The Silent Barrier
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