Pamela spent the day locked in her room. She held no communication with
any one. Arnott had no means of discovering how she was passing the
time, because on the one occasion when he pleaded for admission she
refused to open her door; and he went away troubled and sorely
dissatisfied.
He left the house and did not return until evening.
When she saw him go Pamela had a mad impulse to seize the opportunity
and escape from him, but she dismissed this idea almost immediately. To
run away would be ridiculous: she was quite free to go at any time. And
there was the child. The child was her child; it did not belong to its
father. That was the one right of the unmarried mother. The child of
the dishonoured union belongs as nature intended to the mother. Pamela
began dimly to understand why Herbert had so hated the thought of having
children; that at least was a point which counted in his favour.
She paced the room at intervals, walking restlessly between the window
and the door; but for the greater part of the time she remained seated
listlessly in a chair near the open window, staring out at the sunshine,
thinking, thinking always, trying to resolve what she ought to do, what
she intended doing. The matter rested now between those two points.
She had no longer any real doubt as to what she ought to do. Every
argument she advanced against taking the right step she recognised
perfectly as a deliberate oversight of duty in the pursuit of her own
happiness. She wanted him so. In despite of the wrong he had done her,
she loved him passionately, with a love which attempted to excuse the
injury because of the depth of feeling which had moved him to act as he
had acted, which held him to her still in defiance of every law. He had
sinned out of love for her. Was she too going to sin in order to keep
him?
She realised perfectly that if she went out of his life now, though it
might break her heart to leave him, though it would possibly break his,
she would save from the wreckage her virtue, her self-respect; to
continue to live with him, knowing what she knew, was to become an
abandoned woman, a woman of loose morals, the wings of whose happiness
would be clipped by the sense of her degradation. She would be a thing
in the mire, soiled and ashamed,--Arnott's woman, no longer his wife...
She broke off in her reflections, weeping passionately.
"I couldn't bear it," she moaned. "I couldn't bear it."
Then, when she grew a little calmer, she faced the alternative. Life
without him... never to see him again. To live in some place where her
story was unknown,--to know that he was alive, in the world somewhere,
hungry for her, aching for her, as she would ache for him,--and not be
able to go to him,--never to see his face, nor hear his voice again,--
never to feel the clasp of his arms, his kisses on her lips... Would
that be more bearable than the other, she wondered, and shivered at a
prospect so utterly bleak and forlorn that she could scarce dwell on it
even in her thoughts. How could she face separation from him?--such a
death in life for them both?
And then began again the struggle, the fight of the soul against the
desire of the flesh...
That evening Pamela went downstairs. She dined with Herbert, or rather
sat through the meal; she could not eat. Neither of them spoke much.
Once Arnott insisted on her drinking a glass of wine. He had noticed
her lack of appetite; and he poured the wine into her glass, and stood
by her while she drank it. He was keenly observant of her, and careful
not to let her see his attentive regard. He wondered whether she had
arrived at any decision, whether she would speak about the matter later.
He was feverishly anxious to know what was in her mind. If she was
bent on leaving him, he was determined to oppose her to the utmost, to
exert every art, every argument he could devise to induce her to alter
her decision,--to see the thing from his point of view,--to be
reasonable.
When she left the table, he rose also and followed her from the room.
In the hall, at the foot of the stairs, she paused, glanced at him
uncertainly, and changing her mind about going upstairs, entered the
drawing-room. He followed her and shut the door.
"Tell me," he said, and stood facing her in the dull glow of the shaded
lights, his voice trembling with emotion, body and features tense with
the restraint he was bringing to bear on himself, to subdue the anxious
desire to hear her speak, to hear her pronounce her verdict, to know the
result of that long, miserable, mental struggle which he knew had been
taking place in the bedroom from which she had shut him out,--"tell me
what you have decided... I can't bear this racking uncertainty any
longer, Pamela... I can't bear it."
Pamela looked at him with perplexed, miserable eyes.
"I haven't decided," she said, "anything."
Suddenly her eyes filled with tears, there was a sound of tears in her
voice.
"I don't know what to do," she moaned. "I've thought, and thought... I
can't see a way out."
A momentary gleam of triumph leaped into his eyes. He held out his
arms.
"My dear!" he said.
She made no move towards him. She leaned forward, resting her arms on
the back of a chair, her gaze fixed on the carpet.
"There seems only one thing to do," she resumed in an expressionless
voice... "There _is_ only one thing,--no decent minded woman would
consider any other course."
"You mean parting?" he said, and his face hardened.
"Yes,--parting," she echoed, and lifted her gaze and scrutinised him
intently. "It won't undo the evil; but it sets things right, as far as
it is possible to right them now."
"Look here!" he cried. He went to her and knelt on the chair upon which
she leaned and looked up into her face... "Could you part from me? ...
Could you? Think what we have been to one another,--all that our love
has meant, and then think of being apart,--always,--never seeing one
another even... _Could_ you do it, Pam?"
Her troubled eyes met his, clouded with a mist of tears.
"Don't!" she muttered, and put a hand quickly to her throat. "I've been
thinking about it--like that all day."
"And you can't face it!" he said. He laid a hand firmly upon hers where
it rested upon the back of the chair. "My dear... you can't face it...
I can't face it. I've looked at the matter all round; and I can't face
parting now any better than I could face renunciation five years ago.
It's out of the question. It can't be, Pamela. We've gone a long way
beyond that."
"But the other thing,--to stay,--that's impossible too."
"No," he asserted. "That's the only thing left us. Except for the
compunction I feel in the pain this knowledge has brought you, it hasn't
altered anything for me. I'm trying to look at it from your point of
view. The relative values of our position are not changed for me, you
see. When you have recovered from the shock of the revelation, I'm
hoping you will see things as I do. Nothing is altered really. I have
regarded you always sacredly as my dear wife. You will ever remain so
to me. Nothing can alter that."
"But I am not your wife," Pamela said. "Do you think I can ever forget
that, now I know? Every time that my eyes meet yours that thought will
be in my mind... not you wife,--only your--"
"Don't say it," he said sharply, and gripped her hand hard. "You are my
wife." He spoke with a certain obstinacy, as though his purpose were to
insist on her imagination taking hold of realities which she sought to
overlook, which were none the less realities to him because he justified
them by his own standard in defiance of conventional law.
"I'm not going to give you up, Pamela. I'm going to keep you. If you
left me I should follow you. Don't you see that parting for us is
impossible? If we loved less it might be easy to talk of parting,--easy
to assume a smug respectability, and give up a little for the
satisfaction of feeling virtuous. But people don't give up everything
for the sake of virtue--and to part now would be giving up everything
for you and me."
"But I can't," she insisted, "continue to live here--as your wife. It's
not only a case of conscience, it's a matter of self-respect. I should
_hate_ myself."
This was a fresh issue. He had not foreseen this, and he realised his
inadequacy to grasp the point; it was too intrinsically feminine for his
understanding. He stared at her in baffled perplexity.
"Do you mean," he began, and paused, scrutinising her tortured face with
disconcerted, incredulous eyes.
He stood up, and moved away from her, and remained with his back to her,
facing the window. Then abruptly he faced round again.
"What do you want to do?" he asked, his nerves on edge with the
intolerable strain. "For God's sake, be reasonable! I can't stand this
any longer. Do you mean that you want to leave me?"
Pamela made no answer. She bent forward and leaned her face in her
hands and broke into bitter weeping. In a moment he was beside her. He
took her in his arms, and drew her head down to his breast, and held her
so, still sobbing, with her face hidden in her hands. Tenderly he
kissed the bright hair.
"Poor little woman!" he said.
She clung to him, sobbing and weeping in his embrace.
"Oh! I can't," she wailed... "I can't."
Again the light of victory shone in the man's eyes. He held her more
closely.
"No," he said; "we couldn't do it... Never to meet again! ... We
couldn't do it, dear."
She drew back from his embrace and, seating herself in the chair,
continued to weep hopelessly. He fell on his knees beside her.
"I'm a brute to have brought this on you," he muttered. "But I loved
you so... Dearest heart, say you forgive me."
He caught her wrists and pulled her hands from her face and kissed the
tear-drenched eyes.
"Pamela, my darling, forgive me. I meant no harm to you. I never meant
you to know."
She regarded him with brimming eyes.
"Oh! I wish," she said, "that I didn't love you so well."
He kissed her hands. He had won in this first struggle. With patience,
he told himself, he would recover the whole ground.
For an hour Pamela remained with him, talking the matter threadbare.
Arnott did most of the talking; Pamela listened, acquiescing by her
silence to much that he urged in his own defence, occasionally
interrupting him, more occasionally disputing a point. Gradually he
worked round to the subject of their future relations. On this point
Pamela was more difficult. She held views of her own in regard to that;
and the discussion at times took a bitter tone. He pleaded, he argued
eloquently, he even offered concessions. He was patient and displayed a
tender consideration which moved her to a corresponding tenderness, but
did not shake her resolve.
They were still at cross purposes when, heavy with fatigue and misery,
she arose and announced her intention of going to bed. The discussion,
he recognised, would have to be postponed to some future time. This
exasperated him; he left that the delay minimised his chances of
victory. Further wrestling with her conscience might confirm her in her
resolution, would inevitably make persuasion more difficult. Ultimate
victory depended largely on his success in wearing down her scruples
before they had time to harden into a conviction of duty.
He eyed her resentfully, and bit his lip to keep back the sharp words of
reproach which came to his tongue.
The puritanical strain in the composition of a good woman was the most
baffling factor to cope with; the element of passion became a weak, a
futile argument against its frigid strength.
"You are punishing me heavily, Pamela," he said.
She turned towards him slowly. Her sad eyes dwelt for a long moment on
his face and then looked deliberately away.
"My dear, I am not wishing to punish," she said. "It is equally hard
for me."
"Then why..." he began, and paused, irresolute and almost ungovernably
angry. "It's monstrous," he muttered. "Absurd! We might as well be
apart altogether."
Pamela made no response, but went with a dragging step out of the room,
up the stairs to the bedroom where she had spent the tragic hours of
that weary day.
When he was alone, Arnott moved to a chair and seated himself, and
remained lost in a gloomy reverie, his sombre gaze fixed sullenly on the
floor. The hand of the clock revolved slowly twice round the dial
before he roused himself from his bitter reflections. He saw no way out
of this muddle. If Pamela persisted in her present attitude it meant
the end of their happiness together; her daily presence in his home
under the conditions she imposed would prove merely an aggravation.
Arnott's nature was passionate, and his love for Pamela was of the
quality that refuses to be subdued. He had never practised restraint;
the thought was intolerable. The fever of desire which had led to his
bigamous marriage still fired his blood, and moved him to passionate
rebellion against Pamela's decree. He refused to submit to this
cold-blooded arrangement. He would have it out with her; he would
overcome her scruples; he would,--he must win.
He got up, switched off the lights in the room, and passed out into the
hall. He switched off the hall light also, and went up the darkened
stairs. From beneath the door of Pamela's room a thin line of light
told him that she was awake. He fancied he heard a movement inside the
room, and listened. Then deliberately he advanced and tried the door.
It was locked.
He gritted his teeth, and passed on and entered his dressing-room. For
that night at least he had to admit defeat. Oddly, at the moment,
though smarting with indignation at being thus determinedly denied
admittance, he respected her decision, even while bitterly opposed to
it,--he respected her.
He sat on the edge of his bed and beat softly on the carpet with his
foot. A tormenting desire for her gripped him, as it had not gripped
him since the days before he had married her--those days when he had
recognised how impossible it was for him to do without her, when finally
he had flung every consideration aside and gone through the form of a
marriage, which he knew was no marriage, because he could not give her
up. His need of her now was every whit as insistent as it had been
then. Its very urgency had broken down every law, razed every barrier:
it should, he told himself, surmount also this new obstacle which fate
had flung in his path.