"My opinion is worthless, or I should venture to suggest dangers in wet
clothes."
"Dangers? Madness!" cried Mrs Martyn, jumping up. "Come, Anne, I have
waited for you until I can hardly keep my eyes open."
"They are going to dance," Millie hazarded. "Let them. I go to bed."
"I am tired of the noise," said Mrs Ravenhill.
"And I have a letter to write," remarked Wareham.
Anne, who had recovered herself, looked back over her shoulder with a
smile.
"Do letters ever come or go?" she asked.
The idle question gripped Wareham. The letter--the act of writing--had
been his difficulty; now, with recollection of how long a time must pass
before it could reach England, and bring back its answer, came a sinking
of heart. Honour bound him to the lines he had laid down. If he
remained near he must take no steps to win her until he heard from Hugh.
If he could not trust himself, he must hold aloof. There was the
situation--briefly put. Cruel! For every hour, every minute, now, was
worth months, years! Now the days were strewn with opportunities, he
was thrown into her society. If ever she was to be won, now was his
chance. Impatience caught, shook him! It might be a fortnight before
answer came from Hugh, and when he looked at the past week, and
reflected that it seemed a month long, he found the prospect of two such
periods intolerable. He endeavoured to detach himself from conditions,
and to philosophise; but philosophy is old and scrupulous, while young
love has no qualms in taking advantage of the first opportunity which
presents itself, and tripping up the elderly combatant. Wareham gave up
arguing with himself, and set doggedly to work to write his letter.
Step number one was difficult enough.
Nothing satisfied him in expression. More than one scrawl was tossed
aside as inadequate, absurdly inadequate, or as expressing more than he
meant. What did he mean? There was the mischief. In these early days,
when he had only just begun to read his own heart, and might reasonably
claim a little time for its study, it was detestable to have to offer it
for a third person's perusal. He resented the position the more that he
was unused to interference with his liberty. He lost his first flush of
pity for Hugh, and wrote with a certain asperity--
"Circumstances have thrown Miss Dalrymple and me together; perhaps this
will prepare you for what I have to say. In a word, I believe I am on
the brink of loving her. The knowledge only came to me to-day; I
imagine it will not please you. My dear fellow, I would have given a
good deal for it not to have happened; don't reproach me without keeping
that in mind. As it is, all I can do is to hold back--I don't say draw
back, because I have done nothing--and let you make the next move. If
you have any hope, if you desire to try your luck once more, telegraph
through Bennett, `Wait.' You can trust me to make no sign till word
comes from you, whatever the cost to myself. So much I owe you, and
perhaps you will think I owe you more, but I believe you are generous
enough to forgive what could only be a wrong if I snatched your chances
from you. At best, my own may be small enough, they appear to me so
small that this letter becomes offensively presumptuous in even treating
of them. Yet, lest you should ever think me treacherous, I write it,
and repeat that I hold myself bound in honour and friendship to take no
step in advance until you have told me that I am free, or let me know
that you have not yet resigned your hope."
The wording displeased him, but it did not seem as if any thing he wrote
could give him satisfaction, so that he hurriedly closed his epistle,
and took it to the office. A heap of letters lay on the table, they had
the appearance of having been seeking their owners for weeks, and of
reposing at last with an air of finality. Wareham looked at them
askance, as if each carried a threat of delay.
In the morning Anne sat next to him at breakfast. She said to him
immediately--
"Why are you so cruel as to leave us? We are pinned here until Colonel
Martyn and Mr Grey come back. Besides, I don't like being driven from
point to point, without time to draw breath. I feel like a note of
interjection."
He made a weak reply, to the effect that Mrs Ravenhill disliked the
place.
"And you are bound to Mrs Ravenhill?" She hastened to apologise. "Of
course you are. Forgive me."
If this was offered as an opening, it failed. After a momentary pause,
she said--
"You should have been with us last evening."
"Us?"
"I had a companion; did you not see him? He came in with me."
"Oh, the dog!"
"I don't permit those contemptuous accents for my friends. He behaved
like a true gentleman, and took me to the very place where I wanted to
go. No one else offered." If this was coquetry, it was accompanied by
a frank smile at her own expense. Wareham stiffened, looked away, and
broke out eagerly--
"How long shall you stay here?"
"Until Blanche is tired of it. I suppose till Monday. Are you not
coming out to see what you came from England to see?"
"Oh, we are all coming," said Wareham, raging at his fetters.
She looked at him with eyes surprised but twinkling, talked about London
for a decent interval, and left the room. He scarcely expected to see
her re-appear with the others in the hall, but she was there.
Whatever Stalheim may suffer from its visitors, it is magnificently
placed, a height among heights. Straight in front the Naerodal cleaves
the mountains, its conical Jordalshut dominating the rest, its lovely
mist-drifts playing round the summits. Below, a silver flash darts
through the greys, and slender falls leap down to join the river. Nor
is this fine cleft the only outlet. As they strolled up a road to the
left where was a broken foreground of shrub, boulders, and cut grass--
made lively by magpies--the great valley through which they had passed
the day before, opened, and swept away into purple gloom, until the eye
reached the mountains behind, here shrouded in cloud, there uplifting
snowy heights against the menacing darkness. There was a wildness, a
grandeur, a savage desolation, such as they had not yet seen under the
August skies of Norway.
At the end of the walk Wareham took credit to himself for his conduct.
He was sure that he had been quite natural, had walked with Anne, talked
with Anne, and looked at Anne, without betraying attraction. This
satisfied his man's code, which, once alarmed, is minute in such
matters. He even avoided wishing her good-bye--marked slight; possibly,
too marked. When the Ravenhills started, he dispatched his portmanteau
in a carriole, and followed on foot.
It was a day of broken lights and flitting shadows; waterfalls rushed
down on either side, and the beautiful salmon river, beryl-coloured,
milky white, indigo, raced along by the road, and offered its
counteracting life to what gloom there was. Wareham gave eager
appreciation to the green flashing world through which he walked, his
conscience was light, he enjoyed the smell of hay, snatched from steep
roof-like patches of earth--the slender falls, scarcely more than silver
threads, which leapt incredible heights to escape from their
ice-prisons--the sweet pure air, the spring of turf at his feet. Far
away in front the little carriages with their dun ponies spun along;
presently a wild unkempt figure, carrying a sickle, and clad in scarlet
jacket, broad hat, and knee-breeches, strode from a bushy path, a dog as
wild as his master at his heels. Then a cottage or two with flowery
roofs came in sight, a glimmer of fjord, and he was at Gudvangen. Mrs
Ravenhill and Millie were standing outside Hansen's primitive little inn
when he reached it.
"I don't know what you will say," said Mrs Ravenhill, laughing. "Are
you prepared to live in a deal box by the roadside? But Millie and I
think it delightful."
"Then I shall think it delightful too," said Wareham. "One can always
fish."
Millie inquired if he had seen the waterfall.
"That little thing!"
"Speak respectfully, please! One of the highest in Europe, two thousand
feet, with a jump of five hundred, isn't to be dismissed in such a
slighting tone."
"You are going to rival Mrs Martyn in facts. But I see you have taken
Gudvangen to your heart. Shall we go and explore?" On the way he was
struck with Millie's light-heartedness, and said to himself that here
was one of those happy natures from which care rolls off. She spoke
with almost extreme admiration of Anne, but Mrs Martyn she did not
like. Her mother remonstrated that she had never been harmed by that
lady.
"Padded glass," was all that Millie vouchsafed.
Wareham wondered a little at such unexpected perspicacity.
A figure in a long mackintosh ran joyfully up to the girl. It was the
young Siamese prince, breathless with triumph, and a basket of
twenty-eight trout.
"You are at Hansen's?" he demanded, his eyes sparkling.
"All of us--"
"Then they shall be cooked; we will have them by and by. Perhaps I
shall even catch some more."
"We will live on trout," said Wareham. "I must have a try."
"Do," Mrs Ravenhill urged. "I promise you that Millie and I will bring
appreciative appetites."
They did not meet again till supper, shared with three English
fishermen, who bemoaned the dry weather, and two German girls,
travelling on foot with knapsacks.
"What have you discovered?" Wareham asked. "But I can tell you.
Another waterfall."
"Another? A dozen. We found a delightful walk which you shall see
to-morrow. There is but one, so it is as well it should have charms.
It leads to Bakke, where the pastor--whom we met with a pipe a yard
long--has service to-morrow, and we can either row along the fjord or
walk. Mother will walk, I expect; she sees sketches at every turn."
Wareham foresaw another _tete-a-tete_ stroll, but on this occasion felt
no disquietude, looking upon Millie as a soothing little companion, who
might be induced, without suspicion, to discourse now and then upon Miss
Dalrymple. So much depends on the point of view! Mrs Ravenhill's was
not the same. She started, resolved to remain with the others, but a
shadowy view of the fjord, with a group of infantine kids in the
foreground, shook her resolution. The lights were perfect. Millie's
little fancy, if it ever existed, had quite fluttered away, danger could
not exist. She wavered, resisted, wavered again, and fell. They left
her happily oblivious of everything beyond the purple and green
splendour of the hills, and the absolute reflection of line and tint in
the glassy waters.
"I never before realised how much happiness belongs to art," said
Wareham, as they walked away. "It makes one envious."
"Is not yours art?" Millie asked.
"Nothing so graceful."
"You paint in words, and words are stronger than colours."
"No words could bring those reflections before you."
"But they could extract their inner meaning?"
Wareham looked at her with surprise, feeling as if he had been gravely
addressed by a butterfly, but the next moment she had run lightly up the
bank after strawberries. From this point of vantage she flung him a
question.
"Has Miss Dalrymple a mother?"
"A step-mother."
She knelt down, the better to fill a small basket she carried, and the
impulse to speak was too strong.
"You are not angry any longer?"
He paused a second, then his words rushed. "It was a misconception,
such as comes from judging before one has heard both sides of the
question." To talk more easily, he reached her side with two strides,
and stood looking over the fjord. "He--my friend,"--the words stuck a
little--"never blamed her, but, you know, in such cases, one takes
forbearance as a matter of course. I knew he was generous. I concluded
he must be wronged."
He paused. Millie, on her knees, leaned backward, but still occupied
herself with the strawberries.
"The wedding was close at hand, was it not?"
"Close. Was she wrong?"
The question put, he blamed himself for asking it. It was offering up
Anne's conduct to the world's judgment. Millie did not answer until she
had dropped two or three crimson berries into her basket, then she said
in a steady voice--
"If it was an escape from bonds, it was right."
The answer was unexpected, should have been welcome. Yet it seemed to
push Anne or Hugh Forbes to the wall, suggesting that if she were not to
blame, he was. Wareham uttered an impatient sigh.
"I cannot conceive what she could object to in Hugh!" he said, the
friend uppermost again. Millie was silent. "And yet--women--?" he
added tentatively.
She turned back some leaves, under which a cluster of fruit glowed.
"I believe that I am surprised you don't condemn her with the rest of
the world," he said at last, in order to force an answer.
"How should I? I never saw your friend. Miss Dalrymple has been very
nice to me, but I know nothing of her, or of her life." Millie's words
were hurried. "You asked me if she were right or wrong. How should I
know? But if she was ready to brave people's tongues, either she had
never loved him, or she did not love him any more. In either case, when
she found it out, she must have been right not to wait until it was too
late. That is all I can see clearly, and I dare say, if I knew more, I
should not see so much."
"I believe you are right," said Wareham admiringly. He was in the
condition to find oracles in all that agreed with him. "When you know
Miss Dalrymple better, you will be sure you are."
"Miss Dalrymple is not easily known."
"Not?"
"Not by women."
To this man does not object, and Wareham merely pondered over it.
Millie moved a little farther off. He followed.
"I do not know that it is a disadvantage?" he said, ignoring her last
words, and defending blindly.
"Oh, no! Why should it be?"
Wareham would have preferred something more combative, wishing for
argument, which was unattainable when his companion only acquiesced. He
stood meditating, and Millie started from her knees.
"At this rate, we shall never get to Bakke!" she cried. "But
strawberries are irresistible."
"Do you really like them?"