'Oh yes,' he said, looking about him vaguely, 'we have cleared out a lot of stuff. It was Anna's idea. She doesn't believe in possessions, you know. No, we didn't have a sale, or anything like that. We gave them all away.'
The spare room allotted to me was the one I had always used in the past, and this was pretty much as it had been before. And I had the same old comforts — cans of hot water, early tea, biscuits by my bed, cigarette box filled, all the touches of a thoughtful hostess.
Yet once, passing down the long corridor to the stair-head, I noticed that the door of Anna's room, which was usually closed, was open; and knowing it to have been Victor's mother's room in former days, with a fine old four- poster bed and several pieces of heavy solid furniture, all in keeping with the style of the house, ordinary curiosity made me glance over my shoulder as I passed the open door. The room was bare of furniture. There were no curtains to the windows, and no carpet on the floor. The wooden boards were plain. There was a table and a chair, and a long trestle bed with no covering upon it but a blanket. The windows were wide open to the dusk, which was then falling. I turned away and walked down the stairs, and as I did so came face to face with Victor, who was ascending. He must have seen me glance into the room and I did not wish to appear furtive in any way.
'Forgive the trespass,' I said, 'but I happened to notice the room looked very different from your mother's day.'
'Yes,' he said briefly, 'Anna hates frills. Are you ready for dinner? She sent me to find you.'
And we went downstairs together without further conversation. Somehow I could not forget that bare sparse bedroom, comparing it with the soft luxury of my own, and I felt oddly inferior that Anna should consider me as someone who could not dispense with ease and elegance, which she, for some reason, did so well without.
That evening I watched her as we sat beside the fire. Victor had been called from the hall on some business, and she and I were alone for a few moments. As usual I felt the still, soothing peace of her presence come upon me with the silence; I was wrapped about with it, enfolded, as it were, and it was unlike anything I knew in my ordinary humdrum life; this stillness came out of her, yet from another world. I wanted to tell her about it but could not iind the words. At last I said, 'You have done something to this house. I don't understand it.'
'Don't you?' she said. 'I think you do. We are both in search of the same thing, after all.'
For some reason I felt afraid. The stillness was with us just the same, but intensified, almost overpowering.
'I am not aware,' I said, 'that I am in search of anything.'
My words fell foolishly on the air and were lost. My eyes, that had drifted to the fire, were drawn, as if compelled, to hers.
'Aren't you?' she said.
I remember being swept by a feeling of profound distress. I saw myself; for the first time, as a very worthless, very trivial human being, travelling here and there about the world to no purpose, doing unnecessary business with other human beings as worthless as myself; and to no other end but that we should be fed and clothed and housed in adequate comfort until death.
I thought of my own small house in Westminster, chosen after long deliberation and furnished with great care. I saw my books, my pictures, my collection of china, and the two good servants who waited upon me and kept the house spotless always, in preparation for my return. Up to this moment my house and all it held had given me great pleasure. Now I was not sure that it had any value.
'What would you suggest? ' I heard myself saying to Anna. 'Should I sell everything I have and give up my work? What then?'
Thinking back on the brief conversation that passed between us, nothing that she said warranted this sudden question on my part. She implied that I was in search of something, and instead of answering her directly, yes or no, I asked her if I must give up all I had? The significance of this did not strike me at the time. All I knew then was that I was profoundly moved, and whereas a few moments before I had been at peace, I was now troubled.
'Your answer may not be the same as mine,' she said, 'and anyway, I am not certain of my own, as yet. One day I shall know.'
Surely, I thought to myself in looking upon her, she has the answer now, with her beauty, her serenity, her understanding. What more can she possibly achieve, unless it is that up to the present she lacks children, and so feels unfulfilled?
Victor came back into the hall, and it seemed to me his presence brought solidity and warmth to the atmosphere; there was something familiar and comfortable about his old smoking jacket worn with his evening trousers.
'It's freezing hard,' he said. 'I went outside to see. The thermometer is down to 30. Lovely night, though. Full moon.' He drew up his chair before the fire and smiled affectionately at Anna. 'Almost as cold as the night we spent on Snowdon,' he said. 'Heavens above, I shan't forget that in a hurry.' And turning to me with a laugh he added, 'I never told you, did I, that Anna condescended to come climbing with me after all?'
'No,' I said, astonished. 'I thought she had set herself against it.'
I looked across at Anna, and I noticed that her eyes had grown strangely blank, without expression. I felt instinctively that the subject brought up by Victor was one she would not have chosen. Victor, insensitive to this, went prattling on.
'She's a dark horse,' he said. 'She knows just as much about climbing mountains as you or I. In fact, she was ahead of me the whole time, and I lost her.'
He continued, half-laughing, half-serious, giving me every detail of the climb, which seemed hazardous in the extreme, as they had left it much too late in the year.
It seemed that the weather, which had promised well in the morning for their start, had turned by mid- afternoon, bringing thunder and lightning and finally a blizzard; so that darkness overtook them in the descent, and they were forced to spend the night in the open.
'The thing I shall never understand,' said Victor, 'is how I came to miss her. One moment she was by my side, and the next she had gone. I can tell you I had a very bad three hours, in pitch darkness and half a gale.'
Anna never said a word while he told the story. It was as though she withdrew herself completely. She sat in her chair, motionless. I felt uneasy, anxious. I wanted Victor to stop.
'Anyway,' I said, to hasten him, 'you got down all right, and none the worse for it.'
'Yes,' he said ruefully, 'at about five in the morning, thoroughly wet and thoroughly frightened. Anna came up to me out of the mist not even damp, surprised that I was angry. Said she had been sheltered by a piece of rock. It was a wonder she had not broken her neck. Next time we go mountain climbing, I've told her that she can be the guide.'
'Perhaps,' I said, with a glance at Anna, 'there won't be a next time. Once was enough.'
'Not a bit of it,' said Victor cheerfully, 'we are all set, you know, to go off next summer. The Alps, or the Dolomites, or the Pyrenees, we haven't decided yet on the objective. You had better come with us and we'll have a proper expedition.'
I shook my head, regretfully.
'I only wish I could,' I said, 'but it's impossible. I must be in New York by May and shan't be home again until September.'
'Oh, that's a long way ahead,' said Victor, 'anything may happen by May. We'll talk of it again, nearer the time.'
Still Anna said no word, and I wondered why Victor saw nothing strange in her reticence. Suddenly she said good-night and went upstairs. It was obvious to me that all this chatter of mountain climbing had been unwelcome to her. I felt an urge to attack Victor on the subject.
'Look here,' I said, 'do think twice about this holiday in the mountains. I am pretty sure Anna isn't for it.'
'Not for it?' said Victor, surprised. 'Why, it was her idea entirely.'
I stared at him.
'Are you sure?' I asked.
'Of course I'm sure. I tell you, old fellow, she's crazy about mountains. She has a fetish about them. It's her Welsh blood, I suppose. I was being lighta€”hearted just now about that night on Snowdon, but between ourselves I was quite amazed at her courage and her endurance. I don't mind admitting that what with the blizzard, and
