“You’ll remain here?” he said.
Dare nodded. Under his brows he was observing Pamela, who, with the old nervous light in her eyes, was waiting near the door. She did not look at him as she passed out. In silence she accompanied the doctor along the passage to Arnott’s room which was situated at the end of it. The door stood open, and a nurse who was standing inside came forth, and took up her position in the passage within call in case she were needed. The doctor motioned to Pamela to enter.
“I’ve brought Mrs Arnott to see you,” he said.
His words broke the dead stillness that reigned in the room abruptly; but as soon as he had uttered them and quietly withdrawn, the stillness descended again, more deadly, more paralysing than before, it seemed to Pamela, left alone for the first time with the man who when last she had seen him had flung out of her presence in anger, and who now, moving his head feebly on the pillow, turned a pallid, eager, so old face towards her, and held out his hand to her, and broke into pitiful frying.
Pamela felt inexpressibly shocked. She had prepared herself for a change, but not so great a change as this. His hair had whitened during his illness; it was quite white, like a very old man’s; his chin was unshaven, and the unfamiliar beard was white also; his moustache alone retained a few dark hairs. His face was thin, and so altered that, but for the eyes, she would have failed in recognising it. And the sight of him lying there, weak and helpless and so feebly crying, hurt her beyond measure, moved her to an almost terrified compassion, so that for a second she could not stir or speak. Something seemed to clutch at her heart and stop its beating. She had never seen Arnott cry before. The thought of tears in connection with him would have occurred to her as impossible. And here he lay,—crying,—holding out a trembling hand to her, and sobbing like a child.
With a swift, sudden movement, as though her limbs relaxed abruptly and responded automatically to the rush of pity that leapt up within her, submerging for the time all other feeling, she approached the bed and knelt beside it and put her arms about him, as she might have put them about a suffering child, appealing for sympathy. She drew his head to her shoulder, and with the so sadly altered face hidden from her sight against her breast, felt her courage returning, and was able to articulate his name, and murmur soothing words to him as she caressed the silvered hair.
“Herbert!—my dear,” she said; “it’s Pamela. It’s all right, dear... Don’t cry... don’t cry.”
“I’ve been ill,” he said, speaking thickly, with a slight impediment that made the words difficult to understand. “I’ve wanted you, Pam... You’ve been a long time coming.”
He spoke querulously, and sobbed again with a sort of complaining self-pity, as though he felt she had been neglectful, that she ought to have known and come to him before. Pamela would have realised without the doctor’s preparation that the enfeebled mind had lost its power to remember recent events. It was quite possible that he did not realise even where he was, that, had he been told, he would have failed to recall the circumstances of his coming to Pretoria. The subject of their differences, of his desertion of her, had faded entirely from his recollection. He only knew that he was ill, that he had wanted her, and that she had been long in coming. He took up his complaint again.
“I’ve wanted you,” he reiterated. “I’ve kept on wanting you. Why didn’t you come sooner?”