“I don’t know. Sometime in the middle of the afternoon. She was at the piano and then she just got up without finishing what she was playing and she said she was going for a walk and went out.”
“I see,” Courtney said thoughtfully, and stood there in silence.
“What’s happened, daddy?” Virginia asked shrilly. “Do you think something’s happened to mother?”
“No, I don’t, Vee. Now, let’s go into the living room where it’s warmer. It’s too cold for Connie out here. Mother isn’t expected to account to us for every minute of her time, you know. She’s probably just been detained somewhere.”
As they went into the living room the phone began to ring. Mimi turned to dump Connie into one of the plush chairs and run to answer it, but Courtney stopped her with a sharp, “Please stay where you are, Mimi. I will be the one to run to the phone for a change.”
In the small, closed-in living room with the spider chandelier hovering above their heads, they stood listening, scarcely breathing in order not to lose Courtney’s low words.
“No, she’s not here.… No, I don’t know where she is. She went out this afternoon and she hasn’t come back.… No, she didn’t say.… I don’t know where she is either. She was here this afternoon and she didn’t seem well. She’d had too much to drink but she was ill, too, I thought.#8230; I don’t think she was looking for Emily. She seemed to have something she wanted to tell me but whatever it was she didn’t tell me.… I got worried about her later on and went up to the chalet to look for her.… There wasn’t anybody there but she’d left the phonograph running.… I checked at the casino and the Splendide but she wasn’t at either of them. She might be now, of course.… Have you tried Dr. Clément?… Okay, I’ll try the casino and the Splendide again.… Right, Abe, I’ll do that.”
When he came back into the living room Mimi asked, “Were you talking about Madame de Croisenois?”
“Yes, Mimi. Now I am sorry but I must leave you two girls in charge of Connie. Madame de Croisenois seems to have disappeared and I told Abe Fielding I’d join the search team by looking in the village. He and Kaarlo and some of the guides are going up the mountain. If by any chance she should come here please do your best simply to keep her, and one of you go up to the first ski tow where Pierre Balbec will be waiting and tell him. Understand?”
“Yes, daddy.”
“Yes, Mr. Bowen.”
As he left he touched Virginia’s head gently and for a moment from the security of the gesture the terror stopped throbbing in her throat. Mimi looked compassionately at her dilated eyes, but she herself could not keep back a pleasurable thrill of excitement.
“I wish I could go up the mountain with Monsieur Balbec and Mr. Fielding to help look.”
“Do you think she’s gone up the mountain?” Virginia asked.
“I don’t want mama to be up the mountain,” Connie said.
“Not mother, Con,” Virginia said quickly. “Madame de Croisenois.”
“But where’s mama? I want mama!”
“Yes,” Virginia said bitterly. “In all the excitement over Madame de Croisenois everyone seems to have forgotten mother. She’s lost, too.”
“Your mother can take care of herself,” Mimi said. “In any case I don’t think your father’s forgotten her.”
There was a knock at the door and with a wild glance at each other they ran pelting to answer it. But it was not Gertrude, or even Emily, it was Sam and Beanie, in ski clothes, their faces wet and raw from the damp wind.
“Come in, oh, come in,” Mimi said, pulling them in and shutting the door against the cold. “Have they found her?”
“Not yet,” Sam said, stamping snow off his boots. “Dad and Kaarlo and a group of guides have gone up the mountain, and Pierre and Dr. Clément are waiting by the ski tow. Where’re Mr. and Mrs. Bowen?”
“We don’t know where mother is,” Virginia said starkly, “and daddy’s gone into the village again to look for Madame de Croisenois.”
Her arms about Connie, Mimi said. “Take off your things. Come on in the other room.”
“We thought we’d go have a look in the village for her ourselves,” Beanie said. “You girls want to come along?”
Virginia looked quickly at Mimi. “Daddy left us in charge of Connie.”—Please, you mustn’t go with them and leave me here alone with Connie, her mind signalled wildly.
“Can’t you bring her along?” Sam said. “We’ll hold her hands and take good care of her.”
“Okay,” Virginia said after a moment. “Come on, Con. Let sister put your snow suit on.” If they went into the village they might run into Emily—coming from where?—and it would give her at least a feeling of doing something which would be better than the blank waiting in this hated house that was at the same time stifling and icy. In action, particularly in group action, there was a kind of comfort and safety.
Staying close together they went out into the dark. Virginia and Beanie each took Connie by a hand and her short, still-babyish legs slowed them on the icy path. Mimi and Sam went on ahead, occasionally pausing to wait until the other three came in sight, then going on again. Lights from the outlying houses threw warm golden rectangles against the snow, outlined the delicate branches here of a tree, there of a small stone lion sitting on a gatepost, snow drifted up to the pale paws that seemed curled up against it. Walking along with Sam, holding his hand, Mimi forgot for a moment why they were there, though she still kept her sense of excitement. But now the excitement was transferred to Sam, to his nearness, to his departure the next morning, and she said, turning towards him, “Sam, you’ve never kissed me.”
“I know I haven’t, Mimi,” Sam said.
“Why?”
For a moment Sam didn’t answer. Then he said quietly, “Because I don’t want to.”
It was to Mimi as though there were suddenly a change in temperature, in air pressure. After a moment she said, carefully keeping her voice light. “That’s a nice, crushing thing to say to a girl. Is it because I’m not attractive to you?”
“You know it isn’t,” Sam said. “As a matter of fact I thought of kissing you that night on the sleigh ride but I decided against it.” With no further explanation he lapsed into silence again.
“Well, that effectively kills, that conversation,” Mimi remarked. “At the risk of being slapped down again, am I wrong in thinking that you may have engineered Beanie’s date with Virginia so that we could have the sleigh ride together?”
“Not entirely wrong,” Sam said, “in that I did think about it very seriously. But after some of the things Beanie said, and the way Virginia, and all of us, feel about them, it hardly seemed fair to Virginia. But I must admit that when Beanie said he wanted to take Virginia out and asked me if I could take you off her hands for a few hours I jumped at the chance.”
“He has better taste than I credited him with,” Mimi said. “Good for little Vee.”
“And I do think he’s changing his way of thinking. Honestly I do. I’ve talked to him and I had dad talk to him. He’s still a first-class louse for my money, but maybe he has a chance of crawling out of it into something more resembling a human being.”
“Oh, sure,” Mimi said. “Anyhow I suppose one can learn to cohabit with rats as well as Russians.”
Sam grinned. “I think the word is coexist, but I get what you mean. It’s a funny thing, Mimi Opp. Here we all are, but tomorrow dad and I leave—whether they find Madame de Croisenois or not—and next year Virginia’ll be in Indiana and Beanie’ll be going back to Detroit and you’ll probably be in Paris and none of us will ever see each other again.”
“I know,” Mimi said, stopping. They were on the last dark stretch of path before turning in to the main street of the village. She looked back, but Virginia, Connie, and Beanie were not in sight. “That’s one reason why I—Sam, I want you to kiss me. Please. I’ve never had to ask before.”
“That’s just it,” Sam said, looking at the pale oval of her face
against the darkness of the evening. “Please don’t get me wrong, Mimi. If you were little, untouched Virginia I felt this way about, I probably would kiss you.”
“But what’s wrong with me?”
He took her hands in his. “I’m trying to explain. It’s because I want to keep what we have together, special. It’s because kissing has become something that’s too easy for you. When I kiss you I don’t want it to be just because you’re a girl who’s accustomed to kissing. I want it to be important. Do you see what I mean?”
Standing there in front of him she could not keep a hot tear from slipping out and trickling down her cheek. She bit her lip to control herself but suddenly she let out a loud, childlike sob which startled her as much as it did Sam. “I’m sorry,” she said as Sam looked at her in appalled silence. “I’m sorry,” she aplogized again, “but oh, Sam, everything’s so sad!”
“No, it isn’t,” he said, pulling her towards him and putting his arms about her protectingly, though it was he who could have rested his head on her shoulder. “Oh, no, it isn’t, Mimi. It’s the most tremendously exciting thing in the world, no matter what happens. Do you know what I believe? I’m going to kiss you someday. I don’t know where or when but it’s going to happen. We’re going to write each other but even if we stop, even if a lot of years go by and we forget each other, someday we’re going to meet again and we’re going to kiss each other. I believe it! Stop crying, Mimi, please stop. It’s not sad, I promise you it’s not!”
They were still standing holding each other when Virginia and Beanie, half-carrying Connie, caught up with them.—I’m tired of seeing people kissing in the snow, Virginia thought petulantly, too emotionally drained for anything but crossness, and not noticing that Sam and Mimi were, in fact, not kissing. They all started walking on again.
“Let’s look through one of the telescopes,” Beanie said. “If they have lights we might see something. Have you any change, Sam? I have a couple of francs at least to stick in the gadget.” As they drew up in front of the brasserie where the first of the telescopes stood he drew out a franc. “You can go first, Virginia.”
“No, go ahead,” Virginia said. “I’m no good at finding anything with them.”
“I want to look! I want a turn!” Connie cried.
“Let Beanie look,” Virginia said.
He put in the franc and squinted into the telescope. “I can’t see a thing. Nothing but snow.” He moved the telescope around on its stand, adjusting it. “Hey, I think I see a light! Look, Vee, right there to the left.”
Virginia put her eye to the telescope. “Where? Oh, there! I think I see it, too!” Then there was a click and she said, “Oh, what a gyp. It’s shut off. They don’t give you much time for a franc, do they?”
“Let me try,” Sam said. “Come on, Mimi,” but neither he nor Mimi could find the light Virginia and Beanie thought they had seen. Connie in her turn saw dozens of lights and was highly insulted because the others did not believe her.
“I’m Thursday,” she wailed. “I want some hot cocoa.”
They started walking again, Sam carrying Connie on his strong shoulders. Virginia said in a low voice to Mimi, “What are we doing out here? It’s just like a bad dream and we’re all running around in circles pretending things make sense when they really don’t.”
“We’re looking for Madame de Croisenois,” Mimi said. “That makes sense enough to me.”
“Why is everybody all upset about Madame de Croisenois and paying no attention to mother?”
“We all trust your mother,” Mimi said.
“And not Madame de Croisenois?”
Mimi hesitated. Then she said, “Not when she’s drunk.”
“Do you think that’s it, then?”
“Must be.”
“But why would she get lost? Why would she go up the mountain?”
“Why did you throw your father’s drink at the wall?”
“But that—”
“Why does anybody do anything?” Mimi asked impatiently. “Most of the time we don’t know—any of us.”
“Our philosopher,” Beanie said.
Mimi gave him a quick look, but his words were perfectly casual and friendly, and indeed he seemed to be trying in every way except directly apologizing to make up for the incident at the thé dansant.
They looked cursorily into Madame Berigot’s shop on the off chance that Gertrude might have gone in to buy cigarettes or a paper. As they came out a blast of wind beat at them, and Connie, atop Sam’s shoulders, began to whimper with the cold.
“This is awful weather for Madame de Croisenois to be out in. It’d be even worse on the mountain,” Mimi said. “Let’s just take a quick look in the Splendide and the casino and then we’d better take Connie home.”
They looked in the Splendide, in the boulangerie; they continued on down the street peering through steaming windows, through doors that let out quick rushes of warmth. Connie leaned heavily on Sam, drooping with sleep.
Then Virginia let out a cry, for there were Emily and Courtney coming around the bend of the street, caught by the wind and hurled towards the children.
“But we can’t just go back to the villa and wait!” Mimi protested.
“You can and you will,” Courtney said sternly. “All five of you. Virginia, you will please put Connie to bed and see that she goes to sleep.”
“But what are you going to do, daddy?”
“We’re going to the ski tow to see if Pierre has heard anything. The moment there is any news we will get word to you, I promise you.”
“Meanwhile,” Emily said, “Why don’t you make some cocoa? It might help Connie get to sleep. And then it would be a good idea if you’d make a good big pot of coffee and just have it ready.”
They left the reluctant children at the villa and went on up the path, climbing side by side. “If anything’s happened to Gertrude, and it very well may have, it’s best if the children don’t see her,” Courtney said. “Are you dressed warmly enough?”
“Yes, Are you?”
“Yes. Though this wind tonight would penetrate anything.”—Abe is up the mountain with the guides helping in the search. Pierre with his injured leg has to wait by the ski tow. And I—I was sent to tour the bars.
They walked in silence till they had passed the hotel gates. Then Courtney said, his voice rough, “Where were you going?”
Emily looked down at her feet in heavy ski boots pushing her forwards and upwards on the icy path. “Nowhere. I was just walking. How did you know where to find me?”
“I didn’t,” Courtney said. “I was looking for you.”
“To tell me about Gert?”
“Partly.” He shut his mouth closely and did not explain himself any further.
“Does Kaarlo really think she went up the mountain?”
“He seems to.”
“But why? Why?”
“Something must have upset her quite terribly,” Courtney said. “As I told you.”
“But on a night like this,” Emily said, “she could never—” and then stopped.
They were silent until they reached the nursery slopes where a small group was waiting by the ski tow. As they joined the fringes of the group Pierre Balbec looked at them and shook his head to indicate that there was no news as yet. No one was talking very much and all the faces were grave. The group consisted mostly of men from the village who knew Kaarlo and Gertrude and were waiting to see if they could be of any help, but there was also a smattering of tourists from the hotel or who had heard at the Splendide or the casino that a woman was lost on the mountain and were there out of thrill-seeking curiosity. Emily and Courtney stayed slightly apart, silent, waiting.
“Half the time on these rescue parties it’s someone else who gets hurt,” Courtney said once. “Damn Gertrude anyhow. Look what she’s caused by her selfishness.” His voice was low but quite violent, and Emily looked at him in surprise, but in the darkness his face was only a shadow.
&nbs
p; “How many men are out?” she asked.—Abe doesn’t know the mountains as well as the others, he’s not as skilled as they are, it’s terribly dangerous for him, Kaarlo shouldn’t have let him. Courtney’s right, it’s always someone else who gets hurt—
“About a dozen, counting Kaarlo and Abe, I should think. I should have realized this afternoon that she was in a desperate mood.”
“No, how could you?” she asked. “It’s Gert’s nature to seem desperate. When she’s upset she precipitates herself at life instead of retreating from it.”
He grabbed her then by both arms, his hands rough through her ski jacket. “And which is worse?” he demanded.
“What do you mean?”
“Damn you, Emily,” he said, “damn you,” half-dragging her away from the waiting group. He shook her furiously, his breath coming in short angry pants, crying again, “Damn you!” Then with equal violence he flung her from him so that she almost fell, and reached into his pocket (not the pocket that still held Gertrude’s brandy bottle), and pulled out his crampons and bent down to put them on.
“What are you doing?” Emily asked in a stifled voice.
“I’m going up the mountain after Gertrude.”
“No, Court, I shouldn’t have said—I didn’t mean—”
“You didn’t say anything.” He pushed off her restraining hand. “You didn’t put my crampons in my pocket, did you? I got them right after Abe called, before I went out. I’m going to Pierre to see what signals they’ve arranged.”
She did not follow him but stood there away from the cluster of people, watching Pierre gesticulating, Courtney simply shaking his head in a stubborn manner, and finally Pierre waving his arms wildly and then dropping them to his side, and Courtney moving off and upwards, not looking back towards her, crampons on his boots but his overcoat cumbersome and completely unsuited for climbing.
He moved quickly at first, climbing briskly across the frozen surface of the snow until he was out of sight of Emily, of Pierre, of the group of people waiting for news of Gertrude. There were no stars and the sky was heavy about him and the wind that moved harshly against his body seemed to be part of the sky. When he reached the pines he was in complete darkness and he had to move slowly, one arm held blindly ahead of him to fend off the trees that seemed to be moving towards him, converging upon him. A handful of cold needles brushed against his face, stinging him, making his eyes water.
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