thoughtfully. “I knew when I first saw him that he had something on his
mind. Then I discovered that he tramped all night--some of the boys
thought he was a spook! He was taking chloral to make him sleep. I
guess he’s taking it still. One night he came in here and told me.”
Overton took up another cigar and lit it mechanically, without seeming
to be aware of what he did.
“I hated him for it at first. I kept seeing him go off through the
snow with the sledge and the dogs; but afterward--I couldn’t blame
him altogether. It was a question of being willing to die with me, I
suppose, and I had no right to ask it. Yet, at the time, numb as I was,
it amazed me, for I had thought he was fond of me.”
“He was. It was one of those curious cases where a man is seized with
panic. It may be as much physical as moral. Practically speaking, he
had lost his mind. He was of no more use than a frightened child. When
he first told me, I thought it was one of the most cowardly things I’d
ever heard of; but he’s suffered for it--he’s suffered the tortures of
the damned!”
Overton was silent. He did not say he pitied Faunce. In fact, he was
grimly recalling that terrific moment when he had been abandoned to
die. Like Faunce, he visioned the polar wastes, and, unlike Faunce, he
felt the drowsy approach of a frozen death again steal over him.
“I suppose there’s no reason,” he said, hesitating, “why I shouldn’t go
to see Judge Herford?”
“You’re the best judge of that.”
Overton looked up.
“I see no reason why I shouldn’t, unless--unless you think she--she
would rather I didn’t go.”
A quizzical light showed in the doctor’s eyes.
“Are you still in love with her, my son? Are you going there to--help
matters along?”
“I’m still in love with her,” Overton replied, coloring deeply. “I
told her so when we met. That’s the worst of it! I had no idea she was
married; and she let me know she didn’t care for me.”
“Because she was married?”
Overton thought deeply.
“I’m afraid it was because she couldn’t.”
“Then I should think you have no reason to stay away--if the judge
wants to see you.”
“I want to see him, but I want to see her more--that’s the truth! It’s
an infatuation, of course--without excuse, too. She let me know that
when I saw her in the mountains.”
The doctor sat up in his chair.
“She saw you just before she left him?”
“Yes.”
The two men looked at each other for a moment, and the older one smiled
grimly.
“Then it seems to me that you can cry quits with Faunce,” Dr. Gerry
said. “You’ve hurt him nearly as badly as he hurt you. You’ve made his
wife see the truth about him.”
“You know I should scorn to do that!”
“You couldn’t help it. You can tell her all about it after the divorce.”
“I don’t see what you mean!”
The doctor smiled enigmatically this time.
“The judge is so angry that he’ll probably blazon the whole story out
anyway, and ruin Faunce.”
Overton rose abruptly to his feet.
“That won’t do! It’s useless. Besides, it would be like--like vengeance
on my part, as if I had come home to ruin him.”
“You can’t shoulder the blame of it; you’ve nothing to do with the
judge.”
“I’ve got this much to do--I’ve come back!”
The old man eyed him thoughtfully.
“I see! You’re taking up the load because you were disobliging enough
to live to contradict Faunce. That’s a new way to look at it, my son!”
Overton glanced kindly at the old doctor. The familiar address fell
pleasantly on his ear, for at the moment he felt peculiarly desolate.
“It’s the only way to shield her. I’ve got it arranged; but I shall
have to see the judge.”
The doctor nodded.
“That’s right--I advise you to see him. He’s as hard to manage as a
bull in a china-shop--always was; but you’re right, it’ll shield her.
As for Arthur Faunce--well, he’s paying!”
“He’s paying--what?”
Overton stopped with his hand on the door, looking back at the old
figure in the armchair.
“The piper!” The doctor laid down his pipe. “He’s paying with his
heart’s blood, Simon, and I don’t know that he can do anything more
than that. It’s the way some men pay a debt of honor, isn’t it?”
“Brave men!”
Gerry nodded his head slowly.
“Of course, he’s a coward,” he admitted slowly. “Judge Herford calls
him a damned coward.”
“I don’t intend to bring up that subject. I’m simply going to ask the
judge to let matters stand as I’ve fixed them. Faunce keeps the command
and the story--my story is never known.”
“You’re going to tell him that you give up the command to Faunce?”
“Of course!”
“That’s right, my boy, that’s right; but Faunce is giving up Diane.”
Overton, aware of something at work in the back of the old man’s mind,
looked at him curiously.
“I don’t see what you’re driving at.”
The doctor got up and went down the hall to the front door with
Overton, one arm flung affectionately across the younger man’s
shoulders.
“I’m not driving at anything, Simon. I was weighing it--that’s all. You
were immeasurably ahead of him in the race when you forgave him and
gave up the command to shield him; but now, when he’s ready to give his
wife her freedom--well, he’s almost caught up with you, hasn’t he? As I
said, my boy, it’s his heart’s blood, and he’s offering it as bravely
as a brave man might. Let’s give the devil his due--he’s paying up!”
XXIX
IT was dark by this time, and Overton consulted his watch, to be sure
that it was not too near the judge’s dinner-hour for his errand. He
was astonished to find that it was almost half-past eight. He had not
felt the need of food. He dismissed it entirely from his calculations,
and tramped steadily on in the moonlit mist. Through it he could see
the lights twinkling in distant houses, while the trees loomed up
in feathery, indistinct outlines, downy with foliage. Something in
the effect--the weird brightness of the white sky and the elusive
lights--reminded him of the mirage that had so often mocked him in
his polar quest. He recalled it with a keen recollection of Faunce’s
receding figure, and he thought grimly of the task that lay before
him--the task of persuading Judge Herford to spare his own son-in-law
for his daughter’s sake.
But the thought uppermost in Overton’s mind, as he opened the old gate
that had stood for so much in his life, was the prospect of seeing
Diane again. No matter how she regarded his return, even if she felt
that it was his hand that had destroyed her house of cards, his heart
leaped up with hope. The insistent demand for personal happiness is
not only a primal instinct of human nature, and as much a constituent
part of it as the flowers and birds and bees are evidences of
springtime and summer, but it is also the hardest aspiration to kill,
surviving blows that would destroy the strongest impulse of endeavor or
ambition.
In the words of the sage, “the veriest whipster of us all desires
happiness.” Overton, who had actually stood upon the bourn of the
undiscovered country, craved it the more keenly because of his long
starvation.
He noticed every familiar object as he walked up the path. The old
cedar was there, where he had put up the squirrel-house for Diane when
she was a child in short skirts and pigtails. There, too, was the old
worn seat around the oak, where they had read Tennyson together. He
remembered with a smile Diane’s cry to him that he must go in quest of
the Holy Grail. Had her insistence, her inspiration, indeed, sent him
on that quest which had led to this fatal climax?
He went slowly up the steps, rang, and stood waiting, almost expecting
that she would open the door with the same inspired look she used
to wear, the same mystic charm of girlhood and dream-land which had
always clothed her, to his imagination, in a beauty more spiritual than
mundane.
But she did not come. A servant ushered him in, and, after a moment’s
delay, conducted him to the judge’s library.
The room was vacant when he entered, and he had an opportunity to look
about him, to recall the familiar objects, the rich old bindings, and
the glow of the ancient bronzes. The fireplace was not empty to-night;
a large porcelain jar stood inside the fender, filled with a profusion
of blossoms, their pink and white sprayed delicately against the dark
chimney-place, and their fragrance, subtle and sweet, pervading the
room. The old reading-lamp was burning on the table, and the judge’s
big shell-rimmed spectacles lay on the open pages of the “Eumenides.”
Overton stood still, keenly moved by a rush of recollections. He might
have left the room yesterday, it was so unchanged; yet, between his
last sight of it and now, the whole world had changed to him. The
interval had been filled to the brim with suffering and emotion; the
gap was not even bridged. On one side of it stood Diane; on the other
he found himself condemned to wait in the uncertain ground, no longer
possessing a right to cross over and resume his old place at the
fireside.
Presently he heard a heavy step outside, and the judge opened the
door. He seemed to Overton much changed. His face was grim; his gray
hair showed more white. His eyes, however, retained their intense
warmth--the inner flame which at a word might flash up into a
conflagration. He held out his hand with a grim smile.
“It’s good to see you again, Simon Overton,” he said in his deep voice;
“and it’s good of you to come here. We must seem to you to be part and
parcel with--with the coward who left you to die!”
“You’re one of the best friends I ever had, Judge Herford, and one
of the very best my mother left to me. I’ve been looking about this
room and feeling--well, like a boy who’s been long from home. I’m glad
indeed to be here again.”
The judge motioned to an old armchair opposite his own.
“Sit down--I’m glad you’ve come. There’s nothing else clear in my mind
except the shock I’ve had. I believed in Faunce! It’s about used me up
to think I’ve married my girl to--to a craven like that!”
He sat down as he spoke, and fell into an attitude of dejection so new
to him that he seemed another and an older man. Overton, taking the
seat opposite, hesitated. It was difficult to frame what he had to say.
Meanwhile, the judge broke out again with great bitterness:
“The shame of it! I’d rather take a whipping than have Diane exposed to
all this talk!”
The opening was obvious, and Overton took it, his face flushing deeply
as he met the old man’s troubled eye.
“I came to speak to you of that, judge. There’s no need of publicity.
I’ve arranged with Faunce and with certain other people. My return
needn’t upset everything. The trouble can be so glossed over that no
one will know of it. I think I can fairly say that I’ve succeeded in
arranging that much already.”
The judge eyed him keenly.
“You mean that you’ve arranged all this--to shield Faunce, to hush it
up, to let the public think you were found in some mysterious way? I
can’t quite follow you.”
“We needn’t go into detail, need we?” Overton replied steadily. “We can
leave so much in doubt that there’ll never be any certainty. In those
ice-fields a thousand men might well be lost--why not one? The only
danger is in what he’s already said. There are gaps--I’ve been over
them, I’ve filled in some bad breaks. I believe we can save much talk,
and hush it up.”
The judge leaned forward, his strong hands clenched on his knees,
looking at Overton.
“You’re trying to shield him--for what?”
“For your sake, Judge Herford, and--for hers.”
“You can’t hide a fire. The smoke gets out, people smell burning. No
more can you hide a coward! That’s what it is, Simon. The expedition
has been held up; they’re not going to give him the command; questions
will be asked.”
Overton shook his head.
“I’ve arranged that. They offered me the command. I refused to take it
from him. He’ll go.”
The judge bent his brows.
“You’ve no right to do that! It’s paying a premium on falsehood. He
came back here a jay in peacock’s plumes, and fooled us all; now you’re
letting him carry off the prize. You’ve no right to shelter him.”
“I have the right that comes to the injured party. If I have no mind to
enforce publicity, no one else should complain. You see that, judge?”
“I see you’re trying to spare him because”--he looked at his visitor
keenly again--“because of Diane?”
Overton’s face changed sharply.
“Yes.”
“She has left him--you know that?”
“Dr. Gerry told me. It doesn’t constitute a reason for me to ruin him.
Talk about him will involve her in the scandal.”
The judge sank back in his chair, strumming on the arms with nervous
fingers.
“You propose, then, to shield him, to set him up in your place--because
he has married Diane?”
Overton smiled as grimly as the judge himself.
“Not quite in my place. I’ve simply arranged to keep it quiet. After
all, it’s a personal question, judge. It’s true that he abandoned me;
but remember that to stay was to court death. He had no reason to die
with me or for me. We mustn’t expect too much.”
“I’ve noticed you didn’t leave Rayburn. I’ve read the account, and
he told us so himself. I could forgive him”--the old man laughed
harshly--“I could forgive sheer fright--Gerry says it was physical
panic--but I’ll never forgive him for marrying my daughter!”
“I don’t ask that.”
There was something in Overton’s tone which made the judge wheel around
in his chair and look his visitor sharply in the face. What he found
there gave him a shock. He got up, went to the mantel, found his old
pipe, and thrust some tobacco into it. While he was fumbling for a
match, he spoke over his shoulder.
“I’m going to get a divorce for her. At first I thought we should have
to fight for it, but he’s willing to let her get it. He has that much
grace in him. I’ll take her out West, establish a residence, and get a
divorce for her. We’re done with him--she and I!”
Overton did not trust himself to reply. He rose, instead, to say
good-night. The judge swung around.
“Stay, my boy, stay! I want to talk to you, to hear more of your great
adventure.”
“Not now, judge. To tell you the truth, I haven’t dined yet.”
The judge broke out.
“What a fool I am! Sit down and let me order something. We’ve dined,
but you mustn’t leave my house hungry!”
Overton laughed.
“No, I must be off. But it’s understood--we’ll let this matter remain
hushed up?”
The judge thought, standing on the hearth-rug, his feet wide apart and
his head down, the big pipe thrust into his mouth. After a while he
took it out and answered.
“I’d like to expose him. I meant to do it, to set Diane right; but
there might be reasons why silence would be best. I know she wants it.
She shrinks with horror from the whole thing, poor child!”
His tone had in it a note of tenderness that was new to Overton. He
looked up and again met the older man’s dark eyes resting searchingly
upon him. It affected him strongly. There was a subtle suggestion of
hope in it, a reassurance.
He turned hastily, and made his way out with an abruptness that
surprised his host. He had a craving for air and space; the sudden
change, the revival of hope after his despair, seemed to take his
breath away. He forgot his appetite for his delayed meal, and set out
for a long walk in the weird light of the half-clouded moon.
Having closed the door on his visitor, Judge Herford stood for a moment
with his hand on the knob, listening to the young man’s footsteps
until they finally reached the open road. He had received a new and,
to him, amazing impression, and it staggered him so much that for the
time being he forgot his wrath against his son-in-law. It was a new
impression, but it furnished the key to situations that had previously
seemed vague and perplexing. Now he understood them all, and in this
new light he thought he understood his daughter.
While he stood there, before he could clear up the ponderous machinery
of his judicial mind and set it in motion, he heard the swish of skirts
on the staircase and became aware of her presence.
“Papa, who was it?” she demanded tremulously. “Who went out just now?”
He looked up and saw Diane leaning on the banisters. The strong light
on the landing made a luminous nimbus behind her small, spirited head
and outlined her slender figure in a loose evening gown, the full,
short sleeves falling away from delicate forearms and slender wrists.
Her whole attitude suggested suspense and trepidation, and her father
felt her eyes fixed on him, feverishly bright.
“Don’t worry, my dear--it wasn’t Faunce.”
“Oh!” There was a suggestion of extreme relief in the tone, coupled
with some curiosity. “Then who was it?”
“Simon Overton.”
“Oh!” It was the same sound, but with a different note--a note that
spoke volumes to her father’s awakened ear.
“He came here--guess what for!”
She relaxed her hold on the banisters and sat down on the steps, her
face in the shadow, but her large eyes shining luminously through it
and making her face seem singularly white.
“I can’t guess. I give it up--unless he came to see you?”
The judge moved slowly over and stood near the foot of the stairs,
watching her.
“He came to ask me to keep silence, to shield Faunce. He’s determined
never to tell the true story.”
She did not say anything for a while. When she spoke, it was in an awed
tone.
“How noble of him!”
Her father nodded, his hand on the pillar at the foot of the banisters,
as he looked up at her.
“He had seen Faunce and arranged for silence. He wants to let the whole
thing blow over; he’s afraid of injuring you with the scandal.”
She seemed to shrink a little, and she was no longer looking steadily
at him.
“Is that all, papa?”
“No, not all. You know they’ve wanted to take the command of the new
expedition from Faunce and give it to Overton?”
“Yes, I suppose they will.”
“They won’t, for Overton has refused to accept it. He has asked them to
let Faunce keep it.”
She made no reply to this, but put her hand up and pushed back the
soft, loose hair from her forehead with a perplexed air.
“It’s a fine thing, Di, a noble thing for a man to do. It can mean only
one thing!”
She still said nothing, but leaned against the banisters, watching him.
“He’s in love with you, Diane. There’s no other reason on God’s earth
for a man to do a thing like that, to shield another from the blame
that’s coming to him by rights. Did you know”--he stopped and looked at
her again--“before this that he cared for you?”
“I used to think he did,” she answered weakly, her head leaning against
the rail.
“It’s too bad, Diane!” the judge broke out. “It’s too bad that you
didn’t care for him!”
His tone, as well as his words, disarmed her. She did not even suspect
him of a ruse; but, in her pent-up state, it was too much, and she
broke down utterly, quite off her guard.
“Oh, I did!” she sobbed. “I did!”
She turned her head and hid her face on her arm, bursting suddenly into
wild tears and sobs.
XXX
DIANE staggered to her feet and went up-stairs. Her strongest feeling
was one of keen humiliation. She had made a confession that she had
never intended to make, and it did not matter if her father had been
the only listener. The actual admission, the spoken words, had clothed
a dim specter with reality. She had heard her own voice making an
admission that seemed to establish a motive--a motive at once primal
and unjustifiable--for her desertion of her husband.
It frightened her. She felt as if Overton must have heard her, through
the intervening night and the distance, that he must at last put the
true interpretation upon the terror with which she had thrust him
away when they met on the lonely mountain road. Then, as now, it had
come to her with a revealing shock that she still loved him, and not
the man she had married. Yet she must love Faunce, she argued wildly
to herself. She did love him, she had loved him when she had married
him, and it agonized her now to think of him as one who was so totally
different from the man she had imagined him to be.
She found herself in the most inexplicable tangle of emotions. She
did not know which way to turn. She had fled from her father, afraid
to meet his pitying eyes, afraid, most of all, to hear his reassuring
voice, for she knew what that meant!
She fled into her own room, and, locking the door, threw herself
down before the open window, her head on the sill, the soft night
air stirring the dusky hair on her forehead. It was a night for a
love-dream, not for such shrinking and terror as now harassed her.
When Faunce had confessed to her, when he had torn away the last shred
of her illusion about him, she had left him, overwhelmed with horror
and dismay. The revulsion of feeling had been so intense that it had
carried her home and swept her along in the current of her father’s
rage against her husband. She had been as eager as he to get Faunce to
consent to a divorce. She did not wish to bear the name of a man who
had so deeply disgraced himself.
When he had assented to Herford’s demands, when he had declared that,
if she wished it, she could have her freedom, the tension had snapped,
and she had collapsed. She had been ready for conflict, ready to fight
for her liberty; but when she found that there was to be no opposition,
she experienced a sudden feeling of helplessness. She was adrift on a
shoreless sea.
A beacon, indeed, shone across it--the beacon of Overton’s love, which
sometimes seemed to beckon her home to the harbor of safety and
happiness, but now there was this thing--this thing that had risen out
of the night, unasked and unheralded, and it was pressing close upon
her. She had discerned it from afar, and even in the midst of her wild
revulsion, her determination to escape, it had filled her with awe and
with dread.
It was imperceptible, yet it was with her. It held her back with strong
hands, though it was invisible--as invisible as the angel who wrestled
with Jacob. But she had no need to ask its name; she knew the name by
which men called it--unless, indeed, they called it God. She felt it
gaining upon her and threatening her, yet she would not yield.
She lay across the sill of her open window, exhausted and prone, but
not beaten. She was fighting still, fighting for happiness, trying to
guide her shipwrecked bark into that safe harbor where the beacon of
love shone bright. She would not surrender, she would not admit that
there was no room for her there--not yet! But she wished that she
had not spoken, had not voiced her emotion. It seemed to give this
impalpable thing, this invisible angel, so much more power for battle.
Then, suddenly as if the unseen wrestler had successfully thrown
her in the conflict, she saw herself as the type of woman she most
abhorred--the woman who divorces one man because she is in love with
another.
But that could not be true, the inner voice cried; for though she loved
Faunce, she had left him because she had found him to be a creature so
unworthy, so cowardly, so cruel, that her soul had risen up and driven
her from him. Overton had had nothing to do with it. It was Faunce
himself who had torn away the thin veil that had obscured her idol’s
feet of clay.
As she tried to force herself to think of her husband, to recall him
in his better aspect, she could only remember his face as he had
lifted it, haggard and ashamed, to confess that he had left a brave
man, his friend and his commander, to die, that he might be sure to
save himself, be sure to reap the profit and the glory of the fallen
leader’s labor and sacrifice. She could never forget it. It had slain
her love for him so completely that not even a spark lingered in the
ashes.
It was not that she loved Overton now. It was her remembrance of the
fact that she had loved him. The thought of what he was, compared with
the man she had married, had plunged her into deeper self-abasement.
It was a fine distinction, a spiritual difference between the grosser
facts of life and the old, sweet memories that were dead. She
understood it; she would not forget it, but would her father understand
it? She knew that he could not.
He had the hard legal acumen, the keen discernment, but his strength
had the quality of granite and not of crystal. It was tremendous
and solid, but not transparent enough to reflect the more exquisite
emotions. He had not understood her, and he would not understand if she
tried to explain away that broken and inarticulate cry of regret for
the past. He would believe not only that he was doing what was just and
right for his daughter, but that he was seeking her happiness, when
there could be no happiness for her at all.
She could never set him straight, never convince him that she had
not meant every word she said. He could not know about the invisible
wrestler who still held her from the temptation of that distant
happiness, who even now had made her feel that she must forego it. No
one knew this but herself!