The Stronger Influence Part 20

"It didn't take you long to discover that home's the best place," he remarked, with a sideways furtive look at her. "How did you find them all? Jim still grousing, I suppose? And the small boy a perennial note of interrogation?"

"Everything was much the same," she answered in a dispirited voice.

"They were all a little older in appearance, and the children have grown tremendously. I wish you had been with me. Rose was hurt, I think, because you did not go."

"Oh, really! I should have thought she would have felt relieved."

"Why?"

He disregarded the question. Abruptly he put out an unsteady hand and laid it upon hers.

"Tired?" he asked.

"A little." She twisted her hand round in her lap and her fingers closed upon his. "What have you been doing during my absence?"

"Mainly missing you," he answered. "A reversion to one's bachelor days is a dull sort of holiday."

"I know. But what was I to do? I don't want to lose touch altogether with my ain folk."

"I have no folk," he said, "so I can't understand these family ties. I think them a bore. But if you had a good time that's the chief thing.

You've a lot of friends at the Bay, and you find pleasure in them. My friends are silent companions and are better suited to my taste. How did your people think you were looking? None the worse for being tied to this dull person, I hope?"

She laughed and squeezed his hand.

"They were impressed with my staid appearance, and the fact that I am putting on weight," she said. "I didn't realise it myself until Jim told me I was getting fat."

"That is a Jim-like touch," he returned, and glanced at her cursorily.

"The grossness is not apparent to me. Did you meet Sinclair during your stay?"

"Yes," she said, and looked surprised that he should ask the question.

That he had once been jealous of Sinclair was unknown to her.

"And does he still wear the willow for your sake?"

"He isn't married," she answered. "But I don't think that has anything to do with me."

She regretted that he had opened this subject. The memory of Sinclair was a distress to her. The change in him had struck her more forcibly than the change in any member of her own family. The difference in him was not due alone to the pa.s.sing years. He was altered in manner as much as in appearance; all the boyish gaiety had departed: he was older, more thoughtful; the irresponsible gladness of youth, formerly so noticeable a characteristic of his, was missing. She could have wept at the change in him. He was still her devoted slave. During her visit he had haunted her sister's house. He had claimed the privilege of friends.h.i.+p and put himself at her disposal. He was always at hand when she needed him. And never once by word or gesture had he attempted to overstep the boundary of friends.h.i.+p. She felt grateful to him for his consistent and considerate kindness. She did not want to discuss him, even with Paul.

Hallam did not pursue the subject. He fell into silence and left her to do the talking. During the remainder of the drive she chatted fragmentally and brightly of her doings while she had been away.

Princ.i.p.ally she talked about the children. The sight of John and Mary, the sound of their gay young voices, their insistent claim upon the general attention, had brought home to her the absence of the one great interest in her own home. She wanted children intensely; and it did not seem that her desire would ever be satisfied. A child would have completed her married happiness.

Something of what was in her thoughts she managed to convey to Hallam when they reached the house and entered together, her arm within his.

Alone in the drawing-room, when he held her in his embrace and kissed the bright upturned face, she slipped her hands behind his neck and looked back at him with tender loving eyes.

"Paul," she whispered, "I wish we had a child of our very own--a wee sc.r.a.p of soft pink flesh, with tiny clinging hands. My dear, my dearest, I do so want a child!"

He gazed down at her, troubled and immeasurably surprised, and gently kissed the tremulous lips. He had never given any thought to the matter until now, when he realised the aching mother-hunger expressed in her desire: she had concealed it so successfully hitherto. He did not himself wish for children; the thought of them even was an embarra.s.sment. With clumsy tenderness he stroked her hair.

"It seems as though it is not to be," he said. "I didn't know you cared so much, sweetheart."

"Don't you care?" she asked. "I!" He seemed surprised. "I've got you," he said, and drew her close in his embrace.

Book 3--CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE.

The first real sorrow in Esme's life came to her with the realisation of the fact that her influence with her husband no longer sufficed to keep him steady. Gradually, so gradually that she did not suspect it until the thing was plainly manifest, he fell back upon his former habit of intemperance and became once more the drunkard whom she had first met at the Zuurberg, and pitied and despised for the weakness of his character.

Hallam did not give in to his vice without a struggle; but with each lapse his will weakened, till eventually he ceased to fight his enemy, ceased even to consider the pain which he was aware he caused his wife.

Esme's grief was deep, and the humiliation of realising that the thing was becoming publicly known added to her distress. Reluctantly she withdrew from social intercourse and devoted her time entirely to him, trusting that the power of love would yet prove the stronger influence.

Her love for him strengthened with her recognition of his need of her: he was her child, weak and foolish and dependent,--her man and her child, whom she had to protect from himself.

Matters grew worse. An inkling of the trouble reached Rose through an acquaintance of her husband who had been in Cape Town and had heard rumours of the state of affairs. Rose's first impulse was to write to her sister and ask for information direct; but on reflection she decided against this course. There flashed into her mind, as once before at the time of Esme's marriage the same memory had disturbed her peace, the picture of George Sinclair's face when he heard of Esme's engagement and the recollection of his incomprehensible agitation. Was it possible that he had known?

She determined to ask him; and on the first opportunity did so, observing him attentively while she put a direct question to him. The quick distress and the absence of surprise in his look confirmed her suspicion. He had been aware of this thing all along.

"You knew!" she said resentfully. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"Good lord!" he exclaimed almost pa.s.sionately. "It wasn't for me to say anything. She knew what she was taking on. It wouldn't have made a fraction of difference if you had done everything in your power to dissuade her. She went into it with her eyes open."

"You mean that she realised she was marrying a drunkard?"

"Of course she realised it. I suppose she believed she could reclaim him. For a time no doubt she did. Mrs Bainbridge, I could cheerfully kill him, if that would help matters."

"It wouldn't," Rose answered practically. "Don't talk like a fool, George."

"I love her," he said simply, the tears welling in his eyes. "I hate to think of her life with him. It cuts me."

"Dear old boy," she said, with greater gentleness of manner than she often displayed, "I know. I wish from my soul that she had married you.

I always mistrusted Paul. But she was fascinated with him; there was no one else in the picture for her. He may break her heart and spoil her life, but she'll go on loving him. You could see for yourself when she was round here; she was restless without him and wanting to go home."

"That's not surprising in the circ.u.mstances," he returned with bitterness. "I don't suppose that she trusts him out of her sight for long."

"That wasn't it," Rose said quietly; and added after a brief pause: "She just wanted him."

It was better, she decided, that he should face matters and give over cheris.h.i.+ng a hopeless attachment. She liked George Sinclair sufficiently to wish to see him happily married and settled down. He was a man who would make an admirable husband.

But Sinclair showed no inclination towards marriage. He had met the girl he wanted, and lost her; no other girl could blot out the memory of his first real love, nor take her place in his heart. It had been a big blow when she married; and the bitterness of his disappointment increased enormously with the knowledge of the disaster which threatened her happiness. In a measure he had expected it; it did not come as a surprise, only as an ugly confirmation of his fears. He believed that he could have borne his own disappointment philosophically had life gone well for her: but the conviction that she had made a mistake held with him and inflamed his resentment against Hallam.

"Well, there's one thing," he said, as he got up from his seat and confronted Rose with grim set face, "if he goes on at the rate he did when he was at the Zuurberg she will be a widow before many years. A man can't fool with his const.i.tution like that--not in this country anyhow."

"Don't count on that, George," she advised. "It's a slow poison."

He laughed shortly.

"I've a feeling that my turn will come," he said, and turned about abruptly and left the room, left the house, with a sore heart, and his sense of exasperation deepening as he thought of the girl he loved tied to a drunkard who was not man enough to conquer his particular vice.

And the girl he pitied was blaming herself for not having gone with her man into the wilds, for not having allowed him to follow the life he preferred, hunting and exploring along the unbeaten track. Had life offered him a sufficient interest this relapse might have been averted.

She had relied overmuch on the strength of character which she believed was his: she had overestimated his strength, had left him to fight his battle unaided. He had wearied of the struggle and given in. From the point where he wearied she took it up, took it up with a tireless determination to win, that armed itself against all disappointments and rebuffs; and the rebuffs were many. Hallam resented her attempts at coercion.