There Will Come A Stranger Page 4

  While she had been dressing, the hotel had come to life. Footsteps were hurrying past her door. Voices were calling to one another about baths and drinks and what a gorgeous day they’d had: voices whose owners might become her friends, play some part in her future...

  But there was no time now to day-dream. She must go down, for Vivian was waiting to unpack and change.

  Vivian was glad to have this peaceful interlude before the crowd returned and she was plunged in earnest into the vortex of an unfamiliar existence. Susan Prescott was extremely pleasant company, natural and friendly. She must, Vivian decided, be nearly thirty, though she looked no more than twenty-five, for she had been married six years, and had been secretary to an M.P. for some time before that. She said that for the last three winters she had come here for their annual holiday with her husband and brother, leaving her children, a boy of five, a girl of four, with her mother-in-law, who was “a perfect darling”.

  “It’s been a good plan, having my brother with us,” Susan told her. “Harry—my husband—has done far more ski-ing than I have. I’m only average, and not up to the long expeditions he enjoys, but if he hadn’t other company I’d go with him far oftener than I really wanted to—you know the way it is! I do wish they’d come back, though—I’ve been expecting them for the last hour. Silly of me—but I’m always just a little anxious when they’re later than I thought they’d be!”

  Every time the inner door had opened to admit returning skiers she had looked up hopefully. Now, as it opened once more, her face brightened with relief, and she exclaimed, “Hullo, there! Had a good day?”

  Vivian’s back was to the door. She did not care to turn, so did not see the new arrivals until a young man with a thin, keen, clever face came up to Susan. “ ’Fraid we’re a bit later than we thought! Not been flapping, have you darling?”

  Susan laughed as she confessed, “Well—perhaps just a little!” Turning to Vivian, she said, “This is my husband. Harry, Mrs. Howe arrived just in the nick of time to distract me from my fussing!”

  Vivian was conscious of another figure standing partly behind her. Susan said as he came forward,

  “This is my brother. John, this is Mrs. Howe.” Turning to make polite acknowledgement of the introduction, Vivian met a pair of eyes as startled as her own. For Susan Prescott’s brother was none other than John Ainslie!

  CHAPTER THREE

  The Prescotts went upstairs together, leaving John and Vivian confronting one another. Last time she had seen him, at the window of a train in Darlingford, she had taken it for granted that she would see no more of him, and an idea of that kind, once fixed in the mind, is apt to stay there. So although, when she arranged to come to the hotel that he had recommended, she had known there was a possibility that they might meet here, none the less the meeting held for her as well as him an element of the unexpected.

  John spoke first. “What a very nice surprise to find you here!”

  “It’s a surprise to me too! And it’s entirely thanks to you that I am here,” she told him frankly. “When I got home I found my younger sister very much in need of an immediate holiday, and at this time of the year it wasn’t easy to know where to take her. Then I remembered what you had said of Varlet-sur-Montagne, and this hotel. So here we are!”

  Some girls might have found the circumstances of this second meeting somewhat embarrassing. At their last encounter she had told him that the last thing she desired was to leave England, now that she had returned there after eight years’ absence. She might very well have felt self-conscious, fearing he might think that, knowing he was coming here about this time, she had deliberately manoeuvred so that they should meet again—as many a woman has done before and will again, in her determination to see more of some man who has attracted her.

  But Vivian had never in her life run after any man. She would have been amazed and furious had anyone suggested a possibility so undignified and cheap. Nor would such a notion have occurred to John. He merely thought that it was very pleasant to have met once more the girl whom he had found such agreeable company in their brief encounter a few weeks ago, and hoped that she would not regret her decision to come here on his recommendation. So their meeting held no complicated undercurrents, and Valerie, coming down a few minutes later, found her sister talking with a tall man whom she liked at first sight, and was glad: she did hope Vivian was going to enjoy this holiday, undertaken for her sake!

  The summons to dinner sounded some time before Vivian had finished her unpacking and changed into a little suit brought from America.

  Most people had gone in to dinner when she joined Valerie in the lounge. Heads turned to watch approvingly as the two new arrivals, one with primrose hair and frock, the other in leaf-green echoing the green lights in her lively hazel eyes, were shown by Elise to a little table with a gaily checked cloth.

  The meal was simple, but extremely good. While they were eating the Prescotts and John Ainslie rose to leave the dining-room from a table across the room. Susan paused beside their table, while the two men went on ahead. She said to Vivian, “John tells me that you’ve met before! Don’t things happen oddly? You could have had no idea, while we were talking, that you knew the brothers I was waiting for! Do join us afterwards, for coffee, won’t you?”

  “That would be very nice—but please don’t wait for us. We’re only half way through dinner.”

  “Oh, but we’re not in any hurry. I won’t order it till you come.”

  So when they had finished Vivian and Valerie joined the others in a corner of the lounge. It was a good point of vantage for observing all that went on about them. Vivian was glad to see that nearly all their fellow guests were in their twenties or early thirties, so that Valerie should have no lack of young companionship. A few had settled in the lounge with books or crossword puzzles. Two pretty girls in dance frocks went upstairs, to reappear muffled to the eyes in outdoor wraps. They departed into the night with partners also wearing thick outer clothes over their dinner jackets. Susan explained that there was dancing every evening at the Schweizerhof and often at another hotel as well. A number vanished into a room that opened off the lounge, “to play bridge or canasta,” Susan told them, but they could not have been playing very seriously, for every now and then their peals of laughter could be heard through the closed door. One of these evenings, Valerie thought, I may be laughing with them ... I may be going dancing, too!

  Over their coffee they talked chiefly of ski-ing. The Prescotts advised the sisters as to their procedure next day, and gave them various tips for making their currency stretch as far as possible. Valerie was full of eager questions. Vivian, determined that the others, and in particular John Ainslie, should realize that she was perfectly capable of fending for herself and Valerie as well, and had no intention of “tagging on” to their new friends, kept saying, “But we needn’t bother you about that!” and “We can find out that for ourselves to-morrow.”

  Only John Ainslie did not have much to say. But though he did not speak much, he was silently observant. Valerie, he thought, was delightful in her unaffected pleasure and excitement at the novelty of her surroundings. Probably a secluded life accounted for the diffidence that mingled with her radiance; staying for a few weeks in this atmosphere of cheerful comings and goings, mixing with young people of various nationalities and types, should bring her out and give her confidence.

  But it was Vivian who intrigued him most. He wondered—as he had wondered when he saw her for the first time in the train—what caused the sadness in her eyes, the wistful curves about her mouth when it was in repose. Was she unhappy in her marriage? Lonely for the husband she had presumably left behind her in America? Or had they parted company for good? Attractive, young, and soignée, Vivian was so far from his conception of a widow that this possibility did not occur to him. He wondered whether it could be some matrimonial trouble that accounted for her evident desire to make it plain that she was self-sufficient, independent of advice a
nd help? Had some disillusioning experience decided her to stand alone in future, relying only on herself? ... Being as a rule incurious concerning other people and their affairs, he was surprised by his interest in the two attractive sisters.

  Vivian and Valerie had gathered from the Prescotts that the most enthusiastic skiers usually started off soon after nine, although at that hour it was still very cold and rather cheerless. “If I were you, I wouldn’t set out till about ten, particularly on your first day,” Susan had advised them, adding a good deal of information as to how they should go up on the funicular as far as the nursery slopes, where they could hire skis and book instructors.

  After the early start of yesterday (how far away it seemed now, that awakening in the drizzling dark of London!) they were glad enough to sleep late on their first morning at the Casque d’Or, until they were awakened by the departure of those hardy folk who were already starting for the heights. Valerie, eager to inspect their new surroundings, so far only seen by starlight, sprang out of bed and hurried to the window. Vivian joined her there a moment later. Below them, scattered on the mountain side, they saw hotels and chalets, pensions and shops, a little church, the station where they had arrived last night, the railway track zigzagging down towards the shadowy valley till it vanished among firs half buried in the snow. The light was pale and cold. Only the soaring mountain peaks were tipped with rose and flame and coral, but even as they stood there looking out sunlight began flowing from the heights in tides of molten gold, staining the snow, banishing the shadows.

  Evidently the way to the funicular lay past their own hotel, for skiers in twos and threes and larger groups were passing by, and others, emerging from the door immediately below their window, turned in the same direction.

  “And they’re all of them wearing pretty much the kind of clothes we’ve got ourselves!” said Valerie, her voice relieved.

  Vivian laughed. “Thank goodness—so they are! I knew that girl in Harridge’s wouldn’t tell us wrong, of course, but all the same I did keep seeing a horrid sort of mental Bateman picture—you and me attired in different clothes from anybody else, shrinking and pale, with hanging heads, surrounded by a crowd of superior beings in the proper kind of outfit, staring with bulging eyes of scorn!”

  “Me, too!” Valerie confessed, as giggling they began to dress. For the first time since they had tried them on at the shop they put on their ski-ing clothes: thick socks, windproof trousers fastened beneath their feet under their heavy boots. Strong colours would look best against the snow, so Vivian had black trousers, while her pullover was glowing red, matching the windproof jacket and gloves and peaked cap with earflaps fastening alternatively on top of one’s head or under one’s chin, that she would add before they went out. Valerie’s trousers were navy, the remainder of her outfit brilliant azure.

  “Isn’t it lucky,” Valerie remarked when they had finished dressing and were inspecting the results, “that you and I have both got flat behinds!”

  “Yes, thank goodness—more than quite a lot of people I’ve noticed passing by can say!”

  “Still, theirs may be a better shape for falling on.”

  “Oh, dear—I hadn’t thought of that. Never mind—better a bruise than a bulge, don’t you think?”

  “Depends upon how vain one is, or otherwise.” Laughing, they went down to breakfast, glad of one another’s company, for even Vivian, for the first few minutes, felt self-conscious in her unaccustomed garb.

  Though there were still a number of people in the dining-room many of the tables were already laid for lunch, among them the one where the Prescotts and John Ainslie had been sitting the previous night. Probably they had all three gone out some time ago, and Vivian was well pleased it should be so. She had no intention of presuming on that earlier meeting with John Ainslie by joining them again this evening; if they suggested it she would be ready with some excuse—but none the less there would doubtless be an opening for letting them know how nicely she and Valerie had managed on their own.

  So she was taken by surprise when, as they came down in due course ready to go out, they found a solitary figure in the lounge, reading The Scotsman, and John Ainslie rose to greet them with “Good morning! Ready for the fray?”

  An instant later Madame Jourdier, who had welcomed them last night, came bustling from the kitchen premises and on seeing John came to an abrupt halt. The two girls were not in her range of vision, so she was unaware of interrupting as she exclaimed, “Ah—Monsieur Ainslie, it is not like you to be so late in starting out! I thought I saw you going off some time ago?”

  “You did! But only on an errand. However, I really am off now!” he told her.

  Madame, now seeing her two other guests, lingered to say she hoped that they were rested after their long journey, and had all they wanted—then disappeared into her office.

  John Ainslie took his windproof gloves and jacket from the chair where they were lying, put them on, and joined the two girls as they stepped out into the brilliance of the sunlit snow, hastily putting on their dark glasses. Evidently he too was going to the ski lift, which stopped, Susan had told them, for beginners to leave it at the nursery slopes, then continued to the heights with those of more experience.

  The calm, still air was cold and dry and keen as peppermint, but the sun beat warmly on their backs while they stood a moment taking their bearings. “By midday,” John told them, “when you’re sitting in some sheltered corner sipping aperitifs and recovering from your exertions, you’ll be warm enough to shed your gloves and caps and jackets.”

  “We want to stay a month,” Vivian told him, “so I’m afraid our currency won’t run to aperitifs as well as hiring skis and paying for lessons and all that kind of thing!”

  A moment later she regretted having said it. John and the Prescotts, who were staying only for a fortnight, were unlikely to be suffering from financial stringency; they were not the sort to indulge in champagne dinners at the Schweizerhof, or any other currency-devouring luxuries: she hoped her casual words hadn’t sounded like a hint that he might stand them drinks, nor anything of that kind!

  As they turned up the road a voice behind called, “Hey, there! John!”

  They all turned, and saw a young man striding up the road towards them. John raised a hand in salutation. “Rory! This is grand! We were beginning to think you weren’t going to turn up this year! When did you get here?”

  “About half an hour ago!”

  John grinned. “You haven’t wasted much time! Why have you deserted the Casque d’Or this year?”

  “Left it too late. The whole place was booked up when I wrote. But Madame Jourdier fixed me up at the Pension Edelweiss—that little place beside the church. It’s run by cousins of hers.” John introduced him to the two girls as Rory Wilson and they all set off together. Rory was slightly above average height, wiry and well-knit. Both Vivian and Valerie liked the look of him. He had merry grey eyes and an attractive smile revealing very white teeth; his appearance, voice, and manner combined together to express a vital, virile personality. His age was twenty-eight or thereabouts.

  The road was empty, so they walked four abreast, the two girls in the middle, Rory beside Valerie, John by Vivian. Rory’s good-humoured friendliness banished all traces of shyness Valerie was apt to feel with strangers, and in a moment they were talking nineteen to the dozen. Under cover of their talk John said quietly to Vivian, “I knew you’d probably be starting rather late, and as the instructors get snapped up pretty early on, I took a chance and booked one for you. Couldn’t get you one each, I’m afraid—but one is better than none! Antoine’s his name—I hope you don’t think I’ve been butting in!”

  Before she could reply Rory exclaimed, “I say, we’d better get a move on—they’re just going up!”

  They all began to run. The men, racing ahead, took tickets at the little office and they all four flung themselves, laughing and breathless, into the quaint contraption as it started on its dizzy a
scent.

  Vivian and Valerie were side by side, facing the mountain, with the two men opposite, looking back the way that they had come. In the hurry and flurry, followed by the excitement of the novel experience, Vivian momentarily forgot what John had said about the instructor, as like Valerie she gazed about her at the overwhelming beauty lying on all sides: white peaks soaring proud against the azure sky, fir trees emerging from the snow, casting their sapphire shadows on its purity; far in the distance skiers no larger than black dots flashed downward from the dazzling heights with poise and grace that caught one’s breath.

  The funicular was slowing. John was saying, “Well—here you are! Antoine will be waiting for you at the hut.”

  Then she remembered. Getting out, she called back, “I’ll thank you properly this evening—it was good of you—only I wish you hadn’t bothered!”

  Near the funicular was a log hut fronted by a wide veranda with chairs and little tables, partly enclosed by glass screens. As they walked towards it Valerie was thinking rather nervously of what lay ahead. But Vivian was thinking that she knew now why John had set out so late this morning. The “errand” of which he had spoken to Madame Jourdier was on their behalf, and having booked an instructor for them he had returned to tell them he had done so—probably ruining his entire day, since the others had set off without him.

  It would make all the difference in the world to their first morning here to start off properly from the beginning, instead of having to discover that through lack of an instructor they must postpone their first attempts at ski-ing until to-morrow!

  Yet, though she was grateful to John Ainslie, Vivian felt uneasy. He must have taken all this trouble on their behalf because he felt himself responsible, although so indirectly, for their having come here. It seemed that all her pains last night to make it plain that she and Valerie were capable of fending for themselves had been of no avail. Quite unintentionally, they had spoilt his day. She must take care that nothing of the kind occurred again.