Marten had not spoken to Power, nor, to his knowledge, seen him, for twenty-three years. The young and enthusiastic engineer he had sent to the Sacramento placer mine had developed into a man whose appearance and words would sway any gathering, no matter how eminent or noteworthy its component members. For some reason, utterly hidden from the financier"s ken,--for he was not one likely to recognize the magnetic aura which seemed to emanate from Power in his contact with men generally,--he was momentarily cowed. He sank back into the chair he had just quitted, but said, truculently enough:
"It would certainly be less melodramatic if my servants could enter the room should I be summoned in haste."
Power unlocked the door, and drew up a chair facing his unwilling host.
"I am here," he began, "to urge on you the vital necessity of dismissing the Principe del Montecastello from your house, and of permitting the announcement of Nancy"s forthcoming marriage with the Honorable Philip Lindsay, son of the Earl of Colonsay----"
"I guessed as much," broke in Marten wrathfully. "Colonsay is as poor as a church mouse. It was _your_ money which that young prig paraded before my astonished eyes."
"I thought it advisable to state the motive of my visit frankly," said Power. "I take it you are not inclined to discuss the matter in an amicable way; though I am at a loss to understand why--before I have reached any of the points I want you to consider--you are so markedly hostile both to me and to my purpose."
"Then I"ll tell you," and Marten took a letter from a portfolio on the table. "It appears that my late father-in-law, Francis Willard, had taken your measure more accurately than I. I remember treating you as a trustworthy subordinate; but your conduct during my temporary absence from America at a certain period led him to regard you as unprincipled and knavish. He has been dead several years; but he still lives to watch you. He left funds with a firm of lawyers in New York to carry out his instructions, which were that, if ever you were found hanging about any place where I or any member of my family was residing, I should be warned against you, because, owing to his action, and that alone, my dear wife was saved from something worse than a mere indiscretion in which you were the prime factor. A dead hand can reach far sometimes. On this occasion it has stretched across the Atlantic. The communication I received a few days ago is quite explicit. These lawyers have, at times, been much troubled to discover your whereabouts; but, on this occasion, their English agents have kept their eyes open."
""Can vengeance be pursued farther than death?"" murmured Power, shocked by this revelation of Willard"s undying hatred.
The other did not recognize the quotation.
"Yes, and what is more," he snarled, "they go on to say that Willard has intrusted a doc.u.ment to their care which will scare you effectually if this present remonstrance is unavailing. In that event, they will act on their own initiative, and not through me. I wonder what the precious scandal is?"
"I am here to make it known, known beyond reach of doubt or dispute."
Marten moved uneasily. He tossed the letter back into the portfolio, and glared at Power in silence for a few seconds.
"I neither care to hear your secrets nor mean to attach any significance to them when heard," he said, at last. "My only anxiety is to prevent you from sapping my daughter"s affections from me. d.a.m.n you, you have caused the one cloud that has come between us!"
"I, too, have Nancy"s welfare at heart."
"I don"t see what good purpose you serve by alluding to my daughter in that impertinently familiar way."
"Now we are close to the heart of the mystery. Nancy is not your daughter! She is my daughter!"
Marten leaned back in his chair, and glowered at the self-possessed man who had uttered these extraordinary words so calmly. His voice was tinged with sadness, it is true, but otherwise wholly devoid of emotion.
"Do you realize what you are saying?" demanded the older man, and the words came thickly, as though he spoke with difficulty.
"Yes."
"But such raving is not argument. I thought you remarked that you were here to convince me of the error of my ways."
Power produced an envelop, and extracted some papers. "Read!" he said, leaning forward and thrusting the folded sheets before Marten. "The letters quoted there are not in original, of course. I have left those in safe-keeping, and they will be burnt on the day I know for certain that my daughter is married to the man she loves. Read! Note the dates!
I need not say another word. I have supplied such brief explanatory pa.s.sages as are required. I was not aware that Mowlem & Son had tendered other evidence. Though slight, it is helpful."
And Marten read, and his face, dark and lowering as he began, soon faded to the tint of old ivory. For his hawk"s eyes were perusing the story of his own and Willard"s perfidy, and of his wife"s revolt, and love, and final surrender. It was soon told. Nancy"s pitiful scrawl, left in the hut by the lake, Willard"s letter to Mrs. Power, the two cablegrams, and Nancy"s two letters from London--these, with Power"s notes, giving chapter and verse for his arrival at Newport, his flight with Nancy into the Adirondacks, and her departure with Willard, made up a doc.u.ment hard to disbelieve, almost impossible to gainsay. Some dry and faded strands of white heather had fallen from among the papers to the table, and Marten gave no heed to them at first. Now he knew he was gazing at the remnants of Nancy"s bridal bouquet.
The husband whom she loathed and had deserted, who was so detestable in her sight that she died rather than remain his wife, did not attempt to deny the truth of that overwhelming indictment. Indeed, its opening pa.s.sages, laying bare his own scheming, must have convinced him of the accuracy of the remainder. With the painstaking care of one to whom the written word was all-important, he read and reread each letter, particularly Nancy"s pathetic farewell. Then, darting one wolfish glance at Power, he thrust his right hand suddenly toward a drawer. Power was prepared for some such movement, and leaped with a lightning spring born of many a critical adventure in wild lands, when a fraction of a second of delay meant all the difference between life and death. Marten was not a weakling; but he was no match for the younger man"s well-trained muscles. After a brief struggle the automatic pistol he had taken from its hiding-place was wrested from his grasp.
"You may shoot, if you like, when I have finished with you, but not before," said Power, when his breathless adversary seemed to be in a fit condition to follow what he was saying. "I am prepared to die, and by your hand if you think fit to be my executioner; but first you must know the penalty. If I do not return to my friend"s house before a fixed hour, an exact copy of all that you have read will be sent to the father and uncle of that detestable blackguard you have chosen to marry my daughter. It seems that Italians are blessed with fine-drawn scruples in such matters, and the revelation of a blot in Nancy"s parentage will be fatal to your precious project. Copies will also be given to Nancy herself, and to Philip Lindsay. If I know anything of men, I fancy that he, at any rate, will not flout her because of her mother"s sin. In the event of my death, she becomes my heiress; so she will be quite independent of your bounty, and, after the first shock and horror of comprehension has pa.s.sed, I think she has enough of her mother"s spirit, and of my fairly strong will, to defy any legal rights you may try to enforce as her reputed father. I am talking with brutal plainness, Marten, because you"ve got to understand that you are beaten to your knees. Now I"ll repeat my terms. Dismiss an unspeakable cad from your house--not forcibly, of course, but with sufficient conviction that he cannot refuse to go--agree to Nancy"s marriage with the man of her choice--and she should wait another year, at least, whether or not Lindsay be the man--and I burn everything, copies and originals, on her wedding day. Refuse, and you know the sure outcome. There is your pistol. It should do its work well at this short range. Shoot, if you must! I am ready!"
CHAPTER XX
THE Pa.s.sING OF THE STORM
Marten"s hand closed round the b.u.t.t of the pistol, and, during a few seconds, Power thought that he was a doomed man. Even in England, a land where deeds of violence are not condoned by lawless unwritten law, he knew he was in deadly peril. If Marten shot him, there was reasonable probability that punishment might not follow the crime. His own actions would bear out the contention that Marten had killed him in self-defense. He had palpably forced his way in; the warning letter from the New York lawyers would count against him; legal ingenuity could twist in Marten"s favor the very means he was using to safeguard Nancy"s child. But he did not fear death. Rather did he look on it as the supreme atonement. "Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friend," and, in giving his life for an innocent girl, he was surely obeying her mother"s last request.
But Marten, still clutching the pistol--a modern weapon of fearsome effect when fired in conditions which made faulty aim impossible--seemed to be marshaling his disrupted thoughts. His eyes were veiled, his body was bent as though old age had suddenly beset him; but the ivory-white of cheeks and forehead was yielding slowly to the quickening of the arteries caused by the recent struggle.
At last he looked at Power, and may have been surprised by the discovery that his adversary, though standing within a yard of him, obviously disregarded his presence, and was, in fact, staring through a window at the far horizon of the blue Atlantic.
For the first time he was aware of an expression in Power"s face that was baffling, almost unnerving. Suffering, pity, sympathy, well-doing--these essentials had never found lodgment in his own nature, and their legible imprint on another"s features was foreign to his eyes.
He was wholly self-centered, self-contained. To his material mind men and women were mere elements in the alchemy of gold-making; yet here stood one who had never sought the gross treasures which earth seemed to delight in showering on him. And he could win what Marten had never won--love. That thought rankled. Already Nancy was yielding to his influence. Unless----
He replaced the pistol in the drawer where it was kept, ever within reach--he had ruined opponents by the score, and some were vengeful. The movement awoke Power from a species of trance, and their eyes met.
"You win," said Marten laconically.
Power sat down again. The simplicity of his self-effacement almost bewildered the other, on whom the knowledge was forced that, had he raised and pointed the death-dealing weapon, his enemy would have disregarded him.
"I want to ask you a few questions," he continued bruskly. "I suppose you and I can afford now to tell each other the naked truth. Why are you raising all this commotion after twenty years?"
"I am only fulfilling the mandate given in--in your wife"s last letter."
"My wife. You admit, then, that she _was_ my wife?"
Power did not answer, and Marten tingled with the quick suspicion that he was opening up the very line of inquiry in which he was most vulnerable.
"Anyhow, let us endeavor to forget what happened twenty years ago," he went on, affecting a generosity of sentiment he was far from feeling.
"What I wish to understand is this--how do you reconcile your regret, or repentance, or whatever you choose to call it, for bygone deeds, with your attempt now to come between me and my daughter. Yes, d.a.m.n you, whatever you may say or do, you cannot rob me of the nineteen years of affection which at least one person in the world has given me!"
Power pa.s.sed unheeded that sudden flame of pa.s.sionate resentment.
"It is natural, in a sense, that you should misread the actual course of events," he said. "You may not be aware that I have been a constant visitor to this part of Devonshire during many years, and that, in hiring Valescure, you were really seeking me instead of me, as you imagine, seeking you. I met Nancy by accident. We became friends. It was the impulse of a girl deprived of the one adviser in whom she should have complete trust that led her to confide in me."
"What do you mean by that?"
"You, her loved and honored father, were using your authority to force her into a hated marriage."
"I didn"t treat matters so seriously. I never heard of this young Lindsay as a candidate before last week."
"Had you taken a tenth part of the trouble it has cost me, you would have ascertained that the Principe del Montecastello was about as suitable a mate for Nancy as a carrion crow for a linnet."
"He was a bit wild in his youth, but would become a model husband. I know that type of man well. At fifty he would be taking the chair at rescue meetings."
Again Power remained silent, and Marten was obliged to reopen the discussion.