Four Weird Tales
Page 13
IV
That night there was excitement in the little hotel-world, first becausethere was a _bal costume_, but chiefly because the new snow had come.And Hibbert went--felt drawn to go; he did not go in costume, but hewanted to talk about the slopes and ski-ing with the other men, and atthe same time....
Ah, there was the truth, the deeper necessity that called. For thesingular connection between the stranger and the snow again betrayeditself, utterly beyond explanation as before, but vital and insistent.Some hidden instinct in his pagan soul--heaven knows how he phrased iteven to himself, if he phrased it at all--whispered that with the snowthe girl would be somewhere about, would emerge from her hiding place,would even look for him.
Absolutely unwarranted it was. He laughed while he stood before thelittle glass and trimmed his moustache, tried to make his black tie sitstraight, and shook down his dinner jacket so that it should lie uponthe shoulders without a crease. His brown eyes were very bright. "Ilook younger than I usually do," he thought. It was unusual, evensignificant, in a man who had no vanity about his appearance andcertainly never questioned his age or tried to look younger than he was.Affairs of the heart, with one tumultuous exception that left no fuelfor lesser subsequent fires, had never troubled him. The forces of hissoul and mind not called upon for "work" and obvious duties, all went toNature. The desolate, wild places of the earth were what he loved;night, and the beauty of the stars and snow. And this evening he felttheir claims upon him mightily stirring. A rising wildness caught hisblood, quickened his pulse, woke longing and passion too. But chieflysnow. The snow whirred softly through his thoughts like white, seductivedreams.... For the snow had come; and She, it seemed, had somehow comewith it--into his mind.
And yet he stood before that twisted mirror and pulled his tie and coataskew a dozen times, as though it mattered. "What in the world is upwith me?" he thought. Then, laughing a little, he turned before leavingthe room to put his private papers in order. The green morocco desk thatheld them he took down from the shelf and laid upon the table. Tied tothe lid was the visiting card with his brother's London address "in caseof accident." On the way down to the hotel he wondered why he had donethis, for though imaginative, he was not the kind of man who dealt inpresentiments. Moods with him were strong, but ever held in leash.
"It's almost like a warning," he thought, smiling. He drew his thickcoat tightly round the throat as the freezing air bit at him. "Thosewarnings one reads of in stories sometimes ...!"
A delicious happiness was in his blood. Over the edge of the hillsacross the valley rose the moon. He saw her silver sheet the world ofsnow. Snow covered all. It smothered sound and distance. It smotheredhouses, streets, and human beings. It smothered--life.