Читать книгу Contango - James Hilton - Страница 4

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“Oh, dear, now it all begins again,” thought Miss Faulkner, scampering along the platform with her usual smile of sprightly welcome. She had a mixed collection of books and papers under her arm. She nearly always had. And she was nearly always smiling, or scampering, or both. The clanking carriages drew slowly in, pulled by an electric engine that stood at the far end ticking like an enormous clock. Faces appeared at windows—windows that bore the labels of an English travel organisation, and Miss Faulkner, still scampering, shouted out: “Hello, everybody—is the train early, or am I late?” which was the kind of remark which, in her estimation, put people at their ease immediately and helped them to begin a holiday in the right spirit.

The train was from Calais; its passengers had been travelling all night and the day before. The women looked heavy-eyed and bedraggled, the men were blue-chinned after two days without a shave. They came from the vague hinterlands of suburb and provinces, urged across eight hundred miles of land and water by an enterprise which was not their own, but that of a limited liability company working for profit and earning (in normal years) some fifteen per cent. This organisation, after the manner of its age, manufactured the demand which it afterwards proceeded to supply. Its brochures were superb examples of art-printing and chromo-lithography, and its well-known advertisement of a pretty girl smiling over the rail of a Channel steamer in excessively calm and sunny weather had been painted by a R. A. At the other end of the business, however, expenditure was less lavish. The usual practice was to charter a second-rate hotel for the season at such a price that its proprietors, to make any profit at all, had to supply inferior food. Another economical plan was to employ, instead of full-time guides and couriers, a semi- amateur staff of part-time workers, most of them school-teachers, who were willing to work during their summer holidays for very little more than pocket- money.

Miss Faulkner was one of these people. She was small-built, pert-faced, bright-eyed, and aged thirty-seven. Just the person for the job, most people said: by which they meant that her London Matriculation French was understood by foreign railway-porters who knew English, that she possessed a sheepdog aptitude for yapping (though pleasantly) at people’s heels till they had all climbed into the right vehicles, and that her smile was of the kind usually described as “infectious.”

“Ah, well, it’s a nice day, that’s something,” thought Miss Faulkner, marshalling the arrivals and seeing them installed in a couple of late-Victorian horse-omnibuses. “Yes, aren’t they sweet?” she said cheerfully. “I believe there’s some talk of putting them in the local museum.” People always laughed at that. She darted about, answering questions, giving orders, ticking names on a list, already memorising faces; really an exceptionally capable woman. And smiling all the time. A rather wide smile, showing good teeth, but (if one bothered to notice such things) a smile that did not cause much to happen to the rest of her face. “Yes, Mrs. Walsh, your bag will be all right—all the luggage is coming along afterwards,” she sang out; and Mrs. Walsh, a granitic matron who might otherwise have given trouble, was instantly captivated.

“We’ve been having it quite hot here lately,” continued Miss Faulkner, in the omnibus, launching the regulation chitchat about the weather. “And I see from the papers it’s been cold and rainy in England.... Yes, we get all the English papers here a day late.... There, that’s the Jungfrau—that big one over there. Rather fine, isn’t it?” And privately to herself she reflected: “I must write to George immediately after lunch, or I shall never get a chance.”...

Just as the horses turned out of Interlaken’s main thoroughfare into the side-street leading to the hotel, a man stepped off the kerb and would have been run down had not a shaft caught his arm and jerked him back. One of the horses half-stumbled, and the driver pulled up and began to shout angrily in German. There seemed here the makings of an awkward little scene, and it was in just such an emergency that Miss Faulkner was at her best. Climbing down from the omnibus she first commanded silence from the driver and then approached the pedestrian. He was well-dressed, she noticed, and she was relieved to find that he was English. “It was entirely my own fault,” he admitted, calmly. “I wasn’t looking where I was going at all. Fortunately I’m not hurt.”

“Oh, well, if that’s the case, there’s really nothing more to be said, is there?” replied Miss Faulkner, flashing her smile. “I’m glad you’re all right. Good morning.”

The man raised his hat and walked off, and Miss Faulkner, continuing her smile to her people in the omnibus, climbed in again. “Really,” she said, as the journey was resumed, “if people WILL do these things—” Somebody cried: “Day-dreamin’, that’s what he must have been doin’,” and Miss Faulkner echoed: “Yes, that’s just it!” with an air of finding the remark a perfect and wished-for expression of her own feelings. There was thus a second person captivated.

When the hotel was reached, Miss Faulkner presided briskly over the usual commotion about rooms; then came lunch, during which, from the head of the long table, she made the speech she always made at first meals. It was one of carefully mingled exhortation and facetiousness—all about being punctual, making the best of things, keeping together on party expeditions, and taking warm clothing on the mountain trips. “Oh, yes, and there’s just one other thing— some of you may already have discovered that foreign hotels don’t supply soap. If you haven’t brought any with you, there’s a chemist’s shop just round the corner where they speak English.” Somebody cheered. Miss Faulkner smiled. And then: “Perhaps we’d better not plan anything for this afternoon, as I daresay many of you feel tired after the journey and would like to rest.” She gazed round the tables with a look of slightly intimidating enquiry, and the response came easily to her bidding, in the form of mumbled assent. “All right. Then we’ll meet again at seven-thirty for dinner.”

Thank goodness, she thought, escaping through the crowd—that left her free for the afternoon. She went up to her bedroom and dragged a wicker chair to the window. The view was not of the Jungfrau, as all the advertisements would have led one to assume, but of a row of similar windows overlooking a small well-like courtyard in between. Free for the afternoon, Miss Faulkner echoed to herself, as she got out pen and paper and began to write. The letter was to her brother, who worked in a stockbroker’s office in Old Broad Street. She wrote:

“DEAR GEORGE,

“Thanks for sending on my correspondence. The weather here has been hot, which I don’t mind, except that it makes people dawdle, and I have to keep on chivvying them to catch their trains. They’ve been a rather dull crowd so far, and this week’s new arrivals don’t seem much different. Still, I suppose it’s all to the good that they should come out here instead of going to Margate or Blackpool or places like that. I’m sorry you didn’t like the Virginia Woolf—I thought it quite marvellous. Mrs. Ripley writes that she’d like to borrow my notes on Silesian minorities to use in a paper she’s getting up, so if she calls, they’re in the third drawer of my bureau desk, but please don’t mix up the other papers in it. I expect I shall be returning to-day fortnight. I hope you’re managing all right in the flat, and don’t forget to leave the cats their milk when you go out in the mornings. This is in haste, as I simply haven’t a moment to spare.

“Your affectionate sister,

“FLORENCE.”

That done, and the envelope sealed and addressed, Miss Faulkner wrote half a dozen other letters, after which she packed them under her arm with her usual mixed collection of books and papers, and went downstairs to the post.

There was a box inside the hotel lobby, but she preferred the short walk to the little blue letter-box fixed to the lamp-post down the road. She scampered out, through the swing-doors, into the warm glare of the pavement. The sun was shining out of a sky that really was the blue of the picture- postcards, and even the Jungfrau looked somewhat like the advertised Jungfrau. Miss Faulkner, however, was not normally a person to rhapsodise over such matters. She walked straight to the lamp-post, inserted the letters, and walked back. Just as she climbed the hotel steps she noticed a man sitting on the terrace outside the Hôtel Oberland, the bigger and much more aristocratic hotel immediately opposite her own, which was the Hôtel Magnifique de l’Univers. She felt sure he was the man whom the omnibus had nearly driven down, and in seeking to verify the recognition she stared so hard that when he chanced to glance up she felt that the only thing possible to do was to smile. And having smiled, and having received in return a slight but courteous bow, she felt she must at least say something to excuse the smile. So she ran across the road and began: “I’m so sorry about the omnibus dashing into you like that—I do hope you weren’t really hurt. And I must say, even though it may be true that you weren’t looking, that man does drive round corners rather recklessly. It was very kind of you, anyhow, to take it as you did. I mean, it saved a lot of delay and argument.”

The man seemed surprised to be accosted thus and with such volubility. “I assure you I haven’t even a bruise to show for it,” he answered, looking her down with very blue eyes.

“I’m so glad.... It’s marvellous weather, isn’t it?”

“Yes, great,” he replied.

Miss Faulkner, smiling again, recrossed the road to her own hotel. Obviously a gentleman, she had confirmed; his clothes, his accent, his manner, all were satisfactory. For she had belonged to the Left Wing of the English Labour Movement long enough to know that though you might attack gentlemen, as a class, and even, as a measure of social reform, seek to abolish them, they yet remained, as individuals, most charming and agreeable people.

For the rest of the time before dinner she busied herself with the findings of a commission whose bulky minority report she had been somewhat pointlessly carrying about all day.

Miss Faulkner was the headmistress of a council-school in Bermondsey. She was clever, successful, and possessed an abundance of energy as well as that immense capacity for taking pains which, whatever else it is, certainly is not genius. But, genius apart, she was a talented woman; she could speak fluently at meetings, serve effectively on committees, and bully a school-inspector into overlooking the fact that her children, though skilled at clay-modelling and pastel-drawing, were unfortunately less able to read and write. Her ambition was some clay to become an M.P., and to this end she was already associated with many of the movements and campaigns of advanced Socialism. Not that she was by any means insincere. A passion almost flame-like in its intensity sustained her in her many activities; she really did possess a love for humanity, and the further removed humanity was, both in space and time, the more she loved it. Her favourite school lesson, for instance, was one in which she described the sufferings of the little boy chimney-sweeps in the early nineteenth century; and in modern times a Chinese famine, especially when documented by Blue Book or White Paper statistics, could move her to genuine tears of compassion. With the local unemployed she would probably have sympathised almost as warmly had not so many of them approached her for personal help. “My good man, I can’t give to everybody,” she would say; which was true enough, for four hundred a year did not go far when one had a half-share of a flat in West Kensington, and when even the telephone- bill often came to ten shillings a week. She was, anyhow, continually giving money away, more often in guineas than coppers, and her chief reason for spending August as she did was to obtain a healthful holiday of a kind and duration that she could not otherwise have afforded.

Besides, as she often remarked to friends in England, it was a means of doing good to others as well as to herself. “I don’t see why the loveliest places in the world should only be visited by the rich,” she would say, with that clear-voiced truculence especially designed by nature for the painless extraction of “hear-hear’s” from an audience. “We get the middle classes as a rule, you know, and though they may be a little tiresome at times, one does feel that one is helping them to enjoy experiences they ought to have. Sometimes we even get actual working- men—we had a most intelligent engine-driver only the other week. I think that sort of thing is just splendid.” Miss Faulkner always spoke of working-men as of some astonishing natural phenomenon which she had studied for a university doctorate.

That evening she saw the man at the “Oberland” again. He was taking coffee on the terrace after dinner, and from the crowded lobby of the “Magnifique” she could observe him whenever anyone pushed open the swing-doors to go out or come in. He was reading a paper and smoking a cigar, and in the light of the orange-shaded lamp at his elbow she could see that his hair was greyish. Elderly, therefore. And by himself. On business? But no; she had not thought he looked a business man. And suddenly, perhaps because the report she had lately been reading was connected with it, she imagined him as having something to do with the League of Nations. Its headquarters were at Geneva; what more likely than that its personnel should take trips to Interlaken? But that, of course, raised a possible doubt as to his nationality; his accent might be perfect, but might not a League official have a perfect English accent without being necessarily English? He must be Nordic, on account of his blue eyes; and she therefore imagined him a German, because she had an emotional pity for Germans and because at one moment, when she glanced at him, she thought he looked rather sombre. Pondering, perhaps, on the iniquities of the Treaty of Versailles or on the problem of the Polish Corridor.

Later that evening, after he had left the terrace, she went out for a short stroll and, on the way back, stopped to chat a while with the uniformed porter of the “Oberland,” whom she knew quite familiarly, and who graciously permitted the exercise of her French. After discussing the chances of the next day’s weather she said, abruptly: “Oh, by the way, who is that man who was taking coffee on the terrace just now—sitting by himself at the table near the lamp?”

“An Englishman,” replied the porter, with half a wink. “A Mr. Brown, of London.”

Miss Faulkner was disappointed. Her pitying thoughts of a derelict schloss in the Rhineland and of a family starved to death in the blockade subsided painfully; as a Mr. Brown, of London, he was clearly less remarkable. And then, entering the hotel on the other side of the road, she added, what was quite obvious, that it was of absolutely no consequence who or what he was, and that he would probably be gone to-morrow, anyway.

But he had not gone on the morrow. He was seen (by Miss Faulkner) having breakfast on the terrace while she shepherded her party to catch the train for the Schynige Platte. She smiled and he nodded. It was another lovely day, pleasantly cool on the mountain-top, though hot down below. She functioned with her usual sprightliness, smiling at least a hundred times as she gave advice as to the purchase of drinks and picture-postcards. On the way back she could not help wondering if Mr. Brown, of London, had yet left the “Oberland.”

He had not. She saw him that evening on the terrace, but he was engrossed in a book and did not look her way.

The next morning there was no sign of him, and she was surprised in the afternoon to discover, from a casual question to the porter, that he was still staying. It did not matter, of course. She smiled hard throughout dinner and gave a pithy little lecture, in her best schoolmistress manner, about the Gorges of the Aar that were to be visited on the following day.

She saw nothing of him then, either. But on the day after that, the Wednesday, by sheer chance they met on the train to the Jungfraujoch. It was an expensive excursion, costing over two pounds extra, and for that reason she had only half a dozen of the party under her charge. They had already entered the train and she had climbed in after them and found a vacant seat before noticing that he was opposite her. “Good morning,” she said, with brisk eagerness.

“Good morning,” he answered.

He had a book open on his knee, and she obeyed a natural impulse to decipher the title upside down. It was Shaw’s “Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism.” Her eyes glinted; surely it was a good sign when a man was found reading Shaw in a train. She meant (for she was already aware that he interested her) that it was so much the more likely that they would have tastes in common. And she slightly revised her picture of him as a German delegate to the League of Nations; perhaps, if the Shaw were any evidence, he was in the International Labour Office. “A fascinating book,” she commented, keenly.

He looked up and answered, after a pause: “Personally, I’m finding it rather dull.”

“Really?” She yet contrived to smile. She knew there were lots of people nowadays who thought Shaw a back number, and she remembered once hearing a pert Communist at a committee meeting say that Shaw’s book would have been much more interesting had it been an Intelligent Socialist’s Guide to Woman.

“Of course Shaw’s getting very old,” she said, with a hint of unutterable drawbacks.

“Yes, he must be.”

And then she remarked in the casual way she had so often found effective: “I can’t say I was ever impressed with him myself. He talks at you rather than to you, and it gets on one’s nerves after a time. At least it did on mine.”

Here, of course, his obvious cue was to express surprise that she had actually met Shaw, and the fact that he didn’t only disappointed her until she realised that he was probably so used to meeting famous people himself that it had hardly struck him as remarkable. She became quite certain, at that moment, that he was “somebody.”

All he said was the one word “Indeed?”

She was just a little discouraged by this, and did not speak again until they had to change trains at Lauterbrunnen. Then, amidst the warming sunshine, she thought, with sudden boldness: “I’m interested in him and would rather like to get to know him; why shouldn’t I, then, deliberately enter the same carriage and sit next to him in the new train?” After all, nobody would ever blame a man for doing that, if he were interested in a girl.... That final argument, with all that it implied in connection with the equality of the sexes, clinched the matter. Miss Faulkner waited till the man had chosen a seat in the train that goes up to Wengen and Scheidegg, and then led her small party in after him. “Here again,” she exclaimed brightly, banging the window down. He smiled— a rather slow, cautious smile, as if for the first time he were taking real notice of her. “You are going up to the Joch?” he queried.

“Yes. Are you?”

“Yes.”

“It’s a long journey, but well worth it. Is this your first visit?”

“Yes.”

She felt rather glad of that. “You’ll be impressed, on a day like this. I was, tremendously, when I first came. In fact, I always am.”

“You come pretty often, I suppose?”

“Once a week during August.”

“Oh?”

“You see, I’m only here for the month. This is really my holiday....” And in a quarter of an hour—before the train reached the green slopes and red-roofed chalets of Wengen—she had told him all about her job, her school in Bermondsey, and her friendship with Bertrand Russell. He listened politely, without saying very much. At Scheidegg, where there was another change of trains, she kept the conversation going so incessantly that it would have been nearly impossible for them not to re-seat themselves together. All this time she had been somewhat neglectful of her party, but as soon as the train set off she rose and delivered, in her very best style, a short account of the building of the Jungfrau Railway, its cost, difficulties, and the number of lives lost during its construction. When she had finished she smiled at everybody, and then, sitting down, bestowed a little private smile upon the man next her. “I hope you weren’t startled by my sudden burst into professional activity,” she began.

“Not at all,” he answered. “On the contrary, it was most interesting—all that you said. A marvellous piece of engineering... And another thing interested me too.”

“Yes?”

“The way—if you’ll excuse my being personal—the way you managed to make yourself heard above the noise of the train without shouting. I—I could never manage to do that.”

She laughed. “Have you tried?”

“Not exactly in trains. But I’ve had other experience. I suppose it’s partly knack and partly the voice one’s born with.”

“Surely not THAT,” she answered. “Babies can always make themselves heard anywhere. At least, my babies can.”

This time it was he who laughed. “Yes, of course.”

A moment later it occurred to her to add: “I meant my official babies, you know—the children of four and five at my school. I haven’t any other kind of babies.”

Accepting the information, he seemed a little pensive afterwards, and by the arrival of the train at the terminus Miss Faulkner thought she had progressed distinctly well, though she was forced to confess that she knew scarcely anything more about him. And yet to have led the conversation to babies! She smiled with extra emphasis as she gave her people the usual cautions about wearing sun-spectacles and not over-exerting themselves at the unaccustomed altitude. Babies, indeed! For she had a sense of humour, no less acute because it sometimes and for long intervals deserted her completely.

Few places could have been more helpful to the ripening of acquaintance than the Jungfraujoch. In the restricted area round the station and hotel there was little to do except send off picture-postcards, peer through the telescopes at distant skiers, and enjoy the novel combination of blazing sunshine and deep snow. Miss Faulkner found renewed opportunities of talking to Mr. Brown, and Mr. Brown no opportunities at all of escape. It was typical of her that, however much she might let her imagination soar as to his possible identity, she perceived quite clearly that he was not—not yet, at any rate—attracted by her. Probably, she decided, he was not a man who cared for women at all. But she was far from being daunted. If you wanted to get anything in this world, she had discovered, you usually had to set out in pursuit of it—quite shamelessly, if need be. This certainly applied to such things as headships of schools, presidencies of societies, and political candidatures; no doubt also to friendship. She had once read somewhere that liking other people was half the battle towards making them like you, and the theory gave her confidence to go “all out” in getting to know this man. Why not, if she wanted to?

She certainly made the most of her time during that long, hot afternoon two miles high. Not only were the topographical but also the meteorological circumstances favourable; there was something exquisite in that hard, dry, sunlit brilliance, some sense of being suspended above and beyond the normal earth. She basked with him on the edge of a rock and gazed over the ten—or was it twenty?— miles of snowy wilderness; then they turned their tinted glasses on the knife-edge of the Jungfrau summit, its outline crystal-yellow against a storm-green sky. Mr. Brown talked about mountains and said he would like to do some climbing in the Alps; he had had a little experience elsewhere, though not where there was snow. Some young climbers at his hotel, he said, had asked him to join their expeditions, but he had so far declined because he felt it might be too strenuous for him; after this, however, he thought he might perhaps give himself a trial if he were invited again. Which gave her the chance of asking: “Are you staying long, then?” And he answered: “I don’t really know. I—at the moment, that is—I haven’t decided.”

She could not resist a further probe. “Of course, if you’re taking a rest-cure, or recovering from an illness, or anything like that, I daresay you oughtn’t to climb.”

“No, there’s no reason of that kind.”

“Perhaps you’re one of those lucky people who’re never ill?”

“But for occasional bouts of malaria, I keep pretty well, I must say.”

“Malaria’s bad, isn’t it? I suppose you picked it up out East?”

“Er—yes.”

“During the War? I know several men who did.”

“I didn’t.”

He said that almost rudely. But she did not mind. They travelled back to Interlaken together, and all the way she kept the conversation going, somewhat to the continued neglect of her people. She did not mind that, either. She felt she had badgered the man quite enough about his private affairs, and must now set herself out to make up for it by being interesting and amusing. She more than partially succeeded, for she was well-informed, and had a good command of words as well as a retentive memory for the bright sayings of others. Her account of Soviet Russia, for instance, which she had visited for ten days on a lightning tour of co-operative societies, made him laugh several times. At the end, when they separated for their respective hotels, she said, with an air of suddenly realising it: “I say, I do hope I haven’t bored you. I’m afraid I sometimes get rather carried away by these big topics.”

“Not at all,” he answered, gravely, and added, with a ready smile: “At least you’ve given me plenty to think about.... Good night.”

“Perhaps we shall meet again if you’re staying on here?”

“Perhaps so. Yes, certainly we may.”

She hastily changed for dinner and faced at the dining-table a group of faces that eyed her none too cordially. The story that she had spent most of the day talking to a man from the hotel opposite had evidently spread. She decided to be particularly charming; indeed, she was—she was almost radiant. Then, if not before, her case could have been definitely diagnosed.

Miss Faulkner was by no means ignorant of love. She had been in love, and she had also read about it, not only in novels, but in physiological and psychological text-books. She had skimmed through the better-known works of Freud, Jung, Adler, Krafft-Ebbing, Havelock Ellis, Malinowski, and Stopes; she knew all about the Trobriand Islanders, and she was aware that the perception of beauty in moonlight or Mozart was largely an affair of the glandular secretions. Like most women possessed of her type of ambition, she fully realised the likelihood that she would never marry; nor did the prospect worry her much. Apart from the fact that she could not do so and keep her job, the ordinary routine of married life—shopping, babies, and cinema matinées—gave her no thrills of anticipated bliss. If she were ever to accept a man, he would have to be of an exceptional kind, and as that kind was not very likely to come her way, she was quite reconciled to remaining single. She liked children, but in mass rather than individually; and though she was certainly not undersexed, a good deal of what might have been sexual went out of her in other forms of energy. Sublimation, of course; that was another of the things she knew all about. And besides, in these days (1930) one need not be a prude. She did not object to an occasional flirtation, and she had, in her late twenties, adventured rather more than tentatively with a certain university extension lecturer who was now a Labour M.P. It had been her one practical experiment in a subject which she knew well enough in theory, and she had been hit pretty hard when he left her for a fat-legged Jewess who had written a banned novel. For a few days afterwards she had been unconsolable, weeping a good deal, and explaining to her teaching staff that she was on the verge of a breakdown from overwork. By the following week, however, she had salvaged most of her serenity at the cost of a rather greater urge to sublimation than ever. It worked well, indeed, this doing without men; and its very success reinforced her determination to make no surrender but to the most superior applicant.

Miss Faulkner’s attitude towards Mr. Brown was governed, therefore, by conditions perfectly well known to herself. She was attracted, and she was aware that the attraction was to a large extent physical; she liked the man’s tallness, his distinguished, if not exactly handsome, features, his quiet voice, his rare but satisfying smile. The fastidious and slightly snobbish part of her was also attracted; she liked his well-dressed dignity, his accent, his courtesy, his old-fashioned readiness to treat her as a lady for no other reason than that she was a woman. Thinking the matter over in bed that night, she was very candid with herself. She was smitten; yes, most decidedly; indeed, she couldn’t get the man’s image out of her head. The way he had sat with her at the Jungfraujoch; no doubt it would give her a pang whenever she saw the place again. On the other hand, facing facts quite squarely, she came to the rather depressing conclusion that he probably wasn’t very clever. His finding Shaw’s book dull, for instance— not that that by itself proved much, but it linked itself with other things—notably the fact that he hadn’t made one really intelligent remark to her during the whole of their talks. He had listened; he had often made some “suitable” comment; he had certainly never said anything stupid; but of wit, of originality, of anything subtle or scintillating, there had been nothing. Miss Faulkner was disappointed, but she knew it could not be helped. After all, she met charming people far less often than clever ones, and how devastating for her if Mr. Brown had chanced to be both! She turned out the light, deciding that the really satisfactory conclusion would be for him to invite her to spend a week in Paris with him; she would accept, and they would thus live happily ever afterwards—without each other.

Unfortunately for this pleasant possibility, Mr. Brown had so far shown no sign of desiring even friendship, much less amorous adventure. Miss Faulkner admitted this, but without despair. She had, in her time, surmounted barriers that had at first seemed just as forbidding; and she surmised, too, that, in most men as in most women, love was largely a question of having the idea put into their heads when they had nothing else to do. Besides, it was fun trying to get what she wanted, particularly when it didn’t matter a great deal if she were unsuccessful. It was even fun to try and imagine things about him, though she gave up her vision of a high Genevan official and substituted that of a retired bank manager whom his wife had left because she found him too much of a bore.

And then, the very next morning, she made her great discovery.

She had received by the first post a further batch of correspondence forwarded from England, and among its items was a monthly paper issued by some society to which she belonged—one of those organisations for the protection, abolition, or propagation of something or other. The paper was a meagre product in its own particular class of journalism, badly printed and on poor quality paper, but its centre page did contain a sufficiently recognisable photograph of Mr. Brown. And underneath was the caption: “Mr. Charles Gathergood, late British Agent at Cuava, Broken on the Wheel of Capitalist Imperialism.”

Miss Faulkner knew, of course, all about Gathergood. She had followed the whole business in the daily Press; she had even proposed in public a resolution of protest against the shooting down of defenceless Cuavanese by British sailors. Her sympathy with the Cuavanese was naturally intense, since she had never seen them, and since all her respected sources of information assured her that they were the persecuted victims of sadistic rubber-planters in league with a cynical white bureaucracy. Gathergood, according to the unanimous and almost automatic decision of left-wing authority, had stood up, one solitary man against a system, to champion a stricken and exploited subject-race. He had refused consent to Prussianised methods (only, of course, one must not say “Prussianised” any more), and had in consequence been put to the cruel farce of an enquiry at which the real villains had sat in the judgment- seat and condemned him. Quite a vociferous section of English opinion held these views, and for some time after the issue of the report working-men hecklers at their opponents’ meetings had been in the habit of shouting: “What erbaht Gathergood of Kewarver?”—just as they might similarly ask about the Zinovieff Letter, Amritsar, or any other disputed phenomenon.

Upon Miss Faulkner, therefore, the unmasking of that heroic name behind the prosaic pseudonym came like a spark to dry tinder. She sat for a long time in her wicker chair under the bedroom window, holding the revealing photograph in her hand. Yes, she was sure it was he; the nose, mouth, and forehead were unmistakable, and even the eyes and hair were as confirmatory as could be expected from a newspaper print. And then, too, it fitted in with his own queer vagueness and reticences, with his mention of malaria, with the sombre look that she had noted in his eyes sometimes, with—yes, yes, of course it did—even with the very thing that had caused her misgiving. For how could he be expected to respond to stimulating conversation if his mind were still clouded with the memory of undeserved censure? And how could he feel in any mood for a display of mental agility after such storms as had lately broken over his head? Besides, however clever he might or mightn’t be, he was principally a man of action, a hero. Normally Miss Faulkner was not very keen on heroes (she had always thought there was something a little vulgar about winning the V.C.); but Gathergood’s heroism was clearly different; he had championed the oppressed, which was to say, the non-British; indeed, since the stand taken by the conscientious objectors during the War, Miss Faulkner could not call to mind anything more inspiring.

She came down to breakfast with eyes ablaze, and when, in fear lest he were gone, she looked through the hotel doorway across the road, there he was, taking his coffee and rolls as usual, but, oh, how much more to her now—this Gathergood of Cuava, man of such magnificent sorrow, already more than canonised in her heart.

She had to escort her party to Brienz that day, but before setting out she scribbled a hasty note to her brother.

“I wonder if you would mind looking out and sending me back-numbers of the ‘Record’ dealing with the Gathergood case—you know, the man who refused to shoot the native rubber-workers in Cuava. I think Miss Totham gave me some cuttings about it as well—they’re probably in the cupboard under the gramophone. You might send them along with the papers and also the report of the Singapore Enquiry which was held recently. I daresay you can get it at the Stationery Office for a few shillings. It’s a shame to bother you with all these things, but I know you won’t mind. I’d tell you why I want them, but it’s rather a long story and I must dash away to collect my people for a train that leaves almost immediately. In great haste therefore,

“Your affectionate sister,

“FLORENCE.”

All the time she was piloting her party round the wood-carving shops at Brienz, Miss Faulkner was exulting over her discovery. Now, more than ever, she craved the friendship of the lonely, blue-eyed man at the “Oberland”; but now her desire was tinged with the thrill of a secret shared between them, with the pursuit of all her cherished ideals, with—yes, with love. Indeed, for a moment there in the main street of Brienz she became quite dazed with her new vision and could only stare stupidly when she heard one of her party addressing her. “Yes, they are rather sweet, aren’t they?” she managed to answer at last, and to show a belated interest in her surroundings she picked up something haphazardly from the wood-carver’s counter and pretended to examine it. She put it hastily back, however, on perceiving it to be a musical-box disguised as a toilet-roll.

There was, of course, the question of immediate tactics to be settled; should she, or should she not, declare her knowledge? The fact that he was staying at the hotel under an assumed name seemed to indicate a wish not to be identified, which was quite understandable in the circumstances; on the other hand, might he not be glad of the sympathy that could be given him by one, such as herself, who understood and admired the real man? Still, Miss Faulkner felt a little doubtful about it. He did not look to be a person who would like anyone to find out something he had taken special precautions to conceal. Besides, might there not be a species of heaven-sent tact in knowing and yet pretending not to know? Might there not come a moment when Mr. Brown-Gathergood would think: “What a marvellous woman—she guesses, yet she respects my desire for privacy; I will therefore tell her everything.” ... At the thought of that, Miss Faulkner decided quite definitely that she would adopt the more cautious policy. It certainly would be wonderful if he eventually told her himself, and she imagined a conversation which would end by her exclaiming: “But, my dear, why should you have been afraid to tell me? Did you think I didn’t guess it all the time?”

At sunset that evening occurred the phenomenon known as the Alpine glow—a momentary transfiguration of the mountains that turned their snow-slopes into the appearance of pink blancmange. All Miss Faulkner’s party rushed out of the hotel into the middle of the roadway to stare hard, Miss Faulkner with them. And there, on the terrace opposite, the man—her man—was staring hard like everyone else. Miss Faulkner’s heart experienced a sudden Alpine glow of its own; she knew, at that moment, that the world was full of beauty, that Switzerland was marvellous, that the Jungfrau was superb, that even the orchestrola tinkling away from the neighbouring bar was in tune with her own emotions at the sight of that saffron summit. Never had she experienced such a sensation of being at one with everything, part of the tumultuous earth; her eyes filled up as she edged her way through the crowd to the line of shrubs that fringed the “Oberland” terrace. “Wonderful, isn’t it?” she breathed.

The man looked down at her. “Oh, good evening. ... Yes, it’s great. I wouldn’t mind being up there now.”

“Yes... yes.... Oh yes....” Trite remark and trite reply, yet how impossible it seemed for either of them to have said anything more, less, or different.

A moment later the glow had faded into the cool grey distance, and the crowd was filtering back into the hotel. But Miss Faulkner stayed talking—talking less fluently than usual, for she was struggling for mastery with forces that seemed to split her sentences in two just as she had them nicely shaped. It was queer; there was something now that made the barrier higher and more difficult than ever, and her emotion was a pain as well as a pleasure. The mountain-spectacle had made her feel that she must, at any cost, secure a repetition of that magic day with him—not at the Joch again (which would doubtless be impossible to contrive), but somewhere, anywhere that would give them time and opportunity to talk. “Have you made any plans for to-morrow?” she asked.

“I rather thought of going for a long walk somewhere beyond Lauterbrunnen.”

“Splendid idea! There are some lovely paths along the valley.”

It was a few minutes later, re-entering her hotel, that she began to lose her sense of humour. She had already arranged a trip to Kandersteg for the following day, but she suddenly came to a new decision and announced there and then, to those of her party who were in the hotel lobby, that Kandersteg was “off.”

“It’s rather a long trip, you see, and as most of you are leaving for England by the evening train I thought that a shorter one might be more suitable—the Trummelbach Waterfall; we could leave comfortably during the morning and be back for tea.” She felt quite victorious when they all agreed. For the waterfall was just beyond Lauterbrunnen, and there was only one road along the valley, so that if he were to be taking his long walk....

But the next morning it was raining hard. She took her people to the fall and they all got soaked to the skin and there was no sign of the pedestrian hero. When she returned in the late afternoon she found that, like a sensible person, he had stayed indoors all day. It was the friendly porter of the “Oberland” who told her that. And he added: “He was asking me about you this morning, miss.”

Miss Faulkner could not repress a start of joy. “He WAS? Was he REALLY? I hope—I do hope you gave me a good character.”

The porter grinned. “Oh, yes, miss. I said you were very clever— could speak French, German, Italian, Spanish—”

“What nonsense!” she interrupted, with gay indignation. But she was not without hope that the porter’s account of her might have been nearly as impressive.

The party went back to England that evening, having presented Miss Faulkner with an embroidered handbag and received in return her customary speech of thanks and farewell. She saw them off on the Calais train at the station. The next morning she met the incoming train with its load of new arrivals, “Oh, dear, now it all begins again,” she thought, scampering along the platform with her usual smile of sprightly welcome. She had a mixed collection of books under her arm. The clanking carriages drew slowly in, pulled by an electric engine that stood at the far end ticking like an enormous clock. Everything outwardly was the same as a week ago—the labels on the carriage windows, the unshaven faces of the men, the two horse-omnibuses waiting in the station yard, the sky and the mountains and the level-crossing gate like a barber’s pole that seemed so ridiculously confident of being able to hold up a Simplon express. All was the same, except Miss Faulkner, and she was different. She was in love.

There could be no doubt of that. The affair with the university extension lecturer had been nothing to it. It caught up the urge of physical attraction and the drive of ambition and the devouring flame of her love for abstract humanity, and fused them all together into one transcendent and compulsive entirety. It turned Interlaken into the New Jerusalem and the Hôtel Oberland into the ark of all Miss Faulkner’s covenants. “Yes, we’ve been having it quite hot here lately,” she said in the omnibus. “There—that’s the Jungfrau—the one that has all the snow. ...” But she felt she was dreaming, and talking in a dream.

Sunday; she did not see him. The porter told her he had gone out early with some young men for a long walk and climb. As she returned with her people in the afternoon from Grindelwald, the church bell at Lauterbrunnen was tolling for a funeral, and she wondered if it were for some intrepid climber killed on the mountains. There was a wait of three-quarters of an hour at the station, and she left her party and hurried to the churchyard, feeling curiously warm and sentimental as she passed all the English names on the tombstones. She wanted to find some simple outlet for all her emotions, and she was quite disappointed when she reached the open grave and saw from the coffin-lid that the dead person was one Johanna Zimmermeister, aged eighty-seven.

That evening she felt that she could not keep her secret any longer; she must tell somebody, anybody. So she wrote to her brother:

“The reason I asked for the papers about Gathergood is because Gathergood is here, staying at the hotel across the road under an assumed name. I recognised him from a photograph. He is a very quiet man and naturally not anxious to mix up with people. But I have already got to know him, though of course he doesn’t know I know who he is. We had a wonderful day together last week at the Jungfraujoch. I hope I may be able to help him eventually, because he’s bound to feel very deeply all that has happened—you have only to look at him to see that. I am sure you would like him; he is tall and rather slim, and has very blue eyes. I don’t think I have ever seen a man who gives such an impression of brooding power, if you know what I mean. One would rather expect that, from the attitude he took up. I don’t, of course, even hint at the subject of Cuava with him, but he did confide in me that he had been in the East. I want to read up the case so that when does feel inclined to tell me everything (as I think he will) I shall be able to show him how completely I understand. Perhaps the papers and things will arrive by to-morrow morning’s post—I do hope so....”

They did, and she spent the whole of breakfast-time perusing them, forgetting her smiles, forgetting her small talk at table, and— most serious of all—forgetting that the train for the Schynige Platte left at a quarter past ten. It was the first time she had ever made such a blunder, and she was compelled to fix up the impromptu alternative of a trip by lake steamer to Isseltwald and Giesbach. Her people sensed that she had mismanaged things, and were scarcely mollified when they observed her poring over a bulky paper-backed volume at every available moment. But Miss Faulkner was past caring for things like that. Her mind was roaming like molten metal into the vast ramifying moulds of human injustice, and the very loveliness of lake and mountain only served to throw her visions into more dazzling focus. It was terrible, and lovely, and nearly unendurable. Her body and spirit felt like a single raw nerve; she was in pain with pity, with an aching tenderness, with this love of hers. All over the earth the endless panorama of suffering humanity called her, and she yearned towards it, and in yearning saw the face of a man. Her man; the only man who was “yes” to all her eagerness and “no” to all her fears. If only she could make him respond a little! Had he not already, however unsusceptible at first, begun to interest himself in her? His questioning the porter about her seemed a good sign. And it was really unlikely that they could have progressed much faster, he with his natural shyness and she with that dawdling cavalcade always at her heels. But they had had that day together at the Jungfraujoch and he must have realised then how much they shared in common. Miss Faulkner’s heart beat more hopefully when she reckoned up all this; no, it was not at all impossible; indeed, if fate but yielded an opportunity of overcoming the first impediments, the rest might almost be considered probable. Nor, quite honestly, could she imagine a more satisfactory match for either of them. He probably had money—not very much, but enough to let her give up her job and devote herself wholeheartedly to “the cause”; in fact, as the wife of Gathergood ("You know, my dear, the man who—“) her chances and prospects would be greatly enhanced. And he too, reinforced by her capabilities, might go very far. She pictured the two of them, working together in perfect community of ideas and ideals, sitting perhaps for adjacent constituencies (she for Chester-le-Street, say, and he for Houghton-le-Spring), and living in some mellow Georgian house in Chelsea, with a big workroom full of white-painted bookshelves and a tradition of Sunday tea-parties for the intelligentsia. A sort of Sidney and Beatrice Webb business, but with moments during which even the Fabian bloodstream might race. And at this, the mere possibility of it, Miss Faulkner felt herself deliciously flushing. Absurd, of course, to let herself dream in such a way. And yet... and yet... there WAS the chance, the minute, incalculable chance that she had to seize if she could.... “Oh yes, the tickets—I have them, of course,” she stammered, in confusion as the collector approached. But there was another hitch about that; she had thirty-three in her party and had bought tickets for only thirty-one. After complicated countings and reckonings she paid the difference; but it was another thing that had never happened before.

That evening she watched the terrace at intervals from eight o’clock till eleven; then she went across, trembling with almost physical apprehension, and began to chat with the porter. Mr. Brown had gone away that afternoon, he said, and at that she had a queer sensation as though she were on a Channel steamer and about to be sick. Before leaving, the porter continued, Mr. Brown had asked him for the name of a good hotel in Mürren, and he had recommended the “Edelweiss.”

“You see, miss, Mürren is a better centre for climbing. Mr. Brown seemed to get very keen on it these last few days—I think his trip to the Jungfraujoch impressed him.”

“Did he say so?”

“Yes, miss. He said he would always remember it as one of the most marvellous days of his life.”

“He DID? REALLY?”

Miss Faulkner spent an excited and nearly sleepless night, and came down in the morning to the perfect sunshine and blue sky that she had dreaded. For, if the weather were thus fine, she had to take some of her people for that same Jungfraujoch excursion. She felt suddenly that she could not bear to go there again, to make her little speech about the construction of the railway, to watch the skiers through the telescopes, to see that ledge of rock overlooking the snow. She felt, indeed, as she faced her people at breakfast, that she could not endure anything, even a continuation of life itself, without relaxing the strain that held her passionately taut. And it was then, during breakfast, that the last vestige of a sense of humour deserted her.

She left the table abruptly, dashed upstairs to her room, packed a small handbag with a few necessities, ran out of the Hôtel Magnifique de l’Univers without saying a word to anyone, scampered to the station, and booked a single ticket to Mürren.

In the funicular that climbs up the mountain from Lauterbrunnen, Miss Faulkner became calm enough to face certain obvious realities of the situation. She had, she perceived, most comprehensively burned her boats. Even after the greatest ingenuity of explanation, she could scarcely hope to escape condemnation for leaving her people in the lurch. Poor things, some arrangements would be made for them, no doubt; but they would certainly complain to the travel agency, and she would never be offered a cheap August holiday again. It didn’t matter, of course. Nor did it matter that she owed the hotel a few small sums for tips and extras, while they, on the other hand, had possession of most of her clothes. Details of that sort could all be ignored for the time being, since far more urgent was the problem of what to do when she arrived at Mürren.

One thing was clear enough: having burned her boats, she must make the burning worth while by risking everything, if necessary. It was no time for half-measures. She would have the great advantage of being free, at any rate—no longer tied to a routine of times and places. And her programme was, in a sense, quite simple. She would go to the “Edelweiss” like an ordinary private visitor, book accommodation, and then—well, she would meet him. She was bound to, staying at the same hotel in a small place like Mürren. She would have to compose some plausible story to account for her being there—lies, of course, but again that didn’t matter. (Afterwards, in that sublime imagined afterwards which her efforts were to make real, how good it would be to confess all these subterfuges—to say: “My dear, you’ve no notion how utterly unscrupulous I was—I lied right and left—I was absolutely conscienceless about you. Do you forgive me?” And he, perhaps, would make a return confession that he had gone to Mürren to forget, if he could, an attraction by which, at that early stage, he had been unwilling to be enslaved.... Oh dear, oh dear, how wonderful it would all be then!)

She arrived at Mürren before noon, and walked from the station to the hotel. In that midday glory of sunlight the mountains across the valley dazzled and were monstrous. She had seen them from Mürren before, but never on such a day and with such eagerness to yield to rapture. She put on her sun-glasses and found them wet immediately with tears that had sprung to her eyes; oh, this beauty, this beauty everywhere and in everything—did it really exist, apart from her sensing it?—was it all no more than Freud or Havelock Ellis could explain in half a page? And this pity she felt for every suffering being, for soldiers in trenches and work-girls in asbestos- factories and the pigeons at Monte Carlo and the hunted stag on Exmoor—was all this, too, conditioned by no more than secretions and ductless glands? She was passing a shop and went inside to buy a two- day’s-old English newspaper—anything to break the spell of such intolerable sensitiveness; but the spell took hold of the printed words and flaunted them like banners— Famine in China; Heavy Selling on Wall Street; Nottingham Tram-Driver Inherits Fortune; Lover Shoots Sweetheart, Then Himself; Rioting in Bombay; New Prima Donna Creates Furore; Plight of Alabama Flood Victims; Dance-Hall Proprietress Wins Action Against Commercial Traveller; New York Gangster’s £20,000 Coffin... the whole world’s crashing symphony, to which, with one’s own heart-cry, one added but the faintest demi-semiquaver.

In such a mood she came in sight of the Hôtel Edelweiss, and just then, as she approached, he came out of it. He was in heavy climbing boots and thick tweeds, and puffed at a pipe. She began to run towards him involuntarily, like a silly, excited child, though she hasn’t yet thought of any story to tell, or any initial plan of conversation to adopt. It seemed enough, just then, to face him breathlessly, with her bright, terrible smile.

“Good morning,” she said.

“Hullo, hullo...” he answered, halting with a clank of his iron-tipped boots on the road.

“Good morning.... I—I—I’ve just arrived.”

“So I see.”

And then there came a curious silence, during which they both stared hard at each other. He KNOWS, her heart whispered; he knows I know; and he is angry for the moment, but that will pass. She went on: “I’m—I’m staying here—in Mürren—for several days. On business, you know. It’s—it’s odd that we should meet again... isn’t it?”

“Yes, very odd .... Well, if you’ll excuse me, I must get along—I’m meeting some people at another hotel.”

“May I—may I walk with you to it?”

“I suppose you may.”

He set off at a good swinging pace, without continuing the talk. It occurred to her then that it might be her last chance, that she had bungled the encounter so far, and could do little worse by plunging straight into the depths. At least she would secure the advantage of surprise—unless, of course, he HAD already guessed that she knew, in which case it might be a relief to him to learn how safe his secret was in her hands. She went on, in a low, desperate voice: “You must think it strange of me to approach you like this, but I feel I can’t keep silence any longer. To you, I mean. Others needn’t know, of course.”

“WHAT?” he said.

“I’ve known the—the truth for some time. And believe me, I—I honour—and—and admire you—for it—”

“WHAT? What are you talking about?”

“You... YOU... you see, I know who you really are. I’ve known for quite a long time.”

“You say you know who I really am?”

“Yes... Mr. Gathergood... of Cuava... .” She felt herself almost fainting as she uttered the words.

He suddenly stopped and towered above her. “Good God, woman, this is becoming preposterous! I don’t know what sort of microbe has bitten you, but if you take my advice you’ll catch the tram over there and get back to your proper business. Where are all your tourist people—haven’t you got THEM to look after?”

“I left them—to come here and tell you. I felt I had to let you know what I knew. It was terrible for me, waiting. And I don’t care how angry you are with me—so long as you DO know. You can’t deny it—not to me.”

“Deny what?”

“That you ARE him—really. Gathergood—British Agent at Cuava—”

He struck his heel sharply on the ground. “Gathergood? GATHERGOOD? Why should I be him, whoever he is?”

“But you ARE. I know you want to keep it secret—I can understand and sympathise—but to me, now that I know—oh, you must tell me the truth!”

“But, my good woman, that’s just what I AM doing! I’m sorry to disappoint you if this Gathergood man was someone you wanted to meet, but you must pull yourself together and be sensible. And if it’s really any concern of yours, my name is Stuart Brown, I live in England, and on my passport I’m put down as a company-director. Perhaps you’d like to see it? No? Well, there you are, anyhow. This sort of thing won’t do, you know, following men about and pestering them....”

With a quiet little cry of dreadfulness she put her hand to her head and scampered away. But when she was a few dozen yards off she swung round, flashed him her ever-bright smile, and called out: “It’s all right. All my mistake....” Then she broke into a shrill peal of laughter that echoed faintly across the valley to the green-blue glaciers. A few heads looked out of windows, saw the puzzled man and the laughing woman, and wondered what kind of joke, private or public, lay between them. But it all seemed of small consequence, on that blazing August noontide in Mürren. And a moment later Miss Faulkner turned the corner by the tramway-station and was gone.