The Stronger Influence Part 24

She kept this letter writing up after he was in hospital, until she learnt from him that he was well and shortly sailing for home. Then, though he still wrote every week, her letters ceased abruptly. She dreaded his coming out. She knew that he still loved her, that he meant to ask her to marry him. He had given her to understand that before he left. She liked him. In a friendly way she was fond of him; but all her love had been given to Paul Hallam; and, although she now accepted the evidence of his death, her heart still cherished his memory, and turned in unforgettable longing towards the past. Her happiness had ended in tragedy: but that was the common lot in those tragic times.

The war with its harvest of death and suffering had put her own trouble further into the background than time itself could have succeeded in doing. So much had happened within the past four years that was sad and stirring and broad in its appeal to the sympathies of even those outside the reach of these terrific happenings that the egotism of personal grief was merged with the wider sorrow in which the world shared. It was no time for brooding: a common tragedy called for the utmost effort of endurance from all.

In a sense the war proved helpful to Esme; the horror of the calamity took her out of herself, and prevented her from growing morbid through the overwhelming shock of her own great loss. It had taken her a long time to reconcile herself to the belief that Paul was dead. Conviction came to her slowly with the pa.s.sing of time, and the absence of any word from him. If he had been alive he would have contrived to let her know.

It was unthinkable that he should have left her deliberately in a terrible suspense. Hope died hard within her, but it died surely. She mourned him as dead in her thoughts. But she could never bring herself to visit the grave where he was laid to rest, above which had been erected a simple granite cross, inscribed with his name and the date of the year in which he died. Jim had seen to these matters for her; she had been satisfied to leave them to him, and to ask no questions. In his way her brother-in-law had been kind and helpful. And John, who spent all his leisure time at her house, which had become a second home for him, proved a great comfort and companion.

John was now sixteen, and his only regret was that he was not old enough to join up. He admired and envied George Sinclair profoundly. To return after three years' fighting with a pierced lung and covered with glory was a splendid record in young John's estimation. He awaited Sinclair's return impatiently, eager for first-hand information of the wonderful doings in which he had longed to take part; while Esme awaited his coming with misgivings, and wondered what she would find to say to him when they met. She recalled very vividly his coming to say goodbye to her on the evening before he sailed.

"I am going to write to you," he had said, with his blue eyes on her face. "Please don't forbid me that pleasure; it will be a tremendous help to me to be able to talk to you on paper. I may never come back, you know; but if I do I shall come straight to you."

He had gone away wearing a photograph of her which Rose had given him; that, and her friendly occasional letters, had proved the greatest happiness during those days of war and horror and discomfort. And now he was returning, with her photograph worn in a locket, and with her letters, so frequently read that they tore where they were folded, tied together with a piece of ribbon that once had adorned a box of chocolates, and was faded and discoloured even as the package which it secured.

He came to her, as he had said he would do, as soon as he arrived in the Bay. He was shy, and a little uncertain of the welcome likely to be accorded to him. The sudden cessation of her letters had damped his hopes considerably.

She was walking in the garden when his taxi stopped at the gate. He caught a glimpse of her through the mimosa trees, pacing the path slowly with the dog, Regret, walking beside her, close to her, his nose touching the hand which hung loosely at her side.

Sinclair dismissed his driver and opened the gate and advanced swiftly along the path towards her. She saw him and stood still, flushed and obviously nervous, waiting for him, while the dog bounded forward and sniffed the newcomer inquisitively, and finally leapt upon him in boisterous greeting. He patted the dog's head, pushed it aside, and approached the woman, who remained still, watching him with eyes which smiled their welcome. He took her outstretched hand and held it while he looked long and steadily into the face which had lived in his memory from the time when years ago he had met and loved her at the Zuurberg.

Outwardly she had changed little: life had scored far deeper impressions on his face than on hers.

"So glad to see you back, George," she said, with a faint show of embarra.s.sment in her manner under his continued scrutiny. "So very glad to see you safe and sound."

He approached his face a little nearer to hers, still retaining her hand, which he held in a firm grip.

"May I kiss you?" he asked.

Instinctively she drew back, and then, as though regretting the impulse which had moved her to refuse his request, lifted her face and allowed him to kiss her lips. He dropped her hand then, and turned and walked beside her towards the house.

"You can't think what it means to me," he said, "to be home again--and with you. I've had you in my thoughts, dear, every day. Why did you suddenly cease writing, Esme?"

"I don't know," she answered shyly, and ran up the steps on to the stoep and entered the house through the drawing-room window.

He followed more slowly. His gaze, travelling round the pretty room, fell on his own photograph in uniform on the mantelpiece. He had sent her the photograph from England, and it pleased him to see it there.

From the photograph his eyes went to her face and rested there, smiling and confident. She stood facing the light, looking shy and a little overcome at seeing him. Although she had been expecting him she felt oddly unprepared. Everything seemed to have changed with his appearance. He loomed large and substantial in the forefront of her thoughts, a person to be reckoned with, no longer the vague figure which had hovered indistinctly amid the confusion of her mind. Deliberately she moved to the sofa and sat down, and the dog came and lay at her feet. Sinclair seated himself beside her and played with the dog's ears.

"I've a feeling," he said, without looking at her, "that all this is unreal. It's been a sort of make-believe with me that I was with you over there. I've talked with you, told you things in dumb show, often.

I've pretended that you were present and could hear and respond. Now I'm half afraid to look at you for fear you'll vanish. Absurd, isn't it?"

"Poor dear!" she said, and touched his hand gently. He looked up then and smiled at her.

"You know you haven't altered a bit since the days when we began our friends.h.i.+p amid the heights."

"Ah!" she said, and the light in her eyes faded. "I feel as though I had no connection with that girl at all. It's not only the years which alter us, George. You've been through experiences; they've changed you.

Both of us look on life more seriously now. We were boy and girl in those old days of which you speak. I don't care to look back."

"I don't wish you to look back," he said; "I want you to look forward-- with me. Esme, you know what my hope is? I've besieged you for years.

Can't you give me a different answer, dear? I've waited so long. It seems to me we are both of us rather lonely people. Why won't you end all that, and make me happy?"

Again she put out a hand, and this time she slipped it into his. He sat holding it, waiting in an att.i.tude of strained alertness for her answer.

"It is because I like you so well," she said, "that I am reluctant to marry you. I can't give you a fair return. My dear, I've loved...

There never could be any one else in my life--not in the same way."

For a moment he remained silent. He still held her hand; but he was not looking at her; he stared thoughtfully down at the carpet reflecting on what she had said. Then abruptly he released her hand and sat up.

"I'll take what you'll give," he said resolutely.

She made no answer. She could not speak just then for the emotion which gripped her. There were tears in her eyes. He leaned over her and very tenderly kissed the tears away.

Book 4--CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE.

It surprised no one, and gave considerable satisfaction to her relations, when Esme, quite soon after Sinclair's return to South Africa, was married to the man who had been her faithful lover for over eight years.

On the evening before her marriage she discussed the matter and her feelings quite frankly with Rose.

"I'm not in love with George," she said, regarding her sister earnestly; "and I'm not marrying him out of pity. I think chiefly it was a phrase he used which got me: 'We are both of us rather lonely people.' ...

That was how he put it. And suddenly while he spoke a picture of the lonely years ahead for us flashed across my imagination. It's true, you know; we are lonely; and we are both still young."

"Yes," Rose agreed. "I'm glad you see it like that. I've hated to think of you alone always."

"It's a little selfish, and altogether futile, to live wholly in the past," Esme resumed after a pause. "My love for Paul is a sacred memory; but it should not prevent me from making George happy. He is satisfied to take the risk."

"George is a wise man," Rose responded; "he doesn't underrate his power to win your love. You'll grow very fond of him, Esme; he is a lovable fellow."

"I am fond of him," Esme answered. "Do you suppose I would marry him otherwise? I am bidding good-bye to the old life to-night, my dear; I am not dragging it with me into the life which begins to-morrow. I feel as though I were beginning all over again. It's a big break, you know."

"I know."

Rose's gaze travelled round the comfortable, homelike room, which from to-morrow would be deserted, and would ultimately pa.s.s to strangers.

Henceforward Esme would live in Uitenhage, where George's work was. He had furnished a house for her, and bought a car. The sight of the car, which he purposed learning to drive, had reconciled John to his aunt's second marriage. John's mother, while she gazed about her, was thinking of many things, other than motors, which might change and brighten her sister's life. There was the possibility of children. Esme had always desired children. A baby's tiny hands would speedily heal old wounds; the feel of baby lips would stifle all regrets. In Rose's opinion this marriage was altogether desirable; it closed the past completely. In a sense it seemed to her that her sister's life was only now beginning.

The curtain had rung down on the prologue, and was about to rise for the first act of the actual drama.

The Sinclairs spent two weeks in Natal after the wedding. It was Esme's idea to go to Durban for the brief holiday, which was all the leave George could obtain. Sinclair himself had no preference; any place, so long as he had Esme with him, would have seemed Eden to him. He was extravagantly happy. The wish of his heart was realised. The intervening years of bitterness and regret and jealousy were forgotten in the supreme satisfaction of possession. The woman whom he had married was his girl sweetheart, to whom he had remained faithful through long years of disappointment and hopeless longing. There had never been, never could have been, any one else for him. Now that she was his wife, he set himself to the task of teaching her to forget the man whose influence, dead even as when he had been alive, interposed between them. He was determined to win her love, all her love; the strength of his steadfast devotion insisted on a like response. She was very sweet to him, very gracious and kind in manner: time, he believed, would give him his desire. He must have patience, be content to wait.

He had waited so long to win her that this further waiting appeared a small matter compared with what he had endured. With her beside him everything seemed possible, and life was a succession of glad and perfect days.

They spent an ideal fortnight together. Neither referred to it as a honeymoon: it was just a holiday, a pleasant period of sight-seeing and excursions, of bathing and dancing and strolling together in the moonlight. Unconsciously they recovered something of the youth they had been allowing to slip past them unheeded, and realised with a sort of surprise the leaven of frivolity hidden beneath their more serious qualities.

If Esme did not find the same deep happiness which she had known in her life with Paul Hallam, she was at least care free. George was a normal healthy-minded mail, popular with his fellows, and possessed of keen powers of appreciation and enjoyment; and he succeeded, in rousing her to a new interest in things. His devotion touched her deeply. She began to realise that without being pa.s.sionately in love, it was possible to love tenderly. Her life with George promised to be a satisfying and peaceful one. She resolved that as far as it lay in her power she would make him happy.

Life is all a matter of adaptability. Given the qualities of kindness and a tolerant disposition, it is not difficult to be happy and to give happiness. In the case of large-hearted people love develops naturally; and Esme and George had known one another a long time and intimately; they were good comrades when they married; no feeling of strangeness or shyness marred the ease of their intercourse. Even when they returned and took up their residence in their new home it was all pleasantly familiar. They had chosen the house together, furnished it according to their mutual tastes: there was not a corner of the place, or a thing in it, they had not inspected together, discussed, disputed over, and finally come to agreement about.

And Regret was there to welcome them, the faithful watch-dog which had been Esme's constant companion since the day when, as a puppy, John had placed it in her arms. She stooped down to pat the dog, which bounded out of the house and down the steps to meet her, jumping up and licking her hand.

"He's a bit overwhelming in his attentions," George remarked.

He despatched the coloured boy, who stood grinning on the stoep, to a.s.sist with the baggage, and put a hand in Esme's arm and drew her into the house. Everywhere there were flowers; ma.s.ses of roses in bowls, and long sprays in taller vases of the crimson pa.s.sion-flower. Esme stood still and looked about her with pleased eyes.

"Rose has been busy here," she said. "It looks lovely, doesn't it?

George, it's a dear little house; and the garden is wonderful."