nor even shame. He was numb. He had passed through a long agony, and
had paid--in his heart’s blood--for his craven act. He was still
paying, doubtless he would pay until the day of his death; but a
strange apathy had come over him. His emotion had spent itself in his
attack upon Overton, and now shame had drowned him so completely that
it had submerged even his resistance, and he was only intensely weary.
The physical man, worn down by want of sleep, racked by tortured
nerves, keyed up to defend himself from discovery, to keep the place at
which he had snatched with desperate hands, was ready to give up. He
felt an intolerable longing for sleep; he could have thrown himself
down by the way and slept like a dog.
Even about Diane he was troubled no longer. He believed that she had
loved Overton best, he knew that she would side with Overton; but he
had no more strength to battle for her. He was ready to surrender.
He stumbled blindly along with the drowsy feeling surging over him
again and again, weighing down his heavy eyelids. He had only one
desire--to get home, find a spot to lie down and to sleep at last in
peace. Overton lived, and henceforth, if any one had to suffer, he
would be the sufferer, not Overton. The shackles had fallen off, and he
could sleep.
He found his way by instinct, ascended the steps, and unlocked the
door. He knew it was late, and he hoped Diane had gone to bed; but, as
he opened the door, he saw that the lamp still burned brightly on the
table in the living-room.
He took off his coat and left it on the settle by the door, occupying
himself with trifles in the vain hope of delaying, even for a little
while, the moment when he must begin again to act a part; but he heard
her rise from her seat by the fire. When he entered the room, she was
standing near the door, swathed in a delicate pink-silk kimono, her
soft, dark hair falling about her shoulders. Her eyes, feverishly
bright, looked dark and almost wild in her pale face.
“I sat up for you,” she explained brokenly. “I couldn’t sleep. I can’t
bear it any longer, Arthur. Tell me what it is! What are you hiding
from me--about the south pole?”
He did not reply at once, for he was, in a measure, taken by surprise.
He came slowly into the room and walked past her to the fire, his head
bent. He was trying to rally his thoughts. She turned back with him and
stood watching him, scarcely daring to breathe. At last he threw back
his head.
“I think I’ll tell you,” he said deliberately. “Overton thinks it can
be kept a secret, and perhaps he’s right, but I say that you have a
right to know, to decide for yourself. Anyway, I can’t go on. I’ve got
to a place where I can’t go on!”
She was breathing quickly, a horrible fear dragging at her heart.
“What do you mean by keeping a secret? What has Overton to do with it?”
He turned and looked at her. She thought she had never seen such a
strange expression on any man’s face--a look as if he had let go of
everything, as if he no longer cared. But he spoke collectedly, even
coldly.
“You were wrong in marrying me, Diane. You married a coward. Overton’s
a great man, a greater man than even you have thought. He’s willing to
cloak your husband’s craven fear to save you--to hush it all up for
your sake.”
She gasped.
“To hush it up? What--oh, Arthur, tell me, tell me what it is! I don’t
know what you’re saying!”
Then he told her, slowly, deliberately, not sparing himself, as he had
told Dr. Gerry months before.
“I left him to die,” he ended in a hard voice. “He was alive, I knew he
was alive, but I was afraid to die like that. I didn’t see a hope of
saving us both, so I saved myself.”
She drew away with a shudder, her large eyes fixed on his face. He saw
the recoil, the outraged incredulity in her face.
“You--you couldn’t have done that, Arthur--it’s impossible! You’re ill,
you’re not telling me the truth--it can’t be!”
He saw how she took it, saw that he had struck a death-blow at her love
for him. Something seemed to give way in his heart. He turned and sank
into a seat by the hearth with a groan.
“It’s true. You know it’s true, Diane. Overton’s here, isn’t he? You’ve
seen him, and you remember that I told you myself that I was with him
when he died? He isn’t dead. Don’t you see it was a lie? I tell you I’m
a coward!” He seemed possessed to make a clean breast of it, to hide
nothing, to get the relief of cauterizing the wound. “You married a
coward.”
She put her hand out blindly and caught at the table. She felt that
she was falling, and she clung to the support.
“It’s incredible,” she said, almost in a whisper. “It’s incredible. How
could you do such a thing and then endure the thought of it?”
“I haven’t endured the thought of it. It’s been torture; and now he
wants it to go on, wants me to keep on--to hide it for your sake. But I
see how you feel!”
She swept him a look in which scorn and horror mingled with a kind of
fear.
“I don’t see how I could feel any other way! I--why, think of it,
they’ve made a hero of you; you were going in his place to the south
pole. I’ve--I’ve wanted you to go--I was so proud of you! But now--I
don’t see how you could have even thought of going back. It--it would
have driven me mad, if I’d done what--you did!”
He met her wild reproach with a hard look of endurance.
“It was driving me mad. I haven’t slept, you know that. But,
Diane”--his voice suddenly thrilled with passion--“for God’s sake don’t
look at me like that--I love you!”
“Oh!”
It was a cry not so much of surprise as of dismay--dismay that he
should dare, being the craven that he admitted he was, to speak of
love to her. It was unmistakable, he could not misunderstand it; her
tone and her look destroyed his last hope. He recalled Overton’s
insult--“the woman you dared to marry”--and he covered his face with
his hands.
Diane stood looking at him, outraged and terrified by his confession.
All her natural integrity in arms, she had no pity for him. Then, as he
did not speak again or even look up, she turned slowly and walked to
the door of her own room.
There she paused again, turned, looked at him with the same pitiless
expression, and, unmoved by his stricken attitude, his evident
repentance, she went in, shut the door behind her, and bolted it with
hands that not only shook with dismay, but almost with fear.
XXV
JUDGE HERFORD rose from his chair and began pacing the room with every
sign of anger and impatience. Dr. Gerry, on the other hand, kept his
seat by the table without any apparent perturbation. He had stopped in
after dinner to smoke a cigar with his old friend, and had found him
much in the mood of a tiger who has lost his favorite scrap of meat
through the bars of his cage and cannot reach it with his paws.
“I tell you there must be an explanation,” the judge growled. “It’s
impossible to make head or tail of it as it is. If Overton wasn’t dead,
why did Faunce come back with such a story?”
The doctor stopped smoking long enough to answer:
“You saw Overton’s explanation this morning. He was lost in the snow,
his comrades supposed him dead; the Englishmen, coming over the other
trail, found him unconscious; the two parties missed each other, and so
forth.”
“I read that, of course. It’s no explanation, and you know it. It was
their business to find him. What was Faunce doing? He was second in
command.”
“Well, you can ask him. He’s your son-in-law.”
“Precisely! My son-in-law, and the two idiots have gone off and left
no address. We haven’t heard a word in weeks. It’s absurd! Meanwhile,
every paper in the country has been blazing with the news of Overton’s
return. The whole business is in a muddle--the expedition delayed, and
talk--this morning--of putting Overton in command instead of Faunce. A
pretty howdy-do!”
“Natural enough. Overton’s the hero of the great discovery; he’s
returned with the halo of romance; and he’s sure to get all the honors.
Nothing strange about that!”
“There’s a great deal strange about the whole thing!” retorted the
judge, resuming his seat and thrusting some fresh tobacco into his pipe
with an indignant thumb. “But I’ll get to the bottom of it! As it is,
I don’t like it. Any way you can fix it, there’s a shade on Faunce. If
he’d done his duty, he’d have brought Overton back--I stick to that.
What’s more, I’ll tell him so!”
“Better not,” counseled the doctor dryly. “He’s Diane’s husband--you
can’t get around that; and as long as you made the match----”
“As long as I what?” thundered the judge.
The doctor laughed grimly.
“I said you made the match.”
“Nonsense! Do you take me for an old woman? The girl made it herself.
She’s competent to select a husband. She’s got high ideals, too.
She’ll hold him to account--I can tell you that!”
The doctor mused.
“I wonder if she will?”
“She will! We had a talk the night before the wedding. It touched me,
Sam--touched me to the heart! She came down here and sat with me by
the fire, and told me how she felt, how absolutely she demanded truth,
honor, high purpose. It was young, of course, and girlish, but it was
beautiful. She said she couldn’t marry a man who hadn’t the qualities
she believed in. She thought Faunce had them all.”
Gerry stopped smoking. He quietly laid down the stump of his cigar,
and, leaning forward, his elbows on his knees, gazed thoughtfully into
the empty fireplace, for it was too warm now for a fire.
“It’s a pity,” he remarked at last, “that girls have such an amount of
imagination. It’s likely to make trouble later on.”
“What d’you mean?” snapped the judge, with a suspicious glance across
the table.
The doctor rose.
“Nothing but generalities, Hadley. I’ve got to go now; there’s an old
woman down with sciatica, and I’m on my way over to her. You let me
know when you hear from Diane.”
The judge watched his friend, his heavy brows down.
“I remember that you were opposed to the marriage. You said something
about his not being fit to tie her shoe. What did you mean, Sam?”
The doctor was working himself into his coat. He did it vigorously,
flapping his arms up and down until the garment settled into place.
Then he hunted for his hat.
“Can’t say what I may have meant. It’s too late now, anyhow. You put
your shoulder to the wheel, Hadley, and see that Faunce gets his
command. He’s got to make his own way now, or Overton’s big start will
wipe him off the slate. You don’t want Diane’s husband sponged out.”
“By Godfrey, it’s his business to survive the sponging! I can’t make
him over. I believed in him; this thing’s staggered me, and now it’s
up to him to put us all straight. He’ll have to clear himself to
me--that’s flat!”
Dr. Gerry shrugged his shoulders and made for the door. The situation
was fraught with dangers for him. He could not make a clean breast of
it without violating what he would have called his professional honor.
He was, in fact, more disturbed than Herford, for he knew more, and he
had been unable to find a clue to Overton’s action.
A solution had flashed in on him. Overton loved Diane. Was he shielding
her? The doctor, trudging along the country road in the dark, found it
impossible to decide, but he was disturbed with the thought of Diane.
Had she found out the truth?
Meanwhile Diane’s father, left alone to his reflections, found the
problem too hard to solve. He flung his work aside without even looking
at it, too nervous for its dull routine. Going to his book-shelves, he
took down one of his favorite classics, a volume of Æschylus. Turning
over the leaves, he tried to absorb his mind in the beautiful opening
lines of the “Agamemnon,” and to vision with his usual zest the far-off
beacon that greeted the watcher at Argos; but the noble words of the
great tragedy made no appeal to-night. He tried to submerge his mind
in them, but he could not, he could not even read. He found himself
staring at the printed page with no more idea of the familiar Greek
than a bewildered student in his first effort to unravel Sanskrit.
He recalled the doctor’s cryptic comments and coupled them with Gerry’s
previous opposition to Diane’s marriage.
“He’s got something up his sleeve,” the judge decided at last, with a
kind of futile anger. “I’d like to know just what it is!”
Then he suddenly remembered Faunce--remembered him as he had sat in the
vacant chair opposite, young, graceful, peculiarly charming in manner,
with the uplifted look of a young enthusiast. The judge knew that Diane
loved him. Why, then, rake up this trouble? Why doubt him?
Judge Herford resumed his determined efforts to read, and began at last
to lose himself in the return of _Agamemnon_. The evening was so hot
that he had left his window open; but a rising wind disturbed him. He
got up impatiently, slammed down the sash, and returned to his book.
He had been reading half an hour longer when he heard a carriage
stopping at his door, and then a step on the porch outside. It was too
late for visitors, and something familiar in the sound made him start
up and go himself to answer the bell. He threw open the door and peered
out into the night. There was an exclamation that was like a cry, and
Diane flew into his arms.
“Oh, papa, make the man bring in my luggage, please, and pay him. I--I
can’t bear any more!”
The amazed judge looked over his daughter’s shoulder.
“Where’s Faunce?” he demanded.
But she slipped out of his arms and ran on toward the library. Her
father paid the man, who was dragging up the trunk and some bags, and
who stared curiously at the judge as he pocketed his fare. Mapleton was
small, and Herford knew him--he was Steve Lentz, the son of a local
butcher who had gone into the livery business. It would be all over
town to-morrow that Diane Faunce had come home alone and in tears.
The judge slammed the door on Steve, the unoffending, and, hot with
displeasure, made his way toward his sanctum. Diane was there,
standing in the center of the room. She had torn off her hat and tossed
it on the lounge. She stood there, a slender creature in a dark,
clinging dress that made her wild face look white, while her eyes shone
in the lamplight with a glow that was like a flame. All the pent-up
passion of her soul seemed to have leaped up in them, and her lips were
shaking like a child’s who had wept until it can weep no more.
The judge came in and shut the door.
“What does this mean?” he demanded. “What’s wrong? Why are you crying?”
“I’m not--I can’t any more!” was her reply, as she pushed the hair back
from her temples and pressed her hands against her eyes. “I’m blind
with it now. I--oh, papa, how can I tell you?”
“I don’t know what you want to tell. Where’s your husband?”
Diane’s hands dropped at her sides with a helpless gesture, but she
held her head up, meeting her father’s eyes with a flash of spirit.
“I’ve left him.”
The judge was silent. He seemed to be dumb with sheer amazement, for
he did not move, but stood, as he had entered, near the door, with his
eyes fixed on her.
Diane, forced to take the initiative, tried to control herself. She
had been passing through a fiery ordeal, and she felt too bruised and
broken in spirit to battle any longer; but she knew that her father
was as inexorable as she was. She would have to make it clear to him,
to make him see it with her eyes, or he would take sides against her.
But she knew that he would not do so if she told him the whole truth.
He would feel as she did; there was no other way to feel.
She took a step forward, laid hold of the high back of the chair he had
just quitted, and began to speak in a tone that was almost natural:
“Do you remember that night before I was married, when we sat here
together, and I told you how I felt?”
He nodded, his eyes still holding hers.
“I told you that the one supreme test of a man, to me, was his honesty,
that I--I couldn’t go on as Mabel Gardner did, living with a man I knew
to be false. I can’t! It’s--it’s just that, papa, I can’t go on. I had
to come home to you!”
“You mean that Faunce is dishonest?” he managed to ask, after another
moment of silence.
She caught her breath, her eyes dilating with pain.
“Yes, it’s--it’s worse than that. Oh, papa, how can I tell you?” She
held out her arms to him with a cry like a child in pain.
But he held her off with his uplifted hand, still searching her face.
“Is it about Overton?”
“Yes--yes!” She turned and sank down in the chair, hiding her face
in her hands. “I’ll try to tell you,” she went on in a choked voice.
“Overton came back; he came up to the Catskills. We went--I didn’t
tell you, Arthur didn’t want any letters--we went up to the lodge two
weeks ago; you know I had the keys. While we were there, Overton came
to see his aunt, who lives near by. We met, and as soon as I saw him I
knew that something was wrong. He wouldn’t tell me, but I knew. A woman
knows those things about her husband. That night Arthur came home; he
had been down in New York, and he went to see Overton. When he came
back he told me. He----”
She stopped, choked with her sense of shame. Her father, greatly moved
and changed, came slowly across the room and stood beside her, his hand
on her shoulder.
“Go on, Diane. I must know it all.”
She stopped and lifted her white face toward his, twisting her
handkerchief with frantic hands.
“Papa, I can’t--I can’t tell you all; but Overton and Arthur were
alone together. Overton broke his ankle; he couldn’t walk. Arthur took
the sledge and the dogs and escaped, leaving Overton in the blizzard,
helpless, to freeze to death!”
The judge made no response. He stood looking down at his daughter
without the power to reply. She seemed to think he had not understood,
and she repeated her story with a kind of agony which showed him that
she felt a vicarious participation in her husband’s act.
“He left him--helpless--to die. Overton wasn’t even entirely
unconscious; he--he lay there and saw Arthur go!”
The judge could not believe it. Whatever his fears had been, the fact
was past belief.
“You must be mistaken; you can’t have understood it all. He must have
left him to go for help, and then returned.”
She shook her head.
“I asked him--he never went back until it was too late.”
“Faunce admits this? He told you this himself?”
She nodded; she could not speak. Her father groaned aloud.
“My child--my poor child!”
She looked up at him, saw the grief and anger and sympathy in his
face, and her lip quivered pitifully. She tried to speak again, but
words utterly failed her, and she flung herself into his arms, weeping
dreadfully. The judge clasped her and held her close, stroking her
brown hair, tears scalding his own eyes. What had he done! Married his
child, his daughter, the pride of his heart, to a coward?
“The rascal!” he said below his breath. “The craven rascal!”
She clung to him sobbing.
“I loved him! Oh, papa, I loved him! It’s--it’s broken my heart!”
He tried to quiet her, but his indignation kept breaking out in angry
mutterings and threats against Faunce. Apparently she did not hear
them. She was satisfied to feel his arms around her, to be sure that
she was safe in that harbor. She only turned her head a little as she
nestled closer, clinging to him with hands that still shook.
“I was afraid you’d be angry with me, that you’d want me to--to go
back, because he’s--he’s my husband!”
“Go back!” The judge’s pent-up wrath broke out with some of his old
thunderous bass. “Go back to that coward? If you did, Di, I’d--I’d go
after you and pry you out of his house with a writ of habeas corpus.
I’d sooner see you dead than the wife of a coward. I’ll free you, if it
takes my last cent to do it!”
She shivered. The assurance was what she wanted. She had craved it
for hours; she had prayed for it ever since she ran away from the
little mountain house in the dark and stormy night, and braved a
midnight journey to come to her father; yet it did not comfort her now.
She shook from head to foot, and a feeling of sheer loneliness and
desolation--a feeling that might have come to Hagar when she was driven
out into the desert--came to her.
She was at home, in her father’s arms, safe in the old familiar room.
The same warm light shone from the shaded lamp on the multicolored
bindings. His old pipe lay on the table, and the old clock that she had
loved as a child drummed out the hour; but it could never be the same
again. She had passed through an immortal crisis of agony and shame.
She could never take up the old life again at the same place, for the
subtle change that had taken place in all the relations of that life
had dissolved the very foundations of it beneath her feet and left her
adrift.
XXVI
IT was soon after this--in fact, no later than the following
afternoon--that Mrs. Price hurried up the long driveway to the
seminary. She was going home, and, being small and round and oldish,
she panted and bubbled a little in her haste. Even her exactly
appropriate garb, patterned closely on “correct and distinctive styles
for more mature figures,” and her very sober little hat, shaped like a
sugar-bowl, palpitated with undue excitement.
She burst in upon the dean and Fanny, who were quietly enjoying a cup
of tea in the sunny little sitting-room, where a yellow rose showered
its golden buds against the wide stone sills of the bay window.
Fanny, looking up as she entered, recognized something amazing in the
expression of her mother’s round face and rounder eyes.
“Why, mamma, what’s the matter?” she exclaimed, suspending the
cream-pitcher over her father’s second cup of tea.
Mrs. Price dropped into the nearest chair, and, stretching out a plump
hand, gave the dean a sudden prod in the arm that happened to be within
easy reach.
“Edward, do you remember what you said--that night--about Faunce?”
The dean, still waiting for his cup of tea, looked around at her with
an absent air.
“What night--what?”
“Just before he was married. You said he was prowling around at all
hours of the night.”
“Oh, yes, I remember! He was. Give me that tea, please, Fanny, before
you upset the cream-pitcher into it.”
Fanny recovered herself and hastily passed the cup over to her father,
while Mrs. Price resumed.
“You were right, Edward--you always are! There’s something wrong. Diane
has come home--alone!”
“Humph! What of that? He’s probably in New York, closing up his
business before they sail.”
“She’s left him!”
“Eh?”
The dean jerked around in his chair and gazed at his wife in
open-mouthed incredulity, while Fanny suddenly reddened and then paled.
Only Mrs. Price, having recovered her breath, remained mistress of the
situation.
“I said, she’s left him.”
“Nonsense! Your imagination always runs away with you, Julia. They
haven’t been married six months.”
“I know it, but it’s true--the judge told me so himself.”
“Oh, mamma!”
Fanny’s exclamation did not express incredulity so much as dismay. She
had given up all effort to drink her tea, and leaned back in her chair,
her trembling hands hidden in her lap.
The dean continued to regard his wife over the tops of his big
tortoise-shell spectacles. His mild face and pale-blue eyes behind the
heavy brown rims made him look like a pallid but speculative beetle.
“What’s the matter? Did the judge tell you?”
Mrs. Price shook her head.
“He said: ‘My daughter came home last night to stay, and she has my
entire approval and support.’ That’s exactly the way he worded it,
Edward, and I--really, I was afraid to say a word. The atmosphere
seemed to be thick--charged, you know. I can tell you I was glad to get
out. I almost ran all the way home!”
“Did you see Diane, mamma?” Fanny managed to ask in a voice which at
another time would have arrested her mother’s attention; but at the
moment Mrs. Price was absorbed.
“Just for a few minutes, dear. She went right up-stairs and left me to
the judge. You know I never am at home with him. I always feel--well,
just the way I did when I was a little girl and my father made me
fire off a Roman candle. I was so frightened when it exploded! You
know I went over there to return those books papa borrowed, and I got
right into it. As soon as Di went up-stairs, he began. I saw there was
something the matter before. She looks as if she’d been drawn through
a knot-hole. I was just thinking that I never saw a bride look like
that when she got up and left me with him. Of course, I began to get
ready to leave, too, but he made me sit down and sprang this thing on
me--just like that! Somehow I felt as if I’d done it myself. I know
David never felt a bit worse when Nathan said unto him, ‘Thou art the
man!’ I felt as if I were either Faunce or Faunce’s mother, and I got
up and ran!”
The dean smiled grimly.
“You’re not to blame, my dear, unless you want to shoulder a vicarious
responsibility because I married them.”