Marriage, like every other relationship in life, becomes with time a matter of usage. One by one the demands which the ardour of passion exacts relax imperceptibly, and love finds its level on a practical basis of mutual interests in the common daily round.
Hallam’s marriage was a reversal of the usual order, in which generally it falls to the woman to adapt herself more or less to the altered conditions. In their case the change affected him more materially than it affected Esmé: his life had become, as it were, uprooted, and the roots did not strike freely in new soil. The change was not agreeable to him; but his love for his wife was of a quality which helped him to endure with a certain dogged patience many things that formerly he would not have entertained for a moment. He suppressed his own inclinations: to a large extent he suppressed his feelings: mentally his life with her was a series of small deceptions, of pretences practised deliberately for the purpose of misleading her. He feared to disappoint her. His mind became a storehouse of reserved thoughts and inhibitions upon which he turned the key, locking its surprises against her.
In certain respects, though she was unaware of this, he was a stranger to her: one side of his nature remained hidden from her, the weaker side, which most urgently needed her loving sympathy, and which shrank from exposure and misunderstanding with a sensitiveness of which he was conscious and secretly ashamed. He was not the type of man to make an appeal even to the woman he loved. He gave more than he exacted. He gave more than she realised in her ignorance of the sacrifices he made in his attempts to bridge the abysmal gap in temperaments. For her sake he endured many things which were to him boring and annoying in the extreme. He made stupendous efforts to subdue his prejudices and adjust his life to meet the new demands. But the nature of the man remained unchanged and suffered as a result of the artificial conditions of his self-imposed obligations.
Three brief years of married happiness passed; and then Hallam began at first moderately, and always secretly to drink again.
For a time Esmé was unaware of this relapse on his part; for a further period she suspected it but could not be sure. Then the old symptoms reappeared with terrible convincingness: she saw his hands grow shaky, his whole appearance degenerate, till he looked as she had seen him first on the stoep of the hotel at the Zuurberg, older, ill, nervous and morose, with a disregard for public opinion and a growing indifference as to whether she knew or not.
Esmé’s eyes opened to the condition of things after a short visit paid to her sister, which Hallam readily agreed to her accepting but refused to accept for himself. He had no wish to see his wife’s relations; he preferred to remain at home.
She parted from him reluctantly. A feeling of anxiety gripped her at the thought of leaving him alone. It was their first separation since their marriage. But she wanted to see her sister again. Rose’s letter was reproachful; it conveyed the suggestion that the writer was hurt by her neglect. The neglect on Esmé’s side was not wilful: she had wished to have her sister to stay with her; but Hallam had always seemed so disinclined to entertain any member of her family that she had been obliged to give up the idea. But when Rose’s letter came urging her to take a trip round to the Bay, she decided that she ought to go, unless she wished for a complete estrangement between them. Hallam was quite agreeable. He booked her a passage and saw her off by the boat; but at the last moment he showed a strong disinclination to part from her, and almost persuaded her to give up the idea and return with him.
“It’s too absurd,” she said: “we are like a pair of children. Why don’t you come with me?”
“No,” he said. “I’ll wait at home for you. Don’t stay longer than you need.”
She watched him descend to the quay, and, leaning on the rail, looking down at him, the first intimation that things were not quite as they should be dawned on her, and filled her with a sense of uneasiness which grew with every hour of her separation from him.