“Oh, I shall leave you in anger if you talk in that way.”
“No, you won’t. You’re really more than a little sorry for me. You think, perhaps, I am rather mad; but, on reflection, you will be pleased at that, because a lunatic can be contented in his folly, and I know you wish me content. Here’s my train. San Francisco is a great jumping-off place. ‘Last seen in San Francisco’ is quite a common headline in the newspapers. Goodby! I’ll look you up in Devonshire, never fear. Mind you are there to receive me.”
And he was gone. Dacre turned his face to the east. During the long journey to Washington, where he meant to visit some friends before crossing the Atlantic, he thought often of Power. Speaking of him one day to a man of some influence in the Department of State, he inquired if there were any means of keeping track of the wanderer without his cognizance.
“Yes,” said the official. “We can send out a private consular note. Have you any idea which way he is heading?”
“Not the faintest. From a sort of hint he let drop, he may intend joining a Buddhist community in India or Ceylon. At any rate, he had been reading some book on India. But the assumption is too vague to be of value.”
“Well, I’ll see what can be done.”
By the next mail, every United States consulate in the world was asked to report to Washington if John Darien Power, an American citizen, appeared within its jurisdiction. No report ever arrived. Long before the inquiry reached the one consul who might have learned something of his whereabouts, Power had vanished off the map; a phrase which, in this instance, happened to be literally true. Thus, Dacre’s well-meant efforts to keep in touch with his friend were frustrated, and, for the time, he drops out of this history.
When Power arrived in San Francisco, though his definite project as to the future involved a long disappearance from the haunts of civilized men, he had not decided where to pitch his tent. He had actually thought, as Dacre surmised, of going to the inner fastnesses of the Himalayas; but his voluntary exile connoted something more than mere effacement—it meant suffering, and sacrifice, and the succor of earth’s miserable ones—and the barrier of language shut out the East. Again, there was little, if any, element of danger attached to a sojourn in the hilly solitudes of Hindustan; it even appealed to his student’s proclivities. So, for that reason alone, it was dismissed. Spanish was the only foreign tongue he was thoroughly conversant with, and his thoughts turned to Spanish-speaking South America. He made up his mind to go there, and search for his field.
San Francisco was the city of his childhood. In happier conditions, it could hardly fail to evoke pleasant memories. The Moores lived there, and they, aided by a host of oldtime acquaintances, would gladly have made him welcome; but he avoided such snares by driving straight to the offices of the Pacific Steamship Company, where he ascertained that the mail steamer Panama sailed for Valparaiso that day.
He was on board within the hour, and remained in his cabin until the engines started. Then he went on deck, and bade farewell to a land where he had worked, and dreamed, and endured, during the full years of his lost youth. Practically his last intimate glimpse of the West, save for distant views of the California coast, and a fleeting call at San Diego, was obtained when the vessel passed through the Golden Gate. Bitter-sweet recollections warred in heart and brain as he watched the beautiful and well-loved panorama. Every bold promontory and sequestered bay of the miles of narrow straits were familiar to his eyes. If there was aught of weakness in his composition, it must have made its presence felt then; but that there could be any turning back did not even occur to his vague thoughts. He might be moving swiftly into unfathomable night; his action might be deemed either stubborn or irresponsible; he might be regarded as the victim of deep delusion; but at least it must be said of him that he never flinched from the barren outlook or admitted the possibility of retreat. Hitherto love for his mother had exercised the most lasting and salutary influence on his life. The depth and intensity of that love was the gage of his horror when he discovered that he had caused her death. His emotions were incapable of logical analysis. She was dead. His forbidden passion for another woman had killed her. She might have lived seven years. For seven years he would placate her spirit “in weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness.”