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diff --git a/77646-0.txt b/77646-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b8694c0 --- /dev/null +++ b/77646-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,4569 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77646 *** + + OBERLAND + + VOLUMES IN THIS SERIES + + POINTED ROOFS + BACKWATER + HONEYCOMB + THE TUNNEL + INTERIM + DEADLOCK + REVOLVING LIGHTS + THE TRAP + OBERLAND + (The next volume is in preparation) + + + + + OBERLAND + + + BY + DOROTHY M. RICHARDSON + AUTHOR OF “POINTED ROOFS,” ETC. + + + DUCKWORTH + 3 HENRIETTA STREET, LONDON + + + First published 1927 + (All rights reserved) + + + Printed in Great Britain by Ebenezer Baylis & Son, Ltd., The Trinity + Press, Worcester. + + + TO + J. H. B. + + + + + OBERLAND + + + + + CHAPTER I + + +The sight of a third porter, this time a gentle-looking man carrying a +pile of pillows and coming slowly, filled her with hope. But he passed +on his way as heedless as the others. It seemed incredible that not one +of these men should answer. She wasted a precious moment seeing again +the three brutishly preoccupied forms as figures moving in an evil +dream. If only she were without the miserable handbags she might run +alongside one of these villains, with a tip in an outstretched hand and +buy the simple yes or no that was all she needed. But she could not +bring herself to abandon her belongings to the mercy of this +ill-mannered wilderness where not a soul would care if she wandered +helpless until the undiscovered train had moved off into the night. She +knew this would not be and that what she was resenting was not the human +selfishness about her of which she had her own full share, but this +turning of her weariness into exhaustion ruining the rest of the journey +that already had held suffering enough. + +There must be several minutes left of the ten the big clock had marked +as she neared the platforms. Recalling its friendly face she saw also +that of the little waiter at the buffet who had tried to persuade her to +take wine and murmured too late that there was no extra charge for it, +very gently. Rallying the remainder of her strength she dropped her +things on the platform with a decisiveness she tried just in vain to +scorn, and stood still and looked about amongst the hurrying passengers +and saw passing by and going ahead to the movement of an English stride +the familiar, blessed outlines of a Burberry. Ignoring the near train +the man was crossing a pool of lamplight and making for the dark +unlikely platform over the way. She caught up her bags and followed and +in a moment was at peace within the semi-darkness of the further +platform amongst people she had seen this morning at Victoria, and the +clangorous station was reduced to an enchanting background for confident +behaviour. + +All these people were serene; had come in groups, unscathed, knowing +their way, knowing how to quell the bloused fiends into helpfulness. But +then, also, the journey to them was uniform grey, a tiresome business to +be got through; not black and sudden gold. Yet even they were relieved +to find themselves safely through the tangle. They strode unnecessarily +about, shouted needlessly to each other; expressing travellers’ joy in +the English way. + +There seemed to be plenty of time and for awhile she strolled delighting +in them, until the sight of an excited weary child, in a weatherproof +that trailed at its heels, marching sturdily about adream with pride and +joy perfectly caricaturing the rest of the assembly, made her turn away +content to see no more, to hoist up her baggage and clamber after it +into cover, into the company of her own joy. + +Into a compartment whose blinds were snugly drawn upon soft diffused +light falling on the elegance of dove-grey repp and white lace that had +been the surprise and refreshment of this morning’s crowded train, but +that now, evening-lit and enclosed, gave the empty carriage the air of a +little salon. + +Installed here, with fatigue suddenly banished and the large P.L.M. +weaving within the mesh of the lace its thrilling assurance of being +launched on long continental distances, it was easy to forgive the +coercion that had imposed the longer sea-route for its cheapness and the +first-class ticket for the chance of securing solitude on the night +journey. + +And indeed this steaming off into the night, that just now had seemed to +be the inaccessible goal and end of the journey, was only the beginning +of its longest stretch; but demanding only endurance. With hurry and +uncertainty at an end there could be nothing to compare with what lay +behind; nothing that could compare with the state of being a helpless +projectile that had spoiled Dieppe and made Paris a nightmare. + +Yet Dieppe and Paris and the landscape in between, now that they were +set, by this sudden haven, far away in the past, were already coming +before her eyes transformed, lit by the joy that, hovering all the time +in the background, had seen and felt. France, for whose sake at once she +had longed to cease being a hurrying traveller robbed right and left of +things passing too swiftly, had been seen. Within her now, an +irrevocable extension of being, was France. + +France that had spoken from its coast the moment she came up from the +prison of the battened-down saloon; the moment before the shouting +fiends charged up the gangway; spoken from the quay, from the lounging +blue-bloused figures, the buildings, the way the frontage of the town +met the sky and blended with the air, softly, yet clear in its softness, +and with serenity that was vivacious, unlike the stolid English peace. + +And later those slender trees along the high bank of a river, the way +they had of sailing-by, mannered, _coquettish_; awakening affection for +the being of France. + +And Paris barely glimpsed and shrouded with the glare of night ... the +emanation even of Paris was peace. An emanation as powerful as that of +London, more lively and yet more serene. Serene where gracious buildings +presided over the large flaring thoroughfares, serene even in the +dreadful by-streets. + +And that woman at the station. Black-robed figure, coming diagonally +across the clear space yellow in gaslight against the background of +barriered platforms, seeming with her swift assured gait, bust first, +head reared and a little tilted back on the neck, so insolently +feminine, and then, as she swept by, suddenly beautiful; from head to +foot all gracefully moving rhythm. _Style_, of course, redeeming +ugliness and cruelty. She was the secret of France. France concentrated. + +Michael, staying in Paris, said that the French are indescribably evil +and their children like monkeys. He had fled eagerly to England. But +Michael’s perceptions are moral. France, within his framework, falls +back into shadow. + +The train carrying her through beloved France and away from it to a +bourne that had now ceased to be an imagined place, and become an idea, +useless, to be lost on arrival as her idea of France had been lost, was +so quiet amidst its loud rattling that the whole of it might be asleep. +No sound came from the corridor. No one passed. There was nothing but +the continuous rattling and the clatter of gear. The world deserting her +just when she would have welcomed, for wordless communication of the joy +of achievement, the sight and sound of human kind. + +Twelve hours away, and now only a promise of daylight and of food, lay +Berne. Beyond Berne, somewhere in the far future of to-morrow afternoon, +the terminus, the business of finding and bargaining for a sleigh—the +last effort. + +A muffled figure filled the doorway, entered the carriage, deposited +bags. A middle-aged Frenchman, dark, with sallow cheeks bulging above a +little pointed beard. Thinking her asleep he moved quietly, arranging +his belongings with deft, maturely sociable hands. From one of them a +ring gleamed in the gaslight. He showed no sign of relief in escaping +into silence, no sign of being alone. Conversation radiated from him. +Where, on the train, could he have been so recently talking that at this +moment he was almost making remarks into his bag? + +She closed her eyes, listening to his sounds that sent to a distance the +sounds of the train. He had driven away also the outer spaces. The grey +and white interior spoke no longer of the strange wide distances of +France. He was France at home in a railway carriage, preparing to sleep +until, at the end of a definite short space of hours, the Swiss dawn +appeared at the windows. Before he came the night had stretched ahead, +timeless. + +A moment’s stillness, and then a sound like the pumping of nitrous-oxide +into a bag. She opened her eyes upon him seated opposite with cheeks +distended and eyes strained wide above indeed a bag, held to his lips +and limply flopping. Bracing herself to the presence either of a lunatic +or a pitiful invalid believing himself unobserved, she watched while +slowly the bag swelled up and took, obedient to an effort that seemed +about to make his eyeballs start from his head, the shape of a cushion, +circular about a flattened centre. Setting it down in the corner +corresponding to that where lay her own head, he took off his boots, +pulled on slippers and pattered out into the corridor where he became +audible struggling with a near ventilator that presently gave and +clattered home. Tiptoeing back into the carriage where already it seemed +that the air grew close, he stood under the light, peering upwards with +raised arm. A gentle click, and two little veils slid down over the +globe and met, leaving the light quenched to a soft glimmer: beautiful, +shrouding hard outlines, keeping watch through the night, speaking of +night and travel, yet promising day and the end of travel. + +But he had not done. He was battling now with the sliding door. It was +closing, closed, and the carriage converted into a box almost in +darkness and suddenly improper. With a groaning sigh he flung himself +down and drew his rug to the margin of the pale disc that was his face +and that turned sharply as she rose and passed it to reach the door, and +still showed, when the corridor light flowed in through the opened door, +a perfect astonishment. His inactivity, while she struggled out with her +baggage into the inhospitable corridor checked the words with which she +would have explained her inability to remain sealed for the night in a +small box. As she pushed the door to she thought she heard a small +sound, a sniggering expletive, mirth at the spectacle of British +prudery. + +She was alone in the corridor of the sleeping train, in a cold air that +reeked of rusting metal and resounded with the clangour of machinery. +Exploring in both directions she found no sign of an attendant, nothing +but closely shrouded carriages telling of travellers outstretched and +slumbering. Into either of these she felt it impossible to break. There +was nothing for it but to abandon the hope of a night’s rest and drop to +a class whose passengers would be numerous and seated. The train had +gathered a speed that flung her from side to side as she went. In two +journeys she got her belongings across the metal bridge that swayed +above the couplings, and arrived with bruised arms and shoulders in +another length of corridor, a duplicate in noise and cold emptiness of +the one she had left. Everywhere shrouded carriages. But something had +changed, there was something even in the pitiless clangour that seemed +to announce a change of class. + +The door she pushed open revealed huddled shapes whose dim faces, +propped this way and that, were all relaxed in slumber. There was no +visible vacant place, but as she hesitated within the emerging reek a +form stirred and sat forward as if to enquire; and when she struggled in +with her bags and her apology the carriage came to life in heavily +draped movement. + +She was seated, shivering in a fog of smells, but at rest, escaped from +nightmare voyaging amongst swaying shadows. The familiar world was about +her again and she sat blessing the human kindliness of these sleeping +forms, blessing the man who had first moved, even though his rousing had +proved to be anxiety about the open door which, the moment she was +inside, he had closed with the gusty blowings of one who takes refuge +from a blizzard. + +But the sense of home-coming began presently to fade under the pressure +of suffering that promised only to increase. She had long ceased to +wonder what made it possible for these people to add wraps and rugs to +the thick layers of the stifling atmosphere and remain serene. The +effort was no longer possible that had carried her through appearances +into a sense of the reality beneath. She saw them now as repellent +mysteries, pitiless aliens dowered with an unfathomable faculty for +dispensing with air. With each breath the smells that had greeted her, +no longer separately apparent, advanced in waves whose predominant +flavour was the odour of burnt rubber rising from the grating that ran +along the middle of the floor and seemed to sear the soles of her feet. +Getting beneath them her rolled rug she abandoned all but the sense of +survival and sank into herself, into a coma in which everything but the +green-veiled oscillating light was motionless forever. Forever the night +would go on and her head turn now this way now that against the harsh +upholstery. + + * * * * * + +The train was slowing, stopping. Its rumbling clatter subsided to a +prolonged squeak that ended on a stillness within which sounded one +against the other the rapid ticking of a watch and a steady rhythmic +snore. No one stirred, and for a moment there was nothing but these +sounds to witness that life went on. Then faintly and as if from very +far away she heard the metallic clangours of a large high station and +amidst them a thin clarion voice singing out an indistinguishable name. +Some large sleeping provincial town signalling its importance; a +milestone, marking off hours passed through that need not be braved +again. Yet when the train moved on it seemed impossible even to imagine +the ending of the night. She had no idea of how long she had sat hemmed +and suffering, with nothing in her mind but snatches of song that would +not be dismissed, with aching brow and burning eyeballs and a +ceaselessly on-coming stupor that would not turn to sleep. And at the +next stop with its echoing clangour and faintness of clarion voices she +no longer desired somehow to get across the encumbered carriage and +taste from a corridor window the sweet fresh air of the railway station +so freely breathed by those who were crying in the night. + + * * * * * + +A numbness had crept into the movement of the train, as though, wearying +it had ceased to clatter and were dropping into a doze. It was moving so +quietly that the ticking of the watch again became audible. The wheels +under the carriage seemed to be muffled and to labour, pushing heavily +forward ... _Snow_. The journey across France ending on the heights +along its eastern edge. Her drugged senses awoke bewailing Paris, +gleaming now out of reach far away in the north, challenging with the +memory of its glimpsed beauty whatever loveliness might be approaching +through the night. + + * * * * * + +Again outside the stopping train a far-off voice but this time a jocund +sound, ringing echoless in open air. In a moment through a lifted window +it became a rousing summons. Blinds went up, and on the huddled forms +emerging serene and bright-eyed from their hibernation a blueish light +came in. The opened door admitted crisp sounds close at hand and air, +advancing up the carriage. + +Upon the platform the air was motionless and yet, walked through, an +intensity of movement—movement upon her face of millions of +infinitesimal needles attacking. Mountain air “like wine,” but this +effervescence was solid, holding one up, feeding every nerve. + +A little way down the platform she came upon the luggage, a few trunks +set side by side on a counter, and saw at once that her portmanteau was +not there. Anxiety dogging her steps. But this air, that reached, it +seemed, to her very spirit, would not let her feel anxious. + +The movements of the people leaving the train were leisurely, promising +a long wait. Most of the passengers were the English set free, strolling +happily about in fur-coats and creased Burberrys. English voices took +possession of the air. Filled it with the sense of the incorrigible +English confidence. And upon a table beyond the counter stood rows and +rows of steaming cups. Coffee. Café, mon dieu! Offered casually, the +normal beverage of these happy continentals. + +The only visible official stood at ease beyond the table answering +questions, making no move towards the ranged luggage. He looked very +mild, had a little blue-black beard. She thought of long-forgotten +Emmerich, the heavy responsible pimpled face of the German official who +plunged great hands in amongst her belongings. Perhaps the customs’ +officers were yet to appear. + +Fortified by coffee she strolled up and made her enquiry in French, but +carefully in the slipshod English manner. For a moment her demand seemed +to embarrass him. Then, very politely: + +“_Vous arrivez, madame?_” + +“_De Londres._” + +“_Et vous allez?_” + +“_À Oberland._” + +“_Vous n’avez qu’a monter dans le train_,” and hospitably he indicated +the train that stood now emptied, and breathing through its open doors. +Walking on down the platform she caught through a door ajar in the +background a glimpse of a truckle bed with coverings thrown back. Here +as they laboured forward through the darkness the douanier had been +sleeping, his station ready-staged for their coming, a farcical +half-dozen trunks laid out to represent the belongings of the trainful +of passengers. Appearances thus kept up, he was enjoying his rôle of +pleasant host. Tant mieux, tant very much mieux. One could enjoy the fun +of being let out into the night. + +The solid air began to be intensely cold. But in its cold there was no +bitterness and it attained only her face, whose shape it seemed to +change. And all about the station were steep walls of starless darkness +and overhead in a blue-black sky, stars oddly small and numerous; very +sharp and near. + +When the train moved on night settled down once more. Once more there +was dim gaslight and jolting shadows. But the air was clearer and only +two passengers remained, two women, each in her corner and each in a +heavy black cloak. Strangers to each other, with the length of the +carriage between them, yet alike, indistinguishable; above each cloak a +plump middle-aged face not long emerged from sleep: sheened with the +sleep that had left the oily, glinting brown eyes. Presently they began +to speak, with the freemasonry of women unobserved, socially off duty. +Their voices frugal, dull and flat; the voices of those who have +forgotten even the desire to find sympathy, to find anything turned +their way with an offering. + +They reached details. One of them was on her way home to a place with a +tripping gentle name, a fairy keep agleam on a lakeside amidst +mountains. To her it was dailiness, life as now she knew it, a hemmed-in +loneliness. Visitors came from afar. Found it full of poetry. Saw her +perhaps as a part of it, a figure of romance. + +When their patient voices ceased they were ghosts. Not even ghosts, for +they seemed uncreated, seemed never to have lived and yet to preside +over life, fixed in their places, an inexorable commentary. Each sat +staring before her into space, patient and isolated, undisguised +isolation. To imagine them alert and busied with their families about +them made them no less sad. Immovable at the centre of their lives was +loneliness, its plaints silenced, its source forgotten or unknown. + +Of what use traveller’s joy? Frivolous, unfounded, dependent altogether +on oblivions. + +One of them was rummaging in a heavy sack made of black twill and corded +at the neck. Toys, she said, were there—“_pour mes p’tits enfants_.” + +“_Ça porte beaucoup de soins, les enfants_,” said the other, and +compressed dry lips. The first agreed and they sat back, each in her +corner, fallen into silence. Children to them seemed to be not persons +but a material, an unvarying substance wearily known to them both and to +be handled in that deft adjusting way of the French. Satisfied with this +mutual judgment on life, made in camera, they relapsed into +contemplation, leaving the air weighted with their shared, secretly +scornful, secretly impatient resignation. + +Yet they were fortunate. Laden with wealth they did not count. It spoke +in their complacency. Aspiration asleep. They looked for joy in the +wrong place. In this they were humanity, blindly pursuing its way. Their +pallid plump faces, so salient, could smile impersonally. Their heads +were well-poised above shapely subdued bodies. + + * * * * * + +Now that it was empty and the blinds drawn up, the carriage seemed all +window, letting in the Swiss morning that was mist opening here and +there upon snow still greyed by dawn. Through the one she had just +pushed up came life, smoothing away the traces of the night. She lay +back in her corner and heard with closed eyes the steady voice of the +train. The rattle and clatter of its night-long rush through France +seemed to be checked by a sense of achievement, as if now it took its +ease, delighting in the coming of day, in the presence of this +Switzerland for whose features it was watching through the mist. + +Incredible that in this same carriage where now she was at peace in +morning light she had sat through a flaming darkness, penned and +enduring. Lifting weary eyes she boldly surveyed it, saw the soilure and +shabbiness the gaslight had screened, saw a friend, grimed with +beneficent toil, and turned once more blissfully towards the window and +its view of thin mist and dawn-greyed snowfields. + + * * * * * + +The leap of recognition, unknowing between the mountains and herself +which was which, made the first sight of them—smoothed snow and crinkled +rock in unheard-of unimagined tawny light—seem, even at the moment of +seeing, already long ago. + +They knew, they smiled joyfully at the glad shock they were, sideways +gigantically advancing while she passed as over a bridge across which +presently there would be no return, seeing and unseeing, seeing again +with the first keen vision. + +They closed in upon the train, summitless, their bases gliding by, a +ceaseless tawny cliff throwing its light into the carriage, almost +within touch; receding, making space at its side for sudden blue water, +a river accompanying, giving them gentleness who were its mighty edge; +broadening, broadening, becoming a wide lake, a stretch of smooth +peerless blue with mountains reduced and distant upon its hither side. +With the sideways climbing of the train the lake dropped away, down and +down until presently she stood up to see it below in the distance, a +blue pool amidst its encirclement of mountain and of sky: a picture +sliding away, soundlessly, hopelessly demanding its perfect word. + + * * * * * + +“_Je suis anglaise_,” she murmured as the window came down into place. + +“_Je le crois, madame. Mais +comment-voulez-vous-mon-dieu-vous-autres-anglais-qu’on-chauffe-les-coupés?_” + +She was left to pictures framed and glazed. + + * * * * * + +Berne was a snowstorm blotting out everything but small white +green-shuttered houses standing at angles about the open space between +the station and the little restaurant across the way, their strangeness +veiled by falling flakes, flakes falling fast on freshly fallen snow +that was pitted with large deep-sunken foot-prints. The electric air of +dawn had softened, and as she plunged, following the strides of a row of +foot-prints, across to her refuge, it wrapped her about, a pleasant +enlivening density, warmed by the snow. Monstrous snowstorm, adventure, +and an excuse for shirking the walk to the Bridge and its view of the +Bernese heights. She was not ready for heights. This little secret tour, +restricted to getting from train to breakfast and back again to the +train, gave her, with its charm of familiar activity in a strange place, +a sharp first sense of Switzerland that in obediently following the +dictated programme she would have missed. But coming forth, +strengthened, once more into the snow she regretted the low +walking-shoes that prevented the following up of her glad meeting with +the forgotten details of the continental breakfast, its tender-crusted +rolls, the small oblongs of unglistening sugar that sweetened the +life-giving coffee, by an exploration of the nearer streets. + + * * * * * + +Presently their talk fell away and the journeying cast again its full +spell. Almost soundlessly the train was labouring along beside a ridge +that seemed to be the silent top of the world gliding by, its narrow +strip of grey snow-thick sky pierced by the tops of the crooked stakes +that were a fence submerged. From time to time the faint clear sound of +a bell, ting-ting, and a neat toy station slid by half buried in snow. + + * * * * * + +“I don’t dislike those kind of breakfasts myself,” she said and turned +her face to the window. Her well-cut lips had closed unpressing, +flowerlike. Both the girls had the slender delicate fragility of +flowers. And strength. Refined and gentle, above a strength of which +they were unaware. They were immensely strong or they would not appear +undisturbed by their long journeying, would not look so exactly as if +they were returning home in an omnibus from an afternoon’s shopping in +their own Croydon. + + * * * * * + +They had come so far together that it would seem churlish, with the +little terminus welcoming the whole party, to turn away from them. And +she liked them, was attached to them as fellow adventurers, fellow +survivors of the journey. The falling into the trap of travellers’ +freemasonry was inevitable: a fatal desire to know the whence and the +whither, and, before you are aware of it you have pooled your enterprise +and the new reality is at a distance. But so far it had not come to +that. There were no adieux. They had melted away, they and their things, +lost in the open while she, forgetful of everything but the blessed +cessation, had got herself out of the train. + +The station was in a wilderness. High surrounding mountains making it +seem that their half-day’s going up and still up had brought them out +upon a modest lowland. There was no sign from where she stood of any +upward track. Sheds, dumped upon a waste of snow beyond which mountains +filled the sky and barred the way. + +Fierce-looking men in blue gaberdines and slouch hats, lounging about. +One of these must be attacked and bargained with for a sleigh. But there +were no sleighs to be seen, nothing at all resembling a vehicle, unless +indeed one braved the heights in one of those rough shallow frameworks +on runners, some piled with hay and some with peeled yellow timbers, +neatly lashed. Perhaps a sleigh should be ordered in advance? Perhaps +here she met disaster.... + +The man knew her requirements before she spoke and was all hot-eyed +eagerness, yet off-hand. Brutish, yet making her phrases, that a London +cabby would have received with deference, sound discourteous. In his +queer German he agreed to the smaller sum and turned away to +expectorate. + +The large barn-like restaurant was empty save for a group of people at +the far end, forgotten again and again as she sat too happy to swoop the +immense distance between herself and anything but the warm brownness of +the interior and its strange quality, its intensity of welcoming +shelter—sharp contrast with the bleak surrounding snow. Switzerland was +here, already surrounding and protecting with an easy practised hand. +And there was a generous savouriness.... She could not recall any +lunching on an English journey affording this careless completeness of +comfort. + +Incompletely sharing these appreciations her tired and fevered body +cowered within the folds of the beneficent fur-coat seeking a somnolence +that refused to possess it. Fever kept her mind alert, but circling at a +great pace round and round amidst reiterated assertions. Turn and turn +about they presented themselves, were flung aside in favour of what +waited beyond, and again thrust themselves forward, as if determined, so +emphatic they were, not only to share but to steer her adventure. And +away behind them, standing still and now forever accessible, were the +worlds she had passed through since the sleet drove in her face at +Newhaven. And ahead unknown Oberland, summoning her up amongst its +peaks. + +And hovering vehement above them all hung the cloud of her pity for +those who had never bathed in strangeness—and its dark lining, the +selfish congratulation that reminded her how at the beginning of her +life, in the face of obstructions, she had so bathed and now under +kindly compulsion was again bathing. And again alone. Loneliness, that +had long gone from her life, had come back for this sudden voyaging to +be her best companion, to shelter strangeness that can be known only in +solitude. + +In a swift glimpse, caught through the mesh woven by the obstinate +circlings of her consciousness, she saw her time in Germany, how perfect +in pain and joy, how left complete and bright had been that piece of her +life. And in Belgium—in spite of the large party. Yet even the party, +though they had taken the edge from many things had now become a rich +part of the whole. But the things that came back most sharply had been +seen in solitude: in those times of going out alone on small +commissions, the way the long vista of boulevard seemed to sing for joy, +the sharp turn, the clean pavé and neat bright little shops; the +charcuterie just round the corner, the old pharmacien who had understood +and quickly and gravely chloroformed the kitten quite dead; the long +walk through the grilling lively Brussels streets to get the circular +tickets—little shadow over it of pain at the thought of the frightened +man who believed it sinful to go to mass and saw the dull little English +Church as light in a pagan darkness; the afternoon alone in the polished +old salon while the others were packing for the Ardennes tour just +before the great thunderstorm, bright darkness making everything gleam, +the candles melting in the heavy heat, drooping from their sconces, +white, and gracious in their oddity, against the dark panelling: rich +ancient gloom and gleam and the certainty of the good of mass, of the +way so welcome and so right as an interval in living it stayed the +talkative brain and made the soul sure of itself. That moment in +Bruges—after the wrangling at the station, after not wanting to go +deliberately to see the Belfry, after feeling forever blank in just this +place that was fulfilling all the so different other places, showing +itself to be their centre and secret, while aunt Bella bought the prawns +and we all stood fuming in the sweltering heat—of being suddenly struck +alive, drawn running away from them all down the little brown street—the +Belfry and its shadow, all its might and sweetness and surroundedness, +safe, before they all came up with their voices and their books. + +And oh! that first glimpse that had begun it all, of Brussels in the +twilight from the landing window; old peaked houses, grouped irregularly +and rising out of greenery, gothic, bringing happy nostalgia. Gothic +effects bring nostalgia, have a deep recognisable quality of life. A +gothic house is a person, a square house is a thing.... + +In silence and alone; yet most people prefer to see everything in +groups, collectively. They never lose themselves in strangeness and wake +changed. + +That man is cheerfully bearing burdens. Usually in a party there is one +who _is_ alone. Harassed, yet quietly seeing. + +He was smiling, the smile of an old friend. With a sharp effort she +pushed her way through, wondering how long she had sat staring at them, +to recognition of the Croydon party. Who else indeed could it be? She +gathered herself together and instantly saw in the hidden future not the +sunlit mountains of her desire but for the first time the people already +ensconced at the Alpenstock, demanding awareness and at least the +semblance of interest. Sports-people, not only to the manner born—that, +though they would not know it, was a tie, a home-tie pulling at her +heart—but to the manner dressed, making one feel not merely inadequate +but improperly hard-up. But since she was to live on a balcony? And +there was the borrowed fur-coat ... and the blue gown. + +The words sung out by the Croydon father were lost amongst their echoes +in the rafters. She heard only the English voice, come, as she had come, +so far and so laboriously. Her gladly answering words were drowned by +the sudden jingling of sleighbells at the door near by. + + * * * * * + +Behind the sturdy horse, whose head-tossings caused the silvery clash of +bells was the sleigh of _The Polish Jew_, brought out of the darkness at +the back of the stage and brightly coloured: upon a background of +pillar-box red, flourishing gilt scrolls surrounded little landscape +scenes painted upon its sides in brilliant deep tones that seemed to +spread a warmth and call attention to the warmth within the little +carriage sitting compact and low on its runners and billowing with a +large fur rug. + +As unexpected as the luxurious vehicle was the changed aspect of the +driver. Still wearing smock and slouch hat he had now an air of gravity, +the air of a young student of theology. And on his face as he put her +into the sleigh was a look of patient responsibility. He packed and +arranged with the manner of one handling valuables, silently; the Swiss +manner perhaps of treating the English, acquired and handed down through +long experience of the lavish generosity of these travellers from whom +it was useless to expect an intelligible word. But there was contempt +too; deep-rooted, patient contempt. + +This was luxury. There was warmth under her feet, fur lining upon the +back of the seat reinforced by the thickness of the fur-coat and all +about her the immense fur rug. There was nothing to fear from the air +that presently would be in movement, driving by and growing colder as +the sleigh went up into the unknown heights. Away ahead the Croydon +party made a compact black mass between the two horses of their larger +sleigh and the luggage standing out behind in unwieldy cubes just above +the snow. Their driver was preparing to start. On all the upward way +they would be visible ahead, stealing its mystery, heralding the hotel +at the end. + +They were off, gliding swiftly over the snow, gay voices mingling with +the sound of bells, silvery crashings going to the rhythm of a soundless +trit-trot. Every moment her own horse threw up a spray of tinkles +promising the fairy crashing that would ring upon the air against the +one now rapidly receding. The mountains frowning under the grey sky and +the snowfields beyond the flattened expanse round the station came to +life, listening to the confidently receding bells. + +The Croydon party disappeared round a bend and again there was silence +and a mighty inattention. But her man, come round from lashing on her +luggage, was getting into his seat just as he was, coatless and +gathering up the reins with bare hands. + +“Euh!” + +The small sound, like a word spoken _sotto voce_ to a neighbour, barely +broke the stillness, but the sleigh leapt to the pull of the horse, and +glided smoothly off. Its movement was pure enchantment. No driving on +earth could compare to this skimming along on hard snow to the note of +the bells that was higher than that of those gone on ahead and seemed to +challenge them with an overtaking eagerness. Gay and silvery sweet, it +seemed to make a sunlight within the sunless air and to call up to the +crinkled tops of the mountains that were now so magnificently in +movement. + +“Euh-euh!” + +On they swept through the solidly impinging air. Again the million +needles attacking. In a moment they were round the bend and in sight of +the large sleigh, a moving patch upon the rising road. + +“Euh-euh-euh,” urged the driver laconically, and the little sleigh flew +rocking up the slight incline. They were overtaking. The heavier note of +the bells ahead joined its slower rhythm to their swift light jinglings. +The dark mass of the Croydon party showed four white faces turned to +watch. + +“You are well off with your fur-coat,” cried the father as her sleigh +skimmed by. They had looked a little crouched and enduring. Not knowing +the cold she had endured in the past, cold that lay ahead to be endured +again, in winters set in a row. + +Ringing in her head as she sped upwards along the road narrowing and +flanked by massive slopes whose summits had drawn too near to be seen, +were the shouted remarks exchanged by the drivers. They had fallen +resonantly upon the air and opened within it a vision of the sunlit +heights known to these men with the rich deep voices. But there was the +hotel.... + +After all no one was to witness her apprenticeship. And to get up within +sight of the summits was worth much suffering. Suffering that would be +forgotten. And if these were Oberland men, then there was to be +_ski-running_ to-morrow. Si-renna, what else could that mean? Patois, +rich and soft. Doomed to die. Other words gathered unawares on the way +came and placed themselves beside those ringing in her ears. +Terminations, turns of sound, upon a new quality of voice. Strong and +deep and ringing with a wisdom that brought her a sense of helpless +ignorance. The helpless ignorance of town culture. + + * * * * * + +The thin penetrating mist promised increasing cold. The driver flung on +a cloak, secured at the neck but falling open across his chest and +leaving exposed his thinly clad arms and bare hands. + +She pulled high the collar of her fur-coat, rimy now at its edges, and +her chin ceased to ache and only her eyes and cheekbones felt the thin +icy attacking mist that had appeared so suddenly. The cold of a few +moments ago numbing her face had brought a hint of how one might freeze +quietly to death, numbed and as if warmed by an intensity of cold; and +that out amongst the mountains it would not be terrible. But this raw +mist bringing pain in every bone it touched would send one aching to +one’s death, crushed to death by a biting increasing pain. + +She felt elaborately warm, not caring even now how long might go on this +swift progress along a track that still wound through corridors of +mountains and still found mountains rising ahead. But night would come +and the great shapes all about her would be wrapped away until they were +a darkness in the sky. + +If this greying light were the fall of day then certainly the cold would +increase. She tried to reckon how far she had travelled eastwards, by +how much earlier the sun would set. But south, too, she had come.... + + * * * * * + +The mist was breaking, being broken from above. It dawned upon her that +they had been passing impossibly through clouds and were now reaching +their fringe. Colour was coming from above, was already here in dark +brilliance, thundery. Turning to look down the track she saw distance, +cloud masses, light-soaked and gleaming. + +And now from just ahead high in the mist, a sunlit peak looked down. + +Long after she had sat erect from her warm ensconcement, the sunlit +mountain corridors still seemed to be saying watch, see, if you can +believe it, what we can do. And all the time it seemed that they must +open out and leave her upon the hither side of enchantment, and still +they turned and brought fresh vistas. Sungilt masses beetling variously +up into pinnacles that truly cut the sky high up beyond their +high-clambering pinewoods, where their snow was broken by patches of +tawny crag. She still longed to glide forever onwards through this +gladness of light. + +But the bright gold was withdrawing. Presently it stood only upon the +higher ridges. The colour was going and the angular shadows, leaving a +bleakness of white, leaving the mountains higher in their whiteness. The +highest sloped more swiftly than the others from its lower mass and +ended in a long cone of purest white with a flattened top sharply aslant +against the deepening blue; as if walking up it. It held her eyes, its +solid thickness of snow, the way from its blunted tower it came +broadening down unbroken by crag, radiant white until far down its +pinewoods made a gentleness about its base. Up there on the quiet of its +topmost angle it seemed there must be someone, minutely rejoicing in its +line along the sky. + +A turn brought peaks whose gold had turned to rose. She had not eyes +enough for seeing. Seeing was not enough. There was sound, if only one +could hear it, in this still, signalling light. + +The last of it was ruby gathered departing upon the topmost crags, +seeming, the moment before it left them, to be deeply wrought into the +crinkled rock. + +At a sharp bend the face of the sideways-lounging driver came into +sight, expressionless. + +“_Schön, die letzte Glüh_,” he said quietly. + +When she had pronounced her “_Wunderschön_,” she sat back released from +intentness seeing the scene as one who saw it daily; and noticed then +that the colour ebbed from the mountains had melted into the sky. It was +this marvel of colour, turning the sky to molten rainbow, that the +driver had meant as well as the rubied ridges that had kept the sky +forgotten. + +Just above a collar of snow, that dipped steeply between the peaks it +linked, the sky was a soft greenish purple paling upwards from +mauve-green to green whose edges melted imperceptibly into the deepening +blue. In a moment they were turned towards the opposite sky, bold in +smoky russet rising to amber and to saffron-rose expanding upwards; a +high radiant background for its mountain, spread like a banner, not +pressed dense and close with deeps strangely moving, like the little sky +above the collar. + +The mountain lights were happiness possessed, sure of recurrence. But +these skies, never to return, begged for remembrance. + +The dry cold deepened, bringing sleep. Drunk, she felt now, with sleep; +dizzy with gazing, and still there was no sign of the end. They were +climbing a narrow track between a smooth high drift, a greying wall of +snow, and a precipice sharply falling. + +An opening; the floor of a wide valley. Mountains hemming it, exposed +from base to summit, moving by as the sleigh sped along the level to +where a fenced road led upwards. Up this steep road they went in a slow +zig-zag that brought the mountains across the way now right now left, +and a glimpse ahead against the sky of a village, angles and peaks of +low buildings sharply etched, quenched by snow, crushed between snow and +snow, and in their midst the high snow-shrouded cone of a little church; +Swiss village, lost in wastes of snow. + +At a tremendous pace they jingled along a narrow street of shops and +châlets. The street presently opened to a circle about the little church +and narrowed again and ended, showing beyond, as the sleigh pulled up at +the steps of a portico, rising ground and the beginning of pinewoods. + + + + + CHAPTER II + + +She followed the little servant, who had darted forth to seize her +baggage, into a small lounge whose baking warmth recalled the worst of +the train journey; seeming—though, since still one breathed, air was +there—like an over-heated vacuum. + +The brisk little maid, untroubled, was already at the top of a short +flight of wide red-carpeted stairs, and making impatient rallying +sounds—like one recalling a straying dog. Miriam went gladly to the +promise of the upper air. But in going upwards there was no relief. + +Glancing, as she passed at the turn of the stairs a figure standing in a +darkness made by the twilight in the angle of the wall, she found the +proprietress receiving her; a thick rigid figure in a clumsy black +dress, silent, and with deep-set glinting eyes hostile and suspicious +stirring a memory of other eyes gazing out like this upon the world, of +peasant women at cottage doors in German villages, peering out with evil +eyes, but from worn and kindly faces. There was nothing kindly about +this woman, and her commonness was almost startling, dreary and meagre +and seeming to be of the spirit. + +She blamed for the unmitigated impression the fatigue she was silently +pleading whilst she searched for the mislaid German phrases in which to +explain that she had chosen the cheaper room. She found only the woman’s +name: Knigge. This was Frau Knigge, at once seeming more human, and +obviously waiting for her to speak. + +Suddenly, and still unbending from her rigid pose, she made statements +in slow rasping English and a flat voice, that came unwillingly and told +of vanished interest in life. Life, as she spoke, looked terrible that +could make a being so crafty and so cold, that could show to anyone on +earth as it showed to this woman. + +Admitting her identity, seeing herself as she was being seen, Miriam +begged for her room, hurrying through her words to hide the thoughts +that still they seemed to reveal, and that were changing, as she heard +the sound of her own voice, dreadfully, not to consideration for one +whose lot had perhaps been too hard to bear, but to a sudden resentment +of parleying, in her character as Roman citizen, with this peasant whose +remoteness of being was so embarrassing her. + +The woman’s face lit up with an answering resentment and a mocking +contempt for her fluent German. Too late she realised that Roman +citizens do not speak German. But the details were settled, the +interview was at an end, and the woman’s annoyance due perhaps only to +the choice of the cheaper room. When she turned to shout instructions to +the maid she became humanity, in movement, moving in twilight that for +her too was going on its way towards the light of to-morrow. + +When the door was at last blessedly closed upon the narrow room whose +first statements miscarried, lost in the discovery that even up here +there was no change in the baked dry air, she made for the cool light of +the end window but found in its neighbourhood not only no lessening but +an increase of the oppressive warmth. + +The window was a door giving on to a little balcony whose wooden paling +hid the floor of the valley and the bases of the great mountains across +the way. The mountains were now bleak white, patched and streaked with +black, and as she stood still gazing at them set there arrested and +motionless and holding before her eyes an unthinkable grey bitterness of +cold, she found a new quality in her fast closed windows and the +exaggerated warmth. Though still oppressive they were triumphant also, +speaking a knowledge and a defiance of the uttermost possibilities of +cold. + +Cold was banished, by day and by night. For a fortnight taken from the +rawest depths of the London winter there would be no waste of life in +mere endurance. + +She discovered the source of the stable warmth in an unsightly row of +pipes at the side of the large window, bent over like hairpins and +scorching to the touch. The concentrated heat revived her weary nerves. +At the end of the coil there was a regulator. Turning it she found the +heat of the pipes diminish and hurriedly reversed the movement and +glanced out at the frozen world and loved the staunch metallic warmth +and the flavour of timber added to it in this room whose walls and +furniture were all of naked wood. + +Turning to it in greeting she found it seem less small. It was small but +made spacious by light. Light came from a second window that was now +calling—a small square beside the bed with the high astonishing smooth +billow of covering oddly encased in thin sprigged cotton—offering +mountains not yet seen. + +The way to it was endless across the short room from whose four quarters +there streamed, as she moved, a joy so deep that she brought up opposite +the window as if on another day of life and glanced out carelessly at a +distant group of pinnacles darkening in a twilight that was not grey but +lit wanly in its fading, by snow. + +The little servant came in with the promised tea and made, as she set it +upon the little table with the red and white check cover of remembered +German cafés, bent over it in her short-skirted check dress and squab of +sleek flaxen hair, a picture altogether German. She answered questions +gravely, responsibility speaking even in the smile that shone from her +plump toil-sheened young face, telling the story of how she and her +like, permanently toiling, were the price of happiness for visitors. But +this she did not know. She was happy. Liked being busy and smiling and +being smiled at and shutting the door very carefully. + +Some movement of hers had set swinging an electric bulb hanging by a +cord above the little table. Over the head of the bed there was another. +Light and warmth in profusion—in a cheap room in a modest hotel. + +Switching on the light that concentrated on the table and its loaded +little tray and transformed the room to a sitting-room, “I’m in +Switzerland,” she said aloud to the flowered earthenware and bright +nickel, and sat down to revel in freedom and renewal and at once got up +again realising that hurry had gone from her days and flung off her +blouse and found hot water set waiting on the washstand and was +presently at the table in négligé and again ecstatically telling it her +news. + +The familiar sound of tea pouring into a cup heightened the surrounding +strangeness. In the stillness of the room it was like a voice announcing +her installation, and immediately from downstairs there came as if in +answer the sound of a piano, crisply and gently touched, seeming not so +much to break the stillness as to reveal what lay within it. + +She set down her teapot and listened and for a moment could have +believed that the theme was playing itself only in her mind, that it had +come back to her because once again she was within the strange happiness +of being abroad. Through all the years she had tried in vain to recall +it, and now it came, to welcome her, piling joy on joy, setting its seal +upon the days ahead and taking her back to her Germany where life had +been lived to music that had flowed over its miseries and made its +happinesses hardly to be borne. + +For an instant she was back in it, passing swiftly from scene to scene +of the months in Waldstrasse and coming to rest in a summer’s evening: +warm light upon the garden, twilight in the saal. Leaving it she turned +to the other scenes, freshly revived, faithfully fulfilling their +remembered promise to endure in her forever, but each one as she paused +in it changed to the summer’s evening she had watched from the darkening +saal, the light upon the little high-walled garden, making space and +distance with the different ways it fell on trees and grass and +clustering shrubs, falling full on the hushed group of girls turned +towards it with Fräulein Pfaff in their midst disarmed to equality by +the surrounding beauty, making a little darkness in the summer-house +where Solomon shone in her white dress. And going back to it now it +seemed as though some part of her must have lived continuously there so +that she was everywhere at once, in saal and garden and summer-house and +out, beyond the enclosing walls, in the light along the spacious +forbidden streets. + +She relived the first moment of knowing gladly and without feeling of +disloyalty how far a Sommerabend outdoes a summer’s evening, how the +evening beauty was intensified by the deeps of poetry in the Germans all +about her, and remembered her fear lest one of the English should sound +an English voice and break the spell. And how presently Clara Bergmann, +unasked, had retreated into the shadowy saal and played this ballade and +in just this way, the way of slipping it into the stillness. + +“_Man soll sich des Lebens freuen, im Berg und Thal. In so was kann sich +ein’ Engländerin nie hineinleben._” + +Perhaps not, but in that small group of English there had been two who +would in spite of homesickness have given anything just to go on, on any +terms, existing in Germany. + +It is their joy; the joyful rich depth of life in them. + +And this ballade was joy. Eternal Sommerabend; and now to-morrow’s Swiss +sunlight. Someone there was downstairs to whom it was a known and +cherished thing, who was perhaps wise about it, wise in music and able +to place it in relation to other compositions. + +Its charm she now saw, coming to it afresh and with a deepened +recognition, lay partly in the way it opened: not beginning, but +continuing something gone before. It was a shape of tones caught from a +pattern woven continuously and drawn, with its rhythm ready set, +gleaming into sight. The way of the best nocturnes. But with nothing of +their pensiveness. It danced in the sky and tiptoed back to earth down +the group of little chords that filled the pause, again sprang forth and +up and came wreathing down to touch deep lower tones who flung it to and +fro. Up again until once more upon down-stepping chords it came into the +rhythm of its dance. + +It was being played from memory, imperfectly, by someone who had the +whole clear within him and in slowing up for the complicated passages +never stumbled or lost the rhythm or ceased to listen. Someone choosing +just this fragment of all the music in the world to express his state: +joy in being up here in snow and sunlight. + + * * * * * + +When the gown was on, the creasing was more evident; all but the +enlivening strange harmony of embroidered blues and greens and mauves +was a criss-cross of sharp lines and shadows. + +For the second time the long loud buzzing of the downstairs bell +vibrated its summons through the house. + +Standing once more before the little mirror that reflected only her head +and shoulders she recreated the gown in its perfection of cut, the soft +depths of its material that hung and took the light so beautifully. + +“Your first Switzerland must be good. I want your first Switzerland to +be good.” And then, in place of illuminating hints, that little diagram +on the table: of life as a zig-zag. Saddening. Perhaps he was right. +Then, since the beginning had been so good, all a sharp zig, what now +waited downstairs, heralded by the creased dress, was a zag, equally +sharp. + +The dining-room, low ceiled and oblong, was large and seemed almost +empty. Small tables set away towards a window on the right and only one +of them occupied, left clear the large space of floor between the door +at which she had come in and a table, filling the length of the far side +of the room where beside a gap in the row of diners a servant stood +turned towards her with outstretched indicating hand. + +No one but the servant had noticed her entry. Voices were sounding, +smooth easy tones leaving the air composed, as she slipped into her +place in a light that beside the unscreened glare upstairs was mellow, +subdued by shades. The voices were a man’s across the way—light and +kindly, ’Varsity, the smiling tone of one who is amiable even in +disagreement—and that of the woman on her left, a subdued deep bass. +Other voices dropped in, as suave and easy, and clipping and slurring +their words in the same way; but rather less poised. + +The tone of these people was balm. Sitting with eyes cast down aware +only of the subdued golden light, she recalled her fleeting glimpse of +them as she had crossed the room, English in daily evening dress, and +was carried back to the little world of Newlands where first she had +daily shared the evening festival of diners dressed and suave about a +table free of dishes, set with flowers and elegancies beneath a clear +and softly shaded light: the world she had sworn never to leave. She +remembered a summer morning, the brightness of the light over her +breakfast tray and its unopened letters and her vow to remain always +surrounded by beauty, always with flowers and fine fabrics, and space +and a fresh clean air always close about her, playing their part that +was so powerful. + +And this little wooden Swiss hotel with its baked air and philistine +fittings was to provide thrown in with Switzerland, more than a +continuation of Newlands—Newlands seen afresh with experienced eyes. + +The clipped, slurred words had no longer the charm of a foreign tongue. +Though still they rang upon the air the preoccupations of the man at the +wheel: the sound of “The Services” adapted. But clustered in this small +space they seemed to be bringing with them another account of their +origin, to be showing how they might come about of themselves and vary +from group to group, from person to person—with one aim: to avoid +disturbing the repose of the features. Expression might be animated or +inanimate, but features must remain undisturbed. + +Then there is no place for clearly enunciated speech apart from oratory; +platform and pulpit. Anywhere else it is bad form. Bad fawm. + +She felt she knew now why perfect speech, delightful in itself, always +seemed insincere. Why women with clear musical voices undulating, and +clean enunciation, are always cats; and the corresponding men, +ingratiating and charming at first, turn out sooner or later to be +charlatans. + +The nicest people have bad handwriting and bad delivery. + +But all this applied only to English, to Germanics; that was a queer +exciting thing, that only these languages had the quality of aggressive +disturbance of the speaking face: chin-jerking vowels and aspirates, +throat-swelling gutturals ... force and strength and richness, qualities +innumerable and more various than in any other language. + +Quelling an impulse to gaze at the speakers lit by discovery, she gazed +instead at imagined faces, representative Englishmen, with eyes and +brows serene above rapid slipshod speech. + +Here too of course was the explanation of the other spontaneous forms of +garbling, the extraordinary pulpit speech of self-conscious and +incompletely believing parsons, and the mincing speech of the genteel. +It explained “nace.” Nice, correctly spoken, is a convulsion of the +lower face—like a dog snapping at a gnat. + +She had a sudden vision of the English aspirate, all over the world, +puff-puff-puffing like a steam-engine, and was wondering whether it were +a waste or a source of energy, when she became acutely aware of being +for those about her a fresh item in their grouping. + +It was a burden too heavy to be borne. The good Swiss soup had turned +her bright fever of fatigue to a drowsiness that made every effort to +sit decently upright end in a renewed abject drooping that if only she +were alone could be the happy drooping of convalescence from the +journey. + +Their talk had gone on. It was certain that always they would talk. +Archipelagoes of talk, avoiding anything that could endanger continuous +urbanity. + +In the midst of a stifled yawn the call to a fortnight’s continuous +urbanity fell upon her like a whip. Dodging the blow she lolled +resistant to the sound of bland voices. An onlooker, appreciative but +resistant; that, socially, would be the story of her stay. A docile +excursion, even if they should offer it, into this select little world, +would come between her and her Switzerland. Refusal clamoured within her +and it was only as an after-thought that she realised the impossibility +of remaining for a fortnight without opinions. + +The next moment, hearing again the interwoven voices as a far-off unison +of people sailing secure on smooth accustomed waters, she was bleakly +lonely; suppliant. Nothing showed ahead but a return with her fatigue to +sustain the silence and emptiness of a strange room. She was turning to +glance at the woman on her left when the deep bass voice asked her +casually if she had had a good journey. Casual cameraderie, as if +already they had been talking and were now hiding an established +relationship under conventionalities. + +The moment she had answered she heard the university voice across the +way remark, in the tone of one exchanging notes with a friend after a +day’s absence, that it was a vile journey, but all right from Berne +onwards, and looked up. There he was, almost opposite, Cambridge, and +either history or classics, the pleasant radiance of _lit. hum._ all +about him, and turned her way bent a little, as if bowing, and as if +waiting for her acknowledgment—with his smile, apology introduction and +greeting beaming together from sea-blue eyes set only ever so little too +closely together in a neatly tanned narrowly oval face—before regaining +the upright. + +Her soft reply, lost in other sounds, made a long moment during which, +undisturbed by not hearing, he held his attitude of listening that told +her he was glad of her presence. + +The close-set eyes meant neither weakness nor deceit. Sectarian eyes, +emancipated. But his strength was borrowed. His mental strength was not +original. An uninteresting mind; also he was a little selfish, with the +selfishness of the bachelor of thirty—but charming. + +The party was smaller than she had thought. The odd way they were all +drawn up at one end of the table made them look numerous. Spread out in +the English way they would have made a solemn dinner-party, with large +cold gaps. + +Someone asked whether she had come right through and in a moment they +were all amiably wrangling over the pros and cons of breaking the +journey. + +Staring from across the table was a man alone, big oblong foreigner +dwarfing his neighbours, and piteous, not to be looked at as the others +could who fitted the scene; not so much sitting at table with the rest +as set there filling a space. His eyes had turned towards a nasal voice +suddenly prevailing; sombre brown, wistfully sulking below eyebrows +lifted in a wide forehead that stopped unexpectedly soon at a straight +fence of hair. Oblong beard reaching the top of stiff brown coat. +Russian, probably the Chopin player. + +“Anyone’s a fool who passes Parrus without stopping off at least a few +hours.” + +A small man at the end of the row, opaque blue eyes in a peaky face, +little peaked beard, neat close-fitting dress clothes. Incongruous +far-travelled guest of little Switzerland. + +He was next the window, with the nice man on his right. Then came the +big Russian exactly opposite and again naïvely staring across, and +beyond him a tall lady in a home-made silk blouse united by a fichu to +the beginning of a dark skirt; coronet of soft, coiled white hair above +a firmly padded face with polished skin, pink-flushed, glimmering into +the talk, that was now a debate about to-morrow’s chances, into which +sounded women’s voices from the table behind, smooth and clear, but +clipped, free-masonish like the others. To the right of the coronetted +lady an iron-grey man, her husband, gaunt and worn, with peevishly +suffering eyes set towards the door on the far side of the room. +Fastidious eyes, full of knowledge, turned away. He was the last in the +row and beyond him the table stretched away to the end wall through +whose door the servants came and went. His opponents were out of sight +beyond the bass-voiced woman on the left, whose effect was so strangely +large and small: a face horse-like and delicate, and below her length of +face increased by the pyramid of hair above her pointed fringe, a +meeting of old lace and good jewellery. + +To her own right the firm insensitive hand, that wore a signet ring and +made pellets of its bread, belonged to just the man she had imagined, +dark and liverish, but with an unexpectedly flattened profile whose +moustache, dropping to sharp points, gave it an expression faintly +Chinese; a man domestic but accustomed to expand in unrestricted +statement, impatiently in leash to the surrounding equality of exchange. +Beyond him his wife, sitting rather eagerly forward, fair and plump, +with features grown expressionless in their long service of holding back +her thoughts, but, betraying their secret in a brow, creased faintly by +straining upwards as if in perpetual incredulity of an ever-present +spectacle, and become now the open page of the story the mouth and eyes +were not allowed to tell. + +At her side a further figure and beyond it the head of the table +unoccupied, leaving the party to be its own host. + +The atmosphere incommoding the husband, who at a second glance seemed to +call even pathetically for articulate opposition, was that of a +successful house-party, its tone set by the only two in sight who were +through and through of the authentic brand: the deep-voiced woman and +the nice man. The invalid and his wife belonged to that inner circle. +But they were a little shadowed by his malady. + +It was an atmosphere in which the American and the Russian were ill at +ease, one an impatient watchfulness for simpler, more lively behaviour +and the other a bored detachment, heavily anchored, not so much by +thoughts as by hard clear images left by things seen according to the +current formula of whatever group of the European intelligentsia he +belonged to. + +He was speaking softly through the general conversation to the nice man, +with slight deprecating gestures of eyebrows and shoulders, in his eyes +a qualified gratitude. The nice man spoke carefully with head turned and +bent, seeking his words. French, with English intonation. All these +people, however fluently, would talk like that. All of them came from a +world that counted mastery of a foreign tongue both wonderful and +admirable—but ever so little _infra dig_. + + * * * * * + +“Won’t you come in heah for a bit?” + +Drugged as she felt with weariness she turned joyfully into a room +opening in the background of the hall whence the deep bass voice had +sounded as she passed. A tiny salon, ugly; maroon and buff in a thick +light. Plush sofa, plush cover on the round table in the centre, stiff +buff-seated “drawing-room” chairs; a piano. It was from this dismal +little room the Chopin had sounded out into the twilight. + +There she was, alone, standing very thin and tall in a good, rather +drearily elderly black dress beside a cheerless radiator, one elbow +resting on its rim and a slender foot held towards it from beneath the +hem of a slightly hitched skirt: an Englishwoman at a fireside. + +“My name’s Harcourt, M’zz Harcourt,” she said at once. + +Books were set star-wise in small graded piles about the centre of the +table, the uppermost carrying upon their covers scrolls and garlands of +untarnished gilt. The one she opened revealed short-lined poems set +within yet more garlands, appealing; leaves and buds and birds lively +and sweet about the jingling verse. Swiss joy in deep quiet valleys +guarded by sunlit mountains. Joy of people living in beauty all their +lives; enclosed. Yet making rooms like this. + +But it held the woman at the radiator, knowing England and her sea, and +whose smile looking up she met, watching, indulgent of her détour and, +as too eagerly she moved forward, indulgent also of that. Here, if she +would, was a friend, and, although middle-aged, a contemporary +self-confessed by a note in her voice of impatience over waste of time +in preliminaries. + +But Mrs. Harcourt did not know how nimbly she could move, might think it +strange when presently her voice must betray that she was already +rejoicing—defying the note of warning that sounded far away within +her—in a well-known presence, singing recklessly to it the song of new +joy and life begun anew that all the way from England had been gathering +within her. + +The announcement of her own name made the woman again a stranger, so +much was she a stranger to the life belonging to the name, and brought +into sudden prominence the state of her gown, exposed now in its full +length. She recounted the tragedy and saw Mrs. Harcourt’s smile change +to real concern. + +Here they were, alone together, seeming to have leapt rather than passed +through the early stages. + +Like love, but unobstructed. A balance of side-by-side, not of +opposition. More open than love, yet as hidden and wonderful; rising +from the same depth. + +“Hold it in front of the waydiator. Vat’ll take ’em out a bit. Such a +poo’hy gown.” She moved a little back from the row of pipes. + +Going close to the radiator Miriam moved into a fathomless gentleness. + +But it was also a demand, so powerful that it was drawing all her being +to a point. All that she had brought with her into the room would be +absorbed and scattered, leaving her robbed of things not yet fully her +own. + +The warning voice within was crying aloud now, urging her not only to +escape before the treasures of arrival and of strangeness were lost +beyond recovery, but to save also the past, disappeared round the corner +yet not out of sight but drawn closely together in the distance, a +swiftly moving adventure, lit from point to point by the light in which +to-day she had bathed forgetful. + +Even a little talk, a little answering of questions, would falsify the +past. Set in her own and in this woman’s mind in a mould of verbal +summarisings it would hamper and stain the brightness of to-morrow. + +She found herself hardening, seeking generalisations that would cool and +alienate, and was besieged by memories of women whom she had thus +escaped. And of their swift revenge. But this woman was not of those who +avenge themselves. + +Hesitating before the sound of her own voice, or the other which would +sound if this second’s silence were prolonged, she was seized by revolt: +the determination at all costs to avoid hearing in advance, in idle +words above the ceaseless intercourse of their spirits, about Oberland; +even from one whose seeing might leave her own untouched. + +To open the way for flight she remarked that it must be late. + +“About nine. You’re dead beat, I can see. Ought to go to bed.” + +“Not for worlds,” said Miriam involuntarily. + +Mrs. Harcourt’s face, immediately alight for speech, expressed as she +once more took possession of the radiator and looked down at it as into +a fire, willingness to stand indefinitely by. + +“Everyone’s gone to bed. Bein’ out all day in vis air makes you sleepy +at night.” + +Remembering that of course she would speak without gaps, Miriam glanced +at the possibility of pulling herself together for conversation. + +“I been pottering. My ski are at Zurbuchen’s bein’ repaired.” + +“But what a _perfect_ Swiss name. Like oak, like well-baked bread.” + +To get away now. Sufficient impression of the Alpenstock people +perpetually strenuous, living for sport, and, redeeming its angularity, +the rich Swiss background: Zurbuchen. But Mrs. Harcourt’s glance of +surprised delight—there was amusement too, she didn’t think Swiss names +worth considering—meant that she was entertained, anticipating further +entertainment; to which she would not contribute. + +“No. I’m supposed to sit about and rest. Overwork.” + +“You won’t. Lots of people come out like vat. You’ll soon find resting a +baw out heah.” + +“Should like a little sleep. I’ve had none for two nights.” + +“Stop in bed to-morrow. Have your meals up.” + +“Mm....” + +For a moment Mrs. Harcourt waited, silent, not making the movement of +departure that would presently bring down the shadow of returning +loneliness her words had drawn so near; keeping her leaning pose, her +air of being indefinitely available. + +The deep bell of her voice dropped from its soft single note to a murmur +rising and falling, a low narrative tone, hurrying. + +Through the sound still coming and going in her mind of the name Mrs. +Harcourt had so casually spoken, bringing with it the sunlit mountains +and the outer air waiting in to-morrow, Miriam heard that the people at +the Alpenstock were all right—with the exception of the two sitting at +dinner on Mrs. Harcourt’s left, “outsiders” of a kind now appearing in +Oberland for the first time. Saddened by their exclusion, embarrassed by +unconscious flattery, Miriam impulsively asked their name and glowed +with a sudden vision of Mrs. Corrie, of how she would have embraced this +opportunity for wicked mondaine wit. Mrs. Harcourt, for a moment +obediently reflecting, said she had forgotten it but that it was +somefing raver fwightful. Everyone else, introduced by name, received a +few words of commendation—excepting the Russian and the American. The +Russian would be just a foreigner, an unfortunate, but the American +surely must be an outsider? Insincerely, as if in agreement with this +division of humanity by exclusion, she put in a question, and while Mrs. +Harcourt pulled up her discourse to say, as if sufficiently, that he was +staying only a couple of days and passed on to summon other hotels to +the tribunal, she was glad that the Russian had been left untouched. +Harry Vereker, fine, a first-class sportsman and altogether nice chap, +was already lessened, domesticated, general property in his niceness; +but the Russian remained, wistfully alone: attractive. + +“.... hidjus big hotel only just built; all glass and glare. It’ll be +the ruin of Oberland. No one’ll come here next year.” + +Though still immersed in her theme Mrs. Harcourt was aware, when next +she glanced to punctuate a statement, if not exactly that instead of the +object she offered it was herself and her glance that was being seen—the +curious steeliness of its indignation—at least of divided attention, a +sudden breach in their collaboration; and immediately she came to the +surface, passing without pause to her full bell note, with an enquiry. +Hoping to please. But why hoping to please? + +This abrupt stowing away of her chosen material might be a simple +following of the rules of her world; it suggested also the humouring of +a patient by a watchful nurse, and since she had the advantage of not +being in the depths of fatigue this perhaps was its explanation; but +much more clearly it spoke her years of marriage, of dealing with +masculine selfishness. And she was so swift, so repentant of her long, +enjoyable excursion, that it was clear she had suffered masculine +selfishness gladly. Neither understanding nor condemning. It had not +damaged her love and she had suffered bitterly when it was removed. + +Suffering was pleading now in her eyes off their guard in this +to-and-fro of remarks that was a little shocking: the reverberation of a +disaster. + +Now that it was clear that her charming behaviour from the first might +be explained by the attraction there was for her in a mannish mental +hardness, that she sought in its callousness both something it could +never give, as well as entertainment, and rest from perpetual feeling, +she ceased to be interesting. She herself made it so clear that she had +nothing to give. Offering her best help, what in the way of her world +would be most useful to one newly arrived, she was yet suppliant; and +afraid of failure, haunted by the fear of a failure she did not +understand and that was perhaps uniform in her experience. + +Miriam found her own voice growing heavy with the embarrassment of her +discoveries and her longing to break this so eagerly woven entanglement. +Trying again for cooling generalities she had the sense of pouring words +into a void. The gentle presence hovered there, played its part, +followed, answered, but without sharing the effort to swim into the +refreshing tide of impersonality; without seeing the independent light +on the scraps of reality she was being offered. No wonder perhaps: they +were a little breathless. She was scenting apology and retreat. And did +not know that it was retreat not at all from herself, but from her +terrible alacrity and transparence: the way the whole of her was at once +visible. All her thoughts, her way of thinking in words, in set phrases +gathered from too enclosed an experience. Enclosed. To be with her was +enclosure. The earlier feeling of being encompassed that was so welcome +because it was so womanly, so exactly what a man needs in its character +of kindly confessor and giver of absolution in advance, had lost value +before the discovery of this absence of vistas, this frightful sense of +being shut in with assumptions about life that admit of no question and +no modification. + +Again the dead husband intruded; his years of life at this woman’s side, +his first adoration of her, and then his weariness, fury of weariness +whose beginnings she felt herself already tasting, so that for sheer +pity she was kept in her place, effusive, unable to go. + +But at the moment of parting Mrs. Harcourt became again that one who had +waited, impatient of wasting time in formalities. Her smile glanced out +from the past, revealing the light upon her earlier days. It was a +greeting for to-morrow rather than a good-night. + +Going up to the little bedroom that was now merely a refuge off-stage, +she found it brightly lit in readiness for her coming, summery bright +all over, the light curtains drawn and joining with the unvarnished wood +to make an enclosure that seemed to emulate the brightness of the Swiss +daylight. The extravagant illumination, the absence of glooms and +shadows, recalled the outdoor scene and something of this afternoon’s +bliss of arrival and the joy that had followed it, when music sounded up +through the house, of home-coming from long exile. Switzerland waited +outside—enriched by her successful début—with its promise that could not +fail. Meanwhile there was the unfamiliar enchantment of moving +comfortably in a warm bedroom, not having the wealth one brought +upstairs instantly dispersed by the attack of cold and gloom. The +temperature was lower than before, pleasant, no longer oppressive; and +more hospitable than a fire whose glow was saddened by the certainty +that in the morning it would be an ashy desolation. + +The moment the basket chair received her the downstairs world was about +her again; circling, clamorous with the incidents of her passage from +lonely exposure to the shelter of Mrs. Harcourt’s so swiftly offered +wing, from beneath which, with its owner assured of the hardness of what +it sheltered, she could move freely forth in any direction. + +The two Le Mesras—that was her pronunciation of Le Mesurier?—Three +Chators. Mrs. Sneyde and Maud Something at the little table behind ... +Hollebone. Maud Hollebone. The American, leaving. Interest hesitated +between Harry Vereker already a little diminished, and the Russian: the +reincarnated, attractive, ultimately unsatisfactory Tansley Street +foreigner? + +Someone was tapping at the door. She opened it upon Mrs. Harcourt +offering a small tray, transformed to motherliness by a voluminous +dressing-gown. + +When she had gone she vanished utterly. There she was, actually in the +next room, yet utterly forgettable. And yet she threw across the days +ahead a strange deep light. + +The steaming chocolate and the little English biscuits disappeared too +quickly, leaving hunger. + +The French window was made fast by a right-angle hand-piece, very stiff, +that gave suddenly with a dreadfully audible clang. The door creaked +open. Racing the advancing air she was beneath the downy billow before +it reached her. It took her fevered face with its batallions of needles, +stole up her nostrils to her brain, bore her down into the uttermost +depths of sleep. + + + + + CHAPTER III + + +From which she awoke in light that seemed for a moment to be beyond the +confines of earth. It was as if all her life she had travelled towards +this radiance, and was now within it, clear of the past, at an ultimate +destination. + +How long had it been there, quizzically patient, waiting for her to be +aware of it? + +It was sound, that had wakened her and ceased now that she was looking +and listening; become the inaudible edge of a sound infinitely far away. +Brilliant light, urgently describing the outdoor scene. But she was +unwilling to stir and break the radiant stillness. + +Close at hand a bell buzzed sharply. Another, and then a third far away +down the corridor. People ringing their day into existence, free to ring +their day into existence when they pleased. She was one of them; and for +to-day she would wait awhile, give the bell-ringers time to be up and +gone down to breakfast while she kept intact within this miracle of +light the days ahead that with the sounding of her own bell would be +already in process of spending. + +But perhaps there was a time-limit for breakfasts? + +Screwing round to locate the bell with the minimum of movement she +paused in sheer surprise of well-being. Of the shattering journey there +was not a trace. Nor of the morning weariness following social +excitements. + +Sitting up to search more effectually she saw the source of her +wakening, bright gold upon the mountain tops: a smiling challenge, as +if, having put on their morning gold, the mountains watched its effect +upon the onlookers. + + * * * * * + +She was glad to be alone on the scene of last night’s dinner-party; to +be in the company of the other breakfasters represented only by depleted +butter-dishes and gaps in the piles of rolls, and free from the risk of +hearing the opening day fretted by voices set going like incantations to +exorcise the present as if it had no value, as if the speakers were not +living in it but only in yesterday or to-morrow. + +And when there came a warning swift clumping of hob-nailed boots across +the hall, across the room, she demanded Vereker, oddly certain that even +at this late hour still somehow it would contrive to be he. + +And there he was, lightly clumping round the table-end to his place, +into which he slipped smiling his greeting, boyishly. Not at all in the +self-conscious Englishman’s manner of getting himself seated when others +are already in their places: bent, just before sitting down, forward +from the waist and in that pose—hitching his trousers the +while—distributing his greetings, and so letting himself down into his +chair either with immediate speech or a simulated air of preoccupation. +Vereker flopped and beamed at the same moment, unfeignedly pleased to +arrive. Knickerbockers; but that was not the whole difference. He was +always unfeignedly pleased to arrive? + +He began at once collecting food and spoke with gentle suddenness into a +butter-dish: + +“I hope you had a good night?” + +His talk made a little symphony with his movements which also were +conversational, and he looked across each time he spoke, but only on the +last word; a swift blue beam. In the morning light he seemed +younger—perhaps a champion ski-er at the end of his day is as tired as a +hard-worked navvy?—and a certain air of happy gravity and the very fair +curly hair shining round its edges from recent splashings, gave him, in +his very white, very woolly sweater, something of the look of a newly +bathed babe in its matinée jacket—in spite of the stern presence, above +the rolled top of his sweater, of an inch of stiff linen collar highly +glazed. + +He was of a type and of a class, and also, in a way not quite clear, a +tempered, thoroughly live human being; something more in him than fine +sportsman and nice fellow, giving him weight. Presently she found its +marks: a pleat between the brows and, far away within his eyes even when +they smiled, a sadness; that sounded too in his cheerful voice, a +puzzled, perpetual compassion. + +For the world? For himself? + +But these back premises were touched with sunlight. Some sense of things +he had within him that made him utterly _kind_. + +“Isn’t it extraordinary,” she said, hoping to hide the fact that she had +missed his last remark, “the way these people leave the lights switched +on all the time, everywhere.” + +“Cheap electricity,” he said as if in parenthesis, and as if +apologetically reminding her of what she already knew—“Water power. They +pay a rate and use as much as they like.” + +In all his answers there was this manner of apologising for giving +information. And his talk, even the perfect little story of the local +barber and the newspapers, which he told at top pace as if grudging the +moment it wasted, was like a shorthand annotation to essential unspoken +things, shared interests and opinions taken for granted. Talking with +him she no longer felt as she had done last night either that she was at +a private view of an exclusive exhibition, or gathering fresh light on +social problems. There was in him something unbounded, that enhanced the +light reflected into the room from the sunlit snow. His affectionate +allusion to his Cambridge brought to her mind complete in all its +parts—together with gratitude for the peace he gave in which things +could expand unhindered—her own so sparse possession: her week-ends +there with the cousins, their blinkered, comfort-loving academic +friends, the strange sense of at once creeping back into security and +realising how far she had come away from it; their kindnesses, their +secret hope of settling her for life in their enclosed world, and their +vain efforts to mould her to its ways; and then the end, the growing +engrossments in London breaking the link that held her to them and to +the past they embodied—and Cambridge left lit by their sweet +hospitality, by the light streaming on Sunday afternoons through King’s +Chapel windows; the Backs in sunlight, and a memory of the halting +little chime. + +When she told him of the things that Cambridge had left with her, she +paused just in time to escape adding to them the gait of the +undergraduates: the slovenly stride whose each footfall sent the chin +forward with a hen-like jerk. + +He agreed at once with her choice, but hesitated over the little chime. + +“It might have been a new church. I never saw it. But if you had once +heard it you _couldn’t_ forget it.” + +It was absurd to be holding to her solitary chime in face of his four +years’ residence. But it seemed now desperately important to state +exactly the quality she had felt and never put into words. She sat +listening—aware of him waiting in a sympathetic stillness—to each note +as it sounded out into the sky above the town, making it no longer +Cambridge but a dream-city, subduing the graceless modern bricks and +mortar to harmony with the ancient beauty of the colleges—until the +whole was a loveliness beneath the evening sky—and presently found +herself speaking with reckless enthusiasm. + +“_Don’t_ you remember the four little gentle tuneless phrases, of six +and seven notes alternately, one for each quarter, and at the hour +sounding one after the other with a little pause between each, seeming +to ask you to look at what it saw, at the various life of the town made +suddenly wonderful and strange; and the last phrase, beginning with a +small high note that tapped the sky, and wandering down to the level and +stopping without emphasis, leaving everything at peace and very +beautiful.” + +“I think I _can’t_ have heard it,” he said wistfully and sat +contemplative in a little pause during which it occurred to her, +becoming aware of the two of them talking on and on into the morning +that it rested with her to wind up the sitting; that he might perhaps, +if not quite immediately, yet in intention be waiting for her to rise +and spare him the apparent discourtesy of pleading an engagement. Even +failing the engagement they could not sit here forever, and the +convention of his world demanded that she should be the first to go. + +She had just time to note coming from far away within herself a defiance +that would sooner inflict upon him the discomfort of breaking the rule +than upon herself the annoyance of moving at its bidding, when he looked +across and said with the bowing attitude he had held last night as he +spoke and waited for her to become aware of him: “May I put you up for +the ski-club?” + +It was, of course, his business to cultivate new people, and, if they +seemed suitable, to collect them.... + +She smiled acknowledgment and insincerely pleaded the shortness of her +stay. All she could do, short of blurting out her poverty which he +seemed not to have seen. + +But a fortnight was, he declared, the ideal time: time to learn and to +get on well enough to want to come out again next year; and hurried on +to promise a fellow sufferer, a friend coming up, for only a few days, +from the South, who would be set immediately to work and on whose +account he was committed to-day to trek down to the station. + +“We were,” he said, for the first time looking across almost before he +spoke, and with the manner now of making a direct important +communication, “at Cambridge together.” + +A valued friend, being introduced, recommended, put before himself. +Warmth crept into his voice, and lively emphasis—compressed into a small +note of distress. That note was his social utmost, for gravity and for +joy; recalling Selina Holland—when she was deeply moved: a wailing tone, +deprecating, but in his tone was more wistfulness, a suggestion too of +anxiety. It had begun when he spoke of Pater’s Renaissance Studies, but +had then merely sounded into the golden light, intensifying it. Now it +seemed to flout the light, flout everything but his desire to express +the absent friend. + +“That was some years ago. Since then he has been a very busy man, saying +to this one go and he goeth ...” He smiled across as if asking her to +share the strangeness of his friend’s metamorphosis. + +“You’ve not seen him since?” + +“Not since he bought his land.” + +“He’s a landowner,” she said, and fell into sadness. + +“He is indeed, on quite a big scale, and a very hardworking one.” + +“A farmer,” murmured Miriam, “that’s not so bad.” + +“It’s very arduous. He is always at his post. Never takes a holiday. For +three winters I’ve tried to get him up here for a week.” + +“Absolute property in land,” she said to the sunlit snow, “is a crime.” + +Before her, side by side with a vision of Rent as a clutching monster +astride upon civilisation, was a picture of herself, suddenly hitting +out at these pleasant people, all, no doubt, landowners. It was only +because the friend had been presented to her in the distance and with as +it were all his land on his back that this one article of the Lycurgan +faith of which she had no doubt, had at all reared itself in her mind. +And as it came, dictating her words while she stood by counting the +probable cost and wondering too over the great gulf between one’s most +cherished opinions about life and one’s sense of life as it presents +itself piecemeal embodied in people, she heard with relief his unchanged +voice: + +“Oh, please tell me why?” + +And turned to see him flushed, smiling, pardoning her lapse, apologising +for pardoning it, and altogether interested. + +“It’s a whole immense subject and I’m not a specialist. But the theory +of Rent has been worked out by those who are, by people sincerely trying +to discover where it is that temporarily useful parts of the machinery +of civilisation have got out of gear and become harmful. _No_ one ought +to have to pay for the right to sit down on the earth. _No_ one ought to +be so helplessly expropriated that another can _buy_ him and use him up +as he would never dream of using up more costly material—horses for +instance.” + +“You are a socialist?” + +Into her answer came the sound of a child’s voice in plaintive +recitative approaching from the hall. + +“Daphne in trouble,” he said, “you’ll tell me more, I _hope_,”—and +turned his pleading smile to meet people coming in at the door. They +clumped to the small table nearer the further window and she caught a +sideways glimpse before they sat down: a slender woman with red-gold +hair carrying a bunchy little girl whose long legs dangled against her +skirt—Mrs. Sneyde, the grass-widow, and, making for the far side of the +table a big buoyant girlish young woman—uninteresting—the sister-in-law, +Maud Hollebone. + +The child’s “so bitter, _bitter_ cold,” sounded clear through the +morning greetings in which she took no part. Her voice was strange, low +and clear, and full of a meditative sincerity. Amidst the interchange of +talk between Vereker and the two women it prevailed again: a plaintive +monologue addressed to the universe. + +The grating of a chair and there she was confronting the talking +Vereker, who was on his feet and just about to go. She stood gazing up, +with her hands behind her back. A rounded face and head, cleanly +revealed by the way the fine silky brown hair was strained back across +the skull; bunchy serge dress and stiff white pinafore. Pausing, Vereker +looked down at her. + +“You going out, Vereker?” + +“Not yet.” + +“Your friend coming? Not telegraphed or anything?” + +“He’s coming all right, Daphne. He’ll be here to-night. You’ll see him +in the morning.” + +“You’ll be writing your letters till you start?” + +“I may.” + +“Then I’ll come and sit in your room till my beecely walk.” + +She rapped out her statements—immediately upon his replies, making him +sound gentle and slow—from the childish, rounded face that was serenely +thinking, full of quick, calm thought. Regardless talk was going forward +at the other table to which, her business settled, she briskly returned. + + * * * * * + +The little wooden hall was like a summer-house that was also a +sports-pavilion. Against the wall that backed the dining-room stood +bamboo chairs uncertain, as if, belonging elsewhere and having been told +not to block the gangway by moving into the open, they did not know what +they were for. The table to which they belonged stood boldly in the +centre and held an ash-tray. Between it and the front door from above +which the antlered head of a chamois gazed down upon the small scene, +the way was clear, but the rest of the floor space was invaded on all +sides by toboggans propped against the wall or standing clear with boots +lying upon them, slender boots gleaming with polish and fitted with +skates that appeared to be nothing but a single brilliant blade. Against +one wall was a pair of things like oars. Ski? But thought of as attached +to a human foot they were impossibly long. + +From a hidden region away beyond the angle of the staircase came +servants’ voices in staccato, and abrupt sounds: the sounds of their +morning campaign, giving an air of callous oblivion to the waiting +implements of sport, and quenching, with the way they had of seeming to +urge the residents forth upon their proper business outdoors, the +hesitant invitation of the chairs. + +Beyond the dining-room and this little hall, whose stillness murmured +incessantly of activities, there was no refuge but the dejected little +salon. + +Filled with morning light it seemed larger, a little important and quite +self-sufficient, giving out its secret strangeness of a Swiss room, old; +pre-existing English visitors, proof, with its way of being, set long +ago and unaltered, against their travelled hilarity. The little parlour +piano, precious in chosen wood highly polished, with faded yellow keys +and faded silk behind its trellis, was full of old music, seemed to +brood over the carollings of an ancient simplicity unknown to the modern +piano whose brilliant black and white makes it sound in a room all the +time, a ringing accompaniment to the life of to-day. + +But into this averted solitude there came to her again the sense of time +pouring from an inexhaustible source: gentle, marvellous, unutterably +_kind_. It came in through the window whose screened light, filling the +small room and halting meditatively there, seemed to wait for song. + +Drawing back the flimsy curtain from the window, she found it a door +giving on a covered balcony through whose panes she saw wan sunless +snowfields and beyond them slopes, patched with black pinewoods and +rising in the distance to a high ridge, a smooth bulging thickness of +snow against deep blue sky. The dense pinewoods thinned and as they +climbed into small straggling groups with here and there a single file +of trees, small and sharp-pointed, marching towards the top of the +ridge. + +Beautiful this sharp etching far-off of keen black pines upon the +sunless snow and strange the clear deep blue of the sky. But mournful; +remote and self-sufficient. Switzerland averted and a little +discouraging. + +The balcony extended right and left and a glimpse away to the left of +mats hanging out into the open and a maid pouncing forth upon them with +a beater sent her to the right, where the distance was obscured by a +building standing at right angles to the house, a battered barn-like +place, unbalconied, but pierced symmetrically by little windows; châlet, +warm rich brown, darkened above by its sheltering, steeply jutting roof +... beautiful. Its kindliness extended all about it, lending a warmth +even to the far-off desolate slopes. + +A door at her side revealed the dining-room lengthwise and deserted, and +then she was round the angle of the house and free of its secret: its +face towards the valley that was now a vast splendour of sunlight. + +Every day, through these windows that framed the view in strips this +light would be visible in all its changings. Standing at the one that +glazed the great mountain whose gold had wakened her she discovered that +the balcony was a verandah, had in front of it a railed-in space set +with chairs and tables. In a moment she was out in the open light, upon +a shelf, within the landscape that seemed now to be the whole delight of +Switzerland outspread before her eyes. + +Far away below, cleft along its centre by the irregular black line of +its frozen river was the wide white floor of the valley, measuring the +mountains that rose upon its hither side. + +Those high, high summits, beetling variously up into the top of the sky, +with bright patches of tawny rock breaking through their smooth +whiteness against its darkest blue, knew nothing of the world below +where their mountains went downward in a great whiteness of broadening +irregular slopes that presently bore pines in single file upwards +advancing from the dense clumps upon the lower ridges, and met in an +extended mass along the edge of the valley floor. + +Here and there, clear of the pinewoods, and looking perilously high and +desolate, a single châlet made a triangular warm brown blot upon the +dazzling snow. + +In this crystal stillness the smallest sound went easily up to the high +peaks; to the high pure blue. + +Turning to bless the well-placed little hotel she met a frontage of +blank windows, each with its sharply jutting balcony, jaws, dropped +beneath the blind stare of the windows set forever upon a single scene. +Hotel; queer uncherished thing. No one to share its life and make it +live. + +On a near table was a folded newspaper, thin, heavily printed, +continental. Switzerland radiant all about her and the Swiss world +within her hands—a reprieve from further seeing and a tour, into the +daily life of this country whose living went on within a setting that +made even the advertisements look lyrical. + +The simple text was enthralling. For years she had not so delighted in +any reading. In the mere fact of the written word, in the building of +the sentences, the movement of phrases linking part with part. It was +all quite undistinguished, a little crude and hard; demanding, seeming +to assume a sunny hardness in mankind. And there was something missing +whose absence was a relief, like the absence of heaviness in the air. +Everything she had read stood clear in her mind that yet, insufficiently +occupied with the narrative and its strange emanations, caught up single +words and phrases and went off independently touring, climbing to fresh +arrangements and interpretations of familiar thought. + +And this miracle of renewal was the work of a single night. + +The need for expression grew burdensome in the presence of the empty +sun-blistered tables. Perhaps these lively clarities would survive a +return journey through the hotel? + +Voices sounded up from below, from the invisible roadway. English +laughter, of people actively diverting themselves in the winter +landscape. Far away within each one was the uncommunicating English +spirit, heedless, but not always unaware, filling its day with habitual, +lively-seeming activities. The laughter sounded insincere; as if defying +a gloom it refused to face. + +They passed out of hearing and the vast stillness, restored, made her +look forth: at a scene grown familiar, driving her off to fresh seeking +while it went its way towards the day when she would see it for the last +time, giving her even now as she surveyed its irrevocably known beauty, +a foretaste of the nostalgia that must rend her when once more she was +down upon the plains. + +But that time was infinitely far away beyond the days during which she +was to live perpetually with this scene that clamoured now to be +communicated in its first freshness. + + * * * * * + +The writing at top-speed of half-a-dozen letters left arrival and +beginning in the past, the great doorway of the enchantments she had +tried to describe safely closed behind her, and herself going forward +within them. With letters to post she must now go forth, secretly, as it +were behind her own back, into Oberland; into the scene that had seemed +full experience and was but its overture. + +The letters were disappointing. Only in one of them had she escaped +expressing yesterday’s excited achievements and set down instead the +living joy of to-day. And this for the one to whom such joy was +incredible. But all were warm with affection newly felt. The long +distance not only made people very dear—in a surprising way it +re-arranged them. Foremost amongst the men was Densley of the warm heart +and wooden head wildly hailed. His letter, the last and shortest, wrote +itself in one sentence, descriptive, laughing, affectionate. How it +would surprise him.... + +Life, she told herself as she crossed the hall trying to drown the +kitchen sounds by recalling what had flashed across her mind as she +wrote to Densley, is eternal because joy is. “Future life” is a +contradiction in terms. The deadly trap of the adjective. _Pourquoi +dater?_ Even science insists on indestructibility—yet marks for +destruction the very thing that enables it to recognise +indestructibility. But it had come nearer and clearer than that. + +Fawn-coloured woolly puppies, romping in the thick snow at the side of +the steps as though it were grass, huge, as big as lion cubs, with large +snub faces, and dense short bushy coats trying to curl, evenly all over +their tubby tumbling bodies ... St. Bernards, at home in their snow. +They flung themselves at her hands, mumbling her gloves, rolling over +with the smallest shove, weak and big and beautiful and with absurd +miniature barkings. + + * * * * * + +The hotel was at the higher end of the village and from its steps she +could see down the narrow street to where the little church and its +white cloaked sugar-loaf spire obscured the view and away to the right +set clear of the village and each on the crest of a gentle slope, the +hotels, four, five, big buildings, not unbeautiful with their peaked +roofs and balconies and the brilliance of green shutters on their white +faces. And even the largest, Mrs. Harcourt’s ‘hidjus big place’ +recognisable by its difference, a huge square plaster box, patterned +with rows and rows of uniform windows above which on its flat roof a +high pole flaunted a flag limp in the motionless air, looked small and +harmless, a dolls’ house dumped casually, lost in the waste of snow. + +If these hotels were full, there were in the village more visitors than +natives. But where were they? The vast landscape was empty. From its +thickly mantled fields came the smell of snow. + +Lost when she went down the street in a maze of fugitive scents within +one pervading, and that seemed to compose the very air: the sweet deep +smell of burning pinewood. Moving within it as the crowded little shop +windows went by on either hand were the smells of dried apples and straw +and a curious blending of faint odours that revealed themselves—when +presently summoning an excuse for the excitement of shopping, at the +cost of but a few of the multitude of small coins representing an +English sovereign, she gained the inside of the third general store +between the hotel and the church—as the familiar smell of mixed +groceries; with a difference: clean smells, baked dry. No prevailing +odour of moist bacon and mouldering cheese; of spilt paraffin and musty +sacking, and things left undisturbed in corners. No dinginess. And +though shelves and counter were crowded, every single thing gleamed and +displayed itself with an air. + +But there were no Swiss biscuits. Only a double row of the familiar +square tins from Reading, triumphantly displayed by the gaunt +sallow-faced woman whose ringing voice was as disconcertingly at +variance with her appearance as was her charmed manner with the eager +cunning that sat in her eyes. She asked for soap and the woman set wide +the door of an upright glass case in which were invitingly set forth +little packets bearing names that in England were household words. + +She glanced back at the biscuits. Petit-Beurre were after all foreign +and brought with them always the sight of Dinant and its rock coming +into view, ending the squabble about the pronunciation of _grenouille_, +as the Meuse steamer rounded the last bend. But catching sight above the +biscuits of a box of English nightlights she chose a piece of soap at +random and fought while she responded to the voluble chantings +accompanying the packing of her parcel, with the nightmare vision of +bedrooms _never_ bathed in darkness, of people _never_ getting away into +the night, people insisting, even in rooms where brilliance can be +switched on at will, on the perpetual presence of the teasing little +glimmer; people who travel in groups and bring with them so much of +their home surroundings that they destroy daily, piecemeal, the sense of +being abroad. + +Regaining the street in possession of a replica of the tablet she had +unpacked last night, she found that the busy midst of the village lay +just ahead where the way widened to encircle the little church. Many +shops, some of them new-built, with roomy windows, and the lifeless +impersonal appearance of successful provincial stores. There were more +people here, more women in those heavy black dresses and head-shawls, +more bloused and bearded men, crossing the snowy road with swift +slouching stride. A post-office, offering universal hospitality. + +As if from the bright intense sunlight all about her, a ray of thought +had fallen upon the mystery of her passion for soap, making it so clear +in her mind that the little ray and the lit images waiting for words +could be put aside in favour of the strange dingy building breaking the +line of shops, looking like a warehouse, its small battered door, high +up, approached by a flight of steps leading from either side whose +meeting made a little platform before the door. Rough sleds were drawn +up round about the entrance, making it central in the little open space +about the church, the perpetual head-tossings of the horses filling the +bright air with showers of tinkles. It could hardly be a café; yet two +men had just clattered down the steps flushed and garrulous. Strange +dark-looking hostelry within which shone the midday sun of these rough +men living in far-away châlets among the snow. + +It was not only the appeal of varying shape and colour or even of the +many perfumes each with its power of evoking images: the heavy +voluptuous scents suggesting brunette adventuresses, Turkish cigarettes +and luxurious idleness; the elusive, delicate, that could bring +spring-time into a winter bedroom darkened by snow-clouds. The secret of +its power was in the way it pervaded one’s best realisations of everyday +life. No wonder Beethoven worked at his themes washing and re-washing +his hands. And even in merely washing with an empty mind there is a +_charm_; though it is an empty charm, the illusion of beginning, as soon +as you have finished, all over again as a different person. But all +great days had soap, impressing its qualities upon you, during your most +intense moments of anticipation, as a prelude. And the realisation of a +good day past, coming with the early morning hour, is accompanied by +soap. Soap is with you when you are in that state of feeling life at +first hand that makes even the best things that can happen important not +so much in themselves as in the way they make you conscious of life, and +of yourself living. Every day, even those that are called ordinary days, +with its miracle of return from sleep, is heralded by soap, summoning +its retinue of companion days. + +To buy a new cake of soap is to buy a fresh stretch of days. Its little +weight, treasure, minutely heavy in the hand, is life, past present and +future compactly welded. + +Post-office offering universal hospitality more vitally than the little +church. A beggar could perhaps find help in a church more easily than in +a post-office. Yet the mere atmosphere of a post-office offered +something a church could never give. Even to enter it and come away +without transactions was to have been in the midst of life. And to +handle stamps, and especially foreign stamps, was to be aware of just +those very distances the post had abolished. + +The priced goods in the windows were discouragingly high. One window +behind whose thick plate glass were set forth just a few things very +tastefully arranged, showed no prices at all and had the ominous note of +a west-end shop. Next door was a windowful that might have been +transplanted from Holborn so much steel was there, such an array of +rectangular labels and announcements. Skates and skates and skates. Then +a chemist’s and an inspiration, though the window showed nothing but a +perforated screen and the usual coloured bottles bulging on a shelf +above. + +The counter was stacked with wares from Wigmore Street. Even the +tooth-brushes were those of the new shape devised in Cavendish Square. +The chemist was a bald preoccupied man speaking English abruptly. She +came away with a jar of Smith’s cream, her shopping done and the face of +the clock sticking out above the watchmaker’s telling her it was nearly +noon. The little clock on the church said a quarter past eleven and +glancing back at the watchmaker’s, now in the rear, she saw the reverse +dial of the outstanding clock marking half past eleven. And Switzerland +was the land of watchmakers.... Her own watch said one o’clock, English +time. Then it was noon. But this far world was not three minutes +distance from the Alpenstock. There was still half-an-hour. + +The post-office was a sumptuous hall. Little tables stood about +invitingly set with pens and ink. No railed counter; a wooden partition +extending to the ceiling; a row of arched pigeon-holes, all closed. Like +a railway booking-office on Sunday, between trains—blankly indifferent +to the announcement of the presence of a customer made by the clumping +of her boots upon the wooden floor. And when presently—having gone the +round of the posters, brilliant against the white-washed walls, all so +much brighter and so much less bright than reality, all resounding with +a single deep charm, bringing assurance of possessing, in one journey +and one locality, the being of the whole—she tapped at a little shutter, +it flew up impatiently, revealing an affronted young man in a blue +cotton overall, glaring reproachfully through spectacles. The stamps +handed over, the little door shot back into place with a bang, as if +cursing an intruder. + +The open spaces called for a first view before the sense of its being no +longer morning should have robbed them of intensity. But where the +street joined the roadway there was a little shop, full sunlight falling +on its window, whose contents were a clustered delight and each separate +thing more charming than its neighbour. + +Two women approaching along the road preceded by English voices +distracted her, for a moment, with the strangeness of their headdress—a +sort of cowl. In a moment they passed with dangling clinking skates, and +her intention of getting a good view from behind was diverted back to +the shop window, by “tourist-trap” interpolated in a tone meant to be +inaudible, in the dissertation of the one holding forth in a voice not +unlike Mrs. Harcourt’s, about a hotel “packed like a bee-hive and +swarming with influenza.” + +It was true. The shop was full of Swiss brummagem. She fastened on it +the more eagerly. Little expensive cheap things whose charm was beyond +price. Small clumsy earthenware, appealingly dumpy, flower patterned +upon a warm creamy background; painted wooden spoons. Little brooches +and trinkets innumerable. Cow-bells. Some small thing for everybody and +a problem solved at the cost of a few marks. + +Turning away she caught sight of an old woman amazingly wrapped up, +peering at her from inside a little booth set down in the snow on the +other side of the way. A shelf laden with small things in carved wood +protruded in front. She crossed to look at them. Silently with slow +fumbling movements the old woman displayed her wares. Bears. Bears on +ski, on toboggans, bears in every kind of unbearlike attitude. Intricate +model châlets, useless and suggesting, imagined in England, nothing but +the accumulation of dust. But there was an owl, with owlish dignity, +very simply and beautifully carved. Her eyes returned to it and the old +woman put forth an aged freckled hand and grasped its head, which went +easily back upon a hinge and left revealed a clean white china inkwell. + +“Kipsake,” said the old woman huskily. + +“_Danke schön. Ich komme wieder_,” smiled Miriam escaping, followed by +hoarse cacklings of praise. + +Out upon the roadway fenced between dazzling snowfields, the end of the +valley came into sight, new, but faintly reproachful, having waited too +long, and complaining now about the lateness of the hour. Certainly it +was worthy of a whole self, undistracted. But there was to-morrow, many +to-morrows. She had done with the street and the shops save as a +corridor, growing each day more dear, to daily fulfilment of the promise +of this prospect whose beauty she was clearly recognising. And more than +its beauty. Its great, great power of assertion, veiled for the moment +by distractions, but there. Wonderfully beautiful was the speech and +movement of the far-off smooth pure ridge of snow, rising high against +the deepest blue of the sky, linking twin peaks. + +Some of the near slopes were dotted with people, tiny figurines +mitigating the snowfields and the towering mountains: the sounds of +English voices ringing out infinitesimal in the wide space, yet filling +it. Shutting out the scene, yet intensifying it; bringing gratitude for +their presence. + +That remained even after the quaint peaked hoods of brilliant white or +mauve, the effective skirts and jerseys of a group of women passing in +the roadway had rebuked with their colours, clean and sharp against the +snow, her tweed that in London had seemed a good choice, and her London +felt hat. + +But though the clever clothes of these people brought a sense of exile +they were powerless to rouse envy or any desire. Envy was impossible in +this air that seemed, so sharp was every outline, to be no longer +earth’s atmosphere but open space, electric. + +Perhaps even this morning there was time to get clear, to be if only for +a few moments, along some side track alone with the landscape, walking +lightly clad in midsummer sun through this intensity of winter. + +The road was dropping and growing harder. No longer crunching under her +feet, the snow beaten flat showed here and there dark streaks of ice, +and her puttee-bandaged legs, flexible only at the knees, felt like +sticks above her feet lost and helpless in the thick boots that seemed +to walk of themselves. + +The dropping road took a sharp turn towards the valley, showing ahead a +short empty stretch and another sharp turn, revealing it as the winding +trail up which she had come last night. On the right it was joined by a +long track running steeply down into a wilderness of snow in the midst +of whose far distances appeared high up a little bridge half hidden +amongst pines. The track was dotted with pigmy forms. + +“_Ash_-tongue!” A fierce hoarse voice just behind, and joining it +another, clear and ringing: “_Ach_-tooooong.” + +Plunging into the roadside drift she turned in time to see a toboggan +bearing upon it a boy prone, face foremost eagerly out-thrust, shoot +down the slanting road, take the bend at an angle that just cleared the +fence and dart at a terrific pace down the slope towards the wilderness; +followed by the girl with the ringing voice, lightly seated, her +toboggan throwing her up as it bumped skimming from ridge to ridge down +the uneven road. She took the bend smoothly with space to spare and flew +on down the slope with lifted chin and streaming hair. Both mad. +Children of the reckless English who had discovered the Swiss winter. + +This terrific scooting was not the tobogganing of which she had heard in +London. Two more figures were coming, giving her excuse to wait lest +they were coming her way and watch their passing from the drift that was +like warm wool, knee-deep. They were women, coming slowly, paddling +themselves along with little sticks. They took the bend with ironic +caution and went on down the slope, still furiously stabbing the snow +with their little sticks, their high, peaked cowls making them look like +seated gnomes. + +Aware of intense cold invading her feet, she plunged out into the road +and was beating her snow-caked puttees when an intermittent grinding +sound approaching brought her upright: an aged couple side by side, +white-haired and immensely muffled, sitting very grave and stern behind +the legs protruding stiffly on either side the heads of their toboggans +and set from moment to moment heels downwards upon the road to check a +possible increase of their slow triumphant pace. Triumph. Behind the +sternness that defied the onlooker to find their pose lacking in dignity +was triumph. Young joy; for these who might well be patrolling in +bath-chairs the streets of a cathedral town. + +And they left the joyous message: that this sport, since pace could so +easily be controlled, might be tested at once, alone, without +instruction, this very afternoon. A subtle change came over the +landscape, making it less and more; retiring a little as who should say: +then I am to be henceforth a background, already a mere accessory, it +yet challenged her vow, an intimidating witness. + +Along the empty stretch towards the valley the blazing sun blotted out +the distance so that it was pleasant to turn the next corner and be +going again towards the expanse that ended at the white high-hung +collar. The fresh stretch of gently sloping road was longer than the one +above it and walking freely here she found that her gait had changed, +that she was planking along in a lounging stride which brought ease to +her bandaged legs and made more manageable her inflexible feet. With a +little practice, walking could be a joy. Walking in this scene, through +this air, was an occupation in itself. And she was being assailed by the +pangs of a piercing hunger. Obtrusive; insistent as the hunger of +childhood. + +It would take a little longer to go back. It would be wise to turn now. +At the corner ending this stretch. Suddenly it seemed immensely +important to discover what there was round the corner. From the angle of +the turning she could see the little bridge far away to the right, in +profile, with pines stretching along the bank of what it spanned, that +showed a little further on as a thin straight line steeply descending to +join the serpentine that cut the white floor of the valley. Away to the +right of the bridge straggling leafless trees stood in a curve. Behind +them something moved; coming and going across the gaps between their +trunks. Skaters. + +Then for the girl and boy that reckless rush was just a transit; a means +of getting to the rink, as one might take a bus to a tennis-court. + +A voice greeted her from behind, surprising in its level familiarity +until the finished phrase revealed the American, to whom, turning to +find him standing before her, his toboggan drawn to heel by its rope, +she gave the smile, not for him, the lover’s smile reviewing, as they +passed her in inverse rotation while she made the long unwelcome journey +into his world of an American in Europe, her morning’s gatherings. + +But he had received it, was telling her that already she looked +splendid, adding that when folks first came up they looked, seen beside +those already there, just gass’ly. And for a moment the miscarriage was +painful: to have appeared to drop even below his own level of +undiscriminating hail-fellow-well-met. And for a fraction of a second as +he stood before her in his correct garb she transformed him into an +Englishman condemning her foolish grin—but there was his queer little +American smile, that came to her from a whole continent and seemed to +demand a larger face and form, a little smile dryly sweet, as +misdirected as her own and during which they seemed to pour out in +unison their independent appreciations and to recognise and greet in +each other, in relation to the English world out here, fellow voyagers +in a strange element. + +It healed her self-given stripes that were, she reflected as they went +on together up the hill, needless, since to him, as an American, her +greeting would seem neither naïve nor bourgeois. For all Americans are +either undisturbedly naïve and bourgeois or in a state of merely having +learned, via Europe, to be neither. And this man, now launched in speech +revealed himself by the way he had of handling his statements, as so far +very much what he had always been. + +Strange that it was always queer people, floating mysterious and +intangible in an alien element who gathered up, not wanting them, +testimonies that came from her of themselves. + +All the way back to the Alpenstock he pursued his monologue, +information, and in an unbroken flow that by reason of its temperature, +its innocence of either personal interest or benevolent intention, left +her free to wander. There was in his narrow, unresonant voice only one +shape of tone: a discouraged, argumentative rise and fall, very slight, +almost on two adjacent notes, colourless; as of one speaking almost +unawares at the bidding of an endless uniform perception. She heard it +now as statement, now merely as sound and for a moment as the voice of a +friend while after informing her that he had done the valley run and +climb each morning and taken to-day a last turn to add yet one more +layer to his week’s sunburn, he remarked that the long zig-zag was +commonly deserted in the forenoon, folks mostly taking the other track, +either to the rink, or further to the made run, or way beyond that to +the ski-ing slopes. + + * * * * * + +When she was clear of the shop and crossing the road with the toboggan +slithering meekly behind, the invisible distant slopes seemed lonely and +her plan for getting immediately away to them postponed itself in favour +of enjoying for a while the thrilled equilibrium with everything about +her that was the gift of the slight pull on the cord she was trying to +hold with an air of preoccupied negligence. Turning leisurely back from +the short length of street ahead that too soon would show the open +country, she came once more into the heart of the village and paid an +unnecessary visit to the post-office, heard the toboggan pull up against +the kerb and knew as she turned to abandon the cord that she had tasted +the utmost of this new joy, and that when once more the cord was in her +hands she must go forth and venture. + +Out on the road beyond the village the pleasant even slithering +alternated with little silent weightless runs, that at first made her +glance back to see if the toboggan were still there. These little runs, +increasing as the road began to slope came like reminders of its +character, assertions of its small willingness for its task, enhancing +its charm, calling her to turn and survey as she went its entrancing +behaviour of a little toboggan. + +But presently, and as if grown weary of gentle hints and feeling the +necessity of stating more forcibly the meaning of its presence out here +in the glittering stillness, it took a sudden run at her heels. Moving +sideways ahead she reduced it to its proper place in the procession +until the distance between them set it once more in motion. Overtaking +her it made a half turn, slid a little way broadside and pulled up, +facing her, in a small hollow, indignant. In the mercifully empty yet +not altogether unobservant landscape it assumed the proportions of a +living thing and seemed to say as she approached: “You _can’t_ bring me +out here and make a fool of me.” And indeed, even with no one in sight, +she could not allow herself to walk down the slope with the toboggan +ahead and pulling like a dog. + +She might go back, make a détour on the level round about the village, +turn the afternoon into a walk and postpone until to-morrow the +adventure for which now she had neither courage nor desire. In choosing +the time when there would be fewest people abroad she had forgotten that +it was also the lowest point of the day. Even this first day had a +lowest point. And belated prudence, reminding her that she had come away +to rest, cast a chill over the empty landscape, changing it from reality +to a picture of a reality seen long ago. At the sight of it she turned +and went a few paces up the gradient and perched and gathered up the +length of cord, and life came back into the wastes of snow, the +mountains were real again, quiet in the motionless afternoon light, and +the absurd little toboggan a foe about to be vanquished. + +It slid off at once, took a small hummock askew, righted itself, to a +movement made too instinctively to be instructive, and slid onwards +gathering pace. + +But ecstasy passed too swiftly into awareness of the bend in the road +now rushing up to meet her ignorance. Ramming her heels into the snow +she recovered too late with a jolting pang in both ankles and a headlong +dive into this morning’s drift, a memory of what she should have done +and stood up tingling with joy in the midst of the joyous landscape +stilled again that had flown with her and swooped up as she plunged, and +was now receiving her exciting news. + +The backward slope invited her to return and go solemnly, braking all +the way and testing the half-found secret of steering. But the bend +tempted her forward. A single dig on the left when she reached it and +she would be round in face of the long run down to the level. + +But the dig was too heavy and too soon and landed her with her feet in +the drift and the toboggan swung broadside and all but careering with +her backwards along the steepness that lay, when once more she faced it, +a headlong peril before the levels leading on and up to the little +bridge could come to bring rescue and peace. + +Pushing carefully off, sliding with bated breath and uncomfortably +rasping heels, down and down, making no experiments and thankful only to +feel the track slowly ascending behind her she remained clenched until +only a few yards were left down which with feet up she slithered +deliriously and came to rest. + +It was done. She had tobogganed herself away from Oberland into the +wilderness, the unknown valley waiting now to be explored, with the +conquered steed trailing once more meek and unprotesting in the +background. The afternoon was hers for happiness until hunger, already +beginning its apparently almost continuous onslaught, should make +welcome the triumphant climb back to Oberland and tea upon the +promontory. + +The high bridge that in the distance looked so small and seemed to span +smallness was still small, a single sturdy arch; but beneath it dropped +a gorge whose pines led down to a torrent, frozen; strange shapes of +leaping water arrested, strangely coloured: grey in shadow, black in +deep shadow, and here and there, caught by the light, a half-transparent +green. + +There was a great fellowship of pines clustered on either bank and +spreading beyond the bridge to a wood that sent out a rising arm +blocking the view of the valley and the pass. They made a solitude down +here above the silenced waters. The backward view was closed by the +perilous slope whose top was now the sky-line, leaving Oberland far away +out of sight in another world. + +The track through the wood, wide and level for a while with pointed +pines marching symmetrically by, narrowed to a winding path that took +her in amongst them, into their strange close fellowship that left each +one a perfect thing apart. Not lonely, nor, for all the high-bulging +smoothness of snow in which it stood, cold. It was their secret, +pine-breath, that brought a sense of warm life, and their +close-clustered needles. Out on the mountain-sides they looked black and +bleak, striving towards the sun until they were stayed by the upper +cold. Seen close they were a happy company bearing light upon the green +burnish of their needles and the dull live tints of their rough stems. +And very secret; here thought was sheltered as in a quiet room. + +Out in the immense landscape, in the down-pouring brilliance of pure +light, thought was visible. Transparent to the mountains who took its +measure and judged, yet without wounding, and even while they made it +seem of no account, a small intricate buzzing in the presence of mighty, +simple statement sounding just out of reach within the air, and invited +thoughtless submission to their influence as to a final infinite good +that would remain when they were no more seen, there was pathos in their +magnificence; as if they were glad even of one small observing speck, +and displayed gently the death they could deal, and smiled in their +terrifying power as if over an open secret. + +And to walk and walk on and on amongst them, along their sunlit +corridors with thought shut off and being changed, coming back refreshed +and changed and indifferent, was what most deeply she now wanted of +them. + +The track climbed a ridge and there below were the American’s wide +snowfields. + +Before she was assured by the doffed cap outheld while he made his +salutation—the sweeping foreign _coup de chapeau_ that was so decisive a +politesse compared to the Englishman’s meagre small lift; and yet also +insolent—she was rejoicing in the certainty that the bearded figure in +spite of the English Norfolk suit and tweed cap, was the big Russian. He +alone, at this moment, of all the people in the hotel would be welcome. +Remote, near and friendly as the deepest of her thoughts, and so far +away from social conventions and the assumptions behind conventions, as +to leave all the loveliness about her unchanged—and yet trailing an +absurd little toboggan, smaller, and, in contrast with his height, more +ridiculous an appendage than her own. He plunged down the ridge in the +English style, by weight and rather clumsily, and in a moment was by her +side at the head of the run that went, pure white and evenly flattened, +switch-backing away across the field out of sight. + +In a slow mournful voice that gave his excellent French a melancholy +music he asked her if she had already tested the run and became when he +had heard the short tale of her adventure impatiently active. Her +toboggan, he said, and raised its fore-part and bent scanning, was too +large, too heavy and with runners not quite true. It would be better for +the moment to exchange. Try, Try, he chanted with the true Russian +nonchalance and, abandoning his own went off down the gentle slope on +the discredited mount that she might now blame for her mysterious swerve +at the bend. + +After the gentle drop, carrying him over the first small rise as if it +were not there, he flew ahead gathering swiftness with each drop, away +and away until at last he appeared a small upright figure far away on +the waste of snow. + +The run compared with what she had already attempted seemed nothing at +all. The drops so slight that once or twice she was stranded on a ridge +and obliged to push off afresh. And the light little toboggan, +responding to the slightest heel-tap upon the hard pressed snow, taught +her at once the secret of steering. And when at last full of the joy of +fresh conquest she was pulled up by the loose snow at the end of the +run, she was eager only to tramp back and begin again. But tramping at +her side he tore her triumph to shreds. Silently she tried to imagine +the toboggan having its own way uncontrolled for the whole of that +sweeping trek, for the two quite steep drops towards the end. + +The second time he started her in advance and remained behind shouting, +his voice rising to a crescendo at the first steepness: “_Il n’y a pas +de danger!_” With an immense effort she restrained her feet and entered +paradise. + +“_Ça ira, ça ira_,” he admitted smiling when once more they were side by +side. They tramped back in silence, under the eyes as they approached +the ridge of a group newly appeared upon its crest and from which when +they drew near a voice came down in greeting. She looked up to see the +Croydon family, all very trim in sporting garb and carrying skates, +gathered in a bunch, at once collectively domestic and singly restive. +They smiled eagerly down at her and she read in the father’s twinkling +gaze that she was providing material for Croydon humour, so distinctly +and approvingly, was it saying in the Croydon way: “You’ve not lost much +time,” and so swiftly, having told her in response to her own greeting +that the rink was within five minutes easy walking, did he turn and +disappear with his family in tow down the far side of the ridge. + +The third run left her weary and satisfied. Again they were tramping +back side by side, and although her experience of Russians had taught +her that gratitude was out of place and enthusiasm over simple joys a +matter for half-envious contempt, her thankfulness and felicity, +involuntarily eloquent, treated him, marching tall and sombre at her +side upon feet that in spite of the enormous boots showed themselves +slender and shapely terminations of a well-hung frame, as if he had been +of her own English stock; let him see the value, to herself, of his +kindly gift. All she lived for now, she told him, was to rush, +safe-guarded by a properly-mastered technique, at the utmost possible +speed through this indescribable air, down slopes from which the +landscape flew back and up. He smiled down, of course, the half +incredulous smile. Of course bored, giving only part of a dreamy +attention to all this raving. + +“_C’est bon pour la santé_,” he murmured as she paused. + +What did he know of santé, unless perhaps he had been in prison? He +might be a refugee; an anarchist living in Switzerland. + +When he, too, turned out to be now returning in search of tea and they +were climbing the slope towards Oberland, their toboggans colliding and +bumping along as best they might at the ends of cords twisted together +round the wrist of his gloveless hand, she remarked by way of relieving +a silence he did not seem to think it necessary to break, that the Swiss +winter must be less surprisingly beautiful to Russians than to the +people of the misty north. He agreed that doubtless this was so and +gloomily asked her if she had been in Russia. He agreed with everything +she said about his country as seen from a distance, but without interest +and presently, as if to change the subject, declared that he knew +nothing of Russia and Russians. + +His voice sounded again too soon to give her time to select a +nationality that should soften the disappointment of losing him as a +Russian, and in a moment he was talking of Italy, and the Italy she knew +by so many proxies dead and living was stricken out of her mind, to give +place to the unknown Italy who had produced this man, simple and +sincere, gloomy and harsh-minded, playing Chopin with all his heart. But +when presently she learned that he was a business man on holiday from +Milan, her Italy returned to her. He was from a world that everywhere +was the same, a world that existed even within Italy. + +And at dinner again he sat apart wrapped in his gloom until again +Vereker was rescuing him with speech and he was responding in the +withheld, disclaiming Russian way. + +A Latin consciousness was, in this group, something far more remote than +a Russian would have been, and she wondered what it was that behind +Vereker’s unchanging manner was making his half of the bridge upon which +they met. Music perhaps, if Vereker, with eyes candid and not profound +and not deep-set, were musical. She caught a few words. It was the +weather. Do Italians discuss the weather? Was Guerini, behind his +gratitude in being rescued from isolation, wondering at the Englishman’s +naïveté? Vereker was not showing off his French. He was being courteous, +being himself. No one, except when he could seize a chance the American, +made any sort of parade. Nor was it that they made a parade of not +making a parade. Talk with them was easy because it was quite naturally +serene. No emphasis. No controversy. The emergence of even a small +difference of opinion produced at once, on both sides, a smiling +retreat. Deep in his soul the American must certainly be smiling at this +baffling urbanity. English correctness and hypocrisy. Here was the +original stuff from which the world-wide caricatures were made. + +And talk with these people always ended in a light and lively farewell, +a manner of dropping things that handed a note of credit for future +meetings. A retreat, as from royalty, backwards. A retreat from the +royal game of continuous courtesy. + +And together with the surprise of discovering—when having departed +upstairs she was drawn down to the little salon by the sound of the +Chopin ballade—not the Italian but Vereker at the piano in the empty +room, was the boon of his composure. Of his being and continuing to be +after she had slipped into the room and reached a chair from which she +could just see him in profile, so quietly engrossed. A little strung, as +though still the phrases that yesterday he had so carefully recaptured +might again elude him; but listening. Led on, and listening and in the +hands of Chopin altogether. + +Seated thus exposed he was slender, delicate, musicianly; only the line +of his jaw gave him an appearance of strength; and perhaps the close +cropping of his hair so that of what would have been a flamboyant mass +only crisp ridges were left, close against a small skull, like Cæsar’s. +His spruceness and neatness made stranger than ever the strange variance +between the stiff, magpie black and white of dress clothes, and the +depth and colour of music. + +He played the whole ballade; sketchily where the technical difficulties +came thick and fast, but keeping the shape, never losing the swinging +rhythm. + +Its concluding phrases were dimmed by the need of finding something to +say that should convey her right to say anything at all; but when the +last chord stood upon the air, the performance seemed to have been a +collaboration before which they now sat equally committed. And when his +face came round, its smile was an acknowledgment of this. + +For an instant she felt that nothing could fit but a gratefully +affectionate salute and then a “How’s old So-and-So in these days?” +after the manner of men of his type drifting happily about upon the +surfaces of life. And when she said: “You got the whole of it this +time,” it was as if the unexpressed remainder had indeed passed across +to him, as if she were the newly-arrived friend whose presence somewhere +upstairs had made him so radiant during dinner and afterwards sent him +to pour out his happiness in the deserted little salon. + +“After a fashion,” he said with the little flicker of the eyelids that +was his way, from sixth-form or from undergraduate days, of sustaining +for further speech the pose of his turned head and smiling face: +“There’s no one like him, is there?” + +“You were playing last evening just after I came. For a moment I +couldn’t believe that ballade was actually here. I heard it long ago, +and never since, and I’ve never been able to recall the theme.” + +“I’m _so_ glad,” he said with his little note of distress. “I’ve been +trying for _days_ to get it all back.” + +For him, too, it came out of a past, and brought that past into this +little Swiss room, spread it across whatever was current in his life, +showed him himself unchanged. And in that past they had lived in the +same world, seen and felt in the same terms the things that are there +forever before life has moved. So far they were kindred. But since then +she had been flung out into another world; belonged to the one in which +he had gone forward only through an appreciative understanding of its +code, of what it was that created its self-operating exclusiveness. He +did not yet know that she stood outside the charmed circle, had been +only an occasional visitor, and that now, visiting again after years of +absence, she was hovering between the desire to mask and remain within +it and her proper business as a Lycurgan: to make him aware of the +worlds outside his own, let him see that his innocent happiness was kept +going by his innocent mental oblivion. + +And whilst they called up cherished names and collided in agreement she +wondered what these people who lived in exile from reality could find in +their music beyond escape into the self for whom in their state of +continuous urbane association there was so little space; and presently +became aware of lively peace filling the intervals between their to and +fro of words, distracting attention from them, abolishing everything but +itself and its sure meaning: so that into this Swiss stillness of frost +without and electricity within nothing had been present of the +Switzerland that had brought them both here, and now suddenly came back, +enhanced, a single unbounded impression that came and was gone, that was +the face of its life now begun in her as memory. + +She read her blissful truancy in his eyes, his recognition of their +having fallen apart, but not of its cause, which he thought was perhaps +the monotony of their continuous agreement, and was now swiftly seeking +a fresh bridge that in an instant, since clearly he intended to prolong +the sitting, he would, deferentially flickering his eyelids, take +courage to fling. + +But into the little pause came the sound of footsteps approaching +through the hall, and an intensity of listening that was their common +confession of well-being and was filling them with a wealth of eager +communication that must now be postponed until to-morrow. But to-morrow +the college friend would be in possession; there was only this evening, +a solitary incident. Perhaps the door would open upon someone who would +straightway withdraw, leaving the way open for the waiting conversation. +And the college friend had come only for a few days ... + +But this falling from grace was rebuked by the reminder of Vereker’s +all-round niceness. He would, of course, retain the intruder. If it were +a man there would be three-cornered talk enlivened by what was being +sacrificed to it. But with the opening of the door, as she raised her +eyes towards it and caught in passing a glimpse of him upon his music +stool, out of action and alone, she saw that dear and nice as he was, +had always been, he could not fully engage her, was real to her on a +level just short of reaching down to the forces of her nature; was +pathetically, or culpably, a stranded man; subsisting. + +Guerini: huge, filling the doorway, hesitating for a moment and +retreating, quietly closing the door, but not before Vereker wheeling +round on his music-stool, had seen his departing form. + +It was his unexpectedness, the having forgotten him so that he came like +an apparition, that had sent him away. Even so, a woman of the world +would have promptly become a smiling blank and suitably vocal; or +withdrawn and expressionless in the manner of a hotel guest only partly +in possession of a room now to be partly taken over by another. But she +had left her thoughts standing in her face, leaving Vereker, who had +turned just too late, to be hostess. + +Wheeling back to face her, he was again the gentle companion from the +past. In his elegant sunny voice he was recalling their morning’s talk, +begging at once with his despairing little frown, for more light on the +subject of property in land. It was clear that these things had never +come his way. It was after all not his fault that his education had held +his eyes closed, that they had since been kept closed by wealth and ease +taken for granted. And in his way he had kept fine. His adoration for +his gods of art and literature was alive and genuine—and he was a +sportsman. It was difficult face to face with his gentle elegance to +remember that he was distinguishing himself in an exacting sport. +Repentant of her condemnation she set forth the steps of the reasoning +and the groups of facts, saw him eagerly intent—not upon herself but +upon this new picture of life, wrestling step by step with what he saw +far off—and presently had the joy of seeing him see how economic +problems stood rooted in the holding of land at rent. But he was only +one; there were thousands of men, nice men, needing only hints, as +blinkered as he. + + + + + CHAPTER IV + + +Hurrying through her dressing to keep the appointment that had not been +made and whose certainty in her own mind was challenged in vain by all +the probabilities, she opened her door upon the silent corridor; +stillness and silence as if everyone else in the hotel had been spirited +away leaving clear, within the strange surroundings in which for a while +she was set down, the familiar pathway of her life. And when she reached +the dining-room the sight of them there, side by side at breakfast in +the brilliant morning light with no one else in the room save herself +approaching, had for a moment the hard unreality of things deliberately +arranged. She saw them very clearly and it was as if neither of them +were there; as if they were elsewhere each on his own path from which +this tacit meeting was a digression. + +But before she was half-way to the table they were rising. Their +breakfast over, they were going off into their day. She was too late; +her haste was justified of its wisdom. Reaching her place, she murmuring +a casual greeting, turned away towards the spaces of her own day +opening, beyond this already vanishing small disappointment, as brightly +as the light shining in from the sunlit snow. + +They halted a moment while Vereker introduced his friend to whose +height, as she sat down to the table, she glanced up to meet the intent +dark gaze of a man on guard. She was already far away, and in the +instant of her hurried astonished return to face for the first and +perhaps the last time this man who was challenging her, the eyes were +averted and the two men sat down: to freshly broken rolls and steaming +cups. + +The little self-arranged party was secure in the morning stillness that +was the divine invisible host equally dear to all three. Happy in this +fulfilment of premonition, she sat silent, delighting in the challenge +left, miscarried and superfluous upon the empty air, wickedly delighting +in the friend’s discomfort in following the dictates of the code +forbidding him again to look across until she should have spoken, and +confining his large gaze within the range of his small immediate +surroundings. Refusing rescue, she busied herself with breakfast, +enjoying his large absurdity, free, while he paid the well-deserved +penalty of his innocently thwarted attack, to observe to her heart’s +content. + +He sat taking sanctuary with Vereker—who at his sunny best was making +conversation about the trials in store—slightly turned towards him and +away from the barred vista across which no doubt, before she came in, +his large gaze had comfortably extended; responding now and again with +thoughtful groans. + +Beside Vereker’s sunburned fairness he was an oiled bronze; heavy good +features, heavy well-knit frame. Lethargic, or just a very tired man on +a holiday, bemused by his sudden translation. Superficially he was +formidable, “strong and silent.” His few remarks, thrown into the talk +that Vereker kept up while he waited for his two friends to fraternise +and admire each other, came forth upon a voice deliberately cultivated +since his undergraduate days, a ponderous monotone, the voice of a man +infallible, scorning argument, permanently in the right. Its sound was +accompanied by a swaying movement from side to side of his body bent +forward from the hips: suggesting some big bovine creature making up its +mind to charge. + +She recalled other meetings with his kind, instant mutual dislike and +avoidance. This time there was no escape. She was linked to him by +Vereker, obliged by Vereker to tolerate his presence, sit out his +portentousness and be aware, since Vereker found him so very fine, of +the qualities hidden within. Courage of course, tenacity, strength to +adventure in strange places. Were such things enough to justify this +pose of omniscience? With that pose it was forever impossible to make +terms; and if this were not a single occasion, if there were further +meetings, there would sooner or later be a crossing of swords. She +considered his armoury. + +Mentally it was a flimsy array; a set of generalisations, born of the +experience that had matured him and become now his whole philosophy, +simple and tested, immovable; never suspected of holding good only for +the way of living upon which it was based. + +The fact of the existence of life had either never entered his head or +been left behind in the days before he crystallised. He had now become +one of those who say “our first parents” and see a happy protégé of an +entirely masculine Jehovah duped into age-long misery by the first of +the charmers. Homage and contempt for women came equally forth from him, +the manifest faces of his fundamental ignorance. The feminine world +existed for him as something apart from life as he knew it, and to be +kept apart. Within that world “charm” and “wit” drew him like magnets +and he never guessed their source; knew nothing of the hinterlands in +the minds of women who assumed masks, put him at his ease, appeared not +to criticize. And such women were the sum of his social knowledge. One +day he would be a wise old man “with an eye for a pretty face,” wise +with the wisdom that already was cheating him of life. + +There was no hope for him. His youth had left him Vereker, his chum +whose sunny simplicity had always disarmed him, who did not resent his +portentous manner. From women he would have, till old age, flattery for +his strength. From his workers nothing but work, and respect for his +English justice and honesty. It was inconceivable that anyone should +ever pierce his armour; the ultimate male density backed by “means” and +“position.” + +His pose had found its bourne in his present position of authority, his +state of being bound to present a god-like serenity; and it had become +so habitual that even when it was put out of action he could not +disencumber himself of it. At this moment, for lack of proper feminine +response from across the table, it was actually embarrassing him. To +proper feminine response, charming chatter or charming adoring silence +he would pay tribute, the half respectful, half condescending interest +of the giant in his hours of ease. + +Unable any longer to endure silently, she rode across him with speech; +pictures, for Vereker, of her yesterday’s adventure. Lively and shapely, +inspired by the passage of wrath. Her voice had a bright hard tone, +recognisable as the tone of the lively talker. + +She was aware of the friend accepting her as the bright hard mondaine; +at once attentive, his pose relaxed so far as to be represented only by +the eyebrows left a little lifted and still knitting his deliberately +contemplative brow. He was looking, poor dear, at the pictures, enjoying +them, their mechanism, their allusions. And she, for a weary empty +interval, was being a social success. It was a victory for the friend, a +bid for his approval. + +Vereker was puzzled, meeting a stranger; a little taken aback. But when +grown weary of the game of brightly arranged exaggerations, she relapsed +into simplicity, he recovered at once and again brought forth his +ski-club. The friend sat by while one after another the persuasive +arguments came forth, smiling with the slightly lifted brow that was now +his apology for smiling at all. + +And suddenly he was grave, intent as he had been at the first moment; +this time towards the door, outside which sounded Daphne’s eager +breathless voice and ceased in the doorway. Her swift slight footsteps +crossed the room and brought her to a standstill just in sight, gazing +at the stranger. + +He remained grave, darkly gazing. Vereker, half-risen, eager to be off, +was looking at him in the manner of a hostess arrested in giving the +signal for departure. For a moment the man and the child stared at each +other, and then she moved stealthily, rounding the table-end. A light +came into his unsmiling face. With a rush she was upon him, mouth set, +eyes blazing, clenched fists beating upon his breast. + +“_Eaden_,” she panted, “evil, _evil_ Eaden.” + +There was no defence, no display of comic fear, no wrist-catching +dominance. And when she desisted and stood back still searching him with +grave face a little thrust forward in her eagerly-thinking way, he +turned more sideways from the table, to attend while hurriedly with the +air of one having other business on hand and no time to waste, she +catechised him. He answered simply, with just her manner of one cumbered +with affairs and eager nevertheless to contrive meetings; devouring all +the time with his eyes the strange hurried little face, the round wide +eyes set upon something seen afar. + +They had recognised each other. To the rest of the party she was a +quaint, precocious child. This man saw the strange power and beauty of +the spirit shining in those eyes almost round, almost protruding, and, +if there had been in the blue of them, that toned so gently into the +pearly blue surrounding, a shade more intensity of colour, merely +brilliant. + +“You _must_,” she said, her lips closing firmly on her ultimatum, head a +little out-thrust, hands behind back. “You’d better go now,” with a +glance at the group that had gathered round. She pattered swiftly away +to her table in the background. + +“Daphnee’ll always get what she wants with her nagging,” said the Skerry +youth standing by. + +“She will get what she wants with her beaux yeux,” said Miriam warmly, +and saw the little form panting along its ardent way up through life, +seeking and testing and never finding, in any living soul. + +“_Yes_,” groaned Eaden and impatiently sighed away the wrath in his eyes +set upon the departing figure of the youth. Again they were lit and +gentle and as if still gazing upon Daphne. He sat for a moment, paying +tribute to a suddenly found agreement before joining Vereker held up at +the door in the little crowd of newly-arriving breakfasters. + + * * * * * + +It was something like cycling in traffic, only that this scattered +procession making for the rink seemed all one party. The _achtungs_ of +those starting on their journey from the top of the slope rising behind +her rang out like greetings, and the agonised shrieks coming up from +below as one and another neared the gap visible now in the distance as +an all-too-swiftly approaching confusion of narrowly avoided disasters, +were full of friendly laughter: the fearless laughter of those +experienced in collisions. For a moment she was tempted to steer into +the snow and wait until the road should be clear. But the sudden +sideways swerve of a toboggan just ahead called forth unawares her first +_achtung_. It rang, through the moment which somehow manœuvred her clear +of the obstacle, most joyously upon the air and hailed her—seeming to be +her very life sounding out into the far distances of this paradise, +claiming them as long ago it had claimed the far distances surrounding +outdoor games—and sent her forward one of the glad fellowship of +reckless tobogganners whom now unashamed she could leave to go along her +chosen way. + +Ignoring yells from behind she slowed to pass the gap and its glimpse of +the descending track dotted with swiftly gliding humanity, took the +sharp bend beyond it and was out of sight careering down the first slope +of the valley run with sky and landscape sweeping upwards, mountains +gigantically sweeping upwards to the movement of her downward rush. + +The dreaded bends arrived each too swiftly with its threat of revealing +upon the smooth length of the next slope an upward-coming sleigh or +village children steering down at large. Slope after slope showed clear +and empty, each steeper than the last, and here and there a patch of ice +sent her headlong, sent the landscape racing upwards until her heels +could find purchase for a steadying dig and bring back the joy of +steering forward forever through this moving radiance. + +The fencing was growing lower, almost buried in deep snow. A sweeping +turn and ahead, at the end of a long smooth slope, the floor of the +valley, the end. From a drive of both heels she leaned back and shot +forward and flew, feet up, down and down through the crystal air become +a rushing wind, until the runners slurred into the soft snow, drove it +in wreaths about her, and slowed and stopped dead leaving her thrown +forward with the cord slack in her hands, feet down, elbows on knees +come up to meet them, a motionless triumphantly throbbing atom of +humanity in a stillness that at once kept her as motionless as itself to +listen to its unexpected voice: the clear silvery tinkle, very far away, +of water upon rock; some little mountain stream freed to movement by the +sun, making its way down into the valley. She listened for a while to +the perfect little sound, the way it filled the vast scene, and +presently turned to search the snowy levels, longing to locate it and +catch a glimpse, defying distance, of the sunlit runnel. The mountains +were cliffs upon the hither side, their shoulders and summits invisible +until one looked up to find them remote in the ascended sky. + +Down here at their feet was _terra firma_, broad levels on either side +the windings of the frozen river that was trimmed here and there with +bare trees sparse and straggling, their gnarled roots protruding through +the snow that bulged its rim. A bird-cry sounded from a tree at the +roadside; on silent wings a magpie, brilliant in sunlit black and white +sailed forth and away across the wastes of snow. Birds and the tinkling +runnel, the sole inhabitants of this morning solitude. + + * * * * * + +Whose magic survived the long backward climb and the run down to the +rink amidst the sociable echoes of the morning’s tumult, survived the +knowledge that in the minds of these busy skaters it was merely the +bottom of the hill; nothing to do down there unless you were going on +down to the station to meet and sleigh up with someone newly arrived. + +Here on their tree-encircled rink they were together all day as in a +room. Passing and re-passing each other all day long. Held together by +the enchantment of this continuous gliding. Everyone seemed to be +gliding easily about. Only here and there a beginner shuffled along with +outstretched jerking arms and anxious face. It was skating escaped from +the niggardly opportunities of England and grown perfect. Long sweeping +curves; dreaming eyes seraphic, even the sternest betrayed by the +enchantment in their eyes. There were many of these in this English +crowd. Many who knew there was absurdity in the picture of grown persons +sweeping gravely about for hours on end. Only a great enchantment could +keep them in countenance and keep them going on. Envy approached and +stared her in the face. But only for a moment. She could skate, rather +better than the beginners. In a day or two she could be sweeping +enchantedly about. It was a temptation answered before it presented +itself, only presenting itself because it could move more quickly than +thought: to be racing about on a sled was a reckless flouting of the +prescribed programme, but innocent, begun in forgetfulness. To have come +and seen, to sit and stroll about each day just seeing, would have been +joy enough. + +But when she looked across from the grey crowded rink and its belt of +ragged bare trees to the mountains standing in full sunlight and filling +half the opposite sky and saw away above the pinewoods ascending beyond +the little bridge the distant high white saddle of the pass with its +twin peaks rising on either side—they startled her with their heightened +beauty. These enchanted skaters, cooped upon their sunk enclosure had +enlivened the surrounding scene not only by bringing forgetfulness of +it, but because she knew the secret of their bliss, had shared long ago +the experience that kept them confined here all day. + +Gliding, as if forever; the feeling, coming even with the first +uncertain balance, of breaking through into an eternal way of being. In +all games it was there, changing the aspect of life, making friends +dearer, making even those actually disliked dear, as long as they were +within the rhythm of the game. In dancing it was there. But most +strongly that sense of being in an eternal way of living had come with +skating in the foggy English frost. And this it must be that kept all +these English eagerly and shamelessly fooling about on bladed feet; +eternal life. + +It might be wrong. Wells might be right. Golf. There must be a secret +too in golf. The mighty swipe, the swirl of the landscape about the +curving swing of the body, the onward march? All these must count even +if the players think only of the science of the game, only of excelling +an opponent. Even in safe and easy games there is an element of +eternity, something of the quality there must be in sports that include +the thrill of the life-risk. Savage sports. Fitness, the sense of +well-being of the healthy animal? But what _is_ health? What _is_ the +sense of well-being? + +“We know _nothing_. That at least you must admit: that we walk in +darkness.” + +“And proclaim ourselves enlightened by awareness of the fact.” + +A figure swinging swiftly up the rink, a different movement cutting +across the maze of familiar movements, drawing her eyes to follow it +until it was lost and watch until again it came by: clothed in uniform +purplish brown close-fitting, a belted jerkin, trousers, slenderly +baggy, tapering down into flexibly fitting boots. A strong lissome body +that beautifully shaped its clothing and moved in long easy rushes, +untroubled by shackled feet. + +He was not perhaps doing anything very wonderful, just rushing easily +about, in the manner of a native of some land of ice and snow. But he +transformed the English skaters to jerking marionettes, clumsily +clothed, stiff-jointed. Visibly jointed at neck and waist, at knees and +ankles and elbows. Their skating seemed now to be nicely calculated +mechanical balancing of jointed limbs, each limb trying to be +autonomous, their unity, such as it was, achieved only by methods +thought out and carefully acquired. They seemed to be giving exhibitions +of style, with minds and bodies precariously in tune. He was style +spontaneously alive. His whole soul was in his movements. + +She made her way to a near bench under the trees to watch for him. +Sitting there with her feet upon the ice she became one with the +skaters, felt their efforts and controls, the demand of the thin hard +blade for the perpetual movements of loss and recovery. Not all were +English, skating with reservations. Here a little Frenchman with arms +folded on his breast came by as if dancing, so elegantly pointed were +the swinging feet above which gracefully he leaned now forward now back. +Effortlessly. In his stroke there was no jerk of a heavy-muscular drive, +yet he covered as much space as the English, and more quickly. Behind +him an Englishwoman with a bird’s-wing pointing back along the side of +her little seal cap, going perfectly gracefully in smooth slight sweeps; +serene. + +Near at hand two men practised trick skating, keeping clear the space +about them with their whirling limbs. They swept about with eyes intent, +and suddenly one or other would twirl, describe a circle with an +outflung leg and recover, with an absurd hop. Clever and difficult no +doubt, but so very ugly that it seemed not worth doing. The stout man’s +hop seemed as though it must smash the ice. Between their dervish whirls +they talked. They were arguing. Amiably quarrelling; the occasional +hysterical squeal in the voice of the stout man revealing “politics.” +They were at loggerheads over the housekeeping, the lime-lit, well-paid, +public housekeeping, “affairs,” the difficult responsible important +business that was “beyond the powers of women,” that was also “dirty +work for which women were too good”; wrangling. The stout man executed a +terrific twirl and brought up facing his opponent who had just spoken. +He advanced upon him bent and sliding, arms dangling low: “Just _so_,” +he chanted amiably and, recovering the upright, presented a face really +foolish, a full-moon foolishness, kindly perfection of inability to see +further than his good British nose: “We’re back at what I told Hammond +this morning: we _can’t afford_ to ignore the _Trades Union +Secretaries_.” With a swift turn he was off before the other man could +respond, skating away beyond their enclosure, smiling his delight, +staring ahead, with wise eyes, at nothing at all but the spectacle of +his opponent caught out and squashed. + +The spectacle of his complacency was profoundly disquieting. He was the +typical kindly good-natured John Bull. Gently nurtured, well-educated, +“intelligent,” ready to take any amount of time and trouble in “getting +at facts” and “thinking things out.” And he was a towering bully. +Somewhere within his naïve pugnacity was the guilty consciousness of +being more pleased in downing an opponent than concerned for human +welfare. There was no peace of certainty in him. He had scored and was +flushed with victory. And all over English politics was this perpetual +prize-fighting. The power of life and death was in the hands of men +playing for victory; for their own side. + +Morning and evening in some hotel that big man’s voice boomed +incessantly. Behind it a kindly disposition and a set of fixed ideas. No +mind. + +“Don’t you skeete?” + +Making for the bench, bent forward to reach it hands first was the +younger Croydon girl; behind her the other, rallentando, balancing to a +standstill. + +She had greeted them, ere she was aware, with the utmost enthusiasm. +Smiling in their way, a gentle relaxation of the features that left them +composed, they stood about her, pleased to see and greet a stranger who +was also an old friend, renewing their great adventure. At the same time +they were innocently rebuking her outbreak. + +In her suburban past she had instinctively avoided their kind, scented a +snare in their refined gentility, liked them only for the way, in the +distance, going decorously in pretty clothes along tree-lined roadways, +they contributed to the brightness of spring. Meeting them out here, +representative of England, the middle-class counterparts, in their +ardent composure, of the hotel people who so strangely had received her +as a relative, she wanted in some way to put forth her claim as one who +knew of old their world of villa and garden, their gentle enclosed +world. + +“It’s glorious; we’re having a lovely tame,” said the younger, looking +away down the rink: an English rose, thoroughly pretty in the +characterless English way, shapely sullen little face, frowning under +the compulsion of direct statements. Her hair, that in the train had +been a neat bun, hung now in a broad golden plait to her waist where its +ends disappeared behind a large black bow like a bird with wings +outspread. + +And now with one seated close on each side of her it was with difficulty +that she attended to their talk so clearly did it exhibit their world as +a replica of the one just above it: as a state of perpetual urbane +association; conformity to a code in circumstances more restricted, upon +a background more uniform, and searched by the light of a public opinion +that was sterner than the one prevailing above. All the bourgeois +philistine in her came forth to sun itself in their presence, zestfully +living their lives, loving their friends and relatives, ignoring +everyone who lived outside the charmed circle. + +One against the other, they joyously relived the short time whose +sunburn had so becomingly accentuated their Blair Leighton fairness. +Their stories centred round the success or breakdown of the practical +jokes that seemed to be the fabric of life at their hotel ... all the +old practical jokes: even apple-pie beds. In and out of these stories +went Mr. Parry who was presently pointed out upon the ice; a stout +little dark man skating about at random, his movements visibly hampered +by the burden of his sociability, his eyes turning, to the detriment of +his steering, towards everyone he passed in his search for prey. + +“He makes us all _roar_; every evening.” + +There were others, some whose names and their rôles, as assistants or +willing victims of the schemes of Mr. Parry seemed sufficiently to +describe them, and, as central decoration in the picture, these two +girls newly arrived and certainly Mr. Parry’s most adored recruits, +ready trained by a brother in the science of practical joking, yet not +hoydenish; demure and sweet and, to his loneliness, the loneliness of an +undignified little man, not quite grotesque, and incapable of inspiring +romantic affection, figures of romance. + +Growing weary of their inexhaustible theme—of waiting for the emergence +of some sign of consciousness of the passing moment, a dropping of +references backwards or forwards, that would leave them in league +together, there as individuals—she pressed them for personal impressions +of the adventure in its own right, the movement into strangeness, the +being off the chain of accustomed things. They grew vague, lost interest +and fell presently into a silence from which she pulled them by an +enquiry about the plait. + +In the midst of the story of the plait and just as some people were +being pointed out who still thought them three sisters, two with their +hair up, and one with a plait who did not appear at dinner, came a +longing to escape, the sense of a rendez-vous being missed, with the +scene and the time of day. But her preparations for flight were stayed +by their payment for her interest in the plait. They plied her with +questions; presently they were offering to lend her skating-boots, and +choosing from amongst the guests at their hotel, people she would like. +They were pitying her, thinking that she must be having a poor time and +determined at once that she should do more than just stand upon the +edge, sunning herself in the glow of the life they were finding so +entrancing. + +But her contemplation of the desert that must be, from their point of +view, the life of a woman obviously poor and apparently isolated, took +her for a moment far away, and when she returned the link between them +was snapped. Her silence had embarrassed their habit of rapid give and +take. Making vague promises, she took leave, rescued by their immediate +reversion to the forms of speech set for such occasions, from holding +forth upon the subject of the dead level of happiness existing all over +the world independent of circumstances. They would have thought her both +pious and insane. + + * * * * * + +All the afternoon they had been in harmony, strolling and standing about +together in the snow until there seemed nothing more to say; and after +each run there had been something more to say. Till Italy lost all +strangeness but its beauty and he had seemed a simpler Michael free from +Michael’s certainty that everyone in the world was marching to +annihilation. It was the discovery of a shared sense of life at first +hand that had made them not fear saying the very small things. + +And suddenly there was a wall, dividing. No more communication possible; +the mountains grown small and bleak and sad and even now, in being alone +upon the promontory there was no peace, in all the wide prospect no +beauty. + +Why was it so much a matter of life and death, for men as for women? Why +did each always gather all its forces for the conflict? + +If all he said were a part of the light by which he lived he should have +been able to remain calm. But he had not remained calm. He had been +first uneasy, then angry, and then sorry for the destruction of their +friendship. + +“The thing most needed is for men to _recognise_ their illusion, to +leave off while there is yet time their newest illusion of life as only +process. Leave off trying to fit into their mechanical scheme a being +who lives all the time in a world they have never entered. They seem +incapable of unthinking the suggestions coming to them from centuries of +masculine attempts to represent women only in relation to the world as +known to men.” + +It was then he was angry. + +“How else shall they be represented?” + +“They _can’t_ be represented by men. Because by every word they use men +and women mean different things.” + +Probably Italian women led men by the nose in the old way, the way of +letting them imagine themselves the whole creation. And indeed the +problem presently will be: how to save men from collapsing under their +loss of prestige. Their awakening, when it comes, will make them +pitiful. At present they are surrounded out in the world by women who +are trying to be as much like them as possible. That will cease when +commerce and politics are socialised. + +“Art,” “literature,” systems of thought, religions, all the fine +products of masculine leisure that are so lightly called “immortal.” Who +makes them immortal? A few men in each generation who are in the same +attitude of spirit as the creators, and loudly claim them as humanity’s +highest spiritual achievement, condoning in those who produce them any +failure, any sacrifice of the lives about them to the production of +these crumbling monuments. Who has decreed that “works of art” are +humanity’s highest achievement? + +Daphne, preceded by her hurried voice; followed by her maid carrying a +tray. She came swiftly in her manner of a small panting tug, eyes +surveying ahead with gaze too wide for detail. + +“Put it there; near the lady.” + +Hitching herself into a chair, she sighed deeply, but not to attract +attention, nor in the manner of a conversational opening. She had, +without self-consciousness, the preoccupied air of one who snatches a +tiresome necessary meal, grudging the expense of time. All her compact +stillness was the stillness of energy momentarily marking time. Her +face, distorted by efforts, mouth firmly closed, with a goodly bite of +the stout little roll, was busily thinking and talking. Continuous. +There was no cessation in her way of being, no dependence, none of the +tricks of appeal and demand that make most children so quickly +wearisome. Yet she was a baby sitting there; a lonely infant, rotund. + +Her face came round, so perfectly impersonal in its gravity that Miriam +knew the irrepressible smile with which she met it for an affront, felt +herself given up to the child’s judgment, ready to be snubbed. + +For a moment the round eyes surveyed her, deep and clear, a summer sea +in shadow, and then, with her head a little butted forward in the way +she had of holding it during her breathless sentences, she hurriedly +swallowed her mouthful and cried: + +“You’re _nice_! I didn’t know!” Condemnation and approval together. +Scarcely daring to breathe she waited while the child drew near, +shouting for her maid who came grumbling and departed smiling when the +tables were drawn side by side. + +“That’s-my-beecely-German-nurse-I-hate-her.” + +“She talks German with you?” + +“She talks. I don’t listen. She has a beecely voice. Vicky Vereker says +she can’t helper voice, can’t help being a silly stupid and Evil Eaden +didn’t say anything and Vicky said show him how she speaks.” + +“And did you?” + +“I should have been _sick_. Evil Eaden’s gone ski-ing again. Evil Eaden +likes Napoleon and Vicky doesn’t; he wouldn’t.” + +“Why do you like Napoleon so much?” + +“Because I like him because he’s the good dear little big one. Everybody +is the big silly small one almost.” + +Meditating on Napoleon as a pattern for womanhood, Miriam heard the +returned ski-ers arrive upon the platform and watched the eager calm +little face that was still busily talking, for a sign. + +“When I’ve done my beecely edjacation, when I go back to Indja,” it was +saying, looking out with blind eyes across the bright intolerable +valley. + +Vereker’s voice, gently vibrant and sunny, sounded near by, and a deep +groan from Eaden just visible, collapsed in one of the small green +chairs. + +“I’ve got to go now,” said Daphne, relinquishing her second roll and +sliding to the floor. Covering the small space with her little +quick-march, she pulled up in front of Eaden and stood surveying, hands +behind back, feet a little apart, head thrust forward. Napoleon in a +pinafore. + +“You’re dead beat, that’s what you are.” + +“Daphne, I am. I’m a broken man. Don’t pound me. But you may stroke me +if you like.” + +On a table at his side stood a large brown bear on ski, his gift to her, +bought on his way home from the old woman at the corner and that now +they were surveying together. She had approached it with two little +eager steps and pulled up just short with her arms at her sides, volubly +talking just out of hearing but to his delight who heard and watched +her. Between her sallies she sought his face, to bring him to +contemplate and agree. Did it please her? She had not yet handled it. +Could anything please her? The giver and the giving were calling forth +her best, that moved him and Vereker as men are moved at the sight of +life in eager operation, spontaneous as they never seem to be, +commanding and leading them. Vereker was amused. Eaden disarmed and +delighted, protective of a splendour. Suddenly she seized the bear in +her arms and held it while she talked and put it carefully down and +looked back at it as she turned with her little quick-march to someone +calling from the house. + +“It’s all right, Daphne.” Eaden’s voice eager, free of its drawl, crying +out in pity and wrath. He had leapt from his chair and was gathering and +fixing together the detached parts, bear and ski and pole found by +Daphne returned, lying as if broken upon the table at his side. She +stood speechless, a little forlorn child red-cheeked and tearful in +dismay. A little way off stood the Skerry youth with his grin. + + + + + CHAPTER V + + +What had brought this wakening so near to the edge of night? The +mountains were still wan against a cold sky, whitening the morning +twilight with their snow. + +How long to wait, with sleep gone that left no borderland of drowsiness, +until the coming of their gold? + +And in a moment she had seen forever the ruby gleaming impossibly from +the topmost peak: stillness of joy held still for breathless watching of +the dark ruby set suddenly like a signal upon the desolate high crag. + +It could not last, would soon be plain sunlight. + +Already it was swelling, growing brighter, clearing to crimson. In a +moment it became a star with piercing rays that spread and slowly tilted +over the upper snow a flood of rose. + +Each morning this miracle of light had happened before her sleeping +eyes. It might not again find her awake. But it had found her awake, +carried her away in a moment of pure delight that surely was absolution? +And when presently the rose had turned to the familiar gold creeping +down to the valley it was more than the gold of yesterday. In watching +its birth she had regained the first day’s sense of endless time. To-day +was set in advance to the rhythm of endless light. + +To-day was an unfathomable loop within the time that remained before the +end of Eaden’s visit, his short allowance that added, by being set +within it, to her own longer portion. His coming had brought the earlier +time to an end; made it a past, expanding in the distance. And beyond +his far-off departure was a group of days with features yet unseen. +Looking back upon that distant past it seemed impossible that the crest +of her first week was not yet reached. + +Yet the few days that seemed so many had already fallen into a shape. +Morning blessedness of leisure smiled down upon by the mountains again +tawny in their sunlight, witnessed to by every part of the house +wandered through; rich sense of strength unspent; joy of mere going out +again into the wide scene, into the embrace of the crystal air; the +first breath of its piny scent, of the scent of snow and presently the +dry various scents confined within the little street, messengers of +strange life being lived close at hand; the morning dive into the baking +warmth of the post-office to find amongst the English vehement at their +pigeon-holes the sharpest sense of being out in the world of the free; +then the great event, the wild flight down to the valley’s sudden +stillness. + +The afternoon with Guerini; but, after yesterday, there might be no +afternoon with Guerini: freedom instead, for fresh discovery until +tea-time, on the promontory in the midst of unpredictable groupings. +Sunset and afterglow, high day moving away without torment or regret; +the mountains, turning to a darkness in the sky; telling only of the +sure approach of the deep bright world of evening. + +The gold-lit evening feast was still momentous, still under the spell of +the setting, the silent host who kept the party always new. + +And it was in part the setting, the feeling of being out of the world +and irresponsible, that last night had kept Eaden a docile listener. He +had heard a little of the truth, at least something to balance the +misrepresentations of socialism in the Tory press. But he had heard in a +dream, outside life. Sitting on the stairs, huge in his meek correctness +of evening dress. There was, to be sure, in face of Vereker’s +determination, nothing else for him to do. But it was with one consent +that they had all three subsided on the wide stairs, secure from the +intrusions that menaced the little salon. + +And it was only for a moment she had sunned herself in the triumph of +being claimed, forcibly enthroned in the sustaining blue gown upon the +red-carpeted stairs with the best of the hotel’s male guests a little +below on each side of her. After that moment there was only effort, the +effort to make things clear, to find convincing answers to Vereker’s +questions. + +And there were no witnesses, only Guerini, coming from the salon and +apologetically past them up the stairs; and the maids, passing to and +fro. + +There is no evening social centre in this hotel, no large room. That is +why these sports-people like it. The day is concentrated within the +daylight. The falling away after dinner is a turning towards the next +day’s work. + +That Grindelsteig hotel must be rather fascinating. She thought I shared +her disapproval of people “running up and down balconies and in and out +of each other’s rooms all night long.” I did. Yet they are only carrying +out my principles.... + +She despises even those who come out for sport unless all day they are +risking life and limb. So fragile and brittle-looking, so Victorian and +lacy, yet living for her ski-parties with picked people from the other +hotels; going off at dawn, swallowed up until dinner-time and then, +straight to bed. + +The social promise of the first evening has miscarried. The social +centre is the Oberland Ski-club; the rest, a mere putting in of time. I +am living on the outskirts, looking for developments in the wrong place; +have seen all there will be to see until the end of my stay. + +Into the golden sunlight fell the clashing of morning sleighbells +describing the outdoor world. Listening to them she felt the vast +surroundings that lately had become a setting, owing part of its +entrancement to the delightful sense of success in a charming social +atmosphere, re-asserting themselves in their own right, accusing her of +neglect, showing the days winding themselves off to an end that would +leave her in possession only of the valley road and the fields beyond +the bridge. + +The dawn had wakened to remind her. Watching the coming of the light she +had been restored to her first communion with it, back in the time when +the people downstairs had seemed superfluity, thrown in with the rest. +When all was over they would appear in the distance: bright figures of a +momentary widening of her social horizon, unforgotten, but withdrawn +into their own element; not going forward into her life as this winter +paradise would go forward, brightening her days with the possibility of +reunion. + +This morning she would break the snare, be a claimant for a lunch +packet, an absentee for the whole day. With the coming of the far-off +afternoon, Guerini, looking down from his window on to the promontory +either to escape or to claim her company, would find no one there. + + * * * * * + +Even in terror there was gladness of swift movement that left her +pressed like a niched effigy into the wall of the drift as the beast +pranced by, revealing in its wake a slouching peasant; clear brilliant +eyes brooding amidst unkempt shagginess, pipe at an angle of jaunty +defiance to the steep his heedless tramping brought so near. + +She was honourably plastered with snow and the precious package that had +leapt and might have hurled itself into the void was still safely on its +string about her neck, but the narrow rising path bereft of its secrecy +by evidence of homely levels above of field and farm was perhaps only a +highway for humiliating perils. More cows might be coming round the +bend; a whole herd. There might be—it would harmonise with the way life +always seemed to respond to deliberate activity with a personal +challenge—on this very day the dawn had drawn her away from beaten +tracks, a general turning out of cattle for an airing; mountain cattle, +prancing like colts. + +Man and cow were now upon the widening path, approaching the sloping +field with the barn at the end, the cow trotting swiftly ahead, through +the half buried posts beside the sunken open gate, and now careering +hither and thither with flying tail, the powdery snow flung in wreaths +about its course. It was half mad of course, poor thing, with the joy of +release from one of those noisome steamy sheds whose reek polluted the +air surrounding them and saddened the landscape with reminder of the +price of happiness: oblivion of hidden, helpless suffering. + +But in summer-time this air-intoxicated captive would stand knee-deep in +rich pasture; mild. Its colouring was mild, soft tan and creamy white, +in ill-arranged large blots; and with its short legs, huge bony mass of +head and shoulders from which the spine curved down as if sagging +beneath the weight of the clumsy body, it missed the look of breeding, +the even shape and colouring of lowland cattle. Its horns, too, had no +style, rose small and sharp from the disproportionate mass of skull. + + * * * * * + +Almost without warning, so slight in the dense pinewood was the sound of +its muffled gliding, the sled was upon her, heavy with piled logs and a +ruffian perched upon them: slithering headlong, fitting and filling the +banked path from side to side. Somehow she flung herself upon the +root-encumbered bank, somehow hitched her feet clear of the sled as it +rushed by. The villain, unmoved and placidly smoking, had not even +shouted. + +No time to shout, no use _shouting_ she murmured breathless, smiling at +the absurd scene, a treasure now that danger was past, a glimpse into +local reality. But danger was past only for the moment. This pleasant +wide path she had mistaken for a woodland walk winding and mounting +safely amidst the peace of the pinewoods was a stern highway, almost a +railway; formed like a railway to the exact dimensions of its traffic. + +Intently listening, going swiftly where the sides of the track were too +high for an escaping sprawl, she toiled on and up and came presently to +a gap and a view of the small hut seated clear of the pines, high +against the pure blue upon its curve of unblemished snow, come down now +nearly to her level and revealed as a châlet with burnished face, +inhabited: above its chimney the air quivered in the heat of a +clear-burning fire. + + * * * * * + +The hotel lunch, opened upon the trestle table, looked pert, a stray +intruder from the cheap sophisticated world of to-day into these rich +and ancient shadows. The old woman, but for her bell-like, mountainy +voice, was a gnarled witch moving amongst them, unattained by the cold +light from the small low windows that struck so short a way into the +warmly varnished interior. + +And it seemed by magic that she produced the marvellous coffee in whose +subtle brewing was a sadness, the sadness of her lonely permanence above +the waste of snow and woods—old grandmother, a living past, her world +disappeared, leaving only the circling of the seasons about her emptied +being. + +In this haunting presence the triumph of distance accomplished, the +delicious sense of known worlds waiting far below, world behind world in +a chain whose end was the far-off London she represented here in this +high remoteness, could not perfectly flourish, came in full only when +the silence had had time to fill itself with joy that was too strong to +be oppressed by the departed ancient voice that was like the echo of a +sound falling elsewhere. + + * * * * * + +Again, recalling the far-off morning, a dark barn-like room. But the +woman opened a door at the end of it, led the way through a passage +still darker: another door and she was out upon the edge of the world, +upon a dilapidated little grey balcony jutting over an abyss. As far as +sight could reach were sunlit mountain tops range beyond range till they +grew far and faint. + +Faced alone, the scene, after the first moment’s blissfully ranging +perception, was saddened in its grandeur through the absence there of +someone else perceiving. Thousands, of course, had seen it from this +perch in the centre of the row of slummy little balconies. But so +splendid was the triumph of the unexpected mountains ranged and lit that +no company, even exclamatory, could break their onslaught. Alone, there +was too heavy a burden of feeling in the speechless company of this +suddenly revealed magnificence. + +The woman coming out with the tea that one day she must take here +accompanied, was brisk about the view: an adjunct, thrown in gratis with +her refreshments which were good and which presently caused the +mountains, turned away from, to be felt preparing a friendliness; +becoming the last, best reward of her day’s accomplishments. + +The way home down and down and across the levels to the rink and up the +little homely slope into Oberland would be a jog-trot taken half asleep +to the haven of things small and known amidst which she would sit +renewed, to-day’s long life-time stilled to a happy throbbing of the +nerves, a bemused beaming in the midst of friends. Its incidents blurred +that would come back one day clearer, more shining than all the rest? + +Warned by a growing chill she turned to face the mountains in farewell +and found them lit by the first of the afterglow. Far away in the haze +beyond the visible distance a group of slender peaks showed faintly, +rose-misted pinnacles of a dream-city from whose spires would presently +gleam the rubies of farewell. + + + + + CHAPTER VI + + +The solitary excursion had made a gap in the sequence of days. Those +standing behind it were now far away, and yesterday had failed to bridge +the gap and join itself to their serenity. To-day looked shallow and +hurried, with short hours beyond it rushing ahead to pause in the +sunlight of the ski-fest and then to fly, helter-skelter towards the +end. + +Eaden’s departure was helping time to hurry. In the distance it had +promised to leave things as they were before he came. But now that it +was at hand it seemed a sliding away of everything. + +There was no depth in the morning light. + +She turned to survey the scene on which it fell and saw the early gold +stealing faithfully towards the valley. Once Eaden had gone this +thinned-out urgency of time would cease. For everyone but Vereker his +going was only a removal of something grown familiar; a reminder, soon +forgotten, of the movement of time. Slight reminder. He reflected only +surfaces and was going away, unchanged, to reflect the surfaces of +another shape of life. + +Yet last night he had talked. Had been less a passenger unable to take +root. It was he who had been the first to subside on the stairs—with a +groan for his hard day’s work. Perhaps the approach of his known life +had given him a moment of clairvoyance, showing its strangeness, the +strange fact of its existence. + +Last night had been good, was showing now how very good it had been: +three friends glad to sit down together and presently talking, each +voice transformed, by the approach of the separation that would make it +cease to sound, to the strange marvel of a human voice. Everything said +had seemed important in its kindliness, and though there had been no +socialism he had talked at last of his peasants and his ceaseless +fighting with their ancient ways as though he wished to excuse himself +from accepting socialism, to point out its irrelevance to the life of +peasant and soil. + +Industrial socialism had bored him. He thought its problems irrelevant, +raised by clever doctrinaires who had nothing to lose. She had failed +him by standing too much in one camp. The proper message for him came +from the people who saw land as the fundamental unit. + +Tell him to look away from capital and wages. And read George. And the +Jewish land-laws, never surpassed. + +“Good-bye. Please remember that work is an unlimited quantity.” + +Then she remembered that this morning there would be a meeting at +breakfast. He and Vereker would be there together as on the first +morning; with time to spare. + +But going into the dining-room she found his departure already in full +swing. He was talking, smiling across at Mrs. Sneyde and Miss Hollebone +with the eagerness of one who finds at the last moment the ice broken +and communication flowing the more easily for having been dammed up and +accumulating. + +Sitting down unnoticed except by Vereker she presently heard Maud +Hollebone, to whom he had scarcely spoken, arranging, across the width +of the room, to hasten her departure. + +They were going down to Italy together; as casually as guests leaving a +party and finding that their way home lies in the same direction will +share a hansom across London. To travelled people a journey to Italy was +as simple as crossing London. Was even a bore, a tiresome experience to +be got through as pleasantly as possible. Behind her manner of soncy, +quietly boisterous school-girl indifference Maud was pleased, but still +kept her poise, her oblivious independence—of what? On what, all the +time going about with Mrs. Sneyde, neglecting all opportunities for +recognising the existence of the house-party, aloof without being +stand-offish, was she feeding her so strongly-rooted life? + +She was pleased of course to be carrying off as her escort the imposing +oiled bronze, now almost animated as he crossed to the little table to +discuss details and stood, a pillar of strength, at the disposal of the +two ladies now looking so small and Mrs. Sneyde, as she fired remarks at +him, so scintillating. She, no doubt, had her ideas and thought it an +excellent plan. But the sister already knew too late that it was not. +Had felt the project change during his approach with his week’s +happiness all about him, and realised now that she represented a +reprieve, was to be, by keeping Oberland before his eyes during part of +his long journeying, an extension of his holiday. + +Standing at close quarters, already accustomed to her companionship, he +was aware, behind his animation, of sacrificing for the sake of it the +precious silent interval between his strenuous idling and the arduous +work ahead; was paying the price always paid for tumult half-consciously +insincere. The finding of Maud also immersed in the business of +departure and therefore seen in a flash of time as a comrade, had +enlivened him as one is enlivened by a greeting without regard to the +giver of it. That enlivening glow had already departed and he was left +reduced, with its results upon his hands. + +It was settled. The elopement arranged and he, with his instructions, +moving off to clear her path. Perhaps secretly he was pleased after all. +Perhaps his life in the south was not a flight from society and he was +glad to be ever so slightly back again in its conspiracy to avoid +solitude. Glad to be walking again on those sunny levels where there is +never a complete break-off and departure. Never a void. Where even +sorrow and suffering are softened by beautiful surroundings. + +Their windows, she reflected as Eaden, meeting the le Mesuriers at the +door was halted for farewells, even their hotel windows, give on to +beauty. And they can always move on. And soul-sickness, the suffering of +mind so often a result of fatigue and poor food and ugly surroundings, +was rare amongst them. They were cheerful and amused. If bored they +shift on and begin again. If bored by the life of society itself they +remain within it and cut figures as cynics. + +“It’s only fair to warn you,” Maud was crying from her table, “that I’m +a vile fellow-traveller. Hate travelling.” + +She rose and wandered to the window behind her table. + +“You’re going to take away our property?” + +Here she was, the unknown Miss Hollebone, close at hand, flopped in a +chair, school-girlish. + +“Rather!” + +Here in this warm circle was the old freemasonry of school-fellows, two +profiles slightly turned, abrupt remarks, punctuated by jabbings at +ink-stained desks, the sense of power and complete difference in +relation to a stuffy old world; sudden glances, perfect happiness. +Happiness that kept both quite still; hearing, feeling, seeing, in a +circle of light suddenly created, making possible only slight swift +words in whose echo one forgot which had spoken, which was which. + +“What are we to do?” They faced each other to laugh delight. + +“Don’t know. What we really want is _your_ socialism in _our_ world. The +socialist ways you have in your world without knowing it, because you +know no other ways.” + +“You don’t object to us?” + +“Good Lord, no! But just to cultivate you would be to go to sleep as you +are all asleep.” + +“You a Londoner?” + +“Till death us do part.” + +“Lucky dog!” + +Eaden was at her elbow to whom she turned with a guarded brightness, +slipped back into her own world, into the half-conscious conspiracy of +avoidance. Orderly world. A pattern world, life flowing in bright set +patterns under a slowly gathering cloud. + +Its echoes followed Miriam into the deserted little salon. Through the +open door she heard a coming and going in the hall that at this hour +should be empty and eloquent of people spread far and wide in the +landscape. The bright pattern was flowing into a fresh shape, flowing +forward in its way, heedless of clouds, heedless of the rising tide. On +the little table was Daphne’s bear on ski, immortal. + +And now in the hall the sound of her, demanding. Drawn to the door +Miriam saw Vereker taking the stairs two at a time, immersed in +friendship. And Eaden arrested in the middle of the hall by Daphne +up-gazing with white determined face. + +“Look at me,” she was saying, and his down-bent face lost its smile. + +“You’re not to go,” she said swiftly, in casual tone, and then +breathlessly, still searching his unmoved face, “You’re not to go.” + +“That’s right, Daphne,” cried Vereker pausing on the stairs. “Make him +stay for the Fest, he wants to.” + +Eaden watched her while she waited for Vereker’s footsteps to die away, +watched her in frowning concentration while her voice came again, the +voice of one who tells another’s woe: “Not for the Fest, but because if +you go away I shall die.” + +Miriam turned swiftly back into the room, but she had seen the pain in +his face, seen him wince. Daphne on her last words had taken a little +impatient step and stood averted with clenched fists, and now their +voices were going together up the stairs, hers eagerly talking. + + * * * * * + +She made ready to go out amongst the mountains standing there in their +places as for countless ages they had stood, desolate, looking down upon +nothing. + +A door opened at the far end of the corridor and Vereker’s footsteps +came swiftly trotting, went by and paused at a door further down: Maud +Hollebone’s, at which now he was urgently tapping. A few words at the +opened door and he had returned. A moment later came Maud, swishing +along at a run: for more discussion. + +Her thoughts turned to the promontory within easy reach. But it would be +absurd to sit about visibly hung up by the bustle of events that were +not even remotely her events. It was too late to do the valley run and +walk back before lunch. + +“I shall _die_.” Who was comforting Daphne? No one. No one could. +Somewhere outside she was disposed of, walking with her nurse, +uncomforted. + +She peered into Daphne’s future, into the years waiting ahead, unworthy +of her. + +Vereker’s door opened again, letting out the returning Maud; coming back +to go on with her packing, to talk to Mrs. Sneyde. The two of them, +surrounded by the opulence of wealthy packing, talking, skipping about +in talk: family affairs, and in both their minds Maud’s journey to Milan +with the mild and foolish bronze. + +When the footsteps had passed she went out into the corridor and across +the space of sunlight streaming through Mrs. Harcourt’s door open upon +its empty room. Far away in the landscape, with those people from the +Kursaal, Mrs. Harcourt was forgetfully ski-ing, knowing nothing of all +this bustle. + +But Maud’s door too was set wide. Her room deserted, neat and calm as +Mrs. Harcourt’s ... Where was Maud? + +From the room beyond came Mrs. Sneyde, dressed for outdoors, brilliant +in green and gold, turning, coming forward with laughter and an +outstretched restraining hand, suppressing her laughter to speak in the +manner of one continuing a confidential talk; laughter remaining in her +eyes that looked, not at the stranger she addressed for the first time, +but away down the passage. + +“I’ve just,” she whispered, “been in their room tyin’ up Daphne’s +finger. Cut it on one of their razors. The poor things were terrified. +Had her sittin’ on the table with her finger in a glass of water! + +“No. It’s nothing; but those two great fellows were jibberin’ with +fright. She’s a little demon. Two towels on the floor. One all over +chocolate and the other bright with gore. They wanted to fetch old +stick-in-the-mud.” + +“What a tragedy for Mr. Eaden’s last hours.” + +“He’s not goin’; stayin’ for the Fest. Nobody’s goin’ but the dear +Skerrys.” + +“Didn’t know they were going.” + +“Nor nobody else. Till Ma suddenly began about her luggage. Wants to +save the sleigh fare. Vereker’s arranged it; the luggage is goin’ by the +Post and they’re toboggannin’; can’t you see them? ‘Whee don’t ye see +goodbee to Daphnee,’ says she to Tammas.” + +Cruel, a little cruel. + +“They found out a good deal about the peasants.” + +“The _peasants_? The village desperadoes? _Is_ there anything to find +out about them?” + +“The lives they lead.” + +“Tammas been tryin’ to convert them? With his weak eyes? Through his +smoked glasses?” + +“You know he smashed his glasses?” + +“He would.” + +“Yes. I heard his mother scolding him on the balcony and he slowly +trying to explain; all in that low tone, as if they were conspiring.” + +“In an enemy camp. They were like that if you spoke to them. We all +tried; but by the time they’d thought and begun to answer you’d +forgotten what you said.” + +“I suddenly remembered some glasses I’d been advised to bring. They +seemed astonished and suspicious and yet eager. ‘Try them on, Thomas,’ +she said.” + +“Tree them on, Tammas. I hear her.” + +“And yesterday he handed them back jammy round the edges. I thought he +was tired of them. They said nothing about going. But he told me about +the peasants.” + +“They had jam teas, on their own, upstairs.” + +“Anyhow, they got in touch with the natives.” + +“I ain’t surprised. Natives themselves.” + +“With the people in the châlet behind.” + +“Old Methuselah? Not difficult if you smash things. The old boy mended +Daphne’s watch. Of course she went in to see him do it. Went in +jabberin’ German which she _won’t_ talk with Frederika. Was there an +hour till I went to fish her out. Couldn’t see her, my dear—couldn’t see +_anything_; smoke, like a fog, couldn’t _breathe_. Made her out at last +squatting close up to the filthy old villain on his bench. Lost, in the +insides of watches. She’s goin’ to be a watchmaker now.” + +“It must be his son.” + +“Who must?” + +“The one Thomas told me of. A woodcutter. Terrible. In the snow. It’s +only on snow they can bring the wood down from the higher places. +Someone bought a high copse, cheaply, because the higher——” + +“Higher you go, the fewer—now I know what that means.” + +“The cheaper. Over two hours climb from here; somewhere across the +valley. And the men and sleds must be there by daylight.” + +“Poor devils!” + +“Yes. And the horses for the climbing must be fed two hours before the +start. Sometimes they have to feed them before three in the morning. One +lot of men was caught up there by an avalanche and were there four days +before they could be got down.” + +“Ai-_eee_; don’t tell us.” + +“At the best it’s dangerous work. They get maimed; lose their lives. All +the winter this is going on. We don’t read their papers, don’t know the +people and don’t hear of it.” + +“Isn’t it just as well? _We_ can’t help it.” + +“It ought to be done some other way. Men’s lives ought not to be so +cheap.” + +“How did Tammas get all this learning?” + +“Speaks German.” + +“Jee-roozlum!” + +“And French.” + +“And Scotch. And having no one to talk Scotch to, talks to the peasants, +about their trees. Daphne _hates_ the trees.” + +“_Hates_ them?” + +“Would like to make a big bonfire and burn’m all up.” + +Miriam was silent, searching the green eyes for Daphne. + +“Yes, that’s Daphne. She’s mad about Napoleon. Reads all the books. +Has’m in her room. I have to expound when she gets stuck. Won’t say her +prayers till we’ve read a bit of Bony. Won’t say ‘make me a good girl.’ +Says ‘make me a man and a sojer.’ She and Eaden are as thick as thieves. +He’s an angel to her. I’ve got to be _hoff_. Goin’ to the Curse-all for +lunch. Maud’s there. She’s goin’ south to-morrow with the Chisholmes.” + +“Before the Fest?” + +“Chisholmes have got to pick up their kid somewhere. Maud’s had enough +of Switzerland for this year.” + + + + + CHAPTER VII + + +The clouds were a rebuke; for being spell-bound into imagining this +bright paradise inaccessible. The world’s weather cannot be arranged as +a conversation with one small person. Then how did the rebuke manage to +arrive punctually at the serenest moment of self-congratulation? As if +someone were watching ... + +She looked levelly across the sunny landscape and the clouds were out of +sight. But there was a movement in the air, a breeze softly at work +ousting the motionless Oberland air. + +She walked ahead, further and further into the disconcerting change. +Everything was changed, the whole scene, reduced to homeliness. She +caught herself drooping, took counsel and stiffened into acquiescence: +“I might have known. I’m accustomed to this. It removes only what I +thought I couldn’t give up. Something is left behind that can’t be taken +away”—and heard at once within the high stillness the familiar sound of +life, felt the sense of it flowing warmly in along the old channels, and +heard from the past in various tones, amused, impatient, contemptuous: +“You _are_ philosophical.” Always a surprise. What did they mean with +their “philosophical”? The alternative was their way of going on +cursing, missing everything but the unfavourable surface. + +Someone has said that there is nothing meaner than making the best of +things. + +The clouds made soft patches of shadow upon the higher snow. Beside the +angular sharp shadows growing upon the northern slopes they were +blemishes, smudgy and vague. But free, able to move and flow while the +mountains stood crumbling in their places. + +The clouds were beautiful, slowly drifting, leaving torn shreds upon the +higher peaks. + +Upon the ridge beyond the cloaked silence of the little wood the breeze +blew steadily from across the levels—that were strangely empty; no sign +of moving specks making for the further ridge. Hurrying along the track +she recalled too late the slightness of the information upon which she +had built her idea of the golden scene; the gay throng, herself happily +in the midst. + +Without a single clear idea of the direction she had trusted to the +bright magic to draw her to itself. + +The subtly changed air and the melancholy clouds re-stated themselves, +became the prelude to disaster. The increasing wind and the cloud-bank +hiding the distant mountains were proclaiming the certainty of +punishment well-deserved: to wander at a loss and miss the Fest. + +She glanced at her afternoon in retrospect: aimless walking in a world +fallen into greyness and gloom, into familiarity that was already +opening the door to the old friend, at whose heart lived a radiance +out-doing the beams shed by anticipation over unknown things. + +But all the time the ski-ing which now she was not to see would be going +forward, mocking her until she could forget it; until the hours it +filled should have passed into others bright enough to melt regret. + +Climbing the rise beyond the levels she was at once climbing up to find +the Fest, would plod the landscape until she found it, late, but still +in time to share and remember. She reached the crest beyond the +rise—there it was: a small shape, like an elongated horseshoe, upon a +distant slope. Black dots close-clustered in a strange little shape upon +the wastes of snow, defying the wastes of snow. + +There was plenty of space. Gaps on each side of the track and even +towards the top of the rise where people were grouped more closely about +the comforting, the only festal sign, looking like an altar with its +gold-embroidered, red velvet frontal. Nothing could be seen behind its +shelf but a small hut upon the levels that extended backwards until the +pinewoods began with the rising mountain-side. + +Where to stand? Up amongst the connoisseurs to see the start, half-way +down with a view of the ski-ers coming, or at the bottom of the row +amongst the black-clothed natives standing about in scattered groups in +the loose snow. + +Choosing a place half-way down she became one of the gathered crowd of +Oberland visitors lining the smoothed and steeply sloping course. They +were all there. The black and distant dots had become people in every +fashion of sport’s-clothes, standing on skis, sitting on toboggans, +stamping about in the snow, walking up and down; and all waiting, all +looking betweenwhiles expectantly up the track towards the deserted +altar. There was a good deal of talking. Here and there the incessant +voices of men who make a hobby of talking. But most of them talked +intermittently, in the way of these leisured English who veil their +eagerness as they wait half apologetically and wholly self-consciously +for a show. There patiently they would wait, good-humoured, not deigning +to be disturbed, not suffering anything to disturb their pose of amused +independence that looked so like indifference and masked a warmth. + +Just across the way was a stout lady in a seal-skin coat and curiously +different snow-boots. She sat sturdily bunched on her toboggan and they +stuck out in front of her, close-fitting, the rubber soles curving +sharply to the instep and neatly down again into the shape of a heel. +She clasped a camera and her sallow heavy face was drawn into a frown +that remained there while she turned towards a voice sounding from over +the way: + +“.... and we’ll just be _here_ till judgment _day_.” + +“I was told,” she answered at large with face upraised, deep furrows +from nose to chin giving strength to her hanging cheeks, “I was to see +sky-jumping, but I see no men on their skys to jump.” + +American continuousness held up in Europe, brought to despair by the +spectacle of tolerance. + +Sunlight had gone and on the slope of the breeze small snowflakes +drifted down to the snow. For a while it seemed as though the gathering +in the white wilderness were there in vain. + +From the group of black figures at the top of the rise a deep Swiss +voice sang out an English name. Heads were craned forward, but the altar +remained empty. The confronted rows were transformed. Each life, risen +to gazing eyes, waited in a stillness upon the edge of time. + +The knickerbockered tweed-clad form arrived upon the shelf from nowhere, +leaped, knees bent and arms outspread, forward through the air upon the +long blades that looked so like thin oars flattened out, came down, arms +in upward-straining arches, with a resounding whack upon the slope and +slid half-crouching, gaining the upright, fully upright with hooked arms +swinging, at full speed to the bottom of the hill, went off in a wide +curve and was stopped, swaying, just not falling, in wreaths of whirling +snow. + +Achievement. Thrilling and chastening. Long ago someone had done this +difficult thing for the first time, alone, perhaps driven by necessity. +Now it was a sport, a deliberate movement into eternity, shared by all +who looked on. She felt she could watch forever. Cold had withdrawn from +the snow and from the drifting flakes. One after another the figures +appeared at the top of the rise and leapt, making the gliding race to +the sound of cheers that now broke forth each time the forward rush +followed the desperate dive. For those who crashed and rolled, slanting +ski and sloping helpless body rolling over and over down the slope, +there was comment of laughter silly and cruel. Yet one man sliced his +face with a ski-point and one had lain stunned at the bottom of the +slope ... + +Vereker came at last, looking very young and lightly built, leaping +neatly and far, and gliding easily upright, to the accompaniment of +frantic cheering, at a splendid pace down the slope and far on into the +loose snow and round in a sweeping curve that encircled a distant +sapling and left him facing up the track half-hidden in a cloud of +churned-up snow. + +He was the best. Length of jump, pace, style. The best of the English. +And kind life had led her to him for speech, for the recovery of shared +things; and was making now more memories that fitted with the rest. + +Skied onlookers were planking sideways up and down the course, +flattening it. Snow still fell thinly. The distant mountains were lost +in mist. The forgotten scene was utterly desolate. Warmth flowing forth +from within made a summer in its midst. + +“Tsoor-_boo_-chn!” The strong spell-binding peasant name filled out the +ringing cry. Switzerland was coming, bringing its so different life of +mountain and pinewood, its hardy strength, perhaps to outdo the English +in this brave game. + +Here he came, in black against his snow, deep velvety black against the +snow, gliding past the little hut with a powerful different gait. It was +partly his clothes, the way they seemed all of one piece, closely +fitting, without angles. And his size, huge. From the edge of the shelf +he leapt high into the air and seemed to stand there against the sky, in +a dream. Down he swooped, sailing, dreaming, to the track, rose smoothly +from the terrific impact and smoothly went his way. + +What could be more beautiful? He was heavy and solid, thickly built. But +with his shapely clothing and smooth rhythmic movement he made the +English graceless and their clothes deliberately absurd. + +All the Swiss, though some were rough and ungainly, moved with that +strong and steady grace. But Zurbuchen was the best. It was he who would +live in her memory, poised against the sky like a great bird. + + * * * * * + +“You took photographs?” + +“For him,” smiled Vereker with his quizzical affectionate glance. “To +remind him of what he has to do next year. But we’ll share them. Yours +will remind you that next year you won’t be let off.” Eaden remained +silent and expressionless. + +“They will look strange amongst your cypress groves.” + +“They will look passing strange.” + +“You will come out again?” She wanted neither to know nor to seem to +want to know, but Vereker had left him there for a moment on her hands. +She was caught in the social trap. Expected, being a woman, not to walk +off alone, but to wait and provide, while she waited, suitable +entertainment, some kind of parlour trick. For a moment it seemed as +though he would not answer. He was silent and used to stillness, yet +embarrassed now by stillness in the presence of a perceiving witness. +Another woman would not seem to perceive. Would have given her question +the semblance of sincerity. + +“No,” he said suddenly. “If I go away at all next year I shall go east.” + +“When you’ve ’eard the East a-callin’....” She turned to look towards +the returning Vereker. Eaden gazed away towards the snowy distances. He +was taking his farewell. To-morrow he would be gone back to his chosen +isolation, uninfluenced. Tender-hearted lover of brave souls, of Daphne, +and who yet would bring so little to his love-making. He stood in his +heavy silence, heavy man’s silence of waiting for recognisable things. + +“Yes, that man knew what he was talking about.” Suddenly his friendly +beam and a forward approaching step, a turning away, at the first hint +of something he had heard before, from his formal preoccupation, +preoccupation with a glimpse of the next break in his unknown southern +life. She had nothing more to say. Vereker was at hand who had held them +at truce together. But now without Vereker they were at truce, the only +kind of truce he could understand. + +For a moment she was aware, far away in the future, of one of whom he +was the forerunner, coming into her life for mortal combat. + + + + + CHAPTER VIII + + +In spite of her contempt for tobogganing she was going warily, slowing +up a little at the bends, a gnome in an extinguishing cowl, Mrs. +Harcourt, carelessly carrying her long past and the short future that so +strangely she regarded as indefinite, looking forward, making plans for +next winter with eager school-girl eyes; carelessly bringing the life +she carried about with her down to the valley this afternoon with +brusque cameraderie, her day-time manner. + +Her company added something to the joy of flying through the +backward-flowing landscape. But it was shortening the run and fitting it +within reduced surroundings—making it show as it showed to her within +her larger scale of movement. + +Here already was the steepest bend of the run, with the patch of black +ice across its middle. Mrs. Harcourt had passed it safely and +disappeared. It was past and a group of people came into sight midway +down the next slope: two figures pushing off and Mrs. Harcourt at the +side of the track, dismounted, beating her skirt. She had collided, +managed to run into them; a collision and a humiliating smash ... + +“Fools! Fooling all over v’place. Had to slam into v’side.” + +“A blessing the fence is broken just here.” + +“Not their fault I’m not smashed up. I was yellin’ for all I was worth.” + +“It’s _really_ dangerous when you can’t see what’s ahead. Someone said +tobogganing accounts for more accidents than any other sport.” + +“Don’t wonder, with so many idjuts about. Where’s Daphne?” + +“Held up, poor little soul. A broken cord, just as they were starting; +the maid went in for another.” + +“Paw kid. She’ll be too late. No good waiting.” + +They mounted and sped off one behind the other through a scene that was +now the child’s vast desolation. In place of joyous flight, selfish, in +which Daphne had been forgotten, came now this absurd urgency to arrive. +Mrs. Harcourt felt it. She was sorry, in her kindliness, for Daphne’s +disappointment, but saw nothing of the uselessness of arriving without +her. Thought of nothing but herself, her determination, her hatred of +being beaten. This made a shelter. Under the shelter of Mrs. Harcourt’s +determination to be there because she had said she would be there it was +possible to be seen rushing uselessly to the last farewell. + +Another bend. Beyond it a sleigh coming up and Mrs. Harcourt carefully +passing it and the other tobogganers drawn up in the snow. It was safely +past. Mrs. Harcourt was getting ahead. Going recklessly. Even for her +there was something more in this desperate urgency than the mere +determination to arrive. + +If she too were to arrive it was now or never. Now, at once, in the +midst of this winding ice-patched roadway, she must give herself up to +what she had learned on the safe snowfields and never yet dared to try +here until the last clear slope was reached. Lifting her feet to the +bar, leaning back to swing free and steer by weight she let herself go. +The joy of flight returned, singing joy of the inaccessible world to +which in flight one was translated, bringing forgetfulness of everything +but itself. Bend after bend appeared and of itself her body swayed now +right now left in unconscious rhythm. The landscape flew by, +sideways-upwards, its features indistinguishable. She was movement, +increasing, cleaving the backward rushing air. + +At the last slope she was level with Mrs. Harcourt, safely, triumphantly +returned to the known world, passing her, flying down so blissfully that +arrival would now be nothing but an end to joy. Flying down towards two +small figures standing on the level, turned this way, watching up the +incline down which speeded, superfluously, absurdly, just these two +women. + +“Where’s Daphne?” said Eaden in his rich, indolent voice; looking over +their heads, staring up the slope. + +While Mrs. Harcourt’s deep bass, still staccato with her anger, told the +brief tale, she watched the pain and wrath in his face, strong man’s +sympathy of pain with this child to whose spirit he gave homage, anger +with those who had deserted her. Her useless explanation flickered about +him unspoken, silenced by the pain she shared. + +“It’s no good, old man,” said Vereker gently, watch in hand: “we must be +off.” + +Formal hand-shaking. To Mrs. Harcourt’s padding of sociable remarks he +paid no heed, keeping his eyes still above her on the bend at the head +of the slope until he turned to tramp off with Vereker, to the sound of +Vereker’s kindly, sunny voice. + +“Paw kid. Eaden was frightfully wrath. Thought we ought to have brought +her.” + +“I couldn’t have dared, down those slopes, on a small single,” said +Miriam wearily. But the judge within stood firm. She had not thought of +trying. + +The now distant men were marching swiftly, reaching the point where the +road sloped downwards; had reached it and were settling on their +toboggans. A face came round. Miriam looked back up the slope still +cruelly empty, and round again to see the men seated, gliding off, +lessening. Their caps vanished below the level of the ridge. And now the +upward slope held a single small toboggan coming headlong. Daphne had +made the run alone. + +“How _dare_ you let him go?” + +Miriam moved forward surprised by her own approach. Her mind was filled +with the simple selfish truth. The wrath-blazing eyes saw it, recognised +her for what she was and turned away to the wastes of snow: + +“Eaden, my Eaden ... I shall _never_ see him again.” Tears flowed from +the wide eyes and swiftly down the face so little convulsed by grief +that bent her, standing there with arms sideways out as if to save her +from falling, to keep her upright, facing her loss, fists clenched to +fight her woe. Of themselves Miriam’s arms reached forth to stay the +torment. + +Incredibly Daphne was clinging, sobbing with hidden face: “Do you love +me—do you love me?” She held her without speaking, silenced while still +the broken voice went on, by the sense of being carried forward into a +world known only by hearsay and that now was giving forth all about them +in the stillness its ethereal sounds—sounds she had sometimes felt +within a gentle wind. + +Daphne’s head was raised and her flushed face busy in eager speech as +they went forward together over the snow. When presently she assured her +that one day Eaden would come back, the child pulled upon her arm and +spoke in a new way of her new love. She spoke no more of Eaden, walking +sturdily uphill, eagerly talking, sunned for a while in humble helpless +love that soon must be removed. + + * * * * * + +With Eaden’s departure holding Vereker away until to-morrow and Mrs. +Harcourt disappeared upstairs with all those who sought sleep and early +rising, the hotel was empty, strange again and going its independent way +as on the day of her arrival. The presence of Guerini hidden away in the +little salon where daily he had spent his unimaginable evening of a +Milan business man on holiday, increased its emptiness, made it as +desolate as the world of his thoughts. + +He must have learned something in seeing her evening after evening—not +in the least goloshy in her blue gown of many colours—seated on the +crimson stairs between the two Englishmen, in seeing discussion prevail +over personalities; new world for him of men seeking, without +sentimental emotion, without polite contempt, conversation with a woman. +Had any light dawned in him? Would he show any grace of dawning light? + +She went into the little salon and there he was, rising to greet her, +with the look of a man penned within an office, the look upon his low +Italian brow of worry left over from his daily life. He looked common +too, common and ordinary—she wondered now that she could ever have +mistaken him for a musician wandered from Russia. But beside the +pathetic appeal of his commonness, supporting it, was the appeal of his +disarray, his obvious gladness and relief, like Michael coming back +after a last, final explanation and dismissal, saying impenitently: “You +whipped me yesterday, to-day you must not whip.” He was extraordinarily +like Michael in his belief in the essential irrelevance of anything a +woman may say. + +It was his last evening in Oberland and the first time they had found +themselves alone together since the afternoons in the snowfields that +were now so clearly in his mind as he stood still turning over those +hopeless little old Swiss books, but turned towards her as she ensconced +herself in the chair from which so long ago she had watched Vereker at +the piano. Yet their life together had gone on. The grim little room was +full of it. + +Again she had that haunting sense of being a collection of persons +living in a world of people always single and the same. Mrs. Harcourt, +she reflected as she said the books were like faded flowers, was +fastidiously selective and always one person, one unfaltering aspect. +Vereker, Eaden, all the others. Yet the lives she lived with each one +were sharply separated lives, separable parts of herself, incompatible. +The life she lived with Guerini, beginning unconsciously that first +evening when he had turned upon her throughout dinner his brown stare, +hurrying forward during their afternoons in the snow, ending with their +quarrel, begun again with the reproachful gaze he had sent across the +table on the evening of her truancy, had persisted during the +intervening time and was now marching off afresh on its separate way. + +It was clear that these close questionings held not only the remains of +his surprise over the nature of the things that had separated them but +also his determination to try to see these things as she saw them. They +revealed much pondering, not over the things in themselves but over +their power with her, and presently it was clear that he meant to see +her again. She sat ensconced, considering him, measuring the slow +movement of his thoughts, the swiftness of the impressions he was +drawing from his attention to every inflection of her voice. + +She knew she ought to go, that she was building up with every moment she +stayed in the room a false relationship. The cordiality of her voice, +its dreamy animation, was not for him nor made by him. It told its tale +to her alone. His talk of London had taken her thoughts there and she +saw it afar, vivid with charmed and charming people. For the first time +she was seeing London as people whose secret had revealed itself during +this last two weeks, and was at this moment beginning consistently to +live her life there as in future it would be lived, as she had lived it, +but unconsciously and only intermittently, during the past year. + +This man appealed, she realised it now, from the first to a person who +no longer existed, to a loneliness that during the past years had been +moving away from her life. It was only in its moving that she had +realised its existence. This man saw her still as lonely and +resourceless; and also as interesting, something new in his narrow +experience. He too was lonely, had an empty life, in the busy business +man’s way of having an empty life: no centre and a lonely leisure. And +he was more than half bent on offering her the chance that so often in +the past had been at her elbow, of pretending herself into a single +settled existence, a single world, safe. Even now it was a temptation. +But it was the Italian background that was the real temptation. As soon +as he talked of settling himself in London he was lessened, and the +temptation disappeared. Life as a single conversation in a single place +with the rest of the world going by might seem possible when thought of +in all the newness of Italy. In London it at once fell into proportion +and became absurd. + +In London was Hypo, held up, at any rate saying he was held up, and not +now so much awaiting her decision as taking it for granted. A big +shadow, that might turn into sunshine. A gleaming shadow that lost its +brightness as she faced it. And, behind it, a world that perhaps took +most of its glamour from this uncertain shadow. + + + + + CHAPTER IX + + +It was an urgent tapping on the wall from Mrs. Harcourt’s side, and she +was speaking as she tapped. With half-opened eyes Miriam grew aware of +darkness, half-darkness of early morning, and listened through the +companion darkness within her of the knowledge that this was her last +whole day, to this strange clamour from the lady whose nightly presence +at her side had been for so long forgotten. + +“Look out of ve window!” + +Sitting up in bed she saw hanging in mid-air just outside the window a +huge crimson lamp, circular in a blue darkness. Sleepily she cried her +thanks and leaped awake to dwell with the strange spectacle, the gently +startling picture, in its sudden huge nearness, of the loveliness of +space. The little distant moon, enormous and rosy in blue mist, seemed +to float in the blue as in blue water, seemed to have floated close in +sheer unearthly kindliness, to comfort her thoughts on this last day +with something new and strange. + +The day passed with heartless swiftness, savourless. Full of charms +whose spell failed under the coming loss. + + + + + CHAPTER X + + +And for the last morning again a strange surprise. Mountains and valley +were hidden behind impenetrable mist, even the nearest objects were +screened by the thickly falling snow. Alpine winter tremendously at +work, holding her fascinated at windows downstairs, upstairs; mighty +preparation for the beauty of days she would not see, robbing her of +farewell, putting farewell back into yesterday’s superficial seeing +which had not known it was the last. + +But when she was forced to turn away to her packing she found, within +the light of this veiled world that cast within doors a strange dark +brilliance, something of the London gloom, and the enjoyment of a +concentrated activity that had always been one of the gifts of a London +fog. It was as if already she were translated, good-byes said and the +journey begun. The hours ahead became a superfluous time, to be spent in +a Switzerland whose charm, since London had reached forth and touched +her, had fallen into its future place as part of life: an embellishment, +a golden joy to which she would return. + +And when she saw the guests assembled at lunch in full strength it was +as though having left them for good she returned for a moment to find +them immersed in a life to which she was a stranger. Confined by the +weather, they had produced the pile of letters waiting in the lounge and +were now rejoicing in unison over the snowfall. In speech and silence +each one revealed himself, but as a dream-revival of someone known long +ago; and in the dream it was again as on that first evening when she had +sat a listening outsider, fearing and hoping to be drawn in, and again +it was Mrs. Harcourt who, when her association with these people was +seeming to be a vain thing cancelled, drew her in with a question. + +The short hour expanded. Once more she was caught into the medium of +their social vision, into the radiance that would shine unchanged when +she was gone and was the secret of English social life and could, if it +were revealed to every human soul, be the steering light of human life +throughout the world. These people were the fore-runners, free to be +almost as nice as they desired. + +And then, with the suddenness of a rapid river, her coming freedom +flowed in upon her, carrying her outside this pleasant enclosure towards +all that could be felt to the full only in solitude amongst things whose +being was complete, towards that reality of life that withdrew at the +sounding of a human voice. + +It was already from a far distance that, alone with her upon the +landing, she promised Mrs. Harcourt remembrance and letters, said +good-bye and saw once more her first diffident eagerness; felt that it +was she, withdrawn since the first days, who had yet lived her life with +her, transferred something of her being into the gathered memories and +would keep them alive, keep the mountain scene in sight near at hand. + +Alone in her room still thinking of Mrs. Harcourt, she remembered from +“Ships that Pass in the Night” how on the last day all but one person +had forgotten the departing guest. + +Then in getting up from lunch she had seen them all, unknowing, for the +last time—as yesterday the mountains. For all these people hidden away +in their rooms, immersed in their own affairs, she was already a figure +slid away and forgotten. With the paying of Frau Knigge’s bill her last +link with the Alpenstock had been snapped. + +But when the coach-horn sounded and she went down into the hall, there +they all were, gathering round, seeing her off. Hurriedly, with the door +open upon the falling snow and the clashing of sleighbells, she clasped +for the first time strange and friendly hands, saw, in eyes met full and +near, welcome from worlds she had not entered. Beside the door she met +Daphne forgotten, who clutched and drew her back into the window space +for desperate clinging, and entreaties sounding lest for this new +slow-witted lover the searching gaze should not be enough. + +It was not until she was inside the dark coach and its occupants had +thanked heaven she was English and let down a window, that she +remembered Vereker. He alone had made no farewell. + +The coach pulled up outside the post-office and there he stood in the +driving snow, and all the way down the valley she saw them one by one +and saw him standing in great-coat and woollen helmet, heard his elegant +light distressful voice begging her to come out next year. + +And brighter now than the setting they had charmed was the glow these +people had left in her heart. They had changed the aspect of life, given +it the promise of their gentle humanity, given her a frail link with +themselves and their kind. + +She climbed into a carriage whose four corners were occupied and sat +down to the great journeying. + +“History repeats itself.” + +Looking up she found all about her the family from Croydon, met the +father’s quizzical brown eyes. + +“Had a farewell kick-up at our place last night. We’re feeling the +effects. _You_ look very fit. Enjoyed yourself?” + +“I’ve had a splendid time.” + +“You collared the handsomest man in Oberland anyhow—that young giant of +a Russian.” + +“Italian.” + +“Bless my soul! Hear that, Doris?” + +“We were up till _fave_ this morning,” said Doris. + +The train moved off, but only Doris, once more grown-up with her hair in +a staid bun under her English winter hat, turned to watch the station +disappear. + +“Want to go back, Doris?” + +“Ah love,” she breathed devoutly, “could thou and aye with feete +conspire——” + +Miriam joined the sister in intoning the rest of the lines. + +“Ah Moon——” began Doris, and the brother leaned forward holding towards +her a gloved hand whose thumb protruded through a fraying gap: + +“A little job for you in Paris.” + +She regarded it undisturbed and turned away the scornful sweetness of +her face towards the window and the snowflakes falling thickly upon the +shroud of snow. + + + + + Transcriber’s Notes + + +The original spelling was mostly preserved. A few obvious typographical +errors were silently corrected. Further careful corrections, some after +consulting other editions, are listed here (before/after): + + [p. 46]: + ... “Schön, die letzte Gluh,” he said quietly. ... + ... “Schön, die letzte Glüh,” he said quietly. ... + + [p. 57]: + ... “Man soll sich des Leben’s freuen, im Berg ... + ... “Man soll sich des Lebens freuen, im Berg ... + + [p. 57]: + ... und Thal. In so wass kann sich ein’ Engländerin ... + ... und Thal. In so was kann sich ein’ Engländerin ... + + [p. 148]: + ... his own path from which his tacit meeting ... + ... his own path from which this tacit meeting ... + + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77646 *** |