The Silent Barrier Part 36

Helen hesitated. "It will soon be tea time," she said, with a self conscious blush. She had promised Spencer to walk with him to the chateau; but her visit to Millicent had intervened, and he was not on the veranda at the moment.

"We need not go far. The sun has garnished the roads for us. What do you say if we make for the village, and interview Johann Klucker's cat on the weather?"

His tone was quite rea.s.suring. To her transparent honesty of purpose it seemed better that they should discuss Millicent's motive in coming to the hotel and then dismiss it for ever. "A most excellent idea,"

she cried lightly. "I have been writing all the morning, so a breath of fresh air will be grateful."

They pa.s.sed down the steps.

They had not gone more than a few paces when the driver of an empty carriage pulled up his vehicle and handed Bower a telegram.

"They gave it to me at St. Moritz, Herr Bower," he said. "I took a message there for Herr Spencer, and they asked me to bring this to you, as it would reach you more quickly than if it came by the post."

Bower thanked the man, and opened the envelop. It was a very long telegram; but he only glanced at it in the most cursory manner before putting it in a pocket.

At a distant corner of the road by the side of the lake, Millicent turned for a last look at the hotel and waved a hand at them. Helen replied.

"I almost wish now she was staying here a few days," she said wistfully. "She ought to have seen our valley in its summer greenery."

"I fear she brought winter in her train," was Bower's comment. "But the famous cat must decide. Here, boy," he went on, hailing a village urchin, "where is Johann Klucker's house?"

The boy pointed to a track that ran close to the right bank of the tiny Inn. He explained volubly, and was rewarded with a franc.

"Do you know this path?" asked Bower. "Klucker's chalet is near the waterfall, which should be a fine sight owing to the melting snow."

It was Helen's favorite walk. She would have preferred a more frequented route; but the group of houses described by the boy was quite near, and she could devise no excuse for keeping to the busy highway. As the path was narrow she walked in front. The gra.s.s and flowers seemed to have drawn fresh tints from the snow, which had cleared away with magical rapidity from this sheltered spot. But the little rivulet, usually diamond bright, was now a turbulent and foaming stream. Care was needed not to slip. If anyone fell into that miniature torrent, it would be no easy matter to escape without broken bones.

"Would you ever believe that a few hours' snow, followed by a hot sun, would make such a difference to a mere ribbon of water like this?" she asked, when they were pa.s.sing through a narrow cleft in a wall of rock through which the Inn roared with a quite respectable fury.

"I am in a mood to believe anything," said Bower. "Do you remember our first meeting at the Embankment Hotel? Who would have imagined then that Millicent Jaques, a few weeks later, would rush a thousand miles to the Maloja and scream her woes to Heaven and the mult.i.tude. Neither you nor I, I fancy, had seen her during the interval. Did she tell you the cause of her extraordinary behavior?"

"No. I did not ask her. But it scarce needed explanation, Mr. Bower.

I--I fear she suspected me of flirting. It was unjust; but I can well conceive that a woman who thinks her friend is robbing her of a man's affections does not wait to consider nice points of procedure."

"Surely Millicent did not say that I had promised to marry her?"

Though Helen was not prepared for this downright plunge into an embarra.s.sing discussion, she managed to evade a direct answer. "There was more than a suggestion of that in her words last night," she said.

"Perhaps she thought so in all seriousness. You seem to have undeceived her to-day, and I am sure you must have dealt with her kindly, or she would not have acknowledged her mistake in such frank terms to me. There, now! That is the end of a very disagreeable episode. Shall we say no more about it?"

Helen was flushed and hurried of speech: but she persevered bravely, hoping that Bower's tact would not desert him at this crisis. She quickened her pace a little, with the air of one who has said the last word on a difficult topic and is anxious to forget it.

Bower overtook her. He grasped her shoulder almost roughly, and drew her round till she faced him. "You are trying to escape me, Helen!" he said hoa.r.s.ely. "That is impossible. Someone must have told you what I said to Millicent in the hearing of all who chose to listen. Her amazing outburst forced from me an avowal that should have been made to you alone. Helen, I want you to be my wife. I love you better than all the world. I have my faults,--what man is flawless?--but I have the abiding virtue of loving you. I shall make your life happy, Helen.

For G.o.d's sake do not tell me that you are already promised to another!"

His eyes blazed into hers with a pa.s.sion that was appalling in its intensity. She seemed to lose the power to speak or move. She looked up at him like a frightened child, who hears strange words that she does not comprehend. Thinking he had won her, he threw his arms about her and strained her fiercely to his breast. He strove to kiss away the tears that began to fall in piteous protest; but she bent her head as if in shame.

"Oh, please let me go!" she sobbed. "Please let me go! What have I done that you should treat me so cruelly."

"Cruelly, Helen? How should I be cruel to you whom I hold so dear?"

Still he clasped her tightly, hardly knowing what he did in his transport of joy at the belief that she was his.

She struggled to free herself. She shrank from this physical contact with a strange repulsion. She felt as a timid animal must feel when some lord of the jungle pulls it down and drags it to his lair. Bower was kissing her cheeks, her forehead, her hair, finding a mad rapture in the fragrance of her skin. He crushed her in a close embrace that was almost suffocating.

"Oh, please let me go!" she wailed. "You frighten me. Let me go! How dare you!"

She fought so wildly that he yielded to a dim sense that she was in earnest. He relaxed his grip. With the instinct of a hunted thing, she took a dangerous leap for safety clean across the swollen Inn. Luckily she alighted on a broad boulder, or a sprained ankle would have been the least penalty for that desperate means of escape.

As she stood there, with tears streaming down her face and the crimson brand of angry terror on her brow, the dreadful knowledge that he had lost her smote Bower like a rush of cold air from a newly opened tomb.

Between them brawled the tiny torrent. It offered no bar to an active man; but even in his panic of sudden perception he resisted the impulse that bade him follow.

"Helen," he pleaded, stretching forth his hands in frenzied gesture, "why do you cast me off? I swear by all a man holds sacred that I mean no wrong. You are dear to me as life itself. Ah, Helen, say that I may hope! I do not even ask for your love. I shall win that by a lifetime of devotion."

At last she found utterance. He had alarmed her greatly; but no woman can feel it an outrage that a man should avow his longing. And she pitied Bower with a great pity. Deep down in her heart was a suspicion that they might have been happy together had they met sooner. She would never have loved him,--she knew that now beyond cavil,--but if they were married she must have striven to make life pleasant for him, while she drifted down the smooth stream of existence free from either abiding joys or carking sorrows.

"I am more grieved than I can tell that this should have happened,"

she said, striving hard to restrain the sob in her voice, though it gave her words the ring of genuine regret. "I little dreamed that you thought of me in that way, Mr. Bower. But I can never marry you--never, no matter what the circ.u.mstances! Surely you will help me to dispel the memory of a foolish moment. It has been trying to both of us. Let us pretend that it never was."

Had she struck him with a whip he could not have flinched so visibly beneath the lash as from the patent honesty of her words. For a time he did not answer, and the sudden calm that came quick on the heels of frenzy had in it a weird peacefulness.

Neither could ever again forget the noisy rush of the stream, the glad singing of birds in a thicket overhanging the bank, the tinkle of the cow bells as the cattle began to climb to the pastures for a luxurious hour ere sundown. It was typical of their lives that they should be divided by the infant Inn, almost at its source, and that thenceforth the barrier should become ever wider and deeper till it reached the infinite sea.

He seemed to take his defeat well. He was pale, and his lips twitched with the effort to attain composure. He looked at Helen with a hungry longing that was slowly acknowledging restraint.

"I must have frightened you," he said, breaking a silence that was growing irksome. "Of course I apologize for that. But we cannot leave things where they are. If you must send me away from you, I may at least demand a clear understanding. Have no fear that I shall distress you further. May I join you, or will you walk to the bridge a little higher up?"

"Let us return to the hotel," she protested.

"No, no. We are not children. We have broken no law of G.o.d or man. Why should I be ashamed of having asked you to marry me, or you to listen, even though it be such a hopeless fantasy as you say?"

Helen, deeply moved in his behalf, walked to a bridge of planks a little distance up stream. Bower joined her there. He had deliberately resolved to do a dastardly thing. If Spencer was the cause of Helen's refusal, that obstacle, at any rate, could be smashed to a pulp.

"Now, Helen," he said, "I want you to believe that your happiness is my only concern. Perhaps, at some other time, you may allow me to renew in less abrupt manner the proposal I have made to-day. But when you hear all that I have to tell, you will be forced to admit that I placed your high repute above every other consideration in declaring my love before, rather than after, you learned how and why you came to Switzerland."

His manner was becoming more calm and judicial each moment. It reacted on Helen, who gazed at him with a very natural surprise in her still tear-laden eyes.

"That, at least, is simple enough," she cried.

"No. It is menacing, ugly, a trick calculated to wound you sorely.

When first it came to my ears I refused to credit the vile meanness of it. You saw that telegram which reached my hands as we quitted the hotel? It is a reply to certain inquiries I caused to be made in London. Read it."

Helen took the crumpled sheets of thin paper and began to read. Bower watched her face with a maleficent confidence that might have warned her had she seen it. But she paid heed to nothing else at that moment save the mysterious words scrawled in a foreign handwriting:

"Have investigated 'Firefly' incident fully. Pargrave compelled Mackenzie to explain. The American, Charles K.

Spencer, recently residing at Embankment Hotel, is paying Miss Helen Wynton's expenses, including cost of publis.h.i.+ng her articles. He followed her on the day of her departure, and has since asked Mackenzie for introduction. Pargrave greatly annoyed, and holds Mackenzie at your disposal.

"KENNETT."

Helen went very white; but she spoke with a firmness that was amazing, even to Bower. "Who is Kennett?" she said.