I knew him fairly well and liked him, butPamela was
very near my heart.
She had to convince him anew thatshe preferred
Tophet in his company to Paradise alone. There were times, too, when he bitterly
reproached himself. Beyond doubt a beauty, and ofa rare type. The sight of Pamela
thusrestored to him was more than he could bear.
But they are not to be married till
June.
In three years he was a junior partner in his firm,
andafter that his advance was rapid.
After that she wenton a cruise to the Red Sea with
some Americans called Baffin. But its a comfort to me to feel that you
know.
She has caught a beastly cold, and I made her
promise tostay indoors in this bitter weather.
Criticalin any serious sense he could not be, for
he had not the apparatusfor criticism.
Fate has played you an ugly trick, but youre man
enough to beatit. Pam is as white as a sheet, and looks more like a widowthan a
bride. But there was no doubt about his meaning. I saw Lady Pam at a dinner last
week, and shehad a face like a deaths head. The announcement will be in thepapers
tomorrow. The anodyne he tried was the worst conceivable.
He was quiteclear about this, and he had also
become assured of his own end.
I saw that it would be foolish to make light of the
trouble.
Pamela returned to England before the end of
November. I think that youre face to face with a crisis, Charles dear.
In a week or two some alchemy had changedher
utterly.
I had tried to get a word with him, but he shunned
me like theplague. Indeed, he was calm now, if you cancall that calm which is the
uttermost despair. And just before Whitsuntide they had had something like a
quarrel. Then into his orderly life, like a warm spring wind upon asnowfield, came
Pamela Brune. Each spell of freedom from thought was succeeded by a longer spellof
intense brooding.
Then his confidence suddenlydeserted
him.
Oh, Charles, she cried, what has happened to us? He
limited his equipmentto the bare necessaries, and courted every kind of
fatigue.
Thank God, Charles wasnot there to listen to that!
Nothing in Heaven or earth could harmhim now. Oh, Charles, she cried, what has
happened to us?
He is very good too and goes steadily to the
Cityagain, but hes not my notion of the happy lover.
The trouble was thathe got no farther forward. But
the science may have been all cock-eyed.
Charles Ottery is here,and I find to my horror that
Pamela Brune is coming tomorrow.
If we keep on grappling with the brute, it MUST
bless us.