The Dark Tower Part 14

Claire looked doubtfully at him, but he wasn't smiling; he was merely looking at her with sufficient attention.

"There are only two of us," she said in a low voice, "Maurice and me, and I do so awfully want him to be a success. I don't think anybody else does. I don't even know how much he wants it himself. You see, Maurice is so young in many ways, and our people having died--he hasn't had much of a chance, has he? Men ought to have fathers."

Winn listened intently; he always remembered anything she said, but this particular opinion sank deep into the bottom of his heart: "Men ought to have fathers."

"I've done the best I can," Claire went on, "but you see, I'm young, too; there are lots of things I don't really know about life. I think perhaps I sometimes believe too much that things are going to be jolly, and that makes me a bad adviser for Maurice. Do you know what I mean?"

Winn nodded, but he determined that whether she expected or not, she should have things jolly. He must be able to manage it. If one wanted a thing as much as he wanted this, surely one could bring it off.

Hadn't he pulled off races on the scratchiest of polo ponies, when he couldn't afford better, out of sheer intention? He had meant to win, moved the pony along, and won. Was life less controllable than a shoddy polo pony?

He set his mouth and stared grimly out over the sparkling snow. He did not ask himself how a man with a wife hung round his neck like a millstone was going to manage the perpetual happiness of a stray young woman. He never asked himself questions or saw how things were to be done, but when the crisis came his instinct taught him in a flash the short cut to victory.

"Now," said Claire, unexpectedly, "you are looking awfully dangerous--you do rather sometimes, you know--like a kind of volcano that might go off."

Winn turned his eyes slowly toward her.

"I shall never be dangerous for you, Miss Rivers," he said gently.

He did not know how much he promised her or that he was already incapable of keeping his promise. She looked away from him with smiling lips and happy, mysterious eyes. She had known long ago that all the force he had was as safe with her as if he had laid it in her hands; safer than that, because he held it in his own--for her.

It seemed to Claire that you were only perfectly secure when you were with a man who could be dangerous to everybody else, but always safe for you.

"You will help me with Maurice?" she said softly. "Then I sha'n't feel worried any more."

"I shouldn't let it worry me for a moment if I were you," Winn a.s.sured her. "He hasn't come to much harm so far. He's young, that's all. I'll keep my eye on him, of course."

Winn knew quite well what he would do with a subaltern of Maurice's type. He would take him out shooting and put the fear of G.o.d into him.

If this were done often and systematically enough, the subaltern would improve or send in his papers. But Davos did not offer equal advantages.

One could not get the fear of G.o.d everywhere on a tap; besides, there was Mrs. Bouncing.

Claire turned suddenly toward him.

"I want Maurice," she said rather breathlessly, with s.h.i.+ning eyes, "to be a good soldier; I want him to be like you."

Winn felt a pang of fear; it was a pang that was half horrible pain, and half pa.s.sionate and wild delight. Was Claire perfectly safe? Why did she want Maurice to be like him? It was Claire herself who banished his fear; she added hastily:

"He really must get through Sandhurst properly."

Of course she hadn't meant anything. In fact, if she really had liked him in any particular way she'd have been shot before she showed it.

What she wanted was simply the advice of an older man in the service. It did not occur to Winn that Claire had been shot already without knowing it.

He went on being rea.s.sured all the way back because Claire talked persistently about tigers. Winn explained that once you thoroughly knew where you were, there was no real danger in a tiger.

PART II

CHAPTER XIV

Winn discovered almost immediately that what a.s.sistance he could give to Maurice would have to be indirect. He had not a light hand for weak, evasive, and excitable people, and Maurice did not like to be driven off the rink with "Better come along with me" or "I should think a good brisk walk to Clavedel would be about your mark." Winn's idea of a walk was silence and pace; he had a poor notion of small talk, and he became peculiarly dumb with a young man whose idea of conversation was high-pitched boasting.

When Maurice began telling stories about how he got the better of so-and-so or the length of his ski-jumps, Winn's eyes became unpleasantly like probes, and Maurice felt the elan of his effects painfully ebbing away. Still, there was a certain honor in being sought out by the most exclusive person in the hotel and Winn's requests, stated in flat terms and with the force of his determination behind them, were extraordinarily difficult to refuse.

It was Mr. Roper who gave Maurice the necessary stiffening. Mr. Roper didn't like Winn, and though their intercourse had been limited to a series of grunts on Winn's part, Mr. Roper felt something unerringly inimical behind each of these indeterminate sounds.

"That man's a spoil-sport," he informed his pupil. Maurice agreed.

"But he's beastly difficult to say no to," he added. "You mean to somehow, but you don't."

"I expect he's trying to manage you," Mr. Roper cleverly hinted.

This decided Maurice once and for all. He refused all further invitations. He had a terror of being managed, and though he always was managed, gusts of this fear would seize upon him at any effort to influence him in any direction favorable to himself. He was never in the least uneasy at being managed to his disadvantage.

Baffled in his main direction, Winn turned his mind upon the subject of Mr. Roper. Mr. Roper was slippery and intensely amiable; these were not the qualities with which Winn felt himself capable of direct dealing. He would have liked to destroy Mr. Roper, and he thought that the situation might eventually arrive at this point; but until it did, he saw that he had better leave Mr. Roper alone. "You can't do anything with a worm but tread on it," he said to himself, and in hotels people had to be careful how they trod on worms. There was still Mrs. Bouncing, but a slight study of that lady, which took place in the hall after dinner, put this possibility out of the question. She called Winn a "naughty man" and suggested his taking her tobogganing by moonlight.

Mr. Bouncing was a side issue, but Winn, despite his own marriage, held the theory that men ought to look after their wives. He felt that if there had been any question of other men he could have managed Estelle; or, even short of managing Estelle, he could have managed the other men.

It occurred to him now that perhaps Mr. Bouncing could be led to act favorably upon the question of his wife's behavior.

Mr. Bouncing could not walk at all; he could get out to the public balcony in the sun, and when he was there, he lay with the "Pink 'Un"

and "The Whipping Post" on his lap and his thermometer beside him. All he asked was that he should have his hot milk regularly four times a day. He hardly talked to anybody at all. This was not because it made him cough to talk--it didn't particularly; he coughed without being made to--but because he had exhausted his audience.

There was only one subject left to Mr. Bouncing, and that was his health; after he had told people all his symptoms, they didn't want to hear any more and there was nothing left to talk about. So he lay there in the suns.h.i.+ne thinking about his symptoms instead. There were a good many of them to think about, and all of them were bad.

Mr. Bouncing was surprised when Winn sat down to talk to him, and he explained to him at once exactly what the doctors thought of his case.

Winn listened pa.s.sively, and came back the next day at the same time.

This surprised Mr. Bouncing still more, and little by little the subjects between them widened. Mr. Bouncing still talked about himself, but he talked differently. He told Winn things he had never told any one else, and he was really pleased when Winn laughed at a joke he showed him in "The Pink 'Un."

"You can laugh," he said almost admiringly. "I daren't, you know; that's one of the things I'm told not to do, but I often wish some one would come here and laugh at the jokes for me. It's quite an effort for me sometimes not to burst out; and then, you see, hemorrhage! I knew a poor chap who literally died of it--died of laughing. They might put that in the 'Pink 'Un,' mightn't they?"

Winn said he thought one might die of worse things.

"Yes, I know," agreed Mr. Bouncing, "but I'm not going to be caught like that. I dare say you don't know, but I believe I'm the worst case in the hotel. I'm not _quite_ sure; that's what worries me. There's a Mrs.

Maguire who stays in bed. I've made all sorts of inquiries about her; but people are so stupid, they don't know the right symptoms to ask about, and I can't go in and look at her, can I? And my wife won't. She says one death's-head is enough for her and I quite see her point.

Perhaps Mrs. Maguire's case is partly nerves. My wife thinks I'm very nervous. So I am, you know, in a way. I have to be careful; but, Lord!

when I see the things people do up here! The risks they take! You, for instance. I've seen you do heaps of things that are perfectly deadly; and yet there you are getting better. Funny, isn't it?"

Winn said it was funny, but he supposed one must take his chance.

"Yes, I know; that is what people keep saying," Mr. Bouncing admitted.

"You can take it if you've got it; but my point is, if you haven't got it, you can't take it, can you? Now, as far as I can see, looking back from the start, you know, I never had a dog's chance. It's years since I went out in a wind without an overcoat on, and once in the very beginning I got my feet wet; but for the last five years I've been as careful as a girl with a new hat. I think I shall live till the spring if I don't get influenza. I hope you'll remember not to come near me if you feel a cold coming on." Winn a.s.sured him that he would. "I asked Dr. Gurnet the other day," Mr. Bouncing went on musingly, "if he thought I should ever be able to walk to the post-office again--I used to get there and back last winter, you know--but he wouldn't give me a direct answer. He said he thought I could rely on the hotel porter. He's not quite definite enough--Dr. Gurnet. I told him the other day how difficult it was to get up in the morning, and he said, 'Well, then, why not stay in bed?' But I'm not going to do that. I believe you go quicker when you stay in bed. Besides, I should be dull lying there in bed. I like to sit here and watch people and see the silly things they do. That young boy you sit at table with--he won't come to any good. Silly! He thinks my wife likes him, but she doesn't; it's just that she must have her mind taken off, you know, at times, poor thing. I like to see her amused."