“Blame me,” said Wareham penitentially. “It was all my fault.”
He pleased himself by observing that the Martyns and Miss Dalrymple were in possession of seats, and as there had been a certain intention—on his part—of delay, it is doubtful if he were really sorry. Millie was radiant.
“I should not have minded staying,” she remarked, when breath had come back; “it is a dear little place, and it would have been a real crow for the landlord. He loved us so dearly for driving straight to his inn, instead of being forced there by want of room in the other! But what an odd state of society must exist in this place, when out of half-a-dozen houses two are rival inns! Do they speak? Do they fight? Human nature could not allow them to be friendly!”
“Oh, I’m not so sure,” said Mrs Ravenhill; “you forget the strength of nature here, and that the human part of them would have to combine against snow and darkness and solitude. Once we are gone, I dare say they are good friends together.”
As they were carried along over the green waters of the Suldal lake, it seemed to some of those who were looking, as though they were entering a solemn and enchanted region.
The sun, which blazed upon the great granite hills, could not rob them of their supreme gravity. They were mighty Titans resting after labour and conflict; earth-forces up-heaved and left to lie and bleach, exposed to the more subtle forces of air and water. For the lake crept in and out between them, always softly pushing through, although often the tremendous cliffs closed so menacingly round, that the boat appeared to be making for a wall of sheer rock against which she must be ground. At such moments those on board watched almost breathlessly for the passage to declare itself, sometimes splitting a sharp angle, sometimes stealing through a sinuous curve, once urged between two colossal barriers, which bear the name of the Portal. It is the gateway into a shadowy, mysterious, yet radiant world, which lies as God’s Hand has left it, untouched by man. On either side the mountains rise precipitously, or melt away into ethereal distances; out of their soft purples and greens an occasional raw patch marks where the frost-giant has split off a vast fragment from the rock and tumbled it into the green waters below. Birch and oak clamber up and down the cliffs; a sharp white line shows a slender waterfall leaping from the heights, and re-appearing here and there, but, too far off for movement to be perceptible, it looks a mere scratch on the shadows. More rarely, where there is the suspicion of a valley, or, at any rate, a flatness, the steamer screams to some half-dozen—or fewer—scattered houses, tying in a scarcely-endurable solitude, a little amphitheatre of silence; each with its tiny patch of emerald-green rye, its square of half-cut grass, its small potato-ground, its boat lying on the shore. Some rough track may exist, but of visible roads there are none, nor any cattle, except, possibly, a few goats away browsing on the hills. Such forlorn habitations only deepen the brooding solitude, by forcing on the imagination dreams of these alone, self-dependent lives, but for the call of the steamer as alone as though they were a knot of sailors shipwrecked on a desert shore.
Wareham, for whom they had a strange attraction, watched them from the forepart of the vessel. While he was there, Colonel Martyn joined him. He was a tall sad-looking man, with a mountainous nose, devoted to sport, and hating society. He grumbled a disconsolate question.
“How much longer does this sort of thing go on?”
“The lake? Three hours, from end to end. Doesn’t it please you?”
“It would please me well enough if I were pulling up in a boat. Cooped up with a lot of other fools, it makes me sick. Do you mean to tell me you find any pleasure in the business?”