IV
MeanwhileFaunce tramped steadily down the long lane. It led to the edge of the little river, scarcely more than a brook, which divided the village into two unequal parts. Just now, at flood from the recent rains, the stream tumbled noisily over the stones and rushed under the low bridge with a harsh, insistent murmur.
He stopped for a moment with his hand on the rail, and looked down at the black current below. Then the clouds broke, and he saw the moon reflected in the water, while the rising wind suddenly showered the falling leaves until they fell with a patter like rain. Beside him an ancient willow stood like a stricken giant. A summer thunderbolt had split the great trunk in twain, and half of it lay across the stream, while the other half still loomed up, grim and leafless, against the sky.
It was past midnight and in that rural community, where early hours prevailed, the feeling of solitude was as intense as if he had reached the end of the world and was alone in the October night, the last man. Such a feeling had come to him once before, fraught with such cruel terror,such a sensation of disintegration, of the loss of all that was mortal, that Faunce could never forget it, could never feel even the reflection of it again without recalling those vast and terrifying wastes, that inexorable sky, that blinding, cruel, exterminating ice that had frozen its image on his soul.
He tried to drive the thought of it from his mind, and, by fixing his gaze on that intimately familiar scene, to recall the days when, as a lad, he had fished by that old bridge. He remembered his grandmother as she had looked to him then, the quaint cap she wore, and the little plaid shawl folded about her shoulders over the black bombazine dress. His mother had died when he was born, and his father had married again. Young Arthur, in the way of a gay stepmother, had been reared by a fond maternal grandmother.
No one had disciplined his childhood, and he knew that as a boy he had done some mean tricks, which a better-trained lad would have scorned. But he had ceased to be small and tricky when he fell in with Overton, his senior by three years in age and by ten in mental development. He realized now, as he looked back on the long perspective, that Overton had saved him.
Strong-willed and straight-thinking, Simon Overton had possessed that kind of spiritual force of which leaders and martyrs are made. He had been a leader even at school. His companions had followed him with the boyish devotion that alwayssurrounds the school hero with a halo of glory. It was not alone young Overton’s physical strength, and his skill in their favorite sports; it was a certain unfailing stanchness of character, a fearless square-dealing, that impressed the others, and Faunce had only followed the universal lead when he attached himself to him.
Faunce had been favored. Overton had seen that the lad was without a real friend, that his old grandmother could do little more than wrap him in a figurative blanket, spoiling and scolding by turns; and the elder boy suddenly took hold of the younger. A friendship was formed, protective on one side, almost adoring on the other, and from that time their fates had moved forward in an inseparable course.
When Overton went to Annapolis, he had helped Faunce to work his way through college. When Faunce’s father died and left his estate—a small one—to his widow and Arthur’s stepsisters, Overton had tided Arthur over, until he got a place, and his grandmother’s death left him the sole heir of her modest fortune. It was this old bond that had drawn him into the first expedition to the south pole.
Overton, as a lieutenant in the navy, had organized the great adventure, which was financed by an old friend of his father. He had selected Faunce to accompany him, and the trip had been successful up to a certain point. Then the inexorable conditionsof polar exploration had worsted their efforts, and they had been forced to turn back. Bitterly chagrined, Overton had returned for another year of preparation, and then, flushed with new hope, and with that kind of fateful vision which pursues the most difficult and dangerous chimeras, he had set out for the second time, determined to plant the Stars and Stripes at the farthest south.
In the interval between the two expeditions much had happened. Overton had become an acknowledged force in the world of adventure, and Faunce was aware that he had set his heart on the one girl who had remained to both of them the sweetest and most charming reminder of their young days at Mapleton. That Diane, too, had outgrown their early environment and matured into a gracious and accomplished woman of the world seemed only fitting and natural; and Faunce knew, long before the ill-fated ship sailed from New York, that the young leader had left his heart behind him.
Faunce had felt a thrill of satisfaction, too, that under that supreme test he had not failed to keep his faith with his comrade and benefactor. Loving Diane himself, he had stood aside and left the field free to his rival. Whatever misunderstanding had obscured their parting, he had not been at fault. He had found some consolation, in the midst of his discomfiture, in the fact thathe had demonstrated his own spiritual growth, and had proved to himself that he was now above those mean devices which, in his boyhood, had sometimes won for him immunity from punishment, or a reward that was not rightfully his.
The expedition had sailed amid the thunder of salutes from the war-ships in the harbor, and for the second time Overton followed the ill-omened star that led him toward the south pole. All these things came back to Faunce with fatal clarity as he leaned there, under the pallid October sky, his hand on the worn railing of the old bridge that he had crossed many a day on his way to school.
But at this point in his recollections—when the fated ship, brilliant with flags, receded slowly, like a fantom, into the mists which on that day had shrouded the Narrows—Faunce shuddered and passed his hand over his eyes. His reverie was broken. He could no longer recall the past without seeing the wraith that seemed to rise from the very mist over the brook and to shape itself before him, as it had shaped itself hundreds of times already, into a vision of Overton as he had seen him last.
There, in that secluded spot, under the fitful moon, that face—rugged, strong, beautiful with spiritual power—rose from the vapors. Faunce saw it as he had seen it last, stricken with the awfullook of death, pallid and calm, a smile on the lips, the eyes closed. Solitudes, vast, white, inexorable, the peaks of blue ice, the mirage that mocked and deluded, only the shriek of the wind to break the silence that drove men mad.
That drove men mad! That was it! That must be what possessed him now, Faunce thought—madness!
He could never escape that vision, never quite cast it out. All the laurels he had won, the applause, the eager friendships that seemed to await him, were but empty mockery when he had only to close his eyes to find himself in the presence of that terrible vision, to feel the deadly chill strike again to his heart, to hear the howl of the wind on those polar wastes.
What had tempted him to go there a second time? What infatuation had led him to follow Overton? Faunce had never shared his leader’s enthusiasm, had never had his courage; but he had followed him like a little dog at the heels of a big St. Bernard, led by admiration rather than love, held by fear rather than zeal.
He remembered what he had just said to Diane—his assurance of his devotion to Overton; and it seemed to him now like an attempt on his part further to imperil his own salvation by deliberately deceiving her. Yet he had really loved Overton. It was his love for the dead man, the remembranceof his boyish gratitude, that was driving him on, goading him to misery.
Of what avail was the rescue that had brought him and his surviving comrades out of that frozen inferno, and had crowned him with the laurels that Overton had sought, if he could reap no reward, not even grasp the triumph of their success, their victory over a rival English expedition, without paying the price in a mortal agony that had all but extinguished the light in his soul? He had returned to find himself a hero, to be fêted and honored in New York and in Washington, to be mentioned with mingled envy and praise in London and Paris—and he could not sleep!
At first he had thought that he could conquer his weakness, that there was courage enough left in him to force forgetfulness; but there was not. The thing possessed him, pursued him, harried him, and he had come to the end of his endurance. He began to dread night as a condemned man must dread the final summons. In the daytime, and among his fellows, he believed that he bore himself almost with the air of a hero. He had, indeed, thought his performance perfect, but Dr. Gerry had discovered a cleft in the armor, had put his finger on a sore spot.
Was it possible, then, that others saw it, too? That Diane herself might have suspected it when she forbore to question Faunce? The thought, laying hold of him, added a fresh pang to hismisery. He turned with a gesture of disgust and plunged into the night. He could not sleep, and here, in this quiet spot, he could walk until the day broke, unseen and unsuspected.