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 b.u.t.ter, 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 that enabled me to pa.s.s 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 d.u.c.h.esse 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 ent.i.tle 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 fete 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 man he 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 a.s.sembled, 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 a.s.sociation. "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 you _were_ my 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 debris 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.