THE FORTY STEPS
During the next few days Power passed imperceptibly through many phases
of thought and emotion. When his judgment regained its natural equipoise
after the first bitter-sweet intoxication of finding his old sweetheart
desirous as ever of his companionship, he appeared to subside into a
state of placid acceptance of such restricted blessings as the gods
could offer. Nancy made good her promise, and Newport society threw wide
its doors to the good-looking and well-mannered visitor. No doubts were
raised concerning his financial or social status. A word from the
horse-fancying judge made it clear that the Westerner could not be a
poor man, seeing that he had already bought at stiff prices a
magnificent hunter and the best-matched pair of hackneys in the States,
and was in treaty for another round dozen of valuable animals; while
Mrs. Hugh Marten's manifest approval was sufficient to introduce any
similarly favored young man to the most exclusive circle in the island.
Seeing that certain things were essential, Power spent money freely,
supplying himself with a dog-cart, a groom, a valet, and the rest of the
equipment which any man needed who would mix in that fashionable crowd
without attracting attention by lack of it. Each morning he and Nancy,
sometimes unaccompanied, but more often mingling with a lively party,
rode about the island, following rough tracks which are smooth roads
nowadays, and visiting every favorite stretch of cliff and open country
time and again. When the weather moderated its torrid rigor, and sports
became possible in the grounds of the Casino or within the Polo Club's
inclosure, he bore his full share. In all that pertained to horsemanship
he was the equal of any man in Newport, and Nancy had not lost that
perfect confidence in the saddle which life on a ranch demands. Someone
gave prizes for a drag hunt, a hunting crop for the first man and a
silver cup for the first woman in at the finish of a ten-miles' trail,
and the two came in side by side, a furlong ahead of their closest
follower. Luncheons, yachting parties, dinners, musicales, and dances
crowded each day and often went far into the night. The heat-wave had
put forward the almanac, and the Newport season was in full swing nearly
a month in advance of its usual date.
Power retained his rooms at the Ocean House; but saw little of other
inmates of the hotel unless they happened to mix in the same set. His
friends of the dinner-table, except Dacre, had gone, and the Englishman,
like Power, was made an honorary member of the Casino Club; so they kept
up and developed an acquaintance which had begun so pleasantly.
The close intimacy between Mrs. Marten and the stranger from Colorado
attracted slight comment. No breath of scandal fluttered the dovecotes
of Newport. The behavior of the pair was exemplary, and, beyond the
accepted fact that, if any hostess desired the presence of one she must
invite the other, gossip about them was noticeable by its absence.
Their mutual use of Christian names from the outset established a tacit
cousinship, and the only growl uttered behind their backs was an
occasional complaint from some anxious mother who found her attractive
daughters completely eclipsed, in the eyes of at least one eligible
young man, by the millionaire's wife.
Once, and once only, before the crash came, did Nancy allude to the
purloined letters. She and Power were riding along the Cliff Walk before
breakfast, when she broached the subject quite unexpectedly.
"Derry, I want to ask you something," she said seriously. "Did my father
and you ever quarrel without my knowledge--before I left Bison, I mean?"
"No," he said.
"Don't be stupid! I hate answers in monosyllables. When you say no like
that, one suspects that it may really be a kind of yes."
"Then let me make it the most definite sort of negative. Remember, you
fixed a period. The last time I spoke to Mr. Willard before I
was--before I went to Sacramento--I had supper at the ranch."
He carried reminiscence no farther. She stole a look at him; but his
eyes were fixed on a faint blur of smoke rising over the azure plain of
the Atlantic from an invisible steamship. On that unforgetable night of
three and a half years ago, a starlit night of spring, she had walked
with him to the mouth of the Gulch, and in bidding each other farewell
they had exchanged their first and last kiss.
"Father was certainly not an enemy of yours then," she went on, in a
singularly even tone. Indeed, she might have been debating a matter of
utmost triviality. "It seemed to me that he always welcomed you at the
ranch. Why did he become so bitterly opposed to you afterward?"
He could have fenced with her, but deemed it preferable to speak freely.
"I think he was annoyed by my rapid success," he said. "He had made a
failure of things generally, and I candidly admit it must have been
exasperating to see a youngster like me, and a steady-going fossil like
Mac, step in and secure a fortune out of a place where he had met with
nothing but ill-luck. Those who get rich quick often incur animosity in
that way."
For a brief space there was silence. They seemed to be listening to the
slumberous plash of the breakers on the rocks far below, which, with the
pleasant creaking of saddlery, and the hoofbeats and deep breathing of
eager horses held in restraint, were the only sounds audible in that
wondrous solitude. They were passing a part of the cliff known as the
Forty Steps, a euphonious name describing a series of railed staircases,
cut in the solid rock, which afforded an irregular if safe passage to
the beach. Ochre Point, with its millionaire residences, lay a mile, or
less, in front, and on their left was the illimitable ocean. After a
bath and breakfast they had promised to join a large party on a steam
yacht bound for Narragansett Pier, when luncheon and a picnic at a
lighthouse would fill the afternoon. This day was precisely similar to
any other day of a whole fortnight in its round of amusements. The
weather was nearly perfection, and distinctly unsuited for a
heart-searching discussion; but Nancy seemed to be in a mood that
either invited self-torture or wished to witness the writhings of her
companion, because she would not leave a difficult subject alone.
"Supposing, Derry," she continued, "supposing I hadn't got married when
I did, do you think you would have discovered the mine just the same?"
Now he was compelled to go off at a tangent. "You resemble the majority
of your sex in your desire to raise non-existent bogies for the mere
pleasure of slaying them," he began.
"Which is the bogy--my supposition or the mine?" she broke in.
"How can I imagine what would have happened in circumstances which did
not take place? The discovery, or rediscovery, of the mine was one of
those extraordinary bits of good luck which Fortune sometimes thrusts
upon her favorites. It might have occurred if you had never left Bison;
but, on the other hand, it might not."
She nodded her complete agreement. By not answering he had answered
fully.
"Yes, the goddess was certainly kind to you," she said. "The cowboys did
not often ride through the Gulch firing their revolvers. In fact, the
only time I can recall any such riotous proceeding was on the day of my
wedding. That must have been your lucky day."
She watched him closely; but his face showed no sign of emotion. Yet she
was sure that his eyes narrowed somewhat as they continued to search the
horizon, and his lips were set with a dourness hardly warranted by an
enjoyable ride on a carefree morning.
Then she smiled, very slightly, as though she was well pleased. She was
not cruel; but any woman who wants to assure herself that a man loves
her will understand why Nancy Marten was putting Power on the rack, and
even tightening the cords almost beyond endurance.
"I'm sorry if I have worried you, Derry," she said, with a tender caress
in her voice that in no wise helped to mitigate his suffering. "One more
question, and I have done. Have you told your mother that I am here?"
There was no help for it. He lied boldly.
"Yes," he said.
"What did she say?"
"I am expecting her reply any hour."
"And Mac? Did you give him my love?"
"I haven't written to Mac since I came to Newport; but I shall not omit
a word of your message when I see him, or write, whichever comes
first.... Have you any idea what time it is?"
"Time these lazy gees were stirring themselves. Come, Hector!"
She shook the reins on her horse's neck, and the big hunter jumped off
in a fast canter. Power raced alongside, and the two struck into a
byroad leading to Bellevue Avenue. Power was busying his brain to
formulate some colorless phrase which would supply a natural-sounding
comment by his mother on the fact that he had encountered an old friend
in Newport. He knew well that he dared not tell her; for the tidings
would distress her immeasurably. But he need not have troubled himself.
Nancy never mentioned the matter again, for the very convincing reason
that she did not believe him. Her allusion to Mrs. Power was one last
turn of the screw. She was as certain that he could no more explain her
presence to his mother than she could explain his to her father. Twice
had she written his name in letters to Denver, and twice had she
destroyed the letter. On the night she met Power she had dashed off a
hot and impetuous note asking Willard why Derry's letters had been
withheld; but, in calmer mood, this dangerous query was given to the
flames. On a second occasion, about a week later, Power's name crept
inadvertently into a description of some incident at the Casino, and the
warm blood rushed to her face and neck when she found how near she was
to committing the letter to the post without having read it.
All that day Power was puzzled by a new serenity shining in Nancy's
eyes. He could not guess that, more candidly analytical than he, she had
looked fearlessly into the future and had discounted its agonies. She
felt now that she had been tricked into a loveless marriage; that Marten
had purchased her with exactly the same cold calculation of values which
he would have applied to a business undertaking. Willard had proved as
potter's clay in his hands, and every turn and twist of the project was
clear to her vision as though her husband, yielding to sardonic impulse,
had set forth the unsavory story in black and white. But it was one
thing to recognize how she had been duped, and another to strike out
boldly for instant freedom. And in that respect the woman was braver
than the man. Power was content to live in the golden present, to stifle
the longings and plaints of silent hours; while the woman who loved him
thought only of the end she now held firmly in view and recked little of
the means whereby that end might be achieved.
Their unhappy plight was intensified by the fact that their characters
had deepened and broadened alike during the years of separation. The boy
and girl attachment of those heedless days in Colorado might not have
withstood the strain of being thrown together again constantly after so
long an interval, if the woman's nature had not advanced step by step
with the man's. Experience of life, and the educative influences of
foreign travel and good society, had done for Nancy what quiet study and
seclusion from his fellow-men had done for Power. By such widely
different paths they had reached a common standard of earnest purpose
and high resolve, and Nancy, at any rate, was passionately determined
not to sacrifice the remainder of her youth because of the unhallowed
compact which sold her to gilded misery and robbed her of her one true
mate in all the world.
As she did not blink the consequences, there remained but to carry
through her desperate scheme as speedily and quietly as was compatible
with no risk of failure. Her one difficulty lay with Power himself. She
had first to break down his sense of honor, a task which could be
accomplished only by making him see clearly that her life's happiness
was at stake. And she knew him, oh, so well--far better than he knew
himself! Let Derry once find tears in her eyes, tears which he alone
could dispel, and the seeming fortress of his self-control would crumble
into dust. Let her once twine her arms around him, and what man-made
laws would wrench them apart? For, by her reasoning, the solemn
ordinances which govern frail human nature were wholly on her side. If
marriage were, indeed, a divine institution, its very essence was
profaned when Hugh Marten laid his sorry plan and made it effective by
sheer force of money. She, the woman, would be called on to pay for her
liberty in the coin minted of ill-repute, that base metal for whose
currency her sex was mainly responsible. But those friends whom she
valued would hear the truth, and they would rally round her, never fear!
Why, in this delightful island, where pain and anguish seemed to be
banished by the imperious ukase of deities presiding over the revels of
the rich, people recognized as leaders of society had passed already
through a furnace of scandal and scathing exposure such as she and her
lover would never be called upon to face.
And that was why Power was at once bewildered and raised to the seventh
heaven by her confident, contented smile when they met among the crowd
of merrymakers on the yacht, or exchanged a few commonplace words when
doing the round of Narragansett Bay and at dinner that evening in one of
Newport's summer palaces.
As his dog-cart was in waiting, he had no excuse to escort her home,
but, in saying goodnight, she contrived again to perplex and delight him
by a whispered request.
"Derry," she murmured, "make no outside engagement for tomorrow evening.
If you are already booked up, cry off. I want to dine with you in some
quiet place--I suppose there is some hotel or café in Newport where
none of our friends go. Find out, and send me a note, telling me the
time and place. I shall come in a hired carriage, and quietly
dressed--not in dinner clothes, I mean--and you must do the same. I must
have a long talk with you, wholly independent of our servants, you
understand."
"I shall obey, at any rate," he said, with a smile that failed to
conceal the unbounded surprise in his eyes. "May I put a question?"
"No, not now. Full details later, as people say in telegrams."
They parted, and he was so plagued by foreboding that he would have
driven past the Ocean House had not the horse turned in at the gateway
of its own accord. If Nancy's manner during the day had shown the least
trace of worry or annoyance, he would have attributed her strange
request to a desire to take him into her confidence. It was possible,
for instance, that some busybody had warned her that a too marked
preference for the society of one man among the many in Newport would
probably reach her husband's ears; but, in that event, her outraged
pride could never have been veiled by such a mask of unsullied
cheerfulness. If any more drastic explanation of the next day's meeting
suggested itself to his troubled mind, he crushed it resolutely. In his
present mood, the slightest hint of scandal associated with Nancy's
winsome personality due to their friendship was anathema. He would have
endured any loss, fortune, even life itself, to save her name from
besmirchment.
When he alighted from the dog-cart he knew it was useless to try and
sleep; so he lit a cigar, and sat in a remote corner of the veranda.
Then he began seriously to analyze her words. They were to meet in
clandestine fashion; not actually in the garments of disguise, but at a
rendezvous so remote from the frequenters of the Casino as to run small
risk of being identified. She would drive thither in a "hired carriage,"
and he was to leave his dog-cart and groom at home. Moreover, she
inferred that he would not see her until the evening, since the locality
of this _diner à deux_ was to be written; though they had hardly been
separated by longer intervals than a couple of hours between seven
o'clock in the morning and nearly midnight during each day of a
fortnight. What did it all portend? Was this to be their last meeting?
At that thought a fierce pain gripped him, and he was sorely tempted to
call the gods to witness that he would not return to a lifetime of
wandering in the wilderness. Yet, said a still, small voice within, was
it not better so? She was another man's wife. He must remember that,
remember it even when his pent-up passions stormed the citadel of his
conscience, remember it when the sheer fragrance of her maddened his
senses, remember it when the taste of Dead Sea fruit was bitterest in
his mouth. Of what worth was he if, for her dear sake, he was not strong
in knightly resolve? And how could he ever again dare to receive his
mother's kiss if he betrayed the trust which she, at least, reposed in
him?
A mournful and depressing reverie was disturbed by the arrival of a
carriage at the porch. Four young people alighted--two honeymoon couples
they were supposed to be--and their lively voices seemed to ring the
knell of his wrecked existence. He listened, only half hearing, while
they chattered like magpies.
They had been to a dance at the Casino, and their broken comments told
of a jolly evening, a capital band, the best floor that ever was laid,
some wonderful dresses, and an unexcelled supper. Similar young people
were telling each other exactly the same inane commonplaces all over the
eastern part of America at that hour, and similar cackle would girdle
the earth till the crack of doom. Probably the men were wise as he, and
the women might be deemed by their swains pretty as Nancy; yet some
malign despot among the powers which control poor humanity had decreed
that he alone should never know these frivolous moments, never be
granted these breathing-spaces of mild abandonment. And so, wroth with
himself, and vexed with the sorry scheme of things, he went to his
rooms.
Next morning, to make sure, he rode to Nancy's house. No; Mrs. Marten
had not ordered her horse; in fact, she had not appeared as yet, and the
pleasant-spoken butler, showing the requisite confidence in the
discretion of a recognized friend, added that his mistress would not be
"at home" to anyone before luncheon.
Then, the weather being glorious and the air like champagne, Power
whistled care to the devil, and cantered into the town to review the
ground for the night's fixture.
Newport today boasts of almost uncountable hotels and boarding-houses,
nor was the area of choice limited in that respect nearly a generation
ago. After careful scrutiny of various buildings in the business
quarter, Power selected a café run by a certain Giovanni Pestalozzi as
the most promising. It looked clean and bright, and an Italian might be
trusted to be discreet.
Getting a man to hold his horse, he interviewed Giovanni, and was
assured that Delmonico's itself could not produce a better meal if the
signor invited comparison. The signor wanted nothing elaborate, however.
He admitted he was not well versed in either menus or wines, but
demanded the best, and, after inspecting a well-furnished room
overlooking the street, lodged a ten-dollar bill as earnest money, with
a promise of ample largess if he were pleased. Then he rode away to the
Ocean House, sent a note to Nancy, and received a reply which deepened
his mystified dismay.
For she wrote:
"Dear Derry, I shall be there at seven-thirty. Meanwhile, go to
the Casino, and tell everybody that you are summoned to New York
on business, and mean to leave either tonight by the Fall River
steamer or by first train tomorrow. You are traveling by the train
to oblige me; so I am not asking you to indulge in polite fiction.
"Yours ever,
"NANCY."
He carried out instructions to the letter, and was chaffed mildly for
deserting the place just as his friends were getting to like him. It was
easy to promise a speedy return, if possible; though he felt, somehow,
that he would never see Newport again. The conclusion of his
horse-dealing transactions took up a good deal of the afternoon, and, to
his regret, Dacre was out with a yachting party; so he left a hurriedly
written message about his pending departure.
Then he strolled out, went downtown by street car, and met Nancy when
she alighted from a rickety cab at the door of Pestalozzi's café. She
wore a cream-tinted dress, and her piquant features were daintily framed
in a big Leghorn hat. It pleased him to find that she had not even
deigned to veil her face, and her cheerful cry of recognition showed no
conscience-stricken sense of guilt because of a meeting which, if known,
must have excited the suspicions of her intimates.
"Ah, there you are, Derry!" she said. "Was there ever a more punctual
person? Am I late? I had such a load of things to do that I left
dressing till the last moment. Is this where we dine? What a jolly
little café! It is just like hundreds of such establishments in Rome and
Naples. I suppose these Italian restaurateurs employ their
fellow-countrymen as builders and decorators; so they carry their
architecture and fittings with them."
"They change their skies, but not their soups," said Power, falling in
with her mood, and the driver of Nancy's cab recognized the adaptation
of Horace's tag, and was pleased to grin, being himself a broken-down
graduate of Harvard.
Ushered to the dining-room, they tackled the _hors d'oeuvres_ at once,
and Nancy chatted about current events with the tranquil self-possession
she would have displayed at Mrs. Van Ralten's dinner-table. The meal,
excellently cooked and deftly served, marched to its end without a word
from her as to its particular purpose. She delighted Pestalozzi by
taking minute instructions for the preparation of an exquisite
spaghetti, and even noted the brands of Italian wines which should be
tabled with each course. At half-past eight, when coffee appeared, she
rose:
"Pay the bill now, Derry," she said. "We must be off in five minutes,
and I am sure you want to smoke at least one cigarette in peace. Perhaps
Signor Pestalozzi will be good enough to order a cab?"
Signor Pestalozzi was charmed, and decidedly puzzled. He believed for
many a year that those two had dined at his café for a wager. If any
doubter scoffed, he would say, with appropriate gesture:
"Sango la Madonna! I tella you he no squeeze-a de gell, not-ta one time;
so, if dey no make-a de bet, what-a for he give 'er dat pranzo superbo?"
Really, from Giovanni's point of view, there was no answer.
"Tell the man to drive us to the Easton's Beach end of the Cliff Walk,"
she said nonchalantly, when the cab was in evidence, and away they went.
"There is no moon; but these summer nights are never quite dark," she
began, by way of polite conversation. "It ought to be restful tonight
down there by the Atlantic. It is a horrid thing to confess, but the
memories of Venice which are most vivid in my mind are not connected
with St. Mark's or the Doge's Palace, but center round just such a night
as this on the Lido. Coming back in the gondola, I almost wanted to slip
over the side into the still waters, and drift away to the unknown."
"Do we swim tonight, then?" he asked.
It was a relief to hear his own voice in some such apparently
light-hearted quip. The cab was narrow, and hung on indifferent springs,
and its lurching across the roadway to avoid other vehicles often threw
him against Nancy's supple body. He could never touch her without
feeling the thrill of contact, and, fight as he would against it, the
desire to clasp her in his arms and stifle her protests with hot kisses
would come on him at such moments with an almost overwhelming ecstasy.
"If I led, would you follow, Derry?" she whispered.
Heaven help him, it seemed as though she was nestling close
deliberately; yet he refused to believe, and strove to answer with a
jest.
"I have a picture of you and me striking out across the bay for
Narragansett, like a pair of dolphins," he said.
"I thought of you that night on the Lido," she went on, unheeding. "I
imagined then that when you skipped off to Sacramento you had forgotten
the little girl of the Dolores ranch. At any rate, such was my every-day
common-sense sort of belief; but tucked away in some cute little nerve
center of intuition was another notion, which told me that we had been
driven apart by wicked and deceitful contriving. And now, thank my
stars, I know that my subconscious feeling was right! Oh, Derry! How you
must have despised me! What if we had not met for many a year, and you
had schooled yourself into real forgetfulness, and some other girl had
crept into a corner of your heart, thrusting out poor little me
forever?"
The gathering gloom without had now made the cab's interior so dark
that she could not see the rigid lines in his face, nor could she make
out by any convulsive movement that his hands were clenched, and that
beads of perspiration stood on his forehead. But she knew, yes, she
knew, and timid fingers caught his arm.
"You are not to think me mad or cruel to speak in this way," she cooed.
"I have looked into my very soul, Dear, and a great peace has come from
my self-communing. You have wearied your clever brain with guesses as to
my motive in meeting you tonight, and I giggled like a schoolgirl today
at the thought of your absolute amazement when you read my note bidding
you prepare to leave Newport. But it is all part and parcel of my plan,
Derry, which rests on your reply to one small question. Do you want to
go away from _me_? Are you ready to face a world in which there will be
no Nancy, never, no more?"
"Ah, you are trying me beyond endurance!" he almost sobbed.
"But you _must_ tell me _that_, Derry. I have gone a long way daringly.
It is my privilege, my right. If you love me, you must expect it of me,
because, as things are, I am forced to take the first step. But a woman
must be sure that she is loved, and her lover alone can still her
doubts."
An impulse stronger than his own strength of will brought strange, wild
words to his dry lips.
"Nancy," he said, with the calm accents of despair, "I have never loved
any woman but you, and, God willing, I never shall!"
"That is all that really matters," she sighed, with a contented note in
her voice that rang in his ears like a chord of sweet music heard from
afar in the depths of a forest.
After that they sat in silence, she seemingly wrapped in dreams, and he
wandering in a maze wherein impassable walls showed no gateway of
escape; though the guarded path was alluring, and the air was heavy with
the scent of flowers.
The cab stopped, and they alighted; for Nancy, demurely self-controlled,
announced that she meant to take him for a stroll along the Cliff Walk.
Power, deaf and blind to externals, would have accompanied her
straightway; but she laughingly called him back from the clouds.
"Tell the cabman to wait," she said, "and give him some money, or the
poor fellow will think that we have come this long way from town
purposely, and mean to go off without payment."
He handed the driver a subsidy which caused the man to avow his
willingness to wait till morning if necessary. Once away from the main
road, and with no other company than the stars and the sea, Nancy took
her escort's arm, and kept step with him.
"Now," she said, "I'm perversely disinclined to discuss personal affairs
until we reach a certain rock at the foot of the Forty Steps. I mean to
sit on that rock, and you will curl up on the shingle at my feet, and
light a nice-smelling cigar, and listen while I explain the method in my
madness of the last twenty-four hours. But I cannot arrange my thoughts
in sequence till we are settled there comfortably. In the meantime, I'll
make you acquainted with my best friend, the Duchesse de Brasnes, whom
you will meet some day in Paris, I hope, and then you will see for
yourself some of her delightful eccentricities which I'll recount to you
now, and you will laugh quietly and say, 'What an observant little
person that Nancy is! Now, who'd have thought she could quiz and con a
great lady of the Faubourg so accurately?' But you're not to
misunderstand my joking; for the duchess is a dear, and I'm very fond of
her."
To this day Power has never recalled a single syllable of Nancy's
utterances concerning one of the leaders of Parisian society. All that
he knew, or cared to know, was that the voice of his beloved was
murmuring words which were curiously soothing to his tingling nerves. By
this time he had cast scruples to the winds. His mind was armored with
triple steel against any other consideration than that Nancy was by his
side, that her hand rested confidently on his wrist, that he could feel
her slender arm warm and soft near his heart.
And the supreme moment was rushing upon him with the wings of love on a
summer's night, than which no flight of bird is so swift and noiseless.
They reached the top of the rocky staircase, and began to descend. A
fairy radiance from off the dark-blue mirror of the Atlantic made plain
each downward step; but Nancy wore the high-heeled shoes which women
affected then more generally than is the fashion today, and Power held
her hand lest she slipped and fell. Thus they made their way to the
beach, until they had almost negotiated the last short flight. Power,
indeed, was standing on the shingle, and the girl--for, married woman
though she was, her years were still those of a girl--was poised
gracefully on the lowermost slab.
There she hesitated perceptibly. His eyes met hers in a subtle
underlook, and he saw that her face was deathly white. Yet there was
neither fear nor indecision in her steadfast glance. Even while he asked
dumbly why she waited, her lips parted, she held out her hands with a
gesture of pleading, and she murmured:
"Oh, Derry, my own dear love, it is not the first but the last step
which counts now!"
Then he took her in his arms, and their lips met--and for her there was
no uncertainty ever more.