No Hero | Page 8

giant, whom I had not seen since his childhood, was merely
understood to be carrying on a conspicuous, but in all probability the
most innocent, flirtation in a Swiss hotel; and here was I, on mere
second-hand hearsay, crossing half Europe to spoil his perfectly
legitimate sport! I did not examine my project from the unknown lady's
point of view; it made me quite hot enough to consider it from that of
my own sex. Yet, the day before yesterday, I had more than acquiesced
in the dubious plan. I had even volunteered for its achievement. The
train rattled out one long, maddening tune to my own incessant
marvellings at my own secret apostasy: the stuffy compartment was not
Catherine's sanctum of the quickening memorials and the olden spell.
Catherine herself was no longer before me in the vivacious flesh, with
her half playful pathos of word and look, her fascinating outward light
and shade, her deeper and steadier intellectual glow. Those, I suppose,
were the charms which had undone me, first as well as last; but the
memory of them was no solace in the train. Nor was I tempted to dream
again of ultimate reward. I could see now no further than my immediate
part, and a more distasteful mixture of the mean and of the ludicrous I
hope never to rehearse again.
One mitigation I might have set against the rest. Dining at the Rag the
night before I left, I met a man who knew a man then staying at the
Riffel Alp. My man was a sapper with whom I had had a very slight
acquaintance out in India, but he happened to be one of those
good-natured creatures who never hesitate to bestir themselves or their
friends to oblige a mere acquaintance: he asked if I had secured rooms,
and on learning that I had not, insisted on telegraphing to his friend to
do his best for me. I had not hitherto appreciated the popularity of a
resort which I happened only to know by name, nor did I even on
getting at Lausanne a telegram to say that a room was duly reserved for
me. It was only when I actually arrived, tired out with travel, toward
the second evening, and when half of those who had come up with me
were sent down again to Zermatt for their pains, that I felt as grateful as
I ought to have been from the beginning. Here upon a mere ledge of the

High Alps was a hotel with tier upon tier of windows winking in the
setting sun. On every hand were dazzling peaks piled against a
turquoise sky, yet drawn respectfully apart from the incomparable
Matterhorn, that proud grim chieftain of them all. The grand spectacle
and the magic air made me thankful to be there, if only for their sake,
albeit the more regretful that a purer purpose had not drawn me to so
fine a spot.
My unknown friend at court, one Quinby, a civilian, came up and
spoke before I had been five minutes at my destination. He was a very
tall and extraordinarily thin man, with an ill-nourished red moustache,
and an easy geniality of a somewhat acid sort. He had a trick of
laughing softly through his nose, and my two sticks served to excite a
sense of humour as odd as its habitual expression.
"I'm glad you carry the outward signs," said he, "for I made the most of
your wounds and you really owe your room to them. You see, we're a
very representative crowd. That festive old boy, strutting up and down
with his cigar, in the Panama hat, is really best known in the black cap:
it's old Sankey, the hanging judge. The big man with his back turned
you will know in a moment when he looks this way: it's our celebrated
friend Belgrave Teale. He comes down in one or other of his parts
every day: to-day it's the genial squire, yesterday it was the haw-haw
officer of the Crimean school. But a real live officer from the Front we
don't happen to have had, much less a wounded one, and you limp
straight into the breach."
I should have resented these pleasantries from an ordinary stranger, but
this libertine might be held to have earned his charter, and moreover I
had further use for him. We were loitering on the steps between the
glass veranda and the terrace at the back of the hotel. The little sunlit
stage was full of vivid, trivial, transitory life, it seemed as a foil to the
vast eternal scene. The hanging judge still strutted with his cigar,
peering jocosely from under the broad brim of his Panama; the great
actor still posed aloof, the human Matterhorn