"N."

One night, sleeping in the depths of a Patagonian forest, he had been aroused by the snarl of some wild animal close at hand. He had never known what beast it was that rustled away among the undergrowth; but he felt the same sense of impending evil now. Thinking the other message might be more explanatory, he tore at the envelop with nervous fingers; but the contents were an exact replica of its predecessor. Then he saw that one had been sent to Bison and the other to New York on the same day, the place of origin of each being London.

He could not doubt that "N" was "Nancy," and he asked himself, with quick foreboding, what strong motive had inspired this urgent command.

He was to forget all that had pa.s.sed! What strangely variable creatures woman were, to be sure! Could she, or any woman, honestly imagine that such a request might be obeyed? Forget that struggle between love and duty; forget the delirium of that fortnight in the Adirondacks; forget the numb agony of the days following her flight? As soon might a man forget his own name!

Nerving himself to the task, he searched for some written word which should make clear the baffling enigma. Soon he came across two letters in Nancy's handwriting, and bearing the London postmark. The dates were three months apart, and the earlier one corresponded with that on the cablegrams; so he opened it first, and read:

"My own dear Derry.--A few hours ago I cabled you, both to Bison and New York, that you are to come to me without delay, and I hope, I even pray on my knees, that you are already in the train or steamer. Still, I am in such a fever of dread lest any untoward event may have kept my message from you, or prevented you from starting instantly, that I write also. If, which Heaven forbid, any shred of doubt or misgiving has gripped you, and you have decided to await a more explicit reason for my action in bidding you come, I am writing by to-day's mail to tell you that circ.u.mstances beyond my control, or yours, render it imperative that I should leave Hugh Marten now and forever. Derry, don't ask me to explain myself more fully. There are things which a woman may whisper, but which she cannot write. Yet it is only just that I should, at least, make plain the dreadful conditions under which I left you five months since. My father meant to kill you before my eyes. No consideration would have stopped him. He was resolved to shoot you without warning if I refused to return to Marten's house, and I yielded; for I could not bear the thought of seeing you stretched lifeless in front of the dear little hut in which we had been so happy. I may have been weak, but I loved you too much to let you give your life in exchange for my love, and he convinced me that he was in deadly earnest. So I went away with him, and tried to make myself despicable in your eyes as the surest way of searing the bitter wound my action would cause.

Remember, he left me no alternative. The break had to be final, or he would seek you out and slay you without mercy, and I knew only too well that he not only meant what he said, but that our laws would support and public opinion acclaim his action. Well, I traveled with him to England, and have been so ill ever since--though not physically such a wreck as I have pretended to be--that Marten believes I am suffering from the effects of the heat wave, and has compelled me to endure the treatment and scrutiny of many doctors. And today, one of them---- But now I must be dumb, except to tell you that, whether or not it means death to both of us, you _must_ come and take me away to some secret place where none can find us. Don't think that this letter is written in a moment of impulse. It is not the product of a woman's hysteria. It is a cry from my very heart. And, in the midst of my desolation, I am glad--oh, so glad! I am aflame with a delight that is almost superhuman; for I know that you will understand, and that nothing on earth can ever part us again. My tears are falling on this page, but my higher and truer self is singing a canticle of praise and wonderful joy. Hurry, Derry, hurry!

"I am, and have ever been, "Your true and devoted "NANCY."

Power's brain was on fire as he read; but his heart seemed to be in the clutch of an icy hand. For some minutes--he never subsequently knew how long the trance lasted--he was transported bodily to the sh.o.r.es of a sunlit lake, and he lived again through the frenzy of those first hours after Nancy's disappearance. When his senses came back, and his blazing eyes could discern the written word, he read and reread those parts of the letter which breathed her secret. Then, with the listless despair of a man who realizes that the new sanctuary of hope and self-confidence which he had constructed with so much blind faith, to which he had given so many laborious years, was tumbling in ruins at his feet, he opened the second letter, which was somewhat bulky, and crackled under his touch. From the middle of the folded sheet he took a withered spray of white heather. Had it been a poisonous snake he could not have started more violently. There was no doubting either its origin or significance.

He held in his shaking hands the very spray Nancy carried at her wedding, and she had sent it as a token that all was at an end between them. He was minded then and there to commit the whole pile of correspondence to destroying flames; but he was well aware that such a coward's trick would prove of no avail. Strive as he might, he could never expel from his breast the blighting knowledge lodged there now and forever. Those shrunken and faded strands of heather were typical of his own life. Not all the alchemies of wizardry or miracles of science could restore their bright hues. They were dead, and sinking slowly into dust.

No shower from Heaven could freshen them, no kindly care quicken them into vitality. They were dead, and he was dead, a mere dried-up husk of a man, a banned creature, to whom hope and faith and the bright vision of a new career were ruthlessly forbidden.

At last, thinking he might as well learn the scorching truth in its entirety, he turned to the letter.

It was undated; but the postmark was eloquent, and it began with strange abruptness:

"So, then, Derry, you have cast me off, left me to die; for I shall die within a month, or less. Well, be it so. I am content. If such is the woman's lot, of what avail to cry aloud to Heaven that it is unjust?

But, if ever you come to realize what tortures I have endured while waiting in vain for the answer that never arrived, surely you will pity me. I, once so full of the joy of life, am humbled to the dust. Your departure from Bison--for my constant friend MacGonigal has told me of your going--robbed me of my last frail refuge. Some day, perhaps, you will read these farewell words of the woman who loved you, who still loves you, who will love you to the end, whose last prayer will be for you and not for herself. Oh, Derry, it will be hard to pa.s.s into the everlasting night, knowing that you and I shall never meet again on this side of the grave, but harder still to deliver into the keeping of one whom I loathe the living memory of my brief happiness. It may not be so.

My child and I may go out into the darkness together; but I dare not pet.i.tion the Most High for that crowning mercy. Have I really done wrong? I cannot decide, but grope blindly for guidance. If I am judged, it will be by One who looks into the heart, and will treat an erring woman with divine compa.s.sion as well as justice. But you, if ever you see what I am setting down here, and I am convinced that you will, even though I be long dead--what of you? My heart aches for you. Can I give you any message of healing and solace? Yes, one. If my child lives--ah, it is bitter to think that the mother's eyes will be glazing in death when they see her babe!--I charge you with a sacred responsibility. What do I mean? I cannot tell you. I am fey today. I peer into a dim future.

I only know that I shall not survive my little one's birth, and that some day, somehow, you will understand that which is hidden from my ken in laying this duty upon you. And that way will come consolation. Do you remember how I used to hate that word 'duty'? Yet it is stronger than I. It compels me, even now.

"Farewell, Derry. I kiss you, in a waking dream. No matter what the world has in store for you--though some other fair woman may quicken into life because of you--though men may honor your name and exalt you to the high places--you will never forget the girl you once held dear.

As a souvenir, I send you all that is left of the bunch of white heather which formed my wedding bouquet. Did you see it that day when you hid on the ledge, and watched the triumphal start of a journey which has led me into such strange places and is now to end so soon? We never spoke of it when we pa.s.sed the long, sunny hours by the lake--dear Heaven! our lake!

Would that its bright waters had closed over my head then; for I was so happy, and so much in love with you and the world! But I knew what happened on that June day in the Gulch, for I could read your soul mirrored in your eyes; so now I give you one final memento, and hug the belief that you will press it to your lips. My poor secret dies with me, perhaps. I don't imagine that the man whom I used to revere as a father will satisfy an unfathomable spite by denying my child the tending and luxury it will receive in Hugh Marten's care. I could write reams of a woman's sad longings, of explanations that would lead nowhere; but I dare not trust even you, else you would deem me mad. And I am not mad, only woebegone and fearful, for the night cometh, and I shudder at its silence and mystery. So, once more, and for the last time, farewell, my dear. I take you in my arms. I cling to you, even in death."

The unhappy man wilted under that piteous leave-taking. He felt that he had descended into a tomb, and was listening to a voice speaking in dread tones. The thick curtains of despair closed over his soul, and he seemed to be falling into an abyss. He heard himself uttering a broken wail of protest; for it was borne in on him that Nancy's heart-rending message had riveted close against the fetters he thought to have left forever amid the dun recesses of the Andes. What remained in life for him? What could there be of happiness and content, with the dire conviction lodged immovably in heart and brain that Nancy, like his mother, had died because of his wrong-doing? He was caught in some furious and fatal maelstrom which, like that fabled whirlpool of the North Sea, was sweeping him, in ever-narrowing circles, to irresistible doom. The marvel is that his mind did not give way; but a merciful release was not to be vouchsafed in that manner, for the fantastic laughter of lunacy would have been kinder than the blackness of darkness which now enwrapped his being. In that hour of abas.e.m.e.nt his spirit capitulated. Nothing mattered. He was crushed and paralyzed. He could not pray, because it did not seem as though there was One who gave heed.

The bright world had become a place of skulls, a charnel house, a prison whose iron walls were closing in on him eternally.

It was a strange thing that he did not, even as a pa.s.sing obsession, think of terminating the dreary pilgrimage of life then and there. At Bison, during the first stupor of grief after his mother's death and Nancy's desertion, he had pondered, many a time, the awful problem which ever presents itself to men of strong will and resolute purpose. When life appears to be no longer worth living the question arises--why not end it? But seven years of lonely musing had given depth and solidity to his nature. Above all, he had been taught to endure. He had come now to a worse pa.s.s than any that pierced the Andes; for an unending desert lay in front, while he was leaving a fair territory in which lay domestic joys and a love for which his soul hungered. In the moment when union with Marguerite Sinclair was forbidden so sternly he gaged with woeful accuracy the extent of his longing for her companionship. He understood, with a certainty of judgment that brooked no counter argument, that he could never marry. He dared not. If that which Nancy had said was true, he would surely kill himself in a paroxysm of loathing and self-accusation when any other woman's kiss was still hot on his lips.

There remained a task not to be shirked--he must ascertain, beyond doubt, that Nancy was really dead. Gathering the four letters in whose yellowing sheets was summarized the whole story of his wasted life, he placed them in a pocketbook. In doing so, he happened to touch the case containing the ring he had bought for Meg. Oddly enough, that simple incident cost him the sharpest pang; but he conquered his emotions, much as a man might do who was facing unavoidable death, and even forced his trembling fingers to put the envelop which held Nancy's white heather side by side with Marguerite's diamonds. Then he went out.

An oldtime acquaintance in Denver with the ways of journalism led him to the nearest newspaper office. There he asked to be taken to the news editor's room, and a busy man looked at him curiously when he explained that he wanted to know whether or not Mrs. Marten, wife of Hugh Marten, was living, and, if dead, the date of her demise.

There was something in Power's manner that puzzled the journalist, some hint of tragedy and immeasurable loss, but he was courteously explicit.

"You mean Hugh Marten, the financier, formerly of Colorado?" he inquired.

"Yes, that is the man."

The other took a volume from a shelf of biographies, by which is meant the newspaper variety--typed accounts of notable people still living, together with newspaper cuttings referring to recent events in their careers. Soon he had a pencil on an entry.

"Yes," he said. "Mrs. Marten has been dead nearly seven years."

"And her child? Is the child living?"

"Yes. Poor lady! She died in giving it birth. I remember now. It was a very sad business. Mrs. Marten was a remarkably beautiful woman. Her husband was inconsolable. He has not married again; but is devoted to his little daughter, who, by the way, was named after her mother--Nancy Willard Marten. Ah, of course, that middle name reminds me of something else. Mrs. Marten's father, Francis Willard, was accidentally shot last year."

"Shot?"

"Yes. He was summering in the Adirondacks, and was out after duck; but, by some mischance, caught a trigger when crawling through a clump of rushes, and blew the top of his head off."

"He was near a lake, then?"

"Yes. It wasn't Forked Lake, but a sheet of water in the hills not far distant. I can find out the exact locality if you wish it."

"No, thank you. I am very much obliged to you."

"No trouble at all. Sorry I hadn't better news, if these people are friends of yours."

So Willard was dead, and by his own hand, and the scene of his last reckoning was the lake which witnessed the ign.o.ble revenge he had wreaked on Power by sacrificing Nancy! The broken man bowed his head humbly. He had been scourged with whips; but his sworn enemy had been chastised with scorpions.

CHAPTER XVII

SHOWING HOW POWER MET A GUIDE

If a man be hara.s.sed too greatly by outrageous fortune, there comes a time when he will defy the oppressing G.o.ds, and set their edicts at naught. Power's temperament fitted him for sacrifice carried far beyond the common limits of human endurance; but his gorge rose against this latest tyranny; the recoil from bright hope to darkest despair brought him perilously near the gulf. Seated in his room, and reviewing his wrecked life, he was minded then and there to fling himself into the worst dissipation New York could offer. What had he gained by his self-imposed penance, his exile, and his unquestioning service? No monk of La Trappe had disciplined body and soul more rigorously than he during seven weary years; yet, seemingly, his atonement was not accepted, and he was faced now by a decree that entailed unending banishment. Was Providence, then, less merciful than man? The felon, convicted of an offense against his country's laws, was better treated than he. The poor wretch released from prison was met at the gates of the penitentiary by philanthropic offer of reinstatement among his fellows; but for the man who had yielded once to the lure of a woman's love there was, apparently, no forgiveness. Why should he accept any such inexorable ban? He was young, as men regard youth in these days. He was rich. The wine of life ran red in his veins. Why should he fold his arms and bend his head, and say with the meek Jesuit whose moldering bones had harbored that beautiful volume lying there in its leather covering, "_Fiat voluntas Tua!_"

That hour of revolt was the bitterest in Power's existence. Like Jacob, he wrestled with a too potent adversary, and, refusing to yield, asked for a curse rather than a blessing; for he thought he was striving against a fiend. Fortunately, he underestimated his own strength. Some men, he knew, would have tossed every record of the past into the fire, and married the woman of their choice without other than a momentary qualm of conscience. That course, to him, was a sheer impossibility.

While the dead Nancy and her living child stood in the gates of Eden, and option lay only between wedding Marguerite Sinclair and blowing out his brains, he would die unhesitatingly. But, if he continued to live, what was the outlook? Wine, women--debauchery, lewdness? His soul sickened at the notion. He laughed, with bitter humor, while picturing himself a roue, a "sport", an opulent supporter of musical comedy--especially with regard to its frailer exponents--a lounger in "fashionable" resorts. No; that was not the way out of the maze, if ever a way might be found.

It was a sign of returning sanity that he should fill his pipe. As the German proverb has it, "G.o.d first made man, and then He made woman; then, feeling sorry for man, He made tobacco". Power continued to sit there smoking, lost in troubled but more humbled thought, until a chambermaid entered the room. He had kept no count of time, and had evidently pa.s.sed many hours in somber musing; for the apartment was in semidarkness, and the girl started when she caught sight of the solitary figure sunk in the depths of an armchair.

"My land!" she cried, "but you made me jump!" Then, aware that this was not precisely the manner of address expected by patrons of the Waldorf-Astoria, she added hurriedly, "I beg your pardon, sir. I didn't know you were in. Shall I switch on the light?"

"Can you?" he said.

"Why, of course, I can. There you are!"

The room was suddenly illuminated. Power rose and stretched his limbs--he felt as if he had marched many miles carrying a heavy load.

"Like others of your s.e.x, you work miracles, then," he said.

One glance at his face, and the housemaid regained confidence. "Yes, if it is a miracle to touch a switch," she answered pertly.

"Nothing more wonderful was done when the world was created. 'Let there be light: and there was light.' You have read the first chapter of Genesis, I am sure?"

"Yes, and the second."