The Silent Barrier

“Look!” he said, throwing open the half door of a cattle shed behind the timber. “They found her here on the second of August, a Sunday morning, just before the people went to early mass. By her side was a bottle labeled ‘Poison.’ She bought it in Zermatt on the sixth of July. So, you see, my little girl had been thinking a whole month of killing herself. Poor child! What a month! They tell me, Herr Baron, you left Zermatt on the sixth of July?”

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.

And Stampa seemed to have the gift of divination. He read Bower’s heart. By some means he became aware that the unsavory shed was loathsome to the fine gentleman standing beside him.

“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.”

“I tell you – ” began Bower huskily; but the other silenced him with a gesture.

“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.”

“Come away, Stampa! This thing must be dealt with reasonably. Come away! Let us find some less mournful place, and I shall tell you – ”

“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.

“Yes, curse you! And mutter your prayers in your own behalf. You need them more than I.”

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.

“Saperlotte!” he cried, “you are not the first who deemed me helpless because of my crooked leg. You might have run from me, Marcus Bauer; you could never fight me. Were I at death’s door, I would still have strength left to throttle you if once my fingers closed round your throat.”

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.

Stampa produced from his pocket a frayed and tattered prayer book – an Italian edition of the Paroissien Romain. He opened it at a marked page, and began to read the marriage ritual. Though the words were Latin, and he was no better educated than any other peasant in the district, he pronounced the sonorous phrases with extraordinary accuracy. Of course, he was an Italian, and Latin was not such an incomprehensible tongue to him as it would prove to a German or Englishman of his class. Moreover, the liturgy of the Church of Rome is familiar to its people, no matter what their race. Bower, stupefied and benumbed, though the sun was shining brilliantly, and a constant dripping from the pine branches gave proof of a rapid thaw, listened like one in a trance. He understood scattered sentences, brokenly, yet with sufficient comprehension.

“Confiteor Deo omnipotenti,” mumbled Stampa, and the bridegroom in this strange rite knew that he was making the profession of a faith he did not share. His mind cleared by degrees. He was still under the spell of bodily fear, but his brain triumphed over physical stress, and bade him disregard these worn out shibboleths. Nevertheless, the words had a tremendous significance.

“Pater noster qui es in cœlis, sanctificetur nomen tuum … dimitte nobis debita nostra sicut et nos dimittimus debitoribus nostris…”

It was quite easy to follow their general drift. Anyone who had ever recited the Lord’s Prayer in any language would realize that he was asking the Deity to forgive him his trespasses as he forgave those who trespassed against him. And there came to the kneeling man a thrilling consciousness that Stampa was appealing for him in the name of the dead girl, the once blushing and timid maid whose bones were crumbling into dust beneath that coverlet of earth and herbage. There could be no doubting the grim earnestness of the reader. It mattered not a jot to Stampa that he was usurping the functions of the Church in an outlandish travesty of her ritual. He was sustained by a fixed belief that the daughter so heartlessly reft from him was present in spirit, nay, more, that she was profoundly grateful for this belated sanctifying of an unhallowed love. Bower’s feelings or convictions were not of the slightest consequence. He owed it to Etta to make reparation, and the duty must be fulfilled to the utmost letter.

Strong man as he was, Bower nearly fainted. He scarce had the faculty of speech when Stampa bade him make the necessary responses in Italian. But he obeyed. All the time the devilish conviction grew that if he persisted in this flummery he might emerge scatheless from a ghastly ordeal. The punishment of publicity was the one thing he dreaded, and that might be avoided – for Etta’s sake. So he obeyed, with cunning pretense of grief, trying to veil the malevolence in his heart.

At last, when the solemn “per omnia secula seculorum” and a peaceful “Amen” announced the close of this amazing marriage service, Stampa looked fixedly at his supposed son-in-law.

“Now, Marcus Bauer,” he said, “I have done with you. See to it that you do not again break your plighted vows to my daughter! She is your wife. You are her husband. Not even death can divide you. Go!”

His strong, splendidly molded face, massive and dignified, cast in lines that would have appealed to a sculptor who wished to limn the features of a patriarch of old, wore an aspect of settled calm. He was at peace with all the world. He had forgiven his enemy.

Bower rose again stiffly. He would have spoken; but Stampa now fell on his knees and began to pray silently. So the millionaire, humbled again and terror stricken by the sinister significance of those concluding words, yet not daring to question them, crept out of the place of the dead. As he staggered down the hillside he looked back once. He had eyes only for the little iron gate, but Stampa came not.

Then he essayed to brush some of the clinging snow off his clothes. He shook himself like a dog after a plunge into water. In the distance he saw the hotel, with its promise of luxury and forgetfulness. And he cursed Stampa with a bitter fury of emphasis, trying vainly to persuade himself that he had been the victim of a maniac’s delusion.