Book One—Chapter Eight.
It seemed to Esmé as they walked rapidly along in the clear light air that nature revealed herself in her fairest mood that morning. Surely never had sunlight shone more golden, never had the blue of the sky appeared more intense, nor the veld glowed with such splendour of colour. A blue haze, liquid in the golden light, quivered before her vision like a thing alive with iridescent wings outspread in the untempered sunlight that poured itself out upon the earth with a brilliance hurtful to the eyes. Everywhere her gaze turned some fresh wonder met the view. Green mingled with brown and orange, shot with vivid colours, where the hardy veld flowers blossomed in the grass and among the piles of hot-looking yellow stones by the side of the road. It was a scene of wide and glowing colour, of immense blue distances lit by the fierce flame of the sun.
How much of her enjoyment was due to the beauty of the day, and how much to the companionship of the man who shared these things with her, she did not at the time pause to consider. Her senses were steeped in the delight which is born of the mysterious magic of beauty. Everywhere she looked she saw this magic pictured; in her heart she felt its influence; it permeated all her being, all her brain. And again the expectation of adventure gripped her. The belief that something was about to happen, something of tremendous personal importance, took hold of her imagination, stirred her deeply with a mingling of awe and joyous anticipation like nothing she had ever known before. Something was going to happen to her; something surely had happened to her already to work this change in her calm practical nature. For the first time in her quiet uneventful life her latent womanhood rose to the surface and found expression in a number of new emotions, emotions which she vaguely realised without understanding their significance.
She felt intensely alive. Her face was radiant with the joy of life. But she did not talk much. Hallam was not a talkative companion, and his silence affected her. Occasionally he paused to draw her attention to a particular spot; and once he called a halt and seated himself beside her in the shade of some bushes to rest. When he was seated he lit his pipe. He had brought apples with him, and he offered Esmé one, and a knife to peel it with. She returned the knife and set her teeth in the fruit and ate it with keen enjoyment.
“I get these from a farm in the neighbourhood,” he explained. “You should walk there one day. They grow quite good fruit, and they are always glad to see visitors. It’s not far from the hotel.”
“You appear to know every one around here,” she remarked.
“I have been here some months,” he replied.
“And you seek your friends outside the hotel?” she said.
“I neither seek nor find friends,” he answered bluntly. “I have some slight acquaintance with these people which they do not discourage because it is profitable to them. I do not understand disinterested friendship. I do not believe in it.”
“Which is to say you have never felt a disinterested friendship for any one,” she said. “You don’t know what you miss.”
“In that case, I miss nothing,” he replied. “One has to be conscious of a need in order to appreciate its absence. Life is a huge business of bluff. A few persons only remain sincere because they will not take the trouble to pose. To be sincere is to become unpopular. But unpopularity is less irksome than maintaining a pose of sociability. I believe there are very few people who honestly love their kind.”
“That is too cynical a belief to be worth discussing,” she said, pausing with the half eaten fruit in her hand to look at him with puzzled eyes. He seemed amused rather than vexed at her answer, and smoked for a moment reflectively before resuming the talk.
“I doubt whether you are quite sincere in making that assertion,” he contended. “It is an easy way of disposing of a subject which one feels unequal to combat in argument. Friendship is mere sentiment, so is love of one’s fellows; let either interfere with self-interest, and what becomes of it? It is only with a few rare souls that altruism becomes a workable theory.”
“So long as there are a few souls great enough for disinterested love,” she said quietly, “there is a little light of hope in the world.”
She got up and threw away the remains of the apple as though her pleasure in the fruit were spoiled. She hated this cynical bitter talk; at the moment she almost hated the speaker. Because of his own wasted life, his morbid views and perverted ideals, he was trying to poison her mind with the hopeless doctrine of his deliberate self-deception. There was something mean in her opinion in this wilful attempt to darken the world for others.
“Let us go on,” she said. “Active exercise puts you in a better mood. I do not like your ideas. I’m sorry; but I don’t wish to listen to them.”
“No one likes my ideas,” he answered, rising. “I don’t like them myself. Truth is rarely agreeable; that is why so many people affect lies. I think we had better turn and see about breakfast. Your lack of patience suggests to me that you are hungry.”
She broke into a laugh. At the sound of her mirth his face cleared immediately; he stood still in the road and looked at her curiously.
“I am glad that the sun still shines,” he said, and started again to walk along the uphill path.
It was rather a silent walk back to the little house among the trees. Esmé felt shy at having been so outspoken. He had taken her rebuke in good part; she liked him for that. She liked, too, the quiet way in which he assumed command of herself and of everything when they reached the house and stepped up to the little stoep. He presented a new and more forceful side to his character.
The woman of the house fetched two chairs at his request, which she placed side by side in a corner of the stoep beyond the reach of the sun’s rays that fell slantwise upon the white stone floor under the low roof. Hallam separated the chairs and pushed a little deal table between them and sat down opposite the girl.
“It is pleasanter to eat out of doors,” he said. “I didn’t consult your wishes, because I knew it was unnecessary to do so. And even if you preferred breakfasting inside it would not be good for you.”
“I am satisfied with your choice,” she answered, smiling, and took off her hat and dropped it on the floor. “I could eat anywhere; I am so hungry.”
“Good!” he exclaimed, looking pleased, and surveying her across the narrow table, which the housewife had spread with a much-darned snow-white cloth.
It gave him an odd satisfaction to see her there, seated opposite to him, hatless and very much at her ease, a pleasing picture of fresh bright girlhood, with the glow of returning health showing in her cheeks.
The woman came out from the house and made further preparations towards their meal. Occasionally she addressed a remark to Hallam; but she was not loquacious. She stared a good deal at his companion: it doubtless caused her surprise to see him with any one. During all the months since he first came to her house he had never brought a friend with him before. She was obviously familiar with Hallam’s requirements. Without consulting him she placed a glass of milk on the table beside him, and inquired whether the lady drank tea or coffee. Esmé looked at the glass of milk and made up her mind quickly.
“Neither. I will have milk also,” she said.
The woman departed with the order, and the girl and the man sat gazing out on the sunny road and saying nothing. But the silence which hung between them was the silence of comradeship. There was an absence of all constraint in their manner; they were like old friends between whom speech is unnecessary.
With the arrival of breakfast the girl drew her chair nearer the table, and served the omelette and passed his plate across to Hallam; assisting him unobtrusively, because of the shaking of his hands and his pitiful consciousness of it. The sight of those nervous unsteady hands hurt her. She was always painfully aware of them and keenly anxious to conceal the fact. She observed that the man endeavoured to control their trembling, and that his inability to do so distressed him. He bent low over his plate. It was this habit of bending over his meals and of looking down when he walked which caused the stoop of the shoulders, giving him an appearance of ill health.
While she ate and attended to his needs and her own she wondered about him. What could be the secret of his downfall? Life had been generous to him in some respects; possibly in other, more important matters, it had treated him ill. She continued her study of him while she sat at the little table opposite to him and watched the sunlight slowly encroaching on the patch of shade in which they breakfasted. Before they had finished their meal it had reached Hallam, dividing them like a curtain of fire which wrapped him about in its radiant warmth and left her in the shadows.
“Hadn’t you better move your seat?” she suggested. “The sun strikes on your head.”
He got up, dragged his chair nearer to hers, and sat down again. Their chairs were side by side now. She leaned back in hers and smiled at him.
“This is infinitely pleasanter than breakfasting at a long table among a crowd. They will wonder at the hotel what has become of me.”
“They will certainly never suppose that you are in my company,” he said.
“Why not?”
A dry smile twisted his lips. He scrutinised her for a brief moment, and then answered abruptly:
“They wouldn’t credit the possibility of my inviting you to come.”
“You didn’t,” she answered, and laughed with amusement. The laugh was infectious; Hallam joined in it.
“I wish you hadn’t such an awkward memory for blunt facts,” he said. “I know I was abominably rude. I am always rude. As a rule that doesn’t trouble me; but in your case I regret my lack of manners.”
“I did not notice it,” she replied. “I think perhaps I was preoccupied with the lack of manners betrayed on my part. You must think me rather pushing.”
Again he smiled dryly, but in the keen eyes shone a kindly look.
“One day, if it will interest you to hear it,” he said, “I will tell you what I think of you. But at the moment I do not feel equal to so much frankness. If you have finished breakfast, let me carry your chair into the shade of the trees. Since there is no one to whom your absence will cause anxiety we will suit our own convenience as to the time of our return.”