The Silent Barrier
say, was situated near the British Museum. She usually returned by a
longer route, unless pelting rain or the misery of London snow made
the streets intolerable. Thus there was hardly a day that she did not
cover eight miles at a rapid pace, a method of training that eclipsed
all the artifices of beauty doctors and schools of deportment. Her
sweetly pretty face, her abundance of shining brown hair, her slim,
well proportioned figure, and the almost athletic swing of her well
arched shoulders, would entitle her to notice in a gathering of
beauties far more noted than those who graced Maloja with their
presence that year. In addition to these physical attractions
she carried with her the rarer and indefinable aura of the born
aristocrat. As it happened, she merited that description both by birth
and breeding; but there is a vast company entitled to consideration
on that score to whom nature has cruelly denied the necessary
hallmarks--otherwise the pages of Burke would surely be embellished
with portraits.
Indeed, so far as appearance went, it was rather ludicrous to regard
Helen as the social inferior of any person then resident in the
Kursaal, and it is probable that a glimmering knowledge of this fact
inflamed Mrs. de Courcy Vavasour's wrath to boiling point, when a few
minutes later, she saw her son coolly walk up to the "undesirable"
and enter into conversation with her.
Helen was seated in a shady corner. A flood of sunlight filled the
glass covered veranda with a grateful warmth. She had picked up an
astonishingly well written and scholarly guide book issued by the
proprietors of the hotel, and was deep in its opening treatise on the
history and racial characteristics of the Engadiners, when she was
surprised at hearing herself addressed by name.
"Er--Miss--er--Wynton, I believe?" said a drawling voice.
Looking up, she found George de Courcy Vavasour bending over her in an
attitude that betokened the utmost admiration for both parties to the
tete-a-tete. Under ordinary conditions,--that is to say, if Vavasour's
existence depended on his own exertions,--Helen's eyes would have
dwelt on a gawky youth endowed with a certain pertness that might in
time have brought him from behind the counter of a drapery store to
the wider arena of the floor. As it was, a reasonably large income
gave him unbounded assurance, and his credit with a good tailor was
unquestionable. He represented a British product that flourishes best
in alien soil. There exists a foreign legion of George de Courcy
Vavasours, flaccid heroes of fashion plates, whose parade grounds
change with the seasons from Paris to the Riviera, and from the
Riviera to some nook in the Alps. Providence and a grandfather have
conspired in their behalf to make work unnecessary; but Providence,
more far-seeing than grandfathers, has decreed that they shall be
effete and light brained, so the type does not endure.
Helen, out of the corner of her eye, became aware that Mrs. de Courcy
Vavasour was advancing with all the plumes of the British matron
ruffled for battle. It was not in human nature that the girl should
not recall the slight offered her the previous evening. With the
thought came the temptation to repay it now with interest; but she
thrust it aside.
"Yes, that is my name," she said, smiling pleasantly.
"Well--er--the General has asked me to--er--invite you take part in
some of our tournaments. We have tennis, you know, an' golf, an'
croquet, an' that sort of thing. Of course, you play tennis, an' I
rather fancy you're a golfer as well. You look that kind of girl--Eh,
what?"
He caressed a small mustache as he spoke, using the finger and thumb
of each hand alternately, and Helen noticed that his hands were
surprisingly large when compared with his otherwise fragile frame.
"Who is the General?" she inquired.
"Oh, Wragg, you know. He looks after everything in the amusement line,
an' I help. Do let me put you down for the singles an' mixed doubles.
None of the women here can play for nuts, an' I haven't got a partner
yet for the doubles. I've been waitin' for someone like you to turn
up."
"You have not remained long in suspense," she could not help saying.
"You are Mr. Vavasour, are you not?"
"Yes, better known as Georgie."
"And you arrived in Maloja last evening, I think. Well, I do play
tennis, or rather, I used to play fairly well some years ago----"
"By gad! just what I thought. Go slow in your practice games, Miss
Wynton, an' you'll have a rippin' handicap."
"Would that be quite honest?" said Helen, lifting her steadfast brown
eyes to meet his somewhat too free scrutiny.
"Honest? Rather! You wait till you see the old guard pullin' out a bit
when they settle down to real business. But the General is up to their
little dodges. He knows their form like a book, an' he gets every one
of 'em shaken out by the first round--Eh, what?"
"The arrangement seems to be ideal if one is friendly with the
General," said Helen.
Vavasour drew up a chair. He also drew up the ends of his trousers,
thus revealing that the Pomeranian brown and myrtle green stripes in
his necktie were faithfully reproduced in his socks, while these
master tints were thoughtfully developed in the subdominant hues of
his clothes and boots.
"By Jove! what a stroke of luck I should have got hold of you first!"
he chuckled. "I'm pretty good at the net, Miss Wynton. If we manage
things properly, we ought to have the mixed doubles a gift with plus
half forty, an' in the ladies' singles you'll be a Queen's Club
champion at six-stone nine--Eh, what?"
Though Vavasour represented a species of inane young man whom Helen
detested, she bore with him because she hungered for the sound of an
English voice in friendly converse this bright morning. At times her
life was lonely enough in London; but she had never felt her isolation
there. The great city appealed to her in all its moods. Her cheerful
yet sensitive nature did not shrink from contact with its hurrying
crowds. The mere sense of aloofness among so many millions of people
brought with it the knowledge that she was one of them, a human atom
plunged into a heedless vortex the moment she passed from her house
into the street.
Here in Maloja things were different. While her own identity was laid
bare, while men and women canvassed her name, her appearance, her
occupation, she was cut off from them by a social wall of their
own contriving. The attitude of the younger women told her that
trespassers were forbidden within that sacred fold. She knew now that
she had done a daring thing--outraged one of the cheap conventions--in
coming alone to this clique-ridden Swiss valley. Better a thousand
times have sought lodgings in some small village inn, and mixed with
the homely folk who journeyed thither on the diligence or tramped
joyously afoot, than strive to win the sympathy of any of these
shallow nonentities of the smart set.
Even while listening to "Georgie's" efforts to win her smiles with
slangy confidences, she saw that Mrs. Vavasour had halted in mid
career, and joined a group of women, evidently a mother and two
daughters, and that she herself was the subject of their talk. She
wondered why. She was somewhat perplexed when the conclave broke up
suddenly, the girls going to the door, Mrs. Vavasour retreating
majestically to the far end of the veranda, and the other elderly
woman drawing a short, fat, red faced man away from a discussion with
another man.
"Jolly place, this," Vavasour was saying. "There's dancin' most
nights. The dowager brigade want the band to play classical music, an'
that sort of rot, you know; but Mrs. de la Vere and the Wragg girls
like a hop, an' we generally arrange things our own way. We'll have a
dance to-night if you wish it; but you must promise to----"
"Georgie," cried the pompous little man, "I want you a minute!"
Vavasour swung round. Evidently he regarded the interruption as "a
beastly bore." "All right, General," he said airily. "I'll be there
soon. No hurry, is there?"
"Yes, I want you now!" The order was emphatic. The General's only
military asset was a martinet voice, and he made the most of it.
"Rather rotten, isn't it, interferin' with a fellow in this way?"
muttered Vavasour. "Will you excuse me? I must see what the old boy is
worryin' about. I shall come back soon--Eh, what?"
"I am going out," said Helen; "but we shall meet again. I remain here
a month."
"You'll enter for the tournament?" he asked over his shoulder.
"I--think so. It will be something to do."
"Thanks awfully. And don't forget to-night."
Helen laughed. She could not help it. The younger members of the Wragg
family were eying her sourly through the glass partition. They seemed
to be nice girls too, and she made up her mind to disillusion them
speedily if they thought that she harbored designs on the callow youth
whom they probably regarded as their own special cavalier.
When she passed through the inner doorway to go to her room she
noticed that the General was giving Georgie some instructions which
were listened to in sulky silence. Indeed, that remarkable ex-warrior
was laying down the law of the British parish with a clearness that
was admirable. He had been young himself once,--dammit!--and had as
keen an eye for a pretty face as any other fellow; but no gentleman
could strike up an acquaintance with an unattached female under the
very nose of his mother, not to mention the noses of other ladies who
were his friends. Georgie broke out in protest.
"Oh, but I say, General, she is a lady, an' you yourself said----"
"I know I did. I was wrong. Even a wary old bird like me can make a
mistake. Mrs. Vavasour has just warned my wife about her. It's no
good arguing, Georgie, my boy. Nowadays you can't draw the line too
rigidly. Things permissible in Paris or Nice won't pass muster here.
I'm sorry, Georgie. She's a high stepper and devilish taking, I admit.
Writes for some ha'penny rag--er--for some cheap society paper, I
hear. Why, dash it all, she will be lampooning us in it before we know
where we are. Just you go and tell your mother you'll behave better in
future. Excellent woman, Mrs. Vavasour. She never makes a mistake.
Gad! don't you remember how she spotted that waiter from the Ritz who
gulled the lot of us at the Jetee last winter? Took him for the French
marquis he said he was, every one of us, women and all, till Mrs. V.
fixed her eye on him and said, 'Gustave!' Damme! how he curled up!"
George was still obdurate. A masquerading waiter differed from Helen
in many essentials. "He was a Frenchman, an' they're mostly rotters.
This girl is English, General, an' I shall look a proper sort of an
ass if I freeze up suddenly after what I've said to her."
"Not for the first time, my boy, and mebbe not for the last." Then, in
view of the younger man's obvious defiance, the General's white
mustache bristled. "Of course, you can please yourself," he growled:
"but neither Mrs. Wragg nor my daughters will tolerate your
acquaintance with that person!"
"Oh, all right, General," came the irritated answer. "Between you an'
the mater I've got to come to heel; but it's a beastly shame, I say,
an' you're all makin' a jolly big mistake."
Georgie's intelligence might be superficial; but he knew a lady when
he met one, and Helen had attracted him powerfully. He was thanking
his stars for the good fortune that numbered him among the earliest of
her acquaintances in the hotel, and it was too bad that the barring
edict should have been issued against her so unexpectedly. But he was
not of a fighting breed, and he quailed before the threat of Mrs.
Wragg's displeasure.
Helen, after a delightful ramble past the chateau and along the