Part 6

“I’ll come over presently. Put a hot-water bag on his back,” advised the doctor, with a haunting subconsciousness of the man on the lounge.

“Oh, but I want you to come to breakfast!” she argued. “Why can’t you come?”

He pretended to be angry.

“Why can’t I? I’ve been up all night, my girl, and I want my own way this morning?”

She commiserated him.

“I’m so sorry--what a shame! Of course you must rest. Papa isn’t really so ill, only I--I”--she hesitated with a charming smile--“I’ve got something to tell you!”

He turned a searching look on her.

“Yes?”

“I’m engaged to be married.”

She paused, waiting for him to guess her _fiancé_; but he remained obstinately silent.

“To Arthur Faunce,” she told him.

The doctor forced himself to hold out both hands to meet hers.

“You want me to congratulate you?” he demanded bruskly. “I sha’n’t! I’m going to congratulate him, instead. That’s the way to look at it.”

She laughed.

“Papa’s pleased, and I’m so glad that he is! But I won’t keep you from your rest now. Come over to lunch, instead of breakfast.”

She moved toward the door, her eyes smiling at him. There was something about her that seemed, to the doctor, not wholly happy. There was a tremulous note in her voice, and her eyes were too bright. They were at the door, and he suddenly laid his fatherly hand on her shoulder.

“Diane, do you love him? Are you following your heart?”

She did not answer immediately. Her gaze dwelt on the wide, snowy landscape before them. Then she looked up, and an exquisite blush softened her face.

“Yes,” she replied slowly, but with an engaging candor. “I couldn’t marry for any reason but that. I--I’m following my heart.”

XI

DIANE left Dr. Gerry’s house with a feeling that something had happened there--something apart from the commonplace fact that the overworked physician had been up all night. There had been a hint of it in the doctor’s face as he stood in the doorway watching her departure, his shrewd old eyes peering at her from behind his spectacles, while his close-shut lips seemed to be withholding something.

She wished that he had spoken out, that he had said a little more than the usual things that are said to a newly engaged girl. She did not know that if he could have told her anything, if it had not been part of the code of his profession to keep silence, her very admission of love for Faunce would have made it an impossibility for him to speak. His lips could never have framed the words that must destroy her happiness. To him she was still a child, and he could never have wilfully wounded a child.

The mysterious something in his face, however, had arrested her flow of spirits and checked the joy with which she had set out. As she turned to make her way back in an almost untrodden sheet of snow, the brilliant sparkle of sunshine on the frozen crust dazzled her sight so much that she stopped for a moment and pressed her gloved hands over her eyes to shut it out. Then she walked on rapidly, feeling the crisp cold, and aware that nothing had traveled that road before her but the milk-wagon, which had left deep ruts in the snow.

The atmosphere was translucently brilliant. It sparkled and scintillated, cutting out clear outlines and sharp shadows. Beyond the wide slope of the snow a long, dark line of woodland formed a background against the intense blue of the sky. On either hand the houses, large and old, were set well back from the road, with an independent detachment that gave an impression of stately indifference to the passer-by. But Diane knew that they had never been indifferent to her. She was Judge Herford’s daughter, and she had shown herself more than worthy of certain social traditions that had made her family an important one in the county and the State.

Some members of it, indeed, had achieved international distinction, and it had been rather expected that the beautiful daughter of a distinguished lawyer would make a brilliant marriage. It could scarcely be said that she was doing this in marrying Arthur Faunce; but there was a glamour about the young explorer, a prophecy of still greater achievement, that made him perhaps the most picturesque figure of the day. It was not this notoriety, however, nor even the promise of his success, that had won Diane. It was some subtler, more complex influence that had swayed her mind, while her heart had been touched at first by the very bond that had made him Overton’s comrade and the heir of Overton’s greatness.

As she walked homeward along the frozen road, she was trying to collect her thoughts, to bring herself fairly face to face with this new crisis in her life, to find the real key to that sudden emotion which had swept her into the arms of Faunce.

As she had looked about her in the brilliant morning, on her way to Dr. Gerry’s, she had felt so sure of her love that she could allow herself to dwell on the memory of Overton as something at once beautiful and sacred, but remote. She had told herself that he had never been an actual lover, only a figure that her girlish imagination had clothed in those attributes. He had left her free, and she had a right to suppose that he would not have greatly cared if she married a man who loved her so much that he had told her he could never be happy without her. She knew, of course, that such a declaration was exaggerated; yet she could feel the positiveness of Faunce’s actual devotion, as she had felt the charm of his good looks and his winning ways.

But now, as she slowly and soberly returned, with the chilly memory of Dr. Gerry’s face, she began to question herself a little. She wondered if she had indeed followed her heart so faithfully, or had only yielded to a love that had touched her very deeply at a moment when she felt solitary and bereaved.

Her eyes followed the long, unbroken reaches of snow until they rested on the dark-blue line of the distant water. As she sensed the intense cold and saw the sparkle of ice, her mind went back to the polar wastes, and she found her eyes filling with tears as she thought of the man who had fallen exhausted and alone. The face of Overton, so unlike the face of Faunce, rose before her. The strong, irregular features, the clear, dark-blue eyes under the straight, slightly frowning brows, the decisive mouth and chin--how well she remembered them! Though they lacked Faunce’s classic beauty, they possessed an absolute assurance of strength and repose.

Where the more facile and graceful Faunce would break or yield, Overton had exemplified those granite qualities of soul and body that belong by right to the leaders of men. He would always be that to her, Diane thought pensively as she walked more slowly, prolonging her return journey. He would always be a splendid figure at the horizon of her imagination.

If he had not loved her--and perhaps he had not, after all--she could think of him more openly, sure that Faunce would understand. For Faunce had loved him, too. It was that, she remembered with a thrill of relief; it was that which had drawn them together. She could still hear the touching tone in Arthur’s fine voice when he paid his tribute to Overton that first night at the dinner, which seemed now so long ago.

“The best friend man ever had!”

How it had touched her sore heart then; how it touched her now! How beautifully he had accepted the fact that she had cared for Overton first; how splendidly he had shown himself above the meanness of jealousy of the dead!

She was glad that she had told him. Some girls would have been silent when there had been no actual engagement; but she could not deceive a man who loved her as Arthur Faunce did. When she gave him her heart, she gave him the right to know that she had loved Overton first. Yet did he, could he, really understand how much--how very much--it had mattered to her? In the midst of her walk Diane stopped short.

“What am I doing?” she cried to herself. “What am I doing? I’ve just promised to marry one man, and--and I’m crying out here in broad daylight over another!”

“But you told him, you warned him!” replied an inner voice. “You have a right to go on feeling just the same as you did before.”

“But I’ve no right to marry Faunce if I love another man more!” she cried again, arguing with the unseen ego.

Then, in the rustle of the wind in the bare trees, and the crash of ice falling from their boughs, she seemed to hear an answer--a sublime voice that reassured her. Overton was dead. He was only a dim and glorious presence now. He had entered that sphere where they neither marry nor are given in marriage; how could it matter to him what she did?

She went on, quickening her steps, trying to reassure herself. She recalled Faunce, the warm certainty of his affection, the nearness of his presence. She told herself that she was happy, that she was right, that she had followed her heart.

XII

THAT assurance remained with her later on, when she and the judge sat down to a slightly belated breakfast. It had so far tranquilized her mood that she could chat with him across the table about Dr. Gerry’s sleepless night and the storm, while she poured out his coffee and put in the requisite amount of sugar and cream with a firm and graceful hand.

“I saw two telegraph-poles down,” she said. “The drifts have completely filled the hollow below Skerry’s Hill.”

The judge looked up sharply from his breakfast.

“Faunce had to cross that bridge. I wonder if he got home all right!”

She was a little startled, and then she smiled reassuringly.

“Why, of course, papa! It was early when he left. It was only snowing a little then; don’t you remember?”

“How did I know?” her father retorted with something like a growl. “This lumbago keeps me doubled up like a jack-in-the-box!”

“It’s too bad! I did hope Dr. Gerry had got the better of it, or had helped you to get the better of it; but I suppose this dreadful weather is sure to retard the case.”

“There isn’t any cure for it. I’ve told Gerry so a dozen times. If it stayed continuously, I should only be fit for a menagerie; but it’s intermittent, thank Heaven! By the way, Di, where’s the newspaper?”

“It hasn’t come; I suppose the trains are stalled. They said something about trouble on the line between here and New York. When I was passing Sidney’s, on my way this morning, I heard the men talking at the door. You had last night’s paper, papa, didn’t you?”

“As if I wanted stale news!” he retorted, going on with his breakfast. “I saw something about the English expedition returning from the antarctic. They must have had some delays, but they’ll crow over the venture, I suppose. They seem to have made good. If only Overton had lived!”

She pushed her plate aside, though she had scarcely tasted her food, and clasped her hands on the edge of the table, suddenly aware that her fingers were not quite steady.

“I didn’t notice the article. What did it say? I’m sure, quite sure, that Arthur did all he could to finish the work, even after--their fearful loss.”

“Very likely he did, my dear; but if these Englishmen got ahead of him--steal a march on him, as it were--he hasn’t won much. Besides, they’ve saved their ship. I saw there would be a great reception for them in London. There’s nothing but disappointment in that polar business. I want Faunce to give it up. I’ll put him in politics here.”

She looked thoughtfully across the table at her father’s gray head, his massive face, and his keen eyes bent on the table, while his strong hands plied his knife and fork. The stooping of his big frame suggested nothing of the weakness of age. His personality, dominant and resourceful, seemed as immovable as rock.

“I’d rather you didn’t, papa,” she said quietly. “I want him to go on--to finish the work he’s begun. He’s put his hand to the plow, as it were, and he mustn’t turn back.”

Herford again looked up sharply.

“That’s a strange sentiment from a girl who’s supposed to be in love! Don’t you know it’s a terrible risk for a man? Have you forgotten Overton so soon?”

She rose from the table and went to the window, standing there, looking out. He could see only the slender grace of her young figure and the slight droop of her brown head.

“I shall never forget him,” she replied without looking at her father. “I remember so well what he was, what he did, what he surely would have become had he lived, that I don’t want Arthur to remain in his shadow, to be so much less than he was. If there’s anything great in a man’s soul, I think it’s wrong to choke it with weeds, and--and----”

“You think the political weed is very suffocating?” her father commented dryly. “As far as that goes, you’re right, my dear; but I’ve managed to keep a little above the worst growth all these years, and it’s possible that Arthur might do some weeding out. Reform is not only a fad--it’s a fact.”

“You’re made for that kind of a life, papa; you can stand like a rock in the midst of the tempest. You have the instinct and the prestige and the great traditions that go to make a man safe in politics; but Arthur has none of these things to give him a _raison d’être_ in your world. I feel sure it would dwarf him and spoil him. I want him to go on, to finish his own work.”

“And if he gets killed on the way, you’ll still have the glory, eh?”

She turned with a shocked face.

“As if I cared for anything more than Arthur’s life!”

The judge strummed on the table with his fingers. His lumbago was rending him to the point of incivility.

“Exactly! But you’re sending him to the pole to die as Overton died, without reaping any reward but--death.”

She listened in silence, her eyes fixed on his angry face, but her mind seemed to be far away. In fact, she was again questioning herself. This recurrent mention of Overton shocked her new sense of security, and seemed like a return of the moment when Dr. Gerry’s question had broken the spell of her joy. After all, was it meant that she should not forget? Must she try out and search her heart yet further?

“I want you to drop this nonsense,” her father went on more composedly. “Faunce will give up the idea if you will let him. I want him here. I may not live long--I’m getting old, Diane, and I want you married and settled.”

“Is that why you’re angry at the thought of the new expedition?”

He nodded.

“I want you to get married soon--before spring, anyway.”

She was startled.

“That would be too hurried, papa! You must give me more time than that.”

“Why do you need time? It’s settled, isn’t it? You’ve followed your own heart, haven’t you?”

There it was again, the same question!

“I want you married,” the judge repeated with some force. “I like Faunce; you like him--very good! I’m opposed to long engagements, and a lot of fuss and feathers. Make it short and plain, my girl.”

Diane looked at her father a little reproachfully.

“I didn’t know you wanted to get rid of me so much, papa!”

“I don’t mean to get rid of you,” he retorted crustily. “I mean to break up these polar follies and to keep Faunce here.”

She smiled faintly, a little flush on her face. Then she glanced out of the window again.

“There’s Fanny Price. I’ll go and let her in. She has tramped over through the snow.”

“Don’t bring her in here, then!” snapped the judge sharply. “My back hurts like the devil. I want to finish my meal in peace.”

Diane reassured him and stepped out of the room, thankful enough to be released. She began to see vaguely, and with some little alarm, that her father had been quietly bending her to his will; that he had purposely thrown Faunce in her way; that he was, in fact, making the match. The thought of it, in this light, was so distasteful that she was glad to go to the door to let in her visitor.

Fanny, muffled in furs and submerged under a big hat, was not as visible to the eyes as usual. She seemed to evade observation by withdrawing into the recesses of fur and felt; but she pounced upon Diane with a swift, birdlike motion, and kissed her.

“I came right over,” she said in a rather high-pitched, nervous tone, “to wish you joy, dear!”

Diane looked amazed.

“How in the world did you know?”

Fanny laughed softly.

“Your father phoned to papa last night--before the wires were down--that you and Mr. Faunce were engaged.”

“Oh!”

There was a low note of surprise and dismay in the exclamation, but Diane said no more. She drew Fanny into the sitting-room, where a fire had been kindled on the hearth.

“Mama sent her love,” Fanny went on, trying to appear cordial, “and of course papa must have said something over the phone; but, you know, papa has to think twice before he says just the right thing.”

Diane was trying to remove Fanny’s hat and furs, but the latter resisted.

“Oh, no, I can’t stay, really! I just ran over to--to wish you joy, dear Diane!”

There was a suspicion of a quiver in the girlish voice which, at another time, would not have failed to attract her friend’s attention; but, at the moment, Diane’s mind was occupied with the vexatious thought of her father’s haste. She knew him so well, knew how skilled and subtle he was in his political manipulations, and she experienced a new and unpleasant dread that he had used his skill and subtlety on Arthur.

Was it possible that Arthur’s haste was due to her father? A deep blush mounted to Diane’s hair, transforming and beautifying her face so much that Fanny was startled.

“How beautiful you look, Di! Are you--is it because you’re so happy?”

“I don’t think that’s just what I feel, Fanny. It’s too new to think of like that. It only seems to pervade everything, and to change my point of view. I’m--I’m not used to it yet, and I can’t think why papa was in such a hurry to announce it!”

Fanny hesitated, looking down at the fire so as to keep the brim of her hat between her eyes and Diane’s.

“Well, you know they’re great gossips, papa and your father. I suppose he called up for something else, and then added that. Men are awfully casual about our dearest concerns! Papa’s been asking the judge’s advice about the changes at the seminary, you see.”

“Perhaps that was it,” Diane admitted with a feeling of relief. “He’s anxious to have me settled down, too. It seems I’ve been on his mind,” she added with an odd little laugh.

There was a second of hesitation before Fanny answered, and this time Diane noticed a strange tone in the girl’s voice.

“You’re going to be married soon, then?”

Diane busied herself rearranging two old bronze vases on the high colonial mantel. The storks and the coiled dragons that surrounded them in high relief had been among the wonders of her childhood.

“I don’t know--how should I? You see, Fanny, Mr. Faunce is going to be made the head of the new expedition, but papa doesn’t want him to go. He wants him to stay here and go into politics.”

“Oh!” exclaimed Fanny, just above her breath.

“But I want him to go.”

“Oh!” her visitor gasped again. “Why, he might die, too! If I were you, I’d never let him go!”

Diane’s eyes kindled with the look of one who visions far-off glories.

“I would gladly go with him!”

There was a little pause, and then Fanny spoke with an effort.

“I hadn’t thought of that. Of course you could, Di, you’re so heroic! You measure up to all this great endeavor. That’s what I told him just now.”

“You told him? Where did you see him, Fanny?”

“I met him as I came past the Gerry house. He and the doctor were just coming out together, and I congratulated him.”

Diane stopped her play with the bric-à-brac and stood with one hand still on the tallest vase, looking down on the top of Fanny’s big hat.

“Was he with Dr. Gerry this morning? How did he manage in the snow, I wonder? Did they have the sleigh?”

Fanny looked up, and their eyes met.

“He said he knew very little about the storm. He spent the night with Dr. Gerry.”

Diane made no reply. In the ensuing silence she turned to the mantel and, lifting down the vase, began to wipe a little dust from the elaborate design at its mouth. It was quite a long time before she replaced it.

XIII

DIANE’S engagement created a stir of pleasure and pride in Mapleton, but very little surprise. It was said on all sides that it had been expected. New York and Washington would find it news, and it might do to cable to London and Paris, where Faunce was already recognized; but Mapleton had been anticipating it for weeks. Of course, both young people were overwhelmed with felicitations. Faunce, flushed with a new kind of pride and a joy that disguised his secret pain, appeared even more winning than usual, while Diane, if her happiness was more subdued, was equally charming.

As soon as Judge Herford’s lumbago relaxed its grip, he gave a little dinner to announce his daughter’s engagement, and it proved a great success. Even Fanny Price, pretty and studiously gay, helped to keep the ball rolling, while Diane, in a simple gown that exactly suited her, had never looked more lovely. No one could blame Faunce for the infatuation that he was at no pains to conceal. Their happiness found a response in nearly every heart, recalling the ancient apothegm that “all the world loves a lover.”

Almost immediately after this occasion, too, there began to be a report that the marriage would take place within a few weeks, for Arthur Faunce, in spite of his recent engagement and Judge Herford’s political dreams, had accepted the command of the new antarctic expedition. He was to succeed not only to Overton’s work, but to Overton’s honors.

If it seemed strange that he should elect to leave his prospective bride so soon, all gossip was silenced by Diane’s own enthusiasm. It was her wish, she said, that Arthur should complete the great task that he had undertaken, and should carry the expedition through to a final triumph. She believed in it. Her soul seemed to rise above fear and doubt, and her beautiful eyes were fixed on the visionary glory of a finished achievement.