The Stronger Influence Part 31

They talked late into the night, sitting opposite to one another, with a small table between them on which Rose had placed two cups of coffee, before she left them alone together, and went softly upstairs to take a look at the baby, asleep in its improvised cot.

The little house was overcrowded that night, so that John was forced to sling a hammock on the balcony and sleep out in the open air. It was also a very quiet house; a house in which every one walked softly and spoke in whispers and went about with concerned and anxious faces. The master of the house stayed late at his club, and slipped in quietly on his return and crept past the sitting-room door and went softly upstairs to bed.

And the man and the woman within the room talked on fragmentally, heedless of everything beyond the confines of those four walls which gave privacy to their interview, to the man's grief, and the woman's unutterable sympathy with his sorrow.

George Sinclair sat forward in his seat, with his hands dropped between his knees, staring before him with blurred unseeing eyes. Occasionally he beat the knuckles of one clenched hand softly with the palm of the other, with an action pitiful to watch, suggesting, as it did, intense emotion hardly repressed. He did not say much. The situation had gone beyond words. He sat there, tense and quiet, trying to grasp the fact that she was not his wife, never had been his wife, that their married life had been a sham. And now he had to give way. There was no course left to him but to pa.s.s out of her life altogether. And he loved her, wors.h.i.+pped her. Life without her would be entirely blank. He could not realise living without her. To know that she was in the world somewhere and that he must not see her, speak to her, touch her ever again after to-day...

The thought was torture. It was also fantastically unreal. He felt like a man in a dream, faced by an absurdly impossible situation, which was nevertheless distressing and horrible, which he believed would fade if he could only wake. But he could not wake; and the dream became more real, more terribly convincing with every pa.s.sing moment.

Why, in the name of reason, had he not been shot in France and thus saved this refinement of torture? It would have spared Esme unnecessary suffering also. It seemed monstrous that through his love for her he should hurt her, that by their marriage they should have all unconsciously injured one another grievously. Wherever she might be, however happy she was in her love for Paul and for her child, always there must linger in her mind a regret when she thought of him alone with his memories of his brief happiness and his enduring sorrow.

"Don't reproach yourself," he said, once, looking up in response to something she said in self-condemnation, and meeting her saddened eyes fully. "The trouble is none of your making. I don't see that you are to blame anyway. I worried you into it. You know,"--he leaned towards her and took hold of her hands where they lay along the table,--"I can't regret our marriage, Esme. It's been a wonderful time. It's something to remember when--when I've nothing else left of you. If it wasn't that I know you love Paul better than ever you loved me, I'd not give you up.

But the law and your happiness are both on one side. I'm out of the picture altogether."

She made no reply. She felt that it would not be kindness to urge on him then how much she cared for him. She loved him, not as she loved Paul, but with a strong and tender affection that would keep his memory warm and vivid in her thoughts always.

"I shall never forget you--the sweetness and the dearness of you," he added. "It's a big blow, Esme, to be forced apart now. Dear, I don't know how I'll stand it... No matter; we won't think of that part of it.

One gets used to most things, I imagine."

He was silent again for a while. He had released her hands and returned to his former att.i.tude, and to his action of beating one hand upon the other. Esme watched him, biting her lip to stop its trembling, and with difficulty holding back her tears. What could she do, what could she say, in face of this misery which she was powerless to avert?

Presently she rose from her seat, and went to him, and kneeled on the carpet beside him, and put her hands over his hands to quiet their painful movement.

"George," she said softly, "it stabs me to the heart to see you grieve so. What can I say? You've been so good to me. I love you for your goodness. I'll remember you with grat.i.tude every day--every hour of every day, so long as I live. My dear boy! my dear boy! I can't bear it when you look so sad."

She was sobbing now, sobbing and choking with emotion. He took her face between his hands and smiled at her, with a smile that was infinitely sadder than tears, and bent forward and kissed her gently.

"Poor, weary little woman!" he said. "That white face, with its tired eyes, ought to be on the pillow. Come upstairs, and let me take a look at the baby before I go."

He helped her on to her feet; and, hand in hand, softly and in silence, they went upstairs and stood side by side looking down on the unconscious beauty of their sleeping child.

"She forms a link," he said. "When her blue eyes look into your eyes, you'll remember."

He bent down and laid his hand over the baby hands and kissed the soft cheek.

"I'll miss her," he said; and straightened himself and turned away from the cot abruptly.

Esme followed him to the door.

"No; don't come down. We'll part here. I can let myself out."

He took her by the shoulders and held her a little way off, looking at her long and earnestly as though he wished to impress her features on his memory for ever.

"Some time in the far off future we may meet again," he said. "G.o.d knows. Anyhow, you will live always in my heart. Good-bye, and G.o.d bless you."

His hands slipped to the back of her shoulders, drew her to him, held her. She lifted her face to his; and in the dimly lit room where the baby slept, and where the man was to part from both wife and child, they clung together and kissed for the last time, not as lovers, but solemnly and tenderly, as dear friends embrace, knowing they may never meet again. Then the man went swiftly down the stairs and let himself quietly out of the house.

Book 4--CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT.

Sleep was long in coming to Esme that night.

She lay in the little bed in the room where, as a girl, she had slept soundly in the untroubled days before love had entered into her life, lay wide-eyed in the hot stillness, with the heavy scent of the oleander stealing into the room, perfuming the night, filling the little garden and the surrounding air with its sweetness, bringing back with its familiar fragrance a rush of memories, shy sweet memories of the days when Paul was her lover and she slept with his letters beneath her pillow and sometimes dreamed of him.

So much had happened since those care-free days to change her, to alter all her views of life, that the girl who had slept there before seemed almost a stranger to her. One quality they shared in common; there was one flaming harmony across their sky amid the wind-swept clouds of discontent and pa.s.sing griefs and early intolerances, love. The girl had lain there and dreamed of love, and felt love aglow in her heart; the woman lay there with heart and brain filled with love--compa.s.sionate love, deep and tender and protective in quality--for her husband, for the man who loved her as a husband, and for the small life which G.o.d had given her to complete her world.

These three lives, so intimately and closely a.s.sociated with her own, a.s.serted each its separate claim. Never could she forget, or cease to think kindly and with grateful heart, of the man who was the father of her child. She would love the child more tenderly through her undying affection for George Sinclair. The child forged a link, as he had said, between them for all time.

But above and beyond everything, like a sun set in the sky amid the lesser luminaries, shone her love for Paul Hallam; a great white flame of love that made the crown and glory of her life.

As she thought of Paul, of his struggle and his suffering, her tears fell freely. His claim was stronger than the other claims, his need of her the greater.

With the dawn her mind became more tranquil, less feverishly alert; the curtain of formless thoughts, of futile striving to understand, hung away from her weary brain; and sleep came to her, calm and peaceful sleep, blotting out the sorrows and the joys which go to the making of every life.