.. -*- encoding: utf-8 -*-

.. meta::
   :PG.Id: 54674
   :PG.Title: White Motley
   :PG.Released: 2017-05-07
   :PG.Rights: Public Domain
   :PG.Producer: Al Haines
   :DC.Creator: Max Pemberton
   :DC.Title: White Motley
              A Novel
   :DC.Language: en
   :DC.Created: 1911
   :coverpage: images/img-cover.jpg

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WHITE MOTLEY
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      WHITE MOTLEY

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      *A NOVEL*

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      BY

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      MAX PEMBERTON

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      AUTHOR OF "THE LITTLE HUGUENOT," "THE
      GARDEN OF SWORDS," ETC., ETC.

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      New York
      STURGIS & WALTON COMPANY
      1911

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      *All rights reserved*

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      Copyright 1911
      By STURGIS & WALTON COMPANY

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      Set up and electrotyped. Published April, 1911

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   CONTENTS

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   CHAPTER

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`PROLOGUE`_

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I  `THE GRAND PRIX AT ANDANA`_
II  `A DARK HORSE GOES DOWN`_
III  `CONCERNING A DISOBLIGING GHOST`_
IV  `THE MAN WHO KNEW`_
V  `THE GHOST TAKES WINGS`_
VI  `A LESSON UPON SKIS`_
VII  `AN ULTIMATUM`_
VIII  `BENNY BECOMES AN OPTIMIST`_
IX  `IN WHICH WE BAG A BRACE`_
X  `A SPECIALIST IS CONSULTED`_
XI  `THE VIGIL OF TRAGEDY`_
XII  `FLIGHT`_
XIII  `AFTER THE STORM`_
XIV  `THE GENDARME PHILIP`_
XV  `THE CORTÈGE`_
XVI  `TWO OPINIONS`_
XVII  `HERALDS OF GREAT TIDINGS`_
XVIII  `THE EVE OF THE GREAT ATTEMPT`_
XIX  `THE THIEF`_
XX  `THE FLIGHT IS BEGUN`_
XXI  `THE FLIGHT IS FINISHED`_
XXII  `THE EMPTY HOUSE`_
XXIII  `THE NIGHT MAIL`_
XXIV  `THE DOCTOR INTERVENES`_
XXV  `THE LIGHTS OF MAGADINO`_
XXVI  `AT THE HOSPICE`_
XXVII  `BENNY SETS OUT FOR ENGLAND`_





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.. _`PROLOGUE`:

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   WHITE MOTLEY

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   PROLOGUE

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   THE NEW HOUSE AT HOLMSWELL

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The New House at Holmswell lies, far back from the
road, upon the great highway to Norwich.  Local
topographers delight to tell you that it is just
forty-five miles from that city and five from the Cesarewitch
course at Newmarket.  They are hardly less eloquent
when they come to speak of its late owner, Sir Luton
Delayne, and of that unforgotten and well-beloved
woman, the wife he so little deserved.

To be sure, the house is not new at all, for it was
built at the very moment when the great Harry put
his hands into the coffers of the monasteries and
called upon high Heaven to witness the justice of
his robberies.  They faced it with wonderful tiles some
years ago, and stamped the Tudor rose all over it;
but the people who first called it "new" have been
dead these four hundred years, and it is only the local
antiquary who can tell you just where the monastery
(which preceded it) was built.

Here, the master of a village which knows more
about the jockeys of the day than about any Prime
Minister, here lived Sir Luton Delayne and that gentle
woman who won so many hearts during her brief
tenure of the village kingdom.  Well the people knew
her and well they knew him.  A florid, freckled-faced
man with red hair and the wisp of an auburn
moustache, the common folk said little about his principles
and much about his pugnacity.  Even these dull
intellects knew that he had been "no gentleman" and
were not afraid to tell you so.  His fame, of a sort,
had culminated upon the day he thrashed the butcher
from Mildenhall, because the fellow would halt on the
high road just when the pheasants were being driven
from the Little Barton spinneys.  That was no
famous day for the House of Delayne; for the butcher
had been a great bruiser in his time, and he knocked
down the baronet in a twinkling without any regard
at all for his ancestry or its dignities.  Thereafter,
Sir Luton's violent speech troubled the vulgar but
little, and when he rated Johnny Drummond for
wheeling a barrow over the tennis-court, the lad fell back
upon the price of mutton and took his week's notice
like a man.

To Lady Delayne local sympathy went out in
generous measure.  If little were known of the sorrows
of her life, much was surmised.  The "county" could
tell you many tales and would tell them to intimates.
These spoke of a ruffian who had sworn at that gentle
lady before a whole company at the meet; who openly
snubbed her at her own table; who had visited upon
her the whims and the temper of a disposition at
once vicious and uncontrollable.  Darker things were
said and believed, but the sudden end surprised no one;
and when one day the village heard that she had gone
for good, when a little while afterwards the bailiffs
came to the New House and Sir Luton himself
disappeared, it seemed but the sudden revelation of a
tragedy which all had expected.

Whither had Lady Delayne gone, and what was the
truth of the disaster?  Few could speak upon matters
so uncertain, but amongst the few the name of
Redman Rolls, the bookmaker, stood high.  Report from
Newmarket said that Luton Delayne had lost
twenty-seven thousand pounds upon the Cambridgeshire and
that this loss, following extensive and disastrous
speculation in American insecurities, had been the
immediate instrument of disaster.  As to Lady Delayne's
hurried flight from the New House, that was a delicate
affair upon which no one could throw much light.
She had relatives in the North, and was believed to
possess a small fortune of her own; but no news of
her came to Holmswell, and the far from curious
village had no particular interest in the whereabouts of
a man who had browbeaten and bullied it for more
than ten years.  He had gone to Somaliland to join
his brother who was out after big game, the parson
said.  It meant little to the simple folk, who had not
the remotest idea where Somaliland was unless it lay
somewhere beyond Norwich—a conclusion to which
they arrived in the kitchen of the ancient inn.

To be sure, there were many tales told of the final
separation of these unhappy people, and some of them
were sad enough.  The servants at the New House
well remembered how Sir Luton had come home upon
that unlucky day; and what he had done and what he
had said upon his arrival.  To begin with, Martin, the
motor-man, could speak of a savage, silent figure,
driving blindly through the twilight of an October
afternoon, of the narrow escape from accident at the lodge
gate and of the oaths with which his attentions were
received.  Morris, the butler, would tell how Sir
Luton had almost knocked him down when he opened
the door, and had cursed her ladyship openly when he
heard she had company.  There was the maid Eva, to
tell of her mistress half dressed for dinner and of a
scene which in some part she had witnessed.  Few
believed her wholly when she said that her master had
attributed his misfortunes to the day when he met his
wife, and had told her that "he had done with her, by
Heaven!"  And then upon that there would be
Morris's further story of the table laid for dinner, the
candles lighted, the soup hot and steaming—and not
a soul in the great room where dinner was served.
They waited a long time, this faithful old gossip and
the lean footman with the dull eyes; but neither Sir
Luton nor her ladyship came down.  And then, shortly
before nine, the old horse and the single brougham
were ordered—and the kindest lady they would ever
know went from them and they heard of her no more.

But the man remained, though he had become but
a shadow in the house.  All night he drank in the
little study behind the billiard room, and a light still
burned there at six o'clock next morning, as Jelf, the
under-gardener, could testify.  If he made any effort
to recall the wife, who would willingly have stood by
him in the darkest hour, none knew of it.  For a few
days, Morris carried his meals to the study and would
discover him there, sitting at a table and staring
blankly over the drear park as though dim figures of
his own life's story moved beneath the stately trees.
Then, following an outburst which surpassed all the
servants could remember, an outburst of passion and
of obscenity inconceivable, he was driven one morning
to Mildenhall Station, and Holmswell heard with a
satisfaction it made no attempt to conceal that this
was the end.

The New House was the scene of a great sale
shortly afterwards, and brokers came from London to
buy the porcelain and the pictures, while many a
country gentleman drove in to bid for the well-proved '63
port and the fine bin of Steinberg Cabinet.  Few in
the village could be more than spectators at such a
scene as that; but the old clergyman, Mr. Deakins,
bought Lady Delayne's mirror for three pounds fifteen
shillings, and when they asked him why, had a ready
answer.

"An old man's fancy," he said; "and yet—who
knows that some day it may not show me again the
face of the gentlest lady I have ever known?"





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.. _`THE GRAND PRIX AT ANDANA`:

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   CHAPTER I


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   THE GRAND PRIX AT ANDANA

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The sleigh climbed the heights laboriously, jolting
heavily in the ruts which last night's frost had
hardened.  Minute by minute now new pictures were
revealed.  The Rhone valley appeared to be shaping
itself more clearly at every zigzag; so that, while
Sierre below had become but a toy village upon a
child's board, the majestic Weisshorn now stood up in
detached sovereignty and all the encircling peaks could
be named with assurance.

There had been a blizzard blowing for thirty hours,
and it had detained the little company at Sierre; but
the morning of the day broke gloriously fine, so that
the travellers set off at eight o'clock and were to reach
the hotel at Andana before eleven.

A truly British company, some of them had come to
winter in Switzerland for the first time.  Others were
veterans, who brought their own skis, talked
knowingly of Vermala and the Zaat, and could show you,
even when far down the valley, exactly where the
Palace Hotel lurked behind a forest of pines.  Of
these the gentle old clergyman, Harry Clavering, was
the most prominent—and he, as one of whom much
was expected, offered generous and courtly help to the
more timid of the wayfarers.

But even Harry Clavering, despite his seven and
fifty years, was not insensible to the charm of the
"little widow," and his conscience found a ready excuse
when he craved permission to share a sleigh with
her—and obtained it, to the great annoyance of Sir
Gordon Snagg, the coal-merchant from Newcastle, who
had already confided to his intimates of the company
the unnecessary information that the "little woman"
in violet was the best "view" he hoped to see in
Switzerland.

There were five sledges in all taking the company
to Andana, and two of them devoted to ungovernable
youth.  These lads from the universities and the
schools, convinced that Switzerland existed as a
republic merely by their patronage, hastened at every turn
to give some demonstration of their superiority, either
as performers upon the bugle, or as "yoodlers," or
merely as marksmen, with the passers-by on the slopes
below for their targets.  The newly-fallen snow
delighted them by its promise of good ski-ing for some
days to come.  But for the glorious panorama of the
Rhone, for the wonder of height and valley, they cared
not a straw.

Of the others, a fat man in a well-made suit of
tweeds, and a bright little woman, whose luggage was
marked "Lady Coral-Smith," were the subjects of
some mischief in the other sleighs and of not a little
gossip.  They were old friends, as they were careful
to tell everyone who did not ask; and by the oddest
coincidence in the world, they met on the platform
at the Gare de Lyon.  So they were travelling to
Andana together—where, as Lady Coral-Smith
explained, her poor dead husband, who had thrice been
mayor of Brampton-upon-Sea, died after a long illness
some four years ago.  She would tell this with the
air of one who invited sympathy for what she had
gone through and some tolerance for a gaiety of spirit
natural to the circumstance.  Nor was she without
a certain measure of good looks, bravely as her "art"
strove to disguise them.

The Major on his part—Major Boodle to be exact—was
an excellent example of the half-pay officer,
who is driven to a perpetual conflict between his
desires and his pension.  He had seen a little service in
the South African War and in Egypt, and spoke of
it good humouredly, but without any sense of
proportion.  To him, the Boers were still "those d——d
Dutchmen," and he remembered little about the
campaign apart from the attack of enteric which kept him
three months at Colesberg.  His laugh was loud, his
face fat and without distinction, and his chief concern
the absence of any restaurant between Sierre and the
hotel.  Someone, he thought, should write to the
*Times* about that, and he had said as much to the
"little widow" before they started—and would have
said more but for the sharp eyes of the mayor's relict,
who called him to her side with the asperity of a
colonel on parade.

This was the little company which left Sierre at
eight o'clock upon the morning of the first day of
February and searched with eager eyes for the first
glimpse of the plateau of Andana and its destination.
The most part of them, newly come out of England,
discussed the glorious sunshine to begin with, and upon
that the fog and rain which would then be exasperating
their own countrymen.  By here and there, they
paused to cast backward glances at the genial parson
and the "little widow"; while Bob Otway, a mature
philosopher of one-and-twenty, remarked to his friend,
Dick Fenton, a practised cynicist of like years, that
"old Harry" was certainly "going it."  Which
reflection he capped by the assurance that Andana was
a "devilish mouse-trap" for the men, and that a
fellow was wise to be careful.

"It's perfectly impossible not to propose to a girl
if her Q's are all right," he said—and then, by way
of illustration—"look at Mondy Thurl, who was here
last year.  He married that Toogood girl just because
she could hold out the tails of her threes.  Rotten
idea, I call it—"

Dick Fenton, who was tramping doggedly by the
side of his sledge, admitted that there was something
in it—but he spoke of consolations.

"Anyway, my boy, she didn't hold out the tails of
your threes, and that's something.  Poor old Mondy!
I expect he's wondering what he did it for now.  He
must have thawed a bit before he got back to town.
A man can't be expected to know what he's doing out
here—and that Toogood girl could fall down.  Why,
I believe she practised it before the glass just to show
what a pretty ankle she had got.  She always used to
come down just when old Mondy was there to pick her up."

"Of course she did.  She specialised in him, just
as those Rider girls would specialise in you, Dick, if
they got the chance.  You heard they came over from
Caux on Thursday?"

"Yes, the parson told me—what an old dear he is,
making love to the 'little widow' at his time of life!
Why, she can't be five-and-twenty—"

"And she is undoubtedly 'it.'  I'm beginning to
be sorry for the Rider girls, Dick."

Dick sighed.

"It's the way they take the last corner on the
ice-run," he said sorrowfully, "I know I shall be done
for if I win the doubles with Marjory.  She holds
my neck so tight that I believe she'll strangle me some
day—"

"She'll do that unless you propose to her; you'd
better get it over, old chap, and I'll write to your
people.  By Jove, though, it's hot, isn't it?—couldn't
you drink a lager beer?"

He stopped to wipe his forehead and to look back
for an instant at the valley below and the little town
of Sierre, now become more toy-like than ever, but
for its skating rink, which sparkled like a jewel dropped
from the heights.  Even the pines carried a burden
of the hoar to-day, and every thicket upon the steep
slopes, every wood through which the sleighs carried
them, had some picture more fantastic than its
predecessors to show them.  The air was keen as a breath
of life itself; it had brought the colour anew to the
"widow's" pale cheeks, and her eyes were dancing
while she listened to the rhapsodies of the genial old
clergyman, who knew and loved the scene and
delighted to dwell upon it.  Twenty times already had
he named the different peaks to her, but his enthusiasm
was unabated.

"Vermala is up above the forest," he said, "we
often take luges and have tea up there.  You can see
the Matterhorn from the plateau before the tea-house.
Oh, yes, and Mont Blanc; there's a fine view of that
and of the Dents Blanches from the Park Hotel.
Beginners always go there to learn to ski—I suppose you
are already an expert?"

The "little widow" shook her head.

"It's all quite new to me.  I have been to
Switzerland many times in the summer; but never in the
winter—I had expected something quite different.
All this is very beautiful—but is it not just a little
too exciting?  Would not one have to be something of
an acrobat to enjoy it thoroughly?"

Harry Clavering laughed.

"Ah," he said, "everyone thinks that when he first
comes out.  But we all become acrobats and do the
most wonderful things before we have been here a
week.  Why, even I have been down the ice-run at
my age—dear, dear, to think of it—and I am fifty-seven.

"Do you not believe, then, that a man is as old as
his capacities?"

The parson beamed beneath his glasses—she
certainly was a delightful woman to travel with, and he
had yet to learn her name.

"I believe in thinking of pleasant things," he said,
"old age is pleasant enough if you forget it.  And
we all become young here; the air inspires us—I
think it makes us quite mad sometimes.  Then the
scenery is so beautiful, so very, very beautiful.  Look
at those peaks—how the sun shines upon them!  And
I have wasted one whole week in London when I might
have been here.  Deplorable!  That week has gone forever—"

She liked his enthusiasm, yet could not forbear to
intrude upon it.

"But I hear of blizzards," she exclaimed.  "Whatever
do you do at Andana when there is a blizzard?"

"We grumble and are happy.  Snow is as
necessary to us here as water to the Arab of the desert.
We are thankful to see the snow falling, and we go
into our corners and play bridge.  I suppose you will
join us there?  I felt sure you played bridge directly
I saw you."

She laughed, showing him how white were her teeth,
and how deeply the blue of her eyes contrasted with
the azure of the cloudless sky.

"Oh," she said, "one has to do the necessary things.
But I am a dreadful player, and the old ladies get
very angry with me.  I should never have the courage
to play with strangers—"

He hastened to correct her.

"No one is a stranger here.  That is the best of it.
In a way, we are all friends—though, of course, there
are people we like better than others."

"Which means to say that you find yourself already
devoted heart and soul to Lady Coral-Smith, and the
intimate acquaintance of that dreadful person in the
yellow suit, Sir Gordon Snagg."

He shook his head as one who would not do battle
with her.

"Come, come," he said.  "We must not be unkind.
Some give and take is necessary in a society like
this—and we can always choose our own road if we
prefer.  Sometimes, I wander by myself all day—once,
when I felt the need of rest, I went over to
Grindelwald—with a guide for my companion."

She turned upon him with a face grown suddenly white.

"Grindelwald!  But we are not near Grindelwald?
It can't be."

"Indeed," he said, quite unconscious of her
embarrassment, "it is quite near for the climbers, though
men of my age generally prefer to go by train.  Do
you know Grindelwald, by chance?"

She feigned an answer, glad to think that her
betrayal had escaped the ears of her kindly cicerone.

"I stayed there three nights; it seems a century
ago, but I was on my honeymoon, and you will understand—"

"Perfectly, perfectly; I should not have put the
question.  You must forgive me."

The "little widow" replied with a commonplace,
but both were silent for a full mile or more, and when
next Clavering spoke, they had come out upon a wide
plateau of the snow and were within twenty minutes
of their destination.  Here the scene changed in a
measure, for there were woods upon the right hand,
while the broad expanse of the snow hid the valley
from their sight.  A little village with a winding
street and houses that should have come out of a
child's play-box, stood between the plateau and the
hotel; and when they had passed it, they entered the
forest itself, following a tortuous path amid the pines
and already meeting many of the revellers.  From
these, news of Andana was to be had, especially from
a delightful woman of the world, whose age was
thirteen and whose uncle was a Cabinet Minister.  Skis
permitted her to follow the sledge gracefully, and she
talked as though the end of the world were at hand
and would find her budget undelivered.

"Keith Rivers is here and he's winning everything,"
she said.  "I'm in for the doubles with him to-morrow,
and it's a certainty.  Dr. Orange came yesterday.
Of course, everyone is more in love with him
than ever.  The ice has been beastly, but we've put in
a protest—in fact, we've riddled the enemy with
potholes, and I suppose he'll do something.  Do you
know Ian Kavanagh, I wonder?  He was a blue, and
his father left him thousands and thousands.  It's
awful to start life with that on your shoulders, isn't
it?  But he seems strong.  Of course, he can't skate
a bit, but we forgive him, because he can do other
things.  Then I must tell you, there's Benny—do
you know Benny?  If you do not, you have missed the
joy of your life.  He's the most good-natured,
stupidest, obstinate creature I ever met in all my days.
Think of it—he'd never been on skis before, and he
went out the day before the blizzard and actually
tried to jump.  I thought he was going to fall over
the edge of the world before he'd stop.  Oh, he is such
a dear, and I do wish he'd move into the hotel, and
not stop at that awful villa—"

An empty sleigh, drawn by two sturdy horses
tandem fashion, came cantering down the path and the
business of passing in so difficult a place stilled the
ravenous tongue for a moment.  When they got on
again, Harry Clavering ventured upon an introduction:

"This is our philosopher and reigning monarch,"
he said genially—"Miss Elizabeth Bethune.  Permit
me to introduce her"; and he turned and waited,
remembering that he had not yet the "little widow's"
name.  She remembered it also, and her face was
crimson when she said:

"I am Mrs. Kennaird—I am glad to meet my sovereign."

"Oh, indeed," exclaimed Miss Elizabeth with a
pretty pout; "this is not a golden age, I assure you,
Mrs. Kennaird, and Mr. Clavering never will be
sensible; I don't believe he could be if he tried.  It would
serve him right if I said nothing about the ghost—"

They both looked at her.

"The ghost!  Here at Andana?"

"I should think so; everybody's seen it but
Mr. Benny, and, of course, he's blind.  Do you know the
people in the villages are so frightened that some of
them are going down to Sierre?  Well, it's true, and
even that horrid Dr. Orange, who believes in nothing
but his 'brackets,' why, he's in a dreadful way about
it.  We're to have a picnic after dinner to-night, just
to see if we can find it."

"I shall certainly come," rejoined Clavering; and
then to Mrs. Kennaird he said:

"Perhaps you will join the expedition?"

But the "little widow" shook her head sadly.

"No," she said, "I think not—my life is too full
of ghosts.  I would not add to the number."

And that was the end of it, for the drivers whipped
up their horses at the moment, and with a jangling of
bells and guttural cries from the men, they emerged
from the wood, and the Palace Hotel was before
them.  Here Dr. Orange and a few others were
gathered, waiting the bell for luncheon.  They greeted
such of the new-comers as were known to them with
an exuberant welcome; nor did they fail to bestow
their interest upon the "little widow."

"A devilish dainty little woman," said that
condescending young gentleman, Keith Rivers.

Dr. Orange, however, a slim, good-looking man of
forty, had become suddenly preoccupied.

"By Jove!" he said, "I know that face almost as
well as my own.  Now where—?"





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.. _`A DARK HORSE GOES DOWN`:

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   CHAPTER II


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   A DARK HORSE GOES DOWN

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The morning of the following day surpassed the
expectation even of those who wrote the story of
Andana for the English newspapers.  People who were
out of the hotel by nine o'clock returned to tell their
friends that the sun was broiling.  Others went to the
little bazaar for blue glasses at one franc fifty.

There had been mist in the Rhone valley at dawn
and wisps of it still hung about the entrance to the
Simplon.  Weather prophets detected a good omen
here, and stood before the porch of the hotel to peer
down into that unsurpassable ravine and to say that
the cluster of black dots immediately below them
stood for the church and streets of Sierre.  To the
right and left were the great clefts of the mighty
chasm, a vast pit digged by the waters that flowed
before man was, and were now sown with towns and
villages and the iron links of civilisation.

The hotel at Andana stands upon the brink of the
valley at a height of five thousand feet.  Immediately
facing it upon the farther side are the twin peaks of the
Weisshorn with its sheer and glistening precipices, and
a little to the right of that, the Rothhorn and the
shining glaciers which are the windows to that
supreme escarpment.  Look farther to the right across
the vast abyss, and you have Sion in the hollow and
for your heights the Becs de Bosson—or farther yet,
the Aiguilles Rouges and all their story of hazard and
achievement.  These stand up amid countless peaks,
while from the lesser mountains of the Simplon upon
the one hand, right away to Mont Blanc upon the
other, the eye is spellbound both by the number and
the grandeur of these dominating summits.

Deep in the valley lies the Rhone, but a thread of
silver to those upon the heights.  Andana stands high
above its right bank, and the mountains behind it,
lacking something in variety, are yet incomparable in
the delights they afford to the winter sportsman.  Here
the climber seeks the wider fields of untrodden snows,
the gentler valleys and the vanquished summits.  And
here in the woods there is a solitude of winter whose
charm is not readily to be forgotten.

The "little widow" had slept well after her long
journey, and she awoke to the delights of this
unfamiliar scene just when the clocks were striking nine.
Lying a little while to speculate upon the events of
the long journey from Egypt and to wonder if any in
the hotel would know her, presently her ears became
aware of an unusual clatter below her window.  When
she looked out she discovered a party on skis about to
set out for a paper chase, and announcing the fact with
the boisterous spirit of the mountains.

There they were, fathers of families and their sons;
generals who had cast off the shackles of Whitehall;
colonels from India; merchants waxed fat; boys from
the universities—all dressed in the once-white
sweaters, the short knee-breeches and the regulation boots.
Troops of girls and of ladies of uncertain age
accompanied them—gliding, sliding, staggering upon the
ungainly runners; and thus, in splendid disorder, the
motley march began.

When they were gone, the two young gentlemen
who had come up with the party from Sierre
yesterday appeared upon the plateau with Miss Bessie
Bethune, and having bestowed upon her the gift of
a few buckets of snow applied chiefly to the nape of
her neck, began to ask ironically when the "show"
would begin.

"Rivers said nine o'clock.  I put my three-and-six-penny
watch down the back of the customs' man at
Pontarlier, so I don't know, but I'll bet it's nearly ten.
Beastly shame to keep the cracks waiting.  Snagg
ought to ask a question in Parliament about it."

To which Dick Fenton replied that Rivers was
certainly "a nut" and that they had better go up and
crack him—which suggestion, adopted *nem. con.*, left
Miss Bessie to herself for an instant and then to a
duologue with the "little widow," whom she espied at
the window.

"Aren't you coming down to see the races, Mrs. Kennaird?"

"Oh, I hope so; what time do they begin?"

"That's what I want to know.  If they don't come
down soon, I shall race by myself, and then they'll
have to give me a prize.  Do come and help me.  I'm
in a dreadful minority."

"Then I must certainly come to your assistance.
Is Mr. Clavering down yet?"

"I haven't seen him; but, of course, we don't want
the Church until Sunday.  There's no one on the run
at all but Benny, and he doesn't count.  Have you
seen Benny?  Then it's a thing to dream about.  He
lives all by himself in the chalet up there—such a
wonderful man, and always going about as though he
were looking for his own soul.  You'll see him in a
minute, for he's just gone up—but I don't suppose
he'll come down on the luge—I really can't believe
that Benny would be faithful to anything for more
than five minutes.  And, oh! here's Mr. Kavanagh—I
would like to introduce you, for he is such a dear!"

A tall, fair-haired man emerged from the hotel door
at the moment, and Miss Bessie immediately took
possession of him, to his apparent satisfaction, for they
were gossiping like two old women when next the
"little widow" saw them.  Immediately afterwards,
someone shouted "*Achtung!*" and a figure came
flying down the ice-run which finishes at the very door
of the hotel.  Roughly clad in a grey sweater and
check breeches, wearing no hat, and showing a thick
crop of black hair, Mr. Benjamin Benson, for it was
he, clung to his toboggan wildly, his teeth set and his
eyes staring.  When at last it flung him violently to
the snow, he got up with the smile of a child, and
looked at it for many minutes almost reproachfully.
Then, patiently and laboriously he set out to climb the
hill again to have another try.

When he had gone, the "little widow" dressed
herself without further delay, and by a quarter to ten she
also joined the throng before the hotel door, and was
immediately recognised by Harry Clavering, who told
her that the races were about to begin.

"Perhaps you would like to go up with me," he
suggested a little nervously.  "I am time-keeper
to-day, and I can show you just how it is done.
Everyone toboggans here, and you will like to begin as soon
as possible.  Shall we go now?"

She offered no objection, and they set out at once,
climbing steep steps cut in the snow to a little bridge
above the final straight of the course.  To his
question whether she had discovered any friends at
Andana, she replied in the negative; but added that
Mrs. Allwater and her daughter Pansy were coming on from
Caux in a few days' time—"and they," she said,
"are very old friends of mine."

When they arrived at the bridge they found quite a
concourse of people, that very self-conscious person,
Ian Kavanagh, among the number.  Hardly had he
set eyes on the "little widow" when he begged the
parson to introduce him.

"Do you do this sort of thing, Mrs. Kennaird?"
he asked her, as he took his stand near by.  She
answered with a smile that she was quite unaccomplished
on the ice.

"Prefer hunting, I suppose?  Well, so do I, though
what my twenty nags are doing just now I won't ask.
Eating their heads off, I suppose.  Let me get you a
seat; this sun takes it out of one, and some of the
girls are staggering.  You'll want all your courage, I
can tell you."

He brought a cane chair, and set it upon the high
bank so that she could see the toboggans as they passed
under the little bridge.  Harry Clavering watched all
this ceremony with some impatience, and hastened to
cut in before the thing went any farther.

"I think they are wanting you, Mr. Kavanagh, at
the starting-post," he said with a smile of entreaty.
"There's no flag there, and we must have one.  Would
you very much object?"

"I should indeed, but, of course, if you
command—"  And the man, with a look at the "little
widow" which he meant to be unutterable, set out for
the unwelcome duty.  Then the parson spoke.

"I don't understand Kavanagh," he said; "no
energy at all—so listless—and he is only twenty-seven,
I believe.  They say he has a large fortune; it really
is a great pity if it is true.  Young men with much
money are dreadfully handicapped in the race for
happiness—but there, it is not my business after all, and
I have no right to mention it.  Can you see quite well,
Mrs. Kennaird?—the start is up there, you know, by
the little white cottage.  I take the time directly the
red flag is lowered, and the man at the finish signals to
me with his flag when the course is finished.  This is
what we call an ice-run.  They flood the surface every
night, and that makes it very fast.  These high banks
are to guard the corners.  If it were flat, they could
not get round at all.  Some of them are very
clever—Mr. Rivers, for instance.  He is standing over there,
just by Lady Coral-Smith—the thin man in the
sweater with our Trinity colours."

He babbled on as though she had been a child; nor
could her ignorance quarrel with the lesson.  Not for
many a month had she felt so much alive as out here
upon the mountain-side, with the valley at her feet and
the whited woods above.  The sense of vast space and
dominion delighted her—the merry people; the
skaters upon the rink to the right of her; the curlers
upon the rink to the left; the sunshine, the feeling that
all the men and women in the world had suddenly
become children and were at play, combined to suggest
an ecstasy of repose and forgetfulness.

"Tell me, for I am very ignorant," she said, "do
two people come down the slide together?"

Harry Clavering was startled.

"We don't call it a slide—an 'ice-run' is the
proper name," he said almost apologetically.  "There
is only room for one runner at a time, as you will see
presently.  They go so very fast.  Why, it's more
than a mile from the cottage up there to the door of
the hotel, and they do it in a minute and a half!
You must watch them as they take the corners;
that's the real fun—that's where they generally fall
off."

"So we are here to support their miseries.  How
very noble of us!  And the man with the red flag up
on the hillside?"

"He is the starter.  Now see, there is young Bob
Otway just about to come down."

He was very excited, and watched the starting-box
with restless eyes, while she tried to follow him and
to trace the serpentine course of the run which might
have been just a wide stretch of the ice extending from
the pine-woods above to the door of the hotel upon the
plateau.  Half-way down, the track swept suddenly to
the right, and then to the left again—and here were
the high banks of snow to ease the corners and make
them possible at high speeds.  The "little widow"
had just fallen to a memory of her own girlhood and
of the joy such a game would have afforded her
before the dark days, when Harry Clavering waved his
red flag violently and there was a general shout:

"He's off!"

"Only Bob Otway," said some kindly friend in the
crowd who was an optimist.  "He's sure to take a
toss."  And it was a true saying, for Master Bob came
at the corner like a bull and was clean up and over it
before many realised that he started at all.

"Oh, dear!  Oh, dear!" exclaimed the old parson,
quite as excited as any boy about it.  "He should not
have taken the bank so high.  Poor boy, I hope he has
not hurt himself."  A comment which provoked a
muttered "D——d fool!" from a choleric colonel, who
had seen the thing done in Canada, and did not
believe it possible to do it better in Switzerland.  Then
a second competitor, Dick Fenton, started, and he
came down prettily enough, riding low at the banks
and getting a splendid course in the final straight.  It
was quite thrilling to see him, the "little widow"
declared; and when Harry Clavering announced the
time as one minute thirty-one seconds, she believed
that Fenton must have won.  Not so the others.
"Wait until Rivers has been down," they said.  That
splendid personage obviously was their *pièce de resistance*.

Meanwhile, there were "heats" for the ladies, and
these found the men a little nearer to the edge of the
bank and frankly enjoying themselves.  Some of the
girls rode very well—and, significantly, Marjory
Rider, whose name suggested proficiency, acquitted
herself with hardly less aplomb than her sister Nellie.
Tall girls, and excessively thin, it remained for an
artist in the background to suggest that they never
would have got their living as "models."  But they
flashed down the ice-run with a bravado that was
incontestable, and their corners were, in Bob Otway's
words, "divine."  They were followed by a pretty
little girl with a superb figure, who considerately
parted company with her toboggan on the second
bank and went half-way down the straight with her
face to the heights and her back toward the winning
post.  Even this, however, was capped by a mature
lady of forty-three, who rolled over and over at the
first turn and had to be helped up the slope with a
curler's besom.  In no way daunted, she set out
immediately for the summit to repeat a performance so
diverting to the company.

The "little widow" found all this new enough to
be pleasing, and there was a curious fascination in
watching this whirring from the heights; while the
prone figures, the drone of the runners, the leap at
the corners, the hard set faces, suggested that conquest
of space and time which never fails to be exciting.
When they told her that Keith Rivers was about to
perform, she craned forward in her chair to see that
dashing youth, with his curly brown hair and his
frank open face and his contempt of other rivals.  He
had just left Eton and was going into the army, they
told her.  And none at Andana could keep pace with
him, whether upon skis or skates.  To be sure, he
rode magnificently, taking the corners with unerring
judgment, and making a sweep into the straight which
dazzled the company.  When the time was
announced—one minute twenty-nine  seconds—it
seemed that there was nothing for his friends to do
but to throw their caps into the air and claim the
stakes.  None was left in now but Benny, and to
think of Mr. Benjamin Benson as the winner of the
Grand Prix at Andana was too ridiculous.

Benny had just gone up to the starting-post, a
well-made figure of a man enough, with the kindliest
eyes in all Switzerland.  He walked with the lurch
of the sailor ashore; and the chaff that followed him
was like hail upon a pent-house roof.  To Bess
Bethune, who asked him if he were going to beat record,
he shouted back over his shoulder that he meant to
try.  It was evident that he had little skill in repartee;
and when anyone wished him luck he took the words
as he found them and missed the irony.  To Bob
Otway, who recommended him to tie himself on with
a rope, he retorted that he would be the better for
the loan of a monkey's tail; and quite satisfied with
the shot, he went plodding on up the hill to the
amusement of every superior person in the company.

There was a little delay at the post, for Benny
would fall off his toboggan before he got on to it, as
the starter declared; and when they did get him
going, he leaped high into the air and fell with such a
thud upon the cushion of the machine that any other
man's bones would have been broken.  From that
moment his performance became entirely astonishing.
No one at Andana had ever taken the earlier bends
of the course so fast and so furiously, and it seemed
quite impossible that he could remain upon the course
at all.  Benny, however, was a sticker.  "Where I
drop, there I lie," was one of the maxims of his life,
and so he lay very close to his toboggan, hugging
it as though it were a pretty girl, and never lifting
his eyes from a form so attractive.  Approaching the
corner he began to attain a speed which delighted the
*cognoscenti*.  Uproarious applause mingled with
mocking laughter.  All said and done, the world likes
a butt—and what other role could such a man have filled?

"Stick to it, old chap!" "Hang on, Benjamin!"
"Give him his head!" "Now we're jumping!"
"Benny's a nut!" "Oh, my hat, see that!" "Hard
to starboard, Benjamin!"—such were the cries that
were to be heard above the din as the rider approached
the corner.  Here, surely, the gallery believed that
this meteoric display must terminate.  The leap from
the second bank to a long straight run carried Benny
to the first of the monstrous corners, and here he
must be unshipped.  As the flash of a blackbird
against a curtain of the snow, he rushed the straight
and struck the great mound which defended the bend.
People saw him shoot high into the air, then fall
again with hands gripping the bars of the runners,
and eyes which stared from his head.  A great "Oh!"
went up, a murmur of wonder and amazement.
Someone said that he was round the second bank, but no
one believed it until a cry from the final straight turned
all eyes thither, and Benny was espied leaping to the
goal.  Then the red flag fell.  The race was
over—and more wonderful to tell, Benny had won it!

No one believed the thing at first.  Even Harry
Clavering felt very dubious about it, and looked at
his watch a good many times before daring to
announce the result.  "One minute twenty-seven and
four-fifth seconds," the chronograph said, and, to be
sure, it was no good disputing that.  So the kindly little
man admitted almost apologetically at last that he
really believed Mr. Benson had won.  Upon which a
curious, half-mocking silence fell upon the company.
In a way its pride of judgment was hurt, and it had
not the manliness to say so.  That the Grand Prix,
the race of the year, should be won by a half-savage
sailor-man, who knew no more of the science of the
game than a heathen Chinee, was surely an insult to
the elect of Andana!  And then all the fine talk on
the part of men like Ian Kavanagh and Keith Rivers,
the attitudes and devotions of the Rider girls, were
those to count for nothing?  An unspoken resentment
against the dark horse, who certainly had gone down,
left Benny without a cheer.  There was only one
person in the crowd who spoke an honest word to him,
and she was the "little widow."

"I'm so glad you won," she said, meeting him in
the veranda of the hotel, and quite regardless of the
formalities.  Benny's eyes lighted up like lamps when
he heard her.

"Do you really mean that, Mrs. Kennaird?"

"I mean every word of it.  Pride has had many
falls to-day.  I am not at all sorry."

"Thank you very much," he said; and then, as
simply as a boy, he added: "I knew I should do it
if I could stick on."

"That's why you won," she rejoined; "because
you knew you would," and with a smile that he would
never forget she passed on into the hall.

The "little widow" had awarded Benny his prize.
He fell there and then to wondering if it were the
last he would ever win from her.





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.. _`CONCERNING A DISOBLIGING GHOST`:

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   CHAPTER III


.. class:: center medium bold

   CONCERNING A DISOBLIGING GHOST

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The "little widow" had come to Andana under the
mistaken notion that it was a nook in the backwoods
of Switzerland where none might discover her.  She
was very much astonished and not a little dismayed
to discover a middle-class society of an exuberant
order and a noisy frivolity which could not but amuse
her.

In such a company it was hardly possible for her
to remain undiscovered, and she had not been in the
hotel many hours when that Admirable Crichton,
Dr. Orange, invited her to his own table.  There she
speedily began to reign to the satisfaction of a little
coterie of the elect.  If she, in her turn, shrank from
the greatness thus thrust upon her, she was grateful
for the compliment, and hastened to accept it.  She
had been alone so many months—she who was but
seven-and-twenty, and had the heart of a child.

It was a great dinner that night, and merry the
mood of the company.  The "little widow" herself
wore a dress of black velvet with a glorious
"what-do-you-call-it" of white silk beneath it, as Bob Otway
told his sister when describing it.  Her diamonds were
undoubtedly magnificent.  Obviously a woman of
fashion and of the world, she racked the animosities
of prim misses from the suburbs and positively
exasperated their mammas.  These were of the "blouse"
order, and obviously sober both in the matter of habit
and of fashion.  They dined with their eyes upon the
"little widow" and their ears bent to every breath of
gossip which stirred in an atmosphere odorous of
dinner and cheap scents.

Dr. Orange, meanwhile, was hardly conscious of
the envy he excited.  He had not heard the rhapsodies
of the males or the conviction, general when the fish
was served, that her eyes were divine.  He saw a
charming woman, with a skin that Greuze would
have copied, a mouth that a suburban poet would have
likened to a "rosebud," and hair so fine and silky
and bewitching in its play of browns that another
woman would have been tempted to ask immediately
for the name of the hairdresser who supplied it.  Her
nose was *retroussé* and just a little flat; her forehead
spoke of intellect; her neck and arms of a figure
which an artist alone might have criticised.  And so
back to the eyes again—those eyes divinely blue,
which looked into a man's soul (if he had one) or
sent the devil flying out of him as though holy-water
had been sprinkled round about.

The doctor was aware of all this, and so was Bess,
who really rather despised middle-class folk and
consorted with them merely because her uncle, the Cabinet
Minister, was a Radical.  But despite their
knowledge, the usual conversation was eschewed altogether,
and they discussed neither the magnificence of the
latest production at His Majesty's, nor the fashionable
intelligence from Monte Carlo.  Andana and its
excitements were topic enough—for was not this a day
of prize-giving, and was not the doctor at his wits' end
to find a prize-giver?

"I would like you to do it," he said to the
beautiful woman at his side, "but they will have a title
here.  I suppose it must be that amusing person, Lady
Coral-Smith—her husband made his money out of
red herrings, and we shall have to draw one across
the scent.  All this kind of thing devolves upon me.
I have to run everything: the hotel, the races, the
invalids—and even Miss Elizabeth here.  Do you
wonder I am growing older?"

"No one should grow older in the company of a
clever woman," said Miss Bessie, pouting.  "It is only
the consciousness of intellectual inferiority which can
say such a thing.  I am angry with you, Dr. Orange.
Pass me the chocolates immediately."

"You see," said the doctor, appealing to them
generally, "she covers me with scorn and then dies
for my sake.  I shall have to prescribe for her to-morrow."

"But I shall leave an imperishable memory behind
me, and if anyone remembers that such a person as
Dr. Orange lived, they will say that he was my doctor.
Thank you, sir—your chocolates are beastly.  I shall
keep them for the ghost."

Here was a new topic, and one to which they turned
with gusto.  Andana was not so well amused that
it had not a corner to spare for this particularly
disobliging phantom, who had scared the peasants out
of their wits and had actually appeared to a party
coming down from Vermala at midnight.  Miss Bessie
told the story with a sense of drama all admirable;
but she prefaced her narrative with the assurance that
she would as soon believe in it as in the doctor at her
side.

"There isn't any ghost, and so we are going out
to look for it," she said; "the doctor wouldn't dress
because he thinks he looks nicer in the green tie.
The ghost might be feminine, you know.  Perhaps
she wants votes for women, and so appeals first to the
weaker intelligence.  They say that no end of people
have seen her, including the Swan; but he doesn't
count.  Do you know the Swan?  Oh, he's a dear,
and he thinks he's swimming when he waltzes.  He
went up to Vermala to dinner the other night and
saw the ghost as he came down.  It's a great big black
bird and makes a noise like a windmill.  Dr. Orange
says that it is troubled by asthma, but Mr. Benny
says that its bones want greasing.  He is an engineer,
you know.  He told me so yesterday.  He is an
engineer in principle, but in practice they won't have
him, for he cannot pass the exams.  Some men are
so unlucky, while others—well, no one knows how
they manage to get through.  There is Dr. Orange,
for instance; I think they must have passed him
because they couldn't stand the green bow.  There could
not be any other reason.  Well, as I was saying—what,
are you going to begin already, and I haven't
finished my ice?  Monster!"

But the doctor had risen and now announced very
briefly that Lady Coral-Smith had kindly offered to
present the prizes to the winners in the various
competitions held during the past week; so that brisk
little woman, dressed like a Grecian shepherdess, with
little white daisies all over her gown, came nodding
and smiling to the table and began to hand out various
ridiculous presents to the winners in question.  Of
these, the most conspicuous were the Rider girls, now
resplendent in muslin dresses with bright blue bows,
and their frequent appearances at the table gave rise
to resounding cheers, not unaccompanied by kindly
comments of an amiably derisive order.

Ian Kavanagh, that golden youth with the flaxen
hair, had conducted his conversation chiefly in
monosyllables during dinner; but he was a trifle more
condescending at this stage, and declared it to be a pity
that these accomplished young ladies had not to get
their living at the Coliseum!—or other popular
resort where acrobatic performances were properly
rewarded.  He thought that Andana was unworthy of them.

"They came here to win pots," he said scornfully.
"The man who marries them is sure of a hundred or
more *objets d'art*—to say nothing of virtue—all
bought in the bazaar for one franc fifty.  That ought
to console him—"

"Is he going to marry them both?" Miss Elizabeth asked.

The golden youth smiled.

"Two go to a pattern, I suppose.  I shouldn't know
one from the other in the dark."

"But you'd have to know the one you married!"

"Ah, so I should!  Why don't you write a story
about it: 'The Bride Who Wasn't,' or something of
that sort?  Kipling would do it finely."

"Well, but I'm not Kipling—and here's
Mr. Rivers.  Why, of course, we won the doubles
together.  And is it poor little me they want?—Oh, dear!"

There were loud cries for Miss Elizabeth, and she
rose, blushing very much at the outburst of cheering
which attended her appearance—and obviously a
great popular favourite.  When she had received one
Teddy Bear upon skis from the fat hands of the
mayor's relict, she returned to the table and implored
them to make plans for the ghost hunt.

"You're all coming, of course," she said.  "We'll
take luges and have coffee at Vermala.  If the ghost
does not appear for me, he will never appear at all.
Now don't you think so, Mr. Kavanagh?"

"Oh, I think whatever the ladies think.  Is
Mrs. Kennaird coming?"

He turned to the "little widow," and the doctor
joined in the appeal.  She would accompany them, of
course.  It would be a beautiful moonlight night, and
they would come down on luges.  It was the very
thing to do: and as the amiable doctor said
emphatically, so very much better than the outside edge
backwards in the ball-room with a partner who could not
dance.  There could be but one answer to such unanimity.

A brief interval for the securing of the necessary
wraps and the party was away.  Mrs. Kennaird had
changed her dress hurriedly, and when she reached the
hall she found the whole hotel restless and awakened
to nomadic instincts.  No one seemed to care at all
for the wretched bandsmen who were, as Bob Otway
put it, blowing the "Merry Widow" into three keys
in the ball-room upstairs.  Rather, the guests turned
with expectant interest to the exquisite scene without,
the snow plateau gleaming in the moonlight, the
mellow radiance of the heights, the silent moonlit woods.
Few of the men had dressed for dinner, and many
were now garbed in the heavy sweaters and
hobnailed boots indispensable to the climb.  The girls
were dressed as practically, and with their white woolly
caps, their short skirts and heavy boots, looked like so
many madcaps just let out from a seminary for young
ladies where hockey was the chief study.

Miss Bessie had invited the "little widow" to be
of her party; but being an impulsive young lady, she
herself ultimately sought the society of Mr. Robert
Otway; and somehow, but not of her own will,
Mrs. Kennaird found herself enjoying a *tête-à-tête* with
Kavanagh, and mounting slowly with him toward the
heights.  She had hoped that the old parson would
have espied her and made one of the party; but he
was playing bridge with a trio of matrons when she
came down, and certainly Kavanagh showed no
disposition to release her from her promise.  He followed
her like a dog, and they had not walked a hundred
yards before she became aware that it was his
intention to make love to her.

And why not? as he himself would have asked.
Could the scene have been matched in all Switzerland?
The sweet stillness of the bewitching night; the glory
of the full round moon in the azure sky; the great
white peaks standing out in majestic solitude; the
stillness of the woods—what purpose could they serve
so well as that of an amiable and meaningless
flirtation with a pretty woman, who was already the
well-desired of the whole community?  Kavanagh had
been greatly smitten at dinner, though his silence
might not have been so interpreted.  Who was she,
and whence did she come?  Upon his part, he had
not spoken twenty sentences to her on the hillside
before he managed to let her know that his father was
Sir John Kavanagh, of Bolton, and that the heir to
that ancient baronetcy now stood before her.

"You meet a very weird lot in these places," he
began in a patronising tone.  "I don't know what kind
of an ark lets them loose.  When at Rome, don't
do as Bayswater does is my motto.  It's astonishing
how the nice people sort themselves, though.  Why,
I saw you before you got out of your sleigh, and I
said, 'Thank Heaven.'  We wanted reinforcements,
and you came just in time.  Kennaird's a name I
couldn't help but know.  Yorkshire, isn't it?—we're
neighbours so to speak, for my old gov'nor's Sir John
Kavanagh, of Bolton, and poor little me is all he's
got in the world.  You do come from Yorkshire, don't you?"

She said that she did, and happily the darkness of
the way hid the blush upon her cheek when she spoke.
Oblivious of the dangerous nature of the subject,
Kavanagh plunged on.

"I came out here just to see what this ice rot is
all about.  I suppose you did the same?  One has to
put up with something to learn, and we're paying our
footing.  Mine's pretty dicky on anything but good
honest skates; but it's no good skating here in the
'village pond champion' style.  I tried skis and
resigned.  It makes a fellow feel an awful fool to have
one of his legs round his neck and the other at the
bottom of a crevasse.  All right at twenty-one,
perhaps; but I'm no chicken, and I don't like to make
a fool of myself for nothing.  If you skate, we might
have some good times here—and we can always go
down the Vermala run in the afternoon—or at night
if you like.  I call it top notch at night, and you'll
do the same, I hope.  Just look at the old Weisshorn—looks
like a Chinese god on a fancy ottoman, doesn't
he?  We can't beat that in Yorkshire, can we?  Well,
I'm glad you're a neighbour, anyway, and we must
find out all the people we know.  Do you hunt, by
the way?—I've got twenty nags at home, and what
they're doin' Heaven only knows.  Eatin' their heads
off, I suppose."

She remembered that he had told her the same
thing earlier in the day, and looked at him curiously
from the depths of her blue eyes, grown black here
in the solitude of the woods.  What an amiable
imbecile he was, and how odd that her lot should be cast
with him.  Possibly he was the only Yorkshireman in
all the company, and fate had thus thrown them
together at the very beginning.  And with this thought
there was just another, passing as a flash upon the
white ground of memory, of one whose face had
flushed when she spoke to him that morning, the butt
of an amiable company, the derided Benny.  She knew
not why she wished for Mr. Benjamin's company, here
upon the hillside; but the fact that she did wish for it
could not be kept back.

"Is it far to the hotel at Vermala?" she asked
presently—any question served to turn the dangerous
talk.  Kavanagh answered with the pride of
knowledge acquired some sixty hours ago.

"It's just above the clump of pines there.  They
make top-notch coffee and have got some decent
cigarettes.  We've climbed about a thousand feet since
we started.  You'd never think it, would you; and
doesn't the old show look just like the White
City?—eh, what?  Upon my life, I never saw such a
resemblance.  We might be up in the flip-flap."

She smiled at his preposterous imagery, and yet
words might well have failed such an intellect upon
such a scene.  The place where they stood was a little
thicket of trees at the last bend below Vermala.  All
around were the frozen pines, magic in their
suggestion of fairyland, enchanting in the infinite variety
of their matchless tracery.  Below them Andana lay
like an oasis of light upon a bleak hillside.  Great
arc-lamps waned and waxed upon the narrow road
by the skating rink and again downwards toward the
village.  The hotel itself blazed with radiance and
suggested the antithesis to this solitude of the woods.
Far, far down in the black hollow of the valley there
were the lamps of Sierre and the railway; and high
above them, as though uplifted to the heavens, the
moonlit peaks, a very forest of them running in
unbroken majesty to the great flat dome of Mont Blanc.

The human side of this entrancing picture was
voiced by the ripples of laughter, the joyous cries
which came floating up on the still night air.  A
romancer would have espied lovers in the thickets, and
heard the whispers of their sighs.  By here and there
stragglers were to be perceived upon the great plateau
of the snow or plodding upward to the heights.  In
sharp contrast to this leisure of the climb would come
the swift descent of a luge towards Andana, the loud
cry, "*Achtung!*" the passing of the prone figure, and
the lantern jolting at every rut.  These cries became
more frequent as the climbers neared Vermala.  Some
of the toboggans were bedecked gloriously with
Chinese lanterns, which gave a rare splash of colour to
the monotony of silhouettes, or turned the snow blood
red.  And dominating all was the eternal spirit of
youth; the *joie de vivre*; the consciousness of the
present; the will to blot all else but this fulness of life
which ran in the veins like fire.

There was a fine crowd of people up at the little
hotel at Vermala, and conspicuous among them the
Rider girls and Bess Bethune.  Bess, in fact,
furnished the place, as someone remarked—it must have
been Bob Otway—and her high spirits were so
infectious that the doctor sat down to the piano and
played a magnificent fantasia upon "Our Miss Gibbs,"
arranged as a sonata in the fashion of Schubert.
Everyone took coffee, and the ladies sipped *crême de
menthe* under protest.  The ghost received less
attention than he merited—and when the best part of the
company trooped out to look for him, and did not find
him, not a few took advantage of the opportunities
presented by Japan (in the form of screens) and
Africa (in the matter of palms) to continue
discussions of a momentous nature.  The "little widow,"
however, found herself once more with Ian Kavanagh
at the head of the path, and she realised that she must
make her first run on a luge or be derided by the company.

How ridiculous it all seemed to her, that she should
be playing a girl's part, she whose life had been so
tragic and so womanly.  She had the will to forget,
God knows; and if the mountains had any message for
her, the silent woods their consolation, it was that
forgetfulness might be won, and upon forgetfulness,
peace.  Let there be a truce, however brief the day
of it.  The kingdom of a joyous childhood called her
with a sweet voice—she tried to believe that she had
become a child again.

"I have never done this before," she said to
Kavanagh almost pleadingly, when he offered her the luge
he had dragged up from Andana and showed her what
she must do with it.  "Is it so dreadful?  Shall I
really be able to manage it?"

He assured her that it was the easiest thing in all
the world.

"Just guide yourself with your feet.  Lean over
when you come to the corners and round you go.
I'd better get on ahead, for I shall be faster.  I'll wait
at the path where we go down to the rink.  You can't
hurt yourself—it's just like falling into an iced
blanket—now see me do it."

He squatted on the luge, and going with as much
dignity as he could command—which was not a great
deal—he set off down the path and rounded the first
of the corners successfully.  Great flat hands pushed
him off from the banks; his progress, if not
melancholy, was certainly slow, and in the end became
remote.  The "little widow" heard him calling to her
to "come on," and at last she seated herself and
essayed to obey his interjectory instructions.  But the
dazzle and glory of the thing seemed less when she
had started, and she reflected with irony that she
could have walked much faster.  Then the luge was
so uncomfortable; just a few bars of wood, a cushion
and two steel runners.  And "the thing" would go
up the banks in the most shameless way—first to the
right, then to the left, now half round, now frightening
her by a sudden plunge.  At the corner she failed
altogether, and ran high over the bank and into the
soft snow upon the other side.  Her white gloves
were wet through by this time, her shoes full of snow,
and her general condition one of misery.  She picked
herself up and laughed with a truer note than she had
done for years.  Yes, she had become a child again,
and had a child's sense of irresponsibility.

Kavanagh had disappeared altogether by this time.
Other tobogganers came flying down the mountainside;
but none pulled up because of the lonely little
woman standing between the trees at the "hairpin"
bend.  She heard voices above and below; the wood
might have been full of the spirits of dead children
rejoicing.  But she had lost all taste for the miserable
contraption which behaved so shabbily, and it had
become a burden to her.  Trying to set it going again,
she ran a little way and lost hold of it; and then,
as a horse which has lost its rider in a steeple-chase,
it went on gaily, rounding the corners upon its own
account, and disappearing as her guide and philosopher
had done.  She was quite alone now, and very pleased
to be so—at least, she thought so until she espied
a black figure creeping up between the trees, and, as
it were, stalking her in the shelter of the wood.  This
frightened her a little and she tried to go on; but
her heart beat fast and she was really quite afraid.
Why did the man not speak?  Was he a Swiss or
one of the guests at the hotel?  She was just about
to shout for help when the crouching figure cried out:

"Mrs. Kennaird, is that you?  Well, I'm Benson—you
remember me?"

She burst out laughing.

As though anyone who had known him could forget "Benny."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE MAN WHO KNEW`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER IV


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE MAN WHO KNEW

.. vspace:: 2

"Oh," she exclaimed, recovering herself, though her
heart still drummed the echoes of a panic, "oh, I
thought you were the ghost."

Benjamin Benson was immensely tickled.

"I've been taken for many things in my life," he
said, "but never for a ghost.  I wonder if it would be
nice to be that?  We always think of it from the
mortal point of view.  We never ask if the ghost has
a good time—and yet I don't see why he shouldn't.
There might be sociable ghosts—now don't you think
so, Mrs. Kennaird?"

She did not feel disposed to argue it.

"They tell me the peasants have seen a great bird
in the sky.  Everyone up at Vermala is looking for
it.  Of course they will not find it.  I am not a least
bit superstitious, but I must say that the idea of a
great bird pleases me—even if it's untrue."

"Then you are quite sure it is untrue, Mrs. Kennaird?"

"Now, could it be anything else?  You are not serious."

He laughed a little nervously.

"It would be a splendid thing to fly over the
mountains, wouldn't it?  If I have a spirit, I would
sooner it played about here than in an old vault, as
most of them do.  Why, how it suggests power—power
above men, doesn't it?"

And then almost with an apology:

"But I suppose you think all this is just nonsense?
I'm not the kind of man who ought to be ambitious,
am I?  Everyone tells me that."

"But you do not lose your ambition because of them?"

He drew himself up—Benny could be a tower of
dignity when he chose.

"Yes," he said, with real earnestness, "I am
ambitious, and some day I shall attain my goal."

They walked a little way down the hillside in silence
after that.  There was no sign of Ian Kavanagh,
who had taken a bad "toss" at the last of the bends
above Andana and was trying to get the snow out of
his hair at that very moment.  Benny had a toboggan
with him, but it was different from the others, much
longer and made of steel.  He trailed it behind him
indifferently, thinking that his companion wished to
walk down to the hotel; but when he discovered her
own luge anchored in the snow he understood the situation.

"Halloa!" he said, "a derelict."

She told him with some shame that it was hers.

"A case of bolting—I suppose it wanted the curb.
And now I shall have to drag it back to the hotel."

"Don't do anything of the kind.  We leave these
things all over the place—the hotel sledges pick them
up as far down as the Sanatorium sometimes.  Just
let it lie there.  I'll take you down if you like—there's
plenty of room for two, and—and—I should like it,
Mrs. Kennaird; I should think it an honour."

It was so simply said, the blunt words of a
schoolboy speaking to the mature woman, that she forbore
to smile.  It would have been absurd, however, to
respond in a similar vein, for the idea of a flirtation
with Mr. Benjamin Benson was quite out of the
question.  So she accepted without any compliment at all.

"It's very good of you—and really I am beginning
to feel the cold.  Will you show me where to sit?
I am absolutely ignorant, and it is so many years since
I played games."

He understood that.

"Life's a game all through.  We all say it, but
what else can we say?  We're in the long field most
of the time, and when we get an innings, Fate goes
and bowls us a curly one.  I've never had an innings
in my life, and I've been fielding for fifteen
years—since I was seventeen—and my poor old father played
on in Mark Lane and lost his house the 'ashes.'  That's
my story, and I don't tell it to everyone.
Perhaps I have no right to tell it to you—but you seem
so different, Mrs. Kennaird; I feel I can talk to you,
and that's what I feel about very few people."

"You pay me a great compliment," she said, and
then, "But we are both quite strangers here.  This
is my first visit to Switzerland in the winter; I know
nobody."

He nodded his head.

"But I thought that I knew you directly I saw
you—I shall remember where we met by and by.  Had
you relatives down Newmarket way, I wonder—people
who used to live at Holmswell?"

She shook her head.

"Then I'm quite wrong; now let's get going.  You
sit in front and I'll steer—don't be afraid, I shan't
upset you.  They laugh at me in the hotel, but I'm
going to have some fun with them before I get
through.  Are you quite ready—shall we let her rip?"

She said "Yes," and he pushed the toboggan off the
bank.  Had he been less nervous, he would have said
that the "little widow" trembled; but Benny was
anxious to make a fine run and had no idea how many
would have envied him his burden.  And truly it was
wonderful how he steered on that dark and tortuous
road.  To the woman the whole thing was an ecstasy, a
mad rush down the mountain-side; a wonderful
journey into fairyland; a magician's leap through the
realms of darkness to the enchanted vales of the fables.
When they stopped, Benny had steered them right
down to the cross roads by the Sanatorium, and they
must tramp ten minutes through the woods before they
reached the hotel again.  It was here that he harked
back to the dangerous topic.

"It's odd about those Newmarket people—I could
have sworn Lady Delayne was your sister," he said;
"really the likeness is wonderful.  I went to
Holmswell from Norwich when I was in the motor shops
trying to make myself an engineer.  The electric light
engine went wrong over at the house, and Sir
Luton—that was his name—Sir Luton Delayne sent to our
people.  I remember him well, a little rat of a man
whose temper used to go off like a cracker.  It makes
me laugh when I remember that he tried to bully me,
until I said a word or two in my own way.  He was
very civil after that and showed me over the house.
There was a picture of a lady in the drawing-room as
like you as two peas.  I thought of it directly I saw
you to-day.  'She'll be a relative,' I said.  You quite
surprised me just now when you said you were not."

She merely rejoined, "Indeed?"  A problem
involving tremendous issues had presented itself
suddenly to her mind, and she had not the remotest idea
how to deal with it.  But she felt that her previous
answer had been a mistake and one that was almost
irreparable.  Why had she made it?  She did not
quite know.

Benny, on his part, was a little puzzled by her
silence.  He thought that he had pursued a subject
which could be of no interest to her; and he would
not have mentioned it again but for the question she
put to him just before the Palace Hotel came into sight.

"Have you heard of Sir Luton Delayne since that
date?" she asked.  He replied as one greedy for the
opportunity to tell her.

"Why, everyone in Switzerland has heard of him.
He's been staying at Grindelwald, painting the place
red.  There was a regular row there the other night.
Some fellow in the Fusiliers accused him of cheating
at bridge, and Sir Luton knocked him down in the
hall.  They say he wouldn't fight it out, and bolted
next morning.  Now the police are after him, and
there'll be a pretty to do if he's caught.  I wonder
you didn't hear of it?"

She tried to smile, but the effort was vain.
"I have been on a steamer, from Egypt, you know.
Women do not read the papers as men do.  I don't
think they understand the meaning of the word
'news,' unless it concerns their own circle.  When I
arrived at Brindisi I was naturally anxious to get on
here.  I see that I am very much out of date."

"Of course you are.  The hotel talked about
nothing else yesterday.  There was a rumour that the
man intended coming on here.  I guess there would
have been some moving if he had.  But the people
won't have him.  The little French secretary Ardlot,
who runs the Palace, told me this morning they would
have no vacant room if Sir Luton Delayne presented
himself."

"Then he has left Grindelwald finally?"

"I should think he has, and wisely too.  Barton
of the Fusiliers would have shot him if he had stayed.
Luton Delayne's the kind of man who doesn't like
playing tame pheasant.  He gets out of the wood
before the beaters are in.  I shouldn't wonder if he is
a hundred miles the other side of Pontarlier this morning."

"Wisdom in this case being the better part of
valour—but is not this the hotel?  I hope it is, for I
am deadly tired, and thank you so much for your
great kindness."

Benny said that the evening had been the best he
had ever spent at Andana—and he meant it.

"I'm not staying at the Palace, you know," he ran
on; "my brother and I took the chalet up by the
Park.  I come in to lunch and dinner, that's all.  I'm
not a sociable person, Mrs. Kennaird.  Sometimes I
think the best thing in life is being alone.  But, of
course, I didn't think that to-night.  Will you let me
bring you down from Vermala again?  I hope so.
It's been a happy opportunity for me, I assure you."

She smiled very sweetly and held out her hand.
They were at the hotel door by this time, and Ian
Kavanagh, hearing her voice, came forward with those
expletives of apology which suited an unceremonious
occasion.  He was "most frightfully sorry," but how
had he managed to miss her?  The "little widow"
declared as frankly that she did not know.

"I am a dreadful bungler," she said, with some
reserve; "undoubtedly it was all my fault; please
don't think any more about it, Mr. Kavanagh."

"Oh, but I couldn't help it—I shall dream about
it all night."

"Then Dr. Orange must prescribe a sleeping
draught for you," and with this for his consolation
she left him and went to her room.

How foolish she had been; how poor her courage
to persist in a foolish denial which might cost her so
much.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE GHOST TAKES WINGS`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER V


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE GHOST TAKES WINGS

.. vspace:: 2

A sense of elation quite foreign to the somewhat
methodical order of his daily life accompanied Benny
to the chalet, where he found his brother Jack
awaiting him with some anxiety.  Jack had been the baby
of the family from the beginning, and this somewhat
precocious infant of twenty-six lifted a shaggy head
above the bedclothes upon Benjamin's entry, and asked
him with real solicitude what had kept him.  He
would have been surprised to the point of wonder had
the answer been "A woman."

Possibly Jack Benson was the only human being
who understood his brother wholly and had no doubt
about his future.  He himself was a somewhat lazy
youth with few affections and no enthusiasms, unless
it were for his wire-haired terrier Toby; but he knew
that Benjamin Benson was a genius of whom the
world would hear one day to its profit.  In his own
dull way he tried to serve his brother; and this was
very proper, for all the legacy that Benjamin ever
received from his kindly old father was one thousand
pounds sterling and the care of "the baby."  That
charge he had undertaken faithfully.  The brothers
were inseparable; and if the younger added little but
encouragement to the common stock, his faith was
precious to the shy, reserved man who wrought so
strenuously for the common good.

"Wherever have you been, Benny?  It's after
twelve o'clock, isn't it?" Jack asked as he lifted his
head from the pillow.  Benjamin replied by setting
the candlestick down upon the table and laughing in
the most ridiculous way possible.

"I've been up to Vermala on a luge," he said as
though the idea tickled him immensely; "imagine me
at the game!  Well, I've been there sure enough,
Jack.  Do you remember the pretty little woman in
violet—the one with the sad face and the dreamy
eyes?  You do remember her; well, then, that's all
right, for I brought her down.  She was a derelict,
and the hee-haw man, who went up with her, had an
engagement on a drift.  He was getting the snow out
of his neck as I went by—so, you see, I brought her
down—and, well, it makes me laugh to think about
it, that's all."

Jack stared as though he had seen the ghost of
whom the peasants spoke.  He was almost tempted
to prescribe hot blankets.  "Benny," he exclaimed
at last, "what's the matter with you?  What are you
going on like that for?  Is it something they said to
you—was it the woman, Benny?"

Benny became serious in a moment.  No oyster
shut his shell more surely.

"No, she's not in it, Jack," he rejoined hastily.
"I was just thinking that it was odd I should have
brought her down, that's all.  She's Mrs. Kennaird,
one of the Yorkshire lot, I guess, though she wouldn't
own up.  I suppose she didn't want anyone to know
too much about her—that would be very natural, eh?"

"But it wasn't much of a compliment to you, Benny."

"Do you think so, Jack?  Well, I didn't look at
it in that light.  Perhaps it wasn't, after all.  She
might have been afraid that I would go down to her
house in Yorkshire and try to see her.  She might
have done so—and, of course, it wouldn't have done;
would it, Jack?"

Jack sat up in bed again.  He was used to this kind
of talk, and it never failed to anger him.

"Why wouldn't it have done?  Aren't you good
enough for her?  You're always crying us down,
Benny.  Wasn't our grandfather a Brerton, and
wasn't he a d——d sight better than any Kennaird in
Yorkshire?  Why shouldn't you call on her if you
wanted to?"

Benny threw himself into a chair and took a very
black briar pipe from his pocket.

"Oh," he said almost impatiently, "the world's a
funny place.  The cannibals get on best, Jack—those
who live on their dead ancestors.  You can't draw
bills on futurity nowadays; no one honours them.  A
man's either up or down; there's no middle course.
If I were to make a hit, people would remember that
I had a history.  If I fail, they won't even say 'Poor
devil.'  Birth and breeding are all right, but you must
have the trappings if they are to be any good to you.
While I'm just Benjamin Benson, engineer, the little
woman in violet will regard me as she does her motor
driver or the man who works the lift in the hotel.
She wouldn't remember that she had done it if I made
my mark—they never do."

He spoke with an intensity of feeling quite beyond
the circumstance, and Brother Jack was altogether
puzzled.

"I never heard you talk like this before," he said
questioningly; "surely to Heaven, Benny, you're not
bitten with the society craze?  For goodness' sake
don't tell me you're going to buy a new silk hat!"

Benny laughed.

"The old one will do yet awhile, Jack.  It's up in
London, packed away with the cylinder castings we
had from Anzini.  No, I'm not going in for that line,
old boy; but when a man does meet a pretty woman,
one he's likely to remember, why then, I suppose,
these thoughts will come.  That's what old
Shakespeare says, and he knew women better than most of
us.  Wasn't it the same old Billy who told us to fling
away ambition, for by that sin fell the angels?  Well,
I hope I shan't fall to-night, for I'm going to try the
Zaat again."

"The Zaat—but you never told me!"

"The idea came as I walked along.  I want to see
how the new propeller is working.  It's only three
weeks to the day, Jack, and if I let some Frenchman
in before me, you know you'd never forgive me.  Ten
thousand pounds, my boy—and that's fortune.  Let
me win them and I will be one of the richest men in
Europe in five years' time.  You believe that, Jack,
don't you?"

Jack believed every word of it.  His faith had
never faltered.  The great prize, offered to the man
who first flew from the summit of the Weisshorn
round Mont Blanc to the valley of Chamonix, would
be won by his brother or it never would be won at all.
Such a victory would change the course of their lives
in an instant.  It would lift them from the ruck of
mere adventurers to the high places of fame.  And
Benny's genius would accomplish it—the day would
come speedily when the world would acknowledge him
for what he was.  This Brother Jack believed faithfully;
this was his whole creed, with an anathema upon
any Frenchman who differed from him.

"It's a dead certainty, Benny," he said with a real
ring in his voice; "you couldn't fail if you tried."

Benny shook his head at that.  "I could fail right
enough if I played the fool, Jack; and then there's the
weather to be reckoned with.  What's going to
happen if I start in a blizzard?  The magneto may give
out on short circuit—that's one of the chances if it's
wet.  When it begins to do that you may sally forth
with a stretcher—not before.  What I'm going 'no
trumps' on is the snow.  If that keeps soft and I
come down, there'll be a new start.  And anyway, it
doesn't much matter, for there'll only be one flying
man less in the world; and, like the folks in Gilbert's
opera, he really won't be missed.  You go to sleep and
don't worry over it, Jack.  It will be time enough to
do that when I take a toss."

He stood up as upon a sudden impulse and, laughing
at his brother's remonstrances, filled his pipe again
and went quickly down the stairs.  A moment later he
shut the door of the chalet softly and turned to the
wooden shed upon his right hand.  Here his machine
was harboured; this was his hangar, wherein he
guarded secrets so precious that he believed they would
revolutionise the art of aviation, youthful as it was.
For three years, since the day when he first heard of
the Wrights and their achievements at Pau, had Benny
dreamed the dreams by night and slaved at the bench
by day.  And now the harvest had come to fruition
and the sickle was at hand.  An offer by an English
newspaper of ten thousand pounds to the man who
first flew over the great peaks of the Pennine Alps
sent Benny to Andana with the determination to win
it or court the ultimate ignominy.  He worked
feverishly in the dread that he might be forestalled.  The
day and the hour were at hand—he believed that he
was ready.

The moon had waned a little when he opened the
door of his shed, and the night fell bitter cold.  He
chose such an hour purposely, that he might prove his
engines under all temperatures, and know that they
would serve him in that rare atmosphere.  Unlike the
majority of others, Benny's machine was in the shape
of a light steel torpedo with a whale's snout and the
fins of a monstrous fish.  He sat snug within this
shell, and could raise or depress the great wings by
the slightest touch upon the pedals at his feet.  His
elevating planes were cunningly placed above the
rudder at the tail, and were connected to a lever at his
right hand.  He had designed the seven-cylindered
engines himself, and while they embodied in some part
the principles of the gyroscope, they had a power and
reliability he had discovered in no other.  Perhaps,
however, the chief merit of the design was its
neatness and its response in every particular to the
scientific theory upon which human flight is based.  In
the air it looked like some monster, half fish, half
bird.  But on land it was a very beautiful thing, as
every expert had admitted.

Upon this night of events he dressed himself in
leather clothes by the aid of the powerful electric
lamps in his hangar; then, pushing the machine out,
he climbed to his seat and started the engine by the
powerful air-pump he had designed for that purpose.
Permitting it to run free for a few moments, at length
he gave a cheery "Good night" to Brother Jack at
the window; then, letting in a clutch, he glided swiftly
over the frozen snow and was lifted almost
immediately from the ground.  Thereafter he towered as
some monstrous eagle; and the motor running at a
great speed, he drove upwards, high above the plateau
of Andana to the woods of the Zaat.

This miracle of flight—assuredly its secret lay in
his keeping!  The world and men were vanquished at
his feet.  He was no cramped and cabined automaton,
no soulless machine, but the dominating arbiter of his
own destinies.  To tower upwards as a bird that
drives against the blast; to swoop downwards as a
hawk upon the quarry; to swing hither, thither, as
his fancy chose—all this his own brain had
contrived for him.  And who shall wonder if a pride in
his achievements attended his lonely triumphs, spake
in his ear while he soared and gave him soft words
when he descended?  Had he not become mightier
than the very mountains?  The earth beneath him
stood typical of the dead ages; the vista above him
seemed to open the infinite to man's understanding.

Benny took a wide sweep upwards from the chalet
and then swung his machine about and hovered for a
little while above the Park Hotel.  The waning moon
had robbed the scene of much of its charm, but the
lights in the windows of the hotel became brighter by
contrast, and he could believe that one blind at least
was drawn while he rested.  When next he set his
motor going, it was to cross the plateau before the
Palace Hotel at Andana, which he did at the bidding
of a futile hope he would have been at a loss to
express.  Here he glided downwards almost to the level
of the pinnacles upon the summit of the lofty
building, and passed so close to the windows that more
than one tale of his coming would be told next day.
Benny laughed to himself when he recalled the stories
of "the ghost"; his pride was quickened when he
reflected that the secret would be known before many
days had passed, and his name linked to it.  It may be
that there lurked in his mind some desire that
Mrs. Kennaird should know the truth before the
others; but he put that by as a foolish thought and,
regretting his boldness and the inspiration of it, he
now swung rapidly to the left and again towered upwards.

The night air was intensely still and bitter cold.
The woods glowed with jewels of the frost; the
valleys had become but profound cavities in a mist of
wavering light.  Just as at the hour of sunset the
weird kaleidoscope of changing lights fascinated the
stranger, so now, as Benny mounted upwards to the
high peak of the Zaat, did the play of the moonlight
upon the summits of the giants reveal new glories to
him and bewitch him by its wantonness.  Here would
the hollow of a glacier become for a brief instant a
river of molten gold; there a needle of the rock turned
to solid silver; or again a mighty circle of glittering
radiance with a heart grown ashen grey.  Towns were
now but the tiniest of stars in a fathomless abyss.
The hotels upon the heights stood for children's houses
set in mockery upon a gigantic plateau.  The night
wind stirred rarely, and when it stirred it burned as
with the breath of fire.

Benny had mounted to the summit of the Zaat
twice since he came to Andana, and he told himself
with a laugh that the third time paid for all.  The
mountain itself is inconsiderable, but there is a fine
view over the Wildstrubel from its summit, and the
prospect of the Simplon is very fine.  Chiefly,
however, Benny chose it because he had determined to
make it his starting point when he set out to win the
great prize of ten thousand pounds; and now, when he
hovered lightly above it for some minutes and then
touched the snow as gently as any bird, his first
thought was of this venture.

To-morrow he must give notice to the English
editor, who would appoint judges and send them south.
Assuredly the attempt would draw aviators from all
quarters of Europe—there would be special trains
from Paris, from Berne, and from Milan.

Benny's heart warmed when he depicted the great
crowds upon the plateau of Andana; the enthusiasm
he must excite and the criticism to which he would
be subject.  Some, no doubt, would deride him—he
was prepared for that.  A few would be openly
incredulous, but he hoped none the less to win friendship
by his initiative, and the possibilities of victory
remained.  Let it come to that and his fortune was
made.  He believed that by money his genius would
conquer the world.  The humblest of men as he
appeared to others, his secret ambitions surpassed all
reason, and were of themselves an ironic commentary
upon an ancient text.

He was vain, truly, and yet vanity ceased to afflict
him when the need of other qualities arose.  Standing
there upon the summit of the Zaat, a lonely figure of
the night, apart from men and the world, Benny
quickly dismissed the phantom multitude and settled
down to the cold logic of his task.

A powerful electric lamp, fixed to the snout of the
machine, focused an aureole upon his map of the
Pennine Alps and confirmed its verities.  He began to
think of winds and weather, of what he would do in
a west wind and what in a south.  Determined to start
very early in the day, he thought he would steer right
across the plateau toward Mont Blanc; then head for
the Matterhorn and, passing high above Zermatt,
would return by the Weisshorn to Sierre and the
plateaus.  One of the conditions of flight stipulated
that he must cross a high peak and start once unaided
from any spot he cared to choose.  Benny determined
to choose Chamonix for this purpose; to descend at
the foot of Mont Blanc, and thence to begin the
second stage across the Matterhorn.  Perilous truly such
a flight must be, perilous beyond any in the story of
aviation; but of peril he thought little for he had
lived for such an hour as this—and it mattered not
what befell him if he failed.

He smoked a pipe at the summit of the Zaat and
tried to forget how very cold it was.  Far from being
a romantic person in the abstract sense of the term,
his imagination delighted in the isolation of his
position and the mastery which genius had conferred upon
him.  Other men climbed to this height laboriously.
He had heard them talking about it in the hotels,
planning excursions upon skis and calculating the
hours necessary for the expedition.  Often they had
left the Palace at eight o'clock of the morning and
returned when it was quite dark.  He himself had
been six minutes in attaining the same position, and
he could descend to the chalet in three if he chose.
Pardonable vanity became something very like egotism
of an unpleasant nature at that particular moment;
and when he put his pipe into his pocket and spread
his wings again, he was a different person from the
nervous hesitating nobody who had addressed
Mrs. Kennaird that morning.

Had he not conquered, and would not all the world
acknowledge his attainments?  So he said as he
started his motor once more and the whir of it droned
a slumber song upon the still air.  If the "little
widow" could see him on this height!  No schoolboy,
aping a conquerer in his dreams, could have hugged
a thought more tenaciously; it may be added that
no schoolboy could have experienced a disappointment
so swift.

There is a great slope of the snow, free of wood
and rock, and running down at an easy angle, perhaps
a third of the way, from the summit of the Zaat to
the hotel at Vermala.  Over this Benny would have
flown to reach the chalet; and he never could quite
say why he should have bungled in such a place of all
others.  Bungle he did, none the less; and bending an
aileron too sharply, he came round just like a yacht
when the helm is put hard down.  An ominous lurch,
a startled cry, and he knew he was done for.  He felt
himself dragged downward and still downward,
sliding and twisting and turning at last upon his face.
Then the soft snow overwhelmed him; it was as
though someone put a hand suddenly upon his mouth
and defied him to breathe a full breath.

His eyes perceived nothing now but a glaring
whiteness; he suffered intolerable pain and believed
himself to be choking.  When the sensation passed, a
deadly chill struck him as though his body had turned
to solid ice.  He understood that he had forced
himself upwards by a great effort, and that he was now
lying upon his chest.  Such an attitude was
insupportable and must quickly give place to another which
would suffocate him—at least he thought so as he
put forth all his strength to lift himself and failed
hopelessly at the attempt.

In the end he lay back and tried to reason it out.
One wing of the two remained to him, and had buried
itself deeply in the soft snow; and upon this was the
weight of the shell and of the engine.  These must
drag him down, inch by inch, but down unpityingly to
the depths of the crevasse.  To-morrow Jack would
find him—surely he would search the slopes about
the Zaat—and so the end of the story would be
written.  Well, it was foreordained, and he had done his
best.  If the curse of failure lay upon his life, better
that he were dead.

All this, to be sure, was accompanied by a sane
review of the situation which such a man might have
been expected to make.  Benny did not hide it from
himself that he had been staring down at the Palace
Hotel at the very moment when he lost control of the
machine, and he could calculate just what the accident
would cost him if he were saved.

All hope of winning the great prize must be
abandoned.  Slave as he might, this night's work was
irreparable.  He had never trusted unfamiliar hands upon
his machine and would not do so now.  The great
prize must go, and that hope of success which meant
so much to him.  It was a heavy price to pay for the
sympathy of a woman to whom he had spoken for
the first time yesterday, and it made strange appeals
to his sense of irony.  That he should have played
the fool, he, "Benny the philosopher," who used to
say that the Greeks were right when they kept their
women in sheds at the bottom of the garden!

How she would laugh when she heard the truth!
He was quite sure of it, and dwelt upon it almost
savagely as though he were destined to bear the world's
contempt whatever he did.  The "little widow"
would call it an excellent joke and narrate the story in
the hotel.  Benny could almost pick and choose the
words she would employ.  He could hear the music of
her laugh and read the story in her eyes—at least he
thought that he could; and that was much the same
thing to a man who might have an hour to live if luck
stood by him.

He had managed to get almost free of the cage by
this time, but not of the wings themselves, and they
held him tenaciously, though he did not quite
understand what new thing was happening to him.  Anyone
familiar with skis would have told him that the smaller
ailerons fixed to the tail were holding the machine in
the snow, while his head and shoulders were being
dragged down by the weight of it, inch by inch, with
a subtlety of cruelty defying description.  When
Benny realised this his courage quavered, and he
uttered a loud cry, more in despair than in the hope that
anyone could possibly hear him.  For who should be
on the Zaat at such an hour of the night, and what
absurd chance of ten million would bring peasants to
the woods when the new day was not an hour old?

Benny knew it to be impossible; but the cry was
forced from him nevertheless, and upon it another
and another as the machine pulled him down without
pity, and the snow began to close about his ears and
neck.  In five minutes or in ten it would cover his
mouth; but whether sooner or later, he must suffer a
lingering death, dying as a man held up a little while
upon the surface of lake or river and then drawn down
imperceptibly but irresistibly to the depths.  So much
Benny understood at the crisis of it, and so much his
brother, who had watched him from the window of
the bedroom, perceived in a flash when he detected the
black speck upon the distant slope and knew that
Benny indeed had fallen.

Jack was as clever upon skis as Benny was clumsy,
and he was out of the house and climbing almost as
soon as the truth of the accident had dawned upon
his somewhat slow intelligence.  Luckily he had been
unable to sleep, and had dressed himself with the idea
of going out to meet his brother when he returned
from the Zaat.  So it came about that he had but to
put on his boots and skis to be up and away—the
height for his goal, Benny's need for his spur.

Calculating the time at a rough guess, he thought
he would be at least three hours upon the journey—three
hours of desperate endeavour to accomplish what
the white wings had attained in six minutes.  If this
reflection vindicated his brother's genius, it did little
to make his own heart lighter.  He thought of Benny
lying there in the snow, dying, perhaps dead, and he
cursed the limitations of his own ignorance.

In ten, in twenty, years this age of stagnant
incredulity would have passed—such men as Benny
were heaping contempt upon it—and the golden years
would be at hand.  Altogether a fine philosophic
commentary, helpful in its place, but of no service
whatever to the panting youth who climbed the steeps
laboriously and felt the icy cold freezing his very heart.
Benny had fallen in the wide snow-fields above
Vermala.  How far off they were, how cruel were these
hours of delay!

But here Pity had a word to say upon it, for
Brother Jack had been but an hour upon the road
when he heard voices in the wood, and presently,
peering through the trees, he espied the figures of two men,
and could say that one of them was his brother and
the other that pleasant little abbé from the Sanatorium,
who had so often accompanied him to the Zaat upon
skis, and was quite the kindliest little priest in all Valais.





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.. _`A LESSON UPON SKIS`:

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   CHAPTER VI


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   A LESSON UPON SKIS

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The "ghost" had been seen by many of the guests
in the Palace Hotel, but not by the "little widow,"
despite her wakefulness.  For her the night was
fruitful of other thoughts, and chiefly the thought of her
own situation, of its difficulties and its dangers.

They had christened her the "little widow" down
at Sierre, and the embarrassing distinction of a
pardonable error had followed her to Andana.  So much
she had achieved by her desire to obliterate the past
and to recall, if it were possible, the innocence and the
freedom of her girlhood.  But she knew now that the
attempt had failed, and that she stood upon the brink
of a discovery which must be attended by shame.
Luton Delayne would come to Andana sooner or later,
and all would know the truth.

It is true that she did not lack courage, and had the
perception to see that worldly sympathy, so far as she
cared to win it, must be upon her side; but the ordeal
through which she must pass, in a sense the exposure,
affrighted her and robbed her even of a desire to sleep.
The morning of the day might bring the man to the
hotel; the evening might send her upon her way again,
a derelict upon a lonely sea which offered no safe harbourage.

There had been no child of her marriage, and thus
no chain upon her desire for freedom.  Her father,
Sir Frederick Kennaird, had married again at the age
of fifty-seven; and while the gates of the old home
were not shut against her, she shrank from the thought
of such a shelter.  Her only brother, Harold, was
with his regiment in India, and had already
condemned her conduct in strenuous letters full of
childish complaints.  "Would she drag her story into the
papers?  Wash their dirty linen in public?"—and all
that sort of thing.  To these she made answer that she
would be the arbiter of her own fortune, and that
if the family honour depended upon her tolerance of
such a man as Luton Delayne, she would not lift a
finger to save it.

This was well enough as an expression of her
promise, but more difficult as a practice.  Enjoying
an allowance of three thousand a year from her father,
whose collieries brought him ten times that sum, she
discovered presently that candour is a factor in the
due enjoyment of life, and that the world has little
love of anonymity.  Go where she would, to remote
cities of Europe, to the East, even to America, there
were some who knew her story and would sell secrecy
at a price.  She made no friends, won no sure refuge,
could find no sanctuary.  Sometimes she regretted her
determination to be known henceforth as Lily
Kennaird, and wondered if her brother were not right
when he described such a subterfuge as madness.
Sacrifice carried her into a new world, and one with which
she was unfamiliar.  She missed the amenities of the
state she had abandoned, its overt dignities, its
influence and power.  Mrs. Kennaird was merely the
"little widow" to the multitude.  It had been otherwise
when she was Lady Delayne.

All this troubled her during the night, and the new
day found her afflicted by apprehensions to which she
had long been a stranger.  Twice in as many years
she had seen her husband, Luton, and upon each
occasion at a crisis of his life.  A wanderer like herself,
he lived chiefly upon the allowance of one thousand
a year which she made him, and when that was
exhausted, upon his wits, which were considerable.  The
latter occupation was not unattended by danger and
the curiosity of the police.  Lily wondered sometimes
at her patience.

And now he had followed her to Switzerland, and
unquestionably would visit her at Andana.  What
shameful story lay behind the pursuit she could not
imagine; but of the existence of such a story she was
sure.  Luton Delayne rarely troubled her unless his
case were desperate—and desperate indeed it must be
for him to abandon the purlieus of Monte Carlo at
such a season.  She resolved, upon her part, to refuse
him audience if that were possible; and if it were not
possible, then to summon all her courage and insist
that this interview should be final.  The day for
compromise was past.

It had been her promise to the parson, Harry
Clavering, that she would submit to the ordeal of the
skis on this morning; and when, with Kavanagh, she
met him on the veranda of the hotel, he reminded her
pleasantly of her obligations.

Unwilling to disappoint, she professed her readiness
to face the ordeal, and skis having been commanded
from the hotel porter, the parson upon one side and
Kavanagh upon the other set to work to imprison the
smallest pair of feet in Andana and to tell the owner
the news while they did so.

"You've heard that the ghost has been seen?"
asked Clavering, a little excitedly.  She shook her
head incredulously.

"Oh, but it's quite true.  Miss Nellie Rider saw it
from her bedroom window and so did her sister.  Sir
Gordon Snagg is another.  He declares it was a man
in a flying machine.  I shouldn't wonder if he were
right."

Kavanagh was of this opinion.

"There are fools in the world who will do
anything," he said.  "Some idiot out of Hanwell may
have brought his aeroplane here to scare the natives;
and jolly well he's succeeded.  I hope he may break
his neck, that's all.  He deserves to, that's sure."

He thought that the "little widow" would agree
with him as a matter of course, and her answer rather
astonished him.

"Then you think that pioneers are very wicked
people?" she remarked; "you have no sympathy with
them, Mr. Kavanagh?"

"Oh, I won't say that—good for science and all
that sort of thing.  What I mean is, let's keep the
mountains anyway.  We don't want ginger-beer
bottles on our heads up here—do we now?  I'm sure
Mr. Clavering agrees to that."

The parson dissented altogether.

"I think it would be a brave thing to fly here," he
said quietly, "a very brave thing.  And I hope the
day when we cannot admire courage is distant.  If
there had been no pioneers in the world, I should not
be travelling through the Simplon Tunnel to Bellagio
in three weeks' time, and you would not be smoking
that excellent tobacco.  If there is an aeroplane at
Andana, it must be owned by one of the men who
is about to fly for the great prize offered by the
English daily paper.  I hope he will win it."

"But you wouldn't go up in one yourself?" Kavanagh insisted.

"Not for a thousand sovereigns, poor as I am."

Kavanagh laughed, but found no support from Lily
Kennaird.  She, grown a little less pale in the
glorious freshness of the morning, was more concerned
with the difficulties of the uncouth implements they
had strapped to her boots than with any question of
flight and its consequences.  How awkward she felt!
How impossible it seemed to do anything at all with
those great wooden skates, so much taller than she
was, and so exceedingly slippery.

"Now," said the parson, who had fixed his own
skis and become a little more anxious when he had
done so, "just shuffle along without lifting your feet,
if you can; it's quite easy to walk up—-the coming
down is the difficulty.  We'll go to the slopes by the
Park Hotel and find a very gentle one.  I'm sure
you'll like it when you become accustomed to the
balance.  The great thing is not to be afraid."

Kavanagh seconded this, and was in the act of
showing her exactly how to place her feet, when he sat
down without warning, and having remained some
moments in an attitude of despair, explained that he
had done it to show the ease with which one can rise
when the boots and straps are all right.  This process
he repeated at intervals on their way to the Park
Hotel; indeed, he proved a paragon of good nature in
the matter.

The fine weather of the previous day favoured them
again, and the famous slopes were merry with the
gambols of the players.  Here there is a great basin of the
snow with a lake at its depths and the white
mountains towering high above it.  The banks themselves
are often gentle and rarely difficult; and hither go the
inexperienced to be tutored by kindly masters, who
are themselves but children at the game.  On every
side you hear the injunction not to be afraid—so
pompously uttered, so difficult to obey.  Elderly
gentlemen, who would be more at home upon a rocking-horse,
glide down gentle declivities and are proud of
the success which follows them to the bottom.
Spinsters, of far from mature aspect, sit down upon less
than no provocation at all, and declare it to be
glorious.  The great white kindergarten is the merriest
place in all the world—and the world is far distant
from it.

Parson Clavering had an excellent eye for an easy
slope, and he chose one just suited to his own
capacities.  It was about three hundred yards from the
chalet which Benny had hired, and that excellent
fellow, looking out of the window and blaming his hard
luck, forgot the latter employment when he espied the
"little widow."  How he envied the cheery parson,
who was holding her arm; how he detested that gilded
popinjay (Benny had got the expression from a
novel) who stood by her side and smoked a cigarette
as though he had hired the parson to do the manual
work of which he himself would reap the fruit.  But
Benny carried his arm in a sling to-day, and even his
zeal prompted no thought of skis.  He was lucky to
be alive.

Meanwhile he could watch the lesson—and instructive
it was.  First Clavering would show his pupil
exactly how to stand, with one leg slightly before the
other and the arms, which carried the trailing sticks,
held well behind the body.  Then the amiable little man
would proceed to slide down the slope himself,
perhaps sitting hurriedly at the foot of it, or arriving
triumphantly at his goal as a man who has achieved
greatness.  When his pupil essayed to do the same
and sank immediately into the soft snow, he assured
her that such a proceeding was correct, and that by
tribulation only would perfection be attained.

"They tell boys who hunt that they must fall forty
times before they can ride—anyone who skis must
fall four hundred times," he said reassuringly.  "Now
don't be afraid—we are all in the same boat, and we
sink together.  You are not hurt, I hope?"

She told him that she was not hurt at all—though,
as a fact, she had dashed a little wildly down the slope
and fallen heavily upon her side at the bottom.  A
fine effort to save her upon Kavanagh's part resulted
in that lordly person falling headlong and in such a
position that his skis held him immobile, and he had
to cry for help.  When he was rescued and had
brushed the snow from his immaculate collar, he asked
her if she did not find it "rather rotten"; but being
answered in the negative, he retired to the path again
and watched her a little jealously.  That "infernal
parson" was having the time of his life—really it
was too ridiculous.

In plain truth, Lily had begun already to enjoy
herself exceedingly.  The keenness of the air, the
glorious sunshine, the delight of this new exercise
drove all other thoughts from her head; and for the
time being she was a child again with all a child's
ardour.  This ski-ing must be the most fascinating
thing on earth, she thought, while she watched those
experts, Bob Otway and Keith Rivers, sailing down
the mountain-side with a dexterity which amazed her.
Patience would teach her to imitate them, and then
the heights would be open to her.  A vain desire
whispered that the mountains might be her safe refuge
after all, and that they would harbour her—an
altitude of dreams upon which Bob Otway's hard voice
intruded painfully: "I say, Kavanagh," he roared,
"come up and jump.  Miss Rivers wants to see you
do it; you aren't going to disappoint her?"

Kavanagh retorted by fixing his glass in his eye
and turning upon that wild youth a glance which
deserved the attribute "stony."

"I am not an acrobat," he snapped severely.  "If
you will tell me how much you require to begin, I will
put something into your hat."

Bob Otway turned away with a laugh.

"By Jove, old chap, it would want a precious big
hat to make you start," and with that for a shot he
began to climb up the mountain-side toward the chalet
where Nellie Rivers was waiting for him.

"Otway's a fine jumper," said the parson, "I believe
he learned in Norway.  It's quite impossible to do
what he does unless you are caught young.  Shall we
watch him come down?  It is really a fine thing to see."

She assented willingly, and they watched the
"happy pair," who were now far up the slope by the
Park Hotel and preparing to take the jump which
has been fashioned about half-way down the valley.
This was nothing more nor less than a kind of diving
board of snow, from which the runners would take
off as they dashed down the steep.  "A clever
performer," said the parson, "would jump ninety or a
hundred feet before his skis touched ground again";
but the proceeding was hazardous, and some
wonderful falls resulted.  However, he had no fears about
Bob Otway, and when that young gentleman started
with a flourish, he followed him with expectant eyes.
Alas for his hopes!  Master Bob flew high into the
air, missed his footing as he landed, and rolled over
and over as though he would never stop.  Then he
sat motionless for many minutes—the situation
required some thinking about, and Bob was rapidly
becoming a philosopher.

Nellie Rivers was more successful.  A graceful
performer at Alpine games, there was no prettier figure
upon skis then in the mountains.  And her jumping
was, as Bob would tell you, divine.  Hardly seeming
to leave the track, she shot through the air at a
tremendous pace, and landed so evenly and with such
perfect balance that the run was resumed as though it
had never been interrupted.  Then she skimmed by
the parson, and raising one foot suddenly and bringing
the other round, she "telemarked" most gracefully
and stood laughingly before him.

"Bob always falls when I am coming down," she
said, "I suppose it's to make a soft place for me.
Mr. Kavanagh would not be so obliging—I can see it in
his eye."

Kavanagh said that he would prefer to dig a hole
with a spade; but he admitted that Master Bob was
an obliging fellow enough.

"If nobody cut capers, this would be a rotten place.
It's a man's duty to do something of the sort," he said,
"but, of course—um—er—mere youth has the responsibility!"

"And the glory," said Clavering, who thought that
the lesson might well be resumed upon so inspiring an
example and immediately turned a somersault to
demonstrate his aptitude as a pupil.  The little man
was wonderfully active from this time forth, and when
half-past twelve came and they heard the bell calling
them back to the Palace for lunch, he resolutely
refused to go indoors.  Had he not brought baskets
packed with chicken and the mysterious sausage in
which "Chic," the cook, delighted?  They would
bivouac up there in the woods—perhaps that
generous person, Mr. Benjamin Benson, would permit them
to use the table in the garden of his chalet—a
suggestion which annoyed Kavanagh, but made an
instantaneous appeal to Madame Lily.  Yes, she would
like it, she said, and having said it, repented
immediately of the admission.  What right had she to think
with pleasure of any friendship of the kind?

Nevertheless, they went up to the chalet and
received the warm welcome they expected.  Benny
himself, his arm in a sling and his sallow face paler than
ordinary, busied about the place with amazing ardour
directly he heard that Mrs. Kennaird was of the party.
His brother, apologising for the black-handled knives
and the forks which matched them, declared that the
kitchen fire was at their service; but he did so rather
knavishly and with a glance aside at the beautiful
woman who had intruded upon their privacy.  It
remained for the Abbé Villari to join the party, and he
cut the oddest figure of all, for his cassock was girdled
high about his waist while the sleeves of it were tucked
up to his elbow.  Moreover, he was exceedingly black,
and when Benny explained with a very red face that
the abbé had a penchant for amateur mechanics, it
was easy to believe him.

"The gospel of the hammer, I suppose," said
Kavanagh, staring fixedly at them as he spoke.

Benny replied that some heads were very thick and
that a corkscrew was the only implement to let a joke
into them—a correct rendering of the great doctor's
*bon mot*, which made but a poor appeal to his enemy.
Then they all sat down to lunch, and a merrier meal
was not known that day at Andana.

Lily could hardly believe in this sense of
contentment which now came upon her.  The magic power
of the mountains as an antidote to ill had never been
wholly understood by her before; she realised it as
she sat there in the glowing sunshine and looked up to
a sky infinitely blue.  The great fields of the dazzling
snow, the beauty of the woods, the grandeur of the
prospect spoke of peace and rest as no other scene she
could remember.  And with it there came the idea that
one man's good will contributed not a little to this
gift of self-deception, and that in the humanity and
good nature of such a personality as Benny the true
secret was to be found.  Much had the great world
of artificiality and of false ideals taught her in her
youth, but here was something different, something
to be learned with gratitude, and being learned, not to
be forgotten.

Benny, for his part, hovered about her as a shadow,
and when she inquired with a woman's gentleness of
his hurt, he blushed like any schoolgirl.

"It was nothing—nothing at all," he said—but
his brother Jack muttered that it was everything—and
as he said it, he glanced at the "little widow"
and wondered what evil fortune had sent her to Andana.





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.. _`AN ULTIMATUM`:

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   CHAPTER VII


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   AN ULTIMATUM

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It had just grown dark when Lily returned to the
Palace Hotel, and the hall was quite full of muffled
folk, whose arguments upon the events of the day
waxed hot and eloquent.  Some of these turned their
heads as the "pretty little woman" went by; but the
many were too interested in their narration of
particular exploits to notice her.  Upstairs, she found her
sitting-room in darkness, but she knew, even before
she had switched on the electric light, that it was not
untenanted, and presently she discovered her husband,
Luton, sitting by the window and smiling a little
sardonically while he waited for her to speak.

Eight months had passed since they had met, and
time had not been kind to him.  He looked very old,
she thought, and his red hair was sown with grey.  A
fine man physically, he had lost flesh, and his clothes
bagged upon his arms and chest.  One characteristic
remained—the evil of a face which had expressed
little but evil since his childhood.

"Well," he said—and he had never been famous
for his eloquence—"well, Lil, you didn't expect to see
me, I suppose.  Rather an unpleasant surprise for
you, isn't it?"

She took off her furs and laid them upon a chair.
The room had become insufferably hot, and she would
have opened the window had he not barred the way.
But all her instinct forbade her to approach him, and
she had need of her courage that he might not see her
trembling.

"What do you want of me?" she rejoined in a cold
voice—and then: "Why do you come here?"

He liked the idea of it, and leaning back in the
chair, laughed as though it were the drollest of notions.

"A man comes to see his wife, and she doesn't
offer him the tips of her beautiful fingers!  'Pon my
word, Lil, you look splendid when you stand like
that—and since you press me, I will take a
whisky-and-soda and a cigar just for luck."

She ignored the request and advancing a little nearer
to him, repeated the question:

"Why do you come to me?  Was it not understood
that you should not come; was not that part of
the bargain?"

He shrugged his shoulders, but his face flushed none
the less.

"Bargain be d——d!  I'm in a hole—nine thousand
four hundred pounds with Bothand and Co.—you
remember them?  I bought your emeralds there.
Well, they talk of fraud and all that sort of stuff.
I'll have to pay them, Lil—it's jail if I don't."

She knew that it would be some story of this kind,
and was relieved, it may be, to find it no worse.  His
exaggerations had ceased to alarm her, and she
believed little of what he told her.

"You have had five thousand pounds from me in
two years," she said quietly.  "I am now making you
an allowance of a thousand a year.  If there is a duty
in the matter, God knows I have done it.  More I will
not, whatsoever the consequences—you know that I
cannot; it is quite impossible."

He nodded his head, and, failing the cigar, took a
cigarette from his case and lighted it.

"Why don't you ask the old man?" he retorted.
"I tell you, Lil, this is business, and if I don't pay
in ten days' time, there'll be mischief.  You don't
mean to say you'd send me to prison for nine thousand
pounds—your beautiful father wouldn't disgrace his
daughter for a trifle like that?  I've been pretty
considerate, I must say.  It's nearly a year since I came
to you, and then for twopence-halfpenny which I had
to beg on my knees.  By ——, you're becoming a
Jew, my dear, a devilish pretty little Jew—that's what
it is."

She turned from him with contempt.

"You have my answer," she said.  "I will
continue to pay you a thousand a year while you leave
me as I am.  But I will not pay more, whatever the
consequences.  That is final and irrevocable.  If you
come to me at this hotel again, you shall never receive
another penny.  The understanding was made, and I
will have it kept.  Have I not suffered enough at your
hands; is there to be no end to a woman's patience?
You have ceased to be anything to me but a name—take
care that I do not forbid you even that right."

He smiled provokingly.

"You dare not do it, my dear; the old man wouldn't
have it.  Devilish proud old boy, Sir Frederick
Kennaird, eh?  His hair would turn grey if you talked
about the courts—he told me so himself.  He'll have
to pay Bothand and look pleased.  I shall write to
him myself if you don't; tell him you're sailing under
false colours here, and the men dancing at your heels.
Eh, what, wouldn't that be the truth?  Why, I saw
you on the snow with two of them this morning, and
I laughed.  This paragon of virtue nods sometimes,
eh?  Well, I don't complain; I'm meek as a lamb.
And I'm going to have nine thousand four hundred
inside ten days, or there'll be a story at the New Bailey
and you'll figure in it, my dear—for, you see, I used
your name and they're not the kind of people to forget
it.  No, by gad, we'll sink or swim together—so help
me Heaven!"

Her anger had been growing while he spoke and
now quite mastered her.  The gentle lady had become
the proud woman, full of courage and resolution.

"You are one of the worst of men," she said in a
low voice.  "I thought and believed that you had
gone from my life; I now see how much I was
mistaken.  But I shall live now for nothing else.  If you
come here again, I will appeal to the people of the
hotel for protection.  You tell me that you have been
guilty of fraud, and I can quite believe it.  But
understand: I will write no letter to my father, take
no steps whatever to save you, and if you are punished,
I will be the first to rejoice.  Go now, and let that be
my answer."

He was not at all alarmed.

"Oh," he said, rising jauntily, "I'm going all right;
but I'm up at Vermala if you want me.  Remember
it's nine thousand four hundred, and the old man
can pay Bothand and Co. direct if he likes.  I pawned
the stuff in your name, and they say it's fraud.  Well,
we shall have the 'tecs out here in a day or two and
there'll be some fun.  They can extradite the pair of
us, and you'd have to go back with me.  I say, Lil,
that would make the old man sit up, wouldn't it?
There'd be a harvest home at Kennaird Court, now
wouldn't there?  I'd write to him, if I were
you—there's a day or two yet; but the game will be up if
they get a warrant.  Think it over, my sweet love,
take the advice of the little bounder in black, who
was holding you so tight this morning, if you like.
He'll tell you what to do better than I can.  A man
will know that I wouldn't take it so lightly if the
money were coming to me; no, by the Lord, I'd be
singing another tune then, and one you'd understand.
But these d——d jewellers must have their bit—there's
no help for it."

He laughed again at the idea; and repeating the
intimation that he was staying at the hotel at Vermala
under the name of Faikes, who had been an old valet
of his, he held out his hand to her; and when she
would not take it, he laughed loudly at the rebuff.
But he did not remain with her, and when he had
passed out of the hotel, he stood a little while looking
up at her window, and his face became grave and
wistful.  What a beautiful woman she was, and what a
mess he had made of his own life!  Perchance his
hatred against her welled up because of that great gulf
between them; the gulf of a woman's will and
character, of her pity and patience bestowed upon him once
as a priceless gift, but now forever withdrawn.  His
own future lay in the chasms; he would tread the high
paths no more.

Lily, his wife, stood meanwhile just where he had
left her.  This new story of shame rang in her ears
as a knell.  No longer doubtful, she knew that it was
true, and she believed him when he said that he would
drag her also to the abyss.  Her father remained their
last hope; but what would Sir Frederick Kennaird
say to such a letter as she must now write him?
What would his answer be?

Assuredly the old baronet would declare that the
arrangement entered into with his daughter had been
final and that Luton Delayne must answer for his own
dishonesty.  She believed it would be so; and it seemed
to her, as her tears fell upon the page, that the sins
of the man lay heavy upon her, and that she must make
atonement.





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.. _`BENNY BECOMES AN OPTIMIST`:

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   CHAPTER VIII


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   BENNY BECOMES AN OPTIMIST

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There were two men who recognised Luton Delayne
when he left the Palace Hotel, and one was that master
of all the courtiers, Dr. Orange.  The other was
Benny, who met the baronet at the turn of the road
and understood in a flash why he had come to Andana.

"Luton Delayne, by all that's unholy!" said he to
himself, and turning, he watched the stooping figure
of the man until the little wood of pines hid the
apparition from his sight.

Dr. Orange treated the matter a little more
cavalierly.  He had Bess Bethune by his side, and she had
been in the act of giving him a definition of
beauty—which he had just declared that even Aristotle could
not define—when the baronet passed him in the hall,
and he uttered a sharp exclamation.

"Do you know who that is?" he said to Bess.  She
replied that she neither knew nor cared.

"Oh, but we shall all care if he comes here," the
doctor ran on; "that's the greatest scoundrel in
Switzerland at the present moment, Luton Delayne, who
used to live at Holmswell.  Surely, the hotel people
know—"

Bess laughed.

"I wonder you didn't introduce me.  My uncle says
that the study of crime is necessary to virtue; but, of
course, I know you, and that's something.  Are you
coming upstairs to play 'hearings,' or are you not?
Really, Dr. Orange, you are getting very difficult."

The doctor said that it must be old age; but he
was contemplative, and his enthusiasm for a child's
game had waned.  Excusing himself to Bess, who
promised him lasting displeasure, he went off to the
little French secretary, Ardlot, to discover, if he could,
what that worthy knew about it.  Ardlot was as dumb
as a drum with a hole in it, and fearing the
consequences of a premature disclosure, the doctor retired
to his own room to think of it.  Of course, he knew
the "little widow" now.  She was Lady Delayne,
and he could well understand that she was ashamed
of her name.  At the same time he foresaw how
difficult her position in the hotel must become, and he
wondered that she had sought the critical society of
Andana when a city would have shielded her more successfully.

Benny's problem was of a different kind altogether.
He, too, knew the "little widow" now, and knowing
her, a hundred castles came tumbling down with a
crash and threatened to leave a brave heart sadly
crushed beneath their ruins.  Benny would have
admitted nothing of the kind to himself; but such was
the truth.

Meanwhile, he could but stare after the retreating
figure of the baronet, and when that had disappeared
from his view, he trudged back heavily toward the
chalet, quite forgetful that he carried in his hand a fur
tippet which Madame Lily had left behind her that
afternoon of blessed memory.

Benny was a good philosopher and in part a historian,
so that it was quite easy for him to sum up the
events of the last few hours and to carry a clear
impression of them in his mind.  Yesterday he had seen
a beautiful woman for the first time, and for the sake
of her unforgettable eyes he had rolled over and over
on the slopes of the Zaat last night, and had been
dragged out headlong by a miracle of a priest, the
Abbé Villari.  Had not one of the patients at the
Sanatorium providentially fallen ill during the small
hours, the abbé would not have been on the mountain
road at all, and he, Benny, would now be making
the best he could of a new and unfamiliar world.
But the priest had saved him—and, more wonderful
to tell, had confessed, as they came down the
mountain-side together, that he also had dabbled in this
new and wonderful science of aviation, and often
delighted the monastery with the model of a "Bleriot"
which would fly.  To all of which the wounded man
had listened indifferently, for what was the meaning
of all this eloquence to him, who had lost the whole
world an hour ago on the slopes of the Zaat?

The priest, however, persisted and, word by word,
he dragged Benny's story from him.  The Englishman,
he said, would be competing for the great prize
offered by the English editor.  It was a fine ambition,
and one to deserve a blessing.  Let him not despair
because the machine was broken.  There were clever
lads at the monastery, and he, Felix Villari, was no
mean mechanic.  He would guard the secrets as his
own, and pledge his word that the machine should be
ready.  Grown almost angry at his optimism, and
deriding his pretensions, Benny lifted his bruised arm
and asked for what kind of a prize that would fly.
It was idle to speak of flight to such a man at such a time.

Here was the state of the game when Benny met
Luton Delayne upon the mountain road, and stood
gaping at "the ghost."  His first idea was to get away
from the place altogether, to cut Andana, and to
forget both his disappointment and the source of it.  Then
a better spirit came to his aid, and he began to
remember the many stories which Holmswell had told
of the baronet, and to wonder how many of them
were true.  Lily Delayne was quite alone in this place;
she herself had told him that she had no friends.  He
knew that his own good-will might be worth
something to her; but for quite a long time he had no
courage to pursue the idea.  A sense of finality
attended this amazing discovery as a sense of finality
had been associated with his mishap in the earlier
hours of the day.

Had Benny's mind been absolutely commonplace,
and had he been hide-bound by the conventions,
perchance the matter would have ended there and then.
An early train would have carried him from Sierre to
London, and he might very well have lived out his
life as a very ordinary mechanic in a very ordinary
workshop.  In this way has the story of hundreds of
good fellows, blessed with no common measure of
talent, been written; and this might have been his own
fate but for a certain hardening of determination
which failure provoked.

The great prize was lost for a certainty, the new
and dazzling hope which had come into his life
yesterday had been shattered beyond all belief: and yet,
when he had communed with himself for the best part
of an hour on the narrow road which led up to the
chalet, he took a sudden resolution and acted upon
it without an instant's delay.  He would see Lily
Delayne immediately and hear from her own lips any
story she might have to tell him.  That she would have
a story he firmly believed, and quickened by the
pleasing idea of a friendship which must be beyond all
question altruistic, he returned at once to the hotel and
sent up a message to her.  Five minutes later he was
in her room, and he perceived at a glance that she had
been weeping.

"I beg your pardon, Mrs. Kennaird," he said, "but
I think you left this at the chalet?"

Lily took the tippet without a word.  Her heart
was beating fast, and the colour had returned as upon
a freshet of understanding to her cheeks.  A woman's
sure instinct told her why he had come to the room.
He knew that she had lied to him, and he understood
the reason.

Benny handed over the fur, but showed no
intention to go.  She thought that he had changed very
much since they had parted an hour ago, and he wore
a certain dignity of manhood which was sure, but
indefinable.  When he spoke, the note of cringing banter
had left him, and he had a man's tone, encouraging
and not a little masterful.

"I thought I would bring the thing down," he said,
with a kindly smile, "I shan't be in to dinner to-night,
and you might want it.  The doctor says I oughtn't
to be out at all; but it doesn't do to listen overmuch
to the medicine men.  You see, I had a pretty bad
spill, and the muscles of my arm are playing tricks.
It wouldn't matter in an ordinary way, but just now—"

She looked up quickly.

"You had a fall on skis, had you not?" she asked.

Benny laughed.

"You can keep a secret, can't you, Mrs. Kennaird?
Well, I'm going to tell you one; I fell out of an
aeroplane—that's the truth!"

"You fell out of an aeroplane!—then you were the
ghost, Mr. Benson?"

He nodded his head.

"Yes, I'm the ghost, but I don't want anyone to
know it just yet.  There's a prize of ten thousand
offered for a flight down the Simplon Valley and over
the big mountains.  My machine would have won it
if I hadn't come down last night.  There's where luck
figures.  I don't think I can be ready now, and I
suppose Paulhan or Bleriot will get it.  But I wanted
an Englishman to win, and I believe I have the
machine.  It's not like anybody else's—something
different altogether.  They tell me I look just like a
double-headed eagle when I'm up.  That's true, I
suppose, for my machine is a bit of a curiosity in its
way.  You wouldn't understand, perhaps, but if you
will come to the chalet sometime, I'll show you.  You
ought to come just to see an extraordinary thing—and
that's a priest with his cassock tucked up, working
like one of the best.  I left him there when I came
along; and, just by the way, I met a man I knew
outside the hotel door—Sir Luton Delayne, of Holmswell.
We were talking about him last night, you'll remember?"

She flushed scarlet.

"Yes," she said in a low voice, "he is my
husband—he has been here to-night."

Benny drew a little nearer still.

"You will forgive me for what I said last night,
Lady Delayne.  I ought to have known; my good
sense should have told me.  What I really came here
for was not to excuse myself, but to ask your
forgiveness.  A man should never speak all that is in
his mind to anybody except himself.  When he begins
to judge other people, he is putting a fool's cap on his
head.  I am old enough to have learned that lesson,
and I think shame to have forgotten it.  Will you let
me say as much to-night?"

She answered him with wondering eyes which
declared her perplexity.  There is an elementary
simplicity of thought and character which women find
irresistible, and Benny was the possessor of it.  To
such a man, women impart strange confidences.  Lily
needed all her self-control.

"There is no need to say anything," she rejoined
with an effort, "men will be judged when they invite
judgment.  I am sure you meant no harm, and
intention is all that matters."

And then, with a shrug of her shoulders and a want
of sequence entirely feminine, she exclaimed:

"Women have few real friends, Mr. Benson; they
make no mistake when they discover one."

"Ah!" he said, "I was hoping you would know
that.  It's very true, Lady Delayne—perhaps the
truest thing in life.  Women make few friends—men
forbid them to do so.  But they need friends
sometimes, need them very badly.  Some day you might
care to remember it.  I would give a great deal to be
at Andana should that day come—that is, if you are
staying here?"

She did not attempt to disguise the meaning of the
question.

"I must stay some days yet; but not in this hotel,
I think.  It may be impossible for me to do so; in
which case I must imitate you and take a chalet.  Do
you know if there is one to let?"

He was delighted to become her confidant.

"There's the very place for you, just by the Park
Hotel.  I looked over it, but it was too dear for me.
They've left the servants—you can have it to-morrow,
if you like.  I'm sure you'd be very comfortable there."

"You are very good," she said.  "We shall be
meeting in the morning.  May I tell you then?"

Benny would have permitted her to tell him at any
hour of the twenty-four, any season of the year, or
any century which might find him alive.  He left her
room like a schoolboy who has dared an ordeal and
returned triumphant.  The stars had never shone so
brightly over Andana as they shone that night; the
moon had never looked down so gloriously upon the
majesty of the mountains.  He had become her confidant;
he shared her secret; he was permitted to be her friend!

And all this at the nadir of his fortunes—when the
great machine had been wrecked utterly, and the
master-key of his ambitions lost beyond hope.
Yesternight, he believed that his name was about to go out
to the world as one of its pioneers; the name of a
man who had dared and had achieved.  To-day, he
doubted if such an hour would ever come.  Others
would win the great prize; he might preach to them
the wonders of his own inventions, but few would
listen.  The gates of success lay far from him, and the
lantern which burned above them had become but a
star upon his horizon.

And yet all sadness had left him.  Jack stared
open-eyed when Benny entered the chalet and began to caper
about like a boy.  The little abbé himself,
understanding nothing, shook his head reproachfully, and
complained of the delay.

"The hours are precious," he said; "we cannot
work unless you direct us.  What has kept you, monsieur?"

"A lady's tippet," retorted Benny, delighted at the
childish sally—and then, as one inspired, he began to
tell them what to do.

There was just a chance by the Lord Harry!  It
came to Benny as he stood there that the thing might
yet be done—the machine made good, the flight
achieved.  Long hours of unremitting toil would be
necessary; but what of that?  Ten thousand pounds
would recreate the world for him, and change the
course of his life as surely as though he were born
again.

And for that gentle lady also—

But here Benny felt himself upon difficult ground
and, turning aside, he contented himself with that
wholly uplifting thought, that even now, at the
eleventh hour, he might achieve the victory!





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.. _`IN WHICH WE BAG A BRACE`:

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   CHAPTER IX


.. class:: center medium bold

   IN WHICH WE BAG A BRACE

.. vspace:: 2

The weekly paper-chase upon skis took place upon
the third day after Luton Delayne's visit to the Palace
Hotel, and was not wanting in the customary excitements.

Youths, garbed in heavy sweaters and the monstrous
boots which are necessary to a delightful accomplishment,
hailed each other uproariously from their
bedroom windows about the hour of nine o'clock and
declared emphatically that the outlook was
"rotten."  Young ladies of ages varying from eighteen to
two-and-fifty, hobbled about the precincts crying for John,
the porter, to "come and strap them on."  The cooks
in the kitchen, not less busy, carved sandwiches with
amazing dexterity and packed mysterious lengths of
sausage as though they were well hidden from the
human eye.  Few thought of anything but the weather,
and all the talk turned upon that well-worn topic.

The morning had broken with some promise, but
the mists were heavy, and now the whole of the great
valley of the Simplon was filled by cloud.

Standing upon the plateau before the Palace Hotel,
a stranger might have imagined himself upon the brink
of an inland sea, whose feathery waves rolled
noiselessly to his feet.  Nothing could be seen of the
panorama below, not a vineyard, nor a cottage; and while
the Weisshorn reared itself majestically from the white
fog, the lesser peaks were wreathed about as by
trailing pillars of smoke.

In one hour or in two, said the experts, this sea
of mist would drift up and envelop the heights.  It
might also be relied upon to obscure the fleeting forms
of "the hares," and to play subtle tricks with the
panting hounds—a prospect which was full of terror
to the majority, but of great interest: (1) to a
certain Bob Otway, who had persuaded Nellie Rider to
be his partner in the promise of the day; and (2) to
his friend, Dick Fenton, who had promised to fly with
her sister Marjory, if not to the ends of the earth, at
least to the chalet where lunch would be found at one
o'clock precisely.

Fenton, as will be gathered from the foregoing, had
been chosen for a hare, sharing the honour with Keith
Rivers and that engaging performer, Miss Marjory
Rider.  Allowed five minutes' grace, these three, who
wore fine scarlet sashes, set out at nine o'clock
precisely, and quickly disappeared in the direction of the
Park Hotel.  Immediately they were gone, the
concourse of indifferents, tempered by a few such
experts as Bob Otway, lined up before the porch of the
hotel, and prepared to carry itself with what grace
it could.  The light of it, conversationally considered,
was Miss Bess Bethune, who, moving like a sprite
amidst the company, assured each and all that
something dreadful was about to happen at the Palace, and
that the night would bear witness.  When she had
thus breakfasted upon horrors, she sought out
Dr. Orange, and attached herself firmly to him, until she
discovered that he preferred the seclusion of the
skating rink, where he might hold out the tails of his
threes to the delight of the elect.  Bess hated him in
the instant of that avowal; and, oh! the malignity of
Fate, she was left to enjoy the society of Sir Gordon
Snagg, who insisted upon treating her as a child,
despite her thirteen years.

Perhaps Bess would have captured Bob Otway, but
for the expert tactics of his *vis-à-vis*, Nellie Rider.
Three seasons had Miss Nellie (and her sister)
pirouetted vainly at Andana, and she was determined that
the fourth should pay for all.  The gossip of chosen
friends, feeding upon the inflated estimates of rumour,
declared that Master Bob had just come into a
fortune of fifteen hundred a year—a tale, by the way,
told also of his friend, Dick Fenton—and this sum
being clearly in her mind and sweet romance, as it
were, jangling the silver bells upon the neck of that
good horse, Matrimony, she attached herself to Bob
with the tenacious grip of an octopus (the words were
Bess's), and so led him instanter to the heights, as to
the place of execution duly appointed.

To be sure, they cared little for the paper-chase.
Both were experts, and the delight of climbing could
not be marred by any thought of direction or
rendezvous.  Sufficient to know that they were mounting
far above the mists, winning their way steadily to the
entrancing slopes and the golden fields of unbroken
sunshine.  When, at last, Bob discovered that they
were lost, he added the intimation that it was a good
thing too!

"We should have old Gordon Snagg on our backs
if we'd stayed down there," he said.  "I know the
old bounder well—he always stops to tell you some
yarn about his brother, the brewer, and falls down in
the middle of it.  He got me yesterday.  That nut,
Major Boodle, was with him and the lady, of course.
Lady Coral-Smith's a pretty good weight when she's
round your neck, but I'd sooner see her round the
major's.  Did you hear her trying to tell something
about the 'little widow' this morning?  Beastly
shame, I call it—the little thing's all alone, and worth
about two hundred of the rest of them.  Now don't
you think so yourself, Nellie?"

He had not called her Nellie before, and she
remarked the circumstance, and pronounced it to be of
good omen.  Fearing no possible rival in the "little
widow," Nellie could afford to be generous.

"She is very pretty, and very nice," she said.  "I
am sorry for her, because she has lost her husband—at
least I should be, if I knew what kind of a husband
he was.  It's all guess-work with widows; you never
quite know whether to be sorry or glad."

Bob laughed loudly.

"They're saying in the hotel that she hasn't lost
him.  Bess Bethune hints that he wouldn't be lost.
That's a new sort of game, I suppose: trying to lose
a husband and counting points against yourself when
he turns up!  Do you think you would like to play it
when you are married?"

She was horribly shocked.  The word "husband"
was sacrosanct, and such trifling seemed to her next
door to a sacrilege.

"Oh, do let's talk of something sensible," she
exclaimed petulantly.  "Wherever there is a pretty
woman, there will people tell untruths about her.
What is it to us?  We don't care, do we?"

Bob shook his head; he liked to pose as a man of
the world.

"I think we ought to stand by her," he said.  "Suppose
you had been in the case, Nellie; wouldn't you
expect me to stand by you?"

"Of course I should—but you wouldn't do it; you
would begin to talk about widows instead.  I'm quite
sorry I came with you—"

He looked up appealingly.

"But we're having such a jolly time together.  You
don't mean to say you would sooner have been with
old Gordon Snagg?"

"I would sooner be with somebody who talked about
sensible things, so there!  Are you going to stand here
all day looking down at nothing?  I didn't come out
for that; I came to ski.  Perhaps you would like to go
back to the paper-chase?"

Bob hastened to say that he hoped the paper-chase
might be swallowed up by an avalanche before he
overtook it.  Having insisted upon the point, he seized
her hand without so much as a by-your-leave or any
other unnecessary absurdity, and began to run down
the slope with her.  Here was something to live for;
they were as two who had conquered the world and
returned its proud heights upon wings of azure.

Down, down, the skis hissing in the splendid snow,
the keen air bringing hot blood to their cheeks, the
speed surpassing dreams of flight—so toward the
woods which would hide them again, and permit them
to forget that towns and hamlets, to say nothing of
the inhabitants thereof, existed.  Both were gasping
for breath as they sailed down the last of the steeps
and swung to the left at the bottom.  Both were too
sensible of the obvious fitness of things to utter one
complaint when Miss Nellie tripped and fell right into
Master Bob's arms upon the very verge of the wood.
Is not the left an unlucky turn to make at any
time?  But who believes in luck when a pretty girl
tumbles headlong into his arms and refuses to budge
an inch?

"I say, Nellie, I wish you'd do that every day.
Now, don't get angry—you know you rather like it."

She sat up and tried to push him from her.

"Whatever do you mean, Bob?  It was your fault;
you pushed me down."

"Of course I did.  Let's lie here a month, just as
we are—only I should like your arms a little closer
round my neck.  Never mind about your skis—I'll
take them off."

He was as good as his word, unbuckling the straps
and regretted that the monstrous boots forbade him
to admire her pretty ankles.  When he had removed
his own impedimenta, he coolly put his arms about her
waist, and lifted her from the deep snow.

"Let's sit down a bit and talk over things," he said.
"There's a grand view from here, Nellie—I could
see Brigue, if it wasn't for the cloud."

"Do you want to see Brigue, Bob?"

"Do I want to see Brigue?—when I can look at
you!  I say, Nellie, how silky your hair is—and I
do believe your lips are cold.  Well, that ought to
warm them anyway!  Shall I do it again?  I will if
you like!"

She shook her head; but her colour was high, and
her heart beat fast.

"Why do you treat me like this, Bob?"

"Because I love you, Nellie."

"Do you mean it—every word of it?"

"I'll swear a thousand oaths if you like."

"And you'll never love anyone else?"

She put both her hands upon his shoulders, and
looked straight into his eyes.

Bob admitted in confidence to his friend Dick, whom
he met presently, that it was the look which did it.

"I'll never love anybody else, if I live to two
hundred, Nellie.  You'll just be my little girl, and when
we're married—"

He paused abruptly, wondering what he had said.
Nellie, however, sealed the compact instantly.  She
gave him a smacking kiss on his lips, and held him so
tightly that he could not utter a single word.

"I'll have to tell mother, Bob—I'll have to tell
her when we get back.  I'm sure she'll be kind about
it.  I know she likes you.  Wasn't it lucky we came
up here to-day?  Wouldn't it have been dreadful to
have gone with all those people?  Oh, why didn't we
bring our lunch—I'm sure I ought to have thought of
it.  Now, I suppose, we'll have to go down."

Bob shook his head.  It really was very nice to be
kissed like that, and he didn't mind how long the
process continued.  The future became as misty as
the wraith of cloud floating over Mont Blanc.  After
all, things might be fixed up somehow, and his two
hundred a year would be all right if they didn't get
married until he got something to do.

"Anyway," he said, upon reflection, "we needn't
move just yet, Nellie—let's stop up here and talk.
Perhaps we shall see the hares.  I wonder what
Marjory will say when we tell her.  You know Dick
Fenton's awfully gone on her.  It would be a game if he
had proposed, wouldn't it?"

Nellie didn't like the flippant tone, and looked a
little serious.  Her keen eyes were roving the valley
below; but not a sign either of hares or hounds did
they detect.  What she did see was a man walking to
and fro upon the narrow bridle-track, near Vermala,
and another man who dodged upon his heels, but took
good care not to be discovered.  The pantomime was
so engaging that she pointed it out to Bob, despite
her desire to pursue that singularly interesting subject,
matrimony and its preliminaries.

"Look at that man," she exclaimed in her surprise.
"He's being followed by the soldier.  I'm quite sure
of it.  Bob, look at him!"

Bob had no particular curiosity in the matter—so
he put his arm about her waist, and peeped over the
steep as she desired.  Sure enough, the play was going
on just as she had indicated.  A man walked leisurely
upon the path, while another dodged him in the
security of the woods.  Such a game of hide-and-seek
carried its own explanations.  There were two who
played it, and one spied upon the other.

"Why, it's a gendarme from Sierre!" exclaimed
Bob presently.  "I should know the fellow anywhere.
What's he up to, I wonder; and who's the man?  It
must be one of the Vermala people—and look, he's
dropped to it now—he knows what's going on!"

It really was vastly curious.  The man who had
been spied upon detected his enemy suddenly and
stood quite still, as though meditating a plan.
Presently he turned about, and began to climb the height
in a direction which would have carried him to the
very wood which now sheltered the lovers.  This
manoeuvre, closely observed by the gendarme, was not
immediately answered by him; but presently he turned
about and set off as though to return to the hotel at
Vermala.  So he became lost to view, and the wood
hiding the other, the little comedy terminated abruptly.

"That's a queer game," Bob remarked presently.

Nellie, upon her part, could make nothing of it, nor
had she any desire to do so.  Suddenly, as they stood
there, the hounds burst into view, in more or less full
cry, according to their agility.  Gliding, shuffling,
sprawling, the thin white line made what haste it could
toward the village of Andana, where lunch was
waiting.  No one cared very much about the hares; elderly
ladies, repenting of their rashness, would have paid
precious gold to have been carried to any destination;
the girls desired only that the men should admire their
dexterity; the men, that their tricks should not go
unobserved by the girls.  Here and there, a fine
performer rejoiced in the magic of the exercise and
swooped down the mountain-side with the dash of an
eagle upon its prey.  But dash—except as an
expression of the language employed—was in the main
lacking to the *cortège*, which moved as though in lingering
agony.

Bob hazarded the opinion that they had better go
down immediately to the "bun-scrap" in the village,
and reluctantly, with a last prolonged embrace which
threatened the stability of the feminine superstructure,
they turned and began to ski gently down through
the wood.  Hardly, however, had they made a start,
when there came, not from below but from above,
a loud and prolonged cry, which echoed in the very
heights of the Zaat, and brought them to a stand in
an instant.  Someone had fallen, up yonder, from one
of the dangerous precipices—there could not be a
doubt of it!

"It must have been that fellow who dodged the
gendarme," said Bob, after a little interval of waiting.
Nellie did not know what to make of it.  The cry was
not repeated, and the pines hid the truth from their
view.  Nevertheless both were a little awed, and it was
impossible not to believe that something untoward had
happened.

"I wonder if we ought to go up?" Bob asked her.
She replied, with a very white face, that it was not
their business.

"There are always plenty of people at Vermala, and
I know some of ours have gone up to the Zaat to-day.
We could do no good, Bob—I'm sure I would go, if
I thought that we could—but is it our business, when
there are so many others about?"

"And the whole thing just spoof, perhaps.  By
George, though; if it were not!—if it were murder,
Nellie?"

"Murder?—you make me shudder.  How can you
be so horrid, Bob?"

Bob hastened to protest that horrors were what
most girls doted on; but he was obviously ill at ease,
and neither said much while they went down through
the wood.  A little further on they disturbed,
maladroitly, a pair of lovers, who started up in guilty
fashion to reveal the red face of a certain Mr. Richard
Fenton, and the tousled hair of that amiable and
athletic nymph, Miss Marjory Rider.  It was the
merriest meeting in all the world, and Nellie's "Oh!"
when she espied her sister would have done credit to
a lady of the theatre.

"Oh, Margy, how can you look me in the face—?"

"But we're engaged, Nell—I'm going to marry Dick."

Dick looked under his eyes at Bob, but he seemed
rather abashed, and by no means a lover who would
have done credit to the heroics of the poets.

Upon his part, Bob said never a word about his
own predicament; but Nellie had it out in a twinkling,
and there the four of them stood, giggling and
laughing and blushing.  It remained for Bob to set matters
straight by a resounding cheer, which he did presently
to the great scandal of his *fiancée*, and the surprise
of all in the vicinity of the wood.  Then he discovered
that he was hungry—a meagre lover sighing for
baked meats.

"We shall miss the bun-scrap if we don't buck up,"
he said.  "I'm sure old Gordon Snagg will eat all
the sandwiches within half a mile of him.  Let's make
a dash for it, Nellie; these two will stop here spooning
all day.  It makes me sick to see them."

He did not wait for his friend to put on his skis,
but taking Nellie by the hand, sailed with her down
the nearest slope, and presently came out just above
Benny's cottage.  Here a little Frenchman, standing
on the path which debouches from the woods below
Vermala, waved his hand to them in a frantic and
demoralised appeal, and when they approached him,
began to tell them an excited tale which even one of
his own countrymen might not have followed.  As for
Bob, who had forgotten the only irregular verb he
ever knew, and Nellie, whose French hardly
represented the guinea expended upon it per quarter, they
were at their wits' end, until Benson himself came to
their assistance; as he did almost immediately, lurching
down from the chalet and asking gruffly what was up.
To him the Frenchman now addressed himself, while
Benny listened with an amused smile.  Then he
interpreted the rigmarole to the others.

"He says a man's fallen down from the height up
yonder.  That's steep, anyway; a baby would walk the
path.  Do you know anything of it?  Did you see
anything, Mr. Otway?"

"We saw a man and another following him," Bob
said in a halting way.  "I think the little man was a
gendarme, for he had something bright on his hat.
They went off toward the Zaat, and then we heard
one of them shout out.  I shouldn't wonder if this
gentleman were right"—pointing to the Frenchman—"it's
very likely the pair may have had a row."

To their great surprise and wonder, Benny turned
as pale as a sheet.  Muttering something about a silly
tale, he, nevertheless, went about, and returned almost
immediately to his chalet, leaving the young couple to
appease the excited Frenchman as best they could.
That worthy, perceiving their lack of understanding,
renewed his appeals, this time to Dick Fenton and
Marjory, who had just emerged from the wood.

"What does he say?" Dick asked his friend.  Bob
assumed an air of reproving superiority, and replied:

"Oh, a man has fallen off the Zaat—!"

Marjory said "Oh!" and turned very pale.  Dick
was not so sentimental.

"Well," he exclaimed rather pettishly, "why doesn't
he go and pick him up?  I expect it's all my eye;
people don't fall off the Zaat, of all places.  Why don't
you tell him so, Bob?"

"He speaks *patois*—mine's no good to him.  You
have a shot, Dick, or perhaps Miss Marjory will?"

They laughed at this, and the Frenchman turned
away in despair.  These English assuredly were mad
and without pity.  He had told his story to half a
dozen of them already, and all the answer he got was
the gibberish of a tongue spoken neither in heaven
nor on earth.  Obviously, he must find one of his own
countrymen, and they must go together to the slopes
above.  Failing that, he would return, and telephone
to the police; an alternative which so pleased him that
he was already half-way down to the hotel, when
Benny, who had appeared on the scene again,
overtook him and entered immediately into an exciting
argument.  Benny spoke French like a true Parisian—the
stranger had no difficulty in understanding him.

The others, meanwhile, had gone down to the
village of Andana.  There in a little café, ordinarily
shut during the winter, the hares and hounds browsed
upon a common pasture.  And curiously enough, while
Bob and Dick ate with good appetite, their mood was
hardly as joyous as it should have been; while those
interesting young ladies, Miss Marjory and Miss Nellie
Rider, wore already something of the staid demeanour
of the married woman.

It was not until after lunch and much good
Malvoisie that the young men drew aside to debate the
situation in anxious whispers.  Assuredly, as Bob
admitted, they had "done it," and time alone and that
far from amiable old lady, Mrs. Rider, could show
them the way out.

In short, as Dick added savagely: "they were in a
devil of a mess."





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.. _`A SPECIALIST IS CONSULTED`:

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   CHAPTER X


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   A SPECIALIST IS CONSULTED

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The amiable discussion, begun in the interval after
lunch, was continued at the Palace Hotel during that
pleasant hour when tea is a memory and dinner an expectation.

The girls had gone up to their room by this time,
hand in hand, and tremulous with the powers of
suppressed narration.  For them the supreme issue
concerned an amiable lady who was quite in ignorance of
the surprise prepared for her, and would certainly shed
tears when the amatory bombshell exploded.  For the
youths it was another matter altogether.  Conscience
had begun to twit them with melancholy gibes upon
their rashness.  Or, as Bob put it tersely, a couple of
wives and three hundred and ninety pounds a year
between the pair of them.  That was the bald truth.  It
had seemed otherwise in the woods when the sun
shone, and the great mountains looked down kindly
upon the lovers.

"What we want," said Dick resolutely, "is someone
to advise us."  He was a sentimental person, and
given to idealism.  "We ought to know how we stand
before the thing goes any further.  Marjory's a dear
little girl, and I shall never marry anybody else.  But
that doesn't say I have the right to marry her on a
hundred and ninety a year—you'll admit that, Bob?"

Bob admitted it, and ordered a "mixed Vermouth."  They
were sitting in the bar at the time, and could hear
Bess Bethune scolding the doctor in the passage
outside.  Distantly, from the drawing-room came the
strains of one of Schubert's nocturnes, played by a
"half-back" from Harrow, who had some difficulty
with the bass.  The charming Swiss girl, who served
them, did not understand much English, but they
would have consulted her for two pins, so dreadful
was the emergency.

"It's my opinion, we were just rushed into it," said
Bob, taking up the conversation from an unobservable
point, "I like Nellie better than any girl I ever
saw, but I confess it's rather a knock to hear she's
been engaged three times already.  Suppose I were to
meet one of the other fellows when we're married!
He'd have the laugh of me, anyway."

Dick sighed.

"Marjory's been engaged once—she told me so.
I don't think a girl can be expected to know her own
mind until she's two or three and twenty.  We'd have
to take a little flat somewhere, and cut it deuced close;
do you think she is the girl to do that, Bob?"

Bob was far from thinking it.

"She proposes to run a motor, Dick, she told me
so.  You've got fifteen hundred a year and a
shooting-box in Scotland, so the hotel says.  My place is in
Norfolk—I suppose they mean the tent Jack Stevens
and I pitched by Horsey Mere last autumn.  I didn't
say so, though; let's keep it up as long as we can; in
for a penny, in for fifteen hundred pound, you know."

Dick drained his glass and appeared to cogitate.
Presently he said, almost as though it were an inspiration:

"I tell you what, Bob, let's talk to the 'little widow'
about it.  I'm sure she's a woman of the world.  She'd
put us straight, right enough; let's go up and see her."

Bob looked at him scornfully.

"Why, where do you think she is, then?"

"Who, Mrs. Kennaird?  Why, in Number 43, of
course.  It's on the board, isn't it?"

"The board be hanged!  She's left the hotel—she
left this morning, and went up to the chalet, near
Benny's."

"Then let's go to the chalet after her.  I'm sure
she's one of the nicest little women in the place.  And
she's been married herself; she'd know what we ought
to do.  Let's go and see her now."

He stood up, excited by the idea; and, really, when
he came to reflect upon it, Bob did not find the notion
displeasing.  It was true that there had been ugly
talk in the hotel concerning this very person; true that
she had left under circumstances so mysterious that a
hundred versions were already current, both of her
past life and the promise of her future.  In these the
boys had taken little part, except to say that it was a
pity people had nothing better to do than to slander
so charming a lady; and their abstention made the
proposed visit to her chalet seem quite chivalrous.
Five minutes later they were climbing up the steps of
the skating-rink; whence it was but a little way to the
bungalow.

There were lights in the lower windows of the
house, and when they knocked, a solemn-looking Swiss
maid opened to them and listened as a freckled
automaton to their far from coherent explanations.  They
wished to see Mrs. Kennaird—for they were still in
ignorance of her true name—upon a private matter,
and one to be explained to no other.  To which Dick
added the rider, that they would be very grateful to
Mrs. Kennaird if she would see them, and would waste
as little as possible of her valuable time; a rigmarole
at which Bob would have laughed had he not been
so very nervous.  But, as he was nervous, he stood
first upon one foot and then upon the other and never
said a word until the maid returned and ushered them
into the drawing-room where the "little widow"
awaited them.  Bob did not know quite why it was,
but from that very moment he felt as though his
troubles were at an end; while as for Dick, he declared
afterwards that all his anxiety vanished like the mists
directly he set eyes on that gracious lady.

Lily was surprised to see the boys, for she had been
awaiting another—perhaps she welcomed them with
a greater cordiality upon that account.  Very
charming, in a loose gown of black lace, it was not her
beauty but her womanhood which cast a spell wherever
she went; and to be sure, she was as much out of place
in that mediocre medley of Andana as a diamond in a
setting of German silver.

"Yes," she said, encouraging Bob to speak, "I
remember you perfectly, Mr. Otway; were we not
fellow-prisoners at Sierre during the blizzard?  And
Mr. Fenton: why, you rode in the same sleigh the day we
came here."

Fenton said that it was so, and apologised at the
same time for certain frivolities upon the journey,
particularly for the votive offering of snow hurled at the
shrine of one Sir Gordon Snagg.  When this had
provoked the kindly lady to a smile, Bob took up the
running.

"Everyone at the hotel is beastly sorry that you
have left," he exclaimed, and then qualified it by
saying: "That is, everyone who counts.  The place
seems quite different since you went."

"Oh, but I only left this morning, and you were
paper-chasing, were you not?"

"Of course he was," cried Dick, "and proposing to
Nellie Rider at the same time.  That's what he came
to tell you, Mrs. Kennaird."

"While Bob wants to say that he is engaged to
Marjory, and doesn't know what to do about it."

"To do about it!  Oh, my dear Mr. Fenton, what
do you mean?"

They were both blushing very much by this time,
and it was quite a charity to ask them to sit down.
Lily herself took a seat upon the sofa, and, enjoying
the situation immensely, encouraged them to go on.

"So I must congratulate you both; how good of you
to take me into your confidence so soon.  Why, it was
only this morning, was it not?"

"In the woods below the Zaat," interposed Bob
quickly; "I could show you the place."

"And I was just a quarter of a mile away.  Was it
not a coincidence, Mrs. Kennaird?  We were both
done for when we met."

She looked from one to the other, asking herself
whether this was said in jest, or was indeed the very
far from sentimental confession of a not unsentimental
youth.  And that was a riddle she could not read.  It
seemed to her that she was listening to boys from a
public school, who had all the fine airs and the sporadic
idiom of the city, but were at heart as simple as any
Corydon from remote pastures.

"Really," she said, with just a suspicion of reproach
in her tone.  "Really, you must be serious, Mr. Fenton."

"I was never more serious in my life.  We're both
engaged, and we've got three hundred and ninety
pounds a year between us; that's why we've come
to you.  You can tell us what we ought to do about it."

She laughed—it was so droll.

"Then you regard it altogether as a matter of money?"

Bob looked rueful.

"We don't, but Mrs. Rider will.  These old girls
are regular nuts on the cash; she's sure to want to
know what we've got."

"Then, of course, you will tell her everything?"

They looked at each other a little sorrowfully.  It
was Dick who made answer.

"If we do, the engagements will be off.  We shall
have to cut the girls to-morrow, and it would make
it awkward for them.  Don't you think we could have
a truce or something—lie low until the night before
we go?  Don't you think that, Mrs. Kennaird?"

Lily shook her head.

"I think you are a pair of babies," she said
emphatically.  "You don't seem to know whether you
wish to marry or not.  That enters into the
question, I think; you certainly ought to make up your
minds."

They nodded their heads as though perfectly in
accord with so obvious a truth.  Presently, Bob, who
hugged his knee during the harangue—not under the
delusion that it was Nellie Rider's waist, but because
he did not know what to do with his hands—spoke
for the pair of them.

"You see," he said—and Lily saw nothing but the
humour of it—"you see it's this way.  Dick's a
sentimentalist, and I'm a philosopher, and we've tumbled
into the same boat somehow.  I would like to marry
Nellie if I could make her happy, and all that sort of
thing; but it's rotten beginning on two hundred a year,
and Dick's only got a hundred and ninety.  Now what
I feel is this: Is it quite fair to the girls?"

"Did you think of that when you proposed to them
this morning?"

Dick shook his head.

"I was never more in love in my life," he said.  "I
forgot everything else in heaven or earth but Marjory.
I would marry her to-morrow, if it wasn't for the
beastly cash."

"And you, Mr. Otway?"

"I say the same, but I don't think I should care to
begin so soon.  She might give me a year's grace."

Lily nodded her head; she understood now.

"I think you will have your year," she said a little
merrily.  "To tell you the truth, Mr. Otway, I should
not be surprised if you remained a bachelor.  As to
Mr. Fenton, well, I think that will depend upon
Mrs. Rider.  Would you like me to speak to her for you,
for both of you if you wish it?"

They jumped at the idea.  She was a regular brick,
and so very much superior to anyone at Andana that
the thing was as good as done if she became their
ambassador.  The promise put them in the seventh
heaven.

"If she says 'No,' we can let bygones be bygones,"
Bob added enthusiastically.  "I will treat Nellie as a
sister, and the hotel need know nothing about it.  You
don't know what a load you've taken off my back,
Mrs. Kennaird; I shall never forget it."

She rejoined that it was a pleasure to help two silly
boys in love, and having said it, the boys in their turn
perceived that the interview must terminate.  Reluctantly,
they shook hands with her, and then, as she
stood with them a moment at the door of the chalet,
Dick Fenton remarked the presence of two gendarmes,
who were going up toward Vermala, carrying lanterns
in their hands.  He bethought him immediately of the
comic-tragedy of the morning, and began to tell her
about it, just to show that he could speak of other
things than matrimony.

"They say there's been a murder up in the woods,"
he declared cheerfully; "that's the very latest
intelligence at Vermala.  Bob saw an Englishman being
followed by one of the Swiss police, and he heard a
weird cry a little while afterwards.  Then we met an
old Frenchman, who declared that he saw the gendarme
fall on the slope below the Zaat.  Those fellows would
be going up to look for him, I suppose.  There'll be a
pretty hullabaloo if they find him."

She did not speak a word; they mistook her silence
for lack of interest, and fearing to stay longer, said
"good night" once more, and went with boyish steps
down the hillside together.





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.. _`THE VIGIL OF TRAGEDY`:

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   CHAPTER XI


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   THE VIGIL OF TRAGEDY

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Lily watched the boys go down the hillside, and when
they were lost to view she did not move from the door
of the chalet.  An onlooker might have said that her
eyes searched the heights for tidings they alone could
give her.  A bitter wind blowing up the valley, a sky
pregnant with omens of tempest, did not drive her
back to the shelter of the house.  She was unconscious
of the cold, and took a cloak from the saturnine maid
with a smile and a protest.

"I really do not want it, Louise—I don't feel the cold."

"But, Madame, it is going to snow; you will be ill,
Madame, and no one to nurse you."

Lily put the cloak about her shoulders, and then
asked the girl another question.

"Can you see a lantern upon the hillside, Louise,
up there below Vermala?"  The maid, grown curious,
came and stood with her, but declared she could see
nothing.

"There were gendarmes by here just now, Madame.
I know them both, Albert and Philip, from Sion; there
will have been trouble at the hotel, then; they would
not send Monsieur Albert if it were not so."

Lily nodded her head.

"You do not often have trouble up here, Louise?"

"Ah, Madame, the world is all the same whether
you are up in the mountains or down in the valleys.
There are wicked people at Andana, just as anywhere
else.  It would be one of the waiters who has robbed
his master.  There are Germans at Vermala, and
they are all thieves—so, you see, the police must be
here."

Lily made no reply.  The lanterns had come into
view by this time, and could be seen dancing to and
fro upon the high path which leads up to the hotel
perched upon the plateau below the Zaat.  It was
apparent that the men were not searching the hillside as
she had supposed; and, when she was sure of this, she
shut the door and went back to the little library.
Louise, meanwhile, had returned to the kitchen to
prepare the modest supper which should be served at
eight o'clock.  Perhaps the gendarmes would pay the
chalet a visit upon their return, in view of which
possibility some culinary diligence was necessary.

In the library, Lily sat down to her writing-table to
finish a letter to her brother Harold, laid aside upon
the appearance of the boys, and now taken up with
reluctance.

She had been trying to tell her brother to concern
himself less with her affairs, and to be sure that
whatever she might do, due regard would be paid to the
interests and the scruples of others.  Such a theme
had been difficult enough before the boys appeared;
but she found it quite impossible when they had left.
Not a line could she write; not a sentence frame.  A
shadow had enveloped her suddenly, and she could not
escape it.

Word by word she pieced together the story she had
heard and tried to give it a meaning.  A man pursued
upon the mountain road and another following him!
Then a loud cry heard by several people, and the belief,
expressed openly, that murder had been done.  Shrinking
from her own dread of a terrible truth, she could
not quiet the voice which told her that there was but
one man at Vermala in whom, the probabilities being
considered, the police might be interested—and that
man, her husband, Luton!  Why, the whole trend of
his life pointed to such an end as this.  And she had
feared and dreamed of it since the day she first learned
to know him and to realise the tragedy of her own
fate.  The end would come before all the world, she
had said—and the day of it was at hand!

She put the letter into the blotting book, and went to
the window again.  The lanterns were no longer to be
seen, and the night had come down with a darkness so
intense that even the nearer slopes were invisible.
Shut from her eyes, the hidden woods were revealed
to a keen imagination which filled them with alien
figures, searching here and there for a truth which must
so alter her own life (if such a truth existed) that
hereafter the whole world would hardly offer her a
harbourage from the shame of it.

As in a vision, she saw the dead man lying there,
deep in the snow, and the white flakes falling anew
upon his face.  A glow from a lantern searched it out,
and declared the horror of the secret.  And up there
at the hotel another waited, dreading the instant of
discovery—perchance preparing already for flight in
the hope that discovery might never come.

It was all hysterical, and out of harmony with her
good common sense, as she admitted when she turned
from the window, and, looking at the clock, discovered
it to be half-past six precisely.  At seven, Luton had
promised to come down from Vermala to see if there
were a telegram from Sir Frederick Kennaird—letter
there could hardly be for another four and twenty
hours.  If he came, and assuredly he would come, he
might very well give an account of the affair which
would so deride her fancies that she would be ashamed
even to remember them.  Or, he might say that he
knew nothing of the affair at all, had taken no part
in it, and had not heard it named.  The latter was
quite an optimistic version, to which she clung
tenaciously, sitting again at her writing-table and
composing quite a satisfactory epistle upon Andana and its
people; to which she added excellent reasons for her
preference of the chalet she occupied.  The hotel, she
declared, was far too noisy—her nerves were no
longer equal to the exigencies of distracted youth, nor
could she support the banalities of a middle-age which
sought to stamp out the years by a grotesque display
of elephantine energies.  From these she had fled to
the solitude of the chalet—a half-truth which entirely
overlooked the personal element and skimmed over the
broken ground where the seeds of slander had fallen.

Seven o'clock struck while she was still at the table,
but there was no sign of Luton, nor any message from
him at the quarter past the hour.  If he were late,
then, she thought, that was the first occasion she could
remember when he had neglected an appointment to
his own advantage and the benefit of his creditors.
He had told her that his need was urgent, and had sent
letters from Bothand and Co. confirming his
statements.  Nine thousand four hundred pounds must be
paid if he would stave off those "further proceedings"
with which they threatened him; and if he did
not pay, then it was clear that the firm would discover
at a later date excellent reasons for a criminal
prosecution.  In such a case, extradition would not be
refused, nor would it be difficult for the police to trace
a man who was at so little pains to act prudently as
Luton Delayne.

The clock struck the three-quarters, and Lily put on
her cloak and went to the door again.  It was
snowing heavily by this time, and the wind almost raging
in the pass.  Despite the rigours of the night, she
determined to go a little way upon the road in the hope
that she might meet Luton; and she set out bravely,
afraid that the wrathful Louise might detect her and
yet determined in her purpose.  Two hundred yards
from the chalet, a burst of light upon the hillside
marked the spot where the brothers Benson were
living, and by this she must go upon her way to Vermala.
It chanced, however, that Jack Benson stood at the
door of the shed when she approached, and it was
natural to ask him how his brother did.  Jack thought
little of women, as a rule, and he dreaded this
particular woman's influence with Benny; but he could not
answer her uncivilly, and like the others, he was,
metaphorically, at her feet before she had spoken twenty
words to him.

"Is that you, Mrs. Kennaird; what a night, isn't
it?  Aren't you rather daring to be out?"

"Oh!" she said, "I had no idea there was such
a wind blowing.  Will you let me shelter a moment?
I'm really quite out of breath.  That's the shed where
your brother keeps his aeroplane, is it not?  He told
me all about it, you know.  I'm very much interested."

Jack muttered to himself that Benny was losing his
wits, or he would never have talked about the machine
to a woman; but a moment's reflection reminded him
that the sex is rarely of a mechanical turn, and would
hardly profit by the confidence.  So he threw the door
open wide, and the electric lamps blazing within cast a
warm aureole upon the snow and upon Lily's pale face.
Perhaps Jack understood his brother's infatuation
then, if he could not condone it.

"You'll find us rather upside down," he said
apologetically.  "We're always like that when Benny's
away—we haven't his idea of order.  But we're
pretty useful in our way, and the abbé's as good as
any mechanic from Bleriot's.  He's just turning up
the planes, if you understand what that is, Mrs. Kennaird;
sewing them up with steel wire, so to speak.  I
assure you, we'd have gone to pot without the abbé."

The little priest looked up and smiled pleasantly.
He wore a white apron over his cassock, and sat with
one of Benny's planes over his knee, repairing and
relaying the canvas with the skill of a trained
workman.  Jack himself was enveloped in engineer's
overalls, and had been working at a forge in the far
corner; he, too, was liberally decorated with choice smuts,
and had a very chart of carbon upon his cheeks.

"Do you say Mr. Benson is away?" Lily asked
him.  Jack responded as one who had a personal grievance.

"He was off before lunch.  Wouldn't eat anything
for some reason which he'll have forgotten by the time
he comes back.  I don't know where he is, I'm
sure.  He always goes away just when we want him most."

"But, surely, this is a dreadful night to be out; he
should have returned by this time?"

The abbé nodded his head.

"Madame is quite right," he said; "he should have
returned.  It is very necessary for him to be here
these days; he will lose a great deal of money if he
behaves so foolishly; would that Madame told him as much!"

"I?" exclaimed Lily, turning her large eyes upon
him.  "But, surely, Mr. Benson would not listen to a
woman?"

"He would listen to you," Jack rejoined with
emphasis.  "He thinks a good deal of your opinion—he
told me so."

She smiled, but turned away her eyes nevertheless.
"And what am I to say to your brother?"

"Tell him that he can do it yet, if he will only
believe as much.  Say that it's not the game for him
to be here, there and everywhere when his future
depends on what we're doing for him.  If he wins the
ten thousand pounds put up by the London daily paper,
he's a made man for life.  There's nothing Benny
could not do with capital, nothing on earth, I do
believe.  Why, he's invented a dozen machines as clever
as this, and all of them are just so many drawings,
because he hasn't got the money to build them.  And
here's ten thousand going begging, so to speak, and
he's dreaming all the time; acting like some moonsick
shepherdess, and got just about as much sense in his
head.  If you'd tell him that, you'd be doing him a
very great kindness, Mrs. Kennaird.  There's no one
else at Andana who could do it, I assure you."

Lily looked from one to the other: her face was
very pale, her manner unusually earnest.

"And what does Monsieur l'Abbé say?"

The abbé ceased to work at the canvas upon his knee.

"I think that Madame is the only person who could
help us," he said at length; and having said it he cast
down his eyes and went on with his work.  She was a
clever woman, and she would understand that, he
thought.  Nor was he mistaken.  Madame understood
him perfectly.

"I see Mr. Benson so rarely," she said.  "Now that
I have left the hotel my opportunities will be fewer.
But that is not to say that I will not do my best when
I do see him, if you care to tell him so."

Jack was delighted.

"I'll send him down to your place in the morning,"
he exclaimed; "that is, with your permission, he shall
come directly after breakfast.  Perhaps you will be
going skating or something.  If so, he might meet you
on the rink?"

She smiled at his eagerness.

"I shall be pleased to see your brother any time.
Now I fear I must go.  Is not that eight o'clock
striking?  My cook will never forgive me."

A miserable cuckoo-clock shrieked the hour with
intolerable emphasis, and reminded them all of the
flesh-pots.  Jack, however, remembered his manners
sufficiently to escort her down the hillside, and it was
a quarter past eight when he left her at her own door.
The snow still fell fast, and the wind howled dismally
up the valley.  It was going to be a dreadful night.

"You won't forget," he said as he turned at her
gate and drew the collar of his heavy coat about his
ears.  She answered that she would expect Benny
sometime during the morning, and immediately went
in to ask her servant if anyone had come.  When
Louise retorted with a shrug of the shoulders and the
inquiry, "Who would come upon such a night?" Madame
had nothing to say.

The hours were making it very difficult for her to
believe the best.  The dawn found her still awake, and
quite prepared for that hour of crisis which such a life
as Luton's had made inevitable.





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   CHAPTER XII


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   FLIGHT

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The Abbé Villari slept at Benny's chalet that night,
fearful of the storm, and not a little concerned at the
absence of its master.  This anxiety he shared with
Jack, who suggested a hundred reasons which might
have taken Benny to Sierre, but none which could
have kept him there—unless it were the storm, which
in the case of such a man seemed altogether insufficient.

"He'll have gone down to see if the stuff has
come," Jack declared with conviction; "they say at
the stables that he engaged a sleigh shortly after ten
o'clock.  I know he's ordered a lot of things, and he
was particularly anxious to have the new steel arms
for the frame.  If the snow's very bad down there,
the fellow who drives the sleigh may have refused to
come up, and then Benny would be on his own.  That
wouldn't matter much to him, though, for he's as tough
as old leather, and would just as soon walk up as ride.
I can't think why he hasn't done it, Abbé."

The abbé agreed, although he had a poor opinion
of some of the coachmen at Andana.

"The fellows like to spend a night in the town," he
said, with a suggestion of ascetic regret.  "It is
difficult for a stranger to think of Sierre in such a light,
but, after all, these things are a question of
opportunity.  A showman with a bear is a great person in a
village where they have never seen bears, and so a
man with a fiddle is an orchestra for people who have
no music.  I should imagine that André has refused
to come back, and that your brother will remain at the
Terminus Hotel.  If so, he will be very comfortable,
for the wines are excellent, and nobody would quarrel
with the cooking.  I think we had better say that he
has done so, and go on with our work.  There is
nothing so unprofitable as speculation when time alone can
tell us the truth."

Jack admitted the good sense of it, but he did little
work, and after they had supped he went some way
down to the road toward the village of Andana in the
hope that he might discover Benny and the sleigh.  It
was a vain quest, however, and he returned to tell the
abbé that the wind had nearly blown him off his legs,
and that if Benny had refused to return from Sierre,
he was no fool for his choice.  Thereafter they ceased
to speak about it, but neither suggested bed; and
although they slept a little after twelve o'clock, the dawn
found them wide awake and alert for tidings of the
wanderer.

Benny was at Sierre—their guess was perfectly
correct.  Where they were at fault was in the matter
of motive, which they failed entirely to comprehend.
Which mystery is the better understood by harking
back to the bridle track below Vermala, at an hour
when a certain foreigner spoke of a strange affair upon
the hillside, and those two masters of idiomatic but
obsolete French, Bob Otway and Dick Fenton,
responded incoherently to his vain appeals.

Benny, it will be remembered, had heard the
Frenchman's story, and immediately understood its meaning.
His knowledge of Luton Delayne convinced him that
such an act of folly was to be expected from a man
famous in two counties for the violence of his temper.
He perceived that some scandalous affair had set the
police upon the baronet's track, that one of them had
been set to watch him and had been detected in the act.
There had been an exchange of angry words, of abuse
upon the one hand and of insolence upon the
other—and then the blow.  Just as Luton Delayne had invited
the contempt of his neighbours at Holmswell by
descending to a vulgar arena in which a butcher figured
not ingloriously, so here in Switzerland had his temper
got the better of him and this blow been struck.  What
the consequences might be, Benny did not care to ask
himself; but he realised that they might be momentous,
and remembering that the man was Lily's husband, he
went up to Vermala at once and began to search the
hillside.  Was it possible that the affair had been
nothing but an idle fracas after all?  Had the gendarme
gone off to report the matter to his superiors, as one
calling for a prosecution which would amuse the
community?  It might be that, he said, and disbelieving
it utterly, he turned to the heights.

The snow was firm and hard upon the narrow track,
and revealed little even to his keen eyes.  He
perceived that luges had gone up to the hotel, and he
could almost say how many.  The track itself
disclosed but gentle slopes, and none which could be called
a precipice even by an imaginative person.  The woods
harboured deep drifts of snow, and were scarred here
and there by the trails of skis; but at one spot alone
was there any possible scene for such a drama as the
Frenchman had described.  This lay immediately
below the hotel; a plateau upon which two men could
stand side by side, with a sheer wall of rock falling
fifty or sixty feet away from it and an arbour of the
pines, which the sun could hardly penetrate, at its foot.

Benny climbed to the plateau, and kneeling there he
peered down to the depths.  A great drift of snow
had culminated about the trunks of three trees which
appeared to grow straight out of the hillside.  On the
plateau itself there were footprints which clearly
indicated that two people had faced each other, and that
a scuffle had taken place.  But, and this was the more
remarkable thing, save for a curious wraith of snow
some twenty feet down the abyss, there was no scar
upon the unbroken sheet of white which stretched from
the plateau to the trees; not a mark which would have
invited the suspicions of the most watchful.  Many
men, satisfied with the scrutiny, would have gone on
at once, convinced that the glen could tell them
nothing; but Benny was not that kind of man, and when
he had reflected upon it a little while, and had made
sure that his acts would not be observed, an idea came
to him, and he put it into practice immediately.  It
was nothing less than this: to descend the precipice by
the help of the trees, and to discover for himself the
secret of the snow wraith, if secret there were.

The feat was not a little difficult, perhaps really
dangerous.  But here was a man who had ploughed
the "roaring forties" in an old Scotch brig, and had
the foot of a goat upon a height.  Swinging himself
out upon a branch, to which he leaped, Benny climbed
over to other branches; then he slid down the trunk
of a pine as a sailor down a pole.  He was five
minutes in the hollow below the plateau, and a quarter of
an hour making his way back through the heavy
drifts to the path he had quitted.  Then he went
straight on to the hotel at Vermala—a silent man,
with set face and eyes which saw nothing but the track
before him.

To the porter who told him that the Englishman,
Mr. Faikes, was engaged in his private room Benny
merely replied: "Go back, and say he'll have to see
me."  Thereafter, he waited, standing immobile in the
hall, and quite unconscious of the guests who studied
him with critical eyes.  Some of these knew him for
the winner of the Grand Prix down at Andana, and
wondered that such a man should interest himself in
Alpine sports; but others made a jest upon his earnestness,
and said, behind their papers, that he looked like
the impersonification of tragedy.

Luton Delayne had a sitting-room looking over
toward the Weisshorn, and here Benny discovered him
a few moments later.  A whisky-and-soda stood at his
side, and the ends of innumerable cigarettes lay in a
tawdry Swiss ash-tray.  Evidently he had but recently
returned from the open, for he still wore heavy boots
and puttees, and these were wet with the snow.  His
manner was characteristically aggressive, and his
question, "Well, what the devil do you want with me?"
quite in the expected tone.

Benny shut the door of the room carefully behind
him, and then crossed it on tip-toe, an unnecessary
proceeding, but one in keeping with his own desire
for secrecy.  His hands were thrust deep in his
trousers pockets, and he had quite forgotten to take off the
old Alpine hat without which his best friends at
Andana would not have recognised him.  Delayne could
not but see that this man had a right to come to him
as he did, and his face blanched suddenly.

"You know why I have come here, Sir Luton—none
but a d——d fool would ask that question.  I've
come to save your neck!"

Delayne puffed hard at his cigarette, and then laid
the end of it down with the others.

"Oh," he exclaimed in the grand manner; "so you
know about the row, then?"

Benny went to the window and looked out.  The
plateau lay a hundred yards from the hotel, but was
hidden by a belt of trees.  He wondered if others had
already made their way there—searching for what he
had found.  The minutes were precious if he would
save this madman for a woman's sake.

"Yes," he said, swinging round on his heel, "I
know about the row.  Half the place is talking about
it.  I suppose you'll be joining in yourself just
now—when the police come along.  That should be
before morning with any luck—it won't be much later
anyway."

The baronet rose and walked across to the window.
Benny could see that his hands were twitching, while
his eyes almost danced in his head.

"The man followed me," he said inconsequently.
"It was the most damnably impertinent thing I ever
saw in all my life.  When I asked him what he
wanted, he wouldn't say a word.  I warned him to
keep off, and he was on my heels again in five minutes.
Would you stand that yourself?  You're a man, and
can judge between us?  Would you stand it?"

Benny shrugged his shoulders.

"What we have to stand depends on our footing.
The man who grubs in dirty soil mustn't complain
that his hands are black.  You came to blows, I
suppose, and he went over.  Is that what you would say?"

"I struck him on the face, and he tried to draw
a revolver on me—we were on the plateau, and he
went over.  If he's hurt, I'll pay compensation.  What
more do you want?"

Benny looked at him curiously.  Was he lying
outright, or merely reciting a defence he had rehearsed
in the interval?  It was difficult to say.  The truth
must be told without delay, for the truth alone could
move him.

"You say the man went over.  Did you see him
after he fell?"

"See him!  What do you mean?"

"I ask if you saw him after he fell—he might
have been injured, you know?"

Delayne returned to the table, and took a deep
draught from the tumbler there.

"You know something," he said, averting his eyes.
"Well, I'm not a child; tell me."

Benny crossed over, and looked him full in the face.

"It's a pity you didn't stop," he said quietly—"the
man's dead—!"

Delayne began to tremble, a little at first and then
as one stricken by an ague.  Reaction had come in an
instant—the man's hands were as cold as ice, he could
not keep still.

"How do you know he's dead?"

"I have seen him, touched him!  He's stone dead
at the foot of the clump of pines: that's what I came
here to tell you."

Delayne said: "My God!" and sank into the chair.
He began to blubber like a child; his whole body
twitched in a nervous collapse to be expected of such
a temperament.  The truth had stricken him; it
prevailed above any thought of his own safety, which
was left to the man who had come to him with so little
ceremony.

"You have twenty hours at the best, six at the
worst," Benny said, ignoring the outbreak and
knowing that it would pass.  "If the little Frenchman who
saw him fall doesn't blab, the police may not be here
until the morning.  You'll have to answer for this
sooner or later, but you'll answer it better across the
frontier.  Are you going to start at once, or wait for
them to come for you?  Take another drop of that
whisky, and then tell me.  I can give you that long."

The man obeyed him like a child.  He was already
trying to excuse himself, to make a case which might
be put to a jury subsequently.

"It's no more than mischance, look at it how you
like.  He provoked me—I had no intention to kill
him.  If he'd have gone away, it would have been all
right.  What business had he to follow me, I ask you,
what business had he?  Is this a free country?  Then
why did he spy on me?  Let the police answer that:
what right had he to spy on me?"

Benny became contemptuous now.

"They'll answer it sharp enough when they are
here.  You'll learn pretty quick whether it's a free
country or not.  If I were you, I would choose
another, and let my lawyers do the talking from there.
You could catch the afternoon train through the
tunnel, if you were quick about it.  You'd be in Italy
to-morrow, and in my house opposite Magadino the
day after.  There's nobody there but an old Italian
woman, and she couldn't pronounce your name if she
knew it.  I have the shanty until the winter—the
hydroplanes I was running in the fall are still there,
and some other stuff.  Say you come on my business,
and no one will question you.  That's what I would do
if I were you, and I wouldn't be long in doing it either."

He stood waiting for an answer, his arms still
thrust deep into his trousers pockets and his hat awry.
The expression of low cunning which crept upon the
baronet's face did not deter him in any way.  He
cared not a straw for any imputations of motive,
whatever they might be.  A determination to save Lily
Delayne from the shame of this madness drove him as
a spur.  Had it been otherwise he would not have
crossed the street at this man's beck.

Delayne understood the situation perfectly, and was
upon the point of confessing as much.  He knew how
sure was his wife's influence over men, and for an
instant a savage impulse of jealousy impelled him to
turn on the man who would have befriended him for
his wife's sake and to say all that was in his mind.
From this an instinct of prudence saved him at the
last moment.  He remembered the words: "The man
is dead," and began to shudder.  Yes, flight was his
only chance—but flight must imply guilt!

"Oh," he exclaimed, after a moment's hesitation,
"that's all very well, but if I go, what will they say?
And my valet, Paul—what of him?  Is he ready to
hold his tongue, do you think?"

"I think nothing.  Send him to Paris by the
Simplon to-night.  Tell him you're following later.
You're not going to say that you've been mad enough
to take him into your confidence?"

"Nothing of the kind; but he's a Swiss.  They
may question him about me?"

"In Paris—"

Delayne shrugged his shoulders.

"If I go, I admit that the police had the right to
molest me."

"If you stay, by God, they'll guillotine you.  Don't
you understand that—don't you see that this man was
in the service of the State?  Lord, a child would know
better.  And you're losing the minutes.  I say, the
minutes; and every one may be the most precious
you'll ever live."

Delayne still hesitated, pacing the room, and
muttering all the jargon of defence he had recited a
hundred times since the instant of his passion.  Despite
his dilemma, certain instincts of his pride remained.
How should he tell this bull-dog of an engineer that
he was at his wits' end to pay his hotel bill?  He
would never have told him had not Benny guessed it
from the first.

"You want money, perhaps?" he said, speaking
in a new tone, which a sense of delicacy forced upon
him.  "Well, I'll see you through this, and you can
pay me when you like.  I'll give you a hundred at
Brigue, and you can run the shanty with that until I
come.  Ten pounds should see your man to Paris—let
him go to a back-street hotel until you come.  You
know the place well enough for that, and can direct
him.  I'm going down to order the sleigh.  It'll be at
the cross-roads above the Palace in half an hour.  If
you're not there when I bring it, a telegram will go to
Sierre.  As sure as I stand here, I'll dispatch that if
you keep me waiting five minutes.  Now go, and do
what I tell you—you've played the fool long enough."

He strode from the room and the hotel.  Half an
hour afterwards, Luton Delayne and the valet, Paul,
met him at the cross-roads above Andana, and stepped
aboard the sleigh he had hired from Karl Meyer, the
jobmaster at the Park.  Benny's excuse, that he wished
to go down alone to bring up "stuff" from Sierre,
satisfied the phlegmatic German, who had a good
customer in this active Englishman.  He promised to
telephone for a second horse to be at the Terminus Hotel
in the valley that night, and gave no further thought
to the matter.

Benny, in the meantime, discovered powers of
prevision which were quite remarkable.  His immediate
object was to get this madman across the Pass, and to
harbour him in his own shanty on Lake Maggiore
without the loss of an hour.  He foresaw that the
departure of a certain Mr. Faikes from the hotel at
Vermala, and the journey of that worthy's valet to Paris,
would be in his favour.  Luton Delayne must take his
own name at Domo d'Ossola, where his presence would
be of no concern to the Swiss authorities, and would
never be associated with such a crime.  The better to
attain this object, he set down the valet, Paul, at the
station in Sierre, and then, under the pretence that he
himself and Sir Luton were to pass a few days at the
Terminus Hotel, he returned at once to the great high
road through the valley of the Simplon, and set out
boldly for Visp.

Here, and here only, luck went with him.  He had
been but three hours upon the road when the storm
overtook him—another hour brought him to a hamlet,
where the lights of a railway station shone warmly
through the blinding haze of snow.  He inquired of
the station-master, and learned that a train would
leave for Milan within the hour.  Nothing could be
more opportune; he believed that he had succeeded
in his task beyond all hope, and that the story of the
tragedy at Vermala would never be known to the world.

"Go straight through to Domo d'Ossola without a
word to anybody," he said to Delayne.  "I will
telegraph instructions to the old woman at the shanty
to-morrow, and you can make your way there as soon
as you please.  If there is any danger, I will warn
you of it.  That's my part of the business: yours is to
hold your tongue, whatever the consequences."

Sir Luton hardly answered him.  A certain
contempt for himself because he had let this masterful
personage persuade him to an ignominious flight now
took possession of him, and entirely banished any
thought of gratitude.  The money which was thrust
upon him he received with the air of a master
borrowing from a servant.  Distance had dwarfed his
understanding of danger, and he had forgotten already his
own platitudes of defence.  Was he not an
Englishman, and what right had that d——d fool to spy upon
him?  For two pins he would have returned to Sierre
and told the authorities as much.

Of this resolution he quickly repented, and, being
bundled into the train for Milan, condescended to offer
his hand to the man who had saved him.  It chanced,
however, that Benny had turned his back at this
particular moment, and thus missed the proffered grasp
which was to be the laurel upon his altruism.  Five
minutes later he set out through the blinding storm
for Sierre, where he arrived at the Terminus Hotel in
time for dinner.  All thoughts of going up to Andana
that night had now been abandoned.  He decided to
sleep at the hotel, and to return as soon as daylight
would let him.

Perhaps such a change from his normal way of life
was not unwelcome.  There is bustle of a kind at
Sierre, where stranded tourists are wont to gather and
excited English folk to indulge in the platitudes of
travel.  This pleasant little town, too, is honoured by
the great Simplon express, which calls after nine
o'clock, and is to be stopped by the station-master's
whistle when there are passengers to take up.  Benny
dined at his leisure, and having lighted a cigar, he
strolled over to the station and waited for the express
to come in.  The snow fell heavily, and the wind
moaned in the heights; but there was good shelter
here at the heart of the valley and a sense of sanctuary
very welcome.  Benny knew that he had done as good
a day's work as he would ever do; and, perhaps, he
began to think that after all he was not such an
unlucky mortal—for, surely, the greatest of good luck
is the possibility to help others.

Half an hour passed in optimistic reflections, and
then the express from Milan came in.  There were
three English passengers, and the station-master ran
out on the rails and blew a shrill whistle when the
great flaming headlights of the engine appeared round
the bend.  Then the English folk were hauled up into
a wagon-lit and the train went on, scattering flaming
sparks into the haze of snow.  When all was silent in
the station, Benny returned toward the hotel, and had
taken some twenty steps across the courtyard when he
came almost face to face with Paul, the valet, who
walked arm-in-arm with a diminutive gendarme, to
whom he was talking earnestly.  Benny watched him
as though he had seen a ghost.  Should not the fellow
have been on his way to Paris three hours or more ago!

He did not know what to do: whether to speak to
the man or merely to watch him.  Delayne had spoken
little of this servant, nor did Benny know whether he
were to be trusted or feared.  On the face of it, the
latter opinion should have been preferred; for what had
a valet to do with the police, and how came it that this
particular valet postponed his visit to Paris to confab
with one of them?  Benny detected danger and drew
back into the shadows.

"They may take him at the frontier after all," he said.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`AFTER THE STORM`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XIII


.. class:: center medium bold

   AFTER THE STORM

.. vspace:: 2

Bob Otway was down very early upon the morning
after the great storm, and he was not a little surprised
to find Dick Fenton waiting upon the plateau before
the hotel, whence he surveyed the newly-fallen snow
with greedy eyes.  In truth, Dick was telling himself
that he would take Marjory up to the wood again, and
compel her to confess that she loved him; an unnecessary
repetition of an ancient story, but pleasant enough
when white arms go with it.

Bob Otway was less sentimental.  He confessed
that he felt a little down, and he added the
information that the concierge was a "nut."  There had been
great "events" last night after Dick went to bed to
dream of Marjory; much damage had been done.  All
this would be charged for when the weekly bills were
sent on, and as Bob asked ruefully: "What do you
think a 'cello's worth, Dick; is it worth thirty
shillings?"  By which he implied the destruction of such
an instrument and his own share therein.

"It was Rivers who began it," he explained, as they
strolled about arm in arm, waiting for the bell to
announce morning coffee: "He tried to hang up the
big clock in the hall with a drawing pin, and when the
concierge spotted him, Billy Godeyer was doing the
same for the picture of the Battle of Sedan.  Then
Rivers found that the band had left their instruments
behind in the drawing-room, and we had a concert.
Never saw such rot; I played the 'cello and all the
hair came out of the bow before I'd sawed out half
a tune.  They say we smashed five notes in the piano,
but I don't believe it.  Old Gordon Snagg doesn't like
noise, so we played on his account; he'd pay the
damage if he were a gentleman."

Dick agreed to that, but didn't much care to talk
about music.  The night had brought pleasant dreams
of Marjory.  He really was rather sorry that they had
chosen the "little widow" for their ambassador.

"We were in too much of a hurry," he said, arguing
in a philosophical if amatory vein.  "Why not let it
run until we get back to England?  It's beastly to
think about money in such a place as this, and I'm
sure Marjory would hate me for doing it.  I'll speak
to my uncle when I get back, and he might do
something for me.  Perhaps he'll send me out to Canada;
there's lots of cash to be made there, and why
shouldn't we make some of it?  Let's have some fun,
Bob.  You're such a gloomy beggar; you always look
at things in the worst light."

Bob retorted that it depended upon the age of the
lady; a vague and half-truthful remembrance of the
havoc which the sun had played with the otherwise
peach-like skin of a nameless nymph.  The morning
found him in a dubious-mood about Nellie, but less
alarmed about the enormity of the offence.  She really
was a "jolly little girl," and it had been quite
impossible not to propose to her in the circumstances.  With
good luck, her views upon the final step of matrimony
might be as distant as his own.  And who could say
that something would not turn up?

"Mrs. Rider will make the devil of a row about it,
and we shall have to clear out," he said musingly.  "I
know she brought the girls here to get 'em off, but she
won't think very much of the particular planks for this
particular plunge.  I'm sorry, too, that we spoke to
the 'little widow.'  It's rather jolly to be thought
rich, though it wouldn't be honest to the girls to leave
them under that impression.  I shall tell Nellie just
what I've got when we're up in the wood this
morning.  Two hundred a year sounds all right when
someone else is paying your hotel bill.  It's when you come
to running a pug dog and a motor-car that you find
where the slice pinches."

"But one would begin in a small way, Bob."

Bob shook his head.

"That's what the modern girl tells you; she
follows it up with the hint that she'd like a flat
overlooking the park, and really couldn't live in Bayswater.
It's a day of big ideas and little balances.  I believe
my old guv'nor was right when he said that money
was the greatest curse that ever came into the world.
There'd be a lot of happiness if it wasn't for money,
Dick.  Think of it, if fashion wasn't so rotten, we
might camp out the first year, live in a tent for two,
and sleep by the roadside.  I'm told it's healthy, and
I know Mecredy did it.  There'd be no rent to pay,
and we might sell our portraits as an advertisement
for a tonic.  As it is, we've just got to own up that
we're paupers; and if the girls take pity on us—well,
we'll feel smaller than ever."

Dick was not so sure of it.  Ancient fables concerning
the angelic qualities of the sex still buoyed him up
with youthful hopes.

"Oh," he said loftily, "that's all rot, Bob.  Money's
something, of course, but lots of girls don't think much
about it.  Look at old Gordon Snagg.  He's supposed
to be worth half a million; they say he paid ten
thousand for his knighthood; do you think Marjory would
have had him if he'd have proposed to her?  Give
sentiment half a chance.  Surely, it is possible to
believe that the girl you're going to marry has some other
ideas but those of your bank balance?"

Bob would not give in.

"Wait until old Mrs. Rider gets going," he
exclaimed sententiously.  "We shall hear some home
truths then, old chap, and just when we were
beginning to enjoy ourselves.  By Jove, isn't it a day!
Look at the sun on the old Rothhorn; isn't it splendid,
Dick? and it rises upon our hour of woe.  Well, I
suppose the ancient martyrs went through this kind of
thing; but I'm hanged if I wouldn't sooner go to the
dentist any day.  What shall we say to the old girl?
How shall we tell her that the truth—?"

"I shall tell her for Marjory's sake.  Why, I
believe she's up at the window there, and Nellie as well.
Don't you see them, Bob?"

The girls were giggling behind the sun-blind of a
third-floor window, but they disappeared almost
instantly when their object of attracting attention had
been achieved.  It still wanted ten minutes to the first
breakfast-bell, and a few active folk had now
appeared to enjoy the sunshine, or to drag luges up the
ice-run and have a "canter" down before the coffee.
The latter idea appealed to the boys; and getting their
luges from the hall, they went up to the starting-point.
This was the moment, however, when a little
procession appeared upon the mountain track above them;
and being attracted by the novelty of the spectacle,
they stood to see it pass.

"They're soldiers, aren't they, Bob?"

"Looks very much like it.  What can they be doing
up here?"

"Would it be about the story?  Surely, they can't
have found the man?"

"I wouldn't wonder; why, here's our little
Frenchman, who wanted to tell us all about it yesterday.
He'll know what's up; let's ask him."

"But he doesn't understand your French!"

Bob was not to be daunted.  Walking across the
snow to the edge of the wood, he took off his hat to
the Frenchman, and asked him the question: "What
are they doing up there, monsieur?"

The reply overwhelmed the young man by its
velocity.  He caught the word *un mort*, or thought that
he did; but so great was the stranger's desire to tell
him that a flood of terrible English followed upon the
outbreak.  The soldiers had been searching the snow
for the body of a comrade, so much Bob made of it;
and not only had they been searching, but the quest
had been successful.  They were now carrying the
dead man down to Andana, whence the body would be
conveyed in a sleigh to Martigny.  With which
intimation, and some incoherent reflections upon the whole
tragedy, the Frenchman turned upon his heel and left
them.  His own curiosity would take him some
distance in the wake of the procession.  Like all his race,
the psychology of crime fascinated him beyond any
other study.

The youths, in their turn, were not a little awed by
this gruesome spectacle, nor could they remain
insensible to its romance.  Down below, upon the plateau,
were the first of the merrymakers, the outposts of a
vigorous life, the careless creatures of laughter and
the sunshine.  Here upon the height, beneath a tracery
of silver, upon a path still in shadow, were the
emblems of death and eternal sleep.  Stern figures, whose
footfalls fell soft upon the untrodden snow, moved
with military rhythm about the body of their
comrade.  None spoke, none paused, the faces of all were
hard set and expressionless.  To-morrow the whole
of Switzerland would be talking of this crime; to-day
it was but a muttered whisper, which hardly echoed in
the woods which harboured it.

But of this the lads knew nothing, and when the
procession disappeared from their view they went racing
down to the Palace; where they arrived at the precise
moment of Miss Marjory and Miss Nellie Rider's
appearance, in virginal white.

The "girls" were dreadfully important people this
morning.  And how little they thought of the married
women!





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE GENDARME PHILIP`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XIV


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE GENDARME PHILIP

.. vspace:: 2

Lily was usually an early riser, but the night of storm
had wearied her, and it was nearly ten o'clock when she
rang for her maid to bring her coffee.

This was the hour of the day she preferred to any
other in a general way.  Then she had letters from
her English friends, and journals, often long delayed
upon their voyage, but none the less welcome.  To
open the windows wide and breathe the air blowing
straight into the room from the glaciers of the
Weisshorn, to sup tea at her leisure and hear of this person
and of that who groped their muggy way in London's
chill atmosphere, were pleasures of the day she would
not readily forgo.  Just as the ascetic believes that the
joy of the blessed is to rejoice upon the sufferings of
the damned, so did Lily realise her own opportunities
the better when contemplating the despair of the
pilgrims she had quitted.  London was "awful," one
woman said; "you could hardly see how badly dressed
the other women were."

The morning of the flight brought Louise to the
room in a querulous mood.  She had quite expected
that there would be gendarmes in the kitchen, and
was disappointed when none came.  True, a postman
had told her strange things and had hinted at this
and that in a way which irritated her dull understanding;
but of news she had none, save that which
Madame's letters implied—and, to be sure, it was a pity
she could not read them.  Failing the opportunity,
she banged them down on the bed as an act of
protest, and with the intimation that the sun would close
the skating rink at twelve, bounced out of the room
with no more grace than she had bounced in.

There were three letters for Lily, all addressed to
Mrs. Kennaird; but of the three, the handwriting of
one alone arrested her immediate attention.  This was
from her father, Sir Frederick Kennaird; a long and
rambling epistle, expressing all the petulance, the anger
and the selfishness of a rich man called upon to
surrender a portion of his riches.

Reciting the family story from the moment when
she had married Luton Delayne, his first charge
concerned her choice of such a man, when it ignored
altogether the paternal satisfaction which the marriage
had awakened at the moment of its inception.  These
particular Delaynes, Sir Frederick wrote, had been bad
eggs since old General Delayne of Huddlesmere played
the knave in the American War, and was shot by a
Yankee whose house he had outraged.  Nothing was
to be hoped from such a family; nor was anything
more to be hoped from the writer, should a further
request on Luton's behalf be made.

As to Bothand and Co. and the alleged fraud, Sir
Frederick had little sympathy for the West-End
jewellers, the majority of whom he declared to be rascals
who battened on the folly and the vanity of unfledged
boys and vulgar parvenues.  Luton's hint that his
wife's name had been used was received with the
derision which, perhaps, it deserved.  It was a device,
he said, to extort money under a species of blackmail
permitted by the law.  Should such an allegation be
made seriously, it would be met in a way which would
surprise these people.  Luton's debt was another thing,
and not to be taken lightly.  The amount of it he
considered incredible; this firm must be nothing less
than money-lenders in disguise, and should be treated
accordingly.  Sir Frederick promised to set his
solicitors, Welis and Welis, to work to see what could
be done.  At the same time, he concluded his reference
to an unpleasant affair by the assurance that his
son-in-law would yet make a beggar of him, and that Lily
owed it to him to see that at his age some consideration
was shown for a man who had done so much for them both.

She did not fall to observe that her father said
nothing upon the more vital matter of her own
unhappiness; nor did he invite her to Benham Priory,
whither he had taken his young American wife, Edna.
Lily did not need this oversight to assure her that the
Priory had ceased to be her home, and that of all the
houses she knew, there would the coldest welcome be
offered her.  These letters from Sir Frederick were
so stereotyped in their expressions that they provoked
no longer those bitter memories once associated with
them, He had ceased to remember any obligations
toward his children save those which their importunities
thrust upon him; to write to him, who should have
been her best friend, had become a humiliation.

She crushed the letter in her hand, and pulling on
her dressing gown, she went to the window and looked
out.  The superb morning had sent a merry throng to
the skating rink, where Dr. Orange and Bess Bethune
were delighting an envious crowd by a sedate
performance in the "English" school; while upon the
opposite side of the rink, Keith Rivers pirouetted and
pranced in the "International" fashion, to the
satisfaction of the inexpert, who thought the English
manner dull.  A few beginners were in remote corners,
and were as ungoverned ships upon a crowded waterway;
but they fell in solemn silence, for it is heresy
here to laugh at that ignorance which, even when
firmly seated, is so far from bliss.

Cheek by jowl with the skating rink lay the little
lake whereon the curlers performed.  From this a
babel of sounds arose; an awful jargon from which
the Esperanto school would have fled in terrified
despair.  Generals of divisions here roared at soulless
"stanes," as though their salvation depended upon a
besom.  Cries of "bring her along," "up cows," "well
sweepit," or "man, you're a curler," rent the air as
the battle cries of warriors.  In the intervals of storm
there fell the calm of comedy.  "Will ye crack an
egg on this, Sandy, dear?" a Scotchman was heard
to remark; but when Sandy did not "crack an egg"
upon it, his compatriot roared: "Ah! ye red-headed
little deevil, wait till I get doun the rink and catch
haud o' ye"—a threat which occasioned no surprise,
and hardly moved a member of the solemn-faced
company to the ghost of a sad smile.

Merry or solemn, it certainly was a scene to
remember and to dwell upon.  All these healthy people
might have been groping in the London fogs but for
those wonder-workers who rediscovered Switzerland
some twenty years ago.  Some of them had been
so groping perhaps but yesterday; and here they were,
basking in a sunshine hardly known to an English
July, reborn to energies they had forgotten, playing
the fool in the finest spirit of the Horatian precept.
Lily said it was wonderful; and then it occurred to
her that she had no part or lot in it.  The events of
the night were remembered in an instant of wonder
that she could have forgotten them even during this
idle hour.

In one way the placid ebb and flow of the tides
of recreation reassured her.  She feared no longer an
aftermath of the fracas at Vermala—or, verily, there
would be some bruit of it at this early hour of the
day.  It was impossible for her to believe that a
tragedy of moment would be attended in this remote place
by no overt manifestation; and of that there was not
a sign.  To-day, as yesterday, and all the days, the
pilgrims set out for the heights on skis; the skaters
waltzed and pirouetted to the strains of the tenth-rate
orchestra generously provided by the *proprietaire*;
the curlers heaved the "stanes" and complained of
the sweltering sunshine.  None of these suggested a
knowledge of drama, remote or intimate.  One man
alone, the little gendarme, Philip, could have spoken,
and he had already passed on toward the Park Hotel.
These were hours of respite for this gracious lady, and
her gratitude was not feigned.

As to Luton, she had grown accustomed to his
habit of procrastination and his incurable levity of
life.  Any excuse, however trivial, would have kept
him from her last night; and she had to admit that
he might have been physically unable to come, for this
also was one of the shameful secrets.  In the latter
case, he would visit her this morning; and her
imagination already depicted him, sitting in the chair by
the window, and pulling ceaselessly at his long red
moustache, while he asked her news and complained
that it was not what he had expected.

Here, of course, she was at fault, and the only
visitor who presented himself at the chalet was
Mr. Benjamin Benson, who, in the language of seamen,
had "cleaned himself" and donned a suit of clothes
which astonished both his brother and the abbé.  To
their many questions, Benny replied that the storm
kept him at Sierre, and that the "stuff" had not
come; and when this was said, he heard their tale
about the "little widow," and her desire to see him,
and marched off to the chalet without another word.
He found her dressed rather prettily in a heavy jacket
of white wool and a violet hat which showed the many
perfections of her pale face, and did not hide the
beauty of her eyes.  Benny thought her so beautiful
that he was almost afraid to look her in the face when
he spoke to her; but he knew that he had a part to
play, and must play it bravely if he would succeed.

She met him at the gate of the chalet, but did not
suggest that they should return there.  It seemed
wicked, as both admitted, to be indoors upon such a
morning; and she fully believed that she could deliver
his brother's message as eloquently upon the hillside
as in her own drawing-room.  Concerning his own
absence she had little curiosity, for she was unaware
that he knew of the affair at Vermala, and would
never have associated it with his visit to Sierre.  At
the same time, she thought that he might have some
news of Luton, and was anxious to hear it.

"So you were caught in the storm, Mr. Benson?"

He said that it was so, and then he asked a
question in his turn.

"You'd never guess who went with me to Sierre,
Lady Delayne."

"Why should I guess it?"

He looked round about him and turned deliberately
toward the deserted path which led to the Park Hotel.

"Let's go this way," he said evasively.  "There
are too many human gramophones at Andana to my
way of thinking, and some of them must have known
Ananias.  Well, about Sierre?  Sir Luton was my
fellow passenger—"

"My husband—then he—!"

She stood quite still, and her face had become
waxen in its pallor.  Benny did not look at her, and
recited his story to the woods upon his right hand.

"Yes, Sir Luton.  There was a bit of a row up at
Vermala yesterday, and his temper got the better of
him.  They tell me he struck one of the gendarmes
from Martigny; you can't do that sort of thing with
impunity hereabouts.  If there's a fuss, he's better
across the frontier, and so I told him.  That's what
took him down to the town with me—I thought the
climate of the lakes would suit him better for a day
or two—and there he is as safe and sound as a bird
in a nest.  If you hear any stories, don't you believe
a word of them.  It's my advice to you to return
to England to your father's house as soon as you can
do it conveniently.  These foreigners make a rare
hullaballoo if you lay a finger on them.  They'll ask
you ten thousand questions if you'll let them.  Don't
give them the opportunity, Lady Delayne—say your
father wants you back, and you are going.  That's
my advice, and it's good common sense.  I'll drive you
down to Sierre this afternoon, if you like.  You could
catch the Simplon to-night, and be in London
to-morrow; I hope you'll let me, for if they find out
that Mr. Faikes is really Sir Luton Delayne, then
there'll be no end to the trouble.  Now, will your
ladyship think of it?"

He spoke with unwonted earnestness, as though
her case were his own, and she really must be led to
see the importance of it.  If any other had told her
such a story, Lily would have disbelieved every word
of it; but here was a very apostle of candour, and who
would doubt him?

"Do you mean to say that I am to return to
England because my husband has had a foolish quarrel
with the authorities?  Do you mean that, Mr. Benson?"

He nodded his head almost savagely.

"Foreigners are all right when you keep the right
side of them.  Sir Luton's temper got the better of
him, and there would have been the devil to pay if
he had not cleared off.  I don't want you to be
troubled about it, and so I say: Go back to England
at once.  I shall be stopping on here, and I can put
matters right if anything is said.  Don't you think
I am wise, Lady Delayne; now, really, don't you
think so?"

"I think you are kind, very kind, to interest
yourself in those who are comparative strangers to you.
And if it was but a fracas as you say—"

He laughed it off, clenching his hands and pursing
his lips to the boldest lie he had ever told in all his
life:

"Just a vulgar row and nothing more.  We should
laugh at it in England, but they've other notions here.
I don't want you to be bothered about it, and so I'm
all for the journey to Sierre and the Simplon to-night.
Give me leave, and I'll telephone for tickets right
away.  You'd be wise to do that, Lady Delayne—I'm
sure you'd be wise—"

"But, my dear Mr. Benson, I have friends coming
from Caux this afternoon.  I could not go away in
such a hurry; it would be too ridiculous in the circumstances."

Benny did not know what to say.  His anxiety for
her had become almost pitiful.  Perhaps he would
have betrayed himself altogether, but for the sudden
appearance of the gendarme, Philip, who emerged from
the wood upon their left hand, and sauntered down
toward them with his eyes searching the ground and
his hands crossed behind his back.  This was a ghost
to stem the flood of eloquence suddenly.  Benny
turned pale when he saw Philip, and his agitation was
not to be hidden from his companion.

"Who is that?" she asked him with awakened
curiosity.  He shook his head.

"One of the gendarmes from Martigny.  I saw
him at the station last night."

"Then why do you see him with displeasure this morning?"

"He may be here on our affair.  I've told you
what I think.  They'll be questioning you about it if
you stay."

"But, surely, I shall be able to answer them!  Is
a woman responsible for her husband's follies—even
in Switzerland?  I do not think so, Mr. Benson; you
are not quite honest with me—there is something yet
to come?"

He shook his head.

"I have told you what I think, Lady Delayne.
It's for you to decide.  I can quite understand that
you may not be able to go away this afternoon, but
to-morrow, or the next day, perhaps?  Will you
think it over, and let me know?  I shall be round
this way after dinner to-night, and I'll look in, with
your-permission.  Now I must run away, for I see
the abbé throwing his arms about up yonder, and
that's to say the lunch is on the table.  Isn't it
wonderful that a man cannot go three or four hours
without food and remain in his right senses?  It's true,
though, so, you see, I'll just run away.  But you'll
think of what I've said, won't you?—and you'll know
that I'm your friend, come what may!"

He held put his hand to her with an awkward
gesture, and felt her soft fingers lying for an instant
in his own.  The look which she gave him was a
reward beyond his expectations; he returned to the
chalet with the step of a boy, and was hoping and
believing a hundred good things when he met the
gendarme, Philip, almost at his own door.

"Ah, my lad, I am glad to see you again," he said.
"Were you not at Sierre last night with the valet of
my friend, Mr. Faikes?"

Philip looked up quickly.

"Of your friend, Sir—?"

Benny did not appear to notice it.

"The Englishman staying at Vermala," he
persisted; and then he asked: "Do you know him also?"

Philip answered as quickly.

"Yes, I know this Englishman, sir; he killed my
brother, Eugène.  Am I to understand that he is a
friend of yours?"

Benny grabbed the man by the arm, and began to
walk him to and fro upon the narrow path.  He was
acting now with all the art he could command.  Yes,
he had seen the Englishman several times; was he
the man who struck the officer, Eugène Gaillarde, on
the hillside?  Who would have thought it?  But
then, to be sure, no one knew the fellow very well: a
sour-tempered bully, who had come from Cannes,
and gone, they said, to Paris.  Had Monsieur Philip
heard that the Englishman had gone to Paris?  Well,
it was so, and he, Benny, had seen him at the
station—indeed, he had driven him some way on the
road.  It would be useful to remember that.  Perhaps
Monsieur Philip would be glad of the information?

The young man heard the strange tale to the end,
but he expressed neither surprise nor gratitude.  He
had come to Andana to learn what he could, and when
his work was done he would know the Englishman's
story and where to seek him.  "And then, monsieur,"
he added with almost savage conviction, "I shall
arrest him with my own hands."

Benny did not argue with him; he saw that this
idea obsessed him, and that words were vain.  His
own acting, clever as it was, appeared to have made
no impression whatsoever upon the gendarme, and
when the man left him, it was to go on with the same
quiet step and unchanging resolution, up toward the
height where his brother had perished.  Benny,
however, stood for a little while at the door of the chalet
looking down toward Lily's house.  Did she believe
the story he had told her with such poor wit?

He knew not what to think.  It was hardly a week
ago she had come to Andana; but the days had
changed his own life beyond all knowledge, and had
left him with but one ambition in the world.  He
would lift the burden from her shoulders if he
could—the burden of shame which threatened to
overwhelm her utterly.





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.. _`THE CORTÈGE`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XV.


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE CORTÈGE

.. vspace:: 2

The siesta at Andana is an event of the day and
differs from other siestas chiefly in the fact that no
one goes to sleep.

Visiting the plateau before the Palace Hotel upon
an afternoon of February a stranger will discover the
arts, the professions and the industries of Great
Britain in some disorder and not a little comfort.
Accrediting the best chairs to generals and colonels,
whom a gracious King employs no longer upon active
service, mere lawyers and persons who write will be
found in accommodating attitudes which a diversity
of luges, camp-stools and even rugs make possible;
while commerce, stiff-backed and upright, flirts
amiably in amatory markets and appears to think little of
Protection.

Everyone has done something during the morning,
and this make-believe of a siesta is the due reward.
Here upon the brink of the valley topographers yawn
and discover mountains; matrons remember their
complexions; mere youth its volatility.

All bask in a wonderful sunshine and are tolerant
of evil.  There is no protest upon the projectile aimed
erringly and discovering unsought targets.  The
prettiest girls do not always show the prettiest ankles,
nor the middle-aged ladies the least desirable qualities.
There is flippancy of talk and act, a craving for ease
not always gratified, and a worship of the glories of
Switzerland as honest as any article in the social
creed.  If a subject be chosen and pursued, it is
haltingly and at intervals.  Men yawn upon other men's
*bons-mots*—they have quick ears chiefly for the whispers.

They were discussing Lily Delayne upon the
afternoon of this particular day, and not without that
charity which remembered her as a baronet's wife.
Led by Bess Bethune—whose father had known Sir
Frederick Kennaird—and kept in order by
Dr. Orange, who was a man of the world with good
perceptions, it was unanimously resolved by the meeting
that her ladyship had been foolish to go to the chalet
and would be more foolish if she remained there.
Had she not been a baronet's wife, the assembly might
have arrived with justice at another conclusion; but
the daughter of Burnham Priory was a desirable
acquisition, and as Lady Coral-Smith remarked: "Not
in any way responsible for the vices of an
irresponsible man."  So the meeting carried the resolution
*nem. con.*, and having carried it, settled down to remember
all the "good things" about Sir Luton which ready
tongues and readier newspapers had recorded these
ten years.

Dr. Orange said very little, except to admit that
Lady Delayne was a very charming person, and to
express his surprise that she had not divorced the
baronet long ago.  This remark escaped him at a
moment when Bess Bethune had deserted the study
of social jurisprudence for that of the velocity of
snow when obstructed by the bald head of a choleric
sleeper.  When the young lady returned from her
occupation, Lady Coral-Smith took up the running
with the observation that the measure of a woman's
endurance is often the measure of her intellect, and
that bad men should certainly marry fools.  This
remark, directed to the dull understanding of Major
Boodle, pleased that worthy mightily, and he echoed
it with a succession of "Eh, what's," which trilled
like the warblings of an asthmatic bird.

Thereafter silence fell and endured until the major
thought that he remembered a good story concerning
the Delaynes, and was about to tell it, when what
should happen but that her ladyship appeared
suddenly among the company, and brought the men to
their feet as though a bombshell had fallen amongst them.

Social credulity is a curious thing, and is apt to
become incredulity on next to no provocation at all.
The man or woman, whom all discuss, remains just
the man, or the woman, when introduced to the
company.  All the stories concerning him or her seem
to be forgotten in a moment; nothing is remembered
but the personality of the intruder, and should that
be satisfying, the recording finger ceases to write.
So, at Andana, this little company would now have
been prepared to swear in any court that none but
the most flattering observations concerning her
ladyship had fallen from its lips, and that it was ready
to welcome this charming lady with the cordiality her
position (and her father's money) demanded.

To this happy state of things Lily's own charm
contributed not a little.  She was, for some of these
good middle-class folk, as an ambassador from
another kingdom, and one which they might not hope
to enter.  Her unaffected manner, her gentleness,
conquered the men, and did not provoke the women.
Had she been of their own sphere, they would have
envied her beauty and complained of it.  But being
of a race apart, even the mayor's relict could grant
her some natural "advantages."  As for homely
Mrs. Rider, particularly honoured by her ladyship's
attentions, she, good soul, was in the seventh heaven.  This
would make a fine story in Bayswater when she got
back.  "My friend, Lady Delayne, travelling
incognito"—how well it sounded.  Her lips were already
prepared for that delicacy.

Lily drew a chair close to the prospective mother
of "the boys," and began to talk to her in low tones.
Sir Gordon, after a vain attempt to join in, had the
wit to perceive that he was making no impression,
and turned his attention to "the little savage," as
he called Mistress Bess.  When he was gone, Lily
approached the dangerous topic of Messrs. Robert
Otway and Richard Fenton.  She thought that they
were pleasant young men and would start in life with
some pecuniary advantages.

Had Mrs. Rider known them long—were they
very old friends?  To which that good lady replied
with warmth that this was her third season at
Andana, and that the boys had been there on each
occasion.  Then, with an aside of some moment, she
hastened to confess that it was embarrassing to be the
mother of two grown-up daughters at her age: "For
I am but nine-and-thirty, Mrs. Kennaird, and my poor
husband has been dead these five years."

Lily expressed her sympathy in a kindly way and
led the good soul insensibly to other confessions.
Each of the girls had three hundred a year in her own
right, and, naturally, their mother would like to see
them happily married.  She, herself, was not too old
to resign "all the pleasures of life," as she put it
naïvely; but what could she do with these great
grown-up girls and their perpetual activities?  Men
naturally thought a woman as old as her children
believed her to be; and young people nowadays have
such strange notions about years.

As to the young men, she liked them well enough.
They were noisy, to be sure; but, then, might not
others say the same with justice of Nell and Marjory?

"I'm ashamed of their boisterousness sometimes,"
the good lady admitted.  "I'm sure I was never like
that when I was a girl, and what happiness they can
find in it, I don't know.  Believe me, Mrs. Kennaird,
they never are at rest.  When it's not skating and
sliding, it's golf and hockey.  If you ask them to read
a book, they think you want to do them an injury.
I gave Marjory the 'Pilgrim's Progress' on her last
birthday, and all she said was that 'Christian won on
the last green.'  There's levity for you—there's
improper behaviour.  Oh, I shall be sorry to lose them,
but sorrier still for the man who marries them—indeed
I shall.  You couldn't understand it yourself,
for you have no daughters of your own, they tell me;
but I've a mother's heart, and they wound it every
day that I live.  Oh, yes, I shall be sorry for the man
who marries them."

Lily smiled, but did not comment upon the
grammar of the observation, or its suggestions.  The
situation was now quite plain to her.  Here was a good
woman who would enter the holy bonds for the second
time, one who found a serious obstacle in the
presence of these hoydens who proclaimed their mother's
age *urbi et orbi*.  Little it mattered to her whether
the worldly prospects of likely suitors were good or
ill.  Lily perceived that the boys were already
married, so far as Mrs. Rider was concerned, and she
determined to push the suggestion no further.  So she
led the conversation to more general topics, and finally
turned to Dr. Orange, who had been waiting for an
opportunity to speak to her.

Lily confessed to the doctor that she had come out
with the intention of doing a little shopping in the
village of Andana, and he, with ready gallantry,
offered to accompany her thither.  His art in mundane
affairs was considerable, and no one who overheard
their talk would have guessed that he knew this
lady's story to the last line.  Not until the narrow
path carried them to the heart of the wood by the
Sanatorium did he begin to speak of intimate affairs
at all, and then in so general a way that it was
impossible not to be frank with him.

"By the way," he said—joining her after the
passage of a bob sleigh steered by that dashing pilot,
Keith Rivers, who rarely broke his collar-bone more
than twice in any season—"by the way, do you
know a person of the name of Paul Lecroix—I think
he is a gentleman's servant, and has been staying
at Andana, recently—do you know anything of him?"

Lily guessed the object of the question and would
not fence with it.

"Yes," she said in a low voice, "he was my
husband's valet; what of him, Dr. Orange?"

The doctor continued as though it were an ordinary affair.

"He has been recently in the employment of a
Mr. Faikes, also staying at Vermala.  The fellow has a
long tongue, and is not to be encouraged.  I fear he
has said many things in the hotel here which you would
not wish him to have said.  They make no difference
to any of us, of course, it goes without saying; but
should you be perplexed by them, I hope you will give
the credit where it is due."

"You mean, that people know my real name—the
name under which I choose not to travel?"

The doctor was surprised by her candour.

"Yes," he said slowly, "that is what I wanted to
say.  Your incognito is an incognito no longer—if it
concerns you that it should not be.  Most possibly
it does not.  I have often taken a *nom de voyage*
myself and found it useful.  I can understand that it
might be helpful to a lady, especially to the daughter
of one so influential as Sir Frederick Kennaird.  If
you wish it to be respected at Andana, you have but
to say the word.  Perhaps, however, you will think
that it has served its purpose in Egypt and the
Balkans.  I was almost expecting you to tell me so when
I first mentioned it."

This was subtly put, and it pleased her.  He
expected her to say that it mattered no longer whether
anyone called her Lady Delayne or Mrs. Kennaird,
and she met him as readily.  It was a matter of
indifference to her.  In any case, she did not expect to
be many days in Andana, and would be returning
almost immediately to London.  Perhaps the doctor
would come and see her in town?

"I am on the north side of the Park, and that is
quite reprehensible," she said with a smile.  "My
address is Upper Gloucester Place, but I will give
you a card.  Doctors find themselves in strange
places, and cultivate an uncritical attitude, I suppose.
But I shall be very glad to see you, if you care to
come, and perhaps some of my Italian curiosities will
interest you."

He admitted an interest: it would have been the
same had she said that the golden gods of Burma
were her hobby; and when he had informed her that
he was now living at Hastings, which proposed shortly
to indulge in the luxury of a pageant, they came to
the little village of Andana and to its bazaar.

The latter was situated picturesquely enough at
the summit of the narrow winding street, and was
itself a gabled chalet which would have served for a
picture book.  An ancient dame, whose English ran
to half a dozen inaccurate phrases, here vended
grotesque knick-knacks at prices still more grotesque.
There were post cards embracing every possible view
of Andana at every possible season; fabulous
distortions of the Matterhorn; panoramas showing the
whole of the Rhone Valley, and portraits of peasants,
who seemed to have dressed themselves especially for
the stage of the Gaiety Theatre.  Elsewhere, the
stock was hardly more attractive.  Cheap jewellery
from Birmingham; cheap glass from Italy; German
ingenuity vended for "two francs-fifty," lay cheek
by jowl with skis to be sold for twice their market
value, and luges upon which a child could sit with
difficulty.  The carved wooden trifles alone
represented the genius of Switzerland, and were to be
valued.  Lily bought some half a dozen of them as
an excuse—her real object had been the quest of
writing-paper—and then remembering that it was
growing dark, she paid her bill hastily, and set out to
return to her chalet.

The night falls swiftly and often with bitter cold
in the Rhone Valley.  It had been twilight when
they entered the shop; it was quite dark when they
emerged.  The village street, usually the resort of
gossips, now welcomed men of more serious aspect,
who were clustered round three sleighs about to go
down to Sierre.  Lily delighted in these sleighs, as a
rule, in the music of their bells, and the primitive
caparison of their long-suffering horses; and when
she came thus face to face with an unexpected *cortège*,
she stopped, despite the cold, to remark upon it.
Hardly had the words been spoken when she regretted
them.  This was no common spectacle.  She
perceived in a moment that it was the harbinger of death.

"Oh," she had exclaimed, "how very picturesque,"
and then with the truth of it arresting her, she turned
upon the doctor inquiring eyes.

"What are they doing, Doctor Orange?  Why are they here?"

He answered as frankly that he did not know.

"Have you heard of any death in Andana?  Has
there been any illness?"

He shook his head.

"It would be a soldier's funeral.  There have been
rumours in the hotel about an accident up at Vermala.
I will speak to them, if you like—"

He crossed over to one of the officers and
exchanged a few words with him.  Other gendarmes
emerged from the little café, carrying lanterns.  A
captain, whose sword jangled upon the flags, uttered
an order in a commanding tone, and sent some of his
men to the horses' heads.  He also exchanged a
brusque word with the doctor, and saluted Madame
when he passed her.  The bells swung musically as the
procession set out and disappeared slowly round the
bend upon its way to the valley.

Dr. Orange meanwhile had returned to Lily's side,
and ignorant that his news had any meaning for her,
he hastened to tell her what had been told to him.

"They say that a gendarme from Martigny has
been killed up on the Zaat.  I heard something about
it this morning, but did not pay much attention.  The
officer was not very communicative.  We shall have
to wait until we get to the Palace before we hear the
whole story.  Perhaps it will not be very exciting
after all.  These accidents are not so common as
English people believe.  Five or six bodies of men
who have been lost on the heights are discovered
under the snow every spring, when the great thaw
comes.  The Alpine chasseurs, too, have a good deal
of trouble with some of the rogues who haunt the
passes.  Shall we walk on?  I am sure you must be
feeling the cold."

Lily had not stirred from the spot; but now, with
a determination which surprised her, she set out for
her house, and did not betray even by a word the
tumultuous thoughts which afflicted her.

As for the doctor, he dismissed the affair almost
immediately, and continued to gossip of lighter things.
There would be a dance at the Palace that night;
would she care to come down?  Or perhaps she would
like him to make up a rubber at bridge?  Old Gordon
Snagg played well, but parsimoniously, and Lady
Coral-Smith was the terror in petticoats.  Failing
that, there would be some passable music in the
drawing-room—he confessed that he himself played, but
did not tell her what a very fine pianist he really
was—nor did he notice her indifference and the effort it
cost her to answer him at all.  When they parted it
was at the door of her own chalet, where he stood a
moment to light a cigarette in the shelter of the porch.
And there for the first time a suggestion of the truth
flashed upon him from the darkness, and spoke both
of the living and of the dead in one instant, of utter
bewilderment.

Lily had entered her house and gone straight to
the sitting-room upon the right-hand side of the door.
There she switched on the electric light, and the blinds
being drawn up, the doctor saw the whole room quite
plainly, and the figure of the woman as she laid aside
her cloak and threw back her head to unpin her hat.
Attracted by the grace of her attitudes, and perplexed
by the extraordinary pallor of her face, he continued
to stand until she turned about suddenly, and pressing
both her hands to her forehead, sank suddenly into
a chair, and burst into a passionate flood of weeping.
Then he understood, and fearing to be detected, set
off instantly toward the hotel.

"By God!" he said as he went, "Luton Delayne
is the man!"





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.. _`TWO OPINIONS`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XVI


.. class:: center medium bold

   TWO OPINIONS

.. vspace:: 2

Benny arrived at the chalet at a quarter to nine, and
was shown immediately into the sitting-room.  There
he found Lily seated before her writing-table; but she
had written no letters, and the note-paper was
covered by meaningless hieroglyphics which her pen
inscribed ceaselessly.

Men are rarely observant when it is a question of
knowing whether a woman is well or ill, and this
good-natured engineer was no exception to a common
rule.  Had anyone called his attention to the
extraordinary pallor of Lily's face, he would have
admitted its significance; but, as it was, his desire to
resume their conversation of the morning blinded
him to the truth.  He had come to know if she were
ready to return to England; he found her determined
upon another purpose altogether.

"I thought you'd have done dinner by this time,
Lady Delayne," he explained, "and so I ventured
to come in.  It's a fine night outside, and good for
walking.  I half expected you to be down with the
Palace people.  They're dancing to-night, and they
tried to run me in.  But I'm too old to prance round
with yearlings, and so I told them.  I'd sooner drive
an airship across the Mediterranean than steer some
of the heavy-weights down yonder—yes, a hundred
times.  But I thought it might be different in your case."

She did not smile; her manner arrested his words,
and was an omen of her answer.  Benny watched
her rising from her chair as he would have watched
an accusing figure about to approach him.  She had
discovered the truth—he was sure of it.

"Mr. Benson," she said slowly, "why did you not
deal more generously with me this morning?"

He did not shrink from it.  The question appealed
to his manhood, and resolution made him strong.
He was glad, moreover, that the hour of suspense had
passed; he would keep nothing from her now.

"I wanted to shield you," he rejoined very
naturally.  "It was a man's part to do that.  I wanted
to keep trouble from you.  Now I see my own
foolishness.  It couldn't be done, Lady Delayne.  The
whole place is talking of the affair; you were bound
to hear of it.  But I did my best, because I wanted to
be your friend."

She knew that it was true, and his frankness
disarmed her.  The irony of life had left her with but
one friend in the world, and he a man she had seen
for the first time a week ago.  It needed some
resolution to keep her courage in the face of that.

"It was not friendship to deceive me," she said,
against her convictions; "so much might have
happened.  I am grateful to you, none the less.  Will
you now tell me all you know?"

She sat upon a sofa near to him, a lamp behind
her, and her face in shadow.  He perceived that she
breathed heavily; but there was no other overt
testimony either of fear or grief.

"I'll tell you willingly, every word," he rejoined.
"There's no doubt that Bothand and Co. got out a
warrant in England against Sir Luton, and that the
Swiss police, acting on instructions from Scotland
Yard, traced him here.  They sent an officer, Eugène
Gaillarde, from Martigny, to ascertain if their man
was at Vermala; he watched your husband for a
couple of days.  I think he may have followed him
over from Grindelwald, but I do not know for sure.
If they had established his identity, word would have
been sent to London; most likely they would have
arrested him, and applied for extradition.  Anyway,
it seems clear that Sir Luton knew he was being
followed, and that he resented the fact just in the
way such a man would resent it.  As bad luck would
have it, he seems to have met Gaillarde face to face
on the plateau below the hotel.  There were words
passed between them, and then blows.  What
precisely befell we shall never know, but I make no doubt
that Gaillarde lost his footing and was thrown over.
He must have fallen about thirty-five feet and struck
the clump of trees at the foot.  I saw him there
myself, lying stone dead, and that's how I came to warn
your husband.  If Sir Luton hadn't gone away, it
would have been a murder charge.  We may avoid
that if they don't trace him, and time will put the
affair in another light.  It would be manslaughter at
the worst—though I can't keep it from you that,
whichever it is, it's bad enough in a country like this.
What you and I have to do is to keep the thing black
dark while we can.  I've sent Sir Luton where no
police will find him, and if he's wise he will stay
there until the worst has blown over.  Then he ought
to go to the East for a couple of years.  We can tell
a tale in the English papers if the truth ever does
come out, and he won't want sympathisers.  We hate
bureaucrats in our country, and there's many who
will understand just what happened in his case.  It
would be otherwise if they had taken him and brought
the trial on immediately.  I had to stop that at any
cost—that's why I sent him into Italy.  The same
reason lay behind my idea that you should go to
England.  You are a danger to him here, Lady Delayne,
so it seems to me.  You are a danger every hour
you remain, and if you would save him, you won't
lose an hour in going away.  I'm glad that I can tell
you so freely, for I couldn't this morning, much as I
wanted to—"

He paused, a little afraid of his own eloquence.
What impression he had made he did not know; but
one thing was plain, and that was the woman's
courage.  There was no hysterical outburst now, no
expression of a vain regret—nothing but a quiet
determination which astonished him.

"I could never forget my obligation to you," she
began; "that must be lifelong.  You say that I
should return to England to save my husband; but
surely it would be the wiser thing to remain.  If they
do not know all the facts, why should they seek Sir
Luton Delayne?  May we not hope that this
question of identity will protect him to the end?  Indeed,
I am beginning to believe that my first duty is to him,
to go to him, Mr. Benson, and to forget!  If he were
really guilty of a monstrous crime, it would be
another thing.  But can we believe that he is?—unless
passion itself be such a crime.  I cannot say that; his
sins have been greatly punished, and am I to judge
him at such an hour?  Not so, surely.  I will go to
Italy whatever the cost.  I feel it is my duty."

He was amazed to hear her.  His primitive
knowledge of woman had prepared him for an issue so
very different.  She would have been humbled utterly
by the disclosure, he thought, overwhelmed and
incapable of any clear purpose.  And here she was
prepared for an act of madness which, whatever its
sublimity, must bring down the house of his hopes with
a crash.  Let her go to Italy and the end might be at
hand.  Which is to say, that he doubted his own
hypothesis, and put little faith in identity as an ally.
Had not Sir Luton been followed from Grindelwald?
Why, there would be twenty ready to bear witness.

"My dear lady," he said, hardly knowing how to
put it to her, "your wish does you great credit, but
do not forget that if you are followed from here to
Locarno, it will not take the authorities very long to
guess what is going on.  Perhaps I was wrong to
advise a journey at all.  The Swiss police are no fools.
They will remember that this English lady came to
spend some weeks at Andana; she took a chalet; she
appeared to have settled down.  Then she goes
without warning.  Suppose, upon the top of that, they
remember that a certain Sir Luton Delayne left
Grindelwald in a hurry—don't you think they are capable
of getting at the truth?  Why, he might be arrested
in the next four-and-twenty hours; and if he were,
God help him.  No, it would be madness to
go—madness to think of it.  He's safe where he is, and
there will be just two people in all Europe who share
this secret.  Let us leave well alone—we have done
our best and can do no more."

She saw the reason of it, but her distress was very
great.  All that she had suffered at her husband's
hands went for nothing in the hour of cataclysm.  In
a way the defects of his character made a new appeal
to her: his life might have been so very different;
his intellect might have led him so far.  And here he
was, a veritable outcast, despised by all, a fugitive to
be named with contempt, even by the vulgar.

"I know that you have done your best," she said,
after some moments of silence, "but what have I
done?  Can I justify the story of my own life since
I left him—can a woman ever justify herself for
leaving a man in the hour of his misfortunes?  While
the world went well with him, I suffered in silence.
Is it possible for me to forget that he is alone,
without friends or help?  The world would say that his
own acts justify me.  Should a woman be guided by
the world, or by her own conscience?  No, indeed, I
cannot agree with you; and yet your advice is wise.
If they know, there is the end of it.  I can do
nothing; I must wait and hope.  My gratitude to you
remains—it will never be told truly, Mr. Benson; it
could not be."

He shrank from this expression as strong men ever
shrink from a verbal recognition of their friendship.
It may be that he perceived how much she really
suffered, and what it cost her to hide the truth.  The
danger hovered about them both, and put a spell of its
constraint upon their intercourse.  In a spirited
endeavour to make light of it, he told her that men would
not judge Sir Luton hardly; and then he dwelt upon
the security of his retreat in a villa upon the shore of
Lake Maggiore.  Though near to Locarno, its
situation was one of some isolation, and it would serve
their purpose beyond contention.  The old woman
who kept it had little English, and no curiosities.
Generally speaking, he thought it as safe a haven as they
were likely to find anywhere on the Continent, and,
as he said, Sir Luton himself would use his eyes, and
if there were danger, he would not fail to meet it.
In brief, if things fell out as they had been planned,
the secret need never pass the doors of the chalet.

She agreed with this, though it was plain that her
thoughts centred rather upon her own conception of
duty than upon the peril of the situation.  Insensibly
she turned to the man where a man's work was to be
done, and Benny encouraged her with a pride that
burned.  Yes, he would be the agent in the matter,
if she would but leave it to him.  He had no fear of
the issue; let him enjoy her confidence and the rest
was easy.

"We must keep his identity out of it," he repeated;
"all depends upon that.  There is a little gendarme
here—the brother of the man who was killed, and he
is to be watched.  Trust me to do so.  I have had my
eye on him from the start, and I shall not sleep much
until he is on his way to Martigny again.  If you see
him, beware of the man: a little pale-faced fellow,
with a serious air and a mincing manner—not the
sort of man you suspect, but one who could be very
dangerous.  I would say nothing to him—not that
he is likely to think of you; but you might meet him
accidentally.  When he's done with, the rest will be
easy.  We shall keep Sir Luton at the shanty for a
month; then send him down to Monte Carlo.  If they
don't suspect him, the trouble will be over pretty
quickly.  I hope to God it will be!"

His optimism was splendid, and fearing a new note,
he ended the interview upon it.  She might rely upon
him to bring her all the news, and meanwhile courage
was necessary.  When he left her, it was just a
quarter-past ten, and he could hear the music at the Palace
floating up the mountain-side in a dreamy rhythm
which seemed in odd contrast with the secrecy and
the fears of that interview.  How bravely she had
suffered it, and what big promises he had made!  If
they were not justified, what of it?  He had done his
best, and she had thanked him.  He could almost feel
the pressure of her fingers in his great hand now.

He was alone upon the mountain-side and all the
glory of the night about him.  A flux of stars marked
the Palace Hotel, every window of which paid tribute
of warm light to the sheen of the spotless snow.
Higher up there twinkled the minor constellations
of Vermala; while away to the west arc-lamps
marked the path to the Park and the slopes whereon
the beginners kept carnival.  These were the human
aspects of the scene, but the majesty and solitude of
the mountains remained impregnable, even in the
half-lights; and looking out upon them, the man recalled
his ambitions, the task he had set himself, and the
hope which had deluded him.  Would he find
inspiration anew because of this thing which had come into
his life?

He turned with a sigh, and went on to his own
house.  A light burned in the workshop, and he
discovered Jack and the abbé still at work there, but they
put down their tools immediately and watched him
with eager eyes.  Had the woman spoken?  Had she
remembered her promise?  They were all agog, and
their desire to know would not be restrained.

"Well, Benny, and what did she say, my boy?"

"Oh, we had a little talk about everything.  What
did you expect her to say, Jack?"

"Then she didn't mention the prize?"

He opened his eyes wide.

"Why should she mention it?"

"Well, you see, she promised to.  She wants you
to win it.  We sent you down there on purpose.  Do
you mean to say she forgot all about it?  How like
a woman!  And you thought she was interested; eh,
Benny? you could have sworn she was."

The abbé nodded his head sagely; then he sighed
and resumed his work.  Benny continued to look at
them with wonder.  A conspiracy.  And she was
interested and had forgotten.  Well, after all, that was
very natural in the circumstances—but if she had
remembered!

He did not answer Jack directly; but declaring that
he was very tired, went off to bed.  When he was
gone, the abbé confessed to Jack that "it was
finished," and he also laid down his tools.

"We waste our time," he said.  "Your brother
has lost interest.  It is a pity, for he might have been
one of the greatest men of our time."

Jack thought so too.  He would have given a good
deal to have heard that this high and mighty lady was
about to quit Andana.





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.. _`HERALDS OF GREAT TIDINGS`:

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   CHAPTER XVII


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   HERALDS OF GREAT TIDINGS

.. vspace:: 2

Bob Otway and Dick Fenton were coming down the
Vermala slopes together, when they espied the "little
widow" on the path below the hotel.  Her appearance
reminded them that more than a week had passed
since they had seen her at the chalet, and that it had
been a time of events never to be forgotten.  To be
candid, the boys had changed very much during these
wonder-working days.  They had even come, as Bob
admitted ruefully, to speak of such mysteries as
drainage and water supply.  The realities were gripping
them and romance already cried out.

"Why, it's Lady Delayne, Bob—don't you see
her?  We really ought to pull up and tell her what
has happened."

Bob agreed, and, as a testimony to his approval,
did a wonderful telemarque which came near to
dashing out his brains against a tree.  It was just twelve
o'clock of a glorious day, and both the boys hungering
for lunch.

But they could not pass by Lily Delayne, even at
the bidding of a mountain appetite, and so they shot
down wildly to the path and confronted her, as two
loping bears emerging suddenly upon their prey.

Lily was dressed in black, and wore a wide motor
hat and a heavy veil.  For an instant she smiled
kindly upon the boys, then relapsed to that pensive air
which seemed inseparable from her natural mood.

"Why," she said, "here are the truants.  Let me
see, ten days, yes, just ten days since the embassy, is it
not, Mr. Otway?  And black silence all this time;
now, really, is not that ingratitude?"

Bob admitted that it was; Dick hung his head and
looked sheepish.

"You see," said the former, "we found it was all
right, and so we didn't want to trouble you.  It's a
beastly thing to have to speak about money, and I
wouldn't have any girl believe that it's her money I
want.  When I heard from Mrs. Rider that Nellie had
three hundred a year, I knew we could just rub along,
and what more does any fellow want?  Of course, we
can't keep a motor on that, and I shall have to play
golf once a week, instead of twice.  But it's something
to be able to pay your way these hard times, and the
fellow who can't give up something for the sake of a
pretty girl isn't much good."

Dick was more explicit.

"I'm rather sorry Marjory has the money," he said
with conviction.  "I don't believe marriages are made
in heaven, or that sort of nonsense; but I do believe
that young people should be content to start in a small
way, and that if a man is to get on, his own brains
should push him.  It can't be helped, of course, and
Mrs. Rider is so pleased about it that I believe she'd
double their allowance for a nod.  She's flirting like
one o'clock with old Gordon Snagg, and it wouldn't
astound me if she married him."

"And struck another!" interposed Bob, whose
alternations of melancholy and gladness were a delight
to hear.  Lily was so much amused by them that she
encouraged him to talk; and saying that she, also, was
returning to lunch, they all set off down the mountain
together.

"We're going to live out at Hampstead to begin
with," Bob explained, cheerily.  "I suppose it must
be flats, for it won't run to a house.  Dick thinks we
might share a big one, but I know the girls would
quarrel, and when sisters do quarrel, then you hear
things.  I shall go into a motor-car business, and
open a garage somewhere.  Dick is going to write
books when he can afford the paper—and I'm sorry
for Thackeray and those fellows.  Perhaps you'll
come and see us when we're settled down, though I
say it's the settling up that's the trouble.
Hampstead's not a bad place, and they don't charge
anything for the empty ginger-beer bottles on the Heath.
I wonder if you really would come, Lady Delayne?"

Lily said it would be a pleasure to do so, though
her secret doubt as to the establishment of this
particular *ménage* remained unspoken.  Concerning Dick,
however, she had no afterthought.  He had grown
sentimental in an hour, and saw nothing but a vision
of Marjory in his brightest heaven.

"I've always wanted to write a book," he said,
"but a man needs a spur.  It's impossible for a fellow
to do anything when he's a bachelor and men are
coming in every five minutes to look over his shoulder.
I could have finished a play last year, if it hadn't been
for the Scratch Medal at Neasden, but I was so keen
to win it that I never got further than the prologue.
Now, however, I mean to take my coat off."

"And to fly—like Benny, the wonderful Benny,"
Bob added.  He was surprised to learn that her
ladyship had heard nothing of this.  Did she not know
that a regular mob was expected at the Palace
to-morrow to see that amazing hero, Mr. Benjamin
Benson, try for the great prize offered by the *Daily
Recorder* of London?  Well, it was so.  They were
even making up beds on the billiard table, and what
sort of a game was a man expected to play on a mattress?

"It's the most amazing get-back I ever heard of,"
he ran on, delighted to interest her so much.
"Benny's the last man in Switzerland we should have
looked to for this, and here he is, cock-a-whoop in the
papers, and as famous as a prize-fighter.  In London
they're talking of nothing else.  He's invented a new
kind of aeroplane, and one which must be the machine
of the future, so they say.  That's why he didn't come
into the hotel.  We thought him a secret kind of
bird, and all the time he was just working away to
bag the £10,000 offered by the London editor.  If he
gets it, it will be an eye-opener; but old Gordon
Snagg, who has been hanging about the chalet,
declares he will get it, and that he deserves to.  Don't
you see, Lady Delayne, that Benny has been the
ghost?  It was his machine over the Zaat which scared
the people so.  Fancy, old Benny—mustn't he have a
head, and didn't he think a lot when he heard us
talking about him?"

Dick took a more serious view of it.

"Benny is a genius," was his testimony.  "He's
just one of those born strong men you can't keep back.
If we had more of him in England, there wouldn't
be all this talk about decadence.  We're just falling
behind as pioneers, and that's the whole truth.  If
you speak to the manufacturers about it, they say it
doesn't matter, because we can always imitate the
foreigners when they have invented things.  I'm sure
that's all nonsense.  The same brains which lead the
way will hold it in the long run.  Look how long it
took us to overtake the French in the motor-car
business; have we done it even now?  Benny is one of our
national assets, and if he succeeds, no honour is too
big for him."

"Then you think he will succeed, Mr. Fenton?"

Dick shook his head.

"Bob knows more about machinery—he'll tell you.
If it depends on the man and not on a bag of tricks,
I'm sure he will succeed.  That remains to be seen:
we shall know to-morrow, anyway."

"And make a night of it if our man wins," Bob
added with conviction.  More than that he was
reticent to say.  Whatever were the secrets of Benny's
aeroplane, they had been guarded closely.

"He must be the cleverest chap alive," he
continued.  "Not a soul at Andana had an idea of it.
He's been flying about here for weeks, and all the time
we thought him a good-natured crank, to be chaffed
and rotted as much as we pleased.  Now he looks like
becoming one of the most famous men in the world.
Sir Gordon says he will, and he's had his eye to the
keyhole.  Perhaps he wants to float Benny as a
company; I shouldn't be surprised.  If his machine is
what he claims it to be, there'll not be a rival in the
market in a month.  Sir Gordon is sure of it."

"Then it is a very wonderful machine, Mr. Otway?"

"So wonderful that you could pack it up in a
hair-trunk, they tell me.  The engine's a gem—just like a
toy.  The frame looks like a torpedo—it's as light
as feathers.  We shall see something to-morrow,
Lady Delayne, and I'm jolly glad I'm at Andana,
anyway.  They start from the slope before the Park at
nine o'clock.  Benny has to fly right over Mont Blanc,
then to Zermatt, and back across the Weisshorn.  He
should be here before dark to win.  If he does
it—well, I hope the Palace will not catch fire; but I
shouldn't wonder if it did.  You'll be coming, of
course.  We shall see you there in the morning?"

She answered, "Certainly."  She would not miss it
on any account.  The news had surprised her very
much; she did not add that, although she had seen
Benny every day, he had said no word to her.  This
was for her own thoughts, which now engrossed her
so that she was very glad when they came down to
her chalet and she could say "Good-bye."  Even there
it was possible to remark the number of the sleighs
now driving up the valley from Sierre.  And the flags
and the bunting!  She had been blind to them
hitherto.  But now they spoke eloquently of a man who
had befriended her beyond any she had known.  And
to his hopes and ambitions she had hardly given a
thought during that long week of watching and
waiting!  This was the truth, and it was not
unaccompanied by regret.  She remembered her promise to
Brother Jack and wondered that she could have
broken it.

To be sure, there had been excuse enough.  Long
days of a terrible doubt had left her at the last almost
beyond the influence of fear or hope.  Luton himself
had not written to her—she was glad of his silence.
All the tidings that Benny had was a brief note from
him in which he described his arrival at Locarno, and
his occupation of the shanty.  The threatened
inquisition upon the part of the Swiss police had not become
a reality.  The crime at Vermala appeared to be
already forgotten by the authorities, as it had ceased to
interest the visitors.  Probably most people now
believed that it had been an accident.  Lily could almost
persuade herself that this view was right.  Luton
would remain a little while at the lakeside, and then
go South.  The accusing hours, when the truth would
not be hidden, were to be combatted with new courage
in the face of this unexpected respite.

It was a quarter to two when she entered the chalet
and nearly half an hour later when the post arrived
from Sierre; to her great surprise there was a letter
from Italy—the only letter that day—and she
perceived immediately that it was in Luton's handwriting.
Letters from him during recent years had been rare
events and coincided with his pecuniary needs; but
she had not read many lines of this particular epistle
before she detected a new note.  Here was an *apologia
pro vita sua*; she knew not at first whether to believe it
serious or a jest.

He spoke of his departure from Andana, and of
the terrible circumstance of it.  Like all men who fall
foul of the world, he was eloquent in self-defence and
could make out a pretty case.

What he seemed to feel acutely was the degradation
of the tragedy.  Had it been different, an affair
in which honour had been compromised, it would have
been defensible; but this poor devil of a soldier, against
whom he had no possible grudge, that was humiliation
enough.  From which he passed on to deplore his
heritage of character, naming himself as a man
predestined to the enmity of his fellows, and without that
power of will which alone could have saved him.

Did not Lily understand this?  Had she never
taken it into account upon a day of reckoning?  He
saw himself as the sport of the Almighty—mocked
by his inheritance.  All that he had done he must do
again if he began life anew under the same set of
circumstances.  He had been without a friend,
misunderstood always, even by her who had been at no pains
to understand him.  Did she think she had done her
duty toward him—had she stood by him as a true
wife should have done?  Then came incoherent
rhapsodies of love from which she shrank.  He swore
to God that there had never been but one woman in
the story of his life.  She knew it to be true.  And
here he was, an outcast among men and alone, while
she had money enough and to spare.  His poverty had
brought him to this.  Did she think upon reflection
that none of the responsibility was hers?

As to the actual position at the moment, he
confessed himself in some danger.  He thought it
possible that the Swiss police would trace him, but he
declared that he would face the matter lightly enough
if she were with him.  Would she come to Locarno
and help him?  He wanted courage, the power to
understand the meaning of his own life, some hope for
the future which she might inspire.  She was a clever
woman, but had never used her cleverness on his
behalf.  He implored her to hear him and have pity.

Such an idea, recurring again and again, betrayed
a mind which had lost stability and a physical
condition which was ominous.  And yet Lily read a deeper
meaning into the screed, and her early contempt was
chastened.  Just as she had asked herself a week ago
if she had done her duty by this man, so could she
repeat the question with insistence.  Phrases of his
letter appealed to her pity, despite a lack of faith;
perhaps she was less influenced by them than by the
judgment pronounced at the tribunal of her own
conscience.  She would go to him; but having gone, what
then?  Must the old way of life be taken once more?
Could she contemplate a future as his wife, living out
the long days of sacrifice without complaint?

The afternoon passed and found her unable to come
to a decision.  Sitting at her window she could see the
stir and bustle before the Palace Hotel, the arrival of
sleighs, and the coming and going of strangers.  Her
hope that she might receive a visit from the object of
all this interest was not to be gratified.  Benny did
not come to the chalet; he contented himself with a
pencilled note brought down by a lad during the
afternoon, and containing just three words, "All goes
well."  She saw him for a moment walking with
Dr. Orange and Sir Gordon Snagg toward the Park at
about four o'clock, but after that the dark fell and her
day was over.

Was it to be her last night in Switzerland? she
wondered, as she sat by the window with Luton's
letter still in her hand.





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.. _`THE EVE OF THE GREAT ATTEMPT`:

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   CHAPTER XVIII


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   THE EVE OF THE GREAT ATTEMPT

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The reporters, who arrived from London shortly after
midday, were astonished to hear that Benny knew little
of the excitement which his entry for the great prize
had occasioned in London.

Some of them had written very pleasantly of this
unknown aspirant; others had been severely derisive,
a fact they overlooked when they called at the chalet
later on and took out their note-books as a matter of
course.

He, good man, had but a dim understanding of
later-day journalism, and these attentions
overwhelmed him.  Some of his replies were quite
unconventional.  They asked him where he was educated,
and he answered "anywhere."  An interrogation
concerning his favourite pursuits obtained the response
"doing nothing."  Generally, he said that if the engine
kept going, he would win the money; but that if the
engine stopped, he would not win it, and this was
written down as an item of great importance, and cabled
to London for the next day's issue.

Now all this had carried the man into a new world,
and so swiftly that it seemed but yesterday he was a
plodder in a dull workshop, without prospects and
unknown.  He had dreamed of fame, but not of this
kind of fame, which came to him, note-book in hand,
and desired to hear whether he flew on whisky or cold
water.  The world he would conquer was a shadow
world; the great vague universe, wherein so many
ambitions are interred.  To be a newspaper hero was
well enough, but he reflected a little sadly that even an
acrobat may be that.  He wondered already if he
would find the fruits of success to be bitter; and this
speculation set him thinking of Lily Delayne.  Did
he owe it to her indifference that flight to-morrow was
possible?  In truth, he believed that he did.

Brother Jack, upon the other hand, welcomed the
reporters with real cordiality.  He delighted to talk
of his clever brother; to tell them impossible anecdotes
of Benny's youth, and to insist that he himself had
always known he was a genius.  Jack spent a long
afternoon in this employment, and when he varied it,
his activities carried him up to the plateau whence the
start was to be made, and back again to the shed
wherein the machine was housed.  What hours of
strenuous labour it stood for; how they had worked
to get everything ready!  And now their work was
done.  Not a wire that had not been overhauled; not
a stay which had not been tested.

Of those who had come from England to witness
the great attempt, Sir John Perinder, the proprietor
of the *Daily Recorder*, was the most eminent.  A
well-built, clear-eyed man, his manner was volatile to a
ridiculous extent, and had earned for him the title of
the greatest hustler in the universe.  Naturally he
asked Benny to dinner at the Palace, and with him
Brother Jack and the Abbé Villari, of whom he heard
with much interest.  These had been but a little while
at the table when they discovered that their host knew
a great deal about aviation, and had the clearest
perceptions as to the future of flying.  At the same time
he did not deceive himself by any of those futile
prophecies in which unthinking men delight.

"You fellows are about to give us a new sport,"
he said bluntly, "young men will fly because they are
tired of motoring.  There will be a fine trade with the
war-offices of Europe, but the rest I don't see.  None
of us now living will take aeroplanes where we now
take cabs.  That's foolish talk; the world will prefer
*terra firma* to the air, just as it prefers *terra firma* to
the sea.  Do you think I would go to America on a
ship if I could travel in a train?  You know that I
wouldn't.  And so with your airships, good enough
for their own purposes, but limited by the factor of
personal courage.  Why, I wouldn't go up in one for
a thousand, and I'll warrant Monsieur l'Abbé here
wouldn't go up for two."

Here, however, he met a tough adversary.  The
abbé had followed the movement with interest from
the beginning.  He had even built a machine of his
own, and purposed to show it at Rome in the spring
of the year.  His optimism baffled the blunt baronet,
who brushed it aside with a jest, and went on to speak
of to-morrow's flight.

"If you win," he said to Benny, "you'll do the
greatest thing ever done by man.  I've been a climber
for twenty years, and never did I think that a man
would look down on what I've looked up to with awe.
You'll do that to-morrow if you succeed.  You're
going to see the Alps as no man has ever seen them
since the world dropped out of the sun.  That's
something to sleep on, Mr. Benson; it's something to take
with you on your journey.  I'd give ten thousand
pounds to see it myself—twenty thousand for the
courage which would let me do what you are going to
do.  It's a safe offer.  There isn't a greater coward
living where a height is concerned, and yet I climb
mountains.  Explain that if you can."

Benny would have explained it if he had been given
half a chance, but he had hardly opened his mouth
when the baronet was off again, saying how the affair
must be "boomed" in this or the other way; the
reports which must be given of it; the particular points
which the aviator must note during his voyage.  He
declared that the public liked sensation, but must have
it first hand nowadays.  The man who has seen
another man eaten by a lion in Africa is of no use—he
must be eaten himself.  Few mechanical minds were
capable of conveying mechanical sensations, and that
was the difficulty.  He hoped that Benny would prove
the exception to the rule, and give them a story for
their money.  Commercialism intruded when he added
that no other paper in Europe would have put up such
a sum, and that he relied upon Benny not to let him
down.  This the inventor modestly offered not to do
if he could help it.  "We ride in the same boat," he
explained, and added, in imitation of Douglas Jerrold,
"but we use different sculls."

The party was gay enough, and broke up early.
The bright light which beat suddenly upon this quite
modest throne somewhat alarmed Benny, and set him
hungering for the solitude of the chalet.  He had left
gendarmes in charge of his machine, but he was
anxious none the less; and upon that was all the fulsome
adulation now lavished upon him by good-natured folk
who had just discovered his existence.

He could detect a change everywhere, a new respect
paid to him, and a desire to be seen in his company.
Even such athletic aristocrats as Keith Rivers
patronised him no longer; while it began to be plain that he
had lighted a candle which failure alone would put out.
That was the rub which must be present in his
reckoning.  It would be a mighty humiliation to fail before
the thousands who were coming to Andana to see him
start.  He knew that there would be thousands, for
the hotel people said as much; and when he managed
to escape his host and to steal as a fugitive from the
Palace, the night bore witness to the truth of such
prophecies.

Surely such a spectacle had never been seen in this
place before.  Scores of great arc lamps illuminated
the scene.  Workmen from Sierre, from Martigny,
and from Lausanne were busy erecting shelters for the
people and building barriers.  Sleighs came up the
mountain-side, so many that he wondered whence they
had been conjured up.  Averse to all such trappings
of spectacle himself, he guessed that Sir John Perinder
had contrived this aspect of tournament, and had set
the lists that the *Daily Recorder* might be glorified.
He imagined that the affair had been largely
advertised both in Switzerland and in Italy, and this was
the case.  All joined willingly in such an emprise; the
hotel-keepers to begin with, then the railway
companies.  Excursions were to be run from Milan, from
Geneva, even from Paris.  The flight across the Alps
appealed to the imagination of all.

Benny had a great deal of courage, but this new
aspect of life filled him with dread.  At the same time
it was not unattended by a certain pride which spoke
of many emotions.  He realised that he had yet to
earn the homage now paid to him.  After all, he was
but a tyro in achievement, and the world had taken him
at his own estimate.  If he failed to succeed, he
would be forgotten in three days, and no one would
listen to him afterwards.  This he remembered as he
took his way up the mountain-side toward his own
chalet.  He might be leaving Switzerland a broken
man to-morrow, and the contempt of the multitude
would attend him.  Vain to accomplish in secret that
which he had promised to do in public.  The world is
credulous where the inventor is concerned and seldom
gives him a second chance.

He wondered if all were really as well as Brother
Jack and the abbé believed it to be.  They had done
wonders during those long days, worked heroically,
and with true devotion.  He himself had set them no
mean example when he had discovered a woman's
indifference and the true meaning of her lightly-spoken
words.  Why should he think of her?  What part
had she to play in the story of his life?  His very
friendship might be misconstrued, and he resolved to
terminate it so soon as his self-invited obligation had
been fulfilled.  For the moment she was alone and
without a friend—this great lady who was of a world
apart, whom he had worshipped in secret as his own
type of true womanhood.  He remembered the day
when he had first seen her at Holmswell, her gentle
bearing, her sweet courtesy.  What right had he to
expect her interest?  Reason answered, none.

He was approaching her chalet at this time, and
perceived that a light shone from the window of her
sitting-room.  When he drew a little nearer, he discerned
Lily herself, dressed in a gown of white lace, and
seated at the writing-table by the window.  She was
not writing, however, and her profound reverie
appeared to be unbroken by any knowledge of the stir
without.  In such an attitude there were aspects of
her beauty he had yet to mark, a grace of pose and
bearing as inimitable by the divinities of his own world
as they were inherent in hers.  Benny stood a long
while, as though a single step would warn her and shut
the vision from his sight.  He would have wanted
words to convey his impressions, and would have
contented himself, perhaps, by the one word "queenly."  She
was born to reign, this mistress of a heritage of
woe; life had dealt hardly with her when it shut her
from her kingdom.

Men rarely confess to their most secret thought,
even in the confessional of the intimate hours.  Benny
would have been ashamed to tell his oldest friend that
he had dwelt for an instant there, at the gate of the
chalet, in a shadowland of dreams, and that it had
shown him this gracious lady as his wife.  His destiny
linked to hers, imagination led him to the high places
of the world.  He shared her kingdom in his thoughts,
and wore the armour of a chivalry as true as any in
the human story.  Recreated by the dream, he struck
off the shackles of birth and obliterated the scars of
a mean heritage.  For such a woman, a man could
give life itself, he thought; for her there would be no
sacrifice from which the mind would shrink.  Nor
could calamity cast down this idol from its pedestal.
He worshipped more surely because she no longer
commanded worship as a right.  The world's contempt
would dower her anew in his eyes, would give him a
title which otherwise he had not possessed.

For a little while these vain thoughts afflicted him,
to give place to others of a very different order.  So
many strangers were at Andana that he was not
surprised to discover an intruder even here upon the
mountain path, but when that intruder emerged
suddenly from the shadows, and Benny saw that it was the
little gendarme, Philip, his interest was awakened while
his false gods were shattered.  The gendarme, on his
part, recognised him immediately, and with hardly a
gesture of apology set out to follow him to his house.

"I wish you success for to-morrow, sir," he said,
and then, as simply, "I may not be here, unfortunately,
to offer my compliments then."

Benny looked at him with curiosity.

"You are going away, Monsieur Philip?"

"Yes, sir, into Italy; the man who killed my brother
is there."

Benny walked a little faster, but he did not turn his
head.

"How do you know that he is in Italy, Monsieur Philip?"

"Because I have discovered that he left the hotel at
Brigue on the night of the murder.  I have a friend
here, and he knows.  The man did not go to Paris;
then he has gone to Milan, and I shall find him."

"Do you know who he is?"

The lad stood still and repeated the words very
slowly.

"He is an Englishman.  They call him Sir Luton
Delayne, and his wife is at the chalet down yonder."

Benny stopped also.  They stood together, looking
down to the window whence the light shone out upon
the snow.

"Oh, but that is nonsense.  Sir Luton Delayne is
a great man in his own country.  What do your
superiors say to it?"

Monsieur Philip answered without emotion.

"They will give me leave of absence, sir.  I am to
go to Milan."

"And if you do not find him at Milan?"

"Then the Italian police will help me.  I have their
promise.  It is impossible now that he will escape
arrest, sir.  I thought you would be glad to know that."

He saluted respectfully and went down toward the valley.

Benny, however, did not move from the place.  The
light shone upon the glistening snow as a beacon which
must guide him, even if it were to the house of his
illusions.





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.. _`THE THIEF`:

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   CHAPTER XIX


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE THIEF

.. vspace:: 2

Lily closed her day upon a resolution to set off to
Maggiore early on the following morning.  She
arrived at a decision reluctantly, and each hour made the
self-appointed task more difficult.  It had seemed
heroic when first contemplated—a tribute to duty, and
a very real sacrifice; but as the hours sped, she shrank
from it and sought the old excuses.  What claim had
Luton upon her generosity?  She knew that he had none.

As a further obstacle there was the chalet, and the
restful days she would abandon so reluctantly.

How pleasant the life might have been in the
sunshine of the beautiful valley!  Everyone had been so
kind to her here.  These simple folk, seeking simple
pleasures, had shown her a new world and taught her
elementary truths of which her own philosophy made
no account.  She thought that she knew them all as
friends already; the admirable doctor; little Bess,
who was the good fairy of the Palace; the boys, with
their tales of woe; the girls, who devoted the interludes
to the measurement of imaginary carpets.  And then,
to be remembered before them all, was there not
Benny, the incomparable Benny, a creature so unlike
any she had ever known that he came to her as a very
apostle of a new revelation?

Here was a prophet, who had been without honour
yesterday, but who stood to-night upon the brink of
that kingdom of success which few may enter.  A
woman of the world, she understood what all this
might mean to the honest fellow who had befriended
her so staunchly.  She saw him fêted and honoured,
grown rich in an hour, a leader among men.  Her
perception discovered the soul of the man, that soul which
a woman—perhaps but one woman in all the
world—might fathom.

What ironical destiny had brought these two
together?  She reflected upon it, contrasting him with
others she had known, the ornaments of her world and
the drones.  Many of these would hardly enter a room
which harboured Benny to-night, but she knew that
they would fawn upon him to-morrow, for such are
the concessions of sycophants to success.  He in turn
would come to despise the humbler circles in which he
had moved and to lose some of those rare qualities
which were his strength.  Of one thing, however, she
had no doubt, and it was this—that a woman's love
would be necessary to such a career as his, and that
without it mere material success might carry him but a
little way.

She had not answered Luton's letter, and it was
still unanswered when she went to bed at half-past
eleven.  The plateau of Andana, usually so still after
ten o'clock, then echoed the music of the sleigh bells
with a persistence almost intolerable.  She heard the
cries of workmen, the lumbering of heavy vehicles,
the muffled sounds of hammering.  And all this
contrasted so strangely with the great mountains across
the valley, where the moon shone clear upon the giant
Weisshorn, and the lesser peaks paid to the greater
the homage of a glorious iridescence.  A white and
silent world it was, mocking the ambitions of
men—yet not of all men, for would not one conquer them
to-morrow?  Such ambition appealed to her womanly
instincts unerringly.  She trembled when she made the
silent confession that this man loved her, but that his
love would remain unspoken to the end.

It would have been about one o'clock when the last
of the sleighs arrived at the Palace Hotel, and a little
later when the workmen had finished their labours.
She sank to a dreamless sleep about this time, but
awoke almost immediately with the conviction that
someone had entered the chalet.  A vague intuition of
unwonted sounds set her heart beating and held her
almost breathless.  Someone had entered the little
sitting-room, and was not twenty paces from the bed in
which she lay.  She could hear the man's footsteps
as he crossed the room, and believing that he was at
her own door she began to tremble violently.  A
realisation of her lonely situation afflicted her with a
sense of inevitability which robbed her of every shred
of her courage.  She lay quite still, afraid to move
a hand.  The silence of the night without surpassed
belief.

The man had crossed the room and was now at her
writing-table.  She could hear the rustle of papers and
the click as of a lock.  In a sense this was a relief, and
gave her the necessary respite.  She began to
remember how unlikely it was that any thief would visit so
poor a house as this chalet, or, if he did visit it, would
trouble himself about letters.  The excellent
reputation well earned by the people of Andana occurred to
her, and would have reassured her but for the
alternative.  For if this man were not a common thief, what
then?  Instantly she recalled the affair at Vermala,
and a new fear came upon her.  Yes, she understood
it all in an instant and, creeping from her bed, she
dressed herself with tremulous fingers.

Surely the man must hear her and take alarm.  This
was her idea as her clothes rustled in her hand, and
her tiny feet shuffled upon the polished boards.  The
man would hear her and burst through the folding
doors presently.  When, however, he made no sign,
she became a little emboldened, and being now quite
dressed, she went to the interstice of the doors and
looked through.  Then she perceived her husband's
valet, Paul Lacroix, who was searching her writing-table
by the aid of an electric torch, whose aureole fell
weirdly upon the scattered papers.

Paul Lacroix!  That it should be he!  She remembered
that she had last seen him at Holmswell on the
eve of the debacle.  He had always been a silent, civil
fellow whom it was a pleasure to have in the house.
Luton, she knew, trusted him entirely, and the others
gave a very good account of him.  When the crash
came, he had followed his master without complaint,
to Africa and then to the East.  She believed him
staunch, and would have named him as one of the few
in her own house who had done his duty loyally both
to master and to mistress.  And here he was at
Andana, prying among her papers!  The very fact robbed
her of all fear and, opening the door immediately, she
asked him what he was doing.

He was a man of the middle height, clean-shaven,
and with crisp black hair, which contrasted sharply
with a very pale face.  It may be that he was not
unprepared for interruption; for he merely looked up
as Lily entered, and then, shutting down the desk
with a click, he held his hand upon it while he
answered her.

"Madame," he said, "I am seeking Sir Luton's address."

The effrontery of it astonished her.  She switched
on the electric light and came a little further into the
room.

"You are seeking my husband's address, but why
did you not come to me?"

He smiled a little contemptuously.

"I did not come, Madame, because you would not
have given me what I wanted."

There was a threat here, and she could not mistake
it.  The peril of her situation occurred to her
immediately.  He had offered no opposition when she
switched on the light; he knew, then, that she dare
not summon assistance, and was content with the
knowledge for his security.

"I do not understand you," she said with wonder.
"Why are you not with Sir Luton?"

He laughed openly.

"You know that, Madame—you and the other.
Why do you ask me the question?"

She thought upon it, trying to recall the account of
the flight as it had been given to her.

"You were to go to Paris," she said presently, "you
were to await Sir Luton there?"

He did not deny it.  His shoulders were lifted in a
characteristic gesture, his hands outspread when he
rejoined:

"But, Madame, my master will never go to Paris—not
while the police of Switzerland are looking for him."

She began to breathe as one distressed.  Little had
been said, but that was sufficient.  She knew the
character of this man now; there was no need to ask
another question.

"Be plain," she said, after an interval of hesitation,
"what is your object, what do you mean by this
intrusion?"

He bowed his head.

"I wish to go to London.  I have an offer of
employment from an American there.  Sir Luton must
give me a character—and one hundred pounds.  If
I cannot have the character, I must have one hundred
pounds.  Then I shall be ready to say that my master
has gone away, and that I am unable to apply to him.
Madame, if you can help me in this?"

She reflected, trembling a little in the night air, and
greatly afraid now both for herself and for her
husband.  Certainly she must not give Luton's address—that
would be a madness surpassing belief.  And if she
paid the hundred pounds—why, she had not such a
sum in her possession at the moment.

"How can I give you the money here in Switzerland?"
she asked.  "You know that it is impossible."

He was prepared for such an answer.

"Madame, no doubt, would have her jewellery with
her—there would be something she could offer me.
It would be very unfortunate if there were not, for
then I must go to Martigny to the police.  Will not
Madame think of it?"

He advanced a step and stood quite close to her.
She could see his clear eyes looking her through and
through, and she quailed before their scrutiny.  A call
for help would bring those white hands to her
throat—she was quite sure of it.

"I will give you what you want," she said, "if you
will wait here."

He bowed again, and she returned to her bedroom.
She had little jewellery with her; but a basket brooch
of rubies and diamonds was worth far more than the
sum he demanded, and for the sacrifice of that she was
not quite prepared.  Trembling hands unlocked her
jewel case, and trembling fingers searched it.  Then
she heard a step behind her, and turning about swiftly,
she discovered the valet at her elbow.  The expression
upon his face had changed altogether.  It had become
that of a wolf seeking prey.

Lily knew that this was the most dangerous
moment she had lived.  The man's quick breathing, his
crouching gesture, the strange light in his eyes,
betrayed him beyond recall.  He was about to spring
upon her, to crush out her life with iron fingers.  He
would have done so but for an intervention which one
night, and perhaps one only in the story of Andana,
made possible.  A sleigh was coming up the mountainside;
the bells rang out musically; the voices of men
were to be heard.  They brought the valet to his senses
instantly.  He did not reason that the sleigh would
pass and that his opportunity would recur.  Crime had
not been in his thoughts when he entered the chalet;
he shivered at its near approach, and, drawing back,
he waited for her to speak.

"Take this," she said; "if you have any sense of
honour, leave Andana immediately.  I have friends
here, and I shall acquaint them with what has
occurred.  Now go."

He went without a word, striding through the
sitting-room and turning into the little hall.  She heard
the front door shut after him, then the echo of light
steps upon the snow.  Her first thought was to wake
the maid, Louise, and to send her for help, but she
corrected that immediately, and set to work to bolt and
bar the place to the limit of its resources.  When that
was done, she returned to the desk which the man had
been about to rifle and examined its contents closely.
Luton's letter was untouched.  It lay at the bottom
of the drawer, and it was unlikely that the man had
seen it.

But granting that he had not, what then?  She
knew something of the story of blackmail as society
has written it, and she perceived her danger.  This
man would return; or, if he did not return, he would
send his agents.

The false step, if it were a false step, could never be
retrieved.  Upon the other side stood the hard truth
that, had she not refused him, the whole story would
have been made public to-morrow.  She was sure of
it.  The Swiss police would have been told that Sir
Luton Delayne had murdered Eugène Gaillarde and
had not gone to Paris.  All her hope lay in the belief
that Paul Lacroix knew nothing more than this.  If
he did know more, the end was at hand.

She slept no more that night, for now an ordered
imagination could tell her just what would happen in
case the worst should befall.  They would arrest Luton
and bring him across the pass.  Every paper in
Europe would tell the sordid story of his life.  Tried by
an alien jury, he would be convicted, and the extreme
penalty might follow conviction.  For herself, there
would be the contemptuous sympathy of the world.
Her life would have been lived, and what a life!  Had
she known one hour of true happiness since her
childhood?  Even her wedding trip had been a story of
disillusion.  A lover's kisses were still warm upon her
lips when she had awakened to the truth that she could
never love him.  Thereafter her existence had been
that almost of a recluse.  The magnificent gifts with
which her father dowered her had been squandered
with the mad profligacy of the born gambler.  She
had descended the ladder of humiliation step by
step—to this!

What would Paul Lacroix do?  This was a
question engrossing above any other.  If he held his
tongue, how long would it be before he returned to
Andana?

She perceived that she must go away—must not
delay an hour.  She resolved to set out for Sierre as
soon as she could make her arrangements and travel
thence to Milan.  It would be time enough afterwards
to decide whether she should or should not go on to
Locarno.

Paul Lacroix, meanwhile, had left the chalet and
returned to the village of Andana, where he shared a
room in the little café with the gendarme Philip.  The
influx of visitors kept this rude cabaret open all night
upon the eve of the flight, and Lacroix came and went
without observation.  He found the lad Philip in bed,
but not asleep; and when he had shut the door of their
room carefully he blurted out his tidings.

"It is well, my friend; I have done what you wished."

Philip sat up and stared at him with dreamy eyes.

"You know where he is, Monsieur Paul?"

The valet seated himself upon the edge of the bed,
and regarded the young man's face closely.

"For what will this reward be paid?" he asked
without premise.  Philip opened his eyes.

"For intelligence which will lead to the arrest of
the Englishman," he said.

Paul thought upon it.

"It would make no difference whether he were
arrested by the Swiss police or the Italian?"

Philip agreed.

"A reward of two thousand francs is offered by
the Government—another two thousand will be paid
by the English soldier, the Captain Barton, who is now
at Grindelwald.  That would make four thousand
francs altogether."

"Which will be earned by the man who gives the
information.  Very well, Monsieur Philip, we
understand each other.  I am going to Paris to-morrow—you
will go to this address.  You will find Sir Luton
Delayne in the house which is named."

He searched out a piece of paper from many scraps
in his pocket, and wrote down the address carefully.
Then he stuck a pin through it, and affixed it to the
bare wooden dressing-table where all could see it.

"You will claim the reward, and will pay me
one-half, Monsieur Philip?  I am generous, for I could go
myself to Martigny and get the money.  But I have
some business in Paris, so I leave it to you.  This is
between men of honour—you will pay me my share?"

Philip merely nodded his head.  He was staring at
the paper as though afraid of it.  But Paul Lacroix
undressed himself quickly and got into bed.

There would not be much more to be got out of
Lady Delayne, he thought.  He knew women well
enough to foresee that she would tell her friends
to-morrow—most probably the black-haired engineer
about whom the people were making such a fuss.  And
he was a man to be avoided.  Paul Lacroix was
already resolved to remove himself as soon as might be
from any possibility of a reckoning with this fellow.





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.. _`THE FLIGHT IS BEGUN`:

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   CHAPTER XX


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE FLIGHT IS BEGUN

.. vspace:: 2

Benny had dreamed that he fell in the Val d'Hérens
after an ignoble start from the plateau of Andana.
He woke upon this to find it was but a dream, and that
the little abbé stood by his bedside with a steaming
bowl of coffee in his hand.  Here was a man who had
been up all night, and who would not sleep until the
issue were known.  Never was there such an enthusiast.

"It is nothing," he said apologetically.  "I have
often watched for thirty hours at the Hospice when
there has been a storm.  We make little difference
between night and day up there.  The poor people who
fall in the snow would not thank us if we did."

Benny laughed, and sitting up in bed, he drank his
coffee willingly.

"What time is it, Abbé?"

"It is half-past six o'clock; you have two hours yet.
Your brother is already dressed; you will find him in
the shed."

Benny put on his engineer's overalls and went down.
He felt a little excited; perhaps he was actually
nervous, but no one would have guessed as much.
Whistling a few bars of an ancient waltz almost in as many
keys as there were notes, he went out to the shed and
set to work to help his brother.  It was still black
dark, and the great arc lamp shone out weirdly at such
an hour of the morning.

Jack Benson carried an electric torch in one hand
and an oil-can in the other.  He said that all was well.
He had been over the "ship" from stem to stern—there
was not a nut which a spanner could tighten a
hair's-breadth, not a wire that was not taut.  The
machine itself seemed to bear witness to the truth of
this.  Benny himself admitted that she was a picture,
while a stranger would have likened her to a great
steel bird, with the head of a snout-faced whale and
the fins of a ravening shark.  Another image would
have made of her a shining torpedo, with great wings
thrust out on either side and a monster propeller large
enough to have moved a steamship at her stern.  It
seemed ridiculous that those slight stays, those
ridiculous bicycle wheels supported her as she stood.  Yet
that was the truth, for she was light to the point of
miracle.

"Shall we run the engine now, Jack?"

Jack thought that they might.

"I'm not too sure of that union we made yesterday,
Benny.  You'd look handsome if the petrol gave out.
Let's run her, and see if it's leaking.  You've a good
hour yet before you need go up.  There's breakfast,
too—you'll have to let the Abbé fill you up, for he's
cook this morning.  Are you ready, old boy?  Then
let her rip."

He switched off the magnet, gave a few sharp turns
to the propeller, and the engine started.  Had not
the machine been anchored, she would have glided
off at once, but, being anchored, she heaved and tossed
as a ship at sea.  Jack was satisfied with the union,
and declared that it was not leaking, upon which Benny
announced his intention to take a short flight as a
final precaution.

They ran the machine out of the shed, and he
climbed into his seat, to which a light steel door in
the side of the torpedo-like body admitted him.  Once
again Jack started the engine.  Benny glided swiftly
over the snow for some thirty yards, then rose swiftly
and circled the Park Hotel.  There was no wind and
it was bitter cold.  Of all the visitors, he did not
espy a single one upon the slopes beneath him.  An
intense silence prevailed—a silence that was almost
ominous.

They sat to breakfast upon his return, and the abbé
served an excellent omelet and some eggs which he
had captured in the village last night.  If their talk
was a little constrained and nervous, the circumstances
more than justified it.  Here they were, with their
eyes upon a goal so distant that its attainment seemed
impossible.  All the dangers, the risks, the difficulties
of such an emprise stared them in the face, and would
be remembered.  A man's life might be the price of
success.  Secretly in his heart, Jack wondered if he
were speaking to his beloved brother for the last time.
It might be that.

Benny, upon his part, said very little.  He had a
map of the Pennine Alps on the white cloth before him
and he studied it closely.  His questions concerned the
arrangements and the names of the committee of the
Aero Club of England, who would be present.  He
understood that his flight was to be checked at
Chamonix and again in the Val d'Anniviers as he returned.
There were to be watchers at Zermatt and at the
Weisshorn hut, if it could be reached.  Twice he was
permitted to land for petrol.  He made it out that they
were sixty-three miles from Mont Blanc as the crow
flies, and that would be his first halting-place.

"Marfan and Collot from Paris are to be there,"
he said, "I had a letter from them.  I hope there will
be good landing somewhere near the hotel—it
wouldn't do to mow down the crowd.  I've got a
spot in my mind, but they may not have in theirs.
The petrol, of course, will be all right.  Émile is
seeing to that, and he's a man to trust."

Jack agreed to it.  Émile was the cleverest airman he knew.

"If you want anything at all, Benny, it may be a
couple of plugs.  Mind you see they don't blow.  The
oil's gone through from London, and I had an advice
from Chamonix yesterday saying they had stored it.
Mind you keep alive in the valley from the
Matterhorn, and remember to come up pretty far before you
swing and drop.  The wind looks like being an easter;
you'll have to take care in the last hour."

He agreed, and consented under compulsion to eat
his breakfast.  Day had broken now at the far end of
the Rhone Valley, and the higher peaks were shaping
above the mists to pinnacles of rose and silver and
many shades of purple.  Clouds drifted toward Sion
and the west; the great chasm below them was so
filled by the rolling white vapour that it might have
been a sea of downy billows; but the day promised
warm sunshine and little wind despite Jack's prophecy.
Benny liked the look of it altogether; and when,
without warning, strains of ridiculous music were to be
heard on the path below the chalet, he pushed on his
hat and went out.

All the world about him was astir now and eager
for the day.  Hatless men had emerged from the
Palace Hotel, and were darting hither and thither on skis,
or crying the news to girls hidden at their bedroom
windows.  Caterers for an expected multitude flocked
towards the booths they had erected on the mountain-side,
and prepared to set out their wares.  A perpetual
going and coming, the jangling of sleigh bells and the
neighing of horses spoke of unusual activity at the
stables.

Higher up on the slope whence the actual start was
to be made, a little throng had already gathered.  It
surveyed the ground, and looked wonderingly toward
distant Mont Blanc veiled in the mists.  Was it
possible that this mad Englishman would attempt to fly
as far as that?  Incredible!  A thing undreamed
of—perhaps an affront to the Almighty, who had created
the mountains to speak of His power and dominion.

Benny saw these people as he wheeled his aeroplane
out of the shed at eight o'clock, and began to push it
up toward the plateau.  He thought very little of
them, and remembered few of his friends at Andana.
A certain pleasure at the interest he had awakened
was mingled already with the desire to hear if Lily
Delayne would be present at the start.  He knew not
quite why it was, but his desire that she should be
there became rather a superstition than a sentiment.
He blamed her no longer for the indifference she had
displayed during the week, for that was natural to the
circumstance; but he associated her presence with the
success of his attempt, and was almost ready to say
that it would not succeed if she failed him.

Of Lily, however, there was no sign at present.  He
had to be content with the gossip of Bess Bethune,
who was early on the scene, and ready with a
thousand questions.  Bess promised to tell her uncle, the
Cabinet Minister, all about the wonderful machine;
and, as she said, "Of course, the Government will buy
thousands, especially if you don't do it, because
Governments always buy things which fall down."  When
this offer failed to excite the stolid engineer as much
as it might have done, she turned to Dr. Orange, and
asked him if he were not going to lend Mr. Benson
his surgical instruments?  Her chatter was not
unmusical, and her presence welcome amid the gloom
which now fell upon the company.  Perhaps many
shared the child's fears.  This Englishman was going
to his death—there could hardly be a doubt about it.

Benny moved in and out among the people,
exchanging a word here, bestowing a nod there.  He was
wrapped up like an Arctic explorer, and resembled a
shaggy bear more than a man; but his black eyes were
very bright, and his pale cheeks carried a flush of
colour foreign to them.  Chiefly, perhaps, his
attention centred upon the narrow path by which Lily
Delayne must come up from her chalet, if she came
at all; and he searched it at brief intervals, even
pushing his way through the press of the people that
he might inspect it more surely, but always to his
disappointment.  Of Lily herself there was not a sign,
the very blinds of her sitting-room were drawn down.
He fell to wondering if she had left Andana altogether,
and he might have rested upon his opinion but for
a message brought to him from the chalet just five
minutes before the signal to start was given.  This
was nothing less than a little horse-shoe carved out
of wood and set with silver nails.  To it was attached
a card with the simple words, "Good Luck," and then
the initials, "L. C."  Benny resolved immediately to
make it his "mascot," and he affixed it to the prow
of his machine without a word to anyone.

Such an offering at the altar of superstition set
other friends busy, and mascots were offered by many
hands.  Teddy-bears, brought in haste from the
bazaar, squatted upon the aluminium shell of the
aeroplane; pigs and elephants from the same merchant
were tied by willing hands wherever a lodgment could
be found.  The occupation found the company in
better mood, and as the moment drew near many who
had been silent became eloquent enough and forgot
their apprehensions.  It was almost with impatience
that the people heard the long-winded speech of the
president for the day.  Words would not help
Benjamin Benson across the Pennine Alps, they
remembered, and some of them did not hesitate to say so
aloud.  Fortunately, the address came to an end just
when the patience of the malcontents was quite
exhausted; and then, with a last salute and a word of
good cheer to Brother Jack and the Abbé, Benny
climbed to his seat and roared to them to let go.

In a sense, it was an undramatic start, and pleased
the excitable Frenchmen but little.  Their tastes would
have dictated a flourish of trumpets or a salute of
twenty-one guns; whereas, in fact, there was no music
whatever at this particular moment, and the solitary
gun which denoted the start boomed heavily and
almost with menace.  Its echoes had hardly died away
in the heights above Vermala when the roar of Benny's
engine was to be heard, and immediately upon that
the machine, flashing silver in the sunshine, soared
above the plateau, and was gone in an instant straight
across the mighty chasm of the Rhone Valley.  Five
minutes later the same machine was but a speck against
the azure of the sky.

Benny had made a good ascent, and was pleased
enough with the way his engine ran.  The exhaust
was firm and regular; he knew the firing to be even;
while, as for the lifting power, he was off the ground
in twenty yards and had mounted five hundred feet
the very first time he circled above the spectators.
This gave him confidence, and sent him straight across
the valley without further preliminary.  To be sure,
he cast down one quick glance at the black ring of
spectators upon the plateau before the Palace Hotel,
searched out for an instant Lily's chalet and tried to
believe that the figure in the garden was that of a
woman who had inspired him to this day's work; but
his reward was a vague impression of a blurred scene,
and it gave place almost immediately to the wonder
and ecstasy of the flight itself, and to that desire of a
goal which burned him as a fever.

His course lay almost directly to the southwest.
Upon his left hand were the tremendous precipices of
the Janus-faced Weisshorn, the gentler arrête of the
Rothhorn, and, behind that again, the black rocks of
the Matterhorn.  More directly before him were the
Becs de Bossons, and the black defile of the lower
Valley; while the Aiguilles Rouges, clear and sharp,
stood to his right at the moment of departure.
Heading for a while down the Valley of the Rhone, he saw
the range of the Pennine Alps opening away to the
south to disclose Mont Blanc and the triple domes, now
lightly veiled by cloud, but plainly to be discerned
at the altitude he had chosen.  Here Nature seemed
a little kinder, showing him low, rounded mountains
upon either side of the valley and great woods of the
pines which were but black scars upon the sheer rock.
Deeper down lay the heart of the chasm, the towns,
which were but so many dots upon a sepia ground,
the silver thread of the Rhone itself, and Sion with
its puny heights whereon proud bishops had built their
palaces.  Over these he passed at a tremendous speed,
watched from below by thousands who were invisible to
him.  He felt already that he was the master even of
this majesty—that man had conquered, and to him
henceforth must be the dominion.

The day had broken fine, and the sun shone
gloriously when he crossed the actual valley and began to
fly high above the mountains upon the other side.
Warned that height would be his salvation, he now
soared to a great altitude that he might be sure of
stable currents and not be drawn down by any of
those eddies in which aeroplanes founder so quickly.
Of the latter he had a momentary experience at the
mouth of the Black Valley, where the cross winds
caught him and turned him completely about before
he could recover control, so that he was facing Brigue
again and looking toward Italy and not toward France.
This salutary warning found him more watchful
afterwards; and when he had put the machine straight he
mounted still higher, and found a dead calm, wherein
he ignored the bitter cold and quickly left the valley
behind him.

Now for the first time Lake Leman was visible to
the northwest.  He could see its waters shining in the
sun and thought he could locate the heights of Caux;
but of this he was not sure, and his knowledge of the
Alps being very limited, he but guessed at his precise
environment.  Of Mont Blanc, however, he never lost
a clear vision, and heading his ship for that, had eyes
for little else.

There were glaciers shaping at this point of the
journey, and the sun showed him desolate fields of
snow slashed with the jagged bands of ice and often
cut by the black rocks of some fearsome arrête.  The
loneliness of his situation was emphasised by this vision
of a world apart; of ravines which the foot of man
had never trodden; of heights which the foot of man
had never conquered.  Descending a little, he searched
out the dark places with curious eyes, tried to make
villages of the tracery below him; said that the
zig-zags stood for vines upon the hillside and the black
lines for railways.  When he heard quite distinctly
the whistle of a locomotive upon its way to Martigny,
the message appeared to come out of the unknown,
a voice from a house of his dreams.  It recalled him
to a sense of his own situation, to the possibilities of
failure and of death.  He remembered that he was
very cold, and wondered if he would have the physical
strength to continue.

It was an unhappy foreboding, and he shook it off
as well as he could and tried to remember the speed
at which he was flying and the hour at which it would
bring him to the Valley of Chamonix.  The mighty
shape of Mont Blanc had begun to emerge more plainly
from the mists at this time, and to show its sloping
summit, with the attendant needles very distinctly to
be seen.  He knew that he must pass right across the
great mountain, and then find what landing he could
in the valley, and the desire to do this with credit
put other thoughts from his head.  The Val d'Hauderes
was behind him at this time, and the head of
his ship pointed almost directly to the Aiguilles Rouges,
beyond which lay the Valley of Chamonix.  When
he looked at the chronometer, fixed upon the right-hand
side of the frame, he learned that he had already
been flying for one hour and twenty minutes; but of
his actual direction he could glean nothing by the
compass, which swung to every point as the ship sagged
and recovered in the varying currents.  This
mattered little while the weather remained clear; and
when, almost with the swiftness of a vision, the valley
came into view he believed his object to be already attained.

What a glorious revelation was that—the revelation
of countless spires and needles of rock, all dwarfed
by his altitude, and seeming but a magic forest rising
from the eternal snows.  Had he been a mountaineer,
he would have named many of them, and before all
others the Aiguille du Géant, with its numberless
satellites.  But he had no knowledge of the valley, and
all his interest centred upon Mont Blanc.  Viewed at
such a height, the mighty monarch appeared rather a
great mound of snow above diverging rivers of ice
than the proud mountain of the school-day fables; but
such was the truth; and when he looked down upon
the grand plateau, that spreading field of snow where
so many have perished, it reminded him of nothing
so much as the plateau at Andana, where his friends
awaited him.  Benny thought of them with a smile as
he headed the ship right over the mountain.  It seemed
impossible to believe that he had left them just an hour
and a half ago.

He flew very close to the summit of Mont Blanc
and dropped upon it three weighted bags, each
containing his message to the Aero Club of Switzerland.
A sense of humour reminded him that those bags
would hardly be sought by any climber at this season
of the year, and that their very fabric might be rotted
when the great thaw came; but he liked the idea of
a message, and would scatter others before the flight
was done.  When they were delivered, he wheeled his
machine right-about, and espying the white buildings
of the valley, he began to go down toward them.
Now, for the first time that day, he could realise the
immensity of the precipices he had defied and their
danger.  Vast walls of rock appeared to engulf him
as he descended; he could feel a bitter cold wind
rising up from the monster glaciers which had become
lakes of the clearest blue ice; pine-woods shaped and
declared the contours of trees.  He became aware of
the presence of people in the valley—thousands of
them, moving in great throngs, now this way, now
that, as they attempted to follow his movements.  In
the end he heard a roar of voices swelling upward,
and this magnified in notes of a falsetto often
ridiculous, but unmistakable.  Called as by a messenger, he
sought out a landing-place, and his eyes searched the
snow-fields ceaselessly.  Where was Émile—the
faithful Émile?  Ah, he stood yonder where the flags
were waving.  And thither the willing machine swept
downward, gliding at last with wings outstretched and
touching the snow as caressingly as a young girl may
kiss her lover.

The chosen ground was about a mile from the
village itself, near Les Pres, on the banks of the Arve.
Here a fine spread of snow made descent comparatively
safe, and here Benny found his allies, those
clever workmen from the French shops whom he had
engaged especially for his venture.  Immediately they
swarmed about him, driving the strangers back and
appealing to the breathless gendarmes.  As for little
Émile, he threw himself into the Englishman's arms
and kissed him on both cheeks, which resounding
thwacks would not have disgraced a pantomime.  He
was followed by normally sane members of the Aero
Clubs of France and London, who, forgetting their
sanity, capered like goats upon the mountain, and
uttered incoherent witticisms in unknown tongues.
Behind them lay the spectators whose "bravos"
echoed far up in the mountains—the honest acclamations
of those who had seen miracles and would never
forget the day.  Indeed, it was said that some of the
peasants had fled to the churches when the aeroplane
first appeared over Mont Blanc.  The priests
themselves, taught to know better by the Abbé Villari, sent
them forth with ridicule.  Was there not a lunch to
be eaten?  And why should they delay?

Benny was frozen to the marrow when he rolled out
of the shell, and his first request was for a hot drink.
When Monsieur Collot of the Swiss Club shrugged his
shoulders in pitiful desperation, Benny mumbled
something about a Thermos under the driving seat, and
Émile understanding, the flask was brought out and
the hot draught proffered.  Then the bluff engineer,
striding to and fro upon the snow, tried to answer all
their questions at a breath, while a photographer from
the *Daily Recorder* made frantic efforts to snapshot
him, and almost cried when he could not.

Yes, Benny admitted it had been a great day.  He
found the air currents very sure, but had suffered a
good deal from the scorching sun.  There would be
no skin on his face for a month, but that did not
matter.  He could hardly tell them how the big
mountains looked from above—his eyes had been too much
on his engine; but he thought very little of Mont Blanc
as a show when seen up aloft, and he was astonished
how flat a country an aeroplane could make even of
this Switzerland.  As to his prospects, he would finish
if the engine held out and the cold was not too much
for him.  He had his doubts on the latter score, not
upon the former.  Pressed to say if his sensations
had not been quite abnormal, he admitted that they
might have been, and that he had known moments of
fear, especially when he came down into the valley.
The ether, he said, was a good friend to man when
it was warm enough.  He quite understood why
parsons told them to look upward, for there was nothing
like the peace of the heights in all the human story.
But for the danger, no man who had known what it
was to fly would ever wish to get back to the earth
again.  Sometimes at great heights he thought he had
lost the earth altogether, and might drift away to
another planet—which our great great grandchildren
may be doing, he added, with a laugh.  This Valley
of Chamonix was just like a prison for the time
being; he felt cabined and confined, wanted to be off
and into the blue again; but he would take some food
first if they didn't mind, and he hoped the police would
keep all hands off his machine.  To which Émile
responded that he would shoot anyone who touched it,
and with this amiable sentiment, continued his feverish
task of replenishment and overhaul.

Benny, meanwhile, was led away to the Hotel
Londres, where a luncheon had been prepared.  His
appearance, when he had discarded his furs, was droll
enough; and, surely, this was the first time that high
officials of Switzerland had sat down to banquet a
man in engineer's overalls!  But they did so with
pride, and the speech in which the Mayor of Lausanne
proposed the aviator's health did credit alike to his
discernment and to his generosity.

It was nearly mid-day when the meal was done,
and a quarter-past twelve when Benny pushed his way
through the crowds of people and took his seat once
more at the tiller of his ship.  A hot sun then blazed
in the sky, but a murmur of winds stirred ever and
anon in the valley and warned him that the Rubicon
had yet to be crossed.  There would be dangerous
moments above the Zermatt glaciers, and still graver
dangers when he re-entered the Simplon.  But he was
in better heart to face them, and with a few honest
words to the people he arose swiftly, amid a storm of
wild cheering, straight up above the River Arve to the
west, and the goal.





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.. _`THE FLIGHT IS FINISHED`:

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   CHAPTER XXI


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   THE FLIGHT IS FINISHED

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There is no more impressive fact of aviation than
the speed at which the airman loses touch with *terra
firma*.

At one moment the subject of congratulations amid
a press of people, a familiar landscape about him, hills
for his horizon, a great plain for his environment; at
the next, he is high above the earth, the familiar
landmarks are almost blotted out, the people have
disappeared from his sight.

Benny had shaken hands perhaps with five hundred
worthy souls at Chamonix, had written his name in
fifty books, posed for his picture to excited acrobats
who held quaking cameras, addressed blunt little
speeches to the deputies, quaffed a stirrup-cup of hot
spiced wine, been conscious of an environment of
mighty mountains and majestic peaks, and then, in
a flash, the picture was changed, the people had
disappeared, the voices were lost to him, the very scene
transformed.

He rose a little to the north of the forbidding
Aiguille du Géant and experienced just for an instant
the sensation that he had not attained a sufficient
altitude and must strike the dread pinnacles of the rock.
This was an unnecessary alarm, for the ship
responded quickly to a touch of the elevating plane, and
he cleared the mountain by three hundred feet or more.
Then he headed almost due east, as he had been told
to do.  The wind, capricious ever in the Valley of
Chamonix, here became almost boisterous; and for the
first time that day he discovered a vacuum, as it were
a whirlpool of the ether, into which he was drawn,
and for a few moments whirled about with a velocity
which appalled him.  One less skilful might have
wrecked all at such a moment, and had it been so he
would have gone down headlong amid the pinnacles
of rock which stand attendant to the famous peak.
Benny, however, was always prepared for such a
happening as this, and despite that crude sensation of the
swift descent he covered his balance almost
immediately and put the ship due east again.

He had saved himself, but for how long?  The
dread mountains, above which he must sail henceforth,
would be fertile in such perils as this; the valleys he
must cross would be death-traps to any but the most
vigilant.  Pride in his swift flight to Mont Blanc had
seduced him to this easy confidence, which might undo
all if uncorrected.  He resolved to apply all the mental
concentration of which he was capable to the one
purpose of success, and taking the wheel firmly in his
hands, he set his eyes toward the great mountains about
Zermatt and would heed no other spectacle.

It has been said that he was quite ignorant of the
Alps, and, truly, a man more familiar with the scene
would have better understood the wonder of the deed.

Here below him were the steeps and slopes, the dread
arrêtes, the gleaming precipices which climbers had
dared since Switzerland first called them to her
wonders.  Observed from that immense altitude he had
now attained, the precipices had become but slabs of
snow, steps in a puny wall above which the pinnacles
soared; the steeps were but mild hills whereon children
should have played; the glaciers but silver threads in
whitened moraines which pierced the woods.  Hotels
and huts—he could hardly distinguish one from the
other; the valleys were flattened out until they
resembled the plateaus, and all with such a grotesque
effect that sometimes the very earth would appear to
be turned inside out as it were, the valleys made
heights and the heights pressed down to valleys.
Going on a little way, a cloud would shut the whole scene
from his view, and he would imagine himself in the
boundless ether, a wanderer apart from all worlds and
voyaging toward the Eternal.

Engineers seldom lack imagination, and he of them
all had a soul above the mechanics of things material.
Despite his desire to accomplish the task he had set
himself, this phantasy of the cloud inspired him to
wonderful thoughts of life and death and the transit
of the soul.  Let this new science of flight continue,
and who could name its limitations?  He laughed at
the folly of the notion, and then remembered that he
must breast Zermatt according to the conditions.

Had he lost count of the Matterhorn?  He peered
down anxiously through the mist, descended a little
and received the first real fright since the beginning.
For a mountain loomed suddenly before him; he swung
instantly to the left, and was then almost abreast of
a fearsome precipice which suggested the whole
measure of that height.  The terror of it set him
shuddering.  He soared again desperately, and listened
to the beat of his engine as to a message of life or
death.  Would it fail him?  If it did, death must be
the end of it.  He laughed at his own cowardice when
the rattle of the exhaust made music for his ears again,
and the drifting vapour showed him all the wonders
of the Riffelberg, as no living man but he had seen it.

Here for the first time he could look down upon the
smiling face of Italy, and discern the gentler country
between the chain of the Pennines and Biella.  Despite
the altitude, a warmer breath was breathed upon him
from the southern valleys.  The vast bulk of Monte
Rosa, approached as he swung about to regain the
Simplon, warned him that the respite was but brief,
and that all the rigour of the northern range must
be faced anew if he would reach Andana.  But he was
cheered by this break in the vista of eternal snows;
and bringing his machine about, he searched the
wilderness of ice below for any sign of those who must
observe his passing.

He had crossed the sloping peak of the Matterhorn
by this time, and could espy the precipices of the
Weisshorn once more.  The Valley of Zermatt
running down to the pass was but a trench in a desolation
from which the eyes must shrink.  Knowing little of
the place, he had few landmarks; but the Gorner
Glacier was one of them, and he traced it with
precision.  There he perceived great tendrils of pure ice,
bent and gnarled as the trunks of trees; black rocks
upon which no snow could rest; fathomless depths
of ice so blue that a magic river should lie beneath
them.  And there, as elsewhere, the stillness appalled
him.  He was glad that it was so, for wind was the
enemy.  Let the weather change, and he might still
be defeated.  He knew it, and his heart sank at the
remembrance.

A great endeavour is chiefly a story of great hopes.
This man had dreamed of such an opportunity as
this—he knew not in what phase of his calling—but
he had dreamed that some day the world would hail
him as a victor, and that his name would be known to
men.  Now it seemed that the moment was at hand.
The immensity of his achievement was hardly present
to his mind.  Sometimes he was almost afraid for
himself, saying, "I am jesting with my fellow-men;
it is the machine and not the man which counts in the
story of the sciences."  At other times a great pride
in what he had done ran like fire through his veins.
The whole world must know his name to-morrow.  If
he fell dead then and there upon the black rocks of
the Matterhorn, they must still say that he of all living
men had first crossed the summit of Mont Blanc.  He
knew it, and flushed at the knowledge.  He had not
lived in vain; perchance, should the supreme prize be
his, he was about to enter upon a new life whose
rewards he would not dwell upon.  Others had told him
so; he was content to believe them.

And so great hopes went with him, and the smallest
check upon them could set his heart beating.  Of these
the most considerable came at the moment when he
headed his machine for the twin-peaked Weisshorn.
His brother and the abbé had warned him against the
currents of the Valley of Zermatt; but so triumphant
had been his progression to this time that he had
forgotten the warnings or derided them.  Now they
returned as an echo to which he must listen.  Suddenly,
and without any warning at all, he felt himself sinking
toward the valley.  It was just as though the whole
machine dropped rapidly, had lost stability, and would
go hurtling down to the abyss as a bird that is shot.
In vain he raised his elevating plane to its full
capacity.  The shell continued its headlong flight, its
nose dipped downwards, its engine raced wildly.
Then, as suddenly, he regained his balance, went a little
way upon an even keel, and discovered that his engine
had almost ceased to run.  It ebbed away as a life that
gasps for air—sobbed out a requiem.  And that
drove him almost mad with terror; for a spell his
wit failed him altogether; he sat back in his chair and
looked death in the face.

But it was for an instant, no more.  There is this
in the instinct of a true mechanic, that whatever the
emergency, his mind will grasp the meaning of it
before the minds of others, and he will be the first to
act.  Even as death looked him in the face, Benny
could say that the engine had ceased to run because
the petrol supply had failed.  Turning in his seat he
lifted the needles valve, and then struck the side of
his tank a fierce blow.  As swiftly as the engine had
failed, as swiftly it took up the drive again.  He heard
the hum of it; watched the great propeller racing, and
then looked ahead of him to regain his course.  There
had been a margin of ten seconds perhaps between
salvation and the ultimate calamity.  He was as white
as the snow beneath him when he understood the truth.

A vast black precipice of rock loomed up the third
of a mile away.  Unable to see more than its jagged
face, Benny swung his machine to port, then soared
without a break until he had lost all sense of locality,
and the air was so bitterly cold that his very breath
turned to ice.  Now a great white cloud enveloped
him.  He looked vainly to his compass for help, but
the needle oscillated so violently that north and south
had no meaning.  Descending a little way, he discovered
that he was circling about Monte Rosa, and that the
plains of Italy called him once more.  Then despair
seized upon him—the despair of a man who wanders
by night, lost to all sense of direction, and vainly
seeking lights upon a strange horizon.

In a measure this dread had been inspired by the
fall.  He waited with ear intent for any sound that
the engine would fail a second time, and shuddered
at any variation of its rhythm.  When the vista
became clear again he was astonished to find that the
scene was just as it had been when first he crossed the
summit of the Matterhorn.  All the great peaks—the
Dent Blanche, the Rothhorn, the Grand Gorner,
the Weissthor—stood in the same relation to his
course as when he had set it at the beginning.  And
at this he took new courage, and with a counsel of
prudence which sent him eastward across the mouth of the
valley.  He would not enter that trap for the second
time; he knew that in altitude lay his salvation.

His flight now lay in some part along the Italian
frontier.  He skirted Monte Rosa and flew straight
across the Gorner Grat, kept to the right of the Horner,
and henceforth found a kindlier country.  Had he
persisted he would have come to the lesser peaks which
fend the Simplon Pass; but he swung again before he
reached them, and so, with the wind at his back, he
headed at last straight for Andana and the goal.  Half
an hour, he thought, would bring the end, if the weather
held and the mists were but local.

The latter was now his only doubt, and he could
not shake it off despite the magnitude of his
attainment.  He had reached a point where he should have
been able to look right up the Valley of the Rhone;
but the view was obscured by those banks of white
cloud which had drifted in the valley since dawn, and
were still to be reckoned with.  He entered the first
of them, and was subject once more to all the dread
and despair which had afflicted him at Zermatt.  A
sense of direction was lost as heretofore; vast shadows
appeared to pursue him; he raced his engine that he
might escape them, but they pressed on the more.
Then, in an instant, the way would be clear, the sun
shining brightly, the valley below him a smiling scene
to summon him to victory.

It was but such a little way, and victory stood so
near.  When the cloud enveloped him for the third
time that day, he tried to soar above it, and succeeded
for a little while; but the vapour was mounting also
and it would interpose a curtain between him and the
earth, so that direction was alternately lost and found,
while he himself became soaked to the skin and began
to lose the use of his hands.  Now, surely, he thought
that he was done for; but still he headed for Andana
and the slopes, and said that all must be risked in that
final descent.  Henceforth, it was a race between the
endurance of the man and the machine, and the
magnitude of the cloud.  He heard an ominous misfire in
his engine, and shivered as though a cold hand had
touched him.  The great white sea of vapour below
forbade him to see whether he were then above Visp
or Sierre; nor did the contour of the valley shape as
he had expected.  So a woful sense of defeat took
possession of him anew; his numbed hands permitted
the ship to rock horribly; he went down a hundred
feet, but feared the walls of the valley; rose again, and
reeled in his seat.  He was a beaten man by now,
hardly able to raise a hand to a lever; the great white
sea had done for him, and he knew it.

Here irony stepped in, and with a weird interposition
which would have delighted a cynic.  While his
machine rolled and sagged in the mists a sound of
human voices came up to him from below.  He thought
that he heard cheers, the hooting of horns, and the
crack of a revolver shot.  As swiftly as the sounds
arose they died away, and the stillness became supreme.
He felt that he must come down whatever the cost.
The great prize was lost, and with it the hope of the
years.  And at this tears of a bitter sorrow welled to
the man's eyes.  Defeated!  Yes, that was the truth,
and the world would know the story to-morrow, and
forget him in a week.  What mattered it that he had
done so much?  Was not victory his all in all?  And
he was beat—dead beat—by the cloud which mocked
him.  Almost with a sob he made a last effort and
began to come down.  The ground below him,
emerging suddenly, showed a steep bank of snow with
pinewoods above it.  There he ran his ship, and as she
came to rest he buried his face in his hands and wept
aloud.





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.. _`THE EMPTY HOUSE`:

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   CHAPTER XXII


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   THE EMPTY HOUSE

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The fit of weakness passed swiftly to give place to a
finer measure of courage than any which had inspired
him hitherto.

The prize was lost.  What then?  He had been
robbed of it, not by any failure of the machine he had
created, but by the caprice of nature, against which
he was powerless.  Those who criticised him would be
compelled to admit as much.  And, all said and done,
he had been the first man to cross Mont Blanc in an
aeroplane, and no tongue could rob him of the credit.

These were early impressions, and not a little vague.
He was bitterly cold and so cramped in every limb
that when he rolled out of his seat at last he could not
stand upright.  Utterly exhausted in mind and body,
he held as well as he could to the shell of the ship, and
tried to drag himself to his feet.  Then he remembered
that there was a flask of brandy among his "stores,"
and finding it with maladroit hand, he took a heavy
draught.  The potent liquor revived him immediately.
Circulation came back at last.  He stood upright and
looked about him.

He was on a steep slope of the snow, and there
were woods above him.  When he had searched them
a little while with patient eyes, he began to think that
they were not unfamiliar.  A further scrutiny showed
him a gabled building above the woods, and he could
have sworn that it was the well-known hotel at
Vermala.  Turning to the valley below, he perceived a
clump of pines emerging from the mists, and they
fitted into the picture he had imagined.  Yes, they
would be the woods standing between Vermala and the
plateau of Andana, and if they were, his chalet lay
below them.  But at that thought he shrugged his
shoulders and laughed in an odd way.  He would not
think about a chance so preposterous.

His machine had escaped all damage in the swift
descent, and lay across the bank; one wing just tipping
the froth of the snow, the other poised high above the
white ground.  His difficulty was to reach solid
ground, for the drifts were deep hereabouts, and he
sank up to his knees at every step he took.  It
occurred to him that he must carry skis with him in
future against such a mishap as this; and resolving to
make a note of it, he began to examine the engine and
propellers to see if all were well with them.  This
scrutiny still occupied him when he heard a loud
shouting from the woods below, and picked up his ears as a
hare that is warned.

There were cries in the wood, incoherent salvos
as of a mob whose hearts might be in unison, but whose
lungs were out of tune.  Listening intently, Benny
thought that he could distinguish the raucous voices
of boys, the shrill piping of girls, and the deep baying
of men excited abnormally.  A moment later and a
man emerged from the wood, and set out to cross the
snow toward him, and this man was up to his waist
in the drift immediately, while strong arms were thrust
out to help him, and a roar of laughter proffered as
his reward.

"Good God!" cried Benny, "it's the little priest!"  And,
in truth, it was.

The Abbé Villari, with his cassock tucked up to
his waist, his arms waving wildly, hatless and with
tousled hair, he had been first before them all.  No
runner at Stamford Bridge could have had much the
better of him in that mad striving for the first prize
in the race.  And, worthy soul, the snow engulfed him
immediately, and it remained for the parson, Harry
Clavering, to drag him out and set him, sobered, upon
his feet.  Meanwhile, others had snatched the prize
from him, and before them all the Admirable Crichton
of Andana, Dr. Orange, the immaculate.

Benny steadied himself by the shell of his ship while
he watched this advance; nor could his wit make
anything of it.  Why were all these people in such a hurry
to thrash a dead horse?  Had they come to tell what
he knew so well, that his endeavour had failed, and that
the prize must go to another?  He could make nothing
of it, and he stood and stared while men and women
on skis debouched from the woods by twenty paths and
came racing over the snow toward him.

Dr. Orange was quite out of breath when he reached
the place, and he stood for a little while holding to
the ship and trying to find words.  Before he had
recovered, Bob Otway, Dick Fenton, and Keith Rivers
had joined him, and these were eloquent enough, though
they spoke a strange tongue to Benny.  In truth, their
greeting was an incoherent salvo of wild words among
which he distinguished such homely phrases as,
"You've got them stiff"; "Bravo old Benny!" and
"Perinder pays, by thunder!"  An instant later and
Bob had suggested that it was a case for "chairing";
and there being no chair handy, he and Rivers laid
violent hands upon the astonished victor and lifted him
bodily to their shoulders.

His protest went for nothing.  He cried out that
it was "damned nonsense!" but no one seemed to
hear him.  Perchance a man has never been carried
shoulder-high by other men on skis before.  They
would establish a precedent, as Bob declared, and
calling the parson and Dick Fenton to his aid, set off
bravely for the Palace.

"Where is my brother?" Benny asked them in an
interlude.  The doctor answered that he had fainted
when the gun announced the victory; but that was an
enigma to the engineer, and kept him quiet awhile.
"When the gun announced his victory.  Good God!
What victory?"

"I lost it," he stammered presently, "because the
mist took me.  It seems I was nearer than I thought.
Another ten minutes and I would have done it."

Nobody listened to this.  They were in the woods
now, and went on in a triumph characteristic of
Andana.  If the music were chiefly of horns and bugles,
it mattered little.  Major Boodle, among others, had
devoted a master intellect to the acquisition of the
"yoodle" in various keys, and he practised it
relentlessly.  There was one fellow who had borrowed a
drum in the village, and beat a tattoo with real
cleverness.  A few mild youths, who always carried
revolvers when "on the Continent," produced those far
from formidable weapons and shot down the branches
from the trees.  But, in the main, the voice was the
instrument, and was to be heard in a stentorian cheer,
or the less musical and more joyous chant of victory.

Some hundreds of the spectators had gone up to
Vermala, but many thousands remained on the plateau
and were discovered suddenly as the odd procession
emerged from the woods.  The drift of cloud, which
had tricked the aviator into the belief that he had
failed, was now but a wall of vapour flanking the
precipices across the valley, all the scene stood out,
revealed in magic glory.

Heaven knew whence all the flags had come.  It was
said that the bunting erected by the *Daily Recorder*
had been pulled down by excited hands and distributed
among the people.  Certainly, every other man carried
a flag and waved it perpetually.  In their turn, the
women waved handkerchiefs while the children ran
to and fro hardly understanding what it was all about,
and caring very little.  Meanwhile, the band blared
incessantly, and down at the village the church bell
tolled as gaily as an ancient bell-ringer could persuade
it to do.

The crowd had waited patiently for its hero to come
down from the heights, and directly it perceived the
outposts of the procession, all bonds were broken and
a wild tumult ensued.  A hundred hands fought for
the burden, and were repulsed with difficulty.  A
frenzy of cheers succeeded the intermittent salvos.
Men, and women too, fell in the snow and were rolled
over and over by the heedless feet of other runners.
The one desire was to see the man who had done this
thing, and, if it might be, to touch his hand.  He, in
turn, implored those who carried him to make an end of it.

"Take me to the chalet," he said.  And the doctor
commanding, they carried him there in triumph, and
shut and barred the door against the multitude.

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Brother Jack had been sitting before the fire in their
little sitting-room when Benny came tumbling in.  His
face was very pale and his eyes wide open.  It was
true that he had fainted when the signal-gun
announced his brother's victory, and the reaction of joy
could be detected in the quiver of his lips and his
restless hands.  Had he been a Frenchman he would
have kissed Benny on both cheeks prior to a flourish
of words in which platitudes of sentiment abounded.
But as it was, he just stood up and cried, "Hallo,
Benny!" while Benny said, "Hallo, Jack!" and came
and slapped him on the shoulder.  The others in the
room at this time were at the Abbé Villari, Harry
Clavering and the doctor, and these three stood apart that
the brothers might talk.

"I thought you were done, Benny, old boy.  I
heard the engine down the valley, and thought you'd
miss us.  How did you manage it?  How did you do
it, old fellow?"

"That's what I'm asking myself, Jack.  I must
have done it, or these people wouldn't be making such
a noise.  Luck, I suppose.  I thought I was a good
ten miles from the place when I came down.  Well,
I suppose I wasn't, and that's all."

Jack laughed.  The colour was returning to his cheeks.

"It's not all by a long way, Benny.  You flew
right over our heads just as though you were making
a bee line.  Not that it mattered.  What you had to
do was to get back to the starting-point, and here
you are.  Come and warm yourself, old boy.  You're
stiff with the cold."

Benny agreed to that.

"Never was so cold in all my life, Jack.  You
could cut me up in lengths, if you liked!  I've had
a hard time, old boy—a d——d hard time!  And
now it's over, eh?  Well, that's something; and if
none of you mind, I think I'll go to bed for a spell.
Dr. Orange would prescribe that, I know.  Just a
snooze, doctor, eh, and a drop of something warm!"

He turned and went up the little staircase to his
bedroom.  Jack and the doctor following.  The crowd
was still gathered about the house, and from time to
time it cheered lustily; but when Dr. Orange went out
and said the aviator was resting, the people drew back
respectfully, while the gendarmes posted sentries
before the chalet, and forbade anyone to approach it.
Among them was the little gendarme, Philip, waiting
impatiently for his chief's permission to go into Italy.

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It had been arranged that the cheque for ten
thousand pounds should be handed over by Sir John
Perinder, the proprietor of the *Daily Recorder*, at a
banquet to be given at the Palace Hotel at seven o'clock
that night.  Lavish according to his habit, Sir John
invited all the residents at the hotel to be his guests,
and prepared also a high table at which the victor
might meet his intimates.

Aided by the staff of the Palace, the great
dining-room was quickly prepared for this novel function.
The flags of many nations adorned its whitewashed
walls; there were ridiculous streamers and words of
welcome both in French and English.  Bizarre
ornaments from the bazaar decorated the long tables, but
the high table itself carried the monster silver cup
with which the Aero Club of Switzerland commemorated
the achievement, and this was a veritable work of art.

Benny found this dinner one of the most
uncomfortable entertainments at which he had yet assisted.
It is true that he was received by a round of cheers
when he entered the room, but he could not but
remember that many who now applauded had derided
him but a week ago.

For himself, he would have been hard put to it to
say just what he did feel.  That the whole world
would tell the story of the flight to-morrow, he knew
full well.  It would have been absurd to have put
aside so self-evident a fact.  The nations would
honour him, and his own people welcome a British
victory.  Looking further afield, he perceived that his
social position had changed in a flash, and that he,
who had called himself a beggar that morning, was
now a rich man, with every prospect of adding
enormously to his riches in the immediate future.
Already the cable had brought offers which dazed him
by their generosity.  He was to fly at this meeting,
to fly at that.  A firm in London offered him two
thousand pounds just to show his machine.  Surely,
this implied a permanence of fortune.  And he had
but begun to use those amazing brains which God had
given him.

Here were things to be remembered subtly as the
waiters filled his glass with champagne, and
boisterous diners asked to drink wine with him.  He found
the speeches tedious enough, and thought Sir John a
dreadful windbag.  When the great moment came,
and the cheque was handed over to him, it seemed
such a sorry strip of paper to stand for so much, and
he thrust it into his pocket carelessly, as though it were
the visiting-card of an acquaintance.  None the less,
he was conscious of it being there during the rest of
the dinner; and despite his desire not to do so, he
touched it more than once with his fingers to be quite
sure that he had not lost it.

His own speech amazed the company.  No one
expected an engineer to be also an orator, and yet his
simple words had the stamp of true oratory.  He
spoke to the hearts of those who heard him, concealing
none of his aims and ambitions, and confessing how
greatly he had desired success.  His honesty was
inspiring.  He believed that they would be glad to have
this news in England.  It was natural that he should
think of his own country at such a moment.  But he
could give every credit to France, and the brains of
those Frenchmen who had carried this art to such
lengths.  In conclusion, he hoped that his many
friends at Andana would hold some memory of him in
their affections.

There were rousing cheers at this—the cheers of
those who had grown suddenly conscious of their own
littleness, and knew that they had met a man.  When
the dinner broke up, young and old swarmed about
Benny again, begging his experiences, proffering their
books, congratulating him in volatile phrases.  To all
he pleaded that he was dead tired and must get to bed.
The supreme day of his life had ended!  He was
about to say "good-bye" to it.

It was eleven o'clock then, and few were abroad.
The excursionists had already returned to Sierre and
the railway; the keepers of carnival had surrendered
to the snow and a bitter wind arisen at sundown.
What should have been an *al fresco* fête upon the
skating rink had become but a collection of shivering
impresarios gathered about ebbing fires.  The
pathway to the Park Hotel was deserted, nor could you
have counted twenty people on the road to Vermala.

Benny had set out in the company of his brother
Jack and the Abbé Villari, and the three pursued their
way in silence toward the house.  Usually, there
would have been a beacon light to guide them, a lamp
shining from the window of Lily Delayne's chalet;
but no such lamp shone out to-night, and the gables
shaped amid the snowflakes as the grey and silent
towers of some deserted citadel.  When they drew a
little nearer they saw that the blinds were drawn, and
that the whole chalet was in darkness: a fact which
the abbé explained by saying that the English lady
had left for Sierre earlier in the day, and that he did
not believe she would return.  To this Benny made no
other answer than to suggest that she must have found
the presence of so many strangers unwelcome, and
perhaps had done well to go.

But he rested a moment at the door of the chalet
for all that, and when he turned away neither of the
others had the courage to mention the matter again.





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.. _`THE NIGHT MAIL`:

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   CHAPTER XXIII


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   THE NIGHT MAIL

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Lily Delayne had left Andana at midday in an
interlude when it was possible to get sleighs from the
stable.

They had told her that she would not be able to
reach the valley at all that day if she left it until the
afternoon; and this fell in with her own resolution,
which was to go at once while she had the courage.

So she set out when the excitement was at its height,
and no one else in the village thought of anything but
the mad Englishman.  There were thousands grouped
upon the plateau when the sleigh came for her; every
commanding slope of snow was black with the people
who stared into the ether as though their eyes might
win a far vision if they had but the patience.  She
could hear the music of bands, the ebb and flow of
carnival and a murmur of voices which betoken a
great throng at its pleasures.  When the sleigh came
for her at length, André the driver, complained
bitterly that he should be compelled to go down to Sierre
at such a moment.

"It is a thing no man will ever see again," he said
almost pathetically.  "Madame should have stayed
until her countryman returned."

She made no comment, and when she had settled
everything with the dour maid, who was to return to
Brigue, they began their drive, making their way
carefully through the press, and arousing no comment
where so many strangers were gathered.  André, for
his part, drew up more than once at the roadside to
show her just where the madman had flown and by
what height he would return.

"It was over there," he cried dramatically,
indicating Mont Blanc with a flourish of his long whip.
"I saw him myself, madame—like the eagle we see
in the picture books.  He was gone before a man
could have counted ten.  If he comes again, it will
be over the Weisshorn.  Just think of that—and we
have lived to see it!  He will come over the Weisshorn
like a flash of light, and to-morrow all the world
will hear of it.  Well, we may not be too late after all,
if we keep our eyes open.  It is a pity, though, that
madame must go to-day."

She made no reply.  Her eyes had followed vaguely
the course of the flight, and she had tried to
realise the wonder of it.  But her deeper thoughts
forbade her to do so.  Had she been honest with herself,
she would have said that she was going away just
because of this man's victory—fleeing from his success,
because she believed that it was her duty to do so.

Here she proved once more that a woman's heart
is impregnable to the assaults of reason.  Luton
Delayne had not a shadow of claim upon her.  The world
would say, "Well done!" if she carried her case to
the courts and ended forever the tragedy of the years.
She intended to do nothing of the kind.  Behind her
intention lay the traditions of centuries, the habit of
mind which the ancient Faith had fostered, and the
resolution of unnumbered millions of good women
who had lived and suffered such a life as this.  At
their bidding she fled from another and from his
victory.  A certain resentment against the honours he
had won possessed her.  He would be famous before
the world to-morrow!

It was warmer in the depths of the valley, and the
sun shone with great power.  Sierre, that odd little
town where all Englishmen travelling to the Simplon
gather at some time or other, was deserted to the point
of wonder.  Even the hall-porter at the Terminus
Hotel had gone a little way up the hillside in the hope
of seeing something of the flight.  The officials at the
railway station were gathered in the yard, staring
skywards until their necks ached.  When Lily obtained a
hearing at last, they told her it would be almost
impossible to go through to Italy to-night by any
ordinary train, and that all the places in the
sleeping-cars were booked.  Far better, said the amiable old
lady who received her at the Terminus, far better to
stay until to-morrow, when the excitement would be
over.  Yes, she could have a bed.  An English family
had left unexpectedly for Caux that morning, and its
rooms were vacant.

Lily decided to accept this wise advice, but
prudence restrained her from sending a telegram to
Luton.  She spent the afternoon in wandering about the
little town and listening to the wild tales of the
gossips at the street corners, each of whom had some new
version of the flight.  The excellent telephone service
in Switzerland spread the news rapidly enough, and
it was soon known that the aviator had reached Mont
Blanc, that he had descended safely, and gone on
towards Zermatt amid scenes of almost frantic
enthusiasm.  Later on, there was a sudden bustle in the
streets, men running hither and thither, and an exodus
from the station and from every café.  Someone said
that the machine had been seen high over the northern
slopes; but Lily herself could make nothing of it, and
when she returned for a cup of afternoon tea the
excitement had subsided as quickly as it arose, and all
was quiet in the town again.

This was merely a lull, as events proved, and she
quickly perceived the wisdom of the advice offered by
the landlady.  No sooner was it known that the
Englishman had succeeded than the sleighs began to return
to the station.  One would not have believed that
there were so many horses in the Rhone Valley, and
this was to say nothing of the thousands of
excursionists who came down on foot besieging the railway
station, and filling every café to the point of riot.
Lily was glad that she had abandoned all idea of a
journey to Locarno until to-morrow, and she went to
bed early, avoiding her loquacious countrymen in the
corridor of the hotel, and trying to believe that she
was little interested in their excited stories of the
day.  When she arose next morning, it was snowing
hard, and the wind had attained some force.  She did
not dare to venture out, and kept her own room until
after dinner, when the news reached her that there
was a delay upon the line at Brigue, and it was doubtful
if the evening express could reach Milan at all that night.

Everyone seemed sure of this—the hall-porter,
who spoke English like a German, and the amiable
landlady, who spoke French like an Italian.  Exactly
what had happened no one could say with certainty,
and the stories were so contradictory that Lily put on
her hat about nine o'clock and went over to the station
to hear the news for herself.

It was snowing heavily and the wind bitterly cold.
She found a little group of officials upon the
dimly-lighted platform and two or three English people,
who, like herself, had been on the point of going into
Italy.  One of these was no other than Harry
Clavering, who recognised her immediately, and came
forward with both hands outstretched.  She remembered
that he had been the first of the guests at Andana to
offer friendship upon her arrival, and she thought it
an odd coincidence that she should meet him here at
such an hour.

"They told me you had returned to England," he
exclaimed, "but you never said good-bye to anyone.
We did not even have an opportunity to snowball you.
Why, everyone who goes away from Andana is
snowballed.  The more snow you get down your neck, the
more popular you are.  I was nearly smothered
to-day.  Yes, they were very kind to me.  But it was a
real disappointment to us all that you should go
without a word."

She told him that urgent private business had summoned
her to Italy, and expressed her pleasure to meet him.

"The hotel is full of English people," she said,
"therefore one knows nobody.  Of course, you have
heard the news?  The express runs no further than
Brigue to-night—there is some trouble on the line.
We should have gone by the slow train earlier in the
day, it appears; but I am always so shy of slow trains
in Italy.  Now they will not promise to take us until
to-morrow, and perhaps not then.  I have just been
speaking to the station-master about it, and learned
the truth so far as he is capable of telling it.  Poor
man, one would think the end of the world was at hand."

Harry Clavering did not seem at all upset.

"It is quite unusual," he explained, trotting by
her side as she began to pace the long platform; "the
express runs usually with the regularity of a clock,
though some clocks, by the way, strike at all the
stations.  I expect there has been a heavy fall of snow
and one of the galleries is giving trouble; or there may
have been a slight accident.  They tell me that the
gale last night was very severe on the other side.  Was
it not lucky that your friend, Mr. Benson, won the
prize when he did?  He would never have done it to-day."

She did not fail to notice that he spoke of "her
friend, Mr. Benson," and she wondered that he had
done so.  Some women would have disclaimed the
association; but Lily Delayne held the little
hypocrisies of life in some contempt, and rarely stooped to
them.  So she accepted the charge, and found herself
talking of Benny's victory.

"Is he not a very remarkable man?" she said.  "I
guessed it the first day I saw him, though that did not
appear to be the common opinion.  The Englishman
is so often judged by the partialities of his critics that
many such mistakes are made.  Surely, of all the
people in Europe, we are the slowest to discover those
who do us most honour.  Now don't you agree with
that, Mr. Clavering?"

"With every word of it, my dear lady.  Our study
of mankind finds us rare dunces.  I think most of us
would be ploughed if our degrees depended upon it.
We are shrewd judges of results, but children in
estimating the mind by which results are achieved.  And
we have ceased, alas! to be pioneers.  Even Mr. Benson
cannot claim to have invented the aeroplane.  He
is but an imitator, though a very clever one, I admit."

He perceived that she was interested, and went on
to tell her all that had been said of Benny during the
day.  Totally destitute of the commercial mind
himself, and wofully ignorant of finance, he repeated Sir
Gordon Snagg's loquacious prophecies.  It would be
odd if Mr. Benson did not make a hundred thousand
pounds in the course of the year, and that, surely,
was a very big sum for such a man.  Why, he would
never know what to do with it.  Then there would be
all the fame attending—just fame, and well earned.
Already a message had come from the King, and the
French President had conferred the Grand Cordon
upon the victor.  It was said that Mr. Benson had
received offers which would carry him to every
quarter of the globe.  He was to leave Switzerland
immediately, it was understood, going straight to London,
where a great reception had been prepared for him
by Sir John Perinder.

Lily heard him with an occasional word of
comment, but did not question him further.  Presently the
great express came steaming into the station; the
gongs rang musically, and the English people flocked
across the rails to take their places.  This was the
northern-bound train.  But the night express for
Milan followed it almost at once, and a rare confusion
followed.  Everyone bawled the news to everyone
else who would listen.  There had been an accident
at Domo d'Ossola, and the line was quite blocked;
they had to transfer the passengers to the
southern-bound train, which was held up beyond the tunnel; it
had not been a serious accident, and nobody was hurt.
When the trains departed at length, the flare from
their furnaces could be seen for many miles, the great
funnels vomiting flame, and the wind carrying the
sparks high above the valley.  Then, as by magic, the
little station appeared to settle down to sleep; the
officials vanished; the English people returned to their
hotel; the red and green lanterns stood sentinels of
the night.

It was just after ten o'clock when Lily re-entered
the corridor of the Terminus.  She had no desire to
go to bed, and when the parson begged permission
to smoke his "lastly" with her, she assented very
willingly.  This kindly, gentle soul, the world
appeared to have cast him out also, for he was without
kith or kin, a lonely bachelor in this wilderness of
mountains, desiring nothing so much as the good of
mankind, but deprived by the subtleties of the
ecclesiastical system from any performance which would
have done him credit before the people.  Naturally,
he delighted in the society of a beautiful woman, who
stood to him for a type of all that was highest and
holiest in the human story.  At a look from her he
would have revealed the most sacred truths of his
life—for so are men led to the confessional; but the
opportunity passed, and he spoke again of things he
believed to be commonplace.

"By the way," he said, "do you remember the
strange affair at Vermala?"

She looked up astonished.

"Yes, indeed; and what of it?"

"Well, I chanced to meet one of the gendarmes
this morning, a mere boy, whom they call Philip
Gaillarde.  He tells me that the affair is no longer a
mystery.  It was his brother who was killed on the
Zaat—I believe by an Englishman who has been in
trouble.  The young man had just obtained leave from
his superiors to go into Italy—I think he must have
started by the morning train.  He says that the
assassin is near Locarno on Lake Maggiore.  He has
gone there to-day to arrest him."

Lily made what reply she could, but she did not
speak again of it.  The night had been very cold, and
now that they were under shelter again she began to
fear that she had taken a chill.  A shivering fit was
succeeded by a little faintness, which caused the
parson great concern.  He advised her to go to bed
immediately, and she welcomed the suggestion.

Philip Gaillarde in Italy!  What, then, had
prevented her going that morning?  An excuse of the
trains.  She knew that it was not so, but rather the
hope that she might yet see a man who loved her, and
say "farewell" to him.





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.. _`THE DOCTOR INTERVENES`:

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   CHAPTER XXIV


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE DOCTOR INTERVENES

.. vspace:: 2

The world is as little interested in the harvest another
reaps of his success as in the dinner he ate yesterday.

Benny's flight for the great prize had been a
pleasant interlude at Andana, an excitement which might
be permitted to postpone for a day the necessary
operations of skating, ski-ing and curling.  But when
the flight had been accomplished, the little colony
returned with what zest it could to its pleasures.  These,
unhappily, were pursued but sadly on the day
following the great event.  A cold bitter wind blew up the
valley from Visp, and the snow fell incessantly during
the morning and again at night, as has been told.

Benny was not sorry that things should turn out
so.  He dreaded a new invasion of the chalet, and
had very much to do before he could leave the
country.  It was true, as Harry Clavering had said, that
splendid offers had been made to him by his own
people, but there were other offers both from France and
from Switzerland, and he spent a good deal of his
morning trying to plan out a campaign which should
satisfy all concerned.  A little later on Dr. Orange
came in as though by accident, and when Brother
Jack had gone upstairs to begin the packing, the
doctor broached a private affair in which he presupposed
a mutual interest.

"By the way," he said, "you know that Lady
Delayne has left here?"

Benny, who was in the act of lighting his pipe,
threw the match into the fireplace and looked at the
doctor sharply.

"Gone to London, hasn't she?"

The doctor thought not.

"No," he said, "they tell me it is to Italy.  Her
husband is there, you know."

Benny made no attempt to evade it.

"Yes," he said, "I do know he's there.  The
question is, how did you find out, Doctor?"

"Oh, doctors hear everything.  To begin with, I
recognised Luton Delayne outside the Palace Hotel
just as you did.  He must have come to us after the
affair at Grindelwald.  Directly his wife arrived here
I thought her face very familiar.  I remember
meeting them at a dinner party in Onslow Square—it
must be three or four years ago.  She's a woman you
could not forget.  We all think that."

Benny did not say that he thought it.  A shrewd
judge of men, he believed that a spirit of friendship
had sent the doctor to the chalet, and he was grateful
to him.

"Why, yes," he enjoined.  "I guess the whole
place would be about unanimous if that lady were in
the case.  But you haven't answered my question,
Doctor; you haven't told me how you knew she was
going into Italy.  I'm curious, for I knew nothing
about it.  In fact, I didn't quite expect her to go at all."

The doctor took a cigarette from his case and
lighted it carefully.  His eyes had a curious trick of
looking first to the right of him and then to the left,
as though seeking inspiration from the carpet, and he
twisted his shadow of a moustache quite fiercely while
he pondered a reply.

"Well," he said, "I think that our objects are quite
the same.  Suppose I say that it was the gendarme
here, the man they call Philip Gaillarde; would you
be astonished at that?"

"I should be astonished at nothing in Luton
Delayne's case.  When did you get the news?"

"Oh, in the café this morning.  There is a girl
there named Susette; the young man is interested, it
appears, and she is one of my patients.  I have been
attending her some days for a little hysteria—nothing
serious, but quite alarming to the love-sick swain.
Somehow she learned that he is going away, and is in
a great state about it.  She thinks he is in danger."

"Of what?"

"Of never returning to Andana—which is to say
that she knows—"

He looked at his friend shrewdly, and seemed to
be waiting for the fuller confession to come from him.
Benny debated it an instant, his teeth gnawing the
stem of his pipe.  Then he spoke.

"You mean to say that Philip Gaillarde has gone
into Italy to arrest Sir Luton?"

"That is exactly how I would put it."

"And that he knows the whole story?"

"I don't think there's any doubt about it.  He has
been told that Luton Delayne was the man, and he has
obtained permission to go to Locarno and to help the
police there.  It is his own idea—though the local
police should be very well able to help themselves.
The question for us is one of social jurisprudence.
Is it good for the other English, for the people who
come here every year, to have this scandal to their
discredit?  I would go further, and ask, is it at any
time wise to push such a case against such a family as
the Delaynes?  Speaking for myself, I don't think it
is.  Luton Delayne is a modern type; I suppose in
New York they would understand him very well; but
here we are educated slowly.  The Swiss police are a
little more ignorant than ourselves.  I have had a chat
with Ardlot, the French secretary at the hotel, and he
tells me that they will be merciless if they succeed in
arresting the man.  We know what that means;
perhaps we are interested enough to ask how others might
take it."

Benny pulled heavily at his pipe.  When he
removed it from his lips it was to say:

"Wouldn't the singular number be better,
Doctor?  Shouldn't we say 'one other'?"

"If you like it so, by all means.  But, let me tell
you, I am talking quite in the dark; I don't know
where Gaillarde speaks the truth; I am quite unaware
if Delayne is in Italy, or no.  That's why I came to
you—"

"Then you believe that I know?"

"I am sure you do."

For a spell the two men sat looking at each other in
silence.  Benny neither denied nor affirmed the
charge.  His eyes searched the flickering fire as though
for an inspiration.  The problem was clear enough;
he wondered if the doctor knew how much it meant to him.

"I guess you're a bit of a thought reader, Doctor,"
he exclaimed of a sudden, taking up the conversation
exactly as it was left.  "I do know where Luton
Delayne is, and that's a fact.  Let me be as plain with
you.  What you came here to do was to warn me.
You wish me to know that the police are inquiring
after him.  Don't you think it's a little late for that?
Gaillarde will be half-way to Brigue by this time.
He'll be in Milan before we've done our second
breakfast.  What's the good of all this then, knowing what
we do?  Isn't it a bit foolish?"

Orange hardly understood him.

"My dear fellow," he protested, "I was not
thinking anything of the kind.  Will not the telegraph
serve our purpose just as well?"

Benny shook his head.

"Look all round it, and then decide," he said
quietly.  "This lad has heard that Delayne is in Italy.
Does he know where he is?  If he does not, we may
be right enough.  If he does, a telegram may be the
thing, or it may not.  I'll have to calculate the chances.
Before I can do that I must see this girl, Susette.
Would she be still at the café, do you think?  Should
I find her there if I went down this afternoon?  If
so, I'll see her and let you know.  There's time enough
anyway; we can't run after the morning train to
Milan, and I don't suppose either of us is going to try.
What I would say before all is that I like the
friendship which sent you here, Doctor.  I shan't forget
that, nor will Lady Delayne, when she hears about it.
Did you say, by the way, that she has gone across
the frontier?  Don't I remember something about that?"

"It is quite true, or will be true.  She was at
Sierre last night waiting for an opportunity.  I should
not wonder if she went this morning by the same train
as Gaillarde.  Ardlot told me how it was; he saw her
at the Terminus, and heard what she was doing."

"Then she certainly will have gone through this
morning.  I am very much obliged to you.
Whatever is done, shall be done after a talk with you.  It
would be about half-past two or three, I suppose?"

They assented, and parted upon it, the doctor
returning to the Palace, Benny calling Brother Jack and
the abbé down to lunch.  When the repast was
finished he made some excuse, and taking his rough
sweater and snow helmet, he set off for the village
of Andana and the café where the girl, Susette, was
to be found.  It was a little after two o'clock, and the
plateau quite deserted.  He remembered that the
guests at the Palace would hardly have finished their
coffee, and hurried on with an anxiety very foreign to
his nature.

Where did his duty lie, and to whom?  It was true
that the gendarme, Philip, had spoken of this visit to
Italy on the eve of the flight; but it had been a
tentative proposal, and depended upon the permission
of his superiors.  Then, as now, Benny perceived that
if the lad did not know the whereabouts of the shanty,
there would be no risk whatever, and Philip might
be less dangerous at Milan than at Andana.  If, on
the other hand, the story of the shanty were known,
then that was the end of it.  Why, Sir Luton might be
arrested that very night.  And if he were, Lily
Delayne must be a free woman before many weeks had
passed.  Benny shuddered a little when he remembered
this, and walked on the faster.  The victor's
laurel suited him but ill, and many a poor wretch by
the wayside might have pitied him.

She would be a free woman!  He repeated the
words often, dwelling upon them with an interest
which frightened him.  Not for the first time did he
understand how little victory meant to him, and how
bitter were the fruits of success.  He must lead a
lonely life, whatever the honour of it.  He saw
himself slaving in study or workshop, a man without a
definite goal, one whose interest had no corner-stone.
And it were idle to say that there was a woman who
could change all this and breathe anew upon a dead
inspiration.  His ideas were old and built upon an
ancient faith.  Fate had set a barrier between Lily
and himself, and none but Almighty God could remove it.

She would be a free woman!  Yes, surely, that
could be brought about easily enough.  He had but to
forbear, to return to his house as he had come, or
simpler, just to whisper a word or two to the Chief
of Police at Sierre, and there would be no difficulty
about the matter.  When he thought of this he
laughed aloud because he had dared to think of it.
In the same mood the best of men have asked
themselves what would happen if they committed murder
or robbed a bank or began to starve their children.

It was less easy to deal with the subtle question of
what could or could not be done.  How if it were
impossible to stop this mad youth, who would avenge
his brother?  It might be so; the chances were that
Philip was already on the way to Locarno, and would
do his work before any could interfere.  Benny
thought of this, and hurried on to the café.  The
girl, Susette, would help him—he was quite confident
about it.

Here luck favoured him, for old Maître Rousset,
the proprietor of the café, declared that his daughter
had just gone down to the post-office, and would be
back inside five minutes.  He was delighted to
welcome Monsieur Benson, the great Englishman, to his
house; and he began to ask him a thousand questions
about his art and achievement.  Like many others, he
had devised a flying machine twenty years ago, and he
called for a glass of vermouth while he unfolded its
wings, so to speak, and drew, with the stem of a brier
pipe, a plan upon the table before him.  When Susette
came in, it needed all Benny's ingenuity to get a word
with her; but he managed it at last by sending her
father upon an errand to the telephone, and promising
him that he should see the machine if he came up to
the chalet later on.

Susette was a brunette, with the figure of a woman
and the face of a child.  Her skin was very white, her
cheeks inordinately red, when she returned from her
errand down the village street.  It was plain that she
had been running in her eagerness to return.
Someone had told her that the hero of the day was at the
café, and knowing him to be the friend of her lover,
Philip, she ran all the way from the post-office that
she might not miss him.  A few kindly words upon
Benny's part put her quite at her ease.  Oh, yes, she
knew that Monsieur Philip had gone into Italy; he
would be back in three or four days at the most, for
that was his promise.

"He has gone to Locarno, Monsieur.  I am quite
sure of it.  He went by the first train this morning,
and should reach his destination to-night.  I have
just posted a letter to him, which he will receive
to-morrow.  It is lonely to be so far away from us all.
I do not think he has any friends in Italy."

"Then you do not know why he has gone there, Susette?"

Susette opened her black eyes.

"Of course, I know, Monsieur; it is to arrest the
Englishman who killed his brother on the Zaat!"

"Do you think he will be able to find the fellow?"

Susette peeped through the door to be sure that no
one heard her, and then drew a little nearer.

"I am glad that you came, Monsieur.  You are a
brave gentleman, and will tell me truly.  There was
a servant here, a Monsieur Paul Lacroix.  He gave
my Philip an address upon a piece of paper—one he
got from the chalet where the English lady was
staying.  I have never liked Paul Lacroix; I do not think
he means well to Philip.  That is what makes me so
anxious.  I think he has been serving his own
purpose, and that he feared to do the work himself.  So
he has sent my Philip.  You will tell me truly,
Monsieur, if that was right or just?"

Benny had no idea how to answer her.  Her news
astonished him beyond any he had expected to hear.
It was as though the whole of the plot had been
revealed in an instant, and being revealed, her news said
that all was lost.

"I will see what we can do," he rejoined, evading
it in despair.  "Perhaps I shall be visiting Italy
myself.  Your father has gone to the telephone to book
a place for me to-night.  We will think about what
is to be done directly we hear where Monsieur Philip
is.  Meanwhile, don't you fret about it, Susette.
Your boy is all right, and I will bring him back to you."

She began to cry at this; it is the office of
friendship to provoke the tears which are hidden from the
unsympathetic.  When old Rousset returned, he
found the Englishman pacing the room like a caged
lion, while Susette dried her tears on the corner of
a far from clean apron.  His rebuke to her was harsh
and commanding; she slunk from the room as though
fearing a new humiliation.

"That girl is becoming a nuisance to me," the old
man said.  "I shall have to send her to England to
work, as her sisters are doing.  It is the loneliness of
the mountains, Monsieur; even I suffer from that
sometimes.  You English people stay here such a
little while; you do not know what it is to see those
great white walls shutting out the world always.
Well, well, Susette will be better in England; and I,
perhaps, may go to Paris and remember that I have
been young."

He laughed, and looked at the paper in his hand.
The trains to Italy—had he not been sent to inquire
about them?  Well, there were no trains.  There had
been an accident beyond Brigue, and it was doubtful
when the line would be cleared.

"I am quite sure about it, Monsieur, for the chief
answered me himself.  You cannot go to-night; it is
out of the question."

Benny stood for an instant rocking upon his heels.
His cheeks had flushed suddenly, and his fists were
clenched almost convulsively.

"When did this accident happen?"

"At midday, I think."

"Do you know if the morning train got through
to Milan?"

"I am able to say so; it was mentioned by the
superintendent, and the last train to reach Italy, I believe."

"Ah, then, that is all, Maître Rousset.  Thank you
very much.  I shall see you later on."

He waited for no reply, but hurried from the café
like one possessed.  So swiftly did he walk, that he
had almost passed the door of the Palace Hotel before
he remembered his promise to the doctor and the
necessity of keeping it.  The hour was favourable to
that, for the players were out on the mountains again,
and the doctor entertained a little company in the
drawing-room, where he played one of Chopin's
nocturnes with an exquisite touch and a feeling for the
music of it quite beyond ordinary.  Nor would Benny
interrupt him.  The haunting melody lingered as a
memory of children's voices; the pathos of life stood
expressed in it; the hope, and fear, and dread which
afflicted his mind at this very moment.  Such chords
were struck by the Master of human destiny when the
souls of men were offered upon the altars of life.
Benny trembled while he heard them, and, trembling,
he saw the woman's face as in a vision.

Dr. Orange came out presently and heard his news
with interest.  The story of the mishap at Brigue had
not entered into his calculations.  It seemed to say
that nothing could be done to further their ends,
unless they sent a telegram to the shanty in the hope
that it would be in time.  On the other hand, there
was a possibility that Susette might not have been
correctly informed, and that the gendarme, Philip,
had but a vague idea of Delayne's whereabouts.  If
this were the case, it would be madness to employ the
telegraph, open as it was to the scrutiny of the police.
In the end the doctor agreed that it would be wiser
to wait; and then he asked if it would not be possible
to drive across the pass?

"You might be at Locarno to-morrow night," he
suggested, and bethought him in the same breath that
the trains would be running through the tunnel from
the point where the accident had happened.  This
suggested another course.  Why not take the train to
Brigue, and learn just what had happened?  To which
Benny responded in his quiet way that it was neck or
nothing.  Either Philip knew, or he did not know.
If he knew, Sir Luton would be in a prison before
nightfall, and England would have the story to-morrow!

"Unless a man can buy a magic carpet," he
remarked with a shrug, "there's nothing further to be
said.  I'd drive across the pass willingly if I thought
it would do any good.  You know that it won't.
Doctor, and that's the end of it."

"Then there is no other way?"

"None at all, unless I run out my machine, and get
there over the mountains."

"You could do it, Benson; I think you would do
it if your own wife or sister were concerned.  Have
you thought about it?  I see the wind has dropped.
It would not take you very long, would it now?  Well,
I must leave it to you.  It's for you to decide, and you
know what can be done so much better than I do.
If I see Lady Delayne, I shall not forget to tell her
how much trouble you took.  She is the kind of
woman who remembers."

Benny said he thought that she was, but they had
no other chance to speak of it, for the Rider girls came
galloping into the conservatory at that moment and
carried off the doctor triumphantly.  It was about
three o'clock then, and already growing dark.  Benny
perceived that the wind had fallen, and that a dead
calm had come down.  There would be an interval
merely of hours, he thought, before it began to blow
again.  He must make up his mind immediately.
The weather would have nothing to do with argument.

He must go and warn Luton Delayne, and must
warn him for Lily's sake.  If he did not go, she might
be a free woman before the summer came, and it
might lie no longer against his conscience that he
loved her.  Permitting his thoughts to run on, he
would say that by such a woman's love would his
future be assured.  He saw himself working for her,
devoting all his genius to her service and raising
himself above the class into which he had been born.  The
world knew his name already; but that was merely the
beginning of things.  He had worshipped the very
ground this woman trod, and she must be the guiding
star of his life to the end.  What then carried him
to Locarno—what paradox of duty or service?  He
could not answer the question, but the vision remained
and haunted him.

To cross the Simplon Valley and descend to Italy.
It was a child's task for a man who had circled the
great Pennine chain.  True, the storm might come
down again, and if it did come down, the unfortunate
who was caught aloft in it would lose his life!  Well,
and what had life in store on this side?  Again, the
voice said, she will be a free woman.

He stood at the chalet which had been her home,
and looked across toward Brigue and the mountains.
They jutted out in bold relief, showing their whitened
domes clearly in the still air, and catching waning
rays of the sinking sun.  Beyond them lay Italy and
the lake.  Perchance—but of that he had no sure
knowledge—Lily was already with her husband; she
would witness his shame and be, in a sense, a partner
of it.  He remembered her as he had seen her at the
door of the chalet—a woman without a friend.  Had
she not called herself that?  He turned away at the
remembrance, and went on toward his own house.

The mechanics were waiting to pack the aeroplane
and send it through to Paris.  Benny went in among
them and began to speak of delay.





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.. _`THE LIGHTS OF MAGADINO`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXV


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE LIGHTS OF MAGADINO

.. vspace:: 2

The cold was less as he began to descend amid the
gentle mountains of the Ticino, and he knew that the
night was won.

Behind him, far away where the white caps marked
the encircling mountains of the Simplon, the storm
must be raging furiously, he thought.  More than
once a gust of the wind, tearing through a breach of
the southern spurs, had flung him headlong, as a leaf
is whirled by the winter blast.  There had been a time
when all sensation left him, when hands and feet were
stiff and powerless; when the very skin of his face
was as dried parchment.  He made light of that, for
the kindlier country lay before him, and if he gained
it, this were not too high a price to pay.

His landmarks were few.  He had set off from
Sierre while the twilight remained and had crossed
the pass above Brigue at a great height and remote
from danger of the peaks.  He turned thence a little
to the southward, and saw the smiling country for an
instant as the sun sank finally, and the night crept
about him.  For an hour afterwards there had been
the black darkness, the biting cold, the anger of the
winds.  Then a spell of silence intervened.  He
seemed to be lost in the shadows, gone from the world,
drifted to the eternal darkness.  But he held on
resolutely, praying for the light.

When the light came at last, no panorama of a
splendid imagination could have surpassed the wonder
of it.  It was as though an unseen hand cleft a wall
before him and showed him a magic city.  Countless
stars glowed beneath a panoply of mountains.  To
the right, to the left, look where he would, the lamps
shone a welcome—here in clusters to speak of a
town; there apart to tell of a high road.  And Benny
knew that they were lights about Lake Maggiore, and
that the battle was won.

Such good fortune as this had been in his mind
from the outset, and he reckoned upon the chance.
Let him espy the lights of the lake from a sufficient
altitude, and his own skill would do the rest.  The
shanty lay almost opposite to Magadino, and if a
man could not name Magadino when the lake lay
illuminated far beneath him, then was he no fit pilot for
an airship.

Benny placed the town at once, working up from
the southward, past the islands of the Borromeos to
Locarno and the mountains.  He thought that he could
have dropped a stone upon the very shanty—and
laughed at himself for the boast.

There was a great acetylene lamp at the prow of
his ship, and it burned brightly enough as he began
to sweep down toward the lake.  Long afterwards
the simple folk were to tell how a star had fallen from
the north and shone gloriously above the Virgin's
Church at Ascona.  Others would have it that a
fireball, monstrous beyond any of the fables, had come
down and settled a while upon the slope of the
mountain opposite Magadino.  The whole country round
about was golden with the flame of it, they said, while
the sounds attending it were unlike anything earthly.
But one old fellow, and he a fisherman of Losone,
actually saw the machine descend; he believed that the
veritable dragon, which the saint slew, had come to
life again, and he ran headlong.

Benny landed about a third of a mile from the
chalet.  He chose a gentle slope of the hill, and came
down without much damage—but he could not help
the reflection that the flight might cost him a good
deal of money before he had done with it, and that it
would be no light undertaking to get the machine
across the pass again.  This, however, was the thought
of an instant, and when he had seen to his engine,
turned off the petrol, and done what he could to make
things ship-shape, he went on to the shanty without
further delay, and was at its garden gate in less than
twenty minutes from the time of his descent.

It was a pretty little house, gabled and covered
in summer with the great flowers of the begonia.
Possessing a good frontage to the lake, there was also
a boathouse and landing-stage—the former having a
smoking-room built right out over the water.  On
the other side there ran the high road to Losone on
the one hand, and to Ronco on the other.  In summer
this road was alive with the motor cars of the
Americans doing Europe in five-and-twenty minutes; but a
night of winter found it deserted enough, and not a
soul was to be discerned, either in the little village
above the shanty or upon the highway itself.  Benny
had hoped to meet some friend or neighbour among
the villagers who would have helped him to guard
the airship; but finding none, he determined to
telephone to Ascone directly it was safe to do so—and
with that in his head he opened the garden gate and
went in.

The consummation of a perilous emprise is often
commonplace to the point of banality, and this is
especially the case when the quest of man or woman
is the objective.  Benny had crossed the Simplon that
he might reach the lake before another—and having
reached it, might warn a madman of his danger.
To do that, he had imperilled his own life as many
times as there had been minutes in his journey; he
had run the risk of being frozen alive or dashed to
instant death in the chasms of the pass.  And now
that it was done he went up to the door of the house
like any ordinary traveller, stood an instant while his
eyes searched the unlighted windows, then rang the
bell upon the right-hand side of the porch, and waited
quietly.  All the excitement of the quest appeared to
have subsided at this time.  He thought nothing of
his victory; he did not even remember that it had been
a victory!

The bell was unanswered, not a little to his
surprise.  He had looked at his watch before he left the
ship, and had discovered that it was just a quarter-past
seven.  By all rights, Sir Luton should have been
then at his dinner, and it occurred to him that the old
woman who kept the shanty might be so busy in her
kitchen that she did not hear him.  Against this was
the black fact of the unlighted windows, and the
silence.  Benny could hear the splash of the waves as
they ebbed and flowed upon the shore of the lake, but
no other sound save that of the distant bells of Losone.
It began to force itself upon his mind that this silence
was prophetic, and, with a shiver of apprehension
different from any he had yet experienced, he rang a
second time, and listened to the jangling
reverberations and their diminuendos.  Again the summons
was unanswered.  It was plain that there was no one
in the house, and that his errand had been in vain.

He would not admit this at the beginning, or even
contemplate a house of shadows.  Knowing Luton
Delayne, he thought it very likely that he had gone
to one of the neighbouring towns for his dinner; while
the old woman, taking advantage of his absence,
would have run down to the village to her home there.
Going round to the back of the house, which looked
upon the lake, he found it shut and barred, and no
evidence of occupation whatever—but the bars were
no obstacle to such a wit as his, and forcing the
kitchen window, he climbed in and began to search
the place.  A fleck of fire reddened in the grate; there
were dirty plates upon a bare table, with a candle and
a box of matches.  Benny lit the candle, and passed
on into the hall.  The shanty had been occupied that
day, so much was evident.

It was here that a strange hallucination took
possession of him, and one he had some little difficulty
to stifle.  Suddenly, and without warning, he thought
that he heard Luton Delayne's voice from one of the
inner rooms; but when he entered it there was no
sign of occupation whatever, no evidence that it had
been used for many months.  This should have set
his mind at rest, but no such result followed upon the
discovery.  For the second time he heard the voice
calling him from another quarter of the house; and,
refusing to believe that he could be mistaken a
second time, he crossed the narrow hall, and entered the
room he had used as his study.  Here at last were
those visible evidences of occupation he had sought
vainly elsewhere.  The remains of such a meal as a
man would have ordered were still upon the table.
A fire burned in the grate, and a flask of red wine
stood upon a side table.  Whoever had occupied this
room had left it during the day, and, what was more,
he had written a letter shortly before he left.

Benny set down the candle upon the side table, and
knelt to warm himself before the fire, upon which he
heaped fresh logs.  The window showed him the
broad expanse of the lake with the mountains upon
the far side of it, and the star cluster of Magadino at
their feet.  A man of indomitable courage, he was
astonished to discover how greatly the hallucination
of the voice had shaken him, and how real it had
seemed when it called him.  He had never realised
the remoteness of the shanty before, nor its isolation
from the towns by the lakeside.  Presently a fit of
shivering seized him, and he started up fearing that
he was about to be ill, and determined that his will
should master the situation.  He heaped up the logs
until the fire roared in the chimney, and then
searching the kitchen for candles made such an illumination
as that little room had never witnessed before.  The
light cheered him—he drank what was left of the
wine in the flask, and ate of the bread and butter upon
the table.

He had pipe and tobacco, and these had ever been
his good friends in every kind of emergency.  A long
smoke by the fireside cleared his brain of the cobwebs,
and gave him a clearer vision.  And first he said that
Luton had left the house, and it was doubtful if he
would return.  Had it been otherwise, had he gone
across to dine at one of the neighbouring towns,
assuredly the beldame would have returned to her
kitchen by this time and made her preparations for
the night.  So it was clear that Delayne had left the
shanty, and that he, Benny, had come too late.
Whether this were a good thing or a bad he had as
yet no means of knowing.  The darker suggestion
that the man had been arrested by the police, and that
the old woman had fled the shanty in consequence, was
not to be put aside.  That seemed a very likely thing
to have happened; but if it had happened, he would
hear of it soon enough, and so would every newspaper
in Switzerland.

This latter thought grew with the minutes and
awakened every instinct to the danger.  He wondered
that it had not occurred to him directly he found the
shanty deserted, and was going on to say that it was
the absolutely obvious thing, when a sound arose
which chilled him to the very marrow.  A moment
later he laughed aloud, and picked up one of the
candles.  Of course, the telephone still ran to the
shanty.  There is hardly a decent house in
Switzerland which does not possess it.

A telephone bell ringing clearly in the silence of
the house!  Well, it was a thing to give a man a
start—and his nerves were not what they should be!  Not
until he had the receiver in his hand, and began to
reply to the unknown at the other end of the wire, did
he bethink him that here was companionship of a sort
after all.  This telephone would summon help from
Ascona, if he needed it.  He took heart at the thought,
and cried "Halloa" in his old tone.  This was the
Benny of yesterday—the man who had done what no
man had ever done before.

"Halloa—halloa!—this is the Villa Favorita—who
do you say you are?—I don't hear
you!—Halloa—halloa!—the Abbé Villari?—Good God!
Abbé—how did you know that I was here?—What, you
didn't know?—then that's the rummest go of
all—You wanted Sir Luton Delayne—Well, I'm d——d!"

He dropped the instrument and laughed aloud.
His talk had been half in French, half in English, and
he remembered that the abbé understood both tongues
perfectly.  But it was no time to apologise.  The
news was too astounding; he would not lose a word
of it.

"You heard all about it from Susette—yes, I
suppose she would tell a priest—And you warned the
man this morning?—I wish you'd told me, Abbé—it
would have saved me a matter of five thousand
pounds.  Of course, it was done for the best—all
that's granted.—Did you say you were at Brigue?—going
up to the Hospice?—Yes, I remember, now—well,
he's away all right—the bird has flown.—Oh,
I don't know where—I hope it's south—you'll
understand that—You haven't seen Lady Delayne?—Ah!
you never did like that charming lady, did you,
Reverence?—Speak up a little, I don't quite catch
that.—The boy, Philip, has gone over the pass, did you
say?—He might have been here, for all I know—I
shall try to find out in the morning—Let me know
if you hear anything of Lady Delayne—It was a big
thing for you to do, and a very kind thing under the
circumstances.—She won't forget it, nor will I.—Good
night, sir—and don't forget to ring up in the morning."

He stood a little while when the abbé had ceased
to speak, holding the instrument in his hand, and
realising anew the weird stillness of the house.  It was
as though he remained incredulous, and could not
grasp the meaning of the few words which had come
across the mountains upon the frail wire—words
which revealed in a twinkling the acumen of the little
abbé and the reality of his friendship.  Benny could
have sworn that the priest did not know one word
of the story, had hardly heard Sir Luton's name, and
would as soon have thought of connecting it with the
episode upon the Zaat as with his own flight across
Mont Blanc.  And now the abbé had undeceived him
in an instant, and spoken of his own shrewdness and
perception beyond possibility of question.

Of course, the girl, Susette, would have told him.
Benny recollected that she was a Catholic, and his odd
notions about the ancient faith included the belief that
nothing is kept secret, not even the most trivial things
of a common day.  So he argued that Susette would
have "confessed," and the gendarme, Philip, have
done the same, putting the abbé in possession of all the
facts, and dictating this friendly intervention.  The
priest had been the man to warn Sir Luton.  Possibly
he had done so directly Philip Gaillarde left Andana.
And if it were so, then the baronet was safe, and this
journey had been vain indeed.

He had come to this conclusion anew when he heard
someone open the front door of the shanty, and
presently recognised the hacking cough of the beldame
who should have been keeping it.  Her feminine
outburst when she discovered him, the muttered oath and
then the trembling recognition were brushed aside
while he asked her of his guest and heard her
garrulous answer.  Ah, that Englishman!—what she
had suffered at his hands!  And now he had
gone—he went at eleven o'clock.  This very morning,
Bajazet, the postboy from the inn, had driven him; he
would know all about it.  For her part, Mother of
God, she was glad that the house was quit of him.
Such a man to serve—such anger, such words!  She
hoped that he would never return; but now that the
master was come again she could be content.  Which
being said, she began with the method of a Swiss to
set the house in order, and to justify her existence.  It
blazed with lights from garret to kitchen before half
an hour had passed; fires roared in the grates;
pots were steaming upon the hob.  And while she
worked she repeated her story that the Englishman
had driven away at eleven o'clock, and that Bajazet
could say where he had gone.

Benny let her have her say, and then went to the
telephone to ring up the inn as she advised him.
Being answered immediately, he asked for help to get
his airship into shelter, and begged them to send up
Cordivet, the gendarme, and as many young fellows
of the place as they could summon.  As to Bajazet,
he must come to the villa immediately, if he could;
and there would be ten francs for him if he hurried.
Which being done, and the woman instructed to have
supper ready within the hour, he went out to the
lakeside and there waited for the postboy.

The night had fallen clear and the heavy clouds
were now breaking to show a monstrous moon,
shining full and round upon the sleeping water.  By here
and there the siren of a steamer could be heard, and
the voices of young people who sang as they rowed;
while from the village inn, some third of a mile up
the road, the music of fiddles and a harp floated down
upon the still air.  Such a contrast to the rigour and
cold of the heights was hardly to be imagined, and
it seemed to Benny to stand for such a haven of rest
as a man might win when he had crossed the pass and
emerged victorious.

For himself, he knew that he was at the crisis of
his life, and faced it with all the resolution he could
command.  To-night, or if not to-night, to-morrow,
would tell him plainly enough whither his road lay,
and to what house of fortune it would lead.  Luton
Delayne's possible flight had been in his calculations
vaguely when he set out for Andana.  He knew that
his desire for this man's safety was honest, and that
he would have contrived it whatever the sacrifice
had cost him.  Henceforth these people must lead
their own lives.  He perceived that it would be better
that he should not see Lily again, and that she had
been wise to leave Andana without a word to him.
If the very fact led also to another conclusion, he
strove to turn from it at such a moment.  The vanity
of his secret hopes was not to be disguised.
Sometimes he had been ready to say that this sense of
inglorious defeat, this merciless rebuke which fortune
administered to him was well deserved.  What had
he, born to so humble a station, to do with such a
friendship or its privileges?  When he answered that
his attainments had given him every right, he flushed
secretly, as though someone overheard him.  Success
found him a shy lover, though he had wooed her
daringly enough.

This passed at the lakeside, but the interlude of
waiting galled him, and he found himself impelled
resistlessly to act—he knew now how.  When the
coachman, Bajazet, appeared, he was greeted as an
old friend: taken apart and made much of, and wine
commanded for him.  It seemed good to be talking
to a man who had played a part, however humble, in
the drama of the day.  Benny led him to the little
study and poured out a tumbler of red wine with his
own hands, while he asked him twenty questions and
hardly waited for an answer.

"So milord went away at eleven o'clock, Bajazet?"

"He did, Monsieur—it was just before the hour."

"He was very anxious to go?"

Bajazet raised his eyes to the ceiling.

"All the time, all the time, he gave me no rest!
I know your countrymen, but not many such as he,
thanks be to God!  He is at Domo d'Ossola this
night.  May he remain there many years!"

Benny looked at him as though he had been lying.

"At Domo d'Ossola?  But you are not speaking
wisely, Bajazet; you make some mistake?  A man
who goes to Domo d'Ossola is returning to Switzerland.
It is impossible to believe it—of my friend!
Think again, and tell me truly."

The fellow shook his head, and drank a little more wine.

"I know what I am saying.  Milord wished to go
by the railway, but the trains were not running.
Very well, then, he will cross the pass.  Why should
he not do so, Monsieur?  There are many who wish
to see it; why should not your countryman be among
the number?  I tell you, I left him at the posthouse.
He was engaging horses for the journey; perhaps he
is at the Hospice to-night.  Should you wish to know
that the telephone will inform you.  What I have
said is of my own knowledge, Monsieur; the rest is
with God!"

He laughed, and reached out his hand to the flask.
Upon the road without the light of many lanterns
was to be seen, and, anon, the voice of Cordivet, the
gendarme, to be heard.  A little company of men and
boys had come up from the inn to do the Englishman's
bidding, and Cordivet marshalled them as though
they had been an army.  Soon these were grouped
about the airship; their eyes staring at the glistening
steel of its tubes; their tongues loosed in wonder.
Had they been English the buffoons among them
would have worked a mischief; but the love of things
mechanical waxes strong among the Swiss even in the
villages to-day, and these youths understood very well
what was asked of them.  Willing lads were sent
hither and thither for tarpaulins to cover the
machinery; strong arms helped to wheel the ship down
toward the garden by the lake.  These good folk had
heard of the great Flight, and they stood awed before
the master who held the key to the secrets.  Every
word they spoke was a tribute to his achievement—every
gesture honoured him.

Benny saw the machine safely anchored, and then
went in to eat the supper prepared before him.  His
mind was already made up, and he had determined
that the worthy Bajazet should drive him immediately
to Domo d'Ossola, and afterwards, if need be, to the
summit of the Simplon.  For had not the fellow said
that Luton Delayne would cross the pass, and if that
mad purpose were filled, who would save the man
from the penalties of his folly?

Benny had the vague idea that he might yet be
in time—he knew not how!  But he promised
Bajazet a hundred francs if his work were well done, and
they went at a gallop, blindly in the silence of the
night toward the mighty high road which must speak
eternally of Napoleon and his genius.





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.. _`AT THE HOSPICE`:

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   CHAPTER XXVI


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   AT THE HOSPICE

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It was three in the morning when Bajazet turned
into the yard of the Hôtel de Ville at Domo d'Ossola
and ordered a sleepy ostler to prepare horses for Brigue.

In summer the place would have been wide awake
enough even at such an hour, for the summer would
have found it alive with motorists about to cross the
pass according to the regulations which forbid them
to travel at the height of the day.  But being the
month of February, the town was as silent as the
grave when the carriage drove in, and even the ostler
could be discovered with difficulty.  When twenty
questions had recalled his understanding, he
remembered that an Englishman had set out for Brigue
yesterday, but had no idea who he was.  His
description, however, answered to that of Luton Delayne,
and Benny quickly came to the conclusion that the
baronet had persisted in his madness, and had returned
to Switzerland upon an impulse no one else might
pretend to understand.

And yet, was it so difficult to be understood?
Luton Delayne knew the best and the worst that life
had in store for him.  Of all his fortune, good or ill,
fortune of character and of possessions, there remained
to him but the supreme desire to seek out the woman
who had been his wife, and to throw himself upon her
pity.  Desperately, and with almost a child's trust,
he had come to believe that she would save him.
The unanswered letter, the hours of loneliness by the
lakeside, the alternations of hope and despair, so
drove him at the last, that, flinging all reason to the
winds, he determined to go to her and hear the worst.
And he had set off immediately when the abbé sent
him a warning message.  What mattered it, if he
could win a hearing from her?  The good that was
in him claimed audience now.  He believed that she
would judge him lightly if all were known; and,
determined that it should be known, he drove to Iselle
and the pass.

Perhaps Benny guessed something of this when he
commanded horses for the journey to Brigue, and
announced his determination to depart immediately.
He understood men in many moods, and could almost
sympathise with this broken man who thus flung down
the gauntlet to the world and did not stop to consider
that it might be picked up—not by a chivalrous
enemy, but by the police.  For himself, his task was
plain, and events had not changed the trend of it.
He would save Luton Delayne from a public exposure
if he could, and would save him for the woman's sake.
What happened afterwards must be as destiny
decided.  It would be enough for him that he had done
his duty to one who claimed his friendship, and for
whom he would measure no sacrifice.

There was a considerable delay before the carriage
could leave the hotel, and he was glad of the hot
coffee which the maids prepared for him.  Early as
it was, the great road to the pass now became alive
with peasants coming down into Italy or returning
to the Valley of the Rhone.  These seldom travel by
the train, and for them the Hospice upon the summit
of the pass is kept open during the winter months.
Benny watched them as they tramped stolidly through
the darkness, their eyes set upon a visionary city,
and their faces pinched with the cold.  When he
spoke to one of them at the door of the inn yard, an
old man whose sister was ill at Baveno, the veteran
told him that there had been a dreadful storm on
the heights last night, and that a bruit of accidents
was abroad.  He also spoke of the railway, and of
the mishap above Brigue; but that, he said, had now
been put right, and the trains were running as usual.
When he left, with a five-franc piece for his gratuity,
he confessed that it was seldom an Englishman was
met upon the pass nowadays—bad luck to all this
craze for railway travelling which robbed so many of
their dues.

Benny was pleased at the news about the trains,
for it fitted in very well with the idea which had come
to him at the shanty, and had not been abandoned
during the journey.  He perceived that all now
depended upon what the gendarme Philip had
done—whether the lad had attempted to reach Italy by the
pass, or had waited for the line to Milan to be
reopened.  In the former case, nothing could save
Luton Delayne from arrest—or worse.  In the latter,
it might very well be that the baronet would reach
Sierre, and, having met his wife, would be persuaded
to take the express to Paris.  Should that be done,
his escape was almost assured, for the heat of the hue
and cry had subsided by this time, and but for Philip
Gaillarde might have been forgotten altogether.  The
gendarme, truly, was the key to the whole situation,
and Benny was almost tempted to ring up the
abbé at the Hospice and ask if he had news of him.
This, however, would have been a concession to
mere curiosity, and, set upon his purpose of
overtaking the baronet if he could, he entered his
carriage about four o'clock and departed immediately
for Brigue.

Many know the Simplon Pass by name, but to few
of this generation is it more than a name.
Sometimes, in the history lesson, the boy learns that the
great road was built at Napoleon's command
immediately after the battle of Marengo, and that it took
no fewer than six years to construct.  By here and
there in an old painting there are pictures of the
Ponto Alto, or, more commonly, of the Gallery of
Gondo, with its wondrous black-mouthed tunnel and
arched bridge, and mighty ramparts uplifted, as it
were, to the very heavens.  But these things are but
traditions to the flitting tourist, who climbs mountains
in a railway carriage and would have his waterfalls
illuminated.

Benny knew nothing of the pass, but insensibly
the wonders of it grew upon him as the day dawned
and the fertile valleys of Italy began to give place
to the grandeur and desolation of the heights.  What
mind had conceived these things—what hand had
planned them?  An engineer by every instinct of his
being, he tried to understand the spirit in which this
great work was conceived and the labour which had
accomplished it.  And from that he passed to the
sheer fascination of it all; of these frail bridges
spanning the very jaws of hell; of the galleries wrought
in the face of the iron rock; of the vast aqueducts
bringing black torrents, and the mighty roofs which
defied the thundering avalanche.  By one man's
genius this had come to be; the gates had been opened,
the goal attained.  And with that man he crossed the
pass in spirit, and lifted his eyes to the stars, and
dwelt in the infinite.

Upward and still upward—to what end, to what
humour of destiny?  Must all this grandeur of the
road melt ultimately to a vulgar truth of life; must
it give place to a man's shame and a woman's tears?
He tried to think that it could not be, and yet the
inevitableness of it all seemed written upon every rock
which towered above him.  He believed no longer that
Philip Gaillarde had gone down into Italy.  The lad,
he thought, would be advised by others, and all that
had been done at the villa would be well known to the
authorities.  Possibly, and this was to be reckoned
with, Philip had himself gone up to the Hospice and
would there meet the baronet face to face.  And if
he did so it might well be that a new page in this
sordid tragedy would be written that very day.
Benny would not dwell upon this, but he encouraged
Bajazet with new promises, while that good fellow
urged on his horses with wild cries and a great cracking
of his whip, which echoed in the hills like a pistol shot.

They were at the Gallery of Gondo by this time,
and its black mouth shaped bell-like at the break of
day.  The open valley here closed in until it became
but a tremendous cañon; the towering heights were
uplifted as the spires of a Gargantuan cathedral; the
road itself seemed to disappear into the very bowels
of the rock.  Upon the right hand, what would have
been a roaring torrent in the spring was but a runnel
cut in the cliff's face; upon their left hand was the
abyss whose black depths no eye could fathom.  Here
no living thing stirred—there was no sound but that
of the water dripping; the very bridge should have
been built for fabled demons of the Simplon and not
for human travellers.

They passed on by the seventh refuge, and set out
across the dreary tableland, beyond which lay the
village of Simplon itself.  They had out-distanced
other travellers, and were alone upon this waste,
which breaks into the hills as an oasis whose icy
mirage mocks the wayfarer.  Here, for the first time,
they perceived the effects of last night's storm: the
profound drifts; the scarred rocks—even relics of
the pilgrims who had dared the journey.  A little
farther on, and they entered the village, and heard the
warning that the road to the Hospice was unsafe.  No
sleighs would be allowed to pass: there had been
accidents upon the road, and the snow was not yet
cleared.  Some hours must intervene before
permission could be given, they said, but Benny heard them
with scorn, for he was determined to make the
Hospice, and to hear the abbé's news, cost him what it
might.  When he had talked a little way with one of
the soldiers at the inn, it appeared that nothing would
be said to those who cared to set out on foot, and
this he did immediately, instructing Bajazet to follow
him directly the road was open that they might
continue the journey to Brigue.

To Brigue—was that his destination?  Lily, he
remembered, should be at Sierre; it was even possible
that her husband had joined her there, and that they
would leave for England by the express to-night.  He
himself would follow after, but not for many weeks.
The triumphs which awaited him in England had
ceased to interest him.  He had lost, as it were, in an
hour the ambitions which had sustained him through
the years, and the inspiration by which they had been
gratified.  It would be well enough to think of his
future when all this were over, and he knew the best
or the worst of it.  The brain refusing to contemplate
any other issue, it brought him back to the starting-point:
would he be in time to save Delayne, or was
the gendarme, Philip, already avenged?

He pressed on over a barren road which has been
likened to a waterless lake in the hollow of the
mountains.  The snow lay heavy and the walking was
difficult.  By here and there he passed wayfarers
coming down from the Hospice, but telling ever the same
story of hardship and distress.  When, at length,
he espied the monastery buildings, it was at a moment
when an avalanche crashed down on the road before
him, and its thunders echoed in the heights with the
booming of a thousand cannon.  Such appalling
sounds affrighted him beyond all reason, for he knew
little of Switzerland in the winter, save what Andana
had taught him.  Grimly and with satisfaction, he
remembered how little all this terror of the hills had
meant to him last night, and how little it would mean
to the men of to-morrow.  Give him his ship, and
he would be but a speck above these imprisoning
peaks—as free as an eagle, and as kingly.  To go as
he must go—battling with the snow and often
almost conquered by it, was a humiliation his genius
derided.  But it was in keeping with the truth of the
quest; and presently, when a second avalanche
thundered down, and the snow sprayed above a gallery
as foam upon a seashore, he shuddered at its reality
and wondered if his courage were equal to the ordeal.

He was but a quarter of a mile from the gate of
the Hospice by this time, and he perceived that those
who had gone before him here deserted the pass itself
and went downward a little way toward the abyss.
So many feet had trodden out a path that prudence
bade him take it.  Striking out boldly, he found
himself presently in a magic sea whose billows rose above
his head but never engulfed him.  At this time the
monastery disappeared from his view entirely; the
landmarks by which he might have guided himself
to its doors vanished to give place to this monstrous
and unbroken curtain of the snow.  He had the sense
of being lost beyond hope, of being a man adrift upon
an ocean whose waters were white with an icy foam.
All idea of direction was blotted out immediately in
this blinding waste.  He found the path and lost it
ten times in as many minutes, and then fell to bitter
self-reproach because he had deserted the high road.
Vain lament—that desertion was his salvation!

A great dog came battling through the snow, and,
anon, a monk with a cassock tucked up to his waist,
and skis upon his feet.  He was quite a youth, and
he laughed and nodded to the stranger as one who
would say: "All is well; we knew you were coming
to us."  At his direction Benny turned up the
hillside again, and there he found the rope by which
travellers pull themselves up to the gates of the
Hospice.  They were now but fifty yards from its door,
and he could hear a bell calling the priests to terce.
The monk, in his turn, pointed to the high road, and
to the mountains of snow which rested upon its galleries.

"You were wise to come as you did," he said.
"Many lose their lives up there; three have done so
this week, Monsieur."

No answer was made, and they entered the monastery.
The bell still tolled, and the brethren were
crossing the court toward the chapel.  The Englishman,
however, was conducted immediately to the guest hall,
where a great fire blazed and a table was spread.
The monk had already told him that the Abbé Villari
was at the Hospice, and the desire to see him brooked
no control.  Benny had almost forgotten where he
was; the events of the night and the journey of the
day were as nothing when the abbé at last entered
the room and greeted him with hand uplifted and a
hushed word upon his lips.

"Yes, yes, I had expected you," he said, nodding
his head slowly while he spoke.  "It was natural
that you should not have heard.  We found him lying
just above the seventh shelter.  He was quite dead;
he had been dead for some hours."

Benny drew a step nearer, as though afraid of the
sound of his voice.

"You found him—are you speaking of Luton Delayne?"

The abbé looked bewildered.

"Of whom, then?  They would have kept him at
Iselle, but he would not hear reason.  He tried to
cross on foot at the height of the storm.  I had an
idea that it might be so.  Yes, yes, the Almighty God
made this known to me, and so I came."

And then he said, turning away:

"She will be here this afternoon—I have spoken
to her myself; she is now upon her way from Sierre."

There was no response.  Benny stood at the
window and looked down the valley as though fearing to
see her carriage already upon the high road.





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.. _`BENNY SETS OUT FOR ENGLAND`:

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   CHAPTER XXVII


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   BENNY SETS OUT FOR ENGLAND

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He left the hospice at three o'clock, while it was yet
light, and the journey to Brigue could be made in
safety.

He had not spoken to her, but he knew that she
was then in the chapel where the dead lie, and that
she was aware of his presence.  An instinct told him
that it were better they should not meet in such a
house of shadows.  He had already determined to set
out for England that night, and to think of Switzerland
no more.  In his own country he would find
the place and the hour.

Of the future, his ideas were vague and indefinable.
A call of ambition had returned in the interlude
of reckoning, and found him resolute in response.
A new world opened to his vision, a world which
should recognise his genius and bid him profit by it.
he would go to England this night and make himself
known to those who would honour him.  Thereafter
strenuous days must follow, and the reaping of the
harvest.  He was as one whose life's task began upon
a foundation of success; the stones of whose house
were already hewn.  In England he would come to his
own.  They waited for him impatiently there.

Just for an instant, as he crossed the courtyard,
he saw her kneeling before the altar, her head bent in
prayer and all her figure shrouded in the gloom.  A
dim light of tapers flickered in the little building and
stood as symbols of the woe it harboured.  She did
not hear his step upon the stone, and he passed by
unnoticed.  But that was not the vision he carried
with him upon his journey, nor the face the clear
heaven showed him when the gate was closed and he
set upon his journey.

It was growing dark then, and twilight had already
come down upon the pass.  The night fell still with a
wonderful heaven of stars.  He drove on in silence,
saying no word to the man which did not bid him
hasten.

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THE END.

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Printed by Cassell and Company, Limited, La Belle Sauvage, London, E.C.

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