"Already he can see nothing to praise where she is not," and then was
horrified because she seemed to make this a reproach. To punish herself
she went back to Anne.
"I suppose the Martyns and Miss Dalrymple start in our steamer
to-morrow? Do they go to Balholm?"
Wareham imagined they would go where Mrs Ravenhill went. Her spirits
sank. She could not chatter as freely as usual, yet made a gallant
effort.
"What flower is that? I never saw any like it. Oh, thank you! Look,
it really is odd, canary-coloured, and hanging by a sort of filament.
We must take it back to mother, who loves flowers."
Hearing this, he gathered everything which came in his way. He was
conscious that absorbing thought left him a dull companion, and wished
to compensate for it by what small attentions he could offer. As for
Millie, he looked at her only to compare her with Anne, and the small
fancies which had crossed his mind during the first days they had spent
together, had flitted into the unremembered past. He liked her,
nevertheless, and recognised a sweetness of nature which, in the years
to come, would make a husband happy. Perhaps he even liked her better
than at first, when a certain air of alert agreeability had once or
twice annoyed him, and pointed to fatigue in companionship. And as she
walked in front, what seemed a sudden inspiration struck him. Here was
the very wife for Hugh Forbes. He loved liveliness, and her very
prettiness was lively; it was, indeed, the very word to use in
describing her. And how admirably such an arrangement would fit the
puzzle into place! Millie could not understand why he began to talk of
Hugh. He grew eloquent. Hugh was the pleasantest fellow! Generous.
Lovable. Amusing. Rising. The picture requiring to be toned down
slightly, he admitted that he was inclined to be idle; but idleness is a
sin a girl readily condones. Millie listened, under the impression that
Mr Forbes was talked of that he might think of Anne. The subject was
distasteful, but she said heroically--
"How strange she did not like him!" Then, as Wareham laughed, a smile
dawned on her face. "Have I said anything odd?"
"No, but I have," he explained. "I have been trying to make one woman
see Hugh's attractiveness at the very moment when she knew another woman
could not bring herself to marry him."
"That might not have been his fault."
"Then it was hers?"
Millie felt disposed to cry out at this persistence. The talk had been
full of pricks, yet was not without its tremulous pleasure, since she
was nearer to Wareham than when indifferent subjects were discussed. He
would not have cared to enlist her on Anne's side, if friendliness had
not urged him. She said, after a momentary pause--
"Why not his misfortune?"
He was silent. It would have been difficult to have satisfied him at
that instant, and Millie's suggestion quite failed. He dropped the
bitter-sweet topic, and talked of Bakke and the curve of the fjord
behind it, promontory overlapping promontory, every light, shadow, and
colour reflected in the water. An ugly little church stood near the
brink, round it nestled the living and the waiting dead, a few
flower-roofed cottages, more black crosses. They stood and looked over
the paling; grass waved upon the graves, the same flowery sorrel-tinted
grass as scented the air; two or three children were in a boat, the oars
splashed, otherwise not a sound broke the silence. Millie's spirits
rose. In the midst of a great nature, she and Wareham seemed to stand
alone, to be brought nearer. When she reached her mother, her eyes
shone.
Wareham went up the Naerodal alone in the afternoon, but in the dusk all
three again strolled together. Clear golden lights swept along sky and
fjord; long shadows trembled in the water; two or three ponies scrambled
like goats among heaped-up boulders, and the goats themselves, perched
on inaccessible heights, sent down faint argumentative bleatings in
response to the wild cry with which a girl was coaxing them.
What land is this, in which we have all once wandered? A land of
shadows and sweet lights, touching everything with mysterious charm.
Hush, dreamer! You know now, though you did not know it then, that this
is Arcady.