The Silent Barrier

Helen was silent.

“If you want to cry, don’t mind me,” went on the kindly cynic. “I’m coming in with you. I’ll light up while you weep, and then you must tell me all about it. That will do you a world of good.”

“There’s n-n-nothing to tell!” bleated Helen.

“Oh yes, there is. You silly child, to-morrow you will have to choose between those two men. Which shall it be? I said before dinner that I couldn’t help you to decide. Perhaps I was mistaken. Anyhow, I’ll try.”

At midnight the snow storm ceased, the wind died away, and the still air deposited its vapor on hills and valley in a hoar frost. The sun rose with a magnificent disregard for yesterday’s riot.

Spencer’s room faced the southeast. When the valet drew his blind in the morning the cold room was filled with a balmy warmth. A glance through the window, however, dispelled a germ of hope that Helen and he might start on the promised walk to Vicosoprano. The snow lay deep in the pass, and probably extended a mile or two down into the Vale of Bregaglia. The rapid thaw that would set in during the forenoon might clear the roads before sunset. Next day, walking would be practicable; to-day it meant wading.

He looked through the Orlegna gorge, and caught the silvery sheen of the Cima di Rosso’s snow capped summit. Hardly a rock was visible. The gale had clothed each crag with a white shroud. All day long the upper reaches of the glacier would be pelted by avalanches. It struck him that an early stroll to the highest point of the path beyond Cavloccio might be rewarded with a distant view of several falls. In any case, it provided an excellent pretext for securing Helen’s company, and he would have cheerfully suggested a trip in a balloon to attain the same object.

The temperature of his bath water induced doubts as to the imminence of the thaw. Indeed, the air was bitterly cold as yet. The snow lay closely on roads and meadow land. It had the texture of fine powder. Passing traffic left shallow, well defined marks. A couple of stablemen swung their arms to restore circulation. The breath of horses and cattle showed in dense clouds.

For once in his life the color of a tie and the style of his clothes became matters of serious import. At first, he was blind to the humor of it. He hesitated between the spruce tightness of a suit fashioned by a New York tailor and the more loosely designed garments he had purchased in London. Then he laughed and reddened. Flinging both aside, he chose the climber’s garb worn the previous day, and began to dress hurriedly. Therein he was well advised. Nothing could better become his athletic figure. He was that type of man who looks thinner when fully clothed. He had never spared himself when asking others to work hard, and he received his guerdon now in a frame of iron and sinews of pliant steel.

Helen usually came down to breakfast at half-past eight. She had the healthy British habit of beginning the day with a good meal, and Spencer indulged in the conceit that he might be favored with a tête-à-tête before they started for the projected walk. Neither Bower nor Mrs. de la Vere ever put in an appearance at that hour. Though Americans incline to the Continental manner of living, this true Westerner found himself a sudden convert to English methods. In a word, he was in love, and his lady could not err. To please her he was prepared to abjure iced water – even to drink tea.

But, as often happens, his cheery mood was destined to end in disappointment. He lingered a whole hour in the salle à manger, but Helen came not. Then he rose in a panic. What if she had breakfasted in her room, and was already basking in the sunlit veranda – perhaps listening to Bower’s eloquence? He rushed out so suddenly that his waiter was amazed. Really, these Americans were incomprehensible – weird as the English. The two races dwelt far apart, but they moved in the same erratic orbit. To the stolid German mind they were human comets, whose comings and goings were not to be gaged by any reasonable standard.

No, the veranda was empty – to him. Plenty of people greeted him; but there was no Helen. Ultimately he reflected that their appointment was for ten o’clock. He calmed down, and a pipe became obvious. He was enjoying that supremest delight of the smoker – the first soothing whiffs of the day’s tobacco – when a servant brought him a note. The handwriting was strange to his eyes; but a premonition told him that it was Helen’s. Somehow, he expected that she would write in a clear, strong, legible way. He was not mistaken. She sent a friendly little message that she was devoting the morning to work. The weather made it impossible to go to Vicosoprano, and in any event she did not feel equal to a long walk. “Yesterday’s events,” she explained, “took more out of me than I imagined.”

Well, she had been thinking of him, and that counted. He was staring at the snow covered tennis courts, and wondering how soon the valley would regain its summer aspect, when Stampa limped into sight round the corner of the hotel. He stood at the foot of the broad flight of steps, as though waiting for someone. Spencer was about to join him for a chat, when he recollected that Bower and the guide had an arrangement to meet in the morning.

With the memory came a queer jumble of impressions. Stampa’s story, told overnight, was a sad one; but the American was too fair minded to affect a moral detestation of Bower because of a piece of folly that wrecked a girl’s life sixteen years ago. If the sins of a man’s youth were to shadow his whole life, then charity and regeneration must be cast out of the scheme of things. Moreover, Bower’s version of the incident might put a new face on it. There was no knowing how he too had been tempted and suffered. That he raged against the resurrection of a bygone misdeed was shown by his mad impulse to kill Stampa on the glacier. That such a man, strong in the power of his wealth and social position, should even dream of blotting out the past by a crime, offered the clearest proof of the frenzy that possessed him as soon as he recognized Etta Stampa’s father.

Not one word of his personal belief crossed Spencer’s lips during the talk with the guide. Rather did he impress on his angry and vengeful hearer that a forgotten scandal should be left in its tomb. He took this line, not that he posed as a moralist, but because he hated to acknowledge, even to himself, that he was helped in his wooing by Helen’s horror of his rival’s lapse from the standard every pure minded woman sets up in her ideal lover. Ethically, he might be wrong; in his conscience he was justified. He had suffered too grievously from every species of intrigue and calumny during his own career not to be ultra-sensitive in regard to the use of such agents.

Yet, watching the bent and crippled old man waiting there in the snow, a sense of pity and mourning chilled his heart with ice cold touch.

“If I were Stampa’s son, if that dead girl were my sister, how would I settle with Bower?” he asked, clenching his pipe firmly between his teeth. “Well, I could only ask God to be merciful both to him and to me.”

“Good gracious, Mr. Spencer! why that fierce gaze at our delightful valley?” came the voice of Mrs. de la Vere. “I am glad none of us can give you the address of the Swiss clerk of the weather – or you would surely slay him.”

He turned. Convention demanded a smile and a polite greeting; but Spencer was not conventional. “You are a thought reader, Mrs. de la Vere,” he said.

“‘One of my many attractions,’ you should have added.”

“I find this limpid light too critical.”

“Oh, what a horrid thing to tell any woman, especially in the early morning!”

“I have a wretched habit of putting the second part of a sentence first. I really intended to say – but it is too late.”

“It is rather like swallowing the sugar coating after the pill; but I’ll try.”

“Well, then, this crystal atmosphere does not lend itself to the obvious. If we were in London, I should catalogue your bewitchments lest you imagined I was blind to them.”

“That sounds nice, but – ”

“It demands analysis, so I have failed doubly.”

“I don’t feel up to talking like a character in one of Henry James’s novels. And you were much more amusing last night. Have you seen Miss Jaques this morning?”

“No. That is, I don’t think so.”

“Do you know her?”

“No.”

“It would be a kind thing if someone told her that there are other places in Switzerland where she will command the general admiration she deserves.”

“I am inclined to believe that there is a man in the hotel who can put that notion before her delicately.”

Spencer possessed the unchanging gravity of expression that the whole American race seems to have borrowed from the Red Indian. Mrs. de la Vere’s eyes twinkled as she gazed at him.

“You didn’t hear what was said last night,” she murmured. “Where Millicent Jaques is concerned, delicacy is absent from Mr. Bower’s make-up – is that good New York?”

“It would be understood.”

This time he smiled. Mrs. de la Vere wished to be a friend to Helen. Whatsoever her motive, the wish was excellent.

“You are severe,” she pouted. “Of course I ought not to mimic you – ”

“Pray do. I had no idea I spoke so nicely.”

“Thank you. But I am serious. I have espoused Miss Wynton’s cause, and there will be nothing but unhappiness for her while that other girl remains here.”

“I hope you are mistaken,” he said slowly, meeting her quizzing glance without flinching.

“That is precisely where a woman’s point of view differs from a man’s,” she countered. “In our lives we are swayed by things that men despise. We are conscious of sidelong looks and whisperings. We dread the finger of scorn. When you have a wife, Mr. Spencer, you will begin to realize the limitations of the feminine horizon.”

“Are you asking me to take this demonstrative young lady in hand?”

“I believe you would succeed.”

Spencer smiled again. He had not credited Mrs. de la Vere with such fine perceptiveness. If her words meant anything, they implied an alliance, offensive and defensive, for Helen’s benefit and his own.

“Guess we’ll leave it right there till I’ve had a few words with Miss Wynton,” he said, dropping suddenly into colloquial phrase.

“A heart to heart talk, in fact.” She laughed pleasantly, and opened her cigarette case.

“Tell you what, Mrs. de la Vere,” he said, “if ever you come to Colorado I shall hail you as a real cousin!”

Then a silence fell between them. Bower was walking out of the hotel. He passed close in front of the glass partition, and might have seen them if his eyes were not as preoccupied as his mind. But he was looking at Stampa, and frowning in deep thought. The guide heard his slow, heavy tread, and turned. The two met. They exchanged no word, but went away together, the lame peasant hobbling along by the side of the tall, well dressed plutocrat.

“How odd!” said Mrs. de la Vere. “How exceedingly odd!”

CHAPTER XIII

THE COMPACT

“Now, what have you to say? We are safe from meddlers here.”

Bower spoke curtly. Stampa and he were halfway across the narrow strip of undulating meadow land which shut off the hotel from the village. They had followed the footpath, a busy thoroughfare bombarded with golf balls on fine mornings, but likely to be unfrequented till the snow melted. Receiving no answer, Bower glanced sharply at his companion; but the old guide might be unaware of his presence, so steadily did he trudge onward, with downcast, introspective eyes. Resolved to make an end of a silence that was irksome, Bower halted.

Then, for the first time, Stampa opened his lips. “Not here,” he said.

“Why not? We are alone.”

“You must come with me, Herr Baron.”

“That is not my title.”

“It used to be. It will serve as well as any other.”

“I refuse to stir a yard farther.”

“Then,” said Stampa, “I will kill you where you stand!”

Neither in voice nor feature did he exhibit any emotion. He merely put forward an all-sufficing reason, and left it at that.

Bower was no coward. Though the curiously repressed manner of the threat sent a wave of blood from his face to his heart, he strode suddenly nearer. Ready and eager to grapple with his adversary before a weapon could be drawn, he peered into the peasant’s care lined face.

“So that is your plan, is it?” he said thickly. “You would entice me to some lonely place, where you can shoot or stab me at your own good pleasure. Fool! I can overpower you instantly, and have you sent to a jail or a lunatic asylum for the rest of your life.”

“I carry no knife, nor can I use a pistol, Herr Baron,” was the unruffled answer. “I do not need them. My hands are enough. You are a man, a big, strong man, with all a man’s worst passions. Have you never felt that you could tear your enemy with your nails, choke him till the bones of his neck crackled, and his tongue lolled out like a panting dog’s? That is how I too may feel if you deny my request. And I will kill you, Marcus Bauer! As sure as God is in Heaven, I will kill you!”

Fear now lent its blind fury to the instinct of self preservation. Bower leaped at Stampa, determined to master him at the first onslaught. But he was heavy and slow, inert after long years of physical indolence. The older man, awkward only because of his crippled leg, swung himself clear of Bower’s grip, and sprang out of reach.

“If there be any who look, ’tis you who risk imprisonment,” he said calmly, with a touch of humor that assuredly he did not intend.

Bower knew then how greatly he had erred. It was a mistake ever to have agreed to meet Stampa alone – a much greater one not to have waited to be attacked. As Stampa said truly, if anyone in the village had seen his mad action, there would be testimony that he was the aggressor. He frowned at Stampa in a bull-like rage, glowering at him in a frenzy of impotence. This dour old man opposed a grim barrier to his hopes. It was intolerable that he, Mark Bower the millionaire, a man who held within his grasp all that the material world has to give, should be standing there at the mercy of a Swiss peasant. Throughout the dreary vigil of the night he had pondered this thing, and could find no loophole of escape. The record of that accursed summer sixteen years ago was long since obliterated in the history of Marcus Bauer, the emotional youth who made love to a village belle in Zermatt, and posed as an Austrian baron among the English and Italians who at that time formed the select band of climbers in the Valais. But the short-lived romance was dead and buried, and its memory brought the taste of Dead Sea ashes to the mouth.

Marcus Bauer had become a naturalized Englishman. The mock barony was replaced by a wealth that might buy real titles. But the crime still lived, and woe to Mark Bower, the financial magnate, if it was brought home to him! He had not risen above his fellows without making enemies. He well knew the weakness and the strength of the British social system, with its strange complacency, its “allowances,” its hysterical prudery, its queer amalgam of Puritanism and light hearted forbearance. He might gamble with loaded dice in the City, and people would applaud him as cleverer and shrewder than his opponents. His name might be coupled with that of a pretty actress, and people would only smile knowingly. But let a hint of his betrayal of Etta Stampa and its attendant circumstances reach the ears of those who hated him, and he would sink forthwith into the slough of rich parvenus who eke out their lives in vain efforts to enter the closely guarded circle from which he had been expelled.

If that was the only danger, he might meet and vanquish it. The unscrupulous use of money, backed up by the law of libel, can do a great deal to still the public conscience. There was another, more subtle and heart searching.

He was genuinely in love with Helen Wynton. He had reached an age when position and power were more gratifying than mere gilded Bohemianism. He could enter Parliament either by way of Palace Yard or through the portals of the Upper House. He owned estates in Scotland and the home counties, and his Park Lane mansion figured already in the address books of half the peerage. It pleased him to think that in placing a charming and gracious woman like Helen at the head of his household, she would look to him as the lodestar of her existence, and not tolerate him with the well-bred hauteur of one of the many aristocratic young women who were ready enough to marry him, but who, in their heart of hearts, despised him. He had deliberately avoided that sort of matrimonial blunder. It promised more than it fulfilled. He refused to wed a woman who deemed her social rank dearly bartered for his money.

Yet, before ever the question arose, he knew quite well that this girl whom he had chosen – the poorly paid secretary of some harmless enthusiast, the strangely selected correspondent of an insignificant journal – would spurn him with scorn if she heard the story Stampa might tell of his lost daughter. That was the wildest absurdity in the mad jumble of events which brought him here face to face with a broken and frayed old man, – one whom he had never seen before the previous day. It was of a piece with this fantasy that he should be standing ankle deep in snow under the brilliant sun of August, and in risk, if not in fear, of his life within two hundred yards of a crowded hotel and a placid Swiss village.

His usually well ordered brain rebelled against these manifest incongruities. His passion subsided almost as quickly as it had arisen. He moistened his cold lips with his tongue, and the action seemed to restore his power of speech.

“I suppose you have some motive in bringing me here. What is it?” he said.

“You must come to the cemetery. It is not far.”

This unlooked for reply struck a new note. It had such a bizarre effect that Bower actually laughed. “Then you really are mad?” he guffawed harshly.

“No, not at all. I was on the verge of madness the other day; but I was pulled back in time, thanks to the Madonna, else I might never have met you.”

“Do you expect me to walk quietly to the burial ground in order that I may be slaughtered conveniently?”

“I am not going to kill you, Marcus Bauer,” said Stampa. “I trust the good God will enable me to keep my hands off you. He will punish you in His own good time. You are safe from me.”

“A moment ago you spoke differently.”

“Ah, that was because you refused to come with me. Assuredly I shall bring either you or your lying tongue to Etta’s grave this morning. But you will come now. You are afraid, Herr Baron. I see it in your eyes, and you value that well-fed body of yours too highly not to do as I demand. Believe me, within the next few minutes you shall either kneel by my little girl’s grave or tumble into your own.”

“I am not afraid, Stampa. I warn you again that I am more than a match for you. Yet I would willingly make any reparation within my power for the wrong I have done you.”

“Yes, yes – that is all I ask – reparation, such as it is. Not to me – to Etta. Come then. I have no weapon, I repeat. You trust to your size and strength; so, by your own showing, you are safe. But you must come!”

A gleam of confidence crept into Bower’s eyes. Was it not wise to humor this old madman? Perhaps, by displaying a remorse that was not all acting, he might arrange a truce, secure a breathing space. He would be free to deal with Millicent Jaques. He might so contrive matters that Helen should be far removed from Stampa’s dangerous presence before the threatened disclosure was made. Yes, a wary prudence in speech and action might accomplish much. Surely he dared match his brain against a peasant’s.

“Very well,” he said, “I shall accompany you. But remember, at the least sign of violence, I shall not only defend myself, but drag you off to the communal guardhouse.”

Without any answer, Stampa resumed his steady plodding through the snow. Bower followed, somewhat in the rear. He glanced sharply back toward the hotel. So far as he could judge, no one had witnessed that frantic spring at his tormentor. At that hour, nearly every resident would be on the sunlit veranda. He wondered whether or not Helen and Millicent had met again. He wished now he had interviewed Millicent last night. Her problem was simple enough, – a mere question of terms. Spite had carried her boldly through the scene in the foyer; but she was far too sensible a young woman to persist in a hopeless quarrel.

It was one of the fatalities that dogged his footsteps ever since he came to Maloja that the only person watching him at the moment should happen to be Millicent herself. Her room was situated at the back of the hotel, and she had fallen asleep after many hours of restless thought. When the clang of a bell woke her with a start she found that the morning was far advanced. She dressed hurriedly, rather in a panic lest her quarry might have evaded her by an early flight. The fine panorama of the Italian Alps naturally attracted her eyes. She was staring at it idly, when she saw Bower and Stampa crossing the open space in front of her bed room window.

Stampa, of course, was unknown to her. In some indefinable way his presence chimed with her fear that Bower would leave Maloja forthwith. Did he intend to post through the Vale of Bregaglia to Chiavenna? Then, indeed, she might be called on to overcome unforeseen difficulties. She appreciated his character to the point of believing that Helen was his dupe. She regretted now that she was so foolish as to attack her one-time friend openly. Far better have asked Helen to visit her privately, and endeavor to find out exactly how the land lay before she encountered Bower. At any rate, she ought to learn without delay whether or not he was hiring post horses in the village. If so, he was unwilling to meet her, and the battle royal must take place in London.

A maid entered with coffee and rolls.

“Who is that man with the English monsieur?” inquired Millicent, pointing to the two.

The servant was a St. Moritz girl, and a glance sufficed. “That? He is Christian Stampa, madam. He used to drive one of Joos’s carriages; but he had a misfortune. He nearly killed a lady whom he was bringing to the hotel, and was dismissed in consequence. Now he is guide to an American gentleman. My God! but they are droll, the Americans!”

The maid laughed, and created a clatter with basin and hot water can. Millicent, forcing herself to eat quickly, continued to gaze after the pair. The description of Stampa’s employer interested her. His drollery evidently consisted in hiring a cripple as guide.

“Is the American monsieur named Charles K. Spencer?” she said, speaking very clearly.

“I do not know, madam. But Marie, who is on the second, can tell me. Shall I ask?”

“Do, please.”

Léontine bustled out. Just then Millicent was amazed by Bower’s extraordinary leap at Stampa and the guide’s agile avoidance of his would-be assailant. The men faced each other as though a fight was imminent; but the upshot was that they walked on together quietly. Be sure that two keen blue eyes watched their every motion thenceforth, never leaving them till they entered the village street and disappeared behind a large chalet.

“And what did it all mean? Mark Bower – scuffling with a villager!”

Millicent’s smooth forehead wrinkled in earnest thought. How queer it would be if Bower was trying to force Spencer’s guide into the commission of a crime! He would stop at nothing. He believed he could bend all men, and all women too, to his will. Was he angered by unexpected resistance? She hoped the maid would hurry with her news. Though she meant to go at once to the village, it would be a point gained if she was certain of Stampa’s identity.

She was already veiled and befurred when Léontine returned. Yes, Marie had given her full information. Madam had heard, perhaps, how Herr Bower and the pretty English mademoiselle were in danger of being snowed up in the Forno hut yesterday. Well, Stampa had gone with his voyageur, Monsieur Spensare, to their rescue. And the young lady was the one whom Stampa had endangered during his career as a cab driver. Again, it was droll.

Millicent agreed. For the second time, she resolved to postpone her journey to St. Moritz.

Bower was surprised when Stampa led him into the main road. Having never seen any sign of a cemetery at Maloja, he guessed vaguely that it must be situated close to the church. Therein, in a sense, he was right. It will be remembered how Helen’s solitary ramble on the morning after her arrival in Maloja brought her to the secluded graveyard. She first visited the little Swiss tabernacle which had attracted her curiosity, and thence took the priest’s path to the last resting place of his flock. But Stampa had a purpose in following a circuitous route. He turned sharply round the base of a huge pile of logs, stacked there in readiness for the fires of a long winter.