VIII
Buteven while the feeling—keen in itself, and searching—was passing through his mind, Arthur Faunce knew that he would not yield to it—not now. He could not, for he was moved by a greater and more compelling force—his passion for Diane Herford. Between that and his peace of mind, or something which he thought might help restore his peace of mind, he felt himself unable to choose.
It was this lack of moral stamina that had always been his trouble. He could not resist an impulse to secure his own happiness or his own life. He had nothing of the Spartan in him; he would have dropped the fox and denied all previous knowledge of it, rather than risk his vitals. He could not now jeopardize his chance with Diane for the mere sake of a confession which, however it might ease his mind, could not fail to raise the moral obstacle of Gerry’s opinion.
Faunce dismissed the thought. He resolved, as he had resolved a hundred times before, to keep his own counsel, to show himself “the captain of his soul.” If he was not strong enough to drive the miserable fantoms from his own mind, noother man could expel them. It remained for him to live them down.
His eyes traveled over the winter landscape, the brown fields and hedgerows, the occasional roof of some neighboring house. Beyond the slope of the hill, where the land dipped suddenly, he saw a long strip of the Sound, its tranquil surface shimmering like burnished copper in the sunshine. The sight of it recalled the ship that was soon to sail on another expedition, and the choice that fate and circumstance were forcing on him.
He must return to those frozen fields, must face again the awful thing that held his soul in its grip, or he must renounce that part of his new fame that rested on his explorations, and, following Judge Herford’s lead, must plunge into the field of politics. He had thought the choice assured—home and easy preferment, the presence of Diane and the approval of her father; but of late, loving her as he did, he was still curiously aware of a mysterious power that had laid hold of him. He felt the lure of those frozen depths, the gray sky, the blue peaks of giant ice—and the soul of Overton! It was like an obsession, it drew him; but he would not go—he was resolved he would not go, if Diane——
At the thought he heard her coming through the hall. The soft rustle of her dress startled him away from the window. He turned and stood facing her as she came into the room.
She had taken off her hat, and her soft hair, a little disordered by the wind, fell low over her small ears. There was still a delicate flush, a softness, about her face that made it at once more youthful and more charming.
“Papa is feeling better,” she announced as she went over to the fire, “and I’ve ordered tea. Won’t you stay and drink a cup with me?”
He did not reply, and she turned her head, looking over her shoulder at his tall figure outlined against the dark portière behind him. Something in his face arrested the words on her lips. She stood holding her hands out toward the blaze and looking back, the soft glow of the fire touching the fine oval of her cheek and the white curve of her full throat.
“Diane,” Faunce said in a low voice, urged on by an overmastering emotion which he tried in vain to control, “I love you! You know it. Is it fair to keep me waiting so long for an answer?”
She turned her head quickly, hiding her face from him. Deep and contending emotions swept over her; yet she was more tranquil than he was. She had realized long ago that her sorrow drew her nearer to the man who had been Overton’s comrade, who shared with her a deep and reverent tenderness for his memory. If any one had a right to her confidence, her friendship, her love, surely it was the man who had almost given his life to be with Overton to the end. But she saidnothing for a moment, and then she heard his voice again.
“Diane, they want me to go back to the antarctic, and lately I’ve felt the deepest, the most unaccountable impulse to go; but there’s one thing that holds me, that would make me give anything up—I mean the hope of your caring enough to want me to stay!”
She turned slowly toward him.
“Would you think that it meant something quite different if I said that I wanted you to go? That I felt that the work should be finished, the victory won?”
He hesitated; his face blanched.
“You want me to go? You don’t care enough to want me to stay here—where you are?”
“I didn’t say that. I want you to go because there’s a great work to finish, because it seems to me like rounding out your career, winning the greatest victory. I—I don’t want to help a man falter by the way or step back. I knowhewould never have faltered—I mean Overton.”
He looked at her blankly.
“No, he would never have faltered, but—you know, I’ve told you, Diane—I’m not as great as he was. I suppose that’s the reason—the reason you can’t feel as I do, you can’t accept all that I have to give—my love for you?”
“I want to tell you the truth,” she replied, looking up at him with clear eyes. “You know howI’ve felt about Overton. I cared for him so much that it seemed to me I could never feel anything like that for any one else, but lately——”
“Yes?” he cried eagerly, bending toward her, his eyes searching her face.
“Lately I’ve begun to feel that I—I did care for you!”