So he and I improvised a stretcher; Solem was instructed to take brandy and bandages to the site of the accident, and the Bergensians, the Associate Master, Miss Torsen, and Mrs. Molie went with him.
"Did you really say nothing to Solem about climbing the peak today?" I asked the Dane.
"No," he replied. "I never said a word about it. If I had meant to go, I should certainly not have wanted company...."
Later that afternoon we returned with the lawyer on the stretcher. Solem kept explaining all the way home how the accident had happened, what he had said and what the lawyer had said, pointing to objects on the way as though this stone represented the lawyer and that the abyss into which he had plunged.... Solem still carried the rope he had not had a chance to use. Miss Torsen asked no more than anyone else, and made purely conventional comments: "I advised him against it, I begged him not to go...."
But however much we talked, we could not bring the lawyer back to life. Strange--his watch was still going, but he himself was dead. The doctor could do nothing here, and returned to his village.
There followed a depressing evening. Solem went to the village to send a telegram to the lawyer's family, and the rest of us did what we thought decent under the circumstances: we all sat in the living room with books in our hands. Now and again, some reference would be made to the accident: it was a reminder, we said, how small we mortals were! And the Associate Master, who had not the soul of a tourist, greatly feared that this disaster would injure the resort and make things still more difficult for Paul; people would shun a place where they were likely to fall off and be killed.
No, the Associate Master was no tourist, and did not understand the Anglo-Saxon mind.
Paul himself seemed to sense that the accident might benefit him rather than do him harm. He brought out a bottle of brandy to console us on this mournful evening.
And since it was a death to which we owed this attention, one of the men from Bergen made a speech.