Chapter XII

Toby did not sleep well that night. He was convinced that things were not going satisfactorily, and, like the Prince of Denmark, he resented extremely being expected to set them right. In the first place he did not believe they could be set right, and in the second he dreaded an intimate conversation with Norman, which would have to be included in the process. Toby had a great deal at the back of his mind about Norman, the accumulated resentments of many years, and he wanted to keep it there. He felt certain that people who have grudges at the back of their minds do not make good intermediaries. The obvious solution of the affair was the one Toby could not press. Anne ought to go away, and she would not see the necessity. She believed that good feeling alone can carry any situation through safely, and Toby believed that in certain situations no possible feeling is as safe as not being on the spot.

He paced up and down his room half the night, and early in the morning leaned out of his balcony window to watch the dawn. It had rained heavily in the night and in the early morning light the mountains were vivid green and blue like the colours of a peacock’s breast. The white road shone hard between banks of fresh washed flowers. The sky was a young pale blue with a single star in it, the pines lay a long dark shadow against the clearness of the day.

A small figure stole out upon the white road, with flame-coloured hair. She had a stick in her hand and a knapsack on her back. Toby watched her for a few moments, wondering at her loneliness, for by her clothes he took her for a tourist, and tourists are seldom lonely. Then, with a start of surprise, he realised that he was watching Nina, and that she had set off by herself, upon the road to Italy. She too had been thinking over the problem in the night, and being younger and more daring than the others, she had put her thoughts into solution.

Toby flung himself hastily into his clothes and hurried out of the house. He cut up into the woods, taking a path which would bring him out upon the Pensolo road about two miles farther down. He rather wanted Nina to walk a few miles before he caught up with her. He had got to interfere now, but he had ceased to mind interfering. Nina’s impulsive action had given him the right handle. It was the wrong thing to do. She was the one person in the group who should have remained passive, but by doing it she had released the dreadful tension of good feeling which was gradually strangling them all. Toby whistled cheerfully to himself as he hurried through the thick wet woods. He was not a man who had many illusions, and the solution that he foresaw was not wholly a pleasant one, least of all for the one person in the world he most desired to please. Still in the end it would be of service to her, and pleasant prospects were not the ones upon which Toby was most accustomed to rely. His way through the woods was a trifle longer than he had supposed, and by the time he had negotiated half a dozen unexpected waterfalls and come down upon the road again, he was half afraid he should find Nina had passed the point at which he proposed to intercept her.

But Nina had come to a standstill. She was sitting on a low white rock by the roadside, her head lifted with an air of tension. Nina had never been alone before in a great silent space. Nature, which is the friendliest and calmest of companions to those who dwell with her habitually, is a terrifying spectacle to the chance visitant. The worst crossing in the Strand at midday would have been soothing to Nina; but the occult and curious peaks, the clear distance of the sky, the infinite remoteness of the silent heights, laid on her spirit a terrific pressure. There was nothing human for her to stand up against. Her personality, which had always depended upon an audience, dwindled into a bundle of fears. She gave a quick cry of relief as she recognised Toby, followed by a frown of suspicion.

“What on earth has brought you here,” she asked, “at this hour of the morning, just where I happen to be?”

“The simplest thing in the world,” said Toby, dusting his trousers carefully and sitting down on a rock opposite hers. “I saw you leave the hotel and I followed you.”

“That was a bit of cheek,” said Nina easily, recovering all her native jauntiness, “and if you think you can persuade me to go back, you’ll have your journey for your pains. Wild horses wouldn’t move me!”

“I’m not the kind of wild horse,” replied Toby, “that wants to move you. On the contrary, I am delighted to hear that you are running away. It’s the most sensible thing I’ve heard of for a long time.”

“I don’t know if it’s sensible or not,” said Nina guardedly, “but it’s what I’m doing.”

“You weren’t running very fast when I first caught sight of you,” suggested Toby tentatively. Nina’s lips trembled. She hadn’t known where to go, she had never in her life been out of the reach of railway stations or motor ’buses. She knew this was the road she had come up with Norman, and it had been her idea to walk till she reached a town, and then to find someone who spoke English and could help her to get to a railway station. Perhaps at the back of her mind she had hoped that before she reached a town, Norman would have found her, but she hadn’t expected Toby, nor to have her audacity poked to death by reasons. Her boots were not very strong, she had very little money, and she had forgotten to bring any food. Toby drew two breakfast rolls from his pocket and presented her with one. “I snatched them up in passing,” he explained. “Never mind your plans at present, we can go into them later. Plans are always less complicated after one has had something to eat. There’s a choice of about seven waterfalls to drink from. I will point one of them out to you, into which I didn’t fall on my way down to the road.” Nina was grateful for his discursiveness, but she was deeply suspicious of his motives. She had never felt sure of Toby Wainwright, and she ate her bread staring at him with hostile eyes across its stubborn surface.

When she had finished eating, she said slowly and distinctly, “I don’t know what you are up to, Mr. Wainwright, but my plans aren’t going to have anything to do with yours. Do you see what I mean?”

Toby glanced at her quizzically for a moment and then laughed. “’Pon my soul,” he said, “do you imagine I want to elope with you? I’d forgotten that possible version! Well, it wouldn’t be any odder than anything else if I _had_ wanted it, but I assure you my motives are as strictly platonic as those of a Jew moneylender. It’s your money, not your life, that I’m after.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” said Nina composedly. “I always thought you wanted Anne, but one can’t be sure. You might have given that up and thought you’d take me on, to spite them both. But I’m not that sort, I don’t want to spite them. At least, I don’t want to spite Anne.”

“That’s a very interesting but misleading discrimination,” said Toby slowly, “because I see you don’t realise that spiting Anne is exactly what you _are_ doing.”

“How do you mean?” Nina asked angrily, “I’m just getting out of her way as fast as I can, like she did out of mine. Norman thought he liked me the better of the two, and I think he did a bit, when we were alone together, but when you came up here and he saw Anne again, it all began to be different. I expect he saw then that he’d made a big mistake.”

“Not as big a one as you’re making now,” said Toby. “My dear girl, you and Anne can’t hand a man about as if he was a sofa cushion. Norman’s in love with you, and till he tells you he isn’t, you can bank on it. You’ve just been having a row—that’s what’s the matter with you. Now sit down quietly and tell me all about it.”

“I don’t see why I should tell you anything,” said Nina sulkily, reseating herself nevertheless. “Besides, you said I did right to run away, so what’s the odds? I’m off now anyhow.”

“Yes, but you may as well tell me why,” said Toby persistently, “particularly as I intend to help you in any way I can. It seems to me you ought in common fairness to tell me your whole story. Part of it, of course, I know, and I’m even, to a certain extent, upon your side, and so of course is Anne—we think Norman’s been playing the fool.”

Nina knitted her surprised eyebrows rather like a puzzled puppy. She couldn’t make Toby out. He wasn’t going to make love to her. He didn’t, she felt, particularly like her. Yet he was going to help her, and had pronounced himself to be more or less upon her side. Her heart was full of a wild storm of hurt, surprised, conflicting feelings, and she wanted nothing better than to pour them all out. She didn’t burst into tears, because Toby looked so very unemotional, and because she had been crying half the night. But she began, after a moment’s pause, to talk unsteadily, and with short nervous rushes.

“I don’t mind telling you some of it,” she began, “though it’s not much good now. You say he loves me, but he can’t! Why should he be always throwing Anne up at me if he did? It isn’t as if I didn’t like Anne. If I thought she’d done this—come up here, I mean, to get him away—I’d have fought it out; but I know she plays fair. She always has. I haven’t any quarrel against Anne, though I wish to God she hadn’t come. I nearly went to her room last night to tell her everything I felt, but I knew she would have tried to stop me running away! Besides, I didn’t want her standing up for me, with him. I was furious with all of you too, to think of taking the part of a set of dirty Germans against me!”

“We didn’t do that quite,” said Toby reflectively; “it was a pity the Germans were there, I’ll admit, but hasn’t it yet occurred to you that we were in the right to treat them courteously since they were there?”

“I don’t think you were in the right at all!” said Nina hotly.

“Think a little,” urged Toby; “we could only have upheld you by letting them think we agreed with your behaviour, and your behaviour was obviously wrong. It would have given any fair-minded person a very poor opinion of the British race. We pride ourselves on fair play, and not hitting people when they’re down. You gave away our position as decent English people, and I think if anybody had a right to be angry, it was your husband.”

Nina took this statement in silence, but it was not an offended silence; she was thinking hard, and trying to think generously. “Well,” she said at last, “perhaps it was a bit thick what I said to them, but he needn’t have said what he did to me afterwards. I can’t repeat it—it was dreadful. If he could say it, he couldn’t love me. No man could. Let him go back to Anne. She’s a lady enough anyhow!”

“You make two mistakes,” said Toby firmly; “one is that men are seldom cruel except to the woman they love, and the other is that Norman will never go back to Anne. It’s too late. Now look here, young woman. I don’t think you know what you’ve done. It’s never been put to you by Anne, and quite obviously it’s never been put to you by Norman, but you’re going to get it straight from the shoulder now—from me. The last few months you’ve been thinking yourself the queen of the world, haven’t you? I don’t blame you—we’re all liable to lose our heads while we’re being adored. But what you are, and what you were when Norman picked you up, was rather a wild little girl out of a bun shop! All right—it wasn’t out of a bun shop—it was from a solicitor’s office off the Strand. But my point is, you came out of it to break up two very cultured and decent people’s lives. These two people treated you uncommonly well. Men in Norman’s position often fall in love with girls like you, but it seldom occurs to them to leave a happy domestic life in order to marry them, and when they have this intention, they are still more rarely assisted by their wives. What do you suppose they’ll feel like, when they wake up this morning, and discover that you’ve broken up their lives again?”

“But I haven’t,” stammered Nina, between tears and fury, “I’ve put them straight this time. I’ve left them to each other!”

“My poor child,” said Toby more gently, “do you suppose lives can be put straight so easily? Norman’s in love with you, not with Anne. But if he’s driven you away because he’s said something tactless (but probably true) about your manners, it isn’t going to make him very pleasant to Anne, when he finds out that you’ve gone because you think he prefers her. And Anne!—I’m not going to do you the injustice to suppose you don’t realise (roughly at any rate) that she’s made some sacrifices for you? Anne’s a proud woman, and she’s eaten dust to give you happiness. She’ll have to eat more dust now.”

“No, oh no!” Nina cried, springing to her feet and seizing Toby by the arm. “Not that! Not that! I’ll go back this minute! I’ll do anything you tell me—but not that!”

Toby held out his hand.

“Will you shake hands?” he said gravely. “I don’t know what Norman may have said to you the other night, but I assure you, you have the feelings of a gentleman, as far, at least, as I’ve ever been able to ascertain what such feelings are.”

Nina looked at him uncertainly, but she shook hands. She would much rather have heard Toby say that she had the behaviour of a lady.

“I don’t want you to go back,” Toby explained, “I want you to sit here while I go and fetch Norman. I quite agree with you that the present situation doesn’t do. You’ve got a lot to learn, if you’re going to be the right kind of wife to suit Norman, but you’ll learn it much better by yourselves. Anne can’t do anything more for you now, and she’s got to see it. Take it all round, this is the best way of showing it to her.”

“Fetch Norman!” exclaimed Nina. “Do you mean for us both to go off alone this way together?” Toby nodded. “But perhaps he won’t come?” said Nina. “Perhaps he’ll still be too angry?” Hope had sprung into her heart with the swiftness of a diving swallow. She voiced her fears and, as she voiced them, they were no longer fears but a troop of dazzling joys.

“Yes,” said Toby, “that’s exactly what I mean. Norman will come to you fast enough. I’ll answer for that!”

“But you don’t know what I did to him!” said Nina in an awestruck voice. “Last night I—I struck him!”

“Well, thank God, somebody did,” exclaimed Toby hastily. “I mean, I beg your pardon, but I’ve no doubt he jolly well earned it.”

“No he didn’t, he didn’t!” said Nina indignantly, “and it’s horrid of you to say so—I thought you were his friend!”

“So I am, in a sense,” agreed Toby sturdily, “but I shouldn’t mind some of my precious balms breaking his head once in a while. Besides, after all, Nina, we’ve both been thinking for several days, Anne and I, that you had a good deal to put up with!”

“Well, as far as that goes,” said Nina more graciously, “so have you. I can’t think why you don’t marry Anne.”

“Can’t you?” said Toby. “Well, Anne seems to be able to think of a reason.”

“You don’t understand women,” Nina explained; “you’ve got to make her think about you. She hasn’t yet, she’s still thinking about Norman. Suppose you start saying the kind of things to her that you’ve been saying to me—that’ll make her sit up!”

“I don’t suppose I could,” said Toby thoughtfully, “and I don’t know that I should particularly like to make Anne sit up. It’s rather a painful process, isn’t it?”

“Oh, that’s because you’re in love with her,” said Nina sagely; “you didn’t mind making _me_ uncomfortable, for my good! It’s no use being as soft for her as she was for Norman, is it?”

Toby rose from his white stone with an amused and thoughtful air. “We seem to understand each other so well,” he said, “that it’s rather a pity we’ve fixed our inclinations elsewhere. Now I’ll go and send you Norman. Take him away. I offer you no advice as to how to deal with him, for I am sure that you are mistress of the entire subject. But I do beg that you won’t, either of you, under any circumstances, return.”

Nina gave him a long reflective look.

“Send him along as quick as you can,” she said, “and don’t worry about our coming back. These mountains just about give me the hump.”