The Silent Barrier

Spencer’s room faced the southeast. When the valet drew his blind in the morning the cold room was filled with a balmy warmth. A glance through the window, however, dispelled a germ of hope that Helen and he might start on the promised walk to Vicosoprano. The snow lay deep in the pass, and probably extended a mile or two down into the Vale of Bregaglia. The rapid thaw that would set in during the forenoon might clear the roads before sunset. Next day, walking would be practicable; to-day it meant wading.

He looked through the Orlegna gorge, and caught the silvery sheen of the Cima di Rosso’s snow capped summit. Hardly a rock was visible. The gale had clothed each crag with a white shroud. All day long the upper reaches of the glacier would be pelted by avalanches. It struck him that an early stroll to the highest point of the path beyond Cavloccio might be rewarded with a distant view of several falls. In any case, it provided an excellent pretext for securing Helen’s company, and he would have cheerfully suggested a trip in a balloon to attain the same object.

The temperature of his bath water induced doubts as to the imminence of the thaw. Indeed, the air was bitterly cold as yet. The snow lay closely on roads and meadow land. It had the texture of fine powder. Passing traffic left shallow, well defined marks. A couple of stablemen swung their arms to restore circulation. The breath of horses and cattle showed in dense clouds.

For once in his life the color of a tie and the style of his clothes became matters of serious import. At first, he was blind to the humor of it. He hesitated between the spruce tightness of a suit fashioned by a New York tailor and the more loosely designed garments he had purchased in London. Then he laughed and reddened. Flinging both aside, he chose the climber’s garb worn the previous day, and began to dress hurriedly. Therein he was well advised. Nothing could better become his athletic figure. He was that type of man who looks thinner when fully clothed. He had never spared himself when asking others to work hard, and he received his guerdon now in a frame of iron and sinews of pliant steel.

Helen usually came down to breakfast at half-past eight. She had the healthy British habit of beginning the day with a good meal, and Spencer indulged in the conceit that he might be favored with a tête-à-tête before they started for the projected walk. Neither Bower nor Mrs. de la Vere ever put in an appearance at that hour. Though Americans incline to the Continental manner of living, this true Westerner found himself a sudden convert to English methods. In a word, he was in love, and his lady could not err. To please her he was prepared to abjure iced water – even to drink tea.

But, as often happens, his cheery mood was destined to end in disappointment. He lingered a whole hour in the salle à manger, but Helen came not. Then he rose in a panic. What if she had breakfasted in her room, and was already basking in the sunlit veranda – perhaps listening to Bower’s eloquence? He rushed out so suddenly that his waiter was amazed. Really, these Americans were incomprehensible – weird as the English. The two races dwelt far apart, but they moved in the same erratic orbit. To the stolid German mind they were human comets, whose comings and goings were not to be gaged by any reasonable standard.

No, the veranda was empty – to him. Plenty of people greeted him; but there was no Helen. Ultimately he reflected that their appointment was for ten o’clock. He calmed down, and a pipe became obvious. He was enjoying that supremest delight of the smoker – the first soothing whiffs of the day’s tobacco – when a servant brought him a note. The handwriting was strange to his eyes; but a premonition told him that it was Helen’s. Somehow, he expected that she would write in a clear, strong, legible way. He was not mistaken. She sent a friendly little message that she was devoting the morning to work. The weather made it impossible to go to Vicosoprano, and in any event she did not feel equal to a long walk. “Yesterday’s events,” she explained, “took more out of me than I imagined.”

Well, she had been thinking of him, and that counted. He was staring at the snow covered tennis courts, and wondering how soon the valley would regain its summer aspect, when Stampa limped into sight round the corner of the hotel. He stood at the foot of the broad flight of steps, as though waiting for someone. Spencer was about to join him for a chat, when he recollected that Bower and the guide had an arrangement to meet in the morning.

With the memory came a queer jumble of impressions. Stampa’s story, told overnight, was a sad one; but the American was too fair minded to affect a moral detestation of Bower because of a piece of folly that wrecked a girl’s life sixteen years ago. If the sins of a man’s youth were to shadow his whole life, then charity and regeneration must be cast out of the scheme of things. Moreover, Bower’s version of the incident might put a new face on it. There was no knowing how he too had been tempted and suffered. That he raged against the resurrection of a bygone misdeed was shown by his mad impulse to kill Stampa on the glacier. That such a man, strong in the power of his wealth and social position, should even dream of blotting out the past by a crime, offered the clearest proof of the frenzy that possessed him as soon as he recognized Etta Stampa’s father.

Not one word of his personal belief crossed Spencer’s lips during the talk with the guide. Rather did he impress on his angry and vengeful hearer that a forgotten scandal should be left in its tomb. He took this line, not that he posed as a moralist, but because he hated to acknowledge, even to himself, that he was helped in his wooing by Helen’s horror of his rival’s lapse from the standard every pure minded woman sets up in her ideal lover. Ethically, he might be wrong; in his conscience he was justified. He had suffered too grievously from every species of intrigue and calumny during his own career not to be ultra-sensitive in regard to the use of such agents.

Yet, watching the bent and crippled old man waiting there in the snow, a sense of pity and mourning chilled his heart with ice cold touch.

“If I were Stampa’s son, if that dead girl were my sister, how would I settle with Bower?” he asked, clenching his pipe firmly between his teeth. “Well, I could only ask God to be merciful both to him and to me.”

“Good gracious, Mr. Spencer! why that fierce gaze at our delightful valley?” came the voice of Mrs. de la Vere. “I am glad none of us can give you the address of the Swiss clerk of the weather – or you would surely slay him.”

He turned. Convention demanded a smile and a polite greeting; but Spencer was not conventional. “You are a thought reader, Mrs. de la Vere,” he said.

“‘One of my many attractions,’ you should have added.”

“I find this limpid light too critical.”

“Oh, what a horrid thing to tell any woman, especially in the early morning!”

“I have a wretched habit of putting the second part of a sentence first. I really intended to say – but it is too late.”

“It is rather like swallowing the sugar coating after the pill; but I’ll try.”

“Well, then, this crystal atmosphere does not lend itself to the obvious. If we were in London, I should catalogue your bewitchments lest you imagined I was blind to them.”

“That sounds nice, but – ”

“It demands analysis, so I have failed doubly.”

“I don’t feel up to talking like a character in one of Henry James’s novels. And you were much more amusing last night. Have you seen Miss Jaques this morning?”

“No. That is, I don’t think so.”

“Do you know her?”

“No.”

“It would be a kind thing if someone told her that there are other places in Switzerland where she will command the general admiration she deserves.”

“I am inclined to believe that there is a man in the hotel who can put that notion before her delicately.”

Spencer possessed the unchanging gravity of expression that the whole American race seems to have borrowed from the Red Indian. Mrs. de la Vere’s eyes twinkled as she gazed at him.

“You didn’t hear what was said last night,” she murmured. “Where Millicent Jaques is concerned, delicacy is absent from Mr. Bower’s make-up – is that good New York?”

“It would be understood.”

This time he smiled. Mrs. de la Vere wished to be a friend to Helen. Whatsoever her motive, the wish was excellent.

“You are severe,” she pouted. “Of course I ought not to mimic you – ”

“Pray do. I had no idea I spoke so nicely.”

“Thank you. But I am serious. I have espoused Miss Wynton’s cause, and there will be nothing but unhappiness for her while that other girl remains here.”

“I hope you are mistaken,” he said slowly, meeting her quizzing glance without flinching.

“That is precisely where a woman’s point of view differs from a man’s,” she countered. “In our lives we are swayed by things that men despise. We are conscious of sidelong looks and whisperings. We dread the finger of scorn. When you have a wife, Mr. Spencer, you will begin to realize the limitations of the feminine horizon.”

“Are you asking me to take this demonstrative young lady in hand?”

“I believe you would succeed.”

Spencer smiled again. He had not credited Mrs. de la Vere with such fine perceptiveness. If her words meant anything, they implied an alliance, offensive and defensive, for Helen’s benefit and his own.

“Guess we’ll leave it right there till I’ve had a few words with Miss Wynton,” he said, dropping suddenly into colloquial phrase.

“A heart to heart talk, in fact.” She laughed pleasantly, and opened her cigarette case.

“Tell you what, Mrs. de la Vere,” he said, “if ever you come to Colorado I shall hail you as a real cousin!”

Then a silence fell between them. Bower was walking out of the hotel. He passed close in front of the glass partition, and might have seen them if his eyes were not as preoccupied as his mind. But he was looking at Stampa, and frowning in deep thought. The guide heard his slow, heavy tread, and turned. The two met. They exchanged no word, but went away together, the lame peasant hobbling along by the side of the tall, well dressed plutocrat.

“How odd!” said Mrs. de la Vere. “How exceedingly odd!”

CHAPTER XIII

THE COMPACT

“Now, what have you to say? We are safe from meddlers here.”

Bower spoke curtly. Stampa and he were halfway across the narrow strip of undulating meadow land which shut off the hotel from the village. They had followed the footpath, a busy thoroughfare bombarded with golf balls on fine mornings, but likely to be unfrequented till the snow melted. Receiving no answer, Bower glanced sharply at his companion; but the old guide might be unaware of his presence, so steadily did he trudge onward, with downcast, introspective eyes. Resolved to make an end of a silence that was irksome, Bower halted.

Then, for the first time, Stampa opened his lips. “Not here,” he said.