OUT OF ACTION
Now if, upon a warm, soft, summer evening, you were suddenly asked to
describe the perfect winter's day, either you would have to stop and
think a little, or your imagination is more elastic than mine. Yet you
might have a passionate preference for cold sun and bracing airs. To me,
Catherine Evers and this Mrs. Lascelles were as opposite to each other
as winter and summer, or the poles, or any other notorious antitheses.
There was no comparison between them in my mind, yet as I sat with one
among the sunlit, unfamiliar Alps, it was a distinct effort to picture
the other in the little London room I knew so well. For it was always
among her books and pictures that I thought of Catherine, and to think
was to wish myself there at her side, rather than to wish her here at
mine. Catherine's appeal, I used to think, was to the highest and the
best in me, to brain and soul, and young ambition, and withal to one's
love of wit and sense of humour. Mrs. Lascelles, on the other hand,
struck me primarily in the light of some splendid and spirited animal. I
still liked to dwell upon her dancing. She satisfied the mere eye more
and more. But I had no reason to suppose that she knew right from wrong
in art or literature, any more than she would seem to have distinguished
between them in life itself. Her Tauchnitz novel lay beside her on the
grass and I again reflected that it would not have found a place on
Catherine's loftiest shelf. Catherine would have raved about the view
and made delicious fun of Quinby and the judge, and we should have sat
together talking poetry and harmless scandal by the happy hour. Mrs.
Lascelles probably took place and people alike for granted. But she had
lived, and as an animal she was superb! I looked again into her healthy
face and speaking eyes, with their bitter knowledge of good and evil,
their scorn of scorn, their redeeming honesty and candour. The contrast
was complete in every detail except the widowhood of both women; but I
did not pursue it any farther; for once more there was but one woman in
my thoughts, and she sat near me under a red parasol--clashing so
humanly with the everlasting snows!
"You don't answer my question, Captain Clephane. How much for your
thoughts?"
"I'll make you a present of them, Mrs. Lascelles. I was beginning to
think that a lot of rot has been written about the eternal snows and the
mountain-tops and all the rest of it. There a few lines in that last
little volume of Browning--"
I stopped of my own accord, for upon reflection the lines would have
made a rather embarrassing quotation. But meanwhile Mrs. Lascelles had
taken alarm on other grounds.
"Oh, _don't_ quote Browning!"
"Why not?"
"He is far too deep for me; besides, I don't care for poetry, and I was
asking you about Mrs. Evers."
"Well," I said, with some little severity, "she's a very clever woman."
"Clever enough to understand Browning?"
"Quite."
If this was irony, it was also self-restraint, for it was to Catherine's
enthusiasm that I owed my own. The debt was one of such magnitude as a
life of devotion could scarcely have repaid, for to whom do we owe so
much as to those who first lifted the scales from our eyes and awakened
within us a soul for all such things? Catherine had been to me what I
instantly desired to become to this benighted beauty; but the desire was
not worth entertaining, since I hardly expected to be many minutes
longer on speaking terms with Mrs. Lascelles. I recalled the fact that
it was I who had broached the subject of Bob Evers and his mother,
together with my unpalatable motive for so doing. And I was seeking in
my mind, against the grain, I must confess, for a short cut back to Bob,
when Mrs. Lascelles suddenly led the way.
"I don't think," said she, "that Mr. Evers takes after his mother."
"I'm afraid he doesn't," I replied, "in that respect."
"And I am glad," she said. "I do like a boy to be a boy. The only son
of his mother is always in danger of becoming something else. Tell me,
Captain Clephane, are they very devoted to each other?"
There was some new note in that expressive voice of hers. Was it merely
wistful, was it really jealous, or was either element the product of my
own imagination? I made answer while I wondered:
"Absolutely devoted, I should say; but it's years since I saw them
together. Bob was a small boy then, and one of the jolliest. Still I
never expected him to grow up the charming chap he is now."
Mrs. Lascelles sat gazing at the great curve of Théodule Glacier. I
watched her face.
"He _is_ charming," she said at length. "I am not sure that I ever met
anybody quite like him, or rather I am quite sure that I never did. He
is so quiet, in a way, and yet so wonderfully confident and at ease!"
"That's Eton," said I. "He is the best type of Eton boy, and the best
type of Eton boy," I declared, airing the little condition with a
flourish, "is one of the greatest works of God."
"I daresay you're right," said Mrs. Lascelles, smiling indulgently; "but
what is it? How do you define it? It isn't 'side,' and yet I can quite
imagine people who don't know him thinking that it is. He is cocksure of
himself, but of nothing else; that seems to me to be the difference. No
one could possibly be more simple in himself. He may have the assurance
of a man of fifty, yet it isn't put on; it's neither bumptious nor
affected, but just as natural in Mr. Evers as shyness and awkwardness in
the ordinary youth one meets. And he has the _savoir faire_ not to ask
questions!"
Were we all mistaken? Was this the way in which a designing woman would
speak of the object of her designs? Not that I thought so hardly of Mrs.
Lascelles myself; but I did think that she might well fall in love with
Bob Evers, at least as well as he with her. Was this, then, the way in
which a woman would be likely to speak of the young man with whom she
had fallen in love? To me the appreciation sounded too frank and
discerning and acute. Yet I could not call it dispassionate, and
frankness was this woman's outstanding merit, though I was beginning to
discover others as well. Moreover, the fact remained that they had been
greatly talked about; that at any rate must be stopped and I was there
to stop it.
I began to pick my words.
"It's all Eton, except what is in the blood, and it's all a question of
manners, or rather of manner. Don't misunderstand me, Mrs. Lascelles. I
don't say that Bob isn't independent in character as well as in his
ways, but only that when all's said he's still a boy and not a man. He
can't possibly have a man's experience of the world, or even of himself.
He has a young head on his shoulders, after all, if not a younger one
than many a boy with half the assurance that you admire in him."
Mrs. Lascelles looked at me point-blank.
"Do you mean that he can't take care of himself?"
"I don't say that."
"Then what do you say?"
The fine eyes met mine without a flicker. The full mouth was curved at
the corners in a tolerant, unsuspecting smile. It was hard to have to
make an enemy of so handsome and good-humoured a woman. And was it
necessary, was it even wise? As I hesitated she turned and glanced
downward once more toward the glacier, then rose and went to the lip of
our grassy ledge, and as she returned I caught the sound which she had
been the first to hear. It was the gritty planting of nailed boots upon
a hard, smooth rock.
"I'm afraid you can't say it now," whispered Mrs. Lascelles. "Here's Mr.
Evers himself, coming this way back from the Monte Rosa hut! I'm going
to give him a surprise!"
And it was a genuine one that she gave him, for I heard his boyish
greeting before I saw his hot brown face, and there was no mistaking the
sudden delight of both. It was sudden and spontaneous, complete, until
his eyes lit on me. Even then his smile did not disappear, but it
changed, as did his tone.
"Good heavens!" cried Bob. "How on earth did _you_ get up here? By rail
to the Riffelberg, I hope?"
"On my sticks."
"It was much too far for him," added Mrs. Lascelles, "and all my fault
for showing him the way. But I'm afraid there was contributory obstinacy
in Captain Clephane, because he simply wouldn't turn back. And now tell
us about yourself, Mr. Evers; surely we were not coming back this way?"
"_We_ were not," said Bob, with a something sardonic in his little
laugh, "but I thought I might as well. It's the long way, six miles on
end upon the glacier."
"But have you really been to the hut?"
"Rather!"
"And where's our guide?"
"Oh, I wouldn't be bothered with a guide all to myself."
"My dear young man, you might have stepped straight into a crevasse!"
"I precious nearly did," laughed Bob, again with something odd about his
laughter; "but I say, do you know, if you won't think me awfully rude,
I'll push on back and get changed. I'm as hot as anything and not fit
to be seen."
And he was gone after very little more than a minute from first to last,
gone with rather an elaborate salute to Mrs. Lascelles, and rather a
cavalier nod to me. But then neither of us had made any effort to detain
him and a notable omission I thought it in Mrs. Lascelles, though to the
lad himself it may well have seemed as strange in the old friend as in
the new.
"What was it," asked Mrs. Lascelles, when we were on our way home, "that
you were going to say about Mr. Evers when he appeared in the flesh in
that extraordinary way?"
"I forget," said I, immorally.
"Really? So soon? Don't you remember, I thought you meant that he
couldn't take care of himself, and you were just going to tell me what
you did mean?"
"Oh, well, it wasn't that, because he can!"
But, as a matter of fact, I had seen my way to taking care of Master Bob
without saying a word either to him or to Mrs. Lascelles, or at all
events without making enemies of them both.