The Terms of Surrender

Toward the close of the meal he beckoned the head waiter.

“Where does Mr. Power sit usually?” he inquired.

“Over there, sir, with Mr. Dacre, the English gentleman, at the small table near the second window.”

Following directions, Willard noted a good-looking man, apparently about forty years old, who was studying the menu intently. As a matter of fact, Dacre had seen the newcomer’s signal, and guessed what it portended.

“Oh, indeed! Mr. Dacre a friend of his?” went on Willard.

“They are often together, sir.”

“And where is Mr. Power this morning?”

“He left by the first train, sir.”

For some reason this news was displeasing; though Power’s departure made plausible any inquiries concerning him.

“That’s a nuisance,” said Willard. “I – wanted to meet him. I came here last night for that purpose. Do you happen to know where he has gone, and for how long?”

The head waiter was not in the habit of answering questions about his patrons indiscriminately.

“I can’t say, I’m sure, sir,” he replied; “but if you were to ask Mr. Dacre he might know.”

Willard weighed the point. In one respect, he was candid with himself. He had come to Newport to spy on Nancy, and, if necessary, to put a prompt and effectual end to any threatened renewal of her friendship with Power. The intuition of sheer hatred had half warned him that the man whom he regarded as his worst enemy might possibly visit Rhode Island; but some newspaper paragraph about the purchase of horses bred in the state of New York had lulled his suspicions until he chanced to meet Benson at lunch in the Brown Palace Hotel. Marten’s secretary was worried. He had replied to Nancy’s letter the previous day; but was not quite sure that he had taken the right line, and he seized the opportunity now to consult her father. Of course, he did not reveal his employer’s business, and Willard was the last person with whom he could discuss the mortgage transaction fully; but he saw no harm in alluding casually to Mrs. Marten’s curious inquiry, and was relieved to find that her father agreed with the answer he had given.

The actual truth was that Willard felt too stunned by the disclosure to trust his own speech. He was well aware already that Marten had used him as a cat’s-paw in bringing about the marriage; but that phase of the affair had long ceased to trouble him. The real shock of Benson’s guarded statement lay in Nancy’s pointblank question. Why had she put it? What influence was at work that such serious thought should be given to his financial straits of nearly four years ago?

In the upshot, he left Denver by that night’s mail; though the letter in which he spoke tentatively of a visit to Newport, and of which Nancy had availed herself in talk with her friends at the Casino, had been only a day in the post, and, in the ordinary course of events, demanded a reply before he undertook a journey of two thousand miles.

And now he was vaguely uneasy. Though he hated the sight of Power, he wished heartily that the interloper who had snatched from him the bonanza of the Dolores Ranch had remained in Newport during this one day, at least. Yes, he would speak to Power’s British acquaintance, and glean some news of the man to whom he had done a mortal wrong and therefore hated with an intensity bordering on mania.

Dacre saw him coming; so it was with the correct air of polite indifference that he heard himself addressed by an elderly stranger.

“I’m sorry to disturb you,” said Willard, “but the head waiter tells me that your friend, Mr. Power, has left Newport. As I am anxious to have a word with him, I thought that, perhaps, you wouldn’t mind telling me his whereabouts. My name is Willard, and I arrived here from Denver at a late hour yesterday; at midnight, in fact, my train having been delayed by an accident.”

Nancy’s father was well spoken. He owned a certain distinction of manner and bearing. Like the majority of undersized men, he was self-assertive by nature; but education and fifty years of experience had rounded the angles of his character, and, in a matter of this sort, he carried himself with agreeable ease.

Dacre was all smiles instantly. “What! Mrs. Marten’s father?” he cried. “Delighted to meet you! Sit down, Mr. Willard. Let us become better known to each other!”

Willard was hardly prepared for this cordial recognition; but he shook hands affably, and seated himself in Power’s chair, as it chanced.

“You have heard of me from my daughter, I suppose?” he began.

“Yes. She was telling Mrs. Van Ralten and several others, including myself – let me see, was it last night at the Casino? – that you were thinking of coming East; but I gathered she did not expect you till a few days later. I was mistaken, evidently.”

“No. I am giving her a surprise. I managed to get away sooner than I expected, and the prospect of Newport’s Atlantic breezes was so enticing that I just made a rush for the next train.”

“Well, you are here, and the long journey is ended, a pleasant achievement in itself. Was the train accident a serious one?”

Willard supplied details, and his sympathetic hearer swapped reminiscences of a similar mishap on the Paris, Lyon et Mediterranée Railway. Incidentally, he wasted quarter of an hour before Willard could bring him back to the topic of the missing Power.

“Ah, yes – as to Power,” nodded Dacre, seemingly recalling his questioner’s errand. “Too bad you didn’t turn up yesterday. Power is off to New York – made up his mind on the spur of the moment – and I rather fancy he will not be in Newport again this year. Indeed, I may go so far as to say I am sure he won’t, because he has invited me to his place at Bison – somewhere near Denver, isn’t it? – and I am to keep him posted as to my own movements, so that we can arrange things to our mutual convenience.”

Willard laughed, intending merely to convey his sense of the absurdity of two men playing hide and seek across a continent; but Dacre’s allusion to Bison brought a snarl into his mirth.

“You will write to the ranch, I suppose?” he inquired casually.

“Yes,” said Dacre, knowing full well that he was being egged on to reveal any more immediate address he might have been given.

“Then I can only apologize for troubling you, and – ”

“Not at all! What’s your hurry? Let’s adjourn to the veranda and smoke.”

“I must go and see my daughter.”

“Oh, fie, Mr. Willard! You, an old married man, proposing to break in on a lady’s toilet at this hour!”

“My girl is up and dressed hours ago.”

“Well, now that I come to think of it, you are right. Most mornings while Power was here he joined Mrs. Marten and others for a scamper across the island, and they were in the saddle by seven-thirty – never later.”

In such conditions, being essentially a weak man, Willard was as a lump of modeler’s clay in the hands of a skilled sculptor. He could not resist the notion of a cigar, he said; of course, it was easy to induce Dacre to gossip anent the lively doings of the Casino set. Ultimately, he entered a carriage at ten o’clock, whereat the Briton, watching his departure, smiled complacently.

“Heaven forgive me for aiding and abetting any man in running away with another man’s wife,” he communed. “But I know Derry and Nancy and Marten, and now I know Willard, and being a confirmed idiot, anyhow, I am mighty glad I was able to secure those young people a pretty useful hour and a quarter of uninterrupted travel. As we say in Newport, it should help some.”

It had an effect which no one could have foreseen. It rendered Willard’s arrival at “The Breakers” a possible thing had he reached Newport that morning, and thus, by idle chance, closed the mouth of scandal; for he positively reeled under the shock of the butler’s open-mouthed statement that Mrs. Marten had left the town by the first train.

The man did not known him; but, being a well-trained servant, he made, as he thought, a shrewd guess at the truth.

“Surely you are not Mr. Willard, sir?” he said respectfully.

“Yes, I am.” Simple words enough; yet their utterance demanded a tremendous effort.

“Ah, there has been some mistake, sir,” came the ready theory. “Mrs. Marten meant to meet you in New York, and had arranged to travel by the nine o’clock train this morning; but Mr. Power made an early call – you know Mr. Power, sir?”

“Yes – yes.”

“He seemed to have some information about you, sir, which caused Mrs. Marten to hurry away before seven. There has been a sad blunder, I’m sure. What a pity! But if you know what hotel Mrs. Marten will stay at, you can fix matters by a telegram within a couple of hours… Aren’t you well, sir? Can I get you anything? Some brandy?”

By some occult process of thought, Willard, though stupefied by rage and dread – for he never doubted for a second that Nancy had flown with Power – held fast to the one tangible idea that her household was ignorant, as yet, of the social tornado which had burst on Newport that morning. Could anything be done to avert its havoc? God! He must have time to recover his senses! While choking with passion, he must be dumb and secret as the grave! A false move now, the least slip of a tongue aching to rain curses on Power, and irretrievable mischief would be done. Small wonder, then, that the butler mistook his pallid fury for illness.

“Won’t you come into the morning-room, and sit down, sir?” inquired the man sympathetically.

“Yes, take me anywhere – I’m dead beat. I’ve been traveling for days in this damned heat… No! no brandy, thank you. A glass of water. Mrs. Marten expected me, you say?”

“Yes, sir – at New York.”

“Ah, my fault – entirely my fault. I misled her, not purposely, of course. She gave you no address?”

“No, sir. Said she would write in a few days, perhaps within a week; but she imagined your movements were uncertain, and she could decide nothing till she had seen you.”

“Ah, the devil take it, my fault! I ought to have telegraphed.”

He harped on this string as promising some measure of safety for the hour. By this time he was seated, and ostensibly sipping iced water, while his frenzied brain was striving to find an excuse to encourage the man to talk.

“Perhaps Mrs. Marten may return when she discovers her mistake,” he contrived to say with some show of calmness.

“Well, sir, that may happen, of course. My mistress did not take any large supply of clothing, and left her maid here; so, when she misses you in New York, she will probably wire for Julie, at any rate.”

“Julie?”

“The French maid, sir.”

“What time did Mr. Power call?”

“Very early, sir. About six o’clock.”

Willard was slowly gaining a semblance of self-control. He realized that he had been checkmated in some inexplicable way; but it was imperative that Power’s interference should not give ground for suspicion.

“I am beginning to grasp the situation now,” he said, forcing a ghastly smile. “Mr. Power heard of the accident to my train – it was derailed late last night – and, fearing lest I might be injured, he hurried Mrs. Marten away without telling her.”

“Then you came by way of New York, sir?”

“Yes. We were held up near Groton.”

“Pity you didn’t come by the Fall River steamer, sir. Then you would have caught Mrs. Marten, as the boat arrives here at a quarter of four in the morning.”

Willard wanted badly to swear at the well-meaning butler. He had chosen the train purposely in order to be in Newport the previous night, and his own haste had proved his undoing. Why should this fat menial put an unerring finger on the one weak spot in his calculations?

But he felt the urgent need for action, and he was only losing time now, as it was evident that Nancy had covered her tracks dexterously where her servants were concerned.

“Is that cab still waiting?” he demanded suddenly.

“Yes, sir. I didn’t notice any baggage. Shall I – ”

“I don’t intend to remain. I’ll telegraph to New York, and go there by tonight’s steamer. Meanwhile, I have some friends at the Ocean House whom I would like to look up. By the way, don’t mention to anyone that I am upset by my daughter’s absence. It might come to Mrs. Marten’s ears, and she would be unnecessarily worried. My heart is slightly affected – you understand?”

The butler understood perfectly. He could be trusted not to cause Mrs. Marten any uneasiness.

Then Willard set out on the trail of the runaways, following it with a grim purpose not to be balked by repeated failure. At the station he had little difficulty in learning that a lady and gentleman – lady young and good-looking, gentleman who walked with a limp – had taken tickets for Boston. He was in Boston within three hours; but Power had broken the line there to such good purpose that the scent failed, for he had caused Nancy to go alone on a shopping expedition, and purchase her own ticket for Burlington, and, when he joined her in a parlor car, the fact that they were traveling in company was by no means published to all the world.

So Willard returned to Newport, removed his baggage from the Ocean House – for some inscrutable reason he distrusted Dacre’s smiling bonhomie– and occupied quarters in a less important hotel. Changing his name, by the simple expedient of ordering a supply of visiting cards, he called on the horse-breeding judge, who could facilitate his seemingly eager quest for Power only by telling him to send a letter to the care of a New York bank. This was something gained, and he hurried to New York, where, of course, he was suavely directed to write, and the letter would be forwarded.

Driven to his wits’ end after a week of furtive visits to restaurants, on the off chance that the fugitives might really be in the metropolitan city, he employed a private inquiry agent, and, five days later, received the first definite news. A “Mr. and Mrs. Darien Power” had registered at the Lake Champlain Hotel on the evening of the day of Nancy’s flight, and had gone into the Adirondacks next morning!

On the principle that it never rains but it pours, quick on the heels of this startling intelligence came a letter from Nancy. It had been sent to Denver, and some bungle in readdressing it had caused a prolonged delay. It was brief and to the point, and had been posted at Boston.

“My dear Father [she wrote]. – It will cause you much distress, but not any real surprise, to hear that I have decided to dissolve my marriage with Mr. Marten. I have met Derry Power, and now I know just what happened at Bison when you forced me to marry a man whom I detested. I forgive you your share in that horrible deceit; but I cannot forgive Marten, and the action I am taking renders it impossible that he and I should ever meet again. You will learn the why and the wherefore in due course. Meanwhile, I hope you will not take this thing too deeply to heart, and I look forward to our reunion in more peaceful days. When the divorce proceedings are ended, and Derry and I are married, I shall tell you where to find me. By that time, perhaps, you will have decided to accept the inevitable, and let the past be forgotten. I am well, and happy – very, very happy.

“Your loving,“NANCY.”

Willard brooded long over this straightforward message. He was blind and deaf to its gentle reproach, finding in it only a confirmation of his worst fears. There was no need now to map out a course of action; he had limned that in the main before leaving Newport. Vengeance on Power, vengeance ample and complete, was what he craved for. He understood, in some furtive and perverted way, that he could not strike a mortal blow at a man of Power’s temperament by using the bludgeons of the law to expiate an offense against society. Both Nancy and her lover must have discounted the effect of the social pillory before they transgressed its code beyond redemption. Indeed, they would hail with joy the edict which banned them – be it proclaimed from the housetops and carried round the earth by the myriad-tongued press! Nancy’s letter, too, showed that she would not scruple to make known her defense, and Willard was well aware that it would serve to rehabilitate her in the eyes of her friends.

So he had devised a ghoulish and crafty punishment, which, the more he pondered it, the more subtle and effective did it appear. As the scheme grew in his imagination, he almost hugged himself in rapturous approval of it. So warped was his mind that he might have discovered, were he capable of making an honest analysis of motives, that he was actually gloating over the position in which his daughter was placed if only because of the weapon it placed in his hands against Power.

To succeed, two conditions were necessary – Power must not have written to his mother, nor Nancy to her husband. To his thinking, neither of these eventualities was likely. The very environment of the woods and lakes of the Adirondacks forbade the notion. If he was right, he would turn Power’s dream of happiness into bitterest gall; if wrong, there was still another alternative, deadlier, more lurid, but far from being so attractive to a mean and rather cowardly nature. Time alone would show which project promised success – to fail in both was nearly, if not quite, impossible.

Meanwhile, no painted Indian ever camped on the trail of unsuspecting pioneer with more malign intent and rancorous tenacity than Willard displayed in his pursuit and tracking of the erring pair. He was not a righteously incensed father, but a disappointed man who saw within his grasp the means of glutting the stored malice of years. To appreciate to the full Willard’s mental processes at this period of his life, not only his double-dealing in the matter of Nancy’s marriage, but his vain longings for the lost wealth of the Dolores Ranch, must be taken into account. Even then, his apologist might plead an obsession mounting almost to insanity. Nothing else would explain his actions; but no words could palliate them, for the ruthless Pawnee he resembled would assuredly have chosen a less ignoble revenge.

CHAPTER X

NANCY DECIDES

A long spur of the Adirondack Mountains stretches across Hamilton County from northeast to southwest. In a hollow on the western slopes of the range nestles Forked Lake. Some five or six miles nearer the watershed, and some hundreds of feet higher in altitude, lies a smaller and prettier lake, difficult of access, and far from the beaten track of tourists. Hither, by devious paths, Power had brought Nancy. A guide, hired at Elizabethtown, was enthusiastic about the fishing in that particular sheet of water, and he vouched for it that there was quarry in plenty for gun as well as rod; moreover, attracted by the sport and scenery, he had built a hut on the unfrequented side of the lake, in which were stored a sufficiency of rough furniture, some cooking utensils, and a canoe. Given fine weather and good health, what more did anyone want?

“Let us go there at once, Derry,” said Nancy. “A cabin among trees on the shore of a lake has always been my dream.”

“It sounds almost too idyllic,” said Power, trying to be cynical; “but we’ll hire the outfit for a week, and move on to the next caravan in a day if we don’t like it.”

They arrived at night, in a drenching downpour of rain, the outcome of the first and only thunderstorm of the season, and were inclined consequently to view with critical eyes the accommodation at their disposal. The owner of the property, who also owned a peculiar name, Peter Granite, had gone to a wood hutch for dry fuel, and Power divested Nancy of a dripping waterproof; while Peter’s dog, a nondescript of the hound type, known as “Guess,” shook his shaggy fur noisily.

“‘Peter’ and ‘Granite’ each signifies ‘rock,’” he whispered; “but Guess seems to be of opinion that we are stranded in a swamp.” Incidentally, he kissed her.

“Hush! I have faith in Peter. He told me today that some famous author came here every summer till he died; so the place must have a charm of its own.”

“Perhaps the famous author was a detached soul; in other words, a queer fish.”

“And perhaps you’ll get that wet coat off, and make yourself useful. Please strike a match. If it were not for Guess, I should be sure that something was going to leap out of the dark and grab me.”

So Nancy was admittedly a trifle nervous; but the feeling passed at once when Granite had a fire roaring in a stove, and an oil lamp was swinging from a hook, and the cabin was filled with warmth, and the grateful scent of a stew mixed with the steam of drying dog and garments. The sleeping arrangements were so primitive, however, that Nancy dared not undress. Every inch of the tiny bedroom was lit by lightning almost incessantly, and the constant dripping of water from the roof, added to the howling and whistling of the wind, kept her and Power awake till long after midnight. They would have risen and gone back to the more comfortable living-room, where the stove might have induced drowsiness, and Power could smoke, at least, but certain regular sounds from that quarter revealed that Granite cared little for the storm, was even expressing his unconscious contempt for it audibly; while Guess had met some lifelong foe in his dreams and was fighting a Homeric battle.

To while away the slow-moving hours, and perchance close their senses to the external uproar, the lovers talked, or, rather, Nancy talked and Power listened. A casual reference to some such wild night in France led the girl to discourse of her Parisian friends, and she gave full play to a ready wit and gift of close yet kindly and humorous observation which, in different conditions, would certainly have won her a place among contemporary writers on French life and manners. American ways and habits of thought owe so much to the Gallic leaven introduced at the beginning of the eighteenth century that a modern American woman assimilates French ideas with more ease and surer touch than her British sister; so Nancy would have brought to the task both racial sympathy and natural equipment. She knew Daudet and Turgenieff – had been present at one of their famous quarrels – and her description of the Russian’s unbridled fury and the Frenchman’s ironic good temper caused the scene to live again. She spoke French fluently, had even gleaned some scraps of Russian, and Power found himself transported in imagination to the brilliant salons where litterateurs like Zola and Coppée bickered, where artists like Rodin and Bonnat founded schools, where Massenet played snatches of operas yet to reach the ear of a wider world, where the men and women who occupied the stage in the Dreyfus drama were already stabbing reputations with poison-tipped epigrams.

Often she brought laughter to his lips; as, for instance, when she spoke of the beautiful and fascinating wife of a struggling artist, a lady notorious in many walks of life, who attended a fancy-dress ball at the American Embassy. “Ah,” said someone to the Duchesse de Brasnes, “here comes the latest star, gotten up appropriately as Madame Récamier!” “No,” chirped the witty old lady instantly. “You have given her the wrong name. You mean Madame Réclâmier!”

Luckily, Power’s acquaintance with the French language was close enough to enable him to appreciate the caustic humor of the words. He was far too absorbed then in the girl’s vivid impressions of personalities familiar to him only in the columns of newspapers to indulge in speculation as to the why and the wherefore of this flow of anecdote and quaintly analytical glimpses of character. But he understood later. During three long years she had existed in an atmosphere that checked every natural impulse. She had become a statue, beautiful but impassive. Now she was once more a woman. The marble was coming to life. Love had breathed on her, and the red blood was flowing freely in her veins.

He could have listened till dawn; but the sweet voice suddenly grew husky, and she expressed a desire to rest.

“Derry,” she said, with the unthinking confidence of a tired child, “let me lean my head on your shoulder. With your arm around me, I do believe I can forget even this dreadful lightning.”

Within a minute she was asleep. She merely smiled and murmured something about “putting the light out” when he laid her gently in a roughly carpentered but fairly comfortable bunk, and covered her with a rug. Then he, too, after a brief vigil to assure himself that she would not waken, stretched himself in the second bunk.

When next they opened their eyes the sun was shining from a cloudless sky, and Peter was shouting that they just had time to dip their hands and faces in the lake before the “cawfee kem to a bile.”