Chapter Four.At Six in the Morning.By fits and starts Wareham was an early riser, and the next morning he was out between five and six. By that time the sun was high in the heavens, dews were dried, life—insect and plant-life—was in eager movement. A cottage with a wonderful roof, lying not far from the foot of thefos, had attracted him the day before; he crossed the zigzags, made out a narrow path over short grass, and reached it.It was a tiny cottage, built partly of stones heaped roughly one on the other, partly of boards of many shapes and sizes, a hut full of odd cranks and changes, deep eaves on one side, a perched-up window on another. But what had attracted Wareham to closer inspection was the roof, lovely with waving grass, sorrel, starlike daisies, and a mass of lilac pansies. It was the subject Mrs Ravenhill would pounce upon to sketch, and he felt a gentle gratitude towards the Ravenhills for the small demands they made upon him. An extraordinarily stony little path flung itself headlong towards the lake, through tall emerald-green rye; he stumbled down a few yards to look back at the hut, standing out against a violet mountain, all the colours sharply insistent in the clear morning air. To his extreme astonishment he saw Miss Dalrymple appear on the crest of the hill, and make her way down towards him. She came lightly and firmly, stepping from stone to stone without hesitation. She wore a white dress, and the impression she gave was of some one younger than he had fancied her. As she drew nearer the impression strengthened by her calling out gaily—“I have just discovered what it is all like; Sunday morning, the freshness, and the enchanting air. Do you know?”“No.” He added in spite of himself—“Tell me.”“The opening to the last act ofParsifal.”“I dare say. But I am no musician.”“Nor I. But I suppose one need not be a painter to be reminded of a picture. However, I did not come after you to talk aboutParsifal.” She stood in the narrow pathway looking down upon him, and spoke with extreme directness. “I saw you from the window, and, as I wished to say something, I followed—”He bowed. She looked beyond him.“I have known you two days, but of course have heard of you enough, and though you may not believe it, no one wanted you home from India more than I. I fancied from what I gathered that you might understand.”He steeled himself against the flattering softness of her voice.“Because I was Hugh Forbes’ friend?”“Yes,” she returned quickly—“for that reason. You might have saved him suffering. For I am afraid he has suffered.”“You are afraid. Do you doubt?”“Not now.”“Compassion has awakened tardily,” he said, with a laugh, which brought her eyes upon him.“Wait a moment,” she said suddenly. “The grass on this bank is dry. Let us sit down. Now go on.”Seated, she was still above, and her dark eyes rested on his face. He found it difficult to say what a moment before had seemed easy. “He will feel his hurt all his life.”This time her eyebrows went up.“Oh, no!”“I know him,” persisted Wareham.“So I thought. But you are mistaken. His feelings cry out, and are quickly consoled. In a year he will have forgotten them.”“Your doctrines are convenient.”She breathed quickly, but appeared to wait for more.“To break off your engagement without so much as a word as to the why! To refuse even to see him! Caprice could hardly show itself more cruelly.”Anger leapt into her eyes.“You allow yourself strong expressions, Mr Wareham!”“If you do not like them it appears to me that I am the last person to whom you should speak. You may not know what Hugh is to me.”“If I did not, I should not be talking to you at this moment,” she retorted, flinging back her head. “Should I discuss the subject with an indifferent person?”It had been good to him to feel the impetus of his own anger, he courted, encouraged it. A secret fear made him dread a softer mood. He kept his eyes upon a butterfly, balancing itself on an ear of rye. As he did not answer, she went on—“Taking it from your point of view only, for I suppose you would be incapable of a broader outlook, do you consider a lingering end more merciful than one which is short and sharp? I have never for a moment regretted the manner of the doing.”“You have regretted something,” said Wareham quickly, recognising that she laid a scarcely-perceptible stress on one word, and beginning to think that she intended him to undertake the mission of reconciliation. A drag of reluctance he believed to belong to disapproval.“Perhaps,” she said, with hesitation.“Isn’t it a little late?”It struck him that his question had an offensive air, but she appeared not to have heard it; she was looking beyond him at the glowing lake, and the mountains which bordered the green waters.“I am ready to own that I was to blame,” she went on, still slowly; “but I shall always think that he ought to have understood.”“What?”“What can’t be put into words. Why, I did not care to marry him.”“You are enigmatical.”She made an impatient movement.“At any rate, it should be enough for you that I did not like him well enough.”“And that is your explanation?”“What; else?”“It had occurred to me that the match might not have been considered sufficiently brilliant for the beautiful Miss Dalrymple.” She did not reject the supposition with anger as he perhaps expected, merely shook her head.“You are like the rest of the world,” she said resignedly, so that he immediately felt shame for his own stupidity, but had nothing to say against it. He took refuge in pointing out that they had placed themselves in the line of a procession of caterpillars, all apparently on their way to the lake, and that several were at that moment on her dress. She brushed them off with indifference. “Why should you have fastened on that motive?” she asked.“Was it so unlikely?”“Your friend rejects it.”“Yes. He believes—still believes—nothing of you but what is good.”“Dear Hugh!” she breathed softly. Wareham started with amazement.“You like him still!”“I have never ceased to like him.”For the first time in their talk he had turned his eyes on her face, and met her look full. Sitting there, the lovely lines of her figure curved against the waving rye, the warm brown tints of her hair caught by the sunshine, eyes in which the fire was veiled by long lashes, a mouth slightly drooped and softened; all this close to him, and seen in the divine freshness of the young day, sent an intoxicating throb of delight into his heart. Clinging to a bending purpose, he stammered—“Then—then—”“I shall not marry him. Make him understand this.”He looked away—closed his eyes, reckless whether she saw the movement or not, only conscious that the momentary madness had passed. It sharpened his voice as he said—“Do not expect me to succeed. I told you that you were enigmatical, and I repeat my words. Nothing that you have said alters the cruelty of dismissing poor Hugh in the sudden and unexpected manner you adopted.” She rose, without at first speaking, but stood in the same place until she said slowly—“Perhaps. But it was difficult to act.”The words that were on his lips seemed glued there; by an effort he succeeded at last in bringing them out.“May I tell Hugh to hope?”“Oh, no,” she said composedly. “Certainly not. My mind is absolutely made up. Urge him to think no more of me; above all, not to try to see me. It is quite useless.”Wareham smiled.“He will thank me.”“If he does not, I shall,” she said softly; and again he was conscious of the strange throb which had surprised him before. This time it was slighter, and he did not look or speak, while in another moment she turned and began to climb the stony path.Wareham followed slowly, more perturbed than he would have cared to own. He had failed in discomfiting her, as he had never doubted his power of doing, once they met; and though no blame had been cast on Hugh, he had an angry and unwilling feeling that if it was want of love which had broken off the marriage, the lover himself should have been the first to realise it. Hugh had never suffered him to suppose this could be the cause. He thrust away the feeling irritably. Was he to blame Hugh for the act of a heartless girl?At the top of the path, a very poor old woman stood outside the hut, holding a goat by a cord. Anne, perhaps glad of the interruption, began to talk to her. Wareham stood a few feet off, and she presently came back to him.“She is not so old as she looks. I thought her a hundred, but that was her husband who went down the path just now. I would ask her about the caterpillars, only I haven’t an idea what is Norwegian for caterpillar. Have you?”He was as ignorant.“She is not begging,” Anne continued, “though I am sure she is dreadfully poor, and in spite of all the laws of political economy, I shall give her a krone.”He neither objected nor encouraged; and his self-respect was partly restored by standing aloof in a position of indifference. Anne, smiling, glanced at him between half-shut eyelids, and went off again. He followed. The old woman, almost beside herself with delight, seized her hand, and shook it with rapturous gratitude. Blessings of every kind were invoked, and showered also, undeservedly, upon Wareham. Then she made vigorous signs that Anne was to stay where she was, while she herself hobbled into the hut.“What is to follow?” asked Wareham.Anne shook her head. “I shall certainly wait and see. What can come out of that poor little place? Not!” She turned upon him a horrified face—“Oh, no!”“What?”“I believe—I am sure—she is bringing me a tumbler of goat’s milk! Of all things that I loathe—”Her face was tragic. Wareham was prepared to see her decline the gift, but had to own to injustice. She took the tumbler, drank to the end, and thanked the old woman with a sweet courtesy. If, after it, she moved quickly away, she told Wareham that it was to rescue him from a similar fate. He owned that he could not have been so heroic, and that she had surprised him.“What else was there to do?” she asked simply.Her mood had changed. All the way back to the inn she talked gaily and lightly about the country, their fellow-travellers, and the children they met. He found his conception of her lost, not to be called back, and between this and that grew bewildered. There was nothing for it but to follow her lead, and to set Hugh’s wrongs on one side. They went there easily, and left the ground more pleasantly open, so that he reached the door in eager talk, and, what was worse, with desire for more.He kept silence to the Ravenhills as to his morning, never even telling Mrs Ravenhill of the little cottage with pansied roof, which he had ostensibly sought for her. Something in him, something which he did not choose to admit, but which secretly controlled him, made him averse from admitting any one to the place where this morning he had met Anne: he told himself that he wished to put away the recollection of a painful incident. Painful it should have been, and must be.It was Sunday; a little service was held in the salon. Afterwards, except at meals, Wareham saw no more of Miss Dalrymple. He went out and walked far over the hills with the clergyman, whose wife was at last tired, but whose own energy was unfailing. He carried it into botany, and though Wareham knew nothing of the subject, the triumph with which a rare discovery was hailed gave relish to the walk. Would Millie have liked something different? She made no complaint, but at supper chatted cheerfully of the cottages into which she had penetrated; the children’s shake of the hand for “tak” when she gave them sweets; the strings of fresh, kindly-faced women coming back from their walk of miles to the nearest church. Millie had won the children’s hearts, and the next morning, when, under a sky of tender northern blue, they started on their walk up the pass, they came smiling round, no longer in Sunday scarlet skirts and green aprons, but in work-a-day clothes, to wish her good-morning and farewell.The air was pure and sweet, soft yet exhilarating. The stolkjaerres were to carry only luggage to the head of the pass, Mrs Ravenhill declaring herself ready for the five miles walk. The clergyman and his wife were ahead of them.They went up gradually towards the heights. The mountains fall away on either side, and it is a wide desolate-looking expanse through which the road to Odde curves and zigzags. Patches of snow lie in sun-forgotten gullies, or crown the higher summits. All along the road tall posts are set at intervals to mark the track on those gloomy days of winter when the light of stars shines on one vast sheet of snow, filling the broad valley cup, and smoothing every rough outline. Something of this melancholy solitude remains throughout the year; not a tree breaks the sweep, not a building asserts itself. Walk for hours, and it is unlikely that you meet a human being; the only trace of his activity is the white road which twists upwards. But on a July morning the world under your feet is astir with gladness; the springy turf is starred with myriads of tiny flowers; shrubs of the dwarf cornel peep at you with white brown-eyed blossoms, and the boggy land, through which melting snows are making their way, feed the bright green succulent winter chickweed, or the delicate bells of the false lily of the valley.And it was across this beautiful upland world, making short cuts from zigzag to zigzag, that Millie, as young as the summer and as happy, went her way. Young Grey had, without deliberate arrangement, become a sort of hanger-on of the party, and he was here. From such small adventures as sticking in a bog, or being forced to wade a stream, merriment flowed joyously. Now and then they sat down, rather from wishing to linger than from need of rest; and it was in one of these halts that, their own carriages having reached a higher level, they beheld two others crawling up the road, and presently a shout reached them from a long spindle-legged figure striding towards the group, and waving a stick to arrest attention. Young Grey sprang to his feet and waved energetically in return.“It’s Colonel Martyn, and there’s Miss Dalrymple in the carriole!” he exclaimed. “What a shame that she isn’t up here!” He was darting off, when reflection brought him back with—“You don’t mind my trying to persuade her to come with us, Mrs Ravenhill?”“How should I? By all means persuade her.”He was off like an arrow from a bow, and Mrs Ravenhill praised his good-nature. Wareham chimed in; Millie sat silent.Miss Dalrymple did not leave the little carriage, and young Grey did not return. Colonel Martyn was a melancholy substitute. Naturally it fell to Mrs Ravenhill to cheer him, and Wareham and Millie wandered on together. She avoided touching Anne’s name: he repeated it more than once to himself, that he might impress on his mind a stronger sense of his relief in not having her there. All Millie’s little prettinesses he made an inward note of, and extracted admiration, telling himself that here was a sweeter charm. If such a thing had been possible, it might have seemed that he fashioned them into a shield. But why? And against what?It gave Millie great pleasure to reach the snow-beds, though their edges were little more than crusts, under which trickled out the melting water; and when a sudden shade came between them and the sun, and looking up, they realised for the first time what a bank of cloud was sweeping down from the north, she professed a strong desire to see a storm in these desolate regions. At the top of the pass, where lies a sullen lake, slaty grey now with menacing shadow, the stolkjaerres were waiting, their own and the Martyns’. And, as there opened before them a vast faraway whiteness of snow, unbroken and eternal, a driver, pointing, said the word which they had long expected—“Folgefond!”“Where is Tom?” Mrs Martyn demanded hastily.Mrs Ravenhill reported that he had left her to make his way up a hill, from which he foretold a view. “He said he would overtake us.”“And I am in mortal terror already!” cried his wife. “The skydsgut says we go down a tremendously steep descent, and that a dreadful storm is coming. Thunder frightens me to death.”Consolation was offered, but failed to soothe. A livid shadow which touched the snow set her trembling. She desired Miss Dalrymple to take Colonel Martyn’s place by her side, then looked imploringly at Wareham.“I am ashamed—it is wretched to be such a coward—but Mr Grey is with Mrs Ravenhill—wouldyou mind coming close behind in Anne’s carriole, Mr Wareham? The comfort that it would be!”Wareham perceived that his attendance was resolved upon. He made a slight demur.“Of course if I can be of any use—”“The greatest! You would not condemn me to stay on this dreary spot until Colonel Martyn has finished his survey?”“Ought we to leave him behind?”“Ought he to have deserted us? Pray let us start. Anne, beg Mr Wareham not to delay. There, I am sure I heard thunder!”“One moment.” Wareham made a quick step to where Millie stood, a little aloof.“You bear?” he said, in a low voice. “Are you alarmed?”If there was effort, Millie did not show it. She said cheerily—“Not in the least.”“The woman is absurd, but I suppose one must humour her.”“Of course. Besides, as she says, we have Mr Grey.”“Why couldn’t she appeal to him?”His reluctance contented her, and pacified himself.Waterproofs were hastily pulled on, for the storm advanced rapidly; clouds, black as ink, brooded on the mountains, blotted out the sky, and before they had gone far, poured down torrents of rain. The turmoil was magnificent, and Wareham could not but excuse Mrs Martyn’s fears, when he noted the acute angles of the steep descent, and heard the thunder crashing overhead. He could see her grasping her companion’s arm, and looking round in terrified appeal, but in the hurly-burly, voice was mute. Yet so swift was the rush of the storm, that by the time they reached more level ground, it was fairly over, and, drawing up, Mrs Martyn was able to bewail herself under an outbreak of sunshine.Wareham sprang out of his carriole, and went to theirs.“Safely through it,” he said, smiling.“But it was awful, awful!” moaned Mrs Martyn. “I have just told Anne that my one comfort was in knowing that you were close behind.”“A lightning conductor!” Anne said mockingly. “I believe I should have preferred you at a greater distance, for if we had come to grief, you would certainly have been on the top of us.”“I am afraid you are very wet?” He eyed her anxiously.“Nothing to mind. But the others? Ought they not to be in sight?”He felt a twinge of shame.“I think they ought. I will go back and see.”Mrs Martyn called after him that she was sure they would be here in a moment, and that it was only because their ponies were not so good that they were behind, but he was already running back. She shrugged her shoulders discontentedly.“Manners!” she exclaimed. “Tell the man to go on, Anne. I don’t mean to wait in the road for Mr Wareham’s pleasure.”Anne said coolly—“Why should you? Besides, he belongs to them.”“Belongs? Nonsense! Do you suppose he thinks of marrying that child?” She took off her felt hat, and shook the wet from it.“Why not?”“Absurd! An insignificant little creature, with no attraction except a dimple, which she doesn’t know how to show off. You have only to lift your little finger, Anne, and he would be at your feet.”Anne showed no surprise, and made no disclaimer.“And it would be better than that last foolish affair from which you were only just saved.”She repeated the word slowly. “Saved? And what saved me?”“Oh, don’t be vexed! Nothing, my dear, but your own worldly wisdom, which came to the rescue in the nick of time, as I always knew it would.” Mrs Martyn laughed.The girl had pulled the hood of her coat over her head to protect it from the rain. She let it slip back, and it showed her face grave.“Why must you all talk of my worldly wisdom!” she exclaimed. “Am I so hateful that you can’t give me credit for a good impulse?”“Oh, I think you have impulses—it was no doubt an impulse which landed you in the entanglement to which I was referring—but then, happily, you retract in time. Recollect, you can’t do this all your life. I wish you were safely married.”Anne drew a deep breath, then laughed.“When I am, the somebody, whoever he is, will have to sweep me away like a whirlwind—”“Why: What do you mean?”“I can’t stand the hesitation, the thinking about it. I invariably begin to repent, and ifhehesitates—he is lost.”Mrs Martyn opened her eyes roundly.“So that is your theory? I hardly thought you owned one.”Anne went on as if she had not spoken.“I mean to marry, and it appears that I have not the power of falling in love. If I take the leap I must do it at a gallop. Now do you understand?”“A little. This last man, did he represent a whirlwind? My dear, you let it go too far with him, and he could not be expected, poor fellow, to see the absurdity as we all saw it.”Anne’s eyes darkened.“There was no absurdity. If I had cared a little more, I would have married him.”“If he had happened to have twenty thousand a year instead of one, you mean. No, Anne, no. Nothing short of a brilliant marriage will satisfy you.”Anne looked as if she were going to reply, but checked herself, and turned her head in another direction. Mrs Martyn yawned.
By fits and starts Wareham was an early riser, and the next morning he was out between five and six. By that time the sun was high in the heavens, dews were dried, life—insect and plant-life—was in eager movement. A cottage with a wonderful roof, lying not far from the foot of thefos, had attracted him the day before; he crossed the zigzags, made out a narrow path over short grass, and reached it.
It was a tiny cottage, built partly of stones heaped roughly one on the other, partly of boards of many shapes and sizes, a hut full of odd cranks and changes, deep eaves on one side, a perched-up window on another. But what had attracted Wareham to closer inspection was the roof, lovely with waving grass, sorrel, starlike daisies, and a mass of lilac pansies. It was the subject Mrs Ravenhill would pounce upon to sketch, and he felt a gentle gratitude towards the Ravenhills for the small demands they made upon him. An extraordinarily stony little path flung itself headlong towards the lake, through tall emerald-green rye; he stumbled down a few yards to look back at the hut, standing out against a violet mountain, all the colours sharply insistent in the clear morning air. To his extreme astonishment he saw Miss Dalrymple appear on the crest of the hill, and make her way down towards him. She came lightly and firmly, stepping from stone to stone without hesitation. She wore a white dress, and the impression she gave was of some one younger than he had fancied her. As she drew nearer the impression strengthened by her calling out gaily—
“I have just discovered what it is all like; Sunday morning, the freshness, and the enchanting air. Do you know?”
“No.” He added in spite of himself—“Tell me.”
“The opening to the last act ofParsifal.”
“I dare say. But I am no musician.”
“Nor I. But I suppose one need not be a painter to be reminded of a picture. However, I did not come after you to talk aboutParsifal.” She stood in the narrow pathway looking down upon him, and spoke with extreme directness. “I saw you from the window, and, as I wished to say something, I followed—”
He bowed. She looked beyond him.
“I have known you two days, but of course have heard of you enough, and though you may not believe it, no one wanted you home from India more than I. I fancied from what I gathered that you might understand.”
He steeled himself against the flattering softness of her voice.
“Because I was Hugh Forbes’ friend?”
“Yes,” she returned quickly—“for that reason. You might have saved him suffering. For I am afraid he has suffered.”
“You are afraid. Do you doubt?”
“Not now.”
“Compassion has awakened tardily,” he said, with a laugh, which brought her eyes upon him.
“Wait a moment,” she said suddenly. “The grass on this bank is dry. Let us sit down. Now go on.”
Seated, she was still above, and her dark eyes rested on his face. He found it difficult to say what a moment before had seemed easy. “He will feel his hurt all his life.”
This time her eyebrows went up.
“Oh, no!”
“I know him,” persisted Wareham.
“So I thought. But you are mistaken. His feelings cry out, and are quickly consoled. In a year he will have forgotten them.”
“Your doctrines are convenient.”
She breathed quickly, but appeared to wait for more.
“To break off your engagement without so much as a word as to the why! To refuse even to see him! Caprice could hardly show itself more cruelly.”
Anger leapt into her eyes.
“You allow yourself strong expressions, Mr Wareham!”
“If you do not like them it appears to me that I am the last person to whom you should speak. You may not know what Hugh is to me.”
“If I did not, I should not be talking to you at this moment,” she retorted, flinging back her head. “Should I discuss the subject with an indifferent person?”
It had been good to him to feel the impetus of his own anger, he courted, encouraged it. A secret fear made him dread a softer mood. He kept his eyes upon a butterfly, balancing itself on an ear of rye. As he did not answer, she went on—
“Taking it from your point of view only, for I suppose you would be incapable of a broader outlook, do you consider a lingering end more merciful than one which is short and sharp? I have never for a moment regretted the manner of the doing.”
“You have regretted something,” said Wareham quickly, recognising that she laid a scarcely-perceptible stress on one word, and beginning to think that she intended him to undertake the mission of reconciliation. A drag of reluctance he believed to belong to disapproval.
“Perhaps,” she said, with hesitation.
“Isn’t it a little late?”
It struck him that his question had an offensive air, but she appeared not to have heard it; she was looking beyond him at the glowing lake, and the mountains which bordered the green waters.
“I am ready to own that I was to blame,” she went on, still slowly; “but I shall always think that he ought to have understood.”
“What?”
“What can’t be put into words. Why, I did not care to marry him.”
“You are enigmatical.”
She made an impatient movement.
“At any rate, it should be enough for you that I did not like him well enough.”
“And that is your explanation?”
“What; else?”
“It had occurred to me that the match might not have been considered sufficiently brilliant for the beautiful Miss Dalrymple.” She did not reject the supposition with anger as he perhaps expected, merely shook her head.
“You are like the rest of the world,” she said resignedly, so that he immediately felt shame for his own stupidity, but had nothing to say against it. He took refuge in pointing out that they had placed themselves in the line of a procession of caterpillars, all apparently on their way to the lake, and that several were at that moment on her dress. She brushed them off with indifference. “Why should you have fastened on that motive?” she asked.
“Was it so unlikely?”
“Your friend rejects it.”
“Yes. He believes—still believes—nothing of you but what is good.”
“Dear Hugh!” she breathed softly. Wareham started with amazement.
“You like him still!”
“I have never ceased to like him.”
For the first time in their talk he had turned his eyes on her face, and met her look full. Sitting there, the lovely lines of her figure curved against the waving rye, the warm brown tints of her hair caught by the sunshine, eyes in which the fire was veiled by long lashes, a mouth slightly drooped and softened; all this close to him, and seen in the divine freshness of the young day, sent an intoxicating throb of delight into his heart. Clinging to a bending purpose, he stammered—“Then—then—”
“I shall not marry him. Make him understand this.”
He looked away—closed his eyes, reckless whether she saw the movement or not, only conscious that the momentary madness had passed. It sharpened his voice as he said—“Do not expect me to succeed. I told you that you were enigmatical, and I repeat my words. Nothing that you have said alters the cruelty of dismissing poor Hugh in the sudden and unexpected manner you adopted.” She rose, without at first speaking, but stood in the same place until she said slowly—“Perhaps. But it was difficult to act.”
The words that were on his lips seemed glued there; by an effort he succeeded at last in bringing them out.
“May I tell Hugh to hope?”
“Oh, no,” she said composedly. “Certainly not. My mind is absolutely made up. Urge him to think no more of me; above all, not to try to see me. It is quite useless.”
Wareham smiled.
“He will thank me.”
“If he does not, I shall,” she said softly; and again he was conscious of the strange throb which had surprised him before. This time it was slighter, and he did not look or speak, while in another moment she turned and began to climb the stony path.
Wareham followed slowly, more perturbed than he would have cared to own. He had failed in discomfiting her, as he had never doubted his power of doing, once they met; and though no blame had been cast on Hugh, he had an angry and unwilling feeling that if it was want of love which had broken off the marriage, the lover himself should have been the first to realise it. Hugh had never suffered him to suppose this could be the cause. He thrust away the feeling irritably. Was he to blame Hugh for the act of a heartless girl?
At the top of the path, a very poor old woman stood outside the hut, holding a goat by a cord. Anne, perhaps glad of the interruption, began to talk to her. Wareham stood a few feet off, and she presently came back to him.
“She is not so old as she looks. I thought her a hundred, but that was her husband who went down the path just now. I would ask her about the caterpillars, only I haven’t an idea what is Norwegian for caterpillar. Have you?”
He was as ignorant.
“She is not begging,” Anne continued, “though I am sure she is dreadfully poor, and in spite of all the laws of political economy, I shall give her a krone.”
He neither objected nor encouraged; and his self-respect was partly restored by standing aloof in a position of indifference. Anne, smiling, glanced at him between half-shut eyelids, and went off again. He followed. The old woman, almost beside herself with delight, seized her hand, and shook it with rapturous gratitude. Blessings of every kind were invoked, and showered also, undeservedly, upon Wareham. Then she made vigorous signs that Anne was to stay where she was, while she herself hobbled into the hut.
“What is to follow?” asked Wareham.
Anne shook her head. “I shall certainly wait and see. What can come out of that poor little place? Not!” She turned upon him a horrified face—“Oh, no!”
“What?”
“I believe—I am sure—she is bringing me a tumbler of goat’s milk! Of all things that I loathe—”
Her face was tragic. Wareham was prepared to see her decline the gift, but had to own to injustice. She took the tumbler, drank to the end, and thanked the old woman with a sweet courtesy. If, after it, she moved quickly away, she told Wareham that it was to rescue him from a similar fate. He owned that he could not have been so heroic, and that she had surprised him.
“What else was there to do?” she asked simply.
Her mood had changed. All the way back to the inn she talked gaily and lightly about the country, their fellow-travellers, and the children they met. He found his conception of her lost, not to be called back, and between this and that grew bewildered. There was nothing for it but to follow her lead, and to set Hugh’s wrongs on one side. They went there easily, and left the ground more pleasantly open, so that he reached the door in eager talk, and, what was worse, with desire for more.
He kept silence to the Ravenhills as to his morning, never even telling Mrs Ravenhill of the little cottage with pansied roof, which he had ostensibly sought for her. Something in him, something which he did not choose to admit, but which secretly controlled him, made him averse from admitting any one to the place where this morning he had met Anne: he told himself that he wished to put away the recollection of a painful incident. Painful it should have been, and must be.
It was Sunday; a little service was held in the salon. Afterwards, except at meals, Wareham saw no more of Miss Dalrymple. He went out and walked far over the hills with the clergyman, whose wife was at last tired, but whose own energy was unfailing. He carried it into botany, and though Wareham knew nothing of the subject, the triumph with which a rare discovery was hailed gave relish to the walk. Would Millie have liked something different? She made no complaint, but at supper chatted cheerfully of the cottages into which she had penetrated; the children’s shake of the hand for “tak” when she gave them sweets; the strings of fresh, kindly-faced women coming back from their walk of miles to the nearest church. Millie had won the children’s hearts, and the next morning, when, under a sky of tender northern blue, they started on their walk up the pass, they came smiling round, no longer in Sunday scarlet skirts and green aprons, but in work-a-day clothes, to wish her good-morning and farewell.
The air was pure and sweet, soft yet exhilarating. The stolkjaerres were to carry only luggage to the head of the pass, Mrs Ravenhill declaring herself ready for the five miles walk. The clergyman and his wife were ahead of them.
They went up gradually towards the heights. The mountains fall away on either side, and it is a wide desolate-looking expanse through which the road to Odde curves and zigzags. Patches of snow lie in sun-forgotten gullies, or crown the higher summits. All along the road tall posts are set at intervals to mark the track on those gloomy days of winter when the light of stars shines on one vast sheet of snow, filling the broad valley cup, and smoothing every rough outline. Something of this melancholy solitude remains throughout the year; not a tree breaks the sweep, not a building asserts itself. Walk for hours, and it is unlikely that you meet a human being; the only trace of his activity is the white road which twists upwards. But on a July morning the world under your feet is astir with gladness; the springy turf is starred with myriads of tiny flowers; shrubs of the dwarf cornel peep at you with white brown-eyed blossoms, and the boggy land, through which melting snows are making their way, feed the bright green succulent winter chickweed, or the delicate bells of the false lily of the valley.
And it was across this beautiful upland world, making short cuts from zigzag to zigzag, that Millie, as young as the summer and as happy, went her way. Young Grey had, without deliberate arrangement, become a sort of hanger-on of the party, and he was here. From such small adventures as sticking in a bog, or being forced to wade a stream, merriment flowed joyously. Now and then they sat down, rather from wishing to linger than from need of rest; and it was in one of these halts that, their own carriages having reached a higher level, they beheld two others crawling up the road, and presently a shout reached them from a long spindle-legged figure striding towards the group, and waving a stick to arrest attention. Young Grey sprang to his feet and waved energetically in return.
“It’s Colonel Martyn, and there’s Miss Dalrymple in the carriole!” he exclaimed. “What a shame that she isn’t up here!” He was darting off, when reflection brought him back with—“You don’t mind my trying to persuade her to come with us, Mrs Ravenhill?”
“How should I? By all means persuade her.”
He was off like an arrow from a bow, and Mrs Ravenhill praised his good-nature. Wareham chimed in; Millie sat silent.
Miss Dalrymple did not leave the little carriage, and young Grey did not return. Colonel Martyn was a melancholy substitute. Naturally it fell to Mrs Ravenhill to cheer him, and Wareham and Millie wandered on together. She avoided touching Anne’s name: he repeated it more than once to himself, that he might impress on his mind a stronger sense of his relief in not having her there. All Millie’s little prettinesses he made an inward note of, and extracted admiration, telling himself that here was a sweeter charm. If such a thing had been possible, it might have seemed that he fashioned them into a shield. But why? And against what?
It gave Millie great pleasure to reach the snow-beds, though their edges were little more than crusts, under which trickled out the melting water; and when a sudden shade came between them and the sun, and looking up, they realised for the first time what a bank of cloud was sweeping down from the north, she professed a strong desire to see a storm in these desolate regions. At the top of the pass, where lies a sullen lake, slaty grey now with menacing shadow, the stolkjaerres were waiting, their own and the Martyns’. And, as there opened before them a vast faraway whiteness of snow, unbroken and eternal, a driver, pointing, said the word which they had long expected—“Folgefond!”
“Where is Tom?” Mrs Martyn demanded hastily.
Mrs Ravenhill reported that he had left her to make his way up a hill, from which he foretold a view. “He said he would overtake us.”
“And I am in mortal terror already!” cried his wife. “The skydsgut says we go down a tremendously steep descent, and that a dreadful storm is coming. Thunder frightens me to death.”
Consolation was offered, but failed to soothe. A livid shadow which touched the snow set her trembling. She desired Miss Dalrymple to take Colonel Martyn’s place by her side, then looked imploringly at Wareham.
“I am ashamed—it is wretched to be such a coward—but Mr Grey is with Mrs Ravenhill—wouldyou mind coming close behind in Anne’s carriole, Mr Wareham? The comfort that it would be!”
Wareham perceived that his attendance was resolved upon. He made a slight demur.
“Of course if I can be of any use—”
“The greatest! You would not condemn me to stay on this dreary spot until Colonel Martyn has finished his survey?”
“Ought we to leave him behind?”
“Ought he to have deserted us? Pray let us start. Anne, beg Mr Wareham not to delay. There, I am sure I heard thunder!”
“One moment.” Wareham made a quick step to where Millie stood, a little aloof.
“You bear?” he said, in a low voice. “Are you alarmed?”
If there was effort, Millie did not show it. She said cheerily—
“Not in the least.”
“The woman is absurd, but I suppose one must humour her.”
“Of course. Besides, as she says, we have Mr Grey.”
“Why couldn’t she appeal to him?”
His reluctance contented her, and pacified himself.
Waterproofs were hastily pulled on, for the storm advanced rapidly; clouds, black as ink, brooded on the mountains, blotted out the sky, and before they had gone far, poured down torrents of rain. The turmoil was magnificent, and Wareham could not but excuse Mrs Martyn’s fears, when he noted the acute angles of the steep descent, and heard the thunder crashing overhead. He could see her grasping her companion’s arm, and looking round in terrified appeal, but in the hurly-burly, voice was mute. Yet so swift was the rush of the storm, that by the time they reached more level ground, it was fairly over, and, drawing up, Mrs Martyn was able to bewail herself under an outbreak of sunshine.
Wareham sprang out of his carriole, and went to theirs.
“Safely through it,” he said, smiling.
“But it was awful, awful!” moaned Mrs Martyn. “I have just told Anne that my one comfort was in knowing that you were close behind.”
“A lightning conductor!” Anne said mockingly. “I believe I should have preferred you at a greater distance, for if we had come to grief, you would certainly have been on the top of us.”
“I am afraid you are very wet?” He eyed her anxiously.
“Nothing to mind. But the others? Ought they not to be in sight?”
He felt a twinge of shame.
“I think they ought. I will go back and see.”
Mrs Martyn called after him that she was sure they would be here in a moment, and that it was only because their ponies were not so good that they were behind, but he was already running back. She shrugged her shoulders discontentedly.
“Manners!” she exclaimed. “Tell the man to go on, Anne. I don’t mean to wait in the road for Mr Wareham’s pleasure.”
Anne said coolly—
“Why should you? Besides, he belongs to them.”
“Belongs? Nonsense! Do you suppose he thinks of marrying that child?” She took off her felt hat, and shook the wet from it.
“Why not?”
“Absurd! An insignificant little creature, with no attraction except a dimple, which she doesn’t know how to show off. You have only to lift your little finger, Anne, and he would be at your feet.”
Anne showed no surprise, and made no disclaimer.
“And it would be better than that last foolish affair from which you were only just saved.”
She repeated the word slowly. “Saved? And what saved me?”
“Oh, don’t be vexed! Nothing, my dear, but your own worldly wisdom, which came to the rescue in the nick of time, as I always knew it would.” Mrs Martyn laughed.
The girl had pulled the hood of her coat over her head to protect it from the rain. She let it slip back, and it showed her face grave.
“Why must you all talk of my worldly wisdom!” she exclaimed. “Am I so hateful that you can’t give me credit for a good impulse?”
“Oh, I think you have impulses—it was no doubt an impulse which landed you in the entanglement to which I was referring—but then, happily, you retract in time. Recollect, you can’t do this all your life. I wish you were safely married.”
Anne drew a deep breath, then laughed.
“When I am, the somebody, whoever he is, will have to sweep me away like a whirlwind—”
“Why: What do you mean?”
“I can’t stand the hesitation, the thinking about it. I invariably begin to repent, and ifhehesitates—he is lost.”
Mrs Martyn opened her eyes roundly.
“So that is your theory? I hardly thought you owned one.”
Anne went on as if she had not spoken.
“I mean to marry, and it appears that I have not the power of falling in love. If I take the leap I must do it at a gallop. Now do you understand?”
“A little. This last man, did he represent a whirlwind? My dear, you let it go too far with him, and he could not be expected, poor fellow, to see the absurdity as we all saw it.”
Anne’s eyes darkened.
“There was no absurdity. If I had cared a little more, I would have married him.”
“If he had happened to have twenty thousand a year instead of one, you mean. No, Anne, no. Nothing short of a brilliant marriage will satisfy you.”
Anne looked as if she were going to reply, but checked herself, and turned her head in another direction. Mrs Martyn yawned.
Chapter Five.The Skittishness of Fate.Before Wareham reached the companions he had deserted, it was evident that something was amiss, for both Mrs Ravenhill and Millie were on foot, and their skydsgut led the pony. Millie, however, called out to him that no harm had happened, and he then saw that Colonel Martyn was with them.“What has gone wrong?” he asked, as he came up. “There’s a very disorganised look about you.”“We were nearly disorganised altogether,” said Mrs Ravenhill gravely, for she was not well pleased at Wareham’s leaving them. “We might have been, if Colonel Martyn had not come to the rescue.”Wareham asked what had happened.“I suppose the man drove too fast, and that fierce clap of thunder startled the pony, for he went over the edge.”“Good heavens!”Colonel Martyn interposed to explain that fortunately the descent was not sheer, and the ground was soft. Moreover, the skydsgut jumped off, and held on like death.“Mr Grey too. And cut his hand,” Millie broke in, with a grateful glance at the young man. He turned red.“Oh, that’s nothing.”“Well, as nobody will accept the honours of the situation, I shall take them myself,” said the girl, laughing. “Know then, Mr Wareham, that mother and I showed immense presence of mind in refusing to be shot out when the jerk came, and in scrambling over the back when we realised that we were still there.”“Then?”“Then the pony was unharnessed, the stolkjaerre dragged back, and—here we are!”She spoke lightly, but she was white and trembling. Colonel Martyn inquired where his people were.“I left them in the road below,” said Wareham briefly.“Then we’ll sort ourselves again, and I’ll go on.”As he strode away, Mrs Ravenhill called after him, “Thank you for your help.”“He enjoyed it,” said Millie. “It was the nearest approach he could have had to a steeplechase, and has quite raised his spirits.” Wareham felt so unconscionably guilty, that it might be supposed something else was really scourging him, and using his small neglect for a lash. He murmured—“I am thankful he was here. If I had dreamed of real danger—”“There was as much for the others as for us,” said Millie reasonably. “Besides, I believe Mr Grey and the skydsgut were equal to the emergency. Poor Mr Grey was the only sufferer.”“Oh, I’m all right,” said the young man. “I say, Mr Wareham, was Miss Dalrymple frightened?”“Not that I know of,” answered Wareham shortly.Mrs Ravenhill raised her eyebrows at the tone.“Now, if you and Mr Grey like to drive on before us,” she said, “Millie and I are quite equal to taking care of ourselves on level ground.”“I see no reason for changing.”His voice was sharp, and he knew it and was vexed by it, the truth being that he was out of sorts with himself and the world. Fate, he felt, had played him a skittish trick, in thrusting him into companionship with the one woman whom he would have avoided; nor, spur his steed as he might, could he get away into the old track. He recalled his deliberate judgment of Anne’s character, but it rose a bloodless ghost, behind a living, glowing, dark face, with a look of reproach in the beautiful eyes. Avaunt, sorceress! How should beauty outweigh friendship? Can a fleeting fancy shake solid foundations? The very thought pricked, scourged him. Even if he extricated himself from his false position by the simple method of breaking away from his companions at Odde, he was wroth at having to admit that he could not easily regain his self-respect.Young Grey babbled youthfully about Miss Dalrymple’s charms, as the two men drove along, but this was a mere outside accident to which Wareham was indifferent. Barring Hugh, what others thought mattered nothing; it was himself he arraigned with the reluctance of a strong character. He answered briefly yes and no, happily sufficient for his companion, who was content to talk.The storm had vanished, leaving an added beauty, on either side a land flashing light from raindrops on which the sun shone brilliantly, a land of bold heights, leaping torrents, and sweet recesses of bedded moss, out of which peeped wild strawberries and a hundred delicate flowers, while far up against the soft blue of the sky gleamed the unbroken whiteness of the snows.The others were overtaken at Seligsted, a small roadside inn, crowded round with unharnessed stolkjaerres, and besieged by ravenous travellers. Willing but inefficient hosts lost their heads under press of custom, and tourists stormed in vain, while the young girl-waiters grew sullen under their reproaches. The Martyns, arriving earlier, had managed to secure some food in a balcony; the others, resigning themselves to a long wait, strolled to the river, sat on the grass, and looked at the blue cleft in the hills through which they had passed, or in the opposite direction, where the country broadened into tamer beauties.When they got back, the most irate of the tourists were driving away in a carriage and pair, a red-faced father, and two or three black-eyed girls, half ashamed, half proud of his brow-beating. “Hurry up! Why the devil can’t they understand plain English!” he was shouting. The men standing by looked at him with calm disapproval; an old man, with a grave, refined face, shrugged his shoulders silently.There is extraordinary variety in Norwegian roads, variety which is beyond word-painting, and, to a large degree, depends upon the cultivation which the eye brings to bear upon it. Admiration rushes easily after vast outlines, and these are lacking, for in Norway the mountains are of no great height, and when you are among them the lower masses block out the summits. Subtler charm lies in the variety, the infinite multitude of tints and shadings with which the sun is always painting hill and sky, the colours which the granite yields to its radiant touch, so that on these summer evenings the barest piece of rock is a wonder of soft and rich colouring. Then, perhaps, where the shadow deepens, afosflings itself down, an aerial spirit, here spreading like a veil, there cleaving the purple gloom with a silver flash. Hardly had the Espelandfos been passed, when the ponies instinctively stopped, and the skydsguts, springing off, announced the Lotefos.They climbed a steep path, and, passing a small summer inn, a great roaring mass of water, broken into three falls, and rushing and seething in an indescribable tumult of beauty, was before them. Clambering from point to point, whichever way the eye turned, it fell upon clouds of spray, upon swift giddy leaps made by the clear beryl-coloured water before it was churned into foam by the force of its descent. Great wet rocks, shining metallic, stood erect in the midst of racing waters, waving grasses caught in the eddies were washed relentlessly, never a pause allowed in which to straighten themselves, and over the magnificent turmoil a rainbow arched serenely. Young Grey sprang into perilous places; Millie gathered trails of the delicate Linnaea Borealis, slender northerner which the great botanist chose for his own; Mrs Ravenhill and Wareham strolled down to the carriages, and leaving the Lotefos behind by a road which soon began to edge itself along a lake, they drove on to Odde.“Civilisation and late dinners!” sighed Millie, as they got out at the cheerful door of the Hardanger.“Shops!” groaned young Grey.“Excellent things, each of them,” retorted Mrs Ravenhill cheerfully. “I wonder how long it will be before you all find yourselves in that shop?”It was not long. Every one is attracted by the furs, the carvings, the silver buttons, the soft eider rugs with their beautiful green duck-breast borderings. In the sweet summer dusk it is pleasant to stroll about the little town, buy cherries from the men who bring their baskets of ripe fruit, and turn into this store of Norwegian handiwork. It is more enchanting to go to the front of the hotel, where the fjord runs up between snow-flecked hills, and ends. Grave evening purples steal over the land; in the sky, and reflected in the faithful waters, daffodil and primrose tints melt into each other. A yacht lay in a sea of gold, her fine delicate lines repeated below. A light shone out. Some one stood at the top of the landing steps, looking at the water. Wareham hesitated, then quickly walked up to her.“I expected to overtake you at the Lotefos,” he said abruptly.She did not turn her head.“Are you grateful to me for having spared you the encounter?”“If I were, should I be here?”“Very likely. I do not know why you have come.”“I venture to bring a suggestion.”“More likely a reproach,” she said. “I believe you are determined to force a quarrel upon me.”“You misjudge me—indeed you misjudge me!” He spoke warmly, then hesitated. “Certainly we need not quarrel,” he said slowly. “The fates have flung us together, and it appears to me that for a time at least we might leave the past behind us. Forbes is my friend. I cannot think that he was well treated—your friends, doubtless, would take another view. But if we are not likely to agree on this one subject, there are, happily, others in the world to talk about. Come. Do you agree?”She did not immediately answer. He found himself speculating anxiously what her words would be. When they dropped from her at last, he hung on the low tones—“I don’t think that two can talk with comfort on even the most indifferent subjects when there is total absence of trust between them.”“Is that our position?” he asked uneasily.“Is it not? I have taken trouble to give you an explanation, and you do not believe a word of it.”“Do not let us discuss that matter.”“It is there,” said Anne.Both were silent. A boat came towards them, shattering the tranquil golden lights of the fjord; a few strong strokes brought it up to the landing-place, and half-a-dozen English sprang out, two young girls among them. They looked tired, carried alpenstocks, and called out a gay good-night to the rowers. They had just come back from a hard climb to the Skjaeggedalsfos, and were almost too weary to be enthusiastic. The boat pushed away again into the shining waters, the sound of the oars died into silence. Presently Anne spoke, ignoring their last words.“The difference between north and south is curiously strong—forgive a truism! What I meant to remark was the different call they make upon oneself. Here there is a good deal of enjoyment to be met with, and it is exactly the opposite kind of enjoyment to what one finds in Italy or Greece. Do you feel this? Since we landed, I believe I have hardly thought a thought or encountered an idea.”“My own sensation,” Wareham answered eagerly. “It has been like taking out one’s brains, and leaving them with one’s plate at the bankers. The odd thing is, that I don’t miss them.” He laughed.She went on—“I have wondered more than once how long it would take to settle down to existence in one of those isolated little villages of two or three houses each which we passed on the Suldal lake?”“With some of us I suspect the savage would take the upper hand more readily and more rapidly than we suppose possible.”“The brain would not rebel?”“You would have to admit glorious physical excitement.”Anne shivered.“I cannot realise the possibility of any excitement at all in those desolate homes.”“Can’t you? I, on the contrary, picture a good deal. Chiefly gloomy, I allow. Think of living for ever next door to your worst enemy—or your best friend! Which would be the most unbearable?”She took no notice of this cynical speech.“I could understand the life being endurable in summer, but in winter—winter! And such a winter, with its snows and darkness!”He demurred.“So far as I can make out, winter is the most sociable time of the year. You forget that lakes and fjords become the great means of communication; in summer, houses are isolated, owing to the want of roads, but in winter the frozen water serves in their place. No, depend upon it, they have a good time when once they can skate, or strike away on the great snow-shoes you saw by the roadside to-day.”“But the darkness?”“Well, one gets used to that in London. I don’t know that we can talk. Besides, they have a great pull over us in the stars. I assure you that all the men who have said anything about it speak of the winter with evident satisfaction.”“They know nothing better,” Anne said incredulously.“The root of all satisfaction,” Wareham observed.She glanced at him quickly, bit her lip, and walked on. He found himself admiring her tall slender figure, and the poise of her small head thrown into relief by the glassy water. He had dropped the fiction that she was not beautiful, and retreated behind a yet feebler barricade, the pretence that hers was not the beauty he extolled. He had ceased to wonder that it served for Hugh.At the end of the landing-place Anne turned. Wareham was immediately behind, and she faced him as she had not yet done. She spoke, too, more softly—“You leave to-morrow?”He flushed and hesitated.“I—I am not sure. Possibly.”Her eyes rested on his for a moment, and moved away. She said, indifferently—“Here is Colonel Martyn.”Colonel Martyn was charged with hope. He had met the party from the Skjaeggedalsfos, and report of certain difficulties owing to a fall of rock had fired his athletic soul. Wareham added that thefositself was worth a visit, but this idea he rejected.“See one, see all,” he declared. “A hurly-burly of water, and no fishing—there you have it. But there might be a chance of a climb getting there, and at any rate it must be better than loafing about this wretched little hole. Anne, will you come?”“No, thank you. I prefer loafing.”“Will you?”—to Wareham.“I don’t mind. I’ve been once, and should not be sorry to see it again.”“Eight. And if you know the lingo, perhaps you’ll make the arrangements. Better change your mind, Anne.”“No. My mind is set upon easier pleasures. Where’s Blanche?”“You needn’t ask.” Colonel Martyn’s gloom returned. “Buying Brummagem goods in the shop.”“I shouldn’t wonder if you believed the fall came from Brummagem too,” Anne retorted. “Well, I’m going to help her. Good-night.”“You’d better be sure you know how to work your fire-escape before you go to bed,” he called after her. “It’s a common occurrence for the hotels to be burnt down once a month.”Young Grey, torn between Anne and adventure, felt as if adventure might possess a qualifying power, and went off with the other men early the next morning. Millie tried to get her mother to slip away to the Buarbrae glacier, but Mrs Ravenhill was tired, and disinclined for a long climb. She agreed to go with Millie to a spot which they had remarked the day before, where a river flung itself out of the lake, but she promised Mrs Martyn to join her after luncheon. They captured a stolkjaerre, and drove to their point; then, dismissing it, and leaving the dusty road, turned into a wood that belonged to a fairy tale, where low trees stood singly in the grass, and where every now and then they saw through a break the blue Hardanger hills, rising out of the fjord, and topped with snow; or, on the other side, a silver lake, with mountains stretching, fold after fold, into the solemn distance. Here and there a great rounded granite boulder cropped up, tossed out of its place by Titan wrath; one little farm nestled amid cherry-trees, but the silence was profound, and hardly a living creature passed; only a child or two, then a quaint old couple with a dog. The woman was tall, with a sweet dignified face; the man, bent and aged, carried a Hardanger fiddle. They stopped and chatted readily, and after they had talked awhile, at a sign from his wife, the man began to play his fiddle. It was an odd jangle with no tune, but somehow the old couple, the granite rocks, the wild peasant music, seemed to belong to each other, and to the country.Mother and daughter slowly walked home, past a picturesque saw-mill, bringing sighs from Mrs Ravenhill, and through fields where hay-making filled the air with fresh fragrance. Each field has its hurdles on which the flower-scented grass hangs drying. When they reached the first outlying house, Mrs Ravenhill put a question which had once or twice fluttered on her lips.“When is Mr Wareham going to leave us?”There was a moment’s pause before Millie answered—“Is he going?”“I suppose so. From what he told me I believed he intended going off on his own account as soon as he had landed us at Odde.”“Well, he hasn’t gone,” said the girl, looking straight before her.Her mother glanced, but could not see her face.“I shall have a talk with him to-morrow,” said Mrs Ravenhill, in a decided tone. “He may consider himself bound to us, and I am sure I should be vexed beyond measure if he imagined anything of the sort. It would be most annoying. You see that, don’t you, Millie?” she added incautiously.“What am I to see?” asked Millie, with a laugh. “Mr Wareham bound with cords to you or to me, or to Miss Dalrymple—which is it?—and unable to extricate himself? I’m not sure that the picture is as pathetic as you imagine, but what will you do about it? Implore him to consider himself a free man? You should get Miss Dalrymple to speak for you.”Mrs Ravenhill was a little offended.“What has Miss Dalrymple to do with it? You told me he disliked her.”The girl did not answer the question; she began to talk to a pony standing in a cart by the roadside. Then came a shop, and doubt as to the purchase of an ermine purse; after that, hurry for thetable-d’hôte. An English yacht lay in the fjord; her people had come on shore, and were lunching at the Hardanger, next to the Martyns. Millie, who had for her neighbour a clever young Siamese prince who was travelling with a Danish tutor, hoped that Miss Dalrymple might select them for her afternoon companions. But, luncheon over, she made straight for Millie.“You and I will escape from all these people,” she said, with a smile which would have sent young Grey to her feet. Millie was unaffected.“It is very hot,” she said.“Here, very. But I have a cool plan in my head. Please come.”It would have been ungracious to refuse, and pre-engagements were not to be pleaded in Odde. In an hours time the two girls were sitting in one of the light boats, pointed at each end, and being rowed across the fjord to the opposite side, where a slender waterfall is seen from Odde, dancing down through purple and green woods. The fjord was still as glass, each line of the English yacht repeated itself in the opal waters, two children with scarlet caps hung fishing over the side of the vessel. Anne lay lazily back, looking at everything through half-closed lids. Everything included Millie.Millie asked at last where they were going.“To a farm. Does that please you?”She did not answer the question.“I can’t see anything like a farm.”“Nor I,” said Anne, idly turning her head. “We must take it on trust. Old Mr Campbell tells me such a place exists, and hinted at cherries and milk.”“But thefos?”“To be crossed by a bridge. You see I have got my bearings.”Apparently, indeed, she and Millie had changed natures, for she rained talk and laughter upon the younger girl. And she showed no sign of being daunted by the steepness of the climb when they had landed and were struggling up the bank. The path they sought eluded them; presently they found themselves in a thick-growing grassy wood of low trees, through which they pushed a devious way. It was green, fresh, lovely; the roar of the waterfall was in their ears, now and again they met some impetuous little stream, which had rushed away from the greater fall to make its own wilful way to the fjord. Delightful assurance of solitude, cool deepness of grass, stones sheeted with moss and wet with spray, clear dash of waters, interlacing boughs through which sun-shafts shot down, lured them to breathless heights—lured Anne, rather, for Millie dragged. It was Anne who made the ventures, Anne who held aside hindering branches, Anne whose voice came laughing back to vow that the labyrinth grew more tangled, Anne who at last dropped by the side of a baby stream babbling over its stones, and bade Millie rest. She could not say enough of the fascinations of the spot.“They will come back boasting of their fall with the hopeless name, only because it is big. What has size to do with beauty? This thing is perfect. Look at its curves, and its swirls, and its pools, and its grasses, and its small airs!”Millie roused herself to admire.“You are tired?” Anne asked.She owned that she had walked far that morning.“And this place doesn’t rest you as it does me?”“I don’t know.”Anne settled herself against a sapling.“I feel as if I had reached the one breathing-place of my life. You don’t know that sensation.”“Do you think you would like it—often?” asked Millie.“Certainly not. It is liking it so much which is so unexpected to me. I am of the world—worldly. And to find myself exhilarated and delighted is like growing young again.”Millie had to smile.“You are not so old!”“Aged!—in experience. As for years, they don’t count, or I dare say we might find that I am not so much older than you as you—as every one—would imagine. But I have lived.” Did that mean she had loved? Millie coloured at the charge of inexperience, galling to youth.“You can know little about me,” she protested.“Next to nothing. Tell me. You live alone with your mother?”This was admitted.“You are not engaged to any one?”“Oh, no!”“And have never tried that position?”“No, oh, no!”“That shocks you,” said Anne, with a laugh. “My dear, it often happens to me.”“Not seriously?”“Quite seriously.” She leant back and watched Millie’s face with amusement. “Are you disgusted?”“Why—why do you do it? I can’t understand.”“It comes somehow, often really without my intending. It’s the way of my kind, I suppose. For one thing, how is one to know a man at all until one is engaged? And so often I can’t tell beforehand whether I like them well enough or not. As you see, it has generally ended by my discovering that it would be intolerable. I don’t pretend that there have not been other reasons,” she added frankly. “Riches sometimes fly away on nearer approach.”“And that would be enough?”“Oh, yes.”“You think nothing of your promise?” Anne was looking at her through half-closed eyes and smiling.“I am not sure that I don’t think too much. It becomes unendurable. When I am married it will have to be in a whirlwind. No hesitations, no hanging back. So much I can tell him. The rest he will have to find out. Stormed, really stormed, I should be afraid of myself.”She fell into silence. There was no sound except the rush of the water, not so much as the chirp of a bird. At last she looked round again.“So you see—me voici!—Anne Dalrymple.”Millie cried out—“I am glad I am not a London beauty!”“There are more disagreeable positions,” Anne said reflectively. “Now, if you had said a London beauty with a heart—”“Have you no heart?” Millie asked impulsively.“Not I! What does duty for it is a poor little chippy dried-up thing, which may be reckoned on never to give me an ache or a pain.” She sprang to her feet. “Come! The farm! I am not going to let you off the farm.”No bridge could they find, and there was nothing for it but to retrace their steps. Down the hill-side, through the entangling greenery, they plunged, breathless and laughing, and found themselves at last overlooking the fjord, without any means of crossing thefos. Anne, undaunted, spied a boat on the fjord rowed by a boy; her signals brought it to shore. The boy readily agreed to row them to a higher point, but, this carried out, he refused to wait for them.“Never mind! We are here!” Anne cried, springing out. She followed a rough path, and presently pounced on wild strawberries.A man was digging. Seeing them gathering strawberries, he made signs that they were welcome to the cherries which hung temptingly from his trees. He bent the boughs down; Anne picked and brought crimson handfuls to Millie lying on the grass. The warm sun shone, a little stone-chat scolded from a rail, it was all calm, restful, and fragrant with hay. They went up the narrow path towards the farm; the way was overhung with cherry-trees, and a vagrant stream of water, which played truant from the fall, dashed down, flinging lovely spray over the waving grasses. The farm dominated the fjord; fold after fold of blue hills stretched away, the white water at their feet, and desolate-looking islands staring up at the sunshine, which scarcely softened their black outlines. Anne’s mood changed, she grew silent, and silently they went their way down the little path, till they reached the man still digging his patch of ground.Millie, tired, inquired how she proposed getting home.“He will take us in his boat. I asked him as I picked the cherries.”Going back, it appeared as if the waters had grown yet more still and glassy. Each patch of snow, each outburst of green, each violet shadow, sent a lovely repetition of itself into the world below. The boat slipped dreamily through them, only the lap of the oars, and the faint and distant murmur of the waterfall, breaking the silence. One after another the little green promontories dropped behind, the white church of Odde and the clustering houses took form, a boat passed them. Anne looked up.“This is not the time for commonplaces, yet they haunt me,” she said impatiently. “I—I—I—I am the commonplace, and I have stumbled into a thick mist of doubts and questionings. Tell me, are you always direct? and certain that right is right and wrong wrong?”Millie coloured, hesitated. Such an appeal confused her. Anne went on—“My rules are not so ready. Something else steps in and hoodwinks me, though I dare say it is true that I offer my eyes for the bandage. What I complain of is that when I do my best to walk straight—according to my lights—I am the more cried out upon. Your Mr Wareham, now, acts Rhadamanthus, yet what does he know? How can he pretend to judge what motives influenced me, and whether they were bad or good? Has he discussed them with you?”The question came like a bolt; the answer was a brief “No.”“No?” Anne’s eyes were fastened on the girl; Millie’s honesty gave unwilling explanation.“Never your motives. He said once that Mr Forbes was his friend, and that the breaking off of your engagement was not his fault. He said this before—”“Before?”“Before he knew you.”Anne meditated. Her eyes softened.“I suppose it is the everlasting I—I—I, again, which makes me imagine that people talk when they are not even thinking of me. However, it is true that he misjudges me, I had it from his own lips, and I am sorry, foolishly sorry, because he is a man—” She broke off and laughed—“Somehow my vanity would make me wish to appear at one’s best before him. Does that shock you again?”“Why should it?”“I couldn’t say why, but I am for ever shocking people unintentionally. You have not got over my talking of my engagements, yet—theydon’t judge me harshly, any one of those men would marry me to-morrow. Yes, even Mr Wareham’s friend, in spite of Mr Wareham!”Women, however unsophisticated, possess the gift of intuition. Millie divined that Miss Dalrymple wished her to talk of Wareham, and was ready to profess a spasmodic anger for the pleasure of hearing him defended. She was reluctant and ashamed of her reluctance. The shame stung her into crying—“Why do you talk of Mr Wareham’s judging you harshly? You must know very well that if it ever was so, he has forgiven you.”A smile began to play about Anne’s mouth.“Do you think so?”Millie flung her a look.“Well—I hope you are right. He has been so stiff that it would be a victory to bring him round. We shall see. Meanwhile, here we are at Odde; and what am I to offer to our boatman?—boat-master too, I suspect.”“Ask him.”The man smiled, shook his head, wanted nothing. The equivalent of a sixpence was all he would at last consent to receive.Millie dragged a heavy heart up-stairs, and Anne went in pursuit of Mrs Martyn.
Before Wareham reached the companions he had deserted, it was evident that something was amiss, for both Mrs Ravenhill and Millie were on foot, and their skydsgut led the pony. Millie, however, called out to him that no harm had happened, and he then saw that Colonel Martyn was with them.
“What has gone wrong?” he asked, as he came up. “There’s a very disorganised look about you.”
“We were nearly disorganised altogether,” said Mrs Ravenhill gravely, for she was not well pleased at Wareham’s leaving them. “We might have been, if Colonel Martyn had not come to the rescue.”
Wareham asked what had happened.
“I suppose the man drove too fast, and that fierce clap of thunder startled the pony, for he went over the edge.”
“Good heavens!”
Colonel Martyn interposed to explain that fortunately the descent was not sheer, and the ground was soft. Moreover, the skydsgut jumped off, and held on like death.
“Mr Grey too. And cut his hand,” Millie broke in, with a grateful glance at the young man. He turned red.
“Oh, that’s nothing.”
“Well, as nobody will accept the honours of the situation, I shall take them myself,” said the girl, laughing. “Know then, Mr Wareham, that mother and I showed immense presence of mind in refusing to be shot out when the jerk came, and in scrambling over the back when we realised that we were still there.”
“Then?”
“Then the pony was unharnessed, the stolkjaerre dragged back, and—here we are!”
She spoke lightly, but she was white and trembling. Colonel Martyn inquired where his people were.
“I left them in the road below,” said Wareham briefly.
“Then we’ll sort ourselves again, and I’ll go on.”
As he strode away, Mrs Ravenhill called after him, “Thank you for your help.”
“He enjoyed it,” said Millie. “It was the nearest approach he could have had to a steeplechase, and has quite raised his spirits.” Wareham felt so unconscionably guilty, that it might be supposed something else was really scourging him, and using his small neglect for a lash. He murmured—
“I am thankful he was here. If I had dreamed of real danger—”
“There was as much for the others as for us,” said Millie reasonably. “Besides, I believe Mr Grey and the skydsgut were equal to the emergency. Poor Mr Grey was the only sufferer.”
“Oh, I’m all right,” said the young man. “I say, Mr Wareham, was Miss Dalrymple frightened?”
“Not that I know of,” answered Wareham shortly.
Mrs Ravenhill raised her eyebrows at the tone.
“Now, if you and Mr Grey like to drive on before us,” she said, “Millie and I are quite equal to taking care of ourselves on level ground.”
“I see no reason for changing.”
His voice was sharp, and he knew it and was vexed by it, the truth being that he was out of sorts with himself and the world. Fate, he felt, had played him a skittish trick, in thrusting him into companionship with the one woman whom he would have avoided; nor, spur his steed as he might, could he get away into the old track. He recalled his deliberate judgment of Anne’s character, but it rose a bloodless ghost, behind a living, glowing, dark face, with a look of reproach in the beautiful eyes. Avaunt, sorceress! How should beauty outweigh friendship? Can a fleeting fancy shake solid foundations? The very thought pricked, scourged him. Even if he extricated himself from his false position by the simple method of breaking away from his companions at Odde, he was wroth at having to admit that he could not easily regain his self-respect.
Young Grey babbled youthfully about Miss Dalrymple’s charms, as the two men drove along, but this was a mere outside accident to which Wareham was indifferent. Barring Hugh, what others thought mattered nothing; it was himself he arraigned with the reluctance of a strong character. He answered briefly yes and no, happily sufficient for his companion, who was content to talk.
The storm had vanished, leaving an added beauty, on either side a land flashing light from raindrops on which the sun shone brilliantly, a land of bold heights, leaping torrents, and sweet recesses of bedded moss, out of which peeped wild strawberries and a hundred delicate flowers, while far up against the soft blue of the sky gleamed the unbroken whiteness of the snows.
The others were overtaken at Seligsted, a small roadside inn, crowded round with unharnessed stolkjaerres, and besieged by ravenous travellers. Willing but inefficient hosts lost their heads under press of custom, and tourists stormed in vain, while the young girl-waiters grew sullen under their reproaches. The Martyns, arriving earlier, had managed to secure some food in a balcony; the others, resigning themselves to a long wait, strolled to the river, sat on the grass, and looked at the blue cleft in the hills through which they had passed, or in the opposite direction, where the country broadened into tamer beauties.
When they got back, the most irate of the tourists were driving away in a carriage and pair, a red-faced father, and two or three black-eyed girls, half ashamed, half proud of his brow-beating. “Hurry up! Why the devil can’t they understand plain English!” he was shouting. The men standing by looked at him with calm disapproval; an old man, with a grave, refined face, shrugged his shoulders silently.
There is extraordinary variety in Norwegian roads, variety which is beyond word-painting, and, to a large degree, depends upon the cultivation which the eye brings to bear upon it. Admiration rushes easily after vast outlines, and these are lacking, for in Norway the mountains are of no great height, and when you are among them the lower masses block out the summits. Subtler charm lies in the variety, the infinite multitude of tints and shadings with which the sun is always painting hill and sky, the colours which the granite yields to its radiant touch, so that on these summer evenings the barest piece of rock is a wonder of soft and rich colouring. Then, perhaps, where the shadow deepens, afosflings itself down, an aerial spirit, here spreading like a veil, there cleaving the purple gloom with a silver flash. Hardly had the Espelandfos been passed, when the ponies instinctively stopped, and the skydsguts, springing off, announced the Lotefos.
They climbed a steep path, and, passing a small summer inn, a great roaring mass of water, broken into three falls, and rushing and seething in an indescribable tumult of beauty, was before them. Clambering from point to point, whichever way the eye turned, it fell upon clouds of spray, upon swift giddy leaps made by the clear beryl-coloured water before it was churned into foam by the force of its descent. Great wet rocks, shining metallic, stood erect in the midst of racing waters, waving grasses caught in the eddies were washed relentlessly, never a pause allowed in which to straighten themselves, and over the magnificent turmoil a rainbow arched serenely. Young Grey sprang into perilous places; Millie gathered trails of the delicate Linnaea Borealis, slender northerner which the great botanist chose for his own; Mrs Ravenhill and Wareham strolled down to the carriages, and leaving the Lotefos behind by a road which soon began to edge itself along a lake, they drove on to Odde.
“Civilisation and late dinners!” sighed Millie, as they got out at the cheerful door of the Hardanger.
“Shops!” groaned young Grey.
“Excellent things, each of them,” retorted Mrs Ravenhill cheerfully. “I wonder how long it will be before you all find yourselves in that shop?”
It was not long. Every one is attracted by the furs, the carvings, the silver buttons, the soft eider rugs with their beautiful green duck-breast borderings. In the sweet summer dusk it is pleasant to stroll about the little town, buy cherries from the men who bring their baskets of ripe fruit, and turn into this store of Norwegian handiwork. It is more enchanting to go to the front of the hotel, where the fjord runs up between snow-flecked hills, and ends. Grave evening purples steal over the land; in the sky, and reflected in the faithful waters, daffodil and primrose tints melt into each other. A yacht lay in a sea of gold, her fine delicate lines repeated below. A light shone out. Some one stood at the top of the landing steps, looking at the water. Wareham hesitated, then quickly walked up to her.
“I expected to overtake you at the Lotefos,” he said abruptly.
She did not turn her head.
“Are you grateful to me for having spared you the encounter?”
“If I were, should I be here?”
“Very likely. I do not know why you have come.”
“I venture to bring a suggestion.”
“More likely a reproach,” she said. “I believe you are determined to force a quarrel upon me.”
“You misjudge me—indeed you misjudge me!” He spoke warmly, then hesitated. “Certainly we need not quarrel,” he said slowly. “The fates have flung us together, and it appears to me that for a time at least we might leave the past behind us. Forbes is my friend. I cannot think that he was well treated—your friends, doubtless, would take another view. But if we are not likely to agree on this one subject, there are, happily, others in the world to talk about. Come. Do you agree?”
She did not immediately answer. He found himself speculating anxiously what her words would be. When they dropped from her at last, he hung on the low tones—
“I don’t think that two can talk with comfort on even the most indifferent subjects when there is total absence of trust between them.”
“Is that our position?” he asked uneasily.
“Is it not? I have taken trouble to give you an explanation, and you do not believe a word of it.”
“Do not let us discuss that matter.”
“It is there,” said Anne.
Both were silent. A boat came towards them, shattering the tranquil golden lights of the fjord; a few strong strokes brought it up to the landing-place, and half-a-dozen English sprang out, two young girls among them. They looked tired, carried alpenstocks, and called out a gay good-night to the rowers. They had just come back from a hard climb to the Skjaeggedalsfos, and were almost too weary to be enthusiastic. The boat pushed away again into the shining waters, the sound of the oars died into silence. Presently Anne spoke, ignoring their last words.
“The difference between north and south is curiously strong—forgive a truism! What I meant to remark was the different call they make upon oneself. Here there is a good deal of enjoyment to be met with, and it is exactly the opposite kind of enjoyment to what one finds in Italy or Greece. Do you feel this? Since we landed, I believe I have hardly thought a thought or encountered an idea.”
“My own sensation,” Wareham answered eagerly. “It has been like taking out one’s brains, and leaving them with one’s plate at the bankers. The odd thing is, that I don’t miss them.” He laughed.
She went on—
“I have wondered more than once how long it would take to settle down to existence in one of those isolated little villages of two or three houses each which we passed on the Suldal lake?”
“With some of us I suspect the savage would take the upper hand more readily and more rapidly than we suppose possible.”
“The brain would not rebel?”
“You would have to admit glorious physical excitement.”
Anne shivered.
“I cannot realise the possibility of any excitement at all in those desolate homes.”
“Can’t you? I, on the contrary, picture a good deal. Chiefly gloomy, I allow. Think of living for ever next door to your worst enemy—or your best friend! Which would be the most unbearable?”
She took no notice of this cynical speech.
“I could understand the life being endurable in summer, but in winter—winter! And such a winter, with its snows and darkness!”
He demurred.
“So far as I can make out, winter is the most sociable time of the year. You forget that lakes and fjords become the great means of communication; in summer, houses are isolated, owing to the want of roads, but in winter the frozen water serves in their place. No, depend upon it, they have a good time when once they can skate, or strike away on the great snow-shoes you saw by the roadside to-day.”
“But the darkness?”
“Well, one gets used to that in London. I don’t know that we can talk. Besides, they have a great pull over us in the stars. I assure you that all the men who have said anything about it speak of the winter with evident satisfaction.”
“They know nothing better,” Anne said incredulously.
“The root of all satisfaction,” Wareham observed.
She glanced at him quickly, bit her lip, and walked on. He found himself admiring her tall slender figure, and the poise of her small head thrown into relief by the glassy water. He had dropped the fiction that she was not beautiful, and retreated behind a yet feebler barricade, the pretence that hers was not the beauty he extolled. He had ceased to wonder that it served for Hugh.
At the end of the landing-place Anne turned. Wareham was immediately behind, and she faced him as she had not yet done. She spoke, too, more softly—
“You leave to-morrow?”
He flushed and hesitated.
“I—I am not sure. Possibly.”
Her eyes rested on his for a moment, and moved away. She said, indifferently—“Here is Colonel Martyn.”
Colonel Martyn was charged with hope. He had met the party from the Skjaeggedalsfos, and report of certain difficulties owing to a fall of rock had fired his athletic soul. Wareham added that thefositself was worth a visit, but this idea he rejected.
“See one, see all,” he declared. “A hurly-burly of water, and no fishing—there you have it. But there might be a chance of a climb getting there, and at any rate it must be better than loafing about this wretched little hole. Anne, will you come?”
“No, thank you. I prefer loafing.”
“Will you?”—to Wareham.
“I don’t mind. I’ve been once, and should not be sorry to see it again.”
“Eight. And if you know the lingo, perhaps you’ll make the arrangements. Better change your mind, Anne.”
“No. My mind is set upon easier pleasures. Where’s Blanche?”
“You needn’t ask.” Colonel Martyn’s gloom returned. “Buying Brummagem goods in the shop.”
“I shouldn’t wonder if you believed the fall came from Brummagem too,” Anne retorted. “Well, I’m going to help her. Good-night.”
“You’d better be sure you know how to work your fire-escape before you go to bed,” he called after her. “It’s a common occurrence for the hotels to be burnt down once a month.”
Young Grey, torn between Anne and adventure, felt as if adventure might possess a qualifying power, and went off with the other men early the next morning. Millie tried to get her mother to slip away to the Buarbrae glacier, but Mrs Ravenhill was tired, and disinclined for a long climb. She agreed to go with Millie to a spot which they had remarked the day before, where a river flung itself out of the lake, but she promised Mrs Martyn to join her after luncheon. They captured a stolkjaerre, and drove to their point; then, dismissing it, and leaving the dusty road, turned into a wood that belonged to a fairy tale, where low trees stood singly in the grass, and where every now and then they saw through a break the blue Hardanger hills, rising out of the fjord, and topped with snow; or, on the other side, a silver lake, with mountains stretching, fold after fold, into the solemn distance. Here and there a great rounded granite boulder cropped up, tossed out of its place by Titan wrath; one little farm nestled amid cherry-trees, but the silence was profound, and hardly a living creature passed; only a child or two, then a quaint old couple with a dog. The woman was tall, with a sweet dignified face; the man, bent and aged, carried a Hardanger fiddle. They stopped and chatted readily, and after they had talked awhile, at a sign from his wife, the man began to play his fiddle. It was an odd jangle with no tune, but somehow the old couple, the granite rocks, the wild peasant music, seemed to belong to each other, and to the country.
Mother and daughter slowly walked home, past a picturesque saw-mill, bringing sighs from Mrs Ravenhill, and through fields where hay-making filled the air with fresh fragrance. Each field has its hurdles on which the flower-scented grass hangs drying. When they reached the first outlying house, Mrs Ravenhill put a question which had once or twice fluttered on her lips.
“When is Mr Wareham going to leave us?”
There was a moment’s pause before Millie answered—
“Is he going?”
“I suppose so. From what he told me I believed he intended going off on his own account as soon as he had landed us at Odde.”
“Well, he hasn’t gone,” said the girl, looking straight before her.
Her mother glanced, but could not see her face.
“I shall have a talk with him to-morrow,” said Mrs Ravenhill, in a decided tone. “He may consider himself bound to us, and I am sure I should be vexed beyond measure if he imagined anything of the sort. It would be most annoying. You see that, don’t you, Millie?” she added incautiously.
“What am I to see?” asked Millie, with a laugh. “Mr Wareham bound with cords to you or to me, or to Miss Dalrymple—which is it?—and unable to extricate himself? I’m not sure that the picture is as pathetic as you imagine, but what will you do about it? Implore him to consider himself a free man? You should get Miss Dalrymple to speak for you.”
Mrs Ravenhill was a little offended.
“What has Miss Dalrymple to do with it? You told me he disliked her.”
The girl did not answer the question; she began to talk to a pony standing in a cart by the roadside. Then came a shop, and doubt as to the purchase of an ermine purse; after that, hurry for thetable-d’hôte. An English yacht lay in the fjord; her people had come on shore, and were lunching at the Hardanger, next to the Martyns. Millie, who had for her neighbour a clever young Siamese prince who was travelling with a Danish tutor, hoped that Miss Dalrymple might select them for her afternoon companions. But, luncheon over, she made straight for Millie.
“You and I will escape from all these people,” she said, with a smile which would have sent young Grey to her feet. Millie was unaffected.
“It is very hot,” she said.
“Here, very. But I have a cool plan in my head. Please come.”
It would have been ungracious to refuse, and pre-engagements were not to be pleaded in Odde. In an hours time the two girls were sitting in one of the light boats, pointed at each end, and being rowed across the fjord to the opposite side, where a slender waterfall is seen from Odde, dancing down through purple and green woods. The fjord was still as glass, each line of the English yacht repeated itself in the opal waters, two children with scarlet caps hung fishing over the side of the vessel. Anne lay lazily back, looking at everything through half-closed lids. Everything included Millie.
Millie asked at last where they were going.
“To a farm. Does that please you?”
She did not answer the question.
“I can’t see anything like a farm.”
“Nor I,” said Anne, idly turning her head. “We must take it on trust. Old Mr Campbell tells me such a place exists, and hinted at cherries and milk.”
“But thefos?”
“To be crossed by a bridge. You see I have got my bearings.”
Apparently, indeed, she and Millie had changed natures, for she rained talk and laughter upon the younger girl. And she showed no sign of being daunted by the steepness of the climb when they had landed and were struggling up the bank. The path they sought eluded them; presently they found themselves in a thick-growing grassy wood of low trees, through which they pushed a devious way. It was green, fresh, lovely; the roar of the waterfall was in their ears, now and again they met some impetuous little stream, which had rushed away from the greater fall to make its own wilful way to the fjord. Delightful assurance of solitude, cool deepness of grass, stones sheeted with moss and wet with spray, clear dash of waters, interlacing boughs through which sun-shafts shot down, lured them to breathless heights—lured Anne, rather, for Millie dragged. It was Anne who made the ventures, Anne who held aside hindering branches, Anne whose voice came laughing back to vow that the labyrinth grew more tangled, Anne who at last dropped by the side of a baby stream babbling over its stones, and bade Millie rest. She could not say enough of the fascinations of the spot.
“They will come back boasting of their fall with the hopeless name, only because it is big. What has size to do with beauty? This thing is perfect. Look at its curves, and its swirls, and its pools, and its grasses, and its small airs!”
Millie roused herself to admire.
“You are tired?” Anne asked.
She owned that she had walked far that morning.
“And this place doesn’t rest you as it does me?”
“I don’t know.”
Anne settled herself against a sapling.
“I feel as if I had reached the one breathing-place of my life. You don’t know that sensation.”
“Do you think you would like it—often?” asked Millie.
“Certainly not. It is liking it so much which is so unexpected to me. I am of the world—worldly. And to find myself exhilarated and delighted is like growing young again.”
Millie had to smile.
“You are not so old!”
“Aged!—in experience. As for years, they don’t count, or I dare say we might find that I am not so much older than you as you—as every one—would imagine. But I have lived.” Did that mean she had loved? Millie coloured at the charge of inexperience, galling to youth.
“You can know little about me,” she protested.
“Next to nothing. Tell me. You live alone with your mother?”
This was admitted.
“You are not engaged to any one?”
“Oh, no!”
“And have never tried that position?”
“No, oh, no!”
“That shocks you,” said Anne, with a laugh. “My dear, it often happens to me.”
“Not seriously?”
“Quite seriously.” She leant back and watched Millie’s face with amusement. “Are you disgusted?”
“Why—why do you do it? I can’t understand.”
“It comes somehow, often really without my intending. It’s the way of my kind, I suppose. For one thing, how is one to know a man at all until one is engaged? And so often I can’t tell beforehand whether I like them well enough or not. As you see, it has generally ended by my discovering that it would be intolerable. I don’t pretend that there have not been other reasons,” she added frankly. “Riches sometimes fly away on nearer approach.”
“And that would be enough?”
“Oh, yes.”
“You think nothing of your promise?” Anne was looking at her through half-closed eyes and smiling.
“I am not sure that I don’t think too much. It becomes unendurable. When I am married it will have to be in a whirlwind. No hesitations, no hanging back. So much I can tell him. The rest he will have to find out. Stormed, really stormed, I should be afraid of myself.”
She fell into silence. There was no sound except the rush of the water, not so much as the chirp of a bird. At last she looked round again.
“So you see—me voici!—Anne Dalrymple.”
Millie cried out—
“I am glad I am not a London beauty!”
“There are more disagreeable positions,” Anne said reflectively. “Now, if you had said a London beauty with a heart—”
“Have you no heart?” Millie asked impulsively.
“Not I! What does duty for it is a poor little chippy dried-up thing, which may be reckoned on never to give me an ache or a pain.” She sprang to her feet. “Come! The farm! I am not going to let you off the farm.”
No bridge could they find, and there was nothing for it but to retrace their steps. Down the hill-side, through the entangling greenery, they plunged, breathless and laughing, and found themselves at last overlooking the fjord, without any means of crossing thefos. Anne, undaunted, spied a boat on the fjord rowed by a boy; her signals brought it to shore. The boy readily agreed to row them to a higher point, but, this carried out, he refused to wait for them.
“Never mind! We are here!” Anne cried, springing out. She followed a rough path, and presently pounced on wild strawberries.
A man was digging. Seeing them gathering strawberries, he made signs that they were welcome to the cherries which hung temptingly from his trees. He bent the boughs down; Anne picked and brought crimson handfuls to Millie lying on the grass. The warm sun shone, a little stone-chat scolded from a rail, it was all calm, restful, and fragrant with hay. They went up the narrow path towards the farm; the way was overhung with cherry-trees, and a vagrant stream of water, which played truant from the fall, dashed down, flinging lovely spray over the waving grasses. The farm dominated the fjord; fold after fold of blue hills stretched away, the white water at their feet, and desolate-looking islands staring up at the sunshine, which scarcely softened their black outlines. Anne’s mood changed, she grew silent, and silently they went their way down the little path, till they reached the man still digging his patch of ground.
Millie, tired, inquired how she proposed getting home.
“He will take us in his boat. I asked him as I picked the cherries.”
Going back, it appeared as if the waters had grown yet more still and glassy. Each patch of snow, each outburst of green, each violet shadow, sent a lovely repetition of itself into the world below. The boat slipped dreamily through them, only the lap of the oars, and the faint and distant murmur of the waterfall, breaking the silence. One after another the little green promontories dropped behind, the white church of Odde and the clustering houses took form, a boat passed them. Anne looked up.
“This is not the time for commonplaces, yet they haunt me,” she said impatiently. “I—I—I—I am the commonplace, and I have stumbled into a thick mist of doubts and questionings. Tell me, are you always direct? and certain that right is right and wrong wrong?”
Millie coloured, hesitated. Such an appeal confused her. Anne went on—
“My rules are not so ready. Something else steps in and hoodwinks me, though I dare say it is true that I offer my eyes for the bandage. What I complain of is that when I do my best to walk straight—according to my lights—I am the more cried out upon. Your Mr Wareham, now, acts Rhadamanthus, yet what does he know? How can he pretend to judge what motives influenced me, and whether they were bad or good? Has he discussed them with you?”
The question came like a bolt; the answer was a brief “No.”
“No?” Anne’s eyes were fastened on the girl; Millie’s honesty gave unwilling explanation.
“Never your motives. He said once that Mr Forbes was his friend, and that the breaking off of your engagement was not his fault. He said this before—”
“Before?”
“Before he knew you.”
Anne meditated. Her eyes softened.
“I suppose it is the everlasting I—I—I, again, which makes me imagine that people talk when they are not even thinking of me. However, it is true that he misjudges me, I had it from his own lips, and I am sorry, foolishly sorry, because he is a man—” She broke off and laughed—“Somehow my vanity would make me wish to appear at one’s best before him. Does that shock you again?”
“Why should it?”
“I couldn’t say why, but I am for ever shocking people unintentionally. You have not got over my talking of my engagements, yet—theydon’t judge me harshly, any one of those men would marry me to-morrow. Yes, even Mr Wareham’s friend, in spite of Mr Wareham!”
Women, however unsophisticated, possess the gift of intuition. Millie divined that Miss Dalrymple wished her to talk of Wareham, and was ready to profess a spasmodic anger for the pleasure of hearing him defended. She was reluctant and ashamed of her reluctance. The shame stung her into crying—“Why do you talk of Mr Wareham’s judging you harshly? You must know very well that if it ever was so, he has forgiven you.”
A smile began to play about Anne’s mouth.
“Do you think so?”
Millie flung her a look.
“Well—I hope you are right. He has been so stiff that it would be a victory to bring him round. We shall see. Meanwhile, here we are at Odde; and what am I to offer to our boatman?—boat-master too, I suspect.”
“Ask him.”
The man smiled, shook his head, wanted nothing. The equivalent of a sixpence was all he would at last consent to receive.
Millie dragged a heavy heart up-stairs, and Anne went in pursuit of Mrs Martyn.