“I’ve been carried all my life,” she thought. “And even if some one comes, I’m the world’s worst linguist.”
The description flattered her, for she had not the slightest claim to the title of linguist. Her ignorance of foreign languages was the result of being finished at Paris and Dresden. During the time she was at school, she mixed exclusively with other English girls, while the natives who taught her acquired excellent English accents.
This was her rendering of the line in the National Anthem—”Send us victorious.”
Patriotism did not help her now, for she felt slightly doubtful when a thick-set swarthy man, wearing leather shorts and dirty coloured braces, swung up the pass.
Among Iris’ crowd was a youth who was clever at languages. From his knowledge of common roots, he had managed to use German as a kind of liaison language; but he had to draw on his imagination in order to interpret and be understood.
Iris had a vivid recollection of how the crowd used to hoot with derision at his failures, when she called out to the man in English and asked him to direct her to the village.
He stared at her, shrugged, and shook his head.
Her second attempt – in a louder key – met with no better success. The peasant, who seemed in a hurry, was passing on, when Iris barred his way.
She was acutely aware of her own impotence, as though she were some maimed creature, whose tongue had been torn out. But she had to hold his attention, to compel him to understand. Feeling that she had lapsed from the dignity of a rational being, she was forced to make pantomimic gestures, pointing to the alternative routes in turn, while she kept repeating the name of the village.
“He must get that, unless he’s an idiot,” she thought.
The man seemed to grasp her drift, for he nodded several times. But, instead of indicating any direction, he broke into an unfamiliar jargon.
As Iris listened to the torrent of guttural sounds, her nerve snapped suddenly. She felt cut off from all human intercourse, as though a boundary-line had been wiped out, and – instead of being in Europe – she were stranded in a corner of Asia.
Without money and without a common language, she could wander indefinitely. At that moment she might be headed away from the village and into the wilds. The gorge had many tributary branches, like the windings of an inland sea.
As she grew afraid, the peasant’s face began to waver, like the illusion of some bad dream. She noticed that his skin glistened and that he had a slight goitre; but she was definitely conscious of his steamy goatish smell, for he was sweating from his climb.
“I can’t understand you,” she cried hysterically. “I can’t understand one word. Stop. Oh, stop. You’ll drive me mad.”
In his turn the man heard only a string of gibberish. He saw a girl, dressed like a man, who was unattractively skinny – according to the local standard of beauty – with cut dirty knees. She was a foreigner, although he did not know her nationality. Further, she was worked up to a pitch of excitement, and was exceptionally stupid.
She did not seem to grasp that she was telling him less than half the name of the village, whereas three different hamlets had the same prefix. He had explained this to her, and asked for the full word.
Iris could not have supplied it even if she had understood the man. The name of the village was such a tongue-twister that she had never tried to disentangle it, but, like the rest, had called it by its first three syllables.
The position was stalemate. With a final grimace and shrug, the peasant went on his way, leaving Iris alone with the mountains.
They overhung her like a concrete threat. She had bought picture postcards of them and broadcast them with the stereotyped comment—”Marvellous scenery.” Once she had even scrawled “This is my room,” and marked a peak with a derisive cross.
Now – the mountains were having their revenge. As she cowered under the projecting cliffs, she felt they had but to shake those towering brows, to crush her to powder beneath an avalanche of boulders. They dwarfed her to insignificance. They blotted out her individuality. They extinguished her spirit.
The spell was broken by the sound of English voices. Round the bend of the pass came the honeymoon couple, from the hotel.
This pair of lovers was respected even by the crowd, for the completeness of their reserve and the splendour of their appearance. The man was tall, handsome, and of commanding carriage. His voice was authoritative, and he held his head at an angle which suggested excessive pride. Waiters scampered at his nod, and the innkeeper— probably on the strength of his private sitting-room – called him “Milord.”
His wife was almost as tall, with a perfect figure and a flawless face. She wore beautiful clothes which were entirely unsuitable for the wilds; but it was obvious that she dressed thus as a matter of course, and to please only her husband.
They set their own standard and appeared unconscious of the other visitors, who accepted them as belonging to a higher social sphere. It was suspected that the name “Todhunter,” under which they had registered, was a fiction to preserve their anonymity.
They passed Iris almost without notice. The man raised his hat vaguely, but his glance held no recognition. His wife never removed her violet eyes from the stony track, for her heels were perilously high.
She was speaking in a low voice, which was vehement in spite of its muffled tone.
“No darling. Not another day. Not even for you. We’ve stayed too—”
Iris lost the rest of the sentence. She prepared to follow them at a discreet distance, for she had become acutely aware of her own wrecked appearance.
The arrival of the honeymoon pair had restored her sense of values. Their presence was proof that the hotel was not far away, for they never walked any distance. At the knowledge, the mountains shrank back to camera-subjects, while she was reconstructed, from a lost entity, to a London girl who was critical about the cut of her shorts.
Very soon she recognised the original shrine, whence she had deserted the pass. Limping painfully down the track, presently she caught the gleam of the darkening lake and the lights of the hotel, shining through the green gloom.
She began to think again of a hot bath and dinner as she remembered that she was both tired and hungry.
But although apparently only the physical traces of her adventure remained, actually, her sense of security had been assailed – as if the experience were a threat from the future, to reveal the horror of helplessness, far away from all that was familiar.
Chapter three. Conversation piece
When the honeymoon pair returned to the hotel the four remaining guests were sitting outside on the gravelled square, before the veranda. They were enjoying the restful interlude of “between the lights.” It was too dark to write letters, or read – too early to dress for dinner. Empty cups and cake crumbs on one of the tables showed that they had taken afternoon tea in the open and had not moved since.
It was typical of two of them, the Misses Flood-Porter, to settle. They were not the kind that flitted, being in the fifties and definitely set in their figures and their habits. Both had immaculately waved grey hair, which retained sufficient samples of the original tint to give them the courtesy-title of blondes. They had also, in common, excellent natural complexions and rather fierce expressions.
The delicate skin of the elder – Miss Evelyn – was slightly shrivelled, for she was nearly sixty, while Miss Rose was only just out of the forties. The younger sister was taller and stouter; her voice was louder, her colour deeper. In an otherwise excellent character, was a streak of amiable bully, which made her inclined to scold her partner at contract.
During their visit, they had formed a quartette with the Reverend Kenneth Barnes and his wife. They had travelled out on the same train, and they planned to return to England together. The vicar and his wife had the gift of pleasant companionship, which the Misses Flood-Porter – who were without it – attributed to mutual tastes and prejudices.
The courtyard was furnished with iron chairs and tables, enamelled in brilliant colours, and was decorated with tubs of dusty evergreen shrubs. As Miss Flood-Porter looked round her, she thought of her own delightful home in a Cathedral city.
According to the papers, there had been rain in England, so the garden should look its best, with vivid green grass and lush borders of asters and dahlias.
“I’m looking forward to seeing my garden again,” she said.
“Ours,” corrected her sister, who was John Blunt.
“And I’m looking forward to a comfortable chair,” laughed the vicar. “Ha. Here comes the bridal pair.”
In spite of a sympathetic interest in his fellows he did not call out a genial greeting. He had learned from his first – and final – rebuff that they had resented any intrusion on their privacy. So he leaned back, puffing at his pipe, while he watched them mount the steps of the veranda.
“Handsome pair,” he said in an approving voice.
“I wonder who they really are,” remarked Miss Flood-Porter. “The man’s face is familiar to me. I know I’ve seen him somewhere.”
“On the pictures, perhaps,” suggested her sister.
“Oh, do you go?” broke in Mrs. Barnes eagerly, hoping to claim another taste in common, for she concealed a guilty passion for the cinema.
“Only to see George Arliss and Diana Wynyard,” explained Miss Flood-Porter.
“That settles it,” said the vicar. “He’s certainly not George Arliss, and neither is she Diana.”
“All the same, I feel certain there is some mystery about them,” persisted Miss Flood-Porter.
“So do I,” agreed Mrs. Barnes. “I–I wonder if they are really married.”
“Are you?” asked her husband quickly.
He laughed gently when his wife flushed to her eyes.
“Sorry to startle you, my dear,” he said, “but isn’t it simpler to believe that we are all of us what we assume to be? Even parsons and their wives.” He knocked the ashes out of his pipe, and rose from his chair. “I think I’ll stroll down to the village for a chat with my friends.”
“How can he talk to them when he doesn’t know their language?” demanded Miss Rose bluntly, when the vicar had gone from the garden.
“Oh, he makes them understand,” explained his wife proudly. “Sympathy, you know, and common humanity. He’d rub noses with a savage.”
“I’m afraid we drove him away by talking scandal,” said Miss Flood-Porter.
“It was my fault,” declared Mrs. Barnes. “I know people think I’m curious. But, really, I have to force myself to show an interest in my neighbour’s affairs. It’s my protest against our terrible national shyness.”
“But we’re proud of that,” broke in Miss Rose. “England does not need to advertise.”
“Of course not… But we only pass this way once. I have to remind myself that the stranger sitting beside me may be in some trouble and that I might be able to help.”
The sisters looked at her with approval. She was a slender woman in the mid-forties, with a pale oval face, dark hair, and a sweet expression. Her large brown eyes were both kind and frank – her manner sincere.
It was impossible to connect her with anything but rigid honesty. They knew that she floundered into awkward explanations, rather than run the risk of giving a false impression.
In her turn, she liked the sisters. They were of solid worth and sound respectability. One felt that they would serve on juries with distinction, and do their duty to their God and their neighbour – while permitting no direction as to its nature.
They were also leisured people, with a charming house and garden, well-trained maids and frozen assets in the bank. Mrs. Barnes knew this, so, being human, it gave her a feeling of superiority to reflect that the one man in their party was her husband.
She could appreciate the sense of ownership, because, up to her fortieth birthday, she had gone on her yearly holiday in the company of a huddle of other spinsters. Since she had left school, she had earned her living by teaching, until the miracle happened which gave her – not only a husband – but a son.
Both she and her husband were so wrapped up in the child that the vicar sometimes feared that their devotion was tempting Fate. The night before they set out on their holiday he proposed a pact.
“Yes,” he agreed, looking down at the sleeping boy in his cot. “He is beautiful. But… It is my privilege to read the Commandments to others. Sometimes, I wonder—”
“I know what you mean,” interrupted his wife. “Idolatry.”
He nodded.
“I am as guilty as you,” he admitted. “So I mean to discipline myself. In our position, we have special opportunities to influence others. We must not grow lop-sided, but develop every part of our nature. If this holiday is to do us real good, it must be a complete mental change… My dear, suppose we agree not to talk exclusively of Gabriel, while we are away?”
Mrs. Barnes agreed. But her promise did not prevent her from thinking of him continually. Although they had left him in the care of a competent grandmother, she was foolishly apprehensive about his health.
While she was counting the remaining hours before her return to her son, and Miss Flood-Porter smiled in anticipation of seeing her garden, Miss Rose was pursuing her original train of thought. She always ploughed a straight furrow, right to its end.
“I can’t understand how any one can tell a lie,” she declared. “Unless, perhaps, some poor devil who’s afraid of being sacked. But – people like us. We know a wealthy woman who boasts of making false declarations at the Customs. Sheer dishonesty.”
As she spoke, Iris appeared at the gate of the hotel garden. She did her best to skirt the group at the table, but she could not avoid hearing what was said.
“Perhaps I should not judge others,” remarked Mrs. Barnes in the clear carrying voice of a form-mistress. “I’ve never felt the slightest temptation to tell a lie.”
“Liar,” thought Iris automatically.
She was in a state of utter fatigue, which bordered on collapse. It was only by the exercise of every atom of willpower that she forced herself to reach the hotel. The ordeal had strained her nerves almost to breaking-point. Although she longed for the quiet of her room, she knew she could not mount the stairs without a short rest. Every muscle felt wrenched as she dropped down on an iron chair and closed her eyes.
“If any one speaks to me, I’ll scream,” she thought.
The Misses Flood-Porter exchanged glances and turned down the corners of their mouths. Even gentle Mrs. Barnes’ soft brown eyes held no welcome, for she had been a special victim of the crowd’s bad manners and selfishness.
They behaved as though they had bought the hotel and the other guests were interlopers, exacting preferential treatment – and getting it – by bribery. This infringement of fair-dealing annoyed the other tourists, as they adhered to the terms of their payment to a travelling agency, which included service.
The crowd monopolised the billiard-table and secured the best chairs. They were always served first at meals; courses gave out, and bath-water ran luke-warm.
Even the vicar found that his charity was strained. He did his best to make allowance for the animal spirits of youth, although he was aware that several among the party could not be termed juvenile.
Unfortunately, Iris’ so-called friends included two persons who were no testimonial for the English nation; and since it was difficult to distinguish one girl in a bathing-brief from another, Mrs. Barnes was of the opinion that they were all doing the same thing – getting drunk and making love.