The House of Dreams-Come-True. Margaret Pedler

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СКАЧАТЬ mountains caught away her breath, the fine driving flakes, crystal-hard, whipped her face, almost blinding her with the fury of their onslaught, whilst her feet slipped and slid on the newly fallen snow as she trudged along beside the Englishman.

      “This is a good preparation for a dance!” she gasped breathlessly, forcing her chilled lips to a smile.

      “For a dance? What dance?”

      “There’s a fancy dress ball at the hotel to-night. There won’t be—much of me—left to dance, will there?”

      The Englishman laughed suddenly.

      “My chief concern is to get you back to the hotel—alive,” he observed grimly.

      Jean looked at him quickly.

      “Is it as bad as that?” she asked more soberly.

      “No. At least I hope not. I didn’t mean to frighten you”—hastily. “Only it seemed a trifle incongruous to be contemplating a dance when we may be struggling through several feet of snow in half an hour.”

      The fierce gusts of wind, lashing the snow about them in bewildering eddies, made conversation difficult, and they pushed on in a silence broken only by an occasional word of encouragement from the Englishman.

      “All right?” he queried once, as Jean paused, battered and spent with the fury of the storm.

      She nodded speechlessly. She had no breath left to answer, but once again her lips curved in a plucky little smile. A fresh onslaught of the wind forced them onwards, and she staggered a little as it blustered by.

      “Here,” he said quickly. “Take my arm. It will be better when we get into the pine-wood. The trees there will give us some protection.”

      They struggled forward again, arm in arm. The swirling snow had blotted out the distant mountains; lowering storm-filled clouds made a grey twilight of the day, through which they could just discern ahead the vague, formless darkness of the pine-wood.

      Another ten minutes walking brought them to it, only to find that the blunted edge of the storm was almost counterbalanced by the added difficulties of the surrounding gloom. High up overhead they could hear the ominous creak and swing of great branches shaken like toys in the wind, and now and again the sharper crack of some limb wrenched violently from its parent trunk. Once there came the echoing crash of a tree torn up bodily and flung to earth.

      “It’s worse here,” declared Jean, “I think”—with a nervous laugh—“I think I’d rather die in the open!”

      “It might be preferable. Only you’re not going to die at all, if I can help it,” the Englishman returned composedly.

      But, cool though he appeared, he experienced a thrill of keen anxiety as they emerged from the pine-wood and his quick eyes scanned the dangerously rapid drifting of the snow.

      The wind was racing down the valley now, driving the snow before it and piling it up, inch by inch, foot by foot, against the steep ground which skirted the sheet of ice where they had been skating but a few hours before.

      Through the pitiless beating of the snow Jean strove to read her companion’s face. It was grim and set, the lean jaw thrust out a little and the grey eyes tense and concentrated.

      “Can we get through?” she asked, raising her voice so that it might carry against the wind.

      “If we can get through the drifted snow between here and the track on the left, we’re all right,” answered the man.

      “The wind’s slanting across the valley and there’ll be no drifts on the further side. I wish I’d got a bit of rope with me.”

      He felt in his pockets, finally producing the rolled-up strap of a suit-case.

      “That’s all I have,” he said discontentedly.

      “What’s it for?”

      “It’s to go round your waist. I don’t want to lose you”—smiling briefly—“if you should stumble into deep snow.”

      “Deep snow? But it’s only been snowing an hour or so!” she objected.

      “Evidently you don’t know what a blizzard can accomplish in the way of drifting during the course of an ‘hour or so.’ I do.”

      Deftly he fastened the strap round her waist, and, taking the loose end, gave it a double turn about his wrist before gripping it firmly in his hand.

      “Now, keep close behind me. Regard me”—laughing shortly—“as a snow-plough. And if I go down deep rather suddenly, throw your weight backward as much as you can.”

      He moved forward, advancing cautiously. He was badly handicapped by the lack of even a stick with which to gauge the depth of drifting snow in front of him, and he tested each step before trusting his full weight to the delusive, innocent-looking surface.

      Jean went forward steadily beside him, a little to the rear. The snow was everywhere considerably more than ankle-deep, and at each step she could feel that the slope of the ground increased and with it the depth of the drift through which they toiled.

      The cold was intense. The icy fingers of the snow about her feet seemed to creep upward and upward till her whole body felt numbed and dead, and as she stumbled along in the Englishman’s wake, buffeted and beaten by the storm, her feet ached as if leaden weights were attached to them.

      But she struggled on pluckily. The man in front of her was taking the brunt of the hardship, cutting a path for her, as it were, with his own body as he forged ahead, and she was determined not to add to his work by putting any weight on the strap which bound them together.

      All at once he gave a sharp exclamation and pulled up abruptly.

      “It’s getting much deeper,” he called out, turning back to her. “You’ll never get through, hampered with your skirts. I’m going to carry you.”

      Jean shook her head, and shouted back:

      “You wouldn’t get through, handicapped like that. No, let’s push on as we are. I’ll manage somehow.”

      A glint of something like admiration flickered in his eyes.

      “Game little devil!” he muttered. But the wind caught up the words, and Jean did not hear them. He raised his voice again, releasing the strap from his wrist as he spoke.

      “You’ll do what I tell you. It’s only a matter of getting through this bit of drift, and we’ll be out of the worst of it. Put your arms round my neck.” Then, as she hesitated: “Do you hear? Put your arms round my neck—quick!”

      The dominant ring in his voice impelled her. Obediently she clasped her arms about his neck as he stooped, and the next moment she felt herself swung upward, almost as easily as a child, and firmly held in the embrace of arms like steel.

      For a few yards he made good progress, thrusting his way through the yielding snow. But the task of carrying a young woman of average height and weight is no light one, even to a strong man and without the СКАЧАТЬ