The Stronger Influence Part 8

"I never met any one quite so indefatigable as you," he said. "If you really desire exercise, of course I'll accompany you. There will be a moon to-night. She is young, but she will serve our purpose. Why do you want to walk?"

The question was jerked out abruptly. There was an inflection of curiosity in his tones. Esme answered quietly, without looking at him.

"I suppose because I feel it is a sin to remain indoors on such a night."

Had not her eyes been averted from his face she must have seen his lips compress themselves at her words. A sort of hardness came into his voice.

"Your language is somewhat exaggerated," he returned. "The physical benefit is more obvious than the moral, I think. However, if it gives you a sense of righteousness, so much the better. I will lend myself readily to further that end. What do you usually do in the evenings?"

"Sit on the stoep generally. I don't care about cards. When Mr Sinclair was here we used to walk."

"Sinclair!--yes... The fellow who fancied he possessed all the virtues because he had not certain vices. You must miss him."

"That isn't a very kind description," she said.

"I was not trying to be kind," he answered. "I am not of a kindly disposition. You may observe that I do not lay claim to any of the virtues. It is safe to conclude that what you don't claim will never be conceded to you. These facts once grasped simplify life enormously.

But I waste time in attempting to teach you worldly wisdom. You live in a world of illusions."

He spoke very little during the remainder of the time he sat at table.

His manner was preoccupied, and his face looked grim. Esme felt that he regretted having yielded to her request; he resented interference with his routine. When he rose from the table, which he did before any of the others, he turned to her and said in his curt way:

"Please be ready in half an hour from now."

Then he pushed his chair back and walked quickly from the room.

The old gentleman on her right asked Esme to make a fourth at bridge.

He looked disappointed when she declined. She explained that she was going for a walk.

"It is good to be young. But don't overdo it," he counselled.

"The air is so wonderful; I am never tired up here," she replied.

"I have heard that said of the air in other places," he said, and smiled. "If I were twenty years younger I would go with you."

The old gentleman was not on the stoep to see Esme start on her walk.

He would have been astonished equally with the rest who viewed her departure to see Hallam come out of the house and join her and walk with her into the road. The people on the stoep who witnessed these things, wondered, and spoke of their wonder to one another. No one before had seen Hallam in the evenings after he left the dinner table. No one, except this girl, who seemed on terms of easy friendliness with him, ever spoke to him. It is not easy to talk to a man who deliberately ignores your existence. It was plain that he wanted to be left alone: yet he made an exception in favour of the girl. There was only one construction likely to be placed on this amazing preference. And so the people at the hotel looked after the disappearing figures, and criticised the growing intimacy between the man and girl long after they had vanished from sight amid the shadows of the early dusk.

When they were well away from the hotel Hallam took the pipe from his mouth and looked down at the girl's unconscious face and smiled dryly.

He wondered whether she realised that they were objects of curiosity to the people they had left behind, whether, if she did realise it, it would trouble her at all? Her eyes, lifted to his in response to his steady scrutiny, showed darkly shadowed in the uncertain light; they smiled frankly up at him. He knew while he gazed down at her that he would miss her when she had gone, that life would seem emptier, more purposeless, than before. From the first he had realised the danger of the acquaintance; yet he had drifted into it with very little effort to evade the danger. He had not made the advances, but he had responded to them; and now he was regretting, with a sense of bitter futility, the folly of allowing her to become a significant influence in his life. He could not end the thing now; he did not want to; her companionship had become necessary to him.

But he could prevent her liking for him from developing, could, if he chose, crush it outright. To crush it outright was perhaps the wiser course.

"You know," he said quietly, "those people who watched us away are deploring your indiscretion in a.s.sociating with me. I am not resenting it. They are perfectly right. I am not a desirable companion for any one. Why did you first speak to me? Why do you persist in the acquaintance? I often wonder. Don't you know what I am?"

"Perhaps I do," she answered in so low a voice that, but for the stillness of the night, he would scarce have heard the faltered words.

"I think that is one reason why I spoke to you."

"You mean," he said, "that you were sorry? That's kind of you. But I am not conscious of needing sympathy. What other reason had you?"

"Isn't it only natural to talk to people one meets daily?" she asked.

"I talk to every one in the hotel."

He smiled.

"I have observed that. But you don't walk with them. Why did you insist on my coming out to-night?"

"Oh!" she said, and felt her face aflame, and was grateful for the darkness which concealed her confusion. "I cannot give a reason for every impulse that moves me. I wanted to walk."

"Excuse me if I accuse you once more of insincerity," he said. "It was no impulse that prompted you to ask me. It was a deliberate and premeditated request which cost you some effort to make. Your concern for me is very flattering. But you waste your sympathy. What do you imagine you accomplish by this display of energy? You will overtire yourself, that is all. For me, it is merely a long time between drinks."

Tears came into her eyes. She hoped he did not see them, but she could not have kept them back. He hurt her even more than he intended to.

"I don't care," she said, a little unsteadily, "how hard you box my ears. I am glad I asked you to come. I'm glad you came." She raised her face suddenly and lifted defiant eyes to his.

"I am sorry I was insincere. You got me there. I didn't know you were so observant. In future I'll be absolutely frank with you. I'll be frank now, even if it angers you. I asked you to come out because I think it is a shame for you to spend your evenings as you do. I think it is a shame that you should waste your life. I'm not so much sorry for you as savage with you. It's hateful in you. It's the one thing which spoils you from being absolutely fine."

She broke off abruptly, startled at her own vehemence, immensely embarra.s.sed, and horrified with herself. The man was staring at her, staring in amazement, incredulous and almost bewildered by the surprising rush of words. He had never in his life been so thunderstruck, nor had he ever before listened to such plain speaking.

He was silent in face of this retort for which he had been in no sense prepared.

"Oh, dear!" she exclaimed, aghast at her own daring. "What must you think of me? I never meant to attack you like this. It's--abominable."

"Whatever I think of you," he answered, "I can never again call you insincere. You have hurled truths at me to-night. You were quite right in everything you said; but--forgive me--you were quite wrong in saying them. However, largely that's my own fault for provoking you. It was inconsiderate to push my inquiries; it would be illogical if I complained because you answered them. We'll wipe the incident out. At least we understand one another. In future, when I see you making your social effort, I shall recognise that you are started on your morality campaign."

"Please don't," she said falteringly, with a catch so suggestive of repressed emotion in her tones that he repented the ill-nature of his words.

He glanced down at her as she walked beside him along the dim road, hatless, with the soft hair shading her partly averted face; then he straightened his stooping shoulders with a jerk, and looked about him at the darkening landscape, and up at the sky, where the young moon rode serenely in a star-strewn cloudless sky. It was a fine night, warm and still; the wan moonlight pierced the dusk palely, revealing the road cutting like a path of silver across the velvety darkness of the veld.

Some softening quality in the quiet beauty of the night, or it may have been in the sight of the partly turned face, with its look of hurt distress, penetrated the man's consciousness. His mood changed; a kinder note banished the harshness from his voice. He had wounded her deliberately, and he regretted it.

"I'm a brute," he said in altered tones. "Don't heed my roughness; it is not meant. I had no wish to offend."

"You did not offend," she answered. "But I am afraid that I did."

"No," he said, but without conviction, she thought. "I asked for truth, and I got it. Perhaps that is what surprised me. The last thing a man expects to hear is the truth about himself. I didn't credit you with the possession of so much courage."

"It has all evaporated," she said.

"The courage!" he laughed. "Oh! I think not. It has merely gone under for the time."

And then he turned the conversation, and closed the matter, as she felt, finally. She had no means of knowing whether his resentment of her plain speaking still rankled. A sort of constraint had fallen between them. She felt self-conscious, and rather like a child who has been rebuked. But she did not regret having spoken as she had done. The barriers of pretence were down; there existed a clear understanding between them. As she walked rather silently with him in the moonlight she resolved that on the morrow she would invite him to accompany her again.

Book 1--CHAPTER ELEVEN.

That walk by the ineffectual light of a young moon brought about a significant change in the relations between the man and girl. The last reserves were swept away. The sweeping had been drastic; it left not so much as a shadow of doubt in the mind of each in regard to the other.

They were profoundly interested in one another, with an interest which struck deeper than the repugnances which both were conscious existed.

The girl liked the man and was horrified at his weakness; the man liked the girl and resented her interference: their mutual regard was stronger than their antagonism.

The people at the hotel watched the development of the friendship distrustfully. They did not approve of the man. All they knew of him was to his discredit. The general opinion was that it was well the girl was leaving so soon.