Part 7

Faunce liked it He liked its air of dignity behind trim hedgerows, its embowered vines, and the wide-spread branches of the elm before the door. He went up the path with the feeling that here, at last, there were peace and security for him.

He found Diane in the library, bending over some sewing, which she put away as he entered. She laughed softly as he bent to kiss her.

“You mustn’t come so often,” she chided, “if you want me to be ready two months from now!”

He held her, looking down into her eyes.

“I want it sooner! Diane, the ship is ready. Can’t we be married in two weeks?”

She did not reply. Instead, her eyes sank under his, and he felt a quiver run through her. He thought of Overton again, with a pang of jealousy, and tightened his hold.

“Diane, you’ll say yes? I must go, but I can’t go without you. You--you’re not going to refuse?” he pleaded urgently, clasping her with one arm, while with his other hand he lifted one of hers and pressed it fervently against his cheek.

She did not withdraw her hand, but he felt that it lay cold and still in his clasp. She was a long time in replying.

“Of course you’ll go, Arthur, but--not so soon! I couldn’t go so soon! It seems too horribly hasty, as if I were in such a hurry to get married that I couldn’t wait for any kind of dignity and ceremony!”

“It’s I who am in a hurry,” he rejoined quickly. “My darling, I can’t feel secure! I keep thinking that you don’t really love me, and that you’ll slip off and leave me at the eleventh hour.”

She laughed softly, a little tenderly. The warmth of his affection seemed to enfold her in such a new security that she could not understand what seemed to be, on his part, a haunting fear.

“I’m not like that, Arthur. I’ve always tried to be rather a loyal person, dear; but I don’t like haste--in weddings!”

“But you must in ours,” he pleaded. “The ship can sail so much sooner. I mean that it shall never sail without you, Diane! You don’t want to make me more unhappy than I am?”

She withdrew herself a little from his embrace, looking up into his face with serious eyes.

“Are you unhappy?” Then something that she saw there moved her deeply. “Arthur, you’re not well! What’s wrong? Tell me!”

He hesitated; then he thought of using her evident anxiety to further his purpose.

“I’m sick for the sea, dear, and to be off again--finishing the work. Every day of delay tells on me; but I vow I sha’n’t go without you!”

She looked at him then, a light in her eyes, the charm of her face, so delicate, so elusive, lending it a peculiar softness and glow.

“I don’t want you to go without me; but you must give me a little time. Why, Arthur, I was working on wedding-finery when you came in!” she admitted with a shy little laugh, glancing at the mass of fluff and lace in the basket beside her.

“You don’t need it. You’re too charming for finery. Diane”--he caught her hands again and drew her, half resisting, toward him--“make it Wednesday at the latest!”

She shook her head.

“Shocking! I couldn’t!”

Then something in his look, in the troubled, handsome face bending toward her, swept away her scruples. If she meant to marry him at all, why quibble for delay, why beg off? She softened, and he read her yielding in her eyes.

“Wednesday?” he repeated eagerly.

“Wednesday week,” she corrected.

Nor could he coax her to advance that day. She declared that she was ashamed of such haste. They might as well run away and be done with it!

“That would be heavenly--no fuss, no feathers! I’m ready. Will you come, Diane? There’s a parson across the road!”

She smiled absently, her eyes still on his face.

“Arthur, you’re not well, or you’re worried,” she declared irrelevantly. “Won’t you tell me? I can see that there’s something on your mind.”

He was startled, and reddened under her look.

“There’s nothing on my mind now, except Wednesday week!” he protested steadily. “That’s far enough off to weigh upon me, isn’t it?”

She shook her head, not altogether reassured. She began to feel vaguely that there was something between them, an impenetrable veil which seemed to screen his inner self, and that not even the love which he protested with such passion could dispel that impalpable reserve; but a certain pride in her kept her from pursuing her questions, and she let the matter drop.

XV

IN the hastened preparations for the wedding, Fanny Price came over to give her help. She and Diane directed the cards of invitation, and sorted out and arranged the presents that were to be displayed to the few intimates who could now witness the ceremony.

“You certainly have some lovely things,” was Fanny’s comment; “but it’s strange, isn’t it, the way people’s minds seem to run to oyster-forks? You’ve got eighteen dozen.”

Diane laughed.

“At least I can serve oysters! Here’s a beautiful fish-knife and fork, too. Perhaps they connect us with things from the sea because Arthur’s going to sail so soon!”

“I should think you were going to marry Neptune. Here are some fish-plates!”

“They ought to have added something especially for the expedition!”

Fanny occupied herself in arranging the silver.

“Aren’t you a little afraid of it, Diane? The thought of that frozen solitude frightens me. I’ve no courage!”

Diane made no immediate reply, and Fanny, giving her a sidelong look, discovered that she had stopped work and was looking out of the window with an absent air, her face quite colorless. The girl’s heart beat fast with a sensation almost of anger. She was sure, with her keen, girlish insight into such things, that at the moment Diane was thinking, not of Faunce, but of Overton.

Fanny’s heart leaped up in defense of her hero. She remembered him at her own fireside, with no eyes, no thought, for any one except Diane. She made a deliberate tinkle in spreading out more spoons and ladles.

“I should think he would hate to go. I’m sure he does, at heart--because of Overton,” she said a little sharply. “He loved Overton so much that I know he’ll feel it when he follows again in the same trail. He can’t help it!”

Diane turned slowly and resumed her own task of undoing endless packages.

“I thought, at first, he wouldn’t go,” she admitted quietly in a colorless voice; “but then something seemed to draw him back. I suppose it’s the lure of the pole. And I--I felt he had to go to finish the work.”

“But it wasn’t his work!”

“You mean----”

“It’s Overton’s. When he’s done it, he won’t get the credit of it. It’ll be finishing the work of Overton’s expedition, won’t it?”

“I--I suppose it will, in a way.”

Fanny laid down some teaspoons.

“You’ve got thirty-six dozen spoons and two soup-ladles. Yes, it’ll be finishing Overton’s work.” She looked up and met Diane’s eyes squarely. “Is that why you wanted him to go?”

Diane colored deeply, working hard at the knotted ribbon on another bundle.

“I hadn’t thought of it in that way, Fanny. I wanted Arthur Faunce to be something more than a--a second in the expedition. When a man is as great as Overton was, he overshadows everything.”

“I don’t see how you can feel that way when Mr. Faunce is so great himself. I don’t believe you really see it as it is, Di!”

“Oh, yes, I do! But then it wouldn’t do for me to say so much, would it?”

Fanny reflected.

“I think I should, if I were you,” she replied stubbornly.

Diane smiled.

“There’s one thing I’ve always loved in you, Fanny, and that’s your loyalty to your friends.”

“Oh, I get that from papa. It’s inherited, and hasn’t any original virtue. I’ve always said that papa would stick up for Satan himself if he happened to be an old acquaintance!”

It gave Diane a feeling of relief to laugh.

“I’m so glad,” she remarked, after a pause, which they spent in arranging the gifts, “that it’s your father who is going to marry us, Fan! I should hate to have a stranger do it. It seems to bring us all so close together, because I know your father loves us.”

“He loves you,” retorted Fanny with unconscious emphasis. “Diane, do you ever think about your father? What will he do when you’re away? Sometimes it seems so strange that we younger ones go off and make our lives as if they hadn’t mothered and fathered us so long.”

“It’s like birds going out of the nest, isn’t it, Fanny? I suppose it’s the law of life--what the scientists call evolution. But I do think of father. I hate to leave him. I shouldn’t leave him, if I didn’t know he would be well cared for. You know old Martha understands just how to cook for him. She knows what he likes better than I do--better, I think, than mama used to know; and old Henry takes care of him as faithfully as Dr. Gerry does. Besides, you’re all so near. It seems to me as if he would be better off. Arthur and I are going into a new land--a land of mist and mirage. I feel”--she was looking across at Fanny without seeming to see her--“that I am indeed setting out on a long journey. I’m taking with me the man who loves me; but I’m not sure--I’m not at all sure what’s beyond the soft, impalpable cloud that hangs like a veil just above the open sea of my dreams!”

Fanny was silent. After a moment Diane turned and went on with her work; but, as she picked up another package, she added in a more natural tone:

“Why don’t you answer me, Fan? Don’t you understand?”

“Yes, I think I do; but if I were you, I’m certain that I should know. I mean, if I were going to marry the man I loved, I’d be sure that the sun was shining behind that cloud!”

Diane slowly and carefully unwrapped the tissue that enclosed an ancient Venetian vase. It was a beautiful thing in design and workmanship, but she made no comment on its perfection as she set it carefully down on the table.

“But I’m not sure,” she confessed softly.

Fanny had now reached the limit of her endurance, and her silence left Diane free to pursue her own train of thought. It was this, perhaps, which led her, later on, to her talk with her father.

XVI

IT was the night before her wedding, and the judge, after a long day of busy arrangements, which had included a settlement of business matters with Faunce, at last found himself at rest in the old armchair beside his study fire. He had been too occupied and too ambitious to forward the fortunes of his future son-in-law to feel that the moment was drawing nearer and nearer when he must give up his daughter; but now, alone at his own fireside, he remembered that, and was amazed at the rush of keen regret that softened his mood.

Diane was very dear to him. He had been a busy man, a man beset with cares and ambitions, but the girl, who had come to him instead of the son for whom he had prayed, held a warm place in his heart. He would miss her--he confessed that to himself, with a kind of pride in his own tenderness. He had, indeed, planned to keep her near him, to set his son-in-law on the path that he had already made a beaten track to political success; but Diane herself had held Faunce to his infatuation--she was actually leading him in this wild venture in the antarctic seas.

Vaguely, but with a certain pride of blood, Judge Herford began to recognize the instinct of race in her. She had sprung from a long line of adventurers on sea and land. A Herford had been with Sir Francis Drake; a Herford had fought at Marston Moor; a Herford had followed the star of empire westward across wintry seas and founded the family fortunes in the colonies. The judge himself had retrieved the losses of his father and his grandfather, and now, in his strong middle age, saw himself nearly at the top rung of the ladder he had set himself to climb. He could afford to take the future in an easier frame of mind, to slacken his gait a little, but he had lacked a son to follow in his footsteps. His fancy, fixing itself on Faunce, on the brilliant promise that seemed to dawn in the young man’s career, began to build new castles in the air.

He felt a certain satisfaction in knowing that he had furthered Arthur Faunce’s fortunes, and had been a factor in the making of the marriage that was to take place on the morrow. Faunce was neither so famous nor so wealthy as the judge could have wished, but he was young, able, and already surrounded with the heroic halo of his hardships and his services to science and his country.

In a recent public address an eminent man had said that America was proud of mothering such sons as Overton and Faunce. That Arthur was placed second seemed, after all, a graceful tribute to the dead, and Faunce had succeeded now to the full leadership in place of Overton. On the whole, the judge felt satisfied and even happy. Thoughts of tenderness and regret added only a gentler shading to a mood that might otherwise have been too unctuous and self-satisfied.

His friends, too, had sustained his judgment; all but Dr. Gerry. He was aware that Gerry challenged it; but he remembered, with a reminiscent smile, that Gerry had always been a “crank.” It was not to be supposed that any one so eminently human and young as Faunce could please the crusty old doctor.

“He’s too healthy,” the judge had declared, laughing.

“Oh, is he?” the doctor flung back, and muttered his objections. “Let him go, Hadley! He isn’t fit to tie Diane’s shoe. Send her to a convent!”

There had been more, in the doctor’s most pessimistic vein; but, when challenged for a real objection, he refused to state his views. The matter had dropped at last, and only Diane noticed that the old man sent no wedding-gift. The judge had brushed Gerry’s opposition aside as he now brushed aside his own tenderness.

He sat back comfortably in his chair, filling the big bowl of his favorite pipe. He was just lighting it when he heard a rustle in the hall, and Diane stood on the threshold, a slight figure in a floating gown of flowered silk, her long hair unbound and shadowing her face.

The judge looked around at her, a smile in his judicial eyes.

“It’s twelve o’clock, Di. You’ll certainly see the dawn of your wedding-day, at this rate!”

“I couldn’t sleep, papa, so I came to sit with you a while.”

He made room for her to bring a low seat to the fire by his side. With a new paternal aspect, he laid his arm gently around her shoulders.

“I was just thinking of you, Di, and of Arthur. I wish I’d had my way and put him into politics.”

“So that we should be near you? I should have loved that, of course; but we’ll come back. I don’t want him in politics, ever!”

“And why not, miss? If it’s good enough for your dad, it should be good enough for your husband, eh?”

She shook her head.

“I don’t think I can make you understand. You’re--you’re different!”

“Humph! Not so valuable, perhaps?”

She laughed softly; then her face sobered.

“You’ve stood like granite, papa, in the midst of all the storm. You were made to be among the captains and the shouting. It’s fine--it has been fine to see you. I’ve always been proud of you, and I’ve heard men say that they were proud of you. Don’t you remember Governor Belt? He told me that you were a wonder, that not a muckraker living could fling ill-report at you! But Arthur? It seems to me that as he stands to-day--young and unsoiled and on the verge of great adventure--he’s at his best; he’ll be always at his best. If you pull him back into the turmoil of the city and State, fling him into politics, he won’t be the same. He won’t stand as you do, like a rock; he would bend and yield. It might spoil him, spoil the fineness in him.”

“My child, if he’s so brittle, life will break him, and he won’t be worth the breaking!”

“I don’t mean just that. I mean that I want to keep the fineness in him, to see him follow the shining trail. If it wasn’t for the fineness in him I couldn’t love him, papa, and if I didn’t believe I loved him I wouldn’t marry him.”

“That’s your test, I know.” The judge leaned back, pulling at his pipe, amused at Diane’s view, which seemed to him to be merely that of untried girlhood. “There’s been many a marriage without love, my dear, that’s turned out well enough.”

“I couldn’t do it! To me the woman who marries that way, for money, for position, or just to be married, is”--her voice dropped to a low note, touched with ineffable scorn--“is no better than the worst!”

The judge patted her shoulder.

“A high view, Di. I’ll agree with you thus far--if he wasn’t fine and honest, I’d never let you marry him if I could help it. In these days we fathers can’t help much, in my opinion; but I’ll help you out of it, my child, if ever he shows himself less than we think him--an honest man!”

“We’re alike in that, papa. That’s the unalterable test--his honesty. I couldn’t live, day after day, with a man whom I knew to be a liar and a thief, as Mabel Gardner does. Yet it’s noble in her, too. She stayed with her husband to try to hold him up, to keep him from falling to the lowest level.”

“It was sentiment and womanish feeling,” the judge retorted sternly. “There was nothing noble in it. She shielded him so that some of his creditors let him off a little for her sake. Goffery, the greatest creditor of all, who could have sent him to prison, wouldn’t testify, because he was in love with Mabel himself. She knew it--she played on him. That’s not noble; it’s mere knavery.”

“You mean that she should have sent him to prison rather than let Goffery save him for love of her?”

The judge nodded.

“Trading--mere trading! Not in the bare, ugly fact, as low people trade, but in sentiment and honor--making a wronged man save another because he still loves that other’s wife. She’ll get a divorce next and marry Goffery.”

“I can’t think that!” exclaimed Diane, gazing thoughtfully into the fire. “That would be degradation, papa, and Mabel’s a lady.”

“What’s a lady?” the judge snorted angrily. “Nothing, unless you’re a little better bred and nobler and more virtuous than the rest of womankind. If Mabel marries Goffery--after she gets a divorce--it’ll be paying him for all that he’s done, won’t it? There’s nothing ladylike in that! You’re a lady, Di--not so much by right of birth and breeding and all that, but because you’re an honest woman, and you wouldn’t do the kind of shabby, cowardly things that Mabel Gardner has done.”

“Poor Mabel! You’re a hard judge sometimes, papa! I pity Mabel. I’ve thought of her once or twice to-day, because I was so happy. You remember she was married three years ago to-morrow? She was happy then--but he’s turned out such a rogue! I think, perhaps, that’s why I said what I did just now. I want to keep Arthur as he is, a follower of the shining trail.”

The judge reflected a while on this, smoking quietly.

“I’ll tell you what Arthur said to me,” he rejoined at last. “He told me that your love for him would lead him higher than any ambition that he had ever cherished, or any hope that he’d ever had. It’s a good deal for a man to say, my girl!”

She was leaning against his knee, her cheek resting on her hand, and he could see only the soft, brown arch of her head and the cloud of hair that cloaked her shoulders.

“It’s a great deal to say,” she admitted. “It makes it harder for me to fill the place he’s set for me in his life; but I’ll try to do it. Meanwhile, papa, I hate to leave you! When I came in here to-night I came to tell you that, but we’ve been talking of Arthur. I’ve tried to be a good daughter. I hope I’ve succeeded half-way, papa?”

He patted her head again.

“The best man ever had!”

The words brought back those words of Faunce about Overton. “The best friend man ever had!” The thought thrust itself suddenly into Diane’s heart, and took her unawares. Her tense nerves quivered. She laid her head down on her father’s knee and burst into bitter, inexplicable tears.

XVII

EARLY the following morning, with the rain and sleet driving against the window-panes, in the fury of a late winter storm--the wild harbinger, in fact, of spring itself--Diane was married to Arthur Faunce.

“The handsomest couple I ever saw!” Mrs. Price whispered to Dr. Gerry, dabbing the moisture from her eyes with the handkerchief that she had already wept into a ball.

Dr. Gerry moved an eye around to look at her without moving his head, much as the drowsy crocodile views curious observers at the aquarium; but he made no comment. He had spent the night in trying to force Faunce to tell Diane the truth before she married him. He had failed, and was therefore an unwilling witness at the ceremony.

The quaint old library, the room Diane had chosen, was scarcely altered from its every-day aspect. Above the low book-shelves that lined the walls were fine examples of pottery and bronze, which gleamed warmly in the light of the fire in the great fireplace. A few moss-roses and tall ferns, sent from a New York conservatory, were the only ornaments.

Dr. Price, small, precise, and placid, in his white surplice and black cassock, his white hair smoothed back with what Horace Walpole would have called “a _soupçon_ of curls behind,” performed the ceremony before a group of old friends and neighbors, the only witnesses. Mrs. Price lifted her plump, wrinkled face and kissed the bride on both cheeks.

“My dear, I wish you every blessing! You remind me of Rachel, and Ruth, and all the brides of the Bible. And, dear Diane, he’s so handsome! It seems almost wicked for nature to waste so much beauty on a mere man, even if he is a hero!”

Diane glanced smilingly at Faunce.

“Isn’t it splendid for me, Cousin Julia? I don’t need to shine when he’s near, do I?”

The little woman plunged in deeper, and was still babbling along when her daughter, a little pale and nervous, came to tell Diane it was time to change her dress for the journey. Glad to escape, the two girls ran up-stairs together, and Fanny and the maid made haste to help transform a white-and-silver bride into a trim, tailor-made young woman ready for the train. While the transformation was in progress, Diane grew more composed, and helped with her deft fingers in the knotting and unknotting of ribbons and laces and flowers.

“It went off beautifully, Di!” Fanny felt that she could say this with safety, as she plunged into a new hat-box after the bride’s traveling-hat. “That cake from New York was fine. I left dear papa eating it, and he’ll be ill to-morrow.”

“I noticed the flowers, Fan,” Diane said, fastening fresh hooks, while she sent the maid on an errand. “I’m glad I didn’t have too many. Is that hat becoming? It seems to me too--too flamboyant. The styles are dreadful!”

“It suits you exactly. What a lovely color you’ve got, Di! A minute ago you looked like a ghost. You were----”

Diane stopped her with a gesture.

“What’s that?”

They listened. A newsboy was shouting an extra edition, and they could hear his shrill pipe above the storm. Fanny’s eyes widened.

“What can it be? No one sells extras out here, in a storm!”

Diane went to the door and listened.

“Some one’s called him. Fanny, go and find out what it is. There’s nothing for me to do now but to work on my gloves.”

The little bridesmaid, glad to hide her telltale face, ran out. Diane stood listening in strange anxiety, unaware that she was frightened. Why should she be? she argued. Why should she worry at all? They were all together and all well--what could be better, more reassuring, than that thought?

Then Arthur’s face came back to her as he had looked when he put the ring on her finger--the feverish light in his eyes, the triumph and the happiness. A feeling, deep and inexplicable, disturbed her; there had been something wanting--some element of strength, fortitude, or poise. At that moment, the supreme moment of the ceremony, she had experienced a new sensation of loss, of shipwreck, as if she had survived the failure of some fine and inarticulate hope and confidence in him.