“AND this friend of your father’s? You have not heard from her yet?”
Jean and Madame de Varigny were breakfasting together the morning after Peterson’s departure.
“No. I hoped a letter might have come for me by this morning’s post. But I’m afraid I shall be on your hands a day or two longer”—smiling.
“But it is a pleasure!” Madame de Varigny reassured her warmly. “My husband and I are here for another week yet. After that we go on to St. Moritz. He is suddenly discontented with Montavan. If, by any chance, you have not then heard from Lady—Lady—I forget the name——”
“Lady Anne Brennan,” supplied Jean.
A curiously concentrated expression seemed to flit for an instant across Madame de Varigny’s face, but she continued smoothly:
“Mais, oui—Lady Brennan.Eh bien, if you have not heard from her by the time we leave for St. Moritz, you must come with us. It would add greatly to our pleasure.”
“It’s very good of you,” replied Jean. She felt frankly grateful for the suggestion, realising that if, by any mischance, the letter should be delayed till then, Madame de Varigny’s offer would considerably smooth her path. In spite of Glyn’s decision that she must join him in Paris, should Lady Anne’s invitation fail to materialise, she was well aware that he would not greet her appearance on the scene with any enthusiasm.
“I suppose”—the Countess was speaking again—“I suppose Brennan is a very frequent—a common name in England?”
The question was put quite casually, more as though for the sake of making conversation than anything else, yet Madame de Varigny seemed to await the answer with a curious anxiety.
“Oh, no,” Jean replied readily enough, “I don’t think it is a common name. Lady Anne married into a junior branch of the family, I believe,” she added.
“That would not be considered a very good match for a peer’s daughter, surely?” hazarded the Countess. “A junior branch? I suppose there was a romantic love-affair of some kind behind it?”
“It was Lady Anne’s second marriage. Her first husband was a Tormarin—one of the oldest families in England.” Jean spoke rather stiffly. There was something jarring about the pertinacious catechism.
Madame de Varigny’s lips trembled as she put her next question, and not even the dusky fringe of lashes could quite soften the sudden tense gleam in her eyes.
“Tor—ma—rin!” She pronounced the name with a French inflection, evidently finding the unusual English word a little beyond her powers. “What a curious name! That, I am sure, must be uncommon. And this Lady Anne—she has children—sons? No?”
“Oh, yes. She has two sons.”
“Indeed?” Madame de Varigny looked interested. “And what are the sons called?”
Jean regarded her with mild surprise. Apparently the subject of nomenclature had a peculiar fascination for her.
“I really forget. My father did once tell me, but I don’t recollect what he said.”
A perceptible shade of disappointment passed over the other’s face, then, as though realising that she had exhibited a rather uncalled-for curiosity, she said deprecatingly:
“I fear I seem intrusive. But I am so interested in your future—I have taken a great fancy to you, mademoiselle. That must be my excuse.” She rose from the table, adding smilingly: “At least you will not find it dull, since Lady Anne has two sons. They will he companions for you.”
Jean rose, too, and together they passed out of thesalle à manger.
“And what do you propose to do with yourself to-day?” asked the Countess, pausing in the hall. “My husband and I are going for a sleigh drive. Would you care to come with us? We should he delighted.”
Jean shook her head.
“It’s very kind of you. But I should really like to try my luck on the ice. I haven’t skated for some years, and as I feel a trifle shaky about beginning again, Monsieur Griolet, who directs the sports, has promised to coach me up a bit some time this morning.”
“Bon!” Madame de Varigny nodded pleasantly. “You will be well occupied while we are away. Au revoir, then, till our return. Perhaps we shall walk down to the rink later to witness your progress under Monsieur Groilet’s instruction.”
She smiled mischievously, the smile irradiating her face with a sudden charm. Jean felt as though, for a moment, she had glimpsed the woman the Countess might have been but for some happening in her life which had soured and embittered it, setting that strange implacability within the liquid depths of her soft, southern eyes.
She was still speculating on Madame de Varigny’s curious personality as she made her way along the beaten track that led towards the rink, and then, as a sudden turn of the way brought the sheet of ice suddenly into full view, all thoughts concerning the bunch of contradictions that goes to make up individual character were swept out of her mind.
In the glory of the morning sunlight the stretch of frozen water gleamed like a shield of burnished silver, whilst on its further side rose great pine-woods, mysteriously dark and silent, climbing the steeply rising ground towards the mountains.
There were a number of people skating, and Jean discovered Monsieur Griolet in the distance, supervising the practice of a pretty American girl who was cutting figures with an ease and exquisite balance of lithe body that hardly seemed to stand in need of the instructions he poured forth so volubly. Probably, Jean decided, the American had entered for some match and was being coached up to concert pitch accordingly.
She stood for a little time watching with interest the varied performances of the skaters. Bands of light-hearted young folk, indulging in the sport just for the sheer enjoyment of it, sped gaily by, broken snatches of their talk and laughter drifting back to her as they passed, whilst groups of more accomplished skaters performed intricate evolutions with an earnestness and intensity of purpose almost worthy of a better cause.
Jean felt herself a little stranded and forlorn. She would have liked someone to share her enthusiasm for the marvels achieved by the figure-skaters—and to laugh with her a little at their deadly seriousness and at the scraps of heated argument anent the various schools of technique which came to her, borne on the still, clear air.
Presently her attention was attracted by the solitary figure of a man who swept past her in the course of making a complete circle of the rink. He skimmed the ice with the free assurance of an expert, and as he passed, Jean caught a fleeting glimpse of a supple, sinewy figure, and of a lean, dark face, down-bent, with a cap crammed low on to the somewhat scowling brows.
There was something curiously distinctive about the man. Brief as was her vision of him, it possessed an odd definiteness—a vividness of impression that was rather startling.
He flashed by, his arms folded across his chest, moving with long, rhythmic strokes which soon carried him to the further side of the rink. Jean’s eyes followed him interestedly. He was unmistakably an Englishman, and he seemed to be as solitary as herself, but, unlike her, he appeared indifferent to the fact, absorbed in his own thoughts which, to judge by the sullen, brooding expression of his face, were not particularly pleasant ones.
Soon she lost sight of him amid the scattered groups of smoothly gliding figures. The scene reminded her of a cinema show. People darted suddenly into the picture, materialising in full detail in the space of a moment, then rushed out of it again, dwindling into insignificant black dots which merged themselves into the continuously shifting throng beyond.
At last she bent her steps towards the lower end of the rink, by common consent reserved for beginners in the art of skating. She had not skated for several years, owing to a severe strain which had left her with a weak ankle, and she felt somewhat nervous about starting again.
Rather slowly she fastened on her skates and ventured tentatively on to the ice. For a few minutes she suffered from a devastating feeling that her legs didn’t belong to her, and wished heartily that she had never quitted the safe security of the bank, but before long her confidence returned, and with it that flexible ease of balance which, once acquired, is never really lost.
In a short time she was thoroughly enjoying the rapid, effortless motion, and felt herself equal to steering a safe course beyond the narrow limits of the “Mugs’ Corner”—as that portion of the ice allotted to novices was unkindly dubbed.
She struck out for the middle of the rink, gradually increasing her speed and revelling in the sting of the keen, cold air against her face. Then, all at once, it seemed as though the solid surface gave way beneath her foot. She lurched forward, flung violently off her balance, and in the same moment the sharp clink of metal upon ice betrayed the cause. One of her skates, insecurely fastened, had come off.
She staggered wildly, and in another instant would have fallen had not someone, swift as a shadow, glided suddenly abreast of her and, slipping a supporting arm round her waist, skated smoothly beside her, little by little slackening their mutual pace until Jean, on one blade all this time, could stop without danger of falling.
As they glided to a standstill, she turned to offer her thanks and found herself looking straight into the lean, dark face of the Englishman who had passed her when she had been watching the skaters.
He lifted his cap, and as he stood for a moment bare-headed beside her, she noticed with a curious little shock—half surprised, half appreciative—that on the left temple his dark brown hair was streaked with a single pure white lock, as though a finger had been laid upon the hair and bleached it where it lay. It conferred a certain air of distinction—an added value of contrast—just as the sharp black shadow in a neutral-tinted picture gives sudden significance to the whole conception.
The stranger was regarding Jean with a flicker of amusement in his grey eyes.
“That was a near thing!” he observed.
Evidently he judged her to be a Frenchwoman, for he spoke in French—very fluently, but with an unmistakable English accent. Instinctively Jean, who all her life had been as frequently called upon to converse in French as English, responded in the same language.
She was breathing rather quickly, a little shaken by the suddenness of the incident, and his face took on a shade of concern.
“You’re not hurt, I hope? Did you twist your ankle?”
“No—oh, no,” she smiled up at him. “I can’t have fastened my skate on properly, and when it shot off like that I’m afraid I rather lost my head. You see,” she added explanatorily, “I haven’t skated for some years. And I was never very proficient.”
“I see,” he said gravely. “It was a little rash of you to start again quite alone, wasn’t it?”
“I suppose it was. However, as you luckily happened to be there to save me from the consequences, no harm is done. Thank you so much.”
There was a note of dismissal in her voice, but apparently he failed to notice it, for he held out his hands to her crosswise, saying:
“Let me help you to the bank, and then I’ll retrieve your errant skate for you.”
He so evidently expected her to comply with his suggestion that, almost without her own volition, she found herself moving with him towards the edge of the rink, her hands grasped in a close, steady clasp, and a moment later she was scrambling up the bank. Once more on level ground, she made a movement to withdraw her hands.
“I can manage quite well now,” she said rather nervously. There was something in that strong, firm grip of his which sent a curious tremor of consciousness through her.
He made no answer, but released her instantly, and in her anxiety to show him how well she could manage she hurried on, struck the tip of the skate she was still wearing against a little hummock of frozen snow, and all but fell. He caught her as she stumbled.
“I think.” he remarked drily, “you would do well to sacrifice your independence till your feet are on more equal terms with one another.”
Jean laughed ruefully.
“I think I should,” she agreed meekly.
He led her to where the prone trunk of a tree offered a seat of sorts, then went in search of the missing skate. Returning in a few moments, he knelt beside her and fastened it on—securely this time—to the slender foot she extended towards him.
“You’re much too incompetent to be out on the ice alone,” he remarked as he buckled the last strap.
A faint flush of annoyance rose in Jean’s cheeks at the uncompromising frankness of the observation.
“What are your friends thinking of to let you do such a thing?” he pursued, blandly ignoring her mute indignation.
“I have no friends here. I am—my own mistress,” she replied rather tartly.
He was still kneeling in the snow in front of her. Now he sat back on his heels and subjected her face to a sharp, swift scrutiny. Almost, she thought, she detected a sudden veiled suspicion in the keen glance.
“You’re not the sort of girl to be knocking about—alone—at a hotel,” he said at last, as though satisfied.
“How do you know what I’m like?” she retorted quickly, “You are hardly qualified to judge.”
“Pardon, mademoiselle, I do not know what you are—but I do know very certainly what you are not. And”—smiling a little—“I think we have just had ocular demonstration of the fact that you’re not accustomed to fending for yourself.”
There was something singularly attractive about his smile. It lightened his whole face, contradicting the settled gravity that seemed habitual to it, and Jean found herself smiling back in response.
“Well, as a matter of fact, I’m not,” she admitted. “I came here with my father, and he was—was suddenly called away. I am going on to stay with friends.”
“This is my last day here,” he remarked with sudden irrelevance. “I am off first thing to-morrow morning.”
“You’re not stopping at the hotel, are you?”
He shook his head.
“No. I’m staying at a friend’s chalet a little way beyond it.Mais, voyons, mademoiselle, you will catch cold sitting there. Are you too frightened to try the ice again?”
He seemed to assume that her next essay would be made in his company. Jean spoke a little hurriedly.
“Oh, no, I was supposed to have a lesson with Monsieur Griolet this morning. He is an instructor,” she explained. “But he was engaged coaching someone else when I came out.”
“And which is this Monsieur Griolet? Can you see him?”
Jean’s glance ranged over the scattered figures on the rink.
“Yes. There he is.”
His eyes followed the direction indicated.
“He seems to be well occupied at the moment,” he commented. “Suppose—would you allow me to act as coach instead?”
She hesitated. This stranger appeared to be uncompromisingly progressive in his tendencies.
“I’m perfectly capable,” he added curtly.
“I’m sure of that. But——”
His eyes twinkled. “But it would not be quitecomme il faut?Is that it?”
“Well, it wouldn’t, would it?” she retaliated.
His face grew suddenly grave, and she noticed that when in repose there were deep, straight lines on either side of his mouth—lines that are usually only furrowed by severe suffering, either mental or physical.
“Mademoiselle,” he said quietly. “To-day, it seems, we are two very lonely people. Couldn’t we forget what iscomme il fautfor once? We shall probably never meet again. We know nothing of each other—just ‘ships that pass in the night.’ Let us keep one another company—take this one day together.”
He drew a step nearer to her.
“Will you?” he said. “Will you?”
He was looking down at her with eyes that were curiously bright and compelling. There was a tense note in his voice which once again sent that disconcerting tremor of consciousness tingling through her blood.
She knew that his proposal was impertinent, unconventional, even regarded from the standpoint of the modern broad interpretation of the word convention, and that by every law of Mrs. Grundy she ought to snub him soundly for his presumption and retrace her steps to the hotel with all the dignity at her command.
But she did none of these things. Instead, she stood hesitating, alternately flushing and paling beneath the oddly concentrated gaze he bent on her.
“I swear it shall bind you to nothing,” he pursued urgently. “Not even to recognising me in the street should our ways ever chance to cross again. Though that is hardly likely to occur”—with a shrug—“seeing that mademoiselle is French and that I am rarely out of England. It will be just one day that we shall have shared together out of the whole of life, and after that the ‘darkness again and a silence.’.... I can promise you the ‘silence’!” he added with a sudden harsh inflection.
It was that bitter note which won the day. In some subtle, subconscious way Jean sensed the pain which lay at the back of it. She answered impulsively:
“Very well. It shall be as you wish.”
A rarely sweet smile curved the man’s grave lips.
“Thank you,” he said simply.
“ENCOREune fois!Bravo! That went better!” Monsieur Griolet’s understudy had amply justified his claim to capability. After a morning’s tuition at his hands, Jean found her prowess in the art of skating considerably enhanced. She was even beginning to master the mysteries of “cross-cuts” and “rocking turns,” and a somewhat attenuated figure eight lay freshly scored on the ice to her credit.
“You are really a wonderful instructor,” she acknowledged, surveying the graven witness to her progress with considerable satisfaction.
Her self-appointed teacher smiled.
“There is something to be said for the pupil, also,” he replied. “But now”—glancing at his watch—“I vote we call a halt for lunch.”
“Lunch!” Jean’s glance measured the distance to the hotel with some dismay.
“But not lunch at the hotel,” interposed her companion quickly.
Jean regarded him with curiosity.
“Where then, monsieur?”
“Up there!” he pointed towards the pine-woods. “Above the woods there is a hut of sorts—erected as a shelter in case of sudden storms for people coming up from the lower valley to Montavan and beyond. It’s a rough little shanty, but it would serve very well as a temporary salle à manger. It isn’t a long climb,” he added persuasively. “Are you too tired to take it on after your recent exertion?”
“Not in the least. But are you expecting a wayside refuge of that description to be miraculously endowed with a well-furnished larder?”
“No. But I think my knapsack can make good the deficiency.” he replied composedly.
Jean looked at him with dancing eyes. Having once yielded to the day’s unconventional adventure, she had surrendered herself whole-heartedly to the enjoyment of it.
She made one reservation, however. Some instinct of self-protection prevented her from enlightening her companion as to her partly English nationality. There was no real necessity for it, seeing that he spoke French with the utmost fluency, and his assumption that she was a Frenchwoman seemed in some way to limit the feeling of intimacy, conferring on her, as it were, a little of the freedom of an incognito.
“A la bonne heure!” she exclaimed gaily. “So you invite me to share your lunch,monsieur le professeur?”
“I’ve invited you to share my day, haven’t I?” he replied, smiling.
They steered for the bank, and when he had helped off her skates and removed his own, slinging them over his arm, they started off along the steep white track which wound its way upwards through the pine-woods.
As they left the bright sunlight that still glittered on the snowy slopes behind them, it seemed as though they plunged suddenly into another world—a still, mysterious, twilit place, where the snow underfoot muffled the sound of their steps and the long shadows of the pines barred their path with sinister, distorted shapes.
Jean, always sensitive to her surroundings, shivered a little.
“It’s rather eerie, isn’t it?” she said. “It’s just as if someone had suddenly turned the lights out.”
“Quite a nice bit of symbolism,” he returned enigmatically.
“How? I don’t think I understand.”
He laughed a little.
“How should you? You’re young. Fate doesn’t come along and snuff out the lights for you when you are—what shall we say? Eighteen?”
“You’re two years out,” replied Jean composedly.
“As much? Then let’s hope you’ll have so much the longer to wait before Madame Destiny comes round with her snuffers.”
He spoke with a kind of bitter humour, the backwash, surely, of some storm through which he must have passed. Jean looked across at him with a vague trouble in her face.
“Then, do you think”—she spoke uncertainly—“do you believe it is inevitable that she will come—sooner or later?”
“I hope not—to you,” he said gently. “But she comes to most of us.”
She longed to put another question, but there was a note of finality in his voice—a kind of “thus far shalt thou come and no further”—that warned her to probe no deeper. Whatever it was of bitterness that lay in the Englishman’s past, he had no intention of sharing the knowledge with his chance companion of a day. He seemed to have become absorbed once more in his own thoughts, and for a time they tramped along together in silence.
The ascent steepened perceptibly, and Jean, light and active as she was, found it hard work to keep pace with the man’s steady, swinging stride. Apparently his thoughts engrossed him to the exclusion of everything else, for he appeared to have utterly forgotten her existence. It was only when a slip of her foot on the beaten surface of the snow wrung a quick exclamation from her that he paused, wheeling round in consternation.
“I beg your pardon! I’m walking you off your legs! Why on earth didn’t you stop me?”
There was something irresistibly boyish about the quick apology. Jean laughed, a little breathless from the swift climb uphill.
“You seemed so bent on getting to the top in the least possible time,” she replied demurely, “that I didn’t like to disappoint you.”
“I’m afraid I make a poor sort of guide,” he admitted. “I was thinking of something else. You must forgive me.”
They resumed their climb more leisurely. The trees were thinning a bit now, and ahead, between the tall, straight trunks winged with drooping, snow-laden branches, they could catch glimpses of the white world beyond.
Presently they came out above the pine-wood on to the edge of a broad plateau and Jean uttered an exclamation of delight, gazing spell-bound at the scene thus suddenly unfolded.
Behind them, in the pine-ringed valley, a frozen reach of water gleamed like a dull sheet of metal, whilst before them, far above, stretched the great chain of mountains, pinnacle after pinnacle, capped with snow, thrusting up into the cloud-swept sky. Through rifts in the cloud—almost, it seemed, torn in the breast of heaven by those towering peaks—the sunlight slanted in long shafts, chequering the snows with shimmering patches of pale gold.
“It was worth the climb, then?”
The Englishman, his gaze on Jean’s rapt face, broke the silence abruptly. She turned to him, radiant-eyed.
“It’s so beautiful that it makes one’s heart ache!” she exclaimed, laying her hand on her breast with the little foreign turn of gesture she derived from her French ancestry.
She said no more, but remained very still, drinking in the sheer loveliness of the scene.
The man regarded her quietly as she stood there silhouetted against the skyline, her slim, brown-clad figure striking a warm note amid the chill Alpine whites and greys. Her face was slightly tilted, and as the sunshine glinted on her hair and eyes, waking the russet lights that slumbered in them, there was something vividly arresting about her—a splendour of ardent youth which brought a somewhat wistful expression into the rather weary eyes of the man watching her.
His thought travelled hack to the brief snatch of conversation evoked by the sudden gloom of the pine-woods. Surely, for once, Fate would lay aside her snuffers and let this young, eager life pass by unshadowed!
Even as the thought took shape in his mind, Jean turned to him again, her face still radiant, “Thank you for bringing me up here,” she said simply. “It has been perfect.”
She stretched out her hand, and he took it and held it in his for a moment.
“I’m glad you’ve liked it,” he answered quietly. “It will always be a part of our day together—the day we stole fromles convenances”—he smiled whimsically. “And now, if you can bring yourself back to more prosaic matters, I suggest we have lunch. Scenery, however fine, isn’t exactly calculated to sustain life.”
“Most material person!” She laughed up at him. “I suppose you think a ham sandwich worth all the scenery in the world?”
“I’ll admit to a preference for the sandwich at the moment,” he acknowledged. “Come, now, confess! Aren’t you hungry, too?”
“Starving! This air makes me feel as if I’d never had anything to eat in my life before!”
“Well, then, come and inspect mysalle à manger.”
The proposed refuge proved to be a roughly constructed little hut—hardly more than a shed provided with a door and thick-paned window, its only furniture a wooden bench and table. But that it had served its purpose as a kind of “travellers’ rest” was proved by the fragments of appreciation, both in prose and verse, that were to be found inscribed in a species of “Visitors’ Book” which lay on the table, carefully preserved from damp in a strong metal box. Jean amused herself by perusing the various contributions to its pages while the Englishman unpacked the contents of his knapsack.
The lunch that followed was a merry little meal, the two conversing with a happy intimacy and freedom from reserve based on the reassuring knowledge that they would, in all probability, never meet again. Afterwards, they bent their energies to concerting a suitable inscription for insertion in the “Visitors’ Book,” squabbling like a couple of children over the particular form it should take.
So absorbed were they in the discussion that they failed to notice the perceptible cooling of the temperature. The sun no longer warmed the roofing of the hut, and there was a desolate note in the sudden gusts of wind which shook the door at frequent intervals as though trying to attract the attention of those within. Presently a louder rattle than usual, coincident with a chance pause in the conversation, roused them effectually.
The Englishman’s keen glance flashed to the little window, through which was visible a dancing, whirling blur of white.
“Great Scott!” he exclaimed in good round English. “It’s snowing like the very dickens!”
In two strides he had reached the door, and, throwing it open, peered out. A draught of icy air rushed into the hut, accompanied by a flurry of fine snow driven on the wind.
When he turned back, his face had assumed a sudden look of gravity.
“We must go at once,” he said, speaking in French again and apparently unconscious of his momentary lapse into his native tongue. “If we don’t, we shan’t be able to get back at all. The snow drifts quickly in the valley. Half an hour more of this and we shouldn’t be able to get through.”
Jean thrust the Visitors’ Book back into its box, and began hastily repacking her companion’s, knapsack, but he stopped her almost roughly.
“Never mind that. Fasten that fur thing closer round your throat and come on. There’s no taking chances in a blizzard like this. Don’t you understand?”—almost roughly. “If we waste time we may have to spend the night here.”
Impelled by the sudden urgency of his tones, Jean followed him swiftly out of the hut, and the wind, as though baulked by her haste, snatched the door from her grasp and drove it to with a menacing thud behind them.
AS Jean stepped outside the hut it seemed as though she had walked straight into the heart of the storm. The bitter, ice-laden blast that bore down from the mountains caught away her breath, the fine driving flakes, crystal-hard, whipped her face, almost blinding her with the fury of their onslaught, whilst her feet slipped and slid on the newly fallen snow as she trudged along beside the Englishman.
“This is a good preparation for a dance!” she gasped breathlessly, forcing her chilled lips to a smile.
“For a dance? What dance?”
“There’s a fancy dress ball at the hotel to-night. There won’t be—much of me—left to dance, will there?”
The Englishman laughed suddenly.
“My chief concern is to get you back to the hotel—alive,” he observed grimly.
Jean looked at him quickly.
“Is it as bad as that?” she asked more soberly.
“No. At least I hope not. I didn’t mean to frighten you”—hastily. “Only it seemed a trifle incongruous to be contemplating a dance when we may be struggling through several feet of snow in half an hour.”
The fierce gusts of wind, lashing the snow about them in bewildering eddies, made conversation difficult, and they pushed on in a silence broken only by an occasional word of encouragement from the Englishman.
“All right?” he queried once, as Jean paused, battered and spent with the fury of the storm.
She nodded speechlessly. She had no breath left to answer, but once again her lips curved in a plucky little smile. A fresh onslaught of the wind forced them onwards, and she staggered a little as it blustered by.
“Here,” he said quickly. “Take my arm. It will be better when we get into the pine-wood. The trees there will give us some protection.”
They struggled forward again, arm in arm. The swirling snow had blotted out the distant mountains; lowering storm-filled clouds made a grey twilight of the day, through which they could just discern ahead the vague, formless darkness of the pine-wood.
Another ten minutes walking brought them to it, only to find that the blunted edge of the storm was almost counterbalanced by the added difficulties of the surrounding gloom. High up overhead they could hear the ominous creak and swing of great branches shaken like toys in the wind, and now and again the sharper crack of some limb wrenched violently from its parent trunk. Once there came the echoing crash of a tree torn up bodily and flung to earth.
“It’s worse here,” declared Jean, “I think”—with a nervous laugh—“I think I’d rather die in the open!”
“It might be preferable. Only you’re not going to die at all, if I can help it,” the Englishman returned composedly.
But, cool though he appeared, he experienced a thrill of keen anxiety as they emerged from the pine-wood and his quick eyes scanned the dangerously rapid drifting of the snow.
The wind was racing down the valley now, driving the snow before it and piling it up, inch by inch, foot by foot, against the steep ground which skirted the sheet of ice where they had been skating but a few hours before.
Through the pitiless beating of the snow Jean strove to read her companion’s face. It was grim and set, the lean jaw thrust out a little and the grey eyes tense and concentrated.
“Can we get through?” she asked, raising her voice so that it might carry against the wind.
“If we can get through the drifted snow between here and the track on the left, we’re all right,” answered the man.
“The wind’s slanting across the valley and there’ll be no drifts on the further side. I wish I’d got a bit of rope with me.”
He felt in his pockets, finally producing the rolled-up strap of a suit-case.
“That’s all I have,” he said discontentedly.
“What’s it for?”
“It’s to go round your waist. I don’t want to lose you”—smiling briefly—“if you should stumble into deep snow.”
“Deep snow? But it’s only been snowing an hour or so!” she objected.
“Evidently you don’t know what a blizzard can accomplish in the way of drifting during the course of an ‘hour or so.’ I do.”
Deftly he fastened the strap round her waist, and, taking the loose end, gave it a double turn about his wrist before gripping it firmly in his hand.
“Now, keep close behind me. Regard me”—laughing shortly—“as a snow-plough. And if I go down deep rather suddenly, throw your weight backward as much as you can.”
He moved forward, advancing cautiously. He was badly handicapped by the lack of even a stick with which to gauge the depth of drifting snow in front of him, and he tested each step before trusting his full weight to the delusive, innocent-looking surface.
Jean went forward steadily beside him, a little to the rear. The snow was everywhere considerably more than ankle-deep, and at each step she could feel that the slope of the ground increased and with it the depth of the drift through which they toiled.
The cold was intense. The icy fingers of the snow about her feet seemed to creep upward and upward till her whole body felt numbed and dead, and as she stumbled along in the Englishman’s wake, buffeted and beaten by the storm, her feet ached as if leaden weights were attached to them.
But she struggled on pluckily. The man in front of her was taking the brunt of the hardship, cutting a path for her, as it were, with his own body as he forged ahead, and she was determined not to add to his work by putting any weight on the strap which bound them together.
All at once he gave a sharp exclamation and pulled up abruptly.
“It’s getting much deeper,” he called out, turning back to her. “You’ll never get through, hampered with your skirts. I’m going to carry you.”
Jean shook her head, and shouted back:
“Youwouldn’t get through, handicapped like that. No, let’s push on as we are. I’ll manage somehow.”
A glint of something like admiration flickered in his eyes.
“Game little devil!” he muttered. But the wind caught up the words, and Jean did not hear them. He raised his voice again, releasing the strap from his wrist as he spoke.
“You’ll do what I tell you. It’s only a matter of getting through this bit of drift, and we’ll be out of the worst of it. Put your arms round my neck.” Then, as she hesitated: “Do you hear? Put your arms round my neck—quick!”
The dominant ring in his voice impelled her. Obediently she clasped her arms about his neck as he stooped, and the next moment she felt herself swung upward, almost as easily as a child, and firmly held in the embrace of arms like steel.
For a few yards he made good progress, thrusting his way through the yielding snow. But the task of carrying a young woman of average height and weight is no light one, even to a strong man and without the added difficulty of plunging through snow that yields treacherously at every step, and Jean could guess the strain entailed upon him by the double burden.
“Oh, do put me down!” she urged him. “I’m sure I can walk it—really I am.”
He halted for a moment.
“Look down!” he said. “Think you could travel in that?”
The snow was up to his knees, above them whenever the ground hollowed suddenly.
“But you?” she protested unhappily. “You’ll—you’ll simply kill yourself!”
“Small loss if I do! But as that would hardly help you out of your difficulties, I’ve no intention of giving up the ghost just at present.”
He started on again, pressing forward slowly and determinedly, but it was only with great difficulty and exertion that he was able to make headway. Jean, her cheek against the rough tweed of his coat, could hear the labouring beats of his heart as the depth of the snow increased.
“How much further?” she whispered.
“Not far,” he answered briefly, husbanding his breath.
A few more steps. They were both silent now. Jean’s eyes sought his face. It was ashen, and even in that bitter cold beads of sweat were running down it; he was nearing the end of his tether. She could bear it no longer. She stirred restlessly in his arms.
“Put me down,” she cried imploringly. “Pleaseput me down.”
But he shook his head.
“Keep still, can’t you?” he muttered between his teeth. She felt his arms tighten round her.
The next moment he stumbled heavily against some surface root or boulder, concealed beneath the snow, and pitched forward, and in the same instant Jean felt herself sinking down, down into a soft bed of something that yielded resistlessly to her weight. Then came a violent jerk and jar, as though she had been seized suddenly round the waist, and the sensation of sinking ceased abruptly.
She lay quite still where she had fallen and, looking upwards, found herself staring straight into the eyes of the Englishman. He was lying flat on his face, on ground a little above the snow-filled hollow into which his fall had flung her, his hand grasping the strap which was fastened round her body. He had caught the flying end of it as they fell, and thus saved her from sinking into seven or eight feet of snow.
“Are you hurt?”
His voice came to her roughened with fierce anxiety.
“No. I’m not hurt. Only don’t leave go of your end of the strap!”
“Thank God!” she heard him mutter. Then, aloud, reassuringly: “I’ve got my end of it all right. How, can you catch hold of the strap and raise yourself a little so that I can reach you?”
Jean obeyed. A minute later she felt his arms about her shoulders, underneath her armpits, and then very slowly, but with a sure strength that took from her all sense of fear, he drew her safely up beside him on to the high ground.
Eor a moment they both rested quietly, recovering their breath. The Englishman seemed glad of the respite, and Jean noticed with concern the rather drawn look of his face. She thought he must be more played out than he cared to acknowledge.
Across the silence of sheer fatigue their eyes met—Jean’s filled with a wistful solicitude as unconscious and candid as a child’s, the man’s curiously brilliant and inscrutable—and in a moment the silence had become something other, different, charged with emotional significance, the revealing silence which falls suddenly between a man and woman.
At last:
“This is what comes of stealing a day from Mrs. Grundy,” commented the man drily.
And the tension was broken.
He sprang up, as though, anxious to maintain the recovered atmosphere of the commonplace.
“Come! Having shot her bolt and tried ineffectually to down you in a ditch, I expect the old lady will let us get home safely now. We’re through the worst. There are no more drifts between here and the hotel.”
It was true. Anything that might have spelt danger was past, and it only remained to follow the beaten track up to the hotel, though even so, with the wind and snow driving in their faces, it took them a good half-hour to accomplish the task.
Monsieur and Madame de Varigny, a distractedmaître d’hôtel, and a little crowd of interested and sympathetic visitors welcomed their arrival.
“Mon dieu, mademoiselle!But we rejoice to see you back!” exclaimed Madame de Varigny. “We ourselves are only newly returned—and that, with difficulty, through this terrible storm—and we arrive to find that none knows where you are!”
“Me, I made sure that mademoiselle had accompaniedMadame la Comtesse.” asseverated Monsieur Vautrinot, nervously anxious to exculpate himself from any charge of carelessness.
“We were just going to organise a search-party,” added the little Count. “I, myself”—stoutly—“should have joined in the search.”
Weary as she was, Jean could hardly refrain from smiling at the idea of the diminutive Count in the rôle of gallant preserver. He would have been considerably less well-qualified even than herself to cope with the drifting snow through which the sheer, dogged strength of the Englishman had brought her safely.
Instinctively she turned with the intention of effecting an introduction between the latter and the Varignys, only to find that he had disappeared. He had taken the opportunity presented by the little ferment of excitement which had greeted her safe return to slip away.
She felt oddly disconcerted. And yet, she reflected, it was so like him—so like the conception of him which she had formed, at least—to evade both her thanks and the enthusiasm with which a recital of the afternoon’s adventure Would have been received.