“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.