Davos began to descend upon the rink, first the best skaters – Swedes, Russians, and Germans – and then all the world. The speed-skaters stood about in heavy fur coats down to their feet.
Claire came down surrounded by admirers. Winn heard her laugh before he saw her, and after he had seen her he saw nothing else. She looked like one of the fir-trees when the sun had caught it; she seemed aflame with a quite peculiar radiance and joy. She flew toward Winn, imitating the speed-skaters with one long swift stride of her skates.
“Ah,” she cried, “isn’t it a jolly morning? Isn’t everything heavenly? Aren’t you glad you are alive?”
That was the kind of mood she was in. It was quite superfluous to ask if she was nervous. She was just about as nervous as the sun was when it ran over the mountains.
“There doesn’t seem to be much the matter with you this morning,” said Winn, eying her thoughtfully.
The rink cleared at eleven and the band began to play.
The judges sat in different quarters of the rink so as to get the best all-around impression of the skating. The audience, muffled up in furs, crowded half-way up the valley, as if it were a gigantic amphitheater.
A Polish girl, very tall and slender, with a long black pigtail, swung out upon the ice. She caught the music with a faultless steadiness and swing. Her eyes were fixed on the mountains; her flexible hips and waist swung her to and fro as easily as a winter bird hovers balanced on its steady pinions. Out of the crowd her partner, a huge black-bearded Russian, glided toward her, caught her by the waist, lifted her, and flung her from side to side in great swirls and resounding leaps. Her skirts flew about her, her pigtail swung round her in the air, her feet struck the ice firmly together like a pair of ringing castanets. The crowd shouted applause as he caught her by the wrists after a particularly dazzling plunge into the empty air, and brought her round to face them, her fixed eyes changed and shot with triumph. The dance was over.
Then a succession of men skaters came forward, whirling, twisting, capering with flying feet. Winn watched them with more astonishment than pleasure.
“Like a ring of beastly slippery microbes!” he remarked to Claire.
“Yes,” she said; “but wait.” Half a dozen men and women came running out on the rink; with lifted feet, hand in hand, they danced like flying sunbeams.
Then a German pair followed the Polish. Both were strong, first-rate skaters, but the man was rough and selfish; he pulled his girl about, was careless of her, and in the end let her down, and half the audience hissed.
Swedish, Norwegian, French pairs followed swiftly after. Then Claire rose with a quickening of her breath.
“Now,” she said, “you!” It was curious how seldom she said Major Staines.
Winn didn’t much care to do this kind of thing before foreigners. However, it was in a way rather jolly, especially when the music warmed one’s blood. He swept her out easily to the center of the ice. For a time he had only to watch her. He wondered what she looked like to all the black-headed dots sitting in the sun and gazing. In his heart there was nothing left to which he could compare her. She turned her head a little, curving and swooping toward him, and then sprang straight into the air. He had her fast for a moment; her hands were in his, her eyes laughed at his easy strength, and again she shot away from him. Now he had to follow her, in and out, to the sound of the music; at first he thought of the steps, but he soon stopped thinking. Something had happened which made it quite unnecessary to think.
He was reading everything she knew out of his own heart; she had got into him somehow, so that he had no need to watch for his cue.
Wherever she wanted him he was; whenever she needed the touch of his hand or his steadiness it was ready for her. They were like the music and words of a song, or like a leaf and the dancing air it rests upon. They were no longer two beings; they had slipped superbly, intolerably into one; they couldn’t go wrong; they couldn’t make a mistake. Where she led he followed, indissolubly a part of her.
They swung together for the final salute. It seemed to Winn that her heart – her happy, swift-beating, exultant heart – was in his breast, and then suddenly, violently he remembered that she wasn’t his, that he had no right to touch her. He moved away from her, leaving her, a little bewildered, to bow alone to the great cheering mass of people.
She found him afterward far back in the crowd, with a white face and inscrutable eyes.
“You must come and see the speed-skaters,” she urged, with her hand on his arm. “It’s the thing I told you about most. And I believe we’ve won the second prize. The Russian and Pole have got the first, of course; They were absolutely perfect, but we were rather good. Why did you rush off, and what are you looking like that for? Is anything the matter? You’re not – ” her voice faltered suddenly – “you’re not angry, are you?”
“No, I’m not angry,” said Winn, recklessly, “and nothing’s the matter, and I’ll go wherever you want and see what you want and do what you want, and I ran away because I was a damned fool and hate a fuss. And I see you’re going to ask me if I liked it awfully. Yes, I did; I liked it awfully. Now are you satisfied?” He still hadn’t said anything, he thought, that mattered.
“Oh, yes,” she said slowly, “of course I’m satisfied. I’m glad you liked it awfully; I liked it awfully myself.”
CHAPTER XVI
The valley of the Dischmatal lies between two rather shapeless mountains; it leads nowhere, and there is nothing in it.
Winn gave no reason for his wish to walk there with Lionel except that it was a quiet place for a talk. They had been together for twenty-four hours and so far they had had no talk. Lionel had expected to find a change in Winn; he had braced himself to meet the shock of seeing the strongest man he knew pitilessly weakened under an insidious disease. He had found a change, but not the one he expected. Winn looked younger, more alert, and considerably more vigorous. There was a curious excitement in his eyes which might have passed for happiness if he had not been so restless. He was glad to see Lionel, but that wasn’t enough to account for it. Winn looked ten years younger and he had something up his sleeve.
Lionel had his own theory as to what that something might be, but he wouldn’t have expected it to make Winn look younger. He couldn’t help being afraid that Winn had found out Estelle. There had always been the chance that he might never find her out; he was neither reflective nor analytical, and Lionel was both. Winn might have been content simply to accept her as lovely and delightful, an ideal wife – not a companion, but a beautiful, fluttering creature to be supplied with everything it wanted. If he had done that he wouldn’t have waked up to the fact that the creature gave him nothing whatever back – beyond preening its feathers and forbearing to peck. Lionel respected and loved women, so that he could afford to feel a certain contempt for Estelle, but he had always feared Winn’s feeling any such emotion. Winn would condemn Estelle first and bundle her whole sex after her. Lionel hardly dared to ask him, as he did at last on their way through Dorf, what news he had of his wife.
“What news of Estelle?” Winn asked indifferently. “None particularly. She doesn’t like Peter’s language. My people seem to have taken to him rather, and I hear he’s picked up parts of the Governor’s vocabulary. It’ll be jolly hearing him talk; he couldn’t when I left. Estelle’s taken up religion. It’s funny, my mother said she would, before we were married. My mother’s got a pretty strong head; Estelle hasn’t, she was keen about the Tango when I left; but I dare say religion’s better for her; hers is the high church kind. Up there is the valley – funny sort of place; it’ll remind you of the hills – that’s one reason why I brought you out here – that and the hotel being like a fly paper. Davos is like all the places where our sort of people go – fashion or disease – it don’t matter a penny which – they’re all over the place itself, in and out of each other’s pockets, and yet get a mile or two out and nobody’s in sight. Funny how people like each other. I don’t like ’em, you know. I hate ’em.”