Toby did not sleep well that night. He was convinced that things were
not going satisfactorily, and, like the Prince of Denmark, he resented
extremely being expected to set them right. In the first place he did
not believe they could be set right, and in the second he dreaded an
intimate conversation with Norman, which would have to be included in
the process. Toby had a great deal at the back of his mind about Norman,
the accumulated resentments of many years, and he wanted to keep it
there. He felt certain that people who have grudges at the back of their
minds do not make good intermediaries. The obvious solution of the
affair was the one Toby could not press. Anne ought to go away, and she
would not see the necessity. She believed that good feeling alone can
carry any situation through safely, and Toby believed that in certain
situations no possible feeling is as safe as not being on the spot.
He paced up and down his room half the night, and early in the morning
leaned out of his balcony window to watch the dawn. It had rained
heavily in the night and in the early morning light the mountains were
vivid green and blue like the colours of a peacock’s breast. The white
road shone hard between banks of fresh washed flowers. The sky was a
young pale blue with a single star in it, the pines lay a long dark
shadow against the clearness of the day.
A small figure stole out upon the white road, with flame-coloured hair.
She had a stick in her hand and a knapsack on her back. Toby watched her
for a few moments, wondering at her loneliness, for by her clothes he
took her for a tourist, and tourists are seldom lonely. Then, with a
start of surprise, he realised that he was watching Nina, and that she
had set off by herself, upon the road to Italy. She too had been
thinking over the problem in the night, and being younger and more
daring than the others, she had put her thoughts into solution.
Toby flung himself hastily into his clothes and hurried out of the
house. He cut up into the woods, taking a path which would bring him out
upon the Pensolo road about two miles farther down. He rather wanted
Nina to walk a few miles before he caught up with her. He had got to
interfere now, but he had ceased to mind interfering. Nina’s impulsive
action had given him the right handle. It was the wrong thing to do. She
was the one person in the group who should have remained passive, but by
doing it she had released the dreadful tension of good feeling which was
gradually strangling them all. Toby whistled cheerfully to himself as he
hurried through the thick wet woods. He was not a man who had many
illusions, and the solution that he foresaw was not wholly a pleasant
one, least of all for the one person in the world he most desired to
please. Still in the end it would be of service to her, and pleasant
prospects were not the ones upon which Toby was most accustomed to rely.
His way through the woods was a trifle longer than he had supposed, and
by the time he had negotiated half a dozen unexpected waterfalls and
come down upon the road again, he was half afraid he should find Nina
had passed the point at which he proposed to intercept her.
But Nina had come to a standstill. She was sitting on a low white rock
by the roadside, her head lifted with an air of tension. Nina had never
been alone before in a great silent space. Nature, which is the
friendliest and calmest of companions to those who dwell with her
habitually, is a terrifying spectacle to the chance visitant. The worst
crossing in the Strand at midday would have been soothing to Nina; but
the occult and curious peaks, the clear distance of the sky, the
infinite remoteness of the silent heights, laid on her spirit a terrific
pressure. There was nothing human for her to stand up against. Her
personality, which had always depended upon an audience, dwindled into a
bundle of fears. She gave a quick cry of relief as she recognised Toby,
followed by a frown of suspicion.
“What on earth has brought you here,” she asked, “at this hour of the
morning, just where I happen to be?”
“The simplest thing in the world,” said Toby, dusting his trousers
carefully and sitting down on a rock opposite hers. “I saw you leave the
hotel and I followed you.”
“That was a bit of cheek,” said Nina easily, recovering all her native
jauntiness, “and if you think you can persuade me to go back, you’ll
have your journey for your pains. Wild horses wouldn’t move me!”
“I’m not the kind of wild horse,” replied Toby, “that wants to move you.
On the contrary, I am delighted to hear that you are running away. It’s
the most sensible thing I’ve heard of for a long time.”
“I don’t know if it’s sensible or not,” said Nina guardedly, “but it’s
what I’m doing.”
“You weren’t running very fast when I first caught sight of you,”
suggested Toby tentatively. Nina’s lips trembled. She hadn’t known where
to go, she had never in her life been out of the reach of railway
stations or motor ’buses. She knew this was the road she had come up
with Norman, and it had been her idea to walk till she reached a town,
and then to find someone who spoke English and could help her to get to
a railway station. Perhaps at the back of her mind she had hoped that
before she reached a town, Norman would have found her, but she hadn’t
expected Toby, nor to have her audacity poked to death by reasons. Her
boots were not very strong, she had very little money, and she had
forgotten to bring any food. Toby drew two breakfast rolls from his
pocket and presented her with one. “I snatched them up in passing,” he
explained. “Never mind your plans at present, we can go into them later.
Plans are always less complicated after one has had something to eat.
There’s a choice of about seven waterfalls to drink from. I will point
one of them out to you, into which I didn’t fall on my way down to the
road.” Nina was grateful for his discursiveness, but she was deeply
suspicious of his motives. She had never felt sure of Toby Wainwright,
and she ate her bread staring at him with hostile eyes across its
stubborn surface.
When she had finished eating, she said slowly and distinctly, “I don’t
know what you are up to, Mr. Wainwright, but my plans aren’t going to
have anything to do with yours. Do you see what I mean?”
Toby glanced at her quizzically for a moment and then laughed. “’Pon my
soul,” he said, “do you imagine I want to elope with you? I’d forgotten
that possible version! Well, it wouldn’t be any odder than anything else
if I _had_ wanted it, but I assure you my motives are as strictly
platonic as those of a Jew moneylender. It’s your money, not your life,
that I’m after.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” said Nina composedly. “I always thought
you wanted Anne, but one can’t be sure. You might have given that up and
thought you’d take me on, to spite them both. But I’m not that sort, I
don’t want to spite them. At least, I don’t want to spite Anne.”
“That’s a very interesting but misleading discrimination,” said Toby
slowly, “because I see you don’t realise that spiting Anne is exactly
what you _are_ doing.”
“How do you mean?” Nina asked angrily, “I’m just getting out of her way
as fast as I can, like she did out of mine. Norman thought he liked me
the better of the two, and I think he did a bit, when we were alone
together, but when you came up here and he saw Anne again, it all began
to be different. I expect he saw then that he’d made a big mistake.”
“Not as big a one as you’re making now,” said Toby. “My dear girl, you
and Anne can’t hand a man about as if he was a sofa cushion. Norman’s in
love with you, and till he tells you he isn’t, you can bank on it.
You’ve just been having a row—that’s what’s the matter with you. Now
sit down quietly and tell me all about it.”
“I don’t see why I should tell you anything,” said Nina sulkily,
reseating herself nevertheless. “Besides, you said I did right to run
away, so what’s the odds? I’m off now anyhow.”
“Yes, but you may as well tell me why,” said Toby persistently,
“particularly as I intend to help you in any way I can. It seems to me
you ought in common fairness to tell me your whole story. Part of it, of
course, I know, and I’m even, to a certain extent, upon your side, and
so of course is Anne—we think Norman’s been playing the fool.”
Nina knitted her surprised eyebrows rather like a puzzled puppy. She
couldn’t make Toby out. He wasn’t going to make love to her. He didn’t,
she felt, particularly like her. Yet he was going to help her, and had
pronounced himself to be more or less upon her side. Her heart was full
of a wild storm of hurt, surprised, conflicting feelings, and she wanted
nothing better than to pour them all out. She didn’t burst into tears,
because Toby looked so very unemotional, and because she had been crying
half the night. But she began, after a moment’s pause, to talk
unsteadily, and with short nervous rushes.
“I don’t mind telling you some of it,” she began, “though it’s not much
good now. You say he loves me, but he can’t! Why should he be always
throwing Anne up at me if he did? It isn’t as if I didn’t like Anne. If
I thought she’d done this—come up here, I mean, to get him away—I’d
have fought it out; but I know she plays fair. She always has. I haven’t
any quarrel against Anne, though I wish to God she hadn’t come. I nearly
went to her room last night to tell her everything I felt, but I knew
she would have tried to stop me running away! Besides, I didn’t want her
standing up for me, with him. I was furious with all of you too, to
think of taking the part of a set of dirty Germans against me!”
“We didn’t do that quite,” said Toby reflectively; “it was a pity the
Germans were there, I’ll admit, but hasn’t it yet occurred to you that
we were in the right to treat them courteously since they were there?”
“I don’t think you were in the right at all!” said Nina hotly.
“Think a little,” urged Toby; “we could only have upheld you by letting
them think we agreed with your behaviour, and your behaviour was
obviously wrong. It would have given any fair-minded person a very poor
opinion of the British race. We pride ourselves on fair play, and not
hitting people when they’re down. You gave away our position as decent
English people, and I think if anybody had a right to be angry, it was
your husband.”
Nina took this statement in silence, but it was not an offended silence;
she was thinking hard, and trying to think generously. “Well,” she said
at last, “perhaps it was a bit thick what I said to them, but he needn’t
have said what he did to me afterwards. I can’t repeat it—it was
dreadful. If he could say it, he couldn’t love me. No man could. Let him
go back to Anne. She’s a lady enough anyhow!”
“You make two mistakes,” said Toby firmly; “one is that men are seldom
cruel except to the woman they love, and the other is that Norman will
never go back to Anne. It’s too late. Now look here, young woman. I
don’t think you know what you’ve done. It’s never been put to you by
Anne, and quite obviously it’s never been put to you by Norman, but
you’re going to get it straight from the shoulder now—from me. The last
few months you’ve been thinking yourself the queen of the world, haven’t
you? I don’t blame you—we’re all liable to lose our heads while we’re
being adored. But what you are, and what you were when Norman picked you
up, was rather a wild little girl out of a bun shop! All right—it
wasn’t out of a bun shop—it was from a solicitor’s office off the
Strand. But my point is, you came out of it to break up two very
cultured and decent people’s lives. These two people treated you
uncommonly well. Men in Norman’s position often fall in love with girls
like you, but it seldom occurs to them to leave a happy domestic life in
order to marry them, and when they have this intention, they are still
more rarely assisted by their wives. What do you suppose they’ll feel
like, when they wake up this morning, and discover that you’ve broken up
their lives again?”
“But I haven’t,” stammered Nina, between tears and fury, “I’ve put them
straight this time. I’ve left them to each other!”
“My poor child,” said Toby more gently, “do you suppose lives can be put
straight so easily? Norman’s in love with you, not with Anne. But if
he’s driven you away because he’s said something tactless (but probably
true) about your manners, it isn’t going to make him very pleasant to
Anne, when he finds out that you’ve gone because you think he prefers
her. And Anne!—I’m not going to do you the injustice to suppose you
don’t realise (roughly at any rate) that she’s made some sacrifices for
you? Anne’s a proud woman, and she’s eaten dust to give you happiness.
She’ll have to eat more dust now.”
“No, oh no!” Nina cried, springing to her feet and seizing Toby by the
arm. “Not that! Not that! I’ll go back this minute! I’ll do anything you
tell me—but not that!”
Toby held out his hand.
“Will you shake hands?” he said gravely. “I don’t know what Norman may
have said to you the other night, but I assure you, you have the
feelings of a gentleman, as far, at least, as I’ve ever been able to
ascertain what such feelings are.”
Nina looked at him uncertainly, but she shook hands. She would much
rather have heard Toby say that she had the behaviour of a lady.
“I don’t want you to go back,” Toby explained, “I want you to sit here
while I go and fetch Norman. I quite agree with you that the present
situation doesn’t do. You’ve got a lot to learn, if you’re going to be
the right kind of wife to suit Norman, but you’ll learn it much better
by yourselves. Anne can’t do anything more for you now, and she’s got to
see it. Take it all round, this is the best way of showing it to her.”
“Fetch Norman!” exclaimed Nina. “Do you mean for us both to go off alone
this way together?” Toby nodded. “But perhaps he won’t come?” said Nina.
“Perhaps he’ll still be too angry?” Hope had sprung into her heart with
the swiftness of a diving swallow. She voiced her fears and, as she
voiced them, they were no longer fears but a troop of dazzling joys.
“Yes,” said Toby, “that’s exactly what I mean. Norman will come to you
fast enough. I’ll answer for that!”
“But you don’t know what I did to him!” said Nina in an awestruck voice.
“Last night I—I struck him!”
“Well, thank God, somebody did,” exclaimed Toby hastily. “I mean, I beg
your pardon, but I’ve no doubt he jolly well earned it.”
“No he didn’t, he didn’t!” said Nina indignantly, “and it’s horrid of
you to say so—I thought you were his friend!”
“So I am, in a sense,” agreed Toby sturdily, “but I shouldn’t mind some
of my precious balms breaking his head once in a while. Besides, after
all, Nina, we’ve both been thinking for several days, Anne and I, that
you had a good deal to put up with!”
“Well, as far as that goes,” said Nina more graciously, “so have you. I
can’t think why you don’t marry Anne.”
“Can’t you?” said Toby. “Well, Anne seems to be able to think of a
reason.”
“You don’t understand women,” Nina explained; “you’ve got to make her
think about you. She hasn’t yet, she’s still thinking about Norman.
Suppose you start saying the kind of things to her that you’ve been
saying to me—that’ll make her sit up!”
“I don’t suppose I could,” said Toby thoughtfully, “and I don’t know
that I should particularly like to make Anne sit up. It’s rather a
painful process, isn’t it?”
“Oh, that’s because you’re in love with her,” said Nina sagely; “you
didn’t mind making _me_ uncomfortable, for my good! It’s no use being as
soft for her as she was for Norman, is it?”
Toby rose from his white stone with an amused and thoughtful air. “We
seem to understand each other so well,” he said, “that it’s rather a
pity we’ve fixed our inclinations elsewhere. Now I’ll go and send you
Norman. Take him away. I offer you no advice as to how to deal with him,
for I am sure that you are mistress of the entire subject. But I do beg
that you won’t, either of you, under any circumstances, return.”
Nina gave him a long reflective look.
“Send him along as quick as you can,” she said, “and don’t worry about
our coming back. These mountains just about give me the hump.”