XII
Thatassurance 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 gotthe 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’vesaved 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 lessthan 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 araison d’êtrein 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 hisangry 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 bronzevases 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.