The Stronger Influence Part 29

"Was it fair to treat me like that? You had all my love, all my confidence. Surely you might have trusted me! Whatever you were doing, wherever you were, I should have understood. I would have waited patiently. I was prepared to wait after reading your letter. I judged from it that you would not return to me until you were sure of yourself, even though it meant separation for all our lives. But you could have let me know you were alive. It was cruel to keep silent all these years."

"Yes," he allowed; "had it been intentional it would have been."

He joined her at the window, and stood opposite to her, observing her with a steady gaze which drew her eyes to his, held them: she remained looking back at him, listening to him, while he strove to make her understand the struggle and the despair of those silent years.

He told her of his flight; of the unhinged state of his mind when he left home; of his physical condition which brought him to the verge of death; of how he would have died but for the care of a stranger--a poor white, who later robbed him, and was subsequently buried in his name.

He told her of his slow recovery in a native hut; of the fierce craving for alcohol which a.s.sailed him as soon as he was able once more to get about.

"I could not write to you then," he said. "I felt unfit to breathe your name."

He went on to speak of the journey to England, still with his vice in the ascendant. He had given way to it in England. His illness had sapped his will-power and he was at the mercy of his desires once more.

Then came the war. He joined up with the intention of making good.

Until he had made good he was resolved that he would not write.

The rest of the story, of his early capture and his ineffectual efforts to communicate with her, he described briefly. He gave a detailed account of the period following his release; of his tedious convalescence; of his longing for her; of his time of probation, during which he tested his endurance until satisfied that he had won a final victory over himself. He told of his voyage out; of his wish to break the news of his return to her himself.

"It was unlikely that you believed me to be still alive," he said. "And I did not want to give you a shock by writing when, by the exercise of a little patience, I could tell you all this, and--"

He broke off abruptly. In his imagination he had antic.i.p.ated her gladness, had pictured their mutual joy in the reunion, when, with his arms about her, he would tell her the story of his absence, and with his kisses comfort her for the sorrow that was past. This home-coming was so different from anything he had conceived.

"I knew nothing of the finding of the body of a man supposed to be me,"

he said. "That was one of the unforeseen accidents of circ.u.mstance which create an aftermath of deplorable consequences. We are the victims of circ.u.mstance. It is useless to impute blame to any one. The facts remain. But for Jim's positive testimony you would not have re-married. Without some proof of my death, you would have gone on hoping, I believe."

"Paul!--Oh, Paul!" she sobbed, and held out her two hands towards him in a gesture of pathetic helplessness.

He took them in his. And abruptly with the feel of her hands in his, his reserve broke down; the hardness went out of his eyes. He gathered her to him and kissed her and held her close in his embrace.

Book 4--CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE.

What were they to do?

That was the question they asked each other as soon as they were able to collect their ideas and talk calmly.

Hallam had put her into Jim Bainbridge's swivel-chair; and he sat on a corner of the writing-table, facing her, holding one of her hands in his. It was become to him now a matter simply of doing what was best for her happiness. Whatever she decided he resolved to abide by. She was the more injured; the settlement of their future must lie in her hands. His rights, his claim on her, which until now had held a paramount place in his thoughts, a.s.sumed an insignificance which rendered them negligible beside her supreme right to the direction of her own life.

"I'll go, Esme,--I'll go now, if you wish it," he said,--"if it would make things easier for you."

He felt her fingers close round his, and said no more about going.

They sat hand in hand for a long while without speaking. Presently she moved slightly and lifted her face to his, white and wrung with emotion, with the stain of much weeping disfiguring it; but the sweetness of her look, the pathos in the eyes which met his, made her face seem more beautiful to him than ever before. He leaned over her and pressed his cheek to hers.

"Paul," she whispered, "if it wasn't for--It breaks my heart when I think of George."

Sharply, as though her words stung him, he drew back.

"It's going to hurt him badly," she said. "And my baby... My poor little innocent baby!"

Hallam had nothing to say to that. The culminating disaster, the biggest and most appalling of the difficulties with which they were faced, was wrought by the existence of the child. He sat, gripping her hand hard, speechless and immeasurably disconcerted. What was there to say in face of her distress?

"I can't think," she said. "I'm all confused. This changes everything.

I don't know what to do. I don't feel that I can go home. I haven't got a home..."

She reflected awhile.

"George will have to be told. That is the part which is going to hurt.

I can't bear to think of it."

"I'll tell him," Hallam said.

"No; not you."

She spoke with a sort of repressed vehemence, and drew her hand from his, and sat with it clenched on the desk in front of her, her face working painfully.

"Oh! whatever made me do it?" she cried. "Why was I not satisfied to live with my memories? All this distress is of my making. Why did I do it?"

"G.o.d knows!" he returned with sudden bitterness. "If you had died, your memory would have been sacred to me."

He regretted having said that as soon as the words were spoken. What right had he to reproach her for inconstancy? It was easy for him to remain faithful in thought to the wife who had never given him a moment's pain. She had suffered--he knew that she must have suffered a great deal--on his account; but her love had remained unchanged through all the disappointment and the weary years of waiting. He held the foremost place in her heart. He was still her husband, to whom she had given the best of her love. She did not withdraw her heart from him.

She wanted him, even as he wanted her: that a.s.surance removed all doubt from his mind as to what they ought to do. He meant to have her.

He fell to talking quietly and reasonably about the situation. It was useless to indulge in recrimination and self-reproach: they must take a common-sense view of their case and make the best of the difficulties.

These were not insoluble after all.

He was still talking, while Esme listened to him with an air of anxious attention, when Jim Bainbridge walked in. From the clerk he had learned of the presence of his sister-in-law and of the stranger who had visited him on the previous day. The cat was out of the bag now for good or ill: the business of keeping Paul Hallam's return secret had ceased to be any affair of his. He had wanted to biff the fellow out of it; had trusted that Hallam would see the inexpediency of his resuscitation stunt and clear off before the news of his return got about. And here they were, together--in his office! He was jolly well in the soup this time.

He came in looking hara.s.sed and startled, and stood inside the door, surveying them in a sort of worried amazement. The appearance of his sister-in-law shocked him. She looked as if she had been mixed up in the brawling in the streets; as if she had been rolled in the dust and badly hurt. His eyes met hers, and read reproach in them as she got up from his chair and came towards him.

"Jim, why didn't you tell me this last night?" she said.

"I wouldn't have told you, ever, if I'd had my way," he answered, with the sulky manner of a man receiving an unmerited rebuke. "How did you come to find one another? If those blasted n.i.g.g.e.rs hadn't started raising Cain over the arrest of their blackguardly leader, I'd have been in my place here. Something always happens when I'm not on the spot.

Well, you've settled what you're going to do, I suppose? It's your show anyhow."

The telephone bell rang at that moment and interrupted the train of his ideas. He seated himself before his desk and took up the receiver. His face was a study in expressions while he listened.

"Hullo! ... Yes. She's here all right..."

"It's George speaking," he looked up to remark for the general information.

"Eh? ... Oh! yes; there's been a devil of a shindy. It's quieting down now. I think we've seen the worst of it. I hope it will serve to ill.u.s.trate how absurdly inadequate our police force is. They've done wonders. There will be a few funerals over this. One or two Europeans killed, worse luck! ... You will? ... Right! We'll keep her with us until you turn up. Good-bye."

He rang off, and looked up at Esme with a wry face.

"They've heard of the row; and George got the wind up about you. He's motoring in later to fetch you. How did you get through? Were you roughly handled at all?"

He surveyed the disorder of her hair, her torn and crumpled dress. She looked as though she had been in the thick of the melee. She nodded.

"If Paul hadn't been near I should have been killed," she answered.

"That was how we met. I was on my way here when a Kaffir got hold of me. Paul killed him."