The Terms of Surrender Part 43

"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 a.s.sistance, I must know how to shape my efforts."

CHAPTER XIX

THE SETTLEMENT

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 emanc.i.p.ated 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 words carelessly. 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 a.s.sured 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 pa.s.sion of those far-off days in 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 enn.o.bled during the seventeenth century, and remained highly orthodox Blacks till the present king came to the throne, when they 'verted to the Whites.[A] I believe that this change came about owing to their a.s.sociation 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?"

[A] The Papal and Const.i.tutional parties in Italy are often differentiated thus briefly.

"He is a suitor for the hand of a young lady whose welfare I have at heart."

"Not Nancy?"

"Yes."

"The devil he is!" and Dacre expressed his sentiments freely. "Why, I'd prefer she married our local road-mender; because then, at least, she would have a decent, clean-minded husband. Marten must be losing grip.

Confound it! Why doesn't he go to Paris or Naples, and find out this fellow's antecedents? I feel it's absurd to doubt you, but can you really trust your informant?"

"I have it from Nancy's own lips."