“I can write no more. My poor heart is breaking.”
God of mercy, what did it all mean? He gave way utterly. A strong man weeping is a pitiable sight, and Nancy’s high resolve might have weakened had she seen him in that bitter hour.
Perhaps she knew. She must have known. Her forlorn soul must have gaged his distress by the measure of her own sorrowful longing. But she had deceived Power so thoroughly that not for many a year did he even guess that her flight was undertaken solely on his account. And it was better so; for the story of their love might have been stained by a sordid tragedy, and Power, instead of going West that night, would have taken a special train to Newport with fixed intent to choke Willard’s wretched life out of him. As it was, he crossed two-thirds of the great land which had given him vast wealth, and much tribulation, and little joy. At New York, and elsewhere en route, he received telegrams from his trusty friend at Bison. They were not reassuring; but they did, at least, contain one grain of comfort in the tidings that his mother still lived.
But therein MacGonigal allowed his heart to control his pen; for Mrs. Power breathed her last before her son had quitted New York, and it was to a town in mourning that Power returned. His mother had endeared herself to every soul in the place. The people looked on her as their guardian angel. They almost scowled on John Darien Power when the flying feet of his horse clattered along the main street in his haste to soothe the fretfulness of a woman who was already three days dead. Why did he leave her? they asked. Where had he hidden that the country should be scoured for him during the last week, and none could find him? He used to be a decent, outspoken sort of fellow, Derry Power; but wealth had spoiled him, as it seemed to spoil every man who secured it. Queer thing! Deponent thought that he, or she, would risk the experiment at the price.
Thus, light-hearted gossip, which talks in headlines, and recks little of the subtler issues of life.
CHAPTER XII
AFTER DARKNESS, LIGHT
Death brings peace. Having accomplished its dread mission, it atones to the body from which the soul is snatched by smoothing away the lines of agony from the face; it seems even to relent for awhile, and restore to worn and aged features the semblance of long-vanished youth.
When Power looked at his dead mother, he saw her as she might have looked in placid sleep when he was a boy in San Francisco. But a discovery that is often soothing to those who are bereft of their nearest and dearest brought him no consolation. His stupor of grief and misery was denied the relief of tears. Rather did his brooding thought run to the other extreme. The mother he loved was at rest—why should he not join her? He believed, like many another man who has passed through the furnace of a soul-destroying passion, that he had drunk the flame-wreathed cup of life to the dregs. The fiery potion had swept through his veins and reduced him to ashes. He was no longer even the recluse of the Dolores Ranch, finding in books solace for a lost love, but the burnt-out husk of his former self. What was there left, that he should wish to live? Why should he not end it all, and seek the kindly oblivion of the grave?