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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.”

They were out in a jiffy, and found themselves in a fairyland. On the one hand, green and blue mountains rose in an almost unscalable rampart; on the other, across two miles of a silvery mirror ordinarily a lake, a wooded landscape fell away in gorgeous tints and ineffable distances. The song of birds trilled in the air, and the fresh, keen scent of the rain-washed pines was pungent in their nostrils. After one delighted glance at this circumambient Paradise, they raced to the water, and, as they ran, Nancy noticed the phenomenally clean-cut reflection of the opposite shore.

“Derry,” she cried, “just look at that picture! Can you wonder if I hardly know whether I am standing on my head or my heels?”

Perhaps, of all the tender memories which Power has hoarded through the years, he is most tenacious of his recollection of Nancy as she was that morning. She seemed some wood-nymph clothed in the garments of civilization, that modern cult which the Greeks, those true poets and clear thinkers, would have scoffed at. Yet, so graceful were her movements, so bewitching her mobile face, so artistic the careless knot into which she had twisted her wealth of nut-brown hair, that not even the Boston tailor of a bygone generation who had equipped her at sight with a fawn-colored coat and skirt could hide the symmetry of her form or impair her winsome beauty.

The lake was oval in shape, and an imaginary line drawn from shore to shore at its center would measure more than a mile. The hut stood half a mile north of the eastern end of this line, and a summer hotel, patronized mostly by zealots of rod and hook, lay half a mile south of it on the opposite side. Thus, except on the rare occasions when a fishing canoe came that way – and the water was so alive with fish that the requisite paddling meant so much wasted time and effort – they were absolutely shut off from the world. Even while they were scampering to the spot where they had landed the night before, Power was noting a tree-shrouded creek where a tiny stream from the hills babbled the last of its brief life into the placid bosom of the lake. There, he decided, it would be easy to contrive an admirable bathing-place for Nancy, as she was only a timid swimmer, having acquired the art quite recently. He himself was equally at home in sea, river, and lake. On one occasion, during his engineering novitiate, he had swum across the Arkansas River when it was almost at flood level, and it needs those who have seen and heard that turbulent stream roaring through its rocky canyons between Pueblo and Las Animas to appreciate the feat at its true worth.

Then he would teach her how to fish and shoot; for they must be self-supporting to a large extent, though the hotel provided a well-equipped base for this foray into the wilds of the Adirondacks. Yes, they would have a glorious time, living like Indians, yet tempering their savagery by the sweet communion of kindred souls, with never a newspaper nearer than the hotel, their address a tangle of wooded mountains, and their solitary book a copy of Milton’s poems, which, Nancy had said once in Newport, she had never appreciated properly, and which Power, an enthusiast, had recommended to her close study as the well of English, pure and undefiled.

Nor was their earliest day-dream any fantasy, or other than a superficial glimpse of delights which expanded hourly before their enraptured vision. A whole fortnight slipped away so rapidly in this Elysium that Nancy, keeping a housewifely eye on stores, discovered the flight of time only by the urgent need of replenishing a cupboard bare of coffee, and sugar, and bacon, and other essentials, notably matches; for the summer camp has yet to be built in which the supply of matches has endured to the end.

Usually, when a visit to the hotel became necessary, Peter Granite took the canoe, while Derry and Nancy, escorted by Guess, rambled off for the day into the hills behind the hut. They had no fear of getting lost, because Power was endowed with a sixth sense in all matters pertaining to topography, while the dog was credited by his master with an infallible knowledge of the homeward way at dinnertime. But on this day, by unhappy chance, Nancy announced that she wanted the cabin clear of men while she indulged in a feminine foible, common to all her sex, known as spring cleaning. Season or clime is immaterial; when that microbe seizes a woman she has to undergo the disease from the earliest symptoms to complete convalescence. The premonitory signs are unmistakable. She begins by a ruthless survey of corners, floors, spidery rafters, and grimy windows. Her eyes sparkle, she turns up the sleeves of her blouse, dons an apron, and arranges for unlimited quantities of hot water and soap. Nancy possessed no apron; but a square of sacking and some cord soon settled that difficulty.

Therefore, deeming themselves wise, Derry and Peter fled, leaving the dog and a double-barreled shotgun as safeguards. Not that any sort of protection was needed in that favored region. The predatory tramp cannot exist there; the inhabitants are the most courteous and law-abiding people in America; the only strangers are city holiday-makers of the quiet and cultured type.

The men promised to remain away two hours. Considering the time altogether too short for the thorough cleansing of the hut, Nancy set to work with a will, and when first she thought of glancing at her watch she found that one hour had sped already. Guess was sitting in the sun, blinking lazily at a beetle which had been disturbed, and was now scuttling away for dear life. Possibly the dog was wondering why uneasy mortals should not rest when not hunting; but, despite his canine philosophy, he was keeping watch and ward with due vigilance, for he rose suddenly, and growled.

Nancy knew that he hardly ever barked; but his growl was an unfailing indication of the near presence of some intruder; whether man or animal remained to be seen. An occasional wolf, and a species of small black bear – the latter very scarce – were the only dangerous creatures which could possibly come near the cabin, and then only by accident; so Nancy was merely obeying Peter’s behests in picking up the gun, and making sure that both barrels were loaded, before going to investigate the cause of the dog’s uneasiness. Out of the tail of her eye she noted that he had stalked away deliberately toward the back of the cabin. Whatever it was that had disturbed his siesta, he was still bidding it defiance; so she hurried somewhat, and, the morning sun being in her eyes, saw, without instant recognition, a man of small stature standing motionless some yards away among the undergrowth.

Then a well-remembered voice chilled her heart with terror; for her father cried angrily:

“Call that brute off! He looks like flying at my throat!”

During a few seconds of icy fear and foreboding she could neither move nor speak. The dog, quick to learn that this stranger was unwelcome, snarled with louder menace, and the fur rose along his spine.

“Do you hear?” shouted Willard, now thoroughly alarmed. “Do you want me to shoot him?”

“Down, Guess!” she contrived to say, in a queer falsetto; for her tongue seemed palsied, and her throat had gone dry. But the mechanical effort at speech served to restore her faculties, and she continued more naturally:

“You startled both Guess and myself, Father. The dog will not hurt you. Use his name – Guess. Then he will wag his tail and make friends.”

Guess, however, belied this good character. He allowed Willard to approach; but eyed him with covert suspicion. In her panic of distress and apprehension the girl had forgotten that her father was one of that small company of human beings who dislike dogs, and whose antipathy is returned in double measure by the animal which, above all others, is regarded as the friend of man. Still, Guess obeyed orders, with reservations, and contented himself by displaying an alert watchfulness widely at variance with his earlier state of dignified repose.

“Of course, you know why I am here?” began Willard, smiling complacently. Nancy’s evident agitation put him at once in a superior position, and his mean soul rejoiced in the fact; for it was he who should be afraid, and not his daughter.

“No,” she faltered, turning her frightened eyes toward the lake.

Oh, if Derry would only come back sooner than he had promised! She half formed a desperate resolve to fire both barrels of the gun, and thus summon him with all speed, because the reports would be heard easily across that mile and a half of placid water.

“I’ve come to take you away,” said the harsh voice at her shoulder. “I got your letter, and managed to find out where you were hiding. Now you must come with me, straight away, do you understand?”

The sheer absurdity of his querulous words helped to stem the rising flood of agony which threatened to overwhelm her; for at that moment she was nearer to fainting than she had ever been before.

“You had better have stayed away than come here in anger and ask a thing that is impossible,” she said.

“Impossible! Nothing is impossible – to a woman. Your husband knows nothing of your conduct. No one in the world knows, except myself.”

If Nancy were not quite distraught and bereft of her quick intelligence, she would have detected a note of breathless questioning and doubt in that confident assertion. Willard could not be certain that neither she nor Power had written to Marten; he had staked all, or nearly all, on ascertaining the fact during the first outburst of talk, while the girl was still quaking with fright at his unexpected appearance. He was well aware of her courage and adroitness. When she regained self-control – a matter of a minute or less – she might be clear-sighted enough to grasp the paramount importance of the admission that she had not as yet placed an insuperable barrier between herself and the man she had cast off. Once alive to its vital significance, he thought, she would either deceive him deliberately, and take the earliest opportunity of rectifying an error in strategy, or, at any rate, keep him in ignorance of the exact position of affairs. Unhappily, he counted well. Nancy was far too dismayed by his presence to pay heed to tricks and turns of speech.

“Father,” she said brokenly, “I have so much to endure that you, for one, should spare me your taunts.”

“I’m not taunting you,” he urged. “I want to save you from yourself. By a stroke of good luck I was able to make it appear that you and I missed each other in Newport, owing to a railroad accident. Your friends on the island believe you are with me in New York. If we were to arrive at Newport tomorrow, not a living soul, except me, would know what has happened. I shall be dumb, you may well believe, and I suppose your – this fellow Power – will hold his tongue? Surely he is man enough for that!”

Beneath the brown of sun and air, Nancy’s forehead and cheeks had assumed the pallor of camaïeu gris, that wan tint with which the monkish illuminators of missals were wont to depict the sufferings of martyrs; but they now flushed with the red stain of unflinching resolve, for her father’s loathsome suggestions aroused all that was high-minded and virile in her character.

She withdrew a pace, and threw the gun across her body as though to protect herself from an assassin’s knife.

“How can you so demean yourself?” she cried hysterically. “Go away, and never let us meet again until you have taught yourself to think decently! Return to Hugh Marten now? Leave the man I love, and act the part of a faithful wife to one whom I hate? Even Marten, bad as he is, would shudder at the thought if he could hear you utter it!”

Willard smiled again in ghastly humor. At least, there was one obstacle the less. She had not written! But his ill-timed mirth changed quickly to a snarl; for Guess had interpreted this angry scene in his own way, and was ready to begin a fray already postponed unduly.

“Can’t you beat off this damned dog?” came the cry. “Let us go into the house, and tell the cur to stop outside.”

Once again was Nancy prompted to fire the signal that would bring Power in hot haste to her side; but she repressed the notion, deeming herself calmer now, more assured, more confident in the justice of her cause and her ability to set it forth convincingly. Indeed, her bewildered brain was actively at work already devising means whereby Derry and her father should be kept apart. She did not want them to quarrel beyond redemption. Time, she hoped and believed, would assuage present bitterness, and, if the gods were kind, the coming years might find the older man in a mood to yield to other claims on his forgiveness.

“Lie down, Guess!” she said, patting the dog’s head. “Just curl up there in the sun. Yes, that’s a dear! Lie down!”

Guess did not curl up; but stretched himself on the grass in front of the door, resting his head between his paws, and keeping a pair of particularly bright eyes fixed on Willard. He would have treated a tame snake or a performing bear in much the same way, if so bidden by someone whom he trusted.

Father and daughter entered the cabin, which was all of a jumble owing to the cleansing operations. Nancy unloaded the gun – why, she hardly knew, because that was the first thing Derry would attend to when he returned. Placing the weapon on the table, she essayed a forlorn smile at the disorder the place was in.

“Derry and Peter have gone to the hotel for stores,” she said, “and I took the opportunity to tidy our small castle.”

“I saw them crossing the lake,” said Willard. “I have been waiting two days for the chance that offered this morning. You see, Nancy, you and I had to thresh out matters between our two selves. When all is said and done, the future concerns us far more than any other person.”

Nancy looked across the lake. There was no sign of the canoe, and she was glad of it.

“Now, Dad,” she said, tuning her utterance to a softer key in valiant endeavor to place their relations on a friendly footing, “I hope you will try and think less harshly of Derry and me. What is done cannot be undone – ”

“It can be put straight, which is the next best thing,” broke in Willard fiercely. “I’m not here to listen to your plans; but you must listen to mine! I have no time to lose, nor have you; so I’ll put my meaning in the plainest words possible, and I’ll thank you not to interrupt me. I’m not going to lecture you on morality, and that sort of thing – that’s not my business. I have followed you with one object, and one only, and that is to take you back to your husband. Don’t try to shut me up!” he almost screamed; for Nancy’s indignation had crimsoned her face and neck again. “You’ve got to hear what I have to say, and it must be here and now. You’ll know why when I have finished. I’ve thought this wretched affair through from A to Z, and my way has to be your way – unless you prefer the alternative. You either come with me now, this instant, and promise not to leave me until I hand you over to your husband, or I shall shoot Power at sight. That is my offer. Take it or leave it. I give you your fancy man’s life in exchange for your obedience. Refuse, and I fill him full of lead. I’m running no bluff on you. I mean just what I am saying. I am not even taking any great risk, because there isn’t a jury in America that would convict a father for killing the man who betrayed his daughter while her husband’s back was turned. The dirty hound! I’ve got both him and you in a tight place, and now you’re going to suffer, each of you. Condemn him to death if you like. I don’t care a red cent which way your choice goes. But, if you want him to live, you must return to Marten, and be his good and loving wife once more. No, you gain nothing by shrinking away in horror at the notion. Nor will death serve your ends, since a silly woman would think little of giving her life to save her lover. You have my full and complete terms, no less, in exchange for Power’s life. It won’t save him if you agree to come away with me and throw yourself overboard before our steamer reaches Europe. That will mean simply that I take the next boat west, and kill Power. My plea still holds good. I am prepared to face any court with the proofs of my story. But I can’t waste any more time. Which is it to be – go or stay – give Power his life or take it? If you want to please me, which is about the last thing you would think of, refuse to come with me, because I am aching to empty these into his rotten carcass.”

Nancy had shrunk from his growing frenzy no less than from his monstrous decree; but her dilated eyes were fixed on his, utterly regardless of the brace of heavy-caliber revolvers he had produced, apparently to lend a theatrical effect to his words. In truth, the man had no such thought in his mind. He was beyond the reach of any impulse of that sort. His maniacal fury was real enough to convince the most skeptical that he fully intended every word of that murderous threat. Nor did the distracted girl harbor any doubt on that score. Suddenly, awfully, she had been scourged to the verge of a precipice, and it was borne in on her she had no option but to make the heartrending decision which the man whom she had once loved as a father was forcing on her.

Her very lips blanched, and she gazed at Willard with all the hatred and passionate scorn of a woman wronged beyond redress.

“You – you – ” she gasped incoherently, “you are not God! It is God alone who wields such power over men and women. He, and He only, may pronounce a decree of life or death against those who have sinned – not you, a man who sold his own daughter for money!”

“Power told you that, did he? The story came well from the mouth of the cheat who robbed me of my property.”

“But that is a lie. Why demean yourself by uttering such a plea?”

“We can argue the rights and wrongs of the matter some other time. Are you coming with me, or not?”

“No, a thousand times no!” she almost shrieked.

Willard repocketed the pistols, and turned to leave the hut. “That’s right!” he chuckled sardonically. “I’d as soon have it that way as the other.”

Nancy was quite beside herself with agony, or she would never have snatched up the gun and held it pointblank at his back.

“Stop!” she screamed. “Stop, or I vow to Heaven I’ll fire!”

He faced her again, and his frenzy was comparable only with that of the distracted girl who threatened him.

“If you want to shoot me you must reload your gun,” he said, and his face grew livid, though not with fright. “Do you imagine that an old man like me fears death? Shoot, I tell you, and see if my last curse does not part you and Power. Test his love by telling him you are a murderess – that you have killed your own father. Ask him to help in hiding my body, and then cower in hourly terror, both of you, till a New York bank sends to my lawyer the letter I have left in its charge. Shoot me now, and I’ll die happy in the knowledge that Power and you will be tried for my murder.”

She dropped the gun, and burst into a tempest of weeping; but her tears seemed but to harden Willard into an even more callous and determined mood.

“Don’t you forget that I am watching for the coming of that canoe,” he said, sinking his voice to a note of sinister meaning. “If Power and I meet, nothing that you can do will save him. It is possible, of course, that he may avoid me this time. You can scream a warning, and he may, or may not, skulk off out of range. But, as sure as there is a sun shining in the sky, so surely will I follow and kill him. Each moment you hesitate brings him nearer the grave. You can save him, if you like; but you must buy his life on my terms, now. It will be too late in a few minutes.”

She threw herself on her knees, and raised her swimming eyes in humblest pleading.

“Father, think what you are doing!” she sobbed, clutching at his hands in a heartbroken way. “I am your own little daughter, the girl you used to be so proud of, the girl who once loved you dearly, and who is ready to forget the past and love you again. You would not condemn me to the degraded life of a woman who loathes and has been unfaithful to her husband, and yet permits him to regard her as his wife? I may be the meanest of God’s creatures in your sight; but you are asking me to act as no decent-minded woman can act, and live. Ah, no! Do not speak yet! Listen, I implore you! God give me words to touch your heart! Have you blotted from your mind all recollection of our long years together on the ranch? Does it count for nothing that I rejoiced with you when times were good, and sorrowed with you when misfortunes came? Have you forgotten my mother? Ah, dear Heaven, my mother! You loved her, did you not? You have said you loved me, not alone for my own sake, but because I reminded you of her. She, at least, was good and pure, and perhaps her spirit is with us now, grieving for my sin, it may be, but surely not content with the dreadful lot you would impose on one who is your child and hers. Oh, father dear, do not turn away from me! Is there nothing I can promise that will soften your heart? I will leave Derry. Yes, I swear it! To save him, and you, I’ll go away and never see him again, writing him some cruel lie in order to assuage his misery; but you shall not, you must not, make my return to Hugh Marten the price of my obedience to your will!”

Willard wrenched himself free, and took a sheet of notepaper, an envelop, and a pencil from a pocket. He placed them on the rough table, and stood in the doorway, watching the sunlit lake. His expression was dour, implacable, malignant in its ferocious joy; for he held Power in the hollow of his hand, and would relinquish naught of his vengeful scheme.

“I’m glad to see you are convinced that I mean what I have said,” he announced, speaking in a cold, balanced way that Nancy knew of old, and recognized now as sounding the knell of her hopes. “Unless I am mistaken, the canoe is putting off from the hotel. It will be here in twenty minutes. You have just five minutes to make up your mind, and to write a farewell message to Power. I don’t care what you say to him, so long as the break is final. You are going with me to Newport, and straight from there to London, where Marten will join us in response to a cablegram from me, telling him that you are ill. You had better stop crying. Nothing that you can say or do, short of loading that gun again and blowing a hole in me, will change either my purpose or my terms. I’ll keep my word with regard to Power if you keep yours where Marten is concerned. He must never know. He must never see any change in you. The moment he casts you off because of Power, and I am still alive, you sign Power’s death-warrant.”

Nancy rose. She was deathly white, and the tears still coursed silently down her cheeks; but despair had benumbed her emotions, and she spoke calmly.

“You are sentencing me to death,” she said.

“Am I? Then Power dies, too,” he cried.

“No. That is not in the bond. You stipulate that I shall return to Marten as his wife, and that I am not to take my own life. But if my heart breaks, and I die, you will have glutted your bitter malice already, and Derry, too, must not provide you with a victim.”

“People don’t die of broken hearts.”