The Silent Barrier
you further. May I join you, or will you walk to the bridge a little
higher up?"
"Let us return to the hotel," she protested.
"No, no. We are not children. We have broken no law of God or man. Why
should I be ashamed of having asked you to marry me, or you to listen,
even though it be such a hopeless fantasy as you say?"
Helen, deeply moved in his behalf, walked to a bridge of planks a
little distance up stream. Bower joined her there. He had deliberately
resolved to do a dastardly thing. If Spencer was the cause of Helen's
refusal, that obstacle, at any rate, could be smashed to a pulp.
"Now, Helen," he said, "I want you to believe that your happiness is
my only concern. Perhaps, at some other time, you may allow me to
renew in less abrupt manner the proposal I have made to-day. But when
you hear all that I have to tell, you will be forced to admit that I
placed your high repute above every other consideration in declaring
my love before, rather than after, you learned how and why you came to
Switzerland."
His manner was becoming more calm and judicial each moment. It reacted
on Helen, who gazed at him with a very natural surprise in her still
tear-laden eyes.
"That, at least, is simple enough," she cried.
"No. It is menacing, ugly, a trick calculated to wound you sorely.
When first it came to my ears I refused to credit the vile meanness of
it. You saw that telegram which reached my hands as we quitted the
hotel? It is a reply to certain inquiries I caused to be made in
London. Read it."
Helen took the crumpled sheets of thin paper and began to read. Bower
watched her face with a maleficent confidence that might have warned
her had she seen it. But she paid heed to nothing else at that moment
save the mysterious words scrawled in a foreign handwriting:
"Have investigated 'Firefly' incident fully. Pargrave
compelled Mackenzie to explain. The American, Charles K.
Spencer, recently residing at Embankment Hotel, is paying
Miss Helen Wynton's expenses, including cost of publishing
her articles. He followed her on the day of her departure,
and has since asked Mackenzie for introduction. Pargrave
greatly annoyed, and holds Mackenzie at your disposal.
"KENNETT."
Helen went very white; but she spoke with a firmness that was amazing,
even to Bower. "Who is Kennett?" she said.
"One of my confidential clerks."
"And Pargrave?"
"The proprietor of 'The Firefly.'"
"Did Millicent know of this--plot?"
"Yes."
Then she murmured a broken prayer. "Ah, dear Heaven!" she complained,
"for what am I punished so bitterly?"
Karl, the voluble and sharp-eyed, retailed a bit of gossip to Stampa
that evening as they smoked in Johann Klucker's chalet. "As I was
driving the cattle to the middle alp to-day, I saw our _fraeulein_ in
the arms of the big _voyageur_," he said.
Stampa withdrew his pipe from between his teeth. "Say that again," he
whispered, as though afraid of being overheard.
Karl did so, with fuller details.
"Are you sure?" asked Stampa.
Karl sniffed scornfully. "_Ach, Gott!_ How could I err?" he cried.
"There are not so many pretty women in the hotel that I should not
recognize our _fraeulein_. And who would forget Herr Bower? He gave me
two louis for a ten francs job. We must get them together on the hills
again, Christian. He will be soft hearted now, and pay well for taking
care of his lady."
"Yes," said Stampa, resuming his pipe. "You are right, Karl. There is
no place like the hills. And he will pay--the highest price, look you!
_Saperlotte!_ I shall exact a heavy fee this time."
CHAPTER XVI
SPENCER EXPLAINS
A sustained rapping on the inner door of the hut roused Helen from
dreamless sleep. In the twilight of the mind that exists between
sleeping and waking she was bewildered by the darkness, perhaps
baffled by her novel surroundings. She strove to pierce the gloom with
wide-open, unseeing eyes, but the voice of her guide broke the spell.
"Time to get up, _signora_. The sun is on the rock, and we have a
piece of bad snow to cross."
Then she remembered, and sighed. The sigh was involuntary, the half
conscious tribute of a wearied heart. It needed an effort to brace
herself against the long hours of a new day, the hours when thoughts
would come unbidden, when regrets that she was fighting almost
fiercely would rush in and threaten to overwhelm her. But Helen was
brave. She had the courage that springs from the conviction of having
done that which is right. If she was a woman too, with a woman's
infinite capacity for suffering--well, that demanded another sort
of bravery, a resolve to subdue the soul's murmurings, a spiritual
teeth-clenching in the determination to prevail, a complete acceptance
of unmerited wrongs in obedience to some inexplicable decree of
Providence.
So she rose from a couch which at least demanded perfect physical
health ere one could find rest on it, and, being fully dressed, went
forth at once to drink the steaming hot coffee that filled the tiny
hut with its fragrance.
"A fine morning, Pietro?" she asked, addressing the man who had
summoned her.
"_Si, signora._ Dawn is breaking with good promise. There is a slight
mist on the glacier; but the rock shows clear in the sun."
She knew that an amiable grin was on the man's face; but it was so
dark in the _cabane_ that she could see little beyond the figures of
the guide and his companion. She went to the door, and stood for a
minute on the narrow platform of rough stones that provided the only
level space in a witches' cauldron of moss covered boulders and rough
ice. Beneath her feet was an ultramarine mist, around her were masses
of black rock; but overhead was a glorious pink canopy, fringed by
far flung circles of translucent blue and tenderest green. And this
heaven's own shield was ever widening. Eastward its arc was broken
by an irregular dark mass, whose pinnacles glittered like burnished
gold. That was the Aguagliouls Rock, which rises so magnificently
in the midst of a vast ice field, like some great portal to the
wonderland of the Bernina. She had seen it the night before, after
leaving the small restaurant that nestles at the foot of the Roseg
Glacier. Then its scarred sides, brightened by the crimson and violet
rays of the setting sun, looked friendly and inviting. Though its base
was a good mile distant across the snow-smoothed surface of the ice,
she could discern every crevice and ledge and steep couloir. Now, all
these distinguishing features were merged in the sea-blue mist. The
great wall itself seemed to be one vast, unscalable precipice, capped
by a series of shining spires.
And for the first time in three sorrowful days, while her eyes dwelt
on that castle above the clouds, the mysterious grandeur of nature
healed her vexed spirit, and the peace that passeth all understanding
fell upon her. The miserable intrigues and jealousies of the past
weeks were so insignificant, so far away, up here among the mountains.
Had she only consulted her own happiness, she mused, she would not
have ordered events differently. There was no real reason why she
should have flown from the hotel like a timid deer roused by hounds
from a thicket. Instead of doubling and twisting from St. Moritz to
Samaden, and back by carriage to a remote hotel in the Roseg Valley,
she might have remained and defied her persecutors. But now the fume
and fret were ended, and she tried to persuade herself she was glad.
She felt that she could never again endure the sight of Bower's face.
The memory of his passionate embrace, of his blazing eyes, of the
thick sensual lips that forced their loathsome kisses upon her, was
bitter enough without the need of reviving it each time they met. She
was sorry it was impossible to bid farewell to Mrs. de la Vere. Any
hint of her intent would have drawn from that well-disposed cynic a
flood of remonstrance hard to stem; though nothing short of force
would have kept Helen at Maloja once she was sure of Spencer's double
dealing.
Of course, she might write to Mrs. de la Vere when she was in calmer
mood. It would be easier then to pick and choose the words that would
convey in full measure her detestation of the American. For she hated
him--yes, hatred alone was satisfying. She despised her own heart
because it whispered a protest. Yet she feared him too. It was from
him that she fled. She admitted this to her honest mind while she
watched the spreading radiance of the new day. She feared the candor
of his steady eyes more than the wiles and hypocrisies of Bower and
her false friend, Millicent. By a half miraculous insight into the
history of recent events, she saw that Bower had followed her to
Switzerland with evil intent.
But the discovery embittered her the more against Spencer, who had
lured her there deliberately, than against Bower who knew of it, nor
scrupled to use the knowledge as best it marched with his designs. It
was nothing to her, she told herself, that Spencer no less than Bower
had renounced his earlier purpose, and was ready to marry her. She
still quivered with anger at the thought that she had fallen so
blindly into the toils. Even though she accepted Mackenzie's
astounding commission, she might have guessed that there was some
ignoble element underlying it. She felt now that it was possible to be
prepared,--to scrutinize occurrences more closely, to hold herself
aloof from compromising incidents. The excursion to the Forno, the
manifest interest she displayed in both men, the concealment of her
whereabouts from friends in London, her stiff lipped indifference to
the opinion of other residents in the hotel,--these things, trivial
individually, united into a strong self indictment.
As for Spencer, though she meant, above all things, to avoid meeting
him, and hoped that he was now well on his way to the wide world
beyond Maloja, she would never forgive him--no, never!
"I am sorry to hurry you, _signora_, but there is a bit of really bad
snow on the Sella Pass," urged Pietro apologetically at her shoulder,
and she reentered the hut at once, sitting down to that which she
deemed to be her last meal on the Swiss side of the Upper Engadine.
It was in a hotel at St. Moritz that she had settled her route with
the aid of a map and a guidebook. When, on that day of great
happenings, she quitted the Kursaal-Maloja, she stipulated that the
utmost secrecy should be observed as to her departure. Her boxes and
portmanteau were brought from her room by the little used exit she had
discovered soon after her arrival. A closed carriage met her there in
the dusk, and she drove straight to St. Moritz station. Leaving her
baggage in the parcels office, she sought a quiet hotel for the night,
registering her room under her mother's maiden name of Trenholme. She
meant to return to England by the earliest train in the morning; but
her new-born terror of encountering Spencer set in motion a scheme for
evading pursuit either by him or Bower.
By going up the Roseg Valley, and carrying the barest necessaries for
a few days' travel, she could cross the Bernina range into Italy,
reach the rail at Sondrio, and go round by Como to Lucerne and thence
to Basle, whither the excellent Swiss system of delivering passengers'
luggage would convey her bulky packages long before she was ready to
claim them.
With a sense of equity that was creditable, she made up her mind to
expend every farthing of the money received from "The Firefly." She
had kept her contract faithfully: Mackenzie, therefore, or Spencer,
must abide by it to the last letter. The third article of the series
was already written and in the post. The fourth she wrote quietly in