the window smoking his pipe, but he rose when she entered and came
forward and kissed her. He was a heavily-built, good-looking man, with
a boisterous geniality of manner which worried his sister-in-law.
Oddly, he never realised her objection. He liked her and laboured under
the delusion that she reciprocated his affection. He kissed her
heartily.
"Glad to see you back, old girl," he said, and reseated himself in the
only comfortable chair in the room and resumed his pipe. "You look very
fit. I told Rose the Zuurberg would set you up; but she won't hear a
good word for it. There isn't much to do up there, certainly, but loaf
around. The drive up, though, is all right. Pretty--isn't it?"
She laughed, to his puzzled surprise. She often surprised him by the
way in which she received his remarks. He had said nothing to cause her
merriment. But he preferred smiling faces to glum looks, and so he did
not resent it when she laughed at nothing.
"I suppose loafing around was what I needed," she said, steering clear
of a discussion on the scenery. "Living in the open air with nothing to
do is a fine tonic."
"Yes," he agreed. "I'd like a little of that myself. A man who spends
all his days in an office ought to get away now and again; but when it
comes to carting a wife and kids around with one it makes an expensive
business of it. Rose ought to see that a man needs change from his
work."
"We are most of us short-sighted where the needs of other people are
concerned," she returned with an ambiguity which he did not suspect. "I
suppose it would be rather nice if I remembered that Rose hasn't had a
holiday and went out to help her with the preparations for your evening
meal."
"Rot!" he ejaculated, unperceiving the drift of her reflections. "You
finish out your holiday and sit down and talk to me."
But she elected to go in quest of her sister, who was busy in the
kitchen, aided by an incompetent Kaffir girl of an amiable disposition,
which revealed itself in the broad smile she gave the young missis when
she appeared in the bright, hot little kitchen, which looked out, as her
bed room looked out, on the white yard shaded by the big oleander tree
beneath which the children played happily in their cramped but secure
playground.
It was a homelike, pleasant enough picture; but the girl's thoughts
strayed persistently to the green open spaces, and the pleasant ease of
the life she had left behind her. She felt a new dissatisfaction with
her present surroundings.
"Can I help?" she asked.
Her sister turned round from the stove with flushed preoccupied face to
stare at her.
"In that dress! Goodness! no. Besides, it's all ready--or ought to be.
But Maggie won't keep a good fire."
Maggie promptly came forward and fed the voracious little stove with a
fresh supply of logs.
"This stove eat wood. Missis should see. I put plenty logs on."
"She's right, you know," Rose said, stepping back, and pushing the hair
from her face. "Jim ought to buy a new stove. He'd save money on it in
the long run. But he hasn't the cooking to do; he merely grumbles when
he has to order the wood. Is the table laid, Maggie? Then you can
begin to dish up."
She put a hand through her sister's arm and drew her out to the
doorstep, where they stood watching the children, both a little silent
and thoughtful in mood.
"Aren't you hating it, being back again?" Rose asked presently, and
bent a keen look on her young sister's face. Esme looked up to smile.
"I suppose one always feels a little regretful at the finish of a
holiday," she said. "But of course I don't hate being back."
Rose did not press the point. Something in the girl's manner, something
even in the reticence she betrayed in speaking of her holiday, puzzled
her. Esme was usually more expansive. She did not seem to wish to talk
of her experiences. Perhaps, after all, she had had a disappointing
time. But the rest and the change had given her back her strength. Had
it? Rose looked at her again more attentively. She appeared to be in
excellent health; but she had lost her old gaiety; she seemed depressed.
"You are tired after the journey," she said. "Come on in and have
something to eat."
She called the children away from their play; and they all went into the
little dining-room and sat, crowded uncomfortably, round the small
table.
Jim served the food, and was jocular and determinedly cheerful. He was
pleased to have his sister-in-law home again. It was all rather noisy
and uncomfortable. The girl's thoughts strayed to the long shady room
at the Zuurberg, and to the silent companionship of the man whose
presence she was missing more than she would have thought possible. And
it was only a few hours since they had parted. There would follow many
hours, many days, many weeks. She wondered whether she would miss him
less as the days went by, or if this intolerable loneliness would grow.
It was distressing to think that she might never see him again. She
wondered also whether he missed her. She hoped he did. And then she
fell to picturing him reverting perhaps to the old evening practice of
drinking steadily, until finally he stumbled along the stoep on his way
to bed... Surely not that! If her friendship counted for anything at
all in his life its influence would linger with him and have some
deterrent effect.
"Sling along the Adam's ale, old girl," said Jim at this point in her
reverie. It was one of his boasts that he didn't pour his money down
his throat.
Esme passed him the water-bottle and roused herself with an effort and
joined in the general talk. The meal seemed interminable. The children
were excited and noisy; they dawdled over their food. Their mother
urged them to be quicker, and their father defeated her authority by
insisting that the slower they ate the better for their digestions.
Husband and wife had a wordy argument on this point. The children
ceased eating to listen, on perceiving which their father vented his
annoyance on them and sent them away from the table.
"That's your fault," he said to his wife. "You are always nagging at
the kids. We never get a meal in peace."
Esme listened and wondered. What was wrong with this household? These
two were quite fond of each other, and fond of the children; yet they
were seldom in agreement on any subject. She wondered whether all
married people got on one another's nerves. Marriage was a difficult
problem. It occurred to Esme that the solution of the difficulty might
be reached by it generous use of tact. Without her volition her
reflections found verbal expression.
"Tact!" she observed aloud to the astonishment of her hearers. "That's
the secret of happiness--immense tact. Jim, I think you are the most
tactless person in the world."
Book 2--CHAPTER THIRTEEN.
During the first few days after her return to her sister's home time
hung dismally for Esme. It would have been better had she gone back to
work immediately; but there was a full week to term time, and during
that week she found nothing sufficiently interesting to distract her
thoughts from the desolating fact that she missed something out of her
life. Her world was like a world without sunshine, flat and colourless,
a place of neutral tints and drab impressions. She hated the house, she
hated going out; most of all, she hated the people who visited her
sister and gossiped over tea of every trivial matter in the common daily
round. Those afternoon gatherings gave her mental indigestion. Yet at
one time these things had seemed pleasant and natural. The inference
was that there was something wrong with herself.
Her sister laid a hand on her secret very soon after her return. She
had gone into Esme's room and taken up a book, which lay on the little
table beside her bed, and opened it casually.
"Who is Paul Hallam?" she asked, reading the name inside the cover.
Esme swung round from the dressing-table, saw the book in her sister's
hand, and coloured warmly.
"A man who was staying at the Zuurberg."
"And he gave you this book?"
"Yes--to read in the train."
The two sisters looked at one another. Rose waited for further
information, but it was not forthcoming. She laid the book down, and
Esme resumed brushing her hair. It was pretty hair, soft and wavy. The
older woman watched operations for a moment or so, then she went
forward, took the brush from the girl's hand, and brushed it for her.
"Tell me about him," she urged.
"There is nothing to tell," Esme replied. "He was nice to me while I
was there; that is all."
The finality of the phrase struck on her own ears desolately. That was
all. Her romance had begun and ended with her holiday.
Rose made no comment. The scrappy information had illumined things for
her surprisingly. She felt suddenly very tender towards her sister.
She put the hair back from her face and kissed her gently.
"You are just sweet. You look such a child with your hair like that,"
she said.
But she made no further mention of Paul Hallam. There were a dozen
questions she would have liked to ask, but she forbore. It was not fair
to attempt to force the girl's confidence; her very reluctance to speak
of this acquaintance proved that there was more in it than she allowed,
perhaps more than she yet realised.
There followed days of restlessness and alternating moods more fitful
than any barometer. Sinclair called, and made himself so agreeable to
Rose and the children, and was so markedly attentive to Esme that Rose
found herself wishing that this quite eligible and agreeable young man
was the object of her sister's interest, as he unmistakably desired to
be.
Esme was pleased to see him again; but her manner towards him showed no
particular partiality. It was certainly not George Sinclair, Rose
decided, who was responsible for the change in the girl.
Sinclair called frequently after that first visit, and speedily became
on very friendly terms with the family. He found a staunch ally in
Rose, who, considering the other affair too remote to be serious, saw in
Sinclair an eventual safety-valve for her sister's repressed emotions.
Repressed emotion was undesirable; it hid like a morbid germ in the
brain cells and worked with insidious effect upon the mind. In Esme it
betrayed itself in unexpected bursts of irritability, as her discontent
with things grew. Mainly this was the result of reaction, and was but a
phase in the cure of which Sinclair aided unconsciously. His visits
made a break in the general monotony.
And then one day a letter came for Esme. Rose took it in. It was
directed in the same small untidy handwriting which she remembered
vividly seeing on the front page of the book in Esme's room. She had
looked for that book often since but she had never seen it again. Now,
with the letter in her hand, her thoughts went back to that little scene
in the bedroom, and her brows knitted themselves in a frown. Paul
Hallam had broken the silence and written to the girl. She carried the
letter up to Esme's room and laid it on the table beside her bed.
"Poor George!" she reflected. "This puts him out of the picture
anyway."
Then she went downstairs and left it to the girl to make her own
discovery on her return.
The first thing which Esme's eyes rested on when she ran up to her room
on getting back from the college where she gave music lessons was the
letter lying on her table. She stood for a full minute looking down at
it with pleased, amazed eyes and a deepening colour in her cheeks; then
she reached forth shyly and took it up.
"I wonder how he learned my address?" was the thought in her mind.
She had not seen him copy it from the label on her suit-case. He had
taken that precaution when the luggage was being placed in the cart.
She seated herself on the side of the bed and opened her letter and read
it.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Dear little Friend," it began characteristically,--
"I wonder whether it will surprise you that I should write to you? I
write to ask you a favour. I want you out of the kindness of your heart
to send me a line sometimes. You can in this matter help me
considerably. I knew before you left that I should miss you, but I did
not realise how great that miss would be until after you were gone.
Never in all my life have I known what it was to feel intolerably lonely
until now. It is not fair to me if, after giving me your friendship,
you withdraw it again altogether.
"I am fighting the devil within me, and just at present I can't say who
will win. But you can help me, if you will. Once you told me it was a
shame to make waste of my life. You were right, and I knew it, though
at the time I resented your candour. Since you left I have thought
often of your words. I miss you. And I want to talk to you. I have
never before ached to talk with any one. And yet I don't want to see
you for the present. If ever we meet you will know I have won. I
shan't attempt to see you otherwise.
"Please send me a line occasionally. You don't know what it will mean
to me. I am wondering as I write what you are doing, and whether you
continue the early morning habit? The sunrises are not marvellous any
longer. Every morning I go in search of the old beauty, but it is not
there. I wonder whether I shall ever find it again.
"Paul Hallam."
Esme read this letter through with deepening interest and a growing
softness in her eyes; there were tears in her eyes; they splashed on to
the paper and blurred the signature, tears of relief, of deep
thankfulness that at last the man had come to see the pity of wasting
his days.
She felt no fear for him any longer. Not a doubt of him troubled her
mind. That he would ultimately win through was assured by the sincerity
of his desire to win. It did not seem to her possible that he could
fail in what he undertook to accomplish. His devil stood no chance when
his better self took up arms against him. He would win. Assuredly he
would win. And then...
The bell sounded for lunch. She folded the letter and put it inside her
blouse. Then she bathed her eyes to hide the traces of emotion and went
downstairs.
Her sister scrutinised her attentively, but could read nothing in her
face to help her to any conclusion. She longed to ask questions, but
restrained her curiosity in the hope that Esme would confide in her when
a propitious moment offered. She made opportunities somewhat too
obviously, but Esme did not take advantage of them. She did not speak
of her letter.
The letters came regularly after that, once a week; and Rose's
unsatisfied curiosity grew enormously. There was something unnatural in
the girl's reticence. She began to entertain doubts of Paul Hallam. It
entered her mind to seek information from Sinclair, but loyalty to her
sister restrained her from doing that. Esme, she supposed, answered
these weekly epistles; but she never saw her write letters; whatever she
wrote she posted herself.
"Who's Esme's correspondent?" Jim asked on one occasion when the weekly
letter attracted his notice. "These letters are always coming to the
house."
"I don't know," his wife answered. "And you'd better not ask her."
"D'you mean she never tells you?" he asked, amazed.
"She doesn't tell me anything. But I believe they come from a man she
met at the Zuurberg."
"That place seems to be a kind of matrimonial agency," Jim grinned. "I
thought Sinclair was coming into the family. You see if you can't find
out something about this fellow. Sinclair's all right, and he means
business. Pity if this is going to queer his pitch."
"It's Esme's affair," Rose replied, experiencing a distinct
disinclination to follow his counsel. "When there is anything for me to
know I expect she will tell me."
"I never knew before that you were so blooming discreet," he rejoined;
and turned, red in the face but unabashed, to confront his
sister-in-law, who entered by the open door and met them in the tiny
hall. He gave her the letter.
"I was just asking Rose who your correspondent was," he said, with
overdone ease of manner. "She pretends she doesn't know."
"She does not know," Esme answered coolly, and took the letter from his
hand and glanced at it casually.
"Well, but, see here," he returned, nettled but intent on information.
"We are interested--naturally."
"How can you be interested in some one you have never met?" she said,
and went on up the steep narrow stairs, carrying her letter with her.
"I'm blowed!" her brother-in-law ejaculated.
Rose laughed annoyingly.
"You made a hash of that," she said. "She won't say anything now."
"Then let her keep her mouth shut," he said rudely, and went into the
sitting-room in a ruffled state of mind.
Book 2--CHAPTER FOURTEEN.
The receipt of those weekly letters and the pleasurable occupation of
replying to them engrossed Esme's thoughts, changed all her outlook,
filled her life completely. She was falling very deeply in love. And
she believed that Paul Hallam loved her. He did not tell her so in
words, but every letter which came from him conveyed the idea that it
was for her sake entirely he was attempting what no other influence
would have led him to attempt, that when he was sure of himself he would
come to her. She waited and hoped and hugged her secret to herself,
determined to guard from others the knowledge of his weakness, which he
was so earnestly endeavouring to conquer.
He had left the Zuurberg for the coast, and was staying at Camp's Bay,
right on the beach, he explained, in writing her a description of his
new quarters.
"You would love it here," he wrote. "The road between Camp's Bay and
Seapoint surpasses everything for beauty. You've no idea how fine it is
in the early morning."
In another letter he said: "The moonlight on the sea has set me thinking
of you. If only we were watching it together! The surface of the sea
is all splashed with silver, broken up and spread over it in a running
liquid fire. One day I hope you will watch it with me. I see it from
the window as I write."
She treasured these letters and tied them about and locked them away
from sight. They brought him very near to her; and his detailed
descriptions of his walks, his surroundings, helped her to visualise
him. She longed to see him again; but she never allowed a breath of her
longing to find expression in the cheery letters she wrote in answer to
his.
In the meantime Sinclair pursued his courtship in blissful
unconsciousness of the hopelessness of his cause. Esme had come to
accept Sinclair's friendship as a matter of course. Their relations
were very fraternal. They called one another by their christian names.
Sinclair was George to everyone in the Bainbridge household, down to the
children, who viewed him with affectionate interest as a person who
understood small people's tastes in the matter of sweets.
Every Saturday he came in for tennis, and returned with Esme to the
house in Havelock Street for supper. Usually on Sundays he took Esme
and the children to Red House, and they spent the day on the river. He
brightened life for her considerably. She liked him. In a friendly,
wholly unsentimental fashion she was fond of him. Had there been no one
else in her life her affection would probably have developed into a
warmer sentiment. But she never thought of George Sinclair in the light
of a possible lover. He never made love to her. Not once in their
pleasant intercourse had he said anything she could have construed into
an attempt at love-making. His manner was affectionate and kind always.
He was a good chum. That was how she thought of him, as a good chum.
The awakening therefore was all the more startling when it came.
Sinclair seized his opportunity during the tennis tournament. With
considerable difficulty he persuaded her to partner him in the mixed
doubles. She was reluctant on account of being a weak player; but he
overruled her objections, and she gave way.
"You'll lose--with me," she warned him. "I'm not good at games ever."
"I'll take my chance of that," he replied. "Anyway, I'd rather lose
with you than win with any one else."
Esme practised untiringly before the event. She had never attended the
tournament before other than as a spectator, and the sight of the crowds
which gathered each day to view the events shook her nerve. She played
badly, and felt rather aggrieved that her partner managed to drag her
victoriously through their first set. After their game she sat with him
below the stand and reproached him for winning.
"It would be all over now if you hadn't cribbed half my balls," she
complained.
"But you don't want to be out of it really?" he said, surprised.
"I do--and I don't. It makes me jumpy."
"That's all right. You'll get your tail up later. I'm going to win,
you know. I'm going to pull this off."
"You've got your work cut out," she said, and laughed. "You'll get very
little help from me."
"I only ask your co-operation," he returned confidently. "Take what you
can, and leave the rest to me. I'm out to win. You see, we are coming
through together."
She did see. And with each set they played and won her astonishment
deepened. She had always known that he was a good player, but she had
not realised the reserve force which he could bring into his game when
he wanted it. It was something more than play, she decided, which
carried him through; it was sheer determination not to be beaten. They
came through the finals with a hard-won victory.
Jim and Rose were present to watch the finish. According to Jim, his
sister-in-law played a footling game.
"At least she didn't hamper her partner," Rose said.
"Hamper him! No. She might as well have been off the court
altogether."
"Her service is good," Rose insisted.
"Yes--for a girl." He chuckled. "She leaves him to make all the
running."
"Well, they won anyhow."
"_He_ won," he corrected. "Shouldn't be surprised if he didn't win all
along the line. He has only a bundle of letters to compete against. My
money is on the man on the spot all the time."
"Hush!" Rose said warningly. "Here they come."
She hailed the winners with smiling congratulations, and complimented
Sinclair on his play.
"We pulled it off all right, Mrs Bainbridge," he said, laughing,
looking hot and young and immeasurably contented with life. "Esme
funked right to the finish, but she played up like a good 'un. Whew!
I'm hot. Come on, partner; let's go and have a lemon squash."
The girl, flushed and tired and less elated with success than he was,
followed him to the back of the pavilion, and stood drinking lemonade,
and talking to a little knot of competitors who were there for a similar
purpose. Some of the players she knew, but a number of them were
visitors down for the tournament. A dance that night at the Town Hall
was to celebrate the finish of the festivities. A group of flannel-clad
young men and white-frocked young women were discussing the ball and
booking dances in advance. Some one came up to Esme and asked her for a
dance, which she promised willingly. In a very short while she had
given a number of dances away. Sinclair touched her arm.
"I want some," he said. "I want quite a lot."
His tone was urgent, and when she turned to look at him she saw that his
face was strained and very determined. The expression in his eyes
puzzled her.
"Of course," she said, "I should feel a little hurt if you didn't."
"Look here!" he said in an undertone. "Come out of this. I don't want
you to give away any more--not at present. I'm going to have the supper
dance, and everything after that. Is it a promise?"
"Well," she said, and looked somewhat doubtful. "That means that you
are booked for the entire half of my programme."
He nodded.
"That's it," he said.
"But,"--she was beginning, when he took hold of her arm and led her
outside, with a muttered reference to the stifling heat.
"Come and sit under the trees," he said. "I want to watch the set on
the far court."
It was one of the less interesting sets, and there were fewer
spectators, which was probably why he decided for it. He conducted her
to an unoccupied seat and sat down beside her.
"It's jolly here and cool and out of the crush. You don't want to watch
the Johannesburg chap, do you?"
She would have preferred to watch the play on the centre court. It was
clear that the Johannesburg man would carry off the championship in the
men's singles; but she gave in to his wish and decided to remain where
she was.
Sinclair's manner was nervous and preoccupied; but the girl did not
appear to notice it; she did not want to talk. Her companion smoked
cigarettes and stared with a sort of strained attention at the game and
jerked out an occasional comment. Presently he remarked apropos of
nothing:
"I had a rise yesterday. That was an altogether unexpected stroke of
luck."