Book Three—Chapter Twenty Five.Midnight struck and still the wind raged without, while inside the house complete silence reigned. One o’clock struck. The gale was at its height; the noise of the wind was terrific: it swept past the lighted window of Hallam’s study and shook the glass as though something alive were out in the storm and seeking refuge from the fury of the wind. But the occupant of the room neither stirred nor looked round: he sat with a book open on the table before him, and a glass at his elbow towards which his shaking hand reached forth at regular and frequent intervals. He had forgotten his promise to his wife, had forgotten the hour; he sat in a semi-stupor, and took no heed of time or place. Whether he read, and, if he did read, whether his drugged brain took hold of the sense of the printed matter on which his eyes rested, was uncertain; but every now and again he turned a page of the book without raising his glance even when his hand reached out for the glass from which he drank: he only looked up to refill the glass from a decanter on the table.The minutes ticked on relentlessly, and the clock on the mantelpiece chimed the half-hour after one. A light footfall descending the stairs, so light that it could not be heard above the noise of the wind, did not disturb the reader; nor did he appear to see when the door of the room was pushed wider and Esmé with a dressing-gown worn over her nightdress and her hair in a heavy plait over her shoulder, stood framed in the doorway, a shrinking slender figure, looking towards him with wide, anguished eyes. She advanced swiftly and stood beside him and rested a hand on his shoulder.“Paul!” she said.He looked up at her slowly, stupidly, his dull eyes scrutinising her, a frown contracting his brows: then his gaze travelled to the hand on his shoulder and stayed there. He moved his shoulder impatiently.“What’s the matter?” he said in thickened tones. “I thought you were asleep.”“You promised that you would not be long,” she said. “I waited for you. Come to bed, Paul; it’s late.”“I shan’t be long,” he muttered. “You’ll take cold.” He stared at her deshabille. “Don’t be silly, Esmé; go back to bed.”“Dear.” She put her hand under his arm and attempted to raise him. “Come with me. I am afraid.”She looked frightened; her face was blanched and tense; her whole body trembled. He stared at her, amazed. Then clumsily he got on to his feet and stood unsteadily before her, assisted by her supporting hand. Slowly she led him towards the door. He appeared reluctant to go with her; and at the door he halted irresolutely and attempted, without success, to free himself from her hold. Her grasp on his arm tightened.“Come with me,” she urged.“I’ve never known you to be so foolish before,” he said. “Why should a little wind make you nervous? It blows hard often enough to have accustomed you to it.”“I don’t feel well, Paul,” she pleaded. “I want you with me.”She drew him on towards the stairs. He took hold of the banister and mounted, stumbling, and kicking against each stair in his progress. She got him as far as the landing; but when she strove to draw him on towards the bedroom he resisted.“You go on,” he said. “I must go down and switch off the lights?”“Never mind the lights,” she urged. “Come with me, dear.”“I must go down,” he repeated with irritable obstinacy. “I won’t be a minute. Go on, and get into bed. I’ll be up in a minute.”“No,” she persisted, and got between him and the stairs, and put out a hand to hinder his descent. “Stay with me, Paul, I don’t want you to go down again.”With darkening looks, and anger kindling in his resentful eyes, he endeavoured to push past her. He shook off her hold roughly, and made a clumsy movement forward, lurching against her heavily, with a force and suddenness which caused her to overbalance. She threw out a hand wildly to catch at the rail, missed it, and fell headlong down the stairs, landing with a crash upon the floor of the hall, where she lay, an inert and crumpled figure, with white upturned face showing deathlike in the artificial light.Hallam swayed forward dizzily and clutched at the rail and leaned against it heavily.“My God!” he muttered, and hid his eyes from the sight of the still white face.There came the sound of doors opening behind him. He pulled himself together quickly, and stumbled down the stairs, and knelt on the floor beside his wife. The frightened faces of the servants peered at him from the landing. He did not look up: he was stroking his wife’s hand and speaking to her softly and weeping. His tears splashed upon her hand and upon his own hand; they fell warm and wet: something else warm and wet touched his hand. Abruptly he became aware of a dark stain under Esmé’s head; it oozed slowly, and spread darkly over the polished floor. She was bleeding. That had to be stopped anyway.The shock of the accident had sobered him; the cloud cleared away from his brain and he was able to think. Quickly he went to the telephone, hunted up a number and rang up the doctor. When he was satisfied that help would arrive speedily he returned to his post beside the unconscious figure of his wife, and slipped a pillow, which one of the servants fetched at his bidding, under her head. He moved her with infinite care. He would have lifted her and carried her upstairs, but he dared not trust himself with this task which in his sober moments he could have accomplished with the utmost ease. He sat beside her, holding her hand and crying uncontrollably, until the doctor arrived and took over the direction of affairs.Hallam, stricken with remorse, shaken, and dazed with grief, wandered aimlessly between his study and the landing, and stood outside the bedroom door, which he dared not open, waiting in a terrible suspense for information of his wife’s condition.A nurse appeared upon the scene. He did not know how she came there; he did not know who admitted her. He heard the subdued noise of her arrival, and later met her on the stairs, a quiet-eyed, resourceful-looking woman, who watched him with interested curiosity as he passed her and went down and shut himself in his study once more. In the cold light of the dawn the house seemed alive with movement, the stealthy rustling of people coming and going on tiptoe, and the occasional murmur of voices speaking in undertones.After what appeared to Hallam an interminable time the doctor came downstairs. He accompanied Hallam into the study and sat down opposite to him and looked with keen, understanding eyes into the haggard face of the man whose agony of mind was written indelibly on every line of the strongly marked features. Hallam’s only question was: “Win she live?”“Oh, yes.”The relief of this assurance was so tremendous that he scarcely took in anything else that was said. The doctor outlined the injuries. A fractured base was the most serious of these. He asked permission to remove the patient to a nursing-home. The case required skilled nursing; it was a matter of time and care; absolute quiet and freedom from worry were essential. The removal could be accomplished that morning, if he were agreeable. Hallam nodded.“I leave everything in your hands,” he said. “You know best.”He felt suddenly very tired. The strain of anxiety and his long night vigil began to tell. The doctor eyed him keenly, advised food and rest, and then rose and went out to his car. Hallam closed the front door after him, and turned towards the stairs which he climbed wearily.Outside the door of Esmé’s room he halted to listen. There was no sound from within. The nurse was in charge he knew. He had no thought of entering; he did not desire to enter. He shrank from the idea of looking upon his wife’s face: the memory of her face, still and white, with the dark fringes of her closed eyes resting on the deathlike pallor of her cheeks, haunted him; it would haunt him, he believed, all his life.While he stood there outside her door, in the faint light that was creeping in wanly as the dawn advanced, he resolved that her life should no longer be darkened with his presence: he would go away somewhere—anywhere,—he would become lost to the world until such time as he could feel certain that the curse which was ruining their married happiness was conquered finally and for ever. Never again should the horror of it cloud her peace.With head sunk on his breast he turned away from the door and went into his dressing-room and threw himself, dressed as he was, upon the bed.
Midnight struck and still the wind raged without, while inside the house complete silence reigned. One o’clock struck. The gale was at its height; the noise of the wind was terrific: it swept past the lighted window of Hallam’s study and shook the glass as though something alive were out in the storm and seeking refuge from the fury of the wind. But the occupant of the room neither stirred nor looked round: he sat with a book open on the table before him, and a glass at his elbow towards which his shaking hand reached forth at regular and frequent intervals. He had forgotten his promise to his wife, had forgotten the hour; he sat in a semi-stupor, and took no heed of time or place. Whether he read, and, if he did read, whether his drugged brain took hold of the sense of the printed matter on which his eyes rested, was uncertain; but every now and again he turned a page of the book without raising his glance even when his hand reached out for the glass from which he drank: he only looked up to refill the glass from a decanter on the table.
The minutes ticked on relentlessly, and the clock on the mantelpiece chimed the half-hour after one. A light footfall descending the stairs, so light that it could not be heard above the noise of the wind, did not disturb the reader; nor did he appear to see when the door of the room was pushed wider and Esmé with a dressing-gown worn over her nightdress and her hair in a heavy plait over her shoulder, stood framed in the doorway, a shrinking slender figure, looking towards him with wide, anguished eyes. She advanced swiftly and stood beside him and rested a hand on his shoulder.
“Paul!” she said.
He looked up at her slowly, stupidly, his dull eyes scrutinising her, a frown contracting his brows: then his gaze travelled to the hand on his shoulder and stayed there. He moved his shoulder impatiently.
“What’s the matter?” he said in thickened tones. “I thought you were asleep.”
“You promised that you would not be long,” she said. “I waited for you. Come to bed, Paul; it’s late.”
“I shan’t be long,” he muttered. “You’ll take cold.” He stared at her deshabille. “Don’t be silly, Esmé; go back to bed.”
“Dear.” She put her hand under his arm and attempted to raise him. “Come with me. I am afraid.”
She looked frightened; her face was blanched and tense; her whole body trembled. He stared at her, amazed. Then clumsily he got on to his feet and stood unsteadily before her, assisted by her supporting hand. Slowly she led him towards the door. He appeared reluctant to go with her; and at the door he halted irresolutely and attempted, without success, to free himself from her hold. Her grasp on his arm tightened.
“Come with me,” she urged.
“I’ve never known you to be so foolish before,” he said. “Why should a little wind make you nervous? It blows hard often enough to have accustomed you to it.”
“I don’t feel well, Paul,” she pleaded. “I want you with me.”
She drew him on towards the stairs. He took hold of the banister and mounted, stumbling, and kicking against each stair in his progress. She got him as far as the landing; but when she strove to draw him on towards the bedroom he resisted.
“You go on,” he said. “I must go down and switch off the lights?”
“Never mind the lights,” she urged. “Come with me, dear.”
“I must go down,” he repeated with irritable obstinacy. “I won’t be a minute. Go on, and get into bed. I’ll be up in a minute.”
“No,” she persisted, and got between him and the stairs, and put out a hand to hinder his descent. “Stay with me, Paul, I don’t want you to go down again.”
With darkening looks, and anger kindling in his resentful eyes, he endeavoured to push past her. He shook off her hold roughly, and made a clumsy movement forward, lurching against her heavily, with a force and suddenness which caused her to overbalance. She threw out a hand wildly to catch at the rail, missed it, and fell headlong down the stairs, landing with a crash upon the floor of the hall, where she lay, an inert and crumpled figure, with white upturned face showing deathlike in the artificial light.
Hallam swayed forward dizzily and clutched at the rail and leaned against it heavily.
“My God!” he muttered, and hid his eyes from the sight of the still white face.
There came the sound of doors opening behind him. He pulled himself together quickly, and stumbled down the stairs, and knelt on the floor beside his wife. The frightened faces of the servants peered at him from the landing. He did not look up: he was stroking his wife’s hand and speaking to her softly and weeping. His tears splashed upon her hand and upon his own hand; they fell warm and wet: something else warm and wet touched his hand. Abruptly he became aware of a dark stain under Esmé’s head; it oozed slowly, and spread darkly over the polished floor. She was bleeding. That had to be stopped anyway.
The shock of the accident had sobered him; the cloud cleared away from his brain and he was able to think. Quickly he went to the telephone, hunted up a number and rang up the doctor. When he was satisfied that help would arrive speedily he returned to his post beside the unconscious figure of his wife, and slipped a pillow, which one of the servants fetched at his bidding, under her head. He moved her with infinite care. He would have lifted her and carried her upstairs, but he dared not trust himself with this task which in his sober moments he could have accomplished with the utmost ease. He sat beside her, holding her hand and crying uncontrollably, until the doctor arrived and took over the direction of affairs.
Hallam, stricken with remorse, shaken, and dazed with grief, wandered aimlessly between his study and the landing, and stood outside the bedroom door, which he dared not open, waiting in a terrible suspense for information of his wife’s condition.
A nurse appeared upon the scene. He did not know how she came there; he did not know who admitted her. He heard the subdued noise of her arrival, and later met her on the stairs, a quiet-eyed, resourceful-looking woman, who watched him with interested curiosity as he passed her and went down and shut himself in his study once more. In the cold light of the dawn the house seemed alive with movement, the stealthy rustling of people coming and going on tiptoe, and the occasional murmur of voices speaking in undertones.
After what appeared to Hallam an interminable time the doctor came downstairs. He accompanied Hallam into the study and sat down opposite to him and looked with keen, understanding eyes into the haggard face of the man whose agony of mind was written indelibly on every line of the strongly marked features. Hallam’s only question was: “Win she live?”
“Oh, yes.”
The relief of this assurance was so tremendous that he scarcely took in anything else that was said. The doctor outlined the injuries. A fractured base was the most serious of these. He asked permission to remove the patient to a nursing-home. The case required skilled nursing; it was a matter of time and care; absolute quiet and freedom from worry were essential. The removal could be accomplished that morning, if he were agreeable. Hallam nodded.
“I leave everything in your hands,” he said. “You know best.”
He felt suddenly very tired. The strain of anxiety and his long night vigil began to tell. The doctor eyed him keenly, advised food and rest, and then rose and went out to his car. Hallam closed the front door after him, and turned towards the stairs which he climbed wearily.
Outside the door of Esmé’s room he halted to listen. There was no sound from within. The nurse was in charge he knew. He had no thought of entering; he did not desire to enter. He shrank from the idea of looking upon his wife’s face: the memory of her face, still and white, with the dark fringes of her closed eyes resting on the deathlike pallor of her cheeks, haunted him; it would haunt him, he believed, all his life.
While he stood there outside her door, in the faint light that was creeping in wanly as the dawn advanced, he resolved that her life should no longer be darkened with his presence: he would go away somewhere—anywhere,—he would become lost to the world until such time as he could feel certain that the curse which was ruining their married happiness was conquered finally and for ever. Never again should the horror of it cloud her peace.
With head sunk on his breast he turned away from the door and went into his dressing-room and threw himself, dressed as he was, upon the bed.
Book Three—Chapter Twenty Six.Following the departure of his wife in an ambulance, Hallam made his own preparations for leaving home for an indefinite time. He purposed going into the interior. He wanted to be alone, away from the influences of civilisation and the sight of European faces, away from the memory of the past and the nightmare of recent events.Great mental anguish, particularly anguish which is accompanied by remorse, tends to a morbid condition of mind which renders the individual liable to act in a manner altogether unusual. Hallam made his preparations as a man might do who leaves his home with no thought of ever returning. He left quite definite and detailed instructions with his solicitor, and a letter for his wife, which was only to be given to her when she was strong enough to receive communications of a startling nature. In his letter he informed her that he had left her until such time as he could with confidence feel that he would never again cause her such distress as he had done in the past. He wrote with restraint but with very deep feeling of his undying love for her and of his remorse for what had happened, and ended by bidding her keep a brave heart and carry on until his return.He posted this letter, with instructions as to its delivery, under cover to his lawyer, and completed his personal arrangements, and left by the train going north.He had no clear idea as to his destination at the time of entraining; his one thought was to get as far away from civilisation as possible: he intended to make for the Congo. Besides a light kit, he was provided with sufficient money and his gun, which he carried in its case. The undertaking was adventurous; but it was in no spirit of adventure that he started; his heart was heavy and his mind clouded and depressed, preoccupied with thoughts of Esmé lying ill and alone in a nursing-home—too ill to concern herself about him for the present; but later he knew she would ask for him and wonder why he did not come. That could not be avoided: she would grow reconciled to his absence, and she would get well quicker without him to worry about.Hallam had secured a compartment to himself, a fact which gave him immense satisfaction. He leaned with his arms on the window and surveyed the lively scene on the platform in gloomy abstraction in the interval before the train started. Other passengers leaned from the windows also for a few last words with friends who were seeing them off. But Hallam spoke to no one, and no one paid any attention to the solitary man looking from his compartment on the animated scene below. Doors slammed noisily, and the guard raised his flag, and instantly lowered it again as, amid a confusion of bustle and excitement, two belated travellers arrived and were bundled unceremoniously into the carriage next to Hallam’s. Their baggage was flung in through the windows after them. Then the whistle sounded and the train moved slowly out of the station.Disturbed and singularly annoyed, Hallam drew back and sat down in the corner seat. The people whose tardy arrival had delayed the start by a couple of minutes were the Garfields. He had recognised them instantly; he believed that they had seen and recognised him. He felt oddly irritated. Had his flight been a criminal proceeding and the secrecy of his movements imperative, he could not have been more discomposed by the knowledge that these people, who were friends of his wife and with whom he was acquainted, were in the next compartment to his. He would probably encounter them later, almost certainly they would meet in the restaurant-car. They would regard it in the light of a social obligation to inquire for his wife. Mrs Garfield had already called both at the house and at the nursing-home for news of Esmé. He had not seen her; he shrank from the thought of seeing her; but he knew that he would be compelled to face her sooner or later. She was one of the few people whose persistent friendship for his wife refused to be dismayed by an absence of response. She understood Esmé’s difficulties, and sympathised with and admired her tremendously.The news of the accident, which no one associated with Hallam, had genuinely distressed her. If by her presence she could have been of service during Esmé’s illness she would have put off her journey to the Falls; but her visit to the nursing-home had convinced her that Esmé was not in a condition to need any one; she might be of some use later during the period of convalescence.Her surprise at seeing Hallam on the train was great. That he should be leaving Cape Town then occurred to her as little short of amazing. While her husband was engaged in stowing their baggage away on the racks she asked him if he had noticed who was in the next compartment to theirs. Apparently he had. He looked down at her and nodded.“Odd chap?” he said. “Most men would prefer to remain on the spot, even if their presence wasn’t actually needed.”“The journey may be a matter of necessity,” she said.“It may be, of course.” He lifted the last bag up to the rack and sat down opposite to her and unrolled a bundle of papers. “We ran it rather fine, old girl. The next time I take you on a holiday I hope you’ll get forrader with your preparations.”“You old Adam, you!” she said, smiling, and leaned forward to pat his knee.And the man in the next compartment sat and smoked and meditated gloomily, while the train ran on through fertile grass-veld towards the mountains and the sterile plain which lay beyond them.In the vexation of seeing people he knew on the train, Hallam’s first thought had been to leave it at a convenient stopping place and wait for the next train and so resume his journey; but on reflection this idea seemed a little absurd. Of what interest could his movements possibly be to the Garfields? They would leave the train in all probability long before he did, and the greatest inconvenience their presence would cause him would be an occasional and brief encounter.The first encounter occurred very speedily: Mr Garfield came to his compartment and stood in the corridor and inquired after his wife. He expressed much sympathy with Hallam.“We were shocked,” he said, “when we heard. My wife called at the nursing-home, but she wasn’t allowed to see Mrs Hallam. I trust she is doing well?”“The doctor tells me so,” Hallam answered, with what the other man considered a curious lack of feeling. “She is too ill at present to see any one.”The talk hung for a while. Mr Garfield, who never felt at his ease with Hallam, was none the less profoundly sorry for the man. He believed that the callous manner was assumed to cloak his real feelings. The haggard face and sombre eyes betokened considerable mental anguish.“It is rather an awkward time for you to have to get away,” he ventured.“It is.” Hallam’s tone became more constrained. He moved restlessly, and looked beyond the speaker out at the changing scenery. “But at least I can’t help by remaining,” he added. Abruptly he brought his gaze back again and looked steadily into the other’s eyes with an expression that was faintly apologetic. “I haven’t recovered from the shock yet,” he said. “I’m worried.”Garfield nodded sympathetically.“My dear fellow, of course. It’s not surprising that you should be. If we can do anything, let us know. And if you want a chat come along to our compartment; we’re only next door. I’m taking the wife to the Falls. It’s her first visit. I expect we’ll put in about a couple of weeks there. Do you go as far?”“I’m going farther,” Hallam answered briefly. But, although Garfield looked inquiry, he did not give him any more definite information in regard to his destination.Hallam had started on his journey with no thought of deserting his wife and leaving his home for ever: he had come away simply because he felt the imperative necessity for change and solitude. The man’s mind was dark with despair. This feeling of despair deepened with every passing hour. Fear held him in its grip. He mistrusted himself. The horror of what had happened haunted him night and day; he could not sleep for thinking of it. Always before his mind’s eye was the picture of his wife—falling—falling headlong—striking the ground with a thud—lying still and white at the foot of the stairs, with the dark stain under her head slowly spreading on the darker wood of the floor...How had this thing happened? How had he come to lose control of himself completely? He ought not to have married her. He had done her an irreparable injury by tying her life to his...Throughout the long hot days he sat in his compartment and brooded, and when the gold merged with the evening purple, and the purple deepened to night, he stretched himself on his bunk, and lay looking out at the star-strewn sky through the unshuttered windows, and brooded still with a mind too distraught to rest.He believed that some brain sickness was coming upon him; he felt wretchedly ill; and from the way in which people stared at him when he entered the dining-car he judged that his appearance evidenced his physical and mental debility. Although he forced himself to go to meals he ate little; he had no appetite for food; the smell and the sight of it nauseated him.He began to think that he would be compelled to leave the train: the confined space and the heat were making him ill. He found himself falling into the habit of talking to himself. This development horrified him no more than it horrified Mrs Garfield, who overheard him, and communicated her fear to her husband that Hallam was mad. His proximity made her nervous. She lay awake the greater part of one night listening to his mutterings, and fell asleep with the dawn and slept heavily until breakfast time. It came as a great relief to her to discover later that Hallam had left the train in the early morning.He had alighted at a wayside halt, moved by an inexplicable impulse too strong to resist. Dread of another long day, of another sleepless night on the train, had been the ruling motive. He felt that if he did not get out and walk he would be ill. He was on the verge of a collapse, and in no condition of mind to realise the foolishness of alighting in this barren waste, with no prospect of shelter or refreshment within view. There must be farms somewhere in the neighbourhood, he judged, or at least a native hut where he could procure all he needed. For the moment he required only to walk in the pure air, to exert his muscles, and rid himself of the intolerable strain on his overcharged nerves. Something had seemed to snap in his brain during the night. He found it increasingly difficult to concentrate his attention on anything for long. But the idea that he must walk obsessed him; and, with his gun-case in hand and his kit across his shoulders, he struck across the veld, turning his back on the permanent way.It did not greatly matter which direction he took; he had no particular objective in view: he wanted chiefly to shake off this annoying sense of unfitness. He had never been ill in his life before: he did not understand it. It had seemed to him that if he could walk he would be all right, and instead he felt worse. He was giddy, and he could not make any pace. He took a bush for a landmark and noted how long he was in reaching it. It amazed him. He became angrily impatient with his own laggard steps: he wasn’t walking, he was crawling—crawling like a sick animal, with a sick animal’s instinct to find some hole to creep into.He looked about him vaguely, with tired eyes. That was what he wanted, all he wanted,—some quiet shelter into which to crawl and rest.He stumbled on, tripping over the dry scrub, lurching heavily like a drunken man, and clinging tightly to his gun-case, as to something from which he would not be separated, though the weight of it was too great for his failing strength. Twice he came to his knees; but each time he rose again and stumbled blindly on as before.The sun rose higher in the heavens. It poured its warmth like some molten stream upon the gaping ground. For miles around the veld stretched in unbroken sameness, blackened from the long drought, sparse and scrubby, with never a sign of any living thing, save the solitary man’s figure, moving slowly, with heavy uncertain gait, in quest of some temporary shelter from the sun’s burning rays.It seemed to Hallam that he walked many miles and for many hours before, a long way off like some wonderful oasis amid the arid waste, he descried signs of water, and the wooded banks of a river which meandered like a green irregular wall across the stark nakedness of the land. The sight of this unexpected fertility gave him fresh heart and stimulated his failing energies to further effort. By sheer force of will he dragged his lagging feet over the uneven ground. He desired only to reach the river and lie down beside it and rest. He longed simply to get to the water, to feel it, to lave his burning brow in its coolness, to moisten his parched lips.Again he fell, and again he rose and staggered on, covering the intervening space painfully and slowly. When he was quite close to the bank he fell once more, and this time he failed to rise, despite his persistent efforts. For the first time his hold on his gun-case relaxed. He stared at it regretfully; but he knew that he was powerless to drag it further. He left it lying where it was, and crawled on his hands and knees painfully towards the bushes, crawled between them, and reached the shallow river which had been his goal.
Following the departure of his wife in an ambulance, Hallam made his own preparations for leaving home for an indefinite time. He purposed going into the interior. He wanted to be alone, away from the influences of civilisation and the sight of European faces, away from the memory of the past and the nightmare of recent events.
Great mental anguish, particularly anguish which is accompanied by remorse, tends to a morbid condition of mind which renders the individual liable to act in a manner altogether unusual. Hallam made his preparations as a man might do who leaves his home with no thought of ever returning. He left quite definite and detailed instructions with his solicitor, and a letter for his wife, which was only to be given to her when she was strong enough to receive communications of a startling nature. In his letter he informed her that he had left her until such time as he could with confidence feel that he would never again cause her such distress as he had done in the past. He wrote with restraint but with very deep feeling of his undying love for her and of his remorse for what had happened, and ended by bidding her keep a brave heart and carry on until his return.
He posted this letter, with instructions as to its delivery, under cover to his lawyer, and completed his personal arrangements, and left by the train going north.
He had no clear idea as to his destination at the time of entraining; his one thought was to get as far away from civilisation as possible: he intended to make for the Congo. Besides a light kit, he was provided with sufficient money and his gun, which he carried in its case. The undertaking was adventurous; but it was in no spirit of adventure that he started; his heart was heavy and his mind clouded and depressed, preoccupied with thoughts of Esmé lying ill and alone in a nursing-home—too ill to concern herself about him for the present; but later he knew she would ask for him and wonder why he did not come. That could not be avoided: she would grow reconciled to his absence, and she would get well quicker without him to worry about.
Hallam had secured a compartment to himself, a fact which gave him immense satisfaction. He leaned with his arms on the window and surveyed the lively scene on the platform in gloomy abstraction in the interval before the train started. Other passengers leaned from the windows also for a few last words with friends who were seeing them off. But Hallam spoke to no one, and no one paid any attention to the solitary man looking from his compartment on the animated scene below. Doors slammed noisily, and the guard raised his flag, and instantly lowered it again as, amid a confusion of bustle and excitement, two belated travellers arrived and were bundled unceremoniously into the carriage next to Hallam’s. Their baggage was flung in through the windows after them. Then the whistle sounded and the train moved slowly out of the station.
Disturbed and singularly annoyed, Hallam drew back and sat down in the corner seat. The people whose tardy arrival had delayed the start by a couple of minutes were the Garfields. He had recognised them instantly; he believed that they had seen and recognised him. He felt oddly irritated. Had his flight been a criminal proceeding and the secrecy of his movements imperative, he could not have been more discomposed by the knowledge that these people, who were friends of his wife and with whom he was acquainted, were in the next compartment to his. He would probably encounter them later, almost certainly they would meet in the restaurant-car. They would regard it in the light of a social obligation to inquire for his wife. Mrs Garfield had already called both at the house and at the nursing-home for news of Esmé. He had not seen her; he shrank from the thought of seeing her; but he knew that he would be compelled to face her sooner or later. She was one of the few people whose persistent friendship for his wife refused to be dismayed by an absence of response. She understood Esmé’s difficulties, and sympathised with and admired her tremendously.
The news of the accident, which no one associated with Hallam, had genuinely distressed her. If by her presence she could have been of service during Esmé’s illness she would have put off her journey to the Falls; but her visit to the nursing-home had convinced her that Esmé was not in a condition to need any one; she might be of some use later during the period of convalescence.
Her surprise at seeing Hallam on the train was great. That he should be leaving Cape Town then occurred to her as little short of amazing. While her husband was engaged in stowing their baggage away on the racks she asked him if he had noticed who was in the next compartment to theirs. Apparently he had. He looked down at her and nodded.
“Odd chap?” he said. “Most men would prefer to remain on the spot, even if their presence wasn’t actually needed.”
“The journey may be a matter of necessity,” she said.
“It may be, of course.” He lifted the last bag up to the rack and sat down opposite to her and unrolled a bundle of papers. “We ran it rather fine, old girl. The next time I take you on a holiday I hope you’ll get forrader with your preparations.”
“You old Adam, you!” she said, smiling, and leaned forward to pat his knee.
And the man in the next compartment sat and smoked and meditated gloomily, while the train ran on through fertile grass-veld towards the mountains and the sterile plain which lay beyond them.
In the vexation of seeing people he knew on the train, Hallam’s first thought had been to leave it at a convenient stopping place and wait for the next train and so resume his journey; but on reflection this idea seemed a little absurd. Of what interest could his movements possibly be to the Garfields? They would leave the train in all probability long before he did, and the greatest inconvenience their presence would cause him would be an occasional and brief encounter.
The first encounter occurred very speedily: Mr Garfield came to his compartment and stood in the corridor and inquired after his wife. He expressed much sympathy with Hallam.
“We were shocked,” he said, “when we heard. My wife called at the nursing-home, but she wasn’t allowed to see Mrs Hallam. I trust she is doing well?”
“The doctor tells me so,” Hallam answered, with what the other man considered a curious lack of feeling. “She is too ill at present to see any one.”
The talk hung for a while. Mr Garfield, who never felt at his ease with Hallam, was none the less profoundly sorry for the man. He believed that the callous manner was assumed to cloak his real feelings. The haggard face and sombre eyes betokened considerable mental anguish.
“It is rather an awkward time for you to have to get away,” he ventured.
“It is.” Hallam’s tone became more constrained. He moved restlessly, and looked beyond the speaker out at the changing scenery. “But at least I can’t help by remaining,” he added. Abruptly he brought his gaze back again and looked steadily into the other’s eyes with an expression that was faintly apologetic. “I haven’t recovered from the shock yet,” he said. “I’m worried.”
Garfield nodded sympathetically.
“My dear fellow, of course. It’s not surprising that you should be. If we can do anything, let us know. And if you want a chat come along to our compartment; we’re only next door. I’m taking the wife to the Falls. It’s her first visit. I expect we’ll put in about a couple of weeks there. Do you go as far?”
“I’m going farther,” Hallam answered briefly. But, although Garfield looked inquiry, he did not give him any more definite information in regard to his destination.
Hallam had started on his journey with no thought of deserting his wife and leaving his home for ever: he had come away simply because he felt the imperative necessity for change and solitude. The man’s mind was dark with despair. This feeling of despair deepened with every passing hour. Fear held him in its grip. He mistrusted himself. The horror of what had happened haunted him night and day; he could not sleep for thinking of it. Always before his mind’s eye was the picture of his wife—falling—falling headlong—striking the ground with a thud—lying still and white at the foot of the stairs, with the dark stain under her head slowly spreading on the darker wood of the floor...
How had this thing happened? How had he come to lose control of himself completely? He ought not to have married her. He had done her an irreparable injury by tying her life to his...
Throughout the long hot days he sat in his compartment and brooded, and when the gold merged with the evening purple, and the purple deepened to night, he stretched himself on his bunk, and lay looking out at the star-strewn sky through the unshuttered windows, and brooded still with a mind too distraught to rest.
He believed that some brain sickness was coming upon him; he felt wretchedly ill; and from the way in which people stared at him when he entered the dining-car he judged that his appearance evidenced his physical and mental debility. Although he forced himself to go to meals he ate little; he had no appetite for food; the smell and the sight of it nauseated him.
He began to think that he would be compelled to leave the train: the confined space and the heat were making him ill. He found himself falling into the habit of talking to himself. This development horrified him no more than it horrified Mrs Garfield, who overheard him, and communicated her fear to her husband that Hallam was mad. His proximity made her nervous. She lay awake the greater part of one night listening to his mutterings, and fell asleep with the dawn and slept heavily until breakfast time. It came as a great relief to her to discover later that Hallam had left the train in the early morning.
He had alighted at a wayside halt, moved by an inexplicable impulse too strong to resist. Dread of another long day, of another sleepless night on the train, had been the ruling motive. He felt that if he did not get out and walk he would be ill. He was on the verge of a collapse, and in no condition of mind to realise the foolishness of alighting in this barren waste, with no prospect of shelter or refreshment within view. There must be farms somewhere in the neighbourhood, he judged, or at least a native hut where he could procure all he needed. For the moment he required only to walk in the pure air, to exert his muscles, and rid himself of the intolerable strain on his overcharged nerves. Something had seemed to snap in his brain during the night. He found it increasingly difficult to concentrate his attention on anything for long. But the idea that he must walk obsessed him; and, with his gun-case in hand and his kit across his shoulders, he struck across the veld, turning his back on the permanent way.
It did not greatly matter which direction he took; he had no particular objective in view: he wanted chiefly to shake off this annoying sense of unfitness. He had never been ill in his life before: he did not understand it. It had seemed to him that if he could walk he would be all right, and instead he felt worse. He was giddy, and he could not make any pace. He took a bush for a landmark and noted how long he was in reaching it. It amazed him. He became angrily impatient with his own laggard steps: he wasn’t walking, he was crawling—crawling like a sick animal, with a sick animal’s instinct to find some hole to creep into.
He looked about him vaguely, with tired eyes. That was what he wanted, all he wanted,—some quiet shelter into which to crawl and rest.
He stumbled on, tripping over the dry scrub, lurching heavily like a drunken man, and clinging tightly to his gun-case, as to something from which he would not be separated, though the weight of it was too great for his failing strength. Twice he came to his knees; but each time he rose again and stumbled blindly on as before.
The sun rose higher in the heavens. It poured its warmth like some molten stream upon the gaping ground. For miles around the veld stretched in unbroken sameness, blackened from the long drought, sparse and scrubby, with never a sign of any living thing, save the solitary man’s figure, moving slowly, with heavy uncertain gait, in quest of some temporary shelter from the sun’s burning rays.
It seemed to Hallam that he walked many miles and for many hours before, a long way off like some wonderful oasis amid the arid waste, he descried signs of water, and the wooded banks of a river which meandered like a green irregular wall across the stark nakedness of the land. The sight of this unexpected fertility gave him fresh heart and stimulated his failing energies to further effort. By sheer force of will he dragged his lagging feet over the uneven ground. He desired only to reach the river and lie down beside it and rest. He longed simply to get to the water, to feel it, to lave his burning brow in its coolness, to moisten his parched lips.
Again he fell, and again he rose and staggered on, covering the intervening space painfully and slowly. When he was quite close to the bank he fell once more, and this time he failed to rise, despite his persistent efforts. For the first time his hold on his gun-case relaxed. He stared at it regretfully; but he knew that he was powerless to drag it further. He left it lying where it was, and crawled on his hands and knees painfully towards the bushes, crawled between them, and reached the shallow river which had been his goal.
Book Three—Chapter Twenty Seven.Esmé’s accident, and the contemporaneous and mysterious disappearance of Hallam, brought Rose in haste and at great personal inconvenience round to Cape Town. She was terribly worried about her sister, and enormously concerned at Hallam’s departure at a time when it seemed to her his presence was urgently needed.Her concern deepened as the days passed, the weeks passed, and still there was no word from him, no news of his whereabouts. The information which the Garfields furnished on their return gave a sinister aspect to the look of things. And Esmé as she got better was continually asking for her husband. She fretted at his absence; and when ultimately she was allowed to have the letter he had left for her, though she ceased to ask for him, she fretted more than before.The contents of the letter, which she refused to allow any one else to read, upset her greatly. It elucidated nothing of the mystery of his complete disappearance, but merely informed her that he had gone away for an indefinite time. She felt assured from her knowledge of him that he would never return until he was master of himself.Her heart was nigh to breaking with her longing for him, and with pity, pity for the suffering which she knew he was enduring: his agony of mind must be terrible. She wanted to see him, to put her arms about him and bid him think no more of what was past. It was grievous to her to think of him alone with heart and mind heavy with sorrow and remorse. If only she could be with him she would help him to forget. The injury to herself seemed to her so small a part of the trouble; it was so entirely accidental: largely her own carelessness was responsible for her fall; if she had been on her guard it need not have happened. She believed that if she could talk to him she could make him see this. She wanted to help him, to comfort him. And she wanted him beside her, wanted his love, his presence, with a feverish urgency that burned like a fever in her veins, and left her sick with unsatisfied longing as the days dragged by without bringing him, without bringing news of him even. If he had died he could not have vanished more completely out of her life.Her sister urged her to return with her to the Bay until she was stronger and more fitted to be alone; but Esmé preferred to remain in her own home.“Any day he may return,” she said. “I would not like him to come back and find me gone.”“He would understand,” Rose said sensibly. “At least he would know where to look for you.”She did not herself believe that her brother-in-law would return. The whole affair was to her mysterious and inexplicable.“Did you quarrel with Paul?” she asked bluntly.Esmé lifted astonished eyes to the questioner’s face.“Quarrel!” she repeated, aghast at the mere suggestion, and too genuinely surprised to leave any doubt as to the amicable conditions of her relations with her husband in Rose’s mind. “Paul and I never quarrelled over anything.”“Then it’s a pity you didn’t,” Rose replied practically. “It lets off steam. You know, my dear,” she added, and passed a caressing arm round Esmé’s shoulders, “your husband possesses a very complex nature. Judged from the ordinary standpoint, it’s an outrageous thing for him to go away like this; in the circumstances it is even cruel. Don’t you think it would be good for him when he returned to find that you had gone back to your own people?—that you were not content to sit at home and wait for him? I’d show more spirit, Esmé. A man like Paul is apt to become neglectful without intending it. He should be made to think. You ought not to be alone until you are strong again.”“I should like him to find his home open,” Esmé answered, “and a welcome waiting for him when he comes back.”There was no doubt in her own mind that one day he would come back. She believed that he would walk in unexpectedly, quite suddenly as he had gone; and she would feel his strong arms round her, and in their shelter forget all the sorrow and perplexity of their separation. That belief buoyed her up and gave her courage to wait. She would not desert her post while he was absent working out his salvation in his own way.Rose left her and went back to her home, and so imbued Jim with her doubts that he sought advice on the matter, and eventually instigated a search for Hallam, who was not, in his opinion, responsible for his actions.Hallam’s disappearance seemed as complete as if he had vanished off the face of the earth. For months his whereabouts baffled all inquiries. People referred to him in the past tense as they might refer to a man who is dead. Generally it was believed that he was dead. From the point where he left the train nothing was known of his movements: no one appeared to have seen him after that; no one in the district, which consisted of a few scattered farms, had heard of or seen any stranger; if he had passed through their land he had not made his presence known. It was thought to be unlikely that he had remained in the district. Possibly he had changed his mind and taken again to the train.This theory gained credence when later the body of a man, answering to Hallam’s description, was discovered in a lonely spot a day’s journey from the halt where he had left the train. There was nothing to show how the man had met his death, and, owing to the state of the body, recognition of the features was impossible; but the clothes were the clothes which Hallam had been wearing, and in the pockets were letters addressed to Hallam, and the watch which had been a present to him from his wife. The facts seemed to point conclusively to this being the missing man; otherwise how came he to be wearing Hallam’s clothes, and where was the owner? Had Hallam been alive he would assuredly have come forward to refute the finding at the inquest on the dead man, whose identity could only be established by his garments and the papers discovered on him.There was no doubt in Jim Bainbridge’s mind, when he viewed the body, that it was that of Paul Hallam; and, although for a long while Esmé refused to believe that her husband was dead, the hope which she cherished of his being alive was a forlorn hope, which faded with the passing of time into a reluctant acceptance of the general belief.It was during the period of uncertainty, when her mind still obstinately rejected the evidence of her husband’s death, that Esmé decided to give up her house in Cape Town and move to Port Elizabeth in order to be near her sister. She felt too nervous and unstrung to remain alone in a place where her only intimate friends were the Garfields; she wanted to be nearer her own people. To the infinite satisfaction of John and Mary, she took a house, with a good garden attached, in Park Drive, and brought her furniture round with the definite intention of making her home there.Promptly with her arrival John packed his suit-case and invited himself to stay with her. He could, he informed her, be of considerable use to her in the business of settling in. John at the age of twelve was quite a man of the world. In her loneliness she was glad of his company. This young kinsman of hers was the most tactful member of her family. He never distressed her with references to his uncle; he took his disappearance as a matter of course, very much as he had taken his marriage with his aunt. These things were incidental, and a little surprising: they were episodes in the pleasant business of life. Since the loss of his uncle had brought his aunt back he was less concerned about it than he otherwise would have been.He found it interesting to assist in moving in, to take over the direction and arrangement of everything. It needed a man to do that.“Dad’s getting old,” he informed Esmé, when he took up his residence with her. “But you can always count on me when you want a man about.”“That’s very nice of you, John,” she said. “You are a great help to me.”He came to her one day in the garden, carrying a leggy retriever pup, which he thrust into her arms with an air of magnificent generosity.“I got a dog for you,” he explained. “You must have a watch-dog, you know. George gave me the pick of his litter. When I told him I wanted it for you, he let me have his best pup.”“Oh!” she cried quickly, and put the little beast down and stooped to pat it. “It’s sweet; but you must keep it. I won’t take your pup.”“We’ll share it,” John returned magnanimously. “It will stay here. I expect I’ll run up most days to see it.” He fondled the puppy lovingly. “Isn’t he a beauty? He’s called Regret.”“Regret!” she repeated slowly. “I don’t think I like that name for a dog. Let us change it, shall we?”“I thought it a silly sort of name myself,” John replied. “But George named it. Perhaps he wouldn’t like it changed. We can cut it down to Gret.”She bent down suddenly and kissed him, to his no small surprise. It pleased her that he showed consideration for others in his direct boyish way: she wondered whence he inherited that kindly characteristic.John suffered the caress, but he looked embarrassed.“I say,” he said; “that’s all right when we are alone; but don’t do it in front of the others.”And then, in case he had hurt her feelings, he slipped an arm round her waist, and walked with her, carrying the puppy, down the garden path in the brief twilight before the darkness fell.
Esmé’s accident, and the contemporaneous and mysterious disappearance of Hallam, brought Rose in haste and at great personal inconvenience round to Cape Town. She was terribly worried about her sister, and enormously concerned at Hallam’s departure at a time when it seemed to her his presence was urgently needed.
Her concern deepened as the days passed, the weeks passed, and still there was no word from him, no news of his whereabouts. The information which the Garfields furnished on their return gave a sinister aspect to the look of things. And Esmé as she got better was continually asking for her husband. She fretted at his absence; and when ultimately she was allowed to have the letter he had left for her, though she ceased to ask for him, she fretted more than before.
The contents of the letter, which she refused to allow any one else to read, upset her greatly. It elucidated nothing of the mystery of his complete disappearance, but merely informed her that he had gone away for an indefinite time. She felt assured from her knowledge of him that he would never return until he was master of himself.
Her heart was nigh to breaking with her longing for him, and with pity, pity for the suffering which she knew he was enduring: his agony of mind must be terrible. She wanted to see him, to put her arms about him and bid him think no more of what was past. It was grievous to her to think of him alone with heart and mind heavy with sorrow and remorse. If only she could be with him she would help him to forget. The injury to herself seemed to her so small a part of the trouble; it was so entirely accidental: largely her own carelessness was responsible for her fall; if she had been on her guard it need not have happened. She believed that if she could talk to him she could make him see this. She wanted to help him, to comfort him. And she wanted him beside her, wanted his love, his presence, with a feverish urgency that burned like a fever in her veins, and left her sick with unsatisfied longing as the days dragged by without bringing him, without bringing news of him even. If he had died he could not have vanished more completely out of her life.
Her sister urged her to return with her to the Bay until she was stronger and more fitted to be alone; but Esmé preferred to remain in her own home.
“Any day he may return,” she said. “I would not like him to come back and find me gone.”
“He would understand,” Rose said sensibly. “At least he would know where to look for you.”
She did not herself believe that her brother-in-law would return. The whole affair was to her mysterious and inexplicable.
“Did you quarrel with Paul?” she asked bluntly.
Esmé lifted astonished eyes to the questioner’s face.
“Quarrel!” she repeated, aghast at the mere suggestion, and too genuinely surprised to leave any doubt as to the amicable conditions of her relations with her husband in Rose’s mind. “Paul and I never quarrelled over anything.”
“Then it’s a pity you didn’t,” Rose replied practically. “It lets off steam. You know, my dear,” she added, and passed a caressing arm round Esmé’s shoulders, “your husband possesses a very complex nature. Judged from the ordinary standpoint, it’s an outrageous thing for him to go away like this; in the circumstances it is even cruel. Don’t you think it would be good for him when he returned to find that you had gone back to your own people?—that you were not content to sit at home and wait for him? I’d show more spirit, Esmé. A man like Paul is apt to become neglectful without intending it. He should be made to think. You ought not to be alone until you are strong again.”
“I should like him to find his home open,” Esmé answered, “and a welcome waiting for him when he comes back.”
There was no doubt in her own mind that one day he would come back. She believed that he would walk in unexpectedly, quite suddenly as he had gone; and she would feel his strong arms round her, and in their shelter forget all the sorrow and perplexity of their separation. That belief buoyed her up and gave her courage to wait. She would not desert her post while he was absent working out his salvation in his own way.
Rose left her and went back to her home, and so imbued Jim with her doubts that he sought advice on the matter, and eventually instigated a search for Hallam, who was not, in his opinion, responsible for his actions.
Hallam’s disappearance seemed as complete as if he had vanished off the face of the earth. For months his whereabouts baffled all inquiries. People referred to him in the past tense as they might refer to a man who is dead. Generally it was believed that he was dead. From the point where he left the train nothing was known of his movements: no one appeared to have seen him after that; no one in the district, which consisted of a few scattered farms, had heard of or seen any stranger; if he had passed through their land he had not made his presence known. It was thought to be unlikely that he had remained in the district. Possibly he had changed his mind and taken again to the train.
This theory gained credence when later the body of a man, answering to Hallam’s description, was discovered in a lonely spot a day’s journey from the halt where he had left the train. There was nothing to show how the man had met his death, and, owing to the state of the body, recognition of the features was impossible; but the clothes were the clothes which Hallam had been wearing, and in the pockets were letters addressed to Hallam, and the watch which had been a present to him from his wife. The facts seemed to point conclusively to this being the missing man; otherwise how came he to be wearing Hallam’s clothes, and where was the owner? Had Hallam been alive he would assuredly have come forward to refute the finding at the inquest on the dead man, whose identity could only be established by his garments and the papers discovered on him.
There was no doubt in Jim Bainbridge’s mind, when he viewed the body, that it was that of Paul Hallam; and, although for a long while Esmé refused to believe that her husband was dead, the hope which she cherished of his being alive was a forlorn hope, which faded with the passing of time into a reluctant acceptance of the general belief.
It was during the period of uncertainty, when her mind still obstinately rejected the evidence of her husband’s death, that Esmé decided to give up her house in Cape Town and move to Port Elizabeth in order to be near her sister. She felt too nervous and unstrung to remain alone in a place where her only intimate friends were the Garfields; she wanted to be nearer her own people. To the infinite satisfaction of John and Mary, she took a house, with a good garden attached, in Park Drive, and brought her furniture round with the definite intention of making her home there.
Promptly with her arrival John packed his suit-case and invited himself to stay with her. He could, he informed her, be of considerable use to her in the business of settling in. John at the age of twelve was quite a man of the world. In her loneliness she was glad of his company. This young kinsman of hers was the most tactful member of her family. He never distressed her with references to his uncle; he took his disappearance as a matter of course, very much as he had taken his marriage with his aunt. These things were incidental, and a little surprising: they were episodes in the pleasant business of life. Since the loss of his uncle had brought his aunt back he was less concerned about it than he otherwise would have been.
He found it interesting to assist in moving in, to take over the direction and arrangement of everything. It needed a man to do that.
“Dad’s getting old,” he informed Esmé, when he took up his residence with her. “But you can always count on me when you want a man about.”
“That’s very nice of you, John,” she said. “You are a great help to me.”
He came to her one day in the garden, carrying a leggy retriever pup, which he thrust into her arms with an air of magnificent generosity.
“I got a dog for you,” he explained. “You must have a watch-dog, you know. George gave me the pick of his litter. When I told him I wanted it for you, he let me have his best pup.”
“Oh!” she cried quickly, and put the little beast down and stooped to pat it. “It’s sweet; but you must keep it. I won’t take your pup.”
“We’ll share it,” John returned magnanimously. “It will stay here. I expect I’ll run up most days to see it.” He fondled the puppy lovingly. “Isn’t he a beauty? He’s called Regret.”
“Regret!” she repeated slowly. “I don’t think I like that name for a dog. Let us change it, shall we?”
“I thought it a silly sort of name myself,” John replied. “But George named it. Perhaps he wouldn’t like it changed. We can cut it down to Gret.”
She bent down suddenly and kissed him, to his no small surprise. It pleased her that he showed consideration for others in his direct boyish way: she wondered whence he inherited that kindly characteristic.
John suffered the caress, but he looked embarrassed.
“I say,” he said; “that’s all right when we are alone; but don’t do it in front of the others.”
And then, in case he had hurt her feelings, he slipped an arm round her waist, and walked with her, carrying the puppy, down the garden path in the brief twilight before the darkness fell.
Book Four—Chapter Twenty Eight.Four years passed away. They were the years of the Great War, which flung the world into mourning and left a pall of depression like a blighting legacy on its passing.Among the men who left South Africa for Europe to fight for the old country was George Sinclair. He had been one of the first to go; and after three years, the greater part of which was spent in France, he was shot through the lung, and invalided out and sent for treatment to England.During the years he was away he wrote to Esmé regularly. He had begged permission to write to her before he left. He did not ask her to write in reply; and for a long while she received his letters without any thought of answering them. But, as the war progressed and the horrors of war deepened, her sympathy with the man and her admiration for his cheerful courage, moved her to open a correspondence with him.She kept this letter writing up after he was in hospital, until she learnt from him that he was well and shortly sailing for home. Then, though he still wrote every week, her letters ceased abruptly. She dreaded his coming out. She knew that he still loved her, that he meant to ask her to marry him. He had given her to understand that before he left. She liked him. In a friendly way she was fond of him; but all her love had been given to Paul Hallam; and, although she now accepted the evidence of his death, her heart still cherished his memory, and turned in unforgettable longing towards the past. Her happiness had ended in tragedy: but that was the common lot in those tragic times.The war with its harvest of death and suffering had put her own trouble further into the background than time itself could have succeeded in doing. So much had happened within the past four years that was sad and stirring and broad in its appeal to the sympathies of even those outside the reach of these terrific happenings that the egotism of personal grief was merged with the wider sorrow in which the world shared. It was no time for brooding: a common tragedy called for the utmost effort of endurance from all.In a sense the war proved helpful to Esmé; the horror of the calamity took her out of herself, and prevented her from growing morbid through the overwhelming shock of her own great loss. It had taken her a long time to reconcile herself to the belief that Paul was dead. Conviction came to her slowly with the passing of time, and the absence of any word from him. If he had been alive he would have contrived to let her know. It was unthinkable that he should have left her deliberately in a terrible suspense. Hope died hard within her, but it died surely. She mourned him as dead in her thoughts. But she could never bring herself to visit the grave where he was laid to rest, above which had been erected a simple granite cross, inscribed with his name and the date of the year in which he died. Jim had seen to these matters for her; she had been satisfied to leave them to him, and to ask no questions. In his way her brother-in-law had been kind and helpful. And John, who spent all his leisure time at her house, which had become a second home for him, proved a great comfort and companion.John was now sixteen, and his only regret was that he was not old enough to join up. He admired and envied George Sinclair profoundly. To return after three years’ fighting with a pierced lung and covered with glory was a splendid record in young John’s estimation. He awaited Sinclair’s return impatiently, eager for first-hand information of the wonderful doings in which he had longed to take part; while Esmé awaited his coming with misgivings, and wondered what she would find to say to him when they met. She recalled very vividly his coming to say goodbye to her on the evening before he sailed.“I am going to write to you,” he had said, with his blue eyes on her face. “Please don’t forbid me that pleasure; it will be a tremendous help to me to be able to talk to you on paper. I may never come back, you know; but if I do I shall come straight to you.”He had gone away wearing a photograph of her which Rose had given him; that, and her friendly occasional letters, had proved the greatest happiness during those days of war and horror and discomfort. And now he was returning, with her photograph worn in a locket, and with her letters, so frequently read that they tore where they were folded, tied together with a piece of ribbon that once had adorned a box of chocolates, and was faded and discoloured even as the package which it secured.He came to her, as he had said he would do, as soon as he arrived in the Bay. He was shy, and a little uncertain of the welcome likely to be accorded to him. The sudden cessation of her letters had damped his hopes considerably.She was walking in the garden when his taxi stopped at the gate. He caught a glimpse of her through the mimosa trees, pacing the path slowly with the dog, Regret, walking beside her, close to her, his nose touching the hand which hung loosely at her side.Sinclair dismissed his driver and opened the gate and advanced swiftly along the path towards her. She saw him and stood still, flushed and obviously nervous, waiting for him, while the dog bounded forward and sniffed the newcomer inquisitively, and finally leapt upon him in boisterous greeting. He patted the dog’s head, pushed it aside, and approached the woman, who remained still, watching him with eyes which smiled their welcome. He took her outstretched hand and held it while he looked long and steadily into the face which had lived in his memory from the time when years ago he had met and loved her at the Zuurberg. Outwardly she had changed little: life had scored far deeper impressions on his face than on hers.“So glad to see you back, George,” she said, with a faint show of embarrassment in her manner under his continued scrutiny. “So very glad to see you safe and sound.”He approached his face a little nearer to hers, still retaining her hand, which he held in a firm grip.“May I kiss you?” he asked.Instinctively she drew back, and then, as though regretting the impulse which had moved her to refuse his request, lifted her face and allowed him to kiss her lips. He dropped her hand then, and turned and walked beside her towards the house.“You can’t think what it means to me,” he said, “to be home again—and with you. I’ve had you in my thoughts, dear, every day. Why did you suddenly cease writing, Esmé?”“I don’t know,” she answered shyly, and ran up the steps on to the stoep and entered the house through the drawing-room window.He followed more slowly. His gaze, travelling round the pretty room, fell on his own photograph in uniform on the mantelpiece. He had sent her the photograph from England, and it pleased him to see it there. From the photograph his eyes went to her face and rested there, smiling and confident. She stood facing the light, looking shy and a little overcome at seeing him. Although she had been expecting him she felt oddly unprepared. Everything seemed to have changed with his appearance. He loomed large and substantial in the forefront of her thoughts, a person to be reckoned with, no longer the vague figure which had hovered indistinctly amid the confusion of her mind. Deliberately she moved to the sofa and sat down, and the dog came and lay at her feet. Sinclair seated himself beside her and played with the dog’s ears.“I’ve a feeling,” he said, without looking at her, “that all this is unreal. It’s been a sort of make-believe with me that I was with you over there. I’ve talked with you, told you things in dumb show, often. I’ve pretended that you were present and could hear and respond. Now I’m half afraid to look at you for fear you’ll vanish. Absurd, isn’t it?”“Poor dear!” she said, and touched his hand gently. He looked up then and smiled at her.“You know you haven’t altered a bit since the days when we began our friendship amid the heights.”“Ah!” she said, and the light in her eyes faded. “I feel as though I had no connection with that girl at all. It’s not only the years which alter us, George. You’ve been through experiences; they’ve changed you. Both of us look on life more seriously now. We were boy and girl in those old days of which you speak. I don’t care to look back.”“I don’t wish you to look back,” he said; “I want you to look forward—with me. Esmé, you know what my hope is? I’ve besieged you for years. Can’t you give me a different answer, dear? I’ve waited so long. It seems to me we are both of us rather lonely people. Why won’t you end all that, and make me happy?”Again she put out a hand, and this time she slipped it into his. He sat holding it, waiting in an attitude of strained alertness for her answer.“It is because I like you so well,” she said, “that I am reluctant to marry you. I can’t give you a fair return. My dear, I’ve loved... There never could be any one else in my life—not in the same way.”For a moment he remained silent. He still held her hand; but he was not looking at her; he stared thoughtfully down at the carpet reflecting on what she had said. Then abruptly he released her hand and sat up.“I’ll take what you’ll give,” he said resolutely.She made no answer. She could not speak just then for the emotion which gripped her. There were tears in her eyes. He leaned over her and very tenderly kissed the tears away.
Four years passed away. They were the years of the Great War, which flung the world into mourning and left a pall of depression like a blighting legacy on its passing.
Among the men who left South Africa for Europe to fight for the old country was George Sinclair. He had been one of the first to go; and after three years, the greater part of which was spent in France, he was shot through the lung, and invalided out and sent for treatment to England.
During the years he was away he wrote to Esmé regularly. He had begged permission to write to her before he left. He did not ask her to write in reply; and for a long while she received his letters without any thought of answering them. But, as the war progressed and the horrors of war deepened, her sympathy with the man and her admiration for his cheerful courage, moved her to open a correspondence with him.
She kept this letter writing up after he was in hospital, until she learnt from him that he was well and shortly sailing for home. Then, though he still wrote every week, her letters ceased abruptly. She dreaded his coming out. She knew that he still loved her, that he meant to ask her to marry him. He had given her to understand that before he left. She liked him. In a friendly way she was fond of him; but all her love had been given to Paul Hallam; and, although she now accepted the evidence of his death, her heart still cherished his memory, and turned in unforgettable longing towards the past. Her happiness had ended in tragedy: but that was the common lot in those tragic times.
The war with its harvest of death and suffering had put her own trouble further into the background than time itself could have succeeded in doing. So much had happened within the past four years that was sad and stirring and broad in its appeal to the sympathies of even those outside the reach of these terrific happenings that the egotism of personal grief was merged with the wider sorrow in which the world shared. It was no time for brooding: a common tragedy called for the utmost effort of endurance from all.
In a sense the war proved helpful to Esmé; the horror of the calamity took her out of herself, and prevented her from growing morbid through the overwhelming shock of her own great loss. It had taken her a long time to reconcile herself to the belief that Paul was dead. Conviction came to her slowly with the passing of time, and the absence of any word from him. If he had been alive he would have contrived to let her know. It was unthinkable that he should have left her deliberately in a terrible suspense. Hope died hard within her, but it died surely. She mourned him as dead in her thoughts. But she could never bring herself to visit the grave where he was laid to rest, above which had been erected a simple granite cross, inscribed with his name and the date of the year in which he died. Jim had seen to these matters for her; she had been satisfied to leave them to him, and to ask no questions. In his way her brother-in-law had been kind and helpful. And John, who spent all his leisure time at her house, which had become a second home for him, proved a great comfort and companion.
John was now sixteen, and his only regret was that he was not old enough to join up. He admired and envied George Sinclair profoundly. To return after three years’ fighting with a pierced lung and covered with glory was a splendid record in young John’s estimation. He awaited Sinclair’s return impatiently, eager for first-hand information of the wonderful doings in which he had longed to take part; while Esmé awaited his coming with misgivings, and wondered what she would find to say to him when they met. She recalled very vividly his coming to say goodbye to her on the evening before he sailed.
“I am going to write to you,” he had said, with his blue eyes on her face. “Please don’t forbid me that pleasure; it will be a tremendous help to me to be able to talk to you on paper. I may never come back, you know; but if I do I shall come straight to you.”
He had gone away wearing a photograph of her which Rose had given him; that, and her friendly occasional letters, had proved the greatest happiness during those days of war and horror and discomfort. And now he was returning, with her photograph worn in a locket, and with her letters, so frequently read that they tore where they were folded, tied together with a piece of ribbon that once had adorned a box of chocolates, and was faded and discoloured even as the package which it secured.
He came to her, as he had said he would do, as soon as he arrived in the Bay. He was shy, and a little uncertain of the welcome likely to be accorded to him. The sudden cessation of her letters had damped his hopes considerably.
She was walking in the garden when his taxi stopped at the gate. He caught a glimpse of her through the mimosa trees, pacing the path slowly with the dog, Regret, walking beside her, close to her, his nose touching the hand which hung loosely at her side.
Sinclair dismissed his driver and opened the gate and advanced swiftly along the path towards her. She saw him and stood still, flushed and obviously nervous, waiting for him, while the dog bounded forward and sniffed the newcomer inquisitively, and finally leapt upon him in boisterous greeting. He patted the dog’s head, pushed it aside, and approached the woman, who remained still, watching him with eyes which smiled their welcome. He took her outstretched hand and held it while he looked long and steadily into the face which had lived in his memory from the time when years ago he had met and loved her at the Zuurberg. Outwardly she had changed little: life had scored far deeper impressions on his face than on hers.
“So glad to see you back, George,” she said, with a faint show of embarrassment in her manner under his continued scrutiny. “So very glad to see you safe and sound.”
He approached his face a little nearer to hers, still retaining her hand, which he held in a firm grip.
“May I kiss you?” he asked.
Instinctively she drew back, and then, as though regretting the impulse which had moved her to refuse his request, lifted her face and allowed him to kiss her lips. He dropped her hand then, and turned and walked beside her towards the house.
“You can’t think what it means to me,” he said, “to be home again—and with you. I’ve had you in my thoughts, dear, every day. Why did you suddenly cease writing, Esmé?”
“I don’t know,” she answered shyly, and ran up the steps on to the stoep and entered the house through the drawing-room window.
He followed more slowly. His gaze, travelling round the pretty room, fell on his own photograph in uniform on the mantelpiece. He had sent her the photograph from England, and it pleased him to see it there. From the photograph his eyes went to her face and rested there, smiling and confident. She stood facing the light, looking shy and a little overcome at seeing him. Although she had been expecting him she felt oddly unprepared. Everything seemed to have changed with his appearance. He loomed large and substantial in the forefront of her thoughts, a person to be reckoned with, no longer the vague figure which had hovered indistinctly amid the confusion of her mind. Deliberately she moved to the sofa and sat down, and the dog came and lay at her feet. Sinclair seated himself beside her and played with the dog’s ears.
“I’ve a feeling,” he said, without looking at her, “that all this is unreal. It’s been a sort of make-believe with me that I was with you over there. I’ve talked with you, told you things in dumb show, often. I’ve pretended that you were present and could hear and respond. Now I’m half afraid to look at you for fear you’ll vanish. Absurd, isn’t it?”
“Poor dear!” she said, and touched his hand gently. He looked up then and smiled at her.
“You know you haven’t altered a bit since the days when we began our friendship amid the heights.”
“Ah!” she said, and the light in her eyes faded. “I feel as though I had no connection with that girl at all. It’s not only the years which alter us, George. You’ve been through experiences; they’ve changed you. Both of us look on life more seriously now. We were boy and girl in those old days of which you speak. I don’t care to look back.”
“I don’t wish you to look back,” he said; “I want you to look forward—with me. Esmé, you know what my hope is? I’ve besieged you for years. Can’t you give me a different answer, dear? I’ve waited so long. It seems to me we are both of us rather lonely people. Why won’t you end all that, and make me happy?”
Again she put out a hand, and this time she slipped it into his. He sat holding it, waiting in an attitude of strained alertness for her answer.
“It is because I like you so well,” she said, “that I am reluctant to marry you. I can’t give you a fair return. My dear, I’ve loved... There never could be any one else in my life—not in the same way.”
For a moment he remained silent. He still held her hand; but he was not looking at her; he stared thoughtfully down at the carpet reflecting on what she had said. Then abruptly he released her hand and sat up.
“I’ll take what you’ll give,” he said resolutely.
She made no answer. She could not speak just then for the emotion which gripped her. There were tears in her eyes. He leaned over her and very tenderly kissed the tears away.
Book Four—Chapter Twenty Nine.It surprised no one, and gave considerable satisfaction to her relations, when Esmé, quite soon after Sinclair’s return to South Africa, was married to the man who had been her faithful lover for over eight years.On the evening before her marriage she discussed the matter and her feelings quite frankly with Rose.“I’m not in love with George,” she said, regarding her sister earnestly; “and I’m not marrying him out of pity. I think chiefly it was a phrase he used which got me: ‘We are both of us rather lonely people.’ ... That was how he put it. And suddenly while he spoke a picture of the lonely years ahead for us flashed across my imagination. It’s true, you know; we are lonely; and we are both still young.”“Yes,” Rose agreed. “I’m glad you see it like that. I’ve hated to think of you alone always.”“It’s a little selfish, and altogether futile, to live wholly in the past,” Esmé resumed after a pause. “My love for Paul is a sacred memory; but it should not prevent me from making George happy. He is satisfied to take the risk.”“George is a wise man,” Rose responded; “he doesn’t underrate his power to win your love. You’ll grow very fond of him, Esmé; he is a lovable fellow.”“I am fond of him,” Esmé answered. “Do you suppose I would marry him otherwise? I am bidding good-bye to the old life to-night, my dear; I am not dragging it with me into the life which begins to-morrow. I feel as though I were beginning all over again. It’s a big break, you know.”“I know.”Rose’s gaze travelled round the comfortable, homelike room, which from to-morrow would be deserted, and would ultimately pass to strangers. Henceforward Esmé would live in Uitenhage, where George’s work was. He had furnished a house for her, and bought a car. The sight of the car, which he purposed learning to drive, had reconciled John to his aunt’s second marriage. John’s mother, while she gazed about her, was thinking of many things, other than motors, which might change and brighten her sister’s life. There was the possibility of children. Esmé had always desired children. A baby’s tiny hands would speedily heal old wounds; the feel of baby lips would stifle all regrets. In Rose’s opinion this marriage was altogether desirable; it closed the past completely. In a sense it seemed to her that her sister’s life was only now beginning. The curtain had rung down on the prologue, and was about to rise for the first act of the actual drama.The Sinclairs spent two weeks in Natal after the wedding. It was Esmé’s idea to go to Durban for the brief holiday, which was all the leave George could obtain. Sinclair himself had no preference; any place, so long as he had Esmé with him, would have seemed Eden to him. He was extravagantly happy. The wish of his heart was realised. The intervening years of bitterness and regret and jealousy were forgotten in the supreme satisfaction of possession. The woman whom he had married was his girl sweetheart, to whom he had remained faithful through long years of disappointment and hopeless longing. There had never been, never could have been, any one else for him. Now that she was his wife, he set himself to the task of teaching her to forget the man whose influence, dead even as when he had been alive, interposed between them. He was determined to win her love, all her love; the strength of his steadfast devotion insisted on a like response. She was very sweet to him, very gracious and kind in manner: time, he believed, would give him his desire. He must have patience, be content to wait. He had waited so long to win her that this further waiting appeared a small matter compared with what he had endured. With her beside him everything seemed possible, and life was a succession of glad and perfect days.They spent an ideal fortnight together. Neither referred to it as a honeymoon: it was just a holiday, a pleasant period of sight-seeing and excursions, of bathing and dancing and strolling together in the moonlight. Unconsciously they recovered something of the youth they had been allowing to slip past them unheeded, and realised with a sort of surprise the leaven of frivolity hidden beneath their more serious qualities.If Esmé did not find the same deep happiness which she had known in her life with Paul Hallam, she was at least care free. George was a normal healthy-minded mail, popular with his fellows, and possessed of keen powers of appreciation and enjoyment; and he succeeded, in rousing her to a new interest in things. His devotion touched her deeply. She began to realise that without being passionately in love, it was possible to love tenderly. Her life with George promised to be a satisfying and peaceful one. She resolved that as far as it lay in her power she would make him happy.Life is all a matter of adaptability. Given the qualities of kindness and a tolerant disposition, it is not difficult to be happy and to give happiness. In the case of large-hearted people love develops naturally; and Esmé and George had known one another a long time and intimately; they were good comrades when they married; no feeling of strangeness or shyness marred the ease of their intercourse. Even when they returned and took up their residence in their new home it was all pleasantly familiar. They had chosen the house together, furnished it according to their mutual tastes: there was not a corner of the place, or a thing in it, they had not inspected together, discussed, disputed over, and finally come to agreement about.And Regret was there to welcome them, the faithful watch-dog which had been Esmé’s constant companion since the day when, as a puppy, John had placed it in her arms. She stooped down to pat the dog, which bounded out of the house and down the steps to meet her, jumping up and licking her hand.“He’s a bit overwhelming in his attentions,” George remarked.He despatched the coloured boy, who stood grinning on the stoep, to assist with the baggage, and put a hand in Esmé’s arm and drew her into the house. Everywhere there were flowers; masses of roses in bowls, and long sprays in taller vases of the crimson passion-flower. Esmé stood still and looked about her with pleased eyes.“Rose has been busy here,” she said. “It looks lovely, doesn’t it? George, it’s a dear little house; and the garden is wonderful.”She stood by the window, looking out on the cool green of grass, on the blaze of colour from the flower borders, on neatly gravelled paths. Here, too, there were roses; the green of the lawn was patterned gaily with their petals which the soft, warm wind had scattered wide and blown into little heaps and again distributed these in a pleasing blending of colour; the path was covered with them, sweet-scented, and newly scattered by the breeze.“It looks festive,” she remarked.“It looks as if the boy had better get to work with a broom,” George replied.“Prosaic person?” she said, laughing. And added: “Let them stay. It’s a sweet disorder, anyhow.”He stooped to kiss her.“You are a sweet woman,” he said, and put his arm about her, and stood looking with her out upon the small but pretty garden of their home.Pride of ownership filled the man’s brain, flooded his heart with genial warmth, even as the sunlight which flooded the garden and shone hotly on the gaily coloured flowers in the borders. He felt that life had nothing more to offer him; his cup of happiness was full to the brim.But to the woman, looking out on the sunlight with him, such complete satisfaction was not possible. She was content. But the sun of her happiness had passed its zenith and was on the decline.Together they went through the house on a tour of inspection, while lunch was preparing. Each room called for comment and fresh expressions of delight. They came to their bedroom last. George sat on the side of the bed while Esmé removed her hat and gave little touches and pats to her hair, standing before the mirror and surveying her appearance critically. She discovered a tiny powder puff and dabbed her face with it. These mysteries of the toilet interested George profoundly. He disapproved of the puff.“I can’t understand why you do that,” he said. “Your skin’s all right.”“We do a lot of incomprehensible things,” she returned, laughing at him. “Men shave, for instance, though nature intended them to wear hair on the face.”“That’s one up to you, old dear,” he said, and got up and seized her by the shoulders and kissed her. “It’s rather jolly to be in our own home. It was nice being away together; but this... Esmé, I feel extraordinarily happy. It seems too good to be true, too good to last. It’s great.”“Silly old duffer!” she said, smiling back into his eager eyes. “Why should the good things be less enduring than the evil?”“Put like that, I don’t see why they should be,” he responded. “Wise little woman! we will make our good time last for all our lives.”
It surprised no one, and gave considerable satisfaction to her relations, when Esmé, quite soon after Sinclair’s return to South Africa, was married to the man who had been her faithful lover for over eight years.
On the evening before her marriage she discussed the matter and her feelings quite frankly with Rose.
“I’m not in love with George,” she said, regarding her sister earnestly; “and I’m not marrying him out of pity. I think chiefly it was a phrase he used which got me: ‘We are both of us rather lonely people.’ ... That was how he put it. And suddenly while he spoke a picture of the lonely years ahead for us flashed across my imagination. It’s true, you know; we are lonely; and we are both still young.”
“Yes,” Rose agreed. “I’m glad you see it like that. I’ve hated to think of you alone always.”
“It’s a little selfish, and altogether futile, to live wholly in the past,” Esmé resumed after a pause. “My love for Paul is a sacred memory; but it should not prevent me from making George happy. He is satisfied to take the risk.”
“George is a wise man,” Rose responded; “he doesn’t underrate his power to win your love. You’ll grow very fond of him, Esmé; he is a lovable fellow.”
“I am fond of him,” Esmé answered. “Do you suppose I would marry him otherwise? I am bidding good-bye to the old life to-night, my dear; I am not dragging it with me into the life which begins to-morrow. I feel as though I were beginning all over again. It’s a big break, you know.”
“I know.”
Rose’s gaze travelled round the comfortable, homelike room, which from to-morrow would be deserted, and would ultimately pass to strangers. Henceforward Esmé would live in Uitenhage, where George’s work was. He had furnished a house for her, and bought a car. The sight of the car, which he purposed learning to drive, had reconciled John to his aunt’s second marriage. John’s mother, while she gazed about her, was thinking of many things, other than motors, which might change and brighten her sister’s life. There was the possibility of children. Esmé had always desired children. A baby’s tiny hands would speedily heal old wounds; the feel of baby lips would stifle all regrets. In Rose’s opinion this marriage was altogether desirable; it closed the past completely. In a sense it seemed to her that her sister’s life was only now beginning. The curtain had rung down on the prologue, and was about to rise for the first act of the actual drama.
The Sinclairs spent two weeks in Natal after the wedding. It was Esmé’s idea to go to Durban for the brief holiday, which was all the leave George could obtain. Sinclair himself had no preference; any place, so long as he had Esmé with him, would have seemed Eden to him. He was extravagantly happy. The wish of his heart was realised. The intervening years of bitterness and regret and jealousy were forgotten in the supreme satisfaction of possession. The woman whom he had married was his girl sweetheart, to whom he had remained faithful through long years of disappointment and hopeless longing. There had never been, never could have been, any one else for him. Now that she was his wife, he set himself to the task of teaching her to forget the man whose influence, dead even as when he had been alive, interposed between them. He was determined to win her love, all her love; the strength of his steadfast devotion insisted on a like response. She was very sweet to him, very gracious and kind in manner: time, he believed, would give him his desire. He must have patience, be content to wait. He had waited so long to win her that this further waiting appeared a small matter compared with what he had endured. With her beside him everything seemed possible, and life was a succession of glad and perfect days.
They spent an ideal fortnight together. Neither referred to it as a honeymoon: it was just a holiday, a pleasant period of sight-seeing and excursions, of bathing and dancing and strolling together in the moonlight. Unconsciously they recovered something of the youth they had been allowing to slip past them unheeded, and realised with a sort of surprise the leaven of frivolity hidden beneath their more serious qualities.
If Esmé did not find the same deep happiness which she had known in her life with Paul Hallam, she was at least care free. George was a normal healthy-minded mail, popular with his fellows, and possessed of keen powers of appreciation and enjoyment; and he succeeded, in rousing her to a new interest in things. His devotion touched her deeply. She began to realise that without being passionately in love, it was possible to love tenderly. Her life with George promised to be a satisfying and peaceful one. She resolved that as far as it lay in her power she would make him happy.
Life is all a matter of adaptability. Given the qualities of kindness and a tolerant disposition, it is not difficult to be happy and to give happiness. In the case of large-hearted people love develops naturally; and Esmé and George had known one another a long time and intimately; they were good comrades when they married; no feeling of strangeness or shyness marred the ease of their intercourse. Even when they returned and took up their residence in their new home it was all pleasantly familiar. They had chosen the house together, furnished it according to their mutual tastes: there was not a corner of the place, or a thing in it, they had not inspected together, discussed, disputed over, and finally come to agreement about.
And Regret was there to welcome them, the faithful watch-dog which had been Esmé’s constant companion since the day when, as a puppy, John had placed it in her arms. She stooped down to pat the dog, which bounded out of the house and down the steps to meet her, jumping up and licking her hand.
“He’s a bit overwhelming in his attentions,” George remarked.
He despatched the coloured boy, who stood grinning on the stoep, to assist with the baggage, and put a hand in Esmé’s arm and drew her into the house. Everywhere there were flowers; masses of roses in bowls, and long sprays in taller vases of the crimson passion-flower. Esmé stood still and looked about her with pleased eyes.
“Rose has been busy here,” she said. “It looks lovely, doesn’t it? George, it’s a dear little house; and the garden is wonderful.”
She stood by the window, looking out on the cool green of grass, on the blaze of colour from the flower borders, on neatly gravelled paths. Here, too, there were roses; the green of the lawn was patterned gaily with their petals which the soft, warm wind had scattered wide and blown into little heaps and again distributed these in a pleasing blending of colour; the path was covered with them, sweet-scented, and newly scattered by the breeze.
“It looks festive,” she remarked.
“It looks as if the boy had better get to work with a broom,” George replied.
“Prosaic person?” she said, laughing. And added: “Let them stay. It’s a sweet disorder, anyhow.”
He stooped to kiss her.
“You are a sweet woman,” he said, and put his arm about her, and stood looking with her out upon the small but pretty garden of their home.
Pride of ownership filled the man’s brain, flooded his heart with genial warmth, even as the sunlight which flooded the garden and shone hotly on the gaily coloured flowers in the borders. He felt that life had nothing more to offer him; his cup of happiness was full to the brim.
But to the woman, looking out on the sunlight with him, such complete satisfaction was not possible. She was content. But the sun of her happiness had passed its zenith and was on the decline.
Together they went through the house on a tour of inspection, while lunch was preparing. Each room called for comment and fresh expressions of delight. They came to their bedroom last. George sat on the side of the bed while Esmé removed her hat and gave little touches and pats to her hair, standing before the mirror and surveying her appearance critically. She discovered a tiny powder puff and dabbed her face with it. These mysteries of the toilet interested George profoundly. He disapproved of the puff.
“I can’t understand why you do that,” he said. “Your skin’s all right.”
“We do a lot of incomprehensible things,” she returned, laughing at him. “Men shave, for instance, though nature intended them to wear hair on the face.”
“That’s one up to you, old dear,” he said, and got up and seized her by the shoulders and kissed her. “It’s rather jolly to be in our own home. It was nice being away together; but this... Esmé, I feel extraordinarily happy. It seems too good to be true, too good to last. It’s great.”
“Silly old duffer!” she said, smiling back into his eager eyes. “Why should the good things be less enduring than the evil?”
“Put like that, I don’t see why they should be,” he responded. “Wise little woman! we will make our good time last for all our lives.”