Chapter Twenty.
Not for Two Months.
Beyond the hotel the street is intersected by a wide space, at once a convenience and a provision against the fiery power which threatens Norse towns. The houses are irregular, an atmosphere of shipping hangs about, vessels are moored alongside the pier, seafaring men stroll. When Wareham wanted a breath of fresh air, he went there.
Monday was an anxious day; the fever showed no signs of abatement, and Wareham would not leave the house until late. It had rained all the previous night, pools lay in the broken ground, overhead white shreds of clouds sailed gaily across sweet depths of blue. All was ruffled movement in the harbour, dance of water against the bigger vessels, and a toss from right to left of the smaller boats. Splashes of scarlet, of emerald green, struck out boldly against the black sheds which rose sharp from the waters edge. Red-roofed houses curved round the wood of masts, and the dominating mountain rose in a grand sweep behind.
Here Wareham carried his unquiet spirit. He feared for Hugh, he hated himself for the penetrating dreams of Anne which haunted him. Honestly, he had tried to avoid her, had chosen Dr Scott for his companion, and declined invitations to the yacht, of which Colonel Martyn was the bearer, with scant civility. But she was in the air. He heard the rustle of her dress on the stairs, Hugh babbled her name, he was in the house with her, and the effort to shut her out of his thoughts made him the more conscious of her influence, and kept her always before him.
He strolled along a short pier, where a steamer was unloading, sat down on a coil of rope, and faced the water. Only a few minutes had passed before he caught the sound of voices, and a group bore down upon him, Mrs Martyn and Sir Walter in front, Anne and Lord Milborough behind.
“You have gained a nickname. We call you the Invisible,” Mrs Martyn began, and rained reproach upon him for his love of solitude.
He made no effort to excuse himself.
“Will you come with us now? We are only to be out two or three hours, and I assure you, Anne keeps Lord Milborough to time.”
Anne spoke gravely.
“Why tease Mr Wareham? I admire him for his friendship. If I were allowed to be of use, I should leave you all to amuse yourselves by yourselves, but my offers are invariably rejected.”
“I’ll fall ill at once, Miss Dalrymple, if only you’ll nurse me,” said Sir Walter. He had a small languid face, and an unwholesome skin. Wareham wondered how Anne could tolerate his company and smile upon him as she did.
“Don’t flatter yourself you’d be permitted the choice. Now-a-days a sick man lives under an iron despotism. It is not what he likes, but what he is allowed.”
“Luckily for us,” Lord Milborough remarked, in a low voice.
“I detest those nurses,” broke in Mrs Martyn. “One must submit to them, and all that. Still, I shall always believe that they delight in exaggeration. I’m sure one hears enough of such an illness as Mr Forbes’, and of course it must run its course. But I do not see why one should be alarmed as to the result.”
Wareham looked without answering. Anne shot him a glance which meant, “Do not mind her.” She chattered on—
“And you won’t be tempted? It really is a pity. Well, come in to-night and hear our adventures.”
Anne lingered a moment behind the others. “Let me hear from yourself. Such garbled reports reach me! I am so sorry for him!”
“He shall be told that.”
“And for you. But that I dare say you don’t believe.”
He was too ready. She sighed.
“All this going about does not look like it, but what can I do? We live in a world in which poor women can’t speak or act without remark fluttering about them like harpies. If one could only be oneself!”
With that she was gone. Wareham paced up and down his stones. What did it all suggest? If her words were for Hugh, vanity was scarcely answerable for the conviction that something was meant for him. He hastily pushed away the thought, which at such a time seemed brutal, and looked round him in search of assistance for casting off meditation. The energy of movement presented itself invitingly; he saw a boat near, and signing to its owner, rowed for half-an-hour with purposeless vigour about the harbour, coming in stiff, but braced. As he reached the hotel, Dr Scott met him, and answered his unspoken question. “Very ill.”
“Worse?”
“With the fever so high he must be worse. It saps the life of a man. Poor fellow! I suppose no one can come?”
“No one. I gather you have little hope?” Silence answered the question. All the hours seemed to have been leading up to this moment, yet Wareham was unprepared for its shock. He turned white. Dr Scott went on to soften his unpronounced doom.
“I may be mistaken. One is never absolutely without hope in these cases, where youth is on our side, and I think Sivertsen is more sanguine than I am.”
Wareham went slowly up the stairs, heaviness in his heart. The turmoil about Anne which had filled his mind was suddenly swept into nothingness. Until this moment, it appeared to him he had never realised what hung over them, and all tender recollection of past years surged up like an overwhelming wave. Opening the door, he heard the babble of words rushing incessantly, not loud, but unintermitting. Hugh had grown so accustomed to his presence, that there was no longer a dread of added excitement, and he was admitted at all hours. Sometimes he sat by his bedside, openly in view; sometimes, when the fever ran high, placed himself behind the bed, an unseen watcher. He dropped there now, on a sign from the nurse.
Eyeing the floor, remembrances flitted across it. Hugh the school-boy, as he first recollected him, a fair curly-headed young giant, blue-eyed and open-faced, fighting an older and bigger fellow with indomitable pluck, and at another time taking a punishment which should not have been his. Once on the track, a dozen such memories of acts which had first drawn the two together, upstarted. Times down at Sir Michael’s, where Wareham, a lonely boy, was always welcome. Older life, when Wareham’s intellect had taken him to the front, and Hugh’s idleness hobbled him. Then the days he did not care to think about even now rose up; no words could have made them clearer; he recollected his misery and the young man’s patience, and the recollection thrilled him, striking, as it did, across the mutter of delirium. In natural sequence followed Hugh’s own trouble, which Wareham looked at now through cloudy remorse, impatient with himself that at first sight of the syren he did not fly, that he had been so dull in reading signs, that he had not waited, repressing the hateful letter. Imagination conjured up reproof in Hugh’s hollow eyes; at times, when he caught them fastened on his face, mute reproach, a hundred times more pathetic than words. His ear was constantly on the alert to catch something bearing on it in delirious sentences, he had an insane notion that then he might have quieted him with assurances. Every now and then something struck on his heart with a sound like a knell.
He spent the greater part of the night in the sick-room. Anne’s request that he would himself bring her news of the patient, he ignored. The morning showed a change, but one enemy retired only to make room for another, for which indeed it had been working, and doctors and nurses gathered all their resources to meet deadly weakness. That morning came a request for which Wareham was prepared. Could he see Anne? The doctor had to decide, and gave unwilling permission, fencing it about with limitations of time. In answer to Wareham’s questioning eyes, he said—
“We have not the right to refuse.”
What passed, his friend never learned. He absented himself, and took care not to go up till all fear of meeting with Anne was over. He knew only that the interview had not lasted more than a few minutes, and that the nurse was cross, admitting no right to human nature in a patient. Love, of all disturbing forces, should be shut out of a sick-room. Not venturing to snub the doctor, she snubbed Wareham, while nursing her charge devotedly. But in the course of the day, Hugh looked at him and said “To-morrow,” and he understood that something was to be said to himself. It relieved him, for he had the longing of a woman for a word out of the silence of darkness which he foresaw.
“He wants to speak to you alone,” Dr Scott said the next morning. “The interview won’t be so disturbing, I imagine, as that of yesterday?”
Wareham had to intimate that it was not unlikely it would.
“Bad,” said the other. “However, as I said, I couldn’t consent to prevent a man from saying what he wished at this stage of his illness. You must do your best to keep him quiet.”
“And when?”
“In ten minutes.”
Ten minutes passed, and Wareham was at Hugh’s side. His heart sank at the alteration, and his voice, when he tried to speak cheerily, had a false ring which he fancied audible to all. Hugh looked at the nurse, who retired reluctantly, showing Wareham as she went out that a restorative was on the table.
“I waited,” said Hugh.
Wareham forced his face into a smile.
“Wait longer, old fellow, if you’re not up to talk. I’m here, night and day.”
“I know. You’ve been awfully good.”
His friend did not answer, except by laying his hand on an arm which shocked him by its thinness, and for a little while there was silence which Wareham did not dare to break. What lay beyond it? Hugh’s next words touched the sore.
“The letter.”
The answer was in a shaken voice.
“I would give my right hand never to have written it!”
Fun once more gleamed in Hugh’s eyes.
“Poor old Dick! Odd, wasn’t it? I couldn’t help laughing to find you’d been so bowled over!”
His voice was little more than a slow whisper, broken by pauses, sometimes sinking so low as to be almost inaudible. Wareham felt that the time had come for him to speak.
“Don’t try to say anything, but just listen. On my honour, the thing was on me before I knew where I was, and, while I flattered myself—like a fool—that I detested her for the way she treated you, I never thought that all the time she was slipping into my very heart. At last, one day, I saw myself and her. Hugh, that very day I wrote that letter. And, look here—though I said just now that I would have given my right hand not to have written it, I don’t know how I could be facing you now if I hadn’t.” He reined himself back into slow speech. “I never spoke a word to her. The secret rests between you and me. She hasn’t an idea. Get well, Hugh, and God knows whether I will not stand aside and be thankful that you have her!”
Silence, and the ticking of the clock. The nurse looked in at the door, but retreated at a sign from Wareham. Hugh said at last—
“I urged you to stay.”
“And now you know why I refused?”
“Yes. Poor Dick!”
His look made the question superfluous, yet Wareham said—
“There never will be bad blood between us?”
Hugh’s hand sought his in pledge.
“Never. I want to make it all right.”
“Wait for that, Hugh.”
“For what? For my ghost?” He breathed the words. “When you saw me that morning—what a sell!”
“Nothing had been said,” repeated Wareham doggedly.
“I know. I couldn’t have been so straight—with Anne before me. But you can’t laugh now at my madness.”
“Not I.”
Silence again, and another spoonful at his dry lips. He whispered. “I’m glad I came.”
His friend had no words for this.
“Yes—glad. I know her better.” His voice gained strength, and his eyes turned again to Wareham. “I could have made her love me.”
“I have seen all along that you were the only man she liked,” the other said, with confidence.
“I don’t know.” His feeble hands beat up and down, as if he were indicating balance. “She’s not easy. If I’d lived, I couldn’t have given her up. Now,”—a sign stopped Wareham’s protest. “Yes, but I’m dog in the manger still.”
Wareham felt a cold clutch at his heart for which he loathed himself.
“Be what you like, Hugh,” he said quickly. “No one has so much right to speak as you,” and whatever his heart might say, his will would have bound itself irrevocably to his friend’s bidding.
“I want—you to have her,” Hugh sighed, turning away his face.
Once more the nurse looked in at the door, signifying disapproval. Wareham hastily nodded, and she withdrew her head. He had to put down his ear to catch Hugh’s next words—
“Don’t let us pretend—I’m dying—win her, Dick.”
It was impossible for Wareham to speak. He pressed Hugh’s hand, and he was thinking more of Hugh than Anne.
“Only—”
A pause.
“I told you I was a dog in the manger.”
“Tell me what you wish, old fellow.”
“I want to be remembered—just for a little. I don’t want you to speak just yet.”
“I couldn’t.”
The dull eyes brightened.
“You promise?”
“Sacredly. And, Hugh, I’ve no right to think she ever will consent.”
“Ask her in—” He paused. “Is two months too long? Remember, I held her mine once. I can’t set that on one side. You promise? Not a word till two months have passed?”
“You have my promise,” said Wareham quickly, the more quickly for shame at the murmurings of a greedy heart.
“When you’ve got her—you won’t mind having waited. I’ve said my say, Dick. Yesterday—”
“Yes?”
“I asked her to kiss me, and—she did.” His voice grew stronger, and he smiled feebly. “That other lean-souled woman wanted to come, but I wouldn’t have her.”
“Mrs Martyn?”
“Yes. She’s curious. Say nothing to her, Dick.”
“Nothing. Old boy, you’ve talked enough.”
“Well—” Hugh acknowledged.
A silent pressure, and Wareham went. He wanted to be by himself, and though there were only half-a-dozen people he knew in Bergen, the place seemed full of them; there was not a corner round which they might not appear. He might have walked off out of the town, and been safe, but he would not leave the house for more than half-an-hour. For that time the museum struck him as a safe refuge, and he made for it.
Turning up a broad street to his right, a sailor crossed the road and touched his hat.
“Beg pardon, sir, but ain’t you Mr Wareham?”
He signified his right to the name.
“I’ve a message for you, sir, from the young lady on board the yacht. I was to say as we ain’t going out of harbour to-day, sir, and that if she was wanted, you’d only got to send a boat for her.”
He was told to carry back the answer that Mr Wareham would take care to act upon her wishes.
“You’ve a fine yacht out there,” he added, in order to gratify the man.
“If you saw her sail, sir, you’d say so. But she hasn’t done nothing here, and it seems as if we were going to be too late for the regattas. Never knew that happen afore.”
He departed, and Wareham walked on quickly to the museum, ran up the broad staircase, and wandered into a world of arctic creatures, where he was secure from interruption.
For the last three or four days his hopes of Hugh’s recovery had been low, now some conviction told him it was all but hopeless. “Hugh, old Hugh!” he kept repeating to himself, as the past years of their friendship trooped up again. Always he had been, in thought as well as fact, the elder, the supporter; now in the shadowy twilight of the Great Unseen, Hugh had passed to strange heights of experience; the careless words he used to rattle off, dropped now, changed, as coming from one whose feet were near the eternal shore.
The special thing which Hugh had to say had scarcely presented itself since. It seemed a matter of no moment; something perhaps to be considered in the far future, but not yet. Dying, Anne belonged to Hugh; Wareham’s only dread was lest she should disappoint him, a vague uneasiness about Lord Milborough was in his mind, and he did not think Hugh had any consciousness of this new disturbing element. He asked few questions about her, and it was impossible to say what had passed between them in their last interview, except that he had appeared satisfied. But Anne herself? She had refused to leave the place, had, but half-an-hour ago, sent a message that she was at hand, yet Wareham had his doubts. Did she feel? Did she care? Her own words came back, when she had called herself heartless, and under the intoxication of her presence he had indignantly refuted the accusation. Admitting it even, how was he to blame her? since a vessel can pour out no more than is in it. But with those eyes! Was it possible that no heart reigned behind them? If it were so, Wareham, suddenly stern judge, acknowledged that it was well Hugh should go while yet he loved her, and clung to the dream that she might yet love him.