His voice was sharp, and he knew it and was vexed by it, the truth being that he was out of sorts with himself and the world. Fate, he felt, had played him a skittish trick, in thrusting him into companionship with the one woman whom he would have avoided; nor, spur his steed as he might, could he get away into the old track. He recalled his deliberate judgment of Anne’s character, but it rose a bloodless ghost, behind a living, glowing, dark face, with a look of reproach in the beautiful eyes. Avaunt, sorceress! How should beauty outweigh friendship? Can a fleeting fancy shake solid foundations? The very thought pricked, scourged him. Even if he extricated himself from his false position by the simple method of breaking away from his companions at Odde, he was wroth at having to admit that he could not easily regain his self-respect.
Young Grey babbled youthfully about Miss Dalrymple’s charms, as the two men drove along, but this was a mere outside accident to which Wareham was indifferent. Barring Hugh, what others thought mattered nothing; it was himself he arraigned with the reluctance of a strong character. He answered briefly yes and no, happily sufficient for his companion, who was content to talk.
The storm had vanished, leaving an added beauty, on either side a land flashing light from raindrops on which the sun shone brilliantly, a land of bold heights, leaping torrents, and sweet recesses of bedded moss, out of which peeped wild strawberries and a hundred delicate flowers, while far up against the soft blue of the sky gleamed the unbroken whiteness of the snows.
The others were overtaken at Seligsted, a small roadside inn, crowded round with unharnessed stolkjaerres, and besieged by ravenous travellers. Willing but inefficient hosts lost their heads under press of custom, and tourists stormed in vain, while the young girl-waiters grew sullen under their reproaches. The Martyns, arriving earlier, had managed to secure some food in a balcony; the others, resigning themselves to a long wait, strolled to the river, sat on the grass, and looked at the blue cleft in the hills through which they had passed, or in the opposite direction, where the country broadened into tamer beauties.
When they got back, the most irate of the tourists were driving away in a carriage and pair, a red-faced father, and two or three black-eyed girls, half ashamed, half proud of his brow-beating. “Hurry up! Why the devil can’t they understand plain English!” he was shouting. The men standing by looked at him with calm disapproval; an old man, with a grave, refined face, shrugged his shoulders silently.
There is extraordinary variety in Norwegian roads, variety which is beyond word-painting, and, to a large degree, depends upon the cultivation which the eye brings to bear upon it. Admiration rushes easily after vast outlines, and these are lacking, for in Norway the mountains are of no great height, and when you are among them the lower masses block out the summits. Subtler charm lies in the variety, the infinite multitude of tints and shadings with which the sun is always painting hill and sky, the colours which the granite yields to its radiant touch, so that on these summer evenings the barest piece of rock is a wonder of soft and rich colouring. Then, perhaps, where the shadow deepens, a fos flings itself down, an aerial spirit, here spreading like a veil, there cleaving the purple gloom with a silver flash. Hardly had the Espelandfos been passed, when the ponies instinctively stopped, and the skydsguts, springing off, announced the Lotefos.
They climbed a steep path, and, passing a small summer inn, a great roaring mass of water, broken into three falls, and rushing and seething in an indescribable tumult of beauty, was before them. Clambering from point to point, whichever way the eye turned, it fell upon clouds of spray, upon swift giddy leaps made by the clear beryl-coloured water before it was churned into foam by the force of its descent. Great wet rocks, shining metallic, stood erect in the midst of racing waters, waving grasses caught in the eddies were washed relentlessly, never a pause allowed in which to straighten themselves, and over the magnificent turmoil a rainbow arched serenely. Young Grey sprang into perilous places; Millie gathered trails of the delicate Linnaea Borealis, slender northerner which the great botanist chose for his own; Mrs Ravenhill and Wareham strolled down to the carriages, and leaving the Lotefos behind by a road which soon began to edge itself along a lake, they drove on to Odde.
“Civilisation and late dinners!” sighed Millie, as they got out at the cheerful door of the Hardanger.
“Shops!” groaned young Grey.
“Excellent things, each of them,” retorted Mrs Ravenhill cheerfully. “I wonder how long it will be before you all find yourselves in that shop?”