“Oh, come, you know,” said Maurice, jauntily, “I’m not responsible for poor old Bouncing’s death, am I?”
“I don’t say you are,” Winn continued, without looking any pleasanter. “Bouncing had to die, and a jolly good thing for him it was when it came off; his life wasn’t worth a row of pins. But I wasn’t talking about him; I was talking about her. If you really want my advice, I’ll tell you plainly that if you want to go the pace, choose women one doesn’t marry, don’t monkey about with the more or less respectable ones who have a right to expect you to play the game. It’s not done, and it’s beastly unfair. D’ you see my point?”
Maurice wondered if he should be thoroughly angry or not. Suddenly it occurred to him that Winn was waiting, and that he had better see his point and not be thoroughly angry.
“Yes, I dare say I did go a little far,” he admitted, throwing out a manly chest; “but between you and me, Staines, should you say our friend Mrs. B. was respectable or not?”
“She isn’t my friend,” said Winn, grimly; “but as she ought to be yours, I’ll trouble you to keep your questions to yourself.”
The idea of being angry having apparently been taken out of Maurice’s hands, he made haste to disappear into the hotel.
Winn walked on into the village. It was the last time he intended to go there. There was nothing peculiarly touching about the flat, long road, with the rink beneath it and the mountains above. The houses and shops, German pensions and crowded balconies had no particular charm. Even the tall, thin spire of the church lacked distinction; and yet it seemed to Winn that it would be difficult to forget. He stopped at the rink as he returned to pick up his skates. He told himself that he was fortunate when he discovered Claire, with Lionel on one side of her and Ponsonby on the other; he had wanted the help of an audience; now he was going to have one. Claire saw him before the others did, and skated swiftly across to him.
“But why don’t you put your skates on?” she said, pointing to them in his hand. “You’re not much good there, you know, on the bank.”
“I’m not much good anywhere, as far as that goes,” said Winn, quickly, before the others came up. Then he said in a different voice, “I hope you enjoyed your dance last night.”
Claire paused the briefest moment before she answered him; it was as if she were trying quickly to change the key in which she spoke in order to meet his wishes, and as if she did not want to change the key.
“Yes, I did,” she said, “most awfully. It was a heavenly dance. I was so sorry you couldn’t come, but Captain Drummond told me why.”
Winn confounded Lionel under his breath for not holding his tongue; but he felt a warmth stir in his heart at the knowledge that, no matter what was at stake, Lionel would not suffer the shadow of blame to attach itself to him. It had been one of Winn’s calculations that Claire would be annoyed at his disappointing her and think the less of him because she was annoyed. He was not a clever calculator.
“Of course I understood,” Claire went on; “you had to be with poor Mr. Bouncing. It was just like you to stay with him.” She had said a good deal, considering that Mr. Ponsonby and Lionel were there. Still, Winn did not misunderstand her. Of course she meant nothing.
“Well,” he said, holding out his hand, “I’m extremely glad, Miss Rivers, to have run across you like this, because I’m off this afternoon to St. Moritz. I want to have a look at the Cresta.”
Claire ignored his outstretched hand.
“Oh,” she cried a little breathlessly, “you’re not going away, are you? But you’ll come back again, of course?”
“I hope so, I’m sure, some day or other,” said Winn. Then he turned to Ponsonby. “Have you been down the Cresta?” he asked.
Mr. Ponsonby shook his head.
“Not from Church Leap,” he replied. “I’ve got too much respect for my bones. It’s awfully tricky; I’ve gone down from below it. You don’t get such a speed on then.”
“Oh, Major Staines, you won’t toboggan?” Claire cried out. “You know you mustn’t toboggan! Dr. Gurnet said you mustn’t. You won’t, will you? Captain Drummond, aren’t you going with him to stop him?”
Lionel laughed.
“He isn’t a very easy person to stop,” he answered her. “I’ll join him later on, of course; but I want to see a little more of Davos before I go.”
“There isn’t the slightest danger,” Winn remarked, without meeting Claire’s eyes. “The Cresta’s as safe as a church hassock. There isn’t half the skill in tobogganing that there is in skating. Good-by, Miss Rivers. I never enjoyed anything as much as I enjoyed our skating competition. I’m most grateful to you for putting up with me.”
Claire gave him her hand then, but Winn remembered afterward that she never said good-by. She looked at him as if he had done something which was not fair.
CHAPTER XXI
Winn’s chief objection to St. Moritz was the shabby way in which it imitated Davos. It had all the same materials – endless snows, forests of fir-trees, soaring peaks and the serene blueness of the skies – and yet as Davos it didn’t in the least come off. It was more beautiful and less definite; the peaks were nearer and higher; they streamed out around the valley like an army with banners. The long, low lake and the small, perched villages, grossly overtopped by vulgar hotel palaces, had a far more fugitive air.
It was a place without a life of its own. Whatever character St. Moritz might once have had was as lost as that of the most catholic of evening ladies in Piccadilly.
Davos had had the dignity of its purpose; it had set out to heal. St. Moritz, on the contrary, set out to avoid healing. It was haunted by crown princes and millionaire Jews, ladies with incredible ear-rings and priceless furs; sharp, little, baffling trans-atlantic children thronged its narrow streets, and passed away from it as casually as a company of tramps.
There was this advantage for Winn: nobody wanted to be friendly unless one was a royalty or a financial magnate. Winn was as much alone as if he had dropped from Charing Cross into the Strand. He smoked, read his paper, and investigated in an unaccommodating spirit all that St. Moritz provided; but he didn’t have to talk.
Winn was suffering from a not uncommon predicament: he had done the right thing at enormous cost, and he was paying for it, instead of being paid. Virtue had struck her usual hard bargain with her votaries. She had taken all he had to give, and then sent in a bill for damages.
He was not in the least aware that he was unhappy, and often, for five or ten minutes at a time, he would forget Claire; afterward he would remember her, and that was worse. The unfortunate part of being made all of a piece is that if you happen to want anything, there is really no fiber of your being that doesn’t want it.
Winn loved in the same spirit that he rode and he always rode to a finish. In these circumstances and in this frame of mind, the Cresta occurred to Winn in the light of a direct inspiration. No one could ride the Cresta with any other preoccupation.
Winn knew that he oughtn’t to do it; he remembered Dr. Gurnet’s advice, and it put an edge to his intention. If he couldn’t have what he wanted, there would be a minor satisfaction in doing what he oughtn’t. The homely adage of cutting off your nose to spite your face had never been questioned by the Staines family. They looked upon a nose as there chiefly for that purpose. It was a last resource to be drawn upon, when the noses of others appeared to be out of reach.
There were, however, a few preliminary difficulties. No one was allowed to ride the Cresta without practice, and it was a part of Winn’s plan not to be bothered with gradual stages. Only one man had ever been known to start riding the Cresta from Church Leap without previous trials, and his evidence was unobtainable as he was unfortunately killed during the experiment. Since this adventure a stout Swiss peasant had been placed to guard the approaches to the run. Winn walked up to him during the dinner-hour, when he knew the valley was freest from possible intruders.