VIII

It had apparently been decreed that Derek Pruyn was not to go to South

America that year. On more than one occasion he had been delayed on the

eve of sailing. From February the voyage was postponed to May, and from

May to September. In September it had ceased for the moment to be

urgent, while remaining a possibility. It was the February of a year

later before it became a definite necessity no longer to be put off.

In the mean while, under the beneficent processes of time, sunshine, and

Diane Eveleth's cultivation, Miss Dorothea Pruyn had become a "bud." The

small, hard, green thing had unfolded petals whose delicacy, purity, and

fragrance were a new contribution to the joy of living. Society in

general showed its appreciation, and Derek Pruyn was proud.

He was more than proud; he was grateful. The development that had

changed Dorothea from a forward little girl into a charming maiden, and

which might have been the mere consequence of growth, was to him the

evident fruit of Diane's influence. The subtle differences whereby his

own dwelling was transformed from a handsome, more or less empty, shell

into an abode of the domestic amenities sprang, in his opinion, from a

presence shedding grace. All the more strange was it, therefore, that

both presence and influence remained as remote from his own personal

grasp as music on the waves of sound or odors in the air. Of the many

impressions produced by a year of Diane's residence beneath his roof,

none perplexed him more than her detachment. Moreover, it was a

detachment as difficult to comprehend in quality as to define in words.

There was in her attitude nothing of the retreating nymph or of the

self-effacing sufferer. She took her place equally without obtrusiveness

and without affectation. Such effects as she brought about came without

noise, without effort, and without laboriousness of good intention.

Simple and straightforward in all her ways, she nevertheless contrived

to throw into her relations with himself an element as impersonal as

sunshine.

In the first days of her coming it was he who, in pursuance of his

method of reserve, had held aloof. He had been frequently absent from

New York, and, even when there, had lived much at one or another of his

clubs. Weeks had already passed when the perception stole on him that

his goings and comings meant little more to her than to the trees waving

in the great Park before his door.

The discovery that he had been taking such pains to abstract himself

from eyes which scarcely noticed whether he was there or not brought

with it a little bitter raillery at his own expense. He was piqued at

once in his self-love and in his masculine instinct for domination. It

seemed to be out of the natural order of things that his thoughts should

dwell so much on a woman to whom he was only a detail in the scheme of

her surroundings--superior to the butler, and more animate than the

pictures on the wall, but as little in her consciousness as either. It

was certainly an easy opportunity in which to display that

self-restraint which he had undertaken to make his portion; but when the

heroic nature finds no obstacles to overcome, it has a tendency to

create them.

Without obtruding himself upon Diane, Derek began to dine more

frequently at his own house. On those occasions when Dorothea went out

alone it was impossible for the two who remained at home to avoid a kind

of conversation, which, with the topics incidental to the management of

a common household, often verged upon the intimate. When Diane

accompanied his daughter to the opera, he adopted the habit of dropping

into the box, and perhaps taking them, with some of Dorothea's friends,

to a restaurant for supper. He planned the little parties and excursions

for which Dorothea's "budding" offered an excuse; and, while he

recognized the subterfuge, he made his probable journey, with the long

absence it would involve, serve as a palliation. Since, too, there was

no danger to Diane, there could be the less reason for stinting himself

in the pleasure of her presence, so long as he was prepared to pay for

it afterward in full.

Thus the first winter had gone by, until with the shifting of the

environment in summer a certain change entered into the situation. The

greater freedom of country life on the Hudson made it requisite that

Diane should be more consciously circumspect. In her detachment Derek

noticed first of all a new element of intention; but since it was the

first sign she had given of distinguishing between him and the dumb

creation, it did not displease him. While he could not affirm that she

avoided him, he saw less of her than when in town. During those

difficult moments when they had no guests and Dorothea was making visits

among her friends, Diane found pretexts for slipping away to New York,

on what she declared to be business of her own--availing herself of the

seclusion of the little French hostelry that had first given her

shelter.

It was at times such as these that Derek began to perceive what she had

become to him. As long as she was near him he could keep his feelings

within the limitations he had set for them; but in her absence he was

restless and despondent till she returned. The brutality of life, which

made him master of the beauty of the country and the coolness of the

hills, while it drove her to stifle in the town, stirred him with

alternate waves of indignation and compassion.

There was a torrid afternoon in August when the sight of her, trudging

along the dusty highway to the station, almost led him to betray himself

by his curses upon fate. Dorothea having left for Newport in the

morning, Diane was, as usual, seeking the privacy of University Place

for the two weeks the girl's visit was to last. Understanding her desire

not to be alone with him for even a few hours when there was no third

person in the house, Derek had taken the opportunity to motor for lunch

to a friend's house some miles away. With the intention of not returning

till after she had gone, he had ordered a carriage to be in readiness to

drive her to her train; but his luncheon was scarcely ended when the

thought occurred to him that, by hurrying back, he might catch a last

glimpse of her before she started.

He had already half smothered her in dust when he perceived that the

little woman in black, under a black parasol, was actually Diane. To his

indignant queries as to why she should be plodding her way on foot, with

this scorching sun overhead, her replies were cheerful and

uncomplaining. A series of small accidents in the stable--such had

constantly happened at her own little château in the Oise--having made

it inadvisable to take the horses out, one of the men had conveyed her

luggage to the station, while she herself preferred to walk. She was

used to the exigencies of country life, in both France and Ireland; and

as for the heat, it was a detail to be scorned. Dust, too, was only

matter out of place, and a necessary concomitant of summer. Would he not

drive on, without troubling himself any more about her?

No; decidedly he would not. She must get in and let him take her to the

station. There he could work off his wrath only by buying her ticket and

seeing to her luggage; while his charge to the negro porter to look to

her comfort was of such a nature that during the whole of the journey

she was pelted with magazine literature and tormented with glasses of

ice-water.

That night he found himself impelled by his sense of honor as a

gentleman to write a letter of apology for the indignity she had been

exposed to while in his house. When it had gone he considered it

insufficient, and only the reflection that he ought to have business in

town next day kept him from following it up with a second note.

Arrived in New York, where the city was burning as if under a sun-glass,

he found his chief subject for consideration to be the choice of a club

at which to lunch. There, in the solitude of the deserted smoking-room,

where the heat was tempered, the glare shut out, and the very footfall

subdued, he thought of the little hotel in University Place. Because

human society had mysterious unwritten laws, the woman he loved was

forced to steal away from the freshness and peace of green fields and

sweeping river, to take refuge amid the noisome ugliness from which, in

spite of her courage, her exquisite nature must shrink. He, whose needs

were simple, as his tastes were comparatively coarse, could command the

sybaritic luxury of a Roman patrician, while she, who could not lift her

hand without betraying the habits of inborn refinement, was exposed not

only to vulgar contact, but to a squalor of discomfort as odious as

vice. The thought was a humiliation. Even if he had not loved her, it

would have seemed almost the duty of a man of honor to step in between

her and the cruel pathos of her lot.

It was a curious reflection that it was the very fact that he did love

her which held him back. Could he have turned toward Paradise and said

to the sweet soul waiting for him there, "This woman has need of me, but

you alone reign in my heart," he would have felt more free to act. But

the time when that would have been possible had gone by. Anything he

might do now would be less for her need than his own; and his own he

could endure if loyalty to his past demanded it. None the less was it

necessary to find a way in which to come to Diane's immediate relief;

and by the time he had finished his cigar he thought he had discovered

it.

"Having been obliged to run up to town," he explained, when she had

received him in the little hotel parlor, "I've dropped in to tell you

that I'm going away for a few weeks into Canada."

"Isn't it rather hot weather for travelling?" she asked, with that

clear, smiling gaze which showed him at once that she had seen through

his pretext for coming.

"It won't be hot where I'm going--up into the valley of the Metapedia."

"It's rather a sudden decision, isn't it?"

"N--no. I generally try to get a little sport some time during the

year."

"Naturally you know your own intentions best. I only happen to remember

that you said, yesterday morning, you hoped not to leave Rhinefields

till the middle of next month."

"Did I say that? I must have been dreaming?"

"Very likely you were. Or perhaps you're dreaming now."

"Not at all; in fact, I'm particularly wide awake. I see things so

clearly that I've looked in to tell you some of them. You must get out

of this stifling hole and go back to Rhinefields at once."

"I don't like that way of speaking of a place I've become attached to.

It isn't a stifling hole; it's a clean little inn, where the service is

the very law of kindness. The art may be of a period somewhat earlier

than the primitive," she laughed, looking round at the highly colored

chromos of lake and mountain scenery hanging on the walls, "and the

furniture may not be strictly in the style of Louis Quinze, but the host

and hostess treat me as a daughter, and every garçon is my slave."

"I can quite understand that; but all the same it's no fit place for

you."

"I suppose the fittest place for any one is the place in which he feels

at home."

"Don't say that," he begged, with sudden emotion in his voice.

"I think I ought to say it," she insisted, "first of all because it's

true; and then because you would feel more at ease about me if you knew

just how it's true."

"You know that I'm not at ease about you."

"I know you think I must be discontented with my lot, when--in a certain

sense--I'm not at all so. I don't pretend that I prefer working for a

living to having money of my own; but I've found this"--she hesitated,

as if thinking out her phrase--"I've found that life grows richer as it

goes on, in whatever way one has to live it. It's as if the streams that

fed it became more numerous the farther one descended from the height."

"I'm glad you're able to say that--"

"I can say it very sincerely; and I lay stress upon it, because I know

you're kind enough to be worried about me. I wish I could make you

understand how little reason there is for it, though you mustn't think

that I'm not touched by it, or that I mistake its motive. I've come to

see that what I've often heard, and used scarcely to believe, is quite

true, that American men have an attitude toward women entirely different

from that of our men. Our men probably think more about women than any

other men in the world; but they think of them as objects of prey--with

joys and sorrows not to be taken seriously. You, on the contrary, are

willing to put yourself to great inconvenience for me, merely because I

am a woman."

"Not merely because of that," Derek permitted himself to say.

"We needn't weigh motives as if they were golddust. When we have their

general trend we have enough. I only want you to see that I understand

you, while I must ask you not to be hurt if I still persist in not

availing myself of your courtesy. I wish you wouldn't question me any

more about it, because there are situations in which one cheapens things

by the very effort to put them into words. If you were a woman, you'd

comprehend my feeling--"

"Let us assume that I do, as it is. I have still another suggestion to

make. Admitting that I stay at Rhinefields, why can't you ask your

mother-in-law to come and make you a couple of weeks' visit there?"

For a moment Diane forgot the restraint she made it a habit to impose

upon herself in the new conditions of her life, and slipped back into

the spontaneous manner of the past.

"How tiresome you are! I never knew any one but a child twist himself in

so many directions to get his own way."

"You see, I'm accustomed to having my own way. You ought not to think of

resisting me."

"I'm not resisting you; I'm only eluding your grasp. There's one great

obstacle to what you've just been good enough to propose: my

mother-in-law couldn't come. Miss Lucilla van Tromp couldn't spare her.

As a matter of fact, she--Miss Lucilla--asked me to go to Newport and stay

with her all the time Dorothea is with the Prouds; but I declined the

invitation. You see now that I don't lack cool and comfortable quarters

because I couldn't get them."

"I see," he nodded. "You evidently prefer--this."

"I'll tell you what I prefer: I prefer a breathing-space in which to

commune with my own soul."

"You could commune with your own soul at Rhinefields."

"No, I couldn't. It's an exercise that requires not only solitude and

seclusion, but a certain withdrawal from the world. If I were in France,

I should go and spend a fortnight in my old convent at Auteuil; but in

this country the nearest approach I can make to that is to be here where

I am. After all that has happened in the last year and more, I am trying

to find myself again, so to speak--I'm trying to re-establish my

identity with the Diane de la Ferronaise, who seems to me to have faded

back into the distant twilight of time. Won't you let me do it in my own

way, and ask me no more questions? Yes; I see by your face that you

will; and we can be friends again. Now," she added, briskly, springing

up and touching a bell, "you're going to have some of my iced coffee.

I've taught them to make it, just as I used to have it at the

Mauconduit--that was our little place near Compiègne--and I know you'll

find it refreshing."

It was half an hour later, while he was taking leave of her, that a

thought occurred to him which promised to be fruitful of new resources.

"Very well," he declared, as they were parting, "if you persist in

staying here, I, too, shall persist in looking in whenever I come to

town--which will have to be pretty often just now--to see that you're

not down with some sort of fever."

"But," she laughed, "I thought you were going away--to Canada?"

"I'm not obliged to; and you've rather succeeded in dissuading me."

"Then let me succeed in dissuading you from everything. Don't come here

again--please don't."

"I certainly shall."

"I'm generally out."

"In that case I shall stay till you come in."

"Of course I can't keep you from doing that. I will only say that the

American man I've had in mind for the past few months--wouldn't."

The fact that he did not go back to University Place, either on this or

any subsequent occasion when she thought it well to withdraw there,

emphasized his helplessness to aid her. By the time autumn returned, and

the household was once more settled in town, he had grown aware that

between Diane and himself there was an impalpable wall of separation,

which he could no more pass than he could transcend the veil between

material existence and the Unseen World. He began to perceive that what

he had called detachment of manner, more or less purposely maintained,

was in reality an element in the situation which from the beginning had

precluded friendship. Diane and he could not be friends in any of the

ordinary senses of the word. As employer and employed their necessary

dealings might be friendly; but to anything more personal, under the

present arrangement, there was attached the impossible condition of

stepping off from terra firma into space.

The obvious method of putting their mutual relationship on a basis

richer in future potentialities Derek still felt himself unable to adopt

of his own initiative act. The vow which bound him to his dead wife was

one from which circumstances--and not merely his own fiat--must absolve

him; but as winter advanced it seemed to him that life had begun to

speak on the subject with a voice of imperative command.

It was the middle of January, when a small, accidental happening drew

all his growing but still debatable intentions into one sharp point of

resolution. It was such an afternoon as comes rarely, even in the

exhilarating winter of New York--an afternoon when the unfathomable blue

of the sky overhead runs through all the gamut of tones from lavender to

indigo; when the air has the living keenness of that which the Spirit

first breathed into the nostrils of man; when the rapture of the heart

is that of neither passion, wine, nor nervous excitement, but comes

nearer the exaltation of deathless youth in a deathless world than

anything else in a temporary earth. It was a day on which even the jaded

heart is in the mood to begin all over again, in renewed pursuit of the

happiness which up to now has been elusive. To Derek, whose heart was by

no means jaded, it was a day on which the instinctive hope of youth,

which he supposed he had outlived, proved itself of one essence with the

conscious passion of maturity.

When, as he walked homeward along Fifth Avenue, he overtook Diane, also

making her way homeward, the happy occurrence seemed but part of the

general radiance permeating life. The chance meeting on the neutral

ground of out-of-doors took Diane by surprise; and before she had time

to put up her guards of reserve she had betrayed her youth in a shy

heightening of color. Under the protection of the cheerful, slowly

moving crowd she felt at liberty to drop for a minute the subdued air of

his daughter's paid companion, and in her replies to what he said she

spoke with some of her old gayety of verve. It was an unfortunate moment

in which to yield to this temptation, for it was, perhaps, the only

occasion since her coming to New York on which she was closely observed.

Engrossed as they were, the one with the other, they had insensibly

relaxed their pace, becoming mere strollers on the outside edge of the

throng. The sense of being watched came to both of them at once, and,

looking up at the same moment, they saw, approaching at a snail's pace,

an open Victoria, in which were two ladies, to whom they were objects of

plainly expressed interest. The elder was an insignificant little woman,

who looked as though she were being taken out by her costly furs, while

the younger was a girl of some two or three and twenty, of a type of

beauty that would have been too imperious had it not been toned down by

that air which to the unintelligent means boredom, though the wise know

it to spring from something gone amiss in life. Both ladies kept their

eyes fixed so exclusively on Diane that they had almost passed before

remembering to salute Derek with a nod.

"I've seen those ladies somewhere," Diane observed, when they had gone

by.

"I dare say. They've probably seen you, too. The elder is Mrs. Bayford,

sister of Mr. Grimston, my uncle's partner in Paris. The girl is Marion

Grimston, his daughter."

"I remember perfectly now. They used to come to our charity sales,

and--and--anything of that kind."

Pruyn laughed.

"Anything, you mean, that was open to all comers. Mrs. Grimston would be

flattered."

"I didn't mean to speak slightingly," she hastened to say. "There were

plenty of nice people in Paris whom I didn't know."

"And plenty, I imagine, who thought you ought to have known them. Mrs.

Grimston, and Mrs. Bayford, too, would have been among that number."

"Well, you see I do know them--by sight. I recall Miss Grimston

especially. She's so handsome."

"I shall tell her that to-night."

"To-night?"

"Yes; it's with them that Dorothea and I are dining. The name conveying

nothing to you, you probably didn't remember it. The fact is that, as

Mrs. Bayford is the sister of my uncle's partner--my partner, too--I

make it a point to be very civil to her twice a year--once when I dine

with her, and once when she dines with me. The annual festivals have

been delayed this season because she has only just returned from a long

visit to Japan and India, with Marion in her wake."

There had been so much to say which, in the glamour of that glorious

afternoon, was more important that no further time was spent on the

topic. Derek forgot the meeting till Mrs. Bayford recalled it to him as

he sat beside her in the evening. She was one of those small, ill-shapen

women whose infirmities are thrown into more conspicuous relief by dress

and jewels and _décolletage_. Seated at the head of her table, she

produced the impression of a Goddess of Discord at a feast of

well-meaning, hapless mortals.

"I want a word with you," she said, parenthetically, to Derek, on her

left, before turning her attention to the more important neighbor on her

right.

"One is scant measure," he laughed, in reply, "but I must be grateful

even for that."

It was the middle of dinner before she took notice of him again, but

when she did she plunged into her subject boldly.

"I suppose you didn't think I knew who you were walking with this

afternoon?"

"Yes, I did, because the lady recognized you. She said you and Mrs.

Grimston were among the nice people in Paris whom she hadn't met--but

whom she knew very well by sight."

If Derek thought this reply calculated to appease an angry deity, he

discovered his mistake.

"Did she have the indecency to say she hadn't met me?"

"I think she did; but she probably didn't know that the word indecency

could apply to anything connected with you."

"Why, I was introduced to her four times in one season!"

"I suppose she hasn't as good a memory as yours."

"Oh, as for that, it wasn't a matter of memory. Nobody was permitted to

forget her--she was quite notorious."

"I've always heard that in Paris the mere possession of beauty is enough

to keep any one in the public eye."

"It wasn't beauty alone--if she _has_ beauty; though for my part I can't

see it."

"It _is_ of rather an elusive quality."

"It must be. But if it exists at all, I can tell you that it's of a

dangerous quality."

"Hasn't that always been the peculiarity of beauty ever since the days

of Helen of Troy?"

"I'm sure I can't say. I've always tried to steer clear of that sort of

thing--"

"That must be an excellent plan; only it deprives one of the power of

speaking as an authority, doesn't it?"

"I don't pretend to speak as an authority. If I say anything at all,

it's what everybody knows."

"What everybody knows is generally--scandal."

"This was certainly scandal; but it wasn't the fact that everybody knew

it that made it so."

"Then I'm sure you wouldn't wish to repeat it."

"I don't see why you should be sure of anything of the kind. I consider

it my duty to repeat it."

"Then you won't be surprised if I consider it mine to contradict it."

"Certainly not. I shouldn't be surprised at anything you could do,

Derek, after what I've heard since I came home."

"I won't ask you what that is--"

"No; your own conscience must tell you. No one can go on as you've been

doing, and not know he must be talked about."

"I've always understood that that was more flattering than to be

ignored."

"It depends. There's such a thing as receiving that sort of flattery

first, only to be ignored in the sequel. I speak as your friend, Derek--"

"I thoroughly understand that; but may I ask if it's in the way of

warning or of threat?"

"It's in the way of both. You must see that, whatever risks I may be

prepared to run myself, as long as I have Marion with me I can't expose

her to--"

"To what?"

Notwithstanding his efforts to keep the conversation to a tone of

banter, acrimonious though it had to be, Derek was unable to pronounce

the two brief syllables without betraying some degree of anger. Glancing

up at him as she shrank under her weight of jewels, Mrs. Bayford found

him very big and menacing; but she was a brave woman, and if she

shrivelled, it was only as a cat shrivels before springing at a mastiff.

"I can't expose her to the chance of meeting--"

She paused, not from hesitation, but with the rhetorical intention of

making the end of her phrase more telling.

"My future wife," he whispered, before she had time to go on. "It's only

fair to tell you that."

"Good heavens! You're not going to marry the creature!"

Mrs. Bayford brought out the words with the dramatic action and

intensity they deserved. In the hum of talk around and across the table

it was doubtful whether or not they were heard, and yet more than one of

the guests glanced up with a look of interrogation. Dorothea caught her

father's eyes in a gaze which he had some difficulty in returning with

the proper amount of steadiness; but Mrs. Berrington Jones came to the

rescue of the company by asking Mrs. Bayford to tell the amusing story

of how her bath had been managed in Japan.

So the incident passed by, leaving a sense of mystery in the air; though

for Derek, all sense of annoyance disappeared in the knowledge that he

was Diane's champion.

He was thinking over the incident in the luxurious semi-darkness of the

electric brougham as they were going homeward, when the clear voice of

Dorothea broke in on his meditation.

"Are you going to be married, father?"

The question could not be a surprise to him after the occurrence at the

table, but he was not prepared to give an affirmative answer on the spur

of the moment.

"What makes you ask?" he inquired, after a second's reflection.

"I heard what Mrs. Bayford said."

"And how should you feel if I were?"

"It would depend."

"On what?"

"On whether or not it was any one I liked."

"That's fair. And if it was some one whom you did like?"

"Then it would depend on whether or not it was--Diane."

"And if it was Diane?"

"I should be very glad."

"Why?"

She slipped her arm through his and snuggled up to him.

"Oh, for a lot of reasons. First, because I've always supposed you'd be

getting married one day; and I've been terribly afraid you'd pick out

some one I couldn't get along with."

"Have I ever shown any symptom to justify that alarm?"

"N--no; but you never can tell--with a man."

"Can you be any surer with a woman?"

"No; and that's one of my other reasons. I'm not very sure about

myself."

"You don't mean that it's to be young Wap--?" he began, uneasily.

"I suppose it will have to be he--or some one else. They keep at me."

"And you don't know how long you may be able to hold out."

"I'm holding out as well as I can," she laughed, "but it can't go on

forever. And then--if I do--"

"Well--what?"

"You'd be left all alone, and, of course, I should be worried about

that--unless you--you--"

"Unless I married some one."

"No; not some one; no one--but Diane."

They were now at their own door, but before she sprang out she drew down

his face to hers and kissed him.