"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 the
_table-d'hote_. 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 the _fos_?"
"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."