Chapter Eleven.
Catechisms.
Breakfast was going on, and merrily, to judge from the rush of voices which met Wareham when he opened the door. His friends were there together, and a place was kept for him next the Ravenhills; opposite were Mrs Martyn, Anne, and Hugh. As he took his seat, Mrs Martyn spoke across the table.
“Pretty proceedings, Mr Wareham!”
“They did not cause you disturbance?” he asked, with a simulated anxiety which sent round a smile.
“Nothing serious. I believed either of you equal to the task of looking after the other. Which took the lead?”
Anne’s clear voice struck in—
“We shared. I claim the suggestion of dinner at Gudvangen. Mr Wareham was too much overwhelmed by the misadventure to preserve his presence of mind.”
“But that was before starting. I can’t conceive how you survived so many hours!” Wareham perceived that the incident of the island had not been offered to Mrs Martyn’s consideration. His heart congratulated itself. Hugh’s indignation rushed in pointedly.
“It’s true enough that Miss Dalrymple wanted something by the time she got here.” He muttered to Anne—“Much she had ready for you!”
“I think you were to be envied,” Mrs Ravenhill said. “The fjord was so beautiful that I hated being carried through it at a rush. And night here is little more than a quiet day.”
“Only too short,” agreed Anne. “The sun was upon us before it seemed possible.”
Wareham’s prescribed attitude of bystander did not preclude his sucking in these little, sweets of comfort with delight. But Mrs Martyn had not done with him.
“What were the charms of Gudvangen, Mr Wareham, which made you so oblivious?”
“Poor Gudvangen! If you speak of it in that tone, I shall believe it was you who bribed, the captain to start an hour earlier than his right time.”
Millie put in a fluttering word.
“It was a delightful place.”
“To Mr Wareham’s companions.” Malice lurked in Mrs Martyn’s sentences. Millie coloured, Anne sat indifferent, Hugh it was who answered.
“No wonder. But I get so called over the coals for want of punctuality that I vow I can’t help being tickled that Wareham should be the sinner. How was it? Had a brown study got over him, Miss Dalrymple: Or did anybody fall asleep?”
“I think we were all to blame,” said Mrs Ravenhill kindly. “We should have made sure that every one was on board. To tell the truth, I did not for a moment believe that we had really started.”
Anne spoke again, languidly.
“Is not the subject threadbare? You will force Mr Wareham or me into invention of adventures, since there is nothing real to relate that we can flatter ourselves would interest you.”
The we and ourselves fell delightfully on Wareham’s ears.
“My dear Anne, you don’t do yourselves justice. Mr Forbes is dying to know how you were occupied when you should have been at the steamer.”
Anne lifted her eyebrows.
“Mr Forbes?” she said questioningly.
He hurried to disclaim.
“Not I. I am only glad you had Wareham to look after you.” Under his breath he grumbled, “Confound her!”
Why might he not be left alone? His own resources would carry him like the trustiest steed through the tilting which he foresaw ahead, but to be forced into a position he had no mind for, to be treated as though he were a jealous ass, and so thrust against Anne’s susceptibilities, was sure to irritate her. If a wish could have swept Mrs Martyn out of Norway, she would have found herself at this moment in England again. Wareham, equally irritated, knew that it was for him to speak.
“It was simple enough,” he said. “We had strolled out of sight or hearing of the steamer, believing that she would not start for an hour and a half. At the end of an hour we found you had all flown. We wanted Colonel Martyn to look us up.”
“Yes. Tom is always ready to undertake other people’s business,” said Mrs Martyn, helping herself to marmalade.
“Do you expect him to-day?” Mrs Ravenhill put in, conscious that her neighbour would prefer a change of subject.
“To-night at latest. Unless missing steamers should be in the air.”
She looked meaningly at Wareham. He turned to Millie.
“Have you thought out any plans for to-day?”
“We meant to explore the place a little this morning, and go to Fjaerland by the evening steamer. It is a pity we can’t sleep there and see the glaciers, but as it is we must just go up the fjord and down again. Mother was out early this morning.”
“Sketching?”
“Yes. She likes it immensely here.”
“And you?”
“Not so well as Gudvangen. But it is very nice, and”—regretfully—“it is so near the end!”
“How?”
Millie sighed. That he should have forgotten that they were to start for England on Friday, and this was Tuesday! But no ill-humour crept into her voice.
“You know we go to Bergen to-morrow night, then home.”
“I had forgotten,” said Wareham, staring at his plate. “Isn’t it a very short stay?”
“Only a fortnight. But that I can hardly believe.”
“Nor I.”
“I suppose you will go further north, with the Martyns?” hazarded Millie.
He said abruptly, “I know nothing,” and checked her.
Their opposite neighbours rose and departed, Hugh flinging an ecstatic look at Wareham as he went. Wareham’s spirits sank to mute misery. Anne’s side allusions had been kindly, but she had not dropped one direct word for him to live upon, and fear of letting honour slip must prevent his seeking it. He writhed under the thought that she yet believed him to have summoned Hugh, and a hundred voices within him seeming to clamour for the right to put this one thing straight, he found it hard to silence them.
Breakfast over, Mrs Ravenhill and Millie vanished, giving him to understand that the sketch had to be finished.
“But I dare say we shall soon meet again,” Mrs Ravenhill said, “for here again there is not much choice of roads, and I am sitting humbly by the roadside.”
Wareham went off like a moth to get close to what hurt him.
She was not to be seen, however, nor Hugh either, so that though he was not scorched, he suffered from another kind of smart, and it did not soothe him to drop upon Mrs Martyn seated in one of the many balconies. He would have escaped, but she saw and captured him.
“I want to speak to you, Mr Wareham; pray come and sit down. We shall all be starting out in an hour’s time. Meanwhile, here we may have a few minutes’ peace.”
He could not excuse himself, and sat down reluctantly.
“I am not going to scold you about yesterday,” she said, “although I think you will allow I might.”
“You do not accuse me, I hope, of premeditation?”
She professed not to be certain, but glancing at Wareham’s face, dropped her attempt at jocularity.
“I dare say it was Anne’s fault. She is astonishingly wilful.”
“I thought I had made it clear that the mistake was all my own. You must be well aware that Miss Dalrymple had the right to be excessively annoyed.”
Mrs Martyn smiled.
“Anne would not trouble herself about talk, if that is what you mean. She has proved herself absolutely indifferent. She will do the same here.”
Spite of himself, he looked up eagerly.
“Yes. Of course I speak of young Forbes. Her friends will not thank me when they hear that I have allowed him to tack himself on to us.”
The traitor in Wareham mentally blessed these friends, though his better instincts forced him to say—
“Why? Hugh is an only son, his father a baronet, and he what the world calls a good match.”
Mrs Martyn turned her large fair face towards him, and raised her eyebrows.
“Middling. No objection was made when Anne said she would marry him. But she let matters go too far, even for her, this time, and naturally they won’t be pleased to have it all over again. Mr Forbes says you telegraphed to him. I wish you had left it alone.”
“Pray don’t think I telegraphed to him to come. It was the last thing I desired.”
“I should have imagined so,” said Mrs Martyn dryly.
Wareham bit his lip.
“One must keep a promise.”
“Must one?”
“You will allow that the manner in which Miss Dalrymple broke off her engagement was maddening for my friend? Not an interview, not a word, only complete annihilation of all that had passed. Of course, from her own point of view, she may have been justified. I say nothing of blame.”
Mrs Martyn smiled. Wareham had seldom found his own temper so tried as in this interview. He felt as if her great hat had an irritating personality, and crushed him.
“You may know, or you may not know, that the blow to him was so serious that it brought me back from India.”
“Isn’t there such a thing as a ricochet?” asked Mrs Blanche innocently, so innocently that the innocence tickled him.
“I am afraid there is,” he admitted with candour. “Shall I go on?”
“Oh, by all means. You had just landed from India?”
“Miss Dalrymple allowed Hugh no communication. He could not even find out where she went when she left London. It seemed to me that he had a right to learn her reasons for dismissal, and I assured him when I quitted him that he should hear from me if I had any news of her whereabouts.”
“I could not have believed that Lady Dalrymple’s servants were so above suspicion.” Mrs Martyn heaved a sigh at recollection of her own.
He went on to say that finding Miss Dalrymple had crossed in the same boat with himself, he telegraphed to Hugh from Stavanger. He knew of no other course he could have taken. And he descanted on it, intending all to be told to Anne. He finished up by repeating that no idea of Hugh’s coming had crossed his mind.
“I dare say not. Magnanimity has limits,” she murmured.
Thinking it well to turn a deaf ear, he added that he had written a letter of some importance to Mr Forbes from Stalheim.
“From Stalheim?” She appeared to meditate, looking at her own hands, which were very small. Then her question flashed out.
“Was it to say you were in love with Anne?”
Wareham had got himself in hand by this time. He bowed.
“That or anything else you please, Mrs Martyn.”
She asked whether the letter had reached Hugh.
“How should it? He left England immediately after my telegram, and there has been no time.”
Mrs Martyn looked out at the fjord, but Wareham saw her shoulders shaking. Tragedy was uppermost with him, and at this proof of heartlessness he thought appreciatively of Millie’s padded glass. She turned round, however, demurely composed.
“Won’t it be a little inconvenient, by and by?”
He gazed loftily over her head.
“I don’t know that we are immediately concerned with my letter. That, at any rate, cannot be accused of bringing Hugh.”
“I wish something would take him away again. I had not the smallest intention of being mixed up with one of Anne’s complicated affairs,” cried Mrs Martyn.
The speech jarred.
“If his presence is disagreeable to Miss Dalrymple, she can certainly send him off. He will have had his explanation. Perhaps it will prove the shortest way out of the difficulty.”
This laid him open to an embarrassing question, “What difficulty?” Fortunately for Wareham, she did not wait for an answer before putting another. “Are you a writer of books?”
“I can’t deny it?”
“Yet read a woman’s nature no better! Anne will not send him off.”
“Accept him, then.”
“Nor accept him.”
“Paddles!”
“If you had studied the genus as you should for your profession, Mr Wareham, you would not find the riddle hard to solve. Anne likes Mr Forbes enough to like to have him about her, but she would not marry him, because she could not endure fetters. Now she salves her conscience by thinking that she has done her best to give him time to recover; you and fate have baffled her, and she—will enjoy herself.”
He forced himself to say quietly—
“You describe a—”
“Flirt. Anne would not deny it if you charged her.”
Her words in the boat were recalled by a reluctant memory; with them came the charm of her voice, her smile, more powerful than words. He started up, and stood leaning against the railing of the balcony.
“It comes to this. You and I read differently. I think you unjust to your friend, you hold me a fool. Of the two, I prefer the rôle of fool. But whichever turns out right, I don’t see that we can do anything except wait, for it is certainly Miss Dalrymple who must tell Hugh to go or stay. Unless you have that authority?”
“I!” She shook her head. “Anne’s chaperons are dummies, they don’t interfere. Besides, I couldn’t be bothered. I don’t even know why I have talked to you, except that A one and Mr Forbes will not be amusing companions this morning.”
Wareham was cheered by the touch of feminine spite in this speech, the more so as he had seen Hugh cross the garden forlornly. He inquired what might be Mrs Martyn’s plans for the future.
“I suppose my husband will return to-day, and then I shall insist upon going as far as Vadheim to-morrow night. Do you mean to come with us to the Geiranger? You had better, for I can’t be responsible for your friend.”
“Thanks. But I shall get back this week.” Decision had stepped in so promptly that there was no time for regret to interpose, although she hung helplessly on his skirts. Mrs Martyn raised her eyebrows.
“You go with the Ravenhills? They mean to secure berths in the Ceylon, which is expected here to-day.”
“I dare say that will suit me.”
When he left her he would not seek Hugh, but went to the little office from whence letters are dispensed, with a feeble dream of lighting upon his own. Failing in this he betook himself to the road, and presently came upon Mrs Ravenhill sketching, and Millie enticing half-a-dozen small children away from her mother by means of barley-sugar. The girls hushed themselves with awe and delight, the boy, all one broad laugh, flourished sticky fingers, and threatened to descend upon the paper, in spite of reproachful cries of “Daarlig Olaf!” At sight of Wareham he fled.
“And I breathe,” said Mrs Ravenhill.
“But he was much the nicest,” declared Millie. “All the grown-up people are so grave, that it is a comfort to see one having a good time while he is young. He was not really so very naughty, though his sisters were dreadfully scandalised. Think of their all living in those lovely cottages!”
And indeed the group of houses which Mrs Ravenhill was drawing made a perfectly harmonious note of colour. The sky delicate broken grey, the hill behind, grey also, running down in fine outline; against this a group of houses, red-roofed one or two, timber-pitched another, gabled, white-plastered, jutting out, running back, and set in waving emerald rye. Where the rye ended, long flowery grass began, and grew down to the foot of the bank where the children were playing. A woman with a white handkerchief on her head, and carrying two pails with a yoke, came down the little path which the thick grass hid from view; the swift-driven clouds cast swift soft shadows, the air was sweet with hay-making.
Wareham was in the state of mind when this soothed, because it seemed apart from the world of men and women, as represented by Mrs Martyn. He had gone to her feeling that the dearest part of him was sacredly wrapped up and invisible, and with shaking shoulders she had plucked it forth, and given him to understand that she knew all about it. The man must be more than usually magnanimous who does not chafe at insight from which he suffers. Here were women who made no pretence at insight. With them he felt healthfully at ease. And so scaly-strong is the coating behind which we flatter ourselves we are entrenched, that nothing could have more amazed him than to know that Millie, simple soul, read through him as easily as, and more truly than Mrs Martyn. He said suddenly at last—
“How do you return to England, Mrs Ravenhill?”
“Not as we came.” She shuddered. “The Ceylon tourist steamer will be here to-day. I am told that she is an old P. and O., and very comfortable, and that we can get berths in her.”
“But you don’t go on board to-day?” Brace himself he must, but hardly to the extent of leaving so abruptly.
“No. We shall meet her at Bergen on Friday.”
He asked to be allowed to take their berths, and let fall something to the effect that if there was another to spare, he might secure it for himself.
“You will have had a short holiday.” Mrs Ravenhill added a little vermilion to her roofs, and sighed hopelessly over the flowery grass. Millie tried to check her heart’s throb.
“You come to Fjaerland to-day?” she hazarded.
They were all to go, it appeared, and Wareham agreed eagerly. What did it matter so long as he refrained from a word? Of course he would go. He sunned himself in the anticipation.