The Shadow of the Past Part 4

A tram came up almost immediately. They boarded it; and the girl, feeling a little constrained and disinclined to talk, sat silent, watching the spear of light along the horizon narrowing and paling as the sea settled to a grey restfulness beneath the darkening sky. She did not want Matheson to talk, and was glad when he fell into silence too. She was conscious of the people on the tram to a quite disproportionate degree. She had a persuasion that they knew she was doing something unusual and rather indiscreet. The sense of back doors and secrecy which had gripped her at first had hold of her again, and spoilt things. It was with immeasurable relief that she got down when they reached the terminus and started to walk.

"Let us go on and on," she said, "until there is no one. I want-- quiet."

"I know," he said on a note of understanding. "We'll find what we want."

A swift and unaccountable feeling of intimacy sprang out of this mutual desire for solitude, which she had expressed with unconscious audacity; while he, in voicing his agreement, seemed to be conspiring with her to get away together and be alone. This purpose had been in his mind from the beginning.

"Tell me when you are tired," he said, as he helped her over a difficult place.

But she did not tire easily. It was the difficulty of making their way between and over the boulders of the rock-strewn beach that brought them to a halt. They sat down on a small strip of sand with a rock at their backs, and for a while remained silent, contemplating the scene in quiet appreciation that defied expression and lent itself to the prevailing peace. Out of the warm dusk a few stars gleamed faintly, and upon the stirless air the contented murmuring of the sea as it drew away from the sleeping sh.o.r.e hung reposefully, the wild slumber song which throughout the ages the element which never rests urges upon the land.

As the silence between them lengthened, Brenda Upton became aware that the man beside her moved nearer to her; observed too, when she turned towards him, that he was more intent upon the study of her face than upon the deep swell of the moving waters, the sinister strength and secretiveness of the mountain range that walled and overlooked the bay.

He had brought her here to see these things, but he did not look at them himself; he was not after all sharing them with her. A faint resentment stirred her as she met the steady gaze of the indolent eyes; she felt somehow cheated.

"I thought this would move you," he said in a voice of satisfaction.

"It moves me--yes." She took up a handful of sand and let it run slowly through her fingers. "And you?" she asked.

Suddenly he smiled. He changed his att.i.tude for a more comfortable position, reclining on the sand on his elbow, with his chin supported on his hand.

"I'm enjoying your enjoyment. That's enough for me to-night. It's a fresh sensation; the scenery isn't. When I first came out here it gripped me--as it grips you. I forgot the time. I missed my dinner."

He laughed at some reminiscence. "That didn't matter; it was worth it.

But I found it impossible to explain what had kept me. It would have spoilt it. You know the fatuous remarks that some people would have made... I could have talked of it to you--you would have understood.

There's something fine about this bit of coast--fine and lonely. People don't come here much. You see, it's difficult to get at; there's no beach, and the rocks scare off bathers. There's nothing to draw people--except just the rugged beauty of it..."

He broke off, aware of the criticism in her eyes, their look of veiled surprise.

"I don't believe _you_ understand," he said doubtfully.

"The love of beauty!" she said. "Oh! yes, I understand that part. It's the inconsistency that puzzles me."

"The inconsistency!" he echoed.

"I'll tell you," she said, and added quickly: "Please don't think I am criticising you--only when I hear you talk like that of the beauty of nature, it becomes difficult to reconcile that idea of you with--the earliest impression."

"I know," he said, and shifted a little on his arm in, order to get a more direct view of her.

He was thinking of the disapproval the brown eyes had so clearly expressed that first morning, and his subsequent wish to drive the disapproval out of them and earn her appreciation. There followed a brief, expectant pause before he said:

"I'm glad you spoke of that. Of course I saw what you were thinking that morning... And in truth it is a waste of a blue day to spend it in gambling. I've acted like a fool, and learnt a lesson. I don't suppose I feel particularly keen about playing in future--not for a time, anyhow--but I have a feeling I'd like to make some sort of a resolve...

Would it bore you to accept my undertaking never to play again?"

"It wouldn't bore me," she said, manifestly surprised at his question.

"But are you sure? ... It is more likely to bore you afterwards to feel constrained to keep that resolve. Is it necessary to promise-- anything?"

"Not necessary, perhaps. It would be a satisfaction to me." He looked up at her with a swift smile. "I believe that's what I inveigled you here for--to force you into the position of custodian of my conscience-- to listen to confidences. I'm lonely. I've no one belonging to me out here--no one I can talk intimately with. I've knocked around. That sort of life doesn't lend itself to intimacies. I want to talk--oh!

about things one doesn't talk about generally... I wonder whether I am making myself intelligible?"

"Yes," she said. "Though possibly if I didn't have those same feelings I might not follow you altogether. I'm lonely too. I often want a sympathetic listener; and there's no one; so I moon about alone, and--"

Her voice trailed off on a thoughtful pause.

"Want to kick yourself?" he suggested.

"No. I don't think it's ever been quite so bad as that."

"It is with me," he said--"often. But I have few resources. I don't sweat things out like some men in violent exercise. I've tried that, but it doesn't give me any sort of relief. My beastly muscles develop and keep hard without that Sometimes I think they are the only part of me to develop and harden; the rest is non-resistant."

"A man has his work," she interjected. "There's ambition..."

He looked away across the dark waste of waters and answered indifferently.

"I never had any. All that talk about a career--what does it amount to?

One man makes a bit of a splash, another doesn't; but they are both heading the same way, both making for the open sea, which eventually engulfs them. It's only while they are insh.o.r.e that the splash is visible; farther out the sea is deep and tranquil; and sometimes it is the man who hasn't made a splash insh.o.r.e who keeps up longest and sees well ahead. Those early splashes don't count for much when the swimmer is done. Death beats us all in the end. It isn't worth it...

ambition... no."

"Without ambition nothing would be achieved ever," she said. "Some one's got to do the things--that are worth doing."

"Why?" he asked, and smiled at her lazily. She looked down at him, puzzled and hesitating, a little uncertain of her ground. "What are the things worth doing?"

"Don't you believe that there is a purpose in life?" she asked.

The smile on his face broadened.

"I confess I haven't given much thought to the matter, but, since you ask me, I suppose there might be some blind purpose even in the life of a mole. It's all rather futile though, isn't it? What are you doing?

... What am I doing? ... The obvious answer, of course, is sitting on the sh.o.r.e. Well, that's about all there is to it--sitting on the sh.o.r.e and talking. Later, well take the plunge and swim out to the deep sea-- and that's the finish. I like best sitting on the sh.o.r.e. It's very pleasant, isn't it? Say you are enjoying it--and don't try to rouse ambition in me; it's a mean thing at best."

"It's a fine thing," she contradicted. "Very little has ever been achieved without it."

He sat up straighter.

"I'll prove my definition to be more correct than yours," he insisted.

"What is ambition?--a desire for power, for superiority. It's utterly selfish, an egotistical quality. It springs from greed of gain, either of recognition or of material benefit. Can that be considered other than an ign.o.ble sentiment?"

"Not as you put it," she dissented. "But I dispute your definition.

Ambition is a lofty endeavour to excel."

"Well, it may be... sometimes it is," he allowed. "But in this very human world it is oftener the more sordid sentiment I described. I merely dragged the wings from your ideal and brought it down to earth."

"I believe that is what you enjoy doing," she said, a touch of reproach in her voice.

"What do we know better than this dear mother earth?" he asked, and pressed his hand heavily upon the sand. "She is altogether beautiful, save where man, in the determined pursuit of ambition, has scarred and changed her face. That idea of living at a high mental alt.i.tude is mere presumption. It's an age of posing. We catch at a phrase that sounds fine, and adopt it because of its fine sound. There isn't any need to live up to the sentiment it expresses--very often it doesn't express much. There's a cult that's called, I believe, the Higher Thought Movement. People read books--or they don't read them, but simply own them and talk vaguely of the higher things they express. It doesn't go far beyond talking as a rule. I never met any one who could transmit higher thought. It's another catch phrase."

"Doesn't every one have those thoughts at some time?" she asked quietly, without resenting his speech as he had half expected her to do.

"Higher thoughts? ... Yes, I suppose so. Only one doesn't talk about them."

"No," she returned; "you are right. One would have difficulty in expressing those things--particularly in high sounding phrases."