by Susan Barrie
“And you, Toinette? You haven’t said yet what I mean to you. Do you love me?”
Her voice quivered as she answered:
“Love you, Kurt? I’ve loved you from the beginning! That has been my trouble!”
“My poor little one,” he answered, gathering her close and stroking her hair with infinite tenderness. “You must believe me when I tell you that I never intended any hardship—not the smallest—to you when I brought you here. I wanted you to have an easy time, and to grow to love me. But Marianne must have realised that as well ... If I had had the least idea that she had put you in that dreadful room I’d have had you out of it long before I did—”
She smiled up at him radiantly.
“But it had a wonderful view,” she reminded him. “Mademoiselle Raveaux was right about that.”
“And how often did you find time to look at it?” his face and voice extraordinarily grim.
She put up a hand and touched his cheek.
“Well, in the few days before I had that accident— when I took over the new job—I did have a little more time...”
But he dismissed that.
“And that’s another thing,” he said with equal grimness, “something we have to get straight. Did you really ask if you could replace Trudi, or was that nothing more than an invention on Marianne’s part?”
“I’m afraid it was,” she admitted. “Naturally I wouldn’t have coveted a job like that.” And then as she saw how upset he looked she tried to erase the matter from his mind. “But it’s over now, and we don’t have to think about it. I expect I was stupid not to tell you the truth—”
“You were,” he agreed. And then he bit his lip. “Gresham was right, you know! I did allow you to be treated appallingly, and it was partly because there were moments when you annoyed me to such an extent that you brought out the worst in me.” He was thoughtful for a moment: “And Gresham?” he asked, at last. “You told me he was a friend of your family, but you didn’t say how you met him for the first time here at the Rosenhorn. Was it in the course of your chambermaid’s duties?”
“Yes.” She drew a deep breath, realising he wasn’t going to like it. “It was on my first morning ... when I was doing chambermaid’s duties on his floor, and he rang for me. He—I—he wanted some coffee...”
“And you took it to him?”
“No.” The flush that had risen in her cheeks spread wildly. “I—I ran into Pierre, one of the dining-room waiters, in the corridor, and I got him to take it to him for me. He said it was against the rules, but he did it all the same.”
“Then I’ll see to it that he gets his reward.” The blackness of his frown almost alarmed her. “And that night when you ran into me on the edge of the wood ... were you running away from Gresham?”
She looked down at the front of his dinner-jacket, and made the admission to his immaculate white shirt front.
“I wasn’t exactly running away. But I had only a short time off duty, and I didn’t want to waste it talking to anyone—”
“Not even me when you cannoned into me?” with his slightly crooked smile.
She put back her head and looked up at him, and it was like being stampeded by a team of wild horses, or caught up on wings and borne away to the heights. Whatever had happened in the past he was hers now —and apparently he always had been hers!
“That was the first time you were even a little bit nice to me,” she told him, a slight break in her voice.
Much later that night, when he had done a considerable amount of making up to her because he had so seldom been nice to her in the past, they came down to earth sufficiently to discuss their immediate plans.
“Your uncle insists that I give you a chance to go away with him for a week or two before we are married,” Kurt admitted, surprising her considerably because she had no idea the General had ever been made aware of the fact that Antoine wanted to marry her. “I discussed it all with him the other day—Oh, yes,” actually looking surprised because she was surprised. “How otherwise do you think I managed to induce an inflammable gentleman like your uncle to refrain from putting me up against a wall in front of a firing squad, and removing you from the hotel without any delay whatsoever, after he discovered what you had had to put up with here? I told him from the outset I wanted—intended—to marry you, and the only stipulation he made was that I should allow you a short time of freedom before expecting you to settle down. And that means that as soon as we’ve broken the news to the General in the morning that we are going to be married he’ll carry you off to somewhere like Paris for a week or two where he’ll give himself the pleasure of providing you with a trousseau.”
“But I don’t want a trousseau.” She wound her arms about his neck, and he was thrilled to feel the slight desperation in her hold as she clung to him. “At least, I can do without it. And I couldn’t bear the thought of being separated from you now that at last we—”
“Have found one another? I know, darling.” He held her away from him a little while he looked at her wryly. “That’s precisely how I feel. But you wouldn’t have me go back on my word to the General, would you? And, in any case, I feel that I owe it to you.”
“Why?” she demanded, sharply, quick to realise what he meant.
His expression grew even more wry.
“You’ve had so little opportunity to really know how you feel when you’re away from me. And you’re very young still, and—”
“If you think by sending me away from you you’ll get me to change my mind about you and leave you free to pursue your old life after all—” she began with great indignation, and then buried her face against him and apologised humbly. “But don’t send me away from you, Kurt,” she begged.
He stroked her hair gently, and talked to her wisely, soothingly.
“Your uncle isn’t exactly young. He wants to give you a special kind of a treat ... behave like a father towards you. And after all, to a young woman of your age Paris will always be Paris ... And as long as you don’t forget me even for a moment I won’t grudge you this little break! And for you it will be a break, sweetheart ... shopping, and all the rest of it. And as soon as you return we’ll be married, and then we will both go to Paris for our honeymoon. How do you like the sound of that?”
Her face glowed like a suddenly opening flower— even in the pale starlight. Her eyes resembled nothing less than stars.
“Oh, Kurt!” she managed, and dung to him. And then, with shaking fingers clutching at him: “But you must make it perfectly clear to my uncle that we can’t stay in Paris for long. I could buy all the clothes I need in a matter of hours...”
“My sweet,” he said, softly, lowering his dark cheek to hers, “all that is arranged. I have given the General very clearly to understand that you can remain away from me for a week, but not any longer. Do you feel any happier about the situation now?”
She sighed, a short, fluttering sigh, but agreed that things could be worse.
“And we’ll have the rest of our lives to be together,” he reminded her, his voice not entirely steady as he turned his mouth to hers.
“Kurt,” she said, dreamily, before an increasing chill in the atmosphere decided them they must go indoors, “I shall always think of that mountain in Switzerland where I first met you as a magic mountain. I was terrified, and lost, and had no hope for the future And then you gave me everything!”
“Not quite everything ... yet,” he corrected her. “But if you like to think that mountain magic was responsible for our present happiness then I most certainly won’t disagree,”
IN the morning they broke the news to the General, who apparently had been waiting to hear something of the kind and was therefore unable to betray surprise.
He kissed Toni with the heartiness her father might have displayed on such an occasion, and then suggested a celebration lunch with champagne. Philip Gresham was invited to join them, although he looked a trifle deflated, as if some carefully nursed plans had collaps
ed like a pricked balloon.
Nevertheless, he drank the health of the newly engaged pair as if he really wished them well, and Kurt tried to forget the morning when his fiancée had been forced to enter such a personable young man’s bedroom while he was hardly in a condition to face the day without fear of criticism of his appearance, and then blamed himself afresh for ever submitting Toni to such possible unpleasantness and even danger.
Not that Gresham was the type to take advantage of a young woman as inexperienced as Toni. Besides, he had recognised her for what she was—a girl with a good background who needed a certain amount of cherishing. And it hadn’t taken him long to decide other things about her.
Kurt had no doubt that Gresham would have married Toni like a shot if she had shown the smallest willingness to become Mrs. Philip Gresham. But fortunately for him, Kurt—she had never shown that willingness.
The one person who did not join in the celebration lunch was Antoine’s beautiful manageress, who kept well out of the way while the champagne corks were popping, and so far as Toni was concerned kept well out of the way for the remainder of that day.
After lunch Kurt took Toni for a walk along one of her favourite mountain paths, and she remembered the afternoon with pleasure sill the rest of her life, for it was while they lingered in the shade of a pine wood that they really got to know one another. They talked, as they had never talked before, about all the things that really interested them ... And they discovered that they had a large number of mutual interests which promised well for their future life together. Anyway, Toni thought so.
“I used to think we were utterly dissimilar,” she told him, while he lay on his back in the shade of the pines, and a golden beam of sunlight found its way through the branches and lighted up the ebony tones of his hair. “I thought you were hard and merciless, and I knew I was weak and stupid.”
“And now?” he enquired, lifting his head and regarding her quizzically, while his eyes had a drowsy look of utter contentment in them.
She smiled at him ... the smile of a woman who no longer has any fears or doubts, and is able to examine the man she loves—even take him apart a little, because in any case she is utterly sure of him.
“Now I wonder why I was so much afraid of you. And yet—looking back—it wasn’t all fear. I trusted you. I trusted you enough to leave someone I had known for weeks and go away with you. It might have been disastrous from my point of view.”
He rolled over on to his side and looked up at her. A cigarette was smouldering between the slim brown fingers of one of his hands, and the smoke that curled upwards formed a thin veil between them. Through it —and the fragrant scent of it in the still heat of the mountain afternoon—dark eyes met and clung to golden brown ones.
“Yet you took the risk,” he said softly.
“Because, I suppose, you compelled me.”
“How did I compel you?”
Her fingers strayed amongst the pine needles that were inches deep in the spot where they were reclining, and she collected a handful and regarded them as if they fascinated her before she replied.
“I think you exercised a sort of mesmerism which I was unable to resist.” The pine needles trickled back through her fingers as she spoke slowly. “When I lost my nerve on that ledge you didn’t make a move to help me, but you must have helped me in some way because alone and without you I couldn’t have taken a step to get off it. I was so hypnotised by fear that I could hardly lift my head, let alone make a move.”
“I wish now that I had jumped down on to the ledge and scooped you up in my arms,” he said almost roughly, his eyes darkening. “I was a cad to insist that you helped yourself.”
“No.” She bent over him and lightly touched the back of his hand. “If you’d done that you would never have made me hate you so much that I had to show you I wasn’t made entirely of the weak kind of stuff you thought I was, and then I would never have had the courage to go away with you. It was the intensity of the dislike I felt for you at that time that gave me the courage to get off that ledge.”
He regarded her broodingly.
“How many women, I wonder, when they become engaged, can truthfully tell the man they propose to marry that they once disliked him so badly they were willing to risk their necks rather than plead for a little help?” he asked, the cigarette smoke curling upwards into the pine branches.
This time she laughed, while her fingers clung tightly about his hand.
“Did you expect me to plead for help?” uncertain whether that was really what he had expected her to do.
He ground out the cigarette end in the pine needles, and then flung it away.
“As a matter of fact, I did.” A gleam of amusement lit his eyes as once again they met hers. “After seeing the way you meekly went to do the bidding of that awful woman in the hotel I could see no reason why your nerve wouldn’t finally crack and you would refuse to get yourself off the ledge. In which case I would have had to bestir myself and do something about it.”
“Are you glad now that I found the courage to help myself?”
“Very glad.” Suddenly his eyes were all melting tenderness, and he swept her into his arms. She yielded gladly, despite those few seconds when they had once again done a little verbal sparring. “If you had failed to find the spirit to stand up and defy me I would have known you were not the kind of girl who would one day subdue me entirely. But, to be perfectly honest with you, there was never a moment when I thought you were really a coward. There was just the possibility that you could be ... But I didn’t believe it. Perhaps, even then, it was important to me to make the discovery!”
She lay with her head pillowed on his shoulder while the fierce heat of the afternoon grew gradually less, and the cool of early evening brought shadows to the wood. Then, realising regretfully that they had to return to the hotel, he pulled her to her feet and held her for a long minute tightly clasped in his arms before they set out for the Rosenhorn.
The next day she and the General were leaving the hotel, and the agony of separation lay ahead. Kurt’s heart misgave him as he looked down at the small fair face framed in soft brown hair, and lighted by those enormous golden-brown eyes. Supposing, just supposing that, when she got away from him, she found that she could live without him, and that her uncle’s way of life appealed to her far more than the thought of returning to live with a man whose main preoccupation was running somewhat remote hotels. The General was a rich man, and he could offer her an extremely comfortable existence once they returned home to England, and there were always men like Philip Gresham who would be eager to marry a girl like Toni ... especially if they had her uncle’s blessing!
He was quite willing for her to marry Kurt Antoine, but it was obvious he was more than a little bit disappointed ... He had hoped to have her with him for a while before she decided to get married. It wouldn’t upset him in the slightest if his niece changed her mind, and, while distance safely separated them, she wrote and said that, after all, she wasn’t ready yet for marriage ... not to him!
He relaxed his hold of her, and instead of keeping her closely locked against him he cupped her face in both his hands, and looked down at her with a strange, new, intent earnestness in his look.
“Toinette,” he said—and he hardly ever called her Toinette—“I want you to know this. If you do change your mind—I shall understand.”
Toni’s upward look at him was at first amazed, and then became suddenly inscrutable.
“You mean,” she said, “that if, once I get away from you, I’m not as hopelessly in love with you as I imagine at the moment ... I’m to let you know?”
“Yes.”
Her face grew quite expressionless.
“And if you make the same discovery—one can change one’s mind about such an important thing as marriage in a week, I suppose, but I can’t imagine how it’s done!—you’ll let me know?”
“Don’t be silly,” he said, almost sternly.
“Well,” with assumed lightness, “there’s Marianne...”
He turned her slowly about and they walked back to the hotel. At the foot of the terrace steps he broke their silence for the first time.
“Liebling, we are both a little upset because of the parting tomorrow, but that is no reason why we should attempt to hurt one another. When I spoke to you in the wood I was merely guarding against a—possible eventuality—”
“A change of heart, you mean, which you might experience yourself! Well, that is something we’ve both got to face up to, and since a week is not a very long time in which to discover our true feelings I’d better persuade my uncle to make it a fortnight’s respite—or even longer! I could go back to England with him...”
“If you do that,” he said, a break in his voice, “I won’t be able to endure it.”
Nevertheless, although her eyes seldom left him during the course of that evening, and whenever he felt them on him his instantly swung to meet them, Toni was rather more depressed than she would normally have been at the prospect of a brief separation. She was depressed enough by the thought of the separation, but the fact that Kurt could have any doubt at this late stage oppressed rather than depressed her.
As she had pointed out to him, it wasn’t a one-sided matter ... There was Marianne moving beautifully in the background of his life all the time, and once Toni was out of the way she would be quite unlike Marianne if she didn’t grasp hold of every possible opportunity to test his devotion to the English girl.
When she saw him looking slightly distrait she could be extra nice to him. She could banish the loneliness of the long evenings by putting forth all her charm and her womanly sympathy.... They worked so much together; they had, in actual fact, quite a lot in common. Hotel running was a sport they pursued with zest, and Kurt would turn naturally to Marianne if anything went temporarily wrong with his precious Rosenhorn.