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قراءة كتاب The Swing of the Pendulum
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Martyn, who had not yet stepped back into her usual assertive mood, she leaned across her daughter, and introduced Wareham. It was only an act of courtesy; after the interchange of a few words, his talk drifted again to Millie.
The motley meal ended, it broke up abruptly.
“Mother and I are going out,” said Millie, with careful avoidance of pressure.
“I will come, if I may.” He added heedfully, “That is, if you are to be alone?”
“Alone, of course.” The girls eyes danced. Triumph had not often come to her, and to find a man, a man of distinction, who preferred her society to that of the beautiful Miss Dalrymple, was intoxicating. She swept her mother to her room, and implored her to make haste.
“Why?”
“Why? Because it is pleasanter to be alone.”
“Shall we be alone?”
Pinning on her veil, Millie admitted that she believed Mr Wareham would come.
“Oh!” Presently Mrs Ravenhill added, with a little intention—“Millie, don’t spoil Mr Wareham.”
The girl laughed frankly.
“The bare idea makes you fierce, mother, doesn’t it? But I do think it is nicer to have a man with us than to trail along by ourselves, and if he comes, he will expect things to—to—well, to go as he likes.”
Mrs Ravenhill emitted another “Oh!” She added—“In my day a man would have thought himself honoured.”
“So he would in mine, if I had the arrangement of things,” Millie retorted. “But I haven’t, and all that can be done is to make the best of them. Perhaps you haven’t found out that Mr Wareham detests Miss Dalrymple, and evidently wishes to avoid her. We needn’t force them upon each other.”
“I thought he did not know her?”
“Nor does he.”
“Well,” said her mother, with impatience, “have it as you like, Millie, only, for pity’s sake, don’t let us plunge into a cloud of mystifications and prejudices! We didn’t come to Norway for that, and Mr Wareham isn’t worth it.”
To this the girl made no answer, and the subject dropped.
So they went out, all three, in the cool clear daylight, which had no suggestion of evening about it, except that the shop-doors were locked, and people strolled about with leisure which seemed unnatural. The streets were not beautiful, but all the boarded houses had clean white faces, red roofs, and cheerful windows crowded with flowers. Presently they came upon the old cathedral with its two low spires; on one side an ancient avenue of storm-stunted sycamores, dignified a grave little cluster of houses at its end. Millie wanted to go into the church, and professed herself injured at finding it closed.
“Mayn’t they ever shut up?” said Wareham, holding out his watch with a smile.
“It is a quarter to ten!” she exclaimed, but refused to return. A lake glimmered through the trees—they went there, and afterwards along stony ways round the harbour. Something—was it the pure light air, the kindly sensible-faced people?—set the girls heart, throbbing. She had suddenly caught her mother’s simple power of enjoyment, and Wareham owned that her quick intuition gave originality to the commonplace.
By the time the harbour was reached, lights were golden, colour ran riot in the sky. There was too much ripple on the water for reflections, but the green boats bobbed gaily up and down; while far away the mountains lay faintly blue against the eastern sky, out of which light paled. Beyond the streets are public gardens, the houses are left behind, and the wide water-mouth stretches broadly. Now there was nothing but the lap of waves, distant islands, more distant mountains, and the sunset sky above.
They lingered, and silently watched the pomp fade, found a boat, and rowed across the harbour in the last afterglow.
Chapter Two.
A Man’s Judgment.
Strange, indeed, that Wareham should have been thus shot into the society of Anne Dalrymple! Never personally acquainted with her, he had heard more about her than of any other living woman, could have described her positively, and believed he knew her mind. Heart he denied her. Had he been in England during the past year or two they must have met, but he had first been ordered abroad after a narrow escape of breakdown from over-work; then, bitten by the charm of the south, let himself drift lazily from Italy to Greece, from Greece to Egypt, from Egypt to India, all lands of enchantment.
During the latter part of this stay, letters had been showered upon him from his chief friend, Hugh Forbes, letters crammed with enthusiasm, with hope, with despair, a thundering chord, with the beautiful Miss Dalrymple for its root. Wareham pished and poohed, and sometimes pitched away as much as half a letter—unread—with a word. But he was a man with an unsuspected strength of sympathy. Probably it belonged to his success as an author that, once interested, he could project himself into another mind, and feel its sensations. Especially where his affections were concerned was this the case, and it may have been fortunate for him that his affections were not easily moved, perhaps because he feared what he counted a weakness, and was reluctant to let himself go. Once he had loved a woman, but this happened before he was famous, and she married a richer man; since that time his heart had apparently remained untouched, although he never avoided women’s society.
The dark time of disappointment drew him nearer to his friend. Hugh was three years his junior, but they had been at school together, and the habit of befriending the younger boy had stuck to Dick. When this happens, the strength of the tie is scarcely calculable, at least on the side of the elder. Hugh knew and acted upon it almost unconsciously. He would as soon have expected the Funds to collapse, as Dick to fail him in case of need.
After a time his letters announced the unexpected to Wareham. The affair was serious, and Miss Dalrymple had accepted him. Rapture filled sheets of paper. Then letters ceased, and Wareham, who was in India, smiled, recognising the inevitable; and waited without misgiving, until a cooler time should bring back the outer manifestations of a friendship which he could not doubt. They came in the form of a cry of misery. Within six weeks of the wedding Miss Dalrymple had broken off the engagement.
He read the letter in amazement, and rushed back to England, snapping the small ties with which he was lazily suffering himself to be entangled, and knowing that in the blackness of a lovers despair his was the only hand to bring the touch of comfort. Under his own misfortunes he had been dumb, but this reticence did not affect his sympathy with a more expansive nature. Hugh liked to enlarge upon his sorrows, unfailing interest lurked for him in the question how they might have been avoided, and the answer was never so convincing as to suffice.
Wareham gave a patient ear to the lengthy catalogue of Miss Dalrymple’s charms—until he could have repeated them without prompting—and offered one suggestion after another as to the causes which had induced her to break off her engagement. For there had been no quarrel, no explanation. Hugh had merely received a letter saying that she had discovered it to have been a mistake, and could not marry him; she accepted the whole blame, and asked him not