The Silent Barrier
was poised on a white firm neck, warned him that such a woman might
surrender to love, but never to greed.
Then he laughed, and ordered another liqueur, and drank a toast to
to-morrow, when all things come to pass for the man who knows how to
contrive to-day.
In the early morning, at Basle, he awoke, and was somewhat angry with
himself when he found that his thoughts still dwelt on Helen Wynton.
In the cold gray glimmer of dawn, and after the unpleasant shaking his
pampered body had received all night, some of the romance of this
latest quest had evaporated. He was stiff and weary, and he regretted
the whim that had led him a good twelve hours astray. But he roused
himself and dressed with care. Some twenty minutes short of Zurich he
sent an attendant to Miss Wynton's berth to inquire if she would join
him for early coffee at that station, there being a wait of a quarter
of an hour before the train went on to Coire.
Helen, who was up and dressed, said she would be delighted. She too
had been thinking, and, being a healthy-minded and kind-hearted girl,
had come to the conclusion that her abrupt departure the previous
night was wholly uncalled for and ungracious.
So it was with a smiling face that she awaited Bower on the steps of
her carriage. She shook hands with him cordially, did not object in
the least degree when he seized her arm to pilot her through a noisy
crowd of foreigners, and laughed with utmost cheerfulness when they
both failed to drink some extraordinarily hot coffee served in glasses
that seemed to be hotter still.
Helen had the rare distinction of being quite as bright and pleasing
to the eye in the searching light of the sun's first rays as at any
other hour. Bower, though spruce and dandified, looked rather worn.
"I did not sleep well," he explained. "And the rails to the frontier
on this line are the worst laid in Europe."
"It is early yet," she said. "Why not turn in again when you reach
your hotel?"
"Perish the thought!" he cried. "I shall wander disconsolate by the
side of the lake. Please say you will miss me at breakfast. And, by
the way, you will find a table specially set apart for you. I suppose
you change at Coire?"
"How kind and thoughtful you are. Yes, I am going to the Engadine, you
know."
"Well, give my greetings to the high Alps. I have climbed most of them
in my time. More improbable things have happened than that I may renew
the acquaintance with some of my old friends this year. What fun if
you and I met on the Matterhorn or Jungfrau! But they are far away
from the valley of the inn, and perhaps you do not climb."
"I have never had the opportunity; but I mean to try. Moreover, it is
part of my undertaking."
"Then may we soon be tied to the same rope!"
Thus they parted, with cheery words, and, on Helen's side, a genuine
wish that they might renew a pleasant acquaintance. Bower waited on
the platform to see the last of her as the train steamed away.
"Yes, it is worth while," he muttered, when the white feathers on her
hat were no longer visible. He did not go to the lake, but to the
telegraph office, and there he wrote two long messages, which he
revised carefully, and copied. Yet he frowned again, even while he was
paying for their transmission. Never before had he taken such pains to
win any woman's regard. And the knowledge vexed him, for the taking of
pains was not his way with women.
CHAPTER IV
HOW HELEN CAME TO MALOJA
At Coire, or Chur, as the three-tongued Swiss often term it--German
being the language most in vogue in Switzerland--Helen found a
cheerful looking mountain train awaiting the coming of its heavy
brother from far off Calais. It was soon packed to the doors, for
those Alpine valleys hum with life and movement during the closing
days of July. Even in the first class carriages nearly every seat was
filled in a few minutes, while pandemonium reigned in the cheaper
sections.
Helen, having no cumbersome baggage to impede her movements, was swept
in on the crest of the earliest wave, and obtained a corner near the
corridor. She meant to leave her handbag there, stroll up and down the
station for a few minutes, mainly to look at the cosmopolitan crowd,
and perhaps buy some fruit; but the babel of English, German, French,
and Italian, mixed with scraps of Russian and Czech, that raged round
a distracted conductor warned her that the wiser policy was to sit
still.
An Englishwoman, red faced, elderly, and important, was offered a
center seat, facing the engine, in Helen's compartment. She refused
it. Her indignation was magnificent. To face the engine, she declared,
meant instant illness.
"I never return to this wretched country that I do not regret it!" she
shrilled. "Have you no telegraphs? Cannot your officials ascertain
from Zurich how many English passengers may be expected, and make
suitable provision for them?"
As this tirade was thrown away on the conductor, she proceeded to
translate it into fairly accurate French; but the man was at his
wits' end to accommodate the throng, and said so, with the breathless
politeness that such a _grande dame_ seemed to merit.
"Then you should set apart a special train for passengers from
England!" she declared vehemently. "I shall never come here
again--never! The place is overrun with cheap tourists. Moreover,
I shall tell all my friends to avoid Switzerland. Perhaps, when
British patronage is withdrawn from your railways and hotels, you
will begin to consider our requirements."
Helen felt that her irate fellow countrywoman was metaphorically
hurling large volumes of the peerage, baronetage, and landed gentry at
the unhappy conductor's head. Again he pointed out that there was a
seat at madam's service. When the train started he would do his best
to secure another in the desired position.
As the woman, whose proportions were generous, was blocking the
gangway, she received a forcible reminder from the end of a heavy
portmanteau that she must clear out of the way. Breathing dire
reprisals on the Swiss federal railway system, she entered
unwillingly.
"Disgraceful!" she snorted. "A nation of boors! In another second I
should have been thrown down and trampled on."
A stolid German and his wife occupied opposite corners, and the man
probably wondered why the _Englischer frau_ glared at him so fiercely.
But he did not move.
Helen, thinking to throw oil on the troubled waters, said pleasantly,
"Won't you change seats with me? I don't mind whether I face the
engine or not. In any case, I intend to stand in the corridor most of
the time."
The stout woman, hearing herself addressed in English, lifted her
mounted eyeglasses and stared at Helen. In one sweeping glance she
took in details. As it happened, the girl had expended fifteen of her
forty pounds on a neat tailor made costume, a smart hat, well fitting
gloves, and the best pair of walking boots she could buy; for, having
pretty feet, it was a pardonable vanity that she should wish them well
shod. Apparently, the other was satisfied that there would be no loss
of caste in accepting the proffered civility.
"Thank you. I am very much obliged," she said. "It is awfully sweet of
you to incommode yourself for my sake."
It was difficult to believe that the woman who had just stormed at
the conductor, who had the effrontery to subject Helen to that
stony scrutiny before she answered, could adopt such dulcet tones
so suddenly. Helen, frank and generous-minded to a degree, would
have preferred a gradual subsidence of wrath to this remarkable
_volte-face_. But she reiterated that she regarded her place in a
carriage as of slight consequence, and the change was effected.
The other adjusted her eyeglasses again, and passed in review the
remaining occupants of the compartment. They were "foreigners," whose
existence might be ignored.
"This line grows worse each year," she remarked, by way of a
conversational opening. "It is horrid traveling alone. Unfortunately,
I missed my son at Lucerne. Are your people on the train?"
"No. I too am alone."
"Ah! Going to St. Moritz?"
"Yes; but I take the diligence there for Maloja."
"The diligence! Who in the world advised that? Nobody ever travels
that way."
By "nobody," she clearly conveyed the idea that she mixed in the
sacred circle of "somebodies," carriage folk to the soles of their
boots, because Helen's guidebook showed that a diligence ran twice
daily through the Upper Engadine, and the Swiss authorities would not
provide those capacious four-horsed vehicles unless there were
passengers to fill them.
"Oh!" cried Helen. "Should I have ordered a carriage beforehand?"
"Most decidedly. But your friends will send one. They know you are
coming by this train?"
Helen smiled. She anticipated a certain amount of cross examination at
the hands of residents in the hotel; but she saw no reason why the
ordeal should begin so soon.
"I must take my luck then," she said. "There ought to be plenty of
carriages at St. Moritz."
Without being positively rude, her new acquaintance could not repeat
the question thus shirked. But she had other shafts in her quiver.
"You will stay at the Kursaal, of course?" she said.
"Yes."
"A passing visit, or for a period? I ask because I am going there
myself."
"Oh, how nice! I am glad I have met you. I mean to remain at Maloja
until the end of August."
"Quite the right time. The rest of Switzerland is unbearable in
August. You will find the hotel rather full. The Burnham-Joneses are
there,--the tennis players, you know,--and General and Mrs. Wragg and
their family, and the de la Veres, nominally husband and wife,--a most
charming couple individually. Have you met the de la Veres? No? Well,
don't be unhappy on Edith's account if Reginald flirts with you. She
likes it."
"But perhaps I might not like it," laughed Helen.
"Ah, Reginald has such fascinating manners!" A sigh seemed to deplore
the days of long ago, when Reginald's fascination might have displayed
itself on her account.
Again there was a break in the flow of talk, and Helen began to take
an interest in the scenery. Not to be balked, her inquisitor searched
in a _portmonnaie_ attached to her left wrist with a strap, and
produced a card.
"We may as well know each other's names," she cooed affably. "Here is
my card."
Helen read, "Mrs. H. de Courcy Vavasour, Villa Menini, Nice."
"I am sorry," she said, with a friendly smile that might have disarmed
prejudice, "but in the hurry of my departure from London I packed my
cards in my registered baggage. My name is Helen Wynton."
The eyeglasses went up once more.
"Do you spell it with an I? Are you one of the Gloucestershire
Wintons?"
"No. I live in town; but my home is in Norfolk."
"And whose party will you join at the Maloja?"
Helen colored a little under this rigorous heckling. "As I have
already told you, Mrs. Vavasour, I am alone," she said. "Indeed, I
have come here to--to do some literary work."
"For a newspaper?"
"Yes."
Mrs. Vavasour received this statement guardedly. If Helen was on the
staff of an important journal there was something to be gained by
being cited in her articles as one of the important persons
"sojourning" in the Engadine.
"It is really wonderful," she admitted, "how enterprising the great
daily papers are nowadays."
Helen, very new to a world of de Courcy Vavasours, and Wraggs, and
Burnham-Joneses, forgave this hawklike pertinacity for sake of the
apparent sympathy of her catechist. And she was painfully candid.
"The weekly paper I represent is not at all well known," she
explained; "but here I am, and I mean to enjoy my visit hugely. It is
the chance of a lifetime to be sent abroad on such a mission. I little