“Why do you say ‘it was’?,” he asked—sharply.
She stared at him in deep bewilderment.
“Quick you are!” she murmured. She passed a hand across her forehead. “I don’t know,” she said. “I should have said ‘it is,’ I suppose. But you’re here, after all—aren’t you?”
That evident fact seemed to astonish him to silence.
“It was dreadful,” Pamela Star insisted. “This evening—all alone here! The doctor came and went—an impressive man. His patients always have bulletins about them in the morning paper—a most impressive man. He pressed my hand most encouragingly as he went away. Then the secretaries came and went—automata, just automata! They seemed to find a tremendous lot to do, though I’m sure I don’t know what it was, for I couldn’t find anything to do at all. One automaton whispered to me that he would see ‘about the Press’—the silly man, as though I cared what he saw about! And at last he went too, the last automaton, with whispering feet. The servants seemed more human—Rose, the butler, is a very nice old man, but the plumber’s daughter wasn’t somehow able to put her head on his shoulder and say that she was very, very miserable. Then he went to bed at last, I suppose, and I was left all alone with Aram and all this money: ... left all alone with to-morrow and all the to-morrows! Don’t you feel sorry for me, my friend—what shall I do with it all? Must I sacrifice all my life to that ghastly money—even as he did! Oh, I don’t despise money, but this is too much, it’s endless! I can’t sign it away, heap by heap—oh, delicious heaps of gold to give away! ‘Will you take it, sir, or shall I send it for you?’ But that’s no use, I can’t sign it away, for he trusted me with his millions to direct them to their best advantage. He educated me for that purpose, he said I was the one woman in the world who would be able to do it. Oh God, what a compliment! They will always be his, I will be their slave! That looks to be my life, my friend....”
She was deliciously frank with him, she did not try to deprecate her self-pity.
“But why did he keep you so—well, closed up?” Ivor asked. “It seems strange of him—not giving you a chance to know people, to make friends, to know things!”
“Oh, but I know such a lot!” she protested, with a vast, sweet arrogance. “I know a devil of a lot, sir, about life and things. He taught me, you see—and he was a most uncommon man, I assure you. And he didn’t keep me ‘closed up’ at all—I just took his advice, respecting him as I did. I was lonely sometimes, of course, but I was happy with him, we laughed together often, and then he would show me the world. I don’t suppose I’ll ever know a younger man than Aram was really—even his contempt for people was a young thing, don’t you see! And, as for me, I never had a desire to keep a salon of my own or decorate some one else’s. I didn’t want all that. I’m of the people, and I always will be of the people, money or no money. And Aram always said that if I went about my face would make a mess of my life—forgive my being candid about my face, but living with him has made me so—for, he said, my beauty wasn’t the kind that men are just content to look at, they would want to touch it, being men. And I couldn’t remain untouchable, he said, being a woman and warm—that’s what he said, anyway, and he probably knew for he was once my lover for a year. A man will come, he said, who will also be your friend. He said that often, he seemed somehow to be certain about it. But by the time he died this evening no such man had come at all, not even the shadow of one. And so I wandered about the house, and then at last I put on this dress, just for something to do; and then, still for something to do, I crept out of the house and walked, and at last I stood by the Tube station, wondering if anything had ever happened to any one in Down Street. At last I decided it hadn’t—even though, you know, I didn’t expect anything to happen, and I don’t think I really wanted anything to happen, for I wouldn’t have known what to do with it if it did....”
“And then,” she said, “you happened, with your one arm. That made things ever so much easier. Somehow....”
“I just happened,” he said, quite sincerely, “as anyone else might have.”