Poor John Landon!
She was sorry for him, and perhaps she felt more sorry for him on this day when her heart was full of a happy suspense. Because something had happened to him since she had come to the Hôtel Vieux Châlet, something that might happen to any man who was fifty, and an exile, and very lonely. And perhaps he was one of the shyest creatures she had ever met, one of those big, gentle, diffident men, rather clumsy in his movements, and not a little inarticulate.
She had let him come near to her as a friend; she had talked to him as a friend, and he had seemed so absurdly grateful. Yes, and he was more than grateful, but she was not afraid of that other homage; she had been touched by it and by its curious, shy magnanimity.
He came forward from the shadow of the pines, looking rather like a long and awkward bird trailing its feet over the snow. He was an ungraceful skier; he would never be anything else, and yet somehow it did not seem to matter.
He was smiling, but his smile was made and not meant. It was for her and not for himself. His blue eyes looked down at her, and yet there was a shyness in them that flinched. It was as though he found both pleasure and pain in looking at her, and chose both the pleasure and the pain.
It was she who broke the silence.
“Why aren’t you with the others?”
He too glanced at those little moving streaks of colour on the white slope opposite.
“Do you think I ought to be? But I shall never be much good at this.”
His thin face was a little twisted and whimsical.
“Those young things—a pace of their own. An old daddy-long-legs like I am——”
She was observing the frayed cuff of his yellow pull-over. His clothes were rather shabby, not because he was doomed to shabbiness—but because—till a month ago—there had been no one for whose sake he had wished to bother. He was not bothering now—because she had told him.
She chose to be playful, for playfulness eases certain disharmonies, and there was something gallant in the way he managed to smile.
“I’m not such a very old thing——”
His eyes were very wide for a moment.
“You! Hardly. I’m going up over the Razor Ridge. I suppose——”
He looked at her feet. She was wearing snow boots, with a pair of socks turned over them.
“Too deep for me?”
“I don’t think so.”
She rose.
“How long will it take? You see——”
Yes, he saw; he understood. Since yesterday she had been a free woman; she had shed her tragedy, and the law had made it final. And now she was waiting for her lover.
“Oh, less than an hour. We shall be back to lunch. You ought to learn to use these things. But, I dare say——”
Her face seemed to catch the sunlight.
“I dare say I shall. He is rather an expert.”
The blue eyes glanced at her quickly, and then fell away.
“He’s coming out? I’m glad.”
“Yes; any day. I’m expecting a telegram.”
They went up the long slope together, he ponderously stepping, she with a lightness that seemed to defy the snow. Her face was slightly flushed, and her eyes happy, and their happiness hurt him, though he would not have taken her happiness from her.
And he was thinking of that other man who was coming to carry her away, back to England and a new life. She had a future, and he—John Landon—had no future save that of a homeless, womanless man, pottering along from hotel to hotel.
He envied that other fellow, though he did not even know his name. All that he did know was that Norah had divorced a cad of a husband—not for the sake of this other man—but because life had become a sordid and unbearable business. But the other fellow had been there in the background, a romantic shadow-man, a happy opportunist—and it appeared that she loved him.
“It might have been——” he thought; and checked the impulse. For what was the use of dwelling upon lost possibilities? Moreover, they had reached the great white ridge of the divide, and reached it without exchanging twenty consecutive words. Another valley lay spread below them, a crumpled wilderness of snowy slopes and sombre woods, and beyond it rose other peaks.
He pointed with one of his sticks.
“See! Blion over there, rather higher than we are.”
She stood at gaze.
“Is that Blion? It looks like one of those enchanted castles in a fairy tale, a glittering mystery upon a mountain.”
“That’s a good phrase! But the little turrets and spires—and all that mystery——”
“Yes——”
“Belong to the Palace Hotel.”
He heard her happy laughter.
“Yes; but how romantic! Another playground in the snow. How far is it?”
“Not five miles. Our railway goes on there.”
“We must go on there—some day.”
A queer little smile seemed to wince across his thin face, for he knew that he was not included in the “we.”
“Yes,” he said; “of course you will.”
When they turned to descend a restlessness seemed to seize him. She had the air of a woman eager to hurry back, because some message might have come for her, and her look of expectancy made him feel so much the superfluous and suffered friend. He broke away from her.
“I must do one glide. I’ll join you again.”
She watched him glide away on his skis. He gathered speed, and went swiftly and diagonally over the white slope until his tall figure became a thin and yellow streak. Her eyes had a kindness. She was not so absorbed in her own happiness as to be blind to his lack of it. Poor, lonely, exiled man! She saw him turn in the distance and strike back towards the track she was following, but he did not rejoin her until she had reached the pinewood, and under the trees his face looked overshadowed.
“It’s like growing old,” he said abruptly.
“The snow——?”
“You go up and so slowly; you reach the height—and then you come down with a rush. But it’s of no consequence.”
Outside the Vieux Châlet Hotel he remained to unfasten his skis. He could imagine Norah hurrying to the funny little box of a bureau where Madame sat busy with her accounts. “Anything for me, madame?” He left his skis on the verandah; he might need them again after lunch; there would be nothing else for him to do. But in the doorway he paused. He saw her standing in the red tiled passage with a piece of paper in her hands.
His inclination was to sneak away, but she raised her eyes and saw him. She smiled.
“I’ve had a wire. He’s coming out.”
Landon made himself answer her smile.
“Good. Coming here?”
“No—to Blion. Isn’t it strange that we should have seen Blion this morning.”
Landon’s eyes were set in a stare.
“Blion——?”
“Yes—you see—— It’s rather sensitive and thoughtful of him—not to come here. At least—not——”
Landon seemed to nod his head.
“Yes; I understand. But his train—the mountain train will pass here.”
“So he says. It’s such a long wire. He says he may arrive at some impossible hour, and that I’m to expect him when I see him.”
She was folding up the telegram, and her downward glances were happy and pensive.
“Why—I have never told you his name, have I?”
“No.”
“Philip Sherwood. But you’ll be introduced. I want you two to be friends.”
“Of course,” said Landon, standing stiff as a post.
After lunch he put on his skis, and went out again over the snow, a lonely figure trailing its long legs over all that desolate whiteness. Never had he felt so alone with himself in a world that seemed empty and beautiful and still, as still as a world that was dead. He climbed again to the ridge, and saw a great red sun setting behind Blion, and the eastern slopes tinted with rose and gold, and the blue zenith flushed
with soft light.
He stood and looked at the spires and the tourelles of Blion, and saw a little blue mountain train winding its way up the mountain track. Perhaps Sherwood was in that train? Rather decent of the fellow to go to Blion, and not to come thrusting himself straightway into the Old Châlet. It was the gentleman’s touch. Naturally. He could not imagine any man behaving like a cad to Norah Burnside, and yet her husband had behaved like a cad to her. This Philip Sherwood was different—or she could not have cared. Oh, lucky lover, to have roused that look of happy expectancy in those soft, brown eyes!
He turned away from the sunset.
“You sentimental idiot!” he said to himself, and wondered whether a man became a fool at fifty.
But was it folly to feel that you could give all that was good and clean in yourself to a woman like Norah? And if that was folly was not life a farce?
He let himself rush with a fierce swiftness through the cold, dry air, feeling that the sting of it was good. It seemed to brace up his spirit, and to enter into the very blood and marrow of his body. It was a challenge to his courage, and to the magnanimity that should come to a man when life has ceased to be a selfish scramble.
“Cannot one desire the good for others as well as for one’s self?”
At dinner, sitting at his little table in a corner of the salle-à-manger, he looked across at Norah Burnside and tried to see in her the eternal woman breathed upon by the sacred spirit of life’s mystery. She was wearing a dress of old rose colour, and round her throat a necklace of rose sapphires set in silver. She seemed to glow. Her whole figure had a soft brilliance. And in a strange, sad way he was glad, for her happiness had an ethereal beauty. It seemed to transcend material things; it was as exquisite as light upon a flower.
Afterwards he noticed that she kept for him a seat in the corner of the little lounge. The châlet was a sociable place, and sometimes they would push back the tables in the salle-à-manger, turn on the gramophone and dance. They danced that night. The two Rendall girls and young Fisher, and a colonel man on leave from India made up the other couples.
Landon was a diffident dancer, and that night he was more shy and self-conscious than usual. Her happiness breathed so near to him, and yet it was not his, and perhaps to-morrow night or some night soon her lover would come. Almost he could feel the presence of that other man in the room.
Sitting out in the lounge between a fox-trot and a waltz and while the young things were trying steps in the dining-room, he sought to find out something to say to her, something that would not sound banal or foolish.
“We must have some dancing when Sherwood comes.”
He thought the remark sufficiently idiotic when he had made it, but she accepted it like a naïf child.
“Would there be a train back to Blion?”
“I think so. The last one passes through here about half-past ten.”
“So he could come down to dinner and get back.”
“Easily.”
Yes; how easy it all seemed for the other fellow! And then he asked her a question that was half intimate and half perfunctory.
“Haven’t got a photo, have you?”
“Oh—yes.”
“May I see it?”
“Of course.”
She went up to her room and returned with a silver cigarette case in which she kept the picture of her lover.
“He’s rather a dear.”
And Landon sat studying the frank, and pleasant face of the man who was to be Norah’s second husband.
“You are lucky—both of you—I should say.”
“Thank you,” she said.
In a mountain train that pulled up for a few seconds at the Old Châlet halt Sherwood himself stood at the doorway of one of the blue coaches and looked at the lights of the little hotel. He was passing it like a ship in the night, and when the train moved on he sat at his window and watched the châlet lights disappear. His eyes smiled. He was thinking of to-morrow, and of the manner of his coming to her. He would put on his skis and glide down from Blion over the snow. He would surprise her.
He sat in his corner seat and reflected. He had had a long journey and was tired.
“No need to hurry to-morrow. I’ll spend the morning getting into form. It is two years since I had skis on. Then—in the afternoon—I’ll swoop. She’ll not be expecting me in that way. The unexpected’s—always rather delightful.”
Next day when the shutters were opened Norah looked out at an overcast sky. Coelestine had come in with the coffee.
“No sun, Coelestine?”
“It is going to snow, madame.”
“Oh, what a pity! Do we want more snow?”
“What the good God sends us, madame, we receive.”
The snow came. It was falling heavily before Norah had finished brushing her hair, a steady drift of big white flakes. The mountains were blotted out, and the pinewoods were grey and ghostly.
She was conscious of a feeling of disappointment and unrest. Going downstairs she found Landon in the lounge, sitting near a radiator, and reading yesterday’s paper. He felt the cold.
“No ski-ing to-day.”
He got up, offering her his chair.
“No—please——” she protested.
“Yes; it’s cosy by the radiator. We shall have to get out our jig-saw puzzles.”
She looked a little anxiously out of one of the long windows.
“It won’t stop the mountain trains?”
“No; not on this line.”
Later she put on a raincoat and her snow boots, and trudged down to the little station and waited for the train that passed through at eleven o’clock. The train did not stop, for there were no passengers for the Vieux Châlet, and she looked at the windows of the coaches, but saw no lover’s face. She met another train at three o’clock, and with no better fortune. She chided herself for feeling disappointed. Surely she was old enough to know that things happen when they happen?
As she walked back to the châlet the grey sky took on a silveriness. The snowflakes came less thickly, and she could see the dim peaks reappearing, and even a suggestion of blueness behind them. A light breeze sprang up, moving the snow-laden branches of the pines.
“To-morrow the sun will shine,” she thought, and went in to take off her snow boots.
She had tea in the lounge with Landon, and the two Rendall girls, and the colonel. The colonel, very much on leave, was teasing everybody, and trying to spread very cold butter on very dry toast. His knife made a scraping sound.
“Hallo! here’s the sun.”
It broke through just before sunset, and the light streamed in at the long windows. Norah got up to look at the great red sphere hanging above the white hills, and tinting the snow and the clouds with an almost miraculous radiance. She found Landon standing beside her. His thin face seemed to catch the light, and she thought how old and sad he looked.
“Wonderful, isn’t it?”
His blue eyes stared straight at the sun.
“A fine day to-morrow.”
Landon had a bedroom with two windows; one facing south, the other looking west towards the pinewoods and the great white slopes beyond them. He had undressed, and was about to turn off the light when it seemed to him that he heard some sound coming to him out of the night.
He stood and listened, his fingers on the switch, and again he seemed to hear that cry, faint and almost undistinguishable. He slipped into his dressing-gown, and going to the south window, opened it, and pushed back a shutter. The cold of the mountain night seemed to meet him like a sheet of icy glass. It was a windless and brittle cold. It made him cough slightly; but he managed to stifle the cough. He stood and listened. But not a sound came to him out of that white and frozen world.
“Must have imagined it,” he thought; “nobody would be out there at this hour.”
When he woke next morning the sun was shining, for he had left the shutters a-jar, and a shaft of light streamed in. He got up and threw
open the shutters, and saw a brilliant, white world, and a sky of cloudless blue, but the very beauty and the promise of the day provoked him to restlessness. It made him think of lovers, and of the youth of the world, and of all his lost moments.
He dressed and rang for his coffee and rolls. He decided that he would get away and out into the sunlight and the snow before the rest of the hotel came down to take its pleasure. He would go out alone, a long way, further than he had ever been before.
The lounge was empty when he went downstairs. He took his skis from the little room opening from the verandah where the luges and the skis were stored. He set out across a world of deepened snow, bearing towards the pinewoods whose boughs were more white than ever. He had reached the edge of the wood, and the shadows of the first scattered trees were patterning the snow, when he saw something, a figure, a face, a blue shape prone upon the snow. Involuntarily he stood still, staring, as rigid and motionless as the trees.
For there, in a patch of sunlight, a man lay with his chin resting on his crossed arms, his widely-open eyes looking down towards the Old Châlet, yet to Landon the figure had an unnatural stillness. He was conscious of a sense of impending horror.
“Hallo——!”
His own voice sounded cracked and harsh, and he felt a coldness down his spine, for those motionless eyes continued to watch the châlet. The figure made no movement.
Landon ploughed forward on his skis. The still face resting above the crossed arms seemed strangely familiar, and then he realized.
Sherwood! Her lover!
He found himself bending down to touch the man, and when he had touched him he withdrew his hand sharply with a little gasping cry.
“My God——!”
For Sherwood was stiff as ice, a dead man staring with dead eyes at the châlet.
Landon’s face looked all lined and yellow. He seemed to sag at the knees, and then the force of his manhood returned. How had the thing happened? This horrible and tragic thing! And then he saw that one of Sherwood’s legs looked all twisted, and that there was a piteous track in the snow.
Landon followed that track. It took him through the pinewood and up the white hillside, and there it ended in a flurry of snow, and a black boss of rock sticking up. Sherwood’s skis and sticks were lying here.
The Short Stories of Warwick Deeping Page 76
