CHAPTER XX
THE PASSING OF THE STORM
Marten’s hand closed round the butt of the pistol, and, during a few seconds, Power thought that he was a doomed man. Even in England, a land where deeds of violence are not condoned by lawless unwritten law, he knew he was in deadly peril. If Marten shot him, there was reasonable probability that punishment might not follow the crime. His own actions would bear out the contention that Marten had killed him in self-defense. He had palpably forced his way in; the warning letter from the New York lawyers would count against him; legal ingenuity could twist in Marten’s favor the very means he was using to safeguard Nancy’s child. But he did not fear death. Rather did he look on it as the supreme atonement. “Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friend,” and, in giving his life for an innocent girl, he was surely obeying her mother’s last request.
But Marten, still clutching the pistol—a modern weapon of fearsome effect when fired in conditions which made faulty aim impossible—seemed to be marshaling his disrupted thoughts. His eyes were veiled, his body was bent as though old age had suddenly beset him; but the ivory-white of cheeks and forehead was yielding slowly to the quickening of the arteries caused by the recent struggle.
At last he looked at Power, and may have been surprised by the discovery that his adversary, though standing within a yard of him, obviously disregarded his presence, and was, in fact, staring through a window at the far horizon of the blue Atlantic.
For the first time he was aware of an expression in Power’s face that was baffling, almost unnerving. Suffering, pity, sympathy, well-doing—these essentials had never found lodgment in his own nature, and their legible imprint on another’s features was foreign to his eyes. He was wholly self-centered, self-contained. To his material mind men and women were mere elements in the alchemy of gold-making; yet here stood one who had never sought the gross treasures which earth seemed to delight in showering on him. And he could win what Marten had never won—love. That thought rankled. Already Nancy was yielding to his influence. Unless——
He replaced the pistol in the drawer where it was kept, ever within reach—he had ruined opponents by the score, and some were vengeful. The movement awoke Power from a species of trance, and their eyes met.
“You win,” said Marten laconically.
Power sat down again. The simplicity of his self-effacement almost bewildered the other, on whom the knowledge was forced that, had he raised and pointed the death-dealing weapon, his enemy would have disregarded him.
“I want to ask you a few questions,” he continued bruskly. “I suppose you and I can afford now to tell each other the naked truth. Why are you raising all this commotion after twenty years?”