The Terms of Surrender Part 41

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 thought of 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 circ.u.mstances 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 c.o.c.kney excursionists on David MacBrayne's steamers or Cook's tourists in Norway."

So the friends pa.s.sed 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 j.a.pan, gray China, and golden India.

Pitching his tent where he listed, Power saw mankind in the ma.s.s.

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 send the 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 hobn.o.bbing 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 Croesus or kindly as Francis d'a.s.sisi--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 G.o.d for their deliverance.

Thus, doing good by stealth, and ever widening his knowledge of mankind, he pa.s.sed 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 tires cost 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 pa.s.sing 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 pa.s.sed 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 table near 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 pa.s.s 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 he spoke, it was to give a motorist's account of the mishaps of the road.

A week pa.s.sed. 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 fete, 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."