Chapter Ten.
The Inconvenience of Two Heroes.
At its best, the unexpected is apt to come off awkwardly, and here was more than one awkward element. When hearing distance was reached, they found that Hugh was speaking volubly—
“Are you all right? No one suffered? What a nuisance for you both! Bring the boat a little further on, Dick, and Miss Dalrymple will land more comfortably. Are you all right?” anxiously again.
“My dear fellow, we’re in a water-logged boat,” Wareham called out, not sorry that his words were truer than they would have been five minutes ago, for with his attention elsewhere a good deal of water had leaked in.
“Horrors!” cried Hugh, pressing forward, and ready to jump in to the rescue. “Is Miss Dalrymple wet?”
“I’m afraid so.” Wareham was cool again outwardly. “Here, take this rope. Now, Miss Dalrymple, your foot here—so. You are cramped? Do not hurry. We shall not be swamped just yet.”
He managed to put his hand for her to tread on, while Hugh eagerly helped her. In another moment men and all had scrambled on shore, and Hugh was shaking hands violently with his friend.
“I never was more annoyed than to hear what had happened, but I felt certain you’d come on, and have been on the look-out all night. They shouldn’t have left you. It was too bad. Miss Dalrymple, are you sure you are not cold?”
“I am sure of nothing,” said Anne, speaking for the first time. “May I inquire what extraordinary chance brought you to this place?” She looked rather amused than vexed.
“I heard you were here.”
“How?”
“Wareham, like a good fellow, telegraphed.”
Anne darted a look at him. He stood helpless. Explanation was impossible. She said only—“Oh!”
“Of course I couldn’t be certain where I should strike across you,” Hugh went on, “so I came straight up in the steamer, and asked as I came along. Some other friends of yours are here. They seemed awfully cut up about you. But pray, pray come at once to the hotel. I have made them keep coffee and cold meat ready, and your room is all right. Dick will see about those fellows.”
He swept her away. Wareham stared after them, dumb wretchedness gnawing at his heart. Complications gathered round him. Anne might naturally resent what had the appearance of an act of treachery; and was this the end of the fair dream which had floated with him along the clear waters of the fjord? He stood reduced, insignificant, before Hugh’s assertive energy. Of her his last view as she walked lightly away was a side-face turned inquiringly towards Hugh.
Wareham’s mood might be painted black—of the blackest. If virtue does not always meet with a reward, she expects it, and grows huffy at non-fulfilment. He felt he had behaved well towards Hugh; an occasional slip of the tongue should not count in comparison with the many times that he had bridled it, and each of these times was quick to multiply itself. By dint of looking back he convinced himself that Hugh’s debt to him was great.
It was one way of discharging it to be waiting at Balholm, at three o’clock in the morning, to hand Miss Dalrymple out of the boat!
The men paid, and left to make the boat water-tight, Wareham walked slowly up the short incline towards the inn. He lingered, from an irritable disinclination to see Anne and Hugh together again; but before he reached the door, Hugh came out to meet him like a bolt. He seized Wareham’s hand and wrung it.
“My dear old fellow,” he cried exultingly, “was ever anything in the world so amazingly lucky! I might have knocked about the country for a week without tumbling up against them, and of all the blessed moments for a man to arrive, just when she was a bit sore at their want of care!”
As Hugh paused to contemplate his good fortune, Wareham thrust in a question.
“What on earth made you go in for such a”—he would have liked to have said “preposterous,” but left it out—“hurricane dash across the seas?”
“What else would you have expected when I had your telegram? Wasn’t I just wild to get word with her again? And saw no chance of it. Look here, what food there is, is waiting for you in there. Come and eat. I’ve got to talk to some one about it all, and I’m not so unreasonable as to harangue a hungry man.”
“More sleepy than hungry.”
“Well, you must eat before you turn in.”
“Has Miss Dalrymple had some food?” Hugh laughed joyously.
“Do you suppose I didn’t see that she had all she wanted? It’s gone up to her room, of course. She’s got to pay that tribute to Mrs Grundy. Here you are; now what’ll you have? Here’s the landlord himself. Beer, sausage, kippered salmon, marmalade, coffee?”
Wareham made a selection; Hugh rattled on, helping himself meanwhile.
“I believe I’m as hungry as you are. Meat in this country is uneatable—or was yesterday,” he added, with an exulting fling at his own change of mood; “but I can’t understand that it isn’t the orthodox breakfast-time. I suppose one must go to bed, but I shan’t sleep—not a wink. I say, old fellow, it was awfully good of you to send me that telegram—awfully. And now you’ve seen Anne—”
“Anne? Is she Anne again?”
“She’s never been anything else in my heart. Now you’ll understand. Enough to throw a man off his balance, wasn’t it?—to think of losing her. She’s splendid. And to tell you the truth, I’ve been fretting myself with the idea she might be annoyed at seeing me here at her heels.”
“Well?”
“Try the salmon? No? You’d better. What was I saying? Oh, I believe she was rather pleased than otherwise. Women are not to be counted on. They’ll fight you, but they like to be taken by storm.”
Wareham agreed with a groan, thinking of himself in the boat. Hugh went on—
“She didn’t seem a bit vexed. But as I said before, I couldn’t have chosen a better moment if I’d waited a year. Selfish pig, that Mrs Martyn. I don’t believe she cared one halfpenny. Those other people, Ravenstones, Ravenhills—what are they called?—were twice as feeling. The mercy was that it was you, old fellow, and no other man, who was with her.”
It was impossible to keep back a sharp “Why?”
Hugh laughed.
“You’ve never seen me a prey to the yellows, but I can imagine myself in their clutches. Another man would have meant possibilities. No, I’m grateful.”
Wareham had a horrible impulse to cry out, “Fool!” and this to his friend. Instead of it, he said—“You’d better bottle up your gratitude till you know it’s due.” He would have liked to let out more, but how?
“I’m not afraid. And I tell you what, I’m glad for another reason. You can’t have seen her for all these hours without understanding something of her charm. Where are your prejudices now? But I won’t reproach you. You’ve done me too good a turn. By Jove, it’s hard work waiting, even if only a few hours!”
He had his elbows on the table, his chin in his hands. Wareham pushed back his chair and stared at him with something of the feeling of a man who, worsted, yet will look his fate in his face. He knew his age—eight-and-twenty—but never before had he seen him as the very incarnation of youth. It could be read in every line, in the twist of his shoulders, in the spring of his thick wavy hair, in the attitude, half comical, half petulant. He was tall, and his shoulders prognosticated size; fair as a northerner, and clean-faced; grey-eyed and wide-mouthed. Wareham, with thirty not long left behind him, felt an absurd envy of his three years’ advantage. He stood up suddenly.
“Look here, Hugh, I’m done. I’m going to bed.”
“All right, old fellow. You do look a bit seedy. Shall I come up and see that they’ve treated you properly? Say the word, and I will.”
“For heavens sake, no.”
“You’d rather tumble in at once? Good. I haven’t said half there is in my head, but I dare say you think it’ll keep. I don’t know what I’ll do. Lie down, I suppose; but there’s a bath-house out there on the pier, and I feel more like a swim. You won’t try that instead?”
“Bed,” said Wareham laconically.
“Bed it is, then. I’d better show the way in this rabbit-warren. You’re close to me.”
“Kviknaes will come. He and I are old friends.”
It was difficult to shake off Hugh’s good-will. Wareham had no inclination for sleep, but imperative need to be alone, to meet these disjointed fancies which had neither sense nor sequence, yet threatened mastery. Kviknaes, smiling hospitably as though four o’clock in the morning were the usual hour for receiving guests, showed him his little room, the same as he had had there once before. It looked out on the great fjord, now lying in sunniest radiance. Evidently Hugh, from the next room, had spied the boat coming over the waters, and timed his own departure to the landing-place. Wareham decided, with a grim smile, that Anne doubtless credited him with a night watch on the shore.
This was the first consolatory reflection, and it was petty enough.
It allowed entrance, however, to others. His mind was like an American house with the valves for hot and cold air both open; cold and heat rushed in in brisk emulation. Out of sight of Hugh, out of hearing his transports, with the shining waters before him across which he and she had floated, he wondered at his own sudden dejection, and rated it as cowardly. The world’s veriest fledgeling would have borne himself more bravely. Say that Hugh was there, say that Anne encountered him without displeasure, what did that prove? Did he expect her to frown, to hurl reproach? He eluded that second speech of hers in the boat, which had fallen icily; he went back to her confession that Hugh bored her. That had seemed to him decisive. A woman does not marry the man who bores her, except for cogent reasons, which he would not hold of possible weight with Anne. He bored her, she had flung up her engagement and fled. There was the long and short of it. Nothing was altered, and out jumped a hundred excellent little arguments protesting that nothing ever should alter.
But the worst of these Jack-in-the-box puppets is that a very little sends them in again. Opportunity—golden opportunity—had been his, when his hands were tied; would she ever come again? How was Anne to know what point of honour checked words, looks? If she did know—there was the rub!—would she accept it as valid reason? Down, dismally down, went the poor puppets, one after the other. She would not, she could not!
If that had been all! But he knew that he was turning his back upon the worst difficulty.
What would happen when the unconscious Hugh received that letter which was off on its travels after him, and which sooner or later must come into his hands. What should he do? Forestall it? Stand aside and wait?
Regrets, forebodings scourged him. If he had spoken he might have won her. Faith to his friend—which he could not have failed in without being false to himself—had probably lost her. And in spite of all, there was that in the situation which might cause Hugh to think him a traitor.
The varying sensations of the day had battered him into a condition more nearly approaching exhaustion than he knew. Sleep came before he had formed plans for his waking, and he was only aroused by Hugh thundering at his door.
“Slept well? So have I. Like a top. Come along down to the bath-house.”
Wareham dispatched him with promise to follow. Waking, as often happens, had brought decision, so that he shook himself free of the foggy doubts which beset him a few hours before. There could be no question of Hugh’s prior rights. He had nothing to do but to stand aside, and hold his tongue. As for the letter, it must be left to its fate. Long before it reached Hugh, that impetuous young man would have carried or lost the day, and Wareham had sufficient faith in his friend’s warm-heartedness to believe that he would understand, too. That, for the moment, was of greater consequence. He walked slowly down to the pier of black piles, where a red-tiled building is picturesquely perched, revolving other people’s possible actions. They are wheels which we can drive with fewer jolts than our own. And the pure fresh air, the sparkling gaiety of the morning had their effect. They intoxicated Hugh. Wareham, who had a stronger head, felt their influence more subtly. Thoughts of escape had fluttered before him; now he would have none of them. Stand aside he must, but from where he stood he could see and measure, and that alone was an incalculable advantage.