Book One—Chapter Ten.During the days which followed time sped on amber wings. It sped so swiftly that her fortnight’s holiday seemed to Esmé the shortest fortnight her life had ever known. Oddly, she did not realise why the hours were so mysteriously curtailed. In reality her days were longer than usual; they started at sunrise.This practice of early rising, which was new to her, developed into a daily habit. If by chance she overslept, as she did occasionally, her day was robbed of its chief pleasure—the early morning walk in Hallam’s company. He never waited for her. He never referred to her absence when she failed to put in an appearance on the stoep at the time he came out, stick in hand, ready for his walk. But he always looked for her; and when he saw her waiting for him he appeared pleased. They set forth together as a matter of course.He grew to look forward to her companionship. His manner had lost its rough unsociability; he talked to her readily. Occasionally he left the seat, which had come by tacit recognition to be considered especially his, for a chair beside hers on the stoep. His behaviour excited considerable surprise and comment among the other guests; but to Esmé it appeared less remarkable than his former attitude of almost hostile aloofness. She derived a quiet happiness from his society.As she came to know him better her amazement at his weakness grew enormously. That a man of such striking personality, possessed of considerable will-power, should yield himself to the influence of a sordid vice, be dominated by it, surprised her beyond words. It was the one thing about him which she hated. It was ugly and inconsistent and degrading. She never saw him drink; he took nothing but milk and soda with his meeds. In the daytime he always appeared perfectly sober; but at night, after dinner, it was his invariable custom to disappear, where she did not know; but sometimes she heard his stumbling step going along the stoep after every one else was in bed. She would lie awake and listen for these sounds, but it was only occasionally she heard him go unsteadily to his room. Then her heart would beat faster, and the tears would come to her eyes, and always, she offered up a prayer for him in the quiet darkness of her little room. Her pity for him and her liking grew like a flower, unconscious of its expansion as it opens to the sun.When first it occurred to Esmé to use her influence to wean Hallam from his nightly practice was uncertain; doubtless her desire had leaned that way from the beginning of their acquaintance; but it was not until she was well into the second week of her holiday that she summoned up sufficient courage one evening while they sat at dinner to propose that he should accompany her for a walk. It was too beautiful a night to spend indoors, she urged.The man hesitated. She believed that he was going to refuse. It was easy to see that her suggestion was not acceptable to him. It took him aback, and for quite an appreciable while he did not reply to her. Then he said, somewhat brusquely:“Have you not had walking enough for one day?”“Come and sit with me on the stoep,” she said, “if you do not care to walk.”Some quality in her voice, something, too, in the expression of her face, when he turned his face to look at her, arrested his attention. He scrutinised her more closely, and into his eyes, as he watched her, leapt a light of understanding.“I never met any one quite so indefatigable as you,” he said. “If you really desire exercise, of course I’ll accompany you. There will be a moon to-night. She is young, but she will serve our purpose. Why do you want to walk?”The question was jerked out abruptly. There was an inflection of curiosity in his tones. Esmé answered quietly, without looking at him.“I suppose because I feel it is a sin to remain indoors on such a night.”Had not her eyes been averted from his face she must have seen his lips compress themselves at her words. A sort of hardness came into his voice.“Your language is somewhat exaggerated,” he returned. “The physical benefit is more obvious than the moral, I think. However, if it gives you a sense of righteousness, so much the better. I will lend myself readily to further that end. What do you usually do in the evenings?”“Sit on the stoep generally. I don’t care about cards. When Mr Sinclair was here we used to walk.”“Sinclair!—yes... The fellow who fancied he possessed all the virtues because he had not certain vices. You must miss him.”“That isn’t a very kind description,” she said.“I was not trying to be kind,” he answered. “I am not of a kindly disposition. You may observe that I do not lay claim to any of the virtues. It is safe to conclude that what you don’t claim will never be conceded to you. These facts once grasped simplify life enormously. But I waste time in attempting to teach you worldly wisdom. You live in a world of illusions.”He spoke very little during the remainder of the time he sat at table. His manner was preoccupied, and his face looked grim. Esmé felt that he regretted having yielded to her request; he resented interference with his routine. When he rose from the table, which he did before any of the others, he turned to her and said in his curt way:“Please be ready in half an hour from now.”Then he pushed his chair back and walked quickly from the room.The old gentleman on her right asked Esmé to make a fourth at bridge. He looked disappointed when she declined. She explained that she was going for a walk.“It is good to be young. But don’t overdo it,” he counselled.“The air is so wonderful; I am never tired up here,” she replied.“I have heard that said of the air in other places,” he said, and smiled. “If I were twenty years younger I would go with you.”The old gentleman was not on the stoep to see Esmé start on her walk. He would have been astonished equally with the rest who viewed her departure to see Hallam come out of the house and join her and walk with her into the road. The people on the stoep who witnessed these things, wondered, and spoke of their wonder to one another. No one before had seen Hallam in the evenings after he left the dinner table. No one, except this girl, who seemed on terms of easy friendliness with him, ever spoke to him. It is not easy to talk to a man who deliberately ignores your existence. It was plain that he wanted to be left alone: yet he made an exception in favour of the girl. There was only one construction likely to be placed on this amazing preference. And so the people at the hotel looked after the disappearing figures, and criticised the growing intimacy between the man and girl long after they had vanished from sight amid the shadows of the early dusk.When they were well away from the hotel Hallam took the pipe from his mouth and looked down at the girl’s unconscious face and smiled dryly. He wondered whether she realised that they were objects of curiosity to the people they had left behind, whether, if she did realise it, it would trouble her at all? Her eyes, lifted to his in response to his steady scrutiny, showed darkly shadowed in the uncertain light; they smiled frankly up at him. He knew while he gazed down at her that he would miss her when she had gone, that life would seem emptier, more purposeless, than before. From the first he had realised the danger of the acquaintance; yet he had drifted into it with very little effort to evade the danger. He had not made the advances, but he had responded to them; and now he was regretting, with a sense of bitter futility, the folly of allowing her to become a significant influence in his life. He could not end the thing now; he did not want to; her companionship had become necessary to him.But he could prevent her liking for him from developing, could, if he chose, crush it outright. To crush it outright was perhaps the wiser course.“You know,” he said quietly, “those people who watched us away are deploring your indiscretion in associating with me. I am not resenting it. They are perfectly right. I am not a desirable companion for any one. Why did you first speak to me? Why do you persist in the acquaintance? I often wonder. Don’t you know what I am?”“Perhaps I do,” she answered in so low a voice that, but for the stillness of the night, he would scarce have heard the faltered words. “I think that is one reason why I spoke to you.”“You mean,” he said, “that you were sorry? That’s kind of you. But I am not conscious of needing sympathy. What other reason had you?”“Isn’t it only natural to talk to people one meets daily?” she asked. “I talk to every one in the hotel.”He smiled.“I have observed that. But you don’t walk with them. Why did you insist on my coming out to-night?”“Oh!” she said, and felt her face aflame, and was grateful for the darkness which concealed her confusion. “I cannot give a reason for every impulse that moves me. I wanted to walk.”“Excuse me if I accuse you once more of insincerity,” he said. “It was no impulse that prompted you to ask me. It was a deliberate and premeditated request which cost you some effort to make. Your concern for me is very flattering. But you waste your sympathy. What do you imagine you accomplish by this display of energy? You will overtire yourself, that is all. For me, it is merely a long time between drinks.”Tears came into her eyes. She hoped he did not see them, but she could not have kept them back. He hurt her even more than he intended to.“I don’t care,” she said, a little unsteadily, “how hard you box my ears. I am glad I asked you to come. I’m glad you came.” She raised her face suddenly and lifted defiant eyes to his.“I am sorry I was insincere. You got me there. I didn’t know you were so observant. In future I’ll be absolutely frank with you. I’ll be frank now, even if it angers you. I asked you to come out because I think it is a shame for you to spend your evenings as you do. I think it is a shame that you should waste your life. I’m not so much sorry for you as savage with you. It’s hateful in you. It’s the one thing which spoils you from being absolutely fine.”She broke off abruptly, startled at her own vehemence, immensely embarrassed, and horrified with herself. The man was staring at her, staring in amazement, incredulous and almost bewildered by the surprising rush of words. He had never in his life been so thunderstruck, nor had he ever before listened to such plain speaking. He was silent in face of this retort for which he had been in no sense prepared.“Oh, dear!” she exclaimed, aghast at her own daring. “What must you think of me? I never meant to attack you like this. It’s—abominable.”“Whatever I think of you,” he answered, “I can never again call you insincere. You have hurled truths at me to-night. You were quite right in everything you said; but—forgive me—you were quite wrong in saying them. However, largely that’s my own fault for provoking you. It was inconsiderate to push my inquiries; it would be illogical if I complained because you answered them. We’ll wipe the incident out. At least we understand one another. In future, when I see you making your social effort, I shall recognise that you are started on your morality campaign.”“Please don’t,” she said falteringly, with a catch so suggestive of repressed emotion in her tones that he repented the ill-nature of his words.He glanced down at her as she walked beside him along the dim road, hatless, with the soft hair shading her partly averted face; then he straightened his stooping shoulders with a jerk, and looked about him at the darkening landscape, and up at the sky, where the young moon rode serenely in a star-strewn cloudless sky. It was a fine night, warm and still; the wan moonlight pierced the dusk palely, revealing the road cutting like a path of silver across the velvety darkness of the veld.Some softening quality in the quiet beauty of the night, or it may have been in the sight of the partly turned face, with its look of hurt distress, penetrated the man’s consciousness. His mood changed; a kinder note banished the harshness from his voice. He had wounded her deliberately, and he regretted it.“I’m a brute,” he said in altered tones. “Don’t heed my roughness; it is not meant. I had no wish to offend.”“You did not offend,” she answered. “But I am afraid that I did.”“No,” he said, but without conviction, she thought. “I asked for truth, and I got it. Perhaps that is what surprised me. The last thing a man expects to hear is the truth about himself. I didn’t credit you with the possession of so much courage.”“It has all evaporated,” she said.“The courage!” he laughed. “Oh! I think not. It has merely gone under for the time.”And then he turned the conversation, and closed the matter, as she felt, finally. She had no means of knowing whether his resentment of her plain speaking still rankled. A sort of constraint had fallen between them. She felt self-conscious, and rather like a child who has been rebuked. But she did not regret having spoken as she had done. The barriers of pretence were down; there existed a clear understanding between them. As she walked rather silently with him in the moonlight she resolved that on the morrow she would invite him to accompany her again.
During the days which followed time sped on amber wings. It sped so swiftly that her fortnight’s holiday seemed to Esmé the shortest fortnight her life had ever known. Oddly, she did not realise why the hours were so mysteriously curtailed. In reality her days were longer than usual; they started at sunrise.
This practice of early rising, which was new to her, developed into a daily habit. If by chance she overslept, as she did occasionally, her day was robbed of its chief pleasure—the early morning walk in Hallam’s company. He never waited for her. He never referred to her absence when she failed to put in an appearance on the stoep at the time he came out, stick in hand, ready for his walk. But he always looked for her; and when he saw her waiting for him he appeared pleased. They set forth together as a matter of course.
He grew to look forward to her companionship. His manner had lost its rough unsociability; he talked to her readily. Occasionally he left the seat, which had come by tacit recognition to be considered especially his, for a chair beside hers on the stoep. His behaviour excited considerable surprise and comment among the other guests; but to Esmé it appeared less remarkable than his former attitude of almost hostile aloofness. She derived a quiet happiness from his society.
As she came to know him better her amazement at his weakness grew enormously. That a man of such striking personality, possessed of considerable will-power, should yield himself to the influence of a sordid vice, be dominated by it, surprised her beyond words. It was the one thing about him which she hated. It was ugly and inconsistent and degrading. She never saw him drink; he took nothing but milk and soda with his meeds. In the daytime he always appeared perfectly sober; but at night, after dinner, it was his invariable custom to disappear, where she did not know; but sometimes she heard his stumbling step going along the stoep after every one else was in bed. She would lie awake and listen for these sounds, but it was only occasionally she heard him go unsteadily to his room. Then her heart would beat faster, and the tears would come to her eyes, and always, she offered up a prayer for him in the quiet darkness of her little room. Her pity for him and her liking grew like a flower, unconscious of its expansion as it opens to the sun.
When first it occurred to Esmé to use her influence to wean Hallam from his nightly practice was uncertain; doubtless her desire had leaned that way from the beginning of their acquaintance; but it was not until she was well into the second week of her holiday that she summoned up sufficient courage one evening while they sat at dinner to propose that he should accompany her for a walk. It was too beautiful a night to spend indoors, she urged.
The man hesitated. She believed that he was going to refuse. It was easy to see that her suggestion was not acceptable to him. It took him aback, and for quite an appreciable while he did not reply to her. Then he said, somewhat brusquely:
“Have you not had walking enough for one day?”
“Come and sit with me on the stoep,” she said, “if you do not care to walk.”
Some quality in her voice, something, too, in the expression of her face, when he turned his face to look at her, arrested his attention. He scrutinised her more closely, and into his eyes, as he watched her, leapt a light of understanding.
“I never met any one quite so indefatigable as you,” he said. “If you really desire exercise, of course I’ll accompany you. There will be a moon to-night. She is young, but she will serve our purpose. Why do you want to walk?”
The question was jerked out abruptly. There was an inflection of curiosity in his tones. Esmé answered quietly, without looking at him.
“I suppose because I feel it is a sin to remain indoors on such a night.”
Had not her eyes been averted from his face she must have seen his lips compress themselves at her words. A sort of hardness came into his voice.
“Your language is somewhat exaggerated,” he returned. “The physical benefit is more obvious than the moral, I think. However, if it gives you a sense of righteousness, so much the better. I will lend myself readily to further that end. What do you usually do in the evenings?”
“Sit on the stoep generally. I don’t care about cards. When Mr Sinclair was here we used to walk.”
“Sinclair!—yes... The fellow who fancied he possessed all the virtues because he had not certain vices. You must miss him.”
“That isn’t a very kind description,” she said.
“I was not trying to be kind,” he answered. “I am not of a kindly disposition. You may observe that I do not lay claim to any of the virtues. It is safe to conclude that what you don’t claim will never be conceded to you. These facts once grasped simplify life enormously. But I waste time in attempting to teach you worldly wisdom. You live in a world of illusions.”
He spoke very little during the remainder of the time he sat at table. His manner was preoccupied, and his face looked grim. Esmé felt that he regretted having yielded to her request; he resented interference with his routine. When he rose from the table, which he did before any of the others, he turned to her and said in his curt way:
“Please be ready in half an hour from now.”
Then he pushed his chair back and walked quickly from the room.
The old gentleman on her right asked Esmé to make a fourth at bridge. He looked disappointed when she declined. She explained that she was going for a walk.
“It is good to be young. But don’t overdo it,” he counselled.
“The air is so wonderful; I am never tired up here,” she replied.
“I have heard that said of the air in other places,” he said, and smiled. “If I were twenty years younger I would go with you.”
The old gentleman was not on the stoep to see Esmé start on her walk. He would have been astonished equally with the rest who viewed her departure to see Hallam come out of the house and join her and walk with her into the road. The people on the stoep who witnessed these things, wondered, and spoke of their wonder to one another. No one before had seen Hallam in the evenings after he left the dinner table. No one, except this girl, who seemed on terms of easy friendliness with him, ever spoke to him. It is not easy to talk to a man who deliberately ignores your existence. It was plain that he wanted to be left alone: yet he made an exception in favour of the girl. There was only one construction likely to be placed on this amazing preference. And so the people at the hotel looked after the disappearing figures, and criticised the growing intimacy between the man and girl long after they had vanished from sight amid the shadows of the early dusk.
When they were well away from the hotel Hallam took the pipe from his mouth and looked down at the girl’s unconscious face and smiled dryly. He wondered whether she realised that they were objects of curiosity to the people they had left behind, whether, if she did realise it, it would trouble her at all? Her eyes, lifted to his in response to his steady scrutiny, showed darkly shadowed in the uncertain light; they smiled frankly up at him. He knew while he gazed down at her that he would miss her when she had gone, that life would seem emptier, more purposeless, than before. From the first he had realised the danger of the acquaintance; yet he had drifted into it with very little effort to evade the danger. He had not made the advances, but he had responded to them; and now he was regretting, with a sense of bitter futility, the folly of allowing her to become a significant influence in his life. He could not end the thing now; he did not want to; her companionship had become necessary to him.
But he could prevent her liking for him from developing, could, if he chose, crush it outright. To crush it outright was perhaps the wiser course.
“You know,” he said quietly, “those people who watched us away are deploring your indiscretion in associating with me. I am not resenting it. They are perfectly right. I am not a desirable companion for any one. Why did you first speak to me? Why do you persist in the acquaintance? I often wonder. Don’t you know what I am?”
“Perhaps I do,” she answered in so low a voice that, but for the stillness of the night, he would scarce have heard the faltered words. “I think that is one reason why I spoke to you.”
“You mean,” he said, “that you were sorry? That’s kind of you. But I am not conscious of needing sympathy. What other reason had you?”
“Isn’t it only natural to talk to people one meets daily?” she asked. “I talk to every one in the hotel.”
He smiled.
“I have observed that. But you don’t walk with them. Why did you insist on my coming out to-night?”
“Oh!” she said, and felt her face aflame, and was grateful for the darkness which concealed her confusion. “I cannot give a reason for every impulse that moves me. I wanted to walk.”
“Excuse me if I accuse you once more of insincerity,” he said. “It was no impulse that prompted you to ask me. It was a deliberate and premeditated request which cost you some effort to make. Your concern for me is very flattering. But you waste your sympathy. What do you imagine you accomplish by this display of energy? You will overtire yourself, that is all. For me, it is merely a long time between drinks.”
Tears came into her eyes. She hoped he did not see them, but she could not have kept them back. He hurt her even more than he intended to.
“I don’t care,” she said, a little unsteadily, “how hard you box my ears. I am glad I asked you to come. I’m glad you came.” She raised her face suddenly and lifted defiant eyes to his.
“I am sorry I was insincere. You got me there. I didn’t know you were so observant. In future I’ll be absolutely frank with you. I’ll be frank now, even if it angers you. I asked you to come out because I think it is a shame for you to spend your evenings as you do. I think it is a shame that you should waste your life. I’m not so much sorry for you as savage with you. It’s hateful in you. It’s the one thing which spoils you from being absolutely fine.”
She broke off abruptly, startled at her own vehemence, immensely embarrassed, and horrified with herself. The man was staring at her, staring in amazement, incredulous and almost bewildered by the surprising rush of words. He had never in his life been so thunderstruck, nor had he ever before listened to such plain speaking. He was silent in face of this retort for which he had been in no sense prepared.
“Oh, dear!” she exclaimed, aghast at her own daring. “What must you think of me? I never meant to attack you like this. It’s—abominable.”
“Whatever I think of you,” he answered, “I can never again call you insincere. You have hurled truths at me to-night. You were quite right in everything you said; but—forgive me—you were quite wrong in saying them. However, largely that’s my own fault for provoking you. It was inconsiderate to push my inquiries; it would be illogical if I complained because you answered them. We’ll wipe the incident out. At least we understand one another. In future, when I see you making your social effort, I shall recognise that you are started on your morality campaign.”
“Please don’t,” she said falteringly, with a catch so suggestive of repressed emotion in her tones that he repented the ill-nature of his words.
He glanced down at her as she walked beside him along the dim road, hatless, with the soft hair shading her partly averted face; then he straightened his stooping shoulders with a jerk, and looked about him at the darkening landscape, and up at the sky, where the young moon rode serenely in a star-strewn cloudless sky. It was a fine night, warm and still; the wan moonlight pierced the dusk palely, revealing the road cutting like a path of silver across the velvety darkness of the veld.
Some softening quality in the quiet beauty of the night, or it may have been in the sight of the partly turned face, with its look of hurt distress, penetrated the man’s consciousness. His mood changed; a kinder note banished the harshness from his voice. He had wounded her deliberately, and he regretted it.
“I’m a brute,” he said in altered tones. “Don’t heed my roughness; it is not meant. I had no wish to offend.”
“You did not offend,” she answered. “But I am afraid that I did.”
“No,” he said, but without conviction, she thought. “I asked for truth, and I got it. Perhaps that is what surprised me. The last thing a man expects to hear is the truth about himself. I didn’t credit you with the possession of so much courage.”
“It has all evaporated,” she said.
“The courage!” he laughed. “Oh! I think not. It has merely gone under for the time.”
And then he turned the conversation, and closed the matter, as she felt, finally. She had no means of knowing whether his resentment of her plain speaking still rankled. A sort of constraint had fallen between them. She felt self-conscious, and rather like a child who has been rebuked. But she did not regret having spoken as she had done. The barriers of pretence were down; there existed a clear understanding between them. As she walked rather silently with him in the moonlight she resolved that on the morrow she would invite him to accompany her again.
Book One—Chapter Eleven.That walk by the ineffectual light of a young moon brought about a significant change in the relations between the man and girl. The last reserves were swept away. The sweeping had been drastic; it left not so much as a shadow of doubt in the mind of each in regard to the other. They were profoundly interested in one another, with an interest which struck deeper than the repugnances which both were conscious existed. The girl liked the man and was horrified at his weakness; the man liked the girl and resented her interference: their mutual regard was stronger than their antagonism.The people at the hotel watched the development of the friendship distrustfully. They did not approve of the man. All they knew of him was to his discredit. The general opinion was that it was well the girl was leaving so soon.“You appear to be great friends with Mr Hallam,” the old lady who was nervous of the mountain road observed one day to Esmé. “What a terrible thing it is to see a young man deliberately making wreck of his life. Don’t you think so?”“I do,” Esmé answered gravely. “One day he will come to think so too; and then he will change.”The old lady shook her head.“I should doubt it very strongly,” she said. She considered it regrettable that the girl should cherish hopes of so improbable a reform.“There is nothing that the human will cannot accomplish, when the will to accomplish a thing is strong enough,” Esmé said with quiet conviction.“You think that?”“I am sure of it.”“Then, why does not Mr Hallam make some effort to overcome his failing?”“I suppose because he has not felt a sufficiently strong incentive. It is difficult to understand these things. But I cannot help believing he will make good.”The old lady was manifestly unconvinced; but Esmé’s faith remained unshaken. She believed in the eventual triumph of Hallam’s better nature. The man was not insensible of her faith in him. Her influence over him was stronger than either of them realised. Each day he felt his interest in her deepening; but it was not until her visit came to the finish that he knew exactly what her friendship meant to him.On the last morning when they sat at breakfast, and the talk turned naturally to the journey down the mountain, it came to him with unpleasant clearness that he was going to miss her very much. He saw the regret in her eyes at the thought of going away, and he knew that a similar regret was in his heart. They had come to the parting of the ways, and neither wished to part.“Can’t you stay a little longer?” he asked her. But she shook her head and answered no.“I hate these comings and goings,” he said gruffly; “they make life uncomfortable.”“I loved the coming,” she replied softly; “but I hate going. I have been happy here.”“I expect you are happy anywhere,” he said. And she laughed, but she did not answer him. “I shall miss our walks,” he added.“I shall miss them to,” she replied. “I shall miss many things. One day I shall come up here again.”“Will you?” He looked surprised. “I shall not do that after I go away. To revisit a familiar spot is like walking among tombstones. Each point recalls a memory, and memory belongs to the past.”“But when one’s memories are pleasant,” she argued, “it is good to recall them.”“They come back to us with the dust on them,” he insisted. “It is more comfortable to live in the present. You’ll forget the Zuurberg when you are back in the town. You’ll be engrossed with other matters. You’ll forget.”“Not one hour,” she breathed softly. “I’ll forget nothing. Will you?”He laughed bitterly.“Life is not so full of pleasant things that I can afford to bury in oblivion the pleasantest that has happened to me,” he said. “When you drive down the mountain to-day, I will go with you and see you on your way.”If anything could have given her pleasure at leaving it was this resolve on Hallam’s part to drive with her down the mountain road. His accompanying her gave to the excursion an air of adventure and decreased the sense of parting. It was not, she found when she came to say goodbye to the little group of people assembled on the stoep to watch the departure of the cart, these general leave-takings which were distressing; nor did it concern her to turn her back on the hotel on the veld; the real parting was to follow, but for the moment that did not weigh with her. Her holiday was not yet at an end.There were other passengers for the journey besides themselves. Hallam waited until these had taken their seats in the back; then he helped the girl up to the front seat next the driver, and, to the amazement of the beholders, got up after her and sat down by her side. They concluded that he was leaving also; it did not occur to any one to suppose that he was going to see the girl off by the train and would return that evening. An act of such supererogatory courtesy was not expected of him.The horses started, and the cart swung along with its load of passengers and luggage, travelling at a good pace along the hard smooth road. Esmé leaned back in her seat and looked about her with happy appreciative eyes. On the upward journey she had longed for a companion to share her joy in the scenery. She recalled her first impressions, as she drove now with Hallam beside her. She had been very tired on that occasion, eye and brain both had been weary. To-day she felt surprisingly well and very alert. The air, the movement, the strong light, all added to her sense of enjoyment; and the presence of the man beside her, his nearness, his unobtrusive care of her, his interest in all which interested her, made the return journey infinitely more wonderful than the journey up the mountain had seemed. She felt extraordinarily happy. And yet she was going away. Soon she and her companion would be parted. It might be that she would never see him after that day. But she could not realise these things. She felt him beside her, heard his voice speaking to her against the mountain wind which blew across them, saw the kindness in the keen eyes when he turned his head to look at her and mark her appreciation of some beauty along the route; and she knew that he mattered to her tremendously; that her feeling for him was a real and profoundly significant emotion, something which had sprung to life suddenly, which would go on growing in her heart after they had separated and gone their different ways.This was the thing which had happened to her. She had looked for something to happen, but she had not dreamed it would be anything like this.She fell to wondering how she would feel when they came to say good-bye, whether she would realise the parting and feel lonely, whether her face would betray her regret? Whether he would see and understand...The journey down occupied considerably less time than the journey up had done; everything seemed to lend itself to speed her departure. But at Coerney there was a wait before the train came in. Hallam took her to the hotel and ordered refreshments, and afterwards they went and sat in the shade of the trees and talked away their last minutes together. She felt that she would have liked to prolong that talk indefinitely; and the minutes slipped away so fast.“It was nice of you to come,” she said. “I should be feeling horribly lonely now if I had had this wait alone.”“The train’s late,” he said. “God bless the lack of unpunctuality. I’ve half a mind to go with you. I don’t know why I don’t go. I don’t know why I stay on in a God-forsaken hole on the top of a mountain which leads nowhere. Do you?”She laughed.“I suppose you like it,” she said. “And the air is fine.”“A man can’t live on air.”“But you don’t live there,” she said. For the first time it occurred to her that she did not know where he lived; she knew surprisingly little about him.“I don’t live anywhere; I drift,” he said.He met her eyes and read the curiosity in them, their unspoken criticism, and smiled. But he did not give her any information. He started to talk again on impersonal matters, while she looked away into the green tangle of the trees and wondered about him.On the way to the station he gave her a book, which he took from his pocket and handed to her with the remark that it would relieve the tedium of the train journey. She read the title, “David Harum,” and flushed with pleasure as she thanked him.“I hope you will like it,” he said. “I have found him a good companion.”He discovered an empty compartment and settled her in it and stood by the door. She leaned from the window, with her arms on it, and looked down at him, earnestly, intently, with the light of unsaid things shining in her eyes.“I hate going,” she said.“I know. Partings are beastly things.”But he said nothing to lead her to hope that this parting was not final; no intimation of it being otherwise entered his thoughts.“To-morrow,” he said, “I shall go alone to watch the sunrise.”A little wistful smile curved her lips.“I shall think of you,” she said.“I shall probably haveyouin my thoughts,” he replied, and smiled also. “We have spent some pleasant times together.”She leaned further out and held out a hand to him as the train was about to start. He took it and pressed it warmly.“Thank you for your kindness to me,” she said simply.“Thankyoufor your bright companionship,” he returned, and the regret he felt at parting crept into his voice.He released her hand and stood back while the train moved slowly out of the station. The girl, leaning from the open window, saw the tall stooping figure on the platform, with face turned towards her, until she drew back suddenly and sat down in the corner seat, a feeling of great loneliness in her heart, and in her eyes the brightness of unshed tears. She took up the book he had given her, and opened it, and read on the fly-leaf his name, written in small, unsteady characters,—Paul Hallam.She sat with the book open in her lap, gazing at his name.
That walk by the ineffectual light of a young moon brought about a significant change in the relations between the man and girl. The last reserves were swept away. The sweeping had been drastic; it left not so much as a shadow of doubt in the mind of each in regard to the other. They were profoundly interested in one another, with an interest which struck deeper than the repugnances which both were conscious existed. The girl liked the man and was horrified at his weakness; the man liked the girl and resented her interference: their mutual regard was stronger than their antagonism.
The people at the hotel watched the development of the friendship distrustfully. They did not approve of the man. All they knew of him was to his discredit. The general opinion was that it was well the girl was leaving so soon.
“You appear to be great friends with Mr Hallam,” the old lady who was nervous of the mountain road observed one day to Esmé. “What a terrible thing it is to see a young man deliberately making wreck of his life. Don’t you think so?”
“I do,” Esmé answered gravely. “One day he will come to think so too; and then he will change.”
The old lady shook her head.
“I should doubt it very strongly,” she said. She considered it regrettable that the girl should cherish hopes of so improbable a reform.
“There is nothing that the human will cannot accomplish, when the will to accomplish a thing is strong enough,” Esmé said with quiet conviction.
“You think that?”
“I am sure of it.”
“Then, why does not Mr Hallam make some effort to overcome his failing?”
“I suppose because he has not felt a sufficiently strong incentive. It is difficult to understand these things. But I cannot help believing he will make good.”
The old lady was manifestly unconvinced; but Esmé’s faith remained unshaken. She believed in the eventual triumph of Hallam’s better nature. The man was not insensible of her faith in him. Her influence over him was stronger than either of them realised. Each day he felt his interest in her deepening; but it was not until her visit came to the finish that he knew exactly what her friendship meant to him.
On the last morning when they sat at breakfast, and the talk turned naturally to the journey down the mountain, it came to him with unpleasant clearness that he was going to miss her very much. He saw the regret in her eyes at the thought of going away, and he knew that a similar regret was in his heart. They had come to the parting of the ways, and neither wished to part.
“Can’t you stay a little longer?” he asked her. But she shook her head and answered no.
“I hate these comings and goings,” he said gruffly; “they make life uncomfortable.”
“I loved the coming,” she replied softly; “but I hate going. I have been happy here.”
“I expect you are happy anywhere,” he said. And she laughed, but she did not answer him. “I shall miss our walks,” he added.
“I shall miss them to,” she replied. “I shall miss many things. One day I shall come up here again.”
“Will you?” He looked surprised. “I shall not do that after I go away. To revisit a familiar spot is like walking among tombstones. Each point recalls a memory, and memory belongs to the past.”
“But when one’s memories are pleasant,” she argued, “it is good to recall them.”
“They come back to us with the dust on them,” he insisted. “It is more comfortable to live in the present. You’ll forget the Zuurberg when you are back in the town. You’ll be engrossed with other matters. You’ll forget.”
“Not one hour,” she breathed softly. “I’ll forget nothing. Will you?”
He laughed bitterly.
“Life is not so full of pleasant things that I can afford to bury in oblivion the pleasantest that has happened to me,” he said. “When you drive down the mountain to-day, I will go with you and see you on your way.”
If anything could have given her pleasure at leaving it was this resolve on Hallam’s part to drive with her down the mountain road. His accompanying her gave to the excursion an air of adventure and decreased the sense of parting. It was not, she found when she came to say goodbye to the little group of people assembled on the stoep to watch the departure of the cart, these general leave-takings which were distressing; nor did it concern her to turn her back on the hotel on the veld; the real parting was to follow, but for the moment that did not weigh with her. Her holiday was not yet at an end.
There were other passengers for the journey besides themselves. Hallam waited until these had taken their seats in the back; then he helped the girl up to the front seat next the driver, and, to the amazement of the beholders, got up after her and sat down by her side. They concluded that he was leaving also; it did not occur to any one to suppose that he was going to see the girl off by the train and would return that evening. An act of such supererogatory courtesy was not expected of him.
The horses started, and the cart swung along with its load of passengers and luggage, travelling at a good pace along the hard smooth road. Esmé leaned back in her seat and looked about her with happy appreciative eyes. On the upward journey she had longed for a companion to share her joy in the scenery. She recalled her first impressions, as she drove now with Hallam beside her. She had been very tired on that occasion, eye and brain both had been weary. To-day she felt surprisingly well and very alert. The air, the movement, the strong light, all added to her sense of enjoyment; and the presence of the man beside her, his nearness, his unobtrusive care of her, his interest in all which interested her, made the return journey infinitely more wonderful than the journey up the mountain had seemed. She felt extraordinarily happy. And yet she was going away. Soon she and her companion would be parted. It might be that she would never see him after that day. But she could not realise these things. She felt him beside her, heard his voice speaking to her against the mountain wind which blew across them, saw the kindness in the keen eyes when he turned his head to look at her and mark her appreciation of some beauty along the route; and she knew that he mattered to her tremendously; that her feeling for him was a real and profoundly significant emotion, something which had sprung to life suddenly, which would go on growing in her heart after they had separated and gone their different ways.
This was the thing which had happened to her. She had looked for something to happen, but she had not dreamed it would be anything like this.
She fell to wondering how she would feel when they came to say good-bye, whether she would realise the parting and feel lonely, whether her face would betray her regret? Whether he would see and understand...
The journey down occupied considerably less time than the journey up had done; everything seemed to lend itself to speed her departure. But at Coerney there was a wait before the train came in. Hallam took her to the hotel and ordered refreshments, and afterwards they went and sat in the shade of the trees and talked away their last minutes together. She felt that she would have liked to prolong that talk indefinitely; and the minutes slipped away so fast.
“It was nice of you to come,” she said. “I should be feeling horribly lonely now if I had had this wait alone.”
“The train’s late,” he said. “God bless the lack of unpunctuality. I’ve half a mind to go with you. I don’t know why I don’t go. I don’t know why I stay on in a God-forsaken hole on the top of a mountain which leads nowhere. Do you?”
She laughed.
“I suppose you like it,” she said. “And the air is fine.”
“A man can’t live on air.”
“But you don’t live there,” she said. For the first time it occurred to her that she did not know where he lived; she knew surprisingly little about him.
“I don’t live anywhere; I drift,” he said.
He met her eyes and read the curiosity in them, their unspoken criticism, and smiled. But he did not give her any information. He started to talk again on impersonal matters, while she looked away into the green tangle of the trees and wondered about him.
On the way to the station he gave her a book, which he took from his pocket and handed to her with the remark that it would relieve the tedium of the train journey. She read the title, “David Harum,” and flushed with pleasure as she thanked him.
“I hope you will like it,” he said. “I have found him a good companion.”
He discovered an empty compartment and settled her in it and stood by the door. She leaned from the window, with her arms on it, and looked down at him, earnestly, intently, with the light of unsaid things shining in her eyes.
“I hate going,” she said.
“I know. Partings are beastly things.”
But he said nothing to lead her to hope that this parting was not final; no intimation of it being otherwise entered his thoughts.
“To-morrow,” he said, “I shall go alone to watch the sunrise.”
A little wistful smile curved her lips.
“I shall think of you,” she said.
“I shall probably haveyouin my thoughts,” he replied, and smiled also. “We have spent some pleasant times together.”
She leaned further out and held out a hand to him as the train was about to start. He took it and pressed it warmly.
“Thank you for your kindness to me,” she said simply.
“Thankyoufor your bright companionship,” he returned, and the regret he felt at parting crept into his voice.
He released her hand and stood back while the train moved slowly out of the station. The girl, leaning from the open window, saw the tall stooping figure on the platform, with face turned towards her, until she drew back suddenly and sat down in the corner seat, a feeling of great loneliness in her heart, and in her eyes the brightness of unshed tears. She took up the book he had given her, and opened it, and read on the fly-leaf his name, written in small, unsteady characters,—Paul Hallam.
She sat with the book open in her lap, gazing at his name.
Book Two—Chapter Twelve.Esmé Lester lived with a married sister at Port Elizabeth in a little house in Havelock Street. Her brother-in-law was junior partner in a store which was not a particularly flourishing concern, and the family finances were generally at low ebb. There were two children, a boy and a girl, named respectively John and Mary. When the family were all at home the little house seemed full to overflowing.Esmé had a tiny bedroom at the back, overlooking a cemented yard. There was one beauty in this yard, a huge oleander tree, the dark green leaves of which and the clusters of sweet-scented pink blossoms reared themselves against her window and shaded and perfumed her little room. If the oleander had been stricken by drought, or any other mischance had befallen it to cause it to die, the house would have been unbearable to the girl. As it was, the oleander made life possible, even when the children were troublesome, and when her sister and her husband quarrelled. They quarrelled frequently; over the children, over the housekeeping expenses, over the lack of money. Lack of money was the principal grievance.Esmé boarded with them, because it seemed more natural to stay with her own people than with strangers, and because her sister liked to have her. But she was not fond of her brother-in-law; and the constant disagreements worried her.It seemed to her, when she entered the house after her pleasant holiday, that she had left all the peace and romance behind and returned to the drab reality of the common daily round. Her sister welcomed her with restrained pleasure, but the children hung about her in unqualified delight, bubbling over in childish fashion with excitement at her return.“You are looking well,” her sister remarked. “I wish I could take a holiday. Single girls don’t realise how lucky they are until after they are married. Jim and I spent our honeymoon at the Zuurberg. I thought it dull.”Esmé reflected, while she regarded her sister with a puzzled scrutiny, that it was scarcely surprising her marriage had proved on the whole a disappointing affair. To feel dull on one’s honeymoon is not a promising beginning.“I thought it wonderful,” she said.“You had a good time, I suppose. Were there many people there?”“A fair number. But it’s the place itself. It is lovely.”Mrs Bainbridge looked unconvinced.“People, not places, make a holiday enjoyable,” she said with a certain worldly wisdom which jarred on her hearer. “Were there any men there?”“A few—yes.”Her sister laughed.“You always get on with men,” she said. “I wonder you don’t marry.”“But, according to your view, that would be a mistake.”“Not if the man were well off. It is having to cheese-pare that makes the shoe pinch. Marriage has its compensations.” Her gaze rested reflectively on the children. “One grumbles,” she said; “but one wouldn’t undo all of it.”“I’mnever going to marry,” John, aged eight, announced with sturdy determination. “I’ve seen too much of it.”His mother laughed, and Esmé caught him up and kissed him.“That’s for you, you stony-hearted little misogynist,” she said, as he struggled to elude her embrace.“John’s a silly kid,” Mary, his senior by two years, announced in the crushing tones of a person who resents a slight to her sex.John freed himself from his aunt’s detaining hold in order to vindicate his insulted manhood; and Esmé left them to their scuffling and went upstairs to unpack.When she came down again her brother-in-law had come home. He sat by the window smoking his pipe, but he rose when she entered and came forward and kissed her. He was a heavily-built, good-looking man, with a boisterous geniality of manner which worried his sister-in-law. Oddly, he never realised her objection. He liked her and laboured under the delusion that she reciprocated his affection. He kissed her heartily.“Glad to see you back, old girl,” he said, and reseated himself in the only comfortable chair in the room and resumed his pipe. “You look very fit. I told Rose the Zuurberg would set you up; but she won’t hear a good word for it. There isn’t much to do up there, certainly, but loaf around. The drive up, though, is all right. Pretty—isn’t it?”She laughed, to his puzzled surprise. She often surprised him by the way in which she received his remarks. He had said nothing to cause her merriment. But he preferred smiling faces to glum looks, and so he did not resent it when she laughed at nothing.“I suppose loafing around was what I needed,” she said, steering clear of a discussion on the scenery. “Living in the open air with nothing to do is a fine tonic.”“Yes,” he agreed. “I’d like a little of that myself. A man who spends all his days in an office ought to get away now and again; but when it comes to carting a wife and kids around with one it makes an expensive business of it. Rose ought to see that a man needs change from his work.”“We are most of us short-sighted where the needs of other people are concerned,” she returned with an ambiguity which he did not suspect. “I suppose it would be rather nice if I remembered that Rose hasn’t had a holiday and went out to help her with the preparations for your evening meal.”“Rot!” he ejaculated, unperceiving the drift of her reflections. “You finish out your holiday and sit down and talk to me.”But she elected to go in quest of her sister, who was busy in the kitchen, aided by an incompetent Kaffir girl of an amiable disposition, which revealed itself in the broad smile she gave the young missis when she appeared in the bright, hot little kitchen, which looked out, as her bed room looked out, on the white yard shaded by the big oleander tree beneath which the children played happily in their cramped but secure playground.It was a homelike, pleasant enough picture; but the girl’s thoughts strayed persistently to the green open spaces, and the pleasant ease of the life she had left behind her. She felt a new dissatisfaction with her present surroundings.“Can I help?” she asked.Her sister turned round from the stove with flushed preoccupied face to stare at her.“In that dress! Goodness! no. Besides, it’s all ready—or ought to be. But Maggie won’t keep a good fire.”Maggie promptly came forward and fed the voracious little stove with a fresh supply of logs.“This stove eat wood. Missis should see. I put plenty logs on.”“She’s right, you know,” Rose said, stepping back, and pushing the hair from her face. “Jim ought to buy a new stove. He’d save money on it in the long run. But he hasn’t the cooking to do; he merely grumbles when he has to order the wood. Is the table laid, Maggie? Then you can begin to dish up.”She put a hand through her sister’s arm and drew her out to the doorstep, where they stood watching the children, both a little silent and thoughtful in mood.“Aren’t you hating it, being back again?” Rose asked presently, and bent a keen look on her young sister’s face. Esmé looked up to smile.“I suppose one always feels a little regretful at the finish of a holiday,” she said. “But of course I don’t hate being back.”Rose did not press the point. Something in the girl’s manner, something even in the reticence she betrayed in speaking of her holiday, puzzled her. Esmé was usually more expansive. She did not seem to wish to talk of her experiences. Perhaps, after all, she had had a disappointing time. But the rest and the change had given her back her strength. Had it? Rose looked at her again more attentively. She appeared to be in excellent health; but she had lost her old gaiety; she seemed depressed.“You are tired after the journey,” she said. “Come on in and have something to eat.”She called the children away from their play; and they all went into the little dining-room and sat, crowded uncomfortably, round the small table.Jim served the food, and was jocular and determinedly cheerful. He was pleased to have his sister-in-law home again. It was all rather noisy and uncomfortable. The girl’s thoughts strayed to the long shady room at the Zuurberg, and to the silent companionship of the man whose presence she was missing more than she would have thought possible. And it was only a few hours since they had parted. There would follow many hours, many days, many weeks. She wondered whether she would miss him less as the days went by, or if this intolerable loneliness would grow. It was distressing to think that she might never see him again. She wondered also whether he missed her. She hoped he did. And then she fell to picturing him reverting perhaps to the old evening practice of drinking steadily, until finally he stumbled along the stoep on his way to bed... Surely not that! If her friendship counted for anything at all in his life its influence would linger with him and have some deterrent effect.“Sling along the Adam’s ale, old girl,” said Jim at this point in her reverie. It was one of his boasts that he didn’t pour his money down his throat.Esmé passed him the water-bottle and roused herself with an effort and joined in the general talk. The meal seemed interminable. The children were excited and noisy; they dawdled over their food. Their mother urged them to be quicker, and their father defeated her authority by insisting that the slower they ate the better for their digestions. Husband and wife had a wordy argument on this point. The children ceased eating to listen, on perceiving which their father vented his annoyance on them and sent them away from the table.“That’s your fault,” he said to his wife. “You are always nagging at the kids. We never get a meal in peace.”Esmé listened and wondered. What was wrong with this household? These two were quite fond of each other, and fond of the children; yet they were seldom in agreement on any subject. She wondered whether all married people got on one another’s nerves. Marriage was a difficult problem. It occurred to Esmé that the solution of the difficulty might be reached by it generous use of tact. Without her volition her reflections found verbal expression.“Tact!” she observed aloud to the astonishment of her hearers. “That’s the secret of happiness—immense tact. Jim, I think you are the most tactless person in the world.”
Esmé Lester lived with a married sister at Port Elizabeth in a little house in Havelock Street. Her brother-in-law was junior partner in a store which was not a particularly flourishing concern, and the family finances were generally at low ebb. There were two children, a boy and a girl, named respectively John and Mary. When the family were all at home the little house seemed full to overflowing.
Esmé had a tiny bedroom at the back, overlooking a cemented yard. There was one beauty in this yard, a huge oleander tree, the dark green leaves of which and the clusters of sweet-scented pink blossoms reared themselves against her window and shaded and perfumed her little room. If the oleander had been stricken by drought, or any other mischance had befallen it to cause it to die, the house would have been unbearable to the girl. As it was, the oleander made life possible, even when the children were troublesome, and when her sister and her husband quarrelled. They quarrelled frequently; over the children, over the housekeeping expenses, over the lack of money. Lack of money was the principal grievance.
Esmé boarded with them, because it seemed more natural to stay with her own people than with strangers, and because her sister liked to have her. But she was not fond of her brother-in-law; and the constant disagreements worried her.
It seemed to her, when she entered the house after her pleasant holiday, that she had left all the peace and romance behind and returned to the drab reality of the common daily round. Her sister welcomed her with restrained pleasure, but the children hung about her in unqualified delight, bubbling over in childish fashion with excitement at her return.
“You are looking well,” her sister remarked. “I wish I could take a holiday. Single girls don’t realise how lucky they are until after they are married. Jim and I spent our honeymoon at the Zuurberg. I thought it dull.”
Esmé reflected, while she regarded her sister with a puzzled scrutiny, that it was scarcely surprising her marriage had proved on the whole a disappointing affair. To feel dull on one’s honeymoon is not a promising beginning.
“I thought it wonderful,” she said.
“You had a good time, I suppose. Were there many people there?”
“A fair number. But it’s the place itself. It is lovely.”
Mrs Bainbridge looked unconvinced.
“People, not places, make a holiday enjoyable,” she said with a certain worldly wisdom which jarred on her hearer. “Were there any men there?”
“A few—yes.”
Her sister laughed.
“You always get on with men,” she said. “I wonder you don’t marry.”
“But, according to your view, that would be a mistake.”
“Not if the man were well off. It is having to cheese-pare that makes the shoe pinch. Marriage has its compensations.” Her gaze rested reflectively on the children. “One grumbles,” she said; “but one wouldn’t undo all of it.”
“I’mnever going to marry,” John, aged eight, announced with sturdy determination. “I’ve seen too much of it.”
His mother laughed, and Esmé caught him up and kissed him.
“That’s for you, you stony-hearted little misogynist,” she said, as he struggled to elude her embrace.
“John’s a silly kid,” Mary, his senior by two years, announced in the crushing tones of a person who resents a slight to her sex.
John freed himself from his aunt’s detaining hold in order to vindicate his insulted manhood; and Esmé left them to their scuffling and went upstairs to unpack.
When she came down again her brother-in-law had come home. He sat by the window smoking his pipe, but he rose when she entered and came forward and kissed her. He was a heavily-built, good-looking man, with a boisterous geniality of manner which worried his sister-in-law. Oddly, he never realised her objection. He liked her and laboured under the delusion that she reciprocated his affection. He kissed her heartily.
“Glad to see you back, old girl,” he said, and reseated himself in the only comfortable chair in the room and resumed his pipe. “You look very fit. I told Rose the Zuurberg would set you up; but she won’t hear a good word for it. There isn’t much to do up there, certainly, but loaf around. The drive up, though, is all right. Pretty—isn’t it?”
She laughed, to his puzzled surprise. She often surprised him by the way in which she received his remarks. He had said nothing to cause her merriment. But he preferred smiling faces to glum looks, and so he did not resent it when she laughed at nothing.
“I suppose loafing around was what I needed,” she said, steering clear of a discussion on the scenery. “Living in the open air with nothing to do is a fine tonic.”
“Yes,” he agreed. “I’d like a little of that myself. A man who spends all his days in an office ought to get away now and again; but when it comes to carting a wife and kids around with one it makes an expensive business of it. Rose ought to see that a man needs change from his work.”
“We are most of us short-sighted where the needs of other people are concerned,” she returned with an ambiguity which he did not suspect. “I suppose it would be rather nice if I remembered that Rose hasn’t had a holiday and went out to help her with the preparations for your evening meal.”
“Rot!” he ejaculated, unperceiving the drift of her reflections. “You finish out your holiday and sit down and talk to me.”
But she elected to go in quest of her sister, who was busy in the kitchen, aided by an incompetent Kaffir girl of an amiable disposition, which revealed itself in the broad smile she gave the young missis when she appeared in the bright, hot little kitchen, which looked out, as her bed room looked out, on the white yard shaded by the big oleander tree beneath which the children played happily in their cramped but secure playground.
It was a homelike, pleasant enough picture; but the girl’s thoughts strayed persistently to the green open spaces, and the pleasant ease of the life she had left behind her. She felt a new dissatisfaction with her present surroundings.
“Can I help?” she asked.
Her sister turned round from the stove with flushed preoccupied face to stare at her.
“In that dress! Goodness! no. Besides, it’s all ready—or ought to be. But Maggie won’t keep a good fire.”
Maggie promptly came forward and fed the voracious little stove with a fresh supply of logs.
“This stove eat wood. Missis should see. I put plenty logs on.”
“She’s right, you know,” Rose said, stepping back, and pushing the hair from her face. “Jim ought to buy a new stove. He’d save money on it in the long run. But he hasn’t the cooking to do; he merely grumbles when he has to order the wood. Is the table laid, Maggie? Then you can begin to dish up.”
She put a hand through her sister’s arm and drew her out to the doorstep, where they stood watching the children, both a little silent and thoughtful in mood.
“Aren’t you hating it, being back again?” Rose asked presently, and bent a keen look on her young sister’s face. Esmé looked up to smile.
“I suppose one always feels a little regretful at the finish of a holiday,” she said. “But of course I don’t hate being back.”
Rose did not press the point. Something in the girl’s manner, something even in the reticence she betrayed in speaking of her holiday, puzzled her. Esmé was usually more expansive. She did not seem to wish to talk of her experiences. Perhaps, after all, she had had a disappointing time. But the rest and the change had given her back her strength. Had it? Rose looked at her again more attentively. She appeared to be in excellent health; but she had lost her old gaiety; she seemed depressed.
“You are tired after the journey,” she said. “Come on in and have something to eat.”
She called the children away from their play; and they all went into the little dining-room and sat, crowded uncomfortably, round the small table.
Jim served the food, and was jocular and determinedly cheerful. He was pleased to have his sister-in-law home again. It was all rather noisy and uncomfortable. The girl’s thoughts strayed to the long shady room at the Zuurberg, and to the silent companionship of the man whose presence she was missing more than she would have thought possible. And it was only a few hours since they had parted. There would follow many hours, many days, many weeks. She wondered whether she would miss him less as the days went by, or if this intolerable loneliness would grow. It was distressing to think that she might never see him again. She wondered also whether he missed her. She hoped he did. And then she fell to picturing him reverting perhaps to the old evening practice of drinking steadily, until finally he stumbled along the stoep on his way to bed... Surely not that! If her friendship counted for anything at all in his life its influence would linger with him and have some deterrent effect.
“Sling along the Adam’s ale, old girl,” said Jim at this point in her reverie. It was one of his boasts that he didn’t pour his money down his throat.
Esmé passed him the water-bottle and roused herself with an effort and joined in the general talk. The meal seemed interminable. The children were excited and noisy; they dawdled over their food. Their mother urged them to be quicker, and their father defeated her authority by insisting that the slower they ate the better for their digestions. Husband and wife had a wordy argument on this point. The children ceased eating to listen, on perceiving which their father vented his annoyance on them and sent them away from the table.
“That’s your fault,” he said to his wife. “You are always nagging at the kids. We never get a meal in peace.”
Esmé listened and wondered. What was wrong with this household? These two were quite fond of each other, and fond of the children; yet they were seldom in agreement on any subject. She wondered whether all married people got on one another’s nerves. Marriage was a difficult problem. It occurred to Esmé that the solution of the difficulty might be reached by it generous use of tact. Without her volition her reflections found verbal expression.
“Tact!” she observed aloud to the astonishment of her hearers. “That’s the secret of happiness—immense tact. Jim, I think you are the most tactless person in the world.”
Book Two—Chapter Thirteen.During the first few days after her return to her sister’s home time hung dismally for Esmé. It would have been better had she gone back to work immediately; but there was a full week to term time, and during that week she found nothing sufficiently interesting to distract her thoughts from the desolating fact that she missed something out of her life. Her world was like a world without sunshine, flat and colourless, a place of neutral tints and drab impressions. She hated the house, she hated going out; most of all, she hated the people who visited her sister and gossiped over tea of every trivial matter in the common daily round. Those afternoon gatherings gave her mental indigestion. Yet at one time these things had seemed pleasant and natural. The inference was that there was something wrong with herself.Her sister laid a hand on her secret very soon after her return. She had gone into Esmé’s room and taken up a book, which lay on the little table beside her bed, and opened it casually.“Who is Paul Hallam?” she asked, reading the name inside the cover.Esmé swung round from the dressing-table, saw the book in her sister’s hand, and coloured warmly.“A man who was staying at the Zuurberg.”“And he gave you this book?”“Yes—to read in the train.”The two sisters looked at one another. Rose waited for further information, but it was not forthcoming. She laid the book down, and Esmé resumed brushing her hair. It was pretty hair, soft and wavy. The older woman watched operations for a moment or so, then she went forward, took the brush from the girl’s hand, and brushed it for her.“Tell me about him,” she urged.“There is nothing to tell,” Esmé replied. “He was nice to me while I was there; that is all.”The finality of the phrase struck on her own ears desolately. That was all. Her romance had begun and ended with her holiday.Rose made no comment. The scrappy information had illumined things for her surprisingly. She felt suddenly very tender towards her sister. She put the hair back from her face and kissed her gently.“You are just sweet. You look such a child with your hair like that,” she said.But she made no further mention of Paul Hallam. There were a dozen questions she would have liked to ask, but she forbore. It was not fair to attempt to force the girl’s confidence; her very reluctance to speak of this acquaintance proved that there was more in it than she allowed, perhaps more than she yet realised.There followed days of restlessness and alternating moods more fitful than any barometer. Sinclair called, and made himself so agreeable to Rose and the children, and was so markedly attentive to Esmé that Rose found herself wishing that this quite eligible and agreeable young man was the object of her sister’s interest, as he unmistakably desired to be.Esmé was pleased to see him again; but her manner towards him showed no particular partiality. It was certainly not George Sinclair, Rose decided, who was responsible for the change in the girl.Sinclair called frequently after that first visit, and speedily became on very friendly terms with the family. He found a staunch ally in Rose, who, considering the other affair too remote to be serious, saw in Sinclair an eventual safety-valve for her sister’s repressed emotions. Repressed emotion was undesirable; it hid like a morbid germ in the brain cells and worked with insidious effect upon the mind. In Esmé it betrayed itself in unexpected bursts of irritability, as her discontent with things grew. Mainly this was the result of reaction, and was but a phase in the cure of which Sinclair aided unconsciously. His visits made a break in the general monotony.And then one day a letter came for Esmé. Rose took it in. It was directed in the same small untidy handwriting which she remembered vividly seeing on the front page of the book in Esmé’s room. She had looked for that book often since but she had never seen it again. Now, with the letter in her hand, her thoughts went back to that little scene in the bedroom, and her brows knitted themselves in a frown. Paul Hallam had broken the silence and written to the girl. She carried the letter up to Esmé’s room and laid it on the table beside her bed.“Poor George!” she reflected. “This puts him out of the picture anyway.”Then she went downstairs and left it to the girl to make her own discovery on her return.The first thing which Esmé’s eyes rested on when she ran up to her room on getting back from the college where she gave music lessons was the letter lying on her table. She stood for a full minute looking down at it with pleased, amazed eyes and a deepening colour in her cheeks; then she reached forth shyly and took it up.“I wonder how he learned my address?” was the thought in her mind.She had not seen him copy it from the label on her suit-case. He had taken that precaution when the luggage was being placed in the cart.She seated herself on the side of the bed and opened her letter and read it.“Dear little Friend,” it began characteristically,—“I wonder whether it will surprise you that I should write to you? I write to ask you a favour. I want you out of the kindness of your heart to send me a line sometimes. You can in this matter help me considerably. I knew before you left that I should miss you, but I did not realise how great that miss would be until after you were gone. Never in all my life have I known what it was to feel intolerably lonely until now. It is not fair to me if, after giving me your friendship, you withdraw it again altogether.“I am fighting the devil within me, and just at present I can’t say who will win. But you can help me, if you will. Once you told me it was a shame to make waste of my life. You were right, and I knew it, though at the time I resented your candour. Since you left I have thought often of your words. I miss you. And I want to talk to you. I have never before ached to talk with any one. And yet I don’t want to see you for the present. If ever we meet you will know I have won. I shan’t attempt to see you otherwise.“Please send me a line occasionally. You don’t know what it will mean to me. I am wondering as I write what you are doing, and whether you continue the early morning habit? The sunrises are not marvellous any longer. Every morning I go in search of the old beauty, but it is not there. I wonder whether I shall ever find it again.“Paul Hallam.”Esmé read this letter through with deepening interest and a growing softness in her eyes; there were tears in her eyes; they splashed on to the paper and blurred the signature, tears of relief, of deep thankfulness that at last the man had come to see the pity of wasting his days.She felt no fear for him any longer. Not a doubt of him troubled her mind. That he would ultimately win through was assured by the sincerity of his desire to win. It did not seem to her possible that he could fail in what he undertook to accomplish. His devil stood no chance when his better self took up arms against him. He would win. Assuredly he would win. And then...The bell sounded for lunch. She folded the letter and put it inside her blouse. Then she bathed her eyes to hide the traces of emotion and went downstairs.Her sister scrutinised her attentively, but could read nothing in her face to help her to any conclusion. She longed to ask questions, but restrained her curiosity in the hope that Esmé would confide in her when a propitious moment offered. She made opportunities somewhat too obviously, but Esmé did not take advantage of them. She did not speak of her letter.The letters came regularly after that, once a week; and Rose’s unsatisfied curiosity grew enormously. There was something unnatural in the girl’s reticence. She began to entertain doubts of Paul Hallam. It entered her mind to seek information from Sinclair, but loyalty to her sister restrained her from doing that. Esmé, she supposed, answered these weekly epistles; but she never saw her write letters; whatever she wrote she posted herself.“Who’s Esmé’s correspondent?” Jim asked on one occasion when the weekly letter attracted his notice. “These letters are always coming to the house.”“I don’t know,” his wife answered. “And you’d better not ask her.”“D’you mean she never tells you?” he asked, amazed.“She doesn’t tell me anything. But I believe they come from a man she met at the Zuurberg.”“That place seems to be a kind of matrimonial agency,” Jim grinned. “I thought Sinclair was coming into the family. You see if you can’t find out something about this fellow. Sinclair’s all right, and he means business. Pity if this is going to queer his pitch.”“It’s Esmé’s affair,” Rose replied, experiencing a distinct disinclination to follow his counsel. “When there is anything for me to know I expect she will tell me.”“I never knew before that you were so blooming discreet,” he rejoined; and turned, red in the face but unabashed, to confront his sister-in-law, who entered by the open door and met them in the tiny hall. He gave her the letter.“I was just asking Rose who your correspondent was,” he said, with overdone ease of manner. “She pretends she doesn’t know.”“She does not know,” Esmé answered coolly, and took the letter from his hand and glanced at it casually.“Well, but, see here,” he returned, nettled but intent on information. “We are interested—naturally.”“How can you be interested in some one you have never met?” she said, and went on up the steep narrow stairs, carrying her letter with her.“I’m blowed!” her brother-in-law ejaculated.Rose laughed annoyingly.“You made a hash of that,” she said. “She won’t say anything now.”“Then let her keep her mouth shut,” he said rudely, and went into the sitting-room in a ruffled state of mind.
During the first few days after her return to her sister’s home time hung dismally for Esmé. It would have been better had she gone back to work immediately; but there was a full week to term time, and during that week she found nothing sufficiently interesting to distract her thoughts from the desolating fact that she missed something out of her life. Her world was like a world without sunshine, flat and colourless, a place of neutral tints and drab impressions. She hated the house, she hated going out; most of all, she hated the people who visited her sister and gossiped over tea of every trivial matter in the common daily round. Those afternoon gatherings gave her mental indigestion. Yet at one time these things had seemed pleasant and natural. The inference was that there was something wrong with herself.
Her sister laid a hand on her secret very soon after her return. She had gone into Esmé’s room and taken up a book, which lay on the little table beside her bed, and opened it casually.
“Who is Paul Hallam?” she asked, reading the name inside the cover.
Esmé swung round from the dressing-table, saw the book in her sister’s hand, and coloured warmly.
“A man who was staying at the Zuurberg.”
“And he gave you this book?”
“Yes—to read in the train.”
The two sisters looked at one another. Rose waited for further information, but it was not forthcoming. She laid the book down, and Esmé resumed brushing her hair. It was pretty hair, soft and wavy. The older woman watched operations for a moment or so, then she went forward, took the brush from the girl’s hand, and brushed it for her.
“Tell me about him,” she urged.
“There is nothing to tell,” Esmé replied. “He was nice to me while I was there; that is all.”
The finality of the phrase struck on her own ears desolately. That was all. Her romance had begun and ended with her holiday.
Rose made no comment. The scrappy information had illumined things for her surprisingly. She felt suddenly very tender towards her sister. She put the hair back from her face and kissed her gently.
“You are just sweet. You look such a child with your hair like that,” she said.
But she made no further mention of Paul Hallam. There were a dozen questions she would have liked to ask, but she forbore. It was not fair to attempt to force the girl’s confidence; her very reluctance to speak of this acquaintance proved that there was more in it than she allowed, perhaps more than she yet realised.
There followed days of restlessness and alternating moods more fitful than any barometer. Sinclair called, and made himself so agreeable to Rose and the children, and was so markedly attentive to Esmé that Rose found herself wishing that this quite eligible and agreeable young man was the object of her sister’s interest, as he unmistakably desired to be.
Esmé was pleased to see him again; but her manner towards him showed no particular partiality. It was certainly not George Sinclair, Rose decided, who was responsible for the change in the girl.
Sinclair called frequently after that first visit, and speedily became on very friendly terms with the family. He found a staunch ally in Rose, who, considering the other affair too remote to be serious, saw in Sinclair an eventual safety-valve for her sister’s repressed emotions. Repressed emotion was undesirable; it hid like a morbid germ in the brain cells and worked with insidious effect upon the mind. In Esmé it betrayed itself in unexpected bursts of irritability, as her discontent with things grew. Mainly this was the result of reaction, and was but a phase in the cure of which Sinclair aided unconsciously. His visits made a break in the general monotony.
And then one day a letter came for Esmé. Rose took it in. It was directed in the same small untidy handwriting which she remembered vividly seeing on the front page of the book in Esmé’s room. She had looked for that book often since but she had never seen it again. Now, with the letter in her hand, her thoughts went back to that little scene in the bedroom, and her brows knitted themselves in a frown. Paul Hallam had broken the silence and written to the girl. She carried the letter up to Esmé’s room and laid it on the table beside her bed.
“Poor George!” she reflected. “This puts him out of the picture anyway.”
Then she went downstairs and left it to the girl to make her own discovery on her return.
The first thing which Esmé’s eyes rested on when she ran up to her room on getting back from the college where she gave music lessons was the letter lying on her table. She stood for a full minute looking down at it with pleased, amazed eyes and a deepening colour in her cheeks; then she reached forth shyly and took it up.
“I wonder how he learned my address?” was the thought in her mind.
She had not seen him copy it from the label on her suit-case. He had taken that precaution when the luggage was being placed in the cart.
She seated herself on the side of the bed and opened her letter and read it.
“Dear little Friend,” it began characteristically,—
“I wonder whether it will surprise you that I should write to you? I write to ask you a favour. I want you out of the kindness of your heart to send me a line sometimes. You can in this matter help me considerably. I knew before you left that I should miss you, but I did not realise how great that miss would be until after you were gone. Never in all my life have I known what it was to feel intolerably lonely until now. It is not fair to me if, after giving me your friendship, you withdraw it again altogether.
“I am fighting the devil within me, and just at present I can’t say who will win. But you can help me, if you will. Once you told me it was a shame to make waste of my life. You were right, and I knew it, though at the time I resented your candour. Since you left I have thought often of your words. I miss you. And I want to talk to you. I have never before ached to talk with any one. And yet I don’t want to see you for the present. If ever we meet you will know I have won. I shan’t attempt to see you otherwise.
“Please send me a line occasionally. You don’t know what it will mean to me. I am wondering as I write what you are doing, and whether you continue the early morning habit? The sunrises are not marvellous any longer. Every morning I go in search of the old beauty, but it is not there. I wonder whether I shall ever find it again.
“Paul Hallam.”
Esmé read this letter through with deepening interest and a growing softness in her eyes; there were tears in her eyes; they splashed on to the paper and blurred the signature, tears of relief, of deep thankfulness that at last the man had come to see the pity of wasting his days.
She felt no fear for him any longer. Not a doubt of him troubled her mind. That he would ultimately win through was assured by the sincerity of his desire to win. It did not seem to her possible that he could fail in what he undertook to accomplish. His devil stood no chance when his better self took up arms against him. He would win. Assuredly he would win. And then...
The bell sounded for lunch. She folded the letter and put it inside her blouse. Then she bathed her eyes to hide the traces of emotion and went downstairs.
Her sister scrutinised her attentively, but could read nothing in her face to help her to any conclusion. She longed to ask questions, but restrained her curiosity in the hope that Esmé would confide in her when a propitious moment offered. She made opportunities somewhat too obviously, but Esmé did not take advantage of them. She did not speak of her letter.
The letters came regularly after that, once a week; and Rose’s unsatisfied curiosity grew enormously. There was something unnatural in the girl’s reticence. She began to entertain doubts of Paul Hallam. It entered her mind to seek information from Sinclair, but loyalty to her sister restrained her from doing that. Esmé, she supposed, answered these weekly epistles; but she never saw her write letters; whatever she wrote she posted herself.
“Who’s Esmé’s correspondent?” Jim asked on one occasion when the weekly letter attracted his notice. “These letters are always coming to the house.”
“I don’t know,” his wife answered. “And you’d better not ask her.”
“D’you mean she never tells you?” he asked, amazed.
“She doesn’t tell me anything. But I believe they come from a man she met at the Zuurberg.”
“That place seems to be a kind of matrimonial agency,” Jim grinned. “I thought Sinclair was coming into the family. You see if you can’t find out something about this fellow. Sinclair’s all right, and he means business. Pity if this is going to queer his pitch.”
“It’s Esmé’s affair,” Rose replied, experiencing a distinct disinclination to follow his counsel. “When there is anything for me to know I expect she will tell me.”
“I never knew before that you were so blooming discreet,” he rejoined; and turned, red in the face but unabashed, to confront his sister-in-law, who entered by the open door and met them in the tiny hall. He gave her the letter.
“I was just asking Rose who your correspondent was,” he said, with overdone ease of manner. “She pretends she doesn’t know.”
“She does not know,” Esmé answered coolly, and took the letter from his hand and glanced at it casually.
“Well, but, see here,” he returned, nettled but intent on information. “We are interested—naturally.”
“How can you be interested in some one you have never met?” she said, and went on up the steep narrow stairs, carrying her letter with her.
“I’m blowed!” her brother-in-law ejaculated.
Rose laughed annoyingly.
“You made a hash of that,” she said. “She won’t say anything now.”
“Then let her keep her mouth shut,” he said rudely, and went into the sitting-room in a ruffled state of mind.
Book Two—Chapter Fourteen.The receipt of those weekly letters and the pleasurable occupation of replying to them engrossed Esmé’s thoughts, changed all her outlook, filled her life completely. She was falling very deeply in love. And she believed that Paul Hallam loved her. He did not tell her so in words, but every letter which came from him conveyed the idea that it was for her sake entirely he was attempting what no other influence would have led him to attempt, that when he was sure of himself he would come to her. She waited and hoped and hugged her secret to herself, determined to guard from others the knowledge of his weakness, which he was so earnestly endeavouring to conquer.He had left the Zuurberg for the coast, and was staying at Camp’s Bay, right on the beach, he explained, in writing her a description of his new quarters.“You would love it here,” he wrote. “The road between Camp’s Bay and Seapoint surpasses everything for beauty. You’ve no idea how fine it is in the early morning.”In another letter he said: “The moonlight on the sea has set me thinking of you. If only we were watching it together! The surface of the sea is all splashed with silver, broken up and spread over it in a running liquid fire. One day I hope you will watch it with me. I see it from the window as I write.”She treasured these letters and tied them about and locked them away from sight. They brought him very near to her; and his detailed descriptions of his walks, his surroundings, helped her to visualise him. She longed to see him again; but she never allowed a breath of her longing to find expression in the cheery letters she wrote in answer to his.In the meantime Sinclair pursued his courtship in blissful unconsciousness of the hopelessness of his cause. Esmé had come to accept Sinclair’s friendship as a matter of course. Their relations were very fraternal. They called one another by their christian names. Sinclair was George to everyone in the Bainbridge household, down to the children, who viewed him with affectionate interest as a person who understood small people’s tastes in the matter of sweets.Every Saturday he came in for tennis, and returned with Esmé to the house in Havelock Street for supper. Usually on Sundays he took Esmé and the children to Red House, and they spent the day on the river. He brightened life for her considerably. She liked him. In a friendly, wholly unsentimental fashion she was fond of him. Had there been no one else in her life her affection would probably have developed into a warmer sentiment. But she never thought of George Sinclair in the light of a possible lover. He never made love to her. Not once in their pleasant intercourse had he said anything she could have construed into an attempt at love-making. His manner was affectionate and kind always. He was a good chum. That was how she thought of him, as a good chum. The awakening therefore was all the more startling when it came.Sinclair seized his opportunity during the tennis tournament. With considerable difficulty he persuaded her to partner him in the mixed doubles. She was reluctant on account of being a weak player; but he overruled her objections, and she gave way.“You’ll lose—with me,” she warned him. “I’m not good at games ever.”“I’ll take my chance of that,” he replied. “Anyway, I’d rather lose with you than win with any one else.”Esmé practised untiringly before the event. She had never attended the tournament before other than as a spectator, and the sight of the crowds which gathered each day to view the events shook her nerve. She played badly, and felt rather aggrieved that her partner managed to drag her victoriously through their first set. After their game she sat with him below the stand and reproached him for winning.“It would be all over now if you hadn’t cribbed half my balls,” she complained.“But you don’t want to be out of it really?” he said, surprised.“I do—and I don’t. It makes me jumpy.”“That’s all right. You’ll get your tail up later. I’m going to win, you know. I’m going to pull this off.”“You’ve got your work cut out,” she said, and laughed. “You’ll get very little help from me.”“I only ask your co-operation,” he returned confidently. “Take what you can, and leave the rest to me. I’m out to win. You see, we are coming through together.”She did see. And with each set they played and won her astonishment deepened. She had always known that he was a good player, but she had not realised the reserve force which he could bring into his game when he wanted it. It was something more than play, she decided, which carried him through; it was sheer determination not to be beaten. They came through the finals with a hard-won victory.Jim and Rose were present to watch the finish. According to Jim, his sister-in-law played a footling game.“At least she didn’t hamper her partner,” Rose said.“Hamper him! No. She might as well have been off the court altogether.”“Her service is good,” Rose insisted.“Yes—for a girl.” He chuckled. “She leaves him to make all the running.”“Well, they won anyhow.”“Hewon,” he corrected. “Shouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t win all along the line. He has only a bundle of letters to compete against. My money is on the man on the spot all the time.”“Hush!” Rose said warningly. “Here they come.”She hailed the winners with smiling congratulations, and complimented Sinclair on his play.“We pulled it off all right, Mrs Bainbridge,” he said, laughing, looking hot and young and immeasurably contented with life. “Esmé funked right to the finish, but she played up like a good ’un. Whew! I’m hot. Come on, partner; let’s go and have a lemon squash.”The girl, flushed and tired and less elated with success than he was, followed him to the back of the pavilion, and stood drinking lemonade, and talking to a little knot of competitors who were there for a similar purpose. Some of the players she knew, but a number of them were visitors down for the tournament. A dance that night at the Town Hall was to celebrate the finish of the festivities. A group of flannel-clad young men and white-frocked young women were discussing the ball and booking dances in advance. Some one came up to Esmé and asked her for a dance, which she promised willingly. In a very short while she had given a number of dances away. Sinclair touched her arm.“I want some,” he said. “I want quite a lot.”His tone was urgent, and when she turned to look at him she saw that his face was strained and very determined. The expression in his eyes puzzled her.“Of course,” she said, “I should feel a little hurt if you didn’t.”“Look here!” he said in an undertone. “Come out of this. I don’t want you to give away any more—not at present. I’m going to have the supper dance, and everything after that. Is it a promise?”“Well,” she said, and looked somewhat doubtful. “That means that you are booked for the entire half of my programme.”He nodded.“That’s it,” he said.“But,”—she was beginning, when he took hold of her arm and led her outside, with a muttered reference to the stifling heat.“Come and sit under the trees,” he said. “I want to watch the set on the far court.”It was one of the less interesting sets, and there were fewer spectators, which was probably why he decided for it. He conducted her to an unoccupied seat and sat down beside her.“It’s jolly here and cool and out of the crush. You don’t want to watch the Johannesburg chap, do you?”She would have preferred to watch the play on the centre court. It was clear that the Johannesburg man would carry off the championship in the men’s singles; but she gave in to his wish and decided to remain where she was.Sinclair’s manner was nervous and preoccupied; but the girl did not appear to notice it; she did not want to talk. Her companion smoked cigarettes and stared with a sort of strained attention at the game and jerked out an occasional comment. Presently he remarked apropos of nothing:“I had a rise yesterday. That was an altogether unexpected stroke of luck.”“Yes!” she exclaimed, turning an interested, unsuspicious face towards him. “I am pleased. Why didn’t you tell me before?”He laughed.“Too absorbed in our game,” he said, “to think of it. But I’m thinking of it now. It makes a difference.”“I suppose it does. You’ll be bursting forth into extravagances. Why don’t you keep a car?”“Not yet,” he said. “I want other things more urgently than that.”“What things?”“I’ll tell you to-night,” he said, reddening.“Yes,” she said, her thoughts reverting to the discussion in the pavilion. “During half a programme you’ll find time enough to tell me a good deal.”He glanced at her quickly.“You didn’t mind?” he said. “It’s only the second half; and you’ll be tired. You won’t want to dance much.”“Oh, indeed! Then what do you propose we shall do? If we don’t dance we might as well remain at home.”“We’ll dance all you want to,” he replied. “And we’ll go for a stroll along the sea wall. The weather is too hot for being inside. You shall do what you like anyhow.”“You are always so amenable, George,” she said, smiling. “And you always get your own way in the end.”He smiled back at her with gay confidence.“My luck’s in,” he replied. “The gods smile on me. I told you, Esmé, that I meant to win.”“I did my utmost to prevent you,” she said.“You understand co-operation, partner,” he returned coolly. “That’s good enough for me.”She did not in the least understand the drift of his remarks, although he believed he was tactfully preparing her for the declaration he intended making that night. The last thing she anticipated was the proposal which hovered continually in the forefront of Sinclair’s mind. He intended to put his luck to the test that evening, and felt fairly confident as to the result. He had not the remotest suspicion of possessing a rival. The road ahead, so far as he could see, was perfectly clear.
The receipt of those weekly letters and the pleasurable occupation of replying to them engrossed Esmé’s thoughts, changed all her outlook, filled her life completely. She was falling very deeply in love. And she believed that Paul Hallam loved her. He did not tell her so in words, but every letter which came from him conveyed the idea that it was for her sake entirely he was attempting what no other influence would have led him to attempt, that when he was sure of himself he would come to her. She waited and hoped and hugged her secret to herself, determined to guard from others the knowledge of his weakness, which he was so earnestly endeavouring to conquer.
He had left the Zuurberg for the coast, and was staying at Camp’s Bay, right on the beach, he explained, in writing her a description of his new quarters.
“You would love it here,” he wrote. “The road between Camp’s Bay and Seapoint surpasses everything for beauty. You’ve no idea how fine it is in the early morning.”
In another letter he said: “The moonlight on the sea has set me thinking of you. If only we were watching it together! The surface of the sea is all splashed with silver, broken up and spread over it in a running liquid fire. One day I hope you will watch it with me. I see it from the window as I write.”
She treasured these letters and tied them about and locked them away from sight. They brought him very near to her; and his detailed descriptions of his walks, his surroundings, helped her to visualise him. She longed to see him again; but she never allowed a breath of her longing to find expression in the cheery letters she wrote in answer to his.
In the meantime Sinclair pursued his courtship in blissful unconsciousness of the hopelessness of his cause. Esmé had come to accept Sinclair’s friendship as a matter of course. Their relations were very fraternal. They called one another by their christian names. Sinclair was George to everyone in the Bainbridge household, down to the children, who viewed him with affectionate interest as a person who understood small people’s tastes in the matter of sweets.
Every Saturday he came in for tennis, and returned with Esmé to the house in Havelock Street for supper. Usually on Sundays he took Esmé and the children to Red House, and they spent the day on the river. He brightened life for her considerably. She liked him. In a friendly, wholly unsentimental fashion she was fond of him. Had there been no one else in her life her affection would probably have developed into a warmer sentiment. But she never thought of George Sinclair in the light of a possible lover. He never made love to her. Not once in their pleasant intercourse had he said anything she could have construed into an attempt at love-making. His manner was affectionate and kind always. He was a good chum. That was how she thought of him, as a good chum. The awakening therefore was all the more startling when it came.
Sinclair seized his opportunity during the tennis tournament. With considerable difficulty he persuaded her to partner him in the mixed doubles. She was reluctant on account of being a weak player; but he overruled her objections, and she gave way.
“You’ll lose—with me,” she warned him. “I’m not good at games ever.”
“I’ll take my chance of that,” he replied. “Anyway, I’d rather lose with you than win with any one else.”
Esmé practised untiringly before the event. She had never attended the tournament before other than as a spectator, and the sight of the crowds which gathered each day to view the events shook her nerve. She played badly, and felt rather aggrieved that her partner managed to drag her victoriously through their first set. After their game she sat with him below the stand and reproached him for winning.
“It would be all over now if you hadn’t cribbed half my balls,” she complained.
“But you don’t want to be out of it really?” he said, surprised.
“I do—and I don’t. It makes me jumpy.”
“That’s all right. You’ll get your tail up later. I’m going to win, you know. I’m going to pull this off.”
“You’ve got your work cut out,” she said, and laughed. “You’ll get very little help from me.”
“I only ask your co-operation,” he returned confidently. “Take what you can, and leave the rest to me. I’m out to win. You see, we are coming through together.”
She did see. And with each set they played and won her astonishment deepened. She had always known that he was a good player, but she had not realised the reserve force which he could bring into his game when he wanted it. It was something more than play, she decided, which carried him through; it was sheer determination not to be beaten. They came through the finals with a hard-won victory.
Jim and Rose were present to watch the finish. According to Jim, his sister-in-law played a footling game.
“At least she didn’t hamper her partner,” Rose said.
“Hamper him! No. She might as well have been off the court altogether.”
“Her service is good,” Rose insisted.
“Yes—for a girl.” He chuckled. “She leaves him to make all the running.”
“Well, they won anyhow.”
“Hewon,” he corrected. “Shouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t win all along the line. He has only a bundle of letters to compete against. My money is on the man on the spot all the time.”
“Hush!” Rose said warningly. “Here they come.”
She hailed the winners with smiling congratulations, and complimented Sinclair on his play.
“We pulled it off all right, Mrs Bainbridge,” he said, laughing, looking hot and young and immeasurably contented with life. “Esmé funked right to the finish, but she played up like a good ’un. Whew! I’m hot. Come on, partner; let’s go and have a lemon squash.”
The girl, flushed and tired and less elated with success than he was, followed him to the back of the pavilion, and stood drinking lemonade, and talking to a little knot of competitors who were there for a similar purpose. Some of the players she knew, but a number of them were visitors down for the tournament. A dance that night at the Town Hall was to celebrate the finish of the festivities. A group of flannel-clad young men and white-frocked young women were discussing the ball and booking dances in advance. Some one came up to Esmé and asked her for a dance, which she promised willingly. In a very short while she had given a number of dances away. Sinclair touched her arm.
“I want some,” he said. “I want quite a lot.”
His tone was urgent, and when she turned to look at him she saw that his face was strained and very determined. The expression in his eyes puzzled her.
“Of course,” she said, “I should feel a little hurt if you didn’t.”
“Look here!” he said in an undertone. “Come out of this. I don’t want you to give away any more—not at present. I’m going to have the supper dance, and everything after that. Is it a promise?”
“Well,” she said, and looked somewhat doubtful. “That means that you are booked for the entire half of my programme.”
He nodded.
“That’s it,” he said.
“But,”—she was beginning, when he took hold of her arm and led her outside, with a muttered reference to the stifling heat.
“Come and sit under the trees,” he said. “I want to watch the set on the far court.”
It was one of the less interesting sets, and there were fewer spectators, which was probably why he decided for it. He conducted her to an unoccupied seat and sat down beside her.
“It’s jolly here and cool and out of the crush. You don’t want to watch the Johannesburg chap, do you?”
She would have preferred to watch the play on the centre court. It was clear that the Johannesburg man would carry off the championship in the men’s singles; but she gave in to his wish and decided to remain where she was.
Sinclair’s manner was nervous and preoccupied; but the girl did not appear to notice it; she did not want to talk. Her companion smoked cigarettes and stared with a sort of strained attention at the game and jerked out an occasional comment. Presently he remarked apropos of nothing:
“I had a rise yesterday. That was an altogether unexpected stroke of luck.”
“Yes!” she exclaimed, turning an interested, unsuspicious face towards him. “I am pleased. Why didn’t you tell me before?”
He laughed.
“Too absorbed in our game,” he said, “to think of it. But I’m thinking of it now. It makes a difference.”
“I suppose it does. You’ll be bursting forth into extravagances. Why don’t you keep a car?”
“Not yet,” he said. “I want other things more urgently than that.”
“What things?”
“I’ll tell you to-night,” he said, reddening.
“Yes,” she said, her thoughts reverting to the discussion in the pavilion. “During half a programme you’ll find time enough to tell me a good deal.”
He glanced at her quickly.
“You didn’t mind?” he said. “It’s only the second half; and you’ll be tired. You won’t want to dance much.”
“Oh, indeed! Then what do you propose we shall do? If we don’t dance we might as well remain at home.”
“We’ll dance all you want to,” he replied. “And we’ll go for a stroll along the sea wall. The weather is too hot for being inside. You shall do what you like anyhow.”
“You are always so amenable, George,” she said, smiling. “And you always get your own way in the end.”
He smiled back at her with gay confidence.
“My luck’s in,” he replied. “The gods smile on me. I told you, Esmé, that I meant to win.”
“I did my utmost to prevent you,” she said.
“You understand co-operation, partner,” he returned coolly. “That’s good enough for me.”
She did not in the least understand the drift of his remarks, although he believed he was tactfully preparing her for the declaration he intended making that night. The last thing she anticipated was the proposal which hovered continually in the forefront of Sinclair’s mind. He intended to put his luck to the test that evening, and felt fairly confident as to the result. He had not the remotest suspicion of possessing a rival. The road ahead, so far as he could see, was perfectly clear.