Part 3

"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 _tete-a-tete_ 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 _creme 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."

*CHAPTER IV*

*THE MAN WHO KNEW*

"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?"