Book Four—Chapter Thirty Four.
As Hallam looked down on the white face, with the eyes closed, and the dark lashes resting on the colourless cheeks, there came back very vividly to his memory a picture of his wife lying senseless at the foot of the stairs, and the horror which had gripped his heart at the sight of her lying thus, the remorse and the self-accusation which had all but unhinged his reason. In recalling these painful memories he felt his heart softening towards her; the jealousy which had embittered his thoughts of her yielded to the more generous instincts of love and a pitiful tenderness, which desired only to shield her from the distress and embarrassment of her position.
Fate had resolved the point as to whether she should know of his return; the responsibility of decision had been lifted from his shoulders. At least his presence had been the means of saving her from a dreadful and violent death. It was horrible to contemplate what might have happened had he not been on the spot.
Deliberately he moved away from the door and approached the unconscious figure lying on the pile of evil-smelling hides. For a while he remained standing, looking down on the quiet form; then he took a seat on the hides and sat still and watched for a sign of returning consciousness. As soon as she was equal to walking he meant to take her to Jim Bainbridge’s office. He was not satisfied of their safety while they remained where they were.
Esmé recovered from her faint to find him seated beside her, watching her with those keen eyes which seemed to search her soul. She lay still for a while, staring back at him, too bewildered to realise at once where she was and what had happened. Then abruptly memory came sweeping back in a confusing rush, and the events immediately preceding her swoon crowded into her mind. She sat up; and the man and the woman looked steadily at one another.
“Paul!” she whispered.
“Esmé!”
Her eyes filled with tears.
“Oh, my dear! Oh, my dear!” she wailed.
She broke down and cried uncontrollably. He made no move to comfort her, or to attempt explanations; he let her cry; tears were more often a relief than otherwise. And there was nothing he could find to say. There was nothing, it seemed to him, to be said. Matters had reached a deadlock. Here they were, husband and wife, together after long years of separation; and, dividing them more effectually than the years, was the fact of Esmé’s second marriage and the existence of her child.
Presently she looked up at him through her tears with eyes that were infinitely sad, that held, too, in their look an expression of yearning tenderness for this man, whom she had loved in the past, whom she still loved better than any one in the world. The sight of him brought back so many memories of the happiness which their great love for one another had put into their lives. Why had she forgotten? The memory of the beauty of their love should have satisfied her. What had she done by forgetting so soon?
“They told me you were dead,” she said.
“I know.”
“At first I wouldn’t believe it. But you sent no word, and the years passed... Oh, my dear! Oh, my dear! Why did you leave me like that?—without a word or a sign from you all these years?”
“I will explain later,” he answered, speaking as calmly as his emotion permitted. “For the present you must just believe that it wasn’t altogether my fault. I was ill for a long time after I left home. It was touch and go. If there is a purpose which governs our destinies, I suppose there was some reason why I should live. Anyhow I pulled through with all the odds against me. And again, when men were dying all about me, my life was preserved—I know not why, nor for what. I have no place in the world. I am just so much dust encumbering the earth. My return is only a distress to you. I come back to find you gone from me.”
She hid her face in her hands and wept afresh. Gone from him! That was how he saw it. She had not been faithful to his memory even.
“Tell me about yourself,” she pleaded. “I want you to fill in the blank. I want to know where you’ve been—all about everything. I don’t understand. Tell me.”
“Not now—nor here,” he said, rising. “It’s a long story; and we should be moving out of this. Can you walk as far as Jim’s office? I think we should be safer there.”
As though reminded by his caution of the disturbance in the streets, which the sight of him had driven temporarily from her thoughts, she stood up and remained in an attentive attitude, listening to the din, which penetrated to their quiet shelter with horrible distinctness. Men were out there a few yards away, fighting and being injured, killed perhaps, as she might have been but for Paul. She lifted frightened eyes to his face.
“What is it?” she asked. “What is happening?”
“It’s a riot,” he answered. “The gaol will be overfull as a result of this noisy disturbance. I hope some of the brutes will get shot.”
“You saved my life, Paul,” she said, looking at him gravely.
He made no answer to that. He went to the door and unfastened it and looked out into the street. With the opening of the door the tumult seemed to swell in volume, but the street itself was quiet; there was no one within sight. He turned to her swiftly and took hold of her arm and led her outside.
“There is nothing to be nervous about,” he said. “We shan’t meet a soul. I came this way just before I saw you.”
None the less, he carried his revolver in his hand, and hurried her up the street, keeping a sharp look-out against surprise, until he got her safely to Bainbridge’s office. The room when they entered it was empty as when he had left it, and showed no sign of its owner having been there.
Esmé sat down, white and shaken, and leaned back in her chair without speaking. A clerk came to the door and inquired whether he could do anything. Her appearance, hatless and dishevelled and white, had struck him when she entered. She asked for water; and he went away to fetch it. Hallam took the glass from him when he returned with it and carried it to her himself.
“Mrs Sinclair isn’t hurt, I hope?” the clerk asked.
“No,” Hallam answered curtly; and the clerk withdrew.
At the sound of her name, Esmé’s eyes sought Hallam’s face. She saw it harden, saw the lips compress themselves, as he turned with the glass in his hand and approached her chair. She took the glass from him with a word of thanks, and drank the contents slowly, while he paced the carpet with long, uneasy strides, backwards and forwards, before the open window.
“Paul,” she asked suddenly, “have you seen Jim?”
“I saw him yesterday,” he answered, without pausing in his walk.
“Yesterday!” she echoed, her thoughts reverting to the dinner party, and to the curious preoccupation of her brother-in-law’s manner. Jim had known yesterday that Paul was alive; and he had said nothing.
“He told you—about me?” she said.
“Yes—everything that matters.”
She put the glass down on the desk and stood up and confronted him.
“What am I to do?” she wailed. “Oh! what am I to do?”
“That,” he answered with surprising quietness, “is a question which no one can resolve but yourself. It is for you to decide.”
“But I don’t know what to do,” she returned distressfully. “I—Oh, dear heaven! what a terrible position to be placed in!”
She wrung her hands and turned away from him and stood leaning against the frame of the window, where the warm fresh air poured in on her, and the distant sounds of the din in the streets came to her ears like something far off, something altogether outside her own concerns. The horror of her encounter with the Kaffir was submerged, almost forgotten, in the bewilderment of Paul’s return. Paul knew of her second marriage—which was no marriage. He must know, since he had spoken with Jim, of her child. The child’s future welfare was her chief concern. She resented the injury done to it as a deliberate wrong wrought through the agency of this man by his long absence, his inexplicable silence. She felt bitter when she thought of it.
“Why did you leave me in ignorance of your whereabouts?” she asked. “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 assailed 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 anticipated 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 circumstance which create an aftermath of deplorable consequences. We are the victims of circumstance. 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.