Chapter IV: Part 4

“I thought, at first, he wouldn’t go,” she admitted quietly in a colorless voice; “but then something seemed to draw him back. I suppose it’s the lure of the pole. And I--I felt he had to go to finish the work.”

“But it wasn’t his work!”

“You mean----”

“It’s Overton’s. When he’s done it, he won’t get the credit of it. It’ll be finishing the work of Overton’s expedition, won’t it?”

“I--I suppose it will, in a way.”

Fanny laid down some teaspoons.

“You’ve got thirty-six dozen spoons and two soup-ladles. Yes, it’ll be finishing Overton’s work.” She looked up and met Diane’s eyes squarely. “Is that why you wanted him to go?”

Diane colored deeply, working hard at the knotted ribbon on another bundle.

“I hadn’t thought of it in that way, Fanny. I wanted Arthur Faunce to be something more than a--a second in the expedition. When a man is as great as Overton was, he overshadows everything.”

“I don’t see how you can feel that way when Mr. Faunce is so great himself. I don’t believe you really see it as it is, Di!”

“Oh, yes, I do! But then it wouldn’t do for me to say so much, would it?”

Fanny reflected.

“I think I should, if I were you,” she replied stubbornly.

Diane smiled.

“There’s one thing I’ve always loved in you, Fanny, and that’s your loyalty to your friends.”

“Oh, I get that from papa. It’s inherited, and hasn’t any original virtue. I’ve always said that papa would stick up for Satan himself if he happened to be an old acquaintance!”

It gave Diane a feeling of relief to laugh.

“I’m so glad,” she remarked, after a pause, which they spent in arranging the gifts, “that it’s your father who is going to marry us, Fan! I should hate to have a stranger do it. It seems to bring us all so close together, because I know your father loves us.”

“He loves you,” retorted Fanny with unconscious emphasis. “Diane, do you ever think about your father? What will he do when you’re away? Sometimes it seems so strange that we younger ones go off and make our lives as if they hadn’t mothered and fathered us so long.”

“It’s like birds going out of the nest, isn’t it, Fanny? I suppose it’s the law of life--what the scientists call evolution. But I do think of father. I hate to leave him. I shouldn’t leave him, if I didn’t know he would be well cared for. You know old Martha understands just how to cook for him. She knows what he likes better than I do--better, I think, than mama used to know; and old Henry takes care of him as faithfully as Dr. Gerry does. Besides, you’re all so near. It seems to me as if he would be better off. Arthur and I are going into a new land--a land of mist and mirage. I feel”--she was looking across at Fanny without seeming to see her--“that I am indeed setting out on a long journey. I’m taking with me the man who loves me; but I’m not sure--I’m not at all sure what’s beyond the soft, impalpable cloud that hangs like a veil just above the open sea of my dreams!”

Fanny was silent. After a moment Diane turned and went on with her work; but, as she picked up another package, she added in a more natural tone:

“Why don’t you answer me, Fan? Don’t you understand?”

“Yes, I think I do; but if I were you, I’m certain that I should know. I mean, if I were going to marry the man I loved, I’d be sure that the sun was shining behind that cloud!”

Diane slowly and carefully unwrapped the tissue that enclosed an ancient Venetian vase. It was a beautiful thing in design and workmanship, but she made no comment on its perfection as she set it carefully down on the table.

“But I’m not sure,” she confessed softly.

Fanny had now reached the limit of her endurance, and her silence left Diane free to pursue her own train of thought. It was this, perhaps, which led her, later on, to her talk with her father.

XVI

IT was the night before her wedding, and the judge, after a long day of busy arrangements, which had included a settlement of business matters with Faunce, at last found himself at rest in the old armchair beside his study fire. He had been too occupied and too ambitious to forward the fortunes of his future son-in-law to feel that the moment was drawing nearer and nearer when he must give up his daughter; but now, alone at his own fireside, he remembered that, and was amazed at the rush of keen regret that softened his mood.

Diane was very dear to him. He had been a busy man, a man beset with cares and ambitions, but the girl, who had come to him instead of the son for whom he had prayed, held a warm place in his heart. He would miss her--he confessed that to himself, with a kind of pride in his own tenderness. He had, indeed, planned to keep her near him, to set his son-in-law on the path that he had already made a beaten track to political success; but Diane herself had held Faunce to his infatuation--she was actually leading him in this wild venture in the antarctic seas.

Vaguely, but with a certain pride of blood, Judge Herford began to recognize the instinct of race in her. She had sprung from a long line of adventurers on sea and land. A Herford had been with Sir Francis Drake; a Herford had fought at Marston Moor; a Herford had followed the star of empire westward across wintry seas and founded the family fortunes in the colonies. The judge himself had retrieved the losses of his father and his grandfather, and now, in his strong middle age, saw himself nearly at the top rung of the ladder he had set himself to climb. He could afford to take the future in an easier frame of mind, to slacken his gait a little, but he had lacked a son to follow in his footsteps. His fancy, fixing itself on Faunce, on the brilliant promise that seemed to dawn in the young man’s career, began to build new castles in the air.

He felt a certain satisfaction in knowing that he had furthered Arthur Faunce’s fortunes, and had been a factor in the making of the marriage that was to take place on the morrow. Faunce was neither so famous nor so wealthy as the judge could have wished, but he was young, able, and already surrounded with the heroic halo of his hardships and his services to science and his country.

In a recent public address an eminent man had said that America was proud of mothering such sons as Overton and Faunce. That Arthur was placed second seemed, after all, a graceful tribute to the dead, and Faunce had succeeded now to the full leadership in place of Overton. On the whole, the judge felt satisfied and even happy. Thoughts of tenderness and regret added only a gentler shading to a mood that might otherwise have been too unctuous and self-satisfied.

His friends, too, had sustained his judgment; all but Dr. Gerry. He was aware that Gerry challenged it; but he remembered, with a reminiscent smile, that Gerry had always been a “crank.” It was not to be supposed that any one so eminently human and young as Faunce could please the crusty old doctor.

“He’s too healthy,” the judge had declared, laughing.

“Oh, is he?” the doctor flung back, and muttered his objections. “Let him go, Hadley! He isn’t fit to tie Diane’s shoe. Send her to a convent!”

There had been more, in the doctor’s most pessimistic vein; but, when challenged for a real objection, he refused to state his views. The matter had dropped at last, and only Diane noticed that the old man sent no wedding-gift. The judge had brushed Gerry’s opposition aside as he now brushed aside his own tenderness.

He sat back comfortably in his chair, filling the big bowl of his favorite pipe. He was just lighting it when he heard a rustle in the hall, and Diane stood on the threshold, a slight figure in a floating gown of flowered silk, her long hair unbound and shadowing her face.

The judge looked around at her, a smile in his judicial eyes.

“It’s twelve o’clock, Di. You’ll certainly see the dawn of your wedding-day, at this rate!”

“I couldn’t sleep, papa, so I came to sit with you a while.”

He made room for her to bring a low seat to the fire by his side. With a new paternal aspect, he laid his arm gently around her shoulders.

“I was just thinking of you, Di, and of Arthur. I wish I’d had my way and put him into politics.”

“So that we should be near you? I should have loved that, of course; but we’ll come back. I don’t want him in politics, ever!”

“And why not, miss? If it’s good enough for your dad, it should be good enough for your husband, eh?”

She shook her head.

“I don’t think I can make you understand. You’re--you’re different!”

“Humph! Not so valuable, perhaps?”

She laughed softly; then her face sobered.

“You’ve stood like granite, papa, in the midst of all the storm. You were made to be among the captains and the shouting. It’s fine--it has been fine to see you. I’ve always been proud of you, and I’ve heard men say that they were proud of you. Don’t you remember Governor Belt? He told me that you were a wonder, that not a muckraker living could fling ill-report at you! But Arthur? It seems to me that as he stands to-day--young and unsoiled and on the verge of great adventure--he’s at his best; he’ll be always at his best. If you pull him back into the turmoil of the city and State, fling him into politics, he won’t be the same. He won’t stand as you do, like a rock; he would bend and yield. It might spoil him, spoil the fineness in him.”

“My child, if he’s so brittle, life will break him, and he won’t be worth the breaking!”

“I don’t mean just that. I mean that I want to keep the fineness in him, to see him follow the shining trail. If it wasn’t for the fineness in him I couldn’t love him, papa, and if I didn’t believe I loved him I wouldn’t marry him.”

“That’s your test, I know.” The judge leaned back, pulling at his pipe, amused at Diane’s view, which seemed to him to be merely that of untried girlhood. “There’s been many a marriage without love, my dear, that’s turned out well enough.”

“I couldn’t do it! To me the woman who marries that way, for money, for position, or just to be married, is”--her voice dropped to a low note, touched with ineffable scorn--“is no better than the worst!”

The judge patted her shoulder.

“A high view, Di. I’ll agree with you thus far--if he wasn’t fine and honest, I’d never let you marry him if I could help it. In these days we fathers can’t help much, in my opinion; but I’ll help you out of it, my child, if ever he shows himself less than we think him--an honest man!”

“We’re alike in that, papa. That’s the unalterable test--his honesty. I couldn’t live, day after day, with a man whom I knew to be a liar and a thief, as Mabel Gardner does. Yet it’s noble in her, too. She stayed with her husband to try to hold him up, to keep him from falling to the lowest level.”

“It was sentiment and womanish feeling,” the judge retorted sternly. “There was nothing noble in it. She shielded him so that some of his creditors let him off a little for her sake. Goffery, the greatest creditor of all, who could have sent him to prison, wouldn’t testify, because he was in love with Mabel himself. She knew it--she played on him. That’s not noble; it’s mere knavery.”

“You mean that she should have sent him to prison rather than let Goffery save him for love of her?”

The judge nodded.

“Trading--mere trading! Not in the bare, ugly fact, as low people trade, but in sentiment and honor--making a wronged man save another because he still loves that other’s wife. She’ll get a divorce next and marry Goffery.”

“I can’t think that!” exclaimed Diane, gazing thoughtfully into the fire. “That would be degradation, papa, and Mabel’s a lady.”

“What’s a lady?” the judge snorted angrily. “Nothing, unless you’re a little better bred and nobler and more virtuous than the rest of womankind. If Mabel marries Goffery--after she gets a divorce--it’ll be paying him for all that he’s done, won’t it? There’s nothing ladylike in that! You’re a lady, Di--not so much by right of birth and breeding and all that, but because you’re an honest woman, and you wouldn’t do the kind of shabby, cowardly things that Mabel Gardner has done.”

“Poor Mabel! You’re a hard judge sometimes, papa! I pity Mabel. I’ve thought of her once or twice to-day, because I was so happy. You remember she was married three years ago to-morrow? She was happy then--but he’s turned out such a rogue! I think, perhaps, that’s why I said what I did just now. I want to keep Arthur as he is, a follower of the shining trail.”

The judge reflected a while on this, smoking quietly.

“I’ll tell you what Arthur said to me,” he rejoined at last. “He told me that your love for him would lead him higher than any ambition that he had ever cherished, or any hope that he’d ever had. It’s a good deal for a man to say, my girl!”

She was leaning against his knee, her cheek resting on her hand, and he could see only the soft, brown arch of her head and the cloud of hair that cloaked her shoulders.

“It’s a great deal to say,” she admitted. “It makes it harder for me to fill the place he’s set for me in his life; but I’ll try to do it. Meanwhile, papa, I hate to leave you! When I came in here to-night I came to tell you that, but we’ve been talking of Arthur. I’ve tried to be a good daughter. I hope I’ve succeeded half-way, papa?”

He patted her head again.

“The best man ever had!”

The words brought back those words of Faunce about Overton. “The best friend man ever had!” The thought thrust itself suddenly into Diane’s heart, and took her unawares. Her tense nerves quivered. She laid her head down on her father’s knee and burst into bitter, inexplicable tears.

XVII

EARLY the following morning, with the rain and sleet driving against the window-panes, in the fury of a late winter storm--the wild harbinger, in fact, of spring itself--Diane was married to Arthur Faunce.

“The handsomest couple I ever saw!” Mrs. Price whispered to Dr. Gerry, dabbing the moisture from her eyes with the handkerchief that she had already wept into a ball.

Dr. Gerry moved an eye around to look at her without moving his head, much as the drowsy crocodile views curious observers at the aquarium; but he made no comment. He had spent the night in trying to force Faunce to tell Diane the truth before she married him. He had failed, and was therefore an unwilling witness at the ceremony.

The quaint old library, the room Diane had chosen, was scarcely altered from its every-day aspect. Above the low book-shelves that lined the walls were fine examples of pottery and bronze, which gleamed warmly in the light of the fire in the great fireplace. A few moss-roses and tall ferns, sent from a New York conservatory, were the only ornaments.

Dr. Price, small, precise, and placid, in his white surplice and black cassock, his white hair smoothed back with what Horace Walpole would have called “a _soupçon_ of curls behind,” performed the ceremony before a group of old friends and neighbors, the only witnesses. Mrs. Price lifted her plump, wrinkled face and kissed the bride on both cheeks.

“My dear, I wish you every blessing! You remind me of Rachel, and Ruth, and all the brides of the Bible. And, dear Diane, he’s so handsome! It seems almost wicked for nature to waste so much beauty on a mere man, even if he is a hero!”

Diane glanced smilingly at Faunce.

“Isn’t it splendid for me, Cousin Julia? I don’t need to shine when he’s near, do I?”

The little woman plunged in deeper, and was still babbling along when her daughter, a little pale and nervous, came to tell Diane it was time to change her dress for the journey. Glad to escape, the two girls ran up-stairs together, and Fanny and the maid made haste to help transform a white-and-silver bride into a trim, tailor-made young woman ready for the train. While the transformation was in progress, Diane grew more composed, and helped with her deft fingers in the knotting and unknotting of ribbons and laces and flowers.

“It went off beautifully, Di!” Fanny felt that she could say this with safety, as she plunged into a new hat-box after the bride’s traveling-hat. “That cake from New York was fine. I left dear papa eating it, and he’ll be ill to-morrow.”

“I noticed the flowers, Fan,” Diane said, fastening fresh hooks, while she sent the maid on an errand. “I’m glad I didn’t have too many. Is that hat becoming? It seems to me too--too flamboyant. The styles are dreadful!”

“It suits you exactly. What a lovely color you’ve got, Di! A minute ago you looked like a ghost. You were----”

Diane stopped her with a gesture.

“What’s that?”

They listened. A newsboy was shouting an extra edition, and they could hear his shrill pipe above the storm. Fanny’s eyes widened.

“What can it be? No one sells extras out here, in a storm!”

Diane went to the door and listened.

“Some one’s called him. Fanny, go and find out what it is. There’s nothing for me to do now but to work on my gloves.”

The little bridesmaid, glad to hide her telltale face, ran out. Diane stood listening in strange anxiety, unaware that she was frightened. Why should she be? she argued. Why should she worry at all? They were all together and all well--what could be better, more reassuring, than that thought?

Then Arthur’s face came back to her as he had looked when he put the ring on her finger--the feverish light in his eyes, the triumph and the happiness. A feeling, deep and inexplicable, disturbed her; there had been something wanting--some element of strength, fortitude, or poise. At that moment, the supreme moment of the ceremony, she had experienced a new sensation of loss, of shipwreck, as if she had survived the failure of some fine and inarticulate hope and confidence in him.

Standing there now, for the last time in her own room, the new wedding-ring on her finger, her wedding-finery thrown across the bed, she shivered, she was afraid. Then she heard Fanny coming slowly back up-stairs. The girl seemed to halt for an instant on her way to the door. Diane turned and saw her at the threshold. She was holding the newspaper unfolded in her hands, her eyes fixed on the front page, her face expressionless.

“What is it, Fanny?”

The question was almost a cry of alarm. Fanny made no reply, and Diane went to her, taking the paper from her. As she did so, Fanny pointed to the headlines of an article that filled the head of a column. It was a cablegram, printed in large type that seemed to stare:

H. M. S. Pelican arrived safely at Southampton to-day, with
Lieutenant Blackford and the other members of his antarctic
expedition. They brought with them the well-known American explorer,
Simon Overton, U. S. N. Having barely recovered from desperate
illness and exposure, Overton refused to be interviewed.

Diane let the paper fall to the floor, and the two girls stood looking at each other in speechless amazement.

Down-stairs there was a moment of poignant silence in the library when the judge read the newspaper despatch in an incredulous voice that was a little deeper than usual. As he read, a sudden burst of sunshine, almost as violent as the storm, flooded the room. It shone on the smooth surfaces of the ancient vases and on the rich and multicolored bindings of the judge’s books. It warmed the moss-roses that had bloomed for the wedding, and shone still more keenly, with almost a cruel concentration, on the white face of Arthur Faunce.

It revealed Faunce’s countenance at a moment when his inner self seemed to be receding, in mortal panic, from the vision of his friends. He stood, with his hand gripped like a vise on the back of a tall chair and his eyes fixed on his father-in-law. He was like a man overtaken by sudden calamity and rooted to the spot, with no more power to escape it than the victim of a nightmare.

The judge threw back his big head and looked at him.

“What can this mean, Arthur?”

Faunce gasped. His mind was still reeling, and his voice sounded a long way off to his own ears.

“It must be a mistake,” he replied slowly; “a mere newspaper story--or the wrong name. Overton is dead!”

The judge looked again at the paper, and then cast another searching look at Faunce.

“It’s strange,” he remarked, “that a thing like that should be cabled from London--from the correspondent of this paper, too; and they think it important enough for an extra.”

“Anything is important enough to make an extra penny on!” the little dean remarked caustically, coming to the rescue.

Dr. Gerry, standing back by the mantel, was watching Faunce. Knowing the story, he was convinced that in some miraculous way Overton had been rescued, and that Faunce must know it, too.

Rallying from the first shock, Faunce was facing it with some self-control.

“I think I can speak with more authority than the newspaper,” he managed to say. “I was there!”

“But--oh, Mr. Faunce, don’t you think it’s--it’s just possible?” pleaded Mrs. Price, clasping her hands. “A miracle may have happened. It would be so beautiful! It would make Diane so happy, it would make us all so happy, if dear Simon Overton could come back!”

Her little bubbling voice, like the pleasant singing of a teakettle, brought relief to a tense situation.

“That’s the way to look at it,” rejoined Dr. Gerry. “Let’s rejoice in the hope.”

Judge Herford bent his heavy brows.

“There can’t be any hope, Gerry,” he said flatly, “if Faunce has told us the truth.”

Faunce smiled, but with a wince.

“It’s not a thing about which any man would want to jest,” he replied slowly, purposely misunderstanding Herford’s speech. “We believed him dead. If a miracle has happened, the body must have been recovered and resuscitated. I can’t believe a word of this!”

Herford, however, pursued his questions, the lawyer in him roused to ignore his new position as a father-in-law.

“Then you admit that his body might have been found?”

Faunce hesitated.

The others--his father-in-law, Gerry, who knew the truth, Dr. Price, and the wedding-guests--all waited. The moment before he had been the hero of the occasion, the bridegroom at his own wedding. Now, strangely enough, he stood alone in the center of the room facing them, much as a prisoner might stand at the bar.

He looked up and met Dr. Gerry’s eye, and it revealed the full force of the situation. Gerry believed that Overton lived!

Faunce experienced again the terrible sensation of the world falling to pieces around him while he still survived. If Overton lived, he was delivered from the hideous remorse that gnawed at his heart; but he was ruined. No power on earth could save him from public shame.

He rallied his forces again.

“There was a terrific blizzard; we were rescued from an avalanche of packed ice and snow. How is it possible that these Englishmen could find and resuscitate a dead man? If they did, where were they? Why didn’t we meet them? The thing’s absurd!” he climaxed, with an actual thrill of relief as he remembered the situation.

Yes, it was absurd! No living man could have reached Overton after he left him.

The dean nodded his head slowly and thoughtfully.

“Of course, of course! You must be right, Faunce; you were with him when he died. This is a cruel mistake!”

“It’s more than cruel--it’s a mockery of death,” Faunce declared with renewed force.

He was determined not to believe it. He was convincing himself, and he was regaining his control of the others.

Judge Herford folded the paper and put it down.

“We’ll hear more of it to-morrow--or they’ll contradict it. Of course, if you were with him until the last minute, you know, Arthur!”

“Yes, I know!” Faunce returned, a feverish light in his eyes. “I----”

He stopped abruptly, looking toward the door, and they all turned and followed his eyes.

XVIII

FANNY PRICE, a pale-faced little creature, in her bridesmaid’s finery, stood there looking at them. Conversation had begun again in a faint-hearted way, but it hushed as she spoke.

“Diane wants to know--is it true about Overton?”

Faunce crossed the room and took Fanny’s hand in his, trying to reply to the challenge of her eyes. She was shaken, horribly shaken, with the remembrance of his book and Overton’s, and of that black gap in the narrative which could easily be filled with Overton’s death.

“Tell Diane that it’s a story, a mere newspaper story,” he said firmly. “It couldn’t be true--you know that.”

She assented, drew her hand hastily out of his, and ran back up-stairs.

The dean exchanged a meaning look with his wife. They had both seen Faunce flinch under Fanny’s glance, and Mrs. Price tried to divert the thoughts of the guests. She touched Herford’s arm and whispered:

“Take them all into the dining-room, Cousin Hadley. She wants to get off without a shower of rice!”

The judge nodded, rousing himself from the unpleasant break in the festivities.

“Come!” he said in a genial tone. “Let’s go back and drink to the health and happiness of the bride and groom for the last time!”

They followed him through the wide folding doors, with the little flutter of excitement that remained after the interruption. They felt as if they had been for a moment over the edge of an abyss, and were still hanging there, suspended by a very thin thread.

Faunce, however, obeyed Fanny’s signal and went toward the door, only to be halted by Dr. Gerry in the hall.

“It’s true, Faunce--you know it’s true. What d’you mean to do?” he demanded grimly.

Faunce leaned back against the door of the drawing-room, shielding himself by holding out a portière on a rigid arm, that the girls might not see his face as they came down-stairs.

“It can’t be true!” he reiterated passionately. “It can’t be true! It’s some horrid story, an attempt to ruin me.”

Gerry shook his head.

“I’ll wager it is true. Didn’t you think you saw figures? You supposed it was a mirage. It’s true, and it’s up to you!”

Faunce put his hand to his throat with a helpless gesture, like a man struggling to breathe.

“I tell you he was stark and freezing,” he gasped. “I swear it. He can’t have come back!”

The doctor laid his hand on Faunce’s shoulder.

“Be a man!” he whispered sharply. “I warned you not to marry Diane, I warned you to keep away from this; but now you’re in it. For God’s sake, shield her! Be a man!”

Faunce shook off the old man’s touch.

“Let me alone! I tell you she’s safe. It’s false, every word of it; he simply can’t have come back!”

The doctor said no more, but made a sign, warning him. Diane and Fanny came down-stairs together, the bride in her traveling-dress. Her filmy veil, floating on the edge of her wide-brimmed hat, obscured the pallor of her face. The doctor took her hand, patting it benignly.

“Good-by, my dear! Your father’s got the enemy in the dining-room, rice and all. You’ll have to run for it!”

He felt the quivering of her fingers in his clasp, and saw the unnatural brightness in her eyes.

“You never wished me joy!” she whispered back.

“Haven’t I? Then I do, my dear, I do--a thousand times!”

He went down with her to the motor, and he and Fanny stood watching it go off. Then they turned and looked at each other. “Do--do you think it’s true?” she whispered in an awed voice.

The doctor fenced.

“My child, has it occurred to you that we’re all acting as if we had not only wanted Overton to die, but to stay dead?”

She gave him a strange look.

“I--I wasn’t thinking of that. I--why, yes, you’re right, it’s true. It’s just as if we did want him to stay dead!”

Gerry took her by the arm.

“Come into the house, child! You’re standing out here in the wet, in a ridiculously flimsy dress and slippers.”

She went, her arm still in his grasp, but she did not even smile.

“It’s true--how awful of us! Just as if we wanted him to be dead, because----”

“Because of Faunce,” concluded the doctor dryly. “Don’t worry, my dear--not about that, anyway, for I’ve an idea it’s true.”

“You mean----”

“That Overton isn’t dead at all.”

“Oh!”

It was a little syllable, but it voiced Fanny’s awful thought--a thought which had, as she had said, nothing to do with Overton, but all to do with Faunce.

Faunce himself, on the way to New York with Diane, found the situation almost beyond endurance. The long strain had so racked his nerves that he flinched at this crisis. His belief in Overton’s death still survived. He had too keen and harrowing a memory of that awful climax in the ice and snow to be easily persuaded that there could have been a rescue; yet the mere fact that such a rescue meant his certain ruin overwhelmed him.

Even while he assured Diane that it was a mere newspaper story, his heart sank with sickening fear. Racked by conscience in the long months since he had left Overton to die in the polar snows, he had again and again cried out to the night and the solitude that he would give his soul to feel that Overton lived, that he had not abandoned his leader and friend to death, that his conscience was clear. Now, when the thought of Overton’s return was weighed in the balance with his personal disgrace, he was not strong enough to face it.

He saw, in a flash, all it would mean to him--the personal shame, the ruin, the loss of his new-won honors and of Diane’s love. He felt certain that she could never love a man stained, as he was, with a cowardice that was in itself a crime.

A feeling of terror seized him. He had put himself outside the pale of mercy. He knew not only that no word could ever be spoken in his defense, but that the world would be eager to revile him, the veriest wastrel in the street would find an excuse to fling a curse at his cowardice.

He had abandoned a prostrate comrade, leaving him to face death alone. Worse than that, he had taken the only means of rescue--the sledge and the dogs--to secure his own escape. He had sacrificed Overton to save himself whole and without a scratch. If Overton had survived, if he knew anything, he must know this. If he had had the strength to live to be rescued, he might know much more. He could not have been so far gone as Faunce had thought!

Day after day, night after night, the horror of that frozen waste had haunted him. The deathlike face of Overton had appeared to him at nightfall and at daybreak. When Faunce, against his own better judgment, had undertaken the new command, he had merely yielded to the mysterious lure that draws a murderer back to the scene of his crime. He had felt as if unseen hands clutched at him and drew him; as if a shadowy presence, standing at his elbow, demanded this sacrifice, this hideous march back on the trail; as if Overton, dead or alive, held his very soul in thrall.

And now, if some miracle had happened, if the grave was about to give up its dead, Faunce could not escape! He was facing a shame that would be more terrible than the death he had fled. Coward as he had proved himself to be at that supreme moment, he might better die now than face the truth--the truth that Overton would be sure to reveal, if he lived.

On the reality of his death, then, hung Faunce’s only hope. Once more he tried to brace himself up with the thought that it was impossible for Overton to have survived. Yet it was in perfect unison with what he had already endured that this renewed horror should quench his new happiness and make his wedding-day a nightmare. If the shade of Overton, athirst for mortal vengeance, still haunted him, this last exquisite torture was its supreme accomplishment. His broken spirit quivered under the visitation.

It was a mockery of fate to have to act the bridegroom at such a moment, to protest his happiness and reply to Diane’s questions. She had spoken to him about the newspaper story almost at once, and had expressed her amazement that such a despatch could have been sent from London. Then she had let the matter drop; but her very acquiescence awakened a keen alarm in the mind of Faunce.

He suspected that she, too, was suffering, that the thought of Overton had broken in on her agitated mind like a blow from the unseen. She was marrying a man who had declared to her that Overton was dead, that he had stood beside him while he was dying; yet, at the very moment when she had finally ratified her belief in him, the doubt took shape and clothed itself in an almost visible semblance.

As the train rushed on, Faunce watched her. He observed the pale outline of her profile against the rosy light of a sunset sky, illumined and touched with glory, like a face carved from the delicately tinted pearl of the abalone shell. Something in the averted eyes, the softly parted lips, and the slight, scarcely perceptible quiver in the white throat, suggested an emotion too deep and too sorrowful for such a moment.

Again he had the curious sensation that the shade of Overton stood between them, its outstretched hand thrusting Faunce away from his bride and slowly but surely toward the edge of that frozen precipice where he had left his comrade’s mortal body, abandoned without pity and without help. At a moment when he should have been supremely happy, Faunce was miserable. He had lifted the cup at Circe’s banquet, and felt as if he had been transformed into some hideous monster that must return to his lair.

Sitting beside Diane on the train, their close proximity accentuated by the soft touch of her sleeve against his and by the faint, elusive perfume of her hair, aware that his ring gleamed on the slender finger of her left hand, he felt no thrill of exultation, only an intense bitterness of soul. He could never look his wife in the face without fear that she would read his soul, find the hideous secret hidden there, and scorn him.

If some trick of fate, inexplicable as it was inexorable, had indeed brought Overton back from the dead, Faunce could already foresee the end. He began to thrash it over in his brain, to piece together every fragment of news he had of the English expedition, and to try to convince himself that it was humanly impossible for any of its members to have been so near that they could have reached Overton before he died. His own knowledge of the vast spaces of those frozen regions went to strengthen his hope that he was safe. He told himself, almost wildly, that it was not a hope that Overton was dead, but that he himself was safe from public shame.

Diane, unaware of her bridegroom’s agony of mind, sat looking deeply into the glow upon the far horizon. She had proudly accepted his word; if he said that Overton was dead she must believe him. She had not forced the issue by asking questions; she had assented to what he said. As she looked out in silence, she was not thinking of Faunce.

Then she became aware that he moved restlessly, and she turned and met his eyes. The agony in them was so intense that she started; but before she could speak, she saw it retreating, as if he withdrew his soul from her sight. It struck a chill to her heart. The look had been distraught, like a wild animal peeping out, and at the alarm, rushing backward into its hiding-place.

“What is it, Arthur?” she exclaimed involuntarily.

Before he could reply a porter came through the train, holding up a telegram and calling out the name--“Arthur Faunce!”

Faunce took the envelope nervously and tore it open, his face changing perceptibly as he read the despatch.

“Our holiday is prolonged, Diane,” he said, turning to her with a forced smile. “There’s been an accident in the shipyard, the ship won’t be ready to sail for months. Instead of three weeks, it may be three months.”

They had planned three weeks or so in Florida--a touch of the tropical atmosphere before they began the long, hard voyage to the antarctic. To his surprise she showed regret.

“I’m sorry, Arthur, I really want to go soon. To me it’s the great adventure, and now we’ve months to wait! Shall you stay all that time in Florida? I think I’m really a little sorry--even for that!”

He was not. Secretly he had long dreaded the arduous expedition, the overwhelming presence that he must face--face with courage, too, or fall forever in her eyes.

“For my part I’ll be glad of the rest. You see, I’ve been in those frozen wastes, Diane, and I know we’ll need a stock of sunshine to carry with us. And three months in Florida with you seems to me pretty near Paradise!” As he spoke he smiled, and his dark eyes softened with that charm which had gone so far to win her heart. Then he added:--“But if you don’t want warm weather all the time, we’ll come back north before we go. Wasn’t there some place--I think your father suggested a cottage--where we could have at least ten days of peace?”

She thought a moment, her eyes looking dark and dreamy under their black lashes.

“It’s a little house of father’s. We could go there, of course, and I’ll keep house. Yes, I think it would do you good, Arthur. You need rest--I’ve seen how fagged you were. After the heat and sunshine that bit of cool mountain air will brace you up. I should like it, too.”

Again he looked around at her. “Would you rather go there now?”

She shook her head. “I want our bit of Florida--and then this. We can go quite easily, and not be out of reach of your last arrangements, it’s in the Catskills, you know.”

“Where?”

She named a small place where the Herfords had long owned property.

He hesitated, regarding her absently. She turned as she spoke, and smiled. Her face seen thus, in the partial shadow of the car, between daylight and dusk, had a peculiar charm, and her eyes held a tenderness that went to his head.

“We’ll go, Diane!” he whispered softly, laying his hand over hers with the first loverlike gesture he had used since they started.

“That’s settled then!”

She sank back in her corner, her face again shaded by her hat.

He was still thinking of their northern retreat.

“That name sounds familiar. Just where have I heard it before? I’ve never been much in the Catskills.”

She did not answer for a moment, and he looked round at her; but he could not make out the expression of her eyes, for they were bent intently on the hand that he had just released.

“You know the name--very well, I fancy. Think a moment, Arthur!”

“I can’t remember.”

“I thought you would,” she said softly. “It’s only a little place, but--Simon Overton was born there.”

Faunce made no reply at all. He sat quite still, looking steadily before him at the people in the car. For the moment it was impossible to meet her eyes.

XIX

WITH Diane things had reached a climax long before that culminating moment when she found that she had married not the man of her imagination, but a strange, abstracted, sleepless creature whose soul seemed to be retreating deeper and deeper into some hidden recess of his being. Following out their early plans they had spent months of waiting in Florida, but now the ship being nearly ready to sail, they had come north and gone to the Catskills. During their long stay at the south Diane had written occasionally to her father and heard from him at even rarer intervals. The judge was a poor correspondent and she noticed that he avoided any mention of the continued rumors that Overton still lived. Now, in this last retreat, even these rare letters stopped. Faunce had asked her to let their last brief week in their sylvan cottage be uninterrupted, and they had left no address behind them. They had spent six or seven days together in the solitude of the mountains. The splendor of the sky, which was already softening with the promise of summer, and the soft purple of the infolding hills, had soothed her spirit, but they seemed to have only increased a deep disquietude in Faunce.

He tried to hide it from her. She could see a kind of furtive watchfulness in him that defeated any effort on her part to surprise his confidence. The subtle feeling of distrust that had crept into her reluctant heart leaped up whenever she saw his pale face opposite her, even at table, and found that his eyes, handsome and luminous as ever, avoided hers, or only met them with a sidelong glance from under his long, girlish lashes. It was a glance that had an indescribable effect of retreat, of slipping away, as if his soul evaded daylight and the open, as some hunted animal might shun the fellowship of its kind.

In this desire for isolation, he would not even allow a newspaper to find its way to the house, and she was as completely cut off from the world as if his love had marooned her on a desert island.

At first she had acquiesced in this peculiarity of his, had tried to adjust her own keen and active mind to a period of quietude, to a dropping away of the universe, that they might learn how to adjust their own temperaments to each other and find a common ground on which to establish their life together; but the longer she faced the problem, the more difficult was its solution. She could not reconcile herself to characteristics which she recognized as wholly divergent from her own conception of the man.

He was not frank, as he had seemed to be, nor cordially disposed, nor courageously bent on high endeavor. He was secret, complex, and perilously evasive. He had never once, since their arrival in the mountains, spoken the name of Overton; yet by the swift and unerring instinct that comes to a woman at such moments, Diane knew that his former leader was never out of her husband’s mind. Overton it was who loomed between them, his shadowy arm outstretched, as if, even from the bourn of the undiscovered country, his spirit had arisen with new power and new divination.

Diane had accepted Faunce’s word. She had declared that she would believe her husband; and no whisper from the world beyond those shadowed hills had yet broken her resolution. But there were moments--in the depth of night, or in the solitude of some early-morning stroll--that made her heart sink. When she had hoped to find candor and stability, she had encountered a silence as perplexing as it was evasive.

It was a relief to her when, on the eighth or ninth day, he announced his intention of returning to the city. They were sitting over a belated breakfast, which Diane herself had prepared, with scant assistance from the little mountain maid who had come to the Herford cottage to help in their haphazard housekeeping.

The small dining-room, built for summer uses, jutted out from the house, and was almost part of the large veranda which overlooked a magnificent prospect. The scene, flooded with sunshine and touched with the peculiar beauty of morning, lay before them in a panorama of spring. The distant mountains, outlined against a brilliant sky, were blocked out in every shade of violet and ocher, while near at hand the brown woods of winter were exquisitely veiled in a delicate haze of pale green and rose.

Here and there a wide glimpse showed a fallen tree spanning a mountain brook; or some tall pine raised its dark-green shaft, like a forest spire, pointing the way. In the wonderful clarity of the atmosphere even the most distant objects stood out in vivid outline, as if the whole scene had been painted by some Titan artist who had used the universe for his canvas and the colors of heaven for his brush. It had a fascination for Diane; it even comforted her, and she sat looking at it, forgetful of the neglected meal.

She was a little startled when Faunce spoke.

“I think we’ve reached the end of it, Diane. We’ll have to begin to face our great expedition. I’ve got to go to New York to-day.”

She looked up with a feeling of relief, but she met again that retreating glance of his.

“I knew we couldn’t put it off much longer, Arthur. I’ve expected you would be growing impatient as the days passed. But why to-day? It’s such short notice! I shall have to close up everything at once.”

He pushed his cup aside, and she noticed for the first time that his coffee was untasted.

“I got a telegram last night. I didn’t tell you.”

“I thought no one knew where we were,” she replied slowly, averting her own eyes from the confusion that she could not help seeing in his face.

“No one but Asher.” This was the man who was to serve under Faunce in the new expedition. “I had to except him, of course. Last night I got a despatch, and I must go to New York to-day; but you needn’t be hurried, dear. I’ll come back to-night or to-morrow morning, and we’ll have a day or two more together before we start.”

Diane understood now his frequent lonely strolls at nightfall. He had gone to the post-office for mail that he had concealed from her. She had a strange sensation, which involved no jealousy of her husband’s private affairs. She felt as if the universe moved beneath her feet, confirming her feeling, too, that there was some new and impalpable barrier between them; but she made no sign of it. Instead, she put her elbow on the table and rested her chin in the hollow of her hand, while she regarded him with a quiet gaze.

“I wish you had told me!”

He moved restlessly in his chair.

“Why should I? It was such a simple thing to do--so obviously necessary. I had to keep in touch with Captain Asher. Except for that, you’ve been the whole world to me,” he added, with that subtle gentleness which no man knew better how to use.

She smiled almost tremulously.

“I’m not jealous! Only----”

She rose abruptly and went to the window, looking out again on the hills. He followed her and put his arm around her.

“Only what, sweetheart?”

She hesitated; then she turned and met his eyes. Their faces were so close together that she felt his breath warm on her cheek.

“Only that I’ve felt, almost from the first, that there was no confidence between us, Arthur. We’re not starting right. We can’t stand still--we shall keep on growing either together or apart. You know it, I know it; but there’s something--it’s like a veil, impalpable and yet impenetrable--between us. What is it? Help me”--she half withdrew herself from his arms and laid her hand lightly on his shoulder--“help me to solve this riddle, dear, or----”

He was a little pale, but for the first time his eyes held hers, and she was less conscious of the retreat in them.

“Or what?” he asked.

His tone seemed expressionless, yet her quick ear caught a guarded note.

“Or we shall lose each other,” she finished bravely. “Don’t you see? We’re two souls reaching out to each other through this thing that we call love; but if we can’t find any meeting-point, we shall pass--our two souls, I mean--like ships in the night! I’m not jealous, I’m not curious, but I want to feel that you and I stand face to face in spiritual confidence, that I know your heart as fully as I’ll try to make you know mine!”

He snatched at the chance she gave him--a chance for evasion.

“Oh, I know it, Diane--it’s a heart of gold! Beside it mine seems as commonplace as lead or pewter; but I love you--never doubt that--I love you with all my soul!”

As he spoke, he folded her close with a reiterated protest of his devotion. There was a moment of silence. Diane hid her face on his shoulder.

It was useless to try to reach him. She knew it now--knew that in protesting his affection with kisses and vows he had used the commonest weapon of defense against a jealous woman. She slipped out of his arms after a moment, and went back to the table, quietly putting aside the little tray on which she had previously set the samovar. He looked at his watch.

“I’ll have to go at once, dear, to get my train. No, I sha’n’t need any bag, I’m coming back so soon.”

She looked over her shoulder.

“That’s all right, Arthur--don’t delay. I’ve got to see to so many things, if we’re to break up in two days. But--you don’t mind now if I write to father? You know I’ve kept the pact and remained in mysterious retreat, but since your breaking it to-day I can, of course, break it, too.”

She saw his hesitation, saw his face redden as he reached for his hat and coat, but she waited quietly, offering no assistance of any kind.

“Why, of course, Di, but”--he laughed weakly--“couldn’t you wait until I come back?”

“Until to-night? Oh, if you wish it! But then I think I’ll call him up on the long-distance. I should like to know just how he is.”

“Of course!” He came across the room to bid her an affectionate good-by. “I hate to go--to break it up--but I must.”

She assented, and stood in the doorway, watching him walk rapidly down the lane. At the end of it he turned and raised his hat, waving it to her.

She returned to her housewifely duties, gave a few directions to the little maid, and began to pack the few belongings that she had brought with her. She was amazed at her own eagerness to go. They had imagined much happiness in this quiet spot, but it had eluded them. She knew that it had eluded Faunce, for he had scarcely slept since they had been there, and his restlessness, his uneasy, haunted look, had utterly broken down her own effort to be happy at any cost.

She paused in her thoughts with a shock of feeling which flooded her consciousness with a lucidity, an insight, that appalled her. Had they both been disappointed? Had the torch of Psyche been lifted by unsteady hands and fallen into an abyss between them?

Unable to endure her own thoughts, Diane thrust aside her work and went out. She needed to escape the thraldom of four walls and try--in the open--to vanquish the haunting spirits that might well have escaped from the secret caverns of those lovely hills to assail her with a fantom host of doubts.