Part 5

“About this time he began to get like Rayburn--out of his head. I suppose his leg pained him, and he was exhausted. The wind kept howling over the ice, and the cold had frozen straight through my clothing. It seemed to be in my bones, it numbed my very soul. I had no feeling except the desire to live, to escape! But I felt that I was going--going the way Rayburn had gone, the way Overton was surely going. I could feel a kind of madness creeping into my blood. I began to be afraid of death. There was nothing there but blinding ice and snow and the screech of the wind. It sounded as if the Furies were let loose. Once I thought I saw figures in the distance, that help was near; but it was the mirage, and I fancied I was going crazy. I saw, too, that Overton was failing fast. It came over me then that I should die, too, like that! We had to stop to rest the dogs, and I gave him the last pull out of my flask; but he lay in a stupor in the snow. The dogs began to howl. I was born in the country, and I’ve heard it said, when I was a boy, that a dog’s howl meant death. It made me furious, and I remember that I struck at the poor brutes. The cold was fiendish. I could scarcely breathe the freezing air. Overton became unconscious, and didn’t answer me.”

For a moment Faunce stopped, breathing hard.

“I was seized with a sickening fear,” he went on. “I shook--not with cold, but with terror. I tried to lift him on the sled again, but I was no longer strong enough, and it terrified me still more to find that my strength was failing. He was as helpless as a log of wood, and I heard the howl of the rising gale. If I stayed there, in twelve hours, in less than twelve hours, I should be like him, or worse! I couldn’t face it; it wasn’t human to face it!”

Faunce stopped again, and then went on in a monotonous voice:

“I didn’t look at him again. I got on the sled and made the dogs drag me away. I had to whip them; they didn’t want to leave him. We went a long way before we struck the trail, and as we did so another storm, worse than the first, broke; but the dugout was in sight, the men saw us, and I was saved.”

“And you left Overton out there--alone--in that waste--_alive_?”

“Yes!”

X

THERE was a terrible pause. For a moment a breathless silence seemed to prevail, both outside the house and inside. Then they heard the wind leap up and come howling back, rattling the windows. Faunce began to talk again with a dry throat:

“He was dying. If I had stayed, I should have died, too. I tell you I couldn’t stand it! A mortal terror had seized me, and I simply couldn’t stand up against it. I had to go!”

The doctor leaned forward in his chair, his eyes fixed on his visitor, but he did not interrupt. He was, in fact, at the moment too much astonished to speak.

“I asked you, a while ago, if you had ever been afraid of death,” Faunce went on. “It wasn’t a fair question. You couldn’t answer it, because you’ve never faced a death like that. I had never been a coward before, but it seized me then--fear, naked, hideous fear! It ground me and tore me. I tell you I couldn’t resist it. I--I had to go!” he repeated again.

“You left him; you got to the cache,” Dr. Gerry managed to say at last; “and then you and the men returned--you must have returned--to find his body!”

“Yes, I went back--oh, God!” Faunce shrank with a gesture of horror. “Why do you ask me? Of course, we went back as soon as we could. But what did we find? Drifted snow-banks, ice--ice--ice! There was no trace of the body--he lay deep down in that awful waste!”

The doctor had pulled himself still farther forward in his chair, peering at the younger man curiously.

“Do you think you found the place?”

Faunce swept the thing from him with a gesture that expressed almost physical pain.

“I--I’ve sometimes feared we didn’t, that I had forgotten. There couldn’t be any track, you know; but--he was dead!” He paused again, still breathing hard. Then he turned a haggard look on his auditor. “You’re a doctor; you can help me; you can tell me the truth,” he pleaded in an altered voice. “Answer me--does it take long to freeze to death?”

“Not long--in such a case.”

“He wasn’t conscious--I know he wasn’t conscious; he didn’t know when I went!” Faunce protested, as if the fact of Overton’s numbness to his desertion established an excuse. “When that terrible storm broke, there wasn’t a hope of saving him. We barely saved ourselves. I told the others to come with me to find the body. We found no trace!”

Faunce’s voice broke at last, and he hid his face in his hands. Without comment, the doctor leaned back in his chair again and gazed at him.

There was another pause, and then Gerry rose hastily and left the room, apparently on some urgent errand. When he returned, after an interval of several minutes, he brought a large, flat book with him. He found his visitor as he had expected, still sitting before the fire. Faunce had picked up the poker, and was idly adjusting a fallen log, as if he had at least partially recovered from his emotion; but the vacant expression in his eyes betrayed his total self-absorption. The doctor came to a chair opposite, and, opening the book he had brought, pointed to a rough map or diagram showing the progress of the Overton expedition.

“Now, tell me where you left him.”

Dropping the poker, Faunce leaned over and put his finger on the page.

“About there, as near as I can tell you.”

“Beyond hope of rescue?”

“Absolutely.”

The doctor closed the book.

“You knew he loved Diane Herford?”

“I had supposed so; he never told me.”

“Well, he did; and it’s fair to assume that she cared for him. He was the kind of a man a woman would care for. But you left him there and came back to ask her to marry you?”

Faunce flushed, and then broke out resentfully:

“I love her!”

The old man leaned back in his chair with a strange grimace, as if a nauseous draft had been offered to him and he had refused to taste it. Faunce, turning at the moment, saw the doctor’s expression, and it kindled his anger again.

“I told you that I love her, that I wouldn’t give her up if Overton came back from the dead!”

“You knew he couldn’t come back,” retorted the doctor. “You saw to that!”

Faunce stared at him in blank dismay.

“My God, do you think I killed him? Do you imagine that?”

“There are some fine shades, then, between abandoning him to die and actually killing him?”

“I’m not a murderer!”

Dr. Gerry laughed bitterly.

“I may be a coward,” Faunce pursued with rising passion, “but I’m no murderer! I swear to you, on my soul, that I never thought of Diane there. I never thought of anything but flight. It was a kind of madness. If it had been my brother, I should have had to do the same thing. I was mad, mad with fear!”

The doctor uttered an inarticulate sound, stooped, and, seizing the tongs, picked up a smoking log that had rolled out to the fender and pitched it back into the fire. The physical action seemed to relieve the tension of his feelings. He settled back in his chair and waited for Faunce to go on with his confession.

Dr. Gerry’s view of the tragedy seemed to have destroyed some remaining stronghold in the younger man’s mind. Faunce kept reiterating his protest in one form or another.

“Listen--I’m not a murderer! If I had killed him, I never should have returned here.”

“Oh, yes, you would! Ninety-nine men out of a hundred return to the scene of their crimes.”

“But I tell you I didn’t hurt a hair of his head! It was a choice between his life and mine, and I left him. It might not even have been a choice, for we should both have perished. If I had stayed, I should have died with him. It would have been heroic--but I didn’t. How many men would?”

“Did he leave Rayburn?”

Faunce reddened.

“No. He had a kind of bull-headed obstinacy--he would stay.”

“Ah! You tried to dissuade him?”

“I told him that we were risking all three lives, instead of one, by staying.”

“But he stayed?”

“He offered to stay alone. I stayed with him.”

“Had you the means to leave him? How about the dog-train?”

“We were short--one of the dogs had died; but the madness hadn’t seized me then. I helped him to the last. We were together when we buried Rayburn.”

“I remember you paid a tribute to his friendship when we were talking with Judge Herford. Do you think he would have left you?”

Faunce lifted his head at that, staring off into space with an unseeing look, his hands twitching nervously.

“No!” he said at last, hoarsely. “No, I can’t say so. He was a brave man, and I--is there any way of escaping a seizure like that? I’m ashamed of it. I’ve suffered horribly; but I--I have a horrible feeling that I might do it again, if I had to face it like that. I couldn’t have stood up to a fight. You--did you suspect me when you told that story of the soldier in the Philippines?”

The doctor was sitting with the tips of his fingers nicely fitted together. He seemed, at the moment, to be deeply engaged with them.

“I can’t say I did. I don’t think I had ever imagined just your situation, though I saw that you had something weighing on your mind.”

“It has nearly driven me mad! I can’t tell you why I did it. I obeyed an impulse, a madness. If I hadn’t we should both be down there now. My staying wouldn’t have saved him. You see how it was? You understand?”

“I understand that you obeyed a pretty universal instinct of self-preservation.”

“That was it!” cried Faunce eagerly. “It was an impulse. I wanted to live--God knows I wanted to live! I was willing to fight to live!”

The doctor nodded, silently watching him with a kind of curiosity that suggested a naturalist’s minute interest in a noisome insect.

“I wanted to live,” Faunce repeated. “It didn’t seem to be wrong to want to save myself.”

“Does it seem so now?”

Faunce raised a haggard face.

“It’s no longer a question of right or wrong with me. It’s no longer a question of life or death. I’m haunted!”

Gerry gave him a keen glance.

“I see--it has reached a point that’s worse than staying behind to die?”

Faunce rose and began to walk the floor again. The lamp on the table had nearly burned out, and the corners of the room were gloomy. The odd bits of pottery and an old skull--brought from some ancient excavations--gleamed uncannily in the shadows. The doctor, before the fire, refused to look in his direction now, and Faunce came back at last with a cry of desperation.

“It haunts me!” he repeated with a smothered groan. “I’ve told you in hope that I could exorcise the demon. I had to tell you! When I sleep I dream of it; when I’m awake I can still see it--that frozen waste and--Overton!”

Gerry nodded his head thoughtfully.

“It’s killing me!” Faunce went on. “I can’t sleep naturally. I’ve increased the dose, but I can’t sleep long. Look at my hands now!”

As he held them out, they were shaking like the hands of a palsy patient. Dr. Gerry eyed them; then he looked up keenly into the haggard face and wild eyes.

“And you’ve just asked a young girl to marry you!”

Faunce was silent. The older man’s tone was tinged with a contempt that stung him. He seemed to rally his forces, to pull himself together.

“I was a fool to tell you all this--a fool! It got hold of me--I don’t know what I’m doing when it gets hold of me. I came here to ask for something to make me sleep, and I’ve--I’ve stripped my soul naked!”

He was shaking again. The doctor rose and put his hand on the younger man’s shoulder.

“Go over there and lie down on the lounge. I’ll give you something. If you don’t sleep, you’ll presently go to a madhouse. Lie down!”

Faunce stared, at first unyieldingly; but he was exhausted, and long hours of sleeplessness had wrecked his nerves. He turned without a word and threw himself on the lounge, burying his head in his arms. A smothered sob shook him from head to foot.

The doctor, measuring out a dose and approaching him, touched his shoulder sharply. Faunce groaned.

“My God!” he cried wildly. “Why did I do it? Why did I do it?”

The doctor bent down and held the glass to his lips.

“Drink this!” he commanded sharply.

Faunce looked up with glazed eyes, took the cup, and swallowed the narcotic. For a long while afterward he lay there, tossing restlessly. Once or twice he uttered a hoarse exclamation, of which Gerry took no notice.

The doctor sat by the fire, feeding it and listening. After a while he heard the sound of heavy and measured breathing. The narcotic had done its work--the tortured man slept.

Gerry rose quietly, extinguished the lamp, and pulled aside the curtains. It was morning. The storm had passed, and the earth lay under a white mantle. Every tree and every branch bore its feathery burden of snow. Through an exquisite lacework of sparkling ice he could see the wonder of a magnificent sky, still pink with sunrise.

He turned back and looked at the sleeper on the lounge. Faunce lay with one arm above his head, the other across his breast, an elaborate seal-ring on one of the white fingers. His face was slightly flushed, and the beauty of his regular features and fine head had never been more keenly revealed. He might easily pose as a hero of romance. He had all the outer attributes--physical strength, unusual beauty of features, and grace of manner--and he had won distinction by his service in the antarctic.

The doctor turned with a gesture of bewilderment and started to go up-stairs. As he did so, he heard some one at the door. Concluding that it must be an early patient, or perhaps a more or less urgent call, he went back, and, shutting the door of his study, locked Faunce in. Then he went himself to answer the ring.

On his door-step, muffled in furs, radiant and sparkling, stood Diane Herford. The doctor was guilty of a start of surprise. She saw it and smiled.

“The storm has torn down the wires, and I couldn’t phone,” she explained. “I want you to come over to breakfast. Papa’s not so well.”

He was aware of a feeling that was almost panic. Nothing on earth could be worse than that she should suspect Arthur Faunce’s state at that moment.

“I can’t come over to breakfast, Di,” he replied gruffly, drawing her out of the frosty air into the little entry. “What’s wrong with the judge? He was better yesterday.”

“He got excited and tried to do too much. He’s all bent over, and you know how he hates that. You’ve really got to come!”

She was standing in the hall, almost leaning against the study door, her dark furs enhancing the beauty of her bright skin and the charm of her eyes.

“I’ll come over presently. Put a hot-water bag on his back,” advised the doctor, with a haunting subconsciousness of the man on the lounge.

“Oh, but I want you to come to breakfast!” she argued. “Why can’t you come?”

He pretended to be angry.

“Why can’t I? I’ve been up all night, my girl, and I want my own way this morning?”

She commiserated him.

“I’m so sorry--what a shame! Of course you must rest. Papa isn’t really so ill, only I--I”--she hesitated with a charming smile--“I’ve got something to tell you!”

He turned a searching look on her.

“Yes?”

“I’m engaged to be married.”

She paused, waiting for him to guess her _fiancé_; but he remained obstinately silent.

“To Arthur Faunce,” she told him.

The doctor forced himself to hold out both hands to meet hers.

“You want me to congratulate you?” he demanded bruskly. “I sha’n’t! I’m going to congratulate him, instead. That’s the way to look at it.”

She laughed.

“Papa’s pleased, and I’m so glad that he is! But I won’t keep you from your rest now. Come over to lunch, instead of breakfast.”

She moved toward the door, her eyes smiling at him. There was something about her that seemed, to the doctor, not wholly happy. There was a tremulous note in her voice, and her eyes were too bright. They were at the door, and he suddenly laid his fatherly hand on her shoulder.

“Diane, do you love him? Are you following your heart?”

She did not answer immediately. Her gaze dwelt on the wide, snowy landscape before them. Then she looked up, and an exquisite blush softened her face.

“Yes,” she replied slowly, but with an engaging candor. “I couldn’t marry for any reason but that. I--I’m following my heart.”

XI

DIANE left Dr. Gerry’s house with a feeling that something had happened there--something apart from the commonplace fact that the overworked physician had been up all night. There had been a hint of it in the doctor’s face as he stood in the doorway watching her departure, his shrewd old eyes peering at her from behind his spectacles, while his close-shut lips seemed to be withholding something.

She wished that he had spoken out, that he had said a little more than the usual things that are said to a newly engaged girl. She did not know that if he could have told her anything, if it had not been part of the code of his profession to keep silence, her very admission of love for Faunce would have made it an impossibility for him to speak. His lips could never have framed the words that must destroy her happiness. To him she was still a child, and he could never have wilfully wounded a child.

The mysterious something in his face, however, had arrested her flow of spirits and checked the joy with which she had set out. As she turned to make her way back in an almost untrodden sheet of snow, the brilliant sparkle of sunshine on the frozen crust dazzled her sight so much that she stopped for a moment and pressed her gloved hands over her eyes to shut it out. Then she walked on rapidly, feeling the crisp cold, and aware that nothing had traveled that road before her but the milk-wagon, which had left deep ruts in the snow.

The atmosphere was translucently brilliant. It sparkled and scintillated, cutting out clear outlines and sharp shadows. Beyond the wide slope of the snow a long, dark line of woodland formed a background against the intense blue of the sky. On either hand the houses, large and old, were set well back from the road, with an independent detachment that gave an impression of stately indifference to the passer-by. But Diane knew that they had never been indifferent to her. She was Judge Herford’s daughter, and she had shown herself more than worthy of certain social traditions that had made her family an important one in the county and the State.

Some members of it, indeed, had achieved international distinction, and it had been rather expected that the beautiful daughter of a distinguished lawyer would make a brilliant marriage. It could scarcely be said that she was doing this in marrying Arthur Faunce; but there was a glamour about the young explorer, a prophecy of still greater achievement, that made him perhaps the most picturesque figure of the day. It was not this notoriety, however, nor even the promise of his success, that had won Diane. It was some subtler, more complex influence that had swayed her mind, while her heart had been touched at first by the very bond that had made him Overton’s comrade and the heir of Overton’s greatness.

As she walked homeward along the frozen road, she was trying to collect her thoughts, to bring herself fairly face to face with this new crisis in her life, to find the real key to that sudden emotion which had swept her into the arms of Faunce.

As she had looked about her in the brilliant morning, on her way to Dr. Gerry’s, she had felt so sure of her love that she could allow herself to dwell on the memory of Overton as something at once beautiful and sacred, but remote. She had told herself that he had never been an actual lover, only a figure that her girlish imagination had clothed in those attributes. He had left her free, and she had a right to suppose that he would not have greatly cared if she married a man who loved her so much that he had told her he could never be happy without her. She knew, of course, that such a declaration was exaggerated; yet she could feel the positiveness of Faunce’s actual devotion, as she had felt the charm of his good looks and his winning ways.

But now, as she slowly and soberly returned, with the chilly memory of Dr. Gerry’s face, she began to question herself a little. She wondered if she had indeed followed her heart so faithfully, or had only yielded to a love that had touched her very deeply at a moment when she felt solitary and bereaved.

Her eyes followed the long, unbroken reaches of snow until they rested on the dark-blue line of the distant water. As she sensed the intense cold and saw the sparkle of ice, her mind went back to the polar wastes, and she found her eyes filling with tears as she thought of the man who had fallen exhausted and alone. The face of Overton, so unlike the face of Faunce, rose before her. The strong, irregular features, the clear, dark-blue eyes under the straight, slightly frowning brows, the decisive mouth and chin--how well she remembered them! Though they lacked Faunce’s classic beauty, they possessed an absolute assurance of strength and repose.

Where the more facile and graceful Faunce would break or yield, Overton had exemplified those granite qualities of soul and body that belong by right to the leaders of men. He would always be that to her, Diane thought pensively as she walked more slowly, prolonging her return journey. He would always be a splendid figure at the horizon of her imagination.

If he had not loved her--and perhaps he had not, after all--she could think of him more openly, sure that Faunce would understand. For Faunce had loved him, too. It was that, she remembered with a thrill of relief; it was that which had drawn them together. She could still hear the touching tone in Arthur’s fine voice when he paid his tribute to Overton that first night at the dinner, which seemed now so long ago.

“The best friend man ever had!”

How it had touched her sore heart then; how it touched her now! How beautifully he had accepted the fact that she had cared for Overton first; how splendidly he had shown himself above the meanness of jealousy of the dead!

She was glad that she had told him. Some girls would have been silent when there had been no actual engagement; but she could not deceive a man who loved her as Arthur Faunce did. When she gave him her heart, she gave him the right to know that she had loved Overton first. Yet did he, could he, really understand how much--how very much--it had mattered to her? In the midst of her walk Diane stopped short.

“What am I doing?” she cried to herself. “What am I doing? I’ve just promised to marry one man, and--and I’m crying out here in broad daylight over another!”

“But you told him, you warned him!” replied an inner voice. “You have a right to go on feeling just the same as you did before.”

“But I’ve no right to marry Faunce if I love another man more!” she cried again, arguing with the unseen ego.

Then, in the rustle of the wind in the bare trees, and the crash of ice falling from their boughs, she seemed to hear an answer--a sublime voice that reassured her. Overton was dead. He was only a dim and glorious presence now. He had entered that sphere where they neither marry nor are given in marriage; how could it matter to him what she did?

She went on, quickening her steps, trying to reassure herself. She recalled Faunce, the warm certainty of his affection, the nearness of his presence. She told herself that she was happy, that she was right, that she had followed her heart.

XII

THAT assurance remained with her later on, when she and the judge sat down to a slightly belated breakfast. It had so far tranquilized her mood that she could chat with him across the table about Dr. Gerry’s sleepless night and the storm, while she poured out his coffee and put in the requisite amount of sugar and cream with a firm and graceful hand.

“I saw two telegraph-poles down,” she said. “The drifts have completely filled the hollow below Skerry’s Hill.”

The judge looked up sharply from his breakfast.