Читать книгу White Motley - Pemberton Max - Страница 3

"

PROLOGUE

I THE GRAND PRIX AT ANDANA II A DARK HORSE GOES DOWN III CONCERNING A DISOBLIGING GHOST IV THE MAN WHO KNEW V THE GHOST TAKES WINGS VI A LESSON UPON SKIS VII AN ULTIMATUM VIII BENNY BECOMES AN OPTIMIST IX IN WHICH WE BAG A BRACE X A SPECIALIST IS CONSULTED XI THE VIGIL OF TRAGEDY XII FLIGHT XIII AFTER THE STORM XIV THE GENDARME PHILIP XV THE CORTÈGE XVI TWO OPINIONS XVII HERALDS OF GREAT TIDINGS XVIII THE EVE OF THE GREAT ATTEMPT XIX THE THIEF XX THE FLIGHT IS BEGUN XXI THE FLIGHT IS FINISHED XXII THE EMPTY HOUSE XXIII THE NIGHT MAIL XXIV THE DOCTOR INTERVENES XXV THE LIGHTS OF MAGADINO XXVI AT THE HOSPICE XXVII BENNY SETS OUT FOR ENGLAND

WHITE MOTLEY

PROLOGUE

THE NEW HOUSE AT HOLMSWELL

The New House at Holmswell lies, far back from the road, upon the great highway to Norwich. Local topographers delight to tell you that it is just forty-five miles from that city and five from the Cesarewitch course at Newmarket. They are hardly less eloquent when they come to speak of its late owner, Sir Luton Delayne, and of that unforgotten and well-beloved woman, the wife he so little deserved.

To be sure, the house is not new at all, for it was built at the very moment when the great Harry put his hands into the coffers of the monasteries and called upon high Heaven to witness the justice of his robberies. They faced it with wonderful tiles some years ago, and stamped the Tudor rose all over it; but the people who first called it "new" have been dead these four hundred years, and it is only the local antiquary who can tell you just where the monastery (which preceded it) was built.

Here, the master of a village which knows more about the jockeys of the day than about any Prime Minister, here lived Sir Luton Delayne and that gentle woman who won so many hearts during her brief tenure of the village kingdom. Well the people knew her and well they knew him. A florid, freckled-faced man with red hair and the wisp of an auburn moustache, the common folk said little about his principles and much about his pugnacity. Even these dull intellects knew that he had been "no gentleman" and were not afraid to tell you so. His fame, of a sort, had culminated upon the day he thrashed the butcher from Mildenhall, because the fellow would halt on the high road just when the pheasants were being driven from the Little Barton spinneys. That was no famous day for the House of Delayne; for the butcher had been a great bruiser in his time, and he knocked down the baronet in a twinkling without any regard at all for his ancestry or its dignities. Thereafter, Sir Luton's violent speech troubled the vulgar but little, and when he rated Johnny Drummond for wheeling a barrow over the tennis-court, the lad fell back upon the price of mutton and took his week's notice like a man.

To Lady Delayne local sympathy went out in generous measure. If little were known of the sorrows of her life, much was surmised. The "county" could tell you many tales and would tell them to intimates. These spoke of a ruffian who had sworn at that gentle lady before a whole company at the meet; who openly snubbed her at her own table; who had visited upon her the whims and the temper of a disposition at once vicious and uncontrollable. Darker things were said and believed, but the sudden end surprised no one; and when one day the village heard that she had gone for good, when a little while afterwards the bailiffs came to the New House and Sir Luton himself disappeared, it seemed but the sudden revelation of a tragedy which all had expected.

Whither had Lady Delayne gone, and what was the truth of the disaster? Few could speak upon matters so uncertain, but amongst the few the name of Redman Rolls, the bookmaker, stood high. Report from Newmarket said that Luton Delayne had lost twenty-seven thousand pounds upon the Cambridgeshire and that this loss, following extensive and disastrous speculation in American insecurities, had been the immediate instrument of disaster. As to Lady Delayne's hurried flight from the New House, that was a delicate affair upon which no one could throw much light. She had relatives in the North, and was believed to possess a small fortune of her own; but no news of her came to Holmswell, and the far from curious village had no particular interest in the whereabouts of a man who had browbeaten and bullied it for more than ten years. He had gone to Somaliland to join his brother who was out after big game, the parson said. It meant little to the simple folk, who had not the remotest idea where Somaliland was unless it lay somewhere beyond Norwich—a conclusion to which they arrived in the kitchen of the ancient inn.

To be sure, there were many tales told of the final separation of these unhappy people, and some of them were sad enough. The servants at the New House well remembered how Sir Luton had come home upon that unlucky day; and what he had done and what he had said upon his arrival. To begin with, Martin, the motor-man, could speak of a savage, silent figure, driving blindly through the twilight of an October afternoon, of the narrow escape from accident at the lodge gate and of the oaths with which his attentions were received. Morris, the butler, would tell how Sir Luton had almost knocked him down when he opened the door, and had cursed her ladyship openly when he heard she had company. There was the maid Eva, to tell of her mistress half dressed for dinner and of a scene which in some part she had witnessed. Few believed her wholly when she said that her master had attributed his misfortunes to the day when he met his wife, and had told her that "he had done with her, by Heaven!" And then upon that there would be Morris's further story of the table laid for dinner, the candles lighted, the soup hot and steaming—and not a soul in the great room where dinner was served. They waited a long time, this faithful old gossip and the lean footman with the dull eyes; but neither Sir Luton nor her ladyship came down. And then, shortly before nine, the old horse and the single brougham were ordered—and the kindest lady they would ever know went from them and they heard of her no more.

But the man remained, though he had become but a shadow in the house. All night he drank in the little study behind the billiard room, and a light still burned there at six o'clock next morning, as Jelf, the under-gardener, could testify. If he made any effort to recall the wife, who would willingly have stood by him in the darkest hour, none knew of it. For a few days, Morris carried his meals to the study and would discover him there, sitting at a table and staring blankly over the drear park as though dim figures of his own life's story moved beneath the stately trees. Then, following an outburst which surpassed all the servants could remember, an outburst of passion and of obscenity inconceivable, he was driven one morning to Mildenhall Station, and Holmswell heard with a satisfaction it made no attempt to conceal that this was the end.

The New House was the scene of a great sale shortly afterwards, and brokers came from London to buy the porcelain and the pictures, while many a country gentleman drove in to bid for the well-proved '63 port and the fine bin of Steinberg Cabinet. Few in the village could be more than spectators at such a scene as that; but the old clergyman, Mr. Deakins, bought Lady Delayne's mirror for three pounds fifteen shillings, and when they asked him why, had a ready answer.

"An old man's fancy," he said; "and yet—who knows that some day it may not show me again the face of the gentlest lady I have ever known?"

CHAPTER I

THE GRAND PRIX AT ANDANA

The sleigh climbed the heights laboriously, jolting heavily in the ruts which last night's frost had hardened. Minute by minute now new pictures were revealed. The Rhone valley appeared to be shaping itself more clearly at every zigzag; so that, while Sierre below had become but a toy village upon a child's board, the majestic Weisshorn now stood up in detached sovereignty and all the encircling peaks could be named with assurance.

There had been a blizzard blowing for thirty hours, and it had detained the little company at Sierre; but the morning of the day broke gloriously fine, so that the travellers set off at eight o'clock and were to reach the hotel at Andana before eleven.

A truly British company, some of them had come to winter in Switzerland for the first time. Others were veterans, who brought their own skis, talked knowingly of Vermala and the Zaat, and could show you, even when far down the valley, exactly where the Palace Hotel lurked behind a forest of pines. Of these the gentle old clergyman, Harry Clavering, was the most prominent—and he, as one of whom much was expected, offered generous and courtly help to the more timid of the wayfarers.

But even Harry Clavering, despite his seven and fifty years, was not insensible to the charm of the "little widow," and his conscience found a ready excuse when he craved permission to share a sleigh with her—and obtained it, to the great annoyance of Sir Gordon Snagg, the coal-merchant from Newcastle, who had already confided to his intimates of the company the unnecessary information that the "little woman" in violet was the best "view" he hoped to see in Switzerland.

There were five sledges in all taking the company to Andana, and two of them devoted to ungovernable youth. These lads from the universities and the schools, convinced that Switzerland existed as a republic merely by their patronage, hastened at every turn to give some demonstration of their superiority, either as performers upon the bugle, or as "yoodlers," or merely as marksmen, with the passers-by on the slopes below for their targets. The newly-fallen snow delighted them by its promise of good ski-ing for some days to come. But for the glorious panorama of the Rhone, for the wonder of height and valley, they cared not a straw.

Of the others, a fat man in a well-made suit of tweeds, and a bright little woman, whose luggage was marked "Lady Coral-Smith," were the subjects of some mischief in the other sleighs and of not a little gossip. They were old friends, as they were careful to tell everyone who did not ask; and by the oddest coincidence in the world, they met on the platform at the Gare de Lyon. So they were travelling to Andana together—where, as Lady Coral-Smith explained, her poor dead husband, who had thrice been mayor of Brampton-upon-Sea, died after a long illness some four years ago. She would tell this with the air of one who invited sympathy for what she had gone through and some tolerance for a gaiety of spirit natural to the circumstance. Nor was she without a certain measure of good looks, bravely as her "art" strove to disguise them.

The Major on his part—Major Boodle to be exact—was an excellent example of the half-pay officer, who is driven to a perpetual conflict between his desires and his pension. He had seen a little service in the South African War and in Egypt, and spoke of it good humouredly, but without any sense of proportion. To him, the Boers were still "those d——d Dutchmen," and he remembered little about the campaign apart from the attack of enteric which kept him three months at Colesberg. His laugh was loud, his face fat and without distinction, and his chief concern the absence of any restaurant between Sierre and the hotel. Someone, he thought, should write to the Times about that, and he had said as much to the "little widow" before they started—and would have said more but for the sharp eyes of the mayor's relict, who called him to her side with the asperity of a colonel on parade.

This was the little company which left Sierre at eight o'clock upon the morning of the first day of February and searched with eager eyes for the first glimpse of the plateau of Andana and its destination. The most part of them, newly come out of England, discussed the glorious sunshine to begin with, and upon that the fog and rain which would then be exasperating their own countrymen. By here and there, they paused to cast backward glances at the genial parson and the "little widow"; while Bob Otway, a mature philosopher of one-and-twenty, remarked to his friend, Dick Fenton, a practised cynicist of like years, that "old Harry" was certainly "going it." Which reflection he capped by the assurance that Andana was a "devilish mouse-trap" for the men, and that a fellow was wise to be careful.

"It's perfectly impossible not to propose to a girl if her Q's are all right," he said—and then, by way of illustration—"look at Mondy Thurl, who was here last year. He married that Toogood girl just because she could hold out the tails of her threes. Rotten idea, I call it—"

Dick Fenton, who was tramping doggedly by the side of his sledge, admitted that there was something in it—but he spoke of consolations.

"Anyway, my boy, she didn't hold out the tails of your threes, and that's something. Poor old Mondy! I expect he's wondering what he did it for now. He must have thawed a bit before he got back to town. A man can't be expected to know what he's doing out here—and that Toogood girl could fall down. Why, I believe she practised it before the glass just to show what a pretty ankle she had got. She always used to come down just when old Mondy was there to pick her up."

"Of course she did. She specialised in him, just as those Rider girls would specialise in you, Dick, if they got the chance. You heard they came over from Caux on Thursday?"

"Yes, the parson told me—what an old dear he is, making love to the 'little widow' at his time of life! Why, she can't be five-and-twenty—"

"And she is undoubtedly 'it.' I'm beginning to be sorry for the Rider girls, Dick."

Dick sighed.

"It's the way they take the last corner on the ice-run," he said sorrowfully, "I know I shall be done for if I win the doubles with Marjory. She holds my neck so tight that I believe she'll strangle me some day—"

"She'll do that unless you propose to her; you'd better get it over, old chap, and I'll write to your people. By Jove, though, it's hot, isn't it?—couldn't you drink a lager beer?"

He stopped to wipe his forehead and to look back for an instant at the valley below and the little town of Sierre, now become more toy-like than ever, but for its skating rink, which sparkled like a jewel dropped from the heights. Even the pines carried a burden of the hoar to-day, and every thicket upon the steep slopes, every wood through which the sleighs carried them, had some picture more fantastic than its predecessors to show them. The air was keen as a breath of life itself; it had brought the colour anew to the "widow's" pale cheeks, and her eyes were dancing while she listened to the rhapsodies of the genial old clergyman, who knew and loved the scene and delighted to dwell upon it. Twenty times already had he named the different peaks to her, but his enthusiasm was unabated.

"Vermala is up above the forest," he said, "we often take luges and have tea up there. You can see the Matterhorn from the plateau before the tea-house. Oh, yes, and Mont Blanc; there's a fine view of that and of the Dents Blanches from the Park Hotel. Beginners always go there to learn to ski—I suppose you are already an expert?"

The "little widow" shook her head.

"It's all quite new to me. I have been to Switzerland many times in the summer; but never in the winter—I had expected something quite different. All this is very beautiful—but is it not just a little too exciting? Would not one have to be something of an acrobat to enjoy it thoroughly?"

Harry Clavering laughed.

"Ah," he said, "everyone thinks that when he first comes out. But we all become acrobats and do the most wonderful things before we have been here a week. Why, even I have been down the ice-run at my age—dear, dear, to think of it—and I am fifty-seven.

"Do you not believe, then, that a man is as old as his capacities?"

The parson beamed beneath his glasses—she certainly was a delightful woman to travel with, and he had yet to learn her name.

"I believe in thinking of pleasant things," he said, "old age is pleasant enough if you forget it. And we all become young here; the air inspires us—I think it makes us quite mad sometimes. Then the scenery is so beautiful, so very, very beautiful. Look at those peaks—how the sun shines upon them! And I have wasted one whole week in London when I might have been here. Deplorable! That week has gone forever—"

She liked his enthusiasm, yet could not forbear to intrude upon it.

"But I hear of blizzards," she exclaimed. "Whatever do you do at Andana when there is a blizzard?"

"We grumble and are happy. Snow is as necessary to us here as water to the Arab of the desert. We are thankful to see the snow falling, and we go into our corners and play bridge. I suppose you will join us there? I felt sure you played bridge directly I saw you."

She laughed, showing him how white were her teeth, and how deeply the blue of her eyes contrasted with the azure of the cloudless sky.

"Oh," she said, "one has to do the necessary things. But I am a dreadful player, and the old ladies get very angry with me. I should never have the courage to play with strangers—"

He hastened to correct her.

"No one is a stranger here. That is the best of it. In a way, we are all friends—though, of course, there are people we like better than others."

"Which means to say that you find yourself already devoted heart and soul to Lady Coral-Smith, and the intimate acquaintance of that dreadful person in the yellow suit, Sir Gordon Snagg."

He shook his head as one who would not do battle with her.

"Come, come," he said. "We must not be unkind. Some give and take is necessary in a society like this—and we can always choose our own road if we prefer. Sometimes, I wander by myself all day—once, when I felt the need of rest, I went over to Grindelwald—with a guide for my companion."

She turned upon him with a face grown suddenly white.

"Grindelwald! But we are not near Grindelwald? It can't be."

"Indeed," he said, quite unconscious of her embarrassment, "it is quite near for the climbers, though men of my age generally prefer to go by train. Do you know Grindelwald, by chance?"

She feigned an answer, glad to think that her betrayal had escaped the ears of her kindly cicerone.

"I stayed there three nights; it seems a century ago, but I was on my honeymoon, and you will understand—"

"Perfectly, perfectly; I should not have put the question. You must forgive me."

The "little widow" replied with a commonplace, but both were silent for a full mile or more, and when next Clavering spoke, they had come out upon a wide plateau of the snow and were within twenty minutes of their destination. Here the scene changed in a measure, for there were woods upon the right hand, while the broad expanse of the snow hid the valley from their sight. A little village with a winding street and houses that should have come out of a child's play-box, stood between the plateau and the hotel; and when they had passed it, they entered the forest itself, following a tortuous path amid the pines and already meeting many of the revellers. From these, news of Andana was to be had, especially from a delightful woman of the world, whose age was thirteen and whose uncle was a Cabinet Minister. Skis permitted her to follow the sledge gracefully, and she talked as though the end of the world were at hand and would find her budget undelivered.

"Keith Rivers is here and he's winning everything," she said. "I'm in for the doubles with him to-morrow, and it's a certainty. Dr. Orange came yesterday. Of course, everyone is more in love with him than ever. The ice has been beastly, but we've put in a protest—in fact, we've riddled the enemy with potholes, and I suppose he'll do something. Do you know Ian Kavanagh, I wonder? He was a blue, and his father left him thousands and thousands. It's awful to start life with that on your shoulders, isn't it? But he seems strong. Of course, he can't skate a bit, but we forgive him, because he can do other things. Then I must tell you, there's Benny—do you know Benny? If you do not, you have missed the joy of your life. He's the most good-natured, stupidest, obstinate creature I ever met in all my days. Think of it—he'd never been on skis before, and he went out the day before the blizzard and actually tried to jump. I thought he was going to fall over the edge of the world before he'd stop. Oh, he is such a dear, and I do wish he'd move into the hotel, and not stop at that awful villa—"

An empty sleigh, drawn by two sturdy horses tandem fashion, came cantering down the path and the business of passing in so difficult a place stilled the ravenous tongue for a moment. When they got on again, Harry Clavering ventured upon an introduction:

"This is our philosopher and reigning monarch," he said genially—"Miss Elizabeth Bethune. Permit me to introduce her"; and he turned and waited, remembering that he had not yet the "little widow's" name. She remembered it also, and her face was crimson when she said:

"I am Mrs. Kennaird—I am glad to meet my sovereign."

"Oh, indeed," exclaimed Miss Elizabeth with a pretty pout; "this is not a golden age, I assure you, Mrs. Kennaird, and Mr. Clavering never will be sensible; I don't believe he could be if he tried. It would serve him right if I said nothing about the ghost—"

They both looked at her.

"The ghost! Here at Andana?"

"I should think so; everybody's seen it but Mr. Benny, and, of course, he's blind. Do you know the people in the villages are so frightened that some of them are going down to Sierre? Well, it's true, and even that horrid Dr. Orange, who believes in nothing but his 'brackets,' why, he's in a dreadful way about it. We're to have a picnic after dinner to-night, just to see if we can find it."

"I shall certainly come," rejoined Clavering; and then to Mrs. Kennaird he said:

"Perhaps you will join the expedition?"

But the "little widow" shook her head sadly.

"No," she said, "I think not—my life is too full of ghosts. I would not add to the number."

And that was the end of it, for the drivers whipped up their horses at the moment, and with a jangling of bells and guttural cries from the men, they emerged from the wood, and the Palace Hotel was before them. Here Dr. Orange and a few others were gathered, waiting the bell for luncheon. They greeted such of the new-comers as were known to them with an exuberant welcome; nor did they fail to bestow their interest upon the "little widow."

"A devilish dainty little woman," said that condescending young gentleman, Keith Rivers.

Dr. Orange, however, a slim, good-looking man of forty, had become suddenly preoccupied.

"By Jove!" he said, "I know that face almost as well as my own. Now where—?"

CHAPTER II

A DARK HORSE GOES DOWN

The morning of the following day surpassed the expectation even of those who wrote the story of Andana for the English newspapers. People who were out of the hotel by nine o'clock returned to tell their friends that the sun was broiling. Others went to the little bazaar for blue glasses at one franc fifty.

There had been mist in the Rhone valley at dawn and wisps of it still hung about the entrance to the Simplon. Weather prophets detected a good omen here, and stood before the porch of the hotel to peer down into that unsurpassable ravine and to say that the cluster of black dots immediately below them stood for the church and streets of Sierre. To the right and left were the great clefts of the mighty chasm, a vast pit digged by the waters that flowed before man was, and were now sown with towns and villages and the iron links of civilisation.

The hotel at Andana stands upon the brink of the valley at a height of five thousand feet. Immediately facing it upon the farther side are the twin peaks of the Weisshorn with its sheer and glistening precipices, and a little to the right of that, the Rothhorn and the shining glaciers which are the windows to that supreme escarpment. Look farther to the right across the vast abyss, and you have Sion in the hollow and for your heights the Becs de Bosson—or farther yet, the Aiguilles Rouges and all their story of hazard and achievement. These stand up amid countless peaks, while from the lesser mountains of the Simplon upon the one hand, right away to Mont Blanc upon the other, the eye is spellbound both by the number and the grandeur of these dominating summits.

Deep in the valley lies the Rhone, but a thread of silver to those upon the heights. Andana stands high above its right bank, and the mountains behind it, lacking something in variety, are yet incomparable in the delights they afford to the winter sportsman. Here the climber seeks the wider fields of untrodden snows, the gentler valleys and the vanquished summits. And here in the woods there is a solitude of winter whose charm is not readily to be forgotten.

The "little widow" had slept well after her long journey, and she awoke to the delights of this unfamiliar scene just when the clocks were striking nine. Lying a little while to speculate upon the events of the long journey from Egypt and to wonder if any in the hotel would know her, presently her ears became aware of an unusual clatter below her window. When she looked out she discovered a party on skis about to set out for a paper chase, and announcing the fact with the boisterous spirit of the mountains.

There they were, fathers of families and their sons; generals who had cast off the shackles of Whitehall; colonels from India; merchants waxed fat; boys from the universities—all dressed in the once-white sweaters, the short knee-breeches and the regulation boots. Troops of girls and of ladies of uncertain age accompanied them—gliding, sliding, staggering upon the ungainly runners; and thus, in splendid disorder, the motley march began.

When they were gone, the two young gentlemen who had come up with the party from Sierre yesterday appeared upon the plateau with Miss Bessie Bethune, and having bestowed upon her the gift of a few buckets of snow applied chiefly to the nape of her neck, began to ask ironically when the "show" would begin.

"Rivers said nine o'clock. I put my three-and-six-penny watch down the back of the customs' man at Pontarlier, so I don't know, but I'll bet it's nearly ten. Beastly shame to keep the cracks waiting. Snagg ought to ask a question in Parliament about it."

To which Dick Fenton replied that Rivers was certainly "a nut" and that they had better go up and crack him—which suggestion, adopted nem. con., left Miss Bessie to herself for an instant and then to a duologue with the "little widow," whom she espied at the window.

"Aren't you coming down to see the races, Mrs. Kennaird?"

"Oh, I hope so; what time do they begin?"

"That's what I want to know. If they don't come down soon, I shall race by myself, and then they'll have to give me a prize. Do come and help me. I'm in a dreadful minority."

"Then I must certainly come to your assistance. Is Mr. Clavering down yet?"

"I haven't seen him; but, of course, we don't want the Church until Sunday. There's no one on the run at all but Benny, and he doesn't count. Have you seen Benny? Then it's a thing to dream about. He lives all by himself in the chalet up there—such a wonderful man, and always going about as though he were looking for his own soul. You'll see him in a minute, for he's just gone up—but I don't suppose he'll come down on the luge—I really can't believe that Benny would be faithful to anything for more than five minutes. And, oh! here's Mr. Kavanagh—I would like to introduce you, for he is such a dear!"

A tall, fair-haired man emerged from the hotel door at the moment, and Miss Bessie immediately took possession of him, to his apparent satisfaction, for they were gossiping like two old women when next the "little widow" saw them. Immediately afterwards, someone shouted "Achtung!" and a figure came flying down the ice-run which finishes at the very door of the hotel. Roughly clad in a grey sweater and check breeches, wearing no hat, and showing a thick crop of black hair, Mr. Benjamin Benson, for it was he, clung to his toboggan wildly, his teeth set and his eyes staring. When at last it flung him violently to the snow, he got up with the smile of a child, and looked at it for many minutes almost reproachfully. Then, patiently and laboriously he set out to climb the hill again to have another try.

When he had gone, the "little widow" dressed herself without further delay, and by a quarter to ten she also joined the throng before the hotel door, and was immediately recognised by Harry Clavering, who told her that the races were about to begin.

"Perhaps you would like to go up with me," he suggested a little nervously. "I am time-keeper to-day, and I can show you just how it is done. Everyone toboggans here, and you will like to begin as soon as possible. Shall we go now?"

She offered no objection, and they set out at once, climbing steep steps cut in the snow to a little bridge above the final straight of the course. To his question whether she had discovered any friends at Andana, she replied in the negative; but added that Mrs. Allwater and her daughter Pansy were coming on from Caux in a few days' time—"and they," she said, "are very old friends of mine."

When they arrived at the bridge they found quite a concourse of people, that very self-conscious person, Ian Kavanagh, among the number. Hardly had he set eyes on the "little widow" when he begged the parson to introduce him.

"Do you do this sort of thing, Mrs. Kennaird?" he asked her, as he took his stand near by. She answered with a smile that she was quite unaccomplished on the ice.

"Prefer hunting, I suppose? Well, so do I, though what my twenty nags are doing just now I won't ask. Eating their heads off, I suppose. Let me get you a seat; this sun takes it out of one, and some of the girls are staggering. You'll want all your courage, I can tell you."

He brought a cane chair, and set it upon the high bank so that she could see the toboggans as they passed under the little bridge. Harry Clavering watched all this ceremony with some impatience, and hastened to cut in before the thing went any farther.

"I think they are wanting you, Mr. Kavanagh, at the starting-post," he said with a smile of entreaty. "There's no flag there, and we must have one. Would you very much object?"

"I should indeed, but, of course, if you command—" And the man, with a look at the "little widow" which he meant to be unutterable, set out for the unwelcome duty. Then the parson spoke.

"I don't understand Kavanagh," he said; "no energy at all—so listless—and he is only twenty-seven, I believe. They say he has a large fortune; it really is a great pity if it is true. Young men with much money are dreadfully handicapped in the race for happiness—but there, it is not my business after all, and I have no right to mention it. Can you see quite well, Mrs. Kennaird?—the start is up there, you know, by the little white cottage. I take the time directly the red flag is lowered, and the man at the finish signals to me with his flag when the course is finished. This is what we call an ice-run. They flood the surface every night, and that makes it very fast. These high banks are to guard the corners. If it were flat, they could not get round at all. Some of them are very clever—Mr. Rivers, for instance. He is standing over there, just by Lady Coral-Smith—the thin man in the sweater with our Trinity colours."

He babbled on as though she had been a child; nor could her ignorance quarrel with the lesson. Not for many a month had she felt so much alive as out here upon the mountain-side, with the valley at her feet and the whited woods above. The sense of vast space and dominion delighted her—the merry people; the skaters upon the rink to the right of her; the curlers upon the rink to the left; the sunshine, the feeling that all the men and women in the world had suddenly become children and were at play, combined to suggest an ecstasy of repose and forgetfulness.

"Tell me, for I am very ignorant," she said, "do two people come down the slide together?"

Harry Clavering was startled.

"We don't call it a slide—an 'ice-run' is the proper name," he said almost apologetically. "There is only room for one runner at a time, as you will see presently. They go so very fast. Why, it's more than a mile from the cottage up there to the door of the hotel, and they do it in a minute and a half! You must watch them as they take the corners; that's the real fun—that's where they generally fall off."

"So we are here to support their miseries. How very noble of us! And the man with the red flag up on the hillside?"

"He is the starter. Now see, there is young Bob Otway just about to come down."

He was very excited, and watched the starting-box with restless eyes, while she tried to follow him and to trace the serpentine course of the run which might have been just a wide stretch of the ice extending from the pine-woods above to the door of the hotel upon the plateau. Half-way down, the track swept suddenly to the right, and then to the left again—and here were the high banks of snow to ease the corners and make them possible at high speeds. The "little widow" had just fallen to a memory of her own girlhood and of the joy such a game would have afforded her before the dark days, when Harry Clavering waved his red flag violently and there was a general shout:

"He's off!"

"Only Bob Otway," said some kindly friend in the crowd who was an optimist. "He's sure to take a toss." And it was a true saying, for Master Bob came at the corner like a bull and was clean up and over it before many realised that he started at all.

"Oh, dear! Oh, dear!" exclaimed the old parson, quite as excited as any boy about it. "He should not have taken the bank so high. Poor boy, I hope he has not hurt himself." A comment which provoked a muttered "D——d fool!" from a choleric colonel, who had seen the thing done in Canada, and did not believe it possible to do it better in Switzerland. Then a second competitor, Dick Fenton, started, and he came down prettily enough, riding low at the banks and getting a splendid course in the final straight. It was quite thrilling to see him, the "little widow" declared; and when Harry Clavering announced the time as one minute thirty-one seconds, she believed that Fenton must have won. Not so the others. "Wait until Rivers has been down," they said. That splendid personage obviously was their pièce de resistance.

Meanwhile, there were "heats" for the ladies, and these found the men a little nearer to the edge of the bank and frankly enjoying themselves. Some of the girls rode very well—and, significantly, Marjory Rider, whose name suggested proficiency, acquitted herself with hardly less aplomb than her sister Nellie. Tall girls, and excessively thin, it remained for an artist in the background to suggest that they never would have got their living as "models." But they flashed down the ice-run with a bravado that was incontestable, and their corners were, in Bob Otway's words, "divine." They were followed by a pretty little girl with a superb figure, who considerately parted company with her toboggan on the second bank and went half-way down the straight with her face to the heights and her back toward the winning post. Even this, however, was capped by a mature lady of forty-three, who rolled over and over at the first turn and had to be helped up the slope with a curler's besom. In no way daunted, she set out immediately for the summit to repeat a performance so diverting to the company.

The "little widow" found all this new enough to be pleasing, and there was a curious fascination in watching this whirring from the heights; while the prone figures, the drone of the runners, the leap at the corners, the hard set faces, suggested that conquest of space and time which never fails to be exciting. When they told her that Keith Rivers was about to perform, she craned forward in her chair to see that dashing youth, with his curly brown hair and his frank open face and his contempt of other rivals. He had just left Eton and was going into the army, they told her. And none at Andana could keep pace with him, whether upon skis or skates. To be sure, he rode magnificently, taking the corners with unerring judgment, and making a sweep into the straight which dazzled the company. When the time was announced—one minute twenty-nine seconds—it seemed that there was nothing for his friends to do but to throw their caps into the air and claim the stakes. None was left in now but Benny, and to think of Mr. Benjamin Benson as the winner of the Grand Prix at Andana was too ridiculous.

Benny had just gone up to the starting-post, a well-made figure of a man enough, with the kindliest eyes in all Switzerland. He walked with the lurch of the sailor ashore; and the chaff that followed him was like hail upon a pent-house roof. To Bess Bethune, who asked him if he were going to beat record, he shouted back over his shoulder that he meant to try. It was evident that he had little skill in repartee; and when anyone wished him luck he took the words as he found them and missed the irony. To Bob Otway, who recommended him to tie himself on with a rope, he retorted that he would be the better for the loan of a monkey's tail; and quite satisfied with the shot, he went plodding on up the hill to the amusement of every superior person in the company.

There was a little delay at the post, for Benny would fall off his toboggan before he got on to it, as the starter declared; and when they did get him going, he leaped high into the air and fell with such a thud upon the cushion of the machine that any other man's bones would have been broken. From that moment his performance became entirely astonishing. No one at Andana had ever taken the earlier bends of the course so fast and so furiously, and it seemed quite impossible that he could remain upon the course at all. Benny, however, was a sticker. "Where I drop, there I lie," was one of the maxims of his life, and so he lay very close to his toboggan, hugging it as though it were a pretty girl, and never lifting his eyes from a form so attractive. Approaching the corner he began to attain a speed which delighted the cognoscenti. Uproarious applause mingled with mocking laughter. All said and done, the world likes a butt—and what other role could such a man have filled?

"Stick to it, old chap!" "Hang on, Benjamin!" "Give him his head!" "Now we're jumping!" "Benny's a nut!" "Oh, my hat, see that!" "Hard to starboard, Benjamin!"—such were the cries that were to be heard above the din as the rider approached the corner. Here, surely, the gallery believed that this meteoric display must terminate. The leap from the second bank to a long straight run carried Benny to the first of the monstrous corners, and here he must be unshipped. As the flash of a blackbird against a curtain of the snow, he rushed the straight and struck the great mound which defended the bend. People saw him shoot high into the air, then fall again with hands gripping the bars of the runners, and eyes which stared from his head. A great "Oh!" went up, a murmur of wonder and amazement. Someone said that he was round the second bank, but no one believed it until a cry from the final straight turned all eyes thither, and Benny was espied leaping to the goal. Then the red flag fell. The race was over—and more wonderful to tell, Benny had won it!

No one believed the thing at first. Even Harry Clavering felt very dubious about it, and looked at his watch a good many times before daring to announce the result. "One minute twenty-seven and four-fifth seconds," the chronograph said, and, to be sure, it was no good disputing that. So the kindly little man admitted almost apologetically at last that he really believed Mr. Benson had won. Upon which a curious, half-mocking silence fell upon the company. In a way its pride of judgment was hurt, and it had not the manliness to say so. That the Grand Prix, the race of the year, should be won by a half-savage sailor-man, who knew no more of the science of the game than a heathen Chinee, was surely an insult to the elect of Andana! And then all the fine talk on the part of men like Ian Kavanagh and Keith Rivers, the attitudes and devotions of the Rider girls, were those to count for nothing? An unspoken resentment against the dark horse, who certainly had gone down, left Benny without a cheer. There was only one person in the crowd who spoke an honest word to him, and she was the "little widow."

"I'm so glad you won," she said, meeting him in the veranda of the hotel, and quite regardless of the formalities. Benny's eyes lighted up like lamps when he heard her.

"Do you really mean that, Mrs. Kennaird?"

"I mean every word of it. Pride has had many falls to-day. I am not at all sorry."

"Thank you very much," he said; and then, as simply as a boy, he added: "I knew I should do it if I could stick on."

"That's why you won," she rejoined; "because you knew you would," and with a smile that he would never forget she passed on into the hall.

The "little widow" had awarded Benny his prize. He fell there and then to wondering if it were the last he would ever win from her.