Raine sat smoking his pipe for a long time before going to bed. The
events of the day had crowded so fast upon one another, that he had
scarcely had time to estimate their relative importance. His mind was
not yet perfectly balanced. The first kiss of a new love disturbs fine
equilibrium.
It was characteristic of him that he at once put aside all temptations
to postpone his departure. He could not meet Katherine again, except as
a declared lover. To parade such relations before Felicia's eyes,
seemed to his simple experience in such things a cynical cruelty. Yet he
devoutly hoped that fate would decide and the destinies decree that he
should return as quickly as possible. There was a peculiar irritation
in the position in which he found himself. The sense of it grew in
intensity as things assumed juster proportions. After all, what had been
said? He was going away with everything unasked, everything unspoken.
A question, a glance, a kiss; sufficient for the glowing moment--but
painfully inadequate for after-hours of longing. With almost grotesque
irritation he broke into an exclamation of anger against the storm that
had interrupted the outburst of his gathering passion. But for a saving
sense of humour he would have felt humiliated by the remembrance of
the sudden check. He could not help chafing under the feeling of
incompleteness.
Unlike the woman, who had taken the kiss to her heart of hearts and
nursed it there wilfully forgetful, for the first delicious after-hours,
of aught else in the wide world, Raine gnawed his spirit with impatient
regret that circumstances had granted him no more. If the fulness of
revelation were to come on the morrow, it would have been different; but
he was going away--without seeing her--for days and days--leaving her
with this unsatisfying expression of his love. For he loved her, deeply,
truly, with the strength of his simple, manly nature. She had roused
in him every instinct of pitying protection, her delicate grace had
captivated his senses, her wide experience of life, sad in its wisdom,
had harmonized subtly with his robust masculine faith. Without being
intellectual, she had the fine judgments of a cultured, thoughtful
woman. On deep questions of ethics they met on common ground; could
view the world together, and be stirred by the same sympathies. Her
companionship had grown intensely dear to him. The sadness that seemed
to overspread her life had appealed to his chivalry, compelled him
irresistibly to her side. The sweet womanliness of her nature had been
gradually revealed to him by a thousand little acts, each one weaving
its charm about him, Jean-Marie, too, and his wife had drawn him within
the area of their worship.
Hitherto her sadness had been attributed in his mind to no definite
cause. She was a widow, had passed through much suffering, was intensely
lonely, uncared for. For him that had been enough. He had scarcely
thought of speculating further. But tonight the remembrance of agitated
tones in her voice forced him to a surmise. He pondered over her
self-accusing cry when he had submitted to her judgment the ethical side
of the poor tragedy of his early manhood.
“God forbid that I of all creatures should dare to judge others.”
Women do not utter such words lightly, least of all women like
Katherine. He fitted them as a key-stone into the grey, vague arch of
the past. His face grew stern and thoughtful as he lay back in his
seat, and passed his hand heavily through his hair, contemplating the
apparition. For a time it loomed as a shadow between himself and her.
And then--was it the ghost that he had laid that evening, come back as
the eternal spirit of love, or was it merely his strong human faith? A
light seemed to pour down from above, and Katherine emerged serene and
radiant from the mist, which spread behind her thin and formless.
He sprang to his feet, rubbed his eyes and laughed to himself. His love
for her thrilled buoyantly through him. He loved her for what she had
shown herself to be; a woman fair and brave and womanly--and one who
loved him; that he had seen in her eyes as he had kissed her.
At half-past six on the following morning, the porter came to convey his
luggage to the diligence, which starts from the Grand Quai, and a little
later he himself left the house. He did so very wistfully. His quixotic
flight caused him a greater pang even than he had anticipated. In the
street he could not forbear giving a regretful glance upwards at the
pension. To his delight, Katherine was standing on the little balcony
outside her window.
The bright morning sunlight fell upon her. She was wearing a
cream-coloured wrapper; a pale blue scarf about her head half covered
her fair hair. Seen through the clear, pure atmosphere, she looked the
incarnation of the morning. Her face flushed red all over, as she met
the gladness in his eyes. She had risen early, unable to sleep; had
dressed herself with elaborate care, searching earnestly in her glass
for the accusing lines of her thirty years. She would send a note, she
had thought, by the waiter who would bring up his coffee, saying that
she was astir and could see him in the salon before he started. But she
had only got as far as biting the end of a pencil before a blank sheet
of paper. All her preparations and fluttering of heart had ended in her
going on to the balcony, to see him walk twenty yards before he turned
the corner of the street. And there she had wished tremulously against
her will that he would look up as he crossed the road. He had done so,
was standing below her. She blushed like a young girl. But he only stood
for a moment. With an eager sign he motioned her inwards, and ran back
to the house.
They met outside the salon door. He rushed up to her, a little
breathless from his race up the stairs, and drew her with him into the
room.
“You--up at this hour--just to see me start!--are you an angel?”
He was rapturously incoherent. Her act seemed to him to be truly
angelic. In the early stages of love a man rarely takes the woman's
passionate cravings into account. Acts that proceed from desires as
self-centred as his own he puts down to pure, selfless graciousness
towards him. And perhaps as a general principle this is just as well.
The woman loves the tribute; and one of her fairest virtues is none the
less fair through being won under false pretences.
Katherine looked up at him with strange shyness. He had the power of
evoking that which was sweetest and most womanly in her.
“You see that I do care--greatly.”
His arms were about her before the soundwave had passed his ear. A flood
of burning words burst impatiently from his lips. She leant back her
head, in the joy of surrender.
“I have loved you from the first--since last Christmas. You came to me
as nothing else has ever come to me--brave and strong above all men.”
The words fell from her in a murmur strung to passion-pitch. One such
radiant moment eclipsed the waste of grey years. She would have sold her
soul for it.
She disengaged herself gently.
“I must not make you late.”
“You will write to me?”
“If you write.”
“Every hour, beloved, till I come back.”
“Oh, let it be soon.”
“How great is your trust in me. Another than you might have reproached
me for going--at such a time.”
She looked at him, her eyes and lips one smile.
“I can guess the reason. I honour you for it. I would not keep you. But
oh! it will be long till I see you again.”
“And to me. I am not one of those to whom waiting is easy. But I take
away all, all yourself with me.”
“All.”
“Good-bye--Katherine,” he whispered. “You haye never called me by my
name. Let me hear it from you.”
“Raine!”
Again their lips met. In another moment he was speeding to catch the
diligence. She went on to the balcony, kissed both hands to him as he
turned the corner. Then she went slowly back up the stairs, holding by
the hand-rail, and shaken with joy and fear.
When Raine arrived at Chamonix, instead of finding Rogers and his party
at the Hotel Royale as he had expected, he found a telegram awaiting
him.
“Accident to Bryce. Party broken up. Letter to follow.”
On inquiring of the manager, Raine learned that his telegram of the day
before had been forwarded on to Rogers to Courmayeur, whence the latter
had written to the hotel countermanding the rooms he had ordered. And
by the next post came a letter giving details of the accident. Bryce
had slipped down a crevasse and injured himself, perhaps fatally. All
thoughts of further climbing were abandoned. Raine was somewhat shocked
at the news. He did not know Bryce, who was a Cambridge friend of the
junior Dean's, but he was sincerely concerned at the tragic end of the
expedition.
The point, however, that touched him practically was that he found
himself stranded at Chamonix. He eagerly scanned the long table-d'hote
in the hope of discovering a familiar face. But not one was visible. He
was alone in that crowded resort which only exists as a rallying point
for excursionists and climbers. The sole distraction the place afforded
were glaciers which he derived little interest in contemplating, and
peaks which he had not the remotest desire to scale. It would have been
different, if he had met a cheerful party. He had bargained with himself
for their society. It was part of the contract. Now that he was forced
to depend on the Alps alone for companionship, he felt aggrieved,
and began to dislike them cordially. The notion, however, of going on
solitary mountaineering excursions entirely against his will, appealed
to his sense of humour.
“The relations between us are simply ridiculous,” he said,
apostrophizing the mighty snow-clad pile.
But as there was no help for it, he prepared, like Mahomet, to go the
mountain cheerfully. So he secured a guide to the Tête Noire for the
following day.
That done, he gave himself up entirely to the new sweetness that had
come into his life.
The few moments of the morning's meeting had lit up the day. Much still
remained unspoken, but there was no longer the irritating sense of
incompleteness that had filled him the night before. Yet all the deeper,
subtler pulsations of his love craved immediate expression. He sat in
his hotel bedroom far into the night, writing her his first letter.
For the next few days he occupied himself strenuously with the sights of
Chamonix. He joined a party over the Mer de Glace, took one day over
the Grands Mulets, ascended the Aiguille Verte, and then rested with a
feeling of well-earned repose. His great event of the day was the Geneva
post. He had received two letters from Katherine. One she had written
a few hours after his departure--he put it to his lips. The second, for
which he waited with a lover's impatience, was in answer to the first he
had written. At first he read it with a slight shade of disappointment.
It seemed to lack the spontaneity of the other. But Raine, by nature
chivalrous towards women, and holding them as creatures with emotions
more delicately balanced than men and subject to a thousand undreamed-of
shynesses, quickly assigned to such causes the restraint he had noticed,
and, reading in, as it were a touch of passion into every touch of
tenderness, satisfied the longings of his heart. There were letters too
from his father. The first stated that he had mooted the plan to Felicia
of the little jaunt to Lucerne, and that she had acceded to it joyfully,
but in the second the old man complained of sudden poorliness. From the
third Raine learned that he was in bed with a bad cold, and that Lucerne
had been postponed indefinitely.
The news depressed him slightly. No letter from Katherine had
accompanied it, to cheer him. On the evening of his day of rest,
therefore, he was less in love with Chamonix than ever. By way of
compensation the weather was bright and clear, and the sunny seat
under the firs in the hotel gardens, whither he had retired with his
travelling edition of “Tristram Shandy,” was warm and reposeful. He was
speculating over the Rabelaisian humour of Mr. Shandy's domestic
concerns, and enjoying the incongruity between it and the towering
masses of rock and glacier and snow on the other side of the valley,
when a man sauntered up the gravelled path, stopped before him, and
asked for a light.
Raine looked up, and recognizing the newcomer as one with whom he had
exchanged casual remarks during the last few days, readily complied with
his request.
He was a thin, wiry man of about seven and thirty, with a clean-shaven
face which bore a curious expression of mingled simplicity and
shrewdness. His thin lips seemed to smile at the deception practised by
his guileless pale-blue eyes. Unlike Raine, who wore the Englishman's
Norfolk jacket, knickerbockers and heavy heather-mixture stockings, he
was attired in grey summer trousers and a black jacket. A soft felt hat
of the Tyrolese shape, a pair of field-glasses slung over his
shoulder, a great gold solitaire fastening his shirt-cuff, which showed
conspicuously as he lit his cigar, suggested the nationality that was
confirmed by his speech.
He was an American, his name was Hockmaster, and he was visiting Europe
for the first time. With these facts he had already acquainted Raine on
a previous occasion.
When the American had returned the match-box, he sat down on the bench
by Raine's side.
“If you want to be alone, you've only got to tell me and I'll
evaporate,” he said cheerfully. “But I've been getting somewhat lonesome
in this valley. Nature's a capital thing in mixed society, but when you
have got her all to yourself, she is a thundering dull companion.”
The remark so exactly echoed Raine's sentiments of the past few days
that he burst out laughing, closed “Tristram Shandy,” and prepared to
gossip sympathetically with his new acquaintance.
“You are not ecstatic over all this,” he said with a wave of his hand.
“Only within reasonable limits,” replied the American. “It's very
pretty, and when you see it for the first time it fetches you in the pit
of your stomach. Some folks say it touches the soul, but I don't
take much stock of souls anyway. Well, then you get over it, like
sea-sickness, and it doesn't fetch you any more. But I'm glad I've seen
it. That is what I came over for.”
“To see the Alps?”
“Well, no. Not exactly. But to sample Europe generally. To get a
bird's-eye view of all the salient features. It is very interesting.
America is a fine country, but it's not the microcosm of the universe.”
“But you have scenery much more grandiose than this, in the Californian
Sierras,” said Raine.
“We may. I don't know. And I hope I shall never know, for mountains
and glaciers are not my strong point. But if they were fifty times as
sublime, American mountains could not have the glamour and sentiment
that brings thousands of my countrymen to gape at Mount Blanc. Other
mountains may do business on a larger scale, but the Alps is an
old-established firm. They have the connection, and people stick to
them. Mount Blanc, too, is a sort of Westminister Abbey to Americans,
and the Rigi a Stratford-on-Avon. They like to feel they have a share
in it. I don't say these are my views personally. I am afraid I take my
glamour neat and get it over quickly.”
As Raine had nothing particular to reply to this philosophy, and as he
saw that Mr. Hockmaster would be more entertaining as a talker than as a
listener, he uttered a polite commonplace by way of antistrophe, and the
American again took up his parable. He spoke well and fluently. Behind
the ingenuousness of his remarks there generally lurked a touch of
incisiveness, which stimulated his listener's interest. His manners were
those of a gentleman. Raine began to like him.
“What part of England do you come from?” he asked at length.
“Oxford.”
“The University?”
“Yes.”
“I haven't been there yet. I've been through Cambridge. But Oxford I
am keeping until I get back. Your English institutions interest me more
than anything in Europe. It's a cumbrous old bit of machinery, and won't
stand comparison with ours; but we seem to live for the sake of our
institutions, whereas you let yours rip and make use of them when they
serve your purpose.”
He lit another cigar from the stump of the old one, and continued,--
“I come from Chicago. It is a go-ahead place, and, if it were near the
sea, could become the capital of the world, when Universal
Federation sets in. I love it, as perhaps you love Oxford. You have
literature--'_literae humaniores_' you call it at Oxford--in your blood,
and I have business in mine. I am a speculator in a small way. I have
just floated a company--got it shipshape before I sailed--for a patent
process of making white lead. Now, I am as keen upon that white lead as
if it were a woman. It has kept me awake at nights, and danced before
my eyes during the day. I have dreamed of every ship flying American
colours painted with my white lead. To make a pile out of it was quite
secondary to the poetry of it. Now I bet you don't see any poetry at all
in a patent white lead process--in making the land hum with it.”
“What about the neat glamour?” asked Raine, smiling.
“Ah! There's a difference. I have got this all out of my own head.
It is a bit of _me_. Whereas the Alps aren't--” He stared at them
innocently--“Not a little bit.”
The sound of the gong for the mid-day meal reached them, resonant
through the rarefied air. They rose and walked together towards the
hotel.
“I guess I'll come and sit next to you, if you have no objection,” said
Mr. Hockmaster.
“Do,” replied Raine cordially, “I shall be delighted.”
They lunched together, and in the afternoon walked to the Boissons and
back, a pleasant three hours' excursion. Raine did not wish to absent
himself from the hotel for a longer time, being anxious concerning
posts. But no letters came for him, save a couple of business
communications from Oxford. He was troubled about his father's health,
and longing for a line from Katherine. He began to reflect that perhaps,
after all, he had come on a fool's errand to Chamonix. Poor little
Felicia would have to be disillusioned sooner or later. If the Lucerne
plan had fallen through, owing to his father's illness, there was no
chance of sparing her the ultimate revelation of the love between
himself and Katherine. He could not remain at Chamonix indefinitely; to
take up other quarters at Geneva would only set the whole pension
speculating; and Raine knew full well that the speculation of a whole
pension is perilous to the most Calphurnian reputation.
He decided, however, to be guided by the next day's letters.