Book Four—Chapter Twenty Nine.
It surprised no one, and gave considerable satisfaction to her relations, when Esmé, 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,” Esmé 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, Esmé; he is a lovable fellow.”
“I am fond of him,” Esmé 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 pass to strangers. Henceforward Esmé 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. Esmé 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 Esmé’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 Esmé 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 Esmé 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 passionately 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 Esmé 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 Esmé’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 assist with the baggage, and put a hand in Esmé’s arm and drew her into the house. Everywhere there were flowers; masses of roses in bowls, and long sprays in taller vases of the crimson passion-flower. Esmé 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.”
She stood by the window, looking out on the cool green of grass, on the blaze of colour from the flower borders, on neatly gravelled paths. Here, too, there were roses; the green of the lawn was patterned gaily with their petals which the soft, warm wind had scattered wide and blown into little heaps and again distributed these in a pleasing blending of colour; the path was covered with them, sweet-scented, and newly scattered by the breeze.
“It looks festive,” she remarked.
“It looks as if the boy had better get to work with a broom,” George replied.
“Prosaic person?” she said, laughing. And added: “Let them stay. It’s a sweet disorder, anyhow.”
He stooped to kiss her.
“You are a sweet woman,” he said, and put his arm about her, and stood looking with her out upon the small but pretty garden of their home.
Pride of ownership filled the man’s brain, flooded his heart with genial warmth, even as the sunlight which flooded the garden and shone hotly on the gaily coloured flowers in the borders. He felt that life had nothing more to offer him; his cup of happiness was full to the brim.
But to the woman, looking out on the sunlight with him, such complete satisfaction was not possible. She was content. But the sun of her happiness had passed its zenith and was on the decline.
Together they went through the house on a tour of inspection, while lunch was preparing. Each room called for comment and fresh expressions of delight. They came to their bedroom last. George sat on the side of the bed while Esmé removed her hat and gave little touches and pats to her hair, standing before the mirror and surveying her appearance critically. She discovered a tiny powder puff and dabbed her face with it. These mysteries of the toilet interested George profoundly. He disapproved of the puff.
“I can’t understand why you do that,” he said. “Your skin’s all right.”
“We do a lot of incomprehensible things,” she returned, laughing at him. “Men shave, for instance, though nature intended them to wear hair on the face.”
“That’s one up to you, old dear,” he said, and got up and seized her by the shoulders and kissed her. “It’s rather jolly to be in our own home. It was nice being away together; but this... Esmé, I feel extraordinarily happy. It seems too good to be true, too good to last. It’s great.”
“Silly old duffer!” she said, smiling back into his eager eyes. “Why should the good things be less enduring than the evil?”
“Put like that, I don’t see why they should be,” he responded. “Wise little woman! we will make our good time last for all our lives.”