Chapter Twenty One.
No matter how great a control a man exercises over himself in ordinary circumstances, brought face to face with the painfully unexpected it is frequently the self-contained man who loses the grip on his emotions, and with it his more extended outlook in favour of an immense concentration upon the personal factor created by the new development. The story which Pamela unfolded produced some such effect on Dare. The emotions which moved him while listening to the sordid, pitiful tale were varied. The story of Arnott’s bigamous marriage enraged him. The personal factor crept into that. The man had not only cheated the girl, he had cheated him,—robbed him of the only woman he had ever wished to marry. He had stolen her from him, having no right to her. This thought filled him with a bitter sense of personal loss, of personal injury. The element of self threw his imagination out of focus for the time. He had a very strong feeling that he wanted to, that he had to, punish Arnott for that mean deception. He would have enjoyed coming to grips with the man.
Then he became acutely aware that Pamela was still talking, telling him other things of an equally painful nature. With an effort he brought his mind back to the subject.
This part of the story was more difficult to tell. Pamela told it in short fragmentary sentences. She concealed nothing. She spoke of her enlightenment, of the difficult choice offered her, and her inability to choose the right course, in low strained tones and with downcast eyes. She did not look at Dare while she spoke. He was standing in front of the window, with his back to the opening, watching her with grave intent face which betrayed little of what he was feeling as he listened to the difficult recital. He was endeavouring, despite the disappointment her confession caused him, to excuse, even to defend, her choice. As she urged, there had been the child to consider, and at that time she loved the man.
Then she spoke of the waning of Arnott’s love, of his frequent unkindness, and her own increasing indifference. Again Dare was conscious of his personal interest in this part of the story. The self-confessed decrease in her love for the man who was not her husband, affected him directly. He felt glad that she had told him that.
She passed on to Arnott’s infatuation for the girl, who was her children’s governess, of their disappearance on the same day, and the inevitable conclusion which, against her own will, she had arrived at in connection with that circumstance, and the fact that he had not written, nor sent any explanation of his absence.
Then came the most difficult part of the whole narrative. Pamela had fetched the cablegram, which she had found in Arnott’s desk and transferred to the safe, and this she placed in Dare’s hand as the simplest way of explaining the duplicity she found impossible to put into words.
“You see,” she said, “that cablegram is a year old. He received that ten months before he left home... And he never told me. I found it after he had gone. He did not intend to take advantage of that knowledge... He didn’t care.”
Tears, the first she had shed, came into her eyes. She wiped them away quietly.
“He doesn’t care,” she said, “what becomes of me and the children.”
Dare, as he held in his hands the cablegram which assured him that the man who had tricked this woman to whom he was not lawfully married, was now free to fulfil his obligation, realised perfectly that of all people calculated to be of service to her in the present crisis he was the worst chosen. He was only conscious of a feeling of regret that the barrier had been removed. It swamped for the time the more chivalrous emotion of pity for Pamela in her helpless position. He stared at the cablegram for a long while without speaking. Then he said, still without looking at her—
“I am afraid there isn’t any reason for doubting the correctness of your deduction in this instance. The evidence is damning.” He lifted his eyes from the paper suddenly and fixed them upon her. “This matter wants thinking over carefully,” he said. “I wasn’t prepared for this. It’s worse than anything I had anticipated.”
The sight of her distressed face, of the slow tears raining over her cheeks, unnerved him, and at the same time called forth his better qualities. He forgot himself in the more worthy emotion of compassion for her in her affliction.
“I hadn’t any idea that things were as bad as this,” he said. “Thank God! you told me. I’ll have to think out what’s best to be done. I’m unprepared, you see... But we’ve got to straighten the muddle somehow.”
He had in his mind a plan, which had presented itself when she confessed to the bogus nature of her marriage, whereby the muddle could be straightened in, what seemed to him in the circumstances, the simplest way; but in view of her present distress he hesitated to speak of that now. The knowledge of the death of Arnott’s wife complicated things.
“Oh!” she cried, with soft vehemence. “The comfort of having some one to confide in,—some one I can trust! I’ve been eating my heart out these last two months. The Carruthers are very kind,—but I couldn’t tell them what I have told you. And Mr Carruthers wouldn’t be able to advise me. He would wish me to consult a lawyer.” She clasped her hands tightly in her lap. “I couldn’t have all these intimate, disgraceful details publicly exposed.”
“No,” he said reassuringly; “of course not.”
But he did not see how without publicity the matter could possibly be satisfactorily arranged. She might, he decided, have to agree to that later. But he refrained from troubling her at the present stage with any such alternative.
“It appears to me,” he said slowly, “that the first thing to be done is to find Arnott. Until I have seen him it is impossible to come to any decision... Have I your permission to let him know that I am in full possession of the facts you have related?”
She looked a little frightened.
“Oh!” she said. “Must you tell him that? He will never forgive me.”
“Do you think that matters?” He tapped the cablegram he still held. “In face of this, I don’t think you have much to expect from him save what is gained through compulsion. We shall be forced to use our knowledge.”
She gazed up at him, faintly perplexed.
“What do you mean to do?” she asked.
“What do you want me to do?”
Pamela hesitated. Any love which had remained from the wreckage of the past had died with the finding of the cablegram after Arnott’s desertion. It seemed to her that all sense of feeling had died with it, except only the jealous maternal love, which gathered strength with the decline of the rest.
“I want only one thing from him,” she answered presently, her eyes evading his without however falling... “I’ve a right to that—his name. Don’t you think I am within my right in demanding that?”
“Yes,” he agreed, “but—”
Pamela glanced at him swiftly.
“You think he won’t consent?” she asked.
“I wasn’t thinking that. I imagine if it came to the point, we could oblige him to consent. But are you quite sure that course would be wise? Wouldn’t it, perhaps, entail fresh suffering on you?”
“I was not considering myself,” she said. “It doesn’t seem to matter much what becomes of me.”
He approached her, and stood over her, all the love that was in his heart revealed in his earnest eyes. He had not intended to speak of his love then; the time occurred to him as ill chosen; but while she discussed in such calm, dispassionate tones the only solution which presented itself to her mind, it seemed to him, if he delayed showing her another way out of her present trouble, the opportunity might not offer itself again.
“Won’t you,” he said very quietly, “take my name instead?”
He seated himself on the sofa beside her, and possessed himself of her hands, which he held in both his. Pamela made no attempt to withdraw them. White and distressed and manifestly disconcerted, she averted her gaze from his and stared past him out at the sunshine. Her sole reason for hesitating to write to Dare had resulted from the conviction that his regard for her was deeper than that of a friend. Her feeling for him did not bear analysis either. He was a man whom from the first she had liked and respected; the respect remained unaltered, but the liking had increased insensibly until it assumed an importance in her thoughts which she found it best to discourage. Not for a moment did it strike her that he made this offer out of pity for her. She knew that he loved her,—that he wanted her. His proposal filled her less with surprise than concern. She was sorry to know that her own broken life might embitter his.
“Won’t you,” he repeated in the same quiet voice as before, “accept my name? I think you know that I love you. I have loved you for a great many years. I shouldn’t speak of that now; only it seems to me such a tragic mistake you are making. The life you contemplate would be a wretched business. You will spoil the happiness of two lives—yours and mine—if you persist in it... I think I could make you happy, Pamela, if you would let me try.”
Deliberately she faced round and met his gaze with sad blue eyes which seemed to have lost entirely their old happy expression.
“I know you could,” she answered, her voice almost a whisper. “If it is any sort of satisfaction to you to hear it, I love you too. But I can’t do what you ask. For the sake of my children I must marry their father. Don’t you see the difference it makes to them?”
“I thought it might be that,” he said. “But consider, Pamela,—they are so young. Don’t you think they would be as happy and as safe under my guardianship?”
“That isn’t the point to consider,” she answered steadily. “When a woman has been circumstanced as I have been she realises the enormous difference these things make. I’ve felt the sting of it,—the dread of discovery,—the overwhelming sense of shame. I should be a selfish mother if I exposed my children to that. In whatever light you stood to them, you could never make good the position which they have a right to as their father’s children. Later, when they grow up, the world will make them feel that loss. If there were only myself to think of I wouldn’t hesitate. But we take upon ourselves a great responsibility when we bring a life into the world... It’s for the sake of the children... Oh! believe me, dear, it’s only for their sakes I refuse.”
The earnestness of her manner, the tears which dimmed her eyes and were with difficulty restrained, affected him deeply. He realised that the barrier which stood between them was insuperable as she saw it; but he was far from satisfied that she was right. Why in later years should the question of the children’s parentage arise? He would take them away from Africa, and adopt them legally. He endeavoured to explain this to her. Pamela listened quietly; but he felt that he failed in convincing her.
“It is dear of you,” she said, and pressed his hand. “But there is only one way in which I can hope to retrieve my mistake. I can’t help thinking that it is best for your sake that I cannot do what you ask. The past clings to a woman. She never succeeds in burying it. I love you for loving me. I love you for wanting to marry me in spite of all you know. It is difficult for me to refuse; but it is better so.”
“Oh! Pamela,” he said; “you are just racking me. My happiness is bound up in you. I’ve nursed my love for you hopelessly for years, until everything else has become subordinated to it. It’s part of myself. And now that you have it in your power to grant what I ask, you refuse. I want you, and you won’t come to me.”
“Don’t make it harder for me,” she pleaded. “It isn’t easy to refuse. Can’t you see, dear, I don’t belong to myself any longer? I belong to the man who took my life and threw it aside when he had no further use for it. He has had the best of me,—my youth—my love.” He winced. “Yes. I loved him once—passionately. I didn’t believe it possible that I could ever love any one as I loved him. But I love you... not in the same way.” She leaned towards him, and her eyes shone mistily, like sapphires gleaming in some translucent pool. “I was always a little afraid of him. Perfect love does not know fear. I wish I could marry you; but it isn’t possible... I belong to him—the father of my children. I’ve got to live for the children now. Their claim on me counts above every other consideration.”
He drew her nearer to him by the hands he still held clasped in his, and looked steadily into her face.
“And if he refuses?” he said hoarsely... “Pamela, if he refuses to agree to your demand?”
Pamela’s eyes lingered on his for a while, the doubt which his question aroused calling up a dread of numberless possibilities.
“Oh!” she said, and paused dismayed. “He can’t refuse,” she added in strained sharpened tones.
She turned her head aside, and quite suddenly, without premonition, she was weeping in a furtive, frightened fashion that was immensely disconcerting to Dare. Her tears stabbed him. He got up and wandered away to the window and stood with his back to her in an attitude of deep dejection. A tormenting remorse gripped him.
“He can’t refuse,” he said reassuringly. “That will be all right. He can’t on the face of things refuse...”