And Jennifer’s lithe, athletic shape was seen to advantage in a navy-blue ski suit, and topped by a scarlet cap with a bobble the golden head was quite bewitching. Jennifer had never been so gay before, either, and she challenged Brace to some downhill runs that made Susan catch her breath when she saw them start off, fearing a broken limb for one or other of them, and they laughed in her face when they returned, breathless and panting—but absolutely whole—up the slope. And they laughed in one another’s faces as if life had suddenly revealed a new exciting side that made them singularly carefree, and occasionally a little unaware of Susan, awaiting them in her warm windcheater.
For Susan was by no means sure of herself on skis, and although there were several quite attractive young men staying in the hotel who were anxious to improve her performance, and Bruce devoted quite a lot of his time to the same purpose in between careering down the slopes with Jennifer—she remained a rather awkward amateur. And the same nervousness that afflicted her on horseback kept her glued to the Nursery Slopes.
Perhaps, she thought sometimes. ... If there was someone who was really keen on teaching her, and whom she was very keen to be taught by—not a man who couldn’t resist watching a navy-blue figure away up on the skyline, and in whom she had nothing but a most affectionate interest—she might do better than she was doing. But the young men in the hotel were all just average young men to her, and although she danced with them at night, as well as permitted their attentions in the daytime, there was not one of them who could do more than make her smile in a frank and friendly fashion.
Never again, she knew, would any man be able to do that....
Never again! ... It was like the tolling of a bell, and it made her feel a little frightened—even momentarily appalled—when the words passed through her head. Never again! ... Never again! ...
But in spite of occasional fits of acute loneliness, and a growing feeling that she was frequently just a little in the way, Susan improved quite noticeably in health, and her cough vanished altogether. They spent such a lot of time in the open air that it would have been peculiar if she hadn’t regained much of her old physical fitness, and there was so little time for brooding that Jennifer was glad Bruce had thought up this idea of bringing her away. Every morning they were on the ski-slopes, and in the afternoons they went for sleigh-rides, and they had one or two picnics; and the evenings were always bright with the glitter and the sparkle inside the hotel, and there was always the relaxed beat of dance music.
Bruce was beginning to talk regretfully of leaving them for a while, and flying back to London to the exigencies of high finance, when something happened that caused him to change his mind about the importance of getting back to his office, and determined him to stay on in case some form of protection might be necessary for Susan.
There had been some new arrivals that afternoon, and although there had also been one or two departures, when they went down to dinner both the cocktail-bar and the dining-room were packed. Bruce looked inside the cocktail-bar, to discover if there was such a thing as a vacant stool, which the girls could occupy in turns, and then withdrew quickly and took them each by the elbow and guided them into dinner.
He was very silent while the waiter proffered the menu, and looking at him Jennifer wondered whether something was amiss. She couldn’t know that he was wishing he occupied the seat Susan was occupying, and which afforded her an excellent view of the door, because at any moment now an entry would be made that would probably drive all the colour out of her face.
Even so, it was Jennifer who saw the entry first. It was a gala night, and the dining-room was lavishly decorated, and there were paper hats at each diner’s plate, and Susan was examining hers with rather delighted interest. It was a milkmaid’s bonnet, and would look enchanting with her filmy grey dress—the filmy grey dress she had once worn to accompany Bruce to the theatre—when she put it on later, and was smoothing out the pink streamers with her slim fingers when Jennifer made an unwary movement, and uttered an unwary sound.
Susan looked up, and instantly she seemed to freeze into a small grey and white figurine, with a few touches of gold embroidery on her bodice, and some golden lights in her hair. Her eyes were at first unbelieving, and then as the first banners of pink stole into her cheeks they developed such a startled look that Jennifer was afraid she might actually rise and leave the table and flee the dining-room by the exit door on the far side of the room.
Jennifer said something—she was never afterwards quite sure what it was that she did say—and Susan subsided. The small, electrified figure relaxed, and the milkmaid’s bonnet slipped from her fingers and under the table. As a waiter retrieved it and handed it back to her she managed to behave as if everything was completely normal, and a man and a girl weren’t walking away across the room to a table in the corner, with the eyes of quite a large number of diners following them.
For the girl was golden and dazzling and exquisitely gowned, and the man was tall and dark, with arrogantly well-held shoulders and slightly sardonic eyebrows— even a sardonic expression—and the Englishman’s air of superiority abroad. He looked neither to right nor left as they crossed the room, but once seated at their table with the girl laughing up into his face, he looked deliberately across the top of her head at the table at which Bruce,
Susan and Jennifer were seated, and acknowledged them with a slight inclination of the head.
After which he looked round for the wine waiter, and studied the wine-list.
Presently Jennifer looked questioningly at Susan, and she nodded, and they rose. Bruce followed them from the dining-room.
Later that night there was dancing as usual, but Bruce sat with the two girls in a corner of the lounge, and they talked desultorily while they sipped coffee. Bruce ordered himself a brandy, and Jennifer had the feeling that he needed it—not to steady his nerves, which were rock firm, but because his anger was mounting so steadily that he had to do something to get control of it. The brandy wasn’t likely to fan the flames of his wrath, but it did enable him to keep an icily clear head.
When Sir Justin and his golden-headed friend entered from the dining-room they had to pass by their table to reach a vacant place for themselves. Sir Justin stopped and spoke to Bruce, as deliberately as he had nodded to him across the heads of the diners.
“Strange that we should run into one another in a place like this! Have you been here long?”
Bruce replied in a controlled voice that he had been there a week, and added that Susan and Jennifer had been there a fortnight. He stood up and bowed stiffly to Justin’s companion.
She put out an eager white hand to him. “So you’re Justin’s stockbroker friend!” she exclaimed, with a broad American accent. “He’s been telling me all about you at dinner, and how you double his money for him! I’ll have to have a little quiet chat with you and get you to give me a few hints!”
Bruce barely replied, and his smile was the faintest thing in smiles he had probably ever accorded an attractive young woman. Justin, that strange, sardonic look on his face, had offered his hand to Jennifer, and then— inevitably—to Susan, but she had hesitated quite noticeably before she put her fingers into it. As she felt his close over hers something inside her seemed to recoil on her in a dull, sick kind of a way, and for just one instant she wanted to cling madly to the warmth and strength of his lean brown hand, if only to help conquer that feeling of sickness.
But a second or so after that she was clinging tightly to her own fingers in her lap, and she heard him say in a conversational way to Jennifer:
“I didn’t know you two were interested in winter sports!”
“We’re not,” Jennifer answered. “At least, we used not to be, but now we’ve become infected with the enthusiasm that seems to get most people. But Susan’s here primarily for her health.”
He looked narrowly at Susan.
“Bruce wrote at Christmas that she had had a bad chill,” he said. His eyes seemed to na
rrow still more as they studied Susan’s face. “You appear to have lost weight, Susan.”
For the first time she allowed herself to meet his eyes, and then looked quickly away.
“I don’t think so,” she answered. “One does lose weight in the winter months, and I’m very fit now.”
“And dancing most nights until about twelve o’clock,” Bruce put in, smiling at her gently. “I can’t think why we’re so lethargic to-night, unless it is that we’ve had a particularly energetic day. Do you feel like being led out on to the floor, Susan?”
But she shook her head.
“Not to-night....”
Jennifer looked up sweetly at Justin.
“You haven’t introduced your friend yet, Sir Justin!” she reminded him. “But it isn’t really necessary, because of course we recognise her. . . .” She smiled with the same deceptive sweetness at the fair-haired girl. “You must be Miss Elizabeth Van Johnson! Your photograph appears so often in American journals that I’ve got quite accustomed to seeing it, and Sir Justin, too, appears to be quite beloved of American photographers! The one thing we’re all dying to know is whether the gossip writers are correct, and, if so, how soon you two are going to be
married?”
Elizabeth Van Johnson appeared at first to be merely mildly amused; and then she put up a hand to her mouth as if she was suddenly rather startled and looked at Sir Justin with impish blue eyes over the top of it.
“And how do we answer that one, Justin?” she said.
Sir Justin frowned, and then a kind of cold hauteur overspread his face. Jennifer, however, was not deceived by it.
“Gossip writers are not the sort of people I take much notice of myself,” he replied; “and society journals have to be filled with photographs. If not of Elizabeth and myself, then of some other couple who might, or might not, be contemplating matrimony.”
“Which is such an evasive answer that it’s almost as revealing as the ‘No comment’ film-stars and V.I.P’s fall back on,” Jennifer observed, looking as if she was really amused. “However, I’ll admit I’m full of feminine curiosity, and you must forgive me.”
As he did not answer, and Elizabeth’s expression was merely quizzical, she explained for the American girl’s benefit:
“Sir Justin is quite an old friend by this time, and having disappointed us once we’re hoping he’s not going to do so again.”
Elizabeth laughed softly.
“Man is the hunter, you know,” she pointed out, and then slipped her hand inside Justin’s arm and looked with the same quizzical gleam in her eyes up into his face. “Isn’t that so, darling? And only the hunter knows where and when to pounce on his quarry!”
Sir Justin’s face looked so grim, and his lips were so taut, that even Jennifer decided it might be wisest to do no more probing for the moment; she had created a temporary situation of embarrassment which pleased her. But as they passed on to the secluded corner they were making for she remarked very quietly to the other two: “He hasn’t the smallest intention of marrying her, and she probably knows it. But if I could do something to cause his play-boy tendencies to recoil on him I’d be happy!”
And she sounded quite vicious, which was quite unlike Jennifer.
Bruce was frowning a little, and Susan had a pale, taut look about her.
“I’m not at all sure that, with the best intentions, you haven’t blundered a little,” Bruce remarked obscurely, and glanced in a worried sideways fashion at Susan.
She stood up.
“If you two don’t mind, I’ll go to bed,” she said. “I’m a little tired.”
“Of course, darling,” Jennifer agreed at once, and when she and Bruce were alone she said penitently: “Was I very crude? I only wanted to shake him if it was humanly possible!”
Bruce didn’t commit himself to an answer, but he watched the couple in the corner and wondered.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The next day Susan saw Justin and his latest blonde girl friend amongst the colourful groups on the snow slopes, but she didn’t attempt to get near enough to them to require to be recognised herself, and certainly not to be included in any conversation.
But she did observe the way in which the American girl skimmed like a bird over the snow—no doubt she had been used to winter sports holidays since her cradle, Susan thought—and as for Justin, he was plainly as much at home with skis on his feet as he was walking down the village street. Neither he nor Miss Van Johnson required the services of any sort of an instructor, and it was quickly recognised by everyone else staying in the hotel, and neighbouring hotels, that this pair was magnificent, and if they were going in for any of the competitions there wouldn’t be a hope for anyone else. They had probably collected strings of medals and prizes already.
But neither Justin nor Elizabeth Van Johnson appeared to wish to enter competitions, or even to mingle very freely with the rest of the enthusiasts. Although they started off with a flock of people from the hotel, they quickly disentangled themselves, and whenever they were seen returning to the hotel there was just the two of them together.
Elizabeth wore a distinctive lemon-yellow parka, and Justin looked slightly sinister in severe black and white. His vorlagers were black, and his thick white sweater seemed to throw into prominence the rich bronze of his skin. However he had passed the summer, he had acquired a devastatingly attractive tan, and judging by outward appearances, and by contrast with Susan’s look of having been delicately refined by inner suffering—or, as she hoped people believed, two doses of flu, practically on top of one another—he had come off quite unscathed in spite of a broken engagement and a shattered love affair. It was true that the love affair—as opposed to the engagement—had been something so unacknowledged that it could easily have died a natural death before it had time to shatter, but Susan thought wistfully when she watched him in secret from the hotel windows that it might have left one single solitary scar to compensate for her own scars.
But, apparently, it had not. He was handsomer than ever, more slickly groomed—a little grim sometimes, she thought, when she was close enough to dwell on his features, and perhaps just a little thinner (but that could be due to a great deal of exercise, and the effects of a hot sun). But there was nothing about him that suggested that he was a man who had suffered, either from inroads on his bank-balance to release him from one love, or from longings for another who also had let him down.
Sometimes when Susan saw him skimming out over the wide width of the valley, utterly sure of himself and in complete control of his skis, her heart leapt in her breast. Whatever he was, he was so good to gaze at, so arrogantly confident, needing so little apart from the things he already had—wealth, well-being, feminine adulation, excitement, and change. She was so sure of this that, her heart having leapt, it grew heavy as lead—in
fact, heavier than lead.
Apart from watching him from the windows, and from the concealment of little clusters of pine trees when they were all out in the open, she sometimes met him in the village street, or in the post-office, or the little cafe where everybody drank hot chocolate in the middle mornings. Then he would nod to her, gravely polite, and the American girl would smile, but neither of them made the slightest endeavour to come across and speak to her. And at night it was just the same; the most striking couple in the hotel dancing in the long enclosed veranda, with its double windows, beneath the discreetly veiled lights. After a day of exhilarating exercise in the sun and the sparklingly clear air they seemed to delight in isolating themselves from their fellow guests, surrounding themselves with an aura of remoteness, of imperviousness to watchful eyes.
And Elizabeth was always smiling up at Justin, obviously well content even if he hadn’t asked her to marry him. And Justin looked down at her thoughtfully, her golden head on a level with his chin.
No wonder the American news-writers had found them excellent copy!
Susan danced with the young men she had danced with all
along, and Jennifer and Bruce seemed also to have formed themselves into a more or less constant pair. Once or twice Susan thought she saw Justin looking through narrowed eyes at this arrangement, but she had no opportunity to discover what he thought about it until the morning when she was seeking to disentangle herself from one of her skis, the strap of which had come unfastened, and he came upon her in the little pine wood beside the hotel which was the vantage point from which she often secretly watched him disappearing into a white void with Elizabeth.
This morning, the fourth morning after his arrival at the hotel, he was alone for once, and Susan, too, was alone.
“Let me,” he said, as she struggled with the obstinate strap of her ski; and at the sound of his voice behind her she spun round and very nearly tripped over both her skis. The colour flamed in her face.
“Thank you, but I—it’s all right. . . .” she stammered. He knelt down and deftly dealt with the buckle, ascertained that the companion buckle was not likely to come adrift also, and then stood up and looked strangely and deliberately down into her eyes.
“What’s happened to your devoted protector?” he asked. “Don’t tell me he’s transferred his allegiance to Jennifer?”
“You mean—Bruce?” she asked.
“Of course.” His eyes were glinting and unpleasant. “He constituted himself your protector from the first, didn’t he? But now you’ve allowed Jennifer to filch him from right under your nose!”
She felt her whole body grow stiff—with resentment, and a hurt that was too acute to be noticeable.
“Jennifer and Bruce are—good friends!” she said.
He smiled.
“Poor little Susan! You do let your men get away from you, don’t you? There must be something wrong with your methods of attaching them to you! They’re not adhesive enough!”
The colour that had flamed in her cheeks suddenly died, and she looked very white in the dim shade of the pine wood. He said quickly, and almost roughly:
“I apologise for that, Susan! It was—distinctly caddish, as I think you would have described it when we first met!”
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