“I was told,” she answered at large with face upraised, deep furrows from nose to chin giving strength to her hanging cheeks, “I was to see sky-jumping, but I see no men on their skys to jump.”
American continuousness held up in Europe, brought to despair by the spectacle of tolerance.
Sunlight had gone and on the slope of the breeze small snowflakes drifted down to the snow. For a while it seemed as though the gathering in the white wilderness were there in vain.
From the group of black figures at the top of the rise a deep Swiss voice sang out an English name. Heads were craned forward, but the altar remained empty. The confronted rows were transformed. Each life, risen to gazing eyes, waited in a stillness upon the edge of time.
The knickerbockered tweed-clad form arrived upon the shelf from nowhere, leaped, knees bent and arms outspread, forward through the air upon the long blades that looked so like thin oars flattened out, came down, arms in upward-straining arches, with a resounding whack upon the slope and slid half-crouching, gaining the upright, fully upright with hooked arms swinging, at full speed to the bottom of the hill, went off in a wide curve and was stopped, swaying, just not falling, in wreaths of whirling snow.
Achievement. Thrilling and chastening. Long ago someone had done this difficult thing for the first time, alone, perhaps driven by necessity. Now it was a sport, a deliberate movement into eternity, shared by all who looked on. She felt she could watch forever. Cold had withdrawn from the snow and from the drifting flakes. One after another the figures appeared at the top of the rise and leapt, making the gliding race to the sound of cheers that now broke forth each time the forward rush followed the desperate dive. For those who crashed and rolled, slanting ski and sloping helpless body rolling over and over down the slope, there was comment of laughter silly and cruel. Yet one man sliced his face with a ski-point and one had lain stunned at the bottom of the slope …
Vereker came at last, looking very young and lightly built, leaping neatly and far, and gliding easily upright, to the accompaniment of frantic cheering, at a splendid pace down the slope and far on into the loose snow and round in a sweeping curve that encircled a distant sapling and left him facing up the track half-hidden in a cloud of churned-up snow.
He was the best. Length of jump, pace, style. The best of the English. And kind life had led her to him for speech, for the recovery of shared things; and was making now more memories that fitted with the rest.
Skied onlookers were planking sideways up and down the course, flattening it. Snow still fell thinly. The distant mountains were lost in mist. The forgotten scene was utterly desolate. Warmth flowing forth from within made a summer in its midst.
“Tsoor-boo-chn!” The strong spellbinding peasant name filled out the ringing cry. Switzerland was coming, bringing its so different life of mountain and pinewood, its hardy strength, perhaps to outdo the English in this brave game.
Here he came, in black against his snow, deep velvety black against the snow, gliding past the little hut with a powerful different gait. It was partly his clothes, the way they seemed all of one piece, closely fitting, without angles. And his size, huge. From the edge of the shelf he leapt high into the air and seemed to stand there against the sky, in a dream. Down he swooped, sailing, dreaming, to the track, rose smoothly from the terrific impact and smoothly went his way.
What could be more beautiful? He was heavy and solid, thickly built. But with his shapely clothing and smooth rhythmic movement he made the English graceless and their clothes deliberately absurd.
All the Swiss, though some were rough and ungainly, moved with that strong and steady grace. But Zurbuchen was the best. It was he who would live in her memory, poised against the sky like a great bird.
“You took photographs?”
“For him,” smiled Vereker with his quizzical affectionate glance. “To remind him of what he has to do next year. But we’ll share them. Yours will remind you that next year you won’t be let off.” Eaden remained silent and expressionless.
“They will look strange amongst your cypress groves.”
“They will look passing strange.”
“You will come out again?” She wanted neither to know nor to seem to want to know, but Vereker had left him there for a moment on her hands. She was caught in the social trap. Expected, being a woman, not to walk off alone, but to wait and provide, while she waited, suitable entertainment, some kind of parlour trick. For a moment it seemed as though he would not answer. He was silent and used to stillness, yet embarrassed now by stillness in the presence of a perceiving witness. Another woman would not seem to perceive. Would have given her question the semblance of sincerity.
“No,” he said suddenly. “If I go away at all next year I shall go east.”
“When you’ve ’eard the East a-callin’. …” She turned to look towards the returning Vereker. Eaden gazed away towards the snowy distances. He was taking his farewell. Tomorrow he would be gone back to his chosen isolation, uninfluenced. Tenderhearted lover of brave souls, of Daphne, and who yet would bring so little to his lovemaking. He stood in his heavy silence, heavy man’s silence of waiting for recognisable things.
“Yes, that man knew what he was talking about.” Suddenly his friendly beam and a forward approaching step, a turning away, at the first hint of something he had heard before, from his formal preoccupation, preoccupation with a glimpse of the next break in his unknown southern life. She had nothing more to say. Vereker was at hand who had held them at truce together. But now without Vereker they were at truce, the only kind of truce he could understand.
For
