The Dark Tower

It is improbable that General Gordon’s character was formed wholly by the exertions of his sister, but Claire in her eagerness rather overlooked the question of material. There was nothing in Maurice himself that was wrong, but he belonged to a class of young men who are always being picked up by “wrong ’uns.”

He wanted a little too much to be liked. He was quite willing to be a hero to please Claire if it was not too much trouble. Meanwhile he expected it to be compatible with drinking rather more than was good for him, spending considerably too much money, and talking loudly and knowingly upon subjects considered doubtful.

If the world had been as innocent as Maurice, this program would in time have corrected itself. But besides holes and the unwary, there are from time to time diggers of holes, and it was to these unsound guides that Maurice found himself oftenest attracted.

What he asked of Claire was that she should continue to believe in him and make his way easy for him. She could fight for his freedom with a surly uncle, but having won it, she shouldn’t afterward expect a fellow to do things with it which would end in his being less free.

Maurice really loved Claire, his idea of love being that he would undeviatingly choose her to bear all his burdens. She managed the externals of his life with the minimum of exertion to himself. She fought his guardians; she talked straight to his opposers; she took buffets that were meant for him to take; she made plans, efforts, and arrangements for his comfort. Lots of things he wanted he could simply not have had if she had failed to procure them.

Pushed beyond a certain point Maurice gave in, or appeared to give in, and lied. Claire never admitted even to herself that Maurice lied, but she took unusual pains to prevent his ever being pushed beyond a certain point.

It was Claire who had managed the journey to Davos in the teeth of opposition; but it was Maurice who would have no other guide than Mr. Roper, a splendid army coach picked up at a billiard room in a hotel. Now that they were at Davos, Claire became a little doubtful if, after all, her uncle hadn’t been right when he had declared that Bournemouth would have done as well and been far less expensive. Then Winn came, and she began mysteriously to feel that the situation was saved.

It wasn’t that Winn looked in the least like General Gordon, but Mr. Ponsonby had told her that he was a distinguished officer and shot tigers on foot.

Claire was quite surprised that Winn had been so nice to her, particularly as he hadn’t appeared at all a friendly kind of person; but she became more and more convinced that Winn was a knight errant in disguise and had been sent by heaven to her direct assistance.

Claire believed very strongly in heaven. If you have no parents and very disagreeable relatives, heaven becomes extremely important. Claire didn’t think it was at all the place her aunt and uncle vaguely held out to her as a kind of permanent and compulsory pew into which an angelic verger conducted the more respectable after death.

Everything Mr. and Mrs. Tighe considered the laws of God seemed to Claire unlikely to be the laws of anybody except people like Mr. and Mrs. Tighe; but she did believe that God looked after Maurice and herself, and she was anxious that He should look particularly after Maurice.

She determined that on the day she went to the Schatz Alp with Major Staines she would take him into her confidence. She could explain the position of women to him while they climbed the Rhüti-Weg; this would give them all of lunch for Maurice’s future, and she hoped without direct calculations — because, although Claire generally had very strong purposes, she seldom had calculations — that perhaps if she was lucky he would tell her about tigers on the way down.

It was one of those mornings at Davos which seemed made out of fragrance and crystal. The sun soaked into the pines, the sky above the tree-tops burned like blue flame. It was the first time in Claire’s life that she had gone out all by herself to lunch with a grown-up man. Winn was far more important than a mere boy, besides being a major.

She had been planning all the morning during her skating what arguments she should use to Winn on the subject of women, but when she saw him in the hall everything went out of her head. She only knew that it was a heavenly day and that it seemed extraordinarily difficult not to dance.

It was a long walk up to the Schatz Alp; there were paths where the pine-trees met overhead, garlanded with wreaths of snow, and the spaces between the wreaths were as blue as love-in-a-mist, an old-fashioned flower that grows in English gardens. Claire pointed it out to Winn.

“Only,” she said, “up here there isn’t any mist, is there?”

“No,” said Winn, looking at her in a curious way; “as far as I can see, there is none whatever. By the by, that particular flower you mention isn’t only called love-in-a-mist, it’s also called devil-in-a-bush.”