Book Four—Chapter Thirty.
Time passed, and the Sinclair menage increased its numbers by one. A baby girl was born to Esmé, and was christened, despite its father’s protests, Georgina.
The baby ruled the household, and tyrannised over its parents, and made slaves of its godparents, who were amazingly interested in this small cousin of theirs. Mary, a pretty girl of nineteen, with all her sex’s partiality for babies, worshipped at the shrine of the new arrival; John, with masculine mistrust of humanity in miniature, regarded the infant doubtfully, until, with its further development, it captivated him with its smile. From the moment when the baby first smiled at him, John lost his awe of it. He found it infinitely more amusing than any puppy. He carried it about the garden, bundled under one arm like a parcel, to its intense gratification. It was a good-tempered mite, and seldom cried.
The coming of her baby brought complete happiness to Esmé. It entirely changed the current of her thoughts, and drew her closer in love and sympathy to George, cementing their union with the strongest bond which married life can forge. Her love for George, as the father of her child, became a fine and tender emotion. She loved him in relation to the child. The great desire of her life was granted. She had her baby: life could give her no greater happiness.
Sinclair took very kindly to the parental rôle. Young things appealed to him; and he was immensely proud of his daughter, whose coming had completed the home circle, had indeed filled the home and banished for ever the quiet of former days. He never tired of watching Esmé with the child. She suggested the incarnate picture of motherhood, with the brooding look of love and contentment in her eyes.
The gap was filled; and the old life with Paul slipped further into the background of her thoughts.
And in England a man, newly released from a German prison camp, ill, half-starved, with nerves racked and shaken, a physical wreck, was thinking of his wife in Africa, and wondering how life had gone with her in the years since he had left her because he had felt himself to be unfit to breathe the same air with her.
Had she grieved for him, he wondered? Or had she felt contempt for his weakness, blamed him for a coward, for leaving her secretly like a criminal? The years since he had left his home were so many that it was more than possible she believed him to be dead. Several times since he was made a prisoner, dining the early days of war, he had written to her; but, receiving no replies to his communications, he concluded that these, for some obscure reason of his captors, were never sent. Many men, like himself, had been similarly cut off from all communication with their friends. He had considered the question of writing after his release; but decided against it; he would wait until he saw her. His return would prove a shock in any case. He preferred to reserve explanations until he could offer them in person and comfort her for the sorrow of their years of separation.
Not once did it ever enter Paul Hallam’s thoughts that his wife, even though she might believe him to be dead—which he considered likely—would have married again. It simply did not occur to him.