The Dark Tower Part 23

Everybody was streaming off to tea. The rink was deserted; it lay a long, gray shadow beneath the high, white banks. The snow had begun to fall, light, dry flakes that rested like powder on Claire's curly hair.

She waited for him to speak; but as he still said nothing, she asked with a sudden dimple:

"Where does this path lead to?"

Then Winn recollected himself, and asked her if she didn't want some tea. Claire shook her head.

"Not now," she said decidedly; "I want to go along this path."

Winn obeyed her silently. The path took them between dark fir-trees to the farthest corner of the little park. Far below them a small stream ran into the lake, it was frozen over, but in the silence they could hear it whispering beneath the ice. The world was as quiet as if it lay in velvet. Then Claire said suddenly:

"Oh, why did you make me hurt him when I liked him so much?"

They found a bench and sat down under the trees.

"Do you mean you've sent Lionel away?" Winn asked anxiously.

"Yes," she said in a forlorn little voice; "yesterday I sent him away.

He didn't know I was coming over here, he was very miserable. He asked me if I knew about you--he said he believed you wanted me to--and I said, 'Of course I know everything.' I wasn't going to let him think you hadn't told me. Why did you go away?"

He had not thought she would ask him that. It was as if he saw before him an interminable hill which he had believed himself to have already climbed.

He drew a deep breath, then he said:

"Didn't they talk about it? I wrote to her, the chaplain's wife I mean; I hadn't time to see her, but I sent it by the porter. I thought she'd do; she seemed a gossipy woman, kept on knitting and ga.s.sing over a stove in the hall. I thought she was--a sort of circulating library, you see. I tipped the porter--tow-headed Swiss brute. I suppose he swallowed it."

"He went away the same day you did," Claire explained. "n.o.body told me anything. Do you think I would have let them? I wouldn't let Lionel, and I knew he had a right to, but I didn't care about anybody's rights. You see, I--I thought you'd tell me yourself. So I came," she finished quietly.

She waited. Winn began to draw patterns on the snow with his stick, then he said:

"I've been a bit of a blackguard not telling you myself. I didn't want to talk about it, and that's a fact. I'm married."

He kept his face turned away from her. It seemed a long time before she spoke.

"You should have told me that before," she said in a queer, low voice.

"It's too late now."

"Would it," he asked quickly, "have made any difference--about Lionel, I mean?"

She shook her head.

"Not," she said, "about Lionel."

He bent lower over the pattern in the snow; it had become more intricate.

"I couldn't tell you," he muttered; "I tried. I couldn't. That was why I went off. You say too late. D'you mind telling me if you mean--you care?"

Her silence seemed interminable, and then he knew she had already answered him. It seemed to him that if he sat there and died, he couldn't speak.

"Winn," she asked in a whisper, "did you go because of me--or because of you?"

He turned round, facing her.

"Is that worrying you?" he asked fiercely. "Well, you can see for yourself, can't you? All there is of me--" He could not finish his sentence.

It was snowing heavily. They seemed intensely, cruelly alone. It was as if all life crept off and left them by themselves in the drifting gray snow, in their silent little corner of the unconscious, unalterable world.

Winn put his arm around her and drew her head down on his shoulder.

"It's all right," he said rather thickly. "I won't hurt you."

But he knew that he had hurt her, and that it was all wrong.

She did not cry, but she trembled against his heart. He felt her s.h.i.+vering as if she were afraid of all the world but him.

"I must stay with you," she whispered. "I must stay with you, mustn't I?"

He tried not to say "always," but he thought afterward that he must have said "always."

Then she lifted her curls and her little fur cap with the snow on it from his shoulder, and looked deep into his eyes. The worst of it was that hers were filled with joy.

"Winn," she said, "do you love me enough for anything? Not only for happiness, but, if we had to have dreadful things, enough for dreadful things?"

She spoke of dreadful things as if they were outside her, and as if they were very far away.

"I love you enough for anything," said Winn, gravely.

"Tell me," she whispered, "did you ever even think--you liked her as much?"

Winn looked puzzled; it took him a few minutes to guess whom she meant, then he said wonderingly:

"My wife, you mean?"

Claire nodded. It was silly how the little word tore its way into her very heart; she had to bite her lips to keep herself from crying out.

She did not realize that the word was meaningless to him.

"No," said Winn, gravely; "that's the worst of it. I must have been out of my head. It was a fancy. Of course I thought it was all right, but I didn't _care_. It was fun rather than otherwise; you know what I mean?

I'm afraid I gave her rather a rotten time of it; but fortunately she doesn't like me at all. It's not surprising."

"Yes, it is," said Claire, firmly; "it's very surprising. But if she doesn't care for you, and you don't care for her, can't anything be done?"

There is something cruel in the astonis.h.i.+ng ease with which youth believes in remedial measures. It is a cruelty which reacts so terribly upon its possessors.

Winn hesitated; then he told her that he would take her to the ends of the world. Claire pushed away the ends of the world; they did not sound very practical.

"I mean," she said, "have you got to consider anybody else? Of course there's Maurice and your people, I've thought of them. But I don't think they'd mind so awfully always, do you? It wouldn't be like robbing or cheating some one who really needed us. We couldn't do that, of course."

Then Winn remembered Peter. He told her somehow that there was Peter. He hid his face against her breast while he told her; he could not bear to see in her eyes this new knowledge of Peter.