Change in a person's appearance when it is due to mental conditions
varies according to mood and outside influences. When Dare was face to
face with Pamela Arnott he decided that Mrs Carruthers had exaggerated
the want of look about which she had written: there was nothing to
excite sympathy, or even comment, in the faintly flushed, pleasantly
excited face which turned eagerly to greet him, as, on entering the
Carruthers' drawing-room, Pamela's eyes singled him out with a smiling
welcome in their blue depths.
When he had talked with her a little while he did notice that she looked
older; the girlishness, with its expression of frank gaiety, had faded
during the past eighteen months.
There was a more perceptible change he considered in Arnott himself.
The man had coarsened, in manner as much as appearance. He was more
noisy and assertive, and inclined to be offhand when addressing his
wife. Dare hated him for that,--hated him for his lack of courtesy, and
the absence of those small but significant attentions which had formerly
been so noticeable in his bearing towards her. He seldom looked at her
now, never with the old tender, almost absurdly chivalrous regard which
one associates more with the lover than with the husband of some years'
standing. Dare decided that he had put off the lover finally; that was
about what it amounted to. But that, after all, cannot be reckoned a
calamity: men do not remain always obviously their wives' lovers.
"So glad to see you again," murmured Pamela, and her smile seemed to
demand that he should recall the length of the friendship he had once
insisted upon, with its consequent intimacy. "I began to think you were
becoming a mere memory."
"So long as you didn't forget altogether!" he said, and looked earnestly
into her eyes. "But I didn't think you would."
"One doesn't forget--pleasant things," she returned. "Besides, it is
only a little over a year and a half since we met, isn't it?"
"A long year and a half ago," he replied enigmatically.
Pamela acquiesced with unusual gravity. His speech broke in upon her
happy mood, disturbing the careless tenor of her thoughts. A long year
and a half! ... Truly it had been a long year and a half for her. So
much had happened in the time: her whole life was altered with the
changing of the months.
"It has been a long year and a half," she replied abstractedly, not
thinking of the man at her side, nor of the interpretation he might put
upon her words, upon the weary discontent of her tones: she thought only
of the crowded events of the past eighteen months,--of the pain, the
sickening disillusion, the constant humiliation. In certain
circumstances a year and a half may seem a lifetime.
He scrutinised her intently. There was something, after all, in Mrs
Carruthers' report. The discontent in her voice, the sadness of her
face, arrested his attention. Had it been merely discontent, it would
have failed to move him particularly, but her look of sadness roused his
deepest sympathy. He rebelled at the thought that any sorrow should
touch, should perhaps spoil, her life. She lifted her glance to his
swiftly, on her guard, he fancied, against himself.
"I have had rather a dull time," she added, assuming a lighter manner.
"Dulness is depressing," he allowed. "I have more experience of it than
you, I expect. You've not been my way yet?"
"No," she returned slowly. "I don't go from home much. You see, there
are the children."
"True!" he said, and kept the conversation in the safer channel into
which she had directed it. "And how is my little friend?"
"Oh, growing big--and naughty! I am beginning to think of schoolroom
discipline for her."
"Oh, lord!" he said. "That baby! Let her run wild for a bit longer."
"You haven't to live with her," she said. "But I only mean a nursery
governess. She is getting beyond the control of coloured nurses. I am
hoping I shall get Blanche Maitland. She is so nice with children."
"Blanche... Oh, I know," he said.
His glance followed hers across the room to where the girl Mrs
Carruthers was bent on his marrying was talking with their host. So
Pamela's domestic arrangements were to clash with his. He smiled at the
fancy. Blanche Maitland was a tall girl, with a noticeably good figure,
a clear skin, and fine, dark, slumbrous eyes. Her face in repose was
calm and unemotional and difficult to read; when she smiled it lighted
wonderfully. She did not smile readily, but she looked really handsome
and delightfully shy when surprised into laughter. She was laughing at
the moment Dare looked at her: he did not immediately remove his gaze.
"She is handsome," he observed.
"Is she?" Pamela regarded the subject of their talk with renewed
interest. "I never thought her that--but I suppose she is."
"She is," he affirmed.
"It isn't a necessary qualification in a governess," she said.
"It would be, if I were engaging one," he returned. "I should make that
and an agreeable voice the principal requirements. Personally, I am
interested in good-looking faces. And plain people haven't a monopoly
of the virtues, you know."
"No," she answered. "But they occasionally more than make up the
deficit in looks in agreeable qualities."
"The wise make the most of what they have," he replied. "And sometimes
nature is lavish and adds kindliness and a sweet disposition to physical
perfection... May I come and see you to-morrow?" he asked somewhat
abruptly.
"Do. Come and dine--informally. I'll ask the Carruthers."
He looked slightly dissatisfied.
"But I want you all to myself," he objected. "I'm a selfish fellow; I
hate sharing. I prefer rather to see my friends singly than in batches.
And Carruthers always wants to play bridge. One can't talk. He's
fussing about the tables already. Let me come and look at the mountain
with you, and gossip, and drink tea. We don't meet very often."
Pamela, if she felt a little surprised, was not displeased at his cool
readjustment of her invitation. She returned his steady gaze with a
faint uplift of her brows and the hint of a smile in her eyes.
"If you really prefer that, of course you shall," she said.
"I've only a week," he said. "I want to make the most of it."
"And when the week is up?"
"I return to my mole-like habits," he replied.
"And you haven't followed my advice?" she said.
"What was that?" he asked... "Oh! I remember. Mrs Carruthers is
always giving me the same. No; I don't think there is much chance of my
doing that."
Carruthers sauntered towards them with every intention, Dare realised,
of ending the tete-a-tete.
"You play at my table, Mrs Arnott," he said. He glanced at Dare. "The
wife has put you at the no-stakes table," he added, grinning. "She
thinks it is good for your morals to play for love on occasions."
Dare regarded the speaker coolly.
"That sounds like your joke, rather than Mrs Carruthers'," he remarked;
"it's so feeble."
Carruthers chuckled.
"Ask her," he returned.
Pamela looked back at Dare over her shoulder as she moved away beside
her host.
"It's quite the best game, really," she said, and smiled at him.
"I admit it," he answered quietly, "when one is allowed to choose one's
partner."
Bridge without stakes was not much of a game, in Dare's opinion; but he
was obliged to acknowledge that Blanche Maitland played remarkably well.
He had never seen a girl play with such skill; and she held good cards.
They were partners. This might have been due to chance, since they
cut; but he had a suspicion that Mrs Carruthers manipulated the cards.
She was clever enough, and deep enough, to do it, he reflected.
He did his best to oblige her in the matter of being agreeable; but, as
he complained to her later, when discussing the evening after the guests
had left, had he been the vainest of men he could not have flattered
himself that he had created a favourable impression in the quarter in
which she insisted he should exert his powers of fascination.
"She thought me a stick," he said. "I'm not at all comfortably assured
in my mind that she didn't think me a fool. I had an exhausting time
racking my brain for agreeable conversation. She wouldn't help me. It
isn't a ha'p'orth of use, my dear, trying to interest me in these
sphinx-like young women with no small talk. You said she wasn't
clever."
"She isn't."
"You are mistaken. No one who isn't clever dare be so deadly dull. She
is profound. I don't think I like your selection of a wife."
"You can't judge on a first acquaintance like that," she insisted.
"There you are entirely out. All my loves have been at first sight."
"Then why haven't you married one of them?"
"Because they have all been provided with husbands," he answered. "When
it is a matter of transgressing the moral law, one naturally hesitates."
"You seem singularly unfortunate," Mrs Carruthers observed
sarcastically. "I believe you have only been in love once in your life.
You are true to that first love still."
"And who is that?" he inquired, looking down at her with mild curiosity
in his eyes.
"George Dare," she answered.
He laughed.
"Poor devil!" he remarked. "If I didn't show him some affection, who
would? Besides, it's a proof that there are lovable qualities in him.
If a man can't tolerate himself, he must be a fairly bad egg."
"You are not justified in making a virtue of egoism," she argued. "And
you ought to marry. It's a duty you owe the State... Men are so
selfish!"
"Oh, come!" he remonstrated. "One can't place all the big questions of
life on such a brutally practical basis. There's the human side to be
considered. Your argument lowers the beautiful to a mere matter of
essentials. There is a spiritual element in marriage, after all."
Mrs Carruthers turned a frankly wondering, inquisitive gaze upon him,
with the disconcerting observation:
"If you were not in love, you wouldn't talk in that exalted strain.
It's unlike you."
"I didn't know I was such a material beast," he retorted.
His eyes met hers for a second or so, and then, to her increasing
amazement, avoided her gaze. He thrust his hands in his pockets and
looked everywhere save at this woman whom he liked immensely, but whom
he hoped to keep comfortably outside his confidence. He was afraid of
Mrs Carruthers' powers of divination. When a woman takes an
affectionate interest in a man, she can become an embarrassment as much
as a pleasure.
"You _are_ in love!" she cried triumphantly. "It's no use... Own up
that I'm right."
"I believe that I have already admitted to you that it is a state which
frequently overtakes me," he replied.
But his manner, despite its banter, lacked assurance. He felt that she
was not in the least deceived.
"And you never told me!" she said reproachfully.
"There is nothing to tell. My love affairs never lead anywhere.
Besides, it's such an old story."
"Old!" she echoed.
He smiled at the indignant incredulity in her voice.
"It's running Jacob's romance pretty close now," he said.
"You are trying to put me off the scent," she declared,--"if there is
any scent. You won't persuade me that you have been in love for seven
years, and that I knew nothing about it."
"Six years and nearly nine months, to be exact," he answered.
"And who, may I ask, was fortunate enough to win your unswerving
devotion six years and nine months ago?" she demanded, with fine
sarcasm.
"She hadn't a personality for me," he replied. "I fell in love with a
face."
His listener eyed him derisively.
"She hadn't any body, I suppose?" she said.
"Oh, yes, I believe so. The body was there, all right. But if it had
been misshapen, or even, as you suggest, non-existent, that wouldn't
have made the slightest difference to my affections."
"Oh, don't try to humbug me!" Mrs Carruthers exclaimed. "You can't
convince me, after all you have said, that you are in love with nothing
more substantial than a face. Where is the girl now?"
"She disappeared," he answered vaguely. "I took the trouble to inquire,
believe me. They told me she had married."
"That disposes of her," Mrs Carruthers responded, with that touch of
finality which convention brings to bear upon romance that can have no
legitimate ending. "It is not decent of you to talk as though you were
in love with her still. That's all finished, anyhow."
"One cannot regulate one's feelings," he protested, "to satisfy a silly
prejudice like that."
"But it's not fair to the girl," she urged.
"Good lord!" he ejaculated. "The girl doesn't know... How should she?
Didn't I tell you that I fell in love with a face?--Its owner was a
stranger to me. I intended to effect an introduction; but some fellow
got ahead of me, and carried her off."
"Oh!" said Mrs Carruthers, manifestly relieved.
"A stranger! Then she doesn't count. You have simply been wearying me
with your nonsense."
"I'm sorry," he said. "I thought you were genuinely interested. When
you are bored you shouldn't appear so eager for details. In a desire to
be obliging one is apt to become prosy."
Carruthers entered the room at the moment with a syphon of soda and
glasses. Dare eyed the syphon discontentedly.
"I hope you are for offering me something more heartening than that," he
remarked. "Your wife has reduced me to a state bordering on nervous
collapse. She is starting a matrimonial agency. I wish you would bear
me out in the lie that I've got a wife somewhere. I fancy she thinks it
is not respectable to be unmarried."
"The whisky is on the table behind you," returned Carruthers, unmoved.
"As for bearing you out in the lie, how do I know it is one? It isn't
to be credited that every man who poses as a bachelor is single."
"If you are going to talk in that strain," Mrs Carruthers observed,
"I'm going to bed. It is past two."
She paused beside her husband, and pointed at Dare with a gesture that
conveyed a mixture of derision and tolerant amusement and a certain
affectionate malice.
"He has been treating me to a resuscitation of his dead and gone love
affairs," she explained, "because I am desirous of interesting him in
Blanche Maitland."
"Blanche Maitland! Why not?" quoth Carruthers, squirting soda-water
into a glass. "Devilish fine girl. What!"
Dare held the door open for Mrs Carruthers.
"You've entrusted it to quite capable hands, you see," he said. "The
worst of it is, old Dick is so hopelessly frank. That is exactly how a
man would describe her, and that is exactly how I wouldn't choose to
have my wife described. You'll have to try again, Connie."
She placed her hand affectionately on his sleeve.
"You are rather a dear, George," she said softly, and passed out,
leaving the astonished man to close the door behind her.
It took a clever woman to accept defeat gracefully, he reflected.