"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 the _fos_ itself
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?"