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 Föhn 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?"
Her silence seemed interminable, and then he knew she had already answered him. It seemed to him that if he sat there and died, he couldn't speak.
"Winn," she asked in a whisper, "did you go because of me—or because of you?"
He turned round, facing her.
"Is that worrying you?" he asked fiercely. "Well, you can see for yourself, can't you? All there is of me—" He could not finish his sentence.
It was snowing heavily. They seemed intensely, cruelly alone. It was as if all life crept off and left them by themselves in the drifting gray snow, in their silent little corner of the unconscious, unalterable world.
Winn put his arm around her and drew her head down on his shoulder.
"It's all right," he said rather thickly. "I won't hurt you."
But he knew that he had hurt her, and that it was all wrong.
She did not cry, but she trembled against his heart. He felt her shivering as if she were afraid of all the world but him.
"I must stay with you," she whispered. "I must stay with you, mustn't I?"
He tried not to say "always," but he thought afterward that he must have said "always."
Then she lifted her curls and her little fur cap with the snow on it from his shoulder, and looked deep into his eyes. The worst of it was that hers were filled with joy.
"Winn," she said, "do you love me enough for anything? Not only for happiness, but, if we had to have dreadful things, enough for dreadful things?"
She spoke of dreadful things as if they were outside her, and as if they were very far away.
"I love you enough for anything," said Winn, gravely.
"Tell me," she whispered, "did you ever even think—you liked her as much?"
Winn looked puzzled; it took him a few minutes to guess whom she meant, then he said wonderingly:
"My wife, you mean?"
Claire nodded. It was silly how the little word tore its way into her very heart; she had to bite her lips to keep herself from crying out. She did not realize that the word was meaningless to him.
"No," said Winn, gravely; "that's the worst of it. I must have been out of my head. It was a fancy. Of course I thought it was all right, but I didn't care. It was fun rather than otherwise; you know what I mean? I'm afraid I gave her rather a rotten time of it; but fortunately she doesn't like me at all. It's not surprising."
"Yes, it is," said Claire, firmly; "it's very surprising. But if she doesn't care for you, and you don't care for her, can't anything be done?"
There is something cruel in the astonishing ease with which youth believes in remedial measures. It is a cruelty which reacts so terribly upon its possessors.
Winn hesitated; then he told her that he would take her to the ends of the world. Claire pushed away the ends of the world; they did not sound very practical.
"I mean," she said, "have you got to consider anybody else? Of course there's Maurice and your people, I've thought of them. But I don't think they'd mind so awfully always, do you? It wouldn't be like robbing or cheating some one who really needed us. We couldn't do that, of course."
Then Winn remembered Peter. He told her somehow that there was Peter. He hid his face against her breast while he told her; he could not bear to see in her eyes this new knowledge of Peter.
But she was very quiet about it; it was almost as if she had always known that there was Peter.
Winn spoke very wildly after that; he denied Peter; he denied any obstacles; he spoke as if they were already safely and securely married. He explained that they had to be together; that was the long and short of it. Anything else was absurd; she must see that it was absurd.
Claire didn't interrupt him once; but when he had quite finished, she said consideringly:
"Yes; but, after all, she gave you Peter."
Then Winn laughed, remembering how Estelle had given him Peter. He couldn't explain to Claire quite how funny it was.
She bore his laughter, though it surprised her a little; there seemed to be so many new things to be learned about him. Then she said:
"Anyway, we can be quite happy for a fortnight, can't we?"
Winn raised his head and looked at her. It was his turn to be surprised.
"Maurice and I," she explained, "have to go back in two weeks; we've come over here for the fortnight. So we'll just be happy, won't we? And we can settle what we'll do afterward, at the end of the time."
She spoke as if a fortnight was a long time. Then Winn kissed her; he did it with extraordinary gentleness, on the side of her cheek and on her wet curls covered with snow.
"You're such a baby," he said half to himself; "so it isn't a bit of use your being as old as the hills the other part of the time. There are just about a million reasons why you shouldn't stay, you know."
"Oh, reasons!" said Claire, making a face at anything so trivial as a reason. Then she became very grave, and said, "I want to stay, Winn; of course I know what you mean. But there's Maurice; it isn't as if I were alone. And afterwards—oh, Winn, it's because I don't know what is going to happen afterwards—I must have now!"
Winn thought for a moment, then he said:
"Well, I'll try and work it. You mustn't be in the same hotel, though. Fortunately, I know a nice woman who'll help us through; only, darling, I'm awfully afraid it's beastly wrong for you. I mean I can't explain properly; but if I let you go now, it would be pretty sickening. But you'd get away; and if you stay, I'll do the best I can but we shall get mixed up so that you'll find it harder to shake me off. You see, you're awfully young; there are chances ahead of you, awfully decent other chaps, marriage—"
"And you," she whispered—"you?"
"Oh, it doesn't matter a damn about me either way," he explained carefully. "I'm stuck. But it isn't really fair of me to let you stay. You don't understand, but it simply isn't fair."
Claire looked reproachfully at him.
"If I don't want you to be fair," she said, "you oughtn't to want to be—not more than I do, I mean. Besides—Oh, Winn, I do know about when I go! That's why I can't go till we've been happy, awfully happy, first. Don't you see, if I went now, there'd be nothing to look back on but just your being hurt and my being hurt; and I want happiness! Oh, Winn, I want happiness!"
That was the end of it. He took her in his arms and promised her happiness.
PART III
CHAPTER XXIII
It seemed incredible that they should be happy, but from the first of their fortnight to the last they were increasingly, insanely happy. Everything ministered to their joy; the unstinted blue and gold of the skies, the incommunicable glee of mountain heights, their blind and eager love.
There was no future. They were on an island cut off from all to-morrows; but they were together, and their island held the fruits of the Hesperides.
They lived surrounded by light passions, by unfaithfulnesses that had not the sharp excuses of desire, bonds that held only because they would require an effort to break and bonds that were forged only because it was easier to pass into a new relation than to continue in an old one. Their solid and sober passion passed through these light fleets of pleasure-boats as a great ship takes its unyielding way toward deep waters.
Winn was spared the agony of foresight; he could not see beyond her sparkling eyes; and Claire was happy, exultantly, supremely happy, with the reckless, incurious happiness of youth.
It was terrible to see them coming in and out with their joy. Their faces were transfigured, their eyes had the look of sleep-walkers, they moved as through another world. They had only one observer, and to Miss Marley the sight of them was like the sight of those unknowingly condemned to die. St. Moritz in general was not observant. It had gossips, but it did not know the difference between true and false, temporary and permanent. It had one mold for all its fancies: given a man and a woman, it formed at once its general and monotonous conjecture.
Maurice might have noticed Claire's preoccupation, for Maurice was sensitive to that which touched himself, but for the moment a group more expensive and less second rate than he had discovered at Davos took up his entire attention. He had none to spare for his sister unless she bothered him, and she didn't bother him.
It was left to Miss Marley to watch from hour to hour the significant and rising chart of passion. The evening after the Davos match, Winn had knocked at the door of her private sitting-room. It was his intention only to ask her if she would dine with some friends of his from Davos; he would mention indifferently that they were very young, a mere boy and girl, and he would suggest with equal subtlety that he would be obliged if Miss Marley would continue to take meals at his table during their visit. St. Moritz, he saw himself saying, was such a place for talk. There was no occasion to go into anything, and Miss Marley would, of course, have no idea how matters really stood. She was a good sort, but he wasn't going to talk about Claire.
Miss Marley said, "Come in," in that wonderful, low, soft voice of hers that came so strangely from her blistered lips. She was sitting in a low chair, smoking, in front of an open wood fire.
Her room was furnished by herself. It was a comfortable, featureless room, with no ornaments and no flowers; there were plenty of books in cases or lying about at ease on a big table, a stout desk by the window, and several leather-covered, deep armchairs. The walls were bare except for photographs of the Cresta. These had been taken from every possible angle of the run—its banks, its corners, its flashing pieces of straight, and its incredible final hill. It was noticeable that though there was generally a figure on a toboggan in the photograph, it never happened to be one of Miss Marley herself. She was a creditable rider, but she did not, to her own mind, show off the Cresta.
Her eyes met Winn's with a shrewdness that she promptly veiled. He wasn't looking as if he wanted her to be shrewd. It struck her that she was seeing Winn as he must have looked when he was about twenty. She wondered if this was only because he had won the match. His eyes were very open and they were off their guard. It could not be said that Winn had ever in his life looked appealing, but for a Staines to look so exposed to friendliness was very nearly an appeal.
"Mavorovitch has just left me," said Miss Marley. "You ought to have heard what he said about you. It was worth hearing. You played this afternoon like a successful demon dealing with lost souls. I don't think I've ever seen bandy played quite in that vein before."
Winn sank into one of the leather armchairs and lighted a cigarette.
"As a matter of fact," he said, "I played like a fluke. I am not up to Mavorovitch's form at all. I just happened to be on my game; he would have had me down and out otherwise."
Miss Marley nodded; she was wondering what had put Winn on his game. She turned her eyes away from him and looked into the fire. Winn was resting for the first time that day; the sense of physical ease and her even, tranquil comradeship were singularly soothing to him. Suddenly it occurred to him that he very much liked Miss Marley, and in a way in which he had never before liked any woman, with esteem and without excitement. He gave her a man's first proof of confidence.
"Look here," he said, "I want you to help me."
Miss Marley turned her eyes back to him; she was a plain woman, but she was able to speak with her eyes, and though what she said was sometimes hard and always honest, on the present occasion they expressed only an intense reassurance of good-will.
"When I came in," Winn said rather nervously, "I meant to ask you a little thing, but I find I am going to ask you a big one."
"Oh, well," said Miss Marley, "ask away. Big or little, friends should stand by each other."
"Yes," said Winn, relieved, "that's what I thought you'd say. I don't know that I ever mentioned to you I'm married?"
"No," she answered quietly, "I can't say that you did; however, most men of your age are married."
"And I've got a son," Winn continued. "His name is Peter—after my father, you know."
"That's a good thing," she concurred heartily. "I'm glad you've got a son."
"Unfortunately," said Winn, "my marriage didn't exactly come off. We got hold of the wrong end of the stick."
"Ah," said Miss Marley, "that's a pity! The right end of the stick is, I believe, almost essential in marriage."
"Yes," Winn acknowledged; "I see that now, of course. I was keen on getting her, but I hadn't thought the rest out. Rather odd, isn't it, that you don't get as much as a tip about how jolly a thing could be till you've dished yourself from having it?"
Miss Marley agreed that it was rather odd.
Winn came back swiftly to his point.
"What I was going to ask you," he said, holding her with his eyes, "is to sit at my table for a bit. I happen to have two young friends of mine over from Davos. He's her brother, of course, but I thought I'd like to have another woman somewhere about. Look better, wouldn't it? She's only nineteen."
His voice dropped as he mentioned Claire's age as if he were speaking of the Madonna.
"Yes," agreed Miss Marley, "it would look better."
"I dare say," said Winn after rather a long pause, "you see what I mean? The idea is—our idea, you know—to be together as much as we can for a fortnight. It'll be all right, of course; only I rather wondered if you'd see us through."
"See you through being all right?" Miss Marley asked with the directness of a knife-thrust.
"Well—yes," said Winn. "It would just put people off thinking things. Everybody seems to know you up here, and I somehow thought I'd rather you knew."
"Thank you," said Miss Marley, briefly.
She turned back to the fire again. She had seen all she wanted to see in Winn's eyes. She saw his intention. What she wasn't sure about was the fortnight. A fortnight can do a good deal with an intention.
Miss Marley knew the world very well. People had often wanted to use her for a screen before, and generally she had refused, believing that the chief safeguard of innocence is the absence of screens. But she saw that Winn did not want her to be that kind of a screen; he wanted her to be in the center of his situation without touching it. He wanted her for Claire, but he wanted her also a little for himself, so that he might feel the presence of her upright friendliness. He intensely trusted her.
There are people who intend to do good in the world and invariably do harm. They enter eagerly into the lives of others and put their fingers pressingly upon delicate machinery; very often they destroy it, more seldom, unfortunately, they cut their own fingers. Miss Marley did not belong to this type. She did not wish to be involved and she was scrupulous never to involve others. She hesitated before she gave her consent, but she couldn't withstand the thought that Claire was only nineteen. She spoke at last.
"What you suggest," she said quietly, "is going to be rather hard for you both. I suppose you do realize how hard? You see, you are only at the beginning of the fortnight now. Unhappy men and very young girls make difficult situations, Major Staines."
He got up and walked to the window, standing with his back to her. She wondered if she had said too much; his back looked uncompromising. She did not realize that she could never say too much in the defense of Claire. Then he said, without looking round:
"We shall have to manage somehow."
It occurred to Miss Marley, with a wave of reassurance, that this was probably Winn's usual way of managing.
"In any case," she said firmly, "you can count on me to do anything you wish."
Winn expressed no gratitude. He merely said:
"I shall introduce her to you this evening."
Before he left Miss Marley he shook hands with her. Her hands were hard and muscular, but she realized when she felt his grip that he must have been extremely grateful.
CHAPTER XXIV
They went out early, before the sun was up, when the valley was an apricot mist and the mountains were as white as snowdrops in the spring. The head waiter fell easily into their habits, and provided them with an early breakfast and a parcel for lunch. Then they drove off through the biting, glittering coldness.
Sometimes they went far down the valley to Sils and on to the verge of the Maloja. Sometimes they drove through the narrower valleys to Pontresina and on into the impenetrable winter gloom of the Mortratsch glacier. The end was the same solitude, sunshine, and their love. The world was wrapped away in its winter stillness. The small Swiss villages slept and hardly stirred. In the hot noonday a few drowsy peasants crept to and from the barns where the cattle passed their winter life. Sometimes a woman labored at a frozen pump, or a party of skiers slipped rapidly through the shady streets, rousing echoes with their laughter; but for the most part they were as much alone as if the world had ceased to hold any beings but themselves. The pine-trees scented all the air, the snow dripped reluctantly, and sometimes far off they heard the distant boom of an avalanche. They sat together for long sunlit hours on the rickety wooden balcony of a friendly hospice, drinking hot spiced glüwein and building up their precarious memories.
There were moments when the hollow present snapped under their feet like a broken twig, and then the light in their eyes darkened and they ran out upon the safer path of make-believe.
It was Winn who, curiously enough, began it, and returned to it oftenest. It came to him, this abolishing of Estelle, always more easily than it came to Claire. It was inconceivable to Claire that Winn didn't, as a rule, remember his wife. She could have understood the tragedy of his marriage, but Winn didn't make a tragedy of it, he made nothing of it at all. It seemed terrible to Claire that any woman, bearing his name, the mother of his child, should have no life in his heart. She found herself resenting this for Estelle. She tried to make Winn talk about her, so that she might justify her ways to him. But Winn went no further in his expressions than the simple phrases, "She's not my sort," "We haven't anything in common," "I expect we didn't hit it off." Finally he said, terribly, under the persistency of Claire's pressure, "Well, if you will have it, I don't believe a single word she says."
"Oh, but sometimes, sometimes she must speak the truth!" Claire urged, breathless with pity.
"I dare say," Winn replied indifferently. "Possibly she does, but what difference does it make to me when I don't know which times?"
Claire waited a little, then she said:
"I wasn't thinking of the difference to you; I was thinking of the difference to her."
"I tell you," Winn repeated obstinately, "that I don't care a hang about the difference to her. People shouldn't tell lies. I don't care that for her!" He snapped a crumb off the table. He looked triumphantly at Claire, under the impression that he had convinced her of a pleasing fact. She burst into tears.
He tried to take her in his arms, but for a moment she resisted him.
"Do you want me to love Estelle?" he asked in desperation.
Claire shook her head.
"I'd like her—to be loved," she said, still sobbing.
Winn looked wonderingly at her.
"Well, as far as that goes, so would I," he observed, with a sardonic grin. "There'd be some way out for us then."
Claire shook her head vehemently, but she made no attempt to explain her tears. She felt that she couldn't alter him, and that when he most surprised her it was wiser to accept these surprises than to probe her deep astonishment.
He surprised her very often, he was in such a hurry to unburden himself of all he was. It seemed to him as if he must tell her everything while he had her. He expressed himself as he had never in his wildest dreams supposed that any man could express himself to another human being. He broke down his conventions, he forced aside his restraint, he literally poured out his heart to her. He gave her his opinions, his religion, his codes of conduct, until she began a little to understand his attitude toward Estelle.
It was part of his exterior way of looking at the world at large. Up till now people, except Lionel, had never really entered into his imagination. Of course there were his servants and his dogs and, nearer still, his horses. He spent hours telling her about his horses. They really had come into his life, but never people; even his own family were nothing but a background for wrangles.
He had never known tenderness. He had had all kinds of odd feelings about Peter, but they hadn't got beyond his own mind. His tenderness was beyond everything now; it over-flowed expression. It was the radical thing in him. He showed her plainly that it would break his heart if she were to let her feet get wet. He made plans for her future which would have suited a chronic invalid. He wanted to give her jewels, expensive specimens of spaniels, and a banking account.
She would take nothing from him but a notebook and a little opal ring. Winn restrained his passion, but out of revenge for his restraint his fancies ran wild.
It was Claire who had to be practical; she who had spent her youth in dreams now clung desperately to facts. She read nothing, she hardly talked, but she drew his very soul out to meet her listening soul. There were wonders within wonders to her in Winn. She had hardly forced herself to accept his hardness when she discovered in him a tolerance deeper than anything she had ever seen, and an untiring patience. He had pulled men out of holes only to see them run back into them with the swiftness of burrowing rabbits; but nothing made him feel as if he could possibly give them up.
"You can't tell how many new starts a man wants," he explained to Claire; "but he ought to have as many as he can take. As long as a man wants to get on, I think he ought to be helped."
His code about a man's conduct to women was astonishingly drastic.
"If you've let a woman in," he explained, "you've got to strip yourself to get her out, no matter whether you care for her or not. The moment a woman gets caught out, you can't do too much for her. It's like seeing a dog with a tin can tied to its tail; you've got to get it off. A man ought to pay for his fun; even if it isn't his fault, he ought to pay just the same. It's not so much that he's the responsible person, but he's the least had. That ought to settle the question."
He was more diffident, but not less decided, on the subject of religion.
"If there's a God at all," he stated, "He must be good; otherwise you can't explain goodness, which doesn't pay and yet always seems worth having. You know what I mean. Not that I am a religious man myself, but I like the idea. Women certainly ought to be religious."
He hoped that Claire would go regularly to church unless it was draughty.
It was on the Bernina, when they were nine thousand feet up in a blue sky, beyond all sight or sound of life, in their silent, private world, that they talked about death.
"Curious," Winn said, "how little you think about it when you're up against it. I shouldn't like to die of an illness. That's all I've ever felt about it; that would be like letting go. I don't think I could let go easily; but just a proper, decent knock-out—why, I don't believe you'd know anything about it. I never felt afraid of chucking it, till I knew you, now I'm afraid."
Claire looked at his strong hands in the sunshine and at her own which lay on his; they looked so much alive! She tried hard to think about death, because she knew that some day everybody must die; but she felt as if she was alive forever.
"Yes," she said; "of course I suppose we shall. But, Winn, don't you think that we could send for each other then? Wouldn't that be splendid?"
The idea of death became suddenly a shortening of the future; it was like something to look forward to. Winn nodded gravely, but he didn't seem to take the same comfort in it that Claire did. He only said:
"I dare say we could manage something. But you feel all right, don't you?"
Claire laughed until something in his grave eyes hurt her behind her laughter.
The sky changed from saffron to dead blue and then to startling rose color. Flame after flame licked the Bernina heights. Their sleigh-bells rang persistently beneath them. They drank their coffee hurriedly while the sun sank out of the valley, and the whole world changed into an icy light.
They drove off rapidly down the pass, wrapped in furs and clinging to each other. They did not know what anything would mean when they were apart. The thought of separation was like bending from a sunny world over a well of darkness. Claire cried a little, but not very much. She never dared let herself really cry because of what might happen to Winn.
It surprised him sometimes how little she tried to influence his future life. She did not make him promise anything except to go to see Dr. Gurnet. He wondered afterward why she had left so much to his discretion when he had made so many plans, and urgent precautions for her future; and yet he knew that when she left him he would be desperate enough to break any promises and never desperate enough to break her trust in him. Suddenly he said to her as the darkness of the pass swallowed them:
"Look here, I won't take to drink. I'd like to, but I won't." And Claire leaned toward him and kissed him, and he said a moment later, with a little half laugh:
"D'you know, I rather wish you hadn't done that. You never have before, and I sha'n't be able to forget it. You put the stopper on to that intention."
And Claire said nothing, smiling into the darkness.
CHAPTER XXV
Claire had never been alone with Miss Marley before; she had known her only as an accompaniment to Winn; but she had been aware, even in these partial encounters, that she was being benevolently judged. It must be owned that earlier in the day she had learned, with a sinking of the heart, that she must give up the evening to Miss Marley. When every hour counted as a victory over time, she could not understand how Winn could let her go; and yet he had said quite definitely: "I want you to go to Miss Marley this evening. She'd like to talk to you, and I think you'd better."
But something happened which changed her feelings. Miss Marley was a woman despite the Cresta and there are times when only a woman's judgment can satisfy the heart of a girl. Claire was startled and perturbed by Maurice's sudden intervention. Maurice said:
"That chap Staines is getting you talked about. Pretty low down of him, as I believe he's married." She was pulled up short in the golden stream of her love. She saw for the first time the face of opinion—that hostile, stupid, interfering face. Claire had never thought that by any malign possibility they could be supposed to be doing wrong. She could not connect wrong with either her love or Winn's. If there was one quality more than another which had distinguished it, it had been its simple sense of rightness. She had seen Winn soften and change under it as the hard earth changes at the touch of spring. She had felt herself enriched and enlarged, moving more unswervingly than ever toward her oldest prayer—that she might, on the whole, be good. She hardly prayed at all about Winn; loving him was her prayer.
If she had meant to take him away from Estelle or to rob him of Peter, then she knew she would have been wrong. But in this fortnight she was taking nothing from Estelle that Estelle had ever had, and she was doing no harm to Peter. It would not be likely to do him any harm to soften his father's heart.
Claire's morality consisted solely in the consideration of other people; her instincts revolted against unkindness. It was an early Christian theory much lost sight of, "Love, and do as you please," the safety of the concession resting upon the quality of the love.
But to-night another idea had occurred to her, and she was very uneasy. Was it really possible that any one could blame Winn? Her first instinct had been sheer anger, and her anger had carried her past fear into the pride of love. She had felt as if she wanted to confront the world and defy it. If the world dared judge them, what did it matter? Their hearts were clean. She was too young to know that under the world's judgments clean hearts break even more easily than soiled ones.
But her mind had not rested there. She had begun to be afraid for Winn, and with all her heart she longed to see him justified. What had he ever done that he could be judged? He had loved her, spared her, guarded her. He had made, he was making, inconceivable sacrifices for her. He was killing not only his own joy, but hers rather than do her what he thought a wrong.
She sat on a footstool in front of Miss Marley's wood fire, frowning at the flames. Miss Marley watched her cautiously; there was a good deal she wanted to say, but she hoped that most of it might be said by Claire. A very careful talker can get a good deal expressed in this way; impressions, to be permanent, must always come from the person you wish to impress.
"Miss Marley," Claire began, "do you think it matters what people think?"
Miss Marley, who invariably rolled her own cigarettes, took up a small silver box, flattened the cigarette-paper out carefully, and prepared to fill it before answering. Then she said:
"Very few people do think; that is generally what matters—absence of thought. Speech without thought is responsible for most people's disasters."
"But it can't matter what people say if it isn't true, can it?" Claire persisted. "I mean—nonsense can't count against any one?"
"I'm rather afraid it does matter," said Miss Marley, lighting her cigarette. "Nonsense is very infectious, and it often carries a good deal of weight. I have known nonsense break people's hearts."
"Oh!" said Claire in a rising breath. She was wondering what it was like to have a broken heart. Somewhere in the back of her mind she knew that she was going to have one, half of one; but what really frightened her was that the other half was going to belong to Winn.
"Could any one," she said under her breath, "think any harm of him? He told me you knew all about us, and that I might talk to you if I wanted to; but I didn't then. There didn't seem anything to say. But now I do want to know; I want to know awfully what you think. If I asked him, he'd only laugh or else he'd be angry. He's very young in some ways, you know, Miss Marley—younger than I am."
"Yes," agreed Miss Marley; "men are always, to the end of their lives, very young in some ways."
"I never thought," Claire went on breathlessly, "that people would dream of blaming him because we were together. Why, it's so stupid! If they only knew! He's so good!"
"If he's that," said Miss Marley, smiling into the fire, "you've succeeded in making a saint of a Staines, a very difficult experiment! I shouldn't advise you to run away too much with that idea, however."
"It isn't me; it's him," exclaimed Claire, regardless of grammar. "I mean, after what Maurice said this afternoon—I don't know how to put it quite—I almost wish we'd both been bad!"
Miss Marley nodded. She knew the danger of blame when a tug of war is in progress, and how it weakens the side attacked.
"How can I explain to people," Claire went on, "what he's been like? I don't know whether I've told you, but he went away almost directly he found out he cared, before—long before he knew I cared, though he might have known; and he left a message to tell me about his wife, which I never got. But, oh, Miss Marley, I've never told him, I should have come if I'd got it or not! I should really, because I had to know if he cared! So you see, don't you, that if either of us was wicked it was me? Only I didn't feel wicked; I really felt awfully good. I don't see how you're to tell what's right if God doesn't let you know and people talk nonsense."
"It's not," agreed Miss Marley, dryly, "particularly easy to know."
"And his wife doesn't care for him," Claire went on. "Fancy Winn's wife not caring for him! Poor woman!"
"Why do you pity her?" Miss Marley inquired with interest.
"Well," said Claire, with a sudden dimple, "I was only thinking I shouldn't like to be Winn's wife if he didn't care for me; and then I was thinking that if he didn't, I'd make him!"
"Well, that effort doesn't seem required of you," said Miss Marley.
"No, but it only shows you that I'm much the most wicked, doesn't it?" asked Claire, with some pride.
"The points against Winn," Miss Marley said gravely, "are his age, his experience, and his wife. I feel bound to tell you that there are points against him."
Claire frowned.
"Winn isn't really old," she explained, "because he's only done things all his life—games or his work; it hasn't been people. People make you old, especially when you are looking after them. He's never really grown up; and as for experience, I don't think you experience anything unless you care about it. It hurts me sometimes to hear him talk about his wife. He's never had her; he's only had me. I don't explain very well, but I know it's true, because he told me things about loving which showed me he'd never had anything before except dogs—and Peter; and Peter's awfully young, and dogs can't answer back. You can't grow up on dogs."
Miss Marley tacitly admitted the limitations of canine influence; but she said:
"Still, you know, he's not kept to his own code; that's what one must judge people by. I'm sure he'd tell you himself that a married man should leave girls alone."
Claire thought for a moment, then she said:
"Yes, but he's gone deeper than his code now. Don't you think that perhaps a smash, even of something you value, makes you grow? I don't know how to put it quite, but if you never did what you thought wrong, would you ever know how big right is? Besides, he hasn't gone on doing it. Perhaps he did start wrong in getting to care, but that only makes it harder and finer, his stopping himself. Very few people, I think, but Winn could stop themselves, and nobody but Winn could ever care—so much." Her voice broke, and she turned away her head.
"What," said Miss Marley, rolling another cigarette, "are your plans?"
Miss Marley felt that she must give up first principles but she hoped that she might still be able to do something about plans.
"We are going to drive over the Maloja to Chiavenna," said Claire; "Maurice has a party to go with. We shall start by the earlier post, and have lunch together at Vico-Soprano before he comes. And then when Maurice comes we shall say good-by; and then—and then, Miss Marley, I've been thinking—we mustn't meet again! I haven't told Winn yet, because he likes to talk as if we could, in places awfully far away and odd, with you to chaperon us. I think it helps him to talk like that but I don't think now that we must ever meet again. You won't blame him if I tell you something, will you?"
"No," said Miss Marley; "after what you've said to me to-night I am not inclined to blame him."
"Well," said Claire, "I don't think, if we were to meet again, he would let me go. We may manage this time, but not twice."
"Are you sure," asked Miss Marley, gently, "that you will manage this time?"
Claire raised her head and looked at Miss Marley.
"Aren't you?" she said gravely. "I did feel very sure."
"I'd feel a great deal surer," said Miss Marley, "if you didn't drive down the pass. If you once set off with Winn, do you suppose he'll stop? I am sure he means to now; in fact, his sending you up here to talk to me proves it. He knows I sha'n't be much of a help to him in carrying you off. But, my dear, I never knew any Staines stop, once he'd started. As long as he is looking at the consequences for you, he'll steer clear of them, he's looking at them now, but a moment will come when he'll cease to look, and then everything will depend on you. I think your one chance is to say good-by here, and to drive down the pass with Maurice. He can dispose of his party for once."
The color left Claire's face, but her eyes never flinched from Miss Marley's. After a time Miss Marley turned her head away; she could no longer bear the look in Claire's eyes. It was like watching the face of some one drowning.
"I don't want a chance!" whispered Claire.
