Read Online Contango (Ill Wind) by James Hilton - Free Book Online Page A

the
station. The next morning she met the incoming train with its load of new
arrivals, “Oh, dear, now it all begins again,” she thought,
scampering along the platform with her usual smile of sprightly welcome. She
had a mixed collection of books under her arm. The clanking carriages drew
slowly in, pulled by an electric engine that stood at the far end ticking
like an enormous clock. Everything outwardly was the same as a week
ago—the labels on the carriage windows, the unshaven faces of the men,
the two horse-omnibuses waiting in the station yard, the sky and the
mountains and the level-crossing gate like a barber’s pole that seemed
so ridiculously confident of being able to hold up a Simplon express. All was
the same, except Miss Faulkner, and she was different. She was in love.
    There could be no doubt of that. The affair with the university extension
lecturer had been nothing to it. It caught up the urge of physical attraction
and the drive of ambition and the devouring flame of her love for abstract
humanity, and fused them all together into one transcendent and compulsive
entirety. It turned Interlaken into the New Jerusalem and the Hôtel Oberland
into the ark of all Miss Faulkner’s covenants. “Yes, we’ve
been having it quite hot here lately,” she said in the omnibus.
“There—that’s the Jungfrau—the one that has all the
snow. …” But she felt she was dreaming, and talking in a dream.
    Sunday; she did not see him. The porter told her he had gone out early
with some young men for a long walk and climb. As she returned with her
people in the afternoon from Grindelwald, the church bell at Lauterbrunnen
was tolling for a funeral, and she wondered if it were for some intrepid
climber killed on the mountains. There was a wait of three-quarters of an
hour at the station, and she left her party and hurried to the churchyard,
feeling curiously warm and sentimental as she passed all the English names on
the tombstones. She wanted to find some simple outlet for all her emotions,
and she was quite disappointed when she reached the open grave and saw from
the coffin-lid that the dead person was one Johanna Zimmermeister, aged
eighty-seven.
    That evening she felt that she could not keep her secret any longer; she
must tell somebody, anybody. So she wrote to her brother:
    “The reason I asked for the papers about Gathergood is because
Gathergood is here, staying at the hotel across the road under an assumed
name. I recognised him from a photograph. He is a very quiet man and
naturally not anxious to mix up with people. But I have already got to know
him, though of course he doesn’t know I know who he is. We had a
wonderful day together last week at the Jungfraujoch. I hope I may be able to
help him eventually, because he’s bound to feel very deeply all that
has happened—you have only to look at him to see that. I am sure you
would like him; he is tall and rather slim, and has very blue eyes. I
don’t think I have ever seen a man who gives such an impression of
brooding power, if you know what I mean. One would rather expect that, from
the attitude he took up. I don’t, of course, even hint at the subject
of Cuava with him, but he did confide in me that he had been in the East. I
want to read up the case so that when does feel inclined to tell me
everything (as I think he will) I shall be able to show him how completely I
understand. Perhaps the papers and things will arrive by to-morrow
morning’s post—I do hope so….”
    They did, and she spent the whole of breakfast-time perusing them,
forgetting her smiles, forgetting her small talk at table, and— most
serious of all—forgetting that the train for the Schynige Platte left
at a quarter past ten. It was the first time she had ever made such a
blunder, and she was compelled to fix up the impromptu alternative of a trip
by lake steamer to Isseltwald and Giesbach. Her people sensed that she had