From London, reinforced by a first-rate valet, the pair went to Devon. There, in a wooded comb looking out over the Atlantic, they found Dacre, the one man living in whose ears Power could to some extent unburden his heart. From him were forthcoming certain details as to Nancy’s end; for he had happened to dine one evening with the physician who attended her constantly after her arrival in England, and the doctor, little guessing how well informed his neighbor was as to Mrs. Marten’s antecedents, had entered into particulars of what he described as “a case that presented unusual and baffling features.”
“From what he told me, I gathered that she must have pined away from the moment she left you in the Adirondacks,” said Dacre. “I realize now that she not only fretted herself into a low state of health, but practically gave her life to her child. No wonder the doctor was puzzled! He could not diagnose her ailment; for who would have suspected that a young, beautiful, and rich woman was resolved to die? Now, knowing what we do know, we can see that it was better so. She would never again have lived with Marten as his wife, and there was bound to be trouble sooner or later. Dear lady! I have often thought of her, and of you. Sometimes, when that most misleading faculty called common sense urged that you, too, must be dead, I have pictured your meeting in the great beyond. Indeed, it is the hope of such reunions that accounts for mortal belief in immortality. Remember, I also have paced the Via Dolorosa, and I prize those hours, above all others, in which I dream of a kingdom where wrongs are adjusted by an all-wise Intelligence, and the wretched failures of earthly life are dislodged from memory by some divine anodyne.”
There was silence for awhile. The two men were talking in a restful, old-fashioned room which commanded a far-flung view of the Atlantic. Howard, whose acute sensibility might always be trusted in such moments, had betaken himself to the garden with an amiable collie, and the friends were free to talk without restraint.
Then Dacre essayed a cheerier note. “We can’t help dwelling on these things,” he said; “but I would remind you that you are still a young man, and it is a nice question, whether, when all is said and done, you are justified in binding yourself forever to a pale ghost. It is a poetic conceit; but the eugenist would tell you that you ought to marry.”
“I shall never marry,” said Power.
Nancy’s secret would be buried with him, and that fact alone burked any reference to Marguerite Sinclair. Dacre was exceedingly shrewd, and could hardly fail to reach the correct conclusion if he heard that “the other woman” did actually exist, and that circumstances of recent discovery alone prevented the contemplated marriage.
“Ah, well!” sighed the older man, relapsing into Power’s mood. “This is a genuine instance of the pot advising the kettle not to be black. How do you purpose spending your time?”
“I’ll tell you. I mean to do some good in the world. But I have not come here to bore you with humane projects. I’ve not forgotten that you are a yachtsman. Say you agree, and I’ll hire a yacht to take us up the west coast of Scotland and across the North Sea to the fiords.”
“Spoken like a prince! It is the very thing I’m longing for; but my purse won’t run to it, and I’m rather too old to fraternize with Cockney excursionists on David MacBrayne’s steamers or Cook’s tourists in Norway.”
So the friends passed an enjoyable summer, and liked the yacht so well that they cruised south by way of Holland, Belgium, and France, and wintered in the Mediterranean. Then Power and his secretary hied them to Bison again; whence their next journey headed east. They visited flower-laden Honolulu, panting Japan, gray China, and golden India. Pitching his tent where he listed, Power saw mankind in the mass. Everywhere, even in climes where Nature is prodigal of her gifts, there was misery to be softened, suffering to be alleviated, men and women in want and worthy of help. His methods were simple in the extreme. Attracting little or no attention by display of wealth, he and Howard studied every problem that seemed to call for solution by money wisely applied. At the last moment—often when he had departed to some far distant place—Power would send the needed sum to the right quarter. Thus, remaining almost unknown, he left a trail of well-doing behind him in the four corners of the globe. Sometimes, when the written or printed word insisted on making him famous, if Bison was too remote a sanctuary, he would disappear for many months on end, either hobnobbing with Dacre in Devonshire or elsewhere, or taking protracted tours in out-of-the-way countries like East Africa, Siberia, or the Balkans.