XI
Dianeleft 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 sheetof 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 himperhaps 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 hadnot, 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.