"I don't know how to tell you," he added. "But the thing has got to be
faced. Your body was found, and identified by your brother-in-law.
You've been dead these many years. And your wife--"
"Yes?" Hallam said, in a tone of deadly quiet.
"Your wife married again, and is living in Uitenhage."
Book 4--CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE.
Hallam recoiled from the news of Esme's marriage as a man might recoil
from the effects of a blow. The thing staggered him. His first thought
was to disappear again, to walk away from Huntley's office, and turn his
back for ever on the country which was home to him no longer and held no
place for him. He felt dazed with grief and anger. The thought of Esme
as the wife of another man was intolerable. He could not reconcile it
with his knowledge of her that she should seek consolation elsewhere.
It was like some hideous nightmare, some terrible hoax, that was being
practised on him for the purpose of torturing him.
He could not determine how to act in the circumstances; he could not
think; his mind was blank with despair. And then jealousy awoke; his
thoughts gained stimulus, and worked in a new direction along fines that
were fiercely personal and possessive in outlook. After all, she was
his wife. This man had no claim on her; she belonged to him. He was
not going to allow any one to hold what was lawfully his.
This sense of urgency to resume possession spurred him to a fever of
aggressive activity, in which mood, and with the settled purpose of
interviewing his brother-in-law, he went round to Port Elizabeth, and
called on Jim Bainbridge at the latter's place of business as soon as he
arrived.
To say that Jim Bainbridge was amazed at the sight of him, were to
express his emotions as inadequately as it would be to describe a
violent explosion as disquieting to the unfortunate persons within the
affected area: the effect on him was rather similar to the effects of an
explosion; he was literally bowled over on beholding a dead man returned
to the world of the living. Had he been given to the cult of the
supernatural he would have imagined that he saw Paul Hallam's ghost,
when Hallam walked into his office. But he did not believe in ghosts;
and there was something uncomfortably lifelike in the hostile gleam of
Hallam's eyes, as he turned from shutting the door and regarded the man
seated in his swivel-chair, with jaw dropped, and with protruding eyes
which stared back at him stupidly.
"Oh hell!" muttered Jim Bainbridge, and collapsed in his seat in a
crumpled heap.
Hallam advanced deliberately, and seated himself opposite his
dumbfounded brother-in-law.
"I knew I was bound to give you an unpleasant surprise," he said, "so I
didn't make an appointment. I've come for news of my wife."
Bainbridge's jaw dropped lower in his increasing consternation. The
man's florid countenance had turned the colour of putty.
"Your--Oh lord!"