Chapter VI: Part 6

He took off his coat and left it on the settle by the door, occupying himself with trifles in the vain hope of delaying, even for a little while, the moment when he must begin again to act a part; but he heard her rise from her seat by the fire. When he entered the room, she was standing near the door, swathed in a delicate pink-silk kimono, her soft, dark hair falling about her shoulders. Her eyes, feverishly bright, looked dark and almost wild in her pale face.

“I sat up for you,” she explained brokenly. “I couldn’t sleep. I can’t bear it any longer, Arthur. Tell me what it is! What are you hiding from me--about the south pole?”

He did not reply at once, for he was, in a measure, taken by surprise. He came slowly into the room and walked past her to the fire, his head bent. He was trying to rally his thoughts. She turned back with him and stood watching him, scarcely daring to breathe. At last he threw back his head.

“I think I’ll tell you,” he said deliberately. “Overton thinks it can be kept a secret, and perhaps he’s right, but I say that you have a right to know, to decide for yourself. Anyway, I can’t go on. I’ve got to a place where I can’t go on!”

She was breathing quickly, a horrible fear dragging at her heart.

“What do you mean by keeping a secret? What has Overton to do with it?”

He turned and looked at her. She thought she had never seen such a strange expression on any man’s face--a look as if he had let go of everything, as if he no longer cared. But he spoke collectedly, even coldly.

“You were wrong in marrying me, Diane. You married a coward. Overton’s a great man, a greater man than even you have thought. He’s willing to cloak your husband’s craven fear to save you--to hush it all up for your sake.”

She gasped.

“To hush it up? What--oh, Arthur, tell me, tell me what it is! I don’t know what you’re saying!”

Then he told her, slowly, deliberately, not sparing himself, as he had told Dr. Gerry months before.

“I left him to die,” he ended in a hard voice. “He was alive, I knew he was alive, but I was afraid to die like that. I didn’t see a hope of saving us both, so I saved myself.”

She drew away with a shudder, her large eyes fixed on his face. He saw the recoil, the outraged incredulity in her face.

“You--you couldn’t have done that, Arthur--it’s impossible! You’re ill, you’re not telling me the truth--it can’t be!”

He saw how she took it, saw that he had struck a death-blow at her love for him. Something seemed to give way in his heart. He turned and sank into a seat by the hearth with a groan.

“It’s true. You know it’s true, Diane. Overton’s here, isn’t he? You’ve seen him, and you remember that I told you myself that I was with him when he died? He isn’t dead. Don’t you see it was a lie? I tell you I’m a coward!” He seemed possessed to make a clean breast of it, to hide nothing, to get the relief of cauterizing the wound. “You married a coward.”

She put her hand out blindly and caught at the table. She felt that she was falling, and she clung to the support.

“It’s incredible,” she said, almost in a whisper. “It’s incredible. How could you do such a thing and then endure the thought of it?”

“I haven’t endured the thought of it. It’s been torture; and now he wants it to go on, wants me to keep on--to hide it for your sake. But I see how you feel!”

She swept him a look in which scorn and horror mingled with a kind of fear.

“I don’t see how I could feel any other way! I--why, think of it, they’ve made a hero of you; you were going in his place to the south pole. I’ve--I’ve wanted you to go--I was so proud of you! But now--I don’t see how you could have even thought of going back. It--it would have driven me mad, if I’d done what--you did!”

He met her wild reproach with a hard look of endurance.

“It was driving me mad. I haven’t slept, you know that. But, Diane”--his voice suddenly thrilled with passion--“for God’s sake don’t look at me like that--I love you!”

“Oh!”

It was a cry not so much of surprise as of dismay--dismay that he should dare, being the craven that he admitted he was, to speak of love to her. It was unmistakable, he could not misunderstand it; her tone and her look destroyed his last hope. He recalled Overton’s insult--“the woman you dared to marry”--and he covered his face with his hands.

Diane stood looking at him, outraged and terrified by his confession. All her natural integrity in arms, she had no pity for him. Then, as he did not speak again or even look up, she turned slowly and walked to the door of her own room.

There she paused again, turned, looked at him with the same pitiless expression, and, unmoved by his stricken attitude, his evident repentance, she went in, shut the door behind her, and bolted it with hands that not only shook with dismay, but almost with fear.

XXV

JUDGE HERFORD rose from his chair and began pacing the room with every sign of anger and impatience. Dr. Gerry, on the other hand, kept his seat by the table without any apparent perturbation. He had stopped in after dinner to smoke a cigar with his old friend, and had found him much in the mood of a tiger who has lost his favorite scrap of meat through the bars of his cage and cannot reach it with his paws.

“I tell you there must be an explanation,” the judge growled. “It’s impossible to make head or tail of it as it is. If Overton wasn’t dead, why did Faunce come back with such a story?”

The doctor stopped smoking long enough to answer:

“You saw Overton’s explanation this morning. He was lost in the snow, his comrades supposed him dead; the Englishmen, coming over the other trail, found him unconscious; the two parties missed each other, and so forth.”

“I read that, of course. It’s no explanation, and you know it. It was their business to find him. What was Faunce doing? He was second in command.”

“Well, you can ask him. He’s your son-in-law.”

“Precisely! My son-in-law, and the two idiots have gone off and left no address. We haven’t heard a word in weeks. It’s absurd! Meanwhile, every paper in the country has been blazing with the news of Overton’s return. The whole business is in a muddle--the expedition delayed, and talk--this morning--of putting Overton in command instead of Faunce. A pretty howdy-do!”

“Natural enough. Overton’s the hero of the great discovery; he’s returned with the halo of romance; and he’s sure to get all the honors. Nothing strange about that!”

“There’s a great deal strange about the whole thing!” retorted the judge, resuming his seat and thrusting some fresh tobacco into his pipe with an indignant thumb. “But I’ll get to the bottom of it! As it is, I don’t like it. Any way you can fix it, there’s a shade on Faunce. If he’d done his duty, he’d have brought Overton back--I stick to that. What’s more, I’ll tell him so!”

“Better not,” counseled the doctor dryly. “He’s Diane’s husband--you can’t get around that; and as long as you made the match----”

“As long as I what?” thundered the judge.

The doctor laughed grimly.

“I said you made the match.”

“Nonsense! Do you take me for an old woman? The girl made it herself. She’s competent to select a husband. She’s got high ideals, too. She’ll hold him to account--I can tell you that!”

The doctor mused.

“I wonder if she will?”

“She will! We had a talk the night before the wedding. It touched me, Sam--touched me to the heart! She came down here and sat with me by the fire, and told me how she felt, how absolutely she demanded truth, honor, high purpose. It was young, of course, and girlish, but it was beautiful. She said she couldn’t marry a man who hadn’t the qualities she believed in. She thought Faunce had them all.”

Gerry stopped smoking. He quietly laid down the stump of his cigar, and, leaning forward, his elbows on his knees, gazed thoughtfully into the empty fireplace, for it was too warm now for a fire.

“It’s a pity,” he remarked at last, “that girls have such an amount of imagination. It’s likely to make trouble later on.”

“What d’you mean?” snapped the judge, with a suspicious glance across the table.

The doctor rose.

“Nothing but generalities, Hadley. I’ve got to go now; there’s an old woman down with sciatica, and I’m on my way over to her. You let me know when you hear from Diane.”

The judge watched his friend, his heavy brows down.

“I remember that you were opposed to the marriage. You said something about his not being fit to tie her shoe. What did you mean, Sam?”

The doctor was working himself into his coat. He did it vigorously, flapping his arms up and down until the garment settled into place. Then he hunted for his hat.

“Can’t say what I may have meant. It’s too late now, anyhow. You put your shoulder to the wheel, Hadley, and see that Faunce gets his command. He’s got to make his own way now, or Overton’s big start will wipe him off the slate. You don’t want Diane’s husband sponged out.”

“By Godfrey, it’s his business to survive the sponging! I can’t make him over. I believed in him; this thing’s staggered me, and now it’s up to him to put us all straight. He’ll have to clear himself to me--that’s flat!”

Dr. Gerry shrugged his shoulders and made for the door. The situation was fraught with dangers for him. He could not make a clean breast of it without violating what he would have called his professional honor. He was, in fact, more disturbed than Herford, for he knew more, and he had been unable to find a clue to Overton’s action.

A solution had flashed in on him. Overton loved Diane. Was he shielding her? The doctor, trudging along the country road in the dark, found it impossible to decide, but he was disturbed with the thought of Diane. Had she found out the truth?

Meanwhile Diane’s father, left alone to his reflections, found the problem too hard to solve. He flung his work aside without even looking at it, too nervous for its dull routine. Going to his book-shelves, he took down one of his favorite classics, a volume of Æschylus. Turning over the leaves, he tried to absorb his mind in the beautiful opening lines of the “Agamemnon,” and to vision with his usual zest the far-off beacon that greeted the watcher at Argos; but the noble words of the great tragedy made no appeal to-night. He tried to submerge his mind in them, but he could not, he could not even read. He found himself staring at the printed page with no more idea of the familiar Greek than a bewildered student in his first effort to unravel Sanskrit.

He recalled the doctor’s cryptic comments and coupled them with Gerry’s previous opposition to Diane’s marriage.

“He’s got something up his sleeve,” the judge decided at last, with a kind of futile anger. “I’d like to know just what it is!”

Then he suddenly remembered Faunce--remembered him as he had sat in the vacant chair opposite, young, graceful, peculiarly charming in manner, with the uplifted look of a young enthusiast. The judge knew that Diane loved him. Why, then, rake up this trouble? Why doubt him?

Judge Herford resumed his determined efforts to read, and began at last to lose himself in the return of _Agamemnon_. The evening was so hot that he had left his window open; but a rising wind disturbed him. He got up impatiently, slammed down the sash, and returned to his book.

He had been reading half an hour longer when he heard a carriage stopping at his door, and then a step on the porch outside. It was too late for visitors, and something familiar in the sound made him start up and go himself to answer the bell. He threw open the door and peered out into the night. There was an exclamation that was like a cry, and Diane flew into his arms.

“Oh, papa, make the man bring in my luggage, please, and pay him. I--I can’t bear any more!”

The amazed judge looked over his daughter’s shoulder.

“Where’s Faunce?” he demanded.

But she slipped out of his arms and ran on toward the library. Her father paid the man, who was dragging up the trunk and some bags, and who stared curiously at the judge as he pocketed his fare. Mapleton was small, and Herford knew him--he was Steve Lentz, the son of a local butcher who had gone into the livery business. It would be all over town to-morrow that Diane Faunce had come home alone and in tears.

The judge slammed the door on Steve, the unoffending, and, hot with displeasure, made his way toward his sanctum. Diane was there, standing in the center of the room. She had torn off her hat and tossed it on the lounge. She stood there, a slender creature in a dark, clinging dress that made her wild face look white, while her eyes shone in the lamplight with a glow that was like a flame. All the pent-up passion of her soul seemed to have leaped up in them, and her lips were shaking like a child’s who had wept until it can weep no more.

The judge came in and shut the door.

“What does this mean?” he demanded. “What’s wrong? Why are you crying?”

“I’m not--I can’t any more!” was her reply, as she pushed the hair back from her temples and pressed her hands against her eyes. “I’m blind with it now. I--oh, papa, how can I tell you?”

“I don’t know what you want to tell. Where’s your husband?”

Diane’s hands dropped at her sides with a helpless gesture, but she held her head up, meeting her father’s eyes with a flash of spirit.

“I’ve left him.”

The judge was silent. He seemed to be dumb with sheer amazement, for he did not move, but stood, as he had entered, near the door, with his eyes fixed on her.

Diane, forced to take the initiative, tried to control herself. She had been passing through a fiery ordeal, and she felt too bruised and broken in spirit to battle any longer; but she knew that her father was as inexorable as she was. She would have to make it clear to him, to make him see it with her eyes, or he would take sides against her. But she knew that he would not do so if she told him the whole truth. He would feel as she did; there was no other way to feel.

She took a step forward, laid hold of the high back of the chair he had just quitted, and began to speak in a tone that was almost natural:

“Do you remember that night before I was married, when we sat here together, and I told you how I felt?”

He nodded, his eyes still holding hers.

“I told you that the one supreme test of a man, to me, was his honesty, that I--I couldn’t go on as Mabel Gardner did, living with a man I knew to be false. I can’t! It’s--it’s just that, papa, I can’t go on. I had to come home to you!”

“You mean that Faunce is dishonest?” he managed to ask, after another moment of silence.

She caught her breath, her eyes dilating with pain.

“Yes, it’s--it’s worse than that. Oh, papa, how can I tell you?” She held out her arms to him with a cry like a child in pain.

But he held her off with his uplifted hand, still searching her face.

“Is it about Overton?”

“Yes--yes!” She turned and sank down in the chair, hiding her face in her hands. “I’ll try to tell you,” she went on in a choked voice. “Overton came back; he came up to the Catskills. We went--I didn’t tell you, Arthur didn’t want any letters--we went up to the lodge two weeks ago; you know I had the keys. While we were there, Overton came to see his aunt, who lives near by. We met, and as soon as I saw him I knew that something was wrong. He wouldn’t tell me, but I knew. A woman knows those things about her husband. That night Arthur came home; he had been down in New York, and he went to see Overton. When he came back he told me. He----”

She stopped, choked with her sense of shame. Her father, greatly moved and changed, came slowly across the room and stood beside her, his hand on her shoulder.

“Go on, Diane. I must know it all.”

She stopped and lifted her white face toward his, twisting her handkerchief with frantic hands.

“Papa, I can’t--I can’t tell you all; but Overton and Arthur were alone together. Overton broke his ankle; he couldn’t walk. Arthur took the sledge and the dogs and escaped, leaving Overton in the blizzard, helpless, to freeze to death!”

The judge made no response. He stood looking down at his daughter without the power to reply. She seemed to think he had not understood, and she repeated her story with a kind of agony which showed him that she felt a vicarious participation in her husband’s act.

“He left him--helpless--to die. Overton wasn’t even entirely unconscious; he--he lay there and saw Arthur go!”

The judge could not believe it. Whatever his fears had been, the fact was past belief.

“You must be mistaken; you can’t have understood it all. He must have left him to go for help, and then returned.”

She shook her head.

“I asked him--he never went back until it was too late.”

“Faunce admits this? He told you this himself?”

She nodded; she could not speak. Her father groaned aloud.

“My child--my poor child!”

She looked up at him, saw the grief and anger and sympathy in his face, and her lip quivered pitifully. She tried to speak again, but words utterly failed her, and she flung herself into his arms, weeping dreadfully. The judge clasped her and held her close, stroking her brown hair, tears scalding his own eyes. What had he done! Married his child, his daughter, the pride of his heart, to a coward?

“The rascal!” he said below his breath. “The craven rascal!”

She clung to him sobbing.

“I loved him! Oh, papa, I loved him! It’s--it’s broken my heart!”

He tried to quiet her, but his indignation kept breaking out in angry mutterings and threats against Faunce. Apparently she did not hear them. She was satisfied to feel his arms around her, to be sure that she was safe in that harbor. She only turned her head a little as she nestled closer, clinging to him with hands that still shook.

“I was afraid you’d be angry with me, that you’d want me to--to go back, because he’s--he’s my husband!”

“Go back!” The judge’s pent-up wrath broke out with some of his old thunderous bass. “Go back to that coward? If you did, Di, I’d--I’d go after you and pry you out of his house with a writ of habeas corpus. I’d sooner see you dead than the wife of a coward. I’ll free you, if it takes my last cent to do it!”

She shivered. The assurance was what she wanted. She had craved it for hours; she had prayed for it ever since she ran away from the little mountain house in the dark and stormy night, and braved a midnight journey to come to her father; yet it did not comfort her now. She shook from head to foot, and a feeling of sheer loneliness and desolation--a feeling that might have come to Hagar when she was driven out into the desert--came to her.

She was at home, in her father’s arms, safe in the old familiar room. The same warm light shone from the shaded lamp on the multicolored bindings. His old pipe lay on the table, and the old clock that she had loved as a child drummed out the hour; but it could never be the same again. She had passed through an immortal crisis of agony and shame. She could never take up the old life again at the same place, for the subtle change that had taken place in all the relations of that life had dissolved the very foundations of it beneath her feet and left her adrift.

XXVI

IT was soon after this--in fact, no later than the following afternoon--that Mrs. Price hurried up the long driveway to the seminary. She was going home, and, being small and round and oldish, she panted and bubbled a little in her haste. Even her exactly appropriate garb, patterned closely on “correct and distinctive styles for more mature figures,” and her very sober little hat, shaped like a sugar-bowl, palpitated with undue excitement.

She burst in upon the dean and Fanny, who were quietly enjoying a cup of tea in the sunny little sitting-room, where a yellow rose showered its golden buds against the wide stone sills of the bay window. Fanny, looking up as she entered, recognized something amazing in the expression of her mother’s round face and rounder eyes.

“Why, mamma, what’s the matter?” she exclaimed, suspending the cream-pitcher over her father’s second cup of tea.

Mrs. Price dropped into the nearest chair, and, stretching out a plump hand, gave the dean a sudden prod in the arm that happened to be within easy reach.

“Edward, do you remember what you said--that night--about Faunce?”

The dean, still waiting for his cup of tea, looked around at her with an absent air.

“What night--what?”

“Just before he was married. You said he was prowling around at all hours of the night.”

“Oh, yes, I remember! He was. Give me that tea, please, Fanny, before you upset the cream-pitcher into it.”

Fanny recovered herself and hastily passed the cup over to her father, while Mrs. Price resumed.

“You were right, Edward--you always are! There’s something wrong. Diane has come home--alone!”

“Humph! What of that? He’s probably in New York, closing up his business before they sail.”

“She’s left him!”

“Eh?”

The dean jerked around in his chair and gazed at his wife in open-mouthed incredulity, while Fanny suddenly reddened and then paled. Only Mrs. Price, having recovered her breath, remained mistress of the situation.

“I said, she’s left him.”

“Nonsense! Your imagination always runs away with you, Julia. They haven’t been married six months.”

“I know it, but it’s true--the judge told me so himself.”

“Oh, mamma!”

Fanny’s exclamation did not express incredulity so much as dismay. She had given up all effort to drink her tea, and leaned back in her chair, her trembling hands hidden in her lap.

The dean continued to regard his wife over the tops of his big tortoise-shell spectacles. His mild face and pale-blue eyes behind the heavy brown rims made him look like a pallid but speculative beetle.

“What’s the matter? Did the judge tell you?”

Mrs. Price shook her head.

“He said: ‘My daughter came home last night to stay, and she has my entire approval and support.’ That’s exactly the way he worded it, Edward, and I--really, I was afraid to say a word. The atmosphere seemed to be thick--charged, you know. I can tell you I was glad to get out. I almost ran all the way home!”

“Did you see Diane, mamma?” Fanny managed to ask in a voice which at another time would have arrested her mother’s attention; but at the moment Mrs. Price was absorbed.

“Just for a few minutes, dear. She went right up-stairs and left me to the judge. You know I never am at home with him. I always feel--well, just the way I did when I was a little girl and my father made me fire off a Roman candle. I was so frightened when it exploded! You know I went over there to return those books papa borrowed, and I got right into it. As soon as Di went up-stairs, he began. I saw there was something the matter before. She looks as if she’d been drawn through a knot-hole. I was just thinking that I never saw a bride look like that when she got up and left me with him. Of course, I began to get ready to leave, too, but he made me sit down and sprang this thing on me--just like that! Somehow I felt as if I’d done it myself. I know David never felt a bit worse when Nathan said unto him, ‘Thou art the man!’ I felt as if I were either Faunce or Faunce’s mother, and I got up and ran!”

The dean smiled grimly.

“You’re not to blame, my dear, unless you want to shoulder a vicarious responsibility because I married them.”

“It’s an awful responsibility, Edward, to marry people these days! Fanny, give me a cup of tea. I feel a little faint. Was that water boiling, child, when you made it? Some of the tea-leaves are floating.”

“Elfrida brought it, mamma. I suppose it was.”

“Very likely it wasn’t, if she brought it. These Norwegians will be the death of me yet. I’ve no doubt that they made perfectly beautiful vikings--so crude and bloody, you know--but they’re deadly cooks! Edward, don’t you think you ought to do something, or say something? It’s so unscriptural.”

“What--the Norwegian?”

His wife stared at him in exasperation.

“You know perfectly what I mean. It’s shocking, the way people act. You really ought to talk to Diane.”

“Or to Faunce,” retorted the dean dryly. “Very likely he’s to blame.”

“Oh, no!” Fanny’s cry was so sharp that both parents looked at her, amazed, and she blushed painfully. “He was so much in love with Diane,” she faltered. “He told me so. We used to talk about her, and I know how he feels. He couldn’t--he simply couldn’t mean to quarrel with her!”

“So that’s what you were talking about, was it?” her father said in a relieved tone. “I sometimes thought, Fan, that he was trying to flirt with you at the same time that he was making love to Diane.”

“Oh, no!”

This time Fanny’s negative was low and a little tremulous. Mrs. Price glanced meaningly at her husband, but the dean, placidly spreading butter on a toasted muffin, was oblivious to the warning.

“I never believed in him, Fan--he’s too handsome. Personally I have more confidence in little plain old men, getting slightly bald and wearing spectacles.”

“Don’t talk nonsense, Edward! We all know you. But it’s--it’s really terrible. Do you suppose Diane intends to get a divorce?”

The dean shook his head helplessly.

“Search me!”

“Edward! Those horrid boys are teaching you slang!”

“Of course they are, my dear. Slang is an expression of the age. I’m making a study of it, but I haven’t used much. If I did, I should say that I heard your news without even batting an eye.”

Mrs. Price rose and set her empty cup on the table.

“I think it’s time for me to go up-stairs and take off my things. I really do wish, Edward, you’d think it over. Something ought to be done. The judge is going to let that child ruin her whole life right at the start. You’re a minister of the gospel, as well as the dean of a seminary, and it’s your duty--it certainly is your duty--to preach the word. There’s nothing in it to favor divorce, and you know it!”

“My dear Julia--” the dean began, but she was already at the stairs, and she only called back something to him about David and Uriah’s wife as she disappeared.

The dean chuckled.

“The trouble with your mother’s quotations, my dear, is that she gets them misapplied. What do you think of it, Fan? You know Faunce better than we do.”

Fanny was looking intently out of the window at the buds of the yellow rose.

“I don’t think I do know him very well, papa. You see, he was so much in love with Diane that he talked about her more than anything else. I felt, after a while, as if I stood on the outer edge. You understand, don’t you? It was as if I knew him quite well as my friend, but his real inner self, his soul, was a long way off. I--I thought it was because he was in love with--with some one else.”

The dean mused.

“I’m not so sure, my child. I think that was the way he made most of us feel--as if his soul was a long way off, as if he had something on his mind. Perhaps Diane has just found out what it is, and it’s given her a shock.”

Fanny started, turning her blue eyes on him.

“You mean you think he’s done something wrong?”

“I don’t think I meant anything as concrete as that, Fan. I was thinking that the inner self of some men is a shock to the average woman. That’s why we get these surprises, my dear. We don’t know people as they are, and when we find out their hidden characteristics we sometimes get a jar. It takes time to settle down and find that we can’t make the world over to suit our own ideas. Diane’s a bit headstrong; she’ll take it hard.”

“I don’t think she cared much for him, papa. She--she was in love with Overton before he went away.”

“Sh! My child, don’t say a word; that road leads to scandal. We don’t know yet how Overton was saved. I suppose, if this goes on, I’ll have to speak to Diane or to Faunce.”

“It’s not his fault, papa,” Fanny protested firmly, as she rose. “He loves her!”

The dean shook his head.

“Youth,” he remarked, “is optimistic. There’s Ferdie Farrar trying to bat that ball right into the seminary window, and I’ve warned him twice!” he added, springing up and making for the door, his eyes intent on the plunging figures on the distant campus.

Fanny heard him go out with his usual impetuosity; then she sat down weakly, poured herself another cup of lukewarm tea, and drank it. She was very glad that she had been so completely mistress of herself. She felt sure that her father had no suspicions. She was aware that Mrs. Price had, but she could depend on her mother.

Mrs. Price had her failings, but she was loyal to her little girl, as she still called her daughter. If she knew that Fanny had suffered when Faunce married Diane, she would not betray her knowledge, even by sympathizing with her. There was relief in that; it would be all the harder to drag her poor little secret out and dissect it, when it was a plain duty to let it die of inanition.

But it was like turning the knife in the wound to see that Diane could not get on with Faunce. Of course, they would patch this quarrel up, unless it was about some vital matter; but they could not go on as they had begun. At least Fanny could not believe it possible.

She had, besides, an intuitive knowledge of Diane’s frame of mind. Diane had loved Overton, and had been drawn to Faunce because of his association with Overton. He had won her consent to the marriage, but Fanny did not believe that he had ever completely won her heart. And now Overton had come back.

Fanny started as the thought took shape. Overton’s inexplicable return, the questions that it had raised about Faunce, the gossip and the scandal were synchronous with Diane’s flight. Was this the meaning of it?

Fanny rose slowly from the tea-table and went to the window. She felt a little giddy with the rush of troubled thoughts, and she blinked as the sunshine flashed full into her eyes. The window faced west, and the day was nearly done. Against a yellow mist she saw the striped and barred figures of the ball-players on the distant field. Their lithe forms etched against the orange tint of the horizon reminded her of the Greek figures on one of Judge Herford’s glazed porcelains.

The trees were scantier here than in the hills, but their green leafage formed a graceful screen between their lawn and the campus. A mass of day lilies bloomed under the window, and she could see the little stars of the blue-eyed grass. She leaned forward, both hands resting on the sill, and looked out, the summer air touching her hot cheek and moving the delicate tendrils of fair hair on her forehead.

XXVII

SHE was still leaning there with a dumb kind of resistance to her inner restlessness, when she saw a visitor coming up the walk. Looking more closely at the tall figure, she recognized Overton with a shock of feeling. She knew that it was not unnatural for him to come to Mapleton, but the unexpected sight of him made her mind flash back to Diane, and she experienced a sensation akin to panic.

He had seen her, and she could not escape. She had to stand there bravely until the Norwegian maid opened the door and led him clumsily to the sitting-room, her square, peasant figure appearing in the background as he entered.

Fanny greeted him, trying to say something correct and conventional. She was secretly appalled at the thought that his resurrection from the polar snows had in it almost an element of tragedy. He seemed to have lost his place among mortal men, and to have assumed the guise of the departed. His return had put their little world all out of joint.

She felt as if he must know it, must feel awkward and out of place, even when she invited him to be seated and offered to despatch the hovering Norwegian for some hot tea. He shook his head at this, however, and Fanny disposed of the attendant by sending her away with the tea-tray. Then she came over to a seat nearer the window.

“Papa’s just gone over to the seminary,” she explained. “I’m sure he’ll want to see you very much.”

“Not as much as I want to see him,” Overton replied warmly. “It’s very good to be here and to see my friends again!”

Fanny felt a pang of guilt, and looked up at him for the first time with a seeing eye. He was, indeed, greatly changed. His strong face was worn, his eyes hollowed; but there remained the old look of genius that had glorified all he did. It was, indeed, accentuated. There was something in his tranquil, unstirred gaze that reassured her, and she felt at home with him again.

“We all thought you were lost,” she said simply. “Your coming back seems like a miracle, and no one quite understands.”

He was at once on his guard.

“That seems to be the trouble. There has been a great deal of misapprehension. I was lost in the ice, given up for dead, and finally rescued by my English friends. I can’t tell you how good they were to me,” he hurried on. “I was so nearly gone that they had no hope at first, and I was so ill and delirious afterward that they didn’t know who I was. I had left my papers with my men, and I happened to have one of poor Rayburn’s diaries on me. They thought I was Rayburn--that’s why no word came back about me. It wasn’t until I recovered enough to know myself that the English nurses found out who I was.”

Fanny turned uneasily and broke off a spray of yellow buds that lay at the window-ledge.

“Mr. Faunce told us how terrible it all was. He couldn’t bear to speak of the worst of it. He said you were the best friend a man ever had. I think”--she looked at him--“the thought of your death nearly crazed him at first.”

She caught the expression in Overton’s eyes, but she could not fathom it; only the tension in his face increased.

“I’ve just seen Faunce. They were up in the Catskills when I went there to visit my old aunt.”

“Oh!” She pulled the yellow buds off one by one. “Then you’ve just seen Diane, too? We didn’t know where they went.”

“Yes, I saw her. When I met her I didn’t know that she was married. You see, we’d had no news.”

Fanny sank back in her chair.

“I never thought of that!”

He smiled grimly.

“It’s like being dead, you know,” he remarked, thinking how pretty she had grown to be, how slender and graceful. He noticed how prettily her fair hair grew on her forehead and on the nape of her white neck. He was the more surprised when she turned a strangely searching look on him, and her face flushed.

“Did you know that Diane had left him?”

“What?”

She nodded.

“It’s true--the judge told mama.”

Overton made no reply at first; he seemed incapable of speech, and Fanny saw the blood rush up to his forehead.

“Are you sure?” he managed to gasp out at last.

“Oh, yes; mama just heard it from the judge. I--I shouldn’t have told. Please don’t tell her that I did!”

He commanded himself again with difficulty.

“She wouldn’t mind your telling me, Fanny. Of course, I sha’n’t give you away, though. You and I were always good pals, weren’t we? The trouble is that I--I can’t quite believe it. I saw them both only two days ago, and I know he’s in New York now.”

“She’s here with her father.”

He rose from his seat and began to walk about the room. Apparently he did not care what she might think of his agitation, which had returned with full force.

“You’re fond of her, you know her well--has she told you what’s the matter?”

“I haven’t seen her.”

He stopped short.

“Has her father anything to do with it?”

Fanny hesitated.

“I suppose he has; you know he’s always so domineering. I don’t know anything about it, but there’s been talk about the expedition. I believe they had set their hearts on Faunce commanding it, and--and, of course, it’s yours. It couldn’t go to any one but you now.”

“Yes, it can, for I’ve refused it.”

She gave him a startled look, her heart warming toward him. She knew well enough why he had refused.

“I’ve asked to have Faunce go,” he went on. “There’s no question of that, if she--if she----”

“It isn’t that with her!” Fanny interrupted.

“I thought you said you hadn’t seen her?”

“I haven’t, but I’m a woman, and I--I know that much myself!”

He stood looking at her, a little reassured, but with a keen subconsciousness that recalled Diane’s white face and her outstretched hands when she pushed him away. He had believed then that she loved Faunce. On that belief, to shelter her, he had tried to shield Faunce, and had surrendered his chance to command the new expedition, only to find that Diane had left her husband!

It was inexplicable, but his heart leaped up with a sudden and unchastened hope. He had been plunged into misery, he had given up, and now, suddenly, as if a window had been opened in a dark room and the light of day let in, he caught a glimpse of the horizon. It awoke hopes that he had extinguished, it renewed thoughts that he had tried to drive out. After attaining the bleak immunity of despair, he was plunged back again into the turmoil of passion.

He could not find words to answer Fanny, and he was glad to see the black-clad figure of the little dean emerging from the golden glow on the campus and approaching at a rapid gait. It meant a resumption of the commonplace and a little while to recover the equilibrium he had lost.

XXVIII

IT was with a feeling of intense bewilderment that Overton finally left the seminary. Dr. Price had refrained from any reference to Diane, but in his very caution in avoiding the subject there was something that made his visitor more eager to fathom the little dean’s innocent reservations. Fanny, having fired her shot at random, had become as quiet as a mouse, scarcely responding to her father’s efforts to draw her into the conversation; but there was a subtle suggestion of something important, of some tragic climax, in the very atmosphere.

Overton felt it, felt that even his efforts to shield Faunce for Diane’s sake had in some mysterious way been forestalled and stultified. He was aware, too, of Fanny’s watchful eyes, of her air of divination. Hitherto he had looked upon her as a mere child, and had never credited her with much perspicacity. Now he felt a sudden leaning toward her, a vague sympathy that made him look to her for help; but she gave him no help at all, and let him go at last with a limp handshake and a half-reproachful glance, which seemed, to his aroused perception, to express his own thought that his return was unfortunate and inopportune. Having apparently died, he had no business to come to life again, to the inconvenience and discomfiture of his friends.

As he made his way through the seminary gates and turned westward along the quiet road, he was still possessed with these conflicting impressions. He suffered, too, from a revival of the keener and more poignant feelings that had overwhelmed him when he knew that Diane was not only lost to him, but was the wife of the coward who had left him to perish. He had subdued this suffering once, he had even risen to the heights of self-sacrifice to shield her from the shame of her husband’s exposure; but it was only after he had convinced himself that there had never been any real foundation for his hopes, that Diane had never cared for him.

But now a new and amazing crisis completely reversed the situation, apparently making his sacrifice futile, for he had no reason to shield Faunce unless he did it to save the woman he loved. He recalled Diane’s face, the anguish in her eyes, her gesture that seemed to thrust him away. He had taken these things for a final dismissal, when another man might have seen in them a far more significant revelation. He began to dimly recognize it now.

Staggered as his higher moral sense was by this new turn of his thoughts, his heart leaped up at the change, as if the dark shadow of disappointment had dropped its grisly shape and become a guiding light. He felt, indeed, much like the ancient Cretan mariners when the monster that had terrified them suddenly became a star-crowned god, ready to guide their storm-tossed ship safely into port.

As Overton plodded along, however, his strongest feeling was one of sheer perplexity. It was like entering a fair garden by the way of the front gate and the sloping lawn, and suddenly losing oneself in a labyrinth.

A determination to solve the riddle drove him toward the one person who, he thought, might furnish a clue. If any one could point a way in the maze, it was Dr. Gerry; but, as Overton turned in that direction, a sudden slope in the hill gave him a wider prospect and a far glimpse of the roof and chimneys of Judge Herford’s house. He paused and looked toward it, his eye taking in the exquisite shading of the landscape, the deep blue and orange of the sky, still pulsing with the afterglow, the faint violet line of the distant hills, the nearer stretch of woodland, with here and there a blooming althea showering its pale blossoms against the green, or half veiling the red-tiled roof of some house set low in the dense growth of shrubbery.

The sweet, keen air had in it that subtle fragrance which is summer. Near at hand a robin whistled with a soft, throaty sound, sweet as Apollo’s lute. Overton let his eyes rest for a moment on the broad, slated roof that sheltered Diane. He had the keenest desire to see her again, to know the worst or the best--which was it?

Had she ceased to love Faunce and left him, shocked by some revelation of his character? Or had his own return--revealing the falsehood of his death--broken her happiness? This thought stirred him with profound emotion, and he turned and went on.

It happened to be the hour at which Dr. Gerry was usually at leisure, and in a few moments Overton found himself following the doctor’s man down the narrow hall to the study door. He remembered the place well--the old striped paper on the walls, and the two or three ancient prints in narrow black frames. They had been there when, as a boy, he had tiptoed reluctantly down the hall to have the doctor look at his tongue and administer some unpalatable dose.

Nothing that he had seen since his return had done so much to recall him to himself, to the familiar surroundings, to the people he had known from boyhood. The horrors of his experience in the antarctic, the nearness of death, and the desertion of Faunce, became unreal. He was at home again!

He was not surprised when the door opened on the old scene--the small, stuffy room, smelling of drugs; the lamp on the table; the doctor, in a flowered dressing-gown and slippers, reading a novel. It had been Gerry’s favorite den since his wife’s death years before, and it was the one place in which he seemed to fit exactly.

As Overton entered, he looked up over his spectacles, took in the big, gaunt lines of his visitor’s figure, and held out a cordial hand. The greeting had in it a moment of intimate feeling. The old man quickly detected the ravages in Overton’s face, and his eyes filled with tears, of which he was immediately ashamed. He bustled about and thrust forward a chair to hide his own emotion.

“Sit down, my boy,” he said bruskly. “Have a cigar? Now tell me all about it. Had a close shave, I know. I was told so a long while ago.”

Overton started with surprise.

“What do you mean?”

“Faunce told me. There’s no use making a secret of it to you, I reckon.”

His visitor gazed at him blankly.

“What possessed him to do that?”

“Conscience, maybe. Personally I should call it nerves. He couldn’t sleep, and he got to the point where he had to speak; he was too pent-up to endure it any longer. It’s the kind of thing doctors and ministers run against occasionally--a sort of almost hysterical desire to get it all out, to make a clean breast of it, and to lighten the load in that way. It’s about on a par with sending conscience-money to the Treasury.”

Overton slowly lit his cigar.

“I’m amazed! Faunce said nothing about this when we talked together the other night. I wonder if he’s told any one else!”

The doctor shook his head with a dry laugh.

“Not a bit of it. He kept still and married Diane Herford. I advised him against it, I tried to stop it, but he wouldn’t listen. The result has been just what I expected.”

“You mean----”

“She’s found it all out and left him.”

The hand that held the cigar shook so badly that Overton quietly lowered it out of sight.

“I knew she’d left him,” he said huskily. “Fanny Price just told me.”

“Oh, yes, the judge isn’t making a secret of her home-coming. He consented to hush up the rest--about Faunce, I mean--until he sees you. There’s no need, is there, to make the scandal any worse? How do things stand? Are you going to expose him?”

Overton shook his head.

“I thought we had come to an agreement about that--to save his wife; but I can’t understand why he told her. It changes everything. Meanwhile, I’ve refused the command of the new expedition and urged them to retain Faunce.”

“So as to bolster him up for her sake?” the doctor mused. “That’s like you, Simon, but she’ll know that, too, and it’ll only make her think more of you. I’m afraid the cat’s out of the bag to stay!”

Overton turned troubled eyes upon him.

“Why in the world did it come off? Who let it be? She never should have married him!”

The doctor picked up an old stump of a pencil from his table and began to whittle it to a fine point.

“For one thing, I think she was a little in love with him. He’s very handsome, and has a way that wins with women. Then the judge was set on it. He believed that Faunce was going to be a great man, cut on your pattern, you see----”

Overton interrupted him in a tone of sharp impatience.

“I’m not great!”

“Well, we’ll let it go at that, anyway. Diane has imagination, and she married Faunce; now, her imagination being rudely shocked into realities, she’s left him. The judge is frantic. He’s seen his son-in-law to-day, and Faunce tells him he’ll offer no opposition to a divorce. That means that Diane ought to be free before a great while.”

Overton jumped up and began to walk about excitedly.

“It’s incredible--I happen to know that he loves her!”

Gerry nodded.

“Just so! If he didn’t love her, he’d refuse to let her go. It’s the supreme test, isn’t it?”

Overton was apparently deaf to this; his mind was absorbed with his own problems.

“It was an agreement--I understood it as an agreement--that nothing should be said. I’ve hushed up Asher. He was the one who might have known that I couldn’t have been even near death when Faunce left me. It never occurred to me--never--that he’d tell her! It’s--it’s incredible!”

“No, it isn’t. I know the man. He’s crazed with remorse. He was probably glad to be relieved from his secret. The thing has preyed on him, and weighed him down like a yoke on his shoulders. He was glad to get it off, I’ll wager!”

“He had no right to consider himself,” Overton broke out. “She was the only one to be considered.”

The doctor sank back in his chair musingly.

“I think he’s considered her in the best way at last. She had to know. What was wrong was not telling her at first; but he’s willing to right it, and he has righted it as far as he could, by confessing. The judge is bent on freeing her, and she’ll be free in a few months. That’s the only way out of it, except death.”

Overton came back to the chair opposite and sat down. He was strongly moved. Nothing that Gerry had said had taken much hold upon him but the bare fact that Diane would be wonderfully set free again. It seemed to restore the old order of things, to put him back where he had been before she told him that she was married. His heart leaped up in a new and keen desire for happiness. Then he became aware of the doctor’s voice.

“It’s just as well you let him go in your place. It’ll hush up scandal, and make people think the separation is only a lovers’ quarrel. The question is, can you keep it quiet? Won’t these Englishmen tell the story?”

“They don’t know much of it; I’ve thought of that. I took some measures, too, as soon as--as I knew.”

“That he’d married Diane?”

Overton assented without looking up.

“It’s strange to me--strange and perplexing,” Dr. Gerry remarked thoughtfully. “I knew when I first saw him that he had something on his mind. Then I discovered that he tramped all night--some of the boys thought he was a spook! He was taking chloral to make him sleep. I guess he’s taking it still. One night he came in here and told me.”

Overton took up another cigar and lit it mechanically, without seeming to be aware of what he did.

“I hated him for it at first. I kept seeing him go off through the snow with the sledge and the dogs; but afterward--I couldn’t blame him altogether. It was a question of being willing to die with me, I suppose, and I had no right to ask it. Yet, at the time, numb as I was, it amazed me, for I had thought he was fond of me.”