The Stronger Influence Part 25

She stood by the window, looking out on the cool green of gra.s.s, on the blaze of colour from the flower borders, on neatly gravelled paths.

Here, too, there were roses; the green of the lawn was patterned gaily with their petals which the soft, warm wind had scattered wide and blown into little heaps and again distributed these in a pleasing blending of colour; the path was covered with them, sweet-scented, and newly scattered by the breeze.

"It looks festive," she remarked.

"It looks as if the boy had better get to work with a broom," George replied.

"Prosaic person?" she said, laughing. And added: "Let them stay. It's a sweet disorder, anyhow."

He stooped to kiss her.

"You are a sweet woman," he said, and put his arm about her, and stood looking with her out upon the small but pretty garden of their home.

Pride of ownership filled the man's brain, flooded his heart with genial warmth, even as the sunlight which flooded the garden and shone hotly on the gaily coloured flowers in the borders. He felt that life had nothing more to offer him; his cup of happiness was full to the brim.

But to the woman, looking out on the sunlight with him, such complete satisfaction was not possible. She was content. But the sun of her happiness had pa.s.sed its zenith and was on the decline.

Together they went through the house on a tour of inspection, while lunch was preparing. Each room called for comment and fresh expressions of delight. They came to their bedroom last. George sat on the side of the bed while 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 pa.s.sed, 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 G.o.dparents, who were amazingly interested in this small cousin of theirs. Mary, a pretty girl of nineteen, with all her s.e.x'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 antic.i.p.ated 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 ma.s.s 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 ash.o.r.e. 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 embarra.s.sed 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 embarra.s.sed.

"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 unbia.s.sed 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 antic.i.p.ated 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 G.o.d, Hallam!" he said.

Suddenly he grasped Hallam's hand and wrung it hard.