Read Ebook: The Silent Barrier by Tracy Louis McFall J V Illustrator Parsons A W Illustrator

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Ebook has 411 lines and 25208 words, and 9 pages

r eyes, and you value that well-fed body of yours too highly not to do as I demand. Believe me, within the next few minutes you shall either kneel by my little girl's grave or tumble into your own."

"I am not afraid, Stampa. I warn you again that I am more than a match for you. Yet I would willingly make any reparation within my power for the wrong I have done you."

"Yes, yes--that is all I ask--reparation, such as it is. Not to me--to Etta. Come then. I have no weapon, I repeat. You trust to your size and strength; so, by your own showing, you are safe. But you must come!"

A gleam of confidence crept into Bower's eyes. Was it not wise to humor this old madman? Perhaps, by displaying a remorse that was not all acting, he might arrange a truce, secure a breathing space. He would be free to deal with Millicent Jaques. He might so contrive matters that Helen should be far removed from Stampa's dangerous presence before the threatened disclosure was made. Yes, a wary prudence in speech and action might accomplish much. Surely he dared match his brain against a peasant's.

"Very well," he said, "I shall accompany you. But remember, at the least sign of violence, I shall not only defend myself, but drag you off to the communal guardhouse."

Without any answer, Stampa resumed his steady plodding through the snow. Bower followed, somewhat in the rear. He glanced sharply back toward the hotel. So far as he could judge, no one had witnessed that frantic spring at his tormentor. At that hour, nearly every resident would be on the sunlit veranda. He wondered whether or not Helen and Millicent had met again. He wished now he had interviewed Millicent last night. Her problem was simple enough,--a mere question of terms. Spite had carried her boldly through the scene in the foyer; but she was far too sensible a young woman to persist in a hopeless quarrel.

It was one of the fatalities that dogged his footsteps ever since he came to Maloja that the only person watching him at the moment should happen to be Millicent herself. Her room was situated at the back of the hotel, and she had fallen asleep after many hours of restless thought. When the clang of a bell woke her with a start she found that the morning was far advanced. She dressed hurriedly, rather in a panic lest her quarry might have evaded her by an early flight. The fine panorama of the Italian Alps naturally attracted her eyes. She was staring at it idly, when she saw Bower and Stampa crossing the open space in front of her bed room window.

Stampa, of course, was unknown to her. In some indefinable way his presence chimed with her fear that Bower would leave Maloja forthwith. Did he intend to post through the Vale of Bregaglia to Chiavenna? Then, indeed, she might be called on to overcome unforeseen difficulties. She appreciated his character to the point of believing that Helen was his dupe. She regretted now that she was so foolish as to attack her one-time friend openly. Far better have asked Helen to visit her privately, and endeavor to find out exactly how the land lay before she encountered Bower. At any rate, she ought to learn without delay whether or not he was hiring post horses in the village. If so, he was unwilling to meet her, and the battle royal must take place in London.

A maid entered with coffee and rolls.

"Who is that man with the English monsieur?" inquired Millicent, pointing to the two.

The servant was a St. Moritz girl, and a glance sufficed. "That? He is Christian Stampa, madam. He used to drive one of Joos's carriages; but he had a misfortune. He nearly killed a lady whom he was bringing to the hotel, and was dismissed in consequence. Now he is guide to an American gentleman. My God! but they are droll, the Americans!"

The maid laughed, and created a clatter with basin and hot water can. Millicent, forcing herself to eat quickly, continued to gaze after the pair. The description of Stampa's employer interested her. His drollery evidently consisted in hiring a cripple as guide.

"Is the American monsieur named Charles K. Spencer?" she said, speaking very clearly.

"I do not know, madam. But Marie, who is on the second, can tell me. Shall I ask?"

"Do, please."

L?ontine bustled out. Just then Millicent was amazed by Bower's extraordinary leap at Stampa and the guide's agile avoidance of his would-be assailant. The men faced each other as though a fight was imminent; but the upshot was that they walked on together quietly. Be sure that two keen blue eyes watched their every motion thenceforth, never leaving them till they entered the village street and disappeared behind a large chalet.

"And what did it all mean? Mark Bower--scuffling with a villager!"

Millicent's smooth forehead wrinkled in earnest thought. How queer it would be if Bower was trying to force Spencer's guide into the commission of a crime! He would stop at nothing. He believed he could bend all men, and all women too, to his will. Was he angered by unexpected resistance? She hoped the maid would hurry with her news. Though she meant to go at once to the village, it would be a point gained if she was certain of Stampa's identity.

Millicent agreed. For the second time, she resolved to postpone her journey to St. Moritz.

Bower was surprised when Stampa led him into the main road. Having never seen any sign of a cemetery at Maloja, he guessed vaguely that it must be situated close to the church. Therein, in a sense, he was right. It will be remembered how Helen's solitary ramble on the morning after her arrival in Maloja brought her to the secluded graveyard. She first visited the little Swiss tabernacle which had attracted her curiosity, and thence took the priest's path to the last resting place of his flock. But Stampa had a purpose in following a circuitous route. He turned sharply round the base of a huge pile of logs, stacked there in readiness for the fires of a long winter.

Bower's face had grown cold and gray while the old man was speaking. He began to understand. Stampa would spare him none of the horror of the tragedy from which he fled like a lost soul when the news of it reached the hotel. Well, he would not draw back now. If Stampa and he were destined to have a settlement, why defer it? This was his day of reckoning,--of atonement, he hoped,--and he would not shirk the ordeal, though his flesh quivered and his humbled pride lashed him like a whip.

The squalid stable was peculiarly offensive. Owing to the gale, the cattle that ought to be pasturing in the high alp were crowded there in reeking filth. Yesterday, not long before this hour, he was humming verses of cow songs to Helen, and beguiling the way to the Forno with a recital of the customs and idyls of the hills. What a spiteful thing was Fate! Why had this doting peasant risen from the dead to drag him through the mire of a past transgression? If Stampa betrayed anger, if his eyes and voice showed the scorn and hatred of a man justly incensed because of his daughter's untimely death, the situation would be more tolerable. But his words were mild, biting only by reason of their simple pathos. He spoke in a detached manner. He might be relating the unhappy story of some village maid of whom he had no personal knowledge. This complete self effacement grated on Bower's nerves. It almost spurred him again to ungovernable rage. But he realized the paramount need of self control. He clenched his teeth in the effort to bear his punishment without protest.

"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."

"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."

"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.

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.

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.

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