“I hate repetitions.”
Wareham heard and chuckled. But where is your woman’s consistency? The next moment she had given her young lover a smile which put the other man’s blood into a fever. Hugh looked round at him radiantly. Mrs Martyn eyed him with an experienced glance expressive to Wareham of “You see!” He walked away.
When he came back the group had been enlarged by several of the other people from the inn, who were making the same little voyage. An elderly man, with a keen clever face, held forth to Mrs Martyn, and Wareham was not ill-pleased to note that the lady showed signs of discomfiture. He interrogated her closely, would have chapter and verse with her statements, and ruthlessly fastened on the futility of certain vague expressions in which she took refuge. Wareham stood for a minute receiving broken sentences from the group, except when Anne spoke, upon which the other voices faded into indistinctness.
“Nothing in Norway to compare with Scotland.”
“Well, I don’t know. There’s good—”
“Didn’t you hear? She is expected to-morrow, and great preparations—”
“Horrible food!”
Then a voice like a bell.
“I half wish we were going home in her, she looks so big and so roomy.”
Only the foolishness of love could make music out of this every-day remark, but to his ear it sounded in sweet relief to the clatter of the others. So sad is the eclipse of friendship before the greater light, that he was conscious of a wish to swing Hugh out of his place by her side, and stand there himself. Had not he had his chance and failed? To be swaggering round, and playing dog in the manger, was an unworthy solace. To be compelled to hover near with a heart full of yesterday, was to munch ashes. For let philosophers say what they will, the past is at best unsatisfying food, but a past which has no more substance than hope unfulfilled, chokes you with its dusty remembrances. Wareham went restlessly about the vessel, talking to the red-faced burly captain of the Kommodoren, to any one: wherever he went he saw Hugh’s spirited figure, Anne’s pale clear-cut profile, and these two only. At last, as he was speaking to an elderly lady with a sweet kind face, he surprised her by quitting her suddenly. Opportunity had come, and he flew to Anne’s side.