The Dark Tower Part 13

It was Claire who had managed the journey to Davos in the teeth of opposition; but it was Maurice who would have no other guide than Mr.

Roper, a splendid army coach picked up at a billiard room in a hotel.

Now that they were at Davos, Claire became a little doubtful if, after all, her uncle hadn't been right when he had declared that Bournemouth would have done as well and been far less expensive. Then Winn came, and she began mysteriously to feel that the situation was saved.

It wasn't that Winn looked in the least like General Gordon, but Mr.

Ponsonby had told her that he was a distinguished officer and shot tigers on foot.

Claire was quite surprised that Winn had been so nice to her, particularly as he hadn't appeared at all a friendly kind of person; but she became more and more convinced that Winn was a knight errant in disguise and had been sent by heaven to her direct a.s.sistance.

Claire believed very strongly in heaven. If you have no parents and very disagreeable relatives, heaven becomes extremely important. Claire didn't think it was at all the place her aunt and uncle vaguely held out to her as a kind of permanent and compulsory pew into which an angelic verger conducted the more respectable after death.

Everything Mr. and Mrs. Tighe considered the laws of G.o.d seemed to Claire unlikely to be the laws of anybody except people like Mr. and Mrs. Tighe; but she did believe that G.o.d looked after Maurice and herself, and she was anxious that He should look particularly after Maurice.

She determined that on the day she went to the Schatz Alp with Major Staines she would take him into her confidence. She could explain the position of women to him while they climbed the Rhuti-Weg; this would give them all of lunch for Maurice's future, and she hoped without direct calculations--because, although Claire generally had very strong purposes, she seldom had calculations--that perhaps if she was lucky he would tell her about tigers on the way down.

It was one of those mornings at Davos which seemed made out of fragrance and crystal. The sun soaked into the pines, the sky above the tree-tops burned like blue flame. It was the first time in Claire's life that she had gone out all by herself to lunch with a grown-up man. Winn was far more important than a mere boy, besides being a major.

She had been planning all the morning during her skating what arguments she should use to Winn on the subject of women, but when she saw him in the hall everything went out of her head. She only knew that it was a heavenly day and that it seemed extraordinarily difficult not to dance.

It was a long walk up to the Schatz Alp; there were paths where the pine-trees met overhead, garlanded with wreaths of snow, and the s.p.a.ces between the wreaths were as blue as love-in-a-mist, an old-fashioned flower that grows in English gardens. Claire pointed it out to Winn.

"Only," she said, "up here there isn't any mist, is there?"

"No," said Winn, looking at her in a curious way; "as far as I can see, there is none whatever. By the by, that particular flower you mention isn't only called love-in-a-mist, it's also called devil-in-a-bush."

"But that's a pity," said Claire, decisively. "I like the other name better."

She moved beside him with a buoyant, untiring step, without haste and without effort. He told her that he would like to take her up into the Himalayas. She would make a good climber. In his heart he knew there was no place on earth to which he wouldn't like to take her. She was born to be a man's comrade, observant, unexacting, level-headed. She was the kind of girl you wouldn't mind seeing in a tight place if you were there, of course, to get her out of it. Then he pulled himself up and told himself not to be fanciful.

It was rather a fanciful morning: the day and the snowy hillside and the endless, pungent sweetness of the sunny air were like a spell. He found he was telling Claire about the things he used to do when he was a boy.

He went on doing it because the adventures of the Staines family made her laugh.

He had not supposed that James, Charles, Isabella, Dolores, and he himself were particularly funny before, but he was delighted to discover their hidden gift. Claire wanted to hear everything about them, their ponies, their dogs, their sharp disgraces, and their more wonderful escapes and revenges; but she didn't want them to be punished, and Winn had to hasten over those frequent and usually protracted disasters.

They had the woods to themselves; there was no sound at all except the occasional soft drop of melting snow. Once they stood quite still holding their breath to watch the squirrels skim from tree to tree as if they were weaving the measures of a mystic dance. If it hadn't been for the squirrels they might have been the only creatures alive in all the silent, sparkling earth.

The mountains spread out around them with the reticent hush of interrupted consciousness. They seemed to be on the verge of further revelations, and were withheld from a last definite whisper only by the intrusion of humanity.

"I know they could speak if they liked," Claire murmured. "What do you suppose they'd say?"

"Let's have an avalanche and knock the silly blighters out of our valley for good and all," Winn suggested.

Claire disposed of Davos with a wave of her hand.

"But they don't mind us, do they?" she urged. "Because we're so happy and we like them so. Doesn't the air make you feel awfully funny and happy?"

"Yes," Winn admitted; "but it's not all the air, you know."

Claire wanted to know what else it was; but as Winn didn't offer to explain, she felt that perhaps she had better not ask.

They were near the top when Winn paused suddenly and said in a most peculiar reluctant voice; "Look here, I think I ought to tell you."

He stumbled over the words and then added, "No, by Jove, that won't do!"

"Oh, don't let's tell each other things we ought!" Claire entreated.

"It's not the kind of morning for that. I meant to talk about lots of really important subjects, but I'm not going to now. I may later, of course; but just now I don't feel in the mood for being important."

Winn looked at her very hard, and then he said:

"But still you are rather important, you know."

"Then," she laughed, "I'm important enough to have my own way, aren't I?"

Winn said nothing. He seemed to acquiesce that she was important enough for that.

"Would you like to know," she asked, "what I'd really like for lunch?"

Winn said he would awfully, and by the time she had told him they had reached the top, and the funicular appeared, disgorging people in front of a big gla.s.s-covered restaurant.

Winn found the best and quietest table with the finest view. From it they could see the valley down to Frauenkirch and up to Clavedel.

It was a splendid lunch, curiously good, with sparkling sweet wine, which Claire loved, and Winn, secretly loathing, serenely shared because of a silly feeling he had that he must take what she did.

After lunch they sat and smoked, leaning over the great clear view. They could hear the distant velvety boom of the village clock beneath them.

Winn gripped his hand firmly on the table.

"I've got to d.a.m.ned well do it," he said to himself. He remembered that he had had once to shoot a spy in cold blood, and that he used those words to himself before he did it.

A couple pa.s.sed close to their table. The woman was over-dressed, and hung with all kinds of jingling chains and bangles; she was pretty, and as she sat with her profile turned a little toward them she was curiously like Estelle. This was his opportunity. It must come now; all the morning it had lain in the back of his mind, behind delight, behind their laughter, like some lurking jungle creature waiting for the dark.

"Do you see that woman," he asked Claire, "the pretty one over there by the pillar? She's awfully like--"

Claire stopped him. "Pretty!" she cried. "Do you really think she's pretty? I think she's simply loathsome!"

Winn checked himself hurriedly; he obviously couldn't finish his sentence with "she's awfully like my wife."

"Well, she sets out to be pretty, doesn't she?" he altered it rather lamely. Claire continued extremely scornful.

"Yes, I dare say," she admitted. "She may set out to be smart too, hung round with things like a Christmas-tree, but she's as common as a sixpenny bazaar. I'll tell you why I don't like her, Major Staines, and who she reminds me of, but perhaps you think her pretty, too? I mean that horrid woman, Mrs. Bouncing in our hotel?"

"But can't horrid women be pretty, too?" Winn ventured with meekness.

"No, of course not," said Claire, with great decisiveness. "Why, you know horrid men can't be handsome. Look at Mr. Roper!" Winn was uncertain if this point of knowledge had ever reached him; but he wasn't at this time of day going to look at Mr. Roper, so he gave in.

"I dare say you're right," he said. "As a matter of fact, you know, I never _do_ look at Roper."

"But that's not the reason," Claire went on, slightly softened by her victory, "that I dislike her. I really dislike her because I think she is bad for Maurice; but perhaps you haven't noticed the way he keeps hanging about her. It makes me sick."

Winn admitted that he had noticed it.

"Still," he said, "of course if you hadn't proved to me that by being horrid she couldn't be pretty, I should have supposed that he simply hung about Mrs. Bouncing because she was--well, not precisely plain."