Chapter Twenty Five.
Dare paced the little balcony outside his room that night for many hours, plunged in a gloomy reverie so made up of confused conjecture, of scraps of that afternoon’s talk, of memories of other talks he had had with Pamela, and of doubts of Arnott, whose poor remnant of life she might still insist on linking with her own, that connected thought became impossible. His mind was a confusion of conflicting ideas that vied and strove with one another, and offered no solution of the complicated muddle of the human tragedy in which he was so inextricably involved.
On one point alone he was very clear: he did not wish Pamela to consolidate her marriage with Arnott. His love for her assumed proportions of vast magnitude, so that he lost sight of every other consideration save his own longing for her, and his repugnance for the idea of her bright life being passed at the side of the moral and physical wreck who did not want her, who would in all probability make her life with him a perfect hell.
Dare chafed at the picture his imagination conjured up, the picture which Blanche’s words had brought vividly before him, of Arnott paralysed, helpless, dependent as a child upon the care of the woman he had treated so abominably, with nothing of love between them to help in lightening the strain. The idea was intolerable. He brushed it aside with a sense of intense disgust. He felt that something must be done to prevent the horrible injustice of this useless sacrifice on her part. He must bring reason to bear with her, must use every argument to induce her to relinquish this vain belief in a personal sacrifice as the only means of retrieving her former mistake. The thing was monstrous, unthinkable; it must not be.
He went inside, switched on the light, and sat down to write to her.
“My dear,” he began, and found it impossible to address her by name, so let it stand at that. “I hardly know what to say to you,—how to tell you what I have learnt since my arrival here. Things are pretty much as you suspected—worse, indeed. It may be a shock to you, but I don’t feel that it can greatly distress you to hear that your husband is ill. He is never likely to be quite well again, if my information is correct I have yet to verify this account, though I have no reason for doubting its accuracy. I am going on to Pretoria, where he is, to find out what I can. I will write to you again when I am more fully informed.”
He paused, and read the letter through with some dissatisfaction. Then he bent over the paper again, and wrote quickly, with a certain eagerness, as though the impulse which dictated what he wrote were irresistible in the flood of emotions that inspired it.
“It is not a bit of use your thinking of going on with this. The thing is impossible. My dear, it is not just for my own sake I urge you to reconsider your purpose. You can’t do it. I can’t bear the thought of your throwing away all chance of happiness for a man who has left you finally, and is now paralysed and practically helpless. It is self-murder. I won’t permit it. I love you, and I want you badly...”