XVIII
Fanny Price, a pale-faced little creature, in her bridesmaid’s finery, stood there looking at them. Conversation had begun again in a faint-hearted way, but it hushed as she spoke.
“Diane wants to know—is it true about Overton?”
Faunce crossed the room and took Fanny’s hand in his, trying to reply to the challenge of her eyes. She was shaken, horribly shaken, with the remembrance of his book and Overton’s, and of that black gap in the narrative which could easily be filled with Overton’s death.
“Tell Diane that it’s a story, a mere newspaper story,” he said firmly. “It couldn’t be true—you know that.”
She assented, drew her hand hastily out of his, and ran back up-stairs.
The dean exchanged a meaning look with his wife. They had both seen Faunce flinch under Fanny’s glance, and Mrs. Price tried to divert the thoughts of the guests. She touched Herford’s arm and whispered:
“Take them all into the dining-room, CousinHadley. She wants to get off without a shower of rice!”
The judge nodded, rousing himself from the unpleasant break in the festivities.
“Come!” he said in a genial tone. “Let’s go back and drink to the health and happiness of the bride and groom for the last time!”
They followed him through the wide folding doors, with the little flutter of excitement that remained after the interruption. They felt as if they had been for a moment over the edge of an abyss, and were still hanging there, suspended by a very thin thread.
Faunce, however, obeyed Fanny’s signal and went toward the door, only to be halted by Dr. Gerry in the hall.
“It’s true, Faunce—you know it’s true. What d’you mean to do?” he demanded grimly.
Faunce leaned back against the door of the drawing-room, shielding himself by holding out a portière on a rigid arm, that the girls might not see his face as they came down-stairs.
“It can’t be true!” he reiterated passionately. “It can’t be true! It’s some horrid story, an attempt to ruin me.”
Gerry shook his head.
“I’ll wager it is true. Didn’t you think you saw figures? You supposed it was a mirage. It’s true, and it’s up to you!”
Faunce put his hand to his throat with a helplessgesture, like a man struggling to breathe.
“I tell you he was stark and freezing,” he gasped. “I swear it. He can’t have come back!”
The doctor laid his hand on Faunce’s shoulder.
“Be a man!” he whispered sharply. “I warned you not to marry Diane, I warned you to keep away from this; but now you’re in it. For God’s sake, shield her! Be a man!”
Faunce shook off the old man’s touch.
“Let me alone! I tell you she’s safe. It’s false, every word of it; he simply can’t have come back!”
The doctor said no more, but made a sign, warning him. Diane and Fanny came down-stairs together, the bride in her traveling-dress. Her filmy veil, floating on the edge of her wide-brimmed hat, obscured the pallor of her face. The doctor took her hand, patting it benignly.
“Good-by, my dear! Your father’s got the enemy in the dining-room, rice and all. You’ll have to run for it!”
He felt the quivering of her fingers in his clasp, and saw the unnatural brightness in her eyes.
“You never wished me joy!” she whispered back.
“Haven’t I? Then I do, my dear, I do—a thousand times!”
He went down with her to the motor, and he and Fanny stood watching it go off. Then they turned and looked at each other. “Do—do youthink it’s true?” she whispered in an awed voice.
The doctor fenced.
“My child, has it occurred to you that we’re all acting as if we had not only wanted Overton to die, but to stay dead?”
She gave him a strange look.
“I—I wasn’t thinking of that. I—why, yes, you’re right, it’s true. It’s just as if we did want him to stay dead!”
Gerry took her by the arm.
“Come into the house, child! You’re standing out here in the wet, in a ridiculously flimsy dress and slippers.”
She went, her arm still in his grasp, but she did not even smile.
“It’s true—how awful of us! Just as if we wanted him to be dead, because——”
“Because of Faunce,” concluded the doctor dryly. “Don’t worry, my dear—not about that, anyway, for I’ve an idea it’s true.”
“You mean——”
“That Overton isn’t dead at all.”
“Oh!”
It was a little syllable, but it voiced Fanny’s awful thought—a thought which had, as she had said, nothing to do with Overton, but all to do with Faunce.
Faunce himself, on the way to New York with Diane, found the situation almost beyond endurance. The long strain had so racked his nervesthat he flinched at this crisis. His belief in Overton’s death still survived. He had too keen and harrowing a memory of that awful climax in the ice and snow to be easily persuaded that there could have been a rescue; yet the mere fact that such a rescue meant his certain ruin overwhelmed him.
Even while he assured Diane that it was a mere newspaper story, his heart sank with sickening fear. Racked by conscience in the long months since he had left Overton to die in the polar snows, he had again and again cried out to the night and the solitude that he would give his soul to feel that Overton lived, that he had not abandoned his leader and friend to death, that his conscience was clear. Now, when the thought of Overton’s return was weighed in the balance with his personal disgrace, he was not strong enough to face it.
He saw, in a flash, all it would mean to him—the personal shame, the ruin, the loss of his new-won honors and of Diane’s love. He felt certain that she could never love a man stained, as he was, with a cowardice that was in itself a crime.
A feeling of terror seized him. He had put himself outside the pale of mercy. He knew not only that no word could ever be spoken in his defense, but that the world would be eager to revile him, the veriest wastrel in the street would find an excuse to fling a curse at his cowardice.
He had abandoned a prostrate comrade, leaving him to face death alone. Worse than that, he had taken the only means of rescue—the sledge and the dogs—to secure his own escape. He had sacrificed Overton to save himself whole and without a scratch. If Overton had survived, if he knew anything, he must know this. If he had had the strength to live to be rescued, he might know much more. He could not have been so far gone as Faunce had thought!
Day after day, night after night, the horror of that frozen waste had haunted him. The deathlike face of Overton had appeared to him at nightfall and at daybreak. When Faunce, against his own better judgment, had undertaken the new command, he had merely yielded to the mysterious lure that draws a murderer back to the scene of his crime. He had felt as if unseen hands clutched at him and drew him; as if a shadowy presence, standing at his elbow, demanded this sacrifice, this hideous march back on the trail; as if Overton, dead or alive, held his very soul in thrall.
And now, if some miracle had happened, if the grave was about to give up its dead, Faunce could not escape! He was facing a shame that would be more terrible than the death he had fled. Coward as he had proved himself to be at that supreme moment, he might better die now thanface the truth—the truth that Overton would be sure to reveal, if he lived.
On the reality of his death, then, hung Faunce’s only hope. Once more he tried to brace himself up with the thought that it was impossible for Overton to have survived. Yet it was in perfect unison with what he had already endured that this renewed horror should quench his new happiness and make his wedding-day a nightmare. If the shade of Overton, athirst for mortal vengeance, still haunted him, this last exquisite torture was its supreme accomplishment. His broken spirit quivered under the visitation.
It was a mockery of fate to have to act the bridegroom at such a moment, to protest his happiness and reply to Diane’s questions. She had spoken to him about the newspaper story almost at once, and had expressed her amazement that such a despatch could have been sent from London. Then she had let the matter drop; but her very acquiescence awakened a keen alarm in the mind of Faunce.
He suspected that she, too, was suffering, that the thought of Overton had broken in on her agitated mind like a blow from the unseen. She was marrying a man who had declared to her that Overton was dead, that he had stood beside him while he was dying; yet, at the very moment when she had finally ratified her belief in him, thedoubt took shape and clothed itself in an almost visible semblance.
As the train rushed on, Faunce watched her. He observed the pale outline of her profile against the rosy light of a sunset sky, illumined and touched with glory, like a face carved from the delicately tinted pearl of the abalone shell. Something in the averted eyes, the softly parted lips, and the slight, scarcely perceptible quiver in the white throat, suggested an emotion too deep and too sorrowful for such a moment.
Again he had the curious sensation that the shade of Overton stood between them, its outstretched hand thrusting Faunce away from his bride and slowly but surely toward the edge of that frozen precipice where he had left his comrade’s mortal body, abandoned without pity and without help. At a moment when he should have been supremely happy, Faunce was miserable. He had lifted the cup at Circe’s banquet, and felt as if he had been transformed into some hideous monster that must return to his lair.
Sitting beside Diane on the train, their close proximity accentuated by the soft touch of her sleeve against his and by the faint, elusive perfume of her hair, aware that his ring gleamed on the slender finger of her left hand, he felt no thrill of exultation, only an intense bitterness of soul. He could never look his wife in the face without fearthat she would read his soul, find the hideous secret hidden there, and scorn him.
If some trick of fate, inexplicable as it was inexorable, had indeed brought Overton back from the dead, Faunce could already foresee the end. He began to thrash it over in his brain, to piece together every fragment of news he had of the English expedition, and to try to convince himself that it was humanly impossible for any of its members to have been so near that they could have reached Overton before he died. His own knowledge of the vast spaces of those frozen regions went to strengthen his hope that he was safe. He told himself, almost wildly, that it was not a hope that Overton was dead, but that he himself was safe from public shame.
Diane, unaware of her bridegroom’s agony of mind, sat looking deeply into the glow upon the far horizon. She had proudly accepted his word; if he said that Overton was dead she must believe him. She had not forced the issue by asking questions; she had assented to what he said. As she looked out in silence, she was not thinking of Faunce.
Then she became aware that he moved restlessly, and she turned and met his eyes. The agony in them was so intense that she started; but before she could speak, she saw it retreating, as if he withdrew his soul from her sight. It struck a chill to her heart. The look had been distraught,like a wild animal peeping out, and at the alarm, rushing backward into its hiding-place.
“What is it, Arthur?” she exclaimed involuntarily.
Before he could reply a porter came through the train, holding up a telegram and calling out the name—“Arthur Faunce!”
Faunce took the envelope nervously and tore it open, his face changing perceptibly as he read the despatch.
“Our holiday is prolonged, Diane,” he said, turning to her with a forced smile. “There’s been an accident in the shipyard, the ship won’t be ready to sail for months. Instead of three weeks, it may be three months.”
They had planned three weeks or so in Florida—a touch of the tropical atmosphere before they began the long, hard voyage to the antarctic. To his surprise she showed regret.
“I’m sorry, Arthur, I really want to go soon. To me it’s the great adventure, and now we’ve months to wait! Shall you stay all that time in Florida? I think I’m really a little sorry—even for that!”
He was not. Secretly he had long dreaded the arduous expedition, the overwhelming presence that he must face—face with courage, too, or fall forever in her eyes.
“For my part I’ll be glad of the rest. You see, I’ve been in those frozen wastes, Diane, andI know we’ll need a stock of sunshine to carry with us. And three months in Florida with you seems to me pretty near Paradise!” As he spoke he smiled, and his dark eyes softened with that charm which had gone so far to win her heart. Then he added:—“But if you don’t want warm weather all the time, we’ll come back north before we go. Wasn’t there some place—I think your father suggested a cottage—where we could have at least ten days of peace?”
She thought a moment, her eyes looking dark and dreamy under their black lashes.
“It’s a little house of father’s. We could go there, of course, and I’ll keep house. Yes, I think it would do you good, Arthur. You need rest—I’ve seen how fagged you were. After the heat and sunshine that bit of cool mountain air will brace you up. I should like it, too.”
Again he looked around at her. “Would you rather go there now?”
She shook her head. “I want our bit of Florida—and then this. We can go quite easily, and not be out of reach of your last arrangements, it’s in the Catskills, you know.”
“Where?”
She named a small place where the Herfords had long owned property.
He hesitated, regarding her absently. She turned as she spoke, and smiled. Her face seen thus, in the partial shadow of the car, betweendaylight and dusk, had a peculiar charm, and her eyes held a tenderness that went to his head.
“We’ll go, Diane!” he whispered softly, laying his hand over hers with the first loverlike gesture he had used since they started.
“That’s settled then!”
She sank back in her corner, her face again shaded by her hat.
He was still thinking of their northern retreat.
“That name sounds familiar. Just where have I heard it before? I’ve never been much in the Catskills.”
She did not answer for a moment, and he looked round at her; but he could not make out the expression of her eyes, for they were bent intently on the hand that he had just released.
“You know the name—very well, I fancy. Think a moment, Arthur!”
“I can’t remember.”
“I thought you would,” she said softly. “It’s only a little place, but—Simon Overton was born there.”
Faunce made no reply at all. He sat quite still, looking steadily before him at the people in the car. For the moment it was impossible to meet her eyes.