The Stronger Influence Part 10

"Thank _you_ for your bright companionship," he returned, and the regret he felt at parting crept into his voice.

He released her hand and stood back while the train moved slowly out of the station. The girl, leaning from the open window, saw the tall stooping figure on the platform, with face turned towards her, until she drew back suddenly and sat down in the corner seat, a feeling of great loneliness in her heart, and in her eyes the brightness of unshed tears.

She took up the book he had given her, and opened it, and read on the fly-leaf his name, written in small, unsteady characters,--Paul Hallam.

She sat with the book open in her lap, gazing at his name.

Book 2--CHAPTER TWELVE.

Esme Lester lived with a married sister at Port Elizabeth in a little house in Havelock Street. Her brother-in-law was junior partner in a store which was not a particularly flourishing concern, and the family finances were generally at low ebb. There were two children, a boy and a girl, named respectively John and Mary. When the family were all at home the little house seemed full to overflowing.

Esme had a tiny bedroom at the back, overlooking a cemented yard. There was one beauty in this yard, a huge oleander tree, the dark green leaves of which and the cl.u.s.ters 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 princ.i.p.al grievance.

Esme boarded with them, because it seemed more natural to stay with her own people than with strangers, and because her sister liked to have her. But she was not fond of her brother-in-law; and the constant disagreements worried her.

It seemed to her, when she entered the house after her pleasant holiday, that she had left all the peace and romance behind and returned to the drab reality of the common daily round. Her sister welcomed her with restrained pleasure, but the children hung about her in unqualified delight, bubbling over in childish fashion with excitement at her return.

"You are looking well," her sister remarked. "I wish I could take a holiday. Single girls don't realise how lucky they are until after they are married. Jim and I spent our honeymoon at the Zuurberg. I thought it dull."

Esme reflected, while she regarded her sister with a puzzled scrutiny, that it was scarcely surprising her marriage had proved on the whole a disappointing affair. To feel dull on one's honeymoon is not a promising beginning.

"I thought it wonderful," she said.

"You had a good time, I suppose. Were there many people there?"

"A fair number. But it's the place itself. It is lovely."

Mrs Bainbridge looked unconvinced.

"People, not places, make a holiday enjoyable," she said with a certain worldly wisdom which jarred on her hearer. "Were there any men there?"

"A few--yes."

Her sister laughed.

"You always get on with men," she said. "I wonder you don't marry."

"But, according to your view, that would be a mistake."

"Not if the man were well off. It is having to cheese-pare that makes the shoe pinch. Marriage has its compensations." Her gaze rested reflectively on the children. "One grumbles," she said; "but one wouldn't undo all of it."

"_I'm_ never going to marry," John, aged eight, announced with st.u.r.dy determination. "I've seen too much of it."

His mother laughed, and Esme caught him up and kissed him.

"That's for you, you stony-hearted little misogynist," she said, as he struggled to elude her embrace.

"John's a silly kid," Mary, his senior by two years, announced in the crushing tones of a person who resents a slight to her s.e.x.

John freed himself from his aunt's detaining hold in order to vindicate his insulted manhood; and Esme left them to their scuffling and went upstairs to unpack.

When she came down again her brother-in-law had come home. He sat by the window smoking his pipe, but he rose when she entered and came forward and kissed her. He was a heavily-built, good-looking man, with a boisterous geniality of manner which worried his sister-in-law.

Oddly, he never realised her objection. He liked her and laboured under the delusion that she reciprocated his affection. He kissed her heartily.

"Glad to see you back, old girl," he said, and reseated himself in the only comfortable chair in the room and resumed his pipe. "You look very fit. I told Rose the Zuurberg would set you up; but she won't hear a good word for it. There isn't much to do up there, certainly, but loaf around. The drive up, though, is all right. Pretty--isn't it?"

She laughed, to his puzzled surprise. She often surprised him by the way in which she received his remarks. He had said nothing to cause her merriment. But he preferred smiling faces to glum looks, and so he did not resent it when she laughed at nothing.

"I suppose loafing around was what I needed," she said, steering clear of a discussion on the scenery. "Living in the open air with nothing to do is a fine tonic."

"Yes," he agreed. "I'd like a little of that myself. A man who spends all his days in an office ought to get away now and again; but when it comes to carting a wife and kids around with one it makes an expensive business of it. Rose ought to see that a man needs change from his work."

"We are most of us short-sighted where the needs of other people are concerned," she returned with an ambiguity which he did not suspect. "I suppose it would be rather nice if I remembered that Rose hasn't had a holiday and went out to help her with the preparations for your evening meal."

"Rot!" he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, 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 s.p.a.ces, and the pleasant ease of the life she had left behind her. She felt a new dissatisfaction with her present surroundings.

"Can I help?" she asked.

Her sister turned round from the stove with flushed preoccupied face to stare at her.

"In that dress! Goodness! no. Besides, it's all ready--or ought to be.

But Maggie won't keep a good fire."

Maggie promptly came forward and fed the voracious little stove with a fresh supply of logs.

"This stove eat wood. Missis should see. I put plenty logs on."

"She's right, you know," Rose said, stepping back, and pushing the hair from her face. "Jim ought to buy a new stove. He'd save money on it in the long run. But he hasn't the cooking to do; he merely grumbles when he has to order the wood. Is the table laid, Maggie? Then you can begin to dish up."

She put a hand through her sister's arm and drew her out to the doorstep, where they stood watching the children, both a little silent and thoughtful in mood.

"Aren't you hating it, being back again?" Rose asked presently, and bent a keen look on her young sister's face. Esme looked up to smile.

"I suppose one always feels a little regretful at the finish of a holiday," she said. "But of course I don't hate being back."

Rose did not press the point. Something in the girl's manner, something even in the reticence she betrayed in speaking of her holiday, puzzled her. Esme was usually more expansive. She did not seem to wish to talk of her experiences. Perhaps, after all, she had had a disappointing time. But the rest and the change had given her back her strength. Had it? Rose looked at her again more attentively. She appeared to be in excellent health; but she had lost her old gaiety; she seemed depressed.

"You are tired after the journey," she said. "Come on in and have something to eat."

She called the children away from their play; and they all went into the little dining-room and sat, crowded uncomfortably, round the small table.

Jim served the food, and was jocular and determinedly cheerful. He was pleased to have his sister-in-law home again. It was all rather noisy and uncomfortable. The girl's thoughts strayed to the long shady room at the Zuurberg, and to the silent companionship of the man whose presence she was missing more than she would have thought possible. And it was only a few hours since they had parted. There would follow many hours, many days, many weeks. She wondered whether she would miss him less as the days went by, or if this intolerable loneliness would grow.

It was distressing to think that she might never see him again. She wondered also whether he missed her. She hoped he did. And then she fell to picturing him reverting perhaps to the old evening practice of drinking steadily, until finally he stumbled along the stoep on his way to bed... Surely not that! If her friendship counted for anything at all in his life its influence would linger with him and have some deterrent effect.

"Sling along the Adam's ale, old girl," said Jim at this point in her reverie. It was one of his boasts that he didn't pour his money down his throat.