The golden youth smiled.
"Two go to a pattern, I suppose. I shouldn't know one from the other in
the dark."
"But you'd have to know the one you married!"
"Ah, so I should! Why don't you write a story about it: 'The Bride Who
Wasn't,' or something of that sort? Kipling would do it finely."
"Well, but I'm not Kipling--and here's Mr. Rivers. Why, of course, we
won the doubles together. And is it poor little me they want?--Oh,
dear!"
There were loud cries for Miss Elizabeth, and she rose, blushing very
much at the outburst of cheering which attended her appearance--and
obviously a great popular favourite. When she had received one Teddy
Bear upon skis from the fat hands of the mayor's relict, she returned to
the table and implored them to make plans for the ghost hunt.
"You're all coming, of course," she said. "We'll take luges and have
coffee at Vermala. If the ghost does not appear for me, he will never
appear at all. Now don't you think so, Mr. Kavanagh?"
"Oh, I think whatever the ladies think. Is Mrs. Kennaird coming?"
He turned to the "little widow," and the doctor joined in the appeal.
She would accompany them, of course. It would be a beautiful moonlight
night, and they would come down on luges. It was the very thing to do:
and as the amiable doctor said emphatically, so very much better than
the outside edge backwards in the ball-room with a partner who could not
dance. There could be but one answer to such unanimity.
A brief interval for the securing of the necessary wraps and the party
was away. Mrs. Kennaird had changed her dress hurriedly, and when she
reached the hall she found the whole hotel restless and awakened to
nomadic instincts. No one seemed to care at all for the wretched
bandsmen who were, as Bob Otway put it, blowing the "Merry Widow" into
three keys in the ball-room upstairs. Rather, the guests turned with
expectant interest to the exquisite scene without, the snow plateau
gleaming in the moonlight, the mellow radiance of the heights, the
silent moonlit woods. Few of the men had dressed for dinner, and many
were now garbed in the heavy sweaters and hobnailed boots indispensable
to the climb. The girls were dressed as practically, and with their
white woolly caps, their short skirts and heavy boots, looked like so
many madcaps just let out from a seminary for young ladies where hockey
was the chief study.
Miss Bessie had invited the "little widow" to be of her party; but being
an impulsive young lady, she herself ultimately sought the society of
Mr. Robert Otway; and somehow, but not of her own will, Mrs. Kennaird
found herself enjoying a _tete-a-tete_ with Kavanagh, and mounting
slowly with him toward the heights. She had hoped that the old parson
would have espied her and made one of the party; but he was playing
bridge with a trio of matrons when she came down, and certainly Kavanagh
showed no disposition to release her from her promise. He followed her
like a dog, and they had not walked a hundred yards before she became
aware that it was his intention to make love to her.
And why not? as he himself would have asked. Could the scene have been
matched in all Switzerland? The sweet stillness of the bewitching night;
the glory of the full round moon in the azure sky; the great white peaks
standing out in majestic solitude; the stillness of the woods--what
purpose could they serve so well as that of an amiable and meaningless
flirtation with a pretty woman, who was already the well-desired of the
whole community? Kavanagh had been greatly smitten at dinner, though
his silence might not have been so interpreted. Who was she, and whence
did she come? Upon his part, he had not spoken twenty sentences to her
on the hillside before he managed to let her know that his father was
Sir John Kavanagh, of Bolton, and that the heir to that ancient
baronetcy now stood before her.
"You meet a very weird lot in these places," he began in a patronising
tone. "I don't know what kind of an ark lets them loose. When at Rome,
don't do as Bayswater does is my motto. It's astonishing how the nice
people sort themselves, though. Why, I saw you before you got out of
your sleigh, and I said, 'Thank Heaven.' We wanted reinforcements, and
you came just in time. Kennaird's a name I couldn't help but know.
Yorkshire, isn't it?--we're neighbours so to speak, for my old gov'nor's
Sir John Kavanagh, of Bolton, and poor little me is all he's got in the
world. You do come from Yorkshire, don't you?"
She said that she did, and happily the darkness of the way hid the blush
upon her cheek when she spoke. Oblivious of the dangerous nature of the
subject, Kavanagh plunged on.
"I came out here just to see what this ice rot is all about. I suppose
you did the same? One has to put up with something to learn, and we're
paying our footing. Mine's pretty dicky on anything but good honest
skates; but it's no good skating here in the 'village pond champion'
style. I tried skis and resigned. It makes a fellow feel an awful fool
to have one of his legs round his neck and the other at the bottom of a
crevasse. All right at twenty-one, perhaps; but I'm no chicken, and I
don't like to make a fool of myself for nothing. If you skate, we might
have some good times here--and we can always go down the Vermala run in
the afternoon--or at night if you like. I call it top notch at night,
and you'll do the same, I hope. Just look at the old Weisshorn--looks
like a Chinese god on a fancy ottoman, doesn't he? We can't beat that
in Yorkshire, can we? Well, I'm glad you're a neighbour, anyway, and we
must find out all the people we know. Do you hunt, by the way?--I've
got twenty nags at home, and what they're doin' Heaven only knows.
Eatin' their heads off, I suppose."
She remembered that he had told her the same thing earlier in the day,
and looked at him curiously from the depths of her blue eyes, grown
black here in the solitude of the woods. What an amiable imbecile he
was, and how odd that her lot should be cast with him. Possibly he was
the only Yorkshireman in all the company, and fate had thus thrown them
together at the very beginning. And with this thought there was just
another, passing as a flash upon the white ground of memory, of one
whose face had flushed when she spoke to him that morning, the butt of
an amiable company, the derided Benny. She knew not why she wished for
Mr. Benjamin's company, here upon the hillside; but the fact that she
did wish for it could not be kept back.
"Is it far to the hotel at Vermala?" she asked presently--any question
served to turn the dangerous talk. Kavanagh answered with the pride of
knowledge acquired some sixty hours ago.
"It's just above the clump of pines there. They make top-notch coffee
and have got some decent cigarettes. We've climbed about a thousand
feet since we started. You'd never think it, would you; and doesn't the
old show look just like the White City?--eh, what? Upon my life, I
never saw such a resemblance. We might be up in the flip-flap."
She smiled at his preposterous imagery, and yet words might well have
failed such an intellect upon such a scene. The place where they stood
was a little thicket of trees at the last bend below Vermala. All
around were the frozen pines, magic in their suggestion of fairyland,
enchanting in the infinite variety of their matchless tracery. Below
them Andana lay like an oasis of light upon a bleak hillside. Great
arc-lamps waned and waxed upon the narrow road by the skating rink and
again downwards toward the village. The hotel itself blazed with
radiance and suggested the antithesis to this solitude of the woods.
Far, far down in the black hollow of the valley there were the lamps of
Sierre and the railway; and high above them, as though uplifted to the
heavens, the moonlit peaks, a very forest of them running in unbroken
majesty to the great flat dome of Mont Blanc.
The human side of this entrancing picture was voiced by the ripples of
laughter, the joyous cries which came floating up on the still night
air. A romancer would have espied lovers in the thickets, and heard the
whispers of their sighs. By here and there stragglers were to be
perceived upon the great plateau of the snow or plodding upward to the
heights. In sharp contrast to this leisure of the climb would come the
swift descent of a luge towards Andana, the loud cry, "_Achtung!_" the
passing of the prone figure, and the lantern jolting at every rut.
These cries became more frequent as the climbers neared Vermala. Some
of the toboggans were bedecked gloriously with Chinese lanterns, which
gave a rare splash of colour to the monotony of silhouettes, or turned
the snow blood red. And dominating all was the eternal spirit of youth;
the _joie de vivre_; the consciousness of the present; the will to blot
all else but this fulness of life which ran in the veins like fire.
There was a fine crowd of people up at the little hotel at Vermala, and
conspicuous among them the Rider girls and Bess Bethune. Bess, in fact,
furnished the place, as someone remarked--it must have been Bob
Otway--and her high spirits were so infectious that the doctor sat down
to the piano and played a magnificent fantasia upon "Our Miss Gibbs,"
arranged as a sonata in the fashion of Schubert. Everyone took coffee,
and the ladies sipped _creme de menthe_ under protest. The ghost
received less attention than he merited--and when the best part of the
company trooped out to look for him, and did not find him, not a few
took advantage of the opportunities presented by Japan (in the form of
screens) and Africa (in the matter of palms) to continue discussions of
a momentous nature. The "little widow," however, found herself once
more with Ian Kavanagh at the head of the path, and she realised that
she must make her first run on a luge or be derided by the company.
How ridiculous it all seemed to her, that she should be playing a girl's
part, she whose life had been so tragic and so womanly. She had the
will to forget, God knows; and if the mountains had any message for her,
the silent woods their consolation, it was that forgetfulness might be
won, and upon forgetfulness, peace. Let there be a truce, however brief
the day of it. The kingdom of a joyous childhood called her with a
sweet voice--she tried to believe that she had become a child again.
"I have never done this before," she said to Kavanagh almost pleadingly,
when he offered her the luge he had dragged up from Andana and showed
her what she must do with it. "Is it so dreadful? Shall I really be
able to manage it?"
He assured her that it was the easiest thing in all the world.
"Just guide yourself with your feet. Lean over when you come to the
corners and round you go. I'd better get on ahead, for I shall be
faster. I'll wait at the path where we go down to the rink. You can't
hurt yourself--it's just like falling into an iced blanket--now see me
do it."
He squatted on the luge, and going with as much dignity as he could
command--which was not a great deal--he set off down the path and
rounded the first of the corners successfully. Great flat hands pushed
him off from the banks; his progress, if not melancholy, was certainly
slow, and in the end became remote. The "little widow" heard him
calling to her to "come on," and at last she seated herself and essayed
to obey his interjectory instructions. But the dazzle and glory of the
thing seemed less when she had started, and she reflected with irony
that she could have walked much faster. Then the luge was so
uncomfortable; just a few bars of wood, a cushion and two steel runners.
And "the thing" would go up the banks in the most shameless way--first
to the right, then to the left, now half round, now frightening her by a
sudden plunge. At the corner she failed altogether, and ran high over
the bank and into the soft snow upon the other side. Her white gloves
were wet through by this time, her shoes full of snow, and her general
condition one of misery. She picked herself up and laughed with a truer
note than she had done for years. Yes, she had become a child again,
and had a child's sense of irresponsibility.
Kavanagh had disappeared altogether by this time. Other tobogganers came
flying down the mountainside; but none pulled up because of the lonely
little woman standing between the trees at the "hairpin" bend. She
heard voices above and below; the wood might have been full of the
spirits of dead children rejoicing. But she had lost all taste for the
miserable contraption which behaved so shabbily, and it had become a
burden to her. Trying to set it going again, she ran a little way and
lost hold of it; and then, as a horse which has lost its rider in a
steeple-chase, it went on gaily, rounding the corners upon its own
account, and disappearing as her guide and philosopher had done. She
was quite alone now, and very pleased to be so--at least, she thought so
until she espied a black figure creeping up between the trees, and, as
it were, stalking her in the shelter of the wood. This frightened her a
little and she tried to go on; but her heart beat fast and she was
really quite afraid. Why did the man not speak? Was he a Swiss or one
of the guests at the hotel? She was just about to shout for help when
the crouching figure cried out:
"Mrs. Kennaird, is that you? Well, I'm Benson--you remember me?"
She burst out laughing.
As though anyone who had known him could forget "Benny."
*CHAPTER IV*
*THE MAN WHO KNEW*
"Oh," she exclaimed, recovering herself, though her heart still drummed
the echoes of a panic, "oh, I thought you were the ghost."
Benjamin Benson was immensely tickled.
"I've been taken for many things in my life," he said, "but never for a
ghost. I wonder if it would be nice to be that? We always think of it
from the mortal point of view. We never ask if the ghost has a good
time--and yet I don't see why he shouldn't. There might be sociable
ghosts--now don't you think so, Mrs. Kennaird?"
She did not feel disposed to argue it.
"They tell me the peasants have seen a great bird in the sky. Everyone
up at Vermala is looking for it. Of course they will not find it. I am
not a least bit superstitious, but I must say that the idea of a great
bird pleases me--even if it's untrue."
"Then you are quite sure it is untrue, Mrs. Kennaird?"
"Now, could it be anything else? You are not serious."
He laughed a little nervously.
"It would be a splendid thing to fly over the mountains, wouldn't it?
If I have a spirit, I would sooner it played about here than in an old
vault, as most of them do. Why, how it suggests power--power above men,
doesn't it?"
And then almost with an apology:
"But I suppose you think all this is just nonsense? I'm not the kind of
man who ought to be ambitious, am I? Everyone tells me that."
"But you do not lose your ambition because of them?"
He drew himself up--Benny could be a tower of dignity when he chose.
"Yes," he said, with real earnestness, "I am ambitious, and some day I
shall attain my goal."
They walked a little way down the hillside in silence after that. There
was no sign of Ian Kavanagh, who had taken a bad "toss" at the last of
the bends above Andana and was trying to get the snow out of his hair at
that very moment. Benny had a toboggan with him, but it was different
from the others, much longer and made of steel. He trailed it behind
him indifferently, thinking that his companion wished to walk down to
the hotel; but when he discovered her own luge anchored in the snow he
understood the situation.
"Halloa!" he said, "a derelict."
She told him with some shame that it was hers.
"A case of bolting--I suppose it wanted the curb. And now I shall have
to drag it back to the hotel."
"Don't do anything of the kind. We leave these things all over the
place--the hotel sledges pick them up as far down as the Sanatorium
sometimes. Just let it lie there. I'll take you down if you
like--there's plenty of room for two, and--and--I should like it, Mrs.
Kennaird; I should think it an honour."
It was so simply said, the blunt words of a schoolboy speaking to the
mature woman, that she forbore to smile. It would have been absurd,
however, to respond in a similar vein, for the idea of a flirtation with
Mr. Benjamin Benson was quite out of the question. So she accepted
without any compliment at all.
"It's very good of you--and really I am beginning to feel the cold.
Will you show me where to sit? I am absolutely ignorant, and it is so
many years since I played games."
He understood that.
"Life's a game all through. We all say it, but what else can we say?
We're in the long field most of the time, and when we get an innings,
Fate goes and bowls us a curly one. I've never had an innings in my
life, and I've been fielding for fifteen years--since I was
seventeen--and my poor old father played on in Mark Lane and lost his
house the 'ashes.' That's my story, and I don't tell it to everyone.
Perhaps I have no right to tell it to you--but you seem so different,
Mrs. Kennaird; I feel I can talk to you, and that's what I feel about
very few people."
"You pay me a great compliment," she said, and then, "But we are both
quite strangers here. This is my first visit to Switzerland in the
winter; I know nobody."
He nodded his head.
"But I thought that I knew you directly I saw you--I shall remember
where we met by and by. Had you relatives down Newmarket way, I
wonder--people who used to live at Holmswell?"
She shook her head.
"Then I'm quite wrong; now let's get going. You sit in front and I'll
steer--don't be afraid, I shan't upset you. They laugh at me in the
hotel, but I'm going to have some fun with them before I get through.
Are you quite ready--shall we let her rip?"
She said "Yes," and he pushed the toboggan off the bank. Had he been
less nervous, he would have said that the "little widow" trembled; but
Benny was anxious to make a fine run and had no idea how many would have
envied him his burden. And truly it was wonderful how he steered on
that dark and tortuous road. To the woman the whole thing was an
ecstasy, a mad rush down the mountain-side; a wonderful journey into
fairyland; a magician's leap through the realms of darkness to the
enchanted vales of the fables. When they stopped, Benny had steered them
right down to the cross roads by the Sanatorium, and they must tramp ten
minutes through the woods before they reached the hotel again. It was
here that he harked back to the dangerous topic.
"It's odd about those Newmarket people--I could have sworn Lady Delayne
was your sister," he said; "really the likeness is wonderful. I went to
Holmswell from Norwich when I was in the motor shops trying to make
myself an engineer. The electric light engine went wrong over at the
house, and Sir Luton--that was his name--Sir Luton Delayne sent to our
people. I remember him well, a little rat of a man whose temper used to
go off like a cracker. It makes me laugh when I remember that he tried
to bully me, until I said a word or two in my own way. He was very
civil after that and showed me over the house. There was a picture of a
lady in the drawing-room as like you as two peas. I thought of it
directly I saw you to-day. 'She'll be a relative,' I said. You quite
surprised me just now when you said you were not."
She merely rejoined, "Indeed?" A problem involving tremendous issues
had presented itself suddenly to her mind, and she had not the remotest
idea how to deal with it. But she felt that her previous answer had
been a mistake and one that was almost irreparable. Why had she made
it? She did not quite know.
Benny, on his part, was a little puzzled by her silence. He thought
that he had pursued a subject which could be of no interest to her; and
he would not have mentioned it again but for the question she put to him
just before the Palace Hotel came into sight.
"Have you heard of Sir Luton Delayne since that date?" she asked. He
replied as one greedy for the opportunity to tell her.
"Why, everyone in Switzerland has heard of him. He's been staying at
Grindelwald, painting the place red. There was a regular row there the
other night. Some fellow in the Fusiliers accused him of cheating at
bridge, and Sir Luton knocked him down in the hall. They say he
wouldn't fight it out, and bolted next morning. Now the police are
after him, and there'll be a pretty to do if he's caught. I wonder you
didn't hear of it?"
She tried to smile, but the effort was vain. "I have been on a steamer,
from Egypt, you know. Women do not read the papers as men do. I don't
think they understand the meaning of the word 'news,' unless it concerns
their own circle. When I arrived at Brindisi I was naturally anxious to
get on here. I see that I am very much out of date."
"Of course you are. The hotel talked about nothing else yesterday.
There was a rumour that the man intended coming on here. I guess there
would have been some moving if he had. But the people won't have him.
The little French secretary Ardlot, who runs the Palace, told me this
morning they would have no vacant room if Sir Luton Delayne presented
himself."
"Then he has left Grindelwald finally?"
"I should think he has, and wisely too. Barton of the Fusiliers would
have shot him if he had stayed. Luton Delayne's the kind of man who
doesn't like playing tame pheasant. He gets out of the wood before the
beaters are in. I shouldn't wonder if he is a hundred miles the other
side of Pontarlier this morning."
"Wisdom in this case being the better part of valour--but is not this
the hotel? I hope it is, for I am deadly tired, and thank you so much
for your great kindness."
Benny said that the evening had been the best he had ever spent at
Andana--and he meant it.
"I'm not staying at the Palace, you know," he ran on; "my brother and I
took the chalet up by the Park. I come in to lunch and dinner, that's
all. I'm not a sociable person, Mrs. Kennaird. Sometimes I think the
best thing in life is being alone. But, of course, I didn't think that
to-night. Will you let me bring you down from Vermala again? I hope
so. It's been a happy opportunity for me, I assure you."
She smiled very sweetly and held out her hand. They were at the hotel
door by this time, and Ian Kavanagh, hearing her voice, came forward
with those expletives of apology which suited an unceremonious occasion.
He was "most frightfully sorry," but how had he managed to miss her?
The "little widow" declared as frankly that she did not know.
"I am a dreadful bungler," she said, with some reserve; "undoubtedly it
was all my fault; please don't think any more about it, Mr. Kavanagh."
"Oh, but I couldn't help it--I shall dream about it all night."
"Then Dr. Orange must prescribe a sleeping draught for you," and with
this for his consolation she left him and went to her room.
How foolish she had been; how poor her courage to persist in a foolish
denial which might cost her so much.
*CHAPTER V*
*THE GHOST TAKES WINGS*
A sense of elation quite foreign to the somewhat methodical order of his
daily life accompanied Benny to the chalet, where he found his brother
Jack awaiting him with some anxiety. Jack had been the baby of the
family from the beginning, and this somewhat precocious infant of
twenty-six lifted a shaggy head above the bedclothes upon Benjamin's
entry, and asked him with real solicitude what had kept him. He would
have been surprised to the point of wonder had the answer been "A
woman."
Possibly Jack Benson was the only human being who understood his brother
wholly and had no doubt about his future. He himself was a somewhat
lazy youth with few affections and no enthusiasms, unless it were for
his wire-haired terrier Toby; but he knew that Benjamin Benson was a
genius of whom the world would hear one day to its profit. In his own
dull way he tried to serve his brother; and this was very proper, for
all the legacy that Benjamin ever received from his kindly old father
was one thousand pounds sterling and the care of "the baby." That
charge he had undertaken faithfully. The brothers were inseparable; and
if the younger added little but encouragement to the common stock, his
faith was precious to the shy, reserved man who wrought so strenuously
for the common good.
"Wherever have you been, Benny? It's after twelve o'clock, isn't it?"
Jack asked as he lifted his head from the pillow. Benjamin replied by
setting the candlestick down upon the table and laughing in the most
ridiculous way possible.