Helen rose betimes next morning; but she found that the sun had kept an earlier tryst. Not a cloud marred a sky of dazzling blue. The phantom mist had gone with the shadows. From her bed room window she could see the whole length of the Ober-Engadin, till the view was abruptly shut off by the giant shoulders of Lagrev and Rosatch. The brilliance of the coloring was the landscape’s most astounding feature. The lakes were planes of polished turquoise, the rocks pure grays and browns and reds, the meadows emerald green, while the shining white patches of snow on the highest mountain slopes helped to blacken by contrast the somber clumps of pines that gathered thick wherever man had not disputed with the trees the tenancy of each foot of meager loam.
This morning glory of nature gladdened the girl’sheart and drove from it the overnight vapors. She dressed hurriedly, made a light breakfast, and went out.
There was no need to ask the way. In front of the hotel the narrow Silser See filled the valley. Close behind lay the crest of the pass. A picturesque château was perched on a sheer rock overhanging the Vale of Bregaglia and commanding a far flung prospect almost to the brink of Como. On both sides rose the mountain barriers; but toward the east there was an inviting gorge, beyond which the lofty Cima di Rosso flung its eternal snows heavenward.
A footpath led in that direction. Helen, who prided herself on her sense of locality, decided that it would bring her to the valley in which were situated, as she learned by the map, a small lake and a glacier.
“That will be a fine walk before lunch,” she said, “and it is quite impossible to lose the way.”
So she set off, crossing the hotel golf course, and making for a typical Swiss church that crowned the nearest of the foothills. Passing the church, she found the double doors in the porch open, and peeped in. It was a cozy little place, cleaner and less garish than such edifices are usually on the Continent. The lamp burning before the sanctuary showed that it was devoted to Roman Catholic worship. The red gleam of the tiny sentinel conveyed a curiously vivid impression of faith and spirituality. Though Helenwas a Protestant, she was conscious of a benign emotion arising from the presence of this simple token of belief.
“I must ascertain the hours of service,” she thought. “It will be delightful to join the Swiss peasants in prayer. One might come near the Creator in this rustic tabernacle.”
She did not cross the threshold of the inner door. At present her mind was fixed on brisk movement in the marvelous air. She wanted to absorb the sunshine, to dispel once and for all the unpleasing picture of life in the high Alps presented by the stupid crowd she had met in the hotel overnight. Of course, she was somewhat unjust there; but women are predisposed to trust first impressions, and Helen was no exception to her sex.
Beyond the church the path was not so definite. Oddly enough, it seemed to go along the flat top of a low wall down to a tiny mountain stream. Steps were cut in the opposite hillside, but they were little used, and higher up, among some dwarf pines and azaleas, a broader way wound back toward the few scattered chalets that nestled under the château.
As the guidebook spoke of a carriage road to Lake Cavloccio, and a bridle path thence to within a mile of the Forno glacier, she came to the conclusion that she was taking a short cut. At any rate, on the summit of the next little hill she would be able to see her way quite distinctly, so she jumped acrossthe brook and climbed through the undergrowth. Before she had gone twenty yards she stopped. She was almost certain that someone was sobbing bitterly up there among the trees. It had an uncanny sound, this plaint of grief in such a quiet, sunlit spot. Still, sorrow was not an affrighting thing to Helen. It might stir her sympathies, but it assuredly could not drive her away in panic.
She went on, not noiselessly, as she did not wish to intrude on some stranger’s misery. Soon she came to a low wall, and, before she quite realized her surroundings, she was looking into a grass grown cemetery. It was a surprise, this ambush of the silent company among the trees. Hidden away from the outer world, and so secluded that its whereabouts remain unknown to thousands of people who visit the Maloja each summer, there was an aspect of stealth in its sudden discovery that was almost menacing. But Helen was not a nervous subject. The sobbing had ceased, and when the momentary effect of such a depressing environment had been resolutely driven off, she saw that a rusty iron gate was open. The place was very small. There were a few monuments, so choked with weeds and dank grass that their inscriptions were illegible. She had never seen a more desolate graveyard. Despite the vivid light and the joyous breeze rustling the pine branches, its air of abandonment was depressing. She fought against the sensation as unworthy of her intelligence; but she had some reason for it in thefact that there was no visible explanation of the mourning she had undoubtedly heard.
Then she uttered an involuntary cry, for a man’s head and shoulders rose from behind a leafy shrub. Instantly she was ashamed of her fear. It was the old guide who acted as coachman the previous evening, and he had been lying face downward on the grass in that part of the cemetery given over to the unnamed dead.
He recognized her at once. Struggling awkwardly to his feet, he said in broken and halting German, “I pray your forgiveness,fräulein. I fear I have alarmed you.”
“It is I who should ask forgiveness,” she said. “I came here by accident. I thought I could go to Cavloccio by this path.”
She could have hit on no other words so well calculated to bring him back to every day life. To direct the steps of wanderers in his beloved Engadine was a real pleasure to him. For an instant he forgot that they had both spoken German.
“No, no!” he cried animatedly. “For lek him go by village. Bad road dissa way. No cross ze field.Verboten!”
Then Helen remembered that trespassers are sternly warned off the low lying lands in the mountains. Grass is scarce and valuable. Until the highest pastures yield to the arid rock, pedestrians must keep to the beaten track.
“I was quite mistaken,” she said. “I see nowthat the path I was trying to reach leads here only. And I am very, very sorry I disturbed you.”
“I fear I have alarmed you, fräulein.”“I fear I have alarmed you,fräulein.”Page88
He hobbled nearer, the ruin of a fine man, with a nobly proportioned head and shoulders, but sadly maimed by the accident which, to all appearances, made him useless as a guide.
“Pardon an old man’s folly,fräulein,” he said humbly. “I thought none could hear, and I felt the loss of my little girl more than ever to-day.”
“Your daughter? Is she buried here?”
“Yes. Many a year has passed; but I miss her now more than ever. She was all I had in the world,fräulein. I am alone now, and that is a hard thing when the back is bent with age.”
Helen’s eyes grew moist; but she tried bravely to control her voice. “Was she young?” she asked softly.
“Only twenty,fräulein, only twenty, and as tall and fair as yourself. They carried her here sixteen years ago this very day. I did not even see her. On the previous night I fell on Corvatsch.”
“Oh, how sad! But why did she die at that age? And in this splendid climate? Was her death unexpected?”
“Unexpected!” He turned and looked at the huge mountain of which the cemetery hill formed one of the lowermost buttresses. “If the Piz della Margna were to topple over and crush me where I stand, it would be less unforeseen than was my sweet Etta’s fate. But I frighten you, lady,—a poor returnfor your kindness. That is your way,—through the village, and by the postroad till you reach a notice board telling you where to take the path.”
There was a crude gentility in his manner that added to the pathos of his words. Helen was sure that he wished to be left alone with his memories. Yet she lingered.
“Please tell me your name,” she said. “I may visit St. Moritz while I remain here, and I shall try to find you.”
“Christian Stampa,” he said. He seemed to be on the point of adding something, but checked himself. “Christian Stampa,” he repeated, after a pause. “Everybody knows old Stampa the guide. If I am not there, and you go to Zermatt some day—well, just ask for Stampa. They will tell you what has become of me.”
She found it hard to reconcile this broken, careworn old man with her cheery companion of the previous afternoon. What did he mean? She understood his queer jargon of Italianized German quite clearly; but there was a sinister ring in his words that blanched her face. She could not leave him in his present mood. She was more alarmed now than when she saw him rising ghostlike from behind the screen of grass and weeds.
“Please walk with me to the village,” she said. “All this beautiful land is strange to me. It will divert your thoughts from a mournful topic if you tell me something of its wonders.”
He looked at her for an instant. Then his eyes fell on the church in the neighboring hollow, and he crossed himself, murmuring a few words in Italian. She guessed their meaning. He was thanking the Virgin for having sent to his rescue a girl who reminded him of his lost Etta.
“Yes,” he said, “I will come. If I were remaining in the Maloja,fräulein, I would beg you to let me take you to the Forno, and perhaps to one of the peaks beyond. Old as I am, and lame, you would be safe with me.”
Helen breathed freely again. She felt that she had been within measurable distance of a tragedy. Nor was there any call on her wits to devise fresh means of drawing his mind away from the madness that possessed him a few minutes earlier. As he limped unevenly by her side, his talk was of the mountains. Did she intend to climb? Well, slow and sure was the golden rule. Do little or nothing during four or five days, until she had grown accustomed to the thin and keen Alpine air. Then go to Lake Lunghino,—that would suffice for the first real excursion. Next day, she ought to start early, and climb the mountain overlooking that same lake,—up there, on the other side of the hotel,—all rock and not difficult. If the weather was clear, she would have a grand view of the Bernina range. Next she might try the Forno glacier. It was a simple thing. She could go to and from thecabanein ten hours. Afterward, the Cima di Rosso offered an easy climb;but that meant sleeping at the hut. All of which was excellent advice, though the reflection came that Stampa’s “slow and sure” methods were not strongly in evidence some sixteen hours earlier.
Now, the Cima di Rosso was in full view at that instant. Helen stopped.
“Do you really mean to tell me that if I wish to reach the top of that mountain, I must devote two days to it?” she cried.
Stampa, though bothered with troubles beyond her ken, forgot them sufficiently to laugh grimly. “It is farther away than you seem to think,fräulein; but the real difficulty is the ice. Unless you cross some of the crevasses in the early morning, before the sun has had time to undo the work accomplished by the night’s frost, you run a great risk. And that is why you must be ready to start from thecabaneat dawn. Moreover, at this time of year, you get the finest view about six o’clock.”
The mention of crevasses was somewhat awesome. “Is it necessary to be roped when one tries that climb?” she asked.
“If any guide ever tells you that you need not be roped while crossing ice or climbing rock, turn back at once,fräulein. Wait for another day, and go with a man who knows his business. That is how the Alps get a bad name for accidents. Look at me! I have climbed the Matterhorn forty times, and the Jungfrau times out of count, and never did I or anyone in my care come to grief. ‘Use the ropeproperly,’ is my motto, and it has never failed me, not even when two out of five of us were struck senseless by falling stones on the south side of Monte Rosa.”
Helen experienced another thrill. “I very much object to falling stones,” she said.
Stampa threw out his hands in emphatic gesture. “What can one do?” he cried. “They are always a danger, like the snow cornice and thenévé. There is a chimney on the Jungfrau through which stones are constantly shooting from a height of two thousand feet. You cannot see them,—they travel too fast for the eye. You hear something sing past your ears, that is all. Occasionally there is a report like a gunshot, and then you observe a little cloud of dust rising from a new scar on a rock. If you are hit—well, there is no dust, because the stone goes right through. Of course one does not loiter there.”
Then, seeing the scared look on her face, he went on. “Ladies should not go to such places. It is not fit. But for men, yes. There is the joy of battle. Do not err,fräulein,—the mountains are alive. And they fight to the death. They can be beaten; but there must be no mistakes. They are like strong men, the hills. When you strive against them, strain them to your breast and never relax your grip. Then they yield slowly, with many a trick and false move that a man must learn if he would look down over them all and say, ‘I am lord here.’ Ah me! ShallI ever again cross the Col du Lion or climb the Great Tower? But there! I am old, and thrown aside. Boys whom I engaged as porters would refuse me now as their porter. Better to have died like my friend, Michel Croz, than live to be a goatherd.”
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 discoveredthree 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 beable 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 thesigñorina,” 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 thesigñorinaknow 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 careof 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 thebella Inglesaon 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 youngvoyageur; 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. “Isthere 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?”
Both man and woman were far too well bred to indulge in anœillade. 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 movementswere 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 soncoolly 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 theirbehalf 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 thingsproperly, 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 winthe 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 fellowin 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!”
George was still obdurate. A masquerading waiter differed from Helen in many essentials. “He was a Frenchman, an’ they’re mostly rotters. This girl is English, General, an’ I shall look a proper sort of an ass if I freeze up suddenly after what I’ve said to her.”
“Not for the first time, my boy, and mebbe not for the last.” Then, in view of the younger man’s obvious defiance, the General’s white mustache bristled. “Of course, you can please yourself,” he growled: “but neither Mrs. Wragg nor my daughterswill tolerate your acquaintance with that person!”
“Oh, all right, General,” came the irritated answer. “Between you an’ the mater I’ve got to come to heel; but it’s a beastly shame, I say, an’ you’re all makin’ a jolly big mistake.”
Georgie’s intelligence might be superficial; but he knew a lady when he met one, and Helen had attracted him powerfully. He was thanking his stars for the good fortune that numbered him among the earliest of her acquaintances in the hotel, and it was too bad that the barring edict should have been issued against her so unexpectedly. But he was not of a fighting breed, and he quailed before the threat of Mrs. Wragg’s displeasure.
Helen, after a delightful ramble past the château and along the picturesque turns and twists of the Colline des Artistes, returned in time for tea, which was served on the veranda, the common rendezvous of the hotel during daylight. No one spoke to her. She went out again, and walked by the lake till the shadows fell and the mountains glittered in purple and gold. She dressed herself in a simple white evening frock, dined in solitary state, and ventured into the ball room after dinner.
Georgie was dancing with Mrs. de la Vere, a languid looking woman who seemed to be pining for admiration. At the conclusion of the waltz that was going on when Helen entered, Vavasour brought his partner a whisky and soda and a cigarette. Hepassed Helen twice, but ignored her, and whirled one of the Wragg girls off into a polka. Again he failed to see her when parties were being formed for a quadrille. Even to herself she did not attempt to deny a feeling of annoyance, though she extracted a bitter amusement from the knowledge that she had been slighted by such a vapid creature.
She was under no misconception as to what had happened. The women were making a dead set against her. If she had been plain or dowdy, they might have been friendly enough. It was an unpardonable offense that she should be good looking, unchaperoned, and not one of the queerly assorted mixture they deemed theirmonde. For a few minutes she was really angry. She realized that her only crime was poverty. Given a little share of the wealth held by many of these passée matrons and bold-eyed girls, she would be a reigning star among them, and could act and talk as she liked. Yet her shyness and reserve would have been her best credentials to any society that was constituted on a sounder basis than a gathering of snobs. Among really well-born people she would certainly have been received on an equal footing until some valid reason for ostracism was forthcoming. The imported limpets on this Swiss rock of gentility were not sure of their own grip. Hence, they strenuously refused to make room for a newcomer until they were shoved aside.
Poor, disillusioned Helen! When she went tochurch she prayed to the good Lord to deliver her and everybody else from envy, hatred, and malice, and all uncharitableness. She felt now that there might well be added to the Litany a fresh petition which should include British communities on the Continent in the list of avoidable evils.
At that instant the piquant face and figure of Millicent Jaques rose before her mind’s eye. She pictured to herself the cool effrontery with which the actress would crush these waspish women by creating a court of every eligible man in the place. It was not a healthy thought, but it was the offspring of sheer vexation, and Helen experienced her second temptation that day when de la Vere, the irresistible “Reginald” of Mrs. Vavasour’s sketchy reminiscences, came and asked her to dance.
She recognized him at once. He sat with Mrs. de la Vere at table, and never spoke to her unless it was strictly necessary. He had distinguished manners, a pleasant voice, and a charming smile, and he seemed to be the devoted slave of every pretty woman in the hotel except his wife.
“Please pardon the informality,” he said, with an affability that cloaked the impertinence. “We are quite a family party at Maloja. I hear you are staying here some weeks, and we are bound to get to know each other sooner or later.”
Helen could dance well. She was so mortified by the injustice meted out to her that she almost accepted de la Vere’s partnership on the spur of themoment. But her soul rebelled against the man’s covert insolence, and she said quietly:
“No, thank you. I do not care to dance.”
“May I sit here and talk?” he persisted.
“I am just going,” she said, “and I think Mrs. de la Vere is looking for you.”
By happy chance the woman in question was standing alone in the center of the ball room, obviously in quest of some man who would take her to the foyer for a cigarette. Helen retreated with the honors of war; but the irresistible one only laughed.
“That idiot Georgie told the truth, then,” he admitted. “And she knows what the other women are saying. What cats these dear creatures can be, to be sure!”
Spencer happened to be an interested onlooker. Indeed, he was trying to arrive at the best means of obtaining an introduction to Helen when he saw de la Vere stroll leisurely up to her with the assured air of one sated by conquest. The girl brushed close to him as he stood in the passage. She held her head high and her eyes were sparkling. He had not heard what was said; but de la Vere’s discomfiture was so patent that even his wife smiled as she sailed out on the arm of a youthful purveyor of cigarettes.
Spencer longed for an opportunity to kick de la Vere; yet, in some sense, he shared that redoubtable lady-killer’s rebuff. He too was wondering if the social life of a Swiss hotel would permit him to seek a dance with Helen. Under existing conditions, itwould provide quite a humorous episode, he told himself, to strike up a friendship with her. He could not imagine why she had adopted such an aloof attitude toward all and sundry; but it was quite evident that she declined anything in the guise of promiscuous acquaintance. And he, like her, felt lonely. There were several Americans in the hotel, and he would probably meet some of the men in the bar or smoking room after the dance was ended. But he would have preferred a pleasant chat with Helen that evening, and now she had gone to her room in a huff.
Then an inspiration came to him. “Guess I’ll stir up Mackenzie to send along an introduction,” he said. “A telegram will fix things.”
It was not quite so easy to explain matters in the curt language of the wire, he found, and it savored of absurdity to amaze the beer-drinking Scot with a long message. So he compromised between desire and expediency by a letter.