The Silent Barrier

CHAPTER XIV
WHEREIN MILLICENT ARMS FOR THE FRAY

Millicent was wondering how she would fare in the deep snow in boots that were never built for such a test. She was standing on the swept roadway between the hotel and the stables, and the tracks of her quarry were plainly visible. But the hope of discovering some explanation of Bower’s queer behavior was more powerful than her dread of wet feet. She was gathering her skirts daintily before taking the next step, when the two men suddenly reappeared.

They had left the village and were crossing the line of the path. Shrinking back under cover of an empty wagon, she watched them. Apparently they were heading for the Orlegna Gorge, and she scanned the ground eagerly to learn how she could manage to spy on them without being seen almost immediately. Then she fell into the same error as Helen in believing that the winding carriage road to the church offered the nearest way to the clump of firs and azaleas by which Bower and Stampa would soon be hidden.

Three minutes’ sharp walking brought her to the church, but there the highway turned abruptly toward the village. As one side of the small ravine faced south, the sun’s rays were beginning to have effect, and a narrow track, seemingly leading to the hill, was almost laid bare. In any event, it must bring her near the point where the men vanished, so she went on breathlessly. Crossing the rivulet, already swollen with melting snow, she mounted the steps cut in the hillside. It was heavy going in that thin air; but she held to it determinedly.

Then she heard men’s voices raised in anger. She recognized one. Bower was speaking German, Stampa a mixture of German and Italian. Millicent had a vague acquaintance with both languages; but it was of the Ollendorf order, and did not avail her in understanding their rapid, excited words. Soon there were other sounds, the animal cries, the sobs, the labored grunts of men engaged in deadly struggle. Thoroughly alarmed, more willing to retreat than advance, she still clambered on, impelled by irresistible desire to find out what strange thing was happening.

At last, partly concealed by a dwarf fir, she could peer over a wall into the tiny cemetery. She was too late to witness the actual fight; but she saw Stampa spring upright, leaving his prostrate opponent apparently lifeless. She was utterly frightened. Fear rendered her mute. To her startled eyes it seemed that Bower had been killed by the crippled man. Soon that quite natural impression yielded to one of sustained astonishment. Bower rose slowly, a sorry spectacle. To her woman’s mind, unfamiliar with scenes of violence, it was surprising that he did not begin at once to beat the life out of the lame old peasant who had attacked him so viciously. When Stampa closed the gate and motioned Bower to kneel, when the tall, powerfully built man knelt without protest, when the reading of the Latin service began, – well, Millicent could never afterward find words to express her conflicting emotions.

But she did not move. Crouching behind her protecting tree, guarding her very breath lest some involuntary cry should betray her presence, she watched the whole of the weird ceremonial. She racked her brains to guess its meaning, strained her ears to catch a sentence that might be identified hereafter; but she failed in both respects. Of course, it was evident that someone was buried there, someone whose memory the wild looking villager held dear, someone whose grave he had forced Bower to visit, someone for whose sake he was ready to murder Bower if the occasion demanded. So much was clear; but the rest was blurred, a medley of incoherences, a waking nightmare.

Oddly enough, it never occurred to her that a woman might be lying in that dreary tenement. Her first vague imagining suggested that Bower had committed a crime, killed a man, and that an avenger had dragged him to his victim’s last resting place. That Stampa was laboriously plodding through the marriage ritual was a fantastic conceit of which she received no hint. There was nothing to dissolve the mist in her mind. She could only wait, and marvel.

As the strange scene drew to its close, she became calmer. She reflected that some sort of registry would be kept of the graves. A few dismal monuments, and two rows of little black wooden crosses that stuck up mournfully out of the snow, gave proof positive of that. She counted the crosses. Stampa was standing near the seventh from a tomb easily recognizable at some future time. Bower faced it on his knees. She could not see him distinctly, as he was hidden by the other man’s broad shoulders; but she did not regret it, because the warm brown tints of her furs against the background of snow and foliage might warn him of her presence. She thanked the kindly stars that brought her here. No matter what turn events took now, she hoped to hold the whip hand over Bower. There was a mystery to be cleared, of course; but with such materials she could hardly fail to discover its true bearings.

So she watched, in tremulous patience, quick to note each movement of the actors in a drama the like to which she had never seen on the stage.

At last Bower slunk away. She heard the crunching of his feet on the snow, and, when Stampa ceased his silent prayer, she expected that he would depart by the same path. To her overwhelming dismay, he wheeled round and looked straight at her. In reality his eyes were fixed on the hills behind her. He was thinking of his unhappy daughter. The giant mass of Corvatsch was associated in his mind with the girl’s last glimpse of her beloved Switzerland, while on that same memorable day it threw its deep shadow over his own life. He turned to the mountain to seek its testimony, – as it were, to the consummation of a tragedy.

But Millicent could not know that. Losing all command of herself, she shrieked in terror, and ran wildly among the trees. She stumbled and fell before she had gone five yards over the rough ground. Quite in a panic, confused and blinded with snow, she rose and ran again, only to find herself speeding back to the burial ground. Then, in a very agony of distress, she stood still. Stampa was looking at her, with mild surprise displayed in every line of his expressive features.

“What are you afraid of, sigñorina?” he asked in Italian.

She half understood, but her tongue clove to the roof of her mouth. Her terror was manifest, and he pitied her.

He repeated his question in German. A child might have recognized that this man of the benignant face and kindly, sorrow laden eyes intended no evil.

“I am sorry. I beg your pardon, Herr Stampa,” she managed to stammer.

“Ah, you know me, then, sigñorina! But everybody knows old Stampa. Have you lost your way?”

“I was taking a little walk, and happened to approach the cemetery. I saw – ”

“There is nothing to interest you here, madam, and still less to cause fear. But it is a sad place, at the best. Follow that path. It will lead you to the village or the hotel.”

Her fright was subsiding rapidly. She deemed the opportunity too good to be lost. If she could win his confidence, what an immense advantage it would be in her struggle against Bower! Summoning all her energies, and trying to remember some of the German sentences learned in her school days, she smiled wistfully.

“You are in great trouble,” she murmured. “I suppose Herr Bower has injured you?”

Stampa glanced at her keenly. He had the experience of sixty years of a busy life to help him in summing up those with whom he came in contact, and this beautiful, richly dressed woman did not appeal to his simple nature as did Helen when she surprised his grief on a morning not so long ago. Moreover, the elegant stranger was little better than a spy, for none but a spy would have wandered among the rocks and shrubs in such weather, and he was in no mood to suffer her inquiries.

“I am in no trouble,” he said, “and Herr Bauer has not injured me.”

“But you fought,” she persisted. “I thought you had killed him. I almost wish you had. I hate him!”

“It is a bad thing to hate anyone. I am three times your age; so you may, or may not, regard my advice as excellent. Come round by the corner of the wall, and you will reach the path without walking in the deep snow. Good morning, madam.”

He bowed with an ease that would have proclaimed his nationality if he had not been an Italian mountaineer in every poise and gesture. Stooping to recover his Alpine hat, which was lying near the cross at the head of the grave, he passed out through the gate before Millicent was clear of the wall. He made off with long, uneven, but rapid strides, leaving her hot with annoyance that a mere peasant should treat her so cavalierly. Though she did not understand all he said, she grasped its purport. But her soreness soon passed. The great fact remained that she shared some secret with him and Bower, a secret of an importance she could not yet measure. She was tempted to go inside the cemetery, and might have yielded to the impulse had not a load of snow suddenly tumbled off the broad fronds of a pine. The incident set her heart beating furiously again. How lonely was this remote hilltop! Even the glorious sunshine did not relieve its brooding silence.

Thus it came about that these three people went down into the valley, each within a short distance of the others, and Spencer saw them all from the high road, where he was questioning an official of the federal postoffice as to the method of booking seats in the banquette of the diligence from Vicosoprano.

That he was bewildered by the procession goes without saying. Where had they been, and how in the name of wonder could the woman’s 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 Molière 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!”

“Pretty hot, I must admit,” sniggered Georgie, thinking to make peace with Beryl Wragg; but she seemed to find his humor not to her taste.

“It is the kind of arrangement from which one draws one’s own conclusions,” said Mrs. Vavasour blandly.

“But, I say, does Bower know this?” asked Wragg, swinging his eyeglasses nervously. Though he dearly loved these carpet battles, he was chary of figuring in them, having been caught badly more than once between the upper and nether millstones of opposing facts.

“You heard me tell him,” was Millicent’s confident answer. “If he requires further information, I am here to give it to him. Indeed, I have delayed my departure for that very reason. By the way, General, do you know Switzerland well?”

“Every hotel in the country,” he boasted proudly.

“I don’t quite mean in that sense. Who are the authorities? For instance, if I had a friend buried in the cemetery here, to whom should I apply for identification of the grave?”

The General screwed up his features into a judicial frown. “Well – er – I should go to the communal office in the village, if I were you,” said he.

Braving his mother’s possible displeasure, George de Courcy Vavasour asserted his manliness for Beryl’s benefit.

“I know the right Johnny,” he said. “Let me take you to him, Miss Jaques – Eh, what?”

Millicent affected to consider the proposal. She saw that Mrs. Vavasour was content. “It is very kind of you,” she said, with her most charming smile. “Have we time to go there before lunch?”

“Oh, loads.”

“I am walking toward the village. May I come with you?” asked Beryl Wragg.

“That will be too delightful,” said Millicent.

Georgie, feeling the claws beneath the velvet of Miss Wragg’s voice, could only suffer in silence. The three went out together. The two women did the talking, and Millicent soon discovered that Bower had unquestionably paid court to Helen from the first hour of his arrival in the Maloja, whereas Spencer seemed to be an utter stranger to her and to every other person in the place. This statement offered a curious discrepancy to the story retailed by Mackenzie’s assistant. But it strengthened her case against Helen. She grew more determined than ever to go on to the bitter end.

A communal official raised no difficulty about giving the name of the occupant of the grave marked by the seventh cross from the tomb she described. A child was buried there, a boy who died three years ago. With Beryl Wragg’s assistance, she cross examined the man, but could not shake his faith in the register.

The parents still lived in the village. The official knew them, and remembered the boy quite well. He had contracted a fever, and died suddenly.

This was disappointing. Millicent, prepared to hear of a tragedy, was confronted by the commonplace. But the special imp that attends all mischief makers prompted her next question.

“Do you know Christian Stampa, the guide?” she asked.

The man grinned. “Yes, sigñora. He has been on the road for years, ever since he lost his daughter.”

“Was he any relation to the boy? What interest would he have in this particular grave?”

The custodian of parish records stroked his chin. He took thought, and reached for another ledger. He ran a finger through an index and turned up a page.

“A strange thing!” he cried. “Why, that is the very place where Etta Stampa is buried. You see, sigñora,” he explained, “it is a small cemetery, and our people are poor.”

Etta Stampa! Was this the clew? Millicent’s heart throbbed. How stupid that she had not thought of a woman earlier!

“How old was Etta Stampa?” she inquired.

“Her age is given here as nineteen, sigñora; but that is a guess. It was a sad case. She killed herself. She came from Zermatt. I have lived nearly all my life in this valley, and hers is the only suicide I can recall.”

“Why did she kill herself, and when?”

The official supplied the date; but he had no knowledge of the affair beyond a village rumor that she had been crossed in love. As for poor old Stampa, who met with an accident about the same time, he never mentioned her.

“Stampa is the lame Johnny who went up the Forno yesterday,” volunteered Georgie, when they quitted the office. “But, I say, Miss Jaques, his daughter couldn’t be a friend of yours?”

Millicent did not answer. She was thinking deeply. Then she realized that Beryl Wragg was watching her intently.

“No,” she said, “I did not mean to convey that she was my friend; only that one whom I know well was interested in her. Can you tell me how I can find out more of her history?”

“Some of the villagers may help,” said Miss Wragg. “Shall we make inquiries? It is marvelous how one comes across things in the most unlikely quarters.”

Vavasour, whose stroll with a pretty actress had resolved itself into a depressing quest into the records of the local cemetery, looked at his watch. “Time’s up,” he announced firmly. “The luncheon gong will go in a minute or two, and this keen air makes one peckish – Eh, what?”

So Millicent returned to the hotel, and when she entered the dining room she saw Helen and Spencer sitting with the de la Veres. Edith de la Vere stared at her in a particularly irritating way. Cynical contempt, bored amusement, even a quizzical surprise that such a vulgar person could be so well dressed, were carried by wireless telegraphy from the one woman to the other. Millicent countered with a studied indifference. She gave her whole attention to the efforts of the head waiter to find a seat to her liking. He offered her the choice between two. With fine self control, she selected that which turned her back on Helen and her friends.

She had just taken her place when Bower came in. He stopped near the door, and spoke to an under manager; but his glance swept the crowded room. Spencer and Helen happened to be almost facing him, and the girl was listening with a smile to something the American was saying. But there was a conscious shyness in her eyes, a touch of color on her sun browned face, that revealed more than she imagined.

Bower, who looked ill and old, hesitated perceptibly. Then he seemed to reach some decision. He walked to Helen’s side, and bent over her with courteous solicitude. “I hope that I am forgiven,” he said.

She started. She was so absorbed in Spencer’s talk, which dealt with nothing more noteworthy than the excursion down the Vale of Bregaglia, which he secretly hoped would be postponed, that she had not observed Bower’s approach.

“Forgiven, Mr. Bower? For what?” she asked, blushing now for no assignable reason.

“For yesterday’s fright, and its sequel.”

“But I enjoyed it thoroughly. Please don’t think I am only a fair weather mountaineer.”

“No. I am not likely to commit that mistake. It was feminine spite, not elemental, that I fancied might have troubled you. Now I am going to face the enemy alone. Pity me, and please drink to my success.”

He favored Spencer and the de la Veres with a comprehensive nod, and turned away, well satisfied that he had claimed a condition of confidence, of mutual trust, between Helen and himself.

Millicent was reading the menu when she heard Bower’s voice at her shoulder. “Good morning, Millicent,” he said. “Shall we declare a truce? May I eat at your table? That, at least, will be original. Picture the amazement of the mob if the lion and the lamb split a small bottle.”

He was bold; but chance had fenced her with triple brass. “I really don’t feel inclined to forgive you,” she said, with a quite forgiving smile.

He sat down. The two were watched with discreet stupefaction by many.

“Never give rein to your emotions, Millicent. You did so last night, and blundered badly in consequence. Artifice is the truest art, you know. Let us, then, be unreal, and act as though we were the dearest friends.”

“We are, I imagine. Self interest should keep us solid.”

Bower affected a momentary absorption in the wine list. He gave his order, and the waiter left them.

“Now, I want you to be good,” he said. “Put your cards on the table, and I will do the same. Let us discuss matters without prejudice, as the lawyers say. And, in the first instance, tell me exactly what you imply by the statement that Mr. Charles K. Spencer, of Denver, Colorado, as he appears in the hotel register, is responsible for Helen Wynton’s presence here to-day.”