Cautious as had been his movements, Pamela was fully aroused. She lifted herself in bed, and surveyed him as he entered with wide, surprised eyes: their regard disconcerted him enormously. He had not anticipated her wakefulness; and he lied awkwardly in answer to her inquiries. She lay back again on the pillow without making any response. He wondered how long she had been awake, and whether she had heard the opening and shutting of the children’s door. He would have been wiser, he decided, had he made a truthful statement of his excursion; the unconvincing falsehood had suggested a sinister motive for his midnight wandering.
For neither Blanche nor Pamela was there any further sleep; Arnott alone slumbered dreamlessly throughout the hot hours of the brief night.
The following day they left Muizenberg. They did not return in the order in which they had arrived. Arnott motored home alone. He left earlier than the others. At breakfast he announced his intention of starting immediately, and asked Pamela if she was driving with him. To his immense relief she decided to return by train with the children. Although no reference had been made to the previous night, he was uncomfortably aware that he was convicted of lying. He resented this. He was angry with himself for having told that unnecessary lie; he was more angry with Pamela for having, as he realised she had done, detected the lie. He did not feel at his ease with her. Had she accused him openly he would have blustered and asserted his right to act as it pleased him; since she chose to ignore the matter, he felt himself at a disadvantage. She was placing him deliberately in the wrong. This incensed him. Why, he asked himself with an oath, should she adopt this self-righteous pose and snub him by her silence? He was not going to tolerate that sort of thing. He would put his foot down, put it down pretty effectively, and make her realise that he was master in his own home.
That was the attitude he assumed when absent from her; when confronted with her gentle, dignified presence he was considerably less bold. He shuffled and dissembled, and endeavoured by fitful bursts of kindness, too forced to be convincing, to sustain the fiction of his unalterable affection.
Pamela was a woman who believed in the power of silence. To upbraid a man, however deserving he were of reproof, was wasted effort; it gave him an excuse for anger,—an angry person being unreasonable, nothing is gained by exciting his ire. Nevertheless, her distrust once aroused, she became watchful and suspicious. What she observed during the next few weeks decided her that Blanche must go. She could no longer doubt that between her husband and the governess existed a secret understanding prejudicial to the happiness of all concerned.
The thing was an amazing revelation to Pamela. Though she had realised for a long while that Herbert’s love for her was no longer of the ardent quality that at one time, when separation had seemed imminent, had made their parting impossible, she had not supposed, despite the warning in his wife’s letter, despite her own bitter experience in watching the waning of his love, that he was a man of loose principles who pursued women idly for the gratification of a sensual nature. The discovery was a shock to her. She felt wounded and humiliated. It was an added degradation for her to reflect that the man she had loved so well, who had ruined her life, for whose sake she was living, according to the world’s judgment, in sin, was not the fine character she had believed him to be,—was merely a selfish profligate, hunting women for his pleasure, and carelessly breaking their lives. At least she would save Blanche from him, if that were possible. It was no easy task for Pamela to undertake. She lacked the power of the wife’s authority; and she realised perfectly that it was the lack of this power which made Arnott so brutally indifferent to her disapproval.
When she lodged her complaint he flew into a rage. It was at night when, Blanche having retired, they were alone together in the drawing-room. Arnott had been out of the room when Blanche left it; he was frequently absent from the room about that hour; Pamela knew quite well that he was in the habit of waylaying the girl on the stairs. When he entered, carrying the glass of whisky which was the ostensible reason for his absence, she met him with the announcement that she intended to part with Blanche and revert to the system of a coloured nurse for the children.
“What for?” he demanded, and reddened awkwardly.
Pamela regarded him steadily.
“I do not think it wise to have her in the house,” she answered. “You don’t need to ask my reason. You are quite aware why I consider her an unfit companion for my children.”