XXV
Judge Herfordrose from his chair and began pacing the room with every sign of anger and impatience. Dr. Gerry, on the other hand, kept his seat by the table without any apparent perturbation. He had stopped in after dinner to smoke a cigar with his old friend, and had found him much in the mood of a tiger who has lost his favorite scrap of meat through the bars of his cage and cannot reach it with his paws.
“I tell you there must be an explanation,” the judge growled. “It’s impossible to make head or tail of it as it is. If Overton wasn’t dead, why did Faunce come back with such a story?”
The doctor stopped smoking long enough to answer:
“You saw Overton’s explanation this morning. He was lost in the snow, his comrades supposed him dead; the Englishmen, coming over the other trail, found him unconscious; the two parties missed each other, and so forth.”
“I read that, of course. It’s no explanation, and you know it. It was their business to find him. What was Faunce doing? He was second in command.”
“Well, you can ask him. He’s your son-in-law.”
“Precisely! My son-in-law, and the two idiots have gone off and left no address. We haven’t heard a word in weeks. It’s absurd! Meanwhile, every paper in the country has been blazing with the news of Overton’s return. The whole business is in a muddle—the expedition delayed, and talk—this morning—of putting Overton in command instead of Faunce. A pretty howdy-do!”
“Natural enough. Overton’s the hero of the great discovery; he’s returned with the halo of romance; and he’s sure to get all the honors. Nothing strange about that!”
“There’s a great deal strange about the whole thing!” retorted the judge, resuming his seat and thrusting some fresh tobacco into his pipe with an indignant thumb. “But I’ll get to the bottom of it! As it is, I don’t like it. Any way you can fix it, there’s a shade on Faunce. If he’d done his duty, he’d have brought Overton back—I stick to that. What’s more, I’ll tell him so!”
“Better not,” counseled the doctor dryly. “He’s Diane’s husband—you can’t get around that; and as long as you made the match——”
“As long as I what?” thundered the judge.
The doctor laughed grimly.
“I said you made the match.”
“Nonsense! Do you take me for an old woman? The girl made it herself. She’s competent to selecta husband. She’s got high ideals, too. She’ll hold him to account—I can tell you that!”
The doctor mused.
“I wonder if she will?”
“She will! We had a talk the night before the wedding. It touched me, Sam—touched me to the heart! She came down here and sat with me by the fire, and told me how she felt, how absolutely she demanded truth, honor, high purpose. It was young, of course, and girlish, but it was beautiful. She said she couldn’t marry a man who hadn’t the qualities she believed in. She thought Faunce had them all.”
Gerry stopped smoking. He quietly laid down the stump of his cigar, and, leaning forward, his elbows on his knees, gazed thoughtfully into the empty fireplace, for it was too warm now for a fire.
“It’s a pity,” he remarked at last, “that girls have such an amount of imagination. It’s likely to make trouble later on.”
“What d’you mean?” snapped the judge, with a suspicious glance across the table.
The doctor rose.
“Nothing but generalities, Hadley. I’ve got to go now; there’s an old woman down with sciatica, and I’m on my way over to her. You let me know when you hear from Diane.”
The judge watched his friend, his heavy brows down.
“I remember that you were opposed to the marriage. You said something about his not being fit to tie her shoe. What did you mean, Sam?”
The doctor was working himself into his coat. He did it vigorously, flapping his arms up and down until the garment settled into place. Then he hunted for his hat.
“Can’t say what I may have meant. It’s too late now, anyhow. You put your shoulder to the wheel, Hadley, and see that Faunce gets his command. He’s got to make his own way now, or Overton’s big start will wipe him off the slate. You don’t want Diane’s husband sponged out.”
“By Godfrey, it’s his business to survive the sponging! I can’t make him over. I believed in him; this thing’s staggered me, and now it’s up to him to put us all straight. He’ll have to clear himself to me—that’s flat!”
Dr. Gerry shrugged his shoulders and made for the door. The situation was fraught with dangers for him. He could not make a clean breast of it without violating what he would have called his professional honor. He was, in fact, more disturbed than Herford, for he knew more, and he had been unable to find a clue to Overton’s action.
A solution had flashed in on him. Overton loved Diane. Was he shielding her? The doctor, trudging along the country road in the dark, found it impossible to decide, but he was disturbed withthe thought of Diane. Had she found out the truth?
Meanwhile Diane’s father, left alone to his reflections, found the problem too hard to solve. He flung his work aside without even looking at it, too nervous for its dull routine. Going to his book-shelves, he took down one of his favorite classics, a volume of Æschylus. Turning over the leaves, he tried to absorb his mind in the beautiful opening lines of the “Agamemnon,” and to vision with his usual zest the far-off beacon that greeted the watcher at Argos; but the noble words of the great tragedy made no appeal to-night. He tried to submerge his mind in them, but he could not, he could not even read. He found himself staring at the printed page with no more idea of the familiar Greek than a bewildered student in his first effort to unravel Sanskrit.
He recalled the doctor’s cryptic comments and coupled them with Gerry’s previous opposition to Diane’s marriage.
“He’s got something up his sleeve,” the judge decided at last, with a kind of futile anger. “I’d like to know just what it is!”
Then he suddenly remembered Faunce—remembered him as he had sat in the vacant chair opposite, young, graceful, peculiarly charming in manner, with the uplifted look of a young enthusiast. The judge knew that Diane loved him. Why, then, rake up this trouble? Why doubt him?
Judge Herford resumed his determined efforts to read, and began at last to lose himself in the return ofAgamemnon. The evening was so hot that he had left his window open; but a rising wind disturbed him. He got up impatiently, slammed down the sash, and returned to his book.
He had been reading half an hour longer when he heard a carriage stopping at his door, and then a step on the porch outside. It was too late for visitors, and something familiar in the sound made him start up and go himself to answer the bell. He threw open the door and peered out into the night. There was an exclamation that was like a cry, and Diane flew into his arms.
“Oh, papa, make the man bring in my luggage, please, and pay him. I—I can’t bear any more!”
The amazed judge looked over his daughter’s shoulder.
“Where’s Faunce?” he demanded.
But she slipped out of his arms and ran on toward the library. Her father paid the man, who was dragging up the trunk and some bags, and who stared curiously at the judge as he pocketed his fare. Mapleton was small, and Herford knew him—he was Steve Lentz, the son of a local butcher who had gone into the livery business. It would be all over town to-morrow that Diane Faunce had come home alone and in tears.
The judge slammed the door on Steve, the unoffending, and, hot with displeasure, made hisway toward his sanctum. Diane was there, standing in the center of the room. She had torn off her hat and tossed it on the lounge. She stood there, a slender creature in a dark, clinging dress that made her wild face look white, while her eyes shone in the lamplight with a glow that was like a flame. All the pent-up passion of her soul seemed to have leaped up in them, and her lips were shaking like a child’s who had wept until it can weep no more.
The judge came in and shut the door.
“What does this mean?” he demanded. “What’s wrong? Why are you crying?”
“I’m not—I can’t any more!” was her reply, as she pushed the hair back from her temples and pressed her hands against her eyes. “I’m blind with it now. I—oh, papa, how can I tell you?”
“I don’t know what you want to tell. Where’s your husband?”
Diane’s hands dropped at her sides with a helpless gesture, but she held her head up, meeting her father’s eyes with a flash of spirit.
“I’ve left him.”
The judge was silent. He seemed to be dumb with sheer amazement, for he did not move, but stood, as he had entered, near the door, with his eyes fixed on her.
Diane, forced to take the initiative, tried to control herself. She had been passing through a fiery ordeal, and she felt too bruised and brokenin spirit to battle any longer; but she knew that her father was as inexorable as she was. She would have to make it clear to him, to make him see it with her eyes, or he would take sides against her. But she knew that he would not do so if she told him the whole truth. He would feel as she did; there was no other way to feel.
She took a step forward, laid hold of the high back of the chair he had just quitted, and began to speak in a tone that was almost natural:
“Do you remember that night before I was married, when we sat here together, and I told you how I felt?”
He nodded, his eyes still holding hers.
“I told you that the one supreme test of a man, to me, was his honesty, that I—I couldn’t go on as Mabel Gardner did, living with a man I knew to be false. I can’t! It’s—it’s just that, papa, I can’t go on. I had to come home to you!”
“You mean that Faunce is dishonest?” he managed to ask, after another moment of silence.
She caught her breath, her eyes dilating with pain.
“Yes, it’s—it’s worse than that. Oh, papa, how can I tell you?” She held out her arms to him with a cry like a child in pain.
But he held her off with his uplifted hand, still searching her face.
“Is it about Overton?”
“Yes—yes!” She turned and sank down inthe chair, hiding her face in her hands. “I’ll try to tell you,” she went on in a choked voice. “Overton came back; he came up to the Catskills. We went—I didn’t tell you, Arthur didn’t want any letters—we went up to the lodge two weeks ago; you know I had the keys. While we were there, Overton came to see his aunt, who lives near by. We met, and as soon as I saw him I knew that something was wrong. He wouldn’t tell me, but I knew. A woman knows those things about her husband. That night Arthur came home; he had been down in New York, and he went to see Overton. When he came back he told me. He——”
She stopped, choked with her sense of shame. Her father, greatly moved and changed, came slowly across the room and stood beside her, his hand on her shoulder.
“Go on, Diane. I must know it all.”
She stopped and lifted her white face toward his, twisting her handkerchief with frantic hands.
“Papa, I can’t—I can’t tell you all; but Overton and Arthur were alone together. Overton broke his ankle; he couldn’t walk. Arthur took the sledge and the dogs and escaped, leaving Overton in the blizzard, helpless, to freeze to death!”
The judge made no response. He stood looking down at his daughter without the power to reply. She seemed to think he had not understood, and she repeated her story with a kindof agony which showed him that she felt a vicarious participation in her husband’s act.
“He left him—helpless—to die. Overton wasn’t even entirely unconscious; he—he lay there and saw Arthur go!”
The judge could not believe it. Whatever his fears had been, the fact was past belief.
“You must be mistaken; you can’t have understood it all. He must have left him to go for help, and then returned.”
She shook her head.
“I asked him—he never went back until it was too late.”
“Faunce admits this? He told you this himself?”
She nodded; she could not speak. Her father groaned aloud.
“My child—my poor child!”
She looked up at him, saw the grief and anger and sympathy in his face, and her lip quivered pitifully. She tried to speak again, but words utterly failed her, and she flung herself into his arms, weeping dreadfully. The judge clasped her and held her close, stroking her brown hair, tears scalding his own eyes. What had he done! Married his child, his daughter, the pride of his heart, to a coward?
“The rascal!” he said below his breath. “The craven rascal!”
She clung to him sobbing.
“I loved him! Oh, papa, I loved him! It’s—it’s broken my heart!”
He tried to quiet her, but his indignation kept breaking out in angry mutterings and threats against Faunce. Apparently she did not hear them. She was satisfied to feel his arms around her, to be sure that she was safe in that harbor. She only turned her head a little as she nestled closer, clinging to him with hands that still shook.
“I was afraid you’d be angry with me, that you’d want me to—to go back, because he’s—he’s my husband!”
“Go back!” The judge’s pent-up wrath broke out with some of his old thunderous bass. “Go back to that coward? If you did, Di, I’d—I’d go after you and pry you out of his house with a writ of habeas corpus. I’d sooner see you dead than the wife of a coward. I’ll free you, if it takes my last cent to do it!”
She shivered. The assurance was what she wanted. She had craved it for hours; she had prayed for it ever since she ran away from the little mountain house in the dark and stormy night, and braved a midnight journey to come to her father; yet it did not comfort her now. She shook from head to foot, and a feeling of sheer loneliness and desolation—a feeling that might have come to Hagar when she was driven out into the desert—came to her.
She was at home, in her father’s arms, safein the old familiar room. The same warm light shone from the shaded lamp on the multicolored bindings. His old pipe lay on the table, and the old clock that she had loved as a child drummed out the hour; but it could never be the same again. She had passed through an immortal crisis of agony and shame. She could never take up the old life again at the same place, for the subtle change that had taken place in all the relations of that life had dissolved the very foundations of it beneath her feet and left her adrift.