Chapter Six.
And the Pitfalls of Cupid.
Once more a shifting of sunny lights and purple shadows, of ever-varying colours, of small hamlets nestling by the water-side, each with its pier, its boats, and its many-hued little crowd, as they steamed down the Hardanger fjord towards Eide. Contempt for waterfalls was balanced by joy in the effort of reaching them, and, by dint of swearing to travel night and day until he overtook them again, Colonel Martyn obtained leave from his wife to go off to the Voringfos, and young Grey he dragged reluctantly with him. This threw the others of the party more together, and it seemed necessary for Wareham to offer his services to those who were bereft of their nominal protector. The mid-day meal was taken at the excellent “Mellands” at Eide; afterwards they strolled about in the meadows, and sat under hay-hurdles, in order to allow the great noonday heat to subside, before mounting the steep hill which lay between them and Vossefangen. Anne, indeed, vowed she would not walk, and chose a carriole, as a lighter conveyance; but Mrs Ravenhill and Millie soon jumped out of their stolkjaerre. And what a road it was! High up, a great waterfall hurled itself into a chasm of foam, and while the carriages crawled round zigzags, those on foot could cut off green corners, clambering ever higher into the sweet elastic air, until at the top they rested, breathless, until the cavalcade of patient ponies pulled slowly up, then merrily along the level road to Voss.
Voss is ugly, but friendly. It has a good inn and a well-known landlord, an ancient church with a brown timber spire, a few shops, and a little train, which leisurely trots backwards and forwards to Bergen. Between it and Stalheim lies one of the most beautiful roads in Norway, a road constantly changing, with every variety of river and lake, of waving sorrel-tinted grass, now red, now green, now grey, as the wind kisses it; of distant snowy heights, and nearer sterner hills; here and there a fall, a water-mill, a group of cottages with turf-roofs starred by ox-eyed daisies, and always before you the road running, white, into the far away.
No zigzagged hills, however, and no opportunities for talk except in the halts which come occasionally for the hardy ponies. And once, from Anne’s skydsgut, a little gill of eight or nine years old, with the usual white handkerchief over her head, there rose an agonised wail of “Toi, toi!” Wareham drove up rapidly. Anne’s portmanteau, which also formed the seat of her infant driver, hung threateningly over the edge; there was much hoisting and roping before it was restored to equilibrium.
“No more carrioles for me,” said Anne. “It is too dull. Think of not being able so much as to inveigh against the dust! Apparently it would cause a revolution in the country if you, for instance, were to drive by my side?”
“I don’t pretend to cope with a Norwegian pony and its skydsgut,” answered Wareham, laughing.
He said no more; but, after these words of hers, it might have been noticed that he contrived to keep sufficiently close to exchange remarks, if only in pantomime, and when they halted at Tvinde, it was he who was at hand to help her down from her dusty perch. There was, as usual, a fos to be visited.
“Not worth seeing,” announced Mrs Martyn. “Some one, I forget who, said so.”
“The more reason for going,” Anne insisted. She invited Wareham to accompany her, Mrs Martyn watching their departure with expressive lifting of her eyebrows.
“There is Anne at her usual pastime, making fools of the men,” she said to Mrs Ravenhill. “I thought she had had a lesson, and might be trusted for a time; but it’s in her, it’s in her! If there is no one else, she sets to work upon my husband. Fortunately he’s wood, not wax.”
“What was the lesson?”
It was irresistible to Mrs Ravenhill to put this leading question.
“Don’t you know? London was full of it. She was engaged to a Mr Forbes, a son of Sir Martin’s, and broke it off with outrageous abruptness. I never expected her to marry him, it was the way she put an end to it which incensed people. We thought the best thing for her was to get her abroad. And here—you see!”
“Why was she so abrupt?”
“She is ambitious. Only a brilliant position will capture, but a fancy will sway her.”
Thankfulness sometimes goes oddly askew. Mrs Ravenhill breathed a sigh of relief that Millie’s innocent inclination had been checked in good time. Still, a touch of hostility towards the man who had roused it was in her tone.
“Possibly Mr Wareham is of the same kind, and can take care of himself?”
“Oh, poor fellow, poor fellow!” ejaculated Mrs Martyn, rejecting the possibility.
The last thing in the world that would have entered Wareham’s head was that he was already the subject of comment. He allowed that there was a change in his thoughts of Anne, but would have scouted the idea that it implied change in his attitude towards Hugh. He now told himself that her conduct was probably capable of explanation. That meant pardon. He even indulged in dreams of reconciliation under his auspices. That included friendship. Hugh’s infatuation no longer amazed him, he was only surprised that he had not held her more strenuously; for it seemed to him that had he been in such a position he would not easily have been ousted. Thinking this, the rash man also watched her, noting the delicate side-lines of her face, the short curve of the upper lip, the soft growth of hair where it touched the neck, and the dainty ear; details which only stepped into prominence when, as now, her eyes were turned away, for their dark depths drew, and held captive, other eyes. They gave the impression of offering much to one who could interpret what they said, and in face of them it was useless to moralise upon the untrustworthiness of woman’s beauty. This was what Wareham had presumed to do, and now, when she suddenly turned them upon him, something startled him.
“Have you got over your prejudice?” she asked, smiling.
“Prejudice?”
“Against me? But I should not have asked you, I didn’t mean to do anything so imprudent, only that you are changed, and wonderfully pleasanter, and women never know when to let well alone. They want words to quiet them, and I want you to tell me with your own lips that you don’t dislike me any more.”
Again that momentary feeling of intoxication. He murmured almost inaudibly—
“I can’t.”
She slackened her steps.
“Why not?”
“Say that I don’t dislike you any more? Had I ever known you to dislike you?”
“No, no, but you had imagined me, and it was not a pretty picture you evolved. Tell me whether the picture still exists, or whether it is blotted out?”
Protestation was on his lips, when the recollection of Hugh’s misery rose up and checked him. She was still watching him, but now she turned away her face.
“It is not, I see,” she said quietly. Wareham clutched at a feverish memory.
“How can I forget his suffering? But,” he hastened to add, “since I have known you, I can’t believe that caprice or heartlessness caused it. There must have been something I don’t understand, and I am certain you could explain it if you would.”
Among Cupid’s pitfalls there is no occupation so dangerous as for two persons to discuss each other’s sins and virtues—none perhaps more attractive. Wareham would have pointed this out in his books, yet here he was floundering. And Anne? Was she playing Will-o’-the-Wisp? She looked at him again.
“I suppose you expect me to drop a curtsey, and offer a meek thank you?”
“I don’t expect the impossible.”
“Impossible?”
“I can’t imagine the meekness.”
“Your own fault. You don’t inspire it. You try to ruffle my temper.”
“What is that but giving you an opportunity to display the virtue? You can’t display meekness without cause for it.”
“Cause for it?” Anne struck back. “You offer cause freely!”
“Oh!”
“Can you say you have not been harsh in all your judgments?”
“Before I knew you.”
Hugh was forgotten. He had ceased to be anything but a peg on which to hang banter, and, perhaps strangely, it was Anne who recalled him with a sigh.
“Did he—did Mr Forbes blame me so much?”
“He never blamed you.”
“Yet his friend was unmerciful.”
“What could I think? I came home to find Hugh dashed from his heights to lowest depths of wretchedness. He neither slept nor ate, but talked immoderately. From his talk I gleaned my own impressions. He was devoted to you, he was miserable—you must forgive me if I became unjust.”
Apparently she had forgotten the compassion which had made her sigh, for she repeated his words demurely—
“Talked immoderately! And your patience held out all the time?”
“I believe I can be patient.”
“And I can’t. There’s the mischief!”
He did not ask her to what mischief she alluded. They were close to the fos, and had been looking at it with unseeing eyes. Now some pause in the flutter of their thoughts made them turn with relief to an outward object. Wareham muttered a platitude about its beauty. He thought Mrs Ravenhill would have liked it for a sketch, while Anne scorned the thought.
“Sketch a waterfall? As well sketch a disembodied spirit.”
Silence again, spent apparently in dreaming of the delicious freshness of the leaping water. Really, Wareham was looking at her, and wondering how he could ever have been such a prejudiced fool. He had made up his mind, that she was a creature of the world, adept in its wiles, knowing how to torment poor Hugh, and using her knowledge remorselessly. Here, by the flashing waters, she was young, frank, imprudent, perhaps, but cruel—never! Whatever had happened, hers was not the fault. So far on the primrose path Wareham had strayed, and was certain of his footing. Presently she spoke again.
“Some day perhaps I shall tell you. Not yet, for I am not sufficiently sure of my ground. If I have gained anything, it would be humiliating to see it all melt away, as it might. I was vexed at your prejudging me, because it was not fair; all your sympathies were heaped on one side, and I really believe if you could have crushed me with them, you were quite ready to have done so. Now I start on a better footing. Now if you blame me, as you will, it will not be in that hard, unreasoning fashion.”
“Why say that I shall blame you?” His voice was not quite steady.
She turned and walked down the hill. “Because you cannot yet judge fairly.”
He remonstrated.
“You need not be displeased. It is not your fault. No man is capable of placing himself in a woman’s position in such a matter.”
“Try me.”
She laughed merrily.
“There is another thing which no man can do—imagine that he is not an exception to the general rule!”
“I wish you would find something which a man can do, instead of crushing with negatives!” He was growing impatient, and she said abruptly—
“I believe I will tell you.”
He waited, eagerly desiring that she should look at him.
“But I risk a great deal, because you are Mr Forbes’ friend, and you will not believe it possible.”
Alas for friendship when it is first confronted with love! Afterwards it may recover its footing, but in the, as yet, unacknowledged whirl of head and heart, the poor thing gets swept into the vortex. At that moment Wareham could have believed much.
“And it sounds so little when one puts it into words!” the sinner went on hesitatingly. “It must have been that I did not like him well enough—ever. I thought I did. I assure you I was quite glad to discover that I could feel so much, but—”
She paused so long that Wareham repeated the word.
“But?”
“I got tired of him, of it, of all!” She turned her eyes on him. “You have never tried, have you, being adored from morning to night?”
“Never.”
“It is sickening. Like living upon sweetmeats. I used to try to provoke him, and if once I could have got him out of temper, there might have been some hope. If he had contradicted me! I longed for a breath of fresh air. And dragging on—oh, he made a mistake all through. Of course you can’t understand—” She ended abruptly.
He felt a burning desire to assure her that he could, but his muttered words struck him as absurdly inadequate. Silence became more eloquent. Anne broke it at last—
“It was a hundred pities,” she mused, “and rough on him, for what could I say? What reason could I give? Tell him that he bored me? I couldn’t, I couldn’t! I can’t lose my friends. No, no, no, poor fellow! Here we come upon all those people, and Blanche is beckoning wildly, and I can’t think how I have had the face to talk to you. Forget it!”
With a sudden movement, for which he was unprepared, she sprang from him, and ran down the steep slope. He restrained the impulse to quicken his own pace, and by the time he reached the road, the carrioles had started, and Mrs Ravenhill and Millie, the clergyman and his wife, were moving off in a cloud of dust. Wareham, in spite of the impatience of his skydsgut, held back until carriages and dust had rolled away in the distance.
Tumultuous thought made it at first impossible to grasp a single idea, and to hold on to it as a centre for others. Anne’s face, the flutter of a small curl on her forehead, softly outlined arch of eyebrows, all manner of idiotic fancies, hustled and jostled each other in his brain; and he presently became aware that instead of sending the airy traitors to the right-about, he was encouraging them to stand, wall-like, between himself and the truth about himself. Too strong a man to keep up the mask when once he discovered it, he proceeded to chase the busy throng. From behind them Anne’s face peeped again.
He dragged out a hiding fact, and held it bare to his own scorn. He loved her—loved her; and though but a day before the amazement of it would have struck him mute, it had already ceased to look strange. All had led to it. The inconceivable would have been his failing to love. So far his heart with easy swing.
But judgment stood stubborn in refusal to go with it. Judgment it was which held the scourge. With Hugh Forbes in the background, what might be acknowledged natural became also offensive. As Wareham jogged along the white road, unheedful of bold outlines or lovely verdure, he found himself mentally writing to his friend, and recoiling with a start. How could he word such a dispatch—“I have seen the woman for whom you are breaking your heart. I love her myself, and shall try to win her”? The very thought was brutal.
Yet—to resign her for a dream, even for an ill-placed devotion, what could be more foolish and morbid? What fresh chance could come to Hugh? His had passed when, sooner than carry out an engagement, she had broken away abruptly, and faced the talk and jibes of her world by venturing on a course for which blame was the more unsparingly heaped on her because it was inexplicable. Hugh was young, handsome, ardent. Until this moment Wareham had fancied him the very man to catch the fancy of a woman, and it was only since Anne had lifted the curtain which friendship held tight, that he could admit that possible something—was it the power of boring?—which had driven her from him. This was what she meant when she said she had no patience. That patience should be wanted!
Here was his heart once more racing smoothly, until judgment caught the reins again, and tugged at the runaway steed. What boy’s work was this! A woman but a few weeks ago betrothed to his friend, and still beloved by him—crazily it might be, but with all his heart—a woman of whom he knew next to nothing, and that little, up to now, not in her favour—and here, at a word, a look, he was at her feet! Shameful! Yet—worst shame of all—not to be parted with at any price. Already the world without Anne’s figure in the foreground looked cold and unendurable. His eyes tried to pierce the whirl of dust ahead, and to distinguish her amid its folds; he fancied he could do so, and straightway his thoughts were occupied with nothing but foolish longing to know what her eyes were saying at this moment. The confidence she had given surely pointed to a touch of sympathy, a budding liking? Happy, happy he! In another hour or two they might be again together, and he would show better than he yet had done, how much he prized her frankness. The next moment these thoughts turned upon him with scourges. Honour stood by, and scornfully directed the flagellation, and he felt himself a miserable traitor. Here was friendship! Here was a creditable sequel to his offices for Hugh! So his mind wandered backwards and forwards.
Chaos lasted for a while, and it is not impossible that the tumult was so new that he rashly suffered it, believing in his own powers of self-government, and aware of a whirl, as of hot-headed youth, which he had thought the years had left behind. The day changed, brooding clouds gathered round the mountains, which closed in, rank after rank; nearer hills, heavily purple, swept up from the gloom of the valley. The road slowly mounted, the dust subsided, and the crawling carrioles in front looked as if an effort might overtake them. But Wareham checked the impulse, and his skydsgut’s attempted spurt. He would not see Anne until he had resolved on a line of action. A resolution, carefully thought out, would serve as a guard against the rasher promptings of his heart, and between this and Stalheim he had to come to terms with this resolution. One was already there—not to give her up if he could gain her. Behind this his heart entrenched itself, grumbling.
Yet, in spite of such a reservation, carrying a good deal with it, Wareham hugged the delusion that the other was the more important. Conscience had much to say as to what he should write to Hugh, how wrap up the communication which was so abominably angular and assertive, that, say what he would, it inevitably presented itself in a repulsive form. Conscience harped loudly upon truth, yet was anxious to give truth what should have been unnecessary adorning. Finally he resolved to write to Hugh that night, and to tell him—? to tell him that he had met Miss Dalrymple. This decided, he was forced to admit that so much Hugh knew already. There must be a more expansive confession; he had to add—admired, liked her. And this written, in thought, appeared so significant to Wareham, that he imagined himself closing the letter here, and drew a breath of relief. But conscience, refusing compromise, cried out for something explicit, and here came the difficulty. All the sentences he revolved looked either inadequate or shameful. “Do you give her up?” Free she undoubtedly was, having herself asserted her freedom, but free to Hugh Forbes’ chief friend?
Yet something he must write, and until it was written and answered, keep his feelings out of reach of betrayal. Here was a resolution which he grasped, for it belonged to the honourable instincts of a fine nature, too deeply rooted to suffer in the general upheaval. He added a rider, necessary if unpalatable. He would not avoid Anne to the extent of provoking her own or other remark, but he must avoid—well, such a walk à deux as they had taken that day, for instance.
The road grew steeper, and he jumped out of his carriole. Stalheim was perched above, a hotel, two or three scattered cottages, and a waterfall. He climbed through gathering clouds, and when he reached the door, was met by English tourists of the most noisy and offensive type. All his own people had vanished, and he saw no more of them until supper, which was eaten to the accompaniment of a band. Mrs Ravenhill confided to him that she hated the place, in spite of the magnificence of the scenery.
“And Millie and I have determined to go to Gudvangen to-morrow, and wait for the Monday steamer. I cannot stay here to see my own country-people making themselves so obnoxious—” She hastened to add with scrupulous care, “You don’t expect me, I hope, to repeat that you are not in the least tied to us, and must not be influenced by anything we may do.”
“Does that sentence mean that I am forbidden to accompany you?”
“Forbidden? Oh, no; but the others stay on, and this is one of the special places in Norway.”
“I detest special places.”
She warned further.
“Remember that we heard the little inn at Gudvangen was very primitive.”
“That decides me. If you will allow me, I shall certainly go there with you.”
Millie’s face was all brightness. Wareham, indeed, was inclined to look upon the proposal as the reward of merit, to plume himself upon a sort of recognition of his having kept on the side of his conscience. It was a step out of his dilemma. Two days of voluntary banishment from Anne meant a sacrifice worthy of the altar of friendship. He would write his letter, avoid walks, avoid the smallest betrayal of feeling. All looked easy.
If love laughs at locksmiths, how much more at lovers’ resolutions!