Lionel walked a little in front of Winn; the snow was soft and made heavy going. At the corner of the valley he turned to wait for Winn, and then he remembered the fanciful legend of New Year’s eve, for he saw Winn’s face very set and white, and his eyes looked as if the presence of death was in them – turned toward Davos.

CHAPTER XVII

Winn was under the impression that he could stand two or three days, especially if he had something practical to do. What helped him was the condition of Mr. Bouncing. Mr. Bouncing had suddenly retired. He had a bedroom on the other side of Winn’s, and a sitting-room connected it with his wife’s; but Mrs. Bouncing failed increasingly to take much advantage of this connection. Her theory was that, once you were in bed, you were better left alone.

Mr. Bouncing refused to have a nurse; he said they were disagreeable women who wouldn’t let you take your own temperature. This might have seemed to involve the services of Mrs. Bouncing; but they were taken up for the moment by a bridge drive.

“People do seem to want me so!” she explained plaintively to Winn in the corridor. “And I have a feeling, you know, Major Staines, that in a hotel like this it’s one’s duty to make things go.”

“Some things go without much making,” said Winn, significantly. He was under the impression that one of these things was Mr. Bouncing.

Winn made it his business, since it appeared to be nobody else’s, to keep an eye on Mr. Bouncing: in the daytime he sat with him and ran his errands; at night he came in once or twice and heated things for Mr. Bouncing on a spirit lamp.

Mr. Bouncing gave him minute directions, and scolded him for leaving milk exposed to the menaces of the air and doing dangerous things with a teaspoon. Nevertheless, he valued Winn’s company.

“You see,” he explained to Winn, “when you can’t sleep, you keep coming up to the point of dying. It’s very odd, the point of dying, a kind of collapsishness that won’t collapse. You say to yourself, ‘I can’t feel any colder than this,’ or, ‘I must have more breath,’ or, ‘This lung is bound to go if I cough much more.’ And the funny part of it is, you do go on getting colder, and your breath breaks like a rotten thread, and you never stop coughing, and yet you don’t go! I dare say I shall be quite surprised when I do. Then when you come in and give me warm, dry sheets and something hot to drink, something comes back. I suppose it’s life force; but not much – never as much as when I started the collapse. I’m getting weaker every hour; don’t you notice it? I never approved of all this lying in bed. I shall speak to Dr. Gurnet about it to-morrow.”

Winn had noticed it; he came and sat down by Mr. Bouncing’s bed.

“Snowy weather,” he suggested, “takes the life out of you.”

Mr. Bouncing ignored this theory.

“I hear,” he went on, “that you and your new friend have changed your table. You don’t sit with the Rivers any more.”

“No,” said Winn, laconically; “table isn’t big enough.”

“I expect they eat too fast,” Mr. Bouncing continued; “young people almost always eat too fast. You’ll digest better at another table. You look to me as if you had indigestion now.”

Winn shook his head.

“Look here, Bouncing,” he said earnestly, “I’m going off to St. Moritz next week to have a look at the Cresta; I wish you’d have a nurse. Drummond will run in and give an eye to you, of course; but you’re pretty seedy, and that’s a fact. I don’t like leaving you alone.”

“Next week,” said Mr. Bouncing, thoughtfully. “Well, I dare say I shall be ready by then. It would be a pity, when I’ve just got you into the way of doing things properly, to have to teach them all over again to somebody else. I’m really not quite strong enough for that kind of thing. But I’m not going to have a nurse. Oh, dear, no! Nurses deceive you and cheer you up. I don’t feel well enough to be cheered up. I like somebody who is thoroughly depressed himself, as you are, you know. I dare say you think I notice nothing lying here, but I’ve noticed that you’re thoroughly depressed. Have you quarreled with your friend? It’s odd you rush off to St. Moritz alone just when he’s arrived.”

“No, it isn’t,” said Winn, hastily. “He’ll join me later; he’s staying here at my request.”

Mr. Bouncing sighed gently.

“Well,” he said; “then all I can say is that you make very odd requests. One thing I’m perfectly sure about: if you go and look at the Cresta, you’ll go down it, you’re such a careless man, and then you’ll be killed. Is that what you want?”

“I could do with it,” said Winn, briefly.

“That,” said Mr. Bouncing, “is because you’re strong. It really isn’t nice to talk in that light way about being killed to any one who has got to be before very long whether he likes it or not. If you were in my place you’d value your life, unless it got too uncomfortable, of course.”

Winn apologized instantly. Mr. Bouncing accepted his apology graciously.

“You’ll learn,” he explained kindly, “how to talk to very ill people in time, and then probably you’ll never see any more of them. Experience is a very silly thing, I’ve often noticed; it hops about so. No continuity. What I was going to say was, don’t be worried about young Rivers and my wife. Take my word for it, you’re making a great mistake.”

“I am glad to hear you say so,” Winn answered. “As a matter of fact, I have at present a few little private worries of my own; but I’m relieved, you think the Rivers boy is all right. I’ve been thinking of having a little talk with that tutor of his.”

“Ah, I shouldn’t do that if I were you,” said Mr. Bouncing, urgently; “you’re sure to be violent. I see you have a great deal of violence in you; you ought to control it. It’s bad for your nerves. There are things I could tell you which would make you change your mind about young Rivers, but I don’t know that I shall; it would excite me too much. I think I should like you to go down and telephone to Dr. Gurnet. Tell him my temperature is normal. It’s a very odd thing; I haven’t had a normal temperature for over three years. Perhaps I’m going to get better, after all. It’s really only my breathing that’s troubling me to-night. It would be funny if I got well, wouldn’t it? But I mustn’t talk any more; so don’t come back until I knock in the night. Pass me the ‘Pink ’Un.’” Winn passed him the “Pink ’Un” and raised him with one deft, strong movement more comfortably up on his pillows.

“You’ve got quite a knack for this sort of thing,” Mr. Bouncing observed. “If you’d been a clever man, you might have been a doctor.”

Mr. Bouncing did not knock during the night. Winn heard him stirring at ten o’clock, and went in. The final change had come very quickly. Mr. Bouncing was choking. He waved his hand as if the very appearance of Winn between him and the open balcony door kept away from him the air that he was vainly trying to breathe. Then a rush of blood came in a stream between his lips. Winn moved quickly behind him and lifted him in his arms.

Mr. Bouncing was no weight at all, and he made very little sound. He was quite conscious, and the look in his eyes was more interested than alarmed. The rush of bleeding stopped suddenly; his breathing was weaker and quieter, but he no longer choked.

“Look here, old man,” Winn said, “let me get your wife.”

But Mr. Bouncing signaled to him not to move; after a time he whispered:

“This is the first time I ever had hemorrhage. Most uncomfortable.”

“Do let me get your wife!” Winn urged again.

“No,” said Mr. Bouncing. “Women – not much good – after the first.”

“Don’t talk any more then, old man,” Winn pleaded. “You’ll start that bleeding off again.”

But Mr. Bouncing made a faint clicking sound that might have been a laugh.

“Too late,” he whispered. “Don’t matter now. No more risks. Besides, I’m too – too uncomfortable to live.”