The Dark Tower

by Phyllis Bottome

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

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

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

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

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

  CHAPTER XIII

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “Only,” she said, “up here there isn’t any mist, is there?”

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

  “But that’s a pity,” said Claire, decisively. “I like the other name better.”

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

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

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

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

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

  “I know they could speak if they liked,” Claire murmured. “What do you suppose they’d say?”

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

  Claire disposed of Davos with a wave of her hand.

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

  “Yes,” Winn admitted; “but it’s not all the air, you know.”

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

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

  He stumbled over the words and then added, “No, by Jove, that won’t do!”

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

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

  “But still you are rather important, you know.”

  “Then,” she laughed, “I’m important enough to have my own way, aren’t I?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “Do you see that woman,” he asked Claire, “the pretty one over there by the pillar? She’s awfully like – ”

  Claire stopped him. “Pretty!” she cried. “Do you really think she’s pretty? I think she’s simply loathsome!”

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

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

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

  “But can’t horrid women be pretty, too?” Winn ventured with meekness.

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

  “I dare say you’re right,” he said. “As a matter of fact, you know, I never do look at Roper.”

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

  Winn admitted that he had noticed it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  Winn turned his eyes slowly toward her.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  Claire turned suddenly toward him.

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

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

  “He really must get through Sandhurst properly.”

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

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

  PART II

  CHAPTER XIV

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

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

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

  “That man’s a spoil-sport,” he informed his pupil. Maurice agreed.