The Dark Tower

by Phyllis Bottome

  “Something indestructible and uniting – ” said Lionel quietly. “I’ve often wondered about it.”

  “Well, I’ve never wondered about it,” said Winn, firmly, “and I’m not going to begin now. Still, I admit it’s there. What I’m getting at is that there’s something I want you to do for me. You’ll probably think I’m mad, but I can’t help that. It’ll work out all right in the end, if you’ll do it.”

  “You can ask me anything you like,” said Lionel, quietly; “any damned thing. I don’t suppose I’ll refuse to do it.”

  The water broke into a prolonged gurgle under their feet; it sounded uncannily like some derisive listener. There was nothing in sight at all – not even their shadows on the unlighted snows.

  “Well – there’s a girl here,” Winn said in a low voice; “it’s not very easy to explain. I haven’t told her about Estelle; I meant to, but I couldn’t. I’m afraid you’ll think I haven’t played the game, but I haven’t made love to her; only I can’t stay any longer; I’ve got to clear out.”

  Lionel nodded. “All right,” he said; “let’s go wherever you like; there are plenty of other snow places jollier than this.”

  “That isn’t what I want,” said Winn. “I want you to stay with her. I want you to marry her eventually – d’ you see? It’s quite simple, really.”

  “By Jove,” said Lionel, thoughtfully; “simple, d’ you call it? As simple as taking a header into the mid-Atlantic! And what good would it do you, my dear old chap, if I did? It wouldn’t be you that had got her?”

  “I dare say not,” said Winn; “you don’t see my point. She’d be all right with you. What I want for the girl is for her to be taken care of. She hasn’t any people to speak of, and she’s up here now with a rotten, unlicked cub of a brother. I fancy she’s the kind of girl that would have a pretty hideous time with the wrong man. I’ve got to know she’s being looked after. D’ you see?”

  “But why should she marry?” Lionel persisted. “Isn’t she all right as she is? What do you want to marry her off for?”

  “There’ll be a man sooner or later,” Winn explained. “There always is, and she’s – well, I didn’t believe girls were innocent before. By God, when they are, it makes you sit up! I couldn’t run the risk of leaving her alone, and that’s flat! It’s like chucking matches to a child and turning your back on it.

  “For after all, if a man cares about a girl the way I care about her, he does chuck her matches. When I go – some one decent ought to be there to take my place.”

  “But there isn’t the slightest chance she’ll like me, even if I happened to like her,” Lionel protested. “Honestly, Winn, you haven’t thought the thing out properly. You can’t stick people about in each other’s places – they don’t fit.”

  “They can be made to,” said Winn, inexorably, “if they’re the proper people. She’ll like you to start with, besides you read – authors. So does she – she’s awfully clever, she doesn’t think anything of Marie Corelli; and she likes a man. As to your taking to her – well, my dear chap, you haven’t seen her! I give you a week; I’ll hang about till then. You can tell me your decision at the end of it.”

  “That’s another thing,” said Lionel. “Of course you only care for the girl, I see that, it’s quite natural, but if by any chance I did pull the thing off – what’s going to happen to you and me, afterwards? I’ve cared for that most, always.”

  A Föhn wind had begun to blow up the valley – it brought with it a curious light that lay upon the snow like red dust. “I don’t say I shall like it,” Winn said after a pause. “I’m not out to like it. There isn’t anything in the whole damned job possible for me to like. But I’d a lot rather have it than any other way. I think that ought to show you what I think of you. You needn’t be afraid I’ll chuck you for seeing me through. I might keep away for a time, but I’d come back. She isn’t the kind of a woman that makes a difference between friends.”

  “Oh, all right,” said Lionel after a pause, “I’ll go in for it – if I can.”

  Winn got up and replaced his pipe carefully, shaking his ashes out on to the snow. “I’m sure I’m much obliged to you,” he said stiffly.

  The wind ran up the valley with a sound like a flying train. Neither of them spoke while the gust lasted. It fell as suddenly as it came, and the valley shrank back into its pall of silence.

  It was so solitary that it seemed to Lionel as if, at times, it might easily have no existence.

  Lionel walked a little in front of Winn; the snow was soft and made heavy going. At the corner of the valley he turned to wait for Winn, and then he remembered the fanciful legend of New Year’s eve, for he saw Winn’s face very set and white, and his eyes looked as if the presence of death was in them – turned toward Davos.

  CHAPTER XVII

  Winn was under the impression that he could stand two or three days, especially if he had something practical to do. What helped him was the condition of Mr. Bouncing. Mr. Bouncing had suddenly retired. He had a bedroom on the other side of Winn’s, and a sitting-room connected it with his wife’s; but Mrs. Bouncing failed increasingly to take much advantage of this connection. Her theory was that, once you were in bed, you were better left alone.

  Mr. Bouncing refused to have a nurse; he said they were disagreeable women who wouldn’t let you take your own temperature. This might have seemed to involve the services of Mrs. Bouncing; but they were taken up for the moment by a bridge drive.

  “People do seem to want me so!” she explained plaintively to Winn in the corridor. “And I have a feeling, you know, Major Staines, that in a hotel like this it’s one’s duty to make things go.”

  “Some things go without much making,” said Winn, significantly. He was under the impression that one of these things was Mr. Bouncing.

  Winn made it his business, since it appeared to be nobody else’s, to keep an eye on Mr. Bouncing: in the daytime he sat with him and ran his errands; at night he came in once or twice and heated things for Mr. Bouncing on a spirit lamp.

  Mr. Bouncing gave him minute directions, and scolded him for leaving milk exposed to the menaces of the air and doing dangerous things with a teaspoon. Nevertheless, he valued Winn’s company.

  “You see,” he explained to Winn, “when you can’t sleep, you keep coming up to the point of dying. It’s very odd, the point of dying, a kind of collapsishness that won’t collapse. You say to yourself, ‘I can’t feel any colder than this,’ or, ‘I must have more breath,’ or, ‘This lung is bound to go if I cough much more.’ And the funny part of it is, you do go on getting colder, and your breath breaks like a rotten thread, and you never stop coughing, and yet you don’t go! I dare say I shall be quite surprised when I do. Then when you come in and give me warm, dry sheets and something hot to drink, something comes back. I suppose it’s life force; but not much – never as much as when I started the collapse. I’m getting weaker every hour; don’t you notice it? I never approved of all this lying in bed. I shall speak to Dr. Gurnet about it to-morrow.”

  Winn had noticed it; he came and sat down by Mr. Bouncing’s bed.

  “Snowy weather,” he suggested, “takes the life out of you.”

  Mr. Bouncing ignored this theory.

  “I hear,” he went on, “that you and your new friend have changed your table. You don’t sit with the Rivers any more.”

  “No,” said Winn, laconically; “table isn’t big enough.”

  “I expect they eat too fast,” Mr. Bouncing continued; “young people almost always eat too fast. You’ll digest better at another table. You look to me as if you had indigestion now.”

  Winn shook his head.

  “Look here, Bouncing,” he said earnestly, “I’m going off to St. Moritz next week to have a look at the Cresta; I wish you’d have a nurse. Drummond will run in and give an eye to you, of course; but you’re pretty seedy, and that’s a fact. I don’t like leaving you alone.”

  “Next week,” said Mr. Bounc
ing, thoughtfully. “Well, I dare say I shall be ready by then. It would be a pity, when I’ve just got you into the way of doing things properly, to have to teach them all over again to somebody else. I’m really not quite strong enough for that kind of thing. But I’m not going to have a nurse. Oh, dear, no! Nurses deceive you and cheer you up. I don’t feel well enough to be cheered up. I like somebody who is thoroughly depressed himself, as you are, you know. I dare say you think I notice nothing lying here, but I’ve noticed that you’re thoroughly depressed. Have you quarreled with your friend? It’s odd you rush off to St. Moritz alone just when he’s arrived.”

  “No, it isn’t,” said Winn, hastily. “He’ll join me later; he’s staying here at my request.”

  Mr. Bouncing sighed gently.

  “Well,” he said; “then all I can say is that you make very odd requests. One thing I’m perfectly sure about: if you go and look at the Cresta, you’ll go down it, you’re such a careless man, and then you’ll be killed. Is that what you want?”

  “I could do with it,” said Winn, briefly.

  “That,” said Mr. Bouncing, “is because you’re strong. It really isn’t nice to talk in that light way about being killed to any one who has got to be before very long whether he likes it or not. If you were in my place you’d value your life, unless it got too uncomfortable, of course.”

  Winn apologized instantly. Mr. Bouncing accepted his apology graciously.

  “You’ll learn,” he explained kindly, “how to talk to very ill people in time, and then probably you’ll never see any more of them. Experience is a very silly thing, I’ve often noticed; it hops about so. No continuity. What I was going to say was, don’t be worried about young Rivers and my wife. Take my word for it, you’re making a great mistake.”

  “I am glad to hear you say so,” Winn answered. “As a matter of fact, I have at present a few little private worries of my own; but I’m relieved, you think the Rivers boy is all right. I’ve been thinking of having a little talk with that tutor of his.”

  “Ah, I shouldn’t do that if I were you,” said Mr. Bouncing, urgently; “you’re sure to be violent. I see you have a great deal of violence in you; you ought to control it. It’s bad for your nerves. There are things I could tell you which would make you change your mind about young Rivers, but I don’t know that I shall; it would excite me too much. I think I should like you to go down and telephone to Dr. Gurnet. Tell him my temperature is normal. It’s a very odd thing; I haven’t had a normal temperature for over three years. Perhaps I’m going to get better, after all. It’s really only my breathing that’s troubling me to-night. It would be funny if I got well, wouldn’t it? But I mustn’t talk any more; so don’t come back until I knock in the night. Pass me the ‘Pink ’Un.’” Winn passed him the “Pink ’Un” and raised him with one deft, strong movement more comfortably up on his pillows.

  “You’ve got quite a knack for this sort of thing,” Mr. Bouncing observed. “If you’d been a clever man, you might have been a doctor.”

  Mr. Bouncing did not knock during the night. Winn heard him stirring at ten o’clock, and went in. The final change had come very quickly. Mr. Bouncing was choking. He waved his hand as if the very appearance of Winn between him and the open balcony door kept away from him the air that he was vainly trying to breathe. Then a rush of blood came in a stream between his lips. Winn moved quickly behind him and lifted him in his arms.

  Mr. Bouncing was no weight at all, and he made very little sound. He was quite conscious, and the look in his eyes was more interested than alarmed. The rush of bleeding stopped suddenly; his breathing was weaker and quieter, but he no longer choked.

  “Look here, old man,” Winn said, “let me get your wife.”

  But Mr. Bouncing signaled to him not to move; after a time he whispered:

  “This is the first time I ever had hemorrhage. Most uncomfortable.”

  “Do let me get your wife!” Winn urged again.

  “No,” said Mr. Bouncing. “Women – not much good – after the first.”

  “Don’t talk any more then, old man,” Winn pleaded. “You’ll start that bleeding off again.”

  But Mr. Bouncing made a faint clicking sound that might have been a laugh.

  “Too late,” he whispered. “Don’t matter now. No more risks. Besides, I’m too – too uncomfortable to live.”

  There were several pauses in the hemorrhage, and at each pause Mr. Bouncing’s mind came back to him as clear as glass. He spoke at intervals.

  “Not Rivers,” he said, fixing Winn’s eyes, “Roper – Roper.” Then he leaned back on the strong shoulder supporting him. “Glad to go,” he murmured. “Life has been – a damned nuisance. I’ve had – enough of it.” Then again, between broken, flying breaths he whispered, “Lonely.”

  “That’s all right,” Winn said gently.

  “You’re not alone now. I’ve got hold of you.”

  “No,” whispered Mr. Bouncing, “no, I don’t think you have.”

  There was no more violence now; his failing breath shook him hardly at all. Even as he spoke, something in him was suddenly freed; his chest rose slowly, his arm lifted then fell back, and Winn saw that he was no longer holding Mr. Bouncing.

  CHAPTER XVIII

  He closed the balcony door; the cold air filled the room as if it were still trying to come to the rescue of Mr. Bouncing. Winn had often done the last offices for the dead before, but always out of doors. Mr. Bouncing would have thought that a very careless way to die; he had often told Winn that he thought nature most unpleasant.

  When Winn had set the room in order he sat down by the table and wondered if it would be wrong to smoke a cigarette. He wanted to smoke, but he came to the conclusion that it wasn’t quite the thing.

  To-night was the ball for the international skaters – he ought to have been there, of course. He had made Lionel go in his place, and had written a stiff little note to Claire, asking her to give his dances to his friend. He had Claire’s answer in his pocket. “Of course I will, but I’m awfully disappointed.” She had spelled disappointed with two s’s and one p. Win had crushed the note into his pocket and not looked at it since, but he took it out now. It wasn’t like smoking a cigarette. Bouncing wouldn’t mind. There was no use making a fuss about it; he had done the best thing for her. He was handing all that immaculate, fresh youth into a keeping worthy of it. He wasn’t fit himself. There were too many things he couldn’t tell her, there was too much in him still that might upset and shock her. He would have done his best, of course, to have taken care of her; but better men could take better care. Lionel had said nothing so far; he had taken Claire skiing and skating, and once down the Schatz Alp. When he had come back from the Schatz Alp he had gone a long walk by himself. Winn had offered to accompany him, but Lionel had said he wanted to go alone and think. Winn accepted this decision without question. He knew Lionel was a clever man, but he didn’t himself see anything to think about. The thing was perfectly simple: Lionel liked Claire or he didn’t; no amount of being clever could make any difference. Winn was a little suspicious of thinking. It seemed to him rather like a way of getting out of things.

  The room was very cold, but Winn didn’t like going away and leaving Mr. Bouncing. By the by he heard voices in the next room. He could distinguish the high, flat giggle of Mrs. Bouncing. She had come back from the dance, probably with young Rivers. He must go in and tell her. That was the next thing to be done. He got up, shook himself, glanced at the appeased and peaceful young face upon the pillow, and walked into the next room. It was a sitting-room, and Winn had not knocked; but he shut the door instantly after him, and then stood in front of it, as if in some way to keep the silent tenant of the room behind him from seeing what he saw.

  Mrs. Bouncing was in a young man’s arms receiving a prolonged farewell. It wasn’t young Rivers, and it was an accustomed kiss. Mrs. Bouncing screamed. She was the kind of woman who found a scream in an emergency as easily as a sailor fi
nds a rope.

  It wasn’t Winn’s place to say, “What the devil are you doing here, sir?” to Mr. Roper; it was the question which, if Mr. Roper had had the slightest presence of mind, he would have addressed to Winn. As it was he did nothing but snarl – a timid and ineffectual snarl which was without influence upon the situation.

  “You’d better clear out,” Winn continued; “but if I see you in Davos after the eight o’clock express to-morrow I shall give myself the pleasure of breaking every bone in your body. Any one’s at liberty to play a game, Mr. Roper, but not a double game; and in the future I really wouldn’t suggest your choosing a dying man’s wife to play it with. It’s the kind of thing that awfully ruffles his friends.”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” said Mr. Roper, hastily edging toward the door; “your language is most uncalled for. And as to going away, I shall do nothing of the kind.”

  “Better think it over,” said Winn, with misleading calm. He moved forward as he spoke, seized Mr. Roper by the back of his coat as if he were some kind of boneless mechanical toy, and deposited him in the passage outside the door.

  Mrs. Bouncing screamed again. This time it was a shrill and gratified scream. She felt herself to be the heroine of an occasion. Winn eyed her as a hostile big dog eyes one beneath his fighting powers. Then he said: