High Noon | Page 6

wandered here and there
grazing upon the green uplands. Once--for an instant only--a mirage
appeared upon the southern sky, as if in mute testimony to the
transitory character of all earthy things, the fleeting phases of human
life. It seemed to Paul, with a score of years dimming the vista of his
young manhood, not more shadowy and unreal than the wonderful
scenes in which years before he had played all too brief a part.
Little by little, as he lay motionless, the sun stole toward the zenith. But
to Paul, alone with his memories, the earth seemed bathed in a
luminous pall--a mysterious golden shroud.
"Oh! God," he cried, out of the anguish of his soul, "what a hideous
world! Beneath all this painted surface, this bedizened face of earth,
lies naught but the yawning maw of the insatiable universe. This very
lake, with its countenance covered with rippling smiles, is only a cruel
monster waiting to devour. Everything, even the most beautiful,
typifies the inexorable laws of Fate and the futility of man's struggle
with the forces he knows not."
He looked far off, wistfully, to the great pile of the Bürgenstock, the
one place in the whole world that for him was most rich in tender
memories. And yet he knew that its undulating blueness hid hard,
relentless rock, as unyielding as the very hand of death itself.
"Love," he said slowly, his heart swelling with the deep sense of his
loss, "love should lead to happiness and peace--not to conflict, murder,
and sudden death."

And he lay there pondering, until at last, as always in the end, his better
genius triumphed. And when the evening sunshine turned the windows
of the distant hamlets into tongues of flame and set the waters in the
little bay a-dancing, he rowed slowly back to the hotel, his own
resourceful English self again.
Far up on the side of the Bürgenstock a dim light shone--a faint glow,
until a cloud bank, stealing ever nearer, nearer, crept between like some
soft curtain, and the silent mystery of the evening fell upon the lake,
and wrapped the mountains in a velvet pall.
CHAPTER IV
Nearly a week had passed since Paul reached the Mecca of his
pilgrimage. Other guests at the hotel had seen little of him, except as
they glimpsed him of a morning as he made an early start to some
favourite haunt; or again as he returned at night-fall, to pass quickly
through the chattering groups upon the terrace or about the hall and
retire to his suite, where usually his dinner was served in solitary state.
His resolutely maintained seclusion was so marked that even his
English friends, accustomed as they were to the exclusiveness of their
kind, commented on it. Barclay openly lamented, for, as he said, "Was
not Sir Paul the best of company when he chose, and why come here to
this gay garden spot to mope?"
Daisy Livingstone, the American girl, from that meeting in the train
had found a peculiar attraction in her big Englishman, as she called
Verdayne playfully when speaking of him to her friends. She knew
now, of course, that he was the famous Sir Paul Verdayne, the
personage so prominent in British public affairs. And she remembered,
too, with a woman's quick intuition for a heart forlorn, Paul's sad,
almost melancholy face.
One balmy evening, as she was slowly strolling back and forth beside
her mother on the terrace, "Mother," she said in a low voice, "why
should Sir Paul look so triste? He has everything, apparently, that a
man could wish to make him happy--health, wealth, and a success that

can be the result only of his own efforts. And yet he is not happy. What
hidden sorrow can he have--some grief, I am sure--that should keep
him away from all companions? Every day he goes away alone. And I
have seen him almost every night, coming back to the hotel, only to
disappear in his rooms, where he must spend many lonely hours."
"Really, Daisy, you are much too interested in this Verdayne. When I
was a girl, I never should have paid such close attention to the humour
of a strange man. Don't you think that you are becoming altogether too
attracted by this Englishman?"
Mrs. Livingstone was an old-fashioned mother who was little in
sympathy with the free and easy point of view of radical latter-day
Americans.
"Not at all, mother. I find something to interest me in all the people
here. Sir Paul is merely a distinct type, just as that awful fat American
with the automobile is another in his own way, and that horrid French
creature who goes motoring with him every day."
"Then there is the beautiful dark-haired foreign lady, too--she is more