Part 33 (1/2)

In the deepening snow we moved slowly, the wheels slipping now and then, unable to grip. Then, on a steep incline, there came a report like a revolver shot. But it didn't frighten me now. I knew it meant a collapsed tyre, not a concealed murderer; but there couldn't have been a much worse place for ”jacking up.” Nevertheless, it's an ill tyre that blows up for its own good alone, and the forty minutes out of a waning afternoon made the chauffeur's cold hands hot and the hot engine cold.

Starting on again, we had ten miles of desolation, then a tiny hamlet which seemed only to emphasize that desolation; again another ten-mile stretch of desert, and another hamlet; here and there a glimpse of the railway line, like a great black snake, lost in the snow; now and then the gilded picture of an ancient town, crowning some tall crag that stood up from the flat plain below like a giant bottle. And there was one thrilling view of a high viaduct, flinging a spider's web of glittering steel across a vast and shadowy ravine. ”Garabit!” said the chauffeur, as he saw it; and I remembered that this road was not new for him. He did not talk much. Was he thinking of the companion who perhaps had sat beside him before? I wondered. Was it because he thought continually of her that he looked at me wistfully sometimes, often in silence, wis.h.i.+ng me away, maybe, and the woman who had spoilt his life by his side again for good or ill?

Suddenly we plunged into a deep snow-bank which deceitfully levelled a dip in the road, and the car stopped, trembling like a horse caught by the hind leg while in full gallop.

On went the first speed, most powerful of all, but not powerful enough to fight through snow nearly up to the hubs. The Aigle was prisoned like a rat in a trap, and could neither go back nor forward.

”Well?” I questioned, half laughing, half frightened, at this fulfilment of the morning's prophecy.

”Sit still, and I'll try to push her through,” said Jack jumping out into the deep snow. ”It's only a drift in a hollow, you see; and we should have got by the worst, just up there at St. Flour.”

I looked where his nod indicated, and saw a town as dark and seemingly as old as the rock out of which it grew, climbing a conical hill, to dominate all the wide, white reaches above which it stood, like an armoured sentinel on a watch-tower. As I gazed, struck with admiration, which for an instant made me forget our plight, he began to push. The car, surprised at his strength and determination, half decided to move, then changed her mind and refused to budge. In a second, before he could guess what I meant to do, I had flashed out of my seat into the snow, and was wading in his tracks to help him when he s.n.a.t.c.hed me up--a hand on either side of my waist--and swung me back into my place again.

”Little wretch!” he exclaimed. ”How dare you disobey me?”

Then I was vexed, for it was ignominious to be treated as a child, when I had wanted to aid him like a comrade.

”You are very unkind--very rude,” I said. ”You wouldn't dare to do that, or speak like that to _Her_.”

He laughed loudly. ”What--haven't you forgotten 'Her?'” (As if I ever could!) ”Well, I may tell you, it's just because I did dare to 'speak like that' to a woman, that I'm a chauffeur stuck in the snow with another man's car, and the--”

”The rest is another epithet which concerns me, I suppose,” I remarked with dignity, though suddenly I felt the chill of the icy air far, far more cruelly than I had felt it yet. I was so cold, in this white desolation, that it seemed I must die soon. And it wouldn't matter at all if I were buried under the drifts, to be found in the late spring with violets growing out of the places where my eyes once had been.

”Yes,” said he, in that cool way he has, which can be as irritating as a chilblain. ”It was an epithet concerning you, but luckily for me I stopped to think before I spoke--an accomplishment I'm only just beginning to learn.”

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.