The Shadow of the Past Part 5

"Truth is never adorned," he said--"which possibly accounts for the frequency with which she is disregarded."

Abruptly he stood up, and held out both hands in invitation to her to rise.

"The moon's getting up," he said. "Come nearer to the water's edge and see it top the mountain."

CHAPTER SIX.

For a week Matheson remained in Cape Town awaiting Holman's convenience.

He was in no hurry to leave. He felt neither interest nor curiosity in his mission; the only emotion he experienced in regard to it was an impatient desire to have it behind instead of hanging perpetually over him, to fulfil his undertaking, and be done with the whole thing and thus be free of further obligation. The necessity for doing something altogether repugnant to him incensed him against the man who had imposed the condition, and who was formerly his friend. He resented the thing as though it had been a trick. In a way it had been a trick. He apprehended that without following the purpose of the stratagem. He had undertaken a questionable mission at the request of a man against whose interest it was to be detected in connection with the matter. The whole thing was ridiculous; but it was as imperative of discharge as any other debt of honour incurred at the option of the individual. Having agreed to the stake, it was impossible now to draw back.

During the week of compulsory inactivity in Cape Town he pursued with considerable diligence the congenial pastime of cultivating the acquaintance so recently begun, which on the night of that first walk had leaped forward with astonishing rapidity, clearing the conventional obstacles that intrude on new acquaintanceship, and arriving at something more nearly resembling an intimate comradeship than anything he had ever experienced in relation to feminine friendship. The novelty of the thing, as much as the undeniable enjoyment he derived from the girl's society, pleased him. The waiting about was not irksome when Brenda Upton was there to fit into the blanks. But Brenda was not always available.

During the next two days Mrs Graham remained indisposed; and her companion was therefore free to spend most of the day, and all the evening, in any way she inclined towards. Never before had Matheson taken satisfaction in a woman's headaches; nor would he have believed it possible that the sufferer's recovery on the third day could have caused him such real disappointment. He would cheerfully have confined her to her room for a week.

With Mrs Graham about again the meetings were uncertain and hurried, and the after-dinner walks ceased altogether. Matheson rebelled against this.

"You can get away if you want to," he a.s.serted unreasonably. "She couldn't refuse to let you off for an hour if you asked."

"Do you really believe that I don't want to?" she asked. "If you only knew how much more they mean to me than they can to you--these walks!

... It's out of the question, anyhow."

That evening while she sat in the lounge, holding wool for her employer and compelled to listen to the discordant noise made by a group of the younger guests, gathered about the piano in the corner, Brenda's thoughts wandered to the quiet beach. She pictured the warm satisfying serenity of the night out there under the starlit sky with the moan of the sea at one's feet. How good it was! ... how good! ... It was hot in the house, despite the draughts created by open doors and windows; there was difficulty in breathing. One wanted to be outside walls, away from artificial lighting, out in the open in the quiet dusk, with no light but the stars.

Mrs Graham finished winding her wool and, with the exhausted air of a woman recently prostrated by some nervous disorder, proposed an adjournment to her room for the inevitable hour's reading, which until now the girl had accepted as a matter of course and not found so unutterably wearisome.

With a limp disinclination that was an unspoken protest, she followed Mrs Graham downstairs and into a room on the left of the entrance, a pleasant room opening on to the stoep in front, and with access to a small conservatory. Mrs Graham touched the electric switch, and immediately the room was flooded with light.

"Shut die window," she directed, "or we shall be eaten alive by mosquitoes."

"But,"--Brenda paused--"it's so hot."

"Well, you can leave the fanlight open. It is as hot outside as indoors."

The reading proved a miserable business. The best of readers would fail to interpret successfully the spirit of a work with a mind intent upon matters wholly outside the subject of the book. Brenda attempted conscientiously to capture her straying thoughts and tie them down to the prosaic present, but they evaded her and flew off at a tangent in pursuit of retrospective glamour. She reached out after them and brought them back, only to lose them almost immediately as, eluding her listless vigilance, they wandered anew in unbidden channels.

"I really think," Mrs Graham's voice broke in complainingly, "that you must go back and read those last few pages again. You've missed the sense somehow. There's a want of relevance... You mustn't skip."

Brenda turned back without comment and endeavoured to fix her attention on the print, which conveyed no meaning whatever to her. The reading that evening was admittedly a failure.

"Year in year out, until I'm old, it will be like this, I suppose," the girl said wearily to herself later on her way upstairs. And then, almost fiercely: "Why do we stand it? Why do we allow all the dull, uninteresting things to be forced on us? I do this--for food and shelter. And there isn't any escape--except through marriage. Ugh!"

Arrived in her bedroom, leaning from the window looking out upon the stirless night, she admonished herself mutely.

"I don't think that moonlight walks and agreeable society are altogether good for you, my dear. You grow discontented because every hour isn't a perfect hour."

A faint smile curved her lips. She leaned farther out into the fragrant darkness, and rested her elbows on the sill and her chin in her hands, and gazed away towards the sea, and sighed.

"Life isn't made up of perfect hours," she reflected. "They are so few--so very few--that's what makes them so good. He's discontented too... Every one's discontented. We want things--oh! all sorts of fine, impossible things--we keep on wanting them. And life goes on in the same solid, stolid way: we live; we grumble; we die. _Sic transit_..."

"No," she contradicted presently, "that isn't all. There _is_ a glory concealed somewhere--the rainbow in the bubble, if we look long enough."

And after that she ceased to speculate on the problem of life, and fell into a retrospective reverie and forgot the time.

Perhaps it is because women as a s.e.x acquiesce too readily in the conditions of life, whatever they may be, instead of making a determined stand against what is unfavourable, that unfavourable conditions are imposed upon them. Men do not submit, and results justify their resistance--organised resistance is the charter of freedom. It is taught that there is beauty in submission--well, there isn't.

Submission is lacking in dignity, and beauty is always dignified. There is beauty in restraint, in control, in unselfishness; but none of these qualities necessarily include submission--rule it out, therefore; its day is done.

It was Matheson who gave Brenda Upton her first lesson in resistance.

He was very authoritative and firm and convincing; also--he was going away. That was the strongest argument in favour of his demand. It was a demand; there was nothing in the nature of a request about it. He required her on the day before he left Cape Town to obtain, not an hour off, but the entire evening. He wanted her companionship, wanted to sit and talk uninterruptedly, as they had done on those other nights, and not to be worried with considerations of time. He met her on the beach during the hottest hour of the day, when Mrs Graham was enjoying her siesta, and stated his desire. Brenda looked amazed.

"She'll not hear of it," she said.

"Of course not, if you make up your mind in advance that you won't ask her," he returned.

A flicker of a smile showed in the dark eyes.

"If you only realised how difficult it is! She'll want it explained-- why I want to go, and all that."

"But that's cheek," he said, surprised. "Don't you see it's cheek. You ought not to submit to that sort of thing. It isn't any business of hers."

She laughed.

"It isn't... But it's always understood in the case of a girl--it's one of the indignities we put up with."

"Then don't put up with them. Don't you see that in putting up with them you are responsible for their existence. It's up to you to make a stand for the good of the next generation."

"That's not as simple as it sounds when one has to exist," she said.

"No."

He was silent for a moment, then he returned to the attack.

"Well, you are coming with me to-night. Tell her what you like--only come."

Events combined that evening to facilitate matters for Brenda. Several of the younger people staying in the house arranged a walk to Camps Bay for that evening: the plan was under discussion during dinner, so audible a discussion that Mrs Graham could not avoid hearing it at her table in the corner. Brenda also listened with attention; and the manner in which she intended to put her request framed itself in her thoughts. After dinner she approached Mrs Graham with her sentences well considered.

"There is a walk on to-night," she observed, with the faintest trace of nervousness apparent in her manner, and a consciousness of wilfully deceiving. "It is such a perfect evening... I wonder if you would let me have to-night off?"

"To-night?" Mrs Graham's tone was expostulatory. "What am I to do for the reading?"

"I'm sorry." The girl's face looked mutinous; there was an obstinate ring in her voice. She was not going to give in. Matheson had made that point clear. She had to make a stand. "I will read longer to-morrow if I may have to-night... only to-night I won't be inconsiderate afterwards."

She felt that it was weak to promise that Why, after all, should she not have a night free occasionally?

"But they will be away hours," Mrs Graham objected. "I shall be in bed before you get back. There will be no one to ma.s.sage my shoulder."

It trembled on Brenda's lips to promise to ma.s.sage it in the morning; but deciding that this was weak also she remained obstinately silent.

Something in the girl's manner, perhaps the unrelenting quiet of her air; convinced Mrs Graham that opposition would avail nothing. In the teeth of determined resistance she gave way.

"Well, of course, if you really wish to go..." she conceded with sufficient ungraciousness. "But it is very inconvenient. I should have thought that you had had plenty of free time lately."