The Stronger Influence Part 3

"If you are rested, we'll go on," he said, addressing himself to Esme.

She stood up. Hallam raised his hat and turned back in the direction whence he had come. The girl felt sorry as she watched him go; she would have liked it had he joined their walk. But she believed that to propose such a thing would have been acceptable neither to him nor to Sinclair. In any case he would probably have declined. Already the ice, so unexpectedly broken, was forming again, a thin crust of resistance upon the surface of his temporary geniality.

Book 1--CHAPTER SIX.

That night Esme lay wakeful in the darkness with a brain too active for sleep, courting slumber, which refused to come to her aid, physically tired, yet not overtired, and mentally very clear and wide awake.

Outside her window the crickets were chirruping noisily, and in the warm darkness, which pressed about her as she lay wide-eyed and very still in her narrow white bed, the mosquitoes hummed annoyingly close to her ears. The sounds of people moving in the rooms adjoining hers had ceased long since; the night was quiet, with the listening hush which settles upon a place when the activities of the day are ended and people sleep. It seemed to Esme that she alone of all the household was awake.

She believed that it must be long past midnight. It had not as a matter of fact struck twelve o'clock; and some one besides herself was awake, had not yet gone to bed. She heard him go later; heard a stumbling step going clumsily and heavily along the stoep. Through the thin walls the noise of the footsteps was distinctly audible. She lay still on her pillow and listened to them, her heart beating quickly and the pulses in her temples throbbing like tiny hammers. A sick horror gripped her.

She knew, without seeing the man, who it was who thus disturbed the silence, and, with the uncertain blundering step of a man under the influence of drink, lurched heavily along the stoep to his room. He made so much noise in getting there that she felt certain all the occupants of the rooms he pa.s.sed would wake and hear him.

Her cheeks burned with shame for him, and her heart was filled with a great pity. What joy could he derive from this terrible misuse of life?

What a waste of his manhood and of his intellect!

With the cessation of the sounds a deeper hush than before seemed to settle upon the night; even the crickets became less insistent: the world slept; every one slept, save herself. She alone of all the household kept wakeful vigil until the dawn broke, and brought with its hopeful promise of a new day rest and forgetfulness to her weary brain.

Esme woke late, and had barely time to dress before the gong sounded for breakfast. With a curious reluctance to meet again the man whose noisy movements had disturbed her overnight, she went into the coffee-room and seated herself at table. Hallam's seat was empty. It was still empty when she rose at the finish of breakfast and went out on to the stoep into the sunshine.

She was relieved that she had been spared the ordeal of meeting him, of sitting beside him while the memory of last night was still so painfully vivid in her thoughts. Her whole being shrank from witnessing his degradation. He must feel, far more acutely than she felt for him, the embarra.s.sment of appearing in public, of meeting the criticism in unsympathetic eyes.

She played tennis during the morning, and played badly; her heart was not in the game, and the careless gaiety of her companions jarred on her sober mood. They rallied her on her preoccupation, until she pleaded a headache; when Sinclair, leaving the others to play singles, led her away to a quiet corner in the garden where she could sit and rest.

He was glad to get her alone. He was leaving on the morrow, going back to his job in a stuffy office in a dull little town.

"Uitenhage is about the sleepiest hole in South Africa," he grumbled.

"I think it is lovely," the girl returned. "I went there once when the roses were in bloom."

"Oh! it's pretty enough. And it's handy to the Bay. I shall look you up when you return--may I?"

"I shall be very pleased," she answered. "But you'll have to choose a holiday. I am going back to my job too. I teach music."

"Oh, really! That's fairly strenuous, I should think. What a bore for you."

She laughed.

"It's my bread and b.u.t.ter. There are less pleasant methods of making a livelihood. But of course one gets tired."

He nodded sympathetically.

"I want you to rest this afternoon and get rid of the headache. I'd like to take you for a walk after dinner if you care about going. It's my last night. Until you came there was no one to walk with--except Hallam. And he's such an unsociable beast. I wish you wouldn't talk to him. He is not a suitable companion for you."

"Don't say those things," she interposed quickly. "It's ungenerous."

She felt angry with Sinclair, felt an inexplicable necessity to defend the man he spoke of in such slighting terms. It was not merely because he was absent and unable to defend himself; there was something more than that to account for her indignation; she realised that much without understanding its nature. Never in all her life had she met any one who interested her so profoundly, who so deeply stirred her pity. She wanted to help this man--with her friendship. There was no other thought in her mind. And he would not let her. He demanded simply to be left alone. A girl could not thrust her friendship on a man who did not want it. But she could defend him in her thoughts and in her speech without fear of his resentment.

"I think Mr Hallam is a very remarkable man," she said. "I should hesitate to criticise him."

Sinclair looked at her in surprise.

"Do you know," he said, "that is the second time I have annoyed you in reference to the same subject."

"Not annoyed," she corrected,--"disappointed me, rather. I hate to hear a man speak disparagingly of another."

The young man was vexed, and showed it. Her ready championship of Hallam displeased him. It was a sort of feminine instinct, he supposed, to shed the light of a tender compa.s.sion on the derelict. Women were absurdly sentimental.

"You do jump on a fellow," he said, aggrieved. "I had no idea you would take my words amiss. Forget them, please."

"And you forget my irritable mood."

She smiled at him with kind brown eyes, eyes which expressed liking in fuller measure than their displeasure of a moment before. She regretted her outburst. What did it concern her what he thought, what any one thought of a man who was almost a stranger to her, whom a few days ago she did not know.

"I slept badly last night," she added, as if to account for her ill-humour.

"How was that?" he asked, more with a view to turning the talk than from curiosity.

His question recalled the ugly memories of the night very vividly to her. She heard again in imagination the stumbling footsteps going along the stoep. Her face clouded.

"What does keep one wakeful at times?" she inquired. "The mind works, I suppose. I think perhaps I was tired."

"I took you too far," he said contritely. "It was inconsiderate of me.

But you seemed so interested."

"I was. I wouldn't have missed a bit of it. It was worth a sleepless night."

"I doubt whether I should consider anything worth the sacrifice of a night's sleep," he said, and laughed. "It would take a lot to spoil my rest. The air here acts like a narcotic with me."

"That's odd," she said. "It makes me alert. There's something in the atmosphere of this place--I don't know what it is--which influences me strangely. I go about in a state of expectant curiosity. I'm looking for things to happen. That's absurd, I know; but the feeling's there."

He scrutinised her intently. In this lonely spot what could happen out of the ordinary run of events? Nothing surely in the nature of change-- unless the change were in one's self.

"The state of your mind is provocative," he said. "By invoking things to happen you may precipitate a crisis. It is always a dangerous practice to tempt the G.o.ds."

"I don't agree with that. I'm something of a fatalist," she said. "I believe, not that our lives are prearranged, but that the event which happens is inevitable, that we must accept things as they come to us.

The manner of our acceptance alone is left to our choice."

"I should hesitate to adopt that theory," he said. "I like to feel that I have some say in the arrangement of my life. According to your idea a man might hold himself immune for any evil he contrived. It relieves the individual of all responsibility."

"No." She flushed slightly. "The qualities of good and evil are ours to develop at will. The individual is always responsible for his own nature."

"I don't like your theory any better as you enlarge it," he replied.

"It's rough on any one to have to keep good with all the odds against him. And if he fail, what then?"

"I don't believe in complete human failure," she answered quietly. "Do you?"

"I don't know."