Chapter Eight.
Dare sat on the stoep of his hotel in Johannesburg reading a letter from Mrs Carruthers, who kept up a spasmodic correspondence with him at his own urgent request; her letters, he explained, gave him a sense of living still in the world. One clause in this letter interested him particularly; it was a clause which referred to Pamela.
“I have just returned,” the writer stated, “from the christening of the Arnott baby,—a querulous man-child whom I have undertaken to keep uncontaminated from the wiles of the devil,—a preposterous thing to ask one human being to do for another. Being a childless woman myself, I am more afraid of my godson than of the devil, the latter being so conveniently unsubstantial. Whether it is the added cares of maternity, or due to the fact that the connubial bliss I once dilated upon to you is not so assertive as it was a year ago, your sweet-faced divinity is decidedly less prepossessing in appearance. I would never have believed that a year could age a woman as it has aged Pamela Arnott. Besides looking older, she is considerably less gay. But she is a dear woman, all the same.”
The writer passed on to other matters, and mentioned that she was glad there was a chance of seeing him shortly. She hoped while he was in Cape Town he would spare them a few days.
Dare folded the letter and placed it in his pocket-book; then he sat back in his chair and fell to thinking about Pamela. Why, he wondered, should a year make such a difference in a woman’s appearance that to her intimate friends who saw her continually this change should be so apparent? And what had caused the diminution in the married happiness which, little as he had seen of the Arnott’s home life, he too had been conscious of? Pamela had radiated happiness on the evening he first met her.
He recalled Mrs Carruthers’ words, uttered carelessly to him that night in the garden, when she had alluded to the Arnotts’ marriage as an instance of perennial courtship, and had added, with a touch of sarcasm not altogether innocent of malice: “But, after all, five years is but a step of the journey.”
That bore out what more than one married man had told him, that it was the silliest mistake man or woman ever made to imagine that because one is violently in love for a period that state of erotic bliss is going to endure.
“It’s beyond the bounds of possibility,” one man had said to him recently in palliation of his own unfaithfulness. “And it’s a good thing all round for the race that we are as we are.”
But Dare had a conviction that, given the right woman, his love would endure to the end. The right woman for him, he believed, was Pamela; and she was beyond his reach.
Feeling as he did about Pamela, the wisest course for him to pursue was to keep out of her way. He realised this fully; at the same time he desired very earnestly to see her. Since she was ignorant of his feeling in regard to her, he argued, there could be no harm in their meeting; he had sufficient self-control to be able to converse with a woman without allowing her to suspect that he was interested in her in any marked degree. Indeed, he would have found his interest difficult to explain. To assert that he had fallen in love at sight with the face of a girl he had seen several years ago and never spoken to until he met her later as a married woman, would have lain him open to ridicule; it would have strained the credulity, he felt, of Pamela herself. He had heard of cases of love at first sight, but he had not believed in them prior to his own experience. It had always seemed to him that love could be begotten only of some quality of deep attraction in the personality of the individual. Certainly had he not found those attractive qualities in Pamela when eventually he met her, the romance he had cherished for five years would have gone the way of dreams; but his meeting with her kindled afresh the fires of his sleeping fancy; and the romance, which had promised to remain only a sentimental memory, was quickened into life. What he had loved in the girl’s face, he loved again in her personality. He was quite satisfied that Pamela was as sweet as she looked; and he determined to play the unobtrusive part of the silent male friend to this woman who was his ideal. He would not deny himself the pleasure of her society merely because he loved her. Never from look or word of his should she guess his secret. But if destiny ever offered him the chance of serving her, he would count himself well rewarded for his undeclared devotion.
The news concerning Pamela in Mrs Carruthers’ letter, quite as much as his own feelings, made him feverishly anxious to see her again. Business was taking him to Cape Town; he decided that when he was through with the business he would put in a little time on his own account; and Mrs Carruthers’ invitation fitted in with his plans.
He wrote her a cordial, but guarded, letter, in which he told her that he would take her at her word and bring himself and his suit case along and enjoy himself for a week. He followed shortly after the despatch of his letter.
Once arrived in Cape Town, the doubtful wisdom of his action in laying himself open to the direct influence of Pamela’s personality struck him forcibly for the first time. He stood to lose more than he was ever likely to gain in thus venturing so close to the flame. He was likely to emerge from the conflict scarred pretty badly, he told himself. But no amount of prudent reasoning could overcome his desire to see her again; that desire was paramount; it subdued every argument he brought forward against it. It was not wise, he allowed. But was a man in love ever wise?
He had resolved when he first met Pamela Arnott, and discovered in his friend’s wife the girl he had seen years before, to go out of her life finally; he had felt that it would not be safe to continue an acquaintance which could only be disturbing to himself, if indeed it developed no further inconvenience; but that suggestion in Mrs Carruthers’ letter that everything was not as formerly in the conditions of Pamela’s life shook this resolution, unsettled him. He wanted to judge for himself. If, as Mrs Carruthers had seemed to insinuate, Pamela was no longer happy in her marriage, then perhaps...
He broke off in his reverie, frowning at his own unbidden thoughts. If there was a grain of truth in that disquieting statement, it was very plain to him that the position of sympathiser was the last thing for him to take upon himself. The platonic, useful friend was very well in theory, but it didn’t answer put into practice as a rule, particularly in the case of the disappointed wife fretting at the conditions of her lot.
Dare had arrived at Mrs Carruthers to find her out, but he was sufficiently at home in that house to be equal to settling himself in, even to the ordering of refreshment, which, in the form of a whisky and soda, was brought to him on the stoep. Mrs Carruthers returned to find him reading the English papers, and quietly smoking.
“You look as though you had been sitting there for years,” she remarked, as she came up the steps. “When did you get here?”
He came forward with alacrity and took her extended hands. Each displayed unaffected pleasure in the other.
“Oh, about an hour ago! How well you look!”
“I’ve been enjoying myself. I suppose that’s why... Dickie’s late.”
She seated herself and began drawing off her gloves. Dare returned to his former chair.
“Tell me how you have contrived to get so much pleasurable excitement out of the afternoon,” he said.
“Oh, bridging,” she said,—“and I won—enormously. But never mind me. What I want to know is, what has abruptly shaken your obduracy? You have persistently refused my pressing invitations for over a year,—and now suddenly you arrive.”
He sat forward and regarded her inquiring face with a faintly amused smile. Ever since he had known her she had subjected him to this kind of suggestive inquiry. She was always reading a motive in his simplest act.
“Your last invitation arrived at a moment when it was possible, as well as agreeable, to accept it,” he explained. “I couldn’t get away before.”
“Umph!” she returned, and laughed. “I thought perhaps—But no matter. Your sex always suits its own convenience. Now tell me exactly what you want to do while you are here, and I’ll lay myself out to be obliging. That’s a prerogative of my sex, and I’ve not noticed that you ever attempt to check it.”
“Why should one discourage anything so commendable?” he asked.
“That’s no answer to my question,” she observed.
“No,” he returned. “But, you see, the question scarcely needs answering from my point of view. What should I want to do, but enjoy your society, and loaf delightfully?”
“Never at a loss,” she said, and smiled at him approvingly. “I hope your ideas of loafing will fit in with my evening’s arrangement I have asked the Arnotts and three others in to make a couple of tables for bridge. I had a feeling at the back of my mind that you would wish to see something of your sweet-faced Madonna during your stay, so I wasted no time. Considering that I am three parts in love with you myself, that is rather magnanimous on my side.”
“In any one else it might be,” he returned; “but you were made like that. Besides, you are fully assured that no one on earth could shake my intense admiration for yourself. I wonder why you married Dick?” he added speculatively. “All the nicest women are married.”
“I wasn’t married when I met you first,” she reminded him. “The truth of the matter is, you, like the majority of middle-aged bachelors, only appreciate the fruit which grows beyond your reach.”
“Middle-aged!” he protested. “Come now! I’m only thirty-five.”
“And seventy is the limit the Psalmist gives us. You have wasted your time, my friend.”
“Yes,” he agreed abruptly, and sat a little straighten, “I’ll have to go the pace,” he said, “in order to catch up.”
“You can make the most of the years that are left you,” Mrs Carruthers replied crushingly, “but you can never catch up. If people realised that in their youth, they wouldn’t waste their time as they do.”
“I wish you wouldn’t be so depressing,” he expostulated.
“I’m not I’m merely lamenting your lost opportunities. I’m for early marriages, and big families, and bother the cost.”
“That’s all very fine. But big families can’t be launched indiscriminately, and flung on the State.”
“People are so prudent nowadays,” she said; “they miss a lot of happiness. A jolly struggle is preferable to discreet luxury, with a will at the finish, leaving everything to the stranger or organised charities. I was one of fourteen, and there wasn’t a jollier or a poorer home in the Colony.”
She laughed, and thrust forward a small, misshapen foot.
“That comes of having to wear my elder sister’s outgrown shoes. But if I had had my footgear made for me, my feet would probably have been flat and large; and the sight of an incipient bunion brings back glorious memories of childhood’s makeshifts, and the joy of trying on coveted and outgrown clothes. We weren’t proud as children. And the bread and butter and onions we ate for supper tasted lots better than the eight-o’clock dinner I take now with Dickie.”
She sighed deeply, and became suddenly grave.
“All the rest have big families themselves,” she added wistfully. “I’m just out of it.”
“Children are mixed blessings,” he said consolingly.
“They aren’t,” she asserted. “They give one the satisfied feeling of carrying on. When we haven’t children, we just finish with our own little lives.” She sat up and smiled at him with cheerful encouragement. “I have invited a girl for you this evening. She is young and fresh and—”
“Oh, don’t!” he interposed hastily.
“She is quite nice to look at,” Mrs Carruthers resumed, not heeding his interruption. “She comes of good stock, and is amiable, and not too clever. She dances well, and plays games well, and is thoroughly domesticated,—an orphan, poor,—the eldest of a family of seven.”
“Ye gods!” he murmured. “Why didn’t you invite the other six?”
“They aren’t out,” replied Mrs Carruthers.
He repressed a desire to smile.
“It is my particular wish that you pay her special attention,” she continued calmly, “with a view to an early and suitable marriage. Now don’t make up your mind against it straightway. It will be an admirable thing for you, and I’ve set my heart on it.”
He laughed outright.
“Oh, you woman!” he said. “You inveterate matchmaker! If your girl is all you profess, why can’t you find her some one younger and more human? As my wife, she would have the devil of a time—you know she would.”
“I think you are rather severe in your judgment of yourself,” she returned imperturbably. “You are quite agreeable. And you could provide handsomely for a woman, and—other things.”
“Oh, yes; fourteen of them, if necessary,” he returned sarcastically. “But I don’t want them, really. I should feel horribly embarrassed with them.”
“Oh, you would get over that!” she answered easily. “You mustn’t think so much of yourself.”
He got up and passed round to the back of her chair and laid his two hands on her shoulders.
“You scheming little fiend!” he said. “You have had this in your mind all along when you have asked me repeatedly to come down.”
“I have always wanted you to marry,” she allowed, smiling up at him. “You will make a delightful husband.”
“Well, I’m not going to marry,” he said. “If you air any more of your matrimonial plans, I’ll make love to you. I’ll wreck your home.”
“You couldn’t,” she said. “Dickie would never trouble to be jealous of any one.” She put up her two hands and laid them upon his where they rested upon her shoulders. “You will be nice to her, George, won’t you?” she said. “You’ll like her immensely, if only you let yourself.”
“Of course I shall,” he replied, and smiled grimly. “I like every Eve’s daughter of you, worse luck!”