XX
Itwas a long time before they left the spot where they had met. Unconsciously and unbidden, he turned back with her. They were silent. She could hear with extraordinary keenness every pebble that crunched under his feet but she dared not look at him. She had a strange sensation of suffocating in the open air. A rending fear shook her, yet even at that supreme moment she had a rush of lucidity, a remembrance of every word that Faunce had said.
He had been with Overton when he died—that much had been clearly understood by all; and now, when they knew that Overton was not dead, but had been rescued by the gallant English sailors who had followed so closely on his track, what explanation remained, what defense for Faunce?
“Where I was deserted and left to die!”
Overton’s words rang in Diane’s ears. Suspense was intolerable; she must know the truth, even if the truth meant ruin. She forced herself to speak.
“You said just now that you were deserted and left to die. Please tell me what you meant!”
There was a perceptible pause before he answered.
“Did I say that? I”—he hesitated—“I’ve nearly forgotten what I said.”
She managed to raise her eyes to his face, and was relieved to find that he was not looking at her. She felt like one lost in a trackless desert. She must find a way out of it; she could not give up, could not believe herself lost. If she did, she would perish. She forced herself to speak again.
“But I haven’t forgotten. How could I? Will you tell me?”
He shook his head.
“Not now—give me a little time to think, please. You must know that it’s all confused—I’ve been so ill and delirious. You mustn’t ask too much of a sick man’s memory,” he ended lamely, trying to smile as he turned at last and faced her.
She met his eyes and felt the full power of their love and their renunciation. Their message was so clear that it made her feel faint. She put her hand out involuntarily and caught at an intervening branch, steadying herself.
He started toward her.
“What is it? You’re ill!”
She shook her head, recovering herself with an effort. She knew that he was hiding from her something ruinous to her husband. There was a second in which she still struggled with herself;then a strange vicarious acceptance of guilt made her face burn. She had cloaked herself with the iniquity of Faunce, if iniquity it was, and she could no longer speak or act as a separate entity.
They began to descend the steep path again. This time the pebbles tumbled ahead of them in a little shower as they scrambled down. Diane tried to talk casually, not looking at Overton again.
“How is it you’re here, in this out-of-the-way place, so soon after your return?”
“My aunt, my mother’s only sister, is living over there. She’s nearly eighty, and she wanted to see me. I found her still in the black she’d worn for me for months. It’s a strange thing to return from the dead! I needed rest, too, just for a day or so.”
“You—look ill.”
He smiled.
“I’ve just pulled through; and yet it’s strange, isn’t it, the fever that possesses me to go back! The lure is on me. It draws men back, I suppose, to their doom!”
“It does—my husband is going again.”
“So they told me in New York. I was there a few hours. Of course the newspapers besieged me, and I heard that much. Then I escaped. That’s why I didn’t hear of—of your marriage.”
He was unable to maintain his tone, and his voice broke on the word. She winced.
“It was a quiet wedding; not much was said about it. My father has been ill.”
He expressed his regret, and asked for the latest news of the judge’s health. She colored deeply.
“We haven’t written. It was agreed, when Arthur and I came up here, that no one should write to us. You see, he’s been so much pursued about everything! I’ve been shut up here, out of the world, and I know nothing.”
He turned quickly, and their eyes met with a shock of feeling. She knew intuitively that there was a reason why she had been kept in the dark, and that he fathomed it and was indignant for her.
Once, when Overton was a lad, he had thrashed a comrade for maltreating a lame dog. She had seen him do it, and she remembered the look in his eyes. She saw the same look now, flaming up in tranquil depths like a torch in the dusk.
She hurried on. A little ahead of him she could command herself; to meet his look just now was more than she could bear.
“Shall you go down to Mapleton?” she managed to ask him. “The Prices and Dr. Gerry will want so much to see you. So will papa—you know that!”
“I did intend to go there at once; but now—yes, I suppose I shall. A man goes home, doesn’the, for the same reason that a cat returns to the old house? It’s habit.”
“They’ll all be so glad to see you—you shouldn’t call it just habit to go back there. It was—it is your home, isn’t it?”
He laughed a little bitterly.
“I haven’t a home in the sense that you mean. I think I’ll be henceforth a nomadic creature. I’ve been away too long!”
She understood the bitterness in his tone, and she fought against the wave of feeling that submerged her being. She had scarcely dreamed that his voice could mean so much to her. The sound of it brought back those old days when she had listened for it—the days when Faunce had had no place in her thoughts, though now she was his wife!
As she walked blindly on, hearing Overton’s step behind her once more, feeling his presence, it seemed incredible that they were separated forever, that her own act had made an impassable gulf between them. She struggled with herself. She had believed in her love for Faunce; she believed in it still. If she did not love him, why should she suffer so deeply at the horrible doubt of him that had assailed her? She loved him, she must believe in him, and—if she could not believe in him—she must suffer with him.
They had reached a turn in the path. Below them lay a wild ravine where a mountain streamtumbled over the rocks, lashed itself to foam in its descent, and then dropped placidly into a wide pool, where in summer the speckled trout darted in lovely shallows and the water-lilies bloomed. Beyond, the hills rose one above another until they darkened into the purple distance, piled like a mass of heavy clouds against the deepening splendor of the western sky.
Near at hand, rising above some clustering evergreens, was the roof of the little cottage that Judge Herford had built for an occasional summer vacation. A white plume of smoke rose from the single chimney in the center, and they could see the sun shining on the window-panes.
“There’s the house,” Diane said, as lightly as she could. “I think papa built it before you went away, didn’t he? It’s only a rambling affair, but we’ve done very well there, and it’s really cozy and warm.”
“I knew it was here, but”—he hesitated—“it’s strange, isn’t it, that my aunt never spoke of your being here?”
“Perhaps she didn’t know it. We’ve been very quiet.” She colored again as she turned toward him. “Won’t you come in and take a cup of tea? I can give you that—though we’re roughing it.”
He hesitated; then, aware, perhaps, that the moment was an awkward one for both, he assented, and followed her down the last slope tothe road. They crossed the little bit of lawn together, and Diane’s mountain maid opened the door for them. While she and her mistress went to make tea for him, Overton entered the living-room, and stood looking down at the few logs that were smoldering in the big, open fireplace.
The room was quaint, planned much in the style of a shooting-lodge that Judge Herford had visited abroad. A gun and a rod swung high over the stone mantel-shelf. An old Turkey rug covered the floor, and a couch in the corner suggested that it was sometimes used for an unexpected guest.
On the table Overton saw an elaborate cigarette-case with the initials of Arthur Faunce, and on the mantel, almost under his hand, was a pipe that Faunce must have left there. Nearer, on a chair, were tossed a bit of Diane’s needlework and her work-basket. They had been sitting there together by that fireplace, husband and wife, the woman whom Overton loved and the coward who had left him to perish in those awful wastes!
The touch of intimacy, of actuality, drove the naked reality home. Overton turned from the fireplace with a smothered groan and began to pace the room.
The scene, warm, familiar, poignantly suggestive of her presence, suddenly receded from his mental vision, and the illimitable snows took its place. He saw again a slate-colored sky, a whiteand dazzling waste, lofty peaks of bluish ice, and the face of Faunce bending over his, distorted with sheer terror, the shrinking eyes avoiding his, the lips blue. The howl of the antarctic blast seemed to sweep over his very soul. He remembered the moment, fraught with the bitterness of death, when, half-rousing from his stupor, he had seen the coward go, when he had realized that the last means of escape had been snatched from him, and that, helpless and wounded, he must perish there alone.
Overton recalled his rage, his hatred of the man who had deserted him, the violence of the spiritual struggle that had torn and wounded his soul until, in one wild moment, he had almost cursed his Maker. It was then, when he had nearly lost his hope of heaven, that he had felt the rush of penitence, of faith. In that illimitable space a Greater Presence had been revealed, and he had felt the gripping power of things unseen and eternal. He had known that, though forsaken, he was not alone; that a Spirit greater than the universe itself was with him. He had cried aloud to God; and surely it was God who had answered him.
Out of the stupor, the terrible frozen mist that had at last benumbed him, body and soul, had come the rescue—the sound of human voices, the touch of strong human hands—and he was saved. But his anger against Faunce, his scorn of the traitor, had survived. Now, as he tried to clearhis recollection of it, Overton felt sore that he had not spared him, but had told his rescuers the truth. He remembered their indignation—the indignation that brave men feel against a coward and a weakling.
Later, when the illness had left him, he had said less, had been reserved in his references to Faunce, and he knew that on his landing in New York he had refrained from describing the details of his narrow escape from death. It was a chance, perhaps, that he had not betrayed more, and he was thankful—thankful that, so far at least, he had spared Diane; for Diane, as Faunce’s wife, must be the one to suffer.
But could he do more to spare her? His mind was confused with the horror of it. The loss of the woman he loved was bad enough, but to see her the wife of such a man!
It was significant that even in that moment of despair his thought was for her, and not for himself. He must shield her if he could. He must save, if he could, her faith in the wretched man she had married; for, if she loved Faunce, it would be the shipwreck of her life to see him dishonored and exposed.
Presently he heard her returning, followed by the maid with the tea-tray and the samovar. They came in together. Diane had removed her hat and coat, and in her simple house-gown, her brown hair rumpled by the wind, she looked almostas when Overton had seen her last. There was the same delicate color in her cheeks, the same elusive charm in her soft eyes under their straight, thick lashes, the same white throat and brow, and yet how changed she was! He saw it when she made tea for him and raised her eyes as she handed him the cup.
“You’ll have to take cream and sugar,” she said with forced lightness. “We’re truly ‘twelve miles from a lemon’ here!”
He took the cup with a smile, and sat down in a low chair by her tea-table. The little maid threw another log on the fire and vanished. For a moment there was no sound in the room but the crackle of the flame as it licked up the dry bark of the new log. He looked at it thoughtfully as he absently tasted his tea.
“It’s good to see a fire again. I don’t believe I’ll ever get past the joy of feeling warm!” He forced a laugh. “Do you remember that late autumn when we were all on the shore in Connecticut, and you and I gathered driftwood?”
“Yes, and it was beautiful. What flames shot out! And have you forgotten Mrs. Price and the ghost-story?”
They both laughed.
“She thought it wasn’t scriptural! How’s Fanny? She was in school when I left.”
“She’s been out nearly two seasons, and she’s a very pretty girl. Nothing could be more amusingthan to see her with the dean and her mother. They flutter behind her like two proud, fat sparrows watching a fledgling.”
“The dean’s all right; he was good to me when I was a boy. How’s Dr. Gerry?”
“Just the same!”
Diane stopped to offer more tea, but Overton refused it and set his cup down. She intuitively felt the effort he was making to skim the surface of talk. The strain was too much for her. She rose and went to the fire, kneeling on a low cushion by the hearth, and pretending to watch the blaze, that he might not see her face. There was a brief pause, and then she spoke without looking around.
“Shall you go back?”
“To the antarctic? God knows!”
“The new expedition sails very soon—in a week, I think.”
“Oh, no! I heard this morning that it had been put off.”
He spoke without thinking. Diane turned, her face flushed.
“Arthur went to New York to-day. I—why, it’s because you’ve come, isn’t it?”
He was on his guard again.
“I hope not. I’ve nothing to do with it. I shouldn’t go now, of course.”
“Do you mean you wouldn’t go with—Arthur?”
“I didn’t say that!”
“But you meant it.” She rose slowly to her feet. “I know you meant it!”
She stopped, for he had risen, too.
“Perhaps I did mean that; but can’t you understand there may be other reasons why I can’t go? I——” His face flushed no less deeply than hers, but he raised his head, and she was again aware of the fineness of his presence, his air of strength. “There are many reasons why I can’t bear to go,” he went on slowly. “There are reasons which—at this moment—are doubly painful. You must forgive me, have a little patience with me.”
She did not answer. She was trying to control herself, but she could not; tears suddenly rained down her cheeks.
“Diane!” he exclaimed in dismay.
She put her hand up, as if to ward off a blow.
“Oh, if you feel like that—if you still feel so, I entreat you——” she stretched out her clasped hands toward him in a gesture of supplication—“I beg of you to tell me the truth! I can’t bear it any longer. I’ve tried not to speak, but I can’t help it—I must! Tell me the truth—what is this thing? What happened? Who deserted you?”
He averted his face, but she was aware of the struggle in his mind. He spoke at last with an effort.
“I can’t—I mustn’t! What there is to tell, Faunce must tell you himself. Say to him thatI have been here and I want to see him. He may want to come to me—tell him that I’ll wait until he does come. He’ll understand that!”
She did not speak again, but stood looking at him, the color slowly leaving her face. She held herself very erect, with her head up, as if she saw a battle before her and would not give it up.
It was a moment so pregnant with feeling, so tragic in discovery, that neither of them could bridge it with mere words. Overton did not even take her hand, but turned with a mute gesture of farewell and walked slowly out of the room and out of the house, his head bent and his shoulders bowed, like a man who carried a burden.