Читать книгу The Kingdom of Earth - E. Phillips Oppenheim - Страница 4

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THEY sat side by side on one of the many seats which fringed the tiny lake high up among the mountains. The sun shone down upon them from a cloudless sky. A little band on the balcony played the liveliest of music. The people around laughed and talked and flirted. The hum of the skates upon the clear, black ice was a music in, itself. The man and the girl were perhaps the soberest couple there.

"You mean," she asked, breaking a silence which had; lasted for several minutes, "that you are going away at once?"

"I fear so," he answered. "Not only that, but I am going back into a different life. I wonder, can you realize what it means, when one comes to my age, to go back into a different life?"

"How old are you she asked.

"I am thirty-three," he answered. "I feel older, I believe that I look older. I am very sure that after a few years of the life that lies before me I shall never know what it is to feel young again."

"Is there any compulsion, then," she asked, "about your going?"

"There is the compulsion which pulls always at a man who tries to do what he believes is right," he answered. "For myself, I believed until a few hours ago that my life was my own, to do what I would with, to shape according to my pleasure. If I may, I will tell you this, that up here among the mountains there have come to me only lately ideas and hopes which were rapidly growing dear to me; and now all this is changed. Something has been thrust upon me which I cannot refuse to take, something which means the abnegation of many of my desires. I am called, perhaps, into a greater sphere of life than any I could reasonably have hoped to occupy, and yet—"

"And yet?" she whispered softly.

"If I could have had my own choice," he said, "there is another and a simpler road which I would have chosen toward happiness."

Then again there was silence between them. The girl waited, but he said no more. Then she rose and glanced toward the clock which hung from the little pavilion.

"Come," she said, "it will be time for luncheon in half an hour, and we have had only one waltz this morning. There goes the music."

They glided away, and the exercise soon brought back the colour to her cheeks. Every one watched them, for not only were they the most graceful performers, but they were interesting people. The girl, rich, half American, popular, and beautiful; the man, good-looking, absolutely distinguished, entirely mysterious. Only, at the hotel she was the friend of everybody, easily the most popular and sought-after person among either sex. He, on the contrary, affected reserve, lived in private rooms, and showed himself very seldom, except on his return from long skiing expeditions, or on the ice. They waltzed until the music stopped, and then stood together for a moment near the wooden steps.

"You are coming back to luncheon, at all events?" she asked.

He shook his head gravely and pointed outside, to where a sleigh with four horses, and laden with luggage, was waiting.

"I am posting to Maloya," he said. "I want, if I can, to catch the Engadine Express. I came down here because it was my only chance of saying good-bye to you."

She looked him full in the face. "It is to be good-bye, then?" she asked.

He answered her with the grave, uncompromising Puritanism which somehow or other she had always associated with him. "It is to be good-bye, Miss Pellisier," he said, holding her hand for a second in his.

A few moments later she heard the tinkle of his sleigh-bells as he rode away. A small crowd of men gathered round to help her off with her skates, and afterward she walked up to the hotel, the centre of a very lively party indeed; but when she got into her room she locked the door, and she was half an hour late for luncheon!