Book Two—Chapter Nineteen.Esmé was married from her sister’s house very quietly, and with what Rose considered quite unnecessary haste. The whole affair was so sudden and so altogether unexpected that she scarcely knew whether to be the more pleased or the more dismayed by her sister’s change of fortune. She never felt quite at ease with her future brother-in-law, and in her heart she regretted that it was not George Sinclair upon whom Esmé’s choice had fallen. Marriage with Hallam meant a more complete separation from the old life: it would remove the girl altogether from her former associations. While she recognised the worldly advantages of the match she resented this: had Esmé married Sinclair they would have continued in touch with one another. But Hallam intended making his home in Cape Town, in one of the suburbs, after a prolonged honeymoon spent in Europe. The honeymoon, she gathered, would extend over a year.It was all very amazing and rather wonderful. And Esmé appeared to be supremely happy; that, after all, was the chief thing.Rose, while she watched from her seat in church, the girl standing before the altar beside the man whose name she was taking, experienced a curious misgiving which, though she felt it to be unreasonable, she could not shake off. Largely, she believed, she was influenced by something Sinclair had said when she informed him of Esmé’s engagement. He had been taken by surprise and was greatly upset by the news. She had very vividly in her memory the sight of his face as he sat and stared at her with stunned, blue eyes, and muttered hoarsely:“My God! ... Hallam! ... I could have stood it had it been any one else.”She had asked him what he meant, what he knew of Hallam? And he had answered shortly, “Nothing,” and gone away hurriedly. She had not seen him since.That this scene should come back to her now, obtruding itself in the middle of the marriage service, struck her as portentous. What had he meant? Some other emotion deeper than jealousy had moved him surely to speak as he had done. Her eyes rested contemplatively on Hallam’s face. It was a fine face, a strong face, and the keen eyes were reassuring. The slight stoop of the shoulders and the reserved inward manner of the man suggested the scholar and thinker. Rose believed that he was clever; Jim said so. Neither she nor her husband understood him or felt at ease in his society. He displayed no interest in any of the family, save young John, whose conversation seemed to amuse him. John and he remained on terms of frank friendliness, marked by an air of patronage on John’s side and an entire absence of sentiment on the part of both. But in relation to the rest he was the same silent unsociable man who had stayed for months at the Zuurberg without exchanging remarks with any one.It puzzled Rose to understand what formed his great attraction in her sister’s eyes. That Esmé was very deeply in love was evident; she was like a girl suddenly transformed; her face was alight with a glow of happiness which made it beautiful even to Rose’s accustomed eyes.Rose sat and watched her, perplexed and thoughtful, with the strange uneasiness disturbing her mind and distracting her thoughts from the service. Why she should feel anxious she did not know; unless it was the result of Sinclair’s speech. But throughout the service the sense of disaster held with her, and later in the vestry, when the bride was signing the register, she experienced an overwhelming desire to cry, and shed a few surreptitious tears with the vexed knowledge that Hallam was observant of her emotion. Her eyes met his critical gaze a little defiantly with a faint hostility in them; and she fancied while she looked back at him that a shadow like a passing regret momentarily crossed his face. Then abruptly he turned to his wife and bent down and spoke to her and smiled. The shadow, if it had been there, had left his face unclouded as before.The wedding party drove to the hotel for lunch, an arrangement which, while it pleased Jim exceedingly and met with the delighted approval of the children, occurred to Rose as altogether irregular. It was not the bridegroom’s duty to provide the wedding-breakfast, she had protested. But her husband talked her objections down and overruled them.“Hallam can afford to do it,” he insisted. “Why shouldn’t he? We can’t give them a champagne breakfast anyhow.”Besides the Bainbridges there was only one other guest, in the person of the best man, who was called Watkin, and whose acquaintance with the bridegroom seemed of the slightest. The absence of any relation or intimate friend of Hallam was a further aggravation to Rose. She looked at everything through dark-coloured glasses that day: no one else did: even John, whose respect for Hallam had decreased with the latter’s deliberate committal of matrimony, allowed that there was considerable enjoyment to be got out of other people’s weddings; the lunch at the “Grand” in particular appealed to him.Hallam bore himself well through the ordeal. Whatever his feelings were in regard to his wife’s relations he managed on the whole to conceal them fairly well. Although he did not like Jim Bainbridge, and did not understand Rose in the remotest degree—he thought her disagreeable and commonplace and as unlike her sister as it was possible for a person intimately related to another to be—it pleased him to entertain them, and to note that they did full justice to his hospitality.Jim drank champagne, to which he was unaccustomed, and became surprisingly talkative and rather noisy; and Rose, responding to the same genial influence, relaxed, and forgot for a time her apprehensions.They made quite a merry party at their flower-decked table by the window, which opened on to the stoep and looked out upon the well-kept garden beyond. It was so near the finish of that part of Esmé’s life that Hallam was content to see her happily surrounded with her people, and to do his share in making himself agreeable; but he longed to be through with it and started on the journey to Cape Town, where he proposed staying for a week before embarking for England. When the talk was at its noisiest he felt Esmé’s hand reaching out under the table and touching his knee; his own hand went down and closed over it warmly while their eyes met in an understanding smile. She felt grateful to him for the effort she knew he was making for her sake to play his part well.“Weddings,” Jim remarked in a reminiscent vein, “always recall to my mind the day I took the plunge. Odd sensation, getting married—uncertain business—rather like backing an outsider in a race. You hope you’ve drawn a prize; but it’s all a chance whether you have or not. It’s tying a knot with your lips which you can’t untie with your teeth. A man gets let in for this sort of thing. He can’t help himself. He gets a sort of brain fever, and there it is—done.”His wife directed a meaning glance towards his glass and smiled dryly. Hallam took up the challenge.“I think it is sometimes the woman who backs an outsider,” he said. “But a light hand on the rein brings many a doubtful mount past the winning post.”“You’ve got the fever all right,” Jim returned. “I know all about that. I had it in its most acute form.”“Never mind that old complaint,” Rose said soothingly. “You are quite cured now.”“That’s all you know about it,” he replied almost aggressively. “That fever is recurrent. Every married man who has ever experienced it knows that the germ once there lies latent for all time. You hear of married people drifting apart... Well, they do, you know—often; but generally they drift back again—or want to. It’s usage. You get fed up—like you get fed up with saying your prayers every night.”—Young John pricked up his ears and became interested in the talk.—“You leave ’em off. Well, some time or other you come back to them. You want to come back to them. Prayer and love—they’re pretty much about on a par.”John’s interest waned. He helped himself to fruit and disregarded the company.“You are getting somewhat beyond my depths,” the best man remarked. “These things haven’t come my way.”“They will,” Jim ventured to predict.The best man looked at the bride and laughed.“I hope so,” he answered gallantly; and introduced, with the ease of the man of the world, a lighter note into the talk.The entire party drove down to the jetty to see Hallam and his bride embark. When she stood on the steps and watched her sister seated beside Hallam in the bobbing launch, smiling and radiantly happy, Rose’s former misgivings reasserted themselves and remained with her while she looked after the crowded launch steering its course towards the mail boat, which lay far out amid the ships on the sunlit blue of the sea.Hallam turned to the girl, when they were well away from the shore, with a look of glad relief, and saw her eyes, happy and loving and trustful, lifted to his in sympathetic understanding. He smiled down at her.“It’s good to get off, to be alone together,” he said. “The thought of this moment has kept me going. I believed we should never be through with it all.”“I know,” she said with a little laugh. “But it’s over. We are together, Paul... for all our lives.”“For all our lives,” he repeated; and, oblivious of the crowd about them, pressed closer against her on the narrow seat.
Esmé was married from her sister’s house very quietly, and with what Rose considered quite unnecessary haste. The whole affair was so sudden and so altogether unexpected that she scarcely knew whether to be the more pleased or the more dismayed by her sister’s change of fortune. She never felt quite at ease with her future brother-in-law, and in her heart she regretted that it was not George Sinclair upon whom Esmé’s choice had fallen. Marriage with Hallam meant a more complete separation from the old life: it would remove the girl altogether from her former associations. While she recognised the worldly advantages of the match she resented this: had Esmé married Sinclair they would have continued in touch with one another. But Hallam intended making his home in Cape Town, in one of the suburbs, after a prolonged honeymoon spent in Europe. The honeymoon, she gathered, would extend over a year.
It was all very amazing and rather wonderful. And Esmé appeared to be supremely happy; that, after all, was the chief thing.
Rose, while she watched from her seat in church, the girl standing before the altar beside the man whose name she was taking, experienced a curious misgiving which, though she felt it to be unreasonable, she could not shake off. Largely, she believed, she was influenced by something Sinclair had said when she informed him of Esmé’s engagement. He had been taken by surprise and was greatly upset by the news. She had very vividly in her memory the sight of his face as he sat and stared at her with stunned, blue eyes, and muttered hoarsely:
“My God! ... Hallam! ... I could have stood it had it been any one else.”
She had asked him what he meant, what he knew of Hallam? And he had answered shortly, “Nothing,” and gone away hurriedly. She had not seen him since.
That this scene should come back to her now, obtruding itself in the middle of the marriage service, struck her as portentous. What had he meant? Some other emotion deeper than jealousy had moved him surely to speak as he had done. Her eyes rested contemplatively on Hallam’s face. It was a fine face, a strong face, and the keen eyes were reassuring. The slight stoop of the shoulders and the reserved inward manner of the man suggested the scholar and thinker. Rose believed that he was clever; Jim said so. Neither she nor her husband understood him or felt at ease in his society. He displayed no interest in any of the family, save young John, whose conversation seemed to amuse him. John and he remained on terms of frank friendliness, marked by an air of patronage on John’s side and an entire absence of sentiment on the part of both. But in relation to the rest he was the same silent unsociable man who had stayed for months at the Zuurberg without exchanging remarks with any one.
It puzzled Rose to understand what formed his great attraction in her sister’s eyes. That Esmé was very deeply in love was evident; she was like a girl suddenly transformed; her face was alight with a glow of happiness which made it beautiful even to Rose’s accustomed eyes.
Rose sat and watched her, perplexed and thoughtful, with the strange uneasiness disturbing her mind and distracting her thoughts from the service. Why she should feel anxious she did not know; unless it was the result of Sinclair’s speech. But throughout the service the sense of disaster held with her, and later in the vestry, when the bride was signing the register, she experienced an overwhelming desire to cry, and shed a few surreptitious tears with the vexed knowledge that Hallam was observant of her emotion. Her eyes met his critical gaze a little defiantly with a faint hostility in them; and she fancied while she looked back at him that a shadow like a passing regret momentarily crossed his face. Then abruptly he turned to his wife and bent down and spoke to her and smiled. The shadow, if it had been there, had left his face unclouded as before.
The wedding party drove to the hotel for lunch, an arrangement which, while it pleased Jim exceedingly and met with the delighted approval of the children, occurred to Rose as altogether irregular. It was not the bridegroom’s duty to provide the wedding-breakfast, she had protested. But her husband talked her objections down and overruled them.
“Hallam can afford to do it,” he insisted. “Why shouldn’t he? We can’t give them a champagne breakfast anyhow.”
Besides the Bainbridges there was only one other guest, in the person of the best man, who was called Watkin, and whose acquaintance with the bridegroom seemed of the slightest. The absence of any relation or intimate friend of Hallam was a further aggravation to Rose. She looked at everything through dark-coloured glasses that day: no one else did: even John, whose respect for Hallam had decreased with the latter’s deliberate committal of matrimony, allowed that there was considerable enjoyment to be got out of other people’s weddings; the lunch at the “Grand” in particular appealed to him.
Hallam bore himself well through the ordeal. Whatever his feelings were in regard to his wife’s relations he managed on the whole to conceal them fairly well. Although he did not like Jim Bainbridge, and did not understand Rose in the remotest degree—he thought her disagreeable and commonplace and as unlike her sister as it was possible for a person intimately related to another to be—it pleased him to entertain them, and to note that they did full justice to his hospitality.
Jim drank champagne, to which he was unaccustomed, and became surprisingly talkative and rather noisy; and Rose, responding to the same genial influence, relaxed, and forgot for a time her apprehensions.
They made quite a merry party at their flower-decked table by the window, which opened on to the stoep and looked out upon the well-kept garden beyond. It was so near the finish of that part of Esmé’s life that Hallam was content to see her happily surrounded with her people, and to do his share in making himself agreeable; but he longed to be through with it and started on the journey to Cape Town, where he proposed staying for a week before embarking for England. When the talk was at its noisiest he felt Esmé’s hand reaching out under the table and touching his knee; his own hand went down and closed over it warmly while their eyes met in an understanding smile. She felt grateful to him for the effort she knew he was making for her sake to play his part well.
“Weddings,” Jim remarked in a reminiscent vein, “always recall to my mind the day I took the plunge. Odd sensation, getting married—uncertain business—rather like backing an outsider in a race. You hope you’ve drawn a prize; but it’s all a chance whether you have or not. It’s tying a knot with your lips which you can’t untie with your teeth. A man gets let in for this sort of thing. He can’t help himself. He gets a sort of brain fever, and there it is—done.”
His wife directed a meaning glance towards his glass and smiled dryly. Hallam took up the challenge.
“I think it is sometimes the woman who backs an outsider,” he said. “But a light hand on the rein brings many a doubtful mount past the winning post.”
“You’ve got the fever all right,” Jim returned. “I know all about that. I had it in its most acute form.”
“Never mind that old complaint,” Rose said soothingly. “You are quite cured now.”
“That’s all you know about it,” he replied almost aggressively. “That fever is recurrent. Every married man who has ever experienced it knows that the germ once there lies latent for all time. You hear of married people drifting apart... Well, they do, you know—often; but generally they drift back again—or want to. It’s usage. You get fed up—like you get fed up with saying your prayers every night.”—Young John pricked up his ears and became interested in the talk.—“You leave ’em off. Well, some time or other you come back to them. You want to come back to them. Prayer and love—they’re pretty much about on a par.”
John’s interest waned. He helped himself to fruit and disregarded the company.
“You are getting somewhat beyond my depths,” the best man remarked. “These things haven’t come my way.”
“They will,” Jim ventured to predict.
The best man looked at the bride and laughed.
“I hope so,” he answered gallantly; and introduced, with the ease of the man of the world, a lighter note into the talk.
The entire party drove down to the jetty to see Hallam and his bride embark. When she stood on the steps and watched her sister seated beside Hallam in the bobbing launch, smiling and radiantly happy, Rose’s former misgivings reasserted themselves and remained with her while she looked after the crowded launch steering its course towards the mail boat, which lay far out amid the ships on the sunlit blue of the sea.
Hallam turned to the girl, when they were well away from the shore, with a look of glad relief, and saw her eyes, happy and loving and trustful, lifted to his in sympathetic understanding. He smiled down at her.
“It’s good to get off, to be alone together,” he said. “The thought of this moment has kept me going. I believed we should never be through with it all.”
“I know,” she said with a little laugh. “But it’s over. We are together, Paul... for all our lives.”
“For all our lives,” he repeated; and, oblivious of the crowd about them, pressed closer against her on the narrow seat.
Book Three—Chapter Twenty.The fulness of life made perfect by a perfect human love lifted Esmé so completely out of the past that all her life which had gone before seemed as a dream, a thing indistinct and distant, with the haunting sense of unreality which clings to dreams in defiance of the vivid impression sometimes left on the mind. To look back on the days of her girlhood was like looking back on the life of some one else. The little hot bedroom, shaded by the pink oleander tree, the life of continuous discords in her sister’s home, the daily drudgery of instructing unmusical pupils in an art they would never acquire, these things were as remote as if they had never been. She looked back on those days wonderingly, comparing them with the present; and the present seemed the more beautiful by comparison with those earlier years.After their year of wandering Hallam and his wife returned to the Cape. No country they had seen appealed to either with the same magnetic attraction which the Peninsular held for both. The house which Hallam took was not large; but it was luxurious in its appointments, and was beautifully situated, high, and surrounded with fine old trees which afforded shade and coolness on the hottest day. From the windows of her new home, as from the garden, Esmé had a view of the wide blue Atlantic stretching away endlessly to the far horizon; while, like a giant wall, rugged and grey, and towering in its immensity above the house, as it towered above the city, was the great square mountain, blue-grey in the sunlight, patterned gorgeously with the flowers which carpeted its slopes. And at night there was the sea still, darkly swelling, mysterious, remote, restless, a black expanse moving ceaselessly under the motionless star-lit darkness above; beating with passionate energy upon the shore and tossing its foam-flecked waters against the rocks: there, too, was the mountain, stark and dominating, black and sharply defined against the sky.Always these wonders were there, and always they assumed fresh guises, revealed themselves in new and surprising aspects with the varying seasons and the shifting light. It was good to sit out on the stoep in the warm still dusk and enjoy these things together in an intimate and undisturbed solitude. They needed nothing else for the present, desired no companionship but each other’s. Hallam was no less misanthropic than before his marriage; but his life was happier and full of interest. He was passionately in love; and his passion poured itself out in daily worship of this woman who gave him a full return, whose passion answered to his, equalled his in everything save its absorbed concentration on the individual to the exclusion of every other interest in life. To shut out the world from her thoughts entirely, as Hallam did, was not possible to Esmé. She loved life and her fellow-beings. Because she loved Paul better than all the world, with a love which was an emotion apart and different in quality from anything she had ever known before, she could not close her heart to every outside interest. She was glad always to be with him, glad during the first months in their own home to have him to herself with no interruptions from the world beyond their walls. But she did not desire to lead that shut in life always. She wanted to go about among people, and to have him go with her; and she made this clear to him after a while to his no inconsiderable dismay.People called on her, and she returned their calls—alone; Hallam refused definitely to have any share in that. She waived the point. So many men evaded this social duty that it did not seem to her of great importance. But when dinner and other invitations began to arrive, and he as flatly declined to accept them, she felt disappointed and showed it. She wanted to take part in these things, and his objection made her participation impossible.“Why should you want to go?” he asked, with passionate resentment in his tones, on an occasion when she pressed him to accept an invitation to a private dance. “I don’t want to go to these things. I don’t care about them. I want only you. Why can’t you be content with your home and me? Why are you not satisfied?”“Oh, Paul!” she said, and entwined his arm with both her arms and leaned against him confidingly. “You know I’m satisfied. But we are living in the world, dear; we can’t shut ourselves off from it entirely. We can’t live just for ourselves.”“Why not?” he asked.“But,”—she protested, and looked up at him with puzzled eyes. “How can we?” she asked. “We must take our part, like other people. It isn’t good to live shut off: it’s cramping. I love you, I love my home; but I want other things. I want to see and talk with people. I want to meet other women. I want to—gossip—about the things women love discussing. I want to show off my clothes.”“You show them off to me,” he said.She laughed softly.“To you!—you unappreciative male! I’ve everything in life to make a woman proud and glad and happy; and I want the world to know it. I long to parade my happiness, as a manikin parades the fashions, to the admiration and the envy of all beholders. Why shouldn’t I? Why shouldn’t I dance, boy? I love dancing. I’d love to dance with you.”“I can’t dance,” he answered. “I don’t do any of these things.”“I’ll teach you,” she volunteered. “It’s altogether simple. You’ve no idea how simple it is, nor how lovely, till you try.”He smiled involuntarily.“At my time of life! Imagine it! I wonder what you’ll ask me to do next?”“Well, you need not dance,” she urged. “You can go to the card room.”“I don’t care about cards,” he answered obstinately and with a note of hard decision in his voice. “And I don’t like the idea of your dancing with other men. Can’t you give up these things—for me?”His objection surprised and vexed her. It was to her absurd that he should feel jealous, even slightly jealous, at the thought of her dancing with any one else. She felt hurt. Surely he had sufficient evidence of her love to trust her? She would have trusted him in any circumstances in her confident assurance of his love for her. She did not understand the temper of his love. It was not mistrust of her that moved him to object: it was dislike of the thought of any other man touching her, holding her in his arms even in the legitimate exercise of dancing. His passion had more than a touch of the primitive male in its quality. He wanted her to himself, shut away from the world, content to be alone with him always. And that was not in the least Esmé’s view of things: her outlook was entirely modern and wholly free from self-consciousness. She saw no reason why she should not enjoy herself in the same way in which other women enjoyed life. She wanted to cure Paul of his misanthropy, not to cultivate it herself. It was not an engaging quality; it was even a little ridiculous.“I would give up anything for you, Paul, if there was a good reason for the sacrifice,” she said. “But I think you are merely prejudiced. You’ve spent so much time alone that you’ve grown used to solitude; but it isn’t good for you. It isn’t good for any one. We can’t live like that—shunning people as if we had something to hide. I want to go out, and I want to invite people here—not very often, but occasionally. Dear, be sensible. You gave up your solitude when you married me. I can’t let you slip back again.”He moved restlessly and disengaged his arm from hers and stood looking across the garden into space and frowning heavily. She watched him with anxious eyes. After more than a year of married life this was the first cloud to gather in their radiant sky.“You can go where you please,” he said ungraciously. “I never supposed you cared so much for these things.”“I can’t go without you,” she insisted.The frown on his brow deepened.“You know how I hate that sort of show,” he answered. “I’ve always avoided social functions. They don’t interest me.”“Very well,” she said. “Then I must decline the invitation.”He swung round on her quickly and caught her up in his arms and held her tightly, muttering against her lips, and punctuating the words with kisses.“Decline it... yes... I can’t let the world—any one—come between you and me. Why should you want interests apart from your home? Your home is here, little one, in the depths of my heart.”She felt his heart thumping against his chest, beating hard and fast as the heart of some one labouring under great excitement; she heard his breath escaping in quick deep gasps, and saw the passionate ardour which burned in his eyes; and she gave way, yielding her will to his stronger will, reluctantly, but with a growing sense of the futility of striving against him any longer. He silenced her protests with kisses, holding her head against his shoulder and keeping his lips on hers.
The fulness of life made perfect by a perfect human love lifted Esmé so completely out of the past that all her life which had gone before seemed as a dream, a thing indistinct and distant, with the haunting sense of unreality which clings to dreams in defiance of the vivid impression sometimes left on the mind. To look back on the days of her girlhood was like looking back on the life of some one else. The little hot bedroom, shaded by the pink oleander tree, the life of continuous discords in her sister’s home, the daily drudgery of instructing unmusical pupils in an art they would never acquire, these things were as remote as if they had never been. She looked back on those days wonderingly, comparing them with the present; and the present seemed the more beautiful by comparison with those earlier years.
After their year of wandering Hallam and his wife returned to the Cape. No country they had seen appealed to either with the same magnetic attraction which the Peninsular held for both. The house which Hallam took was not large; but it was luxurious in its appointments, and was beautifully situated, high, and surrounded with fine old trees which afforded shade and coolness on the hottest day. From the windows of her new home, as from the garden, Esmé had a view of the wide blue Atlantic stretching away endlessly to the far horizon; while, like a giant wall, rugged and grey, and towering in its immensity above the house, as it towered above the city, was the great square mountain, blue-grey in the sunlight, patterned gorgeously with the flowers which carpeted its slopes. And at night there was the sea still, darkly swelling, mysterious, remote, restless, a black expanse moving ceaselessly under the motionless star-lit darkness above; beating with passionate energy upon the shore and tossing its foam-flecked waters against the rocks: there, too, was the mountain, stark and dominating, black and sharply defined against the sky.
Always these wonders were there, and always they assumed fresh guises, revealed themselves in new and surprising aspects with the varying seasons and the shifting light. It was good to sit out on the stoep in the warm still dusk and enjoy these things together in an intimate and undisturbed solitude. They needed nothing else for the present, desired no companionship but each other’s. Hallam was no less misanthropic than before his marriage; but his life was happier and full of interest. He was passionately in love; and his passion poured itself out in daily worship of this woman who gave him a full return, whose passion answered to his, equalled his in everything save its absorbed concentration on the individual to the exclusion of every other interest in life. To shut out the world from her thoughts entirely, as Hallam did, was not possible to Esmé. She loved life and her fellow-beings. Because she loved Paul better than all the world, with a love which was an emotion apart and different in quality from anything she had ever known before, she could not close her heart to every outside interest. She was glad always to be with him, glad during the first months in their own home to have him to herself with no interruptions from the world beyond their walls. But she did not desire to lead that shut in life always. She wanted to go about among people, and to have him go with her; and she made this clear to him after a while to his no inconsiderable dismay.
People called on her, and she returned their calls—alone; Hallam refused definitely to have any share in that. She waived the point. So many men evaded this social duty that it did not seem to her of great importance. But when dinner and other invitations began to arrive, and he as flatly declined to accept them, she felt disappointed and showed it. She wanted to take part in these things, and his objection made her participation impossible.
“Why should you want to go?” he asked, with passionate resentment in his tones, on an occasion when she pressed him to accept an invitation to a private dance. “I don’t want to go to these things. I don’t care about them. I want only you. Why can’t you be content with your home and me? Why are you not satisfied?”
“Oh, Paul!” she said, and entwined his arm with both her arms and leaned against him confidingly. “You know I’m satisfied. But we are living in the world, dear; we can’t shut ourselves off from it entirely. We can’t live just for ourselves.”
“Why not?” he asked.
“But,”—she protested, and looked up at him with puzzled eyes. “How can we?” she asked. “We must take our part, like other people. It isn’t good to live shut off: it’s cramping. I love you, I love my home; but I want other things. I want to see and talk with people. I want to meet other women. I want to—gossip—about the things women love discussing. I want to show off my clothes.”
“You show them off to me,” he said.
She laughed softly.
“To you!—you unappreciative male! I’ve everything in life to make a woman proud and glad and happy; and I want the world to know it. I long to parade my happiness, as a manikin parades the fashions, to the admiration and the envy of all beholders. Why shouldn’t I? Why shouldn’t I dance, boy? I love dancing. I’d love to dance with you.”
“I can’t dance,” he answered. “I don’t do any of these things.”
“I’ll teach you,” she volunteered. “It’s altogether simple. You’ve no idea how simple it is, nor how lovely, till you try.”
He smiled involuntarily.
“At my time of life! Imagine it! I wonder what you’ll ask me to do next?”
“Well, you need not dance,” she urged. “You can go to the card room.”
“I don’t care about cards,” he answered obstinately and with a note of hard decision in his voice. “And I don’t like the idea of your dancing with other men. Can’t you give up these things—for me?”
His objection surprised and vexed her. It was to her absurd that he should feel jealous, even slightly jealous, at the thought of her dancing with any one else. She felt hurt. Surely he had sufficient evidence of her love to trust her? She would have trusted him in any circumstances in her confident assurance of his love for her. She did not understand the temper of his love. It was not mistrust of her that moved him to object: it was dislike of the thought of any other man touching her, holding her in his arms even in the legitimate exercise of dancing. His passion had more than a touch of the primitive male in its quality. He wanted her to himself, shut away from the world, content to be alone with him always. And that was not in the least Esmé’s view of things: her outlook was entirely modern and wholly free from self-consciousness. She saw no reason why she should not enjoy herself in the same way in which other women enjoyed life. She wanted to cure Paul of his misanthropy, not to cultivate it herself. It was not an engaging quality; it was even a little ridiculous.
“I would give up anything for you, Paul, if there was a good reason for the sacrifice,” she said. “But I think you are merely prejudiced. You’ve spent so much time alone that you’ve grown used to solitude; but it isn’t good for you. It isn’t good for any one. We can’t live like that—shunning people as if we had something to hide. I want to go out, and I want to invite people here—not very often, but occasionally. Dear, be sensible. You gave up your solitude when you married me. I can’t let you slip back again.”
He moved restlessly and disengaged his arm from hers and stood looking across the garden into space and frowning heavily. She watched him with anxious eyes. After more than a year of married life this was the first cloud to gather in their radiant sky.
“You can go where you please,” he said ungraciously. “I never supposed you cared so much for these things.”
“I can’t go without you,” she insisted.
The frown on his brow deepened.
“You know how I hate that sort of show,” he answered. “I’ve always avoided social functions. They don’t interest me.”
“Very well,” she said. “Then I must decline the invitation.”
He swung round on her quickly and caught her up in his arms and held her tightly, muttering against her lips, and punctuating the words with kisses.
“Decline it... yes... I can’t let the world—any one—come between you and me. Why should you want interests apart from your home? Your home is here, little one, in the depths of my heart.”
She felt his heart thumping against his chest, beating hard and fast as the heart of some one labouring under great excitement; she heard his breath escaping in quick deep gasps, and saw the passionate ardour which burned in his eyes; and she gave way, yielding her will to his stronger will, reluctantly, but with a growing sense of the futility of striving against him any longer. He silenced her protests with kisses, holding her head against his shoulder and keeping his lips on hers.
Book Three—Chapter Twenty One.For a time Hallam kept the social world at arm’s length, and continued to monopolise his wife, and to persuade himself that she needed nothing beyond his love to make life perfect for her, as it was for him.But Esmé’s more active temperament was not satisfied with the exclusion of every outside influence; and she chafed frequently at the monotony of her life, its gradually narrowing limits. Hallam was a bookworm: he spent much of his time in reading. When he was among his books she longed to go out and amuse herself in the ordinary way as she had done before her marriage; but if she went without consulting him he worried at her absence; when she mentioned that she was going he always laid aside his reading and accompanied her. There were times when this amused her; there were other times when she felt merely exasperated.It became very clear to her that she would be obliged to make some stand or she would cease to have any life of her own at all. She decided to take up tennis again; and joined the public courts on the advice of a woman with whom she was becoming intimately friendly, and who, despite Hallam’s lack of response, continued to call and to bring her husband with her on occasions.The Garfields considered Hallam eccentric, and pitied his wife. Sophy Garfield held out the hand of friendship, and Esmé grasped it readily, and found in her a useful and agreeable acquaintance. When Mrs Garfield proposed that she should join the tennis club, Esmé caught at the suggestion eagerly. She did not consult Hallam: she paid her subscription fee and told him later what she had done. Although he did not receive the information graciously he raised no objection. It was the least unpleasant diversion she had sought to impose so far. He joined the club also with a view to accompanying her sometimes. But he did not attend often; and after a while he gave up going and allowed her to develop some slight independence of him. She made friends easily; he neither made nor desired friends. In this respect they differed materially. She wished that he would become more sociable. He talked well when he chose: it would have afforded her immense pleasure to see him in the company of other men more often.But he kept to his home and his long tramps with her. He bought her a horse and taught her to ride. He was a keen horseman; and when she was sufficiently at home in the saddle they spent long days together, riding, in pursuit of a pleasure that never palled on either: the discovery of fresh and beautiful scenery. In their love of nature they were entirely in accord.“I wish,” Hallam said once, when they sat together on a lonely stretch of beach, with their horses knee-haltered and straying among the coarse grass higher up, “that I had taken you away into the wild somewhere—Central Africa—anywhere where white faces are rare, instead of making a home in the centre of civilisation. These lonely places grip me. I like to feel you beside me and know that the rest of the world is far off, too remote to trouble us. Would you be happy in the wilds with me?”“I suppose I should be happy with you anywhere,” she answered, and touched his hand caressingly as it lay on the sand close to hers. “But I am not hungering for loneliness, Paul. My instincts are civilised. I’m nervous in lonely places.”“With me?” he asked.She met his eyes and smiled faintly.“Even with you I think I might feel fear at times in such solitude as you describe. I remember how terrified I was at the Zuurberg that day, down the kloof, when you crashed through the bushes. I thought of tigers—oh! of all sorts of horrors. I wasn’t shaped on heroic lines, man o’ mine. Leave me to the life of the city, with its comfortable laws and protections, its nice, safe orderliness, and the sense of security one gets in the midst of life. What can the solitudes offer more than we already have?”“The difference between us is that you like crowds and I don’t,” he answered. “Sometimes I feel that the crowd will get between us.”“Paul!” she remonstrated. She observed him closely as he leaned on his elbow beside her, playing idly with the sand, making patterns on it and effacing these again with his hand. He turned his face towards hers, and his restless hands became still. His keen eyes searched her face.“That strikes you as exaggerated,” he said; “but it’s not so. I’ve watched you, and I see it coming. You have quite a number of friends who are not my friends—”“They would be your friends if you would let them,” she interposed.“Yes; I know it’s my fault; but there it is. You want friends. That’s perfectly natural. You ought to have them. You want amusement. I hoped you wouldn’t need any of these things, that you’d be satisfied, as I am, just to be together. That was expecting too much—”“Oh! my dear,” she said quickly, with a note of pain in her tones. “I don’t love you less because I love my kind; I love you better in relation to these others. Paul, why do you say these things? They hurt.”“It wasn’t my intention to hurt you,” he said. “I was merely trying to get the thing square in my mind. I’ve got to get used to these things, you see. I’ve been selfish. When a man loves as I do, he is inclined to grow selfish and exacting. Well, I’ve got to make a fight against that. I don’t like the idea of sharing you with the world at large; but I am forced to consider that as a necessary part of our compact.”“Compact!” she echoed in a puzzled voice.“We compacted to love one another,” he answered quietly. “Love stands for sacrifice. If we cannot give way in little things, the big things become more difficult to relinquish. Your brother-in-law made one observation that was profoundly true, though he did not phrase it happily: love and prayer are synonymous terms. My love for you is as a prayer in my heart. I do not wish to lower it to a mere selfish human passion.”“Oh, Paul!” she said. And suddenly she dropped her face to his hand and her lips caressed it where it lay open, palm upward, on the sand.His talk of sacrifice made her desire to give up things also, to give up her will to him; but the persuasion that it was good for him to throw off his absorption, to adapt his life to the common rule and live more like other men, held her mute. She would accept his sacrifices, all that he offered, and would prove to him in numberless tender ways how great was her appreciation of the unselfish love he gave her; how intense was her pride in it. She had never loved him so much as in that moment when he gave her an insight into what his conception of love was. He so seldom spoke on the subject, and never before had spoken without reserve; it seemed to her that his talk that day threw a bright ray of light upon his feelings, and revealed to her very clearly the beauty of his ideal of love, hitherto so jealously locked in his inmost thoughts.A feeling of happiness that was as a song of gratitude warmed her heart. She pillowed her face on his hand and lay still on the burning sand beside him, undisturbed by the hot sun which beat upon her body, upon her face; loving its warmth which was as the warmth in her heart, a flame that glowed and burned and did not consume.Hallam rolled over on his elbow and lay watching her in contemplative silence for a space. The feel of her cheek against his hand pleased him. Her face was flushed and happy, and the look in the soft eyes when they met his moved him to lean over her and kiss their long lashes. Laughing, she opened them wide and looked up at him.“Paul, heart of my heart!” she cried. “How you make me love you!”“Yes!” he said, and kissed her again. “I wonder whose love is the stronger—yours or mine?”“We cannot prove that,” she said.“Time may,” he replied. “The strength of love is tested by its endurance. A great love endures through everything for all time.”“A great love!” she repeated, and brushed his hand caressingly with her cheek. “I never knew, until you taught me, how great love was.”
For a time Hallam kept the social world at arm’s length, and continued to monopolise his wife, and to persuade himself that she needed nothing beyond his love to make life perfect for her, as it was for him.
But Esmé’s more active temperament was not satisfied with the exclusion of every outside influence; and she chafed frequently at the monotony of her life, its gradually narrowing limits. Hallam was a bookworm: he spent much of his time in reading. When he was among his books she longed to go out and amuse herself in the ordinary way as she had done before her marriage; but if she went without consulting him he worried at her absence; when she mentioned that she was going he always laid aside his reading and accompanied her. There were times when this amused her; there were other times when she felt merely exasperated.
It became very clear to her that she would be obliged to make some stand or she would cease to have any life of her own at all. She decided to take up tennis again; and joined the public courts on the advice of a woman with whom she was becoming intimately friendly, and who, despite Hallam’s lack of response, continued to call and to bring her husband with her on occasions.
The Garfields considered Hallam eccentric, and pitied his wife. Sophy Garfield held out the hand of friendship, and Esmé grasped it readily, and found in her a useful and agreeable acquaintance. When Mrs Garfield proposed that she should join the tennis club, Esmé caught at the suggestion eagerly. She did not consult Hallam: she paid her subscription fee and told him later what she had done. Although he did not receive the information graciously he raised no objection. It was the least unpleasant diversion she had sought to impose so far. He joined the club also with a view to accompanying her sometimes. But he did not attend often; and after a while he gave up going and allowed her to develop some slight independence of him. She made friends easily; he neither made nor desired friends. In this respect they differed materially. She wished that he would become more sociable. He talked well when he chose: it would have afforded her immense pleasure to see him in the company of other men more often.
But he kept to his home and his long tramps with her. He bought her a horse and taught her to ride. He was a keen horseman; and when she was sufficiently at home in the saddle they spent long days together, riding, in pursuit of a pleasure that never palled on either: the discovery of fresh and beautiful scenery. In their love of nature they were entirely in accord.
“I wish,” Hallam said once, when they sat together on a lonely stretch of beach, with their horses knee-haltered and straying among the coarse grass higher up, “that I had taken you away into the wild somewhere—Central Africa—anywhere where white faces are rare, instead of making a home in the centre of civilisation. These lonely places grip me. I like to feel you beside me and know that the rest of the world is far off, too remote to trouble us. Would you be happy in the wilds with me?”
“I suppose I should be happy with you anywhere,” she answered, and touched his hand caressingly as it lay on the sand close to hers. “But I am not hungering for loneliness, Paul. My instincts are civilised. I’m nervous in lonely places.”
“With me?” he asked.
She met his eyes and smiled faintly.
“Even with you I think I might feel fear at times in such solitude as you describe. I remember how terrified I was at the Zuurberg that day, down the kloof, when you crashed through the bushes. I thought of tigers—oh! of all sorts of horrors. I wasn’t shaped on heroic lines, man o’ mine. Leave me to the life of the city, with its comfortable laws and protections, its nice, safe orderliness, and the sense of security one gets in the midst of life. What can the solitudes offer more than we already have?”
“The difference between us is that you like crowds and I don’t,” he answered. “Sometimes I feel that the crowd will get between us.”
“Paul!” she remonstrated. She observed him closely as he leaned on his elbow beside her, playing idly with the sand, making patterns on it and effacing these again with his hand. He turned his face towards hers, and his restless hands became still. His keen eyes searched her face.
“That strikes you as exaggerated,” he said; “but it’s not so. I’ve watched you, and I see it coming. You have quite a number of friends who are not my friends—”
“They would be your friends if you would let them,” she interposed.
“Yes; I know it’s my fault; but there it is. You want friends. That’s perfectly natural. You ought to have them. You want amusement. I hoped you wouldn’t need any of these things, that you’d be satisfied, as I am, just to be together. That was expecting too much—”
“Oh! my dear,” she said quickly, with a note of pain in her tones. “I don’t love you less because I love my kind; I love you better in relation to these others. Paul, why do you say these things? They hurt.”
“It wasn’t my intention to hurt you,” he said. “I was merely trying to get the thing square in my mind. I’ve got to get used to these things, you see. I’ve been selfish. When a man loves as I do, he is inclined to grow selfish and exacting. Well, I’ve got to make a fight against that. I don’t like the idea of sharing you with the world at large; but I am forced to consider that as a necessary part of our compact.”
“Compact!” she echoed in a puzzled voice.
“We compacted to love one another,” he answered quietly. “Love stands for sacrifice. If we cannot give way in little things, the big things become more difficult to relinquish. Your brother-in-law made one observation that was profoundly true, though he did not phrase it happily: love and prayer are synonymous terms. My love for you is as a prayer in my heart. I do not wish to lower it to a mere selfish human passion.”
“Oh, Paul!” she said. And suddenly she dropped her face to his hand and her lips caressed it where it lay open, palm upward, on the sand.
His talk of sacrifice made her desire to give up things also, to give up her will to him; but the persuasion that it was good for him to throw off his absorption, to adapt his life to the common rule and live more like other men, held her mute. She would accept his sacrifices, all that he offered, and would prove to him in numberless tender ways how great was her appreciation of the unselfish love he gave her; how intense was her pride in it. She had never loved him so much as in that moment when he gave her an insight into what his conception of love was. He so seldom spoke on the subject, and never before had spoken without reserve; it seemed to her that his talk that day threw a bright ray of light upon his feelings, and revealed to her very clearly the beauty of his ideal of love, hitherto so jealously locked in his inmost thoughts.
A feeling of happiness that was as a song of gratitude warmed her heart. She pillowed her face on his hand and lay still on the burning sand beside him, undisturbed by the hot sun which beat upon her body, upon her face; loving its warmth which was as the warmth in her heart, a flame that glowed and burned and did not consume.
Hallam rolled over on his elbow and lay watching her in contemplative silence for a space. The feel of her cheek against his hand pleased him. Her face was flushed and happy, and the look in the soft eyes when they met his moved him to lean over her and kiss their long lashes. Laughing, she opened them wide and looked up at him.
“Paul, heart of my heart!” she cried. “How you make me love you!”
“Yes!” he said, and kissed her again. “I wonder whose love is the stronger—yours or mine?”
“We cannot prove that,” she said.
“Time may,” he replied. “The strength of love is tested by its endurance. A great love endures through everything for all time.”
“A great love!” she repeated, and brushed his hand caressingly with her cheek. “I never knew, until you taught me, how great love was.”
Book Three—Chapter Twenty Two.Marriage, like every other relationship in life, becomes with time a matter of usage. One by one the demands which the ardour of passion exacts relax imperceptibly, and love finds its level on a practical basis of mutual interests in the common daily round.Hallam’s marriage was a reversal of the usual order, in which generally it falls to the woman to adapt herself more or less to the altered conditions. In their case the change affected him more materially than it affected Esmé: his life had become, as it were, uprooted, and the roots did not strike freely in new soil. The change was not agreeable to him; but his love for his wife was of a quality which helped him to endure with a certain dogged patience many things that formerly he would not have entertained for a moment. He suppressed his own inclinations: to a large extent he suppressed his feelings: mentally his life with her was a series of small deceptions, of pretences practised deliberately for the purpose of misleading her. He feared to disappoint her. His mind became a storehouse of reserved thoughts and inhibitions upon which he turned the key, locking its surprises against her.In certain respects, though she was unaware of this, he was a stranger to her: one side of his nature remained hidden from her, the weaker side, which most urgently needed her loving sympathy, and which shrank from exposure and misunderstanding with a sensitiveness of which he was conscious and secretly ashamed. He was not the type of man to make an appeal even to the woman he loved. He gave more than he exacted. He gave more than she realised in her ignorance of the sacrifices he made in his attempts to bridge the abysmal gap in temperaments. For her sake he endured many things which were to him boring and annoying in the extreme. He made stupendous efforts to subdue his prejudices and adjust his life to meet the new demands. But the nature of the man remained unchanged and suffered as a result of the artificial conditions of his self-imposed obligations.Three brief years of married happiness passed; and then Hallam began at first moderately, and always secretly to drink again.For a time Esmé was unaware of this relapse on his part; for a further period she suspected it but could not be sure. Then the old symptoms reappeared with terrible convincingness: she saw his hands grow shaky, his whole appearance degenerate, till he looked as she had seen him first on the stoep of the hotel at the Zuurberg, older, ill, nervous and morose, with a disregard for public opinion and a growing indifference as to whether she knew or not.Esmé’s eyes opened to the condition of things after a short visit paid to her sister, which Hallam readily agreed to her accepting but refused to accept for himself. He had no wish to see his wife’s relations; he preferred to remain at home.She parted from him reluctantly. A feeling of anxiety gripped her at the thought of leaving him alone. It was their first separation since their marriage. But she wanted to see her sister again. Rose’s letter was reproachful; it conveyed the suggestion that the writer was hurt by her neglect. The neglect on Esmé’s side was not wilful: she had wished to have her sister to stay with her; but Hallam had always seemed so disinclined to entertain any member of her family that she had been obliged to give up the idea. But when Rose’s letter came urging her to take a trip round to the Bay, she decided that she ought to go, unless she wished for a complete estrangement between them. Hallam was quite agreeable. He booked her a passage and saw her off by the boat; but at the last moment he showed a strong disinclination to part from her, and almost persuaded her to give up the idea and return with him.“It’s too absurd,” she said: “we are like a pair of children. Why don’t you come with me?”“No,” he said. “I’ll wait at home for you. Don’t stay longer than you need.”She watched him descend to the quay, and, leaning on the rail, looking down at him, the first intimation that things were not quite as they should be dawned on her, and filled her with a sense of uneasiness which grew with every hour of her separation from him.In the end she curtailed her visit and returned unexpectedly by train.She had sent a telegram informing Hallam when to expect her; and she found him on the platform waiting for her, and was struck immediately by the change in him. Her heart sank within her, but she forced a smile to her lips and accompanied him out of the station and got into the waiting taxi. He opened the door for her, fumbling with the catch with unsteady fingers, and got in after her and sat down heavily.“It didn’t take you long to discover that home’s the best place,” he remarked, with a sideways furtive look at her. “How did you find them all? Jim still grousing, I suppose? And the small boy a perennial note of interrogation?”“Everything was much the same,” she answered in a dispirited voice. “They were all a little older in appearance, and the children have grown tremendously. I wish you had been with me. Rose was hurt, I think, because you did not go.”“Oh, really! I should have thought she would have felt relieved.”“Why?”He disregarded the question. Abruptly he put out an unsteady hand and laid it upon hers.“Tired?” he asked.“A little.” She twisted her hand round in her lap and her fingers closed upon his. “What have you been doing during my absence?”“Mainly missing you,” he answered. “A reversion to one’s bachelor days is a dull sort of holiday.”“I know. But what was I to do? I don’t want to lose touch altogether with my ain folk.”“I have no folk,” he said, “so I can’t understand these family ties. I think them a bore. But if you had a good time that’s the chief thing. You’ve a lot of friends at the Bay, and you find pleasure in them. My friends are silent companions and are better suited to my taste. How did your people think you were looking? None the worse for being tied to this dull person, I hope?”She laughed and squeezed his hand.“They were impressed with my staid appearance, and the fact that I am putting on weight,” she said. “I didn’t realise it myself until Jim told me I was getting fat.”“That is a Jim-like touch,” he returned, and glanced at her cursorily. “The grossness is not apparent to me. Did you meet Sinclair during your stay?”“Yes,” she said, and looked surprised that he should ask the question. That he had once been jealous of Sinclair was unknown to her.“And does he still wear the willow for your sake?”“He isn’t married,” she answered. “But I don’t think that has anything to do with me.”She regretted that he had opened this subject. The memory of Sinclair was a distress to her. The change in him had struck her more forcibly than the change in any member of her own family. The difference in him was not due alone to the passing years. He was altered in manner as much as in appearance; all the boyish gaiety had departed: he was older, more thoughtful; the irresponsible gladness of youth, formerly so noticeable a characteristic of his, was missing. She could have wept at the change in him. He was still her devoted slave. During her visit he had haunted her sister’s house. He had claimed the privilege of friendship and put himself at her disposal. He was always at hand when she needed him. And never once by word or gesture had he attempted to overstep the boundary of friendship. She felt grateful to him for his consistent and considerate kindness. She did not want to discuss him, even with Paul.Hallam did not pursue the subject. He fell into silence and left her to do the talking. During the remainder of the drive she chatted fragmentally and brightly of her doings while she had been away. Principally she talked about the children. The sight of John and Mary, the sound of their gay young voices, their insistent claim upon the general attention, had brought home to her the absence of the one great interest in her own home. She wanted children intensely; and it did not seem that her desire would ever be satisfied. A child would have completed her married happiness.Something of what was in her thoughts she managed to convey to Hallam when they reached the house and entered together, her arm within his. Alone in the drawing-room, when he held her in his embrace and kissed the bright upturned face, she slipped her hands behind his neck and looked back at him with tender loving eyes.“Paul,” she whispered, “I wish we had a child of our very own—a wee scrap of soft pink flesh, with tiny clinging hands. My dear, my dearest, I do so want a child!”He gazed down at her, troubled and immeasurably surprised, and gently kissed the tremulous lips. He had never given any thought to the matter until now, when he realised the aching mother-hunger expressed in her desire: she had concealed it so successfully hitherto. He did not himself wish for children; the thought of them even was an embarrassment. With clumsy tenderness he stroked her hair.“It seems as though it is not to be,” he said. “I didn’t know you cared so much, sweetheart.”“Don’t you care?” she asked. “I!” He seemed surprised. “I’ve got you,” he said, and drew her close in his embrace.
Marriage, like every other relationship in life, becomes with time a matter of usage. One by one the demands which the ardour of passion exacts relax imperceptibly, and love finds its level on a practical basis of mutual interests in the common daily round.
Hallam’s marriage was a reversal of the usual order, in which generally it falls to the woman to adapt herself more or less to the altered conditions. In their case the change affected him more materially than it affected Esmé: his life had become, as it were, uprooted, and the roots did not strike freely in new soil. The change was not agreeable to him; but his love for his wife was of a quality which helped him to endure with a certain dogged patience many things that formerly he would not have entertained for a moment. He suppressed his own inclinations: to a large extent he suppressed his feelings: mentally his life with her was a series of small deceptions, of pretences practised deliberately for the purpose of misleading her. He feared to disappoint her. His mind became a storehouse of reserved thoughts and inhibitions upon which he turned the key, locking its surprises against her.
In certain respects, though she was unaware of this, he was a stranger to her: one side of his nature remained hidden from her, the weaker side, which most urgently needed her loving sympathy, and which shrank from exposure and misunderstanding with a sensitiveness of which he was conscious and secretly ashamed. He was not the type of man to make an appeal even to the woman he loved. He gave more than he exacted. He gave more than she realised in her ignorance of the sacrifices he made in his attempts to bridge the abysmal gap in temperaments. For her sake he endured many things which were to him boring and annoying in the extreme. He made stupendous efforts to subdue his prejudices and adjust his life to meet the new demands. But the nature of the man remained unchanged and suffered as a result of the artificial conditions of his self-imposed obligations.
Three brief years of married happiness passed; and then Hallam began at first moderately, and always secretly to drink again.
For a time Esmé was unaware of this relapse on his part; for a further period she suspected it but could not be sure. Then the old symptoms reappeared with terrible convincingness: she saw his hands grow shaky, his whole appearance degenerate, till he looked as she had seen him first on the stoep of the hotel at the Zuurberg, older, ill, nervous and morose, with a disregard for public opinion and a growing indifference as to whether she knew or not.
Esmé’s eyes opened to the condition of things after a short visit paid to her sister, which Hallam readily agreed to her accepting but refused to accept for himself. He had no wish to see his wife’s relations; he preferred to remain at home.
She parted from him reluctantly. A feeling of anxiety gripped her at the thought of leaving him alone. It was their first separation since their marriage. But she wanted to see her sister again. Rose’s letter was reproachful; it conveyed the suggestion that the writer was hurt by her neglect. The neglect on Esmé’s side was not wilful: she had wished to have her sister to stay with her; but Hallam had always seemed so disinclined to entertain any member of her family that she had been obliged to give up the idea. But when Rose’s letter came urging her to take a trip round to the Bay, she decided that she ought to go, unless she wished for a complete estrangement between them. Hallam was quite agreeable. He booked her a passage and saw her off by the boat; but at the last moment he showed a strong disinclination to part from her, and almost persuaded her to give up the idea and return with him.
“It’s too absurd,” she said: “we are like a pair of children. Why don’t you come with me?”
“No,” he said. “I’ll wait at home for you. Don’t stay longer than you need.”
She watched him descend to the quay, and, leaning on the rail, looking down at him, the first intimation that things were not quite as they should be dawned on her, and filled her with a sense of uneasiness which grew with every hour of her separation from him.
In the end she curtailed her visit and returned unexpectedly by train.
She had sent a telegram informing Hallam when to expect her; and she found him on the platform waiting for her, and was struck immediately by the change in him. Her heart sank within her, but she forced a smile to her lips and accompanied him out of the station and got into the waiting taxi. He opened the door for her, fumbling with the catch with unsteady fingers, and got in after her and sat down heavily.
“It didn’t take you long to discover that home’s the best place,” he remarked, with a sideways furtive look at her. “How did you find them all? Jim still grousing, I suppose? And the small boy a perennial note of interrogation?”
“Everything was much the same,” she answered in a dispirited voice. “They were all a little older in appearance, and the children have grown tremendously. I wish you had been with me. Rose was hurt, I think, because you did not go.”
“Oh, really! I should have thought she would have felt relieved.”
“Why?”
He disregarded the question. Abruptly he put out an unsteady hand and laid it upon hers.
“Tired?” he asked.
“A little.” She twisted her hand round in her lap and her fingers closed upon his. “What have you been doing during my absence?”
“Mainly missing you,” he answered. “A reversion to one’s bachelor days is a dull sort of holiday.”
“I know. But what was I to do? I don’t want to lose touch altogether with my ain folk.”
“I have no folk,” he said, “so I can’t understand these family ties. I think them a bore. But if you had a good time that’s the chief thing. You’ve a lot of friends at the Bay, and you find pleasure in them. My friends are silent companions and are better suited to my taste. How did your people think you were looking? None the worse for being tied to this dull person, I hope?”
She laughed and squeezed his hand.
“They were impressed with my staid appearance, and the fact that I am putting on weight,” she said. “I didn’t realise it myself until Jim told me I was getting fat.”
“That is a Jim-like touch,” he returned, and glanced at her cursorily. “The grossness is not apparent to me. Did you meet Sinclair during your stay?”
“Yes,” she said, and looked surprised that he should ask the question. That he had once been jealous of Sinclair was unknown to her.
“And does he still wear the willow for your sake?”
“He isn’t married,” she answered. “But I don’t think that has anything to do with me.”
She regretted that he had opened this subject. The memory of Sinclair was a distress to her. The change in him had struck her more forcibly than the change in any member of her own family. The difference in him was not due alone to the passing years. He was altered in manner as much as in appearance; all the boyish gaiety had departed: he was older, more thoughtful; the irresponsible gladness of youth, formerly so noticeable a characteristic of his, was missing. She could have wept at the change in him. He was still her devoted slave. During her visit he had haunted her sister’s house. He had claimed the privilege of friendship and put himself at her disposal. He was always at hand when she needed him. And never once by word or gesture had he attempted to overstep the boundary of friendship. She felt grateful to him for his consistent and considerate kindness. She did not want to discuss him, even with Paul.
Hallam did not pursue the subject. He fell into silence and left her to do the talking. During the remainder of the drive she chatted fragmentally and brightly of her doings while she had been away. Principally she talked about the children. The sight of John and Mary, the sound of their gay young voices, their insistent claim upon the general attention, had brought home to her the absence of the one great interest in her own home. She wanted children intensely; and it did not seem that her desire would ever be satisfied. A child would have completed her married happiness.
Something of what was in her thoughts she managed to convey to Hallam when they reached the house and entered together, her arm within his. Alone in the drawing-room, when he held her in his embrace and kissed the bright upturned face, she slipped her hands behind his neck and looked back at him with tender loving eyes.
“Paul,” she whispered, “I wish we had a child of our very own—a wee scrap of soft pink flesh, with tiny clinging hands. My dear, my dearest, I do so want a child!”
He gazed down at her, troubled and immeasurably surprised, and gently kissed the tremulous lips. He had never given any thought to the matter until now, when he realised the aching mother-hunger expressed in her desire: she had concealed it so successfully hitherto. He did not himself wish for children; the thought of them even was an embarrassment. With clumsy tenderness he stroked her hair.
“It seems as though it is not to be,” he said. “I didn’t know you cared so much, sweetheart.”
“Don’t you care?” she asked. “I!” He seemed surprised. “I’ve got you,” he said, and drew her close in his embrace.
Book Three—Chapter Twenty Three.The first real sorrow in Esmé’s life came to her with the realisation of the fact that her influence with her husband no longer sufficed to keep him steady. Gradually, so gradually that she did not suspect it until the thing was plainly manifest, he fell back upon his former habit of intemperance and became once more the drunkard whom she had first met at the Zuurberg, and pitied and despised for the weakness of his character.Hallam did not give in to his vice without a struggle; but with each lapse his will weakened, till eventually he ceased to fight his enemy, ceased even to consider the pain which he was aware he caused his wife.Esmé’s grief was deep, and the humiliation of realising that the thing was becoming publicly known added to her distress. Reluctantly she withdrew from social intercourse and devoted her time entirely to him, trusting that the power of love would yet prove the stronger influence. Her love for him strengthened with her recognition of his need of her: he was her child, weak and foolish and dependent,—her man and her child, whom she had to protect from himself.Matters grew worse. An inkling of the trouble reached Rose through an acquaintance of her husband who had been in Cape Town and had heard rumours of the state of affairs. Rose’s first impulse was to write to her sister and ask for information direct; but on reflection she decided against this course. There flashed into her mind, as once before at the time of Esmé’s marriage the same memory had disturbed her peace, the picture of George Sinclair’s face when he heard of Esmé’s engagement and the recollection of his incomprehensible agitation. Was it possible that he had known?She determined to ask him; and on the first opportunity did so, observing him attentively while she put a direct question to him. The quick distress and the absence of surprise in his look confirmed her suspicion. He had been aware of this thing all along.“You knew!” she said resentfully. “Why didn’t you tell me?”“Good lord!” he exclaimed almost passionately. “It wasn’t for me to say anything. She knew what she was taking on. It wouldn’t have made a fraction of difference if you had done everything in your power to dissuade her. She went into it with her eyes open.”“You mean that she realised she was marrying a drunkard?”“Of course she realised it. I suppose she believed she could reclaim him. For a time no doubt she did. Mrs Bainbridge, I could cheerfully kill him, if that would help matters.”“It wouldn’t,” Rose answered practically. “Don’t talk like a fool, George.”“I love her,” he said simply, the tears welling in his eyes. “I hate to think of her life with him. It cuts me.”“Dear old boy,” she said, with greater gentleness of manner than she often displayed, “I know. I wish from my soul that she had married you. I always mistrusted Paul. But she was fascinated with him; there was no one else in the picture for her. He may break her heart and spoil her life, but she’ll go on loving him. You could see for yourself when she was round here; she was restless without him and wanting to go home.”“That’s not surprising in the circumstances,” he returned with bitterness. “I don’t suppose that she trusts him out of her sight for long.”“That wasn’t it,” Rose said quietly; and added after a brief pause: “She just wanted him.”It was better, she decided, that he should face matters and give over cherishing a hopeless attachment. She liked George Sinclair sufficiently to wish to see him happily married and settled down. He was a man who would make an admirable husband.But Sinclair showed no inclination towards marriage. He had met the girl he wanted, and lost her; no other girl could blot out the memory of his first real love, nor take her place in his heart. It had been a big blow when she married; and the bitterness of his disappointment increased enormously with the knowledge of the disaster which threatened her happiness. In a measure he had expected it; it did not come as a surprise, only as an ugly confirmation of his fears. He believed that he could have borne his own disappointment philosophically had life gone well for her: but the conviction that she had made a mistake held with him and inflamed his resentment against Hallam.“Well, there’s one thing,” he said, as he got up from his seat and confronted Rose with grim set face, “if he goes on at the rate he did when he was at the Zuurberg she will be a widow before many years. A man can’t fool with his constitution like that—not in this country anyhow.”“Don’t count on that, George,” she advised. “It’s a slow poison.”He laughed shortly.“I’ve a feeling that my turn will come,” he said, and turned about abruptly and left the room, left the house, with a sore heart, and his sense of exasperation deepening as he thought of the girl he loved tied to a drunkard who was not man enough to conquer his particular vice.And the girl he pitied was blaming herself for not having gone with her man into the wilds, for not having allowed him to follow the life he preferred, hunting and exploring along the unbeaten track. Had life offered him a sufficient interest this relapse might have been averted. She had relied overmuch on the strength of character which she believed was his: she had overestimated his strength, had left him to fight his battle unaided. He had wearied of the struggle and given in. From the point where he wearied she took it up, took it up with a tireless determination to win, that armed itself against all disappointments and rebuffs; and the rebuffs were many. Hallam resented her attempts at coercion.Oddly, he did not mind her knowing of his weakness, but he objected when she allowed her knowledge to become obvious. He felt that she ought to have ignored this thing; to embarrass him by thrusting it under his notice was tactless and annoying.He shut himself away from her more than formerly, and sat up late into the night reading in his study. Occasionally he fell asleep in his chair and remained there until the morning, to wake cramped and unrefreshed and creep upstairs in the dawn.
The first real sorrow in Esmé’s life came to her with the realisation of the fact that her influence with her husband no longer sufficed to keep him steady. Gradually, so gradually that she did not suspect it until the thing was plainly manifest, he fell back upon his former habit of intemperance and became once more the drunkard whom she had first met at the Zuurberg, and pitied and despised for the weakness of his character.
Hallam did not give in to his vice without a struggle; but with each lapse his will weakened, till eventually he ceased to fight his enemy, ceased even to consider the pain which he was aware he caused his wife.
Esmé’s grief was deep, and the humiliation of realising that the thing was becoming publicly known added to her distress. Reluctantly she withdrew from social intercourse and devoted her time entirely to him, trusting that the power of love would yet prove the stronger influence. Her love for him strengthened with her recognition of his need of her: he was her child, weak and foolish and dependent,—her man and her child, whom she had to protect from himself.
Matters grew worse. An inkling of the trouble reached Rose through an acquaintance of her husband who had been in Cape Town and had heard rumours of the state of affairs. Rose’s first impulse was to write to her sister and ask for information direct; but on reflection she decided against this course. There flashed into her mind, as once before at the time of Esmé’s marriage the same memory had disturbed her peace, the picture of George Sinclair’s face when he heard of Esmé’s engagement and the recollection of his incomprehensible agitation. Was it possible that he had known?
She determined to ask him; and on the first opportunity did so, observing him attentively while she put a direct question to him. The quick distress and the absence of surprise in his look confirmed her suspicion. He had been aware of this thing all along.
“You knew!” she said resentfully. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Good lord!” he exclaimed almost passionately. “It wasn’t for me to say anything. She knew what she was taking on. It wouldn’t have made a fraction of difference if you had done everything in your power to dissuade her. She went into it with her eyes open.”
“You mean that she realised she was marrying a drunkard?”
“Of course she realised it. I suppose she believed she could reclaim him. For a time no doubt she did. Mrs Bainbridge, I could cheerfully kill him, if that would help matters.”
“It wouldn’t,” Rose answered practically. “Don’t talk like a fool, George.”
“I love her,” he said simply, the tears welling in his eyes. “I hate to think of her life with him. It cuts me.”
“Dear old boy,” she said, with greater gentleness of manner than she often displayed, “I know. I wish from my soul that she had married you. I always mistrusted Paul. But she was fascinated with him; there was no one else in the picture for her. He may break her heart and spoil her life, but she’ll go on loving him. You could see for yourself when she was round here; she was restless without him and wanting to go home.”
“That’s not surprising in the circumstances,” he returned with bitterness. “I don’t suppose that she trusts him out of her sight for long.”
“That wasn’t it,” Rose said quietly; and added after a brief pause: “She just wanted him.”
It was better, she decided, that he should face matters and give over cherishing a hopeless attachment. She liked George Sinclair sufficiently to wish to see him happily married and settled down. He was a man who would make an admirable husband.
But Sinclair showed no inclination towards marriage. He had met the girl he wanted, and lost her; no other girl could blot out the memory of his first real love, nor take her place in his heart. It had been a big blow when she married; and the bitterness of his disappointment increased enormously with the knowledge of the disaster which threatened her happiness. In a measure he had expected it; it did not come as a surprise, only as an ugly confirmation of his fears. He believed that he could have borne his own disappointment philosophically had life gone well for her: but the conviction that she had made a mistake held with him and inflamed his resentment against Hallam.
“Well, there’s one thing,” he said, as he got up from his seat and confronted Rose with grim set face, “if he goes on at the rate he did when he was at the Zuurberg she will be a widow before many years. A man can’t fool with his constitution like that—not in this country anyhow.”
“Don’t count on that, George,” she advised. “It’s a slow poison.”
He laughed shortly.
“I’ve a feeling that my turn will come,” he said, and turned about abruptly and left the room, left the house, with a sore heart, and his sense of exasperation deepening as he thought of the girl he loved tied to a drunkard who was not man enough to conquer his particular vice.
And the girl he pitied was blaming herself for not having gone with her man into the wilds, for not having allowed him to follow the life he preferred, hunting and exploring along the unbeaten track. Had life offered him a sufficient interest this relapse might have been averted. She had relied overmuch on the strength of character which she believed was his: she had overestimated his strength, had left him to fight his battle unaided. He had wearied of the struggle and given in. From the point where he wearied she took it up, took it up with a tireless determination to win, that armed itself against all disappointments and rebuffs; and the rebuffs were many. Hallam resented her attempts at coercion.
Oddly, he did not mind her knowing of his weakness, but he objected when she allowed her knowledge to become obvious. He felt that she ought to have ignored this thing; to embarrass him by thrusting it under his notice was tactless and annoying.
He shut himself away from her more than formerly, and sat up late into the night reading in his study. Occasionally he fell asleep in his chair and remained there until the morning, to wake cramped and unrefreshed and creep upstairs in the dawn.
Book Three—Chapter Twenty Four.These late hours, and the fact that he had taken to sleeping in the dressing-room from a desire not to disturb her, excited Esmé’s worst apprehensions. She fell into the habit of lying awake and listening for him: she could not rest while she knew that he was downstairs. The old sickening sensation of terror, which had seized her at the Zuurberg when she listened to him stumbling along the stoep on his way to his room, gripped her anew each time that she heard him mount the stairs and go unsteadily to the dressing-room in his stockinged feet.The horror of it was as a nightmare which tormented her unceasingly. She was afraid of him when he had been drinking heavily; not afraid that he would do her any physical injury; but the look in his eyes terrified her; it seemed to alter him, to make him a stranger almost. There were times when he passed her on the stairs or landing with wide-opened eyes which appeared not to notice her presence: the sight of him thus made her knees shake under her and blanched her face. It was like meeting a sleep-walker, only more horrible.She went to him one night in his study and kneeled on the carpet beside him and pleaded with him.“Paul,” she said, and lifted sweet, distressed eyes to his, with no reproach in their look, only a great sadness. “Aren’t you neglecting me a little? Why do you shut yourself away every night? I’m lonely all by myself.”“I thought you were in bed,” he said, and moved restlessly and avoided her gaze. “You usually go to bed at ten o’clock.”“Not lately,” she answered. “I sit up and wait for you. I think to myself, he may need me. I am always hoping against hope. My dear, why do you shut yourself away from me? It’s unkind. Paul, don’t you love me any longer?”He brought his eyes back to her face, and looked at her long and earnestly. Then he put his hands on her shoulders and held her a little way off, still scrutinising her attentively.“Do you think it necessary to ask that?” he said.“Yes,” she answered almost passionately. She put her hands over his and clung to him desperately, exerting all her control to keep back the rising tears. “Once our love sufficed, dearest heart; you wanted only to be with me; and now—”“Aren’t you being a little foolish?” he asked. “People who live together develop a sort of independence of each other after a while. Because I like to be quiet for an hour or two during the evening, need that be construed into a sign of indifference?”“No,” she said; “not that in itself. But my love is not strong enough any longer to hold you. You’ve slipped back into the old ways, dear. It’s breaking my heart, Paul; I can’t bear it.”She dropped her face on to his knees and wept bitterly, with her eyes hidden in her hands. His own hand, shaky and uncertain, came to rest on her hair, stroked her hair gently.“I’m a brute,” he said, “an inconsiderate brute.” He gathered her in his arms and drew her up and held her, weeping still, upon his knee. “Don’t cry. Tell me what you want. I’ll try, Esmé. I didn’t think it was so bad as this. I’ll pull myself together. Don’t cry, sweetheart. It distresses me to see you cry. The brute I’ve been!”He drew her wet cheek to his and kissed her, and she wound her arms about his neck and clung to him, sobbing softly, with her head resting like a tired child’s on his shoulder.When the sounds of her sobs ceased he got up and left the room with her and went with her upstairs. For that night she had won a victory. But she did not feel sure any longer that her influence would hold. He had made her promises before and broken them again. It seemed to her that his will had weakened considerably: she no longer felt any real confidence in him.Perhaps she allowed him to see this, and so lost much of her hold on him. He was conscious always that she watched him; and his manner became furtive and suspicious as a result of this supervision. His moods of repentance did not endure for long; but while they lasted his hatred of himself for the distress he caused the wife whom he still tenderly loved was genuine and deep. It was as though his life were accursed and the curse of his misfortune overshadowed her.It amazed Hallam and disconcerted him enormously when he began to realise that he had lost his grip on himself. He had imagined that he had conquered his vice, that he could keep it under without particular effort. He had believed in himself with an even greater confidence than Esmé had once believed in him: he had relied, with an almost arrogant faith in the power of the human will, on his unaided effort to control his desires. At the time of his marriage he had felt quite sure of himself; otherwise he would never have injured the girl he loved by linking her lot with his. He felt as though he had been guilty of a breach of faith with her; and this thought worried him unceasingly, till he drugged his mind into temporary oblivion and laid up thereby further torment for his sober hours.The state of things became unendurable, and finally worked to a climax.A few weeks of restraint on Hallam’s part, of determined and difficult self-discipline, and then his devil got the upper hand once more, and his resolves faded into nothingness before the craving which he could no longer resist.He fought the demon of desire for a few days with a fierce despair in the knowledge that the thing was too strong for him. With each battle his strength weakened. Realising this he sought diversion, taking Esmé out in the evenings to any entertainment that offered. He feared to be alone. When he was alone his craving for drink was insistent.And then one fateful night he gave way to his desire, deliberately and without further struggle: he flung his scruples aside and relaxed all effort, as an exhausted swimmer might relax and give up with the shore and safety in sight.He had been with Esmé to the theatre. The performance had been poor, both in regard to acting and to plot: he had felt extremely bored. And Esmé was tired, and complained of headache. It had been a boisterous day, with a black south-easter raging. The wind gathered force towards evening and blew to a gale, driving the dust before it in swirling clouds of sticky grit. Small stones rattled against the closed windows of the taxi in which they drove; the cushions felt damp and sticky, and the dust penetrated through the cracks.“What a night to be abroad in!” Hallam said, and observed his wife’s pale face with some concern. “You ought not to have come. It was a silly sort of show, and it’s made your head worse. You should have stayed at home and rested.”“I’m all right,” she answered brightly; and made an effort to be entertaining during the long drive home. She did not like him to feel bored when he took her out.But her head ached badly; and she was relieved when the taxi stopped before the house, and Hallam got out and opened the door for her and followed her into the lighted hall. It was good to get inside and shut out the inclement night. The rush of the wind sweeping round the side of the house was terrific. She stood for a moment at the foot of the stairs and listened to it, with her temples throbbing painfully and her nerves jarred with the noise of the warring elements. Hallam shut the front door and bolted it. When he turned round he saw her eyes, dark-ringed in her white face, looking at him gravely with a question in them.“You get off to bed,” he said. “I’ll lock up and follow you in a few minutes. You look done.”“It’s this stupid headache,” she said apologetically. “Paul, you won’t be late? The wind makes me nervous.”“Brave person!” he returned, smiling at her indulgently. He removed the wrap from her shoulders and threw it over his arm. “I will be up before you are asleep.”He watched her mount the stairs. When she reached the landing she paused to smile down at him before entering her room. He turned away and went into his study, switching on the light as he entered. He became aware that he was still carrying his wife’s wrap, and placed the flimsy thing over the back of a chair, and stood hesitating, looking towards his easy chair, with the table beside it littered with books and the reading-lamp in the centre. He touched the switch of the lamp and turned off the brighter light and remained, still in indecision, looking no longer at the chair but beyond it towards a cupboard, the key of which he carried always upon him. He felt in his pocket for the key, and remained staring at it in his hand and reflecting deeply. His devil tempted him sorely. Against his volition his gaze travelled to the flimsy thing of gauze and fur which lay as a mute reminder of his wife where he had dropped it on entering, and in imagination he heard again the plaintive note of her question: “Paul, you won’t be late?” as she had turned and looked back at him from the stairs. He had promised to follow her shortly.Frowning, he turned the key in his hand. For a while he remained still irresolute while his will slowly weakened and his craving increased; then with an abrupt movement he advanced swiftly and, stooping, inserted the key in the cupboard door.
These late hours, and the fact that he had taken to sleeping in the dressing-room from a desire not to disturb her, excited Esmé’s worst apprehensions. She fell into the habit of lying awake and listening for him: she could not rest while she knew that he was downstairs. The old sickening sensation of terror, which had seized her at the Zuurberg when she listened to him stumbling along the stoep on his way to his room, gripped her anew each time that she heard him mount the stairs and go unsteadily to the dressing-room in his stockinged feet.
The horror of it was as a nightmare which tormented her unceasingly. She was afraid of him when he had been drinking heavily; not afraid that he would do her any physical injury; but the look in his eyes terrified her; it seemed to alter him, to make him a stranger almost. There were times when he passed her on the stairs or landing with wide-opened eyes which appeared not to notice her presence: the sight of him thus made her knees shake under her and blanched her face. It was like meeting a sleep-walker, only more horrible.
She went to him one night in his study and kneeled on the carpet beside him and pleaded with him.
“Paul,” she said, and lifted sweet, distressed eyes to his, with no reproach in their look, only a great sadness. “Aren’t you neglecting me a little? Why do you shut yourself away every night? I’m lonely all by myself.”
“I thought you were in bed,” he said, and moved restlessly and avoided her gaze. “You usually go to bed at ten o’clock.”
“Not lately,” she answered. “I sit up and wait for you. I think to myself, he may need me. I am always hoping against hope. My dear, why do you shut yourself away from me? It’s unkind. Paul, don’t you love me any longer?”
He brought his eyes back to her face, and looked at her long and earnestly. Then he put his hands on her shoulders and held her a little way off, still scrutinising her attentively.
“Do you think it necessary to ask that?” he said.
“Yes,” she answered almost passionately. She put her hands over his and clung to him desperately, exerting all her control to keep back the rising tears. “Once our love sufficed, dearest heart; you wanted only to be with me; and now—”
“Aren’t you being a little foolish?” he asked. “People who live together develop a sort of independence of each other after a while. Because I like to be quiet for an hour or two during the evening, need that be construed into a sign of indifference?”
“No,” she said; “not that in itself. But my love is not strong enough any longer to hold you. You’ve slipped back into the old ways, dear. It’s breaking my heart, Paul; I can’t bear it.”
She dropped her face on to his knees and wept bitterly, with her eyes hidden in her hands. His own hand, shaky and uncertain, came to rest on her hair, stroked her hair gently.
“I’m a brute,” he said, “an inconsiderate brute.” He gathered her in his arms and drew her up and held her, weeping still, upon his knee. “Don’t cry. Tell me what you want. I’ll try, Esmé. I didn’t think it was so bad as this. I’ll pull myself together. Don’t cry, sweetheart. It distresses me to see you cry. The brute I’ve been!”
He drew her wet cheek to his and kissed her, and she wound her arms about his neck and clung to him, sobbing softly, with her head resting like a tired child’s on his shoulder.
When the sounds of her sobs ceased he got up and left the room with her and went with her upstairs. For that night she had won a victory. But she did not feel sure any longer that her influence would hold. He had made her promises before and broken them again. It seemed to her that his will had weakened considerably: she no longer felt any real confidence in him.
Perhaps she allowed him to see this, and so lost much of her hold on him. He was conscious always that she watched him; and his manner became furtive and suspicious as a result of this supervision. His moods of repentance did not endure for long; but while they lasted his hatred of himself for the distress he caused the wife whom he still tenderly loved was genuine and deep. It was as though his life were accursed and the curse of his misfortune overshadowed her.
It amazed Hallam and disconcerted him enormously when he began to realise that he had lost his grip on himself. He had imagined that he had conquered his vice, that he could keep it under without particular effort. He had believed in himself with an even greater confidence than Esmé had once believed in him: he had relied, with an almost arrogant faith in the power of the human will, on his unaided effort to control his desires. At the time of his marriage he had felt quite sure of himself; otherwise he would never have injured the girl he loved by linking her lot with his. He felt as though he had been guilty of a breach of faith with her; and this thought worried him unceasingly, till he drugged his mind into temporary oblivion and laid up thereby further torment for his sober hours.
The state of things became unendurable, and finally worked to a climax.
A few weeks of restraint on Hallam’s part, of determined and difficult self-discipline, and then his devil got the upper hand once more, and his resolves faded into nothingness before the craving which he could no longer resist.
He fought the demon of desire for a few days with a fierce despair in the knowledge that the thing was too strong for him. With each battle his strength weakened. Realising this he sought diversion, taking Esmé out in the evenings to any entertainment that offered. He feared to be alone. When he was alone his craving for drink was insistent.
And then one fateful night he gave way to his desire, deliberately and without further struggle: he flung his scruples aside and relaxed all effort, as an exhausted swimmer might relax and give up with the shore and safety in sight.
He had been with Esmé to the theatre. The performance had been poor, both in regard to acting and to plot: he had felt extremely bored. And Esmé was tired, and complained of headache. It had been a boisterous day, with a black south-easter raging. The wind gathered force towards evening and blew to a gale, driving the dust before it in swirling clouds of sticky grit. Small stones rattled against the closed windows of the taxi in which they drove; the cushions felt damp and sticky, and the dust penetrated through the cracks.
“What a night to be abroad in!” Hallam said, and observed his wife’s pale face with some concern. “You ought not to have come. It was a silly sort of show, and it’s made your head worse. You should have stayed at home and rested.”
“I’m all right,” she answered brightly; and made an effort to be entertaining during the long drive home. She did not like him to feel bored when he took her out.
But her head ached badly; and she was relieved when the taxi stopped before the house, and Hallam got out and opened the door for her and followed her into the lighted hall. It was good to get inside and shut out the inclement night. The rush of the wind sweeping round the side of the house was terrific. She stood for a moment at the foot of the stairs and listened to it, with her temples throbbing painfully and her nerves jarred with the noise of the warring elements. Hallam shut the front door and bolted it. When he turned round he saw her eyes, dark-ringed in her white face, looking at him gravely with a question in them.
“You get off to bed,” he said. “I’ll lock up and follow you in a few minutes. You look done.”
“It’s this stupid headache,” she said apologetically. “Paul, you won’t be late? The wind makes me nervous.”
“Brave person!” he returned, smiling at her indulgently. He removed the wrap from her shoulders and threw it over his arm. “I will be up before you are asleep.”
He watched her mount the stairs. When she reached the landing she paused to smile down at him before entering her room. He turned away and went into his study, switching on the light as he entered. He became aware that he was still carrying his wife’s wrap, and placed the flimsy thing over the back of a chair, and stood hesitating, looking towards his easy chair, with the table beside it littered with books and the reading-lamp in the centre. He touched the switch of the lamp and turned off the brighter light and remained, still in indecision, looking no longer at the chair but beyond it towards a cupboard, the key of which he carried always upon him. He felt in his pocket for the key, and remained staring at it in his hand and reflecting deeply. His devil tempted him sorely. Against his volition his gaze travelled to the flimsy thing of gauze and fur which lay as a mute reminder of his wife where he had dropped it on entering, and in imagination he heard again the plaintive note of her question: “Paul, you won’t be late?” as she had turned and looked back at him from the stairs. He had promised to follow her shortly.
Frowning, he turned the key in his hand. For a while he remained still irresolute while his will slowly weakened and his craving increased; then with an abrupt movement he advanced swiftly and, stooping, inserted the key in the cupboard door.