The Stronger Influence Part 15

She had not written to him on the subject; his information had been gleaned from the papers.

"I see you have been distinguishing yourself on the tennis courts," he wrote. "Why do you leave me to discover the tale of your triumphs from the newspapers? I prefer to hear of these things first hand. The news furnished a further link with the old Zuurberg days. I recall how you practised with Sinclair then. So you keep hold on the thread of that acquaintance also?"

It occurred to Esme that this circ.u.mstance had displeased him. She wished that she had written to him about the tournament and her part in it. It did seem a little odd, when she came to think of it, that she had suppressed this piece of news.

His letter was brief; and contained very little news of personal interest. It read as though it had been written with an effort, and not because he wanted to talk to her. A first fear that he might weary of the correspondence gripped her. If he ceased to write she would be desolate. His letters had come to mean so much to her: they caught her away from the dreary routine of her days; they coloured life for her warmly, kept her interest on the alert. Giving music lessons endlessly through the long, hot days, returning to the stuffy overcrowded little house where numberless small duties constantly demanded her attention, was not an existence calculated to add romance to life. She had grown weary of these things. The blood in her veins was astir like the sap in the trees in the springtime. Love budded in her heart; it only awaited a sign to burst into flower.

There were times when she fancied she read in Hallam's letters an intimation that he wanted her. He spoke often of his loneliness, and made reference to the happiness of their time together. But the months went by and he did not come, and into his letters crept a new note of reserve. Then followed a period of silence, after which he wrote from a totally new address and begged for news of her. She allowed herself twenty-four hours for reflection; then she replied to his letter in the old friendly vein.

It was nearing the vacation, and she spoke of needing a holiday, and told him that she could not decide where to go.

"I've thought of the Zuurberg," she wrote; "but your remark about walking among tombstones sticks in my memory unpleasantly. I am afraid it would be just that."

To which he replied from De Aar:

"There is a dignity about monuments which is soothing. My former remarks were ill-considered. You might do worse than walk among memories. Try the Zuurberg again, and tell me what you feel in respect to resuscitated emotions. I would suggest that you came up here, but it is a long journey and too hot for the time of the year."

Clearly he did not want her to join him. That thought wounded her. It had been in her mind when she told him of her indecision that he might propose meeting somewhere; that he made no such proposal seemed to prove that he did not desire to see her. She felt vexed with herself for having mentioned the subject to him. Once again the feeling of having been snubbed by this man tormented her. In the old days it had caused her indignation, but now it hurt.

The question of her holiday became a matter for debate in her mind. She no longer desired to go to the Zuurberg; but the fear that he might read in a change of plan her reason for deciding against it stiffened her resolve to do what she did not want to do. The Zuurberg had not lost its attraction for her; but it would be, she knew, haunted with memories, where the ghosts of old pleasures would meet her at every turn.

Fear of these ghosts prompted her to suggest taking the children with her, a proposal which led to a wordy discussion as to ways and means.

Their father did not consider change necessary for them. Rose disputed this; she wished them to go.

"Other people's children go away," she insisted finally on a softer note. "If we can't afford a holiday for ourselves we ought to let them have one. I think we might manage it, Jim, don't you?"

This direct appeal from her, to which he was unaccustomed, took him aback. He was indeed surprised into acquiescing. In the end he spoke as if it had been his wish all along. Later, when he left the room, Rose looked across at her sister and smiled quietly.

"That was accomplished through the exercise of a little of the tact you advocate," she said.

"It's worth it, don't you think?" Esme returned, and laughed. "All he needs is management."

"Most men, I suppose, need that. You can't drive them in the direction you wish, but if you can make them believe it's the way they want to go, they start off at the gallop. Funny animals, aren't they?"

"Some of them are rather nice," Esme ventured.

"Some of them--perhaps. But you don't know; you aren't married. A girl never really knows a man--knows him, I mean, for what he is underneath the veneer of social pretences until she has lived with him. Then little things peep out, selfishnesses--like ugly excrescences upon the smooth surfaces you fancied were rather fine and n.o.ble. A man when he is a lover is all chivalrous gentleness. Well, the chivalry is mostly veneer. Jim always gives up his seat in a tram to a woman; when he is in his own home, you may have noticed, he takes the most comfortable chair. They have to relax sometimes, you see; it isn't possible to live up to that level always. I'd rather a man were a bear outside the home and considerate in it. There are such men, I suppose, but I haven't met them."

"There are such men," Esme repeated, and thought of Hallam's lack of social manner. She wondered whether the gentleness which she knew to be in him would manifest itself in the home. She could not imagine him behaving altogether selfishly towards any one for whom he cared.

"Husbands want training, like children," Rose went on. "I didn't train my man; I began by spoiling him. That's where most girls make a mistake. Then, when the babies come, the spoiling ceases generally.

But the harm is done. I have often observed that the husbands of selfish women are a long way the nicest. Men like peace; they will sacrifice a great deal in order to get it."

"It is rather an agreeable thing," Esme said, reflecting that a little more of it in her sister's household would make life pleasanter.

"I dare say it is; but it can't be had on an insufficient income. If you like peace so much, why do you take the children with you on your holiday? You won't get peace where they are."

"Oh! we'll get along. We shall be out all day, and there will be other children for them to play with. They won't worry me."

"It's nice of you to be bothered with them," Rose said. She scrutinised her sister closely, and, curiosity getting the upper hand, asked bluntly: "Where is Paul Hallam now?"

"On the Karroo," Esme answered, surprised. "Why?"

"I didn't know. I thought perhaps you might meet at the Zuurberg."

"No. He left there long ago."

"Well, but he might have felt it worth his while to go back when you were there. I don't understand that affair, Esme. I don't trust the man. My dear, I don't trust him. And you are wearing yourself out, thinking of him. You are losing your vitality. You aren't as pretty as you were. No." She surveyed the girl fixedly with adversely criticising eyes. "You are _not_ so pretty."

This came as a shock to Esme. She wanted to look in the gla.s.s over the mantelpiece; but her sense of dignity and the fitness of things kept her glued to her seat. What, after all, did it matter if her looks departed? There was no one to note these things nor feel distressed on their account.

"Why does he continue to write to you, and never come to see you?" Rose asked. "It's not fair to you. And there's George... If it wasn't for Paul Hallam you would marry George. He is a good fellow, and he's getting on. It would be a most suitable arrangement. You don't want to teach all your life. You want a home. Every woman does. Instead you fill your head with romantic nonsense, and make yourself miserable, and George miserable--for a man who doesn't care. You could forget him if you left off corresponding. Why do you let him play with you?"

"He doesn't play with me," Esme answered, flushing. "He never asked me for anything more than friendship. I give him that because it is a help to him, and because he is lonely. Why cannot a man and a girl be friends?"

"I should have thought your own case furnished an answer to that," Rose said. "In a friendship between a man and a girl one of them invariably falls in love. You can't get away from nature. The eternal question of s.e.x hides behind all these unequal friendships. That's what makes them interesting. But these interesting relationships can spoil one's life.

I wish that you had never met this man. I feel uneasy about it."

Esme sat in an att.i.tude of disturbed attention, and kept her eyes studiously averted from her sister's. There was just sufficient reason in her discursive statements to cause the girl to wince mentally. She was beginning to believe that she was giving more than Paul Hallam wanted from her, more than he dreamed of when he proposed continuing the friendship. This thought was humiliating; but only temporarily so: even as she felt its sting another thought drew the venom from it. If she could help him, even a little, it was worth while.

Book 2--CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.

"To revisit a familiar spot is like walking among tombstones. Every point recalls a memory, and memory belongs to the past."

Very vividly, like something heard long ago but never before realised, these words which Hallam had uttered on the morning she left the Zuurberg all those weary months before, echoed in Esme's thoughts when she made her second journey up the mountain road. The truth of them struck her like a thing which hurts. Her memories came back to her, as he had said they would, with the dust on them. And there was no evading them; they obtruded at every point.

At Coerney there was the same wait under the trees before the cart was ready to start; the same languid stillness brooded over the place, the same enervating heat. Here was the first tombstone. She looked about her with reminiscent eyes, marked the spot where she had sat with Hallam while they waited for the train to come in, realised the crowd of new impressions which jostled the memories in her brain, and fell into thought.

The children were busy exploring. The sound of their gay, excited voices came to her distantly on the languid air. But she could not see them; their figures were hidden among the trees.

Everything was much the same as on her former visit. There were two other travellers beside her party: they had gone into the hotel for refreshments. Presently they came out. The horses appeared with the driver, and the business of inspanning began. The children wandered back and became actively interested in these proceedings. John wished to drive: a compromise was effected by his being allowed to sit beside the driver and hold the whip. Then began the toil upward.

With every mile of the journey memories came crowding back into Esme's mind, a dismal procession of pale ghosts that came and went and left a feeling of greater loneliness when they pa.s.sed. These memories of her first glowing impressions, when excitement and a sense of adventure had coloured her imagination, gave to the present occasion a sort of flatness: the wonder of romance was missing from the picture. She looked about her with intent, mystified eyes. Everywhere there were tombstones; they met her all along the route.

Yet the beauty of the place remained unchanged. The wild grandeur of the scenery, the magnificent solitude, the almost terrifying depths of the chasm which lost itself in the froth of green below, these things impressed her as they had impressed her before with a wondering admiration that held something of awe in it; but whereas before, though she had believed herself to be lonely, hope had travelled with her as a companion; on this occasion there was no joyful antic.i.p.ation in her heart, only a sense of disappointment that the finish of the journey promised nothing more than the usual holiday offers--rest and change from the ordinary busy life.

She wished, with an urgency no less insistent because of its futility, that she had decided on some other place--any other place--in which to spend her holiday. The mountain road was haunted with the ghosts of dead pleasures; the gorge was haunted; its secret places were the repositories for the thoughts of yesterday, for the dreams which pa.s.s with the night.

She gazed down into the black-green silences and felt her despondency deepen. These familiar things linked up her life so completely with the one brief romance it had ever known. She could not disentangle her thoughts from the past. Everywhere her eyes turned, each fresh curve in the road, brought back recollections of Hallam, and of their drive down the mountain together. What was he doing now? Where was he, while she was being borne higher and higher up the steep ascent?

Every now and again the children turned in their seats to flash some question at her, or to point out some amazing novelty which caught their eager attention. The big tree across the road, which cut through its giant trunk, was a source of wonder and delight to them. John forgot his dignity and allowed himself to be impressed by its dimensions.

"Man! but they can grow trees up this way," he remarked to the driver.

Whereat the driver unbent so far as to permit him to drive under the tree. Whatever his aunt thought about it, John thoroughly enjoyed the experience of that journey up the mountain road. But when the hotel broke first upon his sight he was a little disappointed by its unpretentious appearance.

"It isn't very big. It's just like an ordinary house," he complained.

"I expect you'll find there is room enough for you inside," Esme said.