Lost Horizon (4 page)

Conway meanwhile was busying himself with a very practical task. He had collected every scrap of paper that they all had, and was composing messages in various native languages to be dropped to earth at intervals. It was a slender chance, in such sparsely populated country, but worth taking.

The fourth occupant, Miss Brinklow, sat tight-lipped and straight-backed, with few comments and no complaints. She was a small, rather leathery woman, with an air of having been compelled to attend a party at which there were goings-on that she could not wholly approve.

Conway had talked less than the two other men, for translating SOS messages into dialects was a mental exercise requiring concentration. He had, however, answered questions when asked, and had agreed, tentatively, with Mallinson’s kidnapping theory. He had also agreed, to some extent, with Barnard’s strictures on the Air Force. “Though one can see, of course, how it may have happened. With the place in commotion as it was, one man in flying-kit would look very much like another. No one would think of doubting the
bona fides
of any man in the proper clothes who looked as if he knew his job. And this fellow
must
have known it—the signals, and so forth. Pretty obvious, too, that he knows how to fly … still, I agree with you that it’s the sort of thing that some one ought to get into hot water about. And somebody will, you may be sure, though I suspect he won’t deserve it.”

“Well, sir,” responded Barnard, “I certainly do admire the way you manage to see both sides of the question. It’s the right spirit to have, no doubt, even when you’re being taken for a ride.”

Americans, Conway reflected, had the knack of being able to say patronizing things without being offensive. He smiled tolerantly, but did not continue the conversation. His tiredness was of a kind that no amount of possible peril could stave off. Towards late afternoon, when Barnard and Mallinson, who had been arguing, appealed to him on some point, it appeared that he had fallen asleep.

“Dead beat,” Mallinson commented. “And I don’t wonder at it, after these last few weeks.”

“You’re his friend?” queried Barnard.

“I’ve worked with him at the Consulate. I happen to know that he hasn’t been in bed for the last four nights. As a matter of fact, we’re damned lucky in having him with us in a tight corner like this. Apart from knowing the languages, he’s got a sort of way with him in dealing with people. If any one can get us out of the mess, he’ll do it. He’s pretty cool about most things.”

“Well, let him have his sleep, then,” agreed Barnard.

Miss Brinklow made one of her rare remarks. “I think he
looks
like a very brave man,” she said.

CONWAY WAS FAR LESS
certain that he
was
a very brave man. He had closed his eyes in sheer physical fatigue, but without actually sleeping. He could hear and feel every movement of the plane, and he heard also, with mixed feelings, Mallinson’s eulogy of himself. It was then that he had his doubts, recognizing a tight sensation in his stomach which was his own bodily reaction to a disquieting mental survey. He was not, as he knew well from experience, one of those persons who love danger for its own sake. There was an aspect of it which he sometimes enjoyed, an excitement, a purgative effect upon sluggish emotions, but he was far from fond of risking his life. Twelve years earlier he had grown to hate the perils of trench warfare in France, and had several times avoided death by declining to attempt valorous impossibilities. Even his D.S.O. had been won, not so much by physical courage, as by a certain hardly developed technique of endurance. And since the War, whenever there had been danger ahead, he had faced it with increasing lack of relish unless it promised extravagant dividends in thrills.

He still kept his eyes closed. He was touched, and a little dismayed, by what he had heard Mallinson say. It was his fate in life to have his equanimity always mistaken for pluck, whereas it was actually something much more dispassionate and much less virile. They were all in a damnably awkward situation, it seemed to him, and so far from being full of bravery about it, he felt chiefly an enormous distaste for whatever trouble might be in store. There was Miss Brinklow, for instance. He foresaw that in certain circumstances he would have to act on the supposition that because she was a woman she mattered far more than the rest of them put together, and he shrank from a situation in which such disproportionate behavior might be unavoidable.

Nevertheless, when he showed signs of wakefulness, it was to Miss Brinklow that he spoke first. He realized that she was neither young nor pretty—negative virtues, but immensely helpful ones in such difficulties as those in which they might soon find themselves. He was also rather sorry for her, because he suspected that neither Mallinson nor the American liked missionaries, especially female ones. He himself was unprejudiced, but he was afraid she would find his open mind a less familiar and therefore an even more disconcerting phenomenon. “We seem to be in a queer fix,” he said, leaning forward to her ear, “but I’m glad you’re taking it calmly. I don’t really think anything dreadful is going to happen to us.”

“I’m certain it won’t if you can prevent it,” she answered; which did not console him.

“You must let me know if there is anything we can do to make you more comfortable.”

Barnard caught the word. “Comfortable?” he echoed raucously. “Why, of course we’re comfortable. We’re just enjoying the trip. Pity we haven’t a pack of cards—we could play a rubber of bridge.”

Conway welcomed the spirit of the remark, though he disliked bridge. “I don’t suppose Miss Brinklow plays,” he said, smiling.

But the missionary turned round briskly to retort: “Indeed I do, and I could never see any harm in cards at all. There’s nothing against them in the Bible.”

They all laughed, and seemed obliged to her for providing an excuse. At any rate, Conway thought, she wasn’t hysterical.

All afternoon the plane had soared through the thin mists of the upper atmosphere, far too high to give clear sight of what lay beneath. Sometimes, at longish intervals, the veil was torn for a moment, to display the jagged outline of a peak, or the glint of some unknown stream. The direction could be determined roughly from the sun; it was still east, with occasional twists to the north; but where it had led depended on the speed of travel, which Conway could not judge with any accuracy. It seemed likely, though, that the flight must already have exhausted a good deal of the gasoline; though that again depended on uncertain factors. Conway had no technical knowledge of aircraft, but he was sure that the pilot, whoever he might be, was altogether an expert. That halt in the rock-strewn valley had demonstrated it, and also other incidents since. And Conway could not repress a feeling that was always his in the presence of any superb and indisputable competence. He was so used to being appealed to for help that mere awareness of some one who would neither ask nor need it was slightly tranquilizing, even amidst the greater perplexities of the future. But he did not expect his companions to share such a tenuous emotion. He recognized that they were likely to have far more personal reasons for anxiety than he had himself. Mallinson, for instance, was engaged to a girl in England; Barnard might be married; Miss Brinklow had her work, vocation, or however she might regard it. Mallinson, incidentally, was by far the least composed; as the hours passed he showed himself increasingly excitable—apt, also, to resent to Conway’s face the very coolness which he had praised behind his back. Once, above the roar of the engine, a sharp storm of argument arose. “Look here,” Mallinson shouted angrily, “are we bound to sit here twiddling our thumbs while this maniac does everything he damn well wants? What’s to prevent us from smashing that panel and having it out with him?”

“Nothing at all,” replied Conway, “except that he’s armed and we’re not, and that in any case, none of us would know how to bring the machine to earth afterwards.”

“It can’t be very hard, surely. I dare say you could do it.”

“My dear Mallinson, why is it always
me
you expect to perform these miracles?”

“Well, anyway, this business is getting hellishly on my nerves. Can’t we
make
the fellow come down?”

“How do you suggest it should be done?”

Mallinson was becoming more and more agitated. “Well, he’s
there
, isn’t he? About six feet away from us, and we’re three men to one! Have we got to stare at his damned back all the time? At least we might force him to tell us what the game is.”

“Very well, we’ll see.” Conway took a few paces forward to the partition between the cabin and the pilot’s cockpit, which was situated in front and somewhat above. There was a pane of glass, about six inches square and made to slide open, through which the pilot, by turning his head and stooping slightly, could communicate with his passengers. Conway tapped on this with his knuckles. The response was almost comically as he had expected. The glass panel slid sideways and the barrel of a revolver obtruded. Not a word; just that. Conway retreated without arguing the point, and the panel slid back again.

Mallinson, who had watched the incident, was only partly satisfied. “I don’t suppose he’d have dared to shoot,” he commented. “It’s probably bluff.”

“Quite,” agreed Conway, “but I’d rather leave you to make sure.”

“Well, I do feel we ought to put up some sort of a fight before giving in tamely like this.”

Conway was sympathetic. He recognized the convention, with all its associations of red-coated soldiers and school history books, that Englishmen fear nothing, never surrender, and are never defeated. He said: “Putting up a fight without a decent chance of winning is a poor game, and I’m not that sort of hero.”

“Good for you, sir,” interposed Barnard heartily. “When somebody’s got you by the short hairs you may as well give in pleasantly and admit it. For my part I’m going to enjoy life while it lasts and have a cigar. I hope you don’t think a little bit of extra danger matters to us?”

“Not so far as I’m concerned, but it might bother Miss Brinklow.”

Barnard was quick to make amends. “Pardon me, madam, but do you mind if I smoke?”

“Not at all,” she answered graciously. “I don’t do so myself, but I just love the smell of a cigar.”

Conway felt that of all the women who could possibly have made such a remark, she was easily the most typical. Anyhow, Mallinson’s excitement had calmed a little, and to show friendliness he offered him a cigarette, though he did not light one himself. “I know how you feel,” he said gently. “It’s a bad outlook, and it’s all the worse, in some ways, because there isn’t much we can do about it.”

“And all the better, too, in other ways,” he could not help adding to himself. For he was still immensely fatigued. There was also in his nature a trait which some people might have called laziness, though it was not quite that. No one was capable of harder work, when it had to be done, and few could better shoulder responsibility; but the facts remained that he was not passionately fond of activity, and did not enjoy responsibility at all. Both were included in his job, and he made the best of them, but he was always ready to give way to any one else who could function as well or better. It was partly this, no doubt, that had made his success in the Service less striking than it might have been. He was not ambitious enough to shove his way past others, or to make an important parade of doing nothing when there was really nothing doing. His dispatches were sometimes laconic to the point of curtness, and his calm in emergencies, though admired, was often suspected of being too sincere. Authority likes to feel that a man is imposing some effort on himself, and that his apparent nonchalance is only a cloak to disguise an outfit of well-bred emotions. With Conway the dark suspicion had sometimes been current that he really was as unruffled as he looked, and that whatever happened, he did not give a damn. But this, too, like the laziness, was an imperfect interpretation. What most observers failed to perceive in him was something quite bafflingly simple—a love of quietness, contemplation, and being alone.

Now, since he was so inclined and there was nothing else to do, he leaned back in the basket chair and went definitely to sleep. When he woke he noticed that the others, despite their various anxieties, had likewise succumbed. Miss Brinklow was sitting bolt upright with her eyes closed, like some rather dingy and outmoded idol; Mallinson had lolled forward in his place with his chin in the palm of a hand. The American was even snoring. Very sensible of them all, Conway thought; there was no point in wearying themselves with shouting. But immediately he was aware of certain physical sensations in himself, slight dizziness and heart-thumping and a tendency to inhale sharply and with effort. He remembered similar symptoms once before—in the Swiss Alps.

Then he turned to the window and gazed out. The surrounding sky had cleared completely, and in the light of late afternoon there came to him a vision which, for the instant, snatched the remaining breath out of his lungs. Far away, at the very limit of distance, lay range upon range of snow-peaks, festooned with glaciers, and floating, in appearance, upon vast levels of cloud. They compassed the whole arc of the circle, merging towards the west in a horizon that was fierce, almost garish in coloring, like an impressionist back-drop done by some half-mad genius. And meanwhile, the plane, on that stupendous stage, was droning over an abyss in face of a sheer white wall that seemed part of the sky itself until the sun caught it. Then, like a dozen piled-up Jungfraus seen from Mürren, it flamed into superb and dazzling incandescence. Conway was not apt to be easily impressed, and as a rule he did not care for “views,” especially the more famous ones for which thoughtful municipalities provide garden seats. Once, on being taken to Tiger Hill, near Darjeeling, to watch the sunrise upon Everest, he had found the highest mountain in the world a definite disappointment. But this fearsome spectacle beyond the window pane was of different caliber; it had no air of posing to be admired. There was something raw and monstrous about those uncompromising ice-cliffs, and a certain sublime impertinence in approaching them thus. He pondered, envisioning maps, calculating distances, estimating times and speeds. Then he became aware that Mallinson had wakened also. He touched the youth on the arm.