Part 9

“Good-by, my dear! Your father’s got the enemy in the dining-room, rice and all. You’ll have to run for it!”

He felt the quivering of her fingers in his clasp, and saw the unnatural brightness in her eyes.

“You never wished me joy!” she whispered back.

“Haven’t I? Then I do, my dear, I do--a thousand times!”

He went down with her to the motor, and he and Fanny stood watching it go off. Then they turned and looked at each other. “Do--do you think it’s true?” she whispered in an awed voice.

The doctor fenced.

“My child, has it occurred to you that we’re all acting as if we had not only wanted Overton to die, but to stay dead?”

She gave him a strange look.

“I--I wasn’t thinking of that. I--why, yes, you’re right, it’s true. It’s just as if we did want him to stay dead!”

Gerry took her by the arm.

“Come into the house, child! You’re standing out here in the wet, in a ridiculously flimsy dress and slippers.”

She went, her arm still in his grasp, but she did not even smile.

“It’s true--how awful of us! Just as if we wanted him to be dead, because----”

“Because of Faunce,” concluded the doctor dryly. “Don’t worry, my dear--not about that, anyway, for I’ve an idea it’s true.”

“You mean----”

“That Overton isn’t dead at all.”

“Oh!”

It was a little syllable, but it voiced Fanny’s awful thought--a thought which had, as she had said, nothing to do with Overton, but all to do with Faunce.

Faunce himself, on the way to New York with Diane, found the situation almost beyond endurance. The long strain had so racked his nerves that he flinched at this crisis. His belief in Overton’s death still survived. He had too keen and harrowing a memory of that awful climax in the ice and snow to be easily persuaded that there could have been a rescue; yet the mere fact that such a rescue meant his certain ruin overwhelmed him.

Even while he assured Diane that it was a mere newspaper story, his heart sank with sickening fear. Racked by conscience in the long months since he had left Overton to die in the polar snows, he had again and again cried out to the night and the solitude that he would give his soul to feel that Overton lived, that he had not abandoned his leader and friend to death, that his conscience was clear. Now, when the thought of Overton’s return was weighed in the balance with his personal disgrace, he was not strong enough to face it.

He saw, in a flash, all it would mean to him--the personal shame, the ruin, the loss of his new-won honors and of Diane’s love. He felt certain that she could never love a man stained, as he was, with a cowardice that was in itself a crime.

A feeling of terror seized him. He had put himself outside the pale of mercy. He knew not only that no word could ever be spoken in his defense, but that the world would be eager to revile him, the veriest wastrel in the street would find an excuse to fling a curse at his cowardice.

He had abandoned a prostrate comrade, leaving him to face death alone. Worse than that, he had taken the only means of rescue--the sledge and the dogs--to secure his own escape. He had sacrificed Overton to save himself whole and without a scratch. If Overton had survived, if he knew anything, he must know this. If he had had the strength to live to be rescued, he might know much more. He could not have been so far gone as Faunce had thought!

Day after day, night after night, the horror of that frozen waste had haunted him. The deathlike face of Overton had appeared to him at nightfall and at daybreak. When Faunce, against his own better judgment, had undertaken the new command, he had merely yielded to the mysterious lure that draws a murderer back to the scene of his crime. He had felt as if unseen hands clutched at him and drew him; as if a shadowy presence, standing at his elbow, demanded this sacrifice, this hideous march back on the trail; as if Overton, dead or alive, held his very soul in thrall.

And now, if some miracle had happened, if the grave was about to give up its dead, Faunce could not escape! He was facing a shame that would be more terrible than the death he had fled. Coward as he had proved himself to be at that supreme moment, he might better die now than face the truth--the truth that Overton would be sure to reveal, if he lived.

On the reality of his death, then, hung Faunce’s only hope. Once more he tried to brace himself up with the thought that it was impossible for Overton to have survived. Yet it was in perfect unison with what he had already endured that this renewed horror should quench his new happiness and make his wedding-day a nightmare. If the shade of Overton, athirst for mortal vengeance, still haunted him, this last exquisite torture was its supreme accomplishment. His broken spirit quivered under the visitation.

It was a mockery of fate to have to act the bridegroom at such a moment, to protest his happiness and reply to Diane’s questions. She had spoken to him about the newspaper story almost at once, and had expressed her amazement that such a despatch could have been sent from London. Then she had let the matter drop; but her very acquiescence awakened a keen alarm in the mind of Faunce.

He suspected that she, too, was suffering, that the thought of Overton had broken in on her agitated mind like a blow from the unseen. She was marrying a man who had declared to her that Overton was dead, that he had stood beside him while he was dying; yet, at the very moment when she had finally ratified her belief in him, the doubt took shape and clothed itself in an almost visible semblance.

As the train rushed on, Faunce watched her. He observed the pale outline of her profile against the rosy light of a sunset sky, illumined and touched with glory, like a face carved from the delicately tinted pearl of the abalone shell. Something in the averted eyes, the softly parted lips, and the slight, scarcely perceptible quiver in the white throat, suggested an emotion too deep and too sorrowful for such a moment.

Again he had the curious sensation that the shade of Overton stood between them, its outstretched hand thrusting Faunce away from his bride and slowly but surely toward the edge of that frozen precipice where he had left his comrade’s mortal body, abandoned without pity and without help. At a moment when he should have been supremely happy, Faunce was miserable. He had lifted the cup at Circe’s banquet, and felt as if he had been transformed into some hideous monster that must return to his lair.

Sitting beside Diane on the train, their close proximity accentuated by the soft touch of her sleeve against his and by the faint, elusive perfume of her hair, aware that his ring gleamed on the slender finger of her left hand, he felt no thrill of exultation, only an intense bitterness of soul. He could never look his wife in the face without fear that she would read his soul, find the hideous secret hidden there, and scorn him.

If some trick of fate, inexplicable as it was inexorable, had indeed brought Overton back from the dead, Faunce could already foresee the end. He began to thrash it over in his brain, to piece together every fragment of news he had of the English expedition, and to try to convince himself that it was humanly impossible for any of its members to have been so near that they could have reached Overton before he died. His own knowledge of the vast spaces of those frozen regions went to strengthen his hope that he was safe. He told himself, almost wildly, that it was not a hope that Overton was dead, but that he himself was safe from public shame.

Diane, unaware of her bridegroom’s agony of mind, sat looking deeply into the glow upon the far horizon. She had proudly accepted his word; if he said that Overton was dead she must believe him. She had not forced the issue by asking questions; she had assented to what he said. As she looked out in silence, she was not thinking of Faunce.

Then she became aware that he moved restlessly, and she turned and met his eyes. The agony in them was so intense that she started; but before she could speak, she saw it retreating, as if he withdrew his soul from her sight. It struck a chill to her heart. The look had been distraught, like a wild animal peeping out, and at the alarm, rushing backward into its hiding-place.

“What is it, Arthur?” she exclaimed involuntarily.

Before he could reply a porter came through the train, holding up a telegram and calling out the name--“Arthur Faunce!”

Faunce took the envelope nervously and tore it open, his face changing perceptibly as he read the despatch.

“Our holiday is prolonged, Diane,” he said, turning to her with a forced smile. “There’s been an accident in the shipyard, the ship won’t be ready to sail for months. Instead of three weeks, it may be three months.”

They had planned three weeks or so in Florida--a touch of the tropical atmosphere before they began the long, hard voyage to the antarctic. To his surprise she showed regret.

“I’m sorry, Arthur, I really want to go soon. To me it’s the great adventure, and now we’ve months to wait! Shall you stay all that time in Florida? I think I’m really a little sorry--even for that!”

He was not. Secretly he had long dreaded the arduous expedition, the overwhelming presence that he must face--face with courage, too, or fall forever in her eyes.

“For my part I’ll be glad of the rest. You see, I’ve been in those frozen wastes, Diane, and I know we’ll need a stock of sunshine to carry with us. And three months in Florida with you seems to me pretty near Paradise!” As he spoke he smiled, and his dark eyes softened with that charm which had gone so far to win her heart. Then he added:--“But if you don’t want warm weather all the time, we’ll come back north before we go. Wasn’t there some place--I think your father suggested a cottage--where we could have at least ten days of peace?”

She thought a moment, her eyes looking dark and dreamy under their black lashes.

“It’s a little house of father’s. We could go there, of course, and I’ll keep house. Yes, I think it would do you good, Arthur. You need rest--I’ve seen how fagged you were. After the heat and sunshine that bit of cool mountain air will brace you up. I should like it, too.”

Again he looked around at her. “Would you rather go there now?”

She shook her head. “I want our bit of Florida--and then this. We can go quite easily, and not be out of reach of your last arrangements, it’s in the Catskills, you know.”

“Where?”

She named a small place where the Herfords had long owned property.

He hesitated, regarding her absently. She turned as she spoke, and smiled. Her face seen thus, in the partial shadow of the car, between daylight and dusk, had a peculiar charm, and her eyes held a tenderness that went to his head.

“We’ll go, Diane!” he whispered softly, laying his hand over hers with the first loverlike gesture he had used since they started.

“That’s settled then!”

She sank back in her corner, her face again shaded by her hat.

He was still thinking of their northern retreat.

“That name sounds familiar. Just where have I heard it before? I’ve never been much in the Catskills.”

She did not answer for a moment, and he looked round at her; but he could not make out the expression of her eyes, for they were bent intently on the hand that he had just released.

“You know the name--very well, I fancy. Think a moment, Arthur!”

“I can’t remember.”

“I thought you would,” she said softly. “It’s only a little place, but--Simon Overton was born there.”

Faunce made no reply at all. He sat quite still, looking steadily before him at the people in the car. For the moment it was impossible to meet her eyes.

XIX

WITH Diane things had reached a climax long before that culminating moment when she found that she had married not the man of her imagination, but a strange, abstracted, sleepless creature whose soul seemed to be retreating deeper and deeper into some hidden recess of his being. Following out their early plans they had spent months of waiting in Florida, but now the ship being nearly ready to sail, they had come north and gone to the Catskills. During their long stay at the south Diane had written occasionally to her father and heard from him at even rarer intervals. The judge was a poor correspondent and she noticed that he avoided any mention of the continued rumors that Overton still lived. Now, in this last retreat, even these rare letters stopped. Faunce had asked her to let their last brief week in their sylvan cottage be uninterrupted, and they had left no address behind them. They had spent six or seven days together in the solitude of the mountains. The splendor of the sky, which was already softening with the promise of summer, and the soft purple of the infolding hills, had soothed her spirit, but they seemed to have only increased a deep disquietude in Faunce.

He tried to hide it from her. She could see a kind of furtive watchfulness in him that defeated any effort on her part to surprise his confidence. The subtle feeling of distrust that had crept into her reluctant heart leaped up whenever she saw his pale face opposite her, even at table, and found that his eyes, handsome and luminous as ever, avoided hers, or only met them with a sidelong glance from under his long, girlish lashes. It was a glance that had an indescribable effect of retreat, of slipping away, as if his soul evaded daylight and the open, as some hunted animal might shun the fellowship of its kind.

In this desire for isolation, he would not even allow a newspaper to find its way to the house, and she was as completely cut off from the world as if his love had marooned her on a desert island.

At first she had acquiesced in this peculiarity of his, had tried to adjust her own keen and active mind to a period of quietude, to a dropping away of the universe, that they might learn how to adjust their own temperaments to each other and find a common ground on which to establish their life together; but the longer she faced the problem, the more difficult was its solution. She could not reconcile herself to characteristics which she recognized as wholly divergent from her own conception of the man.

He was not frank, as he had seemed to be, nor cordially disposed, nor courageously bent on high endeavor. He was secret, complex, and perilously evasive. He had never once, since their arrival in the mountains, spoken the name of Overton; yet by the swift and unerring instinct that comes to a woman at such moments, Diane knew that his former leader was never out of her husband’s mind. Overton it was who loomed between them, his shadowy arm outstretched, as if, even from the bourn of the undiscovered country, his spirit had arisen with new power and new divination.

Diane had accepted Faunce’s word. She had declared that she would believe her husband; and no whisper from the world beyond those shadowed hills had yet broken her resolution. But there were moments--in the depth of night, or in the solitude of some early-morning stroll--that made her heart sink. When she had hoped to find candor and stability, she had encountered a silence as perplexing as it was evasive.

It was a relief to her when, on the eighth or ninth day, he announced his intention of returning to the city. They were sitting over a belated breakfast, which Diane herself had prepared, with scant assistance from the little mountain maid who had come to the Herford cottage to help in their haphazard housekeeping.

The small dining-room, built for summer uses, jutted out from the house, and was almost part of the large veranda which overlooked a magnificent prospect. The scene, flooded with sunshine and touched with the peculiar beauty of morning, lay before them in a panorama of spring. The distant mountains, outlined against a brilliant sky, were blocked out in every shade of violet and ocher, while near at hand the brown woods of winter were exquisitely veiled in a delicate haze of pale green and rose.

Here and there a wide glimpse showed a fallen tree spanning a mountain brook; or some tall pine raised its dark-green shaft, like a forest spire, pointing the way. In the wonderful clarity of the atmosphere even the most distant objects stood out in vivid outline, as if the whole scene had been painted by some Titan artist who had used the universe for his canvas and the colors of heaven for his brush. It had a fascination for Diane; it even comforted her, and she sat looking at it, forgetful of the neglected meal.

She was a little startled when Faunce spoke.

“I think we’ve reached the end of it, Diane. We’ll have to begin to face our great expedition. I’ve got to go to New York to-day.”

She looked up with a feeling of relief, but she met again that retreating glance of his.

“I knew we couldn’t put it off much longer, Arthur. I’ve expected you would be growing impatient as the days passed. But why to-day? It’s such short notice! I shall have to close up everything at once.”

He pushed his cup aside, and she noticed for the first time that his coffee was untasted.

“I got a telegram last night. I didn’t tell you.”

“I thought no one knew where we were,” she replied slowly, averting her own eyes from the confusion that she could not help seeing in his face.

“No one but Asher.” This was the man who was to serve under Faunce in the new expedition. “I had to except him, of course. Last night I got a despatch, and I must go to New York to-day; but you needn’t be hurried, dear. I’ll come back to-night or to-morrow morning, and we’ll have a day or two more together before we start.”

Diane understood now his frequent lonely strolls at nightfall. He had gone to the post-office for mail that he had concealed from her. She had a strange sensation, which involved no jealousy of her husband’s private affairs. She felt as if the universe moved beneath her feet, confirming her feeling, too, that there was some new and impalpable barrier between them; but she made no sign of it. Instead, she put her elbow on the table and rested her chin in the hollow of her hand, while she regarded him with a quiet gaze.

“I wish you had told me!”

He moved restlessly in his chair.

“Why should I? It was such a simple thing to do--so obviously necessary. I had to keep in touch with Captain Asher. Except for that, you’ve been the whole world to me,” he added, with that subtle gentleness which no man knew better how to use.

She smiled almost tremulously.

“I’m not jealous! Only----”

She rose abruptly and went to the window, looking out again on the hills. He followed her and put his arm around her.

“Only what, sweetheart?”

She hesitated; then she turned and met his eyes. Their faces were so close together that she felt his breath warm on her cheek.

“Only that I’ve felt, almost from the first, that there was no confidence between us, Arthur. We’re not starting right. We can’t stand still--we shall keep on growing either together or apart. You know it, I know it; but there’s something--it’s like a veil, impalpable and yet impenetrable--between us. What is it? Help me”--she half withdrew herself from his arms and laid her hand lightly on his shoulder--“help me to solve this riddle, dear, or----”

He was a little pale, but for the first time his eyes held hers, and she was less conscious of the retreat in them.

“Or what?” he asked.

His tone seemed expressionless, yet her quick ear caught a guarded note.

“Or we shall lose each other,” she finished bravely. “Don’t you see? We’re two souls reaching out to each other through this thing that we call love; but if we can’t find any meeting-point, we shall pass--our two souls, I mean--like ships in the night! I’m not jealous, I’m not curious, but I want to feel that you and I stand face to face in spiritual confidence, that I know your heart as fully as I’ll try to make you know mine!”

He snatched at the chance she gave him--a chance for evasion.

“Oh, I know it, Diane--it’s a heart of gold! Beside it mine seems as commonplace as lead or pewter; but I love you--never doubt that--I love you with all my soul!”

As he spoke, he folded her close with a reiterated protest of his devotion. There was a moment of silence. Diane hid her face on his shoulder.

It was useless to try to reach him. She knew it now--knew that in protesting his affection with kisses and vows he had used the commonest weapon of defense against a jealous woman. She slipped out of his arms after a moment, and went back to the table, quietly putting aside the little tray on which she had previously set the samovar. He looked at his watch.

“I’ll have to go at once, dear, to get my train. No, I sha’n’t need any bag, I’m coming back so soon.”

She looked over her shoulder.

“That’s all right, Arthur--don’t delay. I’ve got to see to so many things, if we’re to break up in two days. But--you don’t mind now if I write to father? You know I’ve kept the pact and remained in mysterious retreat, but since your breaking it to-day I can, of course, break it, too.”

She saw his hesitation, saw his face redden as he reached for his hat and coat, but she waited quietly, offering no assistance of any kind.

“Why, of course, Di, but”--he laughed weakly--“couldn’t you wait until I come back?”

“Until to-night? Oh, if you wish it! But then I think I’ll call him up on the long-distance. I should like to know just how he is.”

“Of course!” He came across the room to bid her an affectionate good-by. “I hate to go--to break it up--but I must.”

She assented, and stood in the doorway, watching him walk rapidly down the lane. At the end of it he turned and raised his hat, waving it to her.