Chapter Seven.
How a Letter got Written.
So satisfied was Wareham with his ample precautions that, supper ended, he went in pursuit of Miss Dalrymple. She had vanished. Mrs Martyn engaged him, and Mrs Ravenhill and Millie joined in; presently a harp and voice struck up in the gallery round the hall. An hour later Anne appeared at the door, wet, breathless, but in high spirits. She said she had been paying tribute to the place, had gone down the Gudvangen zigzags to see a waterfall—two waterfalls. A beautiful sleigh-dog slipped in behind her.
“Anne!” exclaimed Mrs Martyn, disapprovingly. “In this rain!”
“Mountain-rain—mist.”
“And alone!”
“Mayn’t oneself be good company?”
She laughed as she said it. Wareham, looking at her, found delightful charm in her laugh. He felt that in breaking away he was giving Hugh an extraordinary proof of loyalty, and probably his face expressed this conviction, for Mrs Martyn said sharply—
“Mr Wareham may admire imprudence—I don’t!”
Anne’s face chilled. He returned—
“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 tête-à-tête 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?”
There was a dissatisfied note in his voice. She thought with a pang—
“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.