‘Don’t go back to your dreary old post office. We’re going to have
supper in my room--something hot. Come and join us. Hurry up!’
There had been an ice carnival, and the last party, tailing up the
snow-slope to the hotel, called him. The Chinese lanterns smoked and
sputtered on the wires; the band had long since gone. The cold was
bitter and the moon came only momentarily between high, driving clouds.
From the shed where the people changed from skates to snow-boots he
shouted something to the effect that he was ‘following’; but no answer
came; the moving shadows of those who had called were already merged
high up against the village darkness. The voices died away. Doors
slammed. Hibbert found himself alone on the deserted rink.
And it was then, quite suddenly, the impulse came to--stay and skate
alone. The thought of the stuffy hotel room, and of those noisy people
with their obvious jokes and laughter, oppressed him. He felt a longing
to be alone with the night, to taste her wonder all by himself there
beneath the stars, gliding over the ice. It was not yet midnight, and
he could skate for half an hour. That supper party, if they noticed his
absence at all, would merely think he had changed his mind and gone to
bed.
It was an impulse, yes, and not an unnatural one; yet even at the time
it struck him that something more than impulse lay concealed behind
it. More than invitation, yet certainly less than command, there was
a vague queer feeling that he stayed because he had to, almost as
though there was something he had forgotten, overlooked, left undone.
Imaginative temperaments are often thus; and impulse is ever weakness.
For with such ill-considered opening of the doors to hasty action
may come an invasion of other forces at the same time--forces merely
waiting their opportunity perhaps!
He caught the fugitive warning even while he dismissed it as absurd,
and the next minute he was whirling over the smooth ice in delightful
curves and loops beneath the moon. There was no fear of collision. He
could take his own speed and space as he willed. The shadows of the
towering mountains fell across the rink, and a wind of ice came from
the forests, where the snow lay ten feet deep. The hotel lights winked
and went out. The village slept. The high wire netting could not keep
out the wonder of the winter night that grew about him like a presence.
He skated on and on, keen exhilarating pleasure in his tingling blood,
and weariness all forgotten.
And then, midway in the delight of rushing movement, he saw a figure
gliding behind the wire netting, watching him. With a start that almost
made him lose his balance--for the abruptness of the new arrival was
so unlooked for--he paused and stared. Although the light was dim he
made out that it was the figure of a woman and that she was feeling her
way along the netting, trying to get in. Against the white background
of the snow-field he watched her rather stealthy efforts as she passed
with a silent step over the banked-up snow. She was tall and slim and
graceful; he could see that even in the dark. And then, of course, he
understood. It was another adventurous skater like himself, stolen down
unawares from hotel or châlet, and searching for the opening. At once,
making a sign and pointing with one hand, he turned swiftly and skated
over to the little entrance on the other side.
But, even before he got there, there was a sound on the ice behind him
and, with an exclamation of amazement he could not suppress, he turned
to see her swerving up to his side across the width of the rink. She
had somehow found another way in.
Hibbert, as a rule, was punctilious, and in these free-and-easy places,
perhaps, especially so. If only for his own protection he did not seek
to make advances unless some kind of introduction paved the way. But
for these two to skate together in the semi-darkness without speech,
often of necessity brushing shoulders almost, was too absurd to think
of. Accordingly he raised his cap and spoke. His actual words he seems
unable to recall, nor what the girl said in reply, except that she
answered him in accented English with some commonplace about doing
figures at midnight on an empty rink. Quite natural it was, and right.
She wore grey clothes of some kind, though not the customary long
gloves or sweater, for indeed her hands were bare, and presently when
he skated with her, he wondered with something like astonishment at
their dry and icy coldness.
And she was delicious to skate with--supple, sure, and light, fast as
a man yet with the freedom of a child, sinuous and steady at the same
time. Her flexibility made him wonder, and when he asked where she had
learned she murmured--he caught the breath against his ear and recalled
later that it was singularly cold--that she could hardly tell, for she
had been accustomed to the ice ever since she could remember.
But her face he never properly saw. A muffler of white fur buried her
neck to the ears, and her cap came over the eyes. He only saw that she
was young. Nor could he gather her hotel or châlet, for she pointed
vaguely, when he asked her, up the slopes. ‘Just over there----’ she
said, quickly taking his hand again. He did not press her; no doubt she
wished to hide her escapade. And the touch of her hand thrilled him
more than anything he could remember; even through his thick glove he
felt the softness of that cold and delicate softness.
The clouds thickened over the mountains. It grew darker. They talked
very little, and did not always skate together. Often they separated,
curving about in corners by themselves, but always coming together
again in the centre of the rink; and when she left him thus Hibbert was
conscious of--yes, of missing her. He found a peculiar satisfaction,
almost a fascination, in skating by her side. It was quite an
adventure--these two strangers with the ice and snow and night!
Midnight had long since sounded from the old church tower before
they parted. She gave the sign, and he skated quickly to the shed,
meaning to find a seat and help her take her skates off. Yet when he
turned--she had already gone. He saw her slim figure gliding away
across the snow ... and hurrying for the last time round the rink alone
he searched in vain for the opening she had twice used in this curious
way.
‘How very queer!’ he thought, referring to the wire netting. ‘She must
have lifted it and wriggled under...!’
Wondering how in the world she managed it, what in the world had
possessed him to be so free with her, and who in the world she was, he
went up the steep slope to the post office and so to bed, her promise
to come again another night still ringing delightfully in his ears. And
curious were the thoughts and sensations that accompanied him. Most of
all, perhaps, was the half suggestion of some dim memory that he had
known this girl before, had met her somewhere, more--that she knew him.
For in her voice--a low, soft, windy little voice it was, tender and
soothing for all its quiet coldness--there lay some faint reminder of
two others he had known, both long since gone: the voice of the woman
he had loved, and--the voice of his mother.
But this time through his dreams there ran no clash of battle. He
was conscious, rather, of something cold and clinging that made him
think of sifting snowflakes climbing slowly with entangling touch and
thickness round his feet. The snow, coming without noise, each flake so
light and tiny none can mark the spot whereon it settles, yet the mass
of it able to smother whole villages, wove through the very texture of
his mind--cold, bewildering, deadening effort with its clinging network
of ten million feathery touches.