XXI
Itwas late in the evening, long past their usual dinner-hour, when Diane heard Faunce coming up the path to the front door. Ever since that bitter moment with Overton, she had been trying to steady her mind for this meeting. It seemed to her that she must be ready for it—ready to force the climax, to make Faunce tell her the truth.
If she had failed to get the whole story from Overton, his very silence and his omissions had made it easy for her imagination to fill up the gaps. She shuddered now before the vision that her tortured mind had conjured from the frozen silence. What had happened behind the gray curtain of the mist and snow? What deep and tragic drama had been enacted? She did not know, yet she shuddered. She felt the weight of it upon her. The shadow of it lay across her path, between her and her husband.
She sat alone before the big fireplace, almost in the very spot where Overton had stood, and listened. She could not move, she could not even go to open the door. She was listening to the step—a little hurried and uncertain—that cameup the steps and across the porch, and halted at the door. There was a moment’s pause, and then Faunce thrust his latch-key into the lock. She dragged herself to her feet and stood facing the door, incapable of action or speech.
He came in very pale and haggard, but his preoccupation had gained upon him, and he was not even startled to see his wife standing there, motionless, before the fire. He saw her, saw the long, graceful lines of her figure, the small, uplifted head; but he was too much absorbed in the struggle within to recognize the change in her.
“I’ve kept you waiting!” he exclaimed hurriedly. “You must forgive me this time, dear! I hope you haven’t waited dinner?”
As he spoke, he came over and kissed her cheek, without apparently perceiving the anguish in her eyes. She yielded, let him caress her soft hair a moment, but she was trying, all the while, to shape the questions that rushed to her lips.
Something in his face, in its stricken look, stopped her. She drew back and went to the table. It had been set for two by the maid, and the belated dinner announced itself by the savory odor of cooking from the kitchen.
“Of course I waited,” Diane said in a dull voice. She herself was startled at the sound of it, it seemed so changed; and yet he did not notice it. “We’d better sit down at once. I knowAnnie wants to go home before it gets any later.”
He assented readily, still unobservant, and they were already seated when the maid brought in the soup and busied herself serving them. While she was there, Diane felt the need of seeming as gay as usual. She inquired for news of New York, and asked if he had telephoned to her father.
“I left that for you. I felt sure the judge wouldn’t want me to do it for you,” he replied without looking up. “For the rest—I saw Asher. The expedition has been delayed. If you wish it, Diane, we can stay here a little longer.”
She hesitated, and then, as the girl removed the tureen, she managed to say in a natural voice:
“I think I’d rather not. If—if we’re going at all, I want to stay with papa a while before we sail.”
He looked up for the first time.
“Why do you say ‘if’? What makes you uncertain?”
She met his eyes squarely, a slow flush staining her cheeks.
“Because I think there may be some change. Simon Overton has come back. He was here this afternoon.”
There was a sharp pause. Faunce met her gaze steadily for an instant longer; then he looked down at his plate, deliberately took his knife and fork, and began to eat like a man who had been suddenly relieved of a terrible suspense.
“Yes, I know he’s come back. I heard the details to-day; but I didn’t know he was here. I suppose he came here to see—you?”
She could not follow his example and try to eat, though she was aware that the little maid was watching them again with bright, curious eyes.
“He came up here to see his old aunt,” she replied with another effort. “I met him accidentally in the woods, and he came here to tea this afternoon. He left a message for you.”
“Yes?”
“He said he wanted to see you, and would wait—until you came.”
Faunce seemed to consider this and weigh it carefully; but he continued to eat his dinner with more appetite, Diane thought, than usual. Again she had a vague impression that he was relieved. The tension seemed less, and there was even a little color in his usually pale face.
“If you’ll excuse me, then, dear, I’ll go to see him as soon as we’ve finished dinner,” he said at last.
She caught her breath quickly, a wild hope leaping up in her heart. Had she wronged him? Would Arthur be so ready to face Overton, so apparently eager to meet him, if he had been the one to forsake him? A feeling of intense relief swept over her, and she sank back weakly in her chair.
“It seemed a miracle that he has come back—I couldn’t understand it!” she faltered.
He glanced at her without apparent comprehension. His mind seemed to have withdrawn itself again into the limbo of forgetfulness, and she saw that he was despatching his food with all the haste he could without seeming to hurry her too much.
The little maid, having served the coffee, retired to the kitchen, leaving them alone. Diane tried again, seeking wildly for some reassurance, some certainty that he was innocent.
“He didn’t tell me much about that awful time when he so nearly perished,” she said slowly, choosing her words; “but what he said—horrified me. I can’t forget it!”
Faunce raised his eyes reluctantly to her face, and she saw a strange expression in them—an expression that baffled her.
“Such things aren’t easy to describe, Diane. It’s like anything else that’s terrible and awe-inspiring—it leaves one speechless. There’s something about the polar wastes that makes a man’s soul numb and mute. I can imagine that any one lost there might become—well, just a brute!”
As he spoke, he rose from his chair, went to the mantel, and, opening his cigarette-case, selected a cigarette and lit it. Diane, watching him with her heart throbbing heavily, noticed that the hand which held the match shook a little; butwhen the light flared up on his face, it seemed to her unusually composed. He picked up his overcoat and pulled it on, talking to her in an evasive tone.
“I’ll go over at once. I may be late, for we shall have a good deal to say. Don’t sit up for me—you look tired.”
She had remained seated at the table, and she busied herself pouring out another cup of coffee.
“I hope you won’t be too late. You’re so restless, Arthur, and you sleep so little! I don’t see how you live.”
“I think I shall sleep to-night.”
Again his tone had in it the suggestion of relief that had reassured her. She watched him as he went out, and then mechanically lifted the cup to her lips and drank the coffee. It seemed to steady her nerves a little. She rose and, going to the hearth, knelt down and stretched her hands out to the blaze. She had not been aware before that she was cold, but she was shaking with a chill that reached her very heart.