The Stronger Influence Part 2

Indignant and angry, she walked as far as the vley and seated herself in the shade of the trees with a book, which she did not read, open on her lap. She could not at the moment concentrate her attention on reading. Her cheeks burned. Twice this man had seemed to snub her, whether intentionally or not she could not determine; but she felt furious, less with the man than with herself for courting a repulse by her persistence. Why should she seek to thrust her society on him when very clearly he did not desire it? Her importunity embarra.s.sed him.

That thought rankled. In a desire to be kind to a man whose lonely condition excited her compa.s.sion she had been guilty of intruding unwarrantably upon his seclusion. What right had she to force her acquaintance upon him? She had had her lesson; she would profit by it and not repeat the blunder.

Idly she turned the pages of her book; but the printed matter upon which her eyes rested conveyed no meaning to her: between her vision and the open page a man's face obtruded itself, a face with fine, strongly marked features, and keen, unsmiling eyes. She could not switch her thoughts off this man, in whom, she realised with a sort of impatience, she was more than ordinarily interested. He piqued her curiosity.

Oddly, the ugly fact which she had learned concerning him had not repelled her so much as deepened her sympathy. She wondered about him; wondered what his life had been, what had made him, still a young man, derelict and at enmity with his fellows. He had possibly suffered a great sorrow, she decided; and, womanlike, longed to know the nature of the tragedy which had spoilt his life.

That his weakness awoke pity and not repugnance in her, filled her with a vague surprise. She knew that in another man she would have considered the weakness contemptible. Why should she except this man from censure in her thoughts when she would have held another unworthy for the same failing? A person who drank to excess had always seemed horrible to her. She would have shrunk in fear from a drunken man. But she felt no shrinking from this man: she felt an almost motherly tenderness for him. She would have liked to help him--with sympathy, with her friends.h.i.+p; and the only kindness she could do him was to humour his misanthropy and leave him to himself.

When she pa.s.sed him again on her return at the tea hour she took no notice of him, but walked along the stoep with an air of not seeing him, and yet with a mind so intent on him that a consciousness of this penetrated his understanding, possibly because he in his turn was thinking about her with a curiosity equal to her own, with an interest which surpa.s.sed hers.

He followed her with his glance until she reached the open window of the dining-room and disappeared within. He did not move. Tea was a meal he never attended; he did not drink tea. When Esme came out again on to the stoep his chair was empty.

Book 1--CHAPTER FIVE.

The frankness of Esme's nature was opposed to the role of dignified silence, which she a.s.sumed deliberately out of consideration for the man who had shown so plainly his objection to social amenities. She was resolved that unless he spoke to her she would not address him again.

The event of his venturing on a spontaneous remark was so improbable that it seemed unlikely that the silence between them would be broken.

To sit daily at meals beside a person with whom the exchange of the ordinary commonplace is denied becomes embarra.s.sing. His silent presence caused her to feel uncomfortable and unhappy. Had it been possible to do so without exciting remark she would have changed her seat.

Her old friend on her right helped her largely in this difficulty. He made himself particularly agreeable to his young companion. But his conversational efforts rendered the other man's silence more marked; and the awkwardness of sitting down to breakfast without offering a friendly good-morning appalled her in view of the many breakfasts which must follow with increasing strain each morning during her stay.

The point which troubled her most in regard to her new line of conduct was the certainty that the man who had furnished her with the gratuitous information concerning Hallam would conclude that the frozen alteration in her demeanour was the result of his unsought confidence. Absurdly, she wanted him to know that this breaking off of all intercourse was on Hallam's initiative and not hers. It was a little thing to trouble her; but it did trouble her exceedingly. She did not wish Sinclair to think that because of what he had told her she was treating with contempt a man for whom she felt no contempt in her heart--nothing but compa.s.sion.

In accordance with the arrangement that had been made the previous day she accompanied Sinclair down the kloof; but her pleasure in the excursion was not so keen as it had been in antic.i.p.ation; she was prejudiced slightly against her companion. She suggested going in a party; but he refused to entertain the idea. He hated crowds, he said.

"I took a party down one day," he explained, "and they just fooled about and dug up ferns. Desecration, I call it. The ferns were thrown away, of course. That's what happens. People must pick things. I wonder why? Sheer destructiveness. I like to see things growing."

He was helpful and agreeable during the walk; and his appreciation of everything when they descended into the green twilight of the kloof pleased the girl: she shared in his enthusiasm. She stood silent amid the cool, green restfulness of this shadowed place, and viewed with amazed eyes the wonder of its vegetation which grew in a tangled luxuriance of varying shades of green; particularly she noticed the long trailing moss which hung festooned from the trees over the stream; the longer trails of clinging vine that wound itself about every plant and tree and linked the whole together in an ordered and pleasing confusion.

Huge boulders, lichen covered, stood out of the water which purled round them, and, with the brown trunks of the trees, struck the only separate note of colour in a scene that was wholly green and lit with a soft green light. The sun did not penetrate here through the ma.s.sed foliage of the locked boughs overhead. There was no view of the sky.

The stream wound in and out among the loose stones like a narrow footpath cut through the dense vegetation. Ferns grew rankly beside the water, in the water, in the crevices of the boulders, and in the rotting trunks of trees. Maidenhair ferns were everywhere with long succulent fronds, and the feathery leaves of the wild asparagus trailed gracefully above the banks.

Esme gazed about her in silent wonder; and her companion stood beside her and watched her pleasure in the scene.

"Makes one feel good, doesn't it?" he said.

She turned to him reluctantly. His voice had broken the quiet spell of the place and caught her back from enchantment to everyday things.

"I want to sit on one of those boulders," was all she said. "I want just to rest and be still."

"Yes," he said. "But when you are rested we'll explore a bit. It's worth it. It goes on like this for ever so far, opening out and closing in again between green walls. It's difficult to break through in places; but I'll go first and make a clearing for you. Take my hand.

These stones are treacherous."

"I'm glad you brought me here," she said, accepting his aid readily.

"I'm glad I came. I've never seen anything quite like this before.

It's wonderful. You are right: one can imagine wild beasts here. One can imagine anything here... snakes. I should be terribly frightened if I saw a snake."

She sat on a large boulder with her hands clasping her knees, and peered into the black-green shadows nervously. The man, standing upon the stones which just escaped the water, watched her with an expression of interest and of satisfaction in his eyes. The grace of her unstudied pose, the serious look on the bright, fair face, appealed pleasantly to him. In his preoccupation he scarcely heeded what she said, until she turned her face and looked up at him inquiringly.

"Are there snakes here?" she asked.

"I don't know. I've not seen one. I think we are more likely to discover them higher up. They like warmth. It is always wise to tread cautiously though."

"Ugh!" She drew her feet a little higher above the water and s.h.i.+vered apprehensively and looked about her. "It rather spoils one's enjoyment, thinking of these things."

"Don't think of them," he returned. "There are plenty of people in Africa and plenty of snakes, but it's very rarely that we hear of any one being bitten. I come here often; it's the only cool place on a hot day."

"Well, I shan't come here often--although I love it," she added.

"Anything might happen here. It's difficult to believe that the sun is s.h.i.+ning somewhere--blazing right over our heads. Here it is always twilight, which later will deepen into night. It's lovely, with a sort of eerie beauty. I don't want to talk. I want just to enjoy it and be quiet."

He understood her mood. The place had impressed him in much the same way when he first beheld it. Familiarity with it had made its wild beauty less a.s.sertively striking; but the girl's keen pleasure in everything recalled his own earlier impressions and added to them. He strolled off and left her in undisturbed contemplation while he explored along the bank of the stream and considered the best spots to show her when she wearied of inactivity and expressed the wish to go on.

But Esme's mind at the moment was detached from her surroundings. She was thinking very earnestly of the man who held aloof from friends.h.i.+p, who seemed to regard with mistrust, almost with dislike, every one about him. She had never before met any one who was at enmity with mankind.

The experience interested her immensely, troubled her. It occurred to her as altogether sad and incomprehensible that a man should shun his fellows and enclose himself in a stronghold of impenetrable reserve.

She longed to pierce the hard crust of his egotism, to draw him out of himself. It was unthinkable that a man of intelligence should be misanthropic from choice and without cause. Possibly at some time he had suffered, been badly hurt by some one. Yet it was difficult to believe that a man could vent on the world at large his sense of injury for the fault of an individual.

She leaned down towards the water and looked into its still brown pools and frowned thoughtfully. It vexed her that this man should have laid such a grip on her imagination: his personality obtruded itself persistently on her thoughts. The thing was beginning to worry her.

She turned her head to look for her companion. He was not in sight.

Abruptly a feeling of loneliness, a loneliness that was almost terrifying, seized her. That Sinclair was somewhere near at hand she knew, but the sense of being alone in that eerie spot frightened her; the silence of the place frightened her. Yet when the silence snapped suddenly, and her attention was caught by the sound of some one or something breaking through the undergrowth and coming towards her, her fear of these sounds was greater than her fear of the silence. She wanted to move, wanted to cry out; and she could not move, could not utter a word. She sat staring in the direction of the noise, staring, and waiting for she knew not what.

The sounds were not made by Sinclair; they came from the opposite direction to that which he had taken. Thoughts of wild beasts flashed into her mind. She wondered what she would do if out of the green tangle a tiger suddenly appeared. She believed that she would do nothing, that she would remain there staring, rooted to the spot. The cras.h.i.+ng sounds grew louder, came nearer. She saw the boughs bend, their ma.s.sed foliage shake and quiver as if a wind swept through it. A branch snapped loudly. Then out of the swaying greenery a man's arm protruded, and the next moment Hallam emerged and stood still, looking at her with a surprise greater than her own. Esme gave a little gulp of relief and laughed weakly.

"Oh?" she said, and sat still clutching at the boulder with her hands.

"Did I frighten you?" he asked.

She nodded without speaking; and he advanced a little nearer to her, and stood still again, leaning on his stick.

"I'm sorry. I had no idea any one was here. You aren't alone?"

"No. Mr Sinclair is somewhere--over there. I thought--I thought you were a tiger."

Involuntarily he smiled.

"You've been listening to the chatter at the hotel," he said.

"It's stupid, I know." She tapped her foot on a stone with a movement of impatience and looked away from him. "It's easy to imagine anything in this jungle. There is something awesome even in its beauty."

"It's the dim light," he said, "and the suggestion of things hidden from sight. With your nerves you should remain in the sunlight."

Esme laughed suddenly. She turned her face towards him again and scrutinised him with greater attentiveness.

"Yes," she said. "I like the sunlight. I like things which are revealed and comprehensive; the furtiveness of secrecy terrifies me. I prefer to move in the open."

"And miss the surprises which life conceals," he said.

"I hadn't thought of that. But I'm not particularly inquisitive," she replied.

Why it should vex her to see him smile at this, she did not know; but that he did smile, and that she resented his doing so, was certain. She flushed and looked round for her escort, whom she now saw coming towards them, leaping agilely across the boulders in the stream. He showed surprise on seeing Hallam; his manner was not cordial.