White Motley: A Novel

by Max Pemberton

He could detect a change everywhere, a new respect paid to him, and a desire to be seen in his company. Even such athletic aristocrats as Keith Rivers patronised him no longer; while it began to be plain that he had lighted a candle which failure alone would put out. That was the rub which must be present in his reckoning. It would be a mighty humiliation to fail before the thousands who were coming to Andana to see him start. He knew that there would be thousands, for the hotel people said as much; and when he managed to escape his host and to steal as a fugitive from the Palace, the night bore witness to the truth of such prophecies.

Surely such a spectacle had never been seen in this place before. Scores of great arc lamps illuminated the scene. Workmen from Sierre, from Martigny, and from Lausanne were busy erecting shelters for the people and building barriers. Sleighs came up the mountain-side, so many that he wondered whence they had been conjured up. Averse to all such trappings of spectacle himself, he guessed that Sir John Perinder had contrived this aspect of tournament, and had set the lists that the Daily Recorder might be glorified. He imagined that the affair had been largely advertised both in Switzerland and in Italy, and this was the case. All joined willingly in such an emprise; the hotel-keepers to begin with, then the railway companies. Excursions were to be run from Milan, from Geneva, even from Paris. The flight across the Alps appealed to the imagination of all.

Benny had a great deal of courage, but this new aspect of life filled him with dread. At the same time it was not unattended by a certain pride which spoke of many emotions. He realised that he had yet to earn the homage now paid to him. After all, he was but a tyro in achievement, and the world had taken him at his own estimate. If he failed to succeed, he would be forgotten in three days, and no one would listen to him afterwards. This he remembered as he took his way up the mountain-side toward his own chalet. He might be leaving Switzerland a broken man to-morrow, and the contempt of the multitude would attend him. Vain to accomplish in secret that which he had promised to do in public. The world is credulous where the inventor is concerned and seldom gives him a second chance.

He wondered if all were really as well as Brother Jack and the abbé believed it to be. They had done wonders during those long days, worked heroically, and with true devotion. He himself had set them no mean example when he had discovered a woman's indifference and the true meaning of her lightly-spoken words. Why should he think of her? What part had she to play in the story of his life? His very friendship might be misconstrued, and he resolved to terminate it so soon as his self-invited obligation had been fulfilled. For the moment she was alone and without a friend—this great lady who was of a world apart, whom he had worshipped in secret as his own type of true womanhood. He remembered the day when he had first seen her at Holmswell, her gentle bearing, her sweet courtesy. What right had he to expect her interest? Reason answered, none.

He was approaching her chalet at this time, and perceived that a light shone from the window of her sitting-room. When he drew a little nearer, he discerned Lily herself, dressed in a gown of white lace, and seated at the writing-table by the window. She was not writing, however, and her profound reverie appeared to be unbroken by any knowledge of the stir without. In such an attitude there were aspects of her beauty he had yet to mark, a grace of pose and bearing as inimitable by the divinities of his own world as they were inherent in hers. Benny stood a long while, as though a single step would warn her and shut the vision from his sight. He would have wanted words to convey his impressions, and would have contented himself, perhaps, by the one word "queenly." She was born to reign, this mistress of a heritage of woe; life had dealt hardly with her when it shut her from her kingdom.

Men rarely confess to their most secret thought, even in the confessional of the intimate hours. Benny would have been ashamed to tell his oldest friend that he had dwelt for an instant there, at the gate of the chalet, in a shadowland of dreams, and that it had shown him this gracious lady as his wife. His destiny linked to hers, imagination led him to the high places of the world. He shared her kingdom in his thoughts, and wore the armour of a chivalry as true as any in the human story. Recreated by the dream, he struck off the shackles of birth and obliterated the scars of a mean heritage. For such a woman, a man could give life itself, he thought; for her there would be no sacrifice from which the mind would shrink. Nor could calamity cast down this idol from its pedestal. He worshipped more surely because she no longer commanded worship as a right. The world's contempt would dower her anew in his eyes, would give him a title which otherwise he had not possessed.

For a little while these vain thoughts afflicted him, to give place to others of a very different order. So many strangers were at Andana that he was not surprised to discover an intruder even here upon the mountain path, but when that intruder emerged suddenly from the shadows, and Benny saw that it was the little gendarme, Philip, his interest was awakened while his false gods were shattered. The gendarme, on his part, recognised him immediately, and with hardly a gesture of apology set out to follow him to his house.

"I wish you success for to-morrow, sir," he said, and then, as simply, "I may not be here, unfortunately, to offer my compliments then."

Benny looked at him with curiosity.

"You are going away, Monsieur Philip?"