Читать книгу The Swing of the Pendulum - Frances Mary Peard - Страница 11

By fits and starts Wareham was an early riser, and the next morning he was out between five and six. By that time the sun was high in the heavens, dews were dried, life—insect and plant-life—was in eager movement. A cottage with a wonderful roof, lying not far from the foot of the fos, had attracted him the day before; he crossed the zigzags, made out a narrow path over short grass, and reached it.

It was a tiny cottage, built partly of stones heaped roughly one on the other, partly of boards of many shapes and sizes, a hut full of odd cranks and changes, deep eaves on one side, a perched-up window on another. But what had attracted Wareham to closer inspection was the roof, lovely with waving grass, sorrel, starlike daisies, and a mass of lilac pansies. It was the subject Mrs Ravenhill would pounce upon to sketch, and he felt a gentle gratitude towards the Ravenhills for the small demands they made upon him. An extraordinarily stony little path flung itself headlong towards the lake, through tall emerald-green rye; he stumbled down a few yards to look back at the hut, standing out against a violet mountain, all the colours sharply insistent in the clear morning air. To his extreme astonishment he saw Miss Dalrymple appear on the crest of the hill, and make her way down towards him. She came lightly and firmly, stepping from stone to stone without hesitation. She wore a white dress, and the impression she gave was of some one younger than he had fancied her. As she drew nearer the impression strengthened by her calling out gaily—

“I have just discovered what it is all like; Sunday morning, the freshness, and the enchanting air. Do you know?”

“No.” He added in spite of himself—“Tell me.”

“The opening to the last act of Parsifal.”

“I dare say. But I am no musician.”

“Nor I. But I suppose one need not be a painter to be reminded of a picture. However, I did not come after you to talk about Parsifal.” She stood in the narrow pathway looking down upon him, and spoke with extreme directness. “I saw you from the window, and, as I wished to say something, I followed—”

He bowed. She looked beyond him.

“I have known you two days, but of course have heard of you enough, and though you may not believe it, no one wanted you home from India more than I. I fancied from what I gathered that you might understand.”

He steeled himself against the flattering softness of her voice.

“Because I was Hugh Forbes’ friend?”

“Yes,” she returned quickly—“for that reason. You might have saved him suffering. For I am afraid he has suffered.”

“You are afraid. Do you doubt?”

“Not now.”

“Compassion has awakened tardily,” he said, with a laugh, which brought her eyes upon him.

“Wait a moment,” she said suddenly. “The grass on this bank is dry. Let us sit down. Now go on.”

Seated, she was still above, and her dark eyes rested on his face. He found it difficult to say what a moment before had seemed easy. “He will feel his hurt all his life.”

This time her eyebrows went up.

“Oh, no!”

“I know him,” persisted Wareham.

“So I thought. But you are mistaken. His feelings cry out, and are quickly consoled. In a year he will have forgotten them.”

“Your doctrines are convenient.”

She breathed quickly, but appeared to wait for more.

“To break off your engagement without so much as a word as to the why! To refuse even to see him! Caprice could hardly show itself more cruelly.”

Anger leapt into her eyes.

“You allow yourself strong expressions, Mr Wareham!”

“If you do not like them it appears to me that I am the last person to whom you should speak. You may not know what Hugh is to me.”

“If I did not, I should not be talking to you at this moment,” she retorted, flinging back her head. “Should I discuss the subject with an indifferent person?”

It had been good to him to feel the impetus of his own anger, he courted, encouraged it. A secret fear made him dread a softer mood. He kept his eyes upon a butterfly, balancing itself on an ear of rye. As he did not answer, she went on—

“Taking it from your point of view only, for I suppose you would be incapable of a broader outlook, do you consider a lingering end more merciful than one which is short and sharp? I have never for a moment regretted the manner of the doing.”

“You have regretted something,” said Wareham quickly, recognising that she laid a scarcely-perceptible stress on one word, and beginning to think that she intended him to undertake the mission of reconciliation. A drag of reluctance he believed to belong to disapproval.

“Perhaps,” she said, with hesitation.

“Isn’t it a little late?”

It struck him that his question had an offensive air, but she appeared not to have heard it; she was looking beyond him at the glowing lake, and the mountains which bordered the green waters.

“I am ready to own that I was to blame,” she went on, still slowly; “but I shall always think that he ought to have understood.”

“What?”

“What can’t be put into words. Why, I did not care to marry him.”

“You are enigmatical.”

She made an impatient movement.

“At any rate, it should be enough for you that I did not like him well enough.”

“And that is your explanation?”

“What; else?”

“It had occurred to me that the match might not have been considered sufficiently brilliant for the beautiful Miss Dalrymple.” She did not reject the supposition with anger as he perhaps expected, merely shook her head.

“You are like the rest of the world,” she said resignedly, so that he immediately felt shame for his own stupidity, but had nothing to say against it. He took refuge in pointing out that they had placed themselves in the line of a procession of caterpillars, all apparently on their way to the lake, and that several were at that moment on her dress. She brushed them off with indifference. “Why should you have fastened on that motive?” she asked.

“Was it so unlikely?”

“Your friend rejects it.”

“Yes. He believes—still believes—nothing of you but what is good.”

“Dear Hugh!” she breathed softly. Wareham started with amazement.

“You like him still!”

“I have never ceased to like him.”

For the first time in their talk he had turned his eyes on her face, and met her look full. Sitting there, the lovely lines of her figure curved against the waving rye, the warm brown tints of her hair caught by the sunshine, eyes in which the fire was veiled by long lashes, a mouth slightly drooped and softened; all this close to him, and seen in the divine freshness of the young day, sent an intoxicating throb of delight into his heart. Clinging to a bending purpose, he stammered—“Then—then—”

“I shall not marry him. Make him understand this.”

He looked away—closed his eyes, reckless whether she saw the movement or not, only conscious that the momentary madness had passed. It sharpened his voice as he said—“Do not expect me to succeed. I told you that you were enigmatical, and I repeat my words. Nothing that you have said alters the cruelty of dismissing poor Hugh in the sudden and unexpected manner you adopted.” She rose, without at first speaking, but stood in the same place until she said slowly—“Perhaps. But it was difficult to act.”

The words that were on his lips seemed glued there; by an effort he succeeded at last in bringing them out.

“May I tell Hugh to hope?”

“Oh, no,” she said composedly. “Certainly not. My mind is absolutely made up. Urge him to think no more of me; above all, not to try to see me. It is quite useless.”

Wareham smiled.

“He will thank me.”

“If he does not, I shall,” she said softly; and again he was conscious of the strange throb which had surprised him before. This time it was slighter, and he did not look or speak, while in another moment she turned and began to climb the stony path.

Wareham followed slowly, more perturbed than he would have cared to own. He had failed in discomfiting her, as he had never doubted his power of doing, once they met; and though no blame had been cast on Hugh, he had an angry and unwilling feeling that if it was want of love which had broken off the marriage, the lover himself should have been the first to realise it. Hugh had never suffered him to suppose this could be the cause. He thrust away the feeling irritably. Was he to blame Hugh for the act of a heartless girl?

At the top of the path, a very poor old woman stood outside the hut, holding a goat by a cord. Anne, perhaps glad of the interruption, began to talk to her. Wareham stood a few feet off, and she presently came back to him.

“She is not so old as she looks. I thought her a hundred, but that was her husband who went down the path just now. I would ask her about the caterpillars, only I haven’t an idea what is Norwegian for caterpillar. Have you?”

He was as ignorant.

“She is not begging,” Anne continued, “though I am sure she is dreadfully poor, and in spite of all the laws of political economy, I shall give her a krone.”

He neither objected nor encouraged; and his self-respect was partly restored by standing aloof in a position of indifference. Anne, smiling, glanced at him between half-shut eyelids, and went off again. He followed. The old woman, almost beside herself with delight, seized her hand, and shook it with rapturous gratitude. Blessings of every kind were invoked, and showered also, undeservedly, upon Wareham. Then she made vigorous signs that Anne was to stay where she was, while she herself hobbled into the hut.

“What is to follow?” asked Wareham.

Anne shook her head. “I shall certainly wait and see. What can come out of that poor little place? Not!” She turned upon him a horrified face—“Oh, no!”

“What?”

“I believe—I am sure—she is bringing me a tumbler of goat’s milk! Of all things that I loathe—”

Her face was tragic. Wareham was prepared to see her decline the gift, but had to own to injustice. She took the tumbler, drank to the end, and thanked the old woman with a sweet courtesy. If, after it, she moved quickly away, she told Wareham that it was to rescue him from a similar fate. He owned that he could not have been so heroic, and that she had surprised him.

“What else was there to do?” she asked simply.

Her mood had changed. All the way back to the inn she talked gaily and lightly about the country, their fellow-travellers, and the children they met. He found his conception of her lost, not to be called back, and between this and that grew bewildered. There was nothing for it but to follow her lead, and to set Hugh’s wrongs on one side. They went there easily, and left the ground more pleasantly open, so that he reached the door in eager talk, and, what was worse, with desire for more.

He kept silence to the Ravenhills as to his morning, never even telling Mrs Ravenhill of the little cottage with pansied roof, which he had ostensibly sought for her. Something in him, something which he did not choose to admit, but which secretly controlled him, made him averse from admitting any one to the place where this morning he had met Anne: he told himself that he wished to put away the recollection of a painful incident. Painful it should have been, and must be.

It was Sunday; a little service was held in the salon. Afterwards, except at meals, Wareham saw no more of Miss Dalrymple. He went out and walked far over the hills with the clergyman, whose wife was at last tired, but whose own energy was unfailing. He carried it into botany, and though Wareham knew nothing of the subject, the triumph with which a rare discovery was hailed gave relish to the walk. Would Millie have liked something different? She made no complaint, but at supper chatted cheerfully of the cottages into which she had penetrated; the children’s shake of the hand for “tak” when she gave them sweets; the strings of fresh, kindly-faced women coming back from their walk of miles to the nearest church. Millie had won the children’s hearts, and the next morning, when, under a sky of tender northern blue, they started on their walk up the pass, they came smiling round, no longer in Sunday scarlet skirts and green aprons, but in work-a-day clothes, to wish her good-morning and farewell.

The air was pure and sweet, soft yet exhilarating. The stolkjaerres were to carry only luggage to the head of the pass, Mrs Ravenhill declaring herself ready for the five miles walk. The clergyman and his wife were ahead of them.

They went up gradually towards the heights. The mountains fall away on either side, and it is a wide desolate-looking expanse through which the road to Odde curves and zigzags. Patches of snow lie in sun-forgotten gullies, or crown the higher summits. All along the road tall posts are set at intervals to mark the track on those gloomy days of winter when the light of stars shines on one vast sheet of snow, filling the broad valley cup, and smoothing every rough outline. Something of this melancholy solitude remains throughout the year; not a tree breaks the sweep, not a building asserts itself. Walk for hours, and it is unlikely that you meet a human being; the only trace of his activity is the white road which twists upwards. But on a July morning the world under your feet is astir with gladness; the springy turf is starred with myriads of tiny flowers; shrubs of the dwarf cornel peep at you with white brown-eyed blossoms, and the boggy land, through which melting snows are making their way, feed the bright green succulent winter chickweed, or the delicate bells of the false lily of the valley.

And it was across this beautiful upland world, making short cuts from zigzag to zigzag, that Millie, as young as the summer and as happy, went her way. Young Grey had, without deliberate arrangement, become a sort of hanger-on of the party, and he was here. From such small adventures as sticking in a bog, or being forced to wade a stream, merriment flowed joyously. Now and then they sat down, rather from wishing to linger than from need of rest; and it was in one of these halts that, their own carriages having reached a higher level, they beheld two others crawling up the road, and presently a shout reached them from a long spindle-legged figure striding towards the group, and waving a stick to arrest attention. Young Grey sprang to his feet and waved energetically in return.

“It’s Colonel Martyn, and there’s Miss Dalrymple in the carriole!” he exclaimed. “What a shame that she isn’t up here!” He was darting off, when reflection brought him back with—“You don’t mind my trying to persuade her to come with us, Mrs Ravenhill?”

“How should I? By all means persuade her.”

He was off like an arrow from a bow, and Mrs Ravenhill praised his good-nature. Wareham chimed in; Millie sat silent.

Miss Dalrymple did not leave the little carriage, and young Grey did not return. Colonel Martyn was a melancholy substitute. Naturally it fell to Mrs Ravenhill to cheer him, and Wareham and Millie wandered on together. She avoided touching Anne’s name: he repeated it more than once to himself, that he might impress on his mind a stronger sense of his relief in not having her there. All Millie’s little prettinesses he made an inward note of, and extracted admiration, telling himself that here was a sweeter charm. If such a thing had been possible, it might have seemed that he fashioned them into a shield. But why? And against what?

It gave Millie great pleasure to reach the snow-beds, though their edges were little more than crusts, under which trickled out the melting water; and when a sudden shade came between them and the sun, and looking up, they realised for the first time what a bank of cloud was sweeping down from the north, she professed a strong desire to see a storm in these desolate regions. At the top of the pass, where lies a sullen lake, slaty grey now with menacing shadow, the stolkjaerres were waiting, their own and the Martyns’. And, as there opened before them a vast faraway whiteness of snow, unbroken and eternal, a driver, pointing, said the word which they had long expected—“Folgefond!”

“Where is Tom?” Mrs Martyn demanded hastily.

Mrs Ravenhill reported that he had left her to make his way up a hill, from which he foretold a view. “He said he would overtake us.”

“And I am in mortal terror already!” cried his wife. “The skydsgut says we go down a tremendously steep descent, and that a dreadful storm is coming. Thunder frightens me to death.”

Consolation was offered, but failed to soothe. A livid shadow which touched the snow set her trembling. She desired Miss Dalrymple to take Colonel Martyn’s place by her side, then looked imploringly at Wareham.

“I am ashamed—it is wretched to be such a coward—but Mr Grey is with Mrs Ravenhill—would you mind coming close behind in Anne’s carriole, Mr Wareham? The comfort that it would be!”

Wareham perceived that his attendance was resolved upon. He made a slight demur.

“Of course if I can be of any use—”

“The greatest! You would not condemn me to stay on this dreary spot until Colonel Martyn has finished his survey?”

“Ought we to leave him behind?”

“Ought he to have deserted us? Pray let us start. Anne, beg Mr Wareham not to delay. There, I am sure I heard thunder!”

“One moment.” Wareham made a quick step to where Millie stood, a little aloof.

“You bear?” he said, in a low voice. “Are you alarmed?”

If there was effort, Millie did not show it. She said cheerily—

“Not in the least.”

“The woman is absurd, but I suppose one must humour her.”

“Of course. Besides, as she says, we have Mr Grey.”

“Why couldn’t she appeal to him?”

His reluctance contented her, and pacified himself.

Waterproofs were hastily pulled on, for the storm advanced rapidly; clouds, black as ink, brooded on the mountains, blotted out the sky, and before they had gone far, poured down torrents of rain. The turmoil was magnificent, and Wareham could not but excuse Mrs Martyn’s fears, when he noted the acute angles of the steep descent, and heard the thunder crashing overhead. He could see her grasping her companion’s arm, and looking round in terrified appeal, but in the hurly-burly, voice was mute. Yet so swift was the rush of the storm, that by the time they reached more level ground, it was fairly over, and, drawing up, Mrs Martyn was able to bewail herself under an outbreak of sunshine.

Wareham sprang out of his carriole, and went to theirs.

“Safely through it,” he said, smiling.

“But it was awful, awful!” moaned Mrs Martyn. “I have just told Anne that my one comfort was in knowing that you were close behind.”

“A lightning conductor!” Anne said mockingly. “I believe I should have preferred you at a greater distance, for if we had come to grief, you would certainly have been on the top of us.”

“I am afraid you are very wet?” He eyed her anxiously.

“Nothing to mind. But the others? Ought they not to be in sight?”

He felt a twinge of shame.

“I think they ought. I will go back and see.”

Mrs Martyn called after him that she was sure they would be here in a moment, and that it was only because their ponies were not so good that they were behind, but he was already running back. She shrugged her shoulders discontentedly.

“Manners!” she exclaimed. “Tell the man to go on, Anne. I don’t mean to wait in the road for Mr Wareham’s pleasure.”

Anne said coolly—

“Why should you? Besides, he belongs to them.”

“Belongs? Nonsense! Do you suppose he thinks of marrying that child?” She took off her felt hat, and shook the wet from it.

“Why not?”

“Absurd! An insignificant little creature, with no attraction except a dimple, which she doesn’t know how to show off. You have only to lift your little finger, Anne, and he would be at your feet.”

Anne showed no surprise, and made no disclaimer.

“And it would be better than that last foolish affair from which you were only just saved.”

She repeated the word slowly. “Saved? And what saved me?”

“Oh, don’t be vexed! Nothing, my dear, but your own worldly wisdom, which came to the rescue in the nick of time, as I always knew it would.” Mrs Martyn laughed.

The girl had pulled the hood of her coat over her head to protect it from the rain. She let it slip back, and it showed her face grave.

“Why must you all talk of my worldly wisdom!” she exclaimed. “Am I so hateful that you can’t give me credit for a good impulse?”

“Oh, I think you have impulses—it was no doubt an impulse which landed you in the entanglement to which I was referring—but then, happily, you retract in time. Recollect, you can’t do this all your life. I wish you were safely married.”

Anne drew a deep breath, then laughed.

“When I am, the somebody, whoever he is, will have to sweep me away like a whirlwind—”

“Why: What do you mean?”

“I can’t stand the hesitation, the thinking about it. I invariably begin to repent, and if he hesitates—he is lost.”

Mrs Martyn opened her eyes roundly.

“So that is your theory? I hardly thought you owned one.”

Anne went on as if she had not spoken.

“I mean to marry, and it appears that I have not the power of falling in love. If I take the leap I must do it at a gallop. Now do you understand?”

“A little. This last man, did he represent a whirlwind? My dear, you let it go too far with him, and he could not be expected, poor fellow, to see the absurdity as we all saw it.”

Anne’s eyes darkened.

“There was no absurdity. If I had cared a little more, I would have married him.”

“If he had happened to have twenty thousand a year instead of one, you mean. No, Anne, no. Nothing short of a brilliant marriage will satisfy you.”

Anne looked as if she were going to reply, but checked herself, and turned her head in another direction. Mrs Martyn yawned.