Part 8 (1/2)

”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 companions.h.i.+p 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?”