XXXI
Itseemed to Diane that her emotion, like the storm, had nearly spent itself, and the few fresh rain-drops that fell on her face helped to cool its feverishness, just as a sudden revival of pride and strength helped to quiet the tumult within.
Torn by conflicting emotions, she had stretched out blindly for guidance—or, at least, for some sort of sympathy that would steady her purpose and point a way in the maze. Fanny had furnished it, not so much by what she had said as by what she left unsaid; and Diane felt the sting of mortification at her own weakness. She had gone out like a mendicant asking the alms of sympathy, and she had received not bread, but a stone.
Suddenly, too, she perceived a fact that had long been only a vague idea in the back of her mind. Fanny had been fond of Faunce! She saw it plainly now, with a passionate feeling of rebellion. If love awaited him elsewhere, why had fate delivered him into her hands? It was all confused, all at cross-purposes.
If he had married Fanny, there would, perhaps, have been no question of his confession. Fanny would have helped him where she had failed. Thatwas the cruelty of it—a cruelty that involved him as well as herself. Why had he been so blind? she cried angrily to herself. Why had he passed Fanny by to pursue her? If he had only left her alone—
She stopped short and stood still. Again she saw herself going over the edge of the abyss. She tried to steady herself, to find the guiding light, the lamp to show her the way out.
Then, just at the very moment when she was least able to endure it, least able to battle any longer, she saw Overton himself just ahead of her. He was walking fast. As he turned he caught sight of her, and, swinging around, came rapidly toward her, his face as white as hers was red with embarrassment.
As he drew nearer, she stopped, more because she did not know what else to do than from any wish to see him. Her first impulse, indeed, had been one of flight, and she suspended it only because, in the hedged lane, there was no convenient way to flee. Something of what she felt—her trepidation, which almost amounted to sheer fright—showed in her eyes and her reluctant attitude, and he saw it. He halted a few yards away and stood looking at her.
“You don’t wish to see me?”
The note of pain in his voice sent a thrill of answering pain through her heart. Unconsciously she held out her hand.
“I do—only it’s hard—after all I’ve been told!”
Her broken words touched him deeply. He realized that she felt a vicarious share in her husband’s guilt toward him, and he caught her hand in both of his.
“He should never have told you. I tried to save you that!” he exclaimed.
She drew her hand gently away.
“You did wrong, then. He was right to tell me—I had to know.”
“But why?”
He had turned with her, and they walked on through the light rain. She looked up, her mind clearing.
“It was wrong of you to urge silence on him. If he’s ever to be anything, he mustn’t be silent. A thing like that must be confessed and atoned for. Besides, he knew that I should know in the end. I couldn’t help it. I’ve felt that there was something wrong, something terrible behind it all!”
“And it has made you wretched—I see that. Why can’t you forget it? I should never have come back. It’s I who have ruined your happiness.”
“Oh, no, no! Think how infinitely worse it would have been if you had perished and I had known too late that he—that he had left you! I couldn’t have borne that.”
The passion of her tone moved him again, andfor a moment he did not reply. He was keenly aware of her presence at his side, her delicate profile against the light mist that was rising like vapor about them, the curve of her brow and the oval of her pale cheek under the dusky sweep of the brown hair that waved upward under her wide hat, the meticulous simplicity of her dark dress, her grace and slightness.
She seemed so young, so girlish, and she was facing a situation so tragic and humiliating! Overton was himself a proud man, and he felt her humiliation, felt that he must lighten it.
“I’ve wanted to speak to you about this,” he managed to say at last. “You mustn’t think that he did something do unpardonable. It isn’t unpardonable to any one who’s ever been at the pole. No man has a right to expect too much from his fellows there, and”—he hesitated—“when a man drops behind, why, he’s got to perish. The stakes are too great, the price too much, to lose all for one life. I fell in my tracks, and it’s only fair to him to think that I should have stayed where I dropped. The expedition couldn’t be imperiled just for me. I wasn’t worth so much. He did what—well, what nine out of ten would have done in his place.”
She stopped and faced him, her large eyes dark with emotion.
“Did you leave Rayburn?”
He flushed under her eyes.
“That was different. Faunce was with me—there were three of us. It was different, of course.”
“I can’t see the difference.”
“It was different, though. Besides, there was no blizzard impending. In my case the storm made it doubly perilous to stay.”
“It made the going worse!” she retorted in a hard voice.
He turned his head, and their eyes met; he felt almost as keen a shame as if he, and not Faunce, had done this thing. He saw that to her it was unpardonable. She would never see any reason or excuse for it. If she had loved her husband, then Overton’s return had wrecked her life.
“I’ve made you wretched!” he exclaimed with profound emotion. “It’s come to me again and again, since my return, that it must be dreadful for a man to come back from the dead. When we die—or people think we’re dead—our places close over our graves; there’s no niche left for us any more. To come back is to disrupt the tranquillity of the life that’s begun to flow in new courses over the surface of the grave. That’s what I’ve done—I’ve come back and wrecked your happiness!”
She shook her head vehemently, tears rising in her eyes.
“No, I never had it. I know now I only imagined. I never had any happiness at all!”
“Diane!”
Her cry had gone to his heart. It was more than he could bear. He caught her hands in his again and held them.
“Don’t say that, for I can’t bear it—no man who loved you could bear to hear you say that!”
She did not answer him, but stood still, her hand quivering in his grasp. They were alone under the trees, and the sun, breaking suddenly through the clouds again, illumined the moist atmosphere until it seemed shot with golden motes.
“I’ve no right to say it,” he went on passionately; “but I’m human, and I can’t keep silence! Diane, I’d rather have died down there in the ice and snow, where he left me, than to have come back to lose you!”
Still she said nothing, but her head drooped, and she could no longer look up. She knew now why she had left her husband. Her whole subconscious being cried out:
“It was this—this! You loved this man, and not your husband!”
“I’ve always loved you, Diane!” he went on madly. The restraint he had set on himself had broken, and nothing now could stem the current of his emotion. “I loved you before I went away, but I wasn’t sure of you; I didn’t dare to risk too much. Diane, if I had spoken then, would you have listened, would all this have been saved?”
She broke down herself.
“Don’t ask me—don’t—it’s no use! It’s done—don’t you see it’s no use to ask me now?”
“It’s not done, if you’ve left him! Your father says you’ve left him. If you have, if you’re going to be free, Diane, it’s not wrong for me to speak. I can’t be silent; I’m human. I’m as bad as he is—I’m worse, for you’re his wife. But I——” He stopped, and then went on in a low voice: “Will you answer me, Diane, just one word. Did you then—before I went away—did you care?”
She looked up into his face and saw it transfigured with deep emotion—the face of the man she loved, for whom she had left her husband. She was trembling, but his eyes held hers, and she yielded.
“Yes!” she sobbed below her breath.
They swayed toward each other in the golden mist, he holding her hands in a grip that thrilled with passionate hope.
“Diane, my love!” he cried.
If she heard him, she did not answer, though she closed her eyes and her lips moved. He seemed to feel, through the impalpable veil between their two souls, that hers was struggling away from his and trying to rise by its own agony to a supreme height of renunciation. But he would not let her go.
“Then—then, if you cared once, you care—you must care again. I can’t have you speak as you did just now—about there being no happinessfor you. I can’t bear that, for I’d give all that I have, the best that’s in me, to make you happy. Speak to me! It’s not wrong—I know what you think, but it’s not wrong if you’re going to begin life over again. It’s not wrong for me to try to win you again, to make you happy!”
With a sudden effort she dragged her hands from his and moved on blindly, hurrying away from him.
“Don’t!” she sobbed. “Don’t make it worse. It’s all wrong; I know it; I see it; I—I left him because——”
He had caught up with her now and walked beside her, as pale as she was.
“Because what? Tell me; I must know; I have a right to know!”
She staggered again; her hand going to her throat with a strange little gesture, as if she felt strangled.
“Because I loved you! I see it now—and it’s wicked. I hadn’t any right to judge him, for I was worse than he was. It’s one of those things that make it wrong, Simon—that make it wrong even to have cared once!”
“No, it’s not wrong! We’ll get you free. He—I’ll say it now, Diane—he had no right to marry you!”
“I was the one who did wrong—as much as he did,” she managed to say. “I—I thought I lovedhim; I told him I loved him. I must have. If I didn’t, I—I could never have married him!”
“But you were mistaken! That’s common; it happens often. You were mistaken—you didn’t love him!”
She stopped again, and the misty sunlight illumined her face until it appeared to him to have a purity as luminous and fragile as an alabaster lamp. Her spirit, tried beyond endurance, seemed to be shining through it, darkening her eyes and softening her lips.
“Oh, I’m not sure!” she cried. “Don’t you see how I feel? There are two roads, and I stand at the crossing. I’m bewildered; I can’t see; I can only feel——”
“But I know!” he returned with profound emotion. “I know! My love is strong enough to find the way for us both. It’s not wrong to love you, for you’ve given him up!”
For a moment, as she clung to him, he felt the slight weight of her body against him, the fragrance of her hair upon his cheek. Then she had slipped out of his arms and left him alone in the mist.