“Derry, I am leaving you. Mr. Willard has followed us. He is here with me now. He has forced me to believe that duty demands my return to Hugh Marten; so I am going. It is best so. Derry, don’t grieve for me. If I thought——[these three words were canceled]. Derry, forgive me. I can write no more. My poor heart is breaking.“Nancy.”
“Derry, I am leaving you. Mr. Willard has followed us. He is here with me now. He has forced me to believe that duty demands my return to Hugh Marten; so I am going. It is best so. Derry, don’t grieve for me. If I thought——[these three words were canceled]. Derry, forgive me. I can write no more. My poor heart is breaking.
“Nancy.”
Slowly, through a haze of pain, certain incongruities were revealed in the curt, disconnected sentences. Never before, in all the years he had known her, had Nancy alluded to her father as “Mr. Willard.” Even during these later days, when the discovery of a parent’s treachery was a prime factor in her seemingly irrevocable decision to dissolve her marriage, she spoke of him invariably in terms of affection. Indeed, Power had practised some measure of duplicity by pretending to agree with her hopeful prophecy of a speedy reconciliation between Willard and himself. He believed he had summed up the man’s character only too well. Such a mean nature would assuredly remain stubborn in its hostility; in fact, he was prepared to encounter greater difficulties and annoyance from Willard than from Marten, and meant to persuade Nancy to take a world-tour of some years’ duration as soon as the divorce was secured, and they were legally married. Why, then, should it be “Mr. Willard” who had followed them, and not “my father,” or “Dad”?
And what an extraordinary plea she had put forward to excuse her precipitate flight? “He has forced me to believe that duty demands my return to Hugh Marten!” When had woman ever convinced herself more thoroughly than Nancy that “duty” did not “demand” the sacrifice of her whole life? Had she not weighed “duty” in the balance, and found it wanting, before she cast all other considerations to the winds, and fled from Newport with the man she loved? But “Mr. Willard” had “forced” that view upon her. Forced! A strange word! Had he threatened to murder her? Had she written that letter at the dictation of a maniac? Why, of course! The notion stung Power to the quick, and he groaned aloud. How crass and blind had been his anguished spirit when first it quivered under the shock of her disappearance! How much wiser and saner was Peter Granite! Even Guess, the dog, read the riddle aright, and had urged instant action. And how fortunate that these two faithful friends had raced off in pursuit rather than wait at the cabin until belated reason shed its light on the brain of the one person in the world Nancy must have trusted to understand her dilemma. At the thought of his failure to grasp the essential elements of a mystery that was simplicity itself when analyzed in cold logic, the blood rushed through his veins like a stream of molten metal, and he leaped to his feet, all afire now to be up and doing. He ran out, and was plunging wildly into the tangle of forest and scrub, when it occurred to him that undirected search in that wilderness was worse than useless. He was no Indian, skilled in jungle lore, that he should discern the tracks of pursued and pursuers, and follow them unerringly. Better possess his soul in patience until some sight or sound announced the return of Peter—with Nancy. Oh, yes, Peter and the dog would soon overtake that vengeful old man and his terrified victim! Pray Heaven there might be no opportunity given Willard to do evil to the girl who had thwarted his plans! Yet how often had the chance to do ill deeds made ill deeds done. Power wilted now under a horrible doubt which brought fresh tortures. He listened for the distant pistol-shot which might shatter his new-found hope.Perforce, he stilled his frenzy, and stood in anguished silence.
But no sound of death-dealing weapon jarred on the brooding solitude of that lake amid the hills; the earliest intimation he received of the real nature of his loss was when Granite and the dog came back—alone.
He strode a few paces to meet his allies, and in that moment of black despair the pride of his manhood sustained him, and choked the bitter words, the fierce ravings, the storming of the very heavens, which tore and raged for utterance, yet were so futile and helpless in the one way that mattered—the rescue of his lost love.
“So, then, you could not overtake them?” he said, and, if Granite had not seen Power when the blow fell, he would never have estimated the volcanic fury of the furnace hidden under Power’s unemotional voice and manner.
“No, sir,” came the quiet answer. “Thar was hosses in waitin’, three hosses. They’ve circled the head of the lake, an’ I saw Mrs. Power’s dress as they rode away from the hotel.”
The perplexed guide deemed it best to blurt out the actual facts. He thought, and rightly so, that any attempt to minimize the full extent of the tragedy would only add to Power’s suffering when he knew the truth. Nor was he comforted in the least by the unnatural calm with which his news was received.
“But, look-a here, Mr. Power!” he protested earnestly. “I’m ready to swear on the biggest Testament ever prent that your good lady didn’t vamoose of herown free will. Leave you? Gol-darn it, that’s a bit too rich fur me ter believe! Who’s tuk her, anyhow? Why did she go? What sort of a spiel did the cuss put up that she walked off with him—when she had a gun, an’ Guess was here, an’ she must ha seen you an’ me comin’ in the canoe?”
“The man was her father. This quarrel is between him and me. Peter, we must cross the lake at once. We can hire horses at the hotel?”
Granite shook his head sorrowfully. The affair was beyond his comprehension; but it was his business to undeceive his employer if he was counting on the chance of overtaking the vanished pair.
“Sorry,” he said. “This yer plot was well laid. They run three nags at the hotel, an’ the hull blamed bunch hit the pike fur Racket.”
Racket was the nearest station, the terminus of a short railway serving the Forked Lake district. It lay six miles away! With the start Willard had secured, he would be at the rail-head before the others had crossed the lake. But Power knew he would go mad if compelled to remain in the cabin when Nancy was not there, and Granite made no further effort to detain him.
“We’ll travel a heap quicker if we unload them stores,” was all he said, and Power turned instantly to help in the work. When Peter had occasion to enter the cabin, he examined the gun, and found the two cartridges.
“Gosh!” he muttered. “She tuk ’em out herself. I allow she didn’t want ter shoot her own father; but she must hev’ damn well felt like it!”
Then he eyed the dog.
“Wish you could talk, Pup,” he said. “Your long lugs heerd what passed atween them two, an’ I guess it kinder tried you good hard ter keep yer teeth outen that old sinner’s leg.”
Power spoke no word until the canoe rested by the side of the small landing-stage provided by the hotel. Bidding the guide await his return, he hastened into the building, and found the proprietor. Yes, a Mr. Francis had registered two days ago. He had rented a room overlooking the lake, and had hired the hotel’s three horses this morning. Two of the animals were carrying him and a lady to Racket, and the rider of the third was a groom, who had charge of Mr. Francis’s grip, and who would bring the nags back from the depot. Mr. Francis seemed to be in a desperate hurry; but that was not to be wondered at if he meant to catch the next south-bound train, there being just fifty minutes in which to cover the five miles. There was no other train until the night mail, which was due to leave Racket at seven o’clock. The hotel possessed a buggy; but Mr. Francis refused to use it. In fact, he was willing to pay any price for the horses; though it was most inconvenient that there should not even be one horse left in the stable, as it might be wanted in an emergency.
Power thanked his informant, who doubtless wondered what whiff of excitement had stirred this remote corner of New York state that morning; but gleaned little from his cool, self-contained questioner. Indeed, Power raised only one more point—could he be driven to Racket for the late train?—and wasassured that there would be no difficulty in that respect.
Then Peter received his orders.
“Pack Mrs. Power’s baggage and mine, and bring everything here,” said Power. “I want you to remain in the cabin till you hear from me; but come to the hotel every day for a letter or telegram.”
Granite nodded, and paddled off silently and swiftly. He understood, not all, but some part, of Power’s mood. There were ordeals from which any man would flinch, and high among these for the bereaved husband (as the guide deemed him) would rank the heartbreaking task of sorting out and folding Nancy’s clothes, and replacing her toilet requisites in a dressing-case. Each garment would speak of her with a hundred mouths, each tiny silver article and cut-glass bottle would recall the grace of her gestures when she was brushing her luxuriant hair or shrugging her slim shoulders in laughing protest against Derry’s clumsiness as a lady’s-maid.
Before Peter returned, a luncheon-gong boomed from the porch of the hotel, and a number of men came in from their canoes or fishing-punts. One of a small party noticed Power sitting on a shaded seat in the little garden which ran down to the water’s edge.
“Isn’t that the man with the pretty wife who lives in Granite’s shack?” he asked. “He looks as though he’d lost a dollar and found a nickel.”
“P’r’aps he’s lost his missis,” laughed another.
“No fear. They’re a honeymoon couple if ever there was one. Why, when he comes here for stores she stands at the door of the hut the whole time he isabsent, watching him all the way here and waving to him all the way home again.”
The hotelkeeper, noting Power’s absence from the dining-room, sent a maid to remind him that the meal was being served.
Power started violently when the girl’s soft-spoken words broke in on his reverie. For an instant he dreamed that Nancy had come, that he would feel her fingers clasped over his eyes, hear her voice.
“It is so hot and quiet here,” he explained, smiling pleasantly, “that I was nearly asleep. I don’t need any lunch, thank you.”
Yet never had man seemed more wakeful. The girl thought that surely he must be ill, and in pain, and she wondered why his wife had left him; for Nancy’s departure was already known to the hotel servants, since nothing could happen in that secluded nook without their cognizance, and Willard’s corner in horse-flesh that morning had been much discussed in the kitchen.
Granite, however, put in an appearance soon, and insisted that Power should eat.
“You’ll be headin’ for N’ York, I reckon,” he said, “an’ there ain’t no sort o’ sense in makin’ that long trip on an empty stummick. You jest take my say-so, Mr. Power, an’ eat yer meals reg’lar, an’ you’ll size up things altogether different when you set down to yer breakfast tomorrow.”
His well-meant advice caused a thrill of agony. Breakfast without Nancy! The dawn of the first day when she was not by his side! The mind often works in grooves, and Power’s thoughts flew back to thatother day when he lay crushed on the ledge. As he walked to the hotel with the guide, his leg seemed to be almost broken again, and he moved with difficulty.
Afterward, he spoke and acted in a curiously mechanical way. He was aware that he gave Granite detailed instructions, and paid him far more than the friendly disposed fellow was inclined to accept, and stowed himself and various portmanteaus in the buggy when the hotel proprietor warned him it was time he should set out. He remembered, too, being told that a young lady and an elderly man had taken tickets for New York by the midday train from Racket; but the journey thenceforth was a meaningless blank. He gave no heed to the passing of the hours. He did not even know when the train reached the Grand Central Station. Before he realized that he must bestir himself, one of the attendants had to ask him sarcastically where he wanted to go, as the engineer thought he wouldn’t butt into Park Avenue that morning.
Still behaving like one in a dream, he wandered out of the station into 42d Street, drifted down Fifth Avenue, and entered the Waldorf Hotel. Here, luckily, he was recognized by a clerk—an expert who never forgot a patron’s name or face—and was allotted rooms. Otherwise, he would certainly have been turned away politely; for his unkempt appearance and half-demented air offered the poorest of recommendations to one of New York’s palatial hotels.
“What about your baggage, Mr. Power?” inquired the clerk, whose private opinion favored the view that this erstwhile spick-and-span client had been “hitting it up some.”
“Baggage? Let me think? I have some recollection——”
Power searched in his pockets, and found a number of brass checks. He really had not the slightest notion as to when and where that detail was attended to, but habit had evidently proved stronger than emotion, and some sense of gratitude stirred in him that he had not mislaid his own few belongings—and Nancy’s.
Then, worn out physically and mentally, he threw himself on a bed and slept. He awoke after three hours, and some of the cloud had lifted off his brain. He felt able to think clearly, and plan a course of action, and that in itself was a blessing. He saw now that, if Nancy were actually humoring a homicidal maniac, she would lead her father straight to Newport, knowing full well that he, Derry, would come there without fail. True, there were sentences in that terrible letter which hardly bore out this argument; but, then, it was probably written under Willard’s watching eyes, and that last heartrending farewell might have been the only formula she could devise for a final leave-taking compelled by a loaded revolver.
At any rate, he would telegraph to Dacre, in whose discretion he trusted implicitly; so, not without a strenuous effort needed to collect his wits, he drafted an ambiguously worded telegram.
“My friend’s father came to the Adirondacks yesterday, and effected departure forcibly during my absence. Will you make guarded inquiries? Wire me Waldorf Hotel on receipt of this message, and later.”
“My friend’s father came to the Adirondacks yesterday, and effected departure forcibly during my absence. Will you make guarded inquiries? Wire me Waldorf Hotel on receipt of this message, and later.”
It was a relief to think that he had taken one decisive step. During the two hours of inaction before a reply could come to hand, he bathed, changed his clothes, and ate some food, for which he was ravenous, having refused to dine on the train.
Bethinking himself, too, that Nancy might have found some means of telegraphing on her own account, he inquired, first at the hotel bureau, but without result, since any communications received there would have been sent to his room, and secondly at his bank. Yes, here were letters and telegrams galore, some readdressed from Newport, and others sent direct. He tore open the telegrams feverishly.
But what was this?
“Your mother asking for you every hour. Why don’t you wire?“MacGonigal.”
“Your mother asking for you every hour. Why don’t you wire?
“MacGonigal.”
And another:
“For Heaven’s sake, wire if this reaches you, and start west by next train.“MacGonigal.”
“For Heaven’s sake, wire if this reaches you, and start west by next train.
“MacGonigal.”
The messages latest in arriving were naturally on top of the bundle, and his trembling fingers were tearing at another envelop when someone touched him on the shoulder. It was an official of the bank, who had spoken to him twice in vain across the counter, and was now standing at his side.
“I’m afraid you have bad news from Bison, Mr. Power,” he said gently. “Your manager—or partner, is it?—Mr. MacGonigal, has been telegraphing us repeatedly during the past five days; but unfortunately we did not know where to find you. Your mother is ill, very ill.”
“Is she dead?”
Power could only whisper the words, and the other noted in voice and manner what he construed as a son’s natural agitation at such a moment.
“No,” he said, “but she is undoubtedly in danger. It seems to me, from what MacGonigal says, that a telegram from you telling her you are on board a west-bound train will be more effective than any doctor’s treatment.”
Power was shaking as though from ague. He alone knew the frightful alternative that faced him now. If he went to Newport, he would be deserting his mother, who was perhaps dying. If he went to Bison, he was deserting Nancy in the hour of her utmost need. At that instant he dared not, he could not, decide, and the knowledge that he even hesitated was like the thrust of a sword through his heart.
“I—I——” he began, and his tongue seemed to refuse its office.
“I quite understand, Mr. Power,” said the official, an assistant manager, as it happened, and a shrewd and kindly man. “It is useless to think of leaving New York before tonight. Come to my desk. I’ll write a telegram for you which will straighten things out. Will you travel by the Pennsylvania and Rock Island Route? I thought so. The train starts at seven o’clock; so you have plenty of time to receive an answer from Bison. Now, how will this do?”
And he wrote:
“Your telegrams only just opened. Coming by tonight’s train by Pennsylvania road. Wire me care of station agent, Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne, Chicago, and Omaha. Message today before six will reach me at Waldorf Hotel. Give my love to mother and bid her cheer up.”
“Your telegrams only just opened. Coming by tonight’s train by Pennsylvania road. Wire me care of station agent, Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne, Chicago, and Omaha. Message today before six will reach me at Waldorf Hotel. Give my love to mother and bid her cheer up.”
Power muttered what he conceived to be words of thanks. Then, rushing to his rooms in the hotel like a hunted animal seeking sanctuary, he read MacGonigal’s earlier telegrams. There were letters, too, no less than three from his mother, who seemed perplexed and uneasy because of the varying postmarks on his correspondence, but made no mention of her illness.
Indeed, the last letter, dated only a week earlier, spoke of a shopping expedition to Denver she and Mrs. Moore and the two girls had taken the previous day. MacGonigal, too, was not explicit. “Mrs. Power very ill and desperately anxious to see you,” ran one telegram. Another told of Dr. Stearn being summoned, and remaining in constant attendance; but the burden of each and every message was that he, Power, must come home.
It was not surprising that the unhappy son should see in his mother’s sudden collapse the hand of the Almighty. Deep in the heart of every man and woman is planted the conviction that an unseen and awful deity deals out retribution as well as justice to erring humanity. Power was under no delusion as to his personal responsibility for his actions. He had done wrong, and now he was being punished. “A man’s heart deviseth the way, but the Lord directeth hissteps.” Sternly and terribly had his feet been turned to the new path; but if he flung himself on his knees and prayed now, it was not for forgiveness of his own sin, but in frenzied petition that it should not be visited on his mother and Nancy. Even in this new delirium of suffering he did not forget the woman he loved. Though his torment was as the torment of a scorpion, he asked that Nancy, too, might be spared. On his head be the punishment; but let the Divine Ruler of the world have pity on her youth, and find innocence in her, for she had been hardly dealt by!
He was still kneeling in anguish of spirit when an awe-stricken page entered the room with a telegram. If aught were needed to crush him into the dust, it was forthcoming in Dacre’s guarded words:
“Have accidentally secured brief talk on telephone with friend indicated, who arrived this morning Fall River steamer. No secret made of intentions, which I am bidden to warn you are final. Going with father to Europe at once; but would not discuss reasons, for which, obviously, I could not press. I am puzzled and shocked. Command me in any way. Have you received urgent summons to Bison? Your mother is ill.”
“Have accidentally secured brief talk on telephone with friend indicated, who arrived this morning Fall River steamer. No secret made of intentions, which I am bidden to warn you are final. Going with father to Europe at once; but would not discuss reasons, for which, obviously, I could not press. I am puzzled and shocked. Command me in any way. Have you received urgent summons to Bison? Your mother is ill.”
Then, and not until then, did some Heaven-sent clarity of vision reveal to Power that Nancy had not been acting a part when she wrote the letter he found in the hut. It was only too true that, as he told Peter Granite in the first mad words which burst from his lips, she had left him forever. He did not pretend to understand her motives—he was sure he never would understand them—but her action, at least, was finite.He knew now she was gone beyond recall. By some malign trick of fate she was probably stating her unalterable resolve over the telephone to his friend at the very moment he was reeling under the shock of MacGonigal’s frantic messages with reference to his mother.
Well, be it so! His dream of a life’s happiness had been shattered by a thunderbolt from a summer sky, and, crowning misery, here was his mother at death’s door, in a state of mind surely aggravated by distress because of uncertainty as to his whereabouts! Sheer despair was again calming if benumbing him when, by ill-chance, his haggard eyes dwelt on Nancy’s letter. The concluding words seemed to grip him by the throat:
“I can write no more. My poor heart is breaking.”
God of mercy, what did it all mean? He gave way utterly. A strong man weeping is a pitiable sight, and Nancy’s high resolve might have weakened had she seen him in that bitter hour.
Perhaps she knew. She must have known. Her forlorn soul must have gaged his distress by the measure of her own sorrowful longing. But she had deceived Power so thoroughly that not for many a year did he even guess that her flight was undertaken solely on his account. And it was better so; for the story of their love might have been stained by a sordid tragedy, and Power, instead of going West that night, would have taken a special train to Newport with fixed intent to choke Willard’s wretched life out of him. As it was, he crossed two-thirds of the great land which had given him vast wealth, and much tribulation, and littlejoy. At New York, and elsewhere en route, he received telegrams from his trusty friend at Bison. They were not reassuring; but they did, at least, contain one grain of comfort in the tidings that his mother still lived.
But therein MacGonigal allowed his heart to control his pen; for Mrs. Power breathed her last before her son had quitted New York, and it was to a town in mourning that Power returned. His mother had endeared herself to every soul in the place. The people looked on her as their guardian angel. They almost scowled on John Darien Power when the flying feet of his horse clattered along the main street in his haste to soothe the fretfulness of a woman who was already three days dead. Why did he leave her? they asked. Where had he hidden that the country should be scoured for him during the last week, and none could find him? He used to be a decent, outspoken sort of fellow, Derry Power; but wealth had spoiled him, as it seemed to spoil every man who secured it. Queer thing! Deponent thought that he, or she, would risk the experiment at the price.
Thus, light-hearted gossip, which talks in headlines, and recks little of the subtler issues of life.
Death brings peace. Having accomplished its dread mission, it atones to the body from which the soul is snatched by smoothing away the lines of agony from the face; it seems even to relent for awhile, and restore to worn and aged features the semblance of long-vanished youth.
When Power looked at his dead mother, he saw her as she might have looked in placid sleep when he was a boy in San Francisco. But a discovery that is often soothing to those who are bereft of their nearest and dearest brought him no consolation. His stupor of grief and misery was denied the relief of tears. Rather did his brooding thought run to the other extreme. The mother he loved was at rest—why should he not join her? He believed, like many another man who has passed through the furnace of a soul-destroying passion, that he had drunk the flame-wreathed cup of life to the dregs. The fiery potion had swept through his veins and reduced him to ashes. He was no longer even the recluse of the Dolores Ranch, finding in books solace for a lost love, but the burnt-out husk of his former self. What was there left, that he should wish to live? Why should he not end it all, and seek the kindly oblivion of the grave?
Ever stronger and more insistently did this ideatake root in his mind, and some evil monitor seemed to bellow it at him when he stood next day in the cemetery, and saw the coffin lowered into the earth. The beautiful words of the burial service give sorely needed help to stricken hearts; but this man’s ears were closed to their solemn promise.
“I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.”
The minister’s voice, hitherto broken and tremulous, for he held the dead woman in much esteem, and her loss was grievous to him, rang out with a new confidence when it declaimed that splendid passage; yet Power was conscious only of a desire to cry aloud in frenzied protest. Then that phase passed; the tumult died down; he shrank into a lethargy which was infinitely more dangerous than a state of wild revolt.
In that black mood he was watched unceasingly by faithful friends. MacGonigal and Jake were never far from his side. Though he did not know of, and would have angrily resented, their quiet guardianship, he could not have taken his own life just then, and the time was yet far distant when he would ask himself in wonder and thankfulness how he had escaped death by his own hand during the first dreary hours following his return to Bison.
But there were other influences at work, and one of these made its presence felt speedily. After the funeral he was sitting alone in the room which he had converted into a library. His unseeing eyes were fixed on the smiling landscape into which irrigation had converted the once arid ranch. A troop of brood mares,with foals at heel, were emulating mankind by neglecting the lush pastures at their feet and craning their graceful necks over a palisade to nibble the thorn hedge it protected. This double barrier shut off the lawn and garden from the meadow lands. Here and there the green of apple orchards, planted with artistic regard to open vistas, was already flecked with golden fruit. Soon the reapers would be busy on the sections where maize and oats and wheat were ripening. The lowing of cattle announced that milking-time was near; for, among her other activities, Mrs. Power had established a model dairy, and it was her gentle boast that she had made it pay; thus bringing out in the mother the money-coining instincts which the son had developed so unexpectedly.
Such a scene might well lull the beholder to rest; but Power was blind to its charms. He was reviewing, in an aimless way, the associations which that very apartment held for him. Changed though it was out of all semblance to the poverty-stricken living-room of the ranch, Nancy’s spirit had never been wholly exorcised. He pictured her slim and lissome figure as she had stood with him at the window many an evening, and watched the purple shadows stealing over the hills. In that room she had married Marten. From a bamboo stand near one of the windows she had taken the spray of white heather which formed her wedding bouquet. Why had she never mentioned it to him? Or were the last five weeks nothing but some disordered vision of the imagination, a delusion akin to those glimpses of palm-laden oases and flashing waters which come to thirst-maddened wanderers in deserts?
But another shadow intervened. His mother, in turn, had loved the gorgeous sunsets of Colorado; she, too, was wont to gaze at the far-flung panorama which once delighted Nancy’s eyes. And she, alas! had become a dream which would never again wake into reality. At that moment the relief of tears was imminent—and tears are intolerable to a strong man. He sprang upright in a spasm of pain, and bitter words escaped him brokenly.
The movement, no less than the few disconnected sentences, seemed to arouse Jake, who happened to be lounging against one of the pillars of the veranda—out of sight, perhaps, but certainly not out of hearing.
“Would yer keer ter hev an easy stroll around, Mistah Power?” he said instantly.
“No, thanks—why are you waiting there? Do you want to speak to me?”
This questioning might bear interpretation as the outburst of one who resented the overseer’s presence; but Jake was ready with the soft answer which turneth away wrath:
“No, sir. Not exactly, that is. I was jest waitin’ fur Mac. He allowed he’d be back about this time. Gosh! Here he is, crossin’ the divide, an’ totin’ along some tony galoot I hain’t seen afore.”
“Tell MacGonigal, and every other person in the place, that I am not to be disturbed.”
Power withdrew from the French window, and Jake nodded to the group of horses.
“You’re feelin’ pretty bad, I guess,” he said to himself. “But thar ain’t a gun in the outfit outside my locked grip, an’ you cahn’t find enough rope terhang a cat, an’ the only pisen in the ranch is on a sideboard, an’ a skinful of that would do you good, an’ this yer son of a gun can stand a lot o’ black looks from you, Derry.”
He heard Power sink into a chair on the inner side of the room, and sheer curiosity led him to steal along the veranda to the porch, where MacGonigal and a stranger were alighting from a two-wheeled buggy.
“Derry’s jest tole me ter quit,” he said in a stage whisper, jerking his left hand, as though it still possessed a thumb, in the direction of the library.
The newcomer, a tall, well-built man of middle age, smiled involuntarily at the queer gesture. As it happened, he had never before seen a veritable cowboy outside the bounds of one or other of the American circus shows which visit Europe occasionally, and Jake had donned his costliest rig for the funeral.
“Shall I find Mr. Power in that room with the open window?” he inquired.
“Yes, sir,” said Jake.
“I think he will be glad to see me,” said the unknown, and, without further comment, he ran up the steps and entered the veranda. The two men watched him in silence. They saw him halt in front of the window, and heard him say, “Power, may I come in?” They heard the scraping of a chair on the parquet floor as it was thrust aside; then the stranger vanished.
“Who’s the dook?” demanded Jake, vastly surprised by the turn of events.
“Friend o’ Derry’s,” said MacGonigal,sotto voce. “He wired me from Newport, an’ his messages struckme as comin’ from a white man; so I gev’ him the fax, an’ the nex’ thing I hear is that he’s on the rail, but I’m to keep mum, as he thought it ’ud help Derry some if he kem on him suddint. An’ here he is.”
During a full minute neither man spoke. At last, Jake, who appeared to have something on his mind, brought it out.
“Thar was a piece ’bout Derry and Mrs. Marten in theRocky Mountain Newsa week sence,” he began.
“Thar was,” agreed MacGonigal, who looked vastly uncomfortable in a suit of heavy black cloth.
“Not anything ter make a song of,” went on Jake. “An or’nary kind o’ yarn, ’bout a point-ter-point steeplechase, whatever that sort o’ flam may be, an’ Bison won, in course.”
“Jest so,” said the other.
“Guess you spotted it, too?”
“Guess I did.”
“Marten’s in Baku. Whar’s Baku?”
“I don’t know, but it’s a damn long way from Newport, anyhow, or Derry an’ Nancy wouldn’t be cavortin’ round together on plugs from one p’int to any other p’int.”
“You an’ me sized up that proposition same like.”
“We’re a slick pair,” grunted MacGonigal sarcastically.
“That’s as may be—I’ve heerd folk say wuss ner that ’bout you,” said Jake. “But what I want ter know is this: S’pose some other low-down cuss gits busy, and stirs his gray matter thinkin’ hard on things he saw in the newspaper, what’s ter be done?”
MacGonigal brought his big red face very nearJake’s olive-skinned one. “If he’s on the ranch, bounce him; if he’s in Bison, let me know,” he growled.
Meanwhile, the man whose interests they were planning to safeguard had looked up in anger when a shadow darkened the open window; but he started to his feet in sheer amazement when he saw Dacre and heard his voice.
“You?” he cried. “How in God’s name didyouget here?”
“You were in trouble, Power, and I count it a poor friendship that shirks a few days’ journey when a chum is in distress.”
Their hands met, and Power’s white face showed a wave of color. He was deeply stirred. For the moment he was an ordinary man, and subject to ordinary emotions.
“I had better be outspoken,” continued Dacre. “I got in touch with Mr. MacGonigal, and he informed me of your mother’s death; so I have hurried across America to be with you. Being rather afraid you might stop me en route, I requested MacGonigal not to tell you I was coming.”
“But I regard your action as a most kindly one.”
“Yes, now that I am here. For all that, old man, you might have wired very emphatic instructions on the point to Omaha yesterday.”
“My dear fellow, you find me in a house of mourning. Won’t you sit down? You must be tired. Can I get you anything?”
“My bones are stiff for want of exercise—that is all. Now, if you want to be a perfect host, have my traps sent to my room.... Don’t say you haven’t aspare bedroom!... Good! I’ll just open a bag, and get some tea—of course, you can’t possibly produce any decent tea—and your cook will boil a kettle, and after we have refreshed on the beverage that cheers while it does not inebriate, you will take me for a walk around this delightful ranch of yours. You see, I don’t mean to let you mope here by yourself. That is the last thing the dear lady who has been taken from you would wish. You will regard me as a beastly nuisance, but that cannot be helped.”
The ghost of a smile twinkled in Power’s eyes. He was quite alive to his friend’s object in rattling along in this fashion; but it was an undeniable relief that he should be compelled to follow the lead given so cheerfully.
“To show that you are welcome I’ll even drink your strong tea,” he said. “Nor am I alone here, as you seem to imagine. There are three ladies in the house—Mrs. Moore and her daughters, Minnie and Margaret. Hand over your bohea to Mrs. Moore—she’ll dispense it properly, and appreciate it, too, I have little doubt.”
In such wise was the black dog care partly lifted off Power’s shoulders. He had yet to learn that the human vessel cannot contain more than its due measure of sorrow. When it is filled to the brim no additional grief can find lodgment. Misfortune carried to excess has made cowards brave and given fools wisdom, and Derry Power was neither coward nor fool.
Mrs. Moore was naturally surprised when the visitor was introduced; but she hailed his presence with obvious relief. MacGonigal and Jake were invited to join the tea-party—and, at any other time, the cowboy’s struggles with a tiny cup and saucer of delicate china, a microscopic teaspoon, and a roll of thin bread and butter would have caused a good deal of merriment. Mac, thanks to his training in the store, juggled easily with these implements, and there was an air almost of light-heartedness about the company before it broke up at Power’s suggestion that he and Dacre might smoke while surveying some part of the ranch.
Dacre showed his knowledge of human nature by leading his friend on to talk of his mother. That way, he was sure, lay the waters of healing. While deploring the unhappy circumstances which attended Mrs. Power’s death, which Dr. Stearn put down to failure of the heart’s action, he swept aside her son’s bitter self-condemnation.
“Death,” he said, “is the one element in human affairs which may not be estimated in that general way. If your mother’s heart was affected, she was far more likely to die of some sudden excitement than because of a not very poignant anxiety as to your prolonged absence from home. I suppose, in a sense, she knew where you were?”
“Yes. I—I deceived her with sufficient skill,” came the morbid retort.
“Then you must school yourself to dwell on those long years of pleasant companionship in the past rather than this final parting, which you attribute to a cause that exists only in your imagination. I think Tennyson’s philosophy is at fault in the line:
‘Sorrow’s crown of sorrow is remembering happier things.’
I hold that Cowper peered more closely into the fiber and essence of humanity when he wrote:
‘The path of sorrow, and that path alone,Leads to the land where sorrow is unknown;No traveler ever reached that blest abodeWho found not thorns and briars in his road.’
You were utterly unnerved and wretched when the news of your mother’s illness reached you. You magnified your personal responsibility out of all reasonable proportion. I can see no proof of other influence than the fixed course and final outcome of a disease difficult to detect and incapable of cure.”
They were nearing the Gulch, Power having chosen that direction because of the uninterrupted view of the surrounding country they would secure from the top of the rising ground.
“I wish I might accept your comforting theory,” he said, more composedly. “Somehow, I feel that I am to blame, or, if that is a crude expression, that I was made the instrument of some devilish act of retribution. However, I do not profess myself able to regard such a problem in a critical light today. You won’t think me heartless if I inquire into the conditions which led up to the telegram you sent me in New York? I was too dazed that morning to understand clearly what had happened. Did you actually speak to Nancy herself over the telephone?”
“Yes.”
“Well?”
“Are you really feeling up to the strain of hearing what took place?”
Power stopped suddenly, caught his friend’s arm, and pointed to a small wooden structure erected in a singular position on the western side of the canyon.
“You have not forgotten the story I told you that last night in Newport?” he cried.
“No. I remember every word of it.”
“Well, that little shack up there stands on the ledge where I rediscovered the lode after being nearly crushed to death. I crawled to within a few yards of this very spot; so resolved was I that no one should rob me of the price I was paid for Nancy. I am the same man now that I was then, Dacre—and in a very similar mood. Strain! I have been strained to the limit. I have thought of taking my own life; not from lack of capacity to endure further ills, but from sheer disgust at the crassness of things. At least, then, let me inquire into their meaning. What did she say to you?”
Despite his unwillingness to add to the heavy load Power had to bear, Dacre was not altogether sorry to get an unpleasing task over and done with. But he felt his way carefully; since he, too, was groping in the dark to a certain extent.
“Your telegram did not take me wholly by surprise,” he said. “I knew that Nancy—you don’t mind if I use her name in that way, do you? Well, then, I had heard of her return. Mrs. Van Ralten rang me up to say that Mr. Willard and his daughter had arrived by the steamer in the early morning. I think I took such astounding news calmly enough; but I have a suspicion that the good lady herself was a trifle worried, and was only too glad to have the chance ofannouncing the fact of her friend’s reappearance. She added that Nancy was ill, having been overcome by the terrific heat in New York, and I chimed in with the proper sentiments; though I have seldom been more bewildered than at that moment. Soon afterward your message came, and I began dimly to grasp the position. I seized the pretext of Mrs. Van Ralten’s statement to call up Nancy’s residence, and, by some sort of fortune, whether good or bad I can’t determine, she herself answered. I concocted a suitable excuse; but she solved the difficulty at once by saying that, as your friend, I ought to know the facts. She had resolved to leave you, ‘to put an end to a mad dream’ was a phrase she used, and asked me to tell you that she adhered resolutely to the decision she had announced in a letter the previous day. She added that she was sailing in a steamer from Boston with her father that night, and hoped I would spread the impression that she had been ill, and needed a sea voyage. I can assure you, old chap, I was completely flabbergasted. Admiring her as I do, I would never have believed that she would act in that extraordinary manner had I not received the story from her own lips, if one may so describe a conversation by telephone. I was so horribly afraid lest some outsider in the hotel might overhear me that I dared not question her. The talk was studiously formal on her part, and I was so thoroughly cut up that I could not attempt to convey my impressions in your telegram. Moreover, as a diligent student of Shakespeare, was I not warned that
‘Though it be honest, it is never goodTo bring bad news.’
Certainly, I was not quite in the position of Cleopatra’s messenger, since I could only confirm a disaster already known to you; but I literally shrank from the obvious inferences. Then came MacGonigal’s revelation of events here. I simply couldn’t rest. After a miserable twenty-four hours of vacillation, I started for New York, calling at your hotel to make sure you had gone west. One thing more. A Chicago newspaper gave a list of passengers sailing from Boston in a Red Star liner. In it were the names of Nancy and her father.”
For an appreciable time after Dacre had concluded neither man spoke. Then Power said quietly:
“Thus endeth the second lesson.”
His companion was not one who indulged in platitudes. Some men, kind-hearted and pitying, would have reminded him that he was still young, that life was rich in promise, that time would heal, or, at any rate, sear, the ugliest wounds. But Dacre said none of these things. He merely asked if Power meant to tell him what really happened in the Adirondacks. A good talker, he was also a good listener. Power would recover, he was convinced. He was not the first man, nor would he be the last, to clasp a phantom and find it air. Meanwhile, outspoken confidence should provide an efficient safety-valve for emotions contained at too high a pressure.
Power yielded to this friendly urging, but not instantly. Indeed, he astonished the Englishman by his next utterance.
“Nearly four years ago,” he said, looking back at the ranch “in that room where you found me today,I was reading ‘The Autocrat’ to Nancy one night, and a certain passage caught our attention. It ran somewhat like this: ‘I would have a woman as true as death. At the first lie which works from the heart outward, she should be tenderly chloroformed into a better world.’ Both of us laughed then, and now I know why we laughed. We were ignorant. Holmes, genial cynic that he was, understood women; he wrote a vital thing when he described the sort of lie that comes from the heart. I put trust in two women, and one of them has betrayed it. If I live another fifty years, I shall never understand why Nancy left me—never, never! I would as soon have thought of suspecting an angel from heaven of disloyalty as Nancy.”
“Has she proved disloyal?”
“What else? I tried to find comfort in the belief that her father compelled her to accompany him by threatening to kill her if she refused. But, in these days, that sort of melodrama does not endure beyond its hour. She could have escaped him fifty times during the last six days. She could have appealed to you for help. Mary Van Ralten would at least have shielded her from murder. Yet, what are the facts? In a letter to me she pleaded duty as an excuse. She must have had some similar plea in her mind when she spoke to you. And she has gone to Europe—to rejoin Marten!”
He broke off with a gesture of disdain. He was in revolt. The statue which had glowed into life under the breath of his love was hardening into polished ivory again.
“May I see that letter?” said Dacre.
“Yes. Here it is.”
The older man read and reread Nancy’s sorrow-laden words.
“She tells you her poor heart is breaking—I believe her—in every syllable,” he said.
“Believe her—when she prates of duty—to Marten?”
“I don’t profess to understand, yet I believe. I do, on my soul!”
Power’s face grew dark with a grim humor that was more tragic than misery. “Am I to follow—by the next steamer?” he demanded.
“No. She will come back—send for you. The present deadlock cannot last.”
Again Power showed his disbelief by a scornful grimace. “I am so deeply beholden to your friendship that I claim the privilege of saying that you are talking nonsense,” he said. “She vowed the fidelity to me which I gave unreservedly to her; but what sort of inconstant ideal inspired her faith, that it should be shattered to atoms by the first real test? Could I ever trust her again? If it were possible, which it is not, that some new whim drove her back to America, am I a toy dog to be whistled to heel as soon as her woman’s caprice dictates? To please her father, she married Marten; to placate her father, she has gone back to Marten; to gratify some feminine impulse, she flung herself in my arms; when impulse, or duty as she calls it, again overcomes reason, she may summon her obedient slave once more. Would I run to her call? I don’t know. My God! I don’t know.”
“I’m sure you don’t,” was the quiet response; “nor do you know how unjust you are being to her, leaving me out of the question altogether. You are like a dismasted ship in a storm, driven this way and that by every cross sea, yet drifting hopelessly nearer a rock-bound coast. Yet men have saved their lives even in such desperate conditions. At the worst, short of death, they have scrambled ashore, bruised and maimed, but living. Now, I ask you to suspend judgment for a few days, or weeks. Enlightenment may come—itmustcome—perhaps from a source you little dream of now. Suppose I practise what I preach, and talk of something else. I think I have whipped you out of a lethargy that was harmful, and, in so far, have done you good. But I’m not here to discuss problems of psychology which are insoluble—for the present, at any rate. Tell me something of your property, of the mine, of Bison. What delightful character-types you picked up in MacGonigal and that picturesque-looking cowboy. And how did the latter gentleman lose the thumb off his left hand? Was it a mere accident? I hope not. I rather expect to hear a page out of the real history of the wild and woolly West.”
Power was slightly ashamed of his outburst already. “You make me feel myself a blatant misanthropist,” he said contritely. “I had no right to blaze out at you in that way. But, now you are here, you shall not escape so easily. Again, and most heartily, I thank you for coming. I realize now that what I wanted more than anything else in the world was some sympathetic ear into which to pour my griefs. Ordinarily,I am not that sort of man. I prefer to endure the minor ills of life in silence. But I have been slammed so hard this time that self-control became a torture. I think I reached the full extent of my resources when I stood by my mother’s open grave today, and saw her name on the coffin. I wanted to tear my heart out with my own hands. For a few seconds I was actually insane.”
“MacGonigal told me how terribly shaken you were. He said you would have fallen if he had not held you up.”
“Ah, was that it? I suppose I nearly fainted. Some nerve in my brain seemed to snap. Perhaps that is why I am talking at random now.”
Not all Dacre’s tact could stop the imminent recital of events since their last meeting. Yet, curiously enough, Power seemed to grow calmer, more even-minded, as he told of his idyl and its dramatic close. By the time they had reached the house again he had recast his views as to Nancy’s desertion of him. During some few days thereafter Fate ceased her outrageous attacks, and he was vouchsafed a measure of peace.
The next blow came from an unexpected hand. Mrs. Moore and her daughters were about to leave Bison for their home in San Francisco. All preparations were made, and their baggage was piled on the veranda ready for transport to the station, when the good lady who had proved such a stanch friend in an emergency called Power into the library. He noticed that she was carrying a small package, wrapped in a piece of linen, and tied with white ribbon.
“Derry,” she said, “I have one sad duty to perform before I go.”
He winced slightly. He was beginning to hate that word “duty.” The very sound of it was ominous, full of foreboding.
“It is nothing to cause you any real sorrow,” she went on, thinking he had misinterpreted her words. “Just before your dear mother’s death she gave me to understand that I was to take charge of a bundle of letters which she kept under her pillow. They were meant for you, I suppose; but unfortunately I could not make out her wishes. Anyhow, here they are. You are the one person in the world who can decide whether or not they should be destroyed. I put them in a locked box, and would have given them to you sooner, but——” She hesitated, seemingly at a loss for a word.
“But I was acting like a lunatic, and you were afraid of the consequences,” he said, with a pleasant smile.
“Well, I have never seen any man so hard hit,” she admitted. “Mr. Dacre’s arrival was a perfect Godsend, for you and all of us; so I thought it best to keep these letters longer than I had planned at first, though I am sure there is nothing in them to cause you any distress. Indeed, I have an idea that they are mostly your own correspondence, sent from New York and elsewhere, because I saw your handwriting on an envelop, and a postmark. You are not vexed with me for retaining them until today?”
Power reassured her on that point. He placed the packet, just as it was, in a drawer of a writing-desk,and did not open it until he had returned from the station after escorting the women to their train.
Dacre had strolled to the outbuildings to inspect a reaping-machine of new design which had been procured for harvesting work; so the room was otherwise untenanted when the son began to examine his mother’s last bequest. At first it seemed as if Mrs. Moore’s surmise was correct. The first few letters he glanced at were those he had despatched from New York and Newport. Then he came upon others posted at Racket, and a twinge of remorse shook him when he recalled the subterfuges and evasions they contained. Still it had been impossible to set forth the truth, and there was a crumb of comfort in the fact that he had written nothing untrue.
He was so disturbed by the painful memories evoked by each date that he was on the verge of tying the bundle together again when his eye was caught by one letter in a strange handwriting. The postmark showed that it hailed from New York, and the date was a curious one, being exactly six days after he and Nancy went from Newport.
Instantly he was aware of a strong impulse to burn that particular letter forthwith. Perhaps some psychic influence made itself felt in that instant. Perhaps a gentle and loving spirit reached from beyond the veil, and made one last effort to secure the fulfilment of a desire balked by the cruel urgency of death. But the forces of evil prevailed, and Power withdrew the written sheet from its covering.
And this is what he read: