Book One—Chapter Six.That night Esmé 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 Esmé 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.Esmé 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.
That night Esmé 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 Esmé 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.
Esmé 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 One—Chapter Seven.During the twenty-two unenlivening and, latterly, busy years of her life Esmé 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 Esmé 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.Esmé 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.Esmé 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.”
During the twenty-two unenlivening and, latterly, busy years of her life Esmé 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 Esmé 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.
Esmé 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.
Esmé 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 One—Chapter Eight.It seemed to Esmé 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 Esmé 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. Esmé 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. Esmé 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.”
It seemed to Esmé 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 Esmé 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. Esmé 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. Esmé 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 One—Chapter Nine.The two or three guests at the hotel who witnessed Esmé’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.”“Thankyoufor 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.Esmé 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. Esmé 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.
The two or three guests at the hotel who witnessed Esmé’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.”
“Thankyoufor 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.
Esmé 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. Esmé 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.