He came down by himself later and went into the bar. He drank alone and talked with the bartender about various brands of bourbon.
“Dad used to have his bourbon sent up from Kentucky in kegs,” Mr. Hartley said. A slight rasp in his voice, and his intense and polite manner, made what he said seem important. “They were small, as I recall. I don’t suppose they held more than a gallon. Dad used to have them sent to him twice a year. When Grandmother asked him what they were, he always told her they were full of sweet cider.” After discussing bourbons, they discussed the village and the changes in the inn. “We’ve only been here once before,” Mr. Hartley said. “That was eight years ago, eight years ago February.” Then he repeated, word for word, what he had said in the lobby the previous night. “We came on the twenty-third and were here for ten days. I remember the date clearly because we had such a wonderful time.”
The Hartleys’ subsequent days were nearly all like the first. Mr. Hartley spent the early hours instructing his daughter. The girl learned rapidly, and when she was with her father, she was daring and graceful, but as soon as he left her, she would go to the hut and sit by the fire. Each day, after lunch, they would reach the point where he gave her a lecture on self-reliance. “Your mother and I are going away now,” he would say, “and I want you to ski by yourself, Anne.” She would nod her head and agree with him, but as soon as he had gone, she would return to the hut and wait there. Once?it was the third day?he lost his temper. “Now, listen, Anne,” he shouted, “if you’re going to learn to ski, you’ve got to learn by yourself.” His loud voice wounded her, but it did not seem to show her the way to independence. She became a familiar figure in the afternoons, sitting beside the fire.
Sometimes Mr. Hartley would modify his discipline. The three of them would return to the inn on the early bus and he would take his daughter to the skating rink and give her a skating lesson. On these occasions, they stayed out late. Mrs. Hartley watched them sometimes from the parlor window. The rink was at the foot of the primitive ski tow that had been built by Mrs. Butterick’s son. The terminal posts of the tow looked like gibbets in the twilight, and Mr. Hartley and his daughter looked like figures of contrition and patience. Again and again they would circle the little rink, earnest and serious, as if he were explaining to her something more mysterious than a sport.
Everyone at the inn liked the Hartleys, although they gave the other guests the feeling that they had recently suffered some loss?the loss of money, perhaps, or perhaps Mr. Hartley had lost his job. Mrs. Hartley remained absent-minded, but the other guests got the feeling that this characteristic was the result of some misfortune that had shaken her self-possession. She seemed anxious to be friendly and she plunged, like a lonely woman, into every conversation. Her father had been a doctor, she said. She spoke of him as if he had been a great power, and she spoke with intense pleasure of her childhood. “Mother’s living room in Crafton was forty-five feet long,” she said. “There were fireplaces at both ends. It was one of those marvelous old Victorian houses.” In the china cabinet in the dining room, there was some china like the china Mrs. Hartley’s mother had owned. In the lobby there was a paperweight like a paperweight Mrs. Hartley had been given when she was a girl. Mr. Hartley also spoke of his origins now and then. Mrs. Butterick once asked him to carve a leg of lamb, and as he sharpened the carving knife, he said, “I never do this without thinking of Dad.” Among the collection of canes in the hallway, there was a blackthorn embossed with silver. “That’s exactly like the blackthorn Mr. Wentworth brought Dad from Ireland,” Mr. Hartley said.
Anne was devoted to her father but she obviously liked her mother, too. In the evenings, when she was tired, she would sit on the sofa beside Mrs. Hartley and rest her head on her mother’s shoulder. It seemed to be only on the mountain, where the environment was strange, that her father would become for her the only person in the world. One evening when the Hartleys were playing bridge?it was quite late and Anne had gone to bed?the child began to call her father, “I’ll go, darling,” Mrs. Hartley said, and she excused herself and went upstairs. “I want my daddy,” those at the bridge table could hear the girl screaming. Mrs. Hartley quieted her and came downstairs again. “Anne had a nightmare,” she explained, and went on playing cards.
The next day was windy and warm. In the middle of the afternoon, it began to rain, and all but the most intrepid skiers went back to their hotels. The bar at the Pemaquoddy filled up early. The radio was turned on for weather reports, and one earnest guest picked up the telephone in the lobby and called other resorts. Was it raining in Pico? Was it raining in Stowe? Was it raining in Ste. Agathe? Mr. and Mrs. Hartley were in the bar that afternoon. She was having a drink for the first time since they had been there, but she did not seem to enjoy it. Anne was playing in the parlor with the other children. A little before dinner, Mr. Hartley went into the lobby and asked Mrs. Butterick if they could have their dinner upstairs. Mrs. Butterick said that this could be arranged. When the dinner bell rang, the Hartleys went up, and a maid took them trays. After dinner, Anne went back to the parlor to play with the other children, and after the dining room had been cleared, the maid went up to get the Hartleys’ trays.
The transom above the Hartleys’ bedroom door was open, and as the maid went down the hall, she could hear Mrs. Hartley’s voice, a voice so uncontrolled, so guttural and full of suffering, that she stopped and listened as if the woman’s life were in danger. “Why do we have to come back?” Mrs. Hartley was crying. “Why do we have to come back? Why do we have to make these trips back to the places where we thought we were happy? What good is it going to do? What good has it ever done? We go through the telephone book looking for the names of people we knew ten years ago, and we ask them for dinner, and what good does it do? What good has it ever done? We go back to the restaurants, the mountains, we go back to the houses, even the neighborhoods, we walk in the slums, thinking that this will make us happy, and it never does. Why in Christ’s name did we ever begin such a wretched thing? Why isn’t there an end to it? Why can’t we separate again? It was better that way. Wasn’t it better that way? It was better for Anne?I don’t care what you say, it was better for her than this. I’ll take Anne again and you can live in town. Why can’t I do that, why can’t I, why can’t I, why can’t I…” The frightened maid went back along the corridor. Anne was sitting in the parlor reading to the younger children when the maid went downstairs.
It cleared up that night and turned cold. Everything froze. In the morning, Mrs. Butterick announced that all the trails on the mountain were closed and that the tramway would not run. Mr. Hartley and some other guests broke the crust on the hill behind the inn, and one of the hired hands started the primitive tow. “My son bought the motor that pulls the tow when he was a senior at Harvard,” Mrs. Butterick said when she heard its humble explosions. “It was in an old Mercer auto, and he drove it up here from Cambridge one night without any license plates!” The slope offered the only skiing in the neighborhood, and after lunch a lot of people came here from other hotels. They wore the snow away under the tow to a surface of rough stone, and snow had to be shoveled onto the tracks. The rope was frayed, and Mrs. Butterick’s son had planned the tow so poorly that it gave the skiers a strenuous and uneven ride. Mrs. Hartley tried to get Anne to use the tow, but she would not ride it until her father led the way. He showed her how to stand, how to hold the rope, bend her knees, and drag her poles. As soon as he was carried up the hill, she gladly followed. She followed him up and down the hill all afternoon,
