Book Two—Chapter Fifteen.
It seemed to Sinclair that all the conditions that night favoured his suit. It was a perfect evening, warm and still, with a brilliant moon in a cloudless sky lighting the world with a luminous whiteness in which everything was revealed scarcely less clearly than in the daylight. It was a night for lovers, for the open air and solitude; it was not a night for dancing. Sinclair, after the first dance, which he had with Esmé, was content to remain on the outskirts of the crowd and look on at the rest. The floor was thronged with dancers. The lights, the music, the colour of the moving crowd, appealed pleasantly to the senses. He liked to watch; and every now and again he caught Esmé’s eye and won a smile from her which cheered him. She appeared more than usually sweet and kind that night, he thought.
The supper dance gave him the right to claim her again. In the interim he had done a lot of thinking. He had his phrases turned and clear in his mind. He knew very definitely what he wanted to say; he had rehearsed it in his thoughts endless times. And he knew the right atmosphere for the deliverance of those neatly turned sentences. He wasn’t going to fling the thing at her in a crowded room with numberless people present. They would slip away together in the moonlight, and stroll along the sea wall, against which the tiny waves broke softly, running in and curling round the rocks, slapping musically against the stonework which checked their further advance. He could tell her to the accompaniment of the sea what he could not tell her in a hot and crowded place. He wanted her to himself, away from these others.
It was not a difficult matter to persuade her to go with him. With the finish of supper they left the hall together, crossed the moonlit square, passed the Customs House, and so on to the sea wall, where the quiet of the night was undisturbed; the swish of lapping water and the low murmur of the sea were the only audible sounds in the surrounding stillness.
He sat down beside her on a seat cut into the wall, and remained very still, holding her hand and looking away to where the ships rode at anchor far out on the silver sea. All the things which he had meant to say to her, all his carefully planned sentences, eluded him; he felt intensely, horribly nervous as he sat there in the growing silence, holding her hand and looking out across the sea.
The girl sat and looked at the water also and forgot the man beside her. Her thoughts were away from her present surroundings. She was thinking of a sentence in one of Hallam’s letters, while she sat silent in the moonlight and saw the surface of the sea, as he had seen it from his window while he wrote his letter to her, splashed with silver, broken up and spread over it, a running liquid fire. It was here just as he had described it—the same sea, the same moon,—with the waste of waters intervening, dividing them in everything but thought. Sinclair had made a mistake in taking her down to the sea.
“Esmé!” he said presently, breaking the dragging silence, and pressing her hand warmly in his strong grasp. “Esmé!”
She turned her face to his, wholly unaware of the emotional stress under which he laboured, but conscious of a quality in his voice which rendered it unfamiliar. She saw his face close to hers, strained and white in the moonlight, heard his breathing, hard and deep, like the breathing of a man after violent exercise, and felt a faint surprise. Dimly she began to realise that something unusual was happening; a look of apprehension grew in her eyes.
He groped about after the sentences he had so carefully prepared, but his mind was a blank. He could think of nothing effective to say; and all the while her eyes, puzzled and questioning, were on his face.
“I love you,” he mumbled presently, and took heart of grace when the words were out and pulled her swiftly to him and kissed her. “Dear, I love you with all my soul. I want to marry you.”
Very gently she freed herself from his hold, and drew back, and sat scrutinising him with ever growing distress. She liked him so well. She hated having to hurt him; but it had never occurred to her that he was in love with her. His affection had seemed so frankly friendly hitherto.
“George, I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t know. I don’t feel towards you like that.”
“Perhaps not now. But you will,” he suggested. “I’ve been a little abrupt. I ought to have waited.”
“It wouldn’t have made any difference,” she said.
“Are you sure?”
“Quite sure. I’m very fond of you; but that’s all,” she added convincingly.
“Well, look here! I’m not taking ‘No’ right off like that. I’m going to wait—”
“No,” she interrupted quickly. “You mustn’t think that. I shan’t change.”
His face fell.
“You don’t mean that there is some one else?” he asked.
For a moment or two she did not answer; then she nodded, without speaking, and put out a hand and touched his arm.
“My dear,” she said, “don’t ask me questions. It is quite possible that I shall never marry the man I love, but I cannot marry any one else. I’m sorry. I didn’t think you cared for me like that. I wish you didn’t. You must put me out of your thoughts.”
He smiled faintly.
“That’s not easily done,” he replied. “Besides, I don’t want to. Like you, I may never marry the girl I love, but at least I cannot love any one else. You are the one and only girl for me. I know. I’m not a moonstruck boy. You’ll let me keep your friendship, won’t you? I won’t take advantage of it.”
Tears came into her eyes. She had never liked him so much as in that moment. The idea of giving up his friendship had not occurred to her until he begged the privilege of retaining it. She did not want to give it up. It was one of the pleasant things in her life.
“I want to continue being friends,” she said. “I’ve grown to look on you as a chum. That’s how I’ve always thought of you. I want to be friends—and to put this other thing out of my thoughts.”
“Yes,” he agreed. “We’ll wipe that out. I made a mistake. You know, dear,”—he felt for her hand and found it and held it tightly,—“I think you are the sweetest girl in the world. I’ll do anything for you. For the present I’m feeling a bit sore, and just for a little while will keep in the background. When I turn up again I’ll be over the worst of it, and you needn’t fear that I shall make a fool of myself. We’ll take things up where we dropped them.”
His defeat staggered Sinclair. He had been so sure that his luck was in, so confident of the girl’s affection, and unsuspicious of a possible rival. He knew of no one with whom she was on terms of particular intimacy. It never entered his thoughts to associate Hallam with her in any way. He had not seen the development of that acquaintance. He would have disapproved if he had. His naturally healthy mind held only contempt for such weakness as Hallam’s. He had summed up the man briefly as a waster, and so disposed of him. That the man he despised would one day have to be reckoned with, that he stood already in his life, a menace to his happiness, an adverse influence, he was wholly unaware. It was as well for his peace of mind that he remained in ignorance for long after she had refused him of his rival’s identity. A rival who did not materialise left room for a tiny gleam of hope in his heart.
“We’d better get back,” he said, and rose from the seat. The beauty of the night held no longer any attraction for him.
“I want to go home,” she said, rising also. “I’m tired, and—I want to go home.”
He took her back to the hall and waited while she fetched her cloak. She came out after a brief while, white faced and pensive, with a look in her eyes as though she had been crying and had dashed the tears hastily away.
He drew her hand through his arm and went with her out into the warm, still night, along the deserted streets, up White’s Road, traversing the intervening byways to her own road almost in silence. At her door he said good-night, and was turning away when she stopped him. Her heart ached with pity for the sadness in his eyes.
“George, I’m sorry,” she whispered, and tugged at his sleeve.
“That’s all right,” he answered, breaking away from her.
His voice sounded husky and a little gruff; he could not trust himself to say more. She drew back, feeling troubled and inadequate, and stood on the doorstep looking after him wistfully while he hurried down the road in the moonlight, turned a corner and went out of her sight. She had an impulse to run after him: she felt that she must say something, do something, anything, to drive the pain and disappointment from his look; it hurt her to let him go like that. But on reflection she knew that she could do nothing; she must let him go.
She opened the door and went dejectedly inside and shut it quickly and turned the key in the lock. Softly she crept upstairs to her room. The blind was not drawn and the moonlight streamed in through the open window and made any other illumination unnecessary.
She seated herself on the side of the bed and stared out at the black shadow of the tree with its clusters of blossoms showing palely in the white light. The household she supposed was asleep; everything was very still and quiet. In the distance a dog barked incessantly: there was no other sound to disturb the quiet of the night.
And then suddenly her door opened softly, and Rose came in in her nightdress, and stood looking in sleepy surprise at the motionless figure seated on the bed. She advanced to the bed and sat down beside the girl and started a whispered conversation.
“I heard you come in,” she said. “Jim’s asleep. Have you had a good time? Why don’t you get to bed?”
“I forgot,” Esmé said, and began to unfasten her dress. Rose became actively helpful.
“You are tired,” she said. “What’s the matter, dear?” She took the girl’s face between her hands and scrutinised it closely. “Esmé, what has happened? I wish you’d confide in me more.”
The gentle reproach in her sister’s voice, acting on her overwrought nerves, caused the tears, so near the surface, to overflow. She dropped her face on to Rose’s shoulder and wept softly.
“Did George say anything to you to-night?” Rose asked, feeling increasingly surprised. She had not wept when Jim proposed to her. She remembered quite vividly that she had felt elated and very excited. She had wanted to speak of it, to tell people. She could not fathom Esmé’s mood.
“Is that the trouble, little goose?” she asked. “I knew—we all knew—he meant to propose.”
Whereupon Esmé lifted her face and turned her tear-wet eyes on the speaker in wide amaze.
“You knew!” she said. “Well, I didn’t. I wish I had known. I thought he was just a pal.”
“A pal makes a good husband,” Rose said thoughtfully, with the first glimmer of doubt in her mind as to what answer her sister had returned. “It’s all right, isn’t it?”
“It’s all wrong,” Esmé answered ruefully, and dabbed at her eyes,—“just as wrong as it can be. He’s hurt; and I hate hurting him. I like him so well. But I don’t love him, Rose.”
“You don’t mean that you refused him?”
“Of course I mean that. I couldn’t marry George.”
“Why not?” Rose inquired blankly. When no response came to her question, she caught her sister’s arm and turned her towards her and looked her steadily in the eyes.
“Tell me,” she said quietly, “what there is between you and Paul Hallam? You’ve changed since you knew him. You are more reserved, and you’ve lost your high spirits. Who is Paul Hallam? And why does he write to you? What is he to you?”
“He is just a friend,” Esmé answered.
“You love him,” Rose said. “Do you think I am so dense as not to have discovered that? You can trust me. I’ve not let Jim guess that I know who your correspondent is. I’ve kept your counsel all the time; it’s your affair. But I think you might tell me.”
Esmé made a gesture that was at once a protest and an appeal. She sat straighter, with her hands locked together in her lap, and stared out at the moonlight unseeingly.
“I’d tell you if there was anything to tell,” she said. “There isn’t. There has never been any talk of love between us ever. We are just good friends.”
“But you love him?” Rose persisted.
“Yes, I love him with all my heart. If I never see him again I will go on loving him for the rest of my life.”
In face of this Rose found nothing to say. The situation had got beyond her. She felt increasingly curious. She wanted to know more about this man; but Esmé’s manner baffled her. It was very evident that the subject was distressing to the girl. There was something behind all this of which she was in ignorance and which she felt she ought to be told. She put one or two leading questions, but all she elicited was the fact that Hallam was a man of independent means and no fixed abode. That struck Rose as significant. If no duties engrossed him it was odd that he should be satisfied to communicate with the girl only by post. If he were sufficiently interested in her to keep up a correspondence, why did he never come to see her?
“I would advise you to put Paul Hallam out of your thoughts,” she said, as an outcome of these reflections.
Then she kissed the girl, and got off the bed, and stood hesitating between the bed and the door, sleepy, yet reluctant to leave her sister alone.
“I hoped when I came in you would have a different story to tell me,” she added. “Don’t waste your life, thinking of a man who doesn’t care enough to want to come and see you. George is honest, and he loves you. It’s a pity to throw away a really good chance of happiness.”
“To marry a man when you love another would not bring happiness,” Esmé said, facing her sister in the moonlight, half undressed, and with her hair falling about her shoulders and shading her face. “And it wouldn’t be fair to George.”
“I expect George, like most people, would prefer half a loaf to no bread,” Rose answered. She opened the door. “Good-night, dear,” she said softly. “You go to sleep, and don’t bother your head about any of them. Men aren’t worth half the tears women waste on them.”
She returned to her own room, and stood for a moment or so looking thoughtfully at the sleeping face of her husband, as he lay on his back with arms spread wide across the bed, and a faint smile touched her lips.
“It is all beauty and romance till we marry you,” she mused. “Then we discover that our demi-gods are just mere men. I wonder whether I would have wept over you in the old days? ... I didn’t anyway.”
With which she got into bed and fell asleep.
But Esmé did not sleep. She lay awake in the hot stuffy darkness of her little room, which the kitchen stove abetted the sun in keeping hot by day, while the warm slates of the too adjacent roof prevented any appreciable decrease in temperature during the night—lay awake with her mind filled with the thought of one man, and her imagination afire with the memory of splashes of moonlight on a heaving mass of water that stretched away endlessly and laved the moonlit, rock-strewn beach of a little bay along the coast. Then, with the dawn, she fell asleep and dreamed of the moonlight and of Paul Hallam.