A LESSON UPON SKIS
The "ghost" had been seen by many of the guests in the Palace Hotel, but not by the "little widow," despite her wakefulness. For her the night was fruitful of other thoughts, and chiefly the thought of her own situation, of its difficulties and its dangers.
They had christened her the "little widow" down at Sierre, and the embarrassing distinction of a pardonable error had followed her to Andana. So much she had achieved by her desire to obliterate the past and to recall, if it were possible, the innocence and the freedom of her girlhood. But she knew now that the attempt had failed, and that she stood upon the brink of a discovery which must be attended by shame. Luton Delayne would come to Andana sooner or later, and all would know the truth.
It is true that she did not lack courage, and had the perception to see that worldly sympathy, so far as she cared to win it, must be upon her side; but the ordeal through which she must pass, in a sense the exposure, affrighted her and robbed her even of a desire to sleep. The morning of the day might bring the man to the hotel; the evening might send her upon her way again, a derelict upon a lonely sea which offered no safe harbourage.
There had been no child of her marriage, and thus no chain upon her desire for freedom. Her father, Sir Frederick Kennaird, had married again at the age of fifty-seven; and while the gates of the old home were not shut against her, she shrank from the thought of such a shelter. Her only brother, Harold, was with his regiment in India, and had already condemned her conduct in strenuous letters full of childish complaints. "Would she drag her story into the papers? Wash their dirty linen in public?"—and all that sort of thing. To these she made answer that she would be the arbiter of her own fortune, and that if the family honour depended upon her tolerance of such a man as Luton Delayne, she would not lift a finger to save it.
This was well enough as an expression of her promise, but more difficult as a practice. Enjoying an allowance of three thousand a year from her father, whose collieries brought him ten times that sum, she discovered presently that candour is a factor in the due enjoyment of life, and that the world has little love of anonymity. Go where she would, to remote cities of Europe, to the East, even to America, there were some who knew her story and would sell secrecy at a price. She made no friends, won no sure refuge, could find no sanctuary. Sometimes she regretted her determination to be known henceforth as Lily Kennaird, and wondered if her brother were not right when he described such a subterfuge as madness. Sacrifice carried her into a new world, and one with which she was unfamiliar. She missed the amenities of the state she had abandoned, its overt dignities, its influence and power. Mrs. Kennaird was merely the "little widow" to the multitude. It had been otherwise when she was Lady Delayne.
All this troubled her during the night, and the new day found her afflicted by apprehensions to which she had long been a stranger. Twice in as many years she had seen her husband, Luton, and upon each occasion at a crisis of his life. A wanderer like herself, he lived chiefly upon the allowance of one thousand a year which she made him, and when that was exhausted, upon his wits, which were considerable. The latter occupation was not unattended by danger and the curiosity of the police. Lily wondered sometimes at her patience.
And now he had followed her to Switzerland, and unquestionably would visit her at Andana. What shameful story lay behind the pursuit she could not imagine; but of the existence of such a story she was sure. Luton Delayne rarely troubled her unless his case were desperate—and desperate indeed it must be for him to abandon the purlieus of Monte Carlo at such a season. She resolved, upon her part, to refuse him audience if that were possible; and if it were not possible, then to summon all her courage and insist that this interview should be final. The day for compromise was past.
It had been her promise to the parson, Harry Clavering, that she would submit to the ordeal of the skis on this morning; and when, with Kavanagh, she met him on the veranda of the hotel, he reminded her pleasantly of her obligations.
Unwilling to disappoint, she professed her readiness to face the ordeal, and skis having been commanded from the hotel porter, the parson upon one side and Kavanagh upon the other set to work to imprison the smallest pair of feet in Andana and to tell the owner the news while they did so.