Windsor Magazine/A Comedy of Styles

by E. F. Benson

A COMEDY OF STYLES

By E. F. BENSON

THE blaze of the January sun was pouring down on to the huge rink at Frédon, hot and invigorating, and yet by that inimitable conjuring trick which the sun so deftly performs all day in the high thin air of Alpine eyries, not melting one fragment of the ice, nor making the surface of it even soft. Above stretched steep pastures covered with fresh-fallen snow, and dotted with chalets fit to be hung on some immense Christmas tree, complete and toy-like with their little green-shuttered windows and their icicles depending from the snow-smothered eaves of the shingled roofs. Above, again, stretched the forest of pines, looking raven-black, where the snow had melted from off their tassels, against the shining dazzle of the white fields, while behind and beyond, remote and austere, rose the horns and precipices of the greater peaks.

Below, the ground declined sharply away: a few outlying chalets of the village stood in the foreground; beyond them the hillside leaped like a waterfall into the cloud-smothered valley of the Rhone, a couple of thousand feet below. Like a solid floor of grey mottled marble, this platform of cloud-land, as seen from above, stretched right across to the slopes on the far side of the valley, a floor level and motionless, fitted in with the cunning of some neat-jointed puzzle to the promontories and bays of the opposite. These, as they climbed upwards, rose again into the blaz3 of the midwinter sun, and guarding it all, like some great beast with head thrown back and paws outstretched, rose the shining snows of the Dent du Midi.

The rink, which had been crowded all morning, was emptying fast, for from the various hotels the bells had announced lunch-time, and there were but half a dozen enthusiasts left." Among those, enthusiastic to the point of mania, was Agnes Cartright, who, recuperating for a few minutes on a bench at the side of the ice, was utterly oblivious to the view and glory of the sun, and was entirely intent on a small and ragged pamphlet which she held in her hand, and which contained the list of the greedy requirements demanded of any who offered themselves as candidates for the first-class English test of skating. For the last three weeks she had lived, breathed, and dreamed skating; nothing else in the world seemed to her to matter at all, and if she had been awakened in the night by an armed inquisitor, who, with pistol to her head, had told her instantly to name the three greatest men in the world, she would have unhesitatingly have told him the names of three very line skaters who were spending a month here. Two were to be her judges in the approaching test, the third was her brother, who, sitting beside her now with his mouth fall of ham sandwich, was trying to explain to her the placing of one of those horrible and adored figures.

"Hold on to your back outside edge," he said, "till you get quite close to the centre, and change it at the centre. When you change it, don't wobble like a Channel boat in a cross-sea. Just change it. Hold on to your inside edge till you get half round the circle, then make your three, and—and stand till and go to sleep till you come back again to the centre. I don't see what bothers you in it."

"Skate it for me, Ted," she asked.

"Just when I'm lunching! You are the most selfish and inconsiderate——"

"I know. But I do want to see it done. It helps so enormously."

He stood up, with half-eaten sandwich in one hand, a tall, satisfactory sort of young man, snub-nosed and sandy-haired, a sort of parody of the tip-tilted golden-haired girl who stood beside him. It was easy to see their relationship; the parody was unmistakable.

"I'll skate the whole set with you if you like," he said. "We've got the ice to ourselves."

"You are a darling. If I can get through this thing at all, it will be entirely your doing, Ted."

"Well, yes, mainly. All the same, you have got a certain natural aptitude."

Then followed a quarter of an hour of strenuous performance, as they wove the mystic dance, with its swift long edges and flicked turns, which is known as English combined skating. Whatever Agnes's power of execution might be, there was no question about the excellence of her style, as standing erect, yet not stiff, she swooped like a swallow into the centre, and sped out again to the circumference of the figure twenty yards away. It was impossible to see where the impetus for these bird-flights came from; they were as inexplicable as the movement of a soaring eagle, and her brother's speed was even more incomprehensible. He but seemed to lay his skate-blade on the ice and shot off with ever-increasing velocity. Their timing, too, from long-repeated practice together, was perfect; they passed each other at the centre with hardly a foot to spare between them, and soared away again. Occasionally he called a critical word to her, or made her repeat some evolution; but when, a quarter of an hour later, the practice was over, his praise was almost unfraternal.

"Yes, that will quite do," he said. "If you skate no worse than that, you will get through. Now, for Heaven's sake, let us finish lunch in peace."

She beamed appreciation of these high compliments.

"I'll just have ten minutes more alone," she said. "You might be an angel, Ted, and shout curses at me if I'm not up to the mark."

A young man, who had been watching this really charming performance, skated up to the bench where Ted was sitting, with arms and unemployed leg outstretched, in the approved and graceful International style. He really did rather resemble some flying Mercury, a pose which all skaters of his school do not attain with any marked degree of success. He had arrived here only the evening before, and nodded kindly to Ted, unaware of his immensity. In Agnes's opinion, this would be about equivalent to some criminal in the dock—skaters in the International style were all criminals in her eyes—negligently saluting the Lord Chief Justice on the bench.

"It really makes one doubt whether English skating is such a ramrod sort of performance as we think it," he said, "when you see a girl like that doing it. Isn't she at the Royal Hotel? I think I saw her there at the dance last night. You were skating with her, weren't you? What is her name?"

Ted Cartright looked at him with a rather pleasant mixture of amusement and resentment. The resentment was for this infernal patronage of the only real form of skating.

"Her name is Cartright," he said. "Miss Agnes Cartright. Perhaps I had better mention that my name is Cartright, too."

He paused a moment.

"In fact, I'm her brother," he said.

The flying Mercury laughed.

"Do you know, that's rather funny," he said. "Then, of course, you are the Mr. Cartright who skates. I assure you that the people I came up in the train with mentioned you with a sort of holy awe. And here am I telling you that perhaps English skating is not entirely a ramrod performance. But, really, I couldn't tell. I hope you don't mind. My name is Turner, if it's the slightest interest to you."

Ted Cartright laughed also.

"Then, of course, you are the Mr. Turner, if it comes to that," he said. "And your arrival has been spoken of with holy awe. You won all the cups and things last year, didn't you, in—in your style?"

"I suppose I did. It looks awful to you, doesn't it? A silly, showing-off, posing kind of game?"

"Well, I don't want to do it myself. But I expect——"

Further attempts at compliments were interrupted by Agnes.

"That was better, wasn't it, Ted?" she asked.

"I don't know; I wasn't looking. Agnes, may I introduce Mr. Turner to you?"

Mr. Turner, apparently, had already lunched, and soon left them. He skated off to the other side of the rink, and there took advantage of the empty ice. With flying, outstretched arms, he glided and poised and turned, launching himself at full speed on his hard, curved edges. He whirled in entrancing spirals, every inch and muscle of him was plastically part of woven loops and brackets. Anyone could see how masterly was his control, how vehement his force. Agnes turned to her brother.

"It's really rather nice when it is done like that," she said. "You can see he is a—man."

"He doesn't in the least degree resemble a girl," said her brother. "Nor does he look like a cross between a hairdresser and a dancing-master, if that is what you mean."

"Yes, just that," she said. "But, of course, we can't call it skating. All the same——"

And she drank the remainder of Ted's beer.

Two days afterwards Agnes went up for her supreme trial. She was horribly nervous, and the sight of the reserved end of the rink, entirely emptied of skaters on her behalf, who lined the edges of it instead, made her think with bitter envy of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, those happy victims of the opening earth. But the moment she got under way, as soon as she felt her skate really bite the smooth, satin-like ice, she was conscious of nothing else but extreme exhilaration. Mr. Turner had left his International followers, who were standing about on one leg, in attitudes of extreme dejection, like hens on a wet day, and established himself on a seat in the sun, and the sight of him following her with perfectly undisguised admiration, made her not nervous, but immensely self-confident. Even the approving grunts of her brother, when in pauses she went and sat by him, did not lend her such solid encouragement. She had begged Mr. Turner not to come and watch her, when she danced—rather frequently—with him the night before at one of the hotel balls, and it may be added that she would have been extremely vexed if he had been so untrustworthy as to dream of keeping this promise she had extorted from him. In fact, as far as he was concerned, her state of mind is thus sufficiently indicated. Once or twice she made mistakes, which caused him much greater anxiety than they caused her. So his state of mind, as far as she was concerned, is also adequately outlined.

Ted skated excitedly up to her, after her judges had held but a brief conference.

"So that's floored," he said; "and now you can begin to learn to skate properly."

"Oh, Ted," she said, " do you mean I have passed?"

"Yes, of course. Let's have lunch."

Now, a certain proportion of the immigrant English at Frédon during the winter months think of practically nothing else all day, and a certain amount of the night, but ski-ing; to others, curling is a similar obsession; to others, tobogganing. But the greater number of the obsessed have no thoughts, day or night—except when they are actually engaged on some such frivolity as dancing, or dining, or bridge—but for skating. And the skaters, divided into two camps, as has been seen, the English style and the International, abstain, if polite, from passing the smallest criticism or taking the slightest notice of the other's doings; if impolite, they use such words as "ramrod" or "dancing-master." They have even been known to attempt to parody—with marked unsuccess—each other's styles. Consequently, rumours that began to creep about, some few days after Agnes Cartright had passed her first-class English test, thrilled these obsessed people to the core. Very early in the morning Miss Cartright had been seen on a sequestered corner of the rink with her unemployed leg wildly waving. With her arms she appeared to be swimming in short, ungainly strokes. An examination of the ice where these contortions had taken place showed beyond doubt that somebody had been trying to skate loops there—those dreadful, wicked, horrible loops which violated every rule of correct English style, to practise which laid the foundations for every immoral habit. It was true that, when observed, she made herself into a ramrod again and jerked her shoulders about in that distressing English manner, but later on, when the rink had cleared for lunch, she was seen again trying to do a spiral. Then she had been seen watching Mr. Turner for quite a long time that afternoon. This, of course, might be for other reasons, and the speaker—who had been doing just the same—wreathed her withered lips into what must have been a sarcastic smile. Such was the thrilling news brought into the International camp.

Later in the evening a spy came into the English camp. He had been on the rink that afternoon when dusk fell, and with his own eyes had seen a solitary figure in a withdrawn situation at the farther end, practising (apparently) in the English style. The speaker, at any rate, thought that these stiff, rigid attitudes, these jerked turns, were meant to be in distant emulation of it. With the amiable intention of assisting this ungainly struggler, and with a certain incredible conjecture in his mind, he skated up to him. The ungainly struggler, on seeing him approach, instantly began whirling his arms and legs again. It was Turner. And that night, after dinner. Turner had been seen again in the lounge of the hotel, absorbed in a book which was easily recognisable as one of the text-books of English skating. Being observed, he hurriedly covered it up with a week-old copy of a daily paper, upside down, and pretended to be immersed in it. A little later he and Miss Cartright played bridge together, and it was credibly ascertained that neither of them had mentioned the word "skating" throughout the course of three long rubbers.

A week later all concealment was at an end. Agnes Cartright had openly joined the ranks of the Internationalists, while the star and mainstay of International skating was busy practising the English style, and hoped before the end of the season, if he was very industrious, to pass the third and most elementary of the English tests. What added to the comedy of the situation was that each went to the other for tuition, and each was at present hopelessly at sea. They, the pillars and ornaments of their schools, floundered and bungled, and were a source of the most blissful encouragement to other beginners. Occasionally a brief spell of apostasy would seize one or other of them, and Turner would giddily trace out a perfect back loop eight, or Miss Cartright, tall and swift and stable, would skim up to a centre from the distance of sixty yards, flick out a dream of a rocker, and hold the back edge for another sixty yards. But these were but infrequent weaknesses; for the most part, from morning till night, they were diligent with the alphabets of their respective studies. In the evening they often sat near each other, strenuously reading. Turner's book was a volume on the English style, with Agnes's name at the beginning; she read the text-book he had written himself.

A further thrill awaited Frédon, ten days later, when their engagement was made known. As for them, they had a great deal to say to each other on other subjects; but one sunny day, as they sat on the edge of the rink, in the lunch interval, the question which had really been a good deal in their minds found utterance. Agnes broached it.

"There's another thing we must talk about," she began.

"I know," he interrupted. "Skating, you mean. It's quite ridiculous to go on as we are. You see, I had to take to English skating when I saw you do it. I couldn't help myself. There was never anything so divine."

She laughed.

"Oh, Jack, that's just what happened to me. And here we are, dear, both making the most dreadful fools of ourselves. I shall never be able to do it! I should be utterly miserable about it if I wasn't so happy. What is to be done?"

"We might toss up," he suggested. "The point is, that we should both skate in the same style, isn't it?"

"Of course."

He took an Italian five-franc piece from his pocket.

"Heads, English style; tails, International," he suggested.

"Yes," said Agnes tremulously, and he spun the coin, caught it, and opened his hand.

And anyone who happens to be at Frédon this winter will see whether it was heads or tails.

 

Copyright, 1913, by E. F. Benson, in the United States of America.