The Silent Barrier
"Etta was always so neat in her dress that it must have been a
dreadful thing to see her laid there," he went on. "She fell just
inside the door. Before she drank the poison she must have looked once
at the top of old Corvatsch. She thought of me, I am sure, for she had
my letter in her pocket telling her that I was at Pontresina with my
voyageurs. And she would think of you too,--her lover, her promised
husband."
Bower cleared his throat. He tried to frame a denial; but Stampa waved
the unspoken thought aside.
"Surely you told her you would marry her, Herr Baron?" he said gently.
"Was it not to implore you to keep your vow that she journeyed all the
way from Zermatt to the Maloja? She was but a child, an innocent and
frightened child, and you should not have been so brutal when she came
to you in the hotel. Ah, well! It is all ended and done with now. It
is said the Madonna gives her most powerful aid to young girls who
seek from her Son the mercy they were denied on earth. And my Etta has
been dead sixteen long years,--long enough for her sin to be cleansed
by the fire of Purgatory. Perhaps to-day, when justice is done to her
at last, she may be admitted to Paradise. Who can tell? I would ask
the priest; but he would bid me not question the ways of Providence."
At last Bower found his voice. "Etta is at peace," he muttered. "We
have suffered for our folly--both of us. I--I could not marry her. It
was impossible."
Stampa did look at him then,--such a look as the old Roman may have
cast on the man who caused him to slay his loved daughter. Yet, when
he spoke, his words were measured, almost reverent. "Not impossible,
Marcus Bower. Nothing is impossible to God, and He ordained that you
should marry my Etta."
"I tell you----" began Bower huskily; but the other silenced him with
a gesture.
"They took her to the inn,--they are kind people who live there,--and
someone telegraphed to me. The news went to Zermatt, and back to
Pontresina. I was high up in the Bernina with my party. But a friend
found me, and I ran like a madman over ice and rock in the foolish
belief that if only I held my little girl in my arms I should kiss her
back to life again. I took the line of a bird. If I had crossed the
Muretto, I should not be lame to-day; but I took Corvatsch in my path,
and I fell, and when I saw Etta's grave the grass was growing on it.
Come! The turf is sixteen years old now."
Breaking off thus abruptly, he swung away into the open pasture.
Bower, heavy with wrath and care, strode close behind. He strove to
keep his brain intent on the one issue,--to placate this sorrowing old
man, to persuade him that silence was best.
Soon they reached a path that curved upward among stunted trees. It
ended at an iron gate in the center of a low wall. Bower shuddered.
This, then, was the cemetery. He had never noticed it, though in
former years he could have drawn a map of the Maloja from memory, so
familiar was he with every twist and turn of mountain, valley, and
lake. The sun was hot on that small, pine sheltered hillock. The snow
was beginning to melt. It clogged their feet, and left green patches
where their footprints would have been clearly marked an hour earlier.
And they were not the only visitors that day. There were signs of one
who had climbed the hill since the snow ceased falling.
Inside the wall the white covering lay deep. Bower's prominent eyes,
searching everywhere with furtive horror, saw that a little space had
been cleared in one corner. The piled up snow was strewed with broken
weeds and tufts of long grass. It bore an uncanny resemblance to the
edges of a grave. He paused, irresolute, unnerved, yet desperately
determined to fall in with Stampa's strange mood.
"There is nothing to fear," said the old man gently. "They brought her
here. You are not afraid--you, who clasped her to your breast, and
swore you loved her?"
Bower's face, deathly pale before, flamed into sudden life. The strain
was unbearable. He could feel his own heart beating violently. "What
do you want me to do?" he almost shouted. "She is dead! My repentance
is of no avail! Why are you torturing me in this manner?"
"Softly, son-in-law, softly! You are disturbed, or you would see the
hand of Providence in our meeting. What could be better arranged? You
have returned after all these years. It is not too late. To-day you
shall marry Etta!"
Bower's neck was purple above the line of his white collar. The veins
stood out on his temples. He looked like one in the throes of
apoplexy.
"For Heaven's sake! what do you mean?" he panted.
"I mean just what I say. This is your wedding day. Your bride lies
there, waiting. Never did woman wait for her man so still and
patient."
"Come away, Stampa! This thing must be dealt with reasonably. Come
away! Let us find some less mournful place, and I shall tell you----"
"Nay, even yet you do not understand. Well, then, Marcus Bauer, hear
me while you may. I swear you shall marry my girl, if I have to recite
the wedding prayers over your dead body. I have petitioned the Madonna
to spare me from becoming a murderer, and I give you this last chance
of saving your dirty life. Kneel there, by the side of the grave, and
attend to the words that I shall read to you, or you must surely die!
You came to Zermatt and chose my Etta. Very well, if it be God's will
that she should be the wife of a scoundrel like you, it is not for me
to resist. Marry her you shall, here and now! I will bind you to her
henceforth and for all eternity, and the time will come when her
intercession may drag you back from the hell your cruel deed
deserves."
With a mighty effort, Bower regained the self-conceit that Stampa's
words, no less than the depressing environment, had shocked out of
him. The grotesque nature of the proposal was a tonic in itself.
"If I had expected any such folly on your part, I should not have come
with you," he said, speaking with something of his habitual dignity.
"Your suggestion is monstrous. How can I marry a dead woman?"
Stampa's expression changed instantly. Its meek sorrow yielded to a
ferocity that was appalling. Already bent, he crouched like a wild
beast gathering itself for an attack.
"Do you refuse?" he asked, in a low note of intense passion.
"Yes, curse you! And mutter your prayers in your own behalf. You need
them more than I."
Bower planted himself firmly, right in the gateway. He clenched his
fists, and savagely resolved to batter this lunatic's face into a
pulp. He had a notion that Stampa would rush straight at him, and give
him an opportunity to strike from the shoulder, hard and true. He was
bitterly undeceived. The man who was nearly twenty years his senior
jumped from the top of a low monument on to the flat coping stones of
the wall. From that greater height he leaped down on Bower, who struck
out wildly, but without a tithe of the force needed to stop the impact
of a heavily built adversary. He had to change feet too, and he was
borne to the earth by that catamount spring before he could avoid it.
For a few seconds the two writhed in the snow in deadly embrace. Then
Stampa remained uppermost. He had pinned Bower to the ground face
downward. Kneeling on his shoulders, with the left hand gripping his
neck and the right clutching his hair and scalp, he pulled back the
wretched man's head till it was a miracle that the spinal column was
not broken.
"Now!" he growled, "are you content?"
There was no reply. It was a physical impossibility that Bower should
speak. Even in his tempest of rage Stampa realized this, and loosened
his grip sufficiently to give his opponent a moment of precious
breath.
"Answer!" he muttered again. "Promise you will obey, you brute, or I
crack your neck!"
Bower gurgled something that sounded like an appeal for mercy. Stampa
rose at once, but took the precaution to close the gate, since they
had rolled into the cemetery during their short fight.
"_Saperlotte!_" he cried, "you are not the first who deemed me
helpless because of my crooked leg. You might have run from me, Marcus
Bauer; you could never fight me. Were I at death's door, I would
still have strength left to throttle you if once my fingers closed
round your throat."
Bower raised himself on hands and knees. He cut an abject figure; but
he was beyond all thought of appearances. For one dread moment his
life had trembled in the balance. That glimpse of death and of the
gloomy path beyond was affrighting. He would do anything now to gain
time. Wealth, fame, love itself, what were they, each and all, when
viewed from the threshold of that barrier which admits a man once and
for ever?
In deep, laboring gasps his breath came back. The blood coursed freely
again in his veins. He lived--ah, that was everything--he still lived!
He scrambled to his feet, bare headed, yellow skinned, dazed, and
trembling. His eyes dwelt on Stampa with a new timidity. He found
difficulty in straightening his limbs. He was quite insensible of his
ridiculous aspect. His clothing, even his hair, was matted with soft
snow. In a curiously servile way, he stooped to pick up his cap.
Stampa lurched toward the tiny patch of grass from which he had
cleared the snow soon after daybreak. "Kneel here at her feet!" he
said.
Bower approached, with a slow, dragging movement. Without a word of
protest, he sank to his knees. The snow in his hair began to melt. He
passed his hands over his face as though shutting out some horrific
vision.
Stampa produced from his pocket a frayed and tattered prayer book--an
Italian edition of the Paroissien Romain. He opened it at a marked
page, and began to read the marriage ritual. Though the words were
Latin, and he was no better educated than any other peasant in the
district, he pronounced the sonorous phrases with extraordinary
accuracy. Of course, he was an Italian, and Latin was not such an
incomprehensible tongue to him as it would prove to a German or
Englishman of his class. Moreover, the liturgy of the Church of Rome
is familiar to its people, no matter what their race. Bower, stupefied
and benumbed, though the sun was shining brilliantly, and a constant
dripping from the pine branches gave proof of a rapid thaw, listened
like one in a trance. He understood scattered sentences, brokenly, yet
with sufficient comprehension.
"_Confiteor Deo omnipotenti_," mumbled Stampa, and the bridegroom in
this strange rite knew that he was making the profession of a faith he
did not share. His mind cleared by degrees. He was still under the
spell of bodily fear, but his brain triumphed over physical stress,
and bade him disregard these worn out shibboleths. Nevertheless, the
words had a tremendous significance.
"_Pater noster qui es in coelis, sanctificetur nomen tuum ...
dimitte nobis debita nostra sicut et nos dimittimus debitoribus
nostris...._"
It was quite easy to follow their general drift. Anyone who had ever
recited the Lord's Prayer in any language would realize that he was
asking the Deity to forgive him his trespasses as he forgave those who
trespassed against him. And there came to the kneeling man a thrilling
consciousness that Stampa was appealing for him in the name of the
dead girl, the once blushing and timid maid whose bones were crumbling
into dust beneath that coverlet of earth and herbage. There could be
no doubting the grim earnestness of the reader. It mattered not a jot
to Stampa that he was usurping the functions of the Church in an
outlandish travesty of her ritual. He was sustained by a fixed
belief that the daughter so heartlessly reft from him was present in
spirit, nay, more, that she was profoundly grateful for this belated
sanctifying of an unhallowed love. Bower's feelings or convictions