“Dear Derry, I shall be there at seven-thirty. Meanwhile, go to the Casino, and tell everybody that you are summoned to New York on business, and mean to leave either tonight by the Fall River steamer or by first train tomorrow. You are traveling by the train to oblige me; so I am not asking you to indulge in polite fiction.“Yours ever,“Nancy.”
“Dear Derry, I shall be there at seven-thirty. Meanwhile, go to the Casino, and tell everybody that you are summoned to New York on business, and mean to leave either tonight by the Fall River steamer or by first train tomorrow. You are traveling by the train to oblige me; so I am not asking you to indulge in polite fiction.
“Yours ever,“Nancy.”
He carried out instructions to the letter, and was chaffed mildly for deserting the place just as his friends were getting to like him. It was easy to promise a speedy return, if possible; though he felt, somehow, that he would never see Newport again. The conclusion of his horse-dealing transactions took up a good deal of the afternoon, and, to his regret, Dacrewas out with a yachting party; so he left a hurriedly written message about his pending departure.
Then he strolled out, went downtown by street car, and met Nancy when she alighted from a rickety cab at the door of Pestalozzi’s café. She wore a cream-tinted dress, and her piquant features were daintily framed in a big Leghorn hat. It pleased him to find that she had not even deigned to veil her face, and her cheerful cry of recognition showed no conscience-stricken sense of guilt because of a meeting which, if known, must have excited the suspicions of her intimates.
“Ah, there you are, Derry!” she said. “Was there ever a more punctual person? Am I late? I had such a load of things to do that I left dressing till the last moment. Is this where we dine? What a jolly little café! It is just like hundreds of such establishments in Rome and Naples. I suppose these Italian restaurateurs employ their fellow-countrymen as builders and decorators; so they carry their architecture and fittings with them.”
“They change their skies, but not their soups,” said Power, falling in with her mood, and the driver of Nancy’s cab recognized the adaptation of Horace’s tag, and was pleased to grin, being himself a broken-down graduate of Harvard.
Ushered to the dining-room, they tackled thehors d’œuvresat once, and Nancy chatted about current events with the tranquil self-possession she would have displayed at Mrs. Van Ralten’s dinner-table. The meal, excellently cooked and deftly served, marched to its end without a word from her as to its particular purpose. She delighted Pestalozzi by taking minute instructions for the preparation of an exquisite spaghetti, and even noted the brands of Italian wines which should be tabled with each course. At half-past eight, when coffee appeared, she rose:
“Pay the bill now, Derry,” she said. “We must be off in five minutes, and I am sure you want to smoke at least one cigarette in peace. Perhaps Signor Pestalozzi will be good enough to order a cab?”
Signor Pestalozzi was charmed, and decidedly puzzled. He believed for many a year that those two had dined at his café for a wager. If any doubter scoffed, he would say, with appropriate gesture:
“Sango la Madonna! I tella you he no squeeze-a de gell, not-ta one time; so, if dey no make-a de bet, what-a for he give ’er dat pranzo superbo?”
Really, from Giovanni’s point of view, there was no answer.
“Tell the man to drive us to the Easton’s Beach end of the Cliff Walk,” she said nonchalantly, when the cab was in evidence, and away they went.
“There is no moon; but these summer nights are never quite dark,” she began, by way of polite conversation. “It ought to be restful tonight down there by the Atlantic. It is a horrid thing to confess, but the memories of Venice which are most vivid in my mind are not connected with St. Mark’s or the Doge’s Palace, but center round just such a night as this on the Lido. Coming back in the gondola, I almost wanted to slip over the side into the still waters, and drift away to the unknown.”
“Do we swim tonight, then?” he asked.
It was a relief to hear his own voice in some such apparently light-hearted quip. The cab was narrow, and hung on indifferent springs, and its lurching across the roadway to avoid other vehicles often threw him against Nancy’s supple body. He could never touch her without feeling the thrill of contact, and, fight as he would against it, the desire to clasp her in his arms and stifle her protests with hot kisses would come on him at such moments with an almost overwhelming ecstasy.
“If I led, would you follow, Derry?” she whispered.
Heaven help him, it seemed as though she was nestling close deliberately; yet he refused to believe, and strove to answer with a jest.
“I have a picture of you and me striking out across the bay for Narragansett, like a pair of dolphins,” he said.
“I thought of you that night on the Lido,” she went on, unheeding. “I imagined then that when you skipped off to Sacramento you had forgotten the little girl of the Dolores ranch. At any rate, such was my every-day common-sense sort of belief; but tucked away in some cute little nerve center of intuition was another notion, which told me that we had been driven apart by wicked and deceitful contriving. And now, thank my stars, I know that my subconscious feeling was right! Oh, Derry! How you must have despised me! What if we had not met for many a year, and you had schooled yourself into real forgetfulness, and some other girl had crept into a corner of your heart, thrusting out poor little me forever?”
The gathering gloom without had now made the cab’s interior so dark that she could not see the rigid lines in his face, nor could she make out by any convulsive movement that his hands were clenched, and that beads of perspiration stood on his forehead. But she knew, yes, she knew, and timid fingers caught his arm.
“You are not to think me mad or cruel to speak in this way,” she cooed. “I have looked into my very soul, Dear, and a great peace has come from my self-communing. You have wearied your clever brain with guesses as to my motive in meeting you tonight, and I giggled like a schoolgirl today at the thought of your absolute amazement when you read my note bidding you prepare to leave Newport. But it is all part and parcel of my plan, Derry, which rests on your reply to one small question. Do you want to go away fromme? Are you ready to face a world in which there will be no Nancy, never, no more?”
“Ah, you are trying me beyond endurance!” he almost sobbed.
“But youmusttell methat, Derry. I have gone a long way daringly. It is my privilege, my right. If you love me, you must expect it of me, because, as things are, I am forced to take the first step. But a woman must be sure that she is loved, and her lover alone can still her doubts.”
An impulse stronger than his own strength of will brought strange, wild words to his dry lips.
“Nancy,” he said, with the calm accents of despair, “I have never loved any woman but you, and, God willing, I never shall!”
“That is all that really matters,” she sighed, witha contented note in her voice that rang in his ears like a chord of sweet music heard from afar in the depths of a forest.
After that they sat in silence, she seemingly wrapped in dreams, and he wandering in a maze wherein impassable walls showed no gateway of escape; though the guarded path was alluring, and the air was heavy with the scent of flowers.
The cab stopped, and they alighted; for Nancy, demurely self-controlled, announced that she meant to take him for a stroll along the Cliff Walk. Power, deaf and blind to externals, would have accompanied her straightway; but she laughingly called him back from the clouds.
“Tell the cabman to wait,” she said, “and give him some money, or the poor fellow will think that we have come this long way from town purposely, and mean to go off without payment.”
He handed the driver a subsidy which caused the man to avow his willingness to wait till morning if necessary. Once away from the main road, and with no other company than the stars and the sea, Nancy took her escort’s arm, and kept step with him.
“Now,” she said, “I’m perversely disinclined to discuss personal affairs until we reach a certain rock at the foot of the Forty Steps. I mean to sit on that rock, and you will curl up on the shingle at my feet, and light a nice-smelling cigar, and listen while I explain the method in my madness of the last twenty-four hours. But I cannot arrange my thoughts in sequence till we are settled there comfortably. In the meantime, I’ll make you acquainted with my best friend,the Duchesse de Brasnes, whom you will meet some day in Paris, I hope, and then you will see for yourself some of her delightful eccentricities which I’ll recount to you now, and you will laugh quietly and say, ‘What an observant little person that Nancy is! Now, who’d have thought she could quiz and con a great lady of the Faubourg so accurately?’ But you’re not to misunderstand my joking; for the duchess is a dear, and I’m very fond of her.”
To this day Power has never recalled a single syllable of Nancy’s utterances concerning one of the leaders of Parisian society. All that he knew, or cared to know, was that the voice of his beloved was murmuring words which were curiously soothing to his tingling nerves. By this time he had cast scruples to the winds. His mind was armored with triple steel against any other consideration than that Nancy was by his side, that her hand rested confidently on his wrist, that he could feel her slender arm warm and soft near his heart.
And the supreme moment was rushing upon him with the wings of love on a summer’s night, than which no flight of bird is so swift and noiseless. They reached the top of the rocky staircase, and began to descend. A fairy radiance from off the dark-blue mirror of the Atlantic made plain each downward step; but Nancy wore the high-heeled shoes which women affected then more generally than is the fashion today, and Power held her hand lest she slipped and fell. Thus they made their way to the beach, until they had almost negotiated the last short flight. Power, indeed, was standing on the shingle, and the girl—for, married womanthough she was, her years were still those of a girl—was poised gracefully on the lowermost slab.
There she hesitated perceptibly. His eyes met hers in a subtle underlook, and he saw that her face was deathly white. Yet there was neither fear nor indecision in her steadfast glance. Even while he asked dumbly why she waited, her lips parted, she held out her hands with a gesture of pleading, and she murmured:
“Oh, Derry, my own dear love, it is not the first but the last step which counts now!”
Then he took her in his arms, and their lips met—and for her there was no uncertainty ever more.
Of course, being a woman, she made believe that he had taken her by storm.
“Derry, dear, howcouldyou?” she gasped, all rosy and breathless, and seemingly much occupied in smoothing her ruffled plumes during the first lull after the hurricane.
“You witch, who could resist you?” he muttered, showing well-marked symptoms of another attack.
“No, you’ll just behave, and sit exactly where I shall point out!” she cried, and her pouting confidence gave eloquent testimony to the passing of an indelible phase in their relations. “And I am not a witch; but if you find it necessary to resist me, as you put it—— Well, there! only this once. Wemustsit down and be serious. I have such a lot to say, and so little time in which to say it.”
The new note struck by the unfettered intimacy of her manner exercised an influence which Power would have regarded as a fantastic impossibility during those moments of delirium when first she clung to him, and both were shaken by irrepressible tumult. It said, far more plainly than impassioned speech, that she had thrown down all barriers, that she had counted the cost, and was giving herself freely and gladly to her mate. The recognition of this supreme surrender by a proudwoman, a woman to whom purity of thought was as the breath of life, administered a beneficial shock to his sorely tried nerves. Had a brilliant meteor flashed suddenly through space, and rushed headlong toward that part of the Atlantic which lapped the southern shore of Rhode Island, it could not have illuminated land and sea with more incisive clarity than did Nancy’s attitude light up the dark places of his mind. Some stupendous thing had happened which would account for this miracle, and he must endeavor to understand. No matter what the effort needed, he must attend to her every word. In his inmost heart he knew that he cared not a jot what set of circumstances had brought about a development which he had not dared to dream of. He recked little of the cause now that its effect was graven on tablets more lasting than brass. But it was due to Nancy that he should be able to follow and appreciate her motives. He held fast to that thought in the midst of a vertigo. A waking nightmare had been changed in an instant into a beatitude akin, perilously akin, to that of the man and woman who found each other in the one perfect garden which this gray old world has seen, and no darkling vision of desert wastes and thorn-choked paths tortured the happy lovers now gazing fearlessly into each other’s shining eyes. The heritage of “man’s first disobedience” might oppress them all too soon; but, for that night at least, it lay hidden behind the veil. Exercising no slight command on his self-control, therefore, Power strove to revert to the well-ordered coherency of speech and action which he had schooled himself to adopt when in Nancy’s presence.
“Forgive me if I have seemed rather mad,” he pleaded, seating himself at her feet, and simulating a calmness which resembled the placid center of a cyclone. “During three long years I have hungered for the taste of your lips, Dear. That is my excuse, and it should serve; for I was content to wait as many decades if Fate kept firm in her resolve to deny you to me.”
“You would never have yielded if I had not used a woman’s guile?” she said, half questioning him, half stating a truism beyond reach of argument.
“There is little of guile in your nature, Nancy.”
“Well, I think that is true, too; but it is equally true that a woman often takes what I may call a saner view of life than a man. She is quicker to admit the logic of accepted facts. If you discovered that some girl had won by false pretense, not your love, for love gilds the grossest clay, but your respect, as her husband, you would not spurn her with the loathing I feel now for the man who made me his wife. For that is what it has come to. I refuse to pose as Hugh Marten’s wife in the eyes of the world one moment longer than is needful to obtain my freedom. His wife I have never been in the eyes of Heaven, because my Heaven is a place of love and content, and I have neither loved my husband nor been content with him, not for a single instant. Our marriage began with a lie, and has endured on a basis of lies. Such contracts, I believe, are void in law, and the principle which governs men in business should at least apply to that most solemn of all engagements, the lifelong union of husband and wife. Hugh Marten conspired with my father—hired him, I might rather say—to drive you and me apart,Derry. The stronger and more subtle brain devised the means, and left it to the weaker one to carry out the scheme in sordid reality. As for me, I was helpless as a caged bird. How was I to guess that Marten, whom I knew only as the owner of the Bison mines and mills, had planned my capture? Even my poor, weak father did not suspect it till you were hundreds of miles away in California. And then how skilfully was the trap baited, and how swiftly it worked! You had not reached Sacramento before a lawyer wrote from Denver warning my father that the mortgagees were about to foreclose on the ranch. On several occasions previously he had been in arrears with the interest on the loan; but they had always proved considerate, and their just claims were met, sooner or later. Yet, in a year when scores of well-to-do ranchers were pressed for money, and when clemency became almost a right, these people proved implacable, and swooped down on him like a hawk on a crippled pigeon.... Derry,youbought the place—who were they?”
“I do not know. I dealt through a lawyer, and the vendor was Mr. Willard. He sold the property free of any encumbrance.”
“Yet local opinion credited you and Mac with being a shrewd pair!” she commented, laughing softly, as if she were reviewing some tragi-comedy in a quizzical humor.
“We certainly wondered why Marten made things so easy for us—in other respects,” he volunteered.
“Ah, then, youdidhave a glimmering suspicion of the truth? I guessed it; though I could not be absolutely certain till yesterday morning, when Mr. Bensonrefused to answer my pointblank question. He would not lie, but he dared not tell the truth; so he fell back on the feeble subterfuge that, after the mighty interval of three and a half years, he could not recall the exact facts.”
“Benson? Did you write to him?”
The surprise in Power’s voice was not feigned. He was beginning to see now something of the fixed purpose which had governed her actions during the past twenty-four hours.
“Yes,” she said composedly. “It was hardly necessary, but I wanted to dispose of my last doubt; though in my own mind I was sure of the ground already. My father went straight to Denver on receipt of that letter, and, of course, chanced to travel by the same train as Hugh Marten, the man to whom the whole amount of the mortgage was little more than a day’s income. Marten was gracious, the lawyer-man adamant. Within a week I was told of a new suitor, and of my father’s certain and complete ruin if I refused him.... Ah, me! How I wept!... When did you post your first letter, Derry?”
“Two days after I arrived at the placer mine,” he replied unhesitatingly. The chief revelation in Nancy’s story was her crystal-clear knowledge of facts which, he flattered himself, he had kept from her ken. Then his heart leaped at the thought that she had known of his love from the night they met in the dining-room of the Ocean House. But he choked back the rush of sentiment; for she was demanding his close attention.
“And I wrote on or about that same date,” she went on. “My father—Heaven forgive him!—stole your letters to me; but the scheme for suppressing my letters to you must have been concocted before you went to Sacramento. Such foul actions are unforgivable! I, for one, refuse to be bound by the fetters which they forged. I come to you, my dear, as truly your wife, as unstained in soul and body, as though Hugh Marten had never existed!”
A sudden note of passion vibrated in her voice, and Power realized, by a lightning flash of intuition, with what vehement decision she had severed already the knot which seemed to bind her so tightly. He fancied it was her due that he should endeavor to relax an emotional strain which was becoming unbearable.
“It’s a mighty good thing we are Americans,” he said. “Here divorce is neither hard to obtain nor highly objectionable in its methods. We—at any rate, I—must consult some lawyer of experience. The laws differ in the various states. That which is murder and sudden death in Ohio is a five-dollar proposition in Illinois; but the legal intellect will throw light on our difficulty. Meanwhile——”
He stopped awkwardly, aware that, although she was apparently listening to his words, they were making no impression on her senses. A sudden silence fell, and the hitherto unheeded noises of the night smote on his ears with uncanny loudness. The leisured plash of waves so tiny that they might not be dignified by the name of breakers swelled into a certain strength and volume as his range of hearing spread, and the faint cries of invisible sea-fowl now jarred loudly on the quietude of nature. A pebble rolled down the cliff, and he could mark its constantly accelerated leapsuntil it reached the shingle with a crash which, even to a case-hardened pebble, betokened damage.
“Meanwhile——” prompted Nancy, in a still, small voice.
So she had followed what he was saying. What was it that he meant to say? Something about the rocks and shoals that lay ahead before he could take her to some safe anchorage. Nevertheless, he shied off at a tangent, and chose haphazard the one topic which his sober judgment might have avoided.
“I was about to utter a banal remark; but it may as well be put on record and dismissed,” he said. “It is fortunate that I am a rich man. Mere weight of money can achieve nothing against us; while the possession of ample means will simplify matters in so far as we are concerned personally.”
“Were those really the words on the tip of your tongue, Derry?”
“Well, no,” he admitted.
“Are you afraid of hurting my feelings?”
“You are right, Dear. As between you and me there should be no concealment. We have to face the immediate future. We must consider how to surmount the interval, short though it may be——”
“Interval! What interval?”
“You cannot secure a divorce without some sort of legal process, and the law refuses to be hurried.”
“Ah, yes. Divorce—law—they are words which have little meaning here and now.”
“But they are all-important. Awhile ago you spoke of your Paris friends, and there are others, like Mrs. Van Ralten, whose sympathies and help will be of realvalue in years to come. You see, I want you to hold your pretty little head higher as Mrs. John Darien Power than you ever held it as Mrs. Hugh Marten.”
“That will cost no great effort, Derry. If we have to pass through an ordeal of publicity, we can surely use the vile means for our own ends, so that our friends may know the whole truth.... Derry, if you were not such a good and honorable man, you would not be so dense.”
In his anxiety to follow each twist and turn of her reasoning he had crept nearer, and was now on his knees, having imprisoned her hands in his, and peering intently into her face. In that dim light her eyes shone like faintly luminous twin stars, and he laughed joyously when, to his thinking, he had solved the doubt that was troubling her.
“If it will help any that all the world should know that I, the aforesaid John Darien Power, have been, and am, and will ever remain frantically in love with a lady heretofore described as Nancy Willard, I shall nail a signed statement to that effect on the Casino notice-board tomorrow morning,” he vowed.
She gently released her hands, placed them lovingly on his cheeks, and drew him close, so that he could not choose but yield to any demand she might make.
“Derry,” she said, kissing him with that soothing air of maternity which is a woman’s highest endowment, “though I am going to say something dreadfully forward and bold, I shall risk all lest I lose you, and, if that happens, my poor heart will break and be at rest forever. Even now you do not see whither I am leading you. You never would see unless I spokeplainly. My love for you may be fierce and terrible; but I am only a weak woman, a woman just emerged from girlhood, and I want to be saved from myself. If, for your dear sake, I am to cut adrift from the past, I cannot be left alone. By your side I can face the storm, but I shudder at the thought of protests, appeals, influences perhaps more potent than I imagine in my present new-found mood of hatred of the wrong which has been done me. Derry, why, do you think, have I asked you to leave Newport early tomorrow?”
Stirred by a common impulse, they both stood upright. All at once she seemed to be unable to bear his burning gaze any longer, and her head sank on his breast. He had thrown a protecting arm around her shoulders, and he felt her supple body quiver under a sob which she tried to restrain.
“Nancy,” he whispered, “am I to take you with me?”
“Yes,” she said brokenly.
“You mean that we are to be a law unto ourselves, and thereby make divorce proceedings inevitable? I must put it that way, my dear one! I must understand!”
“Yes, Derry. Youmustunderstand. There is no other way.”
He held her so tightly that he became aware of the mad racing of her heart, and a great pity stirred his inmost core. How she must have suffered! What agony was this forced discarding, one by one, of her maidenly defenses! Though he had been blind and deaf solely because of the depth and intensity of his love and reverence, he could utter now only a haltingplea that would explain his slowness of perception.
“Forgive me, Dear!” he murmured. “I can find nothing better to say than that—forgive me! I was so absorbed in my own dream of happiness that I gave no heed to the means. But I shall never again be so thoughtless.”
“Thoughtless!” She raised her sweet face once more, tear-stained and smiling. “You thoughtless, Derry? Women thank God for that sort of thoughtlessness in men like you!”
And with that, before he could forestall or even divine her intention, she had withdrawn from his embrace, and had run lightly up half a dozen of the Forty Steps.
“Come!” she cried, with an alteration of manner and voice that was almost stupefying to her hearer. “We have been here an unconscionable time, and just think how awful it will be if our cabman has taken home his tired horse! Of course, even at the twelfth hour, I have loads of things to pack. And, since I don’t know where I am going, the task of selecting a reasonable stock of clothes is too appalling for words. Oh, don’t gaze at me as if I were a ghost, Derry! I am not about to flit away into space. You will have another half hour of my company; because, let that poor horse do his best, we sha’n’t reach our respective habitations till long after eleven o’clock.”
Yet she was neither excited nor hysterical. A great load had been lifted off her heart, and her naturally gay temperament was asserting itself with vital insistence. There was no possibility of drawing back now. Nothing but death could separate her from her lover.Nothing but death! Well, that separation must come in the common order of things; but a bright road stretched before her mind’s eye through a long vista of years, and her spirit sang within her and rejoiced exceedingly. No shred of doubt or hesitation remained. She had passed already through the storm, and though its clouds might roll in sullen thunder among distant hills yet awhile, the particular hilltop on which she stood was bathed in sunlight.
Above all else, despite her complete trust in Power, she thrilled with the consciousness that her love contained a delicious spice of fear, and that is why she climbed the Forty Steps in a sort of panic; so that he marveled at her change of mood, and discovered in it only one more of the enchantments with which his fancy clothed her.
The driver regarded them as a moonstruck couple, since that sort of moon shines ever on fine evenings by the sea. He was obviously surprised when the lady’s address was given, because he expected a return journey to one of Newport’s many boarding-houses; but any suspicions he may have entertained were dispelled when he witnessed a polite farewell in the presence of a pompous butler, and heard Nancy say:
“I am going straight to my room now to write that letter to my father. Then I shall finish packing. What time is the train—nine o’clock. Goodnight, Derry! Sleep well!”
If he thought at all about the matter, the cabman might well have imagined that no young lady in Newport that night had used words less charged with explosive properties; yet no giant cannon on the warships swinging to their moorings in the bay could have rivaled the uproar those few simple sentences might create. Moreover, he heard the gentleman address the butler by name, and witnessed the transference of a tip, accompanied by the plain statement that the giver was leaving Newport early next day. Indeed, once he had deposited his fare at the Ocean House, the man probably gave no further heed to one or other of the pair who had some foolish liking for a prolonged stroll on the cliffs overlooking the Atlantic, nor, to his knowledge, did he ever again see them, or even hear their names spoken of.
Power was crossing the veranda with his alert, uneven strides when a voice came out of the gloom:
“Hullo, Power, that you? Come and join me in a parting drink.”
It was Dacre, the one person in the hotel from whom such an invitation was not an insufferable nuisance at the moment.
“I’m in a bit of a hurry,” said Power, “as I am off tomorrow morning; but I’m glad to find you here. You’ve received my note?”
“Yes. Sit down. I’m just going to light a cigar, and the match will help you to mix your own poison. Had a pleasant evening?”
It was a natural though curiously pertinent question; but Power was at no loss for an answer.
“I have really been arranging certain details as a preliminary to my departure,” he said.
“Where are you bound for, New York?”
“After some days, or weeks, perhaps. I hardly know yet.”
“You’ve changed your plans, it seems?”
Power remembered then that he had invited the Englishman to visit Colorado. It was practically settled that Dacre should come West within three weeks or a month.
“By Jove!” he cried, “you must accept my apologies. Of course, I would have recalled our fixture in good time, and have written postponing your trip to Bison. Circumstances beyond my control will prevent my return home for an indefinite period. I can’t tell you how sorry I am.”
“Same here,” said the other, with John Bull directness.
“But neither of us is likely to shuffle off the map yet awhile,” continued Power. “You have my address, both in Colorado and at my New York bank, and I have yours. Keep me posted as to your movements, and we shall come together again later in the year.”
He was eager to dissipate a certain starchiness, not wholly unjustifiable, which he thought he could detect in his companion’s manner; but the discovery of its true cause disconcerted him more than he cared to acknowledge, even to himself. Enlightenment was not long delayed. Dacre’s evident lack of ease arose from circumstances vastly more important than the disruption of his own plans; he hesitated only because he was searching for the right way to express himself.
“You and I have cultivated quite a friendship since we forgathered here nearly three weeks ago,” he began, after a pause which Power again interpreted mistakenly.
“Yes, indeed. Won’t you let me explain——”
“Not just yet. You are on the wrong tack, Power. You believe I’m rather cut up about the postponement of your invitation. Not a bit of it. This little globe cannot hold two men like you and me, and keep us apart during the remainder of our naturals. No, mine is a different sort of grouch. Now, I’m a good deal older than you. You won’t take amiss anything I tell you, providing I make it clear that I mean well?”
“I can guarantee that, at any rate.”
Power’s reply was straightforward enough; but his tone was cold and guarded. The chill of premonition had fallen on him. A man whom he liked and respected was about to fire the first shot on behalf of unctuous rectitude and the conventions.
“I may as well open with a broadside,” said Dacre, unwittingly adopting the simile of social warfare which had occurred to his hearer. “I was out with a yachting party this afternoon, and we were becalmed. Three of us came away from the New York Yacht Club’s boathouse about half-past eight, and took a street-car in preference to one of those rickety old cabs. Luckily, by the accident of position, I was the only one of the three who saw a lady and gentleman come out of an Italian restaurant. The presence of two such people in that locality was unusual, to say the least; but, as the man was a friend of mine, and the lady one whom I admire and respect, I said nothing to the other fellows.”
“That was thoughtful of you,” broke in Power, half in sarcasm; for he was vastly irritated that he had not contrived affairs more discreetly, and half in genuine recognition of Dacre’s tact.
“The thinking came later,” said the Englishmanslowly. “When all is said and done, a little dinnerà l’Italiennemight pass by way of a joke—a harmless escapade at the best, or worst. But, when I reach my hotel and find a note announcing that the man is leaving Newport unexpectedly, and when I hear at the Casino that the woman also is arranging to meet her father in New York, with equal unexpectedness, I am inclined to ask the man, he being something more than a mere acquaintance, if there is not a very reasonable probability that he is making a damned fool of himself. Now, are we going to discuss this thing rationally, or do you want to hit me with a heavy siphon? If the latter, kindly change your mind, and let’s talk about the next race for the America’s Cup.”
Here no solemn diapason of wave and shingle relieved an unnerving silence. Not even the distant rumble of a vehicle broke the tension. The hour was late for ordinary traffic, early for diners and dancers. A deep hush lay on the hotel and its garden. It was so dark that the street lamps, twinkling few and far between the trees, appeared to diffuse no larger area of light than so many fireflies.
“Are we alone here?” said Power, speaking only when an uneasy movement on Dacre’s part bestirred him.
“Yes. I saw to that when I heard your cab. I timed you to a nicety.”
“You must be experienced in these matters.”
“I have been most sorts of an idiot in my time.”
“You are quite sure we are not overheard?”
“As sure as a man can be of anything.”
“Then I recognize your right to question me. Tonight you, tomorrow all Newport, will know what has happened——”
“Pardon an interruption. Women are invariably careful of the hour, howsoever heedless they may be of next week. Newport knows nothing, will know nothing, except that a popular lady is meeting her father in New York, the said father having written to say he is coming East. His letter is Exhibit A, yours to me Exhibit B, or it would be if it weren’t burnt.”
“A legal jargon is not out of place. When the lady in question has secured a divorce she will become my wife. Now you have the true explanation of my seeming discourtesy. When I am married, I shall entertain you at Bison if I have to escort you from Tokio, or even from Sing Sing.”
“But——”
“There are no ‘buts.’ She was stolen from me, decoyed away by the tricks of the pickpocket and the forger. I am merely regaining possession of my own. It was not I who cleared up the theft. That was her doing. There can be no shirking the consequences. If my mother, whom I love and venerate, implored me on her bended knees to draw back now from the course I have mapped out, I would stop my ears to her pleading, because I could not yield to it.”
“Oh, it’s like that, is it?”
“Just like that.”
Dacre struck another match, and relighted the cigar which he had allowed to go out after the first whiff or two. Power noticed that the flare of the match was not used as an excuse for scrutinizing him, because hisfriend’s eyes were studiously averted. Then came the quiet, cultured voice from the darkness:
“If that’s the position, old man, I wish you every sort of good luck, and a speedy end to your worries, and I’ll come at your call to that ranch of yours, from the other end of the earth, if need be.”
Again a little pause. Then Power spoke:
“You ring like true metal all the time, Dacre. May I ask you one thing—are you married?”
“No, nor ever likely to be. I—I lost her, not by fraud, but by my own folly. But she understood—before she died. That is my only consolation. It must suffice. It has sufficed.”
“I’m sorry. I touched that chord unthinkingly. I merely wanted to have your full comprehension—and sympathy.”
“You had both already. I would not have dared to intrude if I did not realize that a man talking to another man can raise points which are lost sight of when a woman—thewoman—is the other party to the debate.”
“Would you care to hear a brief record of my life during the last few years?”
“Go right ahead! I’m not a gossip. If I know something of the truth, I may be able to stop a rill of scandal one of these days. There’s bound to be chatter, even though old Mr. Willard comes East.”
“You know the name, then?”
“Certainly. Mrs. Van Ralten was speaking about him tonight—not very favorably, either. Said she couldn’t understand how such a man could have such a daughter.”
“Mrs. Van Ralten is a remarkably intelligent woman,” said Power dryly. “I never saw Nancy’s mother; but I imagine that this is a case of exclusive heredity, because there never were two more diverse natures than Nancy’s and her father’s. She is the soul of honor, and would give her life for a principle; while he bartered his own daughter for a few thousand dollars. If I were not convinced of that, do you believe I would besmirch her good name and my own by so much as tonight’s mild adventure in an Italian café?”
“I can give you easy assurance on that head. I have seldom been so surprised as when I saw the pair of you leaving the place and entering a cab.”
“That was a mere episode, a first meek onslaught on the proprieties, so to speak. You will understand fully when I have told you the whole story.”
They talked, or rather Power talked and Dacre listened, till a clock struck twelve somewhere. Carriages began to roll along the neighboring avenues, and lamps occasionally flitted past the hotel. Two or three vivacious groups crossed the veranda, and a porter turned on a lamp. Then Power found that his English friend had placed their chairs in a sort of alcove formed by a disused doorway flanked on each hand by a huge palm growing in a wooden tub which held a ton of earth, or more; so they were well screened.
“You meant to force me to confess,” he said, smiling.
“Yes. It might have been merely folly on your part.”
“But now?”
“Now it is Fate’s own contriving. You don’t wantto escape; but you couldn’t if you did. Or, that is awkwardly put. What I mean is——”
Dacre’s meaning was clear enough; but he never completed the sentence. A cab, laden with luggage, drove up, and a slightly built, elderly man alighted.
“This the Ocean House?” he inquired, when a porter hurried forward.
“Yes, sir,” and the man took a portmanteau from the driver.
“Hold on, there! I’m not sure I shall want a room. How far is ‘The Breakers’ from here, Mrs. Marten’s house?”
“Quite a ways,” said the cabman. “Two miles an’ a bit.”
The new arrival seemed to consider the distance and the lateness of the hour.
“Is Mrs. Marten in Newport, do you know?” he asked.
“Yep. I tuk her downtown this evenin’.”
“Alone?”
“Guess that’s so.”
“Where was she going?”
“Wall, ye see, I was on the box, an’ de lady was inside; so we didn’t git anyways sociable.”
The stranger evidently bethought himself, and turned to the porter again. He could not know that a Harvard man was merely speaking in the vernacular. “Have you a Mr. Power staying here?” he asked.
“Yes, sir.”
“Is he here now?”
“If he isn’t in the hotel, he’ll be at the Casino. Shall I ring up his room, sir?”
“No, no. I’ll see him in the morning. It’s too lateto go any farther tonight, and I’m rather tired and shaken up. My train was derailed, and we are hours behind time. Give me a decent room. I suppose I can have breakfast at eight o’clock?”
“Any time you like, sir.”
The cab went off, and the inquisitive visitor entered the building. The two men seated behind the palms had not uttered a syllable while the foregoing conclave was in progress.
“Mr. Francis Willard, I presume?” murmured Dacre, when the retreating footsteps had died away.
“Yes,” said Power.
“Three days ahead of the time stated in his letter, I presume further.”
“That must be so.”
“Foxy. He fits your description. What are you going to do now?”
“Finish my yarn, if I am not wearying you, and leave Newport at sevenA.M.instead of nine-ten. The fox broke cover just a little too soon.”
“By gad, yes! I think I’ll recognize that cabman again. If I come across him, I’ll tip him for you. He deserves it.... The swine! To start pumping the townsfolk before he was ten seconds in the place, and about his own daughter, too! Dash his eyes—wait till someone refers him to me for news of you! I’ll head him into the open country quick enough—trust me!”
Dacre’s comments might sound rather incoherent; but it was painfully evident that Nancy’s father had created a bad first impression, and he was one of those unhappy mortals who could not afford to do that, because he never survived it.
In the morning Power’s first care was to ascertain the position of the room allotted to Willard. As he imagined, it proved to be in the back part of the hotel, every apartment in the front section being occupied by season residents. Shortly before six o’clock, therefore, he drove away in an open carriage, confident that nothing short of an almost incredible chance would bring the older man to vestibule or porch at that early hour. Halting the vehicle at a corner near Nancy’s abode, he walked to the house, and surprised the earliest servants astir by bidding one of them wake Mrs. Marten at once, as he had news of her father.
“Nothing serious,” he added, with a reassuring smile at a housemaid whose alarmed face showed an immediate sense of disaster. “Mrs. Marten is leaving Newport today, I think, and my message may decide her to start sooner—that is all.”
But Nancy had seen him from her bedroom window, and now fluttered downstairs in a dressing gown.
“What is it, Derry?” she asked, and mistress and maid evidently shared the feminine belief that such an untimely call presaged something sensational and therefore sinister.
“Don’t be frightened,” he said cheerfully, knowing how essential it was that she should not be startledinto an exclamation which might betray her secret to the listening servants. “I heard from Dacre last night that you meant to meet Mr. Willard in New York, and I have reason to believe that you ought to depart by the first train. To do that, you must get away from the house in forty minutes. Can you manage it?”
She came nearer, seeking the truth in his warning eyes, carrying a brave front before the maids, but with fear in her heart, because she and her lover had eaten of the forbidden fruit, and now they were as gods, knowing good and evil.
“Mr. Dacre!” she repeated. “I suppose Mary Van Ralten told him what I said. But I don’t quite understand. Why should I hurry my departure?”
Nothing in this that anyone might hear and deem significant. Power laughed, as though her air of slight alarm had amused him.
“Come into the veranda,” he said. “You are not afraid of the morning air, and it is not on my conscience that I have robbed you of an hour’s sleep, since you were up and around before I arrived.”
When they were alone, though shut off from inquisitive ears by wire-screen doors only, he said, in a low voice:
“Don’t say anything that will cause comment, but your father arrived at the Ocean House soon after midnight, and means to be here about nine o’clock. Our train leaves at seven. Will you use your own carriage, or shall I send a cab in half an hour? You will be ready, of course?”
Nancy was not of that neurotic type of womankindwhich screams or faints in a crisis. “Y-yes,” she murmured. “In less time, if you wish.”
“No need to rush things,” he said coolly. “He is not to be called till eight. I heard him give the order.”
“Youheardhim!”
“Yes. Thanks to Dacre, when he arrived I was sitting in the veranda, well hidden, as it happened; so I planned to reach you this morning with a couple of hours in hand.”
“But, Derry, I have a note written, and ready for the post. I can’t explain now——”
“Put the note in your pocket, and deal with the new situation at leisure. There’s only one thing I regret——”
“Regret! Oh, Derry, what is it?” And again the shadow of fear darkened her eyes, eyes of that rare tint of Asiatic blue known as blende Kagoul, a blue darker at times than any other, and again, bright, dazzling, full of promise, rivaling the clear sky on a summer’s night.
“That I dare not take you in my arms and kiss you,” he said. “You look uncommonly pretty in that negligée wrap.”
She blushed, and put up a hand to reassure herself lest her hair might be tumbling out of its coils. Then she ran to the screen doors and pushed them apart.
“I can’t wait another second,” she said. “Please send that cab. Our own men will hardly be at the stables yet.”
She waved a hand and vanished. Her hurried orders to the domestics came in the natural sequence ofthings, and caused no surprise. When she drove away from the house at twenty minutes of seven every member of her establishment believed that Mrs. Marten had gone to join her father in New York, but, for some reason communicated by her “cousin,” was traveling by the first train of the day instead of the second. The only perplexed person left in “The Breakers” was Julie, the French maid, who thought she would find a holiday in Newport dull, and was, moreover, genuinely concerned because of the scanty wardrobe which her mistress had taken.
Oddly enough, Power, waiting with stoic anxiety outside the New York, New Haven & Hartford station, shared some part of Julie’s thought when he saw Nancy’s two small steamer trunks and a hatbox.
“Well!” he cried, helping her to alight. “Here have I been worrying about the capacity of the cab to hold your baggage, and you bring less than I!”
“Pay the man,” she said quietly. Then, under cover of the approach of a porter with a creaking barrow, she added, “I am coming to you penniless and plainly clad as ever was Nancy Willard. You wish that, don’t you?”
“You dear!” he breathed; but she had her full answer in the color that suffused his bronzed face and the light that blazed in his eyes.
He had experienced no difficulty in securing the small coupé of a Pullman car to Boston. In that train there was little likelihood of any chance passenger recognizing them. In actual fact, they had the whole car to themselves. Nancy, who could not banish the notion that the whole world was watching her, was nervous and ill at ease until the train pulled out of the station. She even started and flushed violently when the conductor came to examine their tickets, whereupon the man smiled discreetly and Power laughed.
“You’re the poorest sort of conspirator,” he said, when the door was closed on the intruder. “We had better admit straight away that we’re a honeymoon couple, because everybody will know it the instant they look at you.”
But he failed to charm away the terror that oppressed her spirit. She felt herself a fugitive from some unseen but awful vengeance, and her heart quailed.
“Derry,” she said, almost on the verge of tears, “I’m beginning to be afraid.”
“Afraid of what?”
Somehow, despite his utter lack of experience of woman’s ways, he had guessed that this moment would arrive, and was, to that extent, prepared for it.
“Of everything. I—I know that I alone am to blame. It is not too late for you to draw back.”
“Why do you think I might wish to draw back?”
“Because of the horrid exposure you must face in the near future.”
“My only trouble is that I may not bear your share as well as my own, Nancy. The combined burden would lie light as thistledown on my shoulders. Let us be true to ourselves, and it will surprise you to find how readily the world, our world, will accept our view.”
“In your heart of hearts, Derry, do you believe we are doing right?”
“When ethics come in at the door love flies out by the window. We are righting a grievous wrong, and, although our actions must, for a time, be opposed to the generally accepted code of morals, I do honestly believe that this is a case in which the end justifies the means.”
“If I were stronger, Dear, we might have kept within stricter bounds.”
“You might have gone to Reno, for instance, and qualified for a divorce by residence?”
“Something of the sort.”
“I’ll take you to Reno, if you like; but I’m going with you. Don’t forget that he who has begun has accomplished half. Why are you torturing yourself, little woman? Shall I tell you?”
“I wish you would.”
“Because,” and his arms were thrown around her, and he kissed away the tears trembling on her lashes, “because, like me, you are really afraid lest we may be too happy. But life is not built on those lines, Deary. It would still hold its tribulations if we could set the calendar back to an April night of three years ago, and you and I were looking forward with bright hope to half a century of wedded joy, with never a cloud on the horizon, and never a memory of dark and deadly abyss crossed in the bygone years. Let us, then, not lose heart in full view of the one threatening storm. Let us rather rejoice that we are facing it together. That is how I feel, Nancy. I have never loved you more than in this hour, and why should I repine because of the greatest gift God can give to man, the unbounded love and trust of the one woman he desires? You are mine, Nancy, mine forever, and I will not let you go till I sink into everlasting night.”
After that, an interlude, when words were impossible, else both would have sobbed like erring children. At last Nancy raised her eyes, and smiled up into her lover’s face, and he understood dimly that, when a woman’s conscience wages war with her emotions, there may come a speedy end to the unequal strife.
“Derry,” she whispered, “have you realized that I don’t know where you are taking me?”
So the battle had ceased ere it had well begun. Perhaps she was hardly conscious—if she were, she gave no sign—of the crisis dissipated by that simple question. It closed with a clang the door of retreat. Henceforth they would dree their weird hand in hand. They would look only to the future, and stubbornly disregard the past. Shutting rebellious eyes against a mandate written in letters of fire, they would seek comfort in Herrick’s time-serving philosophy:
“Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,Old Time is still a-flying;And this same flower that smiles todayTomorrow will be dying.”
The train slackened speed. They were nearing a wayside station, and they drew apart in confusion like a pair of lovers surprised in some quiet corner. But Power laughed softly, and Nancy caught a new note of content in his voice.
“A nice thing!” he cried. “The girl is safe aboard the lugger, and I don’t even tell her to what quarter of the globe she is being lugged. But the sailing directions are easy. We breakfast at Boston. Don’t you dare say you cannot eat any breakfast!”
“I can, or I shall, at any rate,” she retorted bravely.
“Then Boston will be the best place on earth at nine o’clock. Afterward we take the Burlington road, and cross Lake Champlain. There’s a first-rate hotel on the west shore, and we stay there tonight. Tomorrow we plunge into the Adirondacks, and lose ourselves for as long as we please. How does that program suit my lady?”
“Whither thou goest——” she said, and her eyes fell.
Thus did they thrust dull care into the limbo of forgetfulness, and if there was standing at the gates of their Eden a frowning angel with a drawn sword, their vision was clouded, and they could not see him.
America rises early, even in holiday-making Newport; so Mr. Francis Willard did not breakfast in solitary state. When he entered the dining-room at half-past eight next morning he cast a quick glance around the well-filled tables, and ascertained instantly that the one man whom he did not wish to see was absent.
Toward the close of the meal he beckoned the head waiter.
“Where does Mr. Power sit usually?” he inquired.
“Over there, sir, with Mr. Dacre, the English gentleman, at the small table near the second window.”
Following directions, Willard noted a good-looking man, apparently about forty years old, who was studying the menu intently. As a matter of fact, Dacre had seen the newcomer’s signal, and guessed what it portended.
“Oh, indeed! Mr. Dacre a friend of his?” went on Willard.
“They are often together, sir.”
“And where is Mr. Power this morning?”
“He left by the first train, sir.”
For some reason this news was displeasing; though Power’s departure made plausible any inquiries concerning him.
“That’s a nuisance,” said Willard. “I—wanted to meet him. I came here last night for that purpose. Do you happen to know where he has gone, and for how long?”
The head waiter was not in the habit of answering questions about his patrons indiscriminately.
“I can’t say, I’m sure, sir,” he replied; “but if you were to ask Mr. Dacre he might know.”
Willard weighed the point. In one respect, he was candid with himself. He had come to Newport to spy on Nancy, and, if necessary, to put a prompt and effectual end to any threatened renewal of her friendship with Power. The intuition of sheer hatred had half warned him that the man whom he regarded as his worst enemy might possibly visit Rhode Island; but some newspaper paragraph about the purchase of horses bred in the state of New York had lulled his suspicions until he chanced to meet Benson at lunch in the Brown Palace Hotel. Marten’s secretary was worried. He had replied to Nancy’s letter the previous day; but was not quite sure that he had taken the right line, and he seized the opportunity now to consult her father. Of course, he did not reveal his employer’s business, and Willard was the last person with whom he could discuss the mortgage transaction fully; but he saw no harm in alluding casually to Mrs.Marten’s curious inquiry, and was relieved to find that her father agreed with the answer he had given.
The actual truth was that Willard felt too stunned by the disclosure to trust his own speech. He was well aware already that Marten had used him as a cat’s-paw in bringing about the marriage; but that phase of the affair had long ceased to trouble him. The real shock of Benson’s guarded statement lay in Nancy’s pointblank question. Why had she put it? What influence was at work that such serious thought should be given to his financial straits of nearly four years ago?
In the upshot, he left Denver by that night’s mail; though the letter in which he spoke tentatively of a visit to Newport, and of which Nancy had availed herself in talk with her friends at the Casino, had been only a day in the post, and, in the ordinary course of events, demanded a reply before he undertook a journey of two thousand miles.
And now he was vaguely uneasy. Though he hated the sight of Power, he wished heartily that the interloper who had snatched from him the bonanza of the Dolores Ranch had remained in Newport during this one day, at least. Yes, he would speak to Power’s British acquaintance, and glean some news of the man to whom he had done a mortal wrong and therefore hated with an intensity bordering on mania.
Dacre saw him coming; so it was with the correct air of polite indifference that he heard himself addressed by an elderly stranger.
“I’m sorry to disturb you,” said Willard, “but the head waiter tells me that your friend, Mr. Power, has left Newport. As I am anxious to have a word withhim, I thought that, perhaps, you wouldn’t mind telling me his whereabouts. My name is Willard, and I arrived here from Denver at a late hour yesterday; at midnight, in fact, my train having been delayed by an accident.”
Nancy’s father was well spoken. He owned a certain distinction of manner and bearing. Like the majority of undersized men, he was self-assertive by nature; but education and fifty years of experience had rounded the angles of his character, and, in a matter of this sort, he carried himself with agreeable ease.
Dacre was all smiles instantly. “What! Mrs. Marten’s father?” he cried. “Delighted to meet you! Sit down, Mr. Willard. Let us become better known to each other!”
Willard was hardly prepared for this cordial recognition; but he shook hands affably, and seated himself in Power’s chair, as it chanced.
“You have heard of me from my daughter, I suppose?” he began.
“Yes. She was telling Mrs. Van Ralten and several others, including myself—let me see, was it last night at the Casino?—that you were thinking of coming East; but I gathered she did not expect you till a few days later. I was mistaken, evidently.”
“No. I am giving her a surprise. I managed to get away sooner than I expected, and the prospect of Newport’s Atlantic breezes was so enticing that I just made a rush for the next train.”
“Well, you are here, and the long journey is ended, a pleasant achievement in itself. Was the train accident a serious one?”
Willard supplied details, and his sympathetic hearer swapped reminiscences of a similar mishap on the Paris, Lyon et Mediterranée Railway. Incidentally, he wasted quarter of an hour before Willard could bring him back to the topic of the missing Power.
“Ah, yes—as to Power,” nodded Dacre, seemingly recalling his questioner’s errand. “Too bad you didn’t turn up yesterday. Power is off to New York—made up his mind on the spur of the moment—and I rather fancy he will not be in Newport again this year. Indeed, I may go so far as to say I am sure he won’t, because he has invited me to his place at Bison—somewhere near Denver, isn’t it?—and I am to keep him posted as to my own movements, so that we can arrange things to our mutual convenience.”
Willard laughed, intending merely to convey his sense of the absurdity of two men playing hide and seek across a continent; but Dacre’s allusion to Bison brought a snarl into his mirth.
“You will write to the ranch, I suppose?” he inquired casually.
“Yes,” said Dacre, knowing full well that he was being egged on to reveal any more immediate address he might have been given.
“Then I can only apologize for troubling you, and——”
“Not at all! What’s your hurry? Let’s adjourn to the veranda and smoke.”
“I must go and see my daughter.”
“Oh, fie, Mr. Willard! You, an old married man, proposing to break in on a lady’s toilet at this hour!”
“My girl is up and dressed hours ago.”
“Well, now that I come to think of it, you are right. Most mornings while Power was here he joined Mrs. Marten and others for a scamper across the island, and they were in the saddle by seven-thirty—never later.”
In such conditions, being essentially a weak man, Willard was as a lump of modeler’s clay in the hands of a skilled sculptor. He could not resist the notion of a cigar, he said; of course, it was easy to induce Dacre to gossip anent the lively doings of the Casino set. Ultimately, he entered a carriage at ten o’clock, whereat the Briton, watching his departure, smiled complacently.
“Heaven forgive me for aiding and abetting any man in running away with another man’s wife,” he communed. “But I know Derry and Nancy and Marten, and now I know Willard, and being a confirmed idiot, anyhow, I am mighty glad I was able to secure those young people a pretty useful hour and a quarter of uninterrupted travel. As we say in Newport, it should help some.”
It had an effect which no one could have foreseen. It rendered Willard’s arrival at “The Breakers” a possible thing had he reached Newport that morning, and thus, by idle chance, closed the mouth of scandal; for he positively reeled under the shock of the butler’s open-mouthed statement that Mrs. Marten had left the town by the first train.
The man did not known him; but, being a well-trained servant, he made, as he thought, a shrewd guess at the truth.
“Surely you are not Mr. Willard, sir?” he said respectfully.
“Yes, I am.” Simple words enough; yet their utterance demanded a tremendous effort.
“Ah, there has been some mistake, sir,” came the ready theory. “Mrs. Marten meant to meet you in New York, and had arranged to travel by the nine o’clock train this morning; but Mr. Power made an early call—you know Mr. Power, sir?”
“Yes—yes.”
“He seemed to have some information about you, sir, which caused Mrs. Marten to hurry away before seven. There has been a sad blunder, I’m sure. What a pity! But if you know what hotel Mrs. Marten will stay at, you can fix matters by a telegram within a couple of hours.... Aren’t you well, sir? Can I get you anything? Some brandy?”
By some occult process of thought, Willard, though stupefied by rage and dread—for he never doubted for a second that Nancy had flown with Power—held fast to the one tangible idea that her household was ignorant, as yet, of the social tornado which had burst on Newport that morning. Could anything be done to avert its havoc? God! He must have time to recover his senses! While choking with passion, he must be dumb and secret as the grave! A false move now, the least slip of a tongue aching to rain curses on Power, and irretrievable mischief would be done. Small wonder, then, that the butler mistook his pallid fury for illness.
“Won’t you come into the morning-room, and sit down, sir?” inquired the man sympathetically.
“Yes, take me anywhere—I’m dead beat. I’ve been traveling for days in this damned heat.... No! no brandy, thank you. A glass of water. Mrs. Marten expected me, you say?”
“Yes, sir—at New York.”
“Ah, my fault—entirely my fault. I misled her, not purposely, of course. She gave you no address?”
“No, sir. Said she would write in a few days, perhaps within a week; but she imagined your movements were uncertain, and she could decide nothing till she had seen you.”
“Ah, the devil take it, my fault! I ought to have telegraphed.”
He harped on this string as promising some measure of safety for the hour. By this time he was seated, and ostensibly sipping iced water, while his frenzied brain was striving to find an excuse to encourage the man to talk.
“Perhaps Mrs. Marten may return when she discovers her mistake,” he contrived to say with some show of calmness.
“Well, sir, that may happen, of course. My mistress did not take any large supply of clothing, and left her maid here; so, when she misses you in New York, she will probably wire for Julie, at any rate.”
“Julie?”
“The French maid, sir.”
“What time did Mr. Power call?”
“Very early, sir. About six o’clock.”
Willard was slowly gaining a semblance of self-control. He realized that he had been checkmated in some inexplicable way; but it was imperative thatPower’s interference should not give ground for suspicion.
“I am beginning to grasp the situation now,” he said, forcing a ghastly smile. “Mr. Power heard of the accident to my train—it was derailed late last night—and, fearing lest I might be injured, he hurried Mrs. Marten away without telling her.”