Complete Works of E W Hornung

by E. W. Hornung

  “His mother’s the Honourable,” said Quinby, with studious unconcern, yet I fancied with increased interest in me.

  “I used to see something of them both,” I deliberately admitted, “when the lad was little. How has he turned out?”

  Quinby gave his peculiar nasal laugh.

  “A nice youth,” said he. “A very nice youth!”

  “Do you mean nice or nasty?” I asked, inclined to bridle at his tone.

  “Oh, anything but nasty,” said Quinby. “Only — well — perhaps a bit rapid for his years!”

  I stooped and put my name in the book before making any further remark. Then I handed Quinby my cigarette-case, and we sat down on the nearest lounge.

  “Rapid, is he?” said I. “That’s quite interesting. And how does it take him?”

  “Oh, not in any way that’s discreditable; but as a matter of fact, there’s a gay young widow here, and they’re fairly going it!”

  I lit my cigarette with a certain unexpected sense of downright satisfaction. So there was something in it after all. It had seemed such a fool’s errand in the train.

  “A young widow,” I repeated, emphasising one of Quinby’s epithets and ignoring the other.

  “I mean, of course, she’s a good deal older than Evers.”

  “And her name?”

  “A Mrs. Lascelles.”

  I nodded.

  “Do you happen to know anything about her, Captain Clephane?”

  “I can’t say I do.”

  “No more does anybody else,” said Quinby, “except that she’s an Indian widow of sorts.”

  “Indian!” I repeated with more interest.

  Quinby looked at me.

  “You’ve been out there yourself, perhaps?”

  “It was there I knew Hamilton,” said I, naming our common friend in the Engineers.

  “Yet you’re sure you never came across Mrs. Lascelles there?”

  “India’s a large place,” I said, smiling as I shook my head.

  “I wonder if Hamilton did,” speculated Quinby aloud.

  “And the Lascelleses,” I added, “are another large clan.”

  “Well,” he went on, after a moment’s further cogitation, “there’s nobody here can place this particular Mrs. Lascelles; but there are some who say things which they can tell you themselves. I’m not going to repeat them if you know anything about the boy. I only wish you knew him well enough to give him a friendly word of advice!”

  “Is it so bad as all that?”

  “My dear sir, I don’t say there’s anything bad about it,” returned Quinby, who seemed to possess a pretty gift of suggestive negation. “But you may hear another opinion from other people, for you will find that the whole hotel is talking about it. No,” he went on, watching my eyes, “it’s no use looking for them at this time of day; they disappear from morning to night; if you want to see them you must take a stroll when everybody else is thinking of turning in. Then you may have better luck. But here are the letters at last.”

  The concierge had appeared, hugging an overflowing armful of postal matter. In another minute there was hardly standing room in the little hall. My companion uttered his unlovely laugh.

  “And here comes the British lion roaring for his London papers! It isn’t his letters he’s so keen on, if you notice, Captain Clephane; it’s his Daily Mail, with the latest cricket, and after that the war. Teale is an exception, of course. He has a stack of press-cuttings every day. You will see him gloating over them in a minute. Ah! the old judge has got his Sportsman; he reads nothing else except the Sporting Times, and he’s going back for the Leger. Do you see the man with the blue spectacles and the peeled nose? He was last Vice Chancellor but one at Cambridge. No, that’s not a Bishop, it’s an Archdeacon. All we want is a Cabinet Minister now; every evening there is a rumour that the Colonial Secretary is on his way, and most mornings you will hear that he has actually arrived under cloud of night.”

  The facetious Quinby did not confine his more or less caustic commentary to the well-known folk of whom there seemed no dearth; in the ten or twenty minutes that we sat together he further revealed himself as a copious gossip, with a wide net alike for the big fish and for the smallest fry. There was a sheepish gentleman with a twitching face, and a shaven cleric in close attendance; the former a rich brand plucked from burning by the latter, whose temporal reward was the present trip, so Quinby assured me during the time it took them to pass before our eyes through the now emptying hall. A delightfully boyish young American came inquiring waggishly for his “best girl”; next moment I was given to understand that he meant his bride, who was ten times too good for him, with further trivialities to which the dressing-bell put a timely period. There was no sign of my Etonian when I went upstairs.

  As I dressed in my small low room, with its sloping ceiling of varnished wood, at the top of the house, I felt that after all I had learnt nothing really new respecting that disturbing young gentleman. Quinby had already proved himself such an arrant gossip as to discount every word that he had said before I placed him in his proper type: it is one which I have encountered elsewhere, that of the middle-aged bachelor who will and must talk, and he had confessed his celibacy almost in his first breath; but a more pronounced specimen of the type I am in no hurry to meet again. If, however, there was some comfort in the thought of his more than probable exaggerations, there was none at all in the knowledge that these would be, if they had not already been, poured into every tolerant ear in the place, if anything more freely than into mine.

  I was somewhat late for dinner, but the scandalous couple were later still, and all the evening I saw nothing of them. That, however, was greatly due to this fellow Quinby, whose determined offices one could hardly disdain after once accepting favours from him. In the press after dinner I saw his ferret’s face peering this way and that, a good head higher than any other, and the moment our eyes met he began elbowing his way toward me. Only an ingrate would have turned and fled; and for the next hour or two I suffered Quinby to exploit my wounds and me for a good deal more than our intrinsic value. To do the man justice, however, I had no fault to find with the very pleasant little circle into which he insisted on ushering me, at one end of the glazed veranda, and should have enjoyed my evening but for an inquisitive anxiety to get in touch with the unsuspecting pair. Meanwhile the lilt of a waltz had mingled with the click of billiard balls and the talking and laughing which make a summer’s night vocal in that outpost of pleasure on the silent heights; and some of our party had gone off to dance. In the end I followed them, sticks and all; but there was no Bob Evers among the dancers, nor in the billiard-room, nor anywhere else indoors.

  Then, last of all, I looked where Quinby had advised me to look, and there sure enough, on the almost deserted terrace, were the couple whom I had come several hundred miles to put asunder. Hitherto I had only realised the distasteful character of my task; now at a glance I had my first inkling of its difficulty; and there ended the premature satisfaction with which I had learnt that there was “something in” the rumour which had reached Catherine’s ears.

  There was no moon, but the mountain stars were the brightest I have ever seen in Europe. The mountains themselves stood back, as it were, darkling and unobtrusive; all that was left of the Matterhorn was a towering gap in the stars; and in the faint cold light stood my friends, somewhat close together, and I thought I saw the red tips of two cigarettes. There was at least no mistaking the long loose limbs in the light overcoat. And because a woman always looks relatively taller than a man, this woman looked nearly as tall as this lad.

  “Bob Evers? You may not remember me, but my name’s Clephane — Duncan, you know!”

  I felt the veriest scoundrel, and yet the words came out as smoothly as I have written them, as if to show me that I had been a potential scoundrel all my life.

  “Duncan Clephane? Why, of course I remember you. I should think I did! I say, though, you must have had a shocking
time!”

  Bob’s voice was quite quiet for all his astonishment, his manner a miracle, though it was too dark to read the face; and his right hand held tenderly to mine, as his eyes fell upon my sticks, while his left poised a steady cigarette. And now I saw that there was only one red tip after all.

  “I read your name in the visitors’ book,” said I, feeling too big a brute to acknowledge the boy’s solicitude for me. “I — I felt certain it must be you.”

  “How splendid!” cried the great fellow in his easy, soft, unconscious voice, “By the way, may I introduce you to Mrs. Lascelles? Captain Clephane’s one of our very oldest friends, just back from the Front, and precious nearly blown to bits!”

  CHAPTER III

  FIRST BLOOD

  Mrs. Lascelles and I exchanged our bows. For a dangerous woman there was a rather striking want of study in her attire. Over the garment which I believe is called a “rain-coat,” the night being chilly, she had put on her golf-cape as well, and the effect was a little heterogeneous. It also argued qualities other than those for which I was naturally on the watch. Of the lady’s face I could see even less than of Bob’s, for the hood of the cape was upturned into a cowl, and even in Switzerland the stars are only stars. But while I peered she let me hear her voice, and a very rich one it was — almost deep in tone — the voice of a woman who would sing contralto.

  “Have you really been fighting?” she asked, in a way that was either put on, or else the expression of a more understanding sympathy than one usually provoked; for pity and admiration, and even a helpless woman’s envy, might all have been discovered by an ear less critical and more charitable than mine.

  “Like anything!” answered Bob, in his unaffected speech.

  “Until they knocked me out,” I felt bound to add, “and that, unfortunately, was before very long.”

  “You must have been dreadfully wounded!” said Mrs. Lascelles, raising her eyes from my sticks and gazing at me, I fancied, with some intentness; but at her expression I could only guess.

  “Bowled over on Spion Kop,” said Bob, “and fairly riddled as he lay.”

  “But only about the legs, Mrs. Lascelles,” I explained; “and you see I didn’t lose either, so I’ve no cause to complain. I had hardly a graze higher up.”

  “Were you up there the whole of that awful day?” asked Mrs. Lascelles, on a low but thrilling note.

  “I’d got to be,” said I, trying to lighten the subject with a laugh. But Bob’s tone was little better.

  “So he went staggering about among his men,” he must needs chime in, with other superfluities, “for I remember reading all about it in the papers, and boasting like anything about having known you, Duncan, but feeling simply sick with envy all the time. I say, you’ll be a tremendous hero up here, you know! I’m awfully glad you’ve come. It’s quite funny, all the same. I suppose you came to get bucked up? He couldn’t have gone to a better place, could he, Mrs. Lascelles?”

  “Indeed he could not. I only wish we could empty the hotel and fill every bed with our poor wounded!”

  I do not know why I should have felt so much surprised. I had made unto myself my own image of Mrs. Lascelles, and neither her appearance, nor a single word that had fallen from her, was in the least in keeping with my conception. Prepared for a certain type of woman, I was quite confounded by its unconventional embodiment, and inclined to believe that this was not the type at all. I ought to have known life better. The most scheming mind may well entertain an enthusiasm for arms, genuine enough in itself, at a martial crisis, and a natural manner is by no means incompatible with the cardinal vices. That manner and that enthusiasm were absolutely all that I as yet knew in favour of this Mrs. Lascelles; but they were enough to cause me irritation. I wished to be honest with somebody; let me at least be honestly inimical to her. I took out my cigarette-case, and when about to help myself, handed it, with a vile pretence at impulse, to Mrs. Lascelles instead.

  Mrs. Lascelles thanked me, in a higher key, but declined.

  “Don’t you smoke?” I asked blandly.

  “Sometimes.”

  “Ah! then I wasn’t mistaken. I thought I saw two cigarettes just now.”

  Indeed, I had first smelt and afterward discovered the second cigarette smouldering on the ground. Bob was smoking his still. The chances were that they had both been lighted at the same time; therefore the other had been thrown away unfinished at my approach. And that was one more variation from the type of my confident preconceptions.

  Young Robin had meanwhile had a quick eye on us both, and the stump of his own cigarette was glowing between a firmer pair of lips than I had looked for in that boyish face.

  “It’s so funny,” said he (but there was no fun in his voice), “the prejudice some people have against ladies smoking. Why shouldn’t they? Where’s the harm?”

  Now there is no new plea to be advanced on either side of this eternal question, nor is it one upon which I ever felt strongly, but just then I felt tempted to speak as though I did. I will not now dissect my motive, but it was vaguely connected with my mission, and not unrighteous from that standpoint. I said it was not a question of harm at all, but of what one admired in a woman, and what one did not: a man loved to look upon a woman as something above and beyond him, and there could be no doubt that the gap seemed a little less when both were smoking like twin funnels. That, I thought, was the adverse point of view; I did not say that it was mine.

  “I’m glad to hear it,” said Bob Evers, with the faintest coldness in his tone, though I fancied he was fuming within, and admired both his chivalry and his self-control. “To me it’s quite funny. I call it sheer selfishness. We enjoy a cigarette ourselves; why shouldn’t they? We don’t force them to be teetotal, do we? Is it bad form for a lady to drink a glass of wine? You mightn’t bicycle once, might you, Mrs. Lascelles? I daresay Captain Clephane doesn’t approve of that yet!”

  “That’s hitting below the belt,” said I, laughing. “I wasn’t giving you my opinion, but only the old-fashioned view of the matter. I wish you’d take one, Mrs. Lascelles, or I shall think I’ve been misunderstood all round!”

  “No, thank you, Captain Clephane. That old-fashioned feeling is infectious.”

  “Then I will,” cried Bob, “to show there’s no ill-feeling. You old fire-eater, I believe you just put up the argument to change the conversation. Wouldn’t you like a chair for those game legs?”

  “No, I’ve got to use them in moderation. I was going to have a stroll when I spotted you at last.”

  “Then we’ll all take one together,” cried the genial old Bob once more. “It’s a bit cold standing here, don’t you think, Mrs. Lascelles? After you with the match!”

  But I held it so long that he had to strike another, for I had looked on Mrs. Lascelles at last. It was not an obviously interesting face, like Catherine’s, but interest there was of another kind. There was nothing intellectual in the low brow, no enthusiasm for books and pictures in the bold eyes, no witticism waiting on the full lips; but in the curve of those lips and the look from those eyes, as in the deep chin and the carriage of the hooded head, there was something perhaps not lower than intellect in the scale of personal equipment. There was, at all events, character and to spare. Even by the brief glimmer of a single match I could see that (and more) for myself. Then came a moment’s interval before Bob struck his light, and in that moment her face changed. As I saw it next, it appealed, it entreated, until the second match was flung away. And the appeal was to such purpose that I do not think I was five seconds silent.

  “And what do you do with yourself up here all day? I mean you hale people; of course, I can only potter in the sun.”

  The question, perhaps, was better in intention than in tact. I did not mean them to take it to themselves, but Bob’s answer showed that it was open to misconstruction.

  “Some people climb,” said he; “you’ll know them by their noses. The glaciers are almost as bad, though, aren’t they
, Mrs. Lascelles? Lots of people potter about the glaciers. It’s rather sport in the serracs; you’ve got to rope. But you’ll find lots more loafing about the place all day, reading Tauchnitz novels, and watching people on the Matterhorn through the telescope. That’s the sort of thing, isn’t it, Mrs. Lascelles?”

  She also had misunderstood the drift of my unlucky question. But there was nothing disingenuous in her reply. It reminded me of her eyes, as I had seen them by the light of the first match.

  “Mr. Evers doesn’t say that he is a climber himself, Captain Clephane; but he is a very keen one, and so am I. We are both beginners, so we have begun together. It’s such fun. We do some little thing every day; to-day we did the Schwarzee. You won’t be any wiser, and the real climbers wouldn’t call it climbing, but it means three thousand feet first and last. To-morrow we are going to the Monte Rosa hut. There is no saying where we shall end up, if this weather holds.”

  In this fashion Mrs. Lascelles not only made me a contemptuous present of information which I had never sought, but tacitly rebuked poor Bob for his gratuitous attempt at concealment. Clearly, they had nothing to conceal; and the hotel talk was neither more nor less than hotel talk. There was, nevertheless, a certain self-consciousness in the attitude of either (unless I grossly misread them both) which of itself afforded some excuse for the gossips in my own mind.

  Yet I did not know; every moment gave me a new point of view. On my remarking, genuinely enough, that I only wished I could go with them, Bob Evers echoed the wish so heartily that I could not but believe that he meant what he said. On his side, in that case, there could be absolutely nothing. And yet, again, when Mrs. Lascelles had left us, as she did ere long in the easiest and most natural manner, and when we had started a last cigarette together, then once more I was not so sure of him.

  “That’s rather a handsome woman,” said I, with perhaps more than the authority to which my years entitled me. But I fancied it would “draw” poor Bob. And it did.