The Stronger Influence Part 7

"It's the finish of your holiday," she said, "and you are sorry. In a fortnight's time my holiday will have ended. I, too, shall regret leaving this place."

"It is not the place I mind leaving; it's dull enough," he said ungraciously. "There is nothing to do except moon around. Where did you have breakfast this morning?"

"At a little house along the road. I went to see the sun rise."

"It is possible to view that astronomical phenomenon from your bedroom window," he retorted disagreeably.

"I dare say it is. But I wanted the walk."

"You went with Hallam, I suppose?" he said. And, without waiting for her reply, added: "I think you might have remembered that it was my last morning. I would have taken you to see the sun rise if you had expressed the desire. I counted on a last walk."

"I walked with you last night," she said, surprised at the extravagance of his demands.

"I am not forgetting that," he said, with less aggression in his manner.

"But my last morning... I think it was a little unkind. There will be plenty of opportunities for sun-gazing after I have gone. I am full up with things I want to say to you, and you seem such a long way off, perched up there."

She laughed, and twisted round on the sill preparatory to alighting.

"Look the other way for a minute. I'm coming out."

He swung round with a pleased smile, and before she realised what he was about he had seized her by the waist and lifted her down. She stood on the gra.s.s beside him and surveyed him with amazed eyes.

"Well!" she said.

"It was by far the easier way," he excused himself. "I have a couple of chairs fixed up under the trees. It's jolly and cool in the garden."

He led her to the spot he had selected and settled her in one of the two canvas chairs, which faced towards a little arbour covered with a pale, cool-looking creeper with long sprays of minute white blossoms thrusting out between the leaves. The chairs had been placed at the end of the roughly made path, and stood side by side with their backs towards the house. Esme dropped into one, and looked about her with lazy satisfaction. It was restful out here under the trees, and strangely quiet. The hum of the bees sounded reposeful in the sunny stillness.

She felt very tired, and was glad to sit still. She did not want to talk. But it was not possible to sit in silence with this man, as it was with Hallam. The necessity to make conversation was imperative. It surprised and puzzled her that this was so.

She glanced at Sinclair curiously, and discovered him, with his face turned towards her, observing her intently. He smiled when he met her eyes with their curious questioning look; his own expressed admiration, and something more, which he strove to suppress.

"You were quite right," he said. "It is a wonderful day. But I wish you had not discovered that before you came out here. I didn't. It seemed to me this morning a rotten sort of day altogether. I wasn't sure even that I should see you before I left. I have just half an hour. If it wasn't for the thought of seeing you again at the other end I should feel pretty sick at leaving. I've only known you a few days; but I seem to have known you for quite a long time. That's odd, isn't it? I've enjoyed the last of my holiday more than words can express."

He talked quickly, eagerly. His face was flushed, and a sort of boyish shyness showed in his eyes. She regarded him with an air of faint perplexity and said nothing. His abrupt confidences were disconcerting.

"You won't forget these few days altogether, will you?" he urged.

Her composed face, her air of increasing surprise, damped his ardour considerably. The light died out of his eyes.

"I shan't forget a single day of all the days I spend here," she replied, not knowing that she was unkind, not meaning to be.

She was not thinking of Sinclair. Her appreciation had nothing to do with him. She was reviewing her earlier impressions, feeling again the joy which the sense of beauty gives; the complete satisfaction of that walk towards the sunrise, and the magic splendour of the morning when the world stirred out of slumber, dew-drenched and asparkle in the golden radiance of the newly risen sun. She had realised, as she stepped confidently forward in its warmth, the wonder and the goodness of being alive. That sense of well-being remained with her, would remain with her when the boy, who looked to her for a response she was unable to make, was gone down the mountain road out of her dream. He was no part of the dream: he was merely a transitory figure flitting through the gold-blue mist.

"I don't know what it is about the place which grips me so, unless it is that it is unlike any place I've ever seen. I love the brooding silence and the warmth and the soft mountain air. There is health in every breath of it. Down at the Bay the winds rend one. It's all heat and noise and rush."

"Oh! the Bay's not half a bad place," he protested. "Most people at the beginning of a holiday feel as you do; but it wears off. You will be jolly well bored at the end of a fortnight. Travelling always along one old road grows monotonous. And whichever way you go it's the same old road. You may strike across the veld, but sooner or later you have to come back to the road."

"After all,"--she looked at him quickly,--"it isn't monotony that bores one really. We like doing the familiar thing."

"Not necessarily," he returned. "When it is a case of returning to work, the familiar thing becomes a nuisance. I wish you were driving down the mountain with me. Don't come out to see the start. I don't wish you to make one of the crowd. I'm going to say good-bye to you here. I am leaving my racquet behind. I want you to use it, will you?

I've another at my digs, so you needn't feel you are depriving me. I want you to have it."

"That's very kind of you," she said, touched by this act of generosity, and secretly embarra.s.sed. She could not without ungraciousness refuse, but she wished that he had not placed her under this obligation.

"It will serve to pa.s.s an hour or two when you weary of the same old road," he said, smiling.

He was jealous because she had found a companion for the road; that this companion did not play games was a source of satisfaction to him.

"But you break up the set when you leave," she said.

"We played three before you arrived," he reminded her. "When you get back to the Bay I'm coming in sometimes to play with you at the Club courts. You're a member, I suppose?"

She nodded.

"Are you?"

"I am about to become one," he answered, with an amused look at her surprised face. "I've thought of joining often. You know the acquaintance isn't going to end here. I may see you again?"

He looked at her with great earnestness, and waited with such obvious anxiety for her reply that it seemed to her there was only one possible answer to his question. And indeed she was very willing to continue a friendship which had been on the whole agreeable.

"I should be sorry if I thought it would be otherwise," she said, with kind sincerity. "It would seem strange not to meet, seeing that we have been such good friends."

"Good friends!" he repeated. "Yes; we have been that... Well, that's the gist of what I wanted to say. When I travel down the mountain I shall remember your words and your sweetness. We are good friends, whose friendship started amid the heights."

He rose from his seat. She looked up at him with eyes that held a wondering interest in their look. The phrase took hold of her imagination. Until that moment he had always seemed just a boy to her; but in that moment she thought of him as a man, with a man's thoughts and a man's feelings. She stood up a little shyly and gave him her hand.

"I am sorry you are going away," was all she said.

Book 1--CHAPTER TEN.

During the days which followed time sped on amber wings. It sped so swiftly that her fortnight's holiday seemed to Esme the shortest fortnight her life had ever known. Oddly, she did not realise why the hours were so mysteriously curtailed. In reality her days were longer than usual; they started at sunrise.

This practice of early rising, which was new to her, developed into a daily habit. If by chance she overslept, as she did occasionally, her day was robbed of its chief pleasure--the early morning walk in Hallam's company. He never waited for her. He never referred to her absence when she failed to put in an appearance on the stoep at the time he came out, stick in hand, ready for his walk. But he always looked for her; and when he saw her waiting for him he appeared pleased. They set forth together as a matter of course.

He grew to look forward to her companionship. His manner had lost its rough unsociability; he talked to her readily. Occasionally he left the seat, which had come by tacit recognition to be considered especially his, for a chair beside hers on the stoep. His behaviour excited considerable surprise and comment among the other guests; but to Esme it appeared less remarkable than his former att.i.tude of almost hostile aloofness. She derived a quiet happiness from his society.

As she came to know him better her amazement at his weakness grew enormously. That a man of such striking personality, possessed of considerable will-power, should yield himself to the influence of a sordid vice, be dominated by it, surprised her beyond words. It was the one thing about him which she hated. It was ugly and inconsistent and degrading. She never saw him drink; he took nothing but milk and soda with his meeds. In the daytime he always appeared perfectly sober; but at night, after dinner, it was his invariable custom to disappear, where she did not know; but sometimes she heard his stumbling step going along the stoep after every one else was in bed. She would lie awake and listen for these sounds, but it was only occasionally she heard him go unsteadily to his room. Then her heart would beat faster, and the tears would come to her eyes, and always, she offered up a prayer for him in the quiet darkness of her little room. Her pity for him and her liking grew like a flower, unconscious of its expansion as it opens to the sun.

When first it occurred to Esme to use her influence to wean Hallam from his nightly practice was uncertain; doubtless her desire had leaned that way from the beginning of their acquaintance; but it was not until she was well into the second week of her holiday that she summoned up sufficient courage one evening while they sat at dinner to propose that he should accompany her for a walk. It was too beautiful a night to spend indoors, she urged.

The man hesitated. She believed that he was going to refuse. It was easy to see that her suggestion was not acceptable to him. It took him aback, and for quite an appreciable while he did not reply to her. Then he said, somewhat brusquely:

"Have you not had walking enough for one day?"

"Come and sit with me on the stoep," she said, "if you do not care to walk."

Some quality in her voice, something, too, in the expression of her face, when he turned his face to look at her, arrested his attention.

He scrutinised her more closely, and into his eyes, as he watched her, leapt a light of understanding.