CHAPTER XV
A COWARD’S VICTORY
“It is a queer story,” said Bower.
“Because it is true,” retorted Millicent.
“Yet she never set eyes on the man until she met him here.”
“That is rather impossible, isn’t it?”
“It is a fact, nevertheless. On the day I arrived in Maloja, a letter came from the editor of ‘The Firefly,’ telling her that he had written to Spencer, whom he knew, and suggested that they should become acquainted.”
“These things are easily managed,” said Millicent airily.
“I accept Miss Wynton’s version.” Bower spoke with brutal frankness. The morning’s tribulation had worn away some of the veneer. He fully expected the girl to flare into ill suppressed rage. Then he could deal with her as he liked. He had not earned his repute in the city of London without revealing at times the innate savagery of his nature. As soon as he had taunted his adversaries into a passion, he found the weak joints in their armor. He was surprised now that Millicent should laugh. If she was acting, she was acting well.
“It is too funny for words to see you playing the trustful swain,” she said.
“One necessarily believes the best of one’s future wife.”
“So you still keep up that pretense? It was a good line in last night’s situation; but it becomes farcical when applied to light comedy.”
“I give you credit for sufficient wit to understand why I joined you here. We can avoid unpleasant explanations. I am prepared to bury the hatchet – on terms.”
“Terms?”
“Yes. You are a blackmailer, a somewhat dangerous one. You tempt me to revise the wisest of La Rochefoucauld’s maxims, and say that every woman is at heart a snake. You owe everything to me; yet you are not content. Without my help you would still be carrying a banner in the chorus. Unless I continue my patronage, that is what you must go back to. Don’t imagine that I am treating with you out of sentiment. For Helen’s sake, for her sake only, I offer a settlement.”
Millicent’s eyes narrowed a little; but she affected to admire the gleaming beads in a glass of champagne. “Pray continue,” she said. “Your views are interesting.”
There was some danger lest Bower should reverse his wonted procedure, and lose his own temper in this unequal duel. They both spoke in low tones. Anyone watching them would find the smiles of conventionality on their lips. To all outward seeming, they were indulging in a friendly gossip.
“Of course, you want money,” he said. “That is the be-all and end-all of your existence. Very well. Write a letter to Miss Wynton apologizing for your conduct, take yourself away from here at three o’clock, and from St. Moritz by the next train, and I not only withdraw my threat to bar you in the profession but shall hand you a check for a thousand pounds.”
Millicent pretended to consider his proposal. She shook her head. “Not nearly enough,” she said, with a sweetly deprecatory moue.
“It is all you will get. I repeat that I am doing this to spare Helen’s feelings. Perhaps I am ill advised. You have done your worst already, and it only remains for me to crush you. But I stick to the bargain – for five minutes.”
“Dear, dear!” she sighed. “Only five minutes? Do you get rid of your troubles so quickly? How nice to be a man, and to be able to settle matters with such promptitude.”
Bower was undeniably perplexed; but he held to his line. Unwavering tenacity of purpose was his chief characteristic. “Meanwhile,” he said, “let us talk of the weather.”
“A most seasonable topic. It was altogether novel this morning to wake and find the world covered with snow.”
“If the Maloja is your world, you must have thought it rather chilling,” he laughed.
“Yes, cold, perhaps, but fascinating. I went for a walk. You see, I wanted to be alone, to think what I should do for the best. A woman is so helpless when she has to fight a big, strong man like you. Chance led me to the cemetery. What an odd little place it is? Wouldn’t you hate to be buried there?”
It was now Millicent’s turn to be surprised. Not by the slightest tremor did Bower betray the shock caused by her innuendo. His nerves were proof against further assault that day. Fear had conquered him for an instant when he looked into the gate of darkness. With its passing from before his eyes, his intellect resumed its sway, and he weighed events by that nicely adjusted balance. None but a man who greatly dared would be sitting opposite Millicent at that moment. None but a fool would have failed to understand her. But he gave no sign that he understood. He refilled his glass, and emptied it with the gusto of a connoisseur.
“That is a good wine,” he said. “Sometimes pints are better than quarts, although of the same vintage. Waiter, another half bottle, please.”
“No more for me, of course,” murmured Millicent. “I must keep my head clear, – so much depends on the next five minutes.”
“Three, to be exact.”
“Ah, then, I must use them to advantage. Shall I tell you more about my early stroll?”
“What time did you go out?”
“Soon after ten o’clock.”
“You saw – what?”
“A most exciting struggle – and – what shall I call it? – a ceremony.”
Bower was silent for an appreciable time. He watched a waiter uncorking the champagne. When the bottle was placed on the table he pretended to read the label. He was thinking that Stampa’s marriage service was not so futile, after all. It had soon erected its first barrier. Millicent, who had qualities rare in a woman, turned and looked at a clock. Incidentally, she discovered that Spencer was devoting some attention to the proceedings at her table. Still Bower remained silent. She stole a glance at him. She was conscious that an abiding dread was stealing into her heart; but her stage training came to her aid, and she managed to say evenly:
“My little ramble does not appear to interest you?”
“It does,” he said. “I have been arguing the pros and cons of a ticklish problem. There are two courses to me. I can either bribe you, or leave you to your own devices. The latter method implies the interference of the police. I dislike that. Helen would certainly be opposed to it. I make the one thousand into five; but I want your answer now.”
“I accept,” she said instantly.
“Ah, but you are trembling. Queer, isn’t it, how thin is the partition between affluence and a prison? There are dozens of men who stand high in commercial circles in London who ought to be in jail. There are quite as many convicts in Portland who reached penal servitude along precisely the same road. That is the penalty of being found out. Let me congratulate you. And do try another glass of this excellent wine. You need it, and you have to pack your belongings at once, you know.”
“Thank you.”
Her eyes sparkled. Her well modulated voice was hardly under control. Five thousand pounds was a great deal of money; but the tragedy of Etta Stampa’s life might have been worth more. How could she find out the whole truth? She must accomplish that, in some way.
Therein, however, she greatly miscalculated. Bower divined her thought almost before it was formed. “For goodness’ sake, let us put things in plain English!” he said. “I am paying you handsomely to save the woman I am going to marry from some little suffering and heartache. Perhaps it is unnecessary. Her fine nature might forgive a man a transgression of his youth. At any rate, I avert the risk by this payment. The check will be payable to you personally. In other words, you must place it to your own account in your bank. Any breach of our contract in letter or spirit during the next two days will be punished by its stoppage. After that time, the remotest hint on your part of any scandalous knowledge affecting me, or Helen, or the causes which led to my present weakness in allowing you to blackmail me, will imply the immediate issue of a warrant for your arrest. Need I explain the position at greater length?”
“No,” said Millicent, who wished now that she had bitten off the end of her tongue before she vented her spleen to the Vavasours and the Wraggs.
“On second thoughts,” went on Bower unconcernedly, “I forego the stipulation as to a letter of apology. I don’t suppose Helen will value it. Assuredly, I do not.”
The cheapening of her surrender stung more than she counted on. “I have tried to avoid the appearance of uncalled for rudeness to-day,” she blurted out.
“Well – yes. What is the number of your room?”
She told him.
“I shall send the check to you at once. Have you finished?”
He accompanied her to the door, bowed her out, and came back. Smiling affably, he pulled a chair to Mrs. de la Vere’s side.
“I quite enjoyed my luncheon,” he said. “You all heard that stupid outburst of Millicent’s last night; so there is no harm in telling you that she regrets it. She is leaving the hotel forthwith.”
Helen rose suddenly. “She is one of my few friends,” she said. “I cannot let her go in anger.”
“She is unworthy of your friendship,” exclaimed Bower sharply. “Take my advice and forget that she exists.”
“You cannot forget that anyone exists, or has existed,” said Spencer quietly.
“What? You too?” said Bower. His eyes sought the American’s, and flashed an unspoken challenge.
He felt that the world was a few hundred years too old. There were historical precedents for settling affairs such as that now troubling him by means that would have appealed to him. But he opposed no further hindrance to Helen’s departure. Indeed, he perceived that her meeting with Millicent would provide in some sense a test of his own judgment. He would soon learn whether or not money would prevail.
He waited a little while, and then sent his valet with the check and a request for an acknowledgment. The man brought him a scribbled note:
“Was rather taken aback by appearance of H. She says you told her I was leaving the hotel. We fell on each other’s neck and wept. Is that right? M. J.”
He cut the end off a cigar, lit the paper with a match, and lit the cigar with the paper.
“Five thousand pounds!” he said to himself. “It is a lot of money to one who has none. I remember the time when I would have sold my soul to the devil for half the amount.”
But that was not a pleasing notion. It suggested that, by evil hazard, some such contract had, in fact, been made, but forgotten by one of the parties to it. So he dismissed it. Having disposed of Stampa and Millicent, practically between breakfast and lunch, there were no reasons why he should trouble further about them. The American threatened a fresh obstacle. He was winning his way with Helen altogether too rapidly. In the light of those ominous words at the luncheon table his close association with Stampa indicated a definite knowledge of the past. Curse him! Why did he interfere?
Bower was eminently a selfish man. He had enjoyed unchecked success for so long a time that he railed now at the series of mischances that tripped the feet of his desires. Looking back through recent days, he was astonished to find how often Spencer had crossed his path. Before he was four hours in Maloja, Helen, in his hearing, had singled out the American for conjecture and scrutiny. Then Dunston spoke of the same man as an eager adversary at baccarat; but the promised game was arranged without Spencer’s coöperation, greatly to Dunston’s loss. A man did not act in such fashion without some motive. What was it? This reserved, somewhat contemptuous rival had also snatched Helen from his company many times. He had undoubtedly rendered some service in coming to the Forno hut; but Bower’s own lapse from sanity on that occasion did not escape his notice. Finally, this cool mannered, alert youngster from the New World did not seem to care a fig for any prior claim on Helen’s affections. His whole attitude might be explained by the fact that he was Stampa’s employer, and had won the old guide’s confidence.
Yes, the American was the real danger. That pale ghost conjured from the grave by Stampa was intangible, powerless, a dreamlike wraith evoked by a madman’s fancy. Already the fear engendered myopia of the morning was passing from Bower’s eyes. The passage of arms with Millicent had done him good. He saw now that if he meant to win Helen he must fight for her.
Glancing at his watch, he found that the time was a quarter to three. He opened a window in his sitting room, which was situated in the front of the hotel. By leaning out he could survey the carriage stand at the foot of the long flight of steps. A pair-horse vehicle was drawn up there, and men were fastening portly dress baskets in the baggage carrier over the hind wheels.
He smiled. “The pretty dancer travels luxuriously,” he thought. “I wonder whether she will be honest enough to pay her debts with my money?”
He still hated her for having dragged him into a public squabble. He looked to the future to requite him. A year, two years, would soon pass. Then, when funds were low and engagements scarce, she would appeal to him again, and his solicitors would reply. He caught himself framing curt, stinging sentences to be embodied in the letter; but he drew himself up with a start. Surely there was something very wrong with Mark Bower, the millionaire, when he gloated over such paltry details. Why, his reflections were worthy of that old spitfire, Mrs. de Courcy Vavasour.
His cigar had gone out. He threw it away. It had the taste of Millicent’s cheap passion. A decanter of brandy stood on the table, and he drank a small quantity, though he had imbibed freely of champagne at luncheon. He glanced at a mirror. His face was flushed and care lined, and he scowled at his own apparition.
“I must go and see the last of Millicent. It will cheer me up,” he said to himself.
When he entered the foyer, Millicent was already in the veranda, a dainty picture in furs and feathers. Somewhat to his surprise, Helen was with her. A good many people were watching them covertly, a quite natural proceeding in view of their strained relations overnight.
So, alive to possibilities going far beyond a single check, even for five thousand pounds, at the last moment she sent a message to Helen.
“Come and see me off,” she wrote. “It will simply paralyze the dowager brigade if we hug each other on the mat.”
Helen agreed. She was not sorry that her critics should be paralyzed, or stupefied, or rendered incapable in some way of inflicting further annoyance. In her present radiant mood, nearly all her troubles having taken unto themselves wings, she looked on yesterday’s episode in the light of a rather far fetched joke. Bower stood so high in her esteem that she was sure the outspoken announcement of his intentions was dictated chiefly by anger at Millicent’s unfair utterances. Perhaps he had some thought of marriage; but he must seek a wife in a more exalted sphere. She felt in her heart that Spencer was only awaiting a favorable opportunity to declare his love, and she did not strive to repress the wave of divine happiness that flooded her heart at the thought.
After much secret pondering and some shy confidences intrusted to Mrs. de la Vere, she had resolved to tell him that if he left the Maloja at once – an elastic phrase in lovers’ language – and came to her in London next month, she would have an answer ready. She persuaded herself that there was no other honorable way out of an embarrassing position. She had come to Switzerland for work, not for love making. Spencer would probably wish to marry her forthwith, and that was not to be thought of while “The Firefly’s” commission was only half completed. All of which modest and maidenly reasoning left wholly out of account Spencer’s strenuous wooing; it is chronicled here merely to show her state of mind when she kissed Millicent farewell.
It is worthy of note also that two young people who might be expected to take the liveliest interest in each other’s company were steadfast in their determination to separate. Each meant to send the other back to England with the least possible delay, and both were eager to fly into each other’s arms – in London! Whereat the gods may have laughed, or frowned, as the case may be, if they glanced at the horoscopes of certain mortals pent within the mountain walls of the Upper Engadine.
While Helen was still gazing after Millicent’s retreating carriage, Bower came from the darksome foyer to the sunlit veranda. “So you parted the best of friends?” he said quietly.
She turned and looked at him with shining eyes. “I cannot tell you how pleased I am that a stupid misunderstanding should be cleared away!” she said.
“Then I share your pleasure, though, to be candid, I was thinking that a woman’s kiss has infinite gradations. It may savor of Paradise or the Dead Sea.”
“But she told me how grieved she was that she had behaved so foolishly, and appealed to me not to let the folly of a day break the friendship of years.”
“Ah! Millicent picks up some well turned sentiments on the stage. Come out for a little stroll, and tell me all about it.”
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 château; 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 reassuring. 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 passed 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 grass 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 passing 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 multitude. 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 embarrassing 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 hoarsely. “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 God’s sake do not tell me that you are already promised to another!”
His eyes blazed into hers with a passion 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 circumstances! 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 God 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 publishing 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.
“One of my confidential clerks.”
“And Pargrave?”
“The proprietor of ‘The Firefly.’”
“Did Millicent know of this – plot?”
“Yes.”
Then she murmured a broken prayer. “Ah, dear Heaven!” she complained, “for what am I punished so bitterly?”
Karl, the voluble and sharp-eyed, retailed a bit of gossip to Stampa that evening as they smoked in Johann Klucker’s chalet. “As I was driving the cattle to the middle alp to-day, I saw our fräulein in the arms of the big voyageur,” he said.
Stampa withdrew his pipe from between his teeth. “Say that again,” he whispered, as though afraid of being overheard.
Karl did so, with fuller details.
“Are you sure?” asked Stampa.
Karl sniffed scornfully. “Ach, Gott! How could I err?” he cried. “There are not so many pretty women in the hotel that I should not recognize our fräulein. And who would forget Herr Bower? He gave me two louis for a ten francs job. We must get them together on the hills again, Christian. He will be soft hearted now, and pay well for taking care of his lady.”
“Yes,” said Stampa, resuming his pipe. “You are right, Karl. There is no place like the hills. And he will pay – the highest price, look you! Saperlotte! I shall exact a heavy fee this time.”