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 class, 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 blushing 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 assailed 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 assured 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."
A tram came up almost immediately. They boarded it; and the girl,
feeling a little constrained and disinclined to talk, sat silent,
watching the spear of light along the horizon narrowing and paling as
the sea settled to a grey restfulness beneath the darkening sky. She
did not want Matheson to talk, and was glad when he fell into silence
too. She was conscious of the people on the tram to a quite
disproportionate degree. She had a persuasion that they knew she was
doing something unusual and rather indiscreet. The sense of back doors
and secrecy which had gripped her at first had hold of her again, and
spoilt things. It was with immeasurable relief that she got down when
they reached the terminus and started to walk.
"Let us go on and on," she said, "until there is no one. I want--
quiet."
"I know," he said on a note of understanding. "We'll find what we
want."
A swift and unaccountable feeling of intimacy sprang out of this mutual
desire for solitude, which she had expressed with unconscious audacity;
while he, in voicing his agreement, seemed to be conspiring with her to
get away together and be alone. This purpose had been in his mind from
the beginning.
"Tell me when you are tired," he said, as he helped her over a difficult
place.
But she did not tire easily. It was the difficulty of making their way
between and over the boulders of the rock-strewn beach that brought them
to a halt. They sat down on a small strip of sand with a rock at their
backs, and for a while remained silent, contemplating the scene in quiet
appreciation that defied expression and lent itself to the prevailing
peace. Out of the warm dusk a few stars gleamed faintly, and upon the
stirless air the contented murmuring of the sea as it drew away from the
sleeping shore hung reposefully, the wild slumber song which throughout
the ages the element which never rests urges upon the land.
As the silence between them lengthened, Brenda Upton became aware that
the man beside her moved nearer to her; observed too, when she turned
towards him, that he was more intent upon the study of her face than
upon the deep swell of the moving waters, the sinister strength and
secretiveness of the mountain range that walled and overlooked the bay.
He had brought her here to see these things, but he did not look at them
himself; he was not after all sharing them with her. A faint resentment
stirred her as she met the steady gaze of the indolent eyes; she felt
somehow cheated.
"I thought this would move you," he said in a voice of satisfaction.
"It moves me--yes." She took up a handful of sand and let it run slowly
through her fingers. "And you?" she asked.
Suddenly he smiled. He changed his attitude for a more comfortable
position, reclining on the sand on his elbow, with his chin supported on
his hand.
"I'm enjoying your enjoyment. That's enough for me to-night. It's a
fresh sensation; the scenery isn't. When I first came out here it
gripped me--as it grips you. I forgot the time. I missed my dinner."
He laughed at some reminiscence. "That didn't matter; it was worth it.
But I found it impossible to explain what had kept me. It would have
spoilt it. You know the fatuous remarks that some people would have
made... I could have talked of it to you--you would have understood.
There's something fine about this bit of coast--fine and lonely. People
don't come here much. You see, it's difficult to get at; there's no
beach, and the rocks scare off bathers. There's nothing to draw
people--except just the rugged beauty of it..."
He broke off, aware of the criticism in her eyes, their look of veiled
surprise.
"I don't believe _you_ understand," he said doubtfully.
"The love of beauty!" she said. "Oh! yes, I understand that part. It's
the inconsistency that puzzles me."
"The inconsistency!" he echoed.
"I'll tell you," she said, and added quickly: "Please don't think I am
criticising you--only when I hear you talk like that of the beauty of
nature, it becomes difficult to reconcile that idea of you with--the
earliest impression."
"I know," he said, and shifted a little on his arm in, order to get a
more direct view of her.
He was thinking of the disapproval the brown eyes had so clearly
expressed that first morning, and his subsequent wish to drive the
disapproval out of them and earn her appreciation. There followed a
brief, expectant pause before he said:
"I'm glad you spoke of that. Of course I saw what you were thinking
that morning... And in truth it is a waste of a blue day to spend it in
gambling. I've acted like a fool, and learnt a lesson. I don't suppose
I feel particularly keen about playing in future--not for a time,
anyhow--but I have a feeling I'd like to make some sort of a resolve...
Would it bore you to accept my undertaking never to play again?"
"It wouldn't bore me," she said, manifestly surprised at his question.
"But are you sure? ... It is more likely to bore you afterwards to feel
constrained to keep that resolve. Is it necessary to promise--
anything?"
"Not necessary, perhaps. It would be a satisfaction to me." He looked
up at her with a swift smile. "I believe that's what I inveigled you
here for--to force you into the position of custodian of my conscience--
to listen to confidences. I'm lonely. I've no one belonging to me out
here--no one I can talk intimately with. I've knocked around. That
sort of life doesn't lend itself to intimacies. I want to talk--oh!
about things one doesn't talk about generally... I wonder whether I am
making myself intelligible?"
"Yes," she said. "Though possibly if I didn't have those same feelings
I might not follow you altogether. I'm lonely too. I often want a
sympathetic listener; and there's no one; so I moon about alone, and--"
Her voice trailed off on a thoughtful pause.
"Want to kick yourself?" he suggested.
"No. I don't think it's ever been quite so bad as that."
"It is with me," he said--"often. But I have few resources. I don't
sweat things out like some men in violent exercise. I've tried that,
but it doesn't give me any sort of relief. My beastly muscles develop
and keep hard without that Sometimes I think they are the only part of
me to develop and harden; the rest is non-resistant."
"A man has his work," she interjected. "There's ambition..."
He looked away across the dark waste of waters and answered
indifferently.
"I never had any. All that talk about a career--what does it amount to?
One man makes a bit of a splash, another doesn't; but they are both
heading the same way, both making for the open sea, which eventually
engulfs them. It's only while they are inshore that the splash is
visible; farther out the sea is deep and tranquil; and sometimes it is
the man who hasn't made a splash inshore who keeps up longest and sees
well ahead. Those early splashes don't count for much when the swimmer
is done. Death beats us all in the end. It isn't worth it...
ambition... no."
"Without ambition nothing would be achieved ever," she said. "Some
one's got to do the things--that are worth doing."
"Why?" he asked, and smiled at her lazily. She looked down at him,
puzzled and hesitating, a little uncertain of her ground. "What are the
things worth doing?"
"Don't you believe that there is a purpose in life?" she asked.
The smile on his face broadened.
"I confess I haven't given much thought to the matter, but, since you
ask me, I suppose there might be some blind purpose even in the life of
a mole. It's all rather futile though, isn't it? What are you doing?
... What am I doing? ... The obvious answer, of course, is sitting on
the shore. Well, that's about all there is to it--sitting on the shore
and talking. Later, well take the plunge and swim out to the deep sea--
and that's the finish. I like best sitting on the shore. It's very
pleasant, isn't it? Say you are enjoying it--and don't try to rouse
ambition in me; it's a mean thing at best."
"It's a fine thing," she contradicted. "Very little has ever been
achieved without it."
He sat up straighter.
"I'll prove my definition to be more correct than yours," he insisted.
"What is ambition?--a desire for power, for superiority. It's utterly
selfish, an egotistical quality. It springs from greed of gain, either
of recognition or of material benefit. Can that be considered other
than an ignoble sentiment?"
"Not as you put it," she dissented. "But I dispute your definition.
Ambition is a lofty endeavour to excel."
"Well, it may be... sometimes it is," he allowed. "But in this very
human world it is oftener the more sordid sentiment I described. I
merely dragged the wings from your ideal and brought it down to earth."
"I believe that is what you enjoy doing," she said, a touch of reproach
in her voice.
"What do we know better than this dear mother earth?" he asked, and
pressed his hand heavily upon the sand. "She is altogether beautiful,
save where man, in the determined pursuit of ambition, has scarred and
changed her face. That idea of living at a high mental altitude is mere
presumption. It's an age of posing. We catch at a phrase that sounds
fine, and adopt it because of its fine sound. There isn't any need to
live up to the sentiment it expresses--very often it doesn't express
much. There's a cult that's called, I believe, the Higher Thought
Movement. People read books--or they don't read them, but simply own
them and talk vaguely of the higher things they express. It doesn't go
far beyond talking as a rule. I never met any one who could transmit
higher thought. It's another catch phrase."
"Doesn't every one have those thoughts at some time?" she asked quietly,
without resenting his speech as he had half expected her to do.
"Higher thoughts? ... Yes, I suppose so. Only one doesn't talk about
them."
"No," she returned; "you are right. One would have difficulty in
expressing those things--particularly in high sounding phrases."
"Truth is never adorned," he said--"which possibly accounts for the
frequency with which she is disregarded."
Abruptly he stood up, and held out both hands in invitation to her to
rise.
"The moon's getting up," he said. "Come nearer to the water's edge and
see it top the mountain."