do. He tries to excuse him.”
“You’ve seen Overton?”
“Ye-es; just now. I met him on the way home,” she stammered.
A look of relief softened the judge’s face. He rose from his chair and,
crossing the room, took his daughter in his arms.
“My child, you’re half sick! You’ve worried too much. Don’t talk in
this way again. You know you long to be free.”
His softened tone disarmed her again. She clung to him, trembling,
tears in her eyes.
“Oh, I do--I do!” she sobbed. “I long to be my old self again!”
The judge gathered her up in his arms, as he had often gathered her up
as a child, and carried her up-stairs to her room. He put her on the
lounge and covered her up; then he went down, and sent the old maid
servant up with a cup of hot tea. It was the only thing he could think
of that seemed to fill the peculiar demands of a case like this--a
case which, to his mind, was nothing but hysteria. Then he set himself
to framing the reply to Faunce that Diane was to sign.
He had made up his mind to settle her affairs for her. He was convinced
now that she loved Overton. Sternly as he might have viewed such a case
where others were involved, he could see only one side of it for his
own daughter--her right, the inalienable right of youth and love, to
happiness. He did not permit the finer and more ethical questions to
disturb his fixed determination to wrest her from the craven who had
been capable of a crime as near to murder as anything short of actual
killing could be. Indeed, to his own stalwart mind, it was even worse
than murder.
Meanwhile Diane, up-stairs in her own room, drank the hot tea, and
permitted the maid to help her with some dry clothing; but she was
still shaking like a person who had been suddenly smitten with ague.
All the while she seemed to see, through a mist shot with golden
rain-drops, the face of Overton, transfigured with his love for her.
She wrung her hands together and hid her face in them, oblivious of
the pitying eyes of the old servant who had come to take away the
tea-things.
She was still sitting there, with her head in her hands, when she heard
her father leave the library and go out, and knew herself to be alone
in the house. She breathed more freely when she was not in immediate
danger of being rushed into some new and terrible decision--a decision
that might make her as wretched as that other one which had led to her
marriage. She rose weakly from the lounge and went down-stairs.
It was now late afternoon, and the sun had come out with extraordinary
splendor. It was flooding the western windows and dappling the lawn
with a lovely lacework of rain-gemmed cobwebs that sparkled like
frosted fairy veils.
Diane went slowly across the hall, and saw the evening mail lying on
the little table in the corner. It recalled with a sharp pang the days
long ago when she had looked there in vain for a letter from Overton,
then on his way to the south pole. There were some letters there now,
however, and she turned them over and started violently when she
recognized her husband’s handwriting on an envelope addressed to her.
For a moment she leaned forward, her hands on the table, unable to make
up her mind to open it. The aversion she had felt at his confession
swept back over her in wave on wave of futile passion and shame. Then
she took up the letter and, opening it, moved to the window to read
more clearly the few lines that he had written in an unsteady hand:
Your father told me you wanted a divorce, Diane, and now his lawyers
insist upon it; but it’s hard for me to believe it of you. I know
how you felt when you left me, but now--I’ve done nothing against
you, and I trusted you to help me to do better things. I ask you to
come back, I entreat you to come; but I’ll never try to force you.
I have told them that you must answer me yourself. If you don’t, I
shall refuse to let it go on, for I love you still. I will not take
an answer from any one but you. If you still ask it, I will set you
free. But even then I shall love you.
The letter fell from Diane’s hand and fluttered to the floor. She could
see him as he had looked that night in the cottage; she could hear his
voice making the confession. The letter was like him. It seemed to fall
short; it had not even the courage of his love; and yet she knew he
loved her. His very weakness in this hour, when he so needed strength,
touched her woman’s heart. Her abhorrence of his deed had clouded her
own perception of his misery, but now, in a flash, she saw it. It was
as great as hers.
She was still standing there, her head bowed, when she heard steps on
the piazza and her father’s latch-key in the door. He came in, bringing
with him a young man whom Diane recognized as the village notary. She
stooped quickly, picked up her husband’s letter, and stood, holding it
behind her, as they entered.
The judge looked at her gravely, unable to discern her expression as
she stood with her back to the light.
“That paper’s ready, Diane,” he said briefly, “and Mr. Mackay’s come
with me to witness it. All we need now, my dear, is your signature.”
Diane turned and acknowledged the young man’s bow with a deep blush.
She felt that all the world now knew of her flight from her husband.
The judge went to the library door and opened it, young Mackay waiting
at a respectful distance. Diane did not move, and her father looked
around.
“Are you ready, my child?” he demanded sharply.
She hesitated an instant, and then turned and followed him into the
room.
He went to his table and spread out a type-written sheet, dipping his
pen in the ink, and holding it ready in one hand, as he pulled out a
chair for Diane with the other.
“Read that, my dear,” he said briefly, “and then sign here.”
His daughter came slowly over to the table and sank into the chair he
offered, drawing the paper toward her. The powerful sunshine in the
room seemed to flood the document with light, and she could read it at
a glance. It was a brief reply to her husband’s demands and a plain
statement of her determination to sue for divorce at once.
She read it, aware of the impatient hand at her elbow clenching the
pen, and of young Mackay opposite. From the time when she read her
husband’s letter until now she had acted mechanically, scarcely
conscious of what was going on around her; and she was only half aware
of the curiosity and concern in young Mackay’s eyes. She read the paper
slowly through, and then, drawing a long breath, she took the pen from
her father’s hand.
He spoke sharply to the witness:
“Come over here and see her sign it, John!”
The notary obeyed, and they both stood waiting, their eyes on Diane;
but she did not sign the paper. She rose suddenly, turning a white face
toward her father.
“I--I’m sorry, papa, but I really can’t sign it!”
As she spoke she looked up, encountered the amazement and fury and
repudiation in his eyes, and swayed under it--but only for a moment.
She steadied herself, and, turning back again with a gesture of
finality, laid the pen down on the table.
XXXIII
FIVE minutes later the judge had closed the door behind the young
notary, and stood alone in the hall. He had shut the door sharply,
with almost a bang, but now he stood--with his hand still on the
knob--thinking. His first fury against his daughter was scarcely
subsiding, it had gained force in those moments of mortification--when
he had to dismiss the young man whom he had brought to witness her
signature--and now it rose in a hot wave of anger against her and
against Faunce. He suspected that Faunce had written to her, he was
trying to drag the poor girl back against her will. And she--Diane
Herford, his own daughter--had not the force of character to resist
that craven!
The judge turned with a black brow and tramped back to the library door.
“Diane,” he said in a voice of thunder, “what do you mean by this?”
She was still standing beside the table, in fact she was clinging to
the edge of it, and her face was deathly pale. She did not move, she
did not even raise her eyes, and her father, still enraged, became
alarmed.
“Did you hear me?” he shouted. “What is it, Diane, are you ill? Are you
mad?”
At that she turned her head, and slowly and reluctantly lifted her eyes
to his.
“I think I’ve been mad, father,” she replied in a low voice, “mad and
wicked.”
The judge came into the room, he moved over to get a nearer look at
her, peering across the table--where the paper still lay, with the pen
flung across the face of it, a mute witness of her indecision, or her
change of heart. Diane did not meet his eyes this time, she averted her
face and her lips trembled.
“You’re ill, that’s what ails you!” her father exclaimed sharply. “I
was a fool not to see it, you’re too hysterical to sign this paper
to-day, I”--he stamped over to the telephone--“I’ll call up Gerry. I
ought to have done it before----”
She stopped him. “Papa!”
He swung around at the sound of her voice, and, for an instant, they
looked at each other. She was trembling, but a little color came back
into her face.
“I’m not ill,” she said slowly, with an effort, “and I’m not mad now.
I’m sorry, papa, I can’t sign it because----” she stopped, her eyes
fell, the color rose softly from chin to brow, her whole face seemed
transformed and softened and strangely beautiful--“because it would be
wrong for me to sign it.”
His eyes sparkled with anger. “Wrong for you to sign it? Do you mean to
tell me that I--your father--would ask you to do anything wrong?”
“No, no! You don’t understand--I--I can’t tell you, papa, I can’t tell
any one--just what I feel. It’s something a woman can’t tell--I mean
she can’t make any one else understand the change that comes into her
heart and her soul when she’s been tried--as I’ve been tried!”
“Pshaw! Any fool could understand it--you’re hysterical!”
Diane gave him a strange look, a look that was not only appealing,
it was mystical and remote, it seemed to the angry old man that his
daughter’s soul was withdrawing itself into some shadowy region,
as obscure to his robust mind as the mists and the snows that had
enveloped the fatal delinquency of her husband. But the suspicion that
had shot through his mind at the door, came back now with sudden and
convincing force.
“That fellow’s been writing to you!” he exclaimed, “he’s been trying to
make you come back!”
Diane, full of the fresh consciousness of Arthur’s letter, averted her
eyes.
“Yes, he’s written me,” she confessed simply; “he has a right to do
that, he’s--my husband.”
The judge gave utterance to an inarticulate sound. He was, in reality,
choking with anger.
Diane saw it; she felt an almost intolerable longing to escape, to
be alone to order her thoughts, but she could not bear to incur her
father’s anger, he had been so good to her! She had fled to him in her
darkest hour and he had sheltered her. She hated to offend him, she
stood irresolute, unable to voice her thoughts.
Meanwhile, the old man swallowed the lump in his throat.
“I knew it!” he exclaimed bitterly. “He’s been trading on your pity,
on your woman’s heart--confound him! Di, you want to be free, you’ve
said so--why did you mortify me just now? You made that boy think I was
trying to force you to sign a paper against your will. You made a fool
of your father because that--that coward’s been begging off!”
“No, no!” she cried sharply, “it wasn’t that--he’s said nothing
cowardly, papa, nothing that--that he shouldn’t say to his wife. It is
I--I have changed, I----” she stopped, breathing quickly, and then she
added more quietly: “you know what I said, papa--what would you do if I
went back to my husband?”
The judge stood looking at her for a long time in silence, his face
flushing darkly. Then he broke out with passion.
“I’ve told you that, too! I’d disown you.”
She put her hand to her side with a quick gesture of pain, and all the
soft color left her face, even her lips grew white.
“Do you mean that?”
The judge, still regarding her with smouldering eyes, bent his head
slowly.
“I do. I told you so before I got Mackay. I mean it! What did that
fellow write you, what did he say, to make my daughter behave like
this?”
She stood her ground firmly now, though she was still very pale.
“It wasn’t Arthur’s letter, it was--something else.”
“What else?”
The judge’s words snapped like a whip; his rage against Faunce was
deepening to fury now. It was too much to see the power that coward had
to make his daughter wretched. He meant to break it, he would break it,
but first--he must break Diane’s will, he saw that!
“I told you I had seen Overton,” she replied slowly, speaking with an
effort, as if the words were painful. “It was Overton--who made me see
it all, see it so plainly that I couldn’t think why I’d--I’d ever been
blind!”
“Overton?” the judge was bewildered. “Why, the man’s in love with you,
Di!”
She bent her head at that, tears in her eyes.
“I know it,” she spoke so low that her words were almost inaudible,
“that’s why I--I saw it all so plainly. I’m not that kind of a woman!”
“What kind of a woman? What do you mean?” cried the judge with
impatience.
“The kind of woman who leaves her husband to go with another man.”
“Good Lord!” cried the judge furiously, “you came to me! It’s not your
fault if Overton kept on loving you, is it? You haven’t run away with
Overton, have you?”
“If I signed that paper it--it would be almost the same thing!”
He scowled at her, trying to think, seeing at last one side of the
question which was not his side.
“You mean you left Faunce because you loved Overton?”
“No!” she cried sharply. “But he loves me, he wants me free. If--if I
signed that paper it would be as if I wanted to be free to--to marry
him!”
For the second time that day, the judge thought that he saw the light;
he softened his tone.
“You do love Overton, Di, and you think it’s wrong, so your idea is to
make a martyr of yourself, to refuse a divorce?”
Suddenly her face quivered; an emotion stronger and deeper than any
that he had ever seen in her before, shook her from head to foot.
“Oh,” she cried brokenly, “don’t ask me, papa, I--I can’t make you
understand, you--you’re a man, you can’t! I--I wish I had a--a
mother!” she sobbed, covering her face with her hands.
The judge was profoundly touched. He felt that his girl was ill in body
and mind, and he had driven her too hard, he had tried to force her to
act before she was ready, he had seemed to fling her into the arms of
her lover. That cry for her mother--he had never heard her utter it
before, it reached his heart. He went over to her quickly and took her
in his arms.
“I’ve been too hasty, my child,” he said kindly. “You must rest--then
we’ll talk it over. You----” he hesitated before he added grimly: “I
know how you feel, but you’re not to blame. Overton has always loved
you. It’s not his fault now, it’s not yours. If you can’t live with
your husband you’ve got a right to be free, and I’m going to set you
free. You leave it to me, Diane!”
This time his tenderness did not disarm her, she did not yield to his
caress, instead she gave him a strange look, a look that was full of
sadness, and slipped quietly out of his arms.
“I--I feel tired,” she said in her low voice, “I can’t argue now,
papa, I----” she turned suddenly and lifted her face to his and kissed
him--“I’m going up to my room to--to think!”
He stood watching her, taken by surprise. She was walking slowly,
almost unsteadily, toward the door and he saw that she was weeping.
Something in the way in which she had parted from him, something, too,
in the whole attitude of her figure, alarmed him. He called to her
sharply.
“Diane!”
She stopped at the door and looked back, her face colorless again, and
tears in her eyes.
“Understand me,” said the judge sternly, “I’ve told you before. There’s
but one thing for you to do--or for me to do for you. To get free of
that coward. If you’re dreaming of going back, if he’s worked on you to
go back--remember! I’ll disown you.”
His tone, more than his words, sent a chill to her heart, but she said
nothing. She only gave him a look so full of a mute appeal, and that
mysticism, that withdrawal, which had so perplexed him a moment ago,
that he could not fathom her purpose. Then, without a word, she turned
slowly and left the room and he heard her step--still slow but more
resolute--ascending the stairs.
He was sorry that he had been so sharp with her, he began to perceive
that the trouble had gone deeper than he thought. Or that man, Faunce,
had worked upon her--the judge’s choler rose up in his throat again and
nearly choked him. He sat down at his table and tried twice to write a
letter to Faunce, a letter that should be a quietus, and then, thinking
better of it, he tore the sheets into fragments and tossed them into
his waste-paper basket.
Meanwhile, Diane, having reached her own room, locked the door with
shaking hands. It seemed to her that she had spent all her strength in
this conflict of wills, that it had cost her much to resist her father.
And yet----?
She recalled the moment when she had lifted the pen, when she had
almost signed that paper, with a shudder. It was true that the whole
attitude of her mind had broken down. She had seen herself on the brink
of separation from her husband because of Overton!
She stood now, just inside her own door, motionless, her unseeing eyes
fixed on the window opposite. The long swaying bough of a tree swept
across her vision of the sky, and it seemed to her that the leaves
trembled and quivered as if some unseen hand had set them to shaking,
as an unseen power had set her own heart to trembling at the thought of
her own act. Had she fled from her husband--not because she abhorred
his deed, but because she loved Overton? The thought was hideous,
unbelievable!
Diane lifted her hot hands and pressed them against her eyes, to shut
out the light. In the darkness she could think. She tried to recall
all the old arguments that had seemed so plausible, that Faunce
himself had destroyed her faith in him, that he had hurled her idol
down from its pedestal. But she could not; she began to see that there
was no argument that she could use to wholly excuse her act. Faunce
had confessed to her, he had told her the truth, it was his plea for
mercy, for forgiveness, and she had only thought of Overton. But now,
in the solitude of her own room, in this moment when even her father
had failed her, she felt her spiritual isolation. There was no one on
earth who could help her solve the problem of life that confronted her
but the man she had married. The bond was unbroken, neither her will,
nor the cribbling of lawyers could break it, for a power greater than
these had laid hold of her soul. She felt again the strength of it, the
invisible power that wrestled with her.
She walked slowly across her room again to the window and knelt down,
resting her hands on the sill, and looking out toward the western sky.
The sun had set and above the red cloud at the horizon she discerned a
solitary star, keen and white and quivering, a spearhead of glory. She
lifted her face toward it, the soft wind stirring the tendrils of hair
on her white forehead, and touching her feverish cheeks and lips.
Gradually, silently, with infinite beauty, the afterglow touched the
soft sky with all the colors of rose and violet, and the earth below
sank gently and deeply into the shadow, as if it had dropped from
sight. It seemed to Diane that, in that silence, in the tenderness,
the infinite beauty of that moment between sunset and twilight, the
spiritual struggle ceased. A new thought came to her, or rather her
inner consciousness shaped itself into a concrete form. She realized
that she stood on the edge of an abyss while the power that had held
her back had been within her own soul, hidden deep in her heart, at
the mainspring of life itself. She was a woman, it was her province to
build up and not to break down, she saw it now with a spiritual insight
that sent a shudder through her--she had so nearly forgotten it! So
nearly failed to fulfill the destiny that had come down to her through
the ages. To-day when she had been with Overton, when she had heard
his impassioned plea, when she had almost signed the paper that was
to separate her from her husband, she had suddenly awakened from her
dream. The tie that bound her to Arthur Faunce was the primitive bond
of all the ages. She had chosen him, he was her husband. What could
her father do? What could Overton, or any other man do? “Those whom
God hath joined together,” the words came to her with a new meaning, a
meaning which shook her to her soul. For surely no man could put them
asunder! The tie was too deep, it was rooted now in her heart, and she
knew it. It was as deep as the instinct which was awakening slowly but
surely within her, the primal instinct of life, of mating time, of the
birds of the air, of the lioness calling to her mate in the jungle.
Diane lifted her eyes slowly and steadily toward that keen star. It
seemed to her that it penetrated the mists that had obscured her soul,
as the star of old which guided the wise men to the cradle in the
manger. The star was guiding her, too, guiding her into the tender
mists and the soft glory of an unknown but beautiful land. Tenderness
was born in her at last, a tenderness new and beautiful--as the
beginnings of life in the springtime, the budding of flowers, and the
song of the bird to its mate. Alone on her knees in the twilight, Diane
lifted her soul to that distant star, the thought of Overton passed
away from her, the struggle ceased, even her father and his anger were
forgotten, she remembered only her husband, and the eternal purposes of
the Creator who had made them man and woman in the Garden of Eden.
XXXIV
IT was not until he got a clear look at Arthur Faunce’s face under
the strong light of the reading-lamp that Dr. Gerry realized the full
effect of the crisis, moral and physical, upon the younger man. The old
doctor had come in to New York on business connected with his practise,
and in the evening, on his way to the station, he had looked up the
apartment-house from which Faunce had phoned to him on more than one
occasion. He had found him alone, completing his arrangements for the
departure of the expedition to the south pole. Faunce had been glad to
see him, had furnished some cigars and a light, and the two men sat on
opposite sides of the table, both facing the open windows that looked
out over a crowded thoroughfare not far from the heart of the city.
Even at this late hour the clamor of traffic came up to them, and the
variegated lights of the flashing signs revolved, flashed, and receded
and flashed again with all the colors of a kaleidoscope. But the steady
light of the lamp on the table revealed Faunce’s face, its wasted look,
the dark rings under the somber eyes, the drawn lines about the tight
lips, the threads of white in the thick, dark hair that still curled
slightly on the temples. The doctor’s practised eye traveled lower
and rested on the lean, blue-veined hand that held the cigar. It was
unsteady; even the fingers twitched occasionally.
They had been talking, ever since Dr. Gerry’s entrance, of the
expedition. Faunce threw into what he said of it a show of force and
even of enthusiasm, and the doctor had listened without showing that
his own thoughts recurred persistently to that night long ago when
this man had confessed to him in the old office at home. In his heart
he pitied Faunce, as he noticed the feverish eagerness with which he
talked of the new ship and his own plans.
“I’ve got one thing pretty well shaped in my mind,” Faunce said. “The
last time I couldn’t have a free hand, of course, and I always thought
some of our mistakes could have been avoided. But Overton wouldn’t
yield; he has the kind of obstinacy that won’t give up.” He paused long
enough to light another cigar, and then went on: “I’ve been pestered
by some of the old men. I didn’t want them, but there’s one----” He
stopped abruptly, began to pull at his cigar, and seemed embarrassed.
“Well, there’s one----”
Gerry gave him a keen glance. A dull red mounted in the white face, and
Faunce frowned.
“He knows, or thinks he knows, something about the other expedition,
and suspects that I can’t afford to risk his telling it.”
“I thought, at one time, that you dreaded the secret; yet you’ve let
Overton keep back the truth. You’re up to your neck in his debt.”
Faunce leaned forward in his chair, his shoulders bent like an old
man’s, and his clasped hands hanging between his knees.