The Shadow of the Past Part 2

"Loafing seems to agree with some people," he said, a trifle pointedly.

"It's rather a favourite pastime of yours."

"What of it?" asked Matheson impatiently.

"Nothing. It is well if you can afford it. If you can't, it's imprudent."

His hearer laughed.

"You know about how well I can afford it," he said.

"I am ready at any time to give you a chance of making good," Holman answered quickly. "Take a day off--loaf, if you feel that way-- to-morrow I will make you a proposal. I can't win so much off a friend.

I don't like it."

Matheson seemed about to make some reply, but, after a slight hesitation, finally answered nothing; he gave a brief nod as his sole response, and walked quickly out of the room. Holman did not immediately follow him.

"There," he mused, looking reflectively after the retreating figure, "goes a useful man--a man who is too lazy to use his brains, and sufficiently a fool to allow others to adapt them to their own purposes.

So long as there is need for a type, that type exists."

Though such a possibility had not occurred to him at the moment of uttering them, his words had had considerable effect upon Matheson, who, stretching himself in a wicker lounge in the shade of the small stoep at the back of the hotel, farthest removed from the busy hum of the street, stared absently out upon the glaring sunlight and pondered over the implication that he was idling away the hours. It was not a new suggestion; but it had not struck him so forcibly before, perhaps because it had not before been brought so pointedly to his notice by another.

It was not Holman alone who had seemed to make this imputation of indolence. What the man had conveyed in speech, the girl's eyes had expressed with even greater effectiveness. It was what he had read in the girl's eyes that weighed with him now; it left him with a feeling of insufficiency and incompetence. He experienced an unaccustomed sense of shame at the thought that he was as a piece of flotsam which is set moving with the tide. He resented, but could not overcome, this unusual self-depreciation. For the first time he saw himself impartially, and recognised his limitations with surprising clearness. And all because a pair of brown, earnest eyes had seemed to accuse him of trifling with life, which was a serious problem and not the game he would have it.

They were wise brown eyes, and carried persuasion. For the only time within his memory he felt dissatisfied with himself.

He looked into the past, and saw it a waste of opportunity; he looked at the present, and frowned, and dismissed it without comment; he attempted to view the future; but the future stretched vague and unsubstantial along a vista of untrodden years, years in which he foresaw waste also-- always waste; unless he pulled himself together and made some appreciable endeavour to justify his existence. Life held obligations which he had not recognised before that day; perhaps because only then was born in him the consciousness that no life can be lived independently; the individual stands in responsible relations.h.i.+p to the race.

"By Jove!" he muttered, and struck the arm of his chair twice in rapid succession with his open palm, and continued to stare at the sunlight.

"I wonder what has set my thoughts in this direction? I can't remember that these things ever troubled me before."

He pa.s.sed his hand over his eyes; then he took the hand from before his face and contemplated it with interest, looking at it with a sort of surprised curiosity, as though until that moment he had not appreciated its strength. He opened and closed the fingers deliberately, attentively regarding the prominent knuckles that showed white against the sunburnt skin. It was a large hand, and broad, the hand of a mechanic; and it was covered, as were his arms and chest, with fine gold hairs. Evidence of strength was not lacking here, or in the long legs stretched out on the rests of his chair. He turned his attention to his legs, brought his feet deliberately to the stone floor, and sat up straighter.

"I suppose it amounts to this," he reflected, "that I'm something of a rotter, and am only now awaking to the fact."

It may have been the state of his finances, which were low, that was responsible for rousing him, or it may have been simply the criticism in a girl's eyes. It was of the latter he thought more often as he sat wakeful in the sultry afternoon, with a mind in alert contradiction to the repose which his att.i.tude suggested. He saw always in imagination the look of wonder and perplexity shadowing their brown depths, the hint of disapproval behind their surprise. He felt inexplicably desirous of justifying himself in this girl's opinion, of winning her approval, even her admiration. An almost boyish enthusiasm gripped him to do great things, splendid things, to force her into a generous acknowledgement of his worth. He knew it to be absurd, but the conceit held him, despite his realisation that in all probability the girl had ceased to think of him. Their meeting was but an episode in life; possibly he had made less impression on her mind, notwithstanding all that her features had seemed to express, than she had made on his. He doubted that he had gripped her imagination.

It annoyed him to discover that he was more alive to her disapproval than to any other emotion she may have shown. There had been only disapproval, he believed; and he resented this thought, as he resented the feeling of his own insufficiency, futilely and yet with vehemence.

He had got to make that right somehow. He could not let it rest at that. He was going to prove that he was not such a waster after all-- prove it to the girl, until the disapproval in her eyes was banished entirely.

It was odd how the memory of that look stuck in his mind and exasperated him. He could not recall that he had ever been so deeply affected by a gaze before. It was as though he had turned a corner sharply and come unexpectedly up against some barrier he had never suspected of being there; it disconcerted him. But behind the embarra.s.sment he was conscious of an immense curiosity, and coupled with the curiosity was an agreeable sense of adventure that coloured everything with the magic of romance.

Not since he had attained to manhood had he felt particularly interested in any individual woman. As a boy girls had interested him; but of late years he had come little in contact with women, and had fallen into the habit of avoiding their society when it was available. Therefore the encounter of the morning was the more significant. He recognised that his action in accosting the girl was the outcome less of impulse than of volition--an instinctive, compelling sympathy which had given him readily to perceive and resent the criticism of her look, and had made it easy, and indeed imperative, for him to speak to her. The same urgency impelled him to seek her again, some power outside his will yet not in conflict with it.

The afternoon wore slowly away. The brazen sun sloped to the hard blue horizon, sinking into the waves victoriously with its golden challenge flashed in the reluctant face of oncoming night. Along the sh.o.r.e the little waves were breaking gold-tipped, and lengthening shadows, the heralds of approaching dusk, lay along the sands. Matheson, while he sat at dinner, was thinking of the sea--the sea with the evening light upon it, and the restful shadows darkening cliff and sand. He dined alone. Holman was spending the evening with friends--a matter of business, he had explained, and had referred vaguely to the club. It did not concern Matheson that he should be dining at the club rather than at his friend's house; he was not particularly interested in his arrangements. In his present mood he was only conscious of relief at being left to himself. He was out of tune with life, and desirous of keeping the discord unsuspected. He had a strong objection to the cause of his despondency being misinterpreted: Holman would naturally conclude that his losses were weighing unduly on his mind: they certainly sat there heavily, and caused discomfort; but he had an idea that he could bear up in face of these reverses. It was not the first occasion that he had been unlucky with the cards.

He left the dinner table with the picture of the dusk and the quiet sands exciting his imagination, luring him on to the committal of amazing follies. He resisted successfully for over half an hour the seductive call of the sea; and then went up to his room and changed into flannels, and did what for thirty odd minutes he had been resolving he would not do--tramped out along the road to Three Anchor Bay. He had not the smallest hope of seeing Brenda Upton on the beach, or elsewhere; nevertheless he walked down to the beach, and peered about him, searching the dusk vainly for a sign of the small slender figure. He knew that it was not in the least likely that she would be walking about; but he looked for her none the less, with the dogged yet purposeless air of a man pursuing consciously an illusion.

When he had satisfied himself that she was not on the beach, he regained the road, and deliberately turned his steps in the direction he had taken with her that morning. The house where she was staying loomed large in the darkness; and, as he strolled up the sandy roadway, he was conscious of the scent of the oleanders, tall trees of which, in a pink and white confusion, leaned over towards the road. The air was heavy with their fragrance, and warm and still. In the stillness the murmur of the sea followed him, resembling in its m.u.f.fled monotony the almost outdistanced murmuring of a large concourse of people, uttering an insistent complaint. Lights gleamed fitfully from the open windows of the house, and upon the stoep and balcony people were grouped in small parties of twos and threes, contented, after dinner groups, enjoying the restful dusk which succeeded the heat and glare of the day. If Miss Upton had been there he could not have judged; it was not light enough to distinguish clearly, and the view he got was interrupted and shadowed with the trees.

When he had pa.s.sed the house he turned, abruptly and retraced his footsteps, and walked back to his hotel, which he reached with a most unaccustomed feeling of weariness as a result of his long tramp. He discovered when he got back that Holman had returned. He came upon him in the vestibule, and was able to greet him with no trace of his former irritation. He had walked that mood off, or had got the better of it somehow.

Holman was in excellent spirits. He wanted to talk, and suggested whisky and a smoke and a retired corner; and Matheson, infected with his bonhomie, managed to throw off the despondency that had weighed upon him all day and respond to his genial humour.

Before they separated for the night, rather unexpectedly, and yet in a manner which seemed to suggest that he had deliberately led up to the subject, Holman made an allusion to the cards, and to the other's run of ill luck, which he prophesied must turn shortly.

"It can't hold for ever," he a.s.serted. "I'll play you to-morrow double or quits."

"It's no good," Matheson answered. "If I lost I couldn't pay, and I'm not taking on a debt to hang like a millstone round my neck for years."

"I'll tell you what I will do." Holman's hand fell warmly on the other's shoulder... "I can't clear you out without giving you a chance of winning back. If you lose you can pay me in service."

"That depends," Matheson answered, and scrutinised the speaker closely, "on what the service is."

"Well, of course." There was a long pause.

"We will go into that to-morrow," came the slow response.

CHAPTER FOUR.

"And so you see," Holman said, and flung his coat upon the sands, and took a pack of cards from one of the pockets and shuffled them absently, "you don't stand to lose anyhow. If you win it's quits; if I win you get half your losses bade and simply render me a service which will trespa.s.s only on a few days--a week or two at most--of your time. It strikes me as a fairly generous offer."

"It's the undeniable generosity that gives it its Blackguard look," was the answer. "What's the nature of the service? ... You say you want me to deliver a letter to a certain person of Dutch extraction and to bring you back his reply. That would sound all right if there were no postal facilities; but in view of the very excellent postal arrangements in this country the request wears a sinister aspect. I don't want to offend you, but--it's shady, this business? Plainly I can't go into the thing with my eyes shut."

"I don't ask you to. At the same time, the less wide open they are the better. There is nothing shadier in it than is customary in the gamble of party politics. It's an attempt to overthrow the government. That, I take it, won't disturb you particularly; you're not interested.

Despite your appreciation of the postal arrangements of this country, there is a leakage somewhere. I don't choose to have my private communications tapped, that is why I send important messages by hand."

Matheson pondered this, put a few questions as to the policy of the present government and the reason for the other's objection to it, and then lay full length on his lack on the sands and deliberated upon the offer. Judged on its face-value it was worthy of consideration--the whole of his losses, which were considerable, back if he won; and if he lost half of them returned to him, with the sole obligation of carrying a letter for a friend, who was presumably a political agitator, and to return to him bearing a reply to his communication.

There was no danger in the undertaking; it would have appealed more strongly had the dangerous element intruded; there was no particular satisfaction in it beyond the pecuniary gain. Politics did not interest him; but he was averse to this backstairs method of abetting agitators.

Agitators were insufferable nuisances. He had always felt that.

Usually they were moved by motives of personal interest; and they lacked reasonableness. The latter placed them outside the limit of sympathy.

When one can't reason with a man one loses the desire to grasp his point of view. It struck him as odd that Holman should be one of these ill-balanced people; he had always regarded him as a shrewd and peculiarly level-headed man. As a political malcontent he appeared in a new light, a light that flared artificially about him and revealed a queer motley of anachronistic effects--modern civilisation practising the customs of bygone intrigue in a country that was young, in the accepted sense of development, and more ancient than history itself. He couldn't understand it.

After a while he ceased to concern himself with that aspect of the case, and brought his attention to bear upon the more personal view. He would be blind to self-interest if he could not perceive that the proposal, apart from its unpleasant flavour of intrigue, was altogether favourable to himself. He believed it to be prompted by purely friendly feeling, and a desire to accommodate without humiliating him. Regarding it thus, he could only appreciate the generosity and good feeling which dictated it, and marvel at his own reluctance to accept this opportunity of regaining half, or all, that he had lost. But the reluctance remained, and revealed itself, even when he had overcome it sufficiently to decide in favour of closing with the offer, in the ungracious acquiescence which he gave.

"All right," he said, sitting up and fidgeting with the sand. "That sort of thing isn't exactly in my line, but I'll do it--if I lose."

"And ask no questions?" Holman said, without moving.

"And keep my mouth shut in any circ.u.mstance..."

They cut, and Matheson dealt.

This gamble, with its odd stakes and uncertain issue, was like no other game he had ever engaged in. He felt as a man might feel who stakes life or liberty upon a chance without sufficient justification.

Possibly it was because in some subconscious way he realised that it was honour that was at stake that made the issue of such tremendous importance to him. He had to win. He would not admit the possibility of failure.

In silence he took up his cards. His features were tense. The perspiration started on his forehead, on the backs of his hands, on his arms: there was an anxious look in his eyes, a suggestion of nervousness in his laboured breathing. In striking contrast, the calm of his opponent's manner was manifest in the deliberate way in which he looked over his hand and calculated its value. His luck still held; the advantage of the cards lay with him...

Later, with the excitement of the play past, the eager curiosity of indeterminate results changed to the unpleasant actuality of accepted defeat, Matheson was aware that he had lost more than a mere game, even a game with big stakes depending thereon. Although he had regained one-half of his former losses, he felt poorer than when on the previous day he had acknowledged that he was cleaned out. He stood pledged now to a service about which he knew nothing save its undeniably shady nature; he had agreed, moreover, not to attempt to learn more concerning it. The unwisdom of the undertaking struck him as it had not done when upheld with the belief that he would win and so be relieved of the obligation. He was committed to the carrying out of a piece of egregious folly which might lead to any wild complication, and force him into an unwilling co-operation with persons whose views were opposed to his own. Distrust of Holman grew in him. He could not give a name to his doubt, but the doubt existed: he resented having allowed himself to become the man's tool.