Part 15

“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 happiness for 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 loved him; 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.

XXXII

IN a tumult of feeling deeper and more complex than ever, Diane made her way through a meadow that furnished a short cut to her own door. She was vaguely aware that the grass was long, and that she was getting drenched nearly to her knees, when she saw, in a half-conscious way, a cluster of asters blooming happily just at the spot where a lowered fence-rail made it possible for her to scramble into the end of her father’s garden.

She was scarcely conscious of what she did, and she had a new feeling of guilt. Until now she had felt that she was as supremely in the right as Faunce was supremely in the wrong; but the whole attitude of her mind was breaking down. She felt a tremor of fear, though even at that moment she could not have told what it was she feared.

Shaken as she was, she tried to let herself in without attracting attention, for she had as little courage as ever for an interview with the judge. However, she was not to escape. He heard the rear door open, and, looking out of his library, espied her at the foot of the stairs.

“Is that you, my child?” he said in the deep bass that always presaged something important. “Come in here a moment before you go up-stairs. I have something to tell you.”

She turned reluctantly and followed him into the old room, which was so full of memories that it made her shiver. Her father resumed his seat by the table, but she remained standing just inside the door, where a bit of sunshine from the window touched the edge of her wet skirt, but left her face in shadow. The judge mounted his spectacles and looked over some papers, refreshing his memory.

“My dear, of course we’ll employ counsel; you know that! I’ve just got a letter from Holt and Hickson, which seems satisfactory on the whole. Mr. Hickson--he’s the junior partner--advises us to wait until the expedition sails. He’s seen Faunce, and, as far as he can ascertain, there’ll be no opposition. Faunce has modified his first assurance to me a little, but I suppose we’ll have to expect that--to expect changes and vacillations in a man like him!”

Diane tried to steady her voice.

“What did he say--I mean, what does he say now, papa?”

The judge consulted the letter again.

“He told Hickson that it depended upon you. He has the greatest faith in you, and won’t oppose divorce if you ask it; but he wants you to ask it in writing. It’s absurd--knowing, as he does, that you’ve left him; but he seems determined, so Hickson says, to know just what you want. Of course, if that is really all he wants to know, it’s easy. You can make a statement here; I’ll have it typed and witnessed, and Hickson can let him see it.”

“And if I didn’t want to write anything, what would happen then?”

Her father looked up in amazement.

“Not want to write anything? Of course you do! The sooner you’re free of that--that coward the better. That’s what I called you in for. You can decide just what you want to say, and I’ll have it prepared for your signature.”

She lifted her head at that, looking at him, a singular expression on her face.

“But that’s just it. I--I can’t! You see, I don’t know what I want to say at all.”

Her father suppressed an exclamation of impatience.

“I should think you’d know well enough! You’ve got to say something, or else let it go, and after a while he’ll sue you for desertion; but no one knows how long it would take him to get his courage screwed up to that. I wish”--the judge let his hand fall heavily on the papers before him--“I wish we had a clean case against him to sue on at once.”

“You mean--we haven’t any case?”

He frowned.

“We’ve got case enough, in one way; but against you--well, he’s done nothing against you but to dare to marry you, knowing what a coward he was!”

Diane continued to look at him, her eyes dilating a little, but she was silent. The judge, aware of it, looked up and encountered her expression. He pulled off his spectacles and gazed at her steadily.

“What’s the matter, Di? You look ill--I’ll have to send for Gerry.”

“Oh, no! It’s nothing but the scent of those tuberoses on the table--it’s so strong, it makes me feel faint.”

She moved away as she spoke and put herself a little out of the range of his vision. The judge took the glass of tuberoses and set it on the window-ledge.

“I thought you had a craze for all kinds of weeds. This thing has been too much for you; that’s what’s the matter.”

“No, no!” she gasped weakly. “I’m strong enough to stand a great deal more than this. I----” She hesitated, beginning to walk about on the other side of the room, her figure outlined against the rich bookbindings, but her face still in shadow. “Papa, what would you say if I--if I decided to go back to my husband?”

There was a sharp little pause before the judge’s bass boomed across the table.

“I’d disown you! A woman that could go back to such a coward wouldn’t deserve recognition.”

She laughed hysterically.

“But I married him!”

“You didn’t know it, did you?”

“You know I didn’t.”

“Nor did I!” The judge controlled his anger. “I beg your pardon, Di, for my share in it. Gerry thinks I helped make the match. If I did, I’ll help unmake it. I’ll have a statement drawn up for you, and you’ll only need to sign it. I should hate to feel the marriage was my fault.”

“It’s no one’s fault--unless it’s mine. I--I had no right to think I loved him if--if I didn’t!”

“You didn’t--that’s it, my child. Mistakes like that make half the marriages. I’ve seen enough of it in my day, and I don’t mean to have your life ruined at the start. You’re getting hysterical, that’s all. I’ll see that you get out of it and have a chance to make your life over. You can trust me for that, my girl!”

“But if--if I shouldn’t feel that I wanted to--to have you do it, papa?”

He turned sharply.

“What’s the matter? Have you seen that fellow?”

“My husband? Oh, no, no!” Her face flushed painfully. “I don’t believe he wants to see me after the way I left him.”

The judge started to retort, but hesitated and reflected. He had been on the point of telling her that Faunce did want to see her, but he thought better of it.

“It was enough to cure him--I’ll admit that, my dear,” he finally replied.

Diane moved to the nearest cabinet, and lifting a little jar of ancient pottery, began to examine it as if she had never seen it before.

“Do you think that any one--that any woman who’s been through what I’ve been through can start over again!”

“Of course she can! Why not? A man can fail and fall, for that matter, and then get up and start fresh.”

“Oh, but that’s different; the man’s not the question. I’m a woman. It’s not the same thing at all!”

“You’re getting back now to the fundamental question--the double standard of morals. It’s not relevant. You’re not doing anything immoral to refuse to live with a coward.”

“I didn’t even stop to think!” she cried. “When he told me what he’d done, I”--she shuddered--“I couldn’t stay!”

“Of course you couldn’t! What’s more, I won’t let you go back to him. You understand that, Di? You’re nervous and broken down, and he may try to persuade you, but I’ll never let you go back!”

“But if--if I went, papa?”

He struck his hand down on the table.

“Understand me. If you went I’d never speak to you again as long as I lived! Don’t you see what he did? He wasn’t only a coward; he would have been Overton’s murderer if the English party hadn’t come along. It was a miracle that saved Overton; Faunce as good as left him purposely to die.”

“Yet”--she spoke with an effort--“yet Overton doesn’t blame him as you do. He tries to excuse him.”

“You’ve seen Overton?”

“Ye-es; just now. I met him on the way home,” she stammered.

A look of relief softened the judge’s face. He rose from his chair and, crossing the room, took his daughter in his arms.

“My child, you’re half sick! You’ve worried too much. Don’t talk in this way again. You know you long to be free.”

His softened tone disarmed her again. She clung to him, trembling, tears in her eyes.

“Oh, I do--I do!” she sobbed. “I long to be my old self again!”

The judge gathered her up in his arms, as he had often gathered her up as a child, and carried her up-stairs to her room. He put her on the lounge and covered her up; then he went down, and sent the old maid servant up with a cup of hot tea. It was the only thing he could think of that seemed to fill the peculiar demands of a case like this--a case which, to his mind, was nothing but hysteria. Then he set himself to framing the reply to Faunce that Diane was to sign.

He had made up his mind to settle her affairs for her. He was convinced now that she loved Overton. Sternly as he might have viewed such a case where others were involved, he could see only one side of it for his own daughter--her right, the inalienable right of youth and love, to happiness. He did not permit the finer and more ethical questions to disturb his fixed determination to wrest her from the craven who had been capable of a crime as near to murder as anything short of actual killing could be. Indeed, to his own stalwart mind, it was even worse than murder.

Meanwhile Diane, up-stairs in her own room, drank the hot tea, and permitted the maid to help her with some dry clothing; but she was still shaking like a person who had been suddenly smitten with ague. All the while she seemed to see, through a mist shot with golden rain-drops, the face of Overton, transfigured with his love for her. She wrung her hands together and hid her face in them, oblivious of the pitying eyes of the old servant who had come to take away the tea-things.

She was still sitting there, with her head in her hands, when she heard her father leave the library and go out, and knew herself to be alone in the house. She breathed more freely when she was not in immediate danger of being rushed into some new and terrible decision--a decision that might make her as wretched as that other one which had led to her marriage. She rose weakly from the lounge and went down-stairs.

It was now late afternoon, and the sun had come out with extraordinary splendor. It was flooding the western windows and dappling the lawn with a lovely lacework of rain-gemmed cobwebs that sparkled like frosted fairy veils.

Diane went slowly across the hall, and saw the evening mail lying on the little table in the corner. It recalled with a sharp pang the days long ago when she had looked there in vain for a letter from Overton, then on his way to the south pole. There were some letters there now, however, and she turned them over and started violently when she recognized her husband’s handwriting on an envelope addressed to her.

For a moment she leaned forward, her hands on the table, unable to make up her mind to open it. The aversion she had felt at his confession swept back over her in wave on wave of futile passion and shame. Then she took up the letter and, opening it, moved to the window to read more clearly the few lines that he had written in an unsteady hand:

Your father told me you wanted a divorce, Diane, and now his lawyers insist upon it; but it’s hard for me to believe it of you. I know how you felt when you left me, but now--I’ve done nothing against you, and I trusted you to help me to do better things. I ask you to come back, I entreat you to come; but I’ll never try to force you. I have told them that you must answer me yourself. If you don’t, I shall refuse to let it go on, for I love you still. I will not take an answer from any one but you. If you still ask it, I will set you free. But even then I shall love you.

The letter fell from Diane’s hand and fluttered to the floor. She could see him as he had looked that night in the cottage; she could hear his voice making the confession. The letter was like him. It seemed to fall short; it had not even the courage of his love; and yet she knew he loved her. His very weakness in this hour, when he so needed strength, touched her woman’s heart. Her abhorrence of his deed had clouded her own perception of his misery, but now, in a flash, she saw it. It was as great as hers.

She was still standing there, her head bowed, when she heard steps on the piazza and her father’s latch-key in the door. He came in, bringing with him a young man whom Diane recognized as the village notary. She stooped quickly, picked up her husband’s letter, and stood, holding it behind her, as they entered.

The judge looked at her gravely, unable to discern her expression as she stood with her back to the light.

“That paper’s ready, Diane,” he said briefly, “and Mr. Mackay’s come with me to witness it. All we need now, my dear, is your signature.”

Diane turned and acknowledged the young man’s bow with a deep blush. She felt that all the world now knew of her flight from her husband.

The judge went to the library door and opened it, young Mackay waiting at a respectful distance. Diane did not move, and her father looked around.

“Are you ready, my child?” he demanded sharply.

She hesitated an instant, and then turned and followed him into the room.

He went to his table and spread out a type-written sheet, dipping his pen in the ink, and holding it ready in one hand, as he pulled out a chair for Diane with the other.

“Read that, my dear,” he said briefly, “and then sign here.”

His daughter came slowly over to the table and sank into the chair he offered, drawing the paper toward her. The powerful sunshine in the room seemed to flood the document with light, and she could read it at a glance. It was a brief reply to her husband’s demands and a plain statement of her determination to sue for divorce at once.

She read it, aware of the impatient hand at her elbow clenching the pen, and of young Mackay opposite. From the time when she read her husband’s letter until now she had acted mechanically, scarcely conscious of what was going on around her; and she was only half aware of the curiosity and concern in young Mackay’s eyes. She read the paper slowly through, and then, drawing a long breath, she took the pen from her father’s hand.

He spoke sharply to the witness:

“Come over here and see her sign it, John!”

The notary obeyed, and they both stood waiting, their eyes on Diane; but she did not sign the paper. She rose suddenly, turning a white face toward her father.

“I--I’m sorry, papa, but I really can’t sign it!”

As she spoke she looked up, encountered the amazement and fury and repudiation in his eyes, and swayed under it--but only for a moment. She steadied herself, and, turning back again with a gesture of finality, laid the pen down on the table.

XXXIII

FIVE minutes 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 gesture of 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!