Chapter Nineteen.
Desire to be perfectly fair in her judgment of Arnott did not prevent Mrs Carruthers from imparting her views to her husband, when discussing with him that evening the mysterious happenings next door. She first acquainted him with the bare details, and asked for his opinion; since he had no opinion to offer she proceeded to unfold hers. Carruthers was astounded; he was also, to his wife’s amazement, annoyed with her.
“Perhaps you won’t be so ready to recommend people in future,” he remarked. “This is what comes of interfering in other people’s concerns.”
“Don’t be so unreasonable,” she expostulated. “The girl appeared to be all right. She was with the Smiths for years.”
“Smith’s dead, you see,” he answered.
Mrs Carruthers stared.
“You think she was that sort of girl?” she asked.
“Well, I don’t know,” he returned, and looked a trifle sheepish. “But Arnott got her talked about pretty badly at Muizenberg. A fellow who was there at the same time told me it was scandalous the way he went on.”
Mrs Carruthers regarded her husband for a second or two in meditative silence. There was something in her suspicion after all; it was not merely prejudice which had been responsible for connecting Arnott’s absence with the girl’s flight in her mind.
“Dickie,” she said, “I believe they have gone away together.”
“I shouldn’t wonder.”
“I believe she knows it,” Mrs Carruthers pursued. She recalled Pamela’s stricken face, the evasive, frightened look in her eyes, her halting admission of ignorance as to her husband’s movements. “The brute!” she murmured, and added abruptly, “What a horrible thing to have happened. How is it going to end?”
“The usual way, I imagine,” Carruthers replied. “Unless of course she decides to keep quiet for the sake of the kids.”
A pause followed. Carruthers bit the end off a cigar and lighted it irritably. He was wishing that the Arnott’s affairs would not intrude themselves on his domestic peace. From his knowledge of his wife he realised that, however disinclined, he would be dragged into the business somehow. He anticipated her proposal that he should act as adviser to the deserted wife. In general he was not abnormally selfish; but he disliked being mixed up in other people’s scandals; and he did not see how he could keep out of this very well. He smoked energetically, and maintained a non-committal silence. In the meanwhile Mrs Carruthers rapidly reviewed the situation.
“But the girl...” she said suddenly, and broke off with a thoughtful puckering of her brows. “And I wanted George Dare to marry that girl,” she added, ending the pause.
“It’s a let off for him anyway,” remarked Carruthers.
“I would never have believed her capable of such wickedness,” she observed presently.
“I don’t see why you should believe it of her now,” he ventured. “After all, you know nothing. There may be quite a different explanation of Arnott’s absence. Didn’t his wife say where he had gone?”
“I didn’t like to ask her. She seemed to be in entire ignorance as to his movements. And she was so upset. It was her manner that made me suspicious. She was dazed, and—oh! hopeless. No one would take the disappearance of a governess to heart like that. I told her you would run in for a chat and advise her what to do.”
He groaned.
“Why couldn’t you leave me out of it?” he protested. “I can’t advise her. I’ve no experience in these things. You can tell her from me not to bother her head about the matter. I’ll make inquiries to-morrow, and find out what I can. I don’t suppose it will lead to much. The girl is old enough to look after herself, and Arnott’s movements are no concern of mine.”
“Well, really! Dickie, you might be more helpful,” she said.
“That is being helpful,” he insisted. “It’s a much more reasonable idea than yours, and more discreet in the circumstances. If things are anything like so bad as you are trying to make out, the less I run in there the better.”
Mrs Carruthers laughed.
“You nice chivalrous person!” she scoffed. “A fine friend you make for a woman in distress.”
“Distressed women aren’t my forte,” he said. “You should enlist the sympathies of an unmarried man. These bachelors in their sublime ignorance are bolder.”
“I would enlist the help of George Dare,” she said, “if it wasn’t for the unfortunate circumstance of his being—”
She broke off abruptly. To finish the sentence would have been to abuse Dare’s confidence, and she had no wish to do that.
“Of his being what?” Carruthers inquired, looking up.
“So far away,” she finished lamely. “You see, you are on the spot.”
“Yes,” he admitted. “I wish I wasn’t. As though a man’s own domestic troubles aren’t sufficient without his being expected to shoulder another man’s neglected responsibilities. There are people whose business it is to undertake these cases. If Mrs Arnott wants advice she knows where to procure it.”
“Oh! a woman never goes to a lawyer until she has exhausted every other resource,” Mrs Carruthers interposed.
“You are letting your imagination run away with your commonsense,” Carruthers resumed. “It is more than possible that you have discovered the proverbial mare’s nest. Because Arnott leaves home a few hours after the governess has done a bunk is no reason for concluding that they have eloped together. The explanation is probably much more simple.”
“Then I wish you would explain it,” she said with mild exasperation.
“Very likely they had a row,” he returned; “and Arnott cleared out. It’s the male equivalent for feminine hysteria. A jealous woman can make things fairly uncomfortable.”
“He shouldn’t give her cause for jealousy.”
“Well, there of course,” replied Carruthers, amused, “your argument is unassailable. But these things will happen. Man was born to be a hunter, you know; and throughout the ages woman has remained his favourite quarry. It’s pure instinct with us; and occasionally, as in Arnott’s case, instinct and opportunity occur simultaneously. In employing a good-looking underling, a married woman courts disaster.”
“Dickie,” exclaimed his disgusted wife, “how dare you talk like that? I am ashamed of you.”
He laughed good-humouredly, and rose from his seat.
“And now,” he said, “since you really wish it, I’ll go in and comfort Pamela. I’m in the mood for it.”
She gave him a bright look, in which a smiling sarcasm strove with her satisfaction in having gained this concession.
“You have just time before dinner, my fine hunter,” she observed. “If Pamela is in the humour, bring her back with you.”
Pamela was in no mood to accept an invitation to dine out. She was indeed so distraught in manner and so extraordinarily depressed that Carruthers did not propose it. He did not know what to make of her; but he was of his wife’s opinion that the unceremonious departure of the governess was not a sufficient cause for her obvious distress. Rather than adopt her theory, however, he clung to his belief that the Arnotts had had a domestic difference of more than ordinary seriousness, and that Arnott’s sudden absence was the result. The contemporaneous disappearance of the governess was an awkward development. Had he known where to address the man, he would have wired to him and suggested the propriety of his immediate return. But having in mind what his wife had confided to him, and baffled by Pamela’s extraordinary reticence, it was not in Carruthers to bring himself to the point of asking outright for the address. When he hinted at the advisability of summoning Arnott home, Pamela ignored the suggestion. He inclined to the view that she actually did not know where he was.
Very much perplexed, Carruthers returned home. He had relieved Pamela of further responsibility in regard to Blanche Maitland, by promising to look up the girl’s friends and discover, if he could, what had become of her. That was as much as he could do, he informed his wife; and reluctantly confessed, when she dragged the admission from him, that Pamela had not appeared anxious for him to undertake the task. The interview had been most unsatisfactory.
“That bears out my suspicion,” Mrs Carruthers declared. “They have gone off together, and Pamela knows it.”
“Well, in that case,” Carruthers remarked, as he went in to dinner, “we shall all of us know it quite soon enough.”
Carruthers’ subsequent inquiries concerning Blanche Maitland elicited very little information. Her friends, if they knew anything definite, were evidently pledged to secrecy. They were aware that she had left her late employment, but her present whereabouts were unknown to them; they understood she was travelling.
That seemed to strengthen his wife’s suspicion, Carruthers decided; but reflecting that it was no business of his, he dismissed the matter from his thoughts, having first informed Pamela that the girl’s friends appeared satisfied as to her well-being, and that therefore there was no need for her to concern herself further about her. Pamela took the news very quietly. She thanked him for the trouble he had been to on her behalf; and it seemed to him that by her manner of thanking him she intimated that there was nothing further he could do. If, as Mrs Carruthers insisted, she knew the two had eloped, it was plain she did not intend to move in the matter for the present. He admired her reserve. Whatever the trouble between herself and her husband might be it was manifest she had no wish to discuss it. Her attitude he considered was highly correct and discreet.
Pamela passed an anxious week waiting for news of Arnott, but no letter arrived from him. A fortnight passed, a month, without bringing any news. This neglect confirmed her worst fears. She began seriously to consider her position. If Herbert had deserted her she could not continue living as she was doing in his house. It was monstrous to allow herself to be kept in this manner by a man who no longer wanted her.
But the difficulty was how to act. To seek outside advice, it would be necessary to disclose the shameful secret of her marriage. That, she realised, with its consequent disgrace and imprisonment for Herbert, would seem to him a paltry act of revenge on her part. She experienced as great a shrinking from punishing him, as from the thought of publishing her own shame, and bringing ostracism on her children.
The expedient of writing to Dare and making the demand on his friendship which he had asked her so urgently to make, crossed her mind more than once. She could consult him without fear that he would reveal her secret to others. His insistent request that she should appeal to him if in any difficulty, seemed almost as though he had foreseen this trouble looming ahead for her. Could it be that he knew something of Arnott’s past? Impossible! No one, save themselves and Lucy Arnott, knew of his bigamous second marriage.
She sat down to write to Dare one day at Arnott’s desk in the room he called his study. Save that he kept it for his exclusive use and wrote his letters there, it had no pretence at being a study; no one, least of all Arnott, ever studied there. Pamela opened the desk and searched for writing materials. Then she began a letter to Dare.
“You told me once,” she reminded him, “that if ever I was in need of help such as a friend only could render, I was to write to you. My friend, I am in need of help now. I am in great trouble...”
Here she broke off, dissatisfied with this attempt, and tore the paper into minute fragments and threw them into the waste-paper basket. Then she started again. She got a little further with the second letter before this too occurred to her as unsatisfactory and followed the fate of the former attempt. In all she wrote six letters, none of which pleased her, and were each in turn consigned to the basket. Then, having exhausted the note-paper, she paused and sat back in the chair and thought. Was it wise after all to write to him? What could he, or any one, do to help her in her present distress? It was a matter which could only be settled between herself and Herbert, unless she was prepared to face the ordeal of a public scandal.
But the memory of Dare’s face as he had pleaded with her in the garden, the sympathy of the strong kindly voice, the earnest insistence of his manner when he spoke of his desire to be helpful, and his right as her sincere friend to the privilege of her confidence, awoke in her a craving for his help, for the comfort of his advice. She was conscious also of a wish for his presence; it would be an immense relief merely to talk with him.
Quickly she resolved to make a further attempt to write to him, and searched in the desk for another sheet of paper. She opened the drawers, and turned over their contents,—bills principally, and old letters of Arnott’s. From among a pile of loose papers a cablegram fell out, face upward, with a cutting from a newspaper pinned to the back of it. The writing caught Pamela’s eye; the brief message on the little yellow form was fully exposed. “Lucy Arnott died this morning.” And the cablegram was dated ten months ago.
Pamela took it up and stared at the message with dull, comprehending eyes. Ten months earlier Arnott had received this news of his wife’s death, and he had withheld the knowledge from her. Ten months ago he had it in his power to legalise their union, and he had not done it. He had wilfully deceived her in the matter of his wife’s death. There was only one interpretation to put upon his conduct: he had no wish, no intention, to right the wrong he had done her.
Pamela shivered, and laid the cablegram down on the desk and stared at it, faint and sick with the pain and anger, the shamed resentment with which this knowledge filled her. Arnott’s infamous conduct showed her plainly how lightly he regarded her, how little of honour, of love or respect he felt for the girl he had cheated into marrying him, and had made the mother of his children. Free now to marry her, he was satisfied to keep her in the shameful position of a mistress, and to follow lightly after illicit loves.
She recalled his words uttered on the last evening before he left home: “Cheap! Women are cheap.” That probably had been his attitude always in regard to women.
She turned back the cablegram and looked at the printed form attached to it. It was a cutting from an English newspaper containing a brief notice of Lucy Arnott’s death. Why, she wondered, had he kept the thing lying about loose in his drawer where any one might read it? She took it up, closed the desk, forgetting Dare and her intention to write to him, forgetting everything in face of this horrible ugly proof of Herbert’s treachery; and going up to her own room, she locked the cablegram away in the safe where she kept her jewels.