They were difficult days which followed. Pamela went about as usual,
but she looked white and worn, and evidences of sleepless nights and
much weeping disfigured her eyes. Arnott, unequal to the tension,
decided on a brief separation, and took a trip round the coast. His
absence--it was the first time he had gone away without her since their
marriage--might bring home to her some realisation of what life would be
like if they finally parted. Perhaps, when she was alone, when she
missed his actual presence, she would relent. If, when he returned, he
found her still obdurate he would broach the subject of a more complete
separation.
He did not seriously believe that she would bring herself to the point
of parting irrevocably. As things were, it was more difficult to part
now than it would have been in the first shock of revelation. She had
had time in which to adjust her mind to the altered conditions, to be
called upon to readjust it, to do so late what she had felt she ought to
have done at the beginning, and had failed to do, would add a fresh
humiliation to the former difficulty, would make the difficulty greater.
He felt fairly convinced that she would not willingly leave him, and he
meant to force her into compliance by holding out this suggestion as the
only possible alternative.
Pamela received the news of his intended departure with a sense of
relief. She too had felt the strain to be well nigh intolerable, more
so in view of his increased kindness and consideration for her, which
made it so terribly difficult to refuse to listen to his pleading. She
welcomed the thought of his absence as a relief from the constant pain
and embarrassment of his reproachful presence; but when he was gone she
missed him, missed him so sorely that she experienced, as he had hoped
she would, a sort of terror at the idea of living without him. Almost
it seemed to her that the talked-of separation had actually taken place,
that he had gone away from her finally, that she would never see him
again. A fear took hold of her imagination that he might have gone with
the intention of not returning, that this might be his way of avoiding
further distresses. Perhaps he would write and inform her that he had
chosen this means as the best solution of the problem. He had not, she
recalled, made any mention of returning. He had stated simply that he
couldn't stand it, that he must get away. And she had accepted this
without questioning, had felt glad that he should go. She no longer
felt glad: she only wanted him back.
An aching sense of loneliness oppressed her as the days passed and
brought no letter from him. She had expected to hear from him when the
boat reached Algoa Bay. He sent no word until he was as far as Durban,
then he wrote briefly that he was going on further up the coast. She
had no knowledge of his movements after that. He did not write again.
In the weeks which followed she had ample time for reflection, time in
which to determine her future course of action. She spent long hours in
the garden revolving things in her mind, trying to disentangle thoughts
and emotions and impulses of right and wrong, trying to sift them and
get them into some consecutive order. And always she worked back to the
one impassable point, the point which his absence made so distressingly
clear, that life apart from him was a sheer impossibility. She could
not face it. The long lonely years...
And yet to continue to live with him! ... That were to choose evil
deliberately. And all their life together would be a lie,--an outward
respectability which at any moment was liable to exposure for the sham
it was.
From the bottom of her heart she wished that she might have remained in
ignorance of this horrible truth. Then the responsibility of choice
would not have been hers. She wanted to keep her happiness and her
peace of mind, and that was now impossible. She wanted to continue as
Herbert's wife, and yet remain virtuous; and she could not; her
happiness or her virtue must be sacrificed, the one for the other.
Pamela prayed for strength and guidance, but her prayers held--as the
prayers of many people hold--reservations. She attempted to bargain for
the retention of her happiness. She asked to be shown the path of duty
clearly, and when it was revealed to her she shut her eyes. There is
never great difficulty in seeing the road which is called Duty; it shows
always direct and straight ahead; but many people turn their backs on it
and look in the opposite direction, because the path of duty is an
uphill path, and it is not until one has reached the summit that one can
appreciate the fairness of the prospect and the exhilarating freshness
of the air. Pamela stood in the valley, and the steepness and the
loneliness of the ascent appalled her. Hers was not a nature fashioned
for high purposes. The big battles of life require sterner moral
principles to bring them to a triumphant issue. She was not gifted with
that altruism which enables one to meet a great crisis with the utter
self-abnegation by which alone such crises are successfully overcome.
Pamela fought her great battle handicapped by reason of her limitations.
The high ideals which, while unfaced with any great issue, she had
cherished with unconscious hypocrisy failed her in the stress of her
need. She was just a weak, loving woman, stricken to the heart, and
lonely beyond words to describe,--a woman hungry for her lover, whose
last scruple of honour faded into nothingness in the period of his
absence.
Arnott came home unexpectedly. He sent no intimation of his return; he
had not, as a matter of fact, intended to turn back when he did. He
obeyed an odd impulse, prompted by a queer, unaccountable fear that if
he prolonged his absence Pamela might grow reconciled to doing without
him, might grow independent of him. He felt no longer so confident that
his temporary separation had been a wise move. He had prolonged it
unduly. He had given her time to miss him, and had made the mistake of
giving her further time in which to grow used to the idea. With this
doubt in his mind he hurried back.
He got back in the afternoon rather late for tea. They had met with
contrary winds round the coast, and the boat was delayed some hours.
Arnott took a taxi at the docks and drove out to his home. He dismissed
the taxi at the gate and carried his luggage himself up the path and
dumped it down on the stoep for one of the servants to take inside.
Then he looked about him with a strange feeling of unreality, and an
unexpected sensation of nervousness that manifested itself chiefly in
the dryness of his throat. Where, he wondered, was Pamela? This return
to a silent, unwelcoming house was disconcerting. He forgot that he was
not expected, and began to feel unreasonably annoyed.
And then abruptly he became aware of Pamela, standing in the opening of
the drawing-room window, gravely regarding him. He looked round
suddenly, and their gaze met.
"So you have come back?" she said.
Her eyes were deep and very intense; the man as he met their shining
look felt certain of his welcome. He advanced towards her quickly.
"Couldn't stick it any longer, Pam," he said. "I wanted you."
He held out his arms. She went forward unhesitatingly, and put her arms
about his neck and drew his face to hers and kissed him.
"I am so glad you have come home," she said.
Arnott's clasp of her tightened.
"Oh! Pam," he said, "how good, how jolly to have you again."
He drew her inside the room, looking away from her a little awkwardly,
looking about him with an overdone air of ease. Pamela also, now that
their greeting was over, assumed an outward calm which she certainly was
not feeling, and busied herself with the tea things, having an equal
difficulty it seemed in meeting his eyes. That, she discovered later,
was one of the developments of their adjusted relations, a sort of
furtiveness, that comprised a mixture of deprecation and a shamed
shyness that was more instinctive than anything else. The realisation
of this hurt her; it detracted immensely from the beauty of their love.
But just at first she did not recognise it other than as a temporary
embarrassment; it did not distress her particularly.
"I was just going to have a lonely tea," she said, and rang the bell for
a fresh supply; "and now--there's you!"
She glanced at him brightly, a swift colour flushing her cheeks. He
seated himself on the sofa near the tea-table, and studied her curiously
when he believed himself unobserved. He speculated on what might be in
her mind, what the actual thoughts and feeling were which she hid so
successfully behind her welcoming manner. For the first time within his
knowledge of her he realised a subtlety, a certain secretive force,
which he had not suspected in her. It was like coming unexpectedly upon
a familiar spot and finding the view altered and contracted by
surprising innovations. One felt that behind the obstructions the
prospect was exactly the same; it was one's own view that was restricted
and created these new impressions.
"It's good to be home," he said, and dropped into a discursive chat
about the places he had visited. "Tried all I could to get rid of the
thought of you, Pam," he said at the finish, and glanced at her with a
sudden, faintly deprecating smile. "It wasn't a bit of use. You
pursued and brought me back... God! how you haunted me at nights! ...
And your face looked back at me from the water whenever I gazed down at
the sea."
Pamela sat down beside him. She slipped a hand into his, but she did
not look at him.
"It's been the same with me," she said,--"you were always there,
somehow. I wonder... I suppose there are lots of people like ourselves
who grow dependent on one another... You've never been away from me
before."
"And you missed me?" he questioned.
She looked at him then with grave, perplexed eyes, and nodded.
"It was an experiment," he said presently. "I wanted to see if we could
do it--and we can't... We can't part."
"And we can't," Pamela repeated slowly. "No, I don't think we can."
Suddenly she leaned forward and played nervously with a little fanciful
spoon in her saucer.
"I meant to," she said,--"at first. I felt--I still feel it's the right
thing to do. After you had gone away, I knew I couldn't. I suppose I
am not a good woman really." She broke off the jerky sentences, and
gazed at him somewhat wistfully. "It's hard to want to be happy, and to
know that one ought not to be. I suppose that's why she told me... She
wouldn't leave me to be peacefully ignorant. She wanted to stretch me
on the rack too."
"Lord knows!" he answered, and stirred his tea irritably. "She's
threatened to tell you," he added, "ever since some fool of an
acquaintance, who'd been out here and was struck with the name, told her
that I was living here; but I thought I could intercept the letter. I
didn't allow for it coming to the house. I knew she would never make an
open scandal. She's too proud, for one thing. Besides, she is
absolutely indifferent. So long as we are not in the same country, it
would never trouble her what I did."
"But," said Pamela, a little shyly, "she must have loved you once."
"I don't know," he said. "I am beginning to doubt myself, whether it is
really love which brings the greater part of the world together. Not
infrequently curiosity is at the bottom of it,--or the desire to make a
home. The majority of cases, of course, are the result of passion,--the
fundamental scheme for the continuance of the race. I don't see that
it's much use bothering one's head about these matters. I married when
I was a hot-headed young fool; after I found out my mistake--too late.
I met love... Well, I suppose I ought to have turned my back on love,--
and I didn't. There you are."
"Yes," Pamela returned slowly. "That is just the part I find it
impossible to excuse. That was your big error; and it is going to be
responsible for our further wrong-doing."
"Look here!" he cried. "Life is in one's own hands. One either makes
it difficult by moralising, or simple by being philosophical and taking
all it has to offer. It holds a lot of good for you and me, Pam... Why
moralise?"
"Because," Pamela answered, and her eyes filled with unexpected tears,
"in making a deliberate choice of evil I don't wish to cheat myself into
believing that it is the only course open to me; it isn't. If I am a
bad woman, I will at least be sincere."
He took her two hands and held them between his own and looked with
kindly tolerance into the sweet, distressed face. He no longer felt any
need to plead with her; he knew his case was won. Very tenderly he put
her hands to his lips.
"You odd inconsistency," he murmured, "how you delight in tormenting
yourself! Can't you see that in this matter you are entirely blameless?
All the evil is mine. You are driven into a corner, poor child.
Nobody in his senses would hold you responsible. Put the blame on to
me, Pam,--I'm equal to shouldering it." He slipped an arm about her,
and drew her closer. "If it had all to be gone through again, I'd do
the same."