To his own thinking, the tragedy of his life began that day in Bison when the sympathetic storekeeper toldhim of Nancy Willard’s marriage. But he was wrong in that belief. A man may lose the woman he loves, and recover from the blow, but he peers into abysmal depths when he meets her as another man’s wife, and finds that love, though sorely wounded, is not dead. It is then that certain major fiends, unknown to the generality, come forth from their lairs—and there must have been a rare awakening of crafty ghouls on the day Power reached Newport.
When Power arrived at New England’s chief summer resort on a glorious July morning twenty-two years ago, man had succeeded in adding only a garish fringe to a quietly beautiful robe devised by Nature. Some few pretentious houses had been built; but local residences in the mass made up an architectural hotch-potch utterly at variance with sylvan solitudes and breezy cliffs. Rhode Island, which lends its name to the entire state, is slightly larger than Manhattan. A long southwesterly spur shields from the mighty rages of the Atlantic the little bay on which the old town of Newport stands; but the climate has the bracing freshness which is almost invariably associated with the northern half of that great ocean. If the bare rudiments of artistry existed among the idle rich who overran the island during the ’80’s, it should have protected a charming blend of seashore and grassy downs from the Italian palaces, Rhenish castles, Swiss chalets, and don-jon keeps which the freakish conceits of plutocrats placed cheek by jowl along the coast. Nowadays these excrescences are either swallowed in forests of well grown trees or have become so beautified by creepers that they have lost much of their bizarre effect; while magnificent avenues, carefully laid out and well shaded, run through a new city of delightful villas and resplendent gardens. But Power’s first stroll from the portals of the Ocean House revealed a medley in which bad taste ran riot. The Casino, a miserable-looking structure, was saved from dismal mediocrity by its splendid lawns alone; the surf-bathers’ friends were protected from the fierce sun by a long, low shanty built of rough planks; the roads were unkempt, and ankle-deep in mud or dust; broken-down shacks alternated with mansions; a white marble replica of some old Florentine house, stuck bleakly on one knob of a promontory, was scowled at by a heavy-jowled fortress cumbering its neighbor.
He found these things irritating. They were less in harmony with their environment than the corrugated iron roofs of Bison. His gorge rose at them. They satisfied no esthetic sense. In a word, he resolved to get through his business with the horse-fancying judge as speedily as might be, and escape to the unspoiled wilderness of Maine.
Were it not for one of those minor accidents which at times can exert such irresistible influence on the course of future events, he would certainly have left Newport without ever being aware of Mrs. Marten’s presence there. He ascertained that the judge had gone off early in the morning on a yachting excursion up Narragansett Bay, having arranged to lunch at a friend’s house at Pawtucket; so, perforce, he had to wait in Newport another day.
At dinner he was allotted a seat at a large round table reserved for unattached males like himself. The company was a curiously mixed one, but pleasant withal. A Norwegian from San Francisco, who sold Japanese curios, a globe-trotting Briton, a Southerner fromAlabama, a man from Plainville, New Jersey, and a Mexican who spoke no English, made up, with Power himself, a genuinely cosmopolitan board, and Power soon discovered that he was the only person present who could understand the Mexican. Mere politeness insisted that he should lend his aid as interpreter when a negro waiter asked the olive-skinned señor what he would like to eat; but the “Greaser,” as he was dubbed instantly, proved to be a jovial soul, who laughed when any of the other men laughed, insisted on having the joke translated, and roared again when it was explained to him, so that each quip earned a double recognition, while he never failed to pay his own score by some joyous anecdote or amusing repartee. Thus, Power was forced into the role of “good fellow” in a way which he would not have believed possible a few hours earlier. In spite of himself, the merry mood of other years came uppermost, and, when the party broke up at midnight, after a long and lively sitting on a moonlit veranda, he retired to his room with a certain feeling of marvel and agreeable surprise at the change which one evening of enforced relaxation had effected in his outlook on life. He decided that these chance companions had done him a world of good, that his misanthropic attitude was a false one, and that a week or two at Newport might send him back to Colorado a better man. Applying to a state of mind a metaphor drawn from material things, he felt as an Englishman feels who leaves his own dripping and fog-bound island on a January afternoon and wakes next morning amid the roses and sunshine of the Riviera. The glitter on land and sea may bear a close resemblance to spanglesand gilt paper on the stage; but it is cheering to eyes which have not seen the sun for weeks, and when, in such conditions, John Bull sits down to luncheon under the awnings of a café facing the blue Mediterranean, he is unquestionably quite a different being from the muffled-up person who hurried on board the steamer at Dover.
Power had contrived to withdraw himself so completely from the more genial side of existence at Bison that he rediscovered it with a fresh zest. Next day he was no longer alone. The man from Birmingham, Alabama, and the Englishman shared his love of horses, and the three visited the judge, who stabled some of his cattle on the island, and had photographs and pedigrees galore wherewith to describe the stock on his New York farm.
So Power stayed two days, and yet a third, and he was laughing with the rest at some quaint bit of Spanish humor which he had translated for the benefit of the company at dinner on the third evening, when he became aware that a lady, entering with a large party, for whose use a table had been specially decorated, was standing stock-still and looking at him. He lifted his eyes, and met the astonished gaze of Mrs. Marten.
“Derry!” she gasped.
“Nancy!” said he, wholly off his guard, and flushing violently in an absurd consciousness of having committed some fault. She had caught him, as it were, in a boisterous moment utterly at variance with the three years of self-imposed monasticism which followed her marriage. Yet, with the speed of thought, he sawthe futility of such reasoning. The girl-wife knew nothing of his sufferings. She was greeting him with all the warmth of undiminished friendship, and could not possibly understand that he had endured tortures for her sake. So he regained his wits almost at once, and was on his feet, bowing.
“I beg your pardon, Mrs. Marten,” he went on. “Your presence here took me completely unawares. You are the last person breathing I expected to see in Newport.”
She laughed delightedly, with no hint of flurry or confusion beyond that first natural outburst.
“It would sound much nicer if you said what I am going to say to you,” she cried, “that you are one of the few persons breathing whom I am really delighted to see in Newport. But I can’t stop and talk now. I’ll ask Mrs. Van Ralten to forgive me if I slip away from her party for ten minutes after dinner. Mind, you wait for me on the veranda. I’m simply dying to hear some news of dear old Bison! How is Mac? Oh, my! I really must go. But don’t you dare escape afterward!”
Forgetful of all else, he allowed his startled eyes to follow her as she ran to her place at the neighboring table. She was dressed in some confection of white tulle and silver; a circlet of diamonds sparkled in her thick brown hair; a big ruby formed a clasp in front for an aigrette of osprey plumes; her robes and bearing were those of a princess. Were it not for the warranty of his senses, he would never have pictured the girl of the Dolores ranch in this fine lady. Even now he stood as one in a trance, half incredulousof the evidence of eyes and ears, and seemingly afraid lest he might awake and come back to the commonplaces of an existence in which the Nancy Willard of his dreams had no part.
The Englishman, Dacre by name, knew something of the world and its denizens, and he had seen the blood rush to his friend’s face and ebb away again until the brown skin was sallow.
“Sit down, old chap,” he said quietly. “I was just thinking of ordering some wine for the public benefit. Do you drink fizz?”
The calm voice helped to restore Power’s bemused senses. Afraid lest his moonstruck attitude might have been observed by some of Mrs. Marten’s companions, he tried to cover his confusion by a jest.
“Wine, did you say?” he cried. “Certainly—let’s have a magnum. Bottled sunlight should help to dissipate visions.”
“Anacreon has something to that effect in one of his odes; though he vowed that he worshiped Wine, Woman, and the Muses in equal measure.”
“Who is Anacreon?” asked the man from Plainville.
“He flourished at Athens about 600B.C.,” laughed Dacre.
“Did he? By gosh! The Greeks knew a bit, then, even at that time.”
“This one in particular was an authority on those three topics. Love, to him, was no mischievous boy armed with silver darts, but a giant who struck with a smith’s hammer. He died like a gentleman, too, being choked by a grapestone at the age of eighty-five.”
“Ah, that explains it!”
“Explains what?”
“He had a small swallow, or rum and romance would have knocked him out in half the time.”
Power was rapidly becoming himself again. “I behaved like a stupid boy just now,” he said; “but I was never more taken aback in my life. I have not met Mrs. Marten since her marriage, three years ago, and I imagined she was in Europe.”
“Oh, is that Mrs. Marten?” chimed in downright Plainville. “Last Sunday’s papers whooped her up as the prize beauty of Newport this summer, and I guess they got nearer the truth than usual. She’s a sure winner.”
“Did I hear her mention Mrs. Van Ralten?” inquired Dacre.
“Yes, her hostess tonight, I believe.”
“Van Ralten and Marten hurried off together to the Caspian last week. They are interested in the oil wells at Baku.”
Cymbals seemed to clash in Power’s brain, and he heard his own voice saying in a subdued and colorless staccato, “I am sorry I did not meet her sooner. I leave tomorrow.”
Dacre looked at him curiously; but the wine had arrived, a choice vintage of the middle ’70’s, and the Mexican was lifting his glass.
“El sabio muda conseja; el necio no,” he quoted.
The phrase was so apt that Power glanced at the speaker with marked doubt; whereupon the blond Norwegian asked what the señor had said.
“He told us that the wise man changes his mind, but the fool does not,” translated Power.
“Gee whizz!” cried Plainville. “It’s a pity he can’t give out the text in good American; for he talks horse sense most all the time. IfIhad a peach like Mrs. Marten callin’ me ‘Derry,’ damn if I’d quit for a month!”
The general laugh at this dry comment evoked a demand by the Mexican for a Spanish version of the joke. Then he made it clear that he had resolved to abjure wine, and was only salving his conscience by a proverb.
This cheerful badinage, which might pass among any gathering of men when one of them happened to be greeted by a pretty woman, did not leave Power unscathed. He had dwelt too long apart from his fellows not to wince at allusions which would glance harmlessly off less sensitive skins. The iron which had entered into his soul was fused to a white heat by sight of the woman he had loved and lost. He resented what he imagined as being the knowledge these boon companions boasted of his parlous state. Unable to join in their banter, not daring to trust his voice in the most obvious of retorts, for the man from Plainville had not been designed by nature to pose as a squire of dames, he gulped down a glass of champagne at a draft, and pretended to make up for wasted time in an interrupted course.
Dacre seemed to think that he would be interested in the latest gossip in financial circles with reference to a supposed scheme organized by Marten and Van Ralten to fight the Oil Trust. Power listened in silence until he felt sure of himself; then he launched out vigorously.
“It strikes me that America has lost the art of producing great men,” he said. “We whites are degenerating into mere money-grubbers; so, by the law of compensation, our next demigod should be a nigger.”
“Huh!” snorted Alabama, eager for battle.
“That’s my serious opinion,” continued Power dogmatically. “And, what’s more, I think I know the nigger. Have any of you dined in the Auditorium Hotel, Chicago?”
Yes, several; dining-room on top floor; lightning elevator; all right going up empty, but coming down full was rather a trial.
“Well, you will remember that, as you go in, a young colored gentleman takes your hat and overcoat, and cane or umbrella. He supplies no numbered voucher, and cannot possibly tell at which tables some six or seven hundred diners will be seated. At this time of year every man is wearing a straw hat of similar design; yet, as each guest comes forth, he is handed his own hat and other belongings. Now, I hold that that nigger has a brain of supreme mathematical excellence. There is not a financier in Wall Street who could begin to emulate that feat of memory. Given a chance, and such men make their own opportunities. The Auditorium cloakroom attendant will rise to a dizzy height.”
“Tosh!” exclaimed Alabama, primed with facts to prove that hundreds of negroes could perform similar tricks, but were no good for anything else.
He was no match for Power in an argument wherefigures held a place, and Dacre was the only other man present who realized that the talk had been boldly and skilfully wrenched to an impersonal topic. He, at any rate, made no further allusion to Marten or his projects; though he continued to watch Power narrowly but unobtrusively. Himself something of a derelict, though his aimless path lay in summer seas, he had conceived a warm regard for the quiet-mannered stranger from Colorado. Neither he nor any of the others knew aught of Power’s history, who might really be the rancher he professed to be, though his student’s features and reserved manner did not bear out the assumption. Later, when Dacre was better informed, he realized the cause of his first skepticism, for the engineer belonged to one of those rarer types of mankind who, like the lawyer, the soldier, the physician, and the clergyman, had the seal of his life’s work stamped plainly upon him.
Hence, it followed that in a spirit of sheer comradeship and sympathy he kept an eye on Power during the next few days. He saw how matters were tending, and risked a rebuff in offering a friendly hint when disaster was imminent. Above all—whether for good or evil who can judge? at any rate, the writer of this record of a man’s life feels least qualified to decide the point—he brought a dominating influence to bear at a moment when Power was adrift in a maelstrom which threatened to engulf him.
Yet there was slight sign of impending tempest in that bright room with its groups of diners seemingly well content with their surroundings. From the adjoining table, which Power could not see owing to theposition he occupied, came gusts of animated conversation. Mrs. Van Ralten rejoiced in the loud, penetrating accents of the Middle West, and snatches of her talk were audible.
“I do think James Gordon might have provided a more stylish Casino while he was about it.”
“Yes, I sail on theTeutonicfirst week in August. Nothing will keep Willie away from the moors on the Twelfth.”
“Did I see them? My dear, who could miss them? Has anyone ever met such freaks outside a dime museum?”
“Why, Nancy, I don’t wonder a little bit that you were such a success in Paris. The nice things I was told about you turned me green with envy.”
Alabama hotly contested each milestone of the Mason and Dixon Line; but Dacre believed that Power was less intent on the color problem than on catching each syllable of a sweet voice seldom heard above the clatter of tongues at the next table. At last the meal was ended, and the men strolled out into the veranda. Mrs. Marten seemed to know when her friend had risen; she turned and waved a hand, and obviously explained her action in the next breath. Soon she appeared, a radiant being fully in keeping with moonlight and a garden of exotics.
“Mary Van Ralten is a duck,” she said joyously, when Power hurried forward. “She has given me half an hour; but I mustn’t be a minute later, as she has turned out of her own house to accommodate the Barnstormers from Boston, who are acting for her guests tonight. All Newport will be there. You are coming,Derry. I asked her, and will introduce you afterward. My carriage will wait. But, gracious me, why are you lame?”
He was leading her to a couple of reserved chairs in a palm-shaded nook, and she noticed that he walked with a limp.
“Happened an accident near the mine quite a time since,” he said.
“I never heard. I wonder my father didn’t mention it. Anyhow, Derry, why have you never written?”
“Listen to the pot calling the kettle, or, if that is only a trite simile, listen to the Fairy Queen berating a poor mortal for her own lapses!”
“Ah, I have not written since my marriage, it is true, but you treated my hapless missives so cavalierly when I did send them that I hardly dared risk another rebuff.”
“What do you mean?” he asked thickly. He was priding himself on the ease with which they were establishing new relations, when this unlooked-for development plunged him again into a swift-running current of doubt and foreboding. They were seated now, not side by side as he had planned, but in such wise that Nancy could see his face clearly, she having deliberately pulled her chair round for that purpose.
“Exactly what I have said,” she answered composedly. “I sent three separate letters to Mr. John Darien Power, the Esperanza Placer Mine, Sacramento—I sha’n’t forget the address in a hurry, because I’ve always longed to ask why you were so ready to desert a friend—and, seeing that not one of them was returned by the postoffice, I had good reason to suppose that they reached you all right. Derry, don’t tell me you never got them!”
His heart seemed to miss a beat or two. In an instant he guessed the truth, that their correspondence had been burked by malicious contriving; but all he could find to say was:
“Did you really write to me?”
“Of course, I did. Am I not telling you? And you, Derry, didyouwrite tome?”
His tongue almost cleaved to the roof of his mouth; for he knew, in that instant, that they were not seated in the comfortable veranda of the Ocean House, but standing side by side on the lip of an abyss.
He must not, he dared not, answer truly. He had no right to make wreck and ruin of this bright young life, and none knew so well as he how proudly she would denounce the thievish wiles which had separated them if once she grasped their full import.
“It is so long ago,” he muttered brokenly. “So many things have occurred since. I have forgotten. I—I can only be sure that I received no letters from you.”
“You have forgotten!” she repeated slowly.
“Yes—that is, I suffered a good deal from a broken leg—it was badly set—that is why I have such a noticeable hobble. Events round about that period are all jumbled up in my mind.”
The explanation was lame as his leg. It would never have deceived even the Nancy Willard of bygone years, and was utterly thrown away on this wide-eyed woman. She was conscious of a fierce pain somewhere in theregion of her heart, and wanted to cry aloud in her distress; but she crushed the impulse with a self-restraint that had become second nature, and bent nearer, smiling wanly.
“Why did you throw away your cigar, Derry?” she said. “Please smoke. Like every other man, you will talk more easily then. And do tell me what has been going on at Bison. I have often asked Hugh for news; but he says he never hears a word about the place since he sold his interests there.”
Power hardly realized how swiftly and certainly she had made smooth the way. He was conscious only of a vast relief that the subject of the missing correspondence was dropped. Only in later hours of quiet reflection did he grasp the reason—that she was bitterly aware of the truth, and the whole truth. He began at once to describe developments on the ranch, and was too wishful to hide his own confusion behind the smoke of a cigar to notice how a white-gloved hand clenched the arm of a chair when he spoke of his mother and the place she filled in public esteem. Unconsciously he was telling Nancy just what she wanted to know. He was not married. There was no other woman! She uttered no sound; but her lower lip bore a series of white marks for a little while.
“You see,” he explained glibly, “I acquired the habit of letting other people work when I was laid by for repairs. Please excuse these frequent references to a broken limb, which seems to figure in my talk much as King Charles’s head in Mr. Dick’s disjointed manuscripts. Anyhow, I had plenty of time for reading, as the mine paid from the very beginning, and a rockspring which nearly scared Mac stiff came in handy to irrigate the upper part of the ranch—that long slope just below the Gulch, you remember.”
“Yes, I remember,” she said.
“Well, what between fruit-growing and horse-breeding, I hardly ever have time to go near Bison. My mother drives in every day over the new trail——”
“What new trail?”
“We had to cut a road across the divide. The Gulch is blocked by rails.”
“Why?”
“That is where the mine is, you know.”
“I don’t know. Whereabouts exactly is the mine?”
“It starts in the west side of the canyon, about a hundred yards from the ranch end.”
“Near a narrow cleft, topped by a sloping ledge?”
“Yes. How well you recollect every yard of the ground!”
“How did you come to locate the lost seam there?”
“By sheer chance. Some pieces of the granite wall fell away, and any miner who had been a week at his trade would have recognized the vein then.”
“When did they fall away—the bits of rock, I mean?”
“It must have been about the time you—you were married, Mrs. Marten.”
She tapped a satin-shod foot emphatically on the boarded floor. “Why are you calling me ‘Mrs. Marten’?” she demanded.
“Well——”
“Don’t do it again. I am ‘Nancy’ to you, Derry.I refuse to part with the privileges of friendship in that casual way. But I want to understand things more closely. What caused the stones to fall?”
“I don’t mind telling,” he said, “though a good many people have asked me the history of El Preço, and I have refused hitherto to gratify their curiosity——”
“El Preço—doesn’t that mean ‘the price’?”
“Yes.”
“What an extraordinary name! The price of what?”
“Of my broken leg. There, you see! King Charles’s head once more.”
She paused, ever so briefly, before resuming her questioning. “Now, why did the stones fall?”
“Because an excited cowboy fired his revolver in the air, and the bullets struck a section of rock which required some such shock to dislodge it.”
“But how did that affect you?”
“I happened to be lying on the very ledge you spoke of, and—oh, dash it all! I secured my limp then and there.”
“Did the fall disturb a rattlesnake?”
“It may have disturbed a dozen rattlesnakes, for all that I can tell. But what an extraordinary thing to say! Did you know that a rattler lived in that cleft?”
“No. I was just thinking of the Gulch and its inhabitants. Perhaps my wits were wandering.... Come, Derry. Our half-hour is not gone, but we can talk on the way. Send a boy for my carriage. Do you want your hat and coat?”
She rose suddenly, and drew a light wrap of silverytissue around her shoulders. Power stood up, and faced her. He had never seen her looking so ethereally beautiful, not even on the night, now so long ago, when he parted from her before taking that disastrous journey to Sacramento.
“Do you really think I ought to come with you to Mrs. Van Ralten’s?” he said.
“Of course. Why not? You are invited.”
“But——”
“You are my big brother from Bison, Derry, and I’m not going to forgo the pleasure of your company if all Newport lined the road and bawled, ‘Send him away!’ But do hurry. Mary Van Ralten will forgive everything except unpunctuality.”
The nebulous protest on Power’s lips faded into silence. “On such a night I can dispense with hat and overcoat,” he said. “Your carriage is a closed landau, I suppose?”
“Yes. After the play you can escort me to the Breakers—that is the name of the house we have rented—and Sam, our coachman, will take you home.... Oh, there he is, waiting. Mrs. Van Ralten’s, Sam.”
“Yes, Ma’am,” said the negro, who had brought a carriage and pair to the doorway when he caught sight of his mistress. A negro footman opened the door, and Nancy entered, the brilliant moonlight gleaming for an instant on the sheen of a white silk stocking. Power seated himself by her side, and the horses dashed off. He felt the soft folds of her dress touching him. When she turned slightly to say something about the marvelous nights which tempered the heat-wave at Newport, her right shoulder and elbow pressed him closely. Some subtle fragrance came from her that stirred him almost to a frenzy of longing; yet he dared not flinch away into a corner of the carriage. Perforce, he schooled his voice to utter the platitudes of the moment. Yes, he had been in Newport three whole days, and had not the remotest notion that she was there. He had come to buy horses, and might remain another week. Well, hewouldremain, now that they had met; for he was sure he would find a good deal to tell her of Bison and its folk once he had got over the novelty and unexpectedness of this meeting.
And all the time his heart was pounding madly, throbbing so furiously that he feared lest she should become aware of its lack of restraint, and he stooped forward in a make-believe glance at some building they were passing.
“That is the Casino,” she said, misinterpreting his action, or pretending to—Heaven alone knows the extent of a woman’s divination where a man is concerned! “We play tennis there, in the evenings, when it’s so hot during the day. Are you a tennis-player, Derry?... Oh, I’m sorry! I quite forgot.”
“I have been arousing your sympathy by false pretense,” he said, and the laughter in his voice demanded a real effort. “I can walk and ride and jump and dance as well as ever, and I have taught three of the ranchmen to play tennis quite creditably. So, if the Newport stores run to flannels and rubber shoes——”
“Derry,” she cooed, “you are not such a fraudulent person as you imagine. If you knew how muchyou have told me tonight about yourself, you would be awfully surprised, as they say in London. But here we are at Mrs. Van Ralten’s. Now, be nice to everybody; for I mean you to have a real good time in Newport. People here can be very pleasant acquaintances if you take them the right way.”
During the next few days Power passed imperceptibly through many phases of thought and emotion. When his judgment regained its natural equipoise after the first bitter-sweet intoxication of finding his old sweetheart desirous as ever of his companionship, he appeared to subside into a state of placid acceptance of such restricted blessings as the gods could offer. Nancy made good her promise, and Newport society threw wide its doors to the good-looking and well-mannered visitor. No doubts were raised concerning his financial or social status. A word from the horse-fancying judge made it clear that the Westerner could not be a poor man, seeing that he had already bought at stiff prices a magnificent hunter and the best-matched pair of hackneys in the States, and was in treaty for another round dozen of valuable animals; while Mrs. Hugh Marten’s manifest approval was sufficient to introduce any similarly favored young man to the most exclusive circle in the island.
Seeing that certain things were essential, Power spent money freely, supplying himself with a dog-cart, a groom, a valet, and the rest of the equipment which any man needed who would mix in that fashionable crowd without attracting attention by lack of it. Each morning he and Nancy, sometimes unaccompanied, butmore often mingling with a lively party, rode about the island, following rough tracks which are smooth roads nowadays, and visiting every favorite stretch of cliff and open country time and again. When the weather moderated its torrid rigor, and sports became possible in the grounds of the Casino or within the Polo Club’s inclosure, he bore his full share. In all that pertained to horsemanship he was the equal of any man in Newport, and Nancy had not lost that perfect confidence in the saddle which life on a ranch demands. Someone gave prizes for a drag hunt, a hunting crop for the first man and a silver cup for the first woman in at the finish of a ten-miles’ trail, and the two came in side by side, a furlong ahead of their closest follower. Luncheons, yachting parties, dinners, musicales, and dances crowded each day and often went far into the night. The heat-wave had put forward the almanac, and the Newport season was in full swing nearly a month in advance of its usual date.
Power retained his rooms at the Ocean House; but saw little of other inmates of the hotel unless they happened to mix in the same set. His friends of the dinner-table, except Dacre, had gone, and the Englishman, like Power, was made an honorary member of the Casino Club; so they kept up and developed an acquaintance which had begun so pleasantly.
The close intimacy between Mrs. Marten and the stranger from Colorado attracted slight comment. No breath of scandal fluttered the dovecotes of Newport. The behavior of the pair was exemplary, and, beyond the accepted fact that, if any hostess desired the presence of one she must invite the other, gossip about themwas noticeable by its absence. Their mutual use of Christian names from the outset established a tacit cousinship, and the only growl uttered behind their backs was an occasional complaint from some anxious mother who found her attractive daughters completely eclipsed, in the eyes of at least one eligible young man, by the millionaire’s wife.
Once, and once only, before the crash came, did Nancy allude to the purloined letters. She and Power were riding along the Cliff Walk before breakfast, when she broached the subject quite unexpectedly.
“Derry, I want to ask you something,” she said seriously. “Did my father and you ever quarrel without my knowledge—before I left Bison, I mean?”
“No,” he said.
“Don’t be stupid! I hate answers in monosyllables. When you say no like that, one suspects that it may really be a kind of yes.”
“Then let me make it the most definite sort of negative. Remember, you fixed a period. The last time I spoke to Mr. Willard before I was—before I went to Sacramento—I had supper at the ranch.”
He carried reminiscence no farther. She stole a look at him; but his eyes were fixed on a faint blur of smoke rising over the azure plain of the Atlantic from an invisible steamship. On that unforgetable night of three and a half years ago, a starlit night of spring, she had walked with him to the mouth of the Gulch, and in bidding each other farewell they had exchanged their first and last kiss.
“Father was certainly not an enemy of yours then,” she went on, in a singularly even tone. Indeed, shemight have been debating a matter of utmost triviality. “It seemed to me that he always welcomed you at the ranch. Why did he become so bitterly opposed to you afterward?”
He could have fenced with her, but deemed it preferable to speak freely. “I think he was annoyed by my rapid success,” he said. “He had made a failure of things generally, and I candidly admit it must have been exasperating to see a youngster like me, and a steady-going fossil like Mac, step in and secure a fortune out of a place where he had met with nothing but ill-luck. Those who get rich quick often incur animosity in that way.”
For a brief space there was silence. They seemed to be listening to the slumberous plash of the breakers on the rocks far below, which, with the pleasant creaking of saddlery, and the hoofbeats and deep breathing of eager horses held in restraint, were the only sounds audible in that wondrous solitude. They were passing a part of the cliff known as the Forty Steps, a euphonious name describing a series of railed staircases, cut in the solid rock, which afforded an irregular if safe passage to the beach. Ochre Point, with its millionaire residences, lay a mile, or less, in front, and on their left was the illimitable ocean. After a bath and breakfast they had promised to join a large party on a steam yacht bound for Narragansett Pier, when luncheon and a picnic at a lighthouse would fill the afternoon. This day was precisely similar to any other day of a whole fortnight in its round of amusements. The weather was nearly perfection, and distinctly unsuited for a heart-searching discussion; butNancy seemed to be in a mood that either invited self-torture or wished to witness the writhings of her companion, because she would not leave a difficult subject alone.
“Supposing, Derry,” she continued, “supposing I hadn’t got married when I did, do you think you would have discovered the mine just the same?”
Now he was compelled to go off at a tangent. “You resemble the majority of your sex in your desire to raise non-existent bogies for the mere pleasure of slaying them,” he began.
“Which is the bogy—my supposition or the mine?” she broke in.
“How can I imagine what would have happened in circumstances which did not take place? The discovery, or rediscovery, of the mine was one of those extraordinary bits of good luck which Fortune sometimes thrusts upon her favorites. It might have occurred if you had never left Bison; but, on the other hand, it might not.”
She nodded her complete agreement. By not answering he had answered fully.
“Yes, the goddess was certainly kind to you,” she said. “The cowboys did not often ride through the Gulch firing their revolvers. In fact, the only time I can recall any such riotous proceeding was on the day of my wedding. That must have been your lucky day.”
She watched him closely; but his face showed no sign of emotion. Yet she was sure that his eyes narrowed somewhat as they continued to search the horizon, and his lips were set with a dourness hardly warranted by an enjoyable ride on a carefree morning.
Then she smiled, very slightly, as though she was well pleased. She was not cruel; but any woman who wants to assure herself that a man loves her will understand why Nancy Marten was putting Power on the rack, and even tightening the cords almost beyond endurance.
“I’m sorry if I have worried you, Derry,” she said, with a tender caress in her voice that in no wise helped to mitigate his suffering. “One more question, and I have done. Have you told your mother that I am here?”
There was no help for it. He lied boldly.
“Yes,” he said.
“What did she say?”
“I am expecting her reply any hour.”
“And Mac? Did you give him my love?”
“I haven’t written to Mac since I came to Newport; but I shall not omit a word of your message when I see him, or write, whichever comes first.... Have you any idea what time it is?”
“Time these lazy gees were stirring themselves. Come, Hector!”
She shook the reins on her horse’s neck, and the big hunter jumped off in a fast canter. Power raced alongside, and the two struck into a byroad leading to Bellevue Avenue. Power was busying his brain to formulate some colorless phrase which would supply a natural-sounding comment by his mother on the fact that he had encountered an old friend in Newport. He knew well that he dared not tell her; for the tidings would distress her immeasurably. But he need not have troubled himself. Nancy never mentioned the matter again,for the very convincing reason that she did not believe him. Her allusion to Mrs. Power was one last turn of the screw. She was as certain that he could no more explain her presence to his mother than she could explain his to her father. Twice had she written his name in letters to Denver, and twice had she destroyed the letter. On the night she met Power she had dashed off a hot and impetuous note asking Willard why Derry’s letters had been withheld; but, in calmer mood, this dangerous query was given to the flames. On a second occasion, about a week later, Power’s name crept inadvertently into a description of some incident at the Casino, and the warm blood rushed to her face and neck when she found how near she was to committing the letter to the post without having read it.
All that day Power was puzzled by a new serenity shining in Nancy’s eyes. He could not guess that, more candidly analytical than he, she had looked fearlessly into the future and had discounted its agonies. She felt now that she had been tricked into a loveless marriage; that Marten had purchased her with exactly the same cold calculation of values which he would have applied to a business undertaking. Willard had proved as potter’s clay in his hands, and every turn and twist of the project was clear to her vision as though her husband, yielding to sardonic impulse, had set forth the unsavory story in black and white. But it was one thing to recognize how she had been duped, and another to strike out boldly for instant freedom. And in that respect the woman was braver than the man. Power was content to live in the golden present, to stifle the longings and plaints of silent hours; whilethe woman who loved him thought only of the end she now held firmly in view and recked little of the means whereby that end might be achieved.
Their unhappy plight was intensified by the fact that their characters had deepened and broadened alike during the years of separation. The boy and girl attachment of those heedless days in Colorado might not have withstood the strain of being thrown together again constantly after so long an interval, if the woman’s nature had not advanced step by step with the man’s. Experience of life, and the educative influences of foreign travel and good society, had done for Nancy what quiet study and seclusion from his fellow-men had done for Power. By such widely different paths they had reached a common standard of earnest purpose and high resolve, and Nancy, at any rate, was passionately determined not to sacrifice the remainder of her youth because of the unhallowed compact which sold her to gilded misery and robbed her of her one true mate in all the world.
As she did not blink the consequences, there remained but to carry through her desperate scheme as speedily and quietly as was compatible with no risk of failure. Her one difficulty lay with Power himself. She had first to break down his sense of honor, a task which could be accomplished only by making him see clearly that her life’s happiness was at stake. And she knew him, oh, so well—far better than he knew himself! Let Derry once find tears in her eyes, tears which he alone could dispel, and the seeming fortress of his self-control would crumble into dust. Let her once twine her arms around him, and what man-made laws wouldwrench them apart? For, by her reasoning, the solemn ordinances which govern frail human nature were wholly on her side. If marriage were, indeed, a divine institution, its very essence was profaned when Hugh Marten laid his sorry plan and made it effective by sheer force of money. She, the woman, would be called on to pay for her liberty in the coin minted of ill-repute, that base metal for whose currency her sex was mainly responsible. But those friends whom she valued would hear the truth, and they would rally round her, never fear! Why, in this delightful island, where pain and anguish seemed to be banished by the imperious ukase of deities presiding over the revels of the rich, people recognized as leaders of society had passed already through a furnace of scandal and scathing exposure such as she and her lover would never be called upon to face.
And that was why Power was at once bewildered and raised to the seventh heaven by her confident, contented smile when they met among the crowd of merrymakers on the yacht, or exchanged a few commonplace words when doing the round of Narragansett Bay and at dinner that evening in one of Newport’s summer palaces.
As his dog-cart was in waiting, he had no excuse to escort her home, but, in saying goodnight, she contrived again to perplex and delight him by a whispered request.
“Derry,” she murmured, “make no outside engagement for tomorrow evening. If you are already booked up, cry off. I want to dine with you in some quiet place—I suppose there is some hotel or caféin Newport where none of our friends go. Find out, and send me a note, telling me the time and place. I shall come in a hired carriage, and quietly dressed—not in dinner clothes, I mean—and you must do the same. I must have a long talk with you, wholly independent of our servants, you understand.”
“I shall obey, at any rate,” he said, with a smile that failed to conceal the unbounded surprise in his eyes. “May I put a question?”
“No, not now. Full details later, as people say in telegrams.”
They parted, and he was so plagued by foreboding that he would have driven past the Ocean House had not the horse turned in at the gateway of its own accord. If Nancy’s manner during the day had shown the least trace of worry or annoyance, he would have attributed her strange request to a desire to take him into her confidence. It was possible, for instance, that some busybody had warned her that a too marked preference for the society of one man among the many in Newport would probably reach her husband’s ears; but, in that event, her outraged pride could never have been veiled by such a mask of unsullied cheerfulness. If any more drastic explanation of the next day’s meeting suggested itself to his troubled mind, he crushed it resolutely. In his present mood, the slightest hint of scandal associated with Nancy’s winsome personality due to their friendship was anathema. He would have endured any loss, fortune, even life itself, to save her name from besmirchment.
When he alighted from the dog-cart he knew it was useless to try and sleep; so he lit a cigar, and sat ina remote corner of the veranda. Then he began seriously to analyze her words. They were to meet in clandestine fashion; not actually in the garments of disguise, but at a rendezvous so remote from the frequenters of the Casino as to run small risk of being identified. She would drive thither in a “hired carriage,” and he was to leave his dog-cart and groom at home. Moreover, she inferred that he would not see her until the evening, since the locality of thisdiner à deuxwas to be written; though they had hardly been separated by longer intervals than a couple of hours between seven o’clock in the morning and nearly midnight during each day of a fortnight. What did it all portend? Was this to be their last meeting? At that thought a fierce pain gripped him, and he was sorely tempted to call the gods to witness that he would not return to a lifetime of wandering in the wilderness. Yet, said a still, small voice within, was it not better so? She was another man’s wife. He must remember that, remember it even when his pent-up passions stormed the citadel of his conscience, remember it when the sheer fragrance of her maddened his senses, remember it when the taste of Dead Sea fruit was bitterest in his mouth. Of what worth was he if, for her dear sake, he was not strong in knightly resolve? And how could he ever again dare to receive his mother’s kiss if he betrayed the trust which she, at least, reposed in him?
A mournful and depressing reverie was disturbed by the arrival of a carriage at the porch. Four young people alighted—two honeymoon couples they were supposed to be—and their lively voices seemed to ringthe knell of his wrecked existence. He listened, only half hearing, while they chattered like magpies.
They had been to a dance at the Casino, and their broken comments told of a jolly evening, a capital band, the best floor that ever was laid, some wonderful dresses, and an unexcelled supper. Similar young people were telling each other exactly the same inane commonplaces all over the eastern part of America at that hour, and similar cackle would girdle the earth till the crack of doom. Probably the men were wise as he, and the women might be deemed by their swains pretty as Nancy; yet some malign despot among the powers which control poor humanity had decreed that he alone should never know these frivolous moments, never be granted these breathing-spaces of mild abandonment. And so, wroth with himself, and vexed with the sorry scheme of things, he went to his rooms.
Next morning, to make sure, he rode to Nancy’s house. No; Mrs. Marten had not ordered her horse; in fact, she had not appeared as yet, and the pleasant-spoken butler, showing the requisite confidence in the discretion of a recognized friend, added that his mistress would not be “at home” to anyone before luncheon.
Then, the weather being glorious and the air like champagne, Power whistled care to the devil, and cantered into the town to review the ground for the night’s fixture.
Newport today boasts of almost uncountable hotels and boarding-houses, nor was the area of choice limited in that respect nearly a generation ago. After careful scrutiny of various buildings in the business quarter, Power selected a café run by a certain Giovanni Pestalozzi as the most promising. It looked clean and bright, and an Italian might be trusted to be discreet.
Getting a man to hold his horse, he interviewed Giovanni, and was assured that Delmonico’s itself could not produce a better meal if the signor invited comparison. The signor wanted nothing elaborate, however. He admitted he was not well versed in either menus or wines, but demanded the best, and, after inspecting a well-furnished room overlooking the street, lodged a ten-dollar bill as earnest money, with a promise of ample largess if he were pleased. Then he rode away to the Ocean House, sent a note to Nancy, and received a reply which deepened his mystified dismay.
For she wrote: