The Stronger Influence Part 30

"Well!" he said, and sat back and stared from one to the other in astonished curiosity. "I take it, that about settles it. It establishes his claim anyway. It seems like an act of Providence that he should be in the right spot at the right moment. I'm not going against that."

Hallam put out a hand and drew Esme to his side.

"I'm not for allowing any man to interfere between us," he said in quiet authoritative tones. "She's mine all right. We're both agreed as to that."

Jim Bainbridge smiled dryly.

"So it seems. Well, it's the right course, I've no doubt."

He made a mental resolve that he would not be anywhere handy when the explanation with George took place. Thank Heaven, a man had his club to retire to in these domestic crises!

"You'd better not show up at the house," he observed to Hallam, "until we've broken the news to Rose. Shocks aren't good for her. I've had as much excitement as I care about for one day."

Esme crossed to his chair and stood beside it, resting a hand on his shoulder.

"There's one thing more, dear," she said, with brightly flushed cheeks, and eyes carefully averted from Hallam's. "I want you to ring up George and ask him to bring baby and nurse in the car. I am staying with you to-night."

"The kid, eh!"

Swiftly he glanced at Hallam. Hallam remained rigid and said nothing.

Book 4--CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX.

The whole world changed for Esme with the return of the husband she had mourned as dead. But for her sorrow on George Sinclair's account, she could have found in her heart only room for rejoicing in the knowledge that Paul was alive and well instead, as she had been led to believe, of having died mysteriously and alone and been buried in a lonely grave.

But the thought of George, of how this must hit him, haunted her distressfully. It grieved her to have to hurt him; he was so altogether fine and good. She felt like a cheat in relation to him. It seemed to her that she had stolen his love, stolen everything he had to give; and now she was about to steal his child from him and leave him sad and alone.

If only she had remained steadfast, and had refused to marry him!

The thought of the child tormented her anew, the child who would never know a father's love. Fortunately the baby was so young that these matters could be kept from her knowledge until it seemed expedient to reveal them to her. Paul, however kind he might be, could never take a father's place. Instinctively she realised that, though he accepted the position, he resented it keenly. The knowledge that the child was Esme's and not his galled him sorely. But from the moment when he was resolved to have his wife at all costs Hallam had made up his mind that the child would form a part of the new life. Deep down in his soul he had a sort of perception that in this mental scourging lay his punishment and possibly his ultimate salvation. He would be good to the child for the sake of the woman he loved, and who loved them both.

He drove with Bainbridge and Esme to the top of the hill, where he left them and walked the few yards to his hotel. The disturbance was over, and the rioters were in rapid retreat. They swarmed over the Donkin Reserve on their way to the locations. Many of them were injured, and, with the blood streaming from their wounds, presented a sufficiently unpleasant sight. The taxi turned into Havelock Street and stopped before the house, the door of which was opened promptly, and Rose, looking concerned and curious, came out upon the step. Her alarm increased when her eyes discovered Esme's dishevelled appearance.

"Whatever's happened?" she asked, and put out a hand and caught her sister's arm.

Bainbridge turned from paying the driver and followed them into the house.

"Don't make a fuss," he said. "She's upset."

There were tears in Esme's eyes; she looked white and altogether unstrung.

"There's been an accident?" Rose said.

"It came pretty near to being a fatal accident," Jim threw in helpfully.

"One of those black devils got hold of her. If it hadn't been for Paul she'd be as dead as mutton by now."

"_What_?" Rose e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed.

"Paul's turned up," came the laconic information. "Turned up in the nick of time too. It seems he's been a prisoner of war. Don't say anything now. We are all feeling jumpy. He's coming over in the morning."

Rose gasped in her astonishment. Her husband's jerked out sentences, his perturbed and bothered look, as much as her sister's evident agitation, kept her from putting the elucidatory questions which she longed to ask. She could scarcely believe this startling news, so abruptly given; it seemed to her incredible that Paul Hallam should be alive, and coming there. Gently she pa.s.sed an arm about her sister's shoulders and spoke to her soothingly.

"You poor dear!" was all she said. "You poor dear!"

Mary came running down the stairs, agog with excitement, and manifestly curious. But at the foot of the stairs she halted abruptly, and surveyed the group in the hall in wide-eyed amaze. Tactfully she disregarded Esme's tearful condition and confined her attention to the dilapidations of her attire.

"You've been in the wars," she said. "Come on up to my room; I'll rig you out."

Jim Bainbridge, approving of his daughter's handling of an embarra.s.sing situation, looked after the pair as they went arm in arm up the stairs; then, in answer to the question in his wife's eyes, he followed her into the sitting-room and entered into explanations.

Rose took things more calmly than he had expected. The shock of the news left her bewildered and curiously at a loss for words. She found some difficulty in collecting her ideas.

"I always said," she remarked once, "that it was ridiculous to swear so positively to a man's ident.i.ty by the clothes he happened to be wearing."

And after reflection she added simply:

"Poor George!"

Bainbridge's sympathies set strongly in the same direction.

"That's how I felt about it when Paul walked into my office yesterday,"

he observed.

"Yesterday!" she repeated. "You knew this yesterday? Why didn't you tell me?"

"For obvious reasons," he answered. "I hoped when Paul heard of the second marriage he'd see the wisdom of clearing out. But he didn't. I wonder how I would have acted had it been my case? Whether, if I had disappeared and returned to find you married again, I would have slipped away and left the other fellow in possession? Largely, of course," he added reflectively, "it would depend on whether I wanted you. _If_ I had wanted you all right, the other fellow would have had to quit.

That's as plain as print anyway. No doubt I gave Paul fairly rotten advice. However he didn't take it; so there it is."

"You are positively immoral," Rose exclaimed indignantly. "There is no question about the matter at all. They are man and wife."

"I wasn't dealing in morality in offering my advice," he answered, grinning. "I was thinking of the simplest way out of the difficulty."

"The path of least resistance--yes," she said. "And it didn't strike you that in shirking difficulties one makes others? A fine crop of criminal complications you would have started. Besides, Paul isn't a man to take advice."

"No; he is not to be moved from his purpose once his mind is made up.

Incidentally, he's rather a fine chap."

"He drinks," she said.

"I imagine he has learned control," he returned quickly. "You are a little unfair in your judgment, aren't you?"

"Perhaps I am," she allowed. "I never liked him. I resent his coming back and upsetting everything. What a talk there'll be!"

"Don't overlook the fact that he saved us a funeral in the family," he reminded her. "You can't have it both ways. I consider it was providential his being on the spot. George stood to lose in either case."

"I hope he will take your philosophic view of the matter," was all she returned. Then she left him to his reflections and went away to see about a meal.

Book 4--CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN.

It had been a day of varied experiences of big moments, fraught with terror and relief, joy and sorrow, inextricably interwoven. The eventful day was followed by a night of correspondingly deep emotions, a night of painful revelation and much anguish of mind for Esme, as well as for the man who was to learn from the lips of the woman he loved, and whom he believed was his wife, that she had never been legally married to him, that her husband was alive, that she and the child, which was his, were leaving him finally.