Strange, indeed, that Wareham should have been thus shot into the
society of Anne Dalrymple! Never personally acquainted with her, he had
heard more about her than of any other living woman, could have
described her positively, and believed he knew her mind. Heart he
denied her. Had he been in England during the past year or two they
must have met, but he had first been ordered abroad after a narrow
escape of breakdown from over-work; then, bitten by the charm of the
south, let himself drift lazily from Italy to Greece, from Greece to
Egypt, from Egypt to India, all lands of enchantment.
During the latter part of this stay, letters had been showered upon him
from his chief friend, Hugh Forbes, letters crammed with enthusiasm,
with hope, with despair, a thundering chord, with the beautiful Miss
Dalrymple for its root. Wareham pished and poohed, and sometimes
pitched away as much as half a letter--unread--with a word. But he was
a man with an unsuspected strength of sympathy. Probably it belonged to
his success as an author that, once interested, he could project himself
into another mind, and feel its sensations. Especially where his
affections were concerned was this the case, and it may have been
fortunate for him that his affections were not easily moved, perhaps
because he feared what he counted a weakness, and was reluctant to let
himself go. Once he had loved a woman, but this happened before he was
famous, and she married a richer man; since that time his heart had
apparently remained untouched, although he never avoided women's
society.
The dark time of disappointment drew him nearer to his friend. Hugh was
three years his junior, but they had been at school together, and the
habit of befriending the younger boy had stuck to Dick. When this
happens, the strength of the tie is scarcely calculable, at least on the
side of the elder. Hugh knew and acted upon it almost unconsciously.
He would as soon have expected the Funds to collapse, as Dick to fail
him in case of need.
After a time his letters announced the unexpected to Wareham. The
affair was serious, and Miss Dalrymple had accepted him. Rapture filled
sheets of paper. Then letters ceased, and Wareham, who was in India,
smiled, recognising the inevitable; and waited without misgiving, until
a cooler time should bring back the outer manifestations of a friendship
which he could not doubt. They came in the form of a cry of misery.
Within six weeks of the wedding Miss Dalrymple had broken off the
engagement.
He read the letter in amazement, and rushed back to England, snapping
the small ties with which he was lazily suffering himself to be
entangled, and knowing that in the blackness of a lovers despair his was
the only hand to bring the touch of comfort. Under his own misfortunes
he had been dumb, but this reticence did not affect his sympathy with a
more expansive nature. Hugh liked to enlarge upon his sorrows,
unfailing interest lurked for him in the question how they might have
been avoided, and the answer was never so convincing as to suffice.
Wareham gave a patient ear to the lengthy catalogue of Miss Dalrymple's
charms--until he could have repeated them without prompting--and offered
one suggestion after another as to the causes which had induced her to
break off her engagement. For there had been no quarrel, no
explanation. Hugh had merely received a letter saying that she had
discovered it to have been a mistake, and could not marry him; she
accepted the whole blame, and asked him not to attempt to see her.
It was a preposterous request, and he battled against it with all his
might, only to find that the fates were on her side. For, although he
wrote stormy, heart-breaking letters, although he battered at her doors,
his letters remained unanswered, and all that he could hear was that
Miss Dalrymple was ill and would see no one. This made him worse. Her
father was dead, brothers she had none; Lady Dalrymple, her step-mother,
an inconsequent careless woman of the world, who had shrugged her
shoulders when Anne announced her intention of marrying Hugh Forbes,
admitted him to her boudoir, and told him, with another shrug, that she
could neither interfere nor offer an explanation. Anne had acted
throughout on her own responsibility; as she had not opposed when she
disapproved, he could not expect her to take part against her judgment.
"How was I to fight such an argument?"
Hugh asked Wareham, not once but twenty times. The first time he was
answered by a question whether he had never met the girl anywhere? "Was
I going to insult her in public!" groaned Hugh, and his friend liked him
the better for manly self-restraint when he had reason for being
distraught. He had avoided society and nursed his misery, exaggerating
it, perhaps, but acting gallantly. Wareham could not but reach the
conclusion that he had been abominably treated. Yet where lay the
remedy? Patience had to be offered in draughts, and was turned from
with loathing. This went on until even Wareham grew weary of
repetition, and was not sorry when Hugh's sister came up to town, and
appeared eager for confidences. With the belief that his friend would
be the better for a change of consolers, Wareham resolved to carry out a
vague plan, and go to Norway for three or four weeks. And there, as has
been seen, he at once found himself confronted with Miss Dalrymple.
Naturally, she now occupied his thoughts. He had sent a telegram to
Hugh on arrival, in compliance with a promise he had made to let him
know if he at any time became acquainted with Miss Dalrymple's
movements; a promise made idly, and already regretted. To-night he
pieced together his impressions.
They were as unfavourable as might have been expected. The signs in her
face he had already read against her, and her composure almost shocked
him. He was certain, from the exuberance of Hugh's friendship, that his
own name must be familiar to Miss Dalrymple; and, considering her tacit
acknowledgment to Hugh that she had treated him very ill, a woman whose
heart was what a womans should be, must have felt and betrayed
uneasiness at finding herself face to face with the dearest friend of
the man she had jilted. Miss Dalrymple, however, had shown no symptom
of feeling. She had treated him as if he had never so much as touched
her thoughts, and to do Wareham justice, it was friendship, not vanity,
which resented the indifference. He thought it horrible that a woman
should be so cold.
Pride, also, he read accusingly. In his own mind he believed Hugh to
have been flung over because she had grown discontented with his
position. That she had yielded primarily, Wareham interpreted as due to
the young fellow's strong personal charm, perhaps to weariness of other
men. It was an impulse, not love; and it was not powerful enough for a
strain. He depreciated her beauty; who cares for half-shut eyes? He
was not sure that Millie Ravenhill was not prettier; at any rate, he was
certain that she was more attractive.
When conclusions stand up before us in such mighty good order, the
chances are that we have always kept them ready made. This did not
strike Wareham, sifter of causes though he might be; he set them down to
acuteness of observation, and credited them with impartiality. It vexed
him the more to be thrust by circumstances into a sort of companionship
with Miss Dalrymple, whom of all women he would have avoided. He would
take the first opportunity to break away, but when? For in Western
Norway, where there is but one short railway, it often happens that you
must leave when you can, not when you will, and at Stavanger this
means once in the twenty-four hours. Imagine the sensation,
nineteenth-century Englishman! What annoyance! what repose! Whether he
would or no, he must make up his mind to journey as far as Sand, perhaps
Osen, perhaps even Naes, with all the others who had landed from the
_Eldorado_. After, he might go on by himself, and this consolation sent
him off to bed.
When he met the Ravenhills in the morning, he found that Mrs
Ravenhill's inexhaustible energy had carried her out sketching, and
brought her back hungry. She vowed that the place was charming, and
after they had breakfasted--waited upon by a girl in Hardanger dress,
cut-away scarlet bodice, beaded stomacher and belt, with white
chemisette, sleeves, and apron, and fair hair hanging in a long plait--
insisted upon bearing them off to prove her words. And, indeed, though
there is nothing striking in the town itself, it was impossible not to
feel its bright pleasantness. The sun shone gaily, the sweet pure air
made every breath delight; even in July there was a fragrant freshness
abroad, such as only comes to lands where spring and summer flutter down
as fleeting visitors, and we cannot do enough to welcome them. All the
houses are painted, whitened, and decked with flowers; they have not the
lazy, sunburnt, picturesque charm of the south, but under the delicate
northern sky there is a quiet yet vigorous cheerfulness about them.
Wareham, who had seen Eastern splendours, was conscious of this gentle
quality, and liked it.
They wandered round the busy harbour, into the cathedral, with its
Norman pillars, and great impressive barbaric pulpit. The minister came
out as they went in, a long black figure with a tall hat, a Puritan
ruff, and a kind face, who looked as if he had stepped out of a
story-book. Afterwards they strolled on, not much caring where, between
hedges of sweet-briar, past boggy places waving with cotton rush, and
climbed a hill to see the interlacing fjords, and the distant mountains
veiled with advancing mist, and the women making their hay in the
fields. Millie, who had not cared very much for Norway before she came,
having something of a girl's indifference to the unknown, was
discovering delightful things around and before her--were they not
rather blossoming in her heart? As for Wareham, he, too, became
sanguine. So far, the Martyns were avoided, and with good luck the
annoyance of their presence might be reduced to a minimum.
Three people content! What good sprite was here, and what mischief
lurked behind? The three, equally unconscious of their luck and their
danger, looked at all they could see, went back to the inn for more
salmon, and steamed away down the fjords towards Sand.
An hour afterwards they were on the upper deck of the little steamer.
Grey mists had gathered in their scouts, and swept up, chilling the air
and battling with the sunshine. Now one, now the other gained the day.
Miss Dalrymple walked about with Colonel Martyn. Wareham believed she
shared his own disinclination to meet, and, under the circumstances,
disinclination was more creditable than indifference. His hard thoughts
of her softened slightly--very slightly. Mutual avoidance would prevent
difficulties which might otherwise prove awkward in the coming days.
Meanwhile, as yet nothing had been said or done which foreboded trouble.
It pleased Millie to treat Wareham as if he were responsible for
anything lacking in the beauty of the country, and as the wide entrance
to the Sand fjord is uninteresting, and a cold wind, nipping in from a
bleak sea, chilled the landscape, he became the butt of many mock
reproaches. Wrapped in a fur cloak, and barricaded behind an umbrella,
she vowed there was nothing to see. Perhaps there was not much. But
Wareham found a never-failing attraction in the small scattered villages
at which the steamer stopped. A dozen or more white houses, a little
stone pier, against which, under the crystal-clear water, seaweed of a
wonderful green clung and floated, and a stir of human interest among
the people who came down to the water's edge to meet the steamer. At
one of these landing-places the crowd was more than usual--a pink,
green, and blue crowd--and there was concentrating of eyes upon one
young girl, to whom the vessel had brought a bouquet--a white bridal
bouquet. The pride with which she received it, the eagerness with which
she read the note accompanying it, and allowed the children to admire
and smell it, the interest of the other gazing girls, and the dignified
air she assumed after the first few moments, made up an idyll which
Wareham watched, smiling. He was sorry when the steamer backed away
from the busy pier, and left the girl with her hopes, her triumphs, and
her awe-smitten companions.
Going back to tell the idle Millie that she had missed something, his
eye fell upon a tall slight figure in a long cloak, standing near the
spot where he had stood, and talking to a shorter man with a grey beard.
It was Miss Dalrymple, and she had apparently been occupied in the same
way as himself. Her face was turned towards him, but she made no sign
of recognition.
"Well?" demanded Millie gaily.
"Well, you would have found it interesting."
"How do you know?"
"Listen to what were the accessories. A note and a nosegay."
"Go on. No more?"
"A young woman. Beyond question, a wedding near at hand, and I have
remarked that all women are interested in weddings."
"Distantly viewed they are tolerable; but looked at closely, one's pity
becomes painful. And I am too cold to cry comfortably."
"You must be super-sensitive. I saw no promise of tears."
"The actors conceal their feelings; only the spectators may suffer
theirs to be seen. Look how grave Miss Dalrymple is!"
Wareham glanced. Anne stood where he had last noticed her, apparently
listening to her companion, and it was true that she appeared to be
grave and preoccupied. Hers was a face in which beauty played
capriciously, and at this moment the lines justified his charge of
hardness.
"Merely bored, I should say, and not troubling herself to hide it."
Millie put a sudden question.
"Wasn't there some story, some engagement, in which Miss Dalrymple was
mixed up? I am sure there was something one ought to remember."
Wareham did not feel himself called upon to assist in this mental
examination.
"With her beauty she is likely enough to be talked over," was all he
said. But Millie persisted.
"I am certain there was a sort of sensation--I must ask mother, for I am
suddenly seized with curiosity. What was it? Wasn't there--?" She
broke off, and in a moment looked up triumphantly. "Of course! How
stupid of me! Now it comes back. She was engaged to a son of Sir
Michael Forbes. Didn't you hear of it? Oh, I am sure you did! The
wedding day was actually fixed, and everything arranged, and the next
thing one heard was that it was at an end. How could I have forgotten!"
Wareham was silent. She looked at him in surprise.
"It is impossible it should not have come to your ears?"
His face changed a little. If she had known it, she was irritating him
by her persistence, although he acquitted her of intention.
"One may as well leave the idle talk of the season behind one," he said
gravely.
"One can't, with the chief subject before one," retorted Millie.
"Confess. Haven't you thought about it since you saw her?"
He hesitated, then allowed the fact, adding that thoughts might remain
one's own.
"Ah, you think me a chatterbox," she said good-humouredly. "How
tiresome! Here is another shower sweeping across."
"Shall I get a cloak?"
"No. I really want to hear more. I am sure you can tell me." She
added with eagerness--"Which was to blame?"
"What a question!"
"Why, is it strange? Somebody was, I suppose. I have very little doubt
myself that Mr Forbes was the sinner."
Wareham was startled from his impassive attitude.
"What has given you that impression?"
"What? How can I tell you? If I were to say it was a woman's
intuition, you would laugh. So that I imagine it is owing to vague
recollection of what I may have heard."
"If that is all, I think you should disabuse yourself of the idea.
Whoever was to blame, it was certainly not Mr Forbes."
She looked at him mischievously, and remarked that he spoke so gravely
of an indifferent matter that one might suppose he had an interest in
it.
"I have not said that it was indifferent."
"Oh!" Millie coloured, and said hastily--"I beg your pardon. I am very
sorry. If I had dreamed that there was anything to make you care, I
should not have tried to find out your opinion. Do you know, I should
be really glad of a mackintosh."
Wareham went to get it, but when he came back he reverted to the
subject.
"Let me explain why I care. The man to whom Miss Dalrymple was engaged
is my friend, and knowing as I do the circumstances of the case, I can't
stand hearing him reproached. I can't explain the facts, simply because
they are inexplicable, but I will ask you to take my word that no blame
rests with him."
"Oh no, I understand, I quite understand," Millie stammered, wishing
herself anywhere else. She was frightened, and could not find a jest
with which to swing herself out of the difficulty. Her embarrassment
made him think more kindly of her again.
Presently Mrs Ravenhill, who had been talking to Mrs Martyn, came to
carry Millie to a more sheltered corner. Wareham, seeing that they were
approaching another fjord village, went to the vessels side. This time
there was a contrast--no crowd, no happy throng of girls: a few
children, a few older people gathered on the pier; the baker came to
receive his sack of flour, the postmaster his letters; next, out of the
steamer another burden was lifted, an empty black coffin, studded with
silver nails; the children--and the children only--stared curiously at
the label, then they too ran off. And, so long as the steamer was in
sight, there lay the strange black deserted thing, a blot on the green,
unclaimed, and to all appearance uncared for. Some prick of the
universal humanity kept Wareham's eyes fixed upon it. He felt as if the
dead man, whose home it was to be, was wronged by this callous
desertion; as if he had been bound to all of them by a tie they were
ignoring; and while conscious of the unreasonableness of his blame, he
could not shake off the feeling that he shared in the common cruelty.
Suddenly, by his side, a voice exclaimed--
"It is horrible!"
He turned abruptly, and saw Miss Dalrymple. Her eyes were fixed where
he had been looking, and she went on--
"One has no right to resent a mere accident. They may have to come from
a distance, and it can't be known exactly when the steamer will call.
Still--"
"It offends one," said Wareham.
"It is heartless."
He kept his eyes on her face.
"Happily the dead are not hurt by heartlessness."
"Happily," she returned, after a moment's pause. She glanced at him,
half closing her eyes, in the manner he disliked. Already the
conversation had taken an edge, of which, even had it been
unintentional, neither could have been unconscious. But Wareham wished
to wound. He asked whether she had noticed the group at the
landing-place before this last? She made a sign of assent.
"What did you think of it?"
"I?"
"Was it more creditable to human nature? Was heart there, or was the
girl merely pleased with her power?"
A smile made him more angry.
"What makes you or me her judge?"
"Dismal experience as to motives," Wareham replied. "One lives and
learns."
"Not so surely," Anne returned coolly. "Half the time our pretence of
reading motives is sheer affectation. What we are really after is the
making our conclusions fit our theories." She suddenly shot away from
the subject. "Are you travelling with the Ravenhills?"
"Yes--no," said Wareham, surprised. "It was a chance meeting, and we
have all to go the same way."
"All?" She frowned. "Do you mean that we are irrevocably bound
together?"
"Practically. Naturally there may be small deviations."
"Oh, hateful!" she said frankly, and apparently mused over the
information. Having bestowed it, Wareham was silent until she put
another question. "May I inquire where you are all going to-night?"
"I can only help you so far as the Ravenhills are concerned. They will
push on to Osen."
"And you?"
"Oh, I, of course."
"You were mistaken, then," said Anne triumphantly, "in supposing that we
follow the same route. We stop at Sand."
He laughed. "Pardon me. Sand or Osen are practically the same thing.
We meet on the same steamer to-morrow morning."
"Oh!" She reflected again. "There is no help for it, then. Except--"
Wareham waited.
"I trust to you not to take advantage," she said, in a hurried tone, and
with a movement of the head which he interpreted as his dismissal.
Instead of rejoining the Ravenhills he stood solitary, and thought over
the conversation. What ground had been won or lost between two
antagonists'? He had made it plain to Miss Dalrymple that he was on his
friends' side, and she had let him know that the meeting was
disagreeable to her. So far there was equality. But though he had not
disguised his feelings, he could not flatter himself that he had caused
Anne the slightest embarrassment. And there was vexation in the thought
that their first movement had been towards sympathy, so that he
remembered a throb of satisfaction on hearing her exclamation by his
side. He remembered, too, and dwelt upon, the expression of her look--
which said more than words--the brow slightly contracted, the eyes
fixed, the strong pitiful curve of her lips. In spite of his prejudice,
she was beautiful. Hugh's raptures had inspired him with contradictory
views, but he told himself now that there was no reason to be unfair,
and that a lover might very well lose his head over fewer charms.
Disapproval, contempt, perhaps, were as strong as ever, and proof
against a woman's face. Yet something in his own thoughts irritated
him, and he turned from them to talk to a tall German, whose wife and
children were ensconced in the warmest corner of the deck.