The Silent Barrier

He seemed to pull himself up with an effort. “That way – to your left – you cannot miss the path. Addio, sigñorina,” and he lifted his hat with the inborn grace of the peasantry of Southern Europe.

Helen was hoping that he might elect to accompany her to Cavloccio. She would willingly have paid him for loss of time. Her ear was becoming better tuned each moment to his strange patois. Though he often gave a soft Italian inflection to the harsh German syllables, she grasped his meaning quite literally. She had read so much about Switzerland that she knew how Michel Croz was killed while descending the Matterhorn after having made the first ascent. That historic accident happened long before she was born. To hear a man speak of Croz as a friend sounded almost unbelievable, though a moment’s thought told her that Whymper, who led the attack on the hitherto impregnable Cervin on that July day in 1865, was still living, a keen Alpinist.

She could not refrain from asking Stampa one question, though she imagined that he was now in a hurry to take the damaged carriage back to St. Moritz. “Michel Croz was a brave man,” she said. “Did you know him well?”

“I worshiped him, fräulein,” was the reverent answer. “May I receive pardon in my last hour, but I took him for an evil spirit on the day of his death! I was with Jean Antoine Carrel in Signor Giordano’s party. We started from Breuil, Croz and his voyageurs from Zermatt. We failed; he succeeded. When we saw him and his Englishmen on the summit, we believed they were devils, because they yelled in triumph, and started an avalanche of stones to announce their victory. Three days later, Carrel and I, with two men from Breuil, tried again. We gained the top that time, and passed the place where Croz was knocked over by the English milord and the others who fell with him. I saw three bodies on the glacier four thousand feet below, – a fine burial-ground, better than that up there.”

He looked back at the pines which now hid the cemetery wall from sight. Then, with another courteous sweep of his hat, he walked away, covering the ground rapidly despite his twisted leg.

If Helen had been better trained as a woman journalist, she would have regarded this meeting with Stampa as an incident of much value. Long experience of the lights and shades of life might have rendered her less sensitive. As it was, the man’s personality appealed to her. She had been vouchsafed a glimpse into an abyss profound as that into which Stampa himself peered on the day he discovered three of the four who fell from the Matterhorn still roped together in death. The old man’s simple references to the terrors lurking in those radiant mountains had also shaken her somewhat. The snow capped Cima di Rosso no longer looked so attractive. The Orlegna Gorge had lost some of its beauty. Though the sun was pouring into its wooded depths, it had grown gloomy and somber in her eyes. Yielding to impulse, she loitered in the village, took the carriage road to the château, and sat there, with her back to the inner heights and her gaze fixed on the smiling valley that opened toward Italy out of the Septimer Pass.

Meanwhile, Stampa hurried past the stables, where his horses were munching the remains of the little oaten loaves which form the staple food of hard worked animals in the Alps. He entered the hotel by the main entrance, and was on his way to the manager’s bureau, when Spencer, smoking on the veranda, caught sight of him.

Instantly the American started in pursuit. By this time he had heard of Helen’s accident from one of yesterday’s passers by. It accounted for the delay; but he was anxious to learn exactly what had happened.

Stampa reached the office first. He was speaking to the manager, when Spencer came in and said in his downright way:

“This is the man who drove Miss Wynton from St. Moritz last night. I don’t suppose I shall be able to understand what he says. Will you kindly ask him what caused the trouble?”

“It is quite an easy matter,” was the smiling response. “Poor Stampa is not only too eager to pass every other vehicle on the road, but he is inclined to watch the mountains rather than his horses’ ears. He was a famous guide once; but he met with misfortune, and took to carriage work as a means of livelihood. He has damaged his turnout twice this year; so this morning he was dismissed by telephone, and another driver is coming from St. Moritz to take his place.”

Spencer looked at Stampa. He liked the strong, worn face, with its half wistful, half resigned expression. An uneasy feeling gripped him that the whim of a moment in the Embankment Hotel might exert its crazy influence in quarters far removed from the track that seemed then to be so direct and pleasure-giving.

“Why did he want to butt in between the other fellow and the landscape? What was the hurry, anyhow?” he asked.

Stampa smiled genially when the questions were translated to him. “I was talking to the sigñorina,” he explained, using his native tongue, for he was born on the Italian side of the Bernina.

“That counts, but it gives no good reason why he should risk her life,” objected Spencer.

Stampa’s weather furrowed cheeks reddened. “There was no danger,” he muttered wrathfully. “Madonna! I would lose the use of another limb rather than hurt a hair of her head. Is she not my good angel? Has she not drawn me back from the gate of hell? Risk her life! Are people saying that because a worm-eaten wheel went to pieces against a stone?”

“What on earth is he talking about?” demanded Spencer. “Has he been pestering Miss Wynton this morning with some story of his present difficulties?”

The manager knew Stampa’s character. He put the words in kindlier phrase. “Does the sigñorina know that you have lost your situation?” he said.

Even in that mild form, the suggestion annoyed the old man. He flung it aside with scornful gesture, and turned to leave the office. “Tell the gentleman to go to Zermatt and ask in the street if Christian Stampa the guide would throw himself on a woman’s charity,” he growled.

Spencer did not wait for any interpretation. “Hold on,” he said quietly. “What is he going to do now? Work, for a man of his years, doesn’t grow on gooseberry bushes, I suppose.”

“Christian, Christian! You are hot-headed as a boy,” cried the manager. “The fact is,” he went on, “he came to me to offer his services. But I have already engaged more drivers than I need, and I am dismissing some stable men. Perhaps he can find a job in St. Moritz.”

“Are his days as guide ended?”

“Unfortunately, yes. I believe he is as active as ever; but people won’t credit it. And you cannot blame them. When one’s safety depends on a man who may have to cling to an ice covered rock like a fly to a window-pane, one is apt to distrust a crooked leg.”

“Did he have an accident?”

The manager hesitated. “It is part of his sad history,” he said. “He fell, and nearly killed himself; but he was hurrying to see the last of a daughter to whom he was devoted.”

“Is he a local man, then?”

“No. Oh, no! The girl happened to be here when the end came.”

“Well, I guess he will suit my limited requirements in the fly and window-pane business while I remain in Maloja,” said Spencer. “Tell him I am willing to put up ten francs a day and extras for his exclusive services as guide during my stay.”

Poor Stampa was nearly overwhelmed by this unexpected good fortune. In his agitation he blurted out, “Ah, then, the good God did really send an angel to my help this morning!”

Spencer, however, reviewing his own benevolence over a pipe outside the hotel, expressed the cynical opinion that the hot sun was affecting his brain. “I’m on a loose end,” he communed. “Next time I waft myself to Europe on a steamer I’ll bring my mother. It would be a bully fine notion to cable for her right away. I want someone to take care of me. It looks as if I had a cinch on running this hotel gratis. What in thunder will happen next?”

He could surely have answered that query if he had the least inkling of the circumstances governing Helen’s prior meeting with Stampa. As it was, the development of events followed the natural course. While Spencer strolled off by the side of the lake, the old guide lumbered into the village street, and waited there, knowing that he would waylay the bella Inglesa on her return. Though she came from the château and not from Cavloccio, he did not fail to see her.

At first she was at a loss to fathom the cause of Stampa’s delight, and still less to understand why he should want to thank her with such exuberance. She imagined he was overjoyed at having gone back to his beloved profession, and it was only by dint of questioning that she discovered the truth. Then it dawned on her that the man had been goaded to desperation by the curt message from St. Moritz, – that he was sorely tempted to abandon the struggle, and follow into the darkness the daughter taken from him so many years ago, – and the remembrance of her suspicion when they were about to part at the cemetery gate lent a serious note to her words of congratulation.

“You see, Stampa,” she said, “you were very wrong to lose faith this morning. At the very moment of your deepest despair Heaven was providing a good friend for you.”

“Yes, indeed, fräulein. That is why I waited here. I felt that I must thank you. It was all through you. The good God sent you – ”

“I think you are far more beholden to the gentleman who employed you than to me,” she broke in.

“Yes, he is splendid, the young voyageur; but it was wholly on your account, lady. He was angry with me at first, because he thought I placed you in peril in the matter of the wheel.”

Helen was amazed. “He spoke of me?” she cried.

“Ah, yes. He did not say much, but his eyes looked through me. He has the eyes of a true man, that young American.”

She was more bewildered than ever. “What is his name?” she asked.

“Here it is. The director wrote it for me, so that I may learn how to pronounce it.”

Stampa produced a scrap of paper, and Helen read, “Mr. Charles K. Spencer.”

“Are you quite certain he mentioned me?” she repeated.

“Can I be mistaken, fräulein. I know, because I studied the labels on your boxes. Mees Hélène Weenton – so? And did he not rate me about the accident?”

“Well, wonders will never cease,” she vowed; and indeed they were only just beginning in her life, which shows how blind to excellent material wonders can be.

At luncheon she summoned the head waiter. “Is there a Mr. Charles K. Spencer staying in the hotel?” she asked.

“Yes, madam.”

“Will you please tell me if he is in the room?”

The head waiter turned. Spencer was studying the menu. “Yes, madam. There he is, sitting alone, at the second table from the window.”

It was quite to be expected that the subject of their joint gaze should look at them instantly. There is a magnetism in the human eye that is unfailing in that respect, and its power is increased a hundredfold when a charming young woman tries it on a young man who happens to be thinking of her at the moment.

Then Spencer realized that Stampa had told Helen what had taken place in the hotel bureau, and he wanted to kick himself for having forgotten to make secrecy a part of the bargain.

Helen, knowing that he knew, blushed furiously. She tried to hide her confusion by murmuring something to the head waiter. But in her heart she was saying, “Who in the world is he? I have never seen him before last night. And why am I such an idiot as to tremble all over just because he happened to catch me looking at him?”

CHAPTER VI

THE BATTLEFIELD

Both man and woman were far too well bred to indulge in an œillade. The knowledge that each was thinking of the other led rather to an ostentatious avoidance of anything that could be construed into any such flirtatious overture.

Though Stampa’s curious statement had puzzled Helen, she soon hit on the theory that the American must have heard of the accident to her carriage. Yes, that supplied a ready explanation. No doubt he kept a sharp lookout for her on the road. He arrived at the hotel almost simultaneously with herself, and she had not forgotten his somewhat inquiring glance as they stood together on the steps. With the chivalry of his race in all things concerning womankind, he was eager to render assistance, and under the circumstances he probably wondered what sort of damsel in distress it was that needed help. It was natural enough too that in engaging Stampa he should refer to the carelessness that brought about the collapse of the wheel. Really, when one came to analyze an incident seemingly inexplicable, it resolved itself into quite commonplace constituents.

She found it awkward that he should be sitting between her and a window commanding the best view of the lake. If Spencer had been at any other table, she could have feasted her eyes on the whole expanse of the Ober-Engadin Valley. Therefore she had every excuse for looking that way, whereas he had none for gazing at her. Spencer appeared to be aware of this disability. For lack of better occupation he scrutinized the writing on the menu with a prolonged intentness worthy of a gourmand or an expert graphologist.

Helen rose first, and that gave him an opportunity to note her graceful carriage. Though born in the States, he was of British stock, and he did not share the professed opinion of the American humorist that the typical Englishwoman is angular, has large feet, and does not know how to walk. Helen, at any rate, betrayed none of these elements of caricature. Though there were several so-called “smart” women in the hotel, – women who clung desperately to the fringe of Society on both sides of the Atlantic, – his protégée was easily first among the few who had any claim to good looks.

Helen was not only tall and lithe, but her movements were marked by a quiet elegance. It was her custom, in nearly all weathers, to walk from Bayswater to Professor von Eulenberg’s study, which, needless to 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 tête-à-tête. 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 Jetée 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!”