Chapter Twelve.Of the beauty of friendship much has been said and written, but little of its danger. In a friendship between the sexes there is always danger; for a friendship between a man and a woman is based on an entirely different sentiment from any other relation. The danger may not be apparent; in many cases it is latent; but the spark which will ignite it is present in the attribute of sex, and the unforeseen accident of circumstance may fire it at any moment. Men realise this more readily than women, perhaps because they are less given to subduing these qualities. Dare’s resolve to act on Mrs Carruthers’ advice and flee the danger was the result of his recognition of it. His sudden departure was an acknowledgment of his own weakness, and at the same time a proof of strength of purpose. To act contrary to one’s inclination for the sake of principle entails sacrifice.The sacrifice did not affect him solely. This abrupt cessation of their pleasant intercourse made a fresh break in Pamela’s life. For some weeks after he had gone she missed his society greatly; his frequent, unexpected visits had added a pleasurable excitement to her days; she had grown used to his dropping in at all hours, had grown to look for him. Until he was gone she had not realised how much she had enjoyed these visits; now that they had ceased she felt unaccountably lonely.She sought distraction from the dulness of her home by going out a good deal, and took up again with feverish energy the old round of social pleasures which the tragic discovery of the deception of her marriage had interrupted. She had had little heart for such things of late, and had made the baby’s advent an excuse for retirement.She started entertaining again in the lavish manner of happier days, and so filled in the blank which Dare’s departure had created. She had not suspected until he left how much she had grown to depend on him. It distressed her not a little to discover that she missed him so greatly; she felt ashamed to acknowledge it even to herself.Arnott was on the whole rather pleased to observe what he believed to be Pamela’s reawakened interest in life. He had resented her persistent avoidance of all save a favoured few of her former friends. Her attitude had struck him as a tacit reproach to himself, and this had annoyed him. Her resumption of neglected duties won him over to greater amiability, and kept him more at home. Since the birth of the boy, the care of whom had been a tie upon Pamela, he had fallen into the habit of motoring alone into Cape Town and spending much of his time at his club. The parental rôle was not at all in his line.He could not understand why Pamela refused to engage a capable European nurse, and hand the care of the children over to her. Nevertheless, when Pamela suggested having a governess for them, he opposed the idea vigorously. A nurse was reasonable, he argued; but a governess was not a servant, and would be continually in the way. He disliked the idea of admitting a stranger into the household.Pamela allowed the matter to drop for a time, but she did not give it up entirely. She discussed it with Mrs Carruthers, and Mrs Carruthers made inquiries for her, and ascertained that Blanche Maitland would be quite willing to undertake the position. After the lapse of a few months Pamela broached the project with greater determination. In the interval she invited Blanche to the house on several occasions with a view to accustoming Arnott to her. It was following one of these occasions that she opened the subject again.“That girl seems to be here fairly often,” Arnott remarked. “What is the attraction?”“I like her,” said Pamela. “She is quiet, and nice.”“She’s quiet enough,” he admitted.“I want you to agree to my engaging her as nursery governess,” she said. “Pamela is growing big enough to begin easy lessons, and both the children need a white woman’s care. They must have an educated person with them. It is impossible for me to be with them all day.”“I don’t see why a good European nurse,” he began.But she interrupted him firmly.“There are very few good European nurses to be had out here,” she declared, and urged her reasons more strongly.Arnott was not easily won over. He resented the idea of a stranger in the household, whom he could not ignore as he might a nurse, to whom it would be necessary, he complained, to be civil.“I don’t see why a nurse shouldn’t be good enough for our kids as well as for other people’s,” he grumbled. “A governess is always in the way.”“I will take very good care she doesn’t get in your way,” Pamela returned. “And I don’t fancy you will find it difficult to be civil to Blanche.”“You can’t treat a girl like that as if she were a nursemaid,” he objected.“Of course not. One need not go to extremes either way.”He looked at her with some displeasure, made an impatient sound between his teeth, muttered: “Damn the kids!” and finally gave in.“You’ll never leave off pestering until you get what you want,” he said. “You can try the experiment, but as soon as it becomes a nuisance you will have to make other arrangements.”“All right,” Pamela agreed cheerfully, satisfied at having gained her point, and feeling very little anxiety as to the result of her venture. “You’ll see; it will work admirably. And I shall have far more leisure to devote to your exacting self.”He suddenly smiled.“I’m glad you recognise that you have neglected me of late,” he observed. “I’ve been of no greater account in this household than a piece of waste paper since the boy came.”Pamela flushed painfully. It was the first time Arnott had made any direct allusion to the change that was gradually alienating their sympathies. The knowledge that he too recognised it added to the distress of her own unwilling acceptance of the inevitable estrangement.“I too have felt that we were—were growing a little apart,” she faltered. “You don’t seem to need me quite so much as you did.”“What’s the use of needing you when I can’t have you?” he grumbled. “The kids always come first with you.”“You don’t mean that,” she said quickly.Arnott laughed, and put a careless arm about her shoulders.“I’m only teasing, Pam,” he said. “You don’t stand chaff like you used to. You were rare sport at one time. What’s changing you?”“Life,” she answered quietly.“Oh, rot!” he ejaculated irritably. “That’s talking heroics. Your life runs on fairly even lines. Don’t be melodramatic.”He kissed her lightly, and released her. The next day he brought her a present out from town. In this manner he believed he smoothed away unpleasantness.Pamela settled the matter of the governess by engaging her immediately, thus giving Arnott no opportunity for reconsidering his reluctant acquiescence. Within the month Blanche Maitland was established in the house, and very quickly made herself indispensable to Pamela. She was not only useful with the children; she took over many domestic duties which she contrived to fit in without interfering with her legitimate occupation. Pamela stood out for a time against this encroachment on her province. She was not altogether satisfied to have her home run by a stranger. But Blanche seemed so anxious to prove helpful, and was so excellent with the children, that little by little she gave way, until practically the entire control passed into Miss Maitland’s capable hands. After a while Pamela decided that it was rather agreeable to have the housekeeping worries lifted from her shoulders. She increased Miss Maitland’s salary in recognition of her worth, and became a mere cipher in the management of her home.The arrangement pleased Arnott. Miss Maitland was more efficient as a housekeeper than Pamela had ever been; and her release from these ties enabled his wife to devote more of her time and attention upon himself. She too was happier in the new arrangement. Arnott showed a renewed pleasure in her society. Being a man who did not make friends, his wife’s companionship was to a great extent necessary to him; now that he could enjoy it freely whenever he desired he fell into the habit of wanting her and became somewhat exacting in his demands upon her leisure.But in this selfish dependency on her company there remained little of the eager gladness in each other, the perfect understanding of happier days. Pamela was sensible of the difference, though she tried to ignore it. It was, she felt largely her own fault. In the difficult time following her enlightenment she had lost her influence over Arnott; had allowed the power she had possessed to slip away from her in her timid shrinking from ugly realities, and her newly acquired distrust of himself. She had strained his love and patience often in those days, and she was reaping the result now.These things troubled her no longer to the extent they once had done. She was becoming reconciled to the changes in her life. Although she strove to fight against an increasing indifference in her own feeling towards him, she knew that her love was not as perfect as it had been: it had gone down under the shock, and come out of the wreckage of her happiness a crippled thing.When Pamela allowed her mind to dwell on these matters she became frightened. It was terrifying to contemplate what might result if they ceased finally to care for one another. Life together in such circumstances would become unendurable. Plenty of people lived together who were mutually antipathetic, but not in the dishonoured relations of her union with Arnott. A real love alone offered any extenuation—if extenuation could be urged—in defence of their sin against society. She dared not admit a doubt of her loyal devotion, dared not cease to struggle to retain Herbert’s affection. Her life became an endless fight to keep alive the shrunken image of the old love. A love which needs constant tending and guarding and encouraging is a difficult plant to keep flourishing: when one is compelled to resort to artificial stimulus it is a proof that the nature has gone out of it.Pamela had at one time regarded the Carruthers’ married life as a rather prosy affair; now she was inclined to envy the humdrum content of this eminently well-mated couple. If there was not much actual romance in Connie Carruthers’ life, there was solid satisfaction and entire trust. She and Dick Carruthers had been comrades rather than lovers, and they remained comrades still.“Don’t you think,” Pamela observed to her one day, when she came in to see her godson, and take tea, as she often did, with the children, “that babies make a big difference? ... They seem to come between the parents... They make a break. I suppose it’s because they claim so much of one’s time and attention.”“Yours don’t get it, whatever they may claim,” Mrs Carruthers answered. “And children are the only decent excuse for marriage. I wish I had a dozen.”She looked at Pamela curiously, not quite sure what to make of her speech, and not liking it particularly. The children had just been taken away by Miss Maitland. Pamela had let them go reluctantly. Whatever her opinion as to the desirability of children, she was unquestionably devoted to her own.“They make a difference,” Pamela insisted.“Of course they do. They interfere with one’s comfort. It’s good discipline for selfish people. Why, you silly person, you would be miserable without your babies.”Pamela smiled drearily.“I suppose I should—now. But I sometimes wish they hadn’t come... especially the boy,” she added wistfully.Mrs Carruthers felt slightly uncomfortable. She had an instinctive dread of intimate confidences; and the tone of Pamela’s plaint occurred to her as significant of a desire to unburden herself. If babies in the house upset Arnott’s temper, she did not wish to hear about it. Arnott was a man whom she cordially disliked. It was not in the least surprising to her that Pamela was finding life with him less of an idyll than she had once believed it; the mystery was that she had not suffered disillusion earlier; the man was so absolutely selfish.“It isn’t any use wishing,” she replied with a downright commonsense that damped Pamela’s disposition to be confidential. “And Blanche relieves you of all trouble. You were lucky to secure that girl. I knew she was a treasure. She is the kind of girl who deserves to have a home of her own to run. But men usually marry the helpless, ornamental women; they are connoisseurs merely in exteriors. Not that there is anything amiss with Blanche’s exterior. Dickie admires her tremendously.”“She is very useful,” Pamela said. “The children like her.”“Don’t you?”“Oh! yes, of course.” Pamela’s tone was a little uncertain; it qualified her words, Mrs Carruthers thought. “One can’t have everything,” she went on, in the manner of one weighing advantages against disadvantages, and finding the balance fairly even. “She is an enormous help to me—indeed, I am growing to depend too much on her. But I don’t see enough of the children since she came. When I am home and able to have them, she has some reason which interferes. It is always a sound reason. But there is so much discipline in the nursery now; it robs me of a good deal of enjoyment. The children don’t belong to me any more.”“Well,” said Mrs Carruthers, “you can soon alter that.”“It isn’t so simple as it sounds,” Pamela replied. “I tried at first; but one has to give way. It is all for the benefit of the children. It’s no good employing any one like that, and interfering with her authority. She has to be with them always, and I only see them at odd moments.”She broke off with a laugh.“It’s a shame to inflict all this grumbling on you; but I needed an outlet. It wouldn’t do to grumble to Herbert because he was so greatly against having a governess. He would say it was what he foresaw, and advise me to get rid of her. I shouldn’t like to do that. I always feel easy in my mind about them when I leave them now. She is entirely trustworthy.”“I think I should put my foot down upon that point,” Mrs Carruthers advised. “That sort of thing can become annoying. Some people are greedy for authority, and if you give in to them they become arbitrary. If you want the children any hour of the day, have them, whether it is the time for their rest or any other legitimate exercise.”“And spoil their tempers,” laughed Pamela.“Rubbish!” scoffed Mrs Carruthers. “Temper in the human animal develops naturally. One has to spank it out of them. All children are not brought up by rule, you know; it isn’t possible in some households. We were dragged up; but I must add that our tempers on the whole did not suffer as a result. Keep their little bodies nourished, and their minds will develop of themselves. The one thing, I suppose, every mother strives to do is to develop her baby on the lines she considers the most admirable; and the baby invariably develops on its own lines, because it is an individual. It is difficult to regard the infant as an individual. We imagine we form its character; but nature forms its character in the embryo stage; we merely advance its development by the aid of our own experience. See more of your children, Pamela, my dear; nothing will ever make up to you, nor to them, the enjoyment you forego in your present separation.”She rose abruptly, and approached Pamela’s side. Stooping, she took the wistful face between her hands and kissed it.“I am a stony-hearted, philosophical lunatic,” she said. “Go and put on your hat, you blessed infant, and come out for a walk with me.”
Of the beauty of friendship much has been said and written, but little of its danger. In a friendship between the sexes there is always danger; for a friendship between a man and a woman is based on an entirely different sentiment from any other relation. The danger may not be apparent; in many cases it is latent; but the spark which will ignite it is present in the attribute of sex, and the unforeseen accident of circumstance may fire it at any moment. Men realise this more readily than women, perhaps because they are less given to subduing these qualities. Dare’s resolve to act on Mrs Carruthers’ advice and flee the danger was the result of his recognition of it. His sudden departure was an acknowledgment of his own weakness, and at the same time a proof of strength of purpose. To act contrary to one’s inclination for the sake of principle entails sacrifice.
The sacrifice did not affect him solely. This abrupt cessation of their pleasant intercourse made a fresh break in Pamela’s life. For some weeks after he had gone she missed his society greatly; his frequent, unexpected visits had added a pleasurable excitement to her days; she had grown used to his dropping in at all hours, had grown to look for him. Until he was gone she had not realised how much she had enjoyed these visits; now that they had ceased she felt unaccountably lonely.
She sought distraction from the dulness of her home by going out a good deal, and took up again with feverish energy the old round of social pleasures which the tragic discovery of the deception of her marriage had interrupted. She had had little heart for such things of late, and had made the baby’s advent an excuse for retirement.
She started entertaining again in the lavish manner of happier days, and so filled in the blank which Dare’s departure had created. She had not suspected until he left how much she had grown to depend on him. It distressed her not a little to discover that she missed him so greatly; she felt ashamed to acknowledge it even to herself.
Arnott was on the whole rather pleased to observe what he believed to be Pamela’s reawakened interest in life. He had resented her persistent avoidance of all save a favoured few of her former friends. Her attitude had struck him as a tacit reproach to himself, and this had annoyed him. Her resumption of neglected duties won him over to greater amiability, and kept him more at home. Since the birth of the boy, the care of whom had been a tie upon Pamela, he had fallen into the habit of motoring alone into Cape Town and spending much of his time at his club. The parental rôle was not at all in his line.
He could not understand why Pamela refused to engage a capable European nurse, and hand the care of the children over to her. Nevertheless, when Pamela suggested having a governess for them, he opposed the idea vigorously. A nurse was reasonable, he argued; but a governess was not a servant, and would be continually in the way. He disliked the idea of admitting a stranger into the household.
Pamela allowed the matter to drop for a time, but she did not give it up entirely. She discussed it with Mrs Carruthers, and Mrs Carruthers made inquiries for her, and ascertained that Blanche Maitland would be quite willing to undertake the position. After the lapse of a few months Pamela broached the project with greater determination. In the interval she invited Blanche to the house on several occasions with a view to accustoming Arnott to her. It was following one of these occasions that she opened the subject again.
“That girl seems to be here fairly often,” Arnott remarked. “What is the attraction?”
“I like her,” said Pamela. “She is quiet, and nice.”
“She’s quiet enough,” he admitted.
“I want you to agree to my engaging her as nursery governess,” she said. “Pamela is growing big enough to begin easy lessons, and both the children need a white woman’s care. They must have an educated person with them. It is impossible for me to be with them all day.”
“I don’t see why a good European nurse,” he began.
But she interrupted him firmly.
“There are very few good European nurses to be had out here,” she declared, and urged her reasons more strongly.
Arnott was not easily won over. He resented the idea of a stranger in the household, whom he could not ignore as he might a nurse, to whom it would be necessary, he complained, to be civil.
“I don’t see why a nurse shouldn’t be good enough for our kids as well as for other people’s,” he grumbled. “A governess is always in the way.”
“I will take very good care she doesn’t get in your way,” Pamela returned. “And I don’t fancy you will find it difficult to be civil to Blanche.”
“You can’t treat a girl like that as if she were a nursemaid,” he objected.
“Of course not. One need not go to extremes either way.”
He looked at her with some displeasure, made an impatient sound between his teeth, muttered: “Damn the kids!” and finally gave in.
“You’ll never leave off pestering until you get what you want,” he said. “You can try the experiment, but as soon as it becomes a nuisance you will have to make other arrangements.”
“All right,” Pamela agreed cheerfully, satisfied at having gained her point, and feeling very little anxiety as to the result of her venture. “You’ll see; it will work admirably. And I shall have far more leisure to devote to your exacting self.”
He suddenly smiled.
“I’m glad you recognise that you have neglected me of late,” he observed. “I’ve been of no greater account in this household than a piece of waste paper since the boy came.”
Pamela flushed painfully. It was the first time Arnott had made any direct allusion to the change that was gradually alienating their sympathies. The knowledge that he too recognised it added to the distress of her own unwilling acceptance of the inevitable estrangement.
“I too have felt that we were—were growing a little apart,” she faltered. “You don’t seem to need me quite so much as you did.”
“What’s the use of needing you when I can’t have you?” he grumbled. “The kids always come first with you.”
“You don’t mean that,” she said quickly.
Arnott laughed, and put a careless arm about her shoulders.
“I’m only teasing, Pam,” he said. “You don’t stand chaff like you used to. You were rare sport at one time. What’s changing you?”
“Life,” she answered quietly.
“Oh, rot!” he ejaculated irritably. “That’s talking heroics. Your life runs on fairly even lines. Don’t be melodramatic.”
He kissed her lightly, and released her. The next day he brought her a present out from town. In this manner he believed he smoothed away unpleasantness.
Pamela settled the matter of the governess by engaging her immediately, thus giving Arnott no opportunity for reconsidering his reluctant acquiescence. Within the month Blanche Maitland was established in the house, and very quickly made herself indispensable to Pamela. She was not only useful with the children; she took over many domestic duties which she contrived to fit in without interfering with her legitimate occupation. Pamela stood out for a time against this encroachment on her province. She was not altogether satisfied to have her home run by a stranger. But Blanche seemed so anxious to prove helpful, and was so excellent with the children, that little by little she gave way, until practically the entire control passed into Miss Maitland’s capable hands. After a while Pamela decided that it was rather agreeable to have the housekeeping worries lifted from her shoulders. She increased Miss Maitland’s salary in recognition of her worth, and became a mere cipher in the management of her home.
The arrangement pleased Arnott. Miss Maitland was more efficient as a housekeeper than Pamela had ever been; and her release from these ties enabled his wife to devote more of her time and attention upon himself. She too was happier in the new arrangement. Arnott showed a renewed pleasure in her society. Being a man who did not make friends, his wife’s companionship was to a great extent necessary to him; now that he could enjoy it freely whenever he desired he fell into the habit of wanting her and became somewhat exacting in his demands upon her leisure.
But in this selfish dependency on her company there remained little of the eager gladness in each other, the perfect understanding of happier days. Pamela was sensible of the difference, though she tried to ignore it. It was, she felt largely her own fault. In the difficult time following her enlightenment she had lost her influence over Arnott; had allowed the power she had possessed to slip away from her in her timid shrinking from ugly realities, and her newly acquired distrust of himself. She had strained his love and patience often in those days, and she was reaping the result now.
These things troubled her no longer to the extent they once had done. She was becoming reconciled to the changes in her life. Although she strove to fight against an increasing indifference in her own feeling towards him, she knew that her love was not as perfect as it had been: it had gone down under the shock, and come out of the wreckage of her happiness a crippled thing.
When Pamela allowed her mind to dwell on these matters she became frightened. It was terrifying to contemplate what might result if they ceased finally to care for one another. Life together in such circumstances would become unendurable. Plenty of people lived together who were mutually antipathetic, but not in the dishonoured relations of her union with Arnott. A real love alone offered any extenuation—if extenuation could be urged—in defence of their sin against society. She dared not admit a doubt of her loyal devotion, dared not cease to struggle to retain Herbert’s affection. Her life became an endless fight to keep alive the shrunken image of the old love. A love which needs constant tending and guarding and encouraging is a difficult plant to keep flourishing: when one is compelled to resort to artificial stimulus it is a proof that the nature has gone out of it.
Pamela had at one time regarded the Carruthers’ married life as a rather prosy affair; now she was inclined to envy the humdrum content of this eminently well-mated couple. If there was not much actual romance in Connie Carruthers’ life, there was solid satisfaction and entire trust. She and Dick Carruthers had been comrades rather than lovers, and they remained comrades still.
“Don’t you think,” Pamela observed to her one day, when she came in to see her godson, and take tea, as she often did, with the children, “that babies make a big difference? ... They seem to come between the parents... They make a break. I suppose it’s because they claim so much of one’s time and attention.”
“Yours don’t get it, whatever they may claim,” Mrs Carruthers answered. “And children are the only decent excuse for marriage. I wish I had a dozen.”
She looked at Pamela curiously, not quite sure what to make of her speech, and not liking it particularly. The children had just been taken away by Miss Maitland. Pamela had let them go reluctantly. Whatever her opinion as to the desirability of children, she was unquestionably devoted to her own.
“They make a difference,” Pamela insisted.
“Of course they do. They interfere with one’s comfort. It’s good discipline for selfish people. Why, you silly person, you would be miserable without your babies.”
Pamela smiled drearily.
“I suppose I should—now. But I sometimes wish they hadn’t come... especially the boy,” she added wistfully.
Mrs Carruthers felt slightly uncomfortable. She had an instinctive dread of intimate confidences; and the tone of Pamela’s plaint occurred to her as significant of a desire to unburden herself. If babies in the house upset Arnott’s temper, she did not wish to hear about it. Arnott was a man whom she cordially disliked. It was not in the least surprising to her that Pamela was finding life with him less of an idyll than she had once believed it; the mystery was that she had not suffered disillusion earlier; the man was so absolutely selfish.
“It isn’t any use wishing,” she replied with a downright commonsense that damped Pamela’s disposition to be confidential. “And Blanche relieves you of all trouble. You were lucky to secure that girl. I knew she was a treasure. She is the kind of girl who deserves to have a home of her own to run. But men usually marry the helpless, ornamental women; they are connoisseurs merely in exteriors. Not that there is anything amiss with Blanche’s exterior. Dickie admires her tremendously.”
“She is very useful,” Pamela said. “The children like her.”
“Don’t you?”
“Oh! yes, of course.” Pamela’s tone was a little uncertain; it qualified her words, Mrs Carruthers thought. “One can’t have everything,” she went on, in the manner of one weighing advantages against disadvantages, and finding the balance fairly even. “She is an enormous help to me—indeed, I am growing to depend too much on her. But I don’t see enough of the children since she came. When I am home and able to have them, she has some reason which interferes. It is always a sound reason. But there is so much discipline in the nursery now; it robs me of a good deal of enjoyment. The children don’t belong to me any more.”
“Well,” said Mrs Carruthers, “you can soon alter that.”
“It isn’t so simple as it sounds,” Pamela replied. “I tried at first; but one has to give way. It is all for the benefit of the children. It’s no good employing any one like that, and interfering with her authority. She has to be with them always, and I only see them at odd moments.”
She broke off with a laugh.
“It’s a shame to inflict all this grumbling on you; but I needed an outlet. It wouldn’t do to grumble to Herbert because he was so greatly against having a governess. He would say it was what he foresaw, and advise me to get rid of her. I shouldn’t like to do that. I always feel easy in my mind about them when I leave them now. She is entirely trustworthy.”
“I think I should put my foot down upon that point,” Mrs Carruthers advised. “That sort of thing can become annoying. Some people are greedy for authority, and if you give in to them they become arbitrary. If you want the children any hour of the day, have them, whether it is the time for their rest or any other legitimate exercise.”
“And spoil their tempers,” laughed Pamela.
“Rubbish!” scoffed Mrs Carruthers. “Temper in the human animal develops naturally. One has to spank it out of them. All children are not brought up by rule, you know; it isn’t possible in some households. We were dragged up; but I must add that our tempers on the whole did not suffer as a result. Keep their little bodies nourished, and their minds will develop of themselves. The one thing, I suppose, every mother strives to do is to develop her baby on the lines she considers the most admirable; and the baby invariably develops on its own lines, because it is an individual. It is difficult to regard the infant as an individual. We imagine we form its character; but nature forms its character in the embryo stage; we merely advance its development by the aid of our own experience. See more of your children, Pamela, my dear; nothing will ever make up to you, nor to them, the enjoyment you forego in your present separation.”
She rose abruptly, and approached Pamela’s side. Stooping, she took the wistful face between her hands and kissed it.
“I am a stony-hearted, philosophical lunatic,” she said. “Go and put on your hat, you blessed infant, and come out for a walk with me.”
Chapter Thirteen.Miss Maitland had been some months in the house before Arnott became in any degree alive to her actual presence. He met her occasionally coming in or going out. Usually she had the children with her, and a coloured girl in charge of the boy. He always passed them, thankful that politeness demanded nothing further than the raising of his hat. Sometimes he encountered her on the stairs, when he felt constrained to make a remark. But she was exceedingly retiring, and appeared quite as anxious as he was to avoid these encounters. She had a habit of effacing herself when he was at home.But one day when he had been lunching with some men at his club, and returned unexpectedly early in the afternoon with the intention of running Pamela out to Camps Bay in the motor, he found that Pamela had gone visiting; and Miss Maitland, who supplied this information, ceased amazingly to stand as a mere cog in the wheel of his domestic machinery, and assumed a distinct feminine personality that caught and held his attention. She was, he noted, and felt surprised that he noticed this for the first time, a striking, fine-looking girl.He had run upstairs to look for Pamela, and was calling for her loudly when quite unexpectedly a door in the corridor opened, and Miss Maitland appeared, closing the door softly behind her, and keeping her hand on the knob.“The children are asleep,” she said, which he recognised was a warning to him not to disturb them.Instead of feeling annoyed, he stopped short and stared at her apologetically.“Sorry I was so inconsiderate,” he said. “I forgot. Can you tell me where Mrs Arnott is?”Blanche explained.“What a bore,” he said. “I particularly wanted her.”He surveyed the calm face turned gravely in his direction, with its serene eyes and unsmiling lips, and was amused to see it change colour under his scrutiny. His interest was immediately aroused. She assumed from that moment an individuality that excited his curiosity. Why, he wondered, had he been so entirely unaware of her before?—not unaware of her actual bodily presence in his home, but of her separate existence as a sentient human being,—a feminine human being with possibilities of engaging developments.He held her for a few minutes in conversation; then, quite pleasantly excited, he went downstairs, and sat on the stoep and smoked until Pamela returned.Pamela found him in a mood of high good humour, notwithstanding his announcement that he had spent a solitary afternoon, chafing at her absence. The period of solitude had been less irksome than he allowed. She leaned against the rail of the stoep near his chair, and gave an account of her afternoon’s doings, which had been fairly dull on the whole.“I would rather have been motoring,” she finished.Miss Maitland appeared with the children at this moment. She had waited until Pamela returned home, not caring to pass Arnott, for some inexplicable reason, and fully alive to the fact that he was seated on the stoep near the door. It was late for their walk. For the first time since her arrival the rigid rule of regular hours was relaxed.Pamela looked round in surprise.“Going out?” she exclaimed, catching up Pamela, the younger, who had flown towards her and flung herself into her arms.Arnott sat up, regarding the governess under his eyes. She had no look for him.“Baby slept late,” she explained to Pamela. “I thought we might manage a short walk before tea.”“You come too,” the little girl pleaded, tugging at Pamela’s hand.“Nonsense!” interposed Arnott. “You have got Miss Maitland. Daddy wants mummy.”The child pouted her disappointment.“You can have Miss Maitland,” she said, with unflattering generosity. “Pamela wants her mummy.”Arnott laughed.“Suppose I come instead, kiddie?” he suggested.But his small daughter was decided in her opinions, and unblushingly frank in the expression of them.“I want mummy,” she announced. “I don’t want any one else.”“I’ll tell you what I will do,” he said, rising abruptly, to Pamela’s wondering amazement. “The car is all ready for going out I’ll take the whole lot for a spin.” He tried not to look as though he were conscious of acting in an altogether unprecedented manner, and added: “You can nurse the boy between you.”“That will be jolly,” said Pamela.Little Pamela clapped her hands.“That will be jolly,” she echoed.“I feel quite the family man,” Arnott remarked later, when he had settled Miss Maitland in the back with the children,—an arrangement against which Pamela, the younger, at first protested loudly. She wanted her mummy. Why couldn’t Miss Maitland sit in front with daddy?Pamela touched his arm affectionately as he seated himself beside her and grasped the steering wheel.“I love you in the rôle,” she said softly. “I wish you played it more often.”He laughed constrainedly.“We’ll see how it works,” he answered guardedly.It worked well on the whole. David howled lustily part of the time, for no apparent reason, after the manner of small people; but he ceased his cries when Pamela took him on her lap and coaxed him into a good temper. That hour was the happiest she had spent for a long while. It was the first occasion on which Arnott had taken the children out, or evinced any interest in them whatever. She wondered what impulse had moved him to act in this wholly unexpected and delightful way. She understood him sufficiently to realise that it was an impulse, and entertained no great hope that it would develop into a practice; but even as an isolated instance of parental affection it presented him in a new and more kindly light.Aware that he was giving her pleasure, Arnott experienced an agreeable sense of virtuous complacency. He speculated upon what the girl in the tonneau was thinking, as she sat in her silent fashion, responding only when necessary to Pamela’s ceaseless prattle. He looked round occasionally to make some joking remark to the child, and once he deliberately addressed himself to the governess. She started when he spoke to her, and answered briefly, and with faint embarrassment. After that one attempt at conversation he did not look round again.“I like going out in the car,” remarked little Pamela, when she was lifted out on their return home. “Why don’t we go every day?”“Daddy wouldn’t be bothered with such a small fidget every day,” he answered. “But you shall go again, if you are good.”“To-morrow?” demanded Pamela.“We’ll see,” he returned, and drove the car round to the garage.Pamela carried the boy upstairs to the nursery, and remained for the nursery tea. Then she changed her dress and went downstairs. Arnott was in the drawing-room when she entered. She went to him and put her arms about his neck and kissed him.“Thank you, dear, for a very happy drive,” she said.He laughed awkwardly.“Odd ideas of happiness some people have,” he commented.“It gave the children a lot of pleasure,” she said. “And it was a change for Miss Maitland. I have often wished to take her in the car, but I haven’t liked to suggest it.”“Why not?” he asked.“I was afraid you might think it a nuisance. It was one of the conditions, you know, that I wasn’t to let her get in your way.”“Oh, that!” he returned... “Yes. But you’ve taken me rather more literally than I intended. She is a very self-effacing young woman. What on earth does she do with herself? It must be fairly dull for her to be always with the kids. Why don’t you have her down for an hour of an evening? ... I don’t see why she shouldn’t dine with us.”“I don’t think that’s necessary,” she said.“Just as you like,” he answered. “I only thought it would make it brighter for her.”She considered the matter for a second or so, not altogether liking the idea, and half wishing that he had not made the suggestion. A third person sharing their quiet evenings would end finally the pleasant companionable home life which had once meant so much to both of them, but which Pamela was forced to recognise was no longer all it had been. Perhaps the addition of a third person would make the increasing strain of these domestic evenings less apparent, might, by introducing a fresh note, rouse them both from the apathy of indifference into which they were drifting. People could have too much of one another’s undiluted society; the presence of a third person, even if sometimes irksome, stimulates the interest afresh. And, as Arnott had remarked, it would certainly be brighter for Blanche.“If you are sure you don’t mind,” she said.“Why should I mind? The girl is harmless enough,” he replied. “I don’t like the idea of her spending her evenings alone.”“No,” Pamela said, perching herself on the arm of his chair, and turning a smiling face to his. “I don’t like it either. But I am just a little reluctant to admit her altogether as one of the family. It’s going to put a finish to this comfortable state of affairs.”He laughed, and got an arm about her waist.“I suppose it is,” he allowed. “But if you will introduce strange young women into the happy home you must put up with that. It was your doing, remember.”“I know,” Pamela assented. “But you must admit, Herbert, that it has been a success.”“I don’t deny it,” he returned. “So far as I am able to judge, the arrangement has worked towards the greater comfort of the establishment all round. That’s one reason why I think we ought to study the girl. At present she is being treated like an upper servant. That won’t do. A girl needs some society outside the nursery.”“Very well,” agreed Pamela. “We will inaugurate the new system to-morrow.”Accordingly on the morrow Miss Maitland joined them at dinner. Although Arnott himself had suggested, and practically insisted on this extension of privileges, he made very little effort in helping Pamela in the laborious task of sustaining conversation during the meal, or later when they sat on the stoep. The governess occupied herself with some sewing, and Arnott sat under the electric light and read the papers, only very occasionally throwing in a remark. Pamela found the evening very tedious, and was relieved when punctually at nine-thirty Miss Maitland retired. Never very talkative, Miss Maitland’s powers of conversation seemed to dry up in Arnott’s presence. She seldom looked at him, and never addressed him spontaneously.“Bit dull, isn’t she?” Arnott observed, when she had left them and gone indoors. He dropped his paper on to the floor and yawned. Then he got up. “You don’t seem to have the knack of setting her at her ease,” he said irritably.“I don’t see what more I can be expected to do,” Pamela returned, a little nettled. “She is shy—I think of you. When we are alone she is more companionable.”“Well, I’m going in for a whisky,” he said. “Dull people always give me a thirst.”He went inside. Miss Maitland was mounting the stairs as he crossed the hall. He paused at the foot of the stairs and looked after her.“Good-night,—mouse,” he called softly.She looked back over her shoulder and flushed warmly.“Good-night,” she answered, and gave him one of her rare smiles, and hurried on.He entered the dining-room, drank off a glass of whisky, and poured himself out a second, which he carried with him on to the stoep and placed in the armhole of his chair. He had quite recovered his good humour. He smiled a trifle self-consciously, and leaned over the back of Pamela’s chair, and rallied her on her silence.“Am I to sit through the rest of the evening with another speechless young woman?” he inquired.Pamela, who felt unaccountably depressed, made no direct reply to this. Instead she observed:“Blanche plays wonderfully. Would it bore you if I suggested a little music occasionally? I think she would enjoy it, and it would relieve the strain.”“It wouldn’t bore me,” he answered. “I’m fond of music when it’s good. If she would like to strum, let her. There was a time when you used to sing to me. But I haven’t heard you sing for months, and then only when we had people here.”Pamela remembered perfectly. The last time she had sung was the night Dare dined with them.“You never seemed to care much,” she said.“Not care! You didn’t think that when I used to hang over you and the piano on board ship,” he laughed.“Well, you don’t take the trouble to hang over the piano any longer,” she replied.He straightened himself, and moved away, frowning impatiently. Why, he wondered, did a woman always demand open demonstration of a man’s affection? As a sex they were tiresomely exacting.“I’ll get a gramophone,” he said.Pamela laughed.“Some one has to hang over that. That will be my job, I suppose?”“No. I will make myself independent of you. Miss Maitland shall work it.”“It seems,” Pamela observed, “that she is to be a person of many avocations,—nurse to the children, housekeeper for me, and companion to you.”“Why not?” he said. “She’ll find the last job the most amusing.”“If this evening was a sample of your mutual interest, I should doubt that,” Pamela retorted. “I never knew you could be so absolutely wooden. You did not make the least attempt to be agreeable. After all, it was your idea to have her down.”“It’s no use, Pam,” he answered coolly. “I refuse to make a social effort in my own home after eight o’clock. I expect to be amused,—or at least left in peace. I didn’t lay myself out to be entertaining when I proposed her joining us. She will fit in, in time. Don’t you worry.”He raised his glass, and took a long drink.“If one is obliged to admit the stranger within one’s gate, I prefer she should err on the quiet side,” he added. He recalled the swift, surprised flush, and the smile which the girl, pausing on the landing, had given him; and he wondered whether in her own room she was thinking, as he was, of that unexpected encounter, and the confidential half-whisper of his murmured good-night. It had, he felt, established a sort of understanding between them. Odd, he reflected, that he had lived in the same house with her for months, and only now discovered in her that quality of the essential feminine which made her an interesting problem to the male mind.
Miss Maitland had been some months in the house before Arnott became in any degree alive to her actual presence. He met her occasionally coming in or going out. Usually she had the children with her, and a coloured girl in charge of the boy. He always passed them, thankful that politeness demanded nothing further than the raising of his hat. Sometimes he encountered her on the stairs, when he felt constrained to make a remark. But she was exceedingly retiring, and appeared quite as anxious as he was to avoid these encounters. She had a habit of effacing herself when he was at home.
But one day when he had been lunching with some men at his club, and returned unexpectedly early in the afternoon with the intention of running Pamela out to Camps Bay in the motor, he found that Pamela had gone visiting; and Miss Maitland, who supplied this information, ceased amazingly to stand as a mere cog in the wheel of his domestic machinery, and assumed a distinct feminine personality that caught and held his attention. She was, he noted, and felt surprised that he noticed this for the first time, a striking, fine-looking girl.
He had run upstairs to look for Pamela, and was calling for her loudly when quite unexpectedly a door in the corridor opened, and Miss Maitland appeared, closing the door softly behind her, and keeping her hand on the knob.
“The children are asleep,” she said, which he recognised was a warning to him not to disturb them.
Instead of feeling annoyed, he stopped short and stared at her apologetically.
“Sorry I was so inconsiderate,” he said. “I forgot. Can you tell me where Mrs Arnott is?”
Blanche explained.
“What a bore,” he said. “I particularly wanted her.”
He surveyed the calm face turned gravely in his direction, with its serene eyes and unsmiling lips, and was amused to see it change colour under his scrutiny. His interest was immediately aroused. She assumed from that moment an individuality that excited his curiosity. Why, he wondered, had he been so entirely unaware of her before?—not unaware of her actual bodily presence in his home, but of her separate existence as a sentient human being,—a feminine human being with possibilities of engaging developments.
He held her for a few minutes in conversation; then, quite pleasantly excited, he went downstairs, and sat on the stoep and smoked until Pamela returned.
Pamela found him in a mood of high good humour, notwithstanding his announcement that he had spent a solitary afternoon, chafing at her absence. The period of solitude had been less irksome than he allowed. She leaned against the rail of the stoep near his chair, and gave an account of her afternoon’s doings, which had been fairly dull on the whole.
“I would rather have been motoring,” she finished.
Miss Maitland appeared with the children at this moment. She had waited until Pamela returned home, not caring to pass Arnott, for some inexplicable reason, and fully alive to the fact that he was seated on the stoep near the door. It was late for their walk. For the first time since her arrival the rigid rule of regular hours was relaxed.
Pamela looked round in surprise.
“Going out?” she exclaimed, catching up Pamela, the younger, who had flown towards her and flung herself into her arms.
Arnott sat up, regarding the governess under his eyes. She had no look for him.
“Baby slept late,” she explained to Pamela. “I thought we might manage a short walk before tea.”
“You come too,” the little girl pleaded, tugging at Pamela’s hand.
“Nonsense!” interposed Arnott. “You have got Miss Maitland. Daddy wants mummy.”
The child pouted her disappointment.
“You can have Miss Maitland,” she said, with unflattering generosity. “Pamela wants her mummy.”
Arnott laughed.
“Suppose I come instead, kiddie?” he suggested.
But his small daughter was decided in her opinions, and unblushingly frank in the expression of them.
“I want mummy,” she announced. “I don’t want any one else.”
“I’ll tell you what I will do,” he said, rising abruptly, to Pamela’s wondering amazement. “The car is all ready for going out I’ll take the whole lot for a spin.” He tried not to look as though he were conscious of acting in an altogether unprecedented manner, and added: “You can nurse the boy between you.”
“That will be jolly,” said Pamela.
Little Pamela clapped her hands.
“That will be jolly,” she echoed.
“I feel quite the family man,” Arnott remarked later, when he had settled Miss Maitland in the back with the children,—an arrangement against which Pamela, the younger, at first protested loudly. She wanted her mummy. Why couldn’t Miss Maitland sit in front with daddy?
Pamela touched his arm affectionately as he seated himself beside her and grasped the steering wheel.
“I love you in the rôle,” she said softly. “I wish you played it more often.”
He laughed constrainedly.
“We’ll see how it works,” he answered guardedly.
It worked well on the whole. David howled lustily part of the time, for no apparent reason, after the manner of small people; but he ceased his cries when Pamela took him on her lap and coaxed him into a good temper. That hour was the happiest she had spent for a long while. It was the first occasion on which Arnott had taken the children out, or evinced any interest in them whatever. She wondered what impulse had moved him to act in this wholly unexpected and delightful way. She understood him sufficiently to realise that it was an impulse, and entertained no great hope that it would develop into a practice; but even as an isolated instance of parental affection it presented him in a new and more kindly light.
Aware that he was giving her pleasure, Arnott experienced an agreeable sense of virtuous complacency. He speculated upon what the girl in the tonneau was thinking, as she sat in her silent fashion, responding only when necessary to Pamela’s ceaseless prattle. He looked round occasionally to make some joking remark to the child, and once he deliberately addressed himself to the governess. She started when he spoke to her, and answered briefly, and with faint embarrassment. After that one attempt at conversation he did not look round again.
“I like going out in the car,” remarked little Pamela, when she was lifted out on their return home. “Why don’t we go every day?”
“Daddy wouldn’t be bothered with such a small fidget every day,” he answered. “But you shall go again, if you are good.”
“To-morrow?” demanded Pamela.
“We’ll see,” he returned, and drove the car round to the garage.
Pamela carried the boy upstairs to the nursery, and remained for the nursery tea. Then she changed her dress and went downstairs. Arnott was in the drawing-room when she entered. She went to him and put her arms about his neck and kissed him.
“Thank you, dear, for a very happy drive,” she said.
He laughed awkwardly.
“Odd ideas of happiness some people have,” he commented.
“It gave the children a lot of pleasure,” she said. “And it was a change for Miss Maitland. I have often wished to take her in the car, but I haven’t liked to suggest it.”
“Why not?” he asked.
“I was afraid you might think it a nuisance. It was one of the conditions, you know, that I wasn’t to let her get in your way.”
“Oh, that!” he returned... “Yes. But you’ve taken me rather more literally than I intended. She is a very self-effacing young woman. What on earth does she do with herself? It must be fairly dull for her to be always with the kids. Why don’t you have her down for an hour of an evening? ... I don’t see why she shouldn’t dine with us.”
“I don’t think that’s necessary,” she said.
“Just as you like,” he answered. “I only thought it would make it brighter for her.”
She considered the matter for a second or so, not altogether liking the idea, and half wishing that he had not made the suggestion. A third person sharing their quiet evenings would end finally the pleasant companionable home life which had once meant so much to both of them, but which Pamela was forced to recognise was no longer all it had been. Perhaps the addition of a third person would make the increasing strain of these domestic evenings less apparent, might, by introducing a fresh note, rouse them both from the apathy of indifference into which they were drifting. People could have too much of one another’s undiluted society; the presence of a third person, even if sometimes irksome, stimulates the interest afresh. And, as Arnott had remarked, it would certainly be brighter for Blanche.
“If you are sure you don’t mind,” she said.
“Why should I mind? The girl is harmless enough,” he replied. “I don’t like the idea of her spending her evenings alone.”
“No,” Pamela said, perching herself on the arm of his chair, and turning a smiling face to his. “I don’t like it either. But I am just a little reluctant to admit her altogether as one of the family. It’s going to put a finish to this comfortable state of affairs.”
He laughed, and got an arm about her waist.
“I suppose it is,” he allowed. “But if you will introduce strange young women into the happy home you must put up with that. It was your doing, remember.”
“I know,” Pamela assented. “But you must admit, Herbert, that it has been a success.”
“I don’t deny it,” he returned. “So far as I am able to judge, the arrangement has worked towards the greater comfort of the establishment all round. That’s one reason why I think we ought to study the girl. At present she is being treated like an upper servant. That won’t do. A girl needs some society outside the nursery.”
“Very well,” agreed Pamela. “We will inaugurate the new system to-morrow.”
Accordingly on the morrow Miss Maitland joined them at dinner. Although Arnott himself had suggested, and practically insisted on this extension of privileges, he made very little effort in helping Pamela in the laborious task of sustaining conversation during the meal, or later when they sat on the stoep. The governess occupied herself with some sewing, and Arnott sat under the electric light and read the papers, only very occasionally throwing in a remark. Pamela found the evening very tedious, and was relieved when punctually at nine-thirty Miss Maitland retired. Never very talkative, Miss Maitland’s powers of conversation seemed to dry up in Arnott’s presence. She seldom looked at him, and never addressed him spontaneously.
“Bit dull, isn’t she?” Arnott observed, when she had left them and gone indoors. He dropped his paper on to the floor and yawned. Then he got up. “You don’t seem to have the knack of setting her at her ease,” he said irritably.
“I don’t see what more I can be expected to do,” Pamela returned, a little nettled. “She is shy—I think of you. When we are alone she is more companionable.”
“Well, I’m going in for a whisky,” he said. “Dull people always give me a thirst.”
He went inside. Miss Maitland was mounting the stairs as he crossed the hall. He paused at the foot of the stairs and looked after her.
“Good-night,—mouse,” he called softly.
She looked back over her shoulder and flushed warmly.
“Good-night,” she answered, and gave him one of her rare smiles, and hurried on.
He entered the dining-room, drank off a glass of whisky, and poured himself out a second, which he carried with him on to the stoep and placed in the armhole of his chair. He had quite recovered his good humour. He smiled a trifle self-consciously, and leaned over the back of Pamela’s chair, and rallied her on her silence.
“Am I to sit through the rest of the evening with another speechless young woman?” he inquired.
Pamela, who felt unaccountably depressed, made no direct reply to this. Instead she observed:
“Blanche plays wonderfully. Would it bore you if I suggested a little music occasionally? I think she would enjoy it, and it would relieve the strain.”
“It wouldn’t bore me,” he answered. “I’m fond of music when it’s good. If she would like to strum, let her. There was a time when you used to sing to me. But I haven’t heard you sing for months, and then only when we had people here.”
Pamela remembered perfectly. The last time she had sung was the night Dare dined with them.
“You never seemed to care much,” she said.
“Not care! You didn’t think that when I used to hang over you and the piano on board ship,” he laughed.
“Well, you don’t take the trouble to hang over the piano any longer,” she replied.
He straightened himself, and moved away, frowning impatiently. Why, he wondered, did a woman always demand open demonstration of a man’s affection? As a sex they were tiresomely exacting.
“I’ll get a gramophone,” he said.
Pamela laughed.
“Some one has to hang over that. That will be my job, I suppose?”
“No. I will make myself independent of you. Miss Maitland shall work it.”
“It seems,” Pamela observed, “that she is to be a person of many avocations,—nurse to the children, housekeeper for me, and companion to you.”
“Why not?” he said. “She’ll find the last job the most amusing.”
“If this evening was a sample of your mutual interest, I should doubt that,” Pamela retorted. “I never knew you could be so absolutely wooden. You did not make the least attempt to be agreeable. After all, it was your idea to have her down.”
“It’s no use, Pam,” he answered coolly. “I refuse to make a social effort in my own home after eight o’clock. I expect to be amused,—or at least left in peace. I didn’t lay myself out to be entertaining when I proposed her joining us. She will fit in, in time. Don’t you worry.”
He raised his glass, and took a long drink.
“If one is obliged to admit the stranger within one’s gate, I prefer she should err on the quiet side,” he added. He recalled the swift, surprised flush, and the smile which the girl, pausing on the landing, had given him; and he wondered whether in her own room she was thinking, as he was, of that unexpected encounter, and the confidential half-whisper of his murmured good-night. It had, he felt, established a sort of understanding between them. Odd, he reflected, that he had lived in the same house with her for months, and only now discovered in her that quality of the essential feminine which made her an interesting problem to the male mind.
Chapter Fourteen.It seemed as though Arnott, after years of indifference, had abruptly awoke to his duties as a father. He began to take a quite extraordinary interest in his children. Exercise in the car ceased to be an astounding treat and became an almost daily custom. He even penetrated into the nursery, usually when the children were in bed. He bought sweets for them, and chose this hour for presenting his gifts.Pamela looked on, puzzled. She refrained from any comment; she was on the whole pleased; but she was not confident as to the staying qualities of this sudden show of interest; and she awaited developments with a doubt as to his entire sincerity in the new pose. Not for a long time did she connect the change in his attitude with the presence of Miss Maitland in the nursery. It spoke eloquently for Arnott’s discretion that Pamela was so blind to his intimacy with her children’s governess; had he been at all indiscreet in his conduct before the children they would have carried tales. It was in order to avoid the disconcerting evidence of sharp eyes and small ears that he usually visited the nursery when they were in bed.During these visits he contrived to snatch a few minutes alone with Blanche in the playroom, having previously closed the door between it and the night-nursery. These interviews began by being entirely commonplace. Arnott was carefully feeling his way; he had no desire to precipitate matters; and the girl was shy. He was satisfied that this was not a pose; the girl really was shy. She was also, he perceived, pleasantly flattered by his attentions.He began his overtures towards a greater familiarity by addressing her by fanciful names. He bought her elaborate boxes of chocolates, which he gave her with some jesting remark about all little girls liking sweets. One day he gave her a brooch. Blanche looked utterly confused at receiving this present, and pushed it back hastily into his hand.“Oh, no, please! I can’t take it,” she said.For a moment he looked disconcerted.“Why not?” he asked.The rich blood was showing under her skin in the way he enjoyed seeing it, and the dark, mystery-eyes, as he called them, were lowered in quick embarrassment. She was obviously much distressed. His annoyance vanished.“Please don’t think me ungracious,” she pleaded; “but I would rather you didn’t give me things like that.”He slipped the trinket into his pocket, and possessed himself of her hand.“Then I won’t,” he said. “But I am sorry you won’t let me.”He hesitated for a moment, studying her downcast face; then he bent forward and kissed her lips. She looked more confused than before, but she did not draw back. He kissed her again.“Just to show that you are not vexed,” he said.After which he released her, and went downstairs with an air of elation, and his pulses beating at a great rate with pleasurable excitement. He walked on to the stoep, whistling softly. She didn’t seem to mind, he reflected. He wondered why he had not kissed her before.That evening, when she came downstairs, he spoke very little to her, and studiously avoided looking at her. She played accompaniments for Pamela part of the time; and he sat alone on the stoep and smoked and watched them through the French windows. Once Pamela put her arm round the girl’s shoulders, and remained in this position while she sang. Inexplicably her attitude jarred Arnott. The girl sat very stiffly. She did not, he observed, once lift her eyes from the sheet of music she was reading.Shortly before her usual time for retiring he left his seat, and went upstairs, and waited on the landing until she appeared. He heard the drawing-room door open and close. Then the piano sounded again, and Pamela’s voice, rich, and full, and sweet, came to his ears as he stood there in the gloom of the landing, listening for Blanche’s light ascending footfall.Presently she appeared, and stood, a dusky figure in the half light, her simple white dress revealing soft full throat and rounded arms, and a surprisingly graceful form. She paused, startled at seeing him there, and instinctively threw out a protesting hand. He caught her to him, and kissed her passionately, holding her strained against his breast.“Oh, don’t!” she gasped, a little frightened at the steel-like pressure of his arms.She was trembling from head to foot. Never had she been kissed like this in all her life before. His passion scorched her, terrified her, left her quivering with shame and mortification. And yet she was not angry. These hot kisses raining upon her lips, his kisses earlier in the day, roused in her the desire to be kissed. An unemotional, loveless girlhood had repressed, but not slain, the inherent qualities of a passionate nature; Arnott’s virile love-making was calling these repressed emotions to life. She wanted to be loved; she wanted to be kissed; wanted to be made to feel that she counted in some one’s life,—was important,—necessary to some one.At the moment of offering her feeble protest, when she yet yielded to his caresses, it did not occur to her that Arnott had no right to make her of account in his life. That aspect of the case appealed to her later, when she lay in bed unable to sleep for the unwholesome excitement which fired her brain and quickened the beating of her heart. When she considered Arnott in the light of a married man, and realised that his making love to her was an insult, it sickened her. She felt angry—angry with him, and fiercely jealous of Pamela. She hated Pamela,—hated her for having all the things which she desired and had not got,—hated her for her fair smiling prettiness, her kindness, her utter lack of appreciation—as it seemed to Blanche—of all the good she possessed. Why should Pamela have everything, and she only the stealthy kisses of a man whose kisses were an insult?As she felt again in imagination the close pressure of his lips upon hers, the grip of his arms, which had hurt her, frightened her, and yet given her a thrill of sensuous pleasure, she turned her face to the pillow and pressed her mouth against its coolness and cried weakly. How dared he kiss her like that? ... How dared he endeavour to make her love him when he could never be anything closer in her life than at present? It was cruel and mean of him...Yet, despite her realisation of his baseness, she could not hate the man. Already he had succeeded beyond his expectation in rousing in her a hungry craving for him, which, if he persisted in his selfish persecution, could only end disastrously for her. And he had no intention to desist. The game which he had started idly for his own amusement was becoming absorbingly interesting. That was how he regarded the affair. In his ungenerous pursuit of amusement he lost sight of the girl’s youth, of her helpless position in his household, exposed to the evil influence of his attentions, and unable to protect herself save by giving up her post, which he was comfortably assured from the moment she suffered his caresses she would not have the strength of mind to do.He was not in love with her. He was merely gratifying a sensual impulse to take advantage of the moment. It seemed absurd, he told himself, to have a girl, eager for initiation, at hand and refrain from using the opportunity. She could stop him if she chose.When she broke away from him on the landing, he went downstairs and returned quietly to his seat on the stoep. Pamela was still singing. She ceased presently, and closed the piano and joined him.“I believe you were asleep,” she said, and perched herself on his knee.His eyes flashed open instantly. He had been leaning back with them closed, lost in a comfortable reverie; her unexpected action startled him into sudden alertness.“Something very near it,” he admitted. “I believe, myself, I’ve been dreaming.”“Pleasant dreams?” she demanded.He took her chin in his hand.“Confused,” he answered. “I’m not fully awake now... Am I an old fogey, Pam?”“No,” she replied, smiling. “But you are not exactly a boy.”“Not a dashing hero,” he rejoined. “Then my dreams were deceptive. Dreaming after dinner suggests age. I’ll have to buck up.”“Buck up now, and talk to me,” Pamela said. “You’ve been very slow this evening.”“Have I?” He took hold of her wrist and spanned it with his fingers. “You are growing abominably thin,” he remarked irrelevantly.Involuntarily, he compared her slimness with Blanche Maitland’s generous lines, and decided that thinness was unbecoming.“I never was plump,” Pamela answered calmly, quite satisfied with her own proportions, and unconscious of his comparison.“No... ‘A rag and a bone and a hank of hair’ ... How does the thing go?”“I don’t think I want to hear any more of it,” she said.He laughed.“Then don’t grow any thinner. You are getting to be all angles.”She got off his knee and took a chair some little distance from him.“These unflattering remarks are not soothing,” she said. “I think I prefer your silence.”Arnott felt carelessly amused.“You needn’t get ratty,” he returned. “It is only concern for your well-being that is responsible for my criticisms. The fact is, you need a change, Pam. I have half a mind to shut up the house and cart the lot of you off to the seaside for a fortnight—Muizenberg, or somewhere handy, so that I can get in every day and see that things here are going on all right. Miss Maitland could look after the kiddies, and you and I could motor around, and forget all about Wynberg. What do you say to my plan?”Pamela sat forward in her chair, her face alight with pleasure.“Oh! that would be good,” she said. “I should love it? Let it be Muizenberg, Herbert. The sea is so safe and warm there. You could teach Pamela to swim. She hasn’t a scrap of fear.”The suggestion took Arnott’s fancy. It occurred to him that he might derive a good deal of pleasure in this way. Surf bathing at Muizenberg was noted. He would have them all in the sea, and teach the governess as well as Pamela aquatic accomplishments.“Then that’s settled,” he said. “I will secure rooms at the hotel before the holiday rush. If we get bored, we can return and leave the children there.”“I shan’t get bored,” she said. “I shall sit on the sands all day and revel in idleness. You can’t think what a joy it will be to me to have the children always. I shan’t want to go motoring. One can do that any time.”“You shall please yourself,” he returned with unusual good humour. “It’s your holiday. If you want to build castles in the sand, I’ll help you. You must get yourself a bathing dress—we must all have bathing dresses, and we will become amphibious.”“I really believe,” observed Pamela, looking at him with a quiet smile, “that you are actually keen on this adventure.”“I am,” he replied. “I told you I was dreaming myself youthful again. I want to roll in the surf, and do all manner of foolish things... Why have we never done these things before?”“It never occurred to me that you would agree to an annual seaside trip,” she answered. “And I shouldn’t care to go without you. It is only lately,” she added thoughtfully, “that you have shown any disposition to be bothered with the children. You wouldn’t let yourself get interested in them before; and now I believe you realise that you have missed a lot. They are dear wee things.”“Oh! they are jolly little cards,” he answered carelessly. “I am grateful to them in a sense. They are the raison d’être for this excursion after all. An old fogey like myself couldn’t submit to the indignity of paddling in the surf without the legitimate excuse of the necessity for his presence in order to smack the little Arnotts with their own spades when they become unruly. It won’t be all heaven, I expect.”Pamela spent the next few days in preparing for the wonderful holiday, assisted by her small excited family, and a silent and detached governess, who looked on, while Pamela shopped extensively for every one, with a furtive disapproval in her dark eyes, as though disliking the idea of this change to the sea, and her compulsory participation in it.When Pamela presented her with a smart bathing costume she at first declined the gift.“I can’t swim,” she protested. “And I’m afraid of the sea. I shouldn’t like to bathe—really.”“Oh! but,” said Pamela, feeling unaccountably disappointed, “we shall all bathe. You won’t be afraid with Mr Arnott; he will teach you to swim in no time. It will be half the fun.”Blanche blushed at this suggestion that Arnott should teach her to swim, and looked with greater disfavour than ever at the ridiculous garment in Pamela’s hand.“I’m too big a coward to learn,” she said. “I should hate it. Please don’t ask me.”Miss Maitland was, Pamela decided, a most unsatisfactory girl to deal with.She told Arnott of the difficulty, and held up the amazing garment of navy alpaca and white braid for his inspection.“It is so pretty,” she said. “And she looked at it as though it were indecent.”He laughed.“As a sex you are all more or less mock modest,” he announced. “You will half undress of an evening, and blush to be discovered in a perfectly decorous petticoat. Pack the thing in with your own clothes, and I’ll undertake to state when she sees every one else in the water she will yearn to get in too. We will cure her of her distaste for salt water.”And so the bathing dress went to Muizenberg in Pamela’s trunk.
It seemed as though Arnott, after years of indifference, had abruptly awoke to his duties as a father. He began to take a quite extraordinary interest in his children. Exercise in the car ceased to be an astounding treat and became an almost daily custom. He even penetrated into the nursery, usually when the children were in bed. He bought sweets for them, and chose this hour for presenting his gifts.
Pamela looked on, puzzled. She refrained from any comment; she was on the whole pleased; but she was not confident as to the staying qualities of this sudden show of interest; and she awaited developments with a doubt as to his entire sincerity in the new pose. Not for a long time did she connect the change in his attitude with the presence of Miss Maitland in the nursery. It spoke eloquently for Arnott’s discretion that Pamela was so blind to his intimacy with her children’s governess; had he been at all indiscreet in his conduct before the children they would have carried tales. It was in order to avoid the disconcerting evidence of sharp eyes and small ears that he usually visited the nursery when they were in bed.
During these visits he contrived to snatch a few minutes alone with Blanche in the playroom, having previously closed the door between it and the night-nursery. These interviews began by being entirely commonplace. Arnott was carefully feeling his way; he had no desire to precipitate matters; and the girl was shy. He was satisfied that this was not a pose; the girl really was shy. She was also, he perceived, pleasantly flattered by his attentions.
He began his overtures towards a greater familiarity by addressing her by fanciful names. He bought her elaborate boxes of chocolates, which he gave her with some jesting remark about all little girls liking sweets. One day he gave her a brooch. Blanche looked utterly confused at receiving this present, and pushed it back hastily into his hand.
“Oh, no, please! I can’t take it,” she said.
For a moment he looked disconcerted.
“Why not?” he asked.
The rich blood was showing under her skin in the way he enjoyed seeing it, and the dark, mystery-eyes, as he called them, were lowered in quick embarrassment. She was obviously much distressed. His annoyance vanished.
“Please don’t think me ungracious,” she pleaded; “but I would rather you didn’t give me things like that.”
He slipped the trinket into his pocket, and possessed himself of her hand.
“Then I won’t,” he said. “But I am sorry you won’t let me.”
He hesitated for a moment, studying her downcast face; then he bent forward and kissed her lips. She looked more confused than before, but she did not draw back. He kissed her again.
“Just to show that you are not vexed,” he said.
After which he released her, and went downstairs with an air of elation, and his pulses beating at a great rate with pleasurable excitement. He walked on to the stoep, whistling softly. She didn’t seem to mind, he reflected. He wondered why he had not kissed her before.
That evening, when she came downstairs, he spoke very little to her, and studiously avoided looking at her. She played accompaniments for Pamela part of the time; and he sat alone on the stoep and smoked and watched them through the French windows. Once Pamela put her arm round the girl’s shoulders, and remained in this position while she sang. Inexplicably her attitude jarred Arnott. The girl sat very stiffly. She did not, he observed, once lift her eyes from the sheet of music she was reading.
Shortly before her usual time for retiring he left his seat, and went upstairs, and waited on the landing until she appeared. He heard the drawing-room door open and close. Then the piano sounded again, and Pamela’s voice, rich, and full, and sweet, came to his ears as he stood there in the gloom of the landing, listening for Blanche’s light ascending footfall.
Presently she appeared, and stood, a dusky figure in the half light, her simple white dress revealing soft full throat and rounded arms, and a surprisingly graceful form. She paused, startled at seeing him there, and instinctively threw out a protesting hand. He caught her to him, and kissed her passionately, holding her strained against his breast.
“Oh, don’t!” she gasped, a little frightened at the steel-like pressure of his arms.
She was trembling from head to foot. Never had she been kissed like this in all her life before. His passion scorched her, terrified her, left her quivering with shame and mortification. And yet she was not angry. These hot kisses raining upon her lips, his kisses earlier in the day, roused in her the desire to be kissed. An unemotional, loveless girlhood had repressed, but not slain, the inherent qualities of a passionate nature; Arnott’s virile love-making was calling these repressed emotions to life. She wanted to be loved; she wanted to be kissed; wanted to be made to feel that she counted in some one’s life,—was important,—necessary to some one.
At the moment of offering her feeble protest, when she yet yielded to his caresses, it did not occur to her that Arnott had no right to make her of account in his life. That aspect of the case appealed to her later, when she lay in bed unable to sleep for the unwholesome excitement which fired her brain and quickened the beating of her heart. When she considered Arnott in the light of a married man, and realised that his making love to her was an insult, it sickened her. She felt angry—angry with him, and fiercely jealous of Pamela. She hated Pamela,—hated her for having all the things which she desired and had not got,—hated her for her fair smiling prettiness, her kindness, her utter lack of appreciation—as it seemed to Blanche—of all the good she possessed. Why should Pamela have everything, and she only the stealthy kisses of a man whose kisses were an insult?
As she felt again in imagination the close pressure of his lips upon hers, the grip of his arms, which had hurt her, frightened her, and yet given her a thrill of sensuous pleasure, she turned her face to the pillow and pressed her mouth against its coolness and cried weakly. How dared he kiss her like that? ... How dared he endeavour to make her love him when he could never be anything closer in her life than at present? It was cruel and mean of him...
Yet, despite her realisation of his baseness, she could not hate the man. Already he had succeeded beyond his expectation in rousing in her a hungry craving for him, which, if he persisted in his selfish persecution, could only end disastrously for her. And he had no intention to desist. The game which he had started idly for his own amusement was becoming absorbingly interesting. That was how he regarded the affair. In his ungenerous pursuit of amusement he lost sight of the girl’s youth, of her helpless position in his household, exposed to the evil influence of his attentions, and unable to protect herself save by giving up her post, which he was comfortably assured from the moment she suffered his caresses she would not have the strength of mind to do.
He was not in love with her. He was merely gratifying a sensual impulse to take advantage of the moment. It seemed absurd, he told himself, to have a girl, eager for initiation, at hand and refrain from using the opportunity. She could stop him if she chose.
When she broke away from him on the landing, he went downstairs and returned quietly to his seat on the stoep. Pamela was still singing. She ceased presently, and closed the piano and joined him.
“I believe you were asleep,” she said, and perched herself on his knee.
His eyes flashed open instantly. He had been leaning back with them closed, lost in a comfortable reverie; her unexpected action startled him into sudden alertness.
“Something very near it,” he admitted. “I believe, myself, I’ve been dreaming.”
“Pleasant dreams?” she demanded.
He took her chin in his hand.
“Confused,” he answered. “I’m not fully awake now... Am I an old fogey, Pam?”
“No,” she replied, smiling. “But you are not exactly a boy.”
“Not a dashing hero,” he rejoined. “Then my dreams were deceptive. Dreaming after dinner suggests age. I’ll have to buck up.”
“Buck up now, and talk to me,” Pamela said. “You’ve been very slow this evening.”
“Have I?” He took hold of her wrist and spanned it with his fingers. “You are growing abominably thin,” he remarked irrelevantly.
Involuntarily, he compared her slimness with Blanche Maitland’s generous lines, and decided that thinness was unbecoming.
“I never was plump,” Pamela answered calmly, quite satisfied with her own proportions, and unconscious of his comparison.
“No... ‘A rag and a bone and a hank of hair’ ... How does the thing go?”
“I don’t think I want to hear any more of it,” she said.
He laughed.
“Then don’t grow any thinner. You are getting to be all angles.”
She got off his knee and took a chair some little distance from him.
“These unflattering remarks are not soothing,” she said. “I think I prefer your silence.”
Arnott felt carelessly amused.
“You needn’t get ratty,” he returned. “It is only concern for your well-being that is responsible for my criticisms. The fact is, you need a change, Pam. I have half a mind to shut up the house and cart the lot of you off to the seaside for a fortnight—Muizenberg, or somewhere handy, so that I can get in every day and see that things here are going on all right. Miss Maitland could look after the kiddies, and you and I could motor around, and forget all about Wynberg. What do you say to my plan?”
Pamela sat forward in her chair, her face alight with pleasure.
“Oh! that would be good,” she said. “I should love it? Let it be Muizenberg, Herbert. The sea is so safe and warm there. You could teach Pamela to swim. She hasn’t a scrap of fear.”
The suggestion took Arnott’s fancy. It occurred to him that he might derive a good deal of pleasure in this way. Surf bathing at Muizenberg was noted. He would have them all in the sea, and teach the governess as well as Pamela aquatic accomplishments.
“Then that’s settled,” he said. “I will secure rooms at the hotel before the holiday rush. If we get bored, we can return and leave the children there.”
“I shan’t get bored,” she said. “I shall sit on the sands all day and revel in idleness. You can’t think what a joy it will be to me to have the children always. I shan’t want to go motoring. One can do that any time.”
“You shall please yourself,” he returned with unusual good humour. “It’s your holiday. If you want to build castles in the sand, I’ll help you. You must get yourself a bathing dress—we must all have bathing dresses, and we will become amphibious.”
“I really believe,” observed Pamela, looking at him with a quiet smile, “that you are actually keen on this adventure.”
“I am,” he replied. “I told you I was dreaming myself youthful again. I want to roll in the surf, and do all manner of foolish things... Why have we never done these things before?”
“It never occurred to me that you would agree to an annual seaside trip,” she answered. “And I shouldn’t care to go without you. It is only lately,” she added thoughtfully, “that you have shown any disposition to be bothered with the children. You wouldn’t let yourself get interested in them before; and now I believe you realise that you have missed a lot. They are dear wee things.”
“Oh! they are jolly little cards,” he answered carelessly. “I am grateful to them in a sense. They are the raison d’être for this excursion after all. An old fogey like myself couldn’t submit to the indignity of paddling in the surf without the legitimate excuse of the necessity for his presence in order to smack the little Arnotts with their own spades when they become unruly. It won’t be all heaven, I expect.”
Pamela spent the next few days in preparing for the wonderful holiday, assisted by her small excited family, and a silent and detached governess, who looked on, while Pamela shopped extensively for every one, with a furtive disapproval in her dark eyes, as though disliking the idea of this change to the sea, and her compulsory participation in it.
When Pamela presented her with a smart bathing costume she at first declined the gift.
“I can’t swim,” she protested. “And I’m afraid of the sea. I shouldn’t like to bathe—really.”
“Oh! but,” said Pamela, feeling unaccountably disappointed, “we shall all bathe. You won’t be afraid with Mr Arnott; he will teach you to swim in no time. It will be half the fun.”
Blanche blushed at this suggestion that Arnott should teach her to swim, and looked with greater disfavour than ever at the ridiculous garment in Pamela’s hand.
“I’m too big a coward to learn,” she said. “I should hate it. Please don’t ask me.”
Miss Maitland was, Pamela decided, a most unsatisfactory girl to deal with.
She told Arnott of the difficulty, and held up the amazing garment of navy alpaca and white braid for his inspection.
“It is so pretty,” she said. “And she looked at it as though it were indecent.”
He laughed.
“As a sex you are all more or less mock modest,” he announced. “You will half undress of an evening, and blush to be discovered in a perfectly decorous petticoat. Pack the thing in with your own clothes, and I’ll undertake to state when she sees every one else in the water she will yearn to get in too. We will cure her of her distaste for salt water.”
And so the bathing dress went to Muizenberg in Pamela’s trunk.
Chapter Fifteen.With their arrival in Muizenberg Pamela took entirely upon herself the care of the children. She informed Miss Maitland that she was to regard her stay there in the light of a holiday; she was to go and come as she chose, and leave the children with her.“But that won’t be any holiday for you,” objected Blanche.“It is my holiday being with them,” Pamela answered.Robbed of her occupation, Miss Maitland sat on the sands alone and read a book; while Pamela, with the aid of Maggie, the coloured nurse, bathed and put to bed two very weary and rather fretful little people, tired out with the excitement of the day, with a surfeit of undiluted sunlight, and strong salt air. They had rebelled at going to bed. The boy had howled his hardest when he was forcibly removed from the beach. They had been naughty over tea, and cross at being undressed. Pamela had to be coaxed into saying her prayers. But eventually they were put into bed, and within five minutes of being there were sleeping soundly.Arnott came in when they were asleep, and expressed surprise at finding Pamela there. She raised a cautious finger.“Why don’t you let Miss Maitland do this?” he asked.“Because I like to do it myself,” she replied in an undertone.“Aren’t you coming out?”“No.”He left the room quietly, and strolled down to the beach.The sun had set, and the turquoise of the sea had deepened; its waves no longer shone with glancing lights. The long stretch of white sand was almost deserted; one or two people loitered on it, and down by the water’s edge, watching the incoming tide, the solitary figure of a girl in a blue linen frock lent an unexpected touch of harmonious colour against the silvery background of sand. Arnott’s glance fell on the girl, and, his interest quickening at sight of her, he hastened his steps. She looked up at his approach, flushed warmly, and made a movement as if to rise. He stayed her.“Don’t move,” he said, and dropped on the sands beside her. “You looked deliciously lazy. What were you pondering over when I interrupted that deep train of thought?”She had been thinking about him, but she did not say so. She kept her gaze fixed on the long waves, rolling in in ceaseless regularity and sweeping lazily up the beach, as she answered:“I was thinking how beautiful it is here.”“So you like Muizenberg?” he said. “I hoped you would. Doesn’t the sea look jolly?”“I’m afraid of the sea,” she said slowly.He was watching her intently, admiring the rich colour under her skin, and the way in which the little tendrils of dark hair curled over the small ears, admiring too the long line of her shoulder, and the soft contour of the partly averted face. At her admission he suddenly smiled.“So I heard,” he replied. “You must get better acquainted with it, and then you will lose your fear. I brought the gown along in my suit case. We will christen it to-morrow.”“No,” she said, startled, and flashed a quick, almost terrified look at him. There was a strong appeal in her tones. “I don’t wish to bathe—really.”“Not to please me—Blanche?” he said, and dropped on his elbow on the sand and possessed himself of her hand.“Oh, don’t!” she cried. “Some one will see us.”“There is no one to see,” he answered, with a cautious look about him. “What a timid little mouse it is!” He ran his hand up the loose sleeve of her blouse and caressed her elbow with his fingers. “Your skin is like satin,” he said, and smiled into her shrinking eyes. “You mustn’t be angry with me, Blanche. I have a very great affection for you. And I want you to be very happy with us,—I want you to consider yourself as one of the family. What would you say to my adopting you?”“That you are talking nonsense,” she answered.He laughed quietly.“I’ll adopt you informally,” he said. “We needn’t particularise the relationship,—only you must understand that it places me in authority. We will start with the order for sea-bathing. To-morrow I give you your first swimming lesson.”She made no verbal response to this. With her disengaged hand she played nervously with the sand, piling it in small heaps, and scattering these to pile them anew. He watched her in idle amusement.“She is going to be good,” he murmured.“I think,” Blanche said abruptly, “I ought to go in now. The children will be in bed.”“They are asleep,” he replied. “You know quite well you aren’t wanted. There is half an hour yet before we need bother about returning. Talk to me, you silent person. Give me the benefit of all those repressed thoughts of yours. Whenever I watch you, you are always dreaming. Do you never tell your dreams?”“They aren’t worth telling,” she answered coldly, with difficulty restraining a desire to cry.She wanted to beg him to desist from tormenting her, to leave her alone, to ignore her as he used to do. This persistent persecution worried her. She was no match for a man of his years and ripe experience. She was attracted by his personality, and at the same time afraid of him, a dangerous combination of emotions for a girl of twenty-two.“I would like to judge that for myself,” he said. “I incline to believe I should find those day dreams interesting. Is it love you think about so much?”“No,” she answered bluntly. “Love doesn’t come my way. I have no time for it.”“It seems to me,” he said, “that it comes very much your way... You are turning your shoulder on it now. Come! let me see your face—dear.”“You must not talk to me like that,” Blanche exclaimed with sudden passion. “You would not dare if your wife were here.”“My wife!” he echoed, and laughed. “Thank God! she isn’t here. I don’t want any one just now but you,—you, with the sea and the salt wind and that delicious shy look in your eyes... You aren’t angry, really? I so want to enjoy my holiday—here with you. I don’t believe you are angry, but I think you are a little afraid of me.”She kept her face averted, and gazed steadily out to sea. The waves were sweeping up the wet sands until they almost reached her feet. When they came near enough to force her to move, she determined that she would then return to the hotel. She felt that she could not, while he still held her hand, make an effort of herself to rise.“Yes, I am afraid,” she muttered. “I am afraid.”Her lip quivered, and the hand lying unresponsively in his was icy cold. He gripped it hard.“You need not be afraid,” he said. “I have only a very kindly feeling for you,—a tender feeling. I want to give you pleasure. One day you will understand. I do not wish you to be frightened of me. I want you to trust me. There isn’t the slightest reason why we shouldn’t be the closest of chums.”“There is every reason,” she answered; “the secrecy of it alone proves that. You dare not give me your friendship openly.”“But it’s the secrecy which makes it so jolly,” he insisted.“Scuffling in the dark!” she said scornfully.He fondled her hand.“It isn’t dark now,” he said.“No. But there is no one to heed us. Presently we shall go back. I shall walk on ahead,—or follow—whichever suits you; and for the rest of the evening we shall be distantly formal.” She faced him with an expression of hard resentment in her eyes. “You may find it amusing,” she added bitterly; “but to me it is only humiliating. I wish you would leave me alone.”He sat up, and drawing his knees up, clasped them with his arms.“Perverse!” he murmured, watching the encroachment of the waves with a seemingly absorbed interest, and evading the girl’s scornful, accusative gaze. “And I believed she was going to be sweet... My dear girl,” he exclaimed, suddenly facing about, “you have made two misstatements which it behoves me to correct. We are not going to spend a formal evening,—we are going for a walk in the moonlight. You are not going to precede me, nor will I permit you to follow me off the beach now. We return together. It would be far more indiscreet to pursue the tactics you have laid down, as it will be far pleasanter to adopt mine. Better leave yourself in my hands, my dear. My knowledge of the world is more profound than yours. The greater length of time I have lived in it justifies that assumption. And my experience of life has taught me that to deny oneself a single pleasure for the sake of some foolish scruple is wasteful; it only brings regret, and profits one nothing. The moral is obvious.”“That is an unworkable theory,” she answered.“Not so,” he returned. “Take our own case, for instance. We enjoy being together. What do we gain by denying ourselves that pleasure? Nothing. What do we lose by making the most of these opportunities? Nothing. It is absurd to lead a life of suppressions, to deny one’s self enjoyment, for purely imaginary reasons. I delight in your friendship. I like you, your quiet, dark-eyed thoughtfulness. I think you would be kind to me, only you won’t allow yourself to be kind. Why? Can’t you see that I stand in need of your friendship?”“There is your wife,” she reminded him.He made an impatient sound, and looked annoyed.“Haven’t you discovered yet that the children are more to her than I am?” he demanded. “I don’t like second place. I want to stand first in some one’s life. I have no right to say such things to you, of course. But that is how I feel.” He turned to her quickly, and spoke in swift impassioned tones. “Blanche, be a little kind to me. It will cost you nothing, and it will mean so much to me... Will you try?”“You don’t consider me,” she said, in a low, tremulous voice. “Can’t you see how difficult it is for me to refuse? ... I made a great mistake in ever allowing you to kiss me. I blame myself greatly for that I didn’t consider... Be generous, and leave me alone.”Her appeal would have moved any one less deliberately selfish to desist; its effect upon Arnott, to whom it appeared tantamount to a confession of weakness, was merely gratifying. He felt pleasantly confident, and was satisfied for the present to rest at this stage in the development of his pursuit.It was beginning to matter to him more than he realised, the subjugation of this girl’s will to his own. The quest he had begun in idle amusement was becoming a serious business; it was a game no longer, but a matter of deadly earnest. Its very importance to him was hourly increasing her value and desirability in his eyes.He rose without a word, and offered her his hand and assisted her to her feet. They tramped back over the fine white sand in silence. The girl walked with her gaze fixed on the far horizon, where one blue expanse melted into the other as sea and sky took on the grey shades of evening. Her calm face masked successfully the whirl of emotions which stirred her, but the eyes, staring out to sea, were eloquent of many unquiet thoughts.When they left the beach and stepped upon the firm road, he broke the silence abruptly.“Don’t be too hard on me, Blanche,” he said. “I’m a lonely sort of fellow. You fit into the blanks, somehow. I’ve been happier since you came into my life. Don’t begrudge me any scrap of comfort I derive from your society, my dear.”She made no response to this. She crossed the road with heightened colour and entered the hotel. He followed her, and stood at the foot of the stairs, looking after her as she slowly mounted and passed on to her room. Then he went to his own room to change.He surveyed himself in the glass, and twisted the ends of his moustache, and smiled complacently. The glass told him that he had passed his first youth; but it further assured him that he was still a good-looking man, and that the lines which showed between his brows and about the corners of his eyes, added the weight of a matured dignity which might very well prove attractive in the eyes of a girl. A girl would naturally feel flattered by attentions from him. Blanche, he knew, was flattered. She was interested in him; but she was fighting against the influence he exercised over her. When she ceased to fight she would prove an easy conquest, he told himself.
With their arrival in Muizenberg Pamela took entirely upon herself the care of the children. She informed Miss Maitland that she was to regard her stay there in the light of a holiday; she was to go and come as she chose, and leave the children with her.
“But that won’t be any holiday for you,” objected Blanche.
“It is my holiday being with them,” Pamela answered.
Robbed of her occupation, Miss Maitland sat on the sands alone and read a book; while Pamela, with the aid of Maggie, the coloured nurse, bathed and put to bed two very weary and rather fretful little people, tired out with the excitement of the day, with a surfeit of undiluted sunlight, and strong salt air. They had rebelled at going to bed. The boy had howled his hardest when he was forcibly removed from the beach. They had been naughty over tea, and cross at being undressed. Pamela had to be coaxed into saying her prayers. But eventually they were put into bed, and within five minutes of being there were sleeping soundly.
Arnott came in when they were asleep, and expressed surprise at finding Pamela there. She raised a cautious finger.
“Why don’t you let Miss Maitland do this?” he asked.
“Because I like to do it myself,” she replied in an undertone.
“Aren’t you coming out?”
“No.”
He left the room quietly, and strolled down to the beach.
The sun had set, and the turquoise of the sea had deepened; its waves no longer shone with glancing lights. The long stretch of white sand was almost deserted; one or two people loitered on it, and down by the water’s edge, watching the incoming tide, the solitary figure of a girl in a blue linen frock lent an unexpected touch of harmonious colour against the silvery background of sand. Arnott’s glance fell on the girl, and, his interest quickening at sight of her, he hastened his steps. She looked up at his approach, flushed warmly, and made a movement as if to rise. He stayed her.
“Don’t move,” he said, and dropped on the sands beside her. “You looked deliciously lazy. What were you pondering over when I interrupted that deep train of thought?”
She had been thinking about him, but she did not say so. She kept her gaze fixed on the long waves, rolling in in ceaseless regularity and sweeping lazily up the beach, as she answered:
“I was thinking how beautiful it is here.”
“So you like Muizenberg?” he said. “I hoped you would. Doesn’t the sea look jolly?”
“I’m afraid of the sea,” she said slowly.
He was watching her intently, admiring the rich colour under her skin, and the way in which the little tendrils of dark hair curled over the small ears, admiring too the long line of her shoulder, and the soft contour of the partly averted face. At her admission he suddenly smiled.
“So I heard,” he replied. “You must get better acquainted with it, and then you will lose your fear. I brought the gown along in my suit case. We will christen it to-morrow.”
“No,” she said, startled, and flashed a quick, almost terrified look at him. There was a strong appeal in her tones. “I don’t wish to bathe—really.”
“Not to please me—Blanche?” he said, and dropped on his elbow on the sand and possessed himself of her hand.
“Oh, don’t!” she cried. “Some one will see us.”
“There is no one to see,” he answered, with a cautious look about him. “What a timid little mouse it is!” He ran his hand up the loose sleeve of her blouse and caressed her elbow with his fingers. “Your skin is like satin,” he said, and smiled into her shrinking eyes. “You mustn’t be angry with me, Blanche. I have a very great affection for you. And I want you to be very happy with us,—I want you to consider yourself as one of the family. What would you say to my adopting you?”
“That you are talking nonsense,” she answered.
He laughed quietly.
“I’ll adopt you informally,” he said. “We needn’t particularise the relationship,—only you must understand that it places me in authority. We will start with the order for sea-bathing. To-morrow I give you your first swimming lesson.”
She made no verbal response to this. With her disengaged hand she played nervously with the sand, piling it in small heaps, and scattering these to pile them anew. He watched her in idle amusement.
“She is going to be good,” he murmured.
“I think,” Blanche said abruptly, “I ought to go in now. The children will be in bed.”
“They are asleep,” he replied. “You know quite well you aren’t wanted. There is half an hour yet before we need bother about returning. Talk to me, you silent person. Give me the benefit of all those repressed thoughts of yours. Whenever I watch you, you are always dreaming. Do you never tell your dreams?”
“They aren’t worth telling,” she answered coldly, with difficulty restraining a desire to cry.
She wanted to beg him to desist from tormenting her, to leave her alone, to ignore her as he used to do. This persistent persecution worried her. She was no match for a man of his years and ripe experience. She was attracted by his personality, and at the same time afraid of him, a dangerous combination of emotions for a girl of twenty-two.
“I would like to judge that for myself,” he said. “I incline to believe I should find those day dreams interesting. Is it love you think about so much?”
“No,” she answered bluntly. “Love doesn’t come my way. I have no time for it.”
“It seems to me,” he said, “that it comes very much your way... You are turning your shoulder on it now. Come! let me see your face—dear.”
“You must not talk to me like that,” Blanche exclaimed with sudden passion. “You would not dare if your wife were here.”
“My wife!” he echoed, and laughed. “Thank God! she isn’t here. I don’t want any one just now but you,—you, with the sea and the salt wind and that delicious shy look in your eyes... You aren’t angry, really? I so want to enjoy my holiday—here with you. I don’t believe you are angry, but I think you are a little afraid of me.”
She kept her face averted, and gazed steadily out to sea. The waves were sweeping up the wet sands until they almost reached her feet. When they came near enough to force her to move, she determined that she would then return to the hotel. She felt that she could not, while he still held her hand, make an effort of herself to rise.
“Yes, I am afraid,” she muttered. “I am afraid.”
Her lip quivered, and the hand lying unresponsively in his was icy cold. He gripped it hard.
“You need not be afraid,” he said. “I have only a very kindly feeling for you,—a tender feeling. I want to give you pleasure. One day you will understand. I do not wish you to be frightened of me. I want you to trust me. There isn’t the slightest reason why we shouldn’t be the closest of chums.”
“There is every reason,” she answered; “the secrecy of it alone proves that. You dare not give me your friendship openly.”
“But it’s the secrecy which makes it so jolly,” he insisted.
“Scuffling in the dark!” she said scornfully.
He fondled her hand.
“It isn’t dark now,” he said.
“No. But there is no one to heed us. Presently we shall go back. I shall walk on ahead,—or follow—whichever suits you; and for the rest of the evening we shall be distantly formal.” She faced him with an expression of hard resentment in her eyes. “You may find it amusing,” she added bitterly; “but to me it is only humiliating. I wish you would leave me alone.”
He sat up, and drawing his knees up, clasped them with his arms.
“Perverse!” he murmured, watching the encroachment of the waves with a seemingly absorbed interest, and evading the girl’s scornful, accusative gaze. “And I believed she was going to be sweet... My dear girl,” he exclaimed, suddenly facing about, “you have made two misstatements which it behoves me to correct. We are not going to spend a formal evening,—we are going for a walk in the moonlight. You are not going to precede me, nor will I permit you to follow me off the beach now. We return together. It would be far more indiscreet to pursue the tactics you have laid down, as it will be far pleasanter to adopt mine. Better leave yourself in my hands, my dear. My knowledge of the world is more profound than yours. The greater length of time I have lived in it justifies that assumption. And my experience of life has taught me that to deny oneself a single pleasure for the sake of some foolish scruple is wasteful; it only brings regret, and profits one nothing. The moral is obvious.”
“That is an unworkable theory,” she answered.
“Not so,” he returned. “Take our own case, for instance. We enjoy being together. What do we gain by denying ourselves that pleasure? Nothing. What do we lose by making the most of these opportunities? Nothing. It is absurd to lead a life of suppressions, to deny one’s self enjoyment, for purely imaginary reasons. I delight in your friendship. I like you, your quiet, dark-eyed thoughtfulness. I think you would be kind to me, only you won’t allow yourself to be kind. Why? Can’t you see that I stand in need of your friendship?”
“There is your wife,” she reminded him.
He made an impatient sound, and looked annoyed.
“Haven’t you discovered yet that the children are more to her than I am?” he demanded. “I don’t like second place. I want to stand first in some one’s life. I have no right to say such things to you, of course. But that is how I feel.” He turned to her quickly, and spoke in swift impassioned tones. “Blanche, be a little kind to me. It will cost you nothing, and it will mean so much to me... Will you try?”
“You don’t consider me,” she said, in a low, tremulous voice. “Can’t you see how difficult it is for me to refuse? ... I made a great mistake in ever allowing you to kiss me. I blame myself greatly for that I didn’t consider... Be generous, and leave me alone.”
Her appeal would have moved any one less deliberately selfish to desist; its effect upon Arnott, to whom it appeared tantamount to a confession of weakness, was merely gratifying. He felt pleasantly confident, and was satisfied for the present to rest at this stage in the development of his pursuit.
It was beginning to matter to him more than he realised, the subjugation of this girl’s will to his own. The quest he had begun in idle amusement was becoming a serious business; it was a game no longer, but a matter of deadly earnest. Its very importance to him was hourly increasing her value and desirability in his eyes.
He rose without a word, and offered her his hand and assisted her to her feet. They tramped back over the fine white sand in silence. The girl walked with her gaze fixed on the far horizon, where one blue expanse melted into the other as sea and sky took on the grey shades of evening. Her calm face masked successfully the whirl of emotions which stirred her, but the eyes, staring out to sea, were eloquent of many unquiet thoughts.
When they left the beach and stepped upon the firm road, he broke the silence abruptly.
“Don’t be too hard on me, Blanche,” he said. “I’m a lonely sort of fellow. You fit into the blanks, somehow. I’ve been happier since you came into my life. Don’t begrudge me any scrap of comfort I derive from your society, my dear.”
She made no response to this. She crossed the road with heightened colour and entered the hotel. He followed her, and stood at the foot of the stairs, looking after her as she slowly mounted and passed on to her room. Then he went to his own room to change.
He surveyed himself in the glass, and twisted the ends of his moustache, and smiled complacently. The glass told him that he had passed his first youth; but it further assured him that he was still a good-looking man, and that the lines which showed between his brows and about the corners of his eyes, added the weight of a matured dignity which might very well prove attractive in the eyes of a girl. A girl would naturally feel flattered by attentions from him. Blanche, he knew, was flattered. She was interested in him; but she was fighting against the influence he exercised over her. When she ceased to fight she would prove an easy conquest, he told himself.