Chapter Twenty.
Oddly enough the first news of Blanche Maitland came to Mrs Carruthers through Dare.
He mentioned in a letter that he had been to a music-hall entertainment where to his amazement the sphinx-like young person, who was a paragon of all the virtues, was playing accompaniments for the members of a musical troupe, to which she apparently belonged.
“I understood she was fostering the Arnott babies,” he wrote. “You don’t keep me fully posted as to events, as you promised. I tried to get hold of her, but learnt that she had gone on to Pretoria. It is an odd life for a girl, but more amusing, possibly, than tending the future generation.”
Further on in the letter he said:
“I ran across Arnott in town—another surprise. He was very surly, and seemed to wish to avoid me, so I reconsidered my hospitable intention to ask him to lunch with me. How is She? If you don’t mention Her in your next letter I shall run down and pursue my own inquiries.”
Mrs Carruthers was highly perplexed. Why, she wondered, if Blanche had gone away with Arnott should she have joined a troupe of strolling singers? And if she had not gone away with Arnott, why was he in Johannesburg at the same time?
Carruthers could not explain this also as a coincidence. He did not attempt to. He remarked that it looked fishy, and asked his wife if she intended to inform Pamela. Mrs Carruthers was undecided.
“I don’t know what to do,” she confessed. “I think I’ll write to George, and tell him to find out what he can about them. It will be necessary to explain certain things to him; I am sorry to be obliged to do that.”
“Why?” inquired Carruthers.
She looked at him for a moment uncertainly. Dickie was a well-meaning person, but he was not astute. She possessed a beautiful contempt for his perspicacity.
“George admires Pamela,” she said.
Carruthers received this intelligence unmoved.
“He would be a little unusual if he didn’t,” he returned. “I don’t see why that fact should make you hesitate to enlist his services; it’s much more likely to make him of use. Dare is cut out for the rôle of knight to distressed beauty; it suits his proportions; a stout man looks absurd in the cast.”
Mrs Carruthers showed impatience.
“If you can’t help, don’t make fatuous remarks,” she said. “George takes it too seriously. We don’t want to complicate the present muddle. If I felt that he might make a fool of himself over this business I would sooner bite out my tongue than inform him.”
“Then we aren’t any forrader,” Carruthers returned imperturbably, “except that we have a clue to Arnott’s whereabouts, which in my opinion you have no right to keep from his wife.”
“We don’t know positively that she isn’t fully informed,” she replied.
Mrs Carruthers was worried, and felt consequently irritated. Dare’s letter had reopened a subject which had been slipping comfortably into the background of her thoughts. She was sorry for Pamela, whom she would willingly have helped had it lain in her power; but Pamela made no offer to confide in her. She never referred to Arnott’s absence,—never spoke of him now. Mrs Carruthers formed the opinion that she still had no knowledge of his movements, that she did not know when to expect him back. An unpleasant sense of mystery hung over the affair, which imposed a painful constraint on their friendly relations. Pamela avoided intercourse with her neighbours, and was seldom to be seen without the children; it was as though she used them as a shield to guard against awkward encounters. But that she was unhappy was very obvious. She had become transformed into a thoughtful, care-worn woman, in whose eyes there lurked always a haunting expression of dread. It was this expression which, in spite of Pamela’s aloofness, kept Mrs Carruthers’ sympathies alight, and moved her, against her very earnest desire to keep George Dare from mixing himself up in Pamela’s affairs, to write to him, and request him to discover if he could what Arnott was doing in Johannesburg.
Her letter brought Dare to Wynberg. He descended upon her in his usual informal manner, announcing his intended visit by telegram, and following the announcement as speedily as circumstances permitted. This course was a practice with him of many years’ standing, and never before the present occasion had Mrs Carruthers resented it. The receipt of the telegram annoyed her. She had asked him to find out certain things about Arnott, and in response he had come away from the centre where he could have instigated inquiries which might have elicited useful information, led by some wild, unaccountable impulse which he ought, she felt, to have resisted. That he would come down had been the last thought in her mind.
Dare received a frigid welcome. He was in a way prepared for this. The letter she had written had been so vague and guarded in its wording that he had read between the lines her desire to keep him in the dark as far as possible as to the reason for the inquiries she wished him to make. Dare had no intention of being kept in the dark in any matter relating to Pamela. He intended to find out things for himself.
“You don’t appear overjoyed to see me,” he observed to his unwelcoming hostess, whose greeting of him lacked the warmth and kindliness he was accustomed to from her.
“I am not,” she answered severely. “Whatever did you come for?”
“To see Pamela,” he replied unhesitatingly.
“Why?”
“Because from your mysterious communication I judged she was in some difficulty. You gave me a few insufficient facts. I want details. If you won’t give them to me, she will.”
Mrs Carruthers deliberated.
“I asked you to find out what Arnott was doing in Johannesburg,” she said presently. “I fail to see what there was in that request to bring you to Wynberg.”
“Arnott is not in Johannesburg any longer. He was leaving on the day I met him,” he returned. “Why should you concern yourself about his movements? Presumably your request was not based on anxiety on his account; therefore I concluded your concern must be for Mrs Arnott. I came down to find out.”
“I hope you are not going to give me cause to regret having written that letter,” she said seriously.
“I hope not,” he responded with equal gravity. “Why should you imagine anything of the sort? As I told you before, I only wish to be helpful to her.”
She turned the subject, and talked to him on other matters; but Dare, after a brief interval, brought the conversation back to the topic which most interested him. He got very little satisfaction from Mrs Carruthers. Carruthers was more communicative. From him Dare heard the whole story, embellished with details which Mrs Carruthers had not heard. Arnott was pretty freely discussed at the club, of which he and Carruthers were members. Carruthers had come round to believe in his wife’s theory that Arnott had eloped with the governess. The fact that she was touring with a musical troupe, was in his opinion merely a blind. When he tired of the girl, doubtless he would chuck it and come home.
“Well,” said Dare, “I’m glad you told me. But I don’t believe a word of it. He wasn’t with the girl in Johannesburg, save in the sense of being in the same town. I’m going to clear up this business for my own satisfaction. To-morrow I shall call on Mrs Arnott.”
“I supposed that was your object,” Carruthers answered. “But you won’t get much out of her. It’s my belief she is as ignorant as the rest of us. She’s feeling this, Dare. It makes me feel sloppily sentimental merely to look at her. The chap wants kicking. You be careful what you are doing, my boy. I am rather of Connie’s opinion that you’d be wiser to keep out of this. It’s the devil of a business to attempt comforting a pretty married woman. Stick to widows and spinsters, I say. What!”
“You’re an awful old ass, Dickie,” was all Dare said in response.
Dare experienced a curious exasperation in the knowledge that the Carruthers both doubted the disinterestedness of his purpose in seeking to be of use to Pamela. A man may befriend the woman he loves without any base thought in connection with her. In coming to Wynberg to see Pamela, Dare had no other intention than to be of service to her. The doubtful possibility of being able to serve a woman whose husband has presumably deserted her, did not strike him. Once in possession of the facts he would be in a position at least to advise her; might, if things were not as Carruthers represented them, assist in putting a stop to the scandal that was afloat. It was abominable to reflect that Pamela’s name was being bandied about at the clubs.
Pamela was in the garden when Dare called in the morning. The boy was asleep on a kaross spread under the trees, and she was seated in a chair near him, sewing, when Dare opened the gate and entered. The sound of his footsteps on the hard gravel caused her to look up; and an expression of quick alarm showed in her face as her eyes met his.
He advanced swiftly towards her; and, as he crossed the lawn, she rose and stood, flushed, embarrassed, painfully self-conscious, looking at him in a dismayed silence which she seemed unable to break. Dare spoke first.
“I’ve sprung a surprise on you,” he said, and took her proffered hand and held it firmly gripped in his. “I’m staying next door.”
“I didn’t know you were expected,” Pamela returned, recovering herself with an effort, and giving him a welcoming smile. “I haven’t seen Connie for days.”
“It was a surprise for her too,” he admitted. “I came self-invited. Are you busy? I should like to stay for a chat, if I may.”
“That’s my only business at present,” she said, and pointed towards the sleeping child. “I’m on guard.”
Dare looked down at the child.
“The little chap grows,” he remarked. “He was only a baby when last I saw him. How’s the girlie?”
“Oh! very well. If you stay you will see her later. She is out at present. Sit down, won’t you?”
He drew a chair forward facing hers on the side farthest away from the child, and sat down. It recalled, save for the boy’s unconscious presence, the afternoon when he had last sat there with her, and had wrung from her the promise which she had failed to keep.
“It is like old times, this,” he observed, and scrutinised her thoughtfully as he sat back in his seat. Despite the flush in her cheeks which the sight of him had brought there, he could not fail to detect traces of the trouble which had wrought such a marked change in her appearance that, had he needed assurance there was something in what Carruthers had told him, her face would have supplied the necessary proof. “I’m awfully glad to see you again. I came with that object,” he said.
“To see me!” Pamela looked puzzled.
“To see you,” he repeated. “Do you remember something I asked you to do in this garden, the last time we sat here?”
Pamela did not immediately answer. That she followed his question he realised by the deepening of the flush in her cheeks. She lay back in her chair, very still and quiet, the long lashes drooping above her eyes, veiling the trouble in their depths. Dare sat forward now, regarding her steadily.
“What was that?” she asked presently; and he knew that she put the question merely to gain time. She understood perfectly to what he referred.
“You promised me that if ever you were in a position in which a friend might prove helpful, you would extend to me a friend’s privilege,” he said earnestly. “Have you kept that promise?”
“I have not been in that position,” Pamela replied without looking at him.
Dare laid a hand on her dress.
“Pamela,” he said quietly, “I think I deserve that you should be honest with me.”
She turned very white. How he had learnt of the trouble which she believed was known only to herself, she had no means of judging, but that he was in possession of certain information his manner assured her. She wondered how he had come by his knowledge,—how much he knew. Suddenly she experienced again the longing to confide in him, the intense desire for his sympathy and counsel which had moved her to the point of writing to him on the day when she had discovered the further proof of Arnott’s treachery. Since that day until now she had not thought of appealing to him.
“I did write,” she confessed in a low voice, “over a month ago; but I tore the letter up. Then something happened, and I felt I couldn’t write.”
He looked at her for a moment or so in silence. The flush had come back to her cheeks, and the blue of her eyes as they met his darkened almost, to black. The pathos, and the wistfulness of them wrung his heart.
“I’m glad you thought of writing,” he said; “that was something towards it anyway. I want you to go a little further and confide in me fully.”
“I’ve thought of doing that,—I’ve wanted to,” she said. “But—”
She glanced at her sleeping child, and from him back into the strong, sympathetic face of this man who sought to serve her, whose help she so sorely needed.
“If I only knew what to do!” she cried.
“I’m telling you what to do,” he answered. “It seems to me perfectly simple. Whatever the difficulty is it can’t make it easier hugging it to yourself; and if it lies within the scope of human power to help you, you know I’ll do anything for you.” He leaned towards her suddenly and grasped her hand. “Pamela, don’t you trust me?”
“Yes,” she said, troubled and hesitating... “Yes. But I can’t talk to you here.”
“No,” he said. “But later...”
“When Maggie comes for the child,” she answered in a whisper, “we will go indoors... I—will trust you...”