Contango (Ill Wind) (8 page)

One thing was clear enough: having burned her boats, she must make the
burning worth while by risking everything, if necessary. It was no time for
half-measures. She would have the great advantage of being free, at any
rate—no longer tied to a routine of times and places. And her
programme was, in a sense, quite simple. She would go to the
“Edelweiss” like an ordinary private visitor, book accommodation,
and then—well, she would meet him. She was bound to, staying at the
same hotel in a small place like Mürren. She would have to compose some
plausible story to account for her being there—lies, of course, but
again that didn’t matter. (Afterwards, in that sublime imagined
afterwards which her efforts were to make real, how good it would be to
confess all these subterfuges—to say: “My dear, you’ve no
notion how utterly unscrupulous I was—I lied right and left—I
was absolutely conscienceless about you. Do you forgive me?” And he,
perhaps, would make a return confession that he had gone to Mürren to forget,
if he could, an attraction by which, at that early stage, he had been
unwilling to be enslaved…. Oh dear, oh dear, how wonderful it would all be
then!)

She arrived at Mürren before noon, and walked from the station to the
hotel. In that midday glory of sunlight the mountains across the valley
dazzled and were monstrous. She had seen them from Mürren before, but never
on such a day and with such eagerness to yield to rapture. She put on her
sun-glasses and found them wet immediately with tears that had sprung to her
eyes; oh, this beauty, this beauty everywhere and in everything—did it
really exist, apart from her sensing it?—was it all no more than Freud
or Havelock Ellis could explain in half a page? And this pity she felt for
every suffering being, for soldiers in trenches and work-girls in asbestos-
factories and the pigeons at Monte Carlo and the hunted stag on
Exmoor—was all this, too, conditioned by no more than secretions and
ductless glands? She was passing a shop and went inside to buy a two-
day’s-old English newspaper—anything to break the spell of such
intolerable sensitiveness; but the spell took hold of the printed words and
flaunted them like banners— Famine in China; Heavy Selling on Wall
Street; Nottingham Tram-Driver Inherits Fortune; Lover Shoots Sweetheart,
Then Himself; Rioting in Bombay; New Prima Donna Creates Furore; Plight of
Alabama Flood Victims; Dance-Hall Proprietress Wins Action Against Commercial
Traveller; New York Gangster’s Ł20,000 Coffin… the whole
world’s crashing symphony, to which, with one’s own heart-cry,
one added but the faintest demi-semiquaver.

In such a mood she came in sight of the Hôtel Edelweiss, and just then, as
she approached, he came out of it. He was in heavy climbing boots and thick
tweeds, and puffed at a pipe. She began to run towards him involuntarily,
like a silly, excited child, though she hasn’t yet thought of any story
to tell, or any initial plan of conversation to adopt. It seemed enough, just
then, to face him breathlessly, with her bright, terrible smile.

“Good morning,” she said.

“Hullo, hullo…” he answered, halting with a clank of his
iron-tipped boots on the road.

“Good morning…. I—I—I’ve just
arrived.”

“So I see.”

And then there came a curious silence, during which they both stared hard
at each other. He KNOWS, her heart whispered; he knows
I
know; and he
is angry for the moment, but that will pass. She went on:
“I’m—I’m staying here—in Mürren—for
several days. On business, you know. It’s—it’s odd that we
should meet again… isn’t it?”

“Yes, very odd …. Well, if you’ll excuse me, I must get
along—I’m meeting some people at another hotel.”

“May I—may I walk with you to it?”

“I suppose you may.”

He set off at a good swinging pace, without continuing the talk. It
occurred to her then that it might be her last chance, that she had bungled
the encounter so far, and could do little worse by plunging straight into the
depths. At least she would secure the advantage of surprise—unless, of
course, he HAD already guessed that she knew, in which case it might be a
relief to him to learn how safe his secret was in her hands. She went on, in
a low, desperate voice: “You must think it strange of me to approach
you like this, but I feel I can’t keep silence any longer. To you, I
mean. Others needn’t know, of course.”

“WHAT?” he said.

“I’ve known the—the truth for some time. And believe
me, I—I honour—and—and admire you—for
it—”

“WHAT? What are you talking about?”

“You… YOU… you see, I know who you really are. I’ve known
for quite a long time.”

“You say you know who I really am?”

“Yes… Mr. Gathergood… of Cuava… .” She felt herself
almost fainting as she uttered the words.

He suddenly stopped and towered above her. “Good God, woman, this is
becoming preposterous! I don’t know what sort of microbe has bitten
you, but if you take my advice you’ll catch the tram over there and get
back to your proper business. Where are all your tourist
people—haven’t you got THEM to look after?”

“I left them—to come here and tell you. I felt I had to let
you know what I knew. It was terrible for me, waiting. And I don’t care
how angry you are with me—so long as you DO know. You can’t deny
it—not to me.”

“Deny what?”

“That you ARE him—really. Gathergood—British Agent at
Cuava—”

He struck his heel sharply on the ground. “Gathergood? GATHERGOOD?
Why should I be him, whoever he is?”

“But you ARE. I know you want to keep it secret—I can
understand and sympathise—but to me, now that I know—oh, you
must tell me the truth!”

“But, my good woman, that’s just what I AM doing! I’m
sorry to disappoint you if this Gathergood man was someone you wanted to
meet, but you must pull yourself together and be sensible. And if it’s
really any concern of yours, my name is Stuart Brown, I live in England, and
on my passport I’m put down as a company-director. Perhaps you’d
like to see it? No? Well, there you are, anyhow. This sort of thing
won’t do, you know, following men about and pestering
them….”

With a quiet little cry of dreadfulness she put her hand to her head and
scampered away. But when she was a few dozen yards off she swung round,
flashed him her ever-bright smile, and called out: “It’s all
right. All my mistake….” Then she broke into a shrill peal of
laughter that echoed faintly across the valley to the green-blue glaciers. A
few heads looked out of windows, saw the puzzled man and the laughing woman,
and wondered what kind of joke, private or public, lay between them. But it
all seemed of small consequence, on that blazing August noontide in Mürren.
And a moment later Miss Faulkner turned the corner by the tramway-station and
was gone.

In the restaurant-car between Belfort and Paris, Stuart
Brown got into conversation with a dark-haired and very good-looking young
man sitting opposite. To Brown, who liked young men and who had lost an only
son, there was always pleasure in these encounters, the more so as their
transience minimised the risk of boredom. And at this particular moment Brown
was bored enough with his own company and with the world in general to
welcome any such attractive diversion. The deplorable issue of a recent
business visit to Italy, plus that annoying incident in Switzerland, had
induced what was for him an unwontedly darkened humour.

The two chance travellers began to exchange commonplaces during the soup;
by the coffee stage the youth had proffered a visiting-card which declared
him to be a M. Palescu, of Bukarest. Brown did not reciprocate the intimacy,
but he put the card away in his pocket-book and congratulated Palescu on his
excellent English. “You speak so well,” he said, “that I
wasn’t at all sure you weren’t one of my countrymen.”

“Ah, well, you see, my mother was English, and I have always had
many contacts with English people. I have had jobs in India, Malta, and
Egypt.”

“You must have travelled a good deal.”

The youth smiled. “That is one of the things I have been—a
traveller. What you call in England a ‘commercial’. Until
recently I worked for my uncle, who was the head of a big firm in Bukarest.
Then, early this year, owing to the crise mondiale, the firm went smash and
he killed himself. My parents are both dead and my sisters—”

Brown toyed with his cigar, sympathetic but a little disappointed. He had
heard so many “hard luck” stories, and though he was by no means
cynical about them, he could not but prefer a conversation that did not so
soon and so inevitably drift into one. To his surprise and relief, however,
Palescu went on quite cheerfully: “My sisters have a little money,
which is lucky for them, and I— well, I never wanted to settle at one
thing for long. There’s so much I want to do, and at present I’m
my own master, at any rate, though I’m not yet making a
fortune.”

Brown found this optimism in adversity rather refreshing, and his own
spirits willingly responded to it. He had always been a naturally optimistic
person himself; even during the darkest days of the War he had not despaired,
and throughout the post-War years of disappointments and disillusionments he
had found comfort in a steadfast if rather vague belief that things were
bound to take a turn for the better when they had finished taking turns for
the worse. Even so, however, the events of the first half of 1930 had given
his nerves one or two severe jolts, and in Italy he had just had a singularly
unpleasant experience.

Still, he could exclaim, only those few weeks afterwards to his casual
acquaintance in the Paris train: “Splendid! It’s good to hear a
fellow of your age talking so hopefully. Most of the young chaps in England
nowadays …” He was about to enter upon his usual remarks about
demoralisation caused by the dole, but reflected that a Roumanian, even an
intelligent one with an English mother, might not comprehend them very fully.
Besides which, the youth had just mentioned the word
“engineering,” and at this Brown instinctively recoiled again,
since he was in the engineering line himself, and sufficiently well-known in
it for pushful young men to buttonhole him sometimes, in trains and hotels,
and ask for jobs. Which, of course, was always very awkward and
uncomfortable. He therefore remarked, rather cautiously across the table:
“If that’s your profession, I don’t altogether envy
you.”

“Yes, it’s pretty hard just now. But there’s always room
for new ideas—especially in my branch of the trade.”

Brown was not so sure, despite the fact that he had often echoed the
platitude at meetings and public dinners. But Palescu’s charming manner
and almost sensational good looks were potent enough to overcome such a very
minor misgiving, the more so as Brown was quite satisfied that the youth had
no notion who he was. “Provided you realise that an idea isn’t
necessarily good because it’s new,” he countered.

“Oh, of course. But a really GOOD new idea. … For instance, has it
ever occurred to you, sir, why air-travel isn’t yet really popular with
the general public?”

“I should say one of the reasons most people have is a rooted
objection to being roasted alive.”

“Ah, no—not that—not nowadays!” Palescu laughed
with a most attractive heartiness. “What
I
mean is rather
this—suppose an aeroplane holds thirty people, all bound from London
to Paris, yet you yourself don’t want Paris at all—you’re
going to Chantilly, say, for the races. The aeroplane, of course, won’t
come down at Chantilly just for you alone, out of the thirty. So what do you
have to do?”

“My dear boy, don’t ask me—I never fly, I never go to
races, and nothing would induce me to do either.”

Palescu smiled slowly. “I must explain then. The trouble about
flying is that very often it doesn’t save much time—because it
dumps you where you don’t want to go. People talk of flying from London
to Paris in so many hours, but unless you happen to live at Croydon and have
business at Le Bourget, you often find that your total hours from place to
place are not much less than by train and boat. And what if your business
happens to be in some town that you actually fly over on the
way—wouldn’t you feel: ’Ah, if I could only get down to
it’?”

“I daresay, but the same might happen on an express train that
dashes through a place you really want to get to and takes you on to a big
station miles beyond.”

“Except that on railways you can have what is called in England, I
think, a slip-carriage.”

“Yes, that’s sometimes done. Of course I quite see that
there’s no possible parallel to that in the air.”

“But that isn’t what I want you to see at all.” The
youth’s dark, eager eyes expressed a certain merry ecstasy in the
revelation he was approaching. “As a matter of fact, there could be
something like an aerial slip-carriage—that’s not a bad
description of it. And—and it happens to be a particular invention of
mine that I’m busy with just now.”

For the third time Brown’s pleasure was momentarily retarded.
Inventors were a tribe that had bothered him a good deal in the past; he
counted them, on the whole, an even bigger nuisance than job-seekers. He
remembered one fellow, during the 1928 boomlet, who had tried to get him
interested in some new idea for burglar-proof bicycle-pumps…. But Palescu
was talking on, with insurgent enthusiasm: “My invention is a sort of
aluminium cigar, not much bigger than a man, and quite light in construction,
so that a large aeroplane could easily carry half-a-dozen of them. Each one
would contain a very small petrol-driven motor at one end, quite as small and
compact as a motor-cycle two-stroke, together with a system of gyroscopic
controls embodying certain new ideas of my own. All the alighting passenger
need do would be to get into one of these things at any point he found
convenient, have himself launched from the tail of the machine in full
flight, and come to earth. The ‘gyrector,’ which is the name I
have given to it, would descend in gradual spirals, and, when sufficiently
near the ground, could be steered and brought to rest in any desired
spot—even, if need be, in a square or street in the middle of a town,
or on the roof of a building. The cost—”