PAMELA LOOKS ON
Alan Warrisden was one of the two men who had walked up to Roquebrune
on that afternoon of which M. Giraud spoke. But it was not until
Pamela had reached the age of twenty that he made her acquaintance at
Lady Millingham's house in Berkeley Square. He took her down to
dinner, and, to tell the truth, paid no particular attention either to
her looks or her conversation. His neighbour upon the other side
happened to be a friend whom he had not seen for some while, and for a
good part of the dinner he talked to her. A few days afterwards,
however, he called upon Lady Millingham, and she asked at once quite
eagerly--
"Well, what did you think of Pamela Mardale?"
Warrisden was rather at a loss. He was evidently expected to answer
with enthusiasm, and he had not any very definite recollections on
which enthusiasm could be based. He did his best, however; but he was
unconvincing. Lady Millingham shrugged her shoulders and frowned. She
had been married precisely a year, and was engaged in plans for
marrying off all her friends with the greatest possible despatch.
"I shall send you in with somebody quite old the next time you dine
here," she said severely, and she discoursed at some length upon
Pamela's charms. "She loves horses, and yet she's not a bit horsey,"
she said in conclusion, "and there's really nothing better than that.
And just heaps of men have wanted to marry her." She leaned back
against her sofa and contemplated Warrisden with silent scorn. She had
set her heart upon this marriage more than upon any other. Of all the
possible marriages in London, there was not one, to her mind, so
suitable as this. Pamela Mardale came of one of the oldest families of
commoners in Leicestershire. The family was not well off, the estate
had shrunk year by year, and what was left was mortgaged, owing in
some degree to that villa at Roquebrune upon which Mrs. Mardale
insisted. Warrisden, on the other hand, was more than well off, his
family was known, and at the age of twenty-eight he was still dividing
his life between the season in London and shooting expeditions about
the world. And he had the look of a man who might do something more.
That visit had its results. Warrisden met Pamela Mardale again and
realised that Lady Millingham's indignation had been justified. At the
end of that season he proposed, and was gently refused. But if he was
slow to move, he was also firm to persevere. He hunted with the Quorn
that winter, and during the following season he was persistently but
unobtrusively at her elbow; so that Pamela came, at all events, to
count upon him as a most reliable friend. Having duly achieved that
place in her thoughts, he disappeared for ten months and returned to
town one afternoon in the last week of June. There were letters
waiting for him in his rooms, and amongst them a card from Lady
Millingham inviting him to a dance upon that night. At eleven o'clock
his _coupe_ turned out of Piccadilly and entered Berkeley Square. At
the bottom of the square the lighted windows of the house blazed out
upon the night, the balconies were banked with flowers, and behind the
flowers, silhouetted against the light, were visible the thronged
faces of men and women. Warrisden leaned forward, scrutinising the
shapes of the heads, the contours of the faces. His sight, sharpened
by long practice over wide horizons, was of the keenest; he could see,
even at that distance, the flash of jewels on neck and shoulder. But
the face he looked for was not there.
Lady Millingham, however, set his mind at case.
"You are back, then?" she cried.
"This afternoon."
"You will find friends here."
Warrisden passed on into the reception rooms. It seemed to him indeed
that all the friends he had ever made were gathered to this one house
on this particular evening. He was a tall man, and his height made him
noticeable upon most occasions. He was the more noticeable now by
reason of his sunburn and a certain look of exhilaration upon his
face. The season was drawing to its end, and brown faces were not so
usual but that the eyes turned to them. He spoke, however, the fewest
possible words to the men who greeted him, and he did not meet the
eyes of any woman. Yet he saw the women, and was in definite quest of
one of them. That might have been noticed by a careful observer, for
whenever he saw a man older than the rest talking to a girl he
quickened his pace that he might the sooner see that girl's face. He
barely looked into the ball-room at all, but kept to the corridors,
and, at last, in a doorway, came face to face with Pamela Mardale. He
saw her face light up, and the hand held out to him was even eagerly
extended.
"Have you a dance to spare?"
Pamela looked quickly round upon her neighbours.
"Yes, this one," she answered. She bowed to her companion, a man, as
Warrisden expected, much older than herself, and led the way at once
towards the balcony. Warrisden saw a youth emerge from the throng and
come towards them. Pamela was tall, and she used her height at this
moment. She looked him in the face with so serene an indifference that
the youth drew back disconcerted. Pamela was deliberately cutting her
partners.
Another man might have built upon the act, but Warrisden was shrewd,
and shrewdness had taught him long since to go warily in thought where
Pamela Mardale was concerned. She might merely be angry. He walked by
her side and said nothing. Even when they were seated on the balcony,
he left for her to speak first. She was sitting upon the outside
against the railing, so that the light from the windows streamed full
upon her face. He watched it, looking for the change which he desired.
But it had still the one fault he found with it. It was still too
sedate, too womanly for her years. It happened that they had found a
corner where flowers made a sort of screen, and they could talk in low
voices without being overheard.
"I heard of you," she said. "You were shooting woodcock in Dalmatia."
"That was at Christmas."
"Yes. You were hurt there."
"Not seriously," he replied. "A sheep-dog attacked me. They are savage
brutes, and indeed they have to be, there are so many wolves. The
worst of it is, if you are attacked, you mustn't kill the dog, or
there's trouble."
"I heard of you again. You were at Quetta, getting together a
caravan."
"That was in February. I crossed by the new trade route from Quetta to
Seistan."
She had spoken in an indefinite tone, which left him with no clue to
her thoughts. Now, however she turned her eyes upon him, and said in a
lower voice, which was very gentle--
"Don't you think yon might have told me that you were going away for a
year?"
Warrisden had gone away deliberately, and as deliberately he had
abstained from telling her of his intention. He had no answer to make
to her question, and he did not attempt to invent one. He sat still
and looked at her. She followed the question with another.
"Don't you think it would have been kinder if you had written to me
once or twice, instead of letting me hear about you from any chance
acquaintance?"
Again he made no answer. For he had deliberately abstained from
writing. The gentleness with which she spoke was the most hopeful sign
for him which she had made that evening. He had expected a harsher
accusation. For Pamela made her claims upon her friends. They must put
her first or there was likely to be a deal of trouble.
"Well," she said, with a shrug of her shoulders, "I hope you enjoyed
it."
"Yes. I wish I could have thought you would have enjoyed it too. But
you wouldn't have."
"No," she answered listlessly.
Warrisden was silent. He had expected the answer, but he was none the
less disappointed to receive it. To him there was no century in the
history of the world comparable to that in which he lived. It had its
faults, of course. It was ugly and a trifle feverish, but to men of
his stamp, the men with means and energy, a new world with countless
opportunities had been opened up. Asia and Africa were theirs, and the
farthest islands of the sea. Pamela, however, turned her back on it.
The new trade route to Seistan had no message for her. She looked with
envy upon an earlier century.
"Of course," he resumed, "it's pleasant to come back, if only as a
preparation for going away again."
And then Pamela turned on him with her eyes wide open and a look of
actual trouble upon her face.
"No," she said with emphasis. She leaned forward and lowered her
voice. "You have no right to work upon people and make them your
friends, if you mean, when you have made them your friends, to go away
without a word for ever so long. I have missed you very much."
"I wanted you to miss me," he replied.
"Yes, I thought so. But it wasn't fair," she said gently. "You see, I
have been quite fair with you. If you had gone away at once, if you
had left me alone when I said 'No' to you two years ago, then I should
have no right to complain. I should have no right to call you back.
But it's different now, and you willed that it should be different.
You stayed by me. Whenever I turned, there were you at my side. You
taught me to count on you, as I count on no one else. Yes, that's
true. Well, then, you have lost the right to turn your back now just
when it pleases you."
"It wasn't because it pleased me."
"No. I admit that," she agreed. "It was to make an experiment on me,
but the experiment was made at my expense. For after all you enjoyed
yourself," she added, with a laugh.
Warrisden joined in the laugh.
"It's quite true," he said. "I did." Then his voice dropped to the
same serious tone in which she had spoken. "Why not say the experiment
succeeded? Couldn't you say that?"
Pamela shook her head.
"No. I can give you no more now than I gave you a year ago, two years
ago, and that is not enough. Oh, I know," she continued hurriedly as
she saw that he was about to interrupt. "Lots of women are content to
begin with friendship. How they can, puzzles me. But I know they do
begin with nothing more than that, and very often it works out very
well. The friendship becomes more than friendship. But I can't begin
that way. I would if I could. But I can't."
She leaned back in her chair, and sat for a while with her hands upon
her knees in an attitude extraordinarily still. The jingle of harness
in the square rose to Warrisden's ears, the clamour of the town came
muffled from the noisy streets. He looked upwards to the tender blue
of a summer sky where the stars shone like silver; and he leaned back
disheartened. He had returned to London, and nothing was changed.
There was the same busy life vociferous in its streets, and this girl
still sat in the midst of it with the same lassitude and quiescence.
She seemed to be waiting, not at all for something new to happen, but
for the things, which were happening, to cease, waiting with the
indifference of the very old. And she was quite young. She sat with
the delicate profile of her face outlined against the darkness; the
colour of youth was in her cheeks; the slender column of her throat,
the ripple of her dark hair, the grace of her attitude claimed her for
youth; she was fragrant with it from head to foot. And yet it seemed
that there was no youth in her blood.
"So nothing has changed for you during these months," he said, deeply
disappointed.
She turned her face quietly to him and smiled. "No," she answered,
"there has been no new road for me from Quetta to Seistan. I still
look on."
There was the trouble. She just looked on, and to his thinking it was
not right that at her age she should do no more. A girl nowadays had
so many privileges, so many opportunities denied to her grandmother,
she could do so much more, she had so much more freedom, and yet
Pamela insisted upon looking on. If she had shown distress, it would
have been better. But no. She lived without deep feeling of any kind
in a determined isolation. She had built up a fence about herself, and
within it she sat untouched and alone.
It was likely that no one else in the wide circle of her acquaintances
had noticed her detachment, and certainly to no one but Warrisden had
she admitted it. And it was only acknowledged to him after he had
found it out for himself. For she did not sit at home. On the
contrary, hardly a night passed during the season but she went to some
party. Only, wherever she went, she looked on.
"And you still prefer old men to young ones?" he cried in a real
exasperation.
"They talk more of things and less of persons," she explained.
That was not right either. She ought to be interested in persons.
Warrisden rose abruptly from his chair. He was completely baffled.
Pamela was like the sleeping princess in the fairy tale, she lay girt
about with an impassable thicket of thorns. She was in a worse case,
indeed, for the princess in the story might have slept on till the end
of time, a thing of beauty. But was it possible for Pamela, so to
sleep to the end of life, he asked himself. Let her go on in her
indifference, and she might dwindle and grow narrow, her soul would be
starved and all the good of her be lost. Somehow a way must be forced
through the thicket, somehow she must be wakened. But he seemed no
nearer to finding that way than he had been two years ago, and she was
no nearer to her wakening.
"No, there has been no change," he said, and as he spoke his eye was
caught by a bright light which suddenly flamed up in the window of a
dark house upon his right. The house had perplexed him more than once.
It took so little part in the life of the square, it so consistently
effaced itself from the gaieties of the people who lived about. Its
balconies were never banked with flowers, no visitors mounted its
steps; and even in the daytime it had a look of mystery. It may have
been that some dim analogy between that house and the question which
so baffled him arrested Warrisden's attention. It may have been merely
that he was by nature curious and observant. But he leaned forward
upon the balcony-rail.
"Do you see that light?" he asked. "In the window on the second
floor?"
"Yes."
He took out his watch and noticed the time. It was just a quarter to
twelve. He laughed softly to himself and said--
"Wait a moment!"
He watched the house for a few minutes without saying a word. Pamela
with a smile at his eagerness watched too. In a little while they saw
the door open and a man and a woman, both in evening dress, appear
upon the steps. Warrisden laughed again.
"Wait," he said, as if he expected Pamela to interrupt. "You'll see
they won't whistle up a cab. They'll walk beyond the house and take
one quietly. Very likely they'll look up at the lighted window on the
second floor as though they were schoolboys who had escaped from their
dormitories, and were afraid of being caught by the master before they
had had their fun. There, do you see?"
For as he spoke the man and the woman stopped and looked up. Had they
heard Warrisden's voice and obeyed his directions they could not have
more completely fulfilled his prediction. They had the very air of
truants. Apparently they were reassured. They walked along the
pavement until they were well past the house. Then they signalled to a
passing hansom. The cab-driver did not see them, yet they did not call
out, nor did the man whistle. They waited until another approached and
they beckoned to that. Warrisden watched the whole scene with the
keenest interest. As the two people got into the cab he laughed again
and turned back to Pamela.
"Well?" she said, with a laugh of amusement, and the quiet
monosyllable, falling as it were with a cold splash upon his enjoyment
of the little scene, suddenly brought him back to the question which
was always latent in his mind. How was Pamela to be awakened?
"It's a strange place, London," he said. "No doubt it seems stranger
to me, and more full of interesting people and interesting things just
because I have come back from very silent and very empty places. But
that house always puzzled me. I used to have rooms overlooking this
square, high up, over there," and he pointed to the eastern side of
the square towards Berkeley Street, "and what we have seen to-night
used to take place every night, and at the same hour. The light went
up in the room on the second floor, and the truants crept out. Guess
where they go to! The Savoy. They go and sit there amongst the lights
and the music for half an hour, then they come back to the dark house.
They live in the most curious isolation with the most curious
regularity. There are three of them altogether: an old man--it is his
light, I suppose, which went up on the second floor--and those two. I
know who they are. The old man is Sir John Stretton."
"Oh!" said Pamela, with interest.
"And the two people we saw are his son and his son's wife. I have
never met them. In fact, no one meets them. I don't know any one who
knows them."
"Yes, you do," said Pamela, "I know them." And in her knowledge,
although Warrisden did not know it, lay the answer to the problem
which so perplexed him.