packed ice and snow. How is it possible that these Englishmen could
find and resuscitate a dead man? If they did, where were they? Why
didn’t we meet them? The thing’s absurd!” he climaxed, with an actual
thrill of relief as he remembered the situation.
Yes, it was absurd! No living man could have reached Overton after he
left him.
The dean nodded his head slowly and thoughtfully.
“Of course, of course! You must be right, Faunce; you were with him
when he died. This is a cruel mistake!”
“It’s more than cruel--it’s a mockery of death,” Faunce declared with
renewed force.
He was determined not to believe it. He was convincing himself, and he
was regaining his control of the others.
Judge Herford folded the paper and put it down.
“We’ll hear more of it to-morrow--or they’ll contradict it. Of course,
if you were with him until the last minute, you know, Arthur!”
“Yes, I know!” Faunce returned, a feverish light in his eyes. “I----”
He stopped abruptly, looking toward the door, and they all turned and
followed his eyes.
XVIII
FANNY PRICE, a pale-faced little creature, in her bridesmaid’s finery,
stood there looking at them. Conversation had begun again in a
faint-hearted way, but it hushed as she spoke.
“Diane wants to know--is it true about Overton?”
Faunce crossed the room and took Fanny’s hand in his, trying to reply
to the challenge of her eyes. She was shaken, horribly shaken, with the
remembrance of his book and Overton’s, and of that black gap in the
narrative which could easily be filled with Overton’s death.
“Tell Diane that it’s a story, a mere newspaper story,” he said firmly.
“It couldn’t be true--you know that.”
She assented, drew her hand hastily out of his, and ran back up-stairs.
The dean exchanged a meaning look with his wife. They had both seen
Faunce flinch under Fanny’s glance, and Mrs. Price tried to divert the
thoughts of the guests. She touched Herford’s arm and whispered:
“Take them all into the dining-room, Cousin Hadley. She wants to get
off without a shower of rice!”
The judge nodded, rousing himself from the unpleasant break in the
festivities.
“Come!” he said in a genial tone. “Let’s go back and drink to the
health and happiness of the bride and groom for the last time!”
They followed him through the wide folding doors, with the little
flutter of excitement that remained after the interruption. They felt
as if they had been for a moment over the edge of an abyss, and were
still hanging there, suspended by a very thin thread.
Faunce, however, obeyed Fanny’s signal and went toward the door, only
to be halted by Dr. Gerry in the hall.
“It’s true, Faunce--you know it’s true. What d’you mean to do?” he
demanded grimly.
Faunce leaned back against the door of the drawing-room, shielding
himself by holding out a portière on a rigid arm, that the girls might
not see his face as they came down-stairs.
“It can’t be true!” he reiterated passionately. “It can’t be true! It’s
some horrid story, an attempt to ruin me.”
Gerry shook his head.
“I’ll wager it is true. Didn’t you think you saw figures? You supposed
it was a mirage. It’s true, and it’s up to you!”
Faunce put his hand to his throat with a helpless gesture, like a man
struggling to breathe.
“I tell you he was stark and freezing,” he gasped. “I swear it. He
can’t have come back!”
The doctor laid his hand on Faunce’s shoulder.
“Be a man!” he whispered sharply. “I warned you not to marry Diane,
I warned you to keep away from this; but now you’re in it. For God’s
sake, shield her! Be a man!”
Faunce shook off the old man’s touch.
“Let me alone! I tell you she’s safe. It’s false, every word of it; he
simply can’t have come back!”
The doctor said no more, but made a sign, warning him. Diane and Fanny
came down-stairs together, the bride in her traveling-dress. Her filmy
veil, floating on the edge of her wide-brimmed hat, obscured the pallor
of her face. The doctor took her hand, patting it benignly.
“Good-by, my dear! Your father’s got the enemy in the dining-room, rice
and all. You’ll have to run for it!”
He felt the quivering of her fingers in his clasp, and saw the
unnatural brightness in her eyes.
“You never wished me joy!” she whispered back.
“Haven’t I? Then I do, my dear, I do--a thousand times!”
He went down with her to the motor, and he and Fanny stood watching it
go off. Then they turned and looked at each other. “Do--do you think
it’s true?” she whispered in an awed voice.
The doctor fenced.
“My child, has it occurred to you that we’re all acting as if we had
not only wanted Overton to die, but to stay dead?”
She gave him a strange look.
“I--I wasn’t thinking of that. I--why, yes, you’re right, it’s true.
It’s just as if we did want him to stay dead!”
Gerry took her by the arm.
“Come into the house, child! You’re standing out here in the wet, in a
ridiculously flimsy dress and slippers.”
She went, her arm still in his grasp, but she did not even smile.
“It’s true--how awful of us! Just as if we wanted him to be dead,
because----”
“Because of Faunce,” concluded the doctor dryly. “Don’t worry, my
dear--not about that, anyway, for I’ve an idea it’s true.”
“You mean----”
“That Overton isn’t dead at all.”
“Oh!”
It was a little syllable, but it voiced Fanny’s awful thought--a
thought which had, as she had said, nothing to do with Overton, but all
to do with Faunce.
Faunce himself, on the way to New York with Diane, found the situation
almost beyond endurance. The long strain had so racked his nerves
that he flinched at this crisis. His belief in Overton’s death still
survived. He had too keen and harrowing a memory of that awful climax
in the ice and snow to be easily persuaded that there could have been
a rescue; yet the mere fact that such a rescue meant his certain ruin
overwhelmed him.
Even while he assured Diane that it was a mere newspaper story, his
heart sank with sickening fear. Racked by conscience in the long months
since he had left Overton to die in the polar snows, he had again
and again cried out to the night and the solitude that he would give
his soul to feel that Overton lived, that he had not abandoned his
leader and friend to death, that his conscience was clear. Now, when
the thought of Overton’s return was weighed in the balance with his
personal disgrace, he was not strong enough to face it.
He saw, in a flash, all it would mean to him--the personal shame, the
ruin, the loss of his new-won honors and of Diane’s love. He felt
certain that she could never love a man stained, as he was, with a
cowardice that was in itself a crime.
A feeling of terror seized him. He had put himself outside the pale
of mercy. He knew not only that no word could ever be spoken in his
defense, but that the world would be eager to revile him, the veriest
wastrel in the street would find an excuse to fling a curse at his
cowardice.
He had abandoned a prostrate comrade, leaving him to face death alone.
Worse than that, he had taken the only means of rescue--the sledge and
the dogs--to secure his own escape. He had sacrificed Overton to save
himself whole and without a scratch. If Overton had survived, if he
knew anything, he must know this. If he had had the strength to live to
be rescued, he might know much more. He could not have been so far gone
as Faunce had thought!
Day after day, night after night, the horror of that frozen waste
had haunted him. The deathlike face of Overton had appeared to him
at nightfall and at daybreak. When Faunce, against his own better
judgment, had undertaken the new command, he had merely yielded to the
mysterious lure that draws a murderer back to the scene of his crime.
He had felt as if unseen hands clutched at him and drew him; as if a
shadowy presence, standing at his elbow, demanded this sacrifice, this
hideous march back on the trail; as if Overton, dead or alive, held his
very soul in thrall.
And now, if some miracle had happened, if the grave was about to give
up its dead, Faunce could not escape! He was facing a shame that would
be more terrible than the death he had fled. Coward as he had proved
himself to be at that supreme moment, he might better die now than
face the truth--the truth that Overton would be sure to reveal, if he
lived.
On the reality of his death, then, hung Faunce’s only hope. Once more
he tried to brace himself up with the thought that it was impossible
for Overton to have survived. Yet it was in perfect unison with what
he had already endured that this renewed horror should quench his
new happiness and make his wedding-day a nightmare. If the shade of
Overton, athirst for mortal vengeance, still haunted him, this last
exquisite torture was its supreme accomplishment. His broken spirit
quivered under the visitation.
It was a mockery of fate to have to act the bridegroom at such a
moment, to protest his happiness and reply to Diane’s questions. She
had spoken to him about the newspaper story almost at once, and had
expressed her amazement that such a despatch could have been sent from
London. Then she had let the matter drop; but her very acquiescence
awakened a keen alarm in the mind of Faunce.
He suspected that she, too, was suffering, that the thought of Overton
had broken in on her agitated mind like a blow from the unseen. She was
marrying a man who had declared to her that Overton was dead, that he
had stood beside him while he was dying; yet, at the very moment when
she had finally ratified her belief in him, the doubt took shape and
clothed itself in an almost visible semblance.
As the train rushed on, Faunce watched her. He observed the pale
outline of her profile against the rosy light of a sunset sky,
illumined and touched with glory, like a face carved from the
delicately tinted pearl of the abalone shell. Something in the averted
eyes, the softly parted lips, and the slight, scarcely perceptible
quiver in the white throat, suggested an emotion too deep and too
sorrowful for such a moment.
Again he had the curious sensation that the shade of Overton stood
between them, its outstretched hand thrusting Faunce away from his
bride and slowly but surely toward the edge of that frozen precipice
where he had left his comrade’s mortal body, abandoned without pity and
without help. At a moment when he should have been supremely happy,
Faunce was miserable. He had lifted the cup at Circe’s banquet, and
felt as if he had been transformed into some hideous monster that must
return to his lair.
Sitting beside Diane on the train, their close proximity accentuated
by the soft touch of her sleeve against his and by the faint, elusive
perfume of her hair, aware that his ring gleamed on the slender finger
of her left hand, he felt no thrill of exultation, only an intense
bitterness of soul. He could never look his wife in the face without
fear that she would read his soul, find the hideous secret hidden
there, and scorn him.
If some trick of fate, inexplicable as it was inexorable, had indeed
brought Overton back from the dead, Faunce could already foresee the
end. He began to thrash it over in his brain, to piece together every
fragment of news he had of the English expedition, and to try to
convince himself that it was humanly impossible for any of its members
to have been so near that they could have reached Overton before he
died. His own knowledge of the vast spaces of those frozen regions
went to strengthen his hope that he was safe. He told himself, almost
wildly, that it was not a hope that Overton was dead, but that he
himself was safe from public shame.
Diane, unaware of her bridegroom’s agony of mind, sat looking deeply
into the glow upon the far horizon. She had proudly accepted his word;
if he said that Overton was dead she must believe him. She had not
forced the issue by asking questions; she had assented to what he said.
As she looked out in silence, she was not thinking of Faunce.
Then she became aware that he moved restlessly, and she turned and
met his eyes. The agony in them was so intense that she started; but
before she could speak, she saw it retreating, as if he withdrew his
soul from her sight. It struck a chill to her heart. The look had been
distraught, like a wild animal peeping out, and at the alarm, rushing
backward into its hiding-place.
“What is it, Arthur?” she exclaimed involuntarily.
Before he could reply a porter came through the train, holding up a
telegram and calling out the name--“Arthur Faunce!”
Faunce took the envelope nervously and tore it open, his face changing
perceptibly as he read the despatch.
“Our holiday is prolonged, Diane,” he said, turning to her with a
forced smile. “There’s been an accident in the shipyard, the ship won’t
be ready to sail for months. Instead of three weeks, it may be three
months.”
They had planned three weeks or so in Florida--a touch of the tropical
atmosphere before they began the long, hard voyage to the antarctic. To
his surprise she showed regret.
“I’m sorry, Arthur, I really want to go soon. To me it’s the great
adventure, and now we’ve months to wait! Shall you stay all that time
in Florida? I think I’m really a little sorry--even for that!”
He was not. Secretly he had long dreaded the arduous expedition, the
overwhelming presence that he must face--face with courage, too, or
fall forever in her eyes.
“For my part I’ll be glad of the rest. You see, I’ve been in those
frozen wastes, Diane, and I know we’ll need a stock of sunshine to
carry with us. And three months in Florida with you seems to me pretty
near Paradise!” As he spoke he smiled, and his dark eyes softened with
that charm which had gone so far to win her heart. Then he added:--“But
if you don’t want warm weather all the time, we’ll come back north
before we go. Wasn’t there some place--I think your father suggested a
cottage--where we could have at least ten days of peace?”
She thought a moment, her eyes looking dark and dreamy under their
black lashes.
“It’s a little house of father’s. We could go there, of course, and
I’ll keep house. Yes, I think it would do you good, Arthur. You need
rest--I’ve seen how fagged you were. After the heat and sunshine that
bit of cool mountain air will brace you up. I should like it, too.”
Again he looked around at her. “Would you rather go there now?”
She shook her head. “I want our bit of Florida--and then this. We can
go quite easily, and not be out of reach of your last arrangements,
it’s in the Catskills, you know.”
“Where?”
She named a small place where the Herfords had long owned property.
He hesitated, regarding her absently. She turned as she spoke, and
smiled. Her face seen thus, in the partial shadow of the car, between
daylight and dusk, had a peculiar charm, and her eyes held a tenderness
that went to his head.
“We’ll go, Diane!” he whispered softly, laying his hand over hers with
the first loverlike gesture he had used since they started.
“That’s settled then!”
She sank back in her corner, her face again shaded by her hat.
He was still thinking of their northern retreat.
“That name sounds familiar. Just where have I heard it before? I’ve
never been much in the Catskills.”
She did not answer for a moment, and he looked round at her; but he
could not make out the expression of her eyes, for they were bent
intently on the hand that he had just released.
“You know the name--very well, I fancy. Think a moment, Arthur!”
“I can’t remember.”
“I thought you would,” she said softly. “It’s only a little place,
but--Simon Overton was born there.”
Faunce made no reply at all. He sat quite still, looking steadily
before him at the people in the car. For the moment it was impossible
to meet her eyes.
XIX
WITH Diane things had reached a climax long before that culminating
moment when she found that she had married not the man of her
imagination, but a strange, abstracted, sleepless creature whose soul
seemed to be retreating deeper and deeper into some hidden recess of
his being. Following out their early plans they had spent months of
waiting in Florida, but now the ship being nearly ready to sail, they
had come north and gone to the Catskills. During their long stay at
the south Diane had written occasionally to her father and heard from
him at even rarer intervals. The judge was a poor correspondent and
she noticed that he avoided any mention of the continued rumors that
Overton still lived. Now, in this last retreat, even these rare letters
stopped. Faunce had asked her to let their last brief week in their
sylvan cottage be uninterrupted, and they had left no address behind
them. They had spent six or seven days together in the solitude of the
mountains. The splendor of the sky, which was already softening with
the promise of summer, and the soft purple of the infolding hills,
had soothed her spirit, but they seemed to have only increased a deep
disquietude in Faunce.
He tried to hide it from her. She could see a kind of furtive
watchfulness in him that defeated any effort on her part to surprise
his confidence. The subtle feeling of distrust that had crept into her
reluctant heart leaped up whenever she saw his pale face opposite her,
even at table, and found that his eyes, handsome and luminous as ever,
avoided hers, or only met them with a sidelong glance from under his
long, girlish lashes. It was a glance that had an indescribable effect
of retreat, of slipping away, as if his soul evaded daylight and the
open, as some hunted animal might shun the fellowship of its kind.
In this desire for isolation, he would not even allow a newspaper to
find its way to the house, and she was as completely cut off from the
world as if his love had marooned her on a desert island.
At first she had acquiesced in this peculiarity of his, had tried to
adjust her own keen and active mind to a period of quietude, to a
dropping away of the universe, that they might learn how to adjust
their own temperaments to each other and find a common ground on which
to establish their life together; but the longer she faced the problem,
the more difficult was its solution. She could not reconcile herself to
characteristics which she recognized as wholly divergent from her own
conception of the man.
He was not frank, as he had seemed to be, nor cordially disposed,
nor courageously bent on high endeavor. He was secret, complex, and
perilously evasive. He had never once, since their arrival in the
mountains, spoken the name of Overton; yet by the swift and unerring
instinct that comes to a woman at such moments, Diane knew that his
former leader was never out of her husband’s mind. Overton it was who
loomed between them, his shadowy arm outstretched, as if, even from the
bourn of the undiscovered country, his spirit had arisen with new power
and new divination.
Diane had accepted Faunce’s word. She had declared that she
would believe her husband; and no whisper from the world beyond
those shadowed hills had yet broken her resolution. But there
were moments--in the depth of night, or in the solitude of some
early-morning stroll--that made her heart sink. When she had hoped to
find candor and stability, she had encountered a silence as perplexing
as it was evasive.
It was a relief to her when, on the eighth or ninth day, he announced
his intention of returning to the city. They were sitting over a
belated breakfast, which Diane herself had prepared, with scant
assistance from the little mountain maid who had come to the Herford
cottage to help in their haphazard housekeeping.
The small dining-room, built for summer uses, jutted out from the
house, and was almost part of the large veranda which overlooked a
magnificent prospect. The scene, flooded with sunshine and touched
with the peculiar beauty of morning, lay before them in a panorama of
spring. The distant mountains, outlined against a brilliant sky, were
blocked out in every shade of violet and ocher, while near at hand the
brown woods of winter were exquisitely veiled in a delicate haze of
pale green and rose.
Here and there a wide glimpse showed a fallen tree spanning a mountain
brook; or some tall pine raised its dark-green shaft, like a forest
spire, pointing the way. In the wonderful clarity of the atmosphere
even the most distant objects stood out in vivid outline, as if the
whole scene had been painted by some Titan artist who had used the
universe for his canvas and the colors of heaven for his brush. It had
a fascination for Diane; it even comforted her, and she sat looking at
it, forgetful of the neglected meal.
She was a little startled when Faunce spoke.
“I think we’ve reached the end of it, Diane. We’ll have to begin to
face our great expedition. I’ve got to go to New York to-day.”
She looked up with a feeling of relief, but she met again that
retreating glance of his.
“I knew we couldn’t put it off much longer, Arthur. I’ve expected you
would be growing impatient as the days passed. But why to-day? It’s
such short notice! I shall have to close up everything at once.”
He pushed his cup aside, and she noticed for the first time that his
coffee was untasted.
“I got a telegram last night. I didn’t tell you.”
“I thought no one knew where we were,” she replied slowly, averting her
own eyes from the confusion that she could not help seeing in his face.
“No one but Asher.” This was the man who was to serve under Faunce in
the new expedition. “I had to except him, of course. Last night I got a
despatch, and I must go to New York to-day; but you needn’t be hurried,
dear. I’ll come back to-night or to-morrow morning, and we’ll have a
day or two more together before we start.”
Diane understood now his frequent lonely strolls at nightfall. He had
gone to the post-office for mail that he had concealed from her. She
had a strange sensation, which involved no jealousy of her husband’s
private affairs. She felt as if the universe moved beneath her feet,
confirming her feeling, too, that there was some new and impalpable
barrier between them; but she made no sign of it. Instead, she put her
elbow on the table and rested her chin in the hollow of her hand, while
she regarded him with a quiet gaze.
“I wish you had told me!”
He moved restlessly in his chair.
“Why should I? It was such a simple thing to do--so obviously
necessary. I had to keep in touch with Captain Asher. Except for
that, you’ve been the whole world to me,” he added, with that subtle
gentleness which no man knew better how to use.
She smiled almost tremulously.
“I’m not jealous! Only----”
She rose abruptly and went to the window, looking out again on the
hills. He followed her and put his arm around her.
“Only what, sweetheart?”
She hesitated; then she turned and met his eyes. Their faces were so
close together that she felt his breath warm on her cheek.
“Only that I’ve felt, almost from the first, that there was no
confidence between us, Arthur. We’re not starting right. We can’t stand
still--we shall keep on growing either together or apart. You know it,
I know it; but there’s something--it’s like a veil, impalpable and
yet impenetrable--between us. What is it? Help me”--she half withdrew
herself from his arms and laid her hand lightly on his shoulder--“help
me to solve this riddle, dear, or----”
He was a little pale, but for the first time his eyes held hers, and
she was less conscious of the retreat in them.
“Or what?” he asked.
His tone seemed expressionless, yet her quick ear caught a guarded
note.
“Or we shall lose each other,” she finished bravely. “Don’t you see?
We’re two souls reaching out to each other through this thing that we
call love; but if we can’t find any meeting-point, we shall pass--our
two souls, I mean--like ships in the night! I’m not jealous, I’m not
curious, but I want to feel that you and I stand face to face in
spiritual confidence, that I know your heart as fully as I’ll try to
make you know mine!”
He snatched at the chance she gave him--a chance for evasion.
“Oh, I know it, Diane--it’s a heart of gold! Beside it mine seems as
commonplace as lead or pewter; but I love you--never doubt that--I love
you with all my soul!”
As he spoke, he folded her close with a reiterated protest of his
devotion. There was a moment of silence. Diane hid her face on his
shoulder.
It was useless to try to reach him. She knew it now--knew that in
protesting his affection with kisses and vows he had used the commonest
weapon of defense against a jealous woman. She slipped out of his arms
after a moment, and went back to the table, quietly putting aside the
little tray on which she had previously set the samovar. He looked at
his watch.
“I’ll have to go at once, dear, to get my train. No, I sha’n’t need any
bag, I’m coming back so soon.”
She looked over her shoulder.