The Silent Barrier 11Wherein Helen Lives a Crowded Hour
18
Literature · Romance
The Silent Barrier 11
Wherein Helen Lives a Crowded Hour
TracyEnglish
"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 when he interfered in the duel. He, like others, was waiting for his letters. He saw Helen come in, and was hurrying to offer his congratulations on her escape from the storm, when the appearance of Millicent prevented him from speaking at once. The little man was hot with vexation at the scene that followed. He liked Helen; he was unutterably shocked by Millicent's attack; and he resented the unfair and untrue construction that must be placed on her latest innuendo.
"As one who has made Miss Wynton's acquaintance in this hotel," he broke in vehemently, "I must protest most emphatically against the outrageous statement we have just heard. If I may say it, it is unworthy of the lady who is responsible for it. I know nothing of your quarrel, nor do I wish to figure in it; but I do declare, on my honor as a clergyman of the Church of England, that Miss Wynton's conduct in Maloja has in no way lent itself to the inference one is compelled to draw from the words used."
"Thank you, Mr. Hare," said Bower quietly, and a subdued murmur of applause buzzed through the gathering.
There is a legend in Zermatt that Saint Theodule, patron of the Valais, wishing to reach Rome in a hurry, sought demoniac aid to surmount the impassable barrier of the Alps. Opening his window, he saw three devils dancing merrily on the housetops. He called them. "Which of you is the speediest?" he asked. "I," said one, "I am swift as the wind."--"Bah!" cried the second, "I can fly like a bullet."--"These two talk idly," said the third. "I am quick as the thought of a woman." The worthy prelate chose the third. The hour being late, he bargained that he should be carried to Rome and back before cockcrow, the price for the service to be his saintly soul. The imp flew well, and returned to the valley of the Rhone long ere dawn. Joyous at his gain, he was about to bound over the wall of the episcopal city of Sion, when St. Theodule roared lustily, "Coq, chante! Que tu chantes! Ou que jamais plus tu ne chantes!" Every cock in Sion awoke at his voice, and raised such a din that the devil dropped a bell given to his saintship by the Holy Father, and Saint Theodule was snug and safe inside it.
The prelate was right in his choice of the third. The thoughts of two women took wings instantly. Mrs. de la Vere, throwing away a half-smoked cigarette, hurried out of the veranda. Millicent Jaques, whose carriage was ready for the long drive to St. Moritz, decided to remain in Maloja.
The outer door opened, with a rush of cold air and a whirl of snow. People expected the postman; but Stampa entered,--only Stampa, the broken survivor of the little band of guides who conquered the Matterhorn. He doffed his Alpine hat, and seemed to be embarrassed by the unusually large throng assembled in the passageway. Bower saw him, and strode away into the dimly lighted foyer.
"Pardon, 'sieurs et 'dames," said Stampa, advancing with his uneven gait, a venerable and pathetic figure, the wreck of a giant, a man who had aged years in a single day. He went to the bureau, and asked permission to seek Herr Spencer in his room.
Helen was struggling back to consciousness when Mrs. de la Vere joined the kindly women who were loosening her bodice and chafing her hands and feet.
The first words the girl heard were in English. A woman's voice was saying cheerfully, "There, my dear!" a simple formula of marvelous recuperative effect,--"there now! You are all right again. But your room is bitterly cold. Won't you come into mine? It is quite near, and my stove has been alight all day."
Helen, opening her eyes, found herself gazing up at Mrs. de la Vere. Real sympathy ranks high among good deeds. The girl's lips quivered. Returning life brought with it tears.
The woman whom she had regarded as a social butterfly sat beside her on the bed and placed a friendly arm round her neck. "Don't cry, you dear thing," she cooed gently. "There is nothing to cry about. You are a bit overwrought, of course; but, as it happens, you have scored heavily off all of us--and not least off the creature who upset you. Now, do try and come with me. Here are your slippers. The corridor is empty. It is only a few steps."
"Come with you?"
"Yes, you are shivering with the cold, and my room is gloriously warm."
"But----"
"There are no buts. Marie will bring a basin of nice hot soup. While you are drinking it she will set your stove going. I know exactly how you feel. The whole world is topsyturvy, and you don't think there is a smile in your make-up, as that dear American man who carried you here would say."
Helen recovered her senses with exceeding rapidity. Mrs. de la Vere was already leading her to the door.
"What! Mr. Spencer--did he----"
"He did. Come, now. I shall tell you all the trying details when you are seated in my easy chair, and wrapped in the duckiest Shetland shawl that a red headed laird sent me last Christmas. Excellent! Of course you can walk! Isn't every other woman in the hotel well aware how you got that lovely figure? Yes, in that chair. And here is the shawl. It's just like being cuddled by a woolly lamb."
Mrs. de la Vere turned the keys in two doors. "Reggie always knocks," she explained; "but some inquisitive cat may follow me here, and I am sure you don't wish to be gushed over now, after everybody has been so horrid to you."
"You were not," said Helen gratefully.
"Yes, I was, in a way. I hate most women; but I admired you ever since you took the conceit out of that giddy husband of mine. If I didn't speak, it arose from sheer laziness--a sort of drifting with the stream, in tow of the General and that old mischief maker, Mrs. Vavasour. I'm sorry, and you will be quite justified to-morrow morning in sailing past me and the rest as though we were beetles."
Then Helen laughed, feebly, it is true, but with a genuine mirth that chased away momentarily the evergrowing memory of Millicent's injustice. "Why do you mention beetles?" she asked. "It is part of my every day work to classify them."
Mrs. de la Vere was puzzled. "I believe you have said something very cutting," she cried. "If you did, we deserve it. But please tell me the joke. I shall hand it on to the Wraggs."
"There is no joke. I act as secretary to a German professor of entomology--insects, you know; he makes beetles a specialty."
The other woman's eye danced. "It is all very funny," she said, "and I still have my doubts. Never mind. I want to atone for earlier shortcomings. I felt that someone really ought to tell you what took place in the outer foyer after you sank gracefully out of the act. Mr. Bower----"
A tap on the door leading into the corridor interrupted her. It was Marie, armed with chicken broth and dry toast. Mrs. de la Vere, who seemed to be filled with an honest anxiety to place Helen at her ease, persuaded her to begin sipping the compound.
"Well, what did Mr. Bower do?" demanded Helen, who was wondering now why she had fainted. The accusation brought against her by Millicent Jaques was untrue. Why should it disturb her so gravely? It did not occur to her that the true cause was physical,--a too sudden change of temperature.
"He sat on that young woman from the Wellington Theater very severely, I assure you. From her manner we all imagined she had some sort of claim on him; but if she was laboring under any such delusion he cured her. He said--Are you really strong enough to stand a shock?"
"Twenty shocks. I can't think how I could have been so silly----"
"Nerves, my dear. We all have 'em. Sometimes, if I didn't smoke I should scream. No woman really likes to see her husband flirting openly with her friends. I'm no saint; but my wickedness is defensive. Now, are you ready?"
"Quite ready."
"Mr. Bower told us, tout le monde, you know, that he meant to marry you."
"Oh!" said Helen.
During an appreciable pause neither woman spoke. Helen was not sure whether she wanted to laugh or be angry. Mrs. de la Vere eyed her curiously. The girl's face was yet white and drawn. It was impossible to guess how the great news affected her. The de la Veres were poor on two thousand a year. What did it feel like to be the prospective bride of a millionaire, especially when you were--what was it?--secretary to a man who collected beetles!
"Did Mr. Bower assign any reason for making that remarkable statement?" said Helen at last.
"He explained that the fact--I suppose it is a fact--would safeguard you from the malice of an ex-coryphée. Indeed, he put it more brutally. He spoke of the 'slanderous malice of an ex-chorus girl.' The English term sounds a trifle harsher than the French, don't you think?"
It began to dawn on Helen that Mrs. de la Vere's friendliness might have a somewhat sordid foundation. Was she tending her merely to secure the freshest details of an affair that must be causing many tongues to wag?
"I am acquiring new theories of life since I came to Maloja," she said slowly. "One would have thought that I might be the first person to be made aware of Mr. Bower's intentions."
"Oh, this is really too funny. May I light a cigarette?"
"Please do. And now it is my turn to ask you to point out the exquisite humor of the situation."
"Don't be vexed with me, child. You needn't say another word if you don't wish it; but surely you are not annoyed because I have given you the tip as to what took place in the hall?"
"You have been exceedingly good----"
"No. I haven't. I was just as nasty as the others, and I sneered like the rest when Bower showed up a fortnight since. I was wrong, and I apologize for it. Regard me as in sackcloth and ashes. But my heart went out to you when you dropped like a log among all those staring people. I've--I've done it myself, and my case was worse than yours. Once in my life I loved a man, and I came home one day from the hunting field to read a telegram from the War Office. He was 'missing,' it said--missing--in a rear-guard action in Tirah. Do you know what that means?"
A cloud of smoke hid her face; but it could not stifle the sob in her voice. There was a knock at the door.
"Are you there, Edith?" demanded Reginald de la Vere.
"Yes. Go away! I'm busy."
"But----"
"Go away, I tell you!"
Then she jerked a scornful hand toward the door. "Six months later I was married--men who are missed among the Afridis don't come back," she said.
"I'm more sorry than I can put into words!" murmured Helen.
"For goodness' sake don't let us grow sentimental. Shall we return to our sheep? Don't be afraid that I shall pasture the goats in the hall on your confidences. Hasn't Bower asked you?"
"No."
"Then his action was all the more generous. He meant to squelch that friend of yours--is she your friend?"
"She used to be," said Helen sadly.
"And what do you mean to do about it? You will marry Bower, of course?"
Helen's heart fluttered. Her color rose in a sudden wave. "I--I don't think so," she breathed.
"Don't you? Well, I like you the better for saying so. I can picture myself putting the same questions to one of the Wragg girls--to both of 'em, in fact. I am older than you, and very much wiser in some of the world's ways, and my advice is, Don't marry any man unless you are sure you love him. If you do love him, you may keep him, for men are patient creatures. But that is for you to decide. I can't help you there. I am mainly concerned, for the moment, in helping you over the ice during the next day or two--if you will let me, that is. Probably you have determined not to appear in public to-night. That will be a mistake. Wear your prettiest frock, and dine with Reggie and me. We shall invite Mr. Bower to join us, and two other people--some man and woman I can depend on to keep things going. If we laugh and kick up no end of a noise, it will not only worry the remainder of the crowd, but you score heavily off the theatrical lady. See?"
"I can see that you are acting the part of the good Samaritan," cried Helen.
"Oh, dear, no--nothing so antiquated. Look at your future position--the avowed wife of a millionaire. Eh, what? as Georgie says."
"But I am not anything of the kind. Mr. Bower----"
"Mr. Bower is all right. He has the recognized history of the man who makes a good husband, and you can't help liking him, unless--unless there is another man."
"There, at least, I am----" Helen hesitated. Something gripped her heart and checked the modest protestation of her freedom.
Mrs. de la Vere laughed. "If you are not sure, you are safe," she said, with a hard ring in her utterance that belied her easygoing philosophy. "Really, you bring me back a lost decade. Now, Helen--may I call you Helen?"
"Yes, indeed."
"Well, then, don't forget that my name is Edith. You have just half an hour to dress. I need every second of the time; so off you run to your room. As I hear Reggie flinging his boots around next door, I shall hurry him and arrange about the table. Call for me. We must go to the foyer together. Now kiss me, there's a dear."
Helen was wrestling with her refractory tresses--for the coiffure that suits glaciers and Tam o'Shanters is not permissible in evening dress--when a servant brought her a note.
"DEAR MISS WYNTON," it ran,--"If you are able to come down to dinner, why not dine with me? Sincerely,
"CHARLES K. SPENCER."
She blushed and laughed a little. "I am in demand," she thought, flashing a pardonable glance at her own face in the mirror. She read the brief invitation again. Spencer had a trick of printing the K in his signature. It caught her fancy. It suggested strength, trustworthiness. She did not know then that one of the shrewdest scoundrels in the Western States had already commented on certain qualities betokened by that letter in Spencer's name.
"I cannot refuse," she murmured. "To be candid, I don't want to refuse. What shall I do?"
Bidding the servant wait, she twisted her hair into a coil, threw a wrap round her shoulders, and tapped on Mrs. de la Vere's door.
"Entrez!" cried that lady.
"I am in a bit of difficulty," said Helen. "Mr. Spencer wishes me to dine with him. Would you----"
"Certainly. I'll ask him to join us. Reggie will see him too. Really, Helen, this is amusing. I am beginning to suspect you."
So Spencer received a surprising answer. He read it without any sign of the amusement Mrs. de la Vere extracted from the situation, for Helen took care to recite the whole arrangement.
"I'm going through with this," he growled savagely, "even if I have to drink Bower's health--damn him!"
