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 Esme 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 Esme'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 Esme'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 3--CHAPTER TWENTY.
The fulness of life made perfect by a perfect human love lifted Esme 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, Esme 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 Esme. 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 Esme'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 3--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 Esme'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 Esme grasped it readily,
and found in her a useful and agreeable acquaintance. When Mrs
Garfield proposed that she should join the tennis club, Esme 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 3--CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO.