Читать книгу The Swing of the Pendulum - Frances Mary Peard - Страница 13

Before Wareham reached the companions he had deserted, it was evident that something was amiss, for both Mrs Ravenhill and Millie were on foot, and their skydsgut led the pony. Millie, however, called out to him that no harm had happened, and he then saw that Colonel Martyn was with them.

“What has gone wrong?” he asked, as he came up. “There’s a very disorganised look about you.”

“We were nearly disorganised altogether,” said Mrs Ravenhill gravely, for she was not well pleased at Wareham’s leaving them. “We might have been, if Colonel Martyn had not come to the rescue.”

Wareham asked what had happened.

“I suppose the man drove too fast, and that fierce clap of thunder startled the pony, for he went over the edge.”

“Good heavens!”

Colonel Martyn interposed to explain that fortunately the descent was not sheer, and the ground was soft. Moreover, the skydsgut jumped off, and held on like death.

“Mr Grey too. And cut his hand,” Millie broke in, with a grateful glance at the young man. He turned red.

“Oh, that’s nothing.”

“Well, as nobody will accept the honours of the situation, I shall take them myself,” said the girl, laughing. “Know then, Mr Wareham, that mother and I showed immense presence of mind in refusing to be shot out when the jerk came, and in scrambling over the back when we realised that we were still there.”

“Then?”

“Then the pony was unharnessed, the stolkjaerre dragged back, and—here we are!”

She spoke lightly, but she was white and trembling. Colonel Martyn inquired where his people were.

“I left them in the road below,” said Wareham briefly.

“Then we’ll sort ourselves again, and I’ll go on.”

As he strode away, Mrs Ravenhill called after him, “Thank you for your help.”

“He enjoyed it,” said Millie. “It was the nearest approach he could have had to a steeplechase, and has quite raised his spirits.” Wareham felt so unconscionably guilty, that it might be supposed something else was really scourging him, and using his small neglect for a lash. He murmured—

“I am thankful he was here. If I had dreamed of real danger—”

“There was as much for the others as for us,” said Millie reasonably. “Besides, I believe Mr Grey and the skydsgut were equal to the emergency. Poor Mr Grey was the only sufferer.”

“Oh, I’m all right,” said the young man. “I say, Mr Wareham, was Miss Dalrymple frightened?”

“Not that I know of,” answered Wareham shortly.

Mrs Ravenhill raised her eyebrows at the tone.

“Now, if you and Mr Grey like to drive on before us,” she said, “Millie and I are quite equal to taking care of ourselves on level ground.”

“I see no reason for changing.”

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?”

It was not long. Every one is attracted by the furs, the carvings, the silver buttons, the soft eider rugs with their beautiful green duck-breast borderings. In the sweet summer dusk it is pleasant to stroll about the little town, buy cherries from the men who bring their baskets of ripe fruit, and turn into this store of Norwegian handiwork. It is more enchanting to go to the front of the hotel, where the fjord runs up between snow-flecked hills, and ends. Grave evening purples steal over the land; in the sky, and reflected in the faithful waters, daffodil and primrose tints melt into each other. A yacht lay in a sea of gold, her fine delicate lines repeated below. A light shone out. Some one stood at the top of the landing steps, looking at the water. Wareham hesitated, then quickly walked up to her.

“I expected to overtake you at the Lotefos,” he said abruptly.

She did not turn her head.

“Are you grateful to me for having spared you the encounter?”

“If I were, should I be here?”

“Very likely. I do not know why you have come.”

“I venture to bring a suggestion.”

“More likely a reproach,” she said. “I believe you are determined to force a quarrel upon me.”

“You misjudge me—indeed you misjudge me!” He spoke warmly, then hesitated. “Certainly we need not quarrel,” he said slowly. “The fates have flung us together, and it appears to me that for a time at least we might leave the past behind us. Forbes is my friend. I cannot think that he was well treated—your friends, doubtless, would take another view. But if we are not likely to agree on this one subject, there are, happily, others in the world to talk about. Come. Do you agree?”

She did not immediately answer. He found himself speculating anxiously what her words would be. When they dropped from her at last, he hung on the low tones—

“I don’t think that two can talk with comfort on even the most indifferent subjects when there is total absence of trust between them.”

“Is that our position?” he asked uneasily.

“Is it not? I have taken trouble to give you an explanation, and you do not believe a word of it.”

“Do not let us discuss that matter.”

“It is there,” said Anne.

Both were silent. A boat came towards them, shattering the tranquil golden lights of the fjord; a few strong strokes brought it up to the landing-place, and half-a-dozen English sprang out, two young girls among them. They looked tired, carried alpenstocks, and called out a gay good-night to the rowers. They had just come back from a hard climb to the Skjaeggedalsfos, and were almost too weary to be enthusiastic. The boat pushed away again into the shining waters, the sound of the oars died into silence. Presently Anne spoke, ignoring their last words.

“The difference between north and south is curiously strong—forgive a truism! What I meant to remark was the different call they make upon oneself. Here there is a good deal of enjoyment to be met with, and it is exactly the opposite kind of enjoyment to what one finds in Italy or Greece. Do you feel this? Since we landed, I believe I have hardly thought a thought or encountered an idea.”

“My own sensation,” Wareham answered eagerly. “It has been like taking out one’s brains, and leaving them with one’s plate at the bankers. The odd thing is, that I don’t miss them.” He laughed.

She went on—

“I have wondered more than once how long it would take to settle down to existence in one of those isolated little villages of two or three houses each which we passed on the Suldal lake?”

“With some of us I suspect the savage would take the upper hand more readily and more rapidly than we suppose possible.”

“The brain would not rebel?”

“You would have to admit glorious physical excitement.”

Anne shivered.

“I cannot realise the possibility of any excitement at all in those desolate homes.”

“Can’t you? I, on the contrary, picture a good deal. Chiefly gloomy, I allow. Think of living for ever next door to your worst enemy—or your best friend! Which would be the most unbearable?”

She took no notice of this cynical speech.

“I could understand the life being endurable in summer, but in winter—winter! And such a winter, with its snows and darkness!”

He demurred.

“So far as I can make out, winter is the most sociable time of the year. You forget that lakes and fjords become the great means of communication; in summer, houses are isolated, owing to the want of roads, but in winter the frozen water serves in their place. No, depend upon it, they have a good time when once they can skate, or strike away on the great snow-shoes you saw by the roadside to-day.”

“But the darkness?”

“Well, one gets used to that in London. I don’t know that we can talk. Besides, they have a great pull over us in the stars. I assure you that all the men who have said anything about it speak of the winter with evident satisfaction.”

“They know nothing better,” Anne said incredulously.

“The root of all satisfaction,” Wareham observed.

She glanced at him quickly, bit her lip, and walked on. He found himself admiring her tall slender figure, and the poise of her small head thrown into relief by the glassy water. He had dropped the fiction that she was not beautiful, and retreated behind a yet feebler barricade, the pretence that hers was not the beauty he extolled. He had ceased to wonder that it served for Hugh.

At the end of the landing-place Anne turned. Wareham was immediately behind, and she faced him as she had not yet done. She spoke, too, more softly—

“You leave to-morrow?”

He flushed and hesitated.

“I—I am not sure. Possibly.”

Her eyes rested on his for a moment, and moved away. She said, indifferently—“Here is Colonel Martyn.”

Colonel Martyn was charged with hope. He had met the party from the Skjaeggedalsfos, and report of certain difficulties owing to a fall of rock had fired his athletic soul. Wareham added that the fos itself was worth a visit, but this idea he rejected.

“See one, see all,” he declared. “A hurly-burly of water, and no fishing—there you have it. But there might be a chance of a climb getting there, and at any rate it must be better than loafing about this wretched little hole. Anne, will you come?”

“No, thank you. I prefer loafing.”

“Will you?”—to Wareham.

“I don’t mind. I’ve been once, and should not be sorry to see it again.”

“Eight. And if you know the lingo, perhaps you’ll make the arrangements. Better change your mind, Anne.”

“No. My mind is set upon easier pleasures. Where’s Blanche?”

“You needn’t ask.” Colonel Martyn’s gloom returned. “Buying Brummagem goods in the shop.”

“I shouldn’t wonder if you believed the fall came from Brummagem too,” Anne retorted. “Well, I’m going to help her. Good-night.”

“You’d better be sure you know how to work your fire-escape before you go to bed,” he called after her. “It’s a common occurrence for the hotels to be burnt down once a month.”

Young Grey, torn between Anne and adventure, felt as if adventure might possess a qualifying power, and went off with the other men early the next morning. Millie tried to get her mother to slip away to the Buarbrae glacier, but Mrs Ravenhill was tired, and disinclined for a long climb. She agreed to go with Millie to a spot which they had remarked the day before, where a river flung itself out of the lake, but she promised Mrs Martyn to join her after luncheon. They captured a stolkjaerre, and drove to their point; then, dismissing it, and leaving the dusty road, turned into a wood that belonged to a fairy tale, where low trees stood singly in the grass, and where every now and then they saw through a break the blue Hardanger hills, rising out of the fjord, and topped with snow; or, on the other side, a silver lake, with mountains stretching, fold after fold, into the solemn distance. Here and there a great rounded granite boulder cropped up, tossed out of its place by Titan wrath; one little farm nestled amid cherry-trees, but the silence was profound, and hardly a living creature passed; only a child or two, then a quaint old couple with a dog. The woman was tall, with a sweet dignified face; the man, bent and aged, carried a Hardanger fiddle. They stopped and chatted readily, and after they had talked awhile, at a sign from his wife, the man began to play his fiddle. It was an odd jangle with no tune, but somehow the old couple, the granite rocks, the wild peasant music, seemed to belong to each other, and to the country.

Mother and daughter slowly walked home, past a picturesque saw-mill, bringing sighs from Mrs Ravenhill, and through fields where hay-making filled the air with fresh fragrance. Each field has its hurdles on which the flower-scented grass hangs drying. When they reached the first outlying house, Mrs Ravenhill put a question which had once or twice fluttered on her lips.

“When is Mr Wareham going to leave us?”

There was a moment’s pause before Millie answered—

“Is he going?”

“I suppose so. From what he told me I believed he intended going off on his own account as soon as he had landed us at Odde.”

“Well, he hasn’t gone,” said the girl, looking straight before her.

Her mother glanced, but could not see her face.

“I shall have a talk with him to-morrow,” said Mrs Ravenhill, in a decided tone. “He may consider himself bound to us, and I am sure I should be vexed beyond measure if he imagined anything of the sort. It would be most annoying. You see that, don’t you, Millie?” she added incautiously.

“What am I to see?” asked Millie, with a laugh. “Mr Wareham bound with cords to you or to me, or to Miss Dalrymple—which is it?—and unable to extricate himself? I’m not sure that the picture is as pathetic as you imagine, but what will you do about it? Implore him to consider himself a free man? You should get Miss Dalrymple to speak for you.”

Mrs Ravenhill was a little offended.

“What has Miss Dalrymple to do with it? You told me he disliked her.”

The girl did not answer the question; she began to talk to a pony standing in a cart by the roadside. Then came a shop, and doubt as to the purchase of an ermine purse; after that, hurry for the table-d’hôte. An English yacht lay in the fjord; her people had come on shore, and were lunching at the Hardanger, next to the Martyns. Millie, who had for her neighbour a clever young Siamese prince who was travelling with a Danish tutor, hoped that Miss Dalrymple might select them for her afternoon companions. But, luncheon over, she made straight for Millie.

“You and I will escape from all these people,” she said, with a smile which would have sent young Grey to her feet. Millie was unaffected.

“It is very hot,” she said.

“Here, very. But I have a cool plan in my head. Please come.”

It would have been ungracious to refuse, and pre-engagements were not to be pleaded in Odde. In an hours time the two girls were sitting in one of the light boats, pointed at each end, and being rowed across the fjord to the opposite side, where a slender waterfall is seen from Odde, dancing down through purple and green woods. The fjord was still as glass, each line of the English yacht repeated itself in the opal waters, two children with scarlet caps hung fishing over the side of the vessel. Anne lay lazily back, looking at everything through half-closed lids. Everything included Millie.

Millie asked at last where they were going.

“To a farm. Does that please you?”

She did not answer the question.

“I can’t see anything like a farm.”

“Nor I,” said Anne, idly turning her head. “We must take it on trust. Old Mr Campbell tells me such a place exists, and hinted at cherries and milk.”

“But the fos?”

“To be crossed by a bridge. You see I have got my bearings.”

Apparently, indeed, she and Millie had changed natures, for she rained talk and laughter upon the younger girl. And she showed no sign of being daunted by the steepness of the climb when they had landed and were struggling up the bank. The path they sought eluded them; presently they found themselves in a thick-growing grassy wood of low trees, through which they pushed a devious way. It was green, fresh, lovely; the roar of the waterfall was in their ears, now and again they met some impetuous little stream, which had rushed away from the greater fall to make its own wilful way to the fjord. Delightful assurance of solitude, cool deepness of grass, stones sheeted with moss and wet with spray, clear dash of waters, interlacing boughs through which sun-shafts shot down, lured them to breathless heights—lured Anne, rather, for Millie dragged. It was Anne who made the ventures, Anne who held aside hindering branches, Anne whose voice came laughing back to vow that the labyrinth grew more tangled, Anne who at last dropped by the side of a baby stream babbling over its stones, and bade Millie rest. She could not say enough of the fascinations of the spot.

“They will come back boasting of their fall with the hopeless name, only because it is big. What has size to do with beauty? This thing is perfect. Look at its curves, and its swirls, and its pools, and its grasses, and its small airs!”

Millie roused herself to admire.

“You are tired?” Anne asked.

She owned that she had walked far that morning.

“And this place doesn’t rest you as it does me?”

“I don’t know.”

Anne settled herself against a sapling.

“I feel as if I had reached the one breathing-place of my life. You don’t know that sensation.”

“Do you think you would like it—often?” asked Millie.

“Certainly not. It is liking it so much which is so unexpected to me. I am of the world—worldly. And to find myself exhilarated and delighted is like growing young again.”

Millie had to smile.

“You are not so old!”

“Aged!—in experience. As for years, they don’t count, or I dare say we might find that I am not so much older than you as you—as every one—would imagine. But I have lived.” Did that mean she had loved? Millie coloured at the charge of inexperience, galling to youth.

“You can know little about me,” she protested.

“Next to nothing. Tell me. You live alone with your mother?”

This was admitted.

“You are not engaged to any one?”

“Oh, no!”

“And have never tried that position?”

“No, oh, no!”

“That shocks you,” said Anne, with a laugh. “My dear, it often happens to me.”

“Not seriously?”

“Quite seriously.” She leant back and watched Millie’s face with amusement. “Are you disgusted?”

“Why—why do you do it? I can’t understand.”

“It comes somehow, often really without my intending. It’s the way of my kind, I suppose. For one thing, how is one to know a man at all until one is engaged? And so often I can’t tell beforehand whether I like them well enough or not. As you see, it has generally ended by my discovering that it would be intolerable. I don’t pretend that there have not been other reasons,” she added frankly. “Riches sometimes fly away on nearer approach.”

“And that would be enough?”

“Oh, yes.”

“You think nothing of your promise?” Anne was looking at her through half-closed eyes and smiling.

“I am not sure that I don’t think too much. It becomes unendurable. When I am married it will have to be in a whirlwind. No hesitations, no hanging back. So much I can tell him. The rest he will have to find out. Stormed, really stormed, I should be afraid of myself.”

She fell into silence. There was no sound except the rush of the water, not so much as the chirp of a bird. At last she looked round again.

“So you see—me voici!—Anne Dalrymple.”

Millie cried out—

“I am glad I am not a London beauty!”

“There are more disagreeable positions,” Anne said reflectively. “Now, if you had said a London beauty with a heart—”

“Have you no heart?” Millie asked impulsively.

“Not I! What does duty for it is a poor little chippy dried-up thing, which may be reckoned on never to give me an ache or a pain.” She sprang to her feet. “Come! The farm! I am not going to let you off the farm.”

No bridge could they find, and there was nothing for it but to retrace their steps. Down the hill-side, through the entangling greenery, they plunged, breathless and laughing, and found themselves at last overlooking the fjord, without any means of crossing the fos. Anne, undaunted, spied a boat on the fjord rowed by a boy; her signals brought it to shore. The boy readily agreed to row them to a higher point, but, this carried out, he refused to wait for them.

“Never mind! We are here!” Anne cried, springing out. She followed a rough path, and presently pounced on wild strawberries.

A man was digging. Seeing them gathering strawberries, he made signs that they were welcome to the cherries which hung temptingly from his trees. He bent the boughs down; Anne picked and brought crimson handfuls to Millie lying on the grass. The warm sun shone, a little stone-chat scolded from a rail, it was all calm, restful, and fragrant with hay. They went up the narrow path towards the farm; the way was overhung with cherry-trees, and a vagrant stream of water, which played truant from the fall, dashed down, flinging lovely spray over the waving grasses. The farm dominated the fjord; fold after fold of blue hills stretched away, the white water at their feet, and desolate-looking islands staring up at the sunshine, which scarcely softened their black outlines. Anne’s mood changed, she grew silent, and silently they went their way down the little path, till they reached the man still digging his patch of ground.

Millie, tired, inquired how she proposed getting home.

“He will take us in his boat. I asked him as I picked the cherries.”

Going back, it appeared as if the waters had grown yet more still and glassy. Each patch of snow, each outburst of green, each violet shadow, sent a lovely repetition of itself into the world below. The boat slipped dreamily through them, only the lap of the oars, and the faint and distant murmur of the waterfall, breaking the silence. One after another the little green promontories dropped behind, the white church of Odde and the clustering houses took form, a boat passed them. Anne looked up.

“This is not the time for commonplaces, yet they haunt me,” she said impatiently. “I—I—I—I am the commonplace, and I have stumbled into a thick mist of doubts and questionings. Tell me, are you always direct? and certain that right is right and wrong wrong?”

Millie coloured, hesitated. Such an appeal confused her. Anne went on—

“My rules are not so ready. Something else steps in and hoodwinks me, though I dare say it is true that I offer my eyes for the bandage. What I complain of is that when I do my best to walk straight—according to my lights—I am the more cried out upon. Your Mr Wareham, now, acts Rhadamanthus, yet what does he know? How can he pretend to judge what motives influenced me, and whether they were bad or good? Has he discussed them with you?”

The question came like a bolt; the answer was a brief “No.”

“No?” Anne’s eyes were fastened on the girl; Millie’s honesty gave unwilling explanation.

“Never your motives. He said once that Mr Forbes was his friend, and that the breaking off of your engagement was not his fault. He said this before—”

“Before?”

“Before he knew you.”

Anne meditated. Her eyes softened.

“I suppose it is the everlasting I—I—I, again, which makes me imagine that people talk when they are not even thinking of me. However, it is true that he misjudges me, I had it from his own lips, and I am sorry, foolishly sorry, because he is a man—” She broke off and laughed—“Somehow my vanity would make me wish to appear at one’s best before him. Does that shock you again?”

“Why should it?”

“I couldn’t say why, but I am for ever shocking people unintentionally. You have not got over my talking of my engagements, yet—they don’t judge me harshly, any one of those men would marry me to-morrow. Yes, even Mr Wareham’s friend, in spite of Mr Wareham!”

Women, however unsophisticated, possess the gift of intuition. Millie divined that Miss Dalrymple wished her to talk of Wareham, and was ready to profess a spasmodic anger for the pleasure of hearing him defended. She was reluctant and ashamed of her reluctance. The shame stung her into crying—“Why do you talk of Mr Wareham’s judging you harshly? You must know very well that if it ever was so, he has forgiven you.”

A smile began to play about Anne’s mouth.

“Do you think so?”

Millie flung her a look.

“Well—I hope you are right. He has been so stiff that it would be a victory to bring him round. We shall see. Meanwhile, here we are at Odde; and what am I to offer to our boatman?—boat-master too, I suspect.”

“Ask him.”

The man smiled, shook his head, wanted nothing. The equivalent of a sixpence was all he would at last consent to receive.

Millie dragged a heavy heart up-stairs, and Anne went in pursuit of Mrs Martyn.