The Silent Barrier Part 6

"And a fair hit to your credit. Let me urge in self defense that if life in France bubbles, it occasionally leaves a bitter taste in the mouth. Now you shall go and read, and sleep a little perhaps, if that is not a heretical thing to suggest. We have the same table for afternoon tea and dinner."

Helen had never met such a versatile man. He talked of most things with knowledge and restraint and some humor. She could not help admitting that the journey would have been exceedingly dull without his companions.h.i.+p, and he had the tact to make her feel that he was equally indebted to her for pa.s.sing the long hours. At dinner she noticed that they were served with dishes not supplied to others in the dining car.

"I hope you have not been ordering a dreadfully expensive meal," she ventured to say. "I must pay my share, you know, and I am quite an economical person."

"There!" he vowed. "That is the first unkind word you have uttered.

Surely you will not refuse to be my guest? Indeed, I was hoping that to-day marked the beginning of a new era, wherein we might meet at times and criticize humanity to our hearts' content."

"I should feel unhappy if I did not pay," she insisted.

"Well, then, I shall charge you table d'hote prices. Will that content you?"

So, when the attendant came to the other tables, Helen produced her purse, and Bower solemnly accepted her few francs; but no bill was presented to him.

"You see," he said, smiling at her through a gla.s.s of golden wine, "you have missed a great opportunity. Not one woman in a million can say that she has dined at the railway company's expense in France."

She was puzzled. His manner had become slightly more confidential during the meal. It needed no feminine intuition to realize that he admired her. Excitement, the sea air, the heated atmosphere, and unceasing onrush of the train, had flushed her cheeks and lent a deeper shade to her brown eyes. She knew that Bower's was not the only glance that dwelt on her with a curious and somewhat unnerving apprais.e.m.e.nt. Other men, and not a few women, stared at her. The mirror in her dressing room had told her that she was looking her best, and her heart fluttered a little at the thought that she had succeeded, without effort, in winning the appreciation of a man highly placed in the world of fas.h.i.+on and finance. The conceit induced an odd feeling of embarra.s.sment. To dispel it she took up his words in a vein of playful sarcasm.

"If you a.s.sure me that for some unexplained reason the railway authorities are giving us this excellent dinner for nothing, please return my money," she said.

"The gifts of the G.o.ds, and eke of railway companies, must be taken without question," he answered. "No, I shall keep your pieces of silver. I mean to invest them. It will amuse me to learn how much I can make on an initial capital of twelve francs, fifty centimes. Will you allow that? I shall be scrupulously accurate, and submit an audited account at Christmas. Even my worst enemies have never alleged dishonesty against me. Is it a bargain?"

"Y-yes," she stammered confusedly, hardly knowing what he meant. He was leaning over the small table and looking steadfastly at her. She noticed that the wine and food had made his skin greasy. It suddenly occurred to her that Mark Bower resembled certain exotic plants which must be viewed from a distance if they would gratify the critical senses. The gloss of a careful toilet was gone. He was altogether cruder, coa.r.s.er, more animal, since he had eaten, though his consumption of wine was quite moderate. His big, rather fierce eyes were more than prominent now; they bulged. Certain Jewish characteristics in his face had become accentuated. She remembered the ancient habit of anointing with oil, and laughed at the thought, for that was a little trick of hers to conceal nervousness.

"You doubt me, then?" he half whispered. "Or do you deem it beyond the power of finance to convert so small a sum into hundreds--it may be thousands--of pounds in six months?"

"Indeed I should credit you with ability to do that and more, Mr.

Bower," she said; "but I was wondering why you made such an offer to a mere acquaintance,--one whom it is more than likely you will never meet again."

The phrase had a harsh and awkward sound in her ears. Bower, to her relief, seemed to ignore it.

"It is permissible to gratify an impulse once in awhile," he countered. "And not to mention the audited accounts, there was a matter of theater tickets that should serve to bring us together again. Won't you give me your address, in London if not in Switzerland? Here is mine."

He produced a pocketbook, and picked out a card. It bore his name and his club. He added, in pencil, "50 Hamilton Place."

"Letters sent to my house reach me, no matter where I may happen to be," he said.

The incident brought fresh tremors to Helen. Indeed, the penciled address came as an unpleasant shock; for Millicent Jaques, on the day they met in Piccadilly, having gone home with Helen to tea, excused an early departure on the ground that she was due to dinner at that very house.

But she took the card, and strove desperately to appear at ease, for she had no cause to quarrel with one whose manners were so courteous.

"Thank you very much," she said. "If you care to see my articles in the--in the paper, I shall send you copies. Now I must say good by. I am rather tired. Before I go let me say how deeply indebted I feel for your kindness to-day."

She rose. Bower stood up too, and bowed with smiling deference. "Good night," he said. "You will not be disturbed by the customs people at the frontier. I have arranged all that."

Helen made the best of her way along the swaying corridors till she reached her section of the sleeping car; but Bower resumed his seat at the table. He ordered a gla.s.s of fine champagne and held it up to the light. There was a decided frown on his strong face, and the attendant who served him imagined that there was something wrong with the liqueur.

"_N'est-ce pas bon, m'sieur?_" he began.

"Will you go to the devil?" said Bower, speaking very slowly without looking at him.

"_Oui, m'sieur, Je vous a.s.sure_," and the man disappeared.

It was not the wine, but the woman, that was perplexing him. Not often had the lure of gold failed so signally. And why was she so manifestly startled at the last moment? Had he gone too far? Was he mistaken in the a.s.sumption that Millicent Jaques had said little or nothing concerning him to her friend? And this commission too,--there were inexplicable features about it. He knew a great deal of the ways of newspapers, daily and weekly, and it was not the journalistic habit to send inexperienced young women on costly journeys to write up Swiss summer resorts.

He frowned still more deeply as he thought of the Maloja-Kulm Hotel, for Helen had innocently affixed a label bearing her address on her handbag. He peopled it with dozens of smart young men and not a few older beaux of his own type. His features relaxed somewhat when he remembered the women. Helen was alone, and far too good-looking to command sympathy. There should be the elements of trouble in that quarter. If he played his cards well, and he had no reason to doubt his skill, Helen should greet him as her best friend when he surprised her by appearing unexpectedly at the Maloja-Kulm.

Then he waxed critical. She was young, and lively, and unquestionably pretty; but was she worth all this planning and contriving? She was by way of being a prude too, and held serious notions of women's place in the scheme of things. At any rate, the day's hunting had not brought him far out of his path, Frankfort being his real objective, and he would make up his mind later. Perhaps she would remove all obstacles by writing to him on her return to London; but the recollection of her frank, clear gaze, of lips that were molded for strength as well as sweetness, of the dignity and grace with which the well shaped head was poised on a white firm neck, warned him that such a woman might surrender to love, but never to greed.

Then he laughed, and ordered another liqueur, and drank a toast to to-morrow, when all things come to pa.s.s for the man who knows how to contrive to-day.

In the early morning, at Basle, he awoke, and was somewhat angry with himself when he found that his thoughts still dwelt on Helen Wynton.

In the cold gray glimmer of dawn, and after the unpleasant shaking his pampered body had received all night, some of the romance of this latest quest had evaporated. He was stiff and weary, and he regretted the whim that had led him a good twelve hours astray. But he roused himself and dressed with care. Some twenty minutes short of Zurich he sent an attendant to Miss Wynton's berth to inquire if she would join him for early coffee at that station, there being a wait of a quarter of an hour before the train went on to Coire.

Helen, who was up and dressed, said she would be delighted. She too had been thinking, and, being a healthy-minded and kind-hearted girl, had come to the conclusion that her abrupt departure the previous night was wholly uncalled for and ungracious.

So it was with a smiling face that she awaited Bower on the steps of her carriage. She shook hands with him cordially, did not object in the least degree when he seized her arm to pilot her through a noisy crowd of foreigners, and laughed with utmost cheerfulness when they both failed to drink some extraordinarily hot coffee served in gla.s.ses that seemed to be hotter still.

Helen had the rare distinction of being quite as bright and pleasing to the eye in the searching light of the sun's first rays as at any other hour. Bower, though spruce and dandified, looked rather worn.

"I did not sleep well," he explained. "And the rails to the frontier on this line are the worst laid in Europe."

"It is early yet," she said. "Why not turn in again when you reach your hotel?"

"Perish the thought!" he cried. "I shall wander disconsolate by the side of the lake. Please say you will miss me at breakfast. And, by the way, you will find a table specially set apart for you. I suppose you change at Coire?"

"How kind and thoughtful you are. Yes, I am going to the Engadine, you know."

"Well, give my greetings to the high Alps. I have climbed most of them in my time. More improbable things have happened than that I may renew the acquaintance with some of my old friends this year. What fun if you and I met on the Matterhorn or Jungfrau! But they are far away from the valley of the inn, and perhaps you do not climb."

"I have never had the opportunity; but I mean to try. Moreover, it is part of my undertaking."

"Then may we soon be tied to the same rope!"

Thus they parted, with cheery words, and, on Helen's side, a genuine wish that they might renew a pleasant acquaintance. Bower waited on the platform to see the last of her as the train steamed away.

"Yes, it is worth while," he muttered, when the white feathers on her hat were no longer visible. He did not go to the lake, but to the telegraph office, and there he wrote two long messages, which he revised carefully, and copied. Yet he frowned again, even while he was paying for their transmission. Never before had he taken such pains to win any woman's regard. And the knowledge vexed him, for the taking of pains was not his way with women.

CHAPTER IV

HOW HELEN CAME TO MALOJA

At Coire, or Chur, as the three-tongued Swiss often term it--German being the language most in vogue in Switzerland--Helen found a cheerful looking mountain train awaiting the coming of its heavy brother from far off Calais. It was soon packed to the doors, for those Alpine valleys hum with life and movement during the closing days of July. Even in the first cla.s.s carriages nearly every seat was filled in a few minutes, while pandemonium reigned in the cheaper sections.

Helen, having no c.u.mbersome baggage to impede her movements, was swept in on the crest of the earliest wave, and obtained a corner near the corridor. She meant to leave her handbag there, stroll up and down the station for a few minutes, mainly to look at the cosmopolitan crowd, and perhaps buy some fruit; but the babel of English, German, French, and Italian, mixed with sc.r.a.ps of Russian and Czech, that raged round a distracted conductor warned her that the wiser policy was to sit still.