Читать книгу The Stronger Influence - F. E. Mills Young - Страница 4

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Among the passengers which the train disgorged on to the little platform at Coerney, the station from which visitors to the Zuurberg proceeded on their journey up the steep mountain road by cart, were an elderly woman and her husband; a middle-aged man, who was acquainted but not otherwise connected with them; and a young girl, who was neither connected nor acquainted with any of her fellow-travellers, and who, after the first cursory glance towards them, evinced no further curiosity in their movements, but walked alone across the sunlit space to where in the shade of the trees the cart waited until such time as it should please the driver to bring up his horses and inspan them in preparation for the long drive up the mountain.

The girl’s three fellow-travellers had gone in quest of refreshment; the driver was invisible; an atmosphere of languorous repose brooded over the place, which, with the departure of the train, seemed utterly deserted, given over to the silences and the hot golden light of the afternoon sun.

The girl approached the cart with no thought of taking her seat therein: she preferred to walk and stretch her cramped limbs; and it was obvious that the cart would not start for some while. But the cart stood in the shade, and the day was hot: the girl sought the shadows instinctively and nibbled chocolate while she scrolled about under the trees, and awaited developments.

She had been ill, and was taking a holiday to hasten the period of convalescence so that she would be ready to resume her duties as a teacher of music when the vacation ended. The air of the Zuurberg was more bracing than that of the Bay. She was looking forward to the change with pleasurable anticipation; looking for adventures, as girls in the early twenties do look for the development of unusual and exciting events. Teaching was dull work; routine is always dull; the holiday adventure offers promise of immense distraction when one sets forth in the holiday mood.

Esmé Lester’s mood, which at starting had been high with expectation, was a little damped. The journey in the train had tired her more than she had realised; and the appearance of her fellow-travellers—people whom she would meet daily, be under the same roof with—was not calculated to excite her curiosity. She wanted companionship. She wanted youth about her—not the immature youth with which her work brought her into daily contact, but contemporaries whose thoughts and tastes would assimilate with her own. The nice elderly couple who had repaired to the small hotel for refreshment, and the rather heavy middle-aged man who had followed them with the same purpose in view, did not answer her requirement in any sense. If this was all the companionship her holiday promised she would find it dull.

At the end of half an hour, during which time Esmé had tired of wandering and had seated herself on the pole of the cart, she saw her fellow-travellers emerge from the hotel and come towards her, and in the distance the driver appeared leading two of his horses, followed by a native with the second pair.

Esmé stood up and showed a renewed interest in the proceedings. The passengers looked on while the natives inspanned the lean reluctant team, the leader of which, despite a sorry appearance, showed signs of temper, which caused the elderly woman passenger considerable alarm. She took her seat in the back between her husband and Esmé; and when, after the start, the leader kicked over the traces, the business of persuading her to remain in her seat occupied all the husband’s attention. Esmé considered his patience wonderful. The driver handed the reins to the middle-aged man and got down; and after much shouting and jerking and unbuckling and rebuckling matters were righted and the journey resumed. But the old lady was nervous and apprehensive that the team would bolt. The mountain road was sufficiently steep to have conveyed to any reasonable intelligence the improbability of this mischance; but fear lends wings to reason, and the old lady refused to be comforted.

Panting and sweating the horses laboured up the steep incline at a pace that was steady enough to reassure any one; but the further they proceeded along the winding track the deeper yawned the precipice at the side of the road: it fell away sheer in places till it lost itself in the black-green depths of the gorge. The old lady was so positive that the horses would plunge over the precipice and hurl every one to certain death that she closed her eyes in preparation, and clung to her husband’s arm in the determination not to be separated from him when the fatal moment arrived.

The old gentleman smiled whimsically at Esmé over his wife’s drooping head. The girl, feeling that an understanding was established, returned the smile, and then gave her attention to the scenery, which was new to her and which, in its wild beauty, with the tangle of trees below and the green luxuriance of the mountain road revealing ever fresh and greater beauties the higher they climbed it, held her in silent wonder at the surprising incongruities of this great country which is Africa; a country of amazing contrasts, in parts a tangle of luxuriant vegetation, in other parts sterile and savage in the stark nakedness of the land. She had seen something of its sterility, not much; and, save for a brief view of the Cape Peninsular, she had not seen a great deal of its beauty either. The wild green splendour of this mountain journey she found restful and pleasantly stimulating. The air was cooler than in the plains. A soft wind blew furtively down from the heights and met them as they toiled upward in the hot sunshine behind the panting team. The horses’ sides were dark and damp with sweat; foam flecked their chests and the greasy leather of the loosened reins. But they kept doggedly on. They were used to the journey, and the end of the journey promised rest. The beat of their hoofs upon the road, the rumbling of the cart, were the only sounds to disturb the stillness. No bird winged its flight across the quivering blue; there was no song of bird from the bush, no sign of any life, save for a number of grey monkeys which infested the trees lower down: these were left behind as the cart travelled upward. But down in the black-green depths of the undergrowth, moving noiselessly and unseen, countless insects and reptiles pursued their busy way; and the boomslaang wound its heavy brown coils around the limbs of trees.

Esmé leaned back against the hot cushions of the cart and looked about her with quiet enjoyment. Despite fatigue and the weariness behind her eyes caused by the hard brightness of the day, she experienced a feeling of exhilaration. Every sense was on the alert to note and appreciate each fresh beauty along the rugged road. The scenery became tamer as the ascent was neared. Coarse grass and stunted bush took the place of the massed foliage of the trees. The land at the summit was flat and shadeless. But the air was light and wonderfully invigorating; and patches of green showed in places where the land dipped abruptly and lost itself in a kloof, amid a tangle of vegetation in the stony bed of a mountain stream.

The horses took a fresh spurt when the level road was reached and trotted briskly towards the hotel and drew up in style before the entrance. Esmé surveyed the low rambling building with interested eyes. It was a quaint old-fashioned place, this hotel on the veld, one-storied, with a stoep in front and a flight of low steps leading up to it. The garden gate stood open, and a man, who was possibly the proprietor Esmé decided, waited at the gate to receive the arrivals. A coloured boy came out to help with the luggage.

Esmé alighted and walked up the garden path, conscious of the curious gaze of a little knot of people gathered on the stoep to participate in the great excitement of the day,—the arrival of the cart with its load of passengers. The hotel was fairly full; there were men and women on the stoep and several children. The girl was too shy to note any of these people particularly; she took them in collectively at a glance and passed on and went inside. A woman stepped forward out of the gloom of the narrow passage, took her name and conducted her to her room.

Left alone in her room, Esmé crossed to the open window and stood looking out upon the wild bit of garden with its kei-apple hedge and the small vley quite close to the window. The glint of the water in the sunshine was pleasing to watch. That the water would breed mosquitoes, and other things likely to disturb one’s repose at night, did not trouble her; she liked to see it. It stretched cool and clear as a mirror reflecting the blue of the unclouded sky.

The scene from the window was peaceful and pleasing. The whole place was peaceful: an atmosphere of drowsy detachment hung over everything. One felt out of the world here, and at the same time intensely alive. A sense of well-being and of contentment came to the girl while she knelt before the window with her arms on the low sill, looking out upon the unfamiliar scene. She had come to this isolated spot in search of health; and already she felt invigorated by the fresh pure air; her mind worked more clearly, threw off its morbid lethargy in newly kindled interest in everything about her. The clean homelike simplicity of her little bedroom pleased her; the view from the window pleased her; it was expansive, uncultivated—a vast stretch of veld, green and brown in the glow of the declining day, with the azure sky overhead remotely blue as a sapphire is blue, a jewel lit with the yellow flame of the sun.