“I must stay with you,” she whispered. “I must stay with you, mustn’t I?”
He tried not to say “always,” but he thought afterward that he must have said “always.”
Then she lifted her curls and her little fur cap with the snow on it from his shoulder, and looked deep into his eyes. The worst of it was that hers were filled with joy.
“Winn,” she said, “do you love me enough for anything? Not only for happiness, but, if we had to have dreadful things, enough for dreadful things?”
She spoke of dreadful things as if they were outside her, and as if they were very far away.
“I love you enough for anything,” said Winn, gravely.
“Tell me,” she whispered, “did you ever even think – you liked her as much?”
Winn looked puzzled; it took him a few minutes to guess whom she meant, then he said wonderingly:
“My wife, you mean?”
Claire nodded. It was silly how the little word tore its way into her very heart; she had to bite her lips to keep herself from crying out. She did not realize that the word was meaningless to him.
“No,” said Winn, gravely; “that’s the worst of it. I must have been out of my head. It was a fancy. Of course I thought it was all right, but I didn’t care. It was fun rather than otherwise; you know what I mean? I’m afraid I gave her rather a rotten time of it; but fortunately she doesn’t like me at all. It’s not surprising.”
“Yes, it is,” said Claire, firmly; “it’s very surprising. But if she doesn’t care for you, and you don’t care for her, can’t anything be done?”
There is something cruel in the astonishing ease with which youth believes in remedial measures. It is a cruelty which reacts so terribly upon its possessors.
Winn hesitated; then he told her that he would take her to the ends of the world. Claire pushed away the ends of the world; they did not sound very practical.
“I mean,” she said, “have you got to consider anybody else? Of course there’s Maurice and your people, I’ve thought of them. But I don’t think they’d mind so awfully always, do you? It wouldn’t be like robbing or cheating some one who really needed us. We couldn’t do that, of course.”
Then Winn remembered Peter. He told her somehow that there was Peter. He hid his face against her breast while he told her; he could not bear to see in her eyes this new knowledge of Peter.
But she was very quiet about it; it was almost as if she had always known that there was Peter.
Winn spoke very wildly after that; he denied Peter; he denied any obstacles; he spoke as if they were already safely and securely married. He explained that they had to be together; that was the long and short of it. Anything else was absurd; she must see that it was absurd.
Claire didn’t interrupt him once; but when he had quite finished, she said consideringly:
“Yes; but, after all, she gave you Peter.”
Then Winn laughed, remembering how Estelle had given him Peter. He couldn’t explain to Claire quite how funny it was.
She bore his laughter, though it surprised her a little; there seemed to be so many new things to be learned about him. Then she said:
“Anyway, we can be quite happy for a fortnight, can’t we?”
Winn raised his head and looked at her. It was his turn to be surprised.
“Maurice and I,” she explained, “have to go back in two weeks; we’ve come over here for the fortnight. So we’ll just be happy, won’t we? And we can settle what we’ll do afterward, at the end of the time.”
She spoke as if a fortnight was a long time. Then Winn kissed her; he did it with extraordinary gentleness, on the side of her cheek and on her wet curls covered with snow.
“You’re such a baby,” he said half to himself; “so it isn’t a bit of use your being as old as the hills the other part of the time. There are just about a million reasons why you shouldn’t stay, you know.”
“Oh, reasons!” said Claire, making a face at anything so trivial as a reason. Then she became very grave, and said, “I want to stay, Winn; of course I know what you mean. But there’s Maurice; it isn’t as if I were alone. And afterwards – oh, Winn, it’s because I don’t know what is going to happen afterwards – I must have now!”
Winn thought for a moment, then he said:
“Well, I’ll try and work it. You mustn’t be in the same hotel, though. Fortunately, I know a nice woman who’ll help us through; only, darling, I’m awfully afraid it’s beastly wrong for you. I mean I can’t explain properly; but if I let you go now, it would be pretty sickening. But you’d get away; and if you stay, I’ll do the best I can but we shall get mixed up so that you’ll find it harder to shake me off. You see, you’re awfully young; there are chances ahead of you, awfully decent other chaps, marriage – ”
“And you,” she whispered – “you?”
“Oh, it doesn’t matter a damn about me either way,” he explained carefully. “I’m stuck. But it isn’t really fair of me to let you stay. You don’t understand, but it simply isn’t fair.”
Claire looked reproachfully at him.
“If I don’t want you to be fair,” she said, “you oughtn’t to want to be – not more than I do, I mean. Besides – Oh, Winn, I do know about when I go! That’s why I can’t go till we’ve been happy, awfully happy, first. Don’t you see, if I went now, there’d be nothing to look back on but just your being hurt and my being hurt; and I want happiness! Oh, Winn, I want happiness!”
That was the end of it. He took her in his arms and promised her happiness.
PART III
CHAPTER XXIII
It seemed incredible that they should be happy, but from the first of their fortnight to the last they were increasingly, insanely happy. Everything ministered to their joy; the unstinted blue and gold of the skies, the incommunicable glee of mountain heights, their blind and eager love.
There was no future. They were on an island cut off from all to-morrows; but they were together, and their island held the fruits of the Hesperides.
They lived surrounded by light passions, by unfaithfulnesses that had not the sharp excuses of desire, bonds that held only because they would require an effort to break and bonds that were forged only because it was easier to pass into a new relation than to continue in an old one. Their solid and sober passion passed through these light fleets of pleasure-boats as a great ship takes its unyielding way toward deep waters.
Winn was spared the agony of foresight; he could not see beyond her sparkling eyes; and Claire was happy, exultantly, supremely happy, with the reckless, incurious happiness of youth.
It was terrible to see them coming in and out with their joy. Their faces were transfigured, their eyes had the look of sleep-walkers, they moved as through another world. They had only one observer, and to Miss Marley the sight of them was like the sight of those unknowingly condemned to die. St. Moritz in general was not observant. It had gossips, but it did not know the difference between true and false, temporary and permanent. It had one mold for all its fancies: given a man and a woman, it formed at once its general and monotonous conjecture.
Maurice might have noticed Claire’s preoccupation, for Maurice was sensitive to that which touched himself, but for the moment a group more expensive and less second rate than he had discovered at Davos took up his entire attention. He had none to spare for his sister unless she bothered him, and she didn’t bother him.
It was left to Miss Marley to watch from hour to hour the significant and rising chart of passion. The evening after the Davos match, Winn had knocked at the door of her private sitting-room. It was his intention only to ask her if she would dine with some friends of his from Davos; he would mention indifferently that they were very young, a mere boy and girl, and he would suggest with equal subtlety that he would be obliged if Miss Marley would continue to take meals at his table during their visit. St. Moritz, he saw himself saying, was such a place for talk. There was no occasion to go into anything, and Miss Marley would, of course, have no idea how matters really stood. She was a good sort, but he wasn’t going to talk about Claire.