The Dark Tower

by Phyllis Bottome

  Miss Marley said, “Come in,” in that wonderful, low, soft voice of hers that came so strangely from her blistered lips. She was sitting in a low chair, smoking, in front of an open wood fire.

  Her room was furnished by herself. It was a comfortable, featureless room, with no ornaments and no flowers; there were plenty of books in cases or lying about at ease on a big table, a stout desk by the window, and several leather-covered, deep armchairs. The walls were bare except for photographs of the Cresta. These had been taken from every possible angle of the run – its banks, its corners, its flashing pieces of straight, and its incredible final hill. It was noticeable that though there was generally a figure on a toboggan in the photograph, it never happened to be one of Miss Marley herself. She was a creditable rider, but she did not, to her own mind, show off the Cresta.

  Her eyes met Winn’s with a shrewdness that she promptly veiled. He wasn’t looking as if he wanted her to be shrewd. It struck her that she was seeing Winn as he must have looked when he was about twenty. She wondered if this was only because he had won the match. His eyes were very open and they were off their guard. It could not be said that Winn had ever in his life looked appealing, but for a Staines to look so exposed to friendliness was very nearly an appeal.

  “Mavorovitch has just left me,” said Miss Marley. “You ought to have heard what he said about you. It was worth hearing. You played this afternoon like a successful demon dealing with lost souls. I don’t think I’ve ever seen bandy played quite in that vein before.”

  Winn sank into one of the leather armchairs and lighted a cigarette.

  “As a matter of fact,” he said, “I played like a fluke. I am not up to Mavorovitch’s form at all. I just happened to be on my game; he would have had me down and out otherwise.”

  Miss Marley nodded; she was wondering what had put Winn on his game. She turned her eyes away from him and looked into the fire. Winn was resting for the first time that day; the sense of physical ease and her even, tranquil comradeship were singularly soothing to him. Suddenly it occurred to him that he very much liked Miss Marley, and in a way in which he had never before liked any woman, with esteem and without excitement. He gave her a man’s first proof of confidence.

  “Look here,” he said, “I want you to help me.”

  Miss Marley turned her eyes back to him; she was a plain woman, but she was able to speak with her eyes, and though what she said was sometimes hard and always honest, on the present occasion they expressed only an intense reassurance of good-will.

  “When I came in,” Winn said rather nervously, “I meant to ask you a little thing, but I find I am going to ask you a big one.”

  “Oh, well,” said Miss Marley, “ask away. Big or little, friends should stand by each other.”

  “Yes,” said Winn, relieved, “that’s what I thought you’d say. I don’t know that I ever mentioned to you I’m married?”

  “No,” she answered quietly, “I can’t say that you did; however, most men of your age are married.”

  “And I’ve got a son,” Winn continued. “His name is Peter – after my father, you know.”

  “That’s a good thing,” she concurred heartily. “I’m glad you’ve got a son.”

  “Unfortunately,” said Winn, “my marriage didn’t exactly come off. We got hold of the wrong end of the stick.”

  “Ah,” said Miss Marley, “that’s a pity! The right end of the stick is, I believe, almost essential in marriage.”

  “Yes,” Winn acknowledged; “I see that now, of course. I was keen on getting her, but I hadn’t thought the rest out. Rather odd, isn’t it, that you don’t get as much as a tip about how jolly a thing could be till you’ve dished yourself from having it?”

  Miss Marley agreed that it was rather odd.

  Winn came back swiftly to his point.

  “What I was going to ask you,” he said, holding her with his eyes, “is to sit at my table for a bit. I happen to have two young friends of mine over from Davos. He’s her brother, of course, but I thought I’d like to have another woman somewhere about. Look better, wouldn’t it? She’s only nineteen.”

  His voice dropped as he mentioned Claire’s age as if he were speaking of the Madonna.

  “Yes,” agreed Miss Marley, “it would look better.”

  “I dare say,” said Winn after rather a long pause, “you see what I mean? The idea is – our idea, you know – to be together as much as we can for a fortnight. It’ll be all right, of course; only I rather wondered if you’d see us through.”

  “See you through being all right?” Miss Marley asked with the directness of a knife-thrust.

  “Well – yes,” said Winn. “It would just put people off thinking things. Everybody seems to know you up here, and I somehow thought I’d rather you knew.”

  “Thank you,” said Miss Marley, briefly.

  She turned back to the fire again. She had seen all she wanted to see in Winn’s eyes. She saw his intention. What she wasn’t sure about was the fortnight. A fortnight can do a good deal with an intention.

  Miss Marley knew the world very well. People had often wanted to use her for a screen before, and generally she had refused, believing that the chief safeguard of innocence is the absence of screens. But she saw that Winn did not want her to be that kind of a screen; he wanted her to be in the center of his situation without touching it. He wanted her for Claire, but he wanted her also a little for himself, so that he might feel the presence of her upright friendliness. He intensely trusted her.

  There are people who intend to do good in the world and invariably do harm. They enter eagerly into the lives of others and put their fingers pressingly upon delicate machinery; very often they destroy it, more seldom, unfortunately, they cut their own fingers. Miss Marley did not belong to this type. She did not wish to be involved and she was scrupulous never to involve others. She hesitated before she gave her consent, but she couldn’t withstand the thought that Claire was only nineteen. She spoke at last.

  “What you suggest,” she said quietly, “is going to be rather hard for you both. I suppose you do realize how hard? You see, you are only at the beginning of the fortnight now. Unhappy men and very young girls make difficult situations, Major Staines.”

  He got up and walked to the window, standing with his back to her. She wondered if she had said too much; his back looked uncompromising. She did not realize that she could never say too much in the defense of Claire. Then he said, without looking round:

  “We shall have to manage somehow.”

  It occurred to Miss Marley, with a wave of reassurance, that this was probably Winn’s usual way of managing.

  “In any case,” she said firmly, “you can count on me to do anything you wish.”

  Winn expressed no gratitude. He merely said:

  “I shall introduce her to you this evening.”

  Before he left Miss Marley he shook hands with her. Her hands were hard and muscular, but she realized when she felt his grip that he must have been extremely grateful.

  CHAPTER XXIV

  They went out early, before the sun was up, when the valley was an apricot mist and the mountains were as white as snowdrops in the spring. The head waiter fell easily into their habits, and provided them with an early breakfast and a parcel for lunch. Then they drove off through the biting, glittering coldness.

  Sometimes they went far down the valley to Sils and on to the verge of the Maloja. Sometimes they drove through the narrower valleys to Pontresina and on into the impenetrable winter gloom of the Mortratsch glacier. The end was the same solitude, sunshine, and their love. The world was wrapped away in its winter stillness. The small Swiss villages slept and hardly stirred. In the hot noonday a few drowsy peasants crept to and from the barns where the cattle passed their winter life. Sometimes a woman labored at a frozen pump, or a party of skiers slipped rapidly through the shady streets, rousing echoes with their laughter; but for the most part they were as much alone as if the wor
ld had ceased to hold any beings but themselves. The pine-trees scented all the air, the snow dripped reluctantly, and sometimes far off they heard the distant boom of an avalanche. They sat together for long sunlit hours on the rickety wooden balcony of a friendly hospice, drinking hot spiced glüwein and building up their precarious memories.

  There were moments when the hollow present snapped under their feet like a broken twig, and then the light in their eyes darkened and they ran out upon the safer path of make-believe.

  It was Winn who, curiously enough, began it, and returned to it oftenest. It came to him, this abolishing of Estelle, always more easily than it came to Claire. It was inconceivable to Claire that Winn didn’t, as a rule, remember his wife. She could have understood the tragedy of his marriage, but Winn didn’t make a tragedy of it, he made nothing of it at all. It seemed terrible to Claire that any woman, bearing his name, the mother of his child, should have no life in his heart. She found herself resenting this for Estelle. She tried to make Winn talk about her, so that she might justify her ways to him. But Winn went no further in his expressions than the simple phrases, “She’s not my sort,” “We haven’t anything in common,” “I expect we didn’t hit it off.” Finally he said, terribly, under the persistency of Claire’s pressure, “Well, if you will have it, I don’t believe a single word she says.”

  “Oh, but sometimes, sometimes she must speak the truth!” Claire urged, breathless with pity.

  “I dare say,” Winn replied indifferently. “Possibly she does, but what difference does it make to me when I don’t know which times?”

  Claire waited a little, then she said:

  “I wasn’t thinking of the difference to you; I was thinking of the difference to her.”

  “I tell you,” Winn repeated obstinately, “that I don’t care a hang about the difference to her. People shouldn’t tell lies. I don’t care that for her!” He snapped a crumb off the table. He looked triumphantly at Claire, under the impression that he had convinced her of a pleasing fact. She burst into tears.

  He tried to take her in his arms, but for a moment she resisted him.

  “Do you want me to love Estelle?” he asked in desperation.

  Claire shook her head.

  “I’d like her – to be loved,” she said, still sobbing.

  Winn looked wonderingly at her.

  “Well, as far as that goes, so would I,” he observed, with a sardonic grin. “There’d be some way out for us then.”

  Claire shook her head vehemently, but she made no attempt to explain her tears. She felt that she couldn’t alter him, and that when he most surprised her it was wiser to accept these surprises than to probe her deep astonishment.

  He surprised her very often, he was in such a hurry to unburden himself of all he was. It seemed to him as if he must tell her everything while he had her. He expressed himself as he had never in his wildest dreams supposed that any man could express himself to another human being. He broke down his conventions, he forced aside his restraint, he literally poured out his heart to her. He gave her his opinions, his religion, his codes of conduct, until she began a little to understand his attitude toward Estelle.

  It was part of his exterior way of looking at the world at large. Up till now people, except Lionel, had never really entered into his imagination. Of course there were his servants and his dogs and, nearer still, his horses. He spent hours telling her about his horses. They really had come into his life, but never people; even his own family were nothing but a background for wrangles.

  He had never known tenderness. He had had all kinds of odd feelings about Peter, but they hadn’t got beyond his own mind. His tenderness was beyond everything now; it over-flowed expression. It was the radical thing in him. He showed her plainly that it would break his heart if she were to let her feet get wet. He made plans for her future which would have suited a chronic invalid. He wanted to give her jewels, expensive specimens of spaniels, and a banking account.

  She would take nothing from him but a notebook and a little opal ring. Winn restrained his passion, but out of revenge for his restraint his fancies ran wild.

  It was Claire who had to be practical; she who had spent her youth in dreams now clung desperately to facts. She read nothing, she hardly talked, but she drew his very soul out to meet her listening soul. There were wonders within wonders to her in Winn. She had hardly forced herself to accept his hardness when she discovered in him a tolerance deeper than anything she had ever seen, and an untiring patience. He had pulled men out of holes only to see them run back into them with the swiftness of burrowing rabbits; but nothing made him feel as if he could possibly give them up.

  “You can’t tell how many new starts a man wants,” he explained to Claire; “but he ought to have as many as he can take. As long as a man wants to get on, I think he ought to be helped.”

  His code about a man’s conduct to women was astonishingly drastic.

  “If you’ve let a woman in,” he explained, “you’ve got to strip yourself to get her out, no matter whether you care for her or not. The moment a woman gets caught out, you can’t do too much for her. It’s like seeing a dog with a tin can tied to its tail; you’ve got to get it off. A man ought to pay for his fun; even if it isn’t his fault, he ought to pay just the same. It’s not so much that he’s the responsible person, but he’s the least had. That ought to settle the question.”

  He was more diffident, but not less decided, on the subject of religion.

  “If there’s a God at all,” he stated, “He must be good; otherwise you can’t explain goodness, which doesn’t pay and yet always seems worth having. You know what I mean. Not that I am a religious man myself, but I like the idea. Women certainly ought to be religious.”

  He hoped that Claire would go regularly to church unless it was draughty.

  It was on the Bernina, when they were nine thousand feet up in a blue sky, beyond all sight or sound of life, in their silent, private world, that they talked about death.

  “Curious,” Winn said, “how little you think about it when you’re up against it. I shouldn’t like to die of an illness. That’s all I’ve ever felt about it; that would be like letting go. I don’t think I could let go easily; but just a proper, decent knock-out – why, I don’t believe you’d know anything about it. I never felt afraid of chucking it, till I knew you, now I’m afraid.”

  Claire looked at his strong hands in the sunshine and at her own which lay on his; they looked so much alive! She tried hard to think about death, because she knew that some day everybody must die; but she felt as if she was alive forever.

  “Yes,” she said; “of course I suppose we shall. But, Winn, don’t you think that we could send for each other then? Wouldn’t that be splendid?”

  The idea of death became suddenly a shortening of the future; it was like something to look forward to. Winn nodded gravely, but he didn’t seem to take the same comfort in it that Claire did. He only said:

  “I dare say we could manage something. But you feel all right, don’t you?”

  Claire laughed until something in his grave eyes hurt her behind her laughter.

  The sky changed from saffron to dead blue and then to startling rose color. Flame after flame licked the Bernina heights. Their sleigh-bells rang persistently beneath them. They drank their coffee hurriedly while the sun sank out of the valley, and the whole world changed into an icy light.

  They drove off rapidly down the pass, wrapped in furs and clinging to each other. They did not know what anything would mean when they were apart. The thought of separation was like bending from a sunny world over a well of darkness. Claire cried a little, but not very much. She never dared let herself really cry because of what might happen to Winn.

  It surprised him sometimes how little she tried to influence his future life. She did not make him promise anything except to go to see Dr. Gurnet. He wondered afterward why she had left so much to his discretion when he had made so many plans, and u
rgent precautions for her future; and yet he knew that when she left him he would be desperate enough to break any promises and never desperate enough to break her trust in him. Suddenly he said to her as the darkness of the pass swallowed them:

  “Look here, I won’t take to drink. I’d like to, but I won’t.” And Claire leaned toward him and kissed him, and he said a moment later, with a little half laugh:

  “D’you know, I rather wish you hadn’t done that. You never have before, and I sha’n’t be able to forget it. You put the stopper on to that intention.”

  And Claire said nothing, smiling into the darkness.

  CHAPTER XXV

  Claire had never been alone with Miss Marley before; she had known her only as an accompaniment to Winn; but she had been aware, even in these partial encounters, that she was being benevolently judged. It must be owned that earlier in the day she had learned, with a sinking of the heart, that she must give up the evening to Miss Marley. When every hour counted as a victory over time, she could not understand how Winn could let her go; and yet he had said quite definitely: “I want you to go to Miss Marley this evening. She’d like to talk to you, and I think you’d better.”

  But something happened which changed her feelings. Miss Marley was a woman despite the Cresta and there are times when only a woman’s judgment can satisfy the heart of a girl. Claire was startled and perturbed by Maurice’s sudden intervention. Maurice said:

  “That chap Staines is getting you talked about. Pretty low down of him, as I believe he’s married.” She was pulled up short in the golden stream of her love. She saw for the first time the face of opinion – that hostile, stupid, interfering face. Claire had never thought that by any malign possibility they could be supposed to be doing wrong. She could not connect wrong with either her love or Winn’s. If there was one quality more than another which had distinguished it, it had been its simple sense of rightness. She had seen Winn soften and change under it as the hard earth changes at the touch of spring. She had felt herself enriched and enlarged, moving more unswervingly than ever toward her oldest prayer – that she might, on the whole, be good. She hardly prayed at all about Winn; loving him was her prayer.