They had left the village and were crossing the line of the path. Shrinking back under cover of an empty wagon, she watched them. Apparently they were heading for the Orlegna Gorge, and she scanned the ground eagerly to learn how she could manage to spy on them without being seen almost immediately. Then she fell into the same error as Helen in believing that the winding carriage road to the church offered the nearest way to the clump of firs and azaleas by which Bower and Stampa would soon be hidden.
Three minutes’ sharp walking brought her to the church, but there the highway turned abruptly toward the village. As one side of the small ravine faced south, the sun’s rays were beginning to have effect, and a narrow track, seemingly leading to the hill, was almost laid bare. In any event, it must bring her near the point where the men vanished, so she went on breathlessly. Crossing the rivulet, already swollen with melting snow, she mounted the steps cut in the hillside. It was heavy going in that thin air; but she held to it determinedly.
Then she heard men’s voices raised in anger. She recognized one. Bower was speaking German, Stampa a mixture of German and Italian. Millicent had a vague acquaintance with both languages; but it was of the Ollendorf order, and did not avail her in understanding their rapid, excited words. Soon there were other sounds, the animal cries, the sobs, the labored grunts of men engaged in deadly struggle. Thoroughly alarmed, more willing to retreat than advance, she still clambered on, impelled by irresistible desire to find out what strange thing was happening.
At last, partly concealed by a dwarf fir, she could peer over a wall into the tiny cemetery. She was too late to witness the actual fight; but she saw Stampa spring upright, leaving his prostrate opponent apparently lifeless. She was utterly frightened. Fear rendered her mute. To her startled eyes it seemed that Bower had been killed by the crippled man. Soon that quite natural impression yielded to one of sustained astonishment. Bower rose slowly, a sorry spectacle. To her woman’s mind, unfamiliar with scenes of violence, it was surprising that he did not begin at once to beat the life out of the lame old peasant who had attacked him so viciously. When Stampa closed the gate and motioned Bower to kneel, when the tall, powerfully built man knelt without protest, when the reading of the Latin service began,—well, Millicent could never afterward find words to express her conflicting emotions.
But she did not move. Crouching behind her protecting tree, guarding her very breath lest some involuntary cry should betray her presence, she watched the whole of the weird ceremonial. She racked her brains to guess its meaning, strained her ears to catch a sentence that might be identified hereafter; but she failed in both respects. Of course, it was evident that someone was buried there, someone whose memory the wild looking villager held dear, someone whose grave he had forced Bower to visit, someone for whose sake he was ready to murder Bower if the occasion demanded. So much was clear; but the rest was blurred, a medley of incoherences, a waking nightmare.
Oddly enough, it never occurred to her that a woman might be lying in that dreary tenement. Her first vague imagining suggested that Bower had committed a crime, killed a man, and that an avenger had dragged him to his victim’s last resting place. That Stampa was laboriously plodding through the marriage ritual was a fantastic conceit of which she received no hint. There was nothing to dissolve the mist in her mind. She could only wait, and marvel.
As the strange scene drew to its close, she became calmer. She reflected that some sort of registry would be kept of the graves. A few dismal monuments, and two rows of little black wooden crosses that stuck up mournfully out of the snow, gave proof positive of that. She counted the crosses. Stampa was standing near the seventh from a tomb easily recognizable at some future time. Bower faced it on his knees. She could not see him distinctly, as he was hidden by the other man’s broad shoulders; but she did not regret it, because the warm brown tints of her furs against the background of snow and foliage might warn him of her presence. She thanked the kindly stars that brought her here. No matter what turn events took now, she hoped to hold the whip hand over Bower. There was a mystery to be cleared, of course; but with such materials she could hardly fail to discover its true bearings.
So she watched, in tremulous patience, quick to note each movement of the actors in a drama the like to which she had never seen on the stage.