I swallowed something much harder and bigger than a cannon ball, and said nothing.
"Of course you're covered with snow up to your knees, foolish child!" He was glaring ferociously at me.
"It doesn't matter."
"It does matter most infernally. Don't you know that you make no more than a featherweight of difference to the car?"
"I feel as if I weighed a thousand pounds, now."
"It's that snow!"
"No. It's you. Your crossness. I can't have people cross to me, on lonely mountains, just when I'm trying to help them."
His glare of rage turned to a stare of surprise. "Cross? Do you think I was cross to you?"
"Yes. And you just stopped in time, or you would have been worse."
"Oh, I see," he said. "You thought that the 'epithet' was going to be invidious, did you?"
"Naturally."
"Well, it wasn't. I—no, I won't say it! That would be the last folly. But—I wasn't going to be cross. I can't have you think that, whatever happens. Now sit still and be good, while I push again."
I weighed no more than half the thousand pounds now, and the cannon ball had dissolved like a chocolate cream; but the car stood like a rock, fixed, immutable.
"There ought to be half a dozen of me," said the chauffeur. "Look here, little pal, there's nothing else for it; I must trudge off to St. Flour and collect the missing five. Are you afraid to be left here alone?"
Of course I said no; but when he had disappeared, walking very fast, I thought of a large variety of horrors that might happen; almost everything, in fact, from an earthquake to a mad bull. As the sun leaned far down toward the west, the level red light lay like pools of blood in the snow-hollows, and the shadows "came alive," as they used when I was a child lying awake, alone, watching the play of the fire on wall and ceiling.
Long minutes passed, and at last I could sit still no longer. Gaily risking my brother's displeasure, now I knew that he wasn't "cross," I slipped out into the snow again, opened the car door, stood in the doorway, hanging on with one hand, and after much manoeuvring extricated the tea-basket from among spare tyres and luggage on the roof. Then, swinging it down, planted it inside the car, opened it, and scooped up a kettleful of snow. As soon as the big white lump had melted over a rose and azure flame of alcohol, I added more snow, and still more, until the kettle was filled with water. By the time I had warmed and dried my feet on the automatic heater under the floor, the water bubbled; and as jets of steam began to pour from the spout I saw six figures approaching, dark as if they had been cut out in black velvet against the snow.
"Tea for seven!" I said to myself; but the kettle was large, if the cups were few.
It took half an hour to dig the car out, and push her up from the hollow where the snow lay thickest. When she stood only a foot deep, she consented readily to move. We bade good-bye to the five men, for whom we had emptied our not-too-well filled pockets, and forged, bumbling, past St. Flour. It was a great strain for a heavy car, and the chauffeur only said, "I thought so!" when a chain snapped five or six miles farther on.
"What a good thing Lady Turnour isn't here!" said I, as he doctored the wounded Aigle.
"Lots of girls would be in a blue funk," said he. "I could shake that beastly woman for not taking you with her."
"Oh!" I exclaimed. "When I'm not doing you any harm!"
He glanced up from his work, and then, as if on an irresistible impulse, left the chain to come and stand beside me, as I sat wrapped up in his gift "for a good girl."
He gazed at me for a moment without speaking, and I wonderingly returned the gaze, not knowing what was to follow.
The moon had come sailing up like a great silver ship, over the snow billows, and gleamed against a sky which was still a garden of full-blown roses not yet faded, though sunset was long over. The soft, pure light shone on his dark face, cutting it out clearly, and he had never looked so handsome.
"You don't mean to do me any harm, do you?" he said.
"I couldn't if I would, and wouldn't if I could," I answered in surprise.
"Yet you do me harm."
"You're joking!"
"I never was further from joking in my life. You do me harm because you make me wish for something I can't have, something it's a constant fight with me, ever since we've been thrown together, not to wish for, not to think of. Yet you say I'm cross! Now, do you know what I mean, and will you help me a little to remain your faithful brother, instead of tempting me—tempting me, however unconsciously, to—to wish—for—for—what a fool I am! I'm going to finish my mending."
I sat perfectly still, with my mouth open, feeling as if it were my chain, not the car's, which had broken!
Of course if it hadn't been for all his talk of Her, I should have known, or thought that I knew, well enough what he meant. But how could I take his strange words and stammered hints for what they seemed to suggest, knowing as I did, from his own veiled confessions, that he was in love with some beautiful fiend who had ruined his career and then thrown him over!
I longed to speak, to ask him just one question, but I dared not. No words would come; and perhaps if they had, I should have regretted them, for I was so sure he was not a man who would fall out of love with one woman to tumble into love for another, that I didn't know what to make of him; but the thought which his words shot into my mind, swift and keen, and then tore away again, showed me very well what to make of myself.
If I hadn't quite known before, I knew suddenly, all in a minute, that I was in love, oh, but humiliatingly deep in love, with the chauffeur! It seemed to me that no nice, well-regulated girl could ever have let herself go tobogganing down such a steep hill, splash into such a sea of love, unless the man were at the bottom in a boat, holding out his arms to catch her as she fell. But the chauffeur hadn't the slightest intention of holding out his arms to the poor little motor maid. He went on mending the chain, and when he got into the car beside me again he began to talk about the weather.
Chapter XXV
It was ten o'clock when we came into Clermont-Ferrand, which looked a beautiful old place in the moonlight, with the great, white Puy de Dome floating half way up the sky, like a marble dream-palace.
I trembled for our reception at the château, for everything would be our fault, from the snow on the mountains to Lady Turnour's lack of a dinner dress; and the consciousness of our innocence would be our sole comfort. Not for an instant did we believe that it would help our case to stop at the railway station and arrange for the big luggage to be sent the first thing in the morning; nevertheless, we satisfied our consciences by doing it, though we were so hungry that everything uneatable seemed irrelevant.
A young woman in a book, who had just pried into the depths of her soul, and discovered there a desperate love, would have loathed the thought of food; but evidently I am unworthy to be a heroine, for my imagination called up visions of soup and steak; and because it seemed so extremely important to be hungry, I could quite well put off being unhappy until to-morrow.
It is only three miles from Clermont-Ferrand to the Château de Roquemartine, and we came to it easily, without inquiries, Jack having carefully studied the road map with Sir Samuel. He had only to stop at the porter's lodge to make sure we were right, and then to teuf-teuf up a long, straight avenue, sounding our musical siren as an announcement of our arrival. It was only when I saw the fine old mansion on a terraced plateau, its creamy