Claire was not perfectly sure of life--it occurred to her at nineteen
that it might have in store for her certain surprises--but she was
perfectly sure of herself. She knew that she ought to have been a boy,
and that if she had been a boy she would have tried to be like General
Gordon. Balked of this ambition by the fact of her sex, she turned her
attention to Maurice.
It seemed to her essential that he should be like General Gordon in her
place, and by dint of persuasion, concentration of purpose, and sheer
indomitable will power she infected Maurice with the same idea. He had
made her no promises, but he had agreed to enter the army.
It is improbable that General Gordon's character was formed wholly by
the exertions of his sister, but Claire in her eagerness rather
overlooked the question of material. There was nothing in Maurice
himself that was wrong, but he belonged to a class of young men who are
always being picked up by "wrong 'uns."
He wanted a little too much to be liked. He was quite willing to be a
hero to please Claire if it was not too much trouble. Meanwhile he
expected it to be compatible with drinking rather more than was good for
him, spending considerably too much money, and talking loudly and
knowingly upon subjects considered doubtful.
If the world had been as innocent as Maurice, this program would in time
have corrected itself. But besides holes and the unwary, there are from
time to time diggers of holes, and it was to these unsound guides that
Maurice found himself oftenest attracted.
What he asked of Claire was that she should continue to believe in him
and make his way easy for him. She could fight for his freedom with a
surly uncle, but having won it, she shouldn't afterward expect a fellow
to do things with it which would end in his being less free.
Maurice really loved Claire, his idea of love being that he would
undeviatingly choose her to bear all his burdens. She managed the
externals of his life with the minimum of exertion to himself. She
fought his guardians; she talked straight to his opposers; she took
buffets that were meant for him to take; she made plans, efforts, and
arrangements for his comfort. Lots of things he wanted he could simply
not have had if she had failed to procure them.
Pushed beyond a certain point Maurice gave in, or appeared to give in,
and lied. Claire never admitted even to herself that Maurice lied, but
she took unusual pains to prevent his ever being pushed beyond a certain
point.
It was Claire who had managed the journey to Davos in the teeth of
opposition; but it was Maurice who would have no other guide than Mr.
Roper, a splendid army coach picked up at a billiard room in a hotel.
Now that they were at Davos, Claire became a little doubtful if, after
all, her uncle hadn't been right when he had declared that Bournemouth
would have done as well and been far less expensive. Then Winn came, and
she began mysteriously to feel that the situation was saved.
It wasn't that Winn looked in the least like General Gordon, but Mr.
Ponsonby had told her that he was a distinguished officer and shot
tigers on foot.
Claire was quite surprised that Winn had been so nice to her,
particularly as he hadn't appeared at all a friendly kind of person; but
she became more and more convinced that Winn was a knight errant in
disguise and had been sent by heaven to her direct assistance.
Claire believed very strongly in heaven. If you have no parents and very
disagreeable relatives, heaven becomes extremely important. Claire
didn't think it was at all the place her aunt and uncle vaguely held out
to her as a kind of permanent and compulsory pew into which an angelic
verger conducted the more respectable after death.
Everything Mr. and Mrs. Tighe considered the laws of God seemed to
Claire unlikely to be the laws of anybody except people like Mr. and
Mrs. Tighe; but she did believe that God looked after Maurice and
herself, and she was anxious that He should look particularly after
Maurice.
She determined that on the day she went to the Schatz Alp with Major
Staines she would take him into her confidence. She could explain the
position of women to him while they climbed the Rhueti-Weg; this would
give them all of lunch for Maurice's future, and she hoped without
direct calculations--because, although Claire generally had very strong
purposes, she seldom had calculations--that perhaps if she was lucky he
would tell her about tigers on the way down.
It was one of those mornings at Davos which seemed made out of fragrance
and crystal. The sun soaked into the pines, the sky above the tree-tops
burned like blue flame. It was the first time in Claire's life that she
had gone out all by herself to lunch with a grown-up man. Winn was far
more important than a mere boy, besides being a major.
She had been planning all the morning during her skating what arguments
she should use to Winn on the subject of women, but when she saw him in
the hall everything went out of her head. She only knew that it was a
heavenly day and that it seemed extraordinarily difficult not to dance.
It was a long walk up to the Schatz Alp; there were paths where the
pine-trees met overhead, garlanded with wreaths of snow, and the spaces
between the wreaths were as blue as love-in-a-mist, an old-fashioned
flower that grows in English gardens. Claire pointed it out to Winn.
"Only," she said, "up here there isn't any mist, is there?"
"No," said Winn, looking at her in a curious way; "as far as I can see,
there is none whatever. By the by, that particular flower you mention
isn't only called love-in-a-mist, it's also called devil-in-a-bush."
"But that's a pity," said Claire, decisively. "I like the other name
better."
She moved beside him with a buoyant, untiring step, without haste and
without effort. He told her that he would like to take her up into the
Himalayas. She would make a good climber. In his heart he knew there was
no place on earth to which he wouldn't like to take her. She was born to
be a man's comrade, observant, unexacting, level-headed. She was the
kind of girl you wouldn't mind seeing in a tight place if you were
there, of course, to get her out of it. Then he pulled himself up and
told himself not to be fanciful.
It was rather a fanciful morning: the day and the snowy hillside and the
endless, pungent sweetness of the sunny air were like a spell. He found
he was telling Claire about the things he used to do when he was a boy.
He went on doing it because the adventures of the Staines family made
her laugh.
He had not supposed that James, Charles, Isabella, Dolores, and he
himself were particularly funny before, but he was delighted to discover
their hidden gift. Claire wanted to hear everything about them, their
ponies, their dogs, their sharp disgraces, and their more wonderful
escapes and revenges; but she didn't want them to be punished, and Winn
had to hasten over those frequent and usually protracted disasters.
They had the woods to themselves; there was no sound at all except the
occasional soft drop of melting snow. Once they stood quite still
holding their breath to watch the squirrels skim from tree to tree as if
they were weaving the measures of a mystic dance. If it hadn't been for
the squirrels they might have been the only creatures alive in all the
silent, sparkling earth.
The mountains spread out around them with the reticent hush of
interrupted consciousness. They seemed to be on the verge of further
revelations, and were withheld from a last definite whisper only by the
intrusion of humanity.
"I know they could speak if they liked," Claire murmured. "What do you
suppose they'd say?"
"Let's have an avalanche and knock the silly blighters out of our valley
for good and all," Winn suggested.
Claire disposed of Davos with a wave of her hand.
"But they don't mind us, do they?" she urged. "Because we're so happy
and we like them so. Doesn't the air make you feel awfully funny and
happy?"
"Yes," Winn admitted; "but it's not all the air, you know."
Claire wanted to know what else it was; but as Winn didn't offer to
explain, she felt that perhaps she had better not ask.
They were near the top when Winn paused suddenly and said in a most
peculiar reluctant voice; "Look here, I think I ought to tell you."
He stumbled over the words and then added, "No, by Jove, that won't do!"
"Oh, don't let's tell each other things we ought!" Claire entreated.
"It's not the kind of morning for that. I meant to talk about lots of
really important subjects, but I'm not going to now. I may later, of
course; but just now I don't feel in the mood for being important."
Winn looked at her very hard, and then he said:
"But still you are rather important, you know."
"Then," she laughed, "I'm important enough to have my own way, aren't
I?"
Winn said nothing. He seemed to acquiesce that she was important enough
for that.
"Would you like to know," she asked, "what I'd really like for lunch?"
Winn said he would awfully, and by the time she had told him they had
reached the top, and the funicular appeared, disgorging people in front
of a big glass-covered restaurant.
Winn found the best and quietest table with the finest view. From it
they could see the valley down to Frauenkirch and up to Clavedel.
It was a splendid lunch, curiously good, with sparkling sweet wine,
which Claire loved, and Winn, secretly loathing, serenely shared because
of a silly feeling he had that he must take what she did.
After lunch they sat and smoked, leaning over the great clear view. They
could hear the distant velvety boom of the village clock beneath them.
Winn gripped his hand firmly on the table.
"I've got to damned well do it," he said to himself. He remembered that
he had had once to shoot a spy in cold blood, and that he used those
words to himself before he did it.
A couple passed close to their table. The woman was over-dressed, and
hung with all kinds of jingling chains and bangles; she was pretty, and
as she sat with her profile turned a little toward them she was
curiously like Estelle. This was his opportunity. It must come now; all
the morning it had lain in the back of his mind, behind delight, behind
their laughter, like some lurking jungle creature waiting for the dark.
"Do you see that woman," he asked Claire, "the pretty one over there by
the pillar? She's awfully like--"
Claire stopped him. "Pretty!" she cried. "Do you really think she's
pretty? I think she's simply loathsome!"
Winn checked himself hurriedly; he obviously couldn't finish his
sentence with "she's awfully like my wife."
"Well, she sets out to be pretty, doesn't she?" he altered it rather
lamely. Claire continued extremely scornful.
"Yes, I dare say," she admitted. "She may set out to be smart too, hung
round with things like a Christmas-tree, but she's as common as a
sixpenny bazaar. I'll tell you why I don't like her, Major Staines, and
who she reminds me of, but perhaps you think her pretty, too? I mean
that horrid woman, Mrs. Bouncing in our hotel?"
"But can't horrid women be pretty, too?" Winn ventured with meekness.
"No, of course not," said Claire, with great decisiveness. "Why, you
know horrid men can't be handsome. Look at Mr. Roper!" Winn was
uncertain if this point of knowledge had ever reached him; but he wasn't
at this time of day going to look at Mr. Roper, so he gave in.
"I dare say you're right," he said. "As a matter of fact, you know, I
never _do_ look at Roper."
"But that's not the reason," Claire went on, slightly softened by her
victory, "that I dislike her. I really dislike her because I think she
is bad for Maurice; but perhaps you haven't noticed the way he keeps
hanging about her. It makes me sick."
Winn admitted that he had noticed it.
"Still," he said, "of course if you hadn't proved to me that by being
horrid she couldn't be pretty, I should have supposed that he simply
hung about Mrs. Bouncing because she was--well, not precisely plain."
Claire looked doubtfully at him, but he wasn't smiling; he was merely
looking at her with sufficient attention.
"There are only two of us," she said in a low voice, "Maurice and me,
and I do so awfully want him to be a success. I don't think anybody
else does. I don't even know how much he wants it himself. You see,
Maurice is so young in many ways, and our people having died--he hasn't
had much of a chance, has he? Men ought to have fathers."
Winn listened intently; he always remembered anything she said, but this
particular opinion sank deep into the bottom of his heart: "Men ought to
have fathers."
"I've done the best I can," Claire went on, "but you see, I'm young,
too; there are lots of things I don't really know about life. I think
perhaps I sometimes believe too much that things are going to be jolly,
and that makes me a bad adviser for Maurice. Do you know what I mean?"
Winn nodded, but he determined that whether she expected or not, she
should have things jolly. He must be able to manage it. If one wanted a
thing as much as he wanted this, surely one could bring it off.
Hadn't he pulled off races on the scratchiest of polo ponies, when he
couldn't afford better, out of sheer intention? He had meant to win,
moved the pony along, and won. Was life less controllable than a shoddy
polo pony?
He set his mouth and stared grimly out over the sparkling snow. He did
not ask himself how a man with a wife hung round his neck like a
millstone was going to manage the perpetual happiness of a stray young
woman. He never asked himself questions or saw how things were to be
done, but when the crisis came his instinct taught him in a flash the
short cut to victory.
"Now," said Claire, unexpectedly, "you are looking awfully
dangerous--you do rather sometimes, you know--like a kind of volcano
that might go off."
Winn turned his eyes slowly toward her.
"I shall never be dangerous for you, Miss Rivers," he said gently.
He did not know how much he promised her or that he was already
incapable of keeping his promise. She looked away from him with smiling
lips and happy, mysterious eyes. She had known long ago that all the
force he had was as safe with her as if he had laid it in her hands;
safer than that, because he held it in his own--for her.
It seemed to Claire that you were only perfectly secure when you were
with a man who could be dangerous to everybody else, but always safe
for you.
"You will help me with Maurice?" she said softly. "Then I sha'n't feel
worried any more."
"I shouldn't let it worry me for a moment if I were you," Winn assured
her. "He hasn't come to much harm so far. He's young, that's all. I'll
keep my eye on him, of course."
Winn knew quite well what he would do with a subaltern of Maurice's
type. He would take him out shooting and put the fear of God into him.
If this were done often and systematically enough, the subaltern would
improve or send in his papers. But Davos did not offer equal advantages.
One could not get the fear of God everywhere on a tap; besides, there
was Mrs. Bouncing.
Claire turned suddenly toward him.
"I want Maurice," she said rather breathlessly, with shining eyes, "to
be a good soldier; I want him to be like you."
Winn felt a pang of fear; it was a pang that was half horrible pain, and
half passionate and wild delight. Was Claire perfectly safe? Why did
she want Maurice to be like him? It was Claire herself who banished his
fear; she added hastily:
"He really must get through Sandhurst properly."
Of course she hadn't meant anything. In fact, if she really had liked
him in any particular way she'd have been shot before she showed it.
What she wanted was simply the advice of an older man in the service. It
did not occur to Winn that Claire had been shot already without knowing
it.
He went on being reassured all the way back because Claire talked
persistently about tigers. Winn explained that once you thoroughly knew
where you were, there was no real danger in a tiger.
PART II
CHAPTER XIV
Winn discovered almost immediately that what assistance he could give to
Maurice would have to be indirect. He had not a light hand for weak,
evasive, and excitable people, and Maurice did not like to be driven off
the rink with "Better come along with me" or "I should think a good
brisk walk to Clavedel would be about your mark." Winn's idea of a walk
was silence and pace; he had a poor notion of small talk, and he became
peculiarly dumb with a young man whose idea of conversation was
high-pitched boasting.
When Maurice began telling stories about how he got the better of
so-and-so or the length of his ski-jumps, Winn's eyes became
unpleasantly like probes, and Maurice felt the elan of his effects
painfully ebbing away. Still, there was a certain honor in being sought
out by the most exclusive person in the hotel and Winn's requests,
stated in flat terms and with the force of his determination behind
them, were extraordinarily difficult to refuse.
It was Mr. Roper who gave Maurice the necessary stiffening. Mr. Roper
didn't like Winn, and though their intercourse had been limited to a
series of grunts on Winn's part, Mr. Roper felt something unerringly
inimical behind each of these indeterminate sounds.
"That man's a spoil-sport," he informed his pupil. Maurice agreed.
"But he's beastly difficult to say no to," he added. "You mean to
somehow, but you don't."
"I expect he's trying to manage you," Mr. Roper cleverly hinted.
This decided Maurice once and for all. He refused all further
invitations. He had a terror of being managed, and though he always was
managed, gusts of this fear would seize upon him at any effort to
influence him in any direction favorable to himself. He was never in the
least uneasy at being managed to his disadvantage.
Baffled in his main direction, Winn turned his mind upon the subject of
Mr. Roper. Mr. Roper was slippery and intensely amiable; these were not
the qualities with which Winn felt himself capable of direct dealing. He
would have liked to destroy Mr. Roper, and he thought that the situation
might eventually arrive at this point; but until it did, he saw that he
had better leave Mr. Roper alone. "You can't do anything with a worm but
tread on it," he said to himself, and in hotels people had to be careful
how they trod on worms. There was still Mrs. Bouncing, but a slight
study of that lady, which took place in the hall after dinner, put this
possibility out of the question. She called Winn a "naughty man" and
suggested his taking her tobogganing by moonlight.
Mr. Bouncing was a side issue, but Winn, despite his own marriage, held
the theory that men ought to look after their wives. He felt that if
there had been any question of other men he could have managed Estelle;
or, even short of managing Estelle, he could have managed the other men.
It occurred to him now that perhaps Mr. Bouncing could be led to act
favorably upon the question of his wife's behavior.
Mr. Bouncing could not walk at all; he could get out to the public
balcony in the sun, and when he was there, he lay with the "Pink 'Un"
and "The Whipping Post" on his lap and his thermometer beside him. All
he asked was that he should have his hot milk regularly four times a
day. He hardly talked to anybody at all. This was not because it made
him cough to talk--it didn't particularly; he coughed without being made
to--but because he had exhausted his audience.
There was only one subject left to Mr. Bouncing, and that was his
health; after he had told people all his symptoms, they didn't want to
hear any more and there was nothing left to talk about. So he lay there
in the sunshine thinking about his symptoms instead. There were a good
many of them to think about, and all of them were bad.
Mr. Bouncing was surprised when Winn sat down to talk to him, and he
explained to him at once exactly what the doctors thought of his case.
Winn listened passively, and came back the next day at the same time.
This surprised Mr. Bouncing still more, and little by little the
subjects between them widened. Mr. Bouncing still talked about himself,
but he talked differently. He told Winn things he had never told any one
else, and he was really pleased when Winn laughed at a joke he showed
him in "The Pink 'Un."
"You can laugh," he said almost admiringly. "I daren't, you know; that's
one of the things I'm told not to do, but I often wish some one would
come here and laugh at the jokes for me. It's quite an effort for me
sometimes not to burst out; and then, you see, hemorrhage! I knew a poor
chap who literally died of it--died of laughing. They might put that in
the 'Pink 'Un,' mightn't they?"
Winn said he thought one might die of worse things.
"Yes, I know," agreed Mr. Bouncing, "but I'm not going to be caught like
that. I dare say you don't know, but I believe I'm the worst case in the
hotel. I'm not _quite_ sure; that's what worries me. There's a Mrs.
Maguire who stays in bed. I've made all sorts of inquiries about her;
but people are so stupid, they don't know the right symptoms to ask
about, and I can't go in and look at her, can I? And my wife won't. She
says one death's-head is enough for her and I quite see her point.
Perhaps Mrs. Maguire's case is partly nerves. My wife thinks I'm very
nervous. So I am, you know, in a way. I have to be careful; but, Lord!
when I see the things people do up here! The risks they take! You, for
instance. I've seen you do heaps of things that are perfectly deadly;
and yet there you are getting better. Funny, isn't it?"
Winn said it was funny, but he supposed one must take his chance.
"Yes, I know; that is what people keep saying," Mr. Bouncing admitted.
"You can take it if you've got it; but my point is, if you haven't got
it, you can't take it, can you? Now, as far as I can see, looking back
from the start, you know, I never had a dog's chance. It's years since I
went out in a wind without an overcoat on, and once in the very
beginning I got my feet wet; but for the last five years I've been as
careful as a girl with a new hat. I think I shall live till the spring
if I don't get influenza. I hope you'll remember not to come near me if
you feel a cold coming on." Winn assured him that he would. "I asked
Dr. Gurnet the other day," Mr. Bouncing went on musingly, "if he thought
I should ever be able to walk to the post-office again--I used to get
there and back last winter, you know--but he wouldn't give me a direct
answer. He said he thought I could rely on the hotel porter. He's not
quite definite enough--Dr. Gurnet. I told him the other day how
difficult it was to get up in the morning, and he said, 'Well, then, why
not stay in bed?' But I'm not going to do that. I believe you go quicker
when you stay in bed. Besides, I should be dull lying there in bed. I
like to sit here and watch people and see the silly things they do. That
young boy you sit at table with--he won't come to any good. Silly! He
thinks my wife likes him, but she doesn't; it's just that she must have
her mind taken off, you know, at times, poor thing. I like to see her
amused."
"And what about you?" asked Winn. "It seems to me she might better spend
some of her time amusing you."
Mr. Bouncing pointed to the "Pink 'Un."
"I've got plenty to amuse me," he explained, "and you mustn't think she
doesn't look after me. Why, the other day--when I had the high
temperature, you know, and stayed in my room--she came to the door after
she'd been skating, and said, 'Still coughing?' That shows she noticed I
was worse, doesn't it?"
"I'm sure she must be awfully anxious about you," Winn assented with
more kindliness than truth. "But do you care for her knocking about so
with young Rivers and that chap Roper? It seems to me she's too young
and too pretty. If I were you, I'd call her in a bit; I would really."
Mr. Bouncing leaned back in his chair and shut his eyes. This always
made Winn a little uneasy, for when Mr. Bouncing's eyes were shut it was
so difficult to tell whether he was alive or dead. However, after a few
minutes he opened them.
"They are five minutes late with my hot milk," he said. "Do you mind
just getting up and touching the bell? And you've got such a sharp way
of speaking to waiters, perhaps you wouldn't mind hauling him over the
coals for me when he comes?" Winn complied with this request rapidly and
effectively, and the hot milk appeared as if by magic.
Mr. Bouncing drank some before he returned to the subject of his wife.
"Yes," he said, "I dare say you would call her in. You're the kind of
man who can make people come in when you call. I'm not. Besides, you
see, she's young; she's got her life to live, and, then, ought I to have
married her at all? Of course I was wonderfully well at the time; I
could walk several miles, I remember, and had no fever to speak of.
Still, there were the symptoms. She took the risk, of course--she was
one of a large family, and I had money--but it hasn't been very amusing
for her, you must admit."
Winn didn't admit it, because it seemed to him as if it had been
extremely amusing for Mrs. Bouncing, a great deal more amusing than it
had any right to be.
"Perhaps you think she oughtn't to have married for money," Mr. Bouncing
went on when he had finished the hot milk and Winn still sat there
saying nothing. "But you're quite wrong if you do. Money is the most
important thing there is--next to health of course. Health and
money--one's no use without the other, of course; but I don't honestly
think anything else really matters. I know what the chaplain says; but
he's always been quite strong."
"That's all very well," said Winn. "I'm not a religious man myself, but
people oughtn't to take something for nothing. If she's married you for
your money, she ought to be more with you. She's got the money, hasn't
she, and what have you got? That's the way I look at it."
Mr. Bouncing did not shake his head--he was too careful for that--but he
looked as if he were shaking it.
"That's one point of view, of course," he said slowly; "but how do you
know I want to have her more with me? She's very young and strong. I
expect she'd be exciting, and it wouldn't be at all good for me to be
excited.
"Besides, she has no sense of humor. I wouldn't dream of asking her to
laugh at my jokes as I do you. She wouldn't see them, and then I
shouldn't like to show her the improper ones. They're not suitable for
ladies, and the improper ones are the best. I sometimes think you can't
have a really good joke unless it's improper."
Winn did not say anything; but he thought that however limited Mrs.
Bouncing's sense of humor might be, she would have enjoyed the improper
ones.
Mr. Bouncing took out his thermometer.
"It is five minutes," he said, "since I've had the glass of milk, and I
think my tongue must have cooled down by now. So I shall take my
temperature, and after that I shall try to go to sleep. But I don't
believe you are really anxious about my wife; what you're worried about
is young Rivers. I've seen you taking him for walks, and it's no use
your worrying about him, because, as I've said before, he's silly. If he
didn't do one silly thing, he'd do another. However, he's selfish, too.
That's always something; he won't be so likely to come to grief as if he
were merely silly. It's his sister I should be worried about if I were
you."
"Why?" asked Winn without looking at him. Mr. Bouncing looked at Winn,
but he made no answer. He had already got his thermometer in his mouth.
CHAPTER XV
Winn had a feeling that he ought to keep away from her, but Davos was an
inconvenient place for keeping away. People were always turning up when
one least expected them, or one turned up oneself. Privacy and publicity
flashed together in the sunny air. Even going off up a mountain with a
book was hardly the resource it seemed; friends skied or tobogganed down
upon you from the top, and carried you off to tea.
Winn had an uneasy feeling that he oughtn't to go every morning to the
rink, though that was naturally the place for a man who was only allowed
to skate to find himself. It was also the place where he could not fail
to find Claire. There were a good many other skaters on the rink, too;
they were all preparing for the International Skating Competition.
The English, as a rule, stuck to their own rink, where they had a style
of skating belonging to themselves. Their style was perpendicular and
very stiff; it was by no means easy to attain, and when attained, hardly
perhaps, to the observer, worth the efforts expended. Winn approved of
it highly. He thought it a smart and sensible way to skate, and was by
no means a bad exponent; but once he had seen Claire skating on the big
rink, he put aside his abortive circling round an orange. It is
difficult to concentrate upon being a ramrod when every instinct in you
desires to chase a swallow. She wore, when she skated, a short, black
velvet skirt, white fox furs, and a white fur cap. One couldn't very
well miss seeing her. It did not seem to Winn as if she skated at all.
She skimmed from her seat into the center of her chosen corner, and then
looked about her, balanced in the air. When she began to skate he could
not tell whether the band was playing or not, because he felt as if she
always moved to music.
She would turn at first mysteriously and doubtingly, trying her edges,
with little short cuts and dashes, like a leaf blown now here and now
there, pushed by a draught of air, and then some purpose seemed to
catch her, and her steps grew intricate and measured. He could not take
his eyes from her or remember that she was real, she looked so
unsubstantial, eddying to and fro, curving and circling and swooping.
There was no stiffness in her, and Winn found himself ready to give up
stiffness; it was terrible the amount of things he found himself ready
to give up as he watched her body move like seaweed on a tide. Motion
and joy and music all seemed easy things, and the things that were not
easy slipped out of his mind.
After a time Maurice would join her to practise the pair-skating. He was
a clever skater, but careless, and it set Winn's teeth on edge to watch
how nearly he sometimes let her down. He would have let any other woman
down, but Claire knew him. She counted on his not being exactly where he
ought to be, hovered longer on her return strokes, pushed herself more
swiftly forward to meet him, or retreated to avoid his too impulsive
rushes. Winn was always glad when Maurice, satisfied with his cursory
practice, left her circling alone and unfettered like a sea-gull on a
cliff.
This was the time when he always made up his mind not to join her, and
felt most sure that she didn't care whether he joined her or not.
He had not talked with her alone since their lunch at the Schatz Alp
nearly a week ago. Every one of her hours was full, her eyes danced and
laughed as usual, the secretive bloom of youth hid away from him any
sign of expectation. He did not dream that every day for a week she had
expected and wanted him. She couldn't herself have explained what she
wanted. Only her gaiety had lost its unconsciousness; she was showing
that she didn't mind, she was not, now minding. It seemed so strange
that just when she had felt as if they were real friends he had
mysteriously kept away from her. Perhaps he hadn't meant all the nice
things he had said or all the nicer things he hadn't said at all, but
just looked whenever her eyes met his? They did not meet his now; he
always seemed to be looking at something else. Other men put on her
skates and found her quickest on the rink, and the other men seemed to
Claire like trees walking; they were no longer full of amusing
possibilities. They were in the way. Then one morning Winn, watching her
from a distance noticed that Maurice didn't turn up. Claire actually
looked a forlorn and lonely little figure, and he couldn't make up his
mind not to join her.
He skated slowly up to her.
"Well," he said, "where's Maurice? He oughtn't to be missing a good
skating morning like this?" It suddenly seemed to Claire as if
everything was all right again. Winn was there for her, just as he had
been on the Schatz Alp; his eyes looked the same, and the intentional
bruskness which he put into his voice was quite insufficient to hide its
eagerness.
"Oh," she said, "Major Staines, I didn't mean to tell anybody, but I
shall tell you of course. It's rather sickening, isn't it? Maurice
doesn't want to go in for the competition any more; he says he can't
spare the time."
"What!" cried Winn; "look here, let's sit down and talk about it." They
sat down, and the music and the sunshine spread out all round them.
Everything swung into a curious harmony, and left them almost nothing
to be upset about. "He can't throw you over like this," Winn protested.
"Why, it's only a fortnight off the day, and you're one of the tiptop
skaters."
Claire did not say what she knew to be true, that people had been saying
that too much to Maurice, and Maurice only liked praise that came his
own way.
"I think it's Mrs. Bouncing," she said dejectedly. "He's teaching her to
skate, but she'll never learn. She's been up here for years, and she
doesn't know her edges! It looks awfully as if he really liked her,
because Maurice skates quite well."
"I'm afraid I've been of very little use to you about Mrs. Bouncing,"
Winn said apologetically. "I thought Bouncing might help us, he's quite
a good chap; but I'm afraid he's too down in the mouth. Still, I think I
may be able to do something if things get to look really bad. Don't
worry about that, please. But, by Jove! this skating matter _is_
serious. What are you going to do about it?" Anything that stopped sport
seemed to Winn to be really serious; something had got to be done about
it. "Isn't there any one else up here not going in for it that you
could lick into shape?"
Claire shook her head doubtfully.
"They'd have to give up every bit of their time," she explained, "and
virtually hardly breathe. You see, pair-skating is really very stiff. Of
course, if I got a new man, I'd do most of the figures; but he'd have to
be there to catch me at the right times, and awfully steady on his
edges, and waltz of course."
"What about me?" Winn asked quietly.
"I'm steady on my edges, and I can waltz after a fashion, and I'd
promise not to breathe for a fortnight." He looked at her, and then
looked away quickly. He was a damned fool to have offered himself! How
on earth was he going to stand a fortnight with her when he could barely
keep himself in hand for five minutes?
"Oh," she said, "you!"
Afterward she said a good deal more, but Winn only remembered the way
she said "you," because her voice had sounded different, as if she had
found something she had wanted to lay her hands on. Of course what she
really wanted was to go in for the pair-skating; it was much the most
fun.
They began from that moment to go in for it. Winn had to speak to Dr.
Gurnet about the skating, because four hours wasn't enough, and Claire
insisted upon Dr. Gurnet's consent.
Dr. Gurnet had consented, though he had raised his eyebrows and said,
"Pair-skating?" and then he had asked who Major Staines had chosen for
his partner. Naturally Winn had become extremely stiff, and said, "Miss
Rivers," in a tone which should have put an end to the subject.
"Well, well!" said Dr. Gurnet. "And she's a woman, after all, isn't
she?" Winn ignored this remark.
"By the by," he said, "my friend's coming out in about a fortnight--the
one I told you about, Captain Drummond."
"I remember perfectly," said Dr. Gurnet; "a most estimable person I
understand you to say. In about a fortnight? The skating competition
will just be over then, won't it? I am sure I hope you and Miss Rivers
will both make a great success of it."
The fortnight passed in a sunny flash. On the whole Winn had kept
himself in hand. His voice had betrayed him, his eyes had betrayed him,
all his controlled and concentrated passion had betrayed him; but he
hadn't said anything. He had buried his head deep in the sands and
trusted like an ostrich to an infectious oblivion. He reviewed his
behavior on the way to the rink the day of the International.
It was an icy cold morning; the valley was wrapped in a thick blue mist.
There was no sunlight yet. The tops of the mountains were a sharpened
deadly white, colder than purity. As he walked toward the valley the
black fir-trees on the distant heights took fire. They seemed to be
lighted one by one from some swift, invisible torch, and then quicker
than sight itself the sun slipped over the edge and ran in a golden
flood across the mountains. The little willows by the lake-side turned
apricot; the rink was very cold and only just refrozen. It was a small
gray square surrounded by color. Winn was quite alone in the silence and
the light and the tingling bitter air. There was something in him that
burned like a secret undercurrent of fire. Had he played the game? What
about that dumb weight on his lips when he had tried to tell Claire on
the Schatz Alp about Estelle? He couldn't get it out then; but had he
tried again later? Had he concealed his marriage? Why should he tell her
anything? She wouldn't care, she was so young. Couldn't he have his bit
of spring, his dance of golden daffodils, and then darkness? He really
thought of daffodils when he thought of Claire. She wouldn't mind,
because she was spring itself, and had in front of her a great
succession of flowers; but these were the last he was going to have.
There wouldn't be anything at all after Claire, and he wasn't going to
make love to her. Good God! he wasn't such a beast! There had been times
this last fortnight that had tried every ounce of his self-control, and
he hadn't touched her. He hadn't said a word that damned yellow-necked,
hen-headed chaplain's wife couldn't have heard and welcome. Would many
fellows have had his chances and behaved as if they were frozen
barbed-wire fences? And she'd looked at him--by Jove, she'd looked at
him! Not that she'd meant anything by it; only it had been hard to have
to sit on the only decent feelings he had ever had and not let them rip.
And as far as Estelle was concerned, she didn't care a damn for him, and
he might just as well have been a blackguard. But that wasn't quite the
point, was it? Blackguards hurt girls, and he hadn't set out to hurt
Claire.
Well, there was no use making any song or dance about it; he'd have to
go. At first he had thought he could tell her he was married--tell her
as soon as the competition was over, and stay on; but he hadn't counted
on the way things grew, and he didn't think now he could tell her and
then hold his tongue about what he felt. If he told her, the whole thing
would be out; he couldn't keep it back. There were things you knew you
could do, like going away and staying away; there were others you were a
fool to try.
He circled slowly over the black ice surrounded by pink flames. It made
him laugh, because he might have been a creature in hell. Yes, that was
what hell was like, he had always known it--cold. Cold and lonely, when,
if you'd only had a bit of luck, you might have been up somewhere in the
sunlight, not alone. He didn't feel somehow this morning as if his
marriage was an obstruction; he felt as if it were a shame. It hurt him
terribly that what had driven him to Estelle could be called love, when
love was this other feeling--the feeling that he'd like to be torn into
little bits rather than fail Claire. He'd be ridiculous to please her;
he'd face anything, suffer anything, take anything on. And it wasn't in
the least that she was lovely. He didn't think about her beauty half as
much as he thought about her health and the gentle, tender ways she had
with sick people. He'd watched her over and over again, when she had no
idea he was anywhere near, being nice to people in ways in which Winn
had never dreamed before one could be nice. When people had nothing but
their self-esteem left them, no attractions, no courage, no health,
she'd just sit down beside them and make their self-esteem happy and
comfortable.
She needn't have been anything but young and gay and triumphant, but she
never shirked anybody else's pain. He had puzzled over her a good deal
because, as far as he could see, she hadn't the ordinary rules belonging
to good people--about church, and not playing cards for money, and
pulling people up. It wasn't right and wrong she was thinking of most;
it was other people's feelings.
He tried not to love her like that, because it made it worse. It was
like loving God and Peter; it mixed him all up.
He couldn't see straight because everything he saw turned into love of
her, and being with her seemed like being good; and it wasn't, of
course, if he concealed things.
The icy blue rink turned slowly into gold before he had quite made up
his mind what to do. Making up his mind had a good deal to do with
Lionel, so that he felt fairly safe about it. It was going to hurt
horribly, but if it only hurt him, it couldn't be said to matter. You
couldn't have a safe plan that didn't hurt somebody, and as long as it
didn't hurt the person it was made for, it could be counted a success.
Davos began to descend upon the rink, first the best skaters--Swedes,
Russians, and Germans--and then all the world. The speed-skaters stood
about in heavy fur coats down to their feet.
Claire came down surrounded by admirers. Winn heard her laugh before he
saw her, and after he had seen her he saw nothing else. She looked like
one of the fir-trees when the sun had caught it; she seemed aflame with
a quite peculiar radiance and joy. She flew toward Winn, imitating the
speed-skaters with one long swift stride of her skates.
"Ah," she cried, "isn't it a jolly morning? Isn't everything heavenly?
Aren't you glad you are alive?"
That was the kind of mood she was in. It was quite superfluous to ask if
she was nervous. She was just about as nervous as the sun was when it
ran over the mountains.
"There doesn't seem to be much the matter with you this morning," said
Winn, eying her thoughtfully.
The rink cleared at eleven and the band began to play.
The judges sat in different quarters of the rink so as to get the best
all-around impression of the skating. The audience, muffled up in furs,
crowded half-way up the valley, as if it were a gigantic amphitheater.
A Polish girl, very tall and slender, with a long black pigtail, swung
out upon the ice. She caught the music with a faultless steadiness and
swing. Her eyes were fixed on the mountains; her flexible hips and waist
swung her to and fro as easily as a winter bird hovers balanced on its
steady pinions. Out of the crowd her partner, a huge black-bearded
Russian, glided toward her, caught her by the waist, lifted her, and
flung her from side to side in great swirls and resounding leaps. Her
skirts flew about her, her pigtail swung round her in the air, her feet
struck the ice firmly together like a pair of ringing castanets. The
crowd shouted applause as he caught her by the wrists after a
particularly dazzling plunge into the empty air, and brought her round
to face them, her fixed eyes changed and shot with triumph. The dance
was over.
Then a succession of men skaters came forward, whirling, twisting,
capering with flying feet. Winn watched them with more astonishment than
pleasure.
"Like a ring of beastly slippery microbes!" he remarked to Claire.
"Yes," she said; "but wait." Half a dozen men and women came running out
on the rink; with lifted feet, hand in hand, they danced like flying
sunbeams.
Then a German pair followed the Polish. Both were strong, first-rate
skaters, but the man was rough and selfish; he pulled his girl about,
was careless of her, and in the end let her down, and half the audience
hissed.
Swedish, Norwegian, French pairs followed swiftly after. Then Claire
rose with a quickening of her breath.
"Now," she said, "you!" It was curious how seldom she said Major
Staines.
Winn didn't much care to do this kind of thing before foreigners.
However, it was in a way rather jolly, especially when the music warmed
one's blood. He swept her out easily to the center of the ice. For a
time he had only to watch her. He wondered what she looked like to all
the black-headed dots sitting in the sun and gazing. In his heart there
was nothing left to which he could compare her. She turned her head a
little, curving and swooping toward him, and then sprang straight into
the air. He had her fast for a moment; her hands were in his, her eyes
laughed at his easy strength, and again she shot away from him. Now he
had to follow her, in and out, to the sound of the music; at first he
thought of the steps, but he soon stopped thinking. Something had
happened which made it quite unnecessary to think.
[Illustration: In his heart there was nothing left to which he could
compare her]
He was reading everything she knew out of his own heart; she had got
into him somehow, so that he had no need to watch for his cue.
Wherever she wanted him he was; whenever she needed the touch of his
hand or his steadiness it was ready for her. They were like the music
and words of a song, or like a leaf and the dancing air it rests upon.
They were no longer two beings; they had slipped superbly, intolerably
into one; they couldn't go wrong; they couldn't make a mistake. Where
she led he followed, indissolubly a part of her.
They swung together for the final salute. It seemed to Winn that her
heart--her happy, swift-beating, exultant heart--was in his breast, and
then suddenly, violently he remembered that she wasn't his, that he had
no right to touch her. He moved away from her, leaving her, a little
bewildered, to bow alone to the great cheering mass of people.
She found him afterward far back in the crowd, with a white face and
inscrutable eyes.
"You must come and see the speed-skaters," she urged, with her hand on
his arm. "It's the thing I told you about most. And I believe we've won
the second prize. The Russian and Pole have got the first, of course;
They were absolutely perfect, but we were rather good. Why did you rush
off, and what are you looking like that for? Is anything the matter?
You're not--" her voice faltered suddenly--"you're not angry, are you?"
"No, I'm not angry," said Winn, recklessly, "and nothing's the matter,
and I'll go wherever you want and see what you want and do what you
want, and I ran away because I was a damned fool and hate a fuss. And I
see you're going to ask me if I liked it awfully. Yes, I did; I liked it
awfully. Now are you satisfied?" He still hadn't said anything, he
thought, that mattered.
"Oh, yes," she said slowly, "of course I'm satisfied. I'm glad you liked
it awfully; I liked it awfully myself."
CHAPTER XVI
The valley of the Dischmatal lies between two rather shapeless
mountains; it leads nowhere, and there is nothing in it.
Winn gave no reason for his wish to walk there with Lionel except that
it was a quiet place for a talk. They had been together for twenty-four
hours and so far they had had no talk. Lionel had expected to find a
change in Winn; he had braced himself to meet the shock of seeing the
strongest man he knew pitilessly weakened under an insidious disease. He
had found a change, but not the one he expected. Winn looked younger,
more alert, and considerably more vigorous. There was a curious
excitement in his eyes which might have passed for happiness if he had
not been so restless. He was glad to see Lionel, but that wasn't enough
to account for it. Winn looked ten years younger and he had something up
his sleeve.
Lionel had his own theory as to what that something might be, but he
wouldn't have expected it to make Winn look younger. He couldn't help
being afraid that Winn had found out Estelle. There had always been the
chance that he might never find her out; he was neither reflective nor
analytical, and Lionel was both. Winn might have been content simply to
accept her as lovely and delightful, an ideal wife--not a companion, but
a beautiful, fluttering creature to be supplied with everything it
wanted. If he had done that he wouldn't have waked up to the fact that
the creature gave him nothing whatever back--beyond preening its
feathers and forbearing to peck. Lionel respected and loved women, so
that he could afford to feel a certain contempt for Estelle, but he had
always feared Winn's feeling any such emotion. Winn would condemn
Estelle first and bundle her whole sex after her. Lionel hardly dared to
ask him, as he did at last on their way through Dorf, what news he had
of his wife.
"What news of Estelle?" Winn asked indifferently. "None particularly.
She doesn't like Peter's language. My people seem to have taken to him
rather, and I hear he's picked up parts of the Governor's vocabulary.
It'll be jolly hearing him talk; he couldn't when I left. Estelle's
taken up religion. It's funny, my mother said she would, before we were
married. My mother's got a pretty strong head; Estelle hasn't, she was
keen about the Tango when I left; but I dare say religion's better for
her; hers is the high church kind. Up there is the valley--funny sort of
place; it'll remind you of the hills--that's one reason why I brought
you out here--that and the hotel being like a fly paper. Davos is like
all the places where our sort of people go--fashion or disease--it don't
matter a penny which--they're all over the place itself, in and out of
each other's pockets, and yet get a mile or two out and nobody's in
sight. Funny how people like each other. I don't like 'em, you know. I
hate 'em."
In the early February afternoon the valley lay before them singularly
still and white. There were no fir-trees on the sides of the abrupt snow
slopes, and it took Winn some time to rediscover a faint pathway half
blotted out by recent snow.
A few minutes later the road behind them vanished, everything dropped
away from them but the snow, and the low gray skies. A tiny wind slipped
along the valley; it was strange not to see it, for it felt like the
push of a Presence, in the breathless solitude. A long way off Lionel
could hear a faint noise like the sound of some one choking.
It reminded him of the sound behind the green baize doors in the hotel.
It was just such a sound, suppressed, faint, but quite audible, that he
heard along the passages at night. He looked questioningly at Winn.
"That's a waterfall," said Winn; "most of it's frozen up but it leaks
through a little. There's a story about this place--I didn't mention it
to you before, did I?"
Lionel shook his head. Winn was not in the habit of telling him stories
about places. He had informed Lionel on one occasion some years ago,
that he thought legends too fanciful, unless they were in the Bible,
which was probably true, and none of our business. But Lionel had
already wondered if this change in Winn wasn't on the whole making him
more fanciful.
"I dare say," Winn began, "there's not a word of truth in it, and it's
perfectly pointless besides; still it's a queer place, this valley, and
what's particularly odd is, that though you can find it easily enough
sometimes, there are days when I'm blessed if it's there at all! Anyhow
I've gone wrong times out of number when I've looked for it, and you
know I don't usually go wrong about finding places. This is the middle
one of three valleys, count 'em backwards or forwards, whichever way you
like--but I give you my word, after you've passed the first, and take
the second turn, you'll find yourself in the third valley--or take it
the other way, you'll be in the first. It's made me jumpy before now,
looking for it. However, that hasn't anything to do with the story, such
as it is.
"They say that on New Year's eve, all the dead that have died in Davos
(there must be a jolly lot of 'em when you come to think of it) process
through the valley to the Waterfall. What their object is, of course,
the story doesn't mention--ghosts, as far as I can see, never have much
object, except to make you sit up; but they set out anyhow, scores and
scores of 'em.
"If it happens to be moonlight, you can see them slipping over the snow,
making for the waterfall as fast as they can hoof it, but none of them
look back--and if they were all your dearest friends you couldn't catch
a glimpse of their faces--unless, I suppose, you had the gumption to
start off by sitting up at the waterfall and waiting for 'em--which
nobody has, of course. The point of the story, if you can call it a
point, is that the last man in the procession isn't dead at all. He's a
sort of false spook of the living--taking his first turn in with
them--because as sure as fate he dies before the next year's out, and
when the other chaps have reached the waterfall, he stops short and
looks back toward Davos--that's how he's been spotted, and he's always
died all right before the end of the year. Rum tale, isn't it?"
"How did you get hold of it?" Lionel asked curiously. "It's not much in
your line, is it?"
"Well--I don't know," said Winn, taking out his pipe and preparing to
light it. "The last six months or so, I've thought a lot of funny
things. I came up here prepared to die; that's to say, I thought I'd got
to, which is as far as you can prepare for most things, but I'm not
going to die, as I told you yesterday, but what I didn't mention to you
then was that, on the whole, as it happens now, I'd jolly well rather."
"You mean," said Lionel, "that it's got too thick between you and
Estelle? I wish you'd tell me, old chap. I haven't an idea how it
stands, but I've been afraid ever since I stayed with you, that you'd
made a bit of a mistake over your marriage?"
"As far as that goes," said Winn, "I swallowed that down all right. It's
no use bothering about a thing that isn't there. It's what is that
counts. It counts damnably, I can tell you that. Look here, have you
ever had any ideas about love?"
"I can't say that I have," Lionel admitted cautiously. "Many. I dare say
I should like it if it came; and I've had fancies for girls, of course,
but nothing so far I couldn't walk off, not what people call the real
thing, I suppose. I've always liked women more than you have, and I
don't think you get let in so much if you honestly like 'em. I haven't
seen any one I particularly want to marry yet, if that's what you mean?"
"That's part of it," agreed Winn. "I supposed you'd been like that. I
shouldn't wonder if what you say about liking 'em being safer, isn't
true. I never liked 'em. I've taken what I could get when I wanted it. I
rather wish I hadn't now, but I can't say I was ever sorry before.
Even--Estelle--well, I don't want to be nasty about her--but it was only
different, I can see that now, because I knew I couldn't get what I
wanted without marrying her--still--I somehow think I'd made a kind of a
start that time--only I got pulled up too short. I dare say I quite
deserved it. That's no way of liking a woman. When you do _really_, you
know all the rest's been half twaddle and half greed. Your father and
mother are all right--so are mine really, though they do blow each
other's heads off--still, there's something there--you know what I
mean?"
"Something indestructible and uniting--" said Lionel quietly. "I've
often wondered about it."
"Well, I've never wondered about it," said Winn, firmly, "and I'm not
going to begin now. Still, I admit it's there. What I'm getting at is
that there's something I want you to do for me. You'll probably think
I'm mad, but I can't help that. It'll work out all right in the end, if
you'll do it."
"You can ask me anything you like," said Lionel, quietly; "any damned
thing. I don't suppose I'll refuse to do it."
The water broke into a prolonged gurgle under their feet; it sounded
uncannily like some derisive listener. There was nothing in sight at
all--not even their shadows on the unlighted snows.
"Well--there's a girl here," Winn said in a low voice; "it's not very
easy to explain. I haven't told her about Estelle; I meant to, but I
couldn't. I'm afraid you'll think I haven't played the game, but I
haven't made love to her; only I can't stay any longer; I've got to
clear out."
Lionel nodded. "All right," he said; "let's go wherever you like; there
are plenty of other snow places jollier than this."
"That isn't what I want," said Winn. "I want you to stay with her. I
want you to marry her eventually--d' you see? It's quite simple,
really."
"By Jove," said Lionel, thoughtfully; "simple, d' you call it? As simple
as taking a header into the mid-Atlantic! And what good would it do you,
my dear old chap, if I did? It wouldn't be you that had got her?"
"I dare say not," said Winn; "you don't see my point. She'd be all right
with you. What I want for the girl is for her to be taken care of. She
hasn't any people to speak of, and she's up here now with a rotten,
unlicked cub of a brother. I fancy she's the kind of girl that would
have a pretty hideous time with the wrong man. I've got to know she's
being looked after. D' you see?"
"But why should she marry?" Lionel persisted. "Isn't she all right as
she is? What do you want to marry her off for?"
"There'll be a man sooner or later," Winn explained. "There always is,
and she's--well, I didn't believe girls were innocent before. By God,
when they are, it makes you sit up! I couldn't run the risk of leaving
her alone, and that's flat! It's like chucking matches to a child and
turning your back on it.
"For after all, if a man cares about a girl the way I care about her, he
does chuck her matches. When I go--some one decent ought to be there to
take my place."
"But there isn't the slightest chance she'll like me, even if I happened
to like her," Lionel protested. "Honestly, Winn, you haven't thought the
thing out properly. You can't stick people about in each other's
places--they don't fit."
"They can be made to," said Winn, inexorably, "if they're the proper
people. She'll like you to start with, besides you read--authors. So
does she--she's awfully clever, she doesn't think anything of Marie
Corelli; and she likes a man. As to your taking to her--well, my dear
chap, you haven't seen her! I give you a week; I'll hang about till
then. You can tell me your decision at the end of it."
"That's another thing," said Lionel. "Of course you only care for the
girl, I see that, it's quite natural, but if by any chance I did pull
the thing off--what's going to happen to you and me, afterwards? I've
cared for that most, always."
A Foehn wind had begun to blow up the valley--it brought with it a
curious light that lay upon the snow like red dust. "I don't say I shall
like it," Winn said after a pause. "I'm not out to like it. There isn't
anything in the whole damned job possible for me to like. But I'd a lot
rather have it than any other way. I think that ought to show you what I
think of you. You needn't be afraid I'll chuck you for seeing me
through. I might keep away for a time, but I'd come back. She isn't the
kind of a woman that makes a difference between friends."
"Oh, all right," said Lionel after a pause, "I'll go in for it--if I
can."
Winn got up and replaced his pipe carefully, shaking his ashes out on to
the snow. "I'm sure I'm much obliged to you," he said stiffly.
The wind ran up the valley with a sound like a flying train. Neither of
them spoke while the gust lasted. It fell as suddenly as it came, and
the valley shrank back into its pall of silence.
It was so solitary that it seemed to Lionel as if, at times, it might
easily have no existence.
Lionel walked a little in front of Winn; the snow was soft and made
heavy going. At the corner of the valley he turned to wait for Winn, and
then he remembered the fanciful legend of New Year's eve, for he saw
Winn's face very set and white, and his eyes looked as if the presence
of death was in them--turned toward Davos.
CHAPTER XVII
Winn was under the impression that he could stand two or three days,
especially if he had something practical to do. What helped him was the
condition of Mr. Bouncing. Mr. Bouncing had suddenly retired. He had a
bedroom on the other side of Winn's, and a sitting-room connected it
with his wife's; but Mrs. Bouncing failed increasingly to take much
advantage of this connection. Her theory was that, once you were in bed,
you were better left alone.
Mr. Bouncing refused to have a nurse; he said they were disagreeable
women who wouldn't let you take your own temperature. This might have
seemed to involve the services of Mrs. Bouncing; but they were taken up
for the moment by a bridge drive.
"People do seem to want me so!" she explained plaintively to Winn in the
corridor. "And I have a feeling, you know, Major Staines, that in a
hotel like this it's one's duty to make things go."
"Some things go without much making," said Winn, significantly. He was
under the impression that one of these things was Mr. Bouncing.
Winn made it his business, since it appeared to be nobody else's, to
keep an eye on Mr. Bouncing: in the daytime he sat with him and ran his
errands; at night he came in once or twice and heated things for Mr.
Bouncing on a spirit lamp.
Mr. Bouncing gave him minute directions, and scolded him for leaving
milk exposed to the menaces of the air and doing dangerous things with a
teaspoon. Nevertheless, he valued Winn's company.
"You see," he explained to Winn, "when you can't sleep, you keep coming
up to the point of dying. It's very odd, the point of dying, a kind of
collapsishness that won't collapse. You say to yourself, 'I can't feel
any colder than this,' or, 'I must have more breath,' or, 'This lung is
bound to go if I cough much more.' And the funny part of it is, you do
go on getting colder, and your breath breaks like a rotten thread, and
you never stop coughing, and yet you don't go! I dare say I shall be
quite surprised when I do. Then when you come in and give me warm, dry
sheets and something hot to drink, something comes back. I suppose it's
life force; but not much--never as much as when I started the collapse.
I'm getting weaker every hour; don't you notice it? I never approved of
all this lying in bed. I shall speak to Dr. Gurnet about it to-morrow."
Winn had noticed it; he came and sat down by Mr. Bouncing's bed.
"Snowy weather," he suggested, "takes the life out of you."
Mr. Bouncing ignored this theory.
"I hear," he went on, "that you and your new friend have changed your
table. You don't sit with the Rivers any more."
"No," said Winn, laconically; "table isn't big enough."
"I expect they eat too fast," Mr. Bouncing continued; "young people
almost always eat too fast. You'll digest better at another table. You
look to me as if you had indigestion now."
Winn shook his head.
"Look here, Bouncing," he said earnestly, "I'm going off to St. Moritz
next week to have a look at the Cresta; I wish you'd have a nurse.
Drummond will run in and give an eye to you, of course; but you're
pretty seedy, and that's a fact. I don't like leaving you alone."
"Next week," said Mr. Bouncing, thoughtfully. "Well, I dare say I shall
be ready by then. It would be a pity, when I've just got you into the
way of doing things properly, to have to teach them all over again to
somebody else. I'm really not quite strong enough for that kind of
thing. But I'm not going to have a nurse. Oh, dear, no! Nurses deceive
you and cheer you up. I don't feel well enough to be cheered up. I like
somebody who is thoroughly depressed himself, as you are, you know. I
dare say you think I notice nothing lying here, but I've noticed that
you're thoroughly depressed. Have you quarreled with your friend? It's
odd you rush off to St. Moritz alone just when he's arrived."
"No, it isn't," said Winn, hastily. "He'll join me later; he's staying
here at my request."
Mr. Bouncing sighed gently.
"Well," he said; "then all I can say is that you make very odd requests.
One thing I'm perfectly sure about: if you go and look at the Cresta,
you'll go down it, you're such a careless man, and then you'll be
killed. Is that what you want?"
"I could do with it," said Winn, briefly.
"That," said Mr. Bouncing, "is because you're strong. It really isn't
nice to talk in that light way about being killed to any one who has got
to be before very long whether he likes it or not. If you were in my
place you'd value your life, unless it got too uncomfortable, of
course."
Winn apologized instantly. Mr. Bouncing accepted his apology graciously.
"You'll learn," he explained kindly, "how to talk to very ill people in
time, and then probably you'll never see any more of them. Experience is
a very silly thing, I've often noticed; it hops about so. No continuity.
What I was going to say was, don't be worried about young Rivers and my
wife. Take my word for it, you're making a great mistake."
"I am glad to hear you say so," Winn answered. "As a matter of fact, I
have at present a few little private worries of my own; but I'm
relieved, you think the Rivers boy is all right. I've been thinking of
having a little talk with that tutor of his."
"Ah, I shouldn't do that if I were you," said Mr. Bouncing, urgently;
"you're sure to be violent. I see you have a great deal of violence in
you; you ought to control it. It's bad for your nerves. There are things
I could tell you which would make you change your mind about young
Rivers, but I don't know that I shall; it would excite me too much. I
think I should like you to go down and telephone to Dr. Gurnet. Tell him
my temperature is normal. It's a very odd thing; I haven't had a normal
temperature for over three years. Perhaps I'm going to get better, after
all. It's really only my breathing that's troubling me to-night. It
would be funny if I got well, wouldn't it? But I mustn't talk any more;
so don't come back until I knock in the night. Pass me the 'Pink 'Un.'"
Winn passed him the "Pink 'Un" and raised him with one deft, strong
movement more comfortably up on his pillows.
"You've got quite a knack for this sort of thing," Mr. Bouncing
observed. "If you'd been a clever man, you might have been a doctor."
Mr. Bouncing did not knock during the night. Winn heard him stirring at
ten o'clock, and went in. The final change had come very quickly. Mr.
Bouncing was choking. He waved his hand as if the very appearance of
Winn between him and the open balcony door kept away from him the air
that he was vainly trying to breathe. Then a rush of blood came in a
stream between his lips. Winn moved quickly behind him and lifted him in
his arms.
Mr. Bouncing was no weight at all, and he made very little sound. He was
quite conscious, and the look in his eyes was more interested than
alarmed. The rush of bleeding stopped suddenly; his breathing was weaker
and quieter, but he no longer choked.
"Look here, old man," Winn said, "let me get your wife."
But Mr. Bouncing signaled to him not to move; after a time he
whispered:
"This is the first time I ever had hemorrhage. Most uncomfortable."
"Do let me get your wife!" Winn urged again.
"No," said Mr. Bouncing. "Women--not much good--after the first."
"Don't talk any more then, old man," Winn pleaded. "You'll start that
bleeding off again."
But Mr. Bouncing made a faint clicking sound that might have been a
laugh.
"Too late," he whispered. "Don't matter now. No more risks. Besides, I'm
too--too uncomfortable to live."
There were several pauses in the hemorrhage, and at each pause Mr.
Bouncing's mind came back to him as clear as glass. He spoke at
intervals.
"Not Rivers," he said, fixing Winn's eyes, "Roper--Roper." Then he
leaned back on the strong shoulder supporting him. "Glad to go," he
murmured. "Life has been--a damned nuisance. I've had--enough of it."
Then again, between broken, flying breaths he whispered, "Lonely."
"That's all right," Winn said gently.
"You're not alone now. I've got hold of you."
"No," whispered Mr. Bouncing, "no, I don't think you have."
There was no more violence now; his failing breath shook him hardly at
all. Even as he spoke, something in him was suddenly freed; his chest
rose slowly, his arm lifted then fell back, and Winn saw that he was no
longer holding Mr. Bouncing.
CHAPTER XVIII
He closed the balcony door; the cold air filled the room as if it were
still trying to come to the rescue of Mr. Bouncing. Winn had often done
the last offices for the dead before, but always out of doors. Mr.
Bouncing would have thought that a very careless way to die; he had
often told Winn that he thought nature most unpleasant.
When Winn had set the room in order he sat down by the table and
wondered if it would be wrong to smoke a cigarette. He wanted to smoke,
but he came to the conclusion that it wasn't quite the thing.
To-night was the ball for the international skaters--he ought to have
been there, of course. He had made Lionel go in his place, and had
written a stiff little note to Claire, asking her to give his dances to
his friend. He had Claire's answer in his pocket. "Of course I will, but
I'm awfully disappointed." She had spelled disappointed with two s's
and one p. Win had crushed the note into his pocket and not looked at it
since, but he took it out now. It wasn't like smoking a cigarette.
Bouncing wouldn't mind. There was no use making a fuss about it; he had
done the best thing for her. He was handing all that immaculate, fresh
youth into a keeping worthy of it. He wasn't fit himself. There were too
many things he couldn't tell her, there was too much in him still that
might upset and shock her. He would have done his best, of course, to
have taken care of her; but better men could take better care. Lionel
had said nothing so far; he had taken Claire skiing and skating, and
once down the Schatz Alp. When he had come back from the Schatz Alp he
had gone a long walk by himself. Winn had offered to accompany him, but
Lionel had said he wanted to go alone and think. Winn accepted this
decision without question. He knew Lionel was a clever man, but he
didn't himself see anything to think about. The thing was perfectly
simple: Lionel liked Claire or he didn't; no amount of being clever
could make any difference. Winn was a little suspicious of thinking. It
seemed to him rather like a way of getting out of things.
The room was very cold, but Winn didn't like going away and leaving Mr.
Bouncing. By the by he heard voices in the next room. He could
distinguish the high, flat giggle of Mrs. Bouncing. She had come back
from the dance, probably with young Rivers. He must go in and tell her.
That was the next thing to be done. He got up, shook himself, glanced at
the appeased and peaceful young face upon the pillow, and walked into
the next room. It was a sitting-room, and Winn had not knocked; but he
shut the door instantly after him, and then stood in front of it, as if
in some way to keep the silent tenant of the room behind him from seeing
what he saw.
Mrs. Bouncing was in a young man's arms receiving a prolonged farewell.
It wasn't young Rivers, and it was an accustomed kiss. Mrs. Bouncing
screamed. She was the kind of woman who found a scream in an emergency
as easily as a sailor finds a rope.
It wasn't Winn's place to say, "What the devil are you doing here, sir?"
to Mr. Roper; it was the question which, if Mr. Roper had had the
slightest presence of mind, he would have addressed to Winn. As it was
he did nothing but snarl--a timid and ineffectual snarl which was
without influence upon the situation.
"You'd better clear out," Winn continued; "but if I see you in Davos
after the eight o'clock express to-morrow I shall give myself the
pleasure of breaking every bone in your body. Any one's at liberty to
play a game, Mr. Roper, but not a double game; and in the future I
really wouldn't suggest your choosing a dying man's wife to play it
with. It's the kind of thing that awfully ruffles his friends."
"I don't know what you mean," said Mr. Roper, hastily edging toward the
door; "your language is most uncalled for. And as to going away, I shall
do nothing of the kind."
"Better think it over," said Winn, with misleading calm. He moved
forward as he spoke, seized Mr. Roper by the back of his coat as if he
were some kind of boneless mechanical toy, and deposited him in the
passage outside the door.
Mrs. Bouncing screamed again. This time it was a shrill and gratified
scream. She felt herself to be the heroine of an occasion. Winn eyed her
as a hostile big dog eyes one beneath his fighting powers. Then he said:
"I shouldn't make that noise if I were you; it's out of place. I came
here to give you bad news."
This time Mrs. Bouncing didn't scream. She took hold of the edge of the
table and repeated three times in a strange, expressionless voice:
"George is dead! George is dead! George is dead!"
Winn thought she was going to faint, but she didn't. She held on to the
table.
"What ought I to do, Major Staines?" she asked in a quavering voice.
Winn considered the question gravely. It was a little late in the day
for Mrs. Bouncing to start what she ought to do, but he approved of her
determination.
"I think," he said at last--"I think you ought to go in and look at him.
It's usual."
"Oh, dear!" said Mrs. Bouncing, with a shiver, "I never have seen a
corpse!"
Winn escorted her to the bedside and then turned away from her. She
looked down at her dead husband. Mr. Bouncing had no anxiety in his face
at all now; he looked incredibly contented and young.
"I--I suppose he really is gone?" said Mrs. Bouncing in a low voice.
Then she moved waveringly over to a big armchair.
"There is no doubt about it at all," said Winn. "I didn't ring up
Gurnet. He will come in any case first thing to-morrow morning."
Mrs. Bouncing moved her beringed hands nervously, and then suddenly
began to cry. She cried quietly into her pocket-handkerchief, with her
shoulders shaking.
"I wish things hadn't happened!" she sobbed. "Oh, dear! I wish things
hadn't happened!" She did not refer to the death of Mr. Bouncing. Winn
said nothing. "I really didn't mean any harm," Mrs. Bouncing went on
between her sobs--"not at first. You know how things run on; and he'd
been ill seven years, and one does like a little bit of fun, doesn't
one?"
"I shouldn't think about all that now," Winn replied. "It isn't
suitable."
Mrs. Bouncing shook her head and sobbed louder; sobbing seemed a refuge
from suitability.
"I wouldn't have minded," she said brokenly, "if I'd heated his milk. I
always thought he was so silly about having skin on it. I didn't believe
when he came up-stairs it was because he was really worse. I wanted the
sitting-room to myself. Oh dear! oh dear! I said it was all nonsense!
And he said, 'Never mind, Millie; it won't be for long,' and I thought
he meant he'd get down-stairs again. And he didn't; he meant this!"
Winn cleared his throat.
"I don't think he blamed you," he said, "as much as I did."
Mrs. Bouncing was roused by this into a sudden sense of her position.
"Oh," she said, "what are you going to do to me? You've always hated me.
I'm sure I don't know why; I took quite a fancy to you that first
evening. I always have liked military men, but you're so stand-offish;
and now, of course, goodness knows what you'll think! If poor old George
were alive he'd stand up for me!"
"I'm not going to do anything to hurt you, Mrs. Bouncing," said Winn,
after a short pause. "You'll stay on here, of course, till after the
funeral. We shall do all we can to help you, and then you'll go back to
England, won't you?"
"Yes," she said, shivering, "I suppose so. I shall go back to England. I
shall have to see George's people. They don't like me. Will--will that
be all?"
"As far as I am concerned," said Winn, more gently, "there is only one
thing further I have to suggest. I should like you to promise me, when
you leave here, to have nothing more to do with young Rivers. It's
better not; it puts him off his work."
Mrs. Bouncing reddened.
"Oh," she said, "I know; I didn't mean any harm by that. You can't help
young men taking a fancy to you, can you? At least I can't. It looked
better didn't it, in a way--you know what I mean. I didn't want people
to think anything. If only George hadn't been so good to me! I don't
suppose you can understand, but it makes it worse when they are."
It seemed to Winn as if he could understand, but he didn't say so.
Bouncing should have pulled her up. Winn always believed in people being
pulled up. The difficulty lay in knowing how to carry the process out.
It had seemed to Mr. Bouncing simpler to die.
"You'd better go to bed now," Winn said at last. "People will be up
soon. He died quite peacefully. He didn't want you to be disturbed. I
think that's all, Mrs. Bouncing."
She got up and went again to the bed.
"I suppose I oughtn't to kiss him?" she whispered. "I haven't any right
to now, have I? You know what I mean? But I would have liked to kiss
him."
"Oh, I don't believe he'd mind," said Winn, turning away.
Mrs. Bouncing kissed him.
CHAPTER XIX
Winn felt no desire to go to bed. He went out into the long, blank
corridor and wondered if the servants would be up soon and he could get
anything to drink. The passage was intensely still; it stretched
interminably away from him like a long, unlighted road. A vague gray
light came from the windows at each end. It was too early for the shapes
of the mountains to be seen. The outside world was featureless and very
cold.
There was no sound in the house except the faint sound behind the green
baize doors, which never wholly ceased. Winn had always listened to it
before with an impatient distaste; he had hated to hear these echoes of
dissolution. This morning, for the first time, he felt curious.
Suppose things had gone differently; that he'd been too late, and known
his fate? He could have stayed on then; he could have accepted Claire's
beautiful young friendliness. He could have left her free; and yet he
could have seen her every day; then he would have died.
Weakness has privileges. It escapes responsibility; allowances are made
for it. It hasn't got to get up and go, tearing itself to pieces from
the roots. He could have told her about Peter and Estelle and what a
fool he had been; and at the end, he supposed, it wouldn't have mattered
if he had just mentioned that he loved her.
Now there wasn't going to be any end. Life would stretch out narrow,
interminable, and dark, like the passage with the windows at each end,
which were only a kind of blur without any light.
However, of course there was no use bothering about it; since the
servants weren't up and he couldn't get any coffee, he must just turn
in. It suddenly occurred to Winn that what he was feeling now was
unhappiness, a funny thing; he had never really felt before. It was the
kind of feeling the man had had, under the lamp-post at the station,
carrying his dying wife. The idea of a broken heart had always seemed
to Winn namby-pamby. You broke if you were weak; you didn't break if you
were strong. What was happening now was that he was strong and he was
being broken. It was a painful process, because there was a good deal of
him to break, and it had only just begun. However, this was mercifully
hidden from him. He said to himself: "I dare say I'm run down and
fidgety with having had to sit up with Bouncing. I shall feel all right
to-morrow." Then the door behind him opened, and Lionel joined him. He
was still dressed as he had been when he came back from the ball some
hours earlier.
"Hullo!" he said. "I wondered if that was you; I thought I heard
something stirring outside. You weren't in your room when I came in.
Been with Bouncing?"
"Yes," said Winn; "he's dead. I'm looking for some coffee. These
confounded, tow-headed Swiss mules never get up at any decent hour. Why
are you still dressed? Nothing wrong, is there?"
"Well, I didn't feel particularly sleepy, somehow," Lionel acknowledged.
"Are you going to stand outside in this moth-eaten passage the rest of
the night, or will you come in with me and have a whisky and soda? You
must be fagged out."
"I don't mind if I do," Winn agreed. "We may as well make a night of
it."
For a few minutes neither of them spoke, then Winn said: "Had a jolly
dance?"
Lionel did not answer him directly; but he turned round, and met his
friend's eyes with his usual unswerving honesty.
"Look here, old Winn," he said, "it's up to you to decide now. I'll stay
on here or go with you, whichever you like."
"You like her, then?" Winn asked quickly.
"Yes," said Lionel, "I like her."
"Well, then, you'll stay of course," said Winn without any hesitation.
"Isn't that what we damned well settled?"
Lionel's eyes had changed. They were full of a new light; he looked as
if some one had lit a lantern within him. Love had come to him not as it
had come to Winn, bitterly, unavailingly, without illusion; it had
fallen upon his free heart and lit it from end to end with joy. He loved
as a man loves whose heart is clean and who has never loved before,
without a scruple and without restraint. Love had made no claims on him
yet; it had not offered him either its disappointments or its great
rewards. He was transformed without being altered. He simply saw
everything as glorious which before had been plain, but he did not see
different things.
"Yes," he said, "I know we talked about it; but I'm hanged if I'll try
unless I'm sure you are absolutely keen. I thought it all out
after--after I'd seen her, and it seemed to me all very well in the
abstract giving her up to another man and all that, but when it came to
the point, would you be really sure to want me to carry through? I've
seen her now, you know, and I'm glad I've seen her. I'll be glad always
for that, but it needn't go any further."
Winn looked past him; he was tired with the long night's strain, and he
had no white ideal to be a rapture in his heart. He loved Claire not
because she was perfection, but because she was herself. She was
faultless to Lionel, but Winn didn't care whether she was faultless or
not. He didn't expect perfection or even want it, and he wasn't the man
to be satisfied with an ideal; but he wanted, as few men have ever
wanted for any women, that Claire should be happy and safe.
"I've told you once," he said; "you might know I shouldn't change. I've
got one or two little jobs to see to about Bouncing's funeral. That
woman's half a little cat and half an abject fool. Still, you can't help
feeling a bit sorry for her. I dare say I can get things done by
lunch-time; then I'll drive over the Fluella. I'll put up at the Kulm;
but don't bother to write till you've got something settled. I'm not
going to mess about saying good-by to people. You can tell Miss Rivers
when I'm gone."
"Look here," Lionel urged, "you can't do that; you must say good-by to
her properly. She was awfully sick at your not turning up at the ball.
After all, you know, you've seen a lot of her, and she particularly
likes you. You can't jump off into space, as if you were that old chap
in the Bible without any beginning or any end!"
Winn stuck his hands in his pockets and looked immovably obstinate.
"I'm damned if I do," he replied. "Why should I? What's the use of
saying good-by? The proper thing to do when you're going away is to go.
You needn't linger, mewing about like somebody's pet kitten."
Lionel poured out the whiskey before replying, and pushed a glass in
Winn's direction; then he said:
"Don't be a fool, old chap; you'll have to say good-by to her. You don't
want to hurt her feelings."
"What's it to you whether I hurt her feelings or not?" Winn asked
savagely.
There was a moment's sharp tension. It dropped at the tone of Lionel's
quiet voice.
"It's a great deal to me," he said steadily; "but I know it's not half
as much to me as it is to you, old Winn."
"Oh, all right," said Winn after a short pause. "I suppose I'll say it
if you think I ought to. Only stand by if you happen to be anywhere
about. By the by, I hope I shall have some kind of a scrap with Roper
before the morning's over. I shall enjoy that. Infernal little beast, I
caught him out last night. I can't tell you how; but unless he's off by
the eight o'clock to-morrow, he's in for punishment."
Lionel laughed.
"All right," he said; "don't murder him. I'm going to turn in now. Sorry
about Bouncing. Did he have a bad time, poor chap?"
"No," said Winn, "not really. He had a jolly sight harder time living;
and yet I believe he'd have swopped with me at the end. Funny how little
we know what the other fellow feels!"
"We can get an idea sometimes," Lionel said in a queer voice, with his
back to his friend. Winn hastened to the door of his room. He knew that
Lionel had an idea. He said, as he half closed the door on himself:
"Thanks awfully for the whiskey."
CHAPTER XX
Unfortunately, Winn was not permitted the pleasure of punishing Mr.
Roper in the morning. Mr. Roper thought the matter over for the greater
part of an unpleasantly short night. He knew that he could prepare a
perfect case, he could easily clear himself to his pupil, he could stand
by his guns, and probably even succeed in making Mrs. Bouncing stand by
hers; but he didn't want to be thrashed. Whatever else happened, he knew
that he could not get out of this. Winn meant to thrash him, and Winn
would thrash him. People like Winn could not be manipulated; they could
only be avoided. They weren't afraid of being arrested, and they didn't
care anything about being fined. They damned the consequences of their
ferocious acts; and if you happened to be one of the consequences and
had a constitutional shrinking from being damned, it was wiser to pack
early and be off by an eight o'clock train.
Winn was extremely disappointed at this decision; it robbed him of
something which, as he thought, would have cleared the air. However, he
spent a busy morning in assisting Mrs. Bouncing. She was querulous and
tearful and wanted better dressmakers and a more becoming kind of
mourning than it was easy to procure in Davos. It seemed to Winn as if
she was under the impression that mourning was more important to a
funeral than a coffin; but when it came to the coffin, she had terrible
ideas about lilies embroidered in silver, which upset Winn very much.
Mr. Bouncing had always objected to lilies. He considered that their
heavy scent was rather dangerous. Mrs. Bouncing told Winn what everybody
in the hotel had suggested, and appeared to expect him to combine and
carry out all their suggestions, with several other contradictory ones
of her own.
During this crisis Maurice Rivers markedly avoided Mrs. Bouncing. He
felt as if she might have prevented Mr. Bouncing's death just then. It
was a failure of tact. He didn't like the idea of death, and he had
always rather counted oh the presence of Mr. Bouncing. He was afraid he
might, with Mr. Bouncing removed, have gone a little too far.
He explained his position to Winn, whom he met on one of his many
errands.
"One doesn't want to let oneself in for anything, you know," he
asserted. "I'm sure, as a man of the world, you'd advise me to keep out
of it, wouldn't you? It's different for you, of course; you were poor
Bouncing's friend."
Winn, whose temper was extremely ruffled, gave him a formidable glance.
"You get into things a bit too soon, my boy," he replied coldly, "and
get out of 'em a bit too late."
"Oh, come, you know," said Maurice, jauntily, "I'm not responsible for
poor old Bouncing's death, am I?"
"I don't say you are," Winn continued, without looking any pleasanter.
"Bouncing had to die, and a jolly good thing for him it was when it came
off; his life wasn't worth a row of pins. But I wasn't talking about
him; I was talking about her. If you really want my advice, I'll tell
you plainly that if you want to go the pace, choose women one doesn't
marry, don't monkey about with the more or less respectable ones who
have a right to expect you to play the game. It's not done, and it's
beastly unfair. D' you see my point?"
Maurice wondered if he should be thoroughly angry or not. Suddenly it
occurred to him that Winn was waiting, and that he had better see his
point and not be thoroughly angry.
"Yes, I dare say I did go a little far," he admitted, throwing out a
manly chest; "but between you and me, Staines, should you say our friend
Mrs. B. _was_ respectable or not?"
"She isn't my friend," said Winn, grimly; "but as she ought to be yours,
I'll trouble you to keep your questions to yourself."
The idea of being angry having apparently been taken out of Maurice's
hands, he made haste to disappear into the hotel.
Winn walked on into the village. It was the last time he intended to go
there. There was nothing peculiarly touching about the flat, long road,
with the rink beneath it and the mountains above. The houses and shops,
German pensions and crowded balconies had no particular charm. Even the
tall, thin spire of the church lacked distinction; and yet it seemed to
Winn that it would be difficult to forget. He stopped at the rink as he
returned to pick up his skates. He told himself that he was fortunate
when he discovered Claire, with Lionel on one side of her and Ponsonby
on the other; he had wanted the help of an audience; now he was going to
have one. Claire saw him before the others did, and skated swiftly
across to him.
"But why don't you put your skates on?" she said, pointing to them in
his hand. "You're not much good there, you know, on the bank."
"I'm not much good anywhere, as far as that goes," said Winn, quickly,
before the others came up. Then he said in a different voice, "I hope
you enjoyed your dance last night."
Claire paused the briefest moment before she answered him; it was as if
she were trying quickly to change the key in which she spoke in order to
meet his wishes, and as if she did not want to change the key.
"Yes, I did," she said, "most awfully. It was a heavenly dance. I was
so sorry you couldn't come, but Captain Drummond told me why."
Winn confounded Lionel under his breath for not holding his tongue; but
he felt a warmth stir in his heart at the knowledge that, no matter what
was at stake, Lionel would not suffer the shadow of blame to attach
itself to him. It had been one of Winn's calculations that Claire would
be annoyed at his disappointing her and think the less of him because
she was annoyed. He was not a clever calculator.
"Of course I understood," Claire went on; "you had to be with poor Mr.
Bouncing. It was just like you to stay with him." She had said a good
deal, considering that Mr. Ponsonby and Lionel were there. Still, Winn
did not misunderstand her. Of course she meant nothing.
"Well," he said, holding out his hand, "I'm extremely glad, Miss Rivers,
to have run across you like this, because I'm off this afternoon to St.
Moritz. I want to have a look at the Cresta."
Claire ignored his outstretched hand.
"Oh," she cried a little breathlessly, "you're not going away, are you?
But you'll come back again, of course?"
"I hope so, I'm sure, some day or other," said Winn. Then he turned to
Ponsonby. "Have you been down the Cresta?" he asked.
Mr. Ponsonby shook his head.
"Not from Church Leap," he replied. "I've got too much respect for my
bones. It's awfully tricky; I've gone down from below it. You don't get
such a speed on then."
"Oh, Major Staines, you won't toboggan?" Claire cried out. "You know you
mustn't toboggan! Dr. Gurnet said you mustn't. You won't, will you?
Captain Drummond, aren't you going with him to stop him?"
Lionel laughed.
"He isn't a very easy person to stop," he answered her. "I'll join him
later on, of course; but I want to see a little more of Davos before I
go."
"There isn't the slightest danger," Winn remarked, without meeting
Claire's eyes. "The Cresta's as safe as a church hassock. There isn't
half the skill in tobogganing that there is in skating. Good-by, Miss
Rivers. I never enjoyed anything as much as I enjoyed our skating
competition. I'm most grateful to you for putting up with me."
Claire gave him her hand then, but Winn remembered afterward that she
never said good-by. She looked at him as if he had done something which
was not fair.
CHAPTER XXI
Winn's chief objection to St. Moritz was the shabby way in which it
imitated Davos. It had all the same materials--endless snows, forests of
fir-trees, soaring peaks and the serene blueness of the skies--and yet
as Davos it didn't in the least come off. It was more beautiful and less
definite; the peaks were nearer and higher; they streamed out around the
valley like an army with banners. The long, low lake and the small,
perched villages, grossly overtopped by vulgar hotel palaces, had a far
more fugitive air.
It was a place without a life of its own. Whatever character St. Moritz
might once have had was as lost as that of the most catholic of evening
ladies in Piccadilly.
Davos had had the dignity of its purpose; it had set out to heal. St.
Moritz, on the contrary, set out to avoid healing. It was haunted by
crown princes and millionaire Jews, ladies with incredible ear-rings
and priceless furs; sharp, little, baffling trans-atlantic children
thronged its narrow streets, and passed away from it as casually as a
company of tramps.
There was this advantage for Winn: nobody wanted to be friendly unless
one was a royalty or a financial magnate. Winn was as much alone as if
he had dropped from Charing Cross into the Strand. He smoked, read his
paper, and investigated in an unaccommodating spirit all that St. Moritz
provided; but he didn't have to talk.
Winn was suffering from a not uncommon predicament: he had done the
right thing at enormous cost, and he was paying for it, instead of being
paid. Virtue had struck her usual hard bargain with her votaries. She
had taken all he had to give, and then sent in a bill for damages.
He was not in the least aware that he was unhappy, and often, for five
or ten minutes at a time, he would forget Claire; afterward he would
remember her, and that was worse. The unfortunate part of being made all
of a piece is that if you happen to want anything, there is really no
fiber of your being that doesn't want it.
Winn loved in the same spirit that he rode and he always rode to a
finish. In these circumstances and in this frame of mind, the Cresta
occurred to Winn in the light of a direct inspiration. No one could ride
the Cresta with any other preoccupation.
Winn knew that he oughtn't to do it; he remembered Dr. Gurnet's advice,
and it put an edge to his intention. If he couldn't have what he wanted,
there would be a minor satisfaction in doing what he oughtn't. The
homely adage of cutting off your nose to spite your face had never been
questioned by the Staines family. They looked upon a nose as there
chiefly for that purpose. It was a last resource to be drawn upon, when
the noses of others appeared to be out of reach.
There were, however, a few preliminary difficulties. No one was allowed
to ride the Cresta without practice, and it was a part of Winn's plan
not to be bothered with gradual stages. Only one man had ever been known
to start riding the Cresta from Church Leap without previous trials, and
his evidence was unobtainable as he was unfortunately killed during the
experiment. Since this adventure a stout Swiss peasant had been placed
to guard the approaches to the run. Winn walked up to him during the
dinner-hour, when he knew the valley was freest from possible intruders.
"I want you to clear off," he said to the man, offering him five francs,
and pointing in the direction of St. Moritz. The peasant shook his head,
retaining the five francs, and opening the palm of his other hand. Winn
placed a further contribution in it and said firmly:
"Now if you don't go I shall knock you down." He shook his fist to
reinforce the feebleness of his alien speech. The Swiss peasant stepped
off the path hurriedly into a snow-drift. He was a reasonable man, and
he did not grasp why one mad Englishman should wish to be killed, nor,
for the matter of that, why others equally mad, should wish to prevent
it. So he walked off in the direction of St. Moritz and hid behind a
tree, reposing upon the deeply rooted instinct of not being responsible
for what he did not see.
Winn regarded the run methodically, placed his toboggan on the summit
of the leap, and looked down at the thin, blue streak stretching into
the distance. The valley appeared to be entirely empty; there was
nothing visibly moving in it except a little distant smoke on the way to
Samaden. The run looked very cold and very narrow; the nearest banks
stood up like cliffs.
Winn strapped a rake to his left foot, and calculated that the instant
he felt the ice under him he must dig into it, otherwise he would go
straight over the first bank. Then he crouched over his toboggan, threw
himself face downward, and felt it spring into the air.
He kept no very definite recollection of the sixty-odd seconds that
followed. The ice rose up at him like a wall; the wind--he had not
previously been aware of the faintest draught of air--cut into his eyes
and forehead like fire. His lips blistered under it.
He felt death at every dizzy, dwindling second--death knotted up and
racketing, so imminent that he wouldn't have time to straighten himself
out or let go of his toboggan before he would be tossed out into the
empty air.
He remembered hearing a man say that if you fell on the Cresta and
didn't let go of your toboggan, it knocked you to pieces. His hands were
fastened on the runners as if they were clamped down with iron. The
scratching of the rake behind him sounded appalling in the surrounding
silence.
He shot up the first bank, shaving the top by the thinness of a hair,
wobbled sickeningly back on to the straight, regained his grip, shot the
next bank more easily, and whirled madly down between the iron walls. He
felt as if he were crawling slowly as a fly crawls up a pane of glass,
in a buzzing eternity.
Then he was bumped across the road and shot under the bridge. There was
a hill at the end of the run. As he flew up it he became for the first
time aware of pace. The toboggan took it like a racing-cutter, and at
the top rose six feet into the air, and plunged into the nearest
snow-drift.
Winn crawled out, feeling very sick and shaken, and as if every bone in
his body was misplaced.
"Oh, you idiot! You idiot! you unbounded, God-forsaken idiot!" a voice
exclaimed in his ears. "You've given me the worst two minutes of my
life!"
Winn looked around him more annoyed than startled. He felt a great
disinclination for speech and an increasing desire to sit down and keep
still; and he did not care to conduct a quarrel sitting down.
However, a growing inability to stand up decided him; he dragged out his
toboggan and sat on it.
The speaker appeared round a bend of the run. She had apparently been
standing in the path that overlooked a considerable portion of it.
She was not a young woman, and from her complexion and the hardness of
her thickly built figure she might have been made of wood.
She wore a short, strapped-in skirt, leather leggings, and a
fawn-colored sweater. Her eyes were a sharp, decided blue, and the rest
of her appearance matched the sweater.
Winn pulled himself together.
"I don't see, Madam," he remarked slowly, but with extreme
aggressiveness, "what the devil my actions have to do with you!"
"No," said the lady, grimly, "I don't suppose from the exhibition I've
just been watching, that you're in the habit of seeing farther than to
the end of your own nose. However, I may as well point out to you that
if you had killed yourself, as you richly deserved, and as you came
within an ace of doing, the run would have been stopped for the season.
We should all have been deprived of the Grand National, and I, who come
up here solely to ride the Cresta, which I have done regularly every
winter for twenty years, would have had my favorite occupation snatched
from me at an age when I could least afford to miss it."
"I haven't been killed, and I had not the slightest intention of being
so," Winn informed her with dangerous calm. "I merely wished to ride the
Cresta for the first time unobserved. Apparently I have failed in my
intention. If so, it is my misfortune and not my fault." He took out a
cigarette, and lit it with a steady hand, and turned his eyes away from
her. He expected her to go away, but, to his surprise, she spoke again.
"My name," she said, "is Marley. What is yours?"
"Staines," Winn replied with even greater brevity. He had to give her
his name, but he meant it to be his last concession.
"Ah," she said thoughtfully, "that accounts for it. You're the image of
Sir Peter, and you seem to have inherited not only his features, but his
manners. I needn't, perhaps, inform you that the latter were uniformly
bad. I knew your father when I was a girl. He was stationed in Hong-Kong
at the time and he was good enough to call me the little Chinese, no
doubt in reference to my complexion. Plain as I am now, I was a great
deal plainer as a girl, though I dare say you wouldn't think it."
Winn made no comment upon this doubtful statement; he merely grunted.
His private opinion was that ladies of any age should not ride the
Cresta, and that ladies old enough to have known his father at Hong-Kong
should not toboggan at all.
It was unsuitable, and she might have hurt herself; into these two
pitfalls women should never fall.
Miss Marley had a singularly beautiful speaking voice; it was as soft as
velvet. She dropped it half a tone, and said suddenly:
"Look here, don't do that kind of thing again. It's foolish. People
don't always get killed, you know; sometimes they get maimed. Forgive
me, but I thought I would just like to point it out to you. I could not
bear to see a strong man maimed."
Winn knew that it was silly and weak to like her just because of the
tone of her voice, but he found himself liking her. He had a vague
desire to tell her that he wouldn't do it again and that he had been
rather a fool; but the snow was behaving in a queer way all around him;
it appeared to be heaving itself up. He said instead:
"Excuse me for sitting down like this. I've had a bit of a shake. I'll
be all right in a moment or two." Then he fainted.
Miss Marley stooped over him, opened his collar, laid him flat on the
ground--he had fallen in a heap on his toboggan--and chafed his wrists
and forehead with snow. When she saw that he was coming round, she moved
a little away from him and studied his toboggan.
"If I were you," she observed, "I should have these runners cut a little
finer; they are just a shade too thick."
Winn dragged himself on to the toboggan and wondered how his collar came
to be undone. When he did it up, he found his hands were shaking, which
amazed him very much. He looked a little suspiciously at his companion.
"Of course," Miss Marley continued pleasantly, "I ought to have that
watchman discharged. I am a member of the Cresta committee, and he
behaved scandalously; but I dare say you forced him into it, so I shall
just walk up the hill and give him a few straight words. Probably you
don't know the dialect. I've made a point of studying it. If I were you,
I should stay where you are until I come back. I want you to come to tea
with me at Cresta. There's a particularly good kind of bun in the
village, and I think I can give you some rather useful tobogganing tips.
It isn't worth while your climbing up the hill just to climb down again,
is it? Besides, you'd probably frighten the man."
"Thanks," said Winn. "All right; I'll stay." He didn't want the Cresta
bun, and he thought that he resented Miss Marley's invitation; but, on
the other hand, he was intensely glad she was going off and leaving him
alone.
He felt uncommonly queer. Perhaps he could think of some excuse to avoid
the tea when she came back.
All the muscles of his chest seemed to have gone wrong; it hurt him to
breathe. He sat with his head down, like a man climbing a hill against a
strong wind. It was rather funny to feel ill again when he had really
forgotten he was up there for his health. That was what he felt--ill.
It was not nearly as painful a feeling as remembering Claire.
Unfortunately, it was very quickly followed by the more painful feeling.
When Miss Marley came back, he had the eyes of a creature caught in a
trap.
She took him to Cresta to tea, and it did not occur to Winn to wonder
why a woman who at forty-five habitually rode the Cresta should find it
necessary to walk at the pace of a deliberating snail. It was a pace
which at the moment suited Winn precisely.
On the whole he enjoyed his tea. Miss Marley's manners, though abrupt,
had certain fine scruples of their own. She showed no personal curiosity
and she gave Winn some really valuable tips. He began to understand why
she had so deeply resented his trifling with the Cresta.
Miss Marley was one of the few genuine workers at St. Moritz, a member
of the old band who had worked devotedly to produce the Monster which
had afterward as promptly devoured them. This fate, however, had not as
yet overtaken Miss Marley. She was too tough and too rich to be very
easily devoured. The Cresta was at once her child and her banner; she
had helped to make it, and she wound its folds around her as a screen
for her invisible kindnesses.
Menaced boys could have told how she had averted their ruin with large
checks and sharp reproofs. She had saved many homes and covered many
scandals. For girls she had a special tenderness. She had never been a
beautiful young girl, and she had a pathetic reverence for what was
frail and fair. For them she had no reproofs, only vast mercy, and
patient skill in releasing them from the traps which had caught their
flurried young senses; but for those who had set the traps she had no
mercy.
Miss Marley was not known for any of these things. She was celebrated
for fights with chaplains and sanitary inspectors, and for an inability
to give in to authority unless authority knew what it was about. She had
never once tried to please, which is the foundation of charm. Perhaps it
would have been a useless effort, for she was not born to please. She
was born to get things done.
After Miss Marley had talked to Winn for an hour, she decided to get him
to join the Bandy Club. He was the kind of man who must do something,
and it was obviously better that he should not again tempt fate by
riding the Cresta from Church Leap without practice. This course became
clearer to Miss Marley when she discovered that Winn had come up for his
health.
"Of course a fellow who wasn't seedy wouldn't have made an ass of
himself over riding the Cresta," Winn explained, eyeing her
thoughtfully.
He must have got somehow off his toboggan on to the snow, and he had no
recollection at all of getting there. Miss Marley said nothing to
enlighten him further. She merely suggested bandy. After dinner she
introduced Winn to the captain of the St. Moritz team, and at three
o'clock the next afternoon she watched him play in a practice-match.
Winn played with a concentrated viciousness which assured her of two
things: he would be an acquisition to the team, and if he felt as badly
as all that, it was just as well to get some of it worked off on
anything as unresponsive as a ball.
After this Miss Marley let him alone. She considered this the chief
factor in assisting the lives of others; and for nearly two hours a day,
while he was playing bandy, Winn succeeded in not remembering Claire.
CHAPTER XXII
Winn's way of playing bandy was to play as if there wasn't any ice. In
the first few practices it had the disadvantage of a constant series of
falls, generally upon the back of his head; but he soon developed an
increasing capacity of balance and an intensity of speed. He became the
quickest forward the St. Moritz team had ever possessed.
When he was following the ball he took up his feet and ran. The hard
clash of the skates, the determined onrush of the broad-built,
implacable figure, were terrible to withstand. What was to be done
against a man who didn't skate, but tore, who fell upon a ball as a
terrier plunges, eyeless and intent, into a rat-hole? The personal
safety of himself or others never occurred to Winn. He remembered
nothing but the rules of the game. These he held in the back of his
mind, with the ball in front of it.
All St. Moritz came to watch the great match between itself and Davos.
It was a still, cold day; there was no blue in the sky; the mountains
were a hard black and white and the valley very colorless and clear.
There was a hush of coming snow in the air, and the sky was covered by a
toneless, impending cloud.
The game, after a brief interval, became a duel between two men: Winn,
with his headlong, thirsty method of attack, and the champion player of
Davos, Mavorovitch, who was known as the most finished skater of the
season.
Mavorovitch never apparently lifted his skates, but seemed to send them
forward by a kind of secret pressure. He was a very cool player, as
quick as mercury and as light as thistledown. Winn set himself against
him with the dogged fury of a bull against a toreador.
"That man's not brave; he's careless," a St. Moritz potentate remarked
to Miss Marley. Miss Marley gave a short laugh and glanced at Winn.
"That's my idea of courage," she said, "carelessness toward things that
don't count. Major Staines isn't careless with the ball."
"A game's a game," the foreign prince protested, "not a prolonged
invitation to concussion."
"All, that's where your foreign blood comes in, Your Highness," argued
Miss Marley. "A game isn't a game to an Englishman; it's his way of
tackling life. As a man plays so he reaps."
"Very well, then," remarked her companion, gravely. "Mark my words,
Madame, your friend over there will reap disaster."
Winn tackled the ball in a series of sudden formidable rushes; he hurled
himself upon the slight form of Mavorovitch, only to find he had before
him a portion of the empty air. Mavorovitch was invariably a few inches
beyond his reach, and generally in possession of the ball.
Twice Winn wrested it forcibly from him and got half way up the ice,
tearing along with his skates crashing their iron way toward the goal,
and twice Mavorovitch noiselessly, except for a faint scraping, slid up
behind him and coaxed the ball out of his very grip. St. Moritz lost
two goals to nothing in the first half, and Winn felt as if he were
biting on air.
He stood a little apart from the other players, with his back turned to
the crowd. He wished it wasn't necessary always to have an audience; a
lot of people who sat and did nothing irritated him. Mavorovitch
irritated him, too. He did not like a man to be so quiet; the faint
_click_, _click_ of Mavorovitch's skates on the ice was like a lady
knitting.
The whistle sounded again, and Winn set upon the ball with redoubled
fury. He had a feeling that if he didn't win this game he was going to
dislike it very much. He tore up the ice, every muscle strained, his
stick held low, caressing the round, flying knob in front; he had got
the ball all right, the difficulty was going to be, to keep it. His mind
listened to the faint distant scraping of Mavorovitch's approach. Winn
had chosen the exact spot for slowing up for his stroke.
It must be a long-distance shot or Mavorovitch would be there to
intercept him, the longer, the safer, if he could get up speed enough
for his swing. He had left the rest of the players behind him long ago,
tossing some to one side and outflanking others; but he had not got
clear away from Mavorovitch, bent double, and quietly calculating, a few
feet behind him, the exact moment for an intercepting spurt: and then
through the sharpness of the icy air and the sense of his own speed an
extraordinary certainty flashed into Winn. He was not alone; Claire was
there. He called it a fancy, but he knew it was a certainty. A burning
joy seized him, and a new wild strength poured into him. He could do
anything now.
He drew up suddenly, long before the spot he had fixed upon as a certain
stroke, lifted his arm, and struck with all his might. It was a long,
doubtful, crossing stroke, almost incredibly distant from the goal.
The crowd held its breath as the ball rose, cutting straight above the
goal-keeper's head, through the very center of the goal.
Winn was probably the only person there who didn't follow its flight. He
looked up quickly at the bank above him, and met her eyes. She was as
joined to him as if they had no separate life.
In a moment it struck him that there was nothing else to do but to go to
her at once, take her in his arms, and walk off with her somewhere into
the snow. He knew now that he had been in hell; the sight of her was
like the sudden cessation of blinding physical pain.
Then he pulled himself together and went back to the game. He couldn't
think any more, but the new activity in him went on playing methodically
and without direction.
Mavorovitch, who was playing even more skilfully and swiftly, got the
better of him once or twice; but the speed that had given Winn room for
his great stroke flowed tirelessly through him. It seemed to him as if
he could have outpaced a Scotch express.
He carried the ball off again and again out of the mob of his
assailants. They scattered under his rushes like creatures made of
cardboard. He offered three goals and shot one. The cheering of the St.
Moritzers sounded in his ears as if it were a long way off. He saw the
disappointed, friendly grin of little Mavorovitch as the last whistle
settled the match at five goals to four against Davos, but everything
seemed cloudy and unreal. He heard Mavorovitch say:
"Spooner never told us he had a dark horse over here. I must say I am
disappointed. Until half-time I thought I should get the better of you;
but how did you get that devilish spurt on? Fierce pace tires, but you
were easier to tire when you began."
Winn's eyes wandered over the little man beside him.
"Oh, I don't know," he said good-naturedly; he had never in his life
felt so good-natured. "I suppose I thought we were getting beaten. That
rather braces one up, doesn't it?"
"Ah, that is you English all over," laughed Mavorovitch. "We have a
saying, 'In all campaigns the English lose many battles, but they always
win one--namely, the last.'"
"I'm sure it's awfully jolly of you to say so," said Winn. "You play a
pretty fine game yourself, you know, considerably more skill in it than
mine. I had no idea you were not English yourself."
Mavorovitch seemed to swim away into a mist of laughter, people receded,
the bank receded; at last he stood before her. Winn thought she was a
little thinner in the face and her eyes were larger than ever. He could
not take his own away from her; he had no thoughts, and he forgot to
speak.
Everybody was streaming off to tea. The rink was deserted; it lay a
long, gray shadow beneath the high, white banks. The snow had begun to
fall, light, dry flakes that rested like powder on Claire's curly hair.
She waited for him to speak; but as he still said nothing, she asked
with a sudden dimple:
"Where does this path lead to?"
Then Winn recollected himself, and asked her if she didn't want some
tea. Claire shook her head.
"Not now," she said decidedly; "I want to go along this path."
Winn obeyed her silently. The path took them between dark fir-trees to
the farthest corner of the little park. Far below them a small stream
ran into the lake, it was frozen over, but in the silence they could
hear it whispering beneath the ice. The world was as quiet as if it lay
in velvet. Then Claire said suddenly:
"Oh, why did you make me hurt him when I liked him so much?"
They found a bench and sat down under the trees.
"Do you mean you've sent Lionel away?" Winn asked anxiously.
"Yes," she said in a forlorn little voice; "yesterday I sent him away.
He didn't know I was coming over here, he was very miserable. He asked
me if I knew about you--he said he believed you wanted me to--and I
said, 'Of course I know everything.' I wasn't going to let him think you
hadn't told me. Why did you go away?"
He had not thought she would ask him that. It was as if he saw before
him an interminable hill which he had believed himself to have already
climbed.
He drew a deep breath, then he said:
"Didn't they talk about it? I wrote to her, the chaplain's wife I mean;
I hadn't time to see her, but I sent it by the porter. I thought she'd
do; she seemed a gossipy woman, kept on knitting and gassing over a
stove in the hall. I thought she was--a sort of circulating library, you
see. I tipped the porter--tow-headed Swiss brute. I suppose he swallowed
it."
"He went away the same day you did," Claire explained. "Nobody told me
anything. Do you think I would have let them? I wouldn't let Lionel, and
I knew he had a right to, but I didn't care about anybody's rights. You
see, I--I thought you'd tell me yourself. So I came," she finished
quietly.
She waited. Winn began to draw patterns on the snow with his stick, then
he said:
"I've been a bit of a blackguard not telling you myself. I didn't want
to talk about it, and that's a fact. I'm married."
He kept his face turned away from her. It seemed a long time before she
spoke.
"You should have told me that before," she said in a queer, low voice.
"It's too late now."
"Would it," he asked quickly, "have made any difference--about Lionel, I
mean?"
She shook her head.
"Not," she said, "about Lionel."
He bent lower over the pattern in the snow; it had become more
intricate.
"I couldn't tell you," he muttered; "I tried. I couldn't. That was why I
went off. You say too late. D'you mind telling me if you mean--you
care?"