Part 5

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

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

The doctor himself appeared in answer to the summons.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Faunce looked up at him with a dazed face.

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

Gerry shook his head.

“I never had time.”

“Then you can’t understand!”

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

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

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

Faunce, fully roused, started.

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

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

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

The doctor nodded.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Faunce turned and met Gerry’s eyes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

For a moment Faunce stopped, breathing hard.

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

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

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

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

“Yes!”

X

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Do you think you found the place?”

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

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

“Not long--in such a case.”

“He wasn’t conscious--I know he wasn’t conscious; he didn’t know when I went!” Faunce protested, as if the fact of Overton’s numbness to his desertion established an excuse. “When that terrible storm broke, there wasn’t a hope of saving him. We barely saved ourselves. I told the others to come with me to find the body. We found no trace!”

Faunce’s voice broke at last, and he hid his face in his hands. Without comment, the doctor leaned back in his chair again and gazed at him.

There was another pause, and then Gerry rose hastily and left the room, apparently on some urgent errand. When he returned, after an interval of several minutes, he brought a large, flat book with him. He found his visitor as he had expected, still sitting before the fire. Faunce had picked up the poker, and was idly adjusting a fallen log, as if he had at least partially recovered from his emotion; but the vacant expression in his eyes betrayed his total self-absorption. The doctor came to a chair opposite, and, opening the book he had brought, pointed to a rough map or diagram showing the progress of the Overton expedition.

“Now, tell me where you left him.”

Dropping the poker, Faunce leaned over and put his finger on the page.

“About there, as near as I can tell you.”

“Beyond hope of rescue?”

“Absolutely.”

The doctor closed the book.

“You knew he loved Diane Herford?”

“I had supposed so; he never told me.”

“Well, he did; and it’s fair to assume that she cared for him. He was the kind of a man a woman would care for. But you left him there and came back to ask her to marry you?”

Faunce flushed, and then broke out resentfully:

“I love her!”

The old man leaned back in his chair with a strange grimace, as if a nauseous draft had been offered to him and he had refused to taste it. Faunce, turning at the moment, saw the doctor’s expression, and it kindled his anger again.

“I told you that I love her, that I wouldn’t give her up if Overton came back from the dead!”

“You knew he couldn’t come back,” retorted the doctor. “You saw to that!”

Faunce stared at him in blank dismay.

“My God, do you think I killed him? Do you imagine that?”

“There are some fine shades, then, between abandoning him to die and actually killing him?”

“I’m not a murderer!”

Dr. Gerry laughed bitterly.

“I may be a coward,” Faunce pursued with rising passion, “but I’m no murderer! I swear to you, on my soul, that I never thought of Diane there. I never thought of anything but flight. It was a kind of madness. If it had been my brother, I should have had to do the same thing. I was mad, mad with fear!”

The doctor uttered an inarticulate sound, stooped, and, seizing the tongs, picked up a smoking log that had rolled out to the fender and pitched it back into the fire. The physical action seemed to relieve the tension of his feelings. He settled back in his chair and waited for Faunce to go on with his confession.

Dr. Gerry’s view of the tragedy seemed to have destroyed some remaining stronghold in the younger man’s mind. Faunce kept reiterating his protest in one form or another.

“Listen--I’m not a murderer! If I had killed him, I never should have returned here.”

“Oh, yes, you would! Ninety-nine men out of a hundred return to the scene of their crimes.”

“But I tell you I didn’t hurt a hair of his head! It was a choice between his life and mine, and I left him. It might not even have been a choice, for we should both have perished. If I had stayed, I should have died with him. It would have been heroic--but I didn’t. How many men would?”

“Did he leave Rayburn?”

Faunce reddened.

“No. He had a kind of bull-headed obstinacy--he would stay.”

“Ah! You tried to dissuade him?”

“I told him that we were risking all three lives, instead of one, by staying.”

“But he stayed?”

“He offered to stay alone. I stayed with him.”

“Had you the means to leave him? How about the dog-train?”

“We were short--one of the dogs had died; but the madness hadn’t seized me then. I helped him to the last. We were together when we buried Rayburn.”

“I remember you paid a tribute to his friendship when we were talking with Judge Herford. Do you think he would have left you?”

Faunce lifted his head at that, staring off into space with an unseeing look, his hands twitching nervously.

“No!” he said at last, hoarsely. “No, I can’t say so. He was a brave man, and I--is there any way of escaping a seizure like that? I’m ashamed of it. I’ve suffered horribly; but I--I have a horrible feeling that I might do it again, if I had to face it like that. I couldn’t have stood up to a fight. You--did you suspect me when you told that story of the soldier in the Philippines?”

The doctor was sitting with the tips of his fingers nicely fitted together. He seemed, at the moment, to be deeply engaged with them.

“I can’t say I did. I don’t think I had ever imagined just your situation, though I saw that you had something weighing on your mind.”

“It has nearly driven me mad! I can’t tell you why I did it. I obeyed an impulse, a madness. If I hadn’t we should both be down there now. My staying wouldn’t have saved him. You see how it was? You understand?”

“I understand that you obeyed a pretty universal instinct of self-preservation.”

“That was it!” cried Faunce eagerly. “It was an impulse. I wanted to live--God knows I wanted to live! I was willing to fight to live!”

The doctor nodded, silently watching him with a kind of curiosity that suggested a naturalist’s minute interest in a noisome insect.

“I wanted to live,” Faunce repeated. “It didn’t seem to be wrong to want to save myself.”

“Does it seem so now?”

Faunce raised a haggard face.

“It’s no longer a question of right or wrong with me. It’s no longer a question of life or death. I’m haunted!”

Gerry gave him a keen glance.

“I see--it has reached a point that’s worse than staying behind to die?”

Faunce rose and began to walk the floor again. The lamp on the table had nearly burned out, and the corners of the room were gloomy. The odd bits of pottery and an old skull--brought from some ancient excavations--gleamed uncannily in the shadows. The doctor, before the fire, refused to look in his direction now, and Faunce came back at last with a cry of desperation.

“It haunts me!” he repeated with a smothered groan. “I’ve told you in hope that I could exorcise the demon. I had to tell you! When I sleep I dream of it; when I’m awake I can still see it--that frozen waste and--Overton!”

Gerry nodded his head thoughtfully.

“It’s killing me!” Faunce went on. “I can’t sleep naturally. I’ve increased the dose, but I can’t sleep long. Look at my hands now!”

As he held them out, they were shaking like the hands of a palsy patient. Dr. Gerry eyed them; then he looked up keenly into the haggard face and wild eyes.

“And you’ve just asked a young girl to marry you!”

Faunce was silent. The older man’s tone was tinged with a contempt that stung him. He seemed to rally his forces, to pull himself together.

“I was a fool to tell you all this--a fool! It got hold of me--I don’t know what I’m doing when it gets hold of me. I came here to ask for something to make me sleep, and I’ve--I’ve stripped my soul naked!”

He was shaking again. The doctor rose and put his hand on the younger man’s shoulder.

“Go over there and lie down on the lounge. I’ll give you something. If you don’t sleep, you’ll presently go to a madhouse. Lie down!”

Faunce stared, at first unyieldingly; but he was exhausted, and long hours of sleeplessness had wrecked his nerves. He turned without a word and threw himself on the lounge, burying his head in his arms. A smothered sob shook him from head to foot.

The doctor, measuring out a dose and approaching him, touched his shoulder sharply. Faunce groaned.

“My God!” he cried wildly. “Why did I do it? Why did I do it?”

The doctor bent down and held the glass to his lips.

“Drink this!” he commanded sharply.

Faunce looked up with glazed eyes, took the cup, and swallowed the narcotic. For a long while afterward he lay there, tossing restlessly. Once or twice he uttered a hoarse exclamation, of which Gerry took no notice.

The doctor sat by the fire, feeding it and listening. After a while he heard the sound of heavy and measured breathing. The narcotic had done its work--the tortured man slept.

Gerry rose quietly, extinguished the lamp, and pulled aside the curtains. It was morning. The storm had passed, and the earth lay under a white mantle. Every tree and every branch bore its feathery burden of snow. Through an exquisite lacework of sparkling ice he could see the wonder of a magnificent sky, still pink with sunrise.

He turned back and looked at the sleeper on the lounge. Faunce lay with one arm above his head, the other across his breast, an elaborate seal-ring on one of the white fingers. His face was slightly flushed, and the beauty of his regular features and fine head had never been more keenly revealed. He might easily pose as a hero of romance. He had all the outer attributes--physical strength, unusual beauty of features, and grace of manner--and he had won distinction by his service in the antarctic.

The doctor turned with a gesture of bewilderment and started to go up-stairs. As he did so, he heard some one at the door. Concluding that it must be an early patient, or perhaps a more or less urgent call, he went back, and, shutting the door of his study, locked Faunce in. Then he went himself to answer the ring.

On his door-step, muffled in furs, radiant and sparkling, stood Diane Herford. The doctor was guilty of a start of surprise. She saw it and smiled.

“The storm has torn down the wires, and I couldn’t phone,” she explained. “I want you to come over to breakfast. Papa’s not so well.”

He was aware of a feeling that was almost panic. Nothing on earth could be worse than that she should suspect Arthur Faunce’s state at that moment.

“I can’t come over to breakfast, Di,” he replied gruffly, drawing her out of the frosty air into the little entry. “What’s wrong with the judge? He was better yesterday.”

“He got excited and tried to do too much. He’s all bent over, and you know how he hates that. You’ve really got to come!”

She was standing in the hall, almost leaning against the study door, her dark furs enhancing the beauty of her bright skin and the charm of her eyes.