Book Three—Chapter Twenty Seven.
Esmé’s accident, and the contemporaneous and mysterious disappearance of Hallam, brought Rose in haste and at great personal inconvenience round to Cape Town. She was terribly worried about her sister, and enormously concerned at Hallam’s departure at a time when it seemed to her his presence was urgently needed.
Her concern deepened as the days passed, the weeks passed, and still there was no word from him, no news of his whereabouts. The information which the Garfields furnished on their return gave a sinister aspect to the look of things. And Esmé as she got better was continually asking for her husband. She fretted at his absence; and when ultimately she was allowed to have the letter he had left for her, though she ceased to ask for him, she fretted more than before.
The contents of the letter, which she refused to allow any one else to read, upset her greatly. It elucidated nothing of the mystery of his complete disappearance, but merely informed her that he had gone away for an indefinite time. She felt assured from her knowledge of him that he would never return until he was master of himself.
Her heart was nigh to breaking with her longing for him, and with pity, pity for the suffering which she knew he was enduring: his agony of mind must be terrible. She wanted to see him, to put her arms about him and bid him think no more of what was past. It was grievous to her to think of him alone with heart and mind heavy with sorrow and remorse. If only she could be with him she would help him to forget. The injury to herself seemed to her so small a part of the trouble; it was so entirely accidental: largely her own carelessness was responsible for her fall; if she had been on her guard it need not have happened. She believed that if she could talk to him she could make him see this. She wanted to help him, to comfort him. And she wanted him beside her, wanted his love, his presence, with a feverish urgency that burned like a fever in her veins, and left her sick with unsatisfied longing as the days dragged by without bringing him, without bringing news of him even. If he had died he could not have vanished more completely out of her life.
Her sister urged her to return with her to the Bay until she was stronger and more fitted to be alone; but Esmé preferred to remain in her own home.
“Any day he may return,” she said. “I would not like him to come back and find me gone.”
“He would understand,” Rose said sensibly. “At least he would know where to look for you.”
She did not herself believe that her brother-in-law would return. The whole affair was to her mysterious and inexplicable.
“Did you quarrel with Paul?” she asked bluntly.
Esmé lifted astonished eyes to the questioner’s face.
“Quarrel!” she repeated, aghast at the mere suggestion, and too genuinely surprised to leave any doubt as to the amicable conditions of her relations with her husband in Rose’s mind. “Paul and I never quarrelled over anything.”
“Then it’s a pity you didn’t,” Rose replied practically. “It lets off steam. You know, my dear,” she added, and passed a caressing arm round Esmé’s shoulders, “your husband possesses a very complex nature. Judged from the ordinary standpoint, it’s an outrageous thing for him to go away like this; in the circumstances it is even cruel. Don’t you think it would be good for him when he returned to find that you had gone back to your own people?—that you were not content to sit at home and wait for him? I’d show more spirit, Esmé. A man like Paul is apt to become neglectful without intending it. He should be made to think. You ought not to be alone until you are strong again.”
“I should like him to find his home open,” Esmé answered, “and a welcome waiting for him when he comes back.”
There was no doubt in her own mind that one day he would come back. She believed that he would walk in unexpectedly, quite suddenly as he had gone; and she would feel his strong arms round her, and in their shelter forget all the sorrow and perplexity of their separation. That belief buoyed her up and gave her courage to wait. She would not desert her post while he was absent working out his salvation in his own way.
Rose left her and went back to her home, and so imbued Jim with her doubts that he sought advice on the matter, and eventually instigated a search for Hallam, who was not, in his opinion, responsible for his actions.
Hallam’s disappearance seemed as complete as if he had vanished off the face of the earth. For months his whereabouts baffled all inquiries. People referred to him in the past tense as they might refer to a man who is dead. Generally it was believed that he was dead. From the point where he left the train nothing was known of his movements: no one appeared to have seen him after that; no one in the district, which consisted of a few scattered farms, had heard of or seen any stranger; if he had passed through their land he had not made his presence known. It was thought to be unlikely that he had remained in the district. Possibly he had changed his mind and taken again to the train.
This theory gained credence when later the body of a man, answering to Hallam’s description, was discovered in a lonely spot a day’s journey from the halt where he had left the train. There was nothing to show how the man had met his death, and, owing to the state of the body, recognition of the features was impossible; but the clothes were the clothes which Hallam had been wearing, and in the pockets were letters addressed to Hallam, and the watch which had been a present to him from his wife. The facts seemed to point conclusively to this being the missing man; otherwise how came he to be wearing Hallam’s clothes, and where was the owner? Had Hallam been alive he would assuredly have come forward to refute the finding at the inquest on the dead man, whose identity could only be established by his garments and the papers discovered on him.
There was no doubt in Jim Bainbridge’s mind, when he viewed the body, that it was that of Paul Hallam; and, although for a long while Esmé refused to believe that her husband was dead, the hope which she cherished of his being alive was a forlorn hope, which faded with the passing of time into a reluctant acceptance of the general belief.
It was during the period of uncertainty, when her mind still obstinately rejected the evidence of her husband’s death, that Esmé decided to give up her house in Cape Town and move to Port Elizabeth in order to be near her sister. She felt too nervous and unstrung to remain alone in a place where her only intimate friends were the Garfields; she wanted to be nearer her own people. To the infinite satisfaction of John and Mary, she took a house, with a good garden attached, in Park Drive, and brought her furniture round with the definite intention of making her home there.
Promptly with her arrival John packed his suit-case and invited himself to stay with her. He could, he informed her, be of considerable use to her in the business of settling in. John at the age of twelve was quite a man of the world. In her loneliness she was glad of his company. This young kinsman of hers was the most tactful member of her family. He never distressed her with references to his uncle; he took his disappearance as a matter of course, very much as he had taken his marriage with his aunt. These things were incidental, and a little surprising: they were episodes in the pleasant business of life. Since the loss of his uncle had brought his aunt back he was less concerned about it than he otherwise would have been.
He found it interesting to assist in moving in, to take over the direction and arrangement of everything. It needed a man to do that.
“Dad’s getting old,” he informed Esmé, when he took up his residence with her. “But you can always count on me when you want a man about.”
“That’s very nice of you, John,” she said. “You are a great help to me.”
He came to her one day in the garden, carrying a leggy retriever pup, which he thrust into her arms with an air of magnificent generosity.
“I got a dog for you,” he explained. “You must have a watch-dog, you know. George gave me the pick of his litter. When I told him I wanted it for you, he let me have his best pup.”
“Oh!” she cried quickly, and put the little beast down and stooped to pat it. “It’s sweet; but you must keep it. I won’t take your pup.”
“We’ll share it,” John returned magnanimously. “It will stay here. I expect I’ll run up most days to see it.” He fondled the puppy lovingly. “Isn’t he a beauty? He’s called Regret.”
“Regret!” she repeated slowly. “I don’t think I like that name for a dog. Let us change it, shall we?”
“I thought it a silly sort of name myself,” John replied. “But George named it. Perhaps he wouldn’t like it changed. We can cut it down to Gret.”
She bent down suddenly and kissed him, to his no small surprise. It pleased her that he showed consideration for others in his direct boyish way: she wondered whence he inherited that kindly characteristic.
John suffered the caress, but he looked embarrassed.
“I say,” he said; “that’s all right when we are alone; but don’t do it in front of the others.”
And then, in case he had hurt her feelings, he slipped an arm round her waist, and walked with her, carrying the puppy, down the garden path in the brief twilight before the darkness fell.