The solitary excursion had made a gap in the sequence of days. Those
standing behind it were now far away, and yesterday had failed to bridge
the gap and join itself to their serenity. To-day looked shallow and
hurried, with short hours beyond it rushing ahead to pause in the
sunlight of the ski-fest and then to fly, helter-skelter towards the
end.
Eaden’s departure was helping time to hurry. In the distance it had
promised to leave things as they were before he came. But now that it
was at hand it seemed a sliding away of everything.
There was no depth in the morning light.
She turned to survey the scene on which it fell and saw the early gold
stealing faithfully towards the valley. Once Eaden had gone this
thinned-out urgency of time would cease. For everyone but Vereker his
going was only a removal of something grown familiar; a reminder, soon
forgotten, of the movement of time. Slight reminder. He reflected only
surfaces and was going away, unchanged, to reflect the surfaces of
another shape of life.
Yet last night he had talked. Had been less a passenger unable to take
root. It was he who had been the first to subside on the stairs—with a
groan for his hard day’s work. Perhaps the approach of his known life
had given him a moment of clairvoyance, showing its strangeness, the
strange fact of its existence.
Last night had been good, was showing now how very good it had been:
three friends glad to sit down together and presently talking, each
voice transformed, by the approach of the separation that would make it
cease to sound, to the strange marvel of a human voice. Everything said
had seemed important in its kindliness, and though there had been no
socialism he had talked at last of his peasants and his ceaseless
fighting with their ancient ways as though he wished to excuse himself
from accepting socialism, to point out its irrelevance to the life of
peasant and soil.
Industrial socialism had bored him. He thought its problems irrelevant,
raised by clever doctrinaires who had nothing to lose. She had failed
him by standing too much in one camp. The proper message for him came
from the people who saw land as the fundamental unit.
Tell him to look away from capital and wages. And read George. And the
Jewish land-laws, never surpassed.
“Good-bye. Please remember that work is an unlimited quantity.”
Then she remembered that this morning there would be a meeting at
breakfast. He and Vereker would be there together as on the first
morning; with time to spare.
But going into the dining-room she found his departure already in full
swing. He was talking, smiling across at Mrs. Sneyde and Miss Hollebone
with the eagerness of one who finds at the last moment the ice broken
and communication flowing the more easily for having been dammed up and
accumulating.
Sitting down unnoticed except by Vereker she presently heard Maud
Hollebone, to whom he had scarcely spoken, arranging, across the width
of the room, to hasten her departure.
They were going down to Italy together; as casually as guests leaving a
party and finding that their way home lies in the same direction will
share a hansom across London. To travelled people a journey to Italy was
as simple as crossing London. Was even a bore, a tiresome experience to
be got through as pleasantly as possible. Behind her manner of soncy,
quietly boisterous school-girl indifference Maud was pleased, but still
kept her poise, her oblivious independence—of what? On what, all the
time going about with Mrs. Sneyde, neglecting all opportunities for
recognising the existence of the house-party, aloof without being
stand-offish, was she feeding her so strongly-rooted life?
She was pleased of course to be carrying off as her escort the imposing
oiled bronze, now almost animated as he crossed to the little table to
discuss details and stood, a pillar of strength, at the disposal of the
two ladies now looking so small and Mrs. Sneyde, as she fired remarks at
him, so scintillating. She, no doubt, had her ideas and thought it an
excellent plan. But the sister already knew too late that it was not.
Had felt the project change during his approach with his week’s
happiness all about him, and realised now that she represented a
reprieve, was to be, by keeping Oberland before his eyes during part of
his long journeying, an extension of his holiday.
Standing at close quarters, already accustomed to her companionship, he
was aware, behind his animation, of sacrificing for the sake of it the
precious silent interval between his strenuous idling and the arduous
work ahead; was paying the price always paid for tumult half-consciously
insincere. The finding of Maud also immersed in the business of
departure and therefore seen in a flash of time as a comrade, had
enlivened him as one is enlivened by a greeting without regard to the
giver of it. That enlivening glow had already departed and he was left
reduced, with its results upon his hands.
It was settled. The elopement arranged and he, with his instructions,
moving off to clear her path. Perhaps secretly he was pleased after all.
Perhaps his life in the south was not a flight from society and he was
glad to be ever so slightly back again in its conspiracy to avoid
solitude. Glad to be walking again on those sunny levels where there is
never a complete break-off and departure. Never a void. Where even
sorrow and suffering are softened by beautiful surroundings.
Their windows, she reflected as Eaden, meeting the le Mesuriers at the
door was halted for farewells, even their hotel windows, give on to
beauty. And they can always move on. And soul-sickness, the suffering of
mind so often a result of fatigue and poor food and ugly surroundings,
was rare amongst them. They were cheerful and amused. If bored they
shift on and begin again. If bored by the life of society itself they
remain within it and cut figures as cynics.
“It’s only fair to warn you,” Maud was crying from her table, “that I’m
a vile fellow-traveller. Hate travelling.”
She rose and wandered to the window behind her table.
“You’re going to take away our property?”
Here she was, the unknown Miss Hollebone, close at hand, flopped in a
chair, school-girlish.
“Rather!”
Here in this warm circle was the old freemasonry of school-fellows, two
profiles slightly turned, abrupt remarks, punctuated by jabbings at
ink-stained desks, the sense of power and complete difference in
relation to a stuffy old world; sudden glances, perfect happiness.
Happiness that kept both quite still; hearing, feeling, seeing, in a
circle of light suddenly created, making possible only slight swift
words in whose echo one forgot which had spoken, which was which.
“What are we to do?” They faced each other to laugh delight.
“Don’t know. What we really want is _your_ socialism in _our_ world. The
socialist ways you have in your world without knowing it, because you
know no other ways.”
“You don’t object to us?”
“Good Lord, no! But just to cultivate you would be to go to sleep as you
are all asleep.”
“You a Londoner?”
“Till death us do part.”
“Lucky dog!”
Eaden was at her elbow to whom she turned with a guarded brightness,
slipped back into her own world, into the half-conscious conspiracy of
avoidance. Orderly world. A pattern world, life flowing in bright set
patterns under a slowly gathering cloud.
Its echoes followed Miriam into the deserted little salon. Through the
open door she heard a coming and going in the hall that at this hour
should be empty and eloquent of people spread far and wide in the
landscape. The bright pattern was flowing into a fresh shape, flowing
forward in its way, heedless of clouds, heedless of the rising tide. On
the little table was Daphne’s bear on ski, immortal.
And now in the hall the sound of her, demanding. Drawn to the door
Miriam saw Vereker taking the stairs two at a time, immersed in
friendship. And Eaden arrested in the middle of the hall by Daphne
up-gazing with white determined face.
“Look at me,” she was saying, and his down-bent face lost its smile.
“You’re not to go,” she said swiftly, in casual tone, and then
breathlessly, still searching his unmoved face, “You’re not to go.”
“That’s right, Daphne,” cried Vereker pausing on the stairs. “Make him
stay for the Fest, he wants to.”
Eaden watched her while she waited for Vereker’s footsteps to die away,
watched her in frowning concentration while her voice came again, the
voice of one who tells another’s woe: “Not for the Fest, but because if
you go away I shall die.”
Miriam turned swiftly back into the room, but she had seen the pain in
his face, seen him wince. Daphne on her last words had taken a little
impatient step and stood averted with clenched fists, and now their
voices were going together up the stairs, hers eagerly talking.
* * * * *
She made ready to go out amongst the mountains standing there in their
places as for countless ages they had stood, desolate, looking down upon
nothing.
A door opened at the far end of the corridor and Vereker’s footsteps
came swiftly trotting, went by and paused at a door further down: Maud
Hollebone’s, at which now he was urgently tapping. A few words at the
opened door and he had returned. A moment later came Maud, swishing
along at a run: for more discussion.
Her thoughts turned to the promontory within easy reach. But it would be
absurd to sit about visibly hung up by the bustle of events that were
not even remotely her events. It was too late to do the valley run and
walk back before lunch.
“I shall _die_.” Who was comforting Daphne? No one. No one could.
Somewhere outside she was disposed of, walking with her nurse,
uncomforted.
She peered into Daphne’s future, into the years waiting ahead, unworthy
of her.
Vereker’s door opened again, letting out the returning Maud; coming back
to go on with her packing, to talk to Mrs. Sneyde. The two of them,
surrounded by the opulence of wealthy packing, talking, skipping about
in talk: family affairs, and in both their minds Maud’s journey to Milan
with the mild and foolish bronze.
When the footsteps had passed she went out into the corridor and across
the space of sunlight streaming through Mrs. Harcourt’s door open upon
its empty room. Far away in the landscape, with those people from the
Kursaal, Mrs. Harcourt was forgetfully ski-ing, knowing nothing of all
this bustle.
But Maud’s door too was set wide. Her room deserted, neat and calm as
Mrs. Harcourt’s ... Where was Maud?
From the room beyond came Mrs. Sneyde, dressed for outdoors, brilliant
in green and gold, turning, coming forward with laughter and an
outstretched restraining hand, suppressing her laughter to speak in the
manner of one continuing a confidential talk; laughter remaining in her
eyes that looked, not at the stranger she addressed for the first time,
but away down the passage.
“I’ve just,” she whispered, “been in their room tyin’ up Daphne’s
finger. Cut it on one of their razors. The poor things were terrified.
Had her sittin’ on the table with her finger in a glass of water!
“No. It’s nothing; but those two great fellows were jibberin’ with
fright. She’s a little demon. Two towels on the floor. One all over
chocolate and the other bright with gore. They wanted to fetch old
stick-in-the-mud.”
“What a tragedy for Mr. Eaden’s last hours.”
“He’s not goin’; stayin’ for the Fest. Nobody’s goin’ but the dear
Skerrys.”
“Didn’t know they were going.”
“Nor nobody else. Till Ma suddenly began about her luggage. Wants to
save the sleigh fare. Vereker’s arranged it; the luggage is goin’ by the
Post and they’re toboggannin’; can’t you see them? ‘Whee don’t ye see
goodbee to Daphnee,’ says she to Tammas.”
Cruel, a little cruel.
“They found out a good deal about the peasants.”
“The _peasants_? The village desperadoes? _Is_ there anything to find
out about them?”
“The lives they lead.”
“Tammas been tryin’ to convert them? With his weak eyes? Through his
smoked glasses?”
“You know he smashed his glasses?”
“He would.”
“Yes. I heard his mother scolding him on the balcony and he slowly
trying to explain; all in that low tone, as if they were conspiring.”
“In an enemy camp. They were like that if you spoke to them. We all
tried; but by the time they’d thought and begun to answer you’d
forgotten what you said.”
“I suddenly remembered some glasses I’d been advised to bring. They
seemed astonished and suspicious and yet eager. ‘Try them on, Thomas,’
she said.”
“Tree them on, Tammas. I hear her.”
“And yesterday he handed them back jammy round the edges. I thought he
was tired of them. They said nothing about going. But he told me about
the peasants.”
“They had jam teas, on their own, upstairs.”
“Anyhow, they got in touch with the natives.”
“I ain’t surprised. Natives themselves.”
“With the people in the châlet behind.”
“Old Methuselah? Not difficult if you smash things. The old boy mended
Daphne’s watch. Of course she went in to see him do it. Went in
jabberin’ German which she _won’t_ talk with Frederika. Was there an
hour till I went to fish her out. Couldn’t see her, my dear—couldn’t see
_anything_; smoke, like a fog, couldn’t _breathe_. Made her out at last
squatting close up to the filthy old villain on his bench. Lost, in the
insides of watches. She’s goin’ to be a watchmaker now.”
“It must be his son.”
“Who must?”
“The one Thomas told me of. A woodcutter. Terrible. In the snow. It’s
only on snow they can bring the wood down from the higher places.
Someone bought a high copse, cheaply, because the higher——”
“Higher you go, the fewer—now I know what that means.”
“The cheaper. Over two hours climb from here; somewhere across the
valley. And the men and sleds must be there by daylight.”
“Poor devils!”
“Yes. And the horses for the climbing must be fed two hours before the
start. Sometimes they have to feed them before three in the morning. One
lot of men was caught up there by an avalanche and were there four days
before they could be got down.”
“Ai-_eee_; don’t tell us.”
“At the best it’s dangerous work. They get maimed; lose their lives. All
the winter this is going on. We don’t read their papers, don’t know the
people and don’t hear of it.”
“Isn’t it just as well? _We_ can’t help it.”
“It ought to be done some other way. Men’s lives ought not to be so
cheap.”
“How did Tammas get all this learning?”
“Speaks German.”
“Jee-roozlum!”
“And French.”
“And Scotch. And having no one to talk Scotch to, talks to the peasants,
about their trees. Daphne _hates_ the trees.”
“_Hates_ them?”
“Would like to make a big bonfire and burn’m all up.”
Miriam was silent, searching the green eyes for Daphne.
“Yes, that’s Daphne. She’s mad about Napoleon. Reads all the books.
Has’m in her room. I have to expound when she gets stuck. Won’t say her
prayers till we’ve read a bit of Bony. Won’t say ‘make me a good girl.’
Says ‘make me a man and a sojer.’ She and Eaden are as thick as thieves.
He’s an angel to her. I’ve got to be _hoff_. Goin’ to the Curse-all for
lunch. Maud’s there. She’s goin’ south to-morrow with the Chisholmes.”
“Before the Fest?”
“Chisholmes have got to pick up their kid somewhere. Maud’s had enough
of Switzerland for this year.”