The Shadow of the Past Part 3

Holman made some comment on the unaccountability of luck, and, looking up to answer him, Matheson became aware of a small face, flushed and half averted, of a pair of disapproving brown eyes surveying their grouping with disfavour, as their owner pa.s.sed close by the scene of the gamble and continued her way over the hot sands. Matheson got up.

"I'll see you at the hotel," he said, slipping into his coat. And without waiting for any response, he followed the girl and speedily overtook her.

"So the injury didn't amount to much after all," he said, meeting her eyes with a smile as she turned an inquiring face in his direction, and then halted and shook hands with him. "I am glad to see you are able to walk without inconvenience."

"Oh! the bite was nothing. I rested yesterday; but it wasn't really necessary. However, I don't mean to walk far; it is too hot."

"The best time is the evening," he said, keeping beside her when she started to walk again. "It was jolly on the beach last night. I tramped out after dinner," he explained, observing her surprise. "Do you ever come down here in the dusk?"

"No. I don't often get the opportunity," she answered; and there was, he fancied, a note of regret in her voice. "Mrs Graham likes to be read to after dinner--or we work."

The description of the manner in which her evenings were pa.s.sed did not sound enlivening. He wondered that any girl should submit to these dull conditions, that girls could be found to fill such servile posts.

"Do you never get any time off?" he asked.

"It's off-time to-day," she admitted, smiling suddenly. "Mrs Graham has a sick headache. When she has a headache no one is allowed near her. Sometimes they last three days. She is subject to them."

"Then," he said promptly, in the manner of one making a statement which admits no contradiction, "you can come to-night... Will you?" he added tentatively.

"Will I come--on the beach?" she asked in an undecided tone, as though uncertain that she apprehended him rightly. "You mean after dinner?"

"Yes," he returned. "It will be jolly if you do."

She hesitated; and he noticed in her eyes, before she averted them and looked seaward, a shadow like a tiny doubt pa.s.sing over the clear surface of her mind.

"I... It is a little unusual," she said, the perplexed eyes in the glittering distance.

"That's tantamount to a refusal, I suppose?" he said, feeling nettled and unaccountably disappointed. "Perhaps I ought not to have proposed it; but it occurred to me that it would be pleasant. I'm sorry. I didn't wish to embarra.s.s you."

Immediately, with his inference of refusal, her disinclination to adopt the suggestion faded. She wanted to come. He had said he thought it would be pleasant; she, more positive in her opinions, knew that it would be pleasant, wonderfully pleasant. Very few pleasant adventures happened in her life; it was ridiculous to reject anything that offered for so feeble a reason as a sense of the unusual. Was that not after all recommendation in itself? She sought about in her mind for words in which to convey to him without appearing eager that she would like to come, but her vocabulary failed her; seldom had she been at so great a loss for words. Unexpectedly he came to her relief.

"I am infected with the holiday mood," he said. "I want to enjoy things. And my holiday is very near the finish. I may leave any day-- perhaps to-morrow. You too must know the holiday mood. We don't leave it altogether behind with our childhood. I want to talk to you. We happened upon the acquaintance by accident--it is part of the holiday.

That must be my apology for seeming intrusive."

She turned towards him deliberately with a friendlier look in her eyes.

"I think my gaucherie needs some apologia too," she confessed.

"Why not make it in the form of a concession?" he suggested hopefully, and experienced a curious satisfaction when suddenly she laughed.

Somehow he did not need any a.s.surance in words that she would be on the beach that evening. Instinctively he felt that the reason which had been responsible for her reluctance to accede to his request no longer existed. Whatever it had been she had ridded herself of it. He liked to think that if she had felt a want of confidence in him, her feminine intuition had made it possible to conquer this mistrust. It was the first step towards that better understanding which he wished, he did not know why, to establish between them.

CHAPTER FIVE.

Brenda Upton, avoiding the notice of the general company by leaving the dinner table early that evening and slipping into the garden while most of the guests remained seated, sauntered down the path to the gate, thrilled with an agreeable sense of adventure that was only slightly damped by the reflection that her behaviour in meeting this stranger about whom she knew nothing was not in keeping with the traditions of her cla.s.s, was, in fact indiscreet, and might be regarded by the man himself as evidence of an unconventionality of which he might seek to take advantage.

She felt herself blus.h.i.+ng at the thought; and pulled up at the gate, and stood with it open and her hand upon the iron spikes, wavering, and looking uncertainly upon the shadowy road. If she detected in his manner any decrease of respect it would hurt as well as humiliate...

Perhaps after all it would be wiser not to go...

She glanced back over her shoulder towards the house. Two men made their appearance on the stoep while she looked back. She had made one of a set with them that day for tennis; the younger had suggested taking her up the mountain later. It had seemed quite natural and in order to consent to these things. Yet what did she know about these men more than she knew of Guy Matheson? They chanced to be staying in the same house; that was all: had the other been staying in the house she would not have hesitated to walk with him on the beach. These distinctions were rather absurd.

She let the gate go, and it clanged behind her as she emerged upon the road, and, startled a little by the noise of the gate swinging to, stood for a second and looked about her with an air of furtive watchfulness, and the feeling that she was doing something just a little shameful, something which later she might regret.

The expedition seemed scarcely worth such complications of perplexed thought. It was a proof of the strength of her inclination that she persevered in face of this sense of impropriety, and the formless doubts that a.s.sailed her continually in defiance of the logic with which she sought to banish them. She was interested in this man with the strong body and handsome face and the air of reckless indolence. She wanted to meet him and talk uninterruptedly without the necessity to break away in the middle of the conversation and hurry back to a meal or something.

The freemasonry that exists between persons of like temperament and instinctive sympathy a.s.sured her that this interest was mutual.

She crossed the road and walked on to the beach. Against the wall, lounging in the shadow of it and obviously waiting for her, was Matheson. When she saw him she realised how ashamed, how bitterly ashamed, she would have felt had she arrived first. He must have dined early, or hurried through his meal, to have got there so soon. He turned his head quickly, caught sight of her, and advanced to meet her.

"It's good of you," he said. "But I felt sure you must relent."

He scrutinised her for a moment, and found himself enjoying the effects of the last rays of the sunset warming her hair and the clear olive of her skin.

"The sun is kissing you good-bye. It's a good time of the day, isn't it?" he said.

"Yes," she answered a little shyly--"the best time of all."

"Wait," he counselled. "I am going to take you beyond Sea Point. You needn't trudge it all the way. We can board the tram--as far as it goes. Round the point one gets a view of the Twelve Apostles--if you care about mountains,--but I'm sure you do. One faces the wide sweep of the bay and the immensity of the open sea. We'll watch the moon rise out there--then you will know which is the best time of all I want you to admit that my hour is the best hour." He laughed with a ring of light-hearted enjoyment in the sound of the mirth. "Humour me," he pleaded. "That's one of my conceits."

But she, smiling also, shook her head.

"The best hour of the twenty-four--the Perfect Hour," she insisted, "belongs to no specified period. Haven't you discovered that?"

"What is the perfect hour?" he asked.

"The hour we most enjoy."

An earnest look had come into her eyes, the quiet tones of her voice echoed this earnestness, accentuated it; he felt his own mood responding to the seriousness of hers. He liked her treatment of the subject.

Never in all his life, he believed, and wondered whether she had been more fortunate in this respect, had he experienced the perfect hour. It was possible, he decided, to go through life without experiencing it.

"Your idea appeals pleasantly to the imagination," he said; "but it deals with superlatives. My good hour is not to be despised; it's within the grasp of all."

"You think the other isn't?" she asked.

"Well, of course, enjoyment is relative; but I imagine your idea of it embraces only the highest quality. Am I right?"

"In a sense, yes--though possibly our ideas of what is truly enjoyable differ substantially. For instance, beautiful scenery is to me entirely satisfying; so is a beautiful flower."

"You will get that to-night," he said--"the scenery, I mean. But you know the coast about here, I expect."

"Fairly well."

"We'll get on to the road," he said; "then we can stop the first tram that overtakes us. It's too far to walk. We have to study the leg."

"Oh, that! I played tennis this afternoon," she said.

He showed his disapproval.

"If you do foolish things like that you deserve complications."