The Silent Barrier
to-morrow. She was right. But she had not yet done with the present
day. When she entered the cozy and brilliantly lighted veranda of the
hotel, the first person her amazed eyes alighted upon was Millicent
Jaques.
CHAPTER XI
WHEREIN HELEN LIVES A CROWDED HOUR
"Millicent! You here!" Helen breathed the words in an undertone that
carried more than a hint of dismay.
It was one of those rare crises in life when the brain receives a
presage of evil without any prior foundation of fact. Helen had every
reason to welcome her friend, none to be chilled by her unexpected
presence. Among a small circle of intimate acquaintances she counted
Millicent Jaques the best and truest. They had drifted apart; but that
was owing to Helen's lack of means. She was not able, nor did she
aspire, to mix in the society that hailed the actress as a bright
particular star. Yet it meant much to a girl earning her daily bread
in a heedless city that she should possess one friend of her own age
and sex who could speak of the golden years when they were children
together,--the years when Helen's father was the prospective governor
of an Indian province as large as France; when the tuft hunters now
gathered in Maloja would have fawned on her mother in hope of
subsequent recognition.
Why, then, did Helen falter in her greeting? Who can tell? She herself
did not know, unless it was that Millicent rose so leisurely from the
table at which she was drinking a belated cup of tea, and came toward
her with a smile that had no warmth in it.
"So you have returned," she said, "and with both cavaliers?"
Helen was conscious of a queer humming noise in her head. She was
incapable of calm thought. She realized now that the friend she had
left in London was here in the guise of a bitter enemy. The veranda
was full of people waiting for the post. The snow had banished them
from links and tennis court. This August afternoon was dark as
mid-December at the same hour. But the rendezvous was brilliantly
lighted, and the reappearance of the climbers, whose chances of safety
had been eagerly debated since the snow storm began, drew all eyes.
Someone had whispered too that the beautiful woman who arrived from
St. Moritz half an hour earlier, who sat in her furs and sipped her
tea after a long conversation with a clerk in the bureau, was none
other than Millicent Jaques, the dancer, one of the leading lights of
English musical comedy.
The peepers and whisperers little dreamed that she could be awaiting
the party from the Forno. Now that her vigil was explained, for Bower
had advanced with ready smile and outstretched hand, the Wraggs and
Vavasours and de la Veres--all the little coterie of gossips and
scandalmongers--were drawn to the center of the hall like steel
filings to a magnet.
Millicent ignored Bower. She was young enough and pretty enough to
feel sure of her ability to deal with him subsequently. Her cornflower
blue eyes glittered. They held something of the quiet menace of a
crevasse. She had traveled far for revenge, and she did not mean to
forego it. Helen, whose second impulse was to kiss her affectionately,
with excited clamor of welcome and inquiry, stood rooted to the floor
by her friend's strange words.
"I--I am so surprised----" she half stammered in an agony of confused
doubt; and that was the only lame phrase she could utter during a few
trying seconds.
Bower frowned. He hated scenes between women. With his first glimpse
of Millicent he guessed her errand. For Helen's sake, in the presence
of that rabbit-eared crowd, he would not brook the unmerited flood of
sarcastic indignation which he knew was trembling on her lips.
"Miss Wynton has had an exhausting day," he said coolly. "She must go
straight to her room, and rest. You two can meet and talk after
dinner." Without further preamble, he took Helen's arm.
Millicent barred the way. She did not give place. Again she paid no
heed to the man. "I shall not detain you long," she said, looking only
at Helen, and speaking in a low clear voice that her stage training
rendered audible throughout the large hall. "I only wished to assure
myself that what I was told was true. I found it hard to believe, even
when I saw your name written up in the hotel. Before I go, let me
congratulate you on your conquest--and Mr. Mark Bower on his," she
added, with clever pretense of afterthought.
Helen continued to stare at her helplessly. Her lips quivered; but
they uttered no sound. It was impossible to misunderstand Millicent's
object. She meant to wound and insult in the grossest way.
Bower dropped Helen's arm, and strode close to the woman who had
struck this shrewd blow at him. "I give you this one chance!" he
muttered, while his eyes blazed into hers. "Go to your room, or sit
down somewhere till I am free. I shall come to you, and put things
straight that now seem crooked. You are wrong, horribly wrong, in your
suspicions. Wait my explanation, or by all that I hold sacred, you
will regret it to your dying hour!"
Millicent drew back a little. She conveyed the suggestion that his
nearness was offensive to her nostrils. And she laughed, with due
semblance of real amusement. "What! Has she made a fool of you too?"
she cried bitingly.
Then Helen did exactly the thing she ought not to have done. She
fainted.
Spencer, in his own vivid phrase, was "looking for trouble" the
instant he caught sight of the actress. Had some Mahatma-devised magic
lantern focused on the screen of his inner consciousness a complete
narrative of the circumstances which conspired to bring Millicent
Jaques to the Upper Engadine, he could not have mastered cause and
effect more fully. The unlucky letter he asked Mackenzie to send to
the Wellington Theater--the letter devised as a probe into Bower's
motives, but which was now cruelly searching its author's heart--had
undoubtedly supplied to a slighted woman the clew to her rival's
identity. Better posted than Bower in the true history of Helen's
visit to Switzerland, he did not fail to catch the most significant
word in Millicent's scornful greeting.
"And with _both_ cavaliers!"
In all probability, she knew the whole ridiculous story, reading into
it the meaning lent by jealous spleen, and no more to be convinced of
error than the Forno glacier could be made to flow backward.
But if his soul was vexed by a sense of bygone folly, his brain was
cool and alert. He saw Helen sway slightly. He caught her before she
collapsed where she stood. He gathered her tenderly in his arms. She
might have been a tired child, fallen asleep too soon. Her limp head
rested on his shoulder. Through the meshes of her blue veil he could
see the sudden pallor of her cheeks. The tint of the silk added to
the lifelessness of her aspect. Just then Spencer's heart was sore
within him, and he was an awkward man to oppose.
George de Courcy Vavasour happened to crane his neck nearer at the
wrong moment. The American sent him flying with a vigorous elbow
thrust. He shoved Bower aside with scant ceremony. Millicent Jaques
met a steely glance that quelled the vengeful sparkle in her own eyes,
and caused her to move quickly, lest, perchance, this pale-faced
American should trample on her. Before Bower could recover his
balance, for his hobnails caused him to slip on the tiled floor,
Spencer was halfway across the inner hall, and approaching the
elevator.
An official of the hotel hastened forward with ready proffer of help.
"This way," he said sympathetically. "The lady was overcome by the
heat after so many hours in the intense cold. It often occurs. She
will recover soon. Bring her to a chair in the office."
But Spencer was not willing that Helen's first wondering glance should
rest on strangers, or that, when able to walk to her own apartments,
she should be compelled to pass through the ranks of gapers in the
lounge.
"No," he said. "Ring for the elevator. This lady must be taken to her
room,--No. 80, I believe,--then the manageress and a chambermaid can
attend to her. Quick! the elevator!"
Bower turned on Millicent like an angry bull. "You have chosen your
own method," he growled. "Very well. You shall pay for it."
Her venom was such that she was by no means disturbed by his threat.
"The other man--the American who brought her here--seems to have
bested you throughout," she taunted him.
He drew himself up with a certain dignity. He was aware that every
tongue in the place was stilled, that every ear was tuned to catch
each note of this fantastic quartet,--a sonata appassionata in which
vibrated the souls of men and women. He looked from Millicent's pallid
face to the faces of the listeners, some of whom made pretense of
polite indifference, while others did not scruple to exhibit their
eager delight. If nothing better, the episode would provide an
abundance of spicy gossip during the enforced idleness caused by the
weather.
"The lady whom you are endeavoring to malign, will, I hope, do me the
honor of becoming my wife," he said. "That being so, she is beyond the
reach of the slanderous malice of an ex-chorus girl."
He spoke slowly, with the air of a man who weighed his words. A thrill
that could be felt ran through his intent audience. Mark Bower, the
millionaire, the financial genius who dominated more than one powerful
group in the city, who controlled a ring of theaters in London and the
provinces, who had declined a knighthood, and would surely be created
a peer with the next change of government,--that he should openly
declare himself a suitor for the hand of a penniless girl was a
sensation with a vengeance. His description of Millicent as an
ex-chorus girl offered another _bonne bouche_ to the crowd. She would
never again skip airily behind the footlights of the Wellington, or
any other important theater in England. So far as she was concerned,
the musical comedy candle that succeeded to the sacred lamp of West
End burlesque was snuffed out.
Millicent was actress enough not to flinch from the goad. "A charming
and proper sentiment," she cried with well simulated flippancy. "The
marriage of Mr. Mark Bower will be quite a fashionable event, provided
always that he secures the assent of the American gentleman who is
paying his future wife's expenses during her present holiday."
Now, so curiously constituted is human nature, or the shallow
worldliness that passes current for it among the homeless gadabouts
who pose as British society on the Continent, that already the current
of opinion in the hotel was setting steadily in Helen's favor. The
remarkable change dated from the moment of Bower's public announcement
of his matrimonial plans. Many of those present were regretting a lost
opportunity. It was obvious to the meanest intelligence--and the
worn phrase took a new vitality when applied to some among the
company--that any kindness shown to Helen during the preceding
fortnight would be repaid a hundredfold when she became Mrs. Mark
Bower. Again, not even the bitterest of her critics could allege that
she was flirting with the quiet mannered American who had just carried
her off like a new Paris. She had lived in the same hotel for a whole
week without speaking a word to him. If anything, she had shown favor
only to Bower, and that in a way so decorous and discreet that
more than one woman there was amazed by her careless handling of a
promising situation. Just give one of them the chance of securing such
a prize fish as this stalwart millionaire! Well, at least he should
not miss the hook for lack of a bait.
Oddly enough, the Rev. Philip Hare gave voice to a general sentiment