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!”
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 daughters will 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. He passed 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 their monde. 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 to church 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 the moment. 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, it would 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.
“Dear Mr. Mackenzie,” he wrote, “life is not rapid at this terminus. It might take on some new features if I had the privilege of saying ‘How de do’ to Miss Wynton. Will you oblige me by telling her that one of your best and newest friends happens to be in the same hotel as her charming self, and that if she gets him to sparkle, he (which is I) will help considerable with copy for ‘The Firefly.’ Advise me by same post, and the rest of the situation is up to yours faithfully,
“C. K. S.”
The letter was posted, and Spencer waited five tiresome days. He saw little or nothing of Helen save at meals. Once he met her on a footpath that runs through a wood by the side of the lake to the little hamlet of Isola, and he was minded to raise his hat, as he would have done to any other woman in the hotel whom he encountered under similar circumstances; but she deliberately looked away, and his intended courtesy must have passed unheeded.
As he sedulously avoided any semblance of dogging her footsteps, he could not know how she was being persecuted by de la Vere, Vavasour, and one or two other men of like habit. That knowledge was yet to come. Consequently he deemed her altogether too prudish, and was so out of patience with her that he and Stampa went off for a two days’ climb by way of the Muretto Pass to Chiareggio and back to Sils-Maria over the Fex glacier.
Footsore and tired, but thoroughly converted to the marvels of the high Alps, he reached the Kursaal side by side with the postman who brought the chief English mail about six o’clock each evening.
He waited with an eager crowd of residents while the hall porter sorted the letters. There were some for him from America, and one from London in a handwriting that was strange to him. But he had quick eyes, and he saw that a letter addressed to Miss Helen Wynton, in the flamboyant envelope of “The Firefly,” bore the same script.
Mackenzie had risen to the occasion. He even indulged in a classical joke. “There is something in the name of Helen that attracts,” he said. “Were it not for the lady whose face drew a thousand ships to Ilium, we should never have heard of Paris, or Troy, or the heel of Achilles, and all these would be greatly missed.”
“And I should never have heard of Mackenzie or Maloja,” thought Spencer, sinking into a chair and looking about to learn whether or not the girl would find her letter before he went to dress for dinner. He was sure she knew his name. Perhaps when she read the editor’s note, she too would search the spacious lounge with those fine eyes of hers for the man described therein. If that were so, he meant to go to her instantly, discuss the strangeness of the coincidence that led to two of Mackenzie’s friends being at the hotel at the same time, and suggest that they should dine together.
The project seemed feasible, and it was decidedly pleasant in perspective. He longed to compare notes with her, – to tell her the quaint stories of the hills related to him by Stampa in a medley of English, French, Italian, and German; perhaps to plan delightful trips to the fairyland in company.
People began to clear away from the hall porter’s table; yet Helen remained invisible. He could hardly have missed her; but to make certain he rose and glanced at the few remaining letters. Yes, “The Firefly’s” gaudy imprint still gleamed at him. He turned way, disappointed. After his long tramp and a night in a weird Italian inn, a bath was imperative, and the boom of the dressing gong was imminent.
He was crossing the hall toward the elevator when he heard her voice.
“I am so glad you are keen on an early climb,” she was saying, with a new note of confidence that stirred him strangely. “I have been longing to leave the sign boards and footpaths far behind, but I felt rather afraid of going to the Forno for the first time with a guide. You see, I know nothing about mountaineering, and you can put me up to all the dodges beforehand.”
“Show you the ropes, in fact,” agreed the man with her, Mark Bower.
Spencer was so completely taken by surprise that he could only stare at the two as though they were ghosts. They had entered the hotel together, and had apparently been out for a walk. Helen picked up her letter and held it carelessly in her hand while she continued to talk with Bower. Her pleasurable excitement was undeniable. She regarded her companion as a friend, and was evidently overjoyed at his presence. Spencer banged into the elevator, astonished the attendant and two other occupants by the savagery of his command, “Au deuxième, vite!” and paced through a long corridor with noisy clatter of hob-nailed boots.
He was in a rare fret and fume when he sat down to dinner alone. Bower was at Helen’s table. It was brightened by rare flowers not often seen in sterile Maloja. A bottle of champagne rested in an ice bucket by his side. He had brought with him the atmosphere of London, of the pleasant life that London offers to those who can buy her favors. Truly this Helen, all unconsciously, had not only found the heel of a modern Achilles, but was wounding him sorely. For now Spencer knew that he wanted to see her frank eyes smiling into his as they were smiling into Bower’s, and, no matter what turn events took, a sinister element had been thrust into a harmless idyl by this man’s arrival.