The Silent Barrier
till later days brought a fuller understanding. It was a mad trick of
fate that threw the girl into his embrace just then, for another
far-flung sheet of fire revealed to her terrified vision the figures
of Spencer and Stampa on the rocks beneath. With brutal candor, the
same flash showed her nestling close to Bower. For some reason, she
shuddered. Though the merciful gloom of the next few seconds restored
her faculties, her face and neck were aflame. She almost felt that she
had been detected in some fault. Her confusion was not lessened by
hearing a muttered curse from her companion. Careless of the stinging
sleet, she leaped down to a broad tier of rock below the plateau of
the hut and cried shrilly:
"Is that really you, Mr. Spencer?"
A more tremendous burst of thunder than any yet experienced dwarfed
all other sounds for an appreciable time. The American scrambled up,
almost at her feet, and stood beside her. Stampa came quick on his
heels, moving with a lightness and accuracy of foothold amazing in one
so lame.
"Just me, Miss Wynton. Sorry if I have frightened you, but our old
friend here was insistent that we should hurry. I have been tracking
you since nine o'clock."
Spencer's words were nonchalantly polite. He even raised his cap,
though the fury of the ice laden blast might well have excused this
formal act of courtesy. Helen was still blushing so painfully that she
became angry with herself, and her voice was hardly under control.
Nevertheless, she managed to say:
"How kind and thoughtful of you! I am all right, as you see. Mr. Bower
and the guide were able to bring me here before the storm broke. We
happened to be standing near the door, watching the lightning. When I
caught a glimpse of you I was so stupidly startled that I screamed and
almost fell into Mr. Bower's arms."
Put in that way, it did not sound so distressing. And Spencer had no
desire to add further difficulties to a situation already awkward.
"Guess you scared me too," he said. "I suppose, now we are at the hut,
Stampa will not object to my waiting five minutes or so before we
start for home."
"Surely you will lunch with us. Everything is set out on the table,
and we have food enough for a regiment."
"You would need it if you remained here another couple of hours, Miss
Wynton. Stampa tells me that a first rate _guxe_, which is Swiss for a
blizzard, I believe, is blowing up. This thunder storm is the
preliminary to a heavy downfall of snow. That is why I came. If we are
not off the glacier before two o'clock, it will become impassable till
a lot of the snow melts."
"What is that you are saying?" demanded Bower bruskly. Helen and the
two men had reached the level of the _cabane_; but Stampa, thinking
they would all enter, kept in the rear, "If that fairy tale accounts
for your errand, you are on a wild goose chase, Mr. Spencer."
He had not heard the American's words clearly; but he gathered
sufficient to account for the younger man's motive in following them,
and was furiously annoyed by this unlooked for interruption. He had no
syllable of thanks for a friendly action. Though no small risk
attended the crossing of the Forno during a gale, it was evident he
strongly resented the presence of both Spencer and the guide.
Helen, after her first eager outburst, was tongue tied. She saw that
her would-be rescuers were dripping wet, and was amazed that Bower
should greet them so curtly, though, to be sure, she believed
implicitly that the storm would soon pass. Stampa was already inside
the hut. He was haranguing Barth and the porter vehemently, and they
were listening with a curious submissiveness.
Spencer was the most collected person present. He brushed aside
Bower's acrimony as lightly as he had accepted Helen's embarrassed
explanation. "This is not my hustle at all," he said. "Stampa heard
that his adored _signorina_----"
"Stampa! Is that Stampa?"
Bower's strident voice was hushed to a hoarse murmur. It reminded one
of his hearers of a growling dog suddenly cowed by fear. Helen's ears
were tuned to this perplexing note; but Spencer interpreted it
according to his dislike of the man.
"Stampa heard," he went on, with cold-drawn precision, "that Miss
Wynton had gone to the Forno. He is by far the most experienced guide
to be found on this side of the Alps, and he believes that anyone
remaining up here to-day will surely be imprisoned in the hut a week
or more by bad weather. In fact, even now an hour may make all the
difference between danger and safety. Perhaps you can convince him he
is wrong. I know nothing about it, beyond the evidence of my senses,
backed up by some acquaintance with blizzards. Anyhow, I am inclined
to think that Miss Wynton will be wise if she listens to the points of
the argument in the hotel."
"Perhaps it would be better to return at once," said Helen timidly.
Her sensitive nature warned her that these two men were ready to
quarrel, and that she herself, in some nebulous way, was the cause of
their mutual enmity.
Beyond this her intuition could not travel. It was impossible that she
should realize how sorely her wish to placate Bower disquieted
Spencer. He had seen the two under conditions that might, indeed, be
explicable by Helen's fright; but he would extend no such charitable
consideration to Bower, whose conduct, no matter how it was viewed,
made him a rival. Yes, it had come to that. Spencer had hardly spoken
a word to Stampa during the toilsome journey from Maloja. He had
looked facts stubbornly in the face, and the looking served to clear
certain doubts from his heart and brain. He wanted to woo and win
Helen for his wife. He was enmeshed in a net of his own contriving,
and its strands were too strong to be broken. If Helen was reft from
him now, he would gaze on a darkened world for many a day.
But he was endowed with a splendid self control. That element of cast
steel in his composition, discovered by Dunston after five minutes'
acquaintance, kept him rigid under the strain.
"Sorry I should figure as spoiling your excursion, Miss Wynton," he
was able to say calmly; "but, when all is said and done, the weather
is bad, and you will have plenty of fine days later."
Bower crept nearer. His action suggested stealth. Although the wind
was howling under the deep eaves of the hut, he almost whispered.
"Yes, you are right--quite right. Let us go now--at once. With you and
me, Mr. Spencer, Miss Wynton will be safe--safer than with the guides.
They can follow with the stores. Come! There is no time to be lost!"
The others were so taken aback by his astounding change of front that
they were silent for an instant. It was Helen who protested, firmly
enough.
"The lightning seems to have given us an attack of nerves," she said.
"It would be ridiculous to rush off in that manner----"
"But there is peril--real peril--in delay. I admit it. I was wrong."
Bower's anxiety was only too evident. Spencer, regarding him from a
single viewpoint, deemed him a coward, and his gorge rose at the
thought.
"Oh, nonsense!" he cried contemptuously. "We shall be two hours on the
glacier, so five more minutes won't cut any ice. If you have food and
drink in there, Stampa certainly wants both. We all need them. We have
to meet that gale all the way. The two hours may become three before
we reach the path."
Helen guessed the reason of his disdain. It was unjust; but the moment
did not permit of a hint that he was mistaken. To save Bower from
further commitment--which, she was convinced, was due entirely to
regard for her own safety--she went into the hut.
"Stampa," she said, "I am very much obliged to you for taking so much
trouble. I suppose we may eat something before we start?"
"Assuredly, _fraeulein_," he cried. "Am I not here? Were it to begin to
snow at once, I could still bring you unharmed to the chalets."
Josef Barth had borne Stampa's reproaches with surly deference; but he
refused to be degraded in this fashion--before Karl, too, whose tongue
wagged so loosely.
"That is the talk of a foolish boy, not of a man," he cried
wrathfully. "Am I not fitted, then, to take mademoiselle home after
bringing her here?"
"Truly, on a fine day, Josef," was the smiling answer.
"I told monsieur that a _guxe_ was blowing up from the south; so did
Karl; but he would not hearken. _Ma foi!_ I am not to blame." Barth,
on his dignity, introduced a few words of French picked up from the
Chamounix men. He fancied they would awe Stampa, and prove
incidentally how wide was his own experience.
The old guide only laughed. "A nice pair, you and Karl," he shouted.
"Are the voyageurs in your care or not? You told monsieur, indeed! You
ought to have refused to take mademoiselle. That would have settled
the affair, I fancy."
"But this monsieur knows as much about the mountains as any of us. He
might surprise even you, Stampa. He has climbed the Matterhorn from
Zermatt and Breuil. He has come down the rock wall on the Col des
Nantillons. How is one to argue with such a _voyageur_ on this child's
glacier?"
Stampa whistled. "Oh--knows the Matterhorn, does he? What is his
name?"
"Bower," said Helen,--"Mr. Mark Bower."
"What! Say that again, _fraeulein_! Mark Bower? Is that your English
way of putting it?"
Helen attributed Stampa's low hiss to a tardy recognition of Bower's
fame as a mountaineer. Though the hour was noon, the light was feeble.
Veritable thunder clouds had gathered above the mist, and the
expression of Stampa's face was almost hidden in the obscurity of the
hut.
"That is his name," she repeated. "You must have heard of him. He was
well known on the high Alps--years ago." She paused before she added
those concluding words. She was about to say "in your time," but the
substituted phrase was less personal, since the circumstances under
which Stampa ceased to be a notability in "the street" at Zermatt were
in her mind.
"God in heaven!" muttered the old man, passing a hand over his face as
though waking from a dream,--"God in heaven! can it be that my prayer
is answered at last?" He shambled out.
Spencer had waited to watch the almost continuous blaze of lightning
playing on the glacier. Distant summits were now looming through the
diminishing downpour of sleet. He was wondering if by any chance
Stampa might be mistaken. Bower stood somewhat apart, seemingly
engaged in the same engrossing task. The wind was not quite so fierce
as during its first onset. It blew in gusts. No longer screaming in a
shrill and sustained note, it wailed fitfully.
Stampa lurched unevenly close to Bower. He was about to touch him on
the shoulder; but he appeared to recollect himself in time.
"Marcus Bauer," he said in a voice that was terrible by reason of its
restraint.
Bower wheeled suddenly. He did not flinch. His manner suggested a
certain preparedness. Thus might a strong man face a wild beast when
hope lay only in the matching of sinew against sinew. "That is not my
name," he snarled viciously.
"Marcus Bauer," repeated Stampa in the same repressed monotone, "I am
Etta's father."
"Why do you address me in that fashion? I have never before seen you."
"No. You took care of that. You feared Etta's father, though you cared
little for Christian Stampa, the guide. But I have seen you, Marcus
Bauer. You were slim then--an elegant, is it not?--and many a time
have I hobbled into the Hotel Mont Cervin to look at your portrait in
a group lest I should forget your face. Yet I passed you just now!
Great God! I passed you."
A ferocity glared from Bower's eyes that might well have daunted
Stampa. For an instant he glanced toward Spencer, whose clear cut
profile was silhouetted against a background of white-blue ice now