raine sat smoking his pipe for a long time before going to bed. the events of the day-had crowded so fast upon one another, that he had scarcely had time to estimate their relative importance. his mind was not yet perfectly balanced. the first kiss of a new love disturbs fine equilibrium.
it was characteristic of him that he at once put aside all temptations to postpone his departure. he could not meet katherine again, except as a declared lover. to parade such relations before felicia’s eyes, seemed to his simple experience in such things a cynical cruelty. yet he devoutly hoped that fate would decide and the destinies decree that he should return as quickly as possible. there was a peculiar irritation in the position in which he found himself. the sense of it grew in intensity as things assumed juster proportions. after all, what had been said? he was going away with everything unasked, everything unspoken. a question, a glance, a kiss; sufficient for the glowing moment—but painfully inadequate for after-hours of longing. with almost grotesque irritation he broke into an exclamation of anger against the storm that had interrupted the outburst of his gathering passion. but for a saving sense of humour he would have felt humiliated by the remembrance of the sudden check. he could not help chafing under the feeling of incompleteness.
unlike the woman, who had taken the kiss to her heart of hearts and nursed it there wilfully forgetful, for the first delicious afterhours, of aught else in the wide world, raine gnawed his spirit with impatient regret that circumstances had granted him no more. if the fulness of revelation were to come on the morrow, it would have been different; but he was going away—without seeing her—for days and days—leaving her with this unsatisfying expression of his love. for he loved her, deeply, truly, with the strength of his simple, manly nature. she had roused in him every instinct of pitying protection, her delicate grace had captivated his senses, her wide experience of life, sad in its wisdom, had harmonized subtly with his robust masculine faith. without being intellectual, she had the fine judgments of a cultured, thoughtful woman. on deep questions of ethics they met on common ground; could view the world together, and be stirred by the same sympathies. her companionship had grown intensely dear to him. the sadness that seemed to overspread her life had appealed to his chivalry, compelled him irresistibly to her side. the sweet womanliness of her nature had been gradually revealed to him by a thousand little acts, each one weaving its charm about him, jean-marie, too, and his wife had drawn him within the area of their worship.
hitherto her sadness had been attributed in his mind to no definite cause. she was a widow, had passed through much suffering, was intensely lonely, uncared for. for him that had been enough. he had scarcely thought of speculating further. but tonight the remembrance of agitated tones in her voice forced him to a surmise. he pondered over her self-accusing cry when he had submitted to her judgment the ethical side of the poor tragedy of his early manhood.
“god forbid that i of all creatures should dare to judge others.”
women do not utter such words lightly, least of all women like katherine. he fitted them as a key-stone into the grey, vague arch of the past. his face grew stern and thoughtful as he lay back in his seat, and passed his hand heavily through his hair, contemplating the apparition. for a time it loomed as a shadow between himself and her. and then—was it the ghost that he had laid that evening, come back as the eternal spirit of love, or was it merely his strong human faith? a light seemed to pour down from above, and katherine emerged serene and radiant from the mist, which spread behind her thin and formless.
he sprang to his feet, rubbed his eyes and laughed to himself. his love for her thrilled buoyantly through him. he loved her for what she had shown herself to be; a woman fair and brave and womanly—and one who loved him; that he had seen in her eyes as he had kissed her.
at half-past six on the following morning, the porter came to convey his luggage to the diligence, which starts from the grand quai, and a little later he himself left the house. he did so very wistfully. his quixotic flight caused him a greater pang even than he had anticipated. in the street he could not forbear giving a regretful glance upwards at the pension. to his delight, katherine was standing on the little balcony outside her window.
the bright morning sunlight fell upon her. she was wearing a cream-coloured wrapper; a pale blue scarf about her head half covered her fair hair. seen through the clear, pure atmosphere, she looked the incarnation of the morning. her face flushed red all over, as she met the gladness in his eyes. she had risen early, unable to sleep; had dressed herself with elaborate care, searching earnestly in her glass for the accusing lines of her thirty years. she would send a note, she had thought, by the waiter who would bring up his coffee, saying that she was astir and could see him in the salon before he started. but she had only got as far as biting the end of a pencil before a blank sheet of paper. all her preparations and fluttering of heart had ended in her going on to the balcony, to see him walk twenty yards before he turned the corner of the street. and there she had wished tremulously against her will that he would look up as he crossed the road. he had done so, was standing below her. she blushed like a young girl. but he only stood for a moment. with an eager sign he motioned her inwards, and ran back to the house.
they met outside the salon door. he rushed up to her, a little breathless from his race up the stairs, and drew her with him into the room.
“you—up at this hour—just to see me start!—are you an angel?”
he was rapturously incoherent. her act seemed to him to be truly angelic. in the early stages of love a man rarely takes the woman’s passionate cravings into account. acts that proceed from desires as self-centred as his own he puts down to pure, selfless graciousness towards him. and perhaps as a general principle this is just as well. the woman loves the tribute; and one of her fairest virtues is none the less fair through being won under false pretences.
katherine looked up at him with strange shyness. he had the power of evoking that which was sweetest and most womanly in her.
“you see that i do care—greatly.”
his arms were about her before the soundwave had passed his ear. a flood of burning words burst impatiently from his lips. she leant back her head, in the joy of surrender.
“i have loved you from the first—since last christmas. you came to me as nothing else has ever come to me—brave and strong above all men.”
the words fell from her in a murmur strung to passion-pitch. one such radiant moment eclipsed the waste of grey years. she would have sold her soul for it.
she disengaged herself gently.
“i must not make you late.”
“you will write to me?”
“if you write.”
“every hour, beloved, till i come back.”
“oh, let it be soon.”
“how great is your trust in me. another than you might have reproached me for going—at such a time.”
she looked at him, her eyes and lips one smile.
“i can guess the reason. i honour you for it. i would not keep you. but oh! it will be long till i see you again.”
“and to me. i am not one of those to whom waiting is easy. but i take away all, all yourself with me.”
“all.”
“good-bye—katherine,” he whispered. “you haye never called me by my name. let me hear it from you.”
“raine!”
again their lips met. in another moment he was speeding to catch the diligence. she went on to the balcony, kissed both hands to him as he turned the corner. then she went slowly back up the stairs, holding by the hand-rail, and shaken with joy and fear.
when raine arrived at chamonix, instead of finding rogers and his party at the hotel royale as he had expected, he found a telegram awaiting him.
“accident to bryce. party broken up. letter to follow.”
on inquiring of the manager, raine learned that his telegram of the day before had been forwarded on to rogers to courmayeur, whence the latter had written to the hotel countermanding the rooms he had ordered. and by the next post came a letter giving details of the accident. bryce had slipped down a crevasse and injured himself, perhaps fatally. all thoughts of further climbing were abandoned. raine was somewhat shocked at the news. he did not know bryce, who was a cambridge friend of the junior dean’s, but he was sincerely concerned at the tragic end of the expedition.
the point, however, that touched him practically was that he found himself stranded at chamonix. he eagerly scanned the long table-d’hote in the hope of discovering a familiar face. but not one was visible. he was alone in that crowded resort which only exists as a rallying point for excursionists and climbers. the sole distraction the place afforded were glaciers which he derived little interest in contemplating, and peaks which he had not the remotest desire to scale. it would have been different, if he had met a cheerful party. he had bargained with himself for their society. it was part of the contract. now that he was forced to depend on the alps alone for companionship, he felt aggrieved, and began to dislike them cordially. the notion, however, of going on solitary mountaineering excursions entirely against his will, appealed to his sense of humour.
“the relations between us are simply ridiculous,” he said, apostrophizing the mighty snow-clad pile.
but as there was no help for it, he prepared, like mahomet, to go the mountain cheerfully. so he secured a guide to the tête noire for the following day.
that done, he gave himself up entirely to the new sweetness that had come into his life.
the few moments of the morning’s meeting had lit up the day. much still remained unspoken, but there was no longer the irritating sense of incompleteness that had filled him the night before. yet all the deeper, subtler pulsations of his love craved immediate expression. he sat in his hotel bedroom far into the night, writing her his first letter.
for the next few days he occupied himself strenuously with the sights of chamonix. he joined a party over the mer de glace, took one day over the grands mulets, ascended the aiguille verte, and then rested with a feeling of well-earned repose. his great event of the day was the geneva post. he had received two letters from katherine. one she had written a few hours after his departure—he put it to his lips. the second, for which he waited with a lover’s impatience, was in answer to the first he had written. at first he read it with a slight shade of disappointment. it seemed to lack the spontaneity of the other. but raine, by nature chivalrous towards women, and holding them as creatures with emotions more delicately balanced than men and subject to a thousand undreamed-of shynesses, quickly assigned to such causes the restraint he had noticed, and, reading in, as it were a touch of passion into every touch of tenderness, satisfied the longings of his heart. there were letters too from his father. the first stated that he had mooted the plan to felicia of the little jaunt to lucerne, and that she had acceded to it joyfully, but in the second the old man complained of sudden poorliness. from the third raine learned that he was in bed with a bad cold, and that lucerne had been postponed indefinitely.
the news depressed him slightly. no letter from katherine had accompanied it, to cheer him. on the evening of his day of rest, therefore, he was less in love with chamonix than ever. by way of compensation the weather was bright and clear, and the sunny seat under the firs in the hotel gardens, whither he had retired with his travelling edition of “tristram shandy,” was warm and reposeful. he was speculating over the rabelaisian humour of mr. shandy’s domestic concerns, and enjoying the incongruity between it and the towering masses of rock and glacier and snow on the other side of the valley, when a man sauntered up the gravelled path, stopped before him, and asked for a light.
raine looked up, and recognizing the newcomer as one with whom he had exchanged casual remarks during the last few days, readily complied with his request.
he was a thin, wiry man of about seven and thirty, with a clean-shaven face which bore a curious expression of mingled simplicity and shrewdness. his thin lips seemed to smile at the deception practised by his guileless pale-blue eyes. unlike raine, who wore the englishman’s norfolk jacket, knickerbockers and heavy heather-mixture stockings, he was attired in grey summer trousers and a black jacket. a soft felt hat of the tyrolese shape, a pair of field-glasses slung over his shoulder, a great gold solitaire fastening his shirt-cuff, which showed conspicuously as he lit his cigar, suggested the nationality that was confirmed by his speech.
he was an american, his name was hockmaster, and he was visiting europe for the first time. with these facts he had already acquainted raine on a previous occasion.
when the american had returned the match-box, he sat down on the bench by raine’s side.
“if you want to be alone, you’ve only got to tell me and i’ll evaporate,” he said cheerfully. “but i’ve been getting somewhat lonesome in this valley. nature’s a capital thing in mixed society, but when you have got her all to yourself, she is a thundering dull companion.”
the remark so exactly echoed raine’s sentiments of the past few days that he burst out laughing, closed “tristram shandy,” and prepared to gossip sympathetically with his new acquaintance.
“you are not ecstatic over all this,” he said with a wave of his hand.
“only within reasonable limits,” replied the american. “it’s very pretty, and when you see it for the first time it fetches you in the pit of your stomach. some folks say it touches the soul, but i don’t take much stock of souls anyway. well, then you get over it, like sea-sickness, and it doesn’t fetch you any more. but i’m glad i’ve seen it. that is what i came over for.”
“to see the alps?”
“well, no. not exactly. but to sample europe generally. to get a bird’s-eye view of all the salient features. it is very interesting. america is a fine country, but it’s not the microcosm of the universe.”
“but you have scenery much more grandiose than this, in the californian sierras,” said raine.
“we may. i don’t know. and i hope i shall never know, for mountains and glaciers are not my strong point. but if they were fifty times as sublime, american mountains could not have the glamour and sentiment that brings thousands of my countrymen to gape at mount blanc. other mountains may do business on a larger scale, but the alps is an old-established firm. they have the connection, and people stick to them. mount blanc, too, is a sort of westminister abbey to americans, and the rigi a stratford-on-avon. they like to feel they have a share in it. i don’t say these are my views personally. i am afraid i take my glamour neat and get it over quickly.”
as raine had nothing particular to reply to this philosophy, and as he saw that mr. hockmaster would be more entertaining as a talker than as a listener, he uttered a polite commonplace by way of antistrophe, and the american again took up his parable. he spoke well and fluently. behind the ingenuousness of his remarks there generally lurked a touch of incisiveness, which stimulated his listener’s interest. his manners were those of a gentleman. raine began to like him.
“what part of england do you come from?” he asked at length.
“oxford.”
“the university?”
“yes.”
“i haven’t been there yet. i’ve been through cambridge. but oxford i am keeping until i get back. your english institutions interest me more than anything in europe. it’s a cumbrous old bit of machinery, and won’t stand comparison with ours; but we seem to live for the sake of our institutions, whereas you let yours rip and make use of them when they serve your purpose.”
he lit another cigar from the stump of the old one, and continued,—
“i come from chicago. it is a go-ahead place, and, if it were near the sea, could become the capital of the world, when universal federation sets in. i love it, as perhaps you love oxford. you have literature—‘literae humaniores’ you call it at oxford—in your blood, and i have business in mine. i am a speculator in a small way. i have just floated a company—got it shipshape before i sailed—for a patent process of making white lead. now, i am as keen upon that white lead as if it were a woman. it has kept me awake at nights, and danced before my eyes during the day. i have dreamed of every ship flying american colours painted with my white lead. to make a pile out of it was quite secondary to the poetry of it. now i bet you don’t see any poetry at all in a patent white lead process—in making the land hum with it.”
“what about the neat glamour?” asked raine, smiling.
“ah! there’s a difference. i have got this all out of my own head. it is a bit of me. whereas the alps aren’t—” he stared at them innocently—“not a little bit.”
the sound of the gong for the mid-day meal reached them, resonant through the rarefied air. they rose and walked together towards the hotel.
“i guess i’ll come and sit next to you, if you have no objection,” said mr. hockmaster.
“do,” replied raine cordially, “i shall be delighted.”
they lunched together, and in the afternoon walked to the boissons and back, a pleasant three hours’ excursion. raine did not wish to absent himself from the hotel for a longer time, being anxious concerning posts. but no letters came for him, save a couple of business communications from oxford. he was troubled about his father’s health, and longing for a line from katherine. he began to reflect that perhaps, after all, he had come on a fool’s errand to chamonix. poor little felicia would have to be disillusioned sooner or later. if the lucerne plan had fallen through, owing to his father’s illness, there was no chance of sparing her the ultimate revelation of the love between himself and katherine. he could not remain at chamonix indefinitely; to take up other quarters at geneva would only set the whole pension speculating; and raine knew full well that the speculation of a whole pension is perilous to the most calphurnian reputation.
he decided, however, to be guided by the next day’s letters.
