made her unwilling to face her father again. It was with her during the
long night, in her troubled snatches of sleep; it was the motive that
made her plead headache in the morning, and thus escape the ordeal of
another _tête-à-tête_ breakfast by having hers brought up to her room;
and later it drove her out of doors for a long and solitary walk.
It was a relief to be out in the open air again, to tramp down the
familiar road to the seminary, to notice the rapidity with which the
leaves were changing even on the late trees and shrubs, and how many of
the early autumn blossoms had thrust their way up through the earth,
which was moist and dark with recent rains. A storm had come up before
daybreak, and the sky was still softly clouded, while fitful bursts
of rain and wind drove through the narrow lane. Diane had a moment of
exhilaration, of the joy of conflict, as the boughs swayed and creaked
overhead and the leaves rained down at her feet.
This feeling was still with her, stiffening her power of resistance,
when she finally turned into the seminary gates and made her way to the
dean’s house, with no stronger motive than a vague longing to feel that
some one understood.
A little later, however, sitting in Fanny’s room, she was not sure that
even another girl did quite understand the perplexity of her situation,
its hopelessness and its futility. Fanny had been ready enough in her
expressions of sympathy, but there was something between them that
hushed confidence. There was a shy reluctance on the younger girl’s
part that reminded Diane of a similar restraint when Fanny had been her
bridesmaid. They talked a while in meaningless commonplaces. Then, as
Fanny looked up suddenly, Diane caught the quiver of the girl’s lip and
leaned forward, laying her ungloved hand on her friend’s knee.
“Fanny, do you know?” she whispered.
Fanny’s eyes sank involuntarily to the hand on her knee, and rested on
the new wedding-ring. Diane saw the glance, and drew her hand back with
a significant gesture of pain and repugnance.
“Do I know what?” Fanny flushed with embarrassment. “You mean that
you’ve--you’ve left him, Di, or--or what he did?”
Diane, busily covering her left hand with its glove, was aware that her
fingers were shaking.
“I mean both,” she replied.
“Yes, papa told us. Oh, Diane, I’m so sorry--so sorry about him!”
“You mean you’re more sorry for him than for me?”
Fanny raised her blue eyes steadily.
“Yes, I think I am. He’s lost everything, even himself!”
Diane rose to her feet and began to walk about the room. It was small
and bright, with two windows looking out on the campus. It contained a
book-shelf, some pretty chintz-covered furniture, and a little white
bed that looked like a convent cot. There were also unnumbered girlish
belongings--favors, bonbon-boxes, photographs, and knickknacks.
Diane walked about restlessly, lifting up and setting down first one
thing and then another, unaware of what she did.
“I--I couldn’t stay, Fanny!”
The other girl did not follow her with her eyes. Instead, Fanny sat
looking out of the window at a shower that was driving across the
campus, the sun breaking through the clouds in time to make it a rain
of gold.
“I suppose you couldn’t, Di. I think I know just how you felt,
but--well, it makes me pity him the more!”
Diane faced her passionately.
“How can you, Fanny? How can you pity him more than I do? I loved him!”
“Yes, I know; but when you knew what he’d done, you ceased to love
him. Wasn’t that it, Di? You see I--I suppose I’m a weaker mortal. I
couldn’t do that. I should keep on loving him--well, just because I
should feel he needed it so much!”
“Would you?” Diane came slowly nearer, looking at her friend
imploringly, her face colorless. “Fanny, do you think that’s it? That’s
what I’ve asked myself a hundred times. Do you think I--I never really
loved him?”
“Oh, that’s too much to say! I couldn’t judge for you, Di, we’re--we’re
so different. I suppose I’m like--like the dog that keeps going back
to lick the hand that’s struck him. If I loved any one, I couldn’t--I
simply couldn’t turn on them like that!”
“I didn’t think I could, either; but when he told me what he’d
done--Fanny, I can’t tell you how I felt. I felt as if something had
died in my heart. I couldn’t even look at him again without seeing him
in flight and--and Overton alone, deserted in the snow and ice, left
to die!” She covered her face with her hands, shuddering. “I could
have forgiven him a sin against myself far more easily. I could have
forgiven even dishonesty, but that--Fanny, I--I couldn’t, I can’t!”
Fanny averted her eyes. The response that rose to her lips was too
pertinent.
“It’s because you always loved Overton!” she longed to cry out.
Instead, she rose and put her arms around Diane. “If you feel like
that, dear,” she said, “there’s only one way out.”
Diane clung to her trembling.
“You mean----”
“Your father’s way,” Fanny said firmly. “Papa told us the judge meant
to get a divorce for you.”
Diane held her, looking into her eyes. The two seemed to have suddenly
changed places; Fanny was the more composed and confident now.
“Then you--you don’t think it would be wrong?” Diane implored.
Fanny shook her head.
“I think it’s better than to feel as you do. I know mama’s fearfully
opposed to divorce, and papa is, of course. But, no, Di, I think it
would be right for you--and for him, too.”
Diane’s hands fell from Fanny’s shoulders, and she walked slowly over
to the window and stood looking out. For a while they were both silent.
Fanny felt that instead of reassuring her friend, she had only added to
her distress. Through her very words of encouragement Diane must have
felt the subtle suggestion of Fanny’s mind--her belief that Diane’s
love for Overton made her marriage not only intolerable but impossible.
She was conscious, too, that her own emotion dictated her pity for
Faunce, that even now she could not quite forget the hold he had always
had upon her mind and heart. She was flushed and tremulous when Diane
turned suddenly and kissed her.
“Good-by, dear,” she said softly. “I can’t stay here now and face your
father. I know what he’d think. Oh, Fanny, I--I wish I had never been
born!”
The two girls clung to each other for another moment, neither of them
quite able to be coherent. Then Diane ran down-stairs and made her way
out into the rain.
XXXI
IT seemed to Diane that her emotion, like the storm, had nearly spent
itself, and the few fresh rain-drops that fell on her face helped to
cool its feverishness, just as a sudden revival of pride and strength
helped to quiet the tumult within.
Torn by conflicting emotions, she had stretched out blindly for
guidance--or, at least, for some sort of sympathy that would steady her
purpose and point a way in the maze. Fanny had furnished it, not so
much by what she had said as by what she left unsaid; and Diane felt
the sting of mortification at her own weakness. She had gone out like a
mendicant asking the alms of sympathy, and she had received not bread,
but a stone.
Suddenly, too, she perceived a fact that had long been only a vague
idea in the back of her mind. Fanny had been fond of Faunce! She saw it
plainly now, with a passionate feeling of rebellion. If love awaited
him elsewhere, why had fate delivered him into her hands? It was all
confused, all at cross-purposes.
If he had married Fanny, there would, perhaps, have been no question of
his confession. Fanny would have helped him where she had failed. That
was the cruelty of it--a cruelty that involved him as well as herself.
Why had he been so blind? she cried angrily to herself. Why had he
passed Fanny by to pursue her? If he had only left her alone--
She stopped short and stood still. Again she saw herself going over the
edge of the abyss. She tried to steady herself, to find the guiding
light, the lamp to show her the way out.
Then, just at the very moment when she was least able to endure it,
least able to battle any longer, she saw Overton himself just ahead of
her. He was walking fast. As he turned he caught sight of her, and,
swinging around, came rapidly toward her, his face as white as hers was
red with embarrassment.
As he drew nearer, she stopped, more because she did not know what
else to do than from any wish to see him. Her first impulse, indeed,
had been one of flight, and she suspended it only because, in the
hedged lane, there was no convenient way to flee. Something of what she
felt--her trepidation, which almost amounted to sheer fright--showed
in her eyes and her reluctant attitude, and he saw it. He halted a few
yards away and stood looking at her.
“You don’t wish to see me?”
The note of pain in his voice sent a thrill of answering pain through
her heart. Unconsciously she held out her hand.
“I do--only it’s hard--after all I’ve been told!”
Her broken words touched him deeply. He realized that she felt a
vicarious share in her husband’s guilt toward him, and he caught her
hand in both of his.
“He should never have told you. I tried to save you that!” he exclaimed.
She drew her hand gently away.
“You did wrong, then. He was right to tell me--I had to know.”
“But why?”
He had turned with her, and they walked on through the light rain. She
looked up, her mind clearing.
“It was wrong of you to urge silence on him. If he’s ever to be
anything, he mustn’t be silent. A thing like that must be confessed and
atoned for. Besides, he knew that I should know in the end. I couldn’t
help it. I’ve felt that there was something wrong, something terrible
behind it all!”
“And it has made you wretched--I see that. Why can’t you forget it? I
should never have come back. It’s I who have ruined your happiness.”
“Oh, no, no! Think how infinitely worse it would have been if you had
perished and I had known too late that he--that he had left you! I
couldn’t have borne that.”
The passion of her tone moved him again, and for a moment he did not
reply. He was keenly aware of her presence at his side, her delicate
profile against the light mist that was rising like vapor about them,
the curve of her brow and the oval of her pale cheek under the dusky
sweep of the brown hair that waved upward under her wide hat, the
meticulous simplicity of her dark dress, her grace and slightness.
She seemed so young, so girlish, and she was facing a situation so
tragic and humiliating! Overton was himself a proud man, and he felt
her humiliation, felt that he must lighten it.
“I’ve wanted to speak to you about this,” he managed to say at last.
“You mustn’t think that he did something do unpardonable. It isn’t
unpardonable to any one who’s ever been at the pole. No man has a right
to expect too much from his fellows there, and”--he hesitated--“when a
man drops behind, why, he’s got to perish. The stakes are too great,
the price too much, to lose all for one life. I fell in my tracks,
and it’s only fair to him to think that I should have stayed where I
dropped. The expedition couldn’t be imperiled just for me. I wasn’t
worth so much. He did what--well, what nine out of ten would have done
in his place.”
She stopped and faced him, her large eyes dark with emotion.
“Did you leave Rayburn?”
He flushed under her eyes.
“That was different. Faunce was with me--there were three of us. It was
different, of course.”
“I can’t see the difference.”
“It was different, though. Besides, there was no blizzard impending. In
my case the storm made it doubly perilous to stay.”
“It made the going worse!” she retorted in a hard voice.
He turned his head, and their eyes met; he felt almost as keen a shame
as if he, and not Faunce, had done this thing. He saw that to her it
was unpardonable. She would never see any reason or excuse for it. If
she had loved her husband, then Overton’s return had wrecked her life.
“I’ve made you wretched!” he exclaimed with profound emotion. “It’s
come to me again and again, since my return, that it must be dreadful
for a man to come back from the dead. When we die--or people think
we’re dead--our places close over our graves; there’s no niche left
for us any more. To come back is to disrupt the tranquillity of the
life that’s begun to flow in new courses over the surface of the grave.
That’s what I’ve done--I’ve come back and wrecked your happiness!”
She shook her head vehemently, tears rising in her eyes.
“No, I never had it. I know now I only imagined. I never had any
happiness at all!”
“Diane!”
Her cry had gone to his heart. It was more than he could bear. He
caught her hands in his again and held them.
“Don’t say that, for I can’t bear it--no man who loved you could bear
to hear you say that!”
She did not answer him, but stood still, her hand quivering in his
grasp. They were alone under the trees, and the sun, breaking suddenly
through the clouds again, illumined the moist atmosphere until it
seemed shot with golden motes.
“I’ve no right to say it,” he went on passionately; “but I’m human, and
I can’t keep silence! Diane, I’d rather have died down there in the ice
and snow, where he left me, than to have come back to lose you!”
Still she said nothing, but her head drooped, and she could no
longer look up. She knew now why she had left her husband. Her whole
subconscious being cried out:
“It was this--this! You loved this man, and not your husband!”
“I’ve always loved you, Diane!” he went on madly. The restraint he had
set on himself had broken, and nothing now could stem the current of
his emotion. “I loved you before I went away, but I wasn’t sure of you;
I didn’t dare to risk too much. Diane, if I had spoken then, would you
have listened, would all this have been saved?”
She broke down herself.
“Don’t ask me--don’t--it’s no use! It’s done--don’t you see it’s no use
to ask me now?”
“It’s not done, if you’ve left him! Your father says you’ve left him.
If you have, if you’re going to be free, Diane, it’s not wrong for me
to speak. I can’t be silent; I’m human. I’m as bad as he is--I’m worse,
for you’re his wife. But I----” He stopped, and then went on in a low
voice: “Will you answer me, Diane, just one word. Did you then--before
I went away--did you care?”
She looked up into his face and saw it transfigured with deep
emotion--the face of the man she loved, for whom she had left her
husband. She was trembling, but his eyes held hers, and she yielded.
“Yes!” she sobbed below her breath.
They swayed toward each other in the golden mist, he holding her hands
in a grip that thrilled with passionate hope.
“Diane, my love!” he cried.
If she heard him, she did not answer, though she closed her eyes and
her lips moved. He seemed to feel, through the impalpable veil between
their two souls, that hers was struggling away from his and trying to
rise by its own agony to a supreme height of renunciation. But he would
not let her go.
“Then--then, if you cared once, you care--you must care again. I can’t
have you speak as you did just now--about there being no happiness for
you. I can’t bear that, for I’d give all that I have, the best that’s
in me, to make you happy. Speak to me! It’s not wrong--I know what you
think, but it’s not wrong if you’re going to begin life over again.
It’s not wrong for me to try to win you again, to make you happy!”
With a sudden effort she dragged her hands from his and moved on
blindly, hurrying away from him.
“Don’t!” she sobbed. “Don’t make it worse. It’s all wrong; I know it; I
see it; I--I left him because----”
He had caught up with her now and walked beside her, as pale as she was.
“Because what? Tell me; I must know; I have a right to know!”
She staggered again; her hand going to her throat with a strange little
gesture, as if she felt strangled.
“Because I loved you! I see it now--and it’s wicked. I hadn’t any right
to judge him, for I was worse than he was. It’s one of those things
that make it wrong, Simon--that make it wrong even to have cared once!”
“No, it’s not wrong! We’ll get you free. He--I’ll say it now, Diane--he
had no right to marry you!”
“I was the one who did wrong--as much as he did,” she managed to say.
“I--I thought I loved him; I told him I loved him. I must have. If I
didn’t, I--I could never have married him!”
“But you were mistaken! That’s common; it happens often. You were
mistaken--you didn’t love him!”
She stopped again, and the misty sunlight illumined her face until
it appeared to him to have a purity as luminous and fragile as an
alabaster lamp. Her spirit, tried beyond endurance, seemed to be
shining through it, darkening her eyes and softening her lips.
“Oh, I’m not sure!” she cried. “Don’t you see how I feel? There are two
roads, and I stand at the crossing. I’m bewildered; I can’t see; I can
only feel----”
“But I know!” he returned with profound emotion. “I know! My love is
strong enough to find the way for us both. It’s not wrong to love you,
for you’ve given him up!”
For a moment, as she clung to him, he felt the slight weight of her
body against him, the fragrance of her hair upon his cheek. Then she
had slipped out of his arms and left him alone in the mist.
XXXII
IN a tumult of feeling deeper and more complex than ever, Diane made
her way through a meadow that furnished a short cut to her own door.
She was vaguely aware that the grass was long, and that she was getting
drenched nearly to her knees, when she saw, in a half-conscious way,
a cluster of asters blooming happily just at the spot where a lowered
fence-rail made it possible for her to scramble into the end of her
father’s garden.
She was scarcely conscious of what she did, and she had a new feeling
of guilt. Until now she had felt that she was as supremely in the right
as Faunce was supremely in the wrong; but the whole attitude of her
mind was breaking down. She felt a tremor of fear, though even at that
moment she could not have told what it was she feared.
Shaken as she was, she tried to let herself in without attracting
attention, for she had as little courage as ever for an interview with
the judge. However, she was not to escape. He heard the rear door open,
and, looking out of his library, espied her at the foot of the stairs.
“Is that you, my child?” he said in the deep bass that always presaged
something important. “Come in here a moment before you go up-stairs. I
have something to tell you.”
She turned reluctantly and followed him into the old room, which was so
full of memories that it made her shiver. Her father resumed his seat
by the table, but she remained standing just inside the door, where a
bit of sunshine from the window touched the edge of her wet skirt, but
left her face in shadow. The judge mounted his spectacles and looked
over some papers, refreshing his memory.
“My dear, of course we’ll employ counsel; you know that! I’ve just got
a letter from Holt and Hickson, which seems satisfactory on the whole.
Mr. Hickson--he’s the junior partner--advises us to wait until the
expedition sails. He’s seen Faunce, and, as far as he can ascertain,
there’ll be no opposition. Faunce has modified his first assurance to
me a little, but I suppose we’ll have to expect that--to expect changes
and vacillations in a man like him!”
Diane tried to steady her voice.
“What did he say--I mean, what does he say now, papa?”
The judge consulted the letter again.
“He told Hickson that it depended upon you. He has the greatest faith
in you, and won’t oppose divorce if you ask it; but he wants you to ask
it in writing. It’s absurd--knowing, as he does, that you’ve left him;
but he seems determined, so Hickson says, to know just what you want.
Of course, if that is really all he wants to know, it’s easy. You can
make a statement here; I’ll have it typed and witnessed, and Hickson
can let him see it.”
“And if I didn’t want to write anything, what would happen then?”
Her father looked up in amazement.
“Not want to write anything? Of course you do! The sooner you’re free
of that--that coward the better. That’s what I called you in for. You
can decide just what you want to say, and I’ll have it prepared for
your signature.”
She lifted her head at that, looking at him, a singular expression on
her face.
“But that’s just it. I--I can’t! You see, I don’t know what I want to
say at all.”
Her father suppressed an exclamation of impatience.
“I should think you’d know well enough! You’ve got to say something, or
else let it go, and after a while he’ll sue you for desertion; but no
one knows how long it would take him to get his courage screwed up to
that. I wish”--the judge let his hand fall heavily on the papers before
him--“I wish we had a clean case against him to sue on at once.”
“You mean--we haven’t any case?”
He frowned.
“We’ve got case enough, in one way; but against you--well, he’s done
nothing against you but to dare to marry you, knowing what a coward he
was!”
Diane continued to look at him, her eyes dilating a little, but she
was silent. The judge, aware of it, looked up and encountered her
expression. He pulled off his spectacles and gazed at her steadily.
“What’s the matter, Di? You look ill--I’ll have to send for Gerry.”
“Oh, no! It’s nothing but the scent of those tuberoses on the
table--it’s so strong, it makes me feel faint.”
She moved away as she spoke and put herself a little out of the range
of his vision. The judge took the glass of tuberoses and set it on the
window-ledge.
“I thought you had a craze for all kinds of weeds. This thing has been
too much for you; that’s what’s the matter.”
“No, no!” she gasped weakly. “I’m strong enough to stand a great
deal more than this. I----” She hesitated, beginning to walk about
on the other side of the room, her figure outlined against the rich
bookbindings, but her face still in shadow. “Papa, what would you say
if I--if I decided to go back to my husband?”
There was a sharp little pause before the judge’s bass boomed across
the table.
“I’d disown you! A woman that could go back to such a coward wouldn’t
deserve recognition.”
She laughed hysterically.
“But I married him!”
“You didn’t know it, did you?”
“You know I didn’t.”
“Nor did I!” The judge controlled his anger. “I beg your pardon, Di,
for my share in it. Gerry thinks I helped make the match. If I did,
I’ll help unmake it. I’ll have a statement drawn up for you, and you’ll
only need to sign it. I should hate to feel the marriage was my fault.”
“It’s no one’s fault--unless it’s mine. I--I had no right to think I
loved him if--if I didn’t!”
“You didn’t--that’s it, my child. Mistakes like that make half the
marriages. I’ve seen enough of it in my day, and I don’t mean to have
your life ruined at the start. You’re getting hysterical, that’s all.
I’ll see that you get out of it and have a chance to make your life
over. You can trust me for that, my girl!”
“But if--if I shouldn’t feel that I wanted to--to have you do it, papa?”
He turned sharply.
“What’s the matter? Have you seen that fellow?”
“My husband? Oh, no, no!” Her face flushed painfully. “I don’t believe
he wants to see me after the way I left him.”
The judge started to retort, but hesitated and reflected. He had been
on the point of telling her that Faunce did want to see her, but he
thought better of it.
“It was enough to cure him--I’ll admit that, my dear,” he finally
replied.
Diane moved to the nearest cabinet, and lifting a little jar of ancient
pottery, began to examine it as if she had never seen it before.
“Do you think that any one--that any woman who’s been through what I’ve
been through can start over again!”
“Of course she can! Why not? A man can fail and fall, for that matter,
and then get up and start fresh.”
“Oh, but that’s different; the man’s not the question. I’m a woman.
It’s not the same thing at all!”
“You’re getting back now to the fundamental question--the double
standard of morals. It’s not relevant. You’re not doing anything
immoral to refuse to live with a coward.”
“I didn’t even stop to think!” she cried. “When he told me what he’d
done, I”--she shuddered--“I couldn’t stay!”
“Of course you couldn’t! What’s more, I won’t let you go back to him.
You understand that, Di? You’re nervous and broken down, and he may try
to persuade you, but I’ll never let you go back!”
“But if--if I went, papa?”
He struck his hand down on the table.
“Understand me. If you went I’d never speak to you again as long as I
lived! Don’t you see what he did? He wasn’t only a coward; he would
have been Overton’s murderer if the English party hadn’t come along. It
was a miracle that saved Overton; Faunce as good as left him purposely
to die.”