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The Dark Tower

by Phyllis Bottome · English · Gutenberg #25829 · 395,235 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Dark Tower

Author: Phyllis Bottome

Illustrator: James Hamlin Gardner Soper


        
Release date: June 18, 2008 [eBook #25829]

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/25829

Credits: Produced by David Edwards, Alicia Williams, Mary Meehan
        and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
        http://www.pgdp.net


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DARK TOWER ***




Produced by David Edwards, Alicia Williams, Mary Meehan
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
http://www.pgdp.net









                             THE DARK TOWER

                           BY PHYLLIS BOTTOME

                          WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY
                           J. H. GARDNER SOPER


    NEW YORK
    THE CENTURY CO.
    1916

    Copyright, 1916, by
    THE CENTURY CO.

    Published, September, 1916




    Dauntless the slughorn to my lips I set,
    and blew "Child Roland to the dark tower came."
    --Robert Browning




    TO
    W. W. D. H.

    "God forbid that I should do this thing.

    If our time be come, let us die manfully for our brethren
    And let us not stain our honour."

    _I Maccabees, ix, 10._




[Illustration: "I shall never be dangerous for you, Miss Rivers," he
said gently]




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS


"I shall never be dangerous for you, Miss Rivers," he said gently

"You may have to take her as a daughter-in-law, though," Winn remarked
without turning round from the sideboard.

In his heart there was nothing left to which he could compare her

"I don't want a chance," whispered Claire

"You've got to live," said Winn, bending grimly over him; "You've got to
live!"




THE DARK TOWER




PART I




CHAPTER I


Winn Staines respected God, the royal family, and his regiment; but even
his respect for these three things was in many ways academic: he
respected nothing else.

His father, Admiral Sir Peter Staines, had never respected anything; he
went to church, however, because his wife didn't. They were that kind of
family.

Lady Staines had had twelve children. Seven of them died as promptly as
their constitutions allowed; the five survivors, shouted at, quarreled
over, and soundly thrashed, tore themselves through a violent childhood
into a rackety youth. They were never vicious, for they never reflected
over or considered anything that they did.

Winn got drunk occasionally, assaulted policemen frequently, and could
carry a small pony under each arm. Charles and James, who were in the
navy, followed in the footsteps of Sir Peter; that is to say, they
explored all possible accidents on sea or ashore, and sought for a fight
as if it were a mislaid crown jewel.

Dolores and Isabella had to content themselves with minor feats and to
be known merely as the terrors of the neighborhood, though ultimately
Dolores succeeded in making a handsome splash by running away with a
prize-fighting groom. She made him an excellent wife, and though Lady
Staines never mentioned her name again, it was rumored that Sir Peter
met her surreptitiously at Tattersall's and took her advice upon his
horses.

Isabella, shocked and outraged by this sisterly mischance, married, in
the face of all probability, a reluctant curate. He subsided into a
family living given to him by Sir Peter, and tried to die of
consumption.

Isabella took entire control of the parish, which she ruled as if it
were a quarter-deck. She did not use her father's language, but she
inherited his voice. It rang over boys' clubs and into mothers'
meetings with the penetration and volume of a megaphone.

Lady Staines heartily disliked both her daughters, and she appeared not
to care very deeply for her sons, but of the three she had a decided
preference for Winn. Winn had a wicked temper, an unshakable nerve, and
had inherited the strength of Sir Peter's muscles and the sledge-hammer
weight of Lady Staines's wit. He had been expelled from his private
school for unparalleled insolence to the head master; a repetition of
his summing up of that gentleman's life and conduct delighted his
mother, though she assisted Sir Peter in thrashing him for the result.

It may have contributed to his mother's affection for him that Winn had
left England at nineteen, and had reached thirty-five with only two
small intervals at home.

His first leave had kept them all busy with what the Staines considered
a wholly unprovoked lawsuit; a man whom Winn had most unfortunately felt
it his duty to fling from a bus into the street, having the weak-minded
debility to break his leg had the further audacity to claim enormous
damages. The Staines fought the case _en bloc_ with splendid zeal, and
fiery eloquence. It would probably have resulted better for their
interests if they had not defied their own counsel, outraged the
respectable minds of the jury, and insulted the learned judge. Under
these circumstances they lost their case, and the rest of Winn's leave
was taken up in the Family's congenial pursuit of laying the blame on
each other.

The second and more fatal visit heralded Winn's marriage. He had not had
time to marry before. It would not be true to say that women had played
no part in his experiences, but the part they had played was neither
exalted nor durable. They figured in his imagination as an inferior type
of game, tiresome when captured. His life had been spent mainly in
pursuit of larger objects. He had been sent straight from Sandhurst to
South Africa, where he had fought with violence and satisfaction for two
years, winning the D. S. O., a broken nose, and a cut across the face.
When the fighting was over, he obtained leave for a two-years' exploring
expedition into the heart of West Africa. Ten men had gone on this
expedition, and two survived. Winn never talked of these experiences,
but he once admitted to a friend that the early study of his sisters'
characters had saved him in many awkward moments. He had known how to
appeal to female savages with the unerring touch of experience.

From West Africa he was called to the Indian frontier, where he put in
seven years in variegated and extremely useful service. He received his
majority early, and disappeared for two years into Tibet, Manchuria, and
China. After that he came back to England for polo, and met Estelle
Fanshawe. She was lovely, gentle, intensely vain, and not very truthful.

Lady Staines disposed of her at once as "a mincing ninny." The phrase
aggravated Winn, and his fancy deepened. It was stimulated by the fact
that Estelle was the belle of the neighborhood and had a large supply of
ardent admirers. It was almost like running a race with the odds against
you. Winn was not a conceited man, and perhaps he thought the odds more
against him than they actually were. He was the second son of a man who
was immensely rich, (though Sir Peter was reported stingy to his
children). Everybody knew who the Staines were, while the Fanshawes
after every effort and with nearly every attraction had not become a
part of public knowledge. Besides, Estelle had been made love to for
some time, and Winn's way was undeniably different from that of her
other admirers.

He met her at a dance, and insisted upon dancing with her the whole
evening. He took her card away from her, and scored off all her
indignant partners. In the interval of these decisive actions he made
love to her in a steady, definite way that was difficult to laugh at and
impossible to turn aside.

When he said good-night to her he told her that he would probably come
and see her soon. She went away in a flutter, for his words, though
casual, had had a sharply significant sound; besides, he had very nearly
kissed her; if she had been more truthful, she would have said quite.

She didn't, in thinking it over, know at all how this had happened, and
she generally knew precisely how these things happened.

Lady Staines told her son at breakfast a few mornings later what she
thought of Miss Fanshawe.

"She's a girl," she observed, knocking the top off her egg, "who will
develop into a nervous invalid or an advanced coquette, and it entirely
depends upon how much admiration she gets which she does. I hear she's
religious, too, in a silly, egotistical way. She ought to have her neck
wrung."

Sir Peter disagreed; they heard him in the servants' hall.

"Certainly not!" he roared; "certainly not! I don't think so at all! The
girl's a damned pretty piece, and the man's one of my best tenants. He's
only just come, and he's done wonders to the place already. And I won't
have the boy crabbed for fancying a neighbor! It's very natural he
should. You never have a woman in the house fit to look at. Who the
devil do you expect your boys to marry? Negresses or bar-maids?"

"Gentlewomen," said Lady Staines, firmly, "unless their father's
behavior prevents them from being accepted."

Winn said nothing. He got up and began cutting ham at the sideboard. His
mother hesitated a moment; but as she had only roused one of her men,
she made a further effort in the direction of the other.

"The girl's a mean-spirited little liar," she observed. "I wouldn't take
her as a housemaid."

"You may have to take her as a daughter-in-law, though," Winn remarked
without turning round from the sideboard.

[Illustration: "You may have to take her as a daughter-in-law, though,"
Winn remarked without turning round from the sideboard]

Sir Peter grunted. He didn't like this at all, but he couldn't very well
say so without appearing to agree with his wife, a thing he had
carefully avoided doing for thirty years.

Lady Staines rose and gathered up her letters.

"You're of age," she said to her son, "and you've had about as much
experience of civilized women as a European baby has of crocodiles, and
you'll be just about as safe and clever with them. As for you, Peter,
pray don't trouble to tell me what you think of the Fanshawes in a
year's time. You've never had a tenant you haven't had a lawsuit with
yet, and this time you'll be adding Winn's divorce proceedings to your
other troubles. I should think you might begin to save toward the
damages now."

Sir Peter's oaths accompanied his wife across the dining-room to the
door, which her son opened ceremoniously for her. Their eyes crossed
like swords.

"If I get that girl, you'll be nice to her," Winn said in a low voice.

"As long as you are," replied Lady Staines, with a grim smile. He did
not bang the door after her, as she had hoped; instead, he went to see
the girl.




CHAPTER II


It was eleven o'clock when Winn arrived at the Fanshawes. Estelle was
barely dressed, she always slept late, had her breakfast in bed, and
gave as much trouble as possible to the servants.

However, when she heard who had called to see her, she sent for a basket
and some roses, and five minutes later strolled into the drawing-room,
with her hat on, and the flowers in her hands.

Her mother stayed in the garden and nervously thought out the lunch.

Winn seized the basket out of Estelle's hands, took her by the wrists,
and drew her to the window.

She wasn't frightened of him, but she pretended to be. She said, "Oh,
Major Staines!" She looked as soft and innocent as a cream-fed kitten.
Winn cleared his throat. It made him feel rather religious to look at
her. He did not of course see her as a kitten; he saw her approximately
as an angel.

"Look here," he said, "my name's Winn."

"You're hurting my wrists," she murmured. He dropped them. "Winn," she
said under her breath.

"I say," he said after a moment's pause, "would you mind marrying me?"

Estelle lifted her fine China blue eyes to his. They weren't soft, but
they could sometimes look very mysterious.

"Oh," she said, "but, Winn--it's so sudden--so soon!"

"Leave's short," Winn explained, "and besides, I knew the moment I
looked at you, I wanted you. I don't know how you feel, of course;
but--well--I'm sure you aren't the kind of girl to let a fellow kiss
you, are you, and mean nothing?"

Estelle's long lashes swept her cheeks; she behaved exquisitely. She
was, of course, exactly that kind of girl.

"Ah," she said, with a little tremble in her voice, "if I do marry
you--will you be kind to me?"

Winn trembled, too; he flushed very red, and suddenly he did the
funniest, most unlikely thing in the world: he got down on his knees
beside her, and taking both her hands in his, he kissed them.

"I'll be like this as much as ever you'll let me," he said gravely.

He had a great craving for sweetness, delicacy, and gentleness; he began
to tell her in little short, abrupt sentences how unworthy he was of
her, not fit to touch her really--he was afraid he'd been horribly
rough--and done lots of things she would have hated (he forgot to
mention that he'd ever done anything worth doing as well); he explained
that he didn't know any women a bit like her; there weren't any, of
course, _really_ like--but she knew what he meant. So that he expected
she'd have to teach him a lot--would she--if she didn't mind, and
overlook his being stupid?

Estelle listened thoughtfully for a few minutes, then she asked him if
he didn't think eight bridesmaids would be better than four?

He got up from his knees then.

He didn't like discussing the wedding, and he got bored very soon and
went away, so that Mrs. Fanshawe didn't need to have the special lunch
she had ordered, after all.

They were to have a very short engagement, and Estelle decided on four
bridesmaids and four pages; she was so small herself that children would
look prettier and more innocent.

There was something particularly charming about a young wedding, and
they were to have a celebration first--Estelle was most particular about
that--and a wedding breakfast afterwards of course. Winn was
extraordinarily kind to her; he let her settle everything she liked and
gave her exactly the ring she wanted--an immense emerald set with
diamonds. He wasn't in the least particular about where they spent the
honeymoon, after making a very silly suggestion, which Estelle promptly
over-ruled, that they might go to the East Coast and make a study of
fortifications.

He agreed that London would do just as well, with theaters, and he could
look up a man he knew at the War Office. Certainly they should go to the
Ritz if Estelle liked it; but it was rather noisy.

The one point he did make was to have a young officer he liked, who had
been with him in China, Lionel Drummond, as his best man, instead of
his cousin Lord Arlington. His brothers were out of the question, as he
couldn't have one without having a row with the other. Estelle wanted
Lord Arlington, but when she pressed the point, Winn gave her a most
extraordinary sharp look and said, "I thought I told you I wanted that
boy Drummond?" It was a most peculiar and disconcerting look, well known
in the Staines family. Trouble usually followed very quickly upon its
heels. Estelle shivered and gave in and was rewarded by a diamond
brooch.

This showed her how important shivering was going to be in her married
life.

The only really disagreeable time Estelle had during her engagement was
the short half hour in which Lady Staines fulfilled her maternal duties.

It was a rainy day and Lady Staines had walked two miles across the
fields in what looked like a cricket cap, and a waterproof.

She cleaned her boots as carefully as she could in the hall. They were
square-toed and hob-nailed and most unsuitable for a drawing-room.

Mrs. Fanshawe literally quailed before them. "You shouldn't have parquet
floors," Lady Staines remarked, holding out her hand; "in the country,
it's the ruin of them unless you wear paper soles," she glanced
searchingly at Mrs. Fanshawe's and Estelle's feet. "And that of course
is the ruin of your feet. Probably you've lived in London all your
lives?"

Mrs. Fanshawe found herself in the position of apologizing for what had
hitherto been her proudest boast. Lady Staines looked tolerantly around
her. "London's a poor place," she observed, "and very shoddy. When my
friends the Malverns lived here, they had old oak and rather nice
chintzes. I see you go in for color schemes and nicknacks. I hope
Estelle won't find Staines uncomfortable; however, she probably won't be
with us often."

She turned to her future daughter-in-law. "You are Estelle, my dear,
ain't you?" she demanded. "And I dare say you can't speak a word of
French in spite of your fine name. Can you?"

Estelle hesitated and blushed. "Not very much, I'm afraid," she
truthfully murmured. It flashed through her mind that with Lady Staines
you must be truthful if there was any possible chance of your being
found out.

"Hum!" said Lady Staines thoughtfully. "I can't see what people spend so
much on education for nowadays. I really can't! And you're going to
marry my second son, ain't you?" she demanded. "Well, I'm sure it's very
kind of you. All the Staines have tempers, but Winn's is quite the
worst. I don't want to exaggerate, but I really don't think you could
match it in this world. He generally keeps it, too! He was a nasty,
murderous, little boy. I assure you I've often beaten him till he was
black and blue and never got a word out of him."

Mrs. Fanshawe looked horrified. "But my dear Lady Staines," she urged,
"surely you tried kindness?"

Lady Staines shook her head. "No," she said, "I don't think so, I don't
think I am kind--very. But he's turned out well, don't you think? He's
the only one of my sons who's got honors--a 'D.S.O.' for South Africa,
and a C.B. for something or other, I never know what, in China; and he
got his Majority extraordinarily young for special services--or he
wouldn't have been able to marry you, my dear, for his father won't help
him. He doesn't get drunk as often as the other two boys, either; in
fact, on the whole, I should call him satisfactory. And now he's chosen
you, and I'm sure we're all very grateful to you for taking him in
hand."

Mrs. Fanshawe offered her visitor tea; she was profoundly shocked, but
she thought that tea would help. Lady Staines refused it. "No, thank you
very much," she said. "I must be getting back to give Sir Peter his. I
shall be late as it is, and I shall probably hear him swearing all down
the drive. We shall all be seeing more than enough of each other before
long. But there's no use making a fuss about it, is there? We're a most
disagreeable family, and I'm sure it'll be worse for you than for us."

Estelle accompanied her future mother-in-law to the door. She had not
been as much shocked as her mother.

Lady Staines laid her small neat hand on the girl's arm. She looked at
her very hard, but there was a spark of some kind, behind the hardness;
if the eyes hadn't been those of Lady Staines, they might almost have
been said to plead.

"I wonder if you like him?" she said slowly.

Estelle said, "Oh, dear Lady Staines, believe me--with all my heart!"

Lady Staines didn't believe her, but she smiled good-humoredly. "Yes,
yes, my dear, I know!" she said. "But how much heart have you got? You
see his happiness and yours depend on that. The woman who marries a
Staines ought to have a good deal of heart and all of it ought to be
his."

Estelle put on an air of pretty dignity. "I have never loved any one
before," she asserted with serene untruthfulness (she felt sure this
fact couldn't be proved against her), "and Winn believes in my heart."

"Does he?" said his mother. "I wonder. He believes in your pretty face!
Well, it is pretty, I acknowledge that. Keep it as pretty as you can."

She didn't kiss her future daughter-in-law, but she tapped her lightly
on the shoulder and trudged back with head erect through the rain.

"It's a bad business," she said to herself thoughtfully. "He's rushed
his fence and there's a ditch on the other side of it, deep enough to
drown him!"




CHAPTER III


Winn wanted, if possible, a home without rows. He knew very little of
homes, and nothing which had made him suppose this ideal likely to be
realized.

Still he went on having it, hiding it, and hoping for it.

Once he had come across it. It was the time when he had decided to
undertake a mission to Tibet without a government mandate. He wanted
young Drummond to go with him. The job was an awkward and dangerous one.
Certain authorities had warned Winn that though, if the results were
satisfactory, it would certainly be counted in his favor, should
anything go wrong no help could be sent to him, and he would be held
personally responsible; that is he would be held responsible if he were
not dead, which was the most likely outcome of the whole business.

It is easy to test a man on the Indian frontier, and Winn had had his
eye on Lionel Drummond for two years. He was a cool-headed, reliable
boy, and in some occult and wholly unexpressed way Winn was conscious
that he was strongly drawn to him. Winn offered him the job, and even
consented, when he was on leave, to visit the Drummonds and talk the
matter over with the boy's parents. It was then that he discovered that
people really could have a quiet home.

Mrs. Drummond was a woman of a great deal of character, very great
gentleness, and equal courage. She neither cried nor made fusses, and no
one could even have imagined her making a noise.

It was she who virtually settled, after a private talk with Winn, that
Lionel might accompany him. The extraordinary thing that Mrs. Drummond
said to Winn was, "You see, I feel quite sure that you'll look after
Lionel, whatever happens."

Winn had replied coldly, "I should never dream of taking a man who
couldn't look after himself."

Mrs. Drummond said nothing. She just smiled at Winn as if he had agreed
that he would look after Lionel. General Drummond was non-committal. He
knew the boy would get on without the mission, but he also seemed to be
influenced by some absurd idea that Winn was to be indefinitely trusted,
so that he would say nothing to stop them. Lionel himself was wild with
delight, and the whole affair was managed without suspicion, resentment,
or hostility.

The expedition was quite as hard as the authorities had intimated, and
at one point it very nearly proved fatal. A bad attack of dysentery and
snow blindness brought Lionel down at a very inconvenient spot, crossing
the mountains of Tibet during a blizzard. The rest of the party said
with some truth that they must go forward or perish. Winn sent them on
to the next settlement, keeping back a few stores and plenty of
cartridges. He said that he would rejoin them with Drummond when
Drummond was better, and if he did not arrive before a certain date they
were to push on without him.

They were alone together for six weeks, and during these six weeks Winn
discovered that he was quite a new kind of person; for one thing he
developed into a first-rate nurse, and he could be just like a mother,
and say the silliest, gentlest things. No one was there to see or hear
him, and the boy was so ill that he wouldn't be likely to remember
afterwards. He did remember, however, he remembered all his life. The
stores ran out and they were dependent on Winn's rifle for food. They
melted snow water to drink, and there were days when their chances
looked practically invisible.

Somehow or other they got out of it, the boy grew better, the weather
improved, and Winn managed, though the exact means were never specified,
to drag Lionel on a sledge to the nearest settlement, where the rest of
the party were still awaiting them.

After that the expedition was successful and the friendship between the
two men final. Winn didn't like to think what Mrs. Drummond would say to
him when they got back to England, but she let him down quite easily;
she gave him no thanks, she only looked at him with Lionel's steady eyes
and said, smiling a little, "I always knew you'd bring him back to me."

Winn did not ask Lionel to stay at Staines Court until the wedding. None
of the Staines went in much for making friends, and he didn't want his
mother to see that he was fond of any one.

The night before the wedding, however, Lionel arrived in the midst of an
altercation as to who had ordered the motor to meet the wrong train.

This lasted a long time because all the Staines, except Dolores, were
gathered together, and it expanded unexpectedly into an attack on
Charles, the eldest son, whose name had been coupled with that of a lady
whose professional aptitudes were described as those of a manicurist.
There was a moment when murder of a particularly atrocious and
internecine character seemed the only possible outcome to the
discussion--then Charles in a white fury found the door.

Before he had gone out of earshot Sir Peter asked Lionel what his father
would do if presented with a possible daughter-in-law so markedly frail?
Sir Peter seemed to be laboring under the delusion that he had been
weakly favorable to his son's inclinations, and that any other father
would have expressed himself more forcibly. Lionel was saved from the
awkwardness of disagreeing with him by an unexpected remark from Lady
Staines.

"A girl from some kind of a chemist's shop," she observed musingly. "I
fancy she's too good for Charles."

Sir Peter, who was fond of Charles, said the girl was probably not from
a chemist's shop; and described to the horror of the butler, who had
entered to prepare the tea-table, just what kind of a place she probably
was from.

Lady Staines looked at Winn, and said she didn't see that it was much
worse to marry a manicure girl than one who looked like a manequin. They
were neither of them types likely to do credit to the family. Winn
replied that, as far as that went, bad clothes and good morals did not
always go together. He was prepared apparently with an apt illustration,
when Isabella's husband, the Rev. Mr. Betchley, asked feebly if he might
go up-stairs to rest.

It was quite obvious to everybody that he needed it.

The next morning at breakfast the manicure girl was again discussed,
but in a veiled way so as not really to upset Charles before the
wedding.

Winn escaped immediately afterwards with Lionel. They went for a walk,
most of which was conducted in silence; finally, however, they found a
log, took out their pipes, and made themselves comfortable.

Lionel said, "I wish I'd seen Miss Fanshawe; it must be awfully jolly
for you, Winn."

Winn was silent for a minute or two, then he began, slowly gathering
impetus as he went on: "Well--yes, of course, in a sense it is. I mean,
I know I'm awfully lucky and all that, only--you see, old chap, I'm
frightfully ignorant of women. I know one sort of course--a jolly sight
better than you do--but girls! Hang it all, I don't know girls. That's
what worries me--she's such a little thing." He paused a moment. "I hope
it's all right," he said, "marrying her. It seems pretty rough on them
sometimes, I think--don't you--I fancy she's delicate and all that."
Lionel nodded. "It does seem rather beastly," he admitted, "their having
to have a hard time, I mean--but if they care for you--I suppose it
works out all right." Winn paid no attention to this fruitless optimism.
He went on with his study of Estelle. "She's--she's religious too, you
know, that's why we're to have that other service first. Rather nice
idea, I think, don't you, what? Makes it a bit of a strain for her
though I'm afraid, but she'd never think of that. I'm sure she's
plucky." Lionel also was quite sure Estelle must be plucky.

"Fancy you getting married," Lionel said suddenly. "I can't see it
somehow."

"I feel it funny myself," Winn admitted. "You see, it's so damned long,
and I never have seen much of women. I hope she won't expect me to talk
a lot or anything of that kind. Her people, you know, chatter like so
many magpies--just oozes out of 'em."

"We must be off," Lionel said.

They stood up, knocked the ashes out of their pipes, and prepared to
walk on.

It was a mild June day, small vague hills stretched behind them, and
before them soft, lawn-like fields fell away to the river's edge.

Everywhere the green of trees in a hundred tones of color and with
delicate, innumerable leaf shadows, laid upon the landscape, the
fragrance and lightness of the spring.

They were in a temperate land, every yard of it was cultivated and
civilized, immensely lived on and understood. None of it had been
neglected or was dangerous or strange to the eye of man.

Simultaneously the thought flashed between them of other lands and of
sharper vicissitudes; they saw again bleak passes which were cruel death
traps, and above them untrodden alien heights; they felt the solemn
vastness of the interminable, flawless snows. They kept their eyes away
from each other--but they knew what each other was feeling, adventure
and danger were calling to them--the old sting and thrill of an unending
trail; and then from a little hollow in the guarded hills rang out the
wedding bells.

Lionel looked a little shyly at his chief. "I wonder," he said, as Winn
made no response, "if we can ever do things--things together again, I
mean--I should like to think we could." Winn gave him a quick look and
moved hastily ahead over the field path toward the church. "Why the
devil shouldn't we?" he threw back at Lionel over his shoulder.




CHAPTER IV


Estelle's wedding was a great success, but this was not surprising when
one realized how many years had been spent in preparation for it.
Estelle was only twenty-three, but for the last ten years she had known
that she would marry, and she had thought out every detail of the
ceremony except the bridegroom. You could have any kind of a
bridegroom--men were essentially imperfect--but you need have only one
kind of ceremony, and that could be ideal.

Estelle had visualized everything from the last pot of lilies--always
Annunciation ones, not Arum, which look pagan--at the altar to the red
cloth at the door. There were to be rose-leaves instead of rice; the
wedding was to be in June, with a tent in the garden and strawberries.

If possible, she would be married by a bishop; if not, by a dean. The
bishop having proved too remote, the dean had to do. But he was a
fine-looking man, and would be made a bishop soon, so Estelle did not
really mind. The great thing was to have gaiters on the lawn afterward.

The day was perfect. Estelle woke at her usual hour in the morning, her
heart was beating a little faster than it generally did, and then she
remembered with a pang of joy the perfect fit of her wedding-gown
hanging in the wardrobe. She murmured to herself:

"One love, one life." She was not thinking of Winn, but she had always
meant to say that on her wedding morning.

Then she had early tea. Her mother came in and kissed her, and Estelle
implored her not to fuss, and above all not to get red in the face
before going to church, where she was to wear a mauve hat.

It was difficult for Mrs. Fanshawe not to fuss, Estelle was the most
expensive of her children and in a way the most important; for if she
wasn't pleased it was always so dreadful. There were half a dozen
younger children and any of them might do something tiresome.

Estelle arrived at the church five minutes late, on her father's arm,
followed by four little bridesmaids in pink and white, and four little
pages in blue and white. The effect was charming.

The village church was comfortably full, and with her eyes modestly cast
down Estelle managed to see that all the right people were there,
including the clergyman's daughters, whom she had always hated.

The Fanshawes and her mother's relations the Arnots had come down from
town. They all looked very prosperous people with good dressmakers and
tailors, and most of them had given her handsome silver wedding presents
or checks.

They were on one side of the church just as Estelle had always pictured
them, and on the other were the Staines and their relations. The Staines
had very few friends, and those they had were hard riding, hunting
people, who never look their best in satin. There was no doubt that the
Staines sitting in the front seat were a blot on the whole affair.

You couldn't tell everybody that they were a county family, and they
didn't look like it. They were too large and coarse, and took up far
too much room. There they sat, six big creatures in one pew, all
restless, all with big chins, hard eyes, jutting eyebrows, and a
dreadful look as if they were buccaneering. As a matter of fact they all
felt rather timid and flat, and meant to behave beautifully, though Sir
Peter needn't have blown his nose like a trumpet and stamped
simultaneously just as Estelle entered.

At the top of the aisle Winn waited for his bride; and his boots were
dusty. Standing behind him was the handsomest man that Estelle had ever
seen; and not only that, but the very kind of man she had always wished
to see. It made Estelle feel for a moment like a good housekeeper, who
has not been told that a distinguished guest was coming to dinner. If
she had known, she would have ordered something different. She felt in a
flash that he was the kind of bridegroom who would have suited the
ceremony.

He was several inches taller than Winn, slim, with a small athletic head
and perfectly cut Greek features; his face would have been a shade too
regular and too handsome if he had not had the very same hard-bitten
look in his young gray eyes that Winn had in his bright, hawk-like
brown ones. Lionel was looking at Estelle as she came up the aisle in a
tender, protective, admiring way, as if she were a very beautiful
flower. This was most satisfactory, but at least Winn might have done
the same. Instead of looking as if he were waiting for his bride, he
looked exactly as if he were holding a narrow pass against an enemy. His
very figure had a peculiarly stern and rock-like expression. His broad
shoulders were set, his rather heavy head erect, and when he did look at
Estelle, it was an inconceivably sharp look as if he were trying to see
through her.

She didn't know, of course, that on his way to church he had thought
every little white cloud in the blue sky was like her, and every lily in
a cottage garden. There was a drop of sardonic blood in him, that made
him challenge her even at the moment of achieved surrender.

"By Jove," he thought to himself, "can she be as beautiful as she
looks?"

Then the service began, and they had the celebration first, and
afterward the usual ceremony, perfectly conducted, and including the
rather over-exercised "Voice that Breathed o'er Eden." The dean gave
them an excellent, short and evasive address about their married duties,
a great deal nicer than anything in the Prayer Book, and the March from
Lohengrin took them to the vestry. In the vestry Winn began to be
tiresome. The vicar said:

"Kiss the bride," and Winn replied:

"No, thanks; not at present," looking like a stone wall, and sticking
his hands in his pockets. The vicar, who had known him from a boy, did
not press the point; but of course the dean looked surprised. Any dean
would.

The reception afterwards would have been perfect but for the Staines,
who tramped through everything. Estelle perpetually saw them bursting
into places where they weren't wanted, and shouting remarks which
sounded abusive but were meant to be cordial to cowering Fanshawes and
Arnots. It was really not necessary for Sir Peter to say in the middle
of the lawn that what Mr. Fanshawe wanted was more manure.

It seemed to Estelle that wherever she went she heard Sir Peter's
resonant voice talking about manure.

Lady Staines was much quieter; still she needn't have remarked to
Estelle's mother, "Well--I'm glad to see you have seven children, _that_
looks promising at any rate." It made two unmarried ladies of uncertain
age walk into a flower-bed.

Winn behaved abominably. He took the youngest Fanshawe child and
disappeared with him into the stable yard.

Even Charles and James behaved better than that. They hurled well-chosen
incomprehensible jokes at the clergyman's daughters--dreadful girls who
played hockey and had known the Staines all their lives--and these
ladies returned their missiles with interest.

It caused a good deal of noise, but it sounded hearty.

Isabella, being a clergyman's wife, talked to the Dean, who soon looked
more astonished than ever.

At last it was all comfortably over. Estelle, leaning on her father's
arm in pale blue, kissed her mother. Mrs. Fanshawe looked at the end
rather tactlessly cheerful. (She had cried throughout the ceremony,
just when she had worn the mauve hat and Estelle had hoped she
wouldn't.)

Mr. Fanshawe behaved much more suitably; he said to Winn with a
trembling voice, "Take care of my little girl," and Winn, who might have
said something graceful in reply, merely shook his father-in-law's hand
with such force that Mr. Fanshawe, red with pain, hastily retreated.

Lionel Drummond was charming and much appreciated everywhere; he
retrieved Winn from the stable yard when no one could guess where he
was, and was the first person to call Estelle, Mrs. Staines; he wound up
the affair with a white satin slipper.

When they drove off, Estelle turned toward Winn with shining eyes and
quivering lips. It was the moment for a judicious amount of love-making,
and all Winn said was:

"Look here, you know, those high-heeled things on your feet are
absolutely murderous. They might give you a bad tumble. Don't let me see
you in 'em again. Are you sure you're quite comfortable, and all that?"

He made the same absurd fuss about Estelle's comfort in the railway
carriage; but it was one of the last occasions on which he did it,
because he discovered almost immediately that however many things you
could think of for Estelle's comfort, she could think of more for
herself, and no matter how much care or attention was lavished upon her,
it could never quite equal her unerring instinct for her own
requirements.

After this he was prepared to be ardent, but Estelle didn't care for
ardor in a railway train, so she soon stopped it. One of the funny
things she discovered about Winn was that it was the easiest possible
thing to stop his ardor, and this was really odd, because it was not
from lack of strength in his emotion. She never quite discovered what it
did come from, because it didn't occur to her that Winn would very much
rather have died than offend or tire the woman he loved.

She thought that Winn was rather coarse, but he wasn't as coarse as
that!

Estelle had a great deal that she wanted to talk over about the wedding.
The whole occasion flamed out at her--a perfect project, perfectly
carried out. She explained to Winn at length who everybody was and how
there had been some people there who had had to be taken down, and
others who had had to be pushed forward, and her mother explained to,
and her father checked, and the children (it was too dreadful how they'd
let Bobby run after Winn), kept as much out of the way as possible.

Winn listened hard and tried to follow intelligently all the family
histories she evolved for him. At last after a rather prolonged pause on
his part, just at a point when he should have expressed admiration of
her guidance of a delicate affair, Estelle glanced at him and discovered
that he was asleep! They hadn't been married for three hours, and he
could go to sleep in the middle of their first real talk! She was sure
Lionel Drummond wouldn't have done any such thing. But Winn was old--he
was thirty-five--and she could see quite plainly now that the hair round
the tops of his ears was gray. She looked at him scornfully, but he
didn't wake up.

When he woke up he laughed.

"By Jove!" he exclaimed, "I believe I've been to sleep!" but he didn't
apologize. He began instead to tell her some things that might interest
her, about what Drummond, his best man, and he, had done in Manchuria,
just as if nothing had happened; but naturally Estelle wouldn't be
interested. She was first polite, then bored, then captious. Winn looked
at her rather hard. "Are you trying to pay me back for falling asleep?"
he asked with a queer little laugh. "Is that what you're up to?" Estelle
stiffened.

"Certainly not," she said. "I simply wasn't very interested. I don't
think I like Chinese stories, and Manchuria is just the same, of
course."

Winn leaned over her, with a wicked light in his eyes, like a naughty
school boy. "Own up!" he said, laying his rough hand very gently on her
shoulder. "Own up, old lady!"

But has anybody ever owned up when they were being spiteful?

Estelle didn't. She looked at Winn's hand till he withdrew it, and then
she remarked that she was feeling faint from want of food.

After she had had seven chicken sandwiches, pate de foie gras, half a
melon, and some champagne, she began to be agreeable.

Winn was delighted at this change in her and quite inclined to think
that their little "breeze" had been entirely due to his own awkwardness.
Still, he wished she had owned up.




CHAPTER V


It took Winn a month to realize that he had paid his money, had his shy,
and knocked down an empty cocoanut.

He couldn't get his money back, and he must spend the rest of his life
carrying the cocoanut about with him.

It never occurred to him to shirk the institution of marriage. The
church, the law, and the army stood in his mind for good, indelible
things. Estelle was his wife as much as his handkerchief was his
handkerchief. This meant that they were to be faithful to each other, go
out to dinner together, and that he was to pay her bills. He knew the
great thing in any tight corner was never under any circumstances to let
go. All the dangers he had ever been in, had yielded, only because he
hadn't.

It was true he had not been married before, but the same rule no doubt
held good of marriage. If he held on to it, something more bearable
would come of it. Then one could be out of the house a good deal, and
there was the regiment. He began to see his way through marriage as a
man sees his way through a gap in an awkward fence. The unfortunate part
of it was that he couldn't get through the gap unless Estelle shared his
insight.

He would have liked to put it to her, but he didn't know how; he never
had had a great gift of expression, and something had brought him up
very short in his communications with his wife.

It was so slight a thing that Estelle herself had forgotten all about
it, but to a Staines it was absolutely final. She had told the gardener
that Winn wanted hyacinths planted in the front bed. Winn hadn't wanted
a garden at all, and he had let her have her way in everything else; but
he had said quite plainly that he wouldn't on any account have
hyacinths. The expression he used about them was excessively coarse, and
it certainly should have remained in Estelle's memory. He had said, that
the bally things stank. Nevertheless, Estelle had told the gardener
that the master wanted hyacinths, and the gardener had told Winn. Winn
gazed at the gardener in a way which made him wish that he had never
been a gardener, but had taken up any other profession in which he was
unlikely to meet a glance so "nasty." Then Winn said quietly:

"You are perfectly sure, Parsons, that Mrs. Staines told you it was _my_
wish to have the hyacinths?" And the gardener had said:

"Yes, sir. She _did_ say, sir, as 'ow you 'ad a particler fancy for
them." And Winn had gone into the house and asked Estelle what the devil
she meant? Estelle immediately denied the hyacinths and the gardener.
People like that, she said, always misunderstand what one said to them.

"Very well, then," Winn replied. "He has lied to me, and must go. I'll
dismiss him at once. He told me distinctly that you had said I liked
them."

Estelle fidgeted. She didn't want the gardener to go. She really
couldn't remember what she'd said and what she hadn't said to him. And
Winn was absurd, and how could it matter, and the people next door had
hyacinths, and they'd always had them at home!

Winn listened in silence. He didn't say anything more about the gardener
having lied, and he didn't countermand the hyacinths; only from that
moment he ceased to believe a single word his wife said to him. This is
discouraging to conversation and was very unfair to Estelle; for she
might have told the truth more often if she had not discovered that it
made no difference to her husband whether she told it to him or not.

Estelle knew that her heart was broken, but on the whole she did not
find that she was greatly inconvenienced.

In an unhappy marriage the woman generally scores unless she is in love
with her husband. Estelle never had been in love with Winn; she had had
an agreeable feeling about him, and now she had a disagreeable feeling
about him, but neither of these emotions could be compared with
beaten-brass hot-water jugs, which she had always meant to have when she
was married.

If Winn had remained deeply in love with her, besides making things more
comfortable at meals it would have been a feather in her cap. Still his
cruelty could be turned into another almost more becoming feather.

She said to herself and a little later to the nearest clergyman, "I must
make an offering of my sorrow." She offered it a good deal, almost to
every person she met. Even the cook was aware of it; but, like all
servants, she unhesitatingly sided with the master. He might be in the
wrong, but he was seldom if ever in the kitchen.

They had to have a house and servants, because Estelle felt that
marriage without a house was hardly legal; and Winn had given way about
it, as he was apt to do about things Estelle wanted. His very cruelty
made him particularly generous about money.

But Estelle was never for a moment taken in by his generosity; she saw
that it was his way of getting out of being in love with her. Winn was a
bad man and had ruined her life--this forced her to supplement her
trousseau.

Later on when he put down one of his hunters and sold a polo pony so
that she could have a maid, she began to wonder if she had at all found
out how bad he really was?

There was one point he never yielded; he firmly intended to rejoin his
regiment in March.

The station to which they would have to go was five thousand feet up,
lonely, healthy, and quite unfashionable. Winn had tried to make it seem
jolly to her and had mentioned as a recommendation apparently that it
was the kind of place in which you needn't wear gloves. It was close to
the border, and women had to be a little careful where they rode.

Estelle had every intention of being careful; she would, she thought, be
too careful ever to go to the Indian frontier at all. She had often
heard of the tragic separations of Anglo-Indian marriages; it was true
that they were generally caused by illness and children, but there must
be other methods of obtaining the same immunities.

She had never had any difficulty with the doctor at home; she relied on
him entirely, and he had invariably ordered her what she wanted, after a
nice quiet talk.

Travers, the regimental doctor, was different, he looked exactly like a
vet, and only understood things you had actually broken. Still Estelle
put her trust in Providence; no self-respecting higher Power could wish
a woman of her type to be wasted on a hill station. Something would
happen to help her, and if not, she would be given grace to help
herself.

One day Winn came down to breakfast with a particularly disagreeable
expression. He said "good-morning" into his newspaper as usual without
noticing her pathetic little smile.

He only unburied himself to take his second cup of coffee, then he said,
without looking at her,

"It's a beastly nuisance, the War Office want me to extend my
leave--hanged if I do."

Estelle thanked Heaven in a flash and passed him the marmalade. She had
never dreamed the War Office could be so efficient.

"That shows," she said gracefully, "what they think of you!"

Winn turned his sardonic eyes towards her. "Thanks," he drawled, "I dare
say it's the kind of thing you'd like. They propose that I should stay
on here at the Staff College for another year and write 'em a damned red
tape report on Tibet." His irony, dropped from him. "If it was a job,"
he said in a low voice, "I'd go like a shot."

"Mightn't it mean promotion?" she asked a little nervously. Winn
shrugged his shoulders. "I can write anything they want out there," he
said gloomily. "All I want is ink! What I know I've got in my head, you
see. I'd take that with me."

"But you couldn't talk things over with them or answer their questions,
could you?" Estelle intelligently ventured. She had an intelligence
which ripened along the line of her desires.

"I could tell them anything they want to know in ten minutes!" said Winn
impatiently. "They don't want information, they want a straight swift
kick! They know what I think--they just want me to string out a lot of
excuses for them not to act! Besides the chief thing is--they'd have to
send for me, if there was a row--I know the ground and the other chaps
don't. I wish to God there'd be a row!"

Estelle sighed and gazed pathetically out of the window. Her eyes rested
on the bed where the hyacinths were planted, and beyond it to gorse
bushes and a corrugated iron shed.

They were at Aldershot, which was really rather a good place for meeting
suitable people. "What do you intend to do?" she asked, trembling a
little. Winn was at his worst when questioned as to his intentions; he
preferred to let them explode like fire-crackers.

"Do!" he snorted, "Write and tell 'em when they've got any kind of job
on the size of six-pence I'll be in it! And if not Tibet's about as
useful to draw up a report on--as ice in the hunting season--and I'm off
in March--and that's that!"

A tear rolled down Estelle's cheek and splashed on the tablecloth; she
trembled harder until her teaspoon rattled.

Winn looked at her. "What's up?" he asked irritably. "Anything wrong?"

"I suppose," she said, prolonging a small sob, "you don't care what I
feel about going to India?"

"But you knew we were always going out in March didn't you?" he asked,
as if that had anything to do with it! The absurd face value that he
gave to facts was enough to madden any woman. Estelle sobbed harder.

"I never knew I should be so unhappy!" she moaned. Winn looked
extremely foolish and rather conscience-stricken; he even made a
movement to rise, but thought better of it.

"I'm sure I'm awfully sorry," he said apologetically. "I suppose you
mean you're a bit sick of me, don't you?" Estelle wiped her eyes, and
returned to her toast. "Can't you see," she asked bitterly, "that our
life together is the most awful tragedy?"

"Oh, come now," said Winn, who associated tragedy solely with police
courts and theaters. "It's not so bad as all that, is it? We can rub
along, you know. I dare say I've been rather a brute, but I shall be a
lot better company when I'm back in the regiment. We must buck up,
that's all! I don't like to bother you about it, but I think you'd see
things differently if we had a kid. I do really. I've seen heaps of
scratch marriages turn out jolly well--when the kids began to come!"

"How can you be so disgustingly coarse!" shuddered Estelle. "Besides,
I'm far too delicate! Not that you would care if I died! You'd just
marry again!"

"Oh, no! I shouldn't do that," said Winn in his horrid quiet way which
might mean anything. He got up and walked to the window. "You wouldn't
die," he observed with his back turned to her. "You'd be a jolly sight
stronger all the rest of your life! I asked Travers!"

"Oh!" she cried, "you don't mean to tell me that you talked me over with
that disgusting red-faced man!"

"I don't talk people over," said Winn without turning round. "He's a
doctor. I asked his opinion!"

"Well," she said, "I think it was horrible of you--and--and most
ungentlemanly. If I'd wanted to know, I'd have found out for myself. I
haven't the slightest confidence in regimental doctors."

Winn said nothing. One of the things Estelle most disliked in him was
the way in which it seemed as if he had some curious sense of delicacy
of his own. She wanted to think of Winn as a man impervious to all
refinement, born to outrage the nicer susceptibility of her own mind,
but there were moments when it seemed as if he didn't think the
susceptibilities of her mind were nice at all. He was not awed by her
purity.

He didn't say anything of course, but he let certain subjects
prematurely drop.

Suddenly he turned round from the window and fixed his eyes on hers. She
thought he was going to be very violent, but he wasn't, he talked quite
quietly, only something hard and bright in his eyes warned her to be
careful.

"Look here," he said, "I've thought of something, a kind of bargain!
I'll give in to you about this job, if you'll give in to me about the
other! It's no use fighting over things, is it?

"If you'll have a kid, I'll stay on here for a year more; if you won't,
I'll clear out in March and you'll have to come with me, for I can't
afford two establishments. I don't see what else to offer you unless you
want to go straight back to your people. You'd hardly care to go to
mine, if they'd have you.

"But if you do what I ask about the child--I'll meet you all the way
round--I swear to--you shan't forget it! Only you must ride straight. If
you play me any monkey tricks over it--you'll never set eyes on me
again; and I'm afraid you'll have to have Travers, because I trust him,
not some slippery old woman who'd let you play him like a fish! D'you
understand?"

Estelle stared aghast at this mixture of brutality and cunning. Her mind
flew round and round like a squirrel in a cage.

She could have managed beautifully if it hadn't been for Travers.
Travers would be as impervious to handling as a battery mule. She really
wouldn't be able to do anything with Travers. He looked as if he drank;
but he didn't.

Of course having a baby was simply horrid; lots of women got out of it
nowadays who were quite happily married.

It was disgusting of Winn to suggest it when he didn't even love her.

But once she had one, if she really did give way, a good deal might be
done with it.

Maternity was sacred; being a wife on the other hand was "forever
climbing up the climbing wave," there was nothing final about it as
there was in being able to say, "I am the mother of your child!"

Her wistful blue eyes expanded. She saw her own way spreading out before
her like a promised land. "I can't," she said touchingly, "decide all
this in a minute."

He could stay on for two years at the War Office, and Estelle meant him
to stay without inconvenience to herself. He tried bargaining with her;
but her idea of a bargain was one-sided.

"I sometimes feel as if you kept me out of everything," she said at
last.

Estelle was feeling her way; she thought she might collect a few extras
to add to her side of the bargain.

Apparently she was right. Winn was all eagerness to meet her. "How do
you mean?" he asked anxiously.

"Oh," she said contemplatively, "such heaps of things! One thing, I
don't expect you've ever noticed that you never ask your friends to stay
here. I've had all mine; you've never even asked your mother! It's as if
you were ashamed of me."

"I'll ask her like a shot if you like," he said eagerly. Estelle was not
anxious for a visit from Lady Staines, but she thought it sounded better
to begin with her. She let her pass.

"It's not only your relations," she went on; "it's your friends. What
must they think of a wife they are never allowed to see?"

"But they're such a bachelor crew," he objected. "It never occurred to
me you'd care for them--just ordinary soldier chaps like me, not a bit
clever or amusing."

Estelle did not say that crews of bachelors are seldom out of place in
the drawing-room of a young and pretty woman. She looked past her
husband to where in fancy she beheld the aisle of a church and the young
Adonis, who had been his best man, with eyes full of reverence and awe
gazing at her approaching figure.

"I thought," she said indifferently, "you liked that man you insisted on
having instead of Lord Arlington at the wedding?"

"I do," said Winn. "He's my best friend. I meet him sometimes in town,
you know."

"He must think it awfully funny," said Estelle, sadly, "our never having
him down here."

"He's not that sort," said Winn. "He was my sub, you know. He wouldn't
think anything funny unless I told him to. We know each other rather
well."

"That makes it funnier still," said Estelle, relentlessly.

"Oh, all right," said Winn, after a moment's pause. "Have him down here
if you like. Shall I write to him or will you?"

"He's your friend," said Estelle, politely.

"Yes," said Winn, "but it's your idea." There was a peculiar look in his
eyes, as if he wanted to warn her about something. He went to the door
and then glanced back at her, apparently hoping that she had changed her
mind.

Estelle hadn't the faintest intention of changing her mind. She had
already decided to put sweet peas in Lionel's room and a marked copy of
"The Road Mender."

"You may as well ask him yourself," said Winn, "if you really want him
to come."




CHAPTER VI


It was time, Estelle felt, that the real things of life should come back
to her. She had had them before marriage--these real things--light,
swift, contacts with chosen spirits; friendships not untinged with a
liability to become something less capable of definition. But since her
marriage she had been forced into a world of secondary experiences.
Winn, to begin with, had stood very much in the way, and when he had
ceased to block the paths of sentiment she had not found a substitute.
At Aldershot, where they lived, there was an unspoken rule that brides
should be left alone. Women called, and men were polite, but when
Estelle began those delicate personal conversations which led the way to
deeper spiritual contacts she discovered that nothing followed. She
could not say that she found the men elusive; stone walls are not
elusive, but they do not lend themselves to an easy way across country.
As to women, theoretically Estelle desired their friendship just as
much as that of men; but in practice she generally found them
unsympathetic, and incapable of the finest type of intimacy. They did
not seem to know what the word devotion meant. Men did, especially young
men, though the older ones talked more about it. Estelle had already
seen herself after marriage as a confidante to Winn's young brother
officers. She would help them as only a good woman can. (She foresaw
particularly how she would help to extricate them from the influences of
bad women. It was extraordinary how many women who influenced men at all
were bad!) Estelle never had any two opinions about being a good woman
herself. She couldn't be anything else. Good women held all the cards,
but there was no reason why they shouldn't be attractive; it was their
failure to grasp this potentiality, which gave bad women their temporary
sway.

It was really necessary in the missionary career open to young and
attractive married women, to be magnetic. Up to a certain point men must
be led on, because if they didn't care for you in the right way you
couldn't do anything with them at all. After that point, they must be
gently and firmly stopped, or else they might become tiresome, and that
would be bad both for them and for you. Especially with a husband like
Winn, who seemed incapable of grasping fine shades, and far too capable
of dealing roughly and brutally with whatever he did grasp. There had
been a dress, for instance, that he simply refused to let Estelle
wear--remarking that it was a bit too thick--though that was really the
last quality it had possessed.

The question of congenial friendship was therefore likely to be a
difficulty, but Estelle had never forgotten Lionel Drummond. When she
stopped thinking about Winn except as an annoyance, it became necessary
for her to think of somebody else, and her mind fixed itself at once
upon her husband's friend. It seemed to her that in Lionel Drummond she
would find a perfect spiritual counterpart. She dreamed of a friendship
with him too deep for mere friendliness, too late for accepted love; and
it seemed to her exactly the kind of thing she wanted. Hand in hand they
would tread the path of duty together, surrounded by a rosy mist.

They might even lead Winn to higher things; but at this point Estelle's
imagination balked. She could not see Winn being led--he was too
truculent--and he had never in his tenderest moments evinced the
slightest taste for higher things. It would be better perhaps if they
simply set him a good example. He would be certain not to follow it.

She and Lionel would have terrible moments, of course. Estelle thrilled
at the thought of these moments, and from time to time she slightly
stretched the elastic of the path of duty to meet them. They would still
keep on it, of course; they would never go any further than Petrarch and
Laura. These historic philanderers should be their limit, and when the
worst came to the worst, Estelle would softly murmur to Lionel,
"Petrarch and Laura have borne it, and we must bear it too."

She became impatient for Lionel's arrival and bought a new and
exquisitely becoming blue chiffon dress. Both she and her maid were so
struck by her appearance that when Estelle heard Winn banging about at
the last moment in his dressing room, she knocked at his door. Even the
lowest type of man can be used as a superior form of looking glass. He
shouted "Come in!" and stared at her while he fumbled at his collar
stud; then he lifted his eyebrows and said "War-paint--eh?"

"I only wanted to remind you, dear," said Estelle patiently, "that the
key of the wine cellar is in my bureau drawer."

Lionel arrived before Winn had finished dressing. Estelle greeted him
with outstretched hands. "I am so very glad to see you at last," she
said in her softest, friendliest voice. "I think it will do Winn good to
have you here."

Lionel laughed shyly.

"I shouldn't have thought," he said, "that Winn would need much more
good."

"Ah, my dear fellow!" said Winn's voice behind him, "you don't know how
great my needs are. Sorry I couldn't meet you."

Estelle's beautiful, wavering eyes rested for a moment on her husband.
She had never known a man to dress so quickly, and it seemed to her an
unnecessary quality.

The dinner was a great success. Both men were absurdly gay. Winn told
good stories, laughed at Lionel, and rallied his young wife. She had
never seen him like this before, and she put it down to the way one man
sets off another.

Estelle felt that she was being a great success, and it warmed her
heart. The two men talked for her and listened to her; she had a moment
when she thought that perhaps, after all, she needn't relegate Winn to a
lower world.

They accepted with enthusiasm her offer to sing to them after dinner and
then they kept her waiting in the drawing-room for an hour and a half.

She sat there opposite a tall Italian mirror, quivering with her power,
her beauty, her ability to charm, and with nothing before her but the
empty coffee-cups.

She played a little, she even sang a little (the house was small) to
recall them to a sense of her presence, but inexplicably they clung to
their talk. Winn who at ordinary times seemed incapable of more than
disconnected fragments of speech was (she could hear him now and then
quite distinctly) talking like a cataract; and Lionel was, if anything,
worse. Her impatience turned into suspicion. Probably Winn was poisoning
his friend's mind against her. Perhaps he was drinking too much, Sir
Peter did, and people often took after their fathers. That would have to
be another point for Lionel and her to tackle. At last they came in, and
Lionel said without any attempt at an apology:

"We should love some music, Mrs. Winn."

Winn said nothing. He stuck his hands into his pockets, and stood in
front of the fireplace in a horribly British manner while she turned
over her songs. Estelle sang rather prettily. She preferred songs of a
type that dealt with bitter regret over unexplained partings. She sang
them with a great deal of expression and a slight difficulty in letting
go of the top notes. After she had sung two or three, Lionel said:

"Now, Winn, you sing."

Estelle started. She had never before heard of this accomplishment of
her husband's. It occurred to her now that Lionel would think it very
strange she hadn't, but he need never know unless Winn gave her away.
She need not have been afraid. Winn said quietly, as if he said it to
her every evening, "D'you mind playing for me, Estelle?" Then he
dragged out from under her music a big black book in which he had
painstakingly copied and collected his selection of songs.

He had a high, clear baritone, very true and strangely impressive; it
filled the little room. When he had finished, Lionel forgot to ask
Estelle to sing again. Winn excused himself; he said he had a letter or
two to write and left them.

"It's jolly, your both singing," Lionel said, looking at her with the
same admiring friendliness he had shown her before. She guessed then
that Winn had said nothing against her. After all, at the bottom of her
heart she had known he wouldn't. You can't live with a man for five
months and not know where you are safe.

Estelle smiled prettily.

"Yes," she said gently, "music is a great bond," and then she began to
talk to Lionel about himself.

She had a theory that all men liked to talk exclusively about
themselves, and it is certain that most men enjoyed their conversation
with her; but in this particular instance she made a mistake. Lionel
did not like talking about himself, and above all he disliked
sympathetic admiration. He was not a conceited man, and it had not
occurred to him that he was a suitable subject for admiration. Nor did
he see why he should receive sympathy. He had had an admirably free and
happy life with parents who were his dearest friends, and with a friend
who was to him a hero beyond the need of definition.

Still, he wouldn't have shrunk from talking about Winn with Estelle. It
was her right to talk about him, her splendid, perfect privilege. He
supposed that she was a little shy, because she seemed to slip away from
their obvious great topic; but he wished, if she wasn't going to talk
about Winn, she would leave his people alone.

She tried to sympathize with him about his home difficulties, and when
she discovered that he hadn't any, her sympathy veered to the horrible
distance he had to be away from it.

"Oh, well," said Lionel, "it's my father's old regiment, you know; that
makes it awfully different. They know as much about my life as I do
myself, and when I don't get leave, they often come out to me for a
month or two. They're good travelers."

"They must be simply wonderful!" Estelle said ecstatically. Lionel said
nothing. He looked slightly amazed. It seemed so funny that Winn, who
hadn't much use for ecstasy, should have married a so easily ecstatic
wife.

"I do envy you," she said pathetically, "all that background of home
companionship. We were brought up so differently. It was not my parents'
fault of course--" she added rather quickly. Something in Lionel's
expression warned her that he would be unsympathetic to confidences
against parents.

"Well, you've got Winn," he said, looking at her with his steadfast
encouraging eyes, "you've got your background now." He was prepared to
put up with a little ecstasy on this subject, but Estelle looked away
from him, her great eyes strangely wistful and absorbed. She was an
extraordinary exquisite and pretty little person, like a fairy on a
Christmas tree, or a Dresden china shepherdess, not a bit, somehow, like
a wife.

"Yes," she said, twisting her wedding ring round her tiny manicured
finger. "But sometimes I am a little anxious about him--I know it's
silly of me."

Lionel's shyness fell away from him with disconcerting suddenness. "Why
are you anxious?" he demanded. "What do you mean, Mrs. Winn?"

Estelle hesitated, she hadn't meant to say exactly what her fear was,
she only wanted to arouse the young man's chivalry and to talk in some
way that approached intimacy.

Everything must have a beginning, even Petrarch and Laura.

She found Lionel's eyes fixed upon her with a piercing quality difficult
to meet. He obviously wouldn't understand if she didn't mean
anything--and she hardly knew him well enough to touch on her real
difficulties with Winn, those would have to come later.

But she must be anxious about something--she was forced into the rather
meager track of her husband's state of health.

"I don't quite know," she mused, "of course he seems perfectly
strong--but I sometimes wonder if he is as strong as he looks."

Lionel brushed her wonder aside. "Please tell me exactly what you've
noticed," he said, as if he were a police sergeant and she were some
reluctant and slightly prevaricating witness.

She hadn't, as a matter of fact, noticed anything. "He sometimes looks
terribly tired," she said a little uncertainly, "but I dare say it's all
my foolishness, Mr. Drummond. I am afraid I am inclined to be nervous
about other people's health--" Estelle sighed softly. She often accused
herself of faults which no one had discovered in her. "Winn, I am sure,
would be the first to laugh at me."

"Yes, I dare say he would," said Lionel quietly. "But I never will, Mrs.
Winn." She raised her eyes gratefully to him--at last she had succeeded
in touching him.

"You see," Lionel explained, "I care too much for him myself."

Her eyes dropped. She had a feeling that Petrarch and Laura had hardly
begun like that.

The next few days were very puzzling to Estelle; nobody behaved as she
expected them to behave, including herself. She found Lionel always
ready to accept her advances with open-hearted cordiality, but she had
to make the advances. She had not meant to do this. Her idea had been
to be a magnet, and magnets keep quite still; needles do all the moving.
But this particular needle (except that it didn't appear at all soft)
might have been made of cotton wool.

And Winn wouldn't behave at a disadvantage; he was neither tyrannical
nor jealous. He left her a great deal to Lionel, and treated her with
good-natured tolerance in private and with correct attention before his
friend.

In theory Estelle had always stated her belief in platonic friendship,
but she had never been inconvenienced by having to carry it out. One
thing had always led to another. She had imagined that Lionel (in his
relations with her) would be a happy mixture of Lancelot and Galahad.
The Galahad side of him would appear when Lancelot became
inconvenient--and the Lancelot side of him would be there to fall back
upon when Galahad got too dull. But in their actual relation there
seemed to be some important ingredient left out. Of course Lancelot was
guilty and Estelle had never for a moment intended Lionel to be guilty,
but on the other hand Lancelot was in love with the Queen.

This quality was really essential.

Lancelot had had a great affection for the King of course, but that had
been subsidiary; and this was what puzzled Estelle most, was Lionel's
feeling for her subsidiary to his feeling for Winn?

Lionel was delightful to her; he waited on her hand and foot; he studied
all her tastes and remembered everything she told him. Could playing
polo with Winn, going out for walks in the rain, and helping to make
saddles in Winn's musty, smelling den appeal to him with greater force
than her society? He wasn't in love with any one else, and if men
weren't in love with any one else, they were usually in love with
Estelle. But with Lionel everything stopped short. They conversed
confidentially, they used each other's Christian names, but she was left
with the sensation of having come up against an invisible barrier. There
was no impact, and there was no curtness; there was simply empty space.
She was not even sure that Lionel would have liked her at all if she
hadn't been Winn's wife. As it was, he certainly wanted her friendship
and took pains to win it. It must be added that he won more than he took
pains to win. Estelle for the first time in her life stumbled waveringly
into a little love.

The visit prolonged itself from a week to a fortnight. Estelle did not
sleep the night before Lionel went. She tossed feverishly to and fro,
planning their parting. Surely he would not leave her without a word?
Surely there must be some touch of sentiment to this separation,
horrible and inevitable, that lay before them?

She remembered afterwards that as she lay in the dark and foresaw her
loneliness she wondered if she wouldn't after all risk the Indian
frontier to be near him? She was subsequently glad she had decided that
she wouldn't.

It was a very wet morning, and Lionel was to leave before lunch. Winn
went as usual into his study to play with his eternal experiments in
leather. Lionel went with him. She heard the two men laughing together
down the passage. Could real friends have laughed if they had minded
parting with each other?

She sat at her desk in the drawing-room biting nervously at her pen. He
was going; was it possible that there would be no farewell?

Just some terrible flat hand-shake at the door under Winn's penetrating
eyes.

But after a time she heard steps returning. Lionel came by himself.

"Are you busy?" he asked. "Shall I bother you if we talk a little?"

"No," she said softly. "I hoped you would come back."

Lionel did not answer for a moment. For the first time in their
acquaintance he was really a little stirred. He moved about the room
restlessly, he wouldn't sit down, though half unconsciously she had put
her hand on the chair beside her.

"Do you know," he said at last, "I've got something to say to you, and
I'm awfully afraid it may annoy you."

Was it really coming, the place at which he would have to be stopped,
after all her fruitless endeavors to get him to move in any direction at
all? It looked like it; he was very obviously embarrassed and flushed;
he did not even try to meet her eyes.

"The fact is," he went on, "I simply can't go without saying it, and
you've been so awfully good to me--you've let me feel we're friends." He
paused, and Estelle leaned forward, her eyes melting with encouragement.

"I am so glad you feel like that, Lionel," she murmured. "Do please say
anything--anything you like. I shall always understand and forgive, if
it is necessary for me to forgive."

"You're awfully generous," he said gratefully. She smiled, and put out
her hand again toward the chair. This time he sat down in it, but he
turned it to face her.

He was a big man and he seemed to fill the room in which they sat. His
blue-gray eyes fixed themselves on hers intently, his whole being seemed
absorbed in what he was about to say.

"You see," he began, "I think you may be making a big mistake. Naturally
Winn's awfully fond of you and all that and you've just started life,
and you like to live in your own country, surrounded by jolly little
things, and perhaps India seems frightening and far away." Estelle
shrank back a little; he put his hand on the back of her chair
soothingly. "Of course it must be hard," he said. "Only I want to
explain it to you. Winn's heart is yours, I know, but it's in his work,
too, as a man's must be, and his work's out there; it's not here at all.

"When I came here and looked about me, and saw the house and the garden
and the country, where we've had such jolly walks and talks--it all
seemed temporary somehow, made up--not quite natural, I can't explain
what I mean but not a bit like Winn. I needn't tell you what he is, I
dare say you think it's cheek of me to talk about him at all, I can
quite understand it if you do, only perhaps there's a side of him I've
seen more of, and which makes me want to say what I know he isn't--what
I don't think even love can make him be--he isn't tame!"

He stopped abruptly; Estelle's eyes had hardened and grown very cold.

"I don't know what you mean," she said. "Has he complained of my keeping
him here?"

Lionel pushed back his chair.

"Ah, Mrs. Winn! Mrs. Winn!" he exclaimed half laughingly, and half
reproachfully; "you know he wouldn't complain. He only told me that he
wasn't coming back just yet, and I--well, I thought I saw why he
wasn't."

"Then," she said, turning careful eyes away from him, "if he hasn't
complained, I hardly see why you should attack me like this. I suppose
you think I am as unnatural and--and temporary as our surroundings?"

Lionel stood up and looked down at her in a puzzled way.

"Oh, I say, you know," he ventured, "you're not playing very fair, are
you? Of course I'm not attacking you. I thought we were friends, and I
wanted to help you."

"Friends!" she said. Her voice broke suddenly into a hard little laugh.
"Well, what else have you to suggest to me about my husband--out of your
friendship for me?"

"You're not forgiving me," he reminded her gently, not dreaming what it
was she had been prepared to forgive. "But perhaps I'd better go on and
get it all out while I'm about it. You know it isn't only that I think
he won't care for staying on here, but I think it's a bit of a risk. I
don't want to frighten you, but after a man's had black water fever
twice, he's apt to be a little groggy, especially about the lungs.
England isn't honestly a very good winter place for him for a year or
two--"

Estelle flung up her head.

"If he was going to be an invalid," she said, "he oughtn't to have
married me!"

The silence that followed her speech crept into every corner of the
room. Lionel did not look puzzled any more. He stood up very straight
and stiff; only his eyes changed. He could not look at her; they were
filled with contempt. He gave her a moment or two to disavow her words;
he would have given his right hand to hear her do it.

"I beg your pardon," he said at last. "I have overstated the case if you
imagine your husband is an invalid. I think, if you don't mind," he
added, "I'll see if my things are ready."

"Please do," she said, groping in her mind for something left to hurt
him with. "And another time perhaps you will know better than to say for
my husband what he is perfectly competent to say for himself."

"You are quite right," Lionel said quietly; "another time I shall know
better." The rain against the windows sounded again; she had not heard
it before.

He did not come back to say good-by. She heard him talking to Winn in
the hall, the dogcart drove up, and then she saw him for the last time,
his fine, clear-cut profile, his cap dragged over his forehead, his eyes
hard, as they were when he had looked at her. He must have known she
stood there at the window watching, but he never looked back. She had
expected a terrible parting, but never a parting as terrible as this.
Mercifully she had kept her head; it was all she had kept.




CHAPTER VII


It was shortly after Lionel's departure that Estelle realized there was
nothing between her and the Indian frontier except the drawing-room
sofa. She fixed herself as firmly on this shelter as a limpet takes hold
upon a rock. People were extremely kind and sympathetic, and Winn
himself turned over a new leaf. He was gentle and considerate to her,
and offered to read aloud to her in the evenings.

Nothing shook her out of this condition. The baby arrived, unavailingly
as an incentive to health, and not at all the kind of baby Estelle had
pictured. He was almost from his first moments a thorough Staines. He
was never very kissable, and was anxious as soon as possible to get on
to his own feet. At eight months he crawled rapidly across the carpet
with a large musical-box suspended from his mouth by its handle; at ten
he could walk. He tore all his lawn frocks on Winn's spurs, screamed
with joy at his father's footsteps, and always preferred knees to laps.

His general attitude towards women was hostility, he looked upon them as
unfortunate obstacles in the path of adventure, and howled dismally when
they caressed him. He had more tolerance for his mother who seemed to
him an object provided by Providence in connection with a sofa, on
purpose for him to climb over.

Her maternal instinct went so far as to allow him to climb over it twice
a day for short intervals. After all he had gained her two years.

Estelle lay on the sofa one autumn afternoon at four o'clock, with her
eyes firmly shut. She was aware that Winn had come in, and was very
inconsiderately tramping to and fro in heavy boots. He seldom entered
the drawing-room at this hour, and if he did, he went out again as soon
as he saw that her eyes were shut.

Probably he meant to say something horrible about India; she had been
expecting it for some time. The report on Tibet was finished, and he
could let his staff work go when he liked.

He stood at the foot of her couch and looked at her curiously. Estelle
could feel his eyes on her; she wondered if he noticed how thin she
was, and how transparent her eyelids were. Every fiber in her body was
aware of her desire to impress him with her frailty. She held it before
him like a banner.

"Estelle," he said. When he spoke she winced.

"Yes, dear," she murmured hardly above a whisper.

"Would you mind opening your eyes?" he suggested. "I've got something I
want to talk over with you, and I really can't talk to a door banged in
my face."

"I'm so sorry," she said meekly; "I'm afraid I'm almost too exhausted to
talk, but I'll try to listen to what you have to say."

"Thanks," said Winn. He paused as if, after all, it wasn't easy to
begin, even in the face of this responsiveness. She thought he looked
rather odd. His eyes had a queer, dazed look, as if he had been drinking
heavily or as if somebody had kicked him.

"Well," she asked at last, "what is it you want to talk about? Suspense
of any kind, you know, is very bad for my heart."

"I beg your pardon," he said. "It was only that I thought I'd better
mention I am going to Davos."

"Davos!" She opened her eyes wide now and stared at him. "That snow
place?" she asked, "full of consumptives? What a curious idea! I never
have been able to understand how people can care to go there for sport.
It seems to me rather cruel; but, then, I know I am specially sensitive
about that kind of thing. Other people's pain weighs so on me."

"I didn't say I was going there for sport," Winn answered in the same
peculiar manner. He sat down and began to play with a paper-cutter on
his knee. "As a matter of fact, I'm not," he went on. "I've crocked one
of my lungs. They seem to think I've got to go. It's a great nuisance."

It was curious the way he kept looking at her, as if he expected
something. He couldn't have told exactly what he expected himself. He
was face to face with a new situation; he wasn't exactly frightened, but
he had a feeling that he would like very much to know how he ought to
meet it. He had often been close to death--but he had never somehow
thought of dying, he wasn't close to death now but at the end of
something which might be very horrible there would be the long affair of
dying. He hoped he would get through it all right and not make a fuss or
be a bother to anybody. It had all come with a curious suddenness. He
had gone to Travers one day because when Polly pulled he had an odd pain
in his chest. He had had a toss the week before, and it had occurred to
him that a rib might be broken; but Travers said it wasn't that.

Travers had tapped him all over and looked grave, uncommonly grave, and
said some very uncomfortable things. He had insisted on dragging Winn up
to town to see a big man, and the big man had said, "Davos, and don't
lose any time about it." He hadn't said much else, only when Winn had
remarked, "But, damn it all, you know I'm as strong as a horse," he had
answered, "You'll need every bit of strength you've got," and all the
way home Travers had talked to him like a Dutch uncle.

It was really funny when you came to think of it, because there wasn't
anything to see or even feel--except a little cough--and getting rather
hot in the evenings, but after Travers had finished pitching into him
Winn had written to Lionel and made his will and had rather wondered
what Estelle would feel about it. He hadn't wanted to upset her. He
hadn't upset her. She stared at him for a moment; then she said:

"How odd! You look perfectly all right. I never have believed in
Travers."

Winn mentioned the name of the big man.

"It does sound rather rot," he added apologetically. He still waited.
Estelle moved restlessly on the sofa.

"Well," she said, "what on earth am I to do? It's really horribly
inconvenient. I suppose I shall have to go back to my people for the
winter unless you can afford to let me take a flat in London."

"I'm afraid I can't afford that," said Winn. "I think it would be best
for you to go to your people for the winter, unless, of course, you'd
rather go to mine. I'm going down there to-morrow; I've written to tell
them. I must get my father to let me have some money as it is. It's
really an infernal nuisance from the expense point of view."

"I couldn't go to your people," said Estelle, stiffly. "They have never
been nice to me; besides, they would be sure to teach baby how to
swear." Then she added, "I suppose this puts an end to your going to
India."

Winn dropped his eyes.

"Yes," he said, "this puts an end to my going back to India for the
present. I've been up before the board; they're quite agreeable. In
fact, they've been rather decent to me."

Estelle gave a long sigh of relief and gratitude. It was really
extraordinary how she had been helped to avoid India. She couldn't think
what made Winn go on sitting there, just playing with the paper-knife.

He sat there for a long time, but he didn't say any more. At last he got
up and went to the door.

"Well," he said, "I think I'll just run up and have a look at the kid."

"Poor dear," said Estelle, "I'm frightfully sorry for you, of course,
though I don't believe it's at all painful--and by the way, Winn, don't
forget that consumption is infectious."

He stopped short as if someone had struck him. After all, he didn't go
to the nursery; she heard him go down the passage to the smoking-room
instead.




CHAPTER VIII


Sir Peter was having his annual attack of gout. Staines Court appeared
at these times like a ship battened down and running before a storm.

Figures of pale and frightened maids flickered through the long
passage-ways. The portly butler violently ejected from the dining-room
had been seen passing swiftly through the hall, with the ungainly
movement of a prehistoric animal startled from its lair.

The room in which Sir Peter sat burned with his language. Eddies of
blasphemous sound rushed out and buffeted the landings like a rising
gale.

Sir Peter sat in a big arm chair in the center of the room. His figure
gave the impression of a fortressed island in the middle of an empty
sea. His foot was rolled in bandages and placed on a low stool before
him; within reach of his hand was a knobbed blackthorn stick, a bell
and a copy of the "Times" newspaper.

Fortunately Lady Staines was impervious to sound and acclimatized to
fury. When Sir Peter was well she frequently raised storms, but when he
had gout she let him raise them for himself. He was raising one now on
the subject of Winn's letter.

"What's that he says? What's that he says?" roared Sir Peter. "Something
the matter with his lungs! That's the first time a Staines has ever
spoken of his lungs. The boy's mad. I don't admit it! I don't believe
it for a moment, all a damned piece of doctors' rubbish, the chap's
a fool to listen to 'em! When has he ever seen me catering to
hearse-conducting, pocket-filling asses!"

Charles was home on a twenty-four hours' leave--he stood by the
mantelpiece and regarded his parent with undutiful and critical eyes. "I
should say you send for 'em," he observed, "whenever you've got a pain;
why they're always hangin' about. Look at that table chock full of
medicines. 'Nuff to kill a horse--where do they come from?"

"Hold your infernal tongue, Sir!" shouted Sir Peter. "What do I have
'em for? I have 'em here to expose them! That's why--I just let them try
it on, and then hold them up to ridicule! Do you find I ever pay the
least attention to 'em, Sarah?" he demanded from his wife.

"Not as a rule," Lady Staines admitted, "unless you're very bad indeed,
and then you do as you like directly the pain has stopped."

"Well, why shouldn't I!" said Sir Peter triumphantly. "Once I get rid of
the pain I can do as I like. When I've got red hot needles eating into
my toes, am I likely to like anything? Of course not, you may just as
well take medicine then as anything else, but as to taking orders from a
pack of ill-bred bumpkins, full of witch magic as a dog of fleas, I see
myself! Don't stand grinning there, Charles, like a dirty, shock-headed
barmaid's dropped hair pin! I won't stand it! I can't see why all my
sons should have thin legs, neither you nor I, Sarah, ever went about
like a couple of spilikin's. I call it indecent! Why don't you get
something inside 'em, Charles, eh? No stamina, that's what it is!
Everybody going to the dogs in motor cars with manicure girls out of
their parents' pockets--! Why don't you answer me, Charles, when I speak
to you?"

"Nobody can answer you when you keep roaring like a deuced megaphone,"
said Charles wearily. "Let's hear what the chap's got to say for
himself, Mater."

Lady Staines read Winn's letter out loud in a dry voice without
expression; it might have been an account of a new lawn mower which she
held beneath it.

     "I've managed to crock one of my lungs somehow, but they say I've
     got a chance if I go straight out to Davos for six months. Ask the
     guv'nor if he'll let me have some money. I shall want it badly. My
     wife and the kid will go to her people. You might run across and
     have a look at him sometimes. He's rather a jolly little chap. I
     shall come down for the week-end to-morrow unless I hear from you
     to the contrary.

     "Your affectionate son,
     "WINN."

"I think that's all," said his mother.

"What!" shouted Sir Peter. He had never shouted quite like this before.
Charles groaned and buried his head in his hands. Even Lady Staines
looked up from the lawn mower's letter, which she had placed on the top
of Winn's; the medicine bottles sprang from the table and fell back
again sufficiently shaken for the next dose.

"Do you mean to tell me!" cried Sir Peter in a quieter voice, "that that
little piece of dandelion fluff--that baggage--that city fellow's half
baked, peeled onion of a minx is going to desert her husband? That's
what I call it--desertion! What does she want to go back to her people
for? She must go with him! She must go to Davos! She shall go to Davos!
if I have to take her there by the hair! I never heard of anything so
outrageous in my life! What becomes of domesticity? where's family life?
That's what I want to know! and is Winn such a milk and water noodle
that he's going to sit down under it and say 'Thank you!' Not that I
think he needs to go to Davos for a moment, mind you. Let him come here
and have a nice quiet time with me, that's what he wants."

"That's all very well, Father," said Charles. "But what you mean is you
don't want to fork out! If the chap's told to go to Davos, he's got to
go to Davos, and it's his own look-out whether he takes his wife with
him or not. Consumption isn't a joke, and I tell you plainly that if you
don't help him when he's got a chance, you needn't expect _me_ to come
to the funeral. No flowers and coffins and beloved sons on tombstones,
are going to make me move an inch. It'll be just the same to me as if
you'd shoved him under with your own hand, and that's all I've got to
say, and it's no use blowing the roof off about it!"

"You'd better go now, Charles," said Lady Staines quietly.

When Sir Peter had finished saying what he thought of Charles and what
he intended to do to the entail, Lady Staines gave him his medicine.

"Look here, Peter," she said, "this is a bad business about our boy."

Sir Peter met her eyes and nodded.

"Yes," he agreed, "a damned bad business!"

"We'd better get him off," she added after a moment's pause.

"It's all nonsense," grumbled Sir Peter, "and I told you from the first
you ought never to have let him marry that girl. Her father's the
poorest tenant I ever had, soft-headed, London vermin! He doesn't know
anything about manure--and he'll never learn. I shall cut down all his
trees as soon as I'm about again. As for the girl, keep her out of my
sight or I'll wring her neck. I ought to have done it long ago. How much
does he want?"

"Let's make it three hundred," Lady Staines said. "He may as well be
comfortable."

"Pouring money into a sieve," grumbled Sir Peter. "Send for the doctor
and bring me the medical dictionary. I may as well see what it says
about consumption, and don't mention the word when Winn's about. I
_will_ have tact! If you'd used common or garden tact in this house
before, that marriage would never have taken place. I sit here simmering
with it day in and day out and everybody else goes about giving the
whole show away! If it hadn't been for my tact Charles would have
married that manicure girl years ago. Bring me my check-book. It's
nothing but a school-boy's lark, this going to Davos. Why consumption's
a pin-prick compared to gout! No pain--use of both legs--sanguine
disposition. Where the hell's that medical dictionary? Ah, it's there,
is it--then why the devil didn't you give it me before?"

Sir Peter read solemnly for a few minutes, and then flung the book on
the floor.

"Bosh!" he cried angrily. "All old woman's nonsense. Can't tell what's
going on inside a pair of bellows--can they? Then why make condemned
asses of themselves, and say they can! Don't tell Charles I've written
this check--he's the most uncivil rascal we've got."




CHAPTER IX


It was odd how Winn looked forward to seeing Staines; he couldn't
remember ever having paid much attention to the scenery before; he had
always liked the bare backs of the downs behind the house where he used
to exercise the horses, and the turf was short and smelt of thyme; and
of course the shooting was good and the house stood well; but he hadn't
thought about it till now, any more than he thought about his braces.

He decided to walk up from the station. There was a short cut through
the fields and then you came on the Court suddenly, over-looking a sheet
of water.

It was a still November day, colorless and sodden. The big elms were as
dark as wet haystacks and the woods huddled dispiritedly in a vague
mist.

The trees broke to the right of the Court and the house rose up like a
gigantic silver ghost.

It was a battered old Tudor building with an air of not having been
properly cleaned; blackened and weather-soaked, unconscionably averse
from change, it had held its own for four hundred years.

The stones looked as if they were made out of old moonlight and thin
December sunshine. A copse of small golden trees, aspen and silver
birches made a pale screen of light beside the house and at its feet,
the white water stretched like a gleaming eye.

There wasn't a tree Winn hadn't climbed or an inch he hadn't explored,
fought over and played on. He wanted quite horribly to come back to it
again, it was as if there were roots from the very soil in him tugging
at his menaced life.

His mother advanced across the lawn to meet him. She wore a very old
blue serge dress and a black and white check cap which looked as if it
had been discarded by a jockey.

In one hand she held a trowel and in the other a parcel of spring bulbs.
She gave Winn the side of her hard brown cheek to kiss and remarked,
"You've just come in time to help me with these bulbs. Every one of
them must be got in this afternoon. Philip has left us--your father
threw a watering can at him. I can't think what's happened to the men
nowadays, they don't seem to be able to stand anything, and I've sent
Davis into the village to buy ducks. He ought to have been back long ago
if it was only ducks, but probably it's a girl at the mill as well."

Winn looked at the bulbs with deep distaste. "Hang it all, Mother," he
objected, "it's such a messy day for planting bulbs!" "Nonsense," said
Lady Staines firmly, "I presume you wash your hands before dinner, don't
you, you can get the dirt off then? It's a perfect day for bulbs as
you'd know if you had the ghost of country sense in you. There's another
trowel in the small greenhouse, get it and begin." Winn strode off to
the greenhouse smiling; he had had an instinctive desire to get home, he
wanted hard sharp talk that he could answer as if it were a Punch and
Judy show.

In his married life he had had to put aside the free expression of his
thoughts; you couldn't hit out all round if the other person wouldn't
hit back and started whining. Every member of the Staines family had
been brought up on the tradition of combative speech, the bleakest of
personalities found its nest there. Sometimes, of course, you got too
much of it. Sir Peter and Charles were noisy and James and Dolores were
apt to be brutally rough. They were all vehement but there were
different shades in their ability. Winn got through the joints in their
armor as easily as milk slips into a glass. It was Lady Staines and Winn
who were the deadly fighters.

They fought the others with careless ease, but they fought each other
watchfully with fixed eyes and ready implacable brains.

It was difficult to say what they fought for but it was a magnificent
spectacle to see them fight, and they had for each other a regard which,
if it was never tender, had every element of respect.

They worked now for some time in silence. Suddenly Lady Staines cocked a
wintry blue eye in her son's direction and remarked, "Why ain't your
wife going with you to Davos?" Winn hurled a bulb into the small hole
prepared for it before answering, then he said:

"She's too delicate to stand the cold."

"Is there anything the matter with her?" asked his mother.

Winn preferred to consider this question in the light of rhetoric and
made no reply. He wasn't going to give Estelle away by saying there was
nothing the matter with her, and on the other hand a lie would have been
pounced upon and torn to pieces. "Marriage don't seem to have agreed
with either of you particularly well," observed Lady Staines with a grim
smile.

"We haven't got your constitution," replied her son. "If either you or
Father had married any one else--they'd have been dead within six
months."

"Humph!" said his mother. "That only shows our sound judgment; we took
what we could stomach! It's her look-out of course, but I suppose she
knows she's running you into the Divorce Court, letting you go out there
by yourself? All those snow places bristle with grass widows and girls
who have outstayed their market and have to get a hustle on! Sending a
man out there alone is like driving a new-born lamb into a pack of
wolves!" Lady Staines with her eye on the heavily built and rather
leathery lamb beside her gave a sardonic chuckle. Winn ignored her
illustration.

"You needn't be afraid," he replied. "I'm done with women; they tempt me
about as much as stale sponge cakes."

"Ah!" said his mother, "I've heard that tale before. A man who says he's
done with women simply means one of them's done with him. Besides,
you're to be an invalid, I understand! An invalid man is as exposed to
women as a young chicken to rats. You won't stand a ghost of a chance.
Look at your father, if I left him alone when he was having an attack of
gout with a gray-haired matron of a reformatory, he'd be on his knees to
her before I could get back."

"You can take it from me," said Winn, "that even if I _should_ need such
a thing as a petticoat, I'd try a kind that won't affect marriage. I'll
never look at another good woman again--the other sort will do for me if
I can't stick it without."

"Don't racket too much," said Lady Staines, planting her last bulb with
scientific skill. "They say keeping women's very expensive up there--on
account of the Russian Princes."

"By the by," said Winn, "thanks for the money. Had any difficulty in
extracting it?"

"Not much," said Lady Staines, withdrawing to the lawn. "Charles got
rather in the way."

"Silly ass," observed Winn. "Didn't want me to have it, I suppose?"

"No, he did want you to have it," replied Lady Staines, "but he needn't
have been such a fool as to have said so. It nearly upset everything.
His idea was, you see, that if his father gave you something--he and
James would have to be bought off. So they were in the end, but they'd
have had more if he'd played his hand better."

Winn laughed. "Jolly to be home again," he remarked. "Dinner as usual?"

"Yes," said Lady Staines, "and don't forget one of the footmen's a
Plymouth Brother and mustn't be shocked. It's so difficult to get any
one nowadays, one mustn't be too particular. He said he could stand your
father by constant prayer, but he gave notice over Charles. Charles
ought to have waited till dessert to let himself go."

The dinner passed off well. Sir Peter and Winn had one never failing
bone of contention, the rival merits of the sister services. Sir Peter
expressed on every possible occasion in his son's presence, a bitter
contempt for the army, and Winn never let an opportunity pass without
pointing out the gorged and pampered state of the British Navy.

"If we'd had half the money spent on us, Sir, that you keep guzzling
over," Winn cheerfully threw out, "we could knock spots out of Europe.
The trouble with England is--she treats her sailors as if they were the
proud sisters--and we are shoved out like Cinderella into the scullery
to do all the dirty work."

"Pooh!" said Sir Peter, "work! Is that what you call it--takin' a horse
out for an hour or two, and shoutin' at a few men on a parade ground.
What's an army good for--even when it's big enough to be seen with the
naked eye and capable of attacking a few black savages with their
antiquated weapons. Why you're _safe_, that's what you are--dead safe!
Land's beneath you--immovable--you can get anywhere you want to as easy
as sliding down banisters! Targets keep still too! It's nothing to hit a
thing you can stand to fire at while _it_ stands still to _be_ fired at!
Child's play, that's what it is. Look at us, something up all the time,
peace or war. We've got the sea to fight--wind too--and thick weather.
We've got our pace to mind and if we ever did clinch up we'd have to do
our fighting at a rate that'd make an express train giddy--and running
after a target goin' as hard as we do! That's what I call something of a
service. No! No! The Army's played out. You're for ornament now, meant
to go round Buckingham Palace and talk to nurse-maids in the Park."

"Not many nurse-maids in the Kyber Pass," his son observed.

"Frontiers--yes, I dare say," snorted Sir Peter. "A few black rag dolls
behind trees popping at you to keep your circulation going, and you with
Maxims and all, going picnics in the hills and burning down villages as
easy as pulling fire-crackers--and half the time you want help from us!
Look at South Africa!"

They looked at South Africa for some time till the dessert came and the
Plymouth Brother thankfully withdrew. After that Winn allowed himself
some margin and Lady Staines leaned back in her chair, ate grapes and
enjoyed her coffee.

The conversation became pungent, savage and enlivened on Sir Peter's
part by strange oaths.

Winn kept to sudden thrusts of irony impossible to foresee and difficult
to parry.

They drank velvety ripe old port. Sir Peter was for the moment out of
pain and anxious to assert his freedom from doctors. The conversation
shifted to submarines. Sir Peter thought them an underhand and decadent
development suited to James, who was in command of one of them.

As to aeroplanes he said that as we'd now succeeded in imitating
infernal birds and fishes--he supposed we'd soon bring off reptiles the
kind of creature the modern young would be likely to represent best.

"We shall soon have the police crawling on their bellies up and down the
Strand hiding behind lamp-posts," finished Sir Peter. "Call that kind of
thing science! It's an inverted Noah's Ark! That's what it is! And when
you get it all going to suit yourself, there'll be another flood, and
serve you all damned well right. I shall enjoy seeing you drown!"

Winn replied that you had to fight with your head now and that people
who fought with their fists were about as dangerous as stuffed rabbits.

Sir Peter replied that in the end everything came down to blood, how
much you'd got yourself and how much you could get out of the enemy.

Lady Staines was slightly afraid of leaving them in this atmosphere, but
at last she reluctantly withdrew to the hall, where she listened to the
varying shades of Sir Peter's voice and decided they were on the whole
loud enough to be normal.

At eleven o'clock she and Winn between them assisted Sir Peter to bed.

This was a sharp and fiery passage usually undertaken by the toughest of
the gardeners.

Winn however managed extraordinarily well. He insisted on occasional
pauses and by a home truth of an appallingly personal nature actually
silenced his father for the last half flight.

Sir Peter breakfasted in his room.

He had had a bad night. He wouldn't, as he explained to his wife, have
minded if Winn had been a puny chap; but there he was, sound and strong,
with clear hard eyes, broad, straight shoulders and a grip of iron, and
yet Taylor, that little village hound of an apothecary, said once you
had microbes it didn't matter how strong you were--they were just as
likely to be fatal as if you were a narrow-chested epileptic.

Microbes! The very thought of such small insignificant creatures getting
in his way filled Sir Peter with fury. He had always hated insects. But
the worst of it was in the morning he didn't feel angry, he simply felt
chilled and helpless. His son was hit and he couldn't help him. It all
came back to that. There was only one person who could help a sick man,
and that person was his wife. Theoretically Sir Peter despised and hated
women, but practically he leaned on his wife as only a strong man can
lean on a woman; without her, he literally would not have known which
way to turn. His trust in her was as solid as his love for a good stout
ship. In every crisis of his life she had stood by his side, bitter
tongued, hard-headed, undemonstrative and his as much as any ship that
had sailed under his flag.

If she had failed him he would have gone down, and now here was his
son's wife--another woman--presumably formed for the same purpose,
leaking away from under him at the very first sign of weather.

He thought of Estelle with a staggered horror; she had looked soft and
sweet--just the woman to minister to a knocked-out man. The trouble with
her was she had no guts.

Sir Peter woke his wife up at four o'clock in the morning to shout this
fact into her ear. Lady Staines said, "Well--whoever said she had?" and
apparently went to sleep again. But Sir Peter didn't go to sleep:
Estelle reminded him of how he had once been done over a mare, a
beautiful, fine stepping lady-like creature who looked as if she were
made of velvet and steel, no vice in her and every point correct; and
then what had happened? He'd bought her and she'd developed a spirit
like wet cotton wool, no pace, no staying power. She'd sweat and stumble
after a few minutes run, no amount of dieting, humoring or whipping
affected her. She'd set out to shirk, and shirk she did--till he worked
her off on a damned fool Dolores had fortunately introduced him to--only
wives can't be handed on like mares--"Devil's the pity"--Sir Peter said
to himself, as he fell off to sleep. "Works perfectly with horses."

Winn came up-stairs soon after breakfast a little set and silent, to say
good-by to his father. Sir Peter had thrown his breakfast out of the
window and congealed the Plymouth Brother's morning prayers. He wanted
to get hold of something tangible to move circumstances and cheat fate,
but he couldn't think what you did do, when it wasn't a question of
storms or guns--or a man you could knock down for insubordination,
simply a physical fact.

He scowled gloomily at his son's approach. "I wish you weren't such a
damned fool," he observed by way of greeting. "Why can't you shake a
little sense into your wife? What's marriage for? I've been talking to
your mother about it. I don't say she isn't a confoundedly aggravating
woman, your mother! But she's always stuck to me, hasn't let me down,
you know. A wife ain't meant to do that. It's unnatural! Why can't you
say to her, 'You come with me or I'll damned well show you the reason
why--' That's the line to take!"

"A woman you've got to say that to isn't going to make much of a
companion," Winn said quietly. "I'd rather she stayed where she liked."

Sir Peter was silent for a moment, then he said, "Any more children
coming?"

"No," said his son, "nor likely to be either, as far as I'm concerned."

"There you are!" said Sir Peter. "Finicky and immoral, that's what I
call it! That's the way trouble begins, the more children the less
nonsense. Why don't you have more children instead of sitting sneering
at me like an Egyptian Pyramid?"

"That's my look-out," said Winn with aggravating composure. "When I want
'em, I'll have 'em. Don't you worry, Father."

"That's all devilish well!" said Sir Peter crossly. "But I _shall_
worry! Do I know more about the world or do you? Not that I want to
quarrel with you, my dear boy," he added hastily. "I admit things are
awkward for you--damned awkward--still it's no use sitting down under
them when you might have a row and clear the air, is it? What I want to
say is--why not have a row?"

"You can't have a row with a piece of pink silk, can you?" his son
demanded. "I don't want to blame her, but it's no use counting her in;
besides, honestly, Father, I don't care a rap--why should I expect her
to? My marriage was a misdeal."

Sir Peter shook his head. "Men ought to love their wives," he said
solemnly; "in a sense, of course, no fuss about it, and never letting
them know--and not putting oneself out about it! But still there ought
to be something to hold on to, and anyhow the more you stick together,
the more there is, and your going off like this won't improve matters.
Love or no love, marriage is a life."

Winn laughed again. "Life--" he said, "yes--well--how do I know how much
longer I shall have to bother about life?"

There was a silence. Sir Peter's gnarled old hands met above his
blackthorn stick and trembled.

Winn wished he hadn't spoken. He did not know how to tell his father not
to mind. He hadn't really thought his father would mind.

However, there they sat, minding it.

Then Sir Peter said, "I don't believe in consumption, I never have, and
I never shall; besides Taylor says Davos is a very good place for it,
and you're an early case, and it's all damned nonsense, and you've got
to buck up and think no more about it. What I want to hear is that
you're back in your Regiment again. I dare say there'll be trouble later
on, and then where'll you be if you're an invalid--have you ever thought
of that?"

"Yes--that'd be something to live for," Winn said gravely; "trouble."

"You shouldn't be so confoundedly particular," said his father. "Now
look at me--if we did have trouble where'd I be? Nowhere at all--old!
Just gout and newspapers and sons getting up ideas about their lungs,
but when do I complain?

"If you want another L50 any time--I don't say that I can't give it to
you--though the whole thing's damned unremunerative! There's the trap.
Well--good-by."

Winn stood quite still for a moment looking at his father. It might have
been thought by an observer that his eyes, which were remarkably
bright, were offensively critical, but Sir Peter, though he wished the
last moment to end, knew that his son was not being critical.

Then Winn said, "Well--good-by, Father. I'm sure I'm much obliged to
you." And his father said, "Damn everything!" just after the door was
shut.




CHAPTER X


It hadn't seemed dismal at first, it had only seemed quite unnatural.
Everything had stopped being natural when the small creature in lawn,
only the height of his knee, had been torn reluctantly away from its
hold on his trousers. This parting had made Winn feel as if something
inside him was being unfairly handled.

There was nothing he could get hold of in Peter to promise security, and
the only thing that Peter could grasp was the trousers, which had had to
be forcibly removed from him.

Later on Peter would be consoled by a Teddy Bear or the hearth brush,
but Winn had had to go before Peter was consoled, and without the
resources of the hearth brush.

Estelle wept bitterly in the hall, but Winn hadn't minded that; he had
long ago come to the conclusion that Estelle had a taste for tears, just
as some people liked boiled eggs for breakfast. He simply patted her on
the shoulder and looked away from her while she kissed him.

He had enjoyed starting from Charing Cross, intimidating the porters and
giving the man who registered his luggage dispassionate and unfavorable
pieces of his mind. But when he was once fairly off he began to have a
new feeling. It came over him when he was out of England and had crossed
the small gray strip of formless familiar sea--the sea itself always
seemed to Winn to belong much more to England than to France--so much so
that it annoyed him at Boulogne to have to submit to being thought
possibly unblasphemous by porters. He began to feel alone. Up till now
he had always seen his way. There had been fellows to do things with and
animals; even marriage, though disconcerting, had not set him adrift. He
had been cramped by it, but not disintegrated. Now what seemed to have
happened was that he had been cut loose. There wasn't the regiment or
even a staff college to fall back upon. There wasn't a trail to follow
or horses to gentle; his very dog had had to be left behind because of
the ridiculous restrictions of canine quarantine.

It really was an extraordinarily uncomfortable feeling, as if he were a
damned ghost poking about in a new world full of surprises. It was quite
possible that he might find himself among bounders. He had always
avoided bounders, but that had been comparatively easy in a world where
everybody observed an unspoken, inviolable code. If people didn't know
the ropes, they found it simpler to go, and Winn had sometimes assisted
them to find it simpler; but he saw that now bounders could really turn
up with impunity, for, as far as ropes went, it was he himself who would
be in the minority. He might meet men who talked, long-haired,
mysterious chaps too soft to kick or radicals, though if the worst came
to the worst, he flattered himself that he had always the resource of
being unpleasant.

He knew that when the hair rose up on his head like the back of a
challenged bull-dog, and he stuck his hands in his pockets and looked at
people rather straight between the eyes, they usually shut up.

He didn't mind doing this of course, if necessary; only if he had to do
it to everybody in the hotel it might become monotonous, and he had a
nervous fear that consumption was rather a cad's disease.

Fortunately he had got his skates, and he supposed there'd be toboggans
and skis. He would see everybody in hell before he would share a table.

It was curious how one could get to thirty-six and then suddenly in the
middle of nothing start up a whole new set of feelings--feelings about
Peter, who had, after all, only just happened, and yet seemed to have
belonged to him always; and his lungs going wrong, and loneliness, like
a homesick school-girl! Winn had never felt lonely in Central Africa or
Tibet, so that it seemed rather absurd to start such an emotion in a
railway train surrounded by English people, particularly as it had
nothing to do with what he looked upon as his home. His feeling about
leaving the house at Aldershot had been, "Thank God there aren't going
to be any more dinners!"

Still, there it was. He did feel lonely; probably it was one of the
symptoms of bad lungs which Travers hadn't mentioned, the same kind of
thing as the perfectly new desire to lean back in his corner and shut
his eyes.

He felt all right in a way, his muscles acted, he could easily have
thrown a stout young man with white eyelashes passing along the corridor
through the nearest window; but there was a blurred sensation behind
everything, a tiresome, unaccountable feeling as if he mightn't always
be able to do things. He couldn't explain it exactly; but if it really
turned up at all formidably later, he intended to shoot himself quickly
before Peter got old enough to care.

One thing he had quite made up his mind about: he would get well if he
could, but if he couldn't, he wasn't going to be looked after. The mere
thought of it drove him into the corridor, where he spent the night
alternately walking up and down and sitting on an extremely
uncomfortable small seat by a draughty door to prove to himself that he
wasn't in the least tired.

He began to feel rather better after the coffee at Basle, and though he
was hardly the kind of person to take much interest in mere scenery, the
small Swiss villages, with their high pink or blue clock-faced churches
made him wish he could pack them into a box, with a slice of green
mountain behind, and send them to Peter to play with.

After Landeck he smelt the snows, and challenged successfully the whole
shivering carriage on the subject of an open window. The snows reminded
Winn in a jolly way of Kashmir and nights spent alone on dizzy heights
in a Dak bungalow.

The valleys ceased slowly to breathe, the dull autumn coloring sank into
the whiteness of a dream. The mountains rose up on all sides, wave upon
wave of frozen foam, aiming steadily at the high, clear skies. The
half-light of the failing day covered the earth with a veil of silver
and retreating gold.

The valleys passed into silence, freezing, whispering silence. The moon
rose mysteriously behind a line of black fir-trees, sending shafts of
blue light into the hollow cup of mountain gorges. It was a poet's
world, Blake or Shelley could have made it, it was too cold for Keats.
Winn had not read these poets. It reminded him of a particularly good
chamois hunt, in which he had bagged a splendid fellow, after four
hours' hard climbing and stalking. The mountains receded a little, and
everything became part of a white hollow filled with black fir-trees,
and beyond the fir-trees a blue lake as blue as an Indian moonstone, and
then one by one, with the unexpectedness of a flight of glow-worms,
sparkled the serried ranks of the hotels. Out they flashed, breaking up
the mystery, defying the mountains, as insistent and strident as life.

The train stopped, and its contents spilled themselves out a little
uncertainly and stiffly on the platform. Instantly the cold caught them,
not the insidious, subtle cold of lower worlds, but the fresh, brusk
buffet of the Alps. It caught them by the throat and chest, it tingled
in ears and noses; there was no menace in it, and no weakness. It was as
compulsory as a policeman in a street fight.

Winn had just stepped aside to allow a clamorous lady to take possession
of his porter when he saw a man struggle into the light under a
lamp-post; he was carrying something very carefully in his arms.

Winn could not immediately make out what it was, but he saw the man's
face and read utmost mortal misery in his eyes; then he discovered that
the burden was a woman. Her hands were so thin that they lay like
broken flower petals on the man's shoulders; her face was nothing but a
hollow shell; her eyes moved, so that Winn knew she was alive, and in
the glassy stillness of the air he caught her dry whispering voice, "I
am not really tired, dearest," she murmured. In a moment they had
vanished. It struck Winn as very curious that people could love each
other like that, or that a dying woman should fight her husband's fears
with her last strength. He felt horribly sorry for them and impatient
with himself for feeling sorry. After all, he had not come up to Davos
to go about all over the place feeling sorry for strange people to whom
he had never been introduced. The funny part of it was that he didn't
only feel sorry for them, he felt a little sorry for himself. Was love
really like that? And had he missed it? Well, of course he knew he had
missed it, only he hadn't realized that it was quite like that.

Fortunately at this moment a German porter appeared to whom Winn felt an
instant simple antagonism. He was a self-complacent man, and he brought
Winn the wrong luggage.

"Look here, my man," Winn said smoothly, but with a rocky insistence
behind his words, "if you don't look a little sharp and bring me the
_right_ boxes with green labels, I shall have to kick you into the
middle of next week."

This restored Winn even more quickly than it restored his luggage. No
one followed him into the small stuffy omnibus which glided off swiftly
toward its destination. The hotel was an ugly wooden house in the shape
of a hive built out with balconies; it reminded Winn of a gigantic
bird-cage handsomely provided with perches. It was only ten o'clock, but
the house was as silent as the mountains behind it.

The landlord appeared, and, leading Winn into a brilliantly lighted,
empty room, offered him cold meat.

Winn said the kind of thing that any Staines would feel called upon to
say on arriving at a cold place at a late hour and being confronted with
cold meat.

The landlord apologized in a whisper, and returned after some delay with
soup. Nothing, not even more language, could move him beyond soup. He
kept saying that it was late and that they must be quiet, and he didn't
seem to believe Winn when Winn remarked that he hadn't come up there to
be quiet. Winn himself became quieter as he followed the landlord
through interminable passages covered with linoleum where his boots made
a noise like muffled thunder.

Everywhere there was a strange sense of absolute cleanliness and
silence, the subduing smell of disinfectant and the sight of padded,
green felt doors.

When Winn was left alone in a room like a vivid cell, all emptiness and
electric light, and with another green door leading into a farther room,
he became aware of a very faint sound that came from the other side of
the door. It was like the bark of a dog shut up in a distant cellar; it
explained the padding of the doors.

In all the months that followed, Winn never lost this sound, near or
far; it was always with him, seldom shattering and harsh, but always
sounding as if something were being broken gradually, little by little,
shaken into pieces by some invisible disintegrating power.

Winn flung open the long window which faced the bed. It led out to a
small private balcony--if he had to be out on a balcony, he had of
course made a point of its being private--and looked over all Davos.

The lights were nearly gone now. Only two or three twinkled in a narrow
circle on a sheet of snow; behind them the vague shapes of the mountains
hung immeasurably alien and at peace.

A bell rang out through the still air with a deep, reverberating note.
It was a reassuring and yet solemn sound, as if it alone were
responsible for humanity, for all the souls crowded together in the tiny
valley, striving for their separate, shaken, inconclusive lives.

"An odd place--Davos," Winn thought to himself. "No idea it was like
this. Sort of mix up between a picnic and a cemetery!"

And then suddenly somebody laughed. The sound came from a slope of
mountain behind the hotel, and through the dark Winn's quick ear caught
the sound of a light rushing across the snow. Some one must be
tobogganing out there, some one very young and gay and incorrigibly
certain of joy. Winn hoped he should hear Peter laughing like that later
on. It was such a jolly boy's laugh, low, with a mischievous chuckle in
it, elated, and very disarming.

He hoped the child wouldn't get hauled up for being out so late and
making a noise. He smiled as he thought that the owner of the voice,
even if collared, would probably be up to getting out of his trouble;
and when he turned in, he was still smiling.




CHAPTER XI


Dr. Gurnet's house was like an eye, or a pair of super-vigilant eyes,
stationed between Davos Dorf and Davos Platz.

It stood, a small brown chalet, perched high above the lake. There was
nothing on either side of it but the snows, the sunshine, and the sense
of its vigilance; inside, from floor to ceiling, there were neat little
cases with the number of the year, and in each year there was a
complete, exhaustive, and entertaining history of those who wintered,
unaware of its completion and entertainment, in either of the villages.
No eye but his own saw these documents, but no secret policeman ever so
controlled the inner workings of a culprit's mind. There was nothing in
Dr. Gurnet himself that led one to believe in his piercing quality. He
was a stout little man, with a high-domed, bald head, long arms, short
legs, and whitish blue eyes which had the quality of taking in
everything they saw without giving anything out.

Sometimes they twinkled, but the twinkle was in most cases for his own
consumption; he disinfected even his jokes so that they were never
catching. The consulting-room contained no medical books. There were two
book-shelves, on one side psychology from the physical point of view,
and in the other bookcase, psychology as understood by the leading
lights of the Catholic religion.

Dr. Gurnet was fond of explaining to his more intelligent patients that
here you had the two points of view.

"Psychology is like alcohol," he observed; "you may have it with
soda-water or without. Religion is the soda-water."

Two tiger skins lay on the floor. Dr. Gurnet was a most excellent shot.
He was too curious for fear, though he always asserted that he disliked
danger, and took every precaution to avoid it, excepting, of course,
giving up the thing which he had set out to do. But it was a fact that
his favorites among his patients were, as a rule, those who loved danger
for its own sake without curiosity and without fear.

He saw at a glance that Winn belonged to this category. Names were like
pocket electric lamps to Dr. Gurnet. He switched them on and off to
illuminate the dark places of the earth. He held Winn's card in his hand
and recalled that he had known a former colonel of his regiment.

"A very distinguished officer," he remarked, "of a very distinguished
regiment. Probably perfectly unknown in England. England has a
preference for worthless men while they live and a tenderness for them
after they are dead unless corrected by other nations. It is an odd
thing to me that men like Colonel Travers and yourself, for instance,
care to give up your lives to an empire that is like a badly deranged
stomach with a craving for unhealthy objects."

"We haven't got to think about it," said Winn. "We keep the corner we
are in quiet."

"Yes," said Dr. Gurnet sympathetically, "I know; but I think it would be
better if you had to think about it. Perhaps it wouldn't be necessary to
keep things quiet if they were more thoroughly exposed to thought."

Winn's attention wandered to the tiger skins.

"Did you bag those fellows yourself?" he asked. Dr. Gurnet smilingly
agreed. After this Winn didn't so much mind having his chest examined.

But the examination of his chest, though a long and singularly thorough
operation, seemed to Dr. Gurnet a mere bead strung on an extended
necklace. He hadn't any idea, as the London specialist had had, that
Winn could only have one organ and one interest. He came upon him with
the effect of bouncing out from behind a screen with a series of funny,
flat little questions. Sometimes Winn thought he was going to be angry
with him, but he never was. There was a blithe impersonal touch in Dr.
Gurnet, a smiling willingness to look on private histories as of less
importance than last year's newspapers. It was as if he airily explained
to his patients that really they had better put any facts there were on
the files, and let the housemaid use the rest for the kitchen fire; and
he required very little on Winn's part. From a series of reluctant
monosyllables he built up a picturesque and reliable structure of his
new patient's life. They weren't by any means all physical questions. He
wanted to know if Winn knew German. Winn said he didn't, and added that
he didn't like Germans.

"Then you should take some pains to understand them," observed Dr.
Gurnet. "Not to understand the language of an enemy is the first step
toward defeat. Why, it is even necessary sometimes to understand one's
friends."

Winn said that he had a friend he understood perfectly; his name was
Lionel Drummond.

"I know him through and through," he explained; "that's why I trust
him." Dr. Gurnet looked interested, but not convinced.

"Ah," he said, "personally I shouldn't trust any man till he was dead.
You know where you are then, you know. Before that one prophesies. By
the by, are you married?" Dr. Gurnet did not raise his eyes at this
question, but before Winn's leaden "Yes" had answered him he had written
on the case paper, "Unhappy domestic life."

"And--er--your wife's not here with you?" Dr. Gurnet suavely continued.
Winn thought himself non-committal when he confined himself to saying:

"No; she's in England with my boy." He was as non-committal for Dr.
Gurnet as if he had been a wild elephant. He admitted Peter with a
change of voice, and asked eagerly if things with lungs were hereditary
or catching?

"Not at present in your case," Dr. Gurnet informed him. "By the by,
you'll get better, you know. You're a little too old to cure, but you'll
patch up."

"What does that mean?" Winn demanded. "Shall I be a broken-winded,
cats'-meat hack?"

Dr. Gurnet shook his head.

"You can go back to your regiment," he said, "and do anything you like
bar pig-sticking and polo in a year's time. That is to say, if you do as
you are told for that year and will have the kindness to remember that,
if you do not, I am not responsible, nor shall I be in any great degree
inconsolable. I am here like a sign-post; my part of the business is to
point the road. I really don't care if you follow it or not; but I
should be desolated, of course, if you followed it and didn't arrive.
This, however, has not yet occurred to me.

"You will be out of doors nine hours a day, and kindly fill in this card
for me. You may skate, but not ski or toboggan, nor take more than four
hours' active exercise out of the twenty-four. In a month's time I shall
be pleased to see you. Remember about the German and--er--do you ever
flirt?"

Winn stared ominously.

"Flirt? No," he said. "Why the devil should I?"

Dr. Gurnet gave a peculiar little smile, half quizzical and half kindly.

"Well," he said, "I sometimes recommend it to my patients in order that
they may avoid the intenser application known as falling in love. Or in
cases like your own, for instance, when a considerable amount of
beneficial cheerfulness may be arrived at by a careful juxtaposition of
the sexes. You follow me?"

"No, hanged if I do," said Winn. "I've told you I'm married, haven't I?
Besides, I dislike women."

"Ah, there perhaps we may be more in agreement than you imagine," said
Dr. Gurnet, increasing his kindly smile. "But I must continue to assure
you that this avoidance of what you dislike is a hazardous operation.
The study of women at a distance is both amusing and instructive. I
grant you that too close personal relations are less so. I have avoided
family life most carefully from this consideration, but much may be
obtained from women without going to extremes. In fact, if I may say so,
women impart their most favorable attributes solely under these
conditions. Good morning."

Winn left the small brown house with a heart that was strangely light.
Of course he didn't believe in doctors any more than Sir Peter did, but
he found himself believing that he was going to get well.

All the morning he had been moving his mind in slow waves that did not
seem like thoughts against the rock of death; but he came away from the
tiger-skins and the flickering laughter of Dr. Gurnet's eyes with a
comfortable sense of having left all such questions on the doorstep. He
thought instead of whether it was worth while to go down to the rink
before lunch or not.

It was while he was still undecided as to this question that he heard a
little shriek of laughter. It ran up a scale like three notes on a
flute; he knew in a moment that it was the same laughter he had
listened to the night before.

He turned aside and found himself at the bend of a long ice run leading
down to the lake. A group of men were standing there, and with one foot
on a toboggan, her head flung back, her eyes full of sparkling mischief,
was the child. He forgot that he had ever thought her a boy, though she
looked on the whole as if she would like to be thought one. Her curly
auburn hair was short and very thick, and perched upon it was a round
scarlet cap; her mouth was scarlet; her eyes were like Scotch braes,
brown and laughing; the curves of her long, delicate lips ran upward;
her curving thin, black eyebrows were like question-marks; her chin was
tilted upward like the petal of a flower. She was very slim, and wore a
very short brown skirt which revealed the slenderest of feet and ankles;
a sweater clung to her unformed, lithe little figure. She had an air of
pointed sharpness and firmness like a lifted sword. She might have been
sixteen, though she was, as a matter of fact, three years older; but she
was not so much an age as a sensation--the sensation of youth,
incredibly arrogant and unharmed. The men were trying to dissuade her
from the run. It had just been freshly iced; the long blue line of it
curved as hard as iron in and out under banks of ice far down into the
valley. A tall boy beside her, singularly like her in features and
coloring, but weaker in fiber and expression, said querulously:

"Don't go and make a fool of yourself, Claire. It's a man's run, not a
girl's. I won't have you do it." It was the fatal voice of authority
without power.

Across the group her eyes met Winn's; wicked and gay they ran over him
and into him. He stuck his hands into his pockets and stared back at her
grimly, like a Staines. He wasn't going to say anything; only if she had
belonged to him he would have stopped her. His eyes said he could have
stopped her; but she didn't belong to him, so he set his square jaw, and
gave her his unflinching, indifferent disapproval.

She appeared after this to be unaware of him, and turned to her brother.

"Won't have it?" she said, with a little gurgle of laughter. "Why, how
do you suppose you can stop me? There's only one way of keeping a man's
run for men, and that's for girls not to be able to use it--see!"

She slipped her teasing foot off the toboggan and with an agile twist of
her small body sprang face downward on the board. In an instant she was
off, lying along it light as a feather, but holding the runners in a
grip of steel. In a moment more she was nothing but a traveling black
dot far down the valley, lifting to the banks, swirling lightning swift
back into the straight in a series of curves and flashes, till at the
end the toboggan, girl and all, swung high into the air, and subsided
safely into a snow-drift.

Winn turned and walked away; he wasn't going to applaud her. Something
burned in his heart, grave and angry, stubborn and very strong. It was
as if a strange substance had got into him, and he couldn't in the least
have said what it was. It voiced itself for him in his saying to
himself, "That girl wants looking after." The men on the bank admired
her; there were too many of them, and no woman. He wondered if he should
ever see her again. She was curiously vivid to him--brown shoes and
stockings, tossed hair, clear eyes. He remembered once going to an opera
and being awfully bored because there was such a lot of stiff music and
people bawling about; only on the stage there had been a girl lying in
the middle of a ring of flames. She'd showed up uncommonly well, rather
like this one did in the hot sunshine.

Walking back to the hotel he met a string of bounders, people he had
seen and loathed at breakfast. Some of them had tried to talk to him;
one beggar had had the cheek to ask Winn what he was up there for, and
when Winn had said, "Not to answer impertinent questions," things at the
breakfast-table--there was one confounded long one for breakfast--had
fallen rather flat.

He felt sure he wouldn't see the girl again; only he did almost at once.
She came into the _salle-a-manger_ with her brother, as if it belonged
to them. After two stormy, obstinate scenes Winn had obtained the
shelter of his separate and solitary table. The waiter approached the
two young things as they entered late and a little flushed; apparently
he explained to them with patient stubbornness that they, at any rate,
must give up this privilege; they couldn't have a separate table. He
also tried to persuade them which one to join. The boy made a blustering
assertion of himself and then subsided. Claire Rivers did neither. Her
eyes ran over the room, mutinous and a little disdainful; then she
moved. It seemed to Winn he had never seen anybody move so lightly and
so swiftly. There was no faltering in her. She took the room with her
head up like a sail before a breeze. She came straight to Winn's table
and looked down at him.

"This is ours," she said. "You've taken it, though we were here first.
Do you think it's fair?"

Winn rose quietly and looked down at her. He was glad he was half a head
taller; still he couldn't look very far down. She caught at the corner
of her lip with a small white tooth. He tried to make a look of
sternness come into his eyes, but he felt guiltily aware that he wanted
to give in to her, just as he wanted to give in, to Peter.

"Of course," he said, gravely, "I had no idea it was your table when I
got it from that tow-headed fool. You must take it at once, and I'll
make him bring in another one."

"He won't," said Claire. "He says he can't; Herr Avalon, the proprietor,
won't give him another; besides, there isn't room."

"Oh, I think he will," said Winn. "Shall I go over and bring your
brother to you? Won't you sit down?"

She hesitated, then she said:

"You make me feel as if I were being very rude, and I don't want to
drive you away. Only, you know, the other people here are rather awful,
aren't they?"

Winn was aware that their entire awfulness was concentrated upon his
companion.

"Please sit down," he said a little authoritatively. Her brother ought
to have backed her up, but the young fool wouldn't; he stood
shamefacedly over by the door. "I'll get hold of your brother," Winn
added, turning away from her. The waiter hovered nervously in their
direction.

"Am I to set for the three, sir?" he ventured. Claire turned quickly
toward Winn.

"Yes," she said; "why not? If you don't mind, I mean. You aren't really
a bit horrid."

"How can you possibly tell?" Winn asked, with a short laugh. "However,
I'll get your brother, and if you really don't mind, I'll come back with
him."

Claire was quite sure that she could tell and that she didn't mind.

The waiter came back in triumph, but Winn gave him a sharp look which
extracted his triumph as neatly as experts extract a winkle with a pin.
Maurice apologized with better manners than Winn had expected. He looked
a terribly unlicked cub, and Winn found himself watching anxiously to
see if Claire ate enough and the right things. He couldn't, of course,
say anything if she didn't, but he found himself watching.




CHAPTER XII


Winn was from the first sure that it was perfectly all right. She
wouldn't notice him at all. She would merely look upon him as the man
who was there when there were skates to clean, skis to oil, any handy
little thing which the other fellows, being younger and not feeling so
like an old nurse, might more easily overlook. Women liked fellows who
cut a dash, and you couldn't cut a dash and be an old nurse
simultaneously. Winn clung to the simile of the old nurse. That was,
after all the real truth of his feelings, not more than that, certainly
not love. Love would make more of a figure in the world, not that it
mattered what you called things provided you behaved decently. Only he
was glad he was not in love.

He bought her flowers and chocolates, though he had a pang about the
chocolates, not feeling quite sure that they were good for her; but
flowers were safe.

He didn't give her lilies--they seemed too self-consciously virginal, as
if they wanted to rub it in--he gave her crimson roses, flowers that
frankly enjoyed themselves and were as beautiful as they could be. They
were like Claire herself. She never stopped to consider an attitude; she
just went about flowering all over the place in a kind of perpetual
fragrance.

She enjoyed herself so much that she simply hadn't time to notice any
one in particular. There were a dozen men always about her. She was so
young and happy and unintentional that every one wanted to be with her.
It was like sitting in the sun.

She never muddled things up or gave needless pain or cheated. That was
what Winn liked about her. She was as fair as a judge without being
anything like so grave.

They were all playing a game, and she was the leader. They would have
let her break the rules if she had wanted to break them! but she
wouldn't have let herself.

Of course the hotel didn't approve of her; no hotel could be expected to
approve of a situation which it so much enjoyed. Besides Claire was
lawless; she kept her own rules, but she broke everybody else's. She
never sought a chaperon or accepted some older woman's sheltering
presence; she never sat in the ladies' salon or went to tea with the
chaplain's wife. On one dreadful occasion she tobogganed wilfully on a
Sunday, under the chaplain's nose, with a man who had arrived only the
night before.

When old Mrs. Stewart, who knitted regularly by the winter and counted
almost as many scandals as stitches, took her up on the subject out of
kindness of heart, Claire had said without meaning to be rude:

"I really don't think the chaplain's nose ought to be there, to _be_
under, do you?"

Of course, Mrs. Stewart did. She had the highest respect for the
chaplain's nose; but it wasn't the kind of subject you could argue
about.

For a long time Claire and Winn never really talked; she threw words at
him over her shoulder or in the hall or when he put her skates on or
took them off at the rink. He seemed to get there quicker than any one
else, though the operation itself was sometimes a little prolonged. Of
course there were meals, but meals belonged to Maurice, and Claire had
a way of always slipping behind him, so that it was really over the
skates that Winn discovered how awfully clever she was.

She read books, deep books; why, even Hall Caine and Marie Corelli
didn't satisfy her, and Winn had always thought those famous authors the
last words in modern literature. He now learned others. She gave him
Conrad to read, and Meredith. He got stuck in Meredith, but he liked
Conrad; it made him smell the mud and feel again the silence of the
jungle.

"Funny," he explained to Claire, "because when you come to think of it,
he doesn't actually write about the smell; only he's got it, and the
jungle feeling, too. It's quiet, you know, in there, but not a bit like
the snows out here; there's nothing doing up in this snow, but God alone
knows what's happening in the jungle. Odd how there can be two sorts of
quiet, ain't it?"

"There can be two sorts of anything," said Claire, exultantly. "Oh, not
only two--dozens; that's why it's all such fun."

But Winn was inclined to think that there might be more fun where there
were fewer candidates for it. There was, for instance, Mr. Roper.
Maurice was trying to work up for his final examination at Sandhurst
with Mr. Roper. He was a black-haired, polite man with a constant smile
and a habit of agreeing with people much too promptly; also he read
books and talked to Claire about them in the evening till every one
started bridge. Fortunately, that shut him up.

Winn was considered in Anglo-Indian clubs, where the standard of bridge
is high, to play considerably above it, and Claire played with a relish,
that was more instinctive than reliable; nevertheless, Winn loved
playing with her, and accepted Mr. Roper and Maurice as one accepts
severity of climate on the way to a treat. He knew he must keep his
temper with them both, so when he wanted to be nasty he looked at
Claire, and when Claire looked at him he wanted to be nice. He couldn't,
of course, stop Claire from ever in any circumstances glancing in the
direction of Mr. Roper, and it would have startled him extremely if he
had discovered that Claire, seeing how much he disliked it, had reduced
this form of communion to the rarest civility; because Winn still took
for granted the fact that Claire noticed nothing.

It was the solid earth on which he stood. For some months his
consciousness of his wife had been an intermittent recognition of a
disagreeable fact; but for the first few weeks at Davos he forgot
Estelle entirely; she drifted out of his mind with the completeness of a
collar stud under a wardrobe.

He never for a moment forgot Peter, but he didn't talk about him because
it would have seemed like boasting. Even if he had said, "I have a boy
called Peter," it would have sounded as if nobody else had ever had a
boy like Peter. Besides, he didn't want to talk about himself; he wanted
to talk about Claire.

She hadn't time to tell him much; she was preparing for a skating
competition, which took several hours a day, and then in the afternoons
she skied or tobogganed with Mr. Ponsonby, a tall, lean Eton master
getting over an illness. Winn privately thought that if Mr. Ponsonby was
well enough to toboggan, he was well enough to go back and teach boys;
but this opinion was not shared by Mr. Ponsonby, who greatly preferred
staying where he was and teaching Claire.

Claire tobogganed and skied with the same thrill as she played bridge
and skated; they all seemed to her breathless and vital duties. She did
not think of Mr. Ponsonby as much as she did of the toboggan, but he
gave her points. In any case, Winn preferred him to Mr. Roper, who was
obliged to teach Maurice in the afternoons.

If one wants very much to learn a particular subject, it is surprising
how much of it one may pick up in the course of a day from chance
moments.

In a week Winn had learned that Maurice and Claire were orphans, that
they lived with an aunt who didn't get on with Claire and an uncle who
didn't get on with Maurice, and that there were several cousins too
stodgy for words. Claire was waiting for Maurice to get through
Sandhurst--he'd been horribly interrupted by pleurisy--and then she
could keep house for him somewhere--wherever he was sent--unless she
took up a profession. She rather thought she was going to do that in any
case, because they would have awfully little money; and besides, not
doing things was a bore, and every girl ought to make her way in the
world, didn't Major Staines think so?

Major Staines didn't, and emphatically said that he didn't.

"Good God, no! What on earth for?" was how he expressed it. Claire
stopped short, outside the office door, just as she was going to pay her
bill.

"We shall have to talk about this," she said gravely. "I'm awfully
afraid you're a reactionary."

"I dare say I am," said Winn, who hadn't the faintest idea what a
reactionary was, but rather liked the sound of it. "We'll talk about it
as much as you like. How about lunch at the Schatz Alp?"

That was how they went to the Schatz Alp and had their first real talk.




CHAPTER XIII


Claire was not perfectly sure of life--it occurred to her at nineteen
that it might have in store for her certain surprises--but she was
perfectly sure of herself. She knew that she ought to have been a boy,
and that if she had been a boy she would have tried to be like General
Gordon. Balked of this ambition by the fact of her sex, she turned her
attention to Maurice.

It seemed to her essential that he should be like General Gordon in her
place, and by dint of persuasion, concentration of purpose, and sheer
indomitable will power she infected Maurice with the same idea. He had
made her no promises, but he had agreed to enter the army.

It is improbable that General Gordon's character was formed wholly by
the exertions of his sister, but Claire in her eagerness rather
overlooked the question of material. There was nothing in Maurice
himself that was wrong, but he belonged to a class of young men who are
always being picked up by "wrong 'uns."

He wanted a little too much to be liked. He was quite willing to be a
hero to please Claire if it was not too much trouble. Meanwhile he
expected it to be compatible with drinking rather more than was good for
him, spending considerably too much money, and talking loudly and
knowingly upon subjects considered doubtful.

If the world had been as innocent as Maurice, this program would in time
have corrected itself. But besides holes and the unwary, there are from
time to time diggers of holes, and it was to these unsound guides that
Maurice found himself oftenest attracted.

What he asked of Claire was that she should continue to believe in him
and make his way easy for him. She could fight for his freedom with a
surly uncle, but having won it, she shouldn't afterward expect a fellow
to do things with it which would end in his being less free.

Maurice really loved Claire, his idea of love being that he would
undeviatingly choose her to bear all his burdens. She managed the
externals of his life with the minimum of exertion to himself. She
fought his guardians; she talked straight to his opposers; she took
buffets that were meant for him to take; she made plans, efforts, and
arrangements for his comfort. Lots of things he wanted he could simply
not have had if she had failed to procure them.

Pushed beyond a certain point Maurice gave in, or appeared to give in,
and lied. Claire never admitted even to herself that Maurice lied, but
she took unusual pains to prevent his ever being pushed beyond a certain
point.

It was Claire who had managed the journey to Davos in the teeth of
opposition; but it was Maurice who would have no other guide than Mr.
Roper, a splendid army coach picked up at a billiard room in a hotel.
Now that they were at Davos, Claire became a little doubtful if, after
all, her uncle hadn't been right when he had declared that Bournemouth
would have done as well and been far less expensive. Then Winn came, and
she began mysteriously to feel that the situation was saved.

It wasn't that Winn looked in the least like General Gordon, but Mr.
Ponsonby had told her that he was a distinguished officer and shot
tigers on foot.

Claire was quite surprised that Winn had been so nice to her,
particularly as he hadn't appeared at all a friendly kind of person; but
she became more and more convinced that Winn was a knight errant in
disguise and had been sent by heaven to her direct assistance.

Claire believed very strongly in heaven. If you have no parents and very
disagreeable relatives, heaven becomes extremely important. Claire
didn't think it was at all the place her aunt and uncle vaguely held out
to her as a kind of permanent and compulsory pew into which an angelic
verger conducted the more respectable after death.

Everything Mr. and Mrs. Tighe considered the laws of God seemed to
Claire unlikely to be the laws of anybody except people like Mr. and
Mrs. Tighe; but she did believe that God looked after Maurice and
herself, and she was anxious that He should look particularly after
Maurice.

She determined that on the day she went to the Schatz Alp with Major
Staines she would take him into her confidence. She could explain the
position of women to him while they climbed the Rhueti-Weg; this would
give them all of lunch for Maurice's future, and she hoped without
direct calculations--because, although Claire generally had very strong
purposes, she seldom had calculations--that perhaps if she was lucky he
would tell her about tigers on the way down.

It was one of those mornings at Davos which seemed made out of fragrance
and crystal. The sun soaked into the pines, the sky above the tree-tops
burned like blue flame. It was the first time in Claire's life that she
had gone out all by herself to lunch with a grown-up man. Winn was far
more important than a mere boy, besides being a major.

She had been planning all the morning during her skating what arguments
she should use to Winn on the subject of women, but when she saw him in
the hall everything went out of her head. She only knew that it was a
heavenly day and that it seemed extraordinarily difficult not to dance.

It was a long walk up to the Schatz Alp; there were paths where the
pine-trees met overhead, garlanded with wreaths of snow, and the spaces
between the wreaths were as blue as love-in-a-mist, an old-fashioned
flower that grows in English gardens. Claire pointed it out to Winn.

"Only," she said, "up here there isn't any mist, is there?"

"No," said Winn, looking at her in a curious way; "as far as I can see,
there is none whatever. By the by, that particular flower you mention
isn't only called love-in-a-mist, it's also called devil-in-a-bush."

"But that's a pity," said Claire, decisively. "I like the other name
better."

She moved beside him with a buoyant, untiring step, without haste and
without effort. He told her that he would like to take her up into the
Himalayas. She would make a good climber. In his heart he knew there was
no place on earth to which he wouldn't like to take her. She was born to
be a man's comrade, observant, unexacting, level-headed. She was the
kind of girl you wouldn't mind seeing in a tight place if you were
there, of course, to get her out of it. Then he pulled himself up and
told himself not to be fanciful.

It was rather a fanciful morning: the day and the snowy hillside and the
endless, pungent sweetness of the sunny air were like a spell. He found
he was telling Claire about the things he used to do when he was a boy.
He went on doing it because the adventures of the Staines family made
her laugh.

He had not supposed that James, Charles, Isabella, Dolores, and he
himself were particularly funny before, but he was delighted to discover
their hidden gift. Claire wanted to hear everything about them, their
ponies, their dogs, their sharp disgraces, and their more wonderful
escapes and revenges; but she didn't want them to be punished, and Winn
had to hasten over those frequent and usually protracted disasters.

They had the woods to themselves; there was no sound at all except the
occasional soft drop of melting snow. Once they stood quite still
holding their breath to watch the squirrels skim from tree to tree as if
they were weaving the measures of a mystic dance. If it hadn't been for
the squirrels they might have been the only creatures alive in all the
silent, sparkling earth.

The mountains spread out around them with the reticent hush of
interrupted consciousness. They seemed to be on the verge of further
revelations, and were withheld from a last definite whisper only by the
intrusion of humanity.

"I know they could speak if they liked," Claire murmured. "What do you
suppose they'd say?"

"Let's have an avalanche and knock the silly blighters out of our valley
for good and all," Winn suggested.

Claire disposed of Davos with a wave of her hand.

"But they don't mind us, do they?" she urged. "Because we're so happy
and we like them so. Doesn't the air make you feel awfully funny and
happy?"

"Yes," Winn admitted; "but it's not all the air, you know."

Claire wanted to know what else it was; but as Winn didn't offer to
explain, she felt that perhaps she had better not ask.

They were near the top when Winn paused suddenly and said in a most
peculiar reluctant voice; "Look here, I think I ought to tell you."

He stumbled over the words and then added, "No, by Jove, that won't do!"

"Oh, don't let's tell each other things we ought!" Claire entreated.
"It's not the kind of morning for that. I meant to talk about lots of
really important subjects, but I'm not going to now. I may later, of
course; but just now I don't feel in the mood for being important."

Winn looked at her very hard, and then he said:

"But still you are rather important, you know."

"Then," she laughed, "I'm important enough to have my own way, aren't
I?"

Winn said nothing. He seemed to acquiesce that she was important enough
for that.

"Would you like to know," she asked, "what I'd really like for lunch?"
Winn said he would awfully, and by the time she had told him they had
reached the top, and the funicular appeared, disgorging people in front
of a big glass-covered restaurant.

Winn found the best and quietest table with the finest view. From it
they could see the valley down to Frauenkirch and up to Clavedel.

It was a splendid lunch, curiously good, with sparkling sweet wine,
which Claire loved, and Winn, secretly loathing, serenely shared because
of a silly feeling he had that he must take what she did.

After lunch they sat and smoked, leaning over the great clear view. They
could hear the distant velvety boom of the village clock beneath them.
Winn gripped his hand firmly on the table.

"I've got to damned well do it," he said to himself. He remembered that
he had had once to shoot a spy in cold blood, and that he used those
words to himself before he did it.

A couple passed close to their table. The woman was over-dressed, and
hung with all kinds of jingling chains and bangles; she was pretty, and
as she sat with her profile turned a little toward them she was
curiously like Estelle. This was his opportunity. It must come now; all
the morning it had lain in the back of his mind, behind delight, behind
their laughter, like some lurking jungle creature waiting for the dark.

"Do you see that woman," he asked Claire, "the pretty one over there by
the pillar? She's awfully like--"

Claire stopped him. "Pretty!" she cried. "Do you really think she's
pretty? I think she's simply loathsome!"

Winn checked himself hurriedly; he obviously couldn't finish his
sentence with "she's awfully like my wife."

"Well, she sets out to be pretty, doesn't she?" he altered it rather
lamely. Claire continued extremely scornful.

"Yes, I dare say," she admitted. "She may set out to be smart too, hung
round with things like a Christmas-tree, but she's as common as a
sixpenny bazaar. I'll tell you why I don't like her, Major Staines, and
who she reminds me of, but perhaps you think her pretty, too? I mean
that horrid woman, Mrs. Bouncing in our hotel?"

"But can't horrid women be pretty, too?" Winn ventured with meekness.

"No, of course not," said Claire, with great decisiveness. "Why, you
know horrid men can't be handsome. Look at Mr. Roper!" Winn was
uncertain if this point of knowledge had ever reached him; but he wasn't
at this time of day going to look at Mr. Roper, so he gave in.

"I dare say you're right," he said. "As a matter of fact, you know, I
never _do_ look at Roper."

"But that's not the reason," Claire went on, slightly softened by her
victory, "that I dislike her. I really dislike her because I think she
is bad for Maurice; but perhaps you haven't noticed the way he keeps
hanging about her. It makes me sick."

Winn admitted that he had noticed it.

"Still," he said, "of course if you hadn't proved to me that by being
horrid she couldn't be pretty, I should have supposed that he simply
hung about Mrs. Bouncing because she was--well, not precisely plain."

Claire looked doubtfully at him, but he wasn't smiling; he was merely
looking at her with sufficient attention.

"There are only two of us," she said in a low voice, "Maurice and me,
and I do so awfully want him to be a success. I don't think anybody
else does. I don't even know how much he wants it himself. You see,
Maurice is so young in many ways, and our people having died--he hasn't
had much of a chance, has he? Men ought to have fathers."

Winn listened intently; he always remembered anything she said, but this
particular opinion sank deep into the bottom of his heart: "Men ought to
have fathers."

"I've done the best I can," Claire went on, "but you see, I'm young,
too; there are lots of things I don't really know about life. I think
perhaps I sometimes believe too much that things are going to be jolly,
and that makes me a bad adviser for Maurice. Do you know what I mean?"

Winn nodded, but he determined that whether she expected or not, she
should have things jolly. He must be able to manage it. If one wanted a
thing as much as he wanted this, surely one could bring it off.

Hadn't he pulled off races on the scratchiest of polo ponies, when he
couldn't afford better, out of sheer intention? He had meant to win,
moved the pony along, and won. Was life less controllable than a shoddy
polo pony?

He set his mouth and stared grimly out over the sparkling snow. He did
not ask himself how a man with a wife hung round his neck like a
millstone was going to manage the perpetual happiness of a stray young
woman. He never asked himself questions or saw how things were to be
done, but when the crisis came his instinct taught him in a flash the
short cut to victory.

"Now," said Claire, unexpectedly, "you are looking awfully
dangerous--you do rather sometimes, you know--like a kind of volcano
that might go off."

Winn turned his eyes slowly toward her.

"I shall never be dangerous for you, Miss Rivers," he said gently.

He did not know how much he promised her or that he was already
incapable of keeping his promise. She looked away from him with smiling
lips and happy, mysterious eyes. She had known long ago that all the
force he had was as safe with her as if he had laid it in her hands;
safer than that, because he held it in his own--for her.

It seemed to Claire that you were only perfectly secure when you were
with a man who could be dangerous to everybody else, but always safe
for you.

"You will help me with Maurice?" she said softly. "Then I sha'n't feel
worried any more."

"I shouldn't let it worry me for a moment if I were you," Winn assured
her. "He hasn't come to much harm so far. He's young, that's all. I'll
keep my eye on him, of course."

Winn knew quite well what he would do with a subaltern of Maurice's
type. He would take him out shooting and put the fear of God into him.
If this were done often and systematically enough, the subaltern would
improve or send in his papers. But Davos did not offer equal advantages.
One could not get the fear of God everywhere on a tap; besides, there
was Mrs. Bouncing.

Claire turned suddenly toward him.

"I want Maurice," she said rather breathlessly, with shining eyes, "to
be a good soldier; I want him to be like you."

Winn felt a pang of fear; it was a pang that was half horrible pain, and
half passionate and wild delight. Was Claire perfectly safe? Why did
she want Maurice to be like him? It was Claire herself who banished his
fear; she added hastily:

"He really must get through Sandhurst properly."

Of course she hadn't meant anything. In fact, if she really had liked
him in any particular way she'd have been shot before she showed it.
What she wanted was simply the advice of an older man in the service. It
did not occur to Winn that Claire had been shot already without knowing
it.

He went on being reassured all the way back because Claire talked
persistently about tigers. Winn explained that once you thoroughly knew
where you were, there was no real danger in a tiger.




PART II




CHAPTER XIV


Winn discovered almost immediately that what assistance he could give to
Maurice would have to be indirect. He had not a light hand for weak,
evasive, and excitable people, and Maurice did not like to be driven off
the rink with "Better come along with me" or "I should think a good
brisk walk to Clavedel would be about your mark." Winn's idea of a walk
was silence and pace; he had a poor notion of small talk, and he became
peculiarly dumb with a young man whose idea of conversation was
high-pitched boasting.

When Maurice began telling stories about how he got the better of
so-and-so or the length of his ski-jumps, Winn's eyes became
unpleasantly like probes, and Maurice felt the elan of his effects
painfully ebbing away. Still, there was a certain honor in being sought
out by the most exclusive person in the hotel and Winn's requests,
stated in flat terms and with the force of his determination behind
them, were extraordinarily difficult to refuse.

It was Mr. Roper who gave Maurice the necessary stiffening. Mr. Roper
didn't like Winn, and though their intercourse had been limited to a
series of grunts on Winn's part, Mr. Roper felt something unerringly
inimical behind each of these indeterminate sounds.

"That man's a spoil-sport," he informed his pupil. Maurice agreed.

"But he's beastly difficult to say no to," he added. "You mean to
somehow, but you don't."

"I expect he's trying to manage you," Mr. Roper cleverly hinted.

This decided Maurice once and for all. He refused all further
invitations. He had a terror of being managed, and though he always was
managed, gusts of this fear would seize upon him at any effort to
influence him in any direction favorable to himself. He was never in the
least uneasy at being managed to his disadvantage.

Baffled in his main direction, Winn turned his mind upon the subject of
Mr. Roper. Mr. Roper was slippery and intensely amiable; these were not
the qualities with which Winn felt himself capable of direct dealing. He
would have liked to destroy Mr. Roper, and he thought that the situation
might eventually arrive at this point; but until it did, he saw that he
had better leave Mr. Roper alone. "You can't do anything with a worm but
tread on it," he said to himself, and in hotels people had to be careful
how they trod on worms. There was still Mrs. Bouncing, but a slight
study of that lady, which took place in the hall after dinner, put this
possibility out of the question. She called Winn a "naughty man" and
suggested his taking her tobogganing by moonlight.

Mr. Bouncing was a side issue, but Winn, despite his own marriage, held
the theory that men ought to look after their wives. He felt that if
there had been any question of other men he could have managed Estelle;
or, even short of managing Estelle, he could have managed the other men.
It occurred to him now that perhaps Mr. Bouncing could be led to act
favorably upon the question of his wife's behavior.

Mr. Bouncing could not walk at all; he could get out to the public
balcony in the sun, and when he was there, he lay with the "Pink 'Un"
and "The Whipping Post" on his lap and his thermometer beside him. All
he asked was that he should have his hot milk regularly four times a
day. He hardly talked to anybody at all. This was not because it made
him cough to talk--it didn't particularly; he coughed without being made
to--but because he had exhausted his audience.

There was only one subject left to Mr. Bouncing, and that was his
health; after he had told people all his symptoms, they didn't want to
hear any more and there was nothing left to talk about. So he lay there
in the sunshine thinking about his symptoms instead. There were a good
many of them to think about, and all of them were bad.

Mr. Bouncing was surprised when Winn sat down to talk to him, and he
explained to him at once exactly what the doctors thought of his case.
Winn listened passively, and came back the next day at the same time.

This surprised Mr. Bouncing still more, and little by little the
subjects between them widened. Mr. Bouncing still talked about himself,
but he talked differently. He told Winn things he had never told any one
else, and he was really pleased when Winn laughed at a joke he showed
him in "The Pink 'Un."

"You can laugh," he said almost admiringly. "I daren't, you know; that's
one of the things I'm told not to do, but I often wish some one would
come here and laugh at the jokes for me. It's quite an effort for me
sometimes not to burst out; and then, you see, hemorrhage! I knew a poor
chap who literally died of it--died of laughing. They might put that in
the 'Pink 'Un,' mightn't they?"

Winn said he thought one might die of worse things.

"Yes, I know," agreed Mr. Bouncing, "but I'm not going to be caught like
that. I dare say you don't know, but I believe I'm the worst case in the
hotel. I'm not _quite_ sure; that's what worries me. There's a Mrs.
Maguire who stays in bed. I've made all sorts of inquiries about her;
but people are so stupid, they don't know the right symptoms to ask
about, and I can't go in and look at her, can I? And my wife won't. She
says one death's-head is enough for her and I quite see her point.
Perhaps Mrs. Maguire's case is partly nerves. My wife thinks I'm very
nervous. So I am, you know, in a way. I have to be careful; but, Lord!
when I see the things people do up here! The risks they take! You, for
instance. I've seen you do heaps of things that are perfectly deadly;
and yet there you are getting better. Funny, isn't it?"

Winn said it was funny, but he supposed one must take his chance.

"Yes, I know; that is what people keep saying," Mr. Bouncing admitted.
"You can take it if you've got it; but my point is, if you haven't got
it, you can't take it, can you? Now, as far as I can see, looking back
from the start, you know, I never had a dog's chance. It's years since I
went out in a wind without an overcoat on, and once in the very
beginning I got my feet wet; but for the last five years I've been as
careful as a girl with a new hat. I think I shall live till the spring
if I don't get influenza. I hope you'll remember not to come near me if
you feel a cold coming on." Winn assured him that he would. "I asked
Dr. Gurnet the other day," Mr. Bouncing went on musingly, "if he thought
I should ever be able to walk to the post-office again--I used to get
there and back last winter, you know--but he wouldn't give me a direct
answer. He said he thought I could rely on the hotel porter. He's not
quite definite enough--Dr. Gurnet. I told him the other day how
difficult it was to get up in the morning, and he said, 'Well, then, why
not stay in bed?' But I'm not going to do that. I believe you go quicker
when you stay in bed. Besides, I should be dull lying there in bed. I
like to sit here and watch people and see the silly things they do. That
young boy you sit at table with--he won't come to any good. Silly! He
thinks my wife likes him, but she doesn't; it's just that she must have
her mind taken off, you know, at times, poor thing. I like to see her
amused."

"And what about you?" asked Winn. "It seems to me she might better spend
some of her time amusing you."

Mr. Bouncing pointed to the "Pink 'Un."

"I've got plenty to amuse me," he explained, "and you mustn't think she
doesn't look after me. Why, the other day--when I had the high
temperature, you know, and stayed in my room--she came to the door after
she'd been skating, and said, 'Still coughing?' That shows she noticed I
was worse, doesn't it?"

"I'm sure she must be awfully anxious about you," Winn assented with
more kindliness than truth. "But do you care for her knocking about so
with young Rivers and that chap Roper? It seems to me she's too young
and too pretty. If I were you, I'd call her in a bit; I would really."

Mr. Bouncing leaned back in his chair and shut his eyes. This always
made Winn a little uneasy, for when Mr. Bouncing's eyes were shut it was
so difficult to tell whether he was alive or dead. However, after a few
minutes he opened them.

"They are five minutes late with my hot milk," he said. "Do you mind
just getting up and touching the bell? And you've got such a sharp way
of speaking to waiters, perhaps you wouldn't mind hauling him over the
coals for me when he comes?" Winn complied with this request rapidly and
effectively, and the hot milk appeared as if by magic.

Mr. Bouncing drank some before he returned to the subject of his wife.

"Yes," he said, "I dare say you would call her in. You're the kind of
man who can make people come in when you call. I'm not. Besides, you
see, she's young; she's got her life to live, and, then, ought I to have
married her at all? Of course I was wonderfully well at the time; I
could walk several miles, I remember, and had no fever to speak of.
Still, there were the symptoms. She took the risk, of course--she was
one of a large family, and I had money--but it hasn't been very amusing
for her, you must admit."

Winn didn't admit it, because it seemed to him as if it had been
extremely amusing for Mrs. Bouncing, a great deal more amusing than it
had any right to be.

"Perhaps you think she oughtn't to have married for money," Mr. Bouncing
went on when he had finished the hot milk and Winn still sat there
saying nothing. "But you're quite wrong if you do. Money is the most
important thing there is--next to health of course. Health and
money--one's no use without the other, of course; but I don't honestly
think anything else really matters. I know what the chaplain says; but
he's always been quite strong."

"That's all very well," said Winn. "I'm not a religious man myself, but
people oughtn't to take something for nothing. If she's married you for
your money, she ought to be more with you. She's got the money, hasn't
she, and what have you got? That's the way I look at it."

Mr. Bouncing did not shake his head--he was too careful for that--but he
looked as if he were shaking it.

"That's one point of view, of course," he said slowly; "but how do you
know I want to have her more with me? She's very young and strong. I
expect she'd be exciting, and it wouldn't be at all good for me to be
excited.

"Besides, she has no sense of humor. I wouldn't dream of asking her to
laugh at my jokes as I do you. She wouldn't see them, and then I
shouldn't like to show her the improper ones. They're not suitable for
ladies, and the improper ones are the best. I sometimes think you can't
have a really good joke unless it's improper."

Winn did not say anything; but he thought that however limited Mrs.
Bouncing's sense of humor might be, she would have enjoyed the improper
ones.

Mr. Bouncing took out his thermometer.

"It is five minutes," he said, "since I've had the glass of milk, and I
think my tongue must have cooled down by now. So I shall take my
temperature, and after that I shall try to go to sleep. But I don't
believe you are really anxious about my wife; what you're worried about
is young Rivers. I've seen you taking him for walks, and it's no use
your worrying about him, because, as I've said before, he's silly. If he
didn't do one silly thing, he'd do another. However, he's selfish, too.
That's always something; he won't be so likely to come to grief as if he
were merely silly. It's his sister I should be worried about if I were
you."

"Why?" asked Winn without looking at him. Mr. Bouncing looked at Winn,
but he made no answer. He had already got his thermometer in his mouth.




CHAPTER XV


Winn had a feeling that he ought to keep away from her, but Davos was an
inconvenient place for keeping away. People were always turning up when
one least expected them, or one turned up oneself. Privacy and publicity
flashed together in the sunny air. Even going off up a mountain with a
book was hardly the resource it seemed; friends skied or tobogganed down
upon you from the top, and carried you off to tea.

Winn had an uneasy feeling that he oughtn't to go every morning to the
rink, though that was naturally the place for a man who was only allowed
to skate to find himself. It was also the place where he could not fail
to find Claire. There were a good many other skaters on the rink, too;
they were all preparing for the International Skating Competition.

The English, as a rule, stuck to their own rink, where they had a style
of skating belonging to themselves. Their style was perpendicular and
very stiff; it was by no means easy to attain, and when attained, hardly
perhaps, to the observer, worth the efforts expended. Winn approved of
it highly. He thought it a smart and sensible way to skate, and was by
no means a bad exponent; but once he had seen Claire skating on the big
rink, he put aside his abortive circling round an orange. It is
difficult to concentrate upon being a ramrod when every instinct in you
desires to chase a swallow. She wore, when she skated, a short, black
velvet skirt, white fox furs, and a white fur cap. One couldn't very
well miss seeing her. It did not seem to Winn as if she skated at all.
She skimmed from her seat into the center of her chosen corner, and then
looked about her, balanced in the air. When she began to skate he could
not tell whether the band was playing or not, because he felt as if she
always moved to music.

She would turn at first mysteriously and doubtingly, trying her edges,
with little short cuts and dashes, like a leaf blown now here and now
there, pushed by a draught of air, and then some purpose seemed to
catch her, and her steps grew intricate and measured. He could not take
his eyes from her or remember that she was real, she looked so
unsubstantial, eddying to and fro, curving and circling and swooping.
There was no stiffness in her, and Winn found himself ready to give up
stiffness; it was terrible the amount of things he found himself ready
to give up as he watched her body move like seaweed on a tide. Motion
and joy and music all seemed easy things, and the things that were not
easy slipped out of his mind.

After a time Maurice would join her to practise the pair-skating. He was
a clever skater, but careless, and it set Winn's teeth on edge to watch
how nearly he sometimes let her down. He would have let any other woman
down, but Claire knew him. She counted on his not being exactly where he
ought to be, hovered longer on her return strokes, pushed herself more
swiftly forward to meet him, or retreated to avoid his too impulsive
rushes. Winn was always glad when Maurice, satisfied with his cursory
practice, left her circling alone and unfettered like a sea-gull on a
cliff.

This was the time when he always made up his mind not to join her, and
felt most sure that she didn't care whether he joined her or not.

He had not talked with her alone since their lunch at the Schatz Alp
nearly a week ago. Every one of her hours was full, her eyes danced and
laughed as usual, the secretive bloom of youth hid away from him any
sign of expectation. He did not dream that every day for a week she had
expected and wanted him. She couldn't herself have explained what she
wanted. Only her gaiety had lost its unconsciousness; she was showing
that she didn't mind, she was not, now minding. It seemed so strange
that just when she had felt as if they were real friends he had
mysteriously kept away from her. Perhaps he hadn't meant all the nice
things he had said or all the nicer things he hadn't said at all, but
just looked whenever her eyes met his? They did not meet his now; he
always seemed to be looking at something else. Other men put on her
skates and found her quickest on the rink, and the other men seemed to
Claire like trees walking; they were no longer full of amusing
possibilities. They were in the way. Then one morning Winn, watching her
from a distance noticed that Maurice didn't turn up. Claire actually
looked a forlorn and lonely little figure, and he couldn't make up his
mind not to join her.

He skated slowly up to her.

"Well," he said, "where's Maurice? He oughtn't to be missing a good
skating morning like this?" It suddenly seemed to Claire as if
everything was all right again. Winn was there for her, just as he had
been on the Schatz Alp; his eyes looked the same, and the intentional
bruskness which he put into his voice was quite insufficient to hide its
eagerness.

"Oh," she said, "Major Staines, I didn't mean to tell anybody, but I
shall tell you of course. It's rather sickening, isn't it? Maurice
doesn't want to go in for the competition any more; he says he can't
spare the time."

"What!" cried Winn; "look here, let's sit down and talk about it." They
sat down, and the music and the sunshine spread out all round them.
Everything swung into a curious harmony, and left them almost nothing
to be upset about. "He can't throw you over like this," Winn protested.
"Why, it's only a fortnight off the day, and you're one of the tiptop
skaters."

Claire did not say what she knew to be true, that people had been saying
that too much to Maurice, and Maurice only liked praise that came his
own way.

"I think it's Mrs. Bouncing," she said dejectedly. "He's teaching her to
skate, but she'll never learn. She's been up here for years, and she
doesn't know her edges! It looks awfully as if he really liked her,
because Maurice skates quite well."

"I'm afraid I've been of very little use to you about Mrs. Bouncing,"
Winn said apologetically. "I thought Bouncing might help us, he's quite
a good chap; but I'm afraid he's too down in the mouth. Still, I think I
may be able to do something if things get to look really bad. Don't
worry about that, please. But, by Jove! this skating matter _is_
serious. What are you going to do about it?" Anything that stopped sport
seemed to Winn to be really serious; something had got to be done about
it. "Isn't there any one else up here not going in for it that you
could lick into shape?"

Claire shook her head doubtfully.

"They'd have to give up every bit of their time," she explained, "and
virtually hardly breathe. You see, pair-skating is really very stiff. Of
course, if I got a new man, I'd do most of the figures; but he'd have to
be there to catch me at the right times, and awfully steady on his
edges, and waltz of course."

"What about me?" Winn asked quietly.

"I'm steady on my edges, and I can waltz after a fashion, and I'd
promise not to breathe for a fortnight." He looked at her, and then
looked away quickly. He was a damned fool to have offered himself! How
on earth was he going to stand a fortnight with her when he could barely
keep himself in hand for five minutes?

"Oh," she said, "you!"

Afterward she said a good deal more, but Winn only remembered the way
she said "you," because her voice had sounded different, as if she had
found something she had wanted to lay her hands on. Of course what she
really wanted was to go in for the pair-skating; it was much the most
fun.

They began from that moment to go in for it. Winn had to speak to Dr.
Gurnet about the skating, because four hours wasn't enough, and Claire
insisted upon Dr. Gurnet's consent.

Dr. Gurnet had consented, though he had raised his eyebrows and said,
"Pair-skating?" and then he had asked who Major Staines had chosen for
his partner. Naturally Winn had become extremely stiff, and said, "Miss
Rivers," in a tone which should have put an end to the subject.

"Well, well!" said Dr. Gurnet. "And she's a woman, after all, isn't
she?" Winn ignored this remark.

"By the by," he said, "my friend's coming out in about a fortnight--the
one I told you about, Captain Drummond."

"I remember perfectly," said Dr. Gurnet; "a most estimable person I
understand you to say. In about a fortnight? The skating competition
will just be over then, won't it? I am sure I hope you and Miss Rivers
will both make a great success of it."

The fortnight passed in a sunny flash. On the whole Winn had kept
himself in hand. His voice had betrayed him, his eyes had betrayed him,
all his controlled and concentrated passion had betrayed him; but he
hadn't said anything. He had buried his head deep in the sands and
trusted like an ostrich to an infectious oblivion. He reviewed his
behavior on the way to the rink the day of the International.

It was an icy cold morning; the valley was wrapped in a thick blue mist.
There was no sunlight yet. The tops of the mountains were a sharpened
deadly white, colder than purity. As he walked toward the valley the
black fir-trees on the distant heights took fire. They seemed to be
lighted one by one from some swift, invisible torch, and then quicker
than sight itself the sun slipped over the edge and ran in a golden
flood across the mountains. The little willows by the lake-side turned
apricot; the rink was very cold and only just refrozen. It was a small
gray square surrounded by color. Winn was quite alone in the silence and
the light and the tingling bitter air. There was something in him that
burned like a secret undercurrent of fire. Had he played the game? What
about that dumb weight on his lips when he had tried to tell Claire on
the Schatz Alp about Estelle? He couldn't get it out then; but had he
tried again later? Had he concealed his marriage? Why should he tell her
anything? She wouldn't care, she was so young. Couldn't he have his bit
of spring, his dance of golden daffodils, and then darkness? He really
thought of daffodils when he thought of Claire. She wouldn't mind,
because she was spring itself, and had in front of her a great
succession of flowers; but these were the last he was going to have.
There wouldn't be anything at all after Claire, and he wasn't going to
make love to her. Good God! he wasn't such a beast! There had been times
this last fortnight that had tried every ounce of his self-control, and
he hadn't touched her. He hadn't said a word that damned yellow-necked,
hen-headed chaplain's wife couldn't have heard and welcome. Would many
fellows have had his chances and behaved as if they were frozen
barbed-wire fences? And she'd looked at him--by Jove, she'd looked at
him! Not that she'd meant anything by it; only it had been hard to have
to sit on the only decent feelings he had ever had and not let them rip.
And as far as Estelle was concerned, she didn't care a damn for him, and
he might just as well have been a blackguard. But that wasn't quite the
point, was it? Blackguards hurt girls, and he hadn't set out to hurt
Claire.

Well, there was no use making any song or dance about it; he'd have to
go. At first he had thought he could tell her he was married--tell her
as soon as the competition was over, and stay on; but he hadn't counted
on the way things grew, and he didn't think now he could tell her and
then hold his tongue about what he felt. If he told her, the whole thing
would be out; he couldn't keep it back. There were things you knew you
could do, like going away and staying away; there were others you were a
fool to try.

He circled slowly over the black ice surrounded by pink flames. It made
him laugh, because he might have been a creature in hell. Yes, that was
what hell was like, he had always known it--cold. Cold and lonely, when,
if you'd only had a bit of luck, you might have been up somewhere in the
sunlight, not alone. He didn't feel somehow this morning as if his
marriage was an obstruction; he felt as if it were a shame. It hurt him
terribly that what had driven him to Estelle could be called love, when
love was this other feeling--the feeling that he'd like to be torn into
little bits rather than fail Claire. He'd be ridiculous to please her;
he'd face anything, suffer anything, take anything on. And it wasn't in
the least that she was lovely. He didn't think about her beauty half as
much as he thought about her health and the gentle, tender ways she had
with sick people. He'd watched her over and over again, when she had no
idea he was anywhere near, being nice to people in ways in which Winn
had never dreamed before one could be nice. When people had nothing but
their self-esteem left them, no attractions, no courage, no health,
she'd just sit down beside them and make their self-esteem happy and
comfortable.

She needn't have been anything but young and gay and triumphant, but she
never shirked anybody else's pain. He had puzzled over her a good deal
because, as far as he could see, she hadn't the ordinary rules belonging
to good people--about church, and not playing cards for money, and
pulling people up. It wasn't right and wrong she was thinking of most;
it was other people's feelings.

He tried not to love her like that, because it made it worse. It was
like loving God and Peter; it mixed him all up.

He couldn't see straight because everything he saw turned into love of
her, and being with her seemed like being good; and it wasn't, of
course, if he concealed things.

The icy blue rink turned slowly into gold before he had quite made up
his mind what to do. Making up his mind had a good deal to do with
Lionel, so that he felt fairly safe about it. It was going to hurt
horribly, but if it only hurt him, it couldn't be said to matter. You
couldn't have a safe plan that didn't hurt somebody, and as long as it
didn't hurt the person it was made for, it could be counted a success.

Davos began to descend upon the rink, first the best skaters--Swedes,
Russians, and Germans--and then all the world. The speed-skaters stood
about in heavy fur coats down to their feet.

Claire came down surrounded by admirers. Winn heard her laugh before he
saw her, and after he had seen her he saw nothing else. She looked like
one of the fir-trees when the sun had caught it; she seemed aflame with
a quite peculiar radiance and joy. She flew toward Winn, imitating the
speed-skaters with one long swift stride of her skates.

"Ah," she cried, "isn't it a jolly morning? Isn't everything heavenly?
Aren't you glad you are alive?"

That was the kind of mood she was in. It was quite superfluous to ask if
she was nervous. She was just about as nervous as the sun was when it
ran over the mountains.

"There doesn't seem to be much the matter with you this morning," said
Winn, eying her thoughtfully.

The rink cleared at eleven and the band began to play.

The judges sat in different quarters of the rink so as to get the best
all-around impression of the skating. The audience, muffled up in furs,
crowded half-way up the valley, as if it were a gigantic amphitheater.

A Polish girl, very tall and slender, with a long black pigtail, swung
out upon the ice. She caught the music with a faultless steadiness and
swing. Her eyes were fixed on the mountains; her flexible hips and waist
swung her to and fro as easily as a winter bird hovers balanced on its
steady pinions. Out of the crowd her partner, a huge black-bearded
Russian, glided toward her, caught her by the waist, lifted her, and
flung her from side to side in great swirls and resounding leaps. Her
skirts flew about her, her pigtail swung round her in the air, her feet
struck the ice firmly together like a pair of ringing castanets. The
crowd shouted applause as he caught her by the wrists after a
particularly dazzling plunge into the empty air, and brought her round
to face them, her fixed eyes changed and shot with triumph. The dance
was over.

Then a succession of men skaters came forward, whirling, twisting,
capering with flying feet. Winn watched them with more astonishment than
pleasure.

"Like a ring of beastly slippery microbes!" he remarked to Claire.

"Yes," she said; "but wait." Half a dozen men and women came running out
on the rink; with lifted feet, hand in hand, they danced like flying
sunbeams.

Then a German pair followed the Polish. Both were strong, first-rate
skaters, but the man was rough and selfish; he pulled his girl about,
was careless of her, and in the end let her down, and half the audience
hissed.

Swedish, Norwegian, French pairs followed swiftly after. Then Claire
rose with a quickening of her breath.

"Now," she said, "you!" It was curious how seldom she said Major
Staines.

Winn didn't much care to do this kind of thing before foreigners.
However, it was in a way rather jolly, especially when the music warmed
one's blood. He swept her out easily to the center of the ice. For a
time he had only to watch her. He wondered what she looked like to all
the black-headed dots sitting in the sun and gazing. In his heart there
was nothing left to which he could compare her. She turned her head a
little, curving and swooping toward him, and then sprang straight into
the air. He had her fast for a moment; her hands were in his, her eyes
laughed at his easy strength, and again she shot away from him. Now he
had to follow her, in and out, to the sound of the music; at first he
thought of the steps, but he soon stopped thinking. Something had
happened which made it quite unnecessary to think.

[Illustration: In his heart there was nothing left to which he could
compare her]

He was reading everything she knew out of his own heart; she had got
into him somehow, so that he had no need to watch for his cue.

Wherever she wanted him he was; whenever she needed the touch of his
hand or his steadiness it was ready for her. They were like the music
and words of a song, or like a leaf and the dancing air it rests upon.
They were no longer two beings; they had slipped superbly, intolerably
into one; they couldn't go wrong; they couldn't make a mistake. Where
she led he followed, indissolubly a part of her.

They swung together for the final salute. It seemed to Winn that her
heart--her happy, swift-beating, exultant heart--was in his breast, and
then suddenly, violently he remembered that she wasn't his, that he had
no right to touch her. He moved away from her, leaving her, a little
bewildered, to bow alone to the great cheering mass of people.

She found him afterward far back in the crowd, with a white face and
inscrutable eyes.

"You must come and see the speed-skaters," she urged, with her hand on
his arm. "It's the thing I told you about most. And I believe we've won
the second prize. The Russian and Pole have got the first, of course;
They were absolutely perfect, but we were rather good. Why did you rush
off, and what are you looking like that for? Is anything the matter?
You're not--" her voice faltered suddenly--"you're not angry, are you?"

"No, I'm not angry," said Winn, recklessly, "and nothing's the matter,
and I'll go wherever you want and see what you want and do what you
want, and I ran away because I was a damned fool and hate a fuss. And I
see you're going to ask me if I liked it awfully. Yes, I did; I liked it
awfully. Now are you satisfied?" He still hadn't said anything, he
thought, that mattered.

"Oh, yes," she said slowly, "of course I'm satisfied. I'm glad you liked
it awfully; I liked it awfully myself."




CHAPTER XVI


The valley of the Dischmatal lies between two rather shapeless
mountains; it leads nowhere, and there is nothing in it.

Winn gave no reason for his wish to walk there with Lionel except that
it was a quiet place for a talk. They had been together for twenty-four
hours and so far they had had no talk. Lionel had expected to find a
change in Winn; he had braced himself to meet the shock of seeing the
strongest man he knew pitilessly weakened under an insidious disease. He
had found a change, but not the one he expected. Winn looked younger,
more alert, and considerably more vigorous. There was a curious
excitement in his eyes which might have passed for happiness if he had
not been so restless. He was glad to see Lionel, but that wasn't enough
to account for it. Winn looked ten years younger and he had something up
his sleeve.

Lionel had his own theory as to what that something might be, but he
wouldn't have expected it to make Winn look younger. He couldn't help
being afraid that Winn had found out Estelle. There had always been the
chance that he might never find her out; he was neither reflective nor
analytical, and Lionel was both. Winn might have been content simply to
accept her as lovely and delightful, an ideal wife--not a companion, but
a beautiful, fluttering creature to be supplied with everything it
wanted. If he had done that he wouldn't have waked up to the fact that
the creature gave him nothing whatever back--beyond preening its
feathers and forbearing to peck. Lionel respected and loved women, so
that he could afford to feel a certain contempt for Estelle, but he had
always feared Winn's feeling any such emotion. Winn would condemn
Estelle first and bundle her whole sex after her. Lionel hardly dared to
ask him, as he did at last on their way through Dorf, what news he had
of his wife.

"What news of Estelle?" Winn asked indifferently. "None particularly.
She doesn't like Peter's language. My people seem to have taken to him
rather, and I hear he's picked up parts of the Governor's vocabulary.
It'll be jolly hearing him talk; he couldn't when I left. Estelle's
taken up religion. It's funny, my mother said she would, before we were
married. My mother's got a pretty strong head; Estelle hasn't, she was
keen about the Tango when I left; but I dare say religion's better for
her; hers is the high church kind. Up there is the valley--funny sort of
place; it'll remind you of the hills--that's one reason why I brought
you out here--that and the hotel being like a fly paper. Davos is like
all the places where our sort of people go--fashion or disease--it don't
matter a penny which--they're all over the place itself, in and out of
each other's pockets, and yet get a mile or two out and nobody's in
sight. Funny how people like each other. I don't like 'em, you know. I
hate 'em."

In the early February afternoon the valley lay before them singularly
still and white. There were no fir-trees on the sides of the abrupt snow
slopes, and it took Winn some time to rediscover a faint pathway half
blotted out by recent snow.

A few minutes later the road behind them vanished, everything dropped
away from them but the snow, and the low gray skies. A tiny wind slipped
along the valley; it was strange not to see it, for it felt like the
push of a Presence, in the breathless solitude. A long way off Lionel
could hear a faint noise like the sound of some one choking.

It reminded him of the sound behind the green baize doors in the hotel.
It was just such a sound, suppressed, faint, but quite audible, that he
heard along the passages at night. He looked questioningly at Winn.

"That's a waterfall," said Winn; "most of it's frozen up but it leaks
through a little. There's a story about this place--I didn't mention it
to you before, did I?"

Lionel shook his head. Winn was not in the habit of telling him stories
about places. He had informed Lionel on one occasion some years ago,
that he thought legends too fanciful, unless they were in the Bible,
which was probably true, and none of our business. But Lionel had
already wondered if this change

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