The Silent Barrier Part 28

"Ah, I had forgotten. You were not present, of course. He made the other woman's hysterical outburst supremely ridiculous by saying, in effect, that he meant to marry Miss Wynton."

"He said that, eh?"

"Yes. He was quite emphatic. I rebuked Miss Jaques myself, and he thanked me."

"Everything was nicely cut and dried in my absence, it seems."

"Well--er----"

"The crowd evidently lost sight of the fact that I had carried off the prospective bride."

"N-no. Miss Jaques called attention to it."

"Guess her head is screwed on straight, _padre_. She made a bad break in attacking Miss Wynton; but when she set about Bower she was running on a strong scent. Sit tight, Mr. Hare. Don't take sides, or whoop up the wrong spout, and you'll see heaps of fun before you're much older."

Mightily incensed, the younger man turned away. The vicar produced his handkerchief and trumpeted into it loudly.

"G.o.d bless my soul!" he said, and repeated the pious wish, for he felt that it did him good, "how does one whoop up the wrong spout? And what happens if one does? And how remarkably touchy everybody seems to be. Next time I apply to the C.M.S. for an Alpine station, I shall stipulate for a low alt.i.tude. I am sure this rarefied air is bad for the nerves."

Nevertheless, Hare's startling communication was the one thing needed to clear away the doubts that beset Spencer at the dinner table. He had seen Mrs. de la Vere enter Helen's bedroom when he left the girl in charge of a gesticulating maid; but an act of womanly solicitude did not explain the friendship that sprang so suddenly into existence.

Now he understood, or thought he understood, which is a man's way when he seeks to interpret a woman's mind. Mrs. de la Vere, like the rest, was dazzled by Bower's wealth. After ignoring Helen during the past fortnight, she was prepared to toady to her instantly in her new guise as the chosen bride of a millionaire. The belief added fuel to the fire already raging in his breast.

There never was man more loyal to woman in his secret meditations than Spencer; but his gorge rose at the sight of Helen's winsome grat.i.tude to one so unworthy of it. With him, now as ever, to think was to act.

Watching his chance, he waylaid Helen when her vigilant chaperon was momentarily absorbed in a suggestion that private theatricals and the rehearsal of a minuet would relieve the general tedium while the snow held.

"Spare me five minutes, Miss Wynton," he said. "I want to tell you something."

Mrs. de la Vere pirouetted round on him before the girl could answer.

"Miss Wynton is just going to bed," she informed him graciously. "You know how tired she is, Mr. Spencer. You must wait till the morning."

"I don't feel like waiting; but I promise to cut down my remarks to one minute--by the clock." He answered Mrs. de la Vere, but looked at Helen.

Her color rose and fell almost with each beat of her heart. She saw the steadfast purpose in his eyes, and shrank from the decision she would be called upon to make. Hardly realizing what form the words took, she gave faint utterance to the first lucid idea that presented itself. "I think--I must really--go to my room," she murmured. "You wouldn't--like me--to faint twice in one evening--Mr. Spencer?"

It was an astonishing thing to say, the worst thing possible. It betrayed an exact knowledge of his purpose in seeking this interview.

His eyes blazed with a quick light. It seemed that he was answered before he spoke.

"Not one second. Go away, do!" broke in Mrs. de la Vere, whisking Helen toward the elevator without further parley. But she shot a glance at Spencer over her shoulder that he could not fail to interpret as a silent message of encouragement. Forthwith he viewed her behavior from a more favorable standpoint.

"Guess the feminine make-up is more complex than I counted on," he communed, as he bent over a table to find a match, that being a commonplace sort of action calculated to disarm suspicion, lest others might be observing him, and wondering why the women retired so promptly.

"I like your American, my dear," said Mrs. de la Vere sympathetically, in the solitude of the corridor.

Helen was silent.

"If you want to cry, don't mind me," went on the kindly cynic. "I'm coming in with you. I'll light up while you weep, and then you must tell me all about it. That will do you a world of good."

"There's n-n-nothing to tell!" bleated Helen.

"Oh yes, there is. You silly child, to-morrow you will have to choose between those two men. Which shall it be? I said before dinner that I couldn't help you to decide. Perhaps I was mistaken. Anyhow, I'll try."

At midnight the snow storm ceased, the wind died away, and the still air deposited its vapor on hills and valley in a h.o.a.r frost. The sun rose with a magnificent disregard for yesterday's riot.

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 pa.s.s, 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.

Pa.s.sing 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 tete-a-tete 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 a 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 G.o.d 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."