lunch was preparing. Each room called for comment and fresh expressions
of delight. They came to their bedroom last. George sat on the side of
the bed while Esme removed her hat and gave little touches and pats to
her hair, standing before the mirror and surveying her appearance
critically. She discovered a tiny powder puff and dabbed her face with
it. These mysteries of the toilet interested George profoundly. He
disapproved of the puff.
"I can't understand why you do that," he said. "Your skin's all right."
"We do a lot of incomprehensible things," she returned, laughing at him.
"Men shave, for instance, though nature intended them to wear hair on
the face."
"That's one up to you, old dear," he said, and got up and seized her by
the shoulders and kissed her. "It's rather jolly to be in our own home.
It was nice being away together; but this... Esme, I feel
extraordinarily happy. It seems too good to be true, too good to last.
It's great."
"Silly old duffer!" she said, smiling back into his eager eyes. "Why
should the good things be less enduring than the evil?"
"Put like that, I don't see why they should be," he responded. "Wise
little woman! we will make our good time last for all our lives."
Book 4--CHAPTER THIRTY.
Time passed, and the Sinclair menage increased its numbers by one. A
baby girl was born to Esme, and was christened, despite its father's
protests, Georgina.
The baby ruled the household, and tyrannised over its parents, and made
slaves of its godparents, who were amazingly interested in this small
cousin of theirs. Mary, a pretty girl of nineteen, with all her sex's
partiality for babies, worshipped at the shrine of the new arrival;
John, with masculine mistrust of humanity in miniature, regarded the
infant doubtfully, until, with its further development, it captivated
him with its smile. From the moment when the baby first smiled at him,
John lost his awe of it. He found it infinitely more amusing than any
puppy. He carried it about the garden, bundled under one arm like a
parcel, to its intense gratification. It was a good-tempered mite, and
seldom cried.
The coming of her baby brought complete happiness to Esme. It entirely
changed the current of her thoughts, and drew her closer in love and
sympathy to George, cementing their union with the strongest bond which
married life can forge. Her love for George, as the father of her
child, became a fine and tender emotion. She loved him in relation to
the child. The great desire of her life was granted. She had her baby:
life could give her no greater happiness.
Sinclair took very kindly to the parental role. Young things appealed
to him; and he was immensely proud of his daughter, whose coming had
completed the home circle, had indeed filled the home and banished for
ever the quiet of former days. He never tired of watching Esme with the
child. She suggested the incarnate picture of motherhood, with the
brooding look of love and contentment in her eyes.
The gap was filled; and the old life with Paul slipped further into the
background of her thoughts.
And in England a man, newly released from a German prison camp, ill,
half-starved, with nerves racked and shaken, a physical wreck, was
thinking of his wife in Africa, and wondering how life had gone with her
in the years since he had left her because he had felt himself to be
unfit to breathe the same air with her.
Had she grieved for him, he wondered? Or had she felt contempt for his
weakness, blamed him for a coward, for leaving her secretly like a
criminal? The years since he had left his home were so many that it was
more than possible she believed him to be dead. Several times since he
was made a prisoner, dining the early days of war, he had written to
her; but, receiving no replies to his communications, he concluded that
these, for some obscure reason of his captors, were never sent. Many
men, like himself, had been similarly cut off from all communication
with their friends. He had considered the question of writing after his
release; but decided against it; he would wait until he saw her. His
return would prove a shock in any case. He preferred to reserve
explanations until he could offer them in person and comfort her for the
sorrow of their years of separation.
Not once did it ever enter Paul Hallam's thoughts that his wife, even
though she might believe him to be dead--which he considered likely--
would have married again. It simply did not occur to him.
For some months he remained in a convalescent home in England,
recovering slowly from the privations of prison life in Germany: for a
further period he waited for the purpose of proving for his own
satisfaction that, with every facility to indulge his former vice, the
desire no longer tormented him. Then, in a mood of deep thankfulness,
with a heart surcharged with love, and with an intense longing for Esme
exciting his imagination, he sailed for Cape Town in the first available
ship.
Strangely, at the time of Hallam's sailing and during the weeks the
voyage occupied, Esme was troubled with dreams of him. Night after
night she woke trembling in the darkness, with the vision, which sleep
had brought to her lingering in her imagination, of Paul standing before
her and gazing at her and turning away from her. Always the dream was
the same. Suddenly the vision would appear; his eyes would gaze into
her eyes, then abruptly he would turn about; and she would wake to
darkness, to the stillness of the night, and to her own nervous fears.
Why should the dream haunt her now, when she was learning to forget?
And Hallam, on board the ship which steered its difficult course slowly
to avoid the danger of floating mines, looked across the blue waste of
waters with the image of his wife's face ever before him, and the
thought of her in his mind during every wakeful hour. He, too, awoke in
the night, thinking of her, and lay awake in the darkness to the sound
of the swish of the waves, picturing his return and the wonderful
gladness he anticipated as shining in her eyes at sight of him. All the
distress and horror of the past would be wiped out and forgotten in the
happiness of their reunion. He would never again give her cause for a
moment's anxiety. He would fill her life with love; there should be
nothing to give her sorrow any more.
Slowly the blue distance which separated them narrowed, narrowed until
the land came within sight, mistily, like a cloud against the deep azure
of the sky, a cloud which resolved itself into a square mass of rock,
blue-grey in the sunlight which shone upon the city at the base of the
mountain, shone upon the sea, lit everything with a blaze of golden
light. The ship glided past the breakwater into dock.
Hallam was among the first to go ashore. Before sailing he had cabled
to his solicitor to inform him that he was coming out. He drove now
direct to the lawyer's office. He wanted news of his wife before seeing
her, wanted to glean some idea as to what his long absence and
unaccountable silence was attributed to; whether Esme and others
supposed him to be dead; in which event it might be inadvisable to
appear before her suddenly and without any preparation.
The reception which he received from his man of business and one-time
friend surprised him. Mr Huntley, of the firm of Huntley and Thorne,
was manifestly embarrassed by the sight of his former client, whom he
interviewed in his private office, after issuing the strictest orders
against interruption. His obvious nervousness, and the absence of any
sign of welcome in his manner, impressed Hallam oddly. Had the man been
guilty of embezzling trust money, which Hallam knew him to be incapable
of, he could not have betrayed greater dismay at the meeting.
"This is immensely surprising, Hallam," he said. "I have not yet
recovered from the amazement which the receipt of your cablegram caused
me. You see, I--we all concluded you were dead. The mistake was
perfectly natural."
"I grant that," Hallam answered, considerably mystified and a little
annoyed by the other's manner. "At the same time I don't see why it
should be regarded in the light of a misfortune that I am not dead."
"My dear fellow! Certainly not. But you must allow for a certain--
astonishment. I might even put it more strongly. Your return after so
long a period calls for such an abrupt readjustment. There have been
changes. I don't see how you can expect otherwise. I've sat in this
chair day after day since receiving your cable trying to resolve some
way out of the muddle. I haven't communicated with--with your wife.
You didn't instruct us, so I've done nothing."
"Quite right," Hallam said.
"I prefer to see her myself."
"You haven't written?"
"No. I am going home when I leave here."
"But Mrs Hallam has left Cape Town. She gave up the house and went
round to Port Elizabeth and took a house there. Since then she--she has
given up that house also, I believe. In fact I know she has. We manage
her affairs for her."
Hallam nodded.
"I see nothing very extraordinary in these changes," he said. "It was
not to be expected that she should remain in Cape Town alone. She has
relations at the Bay."
Mr Huntley was silent. He took up from the desk before him, and put
down again, a little sheaf of papers, and fidgeted with a pen lying
beside the blotting-pad. He looked as he felt, immensely embarrassed.
"My dear Hallam," he burst forth at length, "I don't wish to appear to
criticise your actions, but your absence--your complete disappearance,
in fact, seems to me inexplicable. That is how it would strike any
unbiassed person. Whatever your private reasons were for leaving your
home, you might at least have kept us informed as to your whereabouts.
It would have prevented a great deal of subsequent distress."
Hallam looked at the speaker in surprise. The last thing he had
anticipated was this tone of rebuke from his old friend. That Huntley
should suppose he had deliberately suppressed all information relating
to himself struck him as an unjust view to take; he resented it.
"I have been a prisoner in Germany since the beginning of the war," he
said quietly. "I wrote home many letters in the early days of my
captivity. I wrote to you. Oh! there's no need to tell me you never
received it. I got no replies to anything I sent out; so I left off
writing after a time. My case was not exceptional."
Huntley leaned with his arm along the desk and looked earnestly into
Hallam's eyes: his own eyes expressed an immense sympathy.
"Good God, Hallam!" he said.
Suddenly he grasped Hallam's hand and wrung it hard.
"I don't know how to tell you," he added. "But the thing has got to be
faced. Your body was found, and identified by your brother-in-law.
You've been dead these many years. And your wife--"
"Yes?" Hallam said, in a tone of deadly quiet.
"Your wife married again, and is living in Uitenhage."
Book 4--CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE.
Hallam recoiled from the news of Esme's marriage as a man might recoil
from the effects of a blow. The thing staggered him. His first thought
was to disappear again, to walk away from Huntley's office, and turn his
back for ever on the country which was home to him no longer and held no
place for him. He felt dazed with grief and anger. The thought of Esme
as the wife of another man was intolerable. He could not reconcile it
with his knowledge of her that she should seek consolation elsewhere.
It was like some hideous nightmare, some terrible hoax, that was being
practised on him for the purpose of torturing him.
He could not determine how to act in the circumstances; he could not
think; his mind was blank with despair. And then jealousy awoke; his
thoughts gained stimulus, and worked in a new direction along fines that
were fiercely personal and possessive in outlook. After all, she was
his wife. This man had no claim on her; she belonged to him. He was
not going to allow any one to hold what was lawfully his.
This sense of urgency to resume possession spurred him to a fever of
aggressive activity, in which mood, and with the settled purpose of
interviewing his brother-in-law, he went round to Port Elizabeth, and
called on Jim Bainbridge at the latter's place of business as soon as he
arrived.
To say that Jim Bainbridge was amazed at the sight of him, were to
express his emotions as inadequately as it would be to describe a
violent explosion as disquieting to the unfortunate persons within the
affected area: the effect on him was rather similar to the effects of an
explosion; he was literally bowled over on beholding a dead man returned
to the world of the living. Had he been given to the cult of the
supernatural he would have imagined that he saw Paul Hallam's ghost,
when Hallam walked into his office. But he did not believe in ghosts;
and there was something uncomfortably lifelike in the hostile gleam of
Hallam's eyes, as he turned from shutting the door and regarded the man
seated in his swivel-chair, with jaw dropped, and with protruding eyes
which stared back at him stupidly.
"Oh hell!" muttered Jim Bainbridge, and collapsed in his seat in a
crumpled heap.
Hallam advanced deliberately, and seated himself opposite his
dumbfounded brother-in-law.
"I knew I was bound to give you an unpleasant surprise," he said, "so I
didn't make an appointment. I've come for news of my wife."
Bainbridge's jaw dropped lower in his increasing consternation. The
man's florid countenance had turned the colour of putty.
"Your--Oh lord!"
The words gurgled in his throat. He gripped the arms of his chair and
attempted to sit up straighter and to get control of himself. Compared
with his nervous collapse the calm of Hallam's demeanour was remarkable.
"Look here," he muttered, fumbling for words, his bewildered gaze fixed
upon the other's face. "Don't you try to rush things. I've got to get
used to this idea. I'm all abroad. When a man has been missing for
years one doesn't expect to see him walk in as if he had been away on a
holiday. What in hell do you mean by turning up here after all this
time? Where've you been? Man, you were found--dead--and buried.
There's a stone erected to your memory out on the veld beyond Bulawayo.
You've no right to disappear and turn up again after six years. It's
indecent."
"It's awkward, I admit," Hallam returned grimly, and regarded the other
sternly with the angry light of accusation in his keen eyes. "I want an
explanation of your reasons for swearing falsely to my identity. You
buried another man under my name--why?"
"Paul, I swear I thought it was you--believe me, or not, as you will."
Suddenly Bainbridge turned with quick suspicion in his look, and smote
the arm of his chair fiercely. "You put that trick on us--to deceive
us. Why was that man dressed in your clothes, and carrying your papers?
Poor devil! there wasn't anything else left of him that one could swear
to."
"I see. No," Hallam shook his head; "you are on the wrong track. I owe
my life to the man you buried--I don't know his name. I don't know how
he came by his death. I know nothing about him; save that he came to my
aid when I was past aiding myself. Then he left me to the care of
natives, and robbed me; left me with his old clothes, and nothing of my
own but my boots, which, presumably, didn't fit him. Oddly, he didn't
discover that the boots had double soles and were lined with notes. He
stole all the money I had on me, which was considerable, and which
possibly cost him his life. He did me good service; though through his
death he injured me more than he could have done had he murdered me.
It's a grim mistake; and it's going to lead to grim consequences."
Bainbridge stared hard at the speaker.
"The muddle is of your own making," he said sullenly. "Why did you
never send a line? Esme fretted her heart out for news of you."
"She soon recovered from her distress," Hallam replied.
"You've heard?"--Bainbridge broke off in his question abruptly.
"That she married Sinclair--yes. That is what I have come to talk over
with you."
"Well, look here!" Jim Bainbridge leaned his head on his hand and
thought hard. "Why didn't you send a line?" he repeated in tones of
exasperation. "Man, don't you see how a word from you would have saved
the situation? It's your own fault, Paul. You've brought this on
yourself."
"I acknowledge the justice of that. I might have written--in the early
days. But, for reasons which Esme alone could appreciate, I refrained
from writing then. Later communication became impossible. I went to
England and joined up. I didn't mean to join up. But if you'd been on
the spot you'd understand the pressing urgency that impelled a man to
go. I was among the first batch of prisoners taken by the Germans.
It's a long story anyhow. I'll tell it to her. She will understand."
But that was exactly what Jim Bainbridge intended to dissuade him from
doing. The moral rights of the case were too subtle for him to grasp;
but he appreciated fully the insuperable difficulties of a readjustment
under existing conditions. The lives of three people would be upset and
the happiness of none secured. The only way to avoid further muddle was
to allow the present muddle to go on. That was how he saw it; and he
hoped to persuade Hallam into taking his view.
"Do many people know of your return?" he asked.
Hallam looked surprised.
"Only Huntley and yourself."
"In your place, I should clear out," Bainbridge advised. "Why not leave
the country altogether, Paul? I'll keep my mouth shut."
As the drift of his meaning dawned on him, Hallam's face hardened; the
grey eyes shone steel-like. Jim Bainbridge, observing him closely,
realised that the task he had set himself would prove no easy matter;
but he braced himself to fight for the peace of mind of the woman whose
happiness hung in the balance.
"You know," he added, after a brief moment for reflection, "your long
absence, your silence, amount pretty near to desertion. I don't know
much about the blooming divorce laws in this country; but I fancy if we
stretched our imaginations a bit we could make out a good case. Clear
out, Paul. Make it a case of desertion proper. It's the only decent
course to take. You don't want to injure Esme further. Leave her
alone."
"And condone a bigamy--in which my own wife is concerned! She _is_ my
wife. I will agree to a divorce only if she wishes it."
"Man, can't you see the unnecessary cruelty of letting her know you're
alive? She's got used to thinking of you as dead. She's happy."
Bainbridge leaned nearer to him and threw out a protesting hand. "It's
hard on you. I admit it's hard on you--damned hard. But--hang it
all!--you created the muddle. If it were only a matter of your claim
against George's, I wouldn't offer advice; but it isn't. It's a case
which would baffle Solomon himself. There's a kid--a baby girl. If I'm
not mistaken, the baby's got a stronger claim than either of you two
men. Some women are like that. Esme lives for the child."
He broke off, heated by his unusual eloquence, and uncomfortably aware
of the expression of black hate on his listener's face. Hallam sat
silent, staring straight before him. The news of the child was the last
dreg of bitterness in the cup which he was forced to drain. The thought
of the child infuriated him, filled him with intolerable jealousy.
Esme, his wife,--with a child--which was not his! The thing would not
bear thinking about. And yet it stuck in his thoughts, tormented his
thoughts, would not be dismissed however much he strove to thrust it
aside. In the moment when Jim Bainbridge let fall this bomb Hallam's
feeling for his wife underwent a sudden revulsion. It seemed to him
that his love died as surely as if it had never been. It seemed to him,
too, though he knew the thought to be an injustice, that the wife he had
loved was unworthy, was no better than a light woman. She had consoled
herself very speedily. His years of self-discipline had been spent in
vain. He had gained a victory over himself at a terrible price--the
price of his wife. He had lost the fruits of his labour; even as a man
who will sometimes strive, putting all his endeavour into one harvest,
to be ruthlessly cheated of the profit of his toil by some unforeseen
calamity, such as drought or other disaster. These things happen: it is
the throw of the dice of chance.
"You had to know," remarked Jim Bainbridge abruptly, feeling the urgency
to say something to end the strained silence which had followed upon his
disclosure, and busying himself with his pipe in order to avoid seeing
the play of bitter emotion which disfigured the other man's features.
"Some one had to tell you. It complicates matters."
"Yes." Hallam stood up. "I wasn't prepared for this," he said. "I've
got to think about it. I'll see you again some other time. If you want
me, I'm staying at the `Grand.'"
"Man, I'm sorry about this," Bainbridge said, and held out his hand.
Hallam did not even see it. Like a man in a trance he turned and walked
out of the place.
Book 4--CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO.
Jim Bainbridge whistled. He filled his pipe and lighted it, and let it
go out again. He repeated this performance until he had exhausted all
the matches in his box; then he put the pipe down and sat back in his
seat, with his thumbs in his braces, and cogitated.
It was a hell of a mess. No other phrase described the situation so
aptly. It _was_ a hell of a mess. He could not see how it was to be
cleaned up exactly. Why the devil, instead of being taken prisoner,
could not the fellow have stopped a bullet? That would have been a
creditable finish. Well, he hadn't. He was back again; and it looked
as though there was going to be the hell of a fuss.
For several minutes Jim Bainbridge ceased from his meditations and
coloured the air luridly with the variety and force of his expressions;
then he cooled down again, and fell once more into thought. This thing
had to be kept from his wife. The fewer the people in possession of the
uncomfortable facts the better for the present. There was no need to
confess to a cat in the bag until the brute mewed.
It wasn't his affair anyway.
Suddenly he remembered, with a distinct disinclination to face Esme in
the circumstances, that they were dining at the Sinclairs' that night.
It was a memorable occasion--the baby's first birthday. A nice sort of
birthday surprise he had up his sleeve!
"Blast the baby!" he muttered; and immediately felt ashamed of himself.
It was most assuredly none of the baby's fault.
The case, looked at from any point, looked at all the way round,
presented no possible solution to his mind. He had not liked the look
in Hallam's eyes when the latter walked out. He did not feel sure of
the man, of how he would act, what his purpose was. There was trouble
in the air; the atmosphere was heavy with it. He stared out of the
window. It was a bright sunny day, hot and clear; it ought to have been
thunder weather; and it was not: the thunder was all within--in the
minds of men, in Hallam's mind in particular. What was he going to do?
Bainbridge kicked the desk in front of him savagely, and got up and put
his coat on. If he sat there any longer he would be moved to do
something ridiculous. He would go out, walk along the Main Street, and
talk with any one he chanced to meet. He must get a grip on himself
before he faced Rose, or she would draw the whole thing out of him. And
Lord knew what would happen then! For her own sake he wanted to keep
his wife in ignorance of this wretched business until secrecy was no
longer possible.
"There's no sense in unfurling an umbrella before the rain falls," he
soliloquised. "There is always a chance that the cloud won't burst."
The abstraction of his manner at lunch that day excited general comment.
Rose jumped to the conclusion that business was worrying him, and
showed immediate concern for the family finances; and so exasperated him
that he left the house in a rage and went back to his office in an
irritable frame of mind.
"The old man's temper is getting a bit frayed at the edges," John
observed, with filial candour.
"Oh! daddy's all right," said Mary, "if you don't take his little moods
seriously. He is always excitable when he is going to a party."