The Dark Tower

by Phyllis Bottome

  Mavorovitch never apparently lifted his skates, but seemed to send them forward by a kind of secret pressure. He was a very cool player, as quick as mercury and as light as thistledown. Winn set himself against him with the dogged fury of a bull against a toreador.

  “That man’s not brave; he’s careless,” a St. Moritz potentate remarked to Miss Marley. Miss Marley gave a short laugh and glanced at Winn.

  “That’s my idea of courage,” she said, “carelessness toward things that don’t count. Major Staines isn’t careless with the ball.”

  “A game’s a game,” the foreign prince protested, “not a prolonged invitation to concussion.”

  “All, that’s where your foreign blood comes in, Your Highness,” argued Miss Marley. “A game isn’t a game to an Englishman; it’s his way of tackling life. As a man plays so he reaps.”

  “Very well, then,” remarked her companion, gravely. “Mark my words, Madame, your friend over there will reap disaster.”

  Winn tackled the ball in a series of sudden formidable rushes; he hurled himself upon the slight form of Mavorovitch, only to find he had before him a portion of the empty air. Mavorovitch was invariably a few inches beyond his reach, and generally in possession of the ball.

  Twice Winn wrested it forcibly from him and got half way up the ice, tearing along with his skates crashing their iron way toward the goal, and twice Mavorovitch noiselessly, except for a faint scraping, slid up behind him and coaxed the ball out of his very grip. St. Moritz lost two goals to nothing in the first half, and Winn felt as if he were biting on air.

  He stood a little apart from the other players, with his back turned to the crowd. He wished it wasn’t necessary always to have an audience; a lot of people who sat and did nothing irritated him. Mavorovitch irritated him, too. He did not like a man to be so quiet; the faint click, click of Mavorovitch’s skates on the ice was like a lady knitting.

  The whistle sounded again, and Winn set upon the ball with redoubled fury. He had a feeling that if he didn’t win this game he was going to dislike it very much. He tore up the ice, every muscle strained, his stick held low, caressing the round, flying knob in front; he had got the ball all right, the difficulty was going to be, to keep it. His mind listened to the faint distant scraping of Mavorovitch’s approach. Winn had chosen the exact spot for slowing up for his stroke.

  It must be a long-distance shot or Mavorovitch would be there to intercept him, the longer, the safer, if he could get up speed enough for his swing. He had left the rest of the players behind him long ago, tossing some to one side and outflanking others; but he had not got clear away from Mavorovitch, bent double, and quietly calculating, a few feet behind him, the exact moment for an intercepting spurt: and then through the sharpness of the icy air and the sense of his own speed an extraordinary certainty flashed into Winn. He was not alone; Claire was there. He called it a fancy, but he knew it was a certainty. A burning joy seized him, and a new wild strength poured into him. He could do anything now.

  He drew up suddenly, long before the spot he had fixed upon as a certain stroke, lifted his arm, and struck with all his might. It was a long, doubtful, crossing stroke, almost incredibly distant from the goal.

  The crowd held its breath as the ball rose, cutting straight above the goal-keeper’s head, through the very center of the goal.

  Winn was probably the only person there who didn’t follow its flight. He looked up quickly at the bank above him, and met her eyes. She was as joined to him as if they had no separate life.

  In a moment it struck him that there was nothing else to do but to go to her at once, take her in his arms, and walk off with her somewhere into the snow. He knew now that he had been in hell; the sight of her was like the sudden cessation of blinding physical pain.

  Then he pulled himself together and went back to the game. He couldn’t think any more, but the new activity in him went on playing methodically and without direction.

  Mavorovitch, who was playing even more skilfully and swiftly, got the better of him once or twice; but the speed that had given Winn room for his great stroke flowed tirelessly through him. It seemed to him as if he could have outpaced a Scotch express.

  He carried the ball off again and again out of the mob of his assailants. They scattered under his rushes like creatures made of cardboard. He offered three goals and shot one. The cheering of the St. Moritzers sounded in his ears as if it were a long way off. He saw the disappointed, friendly grin of little Mavorovitch as the last whistle settled the match at five goals to four against Davos, but everything seemed cloudy and unreal. He heard Mavorovitch say:

  “Spooner never told us he had a dark horse over here. I must say I am disappointed. Until half-time I thought I should get the better of you; but how did you get that devilish spurt on? Fierce pace tires, but you were easier to tire when you began.”

  Winn’s eyes wandered over the little man beside him.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” he said good-naturedly; he had never in his life felt so good-natured. “I suppose I thought we were getting beaten. That rather braces one up, doesn’t it?”

  “Ah, that is you English all over,” laughed Mavorovitch. “We have a saying, ‘In all campaigns the English lose many battles, but they always win one – namely, the last.’”

  “I’m sure it’s awfully jolly of you to say so,” said Winn. “You play a pretty fine game yourself, you know, considerably more skill in it than mine. I had no idea you were not English yourself.”

  Mavorovitch seemed to swim away into a mist of laughter, people receded, the bank receded; at last he stood before her. Winn thought she was a little thinner in the face and her eyes were larger than ever. He could not take his own away from her; he had no thoughts, and he forgot to speak.

  Everybody was streaming off to tea. The rink was deserted; it lay a long, gray shadow beneath the high, white banks. The snow had begun to fall, light, dry flakes that rested like powder on Claire’s curly hair. She waited for him to speak; but as he still said nothing, she asked with a sudden dimple:

  “Where does this path lead to?”

  Then Winn recollected himself, and asked her if she didn’t want some tea. Claire shook her head.

  “Not now,” she said decidedly; “I want to go along this path.”

  Winn obeyed her silently. The path took them between dark fir-trees to the farthest corner of the little park. Far below them a small stream ran into the lake, it was frozen over, but in the silence they could hear it whispering beneath the ice. The world was as quiet as if it lay in velvet. Then Claire said suddenly:

  “Oh, why did you make me hurt him when I liked him so much?”

  They found a bench and sat down under the trees.

  “Do you mean you’ve sent Lionel away?” Winn asked anxiously.

  “Yes,” she said in a forlorn little voice; “yesterday I sent him away. He didn’t know I was coming over here, he was very miserable. He asked me if I knew about you – he said he believed you wanted me to – and I said, ‘Of course I know everything.’ I wasn’t going to let him think you hadn’t told me. Why did you go away?”

  He had not thought she would ask him that. It was as if he saw before him an interminable hill which he had believed himself to have already climbed.

  He drew a deep breath, then he said:

  “Didn’t they talk about it? I wrote to her, the chaplain’s wife I mean; I hadn’t time to see her, but I sent it by the porter. I thought she’d do; she seemed a gossipy woman, kept on knitting and gassing over a stove in the hall. I thought she was – a sort of circulating library, you see. I tipped the porter – tow-headed Swiss brute. I suppose he swallowed it.”

  “He went away the same day you did,” Claire explained. “Nobody told me anything. Do you think I would have let them? I wouldn’t let Lionel, and I knew he had a right to, but I didn’t care about anybody’s rights. You see, I – I thought you’d tell me yourself. So I came,” she finished quietly.

 
; She waited. Winn began to draw patterns on the snow with his stick, then he said:

  “I’ve been a bit of a blackguard not telling you myself. I didn’t want to talk about it, and that’s a fact. I’m married.”

  He kept his face turned away from her. It seemed a long time before she spoke.

  “You should have told me that before,” she said in a queer, low voice. “It’s too late now.”

  “Would it,” he asked quickly, “have made any difference – about Lionel, I mean?”

  She shook her head.

  “Not,” she said, “about Lionel.”

  He bent lower over the pattern in the snow; it had become more intricate.

  “I couldn’t tell you,” he muttered; “I tried. I couldn’t. That was why I went off. You say too late. D’you mind telling me if you mean – you care?”

  Her silence seemed interminable, and then he knew she had already answered him. It seemed to him that if he sat there and died, he couldn’t speak.

  “Winn,” she asked in a whisper, “did you go because of me – or because of you?”

  He turned round, facing her.

  “Is that worrying you?” he asked fiercely. “Well, you can see for yourself, can’t you? All there is of me – ” He could not finish his sentence.

  It was snowing heavily. They seemed intensely, cruelly alone. It was as if all life crept off and left them by themselves in the drifting gray snow, in their silent little corner of the unconscious, unalterable world.

  Winn put his arm around her and drew her head down on his shoulder.

  “It’s all right,” he said rather thickly. “I won’t hurt you.”

  But he knew that he had hurt her, and that it was all wrong.

  She did not cry, but she trembled against his heart. He felt her shivering as if she were afraid of all the world but him.

  “I must stay with you,” she whispered. “I must stay with you, mustn’t I?”

  He tried not to say “always,” but he thought afterward that he must have said “always.”

  Then she lifted her curls and her little fur cap with the snow on it from his shoulder, and looked deep into his eyes. The worst of it was that hers were filled with joy.

  “Winn,” she said, “do you love me enough for anything? Not only for happiness, but, if we had to have dreadful things, enough for dreadful things?”

  She spoke of dreadful things as if they were outside her, and as if they were very far away.

  “I love you enough for anything,” said Winn, gravely.

  “Tell me,” she whispered, “did you ever even think – you liked her as much?”

  Winn looked puzzled; it took him a few minutes to guess whom she meant, then he said wonderingly:

  “My wife, you mean?”

  Claire nodded. It was silly how the little word tore its way into her very heart; she had to bite her lips to keep herself from crying out. She did not realize that the word was meaningless to him.

  “No,” said Winn, gravely; “that’s the worst of it. I must have been out of my head. It was a fancy. Of course I thought it was all right, but I didn’t care. It was fun rather than otherwise; you know what I mean? I’m afraid I gave her rather a rotten time of it; but fortunately she doesn’t like me at all. It’s not surprising.”

  “Yes, it is,” said Claire, firmly; “it’s very surprising. But if she doesn’t care for you, and you don’t care for her, can’t anything be done?”

  There is something cruel in the astonishing ease with which youth believes in remedial measures. It is a cruelty which reacts so terribly upon its possessors.

  Winn hesitated; then he told her that he would take her to the ends of the world. Claire pushed away the ends of the world; they did not sound very practical.

  “I mean,” she said, “have you got to consider anybody else? Of course there’s Maurice and your people, I’ve thought of them. But I don’t think they’d mind so awfully always, do you? It wouldn’t be like robbing or cheating some one who really needed us. We couldn’t do that, of course.”

  Then Winn remembered Peter. He told her somehow that there was Peter. He hid his face against her breast while he told her; he could not bear to see in her eyes this new knowledge of Peter.

  But she was very quiet about it; it was almost as if she had always known that there was Peter.

  Winn spoke very wildly after that; he denied Peter; he denied any obstacles; he spoke as if they were already safely and securely married. He explained that they had to be together; that was the long and short of it. Anything else was absurd; she must see that it was absurd.

  Claire didn’t interrupt him once; but when he had quite finished, she said consideringly:

  “Yes; but, after all, she gave you Peter.”

  Then Winn laughed, remembering how Estelle had given him Peter. He couldn’t explain to Claire quite how funny it was.

  She bore his laughter, though it surprised her a little; there seemed to be so many new things to be learned about him. Then she said:

  “Anyway, we can be quite happy for a fortnight, can’t we?”

  Winn raised his head and looked at her. It was his turn to be surprised.

  “Maurice and I,” she explained, “have to go back in two weeks; we’ve come over here for the fortnight. So we’ll just be happy, won’t we? And we can settle what we’ll do afterward, at the end of the time.”

  She spoke as if a fortnight was a long time. Then Winn kissed her; he did it with extraordinary gentleness, on the side of her cheek and on her wet curls covered with snow.

  “You’re such a baby,” he said half to himself; “so it isn’t a bit of use your being as old as the hills the other part of the time. There are just about a million reasons why you shouldn’t stay, you know.”

  “Oh, reasons!” said Claire, making a face at anything so trivial as a reason. Then she became very grave, and said, “I want to stay, Winn; of course I know what you mean. But there’s Maurice; it isn’t as if I were alone. And afterwards – oh, Winn, it’s because I don’t know what is going to happen afterwards – I must have now!”

  Winn thought for a moment, then he said:

  “Well, I’ll try and work it. You mustn’t be in the same hotel, though. Fortunately, I know a nice woman who’ll help us through; only, darling, I’m awfully afraid it’s beastly wrong for you. I mean I can’t explain properly; but if I let you go now, it would be pretty sickening. But you’d get away; and if you stay, I’ll do the best I can but we shall get mixed up so that you’ll find it harder to shake me off. You see, you’re awfully young; there are chances ahead of you, awfully decent other chaps, marriage – ”

  “And you,” she whispered – “you?”

  “Oh, it doesn’t matter a damn about me either way,” he explained carefully. “I’m stuck. But it isn’t really fair of me to let you stay. You don’t understand, but it simply isn’t fair.”

  Claire looked reproachfully at him.

  “If I don’t want you to be fair,” she said, “you oughtn’t to want to be – not more than I do, I mean. Besides – Oh, Winn, I do know about when I go! That’s why I can’t go till we’ve been happy, awfully happy, first. Don’t you see, if I went now, there’d be nothing to look back on but just your being hurt and my being hurt; and I want happiness! Oh, Winn, I want happiness!”

  That was the end of it. He took her in his arms and promised her happiness.

  PART III

  CHAPTER XXIII

  It seemed incredible that they should be happy, but from the first of their fortnight to the last they were increasingly, insanely happy. Everything ministered to their joy; the unstinted blue and gold of the skies, the incommunicable glee of mountain heights, their blind and eager love.

  There was no future. They were on an island cut off from all to-morrows; but they were together, and their island held the fruits of the Hesperides.

  They lived surrounded by light passions, by unfaithfulnesses that had not the sharp excuses of desire,
bonds that held only because they would require an effort to break and bonds that were forged only because it was easier to pass into a new relation than to continue in an old one. Their solid and sober passion passed through these light fleets of pleasure-boats as a great ship takes its unyielding way toward deep waters.

  Winn was spared the agony of foresight; he could not see beyond her sparkling eyes; and Claire was happy, exultantly, supremely happy, with the reckless, incurious happiness of youth.

  It was terrible to see them coming in and out with their joy. Their faces were transfigured, their eyes had the look of sleep-walkers, they moved as through another world. They had only one observer, and to Miss Marley the sight of them was like the sight of those unknowingly condemned to die. St. Moritz in general was not observant. It had gossips, but it did not know the difference between true and false, temporary and permanent. It had one mold for all its fancies: given a man and a woman, it formed at once its general and monotonous conjecture.

  Maurice might have noticed Claire’s preoccupation, for Maurice was sensitive to that which touched himself, but for the moment a group more expensive and less second rate than he had discovered at Davos took up his entire attention. He had none to spare for his sister unless she bothered him, and she didn’t bother him.

  It was left to Miss Marley to watch from hour to hour the significant and rising chart of passion. The evening after the Davos match, Winn had knocked at the door of her private sitting-room. It was his intention only to ask her if she would dine with some friends of his from Davos; he would mention indifferently that they were very young, a mere boy and girl, and he would suggest with equal subtlety that he would be obliged if Miss Marley would continue to take meals at his table during their visit. St. Moritz, he saw himself saying, was such a place for talk. There was no occasion to go into anything, and Miss Marley would, of course, have no idea how matters really stood. She was a good sort, but he wasn’t going to talk about Claire.