At half-past four that afternoon, Nicholas Compline suddenly announced in a high voice that he must get back to his headquarters at Great Chipping. He sought out Jonathan and, with small regard for plausibility, informed him that he had received an urgent summons by telephone.
“Strange!” said Jonathan, smiling. “Caper tells me that the telephone is out of commission. The lines are down.”
“The order came through some time ago.”
“I’m afraid you can’t go, Nick. There’s a six-foot drift in Deep Bottom at the end of the drive, and it’ll be worse up on Cloudyfold.”
“I can walk over Cloudyfold to Chipping and get a car there.”
“Twelve miles!”
“I can’t help that,” said Nicholas loudly.
“You’ll never do it, Nick. It’ll be dark in an hour. I can’t allow you to try. It’s a soft fall. Perhaps tomorrow, if there’s a frost during the night—”
“I’m going, Jonathan. You used to have a pair of Canadian show-shoes, usen’t you? May I borrow them? Do you know where they are?”
“I gave them away years ago,” said Jonathan blandly.
“Well, I’m going.”
Jonathan hurried up to Mandrake’s room with his piece of news. Mandrake had dressed and was sitting by his fire. He still felt extremely shaky and bemused and stared owlishly at Jonathan, who plunged straight into his story.
“He’s quite determined, Aubrey. Perhaps I had better remember that after all I didn’t give away the snow-shoes. And yet, even with snow-shoes he will certainly lose his way in the dark or smother in a drift. Isn’t it too tiresome?” Jonathan seemed to be more genuinely upset by this turn of events than by anything else that had happened since his party assembled.
“It will ruin everything,” he muttered, and when Mandrake asked him if he meant that the death of Nicholas Compline from exposure would ruin everything, he replied testily: “No, no, his departure. The central figure! The whole action centres round him. I couldn’t be more disappointed.”
“Honestly, Jonathan, I begin to think you are suffering from some terrible form of insanity. The idée fixe. People may drown in your ornamental waters or perish in your snow-drifts, and all you can think of is your hell-inspired party.” Jonathan hastened to protest but in a moment or two he was looking wistfully out of the window and declaring that surely even Nicholas could not be so great a fool as to attempt the walk over Cloudyfold in such a storm. As if in answer to this speech there came a tap on the door and Nicholas himself walked in. He wore his heavy khaki waterproof and carried his cap. He was rather white about the mouth.
“I’m off, Jonathan,” he said.
“Nick, my dear fellow — I implore—”
“Orders is orders. There’s a war on. Will you let me leave my luggage? I’ll collect the car as soon as possible.”
“Do I understand,” said Mandrake, “that you are walking over Cloudyfold?”
“Needs must.”
“Nick, have you considered your mother?”
“I’m not telling my mother I’m going. She’s resting. I’ll leave a note for her. Good-bye, Mandrake. I’m sorry you had the role of my stand-in forced upon you. If it’s any satisfaction you may be quite certain that in a very short space of time I shall be just as wet and possibly a good deal colder than you were.”
“If you persist, I shall come as far as Deep Bottom with you,” said Jonathan, wretchedly. “We’ll have some of the men with shovels, and so on.”
“Please don’t bother, Jonathan. Your men can hardly shovel a path all the way over Cloudyfold.”
“Now listen to me,” said Jonathan. “I’ve talked to my bailiff who came in just now, and he tells me that what you propose is out of the question. I told him you were determined, and he’s sending two of our men—”
“I’m sorry, Jonathan. I’ve made up my mind. I’m off. Don’t come down. Good-bye.”
But before Nicholas got to the door, it burst open and William, scarlet in the face, strode in and confronted his brother.
“What the hell’s this nonsense I hear about you going?” he demanded.
“I don’t know what you’ve heard, but I’m going. I’ve got orders to report at—”
“Orders my foot! You’ve got the wind up and you’re doing a bolt. You’re so damn’ frightened, you’d rather die in a snow-drift than face the music here. You’re not going.”
“Unusual solicitude!” Nicholas said, and the lines from his nostrils to the corners of his mouth deepened.
“Don’t imagine I care what happens to you,” said William, and his voice broke into a higher key. He used the clumsy vehement gestures of a man who, unaccustomed to violence of speech or action, suddenly finds himself consumed with rage. He presented a painful and embarrassing spectacle. “You could drown yourself and welcome, if it weren’t for Mother. D’you want to kill her? You’ll stay here and behave yourself, my bloody little Lothario.”
“Oh, shut up, you fool,” said Nicholas and made for the door.
“No you don’t!” William said, and lurched forward. His brother’s elbow caught him a jolt in the chest and the next moment Nicholas had gone.
“William!” said Jonathan sharply. “Stay where you are.”
“If anything happens to him, who do you suppose she’ll blame for it? For the rest of her life his damned dead sneer will tell her that but for me… He’s not going.”
“You can’t stop him, you know,” said Mandrake.
“Can’t I! Jonathan, please stand aside.”
“Just a moment, William.” Jonathan’s voice had taken an unaccustomed edge. He stood, an unheroic but somehow rather menacing figure, with his plump fingers on the door-knob and his back against the door. “I cannot have you fighting with your brother up and down my house. He is determined to go and you can’t stop him. I am following him to the first drift in the drive. I am quite convinced that he will not get through it and I do not propose to let him come to any grief. I shall take a couple of men with me. If you can behave yourself you had better accompany us.” Jonathan touched his spectacles delicately with his left hand. “Depend upon it,” he said, “your brother will not leave Highfold to-night.”
Mandrake’s bedroom windows overlooked the last sweep of the drive as it passed the east wing of Highfold and turned into the wide sweep in front of the house. Through the white-leopard mottling on his window-pane he saw Nicholas Compline, head down, trudge heavily through the snow and out of sight. A few moments later, Jonathan and William appeared, followed at some distance by two men carrying long-handled shovels. “Nicholas must have delayed a little, after he left here,” Mandrake thought. “Why? To say good-bye to Madame Lisse? Or to Chloris?” And at the thought of a final interview between Nicholas and Chloris Wynne he experienced an unaccustomed and detestable sensation, as if his heart sank with horrid speed into some unfathomable limbo. He looked after the trudging figures until they passed beyond the range of his window, and then suddenly decided that he could no longer endure his own company but would go downstairs in search of Chloris Wynne.
“The difference,” Jonathan observed, “between a walk in an ordinary storm and a walk in a snow-storm is the difference between unpleasant noise and even more unpleasant silence. One can hear nothing but the squeak of snow under one’s feet. I’m glad you decided to come, William.”
“It’s not for love of dear little Nicholas, I promise you,” William muttered.
“Well, well, well,” said Jonathan equitably.
They plodded on, walking in Nicholas’ steps. Presently Highfold Wood enclosed them in a strange twilight where shadow was made negative by reflected whiteness and where the stems of trees seemed comfortless and forgotten in their naked blackness. Here there was less snow and they mended their pace, following the drive on its twisting course downhill. At first they passed between tall banks and heard the multiple voices of tiny runnels of water, then they came out into open spaces where the snow lay thick over Jonathan’s park. It stretched away before their eyes in curves of unbroken pallor and William muttered: “White, grey, and black. I don’t think I could paint it.” When they entered the lower wood, still going downhill, they saw Nicholas, not far ahead, and Jonathan called to him a shrill “Hello!”that set up an echo among the frozen trees. Nicholas turned and stood motionless, waiting for them to overtake him. With that air of self-consciousness inseparable from such approaches, they made their way towards him, the two farm-hands still some distance behind.