The Stronger Influence
by F. E. Mills Young · English · Gutenberg #38176 · 391,833 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: The Stronger Influence
Author: F. E. Mills Young
Release date: November 30, 2011 [eBook #38176]
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/38176
Credits: Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE STRONGER INFLUENCE ***
Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England
The Stronger Influence
By F.E. Mills Young
Published by George H. Doran Company, New York.
This edition dated 1922.
The Stronger Influence, by F.E. Mills Young.
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
THE STRONGER INFLUENCE, BY F.E. MILLS YOUNG.
Book 1--CHAPTER ONE.
Among the passengers which the train disgorged on to the little platform
at Coerney, the station from which visitors to the Zuurberg proceeded on
their journey up the steep mountain road by cart, were an elderly woman
and her husband; a middle-aged man, who was acquainted but not otherwise
connected with them; and a young girl, who was neither connected nor
acquainted with any of her fellow-travellers, and who, after the first
cursory glance towards them, evinced no further curiosity in their
movements, but walked alone across the sunlit space to where in the
shade of the trees the cart waited until such time as it should please
the driver to bring up his horses and inspan them in preparation for the
long drive up the mountain.
The girl's three fellow-travellers had gone in quest of refreshment; the
driver was invisible; an atmosphere of languorous repose brooded over
the place, which, with the departure of the train, seemed utterly
deserted, given over to the silences and the hot golden light of the
afternoon sun.
The girl approached the cart with no thought of taking her seat therein:
she preferred to walk and stretch her cramped limbs; and it was obvious
that the cart would not start for some while. But the cart stood in the
shade, and the day was hot: the girl sought the shadows instinctively
and nibbled chocolate while she scrolled about under the trees, and
awaited developments.
She had been ill, and was taking a holiday to hasten the period of
convalescence so that she would be ready to resume her duties as a
teacher of music when the vacation ended. The air of the Zuurberg was
more bracing than that of the Bay. She was looking forward to the
change with pleasurable anticipation; looking for adventures, as girls
in the early twenties do look for the development of unusual and
exciting events. Teaching was dull work; routine is always dull; the
holiday adventure offers promise of immense distraction when one sets
forth in the holiday mood.
Esme Lester's mood, which at starting had been high with expectation,
was a little damped. The journey in the train had tired her more than
she had realised; and the appearance of her fellow-travellers--people
whom she would meet daily, be under the same roof with--was not
calculated to excite her curiosity. She wanted companionship. She
wanted youth about her--not the immature youth with which her work
brought her into daily contact, but contemporaries whose thoughts and
tastes would assimilate with her own. The nice elderly couple who had
repaired to the small hotel for refreshment, and the rather heavy
middle-aged man who had followed them with the same purpose in view, did
not answer her requirement in any sense. If this was all the
companionship her holiday promised she would find it dull.
At the end of half an hour, during which time Esme had tired of
wandering and had seated herself on the pole of the cart, she saw her
fellow-travellers emerge from the hotel and come towards her, and in the
distance the driver appeared leading two of his horses, followed by a
native with the second pair.
Esme stood up and showed a renewed interest in the proceedings. The
passengers looked on while the natives inspanned the lean reluctant
team, the leader of which, despite a sorry appearance, showed signs of
temper, which caused the elderly woman passenger considerable alarm.
She took her seat in the back between her husband and Esme; and when,
after the start, the leader kicked over the traces, the business of
persuading her to remain in her seat occupied all the husband's
attention. Esme considered his patience wonderful. The driver handed
the reins to the middle-aged man and got down; and after much shouting
and jerking and unbuckling and rebuckling matters were righted and the
journey resumed. But the old lady was nervous and apprehensive that the
team would bolt. The mountain road was sufficiently steep to have
conveyed to any reasonable intelligence the improbability of this
mischance; but fear lends wings to reason, and the old lady refused to
be comforted.
Panting and sweating the horses laboured up the steep incline at a pace
that was steady enough to reassure any one; but the further they
proceeded along the winding track the deeper yawned the precipice at the
side of the road: it fell away sheer in places till it lost itself in
the black-green depths of the gorge. The old lady was so positive that
the horses would plunge over the precipice and hurl every one to certain
death that she closed her eyes in preparation, and clung to her
husband's arm in the determination not to be separated from him when the
fatal moment arrived.
The old gentleman smiled whimsically at Esme over his wife's drooping
head. The girl, feeling that an understanding was established, returned
the smile, and then gave her attention to the scenery, which was new to
her and which, in its wild beauty, with the tangle of trees below and
the green luxuriance of the mountain road revealing ever fresh and
greater beauties the higher they climbed it, held her in silent wonder
at the surprising incongruities of this great country which is Africa; a
country of amazing contrasts, in parts a tangle of luxuriant vegetation,
in other parts sterile and savage in the stark nakedness of the land.
She had seen something of its sterility, not much; and, save for a brief
view of the Cape Peninsular, she had not seen a great deal of its beauty
either. The wild green splendour of this mountain journey she found
restful and pleasantly stimulating. The air was cooler than in the
plains. A soft wind blew furtively down from the heights and met them
as they toiled upward in the hot sunshine behind the panting team. The
horses' sides were dark and damp with sweat; foam flecked their chests
and the greasy leather of the loosened reins. But they kept doggedly
on. They were used to the journey, and the end of the journey promised
rest. The beat of their hoofs upon the road, the rumbling of the cart,
were the only sounds to disturb the stillness. No bird winged its
flight across the quivering blue; there was no song of bird from the
bush, no sign of any life, save for a number of grey monkeys which
infested the trees lower down: these were left behind as the cart
travelled upward. But down in the black-green depths of the
undergrowth, moving noiselessly and unseen, countless insects and
reptiles pursued their busy way; and the boomslaang wound its heavy
brown coils around the limbs of trees.
Esme leaned back against the hot cushions of the cart and looked about
her with quiet enjoyment. Despite fatigue and the weariness behind her
eyes caused by the hard brightness of the day, she experienced a feeling
of exhilaration. Every sense was on the alert to note and appreciate
each fresh beauty along the rugged road. The scenery became tamer as
the ascent was neared. Coarse grass and stunted bush took the place of
the massed foliage of the trees. The land at the summit was flat and
shadeless. But the air was light and wonderfully invigorating; and
patches of green showed in places where the land dipped abruptly and
lost itself in a kloof, amid a tangle of vegetation in the stony bed of
a mountain stream.
The horses took a fresh spurt when the level road was reached and
trotted briskly towards the hotel and drew up in style before the
entrance. Esme surveyed the low rambling building with interested eyes.
It was a quaint old-fashioned place, this hotel on the veld,
one-storied, with a stoep in front and a flight of low steps leading up
to it. The garden gate stood open, and a man, who was possibly the
proprietor Esme decided, waited at the gate to receive the arrivals. A
coloured boy came out to help with the luggage.
Esme alighted and walked up the garden path, conscious of the curious
gaze of a little knot of people gathered on the stoep to participate in
the great excitement of the day,--the arrival of the cart with its load
of passengers. The hotel was fairly full; there were men and women on
the stoep and several children. The girl was too shy to note any of
these people particularly; she took them in collectively at a glance and
passed on and went inside. A woman stepped forward out of the gloom of
the narrow passage, took her name and conducted her to her room.
Left alone in her room, Esme crossed to the open window and stood
looking out upon the wild bit of garden with its kei-apple hedge and the
small vley quite close to the window. The glint of the water in the
sunshine was pleasing to watch. That the water would breed mosquitoes,
and other things likely to disturb one's repose at night, did not
trouble her; she liked to see it. It stretched cool and clear as a
mirror reflecting the blue of the unclouded sky.
The scene from the window was peaceful and pleasing. The whole place
was peaceful: an atmosphere of drowsy detachment hung over everything.
One felt out of the world here, and at the same time intensely alive. A
sense of well-being and of contentment came to the girl while she knelt
before the window with her arms on the low sill, looking out upon the
unfamiliar scene. She had come to this isolated spot in search of
health; and already she felt invigorated by the fresh pure air; her mind
worked more clearly, threw off its morbid lethargy in newly kindled
interest in everything about her. The clean homelike simplicity of her
little bedroom pleased her; the view from the window pleased her; it was
expansive, uncultivated--a vast stretch of veld, green and brown in the
glow of the declining day, with the azure sky overhead remotely blue as
a sapphire is blue, a jewel lit with the yellow flame of the sun.
Book 1--CHAPTER TWO.
The dining-room at the hotel was a low, narrow room, rather dark. Its
French windows opened on to the stoep, which was creeper veiled and
shaded with the shrubs in the garden. Down the centre of the room was a
long table. A smaller room led off from the principal dining-room,
where the guests with families took their meals.
Esme, entering later than the rest, found a seat at the principal table
reserved for her. On her right was seated the old gentleman who had
been her fellow-traveller. He looked up when she took her seat and
spoke to her. She turned from answering him and took quiet observation
while she leisurely unfolded her napkin of the man who was seated on her
left.
He was a man of about twenty-eight, tall and broadly built, with however
an air of delicacy about him altogether inconsistent with his physique.
He was round-shouldered, and his hands, long and remarkably white,
suggested that their owner had never performed any hard work in his
life. His face was altogether striking, strong and fine, with clear cut
features, and keen dominating grey eyes. When Esme sat down he was
bending forward over his plate and did not once glance in her direction.
He seemed wholly unaware of her entrance, unaware of, or indifferent to
the presence of any one in the room. He confined his attention to his
food, and did not talk, or evince any interest in the talk about him.
Esme, while she looked at him, was keenly alive to the fact that he was
conscious of her presence and of her scrutiny, though he chose to ignore
both. A faint colour showed in his face and mounted to the crisp light
brown hair, which, cut very short, had a tight kink in it as though it
might curl were it allowed to grow. She liked the look of this man,
and, oddly, she was attracted rather than repelled by his taciturn and
unsociable manner. Why should a man staying at a sanatorium not remain
aloof if he wished? The fact of being under the same roof with other
people should not of itself enforce an obligation to be sociable when
one inclines towards an opposite mood. Doubtless, like herself, he had
come to the Zuurberg in quest of health. He looked as if he had been
ill. His hand, she observed when he lifted his glass, was unsteady.
She watched his hands, fascinated and puzzled. It was obvious that he
could not control their shaking, that he was aware of this shakiness and
was embarrassed by it. She felt intensely sorry for him. She also felt
surprise at his self-consciousness. She noticed that he ate very
little. He rose before the sweets, and went out by the window and
seated himself on the stoep.
Conversation brightened with his exit. The people near her seemed in
Esme's imagination to relax: the talk flowed more freely. Even the old
gentleman on her right appeared to share in the general relief: he
turned more directly towards her and entered into conversation. While
the man outside sat alone, smoking his pipe, and looking into the
shadows as the dusk drew closer to the earth.
With the finish of dinner Esme walked out on to the stoep with the
purpose of going for a stroll before bedtime. The long straight road
beyond the gate looked inviting in the evening gloom. She would have
welcomed a companion on her walk; but, save for her fellow-travellers,
she knew no one; and her fellow-travellers showed no desire for further
exercise.
When she appeared on the stoep she was aware that the man who interested
her so tremendously looked up as she passed close to him. He followed
her with his eyes as she went down the steps, down the short path to the
gate, through the gate, out on to the open road. But he did not move.
Esme was conscious of his gaze though she could not see it; she was
conscious of his interest. The certainty that she had caught his
attention even as he had arrested hers pleased her. A restrained
excitement gripped her. She laughed softly to herself as she stepped
into the shadowed road. It was good to know that she left some one
behind in whom she had provoked a faint curiosity in this place where
she was a stranger and alone. He, too, was alone. She had thought when
she passed him that he looked lonelier than any one she had ever seen or
imagined, seated amid a crowd of people, saying nothing, doing nothing;
sitting still and solitary, smoking and looking into the shadows.
What was wrong with this man, she wondered, that he should remain so
aloof from his fellows. He was not a newcomer, as she was; he had
indeed, though she did not know this, been many months at the hotel; yet
he seldom spoke to any one. The coming and going of visitors was viewed
by him with indifference. They were nothing to him, these people; he
was less than nothing to them. Occasionally some man came to the hotel
with whom he entered into conversation; but more often people came and
went and held no intercourse with him at all. They summed him up very
quickly for the most part; looked askance at him, and left him severely
alone. He did not care. It pleased him to remain undisturbed, and the
general disapproval troubled him very little. But that night a girl's
clear eyes, a girl's sweet serious face, got between him and his
egotism, got between his vision and the shadowy dusk, and mutely asked a
question of him: "What was he making of life?"
What was he making of it? What was he giving in return for the gifts
which he received? What was he doing, what had he ever done, to justify
his existence? Nothing.
The light wind carried the answer on the dusky wings of night. It beat
into his consciousness and stirred him out of his easy acquiescence in
things. He was flotsam on the sea of life--waste matter drifting
aimlessly, to be finally ejected and flung, spent and useless, on the
shore. Dust which returns to the dust, for which God in His inscrutable
reason finds some use which eludes man's understanding.
Esme Lester walked along the quiet road and thought of the man she had
left seated alone on the stoep, the man whom she believed to be ill.
And the man sat on and waited for her return and wondered about her with
an interest which equalled her interest in him. She was just a girl, a
bright, sweet, wholesome young thing, who had happened along as the
other guests at the sanatorium had happened along, and who would vanish
again as they vanished, leaving him seated there still to watch further
arrivals and departures as he had done for many weeks, as he would
probably do for many months. He had never seen any one until this girl
came who had held his attention even momentarily. She stood out from
these others, some one apart and distinctive. It was not merely that
she was pretty; many pretty women came there, but they did not interest
him. There was something vivid and arresting about her, some elusive
quality which caught his fancy, and which he could not define. He
thought she looked sympathetic.
When Esme returned an hour later he was still seated on the stoep. She
saw his figure against the lighted doorway at his back: to all
appearance he had not moved his position since she had passed him on
setting forth. But the last of the daylight had departed, and the night
was dark; there was no moon and the starlight was obscured by a mist of
thin clouds which trailed across the sky. She could not see his face
clearly. But as she stepped up to the stoep the light from the passage
illumined her features and revealed her fully to the man's gaze. He
watched her covertly from under his brows, saw the startled look in her
eyes as they caught the artificial light, their curious bewildered blink
as the warm glow fell on her face.
Her look of blank surprise amused him. It was like the look of a child
which steps abruptly into the light out of darkness and finds perplexity
in the sudden change.
She passed him and went inside; and it seemed to him that the light
glowed more dimly, that the night grew darker when she disappeared. He
rose and went into the bar and remained there, as was his nightly
custom, until the bar closed, when he went to bed.
Book 1--CHAPTER THREE.
The daylight woke Esme early. The sunbeams found their way through the
open window and flashed upon her face and startled her from sleep. She
had not drawn her blind overnight; and she lay still for a while and
looked at the golden riot without, resting comfortably, with a feeling
of lazy contentment and intense ease of mind and body. The sweet
freshness of the air poured over her in health-giving breaths. The
beauty of the day, the brilliance of the sunshine called her to go out
into it and enjoy the morning in its early freshness.
She rose and dressed and opening her window wider, put her foot over the
sill and dropped down on to the grass.
The heavy dew silvered the ground and sparkled like diamonds in the
sunlight. She felt exhilarated, surprisingly happy and glad to be
alive. No one seemed to be abroad at that hour except herself. The
hotel presented the appearance of a house in which the inmates are all
asleep. She went through the garden, past the low hedge, and out into
the road. The road, too, looked deserted. She had the world to
herself. A sense of freedom gripped her. She was not conscious of
feeling lonely; the sunshine was companionable, and the novelty of
everything held her attention and kept her interest on the alert.
The daylight disclosed all which the night had hidden from her when she
travelled the same road on the previous evening. It had appeared then a
land of shadows, of velvety dark under a purple sky; the shadows had
rolled back, and the scene revealed wide stretches of veld, with here
and there a clump of trees or low bushes to break the sameness of the
view. The veld glowed with an intensity of colour that strove with a
sort of hard defiance against the golden light of the sun. The sense of
space, of solitude, was bewildering in this vast picture of sun-drenched
open country, where no sound disturbed the silence save the muffled
tread of her own footsteps in the powdery dust of the road.
She broke into a little song as she walked briskly forward, but checked
the song almost instantly because the sound of her own voice struck
intrusively on the surrounding quiet: the note of a bird would have
sounded intrusive even here, where the silence of forgetfulness seemed
to have fallen upon the land.
A tiny breath of wind came sighing across the veld; the girl lifted her
face to meet it, and her eyes smiled. This was the cradle of the wind;
here it had its source upon the mountain. She loved the wind as she
loved the sunlight; she loved the warmth and the crudely brilliant
colour, the untempered heat of this land of eternal sunshine, of vast
spaces, and fierce and splendid life. She loved, too, the dark-skinned
people of the country; loved them for their happy dispositions and the
childlike simplicity of their natures.
Further along the road a Kaffir woman passed her with a tiny black baby
slung in a shawl, native fashion, on her back. Esme stopped to admire
the baby, and touched its soft dark skin with her finger. The native
woman and the English girl spoke in tongues incomprehensible to one
another; but the language of baby worship is universal; and the Kaffir
mother smiled appreciatively, pleased at the notice taken of her babe.
She went on her way with the light of the sun in her eyes, which met its
fierceness as the eyes of the animals meet the sun, unblinking and
without inconvenience. Esme looked after her and admired her free
graceful walk, the upright poise of her head. The people who live in
the sun show a superb indifference to its power.
With the disappearance of the native woman a sudden feeling of
loneliness came over her, stayed with her, despite the brightness of the
day and the sense of returning health which came to her in the wonderful
lightness and purity of the air. She walked a little further, to where
a curve in the road brought her to a belt of trees which threw a
pleasing shade across the path. She halted in the shade and looked
about her with inquiring gaze.
It was very beautiful here, and restful, and the air was fragrant with
the pungent scent of the mimosa blossoms. She gathered a branch of the
flowers and thrust some of them in her belt. Looking upward at the road
she had travelled she saw that the descent was greater than she had
imagined; the return would necessitate a steady climb.
She rested for a while, leaning against one of the trees, idly watching
the play of sunlight through the branches. The shadows of the trees lay
along the road in grotesque shapes. The brooding stillness of the day,
the brightness and the warmth, were soothing: but the feeling of
loneliness deepened; there was something a little awe-inspiring in the
general hush. And then, with an abruptness that startled her, a sound
struck upon her ears, a sound that was not loud but which was curiously
audible in the silence. It was the sound of footsteps crunching upon
the road. The figure of a man appeared round the bend and came on
quickly, his footstep beating in measured muffled rhythm in the dust.
He was quite close to her before he saw her; when he caught sight of her
he hesitated for a second; it looked as though he contemplated beating a
retreat. Then, coming apparently to a decision, he walked on. When he
was abreast of her he raised his hat.
Esme regarded him curiously. It was the man whose seat was next hers at
table, the man whose personality had arrested her attention, in whom she
felt unaccountably interested. He carried a stick, which he used
occasionally to walk with and more frequently to strike with at the
grass which bordered the roadside. He carried it as a man carries
something from which he derives a sense of companionship. It was all
the companionship he ever had upon his walks.
"Good-morning," the girl said in response to his mute salutation; and
added, after a barely perceptible pause: "It is glorious, the air up
here."
"Yes," he said, and halted irresolutely.
She believed that he resented, not only her speaking to him, but her
presence there. He resented neither; but he felt averse from beginning
an acquaintance which, once started, it would be impossible to draw back
from, and which he foresaw might develop into something of very deep
significance. Instinctively he feared this acquaintance. But courtesy
demanded some response from him; he made it reluctantly and in a manner
which did not encourage her to persevere.
"You are an early riser," he said. "Usually at this hour I have the day
to myself."
Again it seemed to her that he looked on her presence as an intrusion,
that he preferred to take his rambles without the thought of
encountering any one. An emotion that was a mixture of impatience and
anger seized her at his selfishness.
"There is room for both of us," she said with a touch of scorn in her
voice. "And we travel in opposite directions."
The man's features relaxed in a smile, the first she had seen cross his
face, an involuntary, whimsical smile. A gleam of understanding lit his
eye.
"Yes," he allowed briefly, and lifted his hat again, and walked on,
leaving the girl with the feeling of having suffered a snub.
She looked after him, as he went on, still hitting aimlessly at the
grass with his thick stick as he walked, until he rounded the bend and
disappeared from her view. Then, dispirited and out of humour with the
day, she left the shade of the trees and took her way upward and
returned to the hotel.
At breakfast she saw the man again. He came in late, and dropped into
his seat beside her with an air of weariness, as though he had walked
far and was tired. She did not look at him; but she felt his gaze on
her when he came behind her chair and drew his own chair back from the
table. When he sat down he glanced at her deliberately. She went on
with her breakfast and ignored his presence. Later, this struck her as
unkind and somewhat childish. But it was not possible to make amends;
the opportunity was past.
He sat, as he always sat at table, with his head bent over his plate in
complete disregard of every one. But the presence of the girl beside
him, her partly averted face, the nearness of a projecting elbow with
its white, prettily rounded arm, forced themselves on his notice, made
him intensely self-conscious. He put out a hand for the glass of milk
and soda which stood beside his plate and lifted it unsteadily. The
sight of his own shaking hand unnerved him, made him horribly and
painfully alive to this ugly physical defect. Impatiently he jerked his
arm upward; the glass tilted and the contents foamed over, ran down the
cloth and on to the girl's skirt. He fumbled awkwardly, almost dropped
the glass in his agitation, righted it clumsily and turned, napkin in
hand, his face crimson, and began to sop up the liquid.
"I'm awfully sorry," he mumbled. "I can't think how I came to do that.
I'm sorry."
Esme turned quietly and watched him while with increasing embarrassment
he timidly wiped her dress. In pity for him she put out a hand and took
the napkin from him.
"Don't trouble," she said. "It's nothing really."
"I've spoilt your dress," he said.
"Oh! no. It's a frock on friendly terms with the wash-tub. That will
be all right."
"It's kind of you to make light of it," he said. "But I'm ashamed of my
clumsiness."
She felt intensely sorry for him as he turned again to his breakfast and
resumed eating with a sort of uncomfortable shyness that was painful to
witness. His hands, she noticed, shook more than usual. He did not
attempt to lift his glass again, though it had been placed refilled
before him; he was physically incapable of making the effort. Out of
consideration for him she did not address him again, but finished her
breakfast quickly and got up silently and left the room.
She went down the passage and into her own room and changed into a clean
frock. It was her smartest dress which had been soiled. She took it
off with a sorry little smile at the pang which it cost her vanity to
have to lay it aside. But her earlier resentment against the man whose
clumsiness had caused the mishap gave place to a deep compassion when
she recalled the confused crimson of his face and the fierce yet
diffident embarrassment in his eyes. She was sorry for him without
understanding why she should feel pity for a man who made no appeal to
her sympathy. His solitary condition was the result of his deliberate
choice. When a man shuns the society of his fellows the fault lies
within himself.
But the look in his eyes continued to distress her. She resolved that
when next she encountered him she would make him talk to her.
Book 1--CHAPTER FOUR.
During the morning Esme played tennis with two girls and a man who were
staying at the hotel. The tennis court was rough, and a rope stretched
across it did service for a net. But the tennis players had brought
balls and racquets with them, and, these being good, the defects of the
ground were regarded good-naturedly as part of the fun.
The girls were about Esme's own age; the man, a little older, paid
marked attention to Miss Lester. She introduced an element of new life
into the place, and the attractions of the Zuurberg were beginning to
pall. There was nothing for a man to do, he explained as they strolled
back together towards lunch time.
"But it is pleasant," the girl said, "to do nothing when one is having a
holiday. It is very beautiful here."
He offered to show her some good walks in the neighbourhood, and put
himself very much at her disposal for the remainder of his stay. It
transpired that he was leaving at the end of the week.
"There are some beautiful spots to be enjoyed at the expense of a little
climbing," he said. "I'll show you if you care about it. There's a
kloof within walkable distance that well repays the effort. They found
the spoor of a couple of tigers there about a month ago. It's the sort
of place one can imagine wild beasts prowling about in--a tangle of
undergrowth, with the moss hanging in long green ribbons from the dead
branches of trees. The ferns growing in the water are a sight."
"It sounds exciting," Esme said. "But I'm not keenly anxious to meet
wild beasts."
"No great likelihood of that," he returned. "They are no, more keen
than you are for an encounter. I wish you would let me take you there
to-morrow. We could start after lunch. It's the coolest spot in which
to spend a hot afternoon. But you mustn't play tennis beforehand: it's
quite a good stretch. Will you come?"
Looking up to answer in the affirmative, she became aware as they
approached the stoep of the presence in his customary seat near the
entrance of the man who excited her curiosity and her sympathy in equal
degrees.
"Who is that?" she asked her companion.
He glanced towards the object of her inquiry; and instantly on
perceiving the expression in his eyes she regretted having asked the
question.
"That! Oh! that's Hallam--an awful rotter. Drinks like a fish. I've
not seen him drunk, but I believe he never goes to bed sober."
"I wish you hadn't told me that," she said in a voice that was blank
with disappointment.
He stared at her in surprise and changed colour slightly as a man might
do who is conscious of being rebuked.
"Perhaps I should have left you to discover it for yourself," he
replied. "But it's common knowledge. He doesn't trouble to conceal the
weakness. The odd part of it is I have never seen him drink anything
stronger than milk and soda. But the thing is obvious enough. He
soaks. I don't suppose there are two people in the hotel with whom he
troubles to exchange a remark."
This speech let in a big ray of light upon her understanding. It became
abruptly as clear as the daylight why this man shrunk from intercourse
with every one, why he had seemed to shun her society, to almost resent
her attempts to converse. She wondered whether her new acquaintance,
whose name was Sinclair, had noticed the incident at the breakfast-table
and deliberately offered this information with the purpose of putting
her on her guard. If this were the case she determined to show him that
she did not need advice.
She walked on in silence, and stepped on to the stoep alone, and paused
beside the chair of the man whom they had been discussing and smiled
down at him. He gazed back at her, surprise and uncertainty struggling
in his look.
"I'm so hot," she said. "We've been playing tennis. You look cool
sitting there."
He rose awkwardly to his feet, and stood with his hand resting on the
back of the chair, and regarded her steadily.
"It is cool here," he said. "Take my seat. You have done more to earn
the right to it than I have."
"Thank you, no. It's a shame to disturb you. I'm going inside to
change."
"That's the second change this morning," he said, his eyes on her face.
She laughed brightly.
"It's something to do," she replied.
"Yes," he said.
The old reserve settled upon him once more. She noticed that he looked
hesitatingly from her to the wicker chair beside which he stood, looked
from it almost furtively towards the entrance. She believed that he
purposed retreat, and forestalled him by turning away with a little
friendly smile and going within herself.
He did not look after her. There were people present on the stoep: he
knew very certainly, without glancing in their direction, the interest
they were taking in the little scene. That they had observed the girl's
action in stopping to speak to him, that, with her departure, they
continued their observation of himself, he knew instinctively. Their
curiosity was a matter of indifference to him.
But the girl's insistent friendliness troubled him. He sat down again
heavily in his seat and reflected deeply, sitting with his elbow on the
arm of the chair and his chin sunk on his hands. The gong sounded for
luncheon, but he remained where he was and watched the rest go in, and
listened to the talk and laughter which came to his ears through the
open windows, until, after a while, the lunchers came out again, when he
got up quietly and went inside.
Esme, passing the open windows later on her way into the garden, saw the
man seated alone at the table in the deserted room, eating in solitary
discomfort, while the coloured servant cleared the table in a manner of
sulky protest against this belated service. She quickened her steps and
her face flushed warmly. She felt as though she had had her ears boxed.
Indignant and angry, she walked as far as the vley and seated herself
in the shade of the trees with a book, which she did not read, open on
her lap. She could not at the moment concentrate her attention on
reading. Her cheeks burned. Twice this man had seemed to snub her,
whether intentionally or not she could not determine; but she felt
furious, less with the man than with herself for courting a repulse by
her persistence. Why should she seek to thrust her society on him when
very clearly he did not desire it? Her importunity embarrassed him.
That thought rankled. In a desire to be kind to a man whose lonely
condition excited her compassion she had been guilty of intruding
unwarrantably upon his seclusion. What right had she to force her
acquaintance upon him? She had had her lesson; she would profit by it
and not repeat the blunder.
Idly she turned the pages of her book; but the printed matter upon which
her eyes rested conveyed no meaning to her: between her vision and the
open page a man's face obtruded itself, a face with fine, strongly
marked features, and keen, unsmiling eyes. She could not switch her
thoughts off this man, in whom, she realised with a sort of impatience,
she was more than ordinarily interested. He piqued her curiosity.
Oddly, the ugly fact which she had learned concerning him had not
repelled her so much as deepened her sympathy. She wondered about him;
wondered what his life had been, what had made him, still a young man,
derelict and at enmity with his fellows. He had possibly suffered a
great sorrow, she decided; and, womanlike, longed to know the nature of
the tragedy which had spoilt his life.
That his weakness awoke pity and not repugnance in her, filled her with
a vague surprise. She knew that in another man she would have
considered the weakness contemptible. Why should she except this man
from censure in her thoughts when she would have held another unworthy
for the same failing? A person who drank to excess had always seemed
horrible to her. She would have shrunk in fear from a drunken man. But
she felt no shrinking from this man: she felt an almost motherly
tenderness for him. She would have liked to help him--with sympathy,
with her friendship; and the only kindness she could do him was to
humour his misanthropy and leave him to himself.
When she passed him again on her return at the tea hour she took no
notice of him, but walked along the stoep with an air of not seeing him,
and yet with a mind so intent on him that a consciousness of this
penetrated his understanding, possibly because he in his turn was
thinking about her with a curiosity equal to her own, with an interest
which surpassed hers.
He followed her with his glance until she reached the open window of the
dining-room and disappeared within. He did not move. Tea was a meal he
never attended; he did not drink tea. When Esme came out again on to
the stoep his chair was empty.
Book 1--CHAPTER FIVE.
The frankness of Esme's nature was opposed to the role of dignified
silence, which she assumed deliberately out of consideration for the man
who had shown so plainly his objection to social amenities. She was
resolved that unless he spoke to her she would not address him again.
The event of his venturing on a spontaneous remark was so improbable
that it seemed unlikely that the silence between them would be broken.
To sit daily at meals beside a person with whom the exchange of the
ordinary commonplace is denied becomes embarrassing. His silent
presence caused her to feel uncomfortable and unhappy. Had it been
possible to do so without exciting remark she would have changed her
seat.
Her old friend on her right helped her largely in this difficulty. He
made himself particularly agreeable to his young companion. But his
conversational efforts rendered the other man's silence more marked; and
the awkwardness of sitting down to breakfast without offering a friendly
good-morning appalled her in view of the many breakfasts which must
follow with increasing strain each morning during her stay.
The point which troubled her most in regard to her new line of conduct
was the certainty that the man who had furnished her with the gratuitous
information concerning Hallam would conclude that the frozen alteration
in her demeanour was the result of his unsought confidence. Absurdly,
she wanted him to know that this breaking off of all intercourse was on
Hallam's initiative and not hers. It was a little thing to trouble her;
but it did trouble her exceedingly. She did not wish Sinclair to think
that because of what he had told her she was treating with contempt a
man for whom she felt no contempt in her heart--nothing but compassion.
In accordance with the arrangement that had been made the previous day
she accompanied Sinclair down the kloof; but her pleasure in the
excursion was not so keen as it had been in anticipation; she was
prejudiced slightly against her companion. She suggested going in a
party; but he refused to entertain the idea. He hated crowds, he said.
"I took a party down one day," he explained, "and they just fooled about
and dug up ferns. Desecration, I call it. The ferns were thrown away,
of course. That's what happens. People must pick things. I wonder
why? Sheer destructiveness. I like to see things growing."
He was helpful and agreeable during the walk; and his appreciation of
everything when they descended into the green twilight of the kloof
pleased the girl: she shared in his enthusiasm. She stood silent amid
the cool, green restfulness of this shadowed place, and viewed with
amazed eyes the wonder of its vegetation which grew in a tangled
luxuriance of varying shades of green; particularly she noticed the long
trailing moss which hung festooned from the trees over the stream; the
longer trails of clinging vine that wound itself about every plant and
tree and linked the whole together in an ordered and pleasing confusion.
Huge boulders, lichen covered, stood out of the water which purled
round them, and, with the brown trunks of the trees, struck the only
separate note of colour in a scene that was wholly green and lit with a
soft green light. The sun did not penetrate here through the massed
foliage of the locked boughs overhead. There was no view of the sky.
The stream wound in and out among the loose stones like a narrow
footpath cut through the dense vegetation. Ferns grew rankly beside the
water, in the water, in the crevices of the boulders, and in the rotting
trunks of trees. Maidenhair ferns were everywhere with long succulent
fronds, and the feathery leaves of the wild asparagus trailed gracefully
above the banks.
Esme gazed about her in silent wonder; and her companion stood beside
her and watched her pleasure in the scene.
"Makes one feel good, doesn't it?" he said.
She turned to him reluctantly. His voice had broken the quiet spell of
the place and caught her back from enchantment to everyday things.
"I want to sit on one of those boulders," was all she said. "I want
just to rest and be still."
"Yes," he said. "But when you are rested we'll explore a bit. It's
worth it. It goes on like this for ever so far, opening out and closing
in again between green walls. It's difficult to break through in
places; but I'll go first and make a clearing for you. Take my hand.
These stones are treacherous."
"I'm glad you brought me here," she said, accepting his aid readily.
"I'm glad I came. I've never seen anything quite like this before.
It's wonderful. You are right: one can imagine wild beasts here. One
can imagine anything here... snakes. I should be terribly frightened if
I saw a snake."
She sat on a large boulder with her hands clasping her knees, and peered
into the black-green shadows nervously. The man, standing upon the
stones which just escaped the water, watched her with an expression of
interest and of satisfaction in his eyes. The grace of her unstudied
pose, the serious look on the bright, fair face, appealed pleasantly to
him. In his preoccupation he scarcely heeded what she said, until she
turned her face and looked up at him inquiringly.
"Are there snakes here?" she asked.
"I don't know. I've not seen one. I think we are more likely to
discover them higher up. They like warmth. It is always wise to tread
cautiously though."
"Ugh!" She drew her feet a little higher above the water and shivered
apprehensively and looked about her. "It rather spoils one's enjoyment,
thinking of these things."
"Don't think of them," he returned. "There are plenty of people in
Africa and plenty of snakes, but it's very rarely that we hear of any
one being bitten. I come here often; it's the only cool place on a hot
day."
"Well, I shan't come here often--although I love it," she added.
"Anything might happen here. It's difficult to believe that the sun is
shining somewhere--blazing right over our heads. Here it is always
twilight, which later will deepen into night. It's lovely, with a sort
of eerie beauty. I don't want to talk. I want just to enjoy it and be
quiet."
He understood her mood. The place had impressed him in much the same
way when he first beheld it. Familiarity with it had made its wild
beauty less assertively striking; but the girl's keen pleasure in
everything recalled his own earlier impressions and added to them. He
strolled off and left her in undisturbed contemplation while he explored
along the bank of the stream and considered the best spots to show her
when she wearied of inactivity and expressed the wish to go on.
But Esme's mind at the moment was detached from her surroundings. She
was thinking very earnestly of the man who held aloof from friendship,
who seemed to regard with mistrust, almost with dislike, every one about
him. She had never before met any one who was at enmity with mankind.
The experience interested her immensely, troubled her. It occurred to
her as altogether sad and incomprehensible that a man should shun his
fellows and enclose himself in a stronghold of impenetrable reserve.
She longed to pierce the hard crust of his egotism, to draw him out of
himself. It was unthinkable that a man of intelligence should be
misanthropic from choice and without cause. Possibly at some time he
had suffered, been badly hurt by some one. Yet it was difficult to
believe that a man could vent on the world at large his sense of injury
for the fault of an individual.
She leaned down towards the water and looked into its still brown pools
and frowned thoughtfully. It vexed her that this man should have laid
such a grip on her imagination: his personality obtruded itself
persistently on her thoughts. The thing was beginning to worry her.
She turned her head to look for her companion. He was not in sight.
Abruptly a feeling of loneliness, a loneliness that was almost
terrifying, seized her. That Sinclair was somewhere near at hand she
knew, but the sense of being alone in that eerie spot frightened her;
the silence of the place frightened her. Yet when the silence snapped
suddenly, and her attention was caught by the sound of some one or
something breaking through the undergrowth and coming towards her, her
fear of these sounds was greater than her fear of the silence. She
wanted to move, wanted to cry out; and she could not move, could not
utter a word. She sat staring in the direction of the noise, staring,
and waiting for she knew not what.
The sounds were not made by Sinclair; they came from the opposite
direction to that which he had taken. Thoughts of wild beasts flashed
into her mind. She wondered what she would do if out of the green
tangle a tiger suddenly appeared. She believed that she would do
nothing, that she would remain there staring, rooted to the spot. The
crashing sounds grew louder, came nearer. She saw the boughs bend,
their massed foliage shake and quiver as if a wind swept through it. A
branch snapped loudly. Then out of the swaying greenery a man's arm
protruded, and the next moment Hallam emerged and stood still, looking
at her with a surprise greater than her own. Esme gave a little gulp of
relief and laughed weakly.
"Oh?" she said, and sat still clutching at the boulder with her hands.
"Did I frighten you?" he asked.
She nodded without speaking; and he advanced a little nearer to her, and
stood still again, leaning on his stick.
"I'm sorry. I had no idea any one was here. You aren't alone?"
"No. Mr Sinclair is somewhere--over there. I thought--I thought you
were a tiger."
Involuntarily he smiled.
"You've been listening to the chatter at the hotel," he said.
"It's stupid, I know." She tapped her foot on a stone with a movement
of impatience and looked away from him. "It's easy to imagine anything
in this jungle. There is something awesome even in its beauty."
"It's the dim light," he said, "and the suggestion of things hidden from
sight. With your nerves you should remain in the sunlight."
Esme laughed suddenly. She turned her face towards him again and
scrutinised him with greater attentiveness.
"Yes," she said. "I like the sunlight. I like things which are
revealed and comprehensive; the furtiveness of secrecy terrifies me. I
prefer to move in the open."
"And miss the surprises which life conceals," he said.
"I hadn't thought of that. But I'm not particularly inquisitive," she
replied.
Why it should vex her to see him smile at this, she did not know; but
that he did smile, and that she resented his doing so, was certain. She
flushed and looked round for her escort, whom she now saw coming towards
them, leaping agilely across the boulders in the stream. He showed
surprise on seeing Hallam; his manner was not cordial.
"If you are rested, we'll go on," he said, addressing himself to Esme.
She stood up. Hallam raised his hat and turned back in the direction
whence he had come. The girl felt sorry as she watched him go; she
would have liked it had he joined their walk. But she believed that to
propose such a thing would have been acceptable neither to him nor to
Sinclair. In any case he would probably have declined. Already the
ice, so unexpectedly broken, was forming again, a thin crust of
resistance upon the surface of his temporary geniality.
Book 1--CHAPTER SIX.
That night Esme lay wakeful in the darkness with a brain too active for
sleep, courting slumber, which refused to come to her aid, physically
tired, yet not overtired, and mentally very clear and wide awake.
Outside her window the crickets were chirruping noisily, and in the warm
darkness, which pressed about her as she lay wide-eyed and very still in
her narrow white bed, the mosquitoes hummed annoyingly close to her
ears. The sounds of people moving in the rooms adjoining hers had
ceased long since; the night was quiet, with the listening hush which
settles upon a place when the activities of the day are ended and people
sleep. It seemed to Esme that she alone of all the household was awake.
She believed that it must be long past midnight. It had not as a matter
of fact struck twelve o'clock; and some one besides herself was awake,
had not yet gone to bed. She heard him go later; heard a stumbling step
going clumsily and heavily along the stoep. Through the thin walls the
noise of the footsteps was distinctly audible. She lay still on her
pillow and listened to them, her heart beating quickly and the pulses in
her temples throbbing like tiny hammers. A sick horror gripped her.
She knew, without seeing the man, who it was who thus disturbed the
silence, and, with the uncertain blundering step of a man under the
influence of drink, lurched heavily along the stoep to his room. He
made so much noise in getting there that she felt certain all the
occupants of the rooms he passed would wake and hear him.
Her cheeks burned with shame for him, and her heart was filled with a
great pity. What joy could he derive from this terrible misuse of life?
What a waste of his manhood and of his intellect!
With the cessation of the sounds a deeper hush than before seemed to
settle upon the night; even the crickets became less insistent: the
world slept; every one slept, save herself. She alone of all the
household kept wakeful vigil until the dawn broke, and brought with its
hopeful promise of a new day rest and forgetfulness to her weary brain.
Esme woke late, and had barely time to dress before the gong sounded for
breakfast. With a curious reluctance to meet again the man whose noisy
movements had disturbed her overnight, she went into the coffee-room and
seated herself at table. Hallam's seat was empty. It was still empty
when she rose at the finish of breakfast and went out on to the stoep
into the sunshine.
She was relieved that she had been spared the ordeal of meeting him, of
sitting beside him while the memory of last night was still so painfully
vivid in her thoughts. Her whole being shrank from witnessing his
degradation. He must feel, far more acutely than she felt for him, the
embarrassment of appearing in public, of meeting the criticism in
unsympathetic eyes.
She played tennis during the morning, and played badly; her heart was
not in the game, and the careless gaiety of her companions jarred on her
sober mood. They rallied her on her preoccupation, until she pleaded a
headache; when Sinclair, leaving the others to play singles, led her
away to a quiet corner in the garden where she could sit and rest.
He was glad to get her alone. He was leaving on the morrow, going back
to his job in a stuffy office in a dull little town.
"Uitenhage is about the sleepiest hole in South Africa," he grumbled.
"I think it is lovely," the girl returned. "I went there once when the
roses were in bloom."
"Oh! it's pretty enough. And it's handy to the Bay. I shall look you
up when you return--may I?"
"I shall be very pleased," she answered. "But you'll have to choose a
holiday. I am going back to my job too. I teach music."
"Oh, really! That's fairly strenuous, I should think. What a bore for
you."
She laughed.
"It's my bread and butter. There are less pleasant methods of making a
livelihood. But of course one gets tired."
He nodded sympathetically.
"I want you to rest this afternoon and get rid of the headache. I'd
like to take you for a walk after dinner if you care about going. It's
my last night. Until you came there was no one to walk with--except
Hallam. And he's such an unsociable beast. I wish you wouldn't talk to
him. He is not a suitable companion for you."
"Don't say those things," she interposed quickly. "It's ungenerous."
She felt angry with Sinclair, felt an inexplicable necessity to defend
the man he spoke of in such slighting terms. It was not merely because
he was absent and unable to defend himself; there was something more
than that to account for her indignation; she realised that much without
understanding its nature. Never in all her life had she met any one who
interested her so profoundly, who so deeply stirred her pity. She
wanted to help this man--with her friendship. There was no other
thought in her mind. And he would not let her. He demanded simply to
be left alone. A girl could not thrust her friendship on a man who did
not want it. But she could defend him in her thoughts and in her speech
without fear of his resentment.
"I think Mr Hallam is a very remarkable man," she said. "I should
hesitate to criticise him."
Sinclair looked at her in surprise.
"Do you know," he said, "that is the second time I have annoyed you in
reference to the same subject."
"Not annoyed," she corrected,--"disappointed me, rather. I hate to hear
a man speak disparagingly of another."
The young man was vexed, and showed it. Her ready championship of
Hallam displeased him. It was a sort of feminine instinct, he supposed,
to shed the light of a tender compassion on the derelict. Women were
absurdly sentimental.
"You do jump on a fellow," he said, aggrieved. "I had no idea you would
take my words amiss. Forget them, please."
"And you forget my irritable mood."
She smiled at him with kind brown eyes, eyes which expressed liking in
fuller measure than their displeasure of a moment before. She regretted
her outburst. What did it concern her what he thought, what any one
thought of a man who was almost a stranger to her, whom a few days ago
she did not know.
"I slept badly last night," she added, as if to account for her
ill-humour.
"How was that?" he asked, more with a view to turning the talk than from
curiosity.
His question recalled the ugly memories of the night very vividly to
her. She heard again in imagination the stumbling footsteps going along
the stoep. Her face clouded.
"What does keep one wakeful at times?" she inquired. "The mind works, I
suppose. I think perhaps I was tired."
"I took you too far," he said contritely. "It was inconsiderate of me.
But you seemed so interested."
"I was. I wouldn't have missed a bit of it. It was worth a sleepless
night."
"I doubt whether I should consider anything worth the sacrifice of a
night's sleep," he said, and laughed. "It would take a lot to spoil my
rest. The air here acts like a narcotic with me."
"That's odd," she said. "It makes me alert. There's something in the
atmosphere of this place--I don't know what it is--which influences me
strangely. I go about in a state of expectant curiosity. I'm looking
for things to happen. That's absurd, I know; but the feeling's there."
He scrutinised her intently. In this lonely spot what could happen out
of the ordinary run of events? Nothing surely in the nature of change--
unless the change were in one's self.
"The state of your mind is provocative," he said. "By invoking things
to happen you may precipitate a crisis. It is always a dangerous
practice to tempt the gods."
"I don't agree with that. I'm something of a fatalist," she said. "I
believe, not that our lives are prearranged, but that the event which
happens is inevitable, that we must accept things as they come to us.
The manner of our acceptance alone is left to our choice."
"I should hesitate to adopt that theory," he said. "I like to feel that
I have some say in the arrangement of my life. According to your idea a
man might hold himself immune for any evil he contrived. It relieves
the individual of all responsibility."
"No." She flushed slightly. "The qualities of good and evil are ours
to develop at will. The individual is always responsible for his own
nature."
"I don't like your theory any better as you enlarge it," he replied.
"It's rough on any one to have to keep good with all the odds against
him. And if he fail, what then?"
"I don't believe in complete human failure," she answered quietly. "Do
you?"
"I don't know."
He was thinking of Hallam, considering him a fair example of failure;
she also was thinking of Hallam, but with greater kindness. Derelict
though the man appeared, the belief held with her that one day he would
pull himself together and make good. She got up suddenly.
"We are growing too serious," she said; "and it's nearly lunch time.
What a blessed break in the day one's meals make."
Hallam was in his accustomed seat when she returned, but he did not look
up when she passed him on her way inside. He was reading a newspaper.
His hands, holding the printed sheet, shook more than usual, she
fancied; otherwise he looked much the same. She believed that he was
aware of her presence, though he made no sign that he saw her. She
passed him and entered the narrow passage and went direct to her room.
An unaccountable shyness had come over her. She shrank from going into
lunch, shrank from the thought of sitting beside him in the embarrassing
silence which his taciturnity imposed. The thing was getting on her
nerves. In the case of any other man, she believed that she would not
have minded this blunt ungraciousness; but this man had the power to
hurt her. The thing was incomprehensible and astonished her greatly.
Why should his behaviour wound her when in another man it would merely
have given offence?
The gong for luncheon sounded; but still she lingered in her room,
reluctant to leave this quiet haven for the dining-room and the
disquieting influence of her unresponsive neighbour. But the ordeal had
to be faced. It was ridiculous to allow her nervousness to get the
upper hand. With an action that was almost violent in the suddenness of
her resolve, she opened the door, and stepping into the passage went
swiftly along to the dining-room. At the door of the dining-room she
and Hallam met face to face. He was going in, but he drew back to allow
her to precede him. Thanking him briefly, she passed him and went on
and took her seat. He followed leisurely. When he was seated and
waiting to be served, he turned to her with unexpected suddenness and
observed:
"You missed a great deal this morning through oversleeping. I have
never seen a finer sunrise in my life than the one I witnessed on my
walk."
"You were up at sunrise?"
Her surprised tone, the almost incredulous look in her eyes, drew a
wondering glance from him. She saw it and felt furious with herself for
her stupidity. She had imagined him sleeping late that morning, had
supposed his non-appearance at breakfast was the result of his overnight
excess; and she had been tactless enough to betray surprise on learning
that he had been abroad so early. She flushed with confusion and
averted her eyes.
"I am always up before the sun," he said. "I do most of my walking
before breakfast. It's the best time of the day."
"Yes," she agreed; "I suppose it is. I slept late."
An inexplicable vindictiveness came over her. She turned to him again
and added almost brusquely:
"I was extraordinarily wakeful last night. I did not get to sleep
before the dawn broke."
"You should cultivate the habit of sleeping in a hurry," he advised. "I
get all the rest I need in a few hours."
He began to eat. She watched him for a moment in silence and with a
swift compunction for her recent ill-humour.
"I am sorry I missed the sunrise," she said, relenting, and wishful to
make amends. "Tell me about it."
He smiled faintly.
"Can any one describe a sunrise?" he asked. "Are there any words in our
language which will paint nature in her most wonderful aspects? If
there are I am ignorant of them. You must go out and see these things
for yourself."
This was not encouraging, but she persevered. A sort of inflexible
determination to abolish finally the frigid distances he insistently
maintained armed her with a temporary bravado which amazed herself. It
probably amazed him equally, but he made no sign if so.
"I do not like seeing things by myself. Won't you let me accompany you
some morning?"
"Most assuredly," he answered, after a barely perceptible hesitation.
"But quite possibly you will miss your breakfast. I tramp far."
"I shall not complain," she said. "If you are equal to fasting I have
no doubt I can stand it."
Hallam looked quietly amused. He surveyed her quite steadily for the
fraction of a second, and then very deliberately turned his attention
again to his plate.
"Do you really think," he asked presently, "that your endurance is equal
to mine? You don't look to me very strong."
She was thinking the same about him, but she did not voice her thought.
Possibly he read what she was thinking in her face when he glanced again
momentarily towards her; whether this were so or not, he added after a
pause:
"My constitution is made of cast iron. If it were not it would have
broken down long ago. Notwithstanding that my hand has difficulty in
raising this glass without spilling its contents, I could lift you with
it as easily as I could lift a feather."
She looked at the hand stretched out towards the glass of milk and soda
beside his plate, and noticed how it shook, and wondered that he should
draw her attention to it. He had done so intentionally, mastering his
usual self-consciousness in regard to this physical defect, for what
reason she failed to understand. Oddly, she felt no embarrassment while
she looked at his hand, and he betrayed none either. He lifted the
glass unsteadily and drank from it and set it down again on the cloth.
"I have travelled for a week on a pocketful of dried mealies, and been
none the worse for it," he said. "But I shouldn't recommend that diet
for you."
"I think," she said unexpectedly and without annoyance, "that you don't
wish to be bothered with my company."
"From the fear that I may have to carry you?" he suggested. "You are
mistaken. If you like to be energetic to-morrow I will show you where
best to view the sunrise. And I promise you that if we miss our
breakfast here I will take you to a house where I can obtain a meal at
any hour of the day."
"You breakfasted there this morning?" she said, turning a face flushed
with pleasure to his.
"I breakfasted there this morning. They are accustomed to my irregular
habits, and they don't mind."
"That will be nice," she said.
He laughed.
"I hope you won't be disappointed."
"Disappointed in what?--the sunrise, or the breakfast?"
"I pay you the compliment of supposing that such material pleasures as
food do not interest you," he returned; "nevertheless, you will find the
fare sufficient. The air in the early morning is chilly, so dress
warmly."
With which advice he closed the conversation as resolutely as a man who,
talking over a telephone, shuts off communication by replacing the
receiver. He bent over his plate and went on eating as though he had
forgotten entirely the girl's existence. He finished his breakfast
before she did and got up and went out by the window.
Book 1--CHAPTER SEVEN.
During the twenty-two unenlivening and, latterly, busy years of her life
Esme Lester had never been in love, had not known the excitement which
many girls of her age enjoy of possessing a lover. She was not a
sentimental young woman, and she had not had much time in which to
indulge in these distractions. The woman who earns her livelihood has
her mind occupied with graver matters generally. Love, if it succeed in
penetrating her preoccupation, takes her usually unaware and remains
sometimes unsuspected for quite an appreciable while.
It was possibly not love which in the early stages of their acquaintance
aroused her interest in Hallam. Mainly her feeling for him was a
mixture of womanly compassion and of repugnance so intense that at times
it shouldered pity into the background, and left her chilled with
disgust for his weakness and bitterly ashamed for him.
Her acquaintance with Hallam developed surprisingly. The occasion of
their walk to view the sunrise advanced it to a stage of easy intimacy.
The tentacles of friendship reached out and struck deep into the natures
of both. The man accepted rather than welcomed the change in their
relations. He deplored, despite its agreeableness, the growing intimacy
as something dangerous to his peace, something which might not be
pursued and developed beyond a certain point, which, because of its
limitation, was disturbing and undesirable. No man cares to set a
boundary line to his intercourse with a woman who attracts him;
immediately with the appearance of the barrier the desire to surmount it
is bred.
The state of Hallam's mind was that of paralysed initiative. He was
incapable of making any sustained effort. He drifted into this
friendship as he drifted into less desirable practices. Hereditary
tendencies and inclination both led him to follow his present mode of
life; nor had it seemed to him in any degree shameful until this girl
stepped suddenly across his path and altered his view of things. But
her influence was not yet sufficiently strong to cause him more than a
passing regret for the waste he was making of life. His life was his
own affair; it was no one's business how he elected to use it.
On the morning of their first walk together he came out on to the stoep,
stick in hand, ready to start, and found Esme waiting for him. He
returned her greeting unsmilingly, and scrutinised her attentively with
brows drawn together above the keen eyes.
"You had better fetch a coat," he said. "The morning air is chilly."
"It is fresh," she agreed; "but I thought perhaps walking--it may be
very hot before we return."
"It probably will be," he replied. "But I would prefer that you wore a
coat. When it gets hot I will carry it for you."
Smiling, she went inside to follow his instruction. When she came out
again she wore a woollen sport's coat over her thin dress.
"That's better," he said. "It is unpleasant to feel cold."
He walked down the little path beside her and out on to the open road.
A pale mist, like a thin white fog, shrouded the prospect and lent a
bracing coldness to the air, which felt fresh and clean with the crisp
purity of mountain air, washed by the overnight dews. The girl felt the
benefit of the extra warmth of the coat; it was fresher than she had
supposed out on the open road. A little wind that had more than a touch
of sharpness in its breath blew in their faces as they walked.
"I had no idea the mornings were so good," she said. "I've not been out
so early before."
"People miss more than they realise through lying between the sheets,"
he said. "In a country like this the bulk of the day's work should be
accomplished before breakfast."
"Is that the principle you act on?" she asked.
He looked grimly ahead of him and was slow in replying.
"That is the principle I should act upon if I did any work," he said at
length.
Esme lifted wondering eyes to his face.
"It must be a great responsibility to be independent of work," she said.
Hallam laughed suddenly.
"Do you really think so? Most people would reverse that opinion. The
weight of it does not press on me unduly."
He flicked at the dust of the road with his stick and at the grass which
grew beside the road, and was silent for a space. When he spoke again
it was on an entirely different subject.
They were swinging along down the road at a smart pace, and with every
yard of ground they covered the aspect of the land changed, became more
luxuriant in its growth, and altogether more rugged and assertive. The
sky was flushed with a soft pink like the flush on the face of a child
newly wakened from sleep. Before them as they walked the mist rolled
back, a gradually thinning vapour dispersing before the warmth of the
coming day, revealing with a startling unexpectedness in its reluctant
retreat the wonder of contrasting colour, the beauty of the curving road
with the shadows of the trees across it, and the great green silences
stretching above and below; the silence of the heights, and the more
secretive silence of the hidden places in the furtive darkness of the
gorge.
The rose pink in the sky deepened, spread itself warmly over the blue
expanse, reflected warmly upon the silent, neutral tinted world; changed
the face of the land as it changed the face of the sky; brightening and
intensifying the colour in the grass, in the leaves of the trees,
painting the flowers wonderfully; transforming everything with the glow
and warmth of life. The world threw off its lethargy of slumber and
lifted its face wakefully to the flood of sunlight which broke through
the rose and azure in a flash of gold.
Esme stood transfixed, with eyes turned to the sunrise. She felt the
warmth of the sun on her face, on her hands, on her body. It was like
being gripped in a warm embrace, startling and a little disconcerting by
its very suddenness. The gold of it poured over her like an amber
flame. The man, standing beside her, watched the sun-bathed, radiant
figure, and saw the wonder in her eyes, and remained silent, attentive,
marking nothing of the glory in the changing heavens, seeing only the
startled gladness in a girl's sweet face, and the glowing brightness of
her figure against the sunlit dust of the road.
While he stood observing her the thought took shape in his mind and
grew, as he watched her simple delight in what at another time would
have delighted him equally, but which now he scarcely heeded, that it
was an eternal shame he should of his own act, through his lack of
endeavour, reduce himself to a level which divided him from her, and
from women like her, as widely as the gorge was divided from the
heights. But a steep uphill road connected gorge and heights. He
looked down the road and up at the heights and frowned. Then
deliberately he turned his attention away from the girl and started idly
to trace patterns with his stick in the dust. She looked round at him
with happy eyes, in which surprise gathered as she noted his
preoccupation.
"But you are not watching the sunrise!" she exclaimed.
"It is disappointing," he replied. "Yesterday it was finer. It is one
of nature's exhaustless perplexities that she never reveals herself in
the same guise twice. Shall we go on?"
She started to walk again, a little chilled, she scarcely knew why, by
his manner. She decided that possibly he enjoyed best seeing these
things alone. Some people take their pleasures selfishly; he might be
one of these. To her the sunrise had been wonderful; and she longed to
express her admiration, to share it; but this grave and silent companion
made her silent also. She felt disappointed. He stole a glance at her
serious face, and his features relaxed; a smile played about the corners
of his mouth.
"You had better take off your coat," he said. "The sun soon makes his
power felt."
He helped her to remove the coat, and threw it over his shoulder and
walked on, holding it with his disengaged hand.
"If the people at the hotel could see us they would be amazed," he said.
"Why?" she asked, a fine colour coming into her cheeks, which deepened
as she met his eyes.
"Because no one there has ever seen me do a service for any one," he
replied.
"Perhaps no one has demanded service of you," she said quietly.
"No one has," he answered, with a certain grimness that suggested such a
demand might have met with small response. "In this instance I believe
the idea originated with me."
She laughed brightly.
"You made me bring the coat," she said. "It is only fair you should
carry it."
"I am not complaining. When you are tired, say so, and we will rest by
the wayside. We have a long way to go yet; and I do not wish to carry
you as well as your coat."
Again she laughed brightly and looked up into his face with merry eyes.
"You boasted that you could do that as easily as you could lift a
feather. I should not mind carrying a feather," she said.
He looked down at her, quietly amused.
"Think of the amazement at the hotel if I were seen carrying you back!"
he said, and smiled at the quick flush which overspread her face.
"I do not concern myself about the opinion of other people, as you
appear to do," she retorted.
"Very well," he replied. "Then, when you are tired, say so, and I will
support my boast in a practical manner."
"I will consider your sensitiveness in preference to my comfort," she
said.
"You have not known me very long," he returned; "but in the time I
should have thought that a person of ordinary discernment would have
discovered that I possess no sensibilities to disturb."
"I have discovered one or two things about you," she answered gently,
"but not that."
She felt relieved that he did not pursue the subject. He lifted his
stick and pointed with it away to the right, where the white wall of a
building showed among the trees.
"That is where we shall breakfast on our return," he said.
"On our return! Then you mean to go further?"
"We shall walk a good mile--two miles, if you are equal to it--beyond
the house," he said. "The road gets more beautiful the further you
travel. But we will stop when you wish. After you have breakfasted you
shall rest as long as you like before making the journey back."
Book 1--CHAPTER EIGHT.
It seemed to Esme as they walked rapidly along in the clear light air
that nature revealed herself in her fairest mood that morning. Surely
never had sunlight shone more golden, never had the blue of the sky
appeared more intense, nor the veld glowed with such splendour of
colour. A blue haze, liquid in the golden light, quivered before her
vision like a thing alive with iridescent wings outspread in the
untempered sunlight that poured itself out upon the earth with a
brilliance hurtful to the eyes. Everywhere her gaze turned some fresh
wonder met the view. Green mingled with brown and orange, shot with
vivid colours, where the hardy veld flowers blossomed in the grass and
among the piles of hot-looking yellow stones by the side of the road.
It was a scene of wide and glowing colour, of immense blue distances lit
by the fierce flame of the sun.
How much of her enjoyment was due to the beauty of the day, and how much
to the companionship of the man who shared these things with her, she
did not at the time pause to consider. Her senses were steeped in the
delight which is born of the mysterious magic of beauty. Everywhere she
looked she saw this magic pictured; in her heart she felt its influence;
it permeated all her being, all her brain. And again the expectation of
adventure gripped her. The belief that something was about to happen,
something of tremendous personal importance, took hold of her
imagination, stirred her deeply with a mingling of awe and joyous
anticipation like nothing she had ever known before. Something was
going to happen to her; something surely had happened to her already to
work this change in her calm practical nature. For the first time in
her quiet uneventful life her latent womanhood rose to the surface and
found expression in a number of new emotions, emotions which she vaguely
realised without understanding their significance.
She felt intensely alive. Her face was radiant with the joy of life.
But she did not talk much. Hallam was not a talkative companion, and
his silence affected her. Occasionally he paused to draw her attention
to a particular spot; and once he called a halt and seated himself
beside her in the shade of some bushes to rest. When he was seated he
lit his pipe. He had brought apples with him, and he offered Esme one,
and a knife to peel it with. She returned the knife and set her teeth
in the fruit and ate it with keen enjoyment.
"I get these from a farm in the neighbourhood," he explained. "You
should walk there one day. They grow quite good fruit, and they are
always glad to see visitors. It's not far from the hotel."
"You appear to know every one around here," she remarked.
"I have been here some months," he replied.
"And you seek your friends outside the hotel?" she said.
"I neither seek nor find friends," he answered bluntly. "I have some
slight acquaintance with these people which they do not discourage
because it is profitable to them. I do not understand disinterested
friendship. I do not believe in it."
"Which is to say you have never felt a disinterested friendship for any
one," she said. "You don't know what you miss."
"In that case, I miss nothing," he replied. "One has to be conscious of
a need in order to appreciate its absence. Life is a huge business of
bluff. A few persons only remain sincere because they will not take the
trouble to pose. To be sincere is to become unpopular. But
unpopularity is less irksome than maintaining a pose of sociability. I
believe there are very few people who honestly love their kind."
"That is too cynical a belief to be worth discussing," she said, pausing
with the half eaten fruit in her hand to look at him with puzzled eyes.
He seemed amused rather than vexed at her answer, and smoked for a
moment reflectively before resuming the talk.
"I doubt whether you are quite sincere in making that assertion," he
contended. "It is an easy way of disposing of a subject which one feels
unequal to combat in argument. Friendship is mere sentiment, so is love
of one's fellows; let either interfere with self-interest, and what
becomes of it? It is only with a few rare souls that altruism becomes a
workable theory."
"So long as there are a few souls great enough for disinterested love,"
she said quietly, "there is a little light of hope in the world."
She got up and threw away the remains of the apple as though her
pleasure in the fruit were spoiled. She hated this cynical bitter talk;
at the moment she almost hated the speaker. Because of his own wasted
life, his morbid views and perverted ideals, he was trying to poison her
mind with the hopeless doctrine of his deliberate self-deception. There
was something mean in her opinion in this wilful attempt to darken the
world for others.
"Let us go on," she said. "Active exercise puts you in a better mood.
I do not like your ideas. I'm sorry; but I don't wish to listen to
them."
"No one likes my ideas," he answered, rising. "I don't like them
myself. Truth is rarely agreeable; that is why so many people affect
lies. I think we had better turn and see about breakfast. Your lack of
patience suggests to me that you are hungry."
She broke into a laugh. At the sound of her mirth his face cleared
immediately; he stood still in the road and looked at her curiously.
"I am glad that the sun still shines," he said, and started again to
walk along the uphill path.
It was rather a silent walk back to the little house among the trees.
Esme felt shy at having been so outspoken. He had taken her rebuke in
good part; she liked him for that. She liked, too, the quiet way in
which he assumed command of herself and of everything when they reached
the house and stepped up to the little stoep. He presented a new and
more forceful side to his character.
The woman of the house fetched two chairs at his request, which she
placed side by side in a corner of the stoep beyond the reach of the
sun's rays that fell slantwise upon the white stone floor under the low
roof. Hallam separated the chairs and pushed a little deal table
between them and sat down opposite the girl.
"It is pleasanter to eat out of doors," he said. "I didn't consult your
wishes, because I knew it was unnecessary to do so. And even if you
preferred breakfasting inside it would not be good for you."
"I am satisfied with your choice," she answered, smiling, and took off
her hat and dropped it on the floor. "I could eat anywhere; I am so
hungry."
"Good!" he exclaimed, looking pleased, and surveying her across the
narrow table, which the housewife had spread with a much-darned
snow-white cloth.
It gave him an odd satisfaction to see her there, seated opposite to
him, hatless and very much at her ease, a pleasing picture of fresh
bright girlhood, with the glow of returning health showing in her
cheeks.
The woman came out from the house and made further preparations towards
their meal. Occasionally she addressed a remark to Hallam; but she was
not loquacious. She stared a good deal at his companion: it doubtless
caused her surprise to see him with any one. During all the months
since he first came to her house he had never brought a friend with him
before. She was obviously familiar with Hallam's requirements. Without
consulting him she placed a glass of milk on the table beside him, and
inquired whether the lady drank tea or coffee. Esme looked at the glass
of milk and made up her mind quickly.
"Neither. I will have milk also," she said.
The woman departed with the order, and the girl and the man sat gazing
out on the sunny road and saying nothing. But the silence which hung
between them was the silence of comradeship. There was an absence of
all constraint in their manner; they were like old friends between whom
speech is unnecessary.
With the arrival of breakfast the girl drew her chair nearer the table,
and served the omelette and passed his plate across to Hallam; assisting
him unobtrusively, because of the shaking of his hands and his pitiful
consciousness of it. The sight of those nervous unsteady hands hurt
her. She was always painfully aware of them and keenly anxious to
conceal the fact. She observed that the man endeavoured to control
their trembling, and that his inability to do so distressed him. He
bent low over his plate. It was this habit of bending over his meals
and of looking down when he walked which caused the stoop of the
shoulders, giving him an appearance of ill health.
While she ate and attended to his needs and her own she wondered about
him. What could be the secret of his downfall? Life had been generous
to him in some respects; possibly in other, more important matters, it
had treated him ill. She continued her study of him while she sat at
the little table opposite to him and watched the sunlight slowly
encroaching on the patch of shade in which they breakfasted. Before
they had finished their meal it had reached Hallam, dividing them like a
curtain of fire which wrapped him about in its radiant warmth and left
her in the shadows.
"Hadn't you better move your seat?" she suggested. "The sun strikes on
your head."
He got up, dragged his chair nearer to hers, and sat down again. Their
chairs were side by side now. She leaned back in hers and smiled at
him.
"This is infinitely pleasanter than breakfasting at a long table among a
crowd. They will wonder at the hotel what has become of me."
"They will certainly never suppose that you are in my company," he said.
"Why not?"
A dry smile twisted his lips. He scrutinised her for a brief moment,
and then answered abruptly:
"They wouldn't credit the possibility of my inviting you to come."
"You didn't," she answered, and laughed with amusement. The laugh was
infectious; Hallam joined in it.
"I wish you hadn't such an awkward memory for blunt facts," he said. "I
know I was abominably rude. I am always rude. As a rule that doesn't
trouble me; but in your case I regret my lack of manners."
"I did not notice it," she replied. "I think perhaps I was preoccupied
with the lack of manners betrayed on my part. You must think me rather
pushing."
Again he smiled dryly, but in the keen eyes shone a kindly look.
"One day, if it will interest you to hear it," he said, "I will tell you
what I think of you. But at the moment I do not feel equal to so much
frankness. If you have finished breakfast, let me carry your chair into
the shade of the trees. Since there is no one to whom your absence will
cause anxiety we will suit our own convenience as to the time of our
return."
Book 1--CHAPTER NINE.
The two or three guests at the hotel who witnessed Esme's return in the
company of Hallam were filled with amazement at the unusual spectacle of
the man who was never known to associate with any one, walking beside
the girl and carrying her coat across his shoulder, with an air of being
on perfectly friendly terms with his companion and with himself. The
two were laughing when they neared the gate; but the man's expression
settled into its habitual boredom as he followed the girl up the path
and mounted the steps on to the stoep.
He removed the coat from his shoulder and handed it to her with a brief
smile.
"I have enjoyed my walk," he said. "Thank you."
"Thank _you_ for taking me," she answered, conscious of the curious eyes
observing her. "I have enjoyed it also."
Then she went inside. Hallam waited for a minute or two before
entering, the hotel, while the people on the stoep watched him, puzzled
and immensely interested in these proceedings. He did not appear to
notice them; and presently he went in, and the restraint which his
presence always imposed on the rest relaxed perceptibly.
They started to discuss him, to deplore his friendship with the girl;
they pondered the question whether it was the particular duty of any one
to warn her against pursuing the acquaintance: every one thought that
she ought to be warned; but no one volunteered to undertake this
friendly office; they were all a little in awe of the man of whom they
disapproved.
Esme went to her room with the intention of remaining there and writing
letters until lunch time. She was tired and wanted to rest. But while
she sat at her window with her writing materials on her knee she saw
Sinclair approaching from the direction of the garden beyond the
kei-apple hedge. She remembered that he was leaving that morning. The
early walk, and her pleasure in it, had caused her to forget.
He strolled as far as the vley, and stood by the edge, moodily kicking
little stones into the water. He looked up and saw her at the window
and looked away again, making pretence that he did not know she was
there. She leaned out and spoke to him.
"Isn't it a perfectly wonderful day?" she called softly.
"Is it?" he said, and came towards her slowly, frowning, and with his
hands in his pockets. "It's much like any other day, I think."
He leaned with his shoulder against the wall of the house, and regarded
her with sulky reproach as she sat on the low sill, facing him, smiling
into the hurt boyish eyes. She liked him, and he was going away. She
decided to ignore his irritable mood.
"It's the finish of your holiday," she said, "and you are sorry. In a
fortnight's time my holiday will have ended. I, too, shall regret
leaving this place."
"It is not the place I mind leaving; it's dull enough," he said
ungraciously. "There is nothing to do except moon around. Where did
you have breakfast this morning?"
"At a little house along the road. I went to see the sun rise."
"It is possible to view that astronomical phenomenon from your bedroom
window," he retorted disagreeably.
"I dare say it is. But I wanted the walk."
"You went with Hallam, I suppose?" he said. And, without waiting for
her reply, added: "I think you might have remembered that it was my last
morning. I would have taken you to see the sun rise if you had
expressed the desire. I counted on a last walk."
"I walked with you last night," she said, surprised at the extravagance
of his demands.
"I am not forgetting that," he said, with less aggression in his manner.
"But my last morning... I think it was a little unkind. There will be
plenty of opportunities for sun-gazing after I have gone. I am full up
with things I want to say to you, and you seem such a long way off,
perched up there."
She laughed, and twisted round on the sill preparatory to alighting.
"Look the other way for a minute. I'm coming out."
He swung round with a pleased smile, and before she realised what he was
about he had seized her by the waist and lifted her down. She stood on
the grass beside him and surveyed him with amazed eyes.
"Well!" she said.
"It was by far the easier way," he excused himself. "I have a couple of
chairs fixed up under the trees. It's jolly and cool in the garden."
He led her to the spot he had selected and settled her in one of the two
canvas chairs, which faced towards a little arbour covered with a pale,
cool-looking creeper with long sprays of minute white blossoms thrusting
out between the leaves. The chairs had been placed at the end of the
roughly made path, and stood side by side with their backs towards the
house. Esme dropped into one, and looked about her with lazy
satisfaction. It was restful out here under the trees, and strangely
quiet. The hum of the bees sounded reposeful in the sunny stillness.
She felt very tired, and was glad to sit still. She did not want to
talk. But it was not possible to sit in silence with this man, as it
was with Hallam. The necessity to make conversation was imperative. It
surprised and puzzled her that this was so.
She glanced at Sinclair curiously, and discovered him, with his face
turned towards her, observing her intently. He smiled when he met her
eyes with their curious questioning look; his own expressed admiration,
and something more, which he strove to suppress.
"You were quite right," he said. "It is a wonderful day. But I wish
you had not discovered that before you came out here. I didn't. It
seemed to me this morning a rotten sort of day altogether. I wasn't
sure even that I should see you before I left. I have just half an
hour. If it wasn't for the thought of seeing you again at the other end
I should feel pretty sick at leaving. I've only known you a few days;
but I seem to have known you for quite a long time. That's odd, isn't
it? I've enjoyed the last of my holiday more than words can express."
He talked quickly, eagerly. His face was flushed, and a sort of boyish
shyness showed in his eyes. She regarded him with an air of faint
perplexity and said nothing. His abrupt confidences were disconcerting.
"You won't forget these few days altogether, will you?" he urged.
Her composed face, her air of increasing surprise, damped his ardour
considerably. The light died out of his eyes.
"I shan't forget a single day of all the days I spend here," she
replied, not knowing that she was unkind, not meaning to be.
She was not thinking of Sinclair. Her appreciation had nothing to do
with him. She was reviewing her earlier impressions, feeling again the
joy which the sense of beauty gives; the complete satisfaction of that
walk towards the sunrise, and the magic splendour of the morning when
the world stirred out of slumber, dew-drenched and asparkle in the
golden radiance of the newly risen sun. She had realised, as she
stepped confidently forward in its warmth, the wonder and the goodness
of being alive. That sense of well-being remained with her, would
remain with her when the boy, who looked to her for a response she was
unable to make, was gone down the mountain road out of her dream. He
was no part of the dream: he was merely a transitory figure flitting
through the gold-blue mist.
"I don't know what it is about the place which grips me so, unless it is
that it is unlike any place I've ever seen. I love the brooding silence
and the warmth and the soft mountain air. There is health in every
breath of it. Down at the Bay the winds rend one. It's all heat and
noise and rush."
"Oh! the Bay's not half a bad place," he protested. "Most people at the
beginning of a holiday feel as you do; but it wears off. You will be
jolly well bored at the end of a fortnight. Travelling always along one
old road grows monotonous. And whichever way you go it's the same old
road. You may strike across the veld, but sooner or later you have to
come back to the road."
"After all,"--she looked at him quickly,--"it isn't monotony that bores
one really. We like doing the familiar thing."
"Not necessarily," he returned. "When it is a case of returning to
work, the familiar thing becomes a nuisance. I wish you were driving
down the mountain with me. Don't come out to see the start. I don't
wish you to make one of the crowd. I'm going to say good-bye to you
here. I am leaving my racquet behind. I want you to use it, will you?
I've another at my digs, so you needn't feel you are depriving me. I
want you to have it."
"That's very kind of you," she said, touched by this act of generosity,
and secretly embarrassed. She could not without ungraciousness refuse,
but she wished that he had not placed her under this obligation.
"It will serve to pass an hour or two when you weary of the same old
road," he said, smiling.
He was jealous because she had found a companion for the road; that this
companion did not play games was a source of satisfaction to him.
"But you break up the set when you leave," she said.
"We played three before you arrived," he reminded her. "When you get
back to the Bay I'm coming in sometimes to play with you at the Club
courts. You're a member, I suppose?"
She nodded.
"Are you?"
"I am about to become one," he answered, with an amused look at her
surprised face. "I've thought of joining often. You know the
acquaintance isn't going to end here. I may see you again?"
He looked at her with great earnestness, and waited with such obvious
anxiety for her reply that it seemed to her there was only one possible
answer to his question. And indeed she was very willing to continue a
friendship which had been on the whole agreeable.
"I should be sorry if I thought it would be otherwise," she said, with
kind sincerity. "It would seem strange not to meet, seeing that we have
been such good friends."
"Good friends!" he repeated. "Yes; we have been that... Well, that's
the gist of what I wanted to say. When I travel down the mountain I
shall remember your words and your sweetness. We are good friends,
whose friendship started amid the heights."
He rose from his seat. She looked up at him with eyes that held a
wondering interest in their look. The phrase took hold of her
imagination. Until that moment he had always seemed just a boy to her;
but in that moment she thought of him as a man, with a man's thoughts
and a man's feelings. She stood up a little shyly and gave him her
hand.
"I am sorry you are going away," was all she said.
Book 1--CHAPTER TEN.
During the days which followed time sped on amber wings. It sped so
swiftly that her fortnight's holiday seemed to Esme the shortest
fortnight her life had ever known. Oddly, she did not realise why the
hours were so mysteriously curtailed. In reality her days were longer
than usual; they started at sunrise.
This practice of early rising, which was new to her, developed into a
daily habit. If by chance she overslept, as she did occasionally, her
day was robbed of its chief pleasure--the early morning walk in Hallam's
company. He never waited for her. He never referred to her absence
when she failed to put in an appearance on the stoep at the time he came
out, stick in hand, ready for his walk. But he always looked for her;
and when he saw her waiting for him he appeared pleased. They set forth
together as a matter of course.
He grew to look forward to her companionship. His manner had lost its
rough unsociability; he talked to her readily. Occasionally he left the
seat, which had come by tacit recognition to be considered especially
his, for a chair beside hers on the stoep. His behaviour excited
considerable surprise and comment among the other guests; but to Esme it
appeared less remarkable than his former attitude of almost hostile
aloofness. She derived a quiet happiness from his society.
As she came to know him better her amazement at his weakness grew
enormously. That a man of such striking personality, possessed of
considerable will-power, should yield himself to the influence of a
sordid vice, be dominated by it, surprised her beyond words. It was the
one thing about him which she hated. It was ugly and inconsistent and
degrading. She never saw him drink; he took nothing but milk and soda
with his meeds. In the daytime he always appeared perfectly sober; but
at night, after dinner, it was his invariable custom to disappear, where
she did not know; but sometimes she heard his stumbling step going along
the stoep after every one else was in bed. She would lie awake and
listen for these sounds, but it was only occasionally she heard him go
unsteadily to his room. Then her heart would beat faster, and the tears
would come to her eyes, and always, she offered up a prayer for him in
the quiet darkness of her little room. Her pity for him and her liking
grew like a flower, unconscious of its expansion as it opens to the sun.
When first it occurred to Esme to use her influence to wean Hallam from
his nightly practice was uncertain; doubtless her desire had leaned that
way from the beginning of their acquaintance; but it was not until she
was well into the second week of her holiday that she summoned up
sufficient courage one evening while they sat at dinner to propose that
he should accompany her for a walk. It was too beautiful a night to
spend indoors, she urged.
The man hesitated. She believed that he was going to refuse. It was
easy to see that her suggestion was not acceptable to him. It took him
aback, and for quite an appreciable while he did not reply to her. Then
he said, somewhat brusquely:
"Have you not had walking enough for one day?"
"Come and sit with me on the stoep," she said, "if you do not care to
walk."
Some quality in her voice, something, too, in the expression of her
face, when he turned his face to look at her, arrested his attention.
He scrutinised her more closely, and into his eyes, as he watched her,
leapt a light of understanding.
"I never met any one quite so indefatigable as you," he said. "If you
really desire exercise, of course I'll accompany you. There will be a
moon to-night. She is young, but she will serve our purpose. Why do
you want to walk?"
The question was jerked out abruptly. There was an inflection of
curiosity in his tones. Esme answered quietly, without looking at him.
"I suppose because I feel it is a sin to remain indoors on such a
night."
Had not her eyes been averted from his face she must have seen his lips
compress themselves at her words. A sort of hardness came into his
voice.
"Your language is somewhat exaggerated," he returned. "The physical
benefit is more obvious than the moral, I think. However, if it gives
you a sense of righteousness, so much the better. I will lend myself
readily to further that end. What do you usually do in the evenings?"
"Sit on the stoep generally. I don't care about cards. When Mr
Sinclair was here we used to walk."
"Sinclair!--yes... The fellow who fancied he possessed all the virtues
because he had not certain vices. You must miss him."
"That isn't a very kind description," she said.
"I was not trying to be kind," he answered. "I am not of a kindly
disposition. You may observe that I do not lay claim to any of the
virtues. It is safe to conclude that what you don't claim will never be
conceded to you. These facts once grasped simplify life enormously.
But I waste time in attempting to teach you worldly wisdom. You live in
a world of illusions."
He spoke very little during the remainder of the time he sat at table.
His manner was preoccupied, and his face looked grim. Esme felt that he
regretted having yielded to her request; he resented interference with
his routine. When he rose from the table, which he did before any of
the others, he turned to her and said in his curt way:
"Please be ready in half an hour from now."
Then he pushed his chair back and walked quickly from the room.
The old gentleman on her right asked Esme to make a fourth at bridge.
He looked disappointed when she declined. She explained that she was
going for a walk.
"It is good to be young. But don't overdo it," he counselled.
"The air is so wonderful; I am never tired up here," she replied.
"I have heard that said of the air in other places," he said, and
smiled. "If I were twenty years younger I would go with you."
The old gentleman was not on the stoep to see Esme start on her walk.
He would have been astonished equally with the rest who viewed her
departure to see Hallam come out of the house and join her and walk with
her into the road. The people on the stoep who witnessed these things,
wondered, and spoke of their wonder to one another. No one before had
seen Hallam in the evenings after he left the dinner table. No one,
except this girl, who seemed on terms of easy friendliness with him,
ever spoke to him. It is not easy to talk to a man who deliberately
ignores your existence. It was plain that he wanted to be left alone:
yet he made an exception in favour of the girl. There was only one
construction likely to be placed on this amazing preference. And so the
people at the hotel looked after the disappearing figures, and
criticised the growing intimacy between the man and girl long after they
had vanished from sight amid the shadows of the early dusk.
When they were well away from the hotel Hallam took the pipe from his
mouth and looked down at the girl's unconscious face and smiled dryly.
He wondered whether she realised that they were objects of curiosity to
the people they had left behind, whether, if she did realise it, it
would trouble her at all? Her eyes, lifted to his in response to his
steady scrutiny, showed darkly shadowed in the uncertain light; they
smiled frankly up at him. He knew while he gazed down at her that he
would miss her when she had gone, that life would seem emptier, more
purposeless, than before. From the first he had realised the danger of
the acquaintance; yet he had drifted into it with very little effort to
evade the danger. He had not made the advances, but he had responded to
them; and now he was regretting, with a sense of bitter futility, the
folly of allowing her to become a significant influence in his life. He
could not end the thing now; he did not want to; her companionship had
become necessary to him.
But he could prevent her liking for him from developing, could, if he
chose, crush it outright. To crush it outright was perhaps the wiser
course.
"You know," he said quietly, "those people who watched us away are
deploring your indiscretion in associating with me. I am not resenting
it. They are perfectly right. I am not a desirable companion for any
one. Why did you first speak to me? Why do you persist in the
acquaintance? I often wonder. Don't you know what I am?"
"Perhaps I do," she answered in so low a voice that, but for the
stillness of the night, he would scarce have heard the faltered words.
"I think that is one reason why I spoke to you."
"You mean," he said, "that you were sorry? That's kind of you. But I
am not conscious of needing sympathy. What other reason had you?"
"Isn't it only natural to talk to people one meets daily?" she asked.
"I talk to every one in the hotel."
He smiled.
"I have observed that. But you don't walk with them. Why did you
insist on my coming out to-night?"
"Oh!" she said, and felt her face aflame, and was grateful for the
darkness which concealed her confusion. "I cannot give a reason for
every impulse that moves me. I wanted to walk."
"Excuse me if I accuse you once more of insincerity," he said. "It was
no impulse that prompted you to ask me. It was a deliberate and
premeditated request which cost you some effort to make. Your concern
for me is very flattering. But you waste your sympathy. What do you
imagine you accomplish by this display of energy? You will overtire
yourself, that is all. For me, it is merely a long time between
drinks."
Tears came into her eyes. She hoped he did not see them, but she could
not have kept them back. He hurt her even more than he intended to.
"I don't care," she said, a little unsteadily, "how hard you box my
ears. I am glad I asked you to come. I'm glad you came." She raised
her face suddenly and lifted defiant eyes to his.
"I am sorry I was insincere. You got me there. I didn't know you were
so observant. In future I'll be absolutely frank with you. I'll be
frank now, even if it angers you. I asked you to come out because I
think it is a shame for you to spend your evenings as you do. I think
it is a shame that you should waste your life. I'm not so much sorry
for you as savage with you. It's hateful in you. It's the one thing
which spoils you from being absolutely fine."
She broke off abruptly, startled at her own vehemence, immensely
embarrassed, and horrified with herself. The man was staring at her,
staring in amazement, incredulous and almost bewildered by the
surprising rush of words. He had never in his life been so
thunderstruck, nor had he ever before listened to such plain speaking.
He was silent in face of this retort for which he had been in no sense
prepared.
"Oh, dear!" she exclaimed, aghast at her own daring. "What must you
think of me? I never meant to attack you like this. It's--abominable."
"Whatever I think of you," he answered, "I can never again call you
insincere. You have hurled truths at me to-night. You were quite right
in everything you said; but--forgive me--you were quite wrong in saying
them. However, largely that's my own fault for provoking you. It was
inconsiderate to push my inquiries; it would be illogical if I
complained because you answered them. We'll wipe the incident out. At
least we understand one another. In future, when I see you making your
social effort, I shall recognise that you are started on your morality
campaign."
"Please don't," she said falteringly, with a catch so suggestive of
repressed emotion in her tones that he repented the ill-nature of his
words.
He glanced down at her as she walked beside him along the dim road,
hatless, with the soft hair shading her partly averted face; then he
straightened his stooping shoulders with a jerk, and looked about him at
the darkening landscape, and up at the sky, where the young moon rode
serenely in a star-strewn cloudless sky. It was a fine night, warm and
still; the wan moonlight pierced the dusk palely, revealing the road
cutting like a path of silver across the velvety darkness of the veld.
Some softening quality in the quiet beauty of the night, or it may have
been in the sight of the partly turned face, with its look of hurt
distress, penetrated the man's consciousness. His mood changed; a
kinder note banished the harshness from his voice. He had wounded her
deliberately, and he regretted it.
"I'm a brute," he said in altered tones. "Don't heed my roughness; it
is not meant. I had no wish to offend."
"You did not offend," she answered. "But I am afraid that I did."
"No," he said, but without conviction, she thought. "I asked for truth,
and I got it. Perhaps that is what surprised me. The last thing a man
expects to hear is the truth about himself. I didn't credit you with
the possession of so much courage."
"It has all evaporated," she said.
"The courage!" he laughed. "Oh! I think not. It has merely gone under
for the time."
And then he turned the conversation, and closed the matter, as she felt,
finally. She had no means of knowing whether his resentment of her
plain speaking still rankled. A sort of constraint had fallen between
them. She felt self-conscious, and rather like a child who has been
rebuked. But she did not regret having spoken as she had done. The
barriers of pretence were down; there existed a clear understanding
between them. As she walked rather silently with him in the moonlight
she resolved that on the morrow she would invite him to accompany her
again.
Book 1--CHAPTER ELEVEN.
That walk by the ineffectual light of a young moon brought about a
significant change in the relations between the man and girl. The last
reserves were swept away. The sweeping had been drastic; it left not so
much as a shadow of doubt in the mind of each in regard to the other.
They were profoundly interested in one another, with an interest which
struck deeper than the repugnances which both were conscious existed.
The girl liked the man and was horrified at his weakness; the man liked
the girl and resented her interference: their mutual regard was stronger
than their antagonism.
The people at the hotel watched the development of the friendship
distrustfully. They did not approve of the man. All they knew of him
was to his discredit. The general opinion was that it was well the girl
was leaving so soon.
"You appear to be great friends with Mr Hallam," the old lady who was
nervous of the mountain road observed one day to Esme. "What a terrible
thing it is to see a young man deliberately making wreck of his life.
Don't you think so?"
"I do," Esme answered gravely. "One day he will come to think so too;
and then he will change."
The old lady shook her head.
"I should doubt it very strongly," she said. She considered it
regrettable that the girl should cherish hopes of so improbable a
reform.
"There is nothing that the human will cannot accomplish, when the will
to accomplish a thing is strong enough," Esme said with quiet
conviction.
"You think that?"
"I am sure of it."
"Then, why does not Mr Hallam make some effort to overcome his
failing?"
"I suppose because he has not felt a sufficiently strong incentive. It
is difficult to understand these things. But I cannot help believing he
will make good."
The old lady was manifestly unconvinced; but Esme's faith remained
unshaken. She believed in the eventual triumph of Hallam's better
nature. The man was not insensible of her faith in him. Her influence
over him was stronger than either of them realised. Each day he felt
his interest in her deepening; but it was not until her visit came to
the finish that he knew exactly what her friendship meant to him.
On the last morning when they sat at breakfast, and the talk turned
naturally to the journey down the mountain, it came to him with
unpleasant clearness that he was going to miss her very much. He saw
the regret in her eyes at the thought of going away, and he knew that a
similar regret was in his heart. They had come to the parting of the
ways, and neither wished to part.
"Can't you stay a little longer?" he asked her. But she shook her head
and answered no.
"I hate these comings and goings," he said gruffly; "they make life
uncomfortable."
"I loved the coming," she replied softly; "but I hate going. I have
been happy here."
"I expect you are happy anywhere," he said. And she laughed, but she
did not answer him. "I shall miss our walks," he added.
"I shall miss them to," she replied. "I shall miss many things. One
day I shall come up here again."
"Will you?" He looked surprised. "I shall not do that after I go away.
To revisit a familiar spot is like walking among tombstones. Each
point recalls a memory, and memory belongs to the past."
"But when one's memories are pleasant," she argued, "it is good to
recall them."
"They come back to us with the dust on them," he insisted. "It is more
comfortable to live in the present. You'll forget the Zuurberg when you
are back in the town. You'll be engrossed with other matters. You'll
forget."
"Not one hour," she breathed softly. "I'll forget nothing. Will you?"
He laughed bitterly.
"Life is not so full of pleasant things that I can afford to bury in
oblivion the pleasantest that has happened to me," he said. "When you
drive down the mountain to-day, I will go with you and see you on your
way."
If anything could have given her pleasure at leaving it was this resolve
on Hallam's part to drive with her down the mountain road. His
accompanying her gave to the excursion an air of adventure and decreased
the sense of parting. It was not, she found when she came to say
goodbye to the little group of people assembled on the stoep to watch
the departure of the cart, these general leave-takings which were
distressing; nor did it concern her to turn her back on the hotel on the
veld; the real parting was to follow, but for the moment that did not
weigh with her. Her holiday was not yet at an end.
There were other passengers for the journey besides themselves. Hallam
waited until these had taken their seats in the back; then he helped the
girl up to the front seat next the driver, and, to the amazement of the
beholders, got up after her and sat down by her side. They concluded
that he was leaving also; it did not occur to any one to suppose that he
was going to see the girl off by the train and would return that
evening. An act of such supererogatory courtesy was not expected of
him.
The horses started, and the cart swung along with its load of passengers
and luggage, travelling at a good pace along the hard smooth road. Esme
leaned back in her seat and looked about her with happy appreciative
eyes. On the upward journey she had longed for a companion to share her
joy in the scenery. She recalled her first impressions, as she drove
now with Hallam beside her. She had been very tired on that occasion,
eye and brain both had been weary. To-day she felt surprisingly well
and very alert. The air, the movement, the strong light, all added to
her sense of enjoyment; and the presence of the man beside her, his
nearness, his unobtrusive care of her, his interest in all which
interested her, made the return journey infinitely more wonderful than
the journey up the mountain had seemed. She felt extraordinarily happy.
And yet she was going away. Soon she and her companion would be
parted. It might be that she would never see him after that day. But
she could not realise these things. She felt him beside her, heard his
voice speaking to her against the mountain wind which blew across them,
saw the kindness in the keen eyes when he turned his head to look at her
and mark her appreciation of some beauty along the route; and she knew
that he mattered to her tremendously; that her feeling for him was a
real and profoundly significant emotion, something which had sprung to
life suddenly, which would go on growing in her heart after they had
separated and gone their different ways.
This was the thing which had happened to her. She had looked for
something to happen, but she had not dreamed it would be anything like
this.
She fell to wondering how she would feel when they came to say good-bye,
whether she would realise the parting and feel lonely, whether her face
would betray her regret? Whether he would see and understand...
The journey down occupied considerably less time than the journey up had
done; everything seemed to lend itself to speed her departure. But at
Coerney there was a wait before the train came in. Hallam took her to
the hotel and ordered refreshments, and afterwards they went and sat in
the shade of the trees and talked away their last minutes together. She
felt that she would have liked to prolong that talk indefinitely; and
the minutes slipped away so fast.
"It was nice of you to come," she said. "I should be feeling horribly
lonely now if I had had this wait alone."
"The train's late," he said. "God bless the lack of unpunctuality.
I've half a mind to go with you. I don't know why I don't go. I don't
know why I stay on in a God-forsaken hole on the top of a mountain which
leads nowhere. Do you?"
She laughed.
"I suppose you like it," she said. "And the air is fine."
"A man can't live on air."
"But you don't live there," she said. For the first time it occurred to
her that she did not know where he lived; she knew surprisingly little
about him.
"I don't live anywhere; I drift," he said.
He met her eyes and read the curiosity in them, their unspoken
criticism, and smiled. But he did not give her any information. He
started to talk again on impersonal matters, while she looked away into
the green tangle of the trees and wondered about him.
On the way to the station he gave her a book, which he took from his
pocket and handed to her with the remark that it would relieve the
tedium of the train journey. She read the title, "David Harum," and
flushed with pleasure as she thanked him.
"I hope you will like it," he said. "I have found him a good
companion."
He discovered an empty compartment and settled her in it and stood by
the door. She leaned from the window, with her arms on it, and looked
down at him, earnestly, intently, with the light of unsaid things
shining in her eyes.
"I hate going," she said.
"I know. Partings are beastly things."
But he said nothing to lead her to hope that this parting was not final;
no intimation of it being otherwise entered his thoughts.
"To-morrow," he said, "I shall go alone to watch the sunrise."
A little wistful smile curved her lips.
"I shall think of you," she said.
"I shall probably have _you_ in my thoughts," he replied, and smiled
also. "We have spent some pleasant times together."
She leaned further out and held out a hand to him as the train was about
to start. He took it and pressed it warmly.
"Thank you for your kindness to me," she said simply.
"Thank _you_ for your bright companionship," he returned, and the regret
he felt at parting crept into his voice.
He released her hand and stood back while the train moved slowly out of
the station. The girl, leaning from the open window, saw the tall
stooping figure on the platform, with face turned towards her, until she
drew back suddenly and sat down in the corner seat, a feeling of great
loneliness in her heart, and in her eyes the brightness of unshed tears.
She took up the book he had given her, and opened it, and read on the
fly-leaf his name, written in small, unsteady characters,--Paul Hallam.
She sat with the book open in her lap, gazing at his name.
Book 2--CHAPTER TWELVE.
Esme Lester lived with a married sister at Port Elizabeth in a little
house in Havelock Street. Her brother-in-law was junior partner in a
store which was not a particularly flourishing concern, and the family
finances were generally at low ebb. There were two children, a boy and
a girl, named respectively John and Mary. When the family were all at
home the little house seemed full to overflowing.
Esme had a tiny bedroom at the back, overlooking a cemented yard. There
was one beauty in this yard, a huge oleander tree, the dark green leaves
of which and the clusters of sweet-scented pink blossoms reared
themselves against her window and shaded and perfumed her little room.
If the oleander had been stricken by drought, or any other mischance had
befallen it to cause it to die, the house would have been unbearable to
the girl. As it was, the oleander made life possible, even when the
children were troublesome, and when her sister and her husband
quarrelled. They quarrelled frequently; over the children, over the
housekeeping expenses, over the lack of money. Lack of money was the
principal grievance.
Esme boarded with them, because it seemed more natural to stay with her
own people than with strangers, and because her sister liked to have
her. But she was not fond of her brother-in-law; and the constant
disagreements worried her.
It seemed to her, when she entered the house after her pleasant holiday,
that she had left all the peace and romance behind and returned to the
drab reality of the common daily round. Her sister welcomed her with
restrained pleasure, but the children hung about her in unqualified
delight, bubbling over in childish fashion with excitement at her
return.
"You are looking well," her sister remarked. "I wish I could take a
holiday. Single girls don't realise how lucky they are until after they
are married. Jim and I spent our honeymoon at the Zuurberg. I thought
it dull."
Esme reflected, while she regarded her sister with a puzzled scrutiny,
that it was scarcely surprising her marriage had proved on the whole a
disappointing affair. To feel dull on one's honeymoon is not a
promising beginning.
"I thought it wonderful," she said.
"You had a good time, I suppose. Were there many people there?"
"A fair number. But it's the place itself. It is lovely."
Mrs Bainbridge looked unconvinced.
"People, not places, make a holiday enjoyable," she said with a certain
worldly wisdom which jarred on her hearer. "Were there any men there?"
"A few--yes."
Her sister laughed.
"You always get on with men," she said. "I wonder you don't marry."
"But, according to your view, that would be a mistake."
"Not if the man were well off. It is having to cheese-pare that makes
the shoe pinch. Marriage has its compensations." Her gaze rested
reflectively on the children. "One grumbles," she said; "but one
wouldn't undo all of it."
"_I'm_ never going to marry," John, aged eight, announced with sturdy
determination. "I've seen too much of it."
His mother laughed, and Esme caught him up and kissed him.
"That's for you, you stony-hearted little misogynist," she said, as he
struggled to elude her embrace.
"John's a silly kid," Mary, his senior by two years, announced in the
crushing tones of a person who resents a slight to her sex.
John freed himself from his aunt's detaining hold in order to vindicate
his insulted manhood; and Esme left them to their scuffling and went
upstairs to unpack.
When she came down again her brother-in-law had come home. He sat by
the window smoking his pipe, but he rose when she entered and came
forward and kissed her. He was a heavily-built, good-looking man, with
a boisterous geniality of manner which worried his sister-in-law.
Oddly, he never realised her objection. He liked her and laboured under
the delusion that she reciprocated his affection. He kissed her
heartily.
"Glad to see you back, old girl," he said, and reseated himself in the
only comfortable chair in the room and resumed his pipe. "You look very
fit. I told Rose the Zuurberg would set you up; but she won't hear a
good word for it. There isn't much to do up there, certainly, but loaf
around. The drive up, though, is all right. Pretty--isn't it?"
She laughed, to his puzzled surprise. She often surprised him by the
way in which she received his remarks. He had said nothing to cause her
merriment. But he preferred smiling faces to glum looks, and so he did
not resent it when she laughed at nothing.
"I suppose loafing around was what I needed," she said, steering clear
of a discussion on the scenery. "Living in the open air with nothing to
do is a fine tonic."
"Yes," he agreed. "I'd like a little of that myself. A man who spends
all his days in an office ought to get away now and again; but when it
comes to carting a wife and kids around with one it makes an expensive
business of it. Rose ought to see that a man needs change from his
work."
"We are most of us short-sighted where the needs of other people are
concerned," she returned with an ambiguity which he did not suspect. "I
suppose it would be rather nice if I remembered that Rose hasn't had a
holiday and went out to help her with the preparations for your evening
meal."
"Rot!" he ejaculated, unperceiving the drift of her reflections. "You
finish out your holiday and sit down and talk to me."
But she elected to go in quest of her sister, who was busy in the
kitchen, aided by an incompetent Kaffir girl of an amiable disposition,
which revealed itself in the broad smile she gave the young missis when
she appeared in the bright, hot little kitchen, which looked out, as her
bed room looked out, on the white yard shaded by the big oleander tree
beneath which the children played happily in their cramped but secure
playground.
It was a homelike, pleasant enough picture; but the girl's thoughts
strayed persistently to the green open spaces, and the pleasant ease of
the life she had left behind her. She felt a new dissatisfaction with
her present surroundings.
"Can I help?" she asked.
Her sister turned round from the stove with flushed preoccupied face to
stare at her.
"In that dress! Goodness! no. Besides, it's all ready--or ought to be.
But Maggie won't keep a good fire."
Maggie promptly came forward and fed the voracious little stove with a
fresh supply of logs.
"This stove eat wood. Missis should see. I put plenty logs on."
"She's right, you know," Rose said, stepping back, and pushing the hair
from her face. "Jim ought to buy a new stove. He'd save money on it in
the long run. But he hasn't the cooking to do; he merely grumbles when
he has to order the wood. Is the table laid, Maggie? Then you can
begin to dish up."
She put a hand through her sister's arm and drew her out to the
doorstep, where they stood watching the children, both a little silent
and thoughtful in mood.
"Aren't you hating it, being back again?" Rose asked presently, and
bent a keen look on her young sister's face. Esme looked up to smile.
"I suppose one always feels a little regretful at the finish of a
holiday," she said. "But of course I don't hate being back."
Rose did not press the point. Something in the girl's manner, something
even in the reticence she betrayed in speaking of her holiday, puzzled
her. Esme was usually more expansive. She did not seem to wish to talk
of her experiences. Perhaps, after all, she had had a disappointing
time. But the rest and the change had given her back her strength. Had
it? Rose looked at her again more attentively. She appeared to be in
excellent health; but she had lost her old gaiety; she seemed depressed.
"You are tired after the journey," she said. "Come on in and have
something to eat."
She called the children away from their play; and they all went into the
little dining-room and sat, crowded uncomfortably, round the small
table.
Jim served the food, and was jocular and determinedly cheerful. He was
pleased to have his sister-in-law home again. It was all rather noisy
and uncomfortable. The girl's thoughts strayed to the long shady room
at the Zuurberg, and to the silent companionship of the man whose
presence she was missing more than she would have thought possible. And
it was only a few hours since they had parted. There would follow many
hours, many days, many weeks. She wondered whether she would miss him
less as the days went by, or if this intolerable loneliness would grow.
It was distressing to think that she might never see him again. She
wondered also whether he missed her. She hoped he did. And then she
fell to picturing him reverting perhaps to the old evening practice of
drinking steadily, until finally he stumbled along the stoep on his way
to bed... Surely not that! If her friendship counted for anything at
all in his life its influence would linger with him and have some
deterrent effect.
"Sling along the Adam's ale, old girl," said Jim at this point in her
reverie. It was one of his boasts that he didn't pour his money down
his throat.
Esme passed him the water-bottle and roused herself with an effort and
joined in the general talk. The meal seemed interminable. The children
were excited and noisy; they dawdled over their food. Their mother
urged them to be quicker, and their father defeated her authority by
insisting that the slower they ate the better for their digestions.
Husband and wife had a wordy argument on this point. The children
ceased eating to listen, on perceiving which their father vented his
annoyance on them and sent them away from the table.
"That's your fault," he said to his wife. "You are always nagging at
the kids. We never get a meal in peace."
Esme listened and wondered. What was wrong with this household? These
two were quite fond of each other, and fond of the children; yet they
were seldom in agreement on any subject. She wondered whether all
married people got on one another's nerves. Marriage was a difficult
problem. It occurred to Esme that the solution of the difficulty might
be reached by it generous use of tact. Without her volition her
reflections found verbal expression.
"Tact!" she observed aloud to the astonishment of her hearers. "That's
the secret of happiness--immense tact. Jim, I think you are the most
tactless person in the world."
Book 2--CHAPTER THIRTEEN.
During the first few days after her return to her sister's home time
hung dismally for Esme. It would have been better had she gone back to
work immediately; but there was a full week to term time, and during
that week she found nothing sufficiently interesting to distract her
thoughts from the desolating fact that she missed something out of her
life. Her world was like a world without sunshine, flat and colourless,
a place of neutral tints and drab impressions. She hated the house, she
hated going out; most of all, she hated the people who visited her
sister and gossiped over tea of every trivial matter in the common daily
round. Those afternoon gatherings gave her mental indigestion. Yet at
one time these things had seemed pleasant and natural. The inference
was that there was something wrong with herself.
Her sister laid a hand on her secret very soon after her return. She
had gone into Esme's room and taken up a book, which lay on the little
table beside her bed, and opened it casually.
"Who is Paul Hallam?" she asked, reading the name inside the cover.
Esme swung round from the dressing-table, saw the book in her sister's
hand, and coloured warmly.
"A man who was staying at the Zuurberg."
"And he gave you this book?"
"Yes--to read in the train."
The two sisters looked at one another. Rose waited for further
information, but it was not forthcoming. She laid the book down, and
Esme resumed brushing her hair. It was pretty hair, soft and wavy. The
older woman watched operations for a moment or so, then she went
forward, took the brush from the girl's hand, and brushed it for her.
"Tell me about him," she urged.
"There is nothing to tell," Esme replied. "He was nice to me while I
was there; that is all."
The finality of the phrase struck on her own ears desolately. That was
all. Her romance had begun and ended with her holiday.
Rose made no comment. The scrappy information had illumined things for
her surprisingly. She felt suddenly very tender towards her sister.
She put the hair back from her face and kissed her gently.
"You are just sweet. You look such a child with your hair like that,"
she said.
But she made no further mention of Paul Hallam. There were a dozen
questions she would have liked to ask, but she forbore. It was not fair
to attempt to force the girl's confidence; her very reluctance to speak
of this acquaintance proved that there was more in it than she allowed,
perhaps more than she yet realised.
There followed days of restlessness and alternating moods more fitful
than any barometer. Sinclair called, and made himself so agreeable to
Rose and the children, and was so markedly attentive to Esme that Rose
found herself wishing that this quite eligible and agreeable young man
was the object of her sister's interest, as he unmistakably desired to
be.
Esme was pleased to see him again; but her manner towards him showed no
particular partiality. It was certainly not George Sinclair, Rose
decided, who was responsible for the change in the girl.
Sinclair called frequently after that first visit, and speedily became
on very friendly terms with the family. He found a staunch ally in
Rose, who, considering the other affair too remote to be serious, saw in
Sinclair an eventual safety-valve for her sister's repressed emotions.
Repressed emotion was undesirable; it hid like a morbid germ in the
brain cells and worked with insidious effect upon the mind. In Esme it
betrayed itself in unexpected bursts of irritability, as her discontent
with things grew. Mainly this was the result of reaction, and was but a
phase in the cure of which Sinclair aided unconsciously. His visits
made a break in the general monotony.
And then one day a letter came for Esme. Rose took it in. It was
directed in the same small untidy handwriting which she remembered
vividly seeing on the front page of the book in Esme's room. She had
looked for that book often since but she had never seen it again. Now,
with the letter in her hand, her thoughts went back to that little scene
in the bedroom, and her brows knitted themselves in a frown. Paul
Hallam had broken the silence and written to the girl. She carried the
letter up to Esme's room and laid it on the table beside her bed.
"Poor George!" she reflected. "This puts him out of the picture
anyway."
Then she went downstairs and left it to the girl to make her own
discovery on her return.
The first thing which Esme's eyes rested on when she ran up to her room
on getting back from the college where she gave music lessons was the
letter lying on her table. She stood for a full minute looking down at
it with pleased, amazed eyes and a deepening colour in her cheeks; then
she reached forth shyly and took it up.
"I wonder how he learned my address?" was the thought in her mind.
She had not seen him copy it from the label on her suit-case. He had
taken that precaution when the luggage was being placed in the cart.
She seated herself on the side of the bed and opened her letter and read
it.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Dear little Friend," it began characteristically,--
"I wonder whether it will surprise you that I should write to you? I
write to ask you a favour. I want you out of the kindness of your heart
to send me a line sometimes. You can in this matter help me
considerably. I knew before you left that I should miss you, but I did
not realise how great that miss would be until after you were gone.
Never in all my life have I known what it was to feel intolerably lonely
until now. It is not fair to me if, after giving me your friendship,
you withdraw it again altogether.
"I am fighting the devil within me, and just at present I can't say who
will win. But you can help me, if you will. Once you told me it was a
shame to make waste of my life. You were right, and I knew it, though
at the time I resented your candour. Since you left I have thought
often of your words. I miss you. And I want to talk to you. I have
never before ached to talk with any one. And yet I don't want to see
you for the present. If ever we meet you will know I have won. I
shan't attempt to see you otherwise.
"Please send me a line occasionally. You don't know what it will mean
to me. I am wondering as I write what you are doing, and whether you
continue the early morning habit? The sunrises are not marvellous any
longer. Every morning I go in search of the old beauty, but it is not
there. I wonder whether I shall ever find it again.
"Paul Hallam."
Esme read this letter through with deepening interest and a growing
softness in her eyes; there were tears in her eyes; they splashed on to
the paper and blurred the signature, tears of relief, of deep
thankfulness that at last the man had come to see the pity of wasting
his days.
She felt no fear for him any longer. Not a doubt of him troubled her
mind. That he would ultimately win through was assured by the sincerity
of his desire to win. It did not seem to her possible that he could
fail in what he undertook to accomplish. His devil stood no chance when
his better self took up arms against him. He would win. Assuredly he
would win. And then...
The bell sounded for lunch. She folded the letter and put it inside her
blouse. Then she bathed her eyes to hide the traces of emotion and went
downstairs.
Her sister scrutinised her attentively, but could read nothing in her
face to help her to any conclusion. She longed to ask questions, but
restrained her curiosity in the hope that Esme would confide in her when
a propitious moment offered. She made opportunities somewhat too
obviously, but Esme did not take advantage of them. She did not speak
of her letter.
The letters came regularly after that, once a week; and Rose's
unsatisfied curiosity grew enormously. There was something unnatural in
the girl's reticence. She began to entertain doubts of Paul Hallam. It
entered her mind to seek information from Sinclair, but loyalty to her
sister restrained her from doing that. Esme, she supposed, answered
these weekly epistles; but she never saw her write letters; whatever she
wrote she posted herself.
"Who's Esme's correspondent?" Jim asked on one occasion when the weekly
letter attracted his notice. "These letters are always coming to the
house."
"I don't know," his wife answered. "And you'd better not ask her."
"D'you mean she never tells you?" he asked, amazed.
"She doesn't tell me anything. But I believe they come from a man she
met at the Zuurberg."
"That place seems to be a kind of matrimonial agency," Jim grinned. "I
thought Sinclair was coming into the family. You see if you can't find
out something about this fellow. Sinclair's all right, and he means
business. Pity if this is going to queer his pitch."
"It's Esme's affair," Rose replied, experiencing a distinct
disinclination to follow his counsel. "When there is anything for me to
know I expect she will tell me."
"I never knew before that you were so blooming discreet," he rejoined;
and turned, red in the face but unabashed, to confront his
sister-in-law, who entered by the open door and met them in the tiny
hall. He gave her the letter.
"I was just asking Rose who your correspondent was," he said, with
overdone ease of manner. "She pretends she doesn't know."
"She does not know," Esme answered coolly, and took the letter from his
hand and glanced at it casually.
"Well, but, see here," he returned, nettled but intent on information.
"We are interested--naturally."
"How can you be interested in some one you have never met?" she said,
and went on up the steep narrow stairs, carrying her letter with her.
"I'm blowed!" her brother-in-law ejaculated.
Rose laughed annoyingly.
"You made a hash of that," she said. "She won't say anything now."
"Then let her keep her mouth shut," he said rudely, and went into the
sitting-room in a ruffled state of mind.
Book 2--CHAPTER FOURTEEN.
The receipt of those weekly letters and the pleasurable occupation of
replying to them engrossed Esme's thoughts, changed all her outlook,
filled her life completely. She was falling very deeply in love. And
she believed that Paul Hallam loved her. He did not tell her so in
words, but every letter which came from him conveyed the idea that it
was for her sake entirely he was attempting what no other influence
would have led him to attempt, that when he was sure of himself he would
come to her. She waited and hoped and hugged her secret to herself,
determined to guard from others the knowledge of his weakness, which he
was so earnestly endeavouring to conquer.
He had left the Zuurberg for the coast, and was staying at Camp's Bay,
right on the beach, he explained, in writing her a description of his
new quarters.
"You would love it here," he wrote. "The road between Camp's Bay and
Seapoint surpasses everything for beauty. You've no idea how fine it is
in the early morning."
In another letter he said: "The moonlight on the sea has set me thinking
of you. If only we were watching it together! The surface of the sea
is all splashed with silver, broken up and spread over it in a running
liquid fire. One day I hope you will watch it with me. I see it from
the window as I write."
She treasured these letters and tied them about and locked them away
from sight. They brought him very near to her; and his detailed
descriptions of his walks, his surroundings, helped her to visualise
him. She longed to see him again; but she never allowed a breath of her
longing to find expression in the cheery letters she wrote in answer to
his.
In the meantime Sinclair pursued his courtship in blissful
unconsciousness of the hopelessness of his cause. Esme had come to
accept Sinclair's friendship as a matter of course. Their relations
were very fraternal. They called one another by their christian names.
Sinclair was George to everyone in the Bainbridge household, down to the
children, who viewed him with affectionate interest as a person who
understood small people's tastes in the matter of sweets.
Every Saturday he came in for tennis, and returned with Esme to the
house in Havelock Street for supper. Usually on Sundays he took Esme
and the children to Red House, and they spent the day on the river. He
brightened life for her considerably. She liked him. In a friendly,
wholly unsentimental fashion she was fond of him. Had there been no one
else in her life her affection would probably have developed into a
warmer sentiment. But she never thought of George Sinclair in the light
of a possible lover. He never made love to her. Not once in their
pleasant intercourse had he said anything she could have construed into
an attempt at love-making. His manner was affectionate and kind always.
He was a good chum. That was how she thought of him, as a good chum.
The awakening therefore was all the more startling when it came.
Sinclair seized his opportunity during the tennis tournament. With
considerable difficulty he persuaded her to partner him in the mixed
doubles. She was reluctant on account of being a weak player; but he
overruled her objections, and she gave way.
"You'll lose--with me," she warned him. "I'm not good at games ever."
"I'll take my chance of that," he replied. "Anyway, I'd rather lose
with you than win with any one else."
Esme practised untiringly before the event. She had never attended the
tournament before other than as a spectator, and the sight of the crowds
which gathered each day to view the events shook her nerve. She played
badly, and felt rather aggrieved that her partner managed to drag her
victoriously through their first set. After their game she sat with him
below the stand and reproached him for winning.
"It would be all over now if you hadn't cribbed half my balls," she
complained.
"But you don't want to be out of it really?" he said, surprised.
"I do--and I don't. It makes me jumpy."
"That's all right. You'll get your tail up later. I'm going to win,
you know. I'm going to pull this off."
"You've got your work cut out," she said, and laughed. "You'll get very
little help from me."
"I only ask your co-operation," he returned confidently. "Take what you
can, and leave the rest to me. I'm out to win. You see, we are coming
through together."
She did see. And with each set they played and won her astonishment
deepened. She had always known that he was a good player, but she had
not realised the reserve force which he could bring into his game when
he wanted it. It was something more than play, she decided, which
carried him through; it was sheer determination not to be beaten. They
came through the finals with a hard-won victory.
Jim and Rose were present to watch the finish. According to Jim, his
sister-in-law played a footling game.
"At least she didn't hamper her partner," Rose said.
"Hamper him! No. She might as well have been off the court
altogether."
"Her service is good," Rose insisted.
"Yes--for a girl." He chuckled. "She leaves him to make all the
running."
"Well, they won anyhow."
"_He_ won," he corrected. "Shouldn't be surprised if he didn't win all
along the line. He has only a bundle of letters to compete against. My
money is on the man on the spot all the time."
"Hush!" Rose said warningly. "Here they come."
She hailed the winners with smiling congratulations, and complimented
Sinclair on his play.
"We pulled it off all right, Mrs Bainbridge," he said, laughing,
looking hot and young and immeasurably contented with life. "Esme
funked right to the finish, but she played up like a good 'un. Whew!
I'm hot. Come on, partner; let's go and have a lemon squash."
The girl, flushed and tired and less elated with success than he was,
followed him to the back of the pavilion, and stood drinking lemonade,
and talking to a little knot of competitors who were there for a similar
purpose. Some of the players she knew, but a number of them were
visitors down for the tournament. A dance that night at the Town Hall
was to celebrate the finish of the festivities. A group of flannel-clad
young men and white-frocked young women were discussing the ball and
booking dances in advance. Some one came up to Esme and asked her for a
dance, which she promised willingly. In a very short while she had
given a number of dances away. Sinclair touched her arm.
"I want some," he said. "I want quite a lot."
His tone was urgent, and when she turned to look at him she saw that his
face was strained and very determined. The expression in his eyes
puzzled her.
"Of course," she said, "I should feel a little hurt if you didn't."
"Look here!" he said in an undertone. "Come out of this. I don't want
you to give away any more--not at present. I'm going to have the supper
dance, and everything after that. Is it a promise?"
"Well," she said, and looked somewhat doubtful. "That means that you
are booked for the entire half of my programme."
He nodded.
"That's it," he said.
"But,"--she was beginning, when he took hold of her arm and led her
outside, with a muttered reference to the stifling heat.
"Come and sit under the trees," he said. "I want to watch the set on
the far court."
It was one of the less interesting sets, and there were fewer
spectators, which was probably why he decided for it. He conducted her
to an unoccupied seat and sat down beside her.
"It's jolly here and cool and out of the crush. You don't want to watch
the Johannesburg chap, do you?"
She would have preferred to watch the play on the centre court. It was
clear that the Johannesburg man would carry off the championship in the
men's singles; but she gave in to his wish and decided to remain where
she was.
Sinclair's manner was nervous and preoccupied; but the girl did not
appear to notice it; she did not want to talk. Her companion smoked
cigarettes and stared with a sort of strained attention at the game and
jerked out an occasional comment. Presently he remarked apropos of
nothing:
"I had a rise yesterday. That was an altogether unexpected stroke of
luck."
"Yes!" she exclaimed, turning an interested, unsuspicious face towards
him. "I am pleased. Why didn't you tell me before?"
He laughed.
"Too absorbed in our game," he said, "to think of it. But I'm thinking
of it now. It makes a difference."
"I suppose it does. You'll be bursting forth into extravagances. Why
don't you keep a car?"
"Not yet," he said. "I want other things more urgently than that."
"What things?"
"I'll tell you to-night," he said, reddening.
"Yes," she said, her thoughts reverting to the discussion in the
pavilion. "During half a programme you'll find time enough to tell me a
good deal."
He glanced at her quickly.
"You didn't mind?" he said. "It's only the second half; and you'll be
tired. You won't want to dance much."
"Oh, indeed! Then what do you propose we shall do? If we don't dance
we might as well remain at home."
"We'll dance all you want to," he replied. "And we'll go for a stroll
along the sea wall. The weather is too hot for being inside. You shall
do what you like anyhow."
"You are always so amenable, George," she said, smiling. "And you
always get your own way in the end."
He smiled back at her with gay confidence.
"My luck's in," he replied. "The gods smile on me. I told you, Esme,
that I meant to win."
"I did my utmost to prevent you," she said.
"You understand co-operation, partner," he returned coolly. "That's
good enough for me."
She did not in the least understand the drift of his remarks, although
he believed he was tactfully preparing her for the declaration he
intended making that night. The last thing she anticipated was the
proposal which hovered continually in the forefront of Sinclair's mind.
He intended to put his luck to the test that evening, and felt fairly
confident as to the result. He had not the remotest suspicion of
possessing a rival. The road ahead, so far as he could see, was
perfectly clear.
Book 2--CHAPTER FIFTEEN.
It seemed to Sinclair that all the conditions that night favoured his
suit. It was a perfect evening, warm and still, with a brilliant moon
in a cloudless sky lighting the world with a luminous whiteness in which
everything was revealed scarcely less clearly than in the daylight. It
was a night for lovers, for the open air and solitude; it was not a
night for dancing. Sinclair, after the first dance, which he had with
Esme, was content to remain on the outskirts of the crowd and look on at
the rest. The floor was thronged with dancers. The lights, the music,
the colour of the moving crowd, appealed pleasantly to the senses. He
liked to watch; and every now and again he caught Esme's eye and won a
smile from her which cheered him. She appeared more than usually sweet
and kind that night, he thought.
The supper dance gave him the right to claim her again. In the interim
he had done a lot of thinking. He had his phrases turned and clear in
his mind. He knew very definitely what he wanted to say; he had
rehearsed it in his thoughts endless times. And he knew the right
atmosphere for the deliverance of those neatly turned sentences. He
wasn't going to fling the thing at her in a crowded room with numberless
people present. They would slip away together in the moonlight, and
stroll along the sea wall, against which the tiny waves broke softly,
running in and curling round the rocks, slapping musically against the
stonework which checked their further advance. He could tell her to the
accompaniment of the sea what he could not tell her in a hot and crowded
place. He wanted her to himself, away from these others.
It was not a difficult matter to persuade her to go with him. With the
finish of supper they left the hall together, crossed the moonlit
square, passed the Customs House, and so on to the sea wall, where the
quiet of the night was undisturbed; the swish of lapping water and the
low murmur of the sea were the only audible sounds in the surrounding
stillness.
He sat down beside her on a seat cut into the wall, and remained very
still, holding her hand and looking away to where the ships rode at
anchor far out on the silver sea. All the things which he had meant to
say to her, all his carefully planned sentences, eluded him; he felt
intensely, horribly nervous as he sat there in the growing silence,
holding her hand and looking out across the sea.
The girl sat and looked at the water also and forgot the man beside her.
Her thoughts were away from her present surroundings. She was thinking
of a sentence in one of Hallam's letters, while she sat silent in the
moonlight and saw the surface of the sea, as he had seen it from his
window while he wrote his letter to her, splashed with silver, broken up
and spread over it, a running liquid fire. It was here just as he had
described it--the same sea, the same moon,--with the waste of waters
intervening, dividing them in everything but thought. Sinclair had made
a mistake in taking her down to the sea.
"Esme!" he said presently, breaking the dragging silence, and pressing
her hand warmly in his strong grasp. "Esme!"
She turned her face to his, wholly unaware of the emotional stress under
which he laboured, but conscious of a quality in his voice which
rendered it unfamiliar. She saw his face close to hers, strained and
white in the moonlight, heard his breathing, hard and deep, like the
breathing of a man after violent exercise, and felt a faint surprise.
Dimly she began to realise that something unusual was happening; a look
of apprehension grew in her eyes.
He groped about after the sentences he had so carefully prepared, but
his mind was a blank. He could think of nothing effective to say; and
all the while her eyes, puzzled and questioning, were on his face.
"I love you," he mumbled presently, and took heart of grace when the
words were out and pulled her swiftly to him and kissed her. "Dear, I
love you with all my soul. I want to marry you."
Very gently she freed herself from his hold, and drew back, and sat
scrutinising him with ever growing distress. She liked him so well.
She hated having to hurt him; but it had never occurred to her that he
was in love with her. His affection had seemed so frankly friendly
hitherto.
"George, I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't know. I don't feel towards
you like that."
"Perhaps not now. But you will," he suggested. "I've been a little
abrupt. I ought to have waited."
"It wouldn't have made any difference," she said.
"Are you sure?"
"Quite sure. I'm very fond of you; but that's all," she added
convincingly.
"Well, look here! I'm not taking `No' right off like that. I'm going
to wait--"
"No," she interrupted quickly. "You mustn't think that. I shan't
change."
His face fell.
"You don't mean that there is some one else?" he asked.
For a moment or two she did not answer; then she nodded, without
speaking, and put out a hand and touched his arm.
"My dear," she said, "don't ask me questions. It is quite possible that
I shall never marry the man I love, but I cannot marry any one else.
I'm sorry. I didn't think you cared for me like that. I wish you
didn't. You must put me out of your thoughts."
He smiled faintly.
"That's not easily done," he replied. "Besides, I don't want to. Like
you, I may never marry the girl I love, but at least I cannot love any
one else. You are the one and only girl for me. I know. I'm not a
moonstruck boy. You'll let me keep your friendship, won't you? I won't
take advantage of it."
Tears came into her eyes. She had never liked him so much as in that
moment. The idea of giving up his friendship had not occurred to her
until he begged the privilege of retaining it. She did not want to give
it up. It was one of the pleasant things in her life.
"I want to continue being friends," she said. "I've grown to look on
you as a chum. That's how I've always thought of you. I want to be
friends--and to put this other thing out of my thoughts."
"Yes," he agreed. "We'll wipe that out. I made a mistake. You know,
dear,"--he felt for her hand and found it and held it tightly,--"I think
you are the sweetest girl in the world. I'll do anything for you. For
the present I'm feeling a bit sore, and just for a little while will
keep in the background. When I turn up again I'll be over the worst of
it, and you needn't fear that I shall make a fool of myself. We'll take
things up where we dropped them."
His defeat staggered Sinclair. He had been so sure that his luck was
in, so confident of the girl's affection, and unsuspicious of a possible
rival. He knew of no one with whom she was on terms of particular
intimacy. It never entered his thoughts to associate Hallam with her in
any way. He had not seen the development of that acquaintance. He
would have disapproved if he had. His naturally healthy mind held only
contempt for such weakness as Hallam's. He had summed up the man
briefly as a waster, and so disposed of him. That the man he despised
would one day have to be reckoned with, that he stood already in his
life, a menace to his happiness, an adverse influence, he was wholly
unaware. It was as well for his peace of mind that he remained in
ignorance for long after she had refused him of his rival's identity. A
rival who did not materialise left room for a tiny gleam of hope in his
heart.
"We'd better get back," he said, and rose from the seat. The beauty of
the night held no longer any attraction for him.
"I want to go home," she said, rising also. "I'm tired, and--I want to
go home."
He took her back to the hall and waited while she fetched her cloak.
She came out after a brief while, white faced and pensive, with a look
in her eyes as though she had been crying and had dashed the tears
hastily away.
He drew her hand through his arm and went with her out into the warm,
still night, along the deserted streets, up White's Road, traversing the
intervening byways to her own road almost in silence. At her door he
said good-night, and was turning away when she stopped him. Her heart
ached with pity for the sadness in his eyes.
"George, I'm sorry," she whispered, and tugged at his sleeve.
"That's all right," he answered, breaking away from her.
His voice sounded husky and a little gruff; he could not trust himself
to say more. She drew back, feeling troubled and inadequate, and stood
on the doorstep looking after him wistfully while he hurried down the
road in the moonlight, turned a corner and went out of her sight. She
had an impulse to run after him: she felt that she must say something,
do something, anything, to drive the pain and disappointment from his
look; it hurt her to let him go like that. But on reflection she knew
that she could do nothing; she must let him go.
She opened the door and went dejectedly inside and shut it quickly and
turned the key in the lock. Softly she crept upstairs to her room. The
blind was not drawn and the moonlight streamed in through the open
window and made any other illumination unnecessary.
She seated herself on the side of the bed and stared out at the black
shadow of the tree with its clusters of blossoms showing palely in the
white light. The household she supposed was asleep; everything was very
still and quiet. In the distance a dog barked incessantly: there was no
other sound to disturb the quiet of the night.
And then suddenly her door opened softly, and Rose came in in her
nightdress, and stood looking in sleepy surprise at the motionless
figure seated on the bed. She advanced to the bed and sat down beside
the girl and started a whispered conversation.
"I heard you come in," she said. "Jim's asleep. Have you had a good
time? Why don't you get to bed?"
"I forgot," Esme said, and began to unfasten her dress. Rose became
actively helpful.
"You are tired," she said. "What's the matter, dear?" She took the
girl's face between her hands and scrutinised it closely. "Esme, what
has happened? I wish you'd confide in me more."
The gentle reproach in her sister's voice, acting on her overwrought
nerves, caused the tears, so near the surface, to overflow. She dropped
her face on to Rose's shoulder and wept softly.
"Did George say anything to you to-night?" Rose asked, feeling
increasingly surprised. She had not wept when Jim proposed to her. She
remembered quite vividly that she had felt elated and very excited. She
had wanted to speak of it, to tell people. She could not fathom Esme's
mood.
"Is that the trouble, little goose?" she asked. "I knew--we all knew--
he meant to propose."
Whereupon Esme lifted her face and turned her tear-wet eyes on the
speaker in wide amaze.
"You knew!" she said. "Well, I didn't. I wish I had known. I thought
he was just a pal."
"A pal makes a good husband," Rose said thoughtfully, with the first
glimmer of doubt in her mind as to what answer her sister had returned.
"It's all right, isn't it?"
"It's all wrong," Esme answered ruefully, and dabbed at her eyes,--"just
as wrong as it can be. He's hurt; and I hate hurting him. I like him
so well. But I don't love him, Rose."
"You don't mean that you refused him?"
"Of course I mean that. I couldn't marry George."
"Why not?" Rose inquired blankly. When no response came to her
question, she caught her sister's arm and turned her towards her and
looked her steadily in the eyes.
"Tell me," she said quietly, "what there is between you and Paul Hallam?
You've changed since you knew him. You are more reserved, and you've
lost your high spirits. Who is Paul Hallam? And why does he write to
you? What is he to you?"
"He is just a friend," Esme answered.
"You love him," Rose said. "Do you think I am so dense as not to have
discovered that? You can trust me. I've not let Jim guess that I know
who your correspondent is. I've kept your counsel all the time; it's
your affair. But I think you might tell me."
Esme made a gesture that was at once a protest and an appeal. She sat
straighter, with her hands locked together in her lap, and stared out at
the moonlight unseeingly.
"I'd tell you if there was anything to tell," she said. "There isn't.
There has never been any talk of love between us ever. We are just good
friends."
"But you love him?" Rose persisted.
"Yes, I love him with all my heart. If I never see him again I will go
on loving him for the rest of my life."
In face of this Rose found nothing to say. The situation had got beyond
her. She felt increasingly curious. She wanted to know more about this
man; but Esme's manner baffled her. It was very evident that the
subject was distressing to the girl. There was something behind all
this of which she was in ignorance and which she felt she ought to be
told. She put one or two leading questions, but all she elicited was
the fact that Hallam was a man of independent means and no fixed abode.
That struck Rose as significant. If no duties engrossed him it was odd
that he should be satisfied to communicate with the girl only by post.
If he were sufficiently interested in her to keep up a correspondence,
why did he never come to see her?
"I would advise you to put Paul Hallam out of your thoughts," she said,
as an outcome of these reflections.
Then she kissed the girl, and got off the bed, and stood hesitating
between the bed and the door, sleepy, yet reluctant to leave her sister
alone.
"I hoped when I came in you would have a different story to tell me,"
she added. "Don't waste your life, thinking of a man who doesn't care
enough to want to come and see you. George is honest, and he loves you.
It's a pity to throw away a really good chance of happiness."
"To marry a man when you love another would not bring happiness," Esme
said, facing her sister in the moonlight, half undressed, and with her
hair falling about her shoulders and shading her face. "And it wouldn't
be fair to George."
"I expect George, like most people, would prefer half a loaf to no
bread," Rose answered. She opened the door. "Good-night, dear," she
said softly. "You go to sleep, and don't bother your head about any of
them. Men aren't worth half the tears women waste on them."
She returned to her own room, and stood for a moment or so looking
thoughtfully at the sleeping face of her husband, as he lay on his back
with arms spread wide across the bed, and a faint smile touched her
lips.
"It is all beauty and romance till we marry you," she mused. "Then we
discover that our demi-gods are just mere men. I wonder whether I would
have wept over you in the old days? ... I didn't anyway."
With which she got into bed and fell asleep.
But Esme did not sleep. She lay awake in the hot stuffy darkness of her
little room, which the kitchen stove abetted the sun in keeping hot by
day, while the warm slates of the too adjacent roof prevented any
appreciable decrease in temperature during the night--lay awake with her
mind filled with the thought of one man, and her imagination afire with
the memory of splashes of moonlight on a heaving mass of water that
stretched away endlessly and laved the moonlit, rock-strewn beach of a
little bay along the coast. Then, with the dawn, she fell asleep and
dreamed of the moonlight and of Paul Hallam.
Book 2--CHAPTER SIXTEEN.
From dreaming of Hallam at night and thinking of him in the daytime,
Esme arrived at a stage of almost incredible longing to see him again.
Letters did not satisfy her. She wanted to hear his voice speaking to
her, wanted to feel his presence, wanted, above all, to discover whether
the months had changed him, and if the lapse of time had decreased his
kindly feeling for her in any way. His letters no longer referred to
the possibility of meeting: they became more formal in tone as time went
by.
Soon after her tennis victory he wrote congratulating her on the event.
She had not written to him on the subject; his information had been
gleaned from the papers.
"I see you have been distinguishing yourself on the tennis courts," he
wrote. "Why do you leave me to discover the tale of your triumphs from
the newspapers? I prefer to hear of these things first hand. The news
furnished a further link with the old Zuurberg days. I recall how you
practised with Sinclair then. So you keep hold on the thread of that
acquaintance also?"
It occurred to Esme that this circumstance had displeased him. She
wished that she had written to him about the tournament and her part in
it. It did seem a little odd, when she came to think of it, that she
had suppressed this piece of news.
His letter was brief; and contained very little news of personal
interest. It read as though it had been written with an effort, and not
because he wanted to talk to her. A first fear that he might weary of
the correspondence gripped her. If he ceased to write she would be
desolate. His letters had come to mean so much to her: they caught her
away from the dreary routine of her days; they coloured life for her
warmly, kept her interest on the alert. Giving music lessons endlessly
through the long, hot days, returning to the stuffy overcrowded little
house where numberless small duties constantly demanded her attention,
was not an existence calculated to add romance to life. She had grown
weary of these things. The blood in her veins was astir like the sap in
the trees in the springtime. Love budded in her heart; it only awaited
a sign to burst into flower.
There were times when she fancied she read in Hallam's letters an
intimation that he wanted her. He spoke often of his loneliness, and
made reference to the happiness of their time together. But the months
went by and he did not come, and into his letters crept a new note of
reserve. Then followed a period of silence, after which he wrote from a
totally new address and begged for news of her. She allowed herself
twenty-four hours for reflection; then she replied to his letter in the
old friendly vein.
It was nearing the vacation, and she spoke of needing a holiday, and
told him that she could not decide where to go.
"I've thought of the Zuurberg," she wrote; "but your remark about
walking among tombstones sticks in my memory unpleasantly. I am afraid
it would be just that."
To which he replied from De Aar:
"There is a dignity about monuments which is soothing. My former
remarks were ill-considered. You might do worse than walk among
memories. Try the Zuurberg again, and tell me what you feel in respect
to resuscitated emotions. I would suggest that you came up here, but it
is a long journey and too hot for the time of the year."
Clearly he did not want her to join him. That thought wounded her. It
had been in her mind when she told him of her indecision that he might
propose meeting somewhere; that he made no such proposal seemed to prove
that he did not desire to see her. She felt vexed with herself for
having mentioned the subject to him. Once again the feeling of having
been snubbed by this man tormented her. In the old days it had caused
her indignation, but now it hurt.
The question of her holiday became a matter for debate in her mind. She
no longer desired to go to the Zuurberg; but the fear that he might read
in a change of plan her reason for deciding against it stiffened her
resolve to do what she did not want to do. The Zuurberg had not lost
its attraction for her; but it would be, she knew, haunted with
memories, where the ghosts of old pleasures would meet her at every
turn.
Fear of these ghosts prompted her to suggest taking the children with
her, a proposal which led to a wordy discussion as to ways and means.
Their father did not consider change necessary for them. Rose disputed
this; she wished them to go.
"Other people's children go away," she insisted finally on a softer
note. "If we can't afford a holiday for ourselves we ought to let them
have one. I think we might manage it, Jim, don't you?"
This direct appeal from her, to which he was unaccustomed, took him
aback. He was indeed surprised into acquiescing. In the end he spoke
as if it had been his wish all along. Later, when he left the room,
Rose looked across at her sister and smiled quietly.
"That was accomplished through the exercise of a little of the tact you
advocate," she said.
"It's worth it, don't you think?" Esme returned, and laughed. "All he
needs is management."
"Most men, I suppose, need that. You can't drive them in the direction
you wish, but if you can make them believe it's the way they want to go,
they start off at the gallop. Funny animals, aren't they?"
"Some of them are rather nice," Esme ventured.
"Some of them--perhaps. But you don't know; you aren't married. A girl
never really knows a man--knows him, I mean, for what he is underneath
the veneer of social pretences until she has lived with him. Then
little things peep out, selfishnesses--like ugly excrescences upon the
smooth surfaces you fancied were rather fine and noble. A man when he
is a lover is all chivalrous gentleness. Well, the chivalry is mostly
veneer. Jim always gives up his seat in a tram to a woman; when he is
in his own home, you may have noticed, he takes the most comfortable
chair. They have to relax sometimes, you see; it isn't possible to live
up to that level always. I'd rather a man were a bear outside the home
and considerate in it. There are such men, I suppose, but I haven't met
them."
"There are such men," Esme repeated, and thought of Hallam's lack of
social manner. She wondered whether the gentleness which she knew to be
in him would manifest itself in the home. She could not imagine him
behaving altogether selfishly towards any one for whom he cared.
"Husbands want training, like children," Rose went on. "I didn't train
my man; I began by spoiling him. That's where most girls make a
mistake. Then, when the babies come, the spoiling ceases generally.
But the harm is done. I have often observed that the husbands of
selfish women are a long way the nicest. Men like peace; they will
sacrifice a great deal in order to get it."
"It is rather an agreeable thing," Esme said, reflecting that a little
more of it in her sister's household would make life pleasanter.
"I dare say it is; but it can't be had on an insufficient income. If
you like peace so much, why do you take the children with you on your
holiday? You won't get peace where they are."
"Oh! we'll get along. We shall be out all day, and there will be other
children for them to play with. They won't worry me."
"It's nice of you to be bothered with them," Rose said. She scrutinised
her sister closely, and, curiosity getting the upper hand, asked
bluntly: "Where is Paul Hallam now?"
"On the Karroo," Esme answered, surprised. "Why?"
"I didn't know. I thought perhaps you might meet at the Zuurberg."
"No. He left there long ago."
"Well, but he might have felt it worth his while to go back when you
were there. I don't understand that affair, Esme. I don't trust the
man. My dear, I don't trust him. And you are wearing yourself out,
thinking of him. You are losing your vitality. You aren't as pretty as
you were. No." She surveyed the girl fixedly with adversely
criticising eyes. "You are _not_ so pretty."
This came as a shock to Esme. She wanted to look in the glass over the
mantelpiece; but her sense of dignity and the fitness of things kept her
glued to her seat. What, after all, did it matter if her looks
departed? There was no one to note these things nor feel distressed on
their account.
"Why does he continue to write to you, and never come to see you?" Rose
asked. "It's not fair to you. And there's George... If it wasn't for
Paul Hallam you would marry George. He is a good fellow, and he's
getting on. It would be a most suitable arrangement. You don't want to
teach all your life. You want a home. Every woman does. Instead you
fill your head with romantic nonsense, and make yourself miserable, and
George miserable--for a man who doesn't care. You could forget him if
you left off corresponding. Why do you let him play with you?"
"He doesn't play with me," Esme answered, flushing. "He never asked me
for anything more than friendship. I give him that because it is a help
to him, and because he is lonely. Why cannot a man and a girl be
friends?"
"I should have thought your own case furnished an answer to that," Rose
said. "In a friendship between a man and a girl one of them invariably
falls in love. You can't get away from nature. The eternal question of
sex hides behind all these unequal friendships. That's what makes them
interesting. But these interesting relationships can spoil one's life.
I wish that you had never met this man. I feel uneasy about it."
Esme sat in an attitude of disturbed attention, and kept her eyes
studiously averted from her sister's. There was just sufficient reason
in her discursive statements to cause the girl to wince mentally. She
was beginning to believe that she was giving more than Paul Hallam
wanted from her, more than he dreamed of when he proposed continuing the
friendship. This thought was humiliating; but only temporarily so: even
as she felt its sting another thought drew the venom from it. If she
could help him, even a little, it was worth while.
Book 2--CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.
"To revisit a familiar spot is like walking among tombstones. Every
point recalls a memory, and memory belongs to the past."
Very vividly, like something heard long ago but never before realised,
these words which Hallam had uttered on the morning she left the
Zuurberg all those weary months before, echoed in Esme's thoughts when
she made her second journey up the mountain road. The truth of them
struck her like a thing which hurts. Her memories came back to her, as
he had said they would, with the dust on them. And there was no evading
them; they obtruded at every point.
At Coerney there was the same wait under the trees before the cart was
ready to start; the same languid stillness brooded over the place, the
same enervating heat. Here was the first tombstone. She looked about
her with reminiscent eyes, marked the spot where she had sat with Hallam
while they waited for the train to come in, realised the crowd of new
impressions which jostled the memories in her brain, and fell into
thought.
The children were busy exploring. The sound of their gay, excited
voices came to her distantly on the languid air. But she could not see
them; their figures were hidden among the trees.
Everything was much the same as on her former visit. There were two
other travellers beside her party: they had gone into the hotel for
refreshments. Presently they came out. The horses appeared with the
driver, and the business of inspanning began. The children wandered
back and became actively interested in these proceedings. John wished
to drive: a compromise was effected by his being allowed to sit beside
the driver and hold the whip. Then began the toil upward.
With every mile of the journey memories came crowding back into Esme's
mind, a dismal procession of pale ghosts that came and went and left a
feeling of greater loneliness when they passed. These memories of her
first glowing impressions, when excitement and a sense of adventure had
coloured her imagination, gave to the present occasion a sort of
flatness: the wonder of romance was missing from the picture. She
looked about her with intent, mystified eyes. Everywhere there were
tombstones; they met her all along the route.
Yet the beauty of the place remained unchanged. The wild grandeur of
the scenery, the magnificent solitude, the almost terrifying depths of
the chasm which lost itself in the froth of green below, these things
impressed her as they had impressed her before with a wondering
admiration that held something of awe in it; but whereas before, though
she had believed herself to be lonely, hope had travelled with her as a
companion; on this occasion there was no joyful anticipation in her
heart, only a sense of disappointment that the finish of the journey
promised nothing more than the usual holiday offers--rest and change
from the ordinary busy life.
She wished, with an urgency no less insistent because of its futility,
that she had decided on some other place--any other place--in which to
spend her holiday. The mountain road was haunted with the ghosts of
dead pleasures; the gorge was haunted; its secret places were the
repositories for the thoughts of yesterday, for the dreams which pass
with the night.
She gazed down into the black-green silences and felt her despondency
deepen. These familiar things linked up her life so completely with the
one brief romance it had ever known. She could not disentangle her
thoughts from the past. Everywhere her eyes turned, each fresh curve in
the road, brought back recollections of Hallam, and of their drive down
the mountain together. What was he doing now? Where was he, while she
was being borne higher and higher up the steep ascent?
Every now and again the children turned in their seats to flash some
question at her, or to point out some amazing novelty which caught their
eager attention. The big tree across the road, which cut through its
giant trunk, was a source of wonder and delight to them. John forgot
his dignity and allowed himself to be impressed by its dimensions.
"Man! but they can grow trees up this way," he remarked to the driver.
Whereat the driver unbent so far as to permit him to drive under the
tree. Whatever his aunt thought about it, John thoroughly enjoyed the
experience of that journey up the mountain road. But when the hotel
broke first upon his sight he was a little disappointed by its
unpretentious appearance.
"It isn't very big. It's just like an ordinary house," he complained.
"I expect you'll find there is room enough for you inside," Esme said.
"Gimme my suit-case. I'll go and find out," John replied.
The cart drew up before the entrance. John scrambled down and waited
impatiently for his luggage. He had never owned a suit-case before. He
insisted upon carrying it. This delayed the party. Esme was obliged to
wait while the cart was unloaded, until John's baggage came to light and
was given into his care. Declining assistance, he struggled with his
burden manfully up the short path, and, flushed and a little short of
breath, deposited it on the stoep with an air of satisfaction. Some one
came forward and offered to carry it inside for him; but John was
distrustful of these overtures.
"I can manage," he said politely, to the amusement of a man who was
seated on the stoep, "if you'll show me the way, please."
Before following his conductor he looked round for his aunt and sister;
and the man who had shown amusement looked in the same direction, and
then stood up. John was not interested in the stranger's movements; he
was anxious to go inside and unpack; but the others were so slow in
coming. Mary had halted in the path to fondle an amazingly fat white
cat. John was not keen on cats; he preferred a dog. He wished they
would hurry up.
"John," Mary's shrill voice called on a note of enthusiasm, "it's the
darlingest thing, and it's called Snowflake."
"Oh, _come_ on!" John returned.
Mary came on at a run, and Esme followed leisurely. And then another
delay occurred. John's patience was exhausted. Girls were all alike,
he reflected scornfully; they made a fuss over everything they met. He
did not understand why his aunt should stop to speak to the man who had
been seated on the stoep, and who now stepped off the stoep and went to
meet her. It seemed as though she had forgotten that he was waiting for
her to go in with him.
She had stopped still in the path and was talking to the man. She had
forgotten John and his suit-case altogether; she had forgotten
everything. The weary months of waiting had slipped out of the picture;
the present had rolled back into the past. She was back in the old spot
with the man beside her whose presence made for her the magic of the
place. The ghosts which had met and mocked her on the journey were
finally laid to rest.
Hallam had come down the path quickly, and stood in front of her and
blocked her way. She stood still, flushed and wondering, and looked at
him with eyes which told a tale.
"I began to think you hadn't come," he said.
"Oh!" she said, and held out a hand with a slightly nervous laugh. "I
never expected to see you. Why didn't you tell me?"
"I was coming to the station to meet you," he said, "but the cart went
away fairly loaded. I have been sitting here waiting for you for the
past two days. What do you suppose I meant, you dense little thing,
when I advised you to take your holiday here? Do you think I'd have
left you to wander alone among the musty relics you dreaded? ... I am
going to take you to-morrow morning to see the sun rise," he added in a
lighter tone.
Esme laughed happily.
"I haven't seen the sun rise since the last time we saw it together,"
she said, and scrutinised him for the first time with unwavering eyes.
She thought him looking extremely well and fit. He appeared younger and
altogether more sure of himself. And the stoop of the shoulders was
less noticeable; he carried himself better. He met her eyes and smiled.
"I rather suspected your early morning activity was a cultivation," he
said. "It is possible, I have found, to discard habits as well as to
cultivate them."
That was the only reference he made to the long months he had spent
fighting his baser self. He did not know whether she caught the drift
of his remark. It did not seem to him to matter much. There was
manifestly very little need for explanations on either side. They took
one another for granted. They took their love for one another for
granted; it stood revealed, a thing which needed no words, which
expressed itself mutely in their satisfaction in one another. They
gazed into each other's eyes, and there was no shadow of doubt in their
minds at all.
"You are looking well," she said.
"Yes," he said; "I feel well. I feel amazingly, extravagantly well. So
do you. You're radiant. That's because we are feeling so extremely
pleased, both of us, with life and with ourselves,--particularly with
ourselves. We are going to have the best of times together. I have
been looking forward to this for months. And now you're here... It is
almost as if we had never parted. It's better, really; the break brings
us nearer. It's just good."
The happiness which she felt shone in her face. She looked about her at
the familiar little garden, at the homely comfortable hotel, and the
small stoep in front of the house, where John and Mary waited, John
seated on the steps with his precious suit-case beside him. Then she
looked back into the man's face, and her eyes were grave and tender when
they met his.
"I had forgotten the children," she said.
He glanced over his shoulder.
"The little chap with the suit-case," he said. "And the girl--yes. Who
are they?"
She explained them.
"I brought them with me to keep away the ghosts," she said.
He laughed.
"Well, they are here. I wish they weren't; but we'll make the best of
it. It doesn't very much matter. The sooner they get used to me and
the situation, the better. If there is any one sufficiently
good-natured to foster them we will shift our responsibilities. I am
going to monopolise you. I've been lonely ever since I said good-bye to
you at Coerney."
He turned and walked beside her up the short path to the stoep.
"I'm glad to have you back," he said.
John and Mary, staring with round-eyed curiosity at the pair as they
advanced, wondered why their aunt looked so shy, and why she coloured
suddenly from neck to brow and looked down and spoke softly.
"It's good to be back," she replied.
They came to a halt at the steps; and John, remembering his manners,
stood up, but continued to stare, unabashed.
"This is John," Esme said with greater confidence; and John held out a
small, hot hand.
"How d'ye do?" he said, as one man to another.
Book 2--CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.
The young Bainbridges were not slow in coming to a conclusion in regard
to the condition of affairs between Hallam and their aunt. John
pronounced Hallam as being "all right"; Mary thought him old. But then
her aunt was rather old also; aunts are not girls. Mary viewed this
mature romance with feminine curiosity. She thought it odd, but
immensely interesting. She dogged their footsteps.
"I believe Mr Hallam is in love with Auntie," she confided to John, who
probably unaided would not have discovered this surprising fact.
"I wonder!" John said, and pondered the announcement. "I think I'll
ask him," he added.
He took an early opportunity of doing so. He waylaid the pair,
returning from their morning walk, and planted himself in front of
Hallam, looking squarely up at him, with his hands in his pockets, in an
attitude so reminiscent of his father as to move Esme to merriment. Her
laugh ended in a strangled gurgle when John spoke.
"Are you going to marry Auntie, Mr Hallam?" John asked with a
directness that would have disconcerted most people, but at which Hallam
only smiled.
"I am," he answered. "I hope you don't object?"
"No; that's all right," John said amiably. "I only wanted to know."
And then he wandered off to join Mary and impart the result of his
inquiries to her. Hallam looked at Esme, and turned about abruptly, and
proceeded to walk with her away from the hotel.
"I think," she said hesitatingly, "that I ought to go in."
"Not yet," he said. "I want to talk to you. You may think that that
was an odd sort of proposal; but the little chap forced my hand. It is
amazing how sharp children are. Did you mind?"
"No," she replied, confused but extraordinarily happy. "I was a little
unprepared though."
They had both taken things so much for granted that she had not noticed
that he had never definitely asked her to marry him. That part of it
did not seem to matter.
"You knew," he said, "how things were? I think we both assumed it from
the moment you arrived. But John has put matters on a businesslike
footing. I said I meant to marry you. I do--if you'll take me. You
know what I am. I think you know more about me than any one. Any good
that is in me is of your making--"
"No," she interrupted quickly. But he took no heed of that, and went on
as if she had not spoken.
"When I met you I was drifting. No other influence, I believe, could
have pulled me up. It was not merely that you made me realise the folly
of wasting my life; you opened my mind to more than that. I have come
to see that man has a duty towards his fellow-men; that he has got to
serve the community: if he serve it ill, he plays a mean part; if his
service be good he doesn't merit praise, he is simply doing his job.
You have pulled me out of the mire; now that I have cleaned some of the
mud off I want you to take me by the hand and continue the journey with
me. There isn't any need for me to say in words that I love you. I
think you guessed that long ago."
He looked down and saw her face all flushed and confused, with eyes, too
shy to meet his own, lowered till the lashes touched her cheeks. He
longed to take her in his arms and kiss her; but the open road was ill
suited to his purpose, and he decided to wait.
"Dear, will you marry me?" he asked.
For one fleeting moment she lifted her eyes to his face, and her look
was so sweet and so gravely tender when it met his that his longing
increased. Then she looked away again and answered softly:
"Yes."
Bald little monosyllable, which was all her lips could utter though her
heart was filled with love for him; but it sufficed for Hallam. He
pressed closer to her and bent down over her and touched her hand.
"I want to kiss you," he muttered. "I'm longing to kiss your lips."
She looked up, startled, and moved a little away from him. The
passionate urgency in his voice was so altogether unexpected and
unfamiliar that she felt disquieted. She was afraid of being seen from
the hotel.
"Not now," she faltered. "Wait, I haven't got used to the idea yet.
Not now."
He laughed quietly.
"Little duffer!" he said. "Do you suppose I am going to make love to
you in front of the windows of the hotel? I'll wait--until we are
alone. Then..."
Voice and eyes were eloquent. There was an air of confident mastery
about him. She felt increasingly shy of him. He seemed suddenly to
loom bigger, to express qualities of a virile and dominating nature
which she had not suspected were in him. It was as though he put out a
hand and took her heart in it and held it in a firm grasp. It
frightened her just a little. Her breath came quicker and her pulses
beat fast. They turned about and started to walk back.
"I think we had better go and have some breakfast," he said, with an
amused look at her confused face. "If we delay any longer we shall be
faced with more awkward questions from young John. After breakfast we
will go in search of solitude and have our talk. There are endless
things I want to say to you."
They entered the hotel, separating at the door to meet again at the
breakfast-table. It was a silent meal so far as they were concerned, as
silent as those meals through which they had sat in the early days of
their acquaintance, when the man had maintained a moody aloofness
painfully embarrassing to his companion. She felt no embarrassment any
longer when he did not talk at table, and the chatter of the children
made conversation difficult.
She was glad on that particular occasion that she had the children to
distract her attention. She felt so extraordinarily shy of the man
beside her, shy of the accepted position of their new relations. She
felt that she must drag out the meal indefinitely: she wanted to
postpone that walk. But Hallam held altogether different views; and
presently he got up and prepared to leave the table.
"Hurry up!" he said. "You'll find me waiting for you on the stoep."
Then he went out, and she found herself confronted with the problem of
disposing of John and Mary for the morning. They were desirous of
accompanying her. The situation held an absorbing interest for them.
"I am going to be your bridesmaid, Auntie," Mary said, fascinated with
the prospect of a wedding looming in the near future. "And wear a blue
dress," she added.
John's face became grimly resolute.
"Mr Hallam needn't count on me for best man," he announced. "I'm off
that."
Esme left them to the discussion of these weighty matters under the
sympathetic guardianship of a visitor at the hotel, who had children of
her own and did not mind an addition to the party, and joined Hallam.
They set out together on their first walk since their engagement.
For a time they walked in silence, both of them a little impressed with
the strangeness of the new situation. Hallam's face was grave and
thoughtful, and every now and again he turned to the girl with a curious
eagerness in his eyes, and an added tenderness in the look he gave her.
It was altogether a memorable and wonderful occasion. He liked the
shyness of her mood. It surprised and amused him to see her eyes droop
before his gaze, and the colour come and go in her cheeks. He had known
her before only as a very self-possessed young woman; but she revealed
to him that morning, as he revealed to her, new and unexpected qualities
that were profoundly interesting. Again there came over him the longing
to take her in his arms and hold her close against his heart.
He took her hand when they were well away from the hotel, and they
walked along together thus and talked disjointedly and a trifle
self-consciously of trivial things. Presently Hallam said:
"I am going back with you when you leave. I have to make the
acquaintance of your people. That is a necessary preliminary.
Afterwards we will speed matters, and get married without undue delay.
There isn't any object in waiting, is there? I don't feel that I can
wait. I want you so."
"I'll have to resign my position as music teacher," she said. "There is
nothing else to consider. You know, I can't quite realise it yet. It
all seems so strange and wonderful."
"It is wonderful," he answered gravely. "It's wonderful to me that you
should love me. It seems more wonderful still that you trust me. Your
belief in me has been more helpful than any sermon. It is a sermon.
It's a sort of religion. I've leaned on you... you little thing, whom I
could pick up and toss over my shoulder! Dear, you'll never know how
much I love you. I can't put it into words."
She squeezed his hand understandingly. It was the same with her. She
could never have told him all that was in her heart.
"There isn't any need for words," she said softly.
"No." He looked at her quickly. "You do understand," he said. "You've
always understood. From the first we seemed to strike the same thoughts
instinctively. We get at one another somehow. I feel as if I had known
you all my life."
"And I," she answered with a shy little laugh, "feel that I am only
beginning to know you. Each time I am with you something fresh and
unexpected leaps to the surface, and I've got to start again from the
beginning and reconstruct all my ideas of you. I wonder if it will
always be like that?"
"You will find me consistent in one respect anyhow," he answered.
He drew her into the shadow of some trees towards which their steps had
been directed, and came to a halt facing her, and dropped her hand and
put his arms around her.
"Now..." he said.
He held her closely and for the first time kissed her lips.
Book 2--CHAPTER NINETEEN.
Esme was married from her sister's house very quietly, and with what
Rose considered quite unnecessary haste. The whole affair was so sudden
and so altogether unexpected that she scarcely knew whether to be the
more pleased or the more dismayed by her sister's change of fortune.
She never felt quite at ease with her future brother-in-law, and in her
heart she regretted that it was not George Sinclair upon whom Esme's
choice had fallen. Marriage with Hallam meant a more complete
separation from the old life: it would remove the girl altogether from
her former associations. While she recognised the worldly advantages of
the match she resented this: had Esme married Sinclair they would have
continued in touch with one another. But Hallam intended making his
home in Cape Town, in one of the suburbs, after a prolonged honeymoon
spent in Europe. The honeymoon, she gathered, would extend over a year.
It was all very amazing and rather wonderful. And Esme appeared to be
supremely happy; that, after all, was the chief thing.
Rose, while she watched from her seat in church, the girl standing
before the altar beside the man whose name she was taking, experienced a
curious misgiving which, though she felt it to be unreasonable, she
could not shake off. Largely, she believed, she was influenced by
something Sinclair had said when she informed him of Esme's engagement.
He had been taken by surprise and was greatly upset by the news. She
had very vividly in her memory the sight of his face as he sat and
stared at her with stunned, blue eyes, and muttered hoarsely:
"My God! ... Hallam! ... I could have stood it had it been any one
else."
She had asked him what he meant, what he knew of Hallam? And he had
answered shortly, "Nothing," and gone away hurriedly. She had not seen
him since.
That this scene should come back to her now, obtruding itself in the
middle of the marriage service, struck her as portentous. What had he
meant? Some other emotion deeper than jealousy had moved him surely to
speak as he had done. Her eyes rested contemplatively on Hallam's face.
It was a fine face, a strong face, and the keen eyes were reassuring.
The slight stoop of the shoulders and the reserved inward manner of the
man suggested the scholar and thinker. Rose believed that he was
clever; Jim said so. Neither she nor her husband understood him or felt
at ease in his society. He displayed no interest in any of the family,
save young John, whose conversation seemed to amuse him. John and he
remained on terms of frank friendliness, marked by an air of patronage
on John's side and an entire absence of sentiment on the part of both.
But in relation to the rest he was the same silent unsociable man who
had stayed for months at the Zuurberg without exchanging remarks with
any one.
It puzzled Rose to understand what formed his great attraction in her
sister's eyes. That Esme was very deeply in love was evident; she was
like a girl suddenly transformed; her face was alight with a glow of
happiness which made it beautiful even to Rose's accustomed eyes.
Rose sat and watched her, perplexed and thoughtful,
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