Part 12

“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.

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?”