The Dark Tower Part 17

"If it happens to be moonlight, you can see them slipping over the snow, making for the waterfall as fast as they can hoof it, but none of them look back--and if they were all your dearest friends you couldn't catch a glimpse of their faces--unless, I suppose, you had the gumption to start off by sitting up at the waterfall and waiting for 'em--which n.o.body has, of course. The point of the story, if you can call it a point, is that the last man in the procession isn't dead at all. He's a sort of false spook of the living--taking his first turn in with them--because as sure as fate he dies before the next year's out, and when the other chaps have reached the waterfall, he stops short and looks back toward Davos--that's how he's been spotted, and he's always died all right before the end of the year. Rum tale, isn't it?"

"How did you get hold of it?" Lionel asked curiously. "It's not much in your line, is it?"

"Well--I don't know," said Winn, taking out his pipe and preparing to light it. "The last six months or so, I've thought a lot of funny things. I came up here prepared to die; that's to say, I thought I'd got to, which is as far as you can prepare for most things, but I'm not going to die, as I told you yesterday, but what I didn't mention to you then was that, on the whole, as it happens now, I'd jolly well rather."

"You mean," said Lionel, "that it's got too thick between you and Estelle? I wish you'd tell me, old chap. I haven't an idea how it stands, but I've been afraid ever since I stayed with you, that you'd made a bit of a mistake over your marriage?"

"As far as that goes," said Winn, "I swallowed that down all right. It's no use bothering about a thing that isn't there. It's what is that counts. It counts d.a.m.nably, I can tell you that. Look here, have you ever had any ideas about love?"

"I can't say that I have," Lionel admitted cautiously. "Many. I dare say I should like it if it came; and I've had fancies for girls, of course, but nothing so far I couldn't walk off, not what people call the real thing, I suppose. I've always liked women more than you have, and I don't think you get let in so much if you honestly like 'em. I haven't seen any one I particularly want to marry yet, if that's what you mean?"

"That's part of it," agreed Winn. "I supposed you'd been like that. I shouldn't wonder if what you say about liking 'em being safer, isn't true. I never liked 'em. I've taken what I could get when I wanted it. I rather wish I hadn't now, but I can't say I was ever sorry before.

Even--Estelle--well, I don't want to be nasty about her--but it was only different, I can see that now, because I knew I couldn't get what I wanted without marrying her--still--I somehow think I'd made a kind of a start that time--only I got pulled up too short. I dare say I quite deserved it. That's no way of liking a woman. When you do _really_, you know all the rest's been half twaddle and half greed. Your father and mother are all right--so are mine really, though they do blow each other's heads off--still, there's something there--you know what I mean?"

"Something indestructible and uniting--" said Lionel quietly. "I've often wondered about it."

"Well, I've never wondered about it," said Winn, firmly, "and I'm not going to begin now. Still, I admit it's there. What I'm getting at is that there's something I want you to do for me. You'll probably think I'm mad, but I can't help that. It'll work out all right in the end, if you'll do it."

"You can ask me anything you like," said Lionel, quietly; "any d.a.m.ned thing. I don't suppose I'll refuse to do it."

The water broke into a prolonged gurgle under their feet; it sounded uncannily like some derisive listener. There was nothing in sight at all--not even their shadows on the unlighted snows.

"Well--there's a girl here," Winn said in a low voice; "it's not very easy to explain. I haven't told her about Estelle; I meant to, but I couldn't. I'm afraid you'll think I haven't played the game, but I haven't made love to her; only I can't stay any longer; I've got to clear out."

Lionel nodded. "All right," he said; "let's go wherever you like; there are plenty of other snow places jollier than this."

"That isn't what I want," said Winn. "I want you to stay with her. I want you to marry her eventually--d' you see? It's quite simple, really."

"By Jove," said Lionel, thoughtfully; "simple, d' you call it? As simple as taking a header into the mid-Atlantic! And what good would it do you, my dear old chap, if I did? It wouldn't be you that had got her?"

"I dare say not," said Winn; "you don't see my point. She'd be all right with you. What I want for the girl is for her to be taken care of. She hasn't any people to speak of, and she's up here now with a rotten, unlicked cub of a brother. I fancy she's the kind of girl that would have a pretty hideous time with the wrong man. I've got to know she's being looked after. D' you see?"

"But why should she marry?" Lionel persisted. "Isn't she all right as she is? What do you want to marry her off for?"

"There'll be a man sooner or later," Winn explained. "There always is, and she's--well, I didn't believe girls were innocent before. By G.o.d, when they are, it makes you sit up! I couldn't run the risk of leaving her alone, and that's flat! It's like chucking matches to a child and turning your back on it.

"For after all, if a man cares about a girl the way I care about her, he does chuck her matches. When I go--some one decent ought to be there to take my place."

"But there isn't the slightest chance she'll like me, even if I happened to like her," Lionel protested. "Honestly, Winn, you haven't thought the thing out properly. You can't stick people about in each other's places--they don't fit."

"They can be made to," said Winn, inexorably, "if they're the proper people. She'll like you to start with, besides you read--authors. So does she--she's awfully clever, she doesn't think anything of Marie Corelli; and she likes a man. As to your taking to her--well, my dear chap, you haven't seen her! I give you a week; I'll hang about till then. You can tell me your decision at the end of it."

"That's another thing," said Lionel. "Of course you only care for the girl, I see that, it's quite natural, but if by any chance I did pull the thing off--what's going to happen to you and me, afterwards? I've cared for that most, always."

A Fohn wind had begun to blow up the valley--it brought with it a curious light that lay upon the snow like red dust. "I don't say I shall like it," Winn said after a pause. "I'm not out to like it. There isn't anything in the whole d.a.m.ned job possible for me to like. But I'd a lot rather have it than any other way. I think that ought to show you what I think of you. You needn't be afraid I'll chuck you for seeing me through. I might keep away for a time, but I'd come back. She isn't the kind of a woman that makes a difference between friends."

"Oh, all right," said Lionel after a pause, "I'll go in for it--if I can."

Winn got up and replaced his pipe carefully, shaking his ashes out on to the snow. "I'm sure I'm much obliged to you," he said stiffly.

The wind ran up the valley with a sound like a flying train. Neither of them spoke while the gust lasted. It fell as suddenly as it came, and the valley shrank back into its pall of silence.

It was so solitary that it seemed to Lionel as if, at times, it might easily have no existence.

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 n.o.body 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."