Fanny, give me a cup of tea. I feel a little faint. Was that water
boiling, child, when you made it? Some of the tea-leaves are floating.”
“Elfrida brought it, mamma. I suppose it was.”
“Very likely it wasn’t, if she brought it. These Norwegians will be
the death of me yet. I’ve no doubt that they made perfectly beautiful
vikings--so crude and bloody, you know--but they’re deadly cooks!
Edward, don’t you think you ought to do something, or say something?
It’s so unscriptural.”
“What--the Norwegian?”
His wife stared at him in exasperation.
“You know perfectly what I mean. It’s shocking, the way people act. You
really ought to talk to Diane.”
“Or to Faunce,” retorted the dean dryly. “Very likely he’s to blame.”
“Oh, no!” Fanny’s cry was so sharp that both parents looked at her,
amazed, and she blushed painfully. “He was so much in love with Diane,”
she faltered. “He told me so. We used to talk about her, and I know how
he feels. He couldn’t--he simply couldn’t mean to quarrel with her!”
“So that’s what you were talking about, was it?” her father said in a
relieved tone. “I sometimes thought, Fan, that he was trying to flirt
with you at the same time that he was making love to Diane.”
“Oh, no!”
This time Fanny’s negative was low and a little tremulous. Mrs. Price
glanced meaningly at her husband, but the dean, placidly spreading
butter on a toasted muffin, was oblivious to the warning.
“I never believed in him, Fan--he’s too handsome. Personally I have
more confidence in little plain old men, getting slightly bald and
wearing spectacles.”
“Don’t talk nonsense, Edward! We all know you. But it’s--it’s really
terrible. Do you suppose Diane intends to get a divorce?”
The dean shook his head helplessly.
“Search me!”
“Edward! Those horrid boys are teaching you slang!”
“Of course they are, my dear. Slang is an expression of the age. I’m
making a study of it, but I haven’t used much. If I did, I should say
that I heard your news without even batting an eye.”
Mrs. Price rose and set her empty cup on the table.
“I think it’s time for me to go up-stairs and take off my things. I
really do wish, Edward, you’d think it over. Something ought to be
done. The judge is going to let that child ruin her whole life right at
the start. You’re a minister of the gospel, as well as the dean of a
seminary, and it’s your duty--it certainly is your duty--to preach the
word. There’s nothing in it to favor divorce, and you know it!”
“My dear Julia--” the dean began, but she was already at the stairs,
and she only called back something to him about David and Uriah’s wife
as she disappeared.
The dean chuckled.
“The trouble with your mother’s quotations, my dear, is that she gets
them misapplied. What do you think of it, Fan? You know Faunce better
than we do.”
Fanny was looking intently out of the window at the buds of the yellow
rose.
“I don’t think I do know him very well, papa. You see, he was so much
in love with Diane that he talked about her more than anything else. I
felt, after a while, as if I stood on the outer edge. You understand,
don’t you? It was as if I knew him quite well as my friend, but his
real inner self, his soul, was a long way off. I--I thought it was
because he was in love with--with some one else.”
The dean mused.
“I’m not so sure, my child. I think that was the way he made most of us
feel--as if his soul was a long way off, as if he had something on his
mind. Perhaps Diane has just found out what it is, and it’s given her a
shock.”
Fanny started, turning her blue eyes on him.
“You mean you think he’s done something wrong?”
“I don’t think I meant anything as concrete as that, Fan. I was
thinking that the inner self of some men is a shock to the average
woman. That’s why we get these surprises, my dear. We don’t know
people as they are, and when we find out their hidden characteristics
we sometimes get a jar. It takes time to settle down and find that
we can’t make the world over to suit our own ideas. Diane’s a bit
headstrong; she’ll take it hard.”
“I don’t think she cared much for him, papa. She--she was in love with
Overton before he went away.”
“Sh! My child, don’t say a word; that road leads to scandal. We don’t
know yet how Overton was saved. I suppose, if this goes on, I’ll have
to speak to Diane or to Faunce.”
“It’s not his fault, papa,” Fanny protested firmly, as she rose. “He
loves her!”
The dean shook his head.
“Youth,” he remarked, “is optimistic. There’s Ferdie Farrar trying
to bat that ball right into the seminary window, and I’ve warned him
twice!” he added, springing up and making for the door, his eyes intent
on the plunging figures on the distant campus.
Fanny heard him go out with his usual impetuosity; then she sat down
weakly, poured herself another cup of lukewarm tea, and drank it. She
was very glad that she had been so completely mistress of herself. She
felt sure that her father had no suspicions. She was aware that Mrs.
Price had, but she could depend on her mother.
Mrs. Price had her failings, but she was loyal to her little girl, as
she still called her daughter. If she knew that Fanny had suffered
when Faunce married Diane, she would not betray her knowledge, even by
sympathizing with her. There was relief in that; it would be all the
harder to drag her poor little secret out and dissect it, when it was a
plain duty to let it die of inanition.
But it was like turning the knife in the wound to see that Diane could
not get on with Faunce. Of course, they would patch this quarrel up,
unless it was about some vital matter; but they could not go on as they
had begun. At least Fanny could not believe it possible.
She had, besides, an intuitive knowledge of Diane’s frame of mind.
Diane had loved Overton, and had been drawn to Faunce because of his
association with Overton. He had won her consent to the marriage, but
Fanny did not believe that he had ever completely won her heart. And
now Overton had come back.
Fanny started as the thought took shape. Overton’s inexplicable return,
the questions that it had raised about Faunce, the gossip and the
scandal were synchronous with Diane’s flight. Was this the meaning of
it?
Fanny rose slowly from the tea-table and went to the window. She felt
a little giddy with the rush of troubled thoughts, and she blinked as
the sunshine flashed full into her eyes. The window faced west, and
the day was nearly done. Against a yellow mist she saw the striped and
barred figures of the ball-players on the distant field. Their lithe
forms etched against the orange tint of the horizon reminded her of
the Greek figures on one of Judge Herford’s glazed porcelains.
The trees were scantier here than in the hills, but their green leafage
formed a graceful screen between their lawn and the campus. A mass of
day lilies bloomed under the window, and she could see the little stars
of the blue-eyed grass. She leaned forward, both hands resting on the
sill, and looked out, the summer air touching her hot cheek and moving
the delicate tendrils of fair hair on her forehead.
XXVII
SHE was still leaning there with a dumb kind of resistance to her
inner restlessness, when she saw a visitor coming up the walk. Looking
more closely at the tall figure, she recognized Overton with a shock
of feeling. She knew that it was not unnatural for him to come to
Mapleton, but the unexpected sight of him made her mind flash back to
Diane, and she experienced a sensation akin to panic.
He had seen her, and she could not escape. She had to stand there
bravely until the Norwegian maid opened the door and led him clumsily
to the sitting-room, her square, peasant figure appearing in the
background as he entered.
Fanny greeted him, trying to say something correct and conventional.
She was secretly appalled at the thought that his resurrection from the
polar snows had in it almost an element of tragedy. He seemed to have
lost his place among mortal men, and to have assumed the guise of the
departed. His return had put their little world all out of joint.
She felt as if he must know it, must feel awkward and out of place,
even when she invited him to be seated and offered to despatch the
hovering Norwegian for some hot tea. He shook his head at this,
however, and Fanny disposed of the attendant by sending her away with
the tea-tray. Then she came over to a seat nearer the window.
“Papa’s just gone over to the seminary,” she explained. “I’m sure he’ll
want to see you very much.”
“Not as much as I want to see him,” Overton replied warmly. “It’s very
good to be here and to see my friends again!”
Fanny felt a pang of guilt, and looked up at him for the first time
with a seeing eye. He was, indeed, greatly changed. His strong face
was worn, his eyes hollowed; but there remained the old look of genius
that had glorified all he did. It was, indeed, accentuated. There was
something in his tranquil, unstirred gaze that reassured her, and she
felt at home with him again.
“We all thought you were lost,” she said simply. “Your coming back
seems like a miracle, and no one quite understands.”
He was at once on his guard.
“That seems to be the trouble. There has been a great deal of
misapprehension. I was lost in the ice, given up for dead, and finally
rescued by my English friends. I can’t tell you how good they were to
me,” he hurried on. “I was so nearly gone that they had no hope at
first, and I was so ill and delirious afterward that they didn’t know
who I was. I had left my papers with my men, and I happened to have one
of poor Rayburn’s diaries on me. They thought I was Rayburn--that’s why
no word came back about me. It wasn’t until I recovered enough to know
myself that the English nurses found out who I was.”
Fanny turned uneasily and broke off a spray of yellow buds that lay at
the window-ledge.
“Mr. Faunce told us how terrible it all was. He couldn’t bear to speak
of the worst of it. He said you were the best friend a man ever had. I
think”--she looked at him--“the thought of your death nearly crazed him
at first.”
She caught the expression in Overton’s eyes, but she could not fathom
it; only the tension in his face increased.
“I’ve just seen Faunce. They were up in the Catskills when I went there
to visit my old aunt.”
“Oh!” She pulled the yellow buds off one by one. “Then you’ve just seen
Diane, too? We didn’t know where they went.”
“Yes, I saw her. When I met her I didn’t know that she was married. You
see, we’d had no news.”
Fanny sank back in her chair.
“I never thought of that!”
He smiled grimly.
“It’s like being dead, you know,” he remarked, thinking how pretty she
had grown to be, how slender and graceful. He noticed how prettily her
fair hair grew on her forehead and on the nape of her white neck. He
was the more surprised when she turned a strangely searching look on
him, and her face flushed.
“Did you know that Diane had left him?”
“What?”
She nodded.
“It’s true--the judge told mama.”
Overton made no reply at first; he seemed incapable of speech, and
Fanny saw the blood rush up to his forehead.
“Are you sure?” he managed to gasp out at last.
“Oh, yes; mama just heard it from the judge. I--I shouldn’t have told.
Please don’t tell her that I did!”
He commanded himself again with difficulty.
“She wouldn’t mind your telling me, Fanny. Of course, I sha’n’t give
you away, though. You and I were always good pals, weren’t we? The
trouble is that I--I can’t quite believe it. I saw them both only two
days ago, and I know he’s in New York now.”
“She’s here with her father.”
He rose from his seat and began to walk about the room. Apparently he
did not care what she might think of his agitation, which had returned
with full force.
“You’re fond of her, you know her well--has she told you what’s the
matter?”
“I haven’t seen her.”
He stopped short.
“Has her father anything to do with it?”
Fanny hesitated.
“I suppose he has; you know he’s always so domineering. I don’t know
anything about it, but there’s been talk about the expedition. I
believe they had set their hearts on Faunce commanding it, and--and, of
course, it’s yours. It couldn’t go to any one but you now.”
“Yes, it can, for I’ve refused it.”
She gave him a startled look, her heart warming toward him. She knew
well enough why he had refused.
“I’ve asked to have Faunce go,” he went on. “There’s no question of
that, if she--if she----”
“It isn’t that with her!” Fanny interrupted.
“I thought you said you hadn’t seen her?”
“I haven’t, but I’m a woman, and I--I know that much myself!”
He stood looking at her, a little reassured, but with a keen
subconsciousness that recalled Diane’s white face and her outstretched
hands when she pushed him away. He had believed then that she loved
Faunce. On that belief, to shelter her, he had tried to shield Faunce,
and had surrendered his chance to command the new expedition, only to
find that Diane had left her husband!
It was inexplicable, but his heart leaped up with a sudden and
unchastened hope. He had been plunged into misery, he had given up,
and now, suddenly, as if a window had been opened in a dark room and
the light of day let in, he caught a glimpse of the horizon. It awoke
hopes that he had extinguished, it renewed thoughts that he had tried
to drive out. After attaining the bleak immunity of despair, he was
plunged back again into the turmoil of passion.
He could not find words to answer Fanny, and he was glad to see the
black-clad figure of the little dean emerging from the golden glow on
the campus and approaching at a rapid gait. It meant a resumption of
the commonplace and a little while to recover the equilibrium he had
lost.
XXVIII
IT was with a feeling of intense bewilderment that Overton finally left
the seminary. Dr. Price had refrained from any reference to Diane,
but in his very caution in avoiding the subject there was something
that made his visitor more eager to fathom the little dean’s innocent
reservations. Fanny, having fired her shot at random, had become as
quiet as a mouse, scarcely responding to her father’s efforts to
draw her into the conversation; but there was a subtle suggestion of
something important, of some tragic climax, in the very atmosphere.
Overton felt it, felt that even his efforts to shield Faunce for
Diane’s sake had in some mysterious way been forestalled and
stultified. He was aware, too, of Fanny’s watchful eyes, of her air of
divination. Hitherto he had looked upon her as a mere child, and had
never credited her with much perspicacity. Now he felt a sudden leaning
toward her, a vague sympathy that made him look to her for help;
but she gave him no help at all, and let him go at last with a limp
handshake and a half-reproachful glance, which seemed, to his aroused
perception, to express his own thought that his return was unfortunate
and inopportune. Having apparently died, he had no business to come to
life again, to the inconvenience and discomfiture of his friends.
As he made his way through the seminary gates and turned westward
along the quiet road, he was still possessed with these conflicting
impressions. He suffered, too, from a revival of the keener and more
poignant feelings that had overwhelmed him when he knew that Diane was
not only lost to him, but was the wife of the coward who had left him
to perish. He had subdued this suffering once, he had even risen to the
heights of self-sacrifice to shield her from the shame of her husband’s
exposure; but it was only after he had convinced himself that there
had never been any real foundation for his hopes, that Diane had never
cared for him.
But now a new and amazing crisis completely reversed the situation,
apparently making his sacrifice futile, for he had no reason to shield
Faunce unless he did it to save the woman he loved. He recalled Diane’s
face, the anguish in her eyes, her gesture that seemed to thrust him
away. He had taken these things for a final dismissal, when another man
might have seen in them a far more significant revelation. He began to
dimly recognize it now.
Staggered as his higher moral sense was by this new turn of his
thoughts, his heart leaped up at the change, as if the dark shadow of
disappointment had dropped its grisly shape and become a guiding light.
He felt, indeed, much like the ancient Cretan mariners when the monster
that had terrified them suddenly became a star-crowned god, ready to
guide their storm-tossed ship safely into port.
As Overton plodded along, however, his strongest feeling was one of
sheer perplexity. It was like entering a fair garden by the way of
the front gate and the sloping lawn, and suddenly losing oneself in a
labyrinth.
A determination to solve the riddle drove him toward the one person
who, he thought, might furnish a clue. If any one could point a way in
the maze, it was Dr. Gerry; but, as Overton turned in that direction,
a sudden slope in the hill gave him a wider prospect and a far glimpse
of the roof and chimneys of Judge Herford’s house. He paused and looked
toward it, his eye taking in the exquisite shading of the landscape,
the deep blue and orange of the sky, still pulsing with the afterglow,
the faint violet line of the distant hills, the nearer stretch of
woodland, with here and there a blooming althea showering its pale
blossoms against the green, or half veiling the red-tiled roof of some
house set low in the dense growth of shrubbery.
The sweet, keen air had in it that subtle fragrance which is summer.
Near at hand a robin whistled with a soft, throaty sound, sweet as
Apollo’s lute. Overton let his eyes rest for a moment on the broad,
slated roof that sheltered Diane. He had the keenest desire to see her
again, to know the worst or the best--which was it?
Had she ceased to love Faunce and left him, shocked by some revelation
of his character? Or had his own return--revealing the falsehood of his
death--broken her happiness? This thought stirred him with profound
emotion, and he turned and went on.
It happened to be the hour at which Dr. Gerry was usually at leisure,
and in a few moments Overton found himself following the doctor’s
man down the narrow hall to the study door. He remembered the place
well--the old striped paper on the walls, and the two or three ancient
prints in narrow black frames. They had been there when, as a boy, he
had tiptoed reluctantly down the hall to have the doctor look at his
tongue and administer some unpalatable dose.
Nothing that he had seen since his return had done so much to recall
him to himself, to the familiar surroundings, to the people he had
known from boyhood. The horrors of his experience in the antarctic, the
nearness of death, and the desertion of Faunce, became unreal. He was
at home again!
He was not surprised when the door opened on the old scene--the small,
stuffy room, smelling of drugs; the lamp on the table; the doctor, in
a flowered dressing-gown and slippers, reading a novel. It had been
Gerry’s favorite den since his wife’s death years before, and it was
the one place in which he seemed to fit exactly.
As Overton entered, he looked up over his spectacles, took in the big,
gaunt lines of his visitor’s figure, and held out a cordial hand. The
greeting had in it a moment of intimate feeling. The old man quickly
detected the ravages in Overton’s face, and his eyes filled with tears,
of which he was immediately ashamed. He bustled about and thrust
forward a chair to hide his own emotion.
“Sit down, my boy,” he said bruskly. “Have a cigar? Now tell me all
about it. Had a close shave, I know. I was told so a long while ago.”
Overton started with surprise.
“What do you mean?”
“Faunce told me. There’s no use making a secret of it to you, I reckon.”
His visitor gazed at him blankly.
“What possessed him to do that?”
“Conscience, maybe. Personally I should call it nerves. He couldn’t
sleep, and he got to the point where he had to speak; he was too
pent-up to endure it any longer. It’s the kind of thing doctors and
ministers run against occasionally--a sort of almost hysterical desire
to get it all out, to make a clean breast of it, and to lighten the
load in that way. It’s about on a par with sending conscience-money to
the Treasury.”
Overton slowly lit his cigar.
“I’m amazed! Faunce said nothing about this when we talked together the
other night. I wonder if he’s told any one else!”
The doctor shook his head with a dry laugh.
“Not a bit of it. He kept still and married Diane Herford. I advised
him against it, I tried to stop it, but he wouldn’t listen. The result
has been just what I expected.”
“You mean----”
“She’s found it all out and left him.”
The hand that held the cigar shook so badly that Overton quietly
lowered it out of sight.
“I knew she’d left him,” he said huskily. “Fanny Price just told me.”
“Oh, yes, the judge isn’t making a secret of her home-coming. He
consented to hush up the rest--about Faunce, I mean--until he sees you.
There’s no need, is there, to make the scandal any worse? How do things
stand? Are you going to expose him?”
Overton shook his head.
“I thought we had come to an agreement about that--to save his wife;
but I can’t understand why he told her. It changes everything.
Meanwhile, I’ve refused the command of the new expedition and urged
them to retain Faunce.”
“So as to bolster him up for her sake?” the doctor mused. “That’s like
you, Simon, but she’ll know that, too, and it’ll only make her think
more of you. I’m afraid the cat’s out of the bag to stay!”
Overton turned troubled eyes upon him.
“Why in the world did it come off? Who let it be? She never should have
married him!”
The doctor picked up an old stump of a pencil from his table and began
to whittle it to a fine point.
“For one thing, I think she was a little in love with him. He’s very
handsome, and has a way that wins with women. Then the judge was set on
it. He believed that Faunce was going to be a great man, cut on your
pattern, you see----”
Overton interrupted him in a tone of sharp impatience.
“I’m not great!”
“Well, we’ll let it go at that, anyway. Diane has imagination, and
she married Faunce; now, her imagination being rudely shocked into
realities, she’s left him. The judge is frantic. He’s seen his
son-in-law to-day, and Faunce tells him he’ll offer no opposition to a
divorce. That means that Diane ought to be free before a great while.”
Overton jumped up and began to walk about excitedly.
“It’s incredible--I happen to know that he loves her!”
Gerry nodded.
“Just so! If he didn’t love her, he’d refuse to let her go. It’s the
supreme test, isn’t it?”
Overton was apparently deaf to this; his mind was absorbed with his own
problems.
“It was an agreement--I understood it as an agreement--that nothing
should be said. I’ve hushed up Asher. He was the one who might have
known that I couldn’t have been even near death when Faunce left me. It
never occurred to me--never--that he’d tell her! It’s--it’s incredible!”
“No, it isn’t. I know the man. He’s crazed with remorse. He was
probably glad to be relieved from his secret. The thing has preyed on
him, and weighed him down like a yoke on his shoulders. He was glad to
get it off, I’ll wager!”
“He had no right to consider himself,” Overton broke out. “She was the
only one to be considered.”
The doctor sank back in his chair musingly.
“I think he’s considered her in the best way at last. She had to know.
What was wrong was not telling her at first; but he’s willing to right
it, and he has righted it as far as he could, by confessing. The judge
is bent on freeing her, and she’ll be free in a few months. That’s the
only way out of it, except death.”
Overton came back to the chair opposite and sat down. He was strongly
moved. Nothing that Gerry had said had taken much hold upon him but
the bare fact that Diane would be wonderfully set free again. It seemed
to restore the old order of things, to put him back where he had been
before she told him that she was married. His heart leaped up in a new
and keen desire for happiness. Then he became aware of the doctor’s
voice.
“It’s just as well you let him go in your place. It’ll hush up scandal,
and make people think the separation is only a lovers’ quarrel. The
question is, can you keep it quiet? Won’t these Englishmen tell the
story?”
“They don’t know much of it; I’ve thought of that. I took some
measures, too, as soon as--as I knew.”
“That he’d married Diane?”
Overton assented without looking up.