Chapter Ten.
The week Dare had promised himself at Wynberg overlapped and ran into the better part of three weeks. He gave as his reason for this extension of his holiday that he was enjoying himself, and that he felt he needed the rest.
“I suppose it is restful,” Mrs Carruthers remarked to him once, “mooning about the Arnott’s garden all day. Of course it is more of a change for you than using this garden... You do sleep here.”
He looked at her oddly. They were standing on the stoep together. He was just about to visit next door to take Mrs Arnott a book he had promised her. He had explained all this to Mrs Carruthers rather elaborately, and had failed to meet her steady, disconcerting gaze with his usual candour. These daily explanations of his informal visits next door called for much ingenuity, and were growing increasingly embarrassing. He disliked having to account for his doings; at the same time courtesy to his hostess demanded something; he rather fancied that it demanded more than it received.
“I admit the justice of that box on the ears,” he said. He held the book towards her. “We dine there to-night, I know; but I promised her she should have this this afternoon. Perhaps you wouldn’t mind sending it in with my compliments,” he suggested.
“Pamela would be disappointed,” she said.
“I believe she would,” he agreed.
“George,” she looked at him very gravely, and her tone was admonishing, “I don’t wish to annoy you,—but do you think you are acting wisely?”
“You couldn’t annoy me,” he answered. “And I haven’t considered the question in that light... What do you think?”
“I think you are growing too interested in Pamela,” she replied.
He was silent for a second or so, turning the book he held in his hand and gazing absently at its title. Abruptly he looked up.
“You haven’t overstated the truth,” he said quietly, a little defiantly, she fancied.
She shook her head seriously.
“I am sorry to hear you admit it. From my knowledge of you, I should have thought that, realising that you would at least have avoided her.”
“I am not doing her any harm,” he said.
“How can you be sure of that? Two years ago I should have felt confident that you couldn’t. I am not so positive now.”
“You mean she cares less for her husband than she did?”
The eager light in his eyes as he put the question troubled her. It was not consistent with her opinion of Dare that he should behave other than strictly honourably towards any woman.
“I don’t think you ought to have asked that,” she returned. He changed colour.
“No,” he said; “perhaps not. In any case, there wasn’t any need. It’s fairly obvious.”
“Leave her alone,” she counselled.
“Look here!” He took a step nearer to her, and spoke quickly and with a kind of repressed excitement that conveyed more than his actual words how deeply he was moved. “Don’t start getting a lot of false ideas into your head. I’m not playing the despicable game you think I’m after. I’m not amusing myself. Amusing myself! God! there isn’t much amusement in it. I’m leaving on Saturday,—I’ve made up my mind to that. But I’m going to see as much of her as I can in the interval. It’s the last time... I sha’n’t come back, unless I can feel perfectly sure of myself. But I’m going to leave her with the knowledge that I am her friend,—to be counted on if she needs me. I only ask to serve her. If she doesn’t want my service, I will stand outside her life altogether.”
“My dear boy,” she returned disapprovingly, “you are talking arrant nonsense. A married woman can have no need for a male friend such as you propose to be. He is either an object of ridicule to her, or she grows too fond of him. I am afraid you would not become an object for ridicule with Pamela; she hasn’t a sufficient sense of humour. You had far better give up going there.”
“I can’t do that,” he said. “But I promise you when I leave here I won’t come back.”
“Then leave to-morrow,” she advised.
“Not unless you turn me out.”
“You know I won’t do that,” she said. “But I don’t like it, George. I am—disappointed in you.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, and having nothing more to add, he left her, and walked away down the path.
She watched the tall figure disappear in the sunshine, and turned and went indoors, feeling justly aggrieved with this man whom she liked because he had fallen below the standard she believed him capable of attaining to. Love is either an elevating or a destructive factor; it is the supreme test of the qualities of the individual. She had believed that George Dare was made of stouter stuff. But the human being does not exist, she philosophised, on whom one can count absolutely. One may be able to answer for a person’s actions in relation to most human events, then the unexpected event befalls and one’s calculations are entirely at fault.
Dare, as he walked away from her, was fully alive to the criticism his behaviour evoked. He had been aware of her unspoken disapproval for days, had anticipated the inevitable remonstrance. He admitted the justice and the wisdom of her reproof, none the less it irritated him intensely. It is usually the self-acknowledged wrong that one most resents the detection of by another. When a man knows that his steps are tending crookedly he likes to be assured that he is walking straight; even though he recognises the assurance to be mistaken, it gives him a comfortable sense of secure deception.
“After all,” he reflected savagely, as though his conscience needed reassuring on the point, “I am intending her no harm. It’s my soul that gets scorched.”
But he knew, as he crossed the Arnotts’ lawn to where Pamela sat under the trees waiting for him, that he was to a certain extent disturbing her peace. He filled the newly created blank in her life, added an agreeable atmosphere of romance and excitement which for the time caused her to cease to miss the happiness she was conscious of missing of late. His homage was gratifying; it reinstated her in her own regard. In these ways he was securing a place for himself, making himself necessary to her.
She looked round at his approach, and a light came into her eyes, a smile to her lips, as he drew near. With his critical faculties keenly alert, following the recent interview, he noted more particularly the gladness of her welcome, and felt the inexplicable something that was like a mute bond of sympathy and understanding between them, perceived the furtive shyness of her glance, the quick change of colour as their hands met; and his mind became extraordinarily clear and active. He roused himself from his mental attitude of personal engrossment, and forced himself to an impartial consideration of her position. There was not a shadow of a doubt about it, though she had possibly not discovered the fact herself; she was becoming interested in him—in the man, not merely the friend. There wasn’t any danger, he told himself,—not yet; but there might be.
He recalled how every day since he had been in Wynberg he had seen her on some pretext or other: they had aided one another in the invention of trivial reasons for meeting. He had not always had her to himself as now: sometimes she had the children with her; on occasions Arnott was present. Arnott always seemed glad when Dare came in; he contrived generally to monopolise the conversation, and was manifestly entirely unaware of Dare’s preference for his wife’s society. It simply did not occur to him. His friends always admired Pamela; he was never jealous, perhaps because he felt so certain that this woman who had cleaved to him in defiance of her principles of honour, would cleave to him always. Although he was conscious of a waning of his own passion, it did not strike him that any change in himself could possibly weaken her love. He felt absolutely sure of her.
Pamela had been sewing before Dare joined her. When he sauntered across the lawn and drew up beside her chair, she dropped the work into her lap and gave him her undivided attention.
“You’ve brought the book,” she said, and took it from him with a pleased smile. “I rather wondered if you would come to-day.”
“Didn’t you feel fairly certain I would?” he asked, and fetched a chair for himself, which he placed close to hers, facing her.
He seated himself. Pamela did not answer his question. She opened the book and turned its pages idly. It was a beautifully bound volume of “Paolo and Francesca.” He had wished her to read it. But she understood quite well that the poem was a secondary matter; the bringing it to her was the primary motive.
“I am glad to have this,” she said. “I think I shall like it. The outside is beautiful, anyway.”
“So is the inside,” he answered. “But it is a bit on the tragic side. You mustn’t look for the happy ending.”
“No,” replied Pamela gravely. She put the book down and gazed beyond him at the sunshine that lay warmly on the garden, the golden mantle of gaiety which mocks the sadness of the world. “Life isn’t all happy ending, is it?”
“For many of us, no,” he allowed.
“I think the really happy people,” observed Pamela, wrinkling her brows while she pursued her reflections, “are the people who feel least.”
“You mean,” he said, watching her, “the people who never love?”
“I didn’t mean that exactly... And yet, in a way, I suppose I did. I meant the people of moderate passions,—self-disciplined people whose emotions are under control, whose minds are like a well ordered establishment in which nothing is ever out of place. They don’t admit disturbing elements, and so their lives run on in an even content. There are no big joys and no big sorrows. I have known several women like that. They suggest twilight somehow,—never the sunlight, and never blank darkness. They are restful.”
“I prefer the glowing beauty of vivid contrasts myself,” he said. “A world in which there is only twilight would be a prison house.”
“And yet you can spend a good portion of your time in the mines!” she said, bringing her face round and smiling at him.
He was glad she had introduced a lighter note into their talk.
“I get my contrasts that way,” he returned. “Besides, you can’t imagine how jolly it is to drop down into the warm darkness on a broiling sunny day. Come along to the mines some time, and I’ll take you down.”
“I should be scared to death,” she declared.
Quite unexpectedly he put his strong, thin hand over hers.
“I don’t think so,” he answered. “I wouldn’t take you where there was any danger. You would be safe with me.”
Pamela flushed deeply. There was in the strong, steady pressure of the nervous fingers which closed upon her hand so much of latent force, of protective power, of sex, that she felt strangely frightened. She wanted to withdraw her hand, and could not; some influence stronger than her own will prevented her. She felt oddly stirred, and immensely troubled and disconcerted. With an effort she lifted her eyes, disturbed and faintly questioning, to his. He was leaning forward, looking into the flushed face with earnest, compelling gaze.
“I’m going back to-morrow,” he said jerkily, and was quick to see the startled expression which darkened her eyes as he made the announcement. “This is the last chance I have of seeing you alone. Will you write to me?”
“I don’t think—I couldn’t,” she stammered nervously.
“Then will you promise me that if ever you are in any trouble, no matter what, in which a friend who has your well-being at heart might perhaps be useful, you will write to me? ... You know that I am your friend?” he inquired.
“I believe you are—yes.”
“And will you promise what I have asked?” he persisted.
Pamela hesitated, and stared at him with perplexed, embarrassed gaze.
“But there isn’t any need,” she began...
“Not now; no. I pray there never will be. But you will promise?”
“Yes—oh! yes,” she whispered, and, to her own intense dismay, burst into sudden tears. She dashed them hastily away with her disengaged hand. “You’re—frightening me,” she gasped. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Don’t cry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to frighten you. I’m not a beast. I’m not making love to you. But I just wanted you to know that everything I possess, myself included, is at your service at any time, and in any way you choose to command. Perhaps you may never require my services; but at least you know that I wish to be useful. Don’t misunderstand me,—that is all I wish to convey.”
He released her hand and sat back. Pamela dabbed her eyes furtively, ashamed of her emotional outburst, and angry with herself beyond measure for behaving like a simpleton.
“How silly I am!” she murmured. “I don’t know what you must think of me. I don’t know why I am crying.”
“I think you are very sweet,” he said gently, “and beautifully natural. I probably startled you. The unexpected is often disconcerting. If you had been one of the temperamentally even people of whom we have been talking you wouldn’t have been startled; but then, in that case, neither should I have been offering knightly service after the manner of a hero of romance. As a sign that I am forgiven, will you sing this evening the song you delighted us with on the night I first met you?”
“What was that?” Pamela asked, still too confused to meet his eyes.
“Mon coeur s’ouvre à ta voix.”
“Oh! Saint-Saëns... Yes, of course I will.”
When Dare returned next door, which he did earlier than Mrs Carruthers expected, he amazed her with the abrupt announcement of his intended departure on the morrow.
“You were right,” he said, “and I was wrong. I obey your marching orders. And now naturally,” he added, smiling at her grimly, “you’ll enjoy the feminine satisfaction in a moral victory—which is a euphony for getting your own way.”
She approached him with a glad look on her face, which had in it a good deal of admiration, and held out her hand as a man might do.
“I knew it,” she cried triumphantly. “Boy, you’re straight.”
He made a wry face as he shook hands with her. Then suddenly he stooped and kissed her.
“It’s the least you can offer me,” he said in explanation.
She laughed, well satisfied. She had not been mistaken; he had vindicated her belief in him.