XXIX
Itwas dark by this time, and Overton consulted his watch, to be sure that it was not too near the judge’s dinner-hour for his errand. He was astonished to find that it was almost half-past eight. He had not felt the need of food. He dismissed it entirely from his calculations, and tramped steadily on in the moonlit mist. Through it he could see the lights twinkling in distant houses, while the trees loomed up in feathery, indistinct outlines, downy with foliage. Something in the effect—the weird brightness of the white sky and the elusive lights—reminded him of the mirage that had so often mocked him in his polar quest. He recalled it with a keen recollection of Faunce’s receding figure, and he thought grimly of the task that lay before him—the task of persuading Judge Herford to spare his own son-in-law for his daughter’s sake.
But the thought uppermost in Overton’s mind, as he opened the old gate that had stood for so much in his life, was the prospect of seeing Diane again. No matter how she regarded his return, even if she felt that it was his hand that had destroyed her house of cards, his heart leaped upwith hope. The insistent demand for personal happiness is not only a primal instinct of human nature, and as much a constituent part of it as the flowers and birds and bees are evidences of springtime and summer, but it is also the hardest aspiration to kill, surviving blows that would destroy the strongest impulse of endeavor or ambition.
In the words of the sage, “the veriest whipster of us all desires happiness.” Overton, who had actually stood upon the bourn of the undiscovered country, craved it the more keenly because of his long starvation.
He noticed every familiar object as he walked up the path. The old cedar was there, where he had put up the squirrel-house for Diane when she was a child in short skirts and pigtails. There, too, was the old worn seat around the oak, where they had read Tennyson together. He remembered with a smile Diane’s cry to him that he must go in quest of the Holy Grail. Had her insistence, her inspiration, indeed, sent him on that quest which had led to this fatal climax?
He went slowly up the steps, rang, and stood waiting, almost expecting that she would open the door with the same inspired look she used to wear, the same mystic charm of girlhood and dream-land which had always clothed her, to his imagination, in a beauty more spiritual than mundane.
But she did not come. A servant ushered himin, and, after a moment’s delay, conducted him to the judge’s library.
The room was vacant when he entered, and he had an opportunity to look about him, to recall the familiar objects, the rich old bindings, and the glow of the ancient bronzes. The fireplace was not empty to-night; a large porcelain jar stood inside the fender, filled with a profusion of blossoms, their pink and white sprayed delicately against the dark chimney-place, and their fragrance, subtle and sweet, pervading the room. The old reading-lamp was burning on the table, and the judge’s big shell-rimmed spectacles lay on the open pages of the “Eumenides.”
Overton stood still, keenly moved by a rush of recollections. He might have left the room yesterday, it was so unchanged; yet, between his last sight of it and now, the whole world had changed to him. The interval had been filled to the brim with suffering and emotion; the gap was not even bridged. On one side of it stood Diane; on the other he found himself condemned to wait in the uncertain ground, no longer possessing a right to cross over and resume his old place at the fireside.
Presently he heard a heavy step outside, and the judge opened the door. He seemed to Overton much changed. His face was grim; his gray hair showed more white. His eyes, however, retained their intense warmth—the inner flame which at aword might flash up into a conflagration. He held out his hand with a grim smile.
“It’s good to see you again, Simon Overton,” he said in his deep voice; “and it’s good of you to come here. We must seem to you to be part and parcel with—with the coward who left you to die!”
“You’re one of the best friends I ever had, Judge Herford, and one of the very best my mother left to me. I’ve been looking about this room and feeling—well, like a boy who’s been long from home. I’m glad indeed to be here again.”
The judge motioned to an old armchair opposite his own.
“Sit down—I’m glad you’ve come. There’s nothing else clear in my mind except the shock I’ve had. I believed in Faunce! It’s about used me up to think I’ve married my girl to—to a craven like that!”
He sat down as he spoke, and fell into an attitude of dejection so new to him that he seemed another and an older man. Overton, taking the seat opposite, hesitated. It was difficult to frame what he had to say. Meanwhile, the judge broke out again with great bitterness:
“The shame of it! I’d rather take a whipping than have Diane exposed to all this talk!”
The opening was obvious, and Overton took it, his face flushing deeply as he met the old man’s troubled eye.
“I came to speak to you of that, judge. There’s no need of publicity. I’ve arranged with Faunce and with certain other people. My return needn’t upset everything. The trouble can be so glossed over that no one will know of it. I think I can fairly say that I’ve succeeded in arranging that much already.”
The judge eyed him keenly.
“You mean that you’ve arranged all this—to shield Faunce, to hush it up, to let the public think you were found in some mysterious way? I can’t quite follow you.”
“We needn’t go into detail, need we?” Overton replied steadily. “We can leave so much in doubt that there’ll never be any certainty. In those ice-fields a thousand men might well be lost—why not one? The only danger is in what he’s already said. There are gaps—I’ve been over them, I’ve filled in some bad breaks. I believe we can save much talk, and hush it up.”
The judge leaned forward, his strong hands clenched on his knees, looking at Overton.
“You’re trying to shield him—for what?”
“For your sake, Judge Herford, and—for hers.”
“You can’t hide a fire. The smoke gets out, people smell burning. No more can you hide a coward! That’s what it is, Simon. The expedition has been held up; they’re not going to give him the command; questions will be asked.”
Overton shook his head.
“I’ve arranged that. They offered me the command. I refused to take it from him. He’ll go.”
The judge bent his brows.
“You’ve no right to do that! It’s paying a premium on falsehood. He came back here a jay in peacock’s plumes, and fooled us all; now you’re letting him carry off the prize. You’ve no right to shelter him.”
“I have the right that comes to the injured party. If I have no mind to enforce publicity, no one else should complain. You see that, judge?”
“I see you’re trying to spare him because”—he looked at his visitor keenly again—“because of Diane?”
Overton’s face changed sharply.
“Yes.”
“She has left him—you know that?”
“Dr. Gerry told me. It doesn’t constitute a reason for me to ruin him. Talk about him will involve her in the scandal.”
The judge sank back in his chair, strumming on the arms with nervous fingers.
“You propose, then, to shield him, to set him up in your place—because he has married Diane?”
Overton smiled as grimly as the judge himself.
“Not quite in my place. I’ve simply arranged to keep it quiet. After all, it’s a personal question, judge. It’s true that he abandoned me; butremember that to stay was to court death. He had no reason to die with me or for me. We mustn’t expect too much.”
“I’ve noticed you didn’t leave Rayburn. I’ve read the account, and he told us so himself. I could forgive him”—the old man laughed harshly—“I could forgive sheer fright—Gerry says it was physical panic—but I’ll never forgive him for marrying my daughter!”
“I don’t ask that.”
There was something in Overton’s tone which made the judge wheel around in his chair and look his visitor sharply in the face. What he found there gave him a shock. He got up, went to the mantel, found his old pipe, and thrust some tobacco into it. While he was fumbling for a match, he spoke over his shoulder.
“I’m going to get a divorce for her. At first I thought we should have to fight for it, but he’s willing to let her get it. He has that much grace in him. I’ll take her out West, establish a residence, and get a divorce for her. We’re done with him—she and I!”
Overton did not trust himself to reply. He rose, instead, to say good-night. The judge swung around.
“Stay, my boy, stay! I want to talk to you, to hear more of your great adventure.”
“Not now, judge. To tell you the truth, I haven’t dined yet.”
The judge broke out.
“What a fool I am! Sit down and let me order something. We’ve dined, but you mustn’t leave my house hungry!”
Overton laughed.
“No, I must be off. But it’s understood—we’ll let this matter remain hushed up?”
The judge thought, standing on the hearth-rug, his feet wide apart and his head down, the big pipe thrust into his mouth. After a while he took it out and answered.
“I’d like to expose him. I meant to do it, to set Diane right; but there might be reasons why silence would be best. I know she wants it. She shrinks with horror from the whole thing, poor child!”
His tone had in it a note of tenderness that was new to Overton. He looked up and again met the older man’s dark eyes resting searchingly upon him. It affected him strongly. There was a subtle suggestion of hope in it, a reassurance.
He turned hastily, and made his way out with an abruptness that surprised his host. He had a craving for air and space; the sudden change, the revival of hope after his despair, seemed to take his breath away. He forgot his appetite for his delayed meal, and set out for a long walk in the weird light of the half-clouded moon.
Having closed the door on his visitor, Judge Herford stood for a moment with his hand onthe knob, listening to the young man’s footsteps until they finally reached the open road. He had received a new and, to him, amazing impression, and it staggered him so much that for the time being he forgot his wrath against his son-in-law. It was a new impression, but it furnished the key to situations that had previously seemed vague and perplexing. Now he understood them all, and in this new light he thought he understood his daughter.
While he stood there, before he could clear up the ponderous machinery of his judicial mind and set it in motion, he heard the swish of skirts on the staircase and became aware of her presence.
“Papa, who was it?” she demanded tremulously. “Who went out just now?”
He looked up and saw Diane leaning on the banisters. The strong light on the landing made a luminous nimbus behind her small, spirited head and outlined her slender figure in a loose evening gown, the full, short sleeves falling away from delicate forearms and slender wrists. Her whole attitude suggested suspense and trepidation, and her father felt her eyes fixed on him, feverishly bright.
“Don’t worry, my dear—it wasn’t Faunce.”
“Oh!” There was a suggestion of extreme relief in the tone, coupled with some curiosity. “Then who was it?”
“Simon Overton.”
“Oh!” It was the same sound, but with a different note—a note that spoke volumes to her father’s awakened ear.
“He came here—guess what for!”
She relaxed her hold on the banisters and sat down on the steps, her face in the shadow, but her large eyes shining luminously through it and making her face seem singularly white.
“I can’t guess. I give it up—unless he came to see you?”
The judge moved slowly over and stood near the foot of the stairs, watching her.
“He came to ask me to keep silence, to shield Faunce. He’s determined never to tell the true story.”
She did not say anything for a while. When she spoke, it was in an awed tone.
“How noble of him!”
Her father nodded, his hand on the pillar at the foot of the banisters, as he looked up at her.
“He had seen Faunce and arranged for silence. He wants to let the whole thing blow over; he’s afraid of injuring you with the scandal.”
She seemed to shrink a little, and she was no longer looking steadily at him.
“Is that all, papa?”
“No, not all. You know they’ve wanted to take the command of the new expedition from Faunce and give it to Overton?”
“Yes, I suppose they will.”
“They won’t, for Overton has refused to accept it. He has asked them to let Faunce keep it.”
She made no reply to this, but put her hand up and pushed back the soft, loose hair from her forehead with a perplexed air.
“It’s a fine thing, Di, a noble thing for a man to do. It can mean only one thing!”
She still said nothing, but leaned against the banisters, watching him.
“He’s in love with you, Diane. There’s no other reason on God’s earth for a man to do a thing like that, to shield another from the blame that’s coming to him by rights. Did you know”—he stopped and looked at her again—“before this that he cared for you?”
“I used to think he did,” she answered weakly, her head leaning against the rail.
“It’s too bad, Diane!” the judge broke out. “It’s too bad that you didn’t care for him!”
His tone, as well as his words, disarmed her. She did not even suspect him of a ruse; but, in her pent-up state, it was too much, and she broke down utterly, quite off her guard.
“Oh, I did!” she sobbed. “I did!”
She turned her head and hid her face on her arm, bursting suddenly into wild tears and sobs.