The Silent Barrier

Explanations of motive are apt to become tedious. They are generally inaccurate too; for who can reduce a fantasy to a formula? Nor should they ever be allowed to clip the wings of romance. But the painter who bade his subject sit under a sodium light would justly be deemed a lunatic, and any analysis of Spencer’s character drawn from his latest prank would be faulty in the extreme.

In all London at that moment there was not a more level headed man of his years. He was twenty-eight, an expert mining engineer, and the successful pioneer of a new method of hauling ore. Even in Western America, “God’s own country,” as it is held to be by those who live there, few men “arrive” so early in life. Some, it is true, amass wealth by lucky speculation before they are fitted by experience to earn the price of a suit of clothes. But they are of the freak order. They are not to be classed with one who by hard work wrests a fortune out of the grim Colorado granite. Spencer had been called on to endure long years of rebuff and scorn. Though scoffed at by many who thought he was wrong, he persisted because he knew he was right.

Ofttimes Fate will test such a man almost to breaking point. Then she yields, and, being feminine, her obduracy is the measure of her favors, for she will bestow on her dogged suitor all, and more than all, that he desired.

The draft from Leadville, crammed so carelessly into a pocket when he followed the three to the door, was a fair instance of this trick of hers. A tunnel, projected and constructed in the teeth of ridicule and financial opposition, had linked up the underground workings of several mines, and proved conclusively that it was far cheaper to bring minerals to the rail in that manner than to sink expensive shafts, raise the ore to the top of a mountain, and cart it to its old level in the valley.

Once the thing was indisputable, the young engineer found himself rich and famous. To increase the feeders of the main bore, he drove another short gallery through a mining claim acquired for a few dollars, – a claim deemed worthless owing to a geological fault that traversed its whole length. That was Fate’s opportunity. Doubtless she smiled mischievously when she gave him a vein of rich quartz through which to quarry his way. The mere delving of the rock had produced two thousand dollars’ worth of ore, of which sum he took a moiety by agreement with the company that purchased his rights.

People in Leadville soon discovered that Spencer was a bright man, – “yes, sir, a citizen of whom the chief mining city of the Rocky Mountains has every reason to be proud,” – and the railway magnate who had nearly ruined him by years of hostility buried the past grandiloquently with a mot.

“Charles K. Spencer can’t be sidetracked,” he said. “That K isn’t in his name by accident. Look at it, – a regular buffer of a letter! Tell you what, you may monkey with Charles; but when you hit the K look out for trouble.”

Whereupon the miners laughed, and said that the president was a mighty smart man too, and Spencer, who knew he was a thief, but was unwilling to quarrel with him for the sake of the company, thought that a six months’ vacation in Europe would make for peace and general content.

He had no plans. He was free to wander whithersoever chance led him. Arriving in London from Plymouth late on a Thursday evening, he took a bus-driver’s holiday on Friday. Finding a tunnel under the Thames in full progress near the hotel, he sought the resident engineer, spoke to him in the lingua franca of the craft, and spent several dangerous and enjoyable hours in crawling through all manner of uncomfortable passages bored by human worms beneath the bed of the river.

And this was Saturday, and here he was, at three o’clock in the afternoon, turning over in his mind the best way of sending on an expensive trip abroad a girl who had not the remotest notion of his existence. It was a whim, and a harmless one, and he excused it to his practical mind by the reflection that he was entitled to one day of extravagance after seven years of hard labor. For his own part, he was weary of mountains. He had wrought against one, frowning and stubborn as any Alp, and had not desisted until he reached its very heart with a four thousand foot lance. Switzerland was the last place in Europe he would visit. He wanted to see old cities and dim cathedrals, to lounge in pleasant lands where rivers murmured past lush meadows. Though an American born and bred, there was a tradition in his home that the Spencers were once people of note on the border. When tired of London, he meant to go north, and ramble through Liddesdale in search of family records. But the business presently on hand was to arrange that Swiss excursion for “Helen,” and he set about it with characteristic energy.

In the first instance, he noted her name and address on the back of the Leadville envelop. Then he sought the manager.

“I guess you know Switzerland pretty well,” he said, when a polite man was produced by a boy.

The assumption was well founded. In fact, the first really important looking object the manager remembered seeing in this world was the giant Matterhorn, because his mother told him that if he was a bad boy he would be carried off by the demons that dwelt on its summit.

“What sort of places are Evian-les-Bains and Champèry?” went on Spencer.

“Evian is a fashionable lakeside town. Champèry is in the hills behind it. When Evian becomes too hot in August, one goes to Champèry to cool down.”

“Are they anywhere near the Engadine?”

“Good gracious, no! They are as different as chalk and cheese.”

“Is the Engadine the cheese? Does it take the biscuit?”

The manager laughed. Like all Londoners, he regarded every American as a humorist. “It all depends,” he said. “For my part, I think the Upper Engadine is far and away the most charming section of Switzerland; but there are ladies of my acquaintance who would unhesitatingly vote for Evian, and for a score of other places where there are promenades and casinos. Are you thinking of making a tour there?”

“There’s no telling where I may bring up when I cross the Channel,” said Spencer. “I have heard some talk of the two districts, and it occurred to me that you were just the man to give me a few useful pointers.”

“Well, the average tourist rushes from one valley to another, tramps over a pass each morning, and spends the afternoon in a train or on board a lake steamer. But if I wanted a real rest, and wished at the same time to be in a center from which pleasant walks, or stiff climbs for that matter, could be obtained, I should go by the Engadine Express to St. Moritz, and drive from there to the Maloja-Kulm, where there is an excellent hotel and usually a number of nice people.”

“English?”

“Yes, English and Americans. They select the best as a rule, you know.”

“It sounds attractive,” said Spencer.

“And it is, believe me. Don’t forget the name, Maloja-Kulm. It is twelve miles from everywhere, and practically consists of the one big hotel.”

Spencer procured his hat, gloves, and stick, and called a cab. “Take me to ‘The Firefly’ office,” he said.

“Beg pawdon, sir, but where’s that?” asked the driver.

“It’s up to you to find out.”

“Then w’at is it, guv’nor? I’ve heerd of the ’Orse an’ ’Ound, the Chicken’s Friend, the Cat, an’ the Bee; but the Firefly leaves me thinkin’. Is it a noospaper?”

“Something of the sort.”

“All right, sir. Jump in. We’ll soon be on its track.”

The hansom scampered off to Fleet-st. As the result of inquiries Spencer was deposited at the entrance to a dingy court, the depths of which, he was assured, were illumined by “The Firefly.” There is nothing that so mystifies the citizen of the New World as the hole-and-corner aspect of some of the business establishments of London. He soon learns, however, to differentiate between the spidery dens where money is amassed and the soot laden tenements in which the struggle for existence is keen. A comprehensive glance at the exterior of the premises occupied by “The Firefly” at once explained to Spencer why the cabman did not know its whereabouts. Three small rooms sufficed for its literary and commercial staff, and “To let” notices stared from several windows in the same building.

“Appearances are deceptive ever,” murmured he, as he scanned the legends on three doors in a narrow lobby; “but I think I’m beginning to catch on to the limited extent of Miss Helen’s earnings from her scientific paragraphs.”

He knocked at each door; but received no answer. Then, having sharp ears, he tried the handle of one marked “Private.” It yielded, and he entered, to be accosted angrily by a pallid, elderly, bewhiskered man, standing in front of a much littered table.

“Confound it, sir!” came the growl, “don’t you know it is Saturday afternoon? And what do you mean by coming in unannounced?”

“Guess you’re the editor?” said Spencer.

“What if I am?”

“I’ve just happened along to have a few quiet words with you. If there’s no callers Saturdays, why, that’s exactly what I want, and I came right in because you didn’t answer my knock.”

“I tell you I’m not supposed to be here.”

“Then you shouldn’t draw corks while anybody is damaging the paint outside.”

Spencer smiled so agreeably that the editor of “The Firefly” softened. At first, he had taken his visitor for an unpaid contributor; but the American accent banished this phantom of the imagination. He continued to pour into a tumbler the contents of a bottle of beer.

“Well,” he said, “now that you are here, what can I do for you, Mr. – ”

“Spencer – Charles K. Spencer.”

Instantly it struck the younger man that little more than an hour had elapsed since he gave his name to the letter clerk in the hotel. The singularity of his proceedings during that hour was thereby brought home to him. He knew nothing of newspapers, daily or weekly; but commonsense suggested that “The Firefly’s” radiance was not over-powering. His native shrewdness advised caution, though he felt sure that he could, in homely phrase, twist this faded journalist round his little finger.

“Before I open the ball,” he said, “may I see a copy of your magazine?”

Meanwhile the other was trying to sum him up. He came to the conclusion that his visitor meant to introduce some new advertising scheme, and, as “The Firefly” was sorely in need of advertisements, he decided to listen.

“Here is last week’s issue,” he said, handing to Spencer a small sixteen-page publication. The American glanced through it rapidly, while the editor sampled the beer.

“I see,” said Spencer, after he had found a column signed “H. W.,” which consisted of paragraphs translated from a German article on airships, – “I see that ‘The Firefly’ scintillates around the Tree of Knowledge.”

The editor relaxed sufficiently to smile. “That is a good description of its weekly flights,” he said.

“You don’t use many cuts?”

“N-no. They are expensive and hard to obtain for such subjects as we favor.”

“Don’t you think it would be a good notion to brighten it up a bit – put in something lively, and more in keeping with the name?”

“I have no opening for new matter, if that is what you mean,” and the editor stiffened again.

“But you have the say-so as to the contents, I suppose?”

“Oh, yes. The selection rests with me.”

“Good. I’m sort of interested in a young lady, Miss Helen Wynton by name. She lives in Warburton Gardens, and does work for you occasionally. Now, I propose to send her on a month’s trip to Switzerland, where she will represent ‘The Firefly.’ You must get her to turn out a couple of pages of readable stuff each week, which you will have illustrated by a smart artist at a cost of say, twenty pounds an article for drawings and blocks. I pay all expenses, she gets the trip, and you secure some good copy for nothing. Is it a deal?”

The editor sat down suddenly and combed his whiskers with nervous fingers. He was a weak man, and a too liberal beer diet was not good for him.

“Are you in earnest, Mr. Spencer?” he queried in a bewildered way.

“Dead in earnest. You write the necessary letter to Miss Wynton while I am here, and I hand you the first twenty in notes. You are to tell her to call Monday noon at any bank you may select, and she will be given her tickets and a hundred pounds. When I am certain that she has started I undertake to pay you a further sum of sixty pounds. I make only two conditions. You must guarantee to star her work, as it should help her some, and my identity must not be disclosed to her under any circumstances. In a word, she must regard herself as the accredited correspondent of ‘The Firefly.’ If she appears to be a trifle rattled by your generosity in the matter of terms, you must try and look as if you did that sort of thing occasionally and would like to do it often.”

The editor pushed his chair away from the table. He seemed to require more air. “Again I must ask you if you actually mean what you say?” he gasped.

Spencer opened a pocketbook and counted four five-pound notes out of a goodly bundle. “It is all here in neat copperplate,” he said, placing the notes on the table. “Maybe you haven’t caught on to the root idea of the proposition,” he continued, seeing that the other man was staring at him blankly. “I want Miss Wynton to have a real good time. I also want to lift her up a few rungs of the journalistic ladder. But she is sensitive, and would resent patronage; so I must not figure in the affair at all. I have no other motive at the back of my head. I’m putting up two hundred pounds out of sheer philanthropy. Will you help?”

“There are points about this amazing proposal that require elucidation,” said the editor slowly. “Travel articles might possibly come within the scope of ‘The Firefly’; but I am aware that Miss Wynton is what might be termed an exceedingly attractive young lady. For instance, you wouldn’t be philanthropic on my account.”

“You never can tell. It all depends how your case appealed to me. But if you are hinting that I intend to use my scheme for the purpose of winning Miss Wynton’s favorable regard, I must say that she strikes me as the kind of girl who would think she had been swindled if she learned the truth. In any event, I may never see her again, and it is certainly not my design to follow her to Switzerland. I don’t kick at your questions. You’re old enough to be her father, and mine, for that matter. Go ahead. This is Saturday afternoon, you know, and there’s no business stirring.”

Spencer had to cover the ground a second time before everything was made clear. At last the fateful letter was written. He promised to call on Monday and learn how the project fared. Then he relieved the cabman’s anxiety, as the alley possessed a second exit, and was driven to the Wellington Theater, where he secured a stall for that night’s performance of the Chinese musical comedy in which Miss Millicent Jaques played the part of a British Admiral’s daughter.

While Spencer was watching Helen’s hostess cutting capers in a Mandarin’s palace, Helen herself was reading, over and over again, a most wonderful letter that had fallen from her sky. It had all the appearance of any ordinary missive. The King’s face on a penny stamp, or so much of it as was left uninjured by a postal smudge, looked familiar enough, and both envelop and paper resembled those which had brought her other communications from “The Firefly.” But the text was magic, rank necromancy. No wizard who ever dealt in black letter treatises could have devised a more convincing proof of his occult powers than this straightforward offer made by the editor of “The Firefly.” Four articles of five thousand words each, – tickets and 100 pounds awaiting her at a bank, – go to the Maloja-Kulm Hotel; leave London at the earliest possible date; please send photographs and suggestions for black-and-white illustrations of mountaineering and society! What could it possibly mean?

At the third reading Helen began to convince herself that this rare stroke of luck was really hers. The concluding paragraph shed light on “The Firefly’s” extraordinary outburst.

“As this commission heralds a new departure for the paper, I have to ask you to be good enough not to make known the object of your journey. In fact, it will be as well if you do not state your whereabouts to any persons other than your near relatives. Of course, all need for secrecy ceases with the appearance of your first article; but by that time you will practically be on your way home again. I am anxious to impress on you the importance of this instruction.”

Helen found herein the germ of understanding. “The Firefly” meant to boom itself on its Swiss correspondence; but even that darksome piece of journalistic enterprise did not explain the princely munificence of the hundred pounds. At last, when she calmed down sufficiently to be capable of connected thought, she saw that “mountaineering” implied the hire of guides, and that “society” meant frocks. Of course it was intended that she should spend the whole of the money, and thus give “The Firefly” a fair return for its outlay. And a rapid calculation revealed the dazzling fact that after setting aside the fabulous sum of two pounds a day for expenses she still had forty pounds left wherewith to replenish her scanty stock of dresses.

Believing that at any instant the letter might dissolve into a curt request to keep her scientific jottings strictly within the limits of a column, Helen sat with it lying open on her lap, and searched the pages of a tattered guidebook for particulars of the Upper Engadine. She had read every line before; but the words now seemed to live. St. Moritz, Pontresina, Sils-Maria, Silvaplana, – they ceased to be mere names, – they became actualities. The Julier Pass, the Septimer, the Forno Glacier, the Diavolezza Route, and the rest of the stately panorama of snow capped peaks, blue lakes, and narrow valleys, – valleys which began with picturesque chalets, dun colored cattle, and herb laden pastures, and ended in the yawning mouths of ice rivers whence issued the milky white streams that dashed through the lower gorges, – they passed before her eyes as she read till she was dazzled by their glories.

What a day dream to one who dwelt in smoky London year in and year out! What an experience to look forward to! What memories to treasure! Nor was she blind to the effect of the undertaking on her future. Though “The Firefly” was not an important paper, though its editor was of a half-forgotten day and generation, she would now have good work to show when asked what she had done. She was not enamored of beetles. Even the classifying of them was monotonous, and she had striven bravely to push her way through the throng of would-be writers that besieged the doors of every popular periodical in London. It was a heartbreaking struggle. The same post that gave her this epoch marking letter had brought back two stories with the stereotyped expression of editorial regret.

“Now,” thought Helen, when her glance fell on the bulky envelops, “my name will at least become known. And editors very much resemble the public they cater for. If a writer achieves success, they all want him. I have often marveled how any author got his first chance. Now I know. It comes this way, like a flash of lightning from a summer sky.”

It was only fit and proper that she should magnify her first real commission. No veteran soldier ever donned a field marshal’s uniform with the same zest that he displayed when his subaltern’s outfit came from the tailor. So Helen glowed with that serious enthusiasm which is the soul of genius, for without it life becomes flat and gray, and she passed many anxious, half-doubting hours until a courteous bank official handed her a packet at the appointed time on Monday, and gave her a receipt to sign, and asked her how she would take her hundred pounds – did she want it all in notes or some in gold?

She was so unnerved by this sudden confirmation of her good fortune that she stammered confusedly, “I – really – don’t know.”

“Well, it would be rather heavy in gold,” came the smiling comment. “This money, I understand, is paid to you for some journalistic enterprise that will take you abroad. May I suggest that you should carry, say, thirty pounds in notes and ten in gold, and allow me to give you the balance in the form of circular notes, which are payable only under your signature?”

“Yes,” said Helen, rosy red at her own awkwardness, “that will be very nice.”

The official pushed across the counter some banknotes and sovereigns, and summoned a commissionaire to usher her into the waiting room till he had prepared the circular notes. The respite was a blessing. It gave Helen time to recover her self possession. She opened the packet and found therein coupons for the journey to and from St. Moritz, together with a letter from the sleeping car company, from which she gathered that a berth on the Engadine Express was provisionally reserved in her name for the following Thursday, but any change to a later date must be made forthwith, as the holiday pressure was beginning. It was advisable too, she was reminded, that she should secure her return berth before leaving London.

Each moment the reality of the tour became more patent. She might feel herself bewitched; but pounds sterling and railway tickets were tangible things, and not to be explained away by any fantasy. By the time her additional wealth was ready she was better fitted to guard it. She hurried away quite unconscious of the admiring eyes that were raised from dockets and ledgers behind the grille. She made for the court in which “The Firefly” had its abode. The squalor of the passage, the poverty stricken aspect of the stairs, – items which had prepared her on other occasions for the starvation rate of pay offered for her work, – now passed unheeded. This affectation of scanty means was humorous. Obviously, some millionaire had secured what the newspapers called “a controlling interest” in “The Firefly.”

She sought Mackenzie, the editor, and he received her with a manifest reluctance to waste his precious time over details that was almost as convincing as the money and vouchers she carried.

“Yes, Thursday will suit admirably,” he said in reply to her breathless questions. “You will reach Maloja on Friday evening, and if you post the first article that day week it will arrive in good time for the next number. As for the style and tone, I leave those considerations entirely to you. So long as the matter is bright and readable, that is all I want. I put my requirements clearly in my letter. Follow that, and you cannot make any mistake.”

Helen little realized how precise were the instructions given two hours earlier to the editor, the bank clerk, and the sleeping car company. Mackenzie’s curt acceptance of her mission brought a wondering cry to her lips.

“I am naturally overjoyed at my selection for this work,” she said. “May I ask how you came to think of me?”

“Oh, it is hard to say how these things are determined,” he answered. “We liked your crisp way of putting dull facts, I suppose, and thought that a young lady’s impressions of life in an Anglo-Swiss summer community would be fresher and more attractive than a man’s. That is all. I hope you will enjoy your experiences.”

“But, please, I want to thank you – ”

“Not a word! Business is business, you know. If a thing is worth doing, it must be done well. Good-by!”

He flattered himself that he could spend another man’s money with as lordly an air as the youngest journalist on Fleet-st. The difficulty was to find the man with the money, and Mackenzie had given much thought during the Sabbath to the potentialities that lay behind Spencer’s whim. He was sure the incident would not close with the publication of Miss Wynton’s articles. Judiciously handled, her unknown benefactor might prove equally beneficial to “The Firefly.”

So Helen tripped out into Fleet-st., and turned her pretty face westward, and looked so eager and happy that it is not surprising if many a man eyed her as she passed, and many a woman sighed to think that another woman could find life in this dreary city such a joyous thing.

A sharp walk through the Strand and across Trafalgar Square did a good deal toward restoring the poise of her wits. For safety, she had pinned the envelop containing her paper money and tickets inside her blouse. The mere presence of the solid little parcel reminded her at every movement that she was truly bound for the wonderful Engadine, and, now that the notion was becoming familiar, she was the more astonished that the choice of “The Firefly” had fallen on her. It was all very well for Mr. Mackenzie to say that the paper would be brightened by a woman’s views on life in the high Alps. The poor worn man looked as if such a holiday would have done him a world of good. But the certain fact remained that there was no room for error. It was she, Helen Wynton, and none other, for whom the gods had contrived this miracle. If it had been possible, she would have crossed busy Cockspur-st. with a hop, skip, and a jump in order to gain the sleeping car company’s premises.