The track climbed a ridge and there below were the American’s wide snowfields.
Before she was assured by the doffed cap outheld while he made his salutation—the sweeping foreign coup de chapeau that was so decisive a politesse compared to the Englishman’s meagre small lift; and yet also insolent—she was rejoicing in the certainty that the bearded figure in spite of the English Norfolk suit and tweed cap, was the big Russian. He alone, at this moment, of all the people in the hotel would be welcome. Remote, near and friendly as the deepest of her thoughts, and so far away from social conventions and the assumptions behind conventions, as to leave all the loveliness about her unchanged—and yet trailing an absurd little toboggan, smaller, and, in contrast with his height, more ridiculous an appendage than her own. He plunged down the ridge in the English style, by weight and rather clumsily, and in a moment was by her side at the head of the run that went, pure white and evenly flattened, switch-backing away across the field out of sight.
In a slow mournful voice that gave his excellent French a melancholy music he asked her if she had already tested the run and became when he had heard the short tale of her adventure impatiently active. Her toboggan, he said, and raised its forepart and bent scanning, was too large, too heavy and with runners not quite true. It would be better for the moment to exchange. Try, Try, he chanted with the true Russian nonchalance and, abandoning his own went off down the gentle slope on the discredited mount that she might now blame for her mysterious swerve at the bend.
After the gentle drop, carrying him over the first small rise as if it were not there, he flew ahead gathering swiftness with each drop, away and away until at last he appeared a small upright figure far away on the waste of snow.
The run compared with what she had already attempted seemed nothing at all. The drops so slight that once or twice she was stranded on a ridge and obliged to push off afresh. And the light little toboggan, responding to the slightest heel-tap upon the hard pressed snow, taught her at once the secret of steering. And when at last full of the joy of fresh conquest she was pulled up by the loose snow at the end of the run, she was eager only to tramp back and begin again. But tramping at her side he tore her triumph to shreds. Silently she tried to imagine the toboggan having its own way uncontrolled for the whole of that sweeping trek, for the two quite steep drops towards the end.
The second time he started her in advance and remained behind shouting, his voice rising to a crescendo at the first steepness: “Il n’y a pas de danger!” With an immense effort she restrained her feet and entered paradise.
“Ça ira, ça ira,” he admitted smiling when once more they were side by side. They tramped back in silence, under the eyes as they approached the ridge of a group newly appeared upon its crest and from which when they drew near a voice came down in greeting. She looked up to see the Croydon family, all very trim in sporting garb and carrying skates, gathered in a bunch, at once collectively domestic and singly restive. They smiled eagerly down at her and she read in the father’s twinkling gaze that she was providing material for Croydon humour, so distinctly and approvingly, was it saying in the Croydon way: “You’ve not lost much time,” and so swiftly, having told her in response to her own greeting that the rink was within five minutes easy walking, did he turn and disappear with his family in tow down the far side of the ridge.
The third run left her weary and satisfied. Again they were tramping back side by side, and although her experience of Russians had taught her that gratitude was out of place and enthusiasm over simple joys a matter for half-envious contempt, her thankfulness and felicity, involuntarily eloquent, treated him, marching tall and sombre at her side upon feet that in spite of the enormous boots showed themselves slender and shapely terminations of a well-hung frame, as if he had been of her own English stock; let him see the value, to herself, of his kindly gift. All she lived for now, she told him, was to rush, safeguarded by a properly-mastered technique, at the utmost possible speed through this indescribable air, down slopes from which the landscape flew back and up. He smiled down, of course, the half incredulous smile. Of course bored, giving only part of a dreamy attention to all this raving.
“C’est bon pour la santé,” he murmured as she paused.
What did he know of santé, unless perhaps he had been in prison? He might be a refugee; an anarchist living in Switzerland.
When he, too, turned out to be now returning in search of tea and they were climbing the slope towards Oberland, their toboggans colliding and bumping along as best they might at the ends of cords twisted together round the wrist of his gloveless hand, she remarked by way of relieving a silence he did not seem to think it necessary to break, that the Swiss winter must be less surprisingly beautiful to Russians than to the people of the misty north. He agreed that doubtless this was so and gloomily asked her if she had been in Russia. He agreed with everything she said about his country as seen from a distance, but without interest and presently, as if to change the subject, declared that he knew nothing of Russia and Russians.
His voice
