlist the help of George Dare,” she said, “if it wasn’t for the unfortunate circumstance of his being—”
She broke off abruptly. To finish the sentence would have been to abuse Dare’s confidence, and she had no wish to do that.
“Of his being what?” Carruthers inquired, looking up.
“So far away,” she finished lamely. “You see, you are on the spot.”
“Yes,” he admitted. “I wish I wasn’t. As though a man’s own domestic troubles aren’t sufficient without his being expected to shoulder another man’s neglected responsibilities. There are people whose business it is to undertake these cases. If Mrs Arnott wants advice she knows where to procure it.”
“Oh! a woman never goes to a lawyer until she has exhausted every other resource,” Mrs Carruthers interposed.
“You are letting your imagination run away with your commonsense,” Carruthers resumed. “It is more than possible that you have discovered the proverbial mare’s nest. Because Arnott leaves home a few hours after the governess has done a bunk is no reason for concluding that they have eloped together. The explanation is probably much more simple.”
“Then I wish you would explain it,” she said with mild exasperation.
“Very likely they had a row,” he returned; “and Arnott cleared out. It’s the male equivalent for feminine hysteria. A jealous woman can make things fairly uncomfortable.”
“He shouldn’t give her cause for jealousy.”
“Well, there of course,” replied Carruthers, amused, “your argument is unassailable. But these things will happen. Man was born to be a hunter, you know; and throughout the ages woman has remained his favourite quarry. It’s pure instinct with us; and occasionally, as in Arnott’s case, instinct and opportunity occur simultaneously. In employing a good-looking underling, a married woman courts disaster.”
“Dickie,” exclaimed his disgusted wife, “how dare you talk like that? I am ashamed of you.”
He laughed good-humouredly, and rose from his seat.
“And now,” he said, “since you really wish it, I’ll go in and comfort Pamela. I’m in the mood for it.”
She gave him a bright look, in which a smiling sarcasm strove with her satisfaction in having gained this concession.
“You have just time before dinner, my fine hunter,” she observed. “If Pamela is in the humour, bring her back with you.”
Pamela was in no mood to accept an invitation to dine out. She was indeed so distraught in manner and so extraordinarily depressed that Carruthers did not propose it. He did not know what to make of her; but he was of his wife’s opinion that the unceremonious departure of the governess was not a sufficient cause for her obvious distress. Rather than adopt her theory, however, he clung to his belief that the Arnotts had had a domestic difference of more than ordinary seriousness, and that Arnott’s sudden absence was the result. The contemporaneous disappearance of the governess was an awkward development. Had he known where to address the man, he would have wired to him and suggested the propriety of his immediate return. But having in mind what his wife had confided to him, and baffled by Pamela’s extraordinary reticence, it was not in Carruthers to bring himself to the point of asking outright for the address. When he hinted at the advisability of summoning Arnott home, Pamela ignored the suggestion. He inclined to the view that she actually did not know where he was.
Very much perplexed, Carruthers returned home. He had relieved Pamela of further responsibility in regard to Blanche Maitland, by promising to look up the girl’s friends and discover, if he could, what had become of her. That was as much as he could do, he informed his wife; and reluctantly confessed, when she dragged the admission from him, that Pamela had not appeared anxious for him to undertake the task. The interview had been most unsatisfactory.
“That bears out my suspicion,” Mrs Carruthers declared. “They have gone off together, and Pamela knows it.”
“Well, in that case,” Carruthers remarked, as he went in to dinner, “we shall all of us know it quite soon enough.”
Carruthers’ subsequent inquiries concerning Blanche Maitland elicited very little information. Her friends, if they knew anything definite, were evidently pledged to secrecy. They were aware that she had left her late employment, but her present whereabouts were unknown to them; they understood she was travelling.
That seemed to strengthen his wife’s suspicion, Carruthers decided; but reflecting that it was no business of his, he dismissed the matter from his thoughts, having first informed Pamela that the girl’s friends appeared satisfied as to her well-being, and that therefore there was no need for her to concern herself further about her. Pamela took the news very quietly. She thanked him for the trouble he had been to on her behalf; and it seemed to him that by her manner of thanking him she intimated that there was nothing further he could do. If, as Mrs Carruthers insisted, she knew the two had eloped, it was plain she did not intend to move in the matter for the present. He admired her reserve. Whatever the trouble between herself and her husband might be it was manifest she had no wish to discuss it. Her attitude he considered was highly correct and discreet.
Pamela passed an anxious week waiting for news of Arnott, but no letter arrived from him. A fortnight passed, a month, without bringing any news. This neglect confirmed her worst fears. She began seriously to consider her position. If Herbert had deserted her she could not continue living as she was doing in his house. It was monstrous to allow herself to be kept in this manner by a man who no longer wanted her.
But the difficulty was how to act. To seek outside advice, it would be necessary to disclose the shameful secret of her marriage. That, she realised, with its consequent disgrace and imprisonment for Herbert, would seem to him a paltry act of revenge on her part. She experienced as great a shrinking from punishing him, as from the thought of publishing her own shame, and bringing ostracism on her children.
The expedient of writing to Dare and making the demand on his friendship which he had asked her so urgently to make, crossed her mind more than once. She could consult him without fear that he would reveal her secret to others. His insistent request that she should appeal to him if in any difficulty, seemed almost as though he had foreseen this trouble looming ahead for her. Could it be that he knew something of Arnott’s past? Impossible! No one, save themselves and Lucy Arnott, knew of his bigamous second marriage.
She sat down to write to Dare one day at Arnott’s desk in the room he called his study. Save that he kept it for his exclusive use and wrote his letters there, it had no pretence at being a study; no one, least of all Arnott, ever studied there. Pamela opened the desk and searched for writing materials. Then she began a letter to Dare.
“You told me once,” she reminded him, “that if ever I was in need of help such as a friend only could render, I was to write to you. My friend, I am in need of help now. I am in great trouble...”
Here she broke off, dissatisfied with this attempt, and tore the paper into minute fragments and threw them into the waste-paper basket. Then she started again. She got a little further with the second letter before this too occurred to her as unsatisfactory and followed the fate of the former attempt. In all she wrote six letters, none of which pleased her, and were each in turn consigned to the basket. Then, having exhausted the note-paper, she paused and sat back in the chair and thought. Was it wise after all to write to him? What could he, or any one, do to help her in her present distress? It was a matter which could only be settled between herself and Herbert, unless she was prepared to face the ordeal of a public scandal.
But the memory of Dare’s face as he had pleaded with her in the garden, the sympathy of the strong kindly voice, the earnest insistence of his manner when he spoke of his desire to be helpful, and his right as her sincere friend to the privilege of her confidence, awoke in her a craving for his help, for the comfort of his advice. She was conscious also of a wish for his presence; it would be an immense relief merely to talk with him.
Quickly she resolved to make a further attempt to write to him, and searched in the desk for another sheet of paper. She opened the drawers, and turned over their contents,—bills principally, and old letters of Arnott’s. From among a pile of loose papers a cablegram fell out, face upward, with a cutting from a newspaper pinned to the back of it. The writing caught Pamela’s eye; the brief message on the little yellow form was fully exposed. “Lucy Arnott died this morning.” And the cablegram was dated ten months ago.
Pamela took it up and stared at the message with dull, comprehending eyes. Ten months earlier Arnott had received this news of his wife’s death, and he had withheld the knowledge from her. Ten months ago he had it in his power to legalise their union, and he had not done it. He had wilfully deceived her in the matter of his wife’s death. There was only one interpretation to put upon his conduct: he had no wish, no intention, to right the wrong he had done her.
Pamela shivered, and laid the cablegram down on the desk and stared at it, faint and sick with the pain and anger, the shamed resentment with which this knowledge filled her. Arnott’s infamous conduct showed her plainly how lightly he regarded her, how little of honour, of love or respect he felt for the girl he had cheated into marrying him, and had made the mother of his children. Free now to marry her, he was satisfied to keep her in the shameful position of a mistress, and to follow lightly after illicit loves.
She recalled his words uttered on the last evening before he left home: “Cheap! Women are cheap.” That probably had been his attitude always in regard to women.
She turned back the cablegram and looked at the printed form attached to it. It was a cutting from an English newspaper containing a brief notice of Lucy Arnott’s death. Why, she wondered, had he kept the thing lying about loose in his drawer where any one might read it? She took it up, closed the desk, forgetting Dare and her intention to write to him, forgetting everything in face of this horrible ugly proof of Herbert’s treachery; and going up to her own room, she locked the cablegram away in the safe where she kept her jewels.