Chapter II: Part 2

If Overton had lived, Faunce might have been envious--he knew that he was not free from that taint; but he could at least have accepted any tribute that came his way with a light heart. As it was, his honors were so many millstones about his neck. He grew pale and thin, and the dark shadows under his eyes made their expression take on a haunted look; but his very modesty, his evident hesitation to accept the full measure of applause, and the growing melancholy in his handsome face, only served to increase the interest in a personality so attractive and so reserved.

It appealed most keenly, perhaps, to the imagination of Fanny Price. Her girlish fancy clothed the handsome explorer in all the attributes of the favorite heroes of romance. The fact that she perceived, only too clearly, his infatuation for Diane Herford whetted her admiration by removing its object from the proximity of her own possible adorers.

A pretty young thing and a great favorite, she had no lack of “beans,” to use the familiar language of the inhabitants of Mapleton; but none of them, in Fanny’s mind, could be compared to the hero of two antarctic expeditions and the probable commander of a third. Talk was already current that the same great financier who had furnished the sinews of the Overton expeditions was about to equip another and more perfect ship to be placed at the command of Arthur Faunce.

There was another reason, too, which caused a little flutter in Fanny’s innocent breast. She was well aware that a heart is often caught on the rebound, and she knew that, next to Diane, she was an object of interest to Faunce. The question therefore resolved itself into the more complex problem of the state of Diane Herford’s heart. Did she, or did she not, care for Faunce?

If, as Fanny suspected, Diane had loved Overton, she might be unable to reconcile herself to a man who must inevitably recall a dead lover. On the other hand, this might also be Faunce’s strongest appeal--the fact that he was Overton’s chosen comrade, his closest friend, and the man who had last seen him alive.

The two girls were fairly intimate, but the younger had never dared to encroach on the quiet reserve with which the elder screened her inmost thoughts; and she could draw no positive conclusions from the vague glimpses that Diane’s rare moments of deep emotion gave her. Those moments indicated a strong but hidden feeling which might, at any moment, find an outlet in some fresh channel; and what could be more likely than the awakening of a new and living love? The probability of this termination of the affair chilled Fanny’s joy in her hero’s frequent reappearances in the quiet neighborhood of Mapleton.

“He would never come here at all,” she reasoned shrewdly, “if he wasn’t in love with somebody. He isn’t in love with me--that’s certain--so it must be Diane!”

This conclusion, which seemed to overlook all the other charming girls in the suburb, was less self-centered than it appeared. Fanny knew that Faunce had practically ignored the rest of the world, and had concentrated his attentions upon the Herford house, when an occasional invitation did not divert him to the seminary. But those occasional moments when either an actual invitation, or the courtesy of a visit after one, brought him into the Prices’ dingy drawing-room were always fraught with a tremor of excitement for Fanny, not unpleasantly mingled with the refined tortures of hope deferred.

It was just about that agreeable hour which is devoted to drinking a sociable cup of afternoon tea that she actually saw Faunce coming up the broad driveway which led from the seminary gates to the dean’s modest Queen Anne cottage. She had thought him in Washington, and his sudden appearance, pale and tall and graceful, on his way to her own door, sent a thrill to her heart.

For a moment she leaned forward, with both hands on the sill of the bay window, and watched his unconscious approach. She was quite composed when he entered the room, a few moments later, and found her rearranging her little tea-table with deft and graceful hands, while a sudden shaft of afternoon sunshine touched the little fair curls that clustered about her small, pink ears and nestled on the white nape of her neck.

She was very glad to see him. Her large blue eyes would have told him so, if he had not been so preoccupied; but it was not Fanny of whom he was thinking. He dropped into a comfortable chair beside her tea-table, accepted a cup of her tea, and began at once to talk about Diane. The irony of this almost made the girl smile; but she controlled herself, and turned a sympathetic face toward him, glad that her back was to the light, and that he seemed more occupied with staring absently at the fire on the hearth than in looking at her.

“I just heard that the Herfords might go to Florida this winter,” he observed, balancing his cup in a way that would have wrung Mrs. Price’s housewifely heart with anxiety for her best rug.

“I suppose Dr. Gerry told you?”

He nodded.

“It’s on account of the judge’s rheumatism, isn’t it?”

“I think Di likes to play golf.”

“She doesn’t seem to care for it here. I asked her to go to the links the last time I was home, and she refused.”

Fanny elevated her delicate brows.

“Perhaps she had another engagement. You know Di’s the most popular person in Mapleton.”

He set the neglected cup down on the table and looked at her with preoccupied eyes.

“She’s perfectly charming, isn’t she? But--do you think--I mean, does she seem quite happy?”

Fanny temporized, aware of a sinking heart.

“She should be. She’s got everything, and the old judge adores her.”

He leaned back in his chair, toying with the spoons on the table.

“Has she got everything? That’s what I want to know. Do you think--you’re great pals, you and Diane--do you think she cared for Overton?”

Fanny was silent for a moment. Her hands were trembling a little, and she thrust them out of sight under the table.

“That’s not a fair question. I couldn’t answer it, could I, if I knew? And I don’t know. Diane never talks about herself like some other girls. She wraps herself up the way--I don’t know how to describe it, but you’ve seen some flowers, the more delicate ones, fold their petals together at nightfall and hide their golden hearts? I’ve always thought of them when--when I’ve tried to pry into Diane’s soul.”

He reflected, looking thoughtfully into the fire.

“That’s a beautiful idea, isn’t it?--that her heart’s like a delicate flower!”

The thought seemed to please him so much that he remained silent, dwelling on it. Fanny, keenly aware of the cause of his preoccupation, poured out another cup of tea and tried to drink it. Then he returned to the subject.

“I know that Overton cared for her. I knew it before he went away. That’s why I--I----”

He stopped, the color mounting painfully to his hair.

“Why you didn’t speak?” she concluded gallantly.

He turned a flushed face toward her.

“I say, I didn’t mean to give myself away like that! Tea always makes me gossip like an old woman.”

“Old women aren’t always gossips,” Fanny corrected him, calmly looking at his full cup; “and, moreover, you’ve only just tasted your tea.”

“Then it’s your fault! You made me blurt out the truth. I felt your sympathy. Do you know, it’s a beautiful thing, the way you can sympathize? It’s a gift. You’ve made me feel that I have a real friend.”

Fanny lifted her cup firmly and drank a little tea before she managed to answer.

“That’s really a tremendous compliment,” she said, smiling at him. “I’m very proud of it!”

“Well, since I’ve let the cat out of the bag, I might as well tell you the whole truth, hadn’t I?” he exclaimed with that open and engaging manner that had so often won his way. “I’ve been in love with her ever since I was a little shaver. I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t in love with her.”

“And you stood aside because you were loyal to Overton?” she ventured.

He paled as suddenly as he had reddened.

“Yes, I knew he loved her. I owed him a great deal, you know. I let him have his chance first.”

She lifted her eyes bravely to his.

“I think that was magnificent!” she said in a low voice with a tremor of emotion.

VI

THE girl’s words had a strange effect on Faunce. They seemed to strike like a goad into his flesh. He sprang to his feet and began to pace the room with his head down. Fanny Price followed him with an astonished gaze, but she was too much concerned with her own emotion, her own folly in caring at all, to attempt to analyze his moods. It was enough for her that he loved Diane. She did not want to go beyond that, for it utterly crushed her hopes.

“Nothing I’ve ever done is magnificent!” he declared in a choked voice. “I’m not such a bounder as to let you think it. I would have tried as hard as Overton, I know I should, if I hadn’t been sure that she--she loved him!”

Fanny struggled with the last remnant of her self-love. Then she answered in a weak voice:

“Why does it matter to you so much if she did--then?”

He stopped short.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that he’s dead now.”

There was a profound pause. He stood staring at her with a strange expression, his hands hanging clenched at his sides. Fanny had never seen him look so handsome, so tragically inspired; but she returned his gaze with a kind of defiance. She felt that she was at bay, and mast defend herself.

“You mean,” he said slowly, at length, “that his being dead opens the way for me? That perhaps she might care for me now--because of that?”

Fanny nodded.

“Good Heavens!” He drew a deep breath. “That--that would make it impossible. I couldn’t do that!”

“I don’t see why,” she said blankly.

He caught the amazement in her eyes, and was silent, but his face blanched, and his evident emotion was so unaccountable that it startled and puzzled her. She rose from her seat and went to the window, averting her face.

“It’s natural, isn’t it? I don’t think you should feel so dreadfully about it.”

But Faunce still seemed unable to master himself.

“I can’t help it. I--I----” he stammered again, relapsing into silence as he began to walk to and fro.

Fanny did not turn her head, but continued to look out of the window with unseeing eyes, which did not even recognize the boys who were playing football on the campus, not fifty yards away. She was aware of their plunging, dodging figures, of a blur of multicolored sweaters and brown corduroys; but she was not thinking of them, and even their shouts came to dull ears.

Before her the long driveway to the gate was arched with naked elms, and even the hedgerows began to take on the somber hues of early winter. Far in the west a heavy cloud had broken, the widening rift showing a space of translucent light that shot out oblique shafts of glory, like a shower of golden arrows darting through the leaden sky. A sudden gust of wind sent the brown leaves scampering wildly across the lawn, and swept them at last into a frantic dance below the window.

Fanny’s mind remained absorbed in the exhibition of emotion that she had just witnessed. Her heart swelled with grief and mortification as she realized how little she mattered to Arthur Faunce, how useless it was for her to try to console him, when he cared only for Diane.

“I can’t tell you,” he managed to say at length, “how I feel about that terrific end to the expedition.” He threw out his arms with an almost frantic gesture. “I’d give not only my life, but the hope of her love, to bring him back!”

Fanny turned from the window with a strange look on her face.

“Hush!” she said in a low voice. “Here she is--here’s Diane.”

She gave him time to recover his composure; then, going swiftly into the hall, she opened the door for her visitor.

“Papa has been out all day, and I was lonely,” Diane explained. “I thought I’d come in for a cup of your tea, Fanny.”

The two girls kissed each other, and Fanny whispered:

“Arthur Faunce is here.”

She thought Diane colored, but she was not sure. A moment later they entered the room together. Faunce was standing by the fire with his back to the door, but he turned as they came in. Fanny saw that he had entirely mastered his emotion, and his handsome face lit up with a ready smile as Diane greeted him.

“I was sorry to miss you this morning,” she said gravely; “but papa gave me the package. I--well, I haven’t tried to read it yet. I couldn’t!”

He gave her an eloquent look.

“I wanted you to read it first.”

She bent her head in graceful acknowledgment, and moved slowly across to the fire, drawing off her long, soft gloves. She was thin, but the long lines of her slight figure had the slender grace and delicate suppleness of the Reynolds portrait that haunted his memory. Her head, small and spirited and covered with a shadowy mass of soft, brown hair, was set on a slender, white throat which carried it proudly, with an air of stateliness and pride that became her, even in the simple, dark dress she wore.

Faunce followed her with a glance that neglected Fanny as she bent over her little table again. Even Diane seemed for the moment to forget the younger girl. Her clear eyes turned on Faunce, and she made an evident effort to speak with ease.

“You kept his diary, too?”

He assented.

“A part of it. He gave it to me when we left the ship. The rest was lost with him.”

Diane turned sharply away, averting her face as she pretended to look into the fire.

“It’s wonderful that you--preserved so much! As soon as I can, I’ll read it.”

“Yours is the first copy--the author’s; the publishers sent it to me last night, and I took it over as soon as possible.”

She thanked him simply. Then, looking up, she saw Fanny’s flushed face as she bent over her table. Diane sat down beside her.

“Mr. Faunce brought me a copy of his diary,” she explained, “and I--can’t read it yet!”

The other girl put out her hand involuntarily, and Diane clasped it under the table. They looked at each other, and Fanny saw that Diane’s eyes were full of tears. She withdrew her fingers and turned to Faunce with a gay little smile.

“I wonder if you’ll drink that cup of tea now?” she said lightly. “I’ve made another hot one. There are three cold ones standing around in different localities--one on the mantel, one on the cabinet, and the third somewhere beside the fender--I saw you put it there. Mr. Faunce is devoted to tea, Diane!”

They all laughed. Fanny bravely opened her little tea-caddy and began to measure out a fresh supply. She had a feeling that, having reached the last ditch, she was prepared to defend it with the courage of despair.

VII

IT was toward the end of the following month, when the winter had set in, that Judge Herford was seized with one of his bad attacks of lumbago.

Dr. Gerry, summoned by Diane, found his patient in the library. The judge’s figure, which had the habit of appearing so massive when seated, still retained its large dignity of pose, for the deep cushions of his chair concealed the humiliating twist which the disease had not failed to inflict on its victim’s aristocratic muscles; but his temper, never of an amiable turn, had gained nothing under the visitation. He did not hesitate to scowl openly as his old friend appeared carrying, as usual, the small black bag with which the rural practitioner arms himself for the worst emergencies.

“No pills for me!” he growled. “I’ve got a hot-water bag and a plaster--enough for any poor devil. I suppose Diane sent for you!”

“Diane has more sense than you have,” replied the doctor, taking off his greatcoat with the utmost composure.

“What are you staying for?” demanded the judge savagely. “I tell you I won’t be pilled for a muscular twist!”

“Put out your tongue, Hadley,” responded his visitor, mounting his spectacles. “The color of it is more important just now than the way it wags.”

In spite of himself the judge laughed in a sour way. Then a twinge overtook him, and he swore under his breath.

“If you could cure this infernal disease, I’d give you ten thousand dollars!”

“Keep it for Diane. She’ll need the money about the time you kill yourself with hard work.”

The judge eyed him.

“Trying to intimidate me into taking your drugs, eh?”

“That’s my business,” replied the doctor, drawing his chair to the fire and looking over his open case for an appropriate dose.

The other man lay back in his cushioned chair, free for a moment of the teasing ache, and regarded Gerry in silence. His appearance of great strength, the florid flush on his skin, and his iron-gray hair, defied both age and weakness; but the doctor’s words had set him thinking, and he strummed on his chair-arms with angry fingers. A bright fire was burning on the hearth, and the flames made fitful shadows in the small, comfortable, book-lined room--a room that had an intimate air of having associated long with a man of affairs, and of having acquired, even in its old, dilapidated bindings and its well-worn rug, the full measure of dignity and reserve which befitted a judge.

“I’ve got a great deal to do before I’m ready to go,” he remarked at length, in his deep voice. “They’ve mussed up the political situation in this State. If I died or resigned, they’d put in that fool, Henry Runes, as judge!”

Gerry selected a glass bottle, and, opening it deliberately, shook some pink pills into an envelope.

“Henry Runes? Isn’t he a cousin of Overton’s?” the doctor asked.

“Is there any one who isn’t a cousin of Overton’s, since he got famous?” snapped the judge.

“Has he got famous? I thought he had only died. It’s Faunce who’s famous.”

“That’s the way of the world. A man’s got to be very much alive nowadays to be famous overnight.”

“I hear that you have undertaken to be his political sponsor. They say he’s nursing a boom for Congress.”

“He’d better do that than go to his death like Overton, hadn’t he?”

“I don’t think I’ve ever confused him with Overton. He isn’t of the same mental caliber. What’s the idea, Hadley?”

The judge twisted in his chair with a wry face.

“If he doesn’t take up a career here, they’ll put him in command of the new expedition. He’s booked for it, I believe. I’d rather have him settle down and go into politics here. There’s good stuff in him, and he’s got what the newspapers call personal magnetism.”

“He’s got a good many things besides that!” retorted the doctor dryly, adjusting his glasses as he started to write directions on three sets of envelopes. “You seem to take his affairs to heart. Got any special interest in the boy, Hadley?”

Herford was silent for a moment. In his large and more judicial aspect he seemed to be weighing an important question, and his eyes dwelt moodily on the fire. The doctor, without apparently observing him, finished his hieroglyphics, put back his little glass bottles, and closed his case with a snap. As he did it, he heard the judge’s voice in an unwonted key.

“The truth is he’s taken me into his confidence--not a word of this to Diane, Sam--and I know he wants to marry my daughter. I’ll admit that at first it was rather a shock. I’m selfish enough to want to keep her; but gradually I’ve reconciled my mind. I suppose it’s inevitable. Besides, if anything happened to me, she’d be alone, and--well, I haven’t any objection. I’ve been considering, instead, some way to keep him out of that infernal south pole business.”

“Does Diane know?”

“That he’s in love with her? I suppose she does; girls do, as a rule, I think. But he hasn’t spoken to her yet--I know that--and I’ve held my tongue about it. He made me promise.”

The doctor whistled softly. His patient turned a suspicious eye on him.

“What’s your objection?” the judge asked.

“Why don’t you ask Diane if she has any? She’s the important person.”

“I think she likes him.”

The doctor laughed dryly.

“Take it from me that she has a mind of her own!”

The judge threw back his head haughtily.

“I’m not trying to push her.”

“Better not! She won’t stand for it. How did Faunce come to tell you?” The doctor’s large mouth crinkled at the corners. “Did he ask your consent?”

“Not quite. That’s not the fashion these days, is it? It was an accident. I found out a good deal, and he admitted it handsomely. Upon my word, I never liked a young man better than I did Faunce just then. I’ve never thought any man quite good enough for Di, but he’s won me over. I sha’n’t oppose it--if she wants him.”

“Hope she doesn’t!”

“Why?”

The doctor rose and pulled himself into his greatcoat.

“He isn’t fit to tie her shoe!”

“You’re prejudiced. You didn’t like his father.”

Gerry grinned.

“I remember you did like his mother!”

“Lily Blake?” The judge smiled reminiscently. “We were young sweethearts, but she threw me over to marry Henry Faunce.”

“Just so! Now you follow my advice and throw her son over. Diane can do better than that.”

The judge, taken with another twinge of lumbago, growled.

“It’s up to her; but I like Faunce.”

The doctor’s response was an inarticulate grunt. Then he pushed his medicine envelopes into a little row on the library table.

“I’ll send Diane in to dose you,” he remarked, moving toward the door.

“You can’t. She’s gone out with Faunce.”

The two old men looked at each other. Then they both laughed, the doctor without merriment.

“Hadley, if you weren’t a judge, I’d say you were----”

“An old fool!” concluded the judge grimly.

The doctor nodded and went out, shutting the door rather sharply behind him. On the front steps he encountered Diane and Faunce, just returned from a long walk. It was a cold day, and the wind had brought a brightness into Diane’s face. Her eyes sparkled with something of the latent fire of her father’s, and her cheeks were aglow. Faunce, on the other hand, looked like a ghost of himself.

“How’s father?” Diane questioned as she came up.

“Cross as two sticks,” replied the doctor, and gave her some directions about his patient.

Her face sobered.

“You don’t think he’s really ill?”

The doctor shook his head grimly.

“I’d like to make him sick enough to keep still for six weeks. He’s overworked, Di, and the machinery needs oiling up.”

“I can’t make him mind,” she objected. “I wanted to take him to Florida for three months.”

“We may get him there yet. Don’t worry! Hello, Faunce; coming my way?”

Faunce shook his head smilingly.

“I’m going to see the judge,” he said.

For a moment Dr. Gerry stood staring at him. The young man winced.

“You won’t find the judge in a good humor,” the doctor warned him. “You’d better come along with me and test my cigars. Di’s got her hands full taking care of her father.”

Faunce turned involuntarily and looked at Diane, who stood in the vestibule, listening, and smiling in an absent way, her eyes on the gloves that she was slowly unfastening. As Faunce turned, however, she looked up, and her face softened and glowed with a new and delicate embarrassment. She had never looked more charming, more desirable in his eyes, than at that moment. Dr. Gerry, following his glance, caught the look on her face, too, and his hand tightened its grip on his little black bag.

“I think I’ll stay for a while and risk the judge’s lumbago,” Faunce said without turning his head.

Gerry went slowly down the steps. At the foot he turned and looked at Faunce again.

“You’re risking a good deal more than that,” he observed dryly; and with this enigmatical remark he plodded steadily down to the gate without once glancing over his shoulder.

Diane laughed.

“The doctor’s so full of crotchets! I suppose he and papa have been quarreling again. They always do.”

Faunce, to whom Dr. Gerry’s look had conveyed a very different meaning, made no immediate reply. Instead, he followed Diane into the drawing-room, and waited there while she went to carry out the doctor’s instructions and administer a dose of medicine to the querulous patient.

Faunce moved over to the long French window and stood looking out, aware of the judge’s voice in the distance, before Diane shut the door between. In a long vista between the hedgerows he saw the doctor’s sturdy figure trudging toward the automobile that he had left at the end of the lane.

He recalled the night, now nearly two months ago, when they had walked home together, and he had admitted his insomnia. Since then he had more or less avoided the older man. Gerry had been so quick to divine his use of drugs that he dreaded a more searching scrutiny, which might fathom yet another recess of his inner mind, or surprise some secret that he was still determined to hide.

Yet, as he stood there alone in the warm and fragrant room--a room that seemed to express so much of Diane’s rich personality, her refinement and taste and spirit--he recalled Dr. Gerry’s words:

“You’ve got something on your mind, and you won’t be any better, you won’t sleep any sounder, until you get it off.”

A sudden impulse gripped him, a potent longing to rush out of the house, bareheaded as he was, and, pursuing the older man down the lane, to pour out the misery that was destroying his soul. It seemed to him that the relief would be more than commensurate with the humiliation; that the very sound of his own voice unfolding his terrible story would break the dread spell, release his spirit from thraldom, and expel the specter that haunted his brain.

The impulse had come to him before, but never with such compelling force as now--perhaps because there had never been so much reason for him to pause, to halt on the road he was following, before it was too late.

VIII

BUT even while the feeling--keen in itself, and searching--was passing through his mind, Arthur Faunce knew that he would not yield to it--not now. He could not, for he was moved by a greater and more compelling force--his passion for Diane Herford. Between that and his peace of mind, or something which he thought might help restore his peace of mind, he felt himself unable to choose.

It was this lack of moral stamina that had always been his trouble. He could not resist an impulse to secure his own happiness or his own life. He had nothing of the Spartan in him; he would have dropped the fox and denied all previous knowledge of it, rather than risk his vitals. He could not now jeopardize his chance with Diane for the mere sake of a confession which, however it might ease his mind, could not fail to raise the moral obstacle of Gerry’s opinion.

Faunce dismissed the thought. He resolved, as he had resolved a hundred times before, to keep his own counsel, to show himself “the captain of his soul.” If he was not strong enough to drive the miserable fantoms from his own mind, no other man could expel them. It remained for him to live them down.

His eyes traveled over the winter landscape, the brown fields and hedgerows, the occasional roof of some neighboring house. Beyond the slope of the hill, where the land dipped suddenly, he saw a long strip of the Sound, its tranquil surface shimmering like burnished copper in the sunshine. The sight of it recalled the ship that was soon to sail on another expedition, and the choice that fate and circumstance were forcing on him.

He must return to those frozen fields, must face again the awful thing that held his soul in its grip, or he must renounce that part of his new fame that rested on his explorations, and, following Judge Herford’s lead, must plunge into the field of politics. He had thought the choice assured--home and easy preferment, the presence of Diane and the approval of her father; but of late, loving her as he did, he was still curiously aware of a mysterious power that had laid hold of him. He felt the lure of those frozen depths, the gray sky, the blue peaks of giant ice--and the soul of Overton! It was like an obsession, it drew him; but he would not go--he was resolved he would not go, if Diane----

At the thought he heard her coming through the hall. The soft rustle of her dress startled him away from the window. He turned and stood facing her as she came into the room.

She had taken off her hat, and her soft hair, a little disordered by the wind, fell low over her small ears. There was still a delicate flush, a softness, about her face that made it at once more youthful and more charming.

“Papa is feeling better,” she announced as she went over to the fire, “and I’ve ordered tea. Won’t you stay and drink a cup with me?”

He did not reply, and she turned her head, looking over her shoulder at his tall figure outlined against the dark portière behind him. Something in his face arrested the words on her lips. She stood holding her hands out toward the blaze and looking back, the soft glow of the fire touching the fine oval of her cheek and the white curve of her full throat.

“Diane,” Faunce said in a low voice, urged on by an overmastering emotion which he tried in vain to control, “I love you! You know it. Is it fair to keep me waiting so long for an answer?”

She turned her head quickly, hiding her face from him. Deep and contending emotions swept over her; yet she was more tranquil than he was. She had realized long ago that her sorrow drew her nearer to the man who had been Overton’s comrade, who shared with her a deep and reverent tenderness for his memory. If any one had a right to her confidence, her friendship, her love, surely it was the man who had almost given his life to be with Overton to the end. But she said nothing for a moment, and then she heard his voice again.

“Diane, they want me to go back to the antarctic, and lately I’ve felt the deepest, the most unaccountable impulse to go; but there’s one thing that holds me, that would make me give anything up--I mean the hope of your caring enough to want me to stay!”

She turned slowly toward him.

“Would you think that it meant something quite different if I said that I wanted you to go? That I felt that the work should be finished, the victory won?”

He hesitated; his face blanched.

“You want me to go? You don’t care enough to want me to stay here--where you are?”

“I didn’t say that. I want you to go because there’s a great work to finish, because it seems to me like rounding out your career, winning the greatest victory. I--I don’t want to help a man falter by the way or step back. I know _he_ would never have faltered--I mean Overton.”

He looked at her blankly.

“No, he would never have faltered, but--you know, I’ve told you, Diane--I’m not as great as he was. I suppose that’s the reason--the reason you can’t feel as I do, you can’t accept all that I have to give--my love for you?”

“I want to tell you the truth,” she replied, looking up at him with clear eyes. “You know how I’ve felt about Overton. I cared for him so much that it seemed to me I could never feel anything like that for any one else, but lately----”

“Yes?” he cried eagerly, bending toward her, his eyes searching her face.

“Lately I’ve begun to feel that I--I did care for you!”

IX

IT was late that evening before Faunce left the house. As the door finally closed behind him, a biting wind drove the first flakes of a snow-storm into his face. The touch of it, the sting of ice on his flushed cheek, roused him.

He had been, for a while, like a man in a trance, who sees through the golden mist the beautiful shapes of an Elysian vision, and hears the heavenly music of the spheres, while he lies there powerless alike to grasp the full joy of his translation or to confess his own unworthiness to bask in its heavenly sunshine. Only a moment before he had held Diane in his arms, the soft touch of her cheek was still warm on his, the fragrance of her shadowy hair lay still upon his shoulder; yet he felt the intensity of his moral solitude, the depth of the gulf that yawned between her warm faith in him and his hidden shame.

His love for her, his firm determination to wrest happiness from the depths of his misery--the primal instincts of a nature that could not resist temptation--had driven him on. He had won her; however reluctant, however spiritually blinded she had been to his moral attributes, she had promised to be his wife. But his triumph was short-lived, for he knew already that his joy was like a beautiful, shimmering bubble, dancing before the wind. In an instant it would break, and his outstretched hand would grasp only the empty air.

A moment before he had been so happy, so passionately confident that his soul had at last risen above its dishonor. With the assurance of Diane’s love, he could shake off the shackles of fear and rise to such heights of courage, to such magnificent security, that not even the clutching hands of the Furies who had pursued him day and night could drag him down.

A moment ago--how different it had been! He thought of the warm old room with its mellowed air of age and comfort, the dark rug on the floor, the fire sparkling on the hearth, the somber but beautiful hangings, the few fine pictures--a Gainsborough that an ancestral Herford had brought from England as a family treasure, a small Greuze head, and a simple but lovely landscape by an American painter, who had loved the shaded dell and the dashing waterfall. He could see again the table with the lamp, the carved armchairs, and the figure of Diane in a pale house-gown that she had worn at dinner, its simple folds revealing the long, dryadlike lines of her slender form and the buoyant grace of her easy pose as she stood there, beside her own hearthstone, talking to him.

The kindled loveliness of her eyes haunted him still. He had held her soft hands in his, and had felt the tremulous touch of her lips, believing himself one with the immortal lovers of old; but now the door had closed on him, and the night, wild and wintry and touched with snow, had engulfed him. He shuddered awake from his dream of bliss, and saw himself as a lost soul at the gate of paradise.

That was his fate. Happiness might be within his grasp, but it would elude him and mock him. He might attain, but he could never possess. A power greater than life itself had laid hold upon him, an invisible force was crushing him down, and his soul, like the proverbial candle in the wind, only leaped and flickered at the mercy of the gale.

A driving snow-storm swept across the open country, and the trees creaked and swayed in the tempest; but he walked on. The very tumult of it seemed to submerge the still more cruel tumult in his soul, and he breasted the rising storm with something akin to joy that there was endurance enough left in him to face it. For the time the need of physical exertion relieved his mental tension.

Leaving the highroad and climbing to the summit of a little hill, he stood looking down upon the distant city, shrouded in fog and cloaked in blinding snow, until its lights seemed to blend into gigantic arches and semicircles, like broken rainbows in a bank of vapor. It was a familiar spectacle; he had seen it often before, but never in an aspect quite like this.

The strange effect of the lights in the sky, together with the snowflakes that were driving into his face and whitening his arms and shoulders, recalled the frozen wastes of the polar ice-fields, the curtain of deathlike fog that hung over those bleak solitudes. He remembered Diane’s words, her faith in his high endeavor, her hope that he would complete his task and win, at last, a certain claim to the glory that was now but the fallen mantle of a greater man.

He must go back! He recalled the impulse that had been so overwhelming, the keen desire to return. It had seemed to him sometimes as if unseen hands had grasped him and were drawing him back to those haunted seas. Diane had voiced his feeling; she, too, had urged him to go.

But now, alone in the night, he fell into one of his bitter moments of revulsion. The whole thing filled him with horror. It was strange, he told himself, that she should so insist upon it. It was unlike a woman to bid her lover go into such perils. He began to believe that she did not love him--it was Overton still who stood between! Jealousy laid hold of him and rent him.

A prey to contending feelings, he turned and fought again with the gale, plunging on into the drifting snow. She had told him that she loved Overton. He was second in her heart, second in the great expedition, second in the very honors he had won!

Yet--a shudder ran through him--what right had he to be jealous of Overton? What right had he, indeed, to any honor, or to high repute, or to Diane’s love? An hour before he had lifted the cup of life to his lips and tasted joy; now he was draining the bitter dregs in a spiritual agony that laid bare his own soul.

He saw his course, as he had followed it in the long year that was drawing now to its close; and it was plain to him why the thought of it had haunted him night after night, even when he had tried to shut it out, until insomnia had driven him to the verge of madness. Like Orestes, he had been pursued by the Furies; but no tribunal of the gods would release him from their clutches. He could never sleep again without the deadly poison of some narcotic stealing into his veins.

He had walked blindly, without following the road, and he was almost out of his reckoning when, through the white folds of the storm, he saw the outlines of the Gerry house set low and solid amid its clustering cedars. A light burned in two windows in the rear, showing that Dr. Gerry was still up, keeping his usual vigil in his study. The fact that the rest of the house was dark suggested that the household slept, and that the doctor was alone.

Faunce paused in his struggle with the wind and stood staring at the light. Again he was swept with an unaccountable impulse to cry aloud for help, to strip the veil from his soul, after the manner of those desperate ones who snatch at the wild hope that some other mortal may be able to apply a panacea that shall stay the devouring agony, heal the secret wound, before the sufferer bleeds to death.

As he stood there, uncertain, torn by his fears and his doubts, voices seemed to speak to him in the fury of the elements. As the storm beat upon him, he felt an unseen presence pressing against his garments. The Furies again pursued him!

He had reached the limit of his endurance. He pressed his hands over his eyes; and then, as he looked up, he saw a white world and a leaden sky. The horrible illusion was complete; his fate had overtaken him again, and he could not resist it. Trembling from head to foot, stricken with an overwhelming horror and dismay, he turned and made his way through the drifted snow to the old house, climbed the short flight of front steps, and knocked at the office door.

The doctor himself appeared in answer to the summons.

“Is that you, Faunce?” he asked, holding open the door. “I expected you--come in.”

But the words fell on deaf ears. Faunce did not apparently heed them as he entered, still dazed by the long struggle with the storm, and his tall figure whitened with snow. He suffered himself to be stripped of his greatcoat and ordered to a seat by the fire.

The warmth of the room, the glow of the lamplight, the familiar aspect of the place, lined as it was with the doctor’s books and medicine cabinets, the slight aromatic odor of drugs that pervaded it, awoke him from his stupor. He leaned forward, and, stretching his hands out to the blaze, stared steadily into it.

The doctor, who had been watching him from the first, poured some cognac into a glass and brought it.

“You’d better drink that,” he advised gruffly. “Been trying to kill yourself?”

Faunce took the glass, drained it, and set it down on the table.

“No,” he replied in a low voice. “I don’t want to die. There’s nothing I dread more than death. I’ve always had a kind of physical abhorrence of it.”

His host quietly resumed his own seat on the opposite side of the fire.

“Most strong young men have a horror of it,” he remarked dryly, “as well as some old ones.”

Faunce looked up at him with a dazed face.

“Have you ever been afraid--mortally afraid to die?” he asked hoarsely.

Gerry shook his head.

“I never had time.”

“Then you can’t understand!”

The exclamation was almost a cry. It seemed to be wrung from some agonized inner consciousness that had escaped his control, for Faunce leaned back in his chair, gripping the arms with his strong, nervous hands, and a slow, deep flush mounted over his pale face.

The doctor refilled his old pipe and lit it with elaborate preoccupation.

“Was that what ailed you down there at the pole?” he asked between whiffs.

Faunce, fully roused, started.

“How do you know that anything ailed me? Why have you hung on to that idea?”

“Because I’ve seen--for one thing--that you’ve got something on your mind. I told you so before.”

“And your theory is that--if I get it off--I’ll get rest?”

The doctor nodded.

Faunce rose from his chair and began to walk the floor, his arms hanging at his sides, his head bent. As he walked, he clenched and unclenched his fingers. Dr. Gerry followed the younger man with his eyes, but continued to pull away at his pipe, the intimate of his solitude. He noticed, too, in his cool, observing way, that the cat avoided his nervous visitor, rising from his path with elevated back and moving to a place of security beside the hearth.

The doctor bent down and threw a log upon the fire. The sound of its fresh crackling brought Faunce back.

“By Jove, you’re right!” he said harshly. “I have got something on my mind!”

The doctor smiled grimly. Faunce dropped into his seat and, leaning forward, laid his hand on the older man’s knee.

“Do you know that this afternoon, after I saw you go, I asked Diane Herford to marry me?”

Gerry took his pipe out of his mouth and laid it down.

“You had no business to do it!” he retorted sharply. “You’re a dope-fiend already; what right have you to ask any woman to trust a man who can’t sleep without chloral?”

“Chloral?” Faunce swept that aside with a gesture of contempt. “That’s nothing--compared with the rest!”

The doctor eyed him, looking at him from under heavy brows. He saw the mounting passion in the other man’s mood, and waited. After a moment Faunce went on.

“I’ve been in hell for the last few hours! I’ve lived in it for months, or I thought I had; but the last of it has been too much! But I won’t give her up--I wouldn’t give her up if Overton came back from the dead!”

He stopped and sat staring in front of him, his face distorted with emotion. The doctor, watching his visitor narrowly, nodded his head.

“Ah!” he commented slowly. “It’s Overton, then, who’s on your mind?”

Faunce turned and met Gerry’s eyes.

“Yes, it’s Overton!” he flung back. “You’ve read my book and his journal--you’ve read the story of the expedition?”

“I’ve read all that you let us read. I got an impression that you’d cut out a good deal.”

“Yes; I cut out a good deal. Do you remember the description of the loss of the ship? We had to take to the ice-fields, then, with the men and the dogs. You know the rest. The progress we made, our comparative success, and the shelter for the men--the cache that saved us? Then you remember that Overton, Rayburn, and I set out with one sled and some provisions to make a dash for the pole? How the storm overtook us, Rayburn and Overton died from exposure, and I was barely saved?”

The doctor nodded in an absent way, taking up his pipe, which he had let go out, and emptying it, without again looking in the direction of his guest. In a subconscious way, however, he was recalling Faunce as he stood on the steps with Diane, young, handsome, flushed with hope.

“It’s all of it true, yet there’s more behind--more that I couldn’t tell. I never meant to tell it at all, but there’s something, some power inside of us, or above us, that drags things out. I don’t know what fiend it is, but it has pursued me night and day!”

“Some of us call it conscience,” remarked the doctor dryly.

“Call it by any name you choose, it has mastered me, broken me on the wheel!” Faunce paused again; then he collected his thoughts, and went on in a voice so level and cold that it seemed impossible that he was telling a story of his own life. “It’s true that we set out together, and it’s true that Rayburn died of exposure. By that time the storm had cut us off, and we were lost in that cruel wilderness of ice. We buried Rayburn in a drift, Overton repeating what he could remember of the burial service, the storm beating on us and the dogs howling against our feet. Then we pushed on. To stop was death, and we thought we could find the others. They were in the dugout, and had food enough; but we had been delayed by Rayburn, for Overton wouldn’t leave him until he was buried in the snow, and the blizzard had increased. In the midst of it Overton broke his ankle. We had only one sled, so I put him on it, and we pushed on. The food was gone--he had given the last of it to the dogs.

“About this time he began to get like Rayburn--out of his head. I suppose his leg pained him, and he was exhausted. The wind kept howling over the ice, and the cold had frozen straight through my clothing. It seemed to be in my bones, it numbed my very soul. I had no feeling except the desire to live, to escape! But I felt that I was going--going the way Rayburn had gone, the way Overton was surely going. I could feel a kind of madness creeping into my blood. I began to be afraid of death. There was nothing there but blinding ice and snow and the screech of the wind. It sounded as if the Furies were let loose. Once I thought I saw figures in the distance, that help was near; but it was the mirage, and I fancied I was going crazy. I saw, too, that Overton was failing fast. It came over me then that I should die, too, like that! We had to stop to rest the dogs, and I gave him the last pull out of my flask; but he lay in a stupor in the snow. The dogs began to howl. I was born in the country, and I’ve heard it said, when I was a boy, that a dog’s howl meant death. It made me furious, and I remember that I struck at the poor brutes. The cold was fiendish. I could scarcely breathe the freezing air. Overton became unconscious, and didn’t answer me.”

For a moment Faunce stopped, breathing hard.

“I was seized with a sickening fear,” he went on. “I shook--not with cold, but with terror. I tried to lift him on the sled again, but I was no longer strong enough, and it terrified me still more to find that my strength was failing. He was as helpless as a log of wood, and I heard the howl of the rising gale. If I stayed there, in twelve hours, in less than twelve hours, I should be like him, or worse! I couldn’t face it; it wasn’t human to face it!”

Faunce stopped again, and then went on in a monotonous voice:

“I didn’t look at him again. I got on the sled and made the dogs drag me away. I had to whip them; they didn’t want to leave him. We went a long way before we struck the trail, and as we did so another storm, worse than the first, broke; but the dugout was in sight, the men saw us, and I was saved.”

“And you left Overton out there--alone--in that waste--_alive_?”

“Yes!”

X

THERE was a terrible pause. For a moment a breathless silence seemed to prevail, both outside the house and inside. Then they heard the wind leap up and come howling back, rattling the windows. Faunce began to talk again with a dry throat:

“He was dying. If I had stayed, I should have died, too. I tell you I couldn’t stand it! A mortal terror had seized me, and I simply couldn’t stand up against it. I had to go!”

The doctor leaned forward in his chair, his eyes fixed on his visitor, but he did not interrupt. He was, in fact, at the moment too much astonished to speak.

“I asked you, a while ago, if you had ever been afraid of death,” Faunce went on. “It wasn’t a fair question. You couldn’t answer it, because you’ve never faced a death like that. I had never been a coward before, but it seized me then--fear, naked, hideous fear! It ground me and tore me. I tell you I couldn’t resist it. I--I had to go!” he repeated again.

“You left him; you got to the cache,” Dr. Gerry managed to say at last; “and then you and the men returned--you must have returned--to find his body!”

“Yes, I went back--oh, God!” Faunce shrank with a gesture of horror. “Why do you ask me? Of course, we went back as soon as we could. But what did we find? Drifted snow-banks, ice--ice--ice! There was no trace of the body--he lay deep down in that awful waste!”

The doctor had pulled himself still farther forward in his chair, peering at the younger man curiously.

“Do you think you found the place?”

Faunce swept the thing from him with a gesture that expressed almost physical pain.

“I--I’ve sometimes feared we didn’t, that I had forgotten. There couldn’t be any track, you know; but--he was dead!” He paused again, still breathing hard. Then he turned a haggard look on his auditor. “You’re a doctor; you can help me; you can tell me the truth,” he pleaded in an altered voice. “Answer me--does it take long to freeze to death?”

“Not long--in such a case.”