Contango (Ill Wind) (7 page)

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.