Mountain Magic (13 page)

She sighed, a short, fluttering sigh, but agreed that things could be worse.

“And we’ll have the rest of our lives to be together,” he reminded her, his voice not entirely steady as he turned his mouth to hers.

“Kurt,” she said, dreamily, before an increasing chill in the atmosphere decided them they must go indoors, “I shall always think of that mountain in Switzerland where I first met you as a magic mountain. I was terrified, and lost, and had no hope for the future And then you gave me everything!
”

“Not quite everything ... yet,” he corrected her. “But if you like to think that mountain magic was responsible for our present happiness then I most certainly won’t disagree,”

IN the morning they broke the news to the General, who apparently had been waiting to hear something of the kind and was therefore unable to betray surprise.

He kissed Toni with the heartiness her father might have displayed on such an occasion, and then suggested a celebration lunch with champagne. Philip Gresham was invited to join them, although he looked a trifle deflated, as if some carefully nursed plans had collapsed like a pricked balloon.

Nevertheless, he drank the health of the newly engaged pair as if he really wished them well, and Kurt tried to forget the morning when his
fiancée
had been forced to enter such a personable young man’s bedroom while he was hardly in a condition to face the day without fear of criticism of his appearance, and then blamed himself afresh for ever submitting Toni to such possible unpleasantness and even danger.

Not that Gresham was the type to take advantage of a young woman as inexperienced as Toni. Besides, he had recognised her for what she was—a girl with a good background who needed a certain amount of cherishing. And it hadn’t taken him long to decide other things about her.

Kurt had no doubt that Gresham would have married Toni like a shot if she had shown the smallest
willingness to become Mrs. Philip Gresham. But fortunately for him, Kurt—she had never shown that willingness.

The one person who did not join in the celebration lunch was Antoine’s beautiful manageress, who kept well out of the way while the champagne corks were popping, and so far as Toni was concerned kept well out of the way for the remainder of that day.

After lunch Kurt took Toni for a walk along one of her favourite mountain paths, and she remembered the afternoon with pleasure sill the rest of her life, for it was while they lingered in the shade of a pine wood that they really got to know one another. They talked, as they had never talked before, about all the
things
that really interested them
... And they discovered that they had a large number of mutual interests which promised well for their future life together. Anyway, Toni thought so.

“I used to think we were utterly dissimilar,” she told him, while he lay on his back in the shade of the pines, and a golden beam of sunlight found its way through the branches and lighted up the ebony tones of his hair. “I thought you were hard and merciless, and I knew I was weak and stupid.”

“And now?” he enquired, lifting his head and regarding her quizzically, while his eyes had a drowsy look of utter contentment in them.

She smiled at him ... the smile of a woman who no longer has any fears or doubts, and is able to examine the
man
she loves—even take him apart a little, because in any case she is utterly sure of him.

“Now I wonder why I was so much afraid of you.
And yet—looking back—it wasn’t all fear. I trusted you. I trusted you enough to leave someone I had known for weeks and go away with you. It might have been disastrous from my point of view.”

He rolled over on to his side and looked up at her. A cigarette was smouldering between the slim brown fingers of one of his hands, and the smoke that curled upwards formed a thin veil between them. Through it —and the fragrant scent of it in the still heat of the mountain afternoon—dark eyes met and clung to golden brown ones.

“Yet you took the risk,” he said softly.

“Because, I suppose, you compelled me.”

“How did I compel you
?
”

Her fingers strayed amongst the pine needles that were inches deep in the spot where they were reclining, and she collected a handful and regarded them as if they fascinated her before she replied.

“I think you exercised a sort of mesmerism which I was unable to resist.” The pine needles trickled back through her fingers as she spoke slowly. “When I lost my nerve on that ledge you didn’t make a move to help me, but you must have helped me in some way because alone and without you I couldn’t have taken a step to get off it. I was so hypnotised by fear that I could hardly lift my head, let alone make a move.”

“I wish now that I had jumped down on to the ledge and scooped you up in my arms,” he said almost roughly, his eyes darkening. “I
was
a cad to insist that you helped yourself.”

“No.” She bent over him and lightly touched the back of his hand. “If you’d done that you would never have made me hate you so much that I had to show you I wasn’t made entirely of the weak kind of stuff you thought I was, and then I would never have had the courage to go away with you. It was the intensity of the dislike I felt for you at that time that gave me the courage to get off that ledge.”

He regarded her broodingly.

“How many women, I wonder, when they become engaged, can truthfully tell the man they propose to marry that they
once
disliked him so badly they were willing to risk their necks rather than plead for a little help
?
” he asked, the cigarette smoke curling upwards into the pine branches.

This time she laughed, while her fingers
cl
ung tightly about his hand.

“Did you expect me to plead for help?” uncertain whether that was really what he had expected her to do.

He ground out the cigarette end in the pine needles, and then flung it away.

“As a matter of fact, I did.” A gleam of amusement lit his eyes as once again they met hers. “After seeing the way you meekly went to do the bidding of that awful woman in the
hotel
I could see no reason why your nerve wouldn’t finally crack and you would refuse to get yourself off the ledge. In which case I would have had to bestir myself and do something about it.”

“Are you glad now that I found the courage to h
el
p myself?”

“Very glad.” Suddenly his eyes were all melting tenderness, and he swept her into his arms. She yielded gladly, despite those few seconds when they had once again done a little verbal sparring. “If you had failed to find the spirit to stand up and defy me I would have known you were not the kind of girl who would one day subdue me entirely. But, to be perfectly honest with you, there was never a moment when I thought you were really a coward. There was just the
possibility that you could be
...
But I didn’t believe
it. Perhaps, even then, it was important to me to make the discovery!”

She lay with her head pillowed on his shoulder while the fierce heat of the afternoon grew gradually less, and the cool of early evening brought shadows to the wood. Then, realising regretfully that they had to return to the hotel, he pulled her to her feet and held her for a long minute tightly clasped in his arms before they set out for the
Rosenhorn
.

The next day she and the General were leaving the hotel, and the agony of separation lay ahead. Kurt’s heart misgave him as he looked down at the small fair face framed in soft brown hair, and lighted by those enormous golden-brown eyes. Supposing, just supposing that, when she got away from him, she found that she could live without him, and that her uncle’s way of life appealed to her far more than the thought of returning to live with a man whose main preoccupation was running somewhat remote hotels. The General was a rich man, and he could offer her an extremely comfortable existence once they returned home to England, and there were always men like Philip Gresham who would be eager to marry a girl like Toni ... especially if they had her uncle’s blessing!

He was quite willing for her to marry Kurt Antoine, but it was obvious he was more than a little bit disappointed
...
He had hoped to have her with him for
a while before she decided to get married. It wouldn’t upset him in the slightest if his niece changed her mind, and, while distance safely separated them, she wrote and said that, after all, she wasn’t ready yet for
marriage
... not to him!

He relaxed his hold of her, and instead of keep
in
g her closely locked against him he cupped her face in both his hands, and looked down at her with a strange, new, intent earnestness in his look.

“Toinette,” he said—and he hardly ever called her Toinette—“I want you to know this. If you do change your mind—I shall understand.”

Toni’s upward look at him was at first amazed, and then became suddenly inscrutable.

“You mean,” she said, “that if, once I get away from you, I’m not as hopelessly in love with you as I imagine at the moment
... I’m to let you know
?
”

“Yes.”

Her face grew quite expressionless.

“And if you make the same discovery—one can change one’s mind about such an important thing as marriage in a week, I suppose, but I can
’
t imagine how it’s done!—you’ll let me know?”

“Don’t be silly,” he said, almost sternly.

“Well,” with assumed lightness, “there’s Marianne...”

He turned her slowly about and they walked back
to the hotel. At the foot of the terrace steps he broke their silence for the first time
.

“
Liebling
,
we are both a little upset because of the parting tomorrow, but that is no reason why we should attempt to hurt one another. When I spoke to you in the wood I was merely guarding against a—possible
e
ventuality—”

“A change of heart, you mean, which you might experience yourself! Well, that is something we’ve both got to face up to, and since a week is not a very long time in which to discover our true feelings I’d better persuade my uncle to make it a fortnight’s respite—or even longer! I could go back to England with him...
”

“If you do that,” he said, a break in his voice, “I won’t be able to endure it.”

Nevertheless, although her eyes seldom left him during the course of that evening, and whenever he felt them on him his instan
tl
y swung to meet them, Toni was rather more depressed than she would normally have been at the prospect of a brief separation. She was depressed enough by the thought of the separation, but the fact that Kurt could have any doubt at this late stage oppressed rather than depressed her.

As she had pointed out to him, it wasn’t a one-sided matter
... There was Marianne moving beautifully in the background of his life all the time, and once Toni was out of the way she would be quite unlike Marianne if she didn’t grasp hold of every possible opportunity to test his devotion to the English girl.

When she saw him looking slightly
distrait
she could be extra nice to him. She could banish the loneliness of the long evenings by putting forth all her charm and her womanly sympathy.... They worked so much together; they had, in actual fact, quite a lot in common. Hotel running was a sport they pursued with zest, and Kurt would turn naturally to Marianne if anything went temporarily wrong with his precious
Rosenhorn
.

Looked at in a purely dispassionate way, they were two people who
ought
to have married!

Toni had an almost sleepless night that night, and in the morning her pallor was slightly noticeable. Her uncle pinched her cheek.

“You can do with a change of scenery, my dear,” he told her. “I know the mountains are wonderful, and I can fully appreciate them, but a young girl like you wants a little more life—shops, and things like
that
...
When you’re married you’ll have to persuade
Kurt to take you on your travels occasionally. It won’t do to rusticate all the time.”

Toni felt she wanted to defend the
Rosenhorn
, and Kurt’s way of life, with every breath in her body; but she was tired and dispirited after her sleepless night, and somehow the sight of Kurt’s equally grim face when they met did nothing to lift her spirits.

He wasn’t quite as loverlike as he might have been when he saw them off. He even changed his mind about accompanying them to Innsbruck at the last moment.

Their cases were stacked in the boot of a hired car, and the car swung out of the hotel courtyard. Kurt walked beside it for a few steps, and then he waved a hand almost perfunctorily. Toni, sharing the back seat with her uncle and Philip Gresham—who had decided to accompany them at almost the last moment—waved back and watched, her head bent almost painfully, until the hotel was out of sight.

Her lips felt cold as if they had been touched by ice instead of Kurt’s last kiss, and her hands inside her gloves were cold, too. It was a beautiful mountain morning—a wonderful mountain morning—but as yet the atmosphere was chill.

Somehow it affected her with the queer sensation that she was chilled to the heart.

When they boarded the train she was still
thinking
of Kurt walking back into his office and being welcomed by Mademoiselle Raveaux. Marianne would probably see to it that he had some coffee brought to him almost at once. She would chat brightly about the affairs of the day, and gradually the Austrian would relax, and the image of Toni would begin a slow process of fading...

It hadn’t faded by the time they reached Paris, for a telegram awaited her there, and it u
r
ged her to ‘have a good time and enjoy her shopping spree.’ It also urged her not to forget the
Rosenhorn
.

Toni carried the telegram up to her room, and she put it safely away in a drawer of the dressing-table before issuing any instructions about the disposal of her cases.

Her room was even more luxurious than the one she had recen
tl
y occupied at the
Rosenhorn
. It had an enormous double bed raised on a kind of dais, and the hangings and the carpet were all of pale gold. The bathroom was positively sumptuous, and so were the rest of the furnishings. The ou
tl
ook from the windows
was over the Bois and the leafy trees of Paris, and Toni spent a long time standing and gazing downwards at the glittering cars and the couples moving below her, and she pushed back the thought that if only Kurt was with her everything would have a golden glamour about it. In fact, everything would be rainbow-hued, as well as golden.

When she joined her uncle in the magnificent dining-room where he had reserved a table for their evening meal she was relieved to hear that Philip would not be dining with them. Possibly Toni’s silence on the journey had affected him, and in any case he was convinced that she had left her heart behind in
the mountains of Austria.

But the General was in a festive mood, and determined to celebrate. They would have a bottle of champagne with their meal—it was already reposing in an ice-bucket near to them—and afterwards he would take her to a show, and then, if she felt like it,
they might go on to a night-club.
In the morning, he was sure, she would want to be off early looking at the shops, but tonight was his night for ensuring that she saw something of Pa
ri
s
and enjoyed herself.

“Forget that young man of yours for a few hours,
and have fun,” he urged.

But Toni was appalled.

“I’m a bit tired,” she admitted. “I had thought we would be going early to bed.”

The General exploded in amazement.

“Early to bed in Paris? My dear girl, don’t you know
this
is still the gayest capital in Europe?—the
whole world, if it comes to that! Anyone who goes early to bed in Paris is dull indeed, and I’m not going to accept it that my niece is dull. Now, drink up that glass of champagne, and afterwards you’ll feel distinctly more cheerful.” He summoned the waiter with the sligh
tl
y arrogant gesture of the Englishman abroad, and demanded to know what was special on the menu. Something that the chef could really recommend.

In the morning Toni set off for the shops alone, aware that her head was aching a little after her dissipations of the night before. Not that they had been excessive
... apart from one glass of champagne at dinner, she had had another in some gaudily gleaming place that was dignified by the title of a night-club, and had her toes trodden upon badly when her uncle decided he couldn’t let the evening pass without attempting one or two of the
modern
dances.

Toni, who had danced very little in her life, was nevertheless a
born
dancer, but the General was not. After apologising several times he gave it up and decided that the rhythm was infectious. It didn’t much matter whether he acquitted himself well or not ...
He was thoroughly enjoying himself, and he was thankful to Toni for giving him the opportunity
... or rather, providing him with the excuse!

Toni decided to risk the highly dangerous crossings and make her own discovery of the shops. Her un
cl
e had given her a wad of notes. They seemed to her to fill her handbag when she looked inside it, and she experienced more than a few qualms because she had accepted them. She would much rather fe
el
independent and use her own money, except that she hadn’t any
... or very little.

Kurt had broached the delicate subject of her trousseau, and wanted to pay for everything, but she had refused almost indignantly, and her uncle had supported her. Now, she supposed, if she was ever to have an adequate wardrobe that would enable her to marry someone like Kurt she would have to use the General’s money.

At first she merely window-gazed, and gradually the truly feminine side of her became excited by the things she saw. She ventured to find her way inside one or two shops, and when she emerged her parcels made it necessary for her to take a taxi. After that, she decided to use a taxi all the time, and her afternoon shopping expedition was conducted along somewhat more practical and time-saving lines.

A week of this sort of thing, with the evenings devoted to the General and his naive appreciation of all that Paris night life offered, and she was feeling nearly exhausted. Between excursions to Fontainebleau and Versailles, visits to the hairdresser and the beauty-parlour, snatched half-hours in museums and art galleries, fittings for suits and dresses, purchases of cosmetics, night taxi jaunts to see the lights of Paris and the outskirts, she was beginning to feel like something washed up by the tide. And she never neglected to write to Kurt. She had sent him three long letters, and two telegrams answering the first one he sent her, when it was gradually borne in on her that, so far, he hadn’t bothered to write her one letter.