Book One—Chapter Nine.
The two or three guests at the hotel who witnessed Esmé’s return in the company of Hallam were filled with amazement at the unusual spectacle of the man who was never known to associate with any one, walking beside the girl and carrying her coat across his shoulder, with an air of being on perfectly friendly terms with his companion and with himself. The two were laughing when they neared the gate; but the man’s expression settled into its habitual boredom as he followed the girl up the path and mounted the steps on to the stoep.
He removed the coat from his shoulder and handed it to her with a brief smile.
“I have enjoyed my walk,” he said. “Thank you.”
“Thank you for taking me,” she answered, conscious of the curious eyes observing her. “I have enjoyed it also.”
Then she went inside. Hallam waited for a minute or two before entering, the hotel, while the people on the stoep watched him, puzzled and immensely interested in these proceedings. He did not appear to notice them; and presently he went in, and the restraint which his presence always imposed on the rest relaxed perceptibly.
They started to discuss him, to deplore his friendship with the girl; they pondered the question whether it was the particular duty of any one to warn her against pursuing the acquaintance: every one thought that she ought to be warned; but no one volunteered to undertake this friendly office; they were all a little in awe of the man of whom they disapproved.
Esmé went to her room with the intention of remaining there and writing letters until lunch time. She was tired and wanted to rest. But while she sat at her window with her writing materials on her knee she saw Sinclair approaching from the direction of the garden beyond the kei-apple hedge. She remembered that he was leaving that morning. The early walk, and her pleasure in it, had caused her to forget.
He strolled as far as the vley, and stood by the edge, moodily kicking little stones into the water. He looked up and saw her at the window and looked away again, making pretence that he did not know she was there. She leaned out and spoke to him.
“Isn’t it a perfectly wonderful day?” she called softly.
“Is it?” he said, and came towards her slowly, frowning, and with his hands in his pockets. “It’s much like any other day, I think.”
He leaned with his shoulder against the wall of the house, and regarded her with sulky reproach as she sat on the low sill, facing him, smiling into the hurt boyish eyes. She liked him, and he was going away. She decided to ignore his irritable mood.
“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 grass 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. Esmé 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 embarrassed. She could not without ungraciousness refuse, but she wished that he had not placed her under this obligation.
“It will serve to pass 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.