“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.