there she stood real and solid, a little unfamiliar in her tweeds and with her shining eyes intimate and unforgettable, as though i had never ceased to see them for all those intervening years. and bracing us both and holding back our emotion was, quite unmistakably, miss summersley satchel, a blonde business-like young woman with a stumpy nose very cruelly corrugated and inflamed by a pince-nez that savagely did much more than its duty by its name. she remained seated, tilting her chair a little, pushing herself back from the table and regarding me—intelligently.
it was one of those moments in life when one is taken unawares. i think our common realization of the need of masking the reality of our encounter, the hasty search in our minds for some plausible face upon this meeting, must have been very obvious to the lady who observed us. mary's first thought was for a pseudonym. mine was to make it plain we met by accident.
"it's mr.—stephen!" said mary.
"it's you!"
"dropped out of the sky!"
"from over there. i was benighted and go there late."
"very late?"
"one gleam of light—and a yawning waiter. or i should have had to break windows.... and then i meet you!"
then for a moment or so we were silent, with our sense of the immense gravity of this position growing upon us. a little tow-headed waiter-boy appeared with their coffee and rolls on a tray poised high on his hand.
"you'll have your coffee out here with us?" said mary.
"where else?" said i, as though there was no conceivable alternative, and told the tow-headed waiter.
belatedly mary turned to introduce me to her secretary: "my friend miss summersley satchel. mr.—stephen." miss satchel and i bowed to each other and agreed that the lake was very beautiful in the morning light. "mr. stephen," said mary, in entirely unnecessary explanation, "is an old friend of my mother's. and i haven't seen him for years. how is mrs. stephen—and the children?"
i answered briefly and began to tell of my climb down the titlis. i addressed myself with unnecessary explicitness to miss satchel. i did perhaps over-accentuate the extreme fortuitousness of my appearance.... from where i stood, the whole course of the previous day after i had come over the shoulder was visible. it seemed a soft little shining pathway to the top, but the dangers of the descent had a romantic intensification in the morning light. "the rule of the game," said i, "is that one stops and waits for daylight. i wonder if anyone keeps that rule."
we talked for a time of mountains, i still standing a little aloof until my coffee came. miss summersley satchel produced that frequent and most unpleasant bye-product of a british education, an intelligent interest in etymology. "i wonder," she said, with a brow of ruffled omniscience and eyeing me rather severely with a magnified eye, "why it is called titlis. there must be some reason...."
presently miss satchel was dismissed indoors on a transparent excuse and mary and i were alone together. we eyed one another gravely. perhaps all the more gravely because of the wild excitement that was quickening our pulse and breathing, and thrilling through our nerves. she pushed back the plate before her and put her dear elbows on the table and dropped her chin between her hands in an attitude that seemed all made of little memories.
"i suppose," she said, "something of this kind was bound to happen."
she turned her eyes to the mountains shining in the morning light. "i'm glad it has happened in a beautiful place. it might have been—anywhere."
"last night," i said, "i was thinking of you and wanting to hear your voice again. i thought i did."
"i too. i wonder—if we had some dim perception...."
she scanned my face. "stephen, you're not much changed. you're looking well.... but your eyes—they're dog-tired eyes. have you been working too hard?"
"a conference—what did you call them once?—a carnegieish conference in london. hot weather and fussing work and endless hours of weak grey dusty speeches, and perhaps that clamber over there yesterday was too much. it was too much. in india i damaged a leg.... i had meant to rest here for a day."
"well,—rest here."
"with you!"
"why not? now you are here."
"but—— after all, we've promised."
"it's none of our planning, stephen."
"it seems to me i ought to go right on—so soon as breakfast is over."
she weighed that with just the same still pause, the same quiet moment of lips and eyes that i recalled so well. it was as things had always been between us that she should make her decision first and bring me to it.
"it isn't natural," she decided, "with the sun rising and the day still freshly beginning that you should go or that i should go. i've wanted to meet you like this and talk about things,—ten thousand times. and as for[pg 329] me stephen i won't go. and i won't let you go if i can help it. not this morning, anyhow. no. go later in the day if you will, and let us two take this one talk that god himself has given us. we've not planned it. it's his doing, not ours."
i sat, yielding. "i am not so sure of god's participation," i said. "but i know i am very tired, and glad to be with you. i can't tell you how glad. so glad—— i think i should weep if i tried to say it...."
"three, four, five hours perhaps—even if people know. is it so much worse than thirty minutes? we've broken the rules already; we've been flung together; it's not our doing, stephen. a little while longer—adds so little to the offence and means to us——"
"yes," i said, "but—if justin knows?"
"he won't."
"your companion?"
there was the briefest moment of reflection. "she's discretion itself," she said.
"still——"
"if he's going to know the harm is done. we may as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb. and he won't know. no one will know."
"the people here."
"nobody's here. not a soul who matters. i doubt if they know my name.... no one ever talks to me."
i sat in the bright sunshine, profoundly enervated and quite convinced, but still maintaining out of mere indolence a show of hesitation....
"you take the good things god sends you, stephen—as i do. you stay and talk with me now, before the curtain falls again. we've tired of letters. you stay and talk to me.
"here we are, stephen, and it's the one chance that is ever likely to come to us in all our lives. we'll keep the point of honor; and you shall go to-day. but don't let's drive the point of honor into the quick. go easy stephen, old friend.... my dear, my dear! what has happened to you? have you forgotten? of course! is it possible for you to go, mute, with so much that we can say.... and these mountains and this sunlight!..."
i looked up to see her with her elbows on the table and her hands clasped under her chin; that face close to mine, her dear blue eyes watching me and her lips a little apart.
no other human being has ever had that effect upon me, so that i seem to feel the life and stir in that other body more than i feel my own.
