"So these are the Alps!" Nellie exclaimed.
She was disappointed; he also. But when Denry learnt from theguide-book and by enquiry that the strip of lake was seven miles across,and the highest notched peaks ten thousand feet above the sea andtwenty-five miles off, Nellie gasped and was content.
They liked the Hotel Beau-Site. It had been recommended to Denry, by aman who knew what was what, as the best hotel in Switzerland. "Don'tyou be misled by prices," the man had said. And Denry was not. He paidsixteen francs a day for the two of them at the Beau-Site, and wasrather relieved than otherwise by the absence of finger-bowls.Everything was very good, except sometimes the hot water. The hot-watercans bore the legend "hot water," but these two words were occasionallythe only evidence of heat in the water. On the other hand, the bedroomscould be made sultry by merely turning a handle; and the windows weredouble. Nellie was wondrously inventive. They breakfasted in bed, andshe would save butter and honey from the breakfast to furnish forthafternoon tea, which was not included in the terms. She served thebutter freshly with ice by the simple expedient of leaving it outsidethe window of a night! And Denry was struck by this housewifery.
The other guests appeared to be of a comfortable, companionable class,with, as Denry said, "no frills." They were amazed to learn that achattering little woman of thirty-five, who gossiped with everybody, andsoon invited Denry and Nellie to have tea in her room, was an authenticRussian Countess--inscribed in the visitors' lists as "Comtesse Ruhl(with maid), Moscow." Her room was the untidiest that Nellie had everseen, and the tea a picnic. Still, it was thrilling to have had teawith a Russian Countess. (Plots! Nihilism! Secret police! Marblepalaces!) Those visitors' lists were breath-taking. Pages and pages ofthem; scores of hotels, thousands of names, nearly all English--and allpeople who came to Switzerland in winter, having naught else to do!Denry and Nellie bathed in correctness as in a bath.
The only persons in the hotel with whom they did not "get on" nor "hitit off" were a military party, chiefly named Clutterbuck, and presidedover by a Major Clutterbuck and his wife. They sat at a large table ina corner--father, mother, several children, a sister-in-law, a sister, agoverness, eight heads in all; and while utterly polite they seemed todraw a ring round themselves. They grumbled at the hotel; they playedbridge (then a newish game); and once, when Denry and the Countessplayed with them (Denry being an adept card-player) for shilling points,Denry overheard the sister-in-law say that she was sure Captain Deveraxwould n't play for shilling points. This was the first rumour of theexistence of Captain Deverax; but afterwards Captain Deverax began to bementioned several times a day. Captain Deverax was coming to join them,and it seemed that he was a very particular man. Soon all the rest ofthe hotel had got its back up against this arriving Captain Deverax.Then a Clutterbuck cousin came, a smiling, hard, fluffy woman, andpronounced definitely that the Hotel Beau-Site would never do forCaptain Deverax. This cousin aroused Denry's hostility in a strange way.She imparted to the Countess (who united all sects) her opinion thatDenry and Nellie were on their honeymoon. At night in a corner of thedrawing-room the Countess delicately but bluntly asked Nellie if she hadbeen married long. "No," said Nellie. "A month?" asked the Countesssmiling. "N-no!" said Nellie.
The next day all the hotel knew. The vast edifice of make-believe thatDenry and Nellie had laboriously erected crumbled at a word, and theystood forth, those two, blushing for the criminals they were.
The hotel was delighted. There is more rejoicing in a hotel over onehoneymoon couple than over fifty families with children.
But the hotel had a shock the same day. The Clutterbuck cousin hadproclaimed that owing to the inadequacy of the bedroom furniture she hadbeen obliged to employ a sofa as a wardrobe. Then there were morereferences to Captain Deverax. And then at dinner it becameknown--Heaven knows how!--that the entire Clutterbuck party had givennotice and was seceding to the Hotel Metropole. Also they had tried tocarry the Countess with them, but had failed.
Now, among the guests of the Hotel Beau-Site there had always been aprofessed scorn of the rival Hotel Metropole, which was a franc a daydearer and famous for its new and rich furniture. The Metropole had anorchestra twice a week, and the English Church services were held in itsdrawing-room; and it was larger than the Beau-Site. In spite of thesefacts the clients of the Beau-Site affected to despise it, saying thatthe food was inferior and that the guests were snobbish. It was anarticle of faith in the Beau-Site that the Beau-Site was the best hotelon the mountainside, if not in Switzerland.
The insolence of this defection on the part of the Clutterbucks! How onearth _could_ people have the face to go to a landlord and say to himthat they meant to desert him in favour of his rival?
Another detail: the secession of nine or ten people from one hotel tothe other meant that the Metropole would decidedly be more populous thanthe Beau-Site, and on the point of numbers the emulation was very keen."Well!" said the Beau-Site, "let 'em go! With their Captain Deverax!We shall be better without 'em!" And that deadliest of all feuds sprangup--a rivalry between the guests of rival hotels. The Metropole hadissued a general invitation to a dance, and after the monstrous conductof the Clutterbucks the question arose whether the Beau-Site should notboycott the dance. However, it was settled that the truly effectivecourse would be to go with critical noses in the air, and emitunfavourable comparisons with the Beau-Site. The Beau-Site suddenlybecame perfect in the esteem of its patrons. Not another word was heardon the subject of hot water being coated with ice. And theClutterbucks, with incredible assurance, slid their luggage off in asleigh to the Metropole, in the full light of day, amid the contempt ofthe faithful.
III
Under the stars the dancing section of the Beau-Site went off injingling sleighs over the snow to the ball at the Metropole. Thedistance was not great, but it was great enough to show the inadequacyof furs against twenty degrees of mountain frost, and it was also greatenough to allow the party to come to a general final understanding thatits demeanour must be cold and critical in the gilded halls of theMetropole. The rumour ran that Captain Deverax had arrived, and everyone agreed that he must be an insufferable booby, except the CountessRuhl, who never used her fluent exotic English to say ill of anybody.
The gilded halls of the Metropole certainly were imposing. The hotelwas incontestably larger than the Beau-Site, newer, more richlyfurnished. Its occupants, too, had a lordly way with them, trying toothers, but inimitable. Hence the visitors from the Beau-Site, as theymoved to and fro beneath those crystal chandeliers from Tottenham CourtRoad, had their work cut out to maintain the mien of haughtyindifference. Nellie, for instance, frankly could not do it. And Denrydid not do it very well.
Denry nevertheless did score one point over Mrs. Clutterbuck's fussycousin.
"Captain Deverax has come," said this latter. "He was very late. He'll be downstairs in a few minutes. We shall get him to lead thecotillon."
"Captain Deverax?" Denry questioned.
"Yes. You 've heard us mention him," said the cousin, affronted.
"Possibly," said Denry. "I don't remember."
On hearing this brief colloquy the cohorts of the Beau-Site felt that inDenry they possessed the making of a champion.
There was a disturbing surprise, however, waiting for Denry.
The lift descended, and with a peculiar double action of his arms on thedoors, like a pantomime fairy emerging from an enchanted castle, a tall,thin man stepped elegantly out of the lift and approached the companywith a certain mincingness. But before he could reach the companyseveral young women had rushed towards him, as though with the intentionof committing suicide by hanging themselves from his neck. He was in anevening suit so perfect in detail that it might have sustainedcomparison with the costume of the head waiter. And he wore an eyeglassin his left eye. It was the eyeglass that made Denry jump. For twoseconds he dismissed the notion. But another two seconds of examin
ationshowed beyond doubt that this eyeglass was the eyeglass of the train.And Denry had apprehensions.
"Captain Deverax!" exclaimed several voices.
The manner in which the youthful and the mature fair clustered aroundthis Captain aged forty (and not handsome) was really extraordinary--tothe males of the Hotel Beau-Site. Even the little Russian Countessattached herself to him at once. And by reason of her title, her socialenergy, and her personal distinction, she took natural precedence of theothers.
"Recognise him?" Denry whispered to his wife.
Nellie nodded. "He seems rather nice," she said diffidently.
"Nice!" Denry repeated the adjective. "The man 's an ass."
And the majority of the Beau-Site party agreed with Denry's verdicteither by word or gesture.
Captain Deverax stared fixedly at Denry; then smiled vaguely anddrawled, "Hullo! How d' do?"
And they shook hands.
"So you know him?" some one murmured to Denry.
"Know him? ... Since infancy."
The inquirer scented facetiousness, but he was somehow impressed. Theremarkable thing was that though he regarded Captain Deverax as apopinjay, Denry could not help feeling a certain slight satisfaction inthe fact that they were in some sort acquaintances. Mystery of thehuman heart. He wished sincerely that he had not, in his conversationwith the Captain in the train, talked about previous visits toSwitzerland. It was dangerous.
The dance achieved that brightness and joviality which entitle a danceto call itself a success. The cotillon reached brilliance, owing to thecaptaincy of Captain Deverax. Several score opprobrious epithets wereapplied to the Captain in the course of the night, but it was agreed_nemine contradicente_ that, whatever he would have done in front of aLight Brigade at Balaclava, as a leader of cotillons he was terrific.Many men, however, seemed to argue that if a man who was a man led acotillon he ought not to lead it too well, on pain of being considered acoxcomb.
At the close, during the hot soup, the worst happened. Denry had knownthat it would.
Captain Deverax was talking to Nellie, who was respectfully listening,about the scenery, when the Countess came up, plate in hand.
"No! No!" the Countess protested. "As for me, I hate your mountains.I was born in the steppe where it is all level--level! Your mountainsclose me in. I am only here by order of my doctor. Your mountains geton my nerves." She shrugged her shoulders.
Captain Deverax smiled.
"It is the same with you, isn't it?" he said, turning to Nellie.
"Oh! no!" said Nellie simply.
"But your husband told me the other day that when you and he were inGeneva a couple of years ago, the view of Mont Blanc used to--er--upsetyou."
"View of Mont Blanc?" Nellie stammered.
Everybody was aware that she and Denry had never been in Switzerlandbefore, and that their marriage was indeed less than a month old.
"You misunderstood me," said Denry gruffly. "My wife has n't been toGeneva."
"Oh!" drawled Captain Deverax.
His "Oh!" contained so much of insinuation, disdain, and lofty amusementthat Denry blushed, and when Nellie saw her husband's cheek she blushedin competition and defeated him easily. It was felt that either Denryhad been romancing to the Captain or that he had been married before,unknown to his Nellie, and had been "carrying on" at Geneva. Thesituation, though it dissolved of itself in a brief space, was awkward.It discredited the Hotel Beau-Site. It was in the nature of a repulsefor the Hotel Beau-Site (franc a day cheaper than the Metropole) and ofa triumph for the popinjay.
The fault was utterly Denry's. Yet he said to himself:
"I 'll be even with that chap."
On the drive home he was silent. The theme of conversation in thesleighs which did not contain the Countess was that the Captain hadflirted tremendously with the Countess and that it amounted to anaffair.
IV
Captain Deverax was equally salient in the department of sports. Therewas a fair sheet of ice, obtained by cutting into the side of themountain, and a very good tobogganing track, about half a mile in lengthand full of fine curves, common to the two hotels. Denry's predilectionwas for the track. He would lie on his stomach on the littlecontrivance which the Swiss call a "luge" and which consists of naughtbut three bits of wood and two steel-clad runners, and would course downthe perilous curves at twenty miles an hour. Until the Captain camethis was regarded as dashing, because most people were content to sit onthe luge and travel legs foremost instead of head foremost. But theCaptain, after a few eights on the ice, intimated that for the rest nosport was true sport save the sport of ski-running. He allowed it to beunderstood that luges were for infants. He had brought his skis, andthese instruments of locomotion, some six feet in length, made asensation among the inexperienced. For when he had strapped them to hisfeet the Captain, while stating candidly that his skill was as nothingto that of the Swedish professionals at St. Moritz, could assuredlyslide over snow in a manner prodigious and beautiful. And he wasexquisitely clothed for the part. His knickerbockers, in the eleganceof their lines, were the delight of beholders. Ski-ing became the rage.Even Nellie insisted on hiring a pair. And the pronunciation of theword "ski" aroused long discussions and was never definitely settled byanybody. The Captain said "skee," but he did not object to "shee,"which was said to be the more strictly correct by a lady who knew someone who had been to Norway. People with no shame and no feeling forcorrectness said, brazenly, "sky." Denry, whom nothing could induce todesert his luge, said that obviously "s-k-i" could only spell "planks."And thanks to his inspiration this version was adopted by the majority.
On the second day of Nellie's struggle with her skis she had moresuccess than she either anticipated or desired. She had been makingexperiments at the summit of the track, slithering about, falling andbeing restored to uprightness by as many persons as happened to be near.Skis seemed to her to be the most ungovernable and least practical meansof travel that the madness of man had ever concocted. Skates werewell-behaved old horses compared to these long, untamed fiends, and aluge was like a tricycle. Then suddenly a friendly starting push droveher a yard or two, and she glided past the level on to the firstimperceptible slope of the track. By some hazard her two planks wereexactly parallel, as they ought to be, and she glided forwardmiraculously. And people heard her say:
"How lovely!"
And then people heard her say:
"Oh! ... Oh!"
For her pace was increasing. And she dared not strike her pole into theground. She had, in fact, no control whatever over those two planks towhich her feet were strapped. She might have been Mazeppa and they,mustangs. She could not even fall. So she fled down the preliminarystraight of the track, and ecstatic spectators cried: "Look how _well_Mrs. Machin is doing!"
Mrs. Machin would have given all her furs to be anywhere off thoseplanks. On the adjacent fields of glittering snow the Captain had beengiving his adored Countess a lesson in the use of skis; and they stoodtogether, the Countess somewhat insecure, by the side of the track atits first curve.
Nellie, dumb with excitement and amazement, swept towards them.
"Look out!" cried the Captain.
In vain! He himself might perhaps have escaped, but he could notabandon his Countess in the moment of peril, and the Countess could onlymove after much thought and many efforts, being scarce more advancedthan Nellie. Nellie's wilful planks quite ignored the curve, and, as itwere afloat on them, she charged off the track, and into the Captain andthe Countess. The impact was tremendous. Six skis waved likesemaphores in the air. Then all was still. Then, as the beholdershastened to the scene of the disaster, the Countess laughed and Nellielaughed. The laugh of the Captain was not heard. The sole casualty wasa wound about a foot long in the hinterland of the Captain's uniqueknickerbockers. And as threads of that beautiful check pattern wereafterwards found attached to the wheel of Nellie's pole, the cause ofthe wound w
as indisputable. The Captain departed home chieflybackwards, but with great rapidity.
In the afternoon Denry went down to Montreux and returned with an opalbracelet, which Nellie wore at dinner.
"Oh! What a ripping bracelet!" said a girl.
"Yes," said Nellie. "My husband gave it me only to-day."
"I suppose it's your birthday or something," the inquisitive girlventured.
"No," said Nellie.
"How nice of him!" said the girl.
The next day Captain Deverax appeared in riding breeches. They were notcorrect for ski-running, but they were the best he could do. He visiteda tailor's in Montreux.
V
The Countess Ruhl had a large sleigh of her own, also a horse; both werehired from Montreux. In this vehicle, sometimes alone, sometimes with amale servant, she would drive at Russian speed over the undulatingmountain roads; and for such expeditions she always wore a large redcloak with a hood. Often she was thus seen, in the afternoon; thescarlet made a bright moving patch on the vast expanses of snow. Once,at some distance from the village, two tale-tellers observed a man onskis careering in the neighbourhood of the sleigh. It was CaptainDeverax. The flirtation, therefore, was growing warmer and warmer. Thehotels hummed with the tidings of it. But the Countess never saidanything; nor could anything be extracted from her by even the mostexperienced gossips. She was an agreeable but a mysterious woman, asbefitted a Russian Countess. Again and again were she and the Captainseen together afar off in the landscape. Certainly it was a novelty inflirtations. People wondered what might happen between the two at thefancy-dress ball which the Hotel Beau-Site was to give in return for thehospitality of the Hotel Metropole. The ball was offered not in love,but in emulation, almost in hate; for the jealousy displayed by theBeau-Site against the increasing insolence and prosperity of theMetropole had become acute. The airs of the Captain and his lieges, theClutterbuck party, had reached the limit of the Beau-Site's endurance.The Metropole seemed to take it for granted that the Captain would leadthe cotillon at the Beau-Site's ball as he had led it at theMetropole's.