The Silent Barrier
TextCHAPTER XVII
THE SETTLEMENT
Though Helen was the better linguist, it was left to Spencer to explain that circumstances would prevent the lady from going to Malenco that day. He did not fully understand why the men should exchange glances of darksome intelligence when he made this statement. He fancied they were disappointed at losing a good customer; so he went on brokenly:
“You are in no hurry, eh? Well, then, take us across the glacier to the Aguagliouls. We should obtain a fine view from the summit, and get back to the hotel for luncheon. I will pay the same rates as for the Sella.”
Both guides were manifestly pleased. Pietro began a voluble recital of the glories that would meet their enraptured gaze from the top of the mighty rock.
“You will see the Bernina splendidly,” he cried, “and Roseg too, and the Glüschaint and Il Chapütschin. If the lady will trust to us, we can bring her down the Tschierva glacier safely. You are a climber, sigñor, else you could never have crossed the Ota before dawn. But let us make another cup of coffee. The middle Roseg ice is safe at any hour, and if we are on the rock by nine o’clock that will be perfect for the sun.”
Already a grand panorama of glaciers and peaks was unfolding itself. A cloudless sky promised a lovely August day, and what that means in the high Alps the mountaineer alone can tell. But Spencer turned his back on the outer glory. He had eyes only for Helen, while she, looking mistily at the giant rock across the valley, saw it not at all, for she was peering into her own soul, and found the prospect dazzling in its pure delight.
So they sat down to a fresh brew of coffee, and Spencer horrified Helen by a confession that he had eaten nothing since the previous evening. Her tender solicitude for his needs, her hasty unpacking of rolls and sandwiches, her anxiety that he should endeavor to consume the whole of the provisions intended for the day’s march, were all sufficing guerdon for the sufferings of those miserable days since the hour when Mrs. de la Vere told him that Helen had gone. It was a new experience for Spencer to have a gracious and smiling woman so greatly concerned for his welfare; but it was decidedly agreeable. These little attentions admitted so much that she dared not tell – as yet. And he had such a budget of news for her! Though he found it difficult to eat and talk at the same time, he boldly made the attempt.
“Stampa was the genius who really unraveled the mystery,” he said. “Certainly, I managed to discover, in the first instance, that you had deposited your baggage in your own name. Had all else failed, I should have converted myself into a label and stuck to your boxes till you claimed them at Basle; but once we ascertained that you had not quitted St. Moritz by train, Stampa did the rest. He knows St. Moritz like a book, and it occurred to him that you had changed your name – ”
“Why, I wonder?” she broke in.
“That is rather hard to say.” He wrestled valiantly with the leg of a tough chicken, and thus was able to evade the question.
Poor Stampa! clinging tenaciously to the belief that Helen bore some resemblance to his lost daughter, remembered that when Etta made her sorrowful journey from Zermatt she gave another name at the little hostelry in Maloja where she ended her life.
“Anyhow,” went on Spencer, having dexterously severed the joint, “he tracked you from St. Moritz to the Roseg. He even hit on the shop in which you bought your rucksack and alpenstock. Then he put me on to the telephone, and the remainder of the chase was up to me.”
“I am sorry now that the dear old man did not come with you,” cried Helen. “I look on him as the first of my friends in Switzerland, and shall be more than pleased to see him again.”
“I pressed him to come along; but he refused. I don’t wish to pain you, dearest, but I guess he wants to keep track of Bower.”
Helen, who had no inkling of the tragedy that linked those two, blushed to her ears at the recollection of her parting from the millionaire.
“Do you – do you know that Mr. Bower proposed to me?” she stammered.
“He told me that, and a lot more.”
“Did you quarrel?”
“We – said things. But I couldn’t treat Bower as I handled Georgie. I was forced to admit his good taste, you see.”
“Well, dear, promise me – ”
“That I sha’n’t slay him! Why, Helen, if he is half the man I take him for, he will come to our wedding. I told Mrs. de la Vere I should bring you back, and she agreed that there was nothing else to be done.”
The color ebbed and flowed on Helen’s face at an alarming rate. “What in the world are you talking about?” she asked, with a calm severity that her fluttering heart denied.
Spencer laughed so happily that Pietro, who understood no word of what his voyageurs were saying, gave Bartelommeo a sapient wink.
“Well, now,” he cried, “wouldn’t we be the queerest pair of zanies to go all that long way to London to get married when a parson, and a church, and all the needful consular offices are right here under our noses, so to speak. Why, we have a ready-made honeymoon staring us in the face. We’ll just skate round Switzerland after your baggage and then drop down the map into Italy. I figured it all out last night, together with ’steen methods of making the preliminary declaration. I’ll tell you the whole scheme while we – Oh, well, if you’re in a real hurry to cross the glacier, I must defer details and talk in headlines.”
For Helen, absolutely scarlet now, had risen with a tragic air and bade the guides prepare for instant departure.
The snow lay deep on the Roseg, and roping was essential, though Pietro undertook to avoid any difficult crevasses. He led, Spencer followed, with Helen next, and Bartelommeo last. They reached the opposite moraine in half an hour, and began to climb steadily. The rock which looked so forbidding from the hut was by no means steep and not at all dangerous. They had plenty of time, and often stopped to admire the magnificent vistas of the Val Roseg and the Bernina range that were gradually unfolding before their eyes. Soon they were on a level with the hut, the Alpine palace that had permitted their first embrace.
“When we make our next trip to St. Moritz, Helen, we must seek out the finest and biggest photograph of the Mortel that money can buy,” said Spencer.
Helen was standing a little above him on a broad ledge. Her hand was resting on his shoulder.
“Oh, look!” she cried suddenly, pointing with her alpenstock to the massive mountain wall that rose above the cabane. A few stones had fallen above a widespread snow slope. The stones started an avalanche, and the roar of the tremendous cascade of snow and rock was distinctly audible.
Pietro uttered an exclamation, and hastily unslung a telescope. He said something in a low tone to Bartelommeo; but Spencer and Helen grasped its meaning.
The girl’s eyes dilated with terror. “There has been an accident!” she whispered. Bartelommeo took the telescope in his turn and evidently agreed with the leading guide.
“A party has fallen on Corvatsch,” said Pietro gravely. “Two men are clinging to a ledge. It is not a bad place; but they cannot move. They must be injured, and there may be others – below.”
“Let us go to their assistance,” said Spencer instantly.
“Per certo, sigñor. That is the law of the hills. But the sigñora? What of her?”
“She will remain at the hut.”
“I will do anything you wish,” said Helen sorrowfully, for her gladness had been changed to mourning by the fearsome tidings that two, if not more, human beings were in imminent danger on the slopes of the very hill that had witnessed the avowal of her love. They raced back over the glacier, doubling on their own track, and were thus enabled to travel without precaution.
Leaving Helen at the hut, the men lost no time in beginning the ascent. They were gone so long that she was almost frantic with dread in their behalf; but at last they came, slowly, with the tread of care, for they were carrying the body of a man.
While they were yet a couple of hundred feet above the hut, Spencer intrusted the burden to the Italians alone. He advanced with rapid strides, and Helen knew that he brought bad news.
“Come, dear one,” he said gently. “We must go to the inn and send help. Our guides are bringing an injured man to the hut, and there is one other whom we left on the mountain.”
“Dead?”
“Yes, killed instantly by a stone. That was all. Just a mishap – one of the things that can never be avoided in climbing. But come, dear. More men are needed, and a doctor. This poor fellow is badly hurt.”
“Can I do nothing for him?” she pleaded.
A species of fright twitched his grave face for an instant. “No, no, that is not to be thought of,” he urged. “Pietro says he has some little skill in these matters. He can do all that is needed until a doctor arrives. Believe me, Helen, it is imperative that we should reach the hotel without delay.”
She went with him at once. “Who is it?” she asked. He steeled himself to answer according to his intent. Though he had vowed that never again would he utter a syllable to his love that was not transparently true, how could he tell her then that Stampa was stretched lifeless on the broad bosom of Corvatsch, and that the Italians were carrying Bower, crushed and raving in delirium, to the hut.
“An Englishman and his guide, I am sorry to say,” was his prepared reply. “The guide is dead; but his employer can be saved, I am sure, if only we rush things a bit. Now, Helen, let us go at top speed. No talking, dear. We must make the hotel under the hour.”
They did it, and help was soon forthcoming. Then Spencer ordered a carriage, and insisted that Helen should drive to Maloja forthwith. He would stay at Roseg, he said, to make certain that everything possible was done for the unfortunate climber. Indeed, when his beloved was lost to sight down the winding road that leads to the main valley of the Engadine, he accompanied the men who went to the Mortel. Halfway they met Pietro and Bartelommeo carrying Bower on an improvised stretcher, ice axes and a blanket.
By this time, under the stimulus of wine and warmth, Bower had regained his senses. He recognized Spencer, and tried to speak; but the American told him that even the least excitement must be avoided.
Once the hotel was reached, and they were waiting for the doctor, Bower could not be restrained.
“It was you who rescued me?” he said feebly.
“I, and two Italian guides. We saw the accident from the other side of the Roseg glacier.”
“Yes. Stampa pointed you out to me. I could not believe my eyes. I watched you till the thought came that Stampa had befooled me. Then he pushed me off the rock where we were standing. I broke my leg in the fall; but he held me there on the rope and taunted me. Great God! how I suffered!”
“You really ought not to talk about it,” said Spencer soothingly.
“Why not? He brought me there to kill me, he said. The cunning old fox told me that I would find Helen in the Mortel hut, and offered to take me to her by a short cut over Corvatsch. And I believed him! I was mad, I suppose. We did the Marmoré ascent by the light of the stars. Do you realize what that means? It is a hard climb for experts in broad daylight. But I meant to beat you, Spencer. Stampa vowed you were in St. Moritz. And again I believed him! Think of it – I was hoodwinked by an old peasant.”
“Hush! Try and forget things till your broken limb is fixed.”
“What does it matter? Confound it! you’ve won; so let me tell my story. I must have lost my senses when I saw you and Helen leaving the glacier with two strange guides. I forgot all else in my rage. I stood there, frozen, bewitched. Stampa was watching me all the time, and the instant I turned to revile him he threw me off my balance with a thrust of his ax. ‘Now you are going to die, Marcus Bauer!’ he said, grinning at me with a lunatic’s joy. He even gloated over the unexpected injury I received in falling. My groans and cries were so pleasing to him that he did not cut the rope at once as he meant to do, but kept me dangling there, listening to his reproaches. Then the stones fell, and pinned him to the ledge; but not one touched me, and I hauled myself up, broken leg and all, till I crawled on to the big rock that rested on his body. You found me there, eh?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I wish you luck. I meant to snatch Helen from you, even at the twelfth hour; but Stampa over-reached me. That mock marriage of his contriving had more power than I counted on. Curse it! how these crushed bones are beginning to ache! Give me some brandy. I want to drink Helen’s health, and my own, and yours, damn you! See that you treat her well and make her life happy! She is worthy of all your love, and I suppose she loves you, whereas I might have striven for years to win her affection and then failed in the end.”
Late that night Spencer arrived at the Maloja. Helen was waiting for him, as he had telephoned the hour he might be expected. Rumor had brought the news of Stampa’s death and Bower’s accident. Then she understood why her lover had sent her away so quickly. She was troubled all day, blaming herself as the unconscious cause of so much misery. Spencer saw that the full truth alone would dispel her self reproach. So he told her everything, even showing her Millicent’s letter and a telegram received from Mackenzie, in which the editor of “The Firefly” put it quite plainly that the proprietor of the magazine had forbidden him (Mackenzie) from taking any steps whatever with regard to Helen’s return to England without definite instructions.
The more she learned of the amazing web of intrigue and misunderstanding that surrounded her movements since she left the Embankment Hotel after that memorable luncheon with Millicent, the less inclined she was to deny Spencer’s theory that Fate had brought them together.
“I cleared out of Colorado as though a tarantula had bitten me,” he said. “I traveled five thousand miles to London, saw you, fooled myself into the belief that I was intended by Providence to play the part of a heavy uncle, and kept up that notion during another thousand-mile trip to this delightful country. Then you began to reach out for me, Helen – ”
“I did nothing of the kind!” she protested.
“Oh, yes, you did, – just grabbed me good and hard, – and when Bower showed up I stacked my chips on the table and sat down to the game. What am I talking about? I don’t know. Kiss me good night, sweetheart, and don’t you give a red cent who’s looking. For once in a way, I don’t mind admitting that I’m tired – all in. I could sleep on a row of porcupines.”
Stampa was buried in the grave that held his daughter’s remains. Spencer purchased the space for a suitable monument, and the inscription does not fail to record the fact that one of the men who first conquered the Matterhorn had paid tribute to the mountains by meeting his death on Corvatsch.
The American went many times to visit Bower at the Roseg inn. He found his erstwhile rival resigned to the vagaries of fortune. The doctors summoned from St. Moritz deemed his case so serious that they brought a specialist from Paris, and the great surgeon announced that the millionaire’s leg would be saved; but there must remain a permanent stiffness.
“I know what that means,” said Bower, with a wry smile. “It is a legacy from Stampa. That is really rather funny, considering that the joke is against myself. By the way, did I tell you I gave Millicent Jaques a check for five thousand pounds to stop her tongue?”
“I guessed the check, but couldn’t guess the amount.”
“She wrote last week, threatening all sorts of terrible things because I withheld payment. You will remember that when you and I placed on record our mutual opinion of each other, we agreed at any rate that it was a mean thing on her part to give away our poor Helen to the harpies in the hotel. So I telegraphed at once to my bankers, and Miss Millicent didn’t make good, as you would put it. Now she promises to ‘expose’ me. Humorous, isn’t it?”
“I think you ought to marry her,” said Spencer, with that immobile look of his.
“Perhaps I may, one of these days. But first she must learn to behave herself. A nice girl, Millicent. She would look decorative, sitting beside an invalid in a carriage. Yes, I’ll think of it. Meanwhile, I shall chaff her about the five thousand and see how she takes it.”
Millicent behaved. Helen saw that she did.
On a day in September, after a wedding that was attended by as many people as could be crowded into the little English church at Maloja, Mr. and Mrs. Charles K. Spencer drove over the pass and down the Vale of Bregaglia en route to Como, Milan, and Venice. At the wedding breakfast, when Mrs. de la Vere officiated as hostess, the Rev. Philip Hare amused the guests by stating that he had taken pains to discover what the initial “K” represented in his American friend’s name.
“His second name is Knox,” said the vicar, “and I understand that he is a direct descendant of a famous Scottish divine known to history as a very stubborn person. Well, it has been said by a gentleman present that Mr. Spencer has a backbone of cast steel, so the ‘K’ is fully accounted for, while the singular affinity of steel of any variety for a magnet gives a ready explanation of the admirable union which has resulted from the chance that brought the bride and bridegroom under the same roof.”
Everybody said that Hare was much happier on such occasions than in the pulpit, and even the Wragg girls were heard to admit that Helen looked positively charming.
So it is clear that many hatchets were blunted in Maloja, which is as it should ever be in such a fairyland, and that Helen, looking back at the mighty chain of the Alps from the deck of a steamer on Lake Como, had no reason to regret the day when first she crossed that solemn barrier.