The Silent Barrier

“I assure you my knowledge of both is limited. I had never even tasted champagne until the other day.”

“When you lunched with Millicent at the Embankment Hotel?”

“Well – yes. She was at school with me, and we met last week by accident. She is making quite a success at the Wellington Theater, is she not?”

“So I hear. I am a director of that concern; but I seldom go there.”

“How odd that sounds to one who saves up her pennies to attend a favorite play!”

“Then you must have my address, and when I am in town you need never want a stall at any theater in London. Now, that is no idle promise. I mean it. Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to think you were enjoying something through my instrumentality.”

“How exceedingly kind of you! I shall take you at your word. What girl wouldn’t?”

“I know quite a number who regard me as an ogre. I am not a lady’s man in the general sense of the term, Miss Wynton. I might tell you more about myself if it were not for signs that the next five minutes will bring us to Calais. You are far too independent, I suppose, that I should offer to carry your bag; but will you allow me to reserve a joint table for déjeuner? There will be a rush for the first service, which is the best, as a rule, and I have friends at court on this line. Please don’t say you are not hungry.”

“That would be impolite, and horribly untrue,” laughed Helen.

He took the implied permission, and hurried away. They did not meet again until he came to her carriage in the train.

“Is this where you are?” he cried, looking up at her through the open window. “I am in the next block, as they say in America. When you are ready I shall take you to the dining car. Come out on the platform. The corridors are simply impassable. And here are baskets of peaches, and ripe pears, and all manner of pleasant fruits. Yes, try the corridor to the right, and charge resolutely. If you inflict the maximum injury on others, you seldom damage yourself.”

In a word, Mark Bower spoke as lightheartedly as he professed to feel, and Helen had no cause whatever to be other than thankful for the chance that brought him to Switzerland on the same day and in the same train as herself. His delicate consideration for her well being was manifested in many ways. That such a man, whom she knew to be a figure of importance in the financial world, should take an interest in the simple chronicles of her past life was a flattering thing in itself. He listened sympathetically to the story of her struggles since the death of her mother. The consequent stoppage of the annuity paid to the widow of an Indian civilian rendered it necessary that Helen should supplement by her own efforts the fifty pounds a year allotted to her “until death or marriage.”

“There are plenty of country districts where I could exist quite easily on such a sum,” she said; “but I declined to be buried alive in that fashion, and I made up my mind to earn my own living. Somehow, London appeals to young people situated as I was. It is there that the great prizes are to be gained; so I came to London.”

“From – ” broke in Bower, who was peeling one of the peaches bought at Calais.

“From a village near Sheringham, in Norfolk.”

He nodded with smiling comprehension when she detailed her struggles with editors who could detect no originality in her literary work.

“But that phase has passed now,” he said encouragingly.

“Well, it looks like it. I hope so; for I am tired of classifying beetles.”

There – the word was out at last. Perhaps Bower wondered why she laughed and blushed at the recollection of her earlier determination to suppress von Eulenberg’s “specimens” as a topic of conversation. Already the stiffness of their talk on board the steamship seemed to have vanished completely. It was really a pleasant way of passing the time to sit and chat in this glass palace while the train skimmed over a dull land of marshes and poplars.

“Beetles, though apt to be flighty, are otherwise dull creatures,” he said. “May I ask what paper you are representing on your present tour?”

It was an obvious and harmless question; but Helen was loyal to her bond. “It sounds absurd to have to say it, but I am pledged to secrecy,” she answered.

“Good gracious! Don’t tell me you intend to interview anarchists, or runaway queens, or the other disgruntled people who live in Switzerland. Moreover, they usually find quarters in Geneva, while you presumably are bound for the Engadine.”

“Oh, no. My work lies in less excitable circles. ‘Life in a Swiss hotel’ would be nearer the mark.”

“Apart from the unusual surroundings, you will find it suspiciously like life in a quiet Norfolk village, Miss Wynton,” said Bower. He paused, tasted the peach, and made a grimace. “Sour!” he protested. “Really, when all is said and done, the only place in which one can buy a decent peach is London.”

“Ah, a distinct score for Britain!”

“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 companionship, and he had the tact to make her feel that he was equally indebted to her for passing 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’hôte 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 glass 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 appraisement. 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 fashion and finance. The conceit induced an odd feeling of embarrassment. To dispel it she took up his words in a vein of playful sarcasm.

“If you assure 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 gods, 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, coarser, 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 glass 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.