There Came Both Mist and Snow Read Online Free PDF Page B

of Basil environed by this, absorbed, alone, his map before him on a table of ice. I dreamt of my niece Anne Grainger holding a revolver and saying in a hard voice: ‘Uncle Arthur is shot because he cheated. Uncle Arthur is shot.’

 
     
4
    ‘Shooting this morning.’
    Wilfred Foxcroft, investigating the breakfast kidneys, pronounced the words with an emphasis which made me start. His brother Cecil, who was addressing himself – characteristically as I thought – to a boiled egg, looked up equally sharply. ‘Will that not keep,’ he asked, ‘till the afternoon? This is a holiday reunion, no doubt. But I have an idea that there is urgent family business to consider nevertheless.’
    Wilfred shook his head. ‘Family business – particularly if it is urgent – is always better put off.’ He smiled happily at this witticism, which struck me as more salted with truth than much of Cecil’s more measured wisdom. ‘Basil and I once discussed family affairs at twenty-two thousand feet – with deplorable results.’
    Everybody was startled. The party at Belrive was indeed a holiday reunion, but it was also – evidently – an occasion of reconciliation. An old quarrel, of which the cause was surely obscure to all but two of those present, was being made up. Basil and Wilfred had come together. The last thing to be expected was that one of them should now begin to air the past. We were all slightly shocked, therefore, at Wilfred’s remark; at the same time we all hoped, of course, to hear more. Ten years ago these two men, uncle and nephew, had disappeared up a mountain with a small band of porters – the two of them thick as thieves. They had come down again hazardously by different routes and with a hastily divided commissariat. A month later they had met in Darjeeling and in silence shaken hands in the presence of friends. When the breach had occurred they had been not individuals merely but climbers belonging to a famous club; they complied with a form; they did not meet again. That was the story. And now here was Wilfred seemingly prepared to babble about it.
    But he was only tantalizing us. ‘The quarrelsome altitude,’ he said. ‘Another three thousand feet and one would view with only the most lackadaisical disapproval one’s dearest enemy in the world. Particularly if one were at all ahead of one’s acclimatization. I don’t know what are Wale’s views, but I believe myself that an increase in the haemoglobin of the blood–’ And Wilfred was off on one of his instructive harangues.
    Basil watched him – I thought with a slightly narrowed eye – and interrupted on the first pause. ‘To go back to Cecil’s point,’ he said gravely, ‘there really is, I believe, business for some of us.’ He was choosing his words with evident care. ‘Family business may be tedious, and it is often sound doctrine to let it settle itself, no doubt. But there are times when a person is entitled to formal dealing and to expedition. I do urge that.’
    Hubert Roper put down his cup. ‘Urge it?’ he said. ‘More than that. You exemplify it.’
    I had an inkling of what Basil was at; I remembered my conversation with Cecil on our stroll the night before. Hubert’s words, however – or rather their tone – baffled me; they had an enigmatic quality which might have commended them to Lucy. But Lucy, I fear, though listening was not listening in the right way. It is all a matter of ear, the writing of novels.
    ‘Formal dealing?’ said Wilfred, taking Basil’s phrase. ‘Rather a portentous expression, surely. And I really don’t know that we need hurry. Geoffrey, I am sure you are on my side.’
    Was this malice or good humour? I had to admit that I could not listen delicately enough now myself. Geoffrey, in his invariable place beside Anne, was voting for good humour – perhaps as a matter of policy. ‘Oh, certainly,’ he said. ‘Why should you hurry, after all? All that is for the young.’
    ‘And what