It is easier to get into a snowdrift, than to get out. It was dusk before we reached Celerina. We left Caine walking up the railway track, and made ourselves for the station. It was still snowing.
“No joke,” I said, to my niece in the train. “We might have been buried alive. Such things often happen.”
My niece, Nellie, is a pious girl, and a great admirer of Hall Caine.
“I should have felt anxious,” she said, “if we hadn't had Mr. Hall Caine with us. I felt so sure that Mr. Caine was being watched over.”
St. Moritz used to be a homely little place. The Kuln was the only hotel, practically speaking. My wife and I stayed at the Palace the first winter it opened. They charged us seven francs a day, inclusive. I am told that since then prices have gone up. About a dozen of us had the place to ourselves: among us a retired Indian General who was keen on skating.
“Haven't had a pair of skates on for forty-five years,” he confided to me the first morning. “Used to be rather a dab at it. Daresay it will soon come back.”
A sporting old fellow! He had had pads made: two for his knees, two for his elbows, and one for the back of his head.
“My nose I can always save with my hands,” he explained. “And the only other place doesn't matter. It's bones that we have to be careful of, at my age.”
Jacobs contents himself with bowls. As he points out, it is a game you can play without getting hot and excited, and losing your dignity. Phillpotts and his wife used to be good tennis players, in the old days at Ealing—how many years ago there is no call to discuss. Lawn tennis had not long come in. We used to play it with any kind of racquet. Keen players designed their own. Some were the shape of a kidney, and others bent like an S, with the idea of giving the ball a twist. It was not till the time of the Renshawes that we settled down to a standard size and form. There was a period when we played it—those of us who wished to be in the fashion—in stiff shirts and stand-up collars; and women wore trains which they held up as they ran. W. S. Gilbert, always original, would persist in having his court twenty feet too long. I forget the argument. It was about as long as the court. He was an obstinate chap. I remember one man making him awfully ratty by shouting out in the middle of a game—he hadn't thought to notice the court before we started:
“I say, Gilbert, what are we supposed to be doing? Playing tennis or rehearsing a Bab Ballad?”