“Money and passport and letter of credit and everything. They’re at the bottom of my pack now. And I spread some gorgeous rumors about you to the bank and the hotel and the consulate so that you wouldn’t be able to get any help — which explains why they were so nasty and suspicious. It was the only way I could get you in such a jam that you’d simply have to make this trip with me.”
She made no reply for a while, and then she said, “Why should you take so much trouble over anyone like I was?”
“It was hardly any trouble to me,” he said, “and I thought you were worth it. The way you were going, you were all set to make Jack thoroughly unhappy and break up both your lives. Jack said you’d never forgive him if he tried to get tough with you, but I figured it wouldn’t do either of you so much harm if you never forgave me. All the same, I’m rather glad you have.”
Belinda bit her lip.
She was quiet again, very quiet, until they rolled into their blankets and went to sleep, and Simon let her be. Two more days, she told herself when she awoke, but the time went flying. One more night and a day — a day — three hours — two!.. Everything she saw planted itself on her mind with the feeling that she was leaving it for ever. A boy driving a herd of cattle, slim, blond-haired, with transparent blue eyes and a merry smile. A castle built on a steep hill, hanging aloft in a solid curtain of pines like a picture nailed to a wall. The crucified Christs set up by every path and roadside and in many fields, with bunches of wild flowers stuck in the crevices of the carving — “They’re thank-offerings,” said the Saint. “People going by put the flowers on them for luck.” Belinda picked a handful of narcissi and arranged them behind the outstretched arms of one figure; it seemed a pleasant thing to do. She would never pass that way again, and she must remember everything before she was outlawed from her strange paradise — and then the last hour, and the inn at Hall, where Simon left her on some pretext, and telephoned a message to the address in Innsbruck which Jack Easton had given him. Goodbye, goodbye! And she saw Innsbruck and the end of the journey with a pang. It was so short, like a little life which had to be laid down at its peak.
And then, somehow, relentlessly jarred out of the dream into a cold light of commonplace, she was sitting in a beer garden in Innsbruck with Jack Easton patting her hand. “I was wrong too, Belinda,” he was saying. “This great-open-space stuff isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. One day we were being broiled alive, and the next it was pouring with rain and we were soaked. God, and those country inns! Always the same food, and sanitary arrangements straight out of the Stone Age...”
She scarcely heard him at first. It was as if he spoke a foreign language. She was looking up at the mountains that girdle the town, which can be seen from every corner, looming above the house-tops like the bastions of a gigantic fortress, the gates of the trail that ran half-way up the wall of the world.
“Jack, I was the only one who was wrong. But we’re going on with Simon just like this, over the Alps into Italy.”
Easton shook his head.
“Nothing doing,” he stated firmly. “I’ve had my share, and I could do with some hot baths and civilized meals for a change. We’ll rent an automobile and drive over if you like.”