XXXIII
Fiveminutes later the judge had closed the door behind the young notary, and stood alone in the hall. He had shut the door sharply, with almost a bang, but now he stood—with his hand still on the knob—thinking. His first fury against his daughter was scarcely subsiding, it had gained force in those moments of mortification—when he had to dismiss the young man whom he had brought to witness her signature—and now it rose in a hot wave of anger against her and against Faunce. He suspected that Faunce had written to her, he was trying to drag the poor girl back against her will. And she—Diane Herford, his own daughter—had not the force of character to resist that craven!
The judge turned with a black brow and tramped back to the library door.
“Diane,” he said in a voice of thunder, “what do you mean by this?”
She was still standing beside the table, in fact she was clinging to the edge of it, and her face was deathly pale. She did not move, she did not even raise her eyes, and her father, still enraged, became alarmed.
“Did you hear me?” he shouted. “What is it, Diane, are you ill? Are you mad?”
At that she turned her head, and slowly and reluctantly lifted her eyes to his.
“I think I’ve been mad, father,” she replied in a low voice, “mad and wicked.”
The judge came into the room, he moved over to get a nearer look at her, peering across the table—where the paper still lay, with the pen flung across the face of it, a mute witness of her indecision, or her change of heart. Diane did not meet his eyes this time, she averted her face and her lips trembled.
“You’re ill, that’s what ails you!” her father exclaimed sharply. “I was a fool not to see it, you’re too hysterical to sign this paper to-day, I”—he stamped over to the telephone—“I’ll call up Gerry. I ought to have done it before——”
She stopped him. “Papa!”
He swung around at the sound of her voice, and, for an instant, they looked at each other. She was trembling, but a little color came back into her face.
“I’m not ill,” she said slowly, with an effort, “and I’m not mad now. I’m sorry, papa, I can’t sign it because——” she stopped, her eyes fell, the color rose softly from chin to brow, her whole face seemed transformed and softened and strangely beautiful—“because it would be wrong for me to sign it.”
His eyes sparkled with anger. “Wrong for you to sign it? Do you mean to tell me that I—your father—would ask you to do anything wrong?”
“No, no! You don’t understand—I—I can’t tell you, papa, I can’t tell any one—just what I feel. It’s something a woman can’t tell—I mean she can’t make any one else understand the change that comes into her heart and her soul when she’s been tried—as I’ve been tried!”
“Pshaw! Any fool could understand it—you’re hysterical!”
Diane gave him a strange look, a look that was not only appealing, it was mystical and remote, it seemed to the angry old man that his daughter’s soul was withdrawing itself into some shadowy region, as obscure to his robust mind as the mists and the snows that had enveloped the fatal delinquency of her husband. But the suspicion that had shot through his mind at the door, came back now with sudden and convincing force.
“That fellow’s been writing to you!” he exclaimed, “he’s been trying to make you come back!”
Diane, full of the fresh consciousness of Arthur’s letter, averted her eyes.
“Yes, he’s written me,” she confessed simply; “he has a right to do that, he’s—my husband.”
The judge gave utterance to an inarticulate sound. He was, in reality, choking with anger.
Diane saw it; she felt an almost intolerable longing to escape, to be alone to order her thoughts, but she could not bear to incur her father’s anger, he had been so good to her! She had fled to him in her darkest hour and he had sheltered her. She hated to offend him, she stood irresolute, unable to voice her thoughts.
Meanwhile, the old man swallowed the lump in his throat.
“I knew it!” he exclaimed bitterly. “He’s been trading on your pity, on your woman’s heart—confound him! Di, you want to be free, you’ve said so—why did you mortify me just now? You made that boy think I was trying to force you to sign a paper against your will. You made a fool of your father because that—that coward’s been begging off!”
“No, no!” she cried sharply, “it wasn’t that—he’s said nothing cowardly, papa, nothing that—that he shouldn’t say to his wife. It is I—I have changed, I——” she stopped, breathing quickly, and then she added more quietly: “you know what I said, papa—what would you do if I went back to my husband?”
The judge stood looking at her for a long time in silence, his face flushing darkly. Then he broke out with passion.
“I’ve told you that, too! I’d disown you.”
She put her hand to her side with a quick gestureof pain, and all the soft color left her face, even her lips grew white.
“Do you mean that?”
The judge, still regarding her with smouldering eyes, bent his head slowly.
“I do. I told you so before I got Mackay. I mean it! What did that fellow write you, what did he say, to make my daughter behave like this?”
She stood her ground firmly now, though she was still very pale.
“It wasn’t Arthur’s letter, it was—something else.”
“What else?”
The judge’s words snapped like a whip; his rage against Faunce was deepening to fury now. It was too much to see the power that coward had to make his daughter wretched. He meant to break it, he would break it, but first—he must break Diane’s will, he saw that!
“I told you I had seen Overton,” she replied slowly, speaking with an effort, as if the words were painful. “It was Overton—who made me see it all, see it so plainly that I couldn’t think why I’d—I’d ever been blind!”
“Overton?” the judge was bewildered. “Why, the man’s in love with you, Di!”
She bent her head at that, tears in her eyes.
“I know it,” she spoke so low that her words were almost inaudible, “that’s why I—I saw it all so plainly. I’m not that kind of a woman!”
“What kind of a woman? What do you mean?” cried the judge with impatience.
“The kind of woman who leaves her husband to go with another man.”
“Good Lord!” cried the judge furiously, “you came to me! It’s not your fault if Overton kept on loving you, is it? You haven’t run away with Overton, have you?”
“If I signed that paper it—it would be almost the same thing!”
He scowled at her, trying to think, seeing at last one side of the question which was not his side.
“You mean you left Faunce because you loved Overton?”
“No!” she cried sharply. “But he loves me, he wants me free. If—if I signed that paper it would be as if I wanted to be free to—to marry him!”
For the second time that day, the judge thought that he saw the light; he softened his tone.
“You do love Overton, Di, and you think it’s wrong, so your idea is to make a martyr of yourself, to refuse a divorce?”
Suddenly her face quivered; an emotion stronger and deeper than any that he had ever seen in her before, shook her from head to foot.
“Oh,” she cried brokenly, “don’t ask me, papa, I—I can’t make you understand, you—you’re a man, you can’t! I—I wish I had a—a mother!”she sobbed, covering her face with her hands.
The judge was profoundly touched. He felt that his girl was ill in body and mind, and he had driven her too hard, he had tried to force her to act before she was ready, he had seemed to fling her into the arms of her lover. That cry for her mother—he had never heard her utter it before, it reached his heart. He went over to her quickly and took her in his arms.
“I’ve been too hasty, my child,” he said kindly. “You must rest—then we’ll talk it over. You——” he hesitated before he added grimly: “I know how you feel, but you’re not to blame. Overton has always loved you. It’s not his fault now, it’s not yours. If you can’t live with your husband you’ve got a right to be free, and I’m going to set you free. You leave it to me, Diane!”
This time his tenderness did not disarm her, she did not yield to his caress, instead she gave him a strange look, a look that was full of sadness, and slipped quietly out of his arms.
“I—I feel tired,” she said in her low voice, “I can’t argue now, papa, I——” she turned suddenly and lifted her face to his and kissed him—“I’m going up to my room to—to think!”
He stood watching her, taken by surprise. She was walking slowly, almost unsteadily, toward the door and he saw that she was weeping. Something in the way in which she had parted from him, something, too, in the whole attitude of herfigure, alarmed him. He called to her sharply.
“Diane!”
She stopped at the door and looked back, her face colorless again, and tears in her eyes.
“Understand me,” said the judge sternly, “I’ve told you before. There’s but one thing for you to do—or for me to do for you. To get free of that coward. If you’re dreaming of going back, if he’s worked on you to go back—remember! I’ll disown you.”
His tone, more than his words, sent a chill to her heart, but she said nothing. She only gave him a look so full of a mute appeal, and that mysticism, that withdrawal, which had so perplexed him a moment ago, that he could not fathom her purpose. Then, without a word, she turned slowly and left the room and he heard her step—still slow but more resolute—ascending the stairs.
He was sorry that he had been so sharp with her, he began to perceive that the trouble had gone deeper than he thought. Or that man, Faunce, had worked upon her—the judge’s choler rose up in his throat again and nearly choked him. He sat down at his table and tried twice to write a letter to Faunce, a letter that should be a quietus, and then, thinking better of it, he tore the sheets into fragments and tossed them into his waste-paper basket.
Meanwhile, Diane, having reached her own room, locked the door with shaking hands. Itseemed to her that she had spent all her strength in this conflict of wills, that it had cost her much to resist her father. And yet——?
She recalled the moment when she had lifted the pen, when she had almost signed that paper, with a shudder. It was true that the whole attitude of her mind had broken down. She had seen herself on the brink of separation from her husband because of Overton!
She stood now, just inside her own door, motionless, her unseeing eyes fixed on the window opposite. The long swaying bough of a tree swept across her vision of the sky, and it seemed to her that the leaves trembled and quivered as if some unseen hand had set them to shaking, as an unseen power had set her own heart to trembling at the thought of her own act. Had she fled from her husband—not because she abhorred his deed, but because she loved Overton? The thought was hideous, unbelievable!
Diane lifted her hot hands and pressed them against her eyes, to shut out the light. In the darkness she could think. She tried to recall all the old arguments that had seemed so plausible, that Faunce himself had destroyed her faith in him, that he had hurled her idol down from its pedestal. But she could not; she began to see that there was no argument that she could use to wholly excuse her act. Faunce had confessed to her, he had told her the truth, it was his plea formercy, for forgiveness, and she had only thought of Overton. But now, in the solitude of her own room, in this moment when even her father had failed her, she felt her spiritual isolation. There was no one on earth who could help her solve the problem of life that confronted her but the man she had married. The bond was unbroken, neither her will, nor the cribbling of lawyers could break it, for a power greater than these had laid hold of her soul. She felt again the strength of it, the invisible power that wrestled with her.
She walked slowly across her room again to the window and knelt down, resting her hands on the sill, and looking out toward the western sky. The sun had set and above the red cloud at the horizon she discerned a solitary star, keen and white and quivering, a spearhead of glory. She lifted her face toward it, the soft wind stirring the tendrils of hair on her white forehead, and touching her feverish cheeks and lips.
Gradually, silently, with infinite beauty, the afterglow touched the soft sky with all the colors of rose and violet, and the earth below sank gently and deeply into the shadow, as if it had dropped from sight. It seemed to Diane that, in that silence, in the tenderness, the infinite beauty of that moment between sunset and twilight, the spiritual struggle ceased. A new thought came to her, or rather her inner consciousness shaped itself into a concrete form. She realized that shestood on the edge of an abyss while the power that had held her back had been within her own soul, hidden deep in her heart, at the mainspring of life itself. She was a woman, it was her province to build up and not to break down, she saw it now with a spiritual insight that sent a shudder through her—she had so nearly forgotten it! So nearly failed to fulfill the destiny that had come down to her through the ages. To-day when she had been with Overton, when she had heard his impassioned plea, when she had almost signed the paper that was to separate her from her husband, she had suddenly awakened from her dream. The tie that bound her to Arthur Faunce was the primitive bond of all the ages. She had chosen him, he was her husband. What could her father do? What could Overton, or any other man do? “Those whom God hath joined together,” the words came to her with a new meaning, a meaning which shook her to her soul. For surely no man could put them asunder! The tie was too deep, it was rooted now in her heart, and she knew it. It was as deep as the instinct which was awakening slowly but surely within her, the primal instinct of life, of mating time, of the birds of the air, of the lioness calling to her mate in the jungle.
Diane lifted her eyes slowly and steadily toward that keen star. It seemed to her that it penetrated the mists that had obscured her soul, as the starof old which guided the wise men to the cradle in the manger. The star was guiding her, too, guiding her into the tender mists and the soft glory of an unknown but beautiful land. Tenderness was born in her at last, a tenderness new and beautiful—as the beginnings of life in the springtime, the budding of flowers, and the song of the bird to its mate. Alone on her knees in the twilight, Diane lifted her soul to that distant star, the thought of Overton passed away from her, the struggle ceased, even her father and his anger were forgotten, she remembered only her husband, and the eternal purposes of the Creator who had made them man and woman in the Garden of Eden.