Next day she lunched with Dr. Feng and myself and in the afternoon we put on our skis and I took her out over the snow to the Grütsch Alp by a way which commanded a magnificent view of the high Bernese Alps. We took our cameras with us and, on my table, as I write there is a snap-shot I took of her as, in her smart winter sports kit, she sped swiftly down a steep slope with her ski-sticks held behind her in real professional style.
She proved a delightful companion. She was, I found, a Londoner born and bred, and she had all the genuine shrewdness and good humor of the town girl. She was well educated, a perfect encyclopædia of books and plays, and she was, as I knew, a splendid dancer. Her mother, the widow of an ex-naval officer named Shaylor, lived at Bexhill. Of her father she remembered very little: he had been on the China Station for many years and his visits home had been infrequent. He had died in China the year before.
The humor of my position struck me forcibly. Here was I, a young bachelor fairly well off and sufficiently good-looking, left in charge of a beautiful young girl who was a bride of only a few days! In England, of course, such a position would have been unthinkable. It did not seem so strange in the free and easy camaraderie of Mürren where the free and easy sporting life bred a harmless unconventionality and where even the British starchy reserve was very early sloughed off. Everybody made a joke of the whole affair and Dr. Feng and old Mr. Humphreys laughed like boys at this novel status I had acquired.
Of course there was some malice: there always is in a mixed company. After we had glided some miles across the snow, we halted and I poured out some tea from the vacuum flask I carried. Just as Mrs. Audley was drinking a party of men and girls from the hotel passed. Noticing us, one of the girls made some remark. What it was I did not hear, but it produced a burst of ill-mannered laughter and my companion turned scarlet.
“They’re horrid, aren’t they?” she said and I agreed. “But it is really delightful here,” she said, looking up into my face. “You are most awfully kind to us, Mr. Yelverton. Stanley and I shall never forget it. If he gets the position of manager at Woolwich it will mean so much to us—and it will greatly please my mother.”
“Was your mother—er—against your marriage?” I inquired.
“Well—yes, she was. She thought I was too young. You see I’m not nineteen yet, though people think I’m older,” she confessed with a charming little moue. “Stanley is an awfully good boy, and I love him so very much.”
“Naturally, and I hope you always will,” I said. “Of course, I’m older than you, but our position here today is really a bit unconventional, isn’t it?”
“It is,” she laughed, “I wonder how you like being bothered with a temporary bride?”
“I’m not bothered, but most charmed to have such a delightful companion as yourself, Mrs. Audley,” I declared.