“My dear Meg.—This is my first and last letter to you; so I pray you read it with sympathy. Today I bought a ring at a jeweler’s intending it to be a token of our promised marriage. I am sending the ring, and I ask you to wear it in remembrance of one who must remain forever dead to you. The life of happiness we planned has turned to Dead Sea fruit; for I have been struck by a bolt from Heaven, and marriage becomes an impossibility. I would explain myself more clearly if explanation were not an insult. But Imustsay this—no man could have foreseen the calamity which has befallen me, which has laid in waitthroughout the long years to overwhelm me at last. That is all I dare tell you. Forgive me, dear one. I would not willingly cause you a pang; but Fate is stronger than I, and I am vanquished. Do you know me well enough to accept this statement in its crude truth? It cannot be gainsaid, it cannot be altered, time itself cannot assuage its rigors. Do not write to me. I have no fear of reproach, which would never come from your dear lips, but your strong, brave words would wring my very heartstrings. And yet, I love you, and will grieve till the end that you should have been reft from me. Farewell, then, my dear one.
“My dear Meg.—This is my first and last letter to you; so I pray you read it with sympathy. Today I bought a ring at a jeweler’s intending it to be a token of our promised marriage. I am sending the ring, and I ask you to wear it in remembrance of one who must remain forever dead to you. The life of happiness we planned has turned to Dead Sea fruit; for I have been struck by a bolt from Heaven, and marriage becomes an impossibility. I would explain myself more clearly if explanation were not an insult. But Imustsay this—no man could have foreseen the calamity which has befallen me, which has laid in waitthroughout the long years to overwhelm me at last. That is all I dare tell you. Forgive me, dear one. I would not willingly cause you a pang; but Fate is stronger than I, and I am vanquished. Do you know me well enough to accept this statement in its crude truth? It cannot be gainsaid, it cannot be altered, time itself cannot assuage its rigors. Do not write to me. I have no fear of reproach, which would never come from your dear lips, but your strong, brave words would wring my very heartstrings. And yet, I love you, and will grieve till the end that you should have been reft from me. Farewell, then, my dear one.
Next morning he paid a visit to the clergy-house connected with the cathedral on Fifth Avenue. He asked a priest who received him if anything was known of an old man named Rafferty, who lived on West 27th Street, and had a grandson named Maguire.
“Yes,” said the ecclesiastic. “I know Rafferty well, and esteem him most highly. In all New York there is no more God-fearing man.”
Power smiled. “Fearing?” he questioned.
“Well, I accept the correction. ‘Serving,’ I should have said.”
“And he really exists?”
“Undoubtedly. Why do you ask?”
“I fancied that, perhaps, the age of miracles had not passed.”
“Who says it has?”
“Not I. But I come here for a specific purpose. I mean to provide Rafferty with the sum of fifteen dollars weekly while he lives, and, if his grandson recovers from an accident he sustained yesterday, afurther sum sufficient to maintain, clothe, and educate the boy until he is taught a trade. My banker will co-operate in a trust for this purpose. Will you, or one of your brotherhood, act with him?”
Thus it came to pass that Rafferty, like Job, was more prosperous in the end than in the beginning, and died when he was “old and full of days”; but he had lived five long years to bless the name of his benefactor.
That evening Power took train to the West. He prepared MacGonigal for his coming by a telegram, never thinking that an event which lay in the category of common things for him meant something akin to an earthquake at Bison. He was enlightened when a brass band, “headed by the mayor and a deputation of influential citizens” (seeRocky Mountain Newsof current date) met him at Bison station, where an address of welcome was read, the while MacGonigal and Jake beamed on a cheering multitude. At first Power was astonished and secretly annoyed; then he could not help but yield to the genuine heartiness of this civic welcome, which contrasted so markedly with his last dismal home-coming. He made a modest speech, expressing his real surprise at the community’s progress, and promising not to absent himself again for so long a period.
Then he was escorted in a triumphal procession to the ranch. It was the organizers’ intent that he should sit in an open carriage in solitary state, in order that thousands of people who had never seen him should feast their eyes on “the man who made Bison,” while it was felt that, if he were not distracted by conversation, he would give more heed to local marvels in theshape of trolley-cars, a town hall, a public library, a “Mary Power” institute, and a whole township of new avenues and streets.
But he declined emphatically to fall in with this arrangement, and, if his subconscious mind were not dwelling on less transient matters, might have been much amused by noting how MacGonigal, Jake, and the mayor (a man previously unknown to him) shared the honors of the hour. Nothing could have proved more distasteful personally than this joyous home-coming; yet he went through the ordeal with a quiet dignity that added to his popularity. For, singularly enough, he had not been forgotten or ignored in Bison. MacGonigal, the leader of every phase of local activity, never spoke in public that he did not refer to “our chief citizen, John Darien Power,” and his name and personality figured in all matters effecting the town’s rapid development.
He was deeply touched when he found the ranch exactly as he had left it. He imagined that Jake and his family were living there; but the overseer had built himself a fine house close at hand, and the Dolores homestead was altered in no respect, save that it seemed to have shrunk somewhat, owing to the growth of the surrounding trees and shrubberies.
When, at last, he and MacGonigal were left together in the room which was so intimately associated with vital happenings in his career, his stout partner brought off a remark which the ordered ceremony of the railroad depot had not permitted.
“Wall, ef I ain’t dog-goned glad ter see ye ag’in, Derry!” he said, holding forth a fat fist for anotherhandshake. “But whar on airth did ye bury yerself? Between yer friend Mr. Dacre an’ meself, the hull blame world was s’arched fer news of you; but you couldn’t hev vanished more completely ef Jonah’s whale had swallered you, or you’d been carried up to Heaven in a fiery chariot like Elijah.”
“Hello, Mac!” cried Power, eying his elderly companion with renewed interest. “Whence this Biblical flavor in your speech? Have you taken a much-needed religious turn?”
“It’s fer example, an’ that’s a fac’, Derry. Sence you boosted me inter bein’ a notorious char-ac-ter, I’ve kind o’ lived up ter specification. Thar’s no gettin’ away from it. Ye can’t deal out prizes to a row o’ shiny-faced kids in a Sunday-school without larnin’ some of the stock lingo, an’ bits of it stick. But don’t let’s talk about me. I want ter hear about you. Whar hev you been?”
“It’s a long story, Mac, and will take some telling. Just now, looking around at this room and its familiar objects, my mind goes back through the years. What did you say to Nancy when she wrote and asked what had become of me?”
MacGonigal, who had made quite a speech at the reception, and had been unusually long-winded during the drive, reverted suddenly to earlier habit.
“Who’s been openin’ old sores?” he inquired.
“No one. Nancy wrote to me before she died. That is all.”
“Look-a here, Derry, why not leave it at that?”
“Unhappily, I cannot do otherwise. But I have a right to know exactly what happened.”
“It wasn’t such a heap. She cabled an’ wrote, an’ I had to tell her you was plumb crazy about—about yer mother’s death. That was the on’y reason I could hand out fer your disappearin’ act. Pore thing! Soon after she got my letter she gev in her own checks.”
“Have you met Marten recently?”
“He was in Denver last fall.”
“And the child—the little girl—did you see her?”
“Yep. Gosh, Derry, she’s as like her mother as two peas in a pod.”
“Is Marten fond of her?”
“Derry, that kid kin twist him round her little finger; but he’s a hard man ter move any other way.”
“Where does he live?”
“In Europe, fer the most part. He’s out of mines an’ rails—in the West, anyhow. Last I heerd, he was puttin’ through a state loan fer the I-talians.”
“Quite an international financier, eh?”
“That’s what the papers call him. Guess it’s Shakespeare’s English fer a dog-goned shark.”
“You know Willard is dead?”
“Know! Didn’t I celebrate with a school-treat fer two thousand kids?”
“Mac! Haven’t they taught you better than that at your Sunday-schools?”
“Thar’s a proverb about skinnin’ a Rooshan an’ findin’ a Tartar. That’s me, all the time, when any of that bunch shows up on the screen. What d’ye think Marten kem to Denver for?”
“I can’t imagine.”
“He wanted ter buy the ranch. No, not the mine,” for MacGonigal misread the amazement in Power’s face, “just the ranch. Said he was anxious for little Nancy to own the property whar her mother lived as a gal.”
“And what did you say—or do?”
“Handed him a joint straight outer the refrigerator, all fixed with mustard. ‘Marten,’ says I, just like that, ‘Marten, ef you want yer little gal ter grow up good an’ happy, don’t let her suspicion thar’s such a place as Dolores on the map.’ ‘Why?’ says he, lookin’ black as thunder. ‘Because,’ says I, ‘it’s well named when thar’s one of the Willard family on the location. Ef any children kin play around here an’ be happy, they’ll be Derry Power’s, not yours.’ Sorry, Derry, ef ye didn’t wish me ter rile him; but, till you was given up fer good, the one spot in Colorado his money couldn’t buy was this yer house an’ land.”
And again did MacGonigal fail to interpret his hearer’s expression, nor did he ever understand the tragic import of his words. The story of Nancy’s transgression was buried with her, and the grave seldom gives up its secrets. Moreover, was she not nearly seven years dead? And seven years of death count in the scale of forgetfulness as against seventy and seven of life.
Marguerite Sinclair did not write. Perhaps, tucked away in a corner of Power’s heart, a tender little shoot of hope that she might be moved to disobedience and revolt blossomed for awhile. But it soon withered. She did not break the silence he had imposed on her. The quiet weeks passed. The vessel in which the girl and her father had traveled to London had already returned to South America; but never a word came from Marguerite. So far as externals went, Power seemed to have settled down again to the life of the student and the recluse from which he had been so rudely withdrawn. Beyond a rearrangement with Jake, whereby that pillar of the community was given the stock-raising business, while Power retained only the ranch, together with the paddocks and orchards in its immediate vicinity, there was no change in affairs at Bison. MacGonigal was offered a controlling interest in the mine; but he scoffed at the proposal. The proceeds of his third share would amount to nearly quarter of a million dollars for the current year, and his personal expenditure did not exceed a fifth of that sum.
“It’s the Scot blood in me,” he explained, when people rallied him as to his saving habits. “My great-grandfather lost a sixpence one day in Belfast, an’ thefamily has been makin’ good ever sence. Thar ain’t no sixpences here; so I run a dime bank. Another thing,” and his bulging eyes challenged dispute, “it’s a bully fine notion ter let well enough alone. This yer proposition is goin’ along O. K. Let her rip!”
Power, of course, was accumulating wealth with every turn of the rolls in the reduction mills. The name of the mine became a standing joke in Colorado. “What price the El Preço outfit?” men would say, and spoke with bated breath of the millions it would bring in the open market. Not only were there almost unlimited supplies of rich ore in sight, but the very granite containing the main vein itself yielded handsomely under low-grade treatment. It seemed impossible that the undertaking should go wrong at any stage. If water was tapped, it went to irrigate new lands which MacGonigal had added to the ranch. If a new shaft was sunk, sufficient pay-ore was taken out of the excavation to meet the cost; whereas, in ninety-nine mines among a hundred, the charge would have fallen on capital.
For three months Power lay fallow at Dolores. His bodily vigor was unimpaired; but his mind demanded the restorative tonic of peace. A Chicago bookstore sent him the hundred most important books which had been published during his absence from civilization, and, with their aid, he supplemented Marguerite’s lessons, and soon brought himself abreast of contemporary thought. Beyond establishing a maternity hospital in Bison, and renewing the grant to Dr. Stearn’s poor, he did not embark in philanthropic schemes to any great extent. Still, he found pressing need ofa secretary, and secured an excellent assistant in a Harvard undergraduate, a young man whose brilliant career in the university was brought to a dramatic close by an automobile accident which crippled him for life. He was one of the first victims of the new force. Power had never seen a motor-car until he reached New York. The industry had sprung into being when he was immured in the Andes. Even yet it was in the experimental stage, and his secretary, Wilmot Richard Howard, was testing an improved steering-gear when he was smashed up by a hostile lumber wagon.
The post Power offered him was a veritable godsend, and he, in his way, became infinitely useful to his employer. A curious sympathy soon existed between them. The limitations of Howard’s maimed body caused him to understand something of the cramped outlook before Power’s maimed soul. Moreover, within a month, his wide reading and thorough acquaintance with the world’s current topics filled gaps in Power’s knowledge which books alone could not repair. When Power quitted Bison in the spring of the year none who did not know his history would ever have suspected that he had dwelt so long apart from his fellow-men.
The two traveled together. Halting in New York for a few hours only, they crossed the Atlantic in theLucania. They remained in London a week, living in one of those small and most exclusive West End hotels whose patrons come and go without the blare of trumpets in the press which is the penalty, or reward, of residence in the more noteworthy caravansaries. London, it is true, is the one city in the world where a millionaire can mingle unnoticed with the crowd; but Power took no risk of undue publicity. Once, in later years, a newspaper discovered him, and blazoned forth to all and sundry the status he occupied in Colorado; thenceforth, Howard arranged matters in his own name, and hotel managers and hall-porters bowed to him as the holder of the purse.
From London, reinforced by a first-rate valet, the pair went to Devon. There, in a wooded comb looking out over the Atlantic, they found Dacre, the one man living in whose ears Power could to some extent unburden his heart. From him were forthcoming certain details as to Nancy’s end; for he had happened to dine one evening with the physician who attended her constantly after her arrival in England, and the doctor, little guessing how well informed his neighbor was as to Mrs. Marten’s antecedents, had entered into particulars of what he described as “a case that presented unusual and baffling features.”
“From what he told me, I gathered that she must have pined away from the moment she left you in the Adirondacks,” said Dacre. “I realize now that she not only fretted herself into a low state of health, but practically gave her life to her child. No wonder the doctor was puzzled! He could not diagnose her ailment; for who would have suspected that a young, beautiful, and rich woman was resolved to die? Now, knowing what we do know, we can see that it was better so. She would never again have lived with Marten as his wife, and there was bound to be trouble sooner or later. Dear lady! I have often thoughtof her, and of you. Sometimes, when that most misleading faculty called common sense urged that you, too, must be dead, I have pictured your meeting in the great beyond. Indeed, it is the hope of such reunions that accounts for mortal belief in immortality. Remember, I also have paced the Via Dolorosa, and I prize those hours, above all others, in which I dream of a kingdom where wrongs are adjusted by an all-wise Intelligence, and the wretched failures of earthly life are dislodged from memory by some divine anodyne.”
There was silence for awhile. The two men were talking in a restful, old-fashioned room which commanded a far-flung view of the Atlantic. Howard, whose acute sensibility might always be trusted in such moments, had betaken himself to the garden with an amiable collie, and the friends were free to talk without restraint.
Then Dacre essayed a cheerier note. “We can’t help dwelling on these things,” he said; “but I would remind you that you are still a young man, and it is a nice question, whether, when all is said and done, you are justified in binding yourself forever to a pale ghost. It is a poetic conceit; but the eugenist would tell you that you ought to marry.”
“I shall never marry,” said Power.
Nancy’s secret would be buried with him, and that fact alone burked any reference to Marguerite Sinclair. Dacre was exceedingly shrewd, and could hardly fail to reach the correct conclusion if he heard that “the other woman” did actually exist, and that circumstances of recent discovery alone prevented the contemplated marriage.
“Ah, well!” sighed the older man, relapsing into Power’s mood. “This is a genuine instance of the pot advising the kettle not to be black. How do you purpose spending your time?”
“I’ll tell you. I mean to do some good in the world. But I have not come here to bore you with humane projects. I’ve not forgotten that you are a yachtsman. Say you agree, and I’ll hire a yacht to take us up the west coast of Scotland and across the North Sea to the fiords.”
“Spoken like a prince! It is the very thing I’m longing for; but my purse won’t run to it, and I’m rather too old to fraternize with Cockney excursionists on David MacBrayne’s steamers or Cook’s tourists in Norway.”
So the friends passed an enjoyable summer, and liked the yacht so well that they cruised south by way of Holland, Belgium, and France, and wintered in the Mediterranean. Then Power and his secretary hied them to Bison again; whence their next journey headed east. They visited flower-laden Honolulu, panting Japan, gray China, and golden India. Pitching his tent where he listed, Power saw mankind in the mass. Everywhere, even in climes where Nature is prodigal of her gifts, there was misery to be softened, suffering to be alleviated, men and women in want and worthy of help. His methods were simple in the extreme. Attracting little or no attention by display of wealth, he and Howard studied every problem that seemed to call for solution by money wisely applied. At the last moment—often when he had departed to some far distant place—Power would sendthe needed sum to the right quarter. Thus, remaining almost unknown, he left a trail of well-doing behind him in the four corners of the globe. Sometimes, when the written or printed word insisted on making him famous, if Bison was too remote a sanctuary, he would disappear for many months on end, either hobnobbing with Dacre in Devonshire or elsewhere, or taking protracted tours in out-of-the-way countries like East Africa, Siberia, or the Balkans.
Naturally, he had adventures and misadventures. No man can scour the earth, year in and year out—be he rich as Crœsus or kindly as Francis d’Assisi—without enduring vicissitudes, whether they arise from the haphazard casualties of travel or are the outcome of sheer human perversity.
In Nairobi, he had the narrowest escape from being mauled by a lion; his boat was wrecked in a rapid of the Yang-tse-Kiang, and a Chinese coolie saved him from death by diving after him when he sank, stunned by collision with a rock; in the town of Omsk, in Eastern Siberia, he was lodged in a fever-stricken prison for interfering between a brutal Cossack officer and a female political prisoner whom the man was flogging mercilessly with a knout. On this occasion Howard rescued him by bribing every official in sight. His worst experience came in a Rumelian Christian village. Howard found that certain saline mud baths on the coast of the Adriatic exercised a highly beneficial effect on his injured spine; so Power left him there, to undergo a complete course of treatment, and traveled alone in the interior. By ill luck, he was benighted in a miserable hamlet near Adrianople. During the night the Turkish authorities learned that smallpox was rife among the inhabitants. They established a cordon, and drove back at the point of the bayonet all who attempted to leave the place. For six weeks Power lived in a pesthouse; but the Andean sap rose again in his bones, and he reorganized the habits of the community so thoroughly that its survivors regarded him as a man sent by God for their deliverance.
Thus, doing good by stealth, and ever widening his knowledge of mankind, he passed thirteen busy years. It would serve no useful purpose to go more fully into the records of that long and fruitful period of his life. Though crammed with incident and rich in the vivid tints of travel in many lands, it calls for none other than the briefest summary in a narrative which, at the best, can deal only with the chief phases of a remarkable career.
He was in his forty-eighth year, and was paying a deferred visit to Dacre, when he entered upon the last, and in some respects the greatest, of his trials. Howard was in London, showing the sights to some relations, and Power had elected to motor to Devonshire. His chauffeur, a tall, well-built youngster who answered to the name of Maguire—being, in fact, Rafferty’s grandson—was eager to test a car which was supposed to possess every mechanical virtue, and Power was not disinclined for the run through a June England. Nothing daunted by the prospect of twelve hours’ continuous excess of the speed limit, master and man determined to reach Devonshire in the day. But the machine decided differently. Two burst tirescost them a couple of hours on the road, and a speck of grit in a valve caused such trouble that it became necessary to stop for the night in a town where careful overhauling of the engine was practicable; so they ran slowly into Bournemouth, and there, in one of the big hotels on the cliff, Power met his own daughter.
He thought, and not without reason, that he was the victim of hallucination. He had halted for a moment in a soft-carpeted corridor to look at a spirited painting of wild ponies in the New Forest, when a door opened close at hand. He heard no footstep; but the rustle of a dress caught his ear, and he moved aside to permit the passing of some lady of whose presence he was only half conscious. But a sudden impulse—perhaps due to the action of the magnetic waves which link certain kindred individualities without their personal cognizance—caused him to turn and look at the stranger, and he saw—Nancy!
The light in the corridor was dim—for instance, he had been obliged to peer closely at the picture before he could decipher the artist’s signature—but there was no mistaking the extraordinary resemblance which this girl bore to the Nancy Willard of the Dolores Ranch days, the Nancy with whom he used to gallop along prairie tracks where now ran the steel ribbons of electrically propelled street-cars, Nancy as he knew her before he had won and lost her twice.
The shock of recognition was so unexpected that he reeled under it. Then, seeing that the girl was evidently wondering why he was looking at her so strangely, he forced himself to walk on toward his own apartment.
There, when calmer thought became possible, he realized that he had seen Nancy’s child, a girl now in her twentieth year. She was so like her mother at the same age that there was no possibility of error on his part. The same glory of golden-brown hair, the same changeful eyes of blende Kagoul blue, the same winsome features, the same graceful carriage—he could not be mistaken. And, to make more fierce the fire that was consuming him, he had again found a subtle hint of Marguerite Sinclair in the sprightly maid who had passed him so silently and swiftly. He smiled with a sort of bitter weariness when it dawned on him that this vision would probably control the future course of his life. He was face to face with Destiny again. There was less chance of escape for him now than for the sailor swept from the gale-submerged deck of a tramp steamer in mid-Atlantic, because miracles did sometimes happen at sea; but, where he was concerned, Fate planted her snares so cunningly that he was always fast pinioned before he even suspected their existence.
“I am fey today. I peer into a dim future. Some day, somehow, you will understand that which is hidden from my ken.”
He could not comprehend the full meaning of those words yet; but the day of reckoning was at hand. Well, it was better so. Surely the settlement would be final this time!
He was minded to dine in privacy; but he was no coward, and the inclination was dismissed as unworthy. So he dressed with care, reached the crowded dining-room rather late, and was allotted to a small tablenear a window. In that particular window was a party of six, and among them were Marten and the girl. She raised her eyes when Power entered, and a look of recognition came into them. On her right sat a small, polished, olive-skinned man, who seemed to be more engrossed in her company than she in his. The faces of these three were clearly visible from Power’s place; the others, two women and a man, were not so much in evidence.
He strove to catch some of the girl’s accents; but she spoke but little, and that in a low tone. She gave him the impression of being among people whom she disliked, but whose presence had to be endured. Once or twice she addressed Marten, and then her manner reminded him more than ever of her mother. To all appearance, father and daughter were wrapped up in each other, and Power knew not whether to rejoice or be sad because of it. Martin looked old and worn. He showed every one of his sixty years. The burden of finance may be even weightier than that of empire.
Power’s mind ran back to the night, just twenty years before, when he sat at a table in another hotel and found Nancy Marten gazing at him. Skies and times may change, but not manners. He had met mother and daughter under precisely similar conditions, save that he was alone now, and a complete stranger to the girl. Marten was so taken up with his friends that he gave no attention to others in the room. Perhaps he had trained himself to that useful habit. At any rate, he glanced Power’s way only once, and obviously regarded him as one among the well-dressed throng.
Later, in a lounge where people smoked, chatted,drank coffee, or played bridge to the accompaniment of an excellent band, Power contrived to pass close behind the girl’s chair. She was with one of the women now, and talking animatedly. Yes, she had her mother’s voice! What long dormant chords of memory it touched! How it vibrated through heart and brain! Nancy—dead and yet speaking!
Next morning the car, in chastened mood, bore him smoothly and quickly away through the Hampshire pines and the blossom-laden hedges of Somerset. He reached Dacre’s house early in the afternoon, and was somewhat surprised when his friend suggested that they should start forthwith on a rambling tour up the Wye Valley and thus to the lakes by way of North Wales.
This spirit of unrest was so unlike Dacre’s wonted air of repose that it evoked a question.
“I have just come here to escape from the ceaseless rush of things,” said Power. “Why do you want to bustle me off so promptly?”
“I thought a change of scene might be good for both of us,” was the offhand answer.
“Yet it is only a week since you wrote and reproached me for neglecting the Devon moors. I can slay you with your own quotation. You bade me join you in—
‘This other Eden, demi-paradise,This fortress built by Nature for herself’—
and now you would have us cavort along dusty highways to other joys. Why is it?”
“My quotation applied to the whole of this sceptered isle.”
“You are quibbling, Dacre, and I think I guess the reason. Have you heard anything of Marten recently?”
His companion did not try to conceal the surprise that leaped to his eyes.
“Your Indians made you a bit of wizard,” he said. “I’ll tell you now what I meant to hide from you. Marten has rented Lord Valescure’s place on the hill yonder, and is due here tomorrow or next day. I heard the name of the new tenant only this morning, and decided that we ought to quit if we want to be happy.”
“No. If you’ll let me, I’ll remain.”
“Is it wise?”
“I endured the major wrench last night. Marten and—and his daughter were staying in the same hotel as myself.”
“So you have seen her—at last?”
“Yes, and I’ll confess my weakness. Having seen her, I wish to speak to her. I admit my folly; but I cannot help it. Somehow—I think—that her mother—would wish it. I’ll placate Marten, grovel to him, if I may be allowed to meet her.”
“My dear Derry, I’ve said my say. You ought to have lived two thousand years ago, and Euripides would have immortalized you in a tragedy.”
The eyes of the two men clashed; but Power repressed the imminent request for an explanation of that cryptic remark. He dared not ask what Dacre had in mind. His comment might have been a chance shaft; but it fell dangerously near the forbidden territory of Nancy’s close-veiled secret. When next hespoke, it was to give a motorist’s account of the mishaps of the road.
A week passed. Dacre’s house lay halfway up a wooded comb, or valley, and the Valescure castle stood on a bold tor that thrust itself bluntly into the sea. Unless the occupants of each place were on friendly terms, they might dwell in the same district and not meet once in a year. By taking a rough path they were barely three-quarters of a mile apart; but the only practicable carriage-road covered three miles or more. Dacre’s interests lay with the fisher-folk at the foot of the comb or among the woods and heather of Dartmoor Forest, rolling up into the clouds behind his abode, while the great folk of the castle seldom came his way, unless Lord Valescure happened to be in residence, when the two forgathered often.
But Dacre was right when he hinted at the tragic inevitableness of his friend’s life. They had strolled into the rectory for tea, and were chatting with their hostess about a forthcoming charity fête, when a motor rumbled to the door, and Nancy Marten appeared, a radiant vision in the muslin and flower-decked hat of summer.
“How kind of you to come!” said the rector’s wife, rising to greet the girl. “Lady Valescure said she was sure I might write and seek your help for our village revel. She said all sorts of nice things about you, and now I know they are true.”
So Power was introduced to “Miss Marten,” and the girl gave him one of those shy yet delightfully candid glances which he remembered so well in her mother’s eyes.
“Didn’t I meet you recently in the corridor of a hotel at Bournemouth?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said.
“Then you will be surprised to hear that you rather startled me. I thought you were about to fall, and was on the point of catching your arm when you walked away. Then I saw you had a slight limp, and it was that which had probably caused my stupid notion. Wouldn’t you have been tremendously astonished if a giddy young person had clutched you suddenly and implored you not to drop at her feet?”
“Yet I can well imagine any man, especially a younger sprig than myself, being moved to some such act of homage.”
She laughed—Nancy again!
“There seems to be no end of men in England who can pay neat compliments to a woman,” she said. “But you’re not an Englishman, Mr. Power. Aren’t you a fellow-countryman of mine?”
“Yes.”
“How jolly! People never guess it, but I’m an American; though I can never be President, even if we women get a vote, because I was born in London. But my parents hail from the Silver State.”
“Where more gold is produced than in any other state of the Union.”
“Then you know Colorado?”
“Yes. Better than that, I knew your mother many years ago, before her marriage.”
“You knew my mother—in Colorado—on the ranch! Well!” She turned rapidly to her hostess. “Thank you ever so much for inviting me here today. I’ll work like a slave for your bazaar. Here is the man I’ve been aching to meet ever since I was able to talk. Please don’t think me rude if I monopolize him all the afternoon. I’m going to take him off to that nice shady seat under the copper beech, and question him until he cries for mercy.... Yes, please. Tea, with sugar and milk, and lots of bread and butter, piled high with Devonshire cream and jam—all the good things! Why, you’re a veritable fairy princess. Mr. Power met my mother when she was a girl!... Come along, Mr. Power! No wonder I was inclined to grab you in that corridor. Oh, had I but guessed! I’ll never, never distrust intuition again.”
“To begin with,” said Power, as he walked with her across the springy turf with a laden tray in his hands, “in what way did intuition prompt you?”
“I don’t mind telling you at once. I feel I can talk to you as though we had known each other always. I said you rather startled me; but that was just a polite way of saying what I didn’t exactly mean. You were examining a picture, and you turned unexpectedly and looked at me. There was an expression in your eyes that gave me a sort of shock, one of those emotional thrills which cannot be described in words. You might have been gazing at the ghost of someone very dear to you. Ah, forgive me if my tongue runs away with me, but I’m really excited. Of course, I understand now. You took me for my mother. And I am like her, am I not?”
“So like that your first impression was right. I did nearly fall. The least push would have toppled me over. It was only the iron law of convention thatenabled me to pass on as though nothing unusual had happened.”
“Then my mother and you were great friends?”
“Yes.”
“You met her long before she was married?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t say yes, and leave it at that. Tell me things—everything you think I would like to know.”
“I may tell you this, without the slightest unfairness to—to your father. I loved your mother; but I was poor in those days, and dared not ask her to marry me. Then I was sent away to a distant mine—and—we drifted apart. When next I saw her she was a wife. Now, suppose we forget that bit of ancient history—because I hope to become friendly with your father—for your sake.”
The girl’s eyes were glistening, and she had lost some of her exquisite color.
She understood, or thought she understood; though she little dreamed what fierce longings, what vain regrets, were surging through the man’s inmost core. Her quick intelligence noted certain slight hesitancies in his speech, which the ever-present feminine sense of romance attributed to tender recollections of the bygone days. With ready sympathy, she led him to talk of the ranch, of Bison, even of her grandfather, whom she remembered but vaguely.
Power kept a close guard on his words, and easily focused her interest on topics which could not prove hurtful, even if she repeated the conversation to Marten in its entirety. Once only did their chat veer round to a dangerous quarter.
“You said you saw my mother again after her marriage—where was that?” she asked.
“In Newport, Rhode Island. I went there to buy horses, and we met unexpectedly in a hotel, just as you and I the other evening.”
“Was she—was she happy?”
“Of course she was happy. She was one of the most beautiful women of her day, and married to a rich man who was certainly devoted to her. She moved in the best society, both in America and in Europe. By the way, her closest friends were the Van Raltens in the States and the Duchesse de Brasnes in Paris. Have you ever come across any members of those families?”
“I know Mrs. Van Ralten very well. Her daughter was at school with me at Brussels.”
“Then Mr. Marten hardened his heart, and parted from you for a time?”
“Yes. I see now that it was bad for a girl to be always at home or in hotels, with governesses. Fortunately, Father had to be away a good deal, in Russia and elsewhere; so I was sent to school, where I was taught what little I know.”
Thus was an unforeseen shoal safely navigated, and Power took care that Newport was lost sight of. As he and Dacre walked up the valley to their abode, the latter broke a long silence by saying:
“Again I ask, Derry—is it wise?”
“And again I answer that years of suffering entitle one to the fleeting pleasure of seeing and speaking to Nancy’s daughter.”
“But she is Marten’s daughter, too, and he may prove difficult.”
“Let him. I have fought stronger adversaries, and won through in the end.”
Secretary Howard joined them that night. After dinner he inquired if Power had ever had any dealings with Mowlem & Son, a firm of lawyers in New York.
“No,” said Power. “The name is not familiar to me.”
“Queer thing! A man who represented himself as their London agent called at my hotel yesterday and inquired if it was correct that you were in Devonshire. I said yes, and asked his business. He explained that Mowlem & Son wanted to know, and that was all he could, or would, tell me. I was inclined to believe him.”
“Perhaps it is the usual hue and cry after a bloated capitalist.”
“I rather fancy not. This fellow seemed to lay stress on your presence here. Besides, the company-promoting crowd have learned long since that you are unapproachable.”
“At such a moment one might mention a peak in Darien,” laughed Dacre, and the incident lapsed into the limbo of insignificant happenings.
Thenceforth Power met Nancy day after day. The approaching fête supplied the girl with a ready excuse for these regular visits to village and rectory. Power believed, though he did not seek enlightenment, that she had not spoken of him to her father. One day, when she was accompanied by the sleek, olive-skinned manhe had seen at Bournemouth, she rather avoided him, and he ascertained from an awe-stricken rustic that the stranger was a prince, but of what dynasty his informant could not say.
At their next meeting he rallied the girl on her aloofness. She withered him with an indignant glance.
“Come!” she said imperiously, taking him from the schoolhouse in which a committee was assembled, and making for the tiny stone pier which sheltered a small estuary from southwesterly gales.
“I’ve got to tell you some day, and you may as well know now,” she said, with a curious hardness of tone which she had probably acquired from Marten by the trick of association. “You loved my mother, and ought to have married her. If all was nice and providential in the best of all possible worlds, you would have been my father. Oh, you needn’t flinch because I say that! If youweremy father, I’m sure you wouldn’t force me to marry a man I detest. That person who came with me yesterday is the high and mighty Principe del Montecastello. I have to marry him, and I hate him!”
Power’s face went very pale. His hour had struck. He looked out over a smiling ocean; but the eyes of his soul saw a broken vista of barren hills, snow-crowned and glacier-ribbed, while howling torrents rushed through the depths of ravines choken with the débris of avalanches and rotting pines. His own voice sounded hollow and forlorn in his ears.
“In these days no woman need marry a man she hates,” he was saying, aware of a dull effort to ward off a waking nightmare by the spoken word.
“You know better than that,” she retorted, with the bitter logic of youth. “What am I to do? The man I love, and would marry if I could, is poor. He is too honorable to—to—— Oh, I don’t know what I mean—only this, that a millionaire’s daughter can be bought and sold like any other girl, even a princess, when what men call ‘important interests’ are at stake.”
“You say you have chosen another man?” he said brokenly.
“Yes, the dearest boy. Oh, Mr. Power, I wish you knew him! I have faith in you. Perhaps you could help—if only for my dear mother’s safe.”
She was crying now; but her streaming eyes sought his with wistful confidence.
“Yes. I will help, for your dear mother’s sake,” he said. “Be brave, and drive away those tears. They—they hurt. I—I saw your mother crying once. Now tell me everything. If I would be of any real assistance, I must know how to shape my efforts.”
Nancy’s pitiful little story was soon told. During the last year she had often met the Honorable Philip Lindsay, second son of an impoverished Scottish peer, and now a lieutenant in a line regiment stationed at Aldershot. They discovered each other, in the first instance, at a hunt ball in Leicestershire, and a simple confusion of names led the man to believe that the pretty girl with the blue eyes was the hired companion of the daughters of the family with whom she was staying. Her friends—like herself, just emancipated from the schoolroom—fostered the deception, which she and they found amusing; but Lindsay’s Celtic blood was fired by the knowledge that he had found the one woman in the world he wanted to marry, be she poor as Cinderella. Before the girl realized that the handsome young soldier was not of the carpet-knight type, he was telling her he loved her, and asking her to wait for him till he got his captaincy or secured an adjutant’s berth in a territorial battalion, and they would wed.
Of course, there were explanations, and tears, and a good deal of the white-lipped tragedy of youth. Lindsay, like a gallant gentleman, refused to be dubbed a fortune-hunter, and went back to his regiment, where he threw himself into the dissipation of musketry instruction with a cold fury that surprised and gratified his colonel. Then Nancy found that her heart had gone with him, and wrote a tearful request that they might never meet again; whereupon the sprite who controls these affairs brought Marten and his daughter to a grand review at Windsor—and who should be on some notable general’s staff but Lieutenant the Honorable Philip Lindsay? After that the veriest tyro in the methods of romance must see that the general would invite the American millionaire to dine with him that evening, and that Lindsay should be allotted to Nancy as her dinner partner.
There were thrills, and flashing glances; but Caledonia remained both stern and wild, with the certain result that he and the girl grew more desperately enamoured of each other than ever.
But this is not the love-story of a new Derry and another Nancy; so it may be taken for granted that twenty-four and nineteen were suffering the approved pangs, and were given every opportunity to develop the recognized symptoms. Our real concern lies with a man of middle age, around whom these minor happenings revolved like comets around the sun—itself ever fleeting into stellar depths. Not that Power felt any resemblance to a star of magnitude at that time. Though he never doubted that he was again at the mercy of irresistible forces, dragging him he knew not whither, the simile that presented itself to his mind was that of a log being swept over a cataract. Despite his brave promise to the weeping girl, he had no plan, no hope of successful intervention. He caught at one straw as the swirling current gripped him.This Italian prince might be a very excellent fellow, and the soldier a bit of knave; then it would be his bounden duty to exhort Nancy to filial obedience, that time-honored principle productive of so much good and so great evils.
“What is Mr. Lindsay’s address?” he inquired.
She told him.
“And is there any real need for present anxiety? You are far too young to think of marriage.”
“Father says my mother was wed at twenty. He got rather angry when I retorted that she died at twenty-four. But the real trouble is that that horrid Giovanni Montecastello is pressing for an engagement. Father spoke of it this morning. No wonder I am in such a rebellious mood!”
“Does Mr. Marten know Lindsay?”
“Yes. He regards him merely as one of the thousand nice young men one meets in London society.”
“He is not aware of his attachment for you?”
She raised her hands in horror. Clearly, Hugh Marten was master in his own household. His daughter might be the apple of his eye; but he brooked no interference with his perfected schemes, even from her.
“At any rate,” persisted Power, “he will not compel you to accept Prince Montecastello tomorrow, or next day. Can’t you hold out until, say, your twentieth birthday?”
“This morning I promised to decide within a month.”
“And what did he say?”
“He smiled, and remarked that I chose my wordscarelessly. Evidently I meant ‘accept’ when I said ‘decide.’”
“Well, then, we have a month. Great things can be achieved in that time. Fortresses which have taken ten years to build have fallen in a day. So be of good cheer. I begin the attack at once.”
“Will you please tell me what you intend doing?”
“Firstly, I must see my army, which is composed of one man, Philip Lindsay. Secondly, we must call on the citadel to surrender. Your father is not aware that Mr. Lindsay may be his prospective son-in-law. He must be enlightened.”
“There will be an awful row,” declared Nancy, unconsciously reverting to the slang of a dismayed schoolgirl.
“The capture of a stronghold is usually accompanied by noise and clamor. What matter, so long as it yields?”
“And afterward?”
“Afterward, like every prudent general, I shall be guided by events. Come, now; we’ll go down to the beach, and you shall dab your eyes with salt-water.”
“Is that a recipe to cure red eyes?”
“It’s an excuse for blue ones showing a red tint.”
The girl smiled pathetically. “Somehow,” she said, “I always feel comforted after a talk with you. You haven’t known it, Mr. Power; for I have been forced to conceal my troubles; but every time we meet you send me away in a more assured frame of mind.”
She, in turn, did not know that he winced as if she had struck him. Truly, he was paying a heavy reckoning for the frenzy and passion of those far-off daysin the Adirondacks, and, worst of all, the seeming ashes of that ardent fire threatened to blaze out anew.
As they walked back to the village they encountered a well-dressed man, a stranger. By this time Power was so thoroughly acquainted with the little hamlet’s inhabitants that he recognized some by name and all by sight; but this man was unknown to him.
That evening Howard said, “By the way, you remember an inquiry from Mowlem & Son, New York? The man who made it was in the village today. I saw him, soon after Miss Marten and you strolled on to the beach.”
Power described the stranger, and Howard identified him; but the matter was dismissed as a trivial coincidence. Indeed, Power had affairs of moment to occupy him. Dacre, it appeared, was primed with facts concerning the Principe del Montecastello.
“His people are the famous Lombardy bankers,” he said. “I have an idea, based on ethnological theories, that they belonged originally to one of the ten tribes; but they were ennobled during the seventeenth century, and remained highly orthodox Blacks till the present king came to the throne, when they ’verted to the Whites.*I believe that this change came about owing to their association with Marten in an Italian loan. Anyhow, the existing scion of the princely house is rather a bad hat. Why are you interested in him?”