“Time to get up, sigñora. The sun is on the rock, and we have a piece of bad snow to cross.”
Then she remembered, and sighed. The sigh was involuntary, the half conscious tribute of a wearied heart. It needed an effort to brace herself against the long hours of a new day, the hours when thoughts would come unbidden, when regrets that she was fighting almost fiercely would rush in and threaten to overwhelm her. But Helen was brave. She had the courage that springs from the conviction of having done that which is right. If she was a woman too, with a woman’s infinite capacity for suffering—well, that demanded another sort of bravery, a resolve to subdue the soul’s murmurings, a spiritual teeth-clenching in the determination to prevail, a complete acceptance of unmerited wrongs in obedience to some inexplicable decree of Providence.
So she rose from a couch which at least demanded perfect physical health ere one could find rest on it, and, being fully dressed, went forth at once to drink the steaming hot coffee that filled the tiny hut with its fragrance.
“A fine morning, Pietro?” she asked, addressing the man who had summoned her.
“Si, sigñora. Dawn is breaking with good promise. There is a slight mist on the glacier; but the rock shows clear in the sun.”
She knew that an amiable grin was on the man’s face; but it was so dark in the cabane that she could see little beyond the figures of the guide and his companion. She went to the door, and stood for a minute on the narrow platform of rough stones that provided the only level space in a witches’ cauldron of moss covered boulders and rough ice. Beneath her feet was an ultramarine mist, around her were masses of black rock; but overhead was a glorious pink canopy, fringed by far flung circles of translucent blue and tenderest green. And this heaven’s own shield was ever widening. Eastward its arc was broken by an irregular dark mass, whose pinnacles glittered like burnished gold. That was the Aguagliouls Rock, which rises so magnificently in the midst of a vast ice field, like some great portal to the wonderland of the Bernina. She had seen it the night before, after leaving the small restaurant that nestles at the foot of the Roseg Glacier. Then its scarred sides, brightened by the crimson and violet rays of the setting sun, looked friendly and inviting. Though its base was a good mile distant across the snow-smoothed surface of the ice, she could discern every crevice and ledge and steep couloir. Now, all these distinguishing features were merged in the sea-blue mist. The great wall itself seemed to be one vast, unscalable precipice, capped by a series of shining spires.
And for the first time in three sorrowful days, while her eyes dwelt on that castle above the clouds, the mysterious grandeur of nature healed her vexed spirit, and the peace that passeth all understanding fell upon her. The miserable intrigues and jealousies of the past weeks were so insignificant, so far away, up here among the mountains. Had she only consulted her own happiness, she mused, she would not have ordered events differently. There was no real reason why she should have flown from the hotel like a timid deer roused by hounds from a thicket. Instead of doubling and twisting from St. Moritz to Samaden, and back by carriage to a remote hotel in the Roseg Valley, she might have remained and defied her persecutors. But now the fume and fret were ended, and she tried to persuade herself she was glad. She felt that she could never again endure the sight of Bower’s face. The memory of his passionate embrace, of his blazing eyes, of the thick sensual lips that forced their loathsome kisses upon her, was bitter enough without the need of reviving it each time they met. She was sorry it was impossible to bid farewell to Mrs. de la Vere. Any hint of her intent would have drawn from that well-disposed cynic a flood of remonstrance hard to stem; though nothing short of force would have kept Helen at Maloja once she was sure of Spencer’s double dealing.
Of course, she might write to Mrs. de la Vere when she was in calmer mood. It would be easier then to pick and choose the words that would convey in full measure her detestation of the American. For she hated him—yes, hatred alone was satisfying. She despised her own heart because it whispered a protest. Yet she feared him too. It was from him that she fled. She admitted this to her honest mind while she watched the spreading radiance of the new day. She feared the candor of his steady eyes more than the wiles and hypocrisies of Bower and her false friend, Millicent. By a half miraculous insight into the history of recent events, she saw that Bower had followed her to Switzerland with evil intent.
But the discovery embittered her the more against Spencer, who had lured her there deliberately, than against Bower who knew of it, nor scrupled to use the knowledge as best it marched with his designs. It was nothing to her, she told herself, that Spencer no less than Bower had renounced his earlier purpose, and was ready to marry her. She still quivered with anger at the thought that she had fallen so blindly into the toils. Even though she accepted Mackenzie’s astounding commission, she might have guessed that there was some ignoble element underlying it. She felt now that it was possible to be prepared,—to scrutinize occurrences more closely, to hold herself aloof from compromising incidents. The excursion to the Forno, the manifest interest she displayed in both men, the concealment of her whereabouts from friends in London, her stiff lipped indifference to the opinion of other residents in the hotel,—these things, trivial individually, united into a strong self indictment.
As for Spencer, though she meant, above all things, to avoid meeting him, and hoped that he was now well on his way to the wide world beyond Maloja, she would never forgive him—no, never!