He was acclaimed a hero for his promptitude. After many days, when
the damage was repaired, and nerves had settled down once more into
the calm routine of country life, he told the story to his wife--the
entire story. He told the adventure of his imaginative boyhood with
it. She asked to see the old family cane. And it was this request of
hers that brought back to memory a detail Tim had entirely forgotten
all these years. He remembered it suddenly again--the loss of the cane,
the hubbub his father kicked up about it, the endless, futile search. For the stick had never been found, and Tim, who was questioned very
closely concerning it, swore with all his might that he had not the
smallest notion where it was. Which was, of course, the truth. VII

THE OCCUPANT OF THE ROOM


He arrived late at night by the yellow diligence, stiff and cramped
after the toilsome ascent of three slow hours. The village, a single
mass of shadow, was already asleep. Only in front of the little hotel
was there noise and light and bustle--for a moment. The horses, with
tired, slouching gait, crossed the road and disappeared into the stable
of their own accord, their harness trailing in the dust; and the
lumbering diligence stood for the night where they had dragged it--the
body of a great yellow-sided beetle with broken legs. In spite of his physical weariness the schoolmaster, revelling in the
first hours of his ten-guinea holiday, felt exhilarated. For the high
Alpine valley was marvellously still; stars twinkled over the torn
ridges of the Dent du Midi where spectral snows gleamed against rocks
that looked like solid ink; and the keen air smelt of pine forests,
dew-soaked pastures, and freshly sawn wood. He took it all in with a
kind of bewildered delight for a few minutes, while the other three
passengers gave directions about their luggage and went to their rooms. Then he turned and walked over the coarse matting into the glare of the
hall, only just able to resist stopping to examine the big mountain map
that hung upon the wall by the door. And, with a sudden disagreeable shock, he came down from the ideal to
the actual. For at the inn--the only inn--there was no vacant room. Even the available sofas were occupied....

How stupid he had been not to write! Yet it had been impossible, he
remembered, for he had come to the decision suddenly that morning in
Geneva, enticed by the brilliance of the weather after a week of rain. They talked endlessly, this gold-braided porter and the hard-faced old
woman--her face was hard, he noticed--gesticulating all the time, and
pointing all about the village with suggestions that he ill understood,
for his French was limited and their _patois_ was fearful. "_There!_"--he might find a room, "or _there_! But we are, _hélas_
full--more full than we care about. To-morrow, perhaps--if So-and-So
give up their rooms----!" And then, with much shrugging of shoulders,
the hard-faced old woman stared at the gold-braided porter, and the
porter stared sleepily at the schoolmaster. At length, however, by some process of hope he did not himself
understand, and following directions given by the old woman that were
utterly unintelligible, he went out into the street and walked towards
a dark group of houses she had pointed out to him. He only knew that
he meant to thunder at a door and ask for a room. He was too weary to
think out details. The porter half made to go with him, but turned back
at the last moment to speak with the old woman. The houses sketched
themselves dimly in the general blackness. The air was cold. The whole
valley was filled with the rush and thunder of falling water. He was
thinking vaguely that the dawn could not be very far away, and that
he might even spend the night wandering in the woods, when there was
a sharp noise behind him and he turned to see a figure hurrying after
him. It was the porter--running. And in the little hall of the inn there began again a confused
three-cornered conversation, with frequent muttered colloquy and
whispered asides in _patois_ between the woman and the porter--the net
result of which was that, "If Monsieur did not object--there _was_ a
room, after all, on the first floor--only it was in a sense 'engaged.' That is to say----"

But the schoolmaster took the room without inquiring too closely into
the puzzle that had somehow provided it so suddenly. The ethics of
hotel-keeping had nothing to do with him. If the woman offered him
quarters it was not for him to argue with her whether the said quarters
were legitimately hers to offer. But the porter, evidently a little thrilled, accompanied the guest up
to the room and supplied in a mixture of French and English details
omitted by the landlady--and Minturn, the schoolmaster, soon shared
the thrill with him, and found himself in the atmosphere of a possible
tragedy. All who know the peculiar excitement that belongs to high mountain
valleys where dangerous climbing is a chief feature of the attractions,
will understand a certain faint element of high alarm that goes with
the picture. One looks up at the desolate, soaring ridges and thinks
involuntarily of the men who find their pleasure for days and nights
together scaling perilous summits among the clouds, and conquering
inch by inch the icy peaks that for ever shake their dark terror in
the sky. The atmosphere of adventure, spiced with the possible horror
of a very grim order of tragedy, is inseparable from any imaginative
contemplation of the scene; and the idea Minturn gleaned from the
half-frightened porter lost nothing by his ignorance of the language. This Englishwoman, the real occupant of the room, had insisted on going
without a guide. She had left just before daybreak two days before--the
porter had seen her start--and ... she had not returned! The route was
difficult and dangerous, yet not impossible for a skilled climber, even
a solitary one. And the Englishwoman was an experienced mountaineer. Also, she was self-willed, careless of advice, bored by warnings,
self-confident to a degree. Queer, moreover; for she kept entirely
to herself, and sometimes remained in her room with locked doors,
admitting no one, for days together: a "crank," evidently, of the first
water. This much Minturn gathered clearly enough from the porter's talk while
his luggage was brought in and the room set to rights; further, too,
that the search party had gone out and _might_, of course, return at
any moment. In which case---- Thus the room was empty, yet still hers. "If Monsieur did not object--if the risk he ran of having to turn out
suddenly in the night----" It was the loquacious porter who furnished
the details that made the transaction questionable; and Minturn
dismissed the loquacious porter as soon as possible, and prepared to
get into the hastily arranged bed and snatch all the hours of sleep he
could before he was turned out. At first, it must be admitted, he felt uncomfortable--distinctly
uncomfortable.