Chapter Sixteen.
Men of Arnott’s type are most dangerous on account of their unscrupulousness. A man who will commit bigamy because he recognises that the virtue of the woman he desires is proof against any relationship save the honourably married state, is capable of the further infamy of unfaithfulness to the woman he has wronged. Faithfulness is an unknown quality in such natures; it is at variance with every other predominant quality that goes to the making of such men. Arnott was already unfaithful to Pamela in his thoughts. His sudden infatuation for the governess of his children developed surprisingly until it became an obsession. In his preference for her society ordinary caution was disregarded, and little by little the last decent pretences were allowed to slip away.
Pamela began to be dimly aware of certain things during their stay at Muizenberg. Arnott spent a great deal of time in Miss Maitland’s company. He took her motoring, while Pamela remained with the children, and in the evenings, when she and the children were at tea, they went for long walks together, returning only in time for dinner. Pamela thought little of this at first. She had elected to be with the children, and had refused to motor with Herbert; she was pleased when he asked Blanche to accompany him. But after a while these excursions became a daily practice; the morning bathe was merely a pretext for teaching Blanche to swim Arnott pleased himself without any reference whatever to Pamela’s wishes or convenience. She felt indignant. It was time, she decided, to remonstrate with him on the impropriety of paying such marked attention to the girl. She particularly disliked his conduct towards her in the water. After all, Blanche was in a sense in her charge; she was responsible for her while she remained in her family.
She informed Arnott on one occasion, when they were alone together, that he spent too much time with Miss Maitland, and was unnecessarily familiar. She objected to his addressing her by her Christian name. He lost his temper at that. He didn’t see any harm in it, he told her; she often called her Blanche.
“That’s different,” Pamela answered. “It is scarcely a reason for your doing so. I don’t like it.”
After that he was rather more careful, and indulged in these familiarities only when he felt certain that Pamela could not overhear. But his conduct in other respects continued to affront her, and spoilt her enjoyment entirely of the holiday which had promised so much pleasure at the beginning. She felt only anxious to return home. Had it not been for the disappointment it would have occasioned the children, she would have curtailed the holiday.
When the fortnight was nearly expired, Arnott proposed remaining at Muizenberg for another week, but Pamela refused to do this. He did not urge her. He had put forward the suggestion in an offhand, self-conscious manner; and when she objected, he merely remarked that he thought it would be nice for the children, and then dropped the subject. But her refusal incensed him. Opposition to his wishes always made him angry. It exasperated him to be forced to submit to her decision; but he swallowed his annoyance, and said nothing.
He went for a walk with Blanche, and confided to her that he was sick of his life. He derived immense consolation from her sympathetic silence, and the return pressure of her fingers when he sought her hand,—the first time she had responded in this way. There being no one in sight, he stooped and kissed her.
“You can’t imagine what a help you are to me,” he said.
“I am glad,” she answered. “No one has ever wanted my help before.”
“I want it,” he said.
“Just now,—because you are unhappy. But it won’t always be like that.”
“It will,” he insisted. “I shall always want you. You are necessary to me. You make life bearable.”
“I don’t think it very likely that I shall be with you much longer,” she said.
“Why?” he asked quickly.
She shook her head, and gave him one of her sphinx-like smiles.
“I can’t explain,” she replied. “But I think it will be as I say.”
“You don’t want to leave us?” he asked.
She hesitated, and looked straight ahead along the hot white road. The expression of her face was difficult to read; the man, watching it closely, learned nothing from it. He was conscious only of the sudden hardening of the lines about her mouth.
“Do I?” she murmured, rather to herself than to him, and added slowly:—“I don’t know.”
“That’s nonsense,” he exclaimed impatiently. “You must know whether you are happy with us.”
“I am not happy,” she returned, without looking at him. “I don’t think it should be difficult for you to realise that... I don’t think mine is a happy nature,” she continued in low, dispassionate tones. “I can’t remember being ever really happy—as most people are happy—even as a child. There has been little enough of love or brightness in my life.”
“I want to show you something of both,” he said. “I could, if you would let me. I care a lot for you, you know.”
She smiled drearily.
“That’s not of any use to me,” she replied... “You know that.”
“I’ll wait,” he said confidently. “You’ll change your mind about that some day.”
The sun was sinking low towards the west, disappearing in a crimson glory which reflected its red glow in their faces, and splashed the girl’s white skirt with vivid colour. She stared at the dying splendour of the day with discontented eyes, which read in the vision of this royal withdrawal the melancholy inevitableness of destiny,—the futility of striving against the combined forces of nature and habit and inclination. Why, as Arnott argued, should one refuse what life offered from some unprofitable idea of right? Life had offered her so little: the only gladness she had known came to her through this man’s disloyal affection. Nothing could result from their intercourse. Already it caused her more pain than pleasure. But the unwholesome flattery of his attentions held her captive to the intoxicating excitement of the senses. Each new licence he permitted himself, against which she offered the vain resistance of a half-heartened remonstrance, left her more unguarded to his persistent attack. She despised herself for accepting his caresses, for allowing him to talk to her as he did. Always she resolved that each time should be the last; and on the next occasion she yielded to him again. When the mind becomes subordinated to the senses moral victory is impossible.
“Let us rest here a while,” Arnott said.
He drew her aside from the road, and spread his coat for her under the shade of a tree. He seated himself beside her, and smoked and talked disconnectedly about himself,—of the aimlessness of his life, of his unrealised hopes, his disappointments, and the unsatisfying nature of his married life. He did not speak to her of love; he contented himself with trying to arouse her sympathy, and to place the disloyalty of his conduct in a less condemnatory light. He was the misunderstood, unappreciated husband, whose sole function in his wife’s eyes was to provide her with the agreeable and comfortable things of life.
If this description was not altogether consistent with the home life as she had observed it when she first came to live with them, Blanche ascribed the discrepancy to her want of perception, or to the decent deceptions he had practised in order to keep up before the world a pretence of domestic amiability. She was convinced he was quite sincere in what he told her. He was, as a matter of fact, talking himself into a belief in Pamela’s coldness. He began to feel genuinely sorry for himself in the rôle of the unappreciated husband divorced from the sympathies of an indifferent wife. Pamela was indifferent of late, he reflected; she had grown strangely independent of him.
“You see how it is?” he said, and gazed appealingly into the dark calm eyes that were watching him in wondering earnestness, while their owner listened compassionately to this tale of married infelicity. “It’s all the children with her. I don’t count in the ordinary sense. God knows why I married! I’ve half a mind to chuck it—to disappear. There are times when I feel things can’t go on like this much longer. A man hates being thwarted. That’s what I am,—thwarted continually.”
He dug his heel into the ground and uprooted little tufts of grass and kicked them irritably aside.
“If it wasn’t for you,” he said, “I couldn’t stick it. You are so sweet and understanding and considerate. When I am with you I can let myself out, and that eases the strain. Don’t you ever marry, Blanche,” he added abruptly. “It’s the very devil to be tied hand and foot for life... the very devil.”
“I am never likely to have the opportunity,” she answered in her cool, indifferent manner. “I don’t get on with men. They always want to be amused, and I have nothing to say to them. No man, save you, has ever troubled to talk to me.”
“I’m glad of that,” he said. “It’s selfish of me; but I like to feel that I have your undisputed friendship. I’m a monopolist. A woman who held me alone in her thoughts could have the best of me,—the whole of me. I would give up everything for her.”
“I suppose most men think that of themselves,” observed Blanche. “But a man’s world holds other things than love—a woman’s world also, for that matter, though it is not generally considered to. No person gets the whole of another person; at most one only shares.”
“That’s a frigid philosophy,” he said. “You are too young to be cynical.”
“I am young only in years,” she answered. “I’ve never had any youth. I don’t know what it is to feel girlish. All my life has been spent in looking after other people’s babies, with an insufficient education to fit me for anything else. That sort of life doesn’t tend to make one youthful.”
“It’s a rotten shame,” he declared. “I’d like to take you out of it, and give you a right good time. I’d teach you how to be young.”
“I believe you could,” she said, and smiled suddenly. “Do you know what I covet,” she asked abruptly, “more than anything in the world? Money.” She emitted a bitter little laugh. “Now, confess, you don’t think that altogether nice of me.”
“Well, I don’t know,” he replied. “Life without money would be fairly dull. I had rather you had owned to a more feminine desire; it would seem more natural.”
“Not really,” she contradicted. “Where will you find a woman who will marry a poor man if a richer offers? Every one wants wealth. It is the only thing which gives one power, and is never disappointing. If one is wealthy one can snap one’s fingers at the world.”
“By Jove!” he muttered.
He looked at her oddly, removing the cigar from his mouth and waving aside the smoke rings for his better observation of the intent, inscrutable face, which in its earnest concentration appeared wholly unaware of his scrutiny and the criticism in his eyes. He was busy taking stock of her, summing up from this unexpected admission to the secrecy of her innermost thoughts, the nature of this surprisingly new feminine type who imagined herself symbolic of all womanhood. Like himself, she was thorough egoist, hugging to her embittered, discontented soul the sense of her own importance and the world’s callous neglect. All the submissiveness, the gentle deferential manner which had won for her Mrs Carruthers’ patronage, and the confidence of Pamela, fell from her like a soft garment which has concealed effectively the deformities it cloaked. The passionate, hungry, dissatisfied soul of the girl was bared to the man’s gaze. He recognised her true self for the first time, and smiled to himself at the revelation. He took pleasure in the knowledge that he was a wealthy man.
“If a rich man offered, I suppose you would marry him?” he said, brutally outspoken.
She did not resent the grossness of the question, neither did she give him a direct answer. She plucked the head from a wild flower growing in the grass, and pulled it to pieces abstractedly while she talked.
“Wealth, when it is a personal possession, brings one absolute power,” she said slowly. “When one benefits through another’s wealth one can only enjoy what it gives. If I had money of my own, I should be glad; but I shall never have it. If I were a man I would get it—somehow.”
He laughed.
“That kind of reckless ambition leads men occasionally into awkward scrapes,” he said. “Finance with a disregard for the methods of acquirement is folly. Your feminine logic disqualifies you for the profession.”
She looked at him a little contemptuously.
“A man always considers a woman a fool in business matters,” she said.
“You’ve a good deal as a sex to learn yet,” he returned, unmoved.
“Ah, well!” She threw away the petals of the flower and stood up. “It’s all idle talk, anyway. I suppose if I had even a moderate fortune I’d do as other women occasionally do, invest it in something absolutely safe.” She glanced at his recumbent figure, and at the coat lying on the ground. “If we don’t turn back, we shall be late; and Mrs Arnott will be displeased with me... I am sorry my holiday is drawing to an end.”
“So am I,” he said.
He picked up his coat, and vainly endeavoured to shake out the creases.
“It tells a tale,” he said.
Blanche held it for him while he got into it. She straightened the collar and pressed it into shape. He swung round suddenly and caught her round the waist and kissed her.
“One day,” he said, still holding her with his arm, “you shall have a right royal holiday, and do as much spending as your avarice dictates. I’d enjoy being your banker.”
She flushed hotly and withdrew from the encircling arm.
“You must never say a thing like that to me again,” she said.
Arnott merely smiled. The cloak once discarded can never be resumed as an effective disguise. He had summed her up in his mind and placed her to his entire satisfaction. She was no more sincere and no less vulnerable than the rest of her sex. Arnott held women cheaply in his thoughts, as men of his disposition are wont to do. The only woman whose cold virtue had opposed his libertine nature was his wife in England; and he hated her memory even.