XVII
Earlythe following morning, with the rain and sleet driving against the window-panes, in the fury of a late winter storm—the wild harbinger, in fact, of spring itself—Diane was married to Arthur Faunce.
“The handsomest couple I ever saw!” Mrs. Price whispered to Dr. Gerry, dabbing the moisture from her eyes with the handkerchief that she had already wept into a ball.
Dr. Gerry moved an eye around to look at her without moving his head, much as the drowsy crocodile views curious observers at the aquarium; but he made no comment. He had spent the night in trying to force Faunce to tell Diane the truth before she married him. He had failed, and was therefore an unwilling witness at the ceremony.
The quaint old library, the room Diane had chosen, was scarcely altered from its every-day aspect. Above the low book-shelves that lined the walls were fine examples of pottery and bronze, which gleamed warmly in the light of the fire in the great fireplace. A few moss-roses and tallferns, sent from a New York conservatory, were the only ornaments.
Dr. Price, small, precise, and placid, in his white surplice and black cassock, his white hair smoothed back with what Horace Walpole would have called “asoupçonof curls behind,” performed the ceremony before a group of old friends and neighbors, the only witnesses. Mrs. Price lifted her plump, wrinkled face and kissed the bride on both cheeks.
“My dear, I wish you every blessing! You remind me of Rachel, and Ruth, and all the brides of the Bible. And, dear Diane, he’s so handsome! It seems almost wicked for nature to waste so much beauty on a mere man, even if he is a hero!”
Diane glanced smilingly at Faunce.
“Isn’t it splendid for me, Cousin Julia? I don’t need to shine when he’s near, do I?”
The little woman plunged in deeper, and was still babbling along when her daughter, a little pale and nervous, came to tell Diane it was time to change her dress for the journey. Glad to escape, the two girls ran up-stairs together, and Fanny and the maid made haste to help transform a white-and-silver bride into a trim, tailor-made young woman ready for the train. While the transformation was in progress, Diane grew more composed, and helped with her deft fingers in theknotting and unknotting of ribbons and laces and flowers.
“It went off beautifully, Di!” Fanny felt that she could say this with safety, as she plunged into a new hat-box after the bride’s traveling-hat. “That cake from New York was fine. I left dear papa eating it, and he’ll be ill to-morrow.”
“I noticed the flowers, Fan,” Diane said, fastening fresh hooks, while she sent the maid on an errand. “I’m glad I didn’t have too many. Is that hat becoming? It seems to me too—too flamboyant. The styles are dreadful!”
“It suits you exactly. What a lovely color you’ve got, Di! A minute ago you looked like a ghost. You were——”
Diane stopped her with a gesture.
“What’s that?”
They listened. A newsboy was shouting an extra edition, and they could hear his shrill pipe above the storm. Fanny’s eyes widened.
“What can it be? No one sells extras out here, in a storm!”
Diane went to the door and listened.
“Some one’s called him. Fanny, go and find out what it is. There’s nothing for me to do now but to work on my gloves.”
The little bridesmaid, glad to hide her telltale face, ran out. Diane stood listening in strange anxiety, unaware that she was frightened. Why should she be? she argued. Why should sheworry at all? They were all together and all well—what could be better, more reassuring, than that thought?
Then Arthur’s face came back to her as he had looked when he put the ring on her finger—the feverish light in his eyes, the triumph and the happiness. A feeling, deep and inexplicable, disturbed her; there had been something wanting—some element of strength, fortitude, or poise. At that moment, the supreme moment of the ceremony, she had experienced a new sensation of loss, of shipwreck, as if she had survived the failure of some fine and inarticulate hope and confidence in him.
Standing there now, for the last time in her own room, the new wedding-ring on her finger, her wedding-finery thrown across the bed, she shivered, she was afraid. Then she heard Fanny coming slowly back up-stairs. The girl seemed to halt for an instant on her way to the door. Diane turned and saw her at the threshold. She was holding the newspaper unfolded in her hands, her eyes fixed on the front page, her face expressionless.
“What is it, Fanny?”
The question was almost a cry of alarm. Fanny made no reply, and Diane went to her, taking the paper from her. As she did so, Fanny pointed to the headlines of an article that filled the headof a column. It was a cablegram, printed in large type that seemed to stare:
H. M. S. Pelican arrived safely at Southampton to-day, with Lieutenant Blackford and the other members of his antarctic expedition. They brought with them the well-known American explorer, Simon Overton, U. S. N. Having barely recovered from desperate illness and exposure, Overton refused to be interviewed.
H. M. S. Pelican arrived safely at Southampton to-day, with Lieutenant Blackford and the other members of his antarctic expedition. They brought with them the well-known American explorer, Simon Overton, U. S. N. Having barely recovered from desperate illness and exposure, Overton refused to be interviewed.
Diane let the paper fall to the floor, and the two girls stood looking at each other in speechless amazement.
Down-stairs there was a moment of poignant silence in the library when the judge read the newspaper despatch in an incredulous voice that was a little deeper than usual. As he read, a sudden burst of sunshine, almost as violent as the storm, flooded the room. It shone on the smooth surfaces of the ancient vases and on the rich and multicolored bindings of the judge’s books. It warmed the moss-roses that had bloomed for the wedding, and shone still more keenly, with almost a cruel concentration, on the white face of Arthur Faunce.
It revealed Faunce’s countenance at a moment when his inner self seemed to be receding, in mortal panic, from the vision of his friends. He stood, with his hand gripped like a vise on the back of a tall chair and his eyes fixed on his father-in-law. He was like a man overtaken by sudden calamity and rooted to the spot, with nomore power to escape it than the victim of a nightmare.
The judge threw back his big head and looked at him.
“What can this mean, Arthur?”
Faunce gasped. His mind was still reeling, and his voice sounded a long way off to his own ears.
“It must be a mistake,” he replied slowly; “a mere newspaper story—or the wrong name. Overton is dead!”
The judge looked again at the paper, and then cast another searching look at Faunce.
“It’s strange,” he remarked, “that a thing like that should be cabled from London—from the correspondent of this paper, too; and they think it important enough for an extra.”
“Anything is important enough to make an extra penny on!” the little dean remarked caustically, coming to the rescue.
Dr. Gerry, standing back by the mantel, was watching Faunce. Knowing the story, he was convinced that in some miraculous way Overton had been rescued, and that Faunce must know it, too.
Rallying from the first shock, Faunce was facing it with some self-control.
“I think I can speak with more authority than the newspaper,” he managed to say. “I was there!”
“But—oh, Mr. Faunce, don’t you think it’s—it’sjust possible?” pleaded Mrs. Price, clasping her hands. “A miracle may have happened. It would be so beautiful! It would make Diane so happy, it would make us all so happy, if dear Simon Overton could come back!”
Her little bubbling voice, like the pleasant singing of a teakettle, brought relief to a tense situation.
“That’s the way to look at it,” rejoined Dr. Gerry. “Let’s rejoice in the hope.”
Judge Herford bent his heavy brows.
“There can’t be any hope, Gerry,” he said flatly, “if Faunce has told us the truth.”
Faunce smiled, but with a wince.
“It’s not a thing about which any man would want to jest,” he replied slowly, purposely misunderstanding Herford’s speech. “We believed him dead. If a miracle has happened, the body must have been recovered and resuscitated. I can’t believe a word of this!”
Herford, however, pursued his questions, the lawyer in him roused to ignore his new position as a father-in-law.
“Then you admit that his body might have been found?”
Faunce hesitated.
The others—his father-in-law, Gerry, who knew the truth, Dr. Price, and the wedding-guests—all waited. The moment before he had been the hero of the occasion, the bridegroom at his own wedding.Now, strangely enough, he stood alone in the center of the room facing them, much as a prisoner might stand at the bar.
He looked up and met Dr. Gerry’s eye, and it revealed the full force of the situation. Gerry believed that Overton lived!
Faunce experienced again the terrible sensation of the world falling to pieces around him while he still survived. If Overton lived, he was delivered from the hideous remorse that gnawed at his heart; but he was ruined. No power on earth could save him from public shame.
He rallied his forces again.
“There was a terrific blizzard; we were rescued from an avalanche of packed ice and snow. How is it possible that these Englishmen could find and resuscitate a dead man? If they did, where were they? Why didn’t we meet them? The thing’s absurd!” he climaxed, with an actual thrill of relief as he remembered the situation.
Yes, it was absurd! No living man could have reached Overton after he left him.
The dean nodded his head slowly and thoughtfully.
“Of course, of course! You must be right, Faunce; you were with him when he died. This is a cruel mistake!”
“It’s more than cruel—it’s a mockery of death,” Faunce declared with renewed force.
He was determined not to believe it. He wasconvincing himself, and he was regaining his control of the others.
Judge Herford folded the paper and put it down.
“We’ll hear more of it to-morrow—or they’ll contradict it. Of course, if you were with him until the last minute, you know, Arthur!”
“Yes, I know!” Faunce returned, a feverish light in his eyes. “I——”
He stopped abruptly, looking toward the door, and they all turned and followed his eyes.