“And if you were to die, or I was, Miss Marley could help us to see each other just at the last. I asked her about it.” Despite their future happiness, they seemed to draw more solid satisfaction out of this final privilege.

The last ten minutes they hardly talked at all. Every now and then Winn wanted to know if Claire’s feet were warm, and Claire asked him to let her have a photograph of Peter.

Then Maurice came out of the hotel, and a tailing party stood in the open doorway and wondered if it was going to snow. The sleigh drove up to the hotel, jingling in the gayest manner, with pawing horses. Winn walked across the courtyard with her and nodded to Maurice; and Maurice allowed Winn to tuck Claire up, because, after he’d looked at Winn’s eyes, it occurred to him that he couldn’t do anything else.

Winn reduced the hall porter, a magnificent person in gold lace, with an immense sense of dignity, to gibbering terror before the lift-boy and the boots because he had failed to supply the sleigh with a sufficiently hot foot-warmer.

Finally even Winn was satisfied that there was nothing more to eat or to wear which the sleigh could be induced to hold or Claire agree to want. He stood aside then, and told the man briefly to be off. The driver, who did not understand English, understood perfectly what Winn meant, and hastened to crack his whip.

Claire looked back and saw Winn, bare-headed, looking after her. His eyes were like a mother’s eyes when she fights in naked absorption against the pain of her child.

He went on looking like that for a long while after the sleigh had disappeared. Then he put on his cap and started off up the valley toward Pontresina.

It had already begun to snow. The walk to Pontresina is the coldest and darkest of winter walks, and the snow made it heavy going. Winn got very much out of breath, and his chest hurt him. Every now and then he stopped and said to himself, “By Jove! I wonder if I’m going to be ill?” But as he always pushed on afterward with renewed vigor, as if a good idea had just occurred to him, it hardly seemed as if he cared very much whether he was going to be ill or not. He got as far as the Mortratsch Glacier before he stopped.

He couldn’t get any farther because when he got into the inn for lunch, something or other happened to him. A fool of a porter had the impertinence to tell him afterward that he had fainted. Winn knocked the porter down for daring to make such a suggestion; but feeling remarkably queer despite this relaxation, he decided to drive back to the Kulm.

He wound up the day with bridge and a prolonged wrangle with Miss Marley on the subject of the Liberal Government.

Miss Marley lent herself to the fray and became extremely heated. Winn had her rather badly once or twice, and as he never subsequently heard her argue on the same subject with others, he was spared the knowledge that she shared his political views precisely, and had tenderly provided him with the flaws in her opponent’s case.

When he went to bed he began a letter to Claire. He told her that he had had a jolly walk, a good game of bridge, and that he thought he’d succeeded in knocking some radical nonsense out of Miss Marley’s head. Then he inclosed his favorite snap-shot of Peter, the one that he kept with his revolver, and said he would get taken properly with him when he went back to England.

Winn stopped for a long time after that, staring straight in front of him; then he wrote:

“I hope you’ll never be sorry for having come across me, because you’ve given me everything I ever wanted. I hope you’ll not mind my having been rather rough the other night. I didn’t mean anything by it. I wouldn’t hurt a hair of your head; but I think you know that I wouldn’t, only I thought I’d just mention it. Please be careful about the damp when you get back to England.”

He stopped for half an hour when he had got as far as “England,” and as the heating was off, the room grew very cold; then he wrote, “I didn’t know men loved women like this.”

After that he decided to finish the letter in the morning; but when the morning came he crossed the last sentence out because he thought it might upset her.

CHAPTER XXVIII

He had been afraid that Davos would be beautiful, but the thaw had successfully dissipated its immaculate loveliness. Half of the snow slopes were already bare, the roads were a sea of mud, and the valley was as dingy as if a careless washerwoman had upset a basket of dirty linen on her way to the laundry. All the sport people had gone, the streets were half empty, and most of the tourist shops were shut. Only the very ill had reappeared; they crept aimlessly about in the sunshine with wonder in their eyes that they were still alive.

Winn had put up at the nearest hotel and made the earliest possible appointment with Dr. Gurnet. Dr. Gurnet was obviously pleased to see him, but the pleasure faded rapidly from his face after a glance or two at Winn. The twinkle remained in his eyes, but it had become perceptibly grimmer.

“Perhaps you would be so kind as to take off your things,” he suggested. “After I have examined you we can talk more at our ease.”

It seemed to Winn as if he had never been so knocked about before. Dr. Gurnet pounced upon him and went over him inch by inch; he reminded Winn of nothing so much as of an excited terrier hunting up and down a bank for a rat-hole. Eventually Dr. Gurnet found his rat. He went back to his chair, sat down heavily, and looked at Winn. For rather an ominous moment he was silent; then he said politely:

“Of course I suppose you are aware, Major Staines, of what you have done with your very excellent chances?”

Winn shook his head doubtfully. He hadn’t, as a matter of fact, thought much lately about these particular chances.

“Ah,” said Dr. Gurnet, “then I regret to inform you that you have simply walked through them – or, in your case, I should be inclined to imagine, tobogganed – and you have come out the other side. You haven’t got any chances now.”

Winn did not say anything for a moment or two; then he observed:

“I’m afraid I’ve rather wasted your time.”

“Pray don’t mention it,” said Dr. Gurnet. “It is so small a thing compared with what you have done with your own.”

Winn laughed.

“You rather have me there,” he admitted; “I suppose I have been rather an ass.”

“My dear fellow,” said Dr. Gurnet, more kindly, “I’m really annoyed about this, extremely annoyed. I had booked you to get well. I expected it. What have you been doing with yourself? You’ve broken down that right lung badly; the infection has spread to the left. It was not the natural progress of the disease, which was in process of being checked; it is owing to a very great and undue physical strain, and absolutely no attempt to take precautions after it. Also you have, I should say, complicated this by a great nervous shock.”

“Nonsense!” said Winn, briefly. “I don’t go in for nerves.”

“You must allow me to correct you,” said Dr. Gurnet, gently. “You are a human being, and all human beings are open to the effects of shock.”

“I’m afraid I haven’t quite played the game,” Winn confessed, after a short pause. “I hadn’t meant to let you down like this, Doctor Gurnet. I think it is due to me to tell you that I shouldn’t have come to you for orders if I had intended at the time to shirk them. You’re quite right about the tobogganing: I had a go at the Cresta. I know it shook me up a bit, but I didn’t spill. Perhaps something went wrong then.”

“And why, may I ask, did you do it?” Dr. Gurnet asked ironically. “You did not act solely, I presume, from an idea of thwarting my suggestions?”

Winn’s eyes moved away from the gimlets opposite them.

“I found time dragging on my hands, rather,” he explained a trifle lamely.