XXVIII
Itwas with a feeling of intense bewilderment that Overton finally left the seminary. Dr. Price had refrained from any reference to Diane, but in his very caution in avoiding the subject there was something that made his visitor more eager to fathom the little dean’s innocent reservations. Fanny, having fired her shot at random, had become as quiet as a mouse, scarcely responding to her father’s efforts to draw her into the conversation; but there was a subtle suggestion of something important, of some tragic climax, in the very atmosphere.
Overton felt it, felt that even his efforts to shield Faunce for Diane’s sake had in some mysterious way been forestalled and stultified. He was aware, too, of Fanny’s watchful eyes, of her air of divination. Hitherto he had looked upon her as a mere child, and had never credited her with much perspicacity. Now he felt a sudden leaning toward her, a vague sympathy that made him look to her for help; but she gave him no help at all, and let him go at last with a limp handshake and a half-reproachful glance, which seemed, to his aroused perception, to express his ownthought that his return was unfortunate and inopportune. Having apparently died, he had no business to come to life again, to the inconvenience and discomfiture of his friends.
As he made his way through the seminary gates and turned westward along the quiet road, he was still possessed with these conflicting impressions. He suffered, too, from a revival of the keener and more poignant feelings that had overwhelmed him when he knew that Diane was not only lost to him, but was the wife of the coward who had left him to perish. He had subdued this suffering once, he had even risen to the heights of self-sacrifice to shield her from the shame of her husband’s exposure; but it was only after he had convinced himself that there had never been any real foundation for his hopes, that Diane had never cared for him.
But now a new and amazing crisis completely reversed the situation, apparently making his sacrifice futile, for he had no reason to shield Faunce unless he did it to save the woman he loved. He recalled Diane’s face, the anguish in her eyes, her gesture that seemed to thrust him away. He had taken these things for a final dismissal, when another man might have seen in them a far more significant revelation. He began to dimly recognize it now.
Staggered as his higher moral sense was by this new turn of his thoughts, his heart leaped upat the change, as if the dark shadow of disappointment had dropped its grisly shape and become a guiding light. He felt, indeed, much like the ancient Cretan mariners when the monster that had terrified them suddenly became a star-crowned god, ready to guide their storm-tossed ship safely into port.
As Overton plodded along, however, his strongest feeling was one of sheer perplexity. It was like entering a fair garden by the way of the front gate and the sloping lawn, and suddenly losing oneself in a labyrinth.
A determination to solve the riddle drove him toward the one person who, he thought, might furnish a clue. If any one could point a way in the maze, it was Dr. Gerry; but, as Overton turned in that direction, a sudden slope in the hill gave him a wider prospect and a far glimpse of the roof and chimneys of Judge Herford’s house. He paused and looked toward it, his eye taking in the exquisite shading of the landscape, the deep blue and orange of the sky, still pulsing with the afterglow, the faint violet line of the distant hills, the nearer stretch of woodland, with here and there a blooming althea showering its pale blossoms against the green, or half veiling the red-tiled roof of some house set low in the dense growth of shrubbery.
The sweet, keen air had in it that subtle fragrance which is summer. Near at hand a robinwhistled with a soft, throaty sound, sweet as Apollo’s lute. Overton let his eyes rest for a moment on the broad, slated roof that sheltered Diane. He had the keenest desire to see her again, to know the worst or the best—which was it?
Had she ceased to love Faunce and left him, shocked by some revelation of his character? Or had his own return—revealing the falsehood of his death—broken her happiness? This thought stirred him with profound emotion, and he turned and went on.
It happened to be the hour at which Dr. Gerry was usually at leisure, and in a few moments Overton found himself following the doctor’s man down the narrow hall to the study door. He remembered the place well—the old striped paper on the walls, and the two or three ancient prints in narrow black frames. They had been there when, as a boy, he had tiptoed reluctantly down the hall to have the doctor look at his tongue and administer some unpalatable dose.
Nothing that he had seen since his return had done so much to recall him to himself, to the familiar surroundings, to the people he had known from boyhood. The horrors of his experience in the antarctic, the nearness of death, and the desertion of Faunce, became unreal. He was at home again!
He was not surprised when the door opened on the old scene—the small, stuffy room, smellingof drugs; the lamp on the table; the doctor, in a flowered dressing-gown and slippers, reading a novel. It had been Gerry’s favorite den since his wife’s death years before, and it was the one place in which he seemed to fit exactly.
As Overton entered, he looked up over his spectacles, took in the big, gaunt lines of his visitor’s figure, and held out a cordial hand. The greeting had in it a moment of intimate feeling. The old man quickly detected the ravages in Overton’s face, and his eyes filled with tears, of which he was immediately ashamed. He bustled about and thrust forward a chair to hide his own emotion.
“Sit down, my boy,” he said bruskly. “Have a cigar? Now tell me all about it. Had a close shave, I know. I was told so a long while ago.”
Overton started with surprise.
“What do you mean?”
“Faunce told me. There’s no use making a secret of it to you, I reckon.”
His visitor gazed at him blankly.
“What possessed him to do that?”
“Conscience, maybe. Personally I should call it nerves. He couldn’t sleep, and he got to the point where he had to speak; he was too pent-up to endure it any longer. It’s the kind of thing doctors and ministers run against occasionally—a sort of almost hysterical desire to get it all out, to make a clean breast of it, and to lighten the loadin that way. It’s about on a par with sending conscience-money to the Treasury.”
Overton slowly lit his cigar.
“I’m amazed! Faunce said nothing about this when we talked together the other night. I wonder if he’s told any one else!”
The doctor shook his head with a dry laugh.
“Not a bit of it. He kept still and married Diane Herford. I advised him against it, I tried to stop it, but he wouldn’t listen. The result has been just what I expected.”
“You mean——”
“She’s found it all out and left him.”
The hand that held the cigar shook so badly that Overton quietly lowered it out of sight.
“I knew she’d left him,” he said huskily. “Fanny Price just told me.”
“Oh, yes, the judge isn’t making a secret of her home-coming. He consented to hush up the rest—about Faunce, I mean—until he sees you. There’s no need, is there, to make the scandal any worse? How do things stand? Are you going to expose him?”
Overton shook his head.
“I thought we had come to an agreement about that—to save his wife; but I can’t understand why he told her. It changes everything. Meanwhile, I’ve refused the command of the new expedition and urged them to retain Faunce.”
“So as to bolster him up for her sake?” thedoctor mused. “That’s like you, Simon, but she’ll know that, too, and it’ll only make her think more of you. I’m afraid the cat’s out of the bag to stay!”
Overton turned troubled eyes upon him.
“Why in the world did it come off? Who let it be? She never should have married him!”
The doctor picked up an old stump of a pencil from his table and began to whittle it to a fine point.
“For one thing, I think she was a little in love with him. He’s very handsome, and has a way that wins with women. Then the judge was set on it. He believed that Faunce was going to be a great man, cut on your pattern, you see——”
Overton interrupted him in a tone of sharp impatience.
“I’m not great!”
“Well, we’ll let it go at that, anyway. Diane has imagination, and she married Faunce; now, her imagination being rudely shocked into realities, she’s left him. The judge is frantic. He’s seen his son-in-law to-day, and Faunce tells him he’ll offer no opposition to a divorce. That means that Diane ought to be free before a great while.”
Overton jumped up and began to walk about excitedly.
“It’s incredible—I happen to know that he loves her!”
Gerry nodded.
“Just so! If he didn’t love her, he’d refuse to let her go. It’s the supreme test, isn’t it?”
Overton was apparently deaf to this; his mind was absorbed with his own problems.
“It was an agreement—I understood it as an agreement—that nothing should be said. I’ve hushed up Asher. He was the one who might have known that I couldn’t have been even near death when Faunce left me. It never occurred to me—never—that he’d tell her! It’s—it’s incredible!”
“No, it isn’t. I know the man. He’s crazed with remorse. He was probably glad to be relieved from his secret. The thing has preyed on him, and weighed him down like a yoke on his shoulders. He was glad to get it off, I’ll wager!”
“He had no right to consider himself,” Overton broke out. “She was the only one to be considered.”
The doctor sank back in his chair musingly.
“I think he’s considered her in the best way at last. She had to know. What was wrong was not telling her at first; but he’s willing to right it, and he has righted it as far as he could, by confessing. The judge is bent on freeing her, and she’ll be free in a few months. That’s the only way out of it, except death.”
Overton came back to the chair opposite and sat down. He was strongly moved. Nothing that Gerry had said had taken much hold upon him butthe bare fact that Diane would be wonderfully set free again. It seemed to restore the old order of things, to put him back where he had been before she told him that she was married. His heart leaped up in a new and keen desire for happiness. Then he became aware of the doctor’s voice.
“It’s just as well you let him go in your place. It’ll hush up scandal, and make people think the separation is only a lovers’ quarrel. The question is, can you keep it quiet? Won’t these Englishmen tell the story?”
“They don’t know much of it; I’ve thought of that. I took some measures, too, as soon as—as I knew.”
“That he’d married Diane?”
Overton assented without looking up.
“It’s strange to me—strange and perplexing,” Dr. Gerry remarked thoughtfully. “I knew when I first saw him that he had something on his mind. Then I discovered that he tramped all night—some of the boys thought he was a spook! He was taking chloral to make him sleep. I guess he’s taking it still. One night he came in here and told me.”
Overton took up another cigar and lit it mechanically, without seeming to be aware of what he did.
“I hated him for it at first. I kept seeing him go off through the snow with the sledge and thedogs; but afterward—I couldn’t blame him altogether. It was a question of being willing to die with me, I suppose, and I had no right to ask it. Yet, at the time, numb as I was, it amazed me, for I had thought he was fond of me.”
“He was. It was one of those curious cases where a man is seized with panic. It may be as much physical as moral. Practically speaking, he had lost his mind. He was of no more use than a frightened child. When he first told me, I thought it was one of the most cowardly things I’d ever heard of; but he’s suffered for it—he’s suffered the tortures of the damned!”
Overton was silent. He did not say he pitied Faunce. In fact, he was grimly recalling that terrific moment when he had been abandoned to die. Like Faunce, he visioned the polar wastes, and, unlike Faunce, he felt the drowsy approach of a frozen death again steal over him.
“I suppose there’s no reason,” he said, hesitating, “why I shouldn’t go to see Judge Herford?”
“You’re the best judge of that.”
Overton looked up.
“I see no reason why I shouldn’t, unless—unless you think she—she would rather I didn’t go.”
A quizzical light showed in the doctor’s eyes.
“Are you still in love with her, my son? Are you going there to—help matters along?”
“I’m still in love with her,” Overton replied,coloring deeply. “I told her so when we met. That’s the worst of it! I had no idea she was married; and she let me know she didn’t care for me.”
“Because she was married?”
Overton thought deeply.
“I’m afraid it was because she couldn’t.”
“Then I should think you have no reason to stay away—if the judge wants to see you.”
“I want to see him, but I want to see her more—that’s the truth! It’s an infatuation, of course—without excuse, too. She let me know that when I saw her in the mountains.”
The doctor sat up in his chair.
“She saw you just before she left him?”
“Yes.”
The two men looked at each other for a moment, and the older one smiled grimly.
“Then it seems to me that you can cry quits with Faunce,” Dr. Gerry said. “You’ve hurt him nearly as badly as he hurt you. You’ve made his wife see the truth about him.”
“You know I should scorn to do that!”
“You couldn’t help it. You can tell her all about it after the divorce.”
“I don’t see what you mean!”
The doctor smiled enigmatically this time.
“The judge is so angry that he’ll probably blazon the whole story out anyway, and ruin Faunce.”
Overton rose abruptly to his feet.
“That won’t do! It’s useless. Besides, it would be like—like vengeance on my part, as if I had come home to ruin him.”
“You can’t shoulder the blame of it; you’ve nothing to do with the judge.”
“I’ve got this much to do—I’ve come back!”
The old man eyed him thoughtfully.
“I see! You’re taking up the load because you were disobliging enough to live to contradict Faunce. That’s a new way to look at it, my son!”
Overton glanced kindly at the old doctor. The familiar address fell pleasantly on his ear, for at the moment he felt peculiarly desolate.
“It’s the only way to shield her. I’ve got it arranged; but I shall have to see the judge.”
The doctor nodded.
“That’s right—I advise you to see him. He’s as hard to manage as a bull in a china-shop—always was; but you’re right, it’ll shield her. As for Arthur Faunce—well, he’s paying!”
“He’s paying—what?”
Overton stopped with his hand on the door, looking back at the old figure in the armchair.
“The piper!” The doctor laid down his pipe. “He’s paying with his heart’s blood, Simon, and I don’t know that he can do anything more than that. It’s the way some men pay a debt of honor, isn’t it?”
“Brave men!”
Gerry nodded his head slowly.
“Of course, he’s a coward,” he admitted slowly. “Judge Herford calls him a damned coward.”
“I don’t intend to bring up that subject. I’m simply going to ask the judge to let matters stand as I’ve fixed them. Faunce keeps the command and the story—my story is never known.”
“You’re going to tell him that you give up the command to Faunce?”
“Of course!”
“That’s right, my boy, that’s right; but Faunce is giving up Diane.”
Overton, aware of something at work in the back of the old man’s mind, looked at him curiously.
“I don’t see what you’re driving at.”
The doctor got up and went down the hall to the front door with Overton, one arm flung affectionately across the younger man’s shoulders.
“I’m not driving at anything, Simon. I was weighing it—that’s all. You were immeasurably ahead of him in the race when you forgave him and gave up the command to shield him; but now, when he’s ready to give his wife her freedom—well, he’s almost caught up with you, hasn’t he? As I said, my boy, it’s his heart’s blood, and he’s offering it as bravely as a brave man might. Let’s give the devil his due—he’s paying up!”