The Silent Barrier Part 5

"Yes. I have a companion to-day, you see."

Helen was a little bewildered by this; but it was very pleasant to claim undisputed possession of a quiet retreat from which to watch others trying to find chairs. And, although Bower had a place reserved by her side, he did not sit down. He chatted for a few minutes on such eminently safe topics as the smooth sea, the superiority of turbine engines in the matter of steadiness, the advisability of lunching in the train after leaving Calais, rather than on board the ship, and soon betook himself aft, there to smoke and chat with some acquaintances whom he fell in with. Dover Castle was becoming a gray blur on the horizon when he spoke to Helen again.

"You look quite comfortable," he said pleasantly, "and it is wise not to risk walking about if you are afraid of being ill."

"I used to cross in bad weather without consequences," she answered; "but I am older now, and am doubtful of experiments."

"You were educated abroad, then?"

"Yes. I was three years in Brussels--three happy years."

"Ah! Why qualify them? All your years are happy, I should imagine, if I may judge by appearances."

"Well, if happiness can be defined as contentment, you are right; but I have had my sad periods too, Mr. Bower. I lost my mother when I was eighteen, and that was a blow under which I have never ceased to wince. Fortunately, I had to seek consolation in work. Added to good health, it makes for content."

"You are quite a philosopher. Will you pardon my curiosity? I too lead the strenuous life. Now, I should like to have your definition of work. I am not questioning your capacity. My wonder is that you should mention it at all."

"But why? Any man who knows what toil is should not regard women as dolls."

"I prefer to look on them as G.o.ddesses."

Helen smiled. "I fear, then, you will deem my pedestal a sorry one,"

she said. "Perhaps you think, because you met me once in Miss Jaques's company, and again here, traveling _de luxe_, that I am in her set. I am not. By courtesy I am called a 'secretary'; but the t.i.tle might be shortened into 'typist.' I help Professor von Eulenberg with his--scientific researches."

Though it was on the tip of her tongue to say "beetles," she subst.i.tuted the more dignified phrase. Bower was very nice and kind; but she felt that "beetles" might sound somewhat flippant and lend a too familiar tone to their conversation.

"Von Eulenberg? I have heard of him. Quite a distinguished man in his own line; an authority on--moths, is it?"

"Insects generally."

She blushed and laughed outright, not only at the boomerang effect of her grandiloquent description of the professor's industry, but at the absurdity of her position. Above all else, Helen was candid, and there was no reason why she should not enlighten a comparative stranger who seemed to take a friendly interest in her.

"I ought to explain," she went on, "that I am going to the Engadine as a journalist. I have had the good fortune to be chosen for a very pleasant task. Hence this present grandeur, which, I a.s.sure you, is not a usual condition of entomological secretaries."

Bower pretended to ward off some unexpected attack. "I have done nothing to deserve a hard word like that, Miss Wynton," he cried. "I shall not recover till we reach Calais. May I sit beside you while you tell me what it means?"

She made room for him. "Strictly speaking, it is nonsense," she said.

"Excellent. That is the better line for women who are young and pretty. We jaded men of the world hate to be serious when we leave business behind. Now, you would scarce credit what a lively youngster I am when I come abroad for a holiday. I always kiss my fingers to France at the first sight of her fair face. She bubbles like her own champagne, whereas London invariably reminds me of beer."

"Do I take it that you prefer gas to froth?"

"You offer me difficult alternatives, yet I accept them. Though gas is as dreadful a description of champagne as entomological is of a certain type of secretary, I would venture to point out that it expands, effervesces, soars ever to greater heights; but beer, froth and all, tends to become flat, stale, and unprofitable."

"I a.s.sure 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 _dejeuner_? 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 impa.s.sable. 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 pa.s.sed now," he said encouragingly.

"Well, it looks like it. I hope so; for I am tired of cla.s.sifying 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 pa.s.sing the time to sit and chat in this gla.s.s 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!"