“Eaden,” she panted, “evil, evil Eaden.”
There was no defence, no display of comic fear, no wrist-catching dominance. And when she desisted and stood back still searching him with grave face a little thrust forward in her eagerly-thinking way, he turned more sideways from the table, to attend while hurriedly with the air of one having other business on hand and no time to waste, she catechised him. He answered simply, with just her manner of one cumbered with affairs and eager nevertheless to contrive meetings; devouring all the time with his eyes the strange hurried little face, the round wide eyes set upon something seen afar.
They had recognised each other. To the rest of the party she was a quaint, precocious child. This man saw the strange power and beauty of the spirit shining in those eyes almost round, almost protruding, and, if there had been in the blue of them, that toned so gently into the pearly blue surrounding, a shade more intensity of colour, merely brilliant.
“You must,” she said, her lips closing firmly on her ultimatum, head a little out-thrust, hands behind back. “You’d better go now,” with a glance at the group that had gathered round. She pattered swiftly away to her table in the background.
“Daphnee’ll always get what she wants with her nagging,” said the Skerry youth standing by.
“She will get what she wants with her beaux yeux,” said Miriam warmly, and saw the little form panting along its ardent way up through life, seeking and testing and never finding, in any living soul.
“Yes,” groaned Eaden and impatiently sighed away the wrath in his eyes set upon the departing figure of the youth. Again they were lit and gentle and as if still gazing upon Daphne. He sat for a moment, paying tribute to a suddenly found agreement before joining Vereker held up at the door in the little crowd of newly-arriving breakfasters.
It was something like cycling in traffic, only that this scattered procession making for the rink seemed all one party. The achtungs of those starting on their journey from the top of the slope rising behind her rang out like greetings, and the agonised shrieks coming up from below as one and another neared the gap visible now in the distance as an all-too-swiftly approaching confusion of narrowly avoided disasters, were full of friendly laughter: the fearless laughter of those experienced in collisions. For a moment she was tempted to steer into the snow and wait until the road should be clear. But the sudden sideways swerve of a toboggan just ahead called forth unawares her first achtung. It rang, through the moment which somehow manoeuvred her clear of the obstacle, most joyously upon the air and hailed her—seeming to be her very life sounding out into the far distances of this paradise, claiming them as long ago it had claimed the far distances surrounding outdoor games—and sent her forward one of the glad fellowship of reckless tobogganners whom now unashamed she could leave to go along her chosen way.
Ignoring yells from behind she slowed to pass the gap and its glimpse of the descending track dotted with swiftly gliding humanity, took the sharp bend beyond it and was out of sight careering down the first slope of the valley run with sky and landscape sweeping upwards, mountains gigantically sweeping upwards to the movement of her downward rush.
The dreaded bends arrived each too swiftly with its threat of revealing upon the smooth length of the next slope an upward-coming sleigh or village children steering down at large. Slope after slope showed clear and empty, each steeper than the last, and here and there a patch of ice sent her headlong, sent the landscape racing upwards until her heels could find purchase for a steadying dig and bring back the joy of steering forward forever through this moving radiance.
The fencing was growing lower, almost buried in deep snow. A sweeping turn and ahead, at the end of a long smooth slope, the floor of the valley, the end. From a drive of both heels she leaned back and shot forward and flew, feet up, down and down through the crystal air become a rushing wind, until the runners slurred into the soft snow, drove it in wreaths about her, and slowed and stopped dead leaving her thrown forward with the cord slack in her hands, feet down, elbows on knees come up to meet them, a motionless triumphantly throbbing atom of humanity in a stillness that at once kept her as motionless as itself to listen to its unexpected voice: the clear silvery tinkle, very far away, of water upon rock; some little mountain stream freed to movement by the sun, making its way down into the valley. She listened for a while to the perfect little sound, the way it filled the vast scene, and presently turned to search the snowy levels, longing to locate it and catch a glimpse, defying distance, of the sunlit runnel. The mountains were cliffs upon the hither side, their shoulders and summits invisible until one looked up to find them remote in the ascended sky.
Down here at their feet was terra firma, broad levels on either side the windings of the frozen river that was trimmed here and there with bare trees sparse and straggling, their gnarled roots protruding through the snow that bulged its rim. A bird-cry sounded from a tree at the roadside; on silent wings a magpie, brilliant in sunlit black and white sailed forth and away across the wastes of snow. Birds and the tinkling runnel, the sole inhabitants of this morning solitude.
Whose magic survived the long backward climb
