The Silent Barrier
presence be accounted for? The polite postmaster must have thought
that the Englishman was very dense that morning. Several times he
explained fully that the two desired seats in the diligence must be
reserved from Chiavenna. As many times did Spencer repeat the
information without in the least seeming to comprehend it. He spoke
with the detached air of a boy in the first form reciting the fifth
proposition in Euclid. At last the postmaster gave it up in despair.
"You see that man there?" he said to a keenly interested policeman
when Spencer strolled away in the direction of the village. "He is of
the most peculiar. He talks German like a parrot. He must be a rich
American. Perhaps he wants to buy a diligence."
"_Wer weiss?_" said the other. "Money makes some folk mad."
And, indeed, through Spencer's brain was running a Bedlamite jingle,
a triolet of which the dominant line was Bower, Stampa, and Millicent
Jaques. The meeting of Bower and Stampa was easy of explanation. After
the guide's story of the previous evening, nothing but Stampa's death
or Bower's flight could prevent it. But the woman from the Wellington
Theater, how had she come to know of their feud? He was almost tempted
to quote the only line of Moliere ever heard beyond the shores of
France.
Like every visitor to the Maloja, he was acquainted with each of
its roads and footpaths except the identical one that these three
descended. Where did it lead to? Before he quite realized what he was
doing, he was walking up the hill. In places where the sun had not yet
caught the snow there was a significant trail. Bower had come and gone
once, Stampa, or some man wearing village-made boots, twice; but
the single track left by Millicent's smart footwear added another
perplexing item to the puzzle. So he pressed on, and soon was gazing
at the forlorn cemetery, with its signs of a furious struggle between
the gateposts, the uncovered grave space, and Millicent's track round
two corners of the square built wall.
It was part of his life's training to read signs. The mining engineer
who would hit on a six-inch lode in a mountain of granite must combine
imagination with knowledge, and Spencer quickly made out something of
the silent story,--something, not all, but enough to send him in
haste to the hotel by the way Millicent had arrived on the scene.
"Guess there's going to be a heap of trouble round here," he said to
himself. "Helen must be recalled to London. It's up to me to make the
cable hot to Mackenzie."
He had yet to learn that the storm which brought about a good deal of
the preceding twenty-four hours' excitement had not acted in any
niggardly fashion. It had laid low whole sections of the telegraph
system on both sides of the pass during the night. Gangs of men were
busy repairing the wires. Later in the day, said a civil spoken
attendant at the _bureau des postes_, a notice would be exhibited
stating the probable hour of the resumption of service.
"Are the wires down beyond St. Moritz?" asked Spencer.
"I cannot give an assurance," said the clerk; "but these southwest
gales usually do not affect the Albula Pass. The road to St. Moritz is
practicable, as this morning's mail was only forty minutes behind
time."
Spencer ordered a carriage, wrote a telegram, and gave it to the
driver, with orders to forward it from St. Moritz if possible. And
this was the text:
"MACKENZIE, 'FIREFLY' OFFICE, FLEET-ST., LONDON. Wire Miss
Wynton positive instructions to return to England
immediately. Say she is wanted at office. I shall arrange
matters before she arrives. This is urgent. SPENCER."
A heavy weight gradually lifted off his shoulders as he watched the
wheels of the vehicle churning up the brown snow broth along the
valley road. Within two hours his message would reach a telegraph
office. Two more would bring it to Mackenzie. With reasonable luck,
the line repairers would link Maloja to the outer world that
afternoon, and Helen would hie homeward in the morning. It was a pity
that her holiday and his wooing should be interfered with; but who
could have foretold that Millicent Jaques would drop from the sky in
that unheralded way? Her probable interference in the quarrel between
Stampa and Bower put Mrs. de la Vere's suggestion out of court. A
woman bent on requiting a personal slight would never consent to
forego such a chance of obtaining ample vengeance as Bower's earlier
history provided.
In any case, Spencer was sure that the sooner Helen and he were
removed from their present environment the happier they would be. He
hoped most fervently that the course of events might be made smooth
for their departure. He cared not a jot for the tittle-tattle of the
hotel. Let him but see Helen re-established in London, and it would
not be his fault if they did not set forth on their honeymoon before
the year was much older.
He disliked this secret plotting and contriving. He adopted such
methods only because they offered the surest road to success. Were he
to consult his own feelings, he would go straight to Helen, tell her
how chance had conspired with vagrom fancy to bring them together, and
ask her to believe, as all who love are ready to believe, that their
union was predestined throughout the ages.
But he could not explain his presence in Switzerland without referring
to Bower, and the task was eminently distasteful. In all things
concerning the future relations between Helen and himself, he was done
with pretense. If he could help it, her first visit to the Alps should
not have its record darkened by the few miserable pages torn out of
Bower's life. After many years the man's sin had discovered him. That
which was then done in secret was now about to be shrieked aloud from
the housetops. "Even the gods cannot undo the past," said the old
Greeks, and the stern dogma had lost nothing of its truth with the
march of the centuries. Indeed, Spencer regretted his rival's
threatened exposure. If it lay in his power, he would prevent it:
meanwhile, Helen must be snatched from the enduring knowledge of her
innocent association with the offender and his pillory. He set his
mind on the achievement. To succeed, he must monopolize her company
until she quitted the hotel en route for London.
Then he thought of Mrs. de la Vere as a helper. Her seeming
shallowness, her glaring affectations, no longer deceived him.
The mask lifted for an instant by that backward glance as she
convoyed Helen to her room the previous night had proved altogether
ineffective since their talk on the veranda. He did not stop to ask
himself why such a woman, volatile, fickle, blown this way and that
by social zephyrs, should champion the cause of romance. He simply
thanked Heaven for it, nor sought other explanation than was given
by his unwavering belief in the essential nobility of her sex.
Therein he was right. Had he trusted to her intuition, and told
Millicent Jaques at the earliest possible moment exactly how matters
stood between Helen and himself, it is only reasonable to suppose that
the actress would have changed her plan of campaign. She had no
genuine antipathy toward Helen, whose engagement to Spencer would be
her strongest weapon against Bower. As matters stood, however, Helen
was a stumbling block in her path, and her jealous rage was in process
of being fanned to a passionate intensity, when Spencer, searching for
Mrs. de la Vere, saw Millicent in the midst of a group composed of the
Vavasours, mother and son, the General, and his daughters.
Mrs. de Courcy Vavasour was the evil spirit who brought about this
sinister gathering. She was awed by Bower, she would not risk a
snubbing from Mrs. de la Vere, and she was exceedingly annoyed to
think that Helen might yet topple her from her throne. To one of her
type this final consideration was peculiarly galling. And the
too susceptible Georgie would be quite safe with the lady from
the Wellington Theater. Mrs. Vavasour remembered the malice in
Millicent's fine eyes when she refused to quail before Bower's wrath.
A hawk in pursuit of a plump pigeon would not turn aside to snap up an
insignificant sparrow. So, being well versed in the tactics of these
social skirmishes, she sought Millicent's acquaintance.
The younger woman was ready to meet her more than halfway. The hotel
gossips were the very persons whose aid she needed. A gracious smile
and a pouting complaint against the weather were the preliminaries. In
two minutes they were discussing Helen, and General Wragg was drawn
into their chat. Georgie and the Misses Wragg, of course, came
uninvited. They scented scandal as jackals sniff the feast provided by
the mightier beasts.
Millicent, really despising these people, but anxious to hear the
story of Bower's love making, made no secret of her own sorrows. "Miss
Wynton was my friend," she said with ingenuous pathos. "She never met
Mr. Bower until I introduced her to him a few days before she came to
Switzerland. You may guess what a shock it gave me when I heard that
he had followed her here. Even then, knowing how strangely coincidence
works at times, I refused to believe that the man who was my promised
husband would abandon me under the spell of a momentary infatuation.
For it can be nothing more."
"Are you sure?" asked the sympathetic Mrs. Vavasour.
"By gad!" growled Wragg, "I'm inclined to differ from you there, Miss
Jaques. When Bower turned up last week they met as very old friends, I
can assure you."
"Obviously a prearranged affair," said Mrs. Vavasour.
"None of us has had a look in since," grinned Georgie vacuously. "Even
Reggie de la Vere, who is a deuce of a fellah with the girls, could
not get within yards of her."
This remark found scant favor with his audience. Miss Beryl Wragg, who
had affected de la Vere's company for want of an eligible bachelor,
pursed her lips scornfully.
"I can hardly agree with that," she said. "Edith de la Vere may be a
sport; but she doesn't exactly fling her husband at another woman's
head. Anyhow, it was amazing bad form on her part to include Miss
Wynton in her dinner party last night."
Millicent's blue eyes snapped. "Did Helen Wynton dine in public
yesterday evening?" she demanded.
"Rather! Quite a lively crowd they were too."
"Indeed. Who were the others?"
"Oh, the Badminton-Smythes, and the Bower man, and that
American--what's his name?"
Then Millicent laughed shrilly. She saw her chance of delivering a
deadly stroke, and took it without mercy. "The American? Spencer? What
a delightful mixture! Why, he is the very man who is paying Miss
Wynton's expenses."
"So you said last night. A somewhat--er--dangerous statement," coughed
the General.
"Rather stiff, you know--Eh, what?" put in Georgie.
His mother silenced him with a frosty glance. "Of course you have good
reasons for saying that?" she interposed.
Spencer passed at that instant, and there was a thrilling pause.
Millicent was well aware that every ear was alert to catch each
syllable. When she spoke, her words were clear and precise.
"Naturally, one would not say such a thing about any girl without the
utmost certainty," she purred. "Even then, there are circumstances
under which one ought to try and forget it. But, if it is a question
as to my veracity in the matter, I can only assure you that Miss
Wynton's mission to Switzerland on behalf of 'The Firefly' is a mere
blind for Mr. Spencer's extraordinary generosity. He is acting through
the paper, it is true. But some of you must have seen 'The Firefly.'
How could such a poor journal afford to pay a young lady one hundred
pounds and give her a return ticket by the Engadine express for four
silly articles on life in the High Alps? Why, it is ludicrous!"