Chapter V: Part 5

She walked rapidly, avoiding the road to the little hamlet, and turning into a path that led her past the old house where Overton was born. At the moment she had not thought of it, but, as she approached, her mind returned to him and to the strange report which had so startled her wedding-guests. She thrust that away with an unconscious gesture of pride. She would not distrust Faunce; and to believe that Overton might still survive was to doubt his word. She battled against that with all her remaining strength, and tried to concentrate her thoughts on the beauty about her.

Summer was in the air, and the forces of nature, surviving the long conflict with the bitter winter, had gathered themselves together in a new and beautiful conquest of the earth. At her feet young blades of grass thrust themselves up through the black loam with been new life. The same rebirth seemed to breathe, too, in the tremulous swinging of delicate boughs and the tasseling of magnificent foliage. Overhead the crows flew by twos and tens and twenties, uttering their harsh cries.

It was not tranquil, for the wind stirred restlessly in the branches. Far off she heard the rush of a waterfall, and she could see the dark ring of the encircling hills. It seemed to her that a great, unseen army moved about her, and a mighty conflict was in progress. The dead earth had reawakened; birth, not death, was here. The sap was in the trees, and in the warm moss beneath her feet a myriad living things were struggling up toward the sun.

She stopped suddenly and stood still. Below her, ascending the same path, was the figure of a man. He was still a long way off, but she caught the big outline, the deliberate but easy step, the peculiar erectness of the head and shoulders.

She could not stir, but stood rooted to the spot, all the forces of life suspended. It was impossible either to doubt her own vision or to imagine that it was an apparition. The certainties of her own life dissolved before this solution of the riddle that had tormented her soul; for she knew, even before he approached her, that she stood face to face, not with a specter from the frozen pole, but with the living Overton.

A strange sensation, as if of personal guilt, overwhelmed her, and she shrank back with an involuntary feeling of panic. He did not observe it. He looked up, recognized her, and came forward with outstretched hands.

“Diane!”

She commanded herself with a supreme effort.

“It’s--it’s really you?”

He was holding her hands now, smiling down at her, deeply moved.

“Did you think me a spook?” he laughed unsteadily. “It does seem almost impossible. I’ve fairly come back from the dead! Did you get my letter? I wrote you from London.”

“No--no, I’ve had no letter. I could scarcely believe that you had come back!”

She was trembling; she saw the look in his eyes and knew that he loved her. And how wasted he was, how pale! Here was a man who had indeed been near to death. She fought for time.

“I had given up all hope long ago,” she faltered. “The others were rescued; they believed you had been lost.”

As she spoke, she again raised her eyes to his, trying to find some reassurance there, something that would refute the horrible fear that wrung her heart; but what she saw made her look down, and a deep flush mounted slowly and painfully over her pale face.

“I was as nearly dead as a man could be and live,” he answered soberly. “I can feel the frozen horror of it now, the creeping drowsiness--can see that bleak, inexorable wilderness where I was deserted and left to die!”

He paused, as if the mere thought of it made utterance impossible, as if he had faced a crisis so terrible and so deathlike that it must remain forever inarticulate.

“Left to die!” she repeated in a broken voice, feeling that the very earth sank beneath her feet. “Deserted! What can you mean?”

She was trying to be calm, but a nervous chill shook her from head to foot. He saw it; he caught her hands in his again.

“Diane, you care!” he breathed with deep emotion. “What does anything matter, then. I’ve come back and I’ve found you, my love, my love!”

She swayed and he caught her in his arms, holding her, his wasted face changed and lit with joy.

“Diane, I’ve come back to you!” he cried.

She pushed him away from her with both hands and stood, still shaking, supporting herself against the vine-clad trunk of an ancient oak.

“Don’t!” she gasped in a low voice. “You’ve made a mistake--I’m married!”

There was a moment of intense silence. He straightened himself with a shudder, like a man who had been shot but could still keep on his feet.

“You’re married? And your--your husband, Diane--who is he?”

She watched him. She felt as if life itself hung on the look that she would see in his eyes when she answered.

“Arthur Faunce,” she murmured in a low voice.

“Faunce!”

It was a cry of horror, of dismay--she could not mistake that. Overton stood still, a deep color flaming up in his face. He was apparently incapable of speech, but the look in his eyes, as they met hers, was a revelation. It showed neither anger nor jealousy, but only a deep and horrified consternation.

XX

IT was a long time before they left the spot where they had met. Unconsciously and unbidden, he turned back with her. They were silent. She could hear with extraordinary keenness every pebble that crunched under his feet but she dared not look at him. She had a strange sensation of suffocating in the open air. A rending fear shook her, yet even at that supreme moment she had a rush of lucidity, a remembrance of every word that Faunce had said.

He had been with Overton when he died--that much had been clearly understood by all; and now, when they knew that Overton was not dead, but had been rescued by the gallant English sailors who had followed so closely on his track, what explanation remained, what defense for Faunce?

“Where I was deserted and left to die!”

Overton’s words rang in Diane’s ears. Suspense was intolerable; she must know the truth, even if the truth meant ruin. She forced herself to speak.

“You said just now that you were deserted and left to die. Please tell me what you meant!”

There was a perceptible pause before he answered.

“Did I say that? I”--he hesitated--“I’ve nearly forgotten what I said.”

She managed to raise her eyes to his face, and was relieved to find that he was not looking at her. She felt like one lost in a trackless desert. She must find a way out of it; she could not give up, could not believe herself lost. If she did, she would perish. She forced herself to speak again.

“But I haven’t forgotten. How could I? Will you tell me?”

He shook his head.

“Not now--give me a little time to think, please. You must know that it’s all confused--I’ve been so ill and delirious. You mustn’t ask too much of a sick man’s memory,” he ended lamely, trying to smile as he turned at last and faced her.

She met his eyes and felt the full power of their love and their renunciation. Their message was so clear that it made her feel faint. She put her hand out involuntarily and caught at an intervening branch, steadying herself.

He started toward her.

“What is it? You’re ill!”

She shook her head, recovering herself with an effort. She knew that he was hiding from her something ruinous to her husband. There was a second in which she still struggled with herself; then a strange vicarious acceptance of guilt made her face burn. She had cloaked herself with the iniquity of Faunce, if iniquity it was, and she could no longer speak or act as a separate entity.

They began to descend the steep path again. This time the pebbles tumbled ahead of them in a little shower as they scrambled down. Diane tried to talk casually, not looking at Overton again.

“How is it you’re here, in this out-of-the-way place, so soon after your return?”

“My aunt, my mother’s only sister, is living over there. She’s nearly eighty, and she wanted to see me. I found her still in the black she’d worn for me for months. It’s a strange thing to return from the dead! I needed rest, too, just for a day or so.”

“You--look ill.”

He smiled.

“I’ve just pulled through; and yet it’s strange, isn’t it, the fever that possesses me to go back! The lure is on me. It draws men back, I suppose, to their doom!”

“It does--my husband is going again.”

“So they told me in New York. I was there a few hours. Of course the newspapers besieged me, and I heard that much. Then I escaped. That’s why I didn’t hear of--of your marriage.”

He was unable to maintain his tone, and his voice broke on the word. She winced.

“It was a quiet wedding; not much was said about it. My father has been ill.”

He expressed his regret, and asked for the latest news of the judge’s health. She colored deeply.

“We haven’t written. It was agreed, when Arthur and I came up here, that no one should write to us. You see, he’s been so much pursued about everything! I’ve been shut up here, out of the world, and I know nothing.”

He turned quickly, and their eyes met with a shock of feeling. She knew intuitively that there was a reason why she had been kept in the dark, and that he fathomed it and was indignant for her.

Once, when Overton was a lad, he had thrashed a comrade for maltreating a lame dog. She had seen him do it, and she remembered the look in his eyes. She saw the same look now, flaming up in tranquil depths like a torch in the dusk.

She hurried on. A little ahead of him she could command herself; to meet his look just now was more than she could bear.

“Shall you go down to Mapleton?” she managed to ask him. “The Prices and Dr. Gerry will want so much to see you. So will papa--you know that!”

“I did intend to go there at once; but now--yes, I suppose I shall. A man goes home, doesn’t he, for the same reason that a cat returns to the old house? It’s habit.”

“They’ll all be so glad to see you--you shouldn’t call it just habit to go back there. It was--it is your home, isn’t it?”

He laughed a little bitterly.

“I haven’t a home in the sense that you mean. I think I’ll be henceforth a nomadic creature. I’ve been away too long!”

She understood the bitterness in his tone, and she fought against the wave of feeling that submerged her being. She had scarcely dreamed that his voice could mean so much to her. The sound of it brought back those old days when she had listened for it--the days when Faunce had had no place in her thoughts, though now she was his wife!

As she walked blindly on, hearing Overton’s step behind her once more, feeling his presence, it seemed incredible that they were separated forever, that her own act had made an impassable gulf between them. She struggled with herself. She had believed in her love for Faunce; she believed in it still. If she did not love him, why should she suffer so deeply at the horrible doubt of him that had assailed her? She loved him, she must believe in him, and--if she could not believe in him--she must suffer with him.

They had reached a turn in the path. Below them lay a wild ravine where a mountain stream tumbled over the rocks, lashed itself to foam in its descent, and then dropped placidly into a wide pool, where in summer the speckled trout darted in lovely shallows and the water-lilies bloomed. Beyond, the hills rose one above another until they darkened into the purple distance, piled like a mass of heavy clouds against the deepening splendor of the western sky.

Near at hand, rising above some clustering evergreens, was the roof of the little cottage that Judge Herford had built for an occasional summer vacation. A white plume of smoke rose from the single chimney in the center, and they could see the sun shining on the window-panes.

“There’s the house,” Diane said, as lightly as she could. “I think papa built it before you went away, didn’t he? It’s only a rambling affair, but we’ve done very well there, and it’s really cozy and warm.”

“I knew it was here, but”--he hesitated--“it’s strange, isn’t it, that my aunt never spoke of your being here?”

“Perhaps she didn’t know it. We’ve been very quiet.” She colored again as she turned toward him. “Won’t you come in and take a cup of tea? I can give you that--though we’re roughing it.”

He hesitated; then, aware, perhaps, that the moment was an awkward one for both, he assented, and followed her down the last slope to the road. They crossed the little bit of lawn together, and Diane’s mountain maid opened the door for them. While she and her mistress went to make tea for him, Overton entered the living-room, and stood looking down at the few logs that were smoldering in the big, open fireplace.

The room was quaint, planned much in the style of a shooting-lodge that Judge Herford had visited abroad. A gun and a rod swung high over the stone mantel-shelf. An old Turkey rug covered the floor, and a couch in the corner suggested that it was sometimes used for an unexpected guest.

On the table Overton saw an elaborate cigarette-case with the initials of Arthur Faunce, and on the mantel, almost under his hand, was a pipe that Faunce must have left there. Nearer, on a chair, were tossed a bit of Diane’s needlework and her work-basket. They had been sitting there together by that fireplace, husband and wife, the woman whom Overton loved and the coward who had left him to perish in those awful wastes!

The touch of intimacy, of actuality, drove the naked reality home. Overton turned from the fireplace with a smothered groan and began to pace the room.

The scene, warm, familiar, poignantly suggestive of her presence, suddenly receded from his mental vision, and the illimitable snows took its place. He saw again a slate-colored sky, a white and dazzling waste, lofty peaks of bluish ice, and the face of Faunce bending over his, distorted with sheer terror, the shrinking eyes avoiding his, the lips blue. The howl of the antarctic blast seemed to sweep over his very soul. He remembered the moment, fraught with the bitterness of death, when, half-rousing from his stupor, he had seen the coward go, when he had realized that the last means of escape had been snatched from him, and that, helpless and wounded, he must perish there alone.

Overton recalled his rage, his hatred of the man who had deserted him, the violence of the spiritual struggle that had torn and wounded his soul until, in one wild moment, he had almost cursed his Maker. It was then, when he had nearly lost his hope of heaven, that he had felt the rush of penitence, of faith. In that illimitable space a Greater Presence had been revealed, and he had felt the gripping power of things unseen and eternal. He had known that, though forsaken, he was not alone; that a Spirit greater than the universe itself was with him. He had cried aloud to God; and surely it was God who had answered him.

Out of the stupor, the terrible frozen mist that had at last benumbed him, body and soul, had come the rescue--the sound of human voices, the touch of strong human hands--and he was saved. But his anger against Faunce, his scorn of the traitor, had survived. Now, as he tried to clear his recollection of it, Overton felt sore that he had not spared him, but had told his rescuers the truth. He remembered their indignation--the indignation that brave men feel against a coward and a weakling.

Later, when the illness had left him, he had said less, had been reserved in his references to Faunce, and he knew that on his landing in New York he had refrained from describing the details of his narrow escape from death. It was a chance, perhaps, that he had not betrayed more, and he was thankful--thankful that, so far at least, he had spared Diane; for Diane, as Faunce’s wife, must be the one to suffer.

But could he do more to spare her? His mind was confused with the horror of it. The loss of the woman he loved was bad enough, but to see her the wife of such a man!

It was significant that even in that moment of despair his thought was for her, and not for himself. He must shield her if he could. He must save, if he could, her faith in the wretched man she had married; for, if she loved Faunce, it would be the shipwreck of her life to see him dishonored and exposed.

Presently he heard her returning, followed by the maid with the tea-tray and the samovar. They came in together. Diane had removed her hat and coat, and in her simple house-gown, her brown hair rumpled by the wind, she looked almost as when Overton had seen her last. There was the same delicate color in her cheeks, the same elusive charm in her soft eyes under their straight, thick lashes, the same white throat and brow, and yet how changed she was! He saw it when she made tea for him and raised her eyes as she handed him the cup.

“You’ll have to take cream and sugar,” she said with forced lightness. “We’re truly ‘twelve miles from a lemon’ here!”

He took the cup with a smile, and sat down in a low chair by her tea-table. The little maid threw another log on the fire and vanished. For a moment there was no sound in the room but the crackle of the flame as it licked up the dry bark of the new log. He looked at it thoughtfully as he absently tasted his tea.

“It’s good to see a fire again. I don’t believe I’ll ever get past the joy of feeling warm!” He forced a laugh. “Do you remember that late autumn when we were all on the shore in Connecticut, and you and I gathered driftwood?”

“Yes, and it was beautiful. What flames shot out! And have you forgotten Mrs. Price and the ghost-story?”

They both laughed.

“She thought it wasn’t scriptural! How’s Fanny? She was in school when I left.”

“She’s been out nearly two seasons, and she’s a very pretty girl. Nothing could be more amusing than to see her with the dean and her mother. They flutter behind her like two proud, fat sparrows watching a fledgling.”

“The dean’s all right; he was good to me when I was a boy. How’s Dr. Gerry?”

“Just the same!”

Diane stopped to offer more tea, but Overton refused it and set his cup down. She intuitively felt the effort he was making to skim the surface of talk. The strain was too much for her. She rose and went to the fire, kneeling on a low cushion by the hearth, and pretending to watch the blaze, that he might not see her face. There was a brief pause, and then she spoke without looking around.

“Shall you go back?”

“To the antarctic? God knows!”

“The new expedition sails very soon--in a week, I think.”

“Oh, no! I heard this morning that it had been put off.”

He spoke without thinking. Diane turned, her face flushed.

“Arthur went to New York to-day. I--why, it’s because you’ve come, isn’t it?”

He was on his guard again.

“I hope not. I’ve nothing to do with it. I shouldn’t go now, of course.”

“Do you mean you wouldn’t go with--Arthur?”

“I didn’t say that!”

“But you meant it.” She rose slowly to her feet. “I know you meant it!”

She stopped, for he had risen, too.

“Perhaps I did mean that; but can’t you understand there may be other reasons why I can’t go? I----” His face flushed no less deeply than hers, but he raised his head, and she was again aware of the fineness of his presence, his air of strength. “There are many reasons why I can’t bear to go,” he went on slowly. “There are reasons which--at this moment--are doubly painful. You must forgive me, have a little patience with me.”

She did not answer. She was trying to control herself, but she could not; tears suddenly rained down her cheeks.

“Diane!” he exclaimed in dismay.

She put her hand up, as if to ward off a blow.

“Oh, if you feel like that--if you still feel so, I entreat you----” she stretched out her clasped hands toward him in a gesture of supplication--“I beg of you to tell me the truth! I can’t bear it any longer. I’ve tried not to speak, but I can’t help it--I must! Tell me the truth--what is this thing? What happened? Who deserted you?”

He averted his face, but she was aware of the struggle in his mind. He spoke at last with an effort.

“I can’t--I mustn’t! What there is to tell, Faunce must tell you himself. Say to him that I have been here and I want to see him. He may want to come to me--tell him that I’ll wait until he does come. He’ll understand that!”

She did not speak again, but stood looking at him, the color slowly leaving her face. She held herself very erect, with her head up, as if she saw a battle before her and would not give it up.

It was a moment so pregnant with feeling, so tragic in discovery, that neither of them could bridge it with mere words. Overton did not even take her hand, but turned with a mute gesture of farewell and walked slowly out of the room and out of the house, his head bent and his shoulders bowed, like a man who carried a burden.

XXI

IT was late in the evening, long past their usual dinner-hour, when Diane heard Faunce coming up the path to the front door. Ever since that bitter moment with Overton, she had been trying to steady her mind for this meeting. It seemed to her that she must be ready for it--ready to force the climax, to make Faunce tell her the truth.

If she had failed to get the whole story from Overton, his very silence and his omissions had made it easy for her imagination to fill up the gaps. She shuddered now before the vision that her tortured mind had conjured from the frozen silence. What had happened behind the gray curtain of the mist and snow? What deep and tragic drama had been enacted? She did not know, yet she shuddered. She felt the weight of it upon her. The shadow of it lay across her path, between her and her husband.

She sat alone before the big fireplace, almost in the very spot where Overton had stood, and listened. She could not move, she could not even go to open the door. She was listening to the step--a little hurried and uncertain--that came up the steps and across the porch, and halted at the door. There was a moment’s pause, and then Faunce thrust his latch-key into the lock. She dragged herself to her feet and stood facing the door, incapable of action or speech.

He came in very pale and haggard, but his preoccupation had gained upon him, and he was not even startled to see his wife standing there, motionless, before the fire. He saw her, saw the long, graceful lines of her figure, the small, uplifted head; but he was too much absorbed in the struggle within to recognize the change in her.

“I’ve kept you waiting!” he exclaimed hurriedly. “You must forgive me this time, dear! I hope you haven’t waited dinner?”

As he spoke, he came over and kissed her cheek, without apparently perceiving the anguish in her eyes. She yielded, let him caress her soft hair a moment, but she was trying, all the while, to shape the questions that rushed to her lips.

Something in his face, in its stricken look, stopped her. She drew back and went to the table. It had been set for two by the maid, and the belated dinner announced itself by the savory odor of cooking from the kitchen.

“Of course I waited,” Diane said in a dull voice. She herself was startled at the sound of it, it seemed so changed; and yet he did not notice it. “We’d better sit down at once. I know Annie wants to go home before it gets any later.”

He assented readily, still unobservant, and they were already seated when the maid brought in the soup and busied herself serving them. While she was there, Diane felt the need of seeming as gay as usual. She inquired for news of New York, and asked if he had telephoned to her father.

“I left that for you. I felt sure the judge wouldn’t want me to do it for you,” he replied without looking up. “For the rest--I saw Asher. The expedition has been delayed. If you wish it, Diane, we can stay here a little longer.”

She hesitated, and then, as the girl removed the tureen, she managed to say in a natural voice:

“I think I’d rather not. If--if we’re going at all, I want to stay with papa a while before we sail.”

He looked up for the first time.

“Why do you say ‘if’? What makes you uncertain?”

She met his eyes squarely, a slow flush staining her cheeks.

“Because I think there may be some change. Simon Overton has come back. He was here this afternoon.”

There was a sharp pause. Faunce met her gaze steadily for an instant longer; then he looked down at his plate, deliberately took his knife and fork, and began to eat like a man who had been suddenly relieved of a terrible suspense.

“Yes, I know he’s come back. I heard the details to-day; but I didn’t know he was here. I suppose he came here to see--you?”

She could not follow his example and try to eat, though she was aware that the little maid was watching them again with bright, curious eyes.

“He came up here to see his old aunt,” she replied with another effort. “I met him accidentally in the woods, and he came here to tea this afternoon. He left a message for you.”

“Yes?”

“He said he wanted to see you, and would wait--until you came.”

Faunce seemed to consider this and weigh it carefully; but he continued to eat his dinner with more appetite, Diane thought, than usual. Again she had a vague impression that he was relieved. The tension seemed less, and there was even a little color in his usually pale face.

“If you’ll excuse me, then, dear, I’ll go to see him as soon as we’ve finished dinner,” he said at last.

She caught her breath quickly, a wild hope leaping up in her heart. Had she wronged him? Would Arthur be so ready to face Overton, so apparently eager to meet him, if he had been the one to forsake him? A feeling of intense relief swept over her, and she sank back weakly in her chair.

“It seemed a miracle that he has come back--I couldn’t understand it!” she faltered.

He glanced at her without apparent comprehension. His mind seemed to have withdrawn itself again into the limbo of forgetfulness, and she saw that he was despatching his food with all the haste he could without seeming to hurry her too much.

The little maid, having served the coffee, retired to the kitchen, leaving them alone. Diane tried again, seeking wildly for some reassurance, some certainty that he was innocent.

“He didn’t tell me much about that awful time when he so nearly perished,” she said slowly, choosing her words; “but what he said--horrified me. I can’t forget it!”

Faunce raised his eyes reluctantly to her face, and she saw a strange expression in them--an expression that baffled her.

“Such things aren’t easy to describe, Diane. It’s like anything else that’s terrible and awe-inspiring--it leaves one speechless. There’s something about the polar wastes that makes a man’s soul numb and mute. I can imagine that any one lost there might become--well, just a brute!”

As he spoke, he rose from his chair, went to the mantel, and, opening his cigarette-case, selected a cigarette and lit it. Diane, watching him with her heart throbbing heavily, noticed that the hand which held the match shook a little; but when the light flared up on his face, it seemed to her unusually composed. He picked up his overcoat and pulled it on, talking to her in an evasive tone.

“I’ll go over at once. I may be late, for we shall have a good deal to say. Don’t sit up for me--you look tired.”

She had remained seated at the table, and she busied herself pouring out another cup of coffee.

“I hope you won’t be too late. You’re so restless, Arthur, and you sleep so little! I don’t see how you live.”

“I think I shall sleep to-night.”

Again his tone had in it the suggestion of relief that had reassured her. She watched him as he went out, and then mechanically lifted the cup to her lips and drank the coffee. It seemed to steady her nerves a little. She rose and, going to the hearth, knelt down and stretched her hands out to the blaze. She had not been aware before that she was cold, but she was shaking with a chill that reached her very heart.

XXII

MEANWHILE Faunce pursued his way along the road that led to Overton’s stopping-place with a steadiness that would have amazed no one more than it amazed himself. He had come to the end of his rope; or, to change the analogy, the game was played out, he had lost, and he must pay.

He had believed himself safe. No matter how much the hidden shame corroded his soul, he had believed that his secret was as safe as death and the polar snows could make it. Like a mantle the inexorable ice had covered his cowardice, and he had returned, not a craven in men’s eyes, but a hero.

In his own eyes he had become a thing so miserable and so dishonest that his daily life had been filled with exquisite torture. The love that had driven him on to make Diane his wife had, in the end, been only a knife to cut deeper into his quivering flesh. Every word of hers, every caress, every evidence of her character, had only served to reveal the light in which she would be sure to regard him if she knew the truth.

She had married the hero of her imagination; if some untoward fate ever revealed the actual man to her, she would recoil in dismay, perhaps in horror. Faunce had seen this from the first, but he had believed that he had a right to keep his secret, to live it down, to “let the dead past bury its dead.”

Now, when a miracle had happened, and the grave had given up its dead, there was no power on earth that could save him. She must know the truth--she might know it even now! He recalled the look in her eyes, her coldness and abstraction. She might know it already from Overton, and only be waiting for him to enlighten Faunce. If she did not know it now, she would know it to-morrow or the day after. It could not be long delayed; the end was close at hand.

As Faunce realized this, he drew a long breath. He was amazed to feel relief. In spite of all it meant to him, his first feeling had been almost one of dizziness, like a man from whom a weight has suddenly fallen, and who reels back light-headed and unable to adjust himself to the change in his equilibrium.

If Overton lived, Faunce was no longer responsible for his death. No man could brand him with the mark of Cain. He was liberated from the thing that had hung upon him as fearfully as the slaughtered albatross once hung upon the neck of the _Ancient Mariner_.

There was relief, then--a relief that sent the blood rushing to his heart and the fire to his brain; but with the relief came the awful certainty of ruin. He could never hold up his head again among the men who had so lately hailed him as a friend and a hero. It might be worse to be a confessed craven than a secret felon. There could be no delay, no escape; his fate had passed out of his own control, and the God whom he had ignored in the polar wastes would shape his destiny now. Faunce was powerless; he could neither hasten nor delay it.

His very impotence, in relieving him of the decision, was almost a blessing. All that he could do was to give in, to yield, to let things take their course. The feeling of numbness that follows a great disaster possessed him--a kind of apathy which was in itself a relief to a man who had not slept without the use of drugs for so long a time that sleep without them had become impossible.

He walked steadily on, and at last he became aware of the scene about him. It was a wild night. A wind had risen, and the sky was full of driving clouds, with now and then a moment when the full moon flashed out and clothed the hills with spectral beauty. The creaking of the trees, bent by the gale, and the occasional snapping of a bough, filled the air with sound. Here and there a light shone in the scattered houses, and far off a dog bayed incessantly.

Faunce climbed a sharp ascent, and, turning into a wider path, suddenly found himself before the house where Overton was visiting his old relative. As he rang and stood waiting, his apathy suddenly left him. A feeling of staggering humiliation succeeded it, and he had difficulty in controlling an almost overwhelming impulse of flight.

Then the door opened, and he found himself asking for Overton. The servant, a gaunt, pale-faced woman, evidently an old standby, led him down a long, narrow hall to a portion of the house which had been added as unexpectedly and unreasonably as some perverse imp might add an extra wing to a chicken or a fifth leg to a cow. Being lightly built, it was to-night nearly as tremulous and uncertain in the wind as the pendulum of the ancient clock in the entry.

The woman, preceding Faunce, opened a door, and asked him to sit down and wait in the library while she went to announce him. He entered reluctantly, aware of a brilliant light from the reading-lamp on the low table in the center, and looked about him, glad of a few moments’ added reprieve.

The room was low-ceiled and rather narrow. Heavy crimson curtains covered the windows, while a straggling arrangement of book-shelves and an ancient desk suggested that it had once been the sanctuary of the master of the house--the old aunt’s husband, who had died, if Faunce remembered right, about ten years before. Above the shelves stood a bust of Shakespeare, a little crude in outline, and on the wall hung an engraving of Webster, making one of his famous speeches. The low mantel was covered with a hideous hanging of crewel-work, which suggested another generation as keenly as did the crocheted tidies still on the backs of the armchairs.

On the table, amid a litter of books and papers, an old pipe lay beside the open ink-well. Near it, lying open, was the book that Faunce himself had published, which contained the rescued sheets from Overton’s diary and Faunce’s frenzied efforts to patch together the broken record, to force one and two to make four.

The sight of it there, the evidence that Overton must have been reading his version of that fateful journey, affected Faunce deeply. He moved slowly to the table and looked down at the open page, sure before he saw it that it must be the one on which he had inscribed his own story of Overton’s death--had lied, in black and white, to save himself from shame!

Yes!

He was not mistaken--it was the very page, and a deep pencil-mark accentuated the most damning paragraph. He straightened himself with a sickening feeling of shame, and drew back, trying to steady himself.

At that moment he heard a step outside in the hall, and Overton entered, shut the door behind him, and stood looking at Faunce.

XXIII

IT seemed an interminable moment to Faunce that they stood thus, looking at each other. He had time to note the terrible change and waste in Overton’s face--the face that had haunted him so long with the veil of frozen mist upon it, fixed and unconscious in its awful tranquillity. Now that he saw it alive and hollowed with suffering, it gave him a strange feeling--or, rather, a confusion of feelings, in which relief was for the moment uppermost. However he had failed, however he had played the craven, the man lived, he had no death on his soul!

But his feeling of relief was succeeded by swift and overwhelming humiliation, which increased when Overton amazed him by advancing calmly across the room and holding out a hand.

“Well, Faunce, I’m glad you came--although I suppose you had very little wish to come!”

Faunce colored deeply, his hand falling away from Overton’s with a growing feeling of shame.

“It was hard to come--for I don’t know what to say. Indeed, there’s nothing for me to say. I know, of course, what you think of me!”

The other man put this aside with a significant gesture of weariness.

“Let it go, Faunce--I’m tired of it. For a while I believed I hated you and reviled you in my thoughts; but afterward, looking back at it, I couldn’t blame a man for wanting to live. That was, of course, the size of it.”

As he spoke, he sat down in the armchair by the table, signing to Faunce to take the seat opposite. His manner was easy and unaffected. He had evidently prepared himself for this meeting. Besides, he had the immeasurable advantage of being the injured party.

Faunce, who had expected reproaches and condemnation, was staggered by Overton’s attitude. He could not fathom it, and he tried to face it with a shrewdness and acumen that might cover his confusion and discover the other man’s motives.

“I don’t believe you feel like that!” he said harshly. “You can’t! I’ve often pictured it to myself, and felt that in your place I should have cursed the man who left me. To use a sailor’s phrase, you’ve taken a strange tack--what are you driving at? What do you want of me?”

Overton smiled a little grimly, but he opened a box of cigars and pushed them across the table.

“Have a cigar? Here’s a light--we’ll talk it over. I’m not driving at anything. I can only say--with truth--that having been so near death down there, and knowing the horror of it, I can understand that you wanted to live. It’s merely an elemental instinct, anyway.”

Faunce, who had not lit the cigar he had selected, sat staring in speculative silence. His first thought had been that Overton must want something--must wish to make some deal about the new expedition, or he could not have helped reproaching the man who had deserted him and left him to die. But, looking at the other’s face, ennobled and spiritualized by suffering, Faunce began to realize that Overton was still too great to fall to the level to which he himself had fallen.

His own feeling of humiliation swept back on him, wave upon wave, until he felt like a man who was slowly drowning and knew that little by little the water would rise above his head. He sank back in his chair with a shudder.

“It may have been that,” he admitted reluctantly. “It came over me with such a rush of horror that I couldn’t stay. I never meant to leave you, Overton. I meant to behave like a man, to stay by you as we’d both stood by Rayburn; but I had seen him die, I thought I saw you going the same way, and suddenly it seized me--that feeling--God knows what it was! It was impossible for me to stay. I don’t try to excuse myself--I had to go!”

Overton nodded.

“That’s panic. I know the feeling. I’ve had it myself once or twice, in those solitudes; but”--he hesitated, carefully holding his cigar over the little ash-tray on the table, and knocking the ashes from it with a deliberation that hid his eyes from Faunce--“well, I haven’t yielded to it, that’s all!”

“I did. I don’t want to excuse myself; I know well enough that you’re not the man to excuse--what I did. I’ve often thought that I must have been mad--stark, staring mad!”

Overton smoked for a while in a silence that seemed to Faunce a good deal worse than speech.

“Suppose we let that drop, eh!” he said at length. “It’s over and done with, and if we’re to go on at all we’ve got to forget it. But there’s another side to it--a side that I wanted to see you about. You’re married. There’ll be some danger of this--this thing injuring you. Now, what I wanted to say, and to say strongly, is this--we mustn’t let it hurt your wife!”

Faunce raised his head with a look of such sudden anguish that it astonished Overton. He had not been considering Arthur, only Diane; but now he turned in his chair and looked attentively at the man himself. Faunce, meanwhile, forced himself to speak.

“You saw her to-day. Did you tell her?”

“Of course not! I’m not cad enough for that.”

“You might well tell her without being a cad. There’s no reason for you to spare me. I didn’t spare you!”

“There are a great many reasons why I should spare her, though!” Overton retorted dryly.

Faunce bit his lip. The implication was plain--Overton had more consideration for Faunce’s wife than Faunce had himself.

“It’s useless!” he said bitterly. “She’s sure to know, now that you’re back.”

“Is she? That’s just what I wanted to know. I’ve been trying to recall all that I said when I first regained consciousness--how far I gave it all away. Lately I’ve said nothing. How much has got out already! How much can we suppress? We must spare her if we can--you must see that!”

Faunce stared in sheer incredulity. He had come to face recrimination, to deal with an angry and righteously offended man. He found, instead, a hand stretched out to help him cover his own shame; but the price of it would be a moral obligation as great as the shame. He shuddered.

“You mean”--he spoke slowly, haltingly--“that you want this to go on! That instead of avenging yourself on me, you’re disposed to help me hide what--what I did, and that I’m to keep on as I am--to save my wife?”

Overton assented, stopping to look attentively at his half-smoked cigar, that he might again avoid looking at Faunce.

“My God, I can’t do it!”

Faunce’s cry seemed to be wrung from an inner agony too great to bear. Overton started and looked up as the other man rose from his chair and began to pace the room with disordered steps, his head down.

“I tell you I can’t do it!” Faunce continued in a choked voice. “I’ve been in hell for months. I came back here with a lie on my lips, and I’ve lived a lie ever since. I thought that you were dead, and that I should have to go on doing it; but when I knew you had come back I felt as if a stone had fallen from my neck. You were alive, thank God, and I was free. I was ruined, but I was free from my own tower of lies--free to slink into a corner and grovel there in shame. I’ve known for months that if it ever came out I was ruined, and I was prepared to face it. I’d rather face it!”

He stopped in the center of the room and looked at Overton in a kind of mad defiance.

“I tell you, I haven’t slept, not through a night, since I left you. You’ve haunted me! I can still hear the crunch of the snow under my feet, I can see that frozen desert. And they were going to send me back. Diane wanted me to go back--she believed I had a mission! I was going--I felt like a whipped dog that has to go home to be whipped again. I’m a coward. I haven’t the courage to go on lying. Tell them the truth and let me suffer, but set me free!”

Overton tossed his cigar-stump into the fire and rose slowly to his feet, facing him.

“I can’t, nor can you. You can’t disgrace your wife. You know as well as I know--what would happen. It would ruin you. You can’t do it. You’ve married her, and--you’ve got to protect her. I’ll make you!”

Faunce drew back, meeting Overton’s eyes sullenly, his face distorted.

“Oh, I know! You love her. She’ll think I did it all to--to put you out of the way. She’ll despise me, too!”

Overton returned his look steadily.

“She’d have a right to despise you, if you let this thing disgrace her. It’s not out yet, and we must hide it.”

“Impossible!” Faunce threw out both hands with a gesture of repugnance. “I was in New York to-day, and I was asked a thousand questions. They’re on the trail--they’ll run it down!”

“They can’t run it down if we’re determined to hide it, to stand pat about it. That’s why I wanted to see you. I’ve been over the ground, and I think we can do it. Here’s this book of yours. I see you’ve used my diary and my notes as if I had died sure enough; but you’ve left a gap here.” He put his finger on the page. “We needn’t fill it. We can leave it shrouded in a nebulous haze. You speak of our being separated, but you don’t precisely state that we came together again before I broke my ankle. It has, by the way, lamed me a little. Now, think--think hard. Who knows the truth? Any one besides ourselves?”

Faunce thought, steadying himself.

“Yes; I think Asher knows enough to guess the rest. Asher was going with me on the new expedition, and he knows that the news of your return delayed it. He may be able to piece out the facts. I told them little enough. I’ve hidden the truth--I had cause!”

Overton nodded understandingly.

“I thought so. Then I’ll see Asher; he’s a friend of mine, and I think I can answer for him. We’ve something to fear from England; but there, too, I’ll use my influence, and we’ll hush it up.”

“And I’m to spend the rest of my life supporting the intolerable burden of your magnanimity--your greatness? I can’t understand your feeling toward a fellow who--who treated you as I did. I might as well have murdered you!”

Overton gave him a hard look.

“Understand me, Faunce, I’m human. I don’t care a hang about your feelings, but I’m willing to do my utmost, to give my utmost, to save the woman you’ve dared to marry!”

Faunce drew a tense breath. The accumulated fury of shame and humiliation leaped up. The strain was too much for his taut nerves, and he took a quick step forward.

“I see!” he said in a low voice. “You’re putting me under an obligation because you love my wife! I may have been a craven--I admit that I was a craven--but I have never tried to make any woman hate her husband!”

Like a flash Overton’s right arm shot out, and his fist struck Faunce full in the face. The blow was as sharp as it was unexpected. With the same violent impulse, Faunce leaped at him and hurled him back against the wall. Overton, who was still broken in health, reeled before the assault, and kept his feet only by snatching at the mantel-shelf, while he turned deadly pale. Faunce saw it, let go his hold, and drew back with an inarticulate sound of mingled rage and remorse.

“Good Heavens, you’re making me a coward again! I left you to die once, and now I’ve tried to kill you! Let me go! We two can’t live on the same planet without an intolerable conflict. Take your revenge, expose me--and be hanged!”

Overton, however, had recovered his self-control.

“I was wrong,” he said bluntly. “I had no right to bring your wife into it. We can’t insult her by a fight like this. As you say, we can’t get on, Faunce, but we can agree to silence--we must. To speak now does no man any good, and it will bring misery to--to some.”

“To my wife!” Faunce straightened himself. The violent flush of anger faded out of his face. He turned wearily, picked up his hat, and tossed Overton’s cigar--which he had never lit--upon the table. “Do as you like! To force me to go on is about the worst punishment you can inflict. I’ve reached the limit!”

Overton, bent on saving Diane the humiliation of her husband’s disgrace, followed him to the door.

“I’ll speak to Asher, and I’ll write to England. Let the thing die out. It’s agreed, eh?”

Faunce, who was already on the little old-fashioned stoop, looked back, and Overton got an impression of a white face and haggard eyes; but Faunce made no reply in words. He merely nodded his head and disappeared into the shadows that were gathered thick under the cedars in the path.

Overton stood a moment longer in the door, staring blankly into the night, which was again fitfully lit up by the moon, and listening to those retreating footsteps. They weirdly recalled the moment when he half revived from his frozen stupor and saw the one human figure that he had clung to receding in a white mist. It cost him again a supreme effort to control the rush of his contempt and hatred for the man who had just left him.

XXIV

AS Overton went in and shut the door, Faunce found himself once more in the road, and turned mechanically to go back to the cottage. He had almost lost his mental bearings, and for the moment he was incapable of coherent thought. The march of events had been too swift, the revulsion of feeling too strong.

In his soul, at that instant, there was neither hatred, nor contempt, nor even shame. He was numb. He had passed through a long agony, and had paid--in his heart’s blood--for his craven act. He was still paying, doubtless he would pay until the day of his death; but a strange apathy had come over him. His emotion had spent itself in his attack upon Overton, and now shame had drowned him so completely that it had submerged even his resistance, and he was only intensely weary.

The physical man, worn down by want of sleep, racked by tortured nerves, keyed up to defend himself from discovery, to keep the place at which he had snatched with desperate hands, was ready to give up. He felt an intolerable longing for sleep; he could have thrown himself down by the way and slept like a dog.

Even about Diane he was troubled no longer. He believed that she had loved Overton best, he knew that she would side with Overton; but he had no more strength to battle for her. He was ready to surrender.

He stumbled blindly along with the drowsy feeling surging over him again and again, weighing down his heavy eyelids. He had only one desire--to get home, find a spot to lie down and to sleep at last in peace. Overton lived, and henceforth, if any one had to suffer, he would be the sufferer, not Overton. The shackles had fallen off, and he could sleep.

He found his way by instinct, ascended the steps, and unlocked the door. He knew it was late, and he hoped Diane had gone to bed; but, as he opened the door, he saw that the lamp still burned brightly on the table in the living-room.